Global Military Spending

There are several ways to consider and compare global military spending. The most obvious way is to calculate total military spending and convert to US Dollars. Another important measure is to consider the level of spending as a percentage of a country's GDP. We start with the second way first. (See the end of the post for a definition of military spending)

I constructed this from a World Bank database (based on SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute figures). Comparing military spending as a percentage of GDP allows us to consider how much of economic growth is taken up with military expenditures.

While the United States has the world's largest military by far it ranks only 13th on the level of spending as a percentage of GDP. Importantly SIPRI doesn't construct figures for North Korea. Estimates for North Korea range from 20-33 per cent of GDP.

Rank	Country	2013
1	Oman	11.48
2	Saudi Arabia	8.99
3	Afghanistan	6.24
4	Israel	5.63
5	Angola	5.01
6	Algeria	4.95
7	Azerbaijan	4.68
8	Lebanon	4.36
9	Russian Federation	4.19
10	Armenia	4.10
11	Yemen, Rep.	3.93
12	Morocco	3.90
13	United States	3.81
14	Bahrain	3.77
15	Jordan	3.56
16	Mauritania	3.56
17	Iraq	3.54
18	Colombia	3.44
19	Pakistan	3.39
20	Singapore	3.27
21	Kyrgyz Republic	3.24
22	Namibia	3.15
23	Ecuador	3.11
24	Swaziland	2.96
25	Ukraine	2.93
26	Zimbabwe	2.78
27	Georgia	2.74
28	Sri Lanka	2.71
29	Korea, Rep.	2.60
30	Brunei Darussalam	2.56
31	Greece	2.46
32	India	2.45
33	Turkey	2.33
34	United Kingdom	2.30
35	France	2.24
36	Burundi	2.24
37	Vietnam	2.18
38	Portugal	2.17
39	Serbia	2.17
40	Uganda	2.16
41	Lesotho	2.15
42	China	2.05
43	Botswana	2.02
44	Tunisia	2.01
45	Chile	1.96
46	Estonia	1.96
47	Kenya	1.95
48	Uruguay	1.87
49	Timor-Leste	1.81
50	Poland	1.79
51	Zambia	1.69
52	Egypt, Arab Rep.	1.67
53	Croatia	1.66
54	Australia	1.63
55	Cambodia	1.60
56	Paraguay	1.60
57	Bulgaria	1.58
58	Italy	1.58
59	Montenegro	1.57
60	Malaysia	1.55
61	Thailand	1.52
62	Bolivia	1.45
63	Nepal	1.43
64	Peru	1.42
65	Norway	1.41
66	Burkina Faso	1.41
67	Mali	1.41
68	Brazil	1.40
69	Congo, Dem. Rep.	1.40
70	Denmark	1.38
71	Bangladesh	1.37
72	Malawi	1.36
73	Belarus	1.35
74	Fiji	1.34
75	Germany	1.34
76	Cameroon	1.34
77	Romania	1.33
78	Gabon	1.32
79	Albania	1.30
80	Netherlands	1.29
81	Philippines	1.28
82	Finland	1.27
83	Kazakhstan	1.25
84	Honduras	1.24
85	Macedonia, FYR	1.24
86	Venezuela, RB	1.21
87	South Africa	1.17
88	Sweden	1.17
89	Tanzania	1.15
90	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1.13
91	Rwanda	1.11
92	El Salvador	1.10
93	Czech Republic	1.08
94	Guyana	1.07
95	Belize	1.04
96	Belgium	1.04
97	Benin	1.04
98	Seychelles	1.03
99	Canada	1.01
100	New Zealand	1.00
101	Japan	0.99
102	Spain	0.94
103	Indonesia	0.90
104	Jamaica	0.85
105	Ethiopia	0.82
106	Switzerland	0.78
107	Austria	0.78
108	Nicaragua	0.76
109	Liberia	0.75
110	Argentina	0.74
111	Mexico	0.62
112	Dominican Republic	0.61
113	Papua New Guinea	0.57
114	Ireland	0.55
115	Ghana	0.53
116	Madagascar	0.51
117	Luxembourg	0.51
118	Cabo Verde	0.50
119	Guatemala	0.48
120	Nigeria	0.47

US military spending has declined over recent years, whilst China's has increased. Since 2004 Chinese military spending has increased by 170 per cent, whilst its GDP Has increased by 140 per cent. Still China only spends 2.05 per cent of its GDP while the US spends 3.81 per cent. Japan, due to its pacifist constitution still spends just under 1 per cent. 

The table below constructed from SIPRI databases shows basic measure alluded to above of total military spending converted to US Dollars. It shows the top 60 military spenders in the world (New Zealand comes in at 60). 

Figures are in US$m. at 2013 prices and exchange rates. 

Rank	Country	2013
1	USA	640221
2	China, P. R.	188460
3	Russia	87836
4	Saudi Arabia	66996
5	France	61228
6	UK	57891
7	Germany	48790
8	Japan	48604
9	India	47398
10	Korea, South	33937
11	Italy	32657
12	Brazil	31456
13	Australia	23963
14	Turkey	19085
15	Canada	18460
16	Israel	16032
17	Colombia	13003
18	Spain	12765
19	Taiwan	10530
20	Algeria	10402
21	Netherlands	10328
22	Singapore	9759
23	Poland	9257
24	Oman	9246
25	Iraq	7896
26	Indonesia	7840
27	Mexico	7838
28	Pakistan	7641
29	Norway	7235
30	Sweden	6519
31	Angola	6095
32	Greece	5939
33	Thailand	5891
34	Kuwait	5815
35	Chile	5435
36	Ukraine	5338
37	Venezuela	5313
38	Belgium	5264
39	Switzerland	5053
40	Malaysia	4842
41	Portugal	4784
42	Denmark	4553
43	Argentina	4511
44	Egypt	4255
45	South Africa	4108
46	Morocco	4064
47	Philippines	3472
48	Azerbaijan	3440
49	Viet Nam	3387
50	Finland	3262
51	Austria	3230
52	Peru	2865
53	Ecuador	2803
54	Kazakhstan	2799
55	Romania	2521
56	Nigeria	2411
57	Myanmar	2211
58	Czech Rep.	2149
59	Lebanon	1936
60	New Zealand	1833

In terms of total military spending the US still dominates with 37 per cent of the total compared to China's 11 per cent. This means that China's spending is about 30 per cent of the US figure. 

Note that these figures are measured in US dollars meaning they are subject to the same problems of measurement outlined in How Big, How Rich, How Developed. Constructed on a PPP basis, Chinese military expenditure would be more substantial as a percentage of the total.

The table from the PDA (Project on Defense Alternatives) below shows different measures for military spending from SIPRI and IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies).

What this table makes clear is that how we measure military expenditure matters for our perceptions about China's rise and US relative decline. However, it also seems reasonably clear that the US retains an overwhelming military dominance regardless of the measure. 

Australia, despite significant declines in spending as a percentage of GDP ranks as the 13th largest military spender. 

Given the Abbott government's focus on the seriousness of the Islamic terrorist challenge and promises made, it seems clear that military spending will rise in coming years as will expenditure on domestic policing and surveillance. 

Military expenditures data from SIPRI are derived from the NATO definition, which includes all current and capital expenditures on the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces; defense ministries and other government agencies engaged in defense projects; paramilitary forces, if these are judged to be trained and equipped for military operations; and military space activities. Such expenditures include military and civil personnel, including retirement pensions of military personnel and social services for personnel; operation and maintenance; procurement; military research and development; and military aid (in the military expenditures of the donor country). Excluded are civil defense and current expenditures for previous military activities, such as for veterans' benefits, demobilization, conversion, and destruction of weapons. This definition cannot be applied for all countries, however, since that would require much more detailed information than is available about what is included in military budgets and off-budget military expenditure items. (For example, military budgets might or might not cover civil defense, reserves and auxiliary forces, police and paramilitary forces, dual-purpose forces such as military and civilian police, military grants in kind, pensions for military personnel, and social security contributions paid by one part of government to another.)

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security.

European Dependence on Russian Energy

From: New York Times

Classic dilemma for IR and IPE students.

Who has the power in this situation?

In the short-term it seems clear that the Russians have power (no pun intended) given the dependence of many countries on Russian energy supplies. Over the longer-term, however, it seems likely that the switch away from Russian energy supplies could be disastrous for the energy export-dependent Russian economy.

The sanctions on Russia do not involve stopping the import of Russian energy, but other sanctions could lead to retaliation from the Russians in terms of energy exports or imports. Indeed the Russians have banned food imports from major Western countries. This will undoubtedly punish those exporters to Russia, but will also lead to food shortages in Russia itself. According to this report from the NYT, Russian bans on food  imports will advantage Chinese producers.

New Defence Issues Paper

The New Paper outlines the following areas of concern for the future:

• What are the main threats to, and opportunities for, Australia’s security?

• Are Defence’s policy settings current and accurate?

• What defence capabilities do we need now, and in the future?

• How can we enhance international engagement on defence and security issues?

• What should the relationship be between Defence and defence industry to support Defence’s mission?

• How should Defence invest in its people, and how should it continue to enhance its culture?

It'll be interesting to see what the government does with the new White Paper given the extensive ambition of the last 2 WPs under Labor and their significant underfunding. 

One of the biggest issues remains whether Australia should build military hardware itself or buy it 'off the shelf' from other countries. 

If we are going to build things ourselves we still need to provide competitive pressures to avoid cost overruns, delays and incompetence. 

On the first point it will be interesting how the WP deals with the issue of China. 

Australia's Terms of Trade in Historical Perspective

The Reserve Bank has recently published a historical comparison of the terms of trade in Australia entitled "Macroeconomic Consequences of Terms of Trade Episodes, Past and Present" by Tim Atkin, Mark Caputo, Tim Robinson and Hao Wang.

Now while such articles may make many people's eyes glaze over, there are few concepts that are more important in understanding the Australian economy than the terms of trade and Australians could learn a lot by reading this excellent paper. The authors' conclusion (quoted below) is on the optimistic side of the debate about Australia's economic future and it doesn't canvass the possibility that the extended duration of a high terms of trade and exchange rate have caused significant damage to non-mining sectors of the tradable economy.

The terms of trade is the index-measure ratio of the average price level of exports to the average price level of imports. It effectively reflects the capacity of a given quantity of exports to pay for a given quantity of imports, and provides an important indication of the strengths and weaknesses of the economic structure. A rising or falling terms of trade indicates the possibility of improving or declining living standards, because if what we sell earns relatively more than what we buy, we will be relatively wealthier. Because the terms of trade is a ratio, increases can be a result of export prices increasing at a greater rate than import prices, or export prices increasing while import prices are declining, or export prices declining at a slower rate than import prices. Of course, a rising terms of trade doesn’t stop us from buying more things than we sell, which we have made a habit of for much of our history! Improvements in the terms of trade are not reflected in GDP figures, but improvements do contribute significantly to increases in national disposable income.

Basically Australia has been lucky enough to have a high terms of trade for an extended period of time, but the ratio is now on the way down, with the consequence of declining income for Australians. The extent and rapidity of the descent will have a very large bearing on the economy and by extension on all of us.

The mid-1980s' low point for Australia’s ‘terms of trade’ provided an indication of the extent of the structural crisis of the economy. This terms-of-trade crisis spurred Australian policy-makers to quicken the pace of liberalisation and to make a conscious effort to globalise the economy. The most famous statement about the supposed end of Australian resource prosperity was Labor Treasurer Paul Keating’s “banana republic” radio interview in May 1986. It is worth quoting at length to show how much the rise of China has changed Australia’s economic circumstances. 

We took the view in the 1970s – it’s the old cargo cult mentality of Australia that she’ll be right. This is the lucky country, we can dig up another mound of rock and someone will buy it from us, or we can sell a bit of wheat and bit of wool and we will just sort of muddle through … In the 1970s …we became a third world economy selling raw materials and food and we let the sophisticated industrial side fall apart … We must let Australians know truthfully, honestly, earnestly, just what sort of international hole Australia is in. It’s the price of our commodities – they are as bad in real terms since the Depression … If this government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically done for … If in the final analysis Australia is so undisciplined, so disinterested in its salvation and its economic well being, that it doesn’t deal with these fundamental problems … Then you are gone. You are a banana republic.

Keating used the sense of crisis to further the case for economic reform. The subsequent financial, trade, competition and labour reforms of the 1980s and 1990s helped Australia deal with the current boom, providing a flexibility to adjust to externally derived price shocks. 

Keating was wrong, however, that the era of resource wealth was over. He was not alone. Many commentators believed that the era of resource wealth was over. Arguments about the rise of the information economy seemed to preclude the possibility that resources - apart from oil - could once again substantially increase in price.  

Form the 1960s, the rise of Japan, followed by South Korea and Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and other non-communist countries of Southeast Asia had provided significant expansion of export markets for Australian commodities, but had not led to a sustained structural increase in their prices.

Then along came China, changing everything. Not only did rapid Chinese demand increase the prices Australia received for its exports, but also Chinese manufacturing production helped to decrease the price of Australian imports. Manufactured goods made (or assembled) in China became significantly cheaper. Chinese competitive pressures also helped to keep in check the prices manufacturers throughout the world could charge for their goods. Interestingly, the prices of food and raw materials have not reached their 1970s peaks.

In 2000, Australia was pilloried as an ‘old economy’ too reliant on resources and unable to take advantage of the coming technology boom. The tech boom, however, soon turned into a tech wreck and Australia benefitted from two other booms – a resources boom fuelled by China and a credit boom that went largely into increasing the price of Australian houses.

Before we make the mistake of going too far back in the other direction away from the possibilities of information technology, the internet is now sparking another structural change that will profoundly affect the retail sector as consumers increase online purchases. While the technology boom got ahead of itself at the turn of the millennium, the impact of technological change will accelerate over coming years. Thus far, however, the level of online sales remains relatively small, even if it is growing rapidly from a low base
Betting on China

The major story of recent years, however, has been the rise of China. It is possible that China, India and most of the rest of Asia will continue to grow rapidly as the authors suggest for the next decade or so, but it is unlikely that this growth path will be smooth. China is actively seeking to diversify its sources of supply of the key resources it imports from Australia. Price increases eventually produce supply increases, which often then lead to oversupply and falling prices. And so on. This is the nature of the commodity cycle. China currently appears to be slowing and restructuring its economy away from commodity-intensive development. The debate over the extent of these changes is controversial but the outcome will be very important for us. 

The paper provides many excellent graphs that show the significance of change in the Australian economy. 

The historical snapshot of the terms of trade reveals important periods of boom and gloom in the economy. Especially important is the period from the early 1970s to the mid-to-late 1980s, which caused Keating's despair.

The graph on Australia's goods exports shows just how significant the transformation of exports has been from rural to resource exports. It also highlights the short period of adjustment in the 1990s towards more manufactured exports, which was overtaken in the 2000s by the continuous increase in the value of resources particularly iron ore and coal. Iron ore prices, for example, increased from $12.68 in 2001 to a high of $179.26 in 2011. 

This graph captures not only the extent of the shift to Japan, the rest of East Asia and China since the 1950s, but also the massive dependence on the UK before this. 

The next graph shows the correlation between the real exchange rate and the terms of trade. The manufacturing and tourism sectors will be hoping that the terms of trade declines and that the real exchange rate declines with it. 

Consumer price inflation has been subdued during the latest sustained rise in the terms of trade. 

A long-term look at public debt shows that the current situation is relatively benign when compared with the past, despite continual scare-mongering by policy-makers and commentators. According to the authors: "The primary reason for the large size of public debt in the past was the legacy of major conflict and the ‘settler nature’ of the Australian economy, the latter requiring high rates of social and economic infrastructure. In contrast, public debt in the current episode is at low levels. It could be argued that there is significant room to move to build the physical and mental (health and education) infrastructure to make Australia an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. But this certainly can't happen when public debt is seen as bad regardless of how it is used.

Another major difference of the recent boom was that earnings did not increase in tandem with the increase in commodity prices, as they had done in previous episodes. Undoubtedly, this helped macroeconomic management. Given the hefty wage increases in mining related industries it begs the question as to who was keeping the average down. Obviously some workers were not doing quite so well! According to the authors

The institutional structure of the labour market during the current episode has been the most flexible over any expansion since Federation; a considerable increase in relative wages in the resources sector and a more decentralised industrial system facilitated a relatively low unemployment rate during the upswing in the terms of trade without creating substantial inflationary pressures. 

The authors conclude:

Australia’s current terms of trade cycle has parallels with earlier episodes. Historically, large movements in the terms of trade were mainly driven by changes in export prices, particularly wool, which reflected strong demand from industrialising economies, coupled with adverse supply developments, such as drought. Upswings in the terms of trade have generally boosted domestic demand, usually with a sizeable contribution from investment, probably reflecting both a direct response to higher commodity prices and the associated improvement in wealth and confidence. In some episodes, growth in immigration and pent-up demand following war also supported growth in investment. Typically, net exports have contributed little to economic growth during the upswing in the terms of trade; sluggish supply responses are exacerbated by the real exchange rate appreciation, which dampens growth in other exports and supports imports. Many of these features have been present in the current episode.
The current episode, however, has some distinct features. One is that it has been mostly related to bulk commodities, instead of rural commodities. Consequently, the sluggish response of supply partly reflects the characteristics of resources investment – namely long periods to plan and gain approval for projects and the need to develop infrastructure. However, just as Australia was the world’s major source for internationally traded wool throughout previous episodes, today it is the world’s largest exporter of steel-making materials and it is likely that Australia will also become a major source of liquefied natural gas exports in the coming years. A decline in the terms of trade is therefore, to some extent, the result of new supply from Australian producers coming on-line.

The most recent upswing was the largest sustained increase of the terms of trade on record, and the Australian economy is likely to continue to be a beneficiary of strong growth in Asia. Indications suggest China’s industrialisation and urbanisation process, which has underpinned the increase in demand for steel-making commodities, is likely to continue for a number of years, although it may well grow more slowly than in the past. Chinese infrastructure needs remain large; an example is that steel demand for residential construction is not estimated to peak until around 2024 (Berkelmans and Wang 2012). While the path of economic development is not always smooth, it is important to remember that this is not the first episode during which one country and a narrow range of commodities have been of particular importance to the Australian economy; rather, that is the norm.

Another stark difference is that despite the unprecedented movement in the terms of trade, the macroeconomic adjustments in Australia have been relatively smooth. Inflation, for example, has remained contained, in contrast to many previous experiences, such as the Korean War wool boom. Furthermore, inflation expectations have remained relatively low and stable. Factors facilitating this include the greater flexibility present in the labour market, the inflation-targeting regime adopted by the RBA, and the flexible nominal exchange rate, which has enabled the necessary appreciation of the real exchange rate to occur in a less disruptive manner.

Historically, for several years following a peak in the terms of trade, growth in investment and output per capita tends to be below average. As we have emphasised, the real exchange rate and the terms of trade generally move together.

Consequently, the expected easing in the terms of trade, reflecting growth in the global supply of the bulk commodities, may be accompanied by falls in the real exchange rate. More generally, an increase in Australia’s competitiveness would help facilitate the macroeconomic adjustments necessary during the transition from the investment to production phase by providing support to sectors outside of the resources sector, thereby helping to rebalance growth in the economy. Reflecting the unparalleled magnitude of the expansion, the transition necessary is considerable and is likely to pose challenges to both firms and policymakers. The current policy frameworks and institutional structures, which were important in facilitating better macroeconomic outcomes during the upswing than occurred historically, may also assist this transition.

Political Cartoons and Comics

Recent Charts on Globalisation, Asia and Australia

The following chart shows the extent of the "patchwork" economy in Australia. Despite the clear differences since 1990, according to the ANZ's analysis, the patchwork economy is coming to an end as WA starts to struggle and as activity picks up in NSW. Clearly, however, the other states have some work to do to catch up. (remember that the common starting point is an artificial construction and there would have been significant differences before this time).

Australia's 'real' saving rate perhaps not as high as traditional saving measure suggests if we exclude super and principal mortgage repayments. 

Home Ownership in Australia from Saul Eslake

Thirty Years of the Float 

China's Foreign Exchange Reserves and Debt

One of my former colleagues dismissed Michael Pettis's work on the Chinese economy and international economics as "accounting focused" and therefore as too simplistic to be helpful in understanding the global economy. 

My view is that Pettis's focus on the key relationships between saving, investment and consumption across countries is a vital component of debate on the world economy because it shows the importance of imbalances - particularly between current account surplus and deficit countries - in causing problems in the global economy. 

I have referred to Pettis regularly on this blog and I admire his work because he highlights logical inconsistencies in some popular assumptions about the role of China and the United States and about the world economy generally.

One area that Pettis has highlighted (more than once) is the fallacy that China's reserves could be used domestically to pay off domestic debt. This fallacy has purchase because it sounds right. Why should the Chinese spend so much capital buying US Treasury securities, when they obviously have more important things to spend on within their own borders. This idea is particularly attractive at the moment with a deal not yet being finalised to ensure there isn't a default on US government bonds. This from Pettis's September 20th 2013 Newsletter.

China’s reserves only matter to its credit position if China faced a problem of external debt.

It doesn’t, and so the amount of reserves are almost wholly irrelevant, Because this argument seems to be reviving, it makes sense, I think, to repeat why central bank reserves cannot in any way help China resolve the crisis. I will leave aside the problems of whether the reserves are transferred in the form of foreign currency, in which case it does little to satisfy domestic RMB-denominated funding needs, or in RMB, in which case the PBoC must stop buying dollars in order to hold down the value of the RMB and in fact must sell dollars, which would cause the value of the RMB to soar, thereby wiping out the export sector in China.

A much more important objection is that the idea that reserves can be used to clean up the banks (or anything else, for that matter) is based on a misunderstanding about how the reserves were accumulated in the first place. There seems to be a still-widespread perception that PBoC reserves represent a hoard of unencumbered savings that the PBoC has somehow managed to collect.

But of course they are not. The PBoC has been forced to buy the reserves as a function of its intervention to manage the value of the RMB. And as they were forced to buy the reserves, the PBoC had to fund the purchases, which it did by borrowing RMB in the domestic market.

This means that the foreign currency reserves are simply the asset side of a balance sheet against which there are liabilities. What is more, remember that the RMB has appreciated by more than 30% since July, 2005, so that the value of the assets has dropped in RMB terms even as the value of the liabilities has remained the same, and this has been exacerbated by the lower interest rate the PBoC currently earns on its assets than the interest rate it pays on much of its liabilities.

In fact there have been rumors for years that the PBoC would technically be insolvent if its assets and liabilities were correctly marked, but whether or not this is true, any transfer of foreign currency reserves to bail out Chinese banks would simply represent a reduction of PBoC assets with no corresponding reduction in liabilities. The net liabilities of the PBoC, in other words, would rise by exactly the amount of the transfer. Because the liabilities of the PBoC are presumed to be the liabilities of the central government, the net effect of using the reserves to recapitalize the banks is identical to having the central government borrow money to recapitalize the banks.

This is the point. Any government that is able to borrow money can borrow money to recapitalize its banks, whether or not it has large amounts of foreign currency reserves. The amount of central bank reserves that China or any other country has is wholly irrelevant, except perhaps to the extent that without those reserves the central government would lack the credibility to borrow domestically, which hardly seems to be a concern in China’s case.

Bailing out the banks, it turns out, is conceptually no different than transferring debt from the banks to the central government. China can handle bad debts in the banking system, in other words, by transferring the net obligations from the banks to the central government, and the large hoard of reserves held by the PBoC does not make it any easier for China can resolve any future debt problems. In fact if anything it should remind us that when we are trying to calculate the total amount of debt the central government owes, the total should include any net liabilities of the PBoC, and that these net liabilities will increase by 1% of GDP every time the RMB strengthens against the dollar by 2%. ...    

So who is likely to cover the cost of NPLs in Chinese banks? This isn’t an easy question to answer. If the household sector continues to pay, either in the hidden form of repressed interest rates, or in the more explicit form of taxes, the existence of bad debt in the Chinese banking system must act to repress future household consumption growth. The transfers from the household sector to pay what may turn out to be a huge NPL bill will significantly lower the household income share of GDP, making it very unlikely that the household consumption share of GDP will rise.

If however the state sector covers the difference (perhaps by privatizing state assets and using the proceeds to pay down debt), we are left with the very difficult political problems, which China currently faces, of assigning the costs to different sectors or groups that control the state sector in China. The potentially very large cost of cleaning up NPLs must be assigned to groups that are likely to be both powerful and reluctant to pay the cost.

Debt always matters because it must always be paid for by someone – even if the borrower defaults, of course, the debt is simply “paid” by the lender. This is why the fact that debt in China seems to be growing much faster than debt-servicing capacity implies slower growth in the future. If the debt cannot be fully serviced by the increase in productivity created by the investment that the debt funded, unless it is funded by liquidating state sector assets it must cause a reduction in demand elsewhere, most probably in household consumption. This reduction in demand implies slower growth in the future and, of course, a more difficult rebalancing process.

Here Pettis is dealing with the argument that China's domestic debt problems can be easily solved. Another mistake is that China's foreign exchange reserves are historically unprecedented. This according to Pettis in a post from 2010 is also incorrect.

Twice before in history a country has, under similar circumstances, run up foreign reserves of the same magnitude.

The first time occurred in the late 1920s when, after a decade of record-beating trade and capital account surpluses, the United States had accumulated what John Maynard Keynes worriedly described as “all the bullion in the world”. At the time, total reserves accumulated by the US were more than 5-6% of global GDP. ...

The second time occurred in the late 1980s, when it was Japan’s turn to combine huge trade surpluses, along with more moderate surpluses on the capital account, to accumulate a stockpile of foreign reserves only a little less than the equivalent of 5-6% of global GDP. By the late 1980s, Japan’s accumulation of reserves drew the sort of same breathless description – much of it incorrect, of course – that China’s does today.

...  both previous cases turned out badly for long investors and brilliantly for anyone dumb enough to have gone short. During the early years of the Great Depression of the 1930s, US stock markets lost more than 80 per cent of their value, real estate prices collapsed, and the US economy contracted in real terms by an astonishing 30-40 per cent before recovering in the 1940s.

Japan’s subsequent experience was economically less violent in the short term, but even costlier over the long term. During the period following its astonishing accumulation of central bank reserves, its stock market also lost more than 80 per cent of its value, real estate prices collapsed, and economic growth was virtually non-existent for two decades.

The idea that massive levels of reserves are a guarantor of economic stability is, in other words, based on a profound misunderstanding both of history and of the nature of reserves. Reserves of course are not useless as an enhancer of financial stability, but their use is for very specific forms of instability. Having large amounts of reserves relative to external claims protects countries from external debt crises and from currency crises.

Great, but neither Chanos, nor even the most pessimistic Sino-analyst, has ever said that these are the kinds of risks China faces today, any more than they were the risks faced by the US in the late 1920s or Japan in the late 1980s. The risks that China faces today (and the US in the late 1920s and Japan in the late 1980s) is of excessive domestic liquidity having fueled asset and capacity bubbles, the latter requiring the uninterrupted ability of foreign countries to absorb via large and growing trade deficits. These risks include an explosion in domestic government debt directly and contingently through the banking system.

These are, very typically, the kinds of risks that threaten rapidly developing large economies, unlike the external debt and currency risks that typically threaten small economies. And reserves are almost totally useless in protecting these economies from the risks they face (and, no, no, no, reserves cannot be used to recapitalize the banks – only domestic government borrowing or direct or hidden taxes on the household sector can be used to recapitalize the banks).

In fact, it was the very process of generating massive reserves that created the risks which subsequently devastated the US and Japan. Both countries had accumulated reserves over a decade during which they experienced sharply undervalued currencies, rapid urbanization, and rapid growth in worker productivity (sound familiar?). These three factors led to large and rising trade surpluses which, when combined with capital inflows seeking advantage of the rapid economic growth, forced a too-quick expansion of domestic money and credit.

It was this money and credit expansion that created the excess capacity that ultimately led to the lost decades for the US and Japan. High reserves in both cases were symptoms of terrible underlying imbalances, and they were consequently useless in protecting those countries from the risks those imbalances posed.

We must be careful how we read history. The fact that the US and Japan had terrible decades following periods during which they had amassed levels of reserves that China has subsequently matched, and under conditions similar to those of China, does not necessarily mean that China too must have a lost decade or two. ... 

But the history does indicate that facile statements about central bank reserves should, at the very least, be measured against the obvious historical precedents.

In an earlier post Pettis explains in more specific details the process of foreign exchange reserve accumulation. In a 2012 post entitled "What the PBoC Cannot Do with its Reserves", Pettis starts by explaining how the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC - China's Reserve bank) goes about keeping the renminbi (RMB) (the yuan if you prefer - see here for explanation) at a lower level.

As long as China ran the largest current account surplus ever recorded as a share of global GDP, and the US the largest current account deficit ever recorded, and especially since China also ran an additional capital account surplus (i.e. other non-PBoC agents ran a net capital inflow), it was almost impossible for the PBoC to do anything but buy US dollar assets. Given the sheer amounts, a substantial portion of these assets had inevitably to be USG bonds. 

This was not a discretionary lending decision. It is the automatic consequence of China’s currency regime, in which it pegs the RMB to a foreign currency, in this case the dollar. Why? Because when the PBoC decides on the level of the RMB against the dollar, it does not do so by passing a law, and making it a capital crime for anyone to trade at a different price. What it does is far simpler. It offers to buy or sell unlimited amounts of RMB against the dollar at the desired price. 

No one will sell dollars for less than what they can get from the PBoC, nor will anyone buy dollars for more than what they can pay the PBoC, so all transactions get done at that price. That is how the PBoC (or any other central bank that intervenes in the currency market) sets the foreign exchange value of its own currency.

Now the reason the PBoC must buy dollars under the regime is because the rest of China is a net buyer of dollars. Remember China runs a current account surplus, which must be matched by a net capital outflow.

This means that as long as it wants to set the exchange rate, then, it must take the opposite position of the market. Since the rest of the market is a net seller of dollars (China runs a current and capital account surplus), the PBoC has no choice but to be a net buyer of dollars, which of course it must then invest. 

If it stops buying dollars, it must let the market decide by itself on the new equilibrium price of the dollar. In that case the value of the dollar has to plunge in RMB terms (or the RMB soar, which is the same thing) in order for buyers and sellers to match up and for the market to clear. The moment the PBoC stops buying, in other words, the RMB will rise in value – and so it cannot stop buying in anticipation of the RMB rising in value.

 The next issue is how the PBoC funds these purchases of dollars:

It does so primarily by borrowing in the domestic money markets, selling PBoC bills or entering into short term repos (although it also issues some longer-term bonds), or by “creating” money by crediting the accounts of the commercial banks who sell it the dollars. 

This means, to simplify, that the PBoC has a balance sheet consisting on one side of dollar assets (and here “dollar” is short-hand for all foreign assets). Against this and on the other side it has a roughly equivalent amount of RMB liabilities (I say “roughly” because when you run a mismatched balance sheet, changes in the relative value of assets and liabilities will create losses or profits). 

Here is where things get interesting. China’s reserves are often thought of as if they were a treasure trove available for spending. They are not. They are simply the asset side of the mismatched balance sheet. If the PBoC wanted to “spend” $100, say for example to recapitalize a bank, it could do so, but this would automatically create a $100 dollar hole in its balance sheet. – it would still owe the RMB that it borrowed originally to purchase the $100. To put it another way, the reserves are not a savings account, free for the PBoC to spend as it likes. Reserves are effectively borrowed money. ... 

So what are reserves good for? As long as China maintains its own currency and denominates all domestic transactions in RMB, the PBoC reserves cannot be used in China. They cannot go to pay doctors’ salaries, to build bridges, to lower taxes or to subsidize consumption. They can only be used to purchase or pay for things from outside China. This means that reserves ensure that China can import foreign commodities and other goods as long as it can pay for them domestically. It also means that the PBoC can ensure the availability of dollars to repay foreign debt and foreign investment. ... 

Reserves are useless in preventing domestic debt crises (not totally, because they affect the credibility of the currency, but the RMB today doesn’t seem to suffer from a lack of credibility).

Pettis then goes on to explain why a revaluation of the renminbi against the dollar does not cause the simple scenario of huge losses for China and huge gains for the United States that most commentators allude to when they discuss the so-called economic balance of terror between the United States and China. There are still winners and losers, but the equations are more complex than most assume.

Many people in China and abroad have argued that China cannot afford to raise the value of the RMB against the dollar because it would mean that China will take huge losses because of its massive reserves. After all, if the RMB rises by 10% against the dollar, the value of its reserves will have necessarily declined by $250 billion in RMB terms.   

This is almost completely wrong – China will not take losses anywhere close to that amount and may probably even take a gain if it revalues the currency. One foreign economist even published a rather loony piece three months ago, which excoriated the Obama administration’s “bogus” trade argument for revaluation as done purely for nefarious and no doubt imperialistic reasons – and to strengthen the conspiratorial air it somehow ignored the fact that nearly every country in Europe and Asia has made the same argument.

The argument is that the US wants China to revalue the RMB not because of trade rebalancing (wrong, and this makes a common but still annoying mistake about the relationship between the currency and the trade balance) but rather because of a secret American scheme to reduce the amount that the US government has to pay China on its PBoC holdings. Appreciation of the RMB, according to this theory, represents a transfer of wealth from China to the US because it effectively reduces cost to the US of servicing the debt

An appreciation of the RMB cannot reduce the cost of the US government's debt obligations because:

The US government transacts almost exclusively in dollars, raises dollars in the form of taxes and borrowing, and owns dollar assets. Since it will pay exactly the same number of dollars to Chinese investors after the change in the RMB value as it did before the change, simple arithmetic should indicate that there will be no impact at all on the cost to the US of repaying the debt. But this doesn't mean there aren't winners and losers including within China. Working them out requires an analysis of the "various balance sheets". 

So who are the winners and losers?

In a nutshell, anyone who is net long dollars against RMB loses, and anyone who is net short dollars against RMB gains. For China, the equation is the same. Those who are short US dollars will gain. 

There is no precise way of answering this question, because every single economic entity in China implicitly has some complex exposure to the dollar (by which I mean foreign currencies generally) through current and future transactions, but generally speaking China is likely to gain from a revaluation because after the revaluation it will be exchanging the stuff it makes for stuff it buys from abroad at a better ratio. The value of what it sells abroad will rise relative to the value of what it buys from abroad, and if we could correctly capitalize those values on the balance sheet, it would probably show that the Chinese balance sheet would improve with a revaluation of the RMB. 

Some people might make a more sophisticated argument that since China is a net creditor – i.e. it is net long dollars – it will lose by a revaluation of the RMB. This argument also turns out to be wrong, but for more complex reasons, and to explain why I have to put on my former-trader’s hat and explain the difference between a real loss and a realized loss.

 This is where it gets even more complicated.

If you believe that the RMB is undervalued then you must accept that China takes a “real” loss every single time it exchanges a locally produced good or asset for a foreign one. It does not “realize” the loss, however, until it revalues the RMB to its “correct” value. 

In other words, the PBoC, as the representative of China’s net creditor status, will immediately realize a loss when the RMB revalues, but this loss did not occur because of the revaluation. It occurred the very day the trade took place. When a Chinese producer sold goods to the US and took payment in US dollars, there was an unrealized economic loss equal to the undervaluation of the RMB. This unrealized loss was passed onto the PBoC when it bought the dollars from the exporter and paid RMB. 

This loss, however, will not actually show up until the RMB is revalued, which forces the real loss to be realized (i.e. recognized as an accounting matter). Postponing the revaluation, then, is not the way to avoid the loss – it is too late for that. The only way to avoid future additional loss is to stop making the exchange, which means, ironically, that the longer the PBoC postpones the revaluation of the RMB, the greater the real loss it will take. 

So a revaluation of the RMB will not cause any real loss to any Chinese entity today. The loss already occurred but hasn’t been realized. 

But wait, if the RMB is revalued by 10%, the value of the PBoC’s assets will immediately decline by $250 billion in RMB terms. Since the Chinese measure their wealth in RMB, isn’t this a real additional loss for China? 

No, because remember that the only thing you can do with reserves is pay for foreign imports or repay foreign obligations. And just as the value of the reserves drops 10% in RMB terms, so does the value of all those foreign payments – by definition they must go down by exactly the same amount in RMB terms. 

This means that China takes no loss. It can buy and pay for just as much “stuff” after the revaluation, and with less implied PBoC borrowing, as it could before the revaluation – and the real value of money is what you can buy with it. So the real value of the reserves hasn’t changed at all – just the accounting value in RMB, but this simply recognizes losses that were already taken long ago when the trade was first made, and should be a largely irrelevant number (except perhaps for conspiracy theorists). 

But there are important impacts within China. Who wins and who loses depends "on the structure of individual balance sheets."

Basically everyone who is net long dollars against the RMB loses in an appreciation, and everyone who is net short dollars against the RMB wins. 

Who loses? Of course the PBoC is a big loser. ...

Exporters and their employees, too, are naturally long dollars and so they would lose. ...

Chinese companies with more assets abroad then foreign debt might also lose. 

Who wins? Nearly everyone else in China, since everyone in the country is short dollars to the extent that there are imported goods in his life. The local tea seller is short dollars if his tea is delivered to him in gas-guzzling trucks, as is the family planning to visit Egypt next year, as is the local provider of French perfumes, as is a teenager who wants to buy Nike shoes, and so pay for the corporate sponsorship of a Brazilian soccer star playing for a Spanish team. Every household and nearly every business in China is, in one way or another, an importer (and this is true in every country), so unless they own a lot of assets abroad they are effectively short dollars and will benefit from an appreciation in the RMB. 

Revaluing the RMB, in other words, is important and significant because it represents a shift of wealth largely from the PBoC, exporters, and Chinese residents who have stashed away a lot of wealth in a foreign bank, in favor of the rest of the country. Since much of this shift of wealth benefits households at the expense of the state and manufacturers, one of the automatic consequence of a revaluation will be an increase in household wealth and, with it, household consumption. This is why revaluation is part of the rebalancing strategy – it shifts income to households and so increases household consumption.

So a revaluation has important balance sheet impacts on entities within China, and to a much lesser extent, on some entities outside China. But the fact that the PBoC loses big time does actually matter and although Pettis doesn't mention it, it would actually lead to the same sort of structural changes in the Australian economy that many people in Australia are worried about right now - namely a decline in manufacturing and (traded) services competitiveness. Pettis's point probably is that the rise in household wealth would help to balance the economy away from the investment and export dominated growth model.

But since it merely represents a distribution of wealth within China should we care about the PBoC losses or can we ignore them? 

Unfortunately we cannot ignore them and might have to worry about the PBoC losses because, once again, of balance sheet impacts. 

The PBoC runs a mismatched balance sheet, and as a consequence every 10% revaluation in the RMB will cause the PBoC’s net indebtedness to rise by about 7-8% of GDP. This ultimately becomes an increase in total government debt, and of course the more dollars the PBoC accumulates, the greater this loss. (Some readers will note that if government debt levels are already too high, an increase in government debt will sharply increase future government claims on household income, thus reducing the future rebalancing impact of a revaluation, and they are right, which indicates how complex and difficult rebalancing might be). In that sense it is not whether or not China as a whole loses or gains from a revaluation that can be measured by looking at the reserves, and I would argue that it gains, but how the losses are distributed and what further balance sheet impacts that might have.

Simple right? If you're confused, you're not alone. It is easy to see why so many writers assume simple effects and consequences of actions because the real world complexity of a change in the value of the RMB is much harder to explain. Much easier just to say China loses from a revaluation of the yuan against the dollar!

Still I wouldn't want to betting on the certainty of anything in this field. As Keynes once said: "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."