Wall Street Journal (January 27)
“Beijing’s decision to stop propping up stock prices is a positive sign that leaders are getting serious about reforming its markets. The expected appointment of Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan, one of China’s most prominent free-marketeers, to oversee regulators would restore confidence once the market finds its real floor.”
Tags: Beijing, Chongqing, Confidence, Huang Qifan, Markets, Reform, Regulators, Stock prices
Institutional Investor (January 18)
The “Taiwan election results present a challenge for Beijing.” Not only is Tsai Ing-wen the first female elected president, but the election brought her party, the Democratic Progressive Party, ”its first legislative majority.” Moreover, Tsai “is a strong supporter of independence for the island, presenting a challenge for leadership in Beijing who prefer to designate Taiwan as a breakaway faction of mainland China.”
Tags: Beijing, Challenge, DPP, Election, First female, Independence, Majority, President, Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen
Wall Street Journal (January 11)
“Beijing’s erratic response to the falling yuan and stock prices has exposed policy disarray. But behind the scenes an important debate has been raging over how to revive economic growth that some analysts believe is below 5%.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Disarray, Economic growth, Erratic, Response, Stock prices, Yuan
Wall Street Journal (December 9)
“Rather than reform the markets, Beijing wants to inflict pain on the brokers to assuage public anger over the crash.” This sort of meddling by the government helps explain why China’s financial markets remain dysfunctional. “China’s largest brokerage is now missing six of its eight top bosses” who are widely assumed to to “have been detained by police.” Numerous others have disappeared under similar circumstances. “But political interference risks repeating the boom and boost cycle. Putting brokers in prison won’t strengthen markets unless it is part of a new commitment to consistently enforce the law.”
Tags: Beijing, Brokerage, Brokers, China, Crash, Dysfunctional, Government, Markets, Public anger, Reform
Wall Street Journal (October 22)
“Much has changed since Beijing sparked a rare-earths panic in 2010. China was home to 95% of the world’s production, so when it tightened export quotas by 40% and then cut off shipments to Japan over a territorial dispute, buyers world-wide feared scarcity and prices rose tenfold.” Ironically, this spurred innovation, the use of substitutes and the reopening of mines in other countries. “By 2012 the world faced a glut of rare earths. Prices collapsed as much as 80%.” The rare-earths rollercoaster demonstrates “the ability of markets and human ingenuity to adapt to ill-advised attempts to hold natural resources hostage. When they’re allowed to work, markets always defeat mercantilism—a useful lesson for Beijing’s economic reformers.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Collapse, Export quotas, Glut, Innovation, Markets, Mercantilism, Natural resources, Prices, Production, Rare earths, Scarcity, Substitutes
Wall Street Journal (October 22)
“Much has changed since Beijing sparked a rare-earths panic in 2010. China was home to 95% of the world’s production, so when it tightened export quotas by 40% and then cut off shipments to Japan over a territorial dispute, buyers world-wide feared scarcity and prices rose tenfold.” Ironically, this spurred innovation, the use of substitutes and the reopening of mines in other countries. “By 2012 the world faced a glut of rare earths. Prices collapsed as much as 80%.” The rare-earths rollercoaster demonstrates “the ability of markets and human ingenuity to adapt to ill-advised attempts to hold natural resources hostage. When they’re allowed to work, markets always defeat mercantilism—a useful lesson for Beijing’s economic reformers.”
Tags: Beijing, Export quotas, Glut, Innovation, Markets, Mercantilism, Natural resources, Production, Rare earths, Substitutes
Wall Street Journal (September 24)
“It is now impossible to ignore that China is attempting to redefine its relationship to America and the rules of world order. Under Mr. Xi, Beijing sees itself as a strategic rival rather than a partner. Its foreign policy is increasingly aggressive, sometimes lawless…. The U.S. needs to show that it will resist this behavior—even as it seeks to steer China’s leadership back toward global norms.”
Tags: Aggressive, Beijing, China, Foreign policy, Global norms, Lawless, Partner, Rival, U.S., Xi
Bloomberg (August 19)
“Beijing still believes money can buy the trust and soft power it craves, which explains the new $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank it has sponsored. But as long as analysts don’t feel the Chinese government’s pronouncements are genuinely reliable, skepticism about the yuan will only grow.”
Tags: AIIB, Beijing, Government, Money, Reliable, Skepticism, Soft power, Trust, Yuan
Wall Street Journal (August 7)
In China, the Government is estimated to have spent more than 10% of GDP ($1.3 trillion) “since the market panic started in late June,” producing only questionable results. “The failed bailout reinforces the expectation that Beijing will attempt to manage the financial markets in the future. This moral hazard means the volatility will continue, along with the costs of future bailouts. The first lesson of investing, buyer beware, has yet to be learned in China.”
Tags: Bailouts, Beijing, China, Financial markets, GDP, Government, Moral hazard, Panic, Volatility
Wall Street Journal (July 2)
Government cheerleading for stock prices leads to blame when they fall” and China’s increasingly bearish market is upsetting some investors. “As we warned in April, when the government talks up the market, it runs a risk that the public will hold the Party leadership responsible for a market correction. Beijing may feel that it has to support stock prices now to maintain social stability.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Correction, Government, Investors, Market, Risk, Social stability, Stock prices
