【英文】国际政治研究所报告：疫情后的中国：经济复苏与对世界的挑战（185页）

The Chinese recovery could be seen across most economic  indicators. And, importantly for the Chinese government,  unemployment fell as people went back to work. But the  recovery was unbalanced and looked more like China’s old  growth model. Investment and exports were strongly outpacing  domestic consumption. Market-driven domestic consumption  was expanding at a sluggish pace before the pandemic and, as  China came out of lockdown, it recovered at a much slower pace  than the supply side. But the stimulus package saved output. Te  package had allowed businesses to keep producing, and cheap  credit combined with many new government infrastructure  projects meant construction was booming. Tanks to the huge amount of liquidity made available by the government, fnancial  markets also had a particularly strong year. 

The government  had engineered a stimulus driven demand to absorb the huge  supply needed to keep output growing.Strongly afected by the lockdown, consumption recovered  slowly. Retail sales, a proxy for overall consumption, contracted  by 3.9% in 2020, far below GDP growth. Te fall was likely  due to changed preferences, not because of less disposable  income. In fact, average disposable income grew by 3.5% in  2020. Uncertainty about the future, combined with a strongly  performing fnancial market with high returns, likely caused  Chinese people to invest or simply save a larger share of their  income than in previous years. But even though domestic  demand has recovered at a relatively slower pace it is in recovery  and looks set to continue picking up.