本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2011-10-12 09:09 编辑
【原文标题】As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s People Are Left Behind
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【来源地址】http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/business/global/households-pay-a-price-for-chinas-growth.html
【译 者】某程
【翻译方式】人工
【声 明】欢迎转载，请注明出处 bbs.m4.cn
JILIN CITY, China — Wang Jianping and his wife, Shue, are a relatively affluent Chinese couple, with an annual household income of $16,000 — more than double the national average for urban families.
They own a modest, three-bedroom apartment here in this northeastern industrial city. They paid for their son to study electrical engineering at prestigious Tsinghua University, in Beijing. And even by frugal Asian standards, they are prodigious savers, with $50,000 in a state-run bank.
But like many other Chinese families, the Wangs feel pressed. They do not own a car, and they rarely go shopping or out to eat. That is because the value of their nest egg is shrinking, through no fault of their own.
Under an economic system that favors state-run banks and companies over wage earners, the government keeps the interest rate on savings accounts so artificially low that it cannot keep pace with China’s rising inflation. At the same time, other factors in which the government plays a role — a weak social safety net, depressed wages and soaring home prices — create a hoarding impulse that compels many people to keep saving anyway, against an uncertain future.
Indeed, economists say this nation’s decade of remarkable economic growth, led by exports and government investment in big projects like China’s high-speed rail network, has to a great extent been underwritten by the household savings — not the spending — of the country’s 1.3 billion people.
This system, which some experts refer to as state capitalism, depends on the transfer of wealth from Chinese households to state-run banks, government-backed corporations and the affluent few who are well enough connected to benefit from the arrangement.
Meanwhile, striving middle-class families like the Wangs are unable to enjoy the full fruits of China’s economic miracle.
“This is the foundation of the whole system,” said Carl E. Walter, a former J. P. Morgan executive who is co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.”
“The banks make loans to who the Communist Party tells them to,” Mr. Walter said. “So they punish the household savers in favor of the state-owned companies.”
It is not just China’s problem. Economists say that for China to continue serving as one of the world’s few engines of economic growth, it will need to cultivate a consumer class that buys more of the world’s products and services, and shares more fully in the nation’s wealth.
But rather than rising, China’s consumer spending has actually plummeted in the last decade as a portion of the overall economy, to about 35 percent of gross domestic product, from about 45 percent. That figure is by far the lowest percentage for any big economy anywhere in the world. (Even in the sleepwalking American economy, the level is about 70 percent of G.D.P.)
Unless China starts giving its own people more spending power, some experts warn, the nation could gradually slip into the slow-growth malaise that now afflicts the United States, Europe and Japan. Already this year, China’s economic growth rate has begun to cool off.
“This growth model is past its sell-by date,” says Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If China is going to continue to grow, this system will have to change. They’re going to have to stop penalizing households.”
The Communist Party, in its latest five-year plan, has promised to bolster personal consumption. But doing so would risk undermining a pillar of the country’s current financial system: the household savings that support the government-run banks.
Here in Jilin City, where chemical manufacturing is the dominant industry, the state banks are flush with money from savings accounts. The banks use that money to make low-interest loans to corporate beneficiaries — including real estate developers, helping fuel a speculative property bubble that has raised housing prices beyond the reach of many consumers. It is a dynamic that has played out in dozens of cities throughout China.
图为吉林商业街正在小盹的守店人。当西方公司正把中国看成潜在的巨大市场的同时，吉林和其他中心城市的大多数消费者的消费都满足于国有企业商店和家族商店。
中国吉林--王建平和他的妻子，淑儿，是中国一对相对富裕的夫妻。每年收入16000美圆--比中国都市平均工资的两倍还多。
他们在这个东北部的工业城市拥有一套三居室的公寓。他们的儿子在有名的清华大学学电子工程。甚至是用简朴的亚洲人财富观念，他们都是惊人的节省者，在国有银行有5万美圆的存款。
但是就像很多其他中国家庭一样，王一家觉得生活压抑。他们没有汽车，也很少出去购物和吃饭。这是因为他们的积蓄正在减少，尽管他们本身并没有过错。
在这样一个经济体系下，有利于省立银行和公司，而不利于工薪阶层，政府控制住储蓄帐户的利息非常的低远远低于通货膨胀率。同时，政府在别的地方也起着作用--脆弱的社会保障体制，低工资和飞涨的房价--使得许多人都被迫储蓄，以用来确保不确定的未来。
确实，经济学家说这十年中国的经济有着显著提升，是建立在出口和政府在向高铁这样的大工程投资上，这些经济增长很大程度上是建立在13亿居民储蓄上而不是消费上。
这个体系依赖于把居民储蓄的财富转移到国有银行，国有企业和那些少数富裕的供货商。有些专家形容为国家资本主义。
同时，像王这样努力奋斗的中产阶级却不能享受中国经济奇迹的果实。
“红色资本：中国经济奇迹的脆弱财政基础---这就是整个体系的基础”前JP摩根总裁Carl Walter在这本书中写道。
“银行借钱给共产党指定的对象，这样他们就支撑了国有企业等于变相惩罚居民储蓄。”
这不仅仅是中国的问题。经济学家们说因为中国继续扮演世界少数的经济引擎，会导致培养一批充分分享国家财富的消费阶层。他们购买世界上大多数的产品和服务。
在过去十年里，跟经济增长比起来，中国的消费支出在整个经济分额中实际上陡然下降，从国内生产总值的大约45%下降到35%。这个数额是目前世界上任何经济体中最低的比例。（甚至是在现在低迷的美国经济中，消费数额也占了国内生产总值的70%）
一些专家警告，除非中国政府开始赋予他们的人民更多的消费能力，否则整个国家可能会渐渐地跌入低增长的疲惫经济中，这将给美国，欧洲，和日本带来影响。今年中国的经济增长已经开始冷却。
“这种经济模式是已经过时了的，”北京大学的财经教授和兼任国际卡内基和平基金会的高级顾问Micheal Pettis说道，“如果中国仍想要经济增长的话，这种模式就应该改变。他们应该要停止这种不利于中国居民的局面。”
在最新的五年计划里，共产党承诺要提升居民消费。但是这样做有削弱目前整个国家财政体系的风险。因为是整个居民储蓄在支撑着国有银行。
在化学制造占工业主题的吉林，国有银行的钱都从储蓄帐户里来。银行用这些前去给企业低息贷款--包括真正的房地产开发商，制造了远高于居民能消费的房地产泡沫。这个场景已经在中国上演多次。
Meanwhile, China’s central bank in Beijing also depends on the nation’s vast pool of consumer savings to help finance its big investments in the foreign exchange markets, as a way to keep the currency artificially weak. The weak currency helps sustain China’s mighty export economy by lowering the global price of Chinese goods. But it also makes imports unaffordable for many Chinese people.
News reports of the nouveaux riches in Beijing and Shanghai snapping up Apple iPhones, Gucci bags and Rolex watches may conjure Western business dreams of China’s becoming the world’s biggest consumer market. But consumer choice here in Jilin and many other heartland cities is confined largely to the limited offerings of dingy state-run department stores and mom-and-pop shops. Any sales of global “brands” come mainly in the form of the counterfeits and knockoffs often sold at outdoor markets.
On a recent weekday at the Henan Street flea market, crowds sifted through stacks of clothes that included $3 T-shirts with images of Minnie Mouse and $5 imitation Nike sports jerseys. Just a few yards away, an authentic Nike store selling the real thing for $35 had nary a shopper. Because consumers have so little spending power, many global-brand companies do not even bother to open stores in cities like Jilin.
With the faltering economies of the United States, Europe and Japan limiting China’s ability to continue relying on growth through exports, the Chinese government knows the importance of giving its own consumers more buying power. Already, the central government has pushed to raise rural incomes and has even offered subsidies to buy cars and household appliances.
The question is whether the government can change its entrenched economic system enough to truly make a difference. “The central government is committed to increasing the share of consumption in G.D.P.,” says Li Daokui, a professor of economics at Tsinghua University and a longtime government adviser. “The issue is what is going to be the means.”
THE SAVERS
Frugality Born
Of Necessity
If China is to make consumer spending a much larger share of the economy, it will need to encourage big changes in the habits of people like Mr. Wang, 52, a highway design specialist, and Ms. Wang, also 52, who retired as an accountant seven years ago because of health problems.
“We’re quite traditional,” says Ms. Wang, who draws a pension. “We don’t like to spend tomorrow’s money today.”
But tomorrow’s money may not be worth as much as today’s — not as long as their savings account earns only a 3 percent interest rate while inflation lopes along at 6 percent or more.
Yet the Wangs see no good alternatives to stashing nearly two-thirds of their monthly income in the bank. They are afraid to invest in China’s notoriously volatile stock market. And Chinese law sharply limits their ability to invest overseas or otherwise send money outside the country.
Nor do the Wangs feel flush or daring enough to join the real estate speculation that some Chinese now see as one of the few ways to get a return on their money — risky as that might prove if the bubble bursts.
Mainly, like many in China, the Wangs save because they worry about soaring food prices and the high cost of health care, which the People’s Republic no longer fully provides. They also worry about whether they can afford to buy a home for their son, a cost that Chinese parents are expected to bear when their male children marry.
“If you have a daughter, it’s not so expensive,” Wang Shue said. “But with a son you have to save money.”
Housing prices have become crucial in pushing up savings rates. Here, too, analysts say government policies are shifting wealth away from households.
In the case of the Wangs, they are being forced to move to make way for a new real estate development authorized by municipal authorities — the sort of project that local governments throughout China have come to regard as an easy source of riches.
Although the Wangs and other current residents have received some cash compensation for the apartments they are leaving, the Jilin City government has sold the land to a developer that plans to demolish the current dwellings and erect a new complex with more, and more expensive, apartments.
同时，中国在北京的中心银行也依赖于国家巨大的居民储蓄去投资国外的外汇市场，用这种方式去保持人民币的人为贬值。贬值的人民币帮助降低中国产品的价格使得中国拥有强有力的出口经济。但是这样也使得许多中国人无力消费进口产品。
据新闻报道，北京和上海的新贵阶层大力购买苹果手机，古奇包和劳力士手表。这一消息，让西方商业憧憬着中国成为世界上最大的消费市场。但是在吉林和其他中心城市的消费者选择却大部分限制在贫乏的国有部门商店和家族商店中。大部分国际名牌的销售都以各种形式的假冒和粗枝滥造的形式在商店中被销售出去。
在最近河南跳蚤市场街的一个周日，人群正在筛选一堆一堆的衣服，其中有3美圆的米老鼠图案的短袖衫，也有5美圆的假冒耐克球衣。就在几英尺之外，真正的耐克专卖店正在销售35美圆一件的正品，却鲜有人问津。因为消费者的购买力如此之低，许多世界名牌公司甚至都不想在吉林这样的城市开店。
随着美国经济的衰落，欧洲和日本正在限制中国继续通过出口保持经济增长的能力。中国政府也知道提高居民消费能力的重要性。如今中国中央政府已经提高了农村的收入水平，甚至买车和家庭器具有额外的补贴。
问题在于中国政府是否有足够能力改变它扩张的经济体制而做出真正的改变。清华大学的经济教授和兼任政府长期顾问的李稻葵教授说，“中央政府正致力于提高国内生产总值中消费的份额。事情会得到解决的。”
储户们
认为节俭是必须的
如果中国将要使居民消费占经济很大份额的话，就需要尽力改变中国人民的消费习惯。像52岁的王先生，高速公路设计专家，和同样52岁的王太太，7年前由于健康问题会计师退休。
有退休金收入的王先生说，“我们很传统，我们不喜欢今天花明天的钱。”
但是明天的钱未必有今天的钱值钱。--特别是在他们的储蓄利息只有3%而通货膨胀率是6%或者更高。
然而王一家却没有比把他们收入将近三分之二的钱放在银行更好的选择。他们害怕把钱投入中国臭名昭著的操控股市。另外中国的法律严厉限制他们把钱投资海外或者把钱寄出海外。
王一家也更不敢和头脑发热的让钱流入房地产，这是被现在一些中国人看作是少数几条致富之道。风险是万一房地产的泡沫爆了呢。
基本上，像许多大多数中国人一样，王一家储蓄是由于他们担心食物价格上涨和医疗费用的高支出。目前中国尚未完全普及医保。他们还担心他们是否能为孩子买上一套房，这一般是儿子要结婚的时候中国父母要干的事。
“如果你生的是女儿，就不会这么昂贵了。但是生的是儿子的话，就必须要存钱。“王淑儿说道。
房价在提高储蓄利息上起着重要作用。中国也是如此，分析师认为政府政策正在使居民财富减少。
在王这一家人的例子中，他们被迫为地方性的政府发展的房地产所绑架---这一类的工程，常常在中国作为一项地方政府能够唾手可得的财富。
尽管王一家和其他居民现在能够得到一些拆迁的现金补偿，吉林政府已将土地卖给了开发商，他们计划将现有的建筑拆除兴建新的贵得多的公寓。
The Wangs are not sure they will be able to find a home comparable to their current apartment from the money they are being paid. But the developer and the local government are expected jointly to earn a profit of more than $50 million.
A POLICY’S HISTORY
Averting a Crisis,
But Forming a Habit
Why would China, which hopes eventually to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest economy, deliberately suppress the consumer market that might help it reach that goal?
Some analysts trace the current policies to habits formed in the late 1990s. That’s when the bloat of China’s giant, uncompetitive state-run corporations nearly brought China’s economic expansion to a standstill. Suddenly, with state-owned companies facing bankruptcy, the state banks were saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars in nonperforming loans; many banks faced insolvency.
To avert a crisis, Beijing allowed state-owned companies to lay off tens of millions of workers. In 1999 just one of those companies, the parent of PetroChina, a big oil conglomerate, announced the layoff of a million employees. And to shore up the banks, Beijing assumed tighter control over interest rates, which included sharply lowering the effective rates paid to depositors. A passbook account that might have earned 3 percent in 2002, after inflation, would today be effectively losing 3 to 5 percent, once inflation is factored in.
That is how Chinese banks can provide extremely cheap financing to state-owned companies while still recording huge profits. It has also helped the banks provide easy financing for big public works projects, which besides the high-speed train system have included the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the monumental Three Gorges Dam.
It was during this same period that the Communist government discarded the longstanding “iron rice bowl” promise of lifelong employment and state care. Beijing shifted more of the high costs of social services — including housing, education and medical care — onto households and the private sector.
Together, these measures added up to the managed-market system now known as state capitalism. They worked so well that they not only helped resuscitate China’s failing banks and state companies, but also fueled the nation’s economic boom for more than a decade. But the system also took an enormous economic toll on personal pocketbooks.
“We’d like to spend, but we really have nothing left over after paying the bills,” said Yang Yang, 34, a school administrator who lives in Jilin City with her husband, a police officer, and their son, 10. “Even though our son goes to a public school, we need to pay fees for after-school courses, which everyone is expected to take. Almost every family will do this. So there’s a lot of pressure on us to do it, too.” To save money, Ms. Yang, her husband and son recently moved in with her parents.
Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, calculates that the government policies exacted a hidden tax on Chinese households that amounted to about $36 billion in 2008 alone — or about 4 percent of China’s gross domestic product. Over the last decade, Mr. Lardy says, that figure probably amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars — money that banks essentially took from consumers’ hands.
The distortions may have actually cost households far more, because his figures do not include hidden costs like artificially high prices for imports.
For many Chinese economists, the state capitalism that helped jump-start growth has become counterproductive.
“China is already beyond the point where the law of diminishing returns starts biting,” said Xu Xiaonian, an economist who teaches at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
Mr. Xu argues that China risks repeating the mistakes Japan made in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it relied too long on a predominantly export economy, neglected domestic markets and allowed real estate prices to soar. Since Japan’s bubble burst in the mid-1990s, its economy has never really recovered.
“If we don’t change, we will follow those same footsteps,” Mr. Xu said. “We have already seen the early signs of what we might call the Japanese disease. China invests more and more, but those investments generate less and less growth.”
PREDICTIONS FOR CHANGE
A Radical Overhaul,
But Within Reach
Some economists predict major changes, noting that the Chinese government has the cash and the power to alter course as drastically as it did in the late ’90s, this time in the people’s favor.
“China has faced more daunting challenges in the past,” said Wei Shangjin, a professor at the Columbia Business School. “I don’t doubt that they want to do it. The question is, Can they successfully engineer such a major restructuring of the economy?”
Certainly, multinationals like McDonald’s, Nike and Procter & Gamble are still betting billions of dollars that China will grow into the world’s biggest consumer market within a few decades.
But raising consumption will require a radical overhaul of the Chinese economy — not just weaning state banks off household subsidies but forcing state-run firms to pay much higher borrowing rates. It would also mean letting the currency rise closer to whatever value it might naturally reach. It would mean, in other words, a significant dismantling of the state capitalism that has enabled China to come so far so fast. “To get consumption to surge,” said Mr. Pettis, the Peking University lecturer, “you need to stop taking money from the household sector.”
王一家并不确定他们能不能够找到与他们曾付过款的现在这套公寓差不多的公寓。但是开发商和当地政府都希望联合起能够赚取5000万美圆甚至更多。
政策的由来
避免危机，但是形成了恶习
为什么像中国这样一个期待最终超越美国成为第一经济体的国家会刻意压制能够帮他达到目的的消费者市场呢？
一些分析师追溯现有的政策到形成习惯是自20世纪90年代开始的。那时正是中国经济膨胀的年代，垄断的国有企业几乎把中国的经济膨胀到停止的阶段。忽然，由于国有企业面临倒闭，大量国有银行也由于贷款追不回来而资不抵债。
中央政府为了转变困境，出台让国有企业千万工人下岗。到1999年只有一家国有企业，即现在石油天然气公司的前身，宣布了几百万工人下岗。为了支撑银行，中央政府制定了针对银行利息更紧的政策，这包括大规模降低给储户的利息。在2002年通货膨胀后，存折帐户可能有3%的利息，现在把通货膨胀因素考虑进去可能宽松到3%到5%。
这就是中国银行为何能够像国有企业提供极度便宜的财政支持，这带来了巨大利润。这也助长了银行给大的公共工程项目带来容易的贷款，例如除了高铁以外还有2008年奥运会和历史性的三峡工程。
也是在同一时期，共产党政府废除了长期的“铁饭碗”终身雇佣制和国家保险制。中央政府把高消费的社会服务转接到个人和私营企业主身上。这包括房产，教育，和医疗。
同时，这些措施也给现在所谓的国有资本主义控制市场体制打了一针增强剂。这些措施运转的如此顺利以至于它们不仅让中国面临倒闭的银行和国有企业恢复生机而且让整个国家的经济繁荣了十多年。但是这个体制却让个人的经济赋上了沉重的负担。
图为杨女士和她的儿子。为了节约钱，他们一家最近搬去和父母住。
吉林市的某校校长34岁的杨洋说，“我们很愿意消费，但是我们真的在支付了基本开销外没有什么剩余的钱。甚至是我小孩要去公立学校，我们需要支付课外补课费用，每个人都不能免去。几乎所有的家庭都会这样做。所以我们压力也很大。”她丈夫是警察，有一个10岁的儿子。
华盛顿国际经济Peterson机构的经济学家Nicholas Lardy，预计仅在2008年一年，中国政府政策对每个中国家庭的隐藏税务是360亿美圆--大概占中国国内生产总值的4%。在过去的几十年里，Lardy先生说，银行从消费者口袋里得到的钱有千亿美圆。
这个数字实际上可能远远不止，因为他的数据并没有把人为进口的高税额给算进去。
对于中国的许多经济学家来说，国家资本主义促进经济现在已经带来不良后果。
任上海中欧国际工商学院经济学和金融学教授的许小年说道，“中国经济现在已经违背了报偿递减规律的限度，经济开始回落。”
许先生谈到中国现在正在重复日本在20世纪80年代和20世纪90年代犯的错误，那时日本太长依赖占主要地位的出口经济，而忽视了本地市场，以及让房地产价格飙生。由于日本的经济泡沫在20世纪90年代破灭，它的经济到现在都没恢复。
许说道，“如果我们不改变，我们就会走那条老路，我们已经看到了一些早期的迹象，这可以称为日本病。中国投资的越来越多，但是 这些投资产生的收益对于经济增长来说越来越小。”
改变的预言
能够实现的重大改变
一些经济学家预言大幅度改变会发生，为了帮助人民，中国政府运用现有大量的资金和力量能够像90年代一样改变现在严峻的情况。
哥伦比亚商学院的教授魏尚进说，“中国在过去面临着更危险的情况，我不怀疑这次他们仍会这样做。问题是，他们这些工程师能够成功的大幅度的重构整个经济体制吗？”
确实的，像麦当劳、耐克、宝洁这样的跨国集团，都敢于投入上亿美圆打赌中国在未来几十年内能够成为世界最大的消费市场。
但是提高消费能力会要求中国经济的重大改变--并不仅仅是使银行切断来自居民储蓄的存款，更多的是迫使国有企业交更多的贷款利息。这也意味着让人民币增殖到它自然应有的价值。这还意味着，用别的话来说，显著减少让经济增长如此之快的国有资本。北京大学讲师Pettis说，“为了让消费快点增长，你需要停止从居民那捞钱。”
图为表格对比。
左起第一个是中美之间收入所占国内生产总值的对比。
第二个是消费所占国内生产总值对比。
第三个是储蓄所占可支配收入的对比。
补充内容 (2011-10-15 20:18):
谢谢LILYMA06大人的编辑排版 |
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发表于 2011-10-11 14:42
发表于 2011-10-11 15:05
