Niall Ferguson coined the term “Chimerica” to characterise the economic relationship between China and the United States. In his view, China does the saving, and the United States does the spending.  This is true to a certain extent but that does not mean that China does not borrow. Today, I want to explore debt in the

The People’s Bank of China has raised interest rates and reserve requirement ratios a number of times since last year as the government pledged to make inflation fighting and property price curbing their top priority.  So far, the two main objectives have not been achieved.  However, the effect of tightening has been increasingly visible. For

  We need a new framework for understanding and interpreting what is happening in China. As a friend recently commented to me, there should be three categories of economies: developed, developing and China. China may struggle, but it will struggle in a uniquely Chinese way, and inevitably pose deep questions about the future of capitalism.

The World Bank has damned the lifeboats in its China Quarterly Update and called out multiple risks including a housing bubble, inflation and external imbalances. Here is the money excerpt: Inflation is unlikely to escalate but there are risks. Food price increases seem to have slowed for now, sequentially, and the (yoy) rate of increase in

From Michael Pettis this week: On Friday last week the National Bureau of Statistics released the eagerly anticipated first quarter data. 　As has been widely reported, first quarter GDP was up 9.7% year on year. CPI inflation 5.4% in March, a 32-month high, and up from 4.9% for the first two months of this year.　 For the first

Here’s a heads up about the important Chinese data that is out around lunchtime today.  Amongst the raft of data to be released is the GDP data. Chinese growth is increasingly important to everyone on the planet as our beloved Central Bank Governor pointed out in New York two nights ago. The chart below shows the

Below find the executive summary of a new report into China’s housing bubble from The Economist Intelligence Unit. It has some terrific stats and is well worth your time, even though its analysis and conclusion add up to the intensely suspicious conclusion that ‘this time it’s different’. One particular claim I’ll take umbrage with is

From Nouriel Roubini at RGE Monitor: I’m writing on the heels of two trips to China during which I met with senior policy makers, bank executives and academics, just as the government launched its 12th Five-Year Plan, intended to rebalance the long-term growth model. My meetings deepened my own impression and RGE’s long-standing house view of

Analyst presentations can be tedious affairs, often an equal mix of the obvious and the dubious. But one I saw about China’s Five Year Plan’s implications of Australia really had me listening closely. The visiting China-based analyst was showing a slide of the projections of the growth in “low carbon” energy out to 2015. It

` Exclusively from Michael Pettis newsletter: Quite a few numbers came out this week, but none of them were especially dramatic or likely to change anyone’s mind about anything. The most interesting thing to me is that there are indications that, once again, the economy may be slowing quickly. Every time Beijing gets worried about too

The pressure is growing for China to open up its capital markets as a way to solve its internal bubbles. The question is: how will that affect the rest of the world? The greatest impact of China – its massive scale – is so far largely confined to trade and global production chains. What happens if

The stated goal of the Hu Jintao-led Chinese government is a “harmonious society”. Perhaps that is why the word “Egypt” was blocked on certain search engines over the weekend. Multiple factors are in play in Egypt, but there is one vital similarity with China: Food inflation of a breadth and severity that few in the