魏尚进：新型冠状病毒会拖累中国经济增长吗?

一些人担心新型冠状病毒爆发使中国经济雪上加霜，会严重拖累2020年的中国与全球的增长率。但有几个重要因素让疫情对经济增长的最终影响变得有限。

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The panic generated by the new coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, which originated in Wuhan, China’s ninth largest cities and a major domestic transport hub, reminds many of the fear and uncertainty at the peak of the 2003 SARS crisis. China’s stock market, after rising for months, has reversed itself in recent days, and global markets have followed suit, potentially reflecting concerns about the epidemic’s impact on the Chinese economy and global growth. Are these worries justified?

My baseline projection is that the coronavirus outbreak will get worse before it gets better, with infections and deaths possibly peaking in the second or third week of February. But I expect that the epidemic to be under control by early April.

Under this baseline scenario, my best estimate is that the virus will have only a limited negative economic impact. Its effect on Chinese GDP growth rate in 2020 is likely to be small, perhaps a reduction on the order of 1/10 of a one percentage point. The effect in the first quarter of 2020 will be big, perhaps lowering growth by one percentage point on an annualized basis, but this will be substantially offset by above-the-trend growth in the rest of the year. The impact on the world GDP growth will be even smaller. 

Such a prediction is parallel to the experience of the 2003 SARS crisis. That crisis produced a big decline in China’s GDP growth in the second quarter of that year, which was then largely offset by higher growth in the subsequent two quarters. While the whole year growth rate in 2003 was about 10%, many investment bank economists at the time over-predicted the negative growth impact of the health crisis. If one looks at the time series of annual real GDP growth rates from 2000-2006, it will be very hard to see a SARS effect in the data.

Some fear that the epidemic’s timing – at the start of the week-long Chinese New Year celebration, and in the middle of traditional school-break travels – will exacerbate the economic fallout by keeping many people away from shops, restaurants, and travel hubs. But three important factors may limit the virus’s impact.

First, in contrast to the SARS outbreak, China is now in the Internet commerce age, with consumers increasingly doing their shopping online. Much of the reduction in offline sales owing to the virus will likely be offset by an increase in online purchases (after the resumption of the delivery service). And most of the vacations canceled today will probably be replaced by future trips, because better-off households have already set aside a holiday travel budget.

Many factories have scheduled production stoppages during the Chinese New Year holidays anyway, so the timing of the epidemic may minimize the need for further shutdowns. Similarly, many government offices and schools had planned holiday closures independently of the virus outbreak. The government has just announced an extension of the holiday period, but many companies will find ways to make up the lost time later in the year. The short-term negative impact is thus likely to be concentrated among restaurants, hotels, and airlines.

Second, all reports indicate that the Wuhan coronavirus is less deadly than SARS (although it may have a faster rate of transmission initially). By implementing aggressive measures to isolate actual and potential patients from the rest of the population, the authorities have also improved their chances in containing the epidemic much sooner. That, in turn, increases the likelihood that the lost economic output this quarter will be offset by increased activity in the remainder of the year.

Third, whether or not China’s trade negotiators realized the severity of the Wuhan virus when they signed the “phase one” trade deal with the United States on January 15, the timing of the agreement has turned out to be fortunate. By greatly increasing its imports of facial masks and medical supplies from the US (and elsewhere), China can simultaneously tackle the health crisis and fulfillits promise under the deal to import more goods.

The virus’s impact on other economies will be even more limited. During the last half-decade, many major central banks have developed models to gauge the economic impact of a slowdown in China on their economies. These models were not built with the current health crisis in mind, but they do take into account trade and financial linkages between China and their respective economies.

As a rule of thumb, the negative impact of a decrease in China’s GDP growth on the US and European economies is about one-fifth as large in percentage terms. For example, if the current coronavirus epidemic lowers China’s growth rate by 0.1 percentage points, then growth in the US and Europe is likely to slow by about 0.02 percentage points. The impact on Australia’s economy may be twice as large, given its stronger commodity-trade and tourism links with China, but a 0.04-percentage-point reduction in growth is still small.

Such calculations assume that the coronavirus does not spread widely to these countries and cause direct havoc. This currently seems unlikely, given the low number of cases outside China.

Of course, the impact on China and other economies could be more severe if the coronavirus crisis were to last much longer than this baseline scenario assumes. In that case, it is important to remember that Chinese policymakers still have room for both monetary and fiscal expansion: the banking-sector reserve ratio is relatively high, and the share of public-sector debt to GDP is still manageable compared to China’s international peers. By using this policy space when necessary, China’s authorities could limit the ultimate impact of the current health crisis.

The coronavirus outbreak is understandably causing alarm in China and elsewhere. From an economic perspective, it is too early to panic.

*本文作者魏尚进现任复旦大学泛海国际金融学院学术访问教授、哥伦比亚大学终身讲席教授。同时担任美国国民经济研究局（NBER）中国经济研究组创始主任，美国布鲁金斯学会（Brookings Institution）高级研究员。曾任亚洲开发银行（ADB）首位华人首席经济学家、经济研究与区域合作局局长，国际货币基金组织（IMF）贸易与投资处处长，世界银行（WB）顾问等职务。

*2019年12月，北京当代经济学基金会当代经济学奖评奖委员会决定，将2019年当代经济学奖授予魏尚进教授，以奖励其在竞争性储蓄以及经济全球化下国际贸易统一计算框架两个领域对发展经济学做出的杰出贡献。2015年6月，魏尚进、张晓波合著的《竞争性储蓄动机：中国持续增长的性别比例与储蓄率》（The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Rations and Savings Rates in China）曾获得第十六届（2014年度）孙冶方经济科学奖。