China Dream

That China listens to the IMF is a reassuring and observable fact. So, when the IMF produces a targeted analysis on China’s currently single most serious problem, growth or lack thereof, it’s worth a closer squint. In the IMF Working Paper at this link China’s Path to Sustainable and Balanced Growth staffers Dirk Muir, Natalija […]

In light of recent political developments in the United States do we think China-bashing by Western governments and Western media will: A. Continue as before? B. Decrease in intensity? C. Increase in intensity? If, like me, you believe C is the most likely outcome the paper highlighted today from Isha Agarawal of the University of […]

Researchers Hongtao Chen, Yunlang Wu and Jun Huang, all from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics found an interesting link between ESG ratings and audit fees. Along the way they note nearly 600 agencies are now providing ESG rating services globally with roughly 20 [Surely more? Ed.] of those in China. The problem with […]

[If the future of the ‘tech-war(s)’ is of more than passing interest I recommend you commit the 30-minutes or so a reading of the full text requires. The link is at the end.] Anu Bradford, Matthew C. Waxman and Eileen Li, all at the Law School of the Columbia University, in a pre-print for the […]

Joe Long from the Northwestern University (et al.) acknowledges one of the problems with this analysis is it covers a period when the region being studied, the western states of the United States, did pretty well. The conclusion of the work though is although white miners in the west were beneficiaries of the Chinese Exclusion […]

Michael R. Davidson at the School of Global Policy and StrategyMechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the University of California, San Diego takes the long look at China’s coal ‘problem’. That coal in China is a problem, and one getting worse, is in no doubt. China consumes half of the world’s coal used, five times […]

Fuxiu Jiang from the Renmin University and Kenneth Kim from the Tongji University have prepared a paper that drills down into the mechanisms that make corporate governance (CG) different in China. They believe the arc of China’s CG progress will bend neither towards the Anglo-U.S. model nor to Japan-German practices. As the ‘China-Model’ is still […]

Kari Heimonen and Risto Rönkkö from the University of Jyväskylä and the Bank of Finland have taken a fresh look at the ever-topical notion that the Rmb is increasingly being woven more into the global currency system Since China got off its narrow U.S. dollar peg in 2005 there’s been a strong case to be […]

The young men (and they’re all young men BTW) in t-shirts with tats who promote cryptocurrency at the University of YouTube regularly cite the coming of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a key reason to love the crypto; but so far and to date, CBDCs have failed to arrive. Nobody has made more of […]

The IMF’s regular publication ‘Finance and Development’ is free and an always good read. The September edition though is especially interesting so I’ve decided to highlight the best articles from it today. You can get a copy via the following link Finance and Development – September 2024. The magazine focuses on a key issue for […]

Henry L. Friedman of the University of California’s Anderson School of Management (et al.) found a unique opportunity to test whether or not management guidance helped investors to more orderly or ‘better’ markets. In June 2020 China’s regulators dropped the requirement for companies on their GEM board to provide mandatory earnings guidance. Following the rule […]

The U.S. decided in 2017 to clip China’s wings as an export manufacturing powerhouse. Since then China’s trade balance has gotten a lot bigger. In June it reached a new record. So what’s going on? Trang Hoang and Gordon Lewis, researchers at the FED, have twigged part of the answer which they discuss in a […]

Koichi Yoshino from the Tezukayama University (Nara) together with others from the Bank of Japan address the China-growth question in the context of the Asian Fantastic-4 (F4, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) who’ve already blazed the trail. They conclude, if China can follow the same path the results should be equally impressive. However.. China differs […]

The paper highlighted this week starts with an important point. If China doesn’t continue to grow at a high rate that’ll suck for China AND the rest of the world. We’re not that far away, so most will remember, from the period after the Global Financial Crisis when China’s bold stimulus produced the largest component […]

Formally known as the ‘2024 Article IV Consultation’ this annual exercise often reveals more about what’s on China’s planners minds than what the IMF ‘outsiders’ wish for them. The work was completed in July but the full report was only released on August 2nd and you’ll find it (137-pages) in full here. Below I’ve extracted […]

There’s an important caveat that qualifies the work highlighted today from Yufei Zhang at the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Kyoto in Japan. Viz.: “..our results can only be understood under the Chinese special institutional background, where the most important economic resources are controlled by public sectors (including governments, SOEs and state-owned […]

[Another contribution to the ‘why China never made it to an industrial revolution whilst the West did’ discussion.] Ruanzhuo Zhai from the Renmin University and Xiaoyang Luan from the HKU Business School have identified a period in China’s comparatively recent history, from the 10th to the 14th century, when a mercantilistic school of Confucianism flourished. […]

I’m flagging the ‘paper’ this week despite it being poorly written, un-reviewed, lacking rigor and by somebody who’s claimed affiliation (London School of Economics) I have a question mark over. Having said all that, Neha Baid in the monograph linked to below, makes such a startling, counterintuitive point about the state of relations between the […]