You don’t hear about China’s “ghost cities” nearly as much anymore. Around 2012, thereabouts, suddenly social and regular medias alike were alive with pics of all sorts of empty buildings all around the vast urban Chinese landscapes. Unlike America’s Rust Belt, these spectral landmarks were brand new; built recently yet eerily unoccupied. Claimed to be a symbol of burgeoning asset [...]
It makes all the difference in the world. Back in the back half of 2018, the word more often being used when compared to that year’s first half had been “slowing.” By the later months, it was pretty obvious this was taking place no matter how many times the American unemployment rate was dusted off and trotted out in front [...]
At the monthly press conference China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) now regularly gives whenever the Big Three economic accounts are updated (this time along with quarterly GDP), spokesman Liu Aihua was asked by a reporter from Reuters to comment on how the global economic recession might impact the Communist government’s long range goal of reaching its assigned GDP target. [...]
Chinese industrial production, retail sales, and fixed asset investment were all taken as better or improving. Industrial production, for example, was 6.2% in November 2016, up from 6.1% in both September and October. Retail sales grew 10.8%, the best rate since December 2015. Fixed asset investment grew by an accumulated rate of 8.3% for the second straight month, better by [...]
Economists setting their expectations for China and PBOC “stimulus” should have been paying attention to retail sales; not Chinese retail sales, but American. They keep seeing a rebound that just doesn’t exist. US consumers, as the central marginal marketplace for the world economy of goods, have steadfastly refused the invitation of the unemployment rate to produce a worldwide economic resurgence. [...]
For the month of June 2014, Chinese industrial production rose to 9.2%, which was the highest rate of 2014 to that point. As with the US (as if the US and Chinese economies are related), the Chinese economy in early 2014 seemed to be suffering a bit of a slow patch though there wasn’t the Polar Vortex to divide opinion. [...]
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