CHINA CONSUMERS ’RICHER THAN DATA SUGGESTS’
Govt may have underestimated citizens’ true spending power by as much as 20pc
BEIJING
That’s because the official sampling isn’t good enough to reflect the affluence households have gained through investment returns, CASS says.
And households are the most optimistic they’ve been in more than two years, a private consumer confidence report released yesterday showed.
“We’re richer than the data suggests, and the potential for spending is bigger than it looks,” said Zhao Wen, a labour economics analyst leading the research. “Consumption will continue to be an important driver for economic expansion in the future.”
The shift is reflected by the new champions of the nation’s economy: not industrial giants but retail and services innovators.
Tencent Holdings Ltd and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd have become China’s largest corporations in the past year.
The challenge for policymakers led by President Xi Jinping now is to keep disposable income rising even while they’re trying to deflate property market bubbles and crimp the amount of leverage during the longer-term slowdown of the world’s second-largest economy.
Success isn’t automatic. As China faces stiffer wage competition from its neighbours, wage growth is moderating.
Growth of median per-capita disposable income decelerated to 6.7 per cent in the first quarter, down from 8.3 per cent last year and slower than gross domestic product expansion for the first time since the National Bureau of year and that number was expected to rise to 50 million by the end of the year, said the China E-Commerce Research Centre.
With the patience of police and pedestrians wearing thin, some firms have appointed staff to patrol streets.
But the startups, including leading rivals Mobike and Ofo, may soon need to comply with stricter regulations. Statistics (NBS) began releasing a gauge covering both rural and urban households in March 2014.
The NBS pays a rotating sample of around 160,000 households across the nation to report their daily income and spending habits, generating quarterly data on how much they can spend.
Yet persuading people to be honest about their wealth is no easy task, and it’s almost impossible to track how much people earn through investment of stocks and properties.
“Poorer people, such as those depending on a living allowance, need to let others know they’re short of money, while those in possession of properties, savings and securities are reluctant to reveal the size of their wealth,” said Zhao. Bloomberg
The Transport Ministry on Monday released a draft proposal on rules requiring local governments to better manage the booming bike-share industry.
It calls for the development of dedicated parking zones near major transportation hubs, shopping areas and office blocks, and advises local authorities to make some areas off-limits for bike parking. AFP