China’s high-speed rail accident has attracted a lot of attention. Even the FT Lex coloumn has something to say about it, believing that the pace of investment should be slowed. While I have been arguing here for a while that investment has to be slowed, it is rather harder to see if the “accident” can
After last week’s China update, which focussed on the massive malinvestment taking place within the Chinese economy, I received a number of articles from readers for inclusion in this week’s round-up. Thanks for everyone that sent articles in. If you find any articles that you wish to be included in next week’s summary, feel free
After continuous rounds of curbs, real estate inventories in various cities have been rising to records on the back of thin volume, although prices are still holding pretty well, according to Xinhua. Unsold inventories in Beijing reached 107,000 units as of 20 July, according to the report, which would take almost 15 months to clear based on the
As the HSBC flash estimate for China’s manufacturing PMI falls below 50, indicating a contraction of manufacturing activities, people might start to wonder again whether there will be a hard landing. The first half economic data was robust, with GDP growing at 9.5% over a year ago while inflation hit a new high at 6.4%,
h/t WSJ The HSBC China flash PMI was out this afternoon. According to the SMH: HSBC’s China Flash PMI for July dropped by its fastest pace since March 2009 and pointed to a monthly contraction in the country’s vast manufacturing sector for the first time in 12 months, the purchasing managers’ survey shows, while a
Almost daily now, I come across interesting articles on the Chinese economy. Rather than share each article individually, I will from now on provide a weekly round-up of articles from around the web. If readers have come across any noteworthy articles that I have missed, feel free to add these to the comments section below.
This morning, Chinese National Bureau of Statistics published economic data for June and for the first half of the year. China second quarter GDP increased by 9.5% in real term over the same period a year ago, beating estimates of 9.3%, and slowing only slightly from 9.7% of the first quarter. For the first half
The People’s Bank of China just published the latest set of monetary statistics for June 2011. As of the end of June, M2 money supply reached RMB78.08 trillion, increased by 15.9% over a year earlier, vs. 15.1% in May and consensus of 15.3%. M1 money supply increased by 13.1% over a year ago to RMB27.27
As we know, Chinese inflation further accelerated in June. The headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 6.4% compared to a year ago, vs. 5.5% in May. This is slightly above consensus estimate of 6.3%. Less well understood, however, is how significant food prices are in this equation. Looking at prices in different categories, food prices inflation
In November 2010, I published a fascinating interview with Vitaliy Katsenelson – author of the Little Book of Sideways Markets (highly recommended), and teacher and Director of Research / Portfolio Manager at Investment Management Associates Inc, a money management firm based in Denver, Colorado. In this interview, Vitaliy provided possibly the best discussion of the
Following on from today’s post on Gary Shilling’s warning that China is headed for a hard landing, credit ratings agency, Moody’s Investor Services, today released a report claiming that it has identified an additional 3.5 trillion yuan ($US540 billion) of potential problem loans that the Chinese National Audit Office (NAO) did not disclose in their
Back in February, I published a video interview with Gary Shilling, president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., Inc. and author of the best selling book The Age of Deleveraging, in which he outlined why China’s economy is headed for a hard landing and what to do in order to profit from the slowdown. Now Mr Shilling has
Back in April I published an article, China’s largest ghost cities filled, providing an ‘eyes on the ground’ report from Wendell Cox, co-author of the Annual Demographia Housing Affordability Survey, who was touring China at the time. Wendell had provided photographic evidence showing that one of China’s famed ‘ghost cities’, Zhengzhou New District, was in
In what certainly will not come as a surprise to daily China watchers, the country’s top auditor has issued a new warning about the solvency of local government bodies. The head of China’s national audit office warned on Monday that the country was facing growing risks because of a sharp rise in local government debt
Societe Generale (SocGen) has released a fascinating 50-page research report entitled Chinese construction bubble – Preparing for a potential burst. The report argues that the exponential growth of real estate and infrastructure spending in China is unsustainable and a painful adjustment will occur sooner or later, although SocGen acknowledges that it is impossible to predict when the slowdown or correction
China Daily has published an interesting article, Record realty prices head to lower-tier cities, explaining how tightening measures undertaken by the Chinese Government to curb soaring property values in China’s major cities is causing bubble-like conditions to spread to second and third tier cities [hat tip World Housing Bubble]. Below are some of the key
Bernard Hickey at Interest.co.nz yesterday alerted me to an interesting presentation by the Brookings Institution on China’s latest 5-year plan, which has been widely discussed as focussed on sustainable growth and reducing inflation, rather than going for growth for the sake of it. The presentation contains a series of excellent charts summarising China’s progress and
From Credit Suisse comes this must read report into Chinese bank debt, on and off balance sheet, and the likely fallout in the coming slow down. Rising risks to asset quality Our analysis shows China’s credit-to-GDPhas risen to alarming levels in the past two years due to massive off-balance-sheet financing. Market has only focused on banking
Let’s try some more scenarios, but this time with your participation. My reasoning is this. Most economic and financial commentary is about telling the story of the past leading up to the present. So why not try to tell the story of the future? After all, that is what matters for investment and policy. Can’t
Today Martin Wolf of the FT joins the growing ranks of China skeptics. It is interesting to contrast his views with those of Glenn Stevens, enunciated in his speech yesterday. According to Wolf: Until 1990, Japan was the most successful large economy in the world. Almost nobody predicted what would happen to it in the succeeding
From Bloomberg (h/t The Lorax): China’s inflation accelerated to 5.5 percent in May, the fastest pace in almost three years, and industrial output grew more than economists forecast. The annual gain in consumer prices matched the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. Production rose 13.3 percent last month, the statistics bureau said in
The People’s Bank of China has published the latest set of monetary statistics for May 2011. At the end of May, M2 money supply reached RMB76.34 trillion, increasing by 15.1% yoy, lower than 15.3% yoy growth last month, and continued to dip below the pre-crisis average growth rate. The market consensus looked for a 15.5%
Following on from last night’s post on S&P’s recent report on China and commodities, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) yesterday released an interest report (available below) on the precarious position of the Chinese banking system. Here are some key extracts: Chinese banks’ aggressive credit expansion in the past two years greatly facilitated China’s strong economic recovery
Late last week, Standard and Poors (S&P) released a 22-page report entitled The Potential Risk of China’s Large and Growing Presence In Commodities Markets, which warns that record high commodities may represent an unsustainable bubble at risk of correcting in the event of a significant slowdown of the Chinese economy (hat tip Interest.co.nz for the
Exclusively from Michael Pettis newsletter: My SWS associate Chen Long tells me that last week’s markets indicate that monetary conditions in China are still pretty tight, as measured by the cost of short-term liquidity in the interbank market. As I have argued before, I think this says a lot more about the extent of domestic
From Project Syndicate today comes this piece from Stephen Roach (who I do admire) on why this time it is different for China. I’ll give a peremptory hat tip to anyone that can debunk all ten… Here are ten reasons why it doesn’t pay to diagnose the Chinese economy by drawing inferences from the experiences
From Societe Generale overnight comes a new intensive study of the changing composition of Chinese inflation and how it will radiate outwards. Fascinating reading and essential knowledge for every Australian. Remember the phrase: “deflation in all you own, inflation in all you need”…
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
Exclusively from Michael Pettis’ newsletter: Quite a lot of data came in this week as I was recovering from the jet lag generated by last week’s trip to the US, and for good measure, the PBoC then raised minimum reserve requirements Thursday evening. I don’t have much to say about the hike, beyond what will
