China Economy

Cross-posted from FTAlphaville.

By Leith van Onselen Below is an interesting PowerPoint presentation from Jim Chanos, founder and president of New York investment company Kynikos Associates, which accompanied a speech Chanos gave at the 2013 Wine Country Conference on 5 April 2013.

From Bloomie: So maybe that’s where all that credit is going?

Cross-posted from FTAlphaville.

Cross-posted from FTAlphaville.

Our favourite China observer, Westpac’s Phat Dragon, today feigns humility before blaming Chinese data manipulation for yesterday’s big GDP miss. In true Australian fashion, the AFR embraces this easy excuse without pause (find the full report below).

From ANZ, here are a couple of useful charts of the internals of Chinese growth.

So, here are the charts for China’s first quarter growth miss.

Chinese first quarter growth is out and missed big coming in 1.6% only, 6.4% annualised.

This is unlikely to help markets today.

Yesterday, Captain Glenn Stevens warned that Chinese shadow banking needed to be watched closely: …concern has been expressed about the risks that may be growing in the ‘shadow banking’ system in China.

Whoa, the Chinese central bank has some work to do if we’re going to see the much anticipated slowdown in the second half.  I said I would wait to see March figures after the blowoff in January (which may have been Chinese New Year affected) before drawing conclusions.

Chinese exports are out for March and show several unexpected results (or “shocks” as they say).

By Leith van Onselen China’s most famous ghost city, Ordos in inner-Mongolia, has regularly been cited as a prime example of China’s unsustainable construction-led economy.

Chinese inflation has reversed its February spike in March, down to 2.1% in March: Source: Bloomberg As you can see the falls were all about food prices.

By Leith van Onselen Above is an extract of a video interview on the Daily Ticker with Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Peking University in Beijing, talking about the outlook for the Chinese economy.

Cross-posted from The Conversation In recent months, talk of an emerging crisis in China’s financial sector has been getting louder.

Here’s something to watch and not just for the value your portfolio.

Cross-posted from FTAlphaville. The China Banking Regulatory Commission last week issued several strict-sounding new rules applying to the issuance of Wealth Management Products (WMPs).

In a downbeat day of data here is some good news. China’s non-manufacturing PMI (which is not services) registered a solid gain in March of 1.1 points to 55.6: Source: Bloomberg New orders also rose slightly.

China has released its industrial profits for February and a solid rebound is in evidence with a jump to 17.2% from 5.3% in January:   The internals show big jumps in service sectors, though the data is sketchy: Another data point favouring a decent recovery.

A couple of important milestones in the Chinese recovery were passed overnight.