China-Singapore Jingwei, December 15 (Xinhua) -- The credibility of communication is a key factor in boosting confidence.
This article is based on the main content of Bai Chongen, Dean of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University and Executive Dean of the Institute for Global Common Development, at the "2023 Tsinghua Financial News Forum".
As an economist, I would like to share with you some of my observations and thoughts on China's economic developmentAt the same time, I would like to combine these observations and thoughts to talk about my expectations for economic communication.
To understand China's economy today, I think there are three main factors that should be looked at.
The first is the sequelae of the epidemic that still exist, which is mainly reflected in two aspects.
From a domestic point of view, the fiscal revenue of the first level at all levels has been greatly affected during the epidemic, while the fiscal expenditure still has a strong rigidity. Therefore, this imbalance of income and expenditure has brought a lot of challenges to the local government.
From an international point of view, developed countries have adopted some rescue policies during the epidemic, especially in the later stage of the epidemic, which have led to more serious inflation. In order to cope with high inflation, developed countries have adopted tight monetary policies, and the policy spillovers of these developed countries have brought huge challenges to developing countries around the world. At the same time, international exchanges have been affected to some extent during the pandemic, and these negative impacts have been exacerbated in the geopolitical context that was already tense before the pandemic.
The second is the anti-globalization market. There are many causes for the phenomenon of deglobalization.
In 2013, the American Economic Review published an article by three professors of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Zurich that examined the impact of the economic and trade relationship between the United States and China on U.S. manufacturing employment. The introduction to the article is accompanied by a chart showing two curves: an upward curve representing the penetration rate of Chinese exports to the United States, and a downward curve representing the U.S. manufacturing employment rate, showing a negative correlation between the two. However, the article's conclusions are not convincing enough, because the transformation of labor-intensive industries due to technological change may also be responsible for the decline in manufacturing employment in the United States. The authors then conducted a more detailed study to divide the United States into many regions according to postal codes to observe the relationship between the closeness of Sino-US economic and trade relations and manufacturing employment in different regions, and found that there was still a negative correlation. Since then, the author has published more than ten articles to continue his research in this direction.
Although the authors did make great efforts to ensure the reliability of the conclusions of the study from a scientific point of view, they are still very misleading in terms of comprehensiveness. This is because the economic and trade relationship between China and the United States has brought huge benefits to both countries, and the positive benefits of the United States are more reflected in the service industry, but the articles related to the benefits of the service industry have not been widely disseminated for various reasons, while this article focusing on the manufacturing industry has been quickly disseminated and has had a wide impact on American society. Politicians believe that the direction of the U.S.-China economic and trade relationship has a negative impact on U.S. employment, but they ignore the positive impact of U.S.-China economic and trade in many other aspects besides manufacturing. Such examples illustrate the importance of economic communication in the international community. Going back to the comparison of the research on the service sector, my colleagues have found that the U.S. service sector benefits from the U.S.-China economic and trade relationship, and Wall Street interviewed my colleagues, but unfortunately, such articles have not been fully disseminated and have disappeared into many other information, which has led to a very limited impact of this kind of positive research.
Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote a book called "The World is Flat," and the conclusions of this book remain true to this day. Economic and trade relations and economic and trade exchanges will bring benefits to the participating countries, but the distribution of such benefits within each country is affected by the politics of each country and may not be fair. For example, in the United States, the domestic distribution in the United States is uneven, and the voices of the victims are very loud, and these voices will have a greater impact on the international policy and globalization trend of the United States, and will also have a greater impact on China. How to report these voices objectively and fairly?This shows the importance of communication. In the complex international situation, it is very important for China to maintain sustained and close economic and trade relations with other countries, but there are often remarks that are not conducive to globalization and attacks on rational discussants, which will have an adverse impact on us.
The third is structural transformation.
At present, one of the obvious structural transformations in China is the structural transformation of the real estate industry. Changes in population expectations, combined with other factors, can lead to changes in the real estate market.
Another structural transformation is the new need for governance, which is one that we are not currently discussing enough. The new need for governance comes from two main sources. On the one hand, we only need to focus on the growth of gross domestic product (GDP), while high-quality development is multi-objective management, which brings great challenges to governance. On the other hand, there is the improvement of regulatory requirements, which used to be a relatively simple economy, but now that Internet platform companies play an increasingly important role in the economy, it is more difficult to supervise such enterprises. Because the supervision required by Internet platform enterprises is far more difficult than the supervision of a manufacturing enterprise, the increase in regulatory demand has also brought us new requirements and new challenges.
On the whole, whether it is the sequelae of the epidemic, the anti-globalization market, or the structural transformation, we need to be more objective and fair in communication and create a first-class environment conducive to the high-quality development of China's economy. I believe that the credibility of communication is the key factor in boosting confidence, and only when people believe in it, spreading positive stories can boost confidence.
In reporting and disseminating China's economy, I believe that: first, it is necessary to clarify the many challenges facing China's economy, and also to explain that China still has huge growth potential as a developing country. China has the advantage of economies of scale and abundant human capital, and it is no longer a demographic dividend, but an engineer dividend. At the same time, China has a well-developed infrastructure, and giving full play to the role of long-term strategic planning and coordination will create more space for China's economy to develop.
Second, news outside of social media, especially the mainstream, should play a more active role. In the new media environment, the voice of social ** is getting louder and louder, and rational discussion in social ** is often drowned out by passion. Therefore, the mainstream should play an active role in balancing emotional speech in social interactions.
Third, I hope that China** will play a greater role in global communication, so that readers around the world can see more objective and fair reports on China. I think that the mainstream of foreign countries has a strong bias in reporting on China. We should give a more comprehensive and in-depth account of the impact of China's development on the world, explain the positive impact of China's development on global development and various situations, and continuously enhance China's credibility in the world and China's role in global development. In this way, we can create a good international environment conducive to global development and China's development. (Zhongxin Jingwei app).
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