Tea Leaf Nation

Listen closely; that’s the sound of wings flapping. China’s migratory birds are in full flight. A recent survey found that over half of Chinese millionaires are either emigrating or thinking of doing so. Netizens of Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, may not be able to afford that visa application and plane ticket, but they can afford [...]

Han Zhiguo (@韩志国), a social-media savvy economist profiled in these pages, has tweeted his (somewhat depressing) “Five Secrets of the Chinese Economy” on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter: 1. The driving force behind development is the over-issuance of currency. In September the ratio of M2 to GDP was 2.46:1, [while] Europe and the U.S. don’t exceed [...]

On January 18, the Wall Street Journal reported that Derek Scissors, a China analyst at the Heritage Foundation, has publicly speculated that Chinese authorities are “very likely exaggerating [economic] growth.” Numbers released by China’s Bureau of Statistics show a decline from 10.4% Chinese GDP growth in 2010 to 9.2% in 2011, but Scissors said he suspects [...]