Concerted efforts can help boost growth

By Ed Zhang (China Daily) Updated: 2014-07-21 07:15

No one should be mistaken about the strengths and weaknesses of China's economy, based on its growth records of the first half of 2014. It has the unquestionable ability to deliver continuing growth, despite many short-term problems. But its ability to deliver reform, which Chinese sometimes call transition, is still in question.

To be sure, there won't be a major crash of any sort - in the bursting of a real estate bubble or in sweeping defaults of local government debts or in huge stockpiles as a result of massive manufacturing overcapacity. Alarms were sounded quite a few times about such a crisis, but none has materialized.

One set of problems in Shanghai and Guangzhou can be offset by another, largely different set in the central and western frontier regions, where many cities are still in the early stage of their industrialization. At the same time, a central government that is capable of regulating population growth shouldn't have a shortage of means to balance the country's economic resources.

There is no need to doubt, at this point, whether China will sustain its GDP growth - and along with it, its investment in fixed assets, exports and consumer spending - at a level that is reasonably attainable, given its ability to manage the overall economy.

Economists and government think tanks can keep sending out alarms. Their main function is to serve as an early warning system for the macroeconomic policymakers before they take pro-cyclical moves, as Premier Li Keqiang said, to prevent the business cycle from changing too wildly.

More specifically, for at least 10 years, one strategy can be used repeatedly to generate growth and jobs in China without leading to waste. Modernizing public infrastructure for still underdeveloped areas, building more nuclear power stations, erecting recharge stations for electric vehicles nationwide and phasing out coal stoves in all small towns and villages - each of these would help the country generate a lot of GDP. Similar things can be done on the provincial level, so long as local governments maintain a favorable credit rating record.