- “Readers will by now be familiar with the list of industries impacted by the US China trade war. These include soyabeans, cars, steel, and semiconductors.But one commodity is increasingly important to how the tensions play out: students. The Chinese state media is now saying the government will issue a warning on the risk of studying in the US”
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The FT reports on how Chinese students will now be discouraged from going to American Universities – in a sense, an expected move, but you would be surprised at just how dependent universities in America today are on foreign students. Interesting times.
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.. - “To summarize, based on the above I doubt that actual Chinese growth is more than 1% below the reported figures, at least up through 2018. Of course it’s possible that things have changed in 2019; if so I expect that to show up in upcoming airline travel data for China.”
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Scott Sumner patiently reminds us that we should look at the data before making a claim, and having looked at the airline data, he rejects the notion that there is a dramatic slowdown in China. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle.
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.. - “Vietnam, like China really doesn’t import very many manufactures from the United States. That’s partially a function of the fact that the value added in Vietnam is often low, and thus Vietnam cannot afford a lot of top of the line U.S. capital goods (yet). But it is also a function of the fact that many of the global value chains that generate large (often offshore) profits for U.S. firms don’t give rise to that much U.S. production these days. There just isn’t much sign that the Asian value chains stretch back to include U.S. factories and workers. Fabless semiconductor firms that design chips likely export their designs to a low tax jurisdiction before they license their designs to an Asian contract manufacturer. The rise in Vietnam’s exports hasn’t been associated with a commensurate rise in exports from the United States to Vietnam.”
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Brad Setser takes a look at whether Vietnam is the new China, and concludes that it kind of is, and kind of isn’t.
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.. - “It is not surprising that the CPC has worked so hard to extirpate the Tiananmen Square massacre from public memory. History – including the horrors of Mao Zedong’s rule – is too volatile a substance for the Chinese dictatorship. China’s leaders hold up their system of government as a model for other countries. But how can a regime be confident in the sustainability of its values and methods if it is afraid of its own past?”
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Chris Patten (who knows a thing or two about this issue) reviews the Tiananmen square massacre, and ponders on what it means for China and Hong Kong today.
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.. - “Despite a small increase in young and female lawmakers—like Ms Suematsu, who is in her forties—local politics is still dominated by old men. “In these municipalities, candidates are so old they have a hard time putting up election posters,” says Shigeki Uno of the Nippon Institute for Research Advancement, another think-tank. Indeed, three-quarters of town and village assembly members are over 60. The oldest, aged 91, holds a seat on a city assembly in Shizuoka, in central Japan.Young people are loth to stand because local politics is not a financially rewarding profession. The law bans assembly members from holding other jobs concurrently. Their pay averages around ¥300,000 ($2,740) a month, hardly enough to support young families. “It’s basically a job for the retired,” sniffs Mr Uno. And for little pay, the workload is onerous.”
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The Economist reports on Japan, and it’s ageing population – and what that means for democracy on the ground, at local elections.
EconForEverybody 
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