BBC on Wuhan Iron and Steel Co, SEOs

[Guest realmayo]

A BBC documentary available on iPlayer and therefore probably UK residents only, about Wuhan Iron and Steel Co, and SEOs in general, is unlikely to interest (m)any but just in case, I thought it was interesting enough:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03x0msd/Our_World_Inside_Chinas_Steel_City/

[gato]

SOE (State-Owned Enterprise)?

[Guest realmayo]

Oops yes, not sure why I typoed that twice....

[GaHanna]

Thanks for that. Should be accompanied with BBC's "How China Fooled the World".

[Kobo-Daishi]

 

RealMayo wrote:

A BBC documentary available on iPlayer and therefore probably UK residents only

 

Yeah, it's not available in the US.

 

 

GaHanna wrote:

Thanks for that. Should be accompanied with BBC's "How China Fooled the World".

Since the "Wuhan and Steel" video isn't available in the US, I figure this one isn't as well. If I had a link, I'd check.

I did see an interesting kind of rebuttal at the Forbes magazine web site in the form of an article titled "Upside-Down Propaganda: How China Keeps Fooling The New York Times, The BBC, And Other Wishful Thinkers" by Eamonn Fingleton.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/02/23/a-lesson-in-propaganda-how-china-fooled-the-bbc-the-new-york-times-and-other-wishful-thinkers/

 

 

Snippet from the article:

In a one-hour program predicting the coming collapse of China, Peston spoke in apocalyptic terms about alleged fatal weaknesses in the Chinese banking system. In doing so he fell for one of the most sophisticated propaganda ploys of modern times. For nearly two decades now,  Beijing has worked through various witting and unwitting surrogates, many of them Westerners,  to persuade the United States and Europe that China’s rise is somehow an illusion. Beijing is playing on an apparently limitless capacity  for wishful thinking in the West and, to anyone who has been following the story, the motive is obvious: to foster complacency and procrastination abroad. The point is that the slower Westerners are to understand how profoundly the map of world power is changing, the less effective will be any Western efforts to moderate Beijing’s ambitions. As China’s rise has been built in substantial measure on theft of Western intellectual property as well as a certain “amnesia” about market-opening promises, Beijing has good reason to try to delay an effective Western response.

 

Fingleton thinks that the Chinese are the ones spreading the rumors of their imminent demise to keep the West off guard. Kind of like that old kung fu strategy of not showing your strength. Pretend to be more feeble than you actually are.

At any rate, it seems that Fingleton answers reader comments.

I'm trying to download the Peston video from Peer-to-peer at the moment. Should be interesting viewing.

 

Only time will tell who is right.

Kobo.

[GaHanna]

I agree and thank you for the link. The documentary does make interesting viewing and your link provides an excellent counterpoint.

[li3wei1]

The gist of the Peston doc:

1. The banking crisis in the US and EU caused a slowdown in the Chinese economy and massive unemployment

2. The one thing the Chinese govt fears most is massive unemployment

3. They went to state-owned enterprises and banks and told them to lend, invest, and build

4. Everyone was employed again, and the economy kept booming

5. Only problem is, most of that is the construction sector, building stacks of housing that nobody can afford

6. The other problem is that total debt (I'm a little lost here, because I don't know how this is measured) is something like 200% of China's GDP.

7. He didn't give detailed predictions of how it's all going to pan out, but it looks a bit like Ireland in around 2006.