After the ** Economic Work Conference, the Economic Work Conference of China's provinces was also held for the first time. At the end of the year, it is the time to summarize and look forward, from large enterprise groups, small micro enterprises, and self-employed people, the judgment of the economic situation in the new year and the planning of business strategies are also maintained in the implementation of economic work at all levels in various localities.
The first economic work conference once again made it clear that the "major economic provinces" should really take the lead and make greater contributions to stabilizing the national economy. As a result, the economic work conferences held by several major economic provinces in China have received widespread attention. And they have also coincidentally launched the deployment of "economic work guidance" with their own emphasis.
The Economic Work Conference of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee emphasized the need to firmly grasp the guiding requirements of seeking progress while maintaining stability, promoting stability with progress, and establishing first and then breaking through, and sang the theory of China's economic brightness with a clear banner.
The Economic Work Conference of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee deployed nine tasks to be focused on next year, pointing out that it is necessary to comprehensively understand and grasp the trend changes in economic development, and do a good job in economic propaganda and guidance.
The Economic Work Conference of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee proposed to create new advantages in nine areas such as scientific and technological innovation leading the modern industrial system, and added Article 10 on this basis: to create new advantages in strengthening economic publicity and guidance.
The content of this innovative Article 10 is: timely release of authoritative information, take the initiative to set guidance topics, properly handle sudden public opinion, improve the guidance mechanism, boost development confidence, and improve social expectations.
It can be seen that after the first economic work conference put forward the theory of singing China's economic brightness, this work has been pushed to the height of the same direction, synchronization and frequency with economic work, and such a situation has appeared for the first time in recent years.
In daily life, the public and market entities mainly understand the economic situation and judge the future trend through economic news and commentary. Economic news is not only the dissemination of existing achievements, but also a kind of expectation management, and the pulse of the future.
Shandong's "Article 10" puts it in the same position as economic policy, and makes specific arrangements for economic guidance, releasing the meaning of attaching great importance to this work.
We believe that under the current economic situation, there are three levels of understanding that need to be focused on grasping to do a good job in guiding economic work.
The definition of news is to report what has happened in the past and is happening, but economic news is much more than that, the public should understand the economic situation through the news, eliminate or reduce information asymmetry, so as to judge business opportunities and seize investment opportunities. For the economic authorities, it can stabilize expectations, and thus stabilize the economy.
Correctly interpreting the economic situation and economic events is the proper meaning of economic news. Especially in the period of economic transition, timely and accurate economic news can eliminate the public's panic caused by information asymmetry on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can make operators feel safe about the future.
An economic event often contains complex causes, and the appearance is followed by multiple causes and effects, and mutual cause and effect, which cannot be presented with simple logic, single-line analysis, and fragmented information, but needs rigorous analysis and progressive logic to explain.
Just as the share prices of listed companies reflect the future, economic news is full of expectation management. At a time when the economic environment is expected to weaken, confidence is more important than **. To boost confidence in development, in fact, is to guide market players to accurately grasp the direction of macro policies, and enhance market expectations and their own development expectations.
Economic news is particularly important for expectation management, and policy interpretation and errata are particularly important.
Due to the limitations of people's cognitive level, the judgment of economic policies and economic events is always full of misunderstandings. If there is a misunderstanding, it is necessary to constantly correct and correct it, so that people can achieve a thorough understanding. In practice, there is a need for a smooth communication mechanism between our industry authorities and the public, and the economic sector undertakes this communication function.
In the economic environment we are currently in, the Internet information is very complex, the public obtains a large amount of fragmented information, and the interpretation of information is often one-sided and extreme, so that the internal logic of economic events is destroyed, and the public judges the economic situation like a roller coaster, which is rhythmized by various interpretations. Reflected in the **, a wrong interpretation can often bring about a major setback in the market value of related companies and industries.
The changes in the world and the adjustment and transformation of the Internet have set off waves on the Internet from time to time, amplifying the public's anxiety and interfering with normal economic decision-making. When business operators make decisions in such a leading environment, they must distinguish the authenticity from the false, so they pay a high time cost.
The enlightenment to us is that to improve the first-class guidance mechanism, it is more important to do a lot of work in front, not to find a way to deal with public opinion. The misinterpretation that may arise from the issuance of a government decree should have a pre-interpretation and errata plan, and the market fluctuations caused by the misinterpretation also need to be corrected in a timely manner.
It can be seen that responding to public concerns in a timely manner is still an extremely critical mechanism in the first guidance, and behind this "timely" is a series of arrangements based on the law of communication. However, in practice, there are still many blind spots in our information disclosure mechanism, and the conservative attitude of "vague and unnecessary non-disclosure" of key information is often the choice of the relevant competent authorities, so they often rush into battle after the outbreak of major public opinion and passively maneuver.
In daily economic life, compared with the macro structural adjustment and economic growth, the individual's experience of the economic side is more subtle, and the common people mainly perceive economic development through the rise and fall of prices, wage levels and employment opportunities, and there is a natural asymmetry between the comprehensiveness of macro indicators and the dispersion of micro feelings. And this asymmetry needs to be analyzed in a credible logical chain.
In June 2023, Xu Xianchun, a special researcher at the National School of Development of Peking University and former deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics, in his book "Perspective on China's Statistics: Understanding and Application", explained the most important statistics of the public, academia and policymakers from the perspective of theoretical combing and practical application, covering GDP, disposable income, consumption, investment, import and export. Among them, why is there a "temperature difference" between statistics and individual feelings, and why is it often the focus of public discussion?
In Xu Xianchun's view, it is a common phenomenon that there is a contrast between the public's intuitive feelings and statistical data. Different people look at statistics from different angles, and of course they have different feelings about data. And such a phenomenon also exists abroad, as well as in developed economies.
Taking the increase in CPI as an example, the feelings of low- and middle-income people are more likely to be contrasted. Because of the changes in daily consumer goods such as vegetables, fruits, and pork, the people will be very sensitive, and the changes in durable consumer goods such as household appliances, computers, and automobiles are not easy to feel. When calculating the CPI increase, consumer goods and consumer durables are usually put into one basket. The result of the calculation is that if the increase narrows, and the reason is that the price of durable consumer goods has fallen, and the ** of daily consumer goods has not changed or even has **, then low- and middle-income households will have individual "temperature differences" and think that the statistics are inaccurate.
It can be seen that even if a common statistical data is reported, the statistical method and logical derivation of the data are crucial. Failure to parse the logical chain often leads to misunderstandings. Another example is GDP, which often appears in various economic news, but few people can explain the basic theory and accounting methods of GDP clearly.
In recent years, the internal and external environment of China's economy has undergone drastic changes, and the level of economic development and market environment in various regions are very different, which makes it difficult for us to explain the economy with a universal principle.
Some people often sigh: Our line of work is getting harder and harder!
When an industry is not doing well, it means that it has entered the iteration period of new and old kinetic energy, and the average profit of the industry has entered the trough, which itself is the law of economics at work, just like the rotation of the four seasons, winter and spring are always intertwined. From the perspective of the long cycle of history, no industry can continue to be brilliant, and no industry is always sluggish.
The best guidance of economic work should guide the public to recognize the common sense of economics, understand the economic cycle, get accustomed to the wave-like progress of the economy, and maintain concentration.
At present, the "new quality productivity" represented by the new energy vehicle and photovoltaic industry is rising rapidly, while the growth rate of the "traditional productivity" represented by real estate and its related industries is slowing down.
In an economy in the process of structural adjustment, the transformation of old and new kinetic energy cannot be tightly combined, and the transformation will always go through pains, which is also an objective law. And a healthy economy can always rely on the momentum of emerging industries to quickly eliminate such pains.
Taking Shandong, a major economic province, as an example, Shandong's industrial structure has a strong foundation and a complete range of categories, and its ability to resist economic risks is relatively strong. In the same region, the east is always not bright in the west, and the market players who follow up these changes in a timely manner can always smell new business opportunities.
As the competent economic department and the local government, especially the major economic provinces, it is also responsible to create a clear economic ecology, popularize economic knowledge to the public and market players, and explain such changes with a realistic, scientific and rational attitude.
As emphasized in Article 10, timely release of authoritative information, take the initiative to set up guiding topics, and properly deal with sudden public opinion, which is the essence of our economic guidance, which is not a profound theory, but respects the laws of economics and communication, and transforms it into action guidance. Boosting confidence in development and improving social expectations are always rooted in the public's dialectical understanding of economic fundamentals. It can be said that timely and accurate economic news determines the public's expectations for the future and determines confidence in the economy.
The enlightening significance of Article 10 also lies in the fact that we have designed it as a mechanism, transformed it into a concept, and explored a set of methods to make it a long-term means for us to manage market expectations and assume the responsibility of a major economic province. And the best guidance for economic work, we must not exaggerate for the sake of guidance, let alone distort the facts in violation of economic common sense, such guidance not only can not dispel public doubts, but will also be counterattacked by the market.
In the current complex and changeable internal and external environment, the guidance of economic work is indeed in a highly sensitive period, no matter how careful, will face all kinds of incomprehension and misunderstanding of the public, only by correctly grasping the objective law, in order not to be in a hurry, calmly and promisingly.
Therefore, to do a good job in popularizing economic knowledge and correcting policy misinterpretations in a timely manner is to sing the theory of China's economic brightness.
Original title: "Analysis of the "Tenth Article", How to Guide the Development of Confidence?》