China Tells

China’s low consumption has been on the headline of newspapers recently. One of the perceived causes behind the low consumption is China’s high saving rate (See Graph from Chinatells). Naturally the next question is, why China has such a high saving rate, which makes investment so appealing. A lot of reasons have been put on the table, such as imperfect social security network, high education and medical cost, huge aging population that need to be supported, and high property price. In addition to above, there are also scholars to advise alternative views (See Article from Beijing Review). According to a recent study, in fact Chinese household’s saving rate has not increased but decreased relative to government and corporate. There seems to be a distortion of income redistribution from govenment and state owned enterprises to individuals. A striking finding is that some banks are lending money to big corporations at an interest rate lower than the deposit rate to individuals. An effort to marketize the interest rate is called by scholars to the government.

中国消费者的低消费率一直被人诟病。很多人觉得一大原因是中国的高储蓄率。但是至于为什么人们宁愿把钱存在银行里而不拿出来消费却有各种不同的说法。通常的解释是医疗和教育费用太高，加上高房价，使得人们不得不存钱。最近一项研究却发现，事实上个人储蓄在最近几年没有这么上涨，倒是政府和企业储蓄增加不少。这一发现使学者对中国高储蓄率的原因又产生新的推测。