December 19, 2025 • 8 mins
In November China's economy showed clear signs of strain as investment, consumption, and industrial output all weakened more than anticipated.
"I think the most worrying thing is fixed asset investment actually, which has now declined for the 3rd month in a row," Asia business correspondent Peter Lewis told Andrew Dickens
"We've never seen that before."
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sale is coming. Please don't find.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to the program. And so the battle continues
on the text ninety two ninety two small charge appliers
about whether a duty lawyer on one hundred and eight
dollars an hour as well paid or not. And of
course we've got some people who are caregivers saying i'd
call for that sort of money because they're on less
and we know that. And we've got another text in
here saying, dickens, a caregiver doesn't go to law school
for five years and come out with a massive debt.
(00:39):
So that is a stupid comparison, but that is true.
But at the same time, a caregether lives with the
person that they're given care with, possibly for all their lives.
Many caregivers never work at all and can never work
at all because they have somebody that they have to
give care too and it's not their choice, and it
is a full time profession, and the work they do,
(01:00):
it's very important because it saves the state from the
money spent from institutionalization. So that's sort of fair comparison.
Either the duty lawyer is doing something of their own
volition and of their own choice. But many caregivers have
not been given the choice. It's their familial obligation. And
really if they were given the choice and they could
(01:22):
actually make the decision, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
At the same time, both of them, the duty lawyer
and the caregiver, are doing God's work and I thank
you for that. It is twenty two to seven. After
Asia we go Peter Lewis, good evening to you.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Good evening, Andrew.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So, China's economy. We're always looking at China's economy. It's
got a bit of strain. Considering the whole twer for
and considering everything, it's been doing well, but it's showing
signs of strain. In November it is indeed.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I mean, if you look into the details, we had
a whole load of data on fixedas's investments, on retail sales,
on industrial production. I think the most worrying thing is
fixed acid investments actually, which has now declined for the
third month in a row. Now we've never seen that before.
Since data was first published by China on its economy.
(02:17):
Normally there's been a lot of interest in investing in China.
But what this is now term negative and it shows
that both businesses and households just don't want to invest
at the moment in the Chinese economy.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
One of the main reasons for that is this slide
in house prices, which we've seen now for four years, NonStop.
Investments in property down about sixteen percent from a year ago,
and that's being transmitted more to the consumer side. What
consumers are doing is they're looking to pay down debt
(02:52):
at the moment rather than spend money and build up
new expenditure. So this is going to be a challenge
for China next year because Mehijinping wants to reorientate the
economy towards more the domestic side and less reliance on exports.
(03:12):
Many overseas countries have called for that as well. They're saying.
We had Immanual Macron in Beijing just last month saying
that the pain that all this reliance and exports was
causing to overseas economies was unbearable, and the IMF has
called for China to rebalance its economy over the coming
(03:34):
months more towards domestic consumption. So this is going to
be the big challenge for China next year. Now, in
some ways, I mean, you know, it's in a good
position to be able to do that. If you look
at this economy overall, it's growing at five percent year
on year. Now that's a good rate of growth. Many
countries would be would love to see that sort of growth.
(03:55):
But it's very very lopsided, relying very very heavily on exports.
So this is going to be the big challenge for
China in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Absolutely, the Chinese tiger, though, has been going great guns
over the last fifteen to twenty years. But Ji Jimping
gave a very interesting warning to his officials because he
doesn't want them to chase what he would call reckless
GDP expansion.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yes, indeed, and he's talking a lot about in particular
reckless sort of themes like large industrial parks, building all
these unnecessary cities, of some of which he is promoted.
He promoted a huge new mega city south of Beijing,
which was supposed to eventually take over from Beijing, but
(04:42):
that never really happened, and all that's there is empty
apartment blocks and empty empty factories. But he wants an
end to that, and he wants sort of economic plans
to be based around sustain the long term gains, particularly
(05:04):
trying to boost the sort of green economy, and he
wants to change the way in which local government officials
are evaluated. He said they shouldn't be judged on GDP
growth rates, but on broader achievements such as improving people's
well being, maintaining stability, on so on. This reminds me
a little bit of Bhutan's measure of its well being
(05:26):
by gross national happiness rather than gross national products. But
he wants he wants to change the whole way in
which officials are measured so that they're not tempted to
chase sort of unrealistic growth targets and using unsustainable methods
and fake statistics and the likes to achieve that. So
(05:50):
he wants sustainability and more long term goals in the
economic growth environments.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Will helps when you have a domestic market of like
one point to one point three billion people that you
can survive on that. And they've seen the shots that
have come from America, and they've also been developing. While
they've been doing all the export, they've also been doing
all that incredible power network and as you say, sustainable
green power production and building data centers and all that
sort of thing. So they're quite self reliant, quite a
(06:19):
remarkable economy. Now lit's been to another country. Let's go
to Thailand, where things are not getting any easier. They've
just dissolved their parliament and they're still in conflict with Cambodia.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yes, indeed, I mean Thailand has never really recovered from
the pandemic. It's an economy that's very dependent upon tourism
and it's just really struggled to get momentum behind its
economy since that, since then, and that's the case today
as well. It also has a rather unstable political environment.
(06:52):
The government has to rely on rather large, unwielderly coalitions
and there's elections on a regular base. Is well, now
we've got another one. The prime minister disaster to dissolve parliament,
which the King has granted, so that means there now
has to be another election within forty five to sixty days.
(07:14):
Rather alarmingly, the Prime Minister Anatin is sort of turning
to nationalistic sentiments. This often seems to happen with governments,
doesn't it Around Asia, around the world actually, when they're
fighting for their political survival. So he's sort of rather
relying on these border clashes with Cambodia and taking a
(07:34):
very hard line stance on that he doesn't want a
cease fire at all until basically Cambodia sort of capitulates,
and that he hope it will boost him that hard
line stance in the polls ahead of the election. The
problem is this clash with Cambodia is really disrupting trade
(08:00):
the moment and also putting tourists off as well, so
it's not helping the economy and there's a risk that
if these migrant labor flows, which Thailand is very dependent upon,
are disrupted, or even worse, if Donald Trump, who helped
broker the peace agreement between the two countries, decides to
reimpose tariffs on Thailand, then its economy is really going
(08:24):
to suffer.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
YEP, thank you so much. Peter Lewis out of the Asia.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive, listen live to
news talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
Sale is coming. Please don't find.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to the program. And so the battle continues
on the text ninety two ninety two small charge appliers
about whether a duty lawyer on one hundred and eight
dollars an hour as well paid or not. And of
course we've got some people who are caregivers saying i'd
call for that sort of money because they're on less
and we know that. And we've got another text in
here saying, dickens, a caregiver doesn't go to law school
for five years and come out with a massive debt.
(00:39):
So that is a stupid comparison, but that is true.
But at the same time, a caregether lives with the
person that they're given care with, possibly for all their lives.
Many caregivers never work at all and can never work
at all because they have somebody that they have to
give care too and it's not their choice, and it
is a full time profession, and the work they do,
(01:00):
it's very important because it saves the state from the
money spent from institutionalization. So that's sort of fair comparison.
Either the duty lawyer is doing something of their own
volition and of their own choice. But many caregivers have
not been given the choice. It's their familial obligation. And
really if they were given the choice and they could
(01:22):
actually make the decision, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
At the same time, both of them, the duty lawyer
and the caregiver, are doing God's work and I thank
you for that. It is twenty two to seven. After
Asia we go Peter Lewis, good evening to you.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Good evening, Andrew.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So, China's economy. We're always looking at China's economy. It's
got a bit of strain. Considering the whole twer for
and considering everything, it's been doing well, but it's showing
signs of strain. In November it is indeed.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I mean, if you look into the details, we had
a whole load of data on fixedas's investments, on retail sales,
on industrial production. I think the most worrying thing is
fixed acid investments actually, which has now declined for the
third month in a row. Now we've never seen that before.
Since data was first published by China on its economy.
(02:17):
Normally there's been a lot of interest in investing in China.
But what this is now term negative and it shows
that both businesses and households just don't want to invest
at the moment in the Chinese economy.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
One of the main reasons for that is this slide
in house prices, which we've seen now for four years, NonStop.
Investments in property down about sixteen percent from a year ago,
and that's being transmitted more to the consumer side. What
consumers are doing is they're looking to pay down debt
(02:52):
at the moment rather than spend money and build up
new expenditure. So this is going to be a challenge
for China next year because Mehijinping wants to reorientate the
economy towards more the domestic side and less reliance on exports.
(03:12):
Many overseas countries have called for that as well. They're saying.
We had Immanual Macron in Beijing just last month saying
that the pain that all this reliance and exports was
causing to overseas economies was unbearable, and the IMF has
called for China to rebalance its economy over the coming
(03:34):
months more towards domestic consumption. So this is going to
be the big challenge for China next year. Now, in
some ways, I mean, you know, it's in a good
position to be able to do that. If you look
at this economy overall, it's growing at five percent year
on year. Now that's a good rate of growth. Many
countries would be would love to see that sort of growth.
(03:55):
But it's very very lopsided, relying very very heavily on exports.
So this is going to be the big challenge for
China in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Absolutely, the Chinese tiger, though, has been going great guns
over the last fifteen to twenty years. But Ji Jimping
gave a very interesting warning to his officials because he
doesn't want them to chase what he would call reckless
GDP expansion.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yes, indeed, and he's talking a lot about in particular
reckless sort of themes like large industrial parks, building all
these unnecessary cities, of some of which he is promoted.
He promoted a huge new mega city south of Beijing,
which was supposed to eventually take over from Beijing, but
(04:42):
that never really happened, and all that's there is empty
apartment blocks and empty empty factories. But he wants an
end to that, and he wants sort of economic plans
to be based around sustain the long term gains, particularly
(05:04):
trying to boost the sort of green economy, and he
wants to change the way in which local government officials
are evaluated. He said they shouldn't be judged on GDP
growth rates, but on broader achievements such as improving people's
well being, maintaining stability, on so on. This reminds me
a little bit of Bhutan's measure of its well being
(05:26):
by gross national happiness rather than gross national products. But
he wants he wants to change the whole way in
which officials are measured so that they're not tempted to
chase sort of unrealistic growth targets and using unsustainable methods
and fake statistics and the likes to achieve that. So
(05:50):
he wants sustainability and more long term goals in the
economic growth environments.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Will helps when you have a domestic market of like
one point to one point three billion people that you
can survive on that. And they've seen the shots that
have come from America, and they've also been developing. While
they've been doing all the export, they've also been doing
all that incredible power network and as you say, sustainable
green power production and building data centers and all that
sort of thing. So they're quite self reliant, quite a
(06:19):
remarkable economy. Now lit's been to another country. Let's go
to Thailand, where things are not getting any easier. They've
just dissolved their parliament and they're still in conflict with Cambodia.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yes, indeed, I mean Thailand has never really recovered from
the pandemic. It's an economy that's very dependent upon tourism
and it's just really struggled to get momentum behind its
economy since that, since then, and that's the case today
as well. It also has a rather unstable political environment.
(06:52):
The government has to rely on rather large, unwielderly coalitions
and there's elections on a regular base. Is well, now
we've got another one. The prime minister disaster to dissolve parliament,
which the King has granted, so that means there now
has to be another election within forty five to sixty days.
(07:14):
Rather alarmingly, the Prime Minister Anatin is sort of turning
to nationalistic sentiments. This often seems to happen with governments,
doesn't it Around Asia, around the world actually, when they're
fighting for their political survival. So he's sort of rather
relying on these border clashes with Cambodia and taking a
(07:34):
very hard line stance on that he doesn't want a
cease fire at all until basically Cambodia sort of capitulates,
and that he hope it will boost him that hard
line stance in the polls ahead of the election. The
problem is this clash with Cambodia is really disrupting trade
(08:00):
the moment and also putting tourists off as well, so
it's not helping the economy and there's a risk that
if these migrant labor flows, which Thailand is very dependent upon,
are disrupted, or even worse, if Donald Trump, who helped
broker the peace agreement between the two countries, decides to
reimpose tariffs on Thailand, then its economy is really going
(08:24):
to suffer.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
YEP, thank you so much. Peter Lewis out of the Asia.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive, listen live to
news talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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