|
版权关系,转贴两段。
However, just as fast growth masked underlying strains, so China’s disappointing growth has obscured two encouraging trends that may matter hugely for China’s future. Consumption, although still low, made a bigger contribution than investment to China’s growth in the first quarter. That sustains a break with investment-led growth that dates back to 2011. Even more notable, services have trumped industry’s contribution to GDP in the past three quarters and have almost matched it over the past four—which has not happened since the 1960s.
In short China is modernising, becoming more like a Western economy, with consumers and services to the fore. And these two promising trends reinforce each other. Because services are more labour-intensive than industry, their growth boosts wages and household income. Fatter pay-packets then encourage consumption, and consumer spending, in turn, favours services. In economic life, as one economist has put it, “Result becomes cause and cause becomes result.” |
|