Tag: China

  • Shein and Temu now drive global cargo

    Maybe you have shopped on Shein or Temu. Maybe you only know someone (younger?) who has. Maybe you only know Temu because of their repeat Superbowl ads.

    But these Chinese eCommerce companies are now the main driver behind air and ship cargo rates with Temu and Shein combined accounting for 9,000 tons per day of shipments!

    This is scale.


    Rise of fast-fashion Shein, Temu roils global air cargo industry
    Arriana McLymore, Casey Hall, and Lisa Barrington | Reuters

  • Will Hong Kong Put the Fear Into China’s Property Builders?

    The collapse of China’s massive property bubble is under way and it is wreaking havoc as significant amounts of the debt raised by Chinese property builders is from offshore investors.

    Because of (well-founded) concerns on how Chinese Mainland courts would treat foreign concerns, most of these agreements have historically been conducted under Hong Kong law. As a result, foreign creditors have (understandably) hauled their deadbeat Chinese property builder debtors to court there.

    While the judgements (especially from Linda Chan, the subject of this Bloomberg article) are unsurprisingly against the Chinese property builders (who have been slow to release credible debt restructuring plans), the big question remains whether the Mainland Chinese government will actually enforce these rulings. It certainly would make life harder on (at least until recently very well-connected) Chinese property builders at a moment of weakness in the sector.

    But, failure to do so would also hurt the Chinese government’s goal of encouraging more foreign investment: after all, why would you invest in a country where you can’t trust the legal paper?


  • Hopelessness in China’s Youth

    This article in the Economist paints a dismal picture of the state of life for the youth in China: youth unemployment so high the government has stopped reporting on it (as if that was going to change anything…), housing and childcare costs so high that young people have given up on having traditional families, a government and state-run media that actively scolds them for being soft and pampered, and the best and brightest fleeing to Singapore…

    How’s that “Chinese dream 中國夢” going?