South China Morning Post (January 16)
Disappointing performance has marked Hong Kong’s stock market in 2024. “The Hang Seng Index hit a fresh 14-month low and has lost 2.3 per cent this week on top of a 4.7 per cent loss in the first two trading weeks of 2024.” Investors remain worried about “the strength of the mainland economy” so “it’s possible for the Hang Seng Index to test new lows under selling pressure.”
Tags: 2024, Disappointing, Economy, Hang Seng, Hong Kong, Investors, Mainland, New lows, Performance, Stock market, Trading, Worried
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 Economist (March 20)
Last week China slapped down democracy in Hong Kong. The imposition of tight mainland control over the territory is not just a tragedy for the 7.5m people who live there, it is also a measure of China’s determination not to compromise over how it asserts its will.” But China has pressure points. It is “more tightly coupled with the West than communist Russia ever was. This presents the free world with an epoch-defining question: how should it best secure prosperity, lower the risk of war and protect freedom as China rises?”
Tags: China, Communist, Compromise, Control, Democracy, Hong Kong, Imposition, Mainland, Prosperity, Risk, Russia, Territory, War
The Economist (February 8)
Production of masks, “sadly, is one of the few economic ventures that is still expanding in this thrice-struck city.” Hong Kong’s “GDP shrank last year for the first time in a decade, thanks to the trade war and anti-government protests. The coronavirus now poses a third threat. Some economists have slashed their growth forecasts for Hong Kong by more than for the mainland.”
Tags: Anti-government protests, Coronavirus, GDP, Growth forecasts, Hong Kong, Mainland, Masks, Threat, Trade war, Ventures
South China Morning Post (May 21)
“The direction is clear, and the pace is picking up. For investors around the world, the biggest mistake would be to ignore China’s markets and their enormous potential now.” As China’s capital markets continue opening up, “investors—be they European hedge funds, pension funds in Australia, sovereign wealth funds from Asia, or ordinary savers around the world—will need to look at what might be a once-in-a-generation opportunity.” The June 1 inclusion of 200 of the mainland’s large-cap companies into the MSCI alone might “prompt well over half a trillion US dollars to pour into Chinese stocks in the next five to 10 years, as institutional investors adjust index-linked portfolios to MSCI’s change.”
Tags: Capital, China, Direction, Hedge funds, Index, Institutional investors, Investors, Large-cap, Mainland, Markets, MSCI, Pension, Portfolios, Sovereign wealth, Stocks
Chicago Tribune (August 9)
“Many Americans had reassured themselves that North Korea was still years away from threatening the U.S. mainland with a nuclear missile. That illusion ended Tuesday.” U.S. intelligence reports appear to indicate that “North Korea now has produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside intercontinental ballistic missiles” and has an estimated arsenal including as many as 60 nuclear weapons. North Korea is now clearly a “threat to the U.S., to the world.”
Tags: Arsenal, ICBMs, Intelligence, Mainland, North Korea, Nuclear missile, Threat, U.S., Warhead
Wall Street Journal (June 18)
“Hong Kong democrats celebrated Thursday as the city’s legislature blocked passage of the Beijing-backed election law that sparked last year’s 75-day mass protests.” In response, Beijing’s tactic will probably risk “further alienating the people of Hong Kong from the mainland. The more Beijing paints its opponents as radicals and revolutionaries, the more it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Tags: Beijing, Democrats, Election law, Hong Kong, Legislature, Mainland, Radicals, Revolutionaries
