Source: Bloomberg
China's epidemic prevention policy turns is important, but if you want the economic growth to return to the level of 6%of the year before the epidemic, Beijing still needs to take more action.
When a plan to meet in Beijing in December last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping and its major economic assistants basically put the epidemic on the side, and only briefly mentioned a few rows in the communiqué of the meeting that promoted consumption and corporate confidence.Yao Yang, dean of the National Development Research Institute of Peking University, said that senior officials are determined to resume growth.
Although the infection of crown disease is spreading across the country, the absence rate of factories and offices has soared, and consumers returning to the countryside reduce expenditure, which will cause economic activities to be hit.
Their logic is that the infection will reach its peak within a few months, and family expenditures will then rebound quickly as last year's Hong Kong and Taiwan.But the real problem is the pace.
Based on the mid -value estimation of Bloomberg's regular investigation, economists expect China's economic growth to increase by 4.9%in 2023.This falls in the 4.5%-5.5%interval of the government consultant as the official goal.Yao Yang said that in order to allow the economic growth to reach the upper limit of the interval, consumer expenditure needs to increase by more than 6%, which is by no means a target that is easy to achieve.
A positive side effect brought by China's strict dynamic zero policy is that family savings have increased significantly in 2022 because they abandoned travel and other free control expenditures: only nine months of 2022, bank deposits increased by 13.2 by 13.2RMB trillion yuan (US $ 1.9 trillion), which is higher than that of South Korea's annual GDP (GDP).But the increase in savings mainly comes from the wealthy class, and they are more likely to use excess money for investment rather than commodities and services.
Extensive epidemic prevention and control, and the government's rectification of the real estate and technology industries has caused consumers' confidence and expenditure in 2022.From January to September 2022, after the adjustment of the inflation factors, the salary of Chinese cities increased by only 2.2%, which was less than half of the level before the epidemic.Youth unemployment rate is close to 20%.Faced with these economic pressures, a street protest occurred at the end of November last year, prompting the government's dynamic zero -epidemic prevention policy to suddenly shift.
The government has quickly canceled epidemic prevention restrictions, but consumers are expected to continue."After three years of downturn income growth, it is necessary to persuade Chinese families to believe that it will take time to make a significant improvement in the future," said Song Houze, an economist of MACROPOLO in the US think tank.
Weak consumption expenditure, coupled with the decline in export demand for China, which is endangered, declined, and the heavy task of promoting consumption will fall on Beijing's shoulders this year.A measure that the Chinese government will definitely take is to increase infrastructure expenditures. Some economists predict that the growth rate is nearly 10%this year, which is twice the level before the epidemic.Government officials will also rely on banks to provide enterprises with low -interest loans to promote corporate recruitment and investment.The Chinese government seems to be determined to treat entrepreneurs well, even if they are in the science and technology industry.Under the common role of these actions, employment and salary may be boosted.
In order to further support the economy, even when the European and American central banks continue to raise interest rates, the Central Bank of China will continue to keep interest rates at a low level or even cut interest rates.Another favorable factor is that China's inflation rate is expected to remain sluggish.
