The View

Daily analysis of the major talking points in the worlds of business and investing with a focus on implications for doing both in mainland China and its key financing hub - Hong Kong.

Before Typhoon Mangkhut hit Hong Kong on Sunday, there was a serious debate about whether to tape up windows. Afterwards, there seemed to be just as much glass on the ground bearing shreds of tape as not. Photo: Nora Tam

Why Typhoon Mangkhut was like a stock market crash

The information overload, panic, calm, storm and blame game: was Hong Kong hit by a super typhoon or a market crash?

20 Sep 2018 - 10:31pm 3

People cross the Lok Ma Chau border station from Shenzhen into Hong Kong on September 4. Photo: Roy Issa

A reminder to Hong Kong: immigration is good for business

19 Sep 2018 - 10:32pm 3

In the past, China-based trade fairs were all about what Chinese companies could sell to the world. The upcoming China International Import Expo, at Shanghai’s National Exhibition and Convention Centre in November, is about foreign companies selling to China. Photo: Handout

Amid a trade war, the world needs China’s 1.4 billion consumers

18 Sep 2018 - 10:56pm 6

Chinese companies, many in construction and real estate, have added a staggering US$15 trillion in debt since 2007. Photo: Reuters

Why China is not the new Lehman Brothers

17 Sep 2018 - 10:30pm 6

A view of the east third ring road in Beijing on July 24. Photo: Xinhua

China’s lost decade: have we already seen the best?

13 Sep 2018 - 10:32pm 24

Forget the trade war. Chinese companies, including real estate firms, face other challenges like government regulation of borrowing. Photo: AFP

Beyond the trade war: how Chinese companies can survive the next decade

12 Sep 2018 - 10:43pm 3

The East Coast Rail Link in Malaysia is among the projects suspended after the election of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in May due to concerns their benefits would be “lopsided” in China’s favour. Photo: Xinhua

China’s belt and road can’t meet Asia’s infrastructure needs alone

11 Sep 2018 - 10:32pm 4

Chinese President Xi Jinping with African leaders in Beijing on September 3, during a group photo session at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Photo: AP

Why China’s investment in Africa might not be so smart

7 Sep 2018 - 5:57am 73

A victim of human trafficking recounts his mistreatment at the hands of his former employer in 2016. The Pakistani man worked in Hong Kong between 2007 and 2010 without being paid, and was beaten and threatened. Photo: Dickson Lee

Ending modern slavery in business is possible. Here’s how

5 Sep 2018 - 10:32pm

Farmers plant paddy rice seedlings in central China’s Hunan province in May. Exposing emerging markets to unrestricted capital inflows could be likened to connecting small farms to massive irrigation pipelines to test the effects of a deluge. Photo: Xinhua

How currency crisis is the product of global liquidity deluge

4 Sep 2018 - 10:46pm 3

A woman shops in a supermarket in Kowloon Bay on August 2. Photo: Roy Issa

Why Hong Kong offers grocery shoppers few good deals

30 Aug 2018 - 10:47pm 41

A McDonald’s delivery man rides past an abandoned railway track near residential buildings in Beijing in May 2017. Photo: AP

Why Chinese firms might be hardest hit by boycotts of US brands

29 Aug 2018 - 10:31pm 4

Richard Wong says the hidden free lunch in Hong Kong’s housing market is the space that could be freed up if public housing renters and subsidised housing owners were allowed to lease out their flats

How to increase Hong Kong housing supply without building more flats

28 Aug 2018 - 10:34pm 20

The Chinese economic model could come across as less threatening to the US-led economic system if China could tone down its bragging and focus on improving lives for its huge working-class population. Photo: Reuters

Trade war is an attack on China’s economic model

28 Aug 2018 - 11:06am 28

US President Donald Trump salutes his supporters after speaking at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on August 21. Trump remains defiant in the face of his former personal lawyer pleading guilty to violating campaign laws. Photo: AFP

If the noose is tightening around Trump, should investors worry?

23 Aug 2018 - 10:58pm 3

US President Donald Trump wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to scrap the requirement for three-monthly earnings reports. Photo: Bloomberg

Sometimes even Trump is right: quarterly earnings reports need to go

22 Aug 2018 - 10:31pm 1

China could retaliate against the US by imposing tariffs on Boeing planes, but that would only ensure Airbus seeks higher prices. Photo: Reuters

Why China shouldn’t go tit for tat in US trade war

21 Aug 2018 - 10:30pm 8

Tencent’s shock profit slump caused a sharper one-day fall in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index – the leading equity gauge for developing economies – than on the day Turkey’s currency crisis erupted. Photo: Bloomberg

Focus on Tencent’s woes, not the Turkish lira

20 Aug 2018 - 10:38pm

People wait at a currency exchange shop in Istanbul on August 15. The Turkish lira has nosedived in value in the past week, but some Turks are reacting with defiance to their plunging currency and an escalating trade and political dispute with the United States. Photo: AP

Forget the trade war – worry about the strong US dollar

17 Aug 2018 - 4:46pm 10

Elon Musk listens at a press conference following the first launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 6. Musk recently caused a flurry when he tweeted his intention to take Tesla, the carmaker he founded, private. Photo: Reuters

Why Elon Musk sees shareholders as a distraction

15 Aug 2018 - 10:38pm 1

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the Indo-Pacific Business Forum at the US Chamber of Commerce on July 30 in Washington, where he delivered a keynote address on American's Indo-Pacific economic vision. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

The US plan to fight China’s ascent in Asia takes shape

14 Aug 2018 - 10:28pm 52

China’s yuan has plunged 9 per cent against the US dollar in a little less than three months. Photo: Kyodo

China’s monetary easing boosts bond market but bigger problems remain

14 Aug 2018 - 3:06am 1

A vegetable vendor displays the QR code that enables mobile payment at her stall at Po Tat Market in Sau Mau Ping, Hong Kong, in November 2017. Photo: Edmond So

As the cashless economy takes over, can we talk about debt?

9 Aug 2018 - 11:11pm 2

Plans for new US tariffs on preserves from China may have little monetary impact on the trade war, but do present an opportunity to consider the global process of how such products are produced. Photo: Jonathan Wong

A lesson from the tariffs: without global trade there’d be no marmalade

9 Aug 2018 - 6:05am 4

Chinese investment in real estate in the United States, as well as other Western countries, has slowed down. Photo: Bloomberg

Chinese demand for overseas property will rebound – with or without a trade war

7 Aug 2018 - 10:27pm 3

A woman touches a bull statue on display outside a mall in Beijing on June 18. The Shanghai Composite Index and Shenzhen Composite Index have slid nearly 25 per cent in a month. Photo: AP

China bulls and bears lock heads, leaving room for some optimism

6 Aug 2018 - 10:29pm 1

A worker walks on a structure representing the “golden bridge of the Silk Road” on display outside the National Convention Centre, the venue of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, in Beijing in April 2017. The US has sought to counter China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative with the Indo-Pacific Business Forum launched this week. Photo: AP

Where is the money for Trump’s Indo-Pacific infrastructure dream?

2 Aug 2018 - 10:30pm 17

Kit Kat chocolate wafer bars on sale in London on July 25. The European Court of Justice dismissed an appeal by Nestlé to register the shape of its four-finger Kit Kat as its trademark. Photo: EPA-EFE

As Kit Kat ruling shows, intellectual property is big business

1 Aug 2018 - 10:34pm

Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement stage a protest march near Wall Street in New York on October 12, 2011. The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programme, instituted after the 2008 financial crisis, increased income inequality. Photo: AFP

The Fed’s quantitative easing report card is mixed – except for the rich

31 Jul 2018 - 10:31pm 1

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