Chinese economy as a mirror of the global crisis
Recently, much has been written and spoken about China - about its economy, politics, society, technology, technology, armaments, army. Someone, for example, declares that China, which is increasing arms and improving the technological component of its army, is becoming a global adversary of the United States, and someone argues with a report in his hands that the Chinese economy is about to become bogged down with the financial crisis , just the other day, thirty or forty years later, and after China, the very old mother Europe, and the decrepit United States - the very ones that sometimes scare the world with the Chinese military threat, constructed from the J-20 and reworked Soviet "Varyag".
China does not give peace to the world community! Robert Zoellick, the President of the World Bank, recently announced with anxiety about the rapid growth of the Chinese economy (and not just growth, but one that will double the Chinese economy in the next few years), but he immediately added that growth, but the economic model of the Chinese is unstable. Probably, the financier wanted to say: “If you climb high, it will hurt to fall!” However, as is known, it was so painful for those who had such advisers — like the World Bank, the IMF, and other well-known companies — to listen.
The recent words of Zoellick about the achievement by the Chinese economy of a "turning point", as well as about the "unstable" economic model of China, were repeated by the authors of many political and economic News. But, it seems to me, a person talking about the rapid growth of the Chinese economy and immediately repeating about an unstable model is pretty tricky to understand. Zoellick assures that in the coming years, the Chinese economy will grow 2 times and immediately warns of a near “turn” in the Chinese economy. Here are the numbers issued by Zoellick: in the next few years, the economy of the Celestial Empire will increase by about 8% per year, and then, over the course of twenty years, by 6,6% per year. In general, the growth of the Chinese economy in the coming years will be halved. That is, it will grow, but twice as slow.
The growth of the economy in half over several years is not bad at all, even if the growth rate is halved. God bless them, with pace, in our crisis time, there would be growth! .. Judge for yourself: “... for 20 years - by 6,6% per year”! At the same time, the author of such an optimistic forecast, Zoellick, seriously claims that China needs to carry out ... "profound economic reforms." The head of the WB must be afraid that he will not have time to destroy the Chinese economy before he resigns - and the banker plans to leave the case, according to his own statement, 30 June 2012 of the year.
To implement “deep reforms”, China, of course, should apply the traditional Western recipe: reduce the role of the state and make the economy completely market-oriented. The main recommendations of the World Bank are summarized in the report “China-2030: building a modern, harmonious and creative society with high incomes”. For objectivity's sake, it should be noted that this report on creativity and high incomes, submitted to the press of 27 on February 2012, was prepared by the World Bank in collaboration with the government of the PRC.
At a press conference held in Beijing, R. Zoellick said that “the growth pattern of a country that has been so successful in the last thirty years requires changes in order to meet new challenges.” The President of the World Bank believes that the economic model of China, in which the role of the state has significantly increased over the past ten years, has already begun to lose stability. Zoellick warns: you need to immediately initiate reforms, the purpose of which will be to maintain high rates of economic growth over the next twenty years.
It is known that the Chinese are smart and polite people. They agree with the interlocutors with a smile, nod, - but they do it in their own way.
Co-author of the WB report, Liu Shijin, vice president of the Center for Research and Development of the State Council of China, agreed with Robert Zoellick, noting that, without reforms, annual GDP growth in the PRC will slow to 5 or 6% by 2030, from 10 % over the past thirty years.
Before Zoellick, China was frightened by the coming crisis and the famous International Monetary Fund. In the positive scenario of the IMF, in 2012, China will add "weight" of GDP by 8,2%, and negatively - only by 4%. In order to prevent such a terrible Chinese crisis, invented in the offices of the IMF, Fund experts recommended that China quickly transfer state-owned enterprises to private ownership, i.e., if anyone did not understand, privatize. (We Russians know well what it is).
In November, 2011 for the first time in the last three years, industrial production in China decreased (PMI index — production activity level dropped to 49,0%, the minimum mark of three years ago; 50% mark means stagnation, and below 50%, activity growth). Analysts explain this by well-known reasons: the debt crisis in Europe, which reduced the demand for goods from the Middle Kingdom (the IMF just predicts the PRC to reduce GDP growth due to the Eurozone crisis), as well as a reduction in domestic consumption due to a tightening of domestic monetary policy. In addition, 128 million. in China, it lives below the poverty line: with all their desire, these people cannot provide a high level of demand, much less its growth.
However, none of the Western experts and analysts - among other things, giving advice to successful China against the background of the US crisis and recession in Europe - does not find that the PRC has the prerequisites for starting some terrible financial collapse that affects the whole world . Why do the authors of the report so strongly advise the Chinese to carry out "structural reforms" (oh, this is a notorious expression!) And privatize state-owned companies, in the process transforming industry, agriculture and the financial sector and strengthening the commercial sector, weakening the state? Why, I wonder, China, one of the foremost innovators on the planet, is recommended by speakers to increase ... innovations?
From good, as you know, good is not looking. That is, it should be reformed when it is bad, and not when it is good. "Titanic" also wanted to sail quickly ... Therefore, the advice of world financiers is not so much frightening as the hypnotism of the advisers is frightening. No, I am far from the thought that experienced Western experts are deceiving the Chinese by imposing on them some kind of secret strategy: after all, the Chinese economy will pull the world’s economy to the bottom, and the advisers cannot but understand. But it seems to me that these economists are hypnotizing not so much the Chinese as themselves.
Ii. Ahead of the whole planet
Here are the reasons why the PRC economy for the last thirty years has been ahead - so that economists have long been talking about the Chinese economic miracle:
1) For the past few years, the Chinese government has been supporting state-owned enterprises in those sectors that are considered to be the most important in the Middle Kingdom in order to implement an economic security strategy whose main goal is leadership in global competition.
2) The global economic crisis in 2009 for the first time in many years lowered the demand for Chinese exports, but in a matter of months China got rid of the crisis. A GDP growth of ten percent a year isn’t evidence of economic strength? The reason for such a boom during a general recession is the policy of government incentives. The strong role of the state in the economy has allowed China to successfully avoid the direct influence of the global financial crisis: the PRC economy grew in all years without exception. China's GDP increased more than 10 times from 1978 to 2010. At the end of 2010, China became the second largest economy in the world, leaving only the United States ahead! The economy of the PRC almost comes on the heels of the American economy, and by 2020 (according to plans) in terms of aggregate income, GDP will come on the heels of the States. Oh, what a "unstable model"!
3) The Plan of the Twelfth Chinese Five-Year Plan includes a clause on the need to increase domestic consumption - and this suggests that the Chinese not only do not want to have a purely export-dependent economy, but also year after year they plan to seek relief from this dependence. Which, by the way, may not please the Chinese neighbors in the global economy. At the same time, for the sake of objectivity, it should be noted: for two years now - from 2010-th - China has been listed as the largest exporter in the world.
(By the way, the China-2030 report says that Chinese state bureaucrats manage state-owned enterprises ... ineffectively! Such a statement does not require comments.)
So, three whales of the Chinese economy: state-owned enterprises, state stimulation, state planning. Hence, the “no” crisis and the attack on the heels of the United States.
What can state planning in China achieve? A lot of things. First, China has become a nuclear and space power. Secondly, whatever you may say about foreign capital in the PRC, but it is not entirely foreign: 4 / 5 foreign investment is money or fixed assets received from Huaqiao, that is, ethnic Chinese living abroad. All this is controlled, and at the same time stimulated by the state too. Thirdly, the state in the Celestial Empire encourages the import of advanced technologies in the progressive areas: biotechnology, software, telecommunications, medicine, etc. Fourth, China is developing its own education, and at the same time practicing students abroad, for example, Japan or the United States.
China's GDP amounted to 2009 5,0 trillion. dollars, in 2010 g. - 6,3 trillion. dollars, in 2011 g. - 7,5 trillion. Last year, the Chinese state spent 136 billion dollars on R & D, or 21,9% more than in 2010. The proportion of these expenditures in the country's GDP was 1,83%. Moreover, China plans to increase R & D expenditures to 2020% of GDP by 2,5. One hundred thirty research engineering centers of state importance and almost as many engineering laboratories have been built at the time with state funds.
At the same time last year, Chinese universities released 5 to millions of specialists in various fields. The total number of students in China exceeds the number of students in the European Union or the United States. The quantity does not at all speak about the low quality of Chinese higher education. On the contrary, to enter, for example, at Tsinghua University - the best university in China - is much more difficult than at prestigious Harvard.
Therefore, China has achieved high economic results thanks to the significant role of the state in the economy. And even though the growth rates will slow down somewhat now - the economy also needs to rest in order not to overheat, as it often happens in America - but let experts from the World Bank and other fans of liberal economic theories intelligibly explain to everyone and including the Chinese: why from what brought success, we must refuse? And how does the decline in the role of the state suddenly begin to contribute to China’s economic acceleration? After all, in China 128 millions of people (from the poorest peasants) live extremely poor: for a dollar a day, and many people live on a 2 or 3 dollar a day. Remove the state - one of the largest consumers - from the economy means to destroy the economy. So where are the explanations on this? But it seems that liberal theorists do not bother with explanations. I believe it is ridiculous, as Tertullian once wrote.
The Chinese economy may have difficulties associated with slowing growth - due to a strong dependence on the global economy, rising energy prices, the presence of a large number of poor people with low consumption, and environmental disruptions - but China is unlikely to wish them add more artificial problems initiated by Western advisers. Moreover, there are simply no reasons to follow the advice of international financial organizations.
I repeat: they are not looking for good from the good. So why then all the fuss about the "reforms"? But what for! Advisers who have given monotonous advice to China for three decades now (for so long they have to give advice because China smiles and nods, but does not listen to advisers), they say it. The WB report, in addition to other areas of transformation - market, innovation, environmental, social and tax - says, finally, about further increasing China's participation in the global economy - through trade, investment and even the free conversion of the yuan. And here everything falls into place. In the West, they are just afraid ... no, not that the Chinese economy will be covered with a copper basin. And they are afraid that China with its developed state sector, but with a strong bias towards world markets, is indeed partly reoriented towards internal development - at least in order to eliminate the existing bias, to weaken the existing “attachment”. Following this scenario will allow China to reduce its dependence on the world market, including the stock market, and at the same time serve, if not directly, then indirectly, cause a deepening crisis in the United States and Europe. Western advisers probably want to kill two birds with one stone: to arrange so that the Chinese economy will retain a strong dependence on foreign markets and not go into the locomotives of the world economy. That is, it would have remained where it stands, and then it was then that its economic situation would turn out to be truly “stable.” And it will help to keep it recommended “structural reforms”: on privatization, privatization, revising the role of the state in the economy, financial liberalization - and other measures based on the tenets of faith of the World Bank.
That is why, although the Chinese co-author agreed on something in some ways with the World Bank, nevertheless, in the main theses of the report, Beijing and the World Bank are unlikely to converge in practice. It cannot be that an economically successful China - unlike in the crisis Russia of the Yeltsin era - was led by experts who suggested eliminating in the Chinese economy exactly what promoted its prosperity. The Chinese will smile sweetly at world bankers, but they will not privatize their state-owned companies.
Not without reason, the Vice-President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping recently, a few days before the presentation of the report “China-2030”, said: “The Chinese economy will continue to grow steadily, the so-called“ hard landing ”will not”. Xi Jinping confirmed that Beijing will continue to simultaneously stimulate both domestic consumption and investment abroad.
And the West should be remembered: in the event of a crisis of the Chinese economy, which will inevitably break out, if only Beijing bows down
Iii. And who are the advisers?
So, Western analysts, personally observing how the Chinese economy is developing and growing, are predicting a slowdown in growth, and even a recession, and even an unprecedented crisis. Such are the strange habits of these most Western analysts, who faithfully believe in the recipes of the World Bank, the IBRD, the IMF and other economic “reenactors” and initiators of the “program reforms” who have destroyed many developing economies with loans, programs and advice.
Do they, who know the true value of their recommendations, give advice to China? Looked at Greece, bogged down in a debt crisis. (I'm not talking about the sad past of Argentina or Russia, whose "brilliant" examples of Western economists, financiers, supporters of total liberalization and ingloriously vanished monetarism, crowned by Nobel laurels, seem to have forgotten). So, - not to advise them to China. After all, whatever one may say, but both Europe and the United States are dependent on the PRC economy. And if anything causes the collapse of the global economy, this will be the implementation by China of Western councils, revealing to the world good intentions on the topic of "how we can equip China."
But, fortunately, the Chinese go their own way, and not the dangerous road of advisers sitting in gilded offices thousands of kilometers from Beijing. We wish China success!
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