From China Stats Bureau today comes Chinese house prices up 0.6% in January and 10% over the year: Top tier cities have picked up recently: The advance decline ratio remains quite strong: And the raw data: Still strong enough for gains in starts but they are going the other way for now:

Via FTAlphaville: March 1 may no longer be a “magical date” for President Trump, but the deadline after which tariffs on $200bn worth of Chinese imports are set to more than double is fast approaching. Now in their ninth round of negotiations, the US and China remain at odds on a number of issues, despite making some

Cross posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks. With the January surge in liquidity looming in the distance, the Chinese real estate market is hitting an important turning point. iFeng: 2019年楼市或加速分化 楼市成交整体走低 According to the statistics of the Krui Real Estate Research Center, during the Spring Festival, the data of more than 40 key monitoring cities showed that

Via Nikkei: A massive building boom across China, including in tier-two cities like Jinan, has left as many as 65 million empty apartments across the country, according to estimates by Gan Li, a professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu. Sales volumes in 24 cities tracked by China Real Estate Index System fell

Via Capital Economics: Shipments beat expectations but seasonal distortions muddy the water • The January trade data were much stronger than anticipated but seasonal volatility caused by annual shifts in the timing of Chinese New Year make it difficult to get a good grip on underlying trends at this time of year. Even if the

Bank of England chief Mark Carney has some bad news for Australia, warning that: “(China) are not going to bail us out this time, I absolutely agree,” Carney said when asked about the ability of the world’s second-biggest economy to compensate for a slowdown in richer nations. But the most likely outcome was that the

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

Via Capital Economics: • The People’s Bank (PBOC) appears to have intervened little in FX markets last month, suggesting that the renminbi is not facing much downward pressure at present. However, with the economy likely to slow and interest rates likely to fall further over coming months, pressure is likely to return later this year.

Shane Oliver has penned a creditable piece on China: Why growth in China is unlikely to slow too far and why it needs to save less and spend more Scepticism about China’s economic success amongst (mostly western) investment commentators has been an issue for as long as I can remember. The current China worries mainly

Via Zero Hedge reporting on Credit Suisse: With the latest China economic data once again underwhelming overnight, it is safe to say that in a world where consensus overwhelmingly expect a global recession to arrive some time in 2020, China – which continues its aggressive shadow deleveraging campaign – remains the biggest potential catalyst for

Hello Shanghai Accord! With the Fed in neutral, Barclays says China is next to cut, via Bloomie: “Existing measures are not sufficient to lower the financing costs of the real economy, in a down-cycle with rising credit risk and falling producer-price inflation,” the analysts led by Jian Chang wrote in a note. “Hence, lowering the

Via Caixin: Latest survey data signalled subdued overall operating conditions in the Chinese manufacturing sector at the start of 2019. Production and total new work were both slightly down at the start of the year, despite a renewed increase in export orders. Relatively muted demand conditions underpinned the first fall in purchasing activity for 20

China’s January PMI is out and remains in contraction: In January 2019 , the China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index ( PMI ) was 49.5% , up 0.1 percentage points from the previous month . In terms of enterprise scale, the PMI of large enterprises was 51.3% , up 1.2 percentage points from the previous month and continued to be above the critical point; the PMI of small and medium-sized enterprises was 47.2% and 47.3% , respectively, down 1.2 and 1.3 percentage points from the previous month . Below the critical

There is lot’s of focus on Chinese growth and stimulus at the moment and for good reason. There were a couple of crucial data releases while I was holidaying that offer a lot of insight into 2019 prospects and they are worth revisiting. First up broad credit, which still looks to be falling away: Note

by Chris Becker From Capital Economics on today’s GDP print from China: GDP growth edged down from 6.5% y/y in Q3 to 6.4% last quarter, in line with both the Bloomberg median and our forecast. GDP growth for 2018 as a whole was 6.6%, down from 6.8% in 2017. The official GDP figures have been

CBA Senior Currency Strategist, Joseph Capurso, has produced a new research report arguing that “China’s economic miracle is over” owing to slowing productivity growth and demographic headwinds. This will drag China’s growth down “from around 6% currently to around 4% by 2030”: According to Capurso, despite the slower growth, China may still escape the so-called

Global markets are convinced that China is about spring from its credit funk but so far it ain’t. December credit was decent at 1.59tr yuan with 1.08tr in bank loans but hardly tearing it up: Shadow banking had a better month: The three month moving average for new credit flopped into the positive: There is

by Chris Becker Capital Economics are out with two important reports on the latest trade figures and state of the economy in China. Yesterday’s trade numbers for December shocked to the downside, and Capital’s view aligns with Houses and Holes that any slowdown in the Middle Kingdom’s economy is part of its structural re-alignment and

Via Reuters: China plans to set a lower economic growth target of 6-6.5 percent in 2019 compared with last year’s target of “around” 6.5 percent, policy sources told Reuters, as Beijing gears up to cope with higher U.S. tariffs and weakening domestic demand. The proposed target, to be unveiled at the annual parliamentary session in

Chinese inflation for December is out and it’s adieu price pressures as growth fades: In December 2018 , the national consumer price rose by 1.9% year-on-year . Among them, the city rose 1.9% , the rural rose 1.9% ; the food price rose 2.5% , the non-food price rose 1.7% ; the consumer price rose 1.7% , and the service price rose 2.1% . In December , the national consumer price ratio was unchanged from

Zero Hedge has some hints today: Over the weekend, when commenting on the latest rather disappointing RRR cut out of China (which would release just enough liquidity to offset liquidity drains via the MLP and repo) we pointed out another, far more important event which took place in late December, when traders were generally away on vacation,

Via the AFR: A flurry of construction may be about to take off in China, and investors have pinned their hopes on it. Stocks of Japanese machinery makers Komatsu and Hitachi Construction Machinery perked up on Monday. Over the past week, Chinese engineering and construction companies’ shares have surfaced from multi-month lows. …The optimism stems

Via Capital Economics: The People’s Bank continues to intervene, but on a small scale • The People’s Bank (PBOC) appears to have sold only a small amount of foreign exchange last month, suggesting that the renminbi has faced little downward pressure recently. • The value of the PBOC’s reserves amounted to $3,073bn at the end