Financial expert Victor Shih dives into the 2024 figures at the annual NPC and concludes China cannot roll over debts anymore and finance its budget like it did before. He tells Bloomberg that central state policies have increasingly replaced a market-driven economy.Read More →

China’s consumers are trading down because of deflation, and are looking for cheap prices, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein to CNBC. China’s government is unlikely to use financial support for the economy, he adds, as it finds the current growth of 5 percent quite enough, as its priority is dealing with the gap between the haves and have-nots, not at trying to increase that economic growth.Read More →

London-based China veteran Mark Schaub summarizes in his China Chit-chat newsletter the meetings his law firm had with 24 Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) from China over the last three months of 2023. They were checking out opportunities in Europe and the Middle East, partly because their offspring was not really interested in joining their China business. They would look for lessons from their European counterparts but failed because of the differences between Chinese and Europeans, and because the concept of paying for professional legal advice did not yet take root among the Chinese visitors.Read More →

Geopolitical tensions and the crisis in real estate have hurt consumer confidence over the past 18 months, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at ABC. He does not expect a big-scale stimulus, since the government is short of money to spend, but a slow recovery of retail is emerging, he adds.Read More →

China business veteran Shaun Rein discusses with Cyrus Janssen how China has faced challenges since it opened up post-Corona. Outbound travel has not resumed, expected revenge spending did not happen and consumer confidence is at the lowest rate ever. No, he says, China is not yet back to normal, because consumers sit on their corona savings, unwilling to spend. And foreign investors, while CEOs are going to China, are hesitant to resume investing in China, at least till the end of 2023. But support for Xi Jinping is still there, he sees. Though, expect a tough 10-20 years.Read More →

Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher, looks for the 2022 Hurun Richest Women in China list at who those women are. In his 17th year, women have been doing better, despite the global downturn for the rich over the past few years.Read More →

Many analysts took a negative view of Xi Jinping’s more centralized grip on China’s policies, but leading economist Arthur Kroeber looks at it differently, at least in the short run. Major problems like the zero-covid approach and the downturn of property have already benefited from Xi’s more coherent approach, Kroeber says at the Starr forum at MIT.Read More →