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Only 7% of 1,000 people polled expect good times to last
Bloomberg
28 January 2011
Global investors are bracing themselves for the end of China’s relentless economic growth, with 45 per cent saying they expect a financial crisis there within five years.
An additional 40 per cent anticipate a Chinese crisis after 2016, according to a quarterly poll of 1,000 Bloomberg customers who are investors, traders or analysts.
Only 7 per cent are confident that China will indefinitely escape turmoil.
‘There is no doubt that China is in the midst of a speculative credit-driven bubble that cannot be sustained,’ said currency strategist Stanislav Panis from TRIM Broker in Slovakia, who was a participant in the Bloom-berg Global Poll conducted from Jan 21 to 24.
On Jan 20, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the economy grew 10.3 per cent last year, the fastest pace in three years and up from 9.2 per cent a year earlier.
Any Chinese financial emergency would reverberate around the world.
The total value of the country’s exports and imports last year was US$3 trillion (S$3.8 trillion), of which trade with the United States accounted for 13 per cent.
As of November, China also held US$896 billion in US Treasuries. Trade and investment links between the two nations were underlined with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit last week to the White House for meetings with US President Barack Obama.
Investors’ concern contrasts with Chinese government statements on the outlook for the economy. Beijing said last month that the nation had a ‘sound base’ for stable and fast growth this year after consolidating its recovery.
But 53 per cent of respondents in the poll said they believed China’s economy was a bubble, while 42 per cent disagreed. China’s neighbours are the most concerned: 60 per cent of Asia-based respondents identified a bubble in the world’s second-largest economy.
Worries centre on the danger that investment, which surged almost 24 per cent last year, may be producing empty apartment blocks and unneeded factories.
Mr. Jonathan Sadowsky, chief investment officer at Vaca Creek Asset Management in San Francisco, said he is ‘exceptionally worried’ that the Chinese would eventually face ‘major dislocations within their banking system’.
The Chinese authorities also raised interest rates twice in the fourth quarter in a bid to choke off inflation - a sensitive political issue since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which followed uncontrolled price increases. Food prices last year rose 7.2 per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Mr. Haroon Shaikh, an investment manager with GAM London, cited ‘rapid wage inflation’ and soaring property prices as the financial markets’ chief concern.
Some investors remain unbowed. ‘China can continue to grow over 10 per cent for the better part of the next five years,’ said Mr. Ardavan Mobasheri, head of AIG Global Economics in New York.