作者：Morgan Stanley Asia Limited

类型：研究报告

格式：pdf，4 pages

日期：2007.11.28

What’s New: The Political Bureau of Chinese Communist Party – the de facto highest decision-making body – held a meeting on Monday, November 27. The meeting discussed the broad economic policy agenda for 2008. According to the press statement, there are three key policy objectives for 2008: a) to maintain sustained, steady, fast, and balanced growth; b) to prevent economic overheating and the current structural
inflation from morphing into general inflation; and c) to promote domestic demand, especially consumption, as a growth driver. To achieve these objectives, several policy actions are mentioned in the statement. Policy intentions in two areas warrant particular mentioning: a) to redouble the effort to achieve energy conservation and pollution reduction targets; and b) continue to strictly prevent too fast fixed-asset investment growth.

Our Reading/Takeaway: The statement is completely silent on the risks stemming from potentially weaker external demand, suggesting: a) the authorities still focus on the risk of the domestic economy overheating in general and out-of-control inflation in particular; b) the statement replaces the buzz word “to maintain good and fast growth” in 2007 with “to maintain sustained, steady, fast, and balanced growth”, suggesting the authorities envisage slower growth in 2008; c) the authorities may consider weaker external demand at the current juncture as a welcome development that will help China’s economy to adjust and rebalance; d) in view of the political cycle that tends to encourage investment in2008, the authorities appear to be taking preemptive actions to prevent a major acceleration in fixed-asset investment growth (See Exhibit 1); and e) the statement does not mention the risk of asset price inflation (e.g. stock and property markets).