China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s annual rubber-stamp parliament session, will convene on Friday for a meeting set to focus on a problem many other countries wished they had: how to rein in an economy that has rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic.
“There have been intense discussions about monetary and fiscal policy,” said Wang Jun at the China Center for International Economic Exchange, a government think-tank in Beijing. “The primary goal is to stabilise leverage, but if policy [tightening] goes too far too quickly it may have a negative impact on financial markets as well as the real economy.”
The NPC will run for about a week and is typically a forum where previously agreed measures and policy objectives are formally approved. Last year’s session, however, was dominated by Chinese president Xi Jinping’s surprise announcement of a stringent national security law for Hong Kong after the city was rocked by anti-government protests in 2019.
The gathering also provides the biggest stage of the year for Xi to project his unchallenged grip on both the government and the Chinese Communist party as he prepares for an unprecedented third term in power in late 2022.
China’s post-Covid recovery contrasts starkly with the situation in the US, where the pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 500,000 Americans and President Joe Biden is pushing Congress to pass a $1.9tn economic stimulus package.
Guo Shuqing, one of China’s most powerful financial regulators, warned this week about the dangers of “extremely loose monetary policies” in the US and other pandemic-wracked economies, saying the measures could cause “too much fluctuation” in Chinese financial markets.
He added that China’s property market was still afflicted by “relatively large bubbles” and suggested lending rates would “rebound” this year. Guo, who heads the banking regulator and is also the most senior party official at China’s central bank, pronounced late last year that the real estate sector was the country’s “greatest grey rhino in terms of financial risk”.
Guo’s comments sparked a sell-off on regional markets, illustrating the difficult balance he and other financial officials must attempt to strike. Stimulus measures rolled out by Chinese president Xi Jinping’s administration early last year helped spur investment but also propelled debt levels in the world’s second-largest economy to about 270 per cent of GDP.
“While the leadership feels confident about the economy’s trajectory, there is still a lot of uncertainty,” said Andrew Polk at Trivium, a Beijing-based consultancy. “Authorities need to find a way to unleash consumption and pick up slack from industrial production and real estate investment.”
Shuang Ding, chief China economist at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong, said Beijing was likely to reduce its budget deficit to 3 per cent of GDP, down from 3.6 per cent last year. But he also forecast the Chinese economy would grow at least 6 per cent year on year, with “substantial room for outperformance”, and create 11m jobs.
“The most pressing economic issues are how to withdraw from last year’s expansionary fiscal policy and how to increase consumption,” said Jia Jinjing, an economics professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “The central deficit budget will be lower than last year but still above 3 per cent. We cannot rely too much on increased debt to spur consumption.”
NPC delegates will also formally pass the party’s 14th five-year economic plan, which is focused on achieving “self-reliance” in a number of critical technology sectors as well as ambitious environmental goals, including reaching peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2060.
The NPC session in 2020 was delayed for almost three months by the pandemic and fixated on the imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong.
This year, it is likely to approve measures that will further reduce the pro-democracy camp’s representation in the city’s legislature. It is also expected to unveil rules consolidating Beijing’s hold on an already pro-establishment “election committee” that chooses Hong Kong’s chief executive.
Dozens of Hong Kong democracy activists, including publisher Jimmy Lai and jailed student leader Joshua Wong, have been charged with alleged offences of the security law. In a speech last month, Xia Baolong, head of the Chinese government office responsible for Hong Kong, singled out Lai and Wong as “extremely vile anti-China elements”.
“There doesn’t seem to be any end to the crackdown,” said Willy Lam, a China politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Xi has made up his mind to snuff out Hong Kong’s opposition movement altogether. For ordinary people, Beijing will insist on ‘patriotic education’ in the schools and media.”
A Chinese academic who advises Beijing on Hong Kong issues said the territory had been “too unbridled” prior to last year’s passage of the national security law. “The central government had no other option,” said the academic, who asked not to be identified. “The Hong Kong opposition overestimated its power.”
Additional reporting by Xinning Liu in Beijing
Source: Economy - ft.com
