School of Economics and Management, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, Anhui, P. R. China.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 11;18(8):e0290079. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290079. eCollection 2023.
The Chinese economy has undergone a long-term transition reform, but there is still a planned economy characteristic in the financial sector, which is financial repression. Due to the existence of financial repression, China's actual interest rate level should be lower than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). However, based on official China's interest rates and CPI, over half of the years China's actual interest rate remained higher than CPI by our calculation from 1999 to 2022. This is inconsistent with the financial repression that exists in China, and the main reason is the calculation methods of China's CPI. China's CPI measurement system originated from the planned economy era, which did not fully consider the rise in housing purchase prices, so the current CPI measurement system can be more realistically presented by taking the rise in housing prices into consider. The core idea of this study is to mining relevant official statistical data and calculate the proportion of Chinese residents' expenditure on purchasing houses to their total expenditure. By taking the proportion of house purchases as the weight of house price factor, and taking the proportion of other consumption as the weight of official CPI, the Generalized CPI (GCPI) is formulated. The GCPI is then compared with market interest rates to determine the actual interest rate situation in China over the past 20 years. This study has found that if GCPI is used as a measure, China's real interest rates have been negative for most years since 1999. Chinese residents have suffered the negative effects of financial repression over the past 20 years, and their property income cannot keep up with the actual losses caused by inflation. Therefore, it is believed that China's CPI calculation method should be adjusted to take into account the rise in housing prices, so China's actual inflation level could be more accurately reflected. In view of the above, deepening interest rate marketization reform and expand channels for financial investment are the future development goals of China's financial system.
中国经济经历了长期的转型改革，但金融领域仍存在计划经济特征，即金融压抑。由于金融压抑的存在，中国的实际利率水平应该低于消费者价格指数（CPI）。然而，根据中国官方利率和 CPI，我们从 1999 年到 2022 年的计算结果显示，超过一半的年份中国的实际利率高于 CPI。这与中国存在的金融压抑不一致，主要原因是中国 CPI 的计算方法。中国的 CPI 测量体系起源于计划经济时代，没有充分考虑房价上涨，因此，当前的 CPI 测量体系可以通过考虑房价上涨来更真实地呈现。本研究的核心思想是挖掘相关官方统计数据，并计算中国居民购房支出占总支出的比例。通过将购房比例作为房价因素的权重，并将其他消费比例作为官方 CPI 的权重，制定广义消费者价格指数（GCPI）。然后将 GCPI 与市场利率进行比较，以确定过去 20 年来中国的实际利率情况。本研究发现，如果使用 GCPI 作为衡量标准，自 1999 年以来，中国的实际利率在大多数年份都是负的。在过去的 20 年里，中国居民一直受到金融压抑的负面影响，他们的财产收入跟不上通货膨胀造成的实际损失。因此，人们认为中国的 CPI 计算方法应该进行调整，以考虑房价上涨，从而更准确地反映中国的实际通胀水平。鉴于上述情况，深化利率市场化改革和扩大金融投资渠道是中国金融体系未来的发展目标。
