tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58386472024-03-05T16:29:45.047+01:00China Economy WatchThe Third Industrial RevolutionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger153125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-16552399663430440002010-04-17T17:31:00.014+02:002010-04-18T12:01:14.826+02:00China's Recent Trade Deficit: Is What You Yuan What You're Gonna Get?China is self-evidently both a minefield and a potential graveyard for would-be global economists, the sort of place where reputations are made and lost in the twinkle of a dragon's eye, so I think had better tread rather carefully here. However, having duly noted that only fools rush in, here I go...<br /><br />China ran its first monthly trade deficit in six years in March, a development which encouraged the country's Commerce Ministry to up the volume a bit on the argument that the need to revalue China's currency was being greatly exaggerated. The debate surrounding renminbi revaluation has also given us one more reason - beyond the recent accusations of the US SEC - to cast a watchful eye over how things are done at Goldman Sachs: the outrageous suggestion from their Chief Economist Jim O’Neill (in <a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fdc113472-3cfd-11df-bbcf-00144feabdc0.html&h=7e1ca1f4650cf119337e2877d07a09b2">this Financial Times article</a>) that if things carry on as they are, China will soon overtake France as the principal destination for German exports (see in depth analysis below). <br /><br />The problem is, that with the argument having become so politicised, and with so many different interested parties at work, it is fast becoming hard to see wood from the trees, or even the sandals and tee shirts from the high speed trains.<br /><br /><b>A One-off Deficit?</b><br /><br />Looking through the data, it would appear that while China's March performance was undoubtedly a one-off, import growth has been outpacing export growth for some months now. And with imports of commodities surging, and with them commodity prices, it was not really that surprising to find that China swung into a trade deficit of $7.24 billion in March, from a surplus of $7.61 billion in February, according to figures issued by China's Customs agency. Overall imports were up 66% from a year earlier in the moth, with purchases of crude oil and copper at near-record levels in volume terms. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi71ILQpQQtAQ9e6r4UgfbJX01YIPwO7BW0KWhcV17VxADqS-U_aa7WpcD2DTuWvyAtxXb7KnG7cnm_jp5M3XUbrkNnQ5ug5tN5RXAgZhRa7sE426VHO4vCp04tI3rngE__9id2/s1600/China+Trade+Balance.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi71ILQpQQtAQ9e6r4UgfbJX01YIPwO7BW0KWhcV17VxADqS-U_aa7WpcD2DTuWvyAtxXb7KnG7cnm_jp5M3XUbrkNnQ5ug5tN5RXAgZhRa7sE426VHO4vCp04tI3rngE__9id2/s400/China+Trade+Balance.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461155905392209570" /></a><br /><br />In fact Chinese officials had been signalling for some weeks that March could produce a rather exceptional trade deficit, a development they highlighted to show how China's strong growth has been boosting its purchases from other countries. But beyond the March reading, China's trade surpluses have been shrinking as the government stimulus plan, and extensive bank lending, have boosted domestic demand, and indeed the cumulative trade surplus for the first quarter of 2010 fell 77% from a year earlier to hit $14.49 billion.<br /><br />On the other hand, according to the Chinese customs department, the March deficit mainly comes from trade with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, while large surpluses continued with the U.S. and the European Union.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinmbIivoWcRT6ubuFhetqqGjjIV6SOs6wR-5F1mgQImmWsDEq8gOuTYJEXzZkddw8GA-NPB1eAAwWW6JtfRME6415H5NTPLNjIRFRrZCZMtti-fpEjM6xanpnYMqI7CkLTxSCS/s1600/China+Exports+Monthly+12m.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinmbIivoWcRT6ubuFhetqqGjjIV6SOs6wR-5F1mgQImmWsDEq8gOuTYJEXzZkddw8GA-NPB1eAAwWW6JtfRME6415H5NTPLNjIRFRrZCZMtti-fpEjM6xanpnYMqI7CkLTxSCS/s400/China+Exports+Monthly+12m.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461156781485393138" /></a><br /><br />Evidently one month's data is unlikely to convince anybody, and especially when there is so much doubt surrounding the sustainability of China's domestic consumption growth, so the March data is surely unlikely to silence the deafening roar of international criticism of China's trade policies, and indeed <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-17/eu-steps-up-pressure-for-higher-yuan-on-concerns-about-recovery.html">European voices are now increasingly being added to US ones</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZnpCT2SxZr1WUx-ojaSl50t81CkkAlPMId6uBmbFvB9CmXAvJshvL0cOBCSoYskhed4S6Y4zJ-NpwTbRVS-kmyDjgpvITSD5SUzLxLmQYittI3KiZEtXZDy5-VG2NsUR_tdie/s1600/China+imports+3m.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZnpCT2SxZr1WUx-ojaSl50t81CkkAlPMId6uBmbFvB9CmXAvJshvL0cOBCSoYskhed4S6Y4zJ-NpwTbRVS-kmyDjgpvITSD5SUzLxLmQYittI3KiZEtXZDy5-VG2NsUR_tdie/s400/China+imports+3m.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461156907492436402" /></a><br /><br />Evidently March's exports may well have lower than normal as factories took their time reopening after the February Lunar New Year holiday. Exports were up in March, but the rate of increase fell to 24.3% from a year earlier, as compared to the 31.4% annual growth registered in the first two months of the year, although it is hard to tell how much of this weakening was a Lunar New Year effect, and how much the development reflected domestic demand weaknesses among China's main customers. <br /><br />Looking at the trade balance chart (above), it is clear there is normally a dip in February/March, and this year we may have simply seen an exaggerated version of what is really an annual phenomenon. Certainly, till we see a bit more data it will be hard to separate a stimulus-based surge from the trend.<br /><br /><b>China: The New Import Powerhouse?</b><br /><br />Separating surge from trend however does seem to have turned into <a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fdc113472-3cfd-11df-bbcf-00144feabdc0.html&h=7e1ca1f4650cf119337e2877d07a09b2">something of a problem for Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jim O’Neill</a>, since he argued recently (in a widely quoted piece) that:<br /><br /><blockquote>"As far as China’s involvement with the rest of the world goes, the real story since the worst of the crisis is not China’s recovering exports but China’s strong imports. The forthcoming trade release – interestingly due a few days before the Treasury report – is likely to demonstrate enormous import growth again, absolutely and relative to exports. This is seen not just in Chinese data, but in those from many other important trading nations. Indeed, quite remarkably, Germany’s trade with China is showing such strong growth that by spring next year, on current trends, it might exceed that with France".</blockquote><br /><br />This is quote a claim, and evidently impressed both <a href="http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/04/china-facts-of-the-day.html">Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution</a>, and <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/04/chinas_currency">the Economist Free Exchange Blog</a>, since they quote precisely this extract in support of their argument that the threat to global economic stability represented by China's trade surplus is being rather overdone (which may or may not be the case), and they obviously take his China overtaking France claim as good.<br /><br />As a student of German export performance, I however did not. The most important point to bear in mind is that Germany basically missed out on the first wave of China import growth (with the market being largely dominated by Japan). To give an indication, in 2008 German exports to the Czech Republic and to China were of about the same order of magnitude, a data point which is reasonably suggestive of the extent to which German export growth 2005 - 2008 was dependent on growth in Central and Eastern Europe (both inside and outside the EU). Growth in this market has, of course, now come screeching to a halt, hence the renewed German interest in China, and in general terms, non-European export destinations - which is one reason why, at the end of the day, the sharp drop in the value of the Euro has been as much to Germany's advantage as it has to that of any other Eurogroup country.<br /><br />So the key point to note is that German exports to China started from a comparatively low base, and hence even a sudden sharp surge does not make that much of a dent in the rankings list. <br /><br />So just what are the facts? Well, <a href="http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/EN/press/pr/2010/03/PE10__111__51,templateId=renderPrint.psml">according to the most recent release from the German Federal Statistical Office</a>, German exports to China were worth 36.5 billion euros in 2009. Which means that, compared to 2008, exports to China were up around 7%, while total German exports declined 18.4% during the same period. So evidently the importance of German exports to China has been growing, but nothing like as much as O'Neil claims. Really!<br /><br />Given that German exports to China have been running at something like 40% of exports to France, I thought I would take a look at the actual data. There are two available sources for such information: the German Statistics Office, and the OECD. Here is will use the OECD data. As can be seen in the first chart, there can be no doubt that German exports to China have been growing steadily and impressively over the last 3 years, but it is equally evident that they are still well, well short of those to France, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be thought feasible that China will overtake France as an export destination in the near future.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheUfVgrkXyxZAMqLl6gppwCeZx9SYiiQrFzQaUfDdMXUBuyIA_v8yq1F9JQeYKi_4abH5B_ydUhjIVMI2U0Oyy3KwMgk-BzCqhRxrZL0KzaVpR48XkuC4RFh7Sek6lJAAdWYbT/s1600/German+Exports+To+France+%26+China+Two.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheUfVgrkXyxZAMqLl6gppwCeZx9SYiiQrFzQaUfDdMXUBuyIA_v8yq1F9JQeYKi_4abH5B_ydUhjIVMI2U0Oyy3KwMgk-BzCqhRxrZL0KzaVpR48XkuC4RFh7Sek6lJAAdWYbT/s400/German+Exports+To+France+%26+China+Two.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461157163340256866" /></a><br /><br />The second chart puts things in a longer term perspective, and what stands out is the fact that while German exports to China have followed a steady path, while those to France slumped significantly in 2008 as a result of the global economic crisis. So what this means is that exports to France are unusually low (and thus it is impossible to talk of trend), while those to China are unusually (and possibly unsustainably) high, given the impact of the stimulus programme. So to extract his "trend" (which is in no case valid) Goldman Sachs' Chief Economist seems to be assuming a worst case scenario for France and a best case one for China: hardly a balanced methodology. Or does Jim O'Neil really want to tell us he is discounting the possibility of a sustained recovery in demand in the OECD economies? Even without the benefits of our own "proprietary indicators", simple testimony of the naked eye should tell us he is wrong here. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfJAI_B1899eWaAJWFyx216l8EgCjaAMVhtDNF8a6sphADfIrE7TEakxB5xuknftiEMPJ_imrJ9hjidVPaDhD-v0jn0-ITT3WNRkZTKFnln59oKywUAlUbfP_40twLEgHrVyDL/s1600/German+Exports+to+France+%26+China+one.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfJAI_B1899eWaAJWFyx216l8EgCjaAMVhtDNF8a6sphADfIrE7TEakxB5xuknftiEMPJ_imrJ9hjidVPaDhD-v0jn0-ITT3WNRkZTKFnln59oKywUAlUbfP_40twLEgHrVyDL/s400/German+Exports+to+France+%26+China+one.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461157082973857394" /></a><br /><br />Which is a pity, since stripped of its exaggerated claims, his substantive argument may not have been entirely false. Also we should not forget that Germany imports Chinese products (55.4 billion euros worth in 2009, as compared to the 36.5 billion euros worth of exports), and ran a trade deficit of 18.9 billion euros last year (or roughly 50% of the total value of exports) while Germany ran a <b>trade surplus</b> of some 27 billion euros with France.<br /><br /><b>Whatever You Yuan</b><br /><br />In fact the impact of a revaluation in the renminbi may be much more complex than many seem to be assuming, and one good example of the kind of perverse consequences we may see is offered us in a really interesting research note from Alexandre Schwartsman (Bank Santander, Brazil) entitled "What Do You Yuan?"<br /><blockquote>There is an ongoing debate about how China should handle its currency in face of both political pressures and signs that inflation may be accelerating. Such challenges raise the possibility of the resumption of yuan appreciation trend that prevailed between 2005 and 2008. Of course, we claim no special knowledge on whether or when Chinese authorities will decide on the issue, but in our opinion, eventual decisions on that could have considerable implications for Brazil.<br /><br />We do not think, however, that the direct effects through the trade channel are the most important part of the story. While it is true that China has become the largest market for Brazilian exports, we rush to note that it still represents only 13% of Brazilian exports (which, in turn, are equivalent to about 12% of Brazilian GDP). Moreover, even its current status as the main customer for Brazilian exports is threatened at the margin by the recovery of exports to the U.S. and Argentina.<br /><br />Indeed, we believe the main channel of transmission to Brazil is likely to be through commodity prices. We argue, with the help of a small theoretical model, that a stronger yuan should imply higher commodity prices in dollar terms. In fact, it is possible to show that, if dollar commodity prices do not change in response to a stronger yuan, there would be excess demand for commodities, which would eventually drive their dollar prices up.</blockquote>The economic intuition which lies behind Schwartsman's argument is really very simple, but the logic is also quite compelling. Basically, it depends on two points:<br /><br />i) China domestic demand growth is more energy intensive than the OECD average<br />ii) China is large enough to be (to some extent) a price setter, and not simply a price taker.<br /><br />Put another way, the income elasticity of energy consumption in China is greater than it is in the developed part of the Rest Of the World. This also applies to the energy component of agricultural produce, with important positive consequences for countries like Brazil. That is to say, China consumes energy directly, and indirectly, via the energy input which goes into the food production (fertilizers for soya beans in Brazil, for example) that it outsources. So there is a direct, and an indirect impact.<br /><br />The net consequence of this, is that the Santander analyst expects the dollar price of commodities like oil to rise sharply on the back of any significant yuan revaluation, making China richer (in relative terms), and logically the developed world poorer. Again, and put in other words, the terms of trade are about to change against Europe, the US and Japan, and possibly bigtime, as the Yuan and other emerging market currencies rise. On the other hand, Brazil and other resource rich emerging economies stand to benefit, equally bigtime, in what will be one of the largest rebalancings of the global economy seen in many a long year. The main losers, it seems to me, will be the long-term structurally unemployed we now have in the developed world, and those living in poor countries with few natural resources.<br /><br /><b>Where Do We Go From Here?</b><br /><br />Where we go from here on the China trade front is now very hard to tell. Evidently, on the one hand, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-16/yuan-forwards-erase-losses-after-hu-reiterates-currency-policy.html">evidence continues to mount that more flexibility in yuan parities in in the pipeline</a>. But will the much sought after revaluation really do all that heavy lifting that is being expected of it? After all, Germany's currency was effectively revalued upwards on joining the Euro, and the country then spent several years putting downward pressure on cost elements, with the result that the German trade surplus was even larger (as a % of GDP) in 2008 than it was in 1998. And China's almost unique demographic trajectory also suggests that promoting internal consumption as a growth driver may be up against significant constraints. Life Cycle Theory Nobel Franco Modigliani, in what was his final published paper (2005) - <a href="http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jeclit/v42y2004i1p145-170.html">The Chinese Saving Puzzle and the Life-Cycle Hypothesis</a> - drew attention to this oft neglected dimension which evidently forms part of the problem. At the very least, some simple economic theory suggests that all may not be as simple here as it seems at first sight.<br /><br />On the other hand Chinese officials, far from showing signs of alarm at March's deficit, generally seem to have welcomed the development. According to Zheng Yuesheng, director of Statistics at China's customs office, "This kind of deficit is healthy as it happened while both imports and exports experienced rapid growth," and in any event, as he also points out, China will undoubtedly continue to run (smaller) trade surpluses over the long term. This, at least, has the benefit of being a realistic, and pragmatic assessment of the situation. All we need now is for a bit of this realism and pragmatism to work its way steadily westwards.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-17752076027602427022009-09-11T15:45:00.011+02:002009-09-11T18:50:10.087+02:00China's Economy Continues To Grow, But All The Old Doubts RemainChina’s economy showed new signs this week that it continues to maintain momentum with the announcement that investment, industrial output and credit all expanded more rapidly in August.<br /><br />Output and investment increases both came in ahead of analysts’ forecasts and came on the back of a string of July data that had suggested the recovery might be weakening. The one notable exception was, however, on the trade front, where the decline in exports and imports compared to August 2008 was sharper than expected.<br /><br /><br />China’s economy has been rebouning from the weakest growth in more than a decade on the basis of a $585 billion stimulus package which has produced a sharp surge in new loans surging and driven up manufacturing output and property sales.<br /><br />The robust August numbers will intensify the debate about when China should begin withdrawing some of the massive fiscal and monetary stimulus it has injected into the economy since the end of last year.<br /><br />However, the dramatic increases in new lending and money supply this year, combined with rising property and equity markets, have raised fears that government policies are creating a series of bubbles in the economy.<br /><br />Bank loans rose by Rmb410.4bn in August after increasing by Rmb355.9bn the month before, and by Rmb271.5bn in the same month last year, while the M2 measure of money supply increased by 28.5 per cent.<br /><br />Quite where and how all this will end in the longer run is frankly anyone's guess, since I personally can't recall an economy with these characteristics in this type of situation before. That is, we have an economy which normally runs a large trade surplus, and has massive foreign exchange reserves falling back on a massive dose of government spending, pressing what Krugman would call Keynes button "G" three or four times consecutively in order to finance an orgy of lending and unaffordable housing construction, which may all be comfortably written off in the future if the global economy eventually recovers and China can blitz the planet with products from all that currently "excess to requirement" capacity that is steadily being built up. All we can say is, hold on to your seats, and keep your eyes peeled to the screen, since whichever way this goes it is surely going to be interesting.<br /><br /><br /><strong>China's GDP Growth Rate Continues To Recover</strong><br /><br />China looks as if it could hit its full-year growth target of 8% after a surprisingly strong second quarter which was distinguisjed by a strong surge in investment driven by powerful fiscal and monetary stimulus. Annual gross domestic product growth accelerated to 7.9% from 6.1% in the first quarter, making China the planet's best-performing major economy. The acceleration in China's economic growth follows the application of a 4 trillion yuan stimulus package, record lending and a rebound in property investment and sales that have to some extent offset the slump in the nation’s exports. Consensus economists now anticipate China’s GDP growth will accelerate to a 9.5 percent pace next year following an 8.3 percent rate in 2009,<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_aPwErsKhpsmVV12PUduHS-hII4X1jMslZnojr9n0kURfknnlsFUTCSzLENLrBM97k3vlw4HDBNJ6ywqmzBTFoqcSqBZDKpHgpgJfR8qI36TQREapzMdbSmreU5LUx7FkynCt/s1600-h/china+GDP.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 237px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380208672331577538" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_aPwErsKhpsmVV12PUduHS-hII4X1jMslZnojr9n0kURfknnlsFUTCSzLENLrBM97k3vlw4HDBNJ6ywqmzBTFoqcSqBZDKpHgpgJfR8qI36TQREapzMdbSmreU5LUx7FkynCt/s400/china+GDP.png" /></a><br /><br />The most recent data suggest that China is likely to show a further growth increase in Q3 from the acceleration in Q2. While exports continue to deteriorate on an year on year basis, they are now managing to squeeze out some sort of increase on a month by month basis.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwCyUbQ6e_zjSHAAfFtrhRkiZnmCbW72noI9MsQgnsj26Cotu-YADpNgZJROsQXTU9tplHzg4I1CxaJrpqLvE9G19KsMEEQsLSEaRvI-8Jn150Dt5h7gHlNC4n-qgLsnarKo3u/s1600-h/GDP+IN+USD.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 238px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380208604765964674" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwCyUbQ6e_zjSHAAfFtrhRkiZnmCbW72noI9MsQgnsj26Cotu-YADpNgZJROsQXTU9tplHzg4I1CxaJrpqLvE9G19KsMEEQsLSEaRvI-8Jn150Dt5h7gHlNC4n-qgLsnarKo3u/s400/GDP+IN+USD.png" /></a><br /><br />China's growth really has been quite robust for more than 20 years now, and even though it dropped back somewhat after the 1998 crisis, it never really fell below 8% or so annually averaged over time. Which has to lead you to ask yourself just how much of that export driven surge post 2002, which was fuelled by massive credit in a number of developed economies, really is sustainable? Trend growth at this point is likely to be nearer to 7% a year than it is to 10%.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP-OF7UNjkn-gcHl1bBVKO2lqkC3VzLzpEagKxmEvBUB8b8VPdRhRuUKZDxd6p2XnOIKIH-16jIp3xMvRpv0XuXEQ_7JjtNzw8ycSus0vkihnT4631Q99Y7VDTjDBD4omXaW_A/s1600-h/GDP+5+Year+average.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380208546720172914" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP-OF7UNjkn-gcHl1bBVKO2lqkC3VzLzpEagKxmEvBUB8b8VPdRhRuUKZDxd6p2XnOIKIH-16jIp3xMvRpv0XuXEQ_7JjtNzw8ycSus0vkihnT4631Q99Y7VDTjDBD4omXaW_A/s400/GDP+5+Year+average.png" /></a><br /><br />China is now well on the way to becoming the world's number two economy, behind the United States. In this sense, if China does manage to head straight forward full speed ahead this will mean the current recession will have been decisive as Japan and Germany slump inexorably backwards. These latter two countries just don't have the internal leverage to run the kind of stimulus programme China is applying due to the weight of their ever more elderly population.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Vrcj3qd0qqzXg0iFplh451Wp7-R_jTgb_rvoINA6cZ9Sm-lr-QItkE9laxjEv-4O5A5nivjtAJX6ar6znPWs3jEig8PSmCQPTmeM-RyN8hjv1bDx3elM6eyLyvqf63sqpBjw/s1600-h/GDP+china+Japan+germany.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 238px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380205918618135650" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Vrcj3qd0qqzXg0iFplh451Wp7-R_jTgb_rvoINA6cZ9Sm-lr-QItkE9laxjEv-4O5A5nivjtAJX6ar6znPWs3jEig8PSmCQPTmeM-RyN8hjv1bDx3elM6eyLyvqf63sqpBjw/s400/GDP+china+Japan+germany.png" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Industrial Output Bounces Strongly Back</strong><br /><br />China’s industrial production rose more than forecast in August, lending unexpectedly climbed and retail sales advanced, indicating growth in the world’s third- biggest economy is likely to accelerate. Industrial output expanded by a 12-month high of 12.3 per cent in August from a year earlier after a 10.8 per cent increase in July, although production in August last year was held back by Olympics-related factory closures.<br /><br />GM sales in China last month jumped to 152,365 vehicles,up by more than 100 percent over last year, as tax cuts and stimulus measures spurred demand. The company are forecasting 2009 sales to rise by more than 40 percent from 1.09 million last year. Total output for all carmakersmakers may increase by around 28 percent this year to as many as 12 million, according to China’s leading planning agency earlier this month. Car production accounts for about 2 percent of GDP.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_qswgQg3eArHlxRiP4kdVscPF4CQiI0HOco5ysWk3DJMTgrp-aqJg0qkGc0gzFtB6bJUNkjcHuoMq2vYxD0ur8tANZ2CWkeHe9C8lAUSq058z90-H_0Aqdw4Y_t2WoZb1EUZf/s1600-h/IP.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380248375897264962" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_qswgQg3eArHlxRiP4kdVscPF4CQiI0HOco5ysWk3DJMTgrp-aqJg0qkGc0gzFtB6bJUNkjcHuoMq2vYxD0ur8tANZ2CWkeHe9C8lAUSq058z90-H_0Aqdw4Y_t2WoZb1EUZf/s400/IP.png" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>And Investment Surges</strong><br /><br />Fixed asset investment inched up to a rate of increase of 33 per cent over August last year, after expanding by 32.9 per cent in July. Investment in real-estate development grew 14.7 percent in the first eight months after an 11.6 percent gain in the first seven months, the statistics bureau said yesterday. House prices in 70 cities rose 2 percent in August, the fastest gain in 11 months.<br /><br />Overcapacity is now a serious problem in China. According to a recent report authored by the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee (FEAC) of the National People's Congress (NPC), nineteen industries are currently plagued by problems of overcapacity, although the report failed to provide a detailed list.<br /><br />The number of industries thought to be effected has now almost doubled since the State Council first began addressing the problem of overcapacity back in 2005.<br /><br />The FEAC report noted that when the new round of stimulus package investment was unleashed last October, local governments expanded production capacity with no regard for the consequences and some projects were constructed without preliminary assessment or approval from higher authorities.<br /><br /><br />Liu Manping, a researcher with China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), recently admitted that local governments favoured the construction of large industrial projects since they tended to be the impulsive response of local governments to the sudden access to easy money. Liu also explained that local authorities often split large projects into smaller schemes in order to avoid requiring approval from the NDRC.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvNrrU_MTMJHqeqnYPurW0PGtCz7DNSGdFY4JKVXwHqtazLyXC15R00HN2JYf7zYJaWp_1JomHn06wylDFo_9behFsySVH1GR7cTJc4Ox5qboRw8kAARxn5cbyLJIWjmWfcqRt/s1600-h/china+fixed+assets.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 238px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380249780373690546" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvNrrU_MTMJHqeqnYPurW0PGtCz7DNSGdFY4JKVXwHqtazLyXC15R00HN2JYf7zYJaWp_1JomHn06wylDFo_9behFsySVH1GR7cTJc4Ox5qboRw8kAARxn5cbyLJIWjmWfcqRt/s400/china+fixed+assets.png" /></a><br /><br />The real problem is that the Chinese authorities largely rely - in their attempts to eliminate outdated production facilities - on administrative measures (direct orders to close) rather than market oriented ones.<br /><br />All too often these measures either have a limited impact, or they are intentionally circumvented.<br /><br />Chen Ling, deputy-director of China's Metallurgical Economic Research & Development Center, spoke recently about the early days of the campaign against overcapacity in the steel industry,when the government ordered producers with blast furnaces smaller than 200 cubic meters to close their doors.<br /><br />Upon hearing such news, many small steel mills simply upgraded their blast furnace so that they now use 300 cubic meters, or even larger, blast furnaces. Later, the government again raised the cut-off to 300 cubic meters, but by continuing to increase the size of the blast furnace limit, the government simply pressured steel makers to once again enlarge their blast furnaces and thus production capacity continued to expand.<br /><br />China is now well on the way to becoming the world's number two economy, behind the Unietd States. In this sense, if China does manage to head straight forward full speed ahead this will mean the current recession will have been decisive as Japan and Germany slump inexorably backwards. These latter two countries just don't have the internal leverage to run the kind of stimulus programme China is applying due to the weight of their ever more elderly population.<br /><br /><br /><strong>And Retail Sales Maintain Their Strong Momentum</strong><br /><br />Retail sales grew 15.4 per cent from a year earlier as domestic demand remained robust. Sales of motor vehicles were strong, up 34.8 per cent, as a result of government subsidies and tax cuts.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqAL0iSdJSK_XEIg75DITDLdjHv6afjYZ8K3u-zjYx31rWBBBd0snlPytBbOIpWWSj8BgI6NHDEy4OKTn_WLJpj3iOUM8mLhfYVG-XW3aDoNXgIkuDhr5o8tdf6laUrs4b26yo/s1600-h/retail+sales.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 253px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380251552997681554" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqAL0iSdJSK_XEIg75DITDLdjHv6afjYZ8K3u-zjYx31rWBBBd0snlPytBbOIpWWSj8BgI6NHDEy4OKTn_WLJpj3iOUM8mLhfYVG-XW3aDoNXgIkuDhr5o8tdf6laUrs4b26yo/s400/retail+sales.png" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>But Exports Wobble In August</strong><br /><br />Exports fell for a 10th straight month. The decline in imports was the biggest in three months and more than economists estimated. Exports rose 3.4 percent in August from July on a seasonally adjusted basis, the customs bureau said. Imports rose 1 percent. So month-on-month gains were smaller than in July, when exports rose 5.2 percent and imports climbed 3.5 percent<br /><br />However. in spite of forecasts that exports might start to rebound on the back of restocking in developed economies, the rate of decline in exports increased to 23.4 per cent in August compared to the same month last year, after dropping 23 per cent in July. Imports fell by 17 per cent after declining 14.9 per cent in July. This led the monthly trade surplus to increase again to $15.7bn after recording a $10.6bn surplus in July.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSc047fFjSa0yKGBF1pWDGuQj26SjNJqDEr-eCEJjAKIUzFpUxuwsqFOhNzK9m1lzxVwGvZfXeac7jIdZGfbwX03CE44OJ4EvD7hWdY-zf-9t2jTXe7pRFbzVR1-cwz3-Muj1D/s1600-h/china+exports.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380250452014862898" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSc047fFjSa0yKGBF1pWDGuQj26SjNJqDEr-eCEJjAKIUzFpUxuwsqFOhNzK9m1lzxVwGvZfXeac7jIdZGfbwX03CE44OJ4EvD7hWdY-zf-9t2jTXe7pRFbzVR1-cwz3-Muj1D/s400/china+exports.png" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Deflationary Pressures Nonetheless Eased Slightly</strong><br /><br />Deflationary pressures eased, with consumer price inflation falling 1.2 per cent in August. The rate of decline was nonetheless down from the 1.6 per cent seen in July. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcDfahgiRuT1N7wHBu6Kfaj_79LitqV1Cp5D1u8C_QFgdZsfXdcI5ttR_JAUjwcAJgjXBvX4g21VL_eREXK_xR3v8sSmqfTPkhKbWyFfbwCzuflB5MHwCl6AWK0ideVGr8Bt3O/s1600-h/CPI.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcDfahgiRuT1N7wHBu6Kfaj_79LitqV1Cp5D1u8C_QFgdZsfXdcI5ttR_JAUjwcAJgjXBvX4g21VL_eREXK_xR3v8sSmqfTPkhKbWyFfbwCzuflB5MHwCl6AWK0ideVGr8Bt3O/s400/CPI.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380252439664928482" /></a><br /><br />The producer price index was down 7.9 per cent from the same period in 2008.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-BKY2a5gxPM-MM7EIav_N3StqcM3r4dH1Cg5BUGU8xmzR0c5u5BrfTE3QDeF8o91fxAwLtXq8mM1m3aZtavu3_k9CQFvttYKjcTia9TcXnDACGx1F2BLELTZN1m02yJ_Ud0B-/s1600-h/PPI.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-BKY2a5gxPM-MM7EIav_N3StqcM3r4dH1Cg5BUGU8xmzR0c5u5BrfTE3QDeF8o91fxAwLtXq8mM1m3aZtavu3_k9CQFvttYKjcTia9TcXnDACGx1F2BLELTZN1m02yJ_Ud0B-/s400/PPI.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380252593892140690" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-49373968806050540322009-06-20T11:49:00.000+02:002009-06-20T12:26:44.792+02:00Facebook LinksQuietly clicking my way through Bloomberg last Sunday afternoon, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aC4zbsgMD6x8">I came across this</a>:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Facebook Members Register Names at 550 a Second</strong><br /><br />Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking site, said members registered new user names at a rate of more than 550 a second after the company offered people the chance to claim a personalized Web address.<br /><br />Facebook started accepted registrations at midnight New York time on a first-come, first-served basis. Within the first seven minutes, 345,000 people had claimed user names, said Larry Yu, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook. Within 15 minutes, 500,000 users had grabbed a name. </blockquote><br /><br />Mein Gott, I thought to myself, if 550 people a second are doing something, they can't all be wrong. So I immediately signed up. Actually, this isn't my first experience with social networking since I did try Orkut out some years back, but somehow I didn't quite get the point. Either I was missing something, or Orkut was. Now I think I've finally got it. Perhaps the technology has improved, or perhaps I have. As I said in one of my first postings:<br /><br /><blockquote>Ok. This is just what I've always wanted really. A quick'n dirty personal blog. Here we go. Boy am I going to enjoy this.</blockquote>Daniel Dresner once broke bloggers down into two groups, the "thinkers" and the "linkers". I probably would be immodest enough to suggest that most of my material falls into the first category (my postings are lo-o-o-ng, horribly long), but since I don't really fit any mould, and I am hard to typecast, I also have that hidden "linker" part, struggling within and desperate to come out. Which is why Facebook is just great.<br /><br />In addition, on blogs like this I can probably only manage to post something worthwhile perhaps once or twice a month, and there is news everyday.<br /><br />So, if you want some of that up to the minute "breaking" stuff, and are willing to submit yourself to a good dose of link spam, why not come on in and subscribe to my new state-of-the-art blog? You can either send me a friend request via FB, or mail me direct (you can find the mail on my Roubini Global page). Let's all go and take a long hard look at the future, you never know, it might just work.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-92207099882073368742009-06-11T12:21:00.003+02:002009-06-11T12:50:22.368+02:00China's Imports and Global Recovery - Brad Setser Need Be Curious No LongerEarlier this week <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2009/06/08/no-green-shoots-in-korea%E2%80%99s-may-trade-data/">Brad Setser was opining on his blog</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>“Like everyone else, I am curious to see what China’s May trade data tells us. If China truly is going to lead the global recovery, China needs to import more – and not just import more commodities for its (growing) strategic stockpiles.”</blockquote><br />Well Brad need restrain his curiosity no longer, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=al8v4wR00eSo">since just this very morning we have learnt that:</a> <br /><blockquote>China’s exports fell by a record in May as the global recession cut demand for goods produced by the world’s third-largest economy. Overseas sales dropped 26.4 percent in May from a year earlier. That compares with the median estimate for a decline of 23 percent in a Bloomberg News survey of 15 economists, and a 22.6 percent contraction in April.</blockquote><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT95QAg4dXcUGLStDn2yA-LKmYF5pfPGGKU1GB1YMFFVVfC7b_0MXXbNYv_PxRU2bw-Viqe4ut1j8RbFdWzImPZ0afjfhBXOZZdajTJMMGKcevd79YOTsn9n2bNc_W7HQVRi2Lrg/s1600-h/china+exports.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 238px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345951746611085074" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT95QAg4dXcUGLStDn2yA-LKmYF5pfPGGKU1GB1YMFFVVfC7b_0MXXbNYv_PxRU2bw-Viqe4ut1j8RbFdWzImPZ0afjfhBXOZZdajTJMMGKcevd79YOTsn9n2bNc_W7HQVRi2Lrg/s400/china+exports.png" /></a><br /><br /><br />The decline was the biggest since Bloomberg data began in 1995. And more to the point as far as Brad is concerned China’s imports dropped 25.2 percent last month, compared with a 23 percent fall in April. Hence China just one more time ran an <strong>increased</strong> trade surplus (up to $13.4bn in May from $13.1bn in April), and it is no clearer to me than it is to Brad how a country running a trade surplus can be leading a surge in global demand. Indeed this months data, far from prodiving evidence of an accelerating "recovery" continues to point towards ongoing weakness in global demand, just like the evidence we are receiving <a href="http://germaneconomy.blogspot.com/2009/06/green-shoots-in-germany-and-estonia.html">from Germany</a>, and <a href="http://japanjapan.blogspot.com/2009/06/no-green-shoots-here-german-and.html">from Japan</a>.<br /><br />Of course, these are year on year numbers. Month on month, exports seem to have stabilised since the start of the year, while imports are undoubtedly up. As <a href="http://danskeanalyse.danskebank.dk/abo/FlashCommentChina110609/$file/FlashComment_China_110609.pdf">Danske Bank put it in a research note today</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The development in China’s exports was weaker than expected. According to our own seasonally adjusted data, exports edged up slightly and the overall picture remains that China’s exports have stabilised in recent months. However, the rebound in China’s exports since early this year has been weaker than in most other Asian countries, suggesting that the Chinese recovery story has been a major driver in Asian countries’ export recovery in recent months.<br /><br />This is confirmed by the continued strong growth in China’s imports. According to our own seasonally adjusted figures, China’s imports soared ahead 5.8% m/m in May following an 4.9% m/m impressive jump in imports in the previous month. China’s imports of commodities such as iron ore, coal and crude oil have been extraordinarily strong, increasing speculation that China is currently building strategic inventories of the most important commodities (see chart on next page). For that reason, Latin America (not least Brazil) and the ASEAN countries have benefited recently from China’s strong import volumes.</blockquote><br /><br />What matters is not so much the fact that imports are rising, but what exactly the imports are. There is substantial evidence accumulating that - as Brad suggests - China is simply stockpiling commodities as a hedge against future inflation. Some of the best evidence for this <a href="http://macro-man.blogspot.com/2009/06/china-syndrome.html">came here, yesterday</a>. If this picture is correct, then the situation is unsustainable, as is the run up in commodity prices and stocks which have accompanied it. I note <a href="http://www.forexblog.org/2009/06/bubble-in-emerging-markets-fx.html">Forex Blog draws similar conclusions this morning</a>:<br /><blockquote>I would argue that the sustainability of this rally (both in stocks and in currencies) hinges on a return to GDP growth in emerging markets. [The IMF forecasts 1.6% growth in 2009 and 4% in 2010]. But given the gap between share prices and earnings, I’m frankly not convinced that investors actually care about whether the rally is supported by actual data. Instead, investors have complacently been swept up by the same herd mentality that produced the bubble of 2008, and could potentially lead to a rapid and painful collapse in what looks to be the bubble of 2009.</blockquote><br /><br /><strong>Investment Bonanza?</strong><br /><br />On the other hand there was a 38.7 percent year on year rise in fixed asset investment in May. This was an even larger increase than the one registered in April, when FAI rose 33.9 per cent. For the first five months of this year, investments increased 32.9 per cent from the same period in 2008, compared with 30.5 per cent in the first four months of the year and against an estimate of 31 per cent. According to Alaistair Chan, at Moody’s Economy.com.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Fixed asset investment in China continues to increase on the back of state-directed projects ... This will help keep the economy growing but there are increasing concerns about the amount of lending that has been required to fund the projects"</blockquote><br /><br />Quite. And as a Chinese economist friend wrote me to say: "just how much of the current property demand is speculative? I also have my doubts whether even official inventory levels accurately reflect all the inventory out there, especially when I read anecdotes like this ... "<br /><br /><blockquote>As a Beijing homeowner myself, I’ve experienced this puzzling phenomenon firsthand. We have been told that the value of the condo we bought last year has gone up 30% based on sales of new nearby developments, but it’s impossible to confirm since there is no secondary market. Originally we tried to rent the place, but we couldn’t find takers at any price that could remotely cover the mortgage, despite a prime location. When we decided to move in instead, we discovered that while the building was sold out long ago, hardly anyone actually lives there. Same with another 800-unit project down the street: every unit went for top dollar well before completion, but now the lights are off and nobody’s home.</blockquote><br /><br />In fact the volume of empty apartments across the country hit 91million sq metres at the end of last year, up 32.3 per cent from a year earlier, according to official figures. But those numbers included neither the huge volumes of completed real estate projects whose owners are waiting for market conditions to improve before they put them on the market, nor the estimated 587 million sq m of apartments sold in the past five years but left empty by their owners.<br /><br />And that part of fixed investment which is ending up, not in flats for inventory, but in productive capacity. Well, as MacroMan says this morning:<br /><blockquote>But as capex growth keeps humming along..(we could ask)..does the world really need more manufacturing capacity at this juncture? .....(it all)...of course, begs the question of who the Chinese plan on selling to. It's all well and good continuing to build factories and export capacity, but the real world isn't like Field of Dreams; just because you build it doesn't mean that customers will come. Yesterday's US trade figures were telling in that regard. Imports declined again in April; while an inveterate "second derivative" believer may find reasons for optimism in the slight lessening of the pace of import decline in yesterday's data, Macro Man is rather more sceptical. And the fact that US exports declined as well suggests that domestic demand in the rest of the world remains flaccid at best.</blockquote><br /><br />So, and finishing up where I started, with the trade balance, as Brad said: "China needs to import more – and not just import more commodities for its (growing) strategic stockpiles". However, to quote again my Chinese economist friend: <a href="http://macro-man.blogspot.com/2009/06/china-syndrome.html">Macroman's data on China's imports of commodities is surreal too</a>. To which Claus Vistesen responded: "Yep, this was what I thought, and we should expect Brad Setser to be all over this". We certainly should, we certainly should. On you go Brad.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-23421310218138217922009-06-10T08:44:00.006+02:002009-06-12T14:53:04.756+02:00China's Prices Continue To Decline As Industry Recovers (Updated)Consumer prices fell again in China in May, although less sharply than they did in April. This lead some to hope that deflationary pressures are begining to ease, but I think it is far too early to start drawing this kind of conclusion. Indeed, <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2009/06/08/no-green-shoots-in-korea%E2%80%99s-may-trade-data/">like Brad Setser</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>"I am curious to see what China’s May trade data tells us. If China truly is going to lead the global recovery, China needs to import more – and not just import more commodities for its (growing) strategic stockpiles.” </blockquote>The consumer price index fell 1.4 per cent from a year earlier, compared with a 1.5 per cent decline in April, marking the fourth straight month of falling prices. On a month-on-month basis, the National Bureau of Statistics said the CPI dropped 0.3 per cent from April’s level.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy4UZw3AkUGnY-sX_cRLbvczXIqgCclJKNFgI6PTmB09pdHJo01JR8wJ_PLm81OkQAfOagcHowBhfcuCW9E3pSI6W5rBca8ZjJ6IK3dyTeyXdJ8VIEYoyg3Xp4aF2AYy2RBHbU/s1600-h/china+one.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 238px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345587811619720354" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy4UZw3AkUGnY-sX_cRLbvczXIqgCclJKNFgI6PTmB09pdHJo01JR8wJ_PLm81OkQAfOagcHowBhfcuCW9E3pSI6W5rBca8ZjJ6IK3dyTeyXdJ8VIEYoyg3Xp4aF2AYy2RBHbU/s400/china+one.png" /></a><br /><br />The decline in food prices eased significantly, from 1.3 per cent in April to 0.6 per cent in May. Prices of non-food items, however, fell 1.7 per cent last month, more than April’s 1.5 per cent. However, the producer price index, which measures prices paid at the factory gate, fell 7.2 per cent in May. This was sharper than the 6.6 per cent fall in April.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtn0tL68B-X8SyFi3hkO3Gq7oMyD7lfDnsUQTQEo15Ch4oZNMnhq4iRxQZb3dyCjGv2HdAq8W2ukOTpFXc9yWJ_wbyqFwy-gdYpSVOsYJQhT_sb6dSG8R-HP6A0mmWpxvx9lI5/s1600-h/china+two.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 238px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345587743280834546" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtn0tL68B-X8SyFi3hkO3Gq7oMyD7lfDnsUQTQEo15Ch4oZNMnhq4iRxQZb3dyCjGv2HdAq8W2ukOTpFXc9yWJ_wbyqFwy-gdYpSVOsYJQhT_sb6dSG8R-HP6A0mmWpxvx9lI5/s400/china+two.png" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Manufacturing On The Rebound?</strong><br /><br /><br />The CLSA China Purchasing Managers Index rose to 51.2 in May from 50.1 in April, making May the second consecutive month the CLSA PMI was above 50.0, after eight months of being below the critical line. The rate of destocking increased in May, which was encouraging given there is some anecdotal evidence that production may be running ahead of orders. On aggregate the reverse seems to be true. The CLSA China PMI is compiled by U.K.-based research firm Markit Economics. The export order index increased to 50.1, the first expansion in 11 months. The output index fell to 56.9 from 57.4 and the new order index dropped to 56.2 from 56.6.<br /><br /><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFo1R8PMArwJjOgTmkZuTS-fSFiX3Qs-1kKE_XLGqXW_PmOMroalApLusKT4hgouO8qIEem0QArqyGedSP7HtmvP2QRX0jgAXzfASwXao-lDYd0e5vQFsKo4pmE7gdK3iRPN9KeQ/s1600-h/china+pmi+one.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342417984941884738" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFo1R8PMArwJjOgTmkZuTS-fSFiX3Qs-1kKE_XLGqXW_PmOMroalApLusKT4hgouO8qIEem0QArqyGedSP7HtmvP2QRX0jgAXzfASwXao-lDYd0e5vQFsKo4pmE7gdK3iRPN9KeQ/s400/china+pmi+one.png" /></a><br /><br />In fact in China there are two indexes, <a href="http://chinaeconomywatch.blogspot.com/2009/04/manufacturing-industry-contracts-again.html">a fact which has lead to some controversy</a>. The second index produced by the government-backed Federation of Logistics & Purchasing has repeatedly shown slightly higher readings, a feature which may be the result of giving a slightly larger weighting to the state enterprises, which are more oriented towards the domestic market. The May PMI saw the CFLP benchmark reading fall to 53.1 in May from 53.5 in April. This was the third consecutive month this index has held above 50.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZfFUQrExnFlitfKCHJpQQoKue2k2g92P6lLETQiif5RroBMEhE1q5uD9NzJ4umyhIulNXsMcnH26S2gPu8uL0GUVHSiflguHc7QT6DAtpJ5AEDd4Up0GH8MYhlbjTE726cU8OUA/s1600-h/china+PMI+two.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342419336535057058" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZfFUQrExnFlitfKCHJpQQoKue2k2g92P6lLETQiif5RroBMEhE1q5uD9NzJ4umyhIulNXsMcnH26S2gPu8uL0GUVHSiflguHc7QT6DAtpJ5AEDd4Up0GH8MYhlbjTE726cU8OUA/s400/china+PMI+two.png" /></a> So despite a good deal of controversy about what exactly is happening in China, and how sustainable what is happening actually is, it does seem that, for whatever reason, manufacturing industry is expanding at this point.<br /><br /><br /><strong>China’s Industrial Production Figures Press Leaked</strong><br /><br />The 21st Century Business Herald have reported China’s industrial production ahead of the official release date. The report says fixed-asset investments for May, due out Thursday, will show a 32.9% rise, while the month's industrial production and retail sales, due Friday, will post gains of 8.9% and 15.2%, respectively.<br /><br />The figures were apparently derived from data circulating within government days ahead of public announcement. Reports in the mainland Chinese "21st Century Business Herald" and in Hong Kong's "Ming Pao" had already managed to predict the above consumer and producer price results ahead of today's official release, which raises questions about what exactly is going on here.<br /><br />The accuracy of these newspaper forecasts is better than those of most economists, raising more than just eyebrows. Merrill Lynch said the results, rather than being a lucky coincidence, show that the "whispered numbers" referred in the reports are reliable. "Today's release confirms those whispered inflation numbers, meaning other whispered numbers are likely to be highly credible," Merrill Lynch analysts said in a research note today.<br /></p><p><strong>Retail Sales, Industrial Output and New Lending Data<br /></strong><br />China’s new lending doubled in May and industrial output and retail sales climbed pretty much in line with the data which was leaked earlier in the week by 21st Century Business Herald (see above).</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3t1IqGXBas5M_M2yHy0YJPtbS2qq_z0WVB85yxThyikJdoJQHVJGlUaTVKREmBMSVTKGyLr2pNOmNSVXXPxwdF3yZDKtAt8igGKUy0_3u4mEbT5ScNHtvECMj2yoePYlhcJHK/s1600-h/china+retail+sales.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 254px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346384998722226242" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3t1IqGXBas5M_M2yHy0YJPtbS2qq_z0WVB85yxThyikJdoJQHVJGlUaTVKREmBMSVTKGyLr2pNOmNSVXXPxwdF3yZDKtAt8igGKUy0_3u4mEbT5ScNHtvECMj2yoePYlhcJHK/s400/china+retail+sales.png" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY3dljQtaiwwrmbEfKwssDgo94xzQzvqnyEaPYFdcEB53_47fuvy5BOq1N7Lef8KbgF04XvmUjtjYi3ebwf-SpbiBvDZbHsTySXMxtz5OeTGkxn0_hzmWZlcFpHRlNqB6uwQ97/s1600-h/china+IP.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 248px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346387774859375522" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY3dljQtaiwwrmbEfKwssDgo94xzQzvqnyEaPYFdcEB53_47fuvy5BOq1N7Lef8KbgF04XvmUjtjYi3ebwf-SpbiBvDZbHsTySXMxtz5OeTGkxn0_hzmWZlcFpHRlNqB6uwQ97/s400/china+IP.png" /></a>New loans jumped to 664.5 billion yuan ($97 billion) from 318.5 billion yuan a year earlier. Industrial-output growth accelerated to 8.9 percent year on year and sales rose 15.2 percent.</p><p>Today’s data add to accelerating fixed-asset investment and surging auto and property sales in signaling that rapidly growing bank lending is succesfully countering the exports slump - for the time being anyway. But this very same record lending is stoking concern that China’s recovery may come at the expense of inflating asset bubbles and adding to the bank bad loan books.<br /><br />M2, the broadest measure of money supply, rose 25.7 percent in May from a year earlier, according to central bank data, following a record 26 percent gain in April. Fitch Ratings said last month that it’s “increasingly wary” of China’s banking industry as it expects an increase in bad debts, and the nation’s banking regulator has urged lenders to ensure they don’t loosen management of loans. </p><p>Societe Generale note the following in today's research report:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><p><strong>China’s growth moving into dangerous territory</strong></p><p><br />To describe the economic support measures in place in the Chinese economy as expansionary fiscal policy is not entirely correct. For the money is not being handed out from the public purse. It is being handed out by the Banks. Sure, they are acting as fiscal agents for Beijing, but the point highlights how China is enjoying a heady liquidity boom. It has been these liquidity booms that have always tripped China up....... and requires liquidity drainage that often overshoots. Given Chinese banks extended nearly CNY5trn of lending in the first quarter alone, this was equivalent to 70% of GDP, These liquidity booms are the types that China has always gotten into...... The sheer size of lending in the first quarter was equivalent to around 70% of that quarters GDP. Full-year lending is now likely to be close to CNY10trn – equivalent to nearly 30% of 2008 GDP.</p></blockquote><p><br /><br />On the face of it, China's car industry is among the winners from government efforts to spur growth, as China extends its lead over the U.S. as the world’s biggest auto market this year, with output climbing 29 percent in May. But is this as simple as it seems. <a href="http://agmetalminer.com/2009/06/11/chinas-case-of-the-missing-cars/">As they say here</a>, perhaps not:</p><blockquote><p>At the same time, though prices vary from city to city, it is fair to say<br />China’s housing market which is said to have dropped 20% since this time last<br />year has largely made that back up this year as prices have rebounded.</p><p><br />All in all China looks in robust health and set to resume its place as<br />the engine of world growth just as soon as the rest of the world gets its act<br />together – right? Well we hate to be Doubting Thomas’s but well we have our<br />doubts. Those house sales have been supported by easy loans and reduced interest<br />rates. That is a phenomenon that the government could keep in place for some<br />time, years possibly providing the housing market doesn’t begin to overheat<br />again. But exports are still down, by 20% year over year according to the well<br />respected <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2009/06/09/the-chinese-puzzle-why-is-china-growing-with-other-export-powerhouses-arent/#more-5598">Brad Setser</a>, ignoring the fact the market added another 30% in Q3 2008.</p><p><br />There are some apparently contradictory numbers coming out of China at<br />the moment. Take those car sales as an example. Our man on the ground tells us<br />BYD, a noted Chinese car maker, reported 30,000 car sales of one model by end of<br />last year, but the number plate agency recorded only 10,000 new cars of that<br />model registered for use on the road. What happened to the other 20,000 are they<br />running around without number plates? In a police state, I don’t think so. Our<br />understanding is auto sales are recorded in China when they leave the factory,<br />not when they are registered on the road, so dealers can build up inventory<br />while car “sales” are rising.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-42416805332962956732009-05-11T09:45:00.009+02:002009-05-13T12:01:58.560+02:00China's Manufacturing Industry Expands In April While Prices Fall (Updated)China’s manufacturing expanded for the first time in either eight or nine months (depending on which index you chose - see below) as the decline in export orders moderated and investment surged on the back of the government’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus package.<br /><br />The CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to a seasonally adjusted 50.1 in April from 44.8 in March.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtobFyxsy2cE8wzY9LmNeu-Amhtfx65TR9NG_X8s-iawoQPjsLIA_cUIcY8GkeNgKWl0X_ANxfcUKwPs27qJ22KHINQU5pD2ExaGwJiVT5nV1RkzePKG6cO-jv_Dit2G-3IxO6_Q/s1600-h/china+pmi+two.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331924678513478530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtobFyxsy2cE8wzY9LmNeu-Amhtfx65TR9NG_X8s-iawoQPjsLIA_cUIcY8GkeNgKWl0X_ANxfcUKwPs27qJ22KHINQU5pD2ExaGwJiVT5nV1RkzePKG6cO-jv_Dit2G-3IxO6_Q/s400/china+pmi+two.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />The output index climbed to 51.3 from 44.3, the first expansion in nine months, while the reading for export orders rose to 48.8 from 41.4 in March. The total new-orders index climbed to 50.9 from 43.6 and the employment index rose to 50.9 from 47.1, the first expansions in nine months for both measures. <p></p><p>On the other hand the official (government sponsored) China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing manufacturing index also showed growth, in this case for the second consecutive month, with the headline index rising to 53.5 in April from 52.4 in March.<br /><br />There are various differences between the two indexes (for a summary of the issues raised <a href="http://chinaeconomywatch.blogspot.com/2009/04/manufacturing-industry-contracts-again.html">see my last month's post here</a>), but the gist of the matter is that the government-backed measure is weighted more than the CLSA index toward large state-owned enterprises, which have benefited more directly from the government stimulus measures.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhttrWMpsIdcS1IZ6TzbN31lwu2PxvOkbX0VUM7sYXf_ylQHM9Sr1AgwyzCBbBK4tPwXgOwznD3ZBvV6VmTwtGGNoitqrP48Ei8foCbgfUN9jFhfW86guEWSVVKp3OZB64Xutw9ww/s1600-h/china+CPI+one.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331924037329864690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 241px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhttrWMpsIdcS1IZ6TzbN31lwu2PxvOkbX0VUM7sYXf_ylQHM9Sr1AgwyzCBbBK4tPwXgOwznD3ZBvV6VmTwtGGNoitqrP48Ei8foCbgfUN9jFhfW86guEWSVVKp3OZB64Xutw9ww/s400/china+CPI+one.png" border="0" /></a><br /></p><p><br /><br /><strong>Is China Suffering Outright Deflation?</strong><br /><br />China’s consumer prices fell for a third month running in April and were down 1.5 percent from a year earlier, after falling 1.2 percent in March.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EviZahhzuv48Q7q8N1jXsCbvtyLDosfb79_U15kP2v0pir1jap0JRGbXWgrfy-q5vktEe_SHa5CQpeanheHhTOF_Mi2fZZv7MMHXbiEwdAAEQbdi3ALud7cFqrDuUcMbVos5/s1600-h/china+CPI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334470731026419282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EviZahhzuv48Q7q8N1jXsCbvtyLDosfb79_U15kP2v0pir1jap0JRGbXWgrfy-q5vktEe_SHa5CQpeanheHhTOF_Mi2fZZv7MMHXbiEwdAAEQbdi3ALud7cFqrDuUcMbVos5/s400/china+CPI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Producer prices fell 6.6 percent, following a 6 percent drop in March. The fall, which was largely produced by declining energy prices, was the biggest year on year drop since the turn of the century.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEvR-5LpSfETXxelkiFVQ8f5fmrOMLvNhhLSrJ_Y8tu5sZnYFTYJGlDDa1F3dgMmT3nsZty8pMAvcTgHRyf0bMeRwlmO8DkGTr5L4SxFX0s2RIZd-jA4jvVoSbNNLz7Zvg20_/s1600-h/china+ppi.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334472359216809650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 237px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEvR-5LpSfETXxelkiFVQ8f5fmrOMLvNhhLSrJ_Y8tu5sZnYFTYJGlDDa1F3dgMmT3nsZty8pMAvcTgHRyf0bMeRwlmO8DkGTr5L4SxFX0s2RIZd-jA4jvVoSbNNLz7Zvg20_/s400/china+ppi.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Bank lending also slowed in April, following three months of very strong growth. According to central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan lending was “approximately” 600 billion yuan ($88 billion) during the month, about a third of the record 1.89 trillion yuan in March. The official figure is due to be released this week. If confirmed, new loans of 600 billion yuan would be about 30 percent up on April 2008 which compares with a sixfold increase in March.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Update - Exports Fall Year On Year In April</strong><br /><br />The latest trade figures from China seem to confirm the idea that world trade is NOT taking off at this point. As a result China's economy is coming under a lot of pressure. While March overseas sales were down 17.1 percent from March 2008 - to $90.29 billion - in April exports were running at $91.9 billion, very slightly up on March, but 22.6% down on April 2008. In fact seasonally adjusted figures suggest a 32.8 percent month on month increase in exports from March and a 14 percent increase in imports, according to calculations from the Chinese Customs Bureau. So it is not all bad news. On the other hand we need to think about the fact that China currently has a lot more export capacity than it did a year ago.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEg2C_G-FbwFXn7-Fiq4QXInusf6yZs7emrH7lyduJWND1l6S_M2yk17exVYc6G-MVhyeGy9SWN7C9a_pJiHdPBHWPuEXErOs_x0KZapXC5WzZxuKzofe6kO6zKzwH8SUYfI9E/s1600-h/china+exports.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334833653005305266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEg2C_G-FbwFXn7-Fiq4QXInusf6yZs7emrH7lyduJWND1l6S_M2yk17exVYc6G-MVhyeGy9SWN7C9a_pJiHdPBHWPuEXErOs_x0KZapXC5WzZxuKzofe6kO6zKzwH8SUYfI9E/s400/china+exports.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Basically internal demand is largely being maintained by increasing government spending - hence the news that investment in factories and property jumped 30.5 percent from a year earlier in the first four months of the year, thanks largely to the wave of bank loans for government stimulus projects - but this is only a stopgap.<br /><br />China will have to await a rebound in global trade (and we have no idea when that will come, or how) and grit its teeth in the meantime. The OECD currently forecasts that global trade will shrink 13 percent in 2009 as banks cut back on credit to exporters and importers, so there is still some considerable way to go with all this.<br /><br /><strong>Industrial Ouput Growth Slows</strong></p><p><br />China’s industrial output growth slowed to an annual 7.3 per cent in April, from 8.3 per cent growth in March, only adding to all the doubts over whether a Chinese recovery really is under way. The growth in factory output last month was less than half the year-on-year rate achieved in in April 2008 and most of the growth seems to have been a result of the government’s economic stimulus measures.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiWDIec2dPdQR0RIC8DNZD-WUya4E0h1Vy3C7QbH4QWJrzYZ4W3JDThG41aTZZQQ3GF0XqJd7CvrdAZi_xdyA8fDl_Z2tl9KcajTxU8yizI0jq2u68ZFfB84God_ugSaFseiVU/s1600-h/china+IP.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335240825040943874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 250px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiWDIec2dPdQR0RIC8DNZD-WUya4E0h1Vy3C7QbH4QWJrzYZ4W3JDThG41aTZZQQ3GF0XqJd7CvrdAZi_xdyA8fDl_Z2tl9KcajTxU8yizI0jq2u68ZFfB84God_ugSaFseiVU/s400/china+IP.png" border="0" /></a><br />But retail sale growth remained reasonably healthy in April, rising by 14.8 per cent from a year earlier (to Rmb934.32bn). This was a similar rise to March’s 14.7 per cent growth. Since these numbers are not price adjusted I have created a "home made" price adjusted version, which can be seen for comparative purposes in the chart below. As we can see, nominal (current price) sales growth was much higher than real growth during the inflation burst, but the nominal chart drops below the skyline as deflation sets in an prices start to fall. This then is a fairly graphic illustration of what deflation means, since we can now expect this real/nominal disparity to continue, making everyone's economic decision making just that bit more difficult.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwtfClPbglTpDY28QXrfINdPL2DT4eedix7xZz1M_5CZC74GwH7IRm4_FmjNKvjniLr5s7yGVeRXjCpXcRts7EAe4-x3RJ59KklWqd4q5uLjT9bjCYhcjKUMObVpreX8LvOObT/s1600-h/china+retail+sales.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335240246845623858" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 253px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwtfClPbglTpDY28QXrfINdPL2DT4eedix7xZz1M_5CZC74GwH7IRm4_FmjNKvjniLr5s7yGVeRXjCpXcRts7EAe4-x3RJ59KklWqd4q5uLjT9bjCYhcjKUMObVpreX8LvOObT/s400/china+retail+sales.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Another factor adding to the general state of confusion were figures released by the government on Wednesday that showing that electricity production, which is often regarded as a proxy for economic growth in China, fell by 3.5 per cent from a year earlier in April. When asked, government officials have been repeatedly unable to explain how industrial production can be growing while electricity production is falling. Since it is unlikely that Chinese industries are making large advances in energy conservation the most probable explanation is that the current slowdown has had a more severe impact on energy-intensive heavy industry. One example of this would be that China’s crude steel output fell 4 per cent in April from March. Below you can see the OECD leading indicator chart (which includes electricity output), and this may give is the nearest indication we are going to get of the path of the Chinese economy in recent months.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0TGnfT3wP7tuk93GHAnNuC2L71eaP6CqFZwKzIc7QiCJXRP48JppMwurTLwkzOFUsaZPmq7kf_kq-O3TF5U3Wi5qMY0ZzKND2-e_USiK4Tse1nXfVD2DSIxSz2gjseW_TYNKk/s1600-h/china+OECD+indicator.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335240178822731794" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0TGnfT3wP7tuk93GHAnNuC2L71eaP6CqFZwKzIc7QiCJXRP48JppMwurTLwkzOFUsaZPmq7kf_kq-O3TF5U3Wi5qMY0ZzKND2-e_USiK4Tse1nXfVD2DSIxSz2gjseW_TYNKk/s400/china+OECD+indicator.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />According to the stats office, total investment in fixed assets were 3,708.2 billion yuan from January to April, a year-on-year rise of 30.5 percent. Of which, state-owned and state-holding enterprises invested 1,605.5 billion yuan, surging 39.3 percent, while real estate development, valued at 729.0 billion yuan, went up only 4.9 percent. I think this just about says it all. Exports are way down, real estate is stalled, and output is being ramped up in the state run light industry sector, and in civil engineering.<br /><br />And right now, as mention in the post above, internal price deflation is steadily setting in while the rate of new loan growth is slowing. So, hold tight everyone, this could get to be a bumpy ride.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-50619329536349923282009-04-01T07:59:00.008+02:002009-04-15T12:24:26.083+02:00Manufacturing Industry Contracts Again In March (Update 2)China’s manufacturing industry shrank for an eighth straight month in March as collapsing global trade cut exports and growth across Asia. The CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index dropped to a seasonally adjusted 44.8 last month from 45.1 in February. Any reading on these indexes below 50 means contraction.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQMEULNADr2rHwlLp36a93gMMGoSRDpNA41F2qlCpb6Hn_WwW8tyTW_O0w9WobVF5sW-C-xqrPaLhoCs5HoH4GBOCAQLsUy4D1F_lTuNiCfDNXWPi0E7eKBHqjTQ_qhRurireY/s1600-h/china+PMI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319598856952139650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQMEULNADr2rHwlLp36a93gMMGoSRDpNA41F2qlCpb6Hn_WwW8tyTW_O0w9WobVF5sW-C-xqrPaLhoCs5HoH4GBOCAQLsUy4D1F_lTuNiCfDNXWPi0E7eKBHqjTQ_qhRurireY/s400/china+PMI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The manufacturing component of the index continued to increased, rising for a fourth month from a record low of 40.9 in November. The export orders index rose to 41.4from 39.5 in February. New orders climbed to 43.6 from 44.2. Output gained to 44.3 from 43.9, while the employment index rose to 47.1 from 46.6, its second increase in eight months.<br /><br /><blockquote>“A worsening of domestic manufacturing orders lies behind the drop in the PMI and accords with what we are seeing on the ground in the steel industry,” said Eric Fishwick, head of economic research at CLSA in Hong Kong. “Expect the production index to show softness in April......More encouragingly, export orders continue to improve,” he added “They are still falling but at the most moderate pace since October.” </blockquote><strong>Update: Rival Indexes At Work (Thursday 8 April)</strong><br /><br /><br />Well, following a question in comments (see below) I think it worth adding a few details about the "other" PMI reading which is available, the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing (CFLP) one. The CFLP PMI rebounded to 52.4% in March 2009, up from 49.0% in the previous month. The index was back to the expansionary zone of higher than 50% for the first time since October last year. Output index, new orders index and purchases of inputs index were also higher than the critical level of 50% in March. Except stocks of finished goods, all sub-indices were higher than their respective levels in the previous month. Of which, imports index grew strongly by 7.0 ppt. to 48.8% in March, compared to the previous month.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQZwsAY4I2K2xUiRuGSLzanhLdLoYFztHKSHdOm3RbwUbgH5NEpApgPiDhA_Plb5qzoSboGXvTEAOydChmdvNvQn6iSc_-iBWMXiyPAXp-jlqShlxFm40SHceTxRCFkZIUjEC/s1600-h/china+pmi+2.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322661903648332434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQZwsAY4I2K2xUiRuGSLzanhLdLoYFztHKSHdOm3RbwUbgH5NEpApgPiDhA_Plb5qzoSboGXvTEAOydChmdvNvQn6iSc_-iBWMXiyPAXp-jlqShlxFm40SHceTxRCFkZIUjEC/s400/china+pmi+2.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Many commentators have taken the CFLP reading at face value without bothering to contrast. Thus Bloomberg's Li Yanping, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGbgMTXwJgW0&refer=home">in a very bullish article</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>China’s manufacturing expanded for the first time in six months, spurred by the government’s 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package. The Purchasing Manager’s Index rose to a seasonally adjusted 52.4 in March from 49 in February, the Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said today in Beijing in an e-mailed statement. A reading above 50 indicates an expansion. The expansion may help President Hu Jintao achieve his target of 8 percent economic growth for the world’s third- biggest economy. The report comes as he attends a Group of 20 summit in London where world leaders are discussing remedies for the worst global recession since World War II. Hu’s stimulus package already triggered jumps in urban investment and loan growth in the first two months of this year. </blockquote>or PNB Paribas:<br /><br /><blockquote>China Logistics Information Center (CLIC) release March PMI rose to 52.4 from 49 of February, the fourth months of continues improvement. PMI breached 50 the first time since September 2008, suggesting the industrial sector is resuming sequential expansion after 5 months of continuous drop.<br /><br />Overall, the NBS PMI suggest that March industrial sector resumed sequential expansion despite further deterioration of export, this recovery is due to strong fiscal stimulus, aggressive credit expansion at 24.5% y/y pace and relative resilient household demand for property, autos and other durables. Though export outlook remain gloomy, however the G20 and global quantitative easing seem to be providing a floor to global demand. While Q2 growth should remain anemic, however the rebound of PMI suggests Q2 domestic demand growth is on an increasingly firm footing.</blockquote><br />PNB Paribas basically put the difference down to differences in sample size:<br /><br /><blockquote>The widening gap between CLIC PMI and CLSA survey PMI is due to different sampling, CLIC survey focused on 738 major industrials accounting for 20% of VAIO.</blockquote>But as I indicate in comments, the difference is only in part about sample size, there is also a difference in methodology, largely connected with seasonal adjustment, not an un-important issue when the lunar new year impact is knocking around somewhere in the data. Indeed CLSA made this point abundantly clear in a note released alongside their report:<br /><br /><blockquote>"It is true that the CFLP survey sample size is larger than that of the CLSA China PMI...therefore the standard error of the (population) estimates from the CFLP survey should be around 25 percent smaller than those from the China PMI," according to the CLSA note released on April 1. "However in practice all of this is academic. Differences in the samples are dwarfed by differences in how each set of statisticians adjust for seasonality in the data," said the note. CLSA said it had tuned the March figure as the February and March varied in number of days in a month and the latter month affected by the long Chinese lunar New Year holiday. Though both sides made seasonality adjustment, the CFLP figure was usually boosted by around three points by seasonality in March, said the CLSA note.</blockquote><br />So you can accept the version you want to accept here, but be careful, since the level of confidence to be attached to either reading is moderate. At the end of the day the proof of the pudding here will be in the eating, when we get the March year on year industrial output data, ince this will either be just slightly up, or just slightly down on March 2008 -and remember in the meantime there has been a large expansion incapacity.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbd2dQrrHedNQ9ueXA0HYxi_V77QVLpXi1_Jt2qsyCCC-zhl1kkqzeaSfrWFad9DfkAJg-sx1BbhtPDDA5ywmjxPWaDnpvAjgKwiF2Myq9gF77c6vyIeA1PJEv_ldvSA2HLY9b/s1600-h/china+IP.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322662046673455778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 248px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbd2dQrrHedNQ9ueXA0HYxi_V77QVLpXi1_Jt2qsyCCC-zhl1kkqzeaSfrWFad9DfkAJg-sx1BbhtPDDA5ywmjxPWaDnpvAjgKwiF2Myq9gF77c6vyIeA1PJEv_ldvSA2HLY9b/s400/china+IP.png" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Second Update Monday April 13<br /></strong><br />And well, the mystery only deepens, since now we have an advance on the statistical data (thanks to Premier Wen Jiabao) and we learn that China's industrial output was apparently up by 8.3% year on year in March:<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2HSMCF5b6aAtR4uRLR_3fJEvQ9dT8bmpZSWfE9GTPfTR-otjhTD_HwDIPQFTKDJCTV2ZL4zIsgceYYw7gEIn8jfBlZ7JBtyKDu55SBDPSPzBpy-gfYEPUIk3a05aEes26UNnn/s1600-h/china+IP.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324123615310515810" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 247px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2HSMCF5b6aAtR4uRLR_3fJEvQ9dT8bmpZSWfE9GTPfTR-otjhTD_HwDIPQFTKDJCTV2ZL4zIsgceYYw7gEIn8jfBlZ7JBtyKDu55SBDPSPzBpy-gfYEPUIk3a05aEes26UNnn/s400/china+IP.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><blockquote>China's industrial output rose 8.3 percent in March, in a sign that a huge stimulus package is kicking in, Premier Wen Jiabao said in an interview published on Monday. Last month's growth accelerated from the 3.8-percent rise in the first two months as domestic demand continued to improve, Wen said, according to the China Securities Journal. Fixed asset investment and retail sales, which measure spending on infrastructure and consumption respectively, also increased quickly in the first quarter, he said in an interview while in Thailand for the ASEAN summit at the weekend. All this showed the economy was performing "better than expected" thanks to Beijing's measures to tackle the international financial crisis, he said. China in November unveiled an unprecedented four-trillion-yuan (580-billion-dollar) stimulus package to ward off the worst effects of the global crisis. However, Wen said the nation's export-dependent economy was still facing major difficulties due to a sharp contraction in foreign demand, which has placed increasing pressure on employment. "The international financial crisis has not yet hit the bottom. It's hard to say that China alone has steered away from the crisis," he said. "We should never overlook (the risks)." Wen's comments came just days before the National Statistics Bureau is slated to release first quarter data on the Chinese economy on Thursday. Tai Hui, an economist with Standard Chartered in Singapore, said the March growth in industrial output was boosted partly by companies filling their inventories after depleting them in recent months. However, the level of growth remains modest compared with before the crisis, and the overall economy is still weak, he said. "The economic environment,although it has improved, remains relatively weak due to the global financial turmoil," he said. </blockquote>The mystery deepens in part becuase exports fell in March, more slowly than February, but still sharply - 17% yoy (following a 25.7% drop in Feb):<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0in2DKiEwRg6D1sQjk3IWCLYGZABL0qchatUPm-Rou4XqoTMWaDSRrurHjhSFIN-f_JZ6wd1dqpVlcDOnr1NNTGM8SsESIkFcalj1CLUAPVnRDBgmBTtNUOTHfKtPMGD_Xmyn/s1600-h/china+exports.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324124727850558322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0in2DKiEwRg6D1sQjk3IWCLYGZABL0qchatUPm-Rou4XqoTMWaDSRrurHjhSFIN-f_JZ6wd1dqpVlcDOnr1NNTGM8SsESIkFcalj1CLUAPVnRDBgmBTtNUOTHfKtPMGD_Xmyn/s400/china+exports.png" border="0" /></a><br /><blockquote>China's exports fell 17 percent in March, a less sharp contraction than the month before, amid signs the plunge in overseas demand may be easing, the government reported Friday. But while the decline in exports eased somewhat, a sharper weakening in imports pushed China's trade surplus to $18.56 billion, up from $4.84 billion the month before, the General Administration of Customs said. Exports totaled $90.3 billion in March, the fifth straight month of year-on-year declines due to the global downturn. In February, exports sank 25.7 percent from a year earlier in the worst drop in more than a decade. Imports in March fell 25 percent to $71.7 billion, the customs data showed. China's imports fell 24 percent in February. "The pace of contraction in exports has moderated notably from January-February levels, as export activity showed signs of stabilization," Jing Ulrich, chairman for China equities for J.P.Morgan, said in a report to clients. "Imports remained weak but there are some initial signs of recovery in China's raw materials demand, driven by government stockpiling and record imports of iron ore," she said.<br /></blockquote><br /><br />It's frankly hard to understand why imports would be falling more than exports if you had a domestic demand lead recovery process at work. Brad Setser has <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2009/04/10/big-changes-but-not-much-adjustment-chinas-march-trade-data/">a readable go at explaining things here</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Wall Street Journal puts a more positive gloss on China’s March trade data than I would. To me the overarching story is simple: the data paint a story of deep distress in both the Chinese and global economy. China’s exports were growing 20% y/y (23% actually) in the third quarter of 2008. They were down nearly 20% (19.7%) in the first quarter of 2009. Imports though fell by more, in part because of the fall in oil prices. Imports fell close to 30% y/y in the first quarter. That isn’t just a function of falling commodity prices and fewer imported components either; US exports to China — which presumably include a lot of capital goods — are way down y/y. As a result, China’s trade surplus was larger in the first quarter of 2009 than in the first quarter of 2008 ($62 billion v $41 billion). The global shock has gotten rid of many of the world’s macroeconomic imbalances. American households are saving more and importing less, so the US deficit is down. The oil exporters are no longer running a surplus. Even Japan’s surplus has come down, as demand for Japan’s exports has fallen more rapidly than Japan’s commodity import bill. China’s surplus though has continued to rise.<br /></blockquote><p><br />So this is really the point I think: with a growing surplus (at this point, and on a year on year basis) China's economy isn't going to pull the rest of the world anywhere, since essentially it is still draining-off demand from elsewhere.<br /><br />But even if China seems an unlikely candidate to pull the global train out of the mire, we still need to try and understand what it is exactly that is going on in Chinese domestic industrial activity. One part of the explanation undoubtedly lies in domestic loan growth. Bloomberg report that China’s new lending surged more than sixfold from a year earlier to a record 1.89 trillion yuan ($277 billion) in March, which compares with the previous high of 1.62 trillion yuan posted in January. Domestic loans grew 29.8% in March, from a year earlier - analysts had been expecting a 25.1% jump. M2 - often considered the broadest measure of money supply - grew year on year by 25.5 percent, according to the central bank. </p><p>Bloomberg report that this is the fastest growth rate for M2 since they began compiling data in 1998. China’s banks, which are mostly state-owned, have already implemented new lending almost up to the government’s target of 5 trillion yuan of new loans this year. Indeed, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. lending may exceeed the target level by as much as 3 trillion yuan. China has certainly mounted the credit tiger in its race to meet the government's official growth target of 8% this year, but while growth propelled by government stimulus and easier access to credit may spawn new projects and stem job losses in China, it won't necessarily translate into industrial profits, and indeed in the medium term it may even lead to a large pile-up of Non Performing Loans. </p><p>While no one at this stage believes that the percentage of such loans could reach 2003 levels (20.4% of the total, or 16.5% of GDP) many believe the danger that Chinese vabks could see another wave of loan defaults is rising. This, is the view being taken, for example, by Fitch Ratings, who in a recent report warn that loan defaults could rise to 5% or 6% of total lending, as <a href="http://www.euromoney.com/Article/2173494/Chinas-looming-NPL-crisis.html">Euromoney's Sudip Roy argues</a>:</p><blockquote><p>The biggest proportion of new lending by the banks is through discounted bills, which supply working capital. Long-term to medium-term corporate loans are the second-biggest component. More than 70% of the new lending, according to official figures, is through these two channels, which should be low-risk financing."It is hard to predict the quality of all of the lending in January and February but a large proportion of it was mid- to long-term loans to infrastructure projects with stable funding and government support," says Lian Ping, chief economist at Bank of Communications in Shanghai... banks often categorize loans that are rolled over as performing even though they have not been repaid on their original maturity date. "In practice, this means that a one-year working capital loan that is not repaid at maturity can take another one or more years before being classified as nonperforming," says Fitch. Instead, many banks classify these advances as special mention or even normal loans. Special mention loans are effectively non-performing in all but word. </p><p>What’s especially worrying, according to Fitch, is that if a comparison is made for each of the 16 leading banks of the levels of their equity and loan-loss reserves against their portfolio of NPLs and special mention loans, then in every case the latter "swamped reserves, while for many banks equity also was severely affected". And these banks are the largest and healthiest in the country, adds Fitch.</p></blockquote><p><br />In a sign that some of the lending is already reaching infrastructure and real estate projects China's National Statistics Bureau said on Monday that spending on property development was up from a year earlier by 4.1% in the first quarter, following a rise of only 1% in January and February. Property sales were also up year on year (by 8.2%) in the first quarter, after sliding in January and February. However urban real estate prices in 70 major cities were down 1.3% in March, compared with March 2008, confirming the general deflationary environment.<br /><br /><br />Further foreign direct investment into China fell for a sixth month in March, dropping 9.5 percent from a year earlier to $8.4 billion, as compared with a 15.8 percent decline in February. For the first quarter as a whole, spending fell 20.6 percent to $21.8 billion. Foreign-invested businesses account for 30 percent of industrial output, 55 percent of trade and 11 percent of urban jobs according to Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian at the press conference where the FDI data were released. The rate of decline in FDI is slowing however, since while this is the first time since 2000 that investment from abroad has fallen for six straight months, the absolute value of investment in March was the largest in nine months and the decline from a year earlier was the smallest in the last three months. Thus it would be premature to draw any definitive conclusions at this point.<br /><br />And just one more data point to add to all those quandrys, China’s March power output fell about 2 percent from a year earlier <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=aux5nCrI8Arw&refer=china">according to an official from the China Electricity Council</a>, citing preliminary data. The drop is smaller than in previous months, the official said today, declining to be named before the official data release. </p><p>Power production fell 3.7 percent in the first two months from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on March 12. Further, China's power output fell 0.7 percent in March from a year earlier, according to Caijing magazine on April 3, citing the State Grid Corp. of China, the country’s biggest electricity distributor. On the other hand China Central Television reported on April 11, citing the Electricity Council, that electricity use was up “noticeably” in March from February. Now this little snippet of information would appear at first sight to be at variance (but not in contradiction) with the March year on year data, until you consider the sort of seasonal influences we have been encountering in this post. So it is quite possible that power consumption was up sharply month on month, and down slightly year on year. What seems hard to understand, at least from where I am sitting, is how power consumption can have fallen while industrial output surges 8.3%. When you put this together with the import data, and the rising surplus, then something quite simply doesn't add up here.<br /><br />This impression that all may not be moving as planned under the "official version" would seem to find some confirmation in <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=aSDDFnLloFXs&refer=china">the latest reports that the Chinese government is considering additional stimulus measures</a> to boost consumption and bolster growth. According to a report in the official China Securities Journal - citing Gao Huiqing, a researcher at the State Information Center - the government will issue some “guideline” policies and continue to use fiscal and taxation measures to spur an expansion. This follows this weekends statement from Premier Wen Jiabao that China would “closely” monitor changes in the domestic and world economy and “hammer out” new response plans when needed.<br /><br />Gao, who is affiliated with the National Development and Reform Commission, indicated that the kind of recovery mentioned by Premier Wen, spurred as it is by rebounding inventories and sales of property and cars, may be short-lived without a global rebound which will increase demand for Chinese exports.</p><blockquote>“While the stimulus is indeed having an effect on loan growth and some measures of economic activity, the trend decline in exports is unbroken,” said James McCormack, head of Asia sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings in Hong Kong. “Chinese gross domestic product growth will remain below potential until the global economy recovers.”</blockquote><p>Indeed according to Zheng Xinli, the deputy policy research head of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s 2009 exports may shrink by as much 10 percent over 2008. So what we have here, is more like a make and mend, hold the line, stimulus approach, as the government tries to soften the external blow, rather than a full blooded, domestic demand driven recovery.<br /><br />According to initial reports the new package is likely to be focused on social welfare spending and on boosting consumer consumption, both of which are to be fuelled by the record fiscal deficit China is expected to run this year. China is, for example, subsidizing 20 billion yuan this year on rural purchases of televisions and refrigerators and plans to increase spending on welfare by 29 percent. In the long term, the government is also planning an expanded social safety net, and the State Council published earlier this month an 850 billion yuan health-care plan, including building at least one hospital in every county and expanding medical insurance coverage to 90 percent of the 1.3 billion population by 2011. All welcome measures, but not surely the ones which will lead us all collectively away from the abyss.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-87923593763248254392009-03-11T17:31:00.009+01:002009-03-16T09:01:34.065+01:00Prices Drop As Exports FallPerhaps one of the most heated debates which is taking place among investors and economists at the present time relates to China. Economic growth plunged in the fourth quarter of last year, and the economy may even have contracted. Yet the government has lashed out "loads of money" on a huge stimulus programme. Will this work? The Jury is still out.<br /><br />Certainly some sectors of the economy are suffering badly and China’s trade surplus plunged in February on the back of a record drop in exports. The trade gap narrowed to $4.8 billion - roughly one eighth of the amount registered in January, according to data from the customs bureau. China's trade surplus hit a record $40 billion in November. Exports dropped sharply in February - down 25.7 percent from a year earlier (following a 17.5% fall in January), while the collapse in imports slowed, falling by "only" 24.1 percent following January's record 43.1 percent decline.<br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUDjEHUDkzC-ohZL8F5n5BygVsIVgfe3Saj6DVshUjO8hqaym7A_Rb0lVNwg_9vfbQY1VAtdUNT7Vet0j1r7IfJStfSB9cwd3lZZ0bbjG24g6h5SmIsQlvi7u0sGW09MaGH2zz/s1600-h/china+exports.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311988466081256226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 237px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUDjEHUDkzC-ohZL8F5n5BygVsIVgfe3Saj6DVshUjO8hqaym7A_Rb0lVNwg_9vfbQY1VAtdUNT7Vet0j1r7IfJStfSB9cwd3lZZ0bbjG24g6h5SmIsQlvi7u0sGW09MaGH2zz/s400/china+exports.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Meanwhile China announced earlier this week that its consumer inflation fell for the first time in more than six years in February, suggesting we might now be entering a period of price deflation - the consumer price index fell 1.6 per cent from a year earlier in February. This followed a 1.0 per cent rise in January .<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiREShg_I2EOED7A2PLQQtXUSkxo_75KFZoBal4AEzTFwgqY_kluCSXuSs7OEEX8vZIBbMofK6xFRup451L8rsNRR1k4xRBRi_WWGHjlinrsiFmsNlcYOq5WB1Usyj9HDO8O9G2/s1600-h/china+CPI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311987389727135362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 235px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiREShg_I2EOED7A2PLQQtXUSkxo_75KFZoBal4AEzTFwgqY_kluCSXuSs7OEEX8vZIBbMofK6xFRup451L8rsNRR1k4xRBRi_WWGHjlinrsiFmsNlcYOq5WB1Usyj9HDO8O9G2/s400/china+CPI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />China's CPI last fell in December 2002, when it dropped 0.4 per cent, capping a year in which CPI fell every month save one. The latest data show the risks of prolonged general price declines - deflation - are rising. Beijing has targeted headline inflation of 4 per cent this year but it certainly now looks like the government will struggle to get prices back into positive territory and may have to confront a prolonged period of deflation. Food prices, a key component of in the Chinese CPI, fell 1.9 per cent in February from a year earlier; non-food prices fell 1.2 per cent.<br /><br />And more evidence of possible deflation in the works comes from wholesale prices, since the producer price index fell 4.5 per cent in February from a year earlier, a steeper drop than January's 3.3 per cent decline.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguAu61jnRVDhNTgCJT3ENFb-lJh0OijqZYsoRjUm2sHpJt9RtGa5gFXwmAdj3aQk8tza6UjoMgMKIDhzbV91yK63GHcfTjVIEGY6CJ5ne3KSOAHJywLNMzBd4n2q5-IVD4LCGV/s1600-h/china+manufacturiing.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311987328322817874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguAu61jnRVDhNTgCJT3ENFb-lJh0OijqZYsoRjUm2sHpJt9RtGa5gFXwmAdj3aQk8tza6UjoMgMKIDhzbV91yK63GHcfTjVIEGY6CJ5ne3KSOAHJywLNMzBd4n2q5-IVD4LCGV/s400/china+manufacturiing.png" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Industrial Output Falls Back<br /></strong><br /><br />China’s industrial-production growth slowed at the start of the year on the back of the export decline, with output rising only 3.8 percent in January and February from a year earlier, slowing from a 5.7 percent increase in December. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzxv8fLYIExfpEZD74xkWil46-lnwu3Gt09Ltk0wnRBNKVf-0b3_Xqxne5Q8sC6TKk1HzhuzDD1Dcxn6gWv_W194TL9i_s1d8AX5NrzVXiLqFp64dcu3WtK6RPITxLuAQx8Dpt/s1600-h/china+IP.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312248832518711106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 248px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzxv8fLYIExfpEZD74xkWil46-lnwu3Gt09Ltk0wnRBNKVf-0b3_Xqxne5Q8sC6TKk1HzhuzDD1Dcxn6gWv_W194TL9i_s1d8AX5NrzVXiLqFp64dcu3WtK6RPITxLuAQx8Dpt/s400/china+IP.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />However China’s investment spending has maintained its momentum (and even increased), as the government pours money into roads, railways and power grids. Urban fixed-asset investment climbed by 26.5 percent in January and February from a year earlier.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtjSjMiVi81Wyd_fy3I06gqHm6uoio4c2CDkvXoNpffKUn0pcWOwe8aLWAaFWjbF-k9xnyLXA6-Ss-hgai0OXZFxDXJCYbl2ESXusGXI_ido08CLXMvJnOQVqJ2PHMmmeHLcLN/s1600-h/china+fixed+asset.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312264583273784914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtjSjMiVi81Wyd_fy3I06gqHm6uoio4c2CDkvXoNpffKUn0pcWOwe8aLWAaFWjbF-k9xnyLXA6-Ss-hgai0OXZFxDXJCYbl2ESXusGXI_ido08CLXMvJnOQVqJ2PHMmmeHLcLN/s400/china+fixed+asset.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Retail sales, on the other hand, have been slowing, and rose by 15.2 percent in February from a year earlier in current price terms (after a 19 percent rise in December) or by 16.8% in real (price adjusted) terms (given that prices fell year on year). The downward momentum in retail sales growth since the summer is evident on both measures.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcelW9bFrXL5k1Qs0tod-45xGvcyqkn-WA0q_OTpdajwTL7WdoiJviTdaxPBeUv_nUuk4aSSAVUuvrrMi_wPWhunhyphenhyphenKUc9A5n4jYbUUfurJvB33imvvjJ7vdCVlhNrkyFbPX4l/s1600-h/china+retail+sales.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312271195954346034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 253px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcelW9bFrXL5k1Qs0tod-45xGvcyqkn-WA0q_OTpdajwTL7WdoiJviTdaxPBeUv_nUuk4aSSAVUuvrrMi_wPWhunhyphenhyphenKUc9A5n4jYbUUfurJvB33imvvjJ7vdCVlhNrkyFbPX4l/s400/china+retail+sales.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Huge Loan Expansion</strong><br /><br />So the big question is to just what extent will the government investment programme help restructure the economy? Certainly it won't kickstart it, since the export sector is dependent on demand elsewhere, and that is unlikely to move in the near tyerm. However the emphasis in Chinese economic activity might be able to switch towards domestic consumption, and that is the big question we now face. Certainly bank lending has increased, with China’s new loans more than quadrupling in February (from a year earlier) as the government pressed banks to support a 4 trillion yuan $585 billion). The problem is, just how much of this lending can turn bad?<br /><br />Banks extended 1.07 trillion yuan of local-currency loans in February and M2 climbed 20.5 percent from a year earlier, the fastest pace in more than five years, after growing 18.8 percent in January. The lending, which is in addition to a record 1.62 trillion yuan in new loans in January has given rise to concerns that the pace of new lending may be unsustainable and endanger the overall health of the financial system. Lax credit assessment now may lead to an upward surge in delinquencies in the months and years to come.”<br /><br /><br /><br />Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said earlier this month that loans and money supply may have grown too quickly, since Premier Wen Jiabao announced a whole year target for lending of 5 trillion yuan, so that the banks are already halfway through their target with 10 months still to go. The surge in credit has also triggered concern that some of the money is being pumped into the stock market. The Shanghai Composite Index which tracks China’s largest stock exchanges is now up by 17 percent since the start of the year.</p><p>The worries about bad debts are being taken seriously, and China’s banking regulator have told banks to boost provisions to 150 percent of their outstanding non-performing loans, according to an article in the 21st Century Business Herald. The bad loan ratios of the country's five biggest banks -- Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank Corp., Bank of China Ltd., and Bank of Communications Ltd., is to be raised to 150 percent from 130 percent at the end of 2008, while the requirement for smaller national banks remains unchanged at 150 percent.<br /></p><p> Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, has described such moves as "prudent", and in line with the regulatory decision to carry out spot checks on bank loan books to “ensure quality of growth”.<br /><br /></p><p><strong>Rural Squeeze<br /></strong><br />But while the banks dole out the money, and stocks surge, China’s rural population are feeling the pinch as farm incomes drop this year on the back of falling agricultural prices. </p><blockquote>“The pressure from declining agricultural prices is high,” Yin Chengjie, vice chairman of agricultural and rural affairs of the National People’s Congress, said in an interview in Beijing. “We cannot be optimistic about growth” in farm incomes this year, he said.</blockquote><p><br /><br />Prices of agricultural products - including cotton, soybeans and corn have fallen over the past year as bumper harvests swelled stocks and restaurant sales and food processing output declined. The net consequence is that the disparity between the urban and rural population is widening, and the situation is further aggravated by the large number of migrant workers who now find themselves unemployed and have returned to their villages.<br /><br /><br />And just to show that the export data isn't simply a one off problem, it is worth noting that the OECD leading indicators reading has been sliding steadily for months now, and continue on its way down in January regardless (see chart below). Also foreign direct investment in China fell for a fifth consecutive month in February.<br />Investment dropped 15.8 percent to $5.83 billion from a year earlier - according to the commerce ministry - compared with a 32.6 percent decline in January. So the stimulus programme is acting as a brake on the rate of decline, but we still have a decline. That, I think, is the best we can hop for at this point.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_62-SuALiXy4gFhTHELSa3pYlVtiaUR36tUFd5iy7-mgXJAnrBVklK0JlmMR4uwx33xaGOQVCepzsvlACEz6tfSAaHyUxExHo4aDCAOv6WVMEFMyLqRIdzmPcZgsCGmQcYTi/s1600-h/oecd+indicators+china.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_62-SuALiXy4gFhTHELSa3pYlVtiaUR36tUFd5iy7-mgXJAnrBVklK0JlmMR4uwx33xaGOQVCepzsvlACEz6tfSAaHyUxExHo4aDCAOv6WVMEFMyLqRIdzmPcZgsCGmQcYTi/s400/oecd+indicators+china.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313073417832966706" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-68157558238129320812009-02-12T09:35:00.005+01:002009-02-12T23:10:21.782+01:00Exports Tumble As China Enters DeflationIs China about to lead the charge out of the current slump, or is the Chinese economy about to succumb to it? This appears to be one of the most interesting and most hotly debated questions of the moment. On the one hand the latest manufacturers PurchasingManufacturers Index seemed to suggest the contraction in China's economy slowed in January, while other data, in particular producer price inflation, loan growth, employment figures and movements in external trade seem to give a rather different impression.<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUDSTJZhSpskeZDzwYo5ngqXZWSwfzgNlTra9DEP11x1Le_HZ4HM2YIfDD9wam4lJEMivKUmrUuwHLub23ZlQie_xz9D2zyDzRGWdXvL0tFSXQomfWPLa2sX6irue1r_slnrv/s1600-h/oecd+china.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301976328900497298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUDSTJZhSpskeZDzwYo5ngqXZWSwfzgNlTra9DEP11x1Le_HZ4HM2YIfDD9wam4lJEMivKUmrUuwHLub23ZlQie_xz9D2zyDzRGWdXvL0tFSXQomfWPLa2sX6irue1r_slnrv/s400/oecd+china.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>External Trade Drops Sharply</strong><br /><br />China’s exports fell at the fastest rate in almost 13 years in January while imports fell completely off the cliff, plunging at the record rate of 43.1% year on year, indicating that the contraction in the world’s third-biggest economy may well be gathering rather than losing pace. Exports were down by 17.5 percent from January 2008.<br /><br />Due to the massive fall in imports China's trade surplus remained high - at $39.11 billion it was the second largest on record - and this is almost guaranteed to add to tensions as global leaders seek to avoid a return to protectionism. China’s economic slowdown has already cost the jobs of 20 million migrant workers and the economy is now almost certainly contracting, rather than, as some argue, simply slowing.<br /><br /><br />Exports to the European Union fell 17.4 percent, while those to the U.S. were down 9.8 percent. Shipments of electronics goods dropped 21 percent. Steel slid 32.5 percent and toys declined 14.7 percent, although the numbers are possibly exacerbated by the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, which took place in January this year as opposed to February last year.<br /><br /><br />Chinese government researchers have already begun to advocate weakening the yuan against the dollar to support exports, and according to a report from the Ministry of Finance’s research institute published earlier this month China should “actively guide” the yuan to about 6.93 to the dollar to aid growth and boost employment, although there is no indication at this point that such a recommendation will be acted on.<br /><br />It is very hard to know what is the actual present condition of the Chinese economy, since while it grew by 6.8 percent from a year earlier in the fourth quarter of last year - following a 9 percent in Q3 - this data point doesn't actually tell us too much about the current rate of expansion/contraction, and since things are changing very quickly this is quite important. The same goes for the official industrial output numbers which tell us output was up at a 5.7 percent annual rate in December, down from 17.4 percent a year earlier, but don't tell us what happened between November and December. </p><p><strong>China Compared With The Other Asian Exporters<br /></strong><br />Some commentators are arguing that the drop in Chinese exports is not that severe if we compare it with the decline in other Asian countries, suggesting in effect that China is <strong>less</strong> export dependent than some of its neighbours. </p><blockquote>“While the recent export slowdown has been alarming, China’s export slump has not been as severe as in some neighboring countries with a greater reliance on high-tech exports,” said Jing Ulrich, head of China equities with JPMorgan in Hong Kong. Taiwan’s exports fell a record 44 percent in January.<br /></blockquote><p><br />But this view seems to me to be misleading, and possibly ill-founded. According to a recent research report from DBS, two things stand out in the latest data. First, China’s exports to the US have obviously fallen considerably. In fact, they have fallen by around 9% since October (USD terms, sa, 3mma). Exports to Europe have also fallen by a similar amount. But Asia’s exports to China have fallen by four times more - or 37%. If China were simply passing along weak demand from the US and Europe to its neighbors, the drop in Asia’s exports to China ought to be roughly proportionate. So obviously they’re not.<br /></p><p>DBS suggest that there is thus a huge disconnect between the fall in global demand for China’s exports and China’s demand for Asian exports.<br /><br />Secondly , China’s demand for Asian exports starts to drop sharply in August, fully three months before China’s exports themselves begin to drop. A number of interpretations are possible at this point. One possibility is that the decline in other parts of Asia reflected a decline in new orders which only later hits China (in which case we should expect China's exports to take much stronger hits in February and March). Another is that China was the “leader”, not the“follower”, with much of the Asian exports being directed to fuelling China's internal investment boom. There is a third possibility here, and that is since China is very energy dependent, a significant share in the imports drop is a reflection of the fall in energy prices, since oil did, conveniently, peak in July 2008.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibb2IQRnUJ-p-npvQKL7jBIM_Lb7YQGL6BbT-HinI1YZeHp4WlkNBMet771q3RuCPpR2QVWvpcvROqABHDpVgIZrc35NS29jbVLNARxo8izaivykIwadNAobyytKBDh3j8fKDg/s1600-h/asia+8.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301669140692525746" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 257px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibb2IQRnUJ-p-npvQKL7jBIM_Lb7YQGL6BbT-HinI1YZeHp4WlkNBMet771q3RuCPpR2QVWvpcvROqABHDpVgIZrc35NS29jbVLNARxo8izaivykIwadNAobyytKBDh3j8fKDg/s400/asia+8.png" border="0" /></a><br />Possibly there is some truth in all these arguments, but, in terms of quantities and in terms of timing, there does seem to be something “autonomous”going on with Chinese demand. And if its not simply about the drop in demand from the US, what is it about?<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIihWB7UeAMdmlzJW89Txua6QgBclv40FRvyYx96b8Z5Yf_nPQgJhQyWb2E5TbFaHms-WDNYPtWz0CoMpoZw1rwW7pZe2Rc6pu2OyP2DhJL83XpYuLzJ2dNwBkR1qP9ip2eJT8/s1600-h/china+2.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301670309402145186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 256px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIihWB7UeAMdmlzJW89Txua6QgBclv40FRvyYx96b8Z5Yf_nPQgJhQyWb2E5TbFaHms-WDNYPtWz0CoMpoZw1rwW7pZe2Rc6pu2OyP2DhJL83XpYuLzJ2dNwBkR1qP9ip2eJT8/s400/china+2.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Could the end of the Olympics bubble have something to do with the disconnect, and with the subsequent bust in Asian exports? It certainly seems to be more than a coincidence that China’s imports from Asia rise sharply in the run-up tothe August Olympics and then fall sharply immediately thereafter.<br /><br /><strong>Price Changes Hit Deflation Territory</strong><br /><br />Prices in China have now started to fall, with producer prices dropping in January by 3.3 percent -the most in almost seven years. Consumer prices rose 1 percent in January from a year earlier, after gaining 1.2 percent in December, but these are year on year numbers, and the recent decline in month on month prices changes, despite a surge in food prices as we entered the Lunar New Year celebrations, have generally moved into negative territory.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivVXEqFyUBhxmT_Ua1s_PF66w2vfKrMm0xlmejZudr1VQq0OlEADkKxah1Gl4Ga5amD9Vq2gvHG2jVEAaC-8V0OSu6x9D8LGFrTrUFgOt3YEP7_lB1k-RHwpvTeXE3HfKeyCwh/s1600-h/china+CPI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301801034969368978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivVXEqFyUBhxmT_Ua1s_PF66w2vfKrMm0xlmejZudr1VQq0OlEADkKxah1Gl4Ga5amD9Vq2gvHG2jVEAaC-8V0OSu6x9D8LGFrTrUFgOt3YEP7_lB1k-RHwpvTeXE3HfKeyCwh/s400/china+CPI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />In particular, food prices are usually higher during the Chinese new year celebrations and for that reason consumer prices were probably higher than usual in January. Despite inflation declining less than expected in January, there are signs that inflationary pressure is easing fast and it is likely that China will enter deflationary territory in the coming months. Inflation excluding food in January plunged from 0.6% year on year to -0.6% (see chart below).<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRolQVEybabxUU5GNCFvENChEosn__TJcKkZqypyqT9cvy4wV1qjnHGUI2TwMzgeRVX0kApGu9TiUzzeptcN0hEP2gazFPLbpm93wEckuRhYumgqER5Swu41FSjYb4rlepnbgZ/s1600-h/china+core+CPI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301915619629996578" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 255px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRolQVEybabxUU5GNCFvENChEosn__TJcKkZqypyqT9cvy4wV1qjnHGUI2TwMzgeRVX0kApGu9TiUzzeptcN0hEP2gazFPLbpm93wEckuRhYumgqER5Swu41FSjYb4rlepnbgZ/s400/china+core+CPI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />The residential component showed an unexpected large drop from 1.1% year on year to minus 2.3%. Besides food - which is running just below 5% year on year - all the other major components are now in negative territory.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggCHCErYjxTufIqtXnJMQVj_MA3PzCfSHbGJ2OJXJgPCrKPYlFXuctO-Bjab51q1DAI9q4Cu-qEYQDnMJlgcuMh0-JjGItSE1gBWUUneUgh1uvNBWs__yMDQQuXYG4JNaW8g5r/s1600-h/china+PPI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301876531673870018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggCHCErYjxTufIqtXnJMQVj_MA3PzCfSHbGJ2OJXJgPCrKPYlFXuctO-Bjab51q1DAI9q4Cu-qEYQDnMJlgcuMh0-JjGItSE1gBWUUneUgh1uvNBWs__yMDQQuXYG4JNaW8g5r/s400/china+PPI.png" border="0" /></a> <blockquote>“Inflation could have been close to zero or worse if not for the Chinese New Year, because vegetable prices and grain prices went up,” said Wang Tao, China economist at UBS AG in Beijing.</blockquote><blockquote>McDonalds, the world’s largest fast-food chain, said last week that it was cutting the prices on some of its meals in China by as much as one-third to attract customers to its 1,050 restaurants across the country. </blockquote><p>So my feeling is that we have now entered a deflationary period in China, of longer or shorter duration depending on whether or now the authorities are successful in turning the economy around. The rate of price deflation, and in particular in producer prices, will certainly give us one convenient indicator of the rate of contraction. Further, the inflation slowdown will put additional pressure on the central bank to cut interest rates, since the key one-year lending rates still stands at 5.31 percent - following a total of 2.16 percentage points in reductions at the end of 2008 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The central bank has not yet cut rates so far this year, despite the fact that with inflation now around zero, and the economy more than likely contracting, those 5 percentage points represent very tight monetary conditions. Of course, and looked at from another perspective, any further loosening in interest rates may well not be all that positive for the yuan.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Mind What You Say</strong><br /></p><p></p><blockquote>During the lunar new year festival Chinese people send traditional greetings to each other, such as "Caiyuan gungun" (May prosperity come rolling to you) or "Xinxiang shicheng" (May you achieve all your desires). This year, festive well-wishers have had to be careful which salutations they choose. “Caiyuan gungun” has been virtually banned because it sounds exactly the same as the phrase meaning “laid off and discarded”. “Xinxiang shicheng” is also out of favour because it sounds suspiciously like the Chinese for “40 per cent pay cut”.</blockquote><p><br /><strong>Giant Credit Surge In January</strong><br /><br />The Chinese government has now abandoned quotas for new credit growth and has urged state-owned commercial banks to offer finance for the Rmb 4,000bn ($586bn) fiscal spending plan which is due to run over the next two years. As a result there are now plenty of signs of monetary losening, among which is the fact that new loans rose at a record pace in January while the money supply expanded at the fastest pace in more than a year. Banks extended Rmb 1,620 bn of new local-currency loans and M2 climbed 18.8 percent from a year earlier. The new lending was equivalent in size to 40 percent of the proposed stimulus spending. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRkCLKXNAyo6iVpS3xX9r8Q9dFbXrAgJ-eTl07mPMbtZLJCgFaIGuXzaevTo_5Mzfov0uIYzn_vLG3IgH5ff397Pq6etdSlG3OpYdP85meqF-VJR5X0yM8-XcGmtRRVacuy1a/s1600-h/china+lending.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301894780271951282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 254px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRkCLKXNAyo6iVpS3xX9r8Q9dFbXrAgJ-eTl07mPMbtZLJCgFaIGuXzaevTo_5Mzfov0uIYzn_vLG3IgH5ff397Pq6etdSlG3OpYdP85meqF-VJR5X0yM8-XcGmtRRVacuy1a/s400/china+lending.png" border="0" /></a></p><blockquote>“Explosive lending growth is unsustainable and will likely decelerate,” said Ha Jiming, Hong Kong-based chief economist at China International Corp. “China may face increased risks going forward if the lending upsurge is coupled with declining loan quality and loosened lending terms.”</blockquote>The biggest proportion of new lending, 39 percent, was through discounted bills, which could be though of as supplying working capital, rather than funding investment. Medium and long-term corporate loans accounted for 32 percent.<br /><br />Also of note, consumer credit grew by 121bn in January, and this was almost evenly divided between short and long term credit. These together accounted for just 7% of total credit growth. The level of consumer credit growth was the largest in just over a year, but it was not far above the levels prevailing in 2007. Consumer demand in the holiday month should have been particularly strong in relation to the rest ofthe year, so this rather mediocre result suggest a weakness in the underlying dynamic of consumption growth that could become more apparent as the year progresses.<br /><br /><strong>China Is At The Start, Not The Finish, Of The Slowdown </strong><br /><br />At this point in time it would seem highly premature to start speculating that China's economy may be turning the corner. Many have read the lates CLSA PMI survey, which showed the output index rose in January to 39.7 from 38.6 (which had been a record low) in December, as signs of turning the corner. New orders were even up to 39.9 from 37, while the export orders component rose to 36.3 from 33.6. So the situation was better in January than December, but it is SO important to remember that these sub-components all indicate ongoing contraction, and it is very, very early to start saying that all this has "bottomed".<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBlwq1jHtCyawMKoHWmxjz74qz4-OGj298WUXYLqcwp02fX7M6jXwE_v-RqHpeUdCyFUv-VPWY10YdwwzLtdGbnVyz2WBVn3JQGE23g51giAm2JqvOkS3t6LO0AMcbH6nZ4j-/s1600-h/china+PMI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298106048554977490" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 241px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBlwq1jHtCyawMKoHWmxjz74qz4-OGj298WUXYLqcwp02fX7M6jXwE_v-RqHpeUdCyFUv-VPWY10YdwwzLtdGbnVyz2WBVn3JQGE23g51giAm2JqvOkS3t6LO0AMcbH6nZ4j-/s400/china+PMI.png" border="0" /></a><br />The collapse of China’s export engine has obviously hit the most vulnerable first, and the Chinese authorities estimate that 20m of an estimated 130m rural migrant workers in China's industrial sector have lost their jobs and returned to home towns and villages. The implied 15.3 per cent unemployment rate among migrants is not captured in official jobless numbers, which measure only urban workers who register as unemployed. That official number rose to 8.86m people, or 4.2 per cent of the urban workforce, in December, but many specialists say this number vastly underestimates the true scale of the problem.<br /><br />And in this environment it is hard to see the "big switch" to a consumption driven economy moving slowly, if indeed it moves at all.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-89908070736292787452009-02-02T08:56:00.007+01:002009-02-02T10:28:57.934+01:00China's Manufacturing Sector Continued To Contract In JanuaryChina’s manufacturing contracted for a sixth consecutive month in January as shrinking global demand hit the country's export-driven economy. The CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to a seasonally adjusted 42.2 from 41.2 in December. Since any reading below 50 indicates contraction, even though the rate of contraction dropped (and has been dropping since November, see chart below) China's manufacturing sector (and hence China's economy) is still contracting. What we don't know at this point is how quickly China GDP is contracting, we won't know that till someone with the time and ingenuity devises a way to calculate a rough and ready quarter on quarter (seasonally adjusted) output indicator. Come on, be famous for a day, go out and do it (since the Chinese statistics office apparently have no interest in the matter), I would, but I simply don't have the time, since Europe, not China, is my focus. However, on a rough and ready, back of the envelope, basis my guess is that this months Chinese reading may be equivalent to something like a quarter on quarter contraction rate of around 0.5%, which means that what we have at this point is a 2% annual contraction rate, but we really need to see some actual data to calibrate all this a bit better I think.<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBlwq1jHtCyawMKoHWmxjz74qz4-OGj298WUXYLqcwp02fX7M6jXwE_v-RqHpeUdCyFUv-VPWY10YdwwzLtdGbnVyz2WBVn3JQGE23g51giAm2JqvOkS3t6LO0AMcbH6nZ4j-/s1600-h/china+PMI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298106048554977490" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 241px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBlwq1jHtCyawMKoHWmxjz74qz4-OGj298WUXYLqcwp02fX7M6jXwE_v-RqHpeUdCyFUv-VPWY10YdwwzLtdGbnVyz2WBVn3JQGE23g51giAm2JqvOkS3t6LO0AMcbH6nZ4j-/s400/china+PMI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />In the CLSA survey, output index rose to 39.7 from 38.6 (which had been a record low) in December. New orders were up to 39.9 from 37. The index of export orders rose to 36.3 from 33.6. So the situation was better in January than December, but it is SO important to remember that these sub-components all indicate ongoing contraction.<br /><br />My guess is that Chinese companies are squeezing costs and margins as far as the lemon will take it, since there is little evidence of any uptick in aggregate global demand for manufactured products, au contraire. My guess is also that they are grabbing market share by entering the supply chain in places they haven't been before. For example, Hafei Aviation Industry Co., China’s second-largest listed aerospace company, surged to its highest level in almost six months in Shanghai trading this morning after the announcement that it had <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=aB2JDEgQKoYY&refer=china">formed a venture to supply composite-material components to Airbus SAS</a>.<br /><br /><blockquote>Airbus plans to give 5 percent of the work making parts for A350 airframes to Chinese companies in a bid to win market share in the world’s second-biggest aviation market. The planemaker has also opened an aircraft assembly line in China, its first outside of Europe.<br /><br />Harbin Hafei will start production in September, and it plans to open a new plant by the end of 2010, Airbus said. Hafei, Avichina Industry & Technology Co. and Harbin Development Zone Heli Infrastructure Development Co. will each hold 10 percent of the venture. Harbin Aircraft Industry Group Co. will own a 50 percent stake. Airbus will have a 20 percent stake. </blockquote><br /><br /><strong>Unemployment Surges Dramatically</strong><br /><br />Chinese manufacturers also shed jobs last month at the fastest pace since the survey began in 2004, with the employment index falling to a record low of 45, so obviously as workers lose their jobs internal consumption is also affected, and we clearly have worse to come in the immediate future.<br /><br />Chen Xiwen, a senior rural planning official, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/19c25aea-f0f5-11dd-8790-0000779fd2ac.html">estimated that about 20 million migrant workers had lost their jobs</a> because of the nation’s economic slowdown at a press briefing in Beijing today. <p></p><blockquote><p>More than 20m rural migrant workers in China have lost their jobs and returned home as a result of the global economic crisis according to government figures, raising the spectre of widespread unrest in the authoritarian country. By the start of the Chinese New Year Spring Festival on 25 January, 15.3 per cent of China’s 130m migrant workers had lost their jobs and returned from manufacturing centres in the south and east of the country to their home villages or towns, according to Chen Xiwen, Director of the Office of Central Rural Work Leading Group, who was quoting a survey from the Ministry of Agriculture.</p><p>Government figures show that in recent years 6m to 7m new rural migrant workers a year have poured out of the countryside to fill the factories, construction sites and restaurants of the booming cities, which means the government must actually deal with as many as 27m new jobless in the countryside. On top of that, a survey by a government think-tank in December estimated 1.5m recent tertiary graduates in China were unable to find work by the end of November and universities and technical colleges are expected to churn out another 6.5m graduates this year. According to rough official calculations one percentage point of Chinese GDP growth creates around 1m jobs.</p></blockquote><p>Chinese Premier Wen explicitly declined to rule out a devaluation of the yuan <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae6805b4-f08c-11dd-972c-0000779fd2ac.html">in an interview with the Financial Times today</a>, although , he said that for the moment the government was content to keep the currency stable at what he considered to be a balanced and reasonable level. <blockquote>Asked if China bore any responsibility for causing the financial crisis, as a number of economists believe, he stiffens and says in a low voice: “It is a ridiculous view.” But he makes it clear that Beijing will do whatever is needed to maintain growth at “about 8 per cent” this year. “Running our own affairs well is our biggest contribution to mankind,” he says. If necessary, some of the country’s huge stash of foreign currency reserves could be put towards this endeavour – a new plan to enable the use of reserves for domestic purposes is under discussion, he says. <p></p><p>“We must take forceful steps. Under special circumstances, necessary and extraordinary measures are required,” he says. “We should not be restricted by conventions. Success or failure depends on the pace and intensity of those measures.” </p><p>Mr Wen refuses to make an explicit commitment not to devalue the Chinese currency during the crisis – as the government did after the Asian financial crisis in 1997, a pledge that helped engineer the eventual recovery and won China a lot of prestige. But he does rule out any big shifts in the value of the Chinese currency.</p><p>“I want to make it very clear that maintaining the stability of the renminbi at a balanced and reasonable level is not only in the interests of China but also the interests of the world,” he says. “Many people have not yet come to see this point that if we have drastic fluctuation in the exchange rate of the renminbi, it would be a big disaster.”</p></blockquote><br /><br />The yuan fell 0.1 percent to 6.8471 against the dollar as of 12:23 p.m. in Shanghai today, a drop which is largely a by-product of the fall in the euro against USD. <p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-45997485766559618042009-01-22T07:48:00.006+01:002009-01-22T22:24:00.822+01:00China Nears Recession Point As GDP SlumpsChina’s National Bureau of Statistics released fourth quarter GDP growth statistics for 2008 today, and it turns out that (according to their initial estimates) the Chinese economy expanded by 6.8 per cent in the last quarter of the year when compared with the same period in 2007. This was the weakest quarterly year on year growth rate in seven years. For the year as a whole, the economy grew 9 per cent, down from the revised 13 per cent growth rate in 2007.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgglbGZcBc8pCRRQznrsdRzWUrmr5LzDigXfN8FKhkf7YoBNm4Qit-eK4oXTYf1ZDTPZWOWht_-Q8KBhlNIVRQu8-zZEzWv8PlWcFQikMvIwfWDUqMWHg-CNHcvZ0l82GNmD8TD/s1600-h/china+GDP.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294022854633048914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgglbGZcBc8pCRRQznrsdRzWUrmr5LzDigXfN8FKhkf7YoBNm4Qit-eK4oXTYf1ZDTPZWOWht_-Q8KBhlNIVRQu8-zZEzWv8PlWcFQikMvIwfWDUqMWHg-CNHcvZ0l82GNmD8TD/s400/china+GDP.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><blockquote>Strikingly, Japanese exports to the US were down some 37% yoy, losing some 26pp since the 11% yoy contraction in July. But we cannot highlight strongly enough how truly mindboggling Japan’s collapse in exports to China are. Last July they were expanding at a 16% yoy pace. Now they are contracting at a 35% yoy rate! This is a phenomenon throughout the region. Hence despite the notoriously manipulated Chinese GDP data showing a shocking slowdown in GDP growth to 6.8% yoy, I would eat my hat if the Chinese economy was doing anything other than contracting right now. Albert Edwards Societe Generale</blockquote><p>The steepness of this slowdown is likely to have a significant impact on much of the rest of Asia, which relies heavily on demand from China. Only this week a Singapore based economist friend of mine sent me this in an e-mail:</p><blockquote>At S'pore's port container terminal (the busiest in the world), a third of the cranes are idle. There are some companies saying they have inventories stretching 6 months out. December's plunge in Asian exports was due to the shutdown of electronic companies during the Christmas period because of the pile up in inventories. </blockquote><p>Basically there is still far to much we don't know about what is happening in China, like, for example, the seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter rate. Barclays Capital economist Peng Wensheng estimates that after taking into account seasonal adjustments, the Chinese economy barely grew at all in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter. My feeling is that he is most probably right. Most of the consenus analysts are therefore very probably well behind the curve. Like Daiwa Institute of Research, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. who while they all today reduced their estimates for China’s growth in 2009 remained at remarkably high levels. Daiwa cut to 6.3 percent from 7.5 percent; JPMorgan to 7.2 percent from 7.8 percent; and Citigroup to 7.6 percent from 8.2 percent. This seems to me to be the next best thing to living in "cloud cuckoo land".</p><p>Basically it seems to me that few people other than professional macro economists and bank analysts (and far from all of these if the truth be told) really realise what the implications of such a dramatic decline in year on year GDP actually means. If the quarter on quarter rate of expansion was very low indeed, possibly verging on the negative then - guessing a bit, you know what they call back of the envelope stuff - this means output must have been moving in the October-December period somewhere in an annualised 0 to 2% range. This means we may well see quarter on quarter negative growth in 2009 in China, and that the possibility of a technical recession of two consecutive quarters of negative growth must be over 50% at this point. It wasn't so long ago that the consensus was saying that annual GDP growth which was as high as 6% would be tantamount to a recession! </p><p>It is really very frustrating to find that with all the trillions of dollars at issue, and a whole army of China watchers, virtually no one seems to be trying to derive monthly and quarterly rates of movement from the official statistics.</p><p>The OECD do at least seem to be aware of this problem and they do have a lead indicator for China (which includes items like cargo handled at ports, Enterprise deposits, Chemical fertilizer production, Non ferrous metal production, a Monetary aggregate M2, and Imports from Asia. Below I have a chart which compares this indicator for both Spain and China. Since Spain, as we know, is having a very strong contraction at this moment in time, it gives some sort of reference point. What is so striking is that it appears China is now slowing much more rapidly than even Spain, and GDP may, looking at the steepness of the recent month on month drops,have even started contracting in November. This is obviously all shell shock stuff.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvvmZR1Isb1kSJi37Md6ab57_jUzL9tr682m7S0Nk76Dx2FCOXVT33Eop2NFhBFA5Lz3DMknOlt0whB4gr4OZVVvA-gVfe4H1r6RnsGwhB7aqMQsRowY_jkDERuMsf-K0rdPUY/s1600-h/oecd+lead+indicator.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292572844589580418" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 237px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvvmZR1Isb1kSJi37Md6ab57_jUzL9tr682m7S0Nk76Dx2FCOXVT33Eop2NFhBFA5Lz3DMknOlt0whB4gr4OZVVvA-gVfe4H1r6RnsGwhB7aqMQsRowY_jkDERuMsf-K0rdPUY/s400/oecd+lead+indicator.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Societe Generale economist Albert Edwards is one of those who has been drawing our attention to the rapid decline in China's GDP (although <a href="http://fistfulofeuros.net/afem/demographics/the-second-great-depression-wends-its-way-forward-in-december/">I myself had a go here</a>) and he uses one very interesting "proxy" (an indicator which can serve as a rough and ready substitute for something else, in this case movement in GDP) - electricity output. If you look at the 3 month year-on-year moving average for electricity output in China (see chart below) you will see it is already falling, which means that (in all probability) China's GDP is falling, which is just wow!<br /><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNUbsygaW__hZ0csGuK_jK4NfVtnYqDYtJ9XgQjWCOpXpRddr2p9IKhcykpQQVXRmW0Q9KS0gjpowpiVPurPwbfGe41ViKU1E1s2__UW37Sf4K8FcEi6FGA25n49ksMp205JPI/s1600-h/china+elec+out.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292563360589229474" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 254px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNUbsygaW__hZ0csGuK_jK4NfVtnYqDYtJ9XgQjWCOpXpRddr2p9IKhcykpQQVXRmW0Q9KS0gjpowpiVPurPwbfGe41ViKU1E1s2__UW37Sf4K8FcEi6FGA25n49ksMp205JPI/s400/china+elec+out.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The history of using electrical output as a convenient proxy where we simply don't have very adequate data has a long and reputable history - going back to the pioneering work of US growth theorist Edward Dennison in the 1960s - but in case you feel that the correlation may not be a good one, here (see below) is a chart from Edwards which shows China GDP and electricity output compared. The fit is obviously not a perfect one, but that isn't the name of the game here, what should be evident is that a drop in electrical output as large as the one we are seeing in China at this point will be reflected in a very sharp reduction in GDP output.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjADMArc9DM9K9CTZ7G4ZdYW8yRH-D_CDv3UiMEc8SUryLyn6pv3lju4pZsQ5qad0FUNZeXOw4D9_OGgPIutfW43Hu5A-yyxSEOSfkfCk3asqfEte7mfv2nAoHOwiK4U_-eFyrU/s1600-h/china+three.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292566505235576786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 255px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjADMArc9DM9K9CTZ7G4ZdYW8yRH-D_CDv3UiMEc8SUryLyn6pv3lju4pZsQ5qad0FUNZeXOw4D9_OGgPIutfW43Hu5A-yyxSEOSfkfCk3asqfEte7mfv2nAoHOwiK4U_-eFyrU/s400/china+three.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Which takes me on to my next point, how reliable is Chinese data? Well, perhaps I am going to surprise some of you here, but I would day that for my purposes it doesn't really matter, since what I think we need to know is the rate of contraction (or expansion) in Chinese GDP, and not its absolute level. What matters to the rest of the world is not expecially how rich - or poor - China actually is (from a macro economic analysis point of view that is), but how rapidly it is expanding - or contracting - and what the rate of export and reserves growth is. The rest is interesting, but from a nuts and bolts point of view, it constitutes what Boris Vian used to call froth on the daydream. If the official data is rather inaccurate, then it is not unreasonable to assume that the inbuilt biases are the same from one time period to the next (the same point applies to the existence of the so called "informal economy"), and so my message here is - arrived at on the basis of looking at one economy after another in rapid succession - how much we can learn from how little, if only we know what we are looking for that is. This electrical output picture is also to some extent confirmed by China's manufacturing purchasing managers index, which has been contracting for some months now, and to an extent which begins to be compatible with GDP contraction, given the dependence of China on manufacturing activity.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTErQxXNeQ-ukk-O6ilu8-T_6trlh0Jee34Hhud7z3srGVaq1Yn6VPLW-uDVROqVgCAn3W1wVuHwLzOqUsX13hUPGqnUpyqUcCfPwPoRPmjZz4OFV7sX4r4eIaI135oLZsfibSIA/s1600-h/china+pmi.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286656999714911298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 190px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTErQxXNeQ-ukk-O6ilu8-T_6trlh0Jee34Hhud7z3srGVaq1Yn6VPLW-uDVROqVgCAn3W1wVuHwLzOqUsX13hUPGqnUpyqUcCfPwPoRPmjZz4OFV7sX4r4eIaI135oLZsfibSIA/s320/china+pmi.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Well <a href="http://fistfulofeuros.net/wordpress/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=4099">China isn't quite in Great Depression mode yet</a>, but manufacturing activity - which forms the core of the Chinese economy and accounts for 43% of all activity - is already very close to a technical recession, and phew, it wasn't very long ago that the Chinese economy was registering double digit growth. So the turn around is gigantic. The "close to technical recession in manufacturing industry" call comes from the people over at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, who compile the China purchasing managers index, and they base their judgement on the fact that their Chinese manufacturing index has now been registering contraction for five consecutive months.<br /><br /><strong>Export Slump</strong><br /><br />China is an export driven economy, and you can't simply switch from external to internal demand as a driver at the click of a finger (or mouse, if you make your financial transactions online). Another economist who mailed me this morning said this:</p><blockquote>"I don't cover China so unfortunately, my views on that country are not very informed, but I do agree with your point about the China internal consumption argument. In my opinion, the belief that domestic consumption will take over from exports as a growth engine is nothing more than myth. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the argument, but when factories and the export sector, in general, are bleeding jobs, it would be rather odd for internal consumption to take off at this point in time."</blockquote><p>So what is happening to exports? Well, China’s exports fell the most in nearly a decade in December, with shipments down by 2.8 percent over December 2007. That compares with a 21.7 percent increase a year earlier. Over the whole of 2008 exports were up by 17.2 percent, a reduction on the 25.7 percent gain registered in 2007, and suggesting that the drop in the last two months of the year may have been very sharp indeed. Exports to the European Union, China’s biggest export market, fell 3.5 percent in December from a year earlier. Shipments to the U.S. dropped 4.1 percent. Imports dropped even more sharply - by 21.3 percent, meaning the trade surplus failed to fall, and at $39 billion it remained the second-biggest on record. </p><p>And China's declining imports are also being felt elsewhere, since in Japan's December trade report (which was out this morning, and was a complete horror story) we find that exports to China were down 35.5 percent year on year.</p><p>So to some up, while it may well be true that China is not (yet) entering the Second Great Depression, I am arguing that China is really going to be one of the worst case scenarios in the current global recession, and that consensus thinking still has a very very long way to go in catching up with events in the China case.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-87827813202961705492009-01-02T16:17:00.002+01:002009-01-02T16:23:03.387+01:00The Second Great Depression Wends Its Way Forward in DecemberAnd lands in China.<br /><br /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTErQxXNeQ-ukk-O6ilu8-T_6trlh0Jee34Hhud7z3srGVaq1Yn6VPLW-uDVROqVgCAn3W1wVuHwLzOqUsX13hUPGqnUpyqUcCfPwPoRPmjZz4OFV7sX4r4eIaI135oLZsfibSIA/s1600-h/china+pmi.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 190px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTErQxXNeQ-ukk-O6ilu8-T_6trlh0Jee34Hhud7z3srGVaq1Yn6VPLW-uDVROqVgCAn3W1wVuHwLzOqUsX13hUPGqnUpyqUcCfPwPoRPmjZz4OFV7sX4r4eIaI135oLZsfibSIA/s320/china+pmi.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286656999714911298" /></a><br /><br />Well <a href="http://fistfulofeuros.net/wordpress/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=4099">China isn't quite in Great Depression mode yet</a>, but manufacturing activity - which forms the core of the Chinese economy and accounts for 43% of all activity - is already very close to a technical recession, and phew, it wasn't very long ago that the Chinese economy was registering double digit growth. So the turn around is gigantic. The "close to technical recession in manufacturing industry" call comes from the people over at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, who compile the China purchasing managers index, and they base their judgement on the fact that their Chinese manufacturing index has now been registering contraction for five consecutive months.<br /><br />Now for those of you who are new to the world of Purchasing Manager's Indexes (PMIs), welcome. Basically these indexes are very useful, since they give you a "just in time" point of reference to tell you what is actually happening. These are composite indexes - measuring things like current output, new orders (both domestic and export), employment and input prices. They are not perfect, but they are reasonably accurate - the fit which you can get between composite PMIs (manufacturing and services combined) and GDP is often attractively good - and in a country like China where the main data we get is year-on-year (which in a critical moment of rapid change like this one is virtually useless) it is very hard to see what is happening. The Shanghai-based Industrial Bank estimate, for example, that GDP growth in China will be 5.6% in Q4 2008. But what does that data point - if accurate - tell us? That the economy is slowing fast, well we already knew that. But just how fast? Well GDP was 9% in Q3 - down from 10.1% in Q2. So the deceleration is very rapid, but did the Chinese economy actually manage to contract in Q4? I doubt it, but it may do in Q1 2009, although the only way we would really know would be if the National Statistics Office published quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted numbers, which as far as I can see they don't. Indeed only a small group of highly developed economies actually take the trouble to do this, and you don't even find all EU member countries doing it yet, although Eurostat (thank god for Eurostat) do require such data from members (but those of you who ever get round to checking will see there are still blanks for some countries in the Eurostat quarterly releases).<br /><br />Hence you can see why, in the case of somewhere like China, the PMIs are very, very useful, for those of us who would like to try and follow what is happening as it actually happens. <br /><br />As for the PMI itself, China’s composite manufacturing index contracted for the fifth consecutive month in December as recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan bit deep into demand for exports - indeed China's exports fell year on year for the first time in seven years in November. The CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index registered a seasonally adjusted 41.2, compared with a record low of 40.9 in November. On such indexes any reading below 50 reflects a contraction. <br /><br />Despite the apparent small improvement in December the current output index actually fell sharply, and was down to a record low of 38.6 from 39.2 in November, so production was falling, and the index was basically nudged up slightly by other factors, such as the measure of new orders which rebounded to 37 from 36.1, driven by a rise in export orders to 33.6 from a horrific 28.2 in November. However, according to the report, Chinese manufacturers reduced the size of their workforces at a series record in December, and the employment index has now contracted for five consecutive months, to hit 45.2 in December. <br /><br /><br />So where exactly are we? Well we aren't (quite) in the Second Great Depression yet, but the situation is deteriorating, and rapidly. Manufacturing output is now contracting at quite a sharp pace, while it was rising in the first half of the year at something like a 15% year on year rate. In a useful summary of the Chinese situation back in November, Nouriel Roubini <a href="http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2940">defined a hard landing in China - which he felt was coming - as follows</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>There is thus now a growing risk of a hard landing in China. Let us be clear what we mean by hard landing. In a country with the potential growth of China, a hard landing would occur if the growth rate of the economy were to slow down to 5-6% as China needs a growth rate of 9-10% to absorb about 24 million folks joining the labor force every year; it needs a growth rate of 9-10% to move every year about 12-14 million poor rural farmers to the modern industrial/manufacturing urban sector.</blockquote><br /><br />This is more or less the consensus view of what we used to think a hard landing would mean in China, but I think the latest data already take us beyond that. I think there is now a real risk of a technical recession in the more or less classic sense of two consecutive quarters of negative growth (let's say that the risk is 50-50 at this point), and of serious economic and financial dislocation following in the train of this (btw, just how quickly can you burn your way through $1.7 trillion in reserves, it will be an interesting experiment I think). <br /><br />Brad Setser (further down the same link) has long been more cautious on China, being sceptical about the impact of a dramatic slowdown in exports (and even more importantly in export oriented investment) on an export driven economy, but those of us who have been closely watching other export dependent economies like Germany and Japan over the last decade and a half were surely not quite so sceptical. However even Brad himself is clear that the possibility of an export downturn feeding its way back into the domestic economy - via some sort of negative feedback process - is real enough:<br /><br /><blockquote>But the real key to forecasting China’s future growth consequently is determining whether domestic consumption and above all investment will continue to grow strongly in the absence of strong export demand. Remember, over the past few years both domestic investment and exports increased rapidly. If they fall together as well, Chinese growth will slow quite significantly. And unfortunately the latest indicators seem to suggest that they are correlated; consequently domestic demand may fall along with exports.</blockquote><br /><br />The $1.7 trillion question is, then, just why China is so export dependent? Doubtless there are many factors at work, but one of these is, I am almost sure, China's very special demographics (30 years of one child per familiy policy), and the special problems that these present in the context of building a sustainable national pensions system at the same time as the population pyramid inverts. Obviously the absence of a credible pension system has to be one of the factors influencing the strong desire to save which we are seeing in China. Economics Nobel Franco Modigliani also thought this, and specifically addressed the Chinese saving puzzle <a href="http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jeclit/v42y2004i1p145-170.html">in his last published paper</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>China's per capita income ranks below 100th in the world. Its saving rate, however, has been one of the highest worldwide in recent decades. In this paper, we attempt to explain the seeming paradox within the framework of the Life-Cycle Hypothesis developed by Franco Modigliani. The key LCH variables are income and population growth. Our results based on data we put together from official sources show that income growth has been the dominant factor behind the dramatic increase in China's saving rate, as predicted by the LCH. Demographic structure and inflation also had significant impact on the fluctuations of the saving rate.<br />The Chinese Saving Puzzle and the Life-Cycle Hypothesis - Franco Modigliani and Shi Larry Cao</blockquote><br /><br /><strong>By Way Of Brief Conclusion</strong><br /><br />Well basically, the conclusion here is that there is no conclusion, at this point at least. But I would draw attention to two potential points of interest for all you "economy watchers". <br /><br />Firstly, a couple of months back my fellow blogger Doug Muir <a href="http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/history/one-for-the-economists-among-us/">drew our attention</a> to a very interesting point being made <a href="http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=477k3d8mh2wmtpc4b6h07p4hy9z83x18">by US economic historian Scott Reynolds Nelson</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two years ago, I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some interest to my colleagues in American business and labor history but probably unknown to everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the microfilm reader, I have been hearing weird echoes of recent events.</blockquote><br /><br />At the time of reading this I thought to myself hmmmm! This isn't that simple, but he is on to something. Basically I think no two (or does that make it now three) Great Depressions are ever really exactly alike. I certainly think the resemblence between what is going on now and what happened between 1929 and 1933 is more than passing (especially for the sequencing, of which more in another post), but evidently there are elements of the 1873 one too, and Scott Reynolds puts his finger on some of them, especially in the context of surplus to requirement investment and large capacity overhangs. So my best guess is that what we have is a hybrid, and that what is now happening in China is the best example of the underlying dynamics behind that other great depression that hit our grand- (or great grand) parents and that may well be now about to come back to hit us, boomerang style.<br /><br />Which brings me to my second point, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley_Tariff_Act">as wikipedia explain</a>, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, and raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. After the act was passed, many other countries retaliated with their own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, and American exports and imports plunged by more than half. Many economists now regard the Smoot-Hawley Act as having been the principal feedback catalyst for the severe reduction in U.S.-European trade, and which took it from the 1929 high down to the depressed levels of 1932 and which thus accompanied the start of the Great Depression. And here, in the spectre of a repeat performance comes just the danger we face in the wake of the dramatic contraction which is now underway in China.<br /><br />It is my personal guess that the first major issue to face Barack Obama as President of the United States may well be what to do about China, and especially what to do about a China which lets - as I now suspect they may well do - the yuan float, in order to see it <strong>float DOWN</strong> as the economy unwinds. If this does indeed happen then Obama will really have to struggle to hold back the protectionist pressure I think.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-58589745540313895822008-12-01T14:11:00.003+01:002008-12-01T14:35:46.763+01:00China's Manufacturing Contracts Sharply In NovemberChina’s manufacturing shrank by the most on record and export orders plunged, providing more evidence that recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan are sharply slowing what was previously the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a seasonally adjusted 38.8 in November from 44.6 in October, according to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing. The output index fell to 35.5 from 44.3, while the index of new orders dropped to 32.3 from 41.7. On these indexes any reading below 50 means contraction, and as can be seen in the chart below, China's manufacturing industry has now been contracting (month on month) in four of the last five months. The November reading stands out though, since the magnitude of the contraction has accelerated sharply.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJhleeTB0qa-Vo7EnN-5sta6a1-MRivTWEWLr6qlK00bbswTeqkLVIJQFhWY3u4PoCvCeKmCWhtd6rSbQQsKhkiKcUVVdhgHZxqU7wVC1QPenGFlU2fgdIwkvBX5DlBq0gjMCE/s1600-h/china+PMI.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274812882130669634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 190px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJhleeTB0qa-Vo7EnN-5sta6a1-MRivTWEWLr6qlK00bbswTeqkLVIJQFhWY3u4PoCvCeKmCWhtd6rSbQQsKhkiKcUVVdhgHZxqU7wVC1QPenGFlU2fgdIwkvBX5DlBq0gjMCE/s320/china+PMI.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />A separate index - the CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index - reveals a similar picture, and fell to a seasonally adjusted 40.9 in November from 45.2 in October. The CLSA index, which was started in April 2004, is based on a survey of more than 400 manufacturing companies.<br /><br />Output, new orders and export orders had record contractions. The output index fell to 39.2 in November from 43.4 in October, while the index of new orders declined to 36.1 from 43.8. The index of export orders dropped to 28.2 from 44.3, CLSA said.<br /><br />A slump in property sales and building work is also undermining growth. Construction of homes, offices and factories contracted at least 16.6 percent in October after a 32.5 percent expansion a year earlier, according to a report from Macquarie Securities.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-49723617579809859362008-11-03T18:54:00.002+01:002008-11-03T19:23:24.118+01:00The Contraction In Chinese Manufacturing Accelerates In OctoberChina's manufacturing contracted by the most on record last month as the global financial crisis cut demand for exports, a second survey showed. The CLSA China Purchasing Managers' Index fell to a seasonally adjusted 45.2 in October from 47.7 in September. The output index fell to 43.4 in October from 46.7 in September, while the index of new orders declined to 43.8 from 45.8. The index of export orders dropped to 44.3 from 45.9. <br /><br /><br />The government-backed China Federation of Logistics purchasing managers' index - published on 1 November - also showed a strong contraction, falling to 44.6 in October, the lowest level since the data began in 2005, from 51.2 in September. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGz13O2TfwiRm_ua_KyuONUgdLsCBK2ppOozltDAPKMxYE2FLWZJeZakq0zhaprbf11WmbxM3wg8QnERYAbX_qxnplK3DHHVgpITF4UtejlryXa18RQM6v_bYf7k4GKgl_BiTf/s1600-h/china+manufacturing+PMI.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGz13O2TfwiRm_ua_KyuONUgdLsCBK2ppOozltDAPKMxYE2FLWZJeZakq0zhaprbf11WmbxM3wg8QnERYAbX_qxnplK3DHHVgpITF4UtejlryXa18RQM6v_bYf7k4GKgl_BiTf/s320/china+manufacturing+PMI.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264496708328893890" /></a><br /><br />Basically, not only does Chinese manufacturing seem to have been in contraction mode for the last several months now, the rate of contraction seems to be accelerating.<br /><br />To be watched, and carefully.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-91145899615964139072008-10-20T08:50:00.006+02:002008-10-20T19:15:52.605+02:00China GDP Growth Slows Quite Rapidly In Q3 2008China’s economic growth rate slipped into single digits in the third quarter for the first time in at least four years under the impact of the global credit crisis and weakness in the domestic property sector. Annual gross domestic product growth slowed more sharply than expected to 9.0 per cent from 10.1 per cent in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhACdLppB85hWmJvVdFAPADYFiJojWhahlZAdrRY7zx-9VzOmBkN5_5sx2yMEt2O1OiHzDAjcNKOq70CIR0_p-EfetAOV97581vPoEJMPiTNu5BYYJ1gbbri9t3Fy9bIP7Lo9In/s1600-h/china+GDP+growth.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhACdLppB85hWmJvVdFAPADYFiJojWhahlZAdrRY7zx-9VzOmBkN5_5sx2yMEt2O1OiHzDAjcNKOq70CIR0_p-EfetAOV97581vPoEJMPiTNu5BYYJ1gbbri9t3Fy9bIP7Lo9In/s320/china+GDP+growth.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259125267802913010" /></a><br /><br />It was not immediately possible to pinpoint when growth was last weaker because China does not publish new quarterly data when it revises its annual GDP figures. nor was it possible to precisely calibrate the speed of the slowdown since we do not have seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter data. China's economic expansion was the weakest since at least the second quarter of 2003, when growth slumped because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, epidemic. <br /><br />Industrial production slowed to 11.4 per cent in the year to September, the lowest rate since 2002, suggesting that the economy was losing momentum as the quarter went on. However, the pace of retail sales and fixed-asset investment growth both accelerated last month, beating forecasts and providing reassurance to policy makers counting on domestic demand to take up the slack from ebbing exports. <br /><br />The property market, which accounts for about a quarter of fixed-asset investment, is in almost in free fall due to tight credit and government curbs. Home sales by volume plunged 55.5 percent and 38.5 percent in Beijing and Shanghai in the first eight months from a year earlier, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the China Real Estate Association. This decline is really still to show its ugly face in the data though, since urban fixed-asset investment climbed 27.6 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier, after a 27.4 percent increase through August, today's data showed. <br /><br />Retail sales rose 23.2 percent last month from a year earlier, matching the gain in August and close to the fastest pace in at least nine years. <br /><br />Urban disposable incomes for the first nine months rose 14.7 percent to 11,865 yuan ($1,737) from a year earlier. Rural cash incomes climbed 19.6 percent to 3,971 yuan. Those numbers were boosted by inflation. <br /><br /><br /><br />The fifth quarter of slowing growth may exacerbate declines this year in iron ore, copper and oil prices and undermine demand for exports within Asia, where economies are already contracting. The cabinet announced yesterday tax cuts for exporters and increased infrastructure investment and the central bank may be poised to cut interest rates for the third time this year. <br /><br />Steel-product output in China, the world's biggest producer and user of the alloy, fell 5.5 percent in September from a year ago to a seven-month low as weak demand and falling prices forced mills to pare production. <br /><br /><blockquote>"China's crude steel output fell to 39.6 million tonnes, down 7% from August and 9.1% year-on-year, indicating that many northern mills were cutting production, said market sources. China's steel production ban for the Olympics lasted from July to September 20, so a fall in September output meant that mills were not only not resuming production, but reducing it further in the face of weak demand, said the sources. Several mills in Hebei, China's biggest crude steelmaking province, have been cutting output or have even closed down due to sluggish demand. Some were dumping products in the market in return for cash. September output for major finished products like rebar and plate rose, however, inched up in the month but analysts said this may be due to lower crude steel exports in the month. China exported 7.31 million tonnes of crude steel in September, 1.42 million tonnes or 13.5% less..."</blockquote><br /><br />Output was 45.9 million metric tons last month, according to figures provided today by China Mainland Marketing Research Co., which releases data on behalf of National Bureau of Statistics. Production rose 8.1 percent to 445.2 million tons in the first nine months from a year earlier. <br /><br />Prices of hot-rolled coil, a benchmark product, have fallen to 3,645 yuan a metric ton from a record 5,957 yuan in June. The slump has led to losses at almost all steelmakers, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s analyst Zhang Feng said recently in a research note. <br /><br /><br />Export growth may plummet from 22 percent in the first nine months of this year to ``zero or even negative growth'' in 2009, according to Stephen Green, head of China research at Standard Chartered Bank Plc in Shanghai. <br /><br />The closure last week of a big toy factory in southern China dramatised the difficulties facing the economy, which have prompted steel and aluminium firms to slash output because of slumping prices. Steel prices in China have fallen about 20 per cent over the past three months and there are reports of small steelmakers being forced to close because of shrinking demand.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-8053863796626759292008-10-15T11:15:00.003+02:002008-10-15T11:25:16.853+02:00Rio Tinto Give China Slowdown WarningRio Tinto’s chief executive, Toma Albanese, warned on Wednesday about the health of China and said the slowdown in one of the world’s fastest growing economies had led the mining company to revise its capital spending plans. Mr Albanese said there had been a marked reduction in Chinese commodity demand from the overheated levels of 2007 and added that the “vast majority of Chinese aluminium producers are now making operating losses.” <br /><br />As the credit crisis unfolded over the past year, one of the few certainties in the global economy seemed to be China’s ability to plough on regardless at double-digit growth rates. Not any more. With Wall Street in tatters and Europe’s and Japan’s economies faltering, many investors are beginning to ask if China too might stumble badly. After five turbo-charged years of accelerating growth, the Chinese economy is clearly slowing.<br /><br /><strong>Housing Market Evidence of Slowdown</strong><br /><br />The local government in Shanghai yesterday raised its ceiling on mortgage lending to households under a government-run program, uping available funding by 20 percent in an attempt to encourage families to buy apartments in the city. Eligible households will be allowed to borrow as much as 600,000 yuan ($87,679) starting today, up from 500,000 yuan, the city's public housing fund agency said in a statement yesterday. <br /><br />Under Shanghai's mortgage program, most households are allowed to spend as much as 7 percent of their monthly salaries to repay loans. Employers must match workers' contributions and borrowers receive preferential bank lending rates. Households meeting certain requirements can spend as much as 15 percent of salaries, and they are the ones eligible for the new ceiling. <br /><br /><br /><br />The loan program covered 3.42 million people at the end of June, according to the agency. About 8.8 percent of people covered make the larger repayments, the Shanghai Daily said in June, citing the housing agency. <br /><br />Housing prices in Shanghai, China's biggest financial center, fell 19.5 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months as the volume of sales slumped, real estate broker Savills Plc said yesterday. Average transaction prices, which rose to a record in the second quarter, dropped to 9,092 yuan per square meter, the London-based broker said in a report. <br /><br />The volume of transactions slid 39 percent from the second quarter and two-thirds from the same period last year to 2.9 million square meters, according to Savills. <br /><br />China's stocks also fell for a second day today, with metal producers leading the way, on concern profits will decline as economic growth slows. <br /><br />Jiangxi Copper Co., China's second-biggest producer of the metal, slid 5.9 percent after copper and zinc futures slumped by the exchange-imposed 4 percent daily limit in Shanghai. China Shenhua Energy Co., the nation's largest coal producer, fell 3.2 percent as more affordable oil reduced the allure of alternative energy sources. Citic Securities Co. fell 2.9 percent after a second competitor in as many days reported a slump in profit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-82704083931011375532008-10-13T20:40:00.002+02:002008-10-13T21:42:14.064+02:00Chinese Exports Maintain Strong Momentum In AugustChina’s trade surplus hit a record $29.3bn in September as exporters succeeded in defying forecasts of falling international demand – for the moment, at least.<br /><br />Exports rose 21.5 percent from a year earlier to $136.4 billion after gaining 21.1 percent in August, according to data from the Chinese customs bureau. China has cut interest rates twice in the last month in an attempt to stimulate the economy as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression undermines global growth. The surplus adds to the already existing $1.8 trillion of foreign-currency reserves.<br /><br /><br />The expanding trade surplus – up from the previous record of $28.7bn in August – will bolster China’s slowing gross domestic product growth rate but could also refocus international attention on Beijing’s effort to support exporters in recent months by slowing the renminbi’s appreciation against the US dollar.<br /><br />Chinese imports grew 21.3 per cent year-on-year in September, their weakest performance for more than a year. <br /><br />It is clear that the focus of government policy has shifted away from combating inflation, which hit a 12-year high of 8.7 per cent in February, and toward supporting growth. China remains relatively insulated from the current international financial turmoil. Major state banks have been extensively recapitalised in recent years and have only limited international exposure, while the government has been enjoying rapid growth in tax revenues and over $1.8bn in foreign exchange reserves. <br /><br />However, local investors are already suffering from dramatic falls in stock prices and the slump in urban property markets, increasing vulnerability to any fall in export demand.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-43180429906421270662008-09-01T12:52:00.003+02:002008-09-01T13:06:57.206+02:00August PMI Indicates Continuing Contraction In Chinese ManufacturingManufacturing in China contracted for a second month in August, according to the latest reading on the manufacturing PMI. The China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing Purchasing Managers' Index registered a seasonally adjusted 48.4 in August, unchanged from July. <br /><br /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8z9KyDzdktCzog_L0vkDY5-GAMYYkWj16D2tt1NG3ZLoPArOiiXoyJkJ67cpNf0bjILj8mIyYc45g3_03aZBBnidAoR6Cdp2a6XWULPXP6ksd_aXLyEekzydKuC3vVJ066s7n/s1600-h/china+pmi.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8z9KyDzdktCzog_L0vkDY5-GAMYYkWj16D2tt1NG3ZLoPArOiiXoyJkJ67cpNf0bjILj8mIyYc45g3_03aZBBnidAoR6Cdp2a6XWULPXP6ksd_aXLyEekzydKuC3vVJ066s7n/s320/china+pmi.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241004499257119554" /></a><br /><br />The Chinese authorities have become increasingly concerned that the impact of a global slowdown may weigh heavily on their export oriented economy, and they have recently attempted to put a brake on gains in the yuan and have also loosened lending quotas to help exporters and small businesses following four quarters of slowing economic growth. China's growth slowed to a 10.1 percent annual rate in the second quarter of this year, coming down quarter by quarter from the high of 12.6 percent attained in the second quarter of 2007.<br /><br />The government is considering spending an extra 400 billion yuan ($58 billion) to stimulate the economy, according to reports in Chinese news media. A plan awaiting approval from the State Council and the National People's Congress includes 220 billion yuan of spending and 150 billion yuan of tax cuts, the Beijing-based Economic Observer newspaper reported last week. In addition China has tripled railway spending this year to 300 billion yuan. The current five-year plan, which runs through 2010, calls for investing almost 4.8 trillion yuan on power stations, waterways, roads and other infrastructure projects -- more than the combined output of Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Reconstruction after May's Sichuan earthquake could cost another 1 trillion yuan, the government says. <br /><br />Monetary policy may also be loosened, and the People's Bank of China said in August that it would ``fine-tune'' monetary policy to cushion the economy as overseas demand weakens. This is being widely interpreted as meaning that the central bank will reduce the portion of deposits banks are required to hold as reserves - possibly by as much as 2.5 percentage points, bringing the level down to 15 percent.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-33711545364798443892008-08-15T10:45:00.003+02:002008-08-15T10:49:44.005+02:00China Investment In Fixed Assets AcceleratesChina's factory and property spending growth accelerated in July, fueled by rebuilding after the Sichuan earthquake in May and snowstorms in January and February. Urban fixed-asset investment rose 27.3 percent to 7.22 trillion yuan ($1 trillion) year on year in July, according to the latest data from the Chinese statistics bureau, after gaining 26.8 percent in the first half. China is at the present time busy rebuilding roads, power lines, factories and homes after the worst snowstorms in half a century and an earthquake that killed more than 69,000 people.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp_MbUe20mZqg5pQZ1vYUeITFQw1qvbHSd1pA-w942dp00OdPTva1lWyNi2brXRQgWrEWs5VrY7ET8piuW0e1ad3EwXX9qBBMS-VYkS1GO4YKkEFgDeW1AIuJNnYB4_UhExUTL/s1600-h/china+investment+in+fa.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234662936702799026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp_MbUe20mZqg5pQZ1vYUeITFQw1qvbHSd1pA-w942dp00OdPTva1lWyNi2brXRQgWrEWs5VrY7ET8piuW0e1ad3EwXX9qBBMS-VYkS1GO4YKkEFgDeW1AIuJNnYB4_UhExUTL/s320/china+investment+in+fa.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Railway spending climbed 35.8 percent in the first seven months to 105 billion yuan, up from 20.4 percent for the first half. China plans to spend 3.8 trillion yuan on transportation infrastructure in its five-year plan running through 2010.<br /><br />Growth in spending in real-estate development slowed to 30.9 percent from 33.5 percent. Ferrous-metals investment climbed 31.6 percent from 27.5 percent. Non-ferrous metals rose 40.5 percent after climbing 39.2 percent.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-16763353973535994642008-08-14T13:53:00.003+02:002008-08-15T11:50:35.424+02:00China's Industrial Output Slows in July 2008China's industrial production grew at the slowest pace since February 2007 on weaker export orders and factory shutdowns to clear the air for the Olympic Games. Production rose 14.7 percent in July from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said today, after gaining 16 percent in June. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5REZkYp_MRl3gRQy1QemiToO_RATHDxT1bjFF6PzMae49NmdwbBGTlWfd6Ps6JM-UlR7bo3xkF73VyMqxD3bYqnMOUmjtXgQ1kWCNJ8srCQMp2ZTMZXpYcqMSMwXqO9D8ur8g/s1600-h/China+IP.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5REZkYp_MRl3gRQy1QemiToO_RATHDxT1bjFF6PzMae49NmdwbBGTlWfd6Ps6JM-UlR7bo3xkF73VyMqxD3bYqnMOUmjtXgQ1kWCNJ8srCQMp2ZTMZXpYcqMSMwXqO9D8ur8g/s320/China+IP.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234678842131686770" /></a><br /> <br /><br />Weakness in economies around the world have reduced orders for export products, while higher fuel and raw-material prices deterred some companies from expanding. The slowdown, exacerbated by attempts to prevent pollution in Beijing during the Olympics, suggests an acceleration in China's July export growth is unlikely to be sustained. <br /><br />The yuan fell to 6.8620 against the dollar as of 5:05 p.m. in Beijing after closing at 6.8570 yesterday. <br /><br />Textile output rose 10 percent in July from a year earlier after gaining 12.4 percent in June. Steel products growth weakened to 7 percent from 11 percent. Cement output rose 6.3 percent, down from 7.9 percent. Growth in electricity output slowed for the fourth straight month, climbing 8.1 percent after an 8.3 percent gain in June. <br /><br />China's economy expanded 10.1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, down from 11.9 percent in all of 2007. Still, rising domestic demand may help sustain industrial production to some extent. Retail sales jumped 23.3 percent in July from a year earlier.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-9916873797958237322008-08-13T11:50:00.001+02:002008-08-15T12:09:23.868+02:00China Retail Sales Rise At Record Pace In JulyChina's retail sales expanded at the fastest pace in at least nine years in July as incomes and prices climbed in the world's fastest-growing major economy. Sales rose 23.3 percent to 862.9 billion yuan ($126 billion) after gaining 23 percent in June, the statistics bureau said today. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE2C9TvxiwSlVb3gMR_hqpZ4SnCOZWFzw1xGs3iZs1J_s5ho8Sw1_XaOvy653kxaWMNARL3XQiuQ8LnoU8vhv68Jh4SwGpX2gqyDDiqqYebdGfa0IXcsFSBchYcWxJhGjlIHmD/s1600-h/china+retail+sales.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE2C9TvxiwSlVb3gMR_hqpZ4SnCOZWFzw1xGs3iZs1J_s5ho8Sw1_XaOvy653kxaWMNARL3XQiuQ8LnoU8vhv68Jh4SwGpX2gqyDDiqqYebdGfa0IXcsFSBchYcWxJhGjlIHmD/s320/china+retail+sales.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234681290811213394" /></a><br /><br />As we can see, as inflation is falling back the real rate of increase in retail sales is accelerating. This, in part, is a result of increases in wages.<br /><br />According to the most recent data from the Chinese statistical office, in the first half year of 2008, the average wage of on-duty staff and workers in urban units reached 12,964 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.0 percent. Of the total, the average wage of state-owned units was 13,800 yuan, up by 17.0 percent; that of collective-owned units was 7,789 yuan, rose by 18.9 percent; and that of units of other types of ownership was 12,610 yuan, an increase of 19.2 percent.<br /><br />Urban disposable income increased 14.4 percent in the first half, or 6.3 percent after stripping out inflation. Also per capita consumption expenditure was 5,490 yuan, up by 13.7 percent over the same period of the previous year, a real increase of 5.7 percent after deducting price factors. China aims to increase consumption to reduce dependence on investment and overseas sales for economic growth. <br /><br />The problem with this scenario at the present time is the impact on producer prices. China's producer prices climbed at the fastest pace since 1996 in July on energy and commodity costs, underscoring the significant risk of second round effects and the possibility of a rebound in consumer-price inflation. Factory-gate prices rose 10 percent in July from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said yesterday, after gaining 8.8 percent in June. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS_R2OpjTOsgnwhvcv98WNK1hrJnSFvJVVapMwFkCRczGxV3tDAyeuNWmwRfZ7ku5eIw7yv_-1m4Z5zVhS4RsIb32whcGUF40U1o5hxUTehqqYEB0KJQTj5yrdeWdDrPn8UYoj/s1600-h/china+PPI.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS_R2OpjTOsgnwhvcv98WNK1hrJnSFvJVVapMwFkCRczGxV3tDAyeuNWmwRfZ7ku5eIw7yv_-1m4Z5zVhS4RsIb32whcGUF40U1o5hxUTehqqYEB0KJQTj5yrdeWdDrPn8UYoj/s320/china+PPI.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234678162338299026" /></a><br /> <br />The acceleration in retail sales and the surge in fixed asset formation at a time when industrial output is weakening and exports are slowing means only one thing as far as I am concerned: a correction is coming. <br /><br />Today's data comes two days after figures showing exports climbed 26.9 percent in July, accelerating from 17.2 percent in June.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-58842173922048864912008-08-12T16:54:00.004+02:002008-08-15T11:45:15.640+02:00China Inflation Drops To 6.3% In JulyChina's annual inflation rate dropped to 6.3% in July - the slowest pace in 10 months - and significantly down from February's 8.7 percent rise which was the fastest rate in 12 years.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGWAGb_8_EHnFuxmsP1dpTUBLbNDlOuRAyoosa9bB7NpjzNNjYGaAebwUwn-1Ci5Qp8UM1DvCkWuStq3CEMMyhs_a2pDOwnfiX1BiJLudy70sAXrwa3wekRABXTx9P21Ac_odK/s1600-h/china+CPI.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGWAGb_8_EHnFuxmsP1dpTUBLbNDlOuRAyoosa9bB7NpjzNNjYGaAebwUwn-1Ci5Qp8UM1DvCkWuStq3CEMMyhs_a2pDOwnfiX1BiJLudy70sAXrwa3wekRABXTx9P21Ac_odK/s320/china+CPI.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234677688220066802" /></a><br /><br /><br />The slowdown may encourage government policies aimed at sustaining growth in the world's fourth-biggest economy rather than fighting inflation. While policy makers have halted the yuan's appreciation and boosted tax rebates to help exporters, data yesterday showing the fastest producer-price inflation in 12 years underscores the risk that consumer prices will rebound. <br /><br /><br />China's producer prices climbed at the fastest pace since 1996 in July on energy and commodity costs, underscoring the significant risk of second round effects and the possibility of a rebound in consumer-price inflation. Factory-gate prices rose 10 percent in July from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said yesterday, after gaining 8.8 percent in June. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS_R2OpjTOsgnwhvcv98WNK1hrJnSFvJVVapMwFkCRczGxV3tDAyeuNWmwRfZ7ku5eIw7yv_-1m4Z5zVhS4RsIb32whcGUF40U1o5hxUTehqqYEB0KJQTj5yrdeWdDrPn8UYoj/s1600-h/china+PPI.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS_R2OpjTOsgnwhvcv98WNK1hrJnSFvJVVapMwFkCRczGxV3tDAyeuNWmwRfZ7ku5eIw7yv_-1m4Z5zVhS4RsIb32whcGUF40U1o5hxUTehqqYEB0KJQTj5yrdeWdDrPn8UYoj/s320/china+PPI.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234678162338299026" /></a><br /><br /><br />The yuan rose 4.2 percent in the three months through March and 2.3 percent in the second quarter before stalling in the third. The currency remains Asia's best performer against the dollar this year. Gains make exports more expensive and cut import costs. China's exporters are concerned that a weakening global economy will erode shipments. Exports are now rising at an annual 22.6 percent rate, significantly down from the 25.7 percent pace achieved for whole year 2007.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-4429679187063204292008-08-01T08:38:00.004+02:002008-08-01T08:52:53.712+02:00China Manufacturing Contracts In June According To The PMIManufacturing in China contracted - on a seasonally adjusted basis - for the first time in many years in July as export demand faltered and factories closed to clear the air before the Olympic Games. The Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index - prepared by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing - fell to a seasonally adjusted 48.4 in July from 52 in June. Any reading below 50 represents contratction, and this was the first such reading since the survey began in 2005.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX5kFauZSLikfjq9nTnlCwMJiIofdcpgtI0DJmrIvT0wCOmCkqKrmMpo_0RrbZUhfAja-K71FmSzNvQyhuBYq-lC9CSrGkvnuPCO1DP7s5NHs452orHgIJTo2K8O6SxObtJtod/s1600-h/china+pmi.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX5kFauZSLikfjq9nTnlCwMJiIofdcpgtI0DJmrIvT0wCOmCkqKrmMpo_0RrbZUhfAja-K71FmSzNvQyhuBYq-lC9CSrGkvnuPCO1DP7s5NHs452orHgIJTo2K8O6SxObtJtod/s320/china+pmi.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229436167914943090" /></a><br /><br />The output index fell to 47.4 in July from 54.2 in June, while the index of new orders dropped to 46.2 from 52.6. The index of export orders declined to 46.7 from 50.2. <br /><br />None of this is really too surprising, as it is hard to see how you can maintain 20% plus export growth as all your main customers' economies are slowing. The expansion in what is now the world's fourth-biggest economy slowed for the fourth straight quarter in the three months through June, according to initial estimates.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-31018900463859713132008-07-24T18:29:00.003+02:002008-07-24T18:57:41.659+02:00China's CPI Inflation Slows In June 2008China's inflation rate fell to 7.1 per cent in June from 7.7 per cent in May. The rate has now been falling steadily from a 12-year high of 8.7 per cent hit in February, according to the latest data from the national statistics bureau. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1W-VAs4h4k6KZ5ojhaafed9JLekIE6rnv4uRJ50EWaXiCOSnjh-bWpvo3e-_hyphenhypheni1jwf8YvnFqQea3XCEScso_xgf3G_j8LT1lYOYx_GNLD_MLXGqpg6BA0LQaPQu4gp8HFcA5/s1600-h/china+CPI.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1W-VAs4h4k6KZ5ojhaafed9JLekIE6rnv4uRJ50EWaXiCOSnjh-bWpvo3e-_hyphenhypheni1jwf8YvnFqQea3XCEScso_xgf3G_j8LT1lYOYx_GNLD_MLXGqpg6BA0LQaPQu4gp8HFcA5/s320/china+CPI.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226618836929127346" /></a><br /><br />This reduction comes after months of government efforts to cool inflation by paying subsidies to increase food supplies and imposing price controls on food, fuel and other basic goods, and moves at the central bank to increase the percentage of their deposits that the banks need to keep as reserves.<br /><br />The government gave no June figure for food prices, but said they rose 20.4 percent in the first half over the year-earlier period. JPMorgan estimated June's food price rise at 17.5 percent, compared with 19.9 percent in May.<br /><br />China's main planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, have said that inflation in housing prices, another key area of concern, slowed slightly in June but that costs in 70 major cities still were up 8.2 over June 2007.<br /><br />China's producer price index (PPI), which measures factory-gate inflation, reached 8.8% year-on-year in June, the fastest rise since 1999. In May it rose by 8.2%. Since it usually takes six months for manufacturers to pass on their cost pressure to end consumers, this acceleration in the PPI seems likely to drive inflation higher again later in the year.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg51KEAS6lFJT8QRK2HQEs3dDeWMif-siocnXKOJAD8QfjxIF-0__wS99WtZ3YQSBrrK7HRpr1j8r1xtIiWAzWdfH_iZ-oJr5B4LSRgUFMp3Q2Npw30vPCA43r74jcqTc24vbN5/s1600-h/china+PPI.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg51KEAS6lFJT8QRK2HQEs3dDeWMif-siocnXKOJAD8QfjxIF-0__wS99WtZ3YQSBrrK7HRpr1j8r1xtIiWAzWdfH_iZ-oJr5B4LSRgUFMp3Q2Npw30vPCA43r74jcqTc24vbN5/s320/china+PPI.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226625165924878626" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />China's economy grew by 10.4 per cent in the first half of this year, officials also said today. China's economy grew by 10.1 percent in the three months ending June 30 over the same period last year, compared with 10.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year while for the whole of 2007 the economy grew at a rate of 11.9 per cent. <br /><br />On the other hand export growth - which is the principle driver of the Chinese economy - dropped sharply in June to 18.2 percent which while still very rapid was well down from May's rise of 28 percent. The drop in the rate of increase seems to be due to slowing global demand, prompting suggestions regulators might slow the rise of China's currency, the yuan, or take other steps to help struggling exporters.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5838647.post-74624121580150276862008-07-17T11:58:00.002+02:002008-08-15T12:13:14.921+02:00China's GDP Growth Slows In Q2 2008China's economy grew at the slowest pace since 2005 in the second quarter, prompting the yuan's biggest drop in seven weeks on speculation the government will slow its advance to protect exporters. Gross domestic product rose 10.1 percent from a year earlier, down from 10.6 percent in the first quarter, as exports weakened and the government curbed lending. Consumer prices rose 7.1 percent in June, slowing from 7.7 percent in May, according to the latest data from the statistics bureau. <br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7FWTik9PVAHjJlCgJsjqmN2zKSlfG-PVuWXRMzCQ1KCk1Ah2Dh6butWQ7ydoHDktwzx9FTbF-2vU2ZGOqgQ_gjmjCz0soAFmMfcYqqYJWtXTxaWwnW_nOGMp0WFTLfTWxYyEg/s1600-h/China+GDP.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7FWTik9PVAHjJlCgJsjqmN2zKSlfG-PVuWXRMzCQ1KCk1Ah2Dh6butWQ7ydoHDktwzx9FTbF-2vU2ZGOqgQ_gjmjCz0soAFmMfcYqqYJWtXTxaWwnW_nOGMp0WFTLfTWxYyEg/s320/China+GDP.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234685346148020130" /></a><br /><br /><br />GDP growth cooled for the fourth straight quarter. <br /><br />The trade surplus for the second quarter narrowed 12 percent from a year earlier to $58.14 billion as import costs climbed and U.S. demand faltered. <br /><br /> <br />Producer prices climbed 8.8 percent in June from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said today, after rising 8.2 percent in May.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0