Gavekal Dragonomics

Research Team, Ernan Cui

Sep 01st 2014

After enduring milk powder laced with industrial chemicals and pork tainted with dangerous steroids, Chinese consumers are ramping up demand for imports and organics. Local firms are responding by consolidating markets and upgrading their technology, and the government is tightening food safety rules.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Research Team

Sep 01st 2014

China’s pollution problems may not be the worst in history, but they are bad enough. Progress in correcting them has been real but inconsistent. Loud commitments by the new leadership, and a tough new environmental law, offer hope of a faster clean-up.

Gavekal Research

Andrew Batson

Sep 01st 2014

As China’s economic growth has downshifted over the past few years, one of the big surprises has been the absence of bad news from the job market. Wages are still rising at double digit rates, and employers still have trouble filling vacancies. The reason, as is now widely understood, is that the structural slowdown in investment growth is happening at the same time as a structural shift in the labor market. Changing demographics and the...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Sep 01st 2014

Premier Li Keqiang’s most successful economic reform so far is deregulation that has led to a surge in registrations of new private businesses. The next step will be to let these little companies become big ones.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Aug 21st 2014

Is there a more consensus trade then being bullish on the US dollar? With a) the US economy outperforming those of Europe and Japan, with b) the Federal Reserve looking to withdraw some of the extra-ordinary stimulus that it has deployed in the past five years, just as the need for the European Central Bank, and possibly the Bank of Japan, to become a lot more aggressive becomes ever starker, with c) the Pentagon limiting its defense spending...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave, François-Xavier Chauchat, Will Denyer, Joyce Poon, Udith Sikand, Long Chen

Aug 20th 2014

In the latest bi-weekly review of global economics and investment we focus on the velocity of money and the credit cycle in the major economic regions: Overview: Charles Gave notes with concern the downturn in the Gavekal Velocity Indicator. US: Will Denyer looks where the US is in the credit cycle and argues it looks more like 2004 than 2007. Europe: François Chauchat argues that contrary to popular belief Europe’s long credit crunch is...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Thomas Gatley, Long Chen

Aug 18th 2014

Among all the criticisms on the accuracy of Chinese statistics, the most famous and obvious one is that the sum of China’s provincial GDP is always substantially higher than the national figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics. This reflects the fact that GDP is the most important criterion used to evaluate local government officials, so they have a strong incentive to gussy up their numbers.

Gavekal Research

Long Chen

Aug 14th 2014

How do you ease without easing? That is the conundrum China premier Li Keqiang has set for himself. After a disappointing round of July data made clear that economic recovery was still fragile, Li’s cabinet, the State Council, issued a document asking the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and other ministries to “lower borrowing costs.” But it stopped short of signaling an interest-rate cut.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Aug 11th 2014

China’s government has been promising a “new-style” urbanization policy that will remedy some of the past decade’s many ills. But the ideas behind it are old: planners still seem convinced that the growth of big cities growth must be controlled, and are continuing wasteful efforts to shift resources to smaller and less productive cities.