El hilo de China

[muyuu]

El "tú cállate, puto chino" de Froilán genera miles de comentarios y acalorados debates en China - Historias de China

En referencia a esta noticia del aristócrata Froilán: http://www.diariovasco.com/gente-estilo/201505/29/froilan-callate-puto-chino-20150529215803.html

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-08/one-belt-one-road-may-be-chinas-one-chance-save-collapsing-economy

Not just a Marshall Plan – bigger, more comprehensive and more inclusive   

The Yi Dai Yi Lu (YDYL) initiative has been labelled a “Chinese Marshall plan” in some global commentary. There are some similarities between China’s new initiative and the post World War II US-driven European Recovery Program (popularly known as the Marshall Plan after US Secretary of State George Marshall).

1. The emphasis on infrastructure and heavy industry as a mode to kick-start growth or recovery.   

2. The Marshall Plan amount of US$13bn (c.US$120bn in current dollar value) is in the same order of magnitude as the initial US$40bn envisaged for the New Silk Road Fund.             
         
3. The establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) could be perceived to be analogous to the formation of the IMF and the World Bank to aid the structural transformation of economies.

4. The perception (in some quarters) of potential for Chinese hegemony in the YDYL countries.

However, there are some obvious differences as well.               

1. The world is not recovering from the aftermath of a world war. In fact, most of the countries that are potential YDYL project recipients could do just fine without the project impetus (though growth rates arguably would be lower).                            

2. The YDYL initiative is open to all countries, regardless of their political or economic regime.

We note that the Chinese government has expressed its displeasure at the Marshall Plan moniker. A government spokesman said in early March 2015 “It is inappropriate to simply describe the Belt and Road initiatives as another Marshall Plan. These initiatives seek common development of countries with different ethnicities, religions and cultures, focusing on wide consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.”

[Currobena]

Un ensayo de McCoy, el bueno, sobre el plan chino para  destruir la supremacía estadounidense y dominar el mundo desde Eurasia.

Mackinder argued that the future of global power lay not, as most British then imagined, in controlling the global sea lanes, but in controlling a vast land mass he called “Euro-Asia.”  By turning the globe away from America to place central Asia at the planet’s epicenter, and then tilting the Earth’s axis northward just a bit beyond Mercator’s equatorial projection, Mackinder redrew and thus reconceptualized the world map.
His new map showed Africa, Asia, and Europe not as three separate continents, but as a unitary land mass, a veritable “world island.”  Its broad, deep “heartland” — 4,000 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Siberian Sea — was so enormous that it could only be controlled from its “rimlands” in Eastern Europe or what he called its maritime “marginal” in the surrounding seas.
...
Not only did Mackinder give voice to a worldview that would influence Britain’s foreign policy for several decades, but he had, in that moment,created the modern science of “geopolitics” — the study of how geography can, under certain circumstances, shape the destiny of whole peoples, nations, and empires.
...
A century after Mackinder’s seminal treatise, another British scholar, imperial historian John Darwin, argued in his magisterial survey After Tamerlane that the United States had achieved its “colossal Imperium… on an unprecedented scale” in the wake of World War II by becoming the first power in history to control the strategic axial points “at both ends of Eurasia” (his rendering of Mackinder’s “Euro-Asia”). With fears of Chinese and Russian expansion serving as the “catalyst for collaboration,” the U.S. won imperial bastions in both Western Europe and Japan. With these axial points as anchors, Washington then built an arc of military bases that followed Britain’s maritime template and were visibly meant to encircle the world island.
...
As the fulcrum for Washington’s strategic perimeter around the world island, the Persian Gulf region has for nearly 40 years been the site of constant American intervention, overt and covert. The 1979 revolution in Iran meant the loss of a keystone country in the arch of U.S. power around the Gulf and left Washington struggling to rebuild its presence in the region. To that end, it would simultaneously back Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its war against revolutionary Iran and arm the most extreme of the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
It was in this context that Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, unleashed his strategy for the defeat of the Soviet Union with a sheer geopolitical agility still little understood even today. In 1979, Brzezinski, a déclassé Polish aristocrat uniquely attuned to his native continent’s geopolitical realities, persuaded Carter to launch Operation Cyclone with massive funding that reached $500 million annually by the late 1980s. Its goal: to mobilize Muslim militants to attack the Soviet Union’s soft Central Asian underbelly and drive a wedge of radical Islam deep into the Soviet heartland. It was to simultaneously inflict a demoralizing defeat on the Red Army in Afghanistan and cut Eastern Europe’s “rimland” free from Moscow’s orbit.
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the rise of China as the world’s largest economy, inconceivable a century ago, represents something new and so threatens to overturn the maritime geopolitics that have shaped world power for the past 400 years. Instead of focusing purely on building a blue-water navy like the British or a global aerospace armada akin to America’s, China is reaching deep within the world island in an attempt to thoroughly reshape the geopolitical fundamentals of global power. It is using a subtle strategy that has so far eluded Washington’s power elites. After decades of quiet preparation, Beijing has recently begun revealing its grand strategy for global power, move by careful move. Its two-step plan is designed to build a transcontinental infrastructure for the economic integration of the world island from within, while mobilizing military forces to surgically slice through Washington’s encircling containment.
The initial step has involved a breathtaking project to put in place an infrastructure for the continent’s economic integration.  By laying down an elaborate and enormously expensive network of high-speed, high-volume railroads as well as oil and natural gas pipelines across the vast breadth of Eurasia, China may realize Mackinder’s vision in a new way.  For the first time in history, the rapid transcontinental movement of critical cargo — oil, minerals, and manufactured goods — will be possible on a massive scale, thereby potentially unifying that vast landmass into a single economic zone stretching 6,500 miles from Shanghai to Madrid. In this way, the leadership in Beijing hopes to shift the locus of geopolitical power away from the maritime periphery and deep into the continent’s heartland.
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To capitalize such staggering regional growth plans, in October 2014 Beijing announced the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China’s leadership sees this institution as a future regional and, in the end, Eurasian alternative to the U.S.-dominated World Bank. So far, despite pressure from Washington not to join, 14 key countries, including close U.S. allies like Germany, Great Britain, Australia, and South Korea, have signed on. Simultaneously, China has begun building long-term trade relations with resource-rich areas of Africa, as well as with Australia and Southeast Asia, as part of its plan to economically integrate the world island.
Finally, Beijing has only recently revealed a deftly designed strategy for neutralizing the military forces Washington has arrayed around the continent’s perimeter. In April, President Xi Jinping announced construction of that massive road-rail-pipeline corridor direct from western China to its new port at Gwadar, Pakistan, creating the logistics for future naval deployments in the energy-rich Arabian Sea.
In May, Beijing escalated its claim to exclusive control over the South China Sea, expanding Longpo Naval Base on Hainan Island for the region’s first nuclear submarine facility, accelerating its dredging to create three new atolls that could become military airfields in the disputed Spratley Islands, and formally warning off U.S. Navy overflights. By building the infrastructure for military bases in the South China and Arabian seas, Beijing is forging the future capacity to surgically and strategically impair U.S. military containment.
At the same time, Beijing is developing plans to challenge Washington’s dominion over space and cyberspace.  It expects, for instance, to complete its own global satellite system by 2020, offering the first challenge to Washington’s dominion over space since the U.S. launched its system of 26 defense communication satellites back in 1967. Simultaneously, Beijing is building a formidable capacity for cyber warfare.
In a decade or two, should the need arise, China will be ready to surgically slice through Washington’s continental encirclement at a few strategic points without having to confront the full global might of the U.S. military, potentially rendering the vast American armada of carriers, cruisers, drones, fighters, and submarines redundant.

http://www.unz.com/article/the-geopolitics-of-american-global-decline/

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-reform-challenge-by-adair-turner-2015-06

LONDON – It is often assumed that emerging-economy living standards are bound to converge with those in developed countries. But, leaving aside some oil exporters and the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, only three countries – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – have come from far behind to achieve per capita GDP of at least 70% of the developed-country average over the last 60 years. China hopes to do the same, but it faces a distinctive challenge: its sheer size.

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan depended on export-led growth to catch up with the developed economies. But China – home to almost 20% of the world population and responsible for 15% of global output – is simply too large to depend solely on external markets. To reach the next stage of development, it will need to forge a different growth path – and that will require more difficult reforms than those on which attention is often focused.

To be sure, export-led growth has fueled China’s economic rise so far, with its current-account surplus growing to 10% of GDP in 2008. But such high surpluses are ultimately impossible to sustain. There simply is not enough import demand in the world to absorb ever-growing Chinese exports.

The global financial crisis exposed that reality. Before 2008, China’s massive surpluses were matched by unsustainable credit-fueled deficits in developed economies. When boom turned to bust, falling global demand hit China’s export sector, and threatened to increase unemployment.

In response, China turned to the domestic growth engine of credit-financed investment in infrastructure and real estate. Since 2008, credit has surged from 125% of GDP to more than 210% of GDP, enabling investment to increase from 42% of GDP to nearly 48% last year.

Across China, concrete was poured into apartment blocks, multilane highways, convention centers, railway stations, and airports. Real-estate investment now accounts for 15% of China’s GDP, compared to less than 5% in 2000; when related industries like steel and cement are taken into account, that figure rises to one-third of China’s GDP. Almost 60 million Chinese workers are employed in construction today, up from just below 20 million in 2007.

China’s current growth path stands in stark contrast to that followed by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. When those countries’ per capita GDP stood at current Chinese levels, real estate played only a minor role in their economies; indeed, the sector was often deliberately starved of credit.

The investment boom has kept China’s urban employment growing strongly. But a country needs only so much housing. True, total capital stock per capita in China still lags far behind that of developed countries. But a recent International Monetary Fund report reveals the startling fact that China has now surpassed Japan and South Korea in square meters of housing per capita, having reached a level near – or, in some smaller cities, well above – the European average.

As China’s construction frenzy ends, the economy is experiencing a major slowdown. By some estimates, China’s growth stalled almost completely in the first quarter of this year. Even official figures indicate that several provinces outside the more dynamic coastal regions are in outright recession.

This leaves China facing two major challenges. One is financial: how to deal with the unsustainable debts of many local governments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Fortunately, the solutions here are obvious. Local-government debts can be shifted to the central government, or bank loans can be written off and banks recapitalized.

The second, more profound challenge relates to the real economy: how to redeploy workers and capital from the industrial sectors facing overcapacity and the most overbuilt cities.

This imperative is sometimes denied. Hundreds of millions of people, it is said, have yet to migrate to cities, where they will demand housing. But, given that almost half of China’s rural workers are already over 50 years old, many may never migrate. And China’s total population will begin to decline within 15 years. Far from being on the cusp of a wave of urbanization, China is within 10-15 years of its completion.

Even if urbanization did continue at a high rate, many workers would not migrate to the second- and third-tier cities where overcapacity is most extreme, but to the major coastal cities. Though the government can use its hukou (household registration) system to slow that migration, even it cannot direct people to the specific cities with the most excess capacity.

So what can be done? One option would be to export construction expertise and workers. Indeed, this is one rationale for China’s “one belt, one road” initiative, which aims to recreate the ancient overland and maritime Silk Roads connecting China to Europe. But, as with any export-based strategy, the impact of this approach would be limited by the size of potential external markets, relative to China’s economy. No feasible level of construction exports can fully compensate for faltering domestic investment.

Domestic consumption, supported by strong wage growth, must instead be the dominant driver of growth. The good news is that wages are already growing faster than GDP – a trend that is likely to continue, as demographic change restricts the supply of new labor. Over the next decade, the number of Chinese aged 15-30 will fall by almost 25%.

But major policy reforms are also needed. China must take action to curb overinvestment by SOEs, cutting off such firms’ access to subsidized credit and forcing them to pay much higher dividends to the government. Those revenues could then be used to improve health services and strengthen the social safety net, thereby removing the need for Chinese households to maintain high precautionary savings.

Such reforms would challenge powerful vested interests. It is far easier to build consensus around efforts, say, to add the renminbi to the basket of currencies that determines the value of the IMF’s reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right – a move that, while appropriate, would do little for medium-term growth. But, if China is to replicate the success of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, there is no alternative to tough reform.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Una de las mejores referencias en lengua española sobre China es el Observatorio de la Política China.

Aunque a veces tiene alguna morralla y algún artículo mediocre, allí escribe Xulio Rios artículos bastante interesantes, y es de nuestros más enterados sobre el tema.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://blogs.elconfidencial.com/mercados/valor-anadido/2015-06-29/grecia-esconde-el-hundimiento-chino-la-bolsa-se-colapsa-un-15-en-dos-dias-pese-a-la-bajada-de-tipos_908630/

[muyuu]

http://blogs.elconfidencial.com/mercados/valor-anadido/2015-06-29/grecia-esconde-el-hundimiento-chino-la-bolsa-se-colapsa-un-15-en-dos-dias-pese-a-la-bajada-de-tipos_908630/

Es que estaba muy muy cantado... yo llevo avisando de esto bastante tiempo a la gente que conozco con derivados más o menos relacionados con el mercado de acciones chino.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/06/29/actualidad/1435605593_796475.html

Cincuenta países rubricaron ayer en Pekín los estatutos de la entidad que empezará a funcionar a finales de año. Gracias al acuerdo, China podrá vetar de facto en el banco, que es la primera institución multilateral cuyos principales accionistas serán de países en desarrollo. El banco concederá préstamos con el objetivo de aliviar la necesidad de financiación a la que se enfrentan los países del continente asiático para construir infraestructuras, estimada en 1,5 billones de dólares anuales.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://www.elconfidencial.com/mercados/2015-07-01/fuste-no-se-equivoque-china-sigue-siendo-un-mercado-para-doblar-a-cinco-anos_910663/

“Lo cierto es que los que pensaron que la bolsa China iba a tener subidas del 150% año tras año son los que se están saliendo ahora, más cuando han visto que nuevas iniciativas destinadas al impulso de las salidas a bolsa o las ampliaciones de capital van a tener un efecto dilutivo en el mercado”, asegura el experto. “Pero nosotros creemos, en cambio, que lo que está buscando China es un mercado más financiado con capital que con deuda y esto es positivo a medio y largo plazo”, continúa Fusté.

Y es que al limitar el llamado 'margin trading' -compras apalancadas- se limita la gasolina de los especuladores, algo que a la larga es beneficioso para crear un mercado serio. “Hay infinidad de reformas, con mayúsculas, que van en esta dirección. Lo que al final lo que China está buscando es la liberalización, evitar futuras crisis financieras y lograr la internacionalización del renminbi”, explica Fusté. “Así, a pesar de todo, China sigue siendo un mercado para doblar a cinco años vista”, concluye. 

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://atimes.com/2015/06/dont-compare-china-to-greece-and-they-have-tons-of-pension-money-to-invest/

First, let’s just say China isn’t like Greece.

It’s obvious when you take just two seconds to think about it. China controls its own central bank and currency. Greece has no control over its currency, the euro. So it’s central bank is pretty useless. China’s economy is growing about 7%. Although slower than last year, the US would still kill for this rate. On the other hand, after climbing into positive growth last year, the Greek economy is back in a recession. Greece’s gross domestic product fell 0.2% in the first quarter of 2015.

But if you listen to all the pundits spouting doom-and-gloom about the Greek debt crisis, they sound like China is in the same boat. Yes, the Chinese stock market fell 20%, the unofficial definition of a bear market. But, let’s just say things are different there.

And that’s our second point. It’s good when the government has your back. While government-backed financial markets have their issues, Asia Unhedged wants to focus on the positive.

Which brings us to the main point; China’s stock markets rebounded strongly on Tuesday. The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index jumped 5.5% to 4,277. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index climbed 4.8% and the ChiNext Price Index, which tracks small-stocks, leapt 6.3%.

Let’s recap. Chinese stocks fell over the previous two weeks primarily because a drop-off in liquidity: tighter market requirements, cash lock ups in initial public offerings and a 30% decline in new brokerage accounts.

“Margin debt on the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell for a sixth day to 1.36 trillion yuan ($219 billion) on Monday, the longest stretch of declines since June 2014,” reported Bloomberg.

This is good. It’s pulling speculators out of the market. Meanwhile, there is a pile of institutional cash — especially on the pension side — ready to come into the market.

Investors were spooked when the People’s Bank of China cut interest rates on Saturday for the fourth time since November. Some viewed it as an act of regulatory desperation rather than support. But a few things happened on Monday that got lost in the news about Greece.

“China will allow its basic endowment pension fund to invest in stock markets, according to draft regulations posted on the Ministry of Finance’s website,” reported Bloomberg. The fund also will be allowed to invest in domestic bonds, stock funds, private equities, stock-index futures and treasury futures, according to the draft.

The proposed rules will allow up to 30% of the pension fund’s net value to be invested in stocks, funds and stock-related pension products. The basic pension fund ended 2104 with 3.59 trillion yuan ($583 billion), the official Securities Times reported in May.

“The access of the pension fund as a long-term investor will remarkably increase liquidity supply and will benefit the sustainable, healthy development of the stock market,” Wen Bin, a researcher at China Minsheng Banking in Beijing, told Bloomberg. “The Chinese market will be stabilized by the policy.”

Also, “BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, plans to start using the Shanghai-Hong Kong exchange link, endorsing a program that has so far been slow to lure international investors,” reported Bloomberg on Monday. “The money manager already has about $1.5 billion of quota to buy mainland shares through separate programs for qualified foreign institutions.”

That’s real money, not speculators. We like that trend.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

40 largest chinese companies

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/184/06china40_all_slide.html?thisSpeed=12000

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

El golpetazo está siendo de aúpa...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-05/volatility-confusion-reign-pboc-intervenes-chinese-stocks-surge-then-tumble

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-05/china-crosses-rubicon-stock-bailout-bofa-says-pboc-risks-hurting-its-credibility

[muyuu]

El golpetazo está siendo de aúpa...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-05/volatility-confusion-reign-pboc-intervenes-chinese-stocks-surge-then-tumble

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-05/china-crosses-rubicon-stock-bailout-bofa-says-pboc-risks-hurting-its-credibility

Luego dirán que no se veía venir, si estaba cantadísimo y era vox populi cómo estaban poniendo las condiciones para la burbuja y luego la propia burbuja.

Es interesante que China (PRC), a pesar de su enorme tamaño en el mercado de commodities y de su poder económico, sin embargo no tiene peso en la fijación de precios internacional. En Asia manda Tokio de lejos, y luego Hong Kong, Singapur. Pero es que para ellos es anatema dejar que el mercado funcione.