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
From the ANU’s East Asia Forum comes this sobering assessment of the challenges facing the Chinese economy: China recently wrapped up the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultation Conference (CPPCC) with the approval of the 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) (2011-2015). At the top of the new blueprint is a commitment to
As you can probably tell we are all having a bit of a break over Easter. But just while I have a bit of time before the Easter Bunny arrives and my yard apes turn into sugar crazed lunatics I thought I would share a few stories I am watching. China Protests Over the last
Earlier this month, Houses and Holes posted a report from Professor Nouriel Roubini warning that the Chinese economy is overheating and risks a sharp slowdown sometime after 2013. Now Professor Roubini has followed up with an article on Project Syndicate fleshing-out his views in greater detail. Professor Roubini more or less supports earlier warnings from Michael Pettis and prominent China
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
Just in, credit rating agency, Moody’s Investor Services, has downgraded China’s property sector to negative from stable, citing both falling property sales and prices [my emphasis]: Hong Kong, April 14, 2011 — In a new report, Moody’s Investors Service changes its outlook for the China property sector to negative from stable. The change reflects the
On new years day of this year the Chinese government announced that it had a new plan for housing China’s central government will strengthen its campaign to control soaring housing prices in 2011, a senior official said on Wednesday. Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Jiang Weixin told a national work conference that the government will
Andy Xie, an independent economist based in Shanghai and the former Morgan Stanley chief Asia-Pacific economist, yesterday published an excellent article in Caixin warning that an inefficient public sector and negative real interest rates are pushing China towards stagflation, instability and a possible financial crisis (h/t interest.co.nz). Xie’s article more or less supports earlier warnings
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
Exclusively from Michale Pettis’ newsletter: Three months ago during their 2010 Q4 conference, the PBoC said that they believed that the global economic recovery would continue in 2011, although they acknowledged a great deal of uncertainty. The PBoC also said that stabilizing the price level was their top priority, and the central bank planned to
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
At last, a good news story on China. Readers might remember that I posted an article in December showing alarming satellite photos of entire cities laying vacant (see China’s empty cities). In that article appeared the below photo of Zhengzhou New District, which was supposedly “China’s biggest ghost city, complete with entire blocks of totally
It’s official. China’s 12 Five Year Plan confirms that China has a two speed economy that makes Australia’s two speed economy look thoroughly normal. On one side of the two speed economy is the private sector, which is well documented in an overview by The Economist. Ninety per cent of China’s 43 million companies are private,
` 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
China’s crackdown on dissidents has intensified in recent weeks, a development that is starting to get some traction in the mainstream US media. In this weekend’s New York Times: BEIJING — Teng Biao is no stranger to the wrath of the Chinese authorities. One of a handful of lawyers in China pressing for human rights
I read an interesting article today from Canadian Business magazine on the challenges facing the Chinese economy and the risks to commodity exporters like Australia and Canada (h/t Financial Insights). It’s a worthwhile read, particularly for readers seeking a detailed overview of the bear case on China. But a warning – at 5,400 words the
Exclusively from Michael Pettis’ newsletter: It seems the weird period of money-market tightening seems to have abated, at least for now. My SWS colleague Chen Long tells me the following: The PBoC has injected liquidity through open market operations for the 16th consecutive week. The central bank issued RMB 1 billion in 3-month bills and RMB
An awful lot of rubbish is written about China. Such as how China’s property market is overheating, or its exports unbalancing the world economy. So here are a few questions. When did private property ownership start in China? About a decade ago. Who owns most of the land? The Party (which of course gives them
Investors are nervously watching the situation in Libya unfold this week as fears grow that the unrest could spread to larger neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia, disrupting the supply of oil. Oil rose above $100 a barrel in New York today, while one investment bank predicted that if Libya and Algeria alone were to halt
This superblog has not made an editorial decision to suddenly be kind to the banks. But credit where credit is due and Westpac joins CBA (praised by the Unconventional Economist today) in having produced an excellent piece of research (h/t The Lorax). This time on China. Indeed, this blogger will go so far as to say that
From Michael Pettis’ exclusive newsletter: Last week the National Bureau of Statistics released inflation data for the month of January: In January 2011, consumer price index rose by 4.9 percent over the same period of the previous year. Of which, urban area and rural area was up by 4.8 percent and 5.2 percent respectively; the price
From Michael Pettis’ exclusive newsletter: Because of the lunar New Year festivities not a whole lot happened in China last week, not counting of course the never-ending stream of fireworks and the several really great jiao zi dinners I have managed to snag from my students and their families. I have nonetheless been getting a lot
From Michael Pettis’s exclusive newsletter comes this update on Chinese lending and interest rates: It seems that already bankers might be anticipating the relaxation of lending targets. Rumors on the ground suggest that new lending in January may come in as high as RMB 1.2 trillion. This might seem pretty strong evidence that the PBoC
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
The ongoing demise of the Bretton Woods II (BWII) currency system and its implications for the balance of world growth has been a recurrent theme for this blog. And if recent commentary around China is any guide, the breakdown is accelerating toward another critical moment. To recount, this blogger wrote last year: BWII is the
Following the La Niña-related floods in Queensland earlier this month food prices have spiked, adding to an already serious inflation crisis around the world and toppling the government of Tunisia. And while protesters in Tunis were hardly thinking of Queensland bananas or sugarcane as they mobbed the streets, the changing and dramatic climatic conditions that
For those that missed it, Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism fame quoted liberally from our very own Flashman over the weekend, firing off a frenzy of activity. Amongst that traffic was a comment from Bruce Krasting that included an excellent link comparing this super La Nina with those of the past. He concludes: You are
