Has the Chinese growth model changed? A view from the credit market

A cornerstone of the Chinese growth model has been the opening up of its economy to private competition. Some observers claim that China has changed course since joining the WTO by increasingly promoting ‘state capitalism’, the large State Owned Enterprises, thereby compromising a growth model that has served it well. Due to the opaqueness of the Chinese system, even such a major shift in policy has been difficult to verify. We are able to look inside the covert policy process by studying the credit supply to Chinese listed companies, the drivers of the growth miracle, of the past decade. The econometric analysis corroborates the policy shift: we find a significant improvement in credit supply conditions of government firms relative to other firms during the latter part of the decade. The estimations also provide evidence of other major trends in credit supply that reflect the Chinese government’s policy objectives.