Why China can maintain 8% growth

By John Ross

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) has set a 7.5% official GDP growth target for this year. Lin Yifu, former Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, and one of China’s most important economists, predicts that China can maintain 8% annual growth for 20 years. A key question is evidently whether such targets are realistic. Can China maintain this type of growth rate?

The immediate negative factors are evident. The international context for China’s economy this year is bad. The Eurozone economy is shrinking, Japan is stagnant and US growth is anemic. A 16% fall in world commodity prices since their peak has led to slower growth in major developing economies such as Brazil.

China’s policy makers initially underestimated the problems in the advanced economies. Adjusted for inflation, imports by developed economies have not regained pre-financial crisis levels. China therefore did not achieve its 2012 target of a 10% trade increase – the ctual rise was 6.2%. The lower 8% trade growth target set for 2013 is more realistic if still challenging. All major motors for growth will therefore have to come from China’s domestic economy.

In terms of strengthening China’s relative international economic position, and maintaining its ranking as the world’s most rapidly growing market, all this makes no difference. China is the world’s most open major economy, so it cannot cut itself off from international trends. China’s growth rate inevitably goes up or down with global economic fluctuations – the constant is that China strongly outperforms these trends.

To give more precise numbers, a rule of thumb of over 20 years, which successfully passed the test of events, is that China grows on average at whatever the advanced economies expand at plus 6% - the greater outperformance during the financial crisis was untypical. Developed economies this year will probably grow at around 1.5-2.0%, implying China will grow at 7.5-8.0% - in line with official forecasts. This is consistent with the official target of doubling the size of China’s economy between 2010 and 2020.

But for estimating expansion of China’s market, and growth of living standards, the absolute rate at which China’s economy develops is obviously key. It is therefore worth looking beyond short term ups and downs to the fundamental factors determining how fast an economy grows. This makes clear why China will achieve its 7.5-8% growth target. It also eliminates ‘manic-depressive’ analyses of China’s economy – periodic oscillating predictions of ‘hard landing’ and ‘rampant growth’ which appear in some parts of the media.

The current infatuation with examining consumption in China’s GDP is misleading in terms of analysing its economic performance. A country’s consumption growth is overwhelmingly determined by its GDP growth – internationally 87% of consumption increase is determined by the latter. If China’s GDP grows rapidly consumption will grow rapidly. If China’s GDP growth slows its consumption, over anything other than the very short term, will be lower than its potential with high GDP growth.

Every economy’s growth, including China’s, is necessarily determined by two key parameters: how much it invests and how efficiently that investment creates growth. Taking the five year average for 2006-2011, the latest internationally comparable data, China’s fixed investment was 43.1% of GDP, and it invested 4.1% of GDP for its economy to grow by a percentage point. Consequently, as a matter of simple arithmetic, China’s economy grew at an annual average 10.5%.

The lower the percentage of GDP invested for any given economic growth the more efficient that investment is. Furthermore, contrary to some myths, China’s investment is extremely efficient by international standards as the Table shows. For example in 2006-2011 China needed to invest 4.1% of GDP to grow by 1% whereas the US invested 24.3% - China’s investment was six times as efficient in generating GDP growth as the US. Even before the international financial crisis the US invested 7.0% of GDP to grow by 1% compared to China’s 3.4%. These key numbers determine how fast China’s economy grows.

Table 1

 

If China’s economy is to slow, as some critics argue, then it is necessary one or both of these key parameters changes. Either China’s percentage of investment in GDP must fall or the efficiency of its investment in generating GDP growth must decline – there are no other choices.

Taking first investment efficiency, the Table shows that almost all economies were negatively affected by the international financial crisis. China was no exception – the percentage of GDP which had to be invested for its economy to grow by a percentage point rising from 3.4% to 4.1%. But this deterioration was less than for most countries – the US figure rose from 7.0% to 24.3%, Germany’s from 8.2% to 18.4%.

China’s investment efficiency would have to fall greatly not to achieve its 7.5% growth target. If China’s recent investment level was maintained then the percentage of GDP it needs to invest to grow by a percentage point would have to rise to over 5.7% before China failed to hit its growth rate target. Maintaining China’s efficiency of investment is therefore a constant challenge for the government, but China has a considerable safety margin in setting its target growth. The government’s entire focus is on maintaining the efficiency of investment, not reducing it.

The other possibility for slowing China’s economy would be a sharp reduction in the percentage of investment in GDP. There are certainly some in China advocating reducing the level of investment in GDP, but not by nearly enough to prevent China hitting its growth targets. At its present level of investment efficiency China’s GDP growth rate falls by 1% for each 4.1% reduction in the percentage of fixed investment in GDP. But in the last 5 years China’s annual GDP growth averaged 10.5%. To reduce China’s GDP growth below 7.5% requires a fall in the percentage of investment of GDP of 10%. No serious figure in China, as opposed to a few Western analysts, advocates this. A fall in investment share of 2-4% of GDP, the type of figure sometimes advocated, would only slow China’s economic growth by 0.5-1.0%.

Therefore international economic headwinds are negative. But in both the efficiency of its investment and the percentage of investment in GDP China has considerable safety margins for achieving its growth targets - unless the administration makes very large errors the growth targets will therefore be met. Indeed, looking at these margins of manoeuvre, Lin Yifu’s 8% is perhaps more realistic that the government’s 7.5% - administrations always like to announce they have exceeded targets.

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This article is slightly edited for an international audience from one which originally appeared in Shanghai Daily.

The logic of privatisation of the East Coast mainline

By Michael Burke

The Coalition government has announced its intention to privatise the East Coast mainline rail network. The network was nationalised 3 years ago when the previous private operators discontinued their franchise because they could not make a profit.

The re-privatisation of the East Coast mainline highlights a key fallacy of the current government’s failed economic policy. It also sheds light on the role of the state in resolving the current crisis.

Real aims versus stated aims

The stated aim of government policy is to reduce the public sector deficit. George Osborne has swindled and fiddled the figures in a desperate attempt to hide the real position that the deficit is actually rising, including accounting for the assets of the Royal Mail pension fund but not their liabilities, counting government interest paid to the Bank of England as income and withholding payments to international bodies. All of these devices can only massage the deficit temporarily. They cannot produce either growth or, because of that, a lower deficit.

Investment in rail could form an important part of an investment-led recovery, which would also have the effect of reducing the growth in carbon emissions. But private companies struggle because they cannot continually increase profits while very large scale investments are required. They are certainly not in the business of depleting profits further to allow investment. All the large-scale investment in rail projects over the recent past has been led and co-ordinated by government. Returning the East Coast line to the private sector will not produce increased investment.

Privatisation will also undermine the stated objective of debt- and deficit-reduction. In public hands the line has returned £640mn over 3 years to public finances. With current very low returns on capital and low government borrowing rates this represents a very sizeable return. Government propaganda is that ‘we can either invest in rail, or the NHS’. In reality, investment in rail helps to pay for the NHS.

It is possible to establish the value of the rail line which is now on the chopping block. That can be done by using Net Present Value (NPV) methods. NPV simply values all investments from the cashflows they generate. £640mn over 3 years is about £215mn each year. Currently the government’s long-term borrowing rate is just under 1.9%. So, what sum of capital would be needed to yield £215mn a year to the government when interest rates are at 1.9%? If the interest rate is 1.9% and the actual return is £215mn, the NPV is £11.3bn (that is, 215 divided by 0.019).

Therefore any sale of the East Coast franchise for less than £11.3bn is very poor value, one which will see the deficit and the debt rise faster than if it were kept in public hands. The government will be lucky to get one-tenth of that value from a private sale. The giveaway has nothing to do with growth or deficit-reduction. It has everything to do with restoring the profits of the private sector, which is the purpose of austerity.

State versus private sector

This highlights a more general point. The East Coast network is worth far less to the private sector than the public sector. It must pay a far higher rate of interest than the government, so the NPV of any major asset is lower to the private sector.

In addition, the private sector must provide a profit to shareholders. These are funds that cannot be used for necessary investment. As a result, under privatisation, the government subsidy to the rail industry (which is almost wholly for capital investment) has actually risen in real terms to £3.9bn last year from £2.75bn in the late 1980s when it was in public hands.

The private sector is unable or unwilling to make the necessary investment in the rail infrastructure. Its overriding objective is to provide a return to shareholders. The greater risks associated with the private sector mean that the state is better placed to make those investments. The real alternative, aside from government propaganda, is that the state has to fund this capital investment in either event. Keeping rail in the public sector, and taking the remainder into public ownership is simply a cheaper and more efficient option.

The same logic also applies to a series of other industries including energy, telecoms and post, house building and large-scale construction, education, and banking.

The logic of privatisation of the East Coast mainline

By Michael Burke

The Coalition government has announced its intention to privatise the East Coast mainline rail network. The network was nationalised 3 years ago when the previous private operators discontinued their franchise because they could not make a profit.

The re-privatisation of the East Coast mainline highlights a key fallacy of the current government’s failed economic policy. It also sheds light on the role of the state in resolving the current crisis.

Real aims versus stated aims

The stated aim of government policy is to reduce the public sector deficit. George Osborne has swindled and fiddled the figures in a desperate attempt to hide the real position that the deficit is actually rising, including accounting for the assets of the Royal Mail pension fund but not their liabilities, counting government interest paid to the Bank of England as income and withholding payments to international bodies. All of these devices can only massage the deficit temporarily. They cannot produce either growth or, because of that, a lower deficit.

Investment in rail could form an important part of an investment-led recovery, which would also have the effect of reducing the growth in carbon emissions. But private companies struggle because they cannot continually increase profits while very large scale investments are required. They are certainly not in the business of depleting profits further to allow investment. All the large-scale investment in rail projects over the recent past has been led and co-ordinated by government. Returning the East Coast line to the private sector will not produce increased investment.

Privatisation will also undermine the stated objective of debt- and deficit-reduction. In public hands the line has returned £640mn over 3 years to public finances. With current very low returns on capital and low government borrowing rates this represents a very sizeable return. Government propaganda is that ‘we can either invest in rail, or the NHS’. In reality, investment in rail helps to pay for the NHS.

It is possible to establish the value of the rail line which is now on the chopping block. That can be done by using Net Present Value (NPV) methods. NPV simply values all investments from the cashflows they generate. £640mn over 3 years is about £215mn each year. Currently the government’s long-term borrowing rate is just under 1.9%. So, what sum of capital would be needed to yield £215mn a year to the government when interest rates are at 1.9%? If the interest rate is 1.9% and the actual return is £215mn, the NPV is £11.3bn (that is, 215 divided by 0.019).

Therefore any sale of the East Coast franchise for less than £11.3bn is very poor value, one which will see the deficit and the debt rise faster than if it were kept in public hands. The government will be lucky to get one-tenth of that value from a private sale. The giveaway has nothing to do with growth or deficit-reduction. It has everything to do with restoring the profits of the private sector, which is the purpose of austerity.

State versus private sector

This highlights a more general point. The East Coast network is worth far less to the private sector than the public sector. It must pay a far higher rate of interest than the government, so the NPV of any major asset is lower to the private sector.

In addition, the private sector must provide a profit to shareholders. These are funds that cannot be used for necessary investment. As a result, under privatisation, the government subsidy to the rail industry (which is almost wholly for capital investment) has actually risen in real terms to £3.9bn last year from £2.75bn in the late 1980s when it was in public hands.

The private sector is unable or unwilling to make the necessary investment in the rail infrastructure. Its overriding objective is to provide a return to shareholders. The greater risks associated with the private sector mean that the state is better placed to make those investments. The real alternative, aside from government propaganda, is that the state has to fund this capital investment in either event. Keeping rail in the public sector, and taking the remainder into public ownership is simply a cheaper and more efficient option.

The same logic also applies to a series of other industries including energy, telecoms and post, house building and large-scale construction, education, and banking.

A falling pound will lower the living standards of workers and the poor

By Michael Burke

The British pound has begun to fall once more on the international currency markets. It may be further helped on its way by the loss of the AAA credit rating. This will have important domestic economic consequences.
 
The currency is also being talked down by a number of officials, effectively including both the current governor of the Bank of England and his appointed successor. Their hope is that a weaker pound will boost Britain's woeful export performance, and perhaps lead to a revival of business investment in the export-oriented sectors of the economy.

A policy of failure

One key problem in pursuing this policy is that it has already happened in the recent past and failed. Between 2008 and 2009 the pound fell by approximately 30% against the US Dollar. Against a basket of currencies (represented by the Sterling Trade-Weighted Index) it fell by over 25%.

Chart 1

This was effectively a significant devaluation of the pound. Yet even in nominal Sterling terms, exports barely grew. Britain's share of world export markets actually fell, from 3.5% in 2008 to 3.2% in 2012, continuing a long-term trend.

Chart 2

The effect of the devaluation was to push up the Sterling value of imports. This, combined with Coalition measures such as the increase in VAT and higher charges for transport and domestic fuel bills, pushed inflation higher.
 
Britain was the only major industrialised economy that experienced 'stagflation' during the crisis - that is a simultaneous economic decline or stagnation along with accelerating inflation. Using a common measure such as US Dollars for international comparison, the UK became an incredible shrinking economy, the biggest absolute decline of any major economy. Real wages and incomes also shrank dramatically, as the effect of wage freezes and welfare cuts were magnified by sharply rising prices.
 
This ought to be a lesson for all those who argue that a simple exit from the Euro and large devaluation is the remedy for the crisis-hit countries of the EU. Britain is outside the EU and experienced a large devaluation. The sole consequence was higher inflation and lower real incomes.
 
One of the reasons why membership of the Euro remains so popular even in the crisis-hit countries is that repeated devaluations punctuated the preceding decades of those economies- and failed to raise relative living standards.

Currencies and competitiveness 

Currency exchange rates are simply relative prices so that devaluation can reduce the relative price of the same or similar good. But the effects of global competition mean that an improvement in relative price competitiveness will not last if investment levels fail to match competitors.
 
This relative underinvestment is the key structural failing of the British economy. According to recent data from the Office for National Statistics productivity is 16% below the rest of the G7 and has fallen relatively by 10% during the crisis.
 
This has resulted in a structural deficit on the external accounts. The deficit on the current account, which is equivalent to the British economy's borrowing from the rest of the world, has widened to 3.7% of GDP in the first three quarters of 2012, compared to zero in the depth of the recession.
 
Borrowing is either conducted for consumption or for investment. But as SEB has repeatedly argued, British investment has slumped. It is now just 14% of GDP. This is the cause of the slump in relative productivity, even compared to the rest of the G7, all of which have lower investment now than before the crisis in 2008.
As investment has already fallen therefore the current account deficit can only be corrected by a relative decline in consumption. This runs entirely contrary to the argument for increased consumption to resolve the crisis. But we have already seen that real wages have fallen during the crisis. This has reduced the consumption of most workers and the poor.

Who will pay for investment? 

Fortunately, there is an alternative method of reducing aggregate consumption in order to boost investment. Alongside workers’ wages and investment Marx argued that consumption was divided into necessary consumption and the consumption of luxuries. In this category may be included all items not essential to sustaining well-being, but also all items which have no production capacity. The most important of these is expenditure on armaments.
 
At £777bn the accumulated stock of profits held in cash at British banks is already a multiple of the funds required to restore all the output lost in the recession. At the same time dividend payouts to shareholders are at a record high approaching £79bn in 2012. Managerial and other bonuses (including in the City) are climbing once more. Economically, the renewal of Trident is a huge waste of resources, up to £100bn, as are increased military interventions, with lethal consequences.
 
From these multiple sources there is more than sufficient capital to increase investment and reduce consumption without in any way hurting the real incomes of workers and the poor. On the contrary, improving their living standards is both essential to and the ultimate purpose of socialist economic policy.
The obstacles to this solution are political and social. The purpose of capitalism is to preserve and expand capital, hence its name. Any policy which infringes on, let alone overturns the absolute prerogatives of capital will be resisted fiercely.
 
Instead what is currently on offer is a continuation of the long relative decline of the British economy. To alter fundamentally that path of decline would require a redirection of wasteful spending and idling capital towards investment. Instead, what is planned is a further erosion of the real incomes and consumption of workers and the poor. From that, there may eventually be some modest increase in investment. The decline of Sterling, and the inflationary effect it will produce is part of that project.

Bribing the private sector to invest isn’t working

By Michael Burke

The government’s flagship scheme for promoting investment in infrastructure has been branded a failure. A report in The Times[i] quotes speakers for both the Engineering Employers Federation and the Confederation of British Industry as saying that the scheme is ‘disappointing’ and ‘more needs to be done’.

In July 2012 the government announced the scheme, saying that it would use its balance sheet to support infrastructure investment as the means to revive the economy. Bond holders are willing to lend money to the government but less willing to lend to private capitalists. The government’s scheme was supposed to use this advantage to offer guarantees to the private sector so that they would invest in infrastructure projects. These are increasingly and correctly regarded as a key mechanism to boost growth and employment and to address the British economy’s creaking infrastructure.

However, it is reported that only one project has been agreed, the extension to the Northern Line tube in London, which would have gone ahead without the UK Guarantee.

The government’s inability to promote private infrastructure spending occurs as its own investment continues to be cut. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, government investment will be cut by nearly 30% in total under current government plans. These may alter in the next Budget in March.

Investment driven by profits

The failure of the government’s policy to deliver any new infrastructure spending is because of an insistence on the failed neoliberal model of the economy. One of the many central and incorrect tenets of neoliberalism is that all ‘economic agents’ are essentially the same. Those economic agents are private firms which maximise revenues and private individuals who maximise their own well-being. Form this is it is argued that government stands in the way of this series of rational choices, by taxing and spending incomes that firms and individuals could better choose how to spend themselves.

This is a concocted world which bears little relationship to reality. Neither firms nor individuals operate in a world of perfect knowledge to inform their expenditure, economies of scale often mean that government can purchase the same goods or services in bulk much cheaper (education, health, transport, banking, etc.) than private firms or individuals can. For large infrastructure projects it is often the case that only government can borrow funds sufficiently cheaply for large-scale investment.

But perhaps the biggest fallacy of all in the neoliberal model is the one in the sphere where it claims the greatest authority, which is the factors governing the behaviour of private firms. Firms don’t seek to maximise revenue at all, as the neoliberals claim. They seek to maximise capital, which normally means to maximise profits. And they don’t face a multitude of competitors each seeking to compete by allocating investment more productively than the next. In the most decisive areas of the economy, banking, cars, aviation, large scale housing, energy production, and so on there are just a handful of firms. They are oligopolies. This means that frequently the way to maximise profits is to increase prices, sometimes reducing supply to do so.

The housing crisis

To take just one example, there is a structural shortage of at least 2 million homes in England and Wales alone, comprised of the numbers of households on waiting lists for housing (1.7 million) and others in grossly substandard accommodation. Yet there were just over 100,000 new homes built in the latest 12 month period. This is slightly less than the growth in the number of households, meaning that the housing shortage is increasing.

Yet the Financial Times recently reports that UK housebuilders are enjoying a ‘state-backed boom’[ii]. The boom is in the share price of the stock market-listed housebuilding firms, up 46% in the last 6 months, based on an unprecedented rise in profits.

These profits arise because the term ‘housebuilder’ is a misnomer. Housing starts are at record lows but, Barratt (one of the biggest firms) has been buying land at its fastest rate ever. These firms are in reality land buyers, who have an incentive in hoarding land, which continues to rise in price and in restricting the supply of new housing for the same reason. According to Noble Francis, economics director and the Construction Products Association, ‘The major housebuilders are not going to double the number of units they build because it’s not in their interest’.

Government subsidies for mortgages simply operate as a price-support mechanism for the housebuilders. This is a ‘state-backed boom’ for capitalists, not for house building.

Dividends versus investment

Just as the large housebuilders have no interest in increasing the number of houses they build as they seek to maximise profits, not revenues, so capitalist firms in general have no incentive to produce without the expectation of profits. Not all firms are as fortunate as the housbuilders to be oligopolistic suppliers to a market where there is already a structural shortage. As a result, the profits of most firms have not risen in the same way.

The chart below shows the gross operating surplus of firms (green line, left-hand scale). The gross operating surplus is often described as the profit share of national income and is similar to the Marxist category of surplus value. The chart also shows the level of investment by firms (gross fixed capital formation, blue line right-hand scale) and the level of dividend payments to shareholders (red line, right-hand scale). Together, these two form the overwhelming bulk of the distribution of the surplus. The other main category is interest payments, which have fallen sharply as both interest rates and debt levels have fallen.

Chart 1

In effect, firms can either invest profits or distribute to them in the form of dividends to shareholders. Nominal profits have only just recovered, to £68.2bn in the 3^rd quarter of 2012 from £66.6bn in the 1^st quarter of 2008. But investment has fallen to £29.8bn, from £33bn. At the same time corporate dividends have increased sharply, from £21.5bn to £25bn.

If we compare the respective low-points for the gross operating surplus, investment and dividends the picture is even more stark. On this measure, the surplus has increased by £11.1bn from its recessionary trough, but investment has increased by just £3.6bn. The bulk of the surplus has gone to shareholders, with dividends increasing by £7.4bn.

Chart 2

Because the increase in the profit share has been minimal, the willingness of firms to invest has been minimal. The purpose of capitalism is to maximise capital which requires generating profits. In the chart above the official measure of the profit rate is shown. Although this official measure from the Office of National Statistics has some shortcomings, these do not invalidate the overall trend described in the data. This shows that the profit rate has recovered from its lows, but is very far from a full recovery. This meagre increase in both the profit share and the profit rate explains the unwillingness of capitalist firms to invest.

However, unwillingness to invest is not the same as inability. British firms’ refusal to invest and increased payouts to shareholders have also been accompanied by an increase in their net savings as shown in the chart below. In a vigorous capitalist economy where firms borrow to invest. It is a measure of the decrepit nature of British capitalism that over the 25 years, borrowing has been unusual, and corporate savings have been the norm.

Chart 3

As a result of this prolonged bout of savings, the cash balances of British non-financial firms have reached record proportions. At the end of December 2012 there were £777bn in sterling short-term deposits held in UK banks, not including deposits by other banks or public sector bodies. The bulk of these are deposits by firms who are simply hoarding cash.

It is frequently argued that nothing can be done with this cash pile, as it belongs to the private sector. But we are also told the George Osborne has directed that RBS pay its LIBOR scandal-related fines from bonuses. This is simply because a further round of bank bonuses would be massively unpopular.

It is therefore absolutely clear that the government’s 83% stake in RBS means that it can direct bank policy if it chooses. Instead of failed bribes to the private sector to invest, the government could simply direct RBS to lend the funds to the necessary infrastructure projects required to boost growth and jobs. It could lend to local authorities to build council houses and so on. Given that every bank operating in Britain can only do so with the support of a government guarantee for deposits, liquidity support from the Bank of England and other measures. If the government insisted, they would all have to increase lending.

The state can do this because unlike the private sector, it can invest without the requirement to generate profits for shareholders. The policy of bribing the private sector to invest has already failed.

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[i] ‘Scheme is no guarantee of reviving the economy’, The Times (£), February 4, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/economics/article3676984.ece
[ii] ‘Housebuilders enjoy state-backed boom’, Financial Times (£), January 22, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38a7e488-64ab-11e2-934b-00144feab49a.html#axzz2K8MyzDaq