The phenomenon of "whole words" in China's economy is worth noting. What framework, refactoring, supply side, demand side, etc., after a while there will be a bunch of new words, but the problem is still there. Why is that? This is closely related to the superficiality of China's economic research. I have noticed that there are two major problems in China's economic research.
First, it is more about "finding similarities in historical experience" and comparing the history of a certain country and period with China's economy. Therefore, applying the results of people's development to China is regarded as an inevitable trend in China's future. For example, the historical context of Japan and South Korea is used to illustrate the inevitability of China's economic slowdown.
The second is to go through textbooks, find some nouns from them, use them as fashionable words, and then use them to outline the Chinese economy.
The first research method is very annoying, and its key question is: is it not a big problem to regard the failure of others as a historical necessity of development, as our future development trend?
Recently, a major think tank held a seminar to study Japan's decline for more than 20 years. This should have been a lesson for us, but some people at the seminar believed that Japan's development was a historical necessity and that our development path could not surpass Japan's destiny. I really don't understand what it means for the state to raise such an expert.
What we want to see is: how people do it, what kind of problems have occurred, then how should we do it, so as to avoid the same problem. In other words, what we should look at is what we can do to overcome the "Japanese dilemma," not how to adapt.
In many recent articles on "China's economic slowdown", there are also frequent examples of South Korea and Japan, saying that these countries have an inflection point of high economic growth under what circumstances and at what point in time, and we are bound to have such problems at the same point in time.
It is sad to read such a statement. Why did their yesterday have to be our today? Why are they necessarily our future today? So is there any hope for our future? Can such comparisons help us in any way?
The second method of research is "whole word". Why "whole word"? Because it has to be "profound". It is profound and knowledgeable to use "words" that no one or leaders have heard of in the past to show that their research is profound and knowledgeable, but is there a solution to "finishing the words"?
Nothing new, just tell us a bunch of words, so there is a framework, reconstruction, supply side, demand side and so on. Explain the importance of structural reforms with a bunch of "new words," and even more, they'll tell us what losers do, and we should learn from others.
Isn't it? Isn't what we are doing now following the path of Japan's failure? We can't see the destruction of the Japanese economy by the road of financial capitalism, we can't see the harm of financial short-termization and speculation on the Japanese real economy, and the solution given by everyone is "leverage", so isn't the leverage getting higher and higher? Isn't this the reality of China's economy?
What I see is the fact that the marketization and liberalization of finance have destroyed the "host banking system" that has long supported the development of Japan's real economy. At that time, the loans of the host bank to the enterprise were often 5 years, 10 years, or even 30 years, and the industrial development plan arranged by the enterprise according to such a capital term was in vain in the process of financial marketization and liberalization.
Because the prevalence of financial speculation and the trend of financial short-termization have caused serious problems in the capital turnover of the host banks, especially during the Asian financial crisis, a serious liquidity crisis occurred.
Companies have used long-term loans and it is impossible to return them to the banks; the mismatch between the deposit and loan terms of the banks is getting worse and worse, and the result is that the capital chain is broken. Coupled with the cross-shareholding between enterprises, the crisis spread and transmission is very intense. In the end, the Japanese economy was brought down and collapsed.
Therefore, I think that the key problem in destroying the Japanese economy is finance, which is the inevitable result of the departure of the supreme financial capital from the center of gravity of the real economy in the process of financial marketization and liberalization. In China, how many people are willing to admit such logic?
seldom. Why not admit it? Because their education and the textbooks they have read do not have such a theory. This is the sadness of China's economic research – the theory has reached the point of ignoring reality.
Now, Japan is practicing "Abenomics." The core of "Abenomics" is deflation, but some people focus on prices, which is too superficial and bookish. In my opinion, the core of "Abenomics" is to reduce the financing costs of the Japanese real economy, send long-term liquidity to the market, make the financial market more conducive to the formation of capital, and cultivate the rapid development of Japan's new real economy.
Of course, this is not a year or two thing, so many people only rely on one or two years of GDP and CPI data to say that "Abenomics" failed, which is really too small, really a bit of "Yan Que An Zhi Hong Hu Zhi Zhi" feeling.
A friend who had just returned from a study tour in Japan told me that Japan's recession was an illusion. The reason is that Japan's high-tech products represented by robots are advancing by leaps and bounds. So I think Japan is preparing to overtake in curves.
In the past 30 years, China's opening up, Japan's industrial transfer and economic and financial crisis have enabled China to gain huge development opportunities, and in Japan's traditional advantageous industries, China has almost completely surpassed Japan. But what about the future? The process of global economic restructuring is actually a process of reshuffling, with Japan and the United States renewing cooperation and China stirring up trouble, all of which actually have the charm of winning time for themselves.
Therefore, the key problem of China's economy is still a financial problem, or China's financial market is getting more and more distant from the problem of capital formation. This problem cannot be solved, and there are doubts about the improvement of China's economy.