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Briefing: Chinese-American economic ties

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发表于 4-7-2017 11:43:46 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
本帖最后由 choi 于 4-8-2017 11:46 编辑

Briefing: Chinese-American economic ties l The Silk-Silver Axis; The world's most important economic relationship is also its most fraught. Economist, Mar 30, 2017.
http://www.economist.com/news/br ... flourishingand-deep

Quote:

(a) "IN 1784 the Empress of China set sail from New York, on the first American trade mission to China. Carrying ginseng, lead and woollen cloth, the merchants aboard dreamed of cracking open the vast Asian market. But the real profit, they found, came on their return, when they brought Chinese teas and porcelain to America. As other ships followed in its wake, the pattern became clear. Americans wanted more from China than Chinese wanted from America, and the difference was made up with a steady outflow of silver from America into China. The Empress had launched not just commercial ties between the two great countries but also an American deficit in its trade with China."

"The original sin, for Mr Trump's most hawkish advisers, is the trade imbalance. Before China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, China accounted for less than a quarter of America’s total trade deficit; over the past five years, it has made up two-thirds. * * * [Yet] Counting the bits and pieces from other countries that go into “made in China” smartphones, fridges and televisions, China’s trade surplus with America is about a third smaller than officially reported.

"Even if America as a whole runs a deficit, it has industries and companies that increasingly rely on Chinese demand. Nearly half its [America's] fruit and seed exports go to China. China is in some months the world's biggest market for iPhones. Semiconductor-makers such as Qualcomm and Broadcom derive most of their revenues from China

"Start with a myth—that China can bankrupt the American government. Over the past decade, China has invested more than $1trn in Treasuries. * * * Pundits fret that, were China to dump its bonds, American interest rates would shoot up and the dollar plummet.  But that is to misunderstand the financial mechanics. The Federal Reserve has demonstrated that it can buy far more government bonds than any foreign or domestic holder can sell.

"For firms that have made it in China, the rewards have been immense. Through joint ventures with local partners, GM sells more cars, and makes more profits, in China than it does anywhere in the world. Over the next two decades, Boeing estimates, China will buy 6,000 new aeroplanes, becoming its first trillion-dollar market.

"Others argue that fears of 'Made in China 2025 中国制造2025' are overblown. Government interventions may work in industries such as solar power and railways, which are dominated by subsidies and public-sector procurement. But they have already been seen to fail in consumer industries such as carmaking.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest of the text, which talks about things we are familiar with. The briefing consists of three pages in print, though four charts in it take some space.
(b) Empress of China (1783)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_of_China_(1783)
(c) "American companies initially lighted on China as a cheap manufacturing base"

light (vi):
"1: (light on/upon) come upon or discover by chance  <he lit on a possible solution>
2: archaic  descend <from the horse he lit down>
More example sentences
2.1: (light on) fall and settle or land on (a surface)  <a feather just lighted on the ground>"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/light

(d) About the penultimate quotation. "GM sells more cars, and makes more profits, in China than it does anywhere in the world."

"[S]ells more cars" is correct, but "more profits" is simply wrong -- because on average, GM's profit (not revenue, which is the right gauge) from a car sold in China in 2016 was less than one sixth of that in North America, considering smaller sales volume (3.04m v 3.87m). See quotation (B) below.

(i) GM issued a press release on Feb 7 titled "GM Reports Record Full-Year Earnings Per Share," which gave a preview of 4Q16 and the whole 2016 financial data.
http://www.gm.com/investors/earnings-releases.html
(ii) Melissa Burden, GM Posts $9.43B in Net Profits for '16. Detroit Free Press, Feb 7, 2017
www.detroitnews.com/story/busine ... reat-year/97582884/

Quote:

(A) "The company's profit center again was North America [the press release did not further break down into US and Canada], where pre-tax adjusted profit grew [to $12 billion] from $11 billion in 2015.

"In the US last year, GM sold 3.04 million vehicles, down 1.3 percent from 2015. GM, which is focusing on growing sales to retail customers and is reducing sales to less profitable rental customers, said its retail sales in the US last year were up nearly 2 percent. It gained 0.5 percentage points of US retail market share in 2016.

"While overall US sales are down, GM is selling its vehicles at higher prices. The company's average transaction price in 2016 totaled nearly $35,400, more than $4,200 above the industry average and up more than $700 from GM’s 2015 figure, [GM CEO Mary]Barra said.

(B) "The company and its joint ventures also sold a record 3.87 million vehicles in China last year, GM's largest sales market. Sales there rose 7.1 percent last year. * * * For the year [2016], GM made $2 billion in equity income in China, flat with earnings a year ago.
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