Courtesy of Mish.
In his last email of the Year Michael Pettis takes stock of the current state of China's rebalancing. It's an 18 page PDF, with no online link.
Taking Stock of China’s Transition by Michael Pettis
Special points to highlight in this issue:
- While policymakers almost certainly understand that the interest rate cuts announced by the PBoC two weeks ago will slow the pace of rebalancing, the asymmetry of the change in rates was designed to minimize the adverse impact on rebalancing, and indicate just how complex China’s adjustment is likely to be.
- Next year will be a very important year for China because possible strains in the banking system and the intensity with which the reformers present their case will give us a better sense both of how much debt capacity the country retains and of how well positioned Xi Jinping and his allies are to implement the needed reforms.
- The completion of [prior] reforms [under Deng Xiaoping] left China ready for an investment-driven growth model that delivered astonishing increases in wealth. It also delivered unprecedented imbalances. China’s leaders under Xi Jinping will once again have to liberalize the economy and dramatically change the institutional structure of power in spite, once again, of elite opposition.
I should start by saying that I was a little disappointed, but not terribly surprised, by the PBoC’s announcement two weeks ago that it would cut interest rates. The fact that rates were cut, even though many reformers within the administration were very much opposed, exemplifies the challenges that Beijing will face in 2015.
As China’s economy continues to slow, a lot of sectors, especially among the more heavily indebted, are suffering losses and running into cashflow problems. There have been calls by the tradable goods sector to depreciate the currency and even more urgent calls by the capital-intensive sector to cut interest rates. At the same time, however, there is also recognition that either move would slow the pace of rebalancing and increase the risk that China run into debt capacity constraints.
We are going to see this argument replayed many times in 2015.
All the various measures of inflation have dropped this year, with Monday’s data showing that the producer-price index dropped 2.7% in November, completing nearly three years of monthly declines. Consumer prices rose 1.4%, even lower than the 1.6% increase in October. As a result, real lending rates are strongly positive and real deposits rates are also probably positive.
I don’t expect either a sustained housing rebound or stable growth at current levels. The interest rate burden on Chinese businesses and state-related entities has certainly been much higher in 2014 than it was for most of this century.
While the benchmark deposit rate was officially lowered from 3.00% to 2.75%, the upper limit that banks can pay for deposits remained unchanged at 3.30%. It may seem strange to have both a benchmark rate and a “floating range” that establishes a cap, instead of just setting a cap, as was the case until very recently. The official reason for separating the two is that the “floating range” represents a partial liberalization of deposit rates. By widening the floating range, we are told, the PBoC is gradually eliminating the deposit cap until eventually banks will be able to set any rate they want.
Discriminatory pricing Because banks were always allowed to set deposit rates below, but never above, the benchmark rate, so that it was effectively the cap until recently, the logic seems a little faulty, and it is hard see why this represents the gradual liberalization of deposit rates. But there could nonetheless be a real impact on deposit rates that depends on a kind of “benchmark illusion”.
At first, the new deposit rate rules set last week seem to have had the expected effect. Within two weeks, however, three of the big four banks raised rates back to the upper limit, suggesting that the competition for deposits may be pretty fierce.
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