yeah again they really like to stink it up in shangai, this doesnt explain to me why the central leadership didnt go ballistic against them for this and other fuckups other than fear of instability or (somehow?) being afraid shangai might actually have the loyalty of the military or something like that
Shanghai is the city with the highest GDP in the entire country and also its premier financial center. These people have a lot of power and seriously screw with the growth of the economy. One example is pension/retirement fund, which has become a hot topic recently. Because China cannot print money at will (and also the pension fund cannot be used in stock investment like you’d see in the US), it has to generate growth/revenues to finance the pension payout - there is some calculations floating around that the country will run out of its ability to pay retirement salaries to an increasingly aging population by 2035 if it cannot sustain a continuous growth at 5% over the next 10 years. This is why China is so obsessed with GDP growth even though we all know it’s just a number, and why they had to raise the retirement age recently.
All this can be solved by the central bank directly printing money, but that’s not the model they’re going after.
This is what the government is afraid of:
Covid cases from March-April 2022.
Blue line: Shanghai, orange line: Shenzhen
Shanghai: population 24.87M, density ~4000/sqkm, Western-style lockdown
Shenzhen: population 17.56M, density ~7000/sqkm, Zero Covid lockdown
By December 2022, the entire national Zero Covid policy had to be abandoned. Because one city refused to comply with the national policy.
yeah again they really like to stink it up in shangai, this doesnt explain to me why the central leadership didnt go ballistic against them for this and other fuckups other than fear of instability or (somehow?) being afraid shangai might actually have the loyalty of the military or something like that
Shanghai is the city with the highest GDP in the entire country and also its premier financial center. These people have a lot of power and seriously screw with the growth of the economy. One example is pension/retirement fund, which has become a hot topic recently. Because China cannot print money at will (and also the pension fund cannot be used in stock investment like you’d see in the US), it has to generate growth/revenues to finance the pension payout - there is some calculations floating around that the country will run out of its ability to pay retirement salaries to an increasingly aging population by 2035 if it cannot sustain a continuous growth at 5% over the next 10 years. This is why China is so obsessed with GDP growth even though we all know it’s just a number, and why they had to raise the retirement age recently.
All this can be solved by the central bank directly printing money, but that’s not the model they’re going after.
it needs to be