桐庐富春桃源景区:Of Blind Men and Elephants Grasping China's Economy

2011年 10月 18日 09:54
Of Blind Men and Elephants Grasping China's Economy

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How healthy - or otherwise - is China's economy? Like the proverbial blind men grasping an elephant, the answer likely depends on where you're standing.
That seemed to be the message Monday when China Real Time put a property developer, a private equity executive, a former ambassador and newly minted resource firm director, and a senior local financial journalist on a panel in Beijing.
'The world is not coming to an end in China,' said Wu Yibing, president of Citic Private Equity Funds Management Co., one of China's biggest local funds. According to Mr. Wu, the weighted average revenue for companies that Citic PE's U.S. dollar fund has invested in was up 70% in the first half of the year from a year earlier. Even as the world was losing faith in China, profit for those companies was up 90% over the same period, he said.
Similarly, Citic PE has found that its investments in Chinese city commercial banks were in better shape than it had anticipated, he added. That could indicate China's financial sector is holding up well despite worries that banks hold too many low-quality local government loans.
Back in January Citic PE forecast the two banks in which it had invested would have a nonperforming loan ratio of about 3% by the end of the first half. Instead their levels were about 1.5%, Mr. Wu said.
Property mogul Zhang Xin saw things differently - and claimed Mr. Wu's numbers would likely tell a different story in the three months since June.
'In my 16 years as a developer this [has been] one of the most difficult times,' said Ms. Zhang, chief executive of Soho China, singing a not unfamiliar tune.
With the government gradually reducing the supply of credit since early last year in an effort to bring inflation under control and bring down housing prices, property developers are feeling the strain. But for Ms. Zhang, the problems go deeper.
※State-owned enterprises are the ones who get the liquidity and they＊re the ones who are growing,§ she said when the debate turned to the plight of China＊s private sector, which has loaded up on high-interest rate loans from informal lenders and has been subject to a spate of recent bankruptcies in the entrepreneurial hub of Wenzhou. State firms ※are not the most efficient. They＊re not the ones who will drive China through the twenty-first century.§
※The allocation of capital has huge consequences,§ said Ms. Zhang.
Those were fears echoed by Wang Shuo, managing editor of business-news company Caixin Media.
※I get the feeling that in the last 12 years nothing has changed in China＊s banking system,§ said Mr. Wang. China＊s banks historically operated as a branch of the government, funneling capital where the central planners thought it was most needed. In the late 1990s the government started relieving the banks of the mountains of bad debt they＊d accumulated in the hope of making them commercial-oriented.
Mr. Wang also said that the corruption and safety issues arising from China＊s breakneck development of a high speed rail network had rendered the project ※meaningless and useless.§
Former Australian Ambassador to China and current board member of Australian miner Fortescue Metals Geoff Raby had a different take. A long-time China bull Mr. Raby agreed with the proposition that what equates to a marginal misallocation of capital doesn＊t really matter to China＊s overall growth prospects.
While he clearly felt the recent sell-off of stocks on fears that China＊s economy was slowing was hugely overblown, he had more time for concerns about Chinese corporate disclosures.
He said he didn＊t think corporate transparency was any worse now than before, but ※I don＊t know why people believed [the numbers] so much in the past.§
That the Shanghai Stock Exchange＊s benchmark index is trading at a fraction its 2007 peak is a sign that ※people are finally starting to work it out.§
Dinny McMahon
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