Thursday, December 4, 2014

Non-sustainable growth is non-detectable: Modern and real example of China

/Article on partial completion of the course: International Competition and Policy/
China, the country of immense potential and prospering economy, outruns most of the Asian countries in terms of manufacturing, having per capita production by almost one half than the average of remaining countries in Emerging and Developing Asia. The country still keeps its fast pace of growth, at 6-7 percent per year. According to the WEF’s categorization of development stage, the country is currently on the third stage of total five, an “Efficiency driven economy”. Due to its large supply of cheap labour and continually evolving innovation in business and technology, the country obviously has its comparative advantage in manufacturing.
Briefing on China’s rankings in Competitiveness
Table 1 shows the rankings of China within the competitiveness sub-indices. Ranking at 28 in terms of general economic competitiveness, China’s lowest score was on innovation and sophistication factors, with China being listed at 33, sub index rankings with 43 in Business sophistication and 32 in Innovation. The Basic requirements index consists of 4 independent indices for the 4 “pillars” for a country to be in good condition. Within these pillars, China ranked in the first 10 in Macroeconomic environments, which reflects the fast economic growth, foreign trade, low inflation and production. In terms of Efficiency enhancers, which is the third sub index in the general competitiveness, China ranks at 30. Emphasis should be given to the Market size ranking: second with only US in front. The rankings are generally higher than the rest of Asian emerging and developing countries.
Table 1. Rankings in sub index categories and pillars
Sub index
Rank
Pillars
Rank
Basic requirements
28
Institutions
47
Infrastructure
46
Macroeconomic environment
10
Health and primary education
46
Efficiency enhancers
30
Higher education and training
65
Goods market efficiency
56
Labor market efficiency
37
Financial market development
54
Technological readiness
83
Market size
2
Innovation and sophistication factors
33
Business sophistication
43
Innovation
32
Financial asset perspective
According to the Allianz SE Report, financial asset of private households in Asian countries rose more than 10 percent, holding almost half the financial asset held throughout the world. The financial asset holdings in China was the biggest contributor, with 23 percent of growth. Though the high growth increased the share of China’s financial asset in the region to 36 percent, the “old-rich” Japan still persists as the richest nation in Asia in terms of financial wealth, without mentioning its share in the last year was large at 51 percent. According to Allianz forecast, if this growth continues, China should replace Japan by next year.
Another way of looking at financial holdings is the distribution of financial wealth. According to the Gallup institute of economic research, China’s financial welfare is considerably high comparing with the tiger nations in Asia. In terms of equality, one quarter of the population is thriving while another quarter is suffering in terms financial wealth. Thus, comparing across urban and rural regions, there is still significantly unequal financial distress.
Productivity
According to The Economist, whether China’s growth is due to high productivity or large supply of production factors is problematic. Since as long as the increase of capitals and labour is more than the decrease in productivity, the economy will be growing, which might be the case of China. We cannot see explicitly whether arbitrary worker’s productivity is increasing or decreasing, so economists estimate the Solow residual. Several economists’ estimation resulted with a bad news for China. Productivity growth has decreased across several estimates from World Bank and the local analysts. As an example for these, World Bank estimated that TFP growth in China by 2000-2010 has fallen by 40 percent comparing to its 1990s.
Graph 1. Total productivity in China /in RMB, fixed price of 2000/
Data source: Measuring Chinese Productivity Growth (2006), OECD
Looking at the graph 1 and 2 above, even though the productivity has been increasing in absolute terms, the percentage growth is starting to fall by 2004 and 2005. This supports the above mentioned conclusion that productivity growth in China is starting to fall. But since, due to data insufficiency, the graph doesn’t show the data for 2006 and further until now, it is inconvenient to make hasty conclusion based on this.
Another evidence supporting this is that China’s workers are least motivated in their work. This result is postulated from the Gallup institute[1] mentioned above, and they used data on performance, productivity, tenure etc. in determining the relationship. They even concluded that only 6 percent of workers in Chinese companies are fully engaged to their work.
Graph 2. Total productivity growth in China
Data source: Measuring Chinese Productivity Growth (2006), OECD
Investment vs. Productivity
One of the main reasons for this deceleration is bad investment and lending. Though China’s debt level increases fast (according to Allianz SE, at 23 percent in 2014), the allocation is not optimal. Analysts from the Bank of China even found that there was a strong negative correlation between growth in lending and factor productivity. This highlights the fact that financial wealth, not distributed smartly, might not be as effective as expected.
Moreover, China’s credit-to-GDP grew at high rate since the crisis of 2009 (at 58 percent) and now the total ratio of debt-to-GDP stands at 200 percent. The majority of the loans held is domestic, mostly owned by state-owned companies lending from state-owned banks[2]. Though it might mitigate the worry of going default, there’s still a question of whether the high borrowing level is allocated effectively to the productive sectors at micro level.
Therefore, financial sector development is essential in efficient allocation of current wealth for creating the future wealth. “Financial sector’s development should promote growth by improving allocation of resources… China lagging behind in productivity is an indication that state-owned banks, which still dominate China’s financial sector, are not disbursing enough credit to the country’s most deserving companies. And the economy is consuming more and more capital” writes The Economist. Another fact confirming this notion is that the Incremental capital output ratio rose to 5.4 in 2012 than 3.6 of two decades ago[3], meaning that the amount of investment required for achieving one percentage point increase in economic growth has become higher, indicating worsened investment efficacy.
Conclusion
Though abundant in labour and capital supply, efficient and quality production is essential to long-term sustainable growth. In order to support industries that suggest efficient allocation of resource, it is the role of financial sector to identify the innovative industries and lend them the start-up investment, for initializing their operation. For China, though productivity level is higher in comparison to most developing countries, the productivity growth is slowing while debt level is increasing. Thus, this brief summary suggests that it is important for China’s financial institutions to be able to recognize enterprises with high productivity and provide them with the start-up funding.

REFERENCE
“Allianz Global Wealth Report 2014”, Allianz
“China’s debt-to-GDP level”, July 14th 2014, The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/07/china-s-debt-gdp-level
“The Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015”, World Economic Forum
“World wide, only 13 percent employees are engaged to work”, Oct 13th 2013, Gallup institute: http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx
“Unproductive production”, Oct 11th 2014, The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21623708-weakening-productivity-casting-doubt-sustainability-chinas





[1] Gallup institute: http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx
[2] The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/07/china-s-debt-gdp-level
[3] The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21623708-weakening-productivity-casting-doubt-sustainability-chinas

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