A thread: What is China’s energy import/export makeup? Have they historically been net importers? Starting in 2000s, as the economy grows, China becomes less energy dependent. 1/5
Coal dominates as the 2/3 source of energy supply in China. 2/5
The most dramatic domestic production/import mix change over time for China crude. 3/5
For total energy supply, both domestic and imports increased. China obviously likes to have some self-reliance, but it exports a lot, and imports a lot. It needs the world in many areas. The narrative of complete self-reliance is just narrative. 4/5
When push comes to shuffle, Coal imports <10% of Coal supply, is one energy resource China has most control, in production and domestic coal futures trading. Last few days it restricted financial speculation in onshore coal futures market which lead to coal price decline. 5/5
China becomes less energy independent over time, in 2019 with 1/4 energy supply imported. @Twitter when will you allow a word edit in a tweet?
China's domestic think tanks are mostly defining the current high unemployment of youth (~18%) as structural (结构性失业), showing charts the new labor supply mostly come from those w. higher education /1
New labor supply coming from education, public management, manufacturing, health and social work. (图3 中国新增劳动力结构变化情况(单位:%)
It's suggesting China to deregulate service sector like education, entertainment to increase employment. cssn.cn/jjx/202304/t20…
Local govt Changshu will start paying digital Yuan for all civil servants, a few other city government paying partial wage in digital currency.
Digital Yuan will become more widespread domestically and likely other close countries but it has little to do with separate efforts to allow more Yuan adoption in trade settlement.
I was told in many Thailand or Vietnam one can currently pay directly in Yuan for many services.
As long as PBOC continues cracking down on companies that don't accept paper cash as a form of payment, which it does continuously so far, digital Yuan is just another form of Yuan currency.
🧵I am increasingly skeptical of the young people more for TW independence story that media feeds us, now that I am looking at the data myself.
In the most recent opinion survey, the clearest age trend lines are: The younger, the more for 3rd party (Grey).
Taiwan's current third party gets consistently 20%, and younger people are more fed up with both main two parties.
The other clear age-preference line is OLDER Taiwanese liked DPP (Pro. Independence Party) more, not the usual media story.
Support for KMT across age groups are generally flat, hovering around 30%, no clear age-preference line.
Of course, if you ask what they want if there's no mainland China, the answer is different. But that's irrelevant when looking at what's likely to happen next 2-5 years.
Sec. Yellen's speech on China. For important speeches, always best to go the source on top of narratives.
Narratives usually pick the one that attracts the most attention.
When one day 90% of the headlines, one can't tell whether it's a US headline or Chinese headline, that will be the end of current phase of "you started it first" competition.😀
China's version: baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=174515931…
Pres. Xi: "Security is the premise of economy, and economy is the guarantee of security. Security and economy should be promoted simultaneously"。
习近平总书记指出:安全是发展的前提,发展是安全的保障,安全和发展要同步推进“
🧵Several local headlines all share the same root problem: local govt. are are short of money.
Elderly in Huhan protesting when govt. decided to take the employee contribution portion of health savings account from individuals. /1
Before, avg. one got Y3131/yr, now Y996/yr, no wonder the elderly in Wuhan are on the street.
Many are saying this is like the Covid protests, I have different take. I am pessimistic the elderly will get what they want by protesting. /2 baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=175726866…
Northern provinces started getting ride/reduce of some govt. operations, bc. compared to the economy and local govt. finances, the local govt. now looks to be bloated. /3