Beijing has a population of 21.5 million, but you wouldn’t know it from this BBC video from last Thursday. Normally busy streets and transport systems are eerily empty, with food deliveries often the main traffic on the roads. It’s the same picture in industry, with the Baidu Migration Index reporting only 26% of migrant workers […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Financial markets head for (another) train crash as coronavirus starts to impact
China’s industrial heartland of Hubei (pop 59m) and its capital Wuhan (pop 11m) have now been locked down for nearly a month as a result of the coronavirus COVID-2019 epidemic. In total, more than half of the population (760m) are subject to some form of residential lock down. Yet as with the subprime crisis in […]
Coronavirus disruptions make global recession almost certain
Last month, our Hong Kong-based pH Report colleague, Daniël de Blocq van Scheltinga, warned of the “Possible development (epidemic?) of the Wuhan SARS like illness, and economic impact?” His current view of developments, and their likely impact, is as follows: Hubei, the epicentre of the corona virus epidemic, is a province in central China, where […]
Your A to Z Guide to the Brexit trade negotiations
A. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty set out the rules for leaving the European Union. As with most negotiations, it assumed the leaving country would present its proposals for the post-withdrawal period – which would then be finalised with the other members. The UK government, however, has still not yet set out its post-Brexit […]
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