Africa Feels the Chill of China’s Cooling Economy

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
It hasn’t even been a month since Chinese president Xi Jinping was in South Africa for the triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) confab where he unveiled a massive $60 billion financial package. Oh how those were innocent, halcyon days...

You Can't Understand China Unless You Know How the Communist Party Thinks

Zheng Bijian
Huffington Post
The CPC came into being in 1921, almost a century ago.

Will The IMF Grant China's Currency Global Reserve Status?

Kenneth Rapoza
Forbes
The market doubts it, but it is possible that the Chinese currency, the renmimbi (RMB), may become part of the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights.

Psychedelic Video Sings Praises of China's Five Year-Plan

Agence France-Presse
"If you wanna know what China's gonna do, best pay attention to the shisanwu."

Two-Child Policy Is Too Little, Too Late

Adam Minter
Bloomberg
When Chinese leaders convene this week for a four-day meeting on the future of the country’s economy, the biggest news might have to do with babies.

1 Month Later: What Are the Long-Term Implications of Xi's U.S. Trip?

Yukon Huang
Diplomat
While political and security matters dominated headlines, Xi’s U.S. trip was actually driven by economics.

Many in the West Fear Chinese ‘Aid’ to Africa. They’re Wrong. Here’s Why.

Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Brad Parks...
Washington Post
Western pundits have a narrative about China’s activities in Africa.

China and UK: Signs of a New 'Special Relationship?'

Katie Hunt
CNN
Does the UK have a new "special relationship?"

China to Build $5 Billion High-Speed Rail Line in Indonesia

Rieka Rahadiana
Bloomberg
China Railway International Co. Ltd and a consortium of Indonesian state companies will build the rail line from Jakarta to Bandung.

This Is Where China’s Future Will Be Decided

Matt O'Brien
Washington Post
Lanzhou, China — The first thing you notice is the dust.

Xi’s Visit to Kick Off a Golden Age of China-UK Relations

Shi Zhiqin and Lai Suetyi
Diplomat
A state visit next week is expected to spark a new era in bilateral ties.

China Turns Firepower to Soft Power to Try to Win Tiny Taiwan-held Island

YIMOU LEE AND FAITH HUNG
Reuters
"In Kinmen, we can do what Taiwan can't, what Taiwan doesn't dare do."

China and Europe May Team Up to Snub TPP

Nyshka Chandran
CNBC
The world's largest trade deal in recent decades may wind up creating high school-esque cliques on the international stage.

What Does China Think of the TPP?

Shannon Tiezzi
Diplomat
China is taking a wait-and-see approach on the U.S.-led trade deal.

Are the Good Times Over for China and Africa?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
One of the prevailing media narratives of China’s recent economic turmoil is the effect that it could have on emerging markets, particularly in Africa. Now that the Chinese economy is showing real signs of slowing, the story goes, Beijing will soon...

America’s Biggest Competitor Really Isn’t China

Ana Swanson
Washington Post
If you ask Americans who their country's biggest competitor is, many people will tell you China.

How China’s Economic Slowdown Will Impact Africa

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
The tremors in China’s faltering economy are being felt across Africa. Now that China has replaced Europe and the United States as most African countries’ largest trading partner, there is understandable concern that slowing demand in the P.R.C...

The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?

GRAHAM ALLISON
Atlantic
In 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been bloodshed.

China's Xi Says To Prioritize Energy Cooperation With Iran

Ben Blanchard
Reuters
"(We) must prioritize energy and financial cooperation."

Everyone Wants To Decouple From China – Except Osborne

Heather Stewart
Guardian
UK Chancellor George Osborne urged Chinese firms to help build Britain’s “northern powerhouse” during his five-day long grand tour of China.

China Market Rout Doesn't Reflect Economy, Top Diplomat Says

Bloomberg
“Some movements on the stock exchange in China should not equal the whole picture of the Chinese economy.”

China Hails U.S. Repatriation of Corruption Fugitive

SUI-LEE WEE AND BEN BLANCHARD
Reuters
The repatriation of Yang Jinjun marked the first time that China has succeeded in getting a wanted corruption suspectback from the U.S.

China's Xi Says Economy Resilient, Has Huge Potential: State Radio

Judy Hua and Jake Spring
Reuters
China's economy is resilient and has the capacity to maintain a long-term medium-to-high growth rate.

Is Romance Dead? France Seeks New Image in China

MICHEL ROSE
Reuters
France's finance minister wants to persuade Chinese officials to set aside their romantic image.

U.S. Won’t Impose Sanctions on Chinese Companies Before Xi Visit

Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post
Senior U.S. and Chinese officials reached “substantial agreement” on several cybersecurity issues.

One Thing China Got Right

Peter Coy
Bloomberg
Stocks plunged, monetary policy wavered, but Beijing finally fixed the "fixing."

Media

08.26.15

Mapping Fallout From ‘Black Monday’: Who Was Hardest Hit?

David Wertime
August 24, which some have already dubbed “Black Monday,” was not a kind day to global equity markets. The rout began with a massive sell-off in China, where the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index plunged 8.49 percent in just one day. Those losses...

Conversation

08.25.15

Is the Bloom Off the Rose of China’s Economic Miracle?

Arthur R. Kroeber, David Schlesinger & more
On Monday, August 24, the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 8.5 percent, its second such steep fall since late July, and its worst since 2007. On Tuesday, stocks fell an additional 7.6 percent. The steep slide translates into more than $4 trillion in...

Caixin Media

08.03.15

Villain or Hero for Stock Market Saga?

An obscure equities-trading finance agency that brokers often slighted in favor of bank loans has suddenly taken center stage in the drama playing out in the stock market.But reviews are mixed over whether the four-year-old, quasi-governmental China...

Conversation

07.29.15

Can Xi Jinping Turn China’s Economy Around?

Arthur R. Kroeber, George Chen & more
On Monday, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.5 percent, erasing all of the gains it had made in an extraordinary run-up this year. The drop was the second 8.5 percent drop in recent weeks. The first such drop (the occasion for the Conversation...

China’s Shares Tumble Again

Neil Gough
New York Times
Artists, essayists, lawyers, bloggers and others deemed to be online troublemakers have been hauled into police stations and investigated or imprisoned for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge that was once confined to physical...

China Surprises With 7% Growth in Second Quarter

Mark Magnier
Wall Street Journal
China’s growth remained at 7% in the second quarter, a level economists had thought would be hard to reach amid broad signs that Beijing’s policies to jump-start the economy hadn’t taken hold. 

Sinica Podcast

07.13.15

Good Riddance, Monsieur Epstein

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
The hosts of the Sinica Podcast are not surprised that Gady Epstein is moving on. We used to buy the papers for his “Telegrams from the Orient”, but then he took that Economist gig and his productivity plummeted and it has become hard to even...

Media

05.29.15

Is the Shanghai Stock Market Bubble Finally Bursting?

David Wertime
A customer strolls into a bookstore, goes the popular Chinese joke, and tells the salesperson: “I’m looking for a book with no killers, but much bloodshed; with no love, but great regret; with no spies, but constant paranoia. Can you make a...

Chinese Stocks Surge Most Since 2008 for World’s Biggest Rally

Kyoungwha Kim
Bloomberg
Rally buoyed by optimism around government plans to boost foreign access to the nation’s markets.

Sinica Podcast

05.11.15

India Comes to China

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
This week’s Sincia Podcast is about the upcoming visit to China of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who served from 2001 to 2014 as Chief Minister of Gujarat and was sworn into office almost one year ago this month. Modi’s visit comes at an...

Sinica Podcast

05.04.15

The Furor and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
A total of 57 countries have now joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China’s newly-launched competitor to the Asian Development Bank (AIIB) that has sparked a flurry of objections from the United States, even culminating in a failed...

Media

04.14.15

Henry Paulson: ‘Dealing with China’

Eric Fish from Asia Blog
Speaking at Asia Society New York on April 13 with New Yorker correspondent Evan Osnos, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson explained that it’s impossible to predict the timing or magnitude of a financial crisis, but any country with...

Conversation

01.26.15

Does Size Matter? (In the U.S. and Chinese Economies, That Is...)

Taisu Zhang
Last week, President Obama’s State of the Union Address touted a U.S. economic recovery. Meanwhile, China’s economic growth is slowing and Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, has said that China’s economy, contrary to overseas...

Why Paul Krugman is Scared of China

Sophia Yan
CNN
"China scares me," he said Tuesday at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong. "It scares me not because the policies have been wrong or anything, but because of the magnitude of the adjustment."

Inside a Chinese Test-Prep Factory

Brook Larmer
New York Times
One minute later, at precisely 11:45, the stillness was shattered. Thousands of teenagers swarmed out of the towering front gate of Maotanchang High School. Many of them wore identical black-and-white Windbreakers emblazoned with the slogan, in...

China Offers Russia Ruble Help

Brian Spegele
Wall Street Journal
China says it is willing to provide assistance to Russia following recent sharp drops in the value of its currency, said a senior official, as President Vladimir Putin’s regime faces continuing strains with the U.S. and Europe.

China’s Housing Resists Efforts to Spur Market

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
Every urban real estate market is different in mainland China, driven by myriad municipal and provincial regulations and the varying strength of local economies. But the outcome is the same: The property market is under serious pressure.

Diversity the New Game for Macau as Gambling Revenues Tumble

Tiffany Ap
South China Morning Post
When inaugural chief executive Edmund Ho Hau-wah threw the liberalisation dice that took Macau's flagging gaming industry into the 21st century in 2002, few could have predicted its stellar rise to become the top city for global gaming, leaving...

Features

12.10.14

Why Beijing’s Troubles Could Get a Lot Worse

from Barron’s
Few foreigners know China as intimately as Anne Stevenson-Yang does. She has spent the bulk of her professional life there since first arriving in 1985, working as a journalist, magazine publisher, and software executive, with stints in between...

China Tightening Curbs on Opaque Local Debt Spurs Market Tumble

Helen Sun and Judy Chen
Bloomberg
While the change caught traders off guard, authorities in the world’s second-largest economy are trying to rein in the use of lightly-regulated Local Government Finance Vehicles (LGFVs) as they promote the development of a more transparent municipal...

‘China Strikes Back’: An Exchange

Perry Link & Orville Schell from New York Review of Books
Letters in response to: “China Strikes Back!” from the October 23, 2014 issue of The New York Review of Books.To the Editors:In “China Strikes Back” [NYR, October 23], Orville Schell sounds a much-needed wake-up call about China’s recent attitude...

China Announces Import Support Measures as APEC Leaders Arrive

Lucy Hornby
Financial Times
China tossed a bone to trading partners attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting this week by announcing a series of measures including more bank credit for high-tech imports and quicker approvals for meat and seafood shipments.

China Rolls out the Red Carpet for APEC

Lucy Hornby
Financial Times
The APEC summit of nations that collectively represent more than half the global economy is more about dialogue and non-binding commitments than implementing change.

It’s Time to Give China Some Time

William Pesek
Bloomberg
There’s also evidence the country may be approaching something of a Henry Ford moment, when a manufacturing-based economy matures to point where workers can afford to buy the products they're making.

China Says It Will Be Good Host to Japan During APEC

Reuters
Voice of America
A one-on-one meeting would be a symbolic breakthrough in ties between the world's second- and third-biggest economies, which have turned frigid in the past two years over a territorial row.

All Eyes Will Be On China This Week

Jeremy Gaunt
Business Insider
China's economy, the second largest in the world, gets a spot check this week with a barrage of data due that should indicate how successful Beijing has been in supporting growth.

China’s Economy Just Overtook The U.S. In One Key Measure

Mark Gongloff
Huffington Post
Here's another way of looking at it -- China's share of the global economy is now slightly bigger than America's, at 16.5 percent to 16.3 percent.

Follow the Money, China-Style

Yu Hua
New York Times
The appreciation of the yuan has failed to convince ordinary Chinese people that their money buys more; on the contrary, they feel it’s worth less.

Infographics

04.15.14

Hidden Taxes

from Sohu
It is tax day in the United States, when many citizens groan and grumble at the size of their refund (what refund?) or scratch their heads as they try to maximize deductions. Our partners at Sohu recently published an infographic, which we have...

Media

11.21.13

For Cash-Strapped Parents, Two Babies Are Too Many

Call it reproduction with Chinese capitalist characteristics. On November 15, authorities announced that the country’s One-Child Policy would be loosened, adding couples in which one spouse is an only child to the list of families allowed to have...

Conversation

10.16.13

Uncomfortable Bedfellows: How Much Does China Need America Now?

Bill Bishop, David Schlesinger & more
Bill Bishop:The D.C. dysfunction puts China in a difficult place. Any financial markets turmoil that occurs because of a failure of Congress to do its job could harm China’s economy, and especially its exports. The accumulation of massive foreign-...

China Second Quarter GDP to Test Reformers’ Stomach for Slower Growth

Langi Chiang and Koh Gui Qing
Reuters
China's resolve to revamp its economy for the long-term good will be tested this month when a slew of data show growth is grinding towards a 23-year low, with no recovery in sight.

Reports

06.01.13

Inequality in China

John Knight
World Bank
This paper provides an overview of research on income inequality in China over the period of economic reform. It presents the results of two main sources of evidence on income inequality and, assisted by various decompositions, explains the reasons...