CHINAwatch

Li Qiang named head of China's powerful financial super-reguator - implications

Exclusive live TV interview with WION (World is One News) on 26 Noveember 2023. WION is India's largest internatrional English news channel.  

Xi-Biden meet in San Francisco - reading the tea leaves

Live TV panel discussion with NDTV of India on 15 November 2023 (from an Indian perspective).

President Xi's San Francisco Welcome Dinner Speech (English transcript) 

After the long-awaited high-powered meeting, there was no joint press conference or media statement.  Evidently, none was entertained by either side following a considerable period of mutual sounding-out. So deep-seated remains Washington's misconception and mistrust of Beijing across the aisle. 

Behind the optics and rhetorcs -

(a) Immediate concrete deliverables are limited to fantynal and resumption of military-to-military dialogue, and a mutual willinness to explore cooperative areas including AI, Climate, air travel, and re-visiting a decades-old Science and Technology Agreement (STA). The two leaders appeared to talk past each other on far more volatile issues like Taiwan, human rights, Ukraine and Hamas. 

(b) Cognisant of the deep divide between the two Powers, Presdient Xi is setting greater store on American businesses and people-to-people exchanges, includng a pledge to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study programs in the next five years. Xi's Welcome Dinner address ended with reportedly two standing ovations. Top US corporate leaders thronged the extra-high-priced event at the Hyatt Regency, including Elon Musk of Tesla, Tim Cook of Apple, Albert Bourla of Pfizer, and Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, though serious misgivings about the China market remain, according to the Financial Times.

(c) While flashpoints remain, this state of "managed competition" towards a healthier and less unsustainable relationship is likley to endure, pending the wildcard of the coming US presidential election.  

"Caging the Leviathan" - Beijing's tilt from Rule by Law to Rule of Law

Beijing's tilt from Rule by Law to Rule of Law was synthesized by Peking University Law School Professor Jiang Ming'an 姜明安 at the seminar on "The Formation and Prospects of Contemporary Chinese Administrative Law" on 6 October 2023, where he outlined the following shifts "Caging the Leviathan" under various headings:

The Mindset

(a) Government can make mistakes by infringing on citizen rights;
(b) Officials are not people's masters but their servants bound by law; citizens are free to act unless explicitly forbidden by law;
(c) Citizens are entitled to sue the government and to win according to law. 

Methods of Governance

(a) Officials should not just follow orders but also adhere to established principles;
(b) Governance should not be based on coercion but to include participation and interaction;
(c) Law should also be supported by administrative agreements, guidance and soft tactics;
(d) Emphasis should move from speed and efficiency to due process and protection of citizens rights.

The Party

(a) Emphasis is shifting from class struggle, GDP growth, and material development to fairness, justice, social, ecological and political civilization;
(b) Direction is to move from Rule by Policies and Law to Rule of Law. 

US-China De-Risking Policy - Risks and Opportunities for Hong Kong

A Hong Kong business lunheon presentation on 11 November 2023. Download US-China De-Risking Policy - Risks and Opportunities for HK

New World, New Order How to reposition ourselves for a New Economy

Download New World New Order - How to reposition for a New Economy (A business dinner presentation) 

Some fresh perspectives on China's housing bubble and related debt

On 12 September 2023, at a debate under the aegis of The New Economist, a Chinese think-tank, Nomura Securities China Economist Tin Liu explained how China's mountain of housing-related debt should be looked at. 陆挺：关于当前经济和债务的看法及建议

Amongst others, Mr Liu made the following points -

(a) Debt is not byself a bad thing. Indeed, debt is a necessary conduit to transfer idle or excess savings into growth-ehancing productive actvities and investments. 

(b) Unlike Japan's over-indebted "lost decades", China's current debt bubble, though gigantic, has little impact on China's produtive manufacturing sector. While Japan's development reached its peak consistent with its limited land size and population, China's growth potential has still a long way to go.

(c) To tackle the current debt and property bubble crisis, the first prioriy is stabilization (which ia already underway). To diffuse the crisis and in the interest of long-term development, future debt should be tied to population mobility, from congested cities to more dynamic second or third-tier cities and prefectures forming closely-knit economic clusters or areas. (See China’s Five City Clusters bring diversified real estate investment opportunities)

(In 2015 China’s 11 largest city clusters accounted for one-third of the country’s population and two-thirds of its economic activity, according to the Asian Development Bank. Meanwhile, The Economist reports that the 19 city clusters account for nine-tenths of the country’s economic activity.)

 

China's Role in a Multipolar World

PowerPoint presentation at the 10th Annual Conference on International Studies, Center for Strategic Research and Analysis, Lisbon, Portugal 14-15 September 2023. (CESRAN 2023) (An online presentation) 

Download China's Role in a Multipolar World - CESRAN 2023 (New) [Autosaved]                                                                                      

Why doesn't President Xi attend the 2023 G20 Summit?

Live exclusive TV interview on 9 September 2023 with WION, an Indian English News TV channel 

How China shifted gears on electric vehicles - and why it matters

My China Daily Op-ed  of 21 August flagged up China's rising global electric vehicles (EV) dominance, amongst other things, to illustrate China's resilience. The above -titled well-researched piece dated 14 August in The National Interest delves into the subject in depth. 

China's defeated youth

A product of China's now-defunct "One Child Policy", a sizeable proportion of the nation's millennials have had their nests well-feathered during China's "golden era" of sustained prosperity, which saw the nation leapfrogging to become the world's second largest economy. Theirs are the so-called "4-2-1" generation: much-better times saw them grow up as a single child each pampered by two working parents and their respective grannies. 

Sure they have had their years of hard grind as they faced unrelenting competition for admission to university, not to mention a prestigious one. But once they graduated, they were generally assured of a more secured future. 

No longer. A host of deep-seated domestic and global challenges are catching up on China in a "perfect storm" of changes, and opportunities, "not seen in a hundred years", as flagged up by President Xi from time to time. 

As China is trying to cope with a much more hostile external environment and systemic domestic economic challenges, job opportunities for graduates have dwindled, compounded by a record-high supply of 12 million new graduates a year. This comes at a time when the Fourth Industrialization is re-shaping how lives and work are organized and distributed, resulting in disappearance and sea-change of many job requirements. The prohibitively-high cost of raising a family including housing and education adds to a sense of frustration and despair. 

Their hopelessness and negative feelings, however, are not commonly shared by their parents', let alone grandparents' generations, who had weathered much worse times, often with untold personal sacrifices. 

All this is well captured by The Economist (17 August 2023) expose China's defeated youth.

It will take time, perhaps a decade or so, for China's young generation to adjust to these new realities. 

In any case, against all odds, China's trajectory appears to be on track to unfold a new era of renaissance, where the current "defeated" youth will have to rise to unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Click here.