China’s exports in May grew about 50%, according to leaks in Beijing, news that sparked a surge on the local stockmarket.
The Shanghai Composite Index jumped by nearly 3% on the news.
Markets continued rising on the news in Europe and the uS, but then ran out of puff. oil rose a touch, gold fell and by the close in new York, red was the colour of the market indices.
Exports, which are scheduled to be reported as part of broader trade data today or tomorrow, were thought to have risen 32% in May (from the same month of 2009) after the 30.5% increase in April.
The Chinese government also seems to have leaked the sensitive consumer price inflation figures for May at a conference yesterday.
According to a Reuters report, an unnamed official said Chinese consumer prices rose 3.1% last month (the informal tip from the government was 3%) up from 2.8% in April.
Reuters said that the official also told the audience that new loans in May fell to 630 billion Yuan, from 774 billion Yuan in April.
Meanwhile new reports saw in May a faltering in the rapid rate of growth in China’s car sales with a noticeable fall from April reported .
Sales in May were up 28.35% from the same month of 2009, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said they were down 7.5% from April.
Car production showed a similar pattern: up 27.86% year on year to 1.42 million units last month, but down 9.4% from April.
That means less steel, copper, lead, zinc and plastics were used last month. And Australian iron ore and coal?
Car sales are the earliest of the monthly economic indicators to be issued in China; the bulk of the remainder will be out around midday, Australian time on Friday.
Combined sales in the first five months of the year surged 53.25 % from a year earlier to 7.6 million units while auto production rose 55.6% to 7.54 million units in the period.
Sales and production in China will exceed 15 million units this year, compared with 2009’s boom figure of 13.64 sales and 13.74 made units.
China Vanke, the country’s largest property developer by market value, says its sales revenue last month fell 20.2% from a year earlier thanks to the moves by the government to control the property sector.
In a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the company said its combined sales nationwide topped 5.11 billion Yuan ($US748 million) in May on the back of the 470,000 square meters of floor space sold: that was down 32.6% from May 2009, another sign of how deeply the government’s tightening is hurting.
Another report, from Shenzhen World Union Properties Consultancy said sales of new homes fell 71.5% in Beijing and 67.7% in Shanghai from April 19 to May 30.
While the national local governments have introduced a string of measures to cool the housing market in recent months, there was a significant ratcheting up of one particular policy over the weekend.
The Chinese government announced that it had changed its definition of what constitutes a second home.
From now on it will be based on the number of homes owned for each family, rather than by each individual, thereby banning home ownership splitting.
For the typical three-person Chinese family, it could mean six homes owned becomes just two, or if there’s a bigger family unit, the cut is greater.
The policy ends the differing definitions of second homes that various banks had been using when granting mortgages.
But there will still be loopholes, such as families using different names (original family names for example).
According to a statement released jointly by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission, a family’s actual total property holdings will be calculated by including the home ownership of the loan applicant and the applicant’s spouse and minor children.
The announcement also said banks should ask for higher down payments and mortgage rates if one of the homebuyer’s family members already owns a property with an active loan.
