Another stellar piece of reporting by Evan Osnos of The New Yorker. This week, he looks at the growth of gambling in Macau and tells us why Las Vegas is moving there: more ›

China's rampant smoking problem is not only bad for the health of its people, but might also prove detrimental to the health of the entire economy. Non-communicable diseases like cancer are taking their toll on China's workforce as they account for 80% of nation's deaths (almost 20% more than the global average), and consume 70% of all health spending. The tobacco industry alone has been implicated in the deaths of 1 million people (though the actual figure is probably substantially higher). more ›

Three Chinese cities -- Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing -- have come in among the world's top ten cities for global high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), according to the results of a sentiment survey conducted among Citi Private Bank's wealth advisors and Knight Frank's luxury property specialists. more ›

"Why is the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) stubbornly there despite the anger of the people? Now, NDRC officials are defending the increase in oil prices again. In face of public anger, the NDRC just threw the magic words "for the sake of national energy security." However, in China, they're buying at a low price while selling at a high price and market competition is low given the monopoly. Both the nation and consumers have have a lot to lose. Hasn't that been caused by the NDRC? The people aren't saying they don't expect prices to go up, but what they're against is the monopoly. Under today's system, nobody can take the NDRC to task no matter how angry people are!" more ›

Half of all the world's skyscrapers currently under construction are in China. And like New York in the run-up to the Wall Street crash of 1929, or Dubai before the 2008 financial collapse, analysts point to the link between building for pride and an impending economic fall. [Al Jazeera] more ›

“It is one of our comforting and enduring myths that as China becomes more modern and sophisticated, more like us, it will come to adopt our values. I’m not sure it’s going to be like that. [Chinese students during the Lhasa riots in 2008] were very hostile to the criticism of the Chinese government. The key insight for me is that rather than pro-democracy feelings increasing as China grows economically, it is a radical, shrill nationalism that is emerging. There is an enthusiastic embrace of the economic benefits of the market but resentment of Western cultural hegemony. The attitude is: if we make it economically, we don’t have to kowtow to you culturally." more ›

Former Goldman Sachs partner Peter Kiernan, author of Becoming China's Bitch: And Nine More Catastrophes We Must Avoid Right Now, on CNN sharing his concerns about China replacing the U.S. as the world's top economy. more ›

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Zong Qinghou, China’s second-richest man, talks about the economy and the government's economic policy. Zong, the 66-year-old self-made billionaire who is chairman of Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., is a member of China’s legislature. He also discusses Europe's sovereign debt crisis and his company's legal disputes with Danone SA. He spoke on March 3 in Beijing with Bloomberg Television's Stephen Engle. (Source: Bloomberg) more ›

China's middle class is projected to reach 40% of the population in 2020, twice the proportion at the turn of the century, according to the International City Development Report released jointly by the Social Sciences Academic Press and Shanghai Academy of Social Science more ›

The above infographic, provided by the Gravity Group, is a brief summary of the hits and percentages that make up the Chinese box office totals for last year. more ›

Chinese nationals accounted for the largest share of luxury goods sales in overseas markets during the month of January, with total sales of approximately $7.2 billion USD recently. The amount sees the a nearly 30 percent increase from the same period last year, when Chinese on vacation spent $5.6 billion USD on luxury items. more ›

Shanghai has topped the Brookings Institution's list of the world's 200 largest metropolitan areas who collectively comprise almost half the world's economic activity. more ›

The time isn't ripe for Shanghai's financial hub to allow foreign companies into its equity market, according to Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng. The statement marks a delay of two months in China's aspirations to become a global financial powerhouse by 2020. more ›

BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries have contributed to almost half of global growth in the past decade, but their high times may be over as they face an aging labor market. The major effects in demographics are already beginning to be seen in China, where its one child policy is holding itself back from growing a strong young labor force, thus raising doubts on how to fund its growing pension bill. more ›

China wrote history this week after gaining approval for oil exploration in the Amu Darya Basin in Afghanistan, making it the first international oil deal made by Afghanistan with a foreign country in several decades. more ›

China is about to face a challenging upcoming year amid lingering fears concerning a global financial meltdown. Declining property prices and a severe trade situation are raising serious concerns regarding the economic stability of the backbone of the world economy. more ›

Attention, anxious highly-skilled proletarians of Western Civilization! New plans to attract overseas professionals to Shanghai have just been announced, with companies looking for specialized talent to offer minimum yearly salaries of 300,000RMB ($47,160 USD) and benefits. In addition, newly arrived foreign experts would also be granted preferential visa treatment and priority status for permanent residency permits, according to local officials. more ›

Hong Kong has officially entitled itself as most developed financial market in the world after it jumped from fourth position to first on the World Economic Forum index of financial market development. Beating out the established UK and US leaders, it has become the first Asian financial center ever to top the index. more ›

Phil Inman argues on The Guardian: "China is a one-trick pony. Without the US and Europe to soak up its factory output, it doesn't have a growth plan. Except that isn't quite true. Like Japan in the 1980s and the UK in the decade before the boom, it has a liking for property investment. As a sideline to its enormous manufacturing sector, there is an ever-expanding apartment and office-building craze." more ›

The current wave of strikes and demonstrations continued this week, as more than 100 workers blocking a Tesco store in the city of Jinhua in Zhejiang province. Shoppers were prevented from entering the shop by the staff, who boldly blocked and barricaded the entrances and exits, while holding up banners with messages, including ''We want to protect our rights...Return our blood and sweat money.'' more ›

"I wake up this morning and find the radio, TV and print media all going on and on about how the property market is entering a winter season as real estate prices tumble. I don't understand -- are these macroeconomic adjustments here to help stabilise economic development, or are they here just to make property prices fall? Is there any country in history that has managed to grow its economy stably after a property bust?" more ›

The nightmare is now officially over, hooray! Vending machines that dispense gold bars will debut in Beijing on the 23rd of September, with bars weighing up to 2.5 kilograms. The machines will apparently work just as normal ATM's do, only with the added sense of security that comes from leaving an ATM with an assault-grade brick of gold in one's back pocket. The machines will accept cash and credit cards in exchange for gold, and will be available in upscale clubs and private banks. Which is great, because we always thought putting an expensive cellphone on a table at a bar to show off was so October to mid-December of 2009. At last, an alternative. Rejoice. more ›

Get rich quick scheme of the day: Travel back in time to 2005 with sacks full of Benjamins, exchange them for renminbi, and presto-money-changeo, you're rich! "The renminbi (RMB), China's official currency, set a new high for the second day to a ratio of 6.4536 yuan per US dollar on Thursday. It indicates a 22-percent increase after the country launched exchange reforms on July 21, 2005. The ratio was 8.11 yuan per US dollar when the reforms were launched six years ago. China abandoned a decade-old peg to the US dollar by allowing its currency to fluctuate against a basket of currencies on July 21, 2005. The reforms were suspended in a bid to fight the global downturn in 2008. The yuan exchange rate again was pegged to the dollar at a ratio around 6.83 from September 2008. The peg was lifted on June 19, 2010, when the central bank announced further yuan exchange rate formation mechanisms." [China Daily] more ›

The skeptics who believe China's economy is overheated must be doing a little dance right now: 'Local governments had an overall debt of 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.65 trillion) by the end of 2010, said China's top auditor on Monday in a report to the National People's Congress. It was the first time the world's second-largest economy publicly announced the size of its local governments' debts. The scale amounts to more than one-quarter of its GDP in 2010, which stood at 39.8 trillion yuan. Among the debt, local governments have an obligation to repay 6.7 trillion yuan, or more than 62 percent of the total debt, and they underwrote loans of 2.3 trillion yuan, nearly 22 percent of total debt. Beijing planned to clean up billions in local government debt by shifting 2-3 trillion yuan of debt off the books of local governments, Reuters reported, quoting anonymous sources. Fitch Inc, a major international rating institution, lowered its outlook of China's long-term local-currency rating to "negative" from "stable" in April, saying there is a high "likelihood of a significant deterioration" in banks' asset quality within three years.' [China Daily] more ›

China Premiere Wen Jiabao has a piece in today's Financial Times about China's economy. He says in the article (most of which is behind the FT's paywall, grr!) that China is capable of sustaining fast economic growth and that it has brought inflation under control. more ›

Constructing a heightened personal aura through purchasing pricey baubles just got that much easier: "China, already the world's second-largest luxury goods market, will soon slash import duties on opulent items to encourage wealthy local shoppers to buy more pricey cosmetics, watches and liquor, Chinese media said on Monday. Citing unidentified sources, the paper said China's finance ministry may unveil a revamped tax system before the National Day holiday in October so that Chinese consumers can buy luxury brands such as Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton at home over the Christmas and New Year holidays. With the new taxes, duties on imported cosmetics, milk powder, watches, clothes, suitcases and shoes are expected to be reduced or even scrapped entirely, it said. Owing to hefty import taxes, prices of 20 luxury brands of watches, suitcases, clothes, liquor and consumer electronics in the Chinese mainland are 45 percent higher than those in Hong Kong, 51 percent higher than US prices, and 72 percent higher than French prices, a study by China's commerce ministry showed." [China Daily] more ›

We all knew that China is going to be the world's largest economy -- it's not a question of if but when. Earlier estimates suggested this was going to happen sometime around 2030 but according to the International Monetary Fund's latest bombshell, the "Age of America" is going to end, and the "Age of China" will begin in 2016. That's when the IMF now expects China's economy to become the world's number 1 economy by GDP (purchasing power parity). CNN's Ramy Inocencio explains how.
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Economists have long said that India's economy will some day grow faster than China's. Will 2012 be that turning point? This year, the World Bank expects China's economy to slow down to 8.7% from 10% last year as the government seeks to unwind fiscal stimulus, place restrictions on overheating sectors and tighten monetary policy. more ›

Jim Chanos has never visited my friend's neighborhood, but he would love it. It is the apotheosis of everything he says is wrong with the Chinese real estate market, which more than a year ago, the influential short-seller famously outlined. more ›