A bit more thoughts on this from one of our recent reports:
"There have been five deflationary episodes in Chinese economy since the early 1990s, with each one of them being reversed by a major policy pivot that unleashes tremendous demand.
Richard Koo has been one of my favorite macro thinkers. I have always believed that his thoery on balance sheet recession will prove to be extremely relevant for China one day. Yesterday he gave an extraordinary speech on China's Japanification risk, below are the main takeaways:
1. China is likely to enter a painful balance sheet recession that may take many years to recover.
2. China should not waste time on monetary policy and structural reforms. Instead, it should concentrate its efforts on fiscal stimulus to keep the economy running.
3. What's particularly unnvering is that the Chinese corporate sector has already stopped borrowing since 2016, even before the bubble burst (nonfinancial corporate debt as % of GDP has stopped growing).
4. Koo is confused and intrigued by the phenomenon in No.3...
...unable to find a job, 21mn due to corporate layoffs, and 8mn migrant workers forced out of cities due to the pandemic.
2. The average number of employees at A-share listed companies shrank by 11.9% compared with pre-pandemic levels.
3. 10% of SMEs closed in 2022.
4. Youth unemployment will likely increase by 5mn a year over the next 5 years, suggesting that there may be 50mn youth unemployed by 2028. This will be the most severe unemployment situation for China since the Reform & Opening Up in 1978.
Just to be clear, this is surely a step towards an eventual launch of property tax. However, “eventual” could mean that it is still five if not ten years away. The chance of it happening in the foreseeable future is close to zero, in my opinion. reuters.com/markets/asia/c…
Given the ongoing property weakness and depressed animal spirits among both households and developers, I do not believe that Beijing has the guts to do it right now, while risking inducing a complete crash in property prices.
Policymakers know very well that a sharp fall in property prices is indisputably the biggest risk to China’s financial system and economy. With Beijing remaining fixated on preventing systemic financial risks, it makes no sense for Beijing to commit such a subside.
The most concerning development in Chinese economy today is the entrenched deleveraging among households. Without sufficiently boosting household income and confidence, there is no way that the recovery in property sales and consumption can be strong and sustainable.
Given the retreat of the household sector, Beijing has thus far relied on SOEs to expand credit and balance savings. The problem, however, is that state-directed credit expansion is increasingly inefficient and will inevitably lead to a further rise in debt levels.
The only sector that has a healthy balance sheet right now is the central gov. If Beijing really wants to boost growth and confidence, the most plausible way going forward is to have the central gov. leverage up and increase fiscal support to repair household balance sheets.
Since many of you asked about this, let me briefly reply here why I would not take this too seriously. First, if you read the Chinese version, NHC made it clear that this was a meeting to learn the spirit of the 20th Party Congress.
In other words, this meeting focused more on politics rather than on policy – the first two major paragraphs are simply about the historical significance of the 20th Party Congress. This means that it is clearly not a policy-oriented meeting.
Second, investors can find the same phrase “adhering to dynamic zero-covid strategy” in literally every meeting note from the NHC. That is a pretty standard phrase in their notes, just like the “two establishments” and “two upholds” in all the speeches given by senior politicians
Here is another reason why investors should start to watch China closely. Given growing economic weakness and poor local fiscal condition, the PBoC has quietly restarted the PSL facility, under which the central bank directly provides loans to policy banks for their re-lending...
During the 2015-17 stimulus period, it was the creation of the PSL facility that allowed Beijing to push through its shanty town renovation program, which effectively placed a bottom in Chinese credit and economic growth while caused a surge in commodity prices...
The consensus is that the PSL injection going forward would be much more limited compared with 2015-17 and used only as a tool to complement the already announced stimulus - 800bn new policy bank lending, 600bn development financial instruments, and 200bn special property loans..