China exported 17.5% less goods in January than it did a year ago. The other side of the trade ledger was even uglier — imports plunged by 43%.
Those numbers aren’t pretty but China still had a $39 billion trade surplus in January.
You still want to avoid any Asian companies that heavily depend on sales to foreigners.
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I’ve been here in southeastern china now for about two weeks, and I start school to learn Chinese at Xiamen (the city where I live) in two days. Last sunday, I went to the Super Mall, 5 floors of everything from Nike products to American Ginseng, to Chinese rock sculpture. But the biggest surprise was Walmart itself. Located in the basement of the building, it carried all sorts of stuff, and though I had never bought anything there while in the USA, I did buy a couple of pretty decent cushions for my apartment. Plus, I could even buy Organic Brown Rice, which my Chinese friend doesn’t even know EXISTS. Walmarts was packed with shoppers, while the upper floors of expensive boutique shops were almost deserted. Many here agree here that the economy has not bottomed, but will probably make a turn later this year. I am very impressed by the Class and Generosity I have been shown by my Chinese friends, whom I met by chance a year ago on my first trip. They always show great empathy and concern. 5000 years of continuous culture, despite wars, conquest by Mongols, not to mention European colonialism and forcing opium on them I think matters and in the end, if the world is to change, it may be more because of Confucius, Lao Tse and Amitofo (the Chinese buddha) than the West, which appears to have fallen flat on its face with its wars and predatory capitalism.
“than the West, which appears to have fallen flat on its face with its wars and predatory capitalism.”
That “predatory” capitalism created the boom you see in China.
It was OUR jobs, then our money. They surely were not doing it on their own before we gifted patents, money and knowhow.
How is it that no matter what the West does, we are the bad guy?
Telling statements as to the status shift our world will soon see.
China for centuries was the richest country in the world and had no navy, unlike the Europeans, who invaded what is now America and exterminated the natives and expropriated their gold and wealth. The Europeans then used their guns to force China to take opium in, which resulted in massive outflows of wealth that had accumulated through other means than war.
Teresa, it seems that you still think that YOUR interests are the same as the predatory capitalists who shipped the jobs over there in the first place. Or created the dotcom bubble and the mortgage bubble and the earlier junk bond scam of the 80’s. There are many other examples of “Predatory Capitalism”. And we are the prey.
It was your job and your money that have been stolen from you by Wall Street and the major corporations. For years, Detroit’s idea of profitability was “planned obsolescence” That meant making cars that ultimately drove the market to Toyota and Honda. You are not responsible for those bad decisions, except perhaps for not demanding that our corporations produce good products, made by Americans.
As for the wars, it is now common knowledge that the Iraq war was based on lies, and anyone who bothers to do the research knows that the Taliban offered up Osama bin laden if the US provided proof of his guilt. But the US never did.
Thus in pursuit of imperial ambition, our leaders bankrupted the country–our country.
It is extremely important for American citizens to understand the fact that the country is not “one nation under God” but one nation run by corporations.
Recently, even Newsweek had an article saying that China simply had a better economic model. The US model, based on phony wars (Military Kensianism”) and financial fraud may be considered by some as a good business model. Personally, I doubt it.
Why isn,t china,s ETF (fxp) rising more with their over capacity problems. China is on the other side of the world,s trade imbalance.