No Eggs Can Remain Unbroken When The Nest Is Upset
The bad news we see is not the whole truth
The bad news we see is not the whole truth.
We need to clarify a basic logic-
For dissemination, bad news is always faster and wider than good news.
For example, at the time of the pandemic outbreak in South Korea and Japan, many articles tried to render their stupid response strategies, flustered people and chaotic order.
But just two weeks later, we found that the epidemic situation in South Korea and Japan has been effectively controlled. So how many medias are there now on how the South Korea and Japan have stabilized the epidemic situation? Almost no, because orderly situation is not news, there is no spread, and you can't get 100,000+ readings.
Yes, the tragedies of Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom spread on social media are in fact true, but please note that this is not the whole story-
Our media tends to selectively ignore those aspects where they are going well, because it is too common,too familiar to be a readable news.
Don't think that what you see is the truth. The truth is always more complicated than what you see. Take a closer look at the following two pictures:
The world needs us and we need the world
When we are gloating, maybe we should think back to what we have just experienced in the past two months-
Yes, we were very passive in the early stages of the epidemic. While the media of some countries deliberately mocked and insulted China,it became clear that China is so important to the normal operation of the world.
China's share as an"intermediate product" supplier in various regions of the world:
1. Apple has restricted global purchases because our Foxconn cannot produce at full capacity; 2. Australian lobsters cannot be sold because Chinese restaurants have closed during the epidemic; 3. Thailand ’s tourism industry presses the pause button , Because Chinese tourists are quarantined at home; 4. South Korea ’s Hyundai Motors factory has stopped production because its Shandong supply chain factory in China has stagnated; 5. Barcelona International Telecom Show was canceled because Chinese consumer electronics brands could not participate : ........
China is the largest trading country in the whole world, and China accounts for 12% of total trade volume of the world. China is the largest exporter of 33 countries and the largest importors of 65 countries. At the same time, China is also the largest business partner of 120 countries in the world.
On Christmas of 2004, American journalist Sarah suddenly found that 25 of the 39 Christmas gifts received were "Made in China". Sarah had a sudden idea and decided to lead the family to try not to buy Chinese products from January 1, 2005.
So she started a real and difficult adventure. After experiencing the pain of countless cries, she returned to the embrace of Made in China. She wrote this experience as a best-selling book-"A Year Out of China" .
The U.S. did not find out until the epidemic that 45% of the penicillin used in their entire country was made in China, while ibuprofen was almost 100% made in China.
▲ Sino-U.S. Antibiotic trade deficit over the years
Without China, the world cannot function properly. The world needs us, and we need the world.
Every country is an integral part of the global industry chain
When you are gloating over the epidemic in various countries and the plunge of U.S. stocks, maybe we don't know what it means to us in the following days?
When watching the fire from the other side, the fire was about to burn.
Maybe you do n’t have relatives and classmates in the U.S., you did n’t buy U.S. stocks. The U.S. epidemic seems to have nothing to do with you. However, the rules of operation in this world are not so simple.
In the past month, China's Ping An fell 13%, Weibo fell 19%, Alibaba fell 10%, and Baidu fell 21%. The company whose share price fell needed to improve its financial report to maintain its stock price.
With demand curtailed by the epidemic, layoffs are one of the few options to reduce costs. Calculate the decline in your company's stock price during the epidemic. Maybe unemployment is not so far away from us.
A simple logic: the international epidemic is so serious that international consumers will reduce consumption, and the direct consequence is that orders at our factories in Dongguan will be withdrawn and our workers will be unemployed and have to go home.
Compared with the same period of the previous year, China ’s exports in the first two months of this year have dropped by 17%, orders are being canceled, and factory closures are happening ...
▲ Electronic product shipments in the first quarter of 2020
The global industry chain can be divided into three levels:
The United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom are economies with the service industry as the main export: export more technologies and brands; China, Japan, Germany, and Italy are economies with the mid-to-high-end manufacturing industry as the main export: more output products and physical goods; Output of upstream products: more output of petroleum and raw materials.
Every country is an indispensable part of the global industrial chain. The global supply chain is a domino, and any piece that falls off will affect the whole body.
Even when Netflix reduced the bit rate during the epidemic, the American TV shows we watched will not be so clear.
No eggs can remain unbroken when the nest is upset.
The global economy has long been integrated as a whole.
In February, Daegu City, South Korea was the hardest hit area of the epidemic. The fall of Daegu immediately affected the production of global smartphones, because Samsung and LG's factories, which account for 94% of the global OLED screen market, are located in a turtle 20 minutes away from Daegu. Tai Industrial Park.
Japan ’s Fukushima nuclear leak in 2011 caused the world ’s consumer electronics industry to follow the “earthquake.” In that year, the Japanese chip industry ’s revenue was 63.3 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 20.8% of the global semiconductor market. Factories like Freescale, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Sony, and many other brands are near the epicenter.
In 2013, after the explosion of South Korea's second-largest chip manufacturer Hynix's fab in Wuxi, global memory chip prices jumped by 25% in an instant.
In 2015, the earthquake in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and the suspension of TSMC's Zhongke and Nanke factories caused global logic chip prices to increase by 10% to 20%;
The world is a integration economy--No eggs can remain unbroken when the nest is upset.
Remember the US financial crisis of 2008?
When a rural migrant worker in Hunan returned to his hometown on the train after losing his job, he might not have thought that his unemployment was caused by auto workers in Detroit who had no money to buy a house but could still apply for loans from greedy banks.
▲ Behind the sharp drop in exports is the reduction in production at the factory
Are you ready at the crossroads of the world's economic crisis?
The situation we face may be more serious than we think-
The Secretary-General of the United Nations pointed out that from the current point of view, the global economic recession is inevitable and the new crown epidemic may cause 25 million people to lose their jobs. The International Labour Organization says that this global pandemic is not just a global public health crisis, but a severe employment crisis and economic crisis. And their worst case scenario is that the global economic growth rate will decline by 8% this year.
CICC lowered China ’s real GDP growth rate in 2020 to 2.6% from the previous forecast of 6.1%. What is 2.6%?
It is the slowest growth rate in China in the past 43 years since 1977. "The most difficult year for China's economy" is not an empty phrase. It will become the most real reality this year.
When SARS broke out in 2003, China accounted for only 4% of the world economy, and today that number is 16%. The locomotive of world economic growth is about to stop.
Maybe you still ca n’t feel it, because the epidemic situation in foreign countries is far from reaching its peak. It takes more than two months for China to stabilize the epidemic with such a strategy of preventing death from death. There is no doubt that it will be longer than us and the scope of influence will also be more advertising. Some people on Weibo predict that there are only 24 days left to die in the world for ten thousands.
In the coming months, the world will only get worse, and we will continue to hear bad news. Be prepared for tough times!
Jin Keyu, a tenured professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is even more pessimistic:
"It is possible that we are facing the Great Depression, not the recession, the situation of 1931, not the situation of 2009.
Crisis and depression are very different, one is crisis and the other is depression. One is a loss of 5% of GDP and the other is a loss of 50% of GDP. Depression and crisis are not the same. I think the severity may be 10 times that of 2008. "
▲ The Great Depression of the United States in 1930
According to the aviation consulting firm Asia Pacific Aviation Center (CAPA), if the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic cannot be effectively curbed and aviation continues to regulate, all airlines worldwide will go bankrupt in May this year.
The world is at the crossroads of the economic crisis. Are you ready?
We share weal and woe around the world
Another fact that cannot be ignored is that China's national interest is not entirely domestic. We have many direct interests in foreign countries. In 2019, China's direct foreign investment exceeded 110 billion US dollars.
We build high-speed rail, canals and ports around the world:
The Nicaraguan Grand Canal, whose total length exceeds the Panama Canal, was built by the Chinese; we rented the Port of Darwin in Australia; we invested more than $ 1 billion to develop the Port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka; and we built the Moscow-Kazan High Speed Rail in Russia. ........
Now, China's interests is around the world,these super projects will no doubt be directly affected by the broke-out of the international epidemic.
We have the largest number of overseas students in the world.In 2018 alone, the number of overseas students in China reached 661,200. They are in North America, Europe, Australia ...
In the center of many epidemic countries, the outbreak has directly affected their survival and safety overseas. Many Chinese in the United States are already buying guns to prevent accidents.
We also have many companies that not only export, but also directly operate business overseas. Where there is a market, there are active Chinese people. In 2018, the Chinese made 149 million overseas trips, which is more than the number of other countries including the United States. the outbreak not only infected countless Europeans, but also infected Wu Lei, who kick the balls in Europe.
Our country has long been integrated into this complex world system. The Chinese, Chinese companies, and Chinese goods have become an integral part of the overseas world.
If the world's supply chain network is damaged due to the epidemic, the danger degree of the world will increase.
In the book "The World is Flat", the author proposes a convincing theory-"Dell Theory", that is, when two countries are closely linked through a wide supply chain, no war will occur in this two countries.
Dell computer production supply chain spans multiple countries-
The processor comes from Intel's factories in the Philippines, Malaysia or China; the memory comes from the workshops in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan; the motherboard is produced by factories in Taiwan and South Korea; the battery comes from a factory in Japan in Mexico or Malaysia; Processed by a factory in Dongguan; part of Dell's customer service team is in India .......
Today, perhaps this theory can be modified into the "iPhone theory", "The Global Journey of an iPhone" describes in more detail how this world's best-selling mobile phone closely connects the supply chains of multiple countries.
"Dell Theory" believes that countries in the supply chain will think twice before any possible potential factors of war-Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea ...
These countries are not part of any global supply chain.
If the world's supply chain network is disrupted by the epidemic, the world's danger will increase.
The world is getting more and more torn; No country can benefit from a torn world
Our rapid development in the past 40 years is because we have a peaceful, stable, and moderate external environment after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after 9/11.
Today, this external environment is changing. This subtle change was not initiated after the outbreak, but the extent of the world's fragmentation after the outbreak:
The United States pursues an "American-first" isolationist policy. The black swan of Brexit has emerged in Europe. Even the Italian epidemic rushed to the EU for help. The 27 countries ignored it completely. Germany seized Swiss masks, and European unity became A fairy tale.
Nowadays, the outbreak of the epidemic has left the political forces in various countries calling for "return of the supply chain", it seems determined to decouple from the entire world.
"The globalization as we know it is coming to an end," said Niblett, chief executive of the well-known think tank Chatham House.
The world is becoming more and more torn, and no country can benefit from a torn world.
No one is an island
Do n’t forget that when we are gloating about foreign epidemics, our civilization starts with helping each other.
A student once asked the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead a question: What was the original sign of human civilization?
Many students guess the answers are fishhook, stone tools, fire, and so on.
However, Mead's answer exceeded everyone's conjecture. She said that the first sign of human civilization was that we found "a broken humerus."
Mead further explained:
A broken femur in the animal kingdom is extremely dangerous if it is broken. If an animal breaks its thigh, it actually means death because it cannot escape danger, cannot drink water or hunt food by the river, and it will be quickly destroyed. The beast wandering around will eat it.
The healed humerus indicates that someone has taken a long time to care for the injured person--treating the wound, providing food, and protecting him from attack.
Finally, Mead summed it up meaningfully--helping other people from difficulties is the starting point of civilization!
When we gloat over the epidemic abroad, don't forget that our civilization starts with helping each other.
Finally, let's revisit the famous poem-"No one is an island".
-------Article By Wei Xi, a Chinese writer