21 February 2013
Asia Insights: Reasons not to be too bullish on China
· We reiterate our view that the consensus forecast for China’s economic growth is too optimistic. We expect GDP growth to slow in H2 to 7.3% y-o-y while the consensus expects it to be 8.1%.
· We list five recent developments that support our cautious view, including local governments lowering their 2013 GDP growth targets by 0.5 percentage points (pp), and the severe air pollution problems that could spur Beijing to rethink its growth model.
· The strength of coincident macro data may continue in Q1, but we believe leading policy indicators such as total social financing and M2 growth will soon moderate from currently high levels.
When the market was overwhelmed by China’s hard-landing risks in the summer of 2012, we were positive (see Reasons not to be too bearish about China, 29 June 2012, and China primed to surprise on the upside, 14 September 2012) as we believed policy easing would be an effective catalyst for a growth recovery. An economic recovery is now underway, but unlike consensus, we expect it to be short lived.
We reiterate our out-of-consensus view that growth will surprise on the downside in H2. We expect GDP growth to slow to 7.3% y-o-y in H2 from 8.1% in H1, for a full-year 2013 average of 7.7%, while the consensus expects the growth recovery to sustain above 8% throughout 2013 (Figure 1). We believe that the government will tighten policy in 2013 due to concerns over inflation and financial risks. With slowing potential growth, a tight labour market and the prospect of surging food prices, we expect CPI inflation to rise to 3.5% y-o-y in 2013 (Consensus: 3.1%; 2012: 2.6%), and rise to 4.2% y-o-y in H2, which we expect to cause the People’s Bank of China to hike interest rates twice in H2. Given the surges in shadow banking activities during H2 2012, particularly for trust loans, the financial risks associated with shadow banking have risen sharply in recent months. We believe the government will tighten policies to contain these risks and, in turn, drag down growth in H2.
Recent developments support our view. First, there are increasing signs that the government is concerned about financial risks. The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has asked banks to control the risks in the “fund pools” practice, which allows banks to pay back maturing wealth management products by issuing new products. The Chairman of the Bank of China, Xiao Gang, called the practice a “Ponzi game” in a China Daily article last year. Many local governments have also voiced concerns over the financial condition of LGFVs in their 2013 budget documents, which were recently made public.
Second, another round of energy/utilities price reform appears to be in the pipeline. On 20 February, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Railway (MOR) raised the rail freight tariff by 13.0%, from RMB0.1151 per ton-km to RMB0.1301, the largest hike since 2003. The tariff hike suggests that the government may move to lift other administratively suppressed prices, such as electricity and other public utilities, which will exert upward pressure on inflation.
Third, the property price rebound – the composite property price index of 70 cities has risen for seven consecutive months – may force the government to tighten credit supply/M2 growth (Figure 2), which should also act as a drag on growth, since property investment is a large component of fixed asset investment. After a meeting yesterday, the State Council announced five measures to cool the property market: 1) all major cities except Lhasa shall set price targets for new residential buildings; 2) a crackdown on home purchases made for speculative purposes; 3) an increase in the supply of the medium- and small-sized homes; 4) speed up the construction of social housing projects; and 5) strengthen regulations on the property market. These measures suggest policymakers will maintain a tight rein on the property market.
Fourth, local governments have lowered their growth targets for 2013 by an average of 0.5pp from 2012. The optimistic consensus view that GDP growth will remain strong in H2 and 2014 is, to a large extent, based on the political argument that the new leaders will stimulate growth in the first year of their leadership. However, latest government documents contradict this view. As illustrated in Figure 3, the 2012 GDP growth target set by local governments was only an average of 0.1pp less than the actual GDP growth (Column E), but they cut the growth target by 0.5pp from 2012 to 2013 (Column G). Moreover, the new party chiefs in Chongqing and Guangdong, both rising political stars, chose to cut their GDP growth targets aggressively (Guangdong: 8.0% for 2013, among the lowest of the growth target; Chongqing: 12.0% for 2013, slashed by 1.5pp from 13.5% in 2012). This suggests to us that the new generation of leaders may be starting to recognize that a moderate growth slowdown might be good for China in the long run.
Lastly, the severe air pollution reported throughout China could act as a wake-up call for Chinese leaders, and may spur them to rethink the current growth model. In early February 2013, air pollution in Beijing, as measured by the PM2.5 as in Particulate Matter up to 2.5 micrometers in size, rose above 1000 µg/m3 at one point (PM2.5 guidelines by the World Health Organization set a limit of 25 µg/m3 for the 24-hour mean); air in many other cities has also been heavily polluted (Figure 4). We expect the government to crack down on the heavy industries that generate pollution. While this is a positive for the welfare of the economy, in the short term it will inevitably reduce growth. The recent proposal to improve gasoline quality will likely also exert upward pressure inflation. The pollution will also help to increase the urgency of price reforms on energy and utilities which will remove implicit subsidies and restore energy demand to a more sustainable level.
While the strength of coincident macro data may continue in Q1, we believe leading policy indicators such as total social financing and M2 growth may soon moderate from currently high levels. The government’s 2013 working plan, to be released at the National People’s Congress meeting in March, should provide more information on the leadership’s overall policy stance.
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| Fig. 1: GDP growth forecasts: Nomura vs Consensus Source: Consensus Economics Inc. and Nomura Global Economics. |
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| Fig. 2: Property price index and M2 growth Source: WIND and Nomura Global Economics. |
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| Fig. 3: Local governments’ real GDP growth and growth targets Note: The italic numbers in Column D mean that those governments were aimed to achieve growth higher than the specified rates. Source: CEIC, local government documents and Nomura Global Economics. |
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| Fig. 4: Satellite map of PM2.5 intensity in China (annual exposure between 2008-2010) Source: NASA Earth Observatory and Nomura Global Economics. |
For The Complete Document: Asia Insights:Reasons not to be too bullish on China
Zhiwei Zhang
Wendy Chen
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