Moving China Up To The Next Level

By ANDY XIE

When China's GDP surpassed Japan's in the second quarter of 2010, the international media gave this milestone considerable coverage. But with natural disasters, environmental problems and the property bubble to cover, the domestic media hasn't given it as much attention.

Perhaps it is because China has over ten times as many people as Japan which puts China's per capita income at less than one tenth of Japan's - hardly something to celebrate. Nevertheless, it is useful to look back at how far China has come, study the risks it faces in the future, and, if the country can overcome the existing challenges, explore how much further it can go in the next decade.

China's economy took off in 2002 and since then nominal GDP has grown at 18.5%, and exports in dollars at 21.7% (I have extrapolated the economic performance for the remaining months of 2010). The nominal GDP has increased 2.9 times, and exports 3.8 times in USD and 2.9 times in RMB. Japan had a similar performance in the 1960's, Korea and Taiwan in the 1980's, but they are much smaller. In terms of scale, what China has done is unprecedented.
When growth is sustained over many years, with the miracle of compounding there is a huge long-term impact. Twenty years ago China and India had about the same value in GDP, yet this year China's GDP is roughly four times that of India.

Reform and opening up, China's policy center over the past three decades, has undoubtedly been the most important factor. China is now the largest exporter in the world. Having virtually no exports three decades ago and almost none even two decades ago, the country's exports have risen 5.2 times over the last decade. 'Being the workshop of the world' is the most important part of China's economy today. Without China's export success China's economy wouldn't be nearly where it is today.

Joining the WTO made a critical difference to the country's export success, giving multinational companies (MNCs) the confidence to base significant production in China. As China's domestic market grows, it gives MNCs another strong reason to keep production in China. No other country can offer economies of scale that combine selling locally and exporting abroad with low production costs.

However China no longer offers the lowest production cost. The labor cost in Bangladesh is merely one-fourth of China's. Indonesia's labor cost was twice as high as China's before 1997 and is now comparable to China's and rising at a much slower rate. Industries that do not require the supply chain to be nearby may exit China - for example the shoe and garment industries - but most others will stay since relocation is not an easy solution. Many manufacturers will simply pass their higher costs on to consumers and MNCs may just have to accept lower profit margins.

Infrastructure development has been a competitive advantage for China, and is the result of the government's ability to mobilize resources. Land and credit are usually constraints on infrastructure development in most other countries, but state ownership of land and banks has allowed China to develop large infrastructure projects while also benefiting from economies of scale.

The national expressway system is a good example of this. Only an interconnected system of such a large size can deliver economic benefits due to the so-called 'network effect'. In a dozen years China has completed over 60,000 km of expressways and another 30,000 km are under construction. The expressway system has made the national population more mobile, integrated villages and small cities into the national economy, and sharply decreased logistics costs.

The development of ports and industrial parks has encouraged OEM industries (original equipment manufacturers) to locate in China. Together with the highway system, this made it possible for China to become the largest export country in the world.

China was also early to embrace the Internet - and this laid the foundation for China to be part of and benefit from the global economy. In addition, China's large and productive labor force has contributed more than any other factor to China's growth. Until five years ago the nominal wage had been stagnant in nominal dollar terms for over a decade, even though labor productivity had been increasing at nearly 10% per annum and total factor productivity at over 4%. The increase in productivity of Chinese labor meant declining prices for western consumers, rising profits for MNCs, and rising tax revenues for the Chinese government. This saw more MNCs coming to China for production, and Chinese local governments in China continue to invest in infrastructure to attract them.

China's rapid growth has also coincided with a weak dollar. The dollar index peaked in 2002 and has declined by one third since. The dollar's weakness is due to globalization and technology, a result of driving liquidity into emerging economies, particularly China's. Though the tendency is to blame a crisis on slow growth, actually crises always seem to follow periods of high growth in emerging economies. It is the problems that are allowed to accumulate during the high growth period that cause both the crisis and subsequent slow growth. Nothing hides problems like high growth so policymakers tend to try and sustain it for as long as possible in the hopes they can outgrow the problems. But history teaches us that this is usually not possible. The longer the growth lasts, the more intractable the problems become.

China's money supply has quadrupled in the last eight years, growing at 19% per annum, and if the off-balance sheet expansion of the financial institutions and underground financial activities are included, the money supply may have grown at 11% per annum. During the same period the nominal GDP has grown at 18.5% so if one compares the official GDP data and monetary data, it does not seem cause for concern, as the two are about the same. But there are two potential problems to consider: nominal GDP has been inflated by the property bubble, thus the rapid monetary growth is also probably a bubble; and real monetary growth is much higher.

China's electricity consumption grew at about 13% per annum between 2002-10. Historically China's real GDP has grown faster than electricity consumption - the ratio of electricity consumption increase to GDP increase is called elasticity and it was around 0.8 during the 1990s. Heavy industry has been leading the current growth boom, thus the economy has become more dependent on electricity for growth, so the elasticity should have increased and I suspect it wouldn't be more than one. Hence, it is reasonable to guess that China's real GDP has grown at 13% over the past eight years, which would put the GDP deflator - the broadest inflation gauge - at 4.5%

So far, inflation has mostly occurred in land and commodities. Land prices have increased on average by more than ten times since 2003, 30 times in some hot coastal cities, and more than 100 times in the most speculative areas. It is reasonable to believe that China's land price is highest among all the major economies today, even though China's average wage is one tenth that of developed countries.

Land price inflation has shown up in the nominal GDP through rising property sales of over 14% of GDP last year. Much of the investment has been due to the collateral value of land, with local governments borrowing enormous amounts of money (probably around 17% of the total bank lending) to fund or subsidize investment to create GDP. The loans are secured with land, so without high land prices such financing would be impossible. With fixed investment being driven by the government and close to half of GDP, it is easy to see how the land bubble has accounted for a large portion of the growth during the current cycle.

Recent manufacturing investment, for example, is due partly to high land prices. Local governments have been competing fiercely for manufacturing investment and many companies have learned how to extract enough benefits from local governments that they do not need to put up any equity capital for investment. They often ask for free land and use that as collateral for a bank loan. They then lease equipment from the manufacturers who have used the leasing contracts to obtain bank loans. This explains why so many companies have been able to continue expanding with a negative cash flow: expansion is critical to their survival as new investment brings in the cash they need to sustain themselves.

Profit drives investment, which in turn powers employment, and that then grows consumption. When profit is due to asset appreciation and not sustainable, it may lead to crisis. Large bubbles often occur during prolonged prosperity, when people stop paying attention to risk and there is excessive demand for risky assets, leading to an asset bubble that prolongs prosperity beyond the normal cycle.

Possibly half of China's bank lending is going into property-related businesses or local governments that are pledging land as collateral. While the current boom has catapulted China ahead of Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, we must remember the excesses in this cycle and the need for an adjustment as soon as possible. Nothing reveals the vulnerabilities more than the banking system's exposure to unsustainable economic activities that are dependent on land appreciation. China should proactively bring about the needed economic adjustment.

Andy Xie Is Spot On On China Property

By Andy Xie

The central government has unleashed another round of property tightening measures. This time it is focusing on mortgage lending terms: the mortgage interest discount for first-time homebuyers has been reduced; the discount for second-time homebuyers has been abolished and the down payment requirement raised to 40%; and the rate for third-time buyers is being left to the banks' discretion with down payments raised to 60%.



Predictably, sales volumes in both primary and secondary markets have collapsed. But no one is panicking, not even those who live off the property bubble. Why? Aren't they supposed to be terrified of the government's crackdown?

It seems we have seen this movie before. China has launched property-tightening measures several times but it relaxed them just when they began to bite. The bottom line is that local governments, and the central government through them, depend very much on property for revenue. The market doesn't believe the government will cut off the hand that feeds it.

Local governments and developers are sitting on massive liquidity that they raised last year through land and property sales and borrowings, taking advantage of the "anything goes" window during the stimulus period. They seem to believe that the central government will change its mind before they run out of liquidity. So they are comfortable waiting and not cutting prices.

Cutting prices doesn't make sense if the government is expected to loosen policy again soon. The current lending terms effectively keep second- and third-time homebuyers out of the market. To sell, developers must cut prices to levels affordable to the buyers of first homes, who have low incomes and little wealth. All the players will play by the new rules only if the central government proves its credibility by maintaining the tightening policy until local governments and developers run out of money.

Contrary to the policies' intent, local governments are readying for another round of property inflation. Local governments have been using bank loans to resettle residents, and resettlement costs have skyrocketed since those being moved need enough compensation to buy properties at today's prices. Unless property prices rise considerably, local governments will end up losing money, which they cannot afford to do.

Resettlements played an important role in supporting demand for property last year. The overwhelming majority of end-user purchases probably came from resettled residents who used their compensation money for a down payment. Resettlement compensation is the biggest transfer of wealth from the government to the household sector since the privatization of public housing at low prices a decade ago. It is probably the most important government action supporting today's economy.



The positive elements of resettlement compensation come with two major negatives. First, it is using a form of leverage to support demand. Local governments borrow to pay the compensation packages, using the land as collateral. The resettled residents use the compensation as down payment for mortgage borrowing; so government debt becomes equity for mortgage debt. There is no real equity in the financing chain.

Second, the high compensation costs, though beneficial to the resettled residents, make local governments a player in further inflating property prices. China's economic policies have been favorable to the low-income class in the past few years through rural subsidies, agricultural land reform, and price controls for necessities. The resettlement policy is another element in the push to help them, but the costs are being borne by the middle class, whose most important expenditures — property, cars and education — are highly inflated. Indeed, China's property and car prices are among the highest in the world in absolute terms, and by far the highest relative to income. Unless policies change dramatically, the middle class squeeze will only get worse.

China's property market is a massive bubble. The stock of residential properties, developers' inventories, and land that local governments have pledged to banks may exceed by three times the gross domestic product. Rental yields in most cities are too low to cover depreciation costs. In major cities, the price-to-income ratio, a measure of housing affordability, is routinely above 20, which means that it would take an average mainlander 20 years to buy the average property using their total income. The bubble can still continue because China's banking system has plenty of liquidity – thanks partly to hot money and because local governments have many levers to channel bank liquidity into the market. But the longer the bubble lasts, the more damage it will do to the economy.

The stability of a modern society depends on its middle class being in the majority and content with its situation. The high land-price policy is a form of tax on the middle class, which will slow its growth. China may become a country with a small group of the super-rich, a vast lower class with no property, and a small middle class. Such a social structure would not be good for long-term stability.

The key to a sensible property policy is to reform the fiscal structure. First, government spending, mostly in fixed investment, should be curtailed. China doesn't need to build everything at once. Last year, the sum of government fiscal revenues, central and local government borrowings, and expenditures by state-owned enterprises probably exceeded half of the GDP. Could the government sector spend so much efficiently? Shrinking the government sector should be a top priority for the nation's future.

Second, the government sector still owns assets worth more than the entire GDP. The government should give it to the people to expand the middle class – a move that would support consumption, incomes and tax revenue. Shrinking the government and giving wealth to the people are the policies necessary to make growth balanced and sustainable. The rapid expansion of the government sector only increases its need for revenue and the incentive to inflate the property bubble. Without credible government reforms, property tightening is not credible.

One more point to note is that most of the bears assume Beijing will be sitting around doing nothing. Please note that bank lending by Chinese banks fell 43 per cent in the first quarter from a year earlier as the government winds down its stimulus and tries to cool a credit boom while keeping its recovery on track, central bank data showed on Monday.

Banks lent 2.6 trillion yuan (S$529.7 billion) in the January-March quarter, the People's Bank of China said on its Web site. That compared with 4.6 trillion yuan in loans in the first quarter of 2009 as banks ramped up loans for construction and other projects as part of a 4 trillion yuan stimulus. The figures indicated the central bank's efforts to prevent runaway lending and restore financial discipline in China's state-owned banking industry might finally be taking hold, lessening the need to raise interest rates to curb inflation.

The tightening on lending reflects worries that many of the loans issued in the past year or more may go sour and that easy credit is fueling wasteful investments. On Sunday, the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, Liu Mingkang, announced an aggressive plan to assess the safety of loans made to financing entities set up by local governments to invest in real estate, infrastructure and other projects.