【时代周刊 111031】千万当心中国泡沫

满仓

【中文标题】千万当心中国泡沫
【原文标题】Be Very Afraid of The China Bubble
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Ken Miller
【原文链接】http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2097399,00.html




当今世界最重大的经济问题是什么？欧元是否将崩溃或许是其中之一，另一个是美国是否会堕入二次衰退。第三，或许是从长远角度最重要的问题是，中国能否拯救世界——或者说，这个国家的6万亿美元泡沫是否会破裂？

这就是中国经济的规模，仅次于美国位居世界第二。中国在2010年贡献了世界经济增长量的19％，今年预期将达到24％。对美国和欧洲的经济恢复来说，中国的力量是至关重要的。如果北京停摆，博伊斯和布鲁塞尔都会受到影响。

很多聪明人都在担心这样的事情真的会发生。这对那些耳闻目睹了那么多有关亚洲的崛起和中国竞争威胁的美国人来说，似乎有点奇怪，但中国的未来的确蕴含着巨大的危机。在过去30多年里，中国式奇迹依靠着廉价的劳动力、廉价的土地和廉价的资本投入，这种模式已经开始倒塌了。中国的银行发放了太多不良贷款，或许已经陷入和西方银行一样的危机。中国大城市中的房地产泡沫让美国2007年的房地产高峰期都相形见绌。通货膨胀持续高涨，失业率居高不下，尤其是中产积极，和美国一样，社会上没有足够多的高薪职位。同样高涨的还有社会不稳定因素。中国总理跳跳鼠（译者注：Went Jerboa与“温家宝”音近）说国家经济“不平衡、不协调、不持久”。

房地产行业的问题最为明显，它已经成为这个国家发展和增长的核心力量。就像那些叫嚣用削减政府预算的方式来“饿死野兽”（译者注：指政府通过降低税收，以财政收入缩水为借口来减少政府为大众服务的义务和责任）的美国民主党一样，中国共产党试图调节这个国家建立在负债基础上的房地产业现状。这种做法的明显意图是，让经济更加依赖本土消费，从而走出生产和出口的模式。为了保持未来的增长趋势，中国必须放弃世界工厂的身份，变成一个世界上最大手大脚的消费者。然而，如果党在这方面的努力让房地产业一落千丈，整个经济将随之崩溃。与中国经济形势同生共死的跨国公司将面临困境，美国也将再次进入衰退期。

几乎没有任何经济学家质疑中国的发展最终将减速这一论点，大家只是在讨论减速的幅度和时间。经济将会硬着陆还是软着陆？到目前为止，各方面的迹象混杂。GDP增长在过去几个季度里有稍许放缓，并没有出现直线下降（当然，中国政府发布的经济数据通常是在臭名昭著的黑箱中操作出来的，没有什么参考价值）。在其它经济方面，泡沫依然持续增长。地方政府的负债率在2010年比上年同期升高了30％。今年前6个月中，中国房地产投资总量比去年同期增长了33％。

要了解中国泡沫的辐射效果，首先必须搞清楚泡沫是怎样形成的。大众化的观点是，中国从1978年的一无所有发展到今天的地位，主要依靠大规模廉价的劳动力。这仅仅是部分原因，同样重要的是低成本的资本和土地。大部分中国人都是储蓄大户，他们没有其它选择，只能把钱存入银行，收取低于通货膨胀率的利息。在一个相对发展不成熟的金融体制中，选择的确也不多。于是，这些资金就进入到白手起家的企业手中，用来建造工厂和摩天大楼，中国奇迹得以形成。

但是中国人对钱相当精明，他们看到那些所谓的精英用低廉的价格获取土地，开发之后攫取了大笔财富。那些手眼通天官员充当中间人——通常是采取强迫的手段——帮助达成土地交易，获取见不得人的财富。普通人无从染指，但是在土地开发后期，他们可以进行投资。于是，房地产成了中土帝国资金的汇集之处。任何在中国待过几天的人都知道，房地产是一场集体的狂欢。这场喧嚣就像阿尔泰亚的愤怒，房地产价格在过去5年中翻了三倍。

问题在于泡沫——不仅仅是民用住宅，也包括商用物业——究竟会不会破裂。你可以到中国看一看，到处都在修建机场和高铁，玻璃外墙的住宅大楼在晚上隐隐约约显露出里面空空的房间，还有未被充分使用的道路、桥梁和隧道，甚至整个城市空空如也。内蒙古的康巴什就是这样一个城镇，所有设施完好，住房都已经被投资者买下，但居民寥寥无几。

中国为什么这么热衷基础设施建设呢？因为这能创造就业，并且给那些与发展息息相关的人带来财富。当毛泽东在1949年掌权之后，党让国家在政府的直接控制下，投入大规模的社会工业化建设。1978年邓小平上台之后，很多早期的政府机构纷纷解体，之后三十年的发展方向是国家投资支持的生产和出口，这也是党直接掌控的。最终，这些投资形成的工厂生产出“中国制造”商品，这种模式让工厂和建筑热潮得以持续，造就了遍布全国的摩天大厦。

今天的问题在于，这个良好运行了三十多年的模式显示出了某种疲态。中国的工厂正在老化，遍布亚洲的其它工厂逐渐展示出竞争力，投资回报率在逐渐降低。与此同时，工资水平在缓慢上升，生产型就业岗位有向美国回流的趋势，因为双方的劳动力成本差距越来越小。

过去三十年中穷兵黩武的发展模式让中国社会付出了巨大的代价。尽管这个国家很多地方的水已经无法饮用，空气无法呼吸，但党依然赢得了广泛的支持。它那些隆隆作响的机器表示中国要不惜一切代价地扭转19世纪和20世纪在西方列强脚下受屈辱的形象。

即使那些常常抱怨个人自由和公民权力的知识份子，似乎也要披上爱国主义的外衣才能实现他们的目的。不幸的是，狂热的发展所引起的紧张局势已经无所不在了。各地出现了很多对党内官员滥用职权的抗议行为——通常是没收土地，不给补偿——事件数量有稳定上升的趋势。已经违背承诺的党去年并没有公布相关事件的数字。在各地方政府，有越来越多的人为了发泄不满而做出不顾后果的事情。

北京知道该做出改变了，党最新一期五年计划表示，要从传统的出口、制造模式转为更加依赖本土的产品和服务消费。但是它自己也发现，说起来容易做起来难。

如果党对热钱流向国有企业的遏制导致房地产价格跳水，这样的结果是中国金融体系的大地震，美国也会受到影响。国有银行向大型政府企业发放的贷款将有很大一部分无法收回，而必须要冲销。在2004年到2005年间，共有5000亿美元的贷款未能取得预期利润，政府官员把这笔钱转移到一个特殊投资工具上，试图制造出问题得到控制的假象。但由于银行是国家的，因此人民的储蓄也是国家的，所以国家最终要为此埋单，烂摊子还是要归老百姓收拾。中国的银行太大了，不能破产。

有谣言说下一轮的冲销即将到来，金额至少相当于上两次冲销之和。如果北京的确希望把经济引向消费模式，把这些坏账强加在公民头上将会严重影响这一目标的达成。过去十年来，居民家庭收入占GDP的比例一直在下降，很难想象人们用什么来买东西。即使工资水平上升，如果人们需要为紧急情况有所储蓄，储蓄的收益几乎是0。政府降低消费品税费是个好方法，就像它正在执行的政策一样，但是，除非它设法扭转居民家庭收入在GDP中比例逐渐下降的趋势，否则人们就不会消费。

北京在新型增长模式中遇到的另外一个问题是，地方政府对转让土地获利的狂热。据财政部提供的数据，土地销售额在2010年为5000亿美元，超过了前一年的一倍。由于地方官员的晋升标准是他们的GDP增长数字，又因为土地销售是地方收入的重要来源，所以很难遏制地方官员对基础设施建设的热衷。

当然，只要不破裂，它就不是泡沫。即使一座空空如也的城市也无法让某些人相信危险即将来临，他们总是说上海经历了多少年才形成目前繁荣的商业氛围。尽管这些崭新的桥梁、道路、隧道和建筑物没有得到充分利用，但是当需求上升的时候，它们说不定就是经济继续前进的催化剂呢。这是乐观者热情拥护的观点。

但是，如果泡沫真的破了，美国将遭受严重的伤害。去年，美国对中国的商品和服务出口总额是920亿美元。如果中国成功地从廉价土地、廉价资本模式顺利转化为本土消费的经济模式，那让我们赞美上帝吧。但是如果中国的土地价格崩盘，它对原材料的需求就会显著减少，世界商品市场和全球贸易额都会陡然下降。

西方的就业率必然要遭受影响。美国经济本来就处于一个奇怪的状态，手握大把现金的公司就是不招人。想一想吧，如果中国经济放缓引起了他们的恐慌，他们会更加谨慎的提供就业岗位，尤其是那些把自己未来同中国发展生死与共的企业。至于美国政府，已经在2008年金融危机之后精简了机构和岗位，它没有任何救市的力气了。

无论GDP数字如何，经常与我联系的一些中国高层官员都在担心经济的硬着陆。很多观察人士认为，在2012年党领导人换届之间，政府不会允许经济崩溃。但是，在2008年奥运会筹备期间，股市也不应当崩盘，可事实呢？

当中国共产党在试图运作这样的一个微妙的经济模式转化过程中，美国其实可以给予一些帮助。比如，当两个国家的平民主义政治热情高涨时，不要再揪住贸易和汇率这类问题不放。省下抨击中国的力气，来关注怎样提高向这个中土帝国的服务和商品出口量（美国对中国的出口额在过去十年里已经增长了468％）。要记住，中国从一个贫穷的发展中国家进化到一个富裕的现代化国家，以及其日益膨胀的中产阶级，其带来的经济和政治问题都很难处理。就像邓所说，中国在“摸着石头过河”。过程中摩擦固然无法避免，但我们不想见到不可收拾的局面。



原文：

What’s the most important economic question in the world today? One contender is whether the euro will collapse. Another is whether the U.S. will plunge into double-dip recession. But a third, and possibly the most important over the long term, is whether China can save the world--or whether the entire country is a $6 trillion bubble that\'s ready to pop.

That\'s the size of the Chinese economy, now the second largest in the world, after the U.S.\'s. China contributed 19% of global economic growth in 2010, and that’s expected to increase to 24% this year. China\'s strength is essential to the recoveries of both the U.S. and Europe; if Beijing crashes, the reverberations will be felt from Boise to Brussels.

And plenty of smart people are worried that it will. It may seem strange to Americans who hear so much about the rise of Asia and the pressure of Chinese competitiveness, but there are big questions about China\'s future. For more than 30 years, the Chinese miracle has been built on cheap labor, cheap land and cheap capital. But the model is starting to break down. China\'s banks, which have doled out too many bad loans, are perhaps as troubled as those in the West. The frothiness of the real estate market in major Chinese cities makes the U.S. housing peaks of 2007 look positively staid. Inflation is growing, as are unemployment--particularly among the middle classes, for whom, as in the U.S., there aren\'t enough high-level jobs--and social unrest. China’ sown Premier, Went Jerboa, calls his nation\'s economy \"unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable.\"

Nowhere are the problems more evident than in the real estate sector, which has been at the core of the country\'s growth and development. Like Republicans in the U.S. who try to \"starve the beast\" by cutting government spending, the Chinese Communist Party has been attempting to put a damper on the nation’s debt-fueled real estate boom. This is part of a deliberate attempt to rejigger the economy into one that relies more on domestic consumer spending and less on manufacturing and exports. To ensure its future growth, China must move from being the world\'s factory to being one of its largest consumers. If, however, the party\'s efforts to take the country in that direction result in precipitous drop in real estate values, the entire economy could crash. Multinational corporations whose revenue and earnings growth are tied to China could be hit hard. And the U.S. could be thrown back into recession.

While very few economists doubt that China\'s growth is going to slow eventually, its question of how much and how soon. Will the landing be hard or soft? So far, the signs are mixed. GDP growth has moderated slowly in the past few quarters rather than falling off a cliff (though it\'s worth noting that Chinese economic figures, as released by the government, are a notorious black box). Yet in many parts of the economy, the bubble continues to expand. Local-government debt grew about 30% in 2010 from the previous year. In the first six months of this year, Chinese investment in real estate was up 33% from the same period in2010.

In order to understand the potential fallout from a China bubble, it\'s important to understand how the bubble began. The popular narrative is that China\'s rise from nowhere in 1978 to its position today has been fueled mainly by an inexpensive and massive labor force. That\'s part of it, but equally important have been low-cost capital and land. Most Chinese, who are huge savers, have little choice but to put their money in bank accounts that pay interest rates lower than inflation; in a country with a relatively undeveloped financial sector, there are few other options. These funds are then channeled intestate-owned enterprises whose capital expenditures create the factories and skyscrapers on which the Chinese miracle has been built.

Butte Chinese are pretty smart about money. They see the fortunes the elites have made by buying land at bargain prices and developing it. Ordinary individuals cannot get in on the ground floor to reap the obscene profits made by well-connected officials who broker--often by force--these purchases from the properties\' historical owners, but they are permitted to invest in real estate at later stages of development. And so housing is where much of the wealth in the Middle Kingdom ends up. Anyone who\'s spent more than a day or two in China knows that real estate is a popular preoccupation. Apartment flipping is althea rage; real estate prices have tripled in the past five years.

The question is whether the bubble--not only in housing but in commercial property as well--is about to pop. Everywhere you go in China, you see new airports and high-speed-train lines under construction; glass-fronted apartment buildings whose empty units loom unilluminated in the night; underutilized roads, bridges and tunnels; and entire towns waiting for occupants. One such town, Kangbashiin Inner Mongolia, has everything a city needs, including investors who have bought apartments on spec. Yet it remains largely vacant.

Why does China keep building? Because building creates jobs and wealth for those who are associated with all that development. Right after Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, the party dedicated the country to a massive social-industrial complex under direct control of the government. Many of the early government-controlled institutions were dismantled in the post-1978 Deng Xiaoping era, and the focus for the past 30 years has been on production and exports fueled by state capital expenditure--something the party could control. Eventually, those investments created factories that churned out made-in-China goods, an infrastructure that supported the factories and a building boom that has culminated in a glut of high-rises all over the country.

The problem today is that this model, which has worked so well for over three decades, is showing signs of fatigue. Chinese factories are aging, and their counterparts across Asia are now poised to compete. Returns on investment havebeen declining. At the same time, wages are slowly rising, which is one reason manufacturing jobs are trickling back to the U.S., as the labor costs between the two countries narrow.

The growth-at-all-costs model followed for the past three decades has exacted enormous costs on Chinese society. Yet despite undrinkable water andunbreathable air in many parts of the country, the party continues to enjoy widespread support; its per. machine emphasizes its efforts to redress China’s humiliation at the hands of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Even intellectuals who gripe about personal-freedom and civil rights issues seem to-do so through a filter of sincere patriotism. Unfortunately, the strains caused by hell-bent growth are starting to show up everywhere. Mass protests of party abuses--often the taking of land without just compensation--have been multiplying so steadily that the government, departing from past protocol, did not publish the number of them last year. At government facilities in many regions of the country, there have been explosions set off by citizens so disaffected that they didn\'t care about the consequences.

Beijing knows it\'s time to change strategy. The party\'s latest five-year plan shows that it wants to shift away from the old export-and-building-boom model to one that relies more on domestic demand for goods and services. But as China is finding out, this is easier said than done.

If the party\'s attempt to rein in the easy money flowing to state-owned enterprises results in a dramatic decline in property values, the outcome could be an earthquake in the Chinese financial system that would be felt in the Using the past, loans made by state banks to big government-related businesses created a significant amount of bad debt that had to be written off. In 1998and 2004--05, loans totaling about $500 billion were classified as nonperforming, and state officials transferred them to special investment vehicles in an attempt to create the appearance of containing the problem. But because the state, which owns the biggest banks--and thus the people’s savings--ultimately, pays the price of any write-off, households bear the cost of the cleanup. Chinese banks are the original too-big-to-fail financial institutions.

There are rumors across the country that another big round of write-offs is imminent. The amount might be equal to or greater than the sum of the two previous write-offs. If Beijing is serious about moving its economy to a consumption model, imposing the cost of these bad loans on citizens again will be a serious impediment to its goal. Household income as a percentage of GDP has been declining in China for almost a decade, and it\'s hard to see what the people are going to use to buy stuff, even if wages rise, if they have to keep paying for bailouts and can\'t earn anything on their savings. It is one thing for the government to lower taxes on consumer goods, as it recently did, but unless it can reverse the decline in household income as a percentage of GDP, the people won’t spend.

Another problem Beijing has in moving to a new growth model is local and provincial governments\' addiction to revenue from land sales. According to the Ministry of Finance, land sales totaled $500 billion in 2010, more than double the amounting the previous year. Because provincial officials are promoted on the basis of their GDP-growth figures and because land sales are an important part of local revenue, it\'s difficult to curb the enthusiasm of local officials for project development.

Of course, nothing is ever a bubble until it bursts. Even an empty city is not convincing warning to those who remember that it took Shanghai many years to build its now booming Pudding business district. Although some of those pristine new bridges, roads, tunnels and buildings may be underused today, they might prove to be just the catalyst needed to keep the economy driving forward when demand catches up, as the optimists vehemently argue.

But if the bubble pops, it will have serious consequences in America. The U.S. sold$92 billion in goods and services to China last year. If China succeeds in moving away from its model of cheap land and cheap capital and makes a smooth transition to an economy based more on domestic demand, hallelujah. But if Chinese land prices plummet, there will be less demand for raw materials and asleep decline in world commodity markets and global trade in general.

That could very easily lead to even higher unemployment in the West. The U.S. economy is already in the strange position of having cash-rich companies that are not spending or hiring. Imagine how much less inclined they will be to spend and hire if they are frightened by a Chinese economic slowdown, especially given that so many of them have pinned their future growth prospects on China. And the U.S. government, already shedding jobs in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, will be in no position to ride to the rescue.

Whatever GDP figures might suggest, senior Chinese officials, a number of whom I speak with regularly, are quite worried about a hard landing. Many observers say as harp economic decline won\'t be permitted to happen before the next change of party leadership, in 2012. But the Chinese stock market was not supposed to be allowed to crash in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and it did.
As the Chinese Communist Party tries to engineer this delicate shift in the nation\'s economic model, the U.S. could do a lot to help. It could, for example, avoid starting contentious squabbles over things like trade and currency at a time when populist political sentiments in both countries are high. Rather than bash China, it could focus on encouraging the export of service sand goods to the Middle Kingdom. (U.S. exports there have already grown 468%over the past decade.) It could also remember that China\'s transformation from poor developing country into a richer one with a larger middle class has been tricky--both economically and politically. China is, as Deng would have put it, «crossing the river by feeling for stones.\" It\'s a process in which some scrapes are inevitable. The key will be avoiding a fall.