According to official data, China’s exports surged by a higher-than-expected 25% in January from the same month last year.
Due to booming Chinese demand, Australia’s resources industry has had a bonzer few years. Heavy investment in new iron ore and coal mines created a labor shortage which meant miners have been earning more than bankers. This new class of wealthy “fluoro-collar workers” (named for their fluorescent safety jackets) has provided huge support to the housing market. Some of the nation’s most expensive homes are to be found in back-of-beyond mining towns such as Port Headland in the northwest, which Time magazine described in 2011 as as “isolated hamlet”.
India’s central bank is desperate to wean people off of gold. As we recently discussed, India’s gold imports are so high they have ballooned the nation’s current account deficit. The nation cannot produce enough goods to export to balance out its gold-mania.
Since Japan’s new prime minister Shinzo Abe took up his post last December with a promise to revive the nation’s stalled economy by aggressively printing new money, the yen has crashed. This has been great news for exporters, as it makes their products cheaper abroad.
In the wake of Caterpillar’s $580 million write-down of the value of a Chinese acquisition where it claimed to have discovered major accounting irregularities, Beijing-based accounting expert Paul Gillis has helpfully detailed several methods crooked Chinese companies commonly use to cook the books.
Nokia might have squandered its stroke of good luck. Last December the world’s largest phone carrier, China Mobile, chose the Finnish firm’s newest model, the Lumia 920T, over the iPhone 5 as its flagship product. It was a seal of approval for a device that Nokia had created to compete with the iPhone in the top-end smartphone market. But now Bloomberg reports that most China Mobile outlets will not carry the 920T during the crucial Chinese New Year shopping season, which starts this weekend, due to a supply shortage. The report says that while China Mobile ordered 90,000 920T models during January, Nokia only shipped 30,000.
Volvo, the world’s second-largest truckmaker, reported awful fourth quarter numbers today.
Edward Tsui-ping kwong owns a factory that makes nuts, screws and rivets in Dongguan, a sprawling industrial city near Hong Kong that before the 2008 global crisis was an economic powerhouse fueled by small, energetic exporters manufacturing basics such as auto parts and furniture.
Weak commodities prices dragged Indonesia’s economic growth down to 6.2% in 2012, from 6.5% a year earlier. And the pace of expansion is not picking up: Fourth-quarter GDP came in at 6.1% higher than the final quarter of last year.
Bank of Japan (BoJ) governor Masaaki Shirakawa will leave his post almost three weeks before the end of his term. His decision to walk out just slightly earlier than he needed to leave may signal that he felt his position was untenable.
Once-struggling Japanese electronics firm Panasonic has turned a corner. The company reported a swing back to profit, after posting a crushing loss this time last year. Its shares surged almost 17% on the news.
Blame the country’s frequent electricity blackouts. As smartphones get cheaper, Indians are increasingly using their phones as home entertainment centers. And that means the country’s 44 million smartphone users are gobbling up internet data. (There are many more users of older cell phones on top of that.)
Macau, a former Portugese colony in southern China, is the only place in the country where gambling is legal, and it boasts the world’s biggest gaming market. Its casinos’ VIP rooms attract high-rolling Chinese businessmen and government officials. They have long been linked with suspected money laundering, and seen as places where Chinese nationals illegally convert large amounts of the tightly controlled yuan into foreign currency.
The New York Times has said that it has been infiltrated by Chinese hackers for the last four months.
Taiwan’s economy has roared back to health on the back of the global surge in smartphone sales.
China’s banking regulator has admitted something most analysts have known for ages: The nation’s lenders have doled money out to too many borrowers who cannot repay.
The gym inside Royal Condominium, an upscale apartment and leisure complex in Medan, a fast-growing city on the island of Sumatra, has a safety problem. People are reluctant to let go of their BlackBerrys while they exercise. At the start of spinning classes, instructors say, “Remember to drink water, and no BBM!”
India’s central bank made a smart move today: it cut interest rates for the first time since April.
Last July, Taiwan lifted a ban on imports of American beef containing a controversial growth hormone called ractopamine. Food safety is such an emotive issue in Taiwan that opposition to US beef imports sparked raucous protests in a society that tends towards Confucian decorum. On one occasion, farmers rioting in the capital, Taipei, threw pig excrement and rotten eggs at police.
China’s economy is starting to recover and the Chinese government has been approving new infrastructure projects. All good news for global copper demand.
Heavy machinery giant Caterpillar releases quarterly and full year earnings today (Jan. 28). And analysts are bound to ask just how the company managed to lose $580 million in an alleged Chinese accounting scandal.
Apple has confirmed something many China watchers have long suspected: that multinationals take an eyes-wide-shut approach to auditing their low cost suppliers.
What to watch for today
China’s incoming leader, Xi Jinping, has promised to fight “tigers and flies”, meaning high- and low-ranking bureaucrats who solicit bribes.
