Our views

Longstanding readers may recall that in the early 2000s, we at Gavekal spilled a lot of ink analyzing a new system of production that first emanated from the United States. We called it the "platform" company model and wrote a book on the topic In light of this week’s tariff announcements, Charles explain how a good idea got abused as a tax avoidance wheeze and why the system had to change.

China’s launch of its new DeepSeek large language model at a fraction of the cost of comparable US AI solutions calls into question a whole raft of the beliefs that have underpinned the bull market in US growth stocks over the last couple of years, writes Louis, potentially leaving the AI bubble facing its dot-com moment.

It’s a dedicated Frenchman who consents to work in August. But the financial market volatility of the last week has seen Louis hard at it, fielding client questions about the outlook for global markets and economies. In this paper, he sets out the most salient questions, and offers his answers.

China has become another country to many global investors, who now consider the market uninvestible and so rarely choose to visit. They are missing out on seeing transformational changes whose import you only really grasp when in the country, argues Louis. In this piece, he explains that the most likely outcome is the move into a deflationary boom.

When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, Western European powers were locked out of trading routes in the Eastern Mediterranean. Trade was hamstrung unless another route could be found to link Europe with India and China. Cue the age of the great explorers. In this piece, Louis explains why a latter day parallel of this episode in history may be unfolding before us.

Today, Charles's idea is not to say something new about China’s economy but to argue that its current dislocation is inevitable for well-documented reasons. French economist Clément Juglar explored cycles as recurring phenomena based on periods of eight to 12 years, and his ideas may be relevant to China's current predicament.