China's leaders plan to prioritize industrial policies in 2024 aimed at spurring domestic consumer demand. According to China Beige Book Co-Founder and CEO Leland Miller, the last few years show that "China's economic growth model has evolved." Although President Xi Jinping is unlikely to push massive stimulus policies simply to boost markets and returns for investors, Miller believes Beijing will still "do enough" to keep financial markets afloat.
When asked whether China is decoupling from the global economy, Miller tells Yahoo Finance this is not occurring, as evidenced by China's ongoing trade surpluses with many nations. However, he states that President Xi continues backing domestic regulations that "make foreign investors squeamish" about putting money into China.
Finally, on the chip rivalry between China and the United States, Miller argues it seems more "like a pillow fight, not a chip war."
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Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: How do you see this initiative here shaping or lack thereof China's recovery as we look ahead to the new year?
LELAND MILLER: Well, my big question is, where these investors are getting their expectations from? Because it's been very clear in 2021, then 2022, then 2023, and now going into 2024 that China's economic growth model has evolved, that there's a completely different stimulus playbook and right now, and that Xi Jinping has no interest in using big bang stimulus in order to juice investor returns, in order to surge the stock market, in order to bring back artificially high levels of growth.
And so the idea that every three months, investors are disappointed by this sort of begs the question, why are they not smarter at this point? So I think the expectations right now should be very close to what they've been in the past, which is Beijing will do enough to make sure that the growth doesn't fall off too much. There will be a fiscal push in 2024, just like there was a monetary push in 2023. But the expectations should be tamed in terms of what they are going for. They want to make sure they stabilize the economy, not juice it.
BRAD SMITH: Earlier in the show, our own Jared Blikre had mentioned that China has decoupled from the rest of the world as he was taking a look at some of the movers earlier this morning here. Does this seem like a China that wants to re couple, that wants to re initiate conversations and deal-making with the rest of the world from your perspective?