Last week China Daily had an interesting article on job prospects for university graduates on the mainland. In 2006, as a reaction to rising unemployment among college graduates – even with GDP growth buzzing at rates above 12% – the government launched a program to help students find jobs as university teachers. The program has …
Read More…Archive for March, 2009
The dollar must be replaced – yet again
Beijing music and art Things have been so busy that I haven’t been posting as much as I would like. Besides my increased writing commitments and the constant barrage of news, I would like to mention that over the past weekend we completed the second annual festival of experimental and avant garde music, featuring …
Read More…Did China experiencing January hot money outflows?
The market (or at least that part of the market that obsesses over balance of payment flows) has been swept with rumors today that foreign exchange reserves were down in January by $30 billion. My experience with these sorts of rumors is that they tend to be fairly accurate, and I suspect they will soon …
Read More…Banker? Or Grocer?
Replenishing bank capital One of the students in Peking University’s Guanghua Students Monetary Policy Committee, a group for which I am an advisor, put together last week a summary of plans to raise capital adequacy ratios for Chinese banks. I thought it would be useful to reproduce his numbers. According to him, Shenzhen Development Bank, …
Read More…Trade, CPI and other numbers came in this week
Deflation and debt On Monday CPI and PPI numbers for February came out. CPI was down 1.6% year and year and PPI was down 4.5%, in line with or slightly below expectations and, according to Bloomberg, the highest rate of deflation among the 78 countries they follow. Some of this may be caused by one-off …
Read More…Yes, trade policies do matter
One of my blog readers, Kalasend, responded to Thursday’s entry by asking about the composition of US-Chinese trade, and I think the question is interesting enough to be discussed in a separate entry, rather than in the comments section. In his response he pointed out that “China’s exports are mostly light manufacturing goods like toys, …
Read More…No, I was not disappointed by Premier Wen’s speech
Strangely enough I think I am among the least disappointed people about Premier Wen’s speech this morning during the opening of the National People’s Congress. Like most people I think there was very little of substance in the speech except the usual statements about boosting consumption, maintaining growth, and promoting social welfare – all easier …
Read More…The NPC meets, and Krugman refers to the savings glut
With the tense start of China’s parliamentary season this afternoon – and with the National People’s Congress meeting Thursday – there isn’t much incentive to try to figure anything new out in China since we are likely to be given a lot more information and proposals over the next few days. What are the major …
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