中國堅持用傳統的增長動力去推動從Covid復甦

Recently Yahoo New on-line reported the following:

China Sticks with Old Growth Drivers to Spur Covid Recovery

Tom Hancock

Bloomberg Mon., April 19, 2021, 12:29 a.m.

(Bloomberg) -- After fueling its V-shaped recovery by boosting spending on housing and infrastructure, China appears in no rush to drop its investment-led growth model despite international calls for it to “rebalance” its economy.

First quarter data released Friday underlined just how reliant China remains on its current approach: investment spending rose 6% compared with a 4.2% increase in retail sales, based on two-year average growth rates to strip out base effects from last year’s coronavirus lockdowns. Beijing approved investment projects in energy, transport and hi-tech sectors worth 45.4 billion yuan ($7 billion) in the first quarter alone, it said Monday.

The International Monetary Fund and others have long argued that China’s unusually heavy dependence on investment in infrastructure and property has led to an unbalanced economy. While it’s helped to fuel decades of rapid growth, critics say it’s also led to a reliance on debt -- which could spark a financial crisis -- and overcapacity in the economy, as has happened in the past in industries like steel and coal.

Raising the share of household consumption would help to “rebalance” the economy, the argument goes. At about 43% of gross domestic product, China has one of the highest investment ratios of any major economy, while consumption is about 38%.

Justin Yifu Lin, a former chief economist at the World Bank who was an adviser to President Xi Jinping last year, said in an interview that calls for consumption-led growth “are not supported by empirical evidence or economic theory.” He argues that high investment in new infrastructure and equipment enables workers to be more productive and raises their income, in turn increasing consumption.

 “If I’m an ordinary person what I care about will be the growth rate of consumption. We’d like to have higher consumption, but not necessarily a higher consumption ratio,” he said. Any increase in China’s consumer spending share in the next five years “will be gradual,” he said.

 Growth Sources

That message is echoed by the central bank. In a working paper last week, People’s Bank of China researchers led by Chen Hao wrote that “consumption has never been a source of growth” and that “we attach importance to investment.” They singled out the U.S. as a warning, arguing that excessive consumption and low savings fueled a large trade deficit and contributed to the 2008 global financial crisis.

The pandemic increased China’s gap between investment and consumption as Beijing aimed financial aid at companies to resume production, rather than handing cash to households. The U.S. Treasury said in a report last week that China’s lack of government support for households had fueled its rising trade surplus in 2020, calling on Beijing to “take decisive steps” to allocate more resources to consumers.

Lin says declining household consumption and an increased trade surplus are short-term effects of the pandemic and Beijing doesn’t need aggressive policies to counter them.

“Once the world returns to a normal situation I think the structure will spontaneously adjust back to the more balanced pattern,” he said.

In the longer term, because China is the leading producer of consumer goods but relies on other countries for raw materials it uses for investment, increasing the consumption share would not have a direct effect on the country’s trade surplus, Lin said. China’s current account surplus, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, fell below 2% of GDP before the coronavirus pandemic, even as it maintained a high investment rate.

The share of consumer spending in China’s GDP will increase at a slower pace in the next few years and economic growth still needs the support of investment, said Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the China Association of Policy Science’s economic policy committee, a think tank affiliated with the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee. There’s still a lack of infrastructure to support urbanization and an aging population, he added.

There are other indications that Beijing’s consumption push will be muted. The government’s latest five-year plan released last month predicts that the share of household income in GDP, the main determinant of consumer spending power, will remain roughly constant through to 2025. Beijing plans to invest the equivalent of trillions of dollars in digital infrastructure and green energy over the next five years.

‘Demand-Side Reform’

Late last year, the Communist Party called for “demand-side reform,” a pledge that many interpreted as emphasizing policies aimed at creating a more equal distribution of household income. Since those with lower incomes tend to save less, re-distributive policies could increase consumption without raising the overall household income share.

Yet the five-year plan shifted language to “demand side management,” which is a “less ambitious formulation,” according to Andrew Batson, China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics. Bejing has announced plans to increase consumption this year, but “none of these policy goals are associated with quantitative targets, or seem sizable enough to move the needle on aggregate consumer spending,” Batson wrote in a note. “The government does not actually have a plan to boost consumption.”

Some Chinese economists worry that investment spending is too low, rather than too high. Former central bank adviser Yu Yongding last week argued for a faster rate of increase in government infrastructure spending to boost growth, dismissing fears that added debt will increase financial risks.

“An inadequate economic growth rate will increase, rather than reduce, vulnerabilities of the financial environment,” he wrote in the state-run China Daily.

Translation

（彭博社）-儘管國際呼籲中國“重新平衡”經濟，中國通過增加住房和基礎設施建設的支出推動了V型復甦。中國似乎並不急於放棄其投資主導的增長模式。

週五發布的第一季度數據突顯了中國對當前方法的依賴程度：投資支出增長了6％，而零售額增長了4.2％，這是基於兩年的平均增長率, 剔除去年因冠狀病毒封城的基数影響。週一又說，北京僅在第一季度就批准了對能源，交通和高科技領域的投資項目，總投資額達人民幣454億元（合70億美元）。

國際貨幣基金組織（International Monetary Fund）和其他機構長期以來一直在爭辯說，中國對基礎設施和房地產投資的異常依賴導致了經濟的不平衡。評論家說，儘管它助長了數十年的快速增長，但也導致了對債務的依賴（這可能引發金融危機）以及經濟產能過剩，就像在過去鋼鐵和煤炭等行業中發生的那樣。

該論點認為，提高家庭消費比例將有助於“重新平衡”經濟。中國投資比例約佔國內生產總值的43％，是所有主要經濟體中最高的國家之一，而消費值約為38％。

去年曾是習近平行長顧問的世界銀行前首席經濟學家賈斯汀·林伊夫 (Justin Yifu Lin) 在接受採訪時說，呼籲消費拉動的增長“是沒有經驗證據或經濟理論的支持。”他認為，對新基礎設施和設備的大量投資可使工人提高生產率，增加收入，從而增加消費。

他說“如果我是一個普通人，我關心的將是消費的增長率。我們希望有更高的消費量，但不一定有更高的消費比例”。他又說，未來五年中國消費者支出份額的增長“都是逐步的”。

增長來源

中央銀行回應了這一信息。在上週的一份工作論文中，以陳浩 (Chen Hao) 為首的中國人民銀行研究人員寫道：“消費從未成為增長的來源”，並且“我們重視投資”。他們以美國為例作出警告，特別指出美國的過度消費和低儲蓄助長了巨大的貿易逆差，並助長了2008年的全球金融危機。

病毒大流行擴大了中國在投資和消費之間的差距，而北京將財政援助瞄準了企業恢復生產，而不是將現金交給家庭。美國財政部上週在一份報告中表示，中國缺乏政府對家庭的支持，加劇了其2020年的貿易順差，呼籲北京“採取果斷步驟”分配更多資源給消費者。

Yifu Lin說，家庭消費下降和貿易順差增加是病毒大流行的短期影響，北京不需要採取積極的政策來應對。

他又說：“一旦世界恢復到正常狀態，我認為結構會自發地恢復到更加平衡的格局。”

Yifu Lin說，從長遠來看，由於中國是消費品的主要生產國，但依賴其他國家的原材料作投資用，因此增加消費份額不會對中國的貿易順差產生直接影響。中國經常賬戶的盈餘， 作為中國的商品和服務貿易的最廣泛指標, 即使保持了很高的投資率, 在冠狀病毒大流行之前，跌至2％GDP以下。

屬於執政共產黨中央委員會的智囊機構: 中國政策科學會的經濟政策委員會副主任徐洪才(Xu Hongcai) 表示，未來幾年，消費者支出在中國GDP中的比重將以緩慢的速度增長，經濟增長仍需要投資的支持。他補充說，支持城市化和人口老齡化的基礎設施仍然缺乏。

還有其他跡象表明，北京的推動消費將被減弱。政府上個月發布的最新五年計劃預測，到2025年，家庭收入, 在GDP的比重中, 作為消費支出能力的主要決定因素, 將大體上保持穩定不變。北京計劃投資相當於數万億美元在數字基礎設施和未來五年的綠色能源。

  “需求方面改革”

去年年底，共產黨呼籲進行“需求方面改革”，許多人將這一承諾理解為強調旨在創造更加平等的家庭收入分配的政策。由於收入較低的人往往儲蓄較少，因此，重新分配政策可以在不增加家庭總收入份額的情況下增加消費。

根據Gavekal Dragonomics中國研究總監Andrew Batson表示，把五年計劃的用字轉換為 “改革需求” ，是一個“不那麼雄心勃勃的表述”。 Andrew Batson在一份報告中寫道，北京已經宣布了今年增加消費的計劃，但是 “這些政策目標都沒有與量化目標相關聯，或者在規模上, 似乎不足以去推動消費總支出的指標的移動。” “政府實際上沒有增加消費的計劃。”

一些中國經濟學家擔心投資支出太低而不是太高。 前央行顧問於永定Yu Yongding上週主張加快政府基礎設施支出增速以刺激經濟增長，否定了人們擔心增加債務會增加金融風險。

他在國營《中國日報》（China Daily）上寫道：“不足夠的經濟增長率將增加, 而不是減少金融環境的脆弱性。”

              So, Beijing plans to invest the equivalent of trillions of dollars in digital infrastructure and green energy over the next five years, instead of directly spending money on building infrastructure to support urbanization and its aging population.