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China Unseats US As Global Investment Leader In Financial Technology: Report (fortune.com)
Paul Fernhout writes: China has unseated North America as the global investment leader in financial technology, or "fintech," according to Citigroup's latest report on "digital disruption." The researchers attribute the power shift to the rise of what they term "Chinese dragons," an industry term for the biggest upstarts in Asia. Think of Ant Financial, the payments spinout of Alibaba, as well as Lu.com, JD Finance, and Qufenqi, emerging eastern juggernauts that are generally less familiar to consumers in the west. China accounted for more than half of all fintech investments globally in the first nine months of last year, the report said. Specifically in terms of venture capital, the country more than doubled its worldwide share of the investment category, rising to 46% of the global total versus just 19% the same period in 2015. The U.S., meanwhile, sunk to 41% of the global total from 56% during the same period in 2015, putting it behind China.
We are going to put tariffs on imports? That will not help the economy. It won't help anyone.
Products will get more expensive for people who have money and incomes today. If we forcefully bring manufacturing jobs back here, it means that workers and business owners have to pay extra for goods due to the salaries of the workers in those jobs.
I mean, we have 90 million people not working today of which only about 20 million can probably work -- maybe even less. The rest are either too young, students, disabled, or old.
So we are going to put that 20 million to work, by paying $10 for a screwdriver instead of $5? By paying $300 for a phone that may cost only $200 today?
From the perspective of an income earner isn't that worse than being taxed and having a portion of the tax go towards welfare for the unemployed?
The advantage of giving someone welfare over paying them to do unnecessary work is that the person on welfare would have time to learn new skills plus you lose the overhead costs. And yes if someone or something else can do my work more efficiently then my work is by definition unnecessary.
Exactly. China has spent the last several decades making friends in the developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America, before going on the charm offensive in particularly Europe. I work for a global organisation, and have colleagues from Pakistan, who can't stop heaping praise on China, and you can understand why. America, they say, comes in and behave like colonial masters, ordering them about, whereas China help them achieve things they need and which they take pride in - like a big highway from China to Pakistan, apparently, and a large seaport (if I remember correctly). Yes, everybody does understand that this also serves China's interests, but that is sort of obvious, isn't it?
The point is - China are in a good position to take over from America, not just in APAC, but more or less globally; and probably in a much less threatening way than the US. A few years of Trump will help China enormously - when I talked to my Chinese acquaintances about Trump before the election, they all hoped that he would be elected - and it was not because they thought he will "make America great again". Brexit is another thing that they are quite happy about - it weakens both EU and UK, so they will be more open to making deals with China.