Capital Economics has released a new episode of its Weekly Briefing podcast, "China's future: Deflation, Trade Tensions and Alternative Scenarios", taking stock of the pressures weighing on the world's second-largest economy and outlining a set of alternative paths it could take. The episode is available via Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or on other leading podcast platforms.

The discussion centers on six themes:

• Why China's domestic economy remains under pressure
• The outlook for exports and trade surpluses
• Deflation risks and the prospects for inflation
• How rising geopolitical tensions could reshape China's future
• The six scenarios featured in the new China Economic Scenarios service
• What China's future means for the global economy and financial markets

For context, China has contended with deflationary pressures in recent years, as soft consumer demand and a prolonged downturn in the property sector have kept price growth subdued. At the same time, trade frictions with the United States and the European Union — spanning tariffs, export controls and industrial-policy measures — have complicated the outlook for the country's export sector. Given China's weight in global trade and manufacturing, movements in its prices and export performance are closely tracked by businesses and policymakers assessing demand and supply-chain conditions worldwide — the subject of the episode's closing theme. It is against this backdrop that Capital Economics has launched its China Economic Scenarios service, which maps out six distinct scenarios for how China's economy could evolve; scenario frameworks of this kind are a common tool among economic research firms for helping clients weigh a range of possible paths rather than a single baseline when uncertainty is elevated.

The podcast page also points to recent related research from the firm:

• China Merchandise Trade (Sep. 2026) — China Economist Nguyen Hoang Nam reports that China's trade growth strengthened further in September, with both exports and imports expanding rapidly and higher semiconductor prices among the factors noted.
• How undervalued is the renminbi? — Chief Markets Economist Jonas Goltermann observes that, even though renminbi stands at its strongest level against the US dollar since 2022, it remains close to its weakest levels in real trade-weighted terms.
• EU-China hybrid deal a potential blueprint for future — Chief Europe Economist Andrew Kenningham writes that the EU-China deal on plug-in hybrids marks another step toward strengthening EU trade defences and offers a blueprint for future agreements.

The full episode and accompanying publications are available on the Capital Economics website. For readers following the themes raised in the episode, the firm's recurring trade data updates and currency analysis provide a running record of how China's trade position and renminbi valuation evolve — threads that feed directly into the scenarios outlined in the new service.