{"id":7768,"date":"2014-08-05T21:59:21","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T06:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=7768"},"modified":"2014-07-23T20:28:10","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T12:28:10","slug":"china-the-great-slowdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2014\/08\/05\/7768\/","title":{"rendered":"China: The great slowdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Signs the mammoth property bubble is finally bursting belie Beijing\u2019s upbeat GDP data<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info<\/p>\n

On July 16 the Chinese government released its GDP figures for the second quarter, causing global financial markets to heave a collective sigh of relief as 7.5 percent growth was announced. This figure (Beijing\u2019s GDP data is notoriously prone to manipulation) does not signal that the world\u2019s second largest economy has \u2018stabilised\u2019 however. This was \u201ca recovery, on paper,\u201d noted Keith Bradsher, Beijing correspondent for the New York Times (16 July 2014). As Bradsher\u2019s report points out, \u201cindependent surveys of businesses across China show that in sector after sector, sales and confidence are still deteriorating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statistical lift, from an annualised 7.4 percent growth in the first quarter, was mainly achieved with the help of yet another \u2018mini stimulus\u2019. Like similar measures last year, this has been pushed through surreptiously by Premier Li Keqiang and his economic team, who officially adhere to the line: \u201cNo more stimulus!\u201d Li\u2019s latest measures include extra spending on public housing and railway construction \u2013 up 32 percent in June from a year earlier \u2013 and a package of tax cuts and looser credit (lower reserve requirements at some smaller banks) to boost the small business sector.<\/p>\n

Debt soars<\/strong><\/p>\n

But China\u2019s exceptionally rapid accumulation of debt has narrowed the government\u2019s scope for stimulus. According to Bloomberg, total debt surged from 166.6 percent of GDP at the end of 2011 to 202.1 percent in the first quarter of 2014, and 206.3 percent in the second quarter. The increase in debt over the past five years has been more rapid in China than either 1980s Japan, 1990s Southeast Asia or the US economy in the 2000s \u2013 all of which produced severe financial crises. In Japan, for example, the debt-to-GDP ratio rose by around 45 percent from 1984 to 89. China has accomplished a similar feat in less than three years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s becoming clear that the Chinese economy has now entered a period of crisis that can set off social and political eruptions. The measures taken by President Xi Jinping to beef up state security and clampdown further on any organised expressions of dissent, are tantamount to \u201cbattening down the hatches\u201d before entering rough seas. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) dictatorship faces a \u2018trilemma\u2019 of unpleasant alternatives: disarming the debt bomb (deleveraging) which also risks strangling investment and growth, allowing the property bubble to burst which could trigger a banking crisis, and reining in overextended local governments which, however, are the source of most investment. Beijing\u2019s pressure on regions to speed-up infrastructure spending in accordance with the latest \u2018mini stimulus\u2019 contradicts its efforts to deleverage the economy and aggravates the debt problem.<\/p>\n

This has led capitalist commentators to complain the government is stalling over neo-liberal market reforms promised at the Third Plenum of the CCP in late 2013. Similarly, they bemoan the fact that the promised\u00a0\u201ceconomic rebalancing\u201d towards higher consumer spending and a lower GDP share from investment (which hit a record 54 percent of GDP last year) is not happening. For Beijing, as shown in the past, such a rebalancing is much easier said than done. Even a modest slowdown in investment could translate into a\u00a0much more painful economic slowdown, which in turn could trigger a property-linked financial crisis. This is why some economists describe China as a\u00a0\u201cbicycle economy\u201d that could fall over\u00a0if its slows too much.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The city of Tianjin’s ‘Manhattan project’ \u2013 a replica of New York’s original.<\/p>\n

Housing slump<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a survey conducted by CNNMoney in July, 2014, eight out of 10 economists said the property market poses the biggest threat to China\u2019s economy. Another report, from Japanese bank Nomura, warned, \u201cIt is no longer a question of \u2018if\u2019 but rather \u2018how severe\u2019 the property market correction will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The volume of sales for new housing units in the four largest cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) fell by 40 percent year-on-year during the first quarter of 2014. Nationally, new homes starts fell more than 25 percent in the quarter and the value of sales fell 7.7 percent. Of China\u2019s 27 biggest cities, 21 had housing inventory levels exceeding 12 months\u2019 supply. Nine cities had more than two years\u2019 supply.<\/p>\n

The market downturn is welcomed by the vast majority who are excluded from buying a home at today\u2019s inflated prices. House prices have skyrocketed, in Shanghai\u2019s case by 273 percent in the past seven years. This explains why 83 percent in a recent People\u2019s Daily poll said the government should not \u201crescue the property market\u201d by relaxing cooling measures it imposed in 2011. The Financial Times (12 May 2014) reported that the richest 1 percent of households own around one-third of China\u2019s residential property. Another report from CLSA, a Hong Kong-based finance group, states that 53 percent of house purchases in China are for \u201cinvestment purposes\u201d rather than for a place to live. The majority of these properties are left empty to fetch the highest selling price.<\/p>\n

Corrupt CCP officials have been very active in the housing market, in many cases acquiring hundreds of apartments as a means to park their illicit wealth. Not surprisingly, therefore, Xi Jinping\u2019s anti-corruption drive has also contributed to the market downturn by dampening officials\u2019 appetite for property. Xi\u2019s campaign has exceeded the scale of previous graft-busting campaigns, reflecting an acute crisis and power struggle within the state.<\/p>\n

A construction frenzy the likes of which the world has never seen was the most important single element in the monster stimulus package launched by the Chinese regime in 2008, in an attempt to offset the effects of the global crisis. As always in the context of China, the economic data contains some staggering figures. \u201cIn just two years, from 2011 to 2012, China produced more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century,\u201d reported Jamil Anderlini in the Financial Times (13 May 2014). China built half the world\u2019s new residential buildings last year, according to the vice president of Premier Li\u2019s Development Research Centre. An estimated 200 million housing units have been built in the past 5 to 6 years \u2013 more than 1.5 times the total housing stock in the US (130 million units).<\/p>\n

Construction on this scale far outstrips market \u2018demand\u2019 \u2013 which is not determined by the needs of China\u2019s almost 1.4 billion people, but by the grossly unequal wealth distribution that has accompanied the past 30 years of capitalist \u2018reform and opening\u2019. Low wages and non-existent welfare protection are still the reality for the majority of the population, and even the middle classes face increasing difficulties to buy an apartment at today\u2019s prices.<\/p>\n

Capitalist commentators and China \u2018bulls\u2019 dismiss evidence of massive housing oversupply, including endless \u2018ghost town\u2019 developments, arguing \u201cit\u2019s not a bubble\u201d because, they claim, tens of millions will move to cities and soon fill the empty developments. This argument is a modern day version of the equally flawed slogan of the British capitalists in the 1850s, who dreamed that, \u201cIf every Chinese adds four inches to his shirt-tails, Lancashire cotton mills will be kept busy for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact urban migration has already peaked in China. The number of new arrivals from the countryside each year has halved from 12.5 million to 6.3 million since 2010, according to Nomura. The bank predicts there could be a net outflow of migrants by 2016. More to the point, the proportion of migrant workers who purchase a home is less than 1 percent per year.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s building boom, especially during the mega-stimulus era since 2008, has been driven by an extreme form of financial speculation. Local governments, property developers, corrupt officials, state-run banks and their shadow finance offshoots, have all conspired to inflate land prices, massively expand credit and \u2018juice up\u2019 GDP performance. This process has enormously enriched a tiny elite, while inflicting economic misery on the majority. Among the top 10 property billionaires worldwide, seven are from China, according to the South China Morning Post (26 February 2014).<\/p>\n

As in Japan in the 1980s, inflated property values have helped to fuel an unprecedented wave of bank lending that now threatens to run in reverse. \u201cProperty [is] essentially the asset that underwrites all credit in the Chinese economy,\u201d noted China-based economics professor Patrick Chovanec. Falling land prices will erode the\u00a0book value\u00a0of assets held by banks and other companies, increasing the risk of defaults\u00a0that could paralyse\u00a0the financial system.<\/p>\n

Globally there has been an increase in debt of 30 trillion US dollars over the past five years, of which China accounts for half. According to JPMorgan, the shadow banking sector alone has ballooned from US$2.4 to US$7.7 trillion since 2010, accounting for 84 percent of China\u2019s \u00a0GDP. These sums dwarf even the scale of the US\u2008\u2018subprime\u2019 crisis.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The vast majority of housing construction is for the luxury market.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turning Japanese?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are striking similarities with what happened in Japan almost a quarter of a century ago, which arrested that country\u2019s stellar economic rise and condemned it to a double-decade of stagnation. In Japan, as in China today, around 80 percent of loans were directly or indirectly tied up in the property sector. The collapse in real estate prices, which began in 1989, spilled into Japan\u2019s banking system creating a tsunami of bad loans (with debtors unable to repay). In China, a big part of the debt is concentrated in the nexus of local governments and their investment vehicles, overextended property developers, and the shadow banking entities created by banks (and even non-financial state-owned companies) to get around government controls.<\/p>\n

Comparisons with 1980s Japan are not surprisingly common in today\u2019s economic discussions. A leaked recording of a speech by Mao Daqing, who is vice-chairman of China\u2019s biggest property developer, Vanke Group, spelt out the bleak reality that government spokesmen would prefer to conceal:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1990, Tokyo\u2019s total land value accounted for 63.3 percent of US GDP, while Hong Kong reached 66.3 percent in 1997. Now, the total land value in Beijing is 61.6 percent of US GDP, a dangerous level,\u201d he said (The Telegraph, 2 May 2014).<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, I believe that China has reached its capacity limit for new construction of residential projects\u2026 I don\u2019t see any possibility for a rise in home prices, especially in cities with large housing inventory, unless the government pushes out another few trillion [stimulus]. Beijing and Shanghai have already been listed among the most expensive cities in the world in terms of the median central city property prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

This admission, from one of the industry\u2019s top insiders, leaves no doubt that a gigantic property bubble exists in China, and this is now reaching its limits. While the timing cannot be predicted with certainty, it is clear that this situation is unsustainable, and that which is unsustainable will come to an end at some point. As in Japan, and the US more recently, when asset bubbles burst they unleash a chain reaction of falling prices \u2013 deflation \u2013 that can massively exacerbate today\u2019s debt problems.<\/p>\n

The Chinese dictatorship, with its control \u2013 at least formally \u2013 over the state-owned banking system, has already begun to take measures to try to avert a financial crisis. Bad loans within the banking system are being concealed and underreported. In an authoritarian system with almost total control of the media, the cover-ups will increase in order to prevent bad news sparking a market panic.<\/p>\n

The regime is preparing to again bailout failing financial institutions and establish so-called \u2018bad banks\u2019 as it did 15 years ago, at the time of the last explosion of non-performing loans within the banking system. These are companies where debts that cannot be recovered are buried, like the financial equivalent of toxic waste. This creates the impression \u2013 as if by magic \u2013 that bank balance sheets have been restored to health. The banks are then recapitalised with a government injection of money. The scale of this operation will have to be much bigger this time around, however, and rather than a national rescue, at this stage, Beijing wants provinces and cities to set up \u2018bad banks\u2019 so the bailouts can be performed at local level, partly to avoid the appearance of a systemic crisis. The previous round of bank bailouts, in 1999-2000, cost as much as 40 percent of China\u2019s GDP. This was used to \u2018clean up\u2019 the Big Four state-owned banks and prepare them for flotation on stock markets in China and overseas. But the bad debts which were transferred into four \u2018bad banks\u2019 (asset management companies) at the start of the century are still there today. Repeating this trick on an even larger scale will be no easy feat.<\/p>\n

From early this year, the government has attempted to manage, on a selective basis, the first ever defaults by companies and also involving some \u00a0highly speculative \u2018securities\u2019 sold through the shadow banking sector. This is an attempt to rein in the more reckless forms of speculation. But in most cases Beijing has opted to allow bailouts and avoid defaults, so great is the fear that the failure even of some obscure shadow financial products could trigger a wider systemic crisis. Not for nothing has Premier Li compared reform of China\u2019s banks to \u201cdisarming land mines\u201d.<\/p>\n

The housing downturn has already begun to weigh on economic growth, through reduced investment which is the main driver of GDP. It is also exacerbating the financial woes of heavily indebted local governments, which rely on land sales for a large portion of their revenues \u2013 an average of 39 percent in 2013. In some provinces, especially where the housing bubble has been most extreme, the situation is more acute. In Zhejiang province, revenue from land sales accounts for nearly 70 percent of local governments\u2019 direct debts, with Tianjin not far behind this level.<\/p>\n

\"House<\/a>
House prices have skyrocketed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Global fallout<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cChinese property is the most important sector in the global economy,\u201d declared former UBS chief economist George Magnus in the Financial Times. This underlines the high stakes at play for global capitalism. According to official data, real estate contributed 16 percent of China\u2019s GDP last year, compared to 8.9 percent of GDP in the United States at the height of its housing bubble (2006). A study by Moody\u2019s Analytics puts the housing market\u2019s share of China\u2019s GDP at 23 percent in 2013.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s construction boom has sucked in resources from the whole world, creating a global \u2018super cycle\u2019 for commodity prices \u2013 from fossil fuels to iron ore and timber \u2013 which has boosted GDP growth rates across Africa, Latin America and Asia. The end of this boom will therefore be dire news for global capitalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Signs the mammoth property bubble is finally bursting belie Beijing\u2019s upbeat GDP data Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info On July 16 the Chinese government released its GDP figures for the second quarter, causing global financial markets to heave a collective sigh of relief as 7.5 percent growth was announced. This figure (Beijing\u2019s GDP data is notoriously prone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":7769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[132,124],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-china","8":"category-news"},"yoast_head":"\nChina: The great slowdown - China Worker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2014\/08\/05\/7768\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China: The great slowdown - China Worker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0Signs the mammoth property bubble is finally bursting belie Beijing\u2019s upbeat GDP data Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info On July 16 the Chinese government released its GDP figures for the second quarter, causing global financial markets to heave a collective sigh of relief as 7.5 percent growth was announced. 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