BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s industrial output grew significantly slower than expected in October, as weakness in global and domestic demand and the drawn-out Sino-U.S. trade war weighed on activity in the world’s second-largest economy.
Industrial production rose 4.7% year-on-year in October, data from the National Bureau of Statistics released on Thursday showed, below the median forecast of 5.4% growth in a Reuters poll.
Indicators showed other sectors also slowing significantly and missing forecasts with retail sales growth back near a 16-year trough and fixed asset investment growth the weakest on record.
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WNU Editor: There is even more gloom and doom among the Chinese think tanks when it comes to their economy .... Chinese Think Tank Becomes First Official Body To Predict 2020 GDP Will Drop Below 6% (Zero Hedge).
3 comments:
Why is 5% growth with a greying population bad?
China's population growth rate is only 0.59%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
There are expectations.
And there is poverty. I saw signs of it, but I see the same signs in America, Canada, South america and elsewhere (The dirty squeegee brigade in Toronto was very nice).
From a report I have the people in Outer Mongolia 5 hours north of Beijing were not that productive. You do not need 3 to 5 people tend to 1 machine in a factory for example.
Part of the lack of growth is structural. The Uighurs are not producing that much. Three of 120 million are in camps.
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster is an interesting and very short story written in the early 1900s. It can be downloaded (PDF) free from the site below. It takes about a half hour to read.
https://blindhypnosis.com/the-machine-stops-pdf-em-forster.html
We have seen over the past 75 years that advances in medicine and all manner of technology have had a dramatic impact on civilization. Apart from vast improvements in lifestyle for many, progress has spelled gloom and doom for others, many of whom have yet to fully realize/appreciate that impact.
Ultimately, perhaps with the arrival of AI, the vast majority of humans will no longer be needed and then what will happen? It may sounds like a Hollywood fictional movie, but it is not. It will eventually come for all as it has already come for many.
Worth remembering, China is halfway through the most drastic shakeup of their economy since the introduction of Keynesian capitalism (the ‘Made in China 2025’ Plan) which was expected to cause disruption in the short to medium term.
The trade war may have impacted upon this but all of this is to be expected given the scale of what was planned.
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