Good WSJ piece on the dynamics behind any potential appreciation of the Chinese RMB. Much of the analysis is from Mark Sobel. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

Xi Wants a Strong-Looking Yuan. China’s Economy Keeps Holding It Down.

Plus, Beijing accelerates its buildup in space and a drone maker cleans 28 tons of waste from Mount Everest |WSJ China for Aug. 4.

wsj.com

Most people might not guess that this is Beijing, but this is what I saw earlier today as I cycled along Liangma in the northeast part of the city.

Financial Times: "Beijing is stepping up efforts to attract foreigners to its sovereign debt by building out futures contracts and other bond market infrastructure." www.ft.com/content/0fe0...

China courts global investors with bond market tweaks

Building out market infrastructure is welcome but the country’s economic challenges could remain a deterrent

ft.com

1/6 Financial Times: "China has launched a global hunt for hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes going back decades as Beijing seeks to fill a deepening fiscal hole by targeting the ultra rich." www.ft.com/content/e179...

China launches global tax hunt going back decades

Fiscal pressure sparks retroactive campaign and tougher controls on future offshore capital flows

ft.com

1/2 The New Yorker has a very good article by Evan Osnos on the potential emergence of China's technological leadership. Osnos wonders if the future of technology might be Chinese, but he also notes that this future is very opaque. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The Future, Made in China

Beijing is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy. Who wins will have huge political implications.

newyorker.com

1/6 Bloomberg: "The aftermath of last week’s Ceuta border crisis may be unprecedented too, judging by the blame game erupting on a continent where far-right parties are riding high and several key countries are entering election season." www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Ceuta’s Migrant Chaos Deserves a Better Response than a Blame Game

Last week’s Ceuta border crisis was unprecedented in terms of scale, with at least 67 reported deaths after around 60,000 migrants breached the boundary between Morocco and the Spanish enclave (with a...

bloomberg.com

According to Yicai, the year-on-year decline in cumulative sales in China's property market was high, although it narrowed modestly in July. Monthly sales fell sharply and new-home transactions remained well below last year's levels. www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-...

China's Top 100 Developers See Sales Slowdown Ease Despite Weak July

yicaiglobal.com

FT: "The growing popularity of institutions such as police and military academies reflects a broader shift among young Chinese, who are increasingly willing to trade academic prestige for career certainty." www.ft.com/content/cfe0...

Chinese student high-flyers set sights on police and military academies

Weak economy boosts appeal of institutions that can offer more secure job prospects than even top-tier universities

ft.com

"Les deux chocs chinois ne constituent pas deux explications concurrentes de l’évolution de la Chine. Ce sont deux manifestations extérieures différentes d'un même modèle de croissance" Ma traduction 👉 annotationsbis.blogspot.com/2026/08/derr...

Michael Pettis@michaelpettis.bsky.social · 5d ago

1/2 Good new Adam Tooze piece on China Shock 1.0 and China Shock 2.0: "China shock 2.0 isn’t simply a globalization shock triggering a social backlash. What China is delivering in the 2020s is an industrial policy shock of global scale." open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

For my friends in Beijing, Zhang Shouwang is preforming tomorrow night at Raw Material as part of the Sally Can't Dance series. Whenever he performs it is a highlight.

In top-tier cities, commercial real estate may be bottoming out, at least temporarily: "In Shanghai, the number of commercial property deals jumped 77% year on year in the first half of 2026, while the total value of those transactions was up 18%." sc.mp/4qope?utm_so...

China’s investors snap up prime office space, betting on a property rebound

Commercial properties are changing hands at a much faster rate in Shanghai and other major cities, as investors bet on a market rebound.

sc.mp

Wang Xiangwei: "As long as external demand holds up, policymakers appear relatively untroubled by weakening domestic demand, despite rhetoric to the contrary." www.scmp.com/opinion/chin...

Opinion | How likely is Beijing to walk the talk on boosting consumption?

As long as external demand holds up, policymakers appear relatively untroubled by weakening domestic demand, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

scmp.com

Yuekai's Luo Zhiheng: "The economy remains highly dependent on policy support, while self-sustaining growth momentum is still weak and the vitality of households, businesses and local governments has yet to be fully restored." www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202608/03/...

Caixin: "China’s State Council approved the construction of eight new nuclear power reactors. The approvals underscore Beijing’s unparalleled commitment to expanding its atomic fleet as the country races to nearly double its operational nuclear capacity." www.caixinglobal.com/2026-08-01/b...

Beijing Clears Eight New Reactors as China Accelerates Nuclear Buildout

Most of the newly approved units will use the domestically developed Hualong One design as Beijing pushes to expand operating nuclear capacity to 110 million kilowatts by 2030

caixinglobal.com

1/5 SCMP: "After blanketing the country in railways, expressways, airports and seagoing canals to reach a 91 per cent completion rate, the push for the next 4 percentage points raises questions for the world’s second-largest... sc.mp/134hm?utm_so...

How much transport is enough? China eyes 95% coverage across its record network

Beijing aims to expand nation’s world-leading network coverage, raising questions over need for more infrastructure projects as authorities flag ‘weak links’.

sc.mp

1/6 Gillian Tett: "In an ideal world, they would all immediately stop this mercantilist meddling, which is undermining global growth. Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, has begged China to slow its export flood by stimulating domestic demand." www.ft.com/content/8719...

China is smarter about subsidies than everybody else

Beijing is stealing a march on its competitors by targeting strategic sectors

ft.com

“If the gap between new orders and production persists, companies may continue to take a cautious approach to procurement, inventory management and hiring,” said Yuhan Zhang, of the China Center at the Conference Board." www.ft.com/content/181a...

China’s factory activity falls for first time in five months

Official data also shows sharp decline in non-manufacturing activity in July

ft.com

1/2 Yicai: "China’s debt-to-GDP ratio fell in the second quarter for the first time in four and a half years. The macro leverage ratio shrank to 308.2 percent in the three months ended June 30 from 309.3 percent in the previous quarter." www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-...

China’s Debt-to-GDP Measure Posts First Quarterly Drop in 4.5 Years

yicaiglobal.com

Xinhua: "The PMI for China's manufacturing sector stood at 49.2 in July, down 1.1 percentage points from June. Despite the overall decline, equipment manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing continued to grow, with their PMI readings at 51.4 and 53.3, respectively. english.news.cn/20260731/e33...

xcancel.com/michaelxpett...

1/2 Good new Adam Tooze piece on China Shock 1.0 and China Shock 2.0: "China shock 2.0 isn’t simply a globalization shock triggering a social backlash. What China is delivering in the 2020s is an industrial policy shock of global scale." open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

Domestic continuities between China Shock 1.0 and China Shock 2.0

The evolution of the internal imbalances created by China's overarching growth model were transmitted in different ways to China's trade partners

michaelpettis858496.substack.com

1/2 I just finished re-reading Paul Volcker and Toyoo Gyohten's book, published in 1992, on the management of the global financial system during three previous turbulent decades.

FT: "China’s CSI 300 index has fallen 9.6 per cent so far this month, its biggest drop since January 2016." This happened in spite of support from the "national team". The most important factor driving Chinese stocks tends to be the credibility of government signaling. www.ft.com/content/5052...

Chinese stocks on track for worst month in decade

Investors pull out of ‘picks and shovels’ suppliers to AI boom

ft.com

Bloomberg: "With exports soaring at a double-digit pace this year to keep factories humming, economists had expected officials to act with little urgency for now in rolling out any fresh stimulus measures." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

China’s Top Officials to Consider New Stimulus After Slowdown

China’s top officials struck a more supportive tone on the economy but stopped short of announcing fresh stimulus at a key meeting, after growth slipped near the bottom of Beijing’s target.

bloomberg.com

1/3 Yasheng Huang on China's K-shaped economy and the K-shaped focus of its policymakers: "China has a K-shaped economy — its upper micro-technology arm pointing up, toward technology, and its lower macro arm [almost everything else] pointing down." yashenghuang.substack.com/p/chinas-k-s...

China’s K-shaped economy and its K-shaped Policy Regime

A world-class technology sector sitting on top of a weak economy — and a policy machinery to keep it that way

yashenghuang.substack.com

JakeSullivan: "Whenever the United States has faced existential tests, its leaders have returned to Hamilton’s logic." www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

How to Reindustrialize America

The case for a strategic investment fund.

foreignaffairs.com

In my latest substack piece I argue, against Gopinath, Gourinchas and Rey, that the relevant debate is not whether currency appreciation works, but rather which mechanism of income redistribution is politically, economically acceptable to China. michaelpettis858496.substack.com/p/currency-r...

Currency Revaluation Is Income Rebalancing

Gita Gopinath, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, and Hélène Rey are wrong to argue in a recent piece in The Economist that revaluing the Chinese yuan will not help reduce global imbalances

michaelpettis858496.substack.com

The Economist@economist.com · last wk.

Demanding that China revalue the yuan gets both the diagnosis and the cure wrong, write Gita Gopinath, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas and Hélène Rey

1/4 WTO: "The rise in trade policy activity is not driven by the largest economies alone: the upward movement is broad-based, with non-G20 economies also rising markedly in the most recent period." www.wto.org/english/news...

Updated WTO-IMF TPA Index shows continued rise in global trade policy activity

A new Trade Policy Activity (TPA) index by WTO and IMF economists shows a marked rise in trade policy activity during 2025-26, alongside heightened trade policy tensions among large economies, against...

wto.org

NYT: "One of the most surprising outcomes from a whiplash year of tariffs may be that China has emerged in a position of relative strength, with significantly lower tariffs than last year." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/b...

Trump’s Tariffs Are Sending Some Companies Back to China (Gift Article)

For some U.S. brands seeking a location for their factories, the economic logic is once again pointing to China.

nytimes.com

1/3 Bloomberg: "Washington tightened curbs on some foreign-made robots and inverters, vital components of solar-powered electricity, in a sweeping move that risks widening its tech confrontation with Beijing." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

US Risks Broadening China Tech Clash With Robot, Inverter Curbs

Washington tightened curbs on some foreign-made robots and inverters, vital components of solar-powered electricity, in a sweeping move that risks widening its tech confrontation with Beijing less tha...

bloomberg.com