Most Recent
Gavekal Dragonomics
Tech Policy Won’t Fix The Job Market
Ernan Cui
26 Jul 2024
China’s policymakers are pursuing a profound transformation of the economy through a technology-focused development strategy. But Ernan argues that channeling more investment into high-tech manufacturing industries is highly unlikely to create many new jobs. It’s difficult to see how the current policy strategy could tighten the job market, and in turn boost household consumption.
Gavekal Dragonomics
Xi Goes All In On Tech
Tilly Zhang
24 Jul 2024
At its Third Plenum, China’s Communist Party leadership did not have much to say about urgent economic issues like the struggling real-estate sector or downbeat consumer spending, instead laying out a detailed plan for boosting science and technology. Anyone surprised by this has not been listening to what top leader Xi Jinping has been saying for the last several years. In this piece, Tilly Zhang explains the thinking behind Xi’s all-in bet on science and technology.
Gavekal Dragonomics
Priorities At The Third Plenum
Andrew Batson
22 Jul 2024
The long-awaited Third Plenum of the Communist Party offered top leader Xi Jinping a platform to address the gap between his long-term vision of China’s technological rise, and the short-term reality of disappointing growth. In this piece, Andrew explains what the priorities Xi signaled at the plenum mean for economic policymaking.
Gavekal Research
Video: Towards A Trade War On All Fronts
Yanmei Xie
17 Jul 2024
A new spirit of mercantilism is abroad in the US, with Donald Trump’s Republican Party proposing a “baseline tariff” on all goods imports, as well as targeted higher tariffs on imports from China, should it capture the White House in November’s election. In this interview, Yanmei assesses what this means.
Featured report
Gavekal Dragonomics
The Financial Risk Report 2024
Xiaoxi Zhang
10 Jun 2024
China's property-market downturn exacerbated debt strains last year among the two biggest financial weak points: local-government financing vehicles and real-estate developers. But the fortunes of the two groups of borrowers have since diverged substantially. This chartbook assesses that divergence, and explores the implications for the government, commercial banks, bond markets and other creditors.
Gavekal Dragonomics
Another Warning To Bond Markets
Wei He
Growth Decelerates
Wei He, Dragonomics Team
Webinar: Setting The Agenda For China's Plenum
Andrew Batson, Thomas Gatley, Tilly Zhang
The Localization Drive Steps Up
Tilly Zhang
Dealing With The Next Wave Of Bad Loans
Xiaoxi Zhang
Food Security Is Back
Ernan Cui
The PBOC’s New Yield Floor
Wei He
The Missing Consumer Stimulus
Andrew Batson
Gavekal Dragonomics
Securing The Western Frontier
Tom Miller
16 Dec 2021
China looks like a winner from the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, now free to tighten its grip on Central Asia. In this DeepChina report, Tom explains the complex reality of the latest round of the "great game." China is getting closer to Russia, skeptical of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and consolidating its economic hold on Turkmenistan.
Policy and the cycle
Priorities At The Third Plenum
The long-awaited Third Plenum of the Communist Party offered top leader Xi Jinping a platform to address the gap between his long-term vision of China’s technological rise, and the short-term reality of disappointing growth. In this piece, Andrew explains what the priorities Xi signaled at the plenum mean for economic policymaking.
Another Warning To Bond Markets
The People’s Bank of China introduced a new corridor that sets upper and lower limits on short-term interest rates. Wei argues that the immediate aim is to warn market participants that they have priced in overly aggressive monetary easing expectations. In the longer term, the central bank is attempting technical changes to improve the operation and transmission of monetary policy.
How To Get Households Back Into The Stock Market
China’s stock markets are going through another cycle of hope and disappointment, with the Shanghai Composite’s slide since mid-May having erased all of its gains for the year. Years of such uninspiring performance has made Chinese households more skittish about stocks. What could bring households back into equities? In this piece, the team considers some possible scenarios.
Stocks
Gavekal Dragonomics
A User's Guide To The Chinese Stock Market
Thomas Gatley
2 Apr 2019
China’s onshore equity markets are now large and accessible enough that they can no longer be ignored by foreign investors—but idiosyncratic enough that they are hard to understand. This in-depth DeepChina report explains the fundamentals: What is there to invest in? Who owns the market? How can foreigners invest? How is the market regulated?
Bonds
Gavekal Dragonomics
A User's Guide To The Chinese Bond Market
Wei He, Xiaoxi Zhang
30 Jun 2021
The expansion and opening of China’s onshore renminbi bond market is one of the biggest changes to the structure of global financial markets in recent years, one that investors are still grappling with. In this comprehensive 30-page DeepChina report, our analysts present a guide to the nature and functioning of this important market.
Technology
Webinar: Setting The Agenda For China's Plenum
China's Communist Party is gearing up to hold its Third Plenum later this month, an event where top leader Xi Jinping will have a platform to articulate and possibly revise his vision for the economy. With domestic consumers in the doldrums, and trade tensions escalating, is a course correction for China coming? In this webinar our team of China experts explained what to expect, and not to expect, from this high-level conclave.
The Localization Drive Steps Up
China’s long-running drive to reduce its reliance on foreign technology is entering a new phase, as Tilly explains in this piece. Though most of the documents relating to this localization drive remain secret, the political signals to companies and local governments are increasingly quite clear: domestic suppliers are preferred.
The Coming Price War In Chips
Today, pressure from China's excess capacity is on high technology, most prominently semiconductors. China has been investing in new semiconductor fabs to increase self-sufficiency and relieve chip shortages. All that new capacity is now starting to come to market, at a time when the world could have difficulty absorbing the extra supply.
Property
Conversation: How Bad Is China's Economy, And What Will Beijing Do About It?
China's economy is not cratering, but it is definitely running at well below potential, and the government seems reluctant to do what it takes to get it up to full speed again. In the run-up to July's economic-oriented Third Plenum meeting, Arthur and Andrew discuss why Beijing continues to focus on technological upgrading rather than economic growth, whether the long-suffering property sector has hit an inflection point, and the risks to exports from rising protectionism.
The Policy Support For Property Prices
China’s housing prices continue to decline, and at an increasingly rapid pace. Rosealea argues that officials are betting two relatively low-cost schemes will decrease both new-housing inventories and secondary-market supply. If the policies work, the decline in home prices should slow in the coming months.
Video: Evaluating China's Property Rescue
China’s policymakers announced several new property policies last week, including a call for local governments to buy back residential land from developers and purchase housing inventories for conversion into affordable homes. Christopher examines this latest attempt to bolster the ailing property sector and evaluates whether it might succeed where earlier efforts have failed.
Gavekal Dragonomics
Behind The Incredible Export Boom
Thomas Gatley
Chinese export growth ostensibly continues to outpace the rest of the world this year, but Thomas believes this could in part be due to misleading data. Exporters have been incentivized to reduce their under-invoicing, which has in turn materially inflated China’s export growth over the past three years.
Managing Covid
The Chinese Consumer In 2023
The Invisible Second Wave
Shanghai Seminar — April 2023
The Reopening Recovery Is On Track
Macro Update: Reversal, Reopening, Recovery
Webinar: China’s Covid Surge And The Reopening Rally
Latest webinars
Webinar: Setting The Agenda For China's Plenum
China's Communist Party is gearing up to hold its Third Plenum later this month, an event where top leader Xi Jinping will have a platform to articulate and possibly revise his vision for the economy. With domestic consumers in the doldrums, and trade tensions escalating, is a course correction for China coming? In this webinar our team of China experts explained what to expect, and not to expect, from this high-level conclave.
Webinar: France On The Brink?
France goes to the polls this weekend in the first of two elections to choose a new national assembly. Voters are being offered starkly different visions of the way the country should be governed, and a lot is at stake for investors who have provided generous funding over the years to the French government. In this webinar, our French experts assess the race and offer an analysis of what different outcomes could mean for the pricing of French assets and those across the eurozone.
Webinar: Will The Real India Please Stand Up?
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi will get a third consecutive term in office, but his policy agenda is set to be constrained by the pressures of running a coalition government. Investors are worried that a hitherto pro-business government will become more captive to labor interests.