Chinese Stocks - Puhahhahahaha

[virago]

I definitely don't understand how money works in China. All I know is a Chinese friend of mine just got 500,000 rmb and is expecting more, on account of building work in the area she was born. She didn't even own any land or property, she was just born there, and is now somehow being compensated.

Really weird if you ask me!

She probably sold her rights to buying property. My wife had an apartment. The government bought back the land and demolished the apartment block. She wasn't compensated but had first rights to buy an apartment at a 40% lower rate than on the market. She not only did that but bought other peoples rights. She just offered compensation to the other people.

This could be your friends case also but $500k is alot but depends on the square metre bought or sold.

[bryant.english]

Low unemployment rates? Sure they have low unemployment, its due to CIS or Chinese Inefficiency Syndrome. Efficiency is not in their everyday venacular, labor is cheap so hire 10 people to do the job of 2. Who cares it takes 30 times as long?

Need to demolish a road? It takes a crew with jackhammers 3 days to do, but machinery costs money, and if the machine breaks I need to spend more money to fix it or replace it. Instead lets hire 30 morons with sledgehammers and do this demo work in 3weeks. Your time to wait for the road to be repaired is not my concern, my profit is more important than your convenience.

No different in Hong Kong with cheap labour. Go to a local restaurant and you have 7 waiters all running about providing exceedingly crap service where 2 good waiters would manage, the petrol station employs people to tell you where to park, the cheap abundant labour keeps the streets and footpaths unbelievably clean mind you..

[virago]

No different in Hong Kong with cheap labour. Go to a local restaurant and you have 7 waiters all running about providing exceedingly crap service where 2 good waiters would manage, the petrol station employs people to tell you where to park, the cheap abundant labour keeps the streets and footpaths unbelievably clean mind you..

I have never known any country to have cheap labour.

[gilleshk]

Need to demolish a road? It takes a crew with jackhammers 3 days to do, but machinery costs money, and if the machine breaks I need to spend more money to fix it or replace it. Instead lets hire 30 morons with sledgehammers and do this demo work in 3weeks. Your time to wait for the road to be repaired is not my concern, my profit is more important than your convenience.

If one looks hard enough, it's never very hard to make any government look very bad... Not long ago an undercover camera team followed a road repair crew in a large North American city. First they pull out of the yard to go get breakfast! Then, there's a driver that is only allowed to drive thanks to union regulations so he drives the vehicle to the location and then waits for the others to do the work. Then you have the foreman who directs where to dig a hole, how deep etc... then you have the three tool guys who take turn doing the stuff they do... Long story short, a crew team of six managed to fix a couple of potholes a day. That's western ingenuity for you!

There was also a marvelous story in British Columbia about fast ferries where the government figured it might be a good idea to reignite the shipbuilding industry: Due to various oversights by the government, BC Ferries, design bureaus, and the shipyards, the cost of the program more than doubled from $210 million ($70 million/vessel) to almost $460 million ($150 million/vessel) and final delivery was almost 3 years behind schedule. 5 years later, the ferries were sold at great loss by the next government and with lots of egg left on people's faces. Democracy at work...

Corrupt and/or scandalous politicians? You could start with the governator of California, Rod Blagojevich‎, Sarah Palin, John Edwards or maybe move to Italy with Silvio Berlusconi...

Not hard at all to write childish rants about various government excesses, incompetence or corruption. There's plenty to go around all over the world and not just in China.