Our addiction to real estate...

Its not going backwards. Anything above zero is a win

 

Please go to see world bank data. We peaked in around 2012.

 

Oh in USD? We have had positive economic growth per capita in our own currency.

But yes the shopping trips to the US have become more expensive since we reached parity

 

IMHO I think technologically they are nowhere near the leaders - the USA, Germany, Japan and the UK. Even their own tech leaders admit this and they need to "catch up" so to speak.

The recent Trump spat with China and banning of ZTE buying chips from Qualcomm chipsets has exposed China's reliance on foreign technology.

I see China somewhat of an "in between" country - not developed but not exactly 3rd world either.

Having said all this they have made huge leaps even from 5 years ago, but they still lag badly in key areas from military to even displays. Heck they don't even have their own aeronautics industry or brand - something like a Airbus or Boeing or even Embraer.

 

Developing new tech takes a heck of lot of time especially the hardware side.

So far China is just catching up by buying up foreign companies or trying to do joint ventures.

They have also actually slowed down local development by raising various barriers for foreign firms to operate in China, hence reducing competition.

Much of their current military tech is modified stuff from Russia.

Without proper IP laws, their local firms are going to find it difficult to succeed as any new discovery will be almost instantly copied and mass manufactured to the detriment of the original research company

 

All correct because I could never work out how a society can flourish if ideas are quashed or needs gov approval.

They are however progressing since even 5 years ago. Make no mistake though they are by far still way behind the top tier of innovators in the world and the technological ladder.

Their "advanced" products still contain a lot of foreign tech parts which are assembled/fused together. For example train control systems are still imported from Siemens Germany or Kawasaki Japan.

The irony with China is that the "easy way out options" which made them fat and lazy, for example the car industry with tie ups with foreign car makers - how many Chinese car brands can you name? LOL

 

China right now is well into the top 5 of innovators.

You can’t build everything the world buys and build infrastructure for the world or indeed turn your country from a rice paddy field into a place with modern cities that are 20 years ahead of anything in Australia in under 20 years without being innovative. I fully expect a Chinese parliament in Canberra in 20 years time because The greed here in Australia is disguising the cultural transformation that is already leading to this. Evolution of the smartest. Australians are really so full of themselves they don’t realise that they are inconsequential in the world and in Europe and the United States even amongst the top business leaders and politicians Australia is a backwater.

 

Building new stuff to make a modern city is not innovation. They just use foreign talent like architects to design some of their more modern buildings. It's mostly just Civil engineering, some math involved but not rocket science. Of course they have their own talented professionals with such a big population but big breakthroughs in RnD takes talent and time.

A good example is Singapore, small well built modern city to rival any developed nation. But innovation wise the gov is still trying to encourage that with massive grants and tie ups with foreign universities. Other than inventing the thumb drive, and IT startup like carousel, they are still struggling to invent something significant and move away from being reliant on manufacturing.

And look at Vietnam, similar story as China, look at the Samsung Galaxy phones, there is a ricefield type of village that has now been converted into a high tech manufacturing town by Samsung. Local townsfolk now assembling our phones. Is that innovation? I would call it modernisation. However the new chips they use in the phones are designed by either Samsung themselves or USA based Qualcomm. Now that's innovation attempted and partly succeeded by Samsung but still depending on some tie up with Americans. Look at how many years it's taking for samsung to design and improve just a chip.

You must be dreaming about Canberra. There may be more chinese in the major cities,
But population wise they number just over 5%

ABS Chinese New Year insights

Most Aussie are still of British descent and the rest from Europe making up around 90%+ of population.

Since its the people who vote that decide who goes to Canberra. It is very likely Canberra will have mostly politicians of British and European descent for many decades to come.

By the way in the past 20 years, in science fields, China has only had one noble prize for medicine, we have had 3 in medicine and one more in chemistry. And historically For last century we have got like 16 and China 8(includes non science nobles but we still have more either way)

 

Yes, all correct. But they are more innovative than us. And their systems have better incentives towards tech innovation than us. Give it 20 years, and you will see the outcome of our lack of incentives towards high tech industry.

 

Well said. I am wondering how Russia still continues to do well on all these fronts! I doubt if they have a great government support either.

 

Heard about china's recent home made aircraft carrier fiasco? Back in dry dock after failed launch and project manager arrested for 'corruption' charges. And it's not even that advanced, using ski jump ramp to launch planes.

China’s aircraft carrier needs repairs, manager arrested

Lol that's stellar innovation there. Oh yeah Australia is lagging way behind, don't even build our own cars anymore. But then again we are only 24million plus ,how much innovation do u expect?

 

At the end of the day countries that foster equality and enterprises prosper. Look at Australia, Sweden and Norway.

Countries that don’t eventually fail. Australia is by far more enterprise friendly than China. Per capital Australia is miles ahead by virtually every metric, including innovation, medical research and the list goes on.

Probably maths and science is weaker here in school.
It also remains a fact that countries like Australia don’t have to be the best on every metric.

Do you need an amazing engineer? Fine pick one and they will be glad to come to Australia. You just saved the nation $100K worth of education expense. See where I’m going?

 

Small populations can never really compete though you do have some stellar outliers - look at Sweden (population is barely 9 mil) yet they have a car industry and are very advanced in many fields. Same can be said for Switzerland.

Maybe Australia's remoteness is another hindrance?

 

Yes but that engineer comes here and then he can’t thrive because he can’t afford to buy a house because he was the last one in. He pays for everything and his boss is stupid and stifles him or her. Then his taxes get used to pay for the millions of dole bludgers and then his government racks up a huge tax bill for the future in dubious infrastructure building programs, like pink batts, solar panel subsidies, school hall subsidies, first home buyers grant, and 1 million others, the latest one being tax cuts for the banks who are the most profitable in the world and have turned that engineer and his kids into a debt slave. Wake up.

If you read and understand just the following sentence it would be good.

Taxpayers DEBT money is now being used to create a artificial development boom to keep the horde of year 9 qualified tradies in jobs, 73% of all working males in Australia, are tradies. This is being done by flooding the country with immigrants the country does not need and the starting fuse was putting everyday Australians in competition for their family home with millionaire Chinese buyers in an interest rate environment fueled by bankrupt foreign governments, trying to save their economies by printing truckloads of money and sending it to Australia to be used to buy housing. Nothing in Australia supports the underlying economic fundamentals of this current boom.

 

The current asx strength for instance is caused by millions of dollars of foreign money coming into the country, because the AUD is cheap and the banks are offering 5% dividends. It’s a safe way to make a quick buck for foreign investment corporations and banks that have trillions of dollars of nearly free money. But that 5% is paid by Australians who are paying through the nose for housing causing the retail economy to drop and local jobs to drop. The profits on the asx will be taken from mom and pop investors, from their automatic payments of superannuation they don’t think about and assume just goes up.

 

Australians middle name is “too hard” they like hard physical work, if they like work, not intellectual or learning. There is a zero culture of appreciation of science and engineering, a tradie earns more money than a engineer or scientist and has the ability to speculate on house flipping and renovations for massive profit.

 

China banks' regulator fines 19 banks over loan fraud case

Chinese banking system is pretty bad, those hard earned savings could be gone pretty soon. There's a heap of dodgy loans disguised as 'wealth management' products and held OFF balance sheet. For many banks their income and amount of such loans are far more than their on balance sheet loans. I seriously doubt the savings to debt ratio would be the same if these were properly accounted for. And those wealth management products are repackaged loans made out property developers and such, many with supposedly unsustainable high returns like 10% per annum. It will be pretty scary when the Chinese banking crisis comes, perhaps even more scary than Japan.

Banker's apparent suicide brings attention to China's troubled lenders

I expect we would be in a recession by end of the year though as trade war seems to be going ahead soon and Chinese economy is \will be slowing down quite a bit. And RBA only has 1.5% left to lower rates which will do squat if china's not buying our stuff.

And it's a slippery slope going from budget surplus to deficit when spending goes out of control. It's just the politics of it, people expect more handouts and politicians cater to that.

 

More likely the incentive is not right...

Small population is a disadvantage but some still managed it. Israle also comes to mind.

Lots of political support comes from big mining firms which are not exactly innovative.

Govt has paid lip service to a better tech sector. But providing the right incentive is needed

 

let me disagree with you for once @Leo2413.

schools & school kids in China are so competitive, or forced to be competitive. there aren't much of "kids time", additional home work, classes. kids become salves of these heavy loads. I completed my education ( from primary to tertiary) many yrs ago. we had national uni entry test ( equivalent to HSC), it was about 10:1 (10 students competing for one uni intake), the stress level and pressure were way too much.

But agree with you on the hand, their academic level is way way ahead of Australian kids.

I am not keen to send my kids through Chinese system. it is kind of depletion of childhood.

China, now, is going through a massive transformation. the wealth in the ordinary citizens ( these major metro) are unimaginable ( comparing with 15 yrs ago).

 

What you said is exactly why I would want my kids to go to a Chinese school.