1/4

While the NDRC and the politicos continue to support more infrastructure expansion, there have been more warnings about debt from policy advisors, with a government-linked think tank noting recently that “Infrastructure investment for the whole...

scmp.com/economy/china-…
2/4

year of 2020 increased by 3.41 percentage points more than the growth rate of nominal GDP, but its stimulus effect was limited compared to the scale of debt expansion."

We will see a partial (temporary) reversal this year, but it seems almost impossible to break...
3/4

the relationship in which GDP growth requires faster growth in FAI, which in turn requires faster growth in debt. This can go on for a long time, but it obviously isn't sustainable, and the longer it goes on, the more difficult the adjustment.
4/4

Rather than a debate about more debt or less growth, Beijing should be discussing the type of adjustment it ultimately can tolerate.

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More from @michaelxpettis

16 Feb
1/5

It requires aggressive industrial policy by Beijing to get Washington to recognize the potential value of industrial policy, but this, says the article, is "deemed less ideologically aligned with American values."

Of course this is only true to...

scmp.com/news/china/art…
2/5

people who know almost nothing about American economic history. Even in the conservative 1920s, for example, the US Post Office heavily subsidized the US air industry to help it pull ahead that of Europe. In fact long before American economic policymaking became...
3/5

dominated by finance, it had been involved a wide range of industrial, agricultural, transportation and trade policies, with the major disagreement being whether decision-making belonged at the federal or state level. What is more, Friedrich List's groundbreaking book on...
Read 5 tweets
15 Feb
1/4

I agree that we will see a wave of outbound Chinese investment this year and next, mainly because after the huge outflows of 2014-16, Beijing had put into place policies aimed at driving up net inflows and, as it often does, it went too far.

scmp.com/economy/china-…
2/4

Because China is now suffering the monetary consequences of massive net inflows, Beijing must now partially reverse these earlier policies and try to reduce net outflows, in part by encouraging financial outflows. But it is very hard to get speculative markets to stabilize.
3/4

The combination of large foreign inflows and rising Chinese outflows will almost certainly lead to more fragile domestic balance sheets, in which case within 2-4 years I expect net outflows will once again become a problem. Anyone with much experience in the financial...
Read 4 tweets
14 Feb
1/9

While debt-to-GDP ratios already have a limited but very misunderstood use, it seems economists are finding bright new ways of misunderstanding them. Now we say that when nominal interest rates are lower than nominal growth rates, the resulting...

economist.com/finance-and-ec…
2/9

downward pressure on the debt-to-GDP ratio makes rising government debt and larger government deficits more sustainable and more easily justified.

This is totally confused. When the nominal interest rate is lower than the nominal GDP growth rate, it only means that net...
3/9

borrowers are getting a disproportionate share of growth relative to net lenders. This in and of itself changes the comparability of the debt-to-GDP ratio, so the fact that the ratio may decline tells us nothing about its sustainability which, I'm glad to say, isn't...
Read 9 tweets
13 Feb
1/5

Interesting and important piece by @BrankoMilan on the structure of inequality in China. I would add that there are two different but related kinds of "inequality" in China that must form part of any adjustment process. There is of course the...

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…
2/5

highly-distorted distribution of income within the household sector in favor of the political elite (on which this article focuses), but there is also the highly-distorted distribution of income between the household sector and the non-household sectors.
3/5

In China, the household share of GDP is in rough parity with the share of non-households (businesses and governments), whereas in a more "normal" economy households retain 2-3 times the share of GDP. I would argue this distortion may be politically harder to resolve...
Read 5 tweets
12 Feb
1/4

I know everyone is struggling to come up with clever Ox metaphors, but I really don't think we can describe China's economy as having exhibited "ox-like endurance". That would seem to imply that the various components of the Chinese economy have...

scmp.com/comment/opinio…
2/4

been loyally plugging away in spite of adverse conditions.

But China's reported GDP only grew last year after nearly everything Beijing wanted to expand in fact contracted sharply, forcing Beijing to expand substantially everything it wanted to contract. If it wanted to...
3/4

contract that activity, it must be because it believes that this activity does not add value to the economy, or else why would it want to cut back? The ox, in other words, stopped plowing the field and chose instead to stay busy by digging a ditch that no one needed.
Read 4 tweets
11 Feb
1/4

Interesting article. "Of the 20 most commonly used apps in China — ranging from photo editing to file sharing, from maps to streaming platforms — all have some kind of in-app loan services."

Nearly every modern bubble economy was characterized...

protocol.com/china/chinese-…
2/4

in part by an explosion in new – and so unregulated – forms of lending. Beijing is trying to regulate this app-based from of micro-lending, but this only helps if the new forms of lending are unnecessary froth on the structure of the economy and so can be suppressed.
3/4

The problem, I would argue, is that in retrospect it usually, or even always, turns out that the structure of the bubble economy had evolved to the point where the rapid extension of credit was fundamental to its growth. If that is the case in China (and I think...
Read 4 tweets

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