Menzie Chinn emphasises that for the purposes of estimating country shares in global GDP, it is necessary to think of them in nominal terms. On that basis, China is large, but only half the size of the Euro zone and well under half the size of America. Therefore, he implies, an increase in demand from China won’t really contribute as much to global growth as people might be hoping.
Nevertheless, people do seem to be wondering about China as an engine of global growth in demand. The reason is simple: Despite a near catastrophic collapse in world trade, China’s economy is still growing while those of other export-oriented countries like Japan or Germany are falling precipitously.
Clearly part of the reason for the continued Chinese growth, like in Australia, is the successful use of a fiscal stimulus to boost local demand (the Australian rebound was also helped by the fact that, by not manufacturing much, their decline in investment was offset by a fall in imports and (price) changes in natural resource exports occur with a significant lag).
Brad Setser has explored the Chinese stimulus a little. He writes:
I initially underestimated the magnitude of China’s stimulus by focusing on the (fairly modest) change in the government’s fiscal balance. It is now clear that the majority of China’s stimulus has been off-budget: the huge increase in lending by state owned banks mattered far more than the change in the budget of the central government. The expected loss on these loans can be considered a form of fiscal stimulus.
Which is a fascinating way to conduct government business.