Thread by @michaelxpettis

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This article suggests that thanks to big data, Chinese exporters can redirect sales from foreign consumers to domestic consumers. It cites as an example a toothbrush manufacturer for whom exports now account for 60% of sales, down from 90%, after... bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

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Alibaba data on what Chinese consumers want helped them to figure out how to sell more domestically. The article goes on cite to Bai Ming, deputy director of the Ministry of Commerce as saying: “Turning to the domestic market adds one more option for Chinese exporters. In...

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the future, exporters can sell to the market that’s most favorable, which reduces risks.”

This kind of thinking represents a classic fallacy of composition that is far too common in most discussions of Chinese rebalancing. While it is true that certain individual...

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exporters can use big data to reduce their sales of consumer goods abroad while selling more at home, it is impossible for them to do so collectively. The reason China has an export surplus is because total domestic consumption is too low to allow Chinese manufacturers to...

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sell at home all they produce.

That is why a reduction in exports cannot simply be redirected to domestic consumption. Fewer exports means lower national income and, with it, higher domestic unemployment, which in turn means less, not more, domestic consumption. This...

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can only be resolved either by higher public-sector investment (and more debt) or by allowing higher domestic unemployment to persist.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are only two ways of increasing the consumption share of total Chinese production.

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The unsustainable way is to increase household debt, and the sustainable way is directly or indirectly to increase the share ordinary Chinese households retain of Chinese GDP. China’s net exports are not a cause of low domestic consumption. They are a consequence. That...

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is why for Chinese manufacturers collectively to export less doesn’t mean they can sell more to domestic consumers. It just means that they sell less overall, which without government intervention must result in more domestic unemployment and less total domestic consumption.