What are China’s biggest economic challenges this year?
China’s main economic challenges for this year continue to be the implementation of economic reforms and tackling macroeconomic imbalances, while keeping growth broadly stable. The main downside risks to China’s economic outlook are a sharp correction in the property market and rising protectionist trade policies. Our Consensus Forecast sees GDP expanding 6.5% in 2017 before decelerating to 6.2% growth in 2018.
What reforms are China likely to undertake in the near future?
According to announcements made at this year’s National People’s Congress, the government will focus this year on reducing overcapacity in certain sectors, improving the corporate governance of State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) and encouraging mixed ownership of these, particularly in the electricity, oil, natural gas and railway sectors. Tackling the property market, the government will adopt a two-speed approach of encouraging home purchases in tier 3 and 4 cities, while boosting land supply and keeping some restrictions in cities that have experienced a strong rise in prices.
In order to contain rising leverage and financial risks, authorities are adopting a slight tightening bias for monetary policy. That said, the government is providing stimulus via a more accommodative fiscal policy to ensure that growth remains strong. While authorities will likely tighten regulation on shadow banking, their approach will be gradual in order not to squeeze credit growth.
Is China’s current growth model sustainable, in your opinion? Why?
China’s traditional economic model was not sustainable as it relied heavily on cheap credit, massive investments and a fluctuant external sector. The old system generated large macroeconomic imbalances and constrained private consumption. However, the country is now moving towards a new model based on services and domestic consumption that should eventually be more sustainable.
As the Chinese government controls the financial system, why wouldn’t they continue increasing the ratio of debt to gross domestic product to keep growth going strong?
In order to keep the old economic model afloat, authorities needed to inject substantial funds to generate growth, and they did so in large part by boosting state-owned companies’ debt. The Chinese government’s tight grip on the financial sector meant it could choose repeatedly to divert money to companies—a pattern which would have been unsustainable in most other economies.
Although China may be more capable of continuing down this path to achieve higher rates of growth, authorities are aware of the problematic nature of the situation in the long run. They unveiled new regulations last year, such as a debt-to equity swap programme, to reduce excessive corporate debt.
Has China reached a point where it can open up capital flows to help with its economic rebalancing?
China has started opening up its capital account in recent years but there is still a long way to go. Increasing competition in the financial sector, allowing market forces to have a more decisive role in capital allocation and permitting even greater exchange rate flexibility are key to ensuring a successful opening up of the capital account.
China decided that its massive trade surplus was no longer sustainable and consequently increased investment recently. Are there any future consequences of this down the road?
Growth heavily fuelled by investment alone is not sustainable in the long term, just as growth fueled overwhelmingly by trade was not either. China needs to focus on achieving more broad-based and sustainable growth by boosting private consumption and services, in line with the government’s aims for its new growth model, though this will take time to materialize.
Chinese authorities will continue to support the economy via investment if the economy requires any help to maintain stable growth. Therefore, the current pattern is expected to remain in place in the coming years.
If China doesn’t grow by its target of 6.5%, what could happen? Could there be social unrest?
In order to preserve social stability, the authorities intend to keep unemployment low and ensure that citizens continue to reap some of the benefits of China’s stellar growth. They will not allow a massive economic downturn, which would have the potential to trigger social unrest and threaten the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party. If the risk of a serious downturn arose, they would intervene in the economy or slow down the transition to the new growth model in an attempt to avoid it.
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