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by fn_bb_sqr_pnts
1734 days ago
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A few things to note:
1. points 1-2 are often cited as to why China has been immune from prior global financial issues. IMO, we need to contextualize this. China was able to finance itself through an export-oriented economy and receive huge foreign inflows of cash from it as it became the factory to the world. This has been true for other developing economies. at some point, history shows that most large economies need to reach a better balance between exports and internal consumption (china is the 2nd largest country by GDP with 30% of world MFRU output; law of large numbers apply?)
It does seem now, that China's export economy has reached a stasis/equilibrium given a variety of factors (China labor inflation, regulations/trade wars, other economies like India, Vietnam becoming increasingly competitive vs China, and more vendors adopting China +1 sourcing strategy). You can also see this in China's more aggressive stance towards investing in Africa and LatAm. It's not to say that China's export economy crumbles, but it's likely not the same tailwind to economic growth. Typically when this happens, economies need to switch to a more consumption oriented economy (hence the Economists constant comparison to Japan)
Points 5-8 seem to ignore what actually happened with Evergrande. The new property development restrictions enacted last year point to worries that China's financial sector is exposed to something akin to a "shadow" banking system (Evergrande is both a property developer and offered financial instruments to consumers). The question is how much damage does this do to consumer balance sheets (and hence future consumption) - hard question to answer given everything we don't know about China's actual financial system (we didn't even know the ins/outs of our own system in 2008)
While i dont disagree that the Economist has been a Cassandra on China for a while, this situation seems like a potentially more difficult situation for the CCP to handle |
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