SORRY HATERS, CHINA HAD A RECORD YEAR IN 2022

beijingwalker · Jan 29, 2023

SORRY HATERS, CHINA HAD A RECORD YEAR IN 2022

on January 24, 2023.
— Chris Kanthan

In 2022, China was supposed to collapse. Remember the real estate crisis, banks going belly up, economy destroyed by zero-COVID policy, revolt and coup against Xi Jinping etc? I watch a lot of anti-China videos on YouTube. Many of them are quite fascinating, since they have information not available in mainstream media. However, they make two blunders. First, they only focus on negative stuff. Second, they extrapolate the negative news across time and space — that is, if one city has a problem for a week, the anti-China people turn that into a China-wide problem and a year-around problem. (Or worse, they repeat it for years and decades). This is why the regular audience of these “China collapse” news will be surprised to know that China had a record year in 2022. Here are some quick facts and stats:

China had record trade! Yup, China’s total international trade in 2022 was whopping ¥42 or $6.3 trillion! Trade was up 7.7% from 2021. (Don’t say that China’s numbers are rigged! LOL. All foreign trade numbers are verified by other countries).

US-China trade also hit a record! While the full number are not out from the US, the bilateral trade will be more than $700 billion. Of course, much of it would be U.S. imports from China. No decoupling yet, but keep dreaming!

China had record exports! Despite all the sensational news about lockdowns, Chinese companies managed to export ¥24 trillion or $3.6 trillion last year.
China had record trade surplus! While the US likely had record trade deficit, China had record trade surplus in 2022… a mind-blowing amount of $877 billion. That’s larger than the GDP of Turkiye, the 20th largest economy in the world!

China had record IPO! China was #1 in the world for IPO — both in number of companies that went public and in money raised. Chinese startups raised record $92 billion in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing exchanges — accounting for almost half of global IPO in 2022. That was 10x the US, which had an abysmal year when just 130 deals managed to raise a pitiful amount of $9 billion. IPOs in the USA were down a shocking 95% from the previous year.

China had record FDI: While the U.S. keeps crying about decoupling from China, the rest of the world — especially Europe — invested a lot of money in China in the form of Foreign Direct Investment. The total FDI in 2022 was record $185 billion. And if you think that China’s manufacturing is slowing down, the FDI in manufacturing sector was $48 billion.

China had a record year for EV sales! China’s production of electric vehicles in 2022 exploded to 6.5 million — 60% of the global market share! Pure battery electric cars accounted for 20% of new car sales in China in 2022. Plug-in hybrid was another 5% or so. The total stock of new energy vehicles (NEV) in China is about 13 million now! Tesla also sold about 400,000 cars in China in 2022, proving that the Chinese middle class is vibrant and wealthy.

China had record number of Fortune 500 companies: 134 in mainland China!

China had record space launches! 64 space launches in total.

Conclusion

While China’s real GDP grew only 3% in 2022, it was a pretty good year for China in many other ways. It kept the inflation down to 1.8% and retail sales was more than $6 trillion.

China’s GDP in 2022 was ¥121 trillion or $18 trillion. This year, with the Yuan strengthening a bit (maybe 6%) and a real GDP growth rate of 7%, China’s GDP in 2023 will increase by $3 trillion to $21 trillion.

In 2022, China had achievements in many areas — building a space station, maintaining the #1 spot in WIPO patents etc. The US’ intense and illegal tech war on China — especially in semiconductors — is the biggest challenge for China. Whether China will have a breakthrough in this area is yet to be seen. If it can make chip-making EUV machines like those of ASML or Tokyo Electron, it’s game over for the US.

Xi Jinping’s trip to the Middle East was a huge success. The next three years will be really about financial wars. China, Russia and possibly BRICS+ will try to defang the American dollar. Only one guy, Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse, is really talking about the threat to the Petrodollar. The rest of the American pundits are living in a delusional world.