Special Report
Highlights So What? Ongoing reforms will drag on China's policy easing measures. Why? Xi Jinping is not abandoning his "Three Tough Battles" against leverage, pollution, and poverty. China is striving to contain leverage, despite the shift of rhetoric away from deleveraging. China's anti-pollution targets have eased, but in a pragmatic way. Barring a sharp economic deceleration, China's stimulus measures will be about stability rather than reacceleration. Feature China's leader Xi Jinping has clearly focused on two systemic risks: leverage and pollution (Table 1). Xi redoubled his efforts to address these risks in 2017 when he launched the "Three Tough Battles" against financial systemic risk, pollution, and poverty that will last through 2020. In this Special Report we provide a "status update" on the three battles, particularly the anti-pollution campaign. Investors should not mistake China's policy easing for a wholesale reversal of reform in order to stimulate growth. Today's policy environment and response is different from what investors are familiar with, which is large-scale fiscal and credit injections that pump up infrastructure and property construction and materially reaccelerate global and Chinese demand. Table 1Central Government Spending Preferences (Under Leader's Immediate Control) The First Battle: Financial Systemic Risk First, a word about financial systemic risk, which is of the utmost importance to China's economic trajectory, the global investment outlook, and Xi Jinping's other two policy battles. We have now had two months of full data - August and September - since China's top leaders announced in late July that they would ease economic policy. The data show that there has not been a major acceleration in total private credit growth. This is based on the adjusted total social financing measure used by BCA's China Investment Strategy, which now includes the special purpose bonds that local governments have been issuing rapidly in response to central government demands to ease policy (Chart 1). Chart 1No Credit Spike ... Yet We also closely watch China's money supply. Monetary impulses are bottoming and the M2 impulse is now positive (Chart 2). This is a marginal positive for both the Chinese and global economic outlook in 2019, though it is at odds with China's credit impulse. Chart 2Money And Credit Impulses At Odds While bank loan growth remains steady, informal lending growth is starting to pick up (Chart 3). This could herald a relaxation of controls on shadow banking, although that is by no means clear yet. Chart 3Shadow Banking Crackdown Is Easing Fiscal spending is also becoming more proactive, as is apparent from the spike in local government bond issuance (Chart 4). However, these new bonds hardly make a dent in the total credit picture, as shown in Chart 1 above. Chart 4Fiscal Policy Becomes More Proactive We expect China to stimulate more if internal or external conditions worsen. That looks likely, as we also have a structurally bearish view of the U.S.-China relationship. The trade war could prompt the U.S. to extend tariffs to all Chinese imports at the 25% rate that will apply to $200 billion worth of imports as of January 1, 2019. To be prudent, investors need to be prepared for even a 45% tariff rate on all Chinese imports, as President Trump first threatened on the campaign trail. People's Bank of China Governor Yi Gang has recently implied that benchmark interest rates could be cut if necessary, in addition to further cuts to the required reserve ratio. These measures would have the additional effect of weakening CNY/USD, which could also be stimulative for China, but may first disrupt emerging markets and worsen the trade war. The foregoing data reveal that, while the government has clearly toned down its rhetoric about deleveraging, it continues to try to contain the rise in leverage. China's administration - in contrast to many bullish investors - views leverage as a form of systemic risk. The top leaders perceive that excess leverage is bad for productivity. It delays China's adjustment to a more sustainable, consumer-driven economic model. And it exacerbates quality-of-life problems that could lead to socio-political instability, such as land appropriation and environmental degradation. China's economy can only reaccelerate sharply if Xi Jinping and his deputies - namely his top economic adviser Liu He and also Guo Shuqing, the party secretary of the PBOC - throw in the towel and allow total credit to skyrocket. President Xi is pragmatic and ultimately may have to do this - if conditions get bad enough. But for now, the pace of deceleration is not so quick that throwing in the towel is warranted. Furthermore, the trade war provides Xi with ample domestic political "coverage" to blame the U.S. for any economic pain incurred while pursuing badly needed domestic restructuring. Bottom Line: The Chinese administration wants to contain leverage, and this policy imperative will not easily waver. Data shows that the policy shifts announced in July were indeed evidence of "fine-tuning" rather than wholesale stimulus. The U.S. trade war provides the Xi administration with a scapegoat to absorb public anger when the pain of long-needed economic adjustments sets in. We remain data-dependent and will alter our global asset allocation recommendation - long DM / short EM - if evidence of a wholesale policy shift occurs. The Second Battle: Pollution What about Xi's second battle, the anti-pollution campaign? Is China already throwing out its new environmental regulations in order to stimulate growth? No, but it is compromising them for the sake of stability. Chart 5China Is Resource Intensive China's rapid rise from an agrarian society to an industrial power came at a devastating environmental cost. The heavy resource intensity of its economy (Chart 5) translates to extremely high pollution levels (Chart 6). Chart 6A Highly Polluting Economy To some extent, this is a natural phase of development. The "environmental Kuznets curve" hypothesizes that as economies industrialize they become increasingly polluting - and yet at a certain level of income the relationship reverses and economic growth becomes associated with environmental improvement (Diagram 1).1 Diagram 1The 'Environmental Kuznets Curve' Applies To Air Pollution Chart 7China Following In The Footsteps Of Less Resource-Intensive Neighbors As China transitions to a services-led economy, its appetite for commodities will slow. This is what happened in the advanced economies - and China is already on this path (Chart 7). The transition points away from export-manufacturing, which means that the share of electricity consumed by the industrial sector - currently disproportionately large - will ease (Chart 8). Chart 8Manufacturing Intensity Will Moderate Chart 9Reliance On Coal Power Will Fall China's consumption of coal, on which it depends very heavily (Chart 9), will continue to fall as a share of total energy consumption. And coal is significantly more polluting than other forms of energy (Table 2). Table 2Natural Gas Emits Less Carbon Already, growth in the service sector - the so-called tertiary industries - now outpaces manufacturing growth and accounts for more than half of Chinese GDP (Chart 10). Chart 10Rising Service Sector Means Less Pollution However, the pace of change is too slow for the Chinese public, which has been suffering from the health-related costs of rapid industrialization. The World Health Organization reports that in 2016, over a million deaths in China were attributed to ambient air pollution.2 Chart 11There Is A Reason Xi Jinping Cracked Down On Corruption And Pollution The Pew Research Center finds that 76% of survey respondents would classify air pollution as a "big problem," and nearly half of which a "very big problem" (Chart 11). On top of that, a 2016 survey shows that the Chinese public favors clean air over industry if forced to make a tradeoff (Chart 12). Chart 12The Public Understands The Tradeoff To prevent public discontent from boiling over, China launched a sweeping effort to restrain pollution when Xi Jinping took power in 2012-13 - particularly after the appallingly smoggy winter of 2013, known as "airpocalypse." Chart 13Air Pollution Is Trending Downwards These measures have broadly been effective. Readings of China's preferred measure of air pollution - PM2.5 concentration3 - have fallen steadily (Chart 13). The goals were achieved by means of overcapacity cuts in the coal and steel sectors - including shutting down low-quality steel plants - and replacing coal with cleaner forms of energy, particularly natural gas (Chart 14). Chart 14Coal Reliance Is Declining However, pollution is a structural challenge, not one that can be solved in a single five-year plan. Though PM2.5 emissions have fallen by 35% in 2017 compared to 2012, the current concentration of 47.3 µm/m3 remains well above China's national standard for maximum annual average exposure of 35 µm/m3. China's standards are also lax relative to international peers. The World Health Organization recommends a much lower annual mean for the concentration level at 10 µm/m3. Furthermore, air pollution is not equally concentrated throughout the country. The industrialized north is significantly more polluted than the rest of the country (Map 1). The provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi saw PM2.5 levels rise from 2015-17, reaching the highest alert levels. Map 1China's Air Pollution By Province As a result, the Xi administration has doubled down on its anti-pollution goals. The 13th Five Year Plan, covering 2016-20, was the first national economic blueprint to include air pollution targets. It got off to a rocky start because China had to stimulate the economy aggressively in 2015-16 to fend off a destabilizing slowdown. Pumping credit and fiscal spending into the industrial economy led to a rebound in high-polluting activity (Chart 15). Yet, as mentioned, when Xi consolidated power in 2017, he elevated the war on pollution to the "second battle" of the three battles. Chart 15Excess Credit Means Excess Pollution Pursuant to this 2018-20 framework, the latest action plan for air pollution reinforces the targets of the Five Year Plan and its 2020 deadline: The plan applies to all cities of prefectural or higher level, and thus expands the government's actions beyond the major cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta areas. Furthermore, the Pearl River Delta is no longer one of the key regions, having made substantive progress. It has been replaced by the Fen-Wei Plains, which include Xi'an and parts of Shaanxi, Henan, and Shanxi provinces. These provinces rely on coal for energy and contain polluting industries. PM2.5 levels must fall by at least 18% from 2015 baseline levels in cities of prefectural or higher level and anywhere else where standards have not been met. Targets for reducing volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxide emissions are set to 10% and 15%, respectively, by the end of the period. The number of good-air days should reach 80 percent annually and the percentage of heavily polluted days should decrease by more than 25 percent from 2015 levels. The new air pollution goals are not as aggressive as those of the 2012-17 plan. For instance, the 18% cut in PM2.5 levels is less than the maximum 25% cut in the previous plan. However, the new goals are more precise and targeted. Rather than impose further declines in regions where air pollution has been successfully reduced, the plan aims to prevent heavy industries from migrating to other parts of China to evade environmental restrictions. After all, many of China's coal producers are located in the Fen-Wei Plains, which will no longer escape the regulator's eye (Chart 16). Chart 16The Fen-Wei Plain Now Under Scrutiny What is the market implication of the above? In our view, some market participants have misread the new anti-pollution targets as a form of economic stimulus because they are less aggressive than those of the previous five years. While it is true that China faces a tradeoff between clean air and economic growth (Chart 17), the regulatory easing looks like an attempt to make the anti-pollution goals more realistic and achievable rather than abandoning the overarching anti-pollution push (see Box 1). In net terms, China is still tightening regulation. Chart 17Heavy Industrial Model Drives Pollution Box 1 Easing Up On winter Curbs? China has recently relied on heavy industry production curbs to limit pollution during the especially smog-prone winter months. The 2017-18 season saw the first of these wintertime cuts. Production in highly polluting industries such as coal, aluminum, and steel was slashed by up to 50% in 28 northern cities between mid-November 2017 and mid-March 2018. As a result, fine particle emissions fell. The year-on-year change in emissions peaked with the start of the cuts and troughed with their end, falling by an average 18% y/y over the period (Chart 18). Chart 18Last Winter's Anti-Pollution Crackdown Cuts will continue this winter, in theory limiting steel and aluminum production as well as coal consumption. However, the impact looks to be less dramatic this time around: While the August draft plan reportedly set PM2.5 reduction targets at 5% y/y for the 2018-19 winter, the final plan, released by the newly formed Ministry of Ecology and Environment, set a less ambitious objective of a 3% reduction in emissions. Blanket production cuts are being replaced by more flexible measures that will be overseen by local governments. Central government inspection teams will be dispatched less frequently. The new changes reflect the fact that Chinese policymakers are fine-tuning their policies to minimize the negative impact on industry as well as households that use coal-fired heating: The revision of emissions cuts from 5% in the August draft to 3% in the final plan reflects a more realistic cut than the 15% cut last year. But it is still a cut. The scrapping of blanket measures, in favor of more flexible cuts determined by regional emissions levels, will avoid penalizing producers who have already abided by the targets. It will also reward producers who have upgraded their facilities to be more eco-friendly. While year-on-year changes in emissions fell in northern China last winter, they spiked in the rest of the country, as economic agents shifted to areas not covered by the new rules. The same pattern emerged in the steel industry: steel production cuts in northern China were offset by a ramp-up in steel production from other regions (Chart 19). The newest plan expands the coverage of the regulations even as its demands are less draconian. Chart 19Polluters Know How To Evade Controls Last winter, local governments frantically shut down coal usage in order to meet strict 2017 deadlines for the plan to convert 20 million rural households from coal-heating to gas-heating by 2020. However, natural gas supplies could not pick up the slack - storage capacity, LNG import capacity, internal distribution, Central Asian imports, and bureaucratic coordination all fell short.4 Millions of households lost heating during the winter months, the authorities were forced to backtrack and allow coal imports, and a massive public backlash ensued. It is not surprising, then, that the government is compromising its coal-to-gas requirements for the coming winter.5 While the gas crunch is not expected to be as bad this winter, the underlying problems with natural gas storage, import, or distribution problems remain unresolved. So it makes sense for Beijing to give local governments more flexibility. A total conversion to natural gas heating is still supposed to be accomplished by 2020 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as well as in Shanxi and Shaanxi.6 The goal post may be moved but policies will still push in this direction. Ultimately, pollution is a cross-regional phenomenon - and it has proven to generate significant political opposition movements over time. Many developed nations have gone through a period of political upheaval sparked by popular backlash against the excesses of industrialization - including pollution.7 China does not have voters who can vote on environmental demands, but it greatly fears the political ramifications of widespread protests due to unbearable living and health conditions. As with the anti-corruption and anti-leverage campaigns, the Xi administration is trying to catch up to the magnitude of the problem and mitigate it before something snaps and triggers a general uproar. Bottom Line: China has pared back its emissions cuts for 2018-20 and softened its pollution curbs for the winter. These actions are less negative for economic growth than earlier curbs and proposals would have been. However, they still amount to a net increase in China's environmental regulation, which is in keeping with Xi Jinping's overarching policy priorities. The Third Battle: Poverty Poverty rates have collapsed in China since its opening up and reform in 1979. Xi's third battle is to eliminate rural poverty by 2020. This is the only battle of the three that is growth-enhancing rather than growth-constraining. It lifts China's growth by transferring government funds to the poorest citizens, who have the highest propensity to consume. At the average rate of rural poverty reduction over the past several years, there will still be around 11-12 million rural poor by the end of 2020 (Chart 20). Thus China will have to spend more to meet the target, creating a net increase in fiscal spending. Chart 20Anti-Poverty Campaign Requires Spending The war on poverty underscores a constraint on the previous two battles: growth and stability. Financial and environmental regulation cannot be imposed so aggressively as to lead to a sharp drop in growth or employment. This is China's "Socialist Put" - and it remains in place despite the fact that the government has a higher threshold for economic pain since 2017. While Xi has signaled that China will do away with annual GDP growth targets, he has not discarded them immediately. The leadership is still bound by the economic targets due in 2020 - the doubling of GDP from 2010 levels and the doubling of rural and urban incomes (Chart 21). Chart 21Stimulus Necessary If 2020-21 Goals In Jeopardy These targets are especially important because they more or less coincide with the "centenary goal" of making China a "moderately prosperous society" by 2021. The latter year will mark the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party; the administration will want to make sure that the economy is in good shape. The Chinese leadership takes its two centenary goals (2021 and 2049) seriously.8 As long as headline GDP growth does not fall too far below the average of 6.5% per year in 2018-20, the first centenary goals will be met. New tax cuts worth an estimated 1% of GDP, and other targeted measures, will help reach the goal for urban income, which is the one most at risk. If these goals look to be met, China can save its biggest stimulus measures for later. In recent years, China's economic "mini-cycles" have lasted about 1.4-to-2 years, from the trough of the total credit impulse to the peak of nominal GDP (Chart 22). If China launches a large-scale stimulus now, peak output will occur in 2020 and the economy will be decelerating into 2021. This would be bad timing for the centenary. It would make more sense for China to save some dry powder for 2019 or 2020 to ensure a positive economic backdrop in 2021. Chart 22Economy Peaks Two Years Post-Stimulus Bottom Line: We would need to see a much bigger shock to the economy than is currently in the offing for Xi to abandon his reform agenda for a traditional fiscal-and-credit splurge that exacerbates the credit bubble, fires up overbuilt industries, and annihilates all the hard work of his recent financial and environmental regulations. Investment Conclusions The above findings suggest that coal prices can rise in the near term.Demand will be supported by more flexibility on pollution curbs, while supply will be constrained by the ongoing supply-side cuts in coal production. Steel prices may fall, as production will rise amid less stringent environmental rules. More broadly, however, investors should understand what the recent tactical "easing" measures suggest about China's policy settings overall. China's political system is a system of single-party rule, in which the Communist Party explicitly rejects the legitimacy of "checks and balances" or political liberalism. However, the government cannot do whatever it wants. Its authoritarian model still requires it to address public pressure and maintain general popular approval - otherwise it would lose legitimacy and ultimately power. For the past four decades, the Communist Party has maintained legitimacy by providing economic growth and rising incomes - and these are still essential. But as the economy matures and growth rates naturally fall, it becomes more important to re-establish the party's legitimacy on improving quality of life. Xi Jinping made this point official in his address to the nineteenth National Party Congress last October, but it has driven his administration since 2012.9 The Communist Party is flush with tax revenues and maintains absolute control over government branches, banks, key corporations, security forces, and most forms of civil association. With these tools it can, for the most part, maintain its rule against regional or topical challenges. What it fears are systemic risks - challenges to its authority that span ideological, ethnic, class, or regional divides. Here the government is behind the curve, as quality of life has been entirely neglected during the country's high-growth phase of economic development. Thus Xi has tried to make up for lost time and tackle the most flagrant quality-of-life concerns. His anti-corruption campaign, for instance, sought to address the chief source of public discontent from the moment he came into office - as well as to recentralize power into his own hands so that he could tackle the other major grievances with zero resistance from the party or state bureaucracy. Now his top priorities are leverage and pollution, both of which pose systemic risks and hence the forthcoming improvement in fiscal and credit indicators will not proceed unchecked. Matt Gertken, Vice President Geopolitical Strategy mattg@bcaresearch.com Roukaya Ibrahim, Editor/Strategist roukayai@bcaresearch.com 1 There is a large body of literature on the Environmental Kuznets Curve; the important point for this study is that it holds up well to empirical scrutiny when it comes to modeling air pollution concentrations. Please see David I. Stern, "The Environmental Kuznets Curve After 25 Years," Australian National University, CCEP Working Paper 1514 (December 2015), available at ageconsearch.umn.edu. 2 The death rate attributable to ambient air pollution is 81 per 100,000 people, which places China among the most dangerously polluted countries, alongside North Korea, Russia, and several developing eastern European countries. Please see the WHO's Global Health Observatory data repository, available at www.who.int/gho/en. 3 PM2.5 is a general term for particles and liquid droplets in the atmosphere with aerodynamic diameters less than or equal to 2.5 microns (µm). Short- or long-term exposure to these particles has been found to lead to adverse cardiovascular effects such as heart attacks and strokes. 4 Please see David Sandalow, Akos Losz, and Sheng Yan, "A Natural Gas Giant Awakens: China's Quest for Blue Skies Shapes Global Markets," Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy, July 27, 2018. 5 Please see Yujing Liu, "China scrambles to avoid a repeat of last winter's botched coal-to-gas conversion programme in highly polluting northern rural areas," SCMP, September 24, 2018, available at www.scmp.com. 6 Please see "China coal city vows 'no-coal zones' in bid to curb pollution," Reuters, October 11, 2018, available at reuters.com. 7 The Great London Smog of 1952 is a classic example, but for a detailed study please see Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler, Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies (Cambridge: Polity, 1990). 8 The first goal is to create a "moderately prosperous society in all respects," namely by doubling real GDP and rural and urban per capita income from 2010 levels by 2020. The second goal is to make China into a "modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious," with the GDP per capita of a moderately developed country at around $55,000 in 2014 dollars. Please see "CPC Q&A: What are China's two centennial goals and why do they matter?" Xinhua, October 17, 2017, available at www.xinhuanet.com. 9 Xi, in his work report at the party congress in 2017, said, "what we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life." This is a new formulation of the "principal contradiction" facing Chinese society, by contrast with the earlier formulation, which emphasized "the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and the low level of social production," according to former President Hu Jintao in 2007.
