Managing The Dragon

Food — providing enough of it at acceptable levels of quality and at an affordable cost is shaping up to be one of China’s most challenging problems. Lax quality control, production shortcuts, urbanization and rising consumer spending are all combining to turn the spotlight on China’s food supply chain, creating problems, but also opportunities, for [...]

When I was in the auto business, the statistics published by the Chinese government said that there were approximately 2,500 components companies in the country. Those of us in the industry, though, knew that this number only counted the firms that were registered with the government and vastly underestimated the number of companies actually making [...]

Over the weekend, the Xinhua News Agency reported that authorities in eastern China have cancelled plans to build a waste water pipeline from a paper mill run by Japan’s Oji Paper Co. Ltd. (“OJIPF”) after thousands of people gathered in Qidong, a coastal city of more than 1 million people across the Yangtze River from [...]

According to a recently released United Nations report, global investment in renewable energy reached a record $257 billion in 2011, a 17 percent increase from the amount invested in 2010. Globally, renewable energy covers approximately 16.7 percent of energy consumption. Of this share, modern technologies such as solar and wind accounted for just 8.2 percent, [...]

Earlier this week, CNOOC Ltd. (NYSE:CEO), China’s largest offshore oil and natural gas explorer, announced that it had agreed to pay $15.1 billion in cash to acquire Canada’s Nexen Inc. (NYSE:NXY) in the biggest overseas takeover by a Chinese company. The price tag that CNOOC put on Nexen represented a 61 percent premium over the [...]

I’m not a trained economist, so when I want to understand what is really happening in China’s economy, I always turn to others who are. My “go to” guy in this regard, by a wide margin, is Andy Rothman, China Macro Strategist for CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. I have known Andy for a long time. He [...]

As expected, China reported on Friday that GDP growth in its second quarter slowed to 7.6 percent, just slightly above the government’s full year target of 7.5 percent. Second-quarter growth was the weakest it’s been since the 6.6 percent rate that was registered during the depths of the global financial crisis at the start of [...]

On Wednesday, the China Automobile Manufacturers Association, a government-sanctioned industry group, announced that China’s vehicle makers sold 1.58 million cars, trucks and buses in June, a 9 percent increase from June of 2011. For the first six months of this year, China’s vehicle sales totaled 9.6 million. Any way you look at it, these are [...]

As Americans were taking time off last week to celebrate Independence Day amid sweltering heat in most parts of the country, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) unexpectedly cut interest rates, stoking yet again fears of a global recession. On Friday, the ECB announced that it was reducing its [...]

On January 4, we made our predictions for the Year of the Dragon. It’s hard to believe, but June 30 has already come and gone, so it’s time to take stock and see how we’re doing so far. Prediction #1: China’s economy will grow at 8.5 percent With 8.1 percent GDP growth in the first [...]