1/ As we prepare to leave #Hualien, which is still trembling — seemingly small aftershocks nearly every half hour, or even more frequently — here is our big piece on the quake with @joyuwang and @ByChunHan.

Whoops, wrong link:

Interesting to see these signs around town “Use of illegal foreign labor strictly prohibited.”. Wrote recently on demographic strains in NE Asia, incl. TW: Huge pressure to use foreign labor w/ the fertility rate barely 1. But contentious of course…

RT @hkfp: Police stopped and searched a woman whose mobile phone had its torch function turned on. Officers asked her where she was going,….

RT @ryanl_hass: Important point from interesting interview w/ @alecash: "My fear is China is becoming somewhat of an abstraction. or seen….

RT @nate_taplin: 1/ Today’s weak #China #PMI demonstrates the clear downsides of Beijing’s plan to manufacture/export its way out of troubl….

6/ My full take here:

5/ If the U.S. really does head into recession later this year, rather than a soft landing, then things will get really interesting….

4/ And weak capacity utillization across the board

3/ No surprise then to see continued downward pressure on prices and margins

2/ For the past 2 months, output growth has run well ahead of new orders, replicating the pattern seen in late ‘23

1/ Today’s weak #China #PMI demonstrates the clear downsides of Beijing’s plan to manufacture/export its way out of trouble. Especially in an environment where US consumers are getting grumpy again

RT @jingyanghk: Elaine and I worked on the same team and we survived the gruesome Beijing Winter Olympics ‘bubble’ together. She’s a tale….

RT @EvanFeigenbaum: Make competition with China the lodestar of American foreign policy . but don't teach anyone to speak or read the lan….

RT @tculpan: Taiwan is rocking & rollin’ tonight. There’s been at least 20 earthquakes in the past 2.5 hours. All rather minor, but this….

In other news, @JinjLee and my commodities, fashion and geopolitics-focused hedge fund is opening for subscriptions this week

RT @nate_taplin: 1/ As we prepare to leave #Hualien, which is still trembling — seemingly small aftershocks nearly every half hour, or even….

4/ …and dived into the nitty gritty of Taiwan’s new post-1999 building codes, and the consequences of individual landlords’ decisions—for example that of the hotel next to 天王星大樓，which reinforced after the last big quake.

3/ We also spoke with city officials and experts who elaborated on why the toll for this 7.4 quake — 10 confirmed dead so far — was less than in 1999 and other large quakes Taiwan has experienced, and visited Hualien’s disaster response center

We spent yesterday talking to survivors at a local shelter, some of whom had escaped the collapsing 天王星大樓 — or watched it fall, just before they were about to arrive back