US and Chinese economies compared; dual circulation held unlikely for foreseeable future. Poor Article: This is SCMP doing its colonial propaganda shtick for the west. https://archive.ph/2024.01.18-112521/https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3248652/why-us-and-china-are-unlikely-trade-places-any-time-soon

To observers such as Lighthizer, it might seem as though Americans are Eloi, unaware of who is operating the machinery that makes the world work until a Morlock hand drags them down to death. But as long as America produces US dollars and cutting-edge scientific research, the US-China trade dynamic will continue.

Even as the US moves towards a new political consensus on working towards a self-reliant economy that would make communists proud, many Chinese economists are realising that China’s economy is dangerously tilted towards production. Dual circulation – relying on domestic consumption as well as exports – has been a goal for years.

This article, much more nuanced, argues that the above assumptions are wrong: https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/consumption-in-china-is-it-really-that-bad/

What we are dealing with is a legacy of China having never properly transitioned from its Soviet-era Material Product System (MPS) system of national accounts to the United Nations’ System of National Accounts (SNA) standard. MPS accounting is only concerned with material production. Services are considered costs of production and excluded by design.

Most controversially, perhaps, we also conclude that China’s GDP is under-reported by an amount largely equal to household consumption outside of retail sales. If we had to ballpark it, we would say China’s household consumption is 50-55% of GDP, investment is 30-34% of GDP and total GDP needs to be grossed up by 25-40%.

This has many implications. One is that China’s economy is not nearly as unbalanced as conventional wisdom believes – it is merely a peer of its Asian neighbors Japan and Korea. It explains why the government only seems to give lip service to increasing demand while all policies somehow favor supply. It explains how China has avoided the dire consequences of running such an unbalanced economy for so long – mostly because it hasn’t been.

This article also argues otherwise. Consumption was 82.5% of GDP growth. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202401/1305600.shtml

A gym closing is a non-event. Chinese people–rightfully–like exercising, but they don’t like gyms. They exercise outdoors, with each other, playing games, sports, dancing, martial arts–for free, and using free exercise equipment.

This amchan website covers shanghai in detail https://www.amcham-shanghai.org/en