Chinese Economy Is Giant Question Mark After Challenging Year
Congratulations to Beijing. China hit its growth goal for 2023 despite Xi Jinping's best efforts to smother the economy with overwrought, misplaced paternalism.
Growth was 5.2% for the full year, the NBS said Wednesday. There was no drama. Premier Li Qiang pre-announced the headline annual growth figure in Davos on Tuesday.
In Q4, the economy likewise expanded 5.2%. That was easily better than the mark to hit for the full-year number to reach the target.
By now, everyone knows the narrative
Chinese Economy is at a critical juncture of growth driver transitioning.
During this period it needs cheap raw materials and low inflation to help with expansion. WHAT IF the government is engineering this investor worry on purpose to keep expansion environment favorable? For all the pessimistic talk surrounding Chinese economy, the fact is they’re pulling/importing raw materials at a record pace (look at crude & base metals). Either Chinese economy is not as weak as market seems to suggest or global economy is in serious trouble to allow this arbitrage to open wide.
If that is the case, they are doing a great job of keeping youth unemployment very high and birth rates very low. Not a great recipe for an expansion.
yeah there is no easy fix for youth employment, either you trade long term growth for short term gain, or vice versa.
who needs high birthrate when AI will offset labor shortages in the future?
True, and who cares about youth unemployment when you have Chinese Terminator robots running things in the future…lol
I believe 5.2% growth as much as I believe that youth unemployment dropped from >20% to 14% in three quarters.