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Bruno Maçães Profile picture
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11 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read
China pulls back from the world? Pure wishful thinking. I wrote yesterday about how its manufacturing clout has taken quite the boost from Covid
See my notes here
brunomacaes.substack.com/p/the-latest-e…
I also wrote last week on how wishful thinking now drives most China analysis
foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/07/bid…
Once again: you can only get 46% of export expansion to the US during a trade war and pandemic if your control over industrial value chains is almost complete - the main goal of the Belt and Road

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More from @MacaesBruno

Bruno Maçães Profile picture
14 Dec
Final comments on @FT China story: 1. Database seriously underestimates loan books. Loans are not transparent and authors have a stringent requirement which will miss a large loan volume. This is not the way to proceed if you’re interested in China’s international position
2. Policy banks are not the crux of the Belt and Road. Much more important to look at commercial banks and FDI. That FDI is at the core of BRI was explicit from the start and only intensified in recent years
3. Infrastructure is only one pillar of BRI and not the most important one. Initiative is fundamentally about industry and technology. Industrial parks, value chains, acquisitions and trade are critical
Read 4 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
13 Dec
That Boston University study that was quoted by the @FT last week can only be described as a joke. I just spent one hour looking at annual reports and the numbers don’t add up. They seem completely made up
At first glance there is something odd about the database. Ostensibly it’s about biodiversity and indigenous lands. Why are these metrics being used to measure Chinese financial presence?
This @Diplomat_APAC piece explains the problem or at least one of the problems. thediplomat.com/2020/12/chinas…
Read 6 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
10 Dec
China's foreign trade expanded 7.8 percent year on year in November, official data showed Monday. Exports jumped 14.9 percent year on year while imports dipped 0.8 percent in yuan terms, the General Administration of Customs said. xinhuanet.com/english/2020-1…
That China was able to keep global markets open during geopolitical tensions and a pandemic shows the success of the Belt and Road in my view (that was the prime goal of the initiative as I argue in my book)
In the meantime a current account surplus equivalent to 3% GDP in 2020 is a considerable shock to rest of the world, equivalent to a fiscal contraction in middle of a recession
Read 5 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
9 Dec
Finally took a look at this. Find it genuinely awful. Awful on the books it reviews. Awful on the realities of EU politics, awful on the analogies it draws and tedious (too ignorant on the subject to know if awful) on Dutch politics lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/…
Only thing the reviewer genuinely seems to care about - the only thing not merely an occasion for his vanity to shine through - is that Crimea is Russian
I know many people who are vain, but those who are vain of their vanity are a rarer breed
Read 4 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
9 Dec
So why had Biden dropped the term Indo-Pacific?
Video here. See 0:50
For two years Beijing has been loudly insisting the US replace Indo Pacific with Asia Pacific. This is thus very odd
Read 6 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
24 Nov
Good editorial wsj.com/articles/biden…
“Per­haps this is meant to be diplo­matic the­ater to ap­pease the cli­mate left. But it is a bad sig­nal if Mr. Biden con­sid­ers cli­mate to be a lead­ing na­tional se­cu­rity is­sue.”
I should add that climate and Kerry is what folke in Asia are really worried about. Read Kunihiko Miyake here:
csis.org/analysis/resol…
Read 4 tweets

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