رکود جهانی و بسته محرک چین: یک ارزیابی تعادل عمومی از اثرات سطح کشور

A dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to assess the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government's stimulus package on China's economic growth. By designing two scenarios – one with and one without the stimulus package – the model results show that GDP growth rate in 2009 could have fallen to 2.9% without the stimulus package, mainly as a result of the sharp decline in exports of manufactured goods. Under the stimulus scenario, with the generated additional demand on investment goods, the Chinese economy grows 8–10% in 2009 and the succeeding years. The model also measures the overall gains of the stimulus package, and the cumulative GDP growth difference between the two scenarios for 2009–15 is about RMB76 trillion. Highlights ► We model the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government's stimulus package on China's economic growth. ► The model shows that without the stimulus package China's GDP growth rate in 2009 could have fallen to 2.9%. ► The stimulus package creates investment demand and hence growth. ► The overall gains of the stimulus package measured by the cumulative GDP growth in the model is about RMB76 trillion.

Starting in 2008, the world economy has been experiencing its worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The financial crisis of 2008 that started in the United States and some European Union countries quickly spread around the world, affecting almost all developed and developing countries. While economic growth seems to have returned to many developing countries by 2010, many developed countries are still struggling with issues caused by the recession, such as high unemployment rates and stagnant growth. As one of the world's largest exporting countries, China's economy was hit by the global recession in late 2008 and early 2009. Unlike many countries, China responded early and quickly to the crisis, implementing one of the largest stimulus packages in the world, at 4 trillion yuan (about US$600 billion), and adjusting its macroeconomic policies as part of its strategic response. As a result, China is one of the few countries that recovered quickly in the second half of 2009. By 2010, Chinese growth had returned to its pre-crisis path. While China's quick recovery has attracted ample attention from media, business circles, and politicians around the world, only a few studies have analyzed the role of the stimulus package for China to regain its growth momentum. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB, 2009), and other international organizations have carried out a number of studies on the impacts of the financial crisis on developing countries, but none of them included China. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) summarized the impact of the financial crisis on 10 developing countries but only provided a brief description of China's policies for dealing with the financial crisis and a short discussion about the implications for other developing countries (Mareike & Kennan, 2009). In China, while quite a few initiatives have been launched to examine the effects of the global recession and the government's measures to alleviate its effects on different sectors of the Chinese economy, few have been published. Wang and Cai (2009), for example, analyzed the impacts of the world financial crisis on domestic employment in China and discussed necessary coping measures. The Development Research Center of State Council (2009) synthesized the Chinese government's measures in response to financial crisis and evaluated their effects. Aside from these descriptive studies focusing on the short-run impacts of the financial crisis, a few quantitative analyses have been published recently. He, Zhang, and Zhang (2009), for example, assessed the effect of China's stimulus package on output and employment based on two independent models, an input–output (IO) model and the Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal (GIMF) model calibrated to China. While the IO analysis considers the structure of the Chinese economy and includes 17 production sectors, a linear IO model with fixed input–output coefficients, fixed prices, and perfectly elastic supply often exaggerates the size of intersectoral linkages resulting in unrealistic multipliers (Haggblade, Hammer, & Hazell, 1991). Although the GIMF is a dynamic general equilibrium model, it focuses on the aggregated economy without taking into consideration intersectoral linkages. Liu (2009), on the other hand, conducted a structural vector autoregression analysis to quantify the impact of the global financial crisis on China using data up to 2008. While the results of such an exercise indicate the sizable impact of the decline in economic growth of the United States, the European Union, and Japan on the Chinese economy, it is unable to assess the possible effects of China's stimulus package. The objective of this paper is to examine quantitatively both the effect of the recent global recession and the Chinese government's stimulus packages on China's economy in both the short- and medium-terms. In this study, a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is developed for and applied to China. The study finds that without the introduction of the stimulus package, China's economy could have been more negatively affected by the global recession than it was and the decline in growth from the recession could have lasted for many years. The stimulus package has not only allowed China to avoid a continuous decline in economic growth, but it has also provided China with a different engine for future growth through an enhanced domestic market. In total, the cumulative gains of China's stimulus package, measured by the increases in the country's GDP, will be about 76 trillion renminbi (RMB) over the next 7 years, which is about three times China's 2007 GDP. The paper is organized as follows. We first describe the CGE model for China in Section 2. The model calibration process is discussed in Section 3. In Section 4, the model is initially applied to quantitatively measure the short- and medium-term impacts of global recession without the government's stimulus packages. Then the stimulus packages are introduced and their potential impacts are simulated using the CGE model. The sensitivity tests are conducted and reported in Section 5. Section 6 concludes.

We developed a dynamic CGE model for China and used this model to quantitatively assess the impact of the global recession and China's stimulus package on China's economy. The actual economic growth rate has become available after this study was completed. According to official Chinese statistics, GDP growth fell to 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009, started to recover in the second quarter of 2009, and the overall growth rate was 8.7% for 2009 (Table A5). However, the model simulations are still relevant as they help to assess the role of the stimulus package in achieving such growth. The model's base-run simulation shows that the negative growth effect of the global recession in 2009, without the stimulus package, would have been much more serious than the actual growth in 2009. The model also shows that the industrial sector, particularly export-oriented manufacturing and construction industries, has been the most affected. While the agricultural growth rate declines modestly in the model, rural income is negatively affected due to increased unemployment in the urban sector, which provides income to rural households through rural migrants working in the urban sector. The model also shows that the negative effect of a one-year shock on the Chinese economy would last for many years after 2009. China's ability to replicate its strong economic performance of the past two decades in the next 5–7 years would be improbable without a stimulus package. The analysis of the impact of China's stimulus package focuses on the short and medium runs, and it shows that domestic demand will play the most important role in growth under the stimulus package. While annual growth recovers to 8.6% in the model for 2009 and even higher after, with increased domestic investment and consumer demand, growth in trade is unlikely to recover quickly. Although growth engines differ between stimulus growth and past growth, the stimulus package does create jobs and hence increases income for both urban and rural households. The model is also used to measure the overall gains of the stimulus package by comparing GDP levels in the two different scenarios. The accumulative difference in the two scenarios' GDP is about RMB 76 trillion in 2009–15. This number is about three times that of GDP in 2007.