Excellent summary of China’s growth dilemna by Dr Yanfei Li, Energy Economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) [emphasis added]:
To conclude, national capitalism, which aims to help the Chinese economy move up the global value chain through technological catching up, can be considered part of the essence of the “new” Keynesianism – in other words, the Chinese approach to intervention in the current economic downturn. It will certainly continue to make significant progress in certain well-targeted areas, given enough time. However, there are two key dimensions to measuring how successful the strategy will be. One is the timeline: how long it takes for such efforts to be translated into significant productivity gains for the whole economy. Second, whether or not these selected areas, especially AI and robotics, can bring about a major productivity boost as seen with the IT boom in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In addition, national capitalism, a centralized strategy, is an intrinsically high-risk approach to technological development. Even with well-informed decisions, such as the case of Japan in developing HDTV, there are always surprises. The Chinese government can only hope that it has chosen the right technologies to pursue.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the other part of China’s “New” Keynsianism, namely the One Belt One Road initiative, which is about exporting the products and services of over-capacity, infrastructure-related industries overseas, also seems riskier than usual. Put another way, if these proposed infrastructure projects in targeted developing countries were attractive and low risk, they would have been financed and done. The fact that they are not itself implies higher risks are involved.
At this point, policymakers must look inward: They must identify and implement all necessary reforms to improve the micro-level efficiency of the Chinese economy. And this always implies the importance of truly open, competitive, transparent and fair markets for all industries. That is a vastly superior approach to the Ponzi game of emphasizing ways to manipulate the property market to keep prices climbing ever higher.
Source: Can ‘New’ Keynesianism Save the Chinese Economy? | The Diplomat