China 1.0 = Japan 2.0
Good article.
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Is China Repeating Japan’s Missteps?
Beijing may seem dynamic, but it’s heading down a path we’ve seen before.
China and Japan may seem to inhabit alternative economic universes. After more than two decades of stagnation, Japan is a fading global power that can’t seem to revive its fortunes no matter what unorthodox gimmicks it tries. By contrast, China’s ascent to superpower status appears relentless as it gains wealth, technology, and ambition.
Yet these Asian neighbors have a lot in common, and that doesn’t bode well for China’s economic future. The sad case of Japan should serve as a cautionary tale for China’s policymakers. Beijing pursued almost identical economic policies to Tokyo’s to generate its rapid development. Now China’s leaders are repeating the missteps the Japanese made that tanked Japan’s economy and thwarted its revival.
“Just like Japan, we believe China will eventually face a period of much slower growth,” Goldman Sachs investment strategists said in a report earlier this year. Analysts at ratings agency Moody’s, writing in May, warned that China could suffer “a prolonged period of sub-optimal economic growth and persistent deflationary pressures, or possibly even economic stagnation.” James Chanos, founder of fund manager Kynikos Associates, has compared China’s trajectory to Japan’s “on steroids.”
Some may disregard these warnings as the same predictions of doom that China has shrugged off time and again. But recall that 30 years ago, few foresaw the decline of Japan, either. Japan was the East Asian giant poised to overtake the U.S. as the world’s top economy. Driving that ascent was an economic system that many considered superior to laissez-faire American capitalism. By fostering close, cooperative ties among the state, big corporations, and banks, Japan’s policymakers encouraged investment and guided a national industrial strategy. Bureaucrats in Tokyo interfered with markets to a degree unthinkable in the U.S. by protecting nascent industries and directing financing to favored sectors and companies. Backed by such support, Japanese companies burst onto the world stage and pushed their American competitors to the wall.
But even as Japan appeared destined for greatness, its economy was, in reality, starting to rot. Those clubby ties among finance, business, and government misallocated capital and led to wasteful investments. Growth was given a boost by cheap credit in the second half of the 1980s, but that also helped inflate debt levels and stock and property prices. When this “bubble economy” burst in the early 1990s, the financial industry was flattened. Japan has yet to fully recover.
China could be hurtling down a similar path. The methods Beijing employed to generate rapid growth—directing finance, nurturing targeted industries, and promoting exports—are replicas of Japan’s. And since the state in China’s “state capitalism” plays an even larger economic role than Japan’s officious bureaucracy does, the Chinese government interferes with markets to a greater degree.
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