(Fighting New Crown Pneumonia) China's economic war "epidemic" record: What kind of new infrastructure does China need?
China News Agency, Beijing, March 5 (Reporter Chen Kangliang) New infrastructure (new infrastructure construction) is attracting more and more attention in China. Analysts generally expect the new infrastructure to play a role in hedging the economic downturn and promoting economic transformation and upgrading. Important role.
Recently, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting to study the current priorities for the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and the stabilization of economic and social operations. The meeting emphasized the need to increase investment in public health services and emergency material security, and accelerate the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G networks and data centers.
In this regard, Feng Sheng, an analyst at Zhongtai Securities, said that recently, senior Chinese officials have paid great attention to new infrastructure and have held several meetings to deploy. The reason why new infrastructure is valued is largely because, in the context of the epidemic, which has a large impact on China's economy, accelerating new infrastructure will help stabilize growth and employment.
Feng Sheng said that, unlike traditional infrastructure, new infrastructure is mainly based on technology. Traditional infrastructure mainly refers to large buildings such as railways, highways, bridges, and water conservancy projects, while new infrastructure refers to infrastructure construction based on science and technology, mainly including 5G base station construction, UHV, intercity high-speed railways and urban rail transit, new energy Automotive charging pile, big data center, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet seven fields.
Ren Zeping, president of the Evergrande Research Institute, further pointed out that the key to the "newness" of new infrastructure is to use a reform and innovation mindset to see and promote a new round of infrastructure construction, rather than simply resuming the old path, leading to excess waste. In addition to the differences between specific infrastructure and traditional infrastructure in the future, the new infrastructure should also be “new” in many aspects: new entities should further liberalize market access in the infrastructure sector and expand investment entities, especially for projects with certain benefits. Treat private capital equally; the new method is to regulate and promote the PPP (Government and Social Capital Cooperation Model) in the way of investment in infrastructure, avoiding clear shares and real debt, etc. The introduction of private capital should improve efficiency and expand sources of financing.
It is worth noting that some analysts have reminded that the scale of China's new infrastructure is still too small at present. It may be difficult to generate a large driving force for the economy simply by increasing the investment in new infrastructure. The investment in new infrastructure and traditional infrastructure should be properly coordinated . Guo Changchun, chief global economist at Guotai Junan Research Institute, said that despite the good development prospects of China's new infrastructure, the current scale is still small and the effect of steady growth is expected to be small.
According to Hua Changchun's analysis, in the Chinese government's infrastructure investment, there is currently no statistics on new infrastructure investment, but it can be seen from the PPP library subdivision project. The current total investment scale of existing PPP projects is about 17.6 trillion yuan (RMB, the same below), of which traditional infrastructure is the bulk. The "new infrastructure" project is full of calculations, accounting for less than 15%, and the scale is less than 3 trillion yuan. For the current size of China's economy, its pulling effect is limited. It is expected that China will use the “traditional infrastructure + new infrastructure” two-wheel drive method to promote economic recovery and transformation and upgrading.
In this regard, Jiang Chao, chief economist of Haitong Securities, also held similar opinions. Jiang Chao further pointed out that the new infrastructure is more an expansion of traditional infrastructure, taking into account the dual tasks of stabilizing growth and promoting innovation. The construction of new types of infrastructure such as artificial intelligence, the Industrial Internet, and the Internet of Things will drive demand for related industries such as communications, computers, and electronics. These new infrastructures are the key to the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, and can stimulate more new demand.
Yan Lei, an analyst at Ping An Securities, also said that in the medium and long term, the trend of "cloud" and digitalization of Chinese enterprises is irreversible. After the epidemic, the progress is expected to accelerate. 5G, industrial Internet, and cloud computing are the main infrastructures of the digital economy. It is feasible to achieve a modest advance if technology and funding allow it. Promote application prosperity through infrastructure, and continue to drive investment in infrastructure construction after a sound ecosystem, forming a benign closed loop. Especially in the current context of technological competition among big countries, increasing investment in new infrastructure will help narrow the development gap with developed countries. (Finish)