A brief personal preamble. I maintain Chinese banks are among the best run and safest financial enterprises in the world. This view is incontrovertible in only one circumstance i.e. you believe they falsify their numbers. The fact many do* explains the multi-year drubbing valuations have suffered. [*Believe banks falsify numbers not that banks do, in […]
Author: Nial Gooding
On balance, the IMF give China a clean bill of health in their latest annual assessment. What they’ve chosen to particularly focus on in this report is the ongoing mess in the property market and the concomitant rise in debt at the local government level. This focus is in line with what we believe China […]
A debate in public and academic circles has yet to be settled on the issue of whether banning certain products is effective. America famously banned alcohol a while ago with very mixed results, and reversed the decision not too long after. Today, the argument continues as we vex about whether, or not, we should permit […]
Françoise Huang (et al.), Senior Economist for Asia Pacific and Trade writing in an Allianz Research paper revisits the notion that the Chinese Renminbi (Rmb) may be heading to a position of ‘co-hegemony’ with the U.S. Dollar (U$). The brief begins by noting since 2009 the influence of the Rmb has doubled in size in […]
Whilst the proportion of goods imported by Korea from China has been steady the proportion of goods imported by China from Korea has been falling. This development is highlighted in a short brief from Jung Min Han and Jeong-Hyun Kim writing for the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade. They note Korea’s proportion of […]
Bad news for those hoping for a broad recovery soon in China’s residential property market. Xiguang Cao (et al.) from the East China University of Political Science and Law has looked at 287 Chinese cities from 2005-2018 to see if aging populations correlate with lower house prices; and they do. Studies from the mature markets […]
[As the last W-share listed behemoth to flirt with its listing price flails (Meituan 03690, September 2018, H$69.00, others are well through) brief thoughts on the process of listing companies that once touted poor corporate governance i.e. Weighted Voting Rights, as a virtue. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now.] The decision taken by the Hong […]
Chun Zhou and Samantha Tang from the Zhejiang University and the National University of Singapore note past flurries of excitement about the possibility of hostile takeovers becoming a business in China. However, in the paper highlighted today they push back on the notion this is an inevitable development and conclude instead “it is the futility […]
That China’s domestic stock markets (that increasingly set the tone in Hong Kong) differ fundamentally in terms of players and tactics from developed markets is not new news. However, Lin Tan (et al.), from the Tsinghua University has produced a meta-study looking not only at how the players differ but also how their tendencies manifest […]
Two economies dominate consideration of economic prospects in the next decade. Look around today. Almost every modern convenience was conceived of or perfected in the United States, and almost every device facilitating this convenience was made in China; and this reality of daily life, for most on the planet, is unlikely to change soon. In […]
The Document referenced in the title was produced by The Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and The Chinese Communist Party (hereafter, The Committee) the week before last, to small fanfare. [The Committee have their own website and the Document can be accessed there via this link Reset-Prevent-Build] On reading through […]
More than half of my money invested in China is in the stocks of either State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) or quasi-SOEs. Their earnings are more reliable, the managers are more transparent, the operations tend to be more stable and they’re mostly better financed than private sector peers. Observable facts I’d strongly argue, not just my […]
U.S.-China trade in 2022, at U$730bn, was a new all-time record. Megan Hogan and Gary Clyde Hufbauer, both at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, look at changes in the pattern of trade between China and the U.S. since 2019 and find little changed over the period. Aggregate tariffs rose from 3.1% to 19.3%, China […]
There’s no doubt, and there’s ample academic literature to support the notion, that a regular dialogue with investee companies is a good thing for analysts and managers. Analysts make better forecasts and managers make smarter investment decisions as a result. Through COVID site visits were difficult and we had to rely on conference calls to […]
I have a couple of issues with the paper highlighted today. Viola Rothschild at the Duke University, Department of Political Science and her collaborator Hong Shen Zhu at the University of Pennsylvania, Center for Study of Contemporary China lead off by describing China as an ‘autocracy‘, which it isn’t, exactly. Second, they go on to […]
[The title of this note is a reference to a speech* given by Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University, over six thousand times before his death in 1925. The speech encouraged Philadelphians not to dream of distant riches but find them, via observation and enterprise, in their own backyard. If you substitute ‘Hong Kong’ for […]
The New York Fed have a blog ‘Liberty Street Economics’ and in a recent post from advisors Hunter L. Clark and Matthew Higgins they look at the reality of China achieving per-capita GDP consistent with a mid-level developed economy, such as Greece. This is a policy goal and a target of 2035 has been set. […]
If you have an interest in cryptocurrencies the work highlighted today from Robin Hui Huang and Sunny Xiyuan Li in a Research Paper for the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law will be of interest. If you care about the development of China’s financial system, its central bank digital currency (CBDC, hereafter e-CNY) […]
In the latest Asia and Pacific Regional Economic Outlook the IMF have devoted around a third of the publication to a review of China. The reason, I think, is twofold: First, as they point out, the region will contribute two thirds of global growth in 2024 with China accounting for the lion’s share. Prospects for […]
Every so often I read something and go ‘Wow!’ Reviewing the paper highlighted this week was one of those moments. Eping Liu and Haoyuan Qin, both from the Business Schools of the Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have done extraordinary work, they claim is the first of its kind, on how corporate […]