Archive for August, 2013

01/08/2013

China treads cautiously to rebalance economy

Xinhua: “Despite all the heightened attention and occasional panic over China’s economic health, authorities in the world’s second-largest economy have so far remained confident of its ongoing rebalancing act.

On Tuesday, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee pledged at a meeting to keep the economy growing steadily in the second half of this year, while promising to fine-tune policies when necessary.

“The macro policy should be stable, the micro policy should be flexible and the social policy should support the bottom line. All of them should be coordinated,” read the statement released after the meeting.

The comments were seen as a reaffirmation that a stable environment is necessary for pushing ahead with reforms for long-term sustainable growth.

“A stable policy environment would not only allow time for the market to adjust itself, but also help create a favorable condition for reforms and avoid drastic fluctuations in market expectations,” said Kuang Xianming, director of economic research with the China Institute for Reform and Development.

Drastic policy changes are unlikely unless there are unforeseeable external or internal shocks, he added.

China’s economy expanded 7.6 percent in the first half of the year, slightly above the annual 7.5-percent target set for 2013, and prospects for the second half remain complicated given the sluggish external market, weak domestic strength, persisting overcapacity and growing financial risks.

Chinese leaders have so far demonstrated greater tolerance for slower growth in their efforts to switch the country’s growth model from its dependence on credit expansion and manufacturing toward one driven by consumption, innovation and services.

Instead of initiating a massive stimulus program again to lift the economy, the authorities are moving cautiously to steady growth while driving through reforms in which President Xi Jinping has called for “greater political courage and wisdom.”

Since taking office in March, the new government has been proceeding with reforms in a wide range of areas, including delegating administrative power to lower levels and easing controls in the financial sector.”

via China treads cautiously to rebalance economy – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/china-needs-to-rebalance-her-economy/

01/08/2013

Telangana Effect: Protests Brewing for Gorkhaland

As we thought (see –   https://chindia-alert.org/2013/07/31/divide-uttar-pradesh-into-four-states-mayawati-says/ ), one permissible split leads to others’ great expectations.

WSJ: “Protesters in Darjeeling, a tea-producing mountainous town in West Bengal in northern India, have stepped up calls for their own separate state of Gorkhaland, promising strikes and protests until their demands are met, after New Delhi gave the green-light to create Telangana state out of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, in the south of the country.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha [Gorkha People’s Liberation Campaign], a political party spearheading a movement for the creation of Gorkhaland state, has called for a complete shutdown in the popular Himalayan town starting Saturday after protests brought life there to a standstill earlier this week.

“Now that Delhi is creating Telangana, Gorkhaland should be considered too. We have no option  but to intensify our movement,” Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s general secretary, Rooshan Giri, told India Real Time Thursday.

Mr. Giri said his party had advised tourists and students of boarding schools to leave the town as protests were planned over the next few days that will restrict movement of public transport and trucks carrying food grains to Darjeeling from Siliguri, a commercial center in the northern part of West Bengal, about 40 miles south of Darjeeling.

“There’s no way out. We will not stop until our demand is met,” Mr. Giri said.”

via Telangana Effect: Protests Brewing for Gorkhaland – India Real Time – WSJ.

01/08/2013

Analysis: China risks following Japan into economic coma

Let us hope that this analysis is incorrect.  Because if it is then the world economy will experience a tailspin that will make the 2008 recession seem like a picnic!  Any of you, my readers, have a strong view one way or the other?

Reuters: “After decades of emulating Japan‘s export-driven economic miracle, China appears in danger of following it into the same kind of economic coma that Japan is trying to wake up from 20 years later.

A salesperson, dressed as the Chinese god of fortune, hands out leaflets for a jewellery shop at a shopping district in Beijing July 26, 2013. REUTERS-Kim Kyung-Hoon

China is struggling to wean itself off a habit picked up from its more advanced neighbor: relying for growth on exports and credit-fuelled investment. That has left its economy lopsided, economists say, with massive over investment in property and industries rapidly losing their cost advantage, from mining and electronics to cars and textiles. Wages are rising, the return on investments falling.

With growth slipping, China’s President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang seem determined to avoid a U.S.-style financial crisis, complete with widespread bankruptcies and job losses.

Preventing such a crisis though could embalm diseased sectors, stifling efforts to make growth more sustainable and instead create the kind of “zombie” banks and companies that sucked the life out of Japan’s economy, economists say.

Add a population graying faster than Japan’s did, and economists worry China may be attempting the impossible.

“There is a huge amount of denial. People think that demographics don’t matter,” said Chetan Ahya, chief Asia economist at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. “I’m worried about the deflationary risk.”

Deflation may seem unlikely in an economy still growing at a 7.5 percent clip and where consumer prices are rising 2.7 percent a year. But economists warn that China in many ways resembles Japan in 1989, two years before its crash.

Like Japan, China relied on banks to funnel investment into export industries to create jobs and finance development. In return, interest rates were regulated to ensure banks a healthy profit. Because the most profitable loans were those to the least-risky borrowers, banks concentrated their lending on big state-owned companies.

As Japan did in the 1980s, China tried to remedy this by partially liberalizing the financial sector, creating new avenues of finance, a bond market and other non-bank lending. But as in Japan, this encouraged banks to lend more, not more wisely, helping fuel a property bubble. Things got worse in 2009, when China launched a 4 trillion yuan, credit-powered stimulus to ward off the global crisis.

While Japan saw credit expand from 127 percent of GDP to 176 percent between 1980 and 1990, China’s credit rose from 105 percent in 2000 to 187 percent of GDP last year, JPMorgan Chase in Hong Kong says.”

via Analysis: China risks following Japan into economic coma | Reuters.

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