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Xinhua Headlines: Int'l community upbeat about Chinese economy undergoing epidemic stress test – Xinhua | English.news.cn – Xinhua

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) supports China’s efforts to tackle the outbreak, and is confident that China’s economy “remains resilient,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said.

by Xinhua writer He Fei

BEIJING, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) — An extended new year holiday has slowed down travel and business activities in China due to the unexpected novel coronavirus outbreak.

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While adopting timely, comprehensive and stringent measures to combat the epidemic, China has announced its policy toolkit to shore up businesses. Analysts and business insiders of many countries have voiced their confidence that the Chinese economy will be left unscathed in the long run.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) supports China’s efforts to tackle the outbreak, and is confident that China’s economy “remains resilient,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Twitter Feb. 3.

PRODUCTION RESUMPTION

On Feb. 10, the date of production resumption set by many provinces, transport networks saw increased passenger flow, a slew of wholesale markets and supermarket chains returned to normal operation, and manufacturers resumed operations with precautionary measures taken to prevent a further transmission of the virus.

Employees work at the workshop of Faurecia (Chongqing) Automotive Parts Co., Ltd, a Sino-French joint venture, in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, Feb. 12, 2020. (Xinhua/Tang Yi)

More than 80 percent of the 23,000 manufacturing subsidiaries of 96 centrally-administered state-owned enterprises have resumed production as of Wednesday, except those required by local governments to delay work resumption, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.

By Wednesday, 83 percent of power grid and power generation companies have resumed work, while in the oil and petrochemical industry, the resumption rate reached 96.8 percent. Meanwhile, work on related key national projects have also begun to move forward in an orderly manner, the commission said.

More enterprises have adopted flexible forms of returning to work according to their own characteristics.

An employee works at a modern agricultural park in Weifang, east China’s Shandong Province, Feb. 14, 2020. (Xinhua/Guo Xulei)

Foreign companies in China also joined the rank. European plane maker Airbus, for instance, in a statement released on Tuesday, announced the decision to gradually increase production at its China division.

According to a survey conducted by the Shanghai Association of Foreign Investment earlier this week, more than 80 percent of the 54 foreign companies surveyed in Shanghai have fully or partially resumed production.

Administrative measures have been offering a helping hand in time to businesses. China’s central bank on Monday issued special loans totaling 300 billion yuan (about 43 billion U.S. dollars) at a preferential rate to policy and commercial banks, aiming to support business activities directly linked with epidemic control.

Fiscal authorities have also rolled out measures, such as supplying logistic services and financial assistance, to support small and micro-enterprises, which are a key force to underpin the labor market and protect economic vitality.

On financial markets, China’s central bank has added a total of 1.7 trillion yuan (about 243 billion dollars) into the banking system to boost liquidity and stabilize market expectations.

Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, said he is “very optimistic on the prospects for the Chinese economy,” and “there’s plenty of opportunities for fiscal and monetary stimulus.”

Tan Kok Wai, the Malaysian government’s special envoy to China, said the Chinese government’s effective handling of the outbreak will build business confidence and push everyone from small businesses to state-owned companies to move beyond this temporary problem.

“The message is clear — this will pass and it will be back to business as usual,” he said.

Aerial photo taken on Feb. 16, 2020 shows a China-Europe freight train departing from Zhengzhou Station, central China’s Henan Province. (Xinhua/Li An)

IMPACT ONLY TEMPORARY

Noting the epidemic would pose an economic shock to China, experts have said they believe the world’s second largest economy has leeway to cushion the short-term impact and sustain stable growth.

“We believe the coronavirus is a one-off negative shock, which should not alter the long-term growth trajectory of China’s economy,” United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) economists said in a research note on Tuesday.

“As the virus outbreak is contained and economic activities normalize, we see pent-up demand being released and businesses recover,” they said.

The epidemic will not affect China’s cross-border investments in the long run, though it will have a short-term impact on the Chinese economy, especially in the first quarter, said Horst Loechel, a professor of economics at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

Business activities such as mergers and acquisitions, foreign direct investment, and private equity investment are related to the real economy, and the current epidemic will not have an impact on the long-term forces behind these investments, Loechel said.

An employee transfers polypropylene material for medical use with a forklift at Lanzhou Petrochemical Company in Lanzhou, northwest China’s Gansu Province, Feb. 12, 2020. (Xinhua/Chen Bin)

Khairy Tourk, an economics professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the U.S. city of Chicago, told Xinhua that “one positive thing about the Chinese economy is that it has already developed a digital economy.”

His remarks echoed the recent booming of a “homebody economy” across China, as online education, online healthcare, e-commerce, and working from home are on the rise. China’s tech giant Tencent has upgraded its live-streaming and online conference services, as such demand has been growing in recent days.

“Chinese people are very inventive and they have taken so many steps to lessen the effect of the spread of the disease,” Tourk said. “The country is moving in the right direction as to dealing with its crisis.”

GLOBAL DEMAND ROBUST

China’s long-term trends of moving towards a more consumption-oriented economy and of a rising services share in the overall structure should continue, UBS economists noted. Businesses are showing unabated interest in tapping the market that is too big to be missed.

A staff member picks up goods for online orders at a store of Hema Fresh in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 14, 2020. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

“China plays an important role in the international trading system. That role will evolve but I don’t see reliance changing,” said Doug Barry, senior director of communications and publications at the U.S.-China Business Council, who added that U.S. businesses “remain bullish” on China.

“Those taking a long-term view are betting the economy will continue to grow faster than in most other markets and that the Chinese consumer in particular will propel growth,” Barry said. “Companies want to be in China. They need to be in China.”

Urging British businesses to tap the potential of the Chinese market after Brexit, Colin Rainsforth, director of British food and drink export and marketing firm Absolute Advantage, said China is a big market with rapid growth and an increasing number of middle-class consumers who are keen for high-quality goods.

The timely and decisive measures of China to lessen the economic impact “will be beneficial both to China and the world economy,” he said, adding that isolating China due to the coronavirus “is not the solution and will only create more obstacles to world trade.”

A student takes an online class at home in Handan, north China’s Hebei Province, Feb. 10, 2020. (Xinhua)

Tan, the Malaysian envoy, noted that China has remained Malaysia’s largest trading partner for 11 consecutive years and accounted for 17.2 percent of Malaysia’s trade in 2019, and that bilateral trade “will recover with a higher peak within reach” after the epidemic.

Jorge Valenzuela, president of the Chilean Federation of Fruit Producers, said that China accounts for nearly 30 percent of their exports, and that their “ties with China are deep and long-standing … so this situation is not going to stop or slow down bilateral relations.”

Tourk, the U.S. professor, called for worldwide efforts to fight the disease. “Nothing spares cooperation among nations like emergencies that deal with questions of life and death,” he said. “A healthy China means a healthy world economy.” Enditem

(Xinhua reporters Xu Yuan, Deng Xianlai, Xiong Maoling in Washington, Xu Jing in Chicago, Lin Hao in Kuala Lumpur, Zuo Wei and Shen Zhonghao in Frankfurt, and Zhu Sheng in Berlin also contributed to the story.)

(Video reporters: Deng Xianlai, Jin Yuelei, Xu Yuan, Zhang Xingjun, Jiang Chao; Video editor: Zhu Cong)

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Britain's economy went into recession last year, official figures confirm – The Globe and Mail

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People walk over London Bridge, in London, on Oct. 25, 2023.SUSANNAH IRELAND/Reuters

Britain’s economy entered a shallow recession last year, official figures confirmed on Thursday, leaving Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with a challenge to reassure voters that the economy is safe with him before an election expected later this year.

Gross domestic product shrank by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter and by 0.3 per cent in the fourth, unchanged from preliminary estimates, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Thursday.

The figures will be disappointing for Mr. Sunak, who has been accused by the opposition Labour Party – far ahead in opinion polls – of overseeing “Rishi’s recession.”

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“The weak starting point for GDP this year means calendar-year growth in 2024 is likely to be limited to less than 1 per cent,” said Martin Beck, chief economic adviser at EY ITEM Club.

“However, an acceleration in momentum this year remains on the cards.”

Britain’s economy has shown signs of starting 2024 on a stronger footing, with monthly GDP growth of 0.2 per cent in January, and unofficial surveys suggesting growth continued in February and March.

Tax cuts announced by finance minister Jeremy Hunt and expectations of interest-rate cuts are likely to help the economy in 2024.

However, Britain remains one of the slowest countries to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of last year, its economy was just 1 per cent bigger than in late 2019, with only Germany faring worse among Group of Seven nations.

The economy grew just 0.1 per cent in all of 2023, its weakest performance since 2009, excluding the peak-pandemic year of 2020.

GDP per person, which has not grown since early 2022, fell by 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter and 0.7 per cent across 2023.

Sterling was little changed against the dollar and the euro after the data release.

The Bank of England (BOE) has said inflation is moving toward the point where it can start cutting rates. It expects the economy to grow by just 0.25 per cent this year, although official budget forecasters expect a 0.8-per-cent expansion.

BOE policy maker Jonathan Haskel said in an interview reported in Thursday’s Financial Times that rate cuts were “a long way off,” despite dropping his advocacy of a rise at last week’s meeting.

Thursday’s figures from the ONS also showed 0.7 per cent growth in households’ real disposable income, flat in the previous quarter.

Thomas Pugh, an economist at consulting firm RSM, said the increase could prompt consumers to increase their spending and support the economy.

“Consumer confidence has been improving gradually over the last year … as the impact of rising real wages filters through into people’s pockets, even though consumers remain cautious overall,” Mr. Pugh said.

Britain’s current account deficit totalled £21.18-billion ($36.21-billion) in the fourth quarter, slightly narrower than a forecast of £21.4-billion ($36.6-billion) shortfall in a Reuters poll of economists, and equivalent to 3.1 per cent of GDP, up from 2.7 per cent in the third quarter.

The underlying current account deficit, which strips out volatile trade in precious metals, expanded to 3.9 per cent of GDP.

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How will a shrinking population affect the global economy? – Al Jazeera English

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Falling fertility rates could bring about a transformational demographic shift over the next 25 years.

It has been described as a demographic catastrophe.

The Lancet medical journal warns that a majority of countries do not have a high enough fertility rate to sustain their population size by the end of the century.

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The rate of the decline is uneven, with some developing nations seeing a baby boom.

The shift could have far-reaching social and economic impacts.

Enormous population growth since the industrial revolution has put enormous pressure on the planet’s limited resources.

So, how does the drop in births affect the economy?

And regulators in the United States and the European Union crack down on tech monopolies.

The gender gap in tech narrows.

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John Ivison: Canada's economy desperately needs shock treatment after this Liberal government – National Post

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Lack of business investment is the main culprit. Canadians are digging holes with shovels while our competitors are buying excavators

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It speaks to the seriousness of the situation that the Bank of Canada is not so much taking the gloves off as slipping lead into them.

Senior deputy governor, Carolyn Rogers, came as close to wading into the political arena as any senior deputy governor of the central bank probably should in her speech in Halifax this week.

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But she was right to sound the alarm about a subject — Canada’s waning productivity — on which the federal government’s performance has been lacklustre at best.

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Productivity has fallen in six consecutive quarters and is now on a par with where it was seven years ago.

Lack of business investment is the main culprit.

In essence, Canadians are digging holes with shovels while many of our competitors are buying excavators.

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘in emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” Rogers said.

She was explicit that government policy is partly to blame, pointing out that businesses need more certainty to invest with confidence. Government incentives and regulatory approaches that change year to year do not inspire confidence, she said.

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The government’s most recent contribution to the competitiveness file — Bill C-56, which made a number of competition-related changes — is a case in point. It was aimed at cracking down on “abusive practices” in the grocery industry that no one, including the bank in its own study, has been able to substantiate. Rather than encouraging investment, it added a political actor — the minister of industry — to the market review process. The Business Council of Canada called the move “capricious,” which was Rogers’s point.

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While blatant price-fixing is rare, the lack of investment is a product of the paucity of competition in many sectors, where Canadian companies protected from foreign competition are sitting on fat profit margins and don’t feel compelled to invest to make their operations more efficient. “Competition can make the whole economy more productive,” said Rogers.

The Conservatives now look set to make this an election issue. Ontario MP Ryan Williams has just released a slick 13-minute video that makes clear his party intends to act in this area.

Using the Monopoly board game as a prop, Williams, the party’s critic for pan-Canadian trade and competition, claims that in every sector, monopolies and oligopolies reign supreme, resulting in lower investment, lower productivity, higher prices, worse service, lower wages and more wealth inequality.

(As an aside, it was a marked improvement on last year’s “Justinflation” rap video.)

Williams said that Canadians pay among the highest cell phone prices in the world and that Rogers, Telus and Bell are the priciest carriers, bar none. The claim has some foundation: in a recent Cable.co.uk global league table that compared the average price of one gigabyte, Canada was ranked 216th of 237 countries at US$5.37 (noticeably, the U.S. was ranked even more expensive at US$6).

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Williams noted that two airlines control 80 per cent of the market, even though Air Canada was ranked dead last of all North American airlines for timeliness.

He pointed out that six banks control 87 per cent of Canada’s mortgage market, while five grocery stores — Sobeys, Metro, Loblaw, Walmart and Costco — command a similar dominance of the grocery market.

“Competition is dying in Canada,” Williams said. “The federal government has made things worse by over-regulating airlines, banks and telecoms to actually protect monopolies and keep new players out.”

So far, so good.

The Conservatives will “bring back home a capitalist economy” — a market that does not protect monopolies and creates more competition, in the form of Canadian companies that will provide new supply and better prices.

That sounds great. But at the same time, the Conservative formula for fixing things appears to involve more government intervention, not less.

Williams pointed out the Conservatives opposed RBC buying HSBC’s Canadian operations, WestJet buying Sunwing and Rogers buying Shaw. The party would oppose monopolies from buying up the competition, he said.

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The real solution is to let the market do its work to bring prices down. But that is a more complicated process than Williams lets on.

Back in 2007, when Research in Motion was Canada’s most valuable company, the Harper government appointed a panel of experts, led by former Nortel chair Lynton “Red” Wilson, to address concerns that the corporate sector was being “hollowed out” by foreign takeovers, following the sale of giants Alcan, Dofasco and Inco.

The “Compete to Win” report that came out in June 2008 found that the number of foreign-owned firms had remained relatively unchanged, but recommended 65 changes to make Canada more competitive.

The Harper government acted on the least-contentious suggestions: lowering corporate taxes, harmonizing sales taxes with a number of provinces and making immigration more responsive to labour markets.

But it did not end up liberalizing the banking, broadcasting, aviation or telecom markets, as the report suggested (ironically, it was a Liberal transport minister, Marc Garneau, who raised foreign ownership levels of air carriers to 49 per cent from 25 per cent in 2018).

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The point is, Canada has a competition problem but solving it requires taking on vested interests. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has indicated he is willing to do that, calling corporate lobbyists “utterly useless” and saying he will focus on Canadian workers, not corporate interests.

“My daily obsession will be about what is good for the working-class people in this country,” he said in Vancouver earlier this month.

Even opening up sectors to foreign competition is no guarantee that investors will come. There are no foreign ownership restrictions in the grocery market (in addition to the five supermarkets listed above, there is Amazon-owned Whole Foods). When the Competition Bureau concluded last year that there was a “modest but meaningful” increase in food prices, it recommended Ottawa encourage a foreign-owned player to enter the Canadian market. It was a recommendation adopted by Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, to no avail thus far.

But it is clear from the Bank’s warning that the Canadian economy requires some shock treatment.

Robert Scrivener, the chairman of Bell and Northern Telecom in the 1970s, called Canada a nation of overprotected underachievers. That is even more true now than it was back then.

It’s time to break the glass.

jivison@criffel.ca

Get even more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

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