Some time ago, the statistics department released the data of the 2023 national economic semi-annual report, which showed that China's GDP increased by 5% year-on-year in the first half of this year5%。At first glance, this is a very good figure, but in fact it is quite far from our expectations. It is worth mentioning that in the recently released GDP data, not only did not maintain growth, but fell by 02%, which means that China's economy may have a deflationary problem.
Let me give you a brief introduction, deflation refers to the absolute or relative reduction of the currency, which causes the appreciation of paper money and the overall price level continues to be the social and economic phenomenon. Many people may think that deflation is a good thing, because it means that the purchasing power of the money in the hands of ordinary people is getting stronger, but in fact it is not like that.
Because everyone has found that the consumption power in society has been in a sluggish state during this time. Coupled with the global economic recession, even if people have spare money in their hands, they do not dare to use it for consumption at will, which eventually leads to difficulties in doing business in all walks of life, and in this case, the economic growth rate will decline.
In this regard, some people in the industry pointed out that this rare situation in China's economy is inseparable from the "two major tumors" of society.
The first cancer: high housing prices.
It has to be said that China's vigorous development of real estate in the past 20 years or so has stimulated economic development to a great extent and improved the living conditions of residents. However, it is worth mentioning that the speed of China's real estate development is too fast, in just over 20 years, it has caught up with the development of other countries for fifty or sixty years, and the speed has also led to the imperfection of some regulation and supervision mechanisms, resulting in many negative problems. Specifically, the negative impact of real estate is mainly concentrated in two aspects.
The first is that high mortgages make young people lose their dreams and overdraft their consumption prematurely.
The rapid development of the property market has made China's housing prices rise all the way, and the housing prices of tens of thousands of yuan per square meter have made it necessary for ordinary people to pay huge costs to buy houses, and there are not a few families who have borrowed for twenty or thirty years to buy houses. According to the data, there are currently about 200 million families in China who have taken out loans to buy houses, and the overall debt of the Chinese people is as high as 200 trillion, of which a large part is housing loans.
It can be seen that the house has actually allowed many young people to spend the next twenty or thirty years of income in advance, in addition to the basic living expenses, it is difficult for them to have other extra money for entertainment and consumption, and this is also an important reason why the consumption power of Chinese residents has not been raised.
Secondly, the unfinished building has plunged many families into despair.
For ordinary people, even if they buy a house and encounter high housing prices, the key is that many families are still affected by some unscrupulous developers, and the funds for buying a house are misappropriated, which leads to the occurrence of unfinished buildings. According to the data, Evergrande alone has created more than 1.6 million unfinished buildings, which involves the housing and mortgage repayment problems of about 6 million people.
After talking about the first "cancer" high housing prices, let's talk about the second one, which is e-commerce.
From the consumer's point of view, e-commerce has eliminated the middleman, and the price of goods can be cheaper. However, from the perspective of the entire social consumer economy, the excessive development of e-commerce will do more harm than good. Because e-commerce not only intensifies competition in all walks of life, but also exacerbates the gap between the rich and the poor in society. Because often a few powerful manufacturers at the head of an industry may steal the business of the whole province or even the whole country, and other small sellers don't even have soup to drink.
In addition, in order to consolidate their position in the industry, many leading e-commerce sellers will also use methods such as swiping orders and "praise cashback" to compete maliciously, resulting in the destruction of the normal market operation order and the rampant use of fakes and counterfeit goods.
In addition, the excessive development of e-commerce has also made it difficult for the physical store industry to survive, a large number of physical stores have been forced to close due to reduced business, and the once prosperous commercial streets have fallen one after another, and many people have lost their jobs and changed careers, which shows the great impact of e-commerce on the social economy.