Hi folks, here in China we are still in the middle of the “golden week” long holiday, so I will keep my briefing brief by sharing with you a few items of interest to me lately.
David Fishman wrote a wonderful piece about China’s consumption problem and correctly identified the real estate sector as the single most important variable. I will be very interested in David’s take in Part 2, where he plans to discuss whether the Chinese government is being “stupid” here.
My long-term thesis is that the capital market has to step in to gradually replace real estate's role in China’s economic system. But it’s a long and winding road. Right when the long holiday starts, our team at Baiguan published our view on China assets for Baiguan Pro subscribers. Long story short: we are not optimistic. But some of our indices are doing okay.
In case you missed it, we also had an excellent interview with a true industry veteran in China’s semiconductor industry, where we heard the clearest prediction yet of exactly when China will catch up with the West in this regard.
Talking about advanced technology, we recently paid a visit to Hefei, China’s deep tech capital, and wrote a field note about it. One of the most amazing parts of our visit was the visit to the controlled nuclear fusion facility. We didn’t get to see the actual device, but saw a highly informative exhibition as well as an impressively gigantic component of a fusion tokamak. We drove by the futuristic building of the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak, or BEST. We were not notified at the time, but on Oct 1, BEST was officially “put into use” ahead of schedule.
This could be a consequential moment, whose real significance may only be felt decades into the future.
We won’t lead a tour to Hefei this year (this probably will happen next year). But in 2 weeks’ time, Baiguan’s China Tour series for Fall 2026 will start.
There are still some remaining seats for our AI & Robotics tour (Oct18 - 23) and Advanced Manufacturing tour (Oct 26-30), so make sure to apply here if you are interested.