China Economy

From Citi: The Li Keqiang Index points to a weaker start in the economy – Our augmented index hit a new low since the data history.

In its Bulletin yesterday, the RBA released a solid article on Chinese property: Property development, especially of residential property, represents a sizeable share of China’s economic activity and has made a considerable contribution to overall growth over recent history.

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks.

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks: Chinese new homes prices fell an average of 0.43% across the government’s 70 city survey last month. The drop is unchanged from January’s 0.43% drop, marking three straight months of consistent price declines (no acceleration or deceleration in the trend).

China’s NBS has released February new home prices and the shakeout continues with prices down 5.7% year-on-year from 5.1% in January.

From Investing in Chinese Stocks, land sales for Jan/Feb were down 30% year-on-year 前两月土地出让收入降3成 地方官直言财政紧张: By the real estate market adjustments on state-owned land use right transfer income 455.3 billion yuan, up by 257.9 billion yuan, down 36.2 percent.

Yesterday and overnight, China sensitive stocks took off again on hopes that China’s National Party Congress signaled a renewed push for growth.

China’s credit data for February was out Friday and showed a decent bounce that effectively restored its deleveraging glide slope.

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks.

China released its Jan/Feb data last night (which is combined to overcome CNY distortions)  and, boy, did it underwhelm.

From Morgan Stanley’s China deleveraging scorecard: Total leverage to official GDP has risen to 247% at Sept 2014, still rising but at a slower pace than in the 2008- 2011 time frame.

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks.

China released its February trade data over the weekend and it showed a marked divergence in exports and imports.

It’s a treat when he does Australia but when he travels it’s even more fun, from The Australian: Given Australia’s (apparent) dependence on China, it would make sense to think that that any growth downgrade to our largest trading partner is bad news…Except that it will.

From the AFR: China has signalled a tightening in credit this year as economic growth slows to 7 per cent and the government pledges to smooth the path for foreign companies looking to invest in the world’s second biggest economy.

A new Chinese internet video called Under the Dome is suddenly making huge waves.

From UBS’s Wang Tao via FTAlphaville: Today’s move came as no surprise following the particularly weak prints of January inflation, and another soft reading expected for February.

Chinese growth is descending below the appointed glide slope and on Saturday the PBOC acted again which was absolutely no surprise given the recent crash in money supply growth.

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks.

From Forexlive, a little more stimulus for ya: From the the South China Morning Post – 5 banks have been allowed to cut their required reserve ratio by an extra 0.5 percentage points as part of fresh efforts to pump up liquidity and aid small firms the Securities Times reported on Thursday.

Bloomberg has a very useful article today summarising the bullish case for a turn in Chinese growth.

Martin Wolf in the FT: China’s huge credit boom has several disquieting features.

Fresh from Westpac: • The Westpac MNI China Consumer Sentiment Indicator, hereafter the Westpac MNI China CSI, decreased by 0.1pts in February, printing 112.0 versus 112.1 in January, –0.1% over the month and –4.4% over the year.

HSBC has released its China Flash PMI for February and the news is a little firming from 49.7 last month to a minor expansion of 50.1 in February.