China's economic growth engine: The likely types of hardware failure, software failure and power supply failure

The 6th Plenum of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded on October 11, 2006, with the commitment to establish a harmonious society by 2020. The obvious implication from this commitment is that the present major social, economic and political trends are not leading to a harmonious society or, at least, not leading to a harmonious society fast enough. Analytically, if the Chinese economy is depicted as a speeding car, there are three classes of failures (a) a hardware failure from the breakdown of an economic mechanism, a development that is analogous to the collapse of the chassis of the car; (b) a software failure from a flaw in governance that creates frequent widespread social disorders that disrupt production economy-wide and discourage private investment, a situation similar to a car crash that resulted from a fight among the people inside the speeding car; and (c) a power supply failure from hitting either a natural limit or an externally-imposed limit, a situation that is akin, respectively, to the car running out of gas or to the car smashing into a barrier erected by an outsider. For hardware failure we discuss the possible weakening of China's fiscal position generated by the repeated recapitalization of the state banks. For software failure, we discuss possible social disorder caused by outmoded governance. And for power supply failure, we discuss the possible trade disputes from China’s chronic trade imbalances and the physical constraints posed by China’s rapidly deteriorating natural environment.China; growth; banks; environment

The Challenges of Governance Structure, Trade Disputes and Natural Environment to China's Growth

Viewing the Chinese economy as a speeding car, there are three types of development that could crash the car: (1) a hardware failure, which is the breakdown of an economic mechanism (analogous to the collapse of the chassis of the car), e.g. a banking crisis; (2) a software failure, which is a flaw in governance that creates social disorders (analogous to a fight among the people inside the car), e.g. the state not being able to meet the rising social expectations about its performance because many of the key regulatory institutions are absent or ineffective; and (3) a power supply failure, which is the loss of economic viability (analogous to the car running out of gas or having its ignition key pulled out) e.g. an environmental collapse or an export collapse. The fact that China has recently declared that its most important task is to build a Harmonious Society (described as a democratic society under the rule of law and living in harmony with nature) suggests that improvements in governance and protection of the environment are among the most serious challenges to achieving sustainable development. The greatest inadequacy of the Harmonious Society vision is the absence of an objective to build a harmonious world because a harmonious society cannot endure in China unless there is also a harmonious world, and vice-versa. The large amount of structural adjustments in the developed countries generated by rapid globalization and technological innovations has made the international atmosphere ripe for trade protectionism; and environmental degradation has made conflict over the global environmental commons more likely. China's quest for a harmonious society requires it to help provide global public goods, particularly the strengthening of the multilateral free trade system, and the protection of the global environmental commons. Specifically, China should work actively for the success of the Doha Round and for an international research consortium to develop clean coal technology.China, harmonious society, governance issues, mass incidents, environmental protection, water crisis, trade imbalances, protectionism

The Travails of Current Macroeconomic and Exchange Rate Management in China: The Complications of Switching to a New Growth Engine

Just when China’s leaders receive conflicting signals of “overheating” and “below-potential growth”, they encounter tremendous external pressure to revalue the Renminbi (RMB) substantially. Our conclusion is that the major macroeconomic challenges have their roots in China’s inadequate marketization and continued discrimination against the domestic private sector. The monopoly state banks intermediate the large volume of savings not only inefficiently but also inadequately. The latter results in aggregate demand expanding slower than supply-side growth, imparting a deflationary tendency to the economy. The present remedy of increased public-directed investments can be a satisfactory solution in the short run, but they are a disaster in the long run because they would follow an increasingly rent-seeking path that is wasteful as in Japan (e.g. wasteful projects that benefit politically- connected companies), and the increased state enterprise investments would convert themselves into nonperforming loans. In partially-reformed China, public-directed investments via the state enterprises tend to veer out of control frequently and overheat the economy. China’s persistent trade surplus is fundamentally linked to the deflation phenomenon because a chronic trade surplus means that national savings is larger than domestic investments, the result of inadequate financial intermediation. China should now expand its investment program to incorporate large import-intensive infrastructure projects as the alternative to the appreciation the RMB, or as an important complement to limited RMB appreciation. The additional construction would create jobs, relieve production bottlenecks, and preserve employment in China's export-oriented sectors. The long-run solution to eradicating the deflation bias and the tendency toward current account surplus lies in establishing an efficient financial intermediation mechanism. Frequent bank recapitalization is the biggest threat to China’s fiscal solvency and macroeconomic stability. Our calculations conclude that the forthcoming second recapitalization since 1997 is the last one that China can afford. Even then, fiscal solvency and macroeconomic management requires that the state continues keeping interest rates artificially low in order to avoid reducing the present fiscal stimulus to accommodate the servicing of the bonds issued for the bank bailout. In short, China faces a difficult tradeoff between the maintenance of fiscal stimulus to keep growth on track and the promotion of financial market development via recapitalizing the state banks, splitting them up and privatising some of them, liberalising the establishment of private financial institutions, improving prudential monitoring and enforcement, and deregulating interest rates. The entry of Western banks into China’s financial markets is not the same thing as the opening of the capital account. China would not be well served by a rapid opening of the capital account because foreign banks could suddenly become conduits for large-scale capital flight, or for rapid swings in short-term lending and repayments, or facilitators of bank runs (in which depositors do not merely switch banks, or switch from domestic banks to domestic currency, but actually switch from domestic deposits to foreign assets). Just as in financial market liberalization, capital account opening should also proceed in stages, because it must be accompanied by sophisticated financial market regulation, something that is clearly not in place at this time. The state-owned sector and state-controlled companies are still a serious threat to sustained high growth, banking sector solvency, and price stability. Worse, yet, the corruption within state enterprises undermine social stability. The transformation to a private market economy should be accelerated by faster privatization of state enterprises, and the reduction in legal discrimination against private sector activities.China, deflation, exchange rate, banking system, financial intermediation, state enterprise