The fundamental difference between China housing price drop and US is majority of Chinese buy properties with cash or get mortgage with very large deposit like 40%. So the risk of subprime crisis is very low.
Speculation is rampant and a people I know are leveraged on multiple properties, lying to banks to get loans.
The risk of a crisis is very real; even if the risk of default is low, the risk of the marketing seizing up because no one wants to buy at a price sellers are willing to sell at is incredibly real.
Rents in Beijing are pretty cheap now, getting cheaper actually, while housing prices remain rediculously high. Heck, my apartment complex is prime but only about 60% occupied (the other units bought but being held for speculation alone). Something has got to give.
That was true 10 to 15 years ago. It's no longer accurate. China has become a massive accumulator of debt at the consumer level. While it's not as bad as the US subprime situation was, it is bad and getting worse.
Since year 2000, China's household debt has gone from 8% of GDP, to now 40% of GDP as a ratio (the US is 75% by comparison). Mortgage debt has become a common problem in China. At the rate household debt is expanding in China, they'll be up to 60% in four years or so.
You still have to put down a 30% deposit for first home and 60% for a second, which is stark contract to 0% down payment or even borrowed down payment in US.
A main reason people buy properties is the lack of other type of investment. The public in general have no confidence in stock market. Housing is the only thing almost guaranteed to make money. As financial reforms such as allowing investing overseas kicks in, we should see money moving away to housing market.
0% down is very rare in the US among total housing ownership. The average person is required to put down 15%-20%. Even during the bubble it represented a very small portion of all housing and lasted for only a few years.
Home equity is about 55-56% in the US for the entire housing market (owner occupied) and has continued to climb since the lows of the post bubble bust.
That is a very big difference between house-buying patterns in east Asia in general and house-buying patterns in the United States, and has been for a long time. But that didn't help Japan avoid a housing bust, because if builders build on speculation, their debt drags down the economy even if house-buyers don't have comparable levels of debt. Speculative bubbles always leave someone holding debts that they can't pay off when the bubbles burst.
But do Japanese builders build using large loans, surely the historical sense of building houses from your own money would extend to make them fear borrowing more than they can afford to lose.
Well... no bubble is the same, otherwise we'd be able to spot them and avoid them every time, right? If there is a common factor in housing bubbles, it's the extent to which housing moves away from its primary purpose (ie. a roof over a family's heads). In China housing has become a massive source of income for local governments, income for developers, and an investment vehicle for rich people. It has all the signs of being a classic bubble and the only question is how/if the government can deflate it. Also don't forget that a lot of people pay cash because they can't get a mortgage or don't trust the banks, but they still borrow money from friends, family, lending circles or other informal sources - there is often still a wobbly chain of debt behind each purchase.
people ridicule it because it's so different than the american way, which is to severely restrict housing construction to cause enormous increases in price so that nobody can afford to live anywhere without taking out massive loans, while poor people get kicked out of their homes.
It's hard to point to examples of cities that don't do it because it doesn't make the news when a new building is put up in Nashville. It doesn't make the news when a law to limit building height is never even proposed in Kalamazoo. It doesn't make the news when Akron's population increases 3% year over year.
It does make the news when San Francisco's residents start getting driven out of the city. It does make the news when Madison limits the height of buildings downtown. Can you give me an example of people who didn't get a flat tire today? Of course not, because that's just called normal functioning.
so what you're saying is, the media distorts and amplifies the exceptions in order to create a perception of widespread dysfunction, thereby generating revenues through public outrage?
but this only happens in the US, right? not anywhere else, like... china?
Beijing real estate makes San Francisco look like a bargain.
Also, china doesn't have a property tax, so you can just buy an apartment and sit on it forever, there is no economic pressure (as a property tax is) to put it to productive use.
No one expects that to hold, but even if it does, the US has property taxes most everywhere, and you'd eventually pay for your land again and again just by owning it.
It is speculated that China will drop the land use grant when they institute a real property tax.
There has been massive displacement of Chinese peasants too. By a decree. But indeed - if you look at rates of home ownership in Eastern Europe pre changes - socialist systems indeed seem to prefer affordable housing.
I think author explained the copycat claim rather clearly:
"It's a common reflex in the USA to call Xiaomi and similar companies copycats, on both a hardware and software level, and there's certainly a lot of design inspiration going on, but dismissing these phones as rip-offs is rather lazy. When you actually hold them and use them you would never mistake them for iPhones, any more than you'd mistake a $500 coat or bag for the $2,000 example that sometimes inspires the colour or trim. You can sometimes see where it came from, but it's not the same, nor is it trying to be. Rather, they deliver a similar approach to the user experience at a lower price in a way that's often been absent from Android so far (it's hard not to look at some of Nokia's beautiful Lumia devices and wonder what impact they might have had on Apple if they'd run Android)."
British gold bought distractions. Britain has the best navy but on land it couldn't even compete with France. If the French were able to cross the channel from Boulogne, then it'd be the end of the empire.
At Austerlitz, Britain paid money for each dead Russian soldier. English agents were busy counting the dead making sure his majestry's money is well spent while French medics trying to save wounded from both side. Austrian emperor Francis allegedly said 'English are merchants of human flesh.
> At Austerlitz, Britain paid money for each dead Russian soldier. English agents were busy counting the dead making sure his majestry's money is well spent
Also, Britain routinely paid other monarchies to have them send their soldiers. They hired Germans to fight against American independence. George Washington's famous first victory was crossing the Delaware river and surprise attacked what were actual German legions.
What exactly do you mean 'fought peace'? France was defeated. The allies were simply there to divide up the land. And why is 'sought out Napoleon's former mistresses and seduced them' something to be proud of?
Royal Navy even lost ships to Argentina At Falklands Wars. That would never happen to American Navy.
Blücher's Prussian army arrived to save Wellington's ass despite Wellington not saving theirs at Battle of Ligny. Can we please give Germans some credit.
There is no 'order', only verbal agreement that they will come to each other's aid in case they run into Napoleon's army. Wellington rode to Blücher and promised to aid him at Ligny but he didn't which resulted in Prussian defeat at Battle of Ligny. Blücher himself was incapacitated. Chief of Staff Gneisenau didn't want to come to Wellington's aid because he didn't trust the British. Had Blücher not insisted marching onto Waterloo, Wellington would be crush like Alexander in Austerlitz.
Wellington couldn't come to Blücher's aid as Napoleon blocked him with his left wing under Ney at Quatre Bras.
Your argument seems to be coming from the historical revisionism that Hofschröer puts forward, about how Waterloo was somehow a German victory and Wellington simply took the credit.
It was neither, it was a coalition victory by both Wellington and Blücher in close cooperation. Close cooperation by the standards of the day that is, in personal meetings and messages conveyed on horse-back.
Neither knew from which direction Napoleon would attack, and when he did he took both Blücher and Wellington by surprise. Moving from the south-west he defeated Blücher at Ligny, whilst pushing his left wing under Ney to block Wellington to the north at Quatre Bras. Arguably Napoleon's biggest mistake was not to make sure he had decisively beaten Blücher at Ligny.
Blücher withdrew to reorganise, and Wellington pulled back north along the Brussels road to Waterloo. Crucially Blücher also withdrew northwards, parallel to the French advance, and Wellington was well aware of this, the French not.
The rest is history. Wellington's army held the field all day, the Prussians arrived on the French right in the late afternoon, and with Napoleon's attacks exhausted, the French army routed.
To quote Wellington himself written immediately after the battle "I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshal Blücher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them"
Whether or not Wellington promised to come to Blücher's aid at Ligny is debatable. Hofschröer claims he did. You can't call it revisionism because he was simply stating his view. Ask 10 people today who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, 9 wouldn't even know Prussians were there.
Wellington has always reserved the option to retreat from the sea. That's why he left 10000+ reserve to cover the retreat path in case things go wrong at Waterloo. From Prussian point of view 1) they just lost a battle badly at Ligny 2) Wellington said he'd come but he didn't 3) Wellington could escape from sea in which case Prussians will surely be crushed facing French alone. Wellington does deserve credit but I would say Blücher's courage to trust his teammate and meet Wellington at Waterloo is more respectable. It's not a overstatement that it's a German victory.
Napoleon's biggest mistake is giving his marshals wrong tasks. He left his best marshal Davout in Paris while hoping Grouchy who just got promoted marshal to carry the weight to chase down Blücher. Grouchy is OK with carrying out orders but not so great at reacting to situation. Despite Gérard repeated asking to 'march to the sound of the guns', he decided to follow previous order and chase Prussians in the wrong direction. Although he didn't have too much of a choice, Davout is the only one whose loyalty is questionable. He didn't want what happened at Fontainebleau to repeat so he had to keep Davout at home. And then he used Soult for staff work who did a very sloppy job. The lack of information and misinformation may have well cost the battle.
I can never understand why Wellington would call soldiers 'scum of the earth'. Soldiers don't get anything whether 'His Majesty' wins the war or not. No wonder Scotland wants independence. They sent soldiers to Wellington's expedition. Scots Grays were the ones who charged French line and batteries at Waterloo which avoid disaster. And yet they are 'nothing but beggars and scoundrel' to Wellington.
History is written by winners. Had Napoleon not gone to Russia, European feudal system would have fallen much earlier, and we'd be writing this in French.
Napoleon's contribution to history is not military feat. It's the civil code, education, equal opportunity, emancipation of jews, tearing down of ancien régime and giving birth to idea of nation states.
A longer quote rather puts the "scum of the Earth" thing in context:
A French army is composed very differently from ours. The conscription calls out a share of every class — no matter whether your son or my son — all must march; but our friends — I may say it in this room — are the very scum of the earth. People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling — all stuff — no such thing. Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children — some for minor offences — many more for drink; but you can hardly conceive such a set brought together, and it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are.
He said that many times throughout the war. At a formal settings obvious he'll say it a little nicer. British soldiers get paid only one shilling per day and are constantly short on supply and had to plunder to survive. There is even a book on why soldiers are not 'scum of the Earth'
Much less so than the french who lived of the land - which means you cannot as easily concetrate force at the schwerpunkt (the key point of the battle field)
Napoleon didn't tear down the ancien regime, he was still a very junior officer when that happened. If anything he turned a Republic back into an Empire.
He overthrew many monarchies in Europe, and installed French civil system to the newly occupied regions. Although he did assign his relatives to be monarchies in those areas, the reforms are real and the difference weren't felt until he was defeat and old monarchies came back. His military conscriptions certainly offset his reforms in popularity. Italians vied for independence from Austrian Empire after Napoleon was defeated. Interestingly, it was Napoleon III (Napoleon I's naphew) who helped eventually Italian won independence.
well,
- religious toleration: french revolution basically wants to kill off the Catholic priests. Napoleon brought back Catholicism since there were still a lot of catholics in france but stripped its privileges. He was the first to emancipate the jews.
- His military conquest speeded up the abolition of feudalism across europe. Civil code is put in place in occupied regions.
