Quickie
Colonel
Supermarkets sell fresh farm produce too, sometimes cheaper than you would find in wet markets.
Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
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Supermarkets sell fresh farm produce too, sometimes cheaper than you would find in wet markets.
escobar
Brigadier
Chinese imports from Russia are mainly those of energy sources, such as crude oil, which is mostly transported by rail, and electricity exports from neighboring Siberian and Far Eastern regions. China’s main export to russia are machinery and electronic goods.
Equation
Lieutenant General
Here's an interesting read on the ECONONOMIST this week issue. I bought it and read it and it covers a lot of thing that this forum has already discussed about too. Check it out.
China’s military rise
"NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so (see article).
Much of its effort is aimed at deterring America from intervening in a future crisis over Taiwan. China is investing heavily in “asymmetric capabilities” designed to blunt America’s once-overwhelming capacity to project power in the region. This “anti-access/area denial” approach includes thousands of accurate land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, modern jets with anti-ship missiles, a fleet of submarines (both conventionally and nuclear-powered), long-range radars and surveillance satellites, and cyber and space weapons intended to “blind” American forces. Most talked about is a new ballistic missile said to be able to put a manoeuvrable warhead onto the deck of an aircraft-carrier 2,700km (1,700 miles) out at sea."
China’s military rise
"NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so (see article).
Much of its effort is aimed at deterring America from intervening in a future crisis over Taiwan. China is investing heavily in “asymmetric capabilities” designed to blunt America’s once-overwhelming capacity to project power in the region. This “anti-access/area denial” approach includes thousands of accurate land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, modern jets with anti-ship missiles, a fleet of submarines (both conventionally and nuclear-powered), long-range radars and surveillance satellites, and cyber and space weapons intended to “blind” American forces. Most talked about is a new ballistic missile said to be able to put a manoeuvrable warhead onto the deck of an aircraft-carrier 2,700km (1,700 miles) out at sea."
Reading a large proportion of the media regarding China is a profoundly boring and quite depressing experience. On the one hand when the economy powers ahead its out of control, overheating and about to crash and burn, while when the brakes are applied its slowing down, running out of steam and about to collapse.
I have however noticed something and wonder if there is a truth here that dare not speak its name.
Just over a year ago many of the world economies were in recovery mode and China was enjoying double digit growth albeit with to high for comfort inflation. The answer was to apply the brakes and take out the head steam, reduce inflation and take growth to a more steady 7 - 9% range with inflation taken back to about 3%. Just as these measures were taking effect however the other major economies suffered a slowdown with crises in the US over Federal dept levels and in the EU a debt crisis in some Euroland countries that threatened to become a full blown currency crisis.
The slow down in the US and EU caused a sharp drop in export output in the PRC which has prompted Beijing to start easing off the brakes and increase liquidity plus consider a range of further reforms, including some to allow Private Enterprises access to a wider range of sources of finance.
So question. The PRC has been running the throttle since 2008 to keep the world economy going and to give some space to the US/EU to recover and provide its share of momentum to allow China to keep moving forward when the brakes were applied. When the time came though the Western recovery faltered and China found itself slowing too quickly.
Has China just been unlucky in timing or is the global relationship now far more symbiotic than people are prepared to admit and that China is indeed the main driver of the world economy and not any longer the USA?
I have however noticed something and wonder if there is a truth here that dare not speak its name.
Just over a year ago many of the world economies were in recovery mode and China was enjoying double digit growth albeit with to high for comfort inflation. The answer was to apply the brakes and take out the head steam, reduce inflation and take growth to a more steady 7 - 9% range with inflation taken back to about 3%. Just as these measures were taking effect however the other major economies suffered a slowdown with crises in the US over Federal dept levels and in the EU a debt crisis in some Euroland countries that threatened to become a full blown currency crisis.
The slow down in the US and EU caused a sharp drop in export output in the PRC which has prompted Beijing to start easing off the brakes and increase liquidity plus consider a range of further reforms, including some to allow Private Enterprises access to a wider range of sources of finance.
So question. The PRC has been running the throttle since 2008 to keep the world economy going and to give some space to the US/EU to recover and provide its share of momentum to allow China to keep moving forward when the brakes were applied. When the time came though the Western recovery faltered and China found itself slowing too quickly.
Has China just been unlucky in timing or is the global relationship now far more symbiotic than people are prepared to admit and that China is indeed the main driver of the world economy and not any longer the USA?
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Interesting theory there Sampan. It has been well established for a number of years now that China is the main engine for world economic growth, and the symbiotic relationship between China and the US/EU is indeed extremely strong.
However, in this instance, I think it is just a co-incidence that the economies of the US and EU suffered terrible crashes just as China managed to ease the rate of it's own growth.
The problems that the US and EU faces are pretty much exclusively home grown, with too much personal and national debt and 'clever' bankers having a free-for-all with complex derivatives that not even they themselves truly understands.
The slowdown of Chinese growth would not have had much of an impact on US or European financial sectors, as Chinese growth merely slowed modestly, and did not stop, so few people playing the market would have anything from their investments.
Besides, with the western media the way it is as you have observed yourself, and especially with the US elections coming up, China-bashing and China-Blaming has pretty much become the favorite US national past time. Do you think that none of the US media outlets or politicians would be trying to pin the blame for the US financial collapse on China if there was a way to plausibly to do it?
If there was a 'smoking gun', you would not have 'experts' trying to blame the financial collapse on China saving too much money and giving Americans the opportunity to borrow way more than they could ever afford. I don't think even the most rabid China hater really buys that line of 'reasoning'. Might as well blame supermarkets having too much food on their shelves for obesity.
However, in this instance, I think it is just a co-incidence that the economies of the US and EU suffered terrible crashes just as China managed to ease the rate of it's own growth.
The problems that the US and EU faces are pretty much exclusively home grown, with too much personal and national debt and 'clever' bankers having a free-for-all with complex derivatives that not even they themselves truly understands.
The slowdown of Chinese growth would not have had much of an impact on US or European financial sectors, as Chinese growth merely slowed modestly, and did not stop, so few people playing the market would have anything from their investments.
Besides, with the western media the way it is as you have observed yourself, and especially with the US elections coming up, China-bashing and China-Blaming has pretty much become the favorite US national past time. Do you think that none of the US media outlets or politicians would be trying to pin the blame for the US financial collapse on China if there was a way to plausibly to do it?
If there was a 'smoking gun', you would not have 'experts' trying to blame the financial collapse on China saving too much money and giving Americans the opportunity to borrow way more than they could ever afford. I don't think even the most rabid China hater really buys that line of 'reasoning'. Might as well blame supermarkets having too much food on their shelves for obesity.
bladerunner
Banned Idiot
[
OT. The Sail/Conning tower looks rather rough?
OT. The Sail/Conning tower looks rather rough?
escobar
Brigadier
China swung back to mark a trade surplus in March from February's deficit of 31.48 billion U.S. dollars, posting a 670-million-U.S.-dollar trade surplus in the first quarter, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said Tuesday.
The country's foreign trade in March rose 7.1 percent year-on-year to reach 325.97 billion U.S. dollars, with a trade surplus of 5.35 billion U.S. dollars in the month.
Exports amounted to 165.66 billion U.S. dollars in March, up 8.9 percent year-on-year, while imports reached 160.31 billion dollars, the GAC data showed.
For the first quarter, China's imports and exports expanded 7.3 percent from a year ago to reach 859.37 billion U.S. dollars, with its foreign trade with major trading partners growing in single-digits, according to the GAC.
"Compared with foreign trade elsewhere, China's imports and exports were relatively good in the first quarter," said Zheng Yuesheng, head of the statistical department of the GAC.
However, Zheng said China's foreign trade had grown at pace much slower than a year earlier, underlying existing downward pressure for the country.
The 7.3-percent growth of imports and exports in the January-March period this year marked the slowest level since the fourth quarter of 2009.
The market widely expected China to record a quarterly trade deficit at around 5.4 billion U.S. dollars in the January-March period.
"The March growth in China's exports beat my anticipation, while import growth was lower than what I had anticipated," said Liu Ligang, director of the economic research department of ANZ Greater China.
He said the latest customs data suggested the external environment may have started to improve for China since March, as export growth accelerated to 8.9 percent in March from about 7 percent in the January-February period.
As China reported its first quarterly trade deficit in seven years during the January-March period of 2011, Liu said, the trade surplus in the first quarter of this year means the contribution of exports to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) would be positive.
"So, the GDP data for the first quarter might be higher than expected," Liu said.
Returning to a trade surplus underlined a string of economic indicators that the market is closely looking for clues about the health of the world's second-largest economy.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is set to release GDP data on Friday, and many institutions have projected that China's GDP growth will be around 8.4 percent in the first quarter.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, shot up to 3.6 percent in March from a 20-month low of 3.2 percent in February.
The narrower trade surplus signalled that the exchange rate of the Chinese currency, the Renminbi or the yuan, was moving closer to a balanced level but the fluctuation will be more volatile on capital flow, Liu said.
Despite the lingering debt crisis, the European Union remained China's largest trading partner in the first quarter, but China-EU bilateral trade growth slowed to 2.6 percent year-on-year to reach 126.87 billion U.S. dollars, a development customs officials said need to pay attention to.
Zheng said he was confident that China will be able to realize 10-percent growth in imports and exports this year.
In the first three months, China's trade with the United States -- its second-largest trade partner -- increased 9.3 percent year-on-year to 106.77 billion U.S. dollars, according to the customs data.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held its position as China's third-largest trade partner, with China-ASEAN bilateral trade amounting to 86.78 billion U.S. dollars, up 9.2 percent year-on-year.
Japan, which is still struggling to recover from last year's devastating tsunami and massive earthquake, posted a year-on-year decline of 1.6 percent in bilateral trade with China in the first quarter, or 79.44 billion U.S. dollars.
However, China's trade with Russia, which joined the World Trade Organization this year, showed rapid growth of 33 percent year-on-year, hitting 21.49 billion U.S. dollars.
Meanwhile, China's trade with Brazil, a major exporter of iron ore and other raw materials, gained 11.5 percent from the previous year to hit 18 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter.
According to customs data, China's iron ore imports rose 6 percent from a year ago to 190 million tonnes, with an average import price down 13.4 percent to 137.1 U.S. dollars per tonne.
Soybean import volume went up 21.6 percent to 13.33 million tonnes, with the average import price dipping 8.2 percent year-on-year to 525.7 U.S. dollars.
Moreover, China imported 294,000 vehicles in the first quarter, up 24.9 percent.
Machinery and home appliance products led China's exports in the period, with a year-on-year increase of 9.1 percent to reach 252.99 billion U.S. dollars.
In the period, China's exports of garments, textiles and footwear reached 29.5 billion U.S. dollars, 20.44 billion dollars and 9.08 billion dollars, up 3.9 percent, 1.4 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively.
, by Michael Pettis, China Financial Markets, 9 April, 2012:
and:
More at the link. This is, of course, an excerpt parsed from his newsletter and posted on his blog.
In a sense, even if China does and is able to effect the transition to a value-added/consumer-oriented economy, it will likely have to come full circle of sorts to where it faces many of the issues of the late 1980's and early 1990's once again, in order to do so. Though it will approach them from a rather changed direction this time.
Pettis is sometimes (even often) type-cast as a sort of economic pessimist. I fear he may in fact be somewhat over-optimistic in this case.
and:
More at the link. This is, of course, an excerpt parsed from his newsletter and posted on his blog.
In a sense, even if China does and is able to effect the transition to a value-added/consumer-oriented economy, it will likely have to come full circle of sorts to where it faces many of the issues of the late 1980's and early 1990's once again, in order to do so. Though it will approach them from a rather changed direction this time.
Pettis is sometimes (even often) type-cast as a sort of economic pessimist. I fear he may in fact be somewhat over-optimistic in this case.