Changing China

from Global Investing:

A shoe, a song and the promise of the West

I found myself at Selfridges this week, specifically in what the London retailer says is the world's largest shoe department.

Slightly dazed by cornucopia of women's shoes on slick display, I was roused only when the haze of muzak wafting over the PA system was suddenly dispersed by the jaunty strains of the Chinese New Year ditty 'Gongxi Gongxi'.

A 1946 composition from Shanghai, the song has gone from classic to kitsch, evolving to become the most popular festive song in the Chinese-speaking world. Its ubiquity rests on the many -- for me at least -- teeth-grindingly cloying versions played all over shops and markets in Asia. (Click here for example and don't say I didn't warn you)

I was somewhat surprised by the song's appearance in the British retail icon -- not least because it's still some ways off the Year of the Dragon. But then looking at the shoppers around me it all made sense.

Mainland Chinese travellers spent some £200 million on Bond Street last year. That's a 155 percent surge from 2009, according to an association of luxury retailers in the London thoroughfare.

Never mind that these products are largely assembled back in their home country, Chinese tourists buy their designer bags on Bond Street and elsewhere in Europe to avoid China's luxury sales tax. More importantly, these status-conscious buyers have the assurance that they are not being sold knock-offs -- a risk rampant in a country notorious for its lack of regard for intellectual property.

Those reasons are similar to those that drive the wealthy elite in many emerging economies to London, a city that Goldman Sach's Jim O'Neil has dubbed the "BRIC capital of the world".

from George Chen:

China is still waiting for inflation to peak

By George Chen The opinions expressed are the author’s own.

How time flies. It's already the end of August and speculations naturally arise about what China's inflation reading will be for this month.

The most optimistic view these days is that the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) could decline to below 6 percent. The most pessimistic view I've heard is that growth has slowed down in August, but probably only to 6.2 percent or 6.3 percent.

But, why should we care about the August CPI so much? One month cannot tell the whole story.

The reason we care so much is because if the August CPI growth slows down (we will see the official release of August economic data in the coming weeks), it's good news for the central bank as well as for the ordinary people in China who have been fighting with fast inflation for more than three years already. But, it's not good enough.

Yesterday, amid market talks about August CPI, I heard something interesting from Mengniu, China's top dairy product maker: "We are confident we can at least maintain (first-half) margin levels in the second half," Mengniu Chief Financial Officer Wu Jingshui told reporters after the company's first-half earnings release. He added the company might raise product prices and adjust its product mix to offset an estimated 3 to 5 percent rise in raw milk costs in 2011.

from Global Investing:

Another nail in the Malthusian coffin?

All the talk of addressing the global imbalances throws a spotlight on contrasting demographic trends in the world's two most populous nations -- China and India.

Prior to the financial crisis, India's annual growth rate of about 9 percent seemed positively moribund next to China's double-digit economic expansion. But purely on demographics, the dimming power of the US consumer could give India an edge over its neighbour in the longer run.

That's what India's trade minister Anand Sharma seemed to suggest last week when he reminded the audience at a London conference that the country had "20 percent of the world's children":

We know that when we talk about emerging countries the consumption patterns are different. Most of China's production is meant for (markets) abroad. India consumes two-thirds of what India produces.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs projects that India's middle class will outstrip China's by 2045. This is some 15 years after half of China's population becomes either too old or too young to be part of the workforce.

Beijing's mandarins are taking note of this monumental shift in dependency ratios. After decades of enforcing a 'one-child' policy in the face of an human rights outcry, China appears to be relaxing its stance on population control. Family-planning officials in Shanghai have begun to urge eligible couples to have two children.

from Commentaries:

For Chinese exporters, the grass is greener abroad

   The U.S.-China tyre dispute threatens to spill into other sectors and further squeeze Chinese exporters’ already razor-thin margins. It might seem mind-boggling to many that Chinese manufacturers are still hanging on to weak overseas markets even though the domestic economy looks much healthier and surely offers more potential.

    But there are structural reasons why the grass is greener outside China. The risk of not getting paid, or getting paid late, is significantly lower when dealing with foreign buyers. The cost of international shipping has dropped so much that it can be cheaper to send goods over the Pacific Ocean than across the country.

    In addition, selling to large buyers such as Wal-Mart creates enough volumes to compensate for weak margins. Moreover, Chinese exporters get all sorts of export rebates and local government incentives which help to lower their costs.

    But as the tyre spat has illustrated, Washington can slap punitive duties on Chinese imports simply by pointing to a significant increase in imports from China.  By imposing penalties in this case, President Obama has opened the door for a slew of similar complaints against Chinese goods. It will only be a matter of time before other countries, worried about where those displaced Chinese exports might end up, start to follow suit.