简体中文
As the goal of averaging residential income is taking heed, plus the growth rate of export and investment has been waning, a Chinese official said in Hong Kong on Thursday that consumption will be the major catalyst to China's economic boom.
Li Wei, Director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said thatstatistics show that China's consumption are taking center stage. With gradual structural transformation, coupling the cultural-driven high saving rate, he shrugged off worries that China will cease to growth.
"Consumption accounts for a low share in China's GDP because of the ultra-significant performance of export and investment. In fact, the growth rate of consumption per se has always been decent at about 13-14 percent, if not higher," Li said.
"In the first quarter of 2013, the contribution of final consumption expenditure to GDP was 55.5 percent, 3.7 percent of the figure of the entire 2012," he said. This is more than enough to sweep away skeptics over Chinese consumption market."
Referring to the service industry, Li said that its growth had been seeing sluggish in China, because of the low household income, difficulties of private enterprises entering certain industries and a high Engel coefficient (which indicates that how the proportion of household income on a good varies with income).
But with skyrocketing residential income as well as ongoing urbanization, Li said, demand for various kinds of services will also follow suit.
The rate of urbanization back in 1978 in China was about 18 percent, about 790 million people living in rural areas, accounting for 82 percent of the total population, with only about 170 million people living in urban districts. In 2012, he said, urbanization rate hit 52.6 percent, with more than 700 million people residing in the urban areas, and 640 million people living in rural areas. In the past 34 years, we have more than 500 million people moving in to the towns.
But he said that China should focus on the quality of urbanization, rather than its speed.
In 2012, the average income of people living in rural areas was 7917 yuan, growing 10.7%, 1.1 percent higher in the increase of disposable income than their urban counterparts. The ratio of urban and rural residents' income was down to 1:3.1. In the first quarter of this year, the average income growth rate of people from rural areas was 12.5 percent , much higher than the 9.9 percent of those who live in town. "We believe this will be a long lasting trend,"Li said.
High savings rate will be another key determinant of future economic growth, referring to Li. China 's savings rate is still about twice or thrice higher than the developed countries. Although this advantage may be affected by aging problem and inadequate social security system, with Chinese people's deep-rooted tradition in saving and robust pace of development, high saving rate will still be the main source of capital for further economic growth.
