As 2023 draws to a close, it is customary to review the economy in 2023 and look forward to the economy in 2024 in a few days.
As far as the information around them is concerned, everyone is complaining about the poor economy in 2023, which is very different from the economic situation officially described. Officials have recently begun to sing the theory of economic brightness, saying that the economic achievements in 2023 will be great and the economic prospects in 2024 will be bright, and it is confusing whether it is red or black.
Whether the economy is bad or good in 2023, the subjective factor is too strong.
Due to the particularity of 2022, the economy as a whole should be said to have recovered in 2023. Let's look at it from the side of the cultural tourism industry. In the film industry, the Spring Festival stalls in 2023 performed well, with a box office of more than 6.7 billion yuan, making it the second highest box office in Chinese film history, only lower than 2021. The summer file is particularly eye-catching, with a box office of 20.6 billion yuan, creating the first record of China's summer box office breaking the 20 billion mark. As of December 24, the total annual box office in 2023 has exceeded 53.6 billion, compared with 204 in 2020, 2021, and 20221.7 billion, 4725.8 billion and 3006.7 billion, showing a significant recovery trend in 2023. The concert economy is so hot that Haikou said that Jay Chou's four-day concert from June 29 to July 2 will increase Haikou's income by 1 billion. Concert tickets are hard to find, the demand is strong, and the benefits of scalping are so great that ticketing platform companies and organizers have teamed up with scalpers to scalp tickets. Qingming, five.
First, the Dragon Boat Festival, summer, eleventh tourist peaks, since the beginning of the winter in the north of the country travel is hot, to see the ice and snow world tourists and Harbin hotels and scenic spots crowded. In the first half of the year, Beijing's express hotels were sold for 900 a night, making people afraid to go to Beijing for business. The queues for popular restaurants and Internet celebrity bubble tea shops in various cities are also unexpectedly long. These are certainly not signs of an economic depression.
At the same time, however, there is also a downturn in the economy. According to the data of the General Administration of Customs, in dollar terms, in the first 11 months of this year, China's exports were 308 trillion dollars, down 52%。The lack of manufacturing orders and low factory operating rates spread across many industries and continued throughout the year. Internet, finance and other industries layoffs and salary cuts continue to be reported. The surveyed youth unemployment rate was at a double-digit high in the first half of the year, and the data will not be released later. The severe employment situation has led to a sharp increase in the number of food delivery workers and ride-hailing drivers, while the growth in the number of orders has been sluggish, which has led to a sharp decline in the income of ride-hailing drivers. Nor are these signs of economic prosperity.
For the economic situation in 2023, the people's mourning is in stark contrast to the official narrative, and everyone has given a more or less deviant judgment from the facts for their own positions and purposes, and the reason for this opposition is itself the economic characteristics of 2023, which is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
1. Real estate***
2022 was a fundamental turning point for the real estate market, but all the energy was on the epidemic that year, the whole year was in an abnormal state, and economic issues were masked. In fact, the Evergrande thunderstorm in 2021, followed by the default of many real estate companies, has clearly shown that real estate is on a downward slope. However, in March this year, with the previous backlog of transactions and online signing data, ** intermediaries and real estate companies still shouted "Xiaoyangchun in the property market" and deceived the last group of people. In today's era where marketing is king and what can be deceived is deceiving, a surprising number of people practice that "a lie repeated a thousand times is the truth".Every time the real estate policy is loosened, the purchase restrictions are relaxed, the "house is not recognized", or the down payment ratio is reduced, there will be headlines such as "the owner raised the price overnight" and "the developer cancels the discount" to rush to the hot search, and even some official media also use the guise of "news reports" to name a certain real estate in the cliché of good policy, to advertise for others, ** is to earn traffic and advertising fees, but the credibility and real information are sacrificed. Similar operations have been around for a long time, so the quality of real estate-related information has been very poor, and even developers and ** banks have been bypassed, and there has been over-investment, over-construction and risk out of control.
2023 is a small number of years in which housing prices are recognized as universal, which has only happened a few times in 2008 and 2013 in the more than 20 years since the housing reform, and the rest of the years are "house prices forever **" In this round of housing price adjustment, most cities fell back to before 2020, and some cities fell back to before 2016, depending on the degree of madness and economic and demographic endowments before, the decline from the highest point was between 20-50%.
China's house-price-to-income ratio is about 30 overall, which means that a person with a median income needs to use 30 years of income to buy a median** property, and if it is a couple, it takes 15 years of income for both people. The house-price-to-income ratio in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen is more than 40. This means that 20% of the house price is equivalent to a person's income for 6 years, and if you count the expenses, it will take more than 10 years to accumulate so much money with daily expenses as half of the income. "Once you buy the wrong house, you will work hard for several years", and the salary increase is not fragrant, and it is naturally impossible for groups with real estate as their main asset to have a positive feeling about the economic situation this year.
This year's sluggish housing prices are still interpreted as poor income and expectations, and I don't know when everyone is willing to admit that there are not so many people who need to buy a house. After the house is built enough, no one lives in it, no one lives in it. What happens earlier than the house cannot be sold is that it is difficult to rent out on a regular basis in most places, and the vacancy rate is high.
In the second half of 2020, due to the release of currency and the sharp increase in export orders, the real estate market ushered in the last rebound, and the volume and price rose, most of which were supposed to be delivered before this year. The real estate delivered by luck, you can also intuitively feel that the occupancy rate is not high, and there are many directly listed**.
I pointed out in "The Future of China's Real Estate" on January 7, 2019 that China's annual real estate new residential area is around 1.5 billion square meters, enough for 40 million people to live, while the third and fourth-tier cities have already had the problem of surplus real estate long before 2019, and the so-called real estate shortage in first- and second-tier cities is more artificial and structural. In the context of negative growth, not only will it be impossible for us to find 40 million new people every year to fill these houses, but it will be a big problem to make use of the more houses we have built before.
Ponzi ** always thunders when the victims are the most, and the real estate bubble always bursts when it affects the most widespread people, and the bursting of the real estate bubble will profoundly affect the financial, economic and even social state, this topic is so important, I will elaborate on it in another article later.
2. Financial assets***
This year's ** is relatively sluggish, the Shanghai Composite Index was about 3050 points at the beginning of the year, and it came to around 2950 points at the end of the year. The Shenzhen Component Index, which reflects the small and medium-sized cap, fell from 11,000 points to 9,500 points, and the Growth Enterprise Market slipped from 2,300 points to 1,890 points, each worse than the other.
At the policy level, in fact, there is a lot of care, reducing the handling fee rate, halving the stamp duty, and in August, a double-edged sword was sacrificed, and the IPO was slowed down in an all-round way, reflecting the willingness of the top management to boost the **, and Hu Xijin, who felt that he was good at feeling the pulse, announced his entry into the ** in a high-profile manner. Unexpectedly, the big A-share monopoly is all kinds of dissatisfaction, and anyone who comes is a leek, and Hu Xijin is so bad that he has opened "Justifying the Name of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Index".
Many **fell worse than **, and a large number of public and private ** net value retreated by more than 40%. Especially in the early stage, relying on the so-called star manager to raise more funds, the drawdown is very large. Say something that offends someoneCelebrity managers are mostly marketing. There are thousands of public and private equity managers, and they can always find a manager with outstanding performance or relatively stable performance, but it is not possible to create a good performance manager by "carrying a sedan chair". These managers are often in the small plate, by betting on one or two outlets, or a few soaring ** and "fight to fame", * the company naturally wants to take advantage of this signboard to raise ** to earn management fees, brokers, banks for a little consignment fees, custody fees are also competing to tout, the masses who do not know the truth have subscribed, the scale of management has expanded rapidly, the first two years often reached tens of billions. Naturally, you can't support these ** by luck, and the end is to lose the money of the people by ability. But the management fee is a sure deal.
There are even more outrageous things in the ** industry in 2023. In November, Hangzhou Yuyao's investment of 3 billion quantitative private placement was exposed, "the pre-investment valuation table and post-investment performance are all fake", and risk control measures such as custody have all failed. As the saying goes, when you see cockroaches all the time, there are already 1,000 cockroaches in the house, this kind of fraud ** is certainly not an exception, and it will continue to emerge as the industry recession continues.
This year's event with a greater impact is also the Zhongzhi explosion. For the industry, it is not surprising that Zhongzhi exploded thunder, but what was unexpected was how it exploded this year.
Shrinkage, financial thunder, and housing prices** together make people feel that their wealth has shrunk, giving people the feeling of "this year is really bad". As a result, financial institution workers are facing reduced incomes and unemployment, and they feel that life is even more difficult.
In 2023, the overall financial risk has not yet been cleared, and it can even be said that it has not been really exposed, the trust that is mired in the quagmire of real estate is still demolishing the east wall and making up the west wall through capital pools and other means, the assets of insurance companies are full of doubts, and the bad debts of banks are quietly renewed. However, just as Ponzi ** always rolls bigger and bigger, and finally can't hold on, the financial institutions that pretend to have a good time will eventually usher in the moment of being caught and run.
3. There is a big gap between the actual situation of economic recovery and expectations.
After 2022, people have established high expectations for 2023. For example, in the case of real estate, the general trend has gone, and the so-called property market is a small spring. Overseas orders, especially those from North America, began to decrease in June 2022, and the shipping index plummeted, the fundamental reason for which is the decline of foreign epidemic subsidies and the recovery of its own production, which will certainly not change with China's liberalization, so it is reasonable that export orders will decrease in 2023.
However, many people have established the expectation that "everything will be fine after liberalization", for example, in the top ten at the beginning of the year, the property market is booming, the Internet is good, consumption is good, and medicine is good. Although the economy in 2023 has recovered relatively speaking, such as the cultural tourism and hotel industries listed above, the current environment does not support it if it wants to prosper in an all-round way.
4. Cyclical downturn in some industries.
In the first two years, it can even be said that some overheated industries will encounter a downward cycle in 2023 due to the release of production capacity from early investment, such as lithium carbonate** from more than 500,000 tons at the beginning of the year to less than 100,000 tons. Pork** peaked in 2020 and then entered a downward cycle, running at the bottom of the cycle throughout 2023, with related companies such as New Hope, a new pig farmer, continuing to lose money.
The semiconductor industry, which was once popular in 2021 due to the "lack of cores", will cool down in 2023 with the lack of consumer electronics upgrading. In May, OPPO's chip design upstart Zheku suddenly dissolved, shaking the industry.
In addition, 2015-2018 was the peak of equity investment** fundraising, because after the IPO suspension from November 16, 2012 to December 30, 2013, the IPO began to operate normally in 2014, making the primary market reactive. The operation cycle of these equity investments** is usually about 7 years, and it is time to withdraw from liquidation. It should be said that most of the results are not ideal, and they are far from the returns expected by investors several times or even dozens of times.
5. The strength of economic support policies is less than expected.
Monetary policy is affected by the Fed's stubborn interest rate highs, and it is understandable that interest rate cuts are hesitant. I expected the Fed to leave the rate hike channel in the first half of the year, but they raised rates again in July, and I don't know why.
In terms of fiscal policy, in 2022, the local fiscal deficit will be huge, the decrease in income and expenditure will increase sharply, and the sluggish property market and the decrease in land transfer will make the problem worse, and 2023 will be the first year of the new team. However, it was not until October that 1 trillion yuan of special national bonds were allocated to local governments, and they were also designated for disaster prevention and mitigation.
Local financial constraints have led to the arrears of all kinds of ** merchants, and the ** merchants have defaulted on their further upstream ** merchants, and the entire debt chain is long and tight. After working and selling goods, but the receivables cannot be recovered, people cannot feel that the economic situation is good.
6. Industry supervision is like a bolt from the blue.
After the education and training were hit, this year's talk show suddenly suffered another catastrophe, telling the world that saying the wrong word in this world is a thousand cuts, and it is a huge risk to speak to hundreds of people in one field. In contrast, Pinduoduo "slashed" to defraud hundreds of millions of people, reported tens of thousands, and nothing happened, and they couldn't help but learn from it. The difference is in **?It's nothing more than whether there is anyone who can cover it. As long as the profits and taxes are hundreds of millions, and there are people above it, it will be okay to engage in pyramid schemes that shock the whole country, otherwise, selling cucumbers and selling bean curd in a bun shop will cost tens of thousands of fines.
The cultural industry has been the hardest hit area by regulation for many years. The blood in games and animations can be green, yellow, blue, black, or red, but it can't be red. A few days ago, there were regulations on the management of online games, and a lot of words were written in general, and they were refined to the point that there was a regulation for daily login rewards, which caused an uproar in the market, and game stocks were respected.
It's not that we don't need regulation, on the contrary, the regulation that should exist is nothing. Trillions of real estate pre-sale funds could have covered land prices, construction costs, construction costs and even developers' profits, but the bank and the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau did not control it, and they were misappropriated and disappeared casually. Buyers have saved up for a lifetime and a loan for decades to exchange for an unfinished house, and the developer and the bank have said that there is no money and no way, isn't this a big joke.
Regardless of the industry, there have always been many common problems in our regulation, and there is a trend of spreading to all industries. For example, "thinking of ** to ** to **" really needs to be managed to ignore the rights and wrongs, always picking out words in the details. There is a 2008 edition of the "Measures for the Administration of Major Asset Restructuring of Listed Companies", which has a lot of words, and everyone knows each word, and no one knows what it means together, and no one even knows it in the China Securities Regulatory Commission. This year, a new version has been released, with limited improvements. Many of the management measures are similar, such as the clause "shall not induce excessive consumption".What is induced overconsumption?There is no basis for judgment, relying on casual interpretation and discretionary judgment by supervision.
For a long time, there have been several major problems in our administrative supervision, such as "heavy examination and approval, light supervision, changeable rules, and arbitrary punishment". There are many approval procedures, many processes, and many rules, and it cannot be done without internal departments. And when it comes to real business, no one pays attention to those minor regulations, and even the regulators themselves often forget them. The rules are set by patting the head, and if something happens, there are complaints, and the higher-level departments have opinions, they will change them when they turn around, and after a few years, the people who have been prescribed by the regulations will be transferred, and it is impossible to explain what these management methods are all about. In terms of punishment, a fine of 600,000 yuan will be imposed for a case that causes a loss of hundreds of millions of yuan, and some small negligence will directly make people close the door and cancel it. All kinds of phenomena often make people feel that regulation is not to promote the industry and regulate the industry, but to seize power and intervene in the industry as they wish.
I am afraid that the key point of industry supervision is not in the industry, not which industry to manage and how to manage, but in the supervision itself, who will restrain the regulatory departments, how to standardize regulatory behavior, and how to provide regulatory correction and relief mechanisms.
And always worry about when there will be some "management methods", worry about whether their industry will be "cleaned up", people are unlikely to feel that the economic situation is good.
7. Income disparities continue to widen.
This year, there has been a wave of layoffs in the Internet, finance and other industries, accompanied by a wave of salary cuts. At the same time, there are people who make more money, such as the aforementioned concert scalpers. In the first half of the year, Zibo barbecue was popular, and now it has returned to calm, and the opportunity to open a barbecue restaurant to make money should not be large, but the decoration of the barbecue restaurant should be rich. The business of immigration agents has exploded this year, and the black intermediary business of "line immigration" is said to have also exploded, which is really black humor. Some people can barely pay off their mortgage by working three jobs, and some people can win 2200 million yuan.
The increase in the income of a certain sound is amazing, and the overall income increase of the anchor is naturally amazing. However, the income of the anchor group is already extremely differentiated, and behind the overall growth, it may be a more deformed distribution. This year's top anchor with goods overturned, in addition to improper remarks, the main reason is that the floor price agreement was exposed, and people understand that the so-called "lowest price on the whole network" of the head anchor is not the discount that the anchor asks the manufacturer for, but just does not let the product sell lower**, and the family has supported it for a long time, supporting the "lowest price on the whole network".
Someone calculated that the amount of goods brought by a head anchor is equivalent to the sales of a supermarket group with tens of thousands of employees. In the absence of other regulatory mechanisms, such situations will become more common.
It's not a summary of the summary.
In general, economic activity has recovered in 2023, but due to asset shrinkage, poor collections, and uncertain prospects, people's intuitive feelings are generally poor, and various negative factors do not show signs of improvement at present, so expectations for the future are more pessimistic.
Some negative expectations are correct, such as the fact that real estate is bound to continue to decline. Population data for 2023 should be released in a few days, with negative population growth of about 3 million. In such a general trend and environment, it is obviously self-deception to rebuild everyone's confidence in real estate, and it is better to do a good job in the expected management of real estate loss-making sales and financial institutions' risk exposure. Some negative expectations can be managed, such as whether to suppress the cultural industry, and should give encouraging signals to appease the emotions of practitioners and put away the stick.
Recently, there have been some signs of bad environment, and all kinds of issues have become politicized. We should treat economic work as ideological work, discuss economic issues as propaganda struggles, and treat economic contradictions as contradictions between ourselves and enemiesIt makes people feel like they went back 60 yearsIt's very unrealistic. The economic environment in 2024 is not optimistic, and such an attitude and way of doing things are not conducive to economic construction.