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China’s grain output hit record highs in 2011, and senior officials vow that the country will continue its pace of grain imports at appropriate levels to meet its rapidly expanding hunger for foreign produce.
China has largely closed down its rare earths industry for three months to address pollution concerns, sending the price of compact fluorescent bulbs in the U.S. and elsewhere skyrocketing.
Wall Street banks are trimming their outlook for growth in China as trouble in the West leads to expectations of slower trade.
General Motors says it will spend $150 million to refurbish and reopen a factory in Indonesia to make “people mover” vans, eventually using the country as a base for exports to the rest of Southeast Asia.
New China numbers last night were fine and actually give some reason for hope on the imports side, if this is truly supposed to be a change of character for the world’s second largest economy.
That’s right, move over Japan, China is ahead as of the end Q1.
Exports were up 21 percent in January from 2009, and imports expanded 85.5 percent year-over-year.
Remember that China is closed all next week. If it is truly generating domestic demand, this offsets a slower G3. You can’t remove G3 demand, but I don’t think that’s happening.
I believe we at least have a restocking cycle that can continue until more organic growth is established. I again also point to China auto sales numbers yesterday (+113 percent yoy). This is very impressive.
China imports soared 55.9 percent to a record, and exports rose in December for the first time in 14 months, igniting global markets Monday.
The data, which was released yesterday locally, gave bid to all shipping and bulk commodity names. The data also implies that Western demand is stronger and driving part of the China growth story again. Stronger imports say that domestic consumption is gaining traction, and this was the goal of their stimulus — not to stoke Western markets.
Remember, China is now the world’s largest exporter surpassing Germany. And while we are on the export demand side of the story, this morning, French industrial output jumped two times as much as expected, as car incentives pushed higher sales.
