CHINA-ECONOMY: RISING COST OF LIVING DETERS CHINESE FROM FOREIGN TRAVEL

The South China Morning Post (May 27) reported that food prices in China jumped 6.1 per cent in April due to higher pork and fruit prices, with pork price increases accelerating to 14.4 per cent from 5.1 per cent in March. Last week, Beijing set up a special task force, the State Council Employment Work Leading Group, under Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua to monitor the country’s employment situation, underscoring the government’s increasing concern over unemployment due to the continuing escalation of the trade war with the US and in the wake of recent high-profile lay-offs by the likes of Sony Mobile, Cisco Systems and Oracle. It quoted Li Zhenbiao, a Guangzhou-based agent helping wealthy Chinese citizens emigrate and buy property overseas, as saying “I even heard some wealthy people are going to banks in Hong Kong to buy gold bars and keeping them in the bank for safety.” He said "it’s a very new [practice] and just emerging. Not many people have acted yet to buy gold bars". COTRI ANALYTICS of the German-based China Outbound Tourism Research Institute on February 26, 2019, stated that 56% or 22.5 million of the 40 million outbound trips from Mainland China in the last quarter of 2018 ended in Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan. Only 44% or 17.5 million Chinese travellers went to destinations further afield. 





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