Markets
Visualizing China’s Most Ambitious Megaproject
View a high resolution version of this graphic
Visualizing China’s Most Ambitious Megaproject
View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.
Costing between $4-8 trillion and affecting 65 countries, China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is the granddaddy of all megaprojects.
By the time of it’s estimated completion in 2049, OBOR will stretch from the edge of East Asia all the way to East Africa and Central Europe, and it will impact a lengthy list of countries that account for 62% of the world’s population and 40% of its economic output.
Today’s infographic from Raconteur helps visualize the initiative’s tremendous size, scale, and potential impact on Asian infrastructure.
Silk Road 2.0
The tangible concept behind OBOR is to build an extensive network of infrastructure – including railways, roads, pipelines, and utility grids – that help link China to the rest of Asia, as well as Africa and Europe.
This multi-trillion dollar project will fill the infrastructure gap that currently inhibits economic growth potential on the world’s largest continent, but it has other important objectives as well. By connecting all of these economies together, China is hoping to become the gatekeeper for a new platform international trade cooperation and integration.
But that’s not all: if China’s economic corridor does what it’s supposed to, the countries in it will see more social and cultural links, financial cooperation, and a merger of policy goals and objectives to accomplish.
Naturally, this will expand the clout and influence of China, and it may even create the eventual scaffolding for the renminbi to flourish as a trade currency, and eventually a reserve currency.
One Road or Roadblock?
When billions of dollars are at play, the stakes become higher. Although some countries agree with the OBOR initiative in principle – how it plays out in reality is a different story.
Most of the funding for massive deep-water ports, lengthy railroads, and power plants will be coming from the purse strings of Chinese companies. Some will be grants, but many are taking the form of loans, and when countries default there can be consequences.
In Pakistan, for example, a deep-water port in Gwadar is being funded by loans from Chinese banks to the tune of $16 billion. The only problem? The interest rate is over 13%, and if Pakistan defaults, China could end up taking all sorts of collateral as compensation – from coal mines to oil pipelines.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka was unable to pay its $8 billion loan for the Hambantota Port. In the middle of 2017, the country gave up the controlling interest in the port to a state-owned company in China in exchange for writing off the debt. China now has a 99-year lease on the asset – quite useful, since it happens to be right in the middle of one of China’s most important shipping lanes to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
Natural Opposition
While most economies in Asia are willing to accept some level of risk to develop OBOR, there is one country that is simply not a fan of the megaproject.
India, a very natural rival to China, has a few major qualms:
- The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) goes right through Kashmir, a disputed territory
- Chinese investment in maritime trade routes through the Indian Ocean could displace India’s traditional regional dominance
- India sees the OBOR megaproject as lacking transparency
Meanwhile, with neighboring states such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan getting billions of dollars of investment from Chinese state-run companies, it likely creates one more issue that Indian Prime Minister Modi is not necessarily happy about, either.
Markets
Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?
We visualize the recent performance of the Magnificent Seven stocks, uncovering a clear divergence between the group’s top and bottom names.
Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
In this graphic, we visualize the year-to-date (YTD) performance of the “Magnificent Seven”, a leading group of U.S. tech stocks that gained prominence in 2023 as the replacement of FAANG stocks.
All figures are as of March 12, 2024, and are listed in the table below.
Rank | Company | YTD Change (%) |
---|---|---|
1 | Nvidia | 90.8 |
2 | Meta | 44.3 |
3 | Amazon | 16.9 |
4 | Microsoft | 12 |
5 | 0.2 | |
6 | Apple | -6.7 |
7 | Tesla | -28.5 |
From these numbers, we can see a clear divergence in performance across the group.
Nvidia and Meta Lead
Nvidia is the main hero of this show, setting new all-time highs seemingly every week. The chipmaker is currently the world’s third most valuable company, with a valuation of around $2.2 trillion. This puts it very close to Apple, which is currently valued at $2.7 trillion.
The second best performer of the Magnificent Seven has been Meta, which recently re-entered the trillion dollar club after falling out of favor in 2022. The company saw a massive one-day gain of $197 billion on Feb 2, 2024.
Apple and Tesla in the Red
Tesla has lost over a quarter of its value YTD as EV hype continues to fizzle out. Other pure play EV stocks like Rivian and Lucid are also down significantly in 2024.
Meanwhile, Apple shares have struggled due to weakening demand for its products in China, as well as the company’s lack of progress in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.
Investors may have also been disappointed to hear that Apple’s electric car project, which started a decade ago, has been scrapped.
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