Published in February this year the report highlighted today is from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service in the U.S. and is authored by Wayne M. Morrison, a Specialist in Asian Trade and Finance. It provides a scholarly-but-with-a-light-touch review of where China is today and how it got here and while close China watchers will find […]
Overall, the authors of a recent IMF Working Paper (November 12th 2018) reckon, China’s doing a good job on rebalancing and, by implication, management of the economy in general. Rui Mano and Jiayi Zhang point out that superficially disappointing progress in 2017 had more to do with external factors than domestic backsliding. They conclude, unsurprisingly, […]
‘Fintech’, to borrow a somewhat overused tech simile, is like teenage sex; everyone talks about it, nobody knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it and so claims they’re doing it too. The paper highlighted this week from Bonnie Buchanan and Cathy Cao of the Seattle University is hard to summarize […]
A question I sometimes ask when visiting a new company is ‘Whom, among the analyst community, do you think most reliably summarizes your prospects?’. This is of course a round-the-garden way of asking to whom do you drop the most timely and informed updates? The paper highlighted this week, from Zengquan Li and T. J. […]
黑猫白猫, 能捉到老鼠就是好猫 (black cat, white cat; if it can catch rats, that’s a good cat). China has a long history of flying policy kites, especially in the area of financial reform, and it sent another up last year directed at SOEs using the weakest listed telecom provider China Unicom as its subject. Following an announcement […]
Years ago I was in a garment factory in southern China. I made a note as I was being shown around about how enlightened the factory owner was having air-conditioning installed to keep staff comfortable. Later in the formal Q+A I brought up the issue and asked how they justified the extra expense? If we […]
China is a good place to study the return to education and social scientists have been at it for some time. Researchers M. Niaz Asadullah and Saixi Xiao, both affiliated with the University of Malaya but writing in a Working Paper for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, count 68-such studies from 1987 to 2016. […]
China’s stock markets have progressed, in the last three years, not necessarily to investor’s advantage. A look at the performance of broad indices over the period is self explanatory: Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index -25% Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index -36% Hang Seng China Enterprises Index -7% Summary Conclusion Presently, nothing good can be said […]
The paper highlighted today claims to be the first formal medical assessment of the ‘Bigu’ fasting regime. Bigu fasting (more here if you care Bigu Fasting) has been practiced in China in one form or another for over 2,000 years. Today it’s promoted as a Taoist ritual and is usually carried out at retreats under […]
First, a handy graphic from the note highlighted today. The Working Paper from the IMF raked over this morning sent me a long way down memory lane and, as this is my blog, you’ll have to allow the reminiscence. My first job was working as the assistant to the money manager of an insurance company […]
The IPO process in Hong Kong, as I’ll explain in this note, has been a serial value-destroyer in the last couple of years and part, but by no means all, of the problem lies within the industry that greases its wheels. It is investors though that must shoulder the final responsibility for a system that […]
The paper highlighted today is dense and the mechanics employed to get to the conclusions probably beyond the keenest (well, me anyway) of mortals. The summary though is intuitive and valuable. Videlicet? China’s multi-year and now multi-decade property boom has come with costs to other parts of the economy. Previous studies, for example, have highlighted […]
You’ll notice, when you look at a number of Chinese companies in depth, it seems they have a lot of academics on their boards; and they do. In fact, around 70% of all Chinese companies have at least one academic on the board (in the U.S. it’s around 40%). Jiaren Pang, Xinyi Zhang and Xi […]
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China Investors: Hold-Fast!
In Brief The short-term macro outlook for Emerging Markets (EM), of which China is the largest, is poor; but stock prices have moved a long way to reflect this. This isn’t a compelling argument for fresh engagement. It is however a strong argument for investors already involved to Hold-Fast. Preamble The macroeconomic outlook for EMs […]
Does severe air pollution affect audit judgement? Spoiler alert, it does; but how? Using data from a sample period from 2003, when the first nationwide air quality data is available, to 2014 researchers Xingtai Baoding, Xiaofeng Peng and Jianguang Zeng from the Toronto, Toledo and Chongqing universities respectively show that where air quality was worse […]
The study highlighted this week, a 275-city analysis from 1999 to 2016, claims to be the most comprehensive analysis to date of China’s urban property market. Researchers Keyang Li, Yu Qin, and Jing Wu from the Tsinghua, Singapore and again Tsinghua universities respectively wanted to not only settle the much discussed affordability issue but also […]
The Obama administration worked with 11-nations in Asia over 8-years on the TPP that the Trump administration tore up shortly after the new President’s inauguration. The purpose of the TPP was to create an Asia trading club that included America but excluded China, a club in which America would dictate the rules. China in the […]
The Big Five banks in China (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications) control around 40% of system assets. So, if they’re not doing a good j0b it follows the system isn’t operating efficiently. Writing in a BOFIT (Bank of Finland Institute […]
China enters the WTO, U.S. manufacturing jobs begin a rapid decline; coincidence? It seems not. The paper this week, from John Seungmin Kuk, Deborah Siligsohn and Jiakun (Jack) Zhang of the universities of Washington, Villanova and California respectively, digs into the political response to what is now increasingly referred to in the U.S. as the […]
What a difference? On top is China’s R+D investment from 1996 to 2012. Over the period it rose from 0.6% of GDP to the now OECD near-norm of 2%. Below is India’s effort which has stagnated over the period at between 0.6%~0.8% (and the economy is much, much smaller). So China wins, right? Yes, relative […]