stimulus

The economic data for the third quarter of 2009, released almost two weeks ago, confirmed an impressive recovery in China’s economy, supported by very large fiscal and monetary stimulus. Real GDP growth rose to 8.9 percent year-on-year in the third quarter. This is clearly good news, for China and many other countries whose economies are benefiting at the moment from strong demand from China. As the World Bank economic team for China (which I'm part of) argues in more detail in the new China Quarterly Update, it also means that it is time to consider a less expansionary macroeconomic policy stance and focus more on the structural reforms needed to rebalance the economy and get more growth out of the domestic economy on a sustained basis.

It’s not as if China has not been hit by the global recession. China’s real economy has been hit hard. Exports fell sharply since November last year, and the contribution of net external trade to GDP growth was minus 3.6 percent points in the first three quarters of this year – with the negative contribution particularly large in the third quarter (in year-on-year terms).

When China’s government started to work on and implement its massive stimulus program in November last year in light of a rapid deterioration of the world economy, economists working on China had to work out what it all meant for China’s growth, the composition of growth, and the rest of the world.

Many foreign observers doubted that the stimulus would be effective enough to boost domestic demand in the first place. But even among those with higher expectations in this regard—like we at the World Bank—many wondered what the stimulus would mean for the rest of the world.

Usually, when one country grows much faster than other countries, we expect imports into that country to rise much faster than exports (or, fall much less). However, in the case of China, exports had for quite some time been outgrowing imports by a large margin and many were skeptical that this would change even as economic conditions were changing in a pronounced way.

Getting a clear view on where China’s economy is heading is not easy at the moment, as evidenced by large variations in GDP growth forecasts. One of the confusing developments is that while exports have continued to do badly recently, the domestic economy has exceeded most observers’ expectations by a wide margin.

Working in recent weeks on the World Bank’s new China Quarterly Update, released today, we have been trying to determine how the economy has been doing on balance, what the prospects are, and what this means for economic policy. In this blog, I will summarize our understanding of recent developments and prospects, leaving the upshot for economic policies for a later discussion (keep reading after the jump).

I'm sorry it has been a while since the last East Asia & Pacific regional roundup. A lot has happened, so let's get right to it. As usual, the downward trends continue across the region. The Asian Development Bank just came out with their Development Outlook report and their growth forecasts for this year for emerging markets are bleak – only 2.3% growth in Southeast Asia and 4.7% for the region. The average is pulled up by China, where ADB's estimate for growth is 7%, which is slightly above the World Bank's forecast of 6.5% for China.

The rate of change is dramatic since 2007 when the regional average growth rate was and average of 8%. The countries most dependent on exports were hit the hardest, such as Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, and China. Speaking of which to give the latest examples include Korea, where exports declined by 21% in March, but the good news was that this drop was less than the 26% decline in the first two months of the year. Korea also experienced a 10.3% decline in industrial output in February.