China question of the day

Visits to medical institutions, hospital visits, and primary medical facilities are growing at 2.98%, 5.40%, and 1.56% respectively.

That is from Christopher Balding, read the whole post.  And that is for an aging population and in a setting where the demand for health care is for structural reasons growing rapidly.  Furthermore the use of traditional Chinese medicine is declining rapidly, fifteen percent this year from Balding’s citation.

Now let’s say the Chinese economy is about fifty percent services, though the exact number can be debated.  And we know that manufacturing PMI is down seven months in a row.

What is your estimate of the overall rate of economic growth in China?  The overall rate of growth six months or a year from now?

In the middle of this post you will find Scott Sumner on China’s growth.

Here is Krugman’s excellent post on how large China spillovers will be.  I say watch for who is exposed to the sudden weekend ten to fifteen percent devaluation.  Lots of other EM currencies have gone down by about that amount, why should China be so different or immune?  The Chinese government isn’t going to spend trillions of dollars on fighting a losing battle in the currency wars, they are simply waiting for the right time for this to happen.  Don’t be caught off-guard.

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