aisgzdavinci

Whoa, hold on there because that only applies to Chinese locals. Although China has certainly opened out to the world, I'm pretty sure that most foreign companies encounter VERY strict regulations in China except Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. For example, a foreigner can only rent land in China while a Chinese local can actually buy the land on the mainland. International schools only exist in China because those people have Chinese representatives to the government to make their life easier. Also, foreigners are only allowed to buy B-stocks (which really doesn't grow much) while Chinese can buy A (grows and drops pretty quickly) and B stocks.

Foreigners generally have a hard time trying to invest in China. And Newjack, I really think that you have no idea about how China works because I live there and I know the rules. Also, if you really say that the depression was not caused by people's emotions, then what is it caused by? I would also like to know how the stock market works if you're omniscient.

A comment about the per-capita thing: that measurement is not an accurate measurement of how WELL you can live your life in a country. You really don't need super high taxes and prices in a country for it to be successful. It's like saying "A car is $200 and my assets are $5000" and "A car is $20,000 and my assets are $500,000". Either way, you're going to spend the same percentage of income. China's per-capita is low compared to the US, but the prices of commodities are also very low. High quality DVDs for 5RMB (around 80 cents) to Vistas for 400RMB (go do the math yourself) are common everywhere. If you have more money, then the government expects you to spend more, that's it about per-capita.

Written by westerners who like to hype up the bad stuff and downplay the good stuff. Books are biased one way or the other. That's why we rely on some hard facts and things that we can see and verify here like the "shopping malls" and the fake black markets- irony.