The project of “counting from the east to the west” was officially launched. On February 17, 2022, the national development and Reform Commission and other four departments jointly issued a notice, agreeing to start the construction of National Computing hub nodes in 8 places, including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, Dawan District, Chengdu and Chongqing, and plan 10 national data center clusters. So far, the overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the “counting from the east to the west” project has been officially launched. The application demand in the eastern region is large, but the energy consumption index is tight and the power cost is high; Some western regions are rich in renewable energy and have a suitable climate, but there are bottlenecks such as small network bandwidth and high cost of inter provincial data transmission, which can not effectively meet the needs of the East. On the whole, through the construction of computing power hubs and data center clusters, the project will expand the effective investment in upstream and downstream industrial chains, and the new infrastructure will help the economy achieve steady growth. The data center industrial chain includes not only traditional civil engineering, but also it equipment manufacturing, information and communication, basic software, green energy supply, etc., which may boost the relevant industrial chains in the future.
The situation in Ukraine became the focus of the Muan meeting. As the influx of refugees from eastern Ukraine continues to increase, the state government of Rostov State in southern Russia announced on February 19 that the state will enter a state of emergency from now on. At the 58th session of the multi-party discussion on Ukraine, mu’an called for easing the situation in Germany. In his first speech at the Muan meeting on the 19th, Scholtz said that the situation in Ukraine had not eased, “there is a risk of another war in Europe”, and diplomatic channels are still a means to solve the Ukrainian problem. The statement said that if Russia invades Ukraine, it will face unprecedented economic sanctions. Overall, the situation in Russia and Ukraine may continue to release risk sentiment in the short term, and friction may reduce the risk appetite of the market, which is relatively bad for risk assets and beneficial for safe haven assets such as US bonds and gold.
Inflation is weaker than seasonality. In January 2022, CPI was 0.9% year-on-year, down 0.6 percentage points when the base number decreased in the same period. The CPI in January was 0.4% month on month, while the average CPI in the same period from 2017 to 2021 was 0.9%. Therefore, the CPI in January this year was weaker than the seasonality, which was mainly affected by the sufficient supply of pork in the Spring Festival and the decline of pig price at the end of the month. PPI fell by 9.1% year-on-year (the previous value was 10.3), which was in line with expectations. Mainly affected by the decline of coal and steel prices under the condition of guaranteed supply and stable price, the chain declines of coal mining and washing industry and ferrous metal smelting and calendering processing industry were – 3.5% and – 1.9% respectively, which were the main drag on PPI. Overall, the CPI center may rise moderately during the year. In February, CPI may still fall due to the dislocation factors of the Spring Festival, but the probability of central mild upward throughout the year is high. The downward trend of PPI may continue. PPI may fluctuate month on month, but it is obviously affected by the rise of the base year on year, and there is a high probability of continuing the downward trend during the year. From the signal of inflation, it is not expected to restrict monetary policy. At present, domestic demand is still weak, measures to stabilize growth are expected to continue, and the policy environment may still be relatively friendly.
After the Spring Festival, the market fluctuated upward, and the market stabilized after the early risk release. In terms of industry performance, architectural decoration, non-ferrous metals and biomedicine were among the top gainers; Leisure services, non bank and bank sectors led the decline. Recent geopolitical issues such as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have pushed up gold and oil prices sharply, putting pressure on global risky assets. Behind the situation in Russia and Ukraine is actually the game between the United States, the European Union and Russia. In the short term, the friction between Russia and Ukraine may continue, but we believe that the possibility of large-scale war is relatively small. For China, the data of social finance and RMB loans in January obviously exceeded the market expectations, and the monetary policy will still adhere to the general tone of “focusing on me”. With the implementation of a series of “steady growth” stimulus measures such as MLF, LPR and SLF reduction and superimposed infrastructure, it is optimistic about the subsequent structural market under the background of wide currency + wide credit in the first quarter.
