China Gaoshou 中国高手, Mountain Man, Food Maven

  Yet Another Raft of Discouraging Economic Numbers from China When it comes to disappointing data, China’s economy has become the gift that keeps on giving (well, it’s the Christmas season, so gifts popped into my mind!).   The latest November numbers for inflation, or lack thereof, retail sales, trade, and capital outflows are now in, and they are all pretty bad, pointing to economy that continues to court a long-term deflationary spiral.   The one very minor bright spot was in housing prices, which continued to fall in November, but at a much slower pace than in previous months.   However, this figure must be set against the sharp downward trend in real estate investment and steep drop in housing sales in 2024 compared to just three years ago. Reviewing the official Chinese Government November inflation data, Reuters  notes that the consumer price index (CPI) inched up just 0.2% on a year-on-year basis.   This figure was below the 0.3% increase recorded ...

  Stifling Honest Talk About China’s Economic Problems Politics has always been an extremely fraught topic in China.   More recently, as the Chinese economy encounters ever greater headwinds, frank discussions about these economic challenges have become increasingly dodgy and subject to stricter controls by government authorities.   In the summer of 2023, numerous local brokerage analysts, researchers at leading universities, and state-run think tanks were instructedby government officials  not to comment negatively about a wide array of topics, ranging from fears of capital flight to price deflation.   This gag order applied not just to employees of such organizations, but to domestic Chinese media as well.   Some topics were declared to simply be off-limits. More ominously, a leading economist at the prestigious government-run think tank, the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences (CASS), ZhuHengpeng, was “disappeared”  after last being seen in pub...