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China’s national savings rate has been rising steadily, and especially in the 21st century, it has risen faster from 37.6% in 2000 to 52.6% in 2010, and recently fallen to 49.5% in 2014 (see Figure 1.4). China’s high savings support not only its high investment from the capital supply side but also greatly contribute to the imbalance of the country’s economic structure. On the one hand, the imbalance of the low consumption–high savings structure starts to emerge; on the other hand, the storage–investment difference is expanding, resulting in an external imbalance.⁹ Greenspan even argues that a high savings rate in developing countries has led to the long-term low interest rate and been the fundamental cause of the housing bubble and the global financial crisis of the past two decades.¹⁰ Therefore, it is particularly important to explain the reasons for China’s high national savings rate and thus develop the idea of alleviating structural imbalances.

To understand the root cause of the rising rate of national savings, it is necessary to decompose the structure of national savings. According to departments, national savings can be divided into resident savings, enterprise savings and government savings. Figure 1.5 shows the proportion of those three types of savings in the national savings since 2000. In 2009, the three types of savings accounted for 48.3%, 41.9% and 9.8% of national savings, respectively, clearly showing the dominant position of residents and enterprises in the national savings. In recent years, the savings rate of residents (residents’ savings rate) and the savings rate of enterprises both have shown an upward trend to jointly raise the overall national savings rate. Therefore, the discussion of resident savings and enterprise savings is conducive to understanding the national savings rate. Fan Gang and Lu Yan explain why the enterprise savings rate has been rising in recent years.¹¹ Through study, they believe that China is still in the dual economy state before the Lewis turning point, and the existence of a surplus labor force puts the labor force in a weak position in the game of labor and capital, further leading to a slow increase in wages; with the reform of the system and the opening-up of the market, the efficiency of the production of enterprises has greatly improved, but capital occupies more of this part of the value. With the expansion of the capital scale, profits will accumulate at a higher rate and eventually form large-scale enterprise savings.

Figure 1.4. China’s national consumption rate and savings rate (1980–2014).

Note: The consumption rate is the proportion of consumption expenditure in the GDP with an expenditure-based GDP accounting; savings rate = 1 − consumption rate.

Source: China Statistical Yearbook.

China’s resident savings rate also keeps rising from 31.1% in 2000 to 40.4% in 2009 (Figure 1.6). In spite of a slight decrease in recent years, the proportion of resident savings is still large and will further increase under the guidance of the policy of “increasing the disposable income of residents”, which will play a significant role in determining the trend of the national savings rate in the future. In addition, according to the international comparative study of Blanchard and Giavazzi, the savings rate of Chinese enterprises and of the Chinese government are not exceptional in transnational comparisons, and the high savings rate in China is still closely associated with a high resident savings rate.¹² Thus, it is necessary to focus on the reasons for the rise of the resident savings rate in China in recent years, and further explore the trend of the national savings rate.

Figure 1.5. Proportion of three-sector savings in national savings (2000–2009).

Source: 2001–2010 Fund Flow Statement in The China Statistical Yearbook.

Figure 1.6. China’s resident savings rate (2000–2009).

Source: 2001–2010 Fund Flow Statement in The China Statistical Yearbook.