• Home/
• China

David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - China

"China-Japan rearmament is Keynesian stimulus, if it doesn't go horribly wrong"

Here is the opening from this interesting and unsettling article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for The Telegraph (UK): 

Asia is on the cusp of a full-blown arms race. The escalating clash between China and almost all its neighbours in the Pacific has reached a threshold. All other economic issues at this point are becoming secondary.

Beijing's implicit threat to shoot down any aircraft that fails to adhere to its new air control zone in the East China Sea is a watershed moment for the world. The issue cannot easily be finessed. Other countries either comply, or they don't comply. Somebody has to back down.

The gravity of the latest dispute should by now be obvious even to those who don't pay attention the Pacific Rim, the most dangerous geostrategic fault line in the world.

Japan's foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, accused China of "profoundly dangerous acts that unilaterally change the status quo".

The US defence secretary Chuck Hagel called it "a destabilising attempt to alter the status quo in the region" and warned that the US would defy the order. The Pentagon has since stated that US pilots will not switch on their transponders to comply, and will defend themselves if attacked. Think about this for a moment.

Mr Hagel asserted categorically that Washington will stand behind its alliance with Japan, the anchor of American security in Asia. "The United States reaffirms its long-standing policy that Article V of the US Japan Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands," he said.

Whether China fully believes this another matter, of course. The Senkaku islands offer a perfect opportunity for Beijing to test the resolve of the Obama Administration since it is far from clear to the war-weary American people why they should risk conflict in Asia over these uninhabited rocks near Taiwan, and since it also far from clear whether President Obama's Asian Pivot is much more than a rhetorical flourish.

Besides, Beijing has just watched the US throw its long-time ally Saudi Arabia under a bus over Iran. It has watched Moscow score an alleged victory over Washington in Syria. You and I may think it is an error to infer too much US weakness from these incidents, but that is irrelevant. Beijing seems to be drawing its own conclusions.

Even if the immediate crisis can be defused, we are clearly sliding into a new Cold War. While it is dangerous, it could have paradoxical and powerful side effects. Rearmament lifted the world economy out of slump in the late 1930s, working as a form of concerted Keynesian fiscal stimulus. It could do so again.



Read entire article

Atlantis China Fund Newsletter

This note from Atlantis may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

China's growth moderation is on course. The latest IMF forecast suggests that China's GDP growth will fall to 7.3% in 2014 from an estimated 7.6% in 2013. Reducing inequality and gentrification are on top of the government's agenda. We believe this should be accomplished by implementing broad reforms such as financial market liberalisation, effective land management, free labour mobility, broadening of social security net coverage and establishing a well-defined property rights / compensation system on natural resources. In our view, headline GDP rates only matter when it comes to national power as what counts day to day are living standards, i.e. GDP per capita.



Read entire article

"Gold No Slam-Dunk Sell in China as Aunties Buy Bullion"

Here is the opening from this informative article from Bloomberg:

Yang Cuiyan, a 41-year-old housekeeper from Anhui province, is one reason China is poised to topple India as the world's top consumer of gold even as investors desert the metal.

"I don't know anything about the stock market and I don't have enough money to buy property, so I figured gold is the safest choice," she said. "I can put it on when I go back home to show everyone that I'm doing well."

Yang, who made the 650-mile (1,000-kilometer) journey to the capital from her rural home to visit relatives and shop, is one of the legions of middle-aged Chinese women, respectfully referred to as aunties, who bought coins and jewelry this year, bringing support to a market shunned by many professional investors who began doubting the metal as a store of value.

Bullion consumption in the world's second-largest economy will surge 29 percent to a record 1,000 metric tons in 2013, according to the median of 13 estimates from analysts, traders and gold producers in China surveyed by Bloomberg News. Demand that may ease 2.4 percent in 2014 from this peak still points to purchases greater than any other nation and more than the U.S., Europe and the Middle East combined.

China's demand for jewelry, bars and coins rose 30 percent to 996.3 tons in the 12 months to September, while usage in India gained 24 percent to 977.6 tons, according to the London-based World Gold Council. India was No. 1 for calendar 2012.



Read entire article

Tim Price: Madness, and sanity

My thanks to the author for his ever-interesting letter, published by PFP Wealth Management. It is posted in the Subscriber's Area but here is a brief sample:

Probably the biggest of those fish is that giant part of the world economy known as Asia. The chart below shows the anticipated growth in numbers of the middle class throughout the world over the next two decades. The solid green circle is the current middle class population (or as at 2009 to be precise); the wider blue-fringed circle represents the forecast size of this population in 20 years' time. The OECD definition of middle class is those households with daily per capita expenditures of between $10 and $100 in purchasing power parity terms.

Note that in the US and Europe, the size of the middle class is barely expected to change over the next two decades. Central and South America, and the Middle East and North Africa, are forecast to grow a little. But one area stands out: the emerging middle class in Asia is forecast to explode, from roughly 500 million to some 3 billion people.

In equity investing, the combination of a compelling secular growth story and compellingly attractive valuations is a very rare thing, the sort of investment opportunity that one might only see once or twice in a generation, if that. But it exists, here in Asia, today. Once again, however, we have to abandon conventional financial thinking in order to exploit it.



Read entire article

Beneficiaries of reforms post 3rd Plenum

Thanks to a subscriber for this timely report by Jun Ma and colleagues at Deutsche Bank which may be of interest to subscribers. The full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area but here is a section

“The mega reform package approved by the 3rd Plenum, which includes 60 measures, is by far the most profound in a decade, if not decades, in terms of scope, depth, and impact. Its aggressiveness even exceeded our very bullish expectation. Emphasizing that the market would play a decisive role in allocating resources, this plan will guide China's second-half journey towards a market-based economy, significantly lift China's growth potential, and help reduce macro risks.

We believe that deregulation which will permit private companies to enter most industries other than those related to national security is the most important reform within the package. Our estimate shows that relative to the reform scenario, deregulation will boost the average annual real output growth of the private sector by 3ppts per year in the coming decade.

The measures to liberalize interest rates and the capital account, granting greater market access to foreign investors, granting farmers the titles of land use rights, as well as resource pricing reform will enhance the efficiency of resources allocation, and speed up the development the service sector. The development of the municipal bond market will help remove a major overhang on banks NPLs. The transfer of SOE shares to the pension fund and raising the SOE dividend payout ratio will help improve pension and fiscal sustainability in the longer run. The two-child policy will help raise long-term growth potential.



Read entire article

China's Bold, Contradictory Reform

Here is the opening to this interesting editorial from Bloomberg

Call it policy presentation with Chinese characteristics. After the meeting of its leadership last week, China's Communist Party issued a muddled communique that aroused no great excitement. Then, on the weekend, well ahead of the usual schedule for such announcements, the party released a longer follow-up statement worth getting excited about.

It's radical stuff -- in principle, if not (yet) in policy. Maybe China's new president, Xi Jinping, aspires to be another Deng Xiaoping after all.

The "Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms" was nothing if not wide-ranging. Tucked inside it were the biggest headlines, so far as many foreign observers are concerned: China's notorious one-child policy is to be softened, and the system of arbitrary confinement to "re-education" in labor camps, a tool of political repression, is to be ended.

Most of the statement, though, is devoted to a comprehensive list of economic and financial reforms. This emphasis is deliberate: "The reform of the economic system is the focus of all the efforts to deepen the all-round reform." Many of the proposals echo the long-standing recommendations of pro-market advocates at home and abroad.

The statement calls for China's financial sector to be liberalized. There will be new private banks, as well as further moves toward exchange-rate flexibility, market-determined interest rates and capital-account convertibility. The blueprint calls for price reforms in water, energy, transportation and telecommunications. Farmers will be given new property rights, including the right of succession and the ability to sell shares in their land or use it as collateral. The system of household registration, which controls workers' movement from countryside to city, will be eased (though curbs on migration to the biggest cities will remain).



Read entire article

China Vows Bigger Role for Markets as Party Closes Policy Summit

This article from Bloomberg covers the main points relating to the end of China’s third plenum. Here is a section

China’s leaders are under pressure to revamp the nation’s finances as swelling local-government debt highlights the risk of a buildup of bad loans and state businesses’ access to bank funding crowds out small firms. Today’s document didn’t discuss specific issues such as regional borrowing, interest rates or the one-child policy, while referring generally to giving farmers more property rights.

“It’s going in the right direction is the most you can say,” said Louis Kuijs, chief China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in Hong Kong. “Even though some of the phrasing is new, the ideas are not so new.”

The communique, published by the official Xinhua News Agency, reiterated the role of state ownership while saying development of the non-public sector will be “encouraged.”

That emphasis “probably precludes drastic state-owned enterprise-related reforms,” said Kuijs, who previously worked for the World Bank in China.
 



Read entire article