Is the Chinese economy running out of steam?

From Gerard Jackson's Brooke's news.

Is the Chinese economy running out of steam?

Gerard Jackson

BrookesNews.Com

Monday 22 March 2010

There are signs that China's economy could be sliding into recession. The reason these signs are being largely ignored is because virtually all of the economic commentariat believe the fallacy that consumer spending is what drives an economy when in fact it is entrepreneurship that drives it and savings that fuel it. This fallacy has led some commentators to assert that China is entering a mature phase in its economic development which will result in Chinese savers buying more Chinese goods which in turn could raise real wages.

This is appalling nonsense. Any classical economist would have quickly pointed out that it is the demand for investment goods and not consumer goods that intensifies the demand for labour and hence raises real wages. Moreover, such an economist would have been just as quick to stress that loose monetary policies are not only inflationary they also "derange" production. The second observation is of critical importance.

These economists noted how manufacturing not only went into recession first but that heavy industry also suffered the greatest contraction in output relative to the consumer goods industries. Therefore, to the older economists manufacturing was something of an economic bellwether, particularly the capital goods industries. (Economic commentary is so bad in Australia that one cannot even get this basic fact publicly discussed, not even by our so-called think tanks.)

There is no doubt that Chinese manufacturing is slowing (obviously a slowdown always precedes a contraction) which is described as a rate of reduction in expansion. However, excess capacity ("derangement") "in some industries" is making itself felt. This is not surprising given that the country probably has the largest steel producing capacity in the world, producing about 50 per cent of global output in 2009. Yet no one is asking whether this capacity is necessary.

Commentators are putting the emergence of excess capacity down to an attempt by the People's Bank of China to cool the economy by reducing the rate of inflation. (In China the central bank proposes and the government disposes.) What is not being asked is why the phenomenon of excess capacity is not uniform throughout the economy. The answer is to be found in the fact that money is not neutral. If it were then inflation-created malinvestments would not be possible because price changes would be uniform.

Therefore the appearance of excess capacity is signalling the emergence of malinvestments that must at some point be liquidated. Now these malinvestments are the creation of a reckless monetary policy which some are assuring us that Beijing is trying to reverse. When it comes to monetary policy — which includes monetary theory — Beijing is every bit as clueless as Washington and London. According to official PBC figures M1 jumped by 25 per cent from January 2009 to December 2009.

It's reported that in an effort to maintain economic growth and prevent "overheating" at the same time the government has curbed bank lending while also ordering the banks to increase their reserves. This is dangerous nonsense. Genuine economic growth cannot cause "overheating" which is another term for inflation. Those who argue otherwise are spouting rubbish. (One should have thought that some of these people would have noticed by now that this fallacy only appeared after Keynesian policies left us in a permanent state of inflation.)

If the present trend continues manufacturing will start to contract and the recession will then rapidly spread down China's production structure. Of course, the government can once again push down on the monetary accelerator. But in a sense this is where monetary and capital theory combine to produce an unstable and highly explosive mixture.

There is absolutely no way these malinvestments can be 'reversed'. Liquidation is the only solution for the great majority of them. Even trying to hold him them in check would require greater and greater quantities of monetary injections. Hence any relief would be only temporary until the point is reached where inflationary pressure is considered so great that the government is left with no alternative but to slam on the monetary brakes.

Gerard Jackson is Brookesnews' economics editor