China’s digital economy has expanded rapidly in recent years, including both the emergence of new digital industries and the digitalization of traditional sectors. This brings significant opportunities but also potential risks. The blog discusses the pros and cons of digitalization and how the government can do better in maximizing the benefit while minimizing the risks.
General Motors and Apple sold more cars and iPhones in China than in the US, but their sales were not counted as US exports to China, as these were made and sold in China. Policymakers should look at both trade and local sales by foreign firms (the FDI channel) to gauge bilateral economic balance. We estimate that US firms sold more goods and services to China than Chinese firms sold to the US in 2017, once the FDI channel is taken into account.
Although studies on economic inequality and intergenerational mobility have gained traction in the last decade, little is known about the temporal changes in the intergenerational association of economic status, especially in developing and transitional economies. We find an increasing pattern in intergenerational income persistence across China’s transitional period. To promote intergenerational mobility, the Chinese government should continue to remove rural-urban migration barriers and initiate various programs to subsidize the education of children from disadvantaged families, known as the “left-behind” children.
This article discussing the changes in the exchange rate between the offshore yuan (CNH) and onshore yuan (CNY) help stabilize the CNY-US dollar exchange rate, but they also pose challenges to China's capital controls.
When comparing the credit ratings of domestic and global agencies on Chinese corporations, because of the differences in ratings scales, it is best to focus on the domestic and global agency orderings of relative credit risk. Testing for differences in the determinants of ratings, we find that asset size is weighed more heavily as a positive factor by domestic agencies, while profitability and state-ownership are weighed more positively by global rating agencies, which also weigh leverage more heavily as a negative factor. In spite of these differences, both domestic and global ratings appear to be priced into the market values of rated bonds.