Page 17 - CCFA Journal - Sixth Issue

加中金融 宏观经济 MacroEcon

Constraints on easing stimulus

It is gratifying that the Central Economic Work Conference in December 2021 reiterated that “adhering to the requirement of focusing
on economic construction is the party's basic line”, and in 2022, economic work should be “steady at the head and seek progress
while maintaining stability”. The side has clearly proposed not to engage in “carbon charge”, not to shorten long-term goals, not to
turn protracted wars into surprise wars, to avoid the fallacy of synthesis, and not to overweight. But we also need to see that the
room for easing is limited, and we cannot expect the economy to rebound immediately with an order from the central government.
Specifically, the difficulties and obstacles to future economic recovery are as follows.

 First of all, it is very difficult to stimulate foreign demand. There are only a few tools such as increasing export tax rebates
and RMB depreciation, but the space is limited.
 Secondly, in the context of the raging global Omicron virus variant, the difficulty of China’s epidemic prevention has greatly
increased. Coupled with important events such as the Winter Olympics and the Asian Games, there is little room to adjust
the dynamic clearing policy in 2022.
 Third, increasing fiscal subsidies to households affected by the epidemic can partially offset the impact of the epidemic on
consumption. However, according to tradition, China’s official fiscal deficit has limited room to increase, and local
governments’ special debt and hidden debt are mainly used by local governments. Applied to infrastructure investment and
industrial parks that are considered to have a return on investment. Various special credit arrangements and re-lending of
the central bank are also used to support various business activities and cannot be used on consumption subsidies.
 Fourth, infrastructure investment will definitely be the main focus of steady growth in 2022, and infrastructure investment
will inevitably rebound, but we cannot be blindly optimistic. Taking into account the need to reduce systemic financial risks,
the central government still emphasizes “resolutely curbing new hidden debts of local governments”, and the PPP, which was
popular in the last round of economic stimulus, has proved to be ineffective, so local governments still need to rely heavily
on special projects. debt. However, the annual quota of special debt financing has risen from 2.15 trillion in 2019 before the
epidemic to 3.75 trillion in 2020 and 3.65 trillion in 2021, and there is limited room for further substantial increase. Under
the premise that the scale of deficit and special debt cannot be significantly expanded, the central government may need to
support various infrastructure investments through development banks, central enterprises such as the State Railway Group,
and various special loan arrangements from the central bank. However, we conservatively estimate that the land revenue of
local governments may drop by 2 trillion to 3 trillion in 2022, so even if there is a special debt quota that was not used up in
2021 and moved to 2022, even if the special debt quota in 2022 is increased, it will be very important. It is difficult to offset
the decline in local government land sales revenue.
 Fifth, in terms of real estate, although the central government proposes to implement city-specific policies to “support the
commercial housing market to better meet the reasonable housing needs of buyers”, it still emphasizes that “housing is not
for speculation”, and the property tax may still be promoted, similar to the monetized shantytown reform policy of 2015-
2018 has little chance of being implemented again. Moreover, the real estate industry will inevitably show a downward trend
after going through the boom period brought about by the last round of monetized shed reform, which may not be reversed
by stimulus policies. The social security housing sector is expected to be further promoted in 2022, but in the context of
financial constraints in various regions, it is unrealistic to expect local governments to build social security housing on a large
scale. A lot of waste, accelerating the problem of oversupply of local housing.

综合考虑以上因素，今年 GDP 增速超过 5%的难度很高。宽松刺激政策必然会加码，但也面临多重限制，政策空间已经远
不如以往，中国经济的潜在增速也在下降，要重复 2009 年和 2016 年那种不惜成本、强势拉动经济的做法已经非常困难，
后遗症恐怕也非常之高。以 2021 年三季度 4.9%的 GDP 同比增速为基准，出口贡献约为 2.4 个百分点，若 2022 年出口对增
长的贡献为零，如果其他因素不变，GDP 增速就会掉到 3%以下。

 消费需求方面，2021 年三季度零售实际增长 3.2%。由于新冠疫情暴发频次加密，即使政府大幅增加对受疫情影响
的居民和企业的财政补贴，消费增速可能在短期内也很难回到 3%以上，更不用说 5%以上，消费很有可能是 2022 年
GDP 增长保五的拖累项而非拉动项。
 房地产投资方面，去除价格因素，2021 年三季度已经是零增长。2022 年上半年几乎确定是负增长，需要下半年的
反弹来避免大幅下滑。
 基建方面，因为传统上地方政府承担了全国九成左右的基建投资，在地方政府卖地收入下降和中央严控地方隐性
负债的背景下，期待基建投资大幅反弹也是不现实的。而基建投资对 GDP 的贡献在 10%左右，基建对 GDP 的拉动效
应也显著小于房地产，我们也不能指望基建投资的一枝独秀就能让 GDP 大幅反弹。制造业投资是 2021 年的亮点，
但 2022 年面临的阻力可能会明显上升。持续的疫情、放缓的出口增速和更为理性的新能源策略可能会对制造业投
资造成一定的影响。

CCFA JOURNAL OF FINANCE February 2022
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