By LuFeng TangJie and LiuLiu
Held in the Boya International Meeting Centre in Peking University in the afternoon on July 26, 2008, the 14th Chinese Economy Observation Seminar by CCER mainly covered the following themes including the Reformation on Finance and Revenue System, the Economic Influence by the Labor Contract Statute, the Exterior Imbalance with Chinese and American Economy, the Primary Product Prix and Inflation, and the Current Position of Macro-economy. Xu Shanda, the former Vice-director General of the State Revenue Bureau, Professor Dong Baohua from East China University of Political Science and Law, the chief economist Gong Fangxiong of J.P. Morgan Chase in China Region, and the professors of Song Guoqing, Zhou Qiren and Lu Feng in China Center for Economic Research (CCER) aired their speeches and the floor was open to everyone.
As the first speaker, Professor Lu Feng gave a report commenting on the 13th Langrun Forecast of Macro-economy in the third quarter of 2008 that integrated analytic references from 17 Research Institutions including CCER from which several forecasts thereinafter of economic trend in the third quarter by macro-economists were sightworthy. Firstly, the pressure from inflation will stay with the expectedly year-on-year rises for CPI from 7.8% in the second quarter down to 6.1%-6.3% in the third quarter. Secondly, the descendent extent of economic growth will be narrowed and verge calm with the year-on-year growth slimly reduced from 10.2% to 10% prospectively. Thirdly, the respectively mounting indexes for investment, industrial rise and commodity retail shall appear balanced increase with high speed in principle. Besides, the increscent rapidity for imports and exports will be prognosticated as 29.1% and 19.7% apart, and the trade favorable balance will continue the maintenance of the year-on-year decline and quarter-on-quarter rebound with the similarity to the second quarter. Last but not least, there will be comparatively little fluctuant feasibility of the interest rate which indicates the exchange rate will hold on to increase in value with small scale. To sum up in the mass, anticipative accomplishment has been high up in the pictures via the government macro-policy compounding with inflation-oriented.
Again, brilliant speeches were subsequently addressed by a number of scholars. Mr. Xu Shanda believed the coexistence of value-added tax and sales tax would potentially stand for a long period of time due to various restrictions. Doctor Gong Fangxiong pointed that the increase of provisional price interferences resulted in long-standing problems exerting on the stabilization of economy function from constructional perspective. Professor Dong Baohua introduced the Labor Law systems in America, France and Japan via the comparison of which he recognized the safeguard extent to the unemployment in the Chinese system ranked top. Professor Lu Feng considered that the interpretative effect arise by factors of exchange rate on the exterior imbalance should be neither overlooked nor renounced. Professor Song Guoqing claimed that the rise of the primary product price did not indeed reflect on inflation, while the authentic relationship existed in that inflation namely the currency surplus induced the prix jump in primary products. Zhou Qiren valued that the maintenance of tighten monetary policy should be continuously put on the most crucial stage as the macro-policy contemporarily with more flexible construction and reform policies for the guarantee of the persistent and benign growth for the civil economy.
