Two meetings coming to a close; Ukraine; SOHO China fire sale; Nickel market still broken

The CPPCC session ended today, the NPC closes tomorrow, and then later Friday we have the annual press conference with the Premier.

Premier Li Keqiang’s meeting with the media will likely be his last appearance at an NPC presser. The information content of these events is usually low, but I thought it would be worth taking a trip down memory lane to review some of then-Premier Wen Jiabao’s remarks at his last NPC press conference in 2012.

Wen’s remarks about the importance of political structural reform and that “the mistake of the Cultural Revolution and the impact of feudalism have yet to be fully eliminated” were striking. At the time most people saw these remarks as solely directed at Bo Xilai, who was having his last moments of freedom around the time of Wen’s press conference. Ten years on, might he been making a broader point about something he saw coming?

Among other things Wen said:

As the economy grows, such new problems as unfair distribution, lack of credibility and corrupt…