The Second Great Depression Wends Its Way Forward in December

And lands in China.



Well China isn't quite in Great Depression mode yet, but manufacturing activity - which forms the core of the Chinese economy and accounts for 43% of all activity - is already very close to a technical recession, and phew, it wasn't very long ago that the Chinese economy was registering double digit growth. So the turn around is gigantic. The "close to technical recession in manufacturing industry" call comes from the people over at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, who compile the China purchasing managers index, and they base their judgement on the fact that their Chinese manufacturing index has now been registering contraction for five consecutive months.

Now for those of you who are new to the world of Purchasing Manager's Indexes (PMIs), welcome. Basically these indexes are very useful, since they give you a "just in time" point of reference to tell you what is actually happening. These are composite indexes - measuring things like current output, new orders (both domestic and export), employment and input prices. They are not perfect, but they are reasonably accurate - the fit which you can get between composite PMIs (manufacturing and services combined) and GDP is often attractively good - and in a country like China where the main data we get is year-on-year (which in a critical moment of rapid change like this one is virtually useless) it is very hard to see what is happening. The Shanghai-based Industrial Bank estimate, for example, that GDP growth in China will be 5.6% in Q4 2008. But what does that data point - if accurate - tell us? That the economy is slowing fast, well we already knew that. But just how fast? Well GDP was 9% in Q3 - down from 10.1% in Q2. So the deceleration is very rapid, but did the Chinese economy actually manage to contract in Q4? I doubt it, but it may do in Q1 2009, although the only way we would really know would be if the National Statistics Office published quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted numbers, which as far as I can see they don't. Indeed only a small group of highly developed economies actually take the trouble to do this, and you don't even find all EU member countries doing it yet, although Eurostat (thank god for Eurostat) do require such data from members (but those of you who ever get round to checking will see there are still blanks for some countries in the Eurostat quarterly releases).

Hence you can see why, in the case of somewhere like China, the PMIs are very, very useful, for those of us who would like to try and follow what is happening as it actually happens.

As for the PMI itself, China’s composite manufacturing index contracted for the fifth consecutive month in December as recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan bit deep into demand for exports - indeed China's exports fell year on year for the first time in seven years in November. The CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index registered a seasonally adjusted 41.2, compared with a record low of 40.9 in November. On such indexes any reading below 50 reflects a contraction.

Despite the apparent small improvement in December the current output index actually fell sharply, and was down to a record low of 38.6 from 39.2 in November, so production was falling, and the index was basically nudged up slightly by other factors, such as the measure of new orders which rebounded to 37 from 36.1, driven by a rise in export orders to 33.6 from a horrific 28.2 in November. However, according to the report, Chinese manufacturers reduced the size of their workforces at a series record in December, and the employment index has now contracted for five consecutive months, to hit 45.2 in December.


So where exactly are we? Well we aren't (quite) in the Second Great Depression yet, but the situation is deteriorating, and rapidly. Manufacturing output is now contracting at quite a sharp pace, while it was rising in the first half of the year at something like a 15% year on year rate. In a useful summary of the Chinese situation back in November, Nouriel Roubini defined a hard landing in China - which he felt was coming - as follows:

There is thus now a growing risk of a hard landing in China. Let us be clear what we mean by hard landing. In a country with the potential growth of China, a hard landing would occur if the growth rate of the economy were to slow down to 5-6% as China needs a growth rate of 9-10% to absorb about 24 million folks joining the labor force every year; it needs a growth rate of 9-10% to move every year about 12-14 million poor rural farmers to the modern industrial/manufacturing urban sector.

This is more or less the consensus view of what we used to think a hard landing would mean in China, but I think the latest data already take us beyond that. I think there is now a real risk of a technical recession in the more or less classic sense of two consecutive quarters of negative growth (let's say that the risk is 50-50 at this point), and of serious economic and financial dislocation following in the train of this (btw, just how quickly can you burn your way through $1.7 trillion in reserves, it will be an interesting experiment I think).

Brad Setser (further down the same link) has long been more cautious on China, being sceptical about the impact of a dramatic slowdown in exports (and even more importantly in export oriented investment) on an export driven economy, but those of us who have been closely watching other export dependent economies like Germany and Japan over the last decade and a half were surely not quite so sceptical. However even Brad himself is clear that the possibility of an export downturn feeding its way back into the domestic economy - via some sort of negative feedback process - is real enough:

But the real key to forecasting China’s future growth consequently is determining whether domestic consumption and above all investment will continue to grow strongly in the absence of strong export demand. Remember, over the past few years both domestic investment and exports increased rapidly. If they fall together as well, Chinese growth will slow quite significantly. And unfortunately the latest indicators seem to suggest that they are correlated; consequently domestic demand may fall along with exports.

The $1.7 trillion question is, then, just why China is so export dependent? Doubtless there are many factors at work, but one of these is, I am almost sure, China's very special demographics (30 years of one child per familiy policy), and the special problems that these present in the context of building a sustainable national pensions system at the same time as the population pyramid inverts. Obviously the absence of a credible pension system has to be one of the factors influencing the strong desire to save which we are seeing in China. Economics Nobel Franco Modigliani also thought this, and specifically addressed the Chinese saving puzzle in his last published paper:

China's per capita income ranks below 100th in the world. Its saving rate, however, has been one of the highest worldwide in recent decades. In this paper, we attempt to explain the seeming paradox within the framework of the Life-Cycle Hypothesis developed by Franco Modigliani. The key LCH variables are income and population growth. Our results based on data we put together from official sources show that income growth has been the dominant factor behind the dramatic increase in China's saving rate, as predicted by the LCH. Demographic structure and inflation also had significant impact on the fluctuations of the saving rate.
The Chinese Saving Puzzle and the Life-Cycle Hypothesis - Franco Modigliani and Shi Larry Cao

By Way Of Brief Conclusion

Well basically, the conclusion here is that there is no conclusion, at this point at least. But I would draw attention to two potential points of interest for all you "economy watchers".

Firstly, a couple of months back my fellow blogger Doug Muir drew our attention to a very interesting point being made by US economic historian Scott Reynolds Nelson:

As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two years ago, I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some interest to my colleagues in American business and labor history but probably unknown to everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the microfilm reader, I have been hearing weird echoes of recent events.

At the time of reading this I thought to myself hmmmm! This isn't that simple, but he is on to something. Basically I think no two (or does that make it now three) Great Depressions are ever really exactly alike. I certainly think the resemblence between what is going on now and what happened between 1929 and 1933 is more than passing (especially for the sequencing, of which more in another post), but evidently there are elements of the 1873 one too, and Scott Reynolds puts his finger on some of them, especially in the context of surplus to requirement investment and large capacity overhangs. So my best guess is that what we have is a hybrid, and that what is now happening in China is the best example of the underlying dynamics behind that other great depression that hit our grand- (or great grand) parents and that may well be now about to come back to hit us, boomerang style.

Which brings me to my second point, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which, as wikipedia explain, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, and raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. After the act was passed, many other countries retaliated with their own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, and American exports and imports plunged by more than half. Many economists now regard the Smoot-Hawley Act as having been the principal feedback catalyst for the severe reduction in U.S.-European trade, and which took it from the 1929 high down to the depressed levels of 1932 and which thus accompanied the start of the Great Depression. And here, in the spectre of a repeat performance comes just the danger we face in the wake of the dramatic contraction which is now underway in China.

It is my personal guess that the first major issue to face Barack Obama as President of the United States may well be what to do about China, and especially what to do about a China which lets - as I now suspect they may well do - the yuan float, in order to see it float DOWN as the economy unwinds. If this does indeed happen then Obama will really have to struggle to hold back the protectionist pressure I think.

China's Manufacturing Contracts Sharply In November

China’s manufacturing shrank by the most on record and export orders plunged, providing more evidence that recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan are sharply slowing what was previously the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a seasonally adjusted 38.8 in November from 44.6 in October, according to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing. The output index fell to 35.5 from 44.3, while the index of new orders dropped to 32.3 from 41.7. On these indexes any reading below 50 means contraction, and as can be seen in the chart below, China's manufacturing industry has now been contracting (month on month) in four of the last five months. The November reading stands out though, since the magnitude of the contraction has accelerated sharply.






A separate index - the CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index - reveals a similar picture, and fell to a seasonally adjusted 40.9 in November from 45.2 in October. The CLSA index, which was started in April 2004, is based on a survey of more than 400 manufacturing companies.

Output, new orders and export orders had record contractions. The output index fell to 39.2 in November from 43.4 in October, while the index of new orders declined to 36.1 from 43.8. The index of export orders dropped to 28.2 from 44.3, CLSA said.

A slump in property sales and building work is also undermining growth. Construction of homes, offices and factories contracted at least 16.6 percent in October after a 32.5 percent expansion a year earlier, according to a report from Macquarie Securities.

The Contraction In Chinese Manufacturing Accelerates In October

China's manufacturing contracted by the most on record last month as the global financial crisis cut demand for exports, a second survey showed. The CLSA China Purchasing Managers' Index fell to a seasonally adjusted 45.2 in October from 47.7 in September. The output index fell to 43.4 in October from 46.7 in September, while the index of new orders declined to 43.8 from 45.8. The index of export orders dropped to 44.3 from 45.9.


The government-backed China Federation of Logistics purchasing managers' index - published on 1 November - also showed a strong contraction, falling to 44.6 in October, the lowest level since the data began in 2005, from 51.2 in September.



Basically, not only does Chinese manufacturing seem to have been in contraction mode for the last several months now, the rate of contraction seems to be accelerating.

To be watched, and carefully.

China GDP Growth Slows Quite Rapidly In Q3 2008

China’s economic growth rate slipped into single digits in the third quarter for the first time in at least four years under the impact of the global credit crisis and weakness in the domestic property sector. Annual gross domestic product growth slowed more sharply than expected to 9.0 per cent from 10.1 per cent in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.



It was not immediately possible to pinpoint when growth was last weaker because China does not publish new quarterly data when it revises its annual GDP figures. nor was it possible to precisely calibrate the speed of the slowdown since we do not have seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter data. China's economic expansion was the weakest since at least the second quarter of 2003, when growth slumped because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, epidemic.

Industrial production slowed to 11.4 per cent in the year to September, the lowest rate since 2002, suggesting that the economy was losing momentum as the quarter went on. However, the pace of retail sales and fixed-asset investment growth both accelerated last month, beating forecasts and providing reassurance to policy makers counting on domestic demand to take up the slack from ebbing exports.

The property market, which accounts for about a quarter of fixed-asset investment, is in almost in free fall due to tight credit and government curbs. Home sales by volume plunged 55.5 percent and 38.5 percent in Beijing and Shanghai in the first eight months from a year earlier, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the China Real Estate Association. This decline is really still to show its ugly face in the data though, since urban fixed-asset investment climbed 27.6 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier, after a 27.4 percent increase through August, today's data showed.

Retail sales rose 23.2 percent last month from a year earlier, matching the gain in August and close to the fastest pace in at least nine years.

Urban disposable incomes for the first nine months rose 14.7 percent to 11,865 yuan ($1,737) from a year earlier. Rural cash incomes climbed 19.6 percent to 3,971 yuan. Those numbers were boosted by inflation.



The fifth quarter of slowing growth may exacerbate declines this year in iron ore, copper and oil prices and undermine demand for exports within Asia, where economies are already contracting. The cabinet announced yesterday tax cuts for exporters and increased infrastructure investment and the central bank may be poised to cut interest rates for the third time this year.

Steel-product output in China, the world's biggest producer and user of the alloy, fell 5.5 percent in September from a year ago to a seven-month low as weak demand and falling prices forced mills to pare production.

"China's crude steel output fell to 39.6 million tonnes, down 7% from August and 9.1% year-on-year, indicating that many northern mills were cutting production, said market sources. China's steel production ban for the Olympics lasted from July to September 20, so a fall in September output meant that mills were not only not resuming production, but reducing it further in the face of weak demand, said the sources. Several mills in Hebei, China's biggest crude steelmaking province, have been cutting output or have even closed down due to sluggish demand. Some were dumping products in the market in return for cash. September output for major finished products like rebar and plate rose, however, inched up in the month but analysts said this may be due to lower crude steel exports in the month. China exported 7.31 million tonnes of crude steel in September, 1.42 million tonnes or 13.5% less..."

Output was 45.9 million metric tons last month, according to figures provided today by China Mainland Marketing Research Co., which releases data on behalf of National Bureau of Statistics. Production rose 8.1 percent to 445.2 million tons in the first nine months from a year earlier.

Prices of hot-rolled coil, a benchmark product, have fallen to 3,645 yuan a metric ton from a record 5,957 yuan in June. The slump has led to losses at almost all steelmakers, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s analyst Zhang Feng said recently in a research note.


Export growth may plummet from 22 percent in the first nine months of this year to ``zero or even negative growth'' in 2009, according to Stephen Green, head of China research at Standard Chartered Bank Plc in Shanghai.

The closure last week of a big toy factory in southern China dramatised the difficulties facing the economy, which have prompted steel and aluminium firms to slash output because of slumping prices. Steel prices in China have fallen about 20 per cent over the past three months and there are reports of small steelmakers being forced to close because of shrinking demand.

Rio Tinto Give China Slowdown Warning

Rio Tinto’s chief executive, Toma Albanese, warned on Wednesday about the health of China and said the slowdown in one of the world’s fastest growing economies had led the mining company to revise its capital spending plans. Mr Albanese said there had been a marked reduction in Chinese commodity demand from the overheated levels of 2007 and added that the “vast majority of Chinese aluminium producers are now making operating losses.”

As the credit crisis unfolded over the past year, one of the few certainties in the global economy seemed to be China’s ability to plough on regardless at double-digit growth rates. Not any more. With Wall Street in tatters and Europe’s and Japan’s economies faltering, many investors are beginning to ask if China too might stumble badly. After five turbo-charged years of accelerating growth, the Chinese economy is clearly slowing.

Housing Market Evidence of Slowdown

The local government in Shanghai yesterday raised its ceiling on mortgage lending to households under a government-run program, uping available funding by 20 percent in an attempt to encourage families to buy apartments in the city. Eligible households will be allowed to borrow as much as 600,000 yuan ($87,679) starting today, up from 500,000 yuan, the city's public housing fund agency said in a statement yesterday.

Under Shanghai's mortgage program, most households are allowed to spend as much as 7 percent of their monthly salaries to repay loans. Employers must match workers' contributions and borrowers receive preferential bank lending rates. Households meeting certain requirements can spend as much as 15 percent of salaries, and they are the ones eligible for the new ceiling.



The loan program covered 3.42 million people at the end of June, according to the agency. About 8.8 percent of people covered make the larger repayments, the Shanghai Daily said in June, citing the housing agency.

Housing prices in Shanghai, China's biggest financial center, fell 19.5 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months as the volume of sales slumped, real estate broker Savills Plc said yesterday. Average transaction prices, which rose to a record in the second quarter, dropped to 9,092 yuan per square meter, the London-based broker said in a report.

The volume of transactions slid 39 percent from the second quarter and two-thirds from the same period last year to 2.9 million square meters, according to Savills.

China's stocks also fell for a second day today, with metal producers leading the way, on concern profits will decline as economic growth slows.

Jiangxi Copper Co., China's second-biggest producer of the metal, slid 5.9 percent after copper and zinc futures slumped by the exchange-imposed 4 percent daily limit in Shanghai. China Shenhua Energy Co., the nation's largest coal producer, fell 3.2 percent as more affordable oil reduced the allure of alternative energy sources. Citic Securities Co. fell 2.9 percent after a second competitor in as many days reported a slump in profit.

Chinese Exports Maintain Strong Momentum In August

China’s trade surplus hit a record $29.3bn in September as exporters succeeded in defying forecasts of falling international demand – for the moment, at least.

Exports rose 21.5 percent from a year earlier to $136.4 billion after gaining 21.1 percent in August, according to data from the Chinese customs bureau. China has cut interest rates twice in the last month in an attempt to stimulate the economy as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression undermines global growth. The surplus adds to the already existing $1.8 trillion of foreign-currency reserves.


The expanding trade surplus – up from the previous record of $28.7bn in August – will bolster China’s slowing gross domestic product growth rate but could also refocus international attention on Beijing’s effort to support exporters in recent months by slowing the renminbi’s appreciation against the US dollar.

Chinese imports grew 21.3 per cent year-on-year in September, their weakest performance for more than a year.

It is clear that the focus of government policy has shifted away from combating inflation, which hit a 12-year high of 8.7 per cent in February, and toward supporting growth. China remains relatively insulated from the current international financial turmoil. Major state banks have been extensively recapitalised in recent years and have only limited international exposure, while the government has been enjoying rapid growth in tax revenues and over $1.8bn in foreign exchange reserves.

However, local investors are already suffering from dramatic falls in stock prices and the slump in urban property markets, increasing vulnerability to any fall in export demand.

August PMI Indicates Continuing Contraction In Chinese Manufacturing

Manufacturing in China contracted for a second month in August, according to the latest reading on the manufacturing PMI. The China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing Purchasing Managers' Index registered a seasonally adjusted 48.4 in August, unchanged from July.



The Chinese authorities have become increasingly concerned that the impact of a global slowdown may weigh heavily on their export oriented economy, and they have recently attempted to put a brake on gains in the yuan and have also loosened lending quotas to help exporters and small businesses following four quarters of slowing economic growth. China's growth slowed to a 10.1 percent annual rate in the second quarter of this year, coming down quarter by quarter from the high of 12.6 percent attained in the second quarter of 2007.

The government is considering spending an extra 400 billion yuan ($58 billion) to stimulate the economy, according to reports in Chinese news media. A plan awaiting approval from the State Council and the National People's Congress includes 220 billion yuan of spending and 150 billion yuan of tax cuts, the Beijing-based Economic Observer newspaper reported last week. In addition China has tripled railway spending this year to 300 billion yuan. The current five-year plan, which runs through 2010, calls for investing almost 4.8 trillion yuan on power stations, waterways, roads and other infrastructure projects -- more than the combined output of Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Reconstruction after May's Sichuan earthquake could cost another 1 trillion yuan, the government says.

Monetary policy may also be loosened, and the People's Bank of China said in August that it would ``fine-tune'' monetary policy to cushion the economy as overseas demand weakens. This is being widely interpreted as meaning that the central bank will reduce the portion of deposits banks are required to hold as reserves - possibly by as much as 2.5 percentage points, bringing the level down to 15 percent.