Tag: Economic Conditions and Trends

Murder and Magic Realism: A Rising Literary Star Mines China’s Rust Belt

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For a long time during Shuang Xuetao’s early teenage years, he wondered what hidden disaster had befallen his family. His parents, proud workers at a tractor factory in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, stopped going to work, and the family moved into an empty factory storage room to save money on rent. But they rarely talked about what had happened, and Mr. Shuang worried that some special shame had struck his family alone. It was not until later that he learned about the mass layoffs that swept northeastern China…

Low Prices Lure Hong Kongers to China

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Shuen Chun-wa, 81, and her husband hurried toward a green bus with two dozen other Hong Kong residents, dragging empty suitcases. They had purple tour stickers on their jackets and were headed to shop in Shenzhen, a bustling Chinese city that sits on the northern side of the border with Hong Kong. It was Ms. Shuen’s second trip to Shenzhen to find bargains in a year. Last time, she got dental implants. “You can count how much I need to pay,” she said. She paid $9,000 in Shenzhen for a…

China’s Investors Are Losing Faith in Its Markets and Economy

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Like many Chinese people, Jacky hoped that he could make enough money investing in China’s stock markets to help pay for an apartment in a big city. But in 2015 he lost $30,000, and in 2021 he lost $80,000. After that, he shut down his trading account and started investing in Chinese funds that track stocks in the United States. It’s a perilous time for investors in China. Their main vehicle, so-called A shares of Chinese companies, fell more than 11 percent in 2023 and have continued their losses this…

India’s Quiet Push to Steal More of China’s iPhone Business

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India is quietly grabbing from China more manufacturing of Apple’s iPhones and other electronics gear. It is happening in South Indian industrial areas on muddy plots that were once farmland. In Sriperumbudur, people call Apple “the customer,” not daring to say the name of a company that prizes its secrets. But some things are too big to hide. Two gigantic dormitory complexes are springing up from the earth. Once finished, each will be a tight block of 13 buildings with 24 rooms per floor around an L-shaped hallway. Every one…

How China Censors Critics of the Economy

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China’s top intelligence agency issued an ominous warning last month about an emerging threat to the country’s national security: Chinese people who criticize the economy. In a series of posts on its official WeChat account, the Ministry of State Security implored citizens to grasp President Xi Jinping’s economic vision and not be swayed by those who sought to “denigrate China’s economy” through “false narratives.” To combat this risk, the ministry said, security agencies will focus on “strengthening economic propaganda and public opinion guidance.” China is intensifying its crackdown while struggling…

After China Evergrande, Real Estate Crisis ‘Has Not Touched Bottom’

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The unwavering belief of Chinese home buyers that real estate was a can’t-lose investment propelled the country’s property sector to become the backbone of its economy. But over the last two years, as firms crumbled under the weight of massive debts and sales of new homes plunged, Chinese consumers have demonstrated an equally unshakable belief: Real estate has become a losing investment. This sharp loss of faith in property, the main store of wealth for many Chinese families, is a growing problem for Chinese policymakers who are pulling out all…

China Evergrande Must Be Liquidated, a Judge Said. What Happens Next?

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After nearly two years of false starts, last-ditch proposals and pleas for more time, China Evergrande, a massive property company, has been ordered to dismantle itself. It’s a big moment. Evergrande’s collapse in 2021 sent China’s housing market into a tailspin. The worries in real estate, where most households put their savings, helped tip the economy into a downturn. The scale of Evergrande’s empire is enormous: Its developments cover hundreds of cities. It controls dozens of business and is more than $300 billion in debt — a sum far greater…

Real Estate Giant China Evergrande Will Be Liquidated

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Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted I.O.U.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out. On Monday it became clear just how misguided that bet was. After two years in limbo, Evergrande was ordered by a court in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold. The order is also likely…

As China’s Markets Stumble, Japan Rises Toward Record

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There’s a shift underway in Asia that’s reverberating through global financial markets. Japan’s stock market, overlooked by investors for decades, is making a furious comeback. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989, which effectively marked the peak of Japan’s economic ascendancy before a collapse that led to decades of low growth. China, long an impossible-to-ignore market, has been spiraling downward. Stocks in China recently touched lows not seen since a rout in 2015, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was…

Hong Kong Stocks Sink 4 Percent as China’s Economy Scares Investors

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China’s No. 2 leader, Li Qiang, traveled to Switzerland with a message for the titans of the business world gathered for the World Economic Forum. “Choosing the Chinese market is not a risk, but an opportunity,” Mr. Li, China’s premier, told an audience in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. But there’s a different sentiment about China playing out in the stock market and it’s not so optimistic. The worries over China’s economy have been visible for months in Hong Kong, where stocks plunged 14 percent last year. The new year hasn’t…