Tag Archive: fixed asset investment

Synchronized Not Coronavirus

2022-05-19

There is an understandable tendency to just write off this weekend’s disastrous Chinese data as nothing more than pandemic politics. After all, it has been Emperor Xi’s harsh lockdowns spreading like wildfire across China rather than any disease (why it has been this way, that’s another Mao-tter).

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Shanghai’s Current Plight Began in 2017

2022-04-23

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2022-04-23

The first chapters to China’s new story now playing out in Shanghai were written down in October 2017. Planning for them had begun years earlier, their author Xi Jinping requiring more research before committing them to paper. Communist authorities there had grown increasingly concerned about the lack of growth potential for its political system by then utterly dependent for a quarter-century on the economy growing.

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Looking Past Gigantic Base Effects To China’s (Really) Struggling Economy

2021-03-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2021-03-16

The Chinese were first to go down because they had been first to shut down, therefore one year further on they’ll be the first to skew all their economic results when being compared to it. These obvious base effects will, without further scrutiny, make analysis slightly more difficult.

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This Global Growth Stuff, China Still Wants A Word

2020-12-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-12-16

Before there could be “globally synchronized growth”, it had been plain old “global growth.” The former from 2017 appended the term “synchronized” to its latter 2014 forerunner in order to jazz it up. And it needed the additional rhetorical flourish due to the simple fact that in 2015 for all the stated promise of “global growth” it ended up meaning next to nothing in reality.Oddly the same for 2017’s update heading into 2018 and...

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Six Point Nine Times Two Equals What It Had In Twenty Fourteen

2020-11-17

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-11-17

It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.”

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China’s Hole Puzzle

2020-09-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-09-16

One day short of one year ago, on September 16, 2019, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported its updated monthly estimates for the Big 3 accounts. Industrial Production (IP) is a closely-watched indicator as it is relatively decent proxy for the entire goods economy around the world. Retail Sales in the post-Euro$ #2 context give us a sense of the Chinese economy’s persistent struggle to try to “rebalance” without the pre-2008 boost...

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Of Incomplete Plans and Recoveries

2020-07-21

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-07-21

At the monthly press conference China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) now regularly gives whenever the Big Three economic accounts are updated (this time along with quarterly GDP), spokesman Liu Aihua was asked by a reporter from Reuters to comment on how the global economic recession might impact the Communist government’s long range goal of reaching its assigned GDP target.

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A Chinese Outbreak (of Li v. Xi, Round 2)

2020-06-17

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-06-17

Here they are again, seemingly at odds over how to proceed. Reminiscent of prior battles over whether to revive the economy or just let it go where it will, it appears as if China is in for Xi vs. Li Round 2. Or is it all just clever politics? Li Keqiang may be nominally the Chinese Premier but he’s a very distant second on every list of power players. Xi Jinping holds all the top spots, including a 2017-18 consolidation of power that left Xi...

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China Enters 2020 Still (Intent On) Managing Its Decline

2020-01-21

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-01-21

Chinese Industrial Production accelerated further in December 2019, rising 6.9% year-over-year according to today’s estimates from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). That was a full percentage point above consensus. IP had bottomed out right in August at a record low 4.4%, and then, just as this wave of renewed optimism swept the world, it has rebounded alongside it.

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China Data: Something New, or Just The Latest Scheduled Acceleration?

2019-12-18

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-12-18

The Chinese government was serious about imposing pollution controls on its vast stock of automobiles. The largest market in the world for cars and trucks, the net result of China’s “miracle” years of eurodollar-financed modernization, for the Chinese people living in its huge cities the non-economic costs are, unlike the air, immediately clear each and every day.

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The Dollar-driven Cage Match: Xi vs Li in China With Nowhere Else To Go

2019-10-22

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-10-22

China’s growing troubles go way back long before trade wars ever showed up. It was Euro$ #2 that set this course in motion, and then Euro$ #3 which proved the country’s helplessness. It proved it not just to anyone willing to honestly evaluate the situation, it also established the danger to one key faction of Chinese officials.

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China’s Blowout IP, Frugal Stimulus, and Sinking Capex

2019-04-19

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-04-19

It had been 55 months, nearly five years since China’s vast and troubled industrial sector had seen growth better than 8%. Not since the first sparks of the rising dollar, Euro$ #3’s worst, had Industrial Production been better than that mark. What used to be a floor had seemingly become an unbreakable ceiling over this past half a decade. According to Chinese estimates, IP in March 2019 was 8.5% more than it was in March 2018. That was far more...

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No Sign of Stimulus, Or Global Growth, China’s Economy Sunk By (euro)Dollar

2019-03-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-03-16

Najib Tun Razak was elected as Malaysia’s Prime Minister in early 2009. Taking office that April amid global turmoil and chaos, Najib’s first official visit was to Beijing in early June. His father, also Malaysia’s Prime Minister, had been the first among Asian nations to open formal diplomatic relations with China thirty-five years before.

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China’s Eurodollar Story Reaches Its Final Chapters

2019-01-25

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-01-25

Imagine yourself as a rural Chinese farmer. Even the term “farmer” makes it sound better than it really is. This is a life out of the 19th century, subsistence at best the daily struggle just to survive. Flourishing is a dream.

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The Relevant Word Is ‘Decline’

2018-12-18

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-12-18

China Industrial Production, Nov 1998 - 2018

The English language headline for China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ press release on November 2018’s Big 3 was, National Economy Maintained Stable and Sound Momentum of Development in November. For those who, as noted yesterday, are wishing China’s economy bad news so as to lead to the supposed good news of a coordinated “stimulus” response this was itself a bad news/good news situation.

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Anchoring Globally Synchronized Growth, Or We Gave Up Long Ago?

2018-05-24

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-05-24

China Fixed Asset Investment, Apr 2012 - 2018

January was the last month in which China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) specifically mentioned Fixed Asset Investment (FAI) of state holding enterprises (or SOE’s). For the month of December 2017, the NBS reported accumulated growth (meaning for all of 2017) in this channel of 10.1%. Through FAI of SOE’s, Chinese authorities in early 2016 had panicked themselves into unleashing considerable “stimulus.”

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China’s Questionable Start to 2018

2018-03-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-03-16

China Industrial Production, Feb 1999 - 2018

The Chinese government reported estimates for Industrial Production, Retail Sales, and Fixed Asset Investment (FAI) for both January and February 2018. The National Bureau of Statistics prepares and calculates China’s major economic statistics in this manner at the beginning of each year due to the difficulties created by calendar effects (New Year Golden Week).

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The Blatant Dishonesty of the ‘Boom’

2018-01-20

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-01-20

China Fixed Asset Investment, June 2013 - Dec 2017

Why do humans tend to behave in herds? It’s a fundamental question that only recently have researchers been able to better understand. On the one hand, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in some neurological science to see the basis behind it; survival for our ancestors often meant getting along with the crowd. There are times when that very trait applies still.

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The Dea(r)th of Economic Momentum

2018-01-17

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-01-17

For the fourth quarter as a whole, Chinese exports rose by just less than 10% year-over-year. That’s the highest quarterly rate in more than three years, up from 6.3% and 6.0% in Q2 2017 and Q3, respectively. That acceleration is, predictably, being celebrated as a meaningful leap in global economic fortunes. Instead, it highlights China’s grand predicament, one that country just cannot seem to escape.

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Chinese Are Not Tightening, Though They Would Be Thrilled If You Thought That

2017-12-22

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-12-22

The PBOC has two seemingly competing objectives that in reality are one and the same. Overnight, China’s central bank raised two of its money rates. The rate it charges mostly the biggest banks for access to the Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) was increased by 5 bps to 3.25%. In addition, its reverse repo interest settings were also moved up by 5 bps each at the various tenors (to 2.50% for the 7-day, 2.80% for the 28-day).

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