Managing The Dragon

China’s inflation rate jumped to 5.1 percent in November, its highest level in 28 months. November’s increase follows a 4.4 percent increase in October and a 3.6 percent increase in September. In our previous post on inflation, we quoted Andy Rothman, China Macro Strategist for CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, who said that rising food prices, particularly [...]

In October, China’s inflation rate jumped to 4.4 percent from 3.6 percent the month before, catching many China watchers by surprise. October’s rate was the highest inflation has been in China in two years, and well above the government’s target of 3 percent. Given China’s impact on the global economy, October’s surge in inflation provoked [...]

The People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, announced over the weekend that it will resume a gradual appreciation of the RMB against the U.S. dollar, and that it will manage the yuan’s exchange rate with reference to a basket of currencies, rather than pegging it to the dollar. The PBOC statement makes it clear [...]

In the mid-1990s, I was frequently asked whether I thought that China would break apart into a number of separate, individual countries. That’s because China bears at the time warned that China was not one country, but many different countries, and that the bonds binding the whole lot together were thin. In their view, China [...]

Google’s withdrawal from China and the relationship between the United States and China is on everyone’s mind these days. Sam Gustin, a senior writer for Daily Finance, AOL’s money and finance site, called last weekend and asked a series of questions about both issues. Sam wrote up our conversation in an article that appeared in [...]

Last week was particularly newsworthy in China, with an important milestone being reached and the release of positive economic data. The production of the 10 millionth vehicle by China’s auto industry this year represents a key milestone in the country’s development. Many government and industry officials gathered in Changchun, home to First Auto Works, to [...]

China’s markets aren’t anything if they aren’t volatile. That’s something I’ve learned over and over again in my fifteen years here. Take the components business that I built and ran. Every year, as the Chinese returned from their annual Spring Festival visits to their hometowns, our diesel engine customers would begin ordering more and more [...]

The flow of good news out of China continues, but there are some clouds forming on the horizon which are important to keep in sight. First, the good news. Last week, we highlighted car sales, which increased by 19.2 percent over last year during the first six months of the year and are likely to [...]

It’s only been six months, but it seems like ages since 2008 finally gave way to 2009. Though uncertainty will always be part and parcel of economics and finance, it’s hard to remember a time when there was less clarity in global economics. By January, trillions of dollars of wealth had been wiped out by [...]

Evidence is mounting that China has indeed turned the corner and is leading the rest of the world out of the global economic crisis. The week began on Monday when Andy Rothman, the China Macro Strategist for CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, presented some positive news on the country’s economy in an interview with CNBC’s Oriel Morrison. [...]