Does the Domestic Value Added Induced by China＇s Exports Really Belong to China？

Since 2001, the exports of foreign‐invested enterprises (FIEs) have accounted for more than 50 percent of China's total exports. As foreign capital occupies a high proportion of the total capital of FIEs, most FIEs' capital gains are foreign factor income. Although these gains are calculated as a part of China's GDP, they do not belong to China's national income. To determine the real contribution of exports to China's welfare, the present paper analyses the impact of exports on China's national income using a non‐competitive input–output model capturing processing trade. The results show that every US$1000 of China's exports generates US$506.8 of national income. The real contribution of exports to China's welfare is much smaller than what we expected. This suggests that China should endeavor to improve the gains from international markets or find another engine to maintain its economic growth.     

China： Unscathed through the Global Financial Tsunami

This paper investigates the reasons behind the resilience of China＇s economy to the global financial tsunami. China ＇s economy is lowly leveraged in its banking, household, public and external sectors and, therefore, is less plagued by the global deleveraging than most developed economies. Chinese domestic sectors have improved significantly over the past decade, giving them larger capacity to cope with external shocks than during the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that China＇s economic growth is highly dependent on exports, we find that the main growth engine for China is domestic demand. Destocking, rather than falling exports, was the main cause of the sharp economic slowdown in China in late 2008 and early 2009. Therefore, the global economic slowdown should have limited impact on China＇s economy. We forecast a sustained eeonomic recovery in China in 2009-2011, with real GDP growth exceeding 10 percent in 2010.     

Understanding High Saving Rate in China

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the Chinese saving rate based on the flow of funds data. It finds that the most widely adopted view of precautionary saving, which is regarded as the top reason for maintaining a high saving rate in China, is misleading because this conclusion is drawn from the household survey data. In fact, the household saving rate has declined dramatically since the mid‐1990s, as is observed from the flow of funds framework. The high national saving rate is attributed to the increasing shares of both government and corporation disposable incomes. Insufficient consumption demand is caused by the persistent decrease in percentage share of household to national disposable income. Government‐ directed income redistribution urgently needs to be improved to accelerate consumption, which in turn would make the Chinese economy less investment‐led and help to reduce the current account surplus. (Edited by Zhinan Zhang)     

China,Like the US,Faces Challenges in Achieving Inclusive Growth through Manufacturing

For more than three decades the goal of becoming “the factory of the world” has been at the core of China's development strategy. This strategy, in combination with high rates of domestic investment and low rates of consumption, has made Chinese production the most manufacturing intensive in the world. But as its wages have risen, China's competitiveness in the most labor‐intensive manufacturing industries has eroded. Its ability to assemble products remains a major source of its exports, but it has also tried to shift toward more sophisticated value‐added production domestically. Chinese domestic spending has shifted away from investment toward consumption as citizens' income has grown. Like Americans, Chinese are also spending more on services than on manufactured goods. All of these changes are fundamentally altering the structure of China's production, reducing the role of manufacturing and increasing the skill levels of workers in manufacturing. This paper reviews the challenges posed by these developments for China's long‐term goal of achieving more inclusive growth. It presents evidence that the commonly held perceptions that Chinese manufacturing employment growth is robust are wrong. In fact, such growth has peaked and China is now following a pattern of structural change that is typical of a more mature emerging economy, in which the share of employment in manufacturing declines as workers are increasingly employed in services.     

How China Could Contribute to a Benign Global Rebalancing？

Our study shows that China could contribute to an orderly global rebalancing using a package of policies to stimulate its domestic consumption. These policies include a progressive appreciation of the RMB, fiscal stimulation by increasing expenditure on education, health care, social safety nets and poverty reduction, income policies to reduce inequality and to strengthen wage income, and reforms of the financial system to improve financial efficiency and to mitigate financial constraints. By implementing such policies, China＇ s external surplus could be narrowed and its domestic imbalances improved. The excessively high savings rate could be lowered and the share of household consumption increased, even though GDP growth would moderate slightly.     

Structural change in the Chinese economy and changing trade relations with the world

This paper examines the impact of structural change in China, in particular a reduction in the savings rate, an increase in the share of skilled workers, and an increase in productivity in technologically advanced manufacturing sectors targeted by Made in China 2025. Baseline projections until 2040 are generated with the WTO Global Trade Model, a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. With the modelled structural changes, the Chinese economy is projected to reorient its focus increasingly onto the domestic economy, raising the share of private household and government consumption in GDP, turning China's trade surplus into a trade deficit, reducing China's share in global exports, raising the share of services in both production and exports, shifting the destination markets of Chinese exports from developed to developing countries, and changing its pattern of comparative advantage away from sectors like light and heavy manufacturing to electronic and machinery equipment. The large bilateral trade surplus vis-a-vis the United States is projected to fall to almost zero.     

Global rebalancing: Effects on trade and employment

A sustained reduction of global current-account imbalances must include a decline in the share of household consumption in aggregate demand in the United States and the opposite development in China. Accordingly, import demand would decline in the United States and increase in China. Given non-homothetic demand preferences, the resulting change in the income distribution of global import demand affects both the intensity and pattern of other countries’ exports. Simulations suggest that, for the world economy, the net effect of this shift would be a decline in industrial exports, especially from labor-intensive sectors producing consumer durables. A multilaterally coordinated rebalancing that would also include an increase in the share of household consumption in aggregate demand of developed country surplus economies would reduce these adverse effects on trade and employment. Apart from the countries undertaking rebalancing, developing countries in East and South-East Asia face the greatest adjustment pressure from global rebalancing.     

The Future is in the Past: Projecting and Plotting the Potential Rate of Growth and Trajectory of the Structural Change of the Chinese Economy for the Next 20 Years

Based on the convergence hypothesis and referring to the experience of East Asian high‐performing economies from 1950 to 2010, this paper projects and plots the potential growth rate of the Chinese economy over the next 20 years. It predicts that the potential growth rate of per capita GDP adjusted by purchasing power parity averages at 6.02 percent from 2015 to 2035, while the potential GDP growth rate of 2015 would still be above 8 percent, which implies that the realized rate of growth has not reached its potential since 2012. Besides, based on the per capita GDP projected and on cross‐country comparison, the paper plots the trajectory of structural change of the Chinese economy from 2015 to 2035. The result shows that: (i) the value‐added share of primary industry will drop more rapidly than the employment share; (ii) the value‐added share of secondary industry will decline and employment share will present an inverted U shape whose turning point will probably come between 2020 and 2025; (iii) both the value‐added and employment share of tertiary industry will increase continuously.     

我国经济发展方式转变对策研究——基于居民收入分配差距分析

文章从国民收入分配格局出发,得出我国GDP增加额主要流向企业和政府,居民的收入增长低于经济增长,造成我国投资过剩,内需不足;而不断扩大的居民收入分配差距进一步降低了我国的消费率,制约我国经济的发展。从对居民在城乡、性别、年龄和受教育程度方面的收入分配差距分析,得出农村具有巨大的消费潜力,女性的边际消费率较高,年龄介于35-44岁的居民具有高收入高学历的特征。文章认为,为拉动内需而转变发展方式应从增加居民的货币收入、抑制高房价、缩小城乡差距、提高女性就业率和加大社保与教育投入等方面着手。     

EXPORT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NAMIBIA: A GRANGER CAUSALITY ANALYSIS

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the causality between exports and GDP of Namibia and to evaluate the relationship of these variables for the period 1970 to 2005. Time‐series econometric techniques (Granger causality and cointegration) are applied to test the hypothesis of a growth strategy led by exports. It tests whether export Granger causes GDP, or whether the causality runs from GDP to exports, or if there is bi‐directional causality between exports and GDP. The results revealed that exports Granger cause GDP and GDP per capita. This suggests that the export‐led growth strategy through various incentives has a positive influence on growth.     

EXPORT‐LED GROWTH HYPOTHESIS: FURTHER ECONOMETRIC EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH ASIA

This paper examines the export‐led growth (ELG) hypothesis for five South Asian countries through cointegration and multivariate Granger causality tests. Strong support for a long‐run relationship among exports, imports, and real output for all the countries except Sri Lanka were found. Feedback effects between exports and GDP for Bangladesh and Nepal and unidirectional causality from exports to output in the case of Pakistan were found. No causality between these variables was found for Sri Lanka and India, although for India GDP and exports did induce imports. A feedback effect between imports and GDP was also documented for Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, as well as unidirectional causality from imports to output growth for Sri Lanka. These and other findings are discussed from the standpoint of the export‐led growth hypothesis.     

China's industrial revolution: challenges for a macroeconomic agenda

China's industrialization over the past 30 years has been an epochal event. As of 2000, the industrial sector's share of GDP has grown to be about two-third of the total. The share of agricultural sector of GDP has expectedly declined from 42.2% in 1970 to 11.9% in 2000. The sector's total output however continues to grow as productivity increases. Has the service sector grown enough to support the overall growth of the Chinese economy?China has earned her recognition as a foreign investment friendly economy. Foreign direct investment with 100% foreign ownership came in plenty, supported by a robust system of profit repatriation based on earnings in convertible currencies of exports of a part of newly manufactured products in China. China imported capital and paid for it by exports. China demonstrates a clear case of the import-export led model of industrialization and economic growth, not the simple export-led growth model, as discussed by some.This paper discusses that challenges ahead of China are overwhelming. We present three issues for immediate attention, (a) Can China sustain a rate of growth of GDP at an annual rate of 10% for an indefinite period? (b) How can China address the issues of income distribution across her 31 province and also amongst the various income groups in a given industrialized province/region? (c) Can China ensure progressive augmentation of high-tech oriented productivity of her workforce by way of ensuring building up of necessary human capital?It is argued that much of this can be accomplished by developing a macroeconomic framework with monetary and fiscal policy guidelines, well specified and transparent. Can China restructure its central bank, the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC)? A progressive money, banking and financial sector with ability to absorb shocks of an industrial economy must be in order. How about the fiscal policy management by the Government of China—its Ministry of Finance?Finally this paper argues that China's economic presence will help optimize the economic gains for the rest of the world. China has joined her Asian neighbors toward sponsoring Asian economic cooperation. Let the European Union paradigm be a learning model, and China has a leadership role to play in further developing Asia's continental economic regional model.     

Effects of China's Structural Change on the Exports of East Asian Economies

The Chinese economy is slowing down and is in the midst of a structural transformation from export‐led and investment‐led growth to domestic demand‐led and consumption‐led growth. While there are widespread concerns among China's trading partners about the effect of the slowdown in China's growth on their exports, China's structural changes are also likely to have a significant impact: for example, China will import fewer machines and more cosmetics. The central objective of the present paper is to empirically examine the effect of China's structural transformation on the exports of East Asian economies, which have close trade linkages with China. We find that economies that have failed to increase the share of consumption goods in their exports to China have suffered larger declines in their quantities of exports to China. In addition, economies that have suffered losses in their shares of China's parts and components imports have faced reductions in their shares in China's total imports.     

RCEP关税减让对各成员国的经济影响分析

大幅度削减成员国间关税是RCEP协议的核心内容,为了揭示RCEP成员国间关税减让的经济影响,文章首先分析了RCEP成员国间贸易现状、产品结构、进口关税和贸易竞争力,然后,运用GTAP模型模拟RCEP关税减让对各成员国宏观经济和产出的影响,得到结论如下：（1）RCEP关税减让可以缓解中美贸易摩擦对于中国经济的不利影响;（2）就短期而言,RCEP成员国间关税减让可以提高中国、日本、韩国和澳大利亚的GDP、社会福利、居民收入和消费水平等宏观经济效益,同时,还可以提高中国、韩国、澳大利亚、东盟的总产出水平;（3）就长期来说,实施零关税可能显著提升RCEP大多数成员国的宏观经济效益和产出水平。     

Structural Challenges to Sustained Economic Growth in China

This essay focuses on three broad sets of issues that may not slow China's GDP growth to under 3 percent a year, but they will almost certainly create major social and physical problems that will be difficult to deal with. The first is the demographic and education challenges featured by a rapidly aging population combined with a large share of the population being under-educated. The second is the environmental challenges China faces in achieving the state goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. The third challenge is low consumption and unprecedentedly high investment, a strategy that has driven China's high growth rates in the past decades but is no longer sustainable. These three challenges are intertwined, making China's adjustment path even more uncertain. What would a sustainable development strategy involve? The clearest need is to shift investment away from energy-intensive housing and infrastructure and toward investment in people.     

经济增长、投资与城乡收入差距互动关系的实证分析

本文在分析我国城乡收入差距对投资和经济增长影响的基础上,建立了一个能考察经济增长、城乡收入差距与投资互动关系的联立方程组模型,用2SLS和3SLS方法估计结果表明,劳动者受教育程度和人均收入水平的提高既能促进经济增长,又能缩小城乡收入差距。因此,降低固定资产投资在GDP中所占比重、转变产业结构是实现我国经济增长效率和公平双目标的有效途径。     

A dynamic analysis of the impact of uncertainty on import- and/or export-led growth: The experience of Japan and the Asian Tigers

Increasing integration of the Asian Tigers with the world economy through trade has exposed their income and trade to greater uncertainty and volatility. This paper models uncertainty in trade and income and re-examines the stability of the trade-growth nexus for Japan and the Asian Tigers in a dynamic framework. We find that in a volatile environment Japan's GDP growth is only import-led while Hong Kong's GDP growth is both export and import growth-led. On the other hand, incorporating uncertainty breaks the causal link between Korea's GDP growth and trade but it does not affect Taiwan's mutually causative relationship between GDP growth, with exports and imports. Lastly, the varied qualitative and quantitative impact of volatility in imports and exports on income growth among the Asian Tigers provides further thought for policy making.     

Tax policy implications for a two‐engine growing economy

In an endogenous growth model with two engines of R&D and capital, we investigate the environment of “inclusive growth” for tax reallocations (tax increases or tax credits) to gain broader benefits in terms of promoting the overall GDP growth without an increase in income inequality. Our results show that a tax increase in the capital‐good sector can result in inclusive growth, boosting overall growth and reducing income inequality, provided that the status quo tax rate is not too high. Surprisingly, tax credits are not able to achieve such inclusive growth. While the GDP growth rises, a tax credit in the R&D sector not only increases income inequality but also decreases the aggregate employment, if the labor mobility cost between the final‐good and R&D/capital‐good sectors is relatively low. This provides a caution to policymakers given the fact that research tax credits have served as a common incentive to strengthen the R&D environment.     

收入分配、居民消费与经济发展方式转变

改革开放30年来我国经济持续地高速增长过程中呈现出收入差距不断扩大和居民消费需求不振等问题。文章通过构建模型实证检验了收入分配、居民消费与经济增长之间的关系,研究结果表明：尽管收入差距对农村居民消费的影响并不显著,但城镇居民收入分配差距对其消费有显著的负面影响,我国居民收入差距扩大显著地制约了我国消费需求的增长;居民消费对经济增长存在显著的积极影响,且对经济增长的效应强于投资,扩大居民消费有利于我国经济可持续发展。文章据此提出了针对性的政策建议。     

An Inquiry into the Determinants of the Exports of China and India

Regression analysis is used to tease out the relative significance of influences on the supply and demand for the exports of China and India. On the supply side, the value-added tax in China has discouraged export supply. The elimination of the rebate on those taxes will discourage exports. Higher wages discourage exports, but the share of exports by foreign invested enterprise is a positive influence, as is a higher share of value added in output and greater experience in exporting. On the demand side, exports depend in part on aggregate income levels in importing countries. Relative wages have been more important than exchange rates in determining the demands for Chinese and Indian exports. This evidence does not support the pressures for a devaluation of the RMB. There is also evidence of the positive significance of the accustomization of purchasers to buying Chinese exports.