It takes a brave economist to argue that China is not investing too much: the country’s fixed capital formation to GDP ratio is now 46 per cent of GDP, up from 28 per cent in 1980.
Yet that is exactly what Qu Hongbin, HSBC’s Chief Economist for China, suggests, pointing to the fact that China is just “halfway through the process of urbanisation and industrialisation.” The recent roll-out of its high-speed railway and freight networks may have garnered its share of headlines but Qu points out that “China’s railway network is still shorter than that of the US in 1880.”
Rapid urbanisation of the sort China is undergoing requires heaps of investment. More than 80 cities in China with a population of more than 5m have no mass rapid transit system, he notes. China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 prompted a surge in manufacturing investment – total value of exports has risen 7.6 times since (measured in US dollars in current prices).
