Dr. Jim Walker reflects on the potential collapse of China's $300bn Evergrande and its likely impact on China's economy.

Jim Walker is the chief economist at Aletheia Capital Limited, an independent research platform for the Asia Pacific region. Prior to joining Aletheia he was the founder and chief economist at Asianomics Group, an economics and strategy research consultancy company formed in late 2007 to primarily service the fund management industry. Prior to establishing Asianomics he was the chief economist at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. He joined CLSA in late 1991. Over the years Dr Jim achieved numerous ‘best economist’ rankings in the Asiamoney, Institutional Investor and Greenwich surveys of fund managers. In 1995 he wrote about the prospect of Asia being forced off its de facto dollar peg “within the next two-three years”. The Asian Crisis, precipitated by the Thai baht devaluation, began in July 1997. In recent years he is best known for forecasting the US 2007 downturn and financial sector meltdown in his series of ‘Apocalypse’ reports. In December 2016, for the first time in ten years, he went overweight on China and reinforced that call in his April 2017 report, China: The Bull Among Us. He remains deeply sceptical of the prevailing wisdom in central banks’ approach to monetary policy and has most recently explained those concerns in his 2019 year-end strategy report, The Walking Dead.

Dr. Jim Walker

Chief Economist, Aletheia Capital Limited

Insights

Evergrande