Foreign investors are fleeing China
Jing’an century, a housing development with ponds and lush greenery in north Shanghai, should have been bustling with activity as workers put the finishing touches on flats. Instead the area is silent. A two-month lockdown of the city of 25m people has forced the developer, a large group called Yanlord, to halt construction on the…
What Australia’s new government will do
“TONIGHT, THE Australian people have voted for change,” declared Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, as the results of a federal election became clear. Voters have booted out their conservative coalition government of almost a decade, with a national swing against it of almost six percentage points. Though public enthusiasm for Mr Albanese, or “Albo”,…
Offset markets struggle in the face of surging commodity prices
The loamy soil and dense jungle of the Sumatran rainforest in Indonesia can store an average of 282 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare. If a group of climate-conscious airline passengers were to find a hectare of such forest at risk of being cut down for palm oil and were able to stop that happening,…
Even China’s official economic figures look bleak
May 19th 2022 | HONG KONGWhen china was locked down during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, economic forecasters had to make two predictions: how much would the economy suffer? And how much of this suffering would the official statistics be allowed to reflect? When China reported a historic 13.5% decline in…
Joe Biden has big plans for his first presidential trip to Asia
May 20th 2022 | DELHI AND SEOULOVER THE past quarter century, American presidents have repeatedly come up with plans to counter China, only to be sidetracked. George W. Bush branded China a “strategic competitor”, but soon became preoccupied with his War on Terror. Barack Obama spoke of a “pivot to Asia”, but was too mired…
Asia’s advanced economies now have lower birth rates than Japan
May 19th 2022 | SINGAPOREThe list of things for which Japan enjoys a global reputation includes delicious food, cutting-edge technology, an oversupply of karaoke bars and an undersupply of babies. In 1990 it published a record-low fertility rate for the previous year—the so-called “1.57 shock”. For years it has been seen as a harbinger of…
Is weak governance harming the African Development Bank?
In the middle of July 2020, Roland Michelitsch slipped out of his home in Ivory Coast, taking almost nothing with him. He quietly got into an armoured Land Rover and drove to a boatyard where he abandoned the vehicle. And then he disappeared. Mr Michelitsch was not a spy or criminal mastermind. He was a…
Is China “uninvestible”?
Few chinese companies have caught the imagination of global investors like its technology firms. But they have suffered a catastrophic spell. At one point in March, they had lost about 70% of their value since their 2021 peak. On March 14th Alex Yao of JPMorgan Chase and his team published a set of gloomy reports…
How to unleash more investment in intangible assets
When russia invaded Ukraine, tangible things at first seemed all too important. Bombs and bullets were what mattered; commodity markets were roiled; supply chains were upturned. As the war has gone on, however, intangible factors have asserted their importance, too. The managerial and logistical know-how of the armed forces on either side, as well as…
Myanmar’s resistance is at risk of believing its own propaganda
May 19th 2022 | CHIANG MAITo spend time on Burmese social media or online news sites is to think the end is near for Myanmar’s military junta, which seized power in a coup last February. Resistance groups, it would appear, are slaughtering the army’s men and occupying the countryside. The regime is seemingly struggling to…