Leading China economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®
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Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, discusses the state of China’s current economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on September 9. “So there are a lot of problems. It’s not vibrant from a consumer standpoint. But from a productive standpoint, there’s a lot that’s going right,” he says, according to Social News XYZ.
Social News XYZ:
Key indicators reflected China’s factory output and retail sales going through their weakest growth since August last year. Retail sales have slumped, with demand at home weakening, and unemployment continued to tick up, said reports.
Industrial production rose just 5.2 per cent year‑on‑year in August, down from 5.7 per cent in July, and retail sales expanded only 3.4 per cent last month. It slipped from July’s 3.7 per cent, missing a forecast gain of 3.9 per cent.
Meanwhile, unemployment rate edged up to 5.3 per cent in August, while fixed‑asset investment grew a meagre 0.5 per cent in the first eight months – the weakest pace for that period since 2020 – and property investment collapsed nearly 12.9 per cent year‑on‑year through August.
Earlier this month, Arthur Kroeber, founder of Gavekal Dragonomics, a China-focused economic research firm, had pointed out: “You have a significant problem of persistent deflation, excess capacity in industry, declining profits, a weak job market, and a property market that’s in very poor shape.”
However, he soon added: “So there are a lot of problems. It’s not vibrant from a consumer standpoint. But from a productive standpoint, there’s a lot that’s going right.”
He was speaking at an event, hosted by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on September 9.
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Both China and the USA claim to want to negotiate a trade deal, but, according to economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, since there is no common agenda, only common mistrust, it appears very unlikely that these talks will progress. He says this in an interview at Dwarkesh Clips.
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China now understands the US better than America understands China, argues economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, in an interview at the Dwarkesh Clips. Both on a personal and a governmental level, America has stopped investing in good relations with China, he says.
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How did China change from an economic laggard into a booming country? China veteran Kaiser Kuo dives into the country’s 40-year transformation for the World Economic Forum. For example, how it succeeded in becoming a digital giant.
Kaiser Kuo:
The Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping has as its current focus the development of “new quality productive forces.” What this means is that innovation will, it is hoped, become the main driver of growth, with an emphasis on quality growth over quantity or rapid expansion. This translates more concretely into a renewed emphasis on basic science, “hard” tech like new materials and semiconductors, artificial intelligence, supply chain efficiency and rationalization, and green and sustainable development.
Xi Jinping would like to see physicists doing physics, not designing sophisticated financial products or social media advertising algorithms. Whether these strategies will succeed in navigating China through its next phase of development remains an open question, but if China’s past record is any indication, one might reconsider betting against it.
Other developing countries might look to China’s experience for lessons, but the unique combination of historical context, cultural factors, and policy decisions that shaped China’s rise may not be easily replicable. When its own rhetoric speaks so often of “Chinese characteristics,” it may be less likely that China will seek to push its own developmental model, though doubtless some of its features will prove attractive. As China continues to evolve, the world will be watching closely to see how it addresses these challenges and what new pathways it charts for future growth.
Those challenges are numerous: Environmental degradation, rising labour costs, and an aging population pose significant hurdles. Maintaining the stability that has been so crucial for China thus far, while allowing for experimental approaches, improvisation, and creative thinking that will drive economic dynamism in the future will require careful balancing.
Much more at the World Economic Forum.
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U.S. President Donald Trump may be enthusiastic about the trade deal between China and the U.S., which was closed in London this week. However, business analyst Shaun Rein points out that the deal is lacking crucial details and might not work, as he notes in The Economic Times. “So, the economy in China is not booming, but China is not going to blink. They have the resolve to push hard back against Trump,” he adds.
Shaun Rein:
Trump is saying the deal has been signed and he has been talking about that the Chinese are going to send rare earths and magnets in advance to whatever the United States needs because what you have seen in the last month is the lack of rare earths that were exported to the United States has really crippled the American economy.
You can have companies, the big automakers like Ford and GM are rumoured to say, we need to relocate our manufacturing to China, so we can get access to rare earths despite the heavy tariffs that they would then incur by going into the United States. But here is the thing, China’s media has been a lot more circumspect with the details of this so-called trade agreement.
China has said the rumour is that they will give maybe export licenses to rare earths on a six-month trial basis to American companies. So, basically Trump is exaggerating the win in his mind and China is being a lot more honest probably saying well we do not have all the details ironed out, we want to come to an agreement but quite frankly China has the upper hand in the trade war with the United States right now…
The United States needs a deal. Frankly, China controls about 30-35% of global manufacturing. So, America might have the money, they might have the capital, but they need to buy the products from China. At the end of the day, China makes not just rare earths, about 90% of refined rare earths, but they also make most of the ibuprofen, most of the Tylenol.
Most of the antibiotics in the world comes from China. So, at the end of the day, that is real leverage. So, for instance in 2017, 18% of Chinese exports went to the US, that number is down to 14%. China on the other hand has shifted and exports to Asean, has gone up to 16%.
So, basically, it is a game of chicken right now. China’s economy is hurting, do not get me wg. There are about 15 million people who are involved in the export sector. You have seen that the CPI index has dropped about 0.1%. So, we are dealing with the D-word, deflation.
So, the economy in China is not booming, but China is not going to blink. They have the resolve to push hard back against Trump and Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick because at the end of the day, the Americans need to buy from China. They cannot buy antibiotics from any other country in the world except for a little bit from India.
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Business analyst Shaun Rein, based in Shanghai, is more bullish on China’s economy than he has been since 2019, he says at CNBC. Especially now that China is winning the trade war, he adds.
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Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein, in an extensive interview at Forbes, says that after a very bearish 2024, China’s economy has found its way upwards because of Trump. “People rallied together and said, ‘We’ll deal with lower incomes. We’ll deal with bad sales. We want to make Trump bend’, he tells Forbes.
Forbes:
Long-time China market researcher Shaun Rein chalked up one of his three international business bestsellers in 2018 with “The War for China’s Wallet,” a look at how to sell to the country’s more than one billion consumers. At a time when investors, multinationals and politicians are awaiting a relatively brisk post-pandemic spending recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy, Rein has some good news: it’s coming soon.
“I’ve been in China for 28 years. Last year was probably the most bearish I’ve ever been on the economy,” Rein said in a Zoom interview from Shanghai earlier this month. “Youth unemployment hit 18.8%. Companies weren’t hiring. Fixed asset investment went up only about 0.1 percent. Last July and August were as bad as the height of Covid in terms of confidence and spending. Average retail sales only grew three to four percent year-on-year. People were scared,” even though personal savings totaling $20 trillion, among the world’s largest, he said.
In the last two months, however, Rein’s outlook has reversed. “This is the most bullish I’ve been on China in the last six years,” said Rein, the founder and managing director of Shanghai-headquartered China Market Research Group. Harvard-educated Rein’s other books include “The End of Cheap China” in 2012, “The End of Copycat China” in 2014, and last year’s “The Split: Finding Opportunities in China’s Economy in the New World Older.”
A catalyst for his new, upbeat view is that the hardest punches thrown by the Trump administration in this year’s trade war have yet to prove very damaging to China’s overall economy. “The Chinese feel that China has beat Trump with the tariff and trade war since Liberation Day, and they had the resolve to push back hard. They were not going to bend down because they wanted to push back over a century of humiliation. China bent down during the Qing Dynasty to the Western imperial powers. China wasn’t going to do that again.”
“People rallied together and said, ‘We’ll deal with lower incomes. We’ll deal with bad sales. We want to make Trump bend.’ And Trump did,” Rein said. “By going from 145% to 30% tariffs, Chinese felt they beat Trump. I don’t want say there’s exuberance in the country, but there’s a lot less anxiety than at any time I’ve seen in the last 7-8 years.”
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China and the US are racing to develop and apply AI applications to the real economy. NYU innovation adjunct professor Winston Ma, author of The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace, believes China has a clear advantage in applying AI tools into the real economy, compared to the US, he says on CNBC.
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Much attention goes to industrial innovation to save China’s sluggish economy. But leading economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, is not too sure that path is helping the economy, he tells at NPR. “Growth is probably going to be pretty sluggish for a few more years yet. And they’re not going to get this magical nirvana that they hope for,” he adds
NPR:
WOODS: But the strategy may have its limitations, according to Arthur Kroeber. Arthur is one of these long-time China heads. He’s written a book. He started a China macroeconomics firm. He divides his time between New York and Beijing. He says that the government’s theory seems to be that heavy investments in tech will lead to productivity breakthroughs. Those productivity breakthroughs will then lead to higher wages and good jobs
ARTHUR KROEBER: I don’t think that that is very likely, because the problem with that is you look at all these high-tech industries that everyone is so excited about, EVs and batteries and whatnot, but they’re not very profitable.
RUWITCH: Arthur says there’s a capacity glut, a lot of stuff being produced, but not enough buyers to keep businesses standing on their own two feet. Companies in the solar sector are struggling. In batteries, profits are falling. Profitability in EVs is dropping. And a lot of this is due to competition with other companies in China.
KROEBER: Everyone is struggling, so they’re all barely making money. And so they don’t have a lot of ability to hire lots of people and give them big wages.
WOODS: Without those big wage increases, Arthur says, it’s hard to see how growth in high-tech industries will spill over to the rest of the economy.
RUWITCH: He says China’s industrial policy has been successful at a certain level.
KROEBER: They’ve got a lot of very competitive manufacturing industries. But the– but growth is probably going to be pretty sluggish for a few more years yet. And they’re not going to get this magical nirvana that they hope for.
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One-third of global wealth will come from China in the future, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein in a debate with George Galloway on this latest book, r. One of the achievements of current leader Xi Jinping is that he has been able to diminish the gap between rich and poor Chinese, says Rein. China used to be an unfair society, focusing on the rich, but Xi focused on the poor and middle-class Chinese, a group that counts for 400 million people and might grow to 800 million.
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China expert Kaiser Kuo attended this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos and wrote up the three trends shaping China’s development for the Weforum. Including how China is managing multiple transitions, its role in the global industry, and the country’s latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
Kaiser Kuo:
The electric vehicle sector emerged as a prime example of China’s evolving role in global industry. Pan Jian, co-chairman of Chinese EV battery giant CATL, emphasized the need for global collaboration: “It’s not going to be a one-country effort in terms of EVs. It’s going to be a global effort.” He highlighted China’s success in fostering a robust EV ecosystem through what he called a “perfect marriage between the public and private sectors,” while noting that software integration has been crucial to China’s EV success: “In China, we no longer call them EVs; we call them EIVs — where the ‘I’ stands for ‘intelligent.’ The ‘I’ is what truly makes the difference. Without the intelligence aspect, EV penetration in China would never have exceeded 30%.”
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While in the past youth looked for jobs in the private sector or at foreign companies, they now look for government jobs as they offer more security, says Arthur Kroeber, leading economist and author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®. Most graduates feel the sluggish Chinese economy will continue for some time, he says on CNBC.
Arthur Kroeber is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Would you like him at your meeting or conference? Contact us or fill out our speakers’ request list.
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China will start to delay its current retirement age from the start of 2025 in monthly steps for the next 15 years. But business analyst Ashley Dudarenok wonders if changing the country’s very low retirement age is a good idea, for example now the youth unemployment rate is already very low. This and other arguments in her vlog.
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While he remains optimistic about China’s economy in the long run, he foresees a rough time in most of 2025 as deflation and layoffs melt away the financial stimuli of the past months, tells business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC’s Squawk Box. He sees a recovery only in nine to twelve months as consumer confidence is not going up in 2025.
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In an interview with Keith Yap, shanghai-based best-seller author and business analyst Shaun Rein, recently published r and explains what the West gets wrong about China’s economy and how the country is working.
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