(Sep 2, 2018) Weekly Topics of Global Economy

[kyonmanchung]

(Sep 2, 2018) Weekly Topics of Global Economy

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지난달 다수 EM 통화들이 거의 meltdown 수준으로 평가 절하되었습니다. 작금의 미국-중국간 충돌을 투키디데스의 함정에 빠진 것에 비유한 뉴스가 나왔군요. 인구 2천만의 중국 최대 산업도시 선전시가 조용한 전기차 도시로 변모하고 있습니다.

1. 5 big victims of the meltdown in emerging markets, CNNMoney

- 올해 Emerging Market 국가들의 화폐가치가 거의 meltdown 수준으로 폭락하였습니다. 특히 8월 한달 동안 많은 EM 통화들이 selloff 대상이 되었습니다. 요인은 (나라마다 약간의 차이는 있지만) 미국의 금리 인상, 정치적 충격, 및 세계무역 분쟁 확산에 기인. Turkish, Argentina, India, Brazil, Russia 등 5대 EM국가 동향을 살펴 봅니다.

1. Turkey

올해 Turkish lira는 US $ 대비 40% 절하 되었음(특히 위기가 고조된8월 한달 25%). 금리 상승과 무역분쟁에 더해 대내외 정쟁이 외국인투자 비중이 높은 터키 시장을 강타한 것. Lira 표시 국채는 물론 주가도 큰 폭 하락.

수입물가 상승 -> 개인 소비 위축 -> 기업 투자 위축으로 이어져 거시경제 전반에 악영향 불가피

2. Argentina

올해 Argentina's peso는 달러 대비 50% 이상 절하되었음(특히 8월 한달 29%).

연초 IMF로부터 $50bn 조달 (환율방어 및 외채 상환용) ->추가 조달 추진 중

지난주 목요일 중앙은행 기준금리 45% -> 60%로 인상(전문가들은 내년 중반까지 이 금리 유지 예상)

Government debt 70%가 외화표시 -> Peso화 급락으로 상환 지난 -> 빚 잔치 예상

3. India

 올해 India Rupee 10% 절하. 특히 지난 금요일 최저 기록(전반적 EM통화 selloff 영향). 유가 상승으로 석유수입 비용 급증 -> 고 Inflation -> 루피 하락 가속이 문제. 그러나 작년 경제정책 실패 치유 중 ->루피 하락으로 수출 급증(India economy accelerates as rupee declines) -> 올 2분기 세계 최고 수준의 경제성장 시현(1분기 7.7% ->2분기 8.2%)) -> 물가 안정화 되면 루피 회복 가능

4. Brazil

올해 Brazil's real화는 20% 절하됨. 브라질의 경우 정치 상황이 경제를 억누르는 양상. 연초부터 트럭 운전자 파업 등 계속. 오는 10월 대통령 선거를 앞두고 혼전 중. 투자자들은 populist 정치인이 아닌 pro-business leader가 선출되어 budget deficit 문제의 해결 실마리를 찾기를 기대.

5. Russia

올해 Russia's ruble은 15% 절하. 주요인은 이어지는 economic sanctions(Ukraine개입 등 다양)과 대미 무역분쟁.

그러나, 유가상승 효과가 경제제재 효과를 상회할 것으로 예상 -> 제제 완화 또는 실효될 경우 조기 회복 가능

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- 공통점은? Populism, 높은 외자 의존, 고물가, 자원 부국(단 아르헨티나는 석유수입)

- Contagion 가능성은? 무역분쟁 등 global economy 환경이 악화될 경우 fundamentals 취약 국가들의 위기 현실화 가능

2. What an Ancient Historian Says About the U.S.-China Clash

- 오늘날 기존 패권국 미국과 급성장하는 신흥 중국과의 충돌 상황을 투키디데스의 함정(“Thucydides Trap”)에 빠진 것과 같은 상황으로 비유한 기사입니다.

투키디데스는 BC400년대 그리스 정치가, 군인 겸 역사가로서 고대 그리스문화시대에 종지부를 찍게 하는 펠로폰네서스 전쟁을 기술한 “Peloponnesian War”의 저자.

그는 당시 기존 패권국 스파르타와 빠르게 부상하는 신흥세력 국가 아테네가 전쟁을 일으킬 수 밖에 없게 되는(함정에 빠진 것과 같은) 상황을 사실적 과학적으로 서술 ->최근 미국과 중국간의 관계를 설명하는 데 자주 인용.

“투키디데스의 함정”이란 용어는 2012년 Graham Allison 하바드대 교수에 의해 만들어 진 것으로 그에 의하면, 지난 500년 동안 부상하는 신흥 세력국이 기존 패권국에 도전하는 사례가 16번 있었는데 그중 12번은 전쟁으로 이어졌다고 하는군요(예: 1치대전은 패권국 영국과 신흥세력국 독일이 함정에 빠져 전쟁, 30년전쟁은 기존 구교 국가와 신흥 신교세력간의 전쟁 등)

투키디데스 함정은 inescapable하지는 않음. 패권 도전 16번 사례 중 4번은 파멸적 전쟁 없이 넘어 감. (예: 20세기초 기존 패권국 영국과 신흥세력 미국은 fairly smooth한 take-over. 2차대전후 1990년까지의 cold war도 파멸적 전쟁없이 넘어 감)

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 미국-중국(지도자)이 세계 패권 차지보다는 “홍익인간” 정신에 입각하여 인류 공익과 경제 발전에 기여하기를!  

3. The First Quieter Megacity, Thanks to Electric Vehicles, Bloomberg

- 인구 2천만명의 산업도시Shenzhen(심천)시가 전기차 버스(16천대 운행 중), 전기 자전거, 전기 스쿠터 및 전기 트럭 등의 New Energy Vehicle을 투입함으로써 최고로 조용한 도시(First Quieter Megacity)로 태어나고 있습니다. 전기버스가 소리없이 다가와 문이 열리고, 손님은 내릴 때 WeChat으로 결제. 전기버스는 3시간 충전으로 250km 주행(전기료가 싼 저녁시간 이용)

이 사업의 이니셔티브는 선전에 본사를 둔 BYD Co. 동사는 2008년 Warren Buffett으로부터 $232m를 투자 받은 바 있고, 정부의 강력한 전기차산업 육성지원 하에 빠르게 성장 중. 현재 종업원 37천명으로 전기차 및 부품 생산. 미국의 Tesla를 무색케 함.  

BYD 창업주 Wang Chuanfu는 현재 중국의 등록 차량 3억대를 2030년에 전부 전기차로 대체하겠다는 야심 찬 포부를 밝힘(300m registered vehicles, entirely electrified by 2030) 중국 정부가 2025년까지 전 차의 20%를 전기차로 바꾸겠다는 계획보다 훨씬 빨리 이를 실현 시키겠다고 하는군요. 우와.

배우 DiCaprio in 2017를 brand ambassador로 채용하는 등 해외 진출 공략 중(facebook 납품, 최근 조지아 주정부 전기차 공급계약 등 성공)

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중국 전기차 산업 발전은 정부와 대기업 주도에 의한 각종 산업 굴기의 일환

한국의 산업정책 initiative는? 기발한 청년창업idea만 기대하나요? 답답!

정견만 드림

1. 5 big victims of the meltdown in emerging markets, CNNMoney

Daniel Shane

August 31, 2018: 7:19 AM ET

From Argentina's peso to the Turkish lira, the currencies of emerging markets are taking a battering.

Both economies have been plunged into turmoil this year. Their currencies have collapsed, coming under pressure from an array of forces including rising US interest rates, political clashes and the global trade war.

The pressures have exposed frailties in multiple emerging markets, particularly the reliance on funding from foreign investors, who are more likely to pull out their money as local currencies drop in value.

Worries about Argentina and Turkey have prompted nervous investors to retreat from other economies that are viewed as vulnerable. On Friday, Indonesia's currency plunged to its lowest level against the US dollar since the Asian financial crisis 20 years ago.

Five of the world's major developing economies are feeling the heat:

1. Turkey

Turkey's currency has been thrashed by a potent mix of confrontational politics, economic policy confusion and US interest rate hikes. The lira has plunged more than 40% versus the US dollar since January.

Many Turkish companies have sought to lower their borrowing costs in recent years by taking out loans in foreign currencies. Observers worry they could now fall behind on the loans because customers pay them in lira.

President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has unnerved investors by resisting calls for interest rate hikes to try to rein in rampant inflation.

Analysts say the damage is already showing up in economic data. The lira's slump has left Turkish people and companies suddenly feeling worse off, hitting consumer spending and business confidence.

"There's no getting away from the fact that the Turkish economy is experiencing a deep downturn," Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist at research firm Capital Economics, said in a note to clients this week.

2. Argentina

Argentina's peso has more than halved in value against the dollar since the start of the year.

As the currency nosedived again this week, the government asked the International Monetary Fund to speed up payments from a $50 billion lifeline set up earlier this year.

Argentina's central bank on Thursday jacked up its key interest rate from 45% to an eye-watering 60% in a bid to encourage investors to hang on to their pesos. It said it plans to keep rates at that level until at least December, and some analysts think they won't start to come down until the middle of next year.

But the extraordinary move failed to stem the currency's collapse.

Nearly 70% of Argentine government debt is in foreign currencies, according to Moody's. That will become ever harder to pay as the peso plummets.

3. India

India's rupee hit a new record low against the dollar on Friday as part of the broader emerging market sell-off. It's down almost 10% since the start of the year.

India's economy isn't showing many signs of weakness just yet, though. It's currently the world's fastest growing major economy, and is due to report second quarter data later Friday.

But it is facing serious headwinds. It relies heavily on energy imports, which puts it in a vulnerable position as oil prices rise. That's helped push up inflation to uncomfortable levels for the central bank.

Other factors weighing on the currency are the global trade war and the US Federal Reserve raising rates, which makes assets priced in the rupee and other emerging market currencies less attractive.

4. Brazil

Politics have been weighing heavily on Brazil's currency, the real, in recent months. It has slumped 20% against the dollar since the start of January.

Investors are worried about the outcome of the presidential election scheduled for October. They are hoping Brazilians will elect a pro-business leader who can carry out big financial reforms such as cutting the country's budget deficit.

But recent polls show strong support for more leftist candidates like jailed former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"Lack of clarity that an investor-friendly candidate will win should weigh on local assets," Gustavo Rangel, chief Latin America economist at investment bank ING, wrote in a recent note.

He pointed out that Brazil's central bank has lots of ammunition in the form of foreign exchange reserves to fight further weakness in the currency if it needs to.

Brazil's currency was also pressured earlier in the year by a nationwide strike by truckers, which drove up inflation and disrupted economic growth.

5. Russia

Russia's ruble has crumbled in recent months in the face of economic sanctions. The currency has shed about 15% against the dollar this year.

Russia has been squeezed for years by Western sanctions, which were imposed over its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.

More have kicked in this year after the United Kingdom linked the Kremlin to the attempted murder of a former Russian double agent. The United States has sanctioned several Russian individuals and companies.

Like many other countries, Russia has also been hit with new US tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Investors fear that more sanctions could be on the way, including measures targeting banks and energy companies. The Russian government has been selling its US Treasury debt and buying gold in recent months.

However, some analysts say the rise in oil prices this year should offset much of the damage from the weaker ruble.

1-2. August Turns Ugly for Emerging Markets as Currency Crises Spread, Bloomberg

By Tomoko Yamazaki Yumi Teso and Paul Wallace

‎2018‎년 ‎8월‎ ‎31‎일‎ ‎오전‎ ‎11‎:‎32 Updated on ‎2018‎년 ‎8월‎ ‎31‎일‎ ‎오후‎ ‎9‎:‎58

• MSCI EM FX index set for longest monthly losing run since 2015
• Argentine peso slides; central bank raises key rate to 60%

Emerging-market assets are headed for a monthly loss as declines in Argentina and Turkey sparked fears of global contagion and amid a renewed intensification of U.S.-China trade tensions.

The MSCI EM index of currencies was down 2.2 percent for August as of 1:33 p.m. in London, poised for a fifth monthly loss, the longest stretch since September 2015. South Africa’s rand headed for its worst August on record, while the lira rebounded on Friday after Turkey raised taxes on dollar deposits. In Asia, the Indonesian rupiah slid to its lowest since 1998, while the Indian rupee was set for its biggest monthly drop in three years and a fresh record low.

Plenty of investors -- including BlackRock Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co. -- have viewed emerging-market declines as an opportunity to stock up on securities likely to benefit from growth rates set to outpace those of the rich world in the long run. But that’s not panned out this month, with developed-nation equities comparing favorably thanks in part to solid corporate earnings.

The emerging asset class’s latest woes came from Argentina, where the peso tumbled to a record low, prompting policy makers to boost a benchmark interest rate to 60 percent. In Turkey, a report that the central bank’s deputy governor was set to resign sank the lira. Also hurting sentiment: President Donald Trump was said to move ahead with a plan to impose new tariffs on China as soon as next week.

Contagion Worries

“Argentina’s problems will probably keep investors’ focus on emerging markets with weaker fundamentals, leading to sell-offs in those countries like we’ve seen in Turkey,” said Koji Fukaya, chief executive officer at FPG Securities Co. in Tokyo. “Argentine assets are unlikely to see a turnaround soon with just the IMF support because there hasn’t been any fundamental improvements in the country.”

The latest currency crisis in Argentina adds to existing headwinds for emerging markets including the end of an era of cheap money, prospects of a global trade war, American sanctions and deep political uncertainties in places such as Brazil.

The rupiah fell to 14,750 per dollar, the weakest level since the 1998 Asian financial crisis, while the Indian currency slid past an unprecedented 71 against the dollar.

Asia needs to “guard against complacency” especially for those with deficits in their fiscal and current-account balances, strategists including Philip Wee at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. wrote in a note. “With heightened trade tensions threatening to erupt into a full-blown trade war, the region is on alert for disorderly capital outflows.”

South Africa’s rand was little changed, heading for a monthly drop of almost 10 percent. Turkey’s lira snapped four days of losses after the government raised taxes on dollar deposits of up to a year and scrapped a 10 percent tax on lira accounts with maturities longer than a year.

It’s not just the currencies that have been battered this month among developing economies. An index tracking their equities has lost over 3 percent, while the Bloomberg Barclays index of EM local-currency government notes is down more than 2 percent.

Some analysts say Asia still remains a relative haven given that region’s stronger economic fundamentals.

“At the end of the day, the correlations are not that pronounced and it’s not a monkey see, monkey do kind of reaction for EM Asian currencies,” said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in Singapore.

Argentina’s peso has dropped 29 percent against the dollar this month, the worst performer among major emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg. Turkey’s currency follows closely, with a 25 percent slide. The Thai baht and South Korean won are at the top of the pack, heading for gains of 1.7 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

2. What an Ancient Historian Says About the U.S.-China Clash, Bloomberg

By Alessandro Giovanni Borghese

‎2018‎년 ‎8월‎ ‎31‎일‎ ‎오후‎ ‎1‎:‎00

Are the U.S. and China doomed to battle? Or to put it another way, are they Sparta and Athens? That’s what’s meant when foreign affairs observers toss around the phrase “Thucydides Trap.” Thucydides (thoo-SID-i-deez) was a Greek historian in the 5th century B.C. who explained the Peloponnesian War of his day as an inevitable clash between Athens, a rising city-state, and the already established superpower, Sparta.

1. Who came up with the Thucydides Trap?

Not Thucydides. He was a historian trying to explain what had already happened rather than seeking to predict future events. The modern term was coined in 2012 by Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Allison argued that as China becomes stronger, it will threaten to displace U.S. influence, which could result in an unhealthy rivalry leading to armed conflict.

2. Does the trap explain other conflicts?

Allison counts 16 cases in the past 500 years in which rising powers threatened to dislodge dominant ones, with 12 resulting in war. In the run-up to World War I, for example, Germany sought to assert its military might over Europe and to create its own empire overseas, straining relations with the leading power of the day, Britain. Similarly, the Thirty Years’ War of the 1600s followed rising tensions between emerging Protestant powers, initially a collection of German and Dutch states, and the established Catholic one, the Holy Roman Empire.

3. Is the trap inescapable?

No. World powers can coexist peacefully. In the last century, the U.S. overtook the U.K. as the major military and political power, and the transition was fairly smooth. After Germany, which was divided after World War II, reunified in 1990, it regained significant power within Europe without sparking conflict. Even the Cold War showed how the sour rivalry between two superpowers need not escalate into full-blown war, though the U.S. and Soviet Union certainly clashed through proxies. Some analysts consider the Thucydides Trap an oversimplification of war’s causes and are skeptical of using it to understand relations between the U.S. and China.

The Reference Shelf

• Graham Allison’s recent book on whether China and the U.S. can avoid the Thucydides Trap, the editorial in which he first used the term, and a more recent article on the matter.
• Harvard Kennedy School’s special initiative on the Thucydides’s Trap.
• Bloomberg QuickTakes on the U.S.-China trade war, the growing Chinese economic sphere of influence and tensions around the South China Sea.
• A critique of the theory by historian Arthur Waldron.

3. The First Quieter Megacity, Thanks to Electric Vehicles, Bloomberg

BYD is at the forefront of converting an entire city’s fleet of buses to plug-in electric vehicles.

By Blake Schmidt

‎2018‎년 ‎8월‎ ‎30‎일‎ ‎오후‎ ‎1‎:‎01

On a recent afternoon at a bus stop in the business district of Nanshan in Shenzhen, China, the air was filled with the sound of chirping birds in a nearby park. The street was quiet, with the exception of the occasional diesel truck chugging past—holdouts against a future that glided in with barely a sound: an electric bus.

A woman who’d been browsing on her smartphone while she waited hadn’t noticed the bus creeping up to the stop. Not until the doors opened with a beep, beep, beep and a man barking boisterously into his phone stepped out did she spring into action and hop aboard. Passengers scanned in with their smartphones, paying through WeChat, the app developed by Tencent Holdings Ltd., the Chinese social media giant whose flashy 50-story headquarters could be seen from the bus stop.

Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Sept. 3, 2018. Subscribe now.

Photographer: Luke Casey for Bloomberg Businessweek

Every megacity can trace its history in increments of rising decibels. For most of them, the turning point was the Industrial Revolution. But in Shenzhen—now packed with more than 20 million people and hundreds of factories turning out high-tech hardware—the quiet age is only four decades in the past. Back then, China’s answer to Silicon Valley was still a collection of calm fishing villages just across the river from bustling Hong Kong.

But in 1980, Deng Xiaoping declared Shenzhen to be China’s first special economic zone. The unending wail of urban sound descended almost at once: cars, highways, delivery trucks, sirens, buses, factories, power plants, shipping facilities, trains, and innumerable motorbikes. The newborn metropolis swiftly took its place among its global peers in making a never-ending racket.

The master plan created 14 local industrial clusters, distributing the risk of the government’s experiment. The first factory workers relied on about 300 fishing and farming villages for basics such as potable water and food. The result is that modern Shenzhen is multicentered, with clusters of walkable space, according to Juan Du, an architecture professor at the University of Hong Kong who studied the urban transformation. The city experimented with infrastructure: highways, bus corridors, and a subway that now has one-third the number of stops as New York’s (at one-tenth the age). Bullet trains, ferries, and a new airport connect it to the world.

Because of how the city developed, with skyscrapers filling in the spaces between rural farm communities, about half the city’s residents are urban villagers, who don’t necessarily require their own cars. The new Shenzhen has a mix of electric buses, electric bikes and scooters, electric taxis, and even electric dump trucks. Although the city arrived late to urban noise, the shift to EVs that China has been pushing more than any other country has put Shenzhen at the leading edge of something unprecedented: the quieter city.

If Shenzhen is at the forefront of metropolis-scale replacement of the combustion engine, then BYD Co. is the new Ford of China’s electrified-motor city. The electric-vehicle maker, backed by big Chinese subsidies and a $232 million investment from Warren Buffett in 2008, has eclipsed Tesla Inc. as the leading maker of plug-in EVs. BYD almost singlehandedly electrified Shenzhen’s fleet of 16,000 buses and is now at work on the full-scale replacement of the city’s taxis and trucks.

At the company’s Shenzhen headquarters, more than 37,000 employees make parts for electric cars, buses, and taxis. Most will be sold in China as part of the government’s master plan to become the world’s industrial powerhouse of what Beijing calls “new energy vehicles.”

BYD’s founder, billionaire Wang Chuanfu, envisions China’s fleet, now at 300 million registered vehicles, entirely electrified by 2030. That’s more ambitious than the goals set by policymakers in Beijing, who are shooting for 20 percent electrification by 2025. But Wang insists. “It will happen earlier than expected,” he told reporters in Shenzhen last year.

China’s push to go fully electric would give BYD a strong domestic foundation for its ultimate ambition to become a global brand. To that end, Wang hired the actor and climate champion Leonardo DiCaprio in 2017 as a brand ambassador and began exporting its vehicles to the U.S. BYD has inked deals to supply electric buses to Facebook Inc.’s sprawling headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., the transit authority in Long Beach, Calif., and the campuses of Stanford University and the University of California at Los Angeles. The most recent victory came in August, when BYD won a bid to supply all Georgia government entities with EVs.

The company is using the immense financial backing at home to its advantage. A $9 billion credit line from China Development Bank, for example, is helping BYD place electric monorails in Brazil, Egypt, and the Philippines. But the crutch of government funding, which has supported the company’s expansion, may not be around forever. Grants that once covered half the 1 million yuan ($147,000) it takes to build an electric bus in 2015 now only cover a third of the cost. Shrinking subsidies are a serious threat for a company with big research and development costs.

One of the biggest bottlenecks for BYD’s success at home and abroad is finding the space for charging stations. The company has had to get creative in Shenzhen, slapping solar panels on top of a parking garage to create its first taxi-charging station. As Shenzhen’s housing prices skyrocket to rival Hong Kong’s, real estate for charging stations isn’t easy to find, and then they have to be fitted to the grid, says BYD spokesman Xiao Haiping.

At Shenzhen Eastern Bus Co., one of BYD’s three bus-fleet partners, the monthly electricity bill of 17 million yuan is one-third of what its diesel bill used to be. The company has 15,000 employees and 5,800 buses, which use seven charging stations. Most of the buses are charged at night, when electricity is cheaper, though they sometimes have to top off in the afternoon. Each bus takes about three hours for a full charge and has a range of 250 kilometers (155 miles).

At one of the charging stations on the outskirts of Shenzhen, the mechanics have strikingly clean hands, because they haven’t been handling oil-covered parts all day. Workers fiddling with the new technology on a daily basis came up with breakthroughs, some of which are on display at the facility’s “innovation room.” The only noise comes from a fan and a giant vacuum keeping the motors clear of dust.

Another force pushing Chinese cities toward an electric—and therefore quieter—future is the government’s draconian antipollution measures. They began in 2013 with a set of prohibitions called the Air Pollution Action Plan, which capped coal use, banned additional coal-burning capacity, and set limits on fine particulate matter for key regions. A new plan, published in July, set a target of 2 million electric-car sales per year by 2020. Shenzhen put in place high fees for gas-vehicle licenses while offering free parking and tax incentives to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles. The city also has mandated that all new trucks be electric and that 20,000 diesel trucks be scrapped. Ride-sharing services must now use EV fleets, too.

“Electric cars can definitely reduce the noise,” says Tao Liu, chairman of Clocell Corp., a company that created a sound map of Shenzhen’s busy Futian District to help the government tackle noise pollution.

Perhaps the most significant moment in Shenzhen’s shift toward quiet came in 2003, when the city began a ban on gas-powered motorcycles. In the ban’s wake came vastly popular electric bikes, which riders could use without a license to get around most of the city. But being so quiet, the bikes became a menace, with riders flouting traffic laws and clobbering pedestrians. City authorities eventually banned them, with some half-million ending up in a massive dump. Even after the enforcement sweep, many e-bike riders have finagled their way back onto the roads.

A bus station worker checks the electric motors between runs.

Photographer: Luke Casey for Bloomberg Businessweek

Shenzhen also offers evidence that urban cleanup has its limits. The Mawan coal plant, albeit one of the first in China to use seawater to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, is inconveniently located in an up-and-coming neighborhood near electric-bus stops. It’s a reminder that China’s electricity is still two-thirds coal-powered. All those e-vehicles still end up plugged into a dirty, noisy grid.

Shenzhen Mayor Chen Rugui, a former Communist Party chief in Zhongshan, is also honing in on gridlock, a major source of noise pollution, with the use of heavy surveillance that seems more like an Orwellian spy state than an urban utopia. The city’s traffic police bureau is working with telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. to use big data, facial recognition, and video sensors to manage congestion and accidents. Shanghai-based startup KeyGo Technologies uses an “acoustic camera” system to zero in on honking cars, so police can analyze whether the noise pollution deserves a fine.

Tao, whose company sells noise insulation to wealthy clients, expects EVs will bring calm but not pure noiselessness. Electrics do make some sound, especially when they go fast. Even if electric vehicles are quieter on average, Tao says, the hissing whir they make at high speeds may not be much better than the vroom of a combustion engine. At higher speeds, the low-pitched whistle is caused by the car cutting through the air, not the motor. So, Tao says, luxury EVs may actually contribute to Shenzhen’s next noise problem: rich kids drag racing in the wee hours.

“They’ll drive out at night, and you know the sound,” Tao says. “BroooOOOOoooom!”

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