Ler os Outros: China’s Approach to Economic Development - Eswar Prasad

Um excelente texto sobre plano quinquenal da China em que destaco a passagem relacionada com o desafio de contenção da inflação:

"The major short-term policy challenge is to bring inflation under control. Chinese policymakers are understandably nervous about CPI inflation at a level above 5 percent. As in many other emerging markets, overall price dynamics are being driven by food prices. Food expenditures on average constitute about one-third of total consumption expenditures for Chinese households, so this is a major component of the CPI basket and food price inflation feeds into higher overall inflation by influencing wage demands. So far, nonfood inflation remains modest at about 3 percent (Figure 1).

But modest nonfood inflation is scant comfort for China’s government. Food price increases hit the poor a lot harder as food expenditures account for a larger share of their total expenditures compared to middle class households. The urban poor face a double whammy as they do not benefit from food price increases and measures to tighten policies to control inflation could affect their employment prospects.


The government has responded aggressively to contain inflation by clamping down on growth in monetary aggregates and bank credit (Figure 2). The policy complication is that tightening credit could hurt employment growth by reducing credit flows to small and medium sized enterprises, especially those in the private sector. Moreover, standard monetary policy tools are typically not very effective at dealing with food price increases. Consequently, the government has taken a number of administrative measures, including price controls on some products.

The key question is whether macroeconomic policies can be calibrated in a manner that brings inflation under control without knock-on effects on growth. This is not an easy task as the government is simultaneously aiming for a major transformation of the economy’s structure.


The risk of a hard landing has increased but still remains modest. Even if this risk did come to pass, the effects may not show up directly as a collapse in output growth but could take the form of a sharp fall in employment growth and a setback to other aspects of the growth rebalancing agenda." (meus sublinhados)