How Will the Reopening of China Affect Global Markets?
Among the range of opinions this question elicited, Du offered, “It’s going to take a while for the Chinese domestic market to come back, but when it does there will be strong pent-up demand.”
Rajan added, “As Chinese demand comes back, it’s going to put upward pressure on global commodity prices.” An example, he said, is natural gas. “Europe is currently benefiting from lower natural gas prices because the Chinese have not been competing. That will change in the next year.”
Kroszner, however, offered some hope on that front. “Germany recently built a liquified natural gas plant in six months. This would normally have taken three years. They did it by streamlining and eliminating a bunch of regulations. There’s a real lesson there that if you put your mind to it, you can really get things done.”
Kroszner also expressed doubts on the revival of the Chinese domestic market. “There has always been a very high personal savings rate in China because of a lack of trust in the government to provide healthcare and other services. The lesson people have learned from the pandemic is that this will continue. So while the domestic market will definitely come back, it won’t snap back quite like the US did.”
China also plays into predictions regarding the global supply chain. Because of the disruptions caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, companies are looking to expand their options. “Everybody wants what I call a China Plus One policy,” said Rajan. “Companies want more flexibility with their supply chains. Instead of just-in-time, they’re moving toward a just-in-case strategy.”
The economic upsets of the past few years have also scrambled the outlook for emerging markets such as India, Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines. “If you take them as a group, they had a bad pandemic. The upper classes did well but the governments couldn’t support the lower middle classes with the kind of fiscal transfers that happened in developed countries,” Rajan said. “In India, for example, auto sales are going through the roof but scooter and motorcycle sales—which is how the lower middle class gets around—are still on a downward trend.”
The result, he said, is that “the lower middle class is hurting and that is starting to have an effect on politics. People want change.”