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China Sets ‘Highly Challenging Target’ for Economy

March 7, 2022 By in China, Communist Party, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Investment, Politics, Real Estate, Stock market Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Premier Li Keqiang stresses stability and the importance of 100 million ‘market entities,’ even as Beijing keeps up its regulatory assault on the private sector.

China will target growth of 5.5% in 2022, at the high end of expectations but still far off the double-digit pace we’d grown used to, as the Middle Kingdom grew to become the world’s second-largest economy.

Premier Li Keqiang delivered a forecast of GDP growth of “around 5.5%” while giving his annual work report to the National People’s Congress, the Chinese Communist Party’s yearly agenda-setting meeting for the country’s economy.

“This is a highly challenging target,” Société Générale economists Wei Yao and Michelle Lam say in a research note. It is an acceleration from the two-year compound growth 5.1% rate established in 2021, and there are plenty of headwinds blowing against the Chinese economy.

This story first appeared on Real Money, the premium site of TheStreet.com. Click here to visit the original story.

Top of the list: China still has a “zero-Covid” policy that requires a disruptive snap local lockdown wherever cases break out. It’s hardly a realistic approach in the face of the hyperinfectious Omicron variant. A leading Chinese virus expert has hinted at a change in approach, as I mentioned on Friday, with the potential for China to move toward “Chinese-style coexistence with the virus,” whatever that means.

It’s vague language that allows the Chinese Communist Party to carve out any old “live with Covid” strategy that it likes, explaining away any aberrations by saying they’re necessary in China. It would be a face-saving step designed to discourage too many people from asking why such harsh lockdowns were ever necessary.

But the CCP has so far struck a fine balance by avoiding an overload of the Chinese healthcare system, which is not strong outside the major cities, while permitting much of daily life to return to normal. This has been achieved by barring nearly all overseas travel. The number of Chinese passports issued in the first half of last year was just 2% of the number issued in the first half of 2019.

China set a growth target of “over 6%” for 2021, and official growth came in at 8.1%. Given the wild swings in the economy produced by the pandemic, China also cites the 5.1% average compound annual growth rate over 2020 and 2021, combined.

Li, speaking to around 3,000 delegates in the Great Hall of the People on Saturday, laid out the lowest growth target since 1991. He acknowledges that China “could face more difficulties and challenges this year,” and pledges that China will issue C¥2.5 trillion (US$396 billion) in tax refunds in 2022, in support of the private sector.

President Xi Jinping directed a series of regulatory crackdowns over the course of the last 18 months, in particular targeting Big Tech but also highlighting the “disorderly expansion of capital.” Quite what the “orderly expansion of capital” looks like is unclear; the criticism, part of the overarching “Xi Jinping Thought” that’s now codified in the Chinese Communist Party charter, gives license for the party to curb the power of the private sector, and take down a notch both Chinese “unicorn” companies and its billionaire entrepreneurs.

Meetings like the NPC owe a lot to the Marxist-Leninist roots of the Chinese Communist Party, and the “five-year plan” style of a command economy. Li praised the work of “market entities, over 100 million in number,” for having responded “with fortitude and resilience” to the shocks of the last year. “Employment is pivotal to people’s well-being,” he continued, suggesting the party is not at this time in a position to push its difficult overhaul of its inefficient, bloated state-owned enterprises. “Our efforts to keep market entities afloat are aimed at maintaining stable employment and meeting basic living needs.”

China is resisting direct stimulus from the government to support the economy as it slows, and Li said the government will target a fiscal deficit of 2.8% of GDP this year, down from 3.2% in 2021. But economists believe Beijing will continue to roll out dovish policies this year, and is even warming to the property sector, where prices have gone into reverse. It kept its inflation target at “around 3%,” and the forecast for land sales stays flat, an optimistic call given that many parcels of land are going unbought due to the financial deleveraging forced on developers.

The SocGen team calculate that the measures announced at this meeting equate to fiscal stimulus of around 3% of GDP. That’s one percentage point larger than the economists expected. Li frequently stressed “stability,” and he repeated the Communist Party’s clarion call that “housing is for living, not for speculation,” suggesting it will pull support once again if home prices start to rise.

It is not yet therefore time to consider buying the beaten-down shares of Chinese developers. Li warned that “land prices, home prices and general housing market’s expectations should be stabilized,” with affordable housing and an expansion of the rental-housing stock high on his list of priorities. Nomura says the overall impression, coupled with no mention of imposing a property tax, is that policy has turned “slightly friendly” toward the beleaguered property sector.

The NPC, coming on the heels of the closing ceremony for the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 24, marks the second major marker for the Chinese government this year. It is building toward the 20th Party Congress, likely in November, the latest installment of a key leadership overhaul that’s held once every five years. At this Party Congress, Xi will be seeking an unprecedented third term as president, having pushed through a change in the constitution that will allow him to run again. He will surely be unopposed but must still muster the support of the party. Xi wants to be able to declare victory over the coronavirus and point to solid steering of the economy.

Li did not mention the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the geopolitical distress haunts this year’s proceedings. China is staying largely silent, not wishing to criticize its ally, Russia, but is therefore giving tacit support of the war. It is attempting to cast itself in the role of peacemaker, but it may find it hard to push Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table at a time he appears recalcitrant. Putin is insisting on the “demilitarization” of Ukraine, but China – whose officials stress over and over again the importance of national boundaries and “sovereignty” – has done nothing to criticize the clear violation of Ukraine’s borders.

Chinese shares are dropping today in synch with other Asian markets. The CSI 300 of the largest companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen ended down 3.2%. As is usual when there’s selling in this downturn, Hong Kong has fared worse than most, with the Hang Seng lurching 3.7% lower.

It’s another heavy day of selling on Asian markets on Monday, with the Topix in Japan closing down 2.8%, and all major indexes lower. The day began badly after oil shot up, with Brent crude up 8.9% at the time of writing, having risen briefly above US$130 per barrel. That hurts most Asian nations, which bar Malaysia all import large amounts of oil. The United States is leading the charge in figuring out how to restrict and sanction oil shipments out of Russia, the world’s third-largest oil exporter.

The Sensex in India is also down 2.7% at the time of writing. China and India bookend the United States as the three largest importers of oil in the world.

Indonesia is also a major oil extractor, although the former OPEC member is now a net importer of oil. Still, the production levels out of Southeast Asia are insulating those markets slightly on Monday. The Jakarta Composite Index were down 0.8%, Singapore stocks were 1.0% lower an hour before the close, and Malaysian equities were off 2.3%.

Australia and India Lead Mid-Week Selling for an Asia in Recession

March 20, 2020 By in Asia, Australia, Business, China, Communist Party, India, Investment, Politics, Stock market Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

There are country-specific reasons why Australia, India and Thailand are leading Asia’s plunge, but the whole region is in recession, S&P correctly says.

The wildly unpredictable movements of equity markets continued apace on Wednesday. Despite the strong rally on U.S. markets the day before, when the S&P 500 rose 6%, almost all Asian markets again posted sizable losses here on Wednesday.

The biggest losers are in Australia and India. I’ll briefly explore why each of those two markets is performing particularly poorly.

In Australia, there are massive daily moves in either direction, sometimes even intraday. The S&P/ASX 200 was down 6.4% at the close Wednesday after posting its biggest single-day gain in 20 years on Tuesday. Now that gain has been wiped out! Since hitting a record high on Feb. 20, the index has corrected 31.2%.

Australian equities are dominated by the Big Four banks – Commonwealth Bank CMWAY, Westpac Banking (WBK) , ANZ ANZBY and NAB NABZY – all of which are seeing their shares oscillate as central banks shift policy globally. The Oz market also has a healthy dose of commodity stocks such as the gold miners BHP Group (BHP) and Rio Tinto (RIO) , and commodities are getting crushed, even gold. There’s also a hefty listed real estate sector and renters are going to start struggling to pay up. Oh, and let’s not forget that Australia’s main customer is China, which isn’t buying.

India follows suit

Indian shares again sold off hard on Wednesday, with the Sensex down 5.6% at the close. Indian shares have now corrected 30.1% in the month since Feb. 19, one of the worst performances in Asia. Foreign institutional investors have been heavy sellers, placing a higher risk premium on Indian stocks than before the outbreak.

India only has 137 declared Covid-19 cases so far, and it’s a bit of a mystery why the world’s second-largest country by population has been spared so far. It may be that only a few people are being tested. While ultraviolet light does kill viruses in general, there has been no scientific proof that hot weather deters Covid-19, so it may be that developing markets that often are hot either haven’t been hit yet or tested well. Of course, developing nations will struggle the most in a health care sense if the disease sets in.

Here in Hong Kong, we’ve had virus cases confirmed among Hong Kong tourists returning from India trips. State governments in India are starting to shutter schools, malls, movie theaters and so on, an economic danger because domestic consumption accounts for around 60% of the economy. Travel and tourism, around 7.5% of GDP, will suffer immensely with tourism visas being cancelled.

There are some India-specific issues that add an extra layer of worry. Yes Bank, a private bank established in 2004 as an alternative to state-backed institutions, has collapsed and is being bailed out by the Reserve Bank of India, the nation’s central bank. Also, violent attacks against Muslim minority by radical Hindu nationalists have left scores dead. Those ethnic tensions are not going to be helped by any downward spiral in the economy.

It isn’t pretty elsewhere, either

While Australia and India have fared worst here on Wednesday, other markets alternate to outdo each other in poor performance. Japan was one of the only sources of green on screens, with the Topix up a narrow 0.2% on Wednesday after the Bank of Japan announced it will support the market by buying ETFs. But the Topix, a broad measure of all big Japanese stocks, is down 26.2% this year.

Thailand’s SET index has fallen 33.7% in 2020, by a small margin the worst year-to-date performance in Asia. Thailand gets 11% of its GDP from tourism, and that’s dead – technically, down 44% and getting worse. The Philippines, where stocks are down almost as much, 31.7% in 2020, has simply shut down its stock exchange, saying it couldn’t guarantee the health of folks on the floor. The blood pressure of investors is another health disaster altogether.

It’s going to take a coordinated global response when it comes to fiscal and monetary stimulus to get everyone on the same page. It also will take cooperation among medical bodies and addressing transportation links if we’re going to get out of the coronavirus mess. The unilateral, single-nation responses are firing buckshot when we need a .458 Winchester Magnum, the kind of Big Game rifle the ranger carries when I’ve been on walking safaris in South Africa.

Investors are sensibly responding to economic disruption rather than simply rates of infection. Korean stocks lost 4.9% in a market dominated by big exporters and heavy industry.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed down 4.2% on Wednesday, even though the rate of new infections is now slow in East Asia. Most of Hong Kong’s new cases are coming from abroad as Hong Kongers hurry home ahead of travel shutdowns around the globe. The Hang Seng hadn’t risen as high as other Asian indexes due to the pro-democracy protests here last year, so the benchmark is down “only” 20.9% in 2020.

Mainland China, where this all started, is seeing its stocks spared the worst of the selling. The CSI 300 index of the largest shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell 2.0% on Wednesday, and the whole index is down only 11.2% this year. That’s half the size of the general selloff around Asia. But treat Chinese share movements with skepticism. Domestic retail investors drive the trading and don’t have many other places to put their money. They are also notorious momentum traders. Mainland stocks are also essentially options on companies rather than genuine holdings, because Communist Party policy can change literally overnight without warning and shut your favorite company down. The party also has cash to spend on stimulus.

Recession is here

I was a guest on RTHK Radio 3’s drive-time business show “Money Talk” Tuesday morning, talking about the disastrous economic figures out of China on Monday. The jobless rate is at a record high, manufacturing has slowed a record amount, and retail sales cratered by a record margin.

One point I made is that, given the shutdowns already under way in Italy and Spain, we can expect similar figures out of those economies in the next month or two. And as more countries corral movement and stop public gatherings, we will see that economic pain spread.

So I chuckle a wry laugh when I hear forecasters predicting that we’re heading for recession. We are in recession, people! It’s here now.

The backward-looking economic output figures will confirm that assessment in the future. I hate the new piece of business jargon that an analyst is attempting to “nowcast” activity. But real-time assessments and common-sense assessments are what we need right now.

I’m digesting a particularly gloomy set of reports from Standard & Poor’s. The rating agency isn’t pulling any punches.

“Asia-Pacific Recession Guaranteed” is my light reading right now. It’s a quick hit. The “enormous first-quarter shock” in China means its growth will shudder to 2.9% in 2020, S&P says, a gutsy call because the Communist Party was keen on “predicting” growth of “around 6%.”

S&P is using the traditional definition of two down quarters in a row to define recession. By other measures, countries such as India and China need to achieve outsize growth just to keep the floods of people moving from the countryside to the city gainfully employed.

This new report says the “rising scale of the shock will leave permanent scars on balance sheets and in labor markets” in Asia. I concur. The rating agency believes US$400 billion in permanent income losses is going to be wiped off profit-and-loss statements.

S&P forecasts aggregate growth will fall by more than half in Asia to under 3% for all of 2020. It envisions a U-shaped recovery.

V-shaped, U-shaped, it’s all a question of how deep and how long this recession is going to last. All downturns are temporary unless you think the world economy is going to zero, which it’s not. But how bad will this get? We don’t know. The costs are continuing to add up, meaning we can’t count the final tab yet.

China Posts Worst Economic Performance on Record

March 20, 2020 By in Asia, Business, China, Communist Party, Geopolitics, Investment, Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Monday’s numbers for production, retail sales and the jobless rate are all the worst on record for China. Asian shares continued heavy selling despite central-bank support. [This story first appeared on TheStreet.com.]

China has posted its worst production and sales figures on record on Monday, as a series of firsts continue to be set in Asia, almost all of them on the downside.

The economic numbers released on Monday are far worse than predicted by forecasters, indicating that China’s factories essentially shut up shop in the first two months of the year. Retailers stopped buying, too, e-commerce not able to offset the empty stores nationwide.

Industrial output fell 13.5% for the January-February period, from the prior year. That’s the worst reading on record since Reuters began tracking the figure in January 1990. A poll by the news agency had anticipated a 1.5% rise.

Retail sales plummeted 20.5%, also the first decline on record, despite an increase in online purchases of goods like groceries. Shopping malls and high streets have become ghost towns, and a logistics logjam due to a lack of delivery people has delayed e-commerce orders. A survey of economists by Bloomberg had anticipated only a 4.0% fall.

China’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.2% for February, up from 5.2% in December. That, too, is a record high jobless rate since the government started publishing figures.

Investment also sank 24.5% for the January-February period, the first drop in record, and far worse than the dip of 2.0% forecast by economists. (Combining the two months negates the impact of Lunar New Year, which fell in January in 2020 but February in 2019.) Investment into property, the holding of choice for wealthy Chinese citizens, shrank by its largest amount on record, and home prices stalled for the first time in five years.

Early predictions of the impact of the coronavirus suggested there would be a rapid V-shaped recovery in China. But the location of the virus outbreak in the “Chicago of China” rapidly impacted travel and trade. The epicenter, Wuhan, is a major inland port on the Yangtze River, as well as a north-south and east-west node on railway lines. It is the center of China’s auto manufacturing.

Economic figures for March may be even worse than those recorded for the first two months of the year. Consumer confidence has been shaken to its core, and it’s unclear what will encourage it to return.

Official figures claim that China registered only 16 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, and 12 of those stem from “imported” cases of people arriving from abroad. But with the country opening back up to human movement, there’s potential for a second outbreak. One Hong Kong news report out of Wuhan states that doctors there are releasing patients from temporary hospitals if a lung scan shows no scarring, without testing for the virus, since test kits have run low.

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, which centered on southern Guangdong Province as well as Hong Kong, China did not enter any significant lockdown. With the Covid-19 disease, the top leadership effectively ordered half the country’s 1.4 billion people to stay home. That has complicated the return of workers from the Lunar New Year, and only around 75% of Chinese companies are back in business.

The cessation of production is far more extreme than in 2003, hence the huge and unprecedented impact on industrial production. This has broad implications in the West. Even if demand returns around the world, that is no good if there is no supply of goods.

China’s efforts to get its economy firing on all cylinders are now going to be deterred by a lack of demand, too. The travel bans put in place around the world, and a rising number of lockdowns in major economies such as Italy and Spain, will only further dampen economic activity in Asia.

China’s top leaders were due to announce their “forecast” for full-year economic performance in 2020 at a meeting on March 5. But the event has been postponed due to the virus crisis. The Communist top brass had reportedly agreed a “target” of around 6% when they gathered late last year, and are now debating whether to lower that.

Hong Kong’s economy is also suffering through what amounts to a virtual shutdown. Figures released on Monday showed that there were only 199,000 tourist arrivals in February. That is normally the same number of tourists who arrive in a single day, equating to a 96% decrease. Even at the height of SARS, which centered on the city, 427,000 visitors arrived in the month of May.

The lessons learnt during SARS have however led to far fewer cases of Covid-19 occurring (so far) here in my hometown. Although Hong Kong is next to mainland China, it has only recorded 148 cases, far fewer even than Singapore, at 226, despite Hong Kong having a population that is 32% larger. Social distancing and staying at home, as well as a rapid response to track relatives and friends of those infected, seems to be working.

Asian markets continued their panic selling on Monday, despite moves by the U.S. Federal Reserve to slash interest rates, and an emergency meeting by the central Bank of Japan. New Zealand and South Korea also cut interest rates.

Australian stocks have crashed 9.7% on Monday, their biggest fall since “Black Monday” in 1987. That comes after an extraordinary day’s trade on Friday, which saw the S&P/ASX 200 fall 8.1% at the start, only to close with their strongest one-day gain in more than a decade, of 4.4%. Financial stocks led the selling on Monday, and investors will also have been unnerved by those historically bad activity numbers out of China, the largest source of demand for Australian exports.

Japan’s Topix declined 2.0%, despite BOJ action. The Japanese central bank moved up a policy meeting by two days, and agreed to purchase bonds and other financial instruments, as well as expand corporate finance.

Chinese shares fell 4.3% on Monday after the economic-output figures, and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong dropped 4.0%. Singapore’s Straits Times index lost 5.3%. Indian shares were the biggest fallers outside Australia, the Sensex down 7.9%.