【澳大利亚广播公司】China and Australia's economic future

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China and Australia's economic future
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2576362.htm

PM - Wednesday, 20 May , 2009  18:22:00 Reporter: Mark Colvin

MARK COLVIN: And while Japan's been a key economic partner for Australia for decades now, China has been looming ever larger on our economic horizon.

Now the question of China's economic survival in the downturn is crucial to Australia's economic future.

Last night on PM we heard the Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens saying the Chinese recovery was real.

Stephen Joske is China forecasting director for the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, and he's back in Australia for the China Australia Business Congress.

I asked him about China's economic prospects in light of the disastrous Japanese figures.

STEPHEN JOSKE: Japan and China are in very different circumstances. Japan's been very heavily exposed to the global downturn in trade and of course this is coming from the basis of an already fairly weak economy. It never truly recovered from that, that lost decade.

China's is very different circumstances. It came off a much higher base. It can take a hit and still grow fairly strongly. I think the other thing in China is it's just such a big domestic economy, that the true story in China is actually what's happening with the domestic investment, not what's happening with global trade.

MARK COLVIN: We are in the middle here of a political debate which does involve china, political economic debate and Glenn Stevens, who heads the Reserve Bank yesterday was talking about how the Chinese revival would aid Australia. What's your take?

STEPHEN JOSKE: Glenn's quite right. I mean China's the oasis of growth in the world at the moment. The only major parts of the world economy outgrowing are China and India and China's twice the size of India; so China's where the action is. Growth in China will certainly help Australia but it's quite wrong to think we can just sit back and wait for China.

Basically the other 85 plus per cent of the world is in extremely severe synchronised recession and until we get a much broader recovery, particularly in the developed world we're not going to see that crucial strengthening of commodity prices in a sustained way.

MARK COLVIN: But a huge amount of our exports were commodities going to China?BR>
STEPHEN JOSKE: That's right.

MARK COLVIN: 卋ut you're saying that it's the overall world price that's going to affect it?

STEPHEN JOSKE: In such a depressed global environment, China can't really set prices. Can't really stimulate strong price growth because there's such low demand elsewhere.

MARK COLVIN: What do you think is the reality of the Chinese growth figures? Because they put out GDP figures and a lot of economists are sceptical about them.

STEPHEN JOSKE: I think that scepticism is 10 years out of date. There was genuine reasons to be sceptical during the last big Chinese downturn, round the time of the Asian crisis in the late '90s but it's completely different now.

It's a much more sophisticated economy, more sophisticated statistics and if we look at what they've been announcing, you know they certainly have announced a clear cut domestic slowdown and if you look at the provincial level, we've even got one province with negative growth.

So there showing a willingness to be much more upfront with bad news in a statistical sense.

MARK COLVIN: The national figures then have gone from more than 10 per cent; gone from double figures down to what six or seven per cent now?

STEPHEN JOSKE: The over year growth is a bit over six per cent yes.

MARK COLVIN: And you really reckon that is a realistic figure?

STEPHEN JOSKE: Certainly does. All the signs?

MARK COLVIN: So where is that growth coming from?

STEPHEN JOSKE: The key driver of Chinese growth is domestic investment and what we're seeing is the domestic economy is being relatively lightly hit compared to the export sector. Now there is a domestic downturn and that's focussed in the real estate and construction sector and that's the thing to watch in China.

The real story in China is that if you go a couple of years back, the Government was quite concerned with excessive investment and particularly property bubbles. They worked to puncture that, probably a bit too successfully in retrospect; but the construction activity came right down and that's what the real Chinese downturn has been.

MARK COLVIN: China had stopped growing even before the world had stopped growing?

STEPHEN JOSKE: It had slowed, that's right.

MARK COLVIN: But where is the demand coming from now - you say its domestic but does that mean that Chinese middle classes are going out and buying new kitchens, or?

STEPHEN JOSKE: That's right.

MARK COLVIN: 卭r flat screen TVs?

STEPHEN JOSKE: Yes, very much so. There' still a lot of very strong underlining growth in private consumption and investment hasn't stopped, it's come down and the stimulus package was implemented very quickly to make sure there was a floor under investment and seems to have worked.

MARK COLVIN: Because there's been a debate about this over the last couple of years hasn't there - as to whether the Chinese economy was now self-supporting and you're saying that they have achieved that, that near miracle?

STEPHEN JOSKE: Essentially yes. What we're seeing is that the recovery is going to be driven by this pick up later in the year in the real estate sector and there are really strong reasons for that. Now there certainly will be, the export sector will certainly be a drag on growth from now on and the stimulus package of course can't go on forever and that will drag on growth.

But I think certainly we're forecasting that on balance there will be a mild recovery from now on.

MARK COLVIN: Stephen Joske, China forecasting director for the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

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