China’s Exporters Losing Competitive Edge
(New York Times – Keith Bradsher)
The Canton Fair, China’s biggest marketplace for exporters and buyers, announced at the weekend an unexpected decline in contracts signed over the past month at the fair’s spring session. The weak result was the latest sign that exporters across China are struggling to maintain their global competitiveness.
Falling export orders are also a warning for the Chinese economy because they coincide with steeply rising wages and higher rents for factory space, pushing many export factories to the brink of insolvency. Difficulties in the export sector coincide with broader weakness in the economy since last year, although there were hints of a slight recovery in March. The government has deliberately popped the real estate bubble over the past year and is pushing apartment prices down sharply in an effort to make housing more affordable. Read more here.
Date: May 9, 2012
