July 5, 2011
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Party rulers in China are trapped in a position that chess players deeply fear — zugzwang — where any move made puts you at disadvantage. In China, the cost of both action and inaction is potential economic collapse.
China is slowly starting to face the consequences of its actions — loans grew over 30% a year over the last few years — and inflation is rising fast. Inflation in developed countries is unpleasant, but it is tolerable. For a developing country — and China, despite its size, is still a developing country — it can be catastrophic. In developed countries, we spend two or three times less on food as a percentage of our income as people do in developing countries. Therefore, though food inflation is unpleasant, we have a much greater tolerance (margin of safety) for it. While food inflation the US can mean fewer trips to restaurants or no summer vacation, food inflation in China leads to hunger.
The Chinese government is desperately trying to put the brakes on the economy. It is shutting off lending to land developers and has raised bank reserve requirements five times this year. However, its success on the inflation front will likely lead to a slowdown of the economy and high unemployment. Ironically, those were the issues party planners tried to cure when they stimulated the hell out of the economy over the last few years.
China bulls are arguing that the almighty Chinese government will be able to soft-land the economy. Unlikely, I’d say. Forced lending was at the core of Chinese economic growth. Simply put, there is too much debt to go bad. According to Ernst and Young, one third of the $700 billion in loans taken out by local governments may face repayment problems. The People Bank of China estimates that Chinese banks’ exposure to local government loans is 14 trillion yuan (or $2.2 trillion), according to the June 17 South China Morning Post. Once lending is cut off, property prices will stop appreciating (and likely collapse — that is what usually happens in a Ponzi scheme). Also, the overcapacity in the industrial sector and commercial real estate will come to the surface. And suddenly everyone will discover that the venerable emperor has no clothes.
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