Las cifras oficiales arrojan un crecimiento económico anual espectacular (del 10% los últimos 5 años). Pero algunos economistas cuestionan que estos números reflejen un crecimiento real.
Robert Blumen, en el blog del Mises Institute:
The economy is still largely centrally planned. A significant percentage of the large industry is still state-owned. How can central planners overcome Mises' problem of economic calculation? It is likely that a large amount of the savings is simply wasted on projects that are not economically rational if the costs were properly accounted for (not hidden by their currency peg).
While the savings rate of Chinese is very high, most of the investments are probably wasted because bank loans are largely politically, not economically, driven.
See for example, this Daily Bell column; an article in James Grant's most recent Interest Rate Observer (paid content) called China Channels Monkeybrains; and Brad Setser's paper on the Chinese banking system.
Grant explains that the banking system uses Soviet-style planning based on gross volume lending targets. Setser describes how the banking system in the past enormous quantities of of bad debts, which were taken off their books by the central planners.
GDP measurement can be misleading or event irrelevant. Measuring growth GDP is like looking at the cash flow of a company while ignoring the balance sheet. Producing tons of physical stuff is not the same thing as economic growth if it costs more to produce things than they can be sold for. Also, GDP can increase during a credit-driven boom because the measurement of GDP has no way of distinguishing between mal-investments and economically sound investments.
Why do media commentators think that the currency peg is such a brilliant move? Ultimately the goal of production is consumption; exports can only be paid for with imports. The currency peg only distorts their cost structure of Chinese firms, making their costs appear in local currency lower. The cost of the currency peg is paid by the Chinese people as a whole through a lower purchasing power of money. These artificial costs encourage firms in some industries to produce goods for export to the US market that Americans cannot afford. To maintain the peg, the Bank of China was required to accumulate dollars which they then loaned back to the US government, Fannie, and Freddie. As these loans will surely default (either through inflation or outright default) it will become clear many Chinese people worked hard and saved to give away a lot of valuable goods for free. The entire strategy is a massive wealth transfer scheme from Chinese savers to American consumers and the US government. This is not a "growth strategy" at all, it is an impoverishment strategy.
Blumen cree, no obstante, que parte del crecimiento chino sí es real:
I wouldn't know how to measure the proportion of real growth out of the total economic activity but I suspect that there is some of each. Even though bank lending may not be economically rational, there is a lot of foreign direct investment going on that is surely profit-motivated.
