Chart: China Property Stocks Fall 20% From May High as Concerns Linger

Long-term Chart

Source : Bloomberg

Music Video: Philadelphia Freedom

Elton John Band

Watch video at You Tube (5:38 minutes) . . . .

Mapped: The World’s Best Restaurants in 2024

Source : Statista

Stephen Roach Returns to HK to ‘Face The Music’ For Grim Outlook

Economist Stephen Roach held firm to his gloomy view on Hong Kong and China on his first trip to the city after his sharp comments spurred rebuttals from former officials and an apparent gag order during a major Beijing conference.

The former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman offered a grim analysis of the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy in interviews with Bloomberg on Monday. He’s also doubling down on a contentious debate on Hong Kong’s future as the Asia finance hub struggles to burnish its global image, which has taken a beating from its pandemic self-isolation and a continuing crackdown on dissent.

“I want to come back here and face the music. I’ve gotten a lot of pushback on these articles that I’ve written,” Roach said. “People are upset about them, they’re talking about them. And so I am here to face the debate and exchange views.”

Roach described returning to the former British colony to the sight of a giant “We Love Hong Kong” display on his old office building, part of a light show to draw tourists to a city that Roach said was “over” in a newspaper column in February. He said he would debate prominent figures including real estate tycoon Ronnie Chan and take part in public discussions, as well as meeting corporate and former government leaders.

Roach’s column triggered rebuttals from prominent figures in Hong Kong including Regina Ip, convener of the local government’s advisory Executive Council. In a letter to the Financial Times, PAG executive chairman Weijian Shan argued it was premature to write off Hong Kong as it remains appealing as a free and open society with an independent judiciary and low taxes.

In response to criticism that his analysis discounts the city’s history of bouncing back from political, public health and financial challenges, Roach stressed its economic prospects are tied to the mainland.

“There ain’t gonna be any resilience here if China continues to underperform, period,” he said, pointing to the parallel slowdown in growth rates for the city and country at large. “It’s not something that I think you can necessarily count on to persist and project into the future.”

Roach warned that a growing intolerance of debate in China could lead the country astray, exemplified by what he described as Beijing’s attempt to silence him at a prominent event in the Chinese capital.

Roach said he was “muzzled” at the China Development Forum in March for the first time in a quarter century after being advised, “‘It’s in your best interest, in our best interest if you don’t speak.’” In a previous blog post, he said “powers that be” warned him his remarks could be misinterpreted, without identifying who they were.

The forum also refused to publish an academic paper he submitted for the first time since he was invited to make such contributions 10 years ago, he said, even though organizers had previously confirmed its topic — the structural challenges faced by China including rapid aging, the declining workforce and weak productivity.

“Xi Jinping has sent the message that the internal debate needs to be focused more on what he calls the good stories of China,” said Roach, a lecturer at Yale University who previously worked for three decades at Morgan Stanley. “It’s up to him to define what the word good is.”

Roach told Bloomberg Television in a separate interview on Monday he found a grim mood on the ground in Beijing especially among entrepreneurs and students when he visited recently.

“I found a Beijing that really didn’t have much of the spark that I had been accustomed to over my many years of traveling there,” Roach said on Bloomberg Television. “Certainly the best I could call it was a mood of grim resignation, and you could go further but I don’t care to really do that.”

Source : BNN Bloomberg

---

Read also at The Standard

Govt and Paul Chan hit back at ‘unsupported’ pessimistic remarks by Stephen Roach . . . . .

Infographic: The World’s Largest Economies – Comparing the U.S. and China

Source : Visual Capitalist

AI Tools to Detect Dementia under Development in Japan

Efforts are underway in Japan to develop artificial intelligence-based tools that will help detect dementia at an early stage, including one that analyzes how people walk.

Those tools are expected to lower risks of elderly people failing to notice that they have the condition and see a doctor early or roaming around, easing concerns of those people and their families.

Since February, Ridgelinez Ltd., a Fujitsu Ltd. unit that offers consulting services, has been working with the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center and AI startup Noel Inc. to develop a system that will detect characteristics seen in the way people with dementia walk.

Using AI-based posture recognition technology adopted in Fujitsu’s judging support system for artistic gymnastics competitions, the tool will find signs of dementia like small steps from video footage taken at cameras in public facilities, allowing people around those with such symptoms to talk to them about the possible problem.

The three entities involved in the development of the tool will work on information management rules for privacy protection and conduct analysis in cooperation with nursing care facilities, to put it into practical use in fiscal 2027.

Source : Nippon