Reuters (December 9)
“Wherever you think inflation is coming from, it’s not China – not yet at least…. China said its factory-gate prices showed an annual fall for a second month in a row last month – the latest in stream of numbers revealing the impact of the government’s draconian COVID curbs, now being gradually lifted.”
Tags: China, COVID curbs, Draconian, Factory-gate, Fall, Government, Impact, Inflation, Prices
Reuters (November 28)
“Thousands of people are taking to the streets in several cities across the country in an unprecedented protest against the government’s stringent COVID restrictions.” This sort of unrest “does not happen very often, and the world is watching intently to see how Beijing handles the brewing crisis.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Cities, COVID restrictions, Government, People, Protest, Stringent, Thousands, Unprecedented, Unrest
Bloomberg (November 25)
“Since the Brexit vote in 2016, the UK government is yet to deliver major legislative change with significant benefits for businesses. Instead, companies have had to grapple with higher paperwork costs on trade, a tighter labor market spurred by a reduction in EU migration and a weaker pound increasing import costs. Brexit has also had a political cost of aggravating tensions in Northern Ireland and hurting diplomatic relations with the EU.”
Tags: Benefits, Brexit, Businesses, Costs, EU, Government, Import, Labor market, Migration, Northern Ireland, Paperwork, Pound, Trade, UK, Weaker
The Guardian (August 22)
“England currently feels like an eerie, unpoliced, ungoverned, unstable country after a coup. One government is gone but another hasn’t replaced it, and opposition cannot rise to the challenge.” A macro analyst recently wrote that the UK increasingly looks like “an emerging market country…. Brexit coupled with Covid and high inflation have succeeded…. The UK economy is crushed.”
Tags: Analyst, Brexit, Challenge, Coup, Covid, Economy, Eerie, Emerging market, England, Government, Inflation, Opposition, UK, Ungoverned, Unpoliced, Unstable
Washington Post (May 17)
With May “more than half over,” Russia’s Plan B is clearly “fizzling” with a notable retreat from Kharkiv. Russia “now appears to be aiming to take, at most, the entirety of a single Ukrainian region, Luhansk. And even that might be beyond the capability of Russia’s depleted, poorly led forces.” Instead, “a widening Ukrainian counteroffensive” might succeed in bringing “more of the Russian-held south and east of Ukraine back under the control of its legitimate government.”
Tags: Control, Counteroffensive, Depleted, Fizzling, Government, Kharkiv, Legitimate, Luhansk, May, Plan B, Retreat, Russia, Ukraine
Wall Street Journal (April 14)
“Events in Hong Kong and Shanghai have demonstrated that a ‘zero Covid’ strategy can look very effective for a long time—until suddenly it isn’t, either because a more infectious variant changes the game or because success itself breeds overconfidence.” Unless the Chinese government moves “quickly to vaccinate and boost its elderly, and start spending much more heavily on hospital capacity, then the human and economic consequences could be disastrous.”
Tags: Boost, China, Consequences, Disastrous, Elderly, Events, Government, Hong Kong, Hospital capacity, Infectious, Overconfidence, Shanghai, Vaccinate, Variant, Zero COVID
Reuters (January 28)
“A growing number of Chinese construction and decoration companies are writing off assets or issuing profit warnings as debt woes at China Evergrande Group and other property developers debilitate their suppliers.” Despite government measures “to ease developers’ liquidity stress and support the cooling economy, recent data suggests the problem will get worse.”
Tags: Assets, China, Companies, Construction, Debt, Evergrande, Government, Liquidity, Profit warnings, Property developers, Suppliers, Woes
Taipei Times (January 18)
In a development likely to affect mainland China’s growth potential, the birthrate “has fallen to its lowest level in six decades, barely outnumbering deaths last year despite major government efforts to increase population growth and stave off a demographic crisis.”
Tags: Birthrate, China, Deaths, Demographic crisis, Development, Efforts, Fallen, Government, Growth, Lowest, Mainland, Population, Potential
The Guardian (December 11)
Under New Zealand’s ban on smoking, “those aged 14 and under in 2027 will never be able to buy tobacco products legally. The legal smoking age will increase with every year that passes–meaning that in 2073, someone who is 61 will be able to buy cigarettes whereas someone who is 60 will not. But, as the government ramps up anti-drug measures in the UK at the same time, you have to ask – when has criminalising a substance ever worked?”
Tags: Age, Anti-drug, Ban, Cigarettes, Criminalising, Government, Legal, New Zealand, Smoking, Tobacco, UK
Bloomberg (November 14)
The language of COP26 “crystallizes the more important reality that’s emerging away from the conference halls in power stations, industrial facilities and government offices around the world. In its modest way, it also helps edge that process along.” Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, electric cars have taken off beyond expectations and renewables are now “undercutting” fossil fuels for power generation: “one reason we’ve seen the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Poland and South Korea sign up to end the coal-fired electricity that they’ve been dependent on.”
Tags: 2015, COP26, EVs, Government, Indonesia, Industrial facilities, Paris Agreement, Poland, Power stations, Renewables, South Korea, Vietnam
