A Chinese force to be reckoned with

By Mearns Nimmo, director Far East equities at Friends Ivory & Sime With exports accounting for 20%-100% of GDP, Asia is clearly vulnerable to global economic conditions. This is the main reason the region's stock markets have performed so poorly over the past two years. Years of surging investment in telecoms hardware, much of it from East Asia, are over. Factories are operating at well below capacity and dynamic random access micro (Dram) computer chips have become just another commodity, of which there is significant excess supply. However, at some stage, the drastic reduction ...