By Joe Zhang
The central bank’s efforts exacerbate overcapacity, writes Joe Zhang
When European officials pontificate about an urgent need to forget, at least temporarily, the golden rules of fiscal and monetary policy with the aim of rescuing their economies, their Chinese counterparts fall silent. Yet China’s economy has been slowing for three years in a row and the outlook remains bleak. Why are they not worried?
The answer lies in their realisation that, a decade on, the economy is choking on a surfeit of fiscal and monetary stimulus. The housing bubble may have started to deflate but that is long overdue and has been actively sought by Beijing. So unless a severe crash takes place, the central bank will mostly sit on its hands.
More generally, officials are starting to see the limits and dangers of tinkering with monetary policy. Since the start of 2008, China tripled its money supply to more than Rmb120tn ($19.6tn), far bigger than the corresponding US figure.
So it is hard to fault Beijing for not trying hard enough. But despite the flood of liquidity, the Shanghai stock market index is less than half the level of seven years ago. As the economy slows, having exhausted the Rmb4tn of stimulus launched in 2008 to applause from near and far, even the staunchest Keynesians in the Chinese government begin to question the logic of another round of stimulus.
There are other reasons some officials may have lost some confidence in monetary policy. Despite their frequent tweaking of benchmark interest rates, their intentions have failed to trickle down to the real economy. For example, the one-year benchmark lending rate is 6.3 per cent a year but interest rates in the vast and growing shadow banking sector are 15-20 per cent.
What is disheartening to the central bankers is the fact that cutting benchmark rates often leads to the “incorrect” response of higher, not lower, interest rates in the free market. A number of corporate defaults in recent months has further pushed up the risk premium on corporate loans.
Some observers also argue that the high interest rates in the free market are, in fact, precisely because of the low benchmark rates. The central bank’s efforts to control and depress the benchmark rates have served to encourage the state sector to consume more credit, leaving precious little for the underprivileged. They also exacerbate industrial overcapacity and amplify the advantage of state-run companies over their rivals.
All these facts make lending to the private sector more risky. It is that risk, coupled with inflationary expectations, that underpins the stubbornly high interest rates in the free market.
Some critics speak of two separate credit markets in China: one for the state sector and a small group of big private sector companies; the other for the rest of the economy. Their relative sizes are about two-thirds to one-third.
Frustrated by the decoupling of the two credit markets, the People’s Bank of China has experimented this year with liquidity injections targeted at rural borrowers and small businesses, and selective reductions in bank reserve requirement ratios, while refraining from general liquidity easing and rate cuts across the board. But that new trick has done nothing so far to cut the cost of funding for small and medium-sized businesses.
In Europe it is popular to blame the banks for doing too little for the real economy or for being too weak to lend. The real problem is there may, in fact, be a lack of demand for credit. China does not yet face that problem, but that is only because in comparison to Europe state-run companies pay little heed to the profitability of their investments. Monetary and fiscal stimulus is easy to start but it may stop working even before you plan to taper it out, as China is now discovering.
original source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d3d12432-65c7-11e4-a454-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3IzehdoWI