Streetwise Professor

About 6 years ago, reflecting on China’s massive stimulus effort in the aftermath of the crisis, I referred to the country as the “Michael Jackson economy,” sustained by artificial stimulants, and extending the analogy, predicted it would not end well. In the years since, Chinese economic statistics have performed according to plan with metronomic regularity, but all of the distortions inherent in an investment-driven, credit-financed boom only accumulated. Throughout this period, China interfered in markets, by the manipulation of crucial prices, notably interest rates and the exchange rate, and the implementation of measures to direct capital to favored sectors and firms.

Signs of resource misallocation have abounded most notably in the form of massive overcapacity in myriad industries (e.g., steel), the construction of vacant cities, and a relentless rise in debt-to-GDP that is approaching the stratospheric levels attained by Japan before its crash in the early 1990s.

It was inevitable that this was not sustainable. But although Chinese authorities indicated at some level they understood this, and talked about transitioning away from the credit, export and investment-driven growth model towards a consumption-driven one, political economy considerations that tend to favor established interests, and no doubt a deep fear about their inability to maintain control and social peace during a transition, kept them from kicking the old habits. And now it appears that the Michael Jackson-esque denouement is nigh.

All signs are of an impending economic crisis in China. The recent stock market decline is one symptom (but mainly a symptom), as are other economic data. But the surest sign is the panic evidenced by truly gargantuan stimulus measures (totaling around $2 trillion, or four plus TARPs, according to Christopher Balding’s figuring) and the recent decision to devalue the yuan.

The real slowdown is an especial concern because of the Rube Goldberg nature of the Chinese financial system, and the massive amounts of debt that has accumulated since 2009. The government is using a variety of measures to take the associated risk on its balance sheet (although it is using indirect means to conceal this fact), but even the government balance sheet is not bottomless. In such a debt-dominated and opaque financial system, a full-blown financial crisis that would greatly exacerbate the real slowdown is quite possible.

There are a couple of lessons here that need to be emphasized. The first is the dubious value of GDP as a measure of economic performance, especially in an investment-driven, highly managed economy. Investment is a cost incurred in the expectation of realizing a greater benefit in the future: it is not a benefit  in itself. In an economy where price signals and incentives are deeply distorted by financial repression, capital controls, and crucially a high-powered incentive system that ties remuneration and promotion of government officials to GDP targets, there will be massive malinvestment. With this malinvestment, future returns will be small and negative, and often insufficient to service the debt used to finance it.

When the investment is made it looks great in the GDP figures. But in an economy where investment accounts for upwards of 50 percent of GDP, the destruction of value caused by the malinvestment is staggeringly large.

The GDP-linked high powered incentive system is likely especially pernicious. Investment decisions should be forward looking, but the incentive system drives officials to make “investments” based on their current cost, not the expectation of their future returns.  Big investment (cost!) today means big GDP today means life is good for the cadres. This is beyond perverse.*

Another lesson is that no one should be surprised. Logic and experience lead to the same conclusion. Economic logic teaches that distortions of prices and top-down resource allocation mechanisms destroy wealth rather than create it. Experience, from extreme cases like the USSR to less extreme ones like Japan, illustrate vividly the hard reckoning that a managed system must eventually face.

I am only surprised that people are surprised. Even though logic and experience should have led people to question the Chinese “miracle,” and to doubt rather than tout its GDP figures, for years Smart People** have marveled at Chinese economic performance and sang paeans to its wise government steersmen. They were mesmerized by GDP figures, and confused costs with benefits. But just as it was inevitable that Michael Jackson’s dependence on artificial means would eventually result in a health crisis, it was inevitable that China’s dependence on artificial stimulants and distortionary interventions driven by political agendas and warped incentives wold result in an economic crisis.

And there are mounting signs that that moment has arrived. Perhaps it will result in a serious crisis. Perhaps it will result in multiple lost decades (a la Japan). But one way or another, forecasts of future Chinese economic dominance are going to look quite embarrassing.

* This is a different issue than whether Chinese officials routinely falsify economic data. Given the high powered incentives at the lower and middle levels of the governing hierarchy, and the need for the government to demonstrate its alleged economic competence at the upper levels, the incentives to falsify data are acute.

** H/T @soncharm, of Rhymes With Cars and Girls.