It is expected to carry 15,000 people per hour in one direction, meaning it could attain four times that in all directions, with a projected top speed of 70km/hr.
The transport system was built over three years by the China Railway Group Limited after the Ethiopian government secured 85% of funding from the Export-Import Bank of China.
China will also train the drivers and maintenance staff, while another Chinese company put together the power system.
Japan has lost a key Indonesian high-speed railway contract to China, dealing a heavy blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who is seeking to take advantage of infrastructure exports for economic growth.
Sofyan Djalil, head of the Indonesian National Development Planning Agency, told Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo on Tuesday that Indonesia planned to accept the Chinese proposal, Suga said.
As workers at Western companies fled West Africa during the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, a state-owned Chinese company carried on.
China International Water & Electric Corp. completed the Kaleta dam on budget and a year ahead of schedule in July, ending chronic power shortages in the capital, Conakry. Construction continued even as companies including London-based Rio Tinto Plc and Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal SA paused projects in the region.
“The Chinese saved us,” Lansana Fofana, 63, said, as he stood on the $526 million hydroelectric dam that China financed and he oversees.
Successful projects also help Africa’s leaders. The completion of Kaleta tripled Guinea’s electricity generation and gave many residents of the capital stable power for the first time in their lives, a dividend for President Alpha Conde, who faces re-election next month. Conde is so proud of the dam that he built a private residence next to it and promoted Fofana’s predecessor to energy minister.
WASHINGTON, October 1. /TASS/. China for the first time began to report its official foreign exchange reserves to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to IMF Director of the Communication Department Jerry Rice, China participates in the survey of COFER (Composition of official foreign exchange reserves) - IMF database, which reflects the structure of official foreign exchange reserves of 146 member countries.
According to the information about the second quarter of this year, China's total reserves, which have been reported to the IMF amounted to $11.5 trillion. In the first quarter the amount was smaller - $11.4 trillion. the share of the US dollar significantly increased in the total reserves volume - to 58.2% against 53% in the previous report.
At the end of the year the IMF should complete the next review of the basket of reserve currencies, which will be used by the Fund to form its own calculation unit - the so-called "Special Drawing Right" (SDR). As of now, the basket consists of the US dollar, the euro, the pound sterling and the yen. China, which has the second largest economy in the world, relies on the inclusion of the yuan in the basket.
There is no conspiracy theory here. I think they are quoting the reserves in their local currency. At 6yuan to a dollar the number seems right.TSJones wrote:You are quoting TASS. Keep that in mind.
They are not Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal or even Finance.Yahoo.Com.
There is no telling what they mean when saying "reserves" when establishing a dollar figure.
Whutever is convenient to them.
Wall St. Journal says China is still not fully disclosing.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-begin ... 1443624985
the internet published exchange rate for the yuan (renminbi) is 6.35 to the dollar.Austin wrote:I checked many new article and they were using Dollah only but likely these are yuan denominated
The current China Forex is $ 3.557 Trillion only per bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/CNGFOREX:IND
Total foreign-exchange reserves were $11.5 trillion in the second quarter, up from $11.4 trillion in the previous quarter, the IMF reported Wednesday. The U.S. dollar accounted for 63.8 percent of total allocated reserves, compared to 64.1 percent.
The Cofer database breaks down global holdings by seven currencies: the U.S. dollar, euro, the pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar.
okay by those figures, then the total amount of US treasuries held is 63.8% of published reserves. that would be $11.4 trillion times .638 = $7.27 trillion.Austin wrote:Well you can even check bloomberg reporting on this
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... eform-push
Total foreign-exchange reserves were $11.5 trillion in the second quarter, up from $11.4 trillion in the previous quarter, the IMF reported Wednesday. The U.S. dollar accounted for 63.8 percent of total allocated reserves, compared to 64.1 percent.
The Cofer database breaks down global holdings by seven currencies: the U.S. dollar, euro, the pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar.
NO!!!!!!!TSJones wrote:okay by those figures, then the total amount of US treasuries held is 63.8% of published reserves. that would be $11.4 trillion times .638 = $7.27 trillion.Austin wrote:Well you can even check bloomberg reporting on this
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... eform-push
Total foreign-exchange reserves were $11.5 trillion in the second quarter, up from $11.4 trillion in the previous quarter, the IMF reported Wednesday. The U.S. dollar accounted for 63.8 percent of total allocated reserves, compared to 64.1 percent.
The Cofer database breaks down global holdings by seven currencies: the U.S. dollar, euro, the pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar.
the total amount of US treasury issued debt is $18.15 trillion. So China owns 40% of all US treasury issued debt.
China is one of 96 countries that have agreed to identify themselves as contributors to the IMF’s quarterly data on the currency composition of official foreign-exchange reserves, known as Cofer. The fund still won’t disclose the official reserves of individual countries.
Total foreign-exchange reserves were $11.5 trillion in the second quarter, up from $11.4 trillion in the previous quarter, the IMF reported Wednesday. The U.S. dollar accounted for 63.8 percent of total allocated reserves, compared to 64.1 percent.
I think not. Only $6.076 trillion of US issued Treasures are held overseas, if I understand this page correctly.TSJones wrote:Ah, yes, indeed. I see it now. thank you.
So is it safe to say that 40% of US issued Treasuries constitutes over 63% of global reserves?
Jamie McGeever @ReutersJamie · 1h1 hour ago
China's FX reserves fall a record $176 bln in Q3, the fifth quarterly fall in a row. Reserves now $3.51 trln vs $3.99 trln peak last year.
Wages in China have been rising (8-10%)for years now. Wages in white collar jobs (at least in Metro cities) were around 70-75% of equivalent US jobs a year ago. Probably that was peak and would start sliding down now, and would surely add to the woes of real estate market.This has two major implications:
first, with wages set to drop, yet another source of deflation is about to be unveiled;
second, as China's economic collapse leads to increasingly less job opening , it inevitably means that social tensions and violence are set to rise in a country which see the migration of tens of millions of people from the heartland to the coastal cities.
Finally, all those conflicting forecasts in 2011 that China may or may not hit wage parity with the US some time in 2016, well - we now know the answer: China may have reached its Lewis point, but now that the economy is on its way to a crash landing, it has solidly gone into reverse.
Around 220,000 investors in China stand to lose billions of dollars following the mysterious suspension six months ago of all trading at the Fanya Metal Exchange, a trading platform-turned-asset manager.
One of them is Zhou, a 30-year-old urban planner from Hangzhou, in the southeastern Zhejiang province. She and her husband, Chen, invested 90% of her family’s savings, or about 2 million yuan, in Fanya. Their account has been frozen since Fanya said in April it had run into liquidity problems. To add insult to injury, their income, which totaled around 40,000 yuan ($6,327) a month, has halved because China’s property market is cooling. The couple has decided to put their home on the market and move in with her in-laws to make ends meet.
Equally distressing for Zhou and other investors who Quartz interviewed for this story is the near total absence of any official action. The police have not arrested anyone, and the national institutions that are supposed to protect investors have been silent.
Fanya, after all, was no risky fringe investment. It had attracted around $6 billion from mostly retail investors and was affiliated with some of China’s biggest government institutions, including ICBC, its largest bank. Government employees actively sold Fanya’s products. State television regularly featured Fanya on its business news broadcasts, and prominent Chinese economists promoted it. For investors like Zhou, all the evidence suggested Fanya had the tacit, if not outright, approval of their government.
Shan, a 51-year-old businessman from North China Shanxi province, founded Fanya Metal Exchange in 2011 and over the next four years, grew it into the world’s largest rare metals trading exchange. Its flagship product “Ri Jin Bao,” was linked to indium, bismuth, and other rare metals used in electronics. According to its publicity materials, it promised annualized returns as high as 13.7%—much higher than bank savings rates—and the right to withdraw funds at any time. It also promised “zero risk.”
Twelve banks, including ICBC, Bank of China, and other big state-owned banks, are listed as partners on brochures and on Fanya’s 2013 company webpage. The brochures also claim the banks will serve as “third-party custodians.”
Several investors told Quartz the state-run banks weren’t just listed on marketing materials, but went even further, aggressively selling them the Ri Jin Bao product, which pays investors interest for lending end users of rare metals the money to buy them.
Wang Ye, 46, who runs a small business in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi, told Quartz that she signed a contract to invest in Ri Jin Bao with a local branch of ICBC.
Wang said that a bank clerk told her “we have a financial product,” leading her to think it was affiliated with ICBC. When signing the contract, Wang said, the bank clerk only “let me have a glance at it” on their computer, as the contract is entirely electronic.
It wasn’t until she couldn’t get her money out in June that she learned the financial product was not run by the bank.
“We don’t even know the account and password of our [Fanya] account,” Wang said. “The banks did everything for us.”
Add the declining demographics, its not looking too good for the 50 year plan and the 100 year plan for the perfidious han.Although policymakers have some big levers to pull, including possible expansionary monetary and fiscal policy, that may underpin real economic activity for some time, China’s long-term real gross domestic product (GDP) growth prospects have dimmed. The slowdown is not unexpected.
In 2011, Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park and Kwanho Shin, in a joint paper, warned of the pending slowdown in China’s growth. They identified a number of growth drivers, but the broad thrust of their argument was that economies could grow fast for a period by shifting labour from the primary sector to the secondary industry, while “importing” and applying technology from abroad. These developments typically boost productivity and GDP growth, but not indefinitely.
Ultimately, they observe, once an economy reaches a particular stage of development, a growth slowdown occurs as economies struggle to continue extracting robust productivity gains from these drivers. Characteristics of this “stage of development” include a median GDP per capita level of just over $15 000 (R201 317) in 2005 constant international prices and manufacturing employment of around 23 percent of total employment. Roughly, China is approaching this point.
Viewed from this perspective, the slowdown in China’s growth rate is, therefore, no surprise. But the question is just how prolonged and deep the slowdown will be.
There is reason for concern. China’s fixed investment expenditure has been exceptionally strong for decades. Accordingly, the level of capital stock has increased sharply relative to both GDP and labour input. During the first decade of this century, China’s investment ratio climbed from about 30 percent of GDP to close to 50 percent, while the real capital stock increased, on average, by more than 10 percent per annum. This is exceptionally high and cannot continue indefinitely.
For a time, strong investment spending drives productivity and GDP growth. But as the capital stock continues to expand for a given level of GDP and labour, it becomes more difficult to sustain growth as an increasing share of investment goes towards replacing ageing plants and machinery. An increasingly smaller portion of investment is in new machinery and equipment.
Investment in property has already declined markedly, but overall fixed investment spending continues to outpace GDP growth, while the ratio of investment in output has remained high at close to 50 percent. It seems unlikely this can continue.
Actually it is western ideology, commerce and capital that's helped China grow the economy the way they have. Like it helped Japan, S. Korea and Taiwan grow. Economics should work the same, everywhere.A_Gupta wrote:^^^ According to Western ideology, China should not have grown the economy they have. It was unprecedented. So I wouldn't take Western scholars as the last word on this.
Singha,Singha wrote:but nevertheless they have built things all over to scale and spec in advance of any future demand, rather than the perpetual catch up game with insufficient funding we play.
I know the discussion is becoming a bit academic, but if you take the point that public investment in infra follows GDP boom and not vice versa, then it's bad news for all the ghost towns and public infra like airports that China has built up. They will not spur economic growth and unless there is some other form of stimulus that spurs growth then this infrastructure will be sitting there for a long time before it gets utilised.Overall it is difficult to find a clear-cut example that fits the oft-repeated narrative of a public investment boom followed by acceleration in GDP growth. If anything the cases of clear-cut booms illustrate the opposite – major drives in the past have been followed by slumps rather than booms. Ethiopia in the past decade may prove to be an exception to this pattern. However, it is difficult to establish causality since public investment, GDP, and several other variables have risen together in Ethiopia in recent years. Rapid economic growth in Korea and Taiwan province of China {this is your dhimmi IMF publication doing a full display of tailcoat shiver!} began before their public investment drives, which were in fact modest, compared to the size of the economies. Well-known cases of growth revivals, such as China and Vietnam, were triggered by the abolition of price controls in the Agricultural sector, and were not preceded by major public investment drives.
Mr. Pettis argued in a recent book that countries tend to get locked into infrastructure spending cycles that aren’t sustainable: When growth slows, the rise in bad debts can force investors to cut back even further and can even lead to a financial crisis, as seen with Latin America in the 1980s.
Politicians often prefer dams, interstate highways and bullet trains that make the news, critics add, rather than schools, hospitals and smaller projects that may be more economically productive.
“China is now pushing high-speed rail into rural areas that doesn’t do much for villagers. They really need a one-lane road,” said Ralph W. Huenemann, professor emeritus at Canada’s University of Victoria who has evaluated the efficacy of projects for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.{this is something that has been said on this dhaga for a long, long time!}
The thinking used to be that during major economic depression it is good to pump funds into infrastructure projects. I recall in Maharashtra long time back they completed 10-15 years worth of roads in a huffy because farmers had no work due to drought and the gov used that labor for roads.the popular idea is that infrastructure spending is a good way to kick start and sustain economic growth.
Gupta ji, don't really understand your point here. China's has followed a unique growth pattern. However, having said that, its growth is not something that cannot be explained by standard economic theory, which can hardly be called western economic theory because that would be akin to calling something like say, the laws of motion as being the so called Western laws of motion as opposed to the Eastern laws of motion.A_Gupta wrote:^^^ According to Western ideology, China should not have grown the economy they have. It was unprecedented. So I wouldn't take Western scholars as the last word on this.
There is nothing objective about any part of your post either. For example thisA_Gupta wrote:Western ideology is quite different from economics as a (dismal) science. Ideology infects the economics profession severely, making its scientific content minimal. Per western ideology, state capitalism was not supposed to work; prosperity without a Protestant ethic or lack of individual freedom was not supposed to happen, and so on. When they predict the slowdown of China, it is one par economics, but ten parts trying to assert the primacy of their ideology; it is not an objective assessment.
Likewise, per their theories, neither India as a nation, nor India as a democracy is supposed to exist. Part of the reason they jump on every flaw of India (as compared to Pakistan, say) is not just India being held to a higher standard, but also because it reinforces their ideology. Both China and India, at a fundamental core level, offend the West. It is only to the extent the West has divorced itself from its past (e.g., deChristianized, become pantheistic or pagan) that it has accepted these two countries.
Therefore, their analyses are suspect.
Do you have anything to back your claim that "they" jump on every flaw of India a lot more compared to Pakistan, say ? Can't we just stick to economics here ?Part of the reason they jump on every flaw of India (as compared to Pakistan, say)
I'm sorry but you are confusing political economic mumbo jumbo with hard economic theory that's empirically measurable.A_Gupta wrote:Western ideology is quite different from economics as a (dismal) science. Ideology infects the economics profession severely, making its scientific content minimal. Per western ideology, state capitalism was not supposed to work; prosperity without a Protestant ethic or lack of individual freedom was not supposed to happen, and so on. When they predict the slowdown of China, it is one par economics, but ten parts trying to assert the primacy of their ideology; it is not an objective assessment.
Likewise, per their theories, neither India as a nation, nor India as a democracy is supposed to exist. Part of the reason they jump on every flaw of India (as compared to Pakistan, say) is not just India being held to a higher standard, but also because it reinforces their ideology. Both China and India, at a fundamental core level, offend the West. It is only to the extent the West has divorced itself from its past (e.g., deChristianized, become pantheistic or pagan) that it has accepted these two countries.
Therefore, their analyses are suspect.
I would agree with you.A_Gupta wrote:^^^ According to Western ideology, China should not have grown the economy they have. It was unprecedented. So I wouldn't take Western scholars as the last word on this.
http://piie.com/publications/briefings/piieb15-3.pdfThe increased rate of creation of nonagricultural jobs has a two-fold effect on the wage share of GDP.
First, wages in nonagricultural jobs are about three times the earnings in agriculture. Thus, as the share of the
workforce employed outside of agriculture rises, other things being equal, the wage share of GDP rises. Second,
more rapid growth of demand for nonagricultural labor has meant that urban wage growth has remained
strong even as the headline GDP growth number has slowed since 2010.
The rising wage share is the primary reason that the consumption share of GDP has now risen for five
consecutive years. The pace of increase in the private consumption share is still modest, but it is a dramatic
change from the decade 2000–2010, when it fell continuously. More wage income means more consumption;
an increased share of this consumption expenditure is on services; this leads to relatively faster growth of ser
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vice output, which feeds back to a stronger demand for labor and thus to more wage income. This virtuous
circle has helped to offset the drag on growth from industry, where growth has been slowing since 2010.
It should also be noted that services are much less energy intensive than industry. Industry requires eight
times more energy per unit of GDP than services. And roughly two-thirds of industry is heavy industry—fer
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rous and nonferrous metals, heavy machinery, etc.—where the amount of electricity required to produce a
unit of GDP is 10 times that required in services. So, since the structure of production is shifting from heavy
industry to services, the famous Li Keqiang index of GDP growth, which has electricity as one of its three com
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ponents (another is railroad freight transport), is now outdated and no longer a reliable guide to the pace of
expansion of China’s economy.
Other indicators, beyond those associated with services, suggest the assertion that China’s growth is now
or soon will be only 3 to 4 percent is not well founded. The wages of migrant workers rose 10 percent in the first
half of 2015, which is quite remarkable because the sectors in which migrants are predominantly employed—
construction and export processing—are clearly the slowest growing sectors of the Chinese economy. Another
indicator is that the number of migrant workers employed outside of their native counties slightly expanded in
the first half of 2015. This is in sharp contrast to the first half of 2009 when GDP growth slowed to 7 percent
and exports fell sharply, causing 20 million migrant workers on China’s southeast coast to lose their jobs and
return to their native places
Amit,amit wrote:
All that nonsense about Protestant work ethics and Christianized this and that are part of the legacy of politicisation of economic theory that was the hallmark of the era in which Karl Marx and Max Weber were the reigning deities of the intellectual class in Britain.
Economics as a subject has IMO outgrown that era a long time ago. It is by no means an exact science but modern economic theory and practice can very well predict broad macro economic outcomes based on empirical data that is available.
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All the data is there and easily verifiable. You don't need ideology or theology to examine them and come to an empirical conclusion.
You don't necessarily have to use it all. It is possible to melt it down and produce more next year, NREGA style. In the west this is called a 'make work program'.Singha wrote:where are they using 700 mil tons of steel annually ?
