China’s real estate market is in decline. Debt deflation hangs in the air. The country’s workforce is shrinking and GDP growth is trending downwards.
No wonder the International Monetary Fund at its recent shindig in Marrakech warned of slowing economic growth in the People’s Republic, raising the prospect of “Japanisation” – the prolonged economic and financial malaise that afflicted its once high-flying neighbour after an asset bubble imploded three decades ago.
The trouble is that China’s economic imbalances are far worse than Japan’s in 1990. And that’s before considering the ruinous economic consequences of President Xi Jinping’s autocratic rule.
This old trope
In fact tech has always been a very deflationary sector (as in the longer you wait, the more you get for your money) yet it’s pretty profitable. Nobody would ever get a phone by that logic
I don’t think that’s a realistic comparison. Deflation is just about money whereas technology has actual usage and each iteration is more powerful. Money is exactly the same now and ever, a mean to exchange value.
You only get more if you wait and buy that spec. Latest spec is always more and subject to inflationary shocks like covid supply chain disruption with semis.
Which is probably why they are terrified that the newer specs are not growing at the rates that make it required to get.
If you can’t sell them on the newest chip at 4% faster then it starts to just roll back into deflationary and you need more people to buy it, like buly pushing an AI boom.