PRIVATE consumption plays a small role in China's economy, compared with its prominence in America. Yet hidden disposable incomes may account for trillions of yuan, held disproportionately in the hands of the rich.
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Many economies could face collapse if those Rich buggers with probably ill-gotten gains do not consume those luxury items that are being churned out to cause envy and discontentment from amongst the Occupier ranks.
damn, the Chinese currency IS NOT CALLED YUAN! It's the Renminbi (RMB). stop talking so much of China with proportional ignorance to the country.
So? The official name of the american dollar is "united states dollar" but everyone just calls it the american dollar.
No one in China actually says, "that bottle of pepsi is 6 renminbi". They'd say 6 yuan, or more likely, 6 kuai.
I vote we stop calling it yuan and starting call it kuai. :P
as far as I know, yuan means "a basic money", so if you are in Brazil talking in Chinese with another person and you say something costs 5 yuan, it'll be understood that it costs 5 bucks or, in case, 5 Real.
people in China refer Reminbi as yuan because they're in China, so it's correctly. But yuan doesnt NECESSARILY means Renminbi.
I mean, when we talk about Brazilian economy, we refer ourselves to Real, or in the case of the US, american dollar (which are the names, or even nicknames whatever, of the currency). But what I'm trying to say is that yuan doesnt have any necessary relation with Renminbi :)
I'm just saying it because I'm studying Chinese and sometimes some miserable mistakes matter to you when you are involved in the culture and you have a bad habit of saying the right terms :)
And, I know that nobody in China talks about Renminbi as well as in the US nobody (or few ppl) talk about United States Dollar in the streets.
yuan is tha same english term "bucks" or any other slang/term referring to an amount of money. ;)
The Renminbi or People's currency is made up of the following subunits:
1 yuán (元,圓)
1/10 jiǎo (角)
1/100 fēn (分)
There is no such thing as 100 RMB. Technically we are wrong when we use the word RMB, because it doesn't denote which subunit we are talking about. There are 人民币元 and 人民币角 and 人民币分. Just saying RMB is like saying 100 United States Currency. What currency are we talking about dollars? Dimes? Cents? Mils? You assume dollars, but you are not 100% sure. Using yuan is the only way to correctly identify the unit of the people's currency. Now perhaps you should call it, "The people's currency: Yuan" but that seems a bit much.
The Economist is talking about fairness. I hope The Economist realizes that China is a communist country. The only fair thing in communism is that the government tells you if they are fair or not. Communist will tell how to think and talk. Suppression is necessary in a communist culture. Don't worry China, you can use the U.S. treasury bonds that you have purchased to share the same vision as President's Obama social justice (fairness) in your own country.
Wow the Economist is arguing in favor of more government spending, who would have thought? We are all Keynesians now.
More of this ridiculous socialist nonsense implying the Rich became rich by stealing it from the poor simply because the rich got to a money pile first and with a bigger bucket.
But I suppose China is communist so they would likely believe it.
The fact is with the exception of a few Madoff types, the only Rich who soak the poor and treat the entire country like an ATM would be politicians. Everyone else who is Rich, earned it.
I must have missed the part where it says China's rich got that way from stealing from the poor.
This video makes several points:
1) Spending is dominated by infrastructure projects.
2) China has a very lopsided distribution of wealth, a prosperous new middle class in the cities and hundreds of millions of old school peasants in the countryside.
2) Social spending is very limited by Western standards.
I know it's the final conclusion you disagree with, but I think it's tough to argue with those three observations.
This video doesn't say that the rich in China got that way by nefarious means, although it's implied in other Economist articles. The issue is that many of the very rich in China are thought to have gotten that way through shady government connections, with Bo Xilai and his family being the posterboys. Unlike in the West, there is neither the free media to expose corruption or a legal system to properly address it.
In CHINDIA, people neither SPEND nor INVEST. They just SAVE money.
That used to be true, however, now they are "saving" money by buying real estate. Or they are "saving" money by putting in real estate funds. The majority of Chinese citizens "saving" money this way are unaware that the price of housing can go down. I have spoken to hundreds of people in China about this. Ergo you have the rising housing prices in China and pretty soon the entire "savings" of the country will be wiped out.
and in India?
and in India?
I have no idea. I'm sorry I thought you CHINDIA was a miss spelling of China. I am not aware of the savings rate in India.
and the article was about China anyway.
I think the rich, not just Chinese rich, should do their bit and start spending. What a way to kick start a recovery.
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