After plenty of volatility, last week was a relatively quieter period for global air freight, according to the latest data from TAC Index. The global Baltic Air Freight Index calculated by TAC was unchanged in the week to March 10, still ahead by +6.2 percent year-on-year. #TACIndex #BalticAirFreightIndex #China #Shanghai #HongKong #Frankfurt #London #Chicago #US #Europe

Global air cargo spot rates from Shanghai to the U.S. declined -29% month-on-month to $3.23 per kg, according to the latest industry analysis by Xeneta. #Xeneta #ecommerce #deminimis #Shanghai #aircargo #aircraft

Chinese state media, the first batch of 18 satellites in the constellation dubbed “Qianfan” or “thousand sails” was launched into orbit by state-controlled Shanghai Yuxin Satellite Technology Company on Aug. 6. The entire project is a future network of 14,000 satellites, offering multiple services, including direct-to-device connectivity. Half of those spacecraft will be launched by the end of next year and another half by the end of 2027. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-launches-own-version-starlink-challenge-us-dominance-space

Further context is that Belarus just joined SCO, which is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It's similar to BRICS, but is more focused on Eurasia and Central Asia. In terms of the meaning of it, China is being passive aggressive about the exercise. But Belarus is much more explicit: At a press briefing on Friday, Vladimir Kupriyanyuk, the deputy head of the general staff of Belarus’s armed forces, said that the joint exercise [with China] was a response to “the aggressive foreign policy of the West towards the Union State of Belarus and Russia.” https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-07-10/chinas-brushback-pitch-against-nato

Yesterday TD Bank put out a note detailing a new macro long position in Gold and their rationale Gold is overbought. There’s no gentle way to say it. This was discussed on Sunday with the Founders group (recording available to premium subscribers here). The spike higher and reversal when Shanghai reopened also warned of it as did TD's CoT analysis this week. These are short term metrics however. From a macro perspective, there may be a lot more dry powder waiting for a reason to get long than usual. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-05-17/report-td-bank-likes-gold

Tokyo is the world’s largest city with an agglomeration of 37 million inhabitants, followed by New Delhi with 29 million, Shanghai with 26 million, and Mexico City and São Paulo, each with around 22 million inhabitants. Today, Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing and Dhaka all have close to 20 million inhabitants. By 2020, Tokyo’s population is projected to begin to decline, while Delhi is projected to continue growing and to become the most populous city in the world around 2028. By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, most of them in developing regions. However, some of the fastest-growing urban agglomerations are cities with fewer than 1 million inhabitants, many of them located in Asia and Africa. While one in eight people live in 33 megacities worldwide, close to half of the world’s urban dwellers reside in much smaller settlements with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html

According to Shanghai Morning Post, Guangzhou health authorities have assured the public that Covid is less severe than the flu and no more serious than a seasonal cold: Although easing zero Covid restrictions in China will be met with reopening hardships as infections soar, earlier this week, one of the top medical advisers in the country said that the omicron variant of the virus is no worse than the flu. Now some Chinese cities are downgrading Covid even further, saying it's the same as the seasonal cold, and there is no need to panic. https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/top-chinese-medical-adviser-downplays-omicron-risks

COSCO Shipping Lines has withdrawn its express China-Canada-US intermodal service that was launched in October 2021, as carriers continue to trim capacity to respond to falling demand. Container News was informed that the CEN-EXPRESS service had its last sailing when the Xin Ying Kou arrived at Prince Rupert on 29 November. The service used five 4,250 TEU ships to move containers from Qingdao and Shanghai in China to Prince Rupert in Canada, from where the containers were railed from DP World’s terminal in Prince Rupert port, via the Canadian National Railway, to Chicago in the United States. At the time it was launched, CEN-EXPRESS was marketed as an alternative way for shippers to move boxes from China to the US West Coast; at the time, the lane was suffering unprecedented congestion due to Covid-19 restrictions. Since then, however, the situation has reversed, as global economic uncertainties and inflation affects consumption. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cosco-pulls-china-canada-us-express-service

Protests in China over President Xi Jinping's zero-tolerance Covid-19 measures have intensified - expanding from Beijing and the far western Xinjiang region to several other major cities, including Wuhan, Shanghai, and the eastern city of Nanjing, according to video and photos circulating on social media. The protests are a rare display from a typically compliant citizenry, who know that crackdowns on dissent have intensified over the past decade. As the Wall Street Journal notes, " Having protests over the same issue break out in multiple Chinese cities is almost unheard of, outside of nationalist outpourings, such as anti-Japanese protests." https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/zero-tolerance-chinese-lockdown-protests-intensify-rare-display-defiance

He wrote me this morning making note of news I had already seen earlier today. Namely, that Beijing, the most prominent and well-known Chinese city with a population of 22 million, was going back into Covid lockdown. “CGTN, a Chinese state-run news channel has just announced Beijing and other cities are going back into lockdown. Schools, restaurants, gyms and other facilities closed this week to stop the Omicron variant,” he wrote me. Recall, back in April of this year, I wrote an article called “Something Is Rotten In The State Of Shanghai’s Latest Covid Lockdowns”, asking the question of why the country continues to be so interested in being able to lock down and open up its economy like Xi Jinping flipping a lightswitch on and off. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-11-24/beijing-back-lockdown-expect-turmoil