SHANGHAI -- American policy makers often complain that the Chinese save too much. They should meet the Su family.
Su Yang, the co-owner of a Shanghai airfreight company, and his wife, Ren Jie, a human-resources manager, earn nearly $50,000 a year. After paying the $375 monthly mortgage on their marble-floored townhouse and shelling out for two cars, food, school tuition and foreign travel, they save almost nothing.
"Life is short," says Mr. Su, sinking into one of the brown leather sofas arranged around his flat-screen Hitachi television. "We've got to live life for the moment."
The Sus are part of a growing consumer culture taking hold among China's burgeoning middle class. Enough young urban professionals are blowing their whole salary these days that the Chinese media have coined a nickname for them: yue guang zu, roughly translated as the "monthly tapped-out class," much to the astonishment of their parents. Savings rates, although still among the world's highest, are slipping.
Government officials in Beijing and Washington are encouraging the erosion of savings as a way of reducing China's massive trade surplus with the U.S. Both sides hope that China's citizens will dip into their savings to buy more -- including U.S. goods -- to counter the record trade deficit and an already-tense showdown over trade sanctions and currency adjustments. Many economists worry that the deficit is eroding America's job base as production shifts to China, and causing the U.S. to borrow too much from the rest of the world.
During his visit late last month to the U.S., Chinese President Hu Jintao told reporters that his country is banking on "domestic demand expansion" rather than a high trade surplus to promote growth. The White House lauded China's commitment to lower its savings rate as a "big step." Last week, in a major policy shift, China's central bank raised the rates banks charge for loans but left unchanged the maximum interest rate on deposits -- a further disincentive to savings.
But China's shift away from high savings isn't likely to relieve the imbalance of global trade anytime soon. Among the reasons: The Chinese are spending big portions of their savings domestically on basic necessities such as education, housing and health care. So many U.S. companies from General Motors Corp. to Procter & Gamble Co. are producing goods in China that increased sales often don't relieve the trade imbalance.
Average incomes in China are still so small that a shift from saving to spending will mean little in absolute dollar terms for most households. And there are also less household savings to tap into than many believe.
To be sure, China still saves a huge portion -- around 44% -- of its gross domestic product, compared to 14% for the U.S. Total national savings have continued to grow in recent years as China vaulted into position as the world's fourth-largest economy. China's bank accounts are bulging with deposits totaling $3.75 trillion, more than double the figure in 2000. But the average account is tiny. China Construction Bank Corp., one of the country's largest, says more than half of its 325 million personal accounts held less than $13 at the end of 2005, and the average balance was just $730.
China's household savings rate, about 16% of GDP, has slipped from its highs of over 20% in the mid-1990s, according to a World Bank estimate. Corporate savings in China account for over 22%, and are rising. The remainder is China's relatively consistent but unusually high level of government savings. (In addition to government savings, China's central bank sits on $875 billion in foreign exchange reserves.)
"Traditionally, there was a perception that households in China do all the savings," says World Bank senior economist Louis Kuijs. "Household saving is significant in China, but it is not driving the national savings."
Boosting Chinese consumer activity is a primary focus of policy makers. Retail sales jumped 13% last year, outpacing the 9.9% GDP expansion. But even as middle-class families like Mr. Su's are saving less and spending more, their purchases haven't made much of a dent in China's trade surplus. The reason: Chinese consumer demand isn't matching the output of the nation's cheap export engine.
Also, a look at Mr. Su's shopping list shows that his family doesn't buy many imports, although some of its spending does find its way into American pockets.
Sales of U.S. brands are strong in China, but most of the products are actually made here, too, from GM's Buicks to the Safeguard soap and Head & Shoulders shampoo from Procter & Gamble on Mr. Su's shelves. China is among P&G's top five global markets but "we're fairly self-contained. We do not export a lot and don't import a lot," says Irwin Lee, P&G's vice president for Greater China. So while the 49,000 American companies operating in China may see the benefit of the country's rising consumerism on their bottom line, there is often little ripple in trade flows.
Neither the IBM laptop Mr. Su bought for $2,000 last year, nor his $100 Tommy Hilfiger shirts, were made in the U.S.
In a China outlet of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., U.S.-made consumer products are no easier to find than they are in a Wal-Mart located in the U.S. President Hu said during his U.S. trip that at least 90% of the products exported from China to the U.S. are no longer made in the U.S. "Actually it's hard to find real U.S. imports," Mr. Su concludes.
Just a few products Mr. Su's family buys are of genuine American origin, including steak sauce from Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co. and Carlo Rossi wine from Modesto, Calif.-based E.&J. Gallo Winery. The family also buys oranges exported by Sunkist Growers Inc., based in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
Like many of the economic forces now reshaping China, savings are a relatively recent phenomenon. When economic reforms began in the late 1970s, households had virtually no money at all. The government issued coupons like food stamps to buy consumer products such as televisions and bicycles.
As China bumped its way toward a market economy without much of a social safety net from a planned system where the state took care of everything, the response of many citizens was defensive: grow savings. Chinese with money had only one choice: which bank to deposit it in.
For urban residents like the 33-year-old Mr. Su, economic progress moved at a breathless pace. His family's combined income of nearly $50,000, while not uncommon for the urban middle class, towers over the per capita GDP average of $1,700. A decade ago, the lanky Mr. Su was the freight manager at a local airline, lived with his parents and pulled in only $2,200 annually.
Saving was key. His parents urged him to put away $6,000 before marrying his high-school sweetheart, Ms. Ren, which he did in 1997 despite falling short of the savings goal.
The couple pinched pennies by living with his parents in a "very, very small" apartment, says Ms. Ren, also 33. A big night out was fried chicken at KFC. Within two years, their daughter was born. The couple bought a $48,000 apartment. Family members pitched in to cover the purchase price, even though banks in Shanghai had begun offering mortgages the previous year.
By 2003, Mr. Su's family bank balance had swelled to about $60,000. His two-year-old airfreight business was doing well and his wife had earned a promotion in her job. The future looked so bright, Mr. Su says, the couple decided to stop saving "at the expense of sacrificing our life quality."
That year, the couple agreed to pay about $180,000 for a townhouse, figuring the second-hand property far from the city center was a bargain. The purchase blew out their savings. They took out a 25-year, $60,000 bank mortgage.
These days, temptations to borrow arrive often -- in the mailbox. At least three times in recent months, Mr. Su says he has received a credit card with his name, including one from Citigroup Inc.'s affiliate.
New expenses also appear almost as fast as the couple's earnings rise. Just last year, Mr. Su's 61-year-old father retired from his engineering job at a state-owned company, and his parents now live with his family. Ms. Ren also lends financial support to her parents.
The older folks sometimes drop hints: "You are very young. But you should remember you should save some money," Mr. Su quotes his parents saying. In fact, his mother says she has softened her views. "In the past we were concerned about saving too much," she says.
Before 2001, the couple hadn't set foot outside China. Once or twice a year these days, Mr. Su drops $6,000 taking everyone on a trip. Family photographs from Sweden, Mexico and the U.S. adorn a tabletop near the front door -- another reminder of how Chinese are distributing wealth around the world. Donald Duck posed with Mr. Su's family last November at Hong Kong Disneyland.
Fixed expenses that his parents never faced eat up the final quarter of Mr. Su's family budget, from the home mortgage to his 7-year-old daughter's private-school tuition to car payments. Under communism, the state provided Chinese with places to live and study -- and anyone with "wheels" had a bicycle. "Ten years ago we couldn't imagine we could have a house, a car," he says between calls on his cellphone, as his daughter practices piano upstairs.
Personal savings in China don't substantially exceed those in countries like France as a percentage of GDP and may be less than in some other nations, like India, according to World Bank figures. In India, by comparison, household savings are about 22% of GDP.
Savings are already secondary to 31-year-old Jessica Xu, a university recruiter in Shanghai with a $25,000 annual income, four credit cards and a desire to "buy something just because it's beautiful." Her goal is to save, and she does. But memories are far more important, like treating her mother last year to a $6,250 trip to Southeast Asia.
When she feels family pressure to save money by buying cheaper clothes, Ms. Xu says she reminds herself "there are a lot of things I haven't done" and that dressing trendy is helpful in her job. "I waste a lot of money," Ms. Xu says
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