China Tells

Michael Pettis is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a finance professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets. Pettis has taught Finance and Economics at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. Pettis has a Blog on Chinese Financial Market which is very popular.

Pettis has offered unique insights on the economic and financial situation of China, thanks to his long living experience in Beijing. Pettis has long held the view that China’s consumption has been artificially suppressed due to government’s policy to keep the interest rate at an excessively low level long below the long term economic growth rate. Such a policy has encouraged business owners to borrow at an artificially low level at the cost of lenders (consumer depositors). Such a structural misalignment impedes China from changing into a more consumption oriented growth model.

麦克佩蒂斯是广大中国读者比较熟悉的西方学者之一。佩蒂斯在中国居住了八年，目前在北京大学任教。由于其在中国的生活经历，因此佩蒂斯提出了许多对于中国经济和金融环境的独到的观点。佩蒂斯认为中国要从投资导向转型到消费导向，有很多困难需要克服。其中一个主要的困难是过去20年中国经济赖以成长的法宝，即认为压低利率以惩罚储户激励贷户。因此如果政府真的有决心要刺激国内消费，那么需要从这个基本点出发进行改革。