Malgré son boom, la consommation des ménages contribue faiblement à la croissance en Chine

LE MONDE | 21.11.05 | 15h30 • Mis à jour le 21.11.05 | 15h30

SHANGHAÏ CORRESPONDANT

La consommation des ménages en Chine est au coeur d'une révolution proche de ce qu'ont connu les Tigres asiatiques dans les années 1980-1990 : sevrés pendant des années, les Chinois, aujourd'hui, se "lâchent". Très convoité, le marché chinois est le lieu d'une surenchère marketing qui n'a pas eu d'équivalent dans l'histoire du capitalisme : les sociétés du monde entier convergent en Chine pour y promouvoir leurs produits et les vendre. L'offre s'y développe dans une telle proportion et à une telle vitesse qu'elle pourrait dépasser les capacités d'absorption actuelle du marché — comme c'est le cas dans l'automobile, devenue emblématique des risques de surchauffe : la capacité du secteur pourrait atteindre 20 millions d'unités en 2010, alors que les ventes, de 5,5 millions cette année, risquent de ne pas dépasser 9 millions dans cinq ans.

L'évolution de la demande pour les biens de consommation est surtout impressionnante parce qu'elle a démarré très bas et que les volumes sont significatifs. De 1997 à 2003, d'après une étude récente du cabinet Deloitte, la consommation totale des ménages a ainsi augmenté de 64 %. Mais, sur la même période, la consommation de produits alimentaires et de vêtements n'a grimpé que de 41,2 % et 22 % respectivement.

En revanche, les Chinois ont consommé 90,8 % de plus de produits durables. Pour le transport, la hausse est de 111,8 %. Ces chiffres reflètent le tropisme des consommateurs pour les produits électroniques — il y a désormais 350 millions d'usagers du téléphone portable. Les ventes automobiles, elles, ont crû de 318 % — mais sont retombées à 12 % cette année.

Comparée aux performances de l'économie en général — 9,5 % par an pour le produit intérieur brut (PIB) —, la consommation des ménages reste encore le parent pauvre de la croissance : elle n'a représenté que 42 % du PIB en 2004, et probablement moins en 2005. "D'après nous, la structure politique existante en Chine, la distribution inégale de la richesse et des revenus, sont implicitement défavorables à la consommation. Les exportations et l'investissement ont une part de plus en plus importante du PIB, tandis que la croissance de la consommation est en train de passer derrière celle du PIB nominal", notaient fin octobre, dans leur analyse en ligne, les économistes de Morgan Stanley.

Bref, au lieu d'alimenter la croissance, la consommation privée se nourrit en partie des excès du surinvestissement en capacités de production et en infrastructures (la bulle immobilière, par exemple, gonfle la demande en meubles et en équipement dans les grandes villes).

L'une des évolutions structurelles appelée à doper la consommation en Chine est la modernisation de la grande distribution à la faveur de l'arrivée des groupes étrangers.

Mais, pour que la Chine entre réellement dans l'ère de la consommation, il faut aussi que les bonnes politiques soient mises en oeuvre. Les économistes de Morgan Stanley identifient plusieurs transitions essentielles pour les années à venir. Il s'agit d'abord des facteurs qui permettront d'augmenter le revenu disponible de la population, comme la privatisation des actifs contrôlés par l'Etat — surtout les terres — et l'urbanisation d'une partie des 800 millions de paysans chinois.

Deuxièmement, la mise en place d'un système de santé et de retraite (en pratique, les Chinois sont dépourvus de couverture médicale) est indispensable pour, d'une part, pousser les consommateurs chinois à moins économiser, et, d'autre part, en captant des fonds publics, contribuer à freiner le surinvestissement de l'Etat dans les infrastructures. Enfin, la continuation des réformes et de l'ouverture aux étrangers dans le domaine bancaire doit permettre de généraliser le crédit et de le rendre plus performant.

Brice Pedroletti

Article paru dans l'édition du 22.11.05

Tags: chine, china

'Second Wives' in China

• Mistresses are again a status symbol in China. As scandal spreads, the government worries that they are a motive for public corruption.

By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer
November 22, 2005 latimes.com : World News

SHANGHAI — Li Xin knelt in a hotel room here, wearing polka-dot boxer shorts and a grimace on his face.

The deputy mayor of Jining, in Shandong province, was pleading with his lover not to report him to authorities.

But in the end, the 51-year-old official was exposed and sentenced to life in prison. His crime: accepting more than $500,000 in bribes, which he used to support at least four mistresses in Jining, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Li's transgressions were minor compared with those of other public officials. A top prosecutor in Henan province, for example, was recently stripped of his post and Communist Party membership after investigators alleged that he embezzled $2 million to support his lavish lifestyle — and seven mistresses.

"Everyone is saying, 'Behind every corrupt official, there must be at least one mistress,' " says Li Xinde, an anti-corruption activist who researched Li Xin's case and posted on his website a photo of the deputy mayor begging in the hotel room.

China's economic boom has led to a revival of the 2-millennium-old tradition of "golden canaries," so called because, like the showcase birds, mistresses here are often pampered, housed in love nests and taken out at the pleasure of their "masters."

Concubines were status symbols in imperial China. After the Communists took power, they sought to root out such bourgeois evils, even as Chairman Mao Tse-tung reportedly kept a harem of peasant women into his old age.

Now, mistresses have become a must-have for party officials, bureaucrats and businessmen.

"We are in a commodity economy," says retired Shanghai University sociologist Liu Dalin. "Work, technology, love, beauty, power — it's all tradable."

So-called concubine villages — places where lotharios keep "second wives" in comfort and seclusion — are now spread across the nation, in booming cities such as Dongguan, Chengdu and Shanghai.

So common is the practice that it has spawned an industry of private detectives snooping on cheating husbands and their paramours. One such agency, called Debang, based in the western city of Chengdu, underscores how "first wives" are fighting back.

Debang was started by divorced women with one goal: to help desperate wives ferret out their double- and triple-timing husbands and make them pay for their indiscretions.

Debang wouldn't comment, but informed people say the firm has expanded into several cities and has a staff of more than 100.

The mistress boom is contributing to a surge in divorces — and fierce battles over property when relationships collapse. Not long ago, Beijing amended the country's marriage law to make men who indulge in mistresses pay heavy penalties and to give their spouses greater rights in separations.

Now, local governments are starting to take action.

This year the city of Nanjing issued an order for all public officials to register their extramarital relationships. In Guangzhou, a prosperous city in the south, a major university issued stern warnings to female students about having affairs and wrecking marriages. And last month, state media reported that Hainan province had stipulated that party members who kept mistresses or had children outside of marriage would be expelled.

Government leaders worry that philandering also could have detrimental effects on China's economy and the credibility of the Communist Party.

State-run banks and agencies have lost billions of dollars to embezzlement and fraud, many at the hands of officials seeking money to support their golden canaries. In a government review of 102 corruption cases in several Guangdong province cities a few years ago, every one involved an illicit affair.

"If a government official has a mistress, there must be some corruption," says Sun Youjun, a private investigator in Shanghai. "Visits to high-end hotels are not easy with officials' incomes."

Like most bureaucrats, Li Xin had a monthly paycheck of no more than a few hundred dollars. But as deputy mayor for a city of 8 million that's a regional industrial and rail center, Li could easily boost his income. He collected bribes from more than 40 businesses in exchange for helping them with land deals, commodity sales and construction projects, according to interviews and to reports in state-owned media.

Tags: chine, china

Mariés deux jours sur sept

Courrier international - 22 nov. 2005
CHINE - Mariés deux jours sur sept
"Après plus de deux ans de mariage, je trouvais que je commençais à manquer d'air. Mon espace personnel ne cessait de se rétrécir, et mes amis se faisaient de plus en plus rares. C'est pourquoi on a opté pour cette nouvelle formule. Cela ne veut pas dire que je m'oppose à la conception traditionnelle du mariage, mais je trouve que c'est mieux ainsi", déclare Mme Ling, une citadine de Hangzhou, au Quotidien du peuple.

Selon le journal chinois, le "mariage de fin de semaine" consiste à vivre ensemble les week-ends et les jours fériés. Cette pratique sociale se répand de plus en plus dans les grandes villes chinoises comme Hangzhou ou Zhejiang. "En Chine, près de 10 millions de couples se marient chaque année", estime Zhang Yi, directeur de Roma Wedding, une agence qui assure l'organisation des mariages.

En effet, la structure familiale en Chine, de même que l'institution du mariage, ont connu un vrai bouleversement à la suite de la mutation économique et sociale du pays et l'ouverture sur l'extérieur. Les familles chinoises sont devenues diverses et variées en type comme en structure, et le concept traditionnel du mariage s'est affaibli de plus en plus.

La pratique du "mariage de fin de semaine" se répand parmi les cols blancs. Elle concerne des couples qui ne souhaitent pas voir leur mariage prendre une tournure fatale. Chacun prend beaucoup plus de liberté en semaine ; on se téléphone, on a l'impression d'être encore des amoureux, avant de se retrouver mari et femme en fin de semaine. Cette nouvelle tendance semble bien mieux préserver la chaleur des sentiments que la vie conjugale traditionnelle, observe le journal.

Tags: chine

Les inégalités s'accroissent entre le monde rural et le monde urbain

LEMONDE.FR 14.11.05 14h48

L'OCDE exhorte la Chine à réduire les inégalités de plus en plus importantes entre les campagnes et les villes et à s'attaquer aux graves problèmes d'environnement qui mettent en danger l'agriculture, dans un rapport publié lundi 14 novembre.

Cette première étude sur les politiques agricoles chinoises de l'Organisation de coopération et de développement économique (OCDE), dont la Chine n'est pas membre, relève qu'après avoir bénéficié dans un premier temps des réformes lancées en 1978, l'agriculture souffre d'un retard par rapport aux autres secteurs depuis le milieu des années 1990. Elle pèse toujours d'un poids important, représentant 15 % du produit intérieur brut et plus de 40 % des emplois. La Chine reste majoritairement rurale : 60 % des 1,3 milliard de Chinois vivent à la campagne, soit près de 800 millions de personnes.

Mais, souligne l'OCDE, si les revenus ont fortement augmenté depuis les réformes, cela est dû essentiellement aux entreprises non-agricoles, dont la création a été encouragée dans les campagnes par les autorités pour empêcher un exode rural trop important. Et si la pauvreté a diminué en raison des réformes et de l'ouverture économiques, les écarts de revenus se sont accrus entre les paysans et les citadins : au milieu des années 1980, un habitant des villes gagnait en moyenne 1,85 fois plus qu'un campagnard, "en 2003 et 2004 le ratio était de 3,2, le plus élevé de toute la période des réformes", dit l'étude.

Soulignant que cette question est devenue prioritaire pour le régime en 2004, l'OCDE suggère plusieurs pistes pour s'attaquer au problème, en particulier de lever les barrières administratives empêchant la libre circulation de la main-d'oeuvre vers les villes, estimant que "la poursuite du transfert de la main-d'oeuvre rurale vers des emplois non-agricoles créerait des conditions favorables pour l'ajustement structurel de l'agriculture".

LE DÉFI DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT

L'Etat devrait également, selon l'organisme, garantir une plus grande sécurité juridique de l'accès à la terre, objet de litiges en raison des limitations du système actuel qui prévoit des locations sur 30 ans et donne un pouvoir immense aux fonctionnaires locaux. D'ailleurs, note l'OCDE, dans de nombreux cas, certains se comportent comme des propriétaires terriens, "décidant de louer ou de vendre des terres à des investisseurs extérieurs sans consensus des agriculteurs locaux et sans que les agriculteurs reçoivent une compensation correcte pour la perte des terres".

Un meilleur accès aux services publics est également indispensable. "Les différences énormes dans les dépenses publiques par habitant dans l'éducation, la santé, les systèmes de retraites et de sécurité sociale entre populations rurales et urbaines sont l'une des principales sources de disparités sociales", indique l'étude.

Un autre défi de taille est l'environnement, avec dans l'ensemble du pays une érosion et une dégradation des sols et une pollution de l'eau. L'OCDE, rappelle qu'avec 280 kg par hectare, la Chine est l'un des principaux utilisateurs d'engrais au monde. "Ces problèmes risquent de contribuer à une réduction de la productivité agricole à long terme", prévient le rapport.

L'OCDE conseille au gouvernement chinois de restructurer la filière agro-alimentaire pour la rendre plus compétitive, alors que le secteur est encore très fragmentée avec "200 millions de foyers ruraux avec une affectation de terre de seulement 0,65 ha en moyenne".

Cependant, la proposition de l'OCDE de favoriser l'existence d'organisations de producteurs autonomes devrait être difficilement entendue par Pékin, sourcilleux de ne laisser aucune expression de la société civile en dehors des structures gouvernementales ou du parti au pouvoir.

Avec AFP

Tags: chine

Women in China finally making a great leap forward

excerpt:

"Qu Man and Yang Jie marry in a hotel courtyard with 85 people and a type of ceremony that is becoming common: Western. Statues of Roman gods and scads of purple balloons are part of an event complete with the throwing of rice and confetti. At one point, the parents of both bride Qu and groom Yang are called up front to speak at the ceremony. It seems like no big deal.

Yet like many family matters in China, this wedding ritual represents an enormous change - mainly for the bride. Not long ago, less than 20 years, the bride's family did not attend her wedding, let alone speak at the ceremony. Brides were sent out the door by parents to the groom's family, where they were obliged to serve with duty and alacrity."

[...]

"Qu Man, the bride with the Western-style wedding, is an example of greater status among urban women. Both she and Yang Jie work in a state accounting office. Yang says he chose Qu. But Qu chose just about everything else: She chose the wedding site. She also brought her parents to the wedding.

And that was not for show. It signals she will not be an old-style daughter-in-law, subservient, powerless, dependent. She will negotiate when to leave her career and have a child. If she is like many brides today, she will have told her husband already that if he expects her to live with his family, he must find a different wife."

[...]

"Families with one child, a girl, now place great hope in her. In urban areas, men now say they don't care if their baby is a girl or boy. (A lively debate exists over whether they mean it.) Also, the virtues of having a girl are more explicitly stated in the city: "My parents and many parents I know feel that when the son moves out, his counsel will not be as reliable," she says. "He will look out for his interests first. But the daughter, even when she is married, can be trusted to think for the whole family."

"The daughter is easier to raise, cares more, and is less trouble," says Beijing University family sociologist Xia Xueluan. "That's the feeling.""

From cells to bells, 10 things the Chinese do far better than we do

A comparative list compiled by JAN WONG

JAN WONG
Saturday, October 23, 2004

BEIJING -- Ah, those clever Chinese. First they invent gunpowder and a few other essentials of modern civilization. Now they're gunning their economic engines. Yet who would have thought that, after a millennium of poverty, they'd already do so many things better than we?

In fact, compiling a Top 10 list of what China does better than Canada isn't easy. There are so many items. To whittle it down, let's assume it's unfair to count anything related to cheap labour.

So we won't include the wonderfully thorough mop-ups of supermarket spills: The staff don't plunk down those yellow you-can't-sue-us caution signs. They actually fan the floor with a broken sheet of Styrofoam until it is dry.

Nor will we mention the exquisite, free head-and-shoulder massages that come with every shampoo and haircut.

And we will only sigh with envy over bicycle couriers speeding theatre tickets to you the same day -- free.

Frequent travellers will love this one: Even remote rural hotels in China, not previously known for world-beating hygiene, now routinely slip blankets, quilts and coverlets into freshly laundered duvet covers. No more puffy bedspreads and nasty polyester blankets that cover guest after guest without being cleaned, which is still the practice in most of our hotel chains.

Considering how cheap labour is, it's astonishing that so many Chinese facilities offer free automated lockers now, the way European airports and train stations do. No more old-fashioned keys to form a lump in your pocket -- just a slip of paper with a randomly chosen number that lets you retrieve your belongings. Stores like them because they cut shoplifting; customers like them because they reduce schlepping.

Not all progress is good. Taxis, subways, trains and elevators barrage you with non-stop ads on flat-screen videos. Some city buses feature live television. Who wants that? Pickpockets, probably.

For this list, we won't count minor things, either, like the narrow plastic bags that department stores and offices offer on rainy days to sheathe your dripping umbrella. Or the invention of the electronic fly swatter, which electrocutes without squishy messes (and is now available in dollar stores in Canada).

On this list, we won't count mega things, either, like the soaring architectural wonder of China's airports -- even in provincial capitals like Fuzhou -- awash in natural light. (Not to mention that you can understand the public announcements, and the restaurants are much better.)

We won't include the vast subway and highway systems and huge underground garages that Beijing, Shanghai and Canton have built in astoundingly little time. Or Shanghai's magnetic-levitation train, the first in the world, which accelerates to 431 kilometres an hour in 2 minutes and 53 seconds. Even the Germans who designed it can't afford one for themselves.

No, for this list we were looking for truly brilliant ideas, the forehead-slapping kind, the ones that make you say: Now why didn't we think of that?

1. Cellphones

By any standard you can think of -- coverage, price, ubiquity -- China's cellphone practices beat ours. You can use them in elevators, subways and parking garages. They work in Tibet, at the Great Wall, in remotest rural China, which is more than you can say for Ontario cottage country. Patients, doctors, nurses and visitors use them in hospitals, too, with no apparent ill effects.

It's a cheap, pay-as-you-go system, with no stupid monthly contracts or credit checks. The phones are so cheap -- even sidewalk cabbage vendors have them -- that China is now the biggest cellphone market in the world. With 300 million in use, each one telling time, wristwatch sales have plummeted.

"We're a nation of thumbs," a young Shanghai woman told me, meaning that Chinese use cellphones like BlackBerries, text-messaging friends 24/7, at 1.6 cents a pop. The Chinese never got used to voicemail or answering machines; installing home phones was equivalent to two years pay in the 1980s, so the country leapfrogged over landline technology right into cellular.

Chinese author Qian Fuchang even plans to transmit a novel -- about an extramarital affair -- via text-messaging, one 70-word chapter at a time.

2. Informative stop lights

In Tianjin, a city of 13 million people, traffic lights display red or green signals in a rectangle that rhythmically shrinks down as the time remaining evaporates. In Beijing, some traffic lights offer a countdown clock for both green and red signals.

During a red light, you know whether you have time to check that map; on a green light, you know whether to start braking a block away -- or to stomp on the accelerator, as though you were a Toronto or Montreal driver. (That's probably why Montreal has a few lights with countdown seconds for pedestrians.)

3. Transit debit cards

Wouldn't it be great to have a single debit card for buses, subways -- and taxis? That's how it works in Shanghai. Passengers don't have to fumble for exact change on buses and subways, or line up to buy tokens or tickets. Taxi drivers don't have to make change, or get ripped off by counterfeit bills, a real plague in China. And they aren't loaded down with cash, which would make them tempting targets for robbery.

(In another transit plus, forget those illegible handwritten taxi receipts we get in Canada. China's taxis automatically print out receipts with date, mileage, taxi medallion number, even the start and end times of the ride. That certainly would help you recover the Stradivarius you inadvertently left in the back seat.)

4. Adult playgrounds

Hate paying those gym club bills? Loathe huffing and puffing around buff bodies in spandex? Beijing provides free outdoor exercise equipment in neighbourhoods throughout the city: walking machines, ab flexers, weight machines and rowing machines in bright reds, blues, yellows and greens.

Adult playgrounds get everyone out in the fresh air, especially seniors who might stay shut in at home. Teens like to hang out there, too. And it sends a not-so-subtle propaganda message about the benefits of healthy living.

5. Anti-theft slipcovers

What do you do with a purse in a restaurant? It can slide off your lap, and looping the handle over the back of your chair is an invitation to a thief. In China, when you sling your purse or laptop or coat over your chair back, a waiter hurries to toss a tasteful slipcover over it. It foils thieves, and also protects coats from food spills. Some restaurants provide hooks under the table for purses.

6. Daily banking

We feel so lucky when a bank branch in Canada opens for a few hours on Saturday mornings. (Notice the long, long lines?) But Chinese banks are now open 9 to 5, seven days a week. Even on New Year's Day and other national holidays, at least some branches will open for business. The ones that are closed post helpful notices directing you to the closest open branch. And, yes, they do have a full network of ATMs.

7. Wireless service bells

Trying to flag down your waiter for a glass of water? Just press a made-in-China gizmo at your table. Your table number lights up on a panel inside the kitchen and your server is soon hovering by your side. The bell also eliminates that annoying waiterly interruption: "Is everything all right?"

The same gizmo in spas alerts masseuses when you're demurely under the sheet and ready for their attention.

8. Parking data

A celebrity I once lunched with was an hour late because he couldn't find an empty parking spot in downtown Toronto. He had driven to a dozen lots, each time finding a wooden sign plunked at the entrance smugly announcing that the lot was full.

In China, roadside electronic billboards not only give directions to nearby lots and garages, they crucially reveal how many empty spaces are left.

9. Computer seating maps

Canadian concert halls will tell you that Row DD, Seat 81 costs $74.95. But where on earth is it? At the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the black granite ticket counter is embedded with a Samsung computer screen which lights up with the event you want to see, showing unsold seats, colour-coded by price, and the sightline to the stage. There is even a bar stool on which to perch while you consider your choices.

Movie theatres offer the same service. You choose which film and what showing, and the screen in the counter shows you what's unsold. After you make your choice, you can go shopping or enjoy a latte until show time. No one will take your seats.

10. Free hemming

This doesn't count as cheap labour because only three people service an entire department store. In Canada, hemming a new pair of trousers adds at least $10 to the cost, plus two trips to the tailor. And you have to try them on again while you get measured.

At the No. 1 Department Store in Shanghai, the salesclerk measures you while you are trying on the pants, asking: "Will you be wearing these with high heels or flats?" If you decide to buy them, she scribbles the length on your receipt. You head to what looks like a gift-wrapping station where a man measures and chalks the pants, scissors off the surplus and flings them to two women behind him. One hems the raw edge on a machine and tosses it to the other, who stitches the final hem on another machine and presses them.

Even with two customers ahead of me, I swear it took under three minutes in all to get two pairs back.

When I tell the woman ahead of me that stores in Canada don't do this, she's astonished. "Really?" she says. "How inconvenient."

© The Globe and Mail. Republished with permission. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or republished or redistributed without the prior written consent of the copyright holder.