How much does the Greek crisis matter for China? There are, as far as I see, broadly two schools of thought. One school says that the Greek crisis is largely a problem internal to Europe, and its impact on Europe and the rest of the world is too small to matter much. In support they [...]
The Chinese new year has only just started, and already trade tensions are ratcheting up. This is perhaps appropriate — astrologers tell us that the year of the Tiger is often a year of instability and conflict — and I suspect things will almost certainly get worse. The timing of various domestic political events in [...]
Jan 9th, 2010
I will be in NY and Boston during the first week of February and plan to meet a number of investors there to discuss China. I believe it becomes official on February 1, but I recently joined the Hong Kong subsidiary of one of China’s top broker/dealers, Shenyin Wanguo. I will continue teaching at Peking [...]
While the G20 leaders make reassuring noises about international trade, I think the risk of rising trade tensions have not abated at all. As I see it, everything depends on whether or not domestic Chinese polices had any role in creating the global imbalances, and if they did, then we are still in the early [...]
The Shanghai stock market was up 4.5% in very nervous trading today but down 16.3% since its recent peak at 3478 on August 4, and still trading at more than 30 times earnings. All this turmoil is triggering all sorts of worried comments about the sustainability of the fiscal stimulus package and whether it has [...]
In my last entry I tried to set out the necessary shifts over the next few years as the world, and especially China and the US, works out its imbalances. These shifts will take place, I am pretty sure, but they can do so under a “good” scenario and a “bad” scenario. So what does [...]
Jul 29th, 2009
I am working on a fairly long entry that I will post this weekend about why a trade rebalancing and a consumption/savings rebalancing will take place in both China and the US whether or not we want it. This week has been crazy, among other reasons because a festival in Taiwan has invited one of [...]
I am still working on my piece on the global savings adjustment and will probably post it in the next week or so. The main point is to discuss what the implications are for China if we see simultaneously over the next few years an increase in US savings and a reduction in global investment. [...]
Jun 3rd, 2009
One of the reasons why trade-related discussions can seem so off-the-mark, I think, is because the conditions governing international trade are much more complex than we often realize. The determinants of the international balance of trade basically include anything that affects domestic consumption and domestic production, which pretty much means nearly everything in economics. Among [...]
Apr 30th, 2009
The Shanghai stock market had a good day today – its last trading day before the May holiday and the very long four-day weekend. The SSE Composite is up 4.84% and trading volume was up substantially too. What seemed to propel the market today was a bunch of companies reporting good earnings, especially the banks [...]