China's old economy booming

According to Bloomberg, the government’s effort to keep Asia’s biggest economy on track for its 6.5% growth target has sustained a flurry of spending on housing and infrastructure that started in 2016, and is poised to extend well into 2017. Excavator sales in the first four months of the year rose to the highest since 2012. A bulldozer binge sent sales to the highest since 2014. On Monday, the average price of rebar across China rose to 4,048 yuan ($522) a ton, up 21% so far this year after a 67% gain in 2016. The price has more than doubled since late-2015, after China’s stimulus measures eased a global steel crisis. Steel demand in the world’s biggest consumer and producer has held to robust growth as the old economy revs up, reaching a record in April as mills fired up their furnaces to feed higher prices.