China Gaoshou 中国高手, Mountain Man, Food Maven

  China Doubles Down on Exports: Over the past year, China achieved a major economic milestone, becoming the first country to post a $1 trillion trade surplus.   However, contrary to what one might at first glance believe, this should not be any cause for celebration.   China’s massive trade surplus instead reflect two major underlying current weaknesses in its economy.   One is the decreasing inflows of foreign investment, which has played a crucial role in the rapid growth of the Chinese economy over the past three decades.   The trade surplus also underscores ongoing anemic consumption in China and the unbalanced and unsustainable natures of its current economic growth model. While China has consistently run large trade surpluses ever since becoming the workshop of the world during the 1990s, these surpluses have spiked over the past seven years.   In 2018, the gap between what China exported and imported was under $500 billion.   It reached $500 ...

  A Tale of two Economies on the cusp of a “Lost Decade:”   How does present-day China compare with Japan in the early 1990s? The past year is surely one that Chinese economic policymakers in Beijing are glad to have behind them.   The last 12 months were marked by disappointing inflation numbers, which consistently came in below expectations, particularly in the fall, reflecting anemic consumer demand and the looming threat of deflation.   At the same time, the real estate sector remained mired in crisis.   As if that were not enough, it now appears that the growth of China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the past two years was actually well below the official Government figures.   On top of that, the bond market issued a negative verdict on the Chinese economy, with long-term bond yields in China falling below those of Japan for the first time ever. The last data point underscores that the “Japanification” of the Chinese economy may well be underway...

  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...