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Comment by T-A | Hacker News Reader

Exports are about 20% of China's GDP [1], and 18% of those exports go to the US [2]. So even you completely erased all of China's exports to the US, without substitution, you would only subtract 3.6% from its GDP, i.e. little more than half a year's worth of growth at the current rate of about 6.5% per year. Possibly a short recession, definitely not a crash.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?location...

[2] https://www.thebalance.com/china-economy-facts-effect-on-us-...

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You forgot about the millions of jobs that disappear in China after factories leave for other countries.

You forgot about the billions of foreign direct investment that actually helped China to get to where it is today, now leaving the country.

You forgot about the real estate bubble in China deflating. The one that has the middle class of China paying for $1M house with their $1300/month income.

I responded to your closing statement that "$250B in tariff on Chinese imports in January 2019, followed up with potentially rest of the $600B in tariff on Chinese imports in 2019, will crash China". It's the only thing you wrote which at least contains some numbers, although you got them wrong (it's tariffs on $250 billions worth of imports, not "$250 billion in tariff", etc.).

More serious problems than US tariffs may well crash China's economy, but if you now want to argue so, you'd better bring (correct) numbers and analysis, not just handwaving about "millions of jobs that disappear" and so on (and keep in mind that a million in a country of more than one billion is not a whole lot of anything).

Housing in China has nothing to do with the real estate market.

The real estate market is tied to GDP growth so there is such an excess of housing that there are ghost cities. It's also when you hear stupid stories about power plant shutdowns and going green.

I've been in China for over 5 years and can assure you that almost all news that is presented in the west is either misleading or just wildly out of context, to give a vastly different perception.

But there is far more DIY opportunity in China, but you have to do it yourself. Nobody is going to show you how or help.

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