Rebalancing and Small Europe
Martin Wolf has a very interesting piece on China’s attempt to rebalance its growth model from exports to domestic demand. Wolf remarkably shows how this attempt has been going on for at least a decade, with unequal pace, and several stop-and-go. I’d add that the crisis itself played a contradictory role. China on one side was one of the first countries in 2009 to implement a robust stimulus plan amounting to more than 10% of GDP; on the other, it did not resist (as most countries) more or less hidden protectionist measures and currency manipulation. Wolf concludes that, while successful, the rebalancing from external to domestic demand led to excessive (and not necessarily productive) investment. The new rebalancing challenge of China lies in increasing income and consumption of its population.
What I take from this is that China fully grasps its new role in the world economy. Its leadership understood long ago that the transition from developing/emerging economy to fully developed economy needed to pass among other things through less dependence on exports. A large dynamic economy cannot rely on growth in the rest of the world for its prosperity. Even the debate on reforming the welfare state and on health care had as one of his reasons the necessity to reduce precautionary savings. The rebalancing act is long and unsteady, but definitively under way.
It is also worth noticing that a better balance between domestic and external demand in the large economies is crucial element in reducing the macroeconomic fragility of the world economy through decreasing trade imbalances.
It is striking, in contrast, how Europe remains trapped in a sort of small country syndrome. The “Berlin View” permeating the Fiscal Compact advocates fiscal discipline and domestic demand compression, in order to improve competitiveness and to foster export-led growth. Besides the fact that it is not working, this is equivalent to tying Europe’s fate to the performance of the rest of the world, giving up the ambition of being a major player in the world economic arena. What a difference with the ambition and the forward looking attitude of China…
-
April 6, 2012 at 10:31 amLa Cina è lontana da Berlino « Keynes blog
-
April 10, 2013 at 12:22 pmCockroach Ideas and Weak Arguments | Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist
-
May 19, 2013 at 2:40 pmWho’s Rebalancing | Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist
-
November 28, 2013 at 10:28 amFree Riders in Frankfurt | Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist
-
October 23, 2015 at 1:17 pmDraghi the Fiscal Hawk | Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist