China is Ramping Up Economy
Manufacturing activities outpaced expectations
Manufacturing PMI was 50.6 in February and fell from 51.3 in January, but is still expanding.
This signals some factory workers were still working during the Chinese New Year, where manufacturing activities sub PMI was 51.3 in the month, having fallen from 53.5 in the previous month. This should be the result of workers staying at work locations to spend the Chinese New Year. Some workers found a nice salary working during the holidays. Domestic orders continued to stay above 50 at 51.5 from 52.3 in January.
But external demand fell to contraction level at 48.8 in February from 50.2 before the Chinese New Year. That reflects the fact that Covid-19 cases were still high in export markets.
Honestly, the manufacturing PMIs surpassed our expectation, and shows that domestic demand can continue to support the manufacturing sector. This demand came from the technology sector, commodity sector and the construction sector.
51.5
New dometic orders Manufacturing PMI
48.9
New domestic orders Non-manufacturing PMI
Service demand expanded but not as great as we thought
Non-manufacturing PMI was 51.4 in February down from 52.4. We expected domestic orders would expand in the month but it continued to shrink from January's 48.7 to February's 48.9. This could largely be a result of continual limited orders for transporation services, both from inbound and outbound travels, as well as a lower expectation of sales after the long holiday. The next long holiday is in May.
We expect retail sales to jump over 10% year-on-year as domestic demand should be solid from job stability and wage increases. But we won't get this data until the end of March as the first three months' data are usually reported as quarterly data to avoid seasonal misalignment from the Chinese New Year.
Within all the categories of retail sales, we expect catering to resume to positive growth, which is an important indicator to show that the Covid impact on the Chinese service economy continues to fade, but a full recovery is yet to come with travel restrictions.
AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.
Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?
The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.
Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.