China's economic shocks have thrown the world off balance
buoyant conditions spreading across the globe. The world was said to be on the cusp of an unusually synchronized expansion. Few people still spoke of a jobless recovery in America, and China, after some rare stumbles, appeared to be returning to its old robust self.
Inflation was off the floor, seen as a good thing. Japan and the euro region looked good, the latter having put a crippling debt crisis behind it. The beauty of this surprising togetherness, hailed in early 2017 by articles from Bloomberg News and a story on the cover of The Economist, was that it would lighten the burden carried by the US.
Not even the trade tensions between Washington and Beijing made much of a dent. Happy days beckoned and, for a while, they panned out. But is the world now beset by a worrying bout of lopsidedness? The picture is discouraging.
China, a source of so much commercial vitality the past few decades, just can’t catch a break. Reports this week revealed new blows to a wobbly recovery. Exports swooned, imports dropped alarmingly and, after months of anemic inflation, consumer prices actually fell in July from a year ago.
The deflation is expected to be temporary, given that CPI rose compared with the prior month and that food prices — a big culprit — are projected to pick up. That's little comfort. There's a troubling lack of demand in the second-largest economy.
There's also an abundance of negativity. People are looking for signs of weakness in the Chinese economy, so chastening has been the experience of watching rosy predictions for the reopening fade fast. Another data dump, another dour assessment.
The property sector is a source of woe. Country Garden Holdings Co., once the biggest builder by sales, is teetering. The
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