Key Trends in Globalisation

China's achievement is literally the greatest in world economic history

Economic development’s purpose is to improve the conditions of human beings. Robert Lucas put it eloquently, in frequently quoted words, examining the consequences of different rates of economic growth: ‘I do not see how one can look at these figures without seeing them as possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow… If so, what, exactly?… The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.’

In this framework it should be stated, soberly and with due consideration, that China’s economy since 1978 is the greatest economic achievement in world history. This article shows this in the prosaic language of statistics. But of course that is not the real issue. What really counts is the consequences of this for human beings – escape from poverty, improvement in life expectancy, improved health, expanded potential for education, improvement in the position of women, and many other dimensions. Economic statistics, such as GDP per capita, simply underpin this improvement in human conditions.

The scale of China’s economic achievement

A problem in assessing the true scale of China’s economic achievement is that partial statistics are frequently used to state it. Some of these, for example that China has become the world’s second largest economy, or that it has raised 620 million people out of internationally defined poverty, are extremely striking (Quah, 2010). But nevertheless, because they are partial, they do not capture the full scope of what has occurred. Only when systematic data is used does the full magnitude of China’s achievement become clear.

Again, even when systematic comparisons are attempted, the scale of China’s economic achievement is frequently underestimated because inappropriate measures are used. For example when comparing rates of economic growth, in calculating contributions to economic welfare, it is misleading to take individual countries as the unit of comparison, rather than the proportion of world population affected – rapid economic growth in a small country evidently contributes  less to human well being than rapid growth in a large country.

In order to give an initial systematic comparison, therefore, Table 1 shows the percentage of world population affected at the point when sustained rapid growth commenced in major economies. For example the first country to experience sustained rapid economic growth was the UK in the industrial revolution - which was in a country with 2.0 per cent of the world’s population. The sustained rapid US economic growth after the Civil War was in a country with 3.3 per cent of the world’s population.

There are, of course, arguments about some additional individual countries that might be included in the comparison – for example Italy from 1950 (1.9 per cent of the world’s population) or Spain from 1960 (1.0 per cent of the world’s population). But it is evident from the data that introducing such extra countries makes no difference to the essential situation.

No other economy starting sustained rapid economic growth even approaches the 22.3 per cent of the world’s population in China in 1978 at the beginning of its new economic policies. For comparison Japan’s rapid post-World War II growth was in a country with 3.3 per cent of the world’s population, and the growth of the four Asian ‘Tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) was in economies with only 1.4 per cent of the world’s population.

Only India’s sustained economic growth after the late 1980s, in a country with 16 per cent of the world’s population, even begins to approach China’s achievement in scale, but the percentage of the world population affected is still lower than China’s, as is India’s growth rate.

Table 1

 

Introducing the necessary correction of population size also makes clear that the method sometimes utilised of ranking by country size is misleading. To see why it need only be noted that, if current exchange rates are used, on the World Bank tables for 2010, the latest year for which comprehensive statistics are available, 87 of the countries for which data was available have a higher GDP per capita than China and 83 had a lower. This appears to place China about half way up the list of world rankings. As when the People’s Republic of China was created in 1949, or economic reform was launched in 1978, China was one of the world’s most economically underdeveloped countries this might appear a quite good performance, but it wholly understates China’s achievement.

The reason is that ranking by country takes no account of relative population. For example among the countries above China are the Seychelles, Palau, St Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda – all with a population of less than 100,000. If the real international position of China is to be assessed then, again, size of population must be taken into account. Figure 1 below, therefore, shows the percentages of world population living in countries with GDP per capita above and below China and shows the real proportions of China’s economic achievement.

In 1978 countries containing only 0.5 per cent of the world’s population had a GDP per capita below China’s, while 73.5 per cent had a higher one – China itself accounted for 25.9 per cent of the world’s population for which data was available. By 2010, using the same measure, the percentage of the world’s population living in countries with a higher GDP per capita than China was 31.3 per cent - given the speed of increase, it is clear that when 2011’s data is published it will show that less than 30 per cent of the world’s population lives in countries with a higher GDP per capita than China.

Figure 1

 

Therefore in only slightly over thirty years China, containing more than twenty per cent of the world’s population, has moved from being one of the world’s least economically developed countries, to a position where less than one third of the world’s population lives in countries with a higher GDP per capita, and where China’s position is rising rapidly.

Checking these current price statistics against international parity purchasing powers (PPPs), which takes into account different price levels in different countries, confirms the same result. Measured by PPPs in 1980, the first year for which World Bank data is available, only 1.3 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries with lower GDP per capita than China and 73.0 per cent in countries with a higher one. By 2010 only 31.5 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries with a higher GDP per capita than China.

Another way of measuring is to compare China to the rest of the world’s population. To do this, the best measure is not the average as, for well known statistical reasons, averages covering wide ranges are excessively affected by small numbers of extreme values. This is confirmed very clearly by world data. Only 25 per cent of the world’s population has a GDP per capita above the global average and 75 per cent have one below it. A better, and the standard, measure of incomes is to make a comparison to the median – the exact mid-point.

In 1978 China’s GDP per capita was only 42 per cent of the median for the rest of the world’s population. By 2010 China’s GDP per capita was 289 per cent of the median.

That since 1978 China, with more than one fifth of the world’s population, has moved from being one of the poorest countries in the world to a situation where less than one third of the world’s population has a higher GDP per capita is without historical precedent. Never before in human history has such a large proportion of the world’s population advanced so rapidly.

A number of conclusions clearly follow from the above data – in addition to the obvious one of simply recognising this as a fact of economic history. But for now it need simply be noted, soberly and with due measure, that China’s is quite literally the greatest economic achievement in world history.

*   *   *

An earlier and shorter version of this article appeared, in English and Chinese, in Global Times.

Notes

China's inflation increase - not just a holiday effect?

The increase in China’s January annual consumer price index (CPI) to 4.5 per cent, from January’s 4.1 per cent, ending a five month period of decline, has been generally ascribed to inflationary effects caused by China’s Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). The Financial Times, for example, tagged its coverage ‘Spike blamed on food prices ahead of New Year celebrations‘. The FT’s report noted: 'Chinese inflation jumped in January, breaking a streak of five straight monthly declines, but seasonal factors were largely to blame and price pressures were expected to weaken in the coming months.’

It is certainly true that China’s Spring Festival has powerful, and well known, distorting effects on statistical comparisons, and therefore undoubtedly not too much should be read into one month’s figures. Nevertheless there are reasons to consider that the inflation increase was not purely a holiday effect but reflects international factors.

As this blog has noted previously China’s CPI is not, contrary to claims to the contrary, closely linked to China’s money supply data but it is extremely closely tied to international commodity prices. In this regard it is important to note that since December the annual change in international commodity prices has stopped falling. This may be seen clearly in the end of the decline in the year on year data for the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Spot Price Index – see Figure 1.

Furthermore year on year data somewhat flatter as they are affected by the base effects of the rapid rise in prices during the early part of 2011. If absolute price levels are analysed then commodity prices reached their recent minimum on 4 October 2011, since which they have risen by 8.2 per cent – Figure 2.

Figure 1

Figure 2

 

International commodity prices, as always, show strong fluctuations and it would be too early to definitively state that a new round of commodity price inflation is taking place. But certainly the sharp fall in commodity prices, which took place from spring to autumn 2011, has ended. In that case, given the very close correlation between China’s inflation and global commodity prices, this substantial downward pressure on China’s CPI will also have halted.

The halt to the downward trend in global commodity prices is logical given two factors -  that talk in the second half of last year of a double dip US recession, popularised by Nouriel Roubini and others, was exaggerated and that the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank (ECB) are both engaged in major rounds of quantitative easing (QE) – i.e. printing money. This monetary stimulus is further added to by the financial support the Federal Reserve is giving to the ECB. This new wave of QE has been supporting both bond and share prices and may now be spilling into commodity markets. The partial recovery of gold prices from recent lows is another indicator of the same process. In short upward pressure on commodity prices may well not be temporary.

What conclusions follow?

• International commodity prices need to be very carefully tracked.
• Inflation data not only in China but in other developing economies, notably India and Brazil, needs to be carefully watched to see whether an international effect of a slowing or reversal of the decline in inflation takes place.
• China’s authorities are clearly correct to have taken a relatively cautious approach so far to economic loosening – inflationary pressures may be stronger than generally assumed outside China.

There certainly was a seasonal effect in China’s higher January CPI data. For that reason it is likely China's CPI will fall in February. But nevertheless there is also evidence that the rise in the CPI figure was not only a seasonal holiday effect. As it continues to be the case that international commodity prices, not money supply, shows a close correlation with China’s inflation the data on global commodity prices must be extremely carefully watched to understand trends in China's economy.

Higher international commodity prices, of course, are not due to, or under the control of, China’s economic authorities. But China cannot escape their effect. Both global commodity prices and the inflationary situation in other major developing economies must be carefully followed. While China's inflation is likely to continue to decline from its peak levels there are grounds to consider that China’s, and other countries, CPI will continue to be above market expectations.

Europe's largest economic failure is not in Greece - but in the UK, Italy and Spain

With the European Union (EU) heading into a double dip recession, even before the peak level of GDP of the previous business cycle has been regained (Figure 1), it is evident that the solutions adopted to deal with Europe's economic crisis have failed. But the focus of financial markets on Greece's debt crisis should not obscure the fact that the largest scale economic failures in Europe, with the most direct impact on world growth, are not in Greece, the GDP of which accounts for only 1.8 per cent of the EU’s, but in the UK, Italy and Spain. The latter economies collectively account for over one third, 34.7 per cent, of EU GDP. Furthermore these large EU economies, having failed by significant margins to regain their previous peak levels of GDP, are again turning down.

To give some idea of the relative scale of these problems it may be noted that the combined GDP of the UK, Italy and Spain is equivalent to 40.9 per cent of US GDP, whereas Greece’s GDP is equivalent to a mere 2.0 per cent of US GDP. Even the combined GDP of the three economies under EU bailout measures (Portugal, Ireland and Greece) is only 5.1 per cent of US GDP. In short, while they pose significant problems for financial markets the recessions in the peripheral Eurozone economies are simply to small to make a direct significant difference to global growth prospects.

In contrast the failures in the UK, Italy and Spain - respectively Europe’s 3rd, 4th and 5th largest economies - are on quite large enough scale to create a serious negative impact on global growth – economies approaching half the size of the US are, at best, essentially stagnant and now facing new downturns.

The aim of this article, therefore, is to place the financial difficulties in Greece against the background of these larger growth failures in Europe.

Overall trends in the EU

The overall trends in the EU’s GDP are compared to the US and Japan in Figure 1. They are shown in detail in Table 1 below.

GDP data for the EU for the 4th quarter of 2011 is not yet available – on the basis of partial statistics it is highly likely to show downturn. But on the most up to date data available, for the 3rd quarter of 2011, EU GDP was still 1.7 per cent below its peak in the previous business cycle and Eurozone GDP 1.9 per cent below, In contrast by the 4th quarter of 2011 US GDP was 0.7 per cent above its last business cycle peak. With EU GDP likely to have turned down in the 4th quarter of 2011, Europe is suffering a strictly defined ‘double dip’ recession - i.e. a fall in output before the previous peak level of GDP has been regained .

Figure 1

 

Considering the detailed data for the EU economies, plus those in Eastern Europe, in Table 1 below, the overwhelming majority of European economies have not regained the peak levels of GDP recorded in the previous business cycle. All three economies which have published official Eurostat data for the 4th quarter of 2012 (Spain, Lithuania and the UK) showed a renewed fall in output - a more detailed analysis of the groupings within the European economies is given below.

Failure of recovery in the UK, Italy and Spain

The focus of attention in the European crisis has been on small peripheral Eurozone economies – Portugal, Ireland and Greece – or on a 'Germany v the periphery' divide. But from the point of view of EU GDP by far the most serious situation is the failure of recovery in three large EU economies – the UK, Italy and Spain. These are respectively the 3rd, 4th and 5th largest EU economies. The GDP trends in the five largest EU economies are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

 

By themselves the peripheral Eurozone economies are far too small to pull the Eurozone economy into recession - for comparison the combined economies of Portugal, Ireland and Greece are only one eighth of the size of combined economies of the UK, Italy and Spain. The key problem in European output is that while Germany’s economy has recovered - up to the 3rd quarter of 2011 its GDP performance since the peak of the last business cycle was marginally better than the US, and France’s recovery was significant, reaching only 0.6 per cent below the pre-financial crisis peak, the EU’s other large economies had not recovered and were heading into a new downturn. On the latest available data the UK’s GDP was still 3.8 per cent below its peak in the previous business cycle, Spain’s GDP was 3.9 per cent below and Italy’s was 4.7 per cent below. Furthermore in all three economies the latest available data shows a further downturn in GDP.

Failure in the European bail-out economies

In addition to the failure of recovery in the EU as a whole, primarily due to this situation in the UK, Italy and Spain, a further striking feature is that none of the economies subject to special EU bail out programmes – Portugal, Ireland, Greece – shows any sign of recovery (Figure 3). The latest data for both Ireland and Portugal shows renewed economic downturn, while no Eurostat certified Greek GDP data has been published since the 1st quarter of 2011 – it would be highly likely to show further economic decline. This failure of recovery is despite the fact that Ireland, for example, has undergone almost four years of economic downturn and Portugal is well into the third year of downturn.

The EU bailout programmes may therefore be correctly characterised as having failed.

Figure 3

 

Widespread downturn in Eastern Europe

An equallly severe, although less reported, decline in European production than in the bail-out countries has taken place in the Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Figure 4). The downturn in Latvia (16.6 per cent) is the worst for any European country while those in Estonia (8.6 per cent) and Lithuania (9.0 per cent) are only slightly better than Greece (9.9 per cent) and Ireland (11.6 per cent)

This crisis in the Baltic Republics, incidentally, as with the different case of the UK, shows that the European crisis spreads to far more than Eurozone – only Estonia of the Baltic republics is a Eurozone member.

Figure 4

 

In addition to the Baltic Republics economic downturn has continued in most of Eastern Europe (Figure 5) – with only Poland and Slovakia having recovered to pre-crisis levels of output (Figure 6).

Figure 5

 

Recovery economies

The trends above leave only two large European economies, Germany and France, together with a number of medium sized ones (Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Poland) having undergone serious economic recovery (Figure 6). However, although Germany and France are the 1st and 2nd largest economies in the EU their combined GDP, at 36.2 per cent of the EU total, is only slightly greater than the 34.7 per cent of the UK, Italy and Spain combined.

In short the stagnant and declining situation in the UK, Italy and Spain is enough to essentiallly entirely offset recovery in Germany and France.

Figure 6

 

Large stagnant economies

Finally the position of the UK, Italy and Spain as large economies which have failed to significantly recover, together with smaller economies in the same situation, is clear in Figure 7.

Figure 7

 

Conclusions

A number of clear conclusions follow from these factual trends in Europe.

• Financial crisis may be focussed at present in Greece, but the most serious drags in output are not the peripheral Eurozone economies but the UK, Italy and Spain.
• Remaining outside the Eurozone is unlikely by itself to be sufficient to ensure economic recovery. Economic downturn in the UK, which is outside the Eurozone and has undergone substantial devaluation during the international financial crisis, is as severe as in the other large sluggish economies of Italy and Spain within the Eurozone. The non-Eurozone Baltic Republics of Latvia and Lithuania have undergone as serious declines in GDP as Eurozone member Estonia. Poland, which is outside the Eurozone, has largely escaped recession but due to large scale public investment. 
• Given these trends, overcoming the financial crisis in Greece is unlikely to relaunch economic growth as the largest problems in Europe's economic recovery are located in the UK, Italy and Spain. Of these UK is not even a number of the Eurozone, while the lack of growth in Italy's economy has been prolonged - annual average GDP growth in Italy in the last decade has been only 0.2 per cent.

The overall conclusion is clear. The Eurozone crisis was predictable - the present author noted 15 years ago in 'Fundamental Economic Implications of a Single European Currency' that: '‘The process that would unfold with the creation of a single currency by this method [the Treaty of Maastricht] may be predicted with certainty. Substantial parts of the EU… will be pushed into severe recession if they join. There will be sharply deepening regional imbalances and inequalities. The malignant expressions of economic depression — unemployment, poverty, collapse of the welfare system, weakening of trade unions, racism, chauvinism, crime — will multiply. The end will be either an economic tragedy, or the deepest crisis in the history of the EU, or more probably both.’

This analysis has clearly been vindicated. But it would, nevertheless, as seen above, be wrong to conclude that the exclusive core of the problems in Europe's economy is the Euro - or to see the situation exclusively in terms of a 'Germany and periphery' situation.

The greatest drag on economic growth in Europe is its 'stagnant middle' of the UK, Italy and Spain. These three economies together are equivalent in size to Germany and France. If Germany and France are supposed to provide the 'growth engine' of Europe these three economies may be conceived of as currently providing its 'drag factor'.

Unless the situation within the UK, Italy and Spain can  be resolved it is most unlikely that overcoming the economic problems in Greece will relaunch substantial European growth. For this reason, whatever occurs in Greece, the European crisis is going to be prolonged and other parts of the world economy must both take this into account and understand the more powerful factors in European economic stagnation.

Table 1

Deng Xiaoping and John Maynard Keynes

 

 

Introduction

The international importance of China’s economy is twofold. The first is practical - the scale of China’s economic growth, its global impact, and the consequences for the improvement of the social conditions of China and the world’s population. The second is theoretical, including the potential international applicability of conclusions drawn from China’s economic policies.

Regarding the latter it is necessary to clearly state that no country can mechanically copy another. As China’s political leaders and economic theorists stress its economy has unique ‘Chinese characteristics’. This was formulated as a cardinal principle by the initiator of China's economic reform, Deng Xiaoping: ‘To accomplish modernization of a Chinese type, we must proceed from China’s special characteristics.’ (Deng, 30 March 1979) Therefore China must: ‘blaze a path of our own.’ (Deng, 21 August 1985). As recently reiterated by Justin Yifu Lin, Chinese Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank: ‘we can never be too careful when it comes to the application of a foreign theory, because with different preconditions, no matter how trivial they seem, the result can be very different.’ (Lin, 2012, pp. 66 - emphasis in the original) In that sense, therefore, there is no ‘Chinese model’. However as Lin simultaneously states: ‘Some may think that the performance of a country as unique as China, with more than 1.3 billion people, cannot be replicated. I disagree. Every developing country can have similar opportunities to sustain rapid growth for several decades and reduce poverty dramatically if it exploits the benefits of backwardness, imports technology from advanced countries, and upgrades its industries.’ (Lin, 2011)

There is, however, no contradiction between these different statements. The fundamental structural elements of which an economy is composed (consumption, investment, savings, primary industry, secondary industry, tertiary industry, trade, money etc.) are universal. However the particular way in which these elements combine and are interrelated in any economy is unique and entirely specific both in place and time – which is why no country can copy another’s economic policy, while it can learn from other economies. As analysed below, China has solved in practice problems stated in general macro-economic theory. For that reason such elements, in very different forms and combinations, are of major importance for economic policy elsewhere. However the specific forms and combinations in which such policies are applied are entirely unique both in each country and at different points in time.

The practical impact of China’s economic rise have been considered extensively elsewhere.¹ The focus of this article is on the theoretical economic issues. In particular it aims to relate China’s economic performance to Western economic theory which will be more familiar to most readers.

China and macro-economic theory in Keynesian and Marxist terms

China’s ‘reform and opening up’ process under Deng Xiaoping was, of course, formulated in a Marxist economic framework. It can indeed be clearly outlined in those terms – see the appendix below, for a more detailed account of Chinese discussions on these issues see (Hsu, 1991), but an alternative statement in Western economic terms, those of Keynes, is considered here.

Stated briefly in Marxist terms, China’s reform policy included a critique of Soviet economic policy that this had made the error of confusing the ‘advanced’ stage of socialism/communism, in which the regulation of the economy is ‘for need’, and therefore not market regulated, with the socialist, or more precisely ‘primary’ developing stage of socialism, during which the transition from capitalism to an advanced socialist economy takes place and in which market regulation takes place. This transition should be conceived as extending over a prolonged period. The final formulation arrived at was that China’s was a ‘socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics’. Contrary to suggestions by some writers, for example (Hsu, 1991), such an analysis is in line with Marx’s own writings although, as shown below, it is not necessary to be a Marxist understand it - a more detailed analysis is given in the appendix.

This debate was framed in Chinese terms, without primary reference to previous economic theory in other countries other than Marx himself. The approach, in a Chinese phrase emphasised by Deng, was to ‘seek truth from facts’ (Deng, 2 June 1978). In practical terms in China, such analysis meant abandonment of an administratively planned economy and substitution of a market economy in which the state would control certain key macroeconomic parameters. In terms of ownership it led to ‘Zhuada Fangxiao’ – maintaining large state firms and releasing small ones to the non-state/private sector.

Restatement of Chinese economic policy in terms of Keynesian economics

Most people in the US and Europe are unaware of, or disagree with, Marxist economic categories. To make the essential economic policies clear, therefore, this article will put them in more familiar terms of Western economics – those of Keynes. The proviso is that this is the actual Keynes of The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money - not the vulgarised version in economics textbooks. Geoff Tily’s Keynes Betrayed (Tily, 2007) is one of the best in a series of works outlining the difference between the two. However, there is no substitute for reading Keynes General Theory itself, which differs sharply from the presentation of what is frequently presented as ‘Keynesian’ economics. For example, budget deficits play only a secondary role in both Keynes General Theory and in China’s stimulus packages – even during 2009’s maximum anti-crisis measures China’ s budget deficit was only 3% of GDP. The core of Keynes’ General Theory itself, unlike vulgarisations, centres on factors determining investment. It is therefore through this optic that both Keynes and Chinese economic strategy can be best approached.

The rising proportion of the economy devoted to investment

In the founding work of classical economics, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith identified division of labour as the fundamental force raising productivity, stating as the opening sentence of the first chapter: ‘The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is any where directed, or applied, seems to have been the effects of the division of labour.’ (Smith, 1776, p. 13) Smith concluded that a necessary consequence of the increasing division of labour was that the proportion of the economy devoted to investment rose with economic development: ‘accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour, so labour can be more and more subdivided in proportion only as stock is previously more and more accumulated… As the division of labour advances, therefore, in order to give constant employment to an equal number of workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of materials and tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things must be accumulated beforehand.’ (Smith, 1776, p. 277) A more comprehensive treatment of Smith’s views may be found in (Ross, 2011). Marx reached the same conclusion as Smith, concluding that the contribution of investment rose as an economy developed, which he termed the rising ‘organic composition of capital’ (Marx, 1867, p. 762).

Keynes similarly analysed that the proportion of the economy devoted to investment rose with economic development. His explanation was, however, somewhat different to Smith’s as Keynes rooted this in rising savings levels accompanying development. As the percentage of income consumed fell with increasing wealth, the proportion devoted to saving necessarily rose proportionately: ‘men are disposed… to increase their consumption as their income increases, but not by as much as the increase in their income… a higher absolute level of income will tend… to widen the gap between income and consumption.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 36) As total savings necessarily equals total investment, a rising proportion of saving therefore necessarily means a rising proportion of investment.

A necessary consequence of an increase in the proportion of the economy devoted to investment is that any investment decline will have increasingly serious consequences: ‘the richer the community, the wider will tend to be the gap between its actual and its potential production… For a poor community will be prone to consume by far the greater part of its output, so that a very modest measure of investment will be sufficient to provide full employment; whereas a wealthy community will have to discover much ampler opportunities for investment if the saving propensities of its wealthier members are to be compatible with the employment of its poorer members. If in a potentially wealthy community the inducement to invest is weak… the working of the principle of effective demand will compel it to reduce its actual output, until, in spite of its potential wealth, it has become so poor that its surplus over its consumption is sufficiently diminished to correspond to the weakness of the inducement to invest.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 31)

Failure of attempts to refute Keynes on the rising proportion of investment

In the mid-20^th century attempts were made to dispute this conclusion of classical economics, originally deriving from Smith, of a rising proportion of investment in the economy - Milton Friedman devoted a book, A Theory of the Consumption Function, to attempting to refute Keynes on this (Friedman, 1957). However modern econometrics findings are conclusive in support of Smith and Keynes and against Friedman – the definitive demonstration, as frequently on matters of long term economic growth, being given by Angus Maddison. (Maddison, 1992) Factually, as classical economics and Keynes analysed, the trend is for the proportion of the economy devoted to investment to rise. To illustrate this, Figure 1 shows the percentage of fixed investment in GDP of the leading economies of successive periods of growth over the 300-year period for which meaningful statistics exist.

Figure 1

 

A reason Friedman attempted, unsuccessfully, to refute Keynes over the rising proportion of investment in the economy is that such a trend, as will be seen, is potentially destabilising - Friedman noted: ‘the central analytical proposition of the [theoretical] structure is the denial that the long-run equilibrium position of a free enterprise economy is necessarily at full employment.’ (Friedman, 1957, p. 237)

Effective demand

There is a parallelism between Keynes’s analysis and Marx’s regarding the role of profit and investment. The latter noted that without offsetting factors, a rise in the proportion of investment in the economy would led to a falling rate of profit as a necessary consequence of a rise in capital relative to the profits stream – i.e. Increasing division of labour, through its effect in raising investment as proportion of the economy, as analysed by Smith, created a tendency to a declining rate of profit (Marx, 1894, pp. 317-375).

Keynes also approached economic fluctuations via profit: ‘The trade cycle is best regarded… as being occasioned by a cyclical change in the marginal efficiency of capital.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 313) However, Keynes specific development was to approach the potentially destabilising consequences of the rising proportion of investment in the economy via effective demand.

Effective demand is composed of both consumption and investment, with the latter, as noted, tending to rise relative to the former over time. Keynes therefore noted: ‘when aggregate real income is increased aggregate consumption is increased but not by as much as income… Thus to justify any given amount of employment there must be an amount of current investment sufficient to absorb the excess of total output over what the community chooses to consume when employment is at the given level… It follows… that given what we shall call the community’s propensity to consume, the equilibrium level of employment, i.e. the level at which there is no inducement to employers as a whole either to expand or to contract employment, will depend on the amount of current investment.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 27)

Keynes noted no automatic mechanism ensures a necessary volume of investment to maintain effective demand: ‘the effective demand associated with full employment is a special case… It can only exist when, by accident or design, current investment provides an amount of demand just equal to the excess of the aggregate supply price of the output resulting from full employment over what the community will choose to spend on consumption when it is fully employed.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 28) Put aphoristically: ‘An act of individual saving means – so to speak – a decision not to have dinner today. But it does not necessitate a decision to have dinner or buy a pair of boots a week hence or a year hence.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 210). In more technical terminology: ‘The error lies in proceeding to the … inference that, when an individual saves, he will increase aggregate investment by an equal amount.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 83)

Any investment shortfall would be amplified by the well known economic ‘multiplier’ into much stronger cyclical fluctuations: ‘It is… to the general principle of the multiplier to which we have to look for an explanation of how fluctuations in the amount of investment, which are a comparatively small proportion of the national income, are capable of generating fluctuations in aggregate employment and income so much greater in amplitude than themselves.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 122) Such fluctuations in investment, combined with consumption, in turn determined employment: ‘The propensity to consume and the rate of new investment determine between them the volume of employment.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 30)

From this analysis Keynes derived key policy conclusions.

Budget deficits

One, well known, is countering recession with budget deficits, which Keynes dealt with as ‘loan expenditure’ – vulgarisation of Keynes lies in reducing his theories to support for budget deficits, not in the fact that he supported deficit spending. Keynes noted: ‘”loan expenditure” is a convenient expression for the net borrowing of public authorities on all accounts, whether on capital account or to meet a budgetary deficit. The one form of loan expenditure operates by increasing investment and the other by increasing the propensity to consume.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 128)

Therefore, in a famous passage: ‘If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines… and leave it to private enterprise… to dig the notes up again... with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater… It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 130)

Such a view of deficit spending naturally did not mean Keynes was indifferent to what deficits should be spent on - today environmentally sustainable investment would be added to his existing list. He had scathing contempt for double standards regarding when deficits were justifiable: ‘Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars… may serve to increase wealth, if… our statesmen… stands in the way of anything better… common sense… has been apt to reach a preference for wholly “wasteful” forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict “business” principles. For example, unemployment relief financed by loans is more readily accepted than the financing of improvements at a charge below the current rate of interest…wars have been the only form of large-scale loan expenditure which statesmen have thought justifiable.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 129)

Interest rates

While Keynes supported deficit spending, the causes of recession lay in more fundamental factors affecting investment, which in turn were affected by interest rates: ‘the succession of boom and slump can be described and analysed in terms of the fluctuations of the marginal efficiency of capital relatively to the rate of interest.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 144) This was because marginal efficiency of capital was ‘equal to the rate of discount which would make the present value of the series of annuities given by returns expected from the capital-asset during its lift just equal to its supply price.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 135) Consequently, ‘inducement to invest depends partly on the investment-demand schedule and partly on the rate of interest.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 137)

As investment was affected by interest rates, therefore, a crucial issue to maintain investment at a sufficient level to sustain effective demand was a low interest rate. This problem, in turn, tended to become more acute because of the rising proportion of the economy devoted to investment: ‘Not only is the marginal propensity to consume weaker in a wealthy community, but owing to its accumulation of capital being already larger, the opportunities for further investment are less attractive unless the rate of interest falls at a sufficiently rapid rate; which brings us to the theory of the rate of interest and… reasons why it does not automatically fall to the appropriate levels.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 31)

The aim of low interest rates was to relaunch investment by ensuring that the return on investment was above the rate of interest plus whatever was the required premium to overcome liquidity preference. But, as Keynes openly acknowledged, such low term interest rates destroy the ability to live from income from interest – which is why, in his famous phrase, Keynes foresaw ‘euthanasia of the rentier.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 376) He concluded: ‘I see… the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 376)

‘A somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment’

Nevertheless, despite support for low interest rates Keynes, did not judge these would be likely by themselves to overcome the effects of an investment decline. It would therefore be necessary for the state to play a greater role: ‘Only experience… can show how far management of the rate of interest is capable of continuously stimulating the appropriate volume of investment… I am now somewhat sceptical of the success of a merely monetary policy directed towards influencing the rate of interest… I expect to see the State… taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organising investment.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 164) Consequently Keynes believed that regulating the level of investment would have to be undertaken by the state and not by the private sector: ‘I conclude that the duty of ordering the current volume of investment cannot safely be left in private hands.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 320) It was necessary, therefore, to aim at ‘a socially controlled rate of investment.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 325)

If, however, the state were to determine ‘the current volume of investment’ then this led Keynes to the conclusion: ‘It seems unlikely that the influence of banking policy on the rate of interest will be sufficient by itself to determine an optimum rate of investment. I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 378)

Keynes noted that this ‘somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment’ did not mean the elimination of the private sector, but socialised investment operating together with a private sector: ‘This need not exclude all manner of compromises and devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative… the necessary measures of socialisation can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society… apart from the necessity of central controls to bring about an adjustment between the propensity to consume and the inducement to invest there is no more need to socialise economic life than there was before…. The central controls necessary to ensure full employment will, of course, involve a large extension of the traditional functions of government.’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 378)

The conclusion

It is now possible to clearly see the structure of Keynes’s argument. The rising proportion of the economy devoted to investment meant any downturn in the latter would have increasingly destabilising consequences. Budget deficits could deal with this to some degree, but as the key element was investment, which was determined by interaction between profits and interest rates, low interest rates was necessary. This would lead to the ‘euthanasia of the rentier’. However it was unlikely interest rates would be sufficient themselves and therefore the state would need to step in with ‘a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment’ which would however work alongside a private sector.

Tracing this argument one has now arrived at a ‘Chinese’ economic structure - although approaching it via a Keynesian and not a Marxist framework. ‘Zhuada Fangxiao’, grasping large state firms and releasing small ones to the non-state/private sector, coupled with abandonment of quantitative planning, means that China’s economy is not being regulated via administrative means but by general macro-economic control, including centrally of the level of investment – as Keynes advocated.

Implications

What is the overall significance of this? Deng Xiaoping’s most famous economic statement is ‘cats theory’ – ‘it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white provided it catches mice’. But ‘cats theory’ can be applied to economics itself – it doesn’t matter whether something is described in Marxist or Western economic terms provided the same economic policies exist. ‘Zhuada Fangxiao’ may be arrived at from either a Keynesian or a Marxist framework.

But while one may be indifferent to the colour of theoretical cats it is not possible to be indifferent as regards the policy measures to be taken – steps in budget deficits, interests rates, investment etc are material and precise. Here there is a radical difference in between the US and Europe on one side and China on the other.

In the US and Europe budget deficits have been utilised – although they are under increasing attack. Low central bank interest rates have been pursued and some forms of quantitative easing, driving down long term interest rates through central bank purchases of debt, have been used. But no serious programmes of state investment have been launched – let alone Keynes’s ‘somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment’.

In China, in contrast, relatively limited budget deficits have been combined with low interest rates, a state owned banking system (‘euthanasia of the rentier’) and a huge state investment programme. While the West’s economic recovery programme has been timid, China has pursued full blooded policies of the type recognisable from Keynes General Theory as well as its own ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ Why this contrast and why has China’s stimulus package been so much more successful than the West’s?

Because in the US and Europe, of course, it is held that the colour of the cat matters very much. Only the private sector coloured cat is good, the state sector coloured cat is bad. Therefore even if the private sector cat is catching insufficient mice, that is the economy is in severe recession, the state sector cat must not be used to catch them. In China both cats have been let lose – and therefore far more mice are caught.

The recession in the Western economies, as foreseen by Keynes, is driven by decline in investment – in most countries decline in fixed investment accounted for two thirds to more than ninety per cent of the GDP fall (Ross, Li, & Xu, 2010). Keynes’s calls for not only budget deficits and low interest rates but also for the state to set about ‘organising investment’ are evidently required. But this is blocked because the state coloured cat is not allowed to catch mice.

To put it another way, the US and Europe insist on participating in a race while hopping on only one leg – the private sector. China is using two legs, so little wonder it is running faster.

To turn from metaphors to economic measures, a large scale state financed house building programme, or large scale expansion of transport, of the type China is following as part of anti-crisis measures not only delivers goods that are valuable in themselves but boosts the economy through macro-economic effects in raising investment. But in the West such state investment is blocked as it creates competition for the private sector. As the top aim in the US and Europe is not to revive the economy, but to protect the private sector, therefore such large-scale investment must not be undertaken.

It is an irony. Keynes explicitly put forward his theories to save capitalism. But the structure of the US and European economies has made it impossible to implement Keynes’s policies even when confronted with the most severe recession since the Great Depression. The anti-crisis measures of China’s ‘socialist market economy’ are far closer to those Keynes foresaw that any capitalist economy. Whereas in the US, for example, fixed investment fell by over twenty five per cent during the financial crisis in China urban fixed investment rose by over thirty per cent. Consequently, there is no mystery why China’s economy has grown by 41.4 per cent in the four years since the peak of the last US business cycle, in the 4^th quarter of 2007, while the US economy has grown by 0.7 per cent.

Deng Xiaoping famously said his death was ‘going to meet Marx’. But Deng may also be having an intense talk with John Maynard Keynes. And Keynes would be interested to discuss with Deng’s two cats – who appear to have read the  General Theory more closely and accurately than any administration in the West.

Put in more prosaic terms, China’s economic structure, because it allowed ‘a socially controlled rate of investment’ and a ‘somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment’, could utilise policy tools developed by Keynes but the US and European economies could not. Although Keynes explicitly wished to save capitalism it turned out that Western capitalism could not use his tools, but China’s ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ could. Deng Xiaoping could not fit in the framework of Keynes, but Keynes could fit rather neatly within the framework of Deng Xiaoping.

Appendix – the issues restated in Marxist terms

In the article above an account has been given of China’s macro-economic policy in terms of a theoretical framework derived from Keynes. Deng Xiaoping, however, as a Communist naturally explicitly formulated China’s economic policy in Marxist terms - China’s economic reform policies were seen as the integration of Marxism with the specific conditions in China. More precisely Deng stated: ‘We were victorious in the Chinese revolution precisely because we applied the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism to our own realities.’ (Deng, 28 August 1985) Consequently: ‘Our principle is that we should integrate Marxism with Chinese practice and blaze a path of our own. That is what we call building socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ (Deng, 21 August 1985)

Authors, including (Hsu, 1991), have contended that Deng’s economic policies were not in accord with those of Marx. However while China’s economic policies clearly differed from those of the USSR after the introduction of the First Five Year Plan in 1929, which introduced comprehensive planning and essentially total state ownership, it is clear that China’s economic policies were in line with those indicated by Marx. Whether people wish to formulate Chinese economic policy in Keynesian or Marxist terms may be left to them. What is most crucial is not the colour of the cat but whether it catches mice – that is, the practical policy conclusions drawn. This appendix therefore briefly shows that Deng’s essential concepts in launching China’s economic reform in in 1978 corresponded to Marx’s.

The primary stage of socialism

Regarding China’s economic reform policies Deng noted, as stated in Marxist terms, that China was in the socialist and not the (higher) communist stage of development. Large scale development of the productive forces/output was the prerequisite before China could make the transition to a communist society: ‘A Communist society is one in which there is no exploitation of man by man, there is great material abundance, and the principle of from each according to their ability, to each according to his needs is applied. It is impossible to apply that principle without overwhelming material wealth. In order to realise communism, we have to accomplish the tasks set in the socialist stage. They are legion, but the fundamental one is to develop the productive forces.’ (Deng, 28 August 1985) More precisely, in a characterisation maintained to the present, China was in the ‘primary stage’ of socialism, which was fundamental in defining policy: ‘‘The Thirteenth National Party Congress will explain what stage China is in: the primary stage of socialism. Socialism itself is the first stage of communism, and here in China we are still in the primary stage of socialism – that is, the underdeveloped stage. In everything we do we must proceed from this reality, and all planning must be consistent with it.’ (Deng, 29 August 1987)

The fundamental characterisations by Deng have been maintained to the present – thus for example in July 2011 President Hu Jintao stressed that ‘China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come’ (Xinhua, 2011), while speaking to the UN premier Wen Jiabao noted ‘Taken as a whole, China is still in the primary stage of socialism’ (Xinhua, 2010). The conclusion flowing from this as noted by Hsu, was that: ‘From this perspective, a serious error in the past was the leftist belief that China could skip the primary stage and practice full socialism immediately.’ (Hsu, 1991, p. 11)

The conclusion of such a contrast between a primary socialist stage of development and and the principle of a communist society (which, as noted by Deng above, was regulated by ‘from each according to their ability to each according to each according to his needs’) was that in the present 'socialist' period the principle was ‘ to each according to their work’: ‘We must adhere to this socialist principle which calls for distribution according to the quantity and quality of an individual’s work.’ (Deng, 28 March 1978) In Marxist theory, outlined by Marx in the opening chapter of Capital (Marx, 1867), economic distribution according to work/labour is the fundamental principle of commodity production – and a commodity necessarily implies a market. In this socialist period a market would therefore exist – hence the eventual Chinese terminology of a ‘socialist market economy.’ As presented by Deng Xiaoping and his successors above such Chinese analysis is highly compressed but clearly in line with Marx himself.

It is clear Marx envisaged that the transition from capitalism to communism would be a prolonged one, noting in The Communist Manifesto: ‘The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.’ (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 504) The ‘by degree’ may noted – Marx therefore clearly envisaged a period during which state owned property and private property would exist. China’s system, after Deng, of simultaneous existence of sectors of state and private ownership is therefore clearly more in line with Marx’s conceptualisation than Stalin’s introduction ‘all at once’ of essentially 100 per cent state ownership in 1929.

Regarding Deng’s formulations on communist society being regulated by ‘to each according to their need’ versus the primary stage of socialism regulated by ‘each according to their work’ Marx noted in the Critique of the Gotha Programme of the post-capitalist transition to a communist society: ‘What we are dealing with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.’ (Marx, 1875, p. 85)

In such a transition Marx outlined payment in society, and distribution of products and services, necessarily had to be 'according to work' even within the state owned sector of the economy:‘Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society - after the deductions have been made - exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

‘Here obviously the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values…. as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.

‘Hence, equal right here is still in principle - bourgeois right… The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour.’ (Marx, 1875, p. 86)

In such a society inequality would necessarily still exist: ‘one… is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour... it tacitly recognises the unequal individual endowment and thus the productive capacities of the workers as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality in its content like every right. Right by its very nature can consist only as the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable by an equal standard only insofar as they are made subject to an equal criterion, are taken from a certain side only, for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Besides, one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, etc. etc.. Thus, given an equal amount of work done, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal.’ (Marx, 1875, pp. 86-87)

Marx considered only after a prolonged transition would payment according to work be replaced with the ultimately desired goal, distribution of products according to members of society’s needs.

‘Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development which this determines.

‘In a higher phase of communist society… after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of common wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ (Marx, 1875, p. 87)

It is therefore clear that post-Deng policies in China were more in line with Marx’s prescriptions than post-1929 Stalin policies in the USSR. Given the essentially 100 per cent state ownership of industry in China in 1978 'Zhuada Fangxiao' – maintaining the large enterprises within the state sector and releasing the small ones to the non-state sector – together with the creation of a new private sector created an economic structure clearly more in line with that envisaged by Marx than the essentially 100 per cent state ownership in the USSR after 1929. Deng’s insistence on the formula that in the transitional period reward would be ‘according to work’ and not ‘according to need’ was clearly in line with Marx’s analyses. It is notable that in the USSR itself a number of economists opposed Stalin’s post-1929 policies on the same or related grounds – including Buhkarin (Bukharin, 1925) , Kondratiev (Kondratiev), Trotsky (Trotsky, 1931) and Preobrazhensky (Preobrazhensky, 1921-27) (Preobrazhensky, 1921-27). Their works were, however, almost unknown as these issues were ‘resolved’ by Stalin killing those economists who disagreed with him and banning their works - although several accounts have been published outside the USSR – see for example (Jasny, 1972) (Lewin, 1975). China’s economic debates therefore appear to have preceded with reference to China’s conditions and Marx and not any preceding debates in the USSR.

It is therefore clear that China’s post-reform economic policy is in line with Marx’s analysis and that, as stated in Chinese analysis, post-1929 Soviet policy departed from Marx’s analysis – the argument that the converse is true, by Hsu and others, is invalid.

As China’s economic policy and structure can be understood in either Keynesian or Marxist terms it is a more general issue which is to be preferred. ‘It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white provided it catches mice’ might appear an appropriate response.

* * *

An earlier and shorter version of this article appeared in Soundings.

Notes and Bibliography

US workers dropping out of the labour force, not jobs creation, dominates in this US business cycle

Considerable publicity was given to the decline in the official US unemployment rate to 8.3 per cent in January 2012 and the creation of 243,000 non-farm payroll jobs. The problem is that, as usual, no baseline or serious study of overall trends was given to evaluate this monthly data.

The reality is the number in US non-farm employment still remains 5.6 million, 4.1%, below its peak level in January 2008 (Figure 1). But this figure very substantially flatters as since then the US population has grown by almost 4%.

In fact there has been no significant increase in the percentage of the US population of working age in employment since the depth of the recession, and the participation rate in the labour force of the US population of working age continues to drop.

Figure 1

 

The sharp drop in the participation of the US participation of working age in the total labour force (i.e. employed and unemployed) is shown in Figure 2. Between January 2008, the peak of US non-farm employment, and January 2012 the participation rate in the US labour force of the population over the age of 16 fell by 2.5 per cent – from 66.2 per cent to 63.7 per cent.

Figure 2

 

 

Regarding those actually in employment the situation is worse. The percentage of the US population over the age of 16 in employment fell by 4.4 per cent, from 62.9 per cent to 58.5 per cent, between January 2008 and January 2012. There has been essentially no significant recovery from the low point of 58.2 per cent in December 2008 to the 58.5 per cent in January 2012 (Figure 3).

Figure 3

 

US GDP recovery is the slowest in this business cycle of any since World War II, and in December 2011, the latest available data, US industrial production was still 5.4% below its level in the previous business cycle. As productivity growth means that less workers are required even when previous peak levels of output are regained it will be a substantial period before the US regains its previous employment level. Paul Krugman therefore noted the situation accurately: ‘the gap remains huge. Suppose that we need 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth, and that we’re 10 million jobs in the hole — both conservative estimates. Then we need about 7 years of growth at this rate to restore full employment.’

It remains to be seen whether US employment growth can continue at its present rate for seven years, But the fundamental trend so far during this business cycle has not been a decline in real unemployment but an increase in the proportion of the US population dropping out of the labour force.

The myth of US industrial revival

Currently a number of attempts are being made to claim a major revival of US industry is taking place. For example Harold L. Sirkin, of the Boston Consulting Group, writes: ‘A resurgence of U.S. manufacturing seems to be in the offing. With production costs rising in China, some companies are bringing their manufacturing back to the U.S…. That's partly confirmed by the data: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) recently reported that U.S. manufacturing had expanded for 24 consecutive months. Likewise, the Federal Reserve reported a 0.6% increase in manufacturing in July 2011, with a year-on-year gain of 3.8%.’ Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadha claims: ‘America is destined to once again gain its supremacy in manufacturing, and it will soon by China’s turn to worry.’

It is therefore important to be clear that these claims are a myth. As may be seen in Figure 1 US industrial production has not even regained pre-financial crisis levels. In December 2011, the latest available data, US industrial production was 5.4 per cent below its peak in the previous business cycle. Equally striking, for the long term, is that since June 2000, the peak of the last but one business cycle, average annual US industrial growth has been only 0.3 per cent. In short, far from a ‘rebirth’ of US industry occurring, US industrial production has scarcely grown for over a decade and so far in the present business cycle it has not even regained its previous peak level of output. On the latest monthly data it would take US industry two years to regain its previous peak output.

Figure 1

 

Sirkin presents as evidence to justify his claims: ‘Volkswagen, for example, recently opened a new $1-billion factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Embraer, the Brazilian manufacturer of mid-size commuter jets, recently opened an assembly plant in Melbourne, Florida; and Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems, which builds nuclear power plants and components, is locating a new engineering center in Charlotte, North Carolina.’ Publicity was given by others to a US company exporting chopsticks to China.

Unfortunately presentation of individual examples proves nothing. Industrial production is an aggregate, an average of different movements by companies. There will therefore always necessarily be cases above and below the average. Finding individual companies which are expanding, whether in chopsticks or anything else, therefore doesn’t constitute proof – even if US industry were sharply declining individual expanding companies may well exist.

Sirkin’s statistic that US manufacturing has been expanding for 24 months also doesn’t prove anything. Choosing particular starting dates, rather than considering the overall trend, has a well understood effect in distorting analysis. For example take 1933, the depth of the Great Depression, as a starting point for measuring US economic growth during the 1930s. By 1939 the US economy had expanded by 50 per cent. Solely from this one might conclude that the 1930s were a period of prosperity, whereas actually they were the worst decade in US economic history. The statistical distortion is to measure from the lowest point of the business cycle, ignoring the enormous fall in US GDP which took place in 1929-33. To avoid such statistical distortion economic analysis must state what points in the business cycle it is comparing and consider the economic process as a whole.

To see how this error distorts perception of US industry note that by the time US industrial output reached its bottom in the present recession, in June 2009, it had to grow by 21 per cent to regain its previous peak output. By December 2012, which indeed was after two and a half years of expansion, the increase was 14 per cent. Such an expansion of 14 per cent might sound impressive – it is a growth of over five per cent a year. But such an 'optimistic' conclusion distorts the reality – because 21 per cent growth was required to even regain the previous peak level of production!

Apple’s Steve Jobs stated the reality of US manufacturing reality at a dinner with President Obama last February. Asked what would shift iPhone production to the US, Jobs bluntly replied ‘those jobs aren’t coming back’.

US manufacturing ‘rebirth’ can only be claimed when there is statistical evidence to support it, not when output has not even regained previous peak levels.

*   *   *

An earlier, non-technical, version of this article appeared in Global Times.

 

The incredible shrinking UK economy

The magnitude of the blow suffered by the UK economy since the beginning of the financial crisis is very considerably minimized by not presenting it in terms of a common international yardstick. Gauged by decline in GDP, using a common international purchasing measure, dollars, no other economy in the world has shrunk even remotely as much as the UK (Figure 1 and Table 1).

As most countries produce only annualized GDP data it will be necessary to wait before a comprehensive global comparison can be made for 2011. However it is clear no substantial growth in dollar terms took place in the UK economy during that year – GDP at national current prices rose only 1.4 per cent between the 1^st and 3^rd quarters and the change in the pound’s exchange rate against the dollar during the year was a marginal 0.3 per cent. Therefore there will have been no significant recovery from the UK data set out in Table 1 below, and the gap between the UK and other European economies, which form the next worst performing major group, is too great to have been qualitatively affected by changes in the Euro’s exchange rate – the Euro declined against the pound by only 3.3 per cent in 2011.

Table 1 shows that the fall in UK GDP in 2007-2010 was $562 billion compared to the next worst performing national economy, Italy, with a decline of $65 billion – i.e. the decline in UK GDP in the common measuring yardstick of dollars was more than eight times that of the next worst performing national economy. Table 1 shows the 10 national economies suffering the greatest declines in dollar GDP.

It is also extremely striking that the UK’s decline was more than two and a half times that of the entire Eurozone. The UK accounted for a somewhat astonishing 77 per cent of the EU's decline.

Table 1

Figure 1

 

Expressed in percentage terms the situation is no better. of all economies for which World Bank data is available only Iceland, with a decline in dollar GDP of 38.4 per cent, suffered a worst percentage fall than the UK - even bail out economy Ireland, with a fall of 18.4 per cent, outperformed the UK economy.

Two trends intersected for the UK's performance to be so much worse than that of any other economy. First, contrary to the government's anti-European rhetoric, UK economic performance in constant price national currency terms has been significantly worse than the Eurozone during the financial crisis (Figure 2). Up to the latest available data, for the 3rd quarter of 2011, UK GDP was still 3.6 per cent below its pre-financial crisis peak compared to the Eurozone's 1.7 per cent below. Second, between the beginning of 2008 and the beginning of 2012, the pound's exchange rate has fallen by 21.0 per cent against the dollar compared to the Euro's 11.4 per cent drop in the same period. The multiplicative effect of the severity of the relative drop in constant price GDP and the fall in the pound's exchange rate accounts for the unequalled decline in UK GDP in dollars.

Figure 2

 

As at present the UK economy shows no substantial sign of recovery, the present UK government, which maintains a steadfastly ostrich like attitude towards Europe in particular, and most other countries in general, may argue that a measure in terms of dollars at current exchange rates is irrelevant – the UK currency is the pound and what counts is constant price shifts. Such an argument is false and an attempt to disguise the true scale of the decline of the UK economy.

The internationally unmatched decline in UK dollar GDP is a huge fall in real international purchasing ability. The far higher than targeted inflation in the UK during the last two years, which has substantially eroded the population's living standards, is itself in part a reflecton of the decline in the UK's exchange rate and consequent raising of import prices. In short, the decline in the international purchasing power of the UK's economy translates into a direct fall in real incomes. The decline in the UKs ranking among world economies in terms of GDP, being recently overtaken by Brazil, statistically reflects the same process.

It may also be seen that the government's claim that the UK is outperforming Europe and the Eurozone is entirely without foundation even in constant price national currency terms. But when measured in terms of real international comparisons, i.e. in dollars, the UK's performance is incomparably worse than Europe's.

It appears extremely unlikely that the UK's economy will escape from this circle of decline in the next period. The austerity policies pursued by the present UK government have substantially slowed the economic recovery that was taking place in 2009 and the first part of 2010 - between the 3rd quarter of 2010 and the 3rd quarter of 2011 the UK economy grew by only 0.5 per cent. The opposition Labour Party has recently also endorsed essentially the same austerity policies which have failed not only in the UK but in other European economies, such as Greece and Ireland, where they have been pursued.

Even if any partial recovery takes place, for example by some increase in the exchange rate of the pound against the Euro, the sheer magnitude of the decline in the UK economy makes it implausible that this could be on a scale sufficient to reverse the fall in its relative international position.

 

China and developing economies will determine the chances for world growth in 2012

China’s economic growth has become a key factor not only for itself but for world markets. As the scale of China's impact is still too frequently underestimated it should be noted that, measured in current dollars and at market exchange rates, i.e. in terms of actual effective demand, in the three years following the start of the international financial crisis China contributed 33.4 per cent of global market growth – more than four times as much as the US 8.1 per cent (Table 1). While final data for 2011 is not yet available, it is already clear from the first three quarters figures that China’s market last year expanded by over $1 trillion – approximately twice as much in dollars as the US, despite US growth having resumed. Table 1 makes clear no other economy has approached China in terms of market/global aggregate demand expansion.

It is therefore a key question whether China will continue essentially the same scale of market growth in 2012. The answer is ‘yes’  - but because of the issue’s importance the reasons should be clearly outlined. Interlinked with this is the decisive role played by developing economies in recovery from the financial crisis – the interlinking being that China is by far the largest developing economy, while the developing economies have become China’s largest trade partners.

In the three years covering the period from the beginning of the international financial crisis to the latest available annual data, i.e. in 2007-2010, developing economies accounted for 78.6 per cent of world market growth and developed economies for only 21.4 per cent. Considered from another angle, simply taking different classifications, either the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China), or China plus Latin America, contributed the majority of world market/effective demand expansion – either of these groupings accounting for more than twice as much market expansion as the developed economies.

Table 1

 

Turning to more detailed trends, the first feature determining China’s continued dominant position in world market expansion, one the consequences of which are insufficiently frequently noted, is that as China’s economy becomes larger a similar percentage yearly growth necessarily turns into an increasingly large annual absolute market increase - in inflation adjusted terms, China’s economy expanded by 2.3 trillion RMB in 2008, 2.4 trillion RMB in 2009, and 3.1 trillion RMB in 2010.

But even frequently cited constant price growth figures underestimate the expansion of China’s position in the world market. Actual sales, and therefore changes in aggregate demand, use real money which is affected by exchange rate shifts and inflation – further figures in this article are therefore at current market exchange rates and prices unless otherwise stated. In 2009, when China froze the RMB’s exchange rate due to the international financial crisis, China’s economy grew by $469 billion – compared to a US contraction of $353 billion. In 2010, when China allowed the RMB exchange rate to rise, its annual economic expansion rose to $935 billion and the figure will be over $1 trillion in 2011 – roughly twice US market expansion.

Table 1 also makes clear the second reason China’s market will continue  its expansion. World growth is now dominated by developing economies and China is their most rapidly expanding trading partner.

Considering trends among developing economies, China accounting for 33.4 per cent of global market expansion. Latin America was second – constituting 17.3 per cent of world growth, with Brazil accounting for 58 per cent of this. China and Latin America together accounted for 50.7 per cent of world market growth..

Among other developing economic regions, South Asia contributed 8.0 per cent to world market growth, with India accounting for 84 per cent of this. Developing East Asian economies, excluding China, accounted for 7.0 per cent of world growth – Indonesia constituting 54 per cent of this. The Middle East and North Africa accounted for 6.1 per cent of world growth with no single dominant regional economy – the largest contributor, Egypt, constituted only 19.9 per cent of the total. Developing countries in Europe and Central Asia accounted for 4.5 per cent of world growth – of which 55 per cent was Russia. Sub-Saharan Africa grew rapidly, but due to its low starting point only contributed 2.1 per cent of world growth.

Turning to developed economies, Japan illustrates the importance of currency movements for shifts in markets measured in dollar terms. Due to the yen’s sharp exchange rate rise, Japan contributed 14.9 per cent of the dollar expansion of the world market despite Japan’s economy contracting in inflation adjusted terms. The US contributed 8.2 per cent to world market growth, despite the US not having grown in constant price terms, due to the dollar rising against other currencies,

The ‘disaster area’ for world markets was the developed European economies with a decline of $668 billion - equivalent to subtracting 9.2 cent from world growth.

It is already clear 2012 will show no fundamental change in this pattern. Developed European economies will again be the worst performing region – suffering a recession possibly magnified by a low Euro exchange rate. The US should expand, but slowly compared to previous upswings in US business cycle. Therefore if the world economy is to grow this will again have to be primarily due to developing  economies.

Fortunately, the large developing economies are slowing but still growing substantially more rapidly than developed ones. China, the dominant factor in the equation, even on pessimistic estimates is likely to grow by at least 7-8 per cent in real terms this year which, after increases in the exchange rate of the RMB and inflation is take into account, means an expansion of its market of probably 12-15 per cent in dollar terms. Minimum real growth estimates for India are at least seven per cent.

It is also clear from the pattern in Table 1 why BRIC economies will again dominate world growth – in 2007-2010 they contributed 52.5 per cent of world market expansion. Not only are the BRICs individually the largest developing economies but each is the centre of a major regional economic area. While Brazil has slowed, Russia’s economy has been accelerating, and it is in any case China and India which are the dominant dynamic BRIC economies.

This overall situation clearly interrelates with China as it already carries out the majority of its trade with developing economies – 54 per cent of total trade, 49 per cent of exports and 60 per cent of imports.

The implications for China’s markets are clear. China has not only the world’s most rapidly expanding domestic market, and declining inflation gives it extra room for domestic economic loosening/stimulus in 2012, but its biggest trading partners are the most rapidly growing regions of the world economy. It is this combination of domestic and international factors which determines that  China will continue to remain the world’s most rapidly expanding market/supplier of increased aggregate demand in 2012. Given the negative prospects in Europe, and slow growth in the US, it will then be the situation in the developing economies, which is increasingly related to the situation in China, which will necessarily determine the overall prospects for world growth in 2012.

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This is an expanded version of an article which originally appeared in Shanghai Daily.

China's pivotal role in the world economy in 2012

In 2012 the world economy will continue to struggle with the international financial crisis. There will be recession in Europe, world trade was already declining in September and October, and international commodity prices are falling sharply - a sensitive indicator of the state of the world economy. The only unknown is the severity of the slowdown - in particular, will the US be pulled into recession or merely continue to grow slowly, and by how much will the large developing economies such as Brazil, India and Russia decelerate? China's premier Wen Jiabao predicted, regarding that country’s perspectives, that next year's international economic situation would be "complicated and tough."

Entering such a situation, a major issue is to assess with the maximum possible accuracy the position of China in the global economy - this affects both the rest of the world economy and China. Well known statistics, such as that China's is the world's second largest economy, are insufficiently accurate to suffice for this. For reasons indicated below they underestimate the role of China in the world economy's development and are not fine grained enough to accurately judge economic policy. Analysis shows China will play a pivotal role in the world economy in 2012 - Goldman Sachs's Jim O' Neill, coiner of the term BRIC, estimated in the Financial Times: "While the financial and business world continue to hang on every twist and turn in eurozone politics, I think the biggest issue for the world in 2012 will be...China."

The first reason for this is that China's high growth rate results in its contribution to world economic expansion being much greater than its percentage of world GDP. In 2007, the last year before the international financial crisis, China accounted for only 6.3 per cent of world GDP on World Bank statistics. But in the following three years the world economy expanded by $7.2 trillion while China’s economy grew by $2.4 trillion - i.e. China accounted for 33 per cent of world growth. In contrast, in 2007 the US accounted for 25.1 per cent of world GDP, but in the next three years the US economy grew by only $0.6 trillion. Therefore in the last three years China’s economy contributed four times as much to global growth as the US. The EU, to make a comparison, contracted by $0.7 trillion during the same period.

The second key factor is China’s financial role. The key feature of this is not, as is sometimes supposed, China’s $3 trillion foreign exchange reserves. These have been accumulated over a significant period and, because a large part is an emergency reserve, only a small amount can be utilized at any point. The key element is the finance China generates each year for investment – i.e. its total company, household and government saving. In 2007 US total finance generated for investment was $2 trillion and China’s was $1.8 trillion – that is, the US was slightly ahead of China. By 2010, under the impact of their economies, different responses to the crisis, total finance available for investment in the US was $1.6 trillion and in China $3.1 trillion – i.e. China’s finance available for investment is now almost twice that in the US, a dramatic change in three years.

Turning to international trade, US imports have still not regained pre-financial crisis levels. Taking a three-month average, to avoid distortion by purely short-term fluctuations, up to the latest available data, for October, US imports were an annualized $17 billion lower than the pre-financial crisis peak level in July 2008. Therefore in the last three years the US market for exports has contracted. In contrast, compared to the pre-crisis peak in July 2008, China’s imports from other countries have increased by an annualized $575 billion. China therefore now plays a much greater role as a market for increases in exports than the US.

Finally is the structural position China occupies in the changing pattern of the world economy. The Economist magazine recently emphasized that 2012 will see a fundamental change in the world economy: for the first time the majority of world imports will be by developing economies. In 2008-2010 low and middle income, i.e. developing, economies accounted for 78 per cent of world economic growth.

China already carries out a majority of its trade with developing countries. In the three months ending in October, 54 per cent of China’s trade was with developing economies - 49 per cent of exports and 60 per cent of imports.

The rate of increase of China’s trade with developing economies is also significantly stronger than with developed economies. Between July 2008 and October 2011 China’s exports to developed economies rose by an annualized $107 billion and its imports from them by $145 billion. With developing countries, China’s exports rose by an annualized $143 billion and its imports by $204 billion. China was the hub of a rapid expansion of trade by developing economies.

This trade situation is directly linked to the new technological position China occupies in the world economy. A number of developing economies have passed from being merely suppliers of raw materials to exporting more technologically developed products – India’s success in software and Brazil’s in regional range aircraft are examples. But no other developing country has such a wide technological range of internationally traded products as China. Such trade originated in low technology labour intensive industries, spread through a rapidly widening range of medium technology products such as excavators, domestic goods and personal computers, up to the higher technology telecommunications equipment of Huawei and other companies.

This capacity of China to export across a wider range of the technology spectrum than any other economy creates its increasingly key position in world trade. China exports low, medium and some high technology products to developed economies, while its exports are increasingly on a higher technology level from the point of view of developing economies. China’s financial resources make it able to follow this widening range of exports with direct investment.

It is the combination of these features - the single biggest contributor to the increase in world GDP, the largest source of finance, the biggest potential increase in export markets for other economies - which results in China’s impact on the world economy being much greater than its pure percentage of world GDP. To put it in technical economic terms, developments at the margin, that is contributions to change, must be considered as well as averages.

Concerning the issues that will dominate 2012, China's economy by itself is not yet large enough to pull the developed economies out of recession - although it can play a potentially significant role in collaboration with others. But in relation not only to Asia but to a widening range of developing countries the growth of China’s economy is crucial. As developing economies now contribute more to world economic growth than developed economies, this means that the success, or otherwise, of China’s economy for the global economy will be pivotal in 2012.

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This is an edited version of an article originally published as an opinion piece by China Daily’s website.

China's stronger economic structure than the US and Europe means its fast growth will continue in 2012

The beginning of 2012 is a suitable moment to assess China's economic prospects for the year and coming period. This overall perspective is clear – China will grow strongly, remaining the world's fastest growing major economy, and will continue to substantially outperform Western pessimist predictions. This is the same fundamental analysis maintained by the author over the last two decade period. Factual results during these twenty years have confirmed such projections - as opposed to the opposite perspective. As accurate or inaccurate predictions do not depend on personal characteristics, but on different fundamental analyses, therefore what leads to repeatedly correct and incorrect projections regarding China's economic growth?

The core issue is simple but difficult for the majority of non-Chinese analysts to admit, despite constant confirmation by economic facts and repeated falsification of predictions of China's serious slowdown. This core issue is that statements by Chinese analysts that China has a stronger economic structure than the US and Europe, and that this therefore produces stronger economic performance, is not a boast but actually factually correct. As this stronger character of China's economic structure is not understood by many Western analysts, they therefore systematically, and each year, underestimate China's economic growth potential.

Nevertheless, a genuine difficulty for non-Chinese analysts is that explanations of this economic strength are frequently posed only in terms of specifically 'Chinese characteristics'. It is therefore worth spelling out more generally why China has a stronger economic structure than the US and Europe, and how this relates to global economic issues that will be faced in 2012.

 

 A model performance [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

 

China self-definition of its system is a 'socialist market economy'. This denotes it differs fundamentally from the economy, modeled on the former USSR, which existed prior to China's 1978 economic reforms, in that economic policy is not run by administrative but by market means. China has a large and vibrant private sector – indeed the world's most rapidly growing private sector. However China differs from the US or Europe in having a sufficiently large state sector, and a nationalised core banking system, that it can directly set the economy's overall investment level – the state sector is too small in the US or Europe to achieve this. This combination of market system and a state sector sufficiently strong to determine the overall level of investment is what gives China its greater economic strength than the US or Europe - such a structure can be understood either from a Chinese 'socialist' point of view or a Western 'Keynesian' one, and for present purposes it  is unimportant which is chosen. 

To illustrate this, consider a key contemporary economic problem – the current situation in the US. The Financial Times on December 15 accurately described the situation in the US economy. It noted that the share of wages in US GDP had fallen to the lowest level since records began and concluded: 'The decline in the labor share, along with a shift of labor income towards higher earners, may be an important part of why the US economic recovery is so sluggish. Workers on lower wages consume much of their income, while higher wage earners and those with capital income are more likely to save. That will not affect total demand if savers lend to those who want to consume or invest in buildings and start-ups – but investment has been slow to recover in the wake of the recession.'

In short, the US economy is growing slowly not because there is a shortage of funds for investment, on the contrary profits are at a record high, but because investment is very low – indeed the entire decline in US GDP in the current 'Great Recession' is accounted for by the investment fall. The problem is that in the US there is no mechanism which ensures that the huge funds available for investment are actually invested.

In China no such problem exists. If funds are not directly invested by companies, then the state owned banking system and state sector can invest them. Therefore no shortfall of demand occurs of the type analysed by the Financial Times in the US. During the entire international financial crisis China, unlike the US, suffered no investment decline – on the contrary investment increased. The problem of accumulation of unused funds of the US type, that is in Keynesian terms a shortage of effective demand, does not arise in China. Equally if China's economy is booming, and companies are utilizing all funds for investment, the state steps back and cuts its own investment – reducing it to cool overheating. That is why China's macroeconomic policy is stronger than that in the US - the problems of either shortage of or excessive demand, which plague the US and European economies, are smoothed in China.

This evidently does not mean China escapes all macroeconomic issues. No policy maker can judge absolutely accurately how strongly the international economy will grow, what will be all the inflationary or deflationary pressures present, exactly how China's own economy will respond to a given measure etc. Therefore there are always issues of overheating, undershooting, inflation, deflation etc. But these are qualitatively smaller fluctuations than in the US or Europe.

The period since the onset of the international financial crisis showed this strength of China's economic structure clearly. Faced with the international financial crisis in 2008, China was able to launch a massive stimulus package which meant its economy did not suffer a recession at all. The recovery of the world economy in 2010-2011 combined with the aftermath of the stimulus package to create some economic overheating and 2011 was therefore mainly spent damping inflation. In 2012, with negative trends dominating the world economy, China will loosen policy.

The overall result is evident. In the four years to the latest economic data, for the 3rd quarter of 2011, the US grew by 0.5 percent, the EU shrank by 0.3 percent, and China grew by 42.2 percent. China's economy therefore suffered some fluctuations on a strong growth path, whereas the US and Europe suffered overall economic stagnation. The stronger character of China's economic system was shown by these facts – those predicting crisis for China, on the same scale as the US or Europe, made the wrong predictions because they failed to analyze that strength.

It is this superior strength of China's economic structure that also makes it clearly possible to predict for 2012 that China's economy will continue to grow strongly, that it will remain the fastest growing major economy in the world, and that it will outperform on the upside Western pessimists predictions – as in previous years the facts of 2012 will confirm that analysis. Not until they understand the greater structural strength of China's economy will current critics be able to make persistently accurate predictions.

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 A shorter and edited version of this article originally appeared on China.org.cn.

US house price fall a significant negative for global economic prospects

One of the biggest questions for the global economy in 2012 will be whether the US follows Europe into recession – the other is whether the large developing economies will be able to repeat their strong growth performance during the previous wave of the financial crisis in 2008-2010 by ‘decoupling’ from the US and Europe.

A significant negative for US prospects came with the release of the latest S&P Case-Schiller house price index. This showed a larger than expected 3.4 per cent annual fall for the latest period for which data was available – October. But much more significant than one month's figures is the overall trend.

As shown in Figure 1 US house prices reached their post-financial crisis low in May 2009 after falling 31.7 per cent from their peak. Recovery continued until May 2010 after which prices began falling again. By October 2011 US house prices were 33.0 per cent below their all-time peak – the worst level since the international financial crisis began.

As housing is, with shares and bonds, one of the three great US asset classes, a significant fell in this category will have an impact across the whole US economy. In particular:

• it will further negatively impact the balance sheets of US banks;
• it will have a dampening effect on US consumer spending

Figure 1

 

The overall view of this blog remains that the US will continue to have historically slow growth rather than re-entering a recession, and the latest US consumer confidence figures for December were the best for eight months. But the fact that the trend of US house prices has now been down for 17 months is a serious negative.

Whatever their immediate mood US consumers are constrained by objective financial factors. With unemployment not falling significantly and incomes not rising falling house prices will further constrain consumers. The recent increase in consumer purchasing in the US has been financed by a reduction in savings levels – which is unsustainable.

The house price data by itself does not lead to a view the US is entering recession, but it pushes US growth towards the ‘slower’ end of the ‘slow’ spectrum.

How severe will the international slowdown be - the story from commodity prices?

Commodity prices are a particularly sensitive indicator for the world economy due to their strong and pro-cyclical price fluctuations. These in turn are linked to supply inelasticities – the obstacles to and pronounced time delays in changing the supply of many commodities.

Agricultural commodities frequently require a minimum of a year to increase output due to seasonal factors, and many minerals require very heavy investment, needing time to implement, before output can be increased. Once such heavy fixed costs have been undertaken it is prohibitively expensive to reduce production. Therefore whereas in manufacturing and services a large part of fluctuations in supply and demand is absorbed by changes in volume, in commodities a much higher part has to be absorbed by changes in price – hence extreme price fluctuations.

In that light Figure 1 shows a sensitive indicator for the world economy – the daily Dow Jones-UBS spot commodity price index for the last 20 years. The story is clear. The first gradual and then rapid surge in commodity price inflation in 2000-2008 is evident, as is the price crash during the international financial crisis. Price recovery occurred during 2009 up to spring 2011, taking commodity prices to higher levels than in 2008. This lay behind the consumer price inflation in India, China and other developing economies.

The peak of commodity prices was reached on 29 April 2011 – the subsequent decline itself being an excellent indicator of a slowing world economy. The subsequent fall, of 17.7 per cent to 21 December, may be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1

 

 

The year on year fluctuation in prices, which is what is reflected in the annual consumer price and producer price index figures, is even more violent. In 2011 the peak annual increase was reached at 46.6 per cent on 7 June and by 21 December it had fallen to minus 6.3 per cent. This largely explained the falling consumer price inflation in first China and now India. This inflation drop gives to gives room to loosen economic policy which is why China, for example, will not have a hard landing.

The present fall in commodity prices is clearly not yet nearly as severe as in 2008. Neither, however, has the decline halted. As they are available on a daily basis monitoring the course of commodity price indexes is a key early warning tool for gauging how severe the international economic slowdown will be.

Fairy stories about China's 'economic crisis'

The present rapid shifts in the international and Chinese economic situations, resulting from the second wave of the international financial crisis centred on the Eurozone, are a challenge both to policy makers and a major opportunity for those with an accurate analysis of China's economy.

 

China speed [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

 

The reasons for this are the same as those when I ran a consulting company and knew inaccurate media analysis was an opportunity to make a profit. Businesses need accurate information to take correct decisions. If a newspaper writes an economy is going to boom when actually it suffers recession, the paper doesn't directly lose anything, but a company acting on the wrong analysis can lose a great deal of money. Economic and business writing therefore operates under an objective discipline which doesn't necessarily exist elsewhere - companies rationally pay a great deal of money for accurate information.

The reason a similar opening exists in China at present is that attempts are being made to convince businesses that China faces an 'economic crisis' on the same scale as that hitting the European Union (EU) and the US. This view is factually nonsense, as any comparison of economic data shows. In the four years to the latest data the US economy grew by 0.5 per cent, the EU's shrank by 0.3 per cent, and China's economy grew by 42.2 per cent. Given such comparisons claims that China is suffering from 'crisis' is rather like saying the US has cholera, the EU has typhoid, and China has a cold and therefore they are basically in the same situation as 'all are ill'. Such claims destroy rational scales of comparison and are therefore wholly misleading in predicting what will happen.

China's economy naturally faces problems - all economies always face problems. It has had excessive house price increases, which are now gradually coming under control, and its consumer price index has been too high - although again it is now falling. Recession in the Eurozone will reduce orders to China's exporters. But China's economic year on year growth rate in the last quarter was 9.1 per cent compared to 1.5 per cent for the US and 1.4 per cent for the EU. If the US and EU were paralleling China's growth far from claiming, this was a 'crisis' they would be calling it an unprecedented boom!

A typical example of such fairy stories regarding China's 'economic crisis' was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Nouriel Roubini and Ian Bremmer president of the Eurasia Group - a risk analysis company. This was entitled 'Whose economy has it worst?' and was introduced: 'With Europe, China and the US in crisis, the real question is which of them will stumble first.' The data already given above show such statements are bombast - there is no crisis in China's economy similar to the US or EU.

Why, therefore, are such economic fairy stories published, why are they are publicized, and how to profit, not purely monetarily, from them?

One reason they appear, of course, is simply that people make wrong analyses. But the reason they are publicized is different. Take for example Gordon C Chang. He wrote a book in 2001 entitled 'The Coming Collapse of China'. This argued 'A half-decade ago the leaders of the People's Republic of China had real choices. Today they do not. They have no exit. They have run out of time.'

In the ten years since China's economy more than doubled in size. After such radically wrong predictions you might expect that Chang would find it difficult to obtain coverage for his analysis. But instead he is regularly published by Forbes magazine with articles posing such questions as 'Can Beijing rescue a stumbling economy'. Some 'stumbling' with nine percent GDP growth! Such analyses have nothing to do with reality but fit the politics of Forbes - which specializes in analyzing the ultra-rich in the US and is hostile to China. 

Business people caught up in such political maneuvers can lose huge sums of money. For example, in a case rather similar to the one of China at present, those backing a particular political grouping in Russia in the 1990s persuaded US hedge fund manager George Soros to become involved in a takeover battle around a Russian telecommunications company Svyazinvest. I was retained as a consultant by others involved and concluded Svyazinvest was a terrible investment. Therefore Soros was being pulled in for reasons of political maneuvers and not serious financial analysis. Soros lost approximately a billion dollars.

Companies rightly analyzing that China's economy will continue to grow, GE and Goldman Sachs immediately come to mind, are those most successful in business in China. Equally there are Western analysts who correctly predicted China's growth over the last period - Goldman Sachs Jim O'Neill, who invented the term BRIC, and the specialized consultancy Dragonomics for example.

This gives a major opportunity to those with an accurate analysis of China’s economy. Businesses following the erroneous view that China's economy is going to drastically slow or enter crisis will lose money. Those who rightly predict China's economy will continue to grow rapidly will gain credibility. This requires accurate analysis and reporting - not pretending there are no problems in China's economy but correctly contextualizing that these are far less than in the US and EU. The facts over the next year, as in previous years, will simply show that China’s economy continues to grow strongly, suffering no economic crisis qualitatively equivalent to that in the EU and US at present.

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This article originally appeared on China.org.cn. It has been amended to remove references only relevant to readers in China.    

Wrong analyses of China - listed by author and date

Numerous authors make wrong analyses predicting an economic crash or drastic slowdown in China and then, when these fail to occur, nevertheless continue to present themselves as 'China experts'. The ability to do this rests on readers forgetting what they predicted. Given that the test of an analysis and a theory is its ability, or otherwise, to predict real developments this periodically updated article conveniently lists, for reference, by author and date such wrong predictions of coming economic disaster in China so that readers can use it as reference to judge the track record of various analysts they read.

This article was last updated on 24 December 2011

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Bremmer, Ian: 12 November 2011

'The world's three largest economies can't continue along their current paths, and everybody knows it. Investors watch nervously for signs that China is headed toward a hard landing, that America will sink back into recession, and that the euro zone will simply implode.

'In all three cases, kicking the can down the road has staved off disaster so far, but the cans are getting bigger and heavier. Which economy will be the first to stumble on its problems?...

'In China... It has been... three years since the financial crisis made clear that China's growth remains dangerously dependent on exports to Europe, America and Japan.

'To ensure long-term economic expansion (and political stability), Beijing must figure out a way to encourage Chinese consumers to buy more of the products that local manufacturers make. This will demand a massive transfer of wealth from the state and China's state-owned companies to Chinese households.

'But Beijing is moving in the opposite direction. The leadership responded to Western market turmoil not by boosting consumption but by increasing state and private spending on fixed investment, which now accounts for nearly half of China's growth. The result has been an explosion in residential and commercial real estate, more state spending on infrastructure and more cheap loans from state-owned banks to state-owned enterprises.

'Indeed, a key obstacle to reform is that China remains so heavily invested in its state-managed model of capitalism. Of the 42 Chinese companies listed in the 2010 edition of the Fortune 500, 39 were state-owned enterprises, and three quarters of China's 100 largest publicly traded companies are government controlled. Party officials with a stake in the success of state-owned enterprises have amassed considerable power within the leadership, and they ferociously resist efforts to transfer away their wealth to private enterprises and ordinary citizens.

'China has the cash and foreign reserves to postpone a crisis. But growth is slowing, financial stresses are rising, and there is good reason to fear that China's days of can-kicking are numbered as well...

'Make no mistake: The challenges that the U.S. faces are formidable, and persistent political gridlock could delay badly needed fiscal and structural reforms. But everything is relative, and the best can to be kicking down the road just now is undoubtedly the one made in America.' (Written with Nouriel Roubini)

 

Chang, Gordon: June 2002 The Coming Collapse of China pxxiii

''A half-decade ago the leaders of the People's Republic of China had real choices. Today they do not. They have no exit. They have run out of time.'

 

Duncan, Richard: 17 February 2011

'regardless of what happens in the US, China is facing a much more difficult future than is generally believed. Every boom busts. Every bubble pops. China will be no exception.

'It is a serious mistake to believe China’s economy will continue to grow at 8 per cent or more for the next decade. That’s what people believed about Japan in 1989. Today, Japan’s economy is no larger than it was in 1993, if you don’t adjust for deflation. 2 per cent to 4 per cent annual GDP growth would be an excellent outcome for China over the decade, in light of the enormous capital misallocation that has occurred there over the past 10 years.'

 

Economist, The: 15 June 2002 'A dragon out of puff'

'In the coming decade, therefore, China seems set to become more unstable. It will face growing unrest as unemployment mounts.'

''the economy still relies primarily on domestic engines of growth, which are sputtering. Growth over the last five years has relied heavily on massive government spending. As a result, the government's debt is rising fast. Coupled with the banks' bad loans and the state's huge pension liabilities, this is a financial crisis in the making.'

 

Pettis, Michael: 14 August 2009

'I continue to stand by my comment last year... that the US would be the first major economy out of the crisis and China one of the last.'

 

Roubini, Nouriel: 12 November 2011

'The world's three largest economies can't continue along their current paths, and everybody knows it. Investors watch nervously for signs that China is headed toward a hard landing, that America will sink back into recession, and that the euro zone will simply implode.

'In all three cases, kicking the can down the road has staved off disaster so far, but the cans are getting bigger and heavier. Which economy will be the first to stumble on its problems?...

'In China... It has been... three years since the financial crisis made clear that China's growth remains dangerously dependent on exports to Europe, America and Japan.

'To ensure long-term economic expansion (and political stability), Beijing must figure out a way to encourage Chinese consumers to buy more of the products that local manufacturers make. This will demand a massive transfer of wealth from the state and China's state-owned companies to Chinese households.

'But Beijing is moving in the opposite direction. The leadership responded to Western market turmoil not by boosting consumption but by increasing state and private spending on fixed investment, which now accounts for nearly half of China's growth. The result has been an explosion in residential and commercial real estate, more state spending on infrastructure and more cheap loans from state-owned banks to state-owned enterprises.

'Indeed, a key obstacle to reform is that China remains so heavily invested in its state-managed model of capitalism. Of the 42 Chinese companies listed in the 2010 edition of the Fortune 500, 39 were state-owned enterprises, and three quarters of China's 100 largest publicly traded companies are government controlled. Party officials with a stake in the success of state-owned enterprises have amassed considerable power within the leadership, and they ferociously resist efforts to transfer away their wealth to private enterprises and ordinary citizens.

'China has the cash and foreign reserves to postpone a crisis. But growth is slowing, financial stresses are rising, and there is good reason to fear that China's days of can-kicking are numbered as well...

'Make no mistake: The challenges that the U.S. faces are formidable, and persistent political gridlock could delay badly needed fiscal and structural reforms. But everything is relative, and the best can to be kicking down the road just now is undoubtedly the one made in America.' (Written with Ian Bremmer)

The statistical data indicates the population and shareholders have counterposed interests - implications of the negative correlation of economic growth and share prices

Summary

The studies on the relation between per capita GDP growth and returns on shares persistently find that the two are negatively correlated - i.e. a higher rate of growth of per capita GDP is associated with a lower return on shares. Cardiff Garcia and Neil Hume, in the Financial Times, recently logically used this data to deal with the relatively narrow issue of questioning analyses that the high growth rates of emerging markets, for example China, will lead to them displaying superior share performance to developed markets. But the implications of the overall finding are much more widespread and fundamental for economic policy. Specifically the implications of a negative correlation of per capita GDP growth and returns on shares include:

• The population's living standard, i.e its consumption, is on average positively determined by, and positively correlated with, growth of per capita GDP. However the return on shares is negatively correlated with per capita GDP growth. It follows that the interests of the population's living standards and the interests of shareholders are counterposed - the population has an interest in higher per capita GDP growth whereas shareholders, in terms of return on shares, would benefit from lower per capita GDP growth.
• Governments targeting high rates of increase in per capita GDP, that is high increases in living standards, should expect lower returns on shares than those with low rates of increase of per capita GDP, that is living standards. Therefore, high rates of per capita GDP and living standards, and high rates of growth of share prices/total return on shares, are counterposed and not complimentary objectives.
• These issues are in addition to the points made in the Financial Times that over the long run the higher economic growth rates of emerging economies would produce lower growth of share prices and total return on shares - this clearly fits China which has the highest rate of growth of any major economy but an underperforming share market. 

It should be stressed that such processes operate 'other things being equal' and over long periods of time. But they provide a long term determinant of economic developments which underlays, and therefore inflects, more short term trends. 

Given the widespread implications of this issue the present article therefore outlines the data and examines in more detail some of the implications.

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Not just emerging but developed economies

The Beyond BRICs section of the Financial Times recently analysed a report by Deutsche Bank's John-Paul Smith which argued that share prices in emerging markets will suffer negative trends due to these countries government policies. The article however failed to provide the essential context that a negative correlation exists between per capita GDP growth and share price growth and total return on shares not only in emerging but in developed economies. It therefore follows, other things being equal, that high per capita GDP growth in some emerging markets would be anticipated to be correlated with underperformance of their shares.

However, this clearly raises a more general issue. Given that the aim of economic policy is to increase sustainable GDP per capita, as this makes possible increased living standards, this goal necessarily means that governments in both emerging and developed economies have to target high GDP per capita growth even although this will be necessarily be associated with lower share price growth and lower return on shares. The opposite course, targeting higher share prices and higher return on shares at the expense of lower GDP per capita growth, and therefore lower living standards, would mean placing the interests of the population lower than that of shareholders - a goal which, if being pursued, should be explicitly stated and would be unlikely to command widespread support. 

More specifically John-Paul Smith criticised governments of emerging markets on the grounds that: ‘GEM (Global Emerging Markets) companies are increasingly seen as “facilitators” for the broader economy, on the Chinese model, across many GEM markets.’ Stefan Wagstyl of the Financial Times paraphrased Smith as arguing: ‘The state will drive the redistribution of resources away from shareholders and in favour of labour.’

However it is well established in the studies on the correlation between share price growth/total return on shares and per capita GDP growth - for example Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run, Dimson, Marsh and Staunton’s Triumph of the Optimists and Ritter’s Economic Growth and Equity Returns - that a negative correlation between per capita GDP growth and share prices exists in both developed and developing economies. Such negative correlation is not due specifically to government policies in emerging markets but is an overall feature of economic growth.¹ 

The data

Turning first to the data establishing the negative correlation between GDP per capita growth and share prices, Siegel found: 'Real GDP growth is negatively correlated with stock market returns. That is, higher economic growth in individual [developed] countries is associated with lower returns to equity investors. Similarly, the stock returns for the developing countries against their GDP growth are plotted in Figure 81-b Again... there is a negative relation between the returns in individual countries and the growth rates of their GDP.' (Siegel p124) Siegel's findings for developed economies are shown in Figure 1 and those for developing economies in Figure 2.

Figure 1

Figure 2

 

Dimson, Marsh and Staunton found, regarding the total real return on equities and GDP per capita growth: ‘statistically, the correlation is -0.27 for 1900-2000 and -0.03 for 1951-2000.' (Dimson et al p156)

Regarding the correlation of GDP per capita growth and share price increases Ritter found: ‘My calculations for… 16 [developed] countries over the 1900-2002 period get a correlation of -0.37.’

In a recent survey Jain and Kranson's ‘The Myth of GDP and Stock Market Returns’ noted: ‘The data shows clearly that, over long periods and when adjusted for inflation, stock market returns and GDP per capital growth are negatively correlated.’

Goldman Sachs private wealth group, in a review, recently noted that the overall negative correlation between GDP per capita growth and share price growth extended to different groups of economies when ranked by growth rate: ‘Dimson et al have shown that if one invested in the slowest growing quintile of countries during this hundred-year- plus period, the equity returns would have outperformed the fastest growing quintile by 3% a year… Our own analysis for emerging market countries since 1991 showed the equity markets of the slowest growing countries within emerging markets outperformed those of the fastest growing countries by nearly 5% a year.’

This relation found by Goldman Sachs is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

 

China

Goldman Sachs noted China as illustrating this general trend: ‘China probably provides one of the best examples of the lack of correlation between strong economic growth and equity returns… China’s economy has outgrown that of the US by about 8% a year since the end of 1992 (the inception date of the MSCI China equity market index). Its equity market, however, has lagged that of the US by about 8% a year. Over the last 15 years, earnings per share growth in China has been negative 0.9% while that of the S&P 500 companies has been 5.4% a year. Most recently, in 2010, China has outgrown the US by an estimated 7% but the MSCI China Index has returned just 4.8% (the local Shanghai Composite Index is actually down 12.8%). On the other hand, US equities have returned 15.1%. Since the peak of US and Chinese equities in October 2007, China has outgrown the US by an estimated 10% a year, but Chinese equities have lagged the US by 2.7% a year.’ This data is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

 

Goldman Sachs survey therefore concluded: ‘Whether it is 1 year, 3 years or 18 years, economic growth has not translated into better investment returns in China … The evidence shows that faster economic growth rates do not result in higher equity returns. In fact, if faster growth is priced into the equity markets, the equity markets are most likely going to lag those of slower growth economies.‘

In a recent update of their study, for the Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook, Dimson, Marsh and Staunton concluded: ‘[Our] Figure 2 ranks the real equity return of the 19 Yearbook countries over the period 1900–2009, from lowest to highest…. [our] Figure 2 shows that the supposed association between long-run real growth in GDP per capita and real equity returns is simply not there (the correlation is –0.23).’ This is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5

 

Dividends, share prices and growth

In their study Dimson, Marsh and Staunton however noted an extremely close correlation between share prices/return on shares and dividend payments: ‘there is a high correlation (0.87) between real equity returns and real dividend growth across the 19 countries.’ 

Such a close correlation between dividend payments and share prices is related to the negative correlation between share prices and economic growth: ‘the claim that real dividends grow at the same rate as real GDP is clearly incorrect. Real dividend growth has lagged behind real GDP per capita growth in all but one country, averaging just –0.1%, and the correlation between the two is -0.30.’ Higher economic growth is correlated with lower dividends and vice versa.

Conclusion

The clearly established negative correlation between economic growth and share price growth has a number of implications:

• It must be understood that correlation by itself does not establish causality - i.e. the negative correlation between share price growth and return on shares and GDP per capita growth does not establish whether rapid economic growth causes lower returns on shares, or higher returns on shares causes lower GDP growth, or some other factor(s) causes both. The negative correlation however does exclude that high share prices cause high GDP per capita growth, and therefore that economic policy should aim to have high share price growth in order to stimulate economic growth. The negative correlation shows that high returns on shares are either irrelevant (i.e. non-causal) for economic growth or if causal then higher returns on shares are negative for economic growth.
• Underperformance of shares in emerging economies with high growth rates would be expected to flow from the negative correlation between GDP per capital growth and share prices. Other things being equal, the more rapid the growth of GDP per capita the greater the underperformance of shares that would be anticipated - this clearly fits China.
• As the negative correlation of GDP per capita growth and share prices exists in both developed and developing economies pointing to underperformance of share prices in emerging markets does not justify the claim that underperformance of shares in such markets is due to government policy – except that such an underperformance would necessarily follow from the (desirable) policy of ensuring high GDP per capita growth.
• If share prices are negatively correlated with GDP per capita growth, but dividend payments are positively correlated with returns on shares, this again fits the case of China. China experiences high GDP per capita growth but low dividend payments due in substantial part to the large role played in the economy by State Owned Enterprises which pay extremely low, or zero, dividends to the state.
• Once again correlation does not establish causality, but the negative correlation of share price growth with per capita GDP growth, while dividend payments are positively correlated with share prices, means either that low dividend payments are beneficial for economic growth, that economic growth creates low dividend payments, or some other factor(s) causes both trends.
• Given the rate of growth of living standards is positively correlated with GDP per capita growth, whereas share prices are negatively correlated with GDP per capita growth, there is no reason to assume a positive correlation between rising living standards and rising share prices - i.e. that rising share prices will enhance living standards. Given that the aim is rising living standards there is therefore no reason for governments to target high share prices.

Taking the specific case of China, the negative correlation between share prices and GDP per capita growth is one reason this blog, which has a positive analysis of the growth of China’s economy, has a negative position as regards any major expectations for China’s share market.

Evidently the Financial Times and John-Paul Smith dealt primarily with short term trends in share prices which can can be affected by very different factors to the long term correlations outlined above. However:

• It is misleading to present underperformance of shares in emerging markets as being due to negative government policies when underperformance of shares in rapidly growing developing economies would be precisely expected to be correlated with their rapid growth.
• The implications of the negative correlation between GDP per capita growth and share prices, in both developed and developing economies, are far wider than those raised by John-Paul Smith and in the Financial Times article.

Notes & References

Financial Times begins to correct its analysis of China's trade

For several years the Financial Times has been giving widespread publicity to an analysis, particularly promoted by its (rightly respected) chief economics commentator Martin Wolf, and US finance professor Michael Pettis, that China was pursuing a 'mercantalist' policy aimed at creating a large trade surplus. This blog has repeatedly pointed out that this is not the case and what China has aimed at is a high degree of openness of its economy, that is of both exports and imports in GDP. This does not necessarily imply a surplus at all. 

At last, confronted with the decline in China's trade surplus, the message seems to be getting through more generally in the FT. Analysing the latest trade data, and a speech by China's president Hu Jintao, Kathrin Hille and Simon Rabinovitch from the FT' in Beijing note:

'China’s trade surplus is set to decline in 2011 for the third straight year and is on track to be about half the size of the record $298bn surplus in 2008. That would amount to less than 3 per cent of gross domestic product, suggesting that China’s trade relationship with the rest of the world is increasingly balanced.

'Critics in the US continue to point to their country’s yawning trade deficit with China as evidence of Beijing’s unfair support for its exporters, especially through what they allege is an artificially cheap renminbi.

'But the US deficit with China appears to be more the result of the global trade structure than Chinese policy distortions. As a major processing hub in the global supply chain, China runs large bilateral trade deficits with producers of raw materials and large bilateral surpluses with importers of finished products.'

This is entirely correct. Let us hope that the FT from now on will drop its wrong analysis.

 

China's CPI fall confirms its inflation is driven by international commodity prices and China has room for stimulus

The present author has consistently pointed out that China’s consumer price inflation (CPI) is primarily driven by international commodity prices and not, as some have argued, by monetary conditions in China – for a more extended recent analysis see ‘Key Trends in China’s Inflation’ which appeared in China Daily. This fact is strongly confirmed by China’s new CPI data, showing a fall to 4.2% from October’s 5,5% and a peak of 6.5% in July. To illustrate this Figure 1 shows both international commodity prices and China’s CPI. The tight correlation of the two is evident.

Figure 1

 

To deal with the argument that correlation is not necessarily causation, the direction of causation between international commodity price indexes and China’s CPI inflation is clear. China’s CPI is simply not a sufficiently large factor in the world economy to determine world commodity prices. In terms of causality, therefore, either world commodity prices cause the changes in China’s CPI or a third factor, for example international supply and demand, causes parallel changes in both. In either case examining international commodity prices allows trends in China’s CPI to be predicted.

This close correlation gives good news for future trends in China’s CPI and therefore for the ability of its government to stimulate the economy. Year on year changes in international commodity prices are currently falling rapidly. The year on year change in the daily Dow Jones-UBS international commodity index has dropped from a maximum of plus 52.8 per cent in March to minus 0.5 per cent on 7th December. Given the close correlation between China’s CPI and international commodity prices these sharp falls in commodity prices create good conditions for China’s fight with inflation.. This in turn increases the room for the government to stimulate the economy.

At present the international economy as a whole faces overall stagnation in the developed economies rather than a large 2008 style downturn - despite the recession in Europe. China does not require a full scale 2008 type stimulus package, but loosening of economic policy is clearly increasingly possible. This will ensure there is no large fall in China's GDP growth.

China's latest CPI data are therefore important in confirming:

• The real causes and therefore dynamic of China's inflation.
• The slowdown in inflation gives China the economic room for manoeuvre to loosen economic policy and ensure a 'soft' and not a 'hard' landing.

The decline of individual share ownership in the UK

The Financial Times on 8 December carried a long review by Brian Groom and Sylvia Pfeifer of the 25th anniversary of the privatisation of British Gas. This included a highly interesting insert, for which additional research was done by Yan Morrell Y Alcover, on the trends in individual share ownership in the UK. The trend in individual share ownershp was unequivocally and strongly downwards - see Figure 1.

The article noted British Gas and other privatisations 'failed to reverse the decline in private share ownership that began in the 1960s.... By the end of the 1980s... individuals owned 20.3 per cent of UK equities... Although later water and electricity privatisations briefly lifted holdings back to the 1980s levels, they had dropped to 16 per cent by the millenium. Capita Registrars suggests ownership hit an all-time low in May 2010, before recovering to 12 per cent in August 2011. In 1963 private investors had been majority shareholders in UK-listed companies, owning 54 per cent.'

Readers can find the entire analysis here.

Figure 1

The weakness in world trade - pre-crisis trade levels only regained in Asia and Latin America

Europe’s economy is probably entering a double-dip recession. The indications from world trade, as analysed previously, are so far that the world economy as a whole is facing slowdown but not renewed recession. However a detailed breakdown shows extreme unevenness in the trade recovery - with only Asia and Latin America surpassing pre-financial crisis levels. Regional trends for imports and exports, using a three month moving average to smooth short term fluctuations, are shown in Figures 1 and 2.

Considering trends in detail, pre-crisis world trade peaked in April 2008. In the latest month for which data is available, September 2011, world trade was 2.3 per cent above its pre-crisis maximum on individual month comparisons and 3.6 per cent above on a three monthly moving average.

Table 1 shows a detailed breakdown of trade since the financial crisis by region. This data shows that only in developing Asia and Latin America are both exports and imports clearly above pre-financial crisis levels. Taking three monthly moving averages, imports are up from pre-crisis levels by 16.7 per cent in developing Asia and 9.4 per cent in Latin America, with exports up 17.0 per cent in developing Asia and 6.9 per cent in Latin America. In the US exports are slightly above pre-crisis levels but imports are significantly below. In all other regions – the Euro area, Africa and the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, and Japan – both exports and imports remain below pre-crisis levels.

The recovery of world trade to above pre-crisis levels is therefore due to the situation in two developing regions. The weakness of trade in the Euro area is worse than most regions, particularly in terms of imports, but not really exceptional. Trade in most areas of the world economy remains significantly below pre-crisis levels.

Table 1

 

Trade with China

Among the largest economies the chief beneficiary of this pattern of world trade is China - although it is likely the pattern itself is in significant part a result of the dynamics of China's trade.

In the period between China's peak pre-crisis level of exports and imports, in July 2008, and September 2011 China's exports to Asian developing economies rose by 22.9 per cent and its imports from these economies rose 31.4 per cent. China's exports to Latin America rose by 53.0 per cent and its imports by 59.9 per cent. These are clearly exceptional growth rates. China is the main trade partner for most developing Asian economies as well as for a significant number of Latin American economies including Brazil.

The patterns of world trade since the financial crisis therefore indicate the consolidation of a dynamic trading interaction between China, developing Asia and Latin America. China's economy and trade is not yet sufficiently large to offset a global scale recession in the EU and/or US, but there is clear evidence that China's economy is sufficient to produce the most dynamic of post-crisis world trade interactions centred on Asia and Latin America.

Figure 1

Figure 2

New world trade data indicates slowdown but not recession in the global economy

How much will Europe’s debt crisis and probable recession hit the US, developing countries and the global economy in general? To gauge this it should be noted that International trade is a particularly sensitive indicator of global economic trends, tending to turn down more than GDP during recessions and to grow more during expansions. Data which may be calculated from the new statistics in the invaluable World Trade Monitor of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy therefore helps gives an indicator of the overall state of the global economy.

The latest published data, up to September, is shown in Figure 1. This shows clearly the downturn in the volume of world trade in the recession commencing in 2000 and the far bigger one following 2008. It also shows that in the recent period world trade has ceased growing significantly but has not declined.

Figure 1

 

In order to indicate recent trends in greater detail, and to smooth out purely short term fluctuations, Figure 2 charts world trade in the period since 2000 as a three month moving average. It shows that world trade ceased growing rapidly in February 2011 and then relatively stagnated. Arguably there was a small upturn in the most recent period, with world trade 3.3 per cent above its pre-financial crisis maximum in May and 3.8 per cent above in September, but this shift is too small and recent to be considered a definitive indicator of an upturn. It does indicate clearly however that in the most recent period for which data was available there was no tendency to a decline in world trade.

Figure 2

 

The situation may have deteriorated in October-November, due to the impact of the worsening of the Eurozone debt crisis, but going into this period the trade data is consistent with a slowdown in the international economy but not with a recession.