OPINION> You Nuo
|
OPINION> You Nuo
|
|
Needed real help, not vague policies
By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-25 08:02
We seem to be encountering another kind of inflation, the inflation of government policies and guidelines. There is no doubt the government should have taken certain steps when the market was under heavy threat, as it was in the beginning of the year, to stop things from getting bad to worse - such as shoring up key industries, adding major infrastructure projects and protecting jobs. Some policies and guidelines become inevitable, especially in industries such as shipbuilding and nuclear energy that are dominated by a few large groups. But since then, so many economic revitalizing policies and guidelines have been issued by government agencies (both at the central and local levels) that there seems to be a glut of them. While some policies and guidelines are really important and working, others may never travel very far from the policymakers' table - especially the ones meant to reach the millions of small enterprises in the private sector. Beginning with the second half of the year, say some Chinese language press, there has been a policy paper from one central-level government agency or the other on "cultural business" almost every two weeks, and there is no sign of that ending. Is this a healthy sign? "Cultural business" in China covers a wide area, ranging from publishing and broadcasting to entertainment and animation. These activities have the potential of creating a much higher number of jobs than the State's manufacturing sector. They should not be taken as lightly as the many empty policies, or rather just policy-level promises, suggest. Instead, they deserve real help. Providing small companies the service and convenience they need is a much more efficient way of helping them than issuing a 10-point or 20-point should-do list that are printed in official newspapers. The most common management style in China's "cultural business" has remained unchanged since the late 1980s, under which leaders reluctant to completely cut off their ties with the government contract out commercial units to individuals. It is obvious that before those semi-businesses can be made entirely independent - primarily financially - of the government, they can neither work with any market-economy partners nor seek to become public listed companies. So what they truly need is a resolute government that can free them of their semi-official status rather than being continuously fed with vaguely termed should-do points. Even in industries in which money is the key, it is not the loans coming directly from the central government's financial stimulus package that play a decisive role. In fact, after so much financial stimulus - or government-endorsed loans - being provided through the national banking system, many small companies are still trying to weather the crisis by relying either entirely on themselves or extra-legal financial sources. Technically, it is simply not economical, as banking officials would admit, for any national financial institution to manage small loans across the country. Large loans are easy to manage, and practically risk-free if the debtors are large investors in projects approved by the central government. But running large projects is only one way of helping the economy. More often than not, they are not projects that sustain the largest number of jobs. At this stage, more developed city-level services, from government to financial, hold the key to small companies' prosperity in "cultural business", as well as in other sectors. But up to now, there hasn't been much progress in building up Chinese cities' autonomous economic power. And if progress remains slow, much of China's post-crisis restructuring attempt is bound to suffer. E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 08/25/2009 page9) |
