Progress Evaluation of the Transformation of China's Economic Growth Pattern 1 (Preliminary Draft Please do not quote) Si Joong Kim 2 <Abstract> China has been attempting to transform its strategy of economic growth, particularly after negative consequences of large-scale stimulus package responding to the global financial crisis became clear by 2010. Chinese government realized that achieving rapid economic growth by increasing investment and export became no longer sustainable. Consequently, its 12th Five Year Plan for 2011-2015 included the transformation of its economic growth pattern as the main agenda. Although that transformation is a medium- to long-term agenda, it would be possible to tentatively evaluate how much progress has been made in the transformation. The key task of the transformation is to make household consumption as the new engine of economic growth, gradually replacing the previous engines, namely investment and exports. Also, some other structural changes, such as industrial structure and income distribution, would arise accompanied with the change in demand structure. This paper attempts to judge whether meaningful progress has been achieved in China s transformation in its growth strategy based on empirical findings regarding the demand structure, industrial structure, income distribution structure, etc. based on official statistics of China. Empirical findings suggest that some progress has been actually achieved in that transformation. They, however, also suggest that the speed and extent of the transformation have been rather slow and limited. I. Introduction It seems evident that the period of super high growth of Chinese economy of almost 10% rate per annum which had lasted over three decades is over. Such a remarkable economic growth of China had been driven by even more rapid growth of investment and export. However, changes in domestic and international economic environments have made it either impossible or undesirable. Consequently, growth rate of Chinese economy has been lowered significantly in recent years. Its main engine for growth, namely investment and export, encountered serious obstacles for their sustained increase. 1 A paper presented at the World Congress of Comparative Economics held in Rome on June 25-27, 2015. 2 Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea. Email address: sijoong@sogang.ac.kr
Facing this serious challenge, Chinese government have been attempting to change its pattern of economic growth in recent years. This shift was clearly revealed in its 12 th Five year Plan for 2011-2015, which included the transformation ('zhuanbian') of development pattern as the key agenda. This shift in strategy has been confirmed by the new leadership led by Xi Jinping who inaugurated as General Secretary of the CCP in 2012 and State President in 2013. The Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms adopted by the Third Plenum of the 18 th Central Committee of CCP (November, 2013) clearly suggested accelerating the transformation of pattern of economic development as the key agenda of the economic reform. Now it is high time to assess the progress of this transformation attempt as some years have passed since its inception. This paper attempts to judge whether meaningful progress has been achieved in transforming the pattern of China s economic growth or not, based on empirical findings related with the transformation. The structure of this paper is as follows. In Section II, after discussing why China began to change its strategy of economic growth by 2010, this paper identifies several key structural changes of Chinese economy which are expected be accompanied with the transformation. In Section III, this paper empirically examines how much progresses have been made in those structural changes introduced in section II, based on China s official statistics. Then, concluding remarks follow in Section IV. II. Transformation of Pattern of China s Economic Growth: Background and Required Structural Changes China began to recognize already in mid-2000s that its extensive economic growth, mainly based on investment growth, is not sustainable. It explicitly designated some sectors, including steel, cement, as plagued by excessive production capacity, requiring restructuring. Also, improving energy efficiency was the key goal of the 11 th Five Year Plan for 2006-2010. Also, reducing its dependence on exports was suggested as a new policy goal, too. However, as China continued to achieve rapid economic growth in the same way as before, the transformation efforts were not deemed very urgent. As the global financial crisis gave a big negative shock on Chinese economy beginning in late 2008, China responded with a large-scale stimulus package. The stimulus package consisted of many government-led infrastructure projects combined with loosened credit policy which led to investment boom, particularly in real estate sector. With these government-led demand creation, Chinese economy seemed to have easily overcome the shock from outside by recording over 9% growth in 2009 and even
higher 10.4% growth in 2010. However, negative consequences of such a large-scale artificial stimulus package became apparent by 2010, which included moderately high inflation, excessive investment in real estate and many manufacturing sectors revealed by high vacancy rate and low operation rate, significant increase in debts of regional governments and state-owned enterprises with potential increase in non-performing loan of the banks, etc. Also, as most of the advanced economies fell into recession and were expected to stagnate for extended period, it became impossible for China to increase its exports as before 2008. Therefore, it became inevitable for China to accept lower economic growth and to find out new engines of economic growth. In other words, China needs to find new engines of economic growth to sustain even moderate rate of economic growth. This was the main background why China seriously began to transform its pattern of economic growth by 2010, as suggested in its 12 th Five Year Plan. Then, what are the required structural changes of Chinese economy for this transformation to progress? From demand side, changes in the composition of aggregate demand would be necessary. As rapid increase of investment and export is no longer either undesirable or impossible, consumption should increase fast enough to become a new engine of growth. It suggests that the share of household consumption in GDP should increase, while that of investment and exports decrease. Then, what would be the conditions for household consumption to grow fast enough to lead the growth of the national economy? The most important pre-condition for consumption increase would be the increase in household income. In macroeconomic sense, increase in the share of household income in national income will be necessary. In other words, change in the distribution of national income favoring the household sector relative to the enterprise sector and the government sector is necessary. Another key condition to induce increase in household consumption would be improving the social safety net, such as pension system, health insurance and unemployment insurance systems, etc. Also, the aforementioned change in demand structure would be correlated with corresponding change in the sectoral structure of GDP in several channels. Because service sector is intrinsically more domestic demand oriented, increase of the service sector share in GDP is consistent with the increase of consumption-driven economic growth pursued by China. Also, service sector is more labor intensive than manufacturing sector in China, growth of service sector will be necessary to create jobs to maintain social stability while growth rate is declining. Summing up, the change in industrial structure characterized by relative expansion of tertiary sector combined with relative shrinkage of the secondary sector will be expected as the transformation progresses.
There should arise some changes from supply side, too. For China to sustain its economic growth under the declining growth of investment, increase of the total factor productivity (TFP) will be crucial. Also, structural upgrading of manufacturing sector in the technology ladder to higher value-added industries would be necessary to offset the continuing wage increase. Therefore, significant increase of R&D expenditure is expected for these changes in the supply side. From the discussion above, the transformation of growth pattern pursued by China would entail wideranging structural changes of its economy, which can be observed by Chinese official statistical data. This paper attempts to evaluate the progress of the transformation by analyzing statistical data related with those structural changes mentioned above. This paper will focus on demand side structural changes, attempting to find changes in industrial structure, demand structure, and distribution structure. For supply side changes, growth accounting analysis for estimating TFP contributions to GDP growth over time will be crucial. However, it will not be included in this paper. Instead, this paper will just show how China s R&D efforts have evolved over time. III. Empirical Findings 1. Change in Industrial Structure China s economic growth had been led by the secondary sector, particularly manufacturing sector, since early 1990s. The share of secondary sector in China s GDP steadily increased since early 1990s, peaking with 47.9% in 2006, and remained on 47% level from 2005 to 2008. That is why China was called as world factory by many people. However, dominance of manufacturing sector or secondary sector has been gradually eroded. Instead, service sector began to grow faster than manufacturing sector, ultimately taking over the largest portion in China s GDP. As shown in Table 1, share of the secondary sector in GDP decreased by more than 5 percentage point from its peak of 2007, reaching 42.6% in 2014. On the other hand, share of tertiary sector slowly but steadily increased from 40.5% in 2005 to 43.2% in 2010. Then, its growth accelerated, finally overtaking the secondary sector in 2013 with 46.1%, and reaching even higher 48.2% in 2014. It is clear that relative expansion of service sector has become more significant during the 12 th Five Year Plan period, when the transformation attempt became formal and serious.
<Table 1: Change in China s Industrial Structure Annual Growth Rate (%) Share in GDP (%) Primary Secondary Tertiary Primary Secondary Tertiary Industry Industry Industry Industry Industry Industry 2000 2.4 9.4 9.7 15.1 45.9 39.0 2005 5.2 12.1 12.2 12.1 47.4 40.5 2010 4.3 12.3 9.8 10.1 46.7 43.2 2011 4.6 10.3 9.4 10.0 46.6 43.4 2012 4.5 7.9 8.1 10.1 45.3 44.6 2013 4.0 7.8 8.3 10.0 43.9 46.1 2014 4.0 7.3 8.1 9.2 42.6 48.2 Source: China Statistical Year Book (2014) for data upto 2013. For 2014 data, website of National Statistical Bureau of China (http://www.stats.gov.cn) One positive consequence of relatively faster growth of service sector has been its job creation capability. The growth rate of Chinese economy has steadily slowed down since 2010 from two digits number down to 7% level (Figure 1). Decrease of growth rate by over 3 percentage point could have triggered unemployment crisis. However, as the industrial structure has shifted toward service sector which is more labor-intensive, 3 China could avoid unemployment crisis which may arouse social instability. Otherwise, Chinese government would have been forced to introduce another big-scale stimulus policy similar to that in 2008-09 period, which would undermine the transformation efforts. That is, such a stimulation policy would make the excessive investment and excessive leverage problem worse, thereby increasing the risk of systemic financial crisis and making the transformation attempt fail. 3 In China, service sector is estimated to create about 30% more jobs than industrial sector for the same amount value added production.
<Figure 1: Growth Rate of Chinese economy (yoy, 2010- ) 10.4 9.7 9.5 9.1 8.9 8.1 7.6 7.4 7.9 7.7 7.5 7.8 7.7 7.4 7.5 7.3 7.3 7 2010 2011. 1/4 2011. 2/4 2011. 3/4 2011. 4/4 2012. 1/4 2012. 2/4 2012. 3/4 2012. 4/4 2013. 1/4 2013. 2/4 2013. 3/4 2013. 4/4 2014. 1/4 2014. 2/4 2014. 3/4 2014. 2015. 4/4 1/4 Source: National Statistical Bureau of China (http://www.stats.gov.cn) 2. Changes in Demand Structure The most serious structural problem of Chinese economy which emerged during 2000s was the excessive saving- excessive investment- insufficient consumption, which are related each other. As shown in Table 2, the ratio of gross capital formation to GDP, namely investment rate, had steadily increased throughout 2000s reaching its peak 48.3% in 2011. On the other hand, consumption rate (ratio of total final consumption to GDP) and household consumption rate (ratio of household consumption to GDP) steadily declined, reaching its bottom 48.2% and 34.9%, respectively, in 2010. The ratio of net export to GDP increased significantly during 2000s, peaking in 2007 with 8.8%. This kind and degree of structural imbalance was not sustainable, so that Chinese government began to make efforts to reduce or eliminate it by transforming its pattern of economic growth. The transformation process requires increase of consumption share in GDP, while reducing the share of investment in fixed capital and exports. Because decline in the share of net export and total export began in 2008 and steadily continued, the key would be the adjustment of consumption and investment. Actually, the turnaround has occurred in both consumption and investment. The share of consumption and household consumption in GDP increased from the bottom of 48.2% and 34.9% in 2010 to 49.8% and 36.2% respectively in 2013. In 2014, drop of nominal growth rate of investment (from 19.6% to 15.7%) was relatively larger than that of consumption (from 13.1% to 12.0%), so that further increase in
consumption rate and decrease in investment rate are expected in 2014. However, these changes in consumption rate and investment rate are so modest that structural change in aggregate demand must have occurred only to a limited extent. <Table 2: Composition of China s GDP in Expenditure Side Unit: % Final Consumption Gross Capital Formation Year Household Consumption Government Consumption Sum Gross Fixed Capital Formation Inventory Change Sum Net Export 2000 46.4 15.9 62.3 34.3 1.0 35.3 2.4 2001 45.3 16.1 61.4 34.6 1.9 36.5 2.1 2002 44.0 15.6 59.6 36.2 1.6 37.8 2.6 2003 42.2 14.7 56.9 39.1 1.8 41.0 2.2 2004 40.6 13.8 54.4 40.5 2.5 43.0 2.6 2005 38.9 14.1 53.0 39.6 1.9 41.5 5.5 2006 37.1 13.7 50.8 39.5 2.2 41.7 7.5 2007 36.1 13.5 49.6 39.0 2.6 41.6 8.8 2008 35.4 13.2 48.6 40.5 3.2 43.7 7.7 2009 35.4 13.1 48.5 44.9 2.3 47.2 4.3 2010 34.9 13.3 48.2 45.6 2.5 48.1 3.7 2011 35.7 13.4 49.1 45.6 2.7 48.3 2.6 2012 36.0 13.5 49.5 45.6 2.1 47.7 2.8 2013 36.2 13.6 49.8 45.9 1.9 47.8 2.4 Source: China Statistical Yearbook (2014)
In transforming the pattern of economic growth, the key demand-side component is household consumption as already discussed. Whether household consumption can increase fast enough to become a new engine of growth is the key for the transformation. To get a clue to this issue, the real growth rate of household consumption is estimated using nominal household consumption and consumer price index (CPI). Table 3 shows the process of estimating the growth rate of real household consumption for the period of 2000-2013. Consumer price index with 2000 as base year is constructed in column 4 by accumulating the CPI with previous year being 100 (column 3). Then, the real household consumption is derived (in column 5) by converting the nominal household consumption (column 2) into real values with constant prices of 2000, using the accumulated CPI (column 4). From the data of real household consumption over the years (column 5), index for real household consumption is derived for each year with previous year being 100 (column 6), showing the growth rate for each year. <Table 3: Process of Estimating Real Growth Rate of Household Consumption Year Nominal household Consumption (100 million Yuan) CPI (previous year 100) CPI (year 2000 100) Real household consumption (100 million Yuan, Base Year 2000) Real household consumption Index (Previous year 100) Growth rate of real GDP (previous year 100) 2000 45854.6 100.4 100.0 45854.6 100.0 100.0 2001 49435.9 100.7 100.7 49092.3 107.1 108.3 2002 53056.6 99.2 99.9 53109.7 108.2 109.1 2003 57649.8 101.2 101.1 57022.6 107.4 110.0 2004 65218.5 103.9 105.0 62112.9 108.9 110.1 2005 72958.7 101.8 106.9 68249.4 109.9 111.3 2006 82575.5 101.5 108.5 76105.5 111.5 112.7 2007 96332.5 104.8 113.7 84725.2 111.3 114.2 2008 111670.4 105.9 120.5 92672.5 109.4 109.6 2009 123584.6 99.3 119.6 103331.6 111.5 109.2 2010 140758.6 103.3 123.6 113882.4 110.2 110.4
2011 168956.6 105.4 130.2 129767.0 113.9 109.3 2012 190584.6 102.6 133.6 142653.1 109.9 107.7 2013 212187.5 102.6 137.1 154768.4 108.5 107.7 Source: China Statistical Yearbook (Column 2, 3, 7). Rest of the columns (Column 4, 5, 6) are constructed by the author. By comparing this index of real household consumption (column 6) with the growth rate of real GDP (column 7), we can interpret whether household consumption lead the growth or not. From the comparison, we find that GDP growth rate was consistently higher than the growth rate of real household consumption for every year from 2000 to 2008. From 2008-2013, the opposite phenomenon is observed except for 2010. It implies that household consumption began to lead the overall economic growth in recent years, particularly since 2011. 3. Change in Income Distribution A key precondition for household consumption to increase would be the increase in household income. One of the key reasons why household consumption rate was decreasing at a low level until 2010 (Column 2 of Table 2, Column 6 of Table 4) might have been that household income was not increasing fast enough. This conjecture is confirmed in Table 4 which examines changes in the distribution structure of national income since 2000. Labor share in primary distribution of national income had steadily decreased from 53.3% in 2000 to 47.6% in 2008. Similarly, household share in total disposable income had steadily decreased from 67.5% in 2000 to 58.3% in 2008. 4 These findings support the observation that decreasing share of household consumption in aggregate demand was mainly due to relatively slower growth in labor income and household income. However, it is shown in the Table 4 that both labor income and household income showed minor rebound after 2008, reaching 49.5% and 62.0% in 2012. Correspondingly, national 4 Household disposable income incorporates not just labor income but also non-labor household income, transfer receipt from governments, and tax payment to governments.
saving rate, which had increased significantly from 37.3% in 2000 to 52.7% in 2008, decreased a little bit since then reaching 49.4% in 2012. Reflecting the above changes in distribution structure with a time lag of 1 to 2 years, the ratio of household consumption to household disposable income (Column 6) began to increase since 2010, after experiencing steady decrease through the past decade (2000-2010). However, the increase in household consumption rate was rather modest from 57.9% in 2010 to 59.3% in 2012, which is consistent with the finding in Table 2. <Table 4: Change in Distribution Structure Unit: % Year Labor Share in National Income (Primary Distribution) Household Share in Total Disposable Income National Saving Rate (National Saving/GDP) Household Saving Rate (to GDP) Household Consumption Rate (to Household Disposable Income) 2000 53.3 67.5 37.3 20.8 68.9 2001 53.2 66.0 38.2 20.5 68.8 2002 54.1 64.4 40.1 20.2 68.5 2003 53.1 64.0 43.2 21.8 66.1 2004 50.8 61.0 46.2 20.8 66.2 2005 50.7 60.8 46.6 21.6 64.6 2006 49.3 60.2 48.6 22.6 62.8 2007 48.0 58.9 51.5 23.4 60.8 2008 47.6 58.3 52.7 23.6 60.1 2009 49.1 60.5 50.8 24.6 59.6 2010 47.7 60.4 51.9 25.5 57.9 2011 47.5 60.7 50.3 24.7 59.1 2012 49.5 62.0 49.4 25.1 59.3 Author s Construction based on China s Flow of Funds Account (China Statistical Yearbook, 2012, 2013, 2014 )
4. Innovation Efforts In section II, it was pointed out that structural change in supply side required for the transformation of the growth pattern and sustainable growth is the increase in total factor productivity (TFP). As indirect and partial measures of TFP growth, trends in China s R&D expenditures and R&D outputs are summarized in the following Table 5. <Table 5: China s R&D Inputs and Outputs (2007-2013) 2007 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 R&D expenditures (100 3003 3710 4616 5802 7063 8687 10298 11906 million Yuan) R&D expenditures/gdp (%) 1.39 1.40 1.47 1.70 1.76 1.84 1.98 2.09 Patents Applied 57.3 69.4 82.8 97.7 122.2 163.3 205.1 237.7 (10 thousands) (Among them, (21.0) (24.5) (29.0) (31.5) (39.1) (52.6) (65.3) (82.5) Invention Patents) Patents Granted 26.8 35.2 41.2 58.2 81.5 96.1 125.5 131.3 (Among them, Invention Patents) (5.8) (6.8) (9.4) (12.8) (13.5) (17.2) (21.7) (20.8) Source: China Science and Technology Statistical Data (2014) Growth in China s R&D activities has been remarkable in both inputs and outputs. The ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP has increased by 0.7 percentage point in just seven years, from1.39% in 2007 to 2.09% in 2013. Considering China s GDP growth rate was very high during this period, we can see how rapid the increase in R&D expenditure was. In particular, the fact that average of this ratio among OECD countries is 2.2% suggests China is approaching the level of advanced countries in this regard. Furthermore, the increase in R&D to GDP ratio seem to have accelerated from 2009 and this trend
continues with strong policy support. Also, R&D outputs measured by diverse criteria shown in the Table recorded remarkable growth too. These findings suggest that overall productivity level or TFP of Chinese economy has increased significantly in recent past and is likely to increase further into the future, which increase the sustainability of Chinese economic growth. IV. Conclusion (incomplete) Almost all findings of this paper imply that meaningful structural changes of Chinese economy began to appear after 2010, in industrial structure, demand structure, distribution structure, and innovation capabilities. These structural changes are consistent with the transformation of growth pattern pursued by Chinese government as discussed in Section II. Consequently, findings of this paper suggest China is succeeding it its transformation attempt. At the same time, all the findings of this paper clearly suggest that the extent and speed of the changes were rather modest and slow, while growth rate of Chinese has been steadily decelerating. The decline of growth rate may worsen the structural problems, such as excessive investment or excessive debts, which had been accumulating. It may suggest the urgency of the structural changes and necessary reforms for them.