Tag: Economic Conditions and Trends

China’s Biggest Homebuilder Fights to Survive as Economic Crisis Deepens

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When Country Garden, the biggest developer in China’s increasingly troubled real estate sector, published its annual report in April, the cover design exuded hope: a phoenix spreading its wings. The company said the image showed that China’s economy was “back on track” and that this year would see “growth soaring to new heights.” That was wishful thinking. Shortly after the report’s release, China’s nascent economic recovery lost steam and an already sluggish real estate market started to collapse. At Country Garden, presales of unfinished apartments, a crucial indicator of future…

Factories May Be Leaving China, but Trade Ties Are Stronger Than They Seem

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The United States has spent the past five years pushing to reduce its reliance on China for computer chips, solar panels and various consumer imports amid growing concern over Beijing’s security threats, human rights record and dominance of critical industries. But even as policymakers and corporate executives look for ways to cut ties with China, a growing body of evidence suggests that the world’s largest economies remain deeply intertwined as Chinese products make their way to America through other countries. New and forthcoming economic papers call into question whether the…

She Rose From Poverty as China Prospered. Then It Made Her Poor Again.

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Two years ago, as she walked through a hospital hallway in handcuffs and shackles to get tested for Covid, Sun Junli felt ashamed and defeated. At 45, she had come a long way. The poor village girl in northwestern China had become a successful businesswoman. Then she was crushed. In 2018, state-owned banks abruptly stopped lending to her business, a chain of cafe restaurants, and the pandemic destroyed her cash flow. By May 2021, Ms. Sun had lost her restaurants, and she was serving 16 days in detention for owing…

China’s Property Crisis Is Rippling Through the Economy

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Once a beneficiary of China’s property boom, Lan Mingqiang is now an unwitting casualty of its unraveling. The financial troubles at one real estate company, Country Garden, have left him unable to pay the school fees for his son, who is starting seventh grade. Country Garden owes $21,000 to his company, which makes fences and billboards on construction sites. Now, with Country Garden days away from a default, this money is more out of reach than ever. “Nowadays, real estate is hard,” Mr. Lan said. He recently gave up on…

U.S. Commerce Secretary Faces a Wide Range of Issues in China

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Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, is the latest Biden administration emissary seeking to stabilize ties between the world’s two largest economies. The fourth senior U.S. official to travel to China in less than three months, Ms. Raimondo is taking her trip at a critical juncture. Relations between the countries are strained, partly because the United States has clamped down on China’s access to technology that could aid its military. China’s economy also appears to be slowing, and Beijing has been trying to woo…

What China’s Economic Woes May Mean for the U.S.

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The news about China’s economy over the past few weeks has been daunting, to put it mildly. The country’s growth has fallen from its usual brisk 8 percent annual pace to more like 3 percent. Real estate companies are imploding after a decade of overbuilding. And China’s citizens, frustrated by lengthy coronavirus lockdowns and losing confidence in the government, haven’t been able to consume their way out of the country’s pandemic-era malaise. If the world’s second-largest economy is stumbling so badly, what does that mean for the biggest? Short answer:…

A Crisis of Confidence Is Gripping China’s Economy

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Earlier this year, David Yang was brimming with confidence about the prospects for his perfume factory in eastern China. After nearly three years of paralyzing Covid lockdowns, China had lifted its restrictions in late 2022. The economy seemed destined to roar back to life. Mr. Yang and his two business partners invested more than $60,000 in March to expand production capacity at the factory, expecting a wave of growth. But the new business never materialized. In fact, it’s worse. People are not spending, he said, and orders are one-third what…

The BRICS Group Announces New Members, Expanding Its Reach

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The BRICS club of emerging nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — was at a crossroads when its leaders arrived in South Africa earlier this week for their annual summit. Should it follow the path of more moderate members like India and try to work within the Western-dominated global system? Or should it tack toward China by adding new members that would signal stricter opposition to the United States? On Thursday, the bloc revealed its decision, adding six new countries, including the staunchly anti-Western Iran, in an…

What Can Replace China as a Global Economic Engine?

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This is not a trivial matter. To an extent that few Americans genuinely appreciate, global growth has been powered by the so-called Chinese miracle for almost half a century now. According to World Bank data, between 2008 and 2021 — as the world’s per capita G.D.P. grew by 30 percent and China’s by 263 percent — China accounted for more than 40 percent of all global growth. If you excluded China from the data, global G.D.P. over that period would have grown not by 51 percent but by 33 percent,…

China’s Property Crisis: Why It’s So Hard for Beijing to Fix

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China’s stock market was plunging and its currency was teetering. The head of the central bank, fielding questions at a rare news conference, said that China would make it easier to get home mortgages. It was February 2016 and Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s longtime governor at the time, announced what proved to be the start of an extraordinary blitz of lending by China’s immense banking system. Minimum down payments for buying apartments were reduced, triggering a surge in construction. Vast sums were also lent to local governments, allowing them…