On this episode of MB Fund Webinar, China Triple Threat will have David Llewellyn-Smith joining Damien Klassen and Tim Fuller to cover the latest from China. How will China handle the EM crisis? How will Xi respond to Trump’s Trade War? Is China slowing or is it unleashing more debt? What are the implications for investment?

After the near 4% drop in A-shares yesterday on the Shanghai Composite, precipitated by another round of punitive tariffs by the Trump administration, it was inevitable that Chinese authorities would step in somehow. An event like this on US markets would usually involved the rolling out of Fed officials to placate fears, but without any official intervention,

by Chris Becker It’s no joke that Chinese stock markets are havens for speculative activity, more so than the casinos on Wall Street as the quasi-capitalist communist country catches up on the Great Moderation aka bubble to end all bubbles. It has been quite the ride – witness the epic rise and fall of the

Hmm, Chinese house prices are out today and there’s life in this sucker yet. Monthly gains accelerated for the fourth straight month to 0.7% though year on year was flat at 4.7%: Here is the raw data: The seventy city price balance chart shows a reasonably broad-based acceleration: Though it is clearly still weighted heavily

The PBOC released May new yuan loans lat night and the slowing trends are intact. Banks loaned 1.15tr yuan in the month but non-banks choked down -389bn yuan: Thus total social financing fell -28% year on year and the three month moving average is showing sustained losses for new credit: Shadow banking share collapsed: The

Chinese inflation was out over the weekend and it sure ain’t rebalancing. The CPI is weak: The only pulse there is petrol. The PPI was stronger: But that’s all about oil and metals. Some rebalancing! I expect both CPI and PPI to fall away through H2. It’s obvious that deflation looms so more PBOC easing

Via Capital Economics: • Import growth was surprisingly strong last month. This probably reflects a continued recovery in industrial activity following the easing of winter pollution controls and is unlikely to be sustained. Meanwhile, with global growth now past its peak, Chinese export growth is trending down. But progress in US-China trade negotiations raises hopes

Via Capital Economics: Capital outflows remain muted despite broader EM selloff • The latest foreign exchange reserves data are consistent with very little PBOC action in the FX markets. This suggests that the recent resilience of the renminbi relative to other EM currencies reflects confidence in China’s economy and ability to manage its exchange rate

Via Capital Economics: • The latest PMIs suggest that China continued to sustain rapid growth last month. But the surveys don’t tell the full story and have mostly defied a slowdown in the hard data during the past year. • After edging up from 51.0 to 51.1 in April, the Caixin manufacturing PMI held steady

From China stats comes the May PMI: In May 2018 , China’s Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index ( PMI ) was 51.9% , which was 0.5 % higher than the previous month , and the overall expansion of the manufacturing industry accelerated. In terms of business scale, the PMIs of large and medium-sized companies were 53.1%

By Leith van Onselen I have noted previously how China’s economy is facing stiff headwinds from an ageing population (see here, here, here, and here). Essentially, China’s ageing problem stems from its ‘one child policy’, which was brought into effect in the early-1970s and is credited with preventing around 400 million births from 1979 to

Some nice material today from Vertical Group on the Chinese slowdown. QUICK TAKE: In short, our thesis is that city-level and regional macroprudential tightening policies in China currently will render economic growth in 2Q18, but more importantly 2H18, dismal; we believe this will spread to emerging markets, rendering the “global coordinated growth” bulls out of sync

Chinese house prices for April were out late yesterday and continue to slow slowly.  Month on month growth edged up to 0.4% and year on year fell to 4.7%: Here’s the raw data: Tier one cities are still falling, tier two holding up best and lower tiers fading as well: The composition of price moves

China’s April data is out and showed growth internals trending down. Industrial production jumped back to 7% but fixed asset investment hit its lowest level for as long as anyone can remember at 7%. Retail sales also dipped to 9.4%: Under the hood, real estate floor area sales continue to slow, up just 1.3% year

Chinese CPI and PPI are out for April at 1.8% and 3.4% respectively. The CPI is weak: Across the board: The PPI bounced year on year but the monthly numbers tell us what’s coming: deflation… Again broad outside of oil: Chinese deflation is back as growth begins to slow.

Via Morgan Stanley: The incredibly tight link between the credit impulse and China’s growth cycle, emerging markets (EMs) exports, global growth and commodity prices meant that it would have accurately predicted the direction of almost all other global macro variables that mattered, with about six months’ lead time. China’s credit impulse – or its leverage cycle

The April China PMI is out and slowed after the post-pollution cuts rebound: In terms of the size of the company, the PMI of large-sized companies was 52.0% , which was 0.4 percentage points lower than last month and remained in the expansion range; the PMI of small and medium-sized enterprises was 50.7% and 50.3% , respectively, up 0.3 and 0.2 percentage points from the previous month , and it was continuously The boom period. From the classification index,

This via a couple of uncertain sources. Monday’s Politburo meeting highlights: Measure to continue expanding domestic demand – in the face of threats over trade, renewed focus on boosting consumption: tax cuts, lower bank reserve ratios. Renewal of  tax exemptions for purchases of home appliances and automobiles look to be in the pipeline also. Further derestricting

From China’s NBS today comes March 70 city house prices up 0.4% month on month and 4.9% year on year: Raw data: 28 cities were flat or falling with 42 rising: Third and second tier have re-accelerated a little: This is more or less as expected. As said many times, authorities have cooled the market