This is John Bachelors.

A comment by my colleague Chris Weagle of Sculler.com about business on the mainland in China.

Factories for some time have been calling around looking for work.

And now Chris tells me that factories are still looking for work, however, they've been

told to raise their prices.

Who told them?

The central government, the command economy.

Is your prices in a slowdown, in a recession?

But why?

Chris mentions that this is a surprise to the factories, certainly a surprise to us.

Speculation.

China's out of money, question mark.

Here's Chris.

So, done what we saw in first quarter, post-COVID, was factories with ecstasy calling around

and offering to drop prices.

Core prices try to get orders in, and that's Chinese factories doing what they're good

at soliciting business and trying to re-kick start that economy.

They started a signal in the last week coming into second quarter.

Now we have a price increase, and that price increases 10%, 15%, 20%, to which is a buyer

you say, well, then I'm just not going to buy.

By the way, why did prices go up?

Universally, we're hearing that the call is coming from Beijing instructing manufacturers

...