China’s total social financing (TSF) in January rose more than expected. This is being greeted as a massive boost to…
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China’s zero-Covid policy has reached its limits. The intention is gradually to relax restrictions while efforts to improve vaccination rates,…
Xi’s next period in office will be very difficult for the leadership: economic growth will be only 2-4% a year,…
China’s debt problems persist and are increasingly evident in the housing market. While this is unlikely to lead to immediate…
China is currently de facto blockading Taiwan. Our reading is that the PLA announcement of further manoeuvres in Bohai and…
We went short the renminbi (RMB) on 12 December 2021. At the time, the RMB traded at around USD6.35. For…
China’s “twin sessions” of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference…
There is a moment as flood turns to ebb when, in a few pools on the beach, the tide still…
Evergrande might be insolvent, but its liabilities look digestible for the many mouths of the Chinese state. Clamping down on…
The AUKUS agreement will deepen the cold war with China. And it has repercussions in the EU and for US…
Shared prosperity is for real in China. The coherence between the fragmented state interventions we have already seen and the…
The Covid-19 Delta strain and the economy are likely to reconnect globally. China’s policy to contain this mutation is both…
There are two key variables to consider when investing in Chinese assets. First, the change in Chinese Communist Party (CCP)…
Capital flight continues from China. This isn’t new and it’s really not a problem, despite the perception that this is…
We do not think that China can win the Cold War with the United States. Last month we published a…
Writing a year or more ago when we floated the idea of the superiority of techno-autocracies over liberal democracies, it…
The likely economic and financial market damage caused by the Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is underestimated. We remain short Thai baht and…
The Wuhan Coronavirus has the potential to damage asset prices like SARS did. We would need greater evidence that it…
Another ratchet up in the US-China trade war and the intensification of the Hong Kong protests mean that we would…
The state also was the key player in all the Asian emerging markets that graduated from middle-income to rich economy…
G20 bout resulted in no knock-out! We got a trade war truce, but we didn’t get any shift in the…
The breakdown of US/China trade talks and President Trump’s decision to add a further layer of tariff s on Chinese…
The reality is that the US woke up too late to the risk of China usurping them as the key…
We think there will be several effects from a US-China trade deal. These span import substitution, from a probable increase in US sales to China, including technology imports which will actually make it easier for China to meet its “Made in China” goals.
People are always keen to write off China. Its authoritarian regime has built up malinvestments and debt beyond that of any other emerging economy, both in nominal terms and as a share of GDP. Even its GDP is often deemed to be over-inflated. But we are not on the cusp of a collapse. For a start, China’s financial system still has relatively closed circuitry, with the money being owed mostly by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to state-owned banks, meaning relatively modest connectivity to the wider world.
Chinese data suggests the trade war is biting. This is focusing minds in Beijing, meaning some kind of deal between…
Policy measures taken by the Chinese authorities show they are serious about combatting risks to growth. These were the consequence…
China’s economic model is rebalancing towards domestic demand. While not without its risks, at the moment this shift is proceeding…
China recorded a rare current account deficit in the first quarter. This isn’t likely to mark the start of a…
President Xi is a communist ideologue committed to the supremacy of the Party. These ideals contradict many of China’s economic…
China’s monumental One Belt One Road (OBOR) project is beginning to take shape. OBOR may turn out to be even…
We view Chinese steps to restrain leverage a positive development, proving that the authorities are equally capable of removing the…
The Chinese Communist party’s top leadership will be reshuffled at the end of 2017. The most likely outcome is that…
China’s foreign exchange policy is evolving. The current offshore renminbi short squeeze and the exchange control measures introduced recently seek…
We’re unlikely to see the real colour of President Xi Jinping’s zeal until after the appointment of the next Politburo…
The legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been underpinned by rising living standards. But as trend growth rates…
The issue of Chinese capital flight might have fallen down the list of global risks, but this respite will be…
Whichever method you use to measure capital flight from China the story is similar; around $100bn of cash is heading…
Managing the renminbi via a trade weighted index can be seen as part of the economic reform process. It makes…
We are increasing our short Chinese renminbi position and adding to our Asian EM currency shorts, with Korea and Taiwan…
The shift in the Chinese exchange rate policy reinforces our strategic positions of being short renminbi (see our report China…
Slowing domestic growth and deflation risks posed by a combination of weak global demand and rapid US dollar appreciation are…
Despite China’s National Audit Office (NAO) reporting that the total public debt ratio was still well under 60% of GDP…
