In essence, understanding the relationship between supply-side structural reform and demand-side management requires grasping the interplay between supply and demand. Supply and demand are interdependent and interactive, and their equilibrium determines the equilibrium values of micro and macroeconomic variables. Focusing solely on either supply or demand, regardless of the time length, is one-sided. To promote supply-side structural reform, China should depend on demand and take a measured approach to its expansion. In the absence of demand, the supply-side structural reform would lose its direction and purpose. Enhancing demand-side management involves delving deeper into supply-side structural reform because the scale and growth of demand, alongside changes in demand structure, are fundamentally influenced by institutional factors. Hence, further reforming the systems and mechanisms that hinder the optimization of demand structure and the growth of demand is precisely what supply-side structural reform should entail.

Beginning with increasing effective demand, the demand-side reform advocates for the strategy to expand domestic demand, rectifies distortions in the demand structure, and further aligns demand and supply by reforming the mechanisms for demand formation and regulation, matching supply and demand structures, and easing restrictions on demand. This will enhance economic growth potential and operational efficiency. The demand-side reform contributes to developing a super-large-scale market and optimize market functions to form a unified national market. It also helps address significant structural distortions within domestic circulation and move faster to form a new development pattern of dual circulation. As demand-side reform inevitably deals with the vested interests of stakeholders, it presents challenges on par with supply-side structural reform. Therefore, due attention must be given in terms of priority and weight by increasing operational and property household income, transforming government functions, rectifying any excessive market-oriented reforms in certain public service sectors, among others.

By constructing a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model that embeds structural fiscal policy and contains two types of households, labor intermediaries, manufacturers, the central bank, and fiscal departments, and based on China’s macroeconomic controls that combine proactive fiscal policy with prudent monetary policy in the context of supply-side structural reform, this paper compares and analyzes the macroeconomic effects of the various types of proactive fiscal policy instruments, and measures the impact of the choice of anchors for monetary policy on the long-term welfare loss caused by the various fiscal policy instruments. This study finds that the consumption-oriented fiscal expenditure increase and labor income tax reduction policies have the most significant macroeconomic stimulus effects in the short term, but attention should be paid to the disadvantage that they may lead to the rise of government debt risks; and in the long term, the role of production-oriented fiscal expenditure policies in guaranteeing the stable operations of China’s economy should be brought into play. In addition, once the implementation of proactive fiscal policy lasts for too long, their long-term effects may be weakened, with negative macroeconomic impacts. In order to mitigate the resulting long-term economic fluctuations and welfare loss, prudent monetary policy should be fine-tuned with price stability as the anchor.

In recent years, the changes in the external environment and domestic development conditions have promoted the transformation of China’s economy to one dominated by domestic circulation. In December 2020, the Communist Party of China Central Committee put forward the demand-side reform for the first time in order to prepare China for the new development stage of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) and to promote the new strategic deployment of China’s high-quality development. Based on the paths and direction of the current 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2015) to build a new development pattern, this paper elaborates on the theoretical connotations of the demand-side reform, points out the bottlenecks such as the unreasonable demand structure in China, the mismatch between the industrial system and the high-level demand, the resulting demand spillovers, the poor demand channels, and puts forward the current approaches to the demand-side reform in China.

Comprehensively implementing supply-side structural reform is a major adjustment of ideas and focus of China’s economic development, made by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the world’s long-term economic cycle and the new normal of China’s economic development. As a major innovation to adapt to and lead the new normal of economic development, it has become a strategic deployment that concerns the overall long-term development of China’s economy and society. Before the 19th CPC National Congress, the main tasks of supply-side structural reform were cutting overcapacity, destocking, deleveraging, reducing corporate costs and shoring up weak links. After the 19th CPC National Congress, while continuing to do the tasks, the CPC Central Committee stuck to the main direction of improving the quality of the supply system, enriching the connotation of deepening supply-side structural reform. Since 2016, China’s supply-side structural reform has achieved remarkable results, and has been widely recognized and positively evaluated both internationally and domestically. The reform provides not only a solid foundation and valuable experience for China’s subsequent reforms, but also a useful reference for developing countries.

Abstracts

Bibliography

Academic News

Book Excerpt

Book Discription