The American subprime mortgage crisis completely shattered the myth of Wall Street. Two investment banks, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, collapsed one after another, while real estate and insurance giants such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American International Group (AIG) needed large sums of money from the US Congress to save them. When the American economy was dying in the financial crisis, the eyes of the world turned to China, where the economy was still booming.
Scholars and economists in China have been discussing the above issues enthusiastically recently, among which the most concerned is: Can China, which is highly extroverted and dependent on import and export trade, "be immune" in the current depressed environment?
Scholar: stimulating domestic demand is the key.
In two recent comments, Zhou Qiren, director of China Economic Research Center of Peking University, stressed that China has the conditions to "be immune to it". "We don't need to repeat the cliche that the whole world envies-China has huge domestic demand potential. It is not difficult to make a big calculation: as long as domestic demand is greatly expanded and a part of the huge manufacturing capacity serving external demand in recent years is transferred to China, China's economy may not only continue to grow at a high speed, but also make up for the global economy. "
Zhou Qiren believes that in the final analysis, there is only one difficulty: how to release China's domestic demand potential?
He said that the so-called lack of domestic demand in China is mainly due to the distribution of national income. "The problem of income distribution involves not only the relationship between people, but also the relationship between the country and the people. Residents' income accounts for less than half of the national income, which is too low. "
Xie Guozhong, an independent economist and director of Rosestone Consulting, put forward the same argument in an interview with 2 1 Century Business Herald recently. He said that over the years, China's consumption rate has been declining, and it is difficult for the policies to stimulate consumption to really play a role. One of the important reasons is that the government accounts for a high proportion of income.
China's tax revenue has reached a record high, and its budget revenue this year may reach 6 trillion yuan (RMB 1 yuan is about S $0.2), accounting for 2 1% of GDP, which is twice the lowest level in the 1990s. The profits of state-owned enterprises may also reach 6% of GDP, and there are a lot of extra-budgetary income. Generally speaking, the China government has "collected" one-third of the wealth of GDP, or 40% of the gross national product (GDP minus capital depreciation).
Xie Guozhong said: "In the past ten years, China's economy has obviously turned to the side of the government. Reducing the importance of the government in the economy may solve the economic problems that China is currently facing. "
Let residents earn a higher proportion of national income and let them control more wealth to stimulate domestic demand? The netizens in China had a heated discussion on this issue. According to the reporter's observation, more and more China people used to have "Japanese thinking". If they are given more money, they will save most of it, which has little effect on domestic demand. This is mainly because the future is uncertain, we have no confidence in the future, and everyone has a precautionary attitude.
A netizen said at the Teng Xun Forum. Com: "If a country can't guarantee a citizen's future (education, medical care, old-age care, employment), it can't have domestic demand, because it needs to save money to prevent these problems. China's domestic demand? Can you analyze the education, medical care, pension and employment in China first? "
Zhou Qiren emphasized in his comments that inflation and economic contraction are influenced by global trends, but this does not mean that every country can only passively follow and do nothing.
He said: "Take inflation as an example. The fact is that global inflation is rising, and the impact of high international oil and food prices is also rising. However, in the same global environment, the inflation rate varies greatly from several hundred percent in Zimbabwe to two percent in Japan. This shows that under the influence of global trends, countries can still make a difference through active policy choices, and seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. "
On the other hand, Zhou Qiren also thinks that China is not the Japanese of 1988, and China has huge manufacturing capacity and broad upgrading space in the international market, so it has great potential to turn to serving domestic demand. In addition, China's service industry is still in the primary stage, the income of Chinese people increases, the time cost increases, and the demand for "convenience" is in the ascendant. These are opportunities in the service industry.
He also said: "China also has potential in energy. China should not be intimidated by high oil prices, because 70% of China's energy consumption is coal. China still has the potential and opportunities to produce food. There is still a lot of land in China that is not well managed. One of the reasons is that food prices are not high enough. The appropriate transmission of international high food prices to farmers in China will not be small. "
Fiscal policy should "help" the economy.
In an interview last week, the 265438+20th Century Business Herald mentioned a thought-provoking question: China still has a considerable degree of financial control, can it survive this financial crisis?
Wang Jian, secretary-general of China Macroeconomic Society, said in an interview with this newspaper: "Disasters will not be transmitted only through the financial level. We can't think that if the RMB is not internationalized and the capital market is not open, China can avoid the impact of this crisis. The crisis can be transmitted from the trade level. Our high growth in recent years has largely relied on foreign trade and external demand, and the rapid growth of external demand has driven the investment growth of a large number of export-oriented industries. "
Tang Shuangning, vice president of China Finance Association and chairman of China Everbright Bank, said at a forum held by Sina a few days ago: "Some time ago, due to the good economic situation in our country, the international participation of finance was not high enough, so from the current point of view, the impact is not great, but it should not be careless."
Tang Shuangning said: "Now the economy is globalized and finance has no national boundaries. After joining the WTO, China's economy will be integrated with the world. " In particular, he said that thinking about the economic crisis and preventive measures should be carried out in advance.
Judging from the current situation, China has issued the National Emergency Plan for Financial Emergencies, and the Central Bank, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission and the China Banking Regulatory Commission jointly issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Financial Support Services, clarifying that all ministries and commissions should strengthen financial risk monitoring and evaluation, improve financial risk early warning capabilities, and effectively prevent systemic risks, but these are only through coordination mechanisms to cooperate with other economic sectors.
Wang, dean of the Training College of the People's Bank of China, said: "In fact, it may be necessary to change the situation of separate financial supervision in order to truly control financial risks, maintain financial and social stability, and safeguard the dominant position of the national economy. Unify preventing and blocking the entry of hot money as a long-term task. On the premise of fully grasping financial information, we should maintain a high degree of vigilance against hot money that frequently enters and exits China's financial market, establish an efficient early warning mechanism, closely monitor the inflow of hot money, standardize the management of foreign exchange capital inflow and settlement, focus on investigating illegal and illegal capital inflows, strengthen international cooperation, and guard against the possible impact of international short-term capital on China's economic and financial security. "
Wang also said: "At present, the China government should not only pay attention to the impact of the stock market and house price decline on the macro economy, but also pay attention to the changing international economic environment and make timely adjustments. As long as it is handled properly, the domestic market will not be chaotic and will not really decline. "
On the other hand, Xie Guozhong believes that economic development cannot be supported only by the stock market and real estate market. China's next road must be to improve economic efficiency, and reform is the only way out.
Xie Guozhong predicted that it would take four to five years for the US economy to bottom out. China can't rely on the economic recovery of the United States to pull itself up, but must find another way out, and the weapon to "fight our way out" is to improve China's economic efficiency. He believes that "reform is the only way out."
He said that in the short term, two policies are very important. From the perspective of stabilizing demand, fiscal policy should give the economy a hand. Considering the liquidity problems of export enterprises and real estate developers, the slowdown of economic growth in China is becoming more and more obvious. Some fiscal stimulus measures can ensure a "soft landing", such as speeding up the construction of urban infrastructure and railway network to buffer downside risks, which is also conducive to long-term economic development. At the same time, it is necessary to increase the fiscal revenue of local governments and solve the problem of their solvency.
"The next step (medium and long term) is to find places with low economic efficiency and make changes. (China) There are many inefficiencies in fiscal revenue and expenditure, financial fund policy control and government price control system. By improving efficiency, China's economy can reach a new level. "
To stimulate domestic demand, we must first expand domestic demand.
The most direct impact of the US subprime mortgage crisis on China is actually reflected in the successive closure of a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Professor Sun, vice president of the School of Economics of Fudan University, said in an exclusive interview with this newspaper that China's macro-control measures have brought great pressure to small and medium-sized enterprises, including pushing up their financing costs and making them turn to underground banks to borrow money, thus shouldering heavy debts. In addition, the soaring prices of raw materials have also made them worse.
However, the subprime mortgage crisis has made Americans tighten their belts and greatly reduced the demand for China products, which is the "most critical impact" on small and medium-sized enterprises in China. "Many SMEs are export-oriented, and the United States is an important export market. If things (products) cannot be sold in the United States, they will face the problem of having to be transformed. "
The export-oriented economic model doesn't work.
Statistics show that in the first half of this year, 67,000 small and medium-sized enterprises closed down in China, and more than 20 million workers were laid off. This shows that the export-oriented economic model of lowering product prices in the past is no longer feasible. In addition, the United States may require China to open its market on the premise of increasing export volume, so as to adjust the trade deficit. Therefore, China enterprises should not only expand domestic demand, but also improve their competitiveness. Improving technology and brand management and transferring to service industry has become a prerequisite for the continued survival of small and medium-sized enterprises.
However, most people in China pay more attention to saving, or they would rather take a chance and invest in stocks to "Qian Shengqian". In this context, how easy is it to stimulate domestic demand and drive people to consume?
In this regard, Sun said that we must first recognize the reasons why people are unwilling to spend. "Ordinary people have too many worries, whether it is housing, medical care, children's education or old-age care. There are too many opportunities to use money in the future, so they will save money or invest. Therefore, it is imperative to accelerate the construction of the social security system. "
In addition, to stimulate domestic demand, we must ensure the quality of products, otherwise China people will not buy "Made in China" and "money will still flow into other countries". Sun stressed: "The government should take a two-pronged approach, not only to ensure that enterprises have something to sell, but also to make ordinary people willing to buy."
Develop offshore business and reduce the risk of investing in the US market.
Sun believes that another major impact of the subprime mortgage crisis on China is that it has also brought challenges to China's foreign exchange asset management. He explained that since 1978 was opened to the outside world, China's export momentum has been very strong, and it has accumulated a large amount of foreign exchange reserves, and now it is losing money due to the depreciation of the US dollar.
"We lower the price of our products, export them to the United States, earn dollars and let Americans manage them, but they manage them badly. So, can we manage the dollar ourselves? "
Sun pointed out that China has nearly $ 654.38+0.8 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, and many other Asian countries also have US dollar reserves. It is estimated that two-thirds of the world's dollars are in the hands of Asian countries. "Everyone is asking: Where can the dollar be invested? Can you take the US dollar to Asia for management? "
Therefore, he suggested to develop offshore business and let China investment institutions invest in potential Asian companies that are issuing US dollar bonds, so as to reduce the "political risk" of direct investment in the US market.
As a matter of fact, China investment institutions such as CIC are still state-owned enterprises, so when they go out, they are often suspected by the investing countries and blocked by high barriers, so that, as Sun said, "the strategy and expected goals of overseas investment cannot be fully realized".
Therefore, he hopes that the United States can "emancipate its mind" on the issue of capital injection into China, and should not be wary of China's state-owned enterprises, because this will cast a strong political color on economic measures.
Because China's ruling system and political system are fundamentally different, the economic crisis can affect China's stock market, but it can't shake China's economic foundation ~ ~
The time of general economic crisis is uncertain, and the key depends on the implementation of policies!