China : consumption or investment ? – CADTM (2024)

And a reliable measure of economic activity, the purchasing managers survey index for July, was down to 51.1 in July 2023 from 52.3 in the previous month (50 is the threshold between expansion and contraction). This was the lowest figure since December 2022. Factory activity contracted for the fourth month in a row.

The West’s China ‘experts’ have been quick to argue that the Chinese economy is in deep trouble, with slowing growth, falling exports, weak consumption growth and rising debt. The great economic miracle is over.

But how many times have we heard this refrain from the experts over the last 20 years? I could cite article after article, book after book, predicting the collapse of China’s state-led economy, ranging from the claim that is locked into a ‘middle-income trap’ (ie cannot grow fast again); that an ageing population and falling workforce, alongside rising public and private sector debt, is leading to ‘Japanification’ ie a stagnant economy; and finally to forecasts of an imminent collapse in the property and finance sectors.

I have dealt with these arguments in detail in many previous posts. The last one was only in March. Please read that for chapter and verse and the previous posts cited. The data are all there, refuting this ‘expert’ analysis. But of course, it won’t go away because it is in the interests of ‘the West’ to claim that Chinese economic model cannot work and it needs urgently to make a transition, not to socialism, but to outright free market capitalism.

Let us consider the latest round of claims being put by mainstream economists (and parroted by some inside China, ie those who were nicely educated in neoclassical, free market economics in American universities). For example, here is the latest view of the Financial Times. “Government policy is largely to blame for the slowdown. Decades of relying on an investment-driven growth model has slowed China’s transition to a consumer-based economy. Poor oversight of the housing market led to an unsustainable lending boom, while political impediments have hamstrung private enterprises. Heavy-handed Covid restrictions have also left deep scars.”

So first, let’s blame the Chinese government for the slowing economy – presumably for interfering in business and the capitalist sector. But then claim that “decades of relying an investment-driven growth model” is at fault because what is needed is a “transition to a consumer-based economy”. Really? Have the consumer-based economies of the G7 done better than the awful investment-led Chinese economy in the last two or three decades? Take a look at this graph below.

But the FT and other experts might retort, since COVID things have changed in China; now the economy cannot recover. Really? Look at this graph on the growth rate of China and the US since the COVID pandemic started. Indeed, during the COVID pandemic slump year of 2020, every major advanced capitalist economy suffered a recession, but, as in the Great Recession of 2008-9, China did not. And yet China applied the most stringent and draconian series of lockdowns during the pandemic.

And while the US economists are in rapture over 0.6% growth in the US economy in Q2 this year, apparently 0.8% growth for the same quarter in China is to be considered a disaster.

The FT says that “heavy-handed Covid restrictions have also left deep scars.” Well, those ‘heavy-handed’ measures also saved millions of lives in China, when its health system was at breaking point and inadequate to the task. During 2020-21, when the COVID death rate rocketed in the West, China’s stayed at miniscule levels. Eventually, as lockdown exhaustion emerged and protests rose, the government relented and ‘opened up’ the economy, the death rate rose – but only to 85 per million compared to 3300 per million in the US, or to ‘open’ Sweden at 2325 and or even India at 375 (ludicrously underestimated). The ‘deep scars’ were and are still being felt in Europe, the US and Latin America from COVID deaths and long ‘COVID’ on the health of the workforce and economic growth. This year, the IMFIMFInternational Monetary FundAlong with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68%% of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%). The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.http://imf.org forecasts China will grow 5.3%, while the advanced capitalist economies will manage only 1.5%, with the Euro area reaching only 0.9% and Germany and Sweden in outright recession.

The FT goes on that “Poor oversight of the housing market led to an unsustainable lending boom, while political impediments have hamstrung private enterprises.” Much noise has been made about the property crash in China, with several mega-property development companies going bust as the debt borrowing that they built up could no longer be serviced from property sales.

But was this down to poor regulation? We have heard the same cause presented in the property busts in capitalist economies – that it was ‘badly regulated’. But as in those economies, China’s property crisis is not because of bad regulation or ‘unsustainable lending’ but because the housing and property market in China is just that – part of the speculative capitalist market. To quote, Xi himself: ‘housing is for living not speculation’.

And therein lies the rub. Why was a basic human need, housing, handed over to the private sector to meet the needs of millions flooding into the cities over the last few decades? Housing should be done by direct public investment to build houses for all at reasonable rents and so avoid speculation, rocketing house prices and widening inequality. Indeed, the biggest reason for rising inequality in China in the last two decades was not billionaires but the inequality between urban and rural areas and property and non-property owners.

It’s what happened in the West; China should have avoided that too. But in their ‘wisdom’ the Chinese leaders, as advised by their Western-educated bankers and economists, opted for the rentier-capitalist model, which now has come back to bite them.

The government has been forced to act. First, with its “three red lines” policy introduced in 2020, it aimed to limit borrowing by developers and ultimately curtailed their access to financing. Then it started to bail out developers and take over some. But huge debts remain in local government which bore the burden of providing land to these developers and raising funds. Local government debtGovernment debtThe total outstanding debt of the State, local authorities, publicly owned companies and organs of social security. has spiralled and the oncoming repayment schedule is high.

Local government debt now stands at around 25% of GDPGDPGross Domestic ProductGross Domestic Product is an aggregate measure of total production within a given territory equal to the sum of the gross values added. The measure is notoriously incomplete; for example it does not take into account any activity that does not enter into a commercial exchange. The GDP takes into account both the production of goods and the production of services. Economic growth is defined as the variation of the GDP from one period to another., but if you add in the financing vehicles set up by local governments (LGFVs), then total local government debt is more like 60% of GDP. Worse, faced with tighter credit criteria at home, LGFVs turned to offshore markets and raised a record $39.5 billion in dollar bonds.

I am afraid that the Chinese leaders have not learnt from this. They are now moving to provide easier credit for developers and have dropped Xi’s phrase about ‘homes for living’. The government now talks of helping out the capitalist sector. Senior party and state officials jointly released a 31-point plan earlier to shore up the private economy and improve business sentiment. Various government agencies last week also outlined goals to boost consumer spending on cars and electric appliances, though no direct subsidies for households have been unveiled.

All this is along the lines advocated by the likes of the FT, which reckons that “entrepreneurs and established businesses need stability and regulatory clarity from the government. Further monetary policy loosening by China’s central bankCentral BankThe establishment which in a given State is in charge of issuing bank notes and controlling the volume of currency and credit. In France, it is the Banque de France which assumes this role under the auspices of the European Central Bank (see ECB) while in the UK it is the Bank of England.ECB : http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/Pages/home.aspx could help. Beijing will also need to restructure its local government debt; one option might be a fire sale of state assets to private companies. The proceeds would help local authorities to avoid a debt crisis.” In other words, the answer is not public ownership of the housing sector and taking over the indebted property companies, but instead a bailout and then a sale of state assets to pay for it ie privatisation not nationalization.

Finally, in its claimed demise of the Chinese economy, the FT returns to the old ‘Western expert’ argument that China must become a consumer-led economy like the G7, if it is to avoid the ‘middle-income’ trap and Japanese style stagnation. But it is the consumer economies of West that are stagnating, not China. Moreover, if ‘stagnation’ means no inflationInflationThe cumulated rise of prices as a whole (e.g. a rise in the price of petroleum, eventually leading to a rise in salaries, then to the rise of other prices, etc.). Inflation implies a fall in the value of money since, as time goes by, larger sums are required to purchase particular items. This is the reason why corporate-driven policies seek to keep inflation down. of prices, then it may have merit. China has the lowest inflation rate of all the major economies in the world, including stagnating Japan which is desperately trying to create inflation!

While households in the West are suffering the biggest fall in living standards since the Great Depression because wages are not keeping up with high inflation, it is the opposite in China.

What is an issue is youth unemployment which is over 20% in China compared to average urban unemployment of around 5%.

The problem isn’t that jobs don’t exist in China. They do. But the economy isn’t producing enough of the high-skill, high-wage jobs that many college students have come to expect. China is producing more and more university graduates.

But they all expect to get jobs in finance and technology, but not in manufacturing, construction and engineering. It’s a problem that has affected not just China, but also the West. Better-off families want their kids to be working for glamorous tech firms and banks (where they have to work ridiculous hours) rather than in any ‘mundane’ work that often can pay just as much. The government has offered incentives to companies take on students but it does not plan government projects that could provide training in tech and innovation that could meet important social targets.

Then there is external trade. One reason that China’s growth rate has been relatively low in the last year is the collapse of international trade which has turned negative. As a result, China’s exports to the world have dropped.

Yes, that probably means China should concentrate on domestic investment and output, not exports. But that does not mean becoming a ‘consumer-led’ economy. As I have argued before, consumption flows from investment not vice versa – as China’s economy up to now has proved.

The FT and the other experts argue that China is heading for low growth through this decade – see the IMFs latest forecasts.

But as I have argued in previous posts, that does not follow if China uses the potential it still has to invest and grow. Some ‘experts’ are now claiming that India will usurp China over the next decade. But as ex-World BankWorld BankWBThe World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates. and IMF economist Ashoka Mody puts it:

“Since the mid-1980s, Indian and international observers have predicted that the authoritarian Chinese hare would eventually falter and the democratic Indian tortoise would win the race.”

But the World Bank’s 2020 Human Capital Index – which measures countries’ education and health outcomes on a scale of 0 to 1 – gave India a score of 0.49, below Nepal and Kenya, both poorer countries. China scored 0.65, similar to the much richer (in per capita terms) Chile and Slovakia. While China’s female labour-force participation rate has decreased to roughly 62% from around80% in 1990, India’s has fallen over the same period from 32% to around 25%. Especially in urban areas, violence against women has deterred Indian women from entering the workforce.

Assuming that the two economies were equally productive in 1953 (roughly when they embarked on their modernization efforts), China became over 50% more productive by the late 1980s and today, China’s productivity is nearly double that of India. While 45% of Indian workers are still in the highly unproductive agriculture sector, China has graduated even from simple, labour-intensive manufacturing to emerge, for example, as a dominant force in global car markets, especially in electric vehicles.

China is also better prepared for future opportunities. Seven Chinese universities are ranked among the world’s top 100, with Tsinghua and Peking among the top 20. Tsinghua is considered the world’s leading university for computer science, while Peking is ranked ninth. Likewise, nine Chinese universities are among the top 50 globally in mathematics. By contrast, no Indian university, including the celebrated Indian Institutes of Technology, is ranked among the world’s top 100.

China still has vast opportunities for infrastructure in its interior provinces. The challenge is turn domestic savings into domestic investment, so capital is allocated to its most productive uses. For me, that means the state must direct the allocation and not leave investment to the capitalist sector to deliver.

Indeed, the capitalist sector in China is failing. The private-sector’s shareShareA unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset, representing one part of the total capital stock. Its owner (a shareholder) is entitled to receive an equal distribution of any profits distributed (a dividend) and to attend shareholder meetings. of China’s 100 largest listed companies by market value dropped from a peak of 55% in mid 2021 to 39% this June, close to its lowest levels in more than three years, according to a forthcoming research report by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics, or PIIE.

Private sector investment shrank by 0.2% in the first half of 2023 from a year earlier, the first contraction since official data collection began in 2005, with the exception of 2020, when the economy was racked by the pandemic. In contrast, investment by state-controlled firms expanded 8.1% in the same period.

The FT makes a point: “China’s central government is one of the least indebted in the world… If China is to sustain its long run of economic success, it is down to Beijing to act.” But the FT’s idea of action is for government to make cash handouts to households and ‘free up’ the private sector. But it’s not a turn to a consumer-led market economy that China needs to get the economy going again, but planned public investment into housing, technology and manufacturing.