Chinese Economy: General News, Updates and Discussions

[KAL-EL]

View attachment 188298

Yes, absolute pulse pounding news.

 

[lightning f57]

The most equitable countries in the world don't even make the list...that is because they do a much better job of distributing wealth than any of the 3 making the list. Having billionaires isn't necessarily a *good* thing for the masses in most countries.

Its actually a big problem for the masses, their supporters would say oh but they provide jobs, but they hoard so much wealth and continue to hoard and squeeze out the middle class.

Soon we will see the worlds first trillionaires, this kind of extreme capitalism IMO is a big problem.

 

[ety]

I couldn't care less about how few hundreds of wealthy billionaires a country has, I only care about the development of the country and the living standards of common people.

 

[Beijingwalker]

You are really being naive.
Billionaires runs the government in United States.
Billionaires bankroll the politicians in United States.
And in returns, politicians enact laws to benefits the billionaires
This is Capitalism.

Billionaires govern the government in US, government governs billionaires in China.

 

[Beijingwalker]

How the Iran war could pave the way for the rise of China’s ‘petroyuan’

Ralph Jennings
Published: 8:00am, 26 Mar 2026

Iran war could boost China’s ‘petroyuan’ and weaken US dollar dominance, analysts say​

Disruptions from the war could accelerate a shift in the oil trade, threatening the US dollar’s long-held dominance, analysts say
​

The US-Israeli war in Iran could weaken the US dollar’s historic dominance in the oil-rich Middle East and bolster a “petroyuan” alternative backed by China’s currency, according to analysts at a leading European bank.

Fallout from the nearly month-long conflict was testing the “foundations of the petrodollar regime”, while damage to Gulf economies “could encourage an unwind in their foreign asset savings”, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a research note published on Tuesday.

“If the Gulf moves closer to Asia in its trade and investment relationships and eventually prices less oil in dollars, there could be significant downstream effects to the dollar’s usage in global trade and savings,” they added.

Most globally traded oil is priced and invoiced in US dollars under a system dating back to the 1974 petrodollar pact. Under that deal, Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil in the American currency and invest surpluses in US dollar assets in exchange for security guarantees.

This arrangement helped dollarise global value chains, given oil’s central role in global manufacturing and transport, the analysts said.

But pressures on that system have grown in recent years. Sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil already trades in non-dollar units, and Saudi Arabia has experimented with non-dollar payments for infrastructure projects, the Deutsche Bank analysts said.

Meanwhile, China launched yuan-denominated oil futures contracts in 2018, though petroyuan deals remain far smaller than US dollar-based contracts due to Beijing’s capital controls and the yuan’s limited convertibility.

 

[ety]

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[Beijingwalker]

China’s Industrial Profits Surge 15% As Recovery Strengthens Amid Middle East Risks​

March 27, 2026

China’s industrial sector kicked off 2026 with robust profit growth, posting a 15.2% rise in January-February compared to the same period last year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on March 27.

Reuters reported that this builds on last year’s modest 0.6% gain, signalling early signs of economic recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.

Tech-related industries led the charge, with computer, communication and electronic equipment manufacturers’ profits soaring 200%, while non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling grew 150%.

Strong exports fuelled by artificial intelligence technology demand, higher industrial output and rebounding retail and investment activity contributed to the momentum.

However, margins remain under pressure as rising input costs, intense competition and geopolitical tensions, including the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, pose risks to exports, a key engine of growth.

Consumer inflation ticked up during the Lunar New Year, while producer deflation persists, signalling ongoing weak domestic demand.

Rising costs of components, particularly memory chips, threaten profitability, with Xiaomi president Lu Weibing warning some firms could face “big losses or even go bust” if cost pressures persist. Analysts caution that the Middle East crisis could weigh further on global trade and energy markets in the months ahead.

China’s Industrial Profits Surge 15% As Recovery Strengthens Amid Middle East Risks

Strong exports fuelled by artificial intelligence technology demand, higher industrial output and rebounding retail and investment activity contributed to the momentum.

www.businesstoday.com.my

 

[Beijingwalker]

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[Beijingwalker]

EU demands 'serious reform' of the WTO to stop flood of Chinese exports​

Maroš Šefčovič to demand “new balance” of international trade rules to rein in Beijing
Mar 27, 2026 - 07:52

European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič. (Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)

European fears over the impact of a surge in imports from China on the bloc’s faltering industrial base will be raised during World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in the coming days.

“Overcapacity and non-market policies must be better tackled than in the past,” Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade chief said on Monday.

Šefčovič will demand “serious reform” of the WTO during a meeting in Cameroon this Thursday and make it “crystal clear” that China’s economic rise has meant the global trade environment has “dramatically changed” in recent decades.

“We very much [will] be insisting on serious reform of the WTO, where level playing field, overcapacity, and non-market policies must be better tackled than in the past,” he told journalists.

China, the world’s second-largest economy and the EU’s third-largest trading partner, joined the WTO in 2001, six years after the Geneva-based international trade organisation was created.

Šefčovič’s case is that “a new balance” is now required with the rise of China to adjust the “rights and obligations” of WTO members, which he said is necessary to combat the “overcapacities” that “are creating a lot of problems in the European economy”.

The Slovak commissioner’s remarks come amid a surge of Chinese exports to the EU, at a time when US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are already hurting the bloc’s exporters and causing vast quantities of cheap Chinese manufactured goods to be re-directed toward Europe.

Brussels’ trade deficit with Beijing surged from $335 billion in 2024 to $375 billion in 2025, according to data collected by Bruegel, an EU policy think tank. Beijing’s global trade surplus also hit a record $1.2 trillion last year – a figure it is set to far surpass in 2026.

In addition to confronting China, Šefčovič also called for “new governance models” to facilitate trade disputes between member states. The US has long hobbled the WTO court system by blocking the appointment of judges to its appellate body – thus allowing WTO members to effectively obviate court rulings by ‘appealing into the void’.

Šefčovič said Brussels will invite more countries to join the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement, a 2020 mechanism involving more than 60 of the WTO’s 166 members that have pledged respect for the rulings of an alternative dispute settlement mechanism.

“We are all for multilateralism,” Šefčovič said. “But if we see that in certain areas like the dispute settlement mechanism, this is not possible, we will be also proposing this plurilateral approach.”

 

[Beijingwalker]

The west laid the rules for others to follow and when the rules no longer work well for them they cry foul.

 

[Beijingwalker]

The West should be careful when it comes to copying China​

CARL-BENEDIKT FREY
March 27 2026

Completed Zeekr electric vehicles are inspected at a factory in Ningbo, China, in April 2025. China’s gains in EVs, solar and batteries owe less to a master plan than to political centralization combined with rivalry across provinces and cities.

China has become the West’s most awkward benchmark. In 2013, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau said he admired China because its “basic dictatorship” could “turn their economy around on a dime” and decide “we need to go green.” Italy’s former prime minister Mario Draghi has since warned that China spends “around three times as much on industrial policy as Germany or France” (as a share of GDP). The fixation on China is understandable. But before the West tries to copy China, it should be clear about what it is trying to copy.

The usual story is that an all-seeing state picks champions and subsidizes their way up the value chain. In practice, China’s edge has often come from something closer to the opposite: institutions that force provinces, cities and firms to compete, with the centre acting less as engineer than as referee and disciplinarian.

Deng Xiaoping’s cat that “catches mice” captured the shift: results over doctrine. Beijing stopped micromanaging and set broad goals – catch up technologically, expand exports, create jobs – while letting local governments scramble to deliver. Special economic zones were the proving ground. Shenzhen and other cities were fenced-off experiments where officials could loosen rules, court foreign capital and improvise fixes without rewriting the national system. What worked was scaled; what failed was contained – try locally, copy nationally.

The result was an industrial policy that looked more like a tournament than a blueprint. Instead of anointing one champion, China let provinces and firms chase the same prize in parallel. It can look like duplication; in practice it functions as selection: many bets, hard tests, fast diffusion of what works.

Industrial policy delivered productivity gains when it intensified competition – spreading support, encouraging entry and refusing to shield laggards indefinitely. China did best when policy made markets tougher, not cozier.

That rivalry is institutionalized. China runs a promotion race: provincial and city leaders rise or stall on measurable outcomes such as investment, growth and jobs. That turns local governments into competitors. As the political economist Xu Chenggang argues, it is “regionally decentralised authoritarianism”: Beijing controls personnel and direction, and localities are judged on delivery.

You see the logic in the industries now shaping geopolitics. China’s gains in EVs, solar and batteries owe less to a master plan than to political centralization combined with rivalry across provinces and cities. In EVs, local governments bid for plants and add inducements; competition has become so fierce that Beijing frets about “irrational” price wars. Solar followed the same trajectory, and the pattern is reappearing in AI as energy-rich regions lure data centres with cheap power and other inducements.

Scale amplifies the effect: China’s market is big enough to sustain many rivals in the same sector, so rivalry coexists with size – and Beijing reinforces pressure by keeping multiple state firms in key industries rather than collapsing everything into a single champion.

Could the United States, Canada or Europe replicate this? Not in any straightforward sense. China’s model is inseparable from a one-party cadre system that can appoint and reshuffle local leaders, tying careers to targets.

In contrast, Western industrial policy often mutates into incumbency protection rather than a competition engine. In pluralist systems, the easiest cheques to write go to firms with large payrolls and powerful lobbies. “Strategic” becomes whatever the best-organized interests can defend – and subsidies meant to build tomorrow’s capacity end up preserving yesterday’s structure.

The lesson is not that authoritarianism beats markets. At its best, China’s industrial policy behaves less like central planning than a state-enabled pressure cooker: rivalry across firms and provinces, with the centre steering, rewarding and occasionally reining in excess. Copying subsidies without incentives will disappoint.

For Western governments, the task is not to mimic China’s tool kit or retreat into techno-nationalist fortresses, but to make their own economies more contestable. The test should be simple: does policy widen entry and rivalry, or entrench incumbents?

China did not become an industrial superpower because it always picked the right winners. It rose by forcing provinces and firms to fight for the prize – and rewarding those who delivered. Democracies cannot replicate that politics, and should not want to. But they can replicate the principle: industrial policy that shelters incumbents will disappoint; industrial policy that backs challengers and subjects them to real competition has a chance.

 

[东风夜放花千树]

Before 2022, Europe used Russia's cheap energy, enjoyed U.S. military protection, and imported large quantities of cheap goods from China. This sustained the high welfare of European countries.

In 2026, Europe rejected Russia's cheap energy, and Trump threatened to cancel protection for Europe.

Europe is now trying to target China's cheap goods.

Europe is a fool; Europe's behavior is like using the lives of ten thousand soldiers to wound a thousand enemies.

Europe fails to understand one principle: never push all major countries into an opposite position.

The last country that pushed all major countries into opposition was Libya, led by Gaddafi.

Europe lacks energy and industry. Europe's most advanced Rafale fighter jet was shot down by the Pakistan military. If Europe targets Chinese goods, the purchasing power of the euro will decrease, and the living standards of European people will decline.

Today's Europe has already lost the capital to compete with China, the U.S., and Russia on the international stage. In the future multi-polarized world, there is no place for Europe.

 

[东风夜放花千树]

Ministry of Commerce Announcement No. 17 of 2026: Initiating a Trade Barrier Investigation on the U.S. Practices and Measures Undermining the Global Supply Chain

According to the "Foreign Trade Law of the People’s Republic of China" and the relevant provisions of the Ministry of Commerce’s "Rules for Investigating Foreign Trade Barriers," in order to safeguard the order of foreign trade, the Ministry of Commerce may independently investigate trade barriers of relevant countries and regions.

Preliminary evidence and information obtained by the Ministry of Commerce indicate that the United States has implemented a large number of practices and measures in trade-related fields that severely undermine the global supply chain, including but not limited to: restricting or prohibiting Chinese products from entering the U.S. market, restricting or prohibiting the export of high-tech products to China, and restricting or prohibiting bilateral investment in key sectors. The above practices and measures may seriously harm the trade interests of Chinese enterprises, with some measures suspected of violating the rules of the WTO and other economic and trade treaties or agreements both China and the U.S. have jointly concluded or participated in.

Here is my opinion:

The United States should stop waging wars everywhere; let us fight another trade war. This time, we are using methods frequently used by the United States, fully in accordance with legal provisions and international trade principles.

 

[ety]

Lol, why didn't the EU cry foul when the block's exports flooded Chinese markets for decades not long ago ? Even now, EU export of goods and services to non EU countries is about 23% of its GDP while China export of goods and services to the world is about 21% of its GDP, so EU exports more by similar comparison. I don't know what the Europeans are crying about Chinese exports simply because they want to import more Chinese goods ?

 

[东风夜放花千树]

Lol, why didn't the EU cry foul when the block's exports flooded Chinese markets for decades not long ago ? Even now, EU export of goods and services to non EU countries is about 23% of its GDP while China export of goods and services to the world is about 21% of its GDP, so EU exports more by similar comparison. I don't know what the Europeans are crying about Chinese exports simply because they want to import more Chinese goods ?

Because of selfishness. Politicians in Western countries like to play zero-sum games; they will never learn to achieve mutual victory through cooperation.

China has always provided additional subsidies to countries with trade deficits. For example, China purchases Russia's SU-35 and S-400, China waives debts for African countries, China purchases soybeans from the United States, China provides free aid projects to many countries, China offers study opportunities and scholarships to many countries, and China waives import tariffs for many countries. Countries that trade with China using the renminbi and currency swaps receive more subsidies in this regard. All of this is aimed at balancing trade and consuming foreign exchange. We hope that our market can always exist and continue to develop. China has many industries that require a large amount of labor and resources, and in the future, these will be relocated to underdeveloped regions, such as Pakistan.

We advocate cooperation and suggest expanding the market together and then sharing the benefits within this market. This does not align with the mainstream thinking of Western countries, who believe that only competition and fighting for markets can yield benefits. However, their products have no advantages in competition, so they can only choose to target China.