As Evercore ISI (correctly) puts it, "no one can remember more than 7 bullets on anything." So for those eager to catch up on all the latest news out of China, here are just 7 bullet points:
When you look out across markets and across the increasingly fraught geopolitical landscape, there are plenty of black swans waiting in the wings (no pun intended). And quite a few of them are Chinese.
We’ve written quite a bit over the past two years about the likelihood of social upheaval in China.
Since assuming office, Xi has presided over the country's emergence as a force to be reckoned with both militarily and financially on the world stage. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that Beijing has returned the globe to a bipolarity not seen since the height of the Cold War.
PBoC governor Zhou Xiaochuan thought about it, and decided it’s probably not a good idea for borrowers to get P2P loans for down payments on homes.
In fact, he said last weekend, it’s illegal: “Funds used for down payments cannot be borrowed."
It would funny to watch as Chinese policymakers attempt to pull off the impossible if it weren’t so downright frightening.
Beijing, long the global engine for growth and trade, finds itself at a rather vexing crossroads. NBS protestations to the contrary, the Chinese economy is decelerating rapidly in the face of a massive rebalancing towards consumption and services-led growth. The country’s move away from a smokestack economy has for all intents and purposes reset assumptions regarding how we think about global trade.