Earlier today I had the opportunity to interview a friend, Mark DeWeaver.  Mark is the author of Animal Spirits with Chinese Characteristics and wrote a very kind foreword for my own book.  He worked in China for 9 years and later co-founded Quantrarian Capital Management which is fully invested in the Iraqi Stock Market.

We discussed a number of topics including the “rebalancing” of China’s economic model, the Soviet tech industry during Gorbachev1 , technological innovations with regards to the Great Firewall (GFW) and spent the last 15 minutes discussing cryptocurrencies, smart property, trustless asset management and specifically an article written by Mr. Sheng from the PBOC.2

Other stories mentioned:

• Chinese Steel Firms Reported Debt Ratio of 70pct, Margins at 0.43Pct in Jan.-Oct. Period from Caijing
• China Further Consolidates Rare Earth Industry from China Digital Times
• Rawhide in China from Financial Times
• The Rise of China’s Innovation Machine from The Wall Street Journal
• Beijing, Shanghai to Step Up Pollution Battle as Smog Persists from Bloomberg
• China’s rebalancing requires more investment of the right kind from Financial Times

1. See “The Soviet Machine-Building Complex: Perestroyka’s Sputtering Engine” from the Office of Soviet Analysis published by the Directorate of Intelligence [↩]
2. Mr. Sheng’s article on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is “虚拟货币本质上不是货币” [↩]