Attention Economy


Friday, September 5, 2014

China – Interesting Items


Regional variations

China’s Megacities

Joi Ito of MIT Media Lab on China’s Manufacturing Hub
http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2014/09/01/shenzhen-trip-r.html


Chinese Data and Underlying Economic Trends - An interesting piece by Yukon Huang:
Huang notes:
“Many people see the extremely low share of consumption to GDP as indicative of repressed spending and the high share of investment as waste. Yet few pause to wonder why until the recent slowdown, the news was all about double-digit sales growth rates in the luxury goods, fast-food outlet and home furnishing sectors. How can one reconcile retail sales that were growing at 15-20 per cent a year for decades with GDP numbers that suggest lacklustre growth in personal consumption? This raises suspicions that something is amiss, quite possibly that consumption is seriously understated. A 2008 Morgan Stanley study estimated that Chinese GDP was about 30 per cent higher than official figures, and per capita consumption was as much as 80 per cent higher. Some research surveys show that household income has been understated by some 20-30 per cent of GDP.”
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China attempts to reform state-owned enterprises