East Asia Econ

East Asia Today

The main developments in Japan today were in Japan, with the BOJ meeting and CPI data for August. Elsewhere, China's fx settlement data suggest renewed capital inflows. Growth in consumer lending in Taiwan ticked up in August, but remains much lower than the peak of a year ago.

Paul Cavey

Sep 19, 2025 • 2 min read

Public Post

Japan – will consumption ever grow again?

My latest video, discussing the important question posed in a report of a few weeks ago. Japan's population peaked in 2010, and aggregate consumption stopped growing shortly after. With the number of people continuing to shrink, can consumption – and thus the broader economy – ever grow again?

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Japan – the BOJ gets closer, with inflation remaining firm

While the BOJ remained on hold today, the two dissenting votes to hike are important signals in the direction of travel. The context is inflation that remains firm, with today's August national CPI data showing some signs of underlying inflation starting to creep higher again.

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East Asia Today

This is a bit later today, as I was going through the conclusions of Taiwan's CBC meeting. So that's included below, plus more details of China's August exports (providing further evidence of the re-acceleration in auto sales), as well as Japan's July machine orders.