PRC Economy - New Reflections : April 20 2015

[Austin]

Looks like Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index is covering its losses

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SHCOMP:IND

[Theo_Fidel]

Any clues on what exactly went boom in Tianjin. there is some unsettling speculation on what it was.

[nachiket]

Death toll is over 50 now with hundreds injured. Since this is PRC, the true story may never come out.

[Austin]

Ep. 102: The Real Story Behind China's Decisions on the Yuan

[ashashi]

Looks like Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index is covering its losses

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SHCOMP:IND

There is no short selling in China, so covering the losses is not the reason behind recent range trading. Somewhere I read about 20 mil chinese got out the stock market. So, the new demand is most likely govt induced buying.

[RamaY]

Any clues on what exactly went boom in Tianjin. there is some unsettling speculation on what it was.

Look at the pics to understand the impact & enormity of the explosion. Looks like any human within 0.5-1KM radius would be dead in such an explosion.

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/0 ... na/401228/

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/asia/chin ... xplosions/

The first explosion was huge, and the second was even more powerful -- the equivalent of 21 metric tons of TNT or a magnitude-2.9 earthquake, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

[Singha]

uighur or other separatists could have set it off as a soft target with max devastation potential. its easy to blame unsafe storage or electrical circuit because all evidence has been atomized.

shipping containers due to corrugated plates are quite strong. to see them crumble like paper , the overpressure must have been strong.

a gigantic fuel-air explosive weapon.

[TSJones]

Austin,

I think Peter Schiff is a fear merchant who uses media in order to get people in the US to buy various assets from him such as gold, etc.

I think it serves as cowboy candy to Russia and its adherents and commentariat with tales of US monetary collapse and empty Walmart shelves.

Just my humble opinion.

[Austin]

I think the fear merchant is already proven right once

[Austin]

China Beating US in Trade Volume With ASEAN Nations

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20150814/1025 ... z3ilI6n31F

"China has surpassed the United States in goods trade with… ASEAN countries and trades a similar amount of services," the report, issued on Thursday, stated. "In 2014, China's total goods trade of $480 billion was more than twice the US total goods trade of $220 billion."

[TSJones]

I think the fear merchant is already proven right once

Not with QE3 he hasn't. Not by a long shot.

[Austin]

I think the fear merchant is already proven right once

Not with QE3 he hasn't. Not by a long shot.

You mean QE4 ?

[TSJones]

You mean QE4 ?

there is no such thing as QE4.

yeah, I know, just wait it's coming.

[TSJones]

Air pollution in China is killing people.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-ne ... ds-n409516

Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that about 1.6 million people in China die each year from heart, lung and stroke problems because of incredibly polluted air, especially small particles of haze. Earlier studies put the annual Chinese air pollution death toll at 1 to 2 million, but this is the first to use newly released Chinese air monitoring figures.

The study released Thursday blamed emissions from the burning of coal, both for electricity and heating homes. The study, to be published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, uses real air measurements and then computer model calculations that estimate heart, lung and stroke deaths for different types of pollutants.

"NEARLY EVERYONE IN CHINA EXPERIENCES AIR THAT IS WORSE FOR PARTICULATES THAN THE WORST AIR IN THE U.S."
Study lead author Robert Rohde said that 38 percent of the Chinese population lives in an area with a long-term air quality average that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls "unhealthy."

"It's a very big number," Rohde said Thursday. "It's a little hard to wrap your mind around the numbers. Some of the worst in China is to the southwest of Beijing."

To put Chinese air pollution in perspective, the most recent American Lung Association data shows that Madera, California, has the highest annual average for small particles in the United States. But 99.9 percent of the eastern half of China has a higher annual average for small particle haze than Madera, Rohde said.

"In other words, nearly everyone in China experiences air that is worse for particulates than the worst air in the U.S.," Rohde said.

In a 2010 document, the EPA estimates that between 63,000 and 88,000 people die in the U.S. from air pollution. Other estimates range from 35,000 to 200,000.

Unlike the U.S., air pollution in China is worst in the winter because of burning of coal to heat homes and weather conditions that keeps dirty air closer to the ground, Rohde said. Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Outside scientists praised the research. Jason West at the University of North Carolina said he expects "it will be widely influential."

Allen Robinson at Carnegie Mellon University said in an email that parts of the United States, like Pittsburgh, used to have almost as bad air but have become much cleaner "through tough regulations combined with large collapse of heavy industry (it moved to Asia)."

As China starts to clean up its air, limiting coal use, it will also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief global warming gas, Rohde said.

[TSJones]

China is doing and intends to keep on doing a QE on their stock market. But promise to taper off.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-sec ... 34832.html

China's securities regulator said on Friday that the government will allow market forces to play a bigger role in determining stock prices, the first official signal from Beijing that it could be moderating its efforts to prop up its equity markets.

However, the regulator also said that it would continue to intervene as necessary to maintain stability and avoid systemic risk.

"With market fluctuations gradually shifting to normal, from wild and abnormal, we should let the market exercise its function of self-adjustment," the China Securities Regulatory Commission told a news conference in Beijing.

However, the watchdog said that China Securities Finance Corp (CSF) - the state margin lender that was tasked with buying shares during the market slump - would continue to play its stabilizing role for the next few years.

The comments are the clearest signal yet that the government could be gradually ending its support measures for the equity market and are likely to be in focus when China's stock exchanges open for trading on Monday.

These measures, which have included a ban on stake sales by major shareholders and liquidity support from the central bank, were aimed at stemming a mid-June market rout, but drew criticism over their bluntness.

The CSRC did not say whether it would halt any specific forms of intervention.

CSRC said on Friday that CSF has recently transferred some shares it bought during the sell-off to Central Huijin, an investment unit of sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp, and Huijin will become a long-term holder in those stocks.

"Today, CSF transferred some listed companies' shares to Huijin. Huijin will strive to keep and increase the value of the assets, based on long-term investment philosophy," Huijin said in a statement on its website.

When the market experiences abnormal fluctuations and threaten to cause systemic risks, CSF will continue to help stabilise the market using various measures, CSRC said.

Apparently, the Chinese government will be the largest single stock owner in the world.

Amazing.

[Singha]

means most of their big cos will be quasi-public sector. but that they were anyway via hidden channels, this just makes it on the books.

[Prem]

Any clues on what exactly went boom in Tianjin. there is some unsettling speculation on what it was.
The first explosion was huge, and the second was even more powerful -- the equivalent of 21 metric tons of TNT or a magnitude-2.9 earthquake, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

Must be more than 20 Tons of TNT.

[Austin]

there is no such thing as QE4.

yeah, I know, just wait it's coming.

Does the Fed have any choice .......How long will a drug addict will remain without one.

Even the EU have now their QE and it wont be their last

[TSJones]

there is no such thing as QE4.

yeah, I know, just wait it's coming.

Does the Fed have any choice .......How long will a drug addict will remain without one.

Even the EU have now their QE and it wont be their last

Austin,

You are letting your desire to see the US monetary system collapse over rule the facts that are currently happening.

Fact 1. Reports are starting to come out that the Producer Price Index in the US is rising.

Fact 2. Labor reports are pointing to an approach to close to full employment in the US.

Fact 3. Retails sales have shown a small improvement. Especially in autos. Home sales are up also.

All of these facts are pointing to The Fed *raising* interest rates in order to take liquidity *out* of the economy in order to put the brakes on inflation before hand.

QE *adds* liquidity to the economy. I don't think the Fed wants to add liquidity at this present time with the above facts about the US economy that I have presented.

Is the Fed hesitant about all of this? Yes it is. It doesn't want to start a deflation spiral in the US economy. But it doesn't want inflation either.

So the Fed must be very careful in its medicine that it gives to the US economy. As usual.

Schiff is a fear merchant who wants to sell assets to the fearful.

[Austin]

I or any one here wont let the US monetary system collapse , if it collapses it would be due to its own Economic Mismanagement and QE is one of it considering it just went to increase the asset bubble in the market

I would wait and see IF FED raises its interest rates and by how much .....let wait and watch if FED sticks to its promise

Schiff by the Way does not recommend buying gold to more than 10-15 % of an individual asset but he recommends higher proportion of Gold reserves for country ...I personally hold 25 % of Gold as part of my over all asset though eventually I want to increase that further to like 40 %

[gakakkad]

hey chicoms , what is with the IED mubaraks in Tianjin ?

[ArmenT]

From the BBC:
China Tianjin blasts: Evacuations as sodium cyanide found

The People's Daily newspaper tweeted that they had been sent to handle highly toxic sodium cyanide which had been found there.
The discovery was confirmed by police "roughly east of the blast site" in an industrial zone, state-run Beijing News said.

Officials had until then only confirmed the presence of calcium carbide, potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate. Calcium carbide reacts with water to create the highly explosive acetylene.

From what some news agencies are saying, there was an initial fire and the firefighters went to put it out with water, but they weren't informed that calcium carbide was also stored in the vicinity. Water + calcium carbide = highly inflammable acetylene gas. Didn't help that other chemicals stored on site were potassium nitrate and ammonium nitrate which are used for fertilizers, but are also explosive. There were also rumors of sodium cyanide stored in the warehouse, but it wasn't confirmed earlier.

[Austin]

The Great China Ponzi—-An Economic And Financial Trainwreck Which Will Rattle The World

[hanumadu]

^^A very good article

In a word, China has upwards of 400- 500 million tons of steel capacity that will be idle once its construction boom stops and the rest of the world throws barriers up against its exports. That amounts to economically destructive malinvestment on an unprecedented scale. The idling of China’s giant steel mills, in turn, will create an economic void which will cause a massive collapse of business, employment and incomes up and down the iron and steel food chain.

Its too late for a soft landing and managed deflation of the Great China Ponzi. That’s because in their heedless resort to the printing press and credit driven expansion over and over during the past two decades they have generated “freakish impossibilities” throughout the length and breadth of the Chinese economy.

[Singha]

cement and steel has a back tail to mining, coal/gas fuel demand, trucking, freight trains and shipping(they buy iron ore and coal from places like aus and brazil)...and a fwd tail to infra projects.

would be interesting to a chart of the pace of housing, office and infra building over the last few years.

theoritically there are still vast swathes of the interior who could build out and use this capacity.

[Austin]

Blessing in Disguise: Yuan Devaluation Helps China's Competitiveness in US

[chetak]

The explosion at a factory in Tianjin, which left a mushroom cloud, devastated huge areas of the city's port, which is the 10th largest in the world

Nick Bunkley ‏@nickbunkley Aug 13

Chinese port explosion destroyed 2,750 Volkswagens, 4,000 Hyundais/Kias and 1,500 Renaults: http://www.autonews.com/article/2015081 ... china-port …

Retweets 156 Favorites 33

[g.sarkar]

^^A very good article

In a word, China has upwards of 400- 500 million tons of steel capacity that will be idle once its construction boom stops and the rest of the world throws barriers up against its exports. That amounts to economically destructive malinvestment on an unprecedented scale. The idling of China’s giant steel mills, in turn, will create an economic void which will cause a massive collapse of business, employment and incomes up and down the iron and steel food chain.

An old timer like me is reminded that Tata Steel almost went out of business due to lack of business. It was saved twice. Once by WWI and then by WWII. Nothing uses steel like a WW. I hope this is not coming.
Gautam

[member_20292]

I think it would be a good idea for us to build out our own country on the backs of the huge excess capacity that China has built for itself.

Prices of cement and steel are going to be cheap and its a good opportunity for us to NOT do too much capex, as a nation, into cement and steel industries. Just import and build.

The colour of the cement does not matter, as long as it builds the road.

* I'm aware that this flies in the face of being self sufficient and having our own steel industry built up and thereby drive our economy, as referenced in Singha's post above.
However, I would venture to say that trying to build higher tech, higher margin goods is better than building factories who's output is forced to be dumped at throwaway prices. Let's use Chinese steel/cement firms, and to pay them, borrow Yuan from the PBC (i.e not pay them back at all)

Essentially, their environmental degradation and pollution can help build out our country as well, with much less effort .

We need to get our infrastructure financing done in a better way. [ And the way to do that is as good a guess of yours as is mine! ]

[member_20292]

The previous tigers of Asia - HongKong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea , have built their economies on the backs of free trade with the US.
We should build on the backs of China too, and not let non-mercantilist patriotism cloud our thinking.

[Altair]

Essentially, their environmental degradation and pollution can help build out our country as well, with much less effort .
We need to get our infrastructure financing done in a better way. [ And the way to do that is as good a guess of yours as is mine! ]

Good Plan. But, will not work! Will be kick in nuts for #MakeInIndia campaign. If we can import Cement and Steel why not Fighter Aircraft and Submarines will be the argument by Congress and AAP. No one will see the difference in argument that they are talking about raw materials and finished goods.Huge PR nightmare for Modi.

[Singha]

as I have said, cement and steel not only create direct employment and develop relatively underserved areas (what was jamshedpur or bhilai before industry came - just scrubland and jungles) but also linkage to other industries like trucks, trains , machine tools, power generation, boilers, cooling towers, speciality metals, control systems, township construction ..... if you import the finished product you lose all the multiplier effect long term.

a large country cannot become a 'power' by neglecting core industries. even tiny south korea and relatively small japan produced a lot of steel and still do.

we can consider importing some of the production eqpt and tools for a steep discount if local sources are not found.

[member_20292]

^^^

Let's take the example of a Tata. They are an Indian professionally run conglomerate who have been around for the past 100 years.

Now, they have money to spare and capex to do.

Their IT and IT-design operations (TCS, Tata Elxsi) generate far more shareholder wealth for the conglomerate than the Tata Motors or Steel part of the group, or be it as it may, Indian Hotels.

So, what would their ideal plans be , for the coming 20 years?

1. They would be looking to reduce their exposure to the Steel Sector in general, looking at the coming glut in the steel market.
2. They would be looking to expand ITES export work, anticipating more work in this field.

Now, lets take Tata as a micro-representative of the India economy since they are present in so many fields.

Its a good idea to NOT do the things that one is not good at. Indian companies are about average at building out roads and highways by the gazillion (apart from the Land acquisition issues)
So, how about hiring DengMao co. to build out the buildings and the roads that will house the next 100,000 IT engineers, rather than grow LANCO (etc.) to fulfill those infrastructure orders.

The USA is a machine when it comes to efficiently fulfilling its requirements - they outsource where they can and we and China both are beneficiaries. Why not adopt this to nation building as well.

[Theo_Fidel]

Cement is very expensive to transport compared to cost, Indian cement is world class and very cheap.
Steel maybe but really we only lack the know how for particular types of alloy steels, for instance auto steel, which we already import from Korea.

Road building know how, big maybe, Chinese co's have been disaster building outside China, long list of shoddy construction, poor safety and horrible cost and time over runs.

There is no evidence that the Chinese have improved product or construction or management quality, in fact all signs point the other way so what exactly will you be importing. Shoddy quality, shoddy management and cost/time over runs.

USA imports a lot of stuff from China but not when it counts. No power turbines or construction equipment or heavy duty stuff.
They imported the components and management of the the new bay bridge from China and that has proven a total disaster, recently two of the anchor rods in the pier moved when tested for pull strength. If this happened on my project I would ask for the entire foundation to be replaced but obviously this is impossible for the bay bridge so lot of thumb twiddling and lip twaddling going on.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigatio ... 89402.html

• Quality control managers found thousands of cracks in welds produced by a Chinese contractor for the span’s signature tower and roadway. Rather than ordering all needed fixes, top California Department of Transportation managers replaced those who discovered the problems.
• Millions of dollars were paid to the same Chinese contractor to speed up work after it fell behind schedule and bridge officials urgently wanted faster results.
• Bridge officials rejected warnings in 2008 that suspect anchor rods for the suspension span were not adequately tested; some of those rods snapped last year.
• Officials frequently told contractors and employees not to put concerns about quality into writing – ostensibly to avoid disclosure under the state Public Records Act.

[member_20292]

theo ji,

the post sounds like the products of a project have qualities such as "shoddy, cheap", written down on them like specifications on an Amazon product page. That is hardly the case. There may be generalizations but one cannot be too specific.

Anyways. My point is that we should embrace China and Chinese companies and welcome them to do business in India. We have Western companies like Leighton and Hines construct buildings here, so why not all sorts of Chinese companies. Of course we need to enforce safety standards too - how to do that is anybodys guess..

[Theo_Fidel]

MDbhu,

no need for the ji.
-----------------------------------

There is no doubt that the Chinese ignore quality and safety standards as it suits them. You have to remember the Japanese and Koreans if anything set new standards that the rest of the world follows. Big difference.

I can't believe we are talking about this right now. The week after a gigantic explosion levels an entire small city and kills hundreds. After we realize that the Chinese against every modern practice, failed to segregate and properly handle Sodium Cyanide and Calcium Carbide compounds no doubt because this way, you know, was a cheaper way to do it. And are now busily working like ferrets to cover the entire thing up.

[TSJones]

MDbhu,

no need for the ji.
-----------------------------------

There is no doubt that the Chinese ignore quality and safety standards as it suits them. You have to remember the Japanese and Koreans if anything set new standards that the rest of the world follows. Big difference.

I can't believe we are talking about this right now. The week after a gigantic explosion levels an entire small city and kills hundreds. After we realize that the Chinese against every modern practice, failed to segregate and properly handle Calcium Carbide compounds. And are now busily working like ferrets to cover the entire thing up.

To be fair, these kind of accidents have happened all over the world.

[Theo_Fidel]

^^^
What does that have to do with the discussion at hand?
The discussion is about using Chinese know how/manufacturing remember.

[gakakkad]

i don't believe only 100 people died in Tianjin...I mean look at the freaking parking lot...is that pic real?

this is a CNN video..

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/17/asia/ ... accidents/

look at the condition 700m from the explosion site...

the amount of censorship is phenomenal ...

[svinayak]

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