New threats to recovery emerge

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Monday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the International edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>Today we lead with news there are new or renewed threats to the global recovery emerging.</p><p>But first in China, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-06-17/missing-china-grains-analyst/100219524" target="_blank"><strong>reports</strong></a> are filtering out that Beijing is detaining and arresting analysts who report on crop yields. This sort of work is very hard to do unless you tour and observe crop regions first hand (which is how it is done is most countries). But independent reports have been snuffed out in China over the past few weeks. It does raise the question about why Beijing needs to be so heavy handed on this arcane, technical corner of market assessments.</p><p>China is <a href="http://www.autoreview.com.cn/m/show_article-10972.html" target="_blank"><strong>looking to grow its passenger car market</strong></a> by +10% this year. And a key part of that is an expected nearly +50% surge in sales of new energy vehicles. This rise would put them on track to sell a quarter of all cars as NEVs by 2025. Lithium mining is set for an even bigger boost if this transpires and lithium mining is <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/clean-evs-and-dirty-lithium-mining-business" target="_blank"><strong>an especially dirty process</strong></a> at present. If SRI funds aim to avoid polluters, why should they think battery cars are 'green'? At present, <a href="https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/top-lithium-producing-countries/" target="_blank"><strong>Australia is the top lithium miner</strong></a> and China's NEV drive will benefit them most. Although most of the known lithium reserves are in South America.</p><p>Despite its drive to control commodity prices, China is still not getting <a href="http://www.dce.com.cn/DCE/Products/Industrial/Iron%20Ore/index.html" target="_blank"><s