David Harvey: Crises of Capitalism

Fun animation, interesting lecture! Touches on cultures of home ownership, labor exploitation, credit debts, continual displacement of economic crises (kind of like Haussman's displacement of poor communities), etc.

Signs of Slowing Economy

"The Chinese economy, after nearly three decades of rapid, almost uninterrupted growth, seems to be settling down to a still strong but less blistering pace. But some sectors are struggling, including exports and luxury residential real estate construction.
...
"Urban minimum wages are rising briskly, particularly here in Guangzhou and elsewhere in the industrial Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China. And they are supposed to keep rising 13 percent a year under Beijing’s five-year plan. But many of the job applicants and their friends from nearby factories said that they did not feel they were benefiting from the labor shortage.

“It’s hard to find a good job; it’s easy to find just any job,” said Gao Qing, a 21-year-old who was hoping for a quality-inspection position. Many of the available jobs pay only the local minimum wage, around $200 a month before overtime, and many of the jobs are at small factories with questionable reputations for paying workers on time.

And some of the smaller factories have reduced or eliminated traditional subsidies for workers’ food, housing and other benefits to offset the cost of higher minimum wages, Ms. Gao and other workers said."
...
The government is trying to engineer a decline in real estate prices to improve affordability, without damaging investor confidence so much that prices tip into a multiyear downward spiral of the sort seen in the United States. Down payments have been raised to 40 percent or more and many regulations discourage investors from buying more than one home."

Factory reforms?

Pressure, Chinese and Foreign, Drives Changes at Foxconn
Over 100 million migrant workers returned to their village homes this month to celebrate China’s Spring Festival, otherwise known as the New Year. Traditionally, factories have had no problem luring those workers back. But many Chinese cities are still confronting serious labor shortages, even though the holiday ended weeks ago. A recent Chinese government report said this year’s labor shortage was more pronounced than those in previous years.

And just as China’s exporters are struggling to cope with labor shortages in coastal regions, they are also confronting higher raw material costs and a strengthening Chinese currency, which makes Chinese goods more expensive in other nations.

“China can’t guarantee the low wages and costs they once did,” said Ron Turi of Element 3 Battery Venture, a consulting firm in the battery industry. “And companies like Foxconn have developed international profiles, and so they have to worry about how they’re seen by people living in places with very different standards.”
...
If the workers will not move to the coast, the logic is that the coastal factories ought to move to where the workers are living. Big manufacturers like Foxconn have responded to such challenges by moving factories inland.

And worried that the old model is dying, Foxconn has announced plans to invest in millions of robots and automate aspects of production.

Shanghai: 1990 / 2010

Photo from Retronaut.co.

China Risks a Bumpy Transition to Xi's Leadership // #WSJ

LINK TO XI JINPING'S WIKI

Come On, China, Buy Our Stuff!

China is the fastest-growing consumer market in the world, and American companies have made billions there. At the same time, Chinese consumers aren’t spending nearly as much as American companies had hoped. China has simultaneously become the greatest boon and the biggest disappointment.

Climate Change & China

Global warming threatens China's march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government's latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself.