Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

With 1,300 projects across 280 Chinese cities, Evergrande  currently ranks as the second largest property developer in China and one of the major builders of apartments in the world’s second largest economy. But not for long.

As a result of Chinese government measures that were meant to put a brake on rising housing prices by restricting riskier mortgages, but had the unintended consequence of curtailing  credit to an extent that had not been foreseen, Evergrande is now starving for cash. It has  $300 billion USD in debt, and is increasingly struggling g to meet  interest payments. The likelihood is that Evergrande will default on its outstanding loans.

There are already predictions that Evergrande will become the Lehman Brothers moment for China. Despite the nation being an authoritarian police state, there have been angry demonstrations  throughout China, bordering on riots. The reason is that large numbers of investors, and well as a multitude who have placed large down payments on apartments that may never be built, are angry at the prospect of finding themselves suffering massive and possibly irrecoverable financial losses. It should be recalled that the bulk of Chinese citizens’ wealth is the equity in their apartments.

Though the bulk of those directly exposed to the risk of an Evergrande collapse are Chinese citizens, the repercussions  cannot be contained within China. The size of the Chinese economy and its global interconnectedness mean that there will be collateral damage and contagion impacting the entire global economy. Just as the implosion of the U.S. subprime housing market set off the global financial crisis of 2007-09, the impending demise of Evergrande may very well be the final nail in the coffin of the post-pandemic world economy, ushering in the global economic crisis of the 21st century.

Evergrande may become the epicenter of global financial contagion, just as Wuhan was for the Covid pandemic. What happens to this very large but increasingly insolvent company will be highly consequential for the global economy.

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

The  Center For Economics  and Business Research (CEBR), a UK based consultancy firm, has issued a new forecast that projects China’s GDP will surpass that of the United States by 2028, making China the largest economy in the world. This  projection is five years earlier than an earlier forecast, pointing to an  accelerating decline in U.S. economic strength relative to that of the People’s Republic of China.

According to the CEBR, the primary driver in the imminent surpassing of America’s GDP by China is the impact of Covid-19. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the U.S. more than any other national economy,  creating massive financial losses, major economic dislocation  and political instability that also retards future economic growth. In contrast, though the pandemic originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the draconian measures adopted by Beijing led in the long-term to less economic damage. The relatively low rate of Covid infections in China over the past several months has enabled America’s primary economic competitor to return to growth, while the United States in mired in a patchwork of intermittent and inconsistent lockdowns, while infection rates and  mortality are at a peak.

The fact that China is now projected to have the largest GDP in the world by 2028 will have significant geopolitical consequences, as well  as determine which country will have the most impact on the global economy. Thus far, there are no signs that political leaders in either the U.S., Europe or Russia have fully comprehend the seismic shift in economic power that is occurring virtually in real time, largely enabled by a global pandemic that ironically originated  in China.

The trade war between Washington and Beijing tends to obscure the darkest manifestation of a looming economic danger for China. Though in past years much commentary has been offered on China’s “ghost cities,” the implications been largely glossed over. But they shouldn’t be.

In China’s major urban centers there are currently 65 million unoccupied apartments. This reflects more than 20 percent of all homes in China.  Taking into account that housing construction and its related industrial activity are responsible for one third of all recent GDP growth in China, building zombie residential apartments are not only a non-viable long-term economic  policy; this unsustainable development model will eventually have to come to an end.

When that occurs, the ramifications for President Xi Jinping and the leadership in Beijing will be inevitably dire.

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

Christine Lagarde, chair of the International Monetary Fund- – IMF- – added to the anxieties of the rich and powerful gathered for the annual pilgrimage to Davos , Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Cutting the IMF forecast for 2019 from 3.7 % to 3.5 %, she was acknowledging what is already widely known; there are a growing number of indicators that the global economy is headed for a hard landing.

There is growing instability in major economies, for example the Brexit snafu afflicting the UK and the European Union. There is political gridlock in the USA. And then there is China, the economic gorilla in the room,

The trade wars initiated by the Trump  administration  have harmed both American and Chinese economies. But China is facing other forces; a growing level of indebtedness afflicting both public and private companies. The recent data reflecting the sharp drop in official Chinese GDP growth statistics reflect a major slowing down of the Chinese economy.

Unlike the economic crisis of 2008. when the United Sates was the primary trigger, the next major global recession will most likely be unleashed by events in China, now the world’s second largest economy. 

The  core supporters of President Donald Trump maintain that despite the at times troublesome tweets and verbal coarseness, this is trivial compared to the tangible economic results achieved during the first year-and-a-half of his administration. The relatively high GDP growth rates and low official unemployment rates are heralded by his adherents as signposts on the road of making America “great again.”

I am not as sanguine. In  the first place, based on the pattern of economic cycles in the last hundred years, the American economy is overdue for a severe  recession. It has not happened yet due to the monetary alchemy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, in lockstep with other central banks across the globe.

Secondly, and more importantly, Trump has now unleashed a trade war. It is the economic equivalent of an economic world war, as President Trump is targeting friend and foe alike;   China, Canada   and the European Union have been hit with sizeable tariffs; these countries have responded with retaliatory tariffs, matching America’s in scope and severity.

Many scholars of the Great Depression have argued that this worldwide economic calamity was not driven by the Wall Street crash of 1929, buy by a massive wave of protectionism in the early 1930s, characterized by a wave of tariffs and quotas.

Has President Donald Trump opened a Pandora’s box that may unleash a massive global economic crisis?

Yesterday’s devaluation of 1.9 percent in the value of the Yuan was followed today by another cut of one percent by China’s central bank in the national currency’s competitive value. With July’s decline of 8 percent in China’s exports, following in the wake of the collapse in equity values on the Chinese stock markets, Beijing is clearly worried.

A devaluation of three-percent in the value of nation’s currency, particularly when the fall in value is not the result of market forces but of deliberative monetary policy, is a very big deal in global finance. A nation does not willingly sabotage and debase its own currency when its economy is enjoying robust growth. Currency devaluations are specific acts of monetary policy enacted by the sovereign when its economy is in jeopardy. Thus, despite the official statistics emanating from Beijing on GDP growth and other rosy prognostications, the Chinese economy is facing gathering headwinds. With a low rate of domestic consumption as a proportion of its total GDP, Beijing has undertaken a radical monetary devaluation in an act of desperation, hoping to kickstart exports by cheapening its currency.

Now the remaining major economies must also worry, as the People’s Republic of China has declared an all-out currency war, with the major victim–and target–being the American economy. And the repercussions are not only economic; Donald Trump is poised to take full advantage of China’s currency manipulation as he maintains his frontrunner status in the race for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States. Trump has already gotten ahead of his GOP competition by pontificating on the damage to America’s economy by allowing China’s currency devaluation to be spared any meaningful policy response by Washington, ultimately costing American workers their jobs.

It may be that the monetary policy measure executed by the People’s Bank of China will have its greatest impact and consequences on domestic American politics, with long-term results that may be the opposite of what Beijing desires.

The People’s Bank of China, Beijing’s central bank, imposed a surprise devaluation of 1.9 percent in the value of the nation’s currency, the Yuan or Renminbi. This sudden move by the economic central planners in the People’s Republic of China was in response to a cascade of worrying trends confronting the leadership of the world’s second largest economy.

A country devalues its currency in response to bad economic trends, and never for positive reasons. The negative news emerging from China’s manufacturing sector, in combination with the collapse in the Chinese stock market, has led to the decision to devalue the Yuan, hoping that this policy move will boost Chinese exports. The problem is that this move hurts everyone else, especially the United States. What the financial commentator James Rickards described in his book as “Currency Wars” just got a massive dose of escalation from Beijing, which will likely trigger counter-moves by other major economies that will ultimately damage the global economy as a whole.

Monday, July 27 witnessed the largest fall in share prices in major Chinese stock markets, especially the Shanghai Composite Index, in a decade. The fall of more than eight percent was followed on July 28 by a further drop in China’s stock market by 1.6 percent. These declines come after the massive intervention in the stock market by Beijing, following significant losses in equity values a few weeks ago.

Having frozen much of the market, and injected massive cash allotments into listed shares, amplified by the China authorities compelling companies to purchases stocks, while forbidding the sell-off of shares in many cases, Beijing had thought the problem had been solved. As the past days show, however, central government intervention in the equity markets only temporarily stalled the deflating of this large Chinese asset bubble.

The volatility now existing in China’s stock markets illustrates the overall fragility of much of the Chinese economic model and its opaque financial underpinnings.

While the world has been sidetracked by the never-ending Greek Debt Crisis, another economy with a GDP that is 40 times the size of Greece is giving signs of serious, even critical financial weakness. The world’s second largest economy, and supposedly most-powerful “communist” nation, has seen its stock market enter a downward spiral that Beijing seems helpless to retard.

As the Chinese economy slowed down over the past year, China’s equity market soared by 100 percent or more, creating the largest bubble in the Far East. Now, for the past three weeks, the Shanghai index has been witnessing a massive sell-off that has contracted its value by more than 30 percent. The government, fearing a financial panic and social instability as tens of millions of Chinese investors rush for the exits, has been trying every stratagem known to man to halt and reverse this slide, including compelling government companies to buy massive blocks of shares , cutting interest rates and temporarily halting trading in some companies. All to no avail.

As the implosion in Chinese equity markets continues, the rest of the world is starting to take notice. It should. If what is occurring in China is no mere correction but an actual financial panic, the resulting  damage to China’s economy and fiscal health will impact Chinese imports for its massive industrial sector, negatively impacting global commodity prices at an already fragile moment for the global economy. All this will only heighten the already elevated level of volatility among the world’s financial markets.

The world may be about to discover the true significance of China’s emergence as one of the two largest economies on the planet. During the past several years, many business analysts have warned of the proliferation of signs that much of China’s spectacular economic growth was based on bubbles financed by the central government. There have been numerous  accounts of new cities built with virtually no inhabitants, of vacant office complexes and condominiums. In effect, a trail of pump-priming that has artificially boosted GDP growth in an economy that is still characterized by a very low level of internal consumption, especially in comparison with Western economies, has been the primary driver of China’s economic expansion. There have been earlier signs of an unsustainable real estate bubble and a flood tide of debt by municipal governments and economic enterprises that defy rationality . What is now occurring on the Chinese stock market may be a leading indicator that all is not well with Beijing’s still highly-centralized economic model. Should things unravel beyond the capacity of the government to control, it may be that China in 2015, as with the United States in 2008, will become the primary catalyst of a severe global recession.

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China’s National Bureau of Statistics released GDP growth figures for 2014, indicating that the world’s second largest economy grew that year by 7.4 percent (http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/201501/t20150120_671038.html), below the planned rate of 7.5 percent but exceeding expectations of 7.2 percent. Even if the figures released by Beijing’s NBS are accurate, they reflect a continuing trend of diminishing rates of growth over the past several years, and are the lowest level of GDP growth in 24 years.

But are the official figures on China’s GDP growth believable? Many elements of China’s macroeconomic performance are shrouded in opacity. The architecture of this vast economy  is formulated from a fundamentally contradictory hybrid mix of private sector capitalism and still overwhelming and largely inefficient state controlled sector, especially in heavy industry. Much of China’s growth in the past, impressive as it seems by overall world standards, was based on massive government spending on underutilized infrastructure; the accounts of entire blocks of apartment buildings that remain unoccupied are well known. There are the dangerous property bubbles, early signs of deflation, and rising debt levels in both the public and private arenas, with growing signs of a future explosion in bad debts held by Chinese financial institutions.

Officially, China’s leadership has resorted to what they call the “new normal,” a more sustainable rate of economic growth. The reality is likely a lot more murkier and volatile than the official statistics and pronouncements would indicate.

The clear trend of diminishing rates of GDP growth in China, whether extrapolated from official figures or derived from a more nuanced assessments of China’s economic performance, are already having an effect on the entire global economy. As with the United States, the massive size of the Chinese economy means that lower GDP growth rates create a head wind for the global economy as a whole. It is therefore no surprise that the International Monetary Fund has just revised its forecast of global economic growth downward by the most substantial margin in three years, to 3.5 percent from the 3.8 percent projected only  three months ago by the IMF (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW012015A.htm). This is a harbinger of what lies in store for the global economy as the formerly massive rates of Chinese economic expansion continue to recede.

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