Posted on 01/12/2023 12:31:38 PM PST by FarCenter
HONG KONG – Several global investment houses have recently upgraded their 2023 growth forecasts for China from the 4% range to well above 5%. We believe that’s much too conservative. An “explosive growth spurt” (in the words of a most experienced Hong Kong-based China investor) in the 7-8% range is highly likely as the current Covid wave recedes.
The basic premise for this, as we have written and reiterated on several occasions since just prior to the China Communist Party’s 20th Congress, is that – contrary to the biased and ill-informed “reporting” of the Western press – General Secretary Xi Jinping’s third term will not be characterized by further tightening of centralized controls of the economy and suppression of private-sector initiative by a tight-knit group of handpicked Xi loyalists, but rather by the very opposite.
This could and should have become clear to any unblinkered observer the moment Shanghai party chief Li Qiang walked out in the number two position behind Xi at the introduction of the new Politburo Standing Committee upon the conclusion of the party congress.
Li, whose political career started in Wenzhou, a proud bastion of free enterprise in Zhejiang province, opened the new STAR market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and helped Elon Musk build the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai in record time during his Shanghai tenure, to mention just two of his hallmark initiatives.
Yes, Li is a Xi loyalist: He served under Xi in Zhejiang. But why would Xi pick a loyalist of Li’s pedigree to become his prime minister in charge of the economy if he wanted to pursue policies of the opposite direction? It’s a self-contradictory “analysis” only the hapless inhabitants of the Washington-attuned echo chambers could produce.
Since Li’s designation to take over as premier at the 14th National People’s Congress this March, all relevant Politburo and government agencies have uniquely pointed in the direction of a strongly growth-oriented, high technology-led, consumption-driven and monetary policy-supported economy.
Bloomberg quotes former Bocom International head of research Hong Hao, an outspoken China bear, as noting that there had been “policy pivots in just about every single sector.” This, of course, includes first and foremost the radical decision to totally scrap the “zero-Covid” policy of the past three years.
Significantly, Li had opposed the drastic April 2022 Shanghai lockdown, prompting Beijing to deploy the Iron Lady, vice-premier and politburo member Sun Chunlan, to Shanghai to get it done.
That, in turn, prompted many Western observers to rule out Li as an incoming Politburo Standing committee member. Alas, Sun has since retired from the Politburo and Li is about to take up his position at the head of government.
China will be lucky if it can survive as a single entity
through the coming black swan events, as will we.
China is circling the drain economically, people are rising up against hardline communism, and the people want to be free.
China will more likely have a civil war this year or they’ll invade Siberia which will be very popular.
Oops! "It's exactly the opposite of what most global economists are saying. Give all your money to us."
Sounds like a perfect pump & dump.
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