Co eksport z Korei Południowej ma do Chin? Wpis po angielsku

Drodzy czytelnicy, kolejny wpis po polsku pojawi się na blogu w ten weekend. W międzyczasie dzielę się moim tekstem po angielsku, który zamieściłem na LinkedIn – krótkie podsumowanie aktualnej sytuacji ekonomicznej w Chinach.

Economists used in the past to look closely at South Korea’s exports to China as an important factor whether China was/is doing good (or not). It may currently not be the most accurate indicator (and not only one), but still useful indicator giving us some idea about China’s condition. And if so, outlooks are not that great:

◼️ Korea’s export rose in April by over 12%, but this is drop from more than 18% last month and April’s results were worse than expectations

◼️ Korea’s export to China DECLINED in April by almost 3.5%

This shows impact of COVID restrictions on China’s economy, but of course it is difficult to say yet how big it is going to be – it really depends on when China will resume ‘normal’ operations.

Which then brings us to Shanghai lockdown and quite mixed picture with decreasing number of cases (positive sign), but not really opening of the city (negative sign). Even though it is said that there are more companies entitled to resume their operations in the city, but – what I mentioned in one of my earlier notes – it’s not so easy to work under ‘closed loop’ regime – basically not all companies have conditions allowing them to work under such circumstances (having people to live in premises and regularly tested). It led already to some debate, among economists, about costs for China economy if those daily/every other day tests were to stay throughout the rest of the year.

There are some other challenges as well – logistics seems to still be a problem and some companies in Shanghai (but also in neighboring provinces) may face the problem of lack of materials/components delivered to/from their factories or Shanghai port (which is by the way working). These problems should of course ease, but then it seems like the rest of the year will be one big ‘catch the growth target’ game – as Beijing is still adhering to their 5.5% growth target for this year (but it’s important to mention, that Beijing also in previous years sent signals, that growth just for growth’s sake is not their main goal, so I wouldn’t pay now much attention to this 5.5%, especially now when some analysts are saying about China’s growth this year to be below 5%).

Luckily Beijing still has few aces down their sleeves – like 1 trillion RMB in profits of PBOC (People’s Bank of China/ China’s Central Bank) which will be transferred to central government and then distributed down to support China economy – especially SMEs as those are hit relatively heavily.