China has long been criticized both for its obsession with GDP statistics and their quality: Pressuring cadres to meet growth targets has encouraged a risky buildup of debt and, at times, the outright fabrication of numbers. If anything, though, the quality of China’s official employment data is even worse -- and the inaccuracies could have equally dangerous repercussions.　Until relatively recently, Chinese GDP growth would fluctuate even while remaining robust. The same can’t be said for jobles

Optimism that the US and China can reach a trade deal is rising, with another round of intensive negotiations in Washington this week. What buoyant investors are ignoring, however, is that the talks have become a test of strength between the world’s two great powers -- or, more accurately, a test of how accurate each nation’s sense of its own strength is.　The inconvenient fact is that neither country possesses the power to impose its will on the other. The US is not on its own capable of compell

President Donald Trump is reportedly close to issuing an executive order that would ban Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co. from building 5G wireless networks in the US. The significance of such an order goes beyond its obvious implications for American telecommunications companies.　The prospect of closing technology-related markets to competitors from China raises a fundamental problem that is going to plague policymakers for the foreseeable future: How can they draw the line between

It’s backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, buoyed by China’s green energy policies and has a track record as a pioneer in the world’s largest car market. Surely, BYD has all the ingredients of a winning electric-car maker?　Yet investors aren’t convinced. The company’s Hong Kong-traded stock has fallen more than 30 percent in the past year and even declined after BYD posted a 290 percent jump in January electric-vehicles sales from a year earlier to 28,668 units. That outpaced a 149 perc

As the US demands more from Europe and castigates it ever more stridently, it’s increasingly clear that Russia is missing a historic opportunity. If President Vladimir Putin hadn’t made Russia an unreliable partner for its neighbors, he’d be poised to realize his fondest dream: of displacing the US as Europe’s security guarantor.　Despite European officials’ determination to preserve what’s left of the US-led liberal world order, the cracks in the transatlantic alliance are obvious. They were one

Every now and then, a few apparently random news events come together and influence how you see the world. My most recent lesson is that blackmail and blackmail risk are a lot more common than I had thought.　The first relevant news event is the allegation by Jeff Bezos that the National Enquirer has been blackmailing him with the threat to release photos of his private parts (there is much more detail to this story). Several other people have since alleged that the Enquirer has engaged in additi

Hanging on a wall behind the omelet bar at President Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida -- where the commander in chief apparently stopped for a bite on Saturday after declaring a national emergency the day before -- is an old, framed poster. It’s from an ad campaign Walgreens once ran featuring the president back when he was the sorcerer of “The Apprentice.”　In white block letters on the poster, next to a photo of Trump cocking his index finger at the camera and shouting in fu

Japan has aged; Singapore is aging. Japan’s workforce is shrinking; Singapore’s has plateaued. Japan’s homogeneous society has struggled with immigration; Singapore’s island culture has been welcoming of foreigners, though increasingly less so.　So is the city-state scoring an own-goal by inviting a demographic decline and Japanese-style lost decades? 　After Monday’s annual government budget, in which Singaporean Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced stronger curbs on immigrants in service in

The problems in Afghanistan often feel intractable, like a knot of countless ropes bound together. Every time a strand is pulled, another part of the knot tightens up. Currently, the Taliban refuse to have talks with the Afghan government, which they label a puppet regime; the Kabul government insists that any power-sharing agreement allow limited numbers of Western troops to remain; the Pakistanis, who have long sheltered Taliban leaders, are unwilling to fully encourage a peace settlement; the

Algorithms have long been able to produce basic news stories from press releases or sets of financial data; that’s not much of a threat to most humans in the news business. Now, however, artificial intelligence has taken a step further. It’s learned to perform a tougher task -- to produce convincing-looking fake news.　Stringing together a few formulaic passages from a set of numbers is a mechanical job. Inventing a fake news story on a random subject requires imagination; not every human is up t

Substance often runs a distant second to drama in the age of Donald Trump. So it was when America’s intelligence chiefs visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver their agencies’ annual worldwide threat assessment. It got traction in the news media largely because Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA director Gina Haspel gave testimony that implicitly cut across Trump’s policies toward North Korea and Iran. Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons, Coats and Has

Vietnam is more than a convenient neutral site for the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, which is slated for later this month. The Southeast Asian nation is being held up as a model for what Kim’s isolated country could become if he adopts sweeping market reforms.　The choice facing Kim at the Hanoi summit is the same as it’s always been: weapons or wealth. The US has long offered North Korea a chance to develop its moribund economy in exchange

Brace yourself: A growing number of hard-up Chinese borrowers are not making good on their debts. The pattern is all too familiar.　After a record year of defaults in 2018, two big issuers failed to meet their obligations in recent weeks. Coal miner Wintime Energy Co., one of China’s biggest defaulters last year, missed interest payments again this month. Beijing Orient Landscape & Environment Co., which builds water-treatment plants, was late on a 500 million yuan ($73.8 million) bond due this m

As the US-led world order continues to fall apart, second-tier powers are trying to salvage what they can. But in Germany and France, at least, voters don’t really want the US to be part of the process.　The annual Munich Security Report, which provides the starting point for discussion at the annual security forum in the German city, is often a good indication of the Western security community’s current mood. The 2019 report, titled “The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?” is somewhat le

In retrospect, it seems obvious that President Donald Trump would want to have his cake and eat it, too. That’s essentially what he was doing Friday by both signing a government funding bill that provides $1.375 billion for a barrier with Mexico while also declaring a national emergency to allocate other federal funds for the same purpose.Presumably, congressional Democrats knew this could happen when they entered the compromise to keep the government open in exchange for barrier funding conside

The US government should not regulate social media. It should stay far away from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and the rest. Any regulatory effort might well violate the First Amendment. Even if it turned out to be constitutional, it would squelch creativity and innovation in the very places where they are most needed.Until recently, I would have endorsed every sentence in the above paragraph. But as Baron Bramwell, the English judge, once put it, “The matter does not appear to me now as

Vietnam is more than a convenient neutral site for the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which is slated for later this month. The Southeast Asian nation is being held up as a model for what Kim’s isolated country could become if he adopts sweeping market reforms. It’s an especially apt comparison, one which Kim himself reportedly noted last year -- but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.The choice facing Kim at the Hanoi summit

Japan’s leaders seem happy to rest the country’s fate on the shoulders of its women. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to get more of them out of the home to compensate for a shrinking workforce. His deputy Taro Aso, on the other hand, had to apologize recently after blaming them for not having enough kids. I can hear women secretly seethe, “What now, they want us to work, have kids and take care of husbands?” Male participation in chores is notoriously low in Japan.At Davos this year, Abe rightfu

How can investors profit from China’s race with the US for 5G supremacy? Finding the answer is as tricky as figuring out the geopolitics.The nation’s sleepy telecom stocks came back to life after Huawei Technologies Co. CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada in early December. While the official charge was that the company had violated US sanctions on Iran, many in China interpreted the action as another attempt by the American government to thwart the country’s advance in 5G. Huawei leads the

The proposed merger between SunTrust and BB&T makes sense for both firms -- which is why Wall Street sent both stocks higher Thursday after the announcement. But employees of the two banks, especially older workers who are not yet retirement age, are understandably less enthused at the prospect of downsizing. In a nation with almost 37 million workers over the age of 55, the quandary of SunTrust-BB&T workforce will become increasingly familiar across the US economy. This merger isn’t born out of