(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) Records of "Epizoic" of China's Economic War: Pressing the "Pause" Button Does Not Change the Long-term Trend of China's Economy
China News Agency, Beijing, April 17 (Reporter Wang Enbo) China's first quarter economic transcript was released. In the case of a large number of economic activities requiring the "pause key" due to epidemic prevention, China's GDP fell by 6.8% year-on-year in the first quarter.
Mao Shengyong, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, bluntly said that in the face of the epidemic, China has adopted strong prevention and control measures to control the spread of the epidemic in a relatively short period of time, reducing millions of infected persons and saving a large number of compatriots. Of course, life has to pay some short-term economic costs.
At the same time, with the spread of the epidemic in more than 200 countries and regions, global cross-border investment, trade in goods, and personnel exchanges have decreased significantly, making it difficult for China to be alone. Wen Bin, chief researcher of China Minsheng Bank, told reporters that the latest forecast of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will shrink the global economy by 3% this year, the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the last century. These influences will be transmitted to China through channels such as foreign trade, cross-border investment, financial markets, and sentiment expectations.
It is worth mentioning that in the IMF's above forecast, China's economic growth rate is 1.2% this year, which is one of the few positive growth countries in the world's major economies, and it will be as high as 9.2% next year. This shows that the outside world is still confident that China's economy will soon get rid of the impact of the epidemic and maintain a long-term positive situation. Analysts believe that there are at least three reasons.
First, the advantages of China's industrial system have not been "damaged" by the epidemic.
Mao Shengyong said that China ’s industrial production capacity is strong, and its supporting facilities have a strong advantage, and it has played a unique role in the prevention and control of epidemics. At the same time, this ability has not only not been hit by the epidemic, but has also been further consolidated and enhanced.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, no matter whether it is medical protection materials, water, gas and other comprehensive guarantees necessary for people's lives, or basic industries such as iron and steel, chemicals, and transportation, which are related to national economy and people's livelihood, they have never stopped operating in China. For example, China's basic raw material industry continued to grow in the first quarter. The output of natural gas, non-woven fabrics, chemical raw materials, crude oil, ten non-ferrous metals, ethylene and crude steel increased by 9.1%, 6.1%, 4.5%, 2.4%, 2.1%, 1.3% and 1.2% respectively.
Second, the rapid growth of new kinetic energy and the pace of economic transformation and upgrading continue to advance.
Although some traditional consumption and industries have been severely impacted, huge potential and opportunities are also bred under pressure. The explosive growth of online consumption and the smart economy has hedged some of the negative impacts, opening up new space for high-quality economic development.
In the first quarter, against the backdrop of a decline in overall consumption, online retail sales of physical goods in China exceeded 1.8 trillion yuan, an increase of 5.9% against the trend. At the same time, new models and services such as fresh e-commerce, telemedicine, online education, and online office are expanding rapidly. In the first quarter, the added value of the information transmission, software and information technology service industries increased significantly by 13.2%.
Third, sufficient policy tools will "accumulate counterattack" for economic growth in the next three quarters.
Since the outbreak, China has made overall plans to promote the epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development work, intensified macroeconomic policy adjustment, and formulated a series of high-gold policy measures. Active fiscal policies have more focused on people's livelihood expenditures and tax cuts and fee reductions, and sound monetary policies have paid more attention to supporting the development of the real economy. The National Development and Reform Commission has previously made clear that it will also promote the implementation of relevant reserve policies in due course and increase policy hedging.
"For the prediction of economic growth, an important variable is policy strength." Lian Ping, chief economist and dean of the Institute of Zhixin Investment pointed out that from a fundamental perspective, China still has great potential for development, such as urbanization The level is not high, regional economic integration is advancing rapidly, and there is much room for rural economic system reform. If the policy is significantly strengthened, there is no need to be pessimistic about economic growth in 2020.
In fact, with the effectiveness of the epidemic prevention and control, the progress of resuming production and production has accelerated. In March, China ’s major indicators including industry, service industry, investment, social zero and import and export have narrowed significantly, and the economy has "restarted." The trend is obvious.
Wen Bin believes that China's economy still has great growth potential and space. In the next stage, we must focus on promoting the resumption of investment projects, accelerating the recovery of traditional consumption, stabilizing the basic foreign trade foreign investment, and vigorously promoting new infrastructure, new consumption and new investment The development of new models and new demands will add new impetus to the economy. It is expected that China's economy will continue to improve in the second quarter, and GDP growth will rebound significantly in the second half of the year. (Finish)