Gavekal Dragonomics
November 21, 2019
China’s financial regulators are squeezing funding for property developers in order to discourage land speculation and cool down property prices. In this piece, Rosealea argues the crackdown has been fairly successful, and does not pose a big risk to construction. Slightly easier demand-side policies will help offset tough supply-side restrictions.
Gavekal Dragonomics
November 18, 2019
Europe’s leaders are promising a more forceful approach to defending the bloc’s interests. But they do not fully subscribe to the view, widely held in the US, that China is a strategic rival and security threat. What they have been able to agree on, as Lance argues, is the need to protect the EU’s single market against Chinese state capitalism.
Gavekal Dragonomics
November 15, 2019
China’s data releases for October showed signs that the global downturn in electronics, and the domestic fall in car sales, are starting to fade. But the bad news is that the property and heavy industry complex is weakening. That combination means roughly stable growth for the moment, reassuring policymakers that their cautious stance works.
Gavekal Research
November 6, 2019
Was it worth the wait? Markets have been expecting the People’s Bank of China to cut policy rates ever since it introduced a new rates framework in August and promised to lower funding costs. On Tuesday, the central bank finally delivered, rolling over its one-year medium-term lending facility at 3.25%, 5bp below the previous rate of 3.3%.
Gavekal Research
October 21, 2019
China’s recent economic figures do not paint a bright picture. Yet some of the problems weighing on growth are moving closer to resolution. So how much of a bounce in the data can we expect from these positive developments? Three possible sources of good news can help answer this question: exports, domestic investment and autos.
Gavekal Dragonomics
October 17, 2019
Problems with China’s economic statistics are often blamed on falsification by local officials. But they are not the only ones causing trouble. In this piece, Thomas and Ernan document how central government agencies, including the National Bureau of Statistics and the central bank, have recently stopped publishing some important data series.
Gavekal Research
October 28, 2019
Signs are growing that the US and China will have a mini-deal on trade ready by the time Trump and Xi meet at the mid-November APEC summit. The key questions are whether opposition from US hardliners could derail the deal at the last moment, and whether the campaign to “decouple” the two economies will be knocked back if there is a deal.
Gavekal Research
October 14, 2019
The US-China trade cease-fire shows that President Trump needs a quick deal: facing a soft economy and likely impeachment, he wants to bank a win as soon as possible. The two sides are moving toward a deal in November, but that will not change China's economic model or end US efforts to constrain China's technological rise.
Gavekal Dragonomics
September 4, 2019
Could Taiwan be a winner in the US-China trade war? As Dan reports in this piece, US tariffs have succeeded in getting major contract manufacturers of electronics to shift jobs out of China, some of which are going to Taiwan. But this trend is not enough to end Taiwan’s dependence on Chinese growth, or its vulnerability to Chinese competition.
Gavekal Dragonomics
November 11, 2019
The corporate bond market was once promoted as a better way to finance China’s private firms. Instead, as Xiaoxi explains in this piece, it has turned into another source of financial pressure. The corporate bonds of private firms are now maturing faster than they can issue new ones, creating a financing squeeze that could last through 2021.
Gavekal Dragonomics
October 23, 2019
On paper, the northern port city of Tianjin was once the richest place in China. But now its financial center lies empty, its statistics have been exposed as falsified, and the local government and firms are close to running out of cash. In this report, Ernan explains why Tianjin’s long-running problems have finally burst into the open.
Gavekal Dragonomics
October 10, 2019
The first wave of Chinese bank failures will not be the last. Over the summer, three smaller Chinese banks had to receive official assistance to continue operating. The problems that brought down those banks were not isolated issues, and there are other smaller banks still at risk. This report identifies the most troubled institutions.
Gavekal Dragonomics
October 30, 2019
China’s property market has held up surprisingly well in 2019, but will that strength last? In her annual chartbook, Rosealea examines key market trends and explains the outlook for 2020. Flexible policy can probably continue to avoid a deep decline in housing sales, but construction activity and materials demand are almost certain to slow.
Gavekal Dragonomics
September 24, 2019
China’s government has launched a new program to renovate older residential compounds, which some are touting as a massive new investment stimulus. As Rosealea explains in this piece, such hopes are misplaced. But the new spending will help cushion the impact of the cutbacks of the subsidies delivered through the slum redevelopment program.
Gavekal Dragonomics
July 31, 2019
The world’s major economies are seemingly united on the need for a fresh round of stimulus—except for China. And hopes for a more aggressive approach were dashed by the latest Politburo meeting, which declared that China would not boost the housing market to revive growth. In this piece, Andrew explains what’s behind China’s policy stance.
Gavekal Dragonomics
September 12, 2019
The Trump administration has shown the world that it is willing and able to inflict severe pain on China’s top technology firms. But can the US really squeeze China hard enough to cut it off from global R&D, or stop all advances by Chinese companies?
Gavekal Dragonomics
July 18, 2019
The future of Huawei, China’s most successful electronics manufacturer, has looked bleak ever since the US put it on an export blacklist in May. But with the Trump administration proving willing to soften its export controls, and companies being able to find loopholes in them, it now looks like Huawei has a decent chance to survive.
Gavekal Dragonomics
June 17, 2019
It is easy to forget that the US trade war with China is founded on the issue of intellectual property—and to miss the fact that, despite the breakdown in trade talks, China is pushing through many legal changes to improve IP protection. But as Dan explains, while the technical improvements are real, so is political pressure on the legal system.
Gavekal Dragonomics
November 7, 2019
China’s industrial slowdown is not just about exports. The deep downturn in auto sales accounts for about half of the slowdown in GDP growth since 2018, Thomas estimates. Things are now starting to look less bad, and the growth drag is heading back toward zero. But autos are still not about to deliver a big boost to growth or commodity demand.
Gavekal Dragonomics
August 21, 2019
With exports and domestic investment both weakening, China’s government hopes that consumer spending will support growth. The bad news is that all indicators of consumer spending are still softening. With a deteriorating job market weighing on household income Chinese consumer spending is set to weaken further over the coming quarters.
Gavekal Dragonomics
July 9, 2019
China’s auto market is still locked in the worst downturn in its history. In this report, Ernan explains how the government’s rushed transition to new vehicle-emissions standards worsened that downturn, and why it hasn’t reversed course. Though an end-year recovery for auto sales is still likely, 2019 will be a second bad year for the industry.
Gavekal Research
July 22, 2019
Trading on the world's newest stock market board got off to a predictably volatile start on Monday, when Shanghai's STAR market opened for business. But while that was entirely foreseeable, the reaction of regulators will be less predictable, and will send important signals on the long-term liberalization of China’s stock markets.
Gavekal Dragonomics
June 5, 2019
Chinese listed companies have lately suffered more than their fair share of shocks to earnings. In this piece, Thomas explains the financial and accounting problems that have squeezed profits in recent quarters. But he argues that, even with the trade war, 2019 is likely to be a normal profits downcycle rather than a disastrous one.
Gavekal Research
April 30, 2019
China’s equity bull market has lost steam in the last 10 days after the Politburo adopted a less supportive tone following stronger than expected economic data in March. Even before the announcement, market ebullience had moderated.
Gavekal Dragonomics
September 10, 2019
The African swine fever crisis in China is reaching a new stage as prices for pigs and pork spiral upward at an unprecedented pace. The government is responding with a combination of subsidies for pork farms, as well as rationing and price caps. But this is a short-term strategy that will not contain the ASF epidemic and could even worsen it.
Gavekal Dragonomics
August 5, 2019
China’s government is once again going after pollution from the steel industry, raising the risk of more policy-induced spikes in steel prices. While forced shutdowns to ensure blue skies are on the way, Rosealea argues that the bigger risk to steel prices is on the downside, due to weakening construction activity and cautious housing policy.
Gavekal Dragonomics
April 16, 2019
The world’s deadliest pig disease is now established in the world’s largest pork market. The spread of African swine fever in China has been more severe than the government has admitted, and as a result pork prices are spiking and imports are surging. But as Ernan argues in this report, the impact of this epidemic is still only in its early stages.
Gavekal Dragonomics
July 11, 2019
The new enthusiasm of some European countries for China’s infrastructure-building Belt and Road Initiative has raised alarm across the continent. Brussels fears China is buying influence in Europe’s periphery, sowing disunity and threatening democracy. Our latest in-depth DeepChina report explains the real story of China’s influence on Europe.
Gavekal Dragonomics
December 4, 2018
China’s ambitious goals to lead in the technologies of the future are backed by huge resources. Since late 2014, there has been an explosion in state-backed funds targeting high technology. Our latest in-depth DeepChina report digs into these government guidance funds to find out how they work, and how successful they will be.
Gavekal Dragonomics
August 8, 2018
China is going port-crazy in Southeast Asia. Chinese firms are now engaged in building 15 port projects in the region, at a total cost of more than US$50bn. Will these bricks in the Maritime Silk Road prove to be valuable assets, or financial black holes? In our new DeepChina report, Lance Noble and Tom Miller find the answer is: some of both.
Gavekal Dragonomics
October 30, 2019
China’s property market has held up surprisingly well in 2019, but will that strength last? In her annual chartbook, Rosealea examines key market trends and explains the outlook for 2020. Flexible policy can probably continue to avoid a deep decline in housing sales, but construction activity and materials demand are almost certain to slow.
Gavekal Dragonomics
October 3, 2019
In the latest edition of his annual chartbook, Thomas outlines the fundamentals of China’s corporate sector. The latest downcycle in sales and profits was less severe than previous episodes, but private firms are still suffering from financial strains. The anemic bounce in credit growth points to little recovery in profits or capex in 2020.
Gavekal Dragonomics
August 29, 2019
Whatever happens next in the US-China trade conflict, it’s clear that ties between the two nations have undergone a fundamental reset. Some “decoupling” will definitely occur as a result, and indeed has already begun. In this chartbook, Andrew and Lance explore how US-China decoupling could play out in flows of goods, money, people and ideas.
Gavekal Research
October 31, 2019
Chinese credit growth picked up in September, which is good news at the margin for private sector liquidity. However, a continued crackdown on shadow finance and private firms’ difficultly rolling over bond obligations will retard capital spending and lead to more bond defaults into next year.
Gavekal Research
September 20, 2019
Washington views China as a strategic competitor, and the White House has promised a “whole of government” effort to constrain China’s development of key advanced technologies. Dan examines the three ways in which the US is making life difficult for Chinese tech companies, and explores other weapons the US could deploy should the tech war escalate.
Gavekal Dragonomics
June 28, 2019
Chinese equity markets are up around 26% for the year. Yet there has been no recovery in earnings growth, and the trade war and shaky domestic economic momentum continue to loom. The reason for the market optimism is expectations of supportive government policies, whether or not those expectations are valid.