Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
- Start date
A breakdown of production for this year vs last year. Which ones grew a lot and which ones shrunk. Most obvious drops are stuff like toys and clothing which have shifted some to other Asian countries. The biggest hit is probably phones, where Apple moved some production to India.
More interesting data from this month. industrial robot production is up 29.8% YoY. First 3 quarters had 595k including 76k in just September and this is now already surpassed all of 2025. China's robotic surge has really caught the eyes of Westerners. I think it's just a red herring of the whole industrial base moving up, but flashy stuff like robots and EVs catch all the attentions.
Interesting part is that Weichai already uses large models as "AI super engineers" in its R&D.
Does China stockpile iron? I would imagine it would be of immense help to use the USD surplus to just buy physical resources and stockpile them. Obviously, can't be done for everything because of fungibility or storage costs, but maybe iron is different.