1. Max Roser tweets this stunning graphic that captures the change in night lights over Beijing area over the 1992-2009 period, reflecting the region's rapid pace of development.
2. Zero Hedge points to the potential headwinds faced in sustaining this pace of development. The country's latest trade data appears alarming. Trade surplus has nose-dived,already sluggish exports have fallen into the red, and imports continue to remain deeply in the red.
This graphic should ring alarm bells in India about a potential devaluation by China with its adverse consequences on India's exports, especially important given the country's ambitious 12% targeted annual exports growth till 2019-20. And it is not just a trade imperative that could drive the renminbi's devaluation. For a country exiting, and swiftly at that, massive credit and housing bubbles, and where deflation looms large, a prolonged duration of monetary accommodation, even multiple rounds of quantitative easing, looks inevitable. This too would add to the downward pressure on the renminbi. Given that Chinese exports compete with that of its larger emerging market peers, the prospects of currency wars are not far-fetched.
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