{"id":13978,"date":"2015-10-31T06:39:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T11:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13978"},"modified":"2015-10-31T07:08:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T12:08:28","slug":"chinas-economy-even-worse-than-suspected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13978","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Economy Even Worse than Suspected?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/10\/30\/is-chinas-economy-even-worse-than-suspected\/\" target=\"_blank\">China\u2019s Economy Even Worse than Suspected?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\">It\u2019s always good to have a plan. So China has a new five-year plan, its 13th. And the plan is to dial down China\u2019s formerly white-hot economy to a target of \u201cmedium-high economic growth\u201d for the five years starting in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>\u201cThe country will promote greater sophistication in its industrial sector and significantly raise the contribution of consumption to economic growth,\u201d according to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.globaltimes.cn\/content\/949796.shtml\"><u>Global Times<\/u><\/a>, a tabloid under the\u00a0<em>People\u2019s Daily<\/em>, which is the official propaganda organ of the Communist Party. The goal is to double 2010 GDP and per-capita income by 2020 and create \u201ca moderately prosperous society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s all exciting stuff for the future. Meanwhile, there\u2019s today.<\/p>\n<p>And today, the Chinese economy isn\u2019t exactly hopping, despite the official GDP growth rate of 6.9% that no one believes, especially not the Chinese leadership. So the People\u2019s Bank of China cut its benchmark interest rates a week ago \u2013 the sixth cut since November \u2013 to the lowest level in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tradingeconomics.com\/china\/interest-rate\"><u>data going back two decades<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The leadership is trying to reform and restructure the economy away from low-value cheap-labor manufacturing to the miraculous powers of consumerism, implemented decades ago with such glorious success in the US and elsewhere. So exports and imports have been plunging. But no big deal because retail and services are going to make up for it. Other problems are cropping up\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChina\u2019s steel demand evaporated at unprecedented speed as the nation\u2019s economic growth slowed,\u201d Zhu Jimin, deputy head of the China Iron &amp; Steel Association, explained on Wednesday, according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2015-10-28\/china-steel-chief-says-demand-evaporating-at-unprecedented-speed\"><u>Bloomberg<\/u><\/a>. Demand for steel, which is used in everything from buildings to cars, has dropped by 8.7% in September from a year ago. Prices have crashed. And steel mills are buckling under their debts even as they\u2019re producing tons of red ink in an ocean of overcapacity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China\u2019s Economy Even Worse than Suspected? It\u2019s always good to have a plan. So China has a new five-year plan, its 13th. And the plan is to dial down China\u2019s formerly white-hot economy to a target of \u201cmedium-high economic growth\u201d for the five years starting in 2016. \u201cThe country will promote greater sophistication in its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[130,1784,353,2520,2914,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-13978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-china","tag-exports","tag-gdp","tag-imports","tag-pboc","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13978"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13981,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13978\/revisions\/13981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}