La Chinese economic situation appears rich in positive indications, with growth in the first quarter of 2017 amounting to +6,9% y/y, the best result in the last year and a half. China's contribution to world growth in the two-year period 2017-18 is estimated at one third of the total, 3 times that expected from the United States, 6 times that of the Eurozone, double that attributable to India.
In redesigning the Chinese development model, a step (basically completed) is the reduction of foreign demand. The process of redefining the role of members is less advanced fixed investments. Between 2009 and 2014, their incidence on GDP stood at 45%, decreasing a little later (43% of GDP in 2015).
The quantitative downsizing process is combined with the implementation of an equally important qualitative renewal effort of the production structure. If it is necessary to recognize that China is managing transformation processes of undoubted importance, it is on the other hand evident that in the current scenario there is no shortage obvious criticalities whose evaluation cannot be separated from two considerations.
The first is that these are large-scale problems and therefore require medium-long timescales to be significantly reduced.
The second is that these imbalances were largely functional to the intense growth process achieved in the recent past. Understandably, therefore, attempts are being made to identify corrective measures that do not compromise the economic (and therefore political) stability of the country.
A problematic area of undoubted importance is that of overall fragility of the national financial circuit. Corporate over-indebtedness and intense dimensional growth of the banking circuit are largely related phenomena. The country's future stability depends to a significant extent on a more rigorous management of these two processes.
The Chinese authorities are called upon to outline solutions to important critical issues in the financial system, including in particular the improvement of the quality of the banks' loan portfolio and a cooling of the activity of the so-called shadow banking system.
