Oversimplified insights from someone who has an extremely pessimistic view of China from memory. You could've posted the same thing 20 years ago when there was minimal Chinese demand and said that it was going to be going nowhere. It is misleading and taking into your own political persuasions and emotional charges biases. This is evidenced in the times you accused me of being a China fanboy when I simply questioned your logic.
You need to understand the value of iron ore. Not iron ore demand. Iron / steel is valuable from the PoV of elements in the soil of Earth and in terms of its place on the periodic table. It is used to build buildings taller than a couple of stories and is used for cars, machinery, utensils etc. For what it does and it's intrinsic chemical value, a kg of iron is a bargain.
I bought in at $1.70. There were haters then who said $2 was too much. Now $20 is too little
Are you that crank that was carrying on like an utter loon over in the china thread?
I don't even know where to start with what you've posted. Literally every single thing you said is wrong. I would have to write an essay to explain why on every point.
Maybe start with the fact that what I've asserted is not unique to china and work your way out from there. My point, like with value collector, has clearly gone clean over your head.
Emotion has nothing to do with it. I don't even know what you're basing that assertion on.
I'll try this REAL simple for you guys: There are some products which depend on expansion in order to sell. Buildings, for example. There's no need to build houses if there's nobody to live in them (no demand for them) is there?
If you have a baby bust, you no longer have expansion. You have to sell (export) your stuff to someone else. Japan and south korea have been doing this very well with cars etc for quite some time. But if someone else has a baby bust too, there's nobody left to sell to overseas, and nobody left to sell to (no expansion) within your borders either.
In short, your markets literally no longer exist on account of having
never been born.
This is the same question of why a nightclub owner might be concerned about a lack of 18-25 year olds or gerry harvey selling furniture worrying about 25-35 year olds but taken to a macro level. When your target market was literally never born, your target market thus no longer exists. Demand for your product drops.
This alone is a big problem for an economy, but it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Old farts are expensive. In fact, the more old farts:young people your economy has, the more deadweight it has. Those old farts have to be paid for by the young if a nest egg (sovereign wealth fund) is not put away in the decades prior, which, news flash, it hasn't been.
This means that, if you haven't been saving the money, you have to start doing things like raising taxes on the young in order to pay for the old. This reduces the amount of demand from the young (the people who do the overwhelming majority of the buying of the stuff) even further.
This is not unique to china, I just bring it up in this context because of the amount of rocks/dirt that china buys.
What you guys should be thinking is "Why would the chinese keep buying it? What would they be making with it? Who would they be selling whatever they make with it to?"
If you can't answer those questions, you should be very very worried.
It is abundantly clear that neither of you have any kind of actual background in economics whatsoever. You're those "self taught" types that think they know better than those who have spent several years being trained in something.
You don't.