Neil Shearing on China’s trillion dollar surplus; Leah Fahy on China's AI race episode artwork

EPISODE · Jan 16, 2026 · 35 MIN

Neil Shearing on China’s trillion dollar surplus; Leah Fahy on China's AI race

from The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics · host Capital Economics

Can you pitch yourself as a responsible global stakeholder at the same time as running a $1.2 trillion trade surplus? That’s China’s big global macro play, and it’s one that Neil Shearing thinks China is going to struggle to pull off. The Group Chief Economist of Capital Economics is on The Weekly Briefing to explain what that mammoth trade imbalance means for advanced and emerging economies in a fracturing global economy, including why some EMs are doing quite well as a result of all of the geoeconomic ructions.Also on the show, there’s an awful lot of noise around the race for AI leadership between the US and China, but how to separate out the hype from the reality? China Economist Leah Fahy’s new report sizes up the progress that Chinese AI has made since the launch of DeepSeek a year ago, and the impact that Beijing’s race for tech supremacy will have on the country’s economic outlook.Six non-consensus calls for China for 2026China’s AI rollout could rival the USDrop-In: The shape of the fractured world in 2026The economic and market impact of AI

Can you pitch yourself as a responsible global stakeholder at the same time as running a $1.2 trillion trade surplus? That’s China’s big global macro play, and it’s one that Neil Shearing thinks China is going to struggle to pull off. The Group Chief Economist of Capital Economics is on The Weekly Briefing to explain what that mammoth trade imbalance means for advanced and emerging economies in a fracturing global economy, including why some EMs are doing quite well as a result of all of the geoeconomic ructions.Also on the show, there’s an awful lot of noise around the race for AI leadership between the US and China, but how to separate out the hype from the reality? China Economist Leah Fahy’s new report sizes up the progress that Chinese AI has made since the launch of DeepSeek a year ago, and the impact that Beijing’s race for tech supremacy will have on the country’s economic outlook.Six non-consensus calls for China for 2026China’s AI rollout could rival the USDrop-In: The shape of the fractured world in 2026The economic and market impact of AI

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Neil Shearing on China’s trillion dollar surplus; Leah Fahy on China's AI race

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Can you pitch yourself as a responsible global stakeholder at the same time as running a $1.2 trillion trade surplus? That’s China’s big global macro play, and it’s one that Neil Shearing thinks China is going to struggle to pull off. The Group...

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