It's New Year's Day in 2024 soon, and the new year will inevitably summarize the past year.
The reason why "disappointed 2023" is used is based on the intuitive feeling of A-shares, as well as the fact that the key data seriously falls short of expectations.
After all, 2023 is very different, this year, after 3 years of pandemic control, the strong economic recovery has not been realized, which is the root cause of the "disappointment".
On December 31, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that the manufacturing PMI index for December was only 49%, down 0At 4 percentage points, the data is really disappointing again.
We might as well take a look at the annual manufacturing PMI situation, except for January, February, March and September, the other 8 months are in the contraction range.
I have to admit that 2022 and 2023 are "difficult brothers", and the situation in 2022 is basically similar, and the manufacturing PMI has also stood on the withering line for only 4 months. It is reasonable that the major A-share indices have appeared for 2 consecutive years, or even 3 years.
If you think about it carefully, there is still a certain difference between 2022 and 2023, because the overall base in 2023 is slightly higher than that in 2022, and the superposition of multiple factors has caused the real performance of the major A-share indexes, especially in the second half of the year, which is even worse than the same period in 2022.
Let's go back to the manufacturing PMI data in December, the reason why it fell again, the official explanation is "affected by factors such as the off-season production of some basic raw material industries", and Zhou Maohua, a macro researcher at Everbright Bank, believes that "the textile industry, some raw materials and high energy consumption and other manufacturing market demand is sluggish (new orders index declined), dragging down the willingness of enterprises in related industries to replenish inventory and expand production".
Taking the textile industry as an example, the decline in orders in December is indeed affected by the season, after all, the key holidays in the West are mainly concentrated in December, and the peak consumption is mainly cashed in old orders, which is precisely the node of the decline in new orders. In other words, the statement of "off-season production" is still very plausible.
Then, the question then comes, in a good year, also in December, even if it encounters the impact of the "production off-season" in some industries, why can the manufacturing PMI still remain in the expansion range?
If this is investigated, the "drag" of individual industries is obviously not the root cause, but can only be regarded as the reason for the month-on-month decline. Of course, the market will generally give another widely recognized answer, that is, developed economies such as Europe and the United States have begun to lose demand due to aggressive interest rate hikes.
That sounds like a high-sounding reason, however, data from the Conference Board in December showed that the US consumer confidence index rose to 110 from a revised 101 in November7, the largest increase since the beginning of 2021.
On the one hand, there is strong consumer confidence, and on the other hand, we assume that Americans' spending power is declining
In a simple comparison, the empty statement that "external demand is sluggish" is certainly not objective, and the deep-seated problems are obviously ignored.
Stretch the time longer to see more clearly. In 2018, Trump brazenly launched a war in the United States, and tariffs were imposed on goods exported to the United States.
After two years of war, before I had time to take stock of the impact of Trump's tariffs on my country's economy, the three-year new crown pandemic came unexpectedly.
It should be emphasized that in 2020, 2021, and even 2022, the impact of Trump's tariffs was weakened to a certain extent, and the reason was that when other economies encountered the new crown pandemic, the industrial chain could not operate effectively, and China effectively delayed the impact of Trump's tariffs due to the proper control of the epidemic.
As other economies gradually emerge from the impact of the new crown, China's epidemic control advantages disappear, and low-end industries are crowded out by tariffs, especially the labor-intensive industry such as the textile industry, and the impact on the country after the transfer to ASEAN is beginning to appear.
On the other hand, the PMI of high-tech manufacturing and assembly manufacturing in December was 503% and 502%, all in the expansion range, which is obviously after the reform of the registration system, the financial support of high-end manufacturing investment in the entity has not diminished.
Xianxian Finance believes that 2023 is a very typical year, a year for China's manufacturing to face reality after the impact of Trump's tariffs began to materialize and the advantages of the new crown pandemic control disappeared, and it is also the most obvious year for the structural optimization and transformation of high-end manufacturing and low-end manufacturing that have been impacted.