I’m writing on the heels of two trips to China during which I met with senior policy makers, bank executives and academics, just as the government launched its 12th Five-Year Plan, intended to rebalance the long-term growth model. My meetings deepened my own impression and RGE’s long-standing house view of a potentially destabilizing contradiction between short- and medium-term economic performance: The economy is overheating here and now, but I’m convinced that in the medium term China’s overinvestment will prove deflationary both domestically and globally.
Once increasing fixed investment becomes impossible—most likely after 2013—China is poised for a sharp slowdown. Continuing down the investment-led growth path will exacerbate the visible glut of capacity in manufacturing, real estate and infrastructure. I think this dichotomy between the high-growth/inflation pressures of the next couple of years and growth hitting a brick wall in the second half of the quinquennium is far more important than the current focus on a “soft landing” amid double-digit growth. A number of local scholars close to policy circles agree that this is the biggest challenge of the next few years, as we’ve been saying for months.
Despite policy rhetoric about raising the consumption share in GDP, the path of least resistance is the status quo. The details of the new plan reveal continued reliance on investment, including public housing, to support growth, rather than a tax overhaul, substantial fiscal transfers, liberalization of the household registration system or an easing of financial repression.
No country can be productive enough to take 50% of GDP and reinvest it into new capital stock without eventually facing massive overcapacity and a staggering nonperforming loan problem. Most likely after 2013 [NBF Note : So this would be 2014 or 2015], China will suffer a hard landing. China needs to save less, reduce fixed investment, cut net exports as a share of GDP and boost consumption as a share of GDP.
Several Chinese policies have led to a massive transfer of income from politically weak households to the politically powerful corporates: a weak currency makes imports expensive, low interest rates on deposits and low lending rates for corporates and developers amount to a tax on savings and labor repression has caused wages to grow much less than productivity.
To ease this repression of household income, China would need a more rapid appreciation of the exchange rate, a liberalization of interest rates and a much sharper increase in wage growth. More importantly, China would need to privatize its state-owned enterprises so that their profits become income for households and/or massively tax SOEs’ profits and then transfer those fiscal resources to the household sector.
Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets thinks China's economy has already begun a slowdown. However Pettis does not think it will be a hard landing.
No comments:
Post a Comment