The current state of China’s real estate sector presents contradictory assessments that are often difficult to understand. There has been a “mini recovery,” whose impact is yet to be determined. It is in fact difficult to understand if the downturn has slowed, stopped, or if a recovery is in fact underway. Beginning in October, after the weeklong National Day festivities, the CSI300 index (which measures the health of the largest corporations on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges) of the real estate sector grew much more than the overall index, lending credibility to those who believe the...

Recent demonstrations in Chinese factories have made the headlines as a result of new kind of economic issues the country currently faces: a sustainable model based on social differences.Chinahas now become both a richer country, as well as more economically unequal. The Gini coefficient, which measures social inequality in relation to income distribution, ranksChina54th out of the 134 scrutinized countries. These figures go to show that there is a clear contrast between the current socio-political scenario and the country’s formal socialist identity. They are also the result of Deng Xiaoping’s...

When uncertainty lingers, forecasts are difficult, especially in construction machinery industry. Even prestigious analysts like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch differ blatantly on how to judge the future of this industry. The former is relatively pessimistic, the latter is more optimistic. The dispute is not technical, but economic. The industry is connected to many variables and nobody can envisage a precise projection for these variables. Doubts are cast not only to the macroeconomic elements, but consequently to specific sectors also. Modern econometric models never forget an old,...

by Alberto Forchielli e Alberto Pagliarini* Many people have written about the risk of a real estate bubble in China and opinions are extremely diverging. To some real estate in China is a bubble of historic proportion while to others real estate prices and construction levels are justified by the expectation of future fast economic growth. As it is very dangerous to call something a bubble (at the end of the day, a bubble is something good that’s gone on for too long) we will simply try to point to some of the interesting issues in the debate. China’s economic environment is...