핵심요약

• 작년 중국 무역 흑자 규모 1조 달러
• 기술 부문은 GDP 성장에는 기여가 적음
• 중국, 트럼프 행정부와의 관세 전쟁에 대한 신뢰 부족
• 장기적으로 기술 개발에 중점

도입

이 기사는 중국의 경제 전략과 트럼프 행정부의 관세 정책이 글로벌 투자자에게 미치는 영향을 분석하는 데 중요합니다. 특히 중국의 기술 부문에 대한 투자 가능성과 관세 전쟁의 장기적 영향에 대한 이해를 돕습니다.

본문 1: 기술 부문의 전략적 중요성

중국은 기술 부문을 장기적 성장 동력으로 보고 있습니다. 기술 부문의 성과는 GDP 성장에는 기여가 적지만, 이는 기술 혁신이 아직 초기 단계에 있고, 장기적으로 경제 구조를 변화시킬 수 있는 잠재력을 가지고 있음을 의미합니다. 투자자들은 중국의 기술 부문, 특히 반도체, 인공지능, 클라우드 컴퓨팅 분야에 주목해야 합니다.

본문 2: 관세 전쟁의 경제적 영향

관세 전쟁은 중국의 수출 부문에 직접적인 타격을 줄 수 있습니다. 특히 작년 1조 달러의 무역 흑자를 기록한 수출 부문은 관세 부담이 증가하면 수익성에 큰 영향을 받을 가능성이 있습니다. 이는 중국의 경제 성장률을 감축시킬 수 있으며, 글로벌 공급망에 혼란을 초래할 수 있습니다.

본문 3: 글로벌 투자 전략의 변화

관세 전쟁은 글로벌 투자 전략에 큰 변화를 요구합니다. 투자자들은 중국의 기술 부문에 대한 투자를 고려할 뿐만 아니라, 관세 전쟁으로 인한 리스크를 분산하기 위해 다양한 시장과 자산 클래스에 분산 투자를 하는 것이 중요합니다. 특히 아시아 지역, 특히 베트남, 인도네시아와 같은 국가들의 수출 산업에 주목해야 합니다.

결론

중국의 기술 부문은 장기적 성장 동력으로서의 잠재력이 있지만, 관세 전쟁은 단기적으로 경제에 부정적인 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다. 투자자들은 중국의 기술 부문에 대한 투자를 고려하면서도, 관세 전쟁으로 인한 리스크를 분산하기 위한 전략을 수립해야 합니다. 향후 중국의 기술 정책과 글로벌 관세 정책의 변화에 주목해야 합니다.

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원문 링크: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiggFBVV95cUxQVHNCeWpURENLRUZwYndxVDctQVVjNDJnNk56bW9ZQ3FoMTQ3S1N2UTZKc1Y5WEJUdzRoMmRscmR6aVBXa183VkItLWxMcFVCMGNrdldyb2hBZi14dUtiaVQtTHB5alFDSUFKTjlWS1pjVmFGRGsta1dqZ1dXTW1wRlN3?oc=5

China’s Plan to Fight Trump’s Trade War - newyorker.com

I recently spoke by phone with the economist Yasheng Huang, an expert on China who teaches at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the ways in which tariffs provide an opportunity for Xi to reform his country’s economy, how the tariff war is likely to play out, and why disappointing economic growth figures have not caused any weakening of the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on power. What do you think is the central goal for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) in terms of how to deal with the American Administration under Trump on tariffs? What are they hoping to achieve? I think it’s clear they don’t want a trade war. Their economy is struggling, and the export sector has been one of its few bright spots. Last year, they had almost a trillion-dollar trade surplus. The property sector is not doing well. The technology sector is doing well, but it’s not really adding that much to G.D.P. growth. So this was purely a trade war that was initiated by the United States, and not by China. I don’t think they want to cave in. That would make the Chinese leadership look very bad. And, moreover, I don’t think they trust the Trump Administration. Even if they were to give concessions this time around, I don’t think they believe that the concessions would hold. So there are multiple motivations on their part not to quickly come to an agreement if that agreement requires significant concessions. Even if they do not want to make significant concessions to the Trump Administration, do you think that they believe the economic relationship between China and the United States in the medium term has to change in some way? And what would that look like for China? Well, in terms of the bigger-term picture, the thing that they have been really, really serious about is technology. Trade is important in terms of G.D.P. growth. But, from their point of view, the long-term issue with the United States is that the U.S. controls key technologies that China needs for its national security and for its economic growth. I disagree with that view, but that’s the view that they have. And since 2018—the first Trump trade war and tariffs—they have moved substantially toward technological self-sufficiency, and they have achieved quite a bit of success. But that movement toward technological self-sufficiency has also exposed them to trade shocks and to the volatilities of the external economy. So that’s the dilemma that they have. They are able to reduce technological dependency on the United States, but arguably they have not reduced the economic dependency on the external sector. Why would becoming more self-sufficient also open them up to trade shocks? When I say self-sufficiency, I mean technological self-sufficiency. Technologies are extremely costly, and they require significant up-front investments—and the returns happen in the future, if they happen at all. There is no evidence that the kind of technological investment China has made has created a real economic payoff. If you look at the G.D.P. data, it’s very clear that, as they have achieved technological successes, the G.D.P. growth rate has trended down rather than up. And the most direct measure of the economic implications of this significant up-front investment is that productivity is actually slowing down. In the short term, you need to generate G.D.P. growth, and you need to create employment. And those aspects of the Chinese economy—productivity, G.D.P., employment—require a robust export performance, simply because the real-estate sector, which was almost thirty per cent of the Chinese economy, is struggling. Consumer sentiment is fairly low after the COVID pandemic. Unemployment is problematic. The export sector is one sector that has been doing well. And now they are faced with this trade shock. But that doesn’t mean that they are going to cave in, because this discussion is really about politics, not about economics. What specifically are you talking about when you say technology? Electric vehicles, wind turbines, other energy-transition industries, and, more recently, A.I. If you look at those energy-transition sectors where China is clearly emerging as a leader, they have a major overcapacity, meaning that the domestic economy is not generating sufficient demand for the products that are being produced. Whenever you have a gap between supply and demand, that gap has to be absorbed somewhere else. So that’s why the European Union is very concerned about Chinese products coming their way. And the United States has always been concerned about Chinese exports coming to this country. And even other developing countries are concerned about Chinese products flooding into their regions. So, essentially, the technological successes that they have achieved have not been about creating demand but about creating supply. And when you have that gap between supply and demand, that forces the Chinese economy to depend even more on the external economy than it would otherwise. You said that you disagreed with the way that the C.C.P. thinks about the need to be independent. What specifically do you disagree with and why? For an economy at the level of the Chinese economy, the most important driver of efficiency is capital allocation—efficient capital allocation, rather than adding technology. I’m not saying technologies are bad for productivity; it is just that relative to capital efficiency, technologies are less important. But here’s the problem. In the past ten years, what we have seen is a bigger role of the state sector, which is not as efficient as the private sector. They’re using a lot of capital to generate output, and they’re using a lot of capital as compared with the private sector, while not generating as much employment. And so this is where the gap is. Huge capital allocation has not created productivity gains, employment growth, or income opportunities for the Chinese population. So what would the alternative be? The essence of the argument is that the way they can really protect themselves from another four years of Trump—policy volatility, protectionism—is to expand the domestic markets and tap into their potential. The ratio of private consumption to G.D.P. is only thirty-nine per cent. Here it is about seventy per cent. India is more than sixty per cent. And the consumption ratio is very low because of two things. One is that the savings rate is very high. And the reason that the savings rate is high is because Chinese households are concerned about their future pension liabilities, medical liabilities, old-age liabilities, because the government doesn’t provide enough social protection. This is a government that has invested tremendously in technologies, in infrastructure, in urban building, urban construction, but has invested relatively little in people and social protection, pensions and things like that, so they have to save all of their own income against these future liabilities. The other reason, which I think is actually a bigger reason, is that, relative to the G.D.P. growth rate, the personal-income growth rate has been comparatively low. You work at The New Yorker; I work for M.I.T. You and I, at the personal level, care more about the paychecks that we get than the G.D.P. So, China has had an incredibly high G.D.P. growth rate. But, relative to that high G.D.P. growth rate, the personal-income growth rate of the average Chinese person, and we are talking about 1.4 billion people, has actually been quite modest. So if you look at the income share of Chinese G.D.P., it’s really on the lower end of major economies in the world. And, if you combine these factors, then the consumption rate relative to G.D.P. is low. So I would argue that they should really focus on that problem, rather than continue with the overcapacity model that they have. So how might Trump’s policies change these priorities for China or speed up the need for such a change? I do believe this is a moment of reckoning. The relationship between exports and the domestic markets is that the export market, especially in developed countries, is a substitute for domestic consumption. Basically, it’s foreign consumption. When you don’t have a very high level of domestic consumption, but you have a very powerful production capacity, foreign consumption comes to the rescue. Now, we know for sure that foreign consumption is not going to be at the same level as before, to say the least. Even if you resolve the trade war with the Trump Administration, I don’t think it can go back to the previous low level of tariffs. So, essentially, that option of foreign consumption is becoming less viable. It forces the leadership, on economic grounds, to really look at the domestic-market potential and then hopefully focus their attention on that. But here’s the problem: to really increase the domestic-market potential would require them to give up some of their power, rather than increase it. Their current model is compatible with the power of the government: industrial policy, industrial parks, urban planning, massive infrastructure building—all of these require the power of the government. But domestic-market consumption requires something different, which is social protection and social welfare. But it also requires them to give up some of their power. So that’s the dilemma they are facing. And I believe that the Trump trade war is forcing that issue on them in a way that was not there before. Give up some of their power because it would create a more consumerist society? Yeah. So, there are between five hundred million and six hundred million rural Chinese. They have lower levels of social protection, and social entitlement, as compared with the urban Chinese. It’s called the hukou system. I believe that the state should equalize the social protection of the urban Chinese and the rural Chinese immediately. But that means that the government would have to have money going to the rural households in a way that it hasn’t before: education, health care, and other expenditures. And that means that they would have less money to spend on industrial policy, just to make that trade-off very, very concrete. The reason that they can spend a lot of the money on industrial capacity is because they don’t have to spend a lot of money on social obligations. So, essentially, the Chinese Communist Party has been given an opportunity to make these long-overdue changes. But I assume you think that the reason they haven’t made these changes is because it would come with some sort of potential political weakening of the Party. But now they’re faced with either that option or possible economic pain from the Trump Administration. Is that accurate? Yeah, that’s very accurate. But I think, if I had to place a bet, my bet is that they still want to continue with the current model. They don’t trust Trump. They don’t believe that his tariffs are credible. And I have to say I agree with them. And they think that he is going to make concessions. If he is going to make concessions, then I think they prefer to stay with the current model, which is a lot of investments, a lot of production, and then relying on the export markets. I think that’s their preferred option. Let’s talk about you saying that the tariffs are not credible. Do you mean that even with the tariffs, China can find practical ways to largely get around them? Or do you mean what we saw last week with the bond markets sell-off—that Trump doesn’t have the political capital to push this all the way? And the Chinese Communist Party has more capital and can feel pain longer, and so they can wait Trump out until he makes concessions? I think the second one is more relevant. Essentially, there are pressure points on Trump in a way that there are not pressure points on Xi Jinping. I’m talking about the bond market and consumer sentiment in this country and potentially the political backlash against Trump and the Republican Party. Xi Jinping clearly knows the kind of pressure that Trump is operating under. And also it really speaks to another issue, which is how stupid Trump’s tactics are. The Liberation Day tariffs weakened the American economy in a material way. Recession probability has risen, recession fear has risen, and the market is basically going into chaos. So he has a weaker bargaining hand as a result of the way that he went about the tariff war, quite apart from the tariff war itself. As for your first factor, I believe that factor is diminishing because of the way that this round of Trump tariffs has been constructed. So in 2018, the first round of the tariff war, there were options like Vietnam, Southeast Asia—and those countries have been used as, basically, replacement export platforms. So, basically, Chinese goods go there first, and then the goods would come from Vietnam, or from somewhere else in Southeast Asia to America. If you look at the trade balances of [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] and the trade balances of China, they track with each other almost perfectly since 2018. So the trade surpluses that Vietnam has generated are essentially a diversion of the trade surpluses from China. But I believe, this time around, the Trump people are going to focus on closing that loophole. I cannot imagine that they are going to negotiate with Vietnam and lower the tariff against Vietnam while not demanding the Vietnamese do anything on their tariffs on Chinese products. So that has to become a package in any future agreement between Vietnam and the United States. Is there any worry for Xi Jinping that, if he calls Trump’s bluff and we go into a global recession—and the export sector of the Chinese economy takes a huge hit—that China’s economy could come to such a state that the Communist Party would feel threatened in some way? I think we’re pretty far from a collapse scenario. Look at COVID lockdown, right? For two years, the COVID lockdown devastated the Chinese economy. And definitely there were protests at the end of 2022, but the regime survived that. The simple fact is the Chinese economy has been slowing down substantially since 2018. There is no evidence that the regime has been materially, in a political sense, weakened as a result of this slowdown and the economic devastation associated with the COVID lockdown. I’m sure there are calculations that this trade war can be resolved pretty quickly, because this is not a tenable situation for the United States. So their calculation is: I’m going to call your bluff. Why is it that the slowdown of the Chinese economy and the COVID lockdowns haven’t weakened the C.C.P.’s political position more significantly? I realize it’s not a democratic system, but was this ability to withstand these shocks so obvious? It was not obvious. And the answer is not only because it is an autocracy. If you look at the patterns of how autocracies fail, and this is not just in China but in other countries, usually autocracies fail when there is a divided leadership at the top. And that’s just not true in China today. That was not true with China under Mao, either. Remember Mao and the Great Leap Forward. Tens of millions of people died of starvation. He survived. I think the lack of divided leadership is a fundamental reason that the Chinese political system is able to withstand these incredible economic shocks. But here’s the thing: as soon as Mao died, then the political instability kicked in. So that stability is tied to the leader, and, to be more precise, to the longevity of the leader, rather than to the system. So I wouldn’t say autocracies are necessarily stable. I would say a system that has a very strong autocrat tends to be stable. But it is stable as long as the autocrat is in power. Today, there’s no visible division among the top leadership. None. ♦

Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiggFBVV95cUxQVHNCeWpURENLRUZwYndxVDctQVVjNDJnNk56bW9ZQ3FoMTQ3S1N2UTZKc1Y5WEJUdzRoMmRscmR6aVBXa183VkItLWxMcFVCMGNrdldyb2hBZi14dUtiaVQtTHB5alFDSUFKTjlWS1pjVmFGRGsta1dqZ1dXTW1wRlN3?oc=5