the_unlettered_tellurian

An article in the Atlantic shows how fragile the global supply chain can get during times of financial crisis. It details the sorry state of scrap metal trading between US and China. The much talked about “trust” between trading partners seems to be taking a back seat in the current “survival” crisis.

The Chinese government has always been known to be totalitarian in its approach to a whole bunch of things…but it surprises me how easily things can get hazy in our collective memory. A lot of people I talk to these days seem to have very vague memories of “how” totalitarian the Chinese authorities were (or should I say “can be”).

This 2006 video from PBS’s Frontline, called Tankman, should help you remember, recollect, or realize (depending on what state of neglect you are in) the past excesses of the Chinese Government… the one that is now in the news for its “Olympic” spirit.

Among other things, the program has some amazing footage of what actually happened in “Tiananmen Square” back in 1989.

In case you are too busy to go through all of the parts, at least spend some time on the last chapter of the video, which gives an idea of the extent of success the authorities have had in erasing such unpleasant incidences from their history, from the minds of their younger generations…hard to believe such levels of censorship can happen even in this “information” age!

An short article titled Experts Divided Over China’s Post-Olympic Hangover has just appeared in The Korea Times. Key points in the article are listed below…

1. China is bound to suffer the post-Olympic “valley effect”; what is important is how long the slowdown will last.
2. The Chinese government has been taking some steps (like increasing garment export tax rebates) to boost confidence.
3. Moderate pullback in the Chinese stock markets are good for the country in the long run.
4. Beijing accounts for just 4% of China’s GDP. So any direct “Olympic Hangover” in the Chinese capital can be offset by overall growth in other parts of the country.
5. Earlier host cities like Seoul, Barcelona, and Sydney were bigger in proportion to their national economies resulting in bigger setbacks to their nations’ economies after the Olympics.

Activity on the Olympic Bubble seems to be picking up again. I came across this post on Seeking Alpha that stresses that the Chinese Olympic Bubble is the next “true” bubble after the Nasdaq Tech bubble and the Japan Nikkei Bubble.

Talking about those two bubbles, the author says “Valuation was in the stratosphere. Participants were fully convinced on the ideas of the Technology Miracle and Japanese Miracle respectively. And resources were severely misallocated.”

He thinks the same is happening in China now “Here we have all of the ingredients for a classic bubble – massive hysteria on faulty facts.”

Don’t forget to go through the comments on the post… they are as interesting (if not more) as the post itself.

Your might also be interested in what the pro-China folk had to say (back in 2007, kind of in response to Alan Greenspan’s comment) about the possibility of a post-olympic crash in this post I made earlier.

Looks like the Chinese authorities are really trying hard to justify the things they have done in Tibet under the cloak of “development”. Here is an excellent website they have put up to…shall we call… “purify” their image.

It’s a “Special Report” on chinaview.cn titled “Tibet: Its Past and Present”. Very thoughtful on their part to ignore “Future” in the title cause it doesn’t look like Tibet would have one if things continue as they are in the “Present”.

They even have something like a “Let’s bitch about Dalai Lama” section with stuff like

• Dalai clique’s lies exposed
• Double face of Dalai Lama reprimanded
• Dalai destroying base for dialogue
• Commentary: Dalai Lama, a scientist or a swindler?
• Dalai’s brag about “peace”, “non-violence” is nothing but lie

Brilliant effort…but I wonder why I am still not convinced

I still think that country would have been so much better if the Chinese wouldn’t have directly interfered. They shouldn’t have messed with that beautiful place

Looks like the Chinese had put up this interview as a reply to all that talk about a post-Olympic China crash.
In the interview, Chinese economist Li Yining says strong domestic growth has ensured that China has a lot more good projects that need investment so all the talk about bubbles is just talk. He does not make any direct reference to the Chinese stock markets, nor does he directly comment on any of the problems being forecast about them.
While most of the article has a very “everything-is-fine-in-China-” feel, in response to the final question he does highlight these five problem areas as major obstacles to the country’s sustained economic growth:

1. industrial monopolies
2. slow transformation of the government’s functions
3. slow growth of farmers’ income
4. an insufficient supply of resources
5. pressure on the environment

I must have been asleep for too long… how else could I have ignored all the articles about a possible post-Olympic downturn in Asia that had come up since last year! I was completely unaware of the development till I made this post!

Here’s an article about the topic in Forbes, posted a few days after Alan Greenspan commented on the issue.

Apparently, Indian and Chinese programmers are not contributing enough to the open source process. That’s what Dana Blankenhorn says in a recent blog post.

He thinks that the “proprietary attitude toward improvements which open source fights so hard ” remains ingrained in both these countries.