Why are Chinese consumers tuning out of annual online shopping festival?
A person walks at a shopping mall in Beijing, China, Oct. 31. EPA-Yonhap
Stock market slump and declining property values see many families make debt reduction and deleveraging greater priorities
Hangzhou bank employee Xiao Na says she has no plan to buy anything during China’s ongoing Singles’ Day shopping festival, the world’s largest online retail promotion.
“When I think about hunting around for things to buy just so I can use all kinds of coupons, the money I save is dwarfed by what I’ve lost in the stock market,” the 37-year-old said. “Stocks are falling, home values continue to slide, and my salary isn’t going up. Keeping more cash in my pocket is the best strategy.”
Consumers across China are holding back on spending during the annual shopping extravaganza as a stock market slump and a prolonged decline in property values erode household wealth, with many families making debt reduction and deleveraging greater priorities.
In the third quarter, the tech-focused ChiNext Index plunged nearly 28 percent — one of its steepest quarterly declines on record — while the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index posted more moderate losses amid a sharp unwinding in growth and technology stocks.
Chinese consumption has remained subdued this year, with total retail sales of consumer goods rising just 1.1 percent year on year in the first three quarters, according to the most recent figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.
“Households [in China] still seem wary of stocks,” Thomas Gatley, an analyst at global macroeconomics and technology research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, wrote in a research note on Monday.
Gatley said the recent slump in China’s A-share market meant equities were again weighing on household balance sheets. “In response, households will probably maintain an elevated savings rate to offset the ongoing decline in housing prices, meaning consumption will stay weak,” he said.
In October, the average price of second-hand homes across 100 mainland cities was down 0.6 percent month on month and 6.7 percent year on year, according to data released by the China Index Academy last week. The month-on-month decline widened slightly from September, and 98 of the cities recorded price drops, it said.
A widening gap between income growth and nominal gross domestic product growth was also contributing to more cautious household consumption, said Zhang Yu, Huachuang Securities’ chief economist.
Nominal GDP grew about 4 percent last year, while migrant-worker income and average pay at A-share listed companies rose only about 2 percent, she wrote in a note last week. Zhang said she expected nominal GDP growth of close to 6 percent this year, but interim reports and recent monthly data showed wage growth for both groups was only around 3 percent.
“Since consumption growth can hardly outpace income growth, if incomes rise at around 3 percent, essential consumption within retail sales is likely to fluctuate around that level and struggle to climb higher,” she said. “The bottlenecks holding back the release of consumption potential have yet to be fully cleared.”
A woman walks past a Valentino store at a shopping mall in Shanghai, China, Sept. 30. EPA-Yonhap
The Chinese government issued 20 measures last week to strengthen consumption-related infrastructure, aiming to stimulate and channel more spending through upgrades to commercial facilities, improved infrastructure at tourist attractions, facilities for childcare and elderly care, and more.
But many people are more focused on cutting debt loads to protect their wealth.
Last week, Shanghai resident Xu Xin, who owes China Construction Bank (CCB) roughly 800,000 yuan ($119,800) on his home loan, tried to make a mortgage prepayment, only to find the process far from straightforward.
Following a string of interest rate cuts, his mortgage rate still sits at 3.36 percent.
“I could tolerate that rate when capital markets were rallying in the latter half of last year and the first half of this year,” he said. “But the tech rally has faded and sentiment has turned far more bearish. What wealth management product can deliver an annual return of 4 percent to beat my mortgage cost? With home prices still falling, it makes sense to stop haemorrhaging money.”
He said CCB released prepayment slots at 2 p.m. every weekday, but they were snapped up quickly.
“All the nearest available dates were fully booked,” Xu said. “The earliest opening I could secure was early January. My bank manager told me demand for early repayment was overwhelming.”
Even with the long wait, Xu locked in an appointment two months out — saying he was set on “deleveraging.”
Sources in the mortgage divisions at the Shanghai branches of three state-owned banks said monthly mortgage prepayment volumes at each lender had surpassed 2 billion yuan — weighing on total new loan growth. The monthly figure stood at roughly 100 million yuan three years ago.
The deleveraging mindset appears pervasive across the housing market, among both existing homeowners and prospective buyers, with data from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) showing new household loans were nearly flat in September.
China International Capital Corporation said in a research note last month that the reading pointed to lingering weakness in household demand for housing and consumption.
“The PBOC data shows household deleveraging continued,” it said. “Meanwhile, deposit migration has slowed, a shift driven by swings in the capital market.”
Read the article at SCMP.