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Economist: Potential Risks Underlying Economic Stability Cannot be Ignored.

Zou Dongtao from China’s Central University of Finance and Economics published an opinion piece in which he discussed six potential risks underlying the stability of China’s economy and warned that these risks cannot be ignored.

Zuo stated that the foundation of economic stability is not solid and that conflicts in economic operations are accumulating. The potential risks are in the follow areas:

1. Marginal efficacy of investment is diminishing. With investment interests lacking and more investment needed to maintain the current economic growth, the investment-driven economic model is not sustainable.

2. Production capacity surplus is increasing. In the first quarter of this year, over a third of the businesses in textiles, paper, synthetic fiber, nonferrous metal, ferrous metal, and steel indicated that they have serious over-capacity.

3. Consumption of electricity in manufacturing and railroad cargo volume remain low, showing slow industrial growth.

4. The money supply demonstrates fast growth while businesses have “anemia.” Although M2 reached one trillion yuan, many enterprises are short on cash flow.

5. The revenue of the central government shows a negative growth and local government debts show increasing risks. Compared to same period last year, the central government’s revenue decreased by 5.2 percent.

6. Mid and small sized businesses continue to face serious issues. According to a recent survey of Chinese enterprises, on the most difficult issues businesses ranked the problems as follows: “labor costs rising” (78.3 percent), “excessive burden of social security and taxes” (56.2 percent), and "profit margin too low” (45.3 percent). 

Source: jrj.com.cn (Financial Sector), April 24, 2013
http://opinion.jrj.com.cn/2013/04/24073415253621.shtml