China, Europe | featured news

Yong-Hee Kim still can't believe that in a prosperous country like Germany, powdered baby formula would ever be rationed and that she would have to scour shops in the German capital to find the right brand for her 13-month-old son.

Rosneft is seeking to borrow up to $30 billion from China in exchange for possibly doubling oil supplies, making Beijing the largest consumer of Russian oil and further diverting supplies away from Europe.

Like any nation, China has a host of problems, both societal and economic. It's getting older. It has yet to develop large portions of the west. Corruption is rampant. It has not serious entrepreneurial business culture that can drive the country's economic development. It has untold billions in government investments into states and municipalities that have no investment return for the foreseeable future. But this bridge to nowhere economy, as some naysayers might call it, has one big immediate hurdle. That hurdle is Europe.

The euro zone's economic woes accelerated last month and China's slowdown looked likely to extend to a seventh quarter, surveys on Wednesday showed, while the United States proved the bright spot with better-than-expected news on services and jobs.

Some countries are hard-hit, like Portugal, Greece, and Italy in the case of textiles, but most countries actually come out ahead. So is rising Chinese productivity good? To quote Sam Shakusky, who’s to say? Portuguese workers certainly don’t seem to win from an increase in textile productivity. But most European workers actually come out ahead. What’s more, productivity growth will also almost certainly lead to rising wages in China, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and raising the standard of living considerably in the world’s largest country. That may be the most important factor here.

Stocks are opening lower on Wall Street, deflated by signs that the global economic meltdown is being felt across Asia... China reported sharply lower growth in its exports. The so-called fiscal cliff, when U.S. government spending cuts and higher taxes kick in on Jan. 1, looms larger now that the distraction of earnings season is over.

The U.S. trade deficit shrank in May, as exports to places like China and Europe rose, defying concerns about a global economic slowdown. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the trade deficit fell 3.8 percent to $48.7 billion in May, down from $50.6 billion in April.

China is keen to contribute to a fund to bail out the euro zone, its trade minister said, underscoring the Asian powerhouse's growing interest in playing a bigger role in the global economy as its financial strength grows.