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Forbes (March 15)

2024/ 03/ 17 by jd in Global News

“As the Bank of Japan mulls its biggest policy pivot in roughly 25 years, no major economy may benefit more than China,” helping to counter the headwinds zooming China’s way.” Hoping to supplant the dollar as the global currency, China is hesitant to devalue its own currency. Yet, “for China, falling prices will just further undermine business and household confidence. It’s here where a rising yen could counter the headwinds zooming China’s way. And make China the real winner as the BOJ calls it quits on QE next week.”

 

Foreign Policy (March 11)

2024/ 03/ 13 by jd in Global News

Some question China’s 5.2% GDP growth figure for the final quarter of 2023, but even assuming “the figures are accurate, the wider trends of the Chinese economy suggest a worrying state of affairs.” China’s real GDP figure exceeded its nominal figure. This “indicates that Beijing’s gross value of output in real terms was amplified thanks to negative inflation…. If not for deflation, China’s real GDP growth in 2023 would have been even lower and would have certainly missed the national target of 5 percent.”

 

The Economist (March 6)

2024/ 03/ 07 by jd in Global News

“So far the signals” from China’s annual meeting of the National People’s Congress “are not reassuring. They suggest that China lacks a robust plan to deal with its economic slump and that some of its targets are drifting from reality. Power is concentrating even further in the hands of President Xi Jinping.”

 

Wall Street Journal (March 5)

2024/ 03/ 06 by jd in Global News

“It is the end of the Chinese growth miracle as we know it, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping seems fine with that. The question now is whether he can steer the country onto a new course— and keep the rest of China on board.”

 

Time (March 1)

2024/ 03/ 02 by jd in Global News

“Until the 1970s, women in the most prosperous Asian economies like South Korea, Japan, and China were having more than five children on average. Today, that trend is starkly different.” And not just in Asia. Globally, “fertility rates have decreased worldwide” for seven decades. “Even in the most advanced economies, the rate is now 1.6 children per couple, compared to the recommended rate of 2.1 for countries wanting to keep a steady population without any migration.”

 

Reuters (February 28)

2024/ 02/ 29 by jd in Global News

China’s housing market seems to be approaching a paradigm shift. “The broad idea is to create a two-tier system. Local governments will rent out or sell flats below market prices to most residents, including some 300 million Chinese migrant workers who live far away from their hometowns in the mainland. Upgraders and investors could settle for a smaller private residential market, where regulators meddle less.”

 

Foreign Policy (February 20)

2024/ 02/ 22 by jd in Global News

“Children born in the year of the dragon are considered lucky.” This is, however, unlikely to cause a bump” in China’s birthrate during 2024, which is “likely to see fewer births than any previous year of the dragon.” From 2011 (the last year of the dragon), the nation’s birthrate has dropped from 13.27 children to “just 6.39 children per 1,000 people” last year. The precipitous fall suggests “this year of the dragon may be a bit of a bust as people in China shy away from the soaring costs of child-rearing despite government propaganda pushing women to have more children and to stop working to raise them.”

 

Bloomberg (February 19)

2024/ 02/ 20 by jd in Global News

China’s Communist Party appears poised to “play a bigger role in steering its vast technology industry, the latest sign that Beijing intends to exert more influence over swathes of the world’s No. 2 economy.” In response, shares in the nation’s listed chipmakers “slid more than 2% as investors pondered the ramifications of greater state control, which has yielded mixed results so far.”

 

The Economist (February 10)

2024/ 02/ 13 by jd in Global News

“This year investors in Chinese stocks have been on a hair-raising ride. Even as America’s S&P 500 index reached record highs, markets in China and Hong Kong shed $1.5trn in January alone…. The decline signals a fundamental problem. Investors abroad and at home once saw China’s government as a dependable steward of the economy. Now this trust has seeped away, with severe consequences for China’s growth.”

 

Forbes (February 9)

2024/ 02/ 12 by jd in Global News

“Economists are struggling to put China’s epic $7 trillion stock crash in perspective. The best size and scope may be that, since 2021, the market has lost the combined gross domestic product of Japan and France.” But that’s not even the worst news out of China. Beijing is now “on the lookout for those disseminating negative views on China’s economic and market prospects. This chilling warning not to ‘denigrate China’s economy’ via ‘false narratives’ is Mao Zedong, not Adam Smith. And it raises troubling questions as China’s influence soars.”

 

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