With an Eye on Savings, Some In China Want Rates to Rise
- With an interest-rate increase likely in the U.S. this week, some hope China will follow with its own credit tightening.
"Personally, I wish the interest rates would go up. I'll get more income," says Peter Bao, a 35-year-old business development manager for a state-owned trading company in Shanghai.
Many outsiders think of banks' lending rates when they consider China's monetary policy. But for many Chinese, deposit rates come to mind. And right now many consumers hope Beijing will tighten credit to halt the erosion of their savings from inflation.
The perception in China that higher rates are beneficial contrasts with the prevailing view in the U.S., where consumers are bracing for steeper credit-card bills and house payments after the Federal Reserve begins pushing up rates, as it is widely expected to do Wednesday for the first time in four years. In China a somewhat benign attitude toward rates also casts some doubt on a recent preoccupation of global markets that higher lending rates threaten China with an economic hard landing.
Analysts expect the Chinese central bank will this year announce what would be its first rate increase in about a decade to slow lending. Such a move, however, may do little to curb consumer spending, and could even spark some activity. It would at least make the nation's voracious savers more comfortable.
Mr. Bao says he sold an apartment in Shanghai two years ago and paid down his 15-year mortgage nine years early. But now he is uncomfortable at seeing the proceeds earning negative real interest at a branch of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and sees alternative investments like the stock market as "too risky."
Prices are now rising faster than deposits are generating interest in China. June consumer price inflation is tipped by some in the government to hit 5%, far outstripping the record-low 1.98% annual interest earned on a one-year bank deposit, which is taxable.
Consumer spending isn't the government's major macroeconomic concern and wouldn't be the trigger for a rate rise. Even though lending to consumers continues to grow quickly, only 6.3% of the 16.7 trillion yuan ($2 trillion) in the country's local-currency loans at the end of March were attributable to households, according to central bank numbers. The vast majority of bank lending goes to sectors like industry.
But consumers are a force nonetheless, particularly when it comes to bank deposits. A little more than half the 22.1 trillion yuan in deposits in the Chinese banking system at the end of the first quarter were from consumers.
Central bank Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan has already said deposit rates are less likely to rise than lending rates, which would give consumers more reason to pare down those savings and spend.
China's consumers have found themselves on the losing side of the rate game before. Deposit rates have plunged a full nine percentage points since they were last raised in 1993, but lending rates have fallen only 6.75 percentage points from their 1995 peak.
Citigroup economists forecast an initial half-percentage-point boost in Chinese lending rates around the third quarter, but only a quarter-point increase in deposit rates.
There is no guarantee that China will follow the Fed at all, but some banks are already charging corporate customers higher lending rates. They are responding to China's nascent money market, where banks borrow from each other and higher official interest rates are already factored in.
China Everbright Bank's Hangzhou branch says this year it began adding more than a quarter percentage point of interest on corporate loans, on top of the one-year base lending rate of 5.31%. "The bank is facing tight capital conditions, so we have to control the overall lending," says Chen Zhongwei, head of credit management.
Andy Xie, an economist at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, argued in a report this week that official Chinese interest rates need to go up. He said domestic credit in China has grown too much, surging to 1.66 times the 2003 gross domestic product from 0.87 times before rates started falling in the mid-1990s.
While sizzling car sales and new shopping malls attest to rising wealth in China and raise worries of overheating, figures suggest consumerism overall may be overrated as an economic force. For this reason, a credit crackdown by Beijing over the past year has remained tightly focused on the supply side of the economy -- industry and developers -- rather than the consumer demand end.
Yuan deposits grew 21% in the first quarter from a year earlier, nearly triple the 8% expansion of consumer lending for the same period. The speed at which deposits have accumulated also has outpaced consumer spending, with retail sales up 11% from a year earlier in the first quarter to 1.283 trillion yuan.
The big question is whether higher mortgage or auto-loan payments will prompt defaults. Consumer credit is such a new business in China that the industry has never experienced a rise in interest rates.
部分中国人乐见加息
由于美国预计即将加息，一些人士希望中国也能步美国的后尘收紧信贷。
上海一家国有贸易公司的业务开发经理彼得?包(Peter Bao)说，从个人利益出发他希望加息，因为这可以增加他的收入。
对许多境外人士而言，一谈到中国的货币政策，他们想到的就是银行的贷款利率。但对许多中国人来说，首先浮现在脑海中的则是存款利率。现在，中国的许多消费者希望政府紧缩信贷，以制止通货膨胀侵蚀他们的储蓄。
中国人这种加息将使他们受益的观点与美国人流行的看法大相径庭，如果美国联邦储备委员会(Fed)加息，美国消费者的信用卡消费支出和住房贷款还款支出都将增加，而人们广泛预计本周三Fed将4年以来首度加息。鉴于中国人对利率的变动不太敏感，人们不禁要对全球市场近来流行的一种看法产生些许怀疑：这种看法认为贷款利率上升将使中国经济面临硬著陆的危险。
分析师们预计，为了减缓贷款增势，中国央行(People's Bank of China)今年将进行10年来的首次加息。然而，此举对抑制消费者支出可能收效甚微，甚至在某种程度上还可能助长人们的消费。至少，加息会使拥有银行存款的人心满意足。
上述那位姓包的贸易公司职员说，他2年前卖掉了自己在上海的一套公寓，并提前9年还清了自己的15年期按揭贷款。然而现在，眼见著自己存在中国工商银行(Industrial & Commercial Bank of China)的售房款实际在日渐贬值，他感到心情郁闷，把存款拿出来投资股市吧，他又感到“风险太大”。
中国目前的物价涨幅已经高于银行存款利率。一些官方人士则预计，6月份的消费者价格指数将达到5%，大大高于1.98%的1年期银行存款利率，而存款利息还要纳税。
当然，消费者支出并不是政府在宏观经济方面的主要担忧，它也不会成为促使政府加息的因素。即使消费信贷还在快速增长，央行数据显示截至今年3月底，在中国16.7万亿元(1美元=人民币8.28元)的人民币贷款余额中，仅有6.3%属于个人贷款。银行贷款的大部分都投向了工业等领域。
但消费者的力量也不容忽视，他们对银行存款的贡献尤其显著。截至今年第一季度末，中国银行体系中总额达22.1万亿元的人民币存款余额中有一半稍多是个人存款。
中国央行行长周小川已表示，上调存款利率的可能性要低于上调贷款利率，这将鼓励人们减少存款，增加消费。
加息的影响尚不明朗
中国消费者从以往的利率变动中发现，自己是利益受损的一方。自1993年中国上一次加息以来，存款利率已下调了9个百分点，而目前的贷款利率只较1995年时的高点低6.75个百分点。
花旗集团(Citigroup)的经济学家们预计，中国将在第三季度左右将贷款利率上调0.5个百分点，而存款利率只会上调0.25个百分点。
虽然中国是否会步Fed的后尘加息尚无定论，但一些银行已经开始上调对企业客户的贷款利率。这在中国新兴的货币市场上引起了反响，这一银行同业拆借市场已经开始预先消化政府加息的因素。
中国光大银行(China Everbright Bank)杭州分行表示，在5.31%的1年期贷款利率基础上，今年它已开始将企业贷款利率上调了0.25个百分点以上。这家银行信贷管理部门的负责人陈中伟（音）说，由于该行正面临资金供应趋紧的局面，所以不得不对总的贷款规模加以控制。
摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)驻香港的经济学家谢国忠(Andy Xie)在本周发表的一份报告中声称，中国的官方利率仍然需要上调。他说，中国的国内信贷额增加过多，现已达到了2003年国内生产总值的1.66倍，而在上个世纪90年代中期利率开始逐步下调前，国内贷款总额只相当于国内生产总值的0.87倍。
虽然火爆的汽车销售和新购物中心的涌现证明中国人的财富确实在不断增加，使人们担心经济会过热，但统计数据也显示，人们可能高估了消费浪潮的经济影响力。正因为如此，中国政府过去1年中收紧信贷的著力点仍然放在工业和房地产开发等经济的供给面上，对消费需求则网开一面。
今年第一季度人民币存款余额较上年同期增长了21%，而同期的消费者贷款增幅只有8.0%，前者几乎是后者的3倍。存款的这一增长速度也快于消费支出的增幅。中国今年第一季度的零售额较上年同期增长了11%，为人民币1.283 万亿元。
加息会导致按揭贷款和汽车贷款的还款额增加，这是否会增加还款拖欠现象很值得关注。消费信贷在中国还是一项新兴事物，还从未经历过加息的考验。
前文提到的那位包姓经理就表示并不担心利率上调。他说，自己的妻子即将临产，希望加息能使上海的房价降到人们可承受的水平，这样他就能在市郊买一幢别墅，再买一辆大众牌(Volkswagen)轿车作代步工具。
他说，加息只不过会少量增加自己的支出，但却可以使自己在购房和购车方面省下一大笔钱。
