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China’s Impact on the World Stage – Part III

Before China, there was Japan.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Japan was on a roll. They had one of the highest economic growth rates in the world. Their manufacturing prowess grew to be the envy of the world. Their stock market soared 373 percent between 1980 and its peak in 1989. And, like China today, there were predictions that Japan would overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world.

Oh, but times change.

Japan’s economic miracle came crashing down in the 1990s along with its stock market. By the end of 2010, the Japanese stock market, as measured by the Nikkei 225 index, was down an astounding 73 percent from its 21-year old 1989 high.

As happened in Japan, extrapolating past performance could be hazardous to your wealth. Will China suffer a similar fate? If it does, what will that do to the financial markets?

In this final installment of my series on China, I’ll look at three issues facing China that are an outgrowth of their strong economy and how these issues may affect you and your clients. Click here for Part I and here for Part II.

Managing The Economy

China has deftly managed its economy over the past three decades to produce spectacular growth and improved living standards for its people. In fact, economic growth has contributed to more than 500 million Chinese people rising out of poverty since 1981, according to The World Bank. But growth has its price.

Strong economic growth can lead to problems such as inflation, social and economic inequality and a growing pile of foreign exchange reserves. Let’s take a closer look at each of those three issues.

Inflation

Inflation is a major threat to China’s future success because if it gets out of control, the population may revolt. In August, inflation rose by 6.2 percent from a year earlier -- well above the government’s 4.0 percent target. Worse yet, food prices rose 13.4 percent from a year earlier and for a country that needs to feed 1.3 billion people, that’s a problem.

Rising food prices is particularly difficult for China to stomach (pardon the pun) because the average Chinese household spends about a third of its disposable income on basic food, according to the Financial Times.    

 If you want to know why inflation is a threat to national stability, go back to 1989. The Financial Times said, “Inflation of nearly 20 per cent is considered a key contributing factor to the 1989 student protests that culminated in the bloody military crackdown in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.”

Social, Economic Inequality

While China’s economy has grown more than 90-fold in the past 30 years, the gains have left a widening gap between the “Haves” and “Have-Nots.” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said back in February that rising inequality is threatening social stability, according to a Bloomberg article.

Can you imagine what would happen if even a small percentage of China’s 1.3 billion people turned against the government?

Well, unrest has been on the rise in recent years. As Bloomberg reported in citing data from Sun Liping, a professor of sociology at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, “‘Mass incidents,’ everything from strikes to riots and demonstrations, doubled from 2006, rising to at least 180,000 cases in 2010.”

So, how do you keep 1.3 billion people “in check?” According to Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, China’s been doing it, “through a combination of economic growth, social reforms and political repression.” Time will tell how long that lasts.

Foreign Exchange Reserves

At $3.2 trillion, China has -- by far -- the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world, according to The Wall Street Journal.

These trillions were built over the years through China’s trade surplus, foreign direct investment and capital inflows betting on yuan appreciation (The yuan is China’s currency.) On the surface, large foreign exchange reserves sound like a good thing, and in some ways it is. The downside is that it exacerbates inflationary pressure, according to Bloomberg.

In an ironic twist, the U.S. has been a beneficiary of this massive reserves buildup. China had to park their cash somewhere so where did they turn? To the U.S. treasury market! At the end of June, China was the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries with more than $1.1 trillion filling their balance sheet, according to the Treasury Department.

Viewed another way, China has been a big reason why the U.S. has been able to run up trillion dollar budget deficits while keeping interest rates low—we have China as a willing buyer of our paper.

With China needing a large liquid market to park its reserves and the U.S. needing a big buyer of its paper, these countries have the ultimate “too big to fail” global relationship, said Andy Rothman, an analyst in Shanghai for the investment bank CLSA as quoted in The New York Times.

Conclusion

China is so large and growing so fast, that it will impact the world in major ways for the foreseeable future. Its success or failure, its twists and turns will reverberate throughout the financial markets and affect everything from the level of interest rates to the price of soybeans to the volatility of the S&P 500 index.

Will China stumble at some point? Yes. The big question is how will their tumble cascade throughout the world? As an advisor, it behooves you to monitor what happens in China because it could have a substantial impact on your clients’ portfolios.

China’s Impact on the World Stage – Part II

China’s Impact on the World Stage – Part I

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Steve Sanduski, CFP®, is the Managing Partner of Peak Advisor Alliance, a financial advisor coaching and practice management resources organization. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and co-author of, Tested in the Trenches: A 9 Step Plan for Building and Sustaining a Million-Dollar Financial Services Practice. To learn more, visit, http://www.peakadvisoralliance.com/ and http://www.truewealthcommunity.com/.

If you would like a revised ghost-written version of this blog that is suitable for your client newsletter or other client/prospect communication, please click here to visit the Peak Advisor Alliance website and download a clean copy of the complete letter from the Free Tools section. Enter “china3” as the code. As appropriate, please send it to your compliance department for review.

 

  

 

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