Unfortunately, I was talking trends and cycles, and my hosts told me this was foreign to them. They were amazed, and said that nobody had ever shown them how to link the dots before.

I too was amazed. They could tell me what the T-Bill rate was in Australia that day, or Tokyo or NYC " take your pick. When it came to data, these people had it all over me.

But the name of my game has always been information. I'm always trying to figure out what's going to happen tomorrow. It would be a different story if I was standing at a bank teller's station.

When it comes to statistics about China, there is one place to go: the National Bureau of Statistics of China. And there is a lot of statistical data here.

The latest data on CPI is interesting, for example.

As I understand it, CPI for last year was +1.8 pct. In 2005, out of 70 cities, real estate prices climbed +6.5 pct Y/Y overall. Beijing prices were up +7.4 pct but vacancy rates were up to 20+ pct. But, compared to 3Q05, Shanghai real estate prices are down "4.8 pct.

But here is the real information, I think.

Oil imports for China were down -5.3 pct last year. That's about 100 50 million barrels.

The Xinhua report said "China's net import of oil stood at 136.17 million tons in 2005, down 5.3 percent from 2004, or 7.56 million tons less than the previous year."

And, Chinese demand for oil and oil products DECREASED overall by -0.5 pct. They attributed the "reduced import of oil to an energy consumption campaign launched by the country last year, which enhanced the public's awareness of energy saving, as well as the development of energies which can substitute oil." Hmmm.

I'd like to hear more from Shanghai Fly on this, but markets are now closed for Chinese New Year, and will re-open on Feb-06-06.

A couple days ago, the Fly sent me charts of the Shanghai and Shenzhen broad equity market indexes. He pointed a clear RSI bearish divergence. Sentiment has gotten bullish, he says, and more people have more of their portfolios in stock and not cash.

He said: "Metals have been very hot here. I've been waiting for a retracement in gold stocks to buy, but they just keep going up (600489 and 600547 in Shanghai, 000060 in Shenzhen). Oil and other resource stocks have also been quite hot, but I've lost some money speculating in a few lightly traded ones (000668 and 600255)... Although technically we have cleared the resistance of 1250, consolidation has been the norm of the past few trading days. I expect a strong open on 2/6, after Chinese New Year (like in the U.S. after New Years) -- but sustained strong gains are far from predictable. Maybe a buy in FXI could be made on 2/3 in the US, and ride the open up :). (As well as set a tight stop a few percentage points below open.)"

I just pass along his comments without further analysis. At this point, I am more interested in why oil demand and imports would be declining in China.

That information would be real news. It could mean there are special challenges ahead this year for China that perhaps the world is unaware of. Or there might be a more reasonable explanation than provided by the official quoted by Xinhua.

Maybe somebody can sift through this mountain of data and come up with a perspective they would care to share?