Understanding China's economy and the housing bust, with Tianlei Huang | Event | PIIE
Learn how China's economy has evolved in recent years, ranging from its manufacturing exports sector to the massive housing boom and bust and more, with one of PIIE's top China experts, Senior Fellow Tianlei Huang. What can we learn from China's changing consumption and investment patterns? How did the housing market become so important to China's economy and what does its downfall mean moving forward? Huang explains all of this and more to host Anjali V. Bhatt, drawing on research from his forthcoming book, Detox: China's Fiscal Reckoning in the Shadow of the Housing Bust.
China vs. America: Who the World Trades With Most
In 2000, only 33 countries traded more with China than with the United States.
By 2025, China had become the top goods trading partner for most countries worldwide.
Only a handful of African countries still trade more with the U.S. than China.
Ranked: How Economic Power Shifted in the Last 10 Years
Japan was the only G20 economy to shrink between 2016 and 2026.
Russia’s economy more than doubled in size despite Western sanctions.
India nearly caught up with Japan and Germany after expanding its economy by 83%.
Ranked: The World’s Biggest Gold Producers
China remained the world’s largest gold producer in 2024, mining more than 380 tonnes.
African countries collectively produced nearly one-quarter of global gold supply.
Russia, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. ranked among the world’s top producers.
In 2024: Suriname produced 27.7m tonnes, ranked 30th; Guyana produced 13.5 tonnes, ranked 39th.
35 and Out: Lin Wenlian's study confirms mid-career hiring cliff in China
In Chinese online slang, “35” has become a bleak joke: too young to die, too old to get hired.
The joke works because the number appears in real recruitment settings. Many civil-service posts are closed to applicants above 35. Corporate job advertisements, especially for junior and mid-level roles, often use the same cut-off. In practice, age can be screened before a candidate’s skills, work record, or productivity are considered.
The number also reflects how employers often assess workers in their mid-thirties. By 35, many Chinese workers have a salary history, a mortgage, children, ageing parents, and less tolerance for unpaid overtime presented as commitment. And failure to have achieved a managerial promotion or a notable career milestone by 35 is often read as a signal of low professional ability. These factors contribute to a negative framing of mid-career employees and make them less attractive to employers seeking to control labour costs and maintain a highly compliant workforce.
Beijing Did Not Simply “Write the Script” - by Zichen Wang
The German Marshall Fund of the United States has just published a thoughtful and pointed commentary titled “Beijing Wrote the Script,” arguing that China “slipped a loaded phrase” into the White House statement on the Trump-Xi summit.
The phrase in question is one of the summit’s most eye-catching diplomatic outcomes: that the United States and China should build what the White House called “a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity.”
The GMF piece is right to take diplomatic language seriously, but perhaps went too far in implying that the Trump White House may not have understood what it was accepting…
A more plausible reading is that there was back-and-forth. Rubio began with “strategic stability.” Beijing wanted a broader, relationship-defining formula. Washington accepted a version of it, but added its own limiting language: fairness and reciprocity. Both sides then presented the result in ways that served their own political and diplomatic needs.
That is diplomacy. It may prove wise or unwise. But it is not the same as being duped.
The distinction matters. If the United States knowingly made a trade-off, then the debate should be about whether that trade-off was worthwhile — not whether China somehow slipped a phrase past the White House.
Both sides know words matter. Both sides got words they wanted. And both sides will now try to use those words to shape what comes next.
Brussels Blames China. The Data Point Elsewhere
…A new, detailed analysis by the China Finance 40 Forum shows the increase in Chinese exports to Europe has been highly concentrated in a few sectors—electric vehicles, batteries, photovoltaic products, and chemicals—where Europe’s own green transition and energy shock created real demand. Meanwhile, the decline in European exports to China has not been driven mainly by a shrinking Chinese market, but by China’s industrial upgrading and import substitution.
In other words, the imbalance is not simply something China has done to Europe. It is also something Europe’s own energy costs, industrial structure, and transition choices have helped produce….
China’s landmark Pinglu Canal has entered its final phase of construction and is set to begin trial operations as early as September, with a first shipping route linking the country’s heartlands to the free-trade port of Hainan, according to Chinese state media reports.
The Pinglu Canal – China’s most ambitious waterway project in centuries – will stretch 134km (83 miles) from Nanning, capital of the southern Guangxi region, to the Gulf of Tonkin, known as the Beibu Gulf in China.
The aim is to give China’s less-prosperous inland regions quicker and easier access to global sea lanes, boosting local industry and strengthening trade with the country’s largest export market: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
China has moved to ease residency restrictions that prevent migrant workers from accessing social insurance where they work, in a sweeping effort to expand coverage and strengthen labour protections nationwide.
The new measures were announced on Friday by the State Council, China’s cabinet.
The move is part of China’s broader push to create a unified national market by removing barriers to the free flow of capital and talent.
Under the new policy, workers can enrol in social insurance programmes in the cities where they are employed, regardless of their official hometown registration, or hukou.
Zhou Qunfei, the woman at the helm of manufacturing giant Lens Technology, found herself seated in a favourable position at the state banquet hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping for US President Donald Trump on Thursday night, placed between two of her most important clients, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
Several Chinese business leaders attended the banquet alongside US executives and officials, including Hisense chairman Jia Shaoqian, Wanxiang Group chairman Lu Weiding, Fuyao Glass chairman Cao Hui, Air China chairman Liu Tiexiang, Comac chairman He Dongfeng, Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, Haier chairman Zhou Yunjie, and ByteDance chief executive Liang Rubo, according to footage broadcast by CCTV and media reports.
Zhou Qunfei, born in 1970 to a poor family in a village in Hunan province, left school at 15 and moved to Shenzhen to work in factories. In 1993, at the age of 23, she gathered several relatives and started a small business in a residential building in the city’s Bao’an district, focusing on screen printing on wristwatch glass. A decade later, Lens Technology was established.
This weekly newsletter is put together by DeLisle Worrell, President of the ABCF. Visit us at Association for Barbados China Friendship | (abcf-bb.com).
Thanks to everyone who sent contributions for this week’s Update. Please send items of interest to me via the contact page at ABCF-BB.com or to info@DeLisleWorrell.com
The ABCF mission is to build a deeper understanding between the Chinese people and Barbadians and Caribbean people from all walks of life. The association’s focus is on personal experiences, people-to-people contact, cultural exchanges and exchanges of ideas, and the facilitation of travel, business and study. From the outset we aim to learn from and build on the experiences of the Caribbean and China, and to develop mutual understandings and support that will be to the benefit of both sides.
