The headwind blows frequently, and the world economy ends in a broad but unbalanced rebound in 2021. With the increase of variables, what kind of recovery track the world economy will go out in 2022 has attracted much attention. Observers believe that after a short-term strong rebound, the world economy begins to enter a new stage of medium-term weak recovery, and the road to recovery will be long, unbalanced and full of uncertainty. In the new year, in addition to COVID-19's ups and downs, this new constant will pose a threat to the global economic recovery. At least four key variables will intertwined, which will have a significant impact on the shape and momentum of the world economy. How does the policy shift affect In December 2021, the Federal Reserve decided to accelerate the reduction of the scale of asset purchase, which is expected to end in March 2022. Most members of the Fed's decision-making level expect that the Fed will raise interest rates three times in 2022. The Bank of England, the Bank of England, announced last month that it would raise its benchmark interest rate, becoming the first central bank of a major developed economy to raise interest rates since the outbreak of the epidemic. The shift of the Fed's monetary policy is becoming more and more obvious. Some major developed economies begin to adjust monetary policy. How its spillover effect will affect the world economy deserves close attention. Will the global market shock caused by the tightening of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve in 2013 repeat? How serious are the impacts of hyperinflation and capital outflows faced by emerging market economies? This has become a major cloud over the world economy. Analysts pointed out that for developed economies, tightening monetary policy will lead to rising financing costs and tightening the financial environment, which is not conducive to enterprises to expand investment and production scale, and will also restrict consumption to a certain extent. However, according to current judgment, the speed and range of policy tightening may be limited. For emerging market economies, the negative spillover effect of monetary policy adjustment in developed countries may bring more serious impact. Liang Guoyong, a senior economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and development, believes that emerging market economies may face huge pressure from international capital outflow, rising financing costs and devaluation of local currencies. Some economies with weak economic resilience and weak anti risk ability of the financial system may have a serious financial crisis. Experts believe that affected by factors such as weak economic foundation, unreasonable industrial structure and lagging vaccination of Xinguan vaccine, the economic recovery of some emerging market economies and low-income countries is not as strong as that of developed economies. The impact of tightening monetary policy in developed countries may lead to the continued deterioration of the differentiation of global recovery. When will the "broken chain" crisis be resolved Supply chain bottlenecks have led to soaring freight costs, serious supplier delays, container ships blocked outside the port... The global supply chain crisis continues to ferment. On the surface, the epidemic broke the rhythm of global industrial operation, resulting in limited production, blocked logistics, trapped market, mismatch between supply and demand, resulting in supply shortage. In fact, due to the rise of protectionism in the United States and other countries, international economic and trade cooperation has been blocked, the industrial chain has been disturbed, resulting in serious fluctuations in supply and demand, superimposed with epidemic influencing factors, breaking the "tight balance" of the cost-effective supply chain and "breaking the chain" in some links. After decades of evolution, the global industrial chain has formed a pattern of large-scale migration of basic manufacturing industries to developing regions and concentration of high-end manufacturing industries to developed countries on the basis of specialization and refinement of division of labor, combined with factors such as resources, labor costs and business environment. However, under the impact of the epidemic, the existing pattern of international division of labor has been tested. Deng Ziliang, a researcher at the National Institute of development and strategy of Renmin University of China and a professor at the school of business, said that the epidemic situation magnifies the supply chain crisis, or will further strengthen the idea of promoting the return of manufacturing industry in the United States and other countries, and urge developed countries led by the United States to accelerate the reconstruction of industrial system. Analysts pointed out that even if the pace of international supply chain reconstruction is accelerated, the recovery of supply capacity will take longer than demand, and the local and phased "shortage economy" problems in many countries due to the supply chain crisis may continue until 2023. How do inflationary pressures evolve According to the data of the U.S. Department of labor, the U.S. consumer price index rose 6.8% year-on-year in November 2021, reaching a new high in recent 40 years. Inflation in the euro zone, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Russia and other major economies also hit multi-year highs recently. At present, the price rise has evolved from a short rise in a few commodities to a sustained rise in most commodities. In 2022, will the global inflationary pressure gradually subside for a longer time or will it further intensify? Different situations will undoubtedly have different effects on economic recovery. The rise of inflation is affected by multiple factors, such as unconventional fiscal and monetary measures in developed economies to stimulate demand rebound, supply can not keep pace, the epidemic has changed the demand structure, supply chain bottlenecks lead to insufficient supply, etc. In addition, the decline of labor participation rate in the United States and other countries has boosted the rise of labor costs and exacerbated inflationary pressure. As there is uncertainty about when the impact of these factors will subside, analysts have different views on how long high inflation will last. A survey of economists recently released by the National Business Economics Association shows that high inflation in the United States will continue until at least 2023 due to strong demand, rising wages, supply chain bottlenecks and many other factors. Morgan Stanley predicts that the inflationary pressure in the United States will peak in early 2022 and ease with the decline of energy prices and the improvement of poor supply chain. Goldman Sachs believes that the U.S. consumer price index will remain at a high level of more than 4% for most of 2022. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) pointed out that although the inflationary pressure faced by most countries is expected to ease in 2022, the inflationary situation in some emerging market economies will be more severe due to the more lasting impact of the epidemic. Can the energy dilemma be solved At the beginning of the new year, Indonesia, the world's largest exporter of thermal coal, announced that it would ban its coal export during January 2022 to alleviate the power crisis caused by the shortage of domestic coal supply. Since the second half of 2021, the prices of natural gas, crude oil, coal and other energy in the international market have soared, and energy shortage has occurred in many countries. The International Energy Agency pointed out that the shortage of natural gas and coal has led to a surge in energy market prices, which may lead to a faster than expected rebound in the oil market, which will greatly increase the costs of high energy consuming industries, reduce industrial activity and slow the world economic recovery. Analysts believe that the imbalance between energy supply and demand may continue under the joint action of carbon emission reduction policies to change the existing energy structure, the rebound of the epidemic, the obstruction of the supply chain, geopolitics and other factors. The energy dilemma also highlights the severe challenges facing the practice of coping with climate change through energy transformation. Policy makers should not only deal with the challenges of the epidemic in the short term and ensure a stable economic recovery, but also achieve the goal of green transformation in the medium and long term. How to balance short-term and medium-term goals, resolve the risks that may be brought by energy transformation, and reasonably grasp the pace of transformation is a great test for all parties. All kinds of uncertainties have made the expectation of global economic recovery uncertain. The IMF predicted last October that the world economy is expected to grow by 4.9% in 2022. But Georgi Ieva, President of IMF, recently said that because of the global spread of the variant COVID-19, the organization is considering reducing global growth expectations. (Xinhua News Agency)