Category Archives: China

China Expects to Announce Trade Deficit for March

A story in China Daily indicates that the Chinese offiicaldom foresees a record trade deficit for March: The country will probably see a “record trade deficit” in March thanks to surging imports, Minister of Commerce Chen Deming said on Sunday, while warning that Beijing will “fight back” if Washington labels China a currency manipulator. Speaking […]

China’s Exporters Hanging by a Thread?

Has the Chinese export sector become hostage to WalMartization, the ability of powerful retailers to squeeze vendor profit margins? Reader Michael Q called our attention to a key remark in a Wall Street Journal story: Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan, in an exclusive interview Thursday ahead of a visit to the U.S., said that the […]

On China’s currency peg and potential policy actions

A post by Edward Harrison In reading Scott Sumner’s take on the China currency peg dilemma, I see that both he and Paul Krugman hit on the fundamental problem in the debate: reserves. Everyone is talking about the peg as if relaxing the peg will be the magic bullet to America’s current account problem. But […]

Will the Chinese yield to external threats?

A post by Edward Harrison I am going to talk here a little bit about the looming trade war between China and the United States. But I am going to come at it from a side angle via some historical analogies. Common folklore in the United States says that the Soviet Empire collapsed in large […]

Martin Wolf: China, Germany Commiting World to Deflation

The Financial Times’ Martin Wolf gives a cogent and sober assessment of what he deems to be a destructive refusal to adjust policies on behalf of the world’s two biggest exporters, China and Germany. The problem is that both simultaneously want to have their cake and eat it too. As we stressed in a recent […]

Calibrating differences between China and Japan’s bubble blow-off top

A post by Edward Harrison. I was talking to a friend of mine who does emerging market investing for a living and I asked him what he made of recent China-bullish comments by Stephen Roach. The Morgan Stanley Asia head was in Germany speaking to German business daily Handelsblatt last week. The guys from Handelsblatt […]

Are Rising US-China Tensions Pointing to a Rupture?

Relations between the US and China have been deteriorating. Although both sides have poked each other in various ways (Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama, China dissing Obama in Copenhagen by standing him up for a meeting, some tit for tat on tariffs), the major, unresolved bone of contention is China’s pegging of its currency, […]

Martin Wolf is Very Gloomy, and With Good Reason

Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ highly respected chief economics commentor, weighs in with a pretty pessimistic piece tonight. This makes for a companion to Peter Boone and Simon Johnson’s Doomsday cycle post from yesterday. Let us cut to the chase of Wolf’s argument: Now, after the implosion, we witness the extraordinary rescue efforts. So what […]

Thinking the Unthinkable: What if China Devalues the Renminbi?

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0 and Yves Smith Conventional wisdom holds that the Chinese are due (as in overdue) for a revaluation of their currency, the renminbi. For instance, a recent report from Goldman argues that China will raise the value of the RMB against […]

China’s Burgeoning Local Debt Means Debt, Banking System Risk Understated

Victor Shih has done some serious analytical work to try to get a handle on the magnitude of China’s local debt. His post, which included extracts from his op-ed in the Asian Wall Street Journal, shows that some of the narratives about China are woefully incomplete. The whole post is very much worth reading, but […]

Are Greek Sovereign Debt Tremors a Start of a New Phase of the Crisis?

After the months of buoyant markets, a return to crisis-type headlines seems troublingly familiar, even though the perturbations of the last day or so are a pale shadow of the worst months of the crisis. And some are making the bull case. For instance, a headline at Clusterstock trumpetss, “Yesterday’s Bloodshed Sent The VIX Soaring […]

On China’s Overinvestment

Patrick Chovanek, who writes from China, features an South China Morning Post story on his blog that helps give a better sense of the scale of overinvestment in real estate projects in China than isolated pictures of large, empty buildings. Data, of course, would be nice, but the Chinese officialdom specializes in misleading statistics. From […]

Simon Johnson: “The Worst is Yet To Come”

I must say, it’s quite amusing to watch Simon Johnson. He has an unabashedly bearish message…for 2010! And he delivers it in a sunny, enthusiastic tone. His hosts are not too keen about it, but the fact that he is so bloody upbeat about his gloomsterism leaves them a bit flummoxed.

More On China’s Frothy-Looking Housing Market

We put up a post in late December which keyed off a discussion by Patrick Chovanec . Chovanec argued that real estate was increasingly serving as a vehicle for speculation, with many units kept vacant by investors: In China, however, “flipping” is not the problem. Some people may be engaged in short-term ”flipping,” but as […]