1/4 China Daily: "Chinese policymakers could put more days off into people's hands, as the relatively scarce paid vacation days may be out of step with the needs of a consumption-driven economy that Beijing has been pursuing, analysts said." www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202509/24/...

For those who might be interested, the FT's Martin Sandbu and I recently spoke at a conference in Santander, and we followed up a few weeks later with a discussion on China and global trade. www.ft.com/content/8ee5...

The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:aday7msfnpqba7psqpjq3pij/post/3lzi4nmosv22u.

1/4 "Alphaville suspects that many policymakers in Beijing agree with the IMF’s conclusions that it should unwind a lot of these industrial policies. But we also suspect it is another case of St Augustine’s “Lord make me chaste, but not yet”." www.ft.com/content/be77...

1/6 Reuters: "China’s central bank head pledged on Monday to use a range of monetary policy tools to ensure ample liquidity, try to drive down funding costs and support economic recovery." www.reuters.com/world/china-...

1/6 Interesting paper on Chinese infrastructure investment in creating infrastructure across Latin America. I'd argue that for Latin Americans there are at least two different ways of evaluating the consequences. nationalinterest.org/feature/chin...

Yicai: "China will restrict the expansion of its steel industry over the next two years in an effort to curb excess capacity. China, the world’s largest steel producer, has struggled with overcapacity for more than a decade." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/china-c...

Xinhua: "Loans to China's technology small and medium-sized enterprises grew at an average annual rate of over 20 percent during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), central bank governor Pan Gongsheng said on Monday." english.news.cn/20250922/a61...

FT Alphaville quotes Stephen Jen: "the Trump administration has basically gotten exactly what it wanted: weakening the dollar without causing a stock or bond market tantrum." www.ft.com/content/9d2d...

"Jean-Philippe Bouchaud is both baffled and frustrated by how economics has fallen in thrall to theorists — mathematical, social or political — and become bereft of the rigour of proper sciences, where real-world experiments and experiences actually matter." Aren't we all? www.ft.com/content/6f54...

1/5 Good Scott Kennedy piece on involution: "Central government bureaucrats understand that official exhortations for avoiding price cuts and pushing industries to adhere to “self-discipline” are doomed to failure, but they have to at least look like they are trying." www.csis.org/blogs/truste...

1/2 Good Matthew Klein piece on recent developments in the Chinese economy, with especially interesting numbers on continued demand weakness and on financial flows (including flight capital). theovershoot.co/p/chinas-ant...

1/5 Reuters: "Foreign investors are plotting a return to China's stock markets in a big way three years after pulling back and terming them uninvestable, encouraged by a growing demand for diversification beyond U.S. assets." www.reuters.com/world/china/...

1/4 SCMP: "China is making a renewed push to boost service consumption by relaxing market access and increasing supply – across sectors such as culture, sports and healthcare – as Beijing doubles down on expanding domestic demand for economic growth." www.scmp.com/economy/chin...

Very interesting Caixin article on travel in China. While record numbers of Chinese are traveling, spending is down. Unfortunately local governments, as always, are all chasing the growth areas and this will likely lead to new forms of "involution". www.caixinglobal.com/2025-09-12/i...

EU Chamber of Commerce in China: “While consumption in China is actually growing, manufacturing output has grown faster. Involution, expanding inventories, pressure on profit margins, decreasing asset utilisation and pressure to export are all natural consequences.” www.scmp.com/economy/glob...

Good Reuters article on the sheer extent of excess capacity in China's auto industry, and why it is so hard to resolve. Reuters is becoming the go-to source on excess manufacturing capacity. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Yicai: "The area of unsold properties across China declined for the sixth consecutive month in August. Unsold properties fell by 3.2 million square meters to 761.7 million sqm as of Aug. 31. Residential properties fell by 3.1 million sqm to 402.3 million sqm." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/area-of...

1/2 Yicai: "China’s railway investment is set to reach a record high this year and is likely to break through the CNY900 billion mark should annual growth rise to 5.8 percent, according to the latest data." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-...

1/6 According to the WSJ, after a few years in which the earnings of the poor rose faster than the earnings of the rich, in 2025 the earnings of the rich have risen faster. In theory this should have resulted in a lower US trade deficit. www.wsj.com/economy/us-e...

1/6 SCMP: "President Xi Jinping has called for more efforts to develop a unified domestic market, arguing that it will be crucial to helping China secure an edge in international competition and meet its development goals." www.scmp.com/economy/chin...

1/6 Good news for the Chinese stock markets. According to Yicai, "China’s new household deposits contracted in July and August from the year before, while deposits from non-bank financial institutions surged, in a sign that people have been moving... www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-...

1/2 According to Wang Chaoming, chief economist at Hunan Chasing, infrastructure spending in China "is likely to accelerate as tariffs in the US and weakening global demand weigh on exports, which could post negative growth in the fourth quarter. www.yicaiglobal.com/news/china-s...

1/7 NIFD Director Li Yang thinks that China's low and declining interest rates will not only hurt bank profitability but will also lead to disintermediation, with deposits shifting away from banks and towards the bond markets. www.chinabankingnews.com/p/why-ultra-...

New op-ed published in @carnegieendowment.org's China blog, edited by @michaelpettis.bsky.social: “How China’s Growth Model Determines Its Climate Performance: Rather than climate ambitions, compatibility with investment and exports is why China supports both green and high-emission technologies.”

1/7 In August, both growth in industrial output and growth in retail sales came in well below expectations, with the former up 5.2% and the latter up 3.4% (compared to 5.7% and 3.7%, respectively, in the previous month). english.news.cn/20250915/7a1...

In the latest issue of CRI, Mathias Larsen discusses China's clean industries in the context of its growth model. carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/0...

1/8 Bloomberg: "China urged Mexico to “think twice” before levying tariffs, a warning that could signal Beijing’s willingness to retaliate over a move it sees as giving into demands from the US." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

1/14 Barry Eichengreen warns, correctly, that "The dollar’s international primacy isn’t eternal. To be sustained, it has to be actively fostered and preserved." But why sustain the dollar’s international primacy? Is this merely a modern monetary fetish? www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

Bloomberg: "China is preparing to tackle the significant backlog of unpaid bills owed by local governments to the private sector, an amount of arrears some have estimated at over $1 trillion." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Caixin: "China’s market watchdog has stepped up oversight of the country’s intensifying food delivery subsidy battle, warning leading platforms to steer clear of unfair competition as a wave of cut-price campaigns rattles the industry." www.caixinglobal.com/2025-09-11/c...

Yicai: "The PBoC raised its gold holdings by 60,000 ounces to 74.02 million ounces last month from July. By value, gold reserves rose by USD9.9 billion to USD253.8 billion, with gold’s share of China’s total reserves rising to 7.6% from 7.4%, a new high." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-...

1/10 Interesting new IMF paper on the extent of industrial policy subsidies to Chinese manufacturers and SOEs (to the extent information is available) and their impact on productivity. www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

1/11 FT: "Ursula von der Leyen, who had tasked Draghi to write his report, has been too preoccupied with averting a full-blown trade war with the US, keeping the Trump administration engaged on Ukraine and striking the right balance with China." www.ft.com/content/4423...

1/7 Although August CPI deflation widened year on year to -0.4%, compared to 0.0% in July and well above expectations of -0.2%, leading many analysts to worry that deflation in China is accelerating, I think prices actually did fine. en.people.cn/n3/2025/0910...

Yicai: "China’s auto production, sales, and exports all set fresh record highs for a fourth consecutive month in August. Passenger car production reached 2.406 million units last month, up 11.3 percent from a year earlier and up 6.7 percent on the prior month." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/china-s...

From the National Bureau of Statistics.

Yicai: "The Yicai Chief Economists Confidence Index came in at 50.6 for this month, up from 50.2 in August, remaining above the boom-bust line for the second consecutive month." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chief-e...

Xinhua: "China's manufacturing value-added output is expected to have increased by more than 8 trillion yuan (about 1.13 trillion U.S. dollars) during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), contributing over 30 percent of global growth." english.news.cn/20250909/be0...

1/7 NYT: "Through August, China exported $141 billion to Africa, while importing $81 billion. The widening trade imbalance with Africa stems from surging exports of Chinese-made batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles and industrial equipment." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/b...

1/2 This interesting article by William Goetzmann points out that deep, long-term bubbles are often associated with the spread of new technologies. Speaking of the 1920s, for example, he notes that "all that investor money... www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

1/7 For all the talk of rebalancing domestic demand in China, Chinese exports continue to climb much faster than imports in 2025. In the first seven months of 2025, exports were up 6.9% in RMB terms, while imports were up 1.2%. english.news.cn/20250908/e41...

Highest level of support since Gallup started asking this question a quarter century ago

Interesting article about the growing number of Chinese living in Japan. Among my artist and musician friends, more and more of them visit Japan regularly, and a few have moved there permanently, including two different music club owners who have set up shop in Tokyo. www.ft.com/content/ab9b...

Caixin: "Multiple provinces in China are reining in vehicle trade-in subsidies, dealing a blow to auto sales and casting doubt on the durability of the national stimulus program." www.caixinglobal.com/2025-09-06/c...

1/8 Rather than treat Mexico and Canada as trade rivals, Washington should recognize that both are substantial deficit countries that, by helping to absorb global trade and savings imbalances, actually reduce trade pressures on the US. www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

1/10 Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is concerned mainly about countries following the WTO rulebook, and as head of the WTO, perhaps this makes sense, but it also suggests why the WTO has become largely irrelevant to global trade. www.ft.com/content/344e...

Zhang Shouwang and his band Carsick Cars were the highlight of my time in Beijing.

NBER: The total effective tax rate of the richest 400 Americans averaged 24% in 2018–2020, compared with 30% for the full population and 45% for top labor income earners. www.nber.org/papers/w34170

For friends in Beijing who are interested in the music scene, beginning today we are starting a new weekly series at My Dramamine, featuring many of the best composers and experimental musicians in Beijing and China. The series kicks off with performances by Zhang Shouwang and Wang Xu.