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rffrydr
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 Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 6:34 pm Post subject: Not So Fast |
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In a world of slow moving stats and even slower moving economies that China's growth may be half as big comes as an all- too-large surprise:
http://economist.com/finance/economicsfocus/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10209215
PPP, while on the right track is the wrong idea. Price of rice in China?
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Last edited by rffrydr on Tue Mar 02, 2010 2:42 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 5:06 am Post subject: |
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It's crash talk with the third straight PMI under 50....but remember china "is only" the marginal buyer. And that PMI is still marginal at worst:
| Quote: | In base metals, refined copper imports continued their recovery from April’s lows; aluminium imports rose sharply, turning China once more into a net importer, while zinc imports also climbed strongly month-on-month. Raw materials imports for metals production displayed even more robust upward trends with huge increases in imports of copper concentrates, lead concentrates and nickel ores. This is likely to support further growth in China’s already strong refined metal output, suggesting that underlying demand trends are very strong and that a phase of destocking throughout the metals supply pipeline is now at an end, implying a more robust outlook for future Chinese base metals imports.
A similar picture is evident in energy markets. Coal imports were steady month-on-month, matching July’s all-time highs. Moreover, with prices very strong and rail problems continuing to hamper domestic supplies, import requirements should stay high. Crude oil imports were only modestly up on last year’s levels, but that was outweighed by strong local refinery runs pushing oil demand growth to above 7%, a little higher than the 6% average of the previous three months. Gasoline demand hit an all-time high in August, while diesel and jet fuel demand were also strong. With Chinese economic activity picking up and the seasonal pattern for oil products now turning from stock draw to stock build, the outlook is for even stronger oil import demand ahead, especially in light of the slowing trend in China’s own oil production growth evident so far this year. |
| Quote: | In agriculture, corn imports surged to their highest in 10-months, wheat imports stayed high, 44% above year ago levels, while sugar imports hit an all-time high.
A decline in silver imports was one of the few weak spots in the August trade data for commodities, but PGM imports rose in line with the recovery in domestic auto sales. |
HSBC, who's PMI survey it is concludes (via alpaville, again):
| Quote: |
Growth continues to moderate but the economy is still cooling at a controlled pace.
With less dependence on net exports, China's resilient domestic demand should
support around 8.5-9% growth in the coming quarters. CPI has peaked but its
subsequent slowdown is likely to be very gradual. We expect the PBoC to maintain
a stable monetary policy for the rest of this year. |
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3/bea1ec18-e50a-11e0-9aa8-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss
But greater fears are afoot now....politics.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:58 am Post subject: |
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Not so slow either: Rural appliance sales were up 25.3% y/y in July.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:07 am Post subject: |
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The future grew a little dimmer this week as Japan locates a trove of rare-earths but the present offers more than a few challenges: beware the old saying, "nothing fails like success."
By IAN BREMMER
When exactly will China take over the world?
| Quote: | The moment of truth seems to be coming closer by the minute. China will become the world's largest economy by 2050, according to HSBC. No, it's 2040, say analysts at Deutsche Bank. Try 2030, the World Bank tells us. Goldman Sachs points to 2020 as the year of reckoning, and the IMF declared several weeks ago that China's economy will push past America's in 2016. There's probably someone out there who thinks China became the world's largest economy five years ago.
In an interview with WSJ's John Bussey, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer insists that for China to become the economic powerhouse it is predicted to become in this century, the Chinese must fundamentally restructure their economy.
But let's not get carried away. There's a good deal of turmoil simmering beneath the surface of China's miracle. Consider these recent snapshots:
• In Hunan, farmers pushed off their land by aggressive property developers discover that local authorities are not on their side. A farmer sets himself on fire, and protests spread quickly from town to town.
• A chemical spill into a Chinese river cuts off water supplies to Harbin, a city of four million people, sparking public fury.
• In Inner Mongolia, a Han Chinese truck driver kills a local herdsman in a hit-and-run accident, and ethnic unrest flares for days.
• Rioting in Xinjiang province spins out of control, forcing a state Internet shutdown across an area three times the size of California.
• In the coastal city of Xintang, security guards sent to break up a protest by migrant workers push a pregnant woman to the ground, igniting a firestorm that only paramilitary forces in armored personnel carriers can handle.
China's security services are the world's best at containing large-scale riots, and these protests do not represent any form of coherent opposition to Communist Party control. Most of the protests are directed at local officials and are fueled by local grievances, and three decades of double-digit growth has earned the Chinese leadership deep reserves of public patience.
But this is a country that measures its annual supply of large-scale protests in the tens of thousands. For 2006, China's Academy of Social Sciences reported the eruption of about 60,000 "mass group incidents," an official euphemism for demonstrations of public anger involving at least 50 people. In 2007, the number jumped to 80,000. Though such figures are no longer published, a leak put the number for 2008 at 127,000. Today, it is almost certainly higher.
There is certainly no credible evidence that China is on the brink of an unforeseen crisis, but all that public anger points to enormous challenges on the road ahead. Emerging powers like India, Brazil and Turkey can continue to grow for the next 10 years with the same basic formula that sparked growth over the past 10. China, on the other hand, must undertake enormously complex and ambitious reforms to continue its drive to become a modern power, and the country's leadership knows it.
The financial crisis made clear that China's dependence for growth on the purchasing power of consumers in America, Europe and Japan creates a dangerous vulnerability. Those who insist that it's possible to map the precise arc of China's rise seem to assume that China's leaders can steadily shift the country's growth model toward greater domestic consumption, by transferring enormous reserves of wealth from China's powerful state-owned companies to hundreds of millions of new consumers.
That's quite an assumption. Despite the best efforts of policy architects in Beijing, the share of household consumption in China's economic growth last year actually moved in the other direction, in part because there are political powerbrokers within the elite who have made too much money from the old model to fully embrace a new one.
Moreover, as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, social unrest will almost certainly force tighter state restrictions on free expression and free assembly. That could promote a violent backlash if rising expectations for material success aren't met. Most dangerous of all for the ruling party's future, factions within the government might not agree on how the state should respond to a sudden convulsion of organized unrest.
China's demographics will provide another serious challenge. The country's labor force is becoming more expensive as China urbanizes and moves up the value chain for manufacturing. The population is also getting older, as the one-child policy and other factors leave fewer young people to join the labor force. As more Chinese reach retirement age, the need to expand and reinforce a formal social safety net to provide pensions and health care for hundreds of millions of people will add unprecedented costs.
Given that so much of China's growth is still coming from infrastructure projects and other state-directed investments, the impact on an already overtaxed environment could shock the system. Land degradation, air quality and water shortages are urgent and growing problems. China's capacity to tolerate a deteriorating environment is higher than in most developing markets (to say nothing of the developed world), but the chances for an environmental incident to provoke a dangerously destabilizing event are growing by the day.
Then there's inflation, which hit a 34-month high in May, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics. Food prices surged 11.7%. An over-expansionary monetary policy, higher transportation costs related to urbanization, and large-scale wage hikes are just a few of the variables that ensure the government will have a harder time containing inflation in the years ahead.
Finally, as popular demand, expressed online and in China's blogosphere, plays a larger role in how Chinese policy-makers make decisions, unhappy citizens will check the state's ability to implement strategic policies. That, too, could limit China's longer-term economic growth.
Even if China's leadership makes major progress on domestic reform, it will find that the international environment is becoming less conducive to easy economic expansion. Higher prices for the oil, gas, metals and minerals that China needs to power its economy will weigh on growth. The exertions of all those other emerging market players will add to the upward pressure on food and other commodity prices, suppressing growth rates and undermining consumer confidence, which have been the most important sources of social and political stability in China.
What about China's relationship with the United States? Strong growth in China, coupled with America's unsustainable fiscal policies, high unemployment and weakened consumer demand, will generate friction between the world's two largest economies—in particular, by significantly increasing the likelihood of protectionism on both sides. That's a problem for American companies looking for access to Chinese consumers, but it's far more troublesome for the Chinese, who rely more on U.S. fiscal stability, investment, technology and consumption.
If nothing else, the colossal challenges that lie ahead for China provide an abundance of good reasons to doubt long-term projections of the country's economic supremacy and global dominance. As Yogi Berra once said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 7:47 am Post subject: |
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Everyone is so excited comparing Japan to US, The Economist decided to compare Japan to China:
http://www.economist.com/node/17363625
| Quote: | | Most countries outside East Asia suffered a deteriorating trade balance with China from 2001 to 2008. By the simple arithmetic of growth, trade with China made a (small) negative contribution, not a positive one. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:00 am Post subject: |
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The South China Sea has put a brake, as it always has, in any pan-asian unity. Japan choosing to make a stand on an issue not economically critical--for now. Number two may be an unlucky number:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/world/asia/20chinajapan.html?_r=1&hp
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 12:28 pm Post subject: |
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A xxx party without the xxx?
http://tinyurl.com/29az9eq
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu May 27, 2010 7:15 am Post subject: |
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China's surplus this quarter one/quarter what it was. As today's announcement makes clear, far from distancing its euro reserve position, watch for a steady stream in. China, like Buffett, buys brands.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 10:02 am Post subject: |
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Chinese retail
Published: May 7 2010 09:43 | Last updated: May 7 2010 15:45
| Quote: | Everything seems set up in China for a consumption boom. Interest rates are low, consumer credit is rising, savings rates are falling. State incentives have lifted first-time purchases of bigger-ticket items such as fridges and personal computers, which tends to trigger a cycle of replacement and one-upmanship.
Yet there isn’t much evidence of one. In March total retail sales of consumer goods, as tracked by the National Bureau of Statistics, were up 17.9 per cent year-on-year – a whisker under the five-year average of 18 per cent. Five of the top ten listed retailers reported decelerating sales growth from the fourth to the first quarter, notes consultancy Access Asia. |
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:48 am Post subject: |
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Not yet Bug disconcerting was the Chinese PMI data as those surveys were mixed. The survey set up by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and National Bureau of Statistics fell and looks as though it is starting to roll over.
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