China government’s 家电下乡 "subsidised purchase of electronic goods for rural areas" is one of China’s policies to boost internal consumptions.
家电下乡信息管理系统(Information Management System)
The website has information on announcements, laws & regulation, provincial activities, industrial activities etc regarding 家电下乡.
Q&A on the policy:
Questions & answers by China’s Ministry of Finance
Q&A on other website
Some compilations on 家电下乡on websites:
website 1
website 2
The policy is of good intention, subsidising rural folks on purchase of modern electronic goods for improvement of living standard, while providing much needed orders for electronic goods manufacturers to prevent further spread of bankruptcies and unemployment in the industry.
Its effectiveness depends on real needs of rural folks and actual executions of the program.
The devils are in the details.
Examples of concerns voiced (some are already happening), seen from various websites:
1. Unfair competitive pressure and crowding out effect on small and medium companies that models are not selected for the program.
2. Poor rural folks cannot afford to buy even with subsidy.
3. Even if it is affordable, it may not be usable, for example TV in areas with poor reception of TV programs.
4. Even if it is affordable and usable, cost of ownership may be too high, for example electricity bills, maintenance/repair/parts costs, subscription cost (for example TVs) etc..
5. Perception of the models being selected : lower quality goods, obsolete models ?
6. Ease and hidden costs of getting subsidies
7. Fraudulent goods that made to imitate selected models
8. Incentives for rural distributors to promote selected models will not be there if profits are squeezed too thin compared to other not-selected models
You may see that even if a policy is of good intention, its financial outcome depend greatly on the interaction of its different participants and transaction cost/information cost of participants.
Found this Harvard Business Review (HBR) – 2009 the list in brief (2009: 哈佛20大创见), in chinese.
It has a list of 20 insights, on 5 areas:
consumer trends, economy, interpersonal, cross-discipline and alternative new ideas.
Articles titles, authors and summaries are included.
Worth further explore..
On previous post, we see that to boost internal needs, China has a 10-point plan to boost internal needs, mostly through different types of infrastructure building and policy on agriculture, taxation, credits.
Came across this complementary 10-point plan by "Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China" (MIIT) (工业和信息化部) to boost China’s internal needs.
Link on MIIT
A good read. We can see which are the industries or industries’ aspects that the China government is going to promote/encourage. This one will be more on the industries.
Related aspects/industries (refer to website for details) in summary:
1. On factor of productions like energy, transport, commodity; also on import-export, pricing, taxation, credits
2. Some projects are mentioned: 钢铁基地、百万吨乙烯、百万吨钾肥、磷复肥基地
Wow.. million tonne !
3. Equipment industry
4. Communication, Integrated System industry
5. on SME funding, credit, risk
6. IT + Industrial integration; emphasis on 汽车电子、机床电子、医疗电子
7. TD-SCDMA, IMT-Advanced
8. Agriculture
9. Fashion/apparel industry
10. Quality of corporate internal management
How will it be implemented ? Will it be effective in boosting internal needs ?
National Bureau of Statistics of China
website
Statistical data is available monthly.
data
The Chinese version website has more information compared to English version.
Found this 改革开放30年经济社会发展成就系列报告 in Chinese version only.
report
A great read.
Quite a lot of information on 统 计 分 析:
For examples:
企业景气报告
link
农 产 品 价 格
link
工 业 品 价 格
link
Though the information may still lag the real situation, there are still good reads.
