Special report Chinas economy 经济学人中国经济专题报道 - 图文

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Special report: China's economy 特别报道：中国经济现状

Pedalling prosperity 一路骑行，繁华似锦

China’s economy is not as precarious as it looks, says Simon Cox. But it still needs to change

中国经济不像看上去那么不稳定，西蒙·考克斯评论道，但仍亟待变革。 May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

IN 1886 THOMAS STEVENS, a British adventurer (pictured), set off on an unusual bicycle trip. He pedalled from the flower boats of Guangzhou in China’s south to the pagodas of Jiujiang about 1,000km (620 miles) to the north. He was disarmed by the scenery (the countryside outside Guangzhou was a “marvellous field-garden”) and disgusted by the

squalor (the inhabitants of one town were “scrofulous, sore-eyed, and mangy”). His passage aroused equally strong reactions from the locals: fascination, fear and occasional fury. In one spot a “soul-harrowing” mob pelted him with stones, bruising his body and breaking a couple of his bicycle’s spokes.

1886年，一位英国探险家，托马斯·史蒂文斯（见右图），开启了一段不平凡的自行车旅程。他从中国南方广州的花船上出发，一路向北，一直骑行到两千里之外（620英里）的九江宝塔。他既为沿途的风光所折服（广州的郊外当时是一片美妙的田园），也深深厌恶所见的肮脏穷困（他看到一个镇子上的居民们“面带病色、眼睛红肿、衣着肮脏”）。托马斯的造访同样在当地人中引起了强烈的反响：心驰神往者有之，畏惧害怕者有之，有时也会招致愤怒的回应。沿途某处，一位“让人心惊胆战的”的暴民向他掷石子，石子擦伤了他，还打坏了自行车几根辐条。

A century later the bike was no longer alien to China; it had become symbolic of it. The “bicycle kingdom” had more two-wheelers than any other country on Earth. Many of those

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bikes have since been replaced by cars—one obvious sign of China’s rapid development. But even today the bicycle looms large in the battle for China’s soul.

一个世纪之后，自行车对中国来说早已不再陌生；它已经成为了中国的象征之一。“自行车王国”所拥有的双轮脚踏车比世界上任何一个国家都要多。现在，很多自 行车正为汽车所取代——这也是中国快速发展的显著迹象之一。但即使在今天，在中国的灵魂之役中，自行车仍然显得尤为突出。

For China’s fast-diminishing population of poor people, bikes remain an important beast of burden, piled high with recycled junk. For China’s fast-expanding population of city slickers, the bicycle represents everything they want to leave behind. “I’d rather cry in the back of your BMW than laugh on the back of your bicycle,” as China’s material girls say. Some dreamers in government see a return to the bike as an answer to China’s growing problems of prosperity—pollution, traffic and flab. The country’s National Development and Reform

Commission wants government officials to cycle to work one day a week, though only if the distance is less than 3km.

对中国迅速减少的贫困人民来说，自行车仍旧是重要的运输工具，后座上还会高高地堆着回收垃圾。对中国快速扩张的城里人来说，自行车则代表了他们想要甩在身后的一切。正如中国的拜金女们所说的：“宁可在宝马车里哭，也不在自行车后座上笑”。面对中国繁荣背后越来越多的问题——污染、交通不畅、肥胖人群壮大，一些政府的空想家们把回归使用自行车当作解决的答案。中国发展和改革委员会希望政府官员每周能有一天骑车上下班，尽管这只是在通勤距离小于3公里的情况下的要求。

Even if it is a fading symbol of Chinese society, the bicycle remains a tempting metaphor for its economy. Bikes—especially when heavily laden—are stable only as long as they keep moving. The same is sometimes said about China’s economy. If it loses momentum, it will crash. And since growth is the only source of legitimacy for the ruling party, the economy would not be the only thing to wobble. From 1990 to 2008 China’s workforce swelled by about 145m people, many of them making the long journey from its rural backwaters to its coastal workshops. Over the same period the productivity of the workforce increased by over 9% a year, according to the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO). Output that used to take 100 people in 1990 required fewer than 20 in 2008. All this meant that growth of 8-10% a year was not a luxury but a necessity.

虽然自行车作为中国社会标志的光环渐渐褪去，但借以比喻中国经济仍让人心中一动。自行车——特别是重载货的时候——只有保持前进才会稳定。同样的话有时也 用来形容中国经济。失去了前进的势头，中国经济就会毁于一旦。而因为经济增长是执政党名正言顺的唯一根源，所以到那时，不仅仅只有经济会摇摆不定。从 1990年到2008年，中国的劳动力规模膨胀，增加了大约1亿4千5百万人。很多人不远旅途从农村的穷乡僻壤来到沿海的生产车间。同期（1990-2008），据亚洲生产力组织研究，中国劳动力生产率以每年大于9%的速度增长。同样的产量，过去1990年需要100个人完成，到2008年不超过20个人就可以。所有这些都意味着，8-10%的年增长不是一种难得的辉煌，而是一种需要。

But the pressure is easing. Last year the ranks of working-age Chinese fell as a percentage of the population. Soon their number will begin to shrink. The minority who remain in China’s villages are older and less mobile. Because of this loss of demographic momentum, China no longer needs to grow quite so quickly to keep up. Even the government no longer sees 8% annual growth as an imperative. In March it set a target of 7.5% for this year, consistent with an average of 7% over the course of the five-year plan that ends in 2015. China has been in the habit of surpassing these “targets”, which represent a floor not a ceiling to its

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aspirations. Nonetheless the lower figure was a sign that the central leadership now sees heedless double-digit growth as a threat to stability, not a guarantee of it.

但这样的增长压力在逐步减缓。去年中国处于劳动年龄的人口队伍所占比例有所回落。很快他们的人数就会开始收缩。少数留在乡村的都是老弱者。因为失去了人口 增长的势头，中国已经不再需要为赶上人口增长而如此高速发展。政府甚至也不再把每年8%的增长率看作必须完成的指标。今年3月份，政府设下了7.5%的年 增长目标，这一目标与五年计划（2010-2015）期间7%的平均增长率相符。中国一直习惯于超越这些“目标”，“目标”是其渴望的下限而非上限。尽管 如此，下调的增长指标也是一种迹象，暗示着现在中央领导层把冒失的两位数增长看作是对国家稳定的威胁，而不是稳定的保证。

The penny-farthing theory 大小轮理论

Stevens’s 1886 journey across south-east China was remarkable not only for the route he took but also for the bike he rode: a “high-wheeler” or “penny-farthing”, with an oversized wheel at the front and a diminutive one at the rear. The contraption is not widely known in China. That is a pity, because it provides the most apt metaphor for China’s high-wheeling economy.

史蒂文斯于1886年跨越中国东南部的旅途之所以非同寻常，不仅仅在于他的骑行路线，同样也在于他所骑的车型：一辆“高轮车”或者说“大小轮车”，车前部 有一个超大的轮子，后部有一个很小的轮子。这种装置的自行车在中国并不广为人知。这未尝不是一种遗憾，因为它给出了中国飞转的经济最恰如其分的比喻。

The large circumference of the penny-farthing’s front wheel carried it farther and faster than anything that preceded it, much as China’s economy has grown faster for longer than its predecessors. Asked to name the big wheel that keeps China’s economy moving, many

foreign commentators would say exports. Outside China, people see only the Chinese goods that appear on their shelves and the factory jobs that disappear from their shores; they do not see the cities China builds or the shopping aisles it fills at home. But the contribution of foreign demand to China’s growth has always been exaggerated, and it is now shrinking.

“大小轮车”前轮的大轮径把车带得更远更快，超越了先前的任何东西，很像中国的经济，其成长快过先前时期，增长时间也更长。如果要说什么是保持中国经济前进的大前轮的话，很多外国评论员会认为是出口。在中国之外，人们看到的只是货架上的中国商品和从他们的国家中消失的工作岗位。他们并未看到中国建造的城市和国内商店里充足的货物。而外需对中国经济增长的贡献却一直被夸大，这种需求其实也正在缩减。

It is investment, not exports, that leads China’s economy. Spending on plant, machinery, buildings and infrastructure accounted for about 48% of China’s GDP in 2011. Household consumption, supposedly the sole end and purpose of economic activity, accounts for only about a third of GDP (see chart 1). It is like the small farthing wheel bringing up the rear.

引领中国经济的是投资，而非出口。在工厂、机器装置、建筑和基础设施等方面的投入占到中国2011年GDP的48%左右。家庭消费，按理应当是经济活动的最终的宗旨和目的，只占到GDP的约1/3（见表一）。后者很像垫后的小后轮。

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A disproportionate share of China’s investment is made by state-owned enterprises and, in recent years, by infrastructure ventures under the control of provincial or municipal

authorities but not on their balance sheets. This investment has often been clumsy. In the 1880s, according to Stevens, China showed a “scrupulous respect for individual rights and the economy of the soil”. The road he pedalled took many wearisome twists and turns to avoid impinging on any private property or fertile plot. These days China’s roads run straight. Between 2006 and 2010 local authorities opened up 22,000 sq km of rural land, an area the size of New Jersey, to new development. China’s cities have grown faster in area than in population. This rapid urbanisation is a big part of the country’s economic success. But it has come at a heavy price in depleted natural resources, a damaged environment and scrupulously disrespected property rights.

中国的投资，过多的份额来自国有企业。近年来，由省级或市级政府控制但却不在其资产负债之内的基建投资所占份额也过多。这 一投资往往缺乏策略。19世纪80年代，据史蒂文斯描述，当时的中国表现出对“个人权利和经济土壤审慎的尊崇”。他踏着车走过的路线打了许多烦

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人的弯弯 儿，为的是避免侵犯任何个人财产或践踏上施了肥的田地。而现如今，中国的路横冲直撞。2006到2010年，地方政府开发了高达2万2千平方公里的农村土 地以进行新的发展，这些土地相当于一个新泽西州的大小。中国的城市面积扩张得比人口增长还快。快速的城市化是中国经济成就的一个重要部分。但这造成的沉痛 代价就是耗尽了自然资源，破坏了环境，严重践踏了财产权益。

The imbalance between investment and consumption makes China’s economy look

precarious. A cartoon from the 1880s unearthed by Amir Moghaddass Esfehani, a Sinologist, shows a Chinese rider losing control of a penny-farthing and falling flat on his face. A vocal minority of commentators believe that China’s economy is heading for a crash. In April industrial output grew at its slowest pace since 2009. Homebuilding was only 4% up on a year earlier. Things are looking wobbly.

投资和消费间的不平衡使得中国经济看上去不那么稳定。19世纪80年代，一部由汉学家Amir Moghaddass Esfehani出品的卡通表现了一个骑自行车的中国人在“大小轮车”上失去平衡，摔了个脸着地。少数评论员的声音表示，中国的经济面临崩溃。4月，中国 工业出口的增长速度降至自2009年来的最低水平。住宅建设仅同比增长4%。形势一片动荡。

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（IRER），这个汇率计算的是中国国内非 外贸货品的价格跟可外贸货品价格的比值 。根据香港金融研究协会的一项研究，中国的内部实际汇率在2005年6月到2011年12月之间增长了35%还多（见图2）。汇率提高鼓励中国人制造更多 的非贸易商品，购买更多的贸易商品。两者都有助于缩小盈余。

The size of China’s surplus also depends on some volatile prices, such as the cost of crude oil and other commodities that China imports. The price of China’s imports has risen relative to the price of its exports in recent years. According to the IMF, this deterioration in China’s terms of trade could explain up to half the drop in its surplus between 2007 and 2011. Those terms are unlikely to improve. As long as China remains the dominant force in the market for its main imports and exports, it will continue to influence the price of both. 中国的盈余规模也取决于一些价格浮动，比如原油成本和中国进口的其他商品。近年来，中国进口商品的价格相对出口品的价格提高了。根据IMF，2007年到 2011年中国盈余缩小的一半原因都要归咎于贸易条件的恶化。贸易条件看似不可能改善。只要中国保持其在主要出口和进口市场的主导位置，就会继续影响两个 市场的价格。

This pincer movement shows up in surprising ways. One British scholar argues that cheap Chinese exports have deterred burglaries in his country because a ￡19.99 DVD player is hardly worth stealing. But others say that China’s imports of copper have contributed to a rise in metal theft because China’s appetite for such commodities has made them a more tempting target.

这样一个“钳形攻势”的表现方式令人惊讶。一位英国学者认为中国出口商品的廉价阻止了英国的盗窃行为，因为一部价值19.99英镑的DVD机根本不值得偷。但是其他人指出，中国进口铜却造成了金属偷盗的猖獗，因为中国对这些商品的需求使它们成为了更加诱人的偷窃目标。

Domestic demand in China’s big trading partners has been slow to recover from the crisis. China’s own spending, on the other hand, has surpassed all expectations. Investment as a share of GDP rose by over six points between 2007 and 2010 as banks lent liberally to help stimulate the economy. The IMF reckons that this rise in investment in itself accounted for between a quarter and a third of the narrowing of China’s surplus. But it may also have

been a contributory cause of some of the other factors, such as the rise in commodity prices and the increase in Chinese wages and prices.

中国较大的贸易伙伴的国内需求从金融危机中恢复地很慢。另一方面，中国自身的消费超过预期。由于大量银行贷款有利于刺激经济发展，投资占GDP的份额在 2007年到2010年间上涨了6个百分点。 IMF认为，四分之一至三分之一的中国盈余缩小量可以由对内投资增加来解释。但是投资增长也造成了其他变化，比如物价上升、中国工资和价格的上涨等。

Will it return? 盈余会反弹吗？

The surplus could widen again, for one of two reasons. First, China’s high investment could set the stage for a renewed export boom. Second, China’s investment rate could falter without consumption rising to make up for it, forcing China to rely on foreign demand to keep the economy moving.

盈余可能会再次增大，原因有这么一两个。第一，中国高额投资会为新一轮出口热潮奠定基础。第二，没有消费的增长去弥补投资的话，中国的投资率可能会下滑，迫使中国依赖外国

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需求来维持经济增长。

To imagine the first scenario, you only have to examine the recent past. Pieter Bottelier of the Conference Board, a think-tank, argues that China’s big surpluses before 2008 owed something to an investment boom around the time China joined the World Trade

Organisation in 2001. This investment created excess capacity in industries such as cars, construction materials and especially steel. At first these new factories displaced imports; then, when the domestic market proved too small, they flogged their surplus wares on

foreign markets instead. China went from being a net importer of steel in 2004 to being the world’s largest net exporter, note Brett Berger and Robert Martin of the Federal Reserve. 要想象第一种情况，你只要回顾下最近就可以。来自世界大企业联合会（Conference

Board）智囊团的皮尔特尔?伯特利尔认为，中国在2008年之前的超额盈余要归功于2001年中国加入世界贸易组织那段时间的投资热潮。这些投资造成 了工业行业的过剩产能，比如汽车业、建筑材料业，尤其是钢铁。首先，这些工厂取代了进口；其次，当国内市场确实过小，他们就把这些过剩商品推搡到国外市 场。美联储的布雷特?伯杰和罗伯特?马丁强调：中国从2004年的钢铁净进口国变成了世界最大的净出口国。

But a repeat is unlikely. It would require China’s low consumption rate to move still lower to make room for so much investing and exporting. It would also require China to make further rapid gains in global market share.

但是历史重演不大可能。这要求中国的低消费率持续走低，为投资和出口提供空间。也要求中国在全球市场的收入份额进一步快速增长。

The post-crisis investment boom was also different from the post-WTO one. It was weighted towards inland provinces, far from the seaports that ship China’s goods to the rest of the world. Inland China’s share of fixed-asset investment matched that of the coastal provinces for the first time in 2009, then exceeded it in 2010. The investment boom in 2009-10 was also concentrated in infrastructure and property. Neither can be traded across borders. 金融危机后的投资热潮也不同于进入WTO后的投资。内陆省份成为投资重点，远离那些将中国商品运向海外的港口。2009年，内陆的固定资产投资首次和沿海 省份持平，紧接着在2010年超过沿海省份。同时，2009年到2010年的投资潮集中在基础设施和房地产上，二者都不可以跨境贸易。

But some economists believe that the latest investment boom will prove unsustainable. If construction collapses, some of the industries that fed China’s building rush will turn their attentions overseas, as they did in 2006.

但是一些经济学家相信最新一轮的投资热潮不会持续。如果建筑业崩溃，一些以中国这股建筑热为生的行业将把目光投向海外，如同2006年的做法一样。

The future of China’s export monster depends on whether China’s highinvestment rate is sustainable. Many think it is not

中国的巨额出口未来如何，取决于中国的高投资率是否会持续。很多人对此抱否定态度。

The future of China’s export monster thus depends on whether China’s high investment rate is sustainable. Many think it is not. Economists like Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University and a commentator for the New York Times, have gone from bashing China for its

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underpriced currency to fretting about its overpriced property. Its spectacular building boom has diverted China’s energies inwards, sucking in imports and displacing exports. It has thus eased the world’s fear of China. But it has raised fears for China.

因此，中国的巨额出口未来如何，取决于中国的高投资率是否持续。很多人对此抱着否定的态度。诸如保罗?克鲁格曼（普林斯顿大学教授，同时担任《纽约时报》 评论员）这样的经济学家，从抨击中国价格过低的货币，到担忧价格过高的房地产。惊人的建筑热将中国的能量转向了国内，吸收进口并取代出口。这样缓解了世界 对中国的害怕，但却加深世界对中国的担忧。

http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67723-1-1.html译者ivying Investment 投资

Prudence without a purpose 无意义的节俭

Misinvestment is a bigger problem than overinvestment 投资不当的危害比过度投资更大

May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

China’s answer to Dubai 中国的迪拜

GENGHIS KHAN SQUARE in Kangbashi, a new city in the northern province of Inner Mongolia, is as big as Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But unlike Tiananmen Square, it has only one woman to sweep it. It takes her six hours, she says, though longer after the

sandstorms that sweep in from the Gobi desert. Kangbashi, or “new Ordos”, as it is known, is easy to clean because it is all but empty. China’s most famous “ghost city”, it has attracted a lot of journalists eager to illustrate China’s overinvestment, but not many residents.

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在中国北部的内蒙古自治区，康巴什新城建设的成吉思汗广场同北京的天安门广场一样宏大。跟天安门广场所不同的是它只有一个清洁工保洁。这位清洁工说清扫一 遍康巴什广场要六个小时，如果遇到附件沙漠吹过来的沙尘暴则需要更久。鄂尔多斯新城康巴什之所以容易清扫是因为它是一座空城。作为中国最著名的鬼城，它吸 引了众多试图证明中国处于过度投资的记者，和少得可怜的居民。

Ordos was one of the prime exhibits in an infamous presentation by Jim Chanos, a well-known short-seller, at the London School of Economics in January 2010. Mr Chanos argued that China’s growth was predicated on an unsustainable mobilisation of capital—investment that provides only for further investment. China, he quipped, was “Dubai times 1,000”.

2010年一月在伦敦政治经济学院的一次讲座中，著名的卖空者吉姆?查诺斯将鄂尔多斯作为他演讲的主要论据。查诺斯先生认为中国的增长建立在不可持续的资本流动上——资本全部投入到更大的投资中。他戏言中国的泡沫繁荣是迪拜的1000倍。

His tongue-in-cheek reference to the bling-swept, debt-drenched emirate caused a stir. But not everywhere in China shrinks from the comparison. One property development that

actively courts it is Phoenix Island, off the coast of tropical Sanya, China’s southernmost city. It is a largely man-made islet, much like Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah. Its centrepiece will be a curvaceous seven-star hotel, rather like Dubai’s Burj Al Arab, only shaped like a wishbone not a sail. The five pod-like buildings already up resemble the unopened buds of some

strange flower. Coated in light-emitting diodes, they erupt into a lightshow at night, featuring adverts for Chanel and Louis Vuitton.

他的玩笑借用了财富尽失，债务缠身的酋长国，引起了极大的反响。这种例子在中国不止一个。在中国最南端的城市三亚，一个地产开发项目正在离岸的凤凰岛如火 如荼的进行着。它是一个巨大地人工岛，很像迪拜的棕榈岛。凤凰岛项目的核心是一个超豪华的七星级酒店，如同迪拜的帆船酒店，所不同的是这个酒店将是Y字型 的。这个五荚形建筑模仿一种稀奇的花蕾建造。酒店的外部布有LED灯墙，播放着香奈儿和路易威登的广告。

After a visit to Ordos or Sanya, it is tempting to agree with Mr Chanos that China has

overinvested from its northern steppe to its southern shores. But what exactly does it mean for a country to “overinvest”? One clear sign would be investment that was running well ahead of saving, requiring heavy foreign borrowing and buying. The result could be a currency crisis, like the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Some veterans of that episode worry about China’s reckless investment in tasteless property. But although China invests more of its GDP than those crisis-struck economies ever did, it also saves far more. It is a net exporter of capital, as its controversial current-account surplus attests. Indeed, for every critic bashing China for reckless investment spending there is another accusing it of

depressing world demand through excessive thrift. China is in the odd position of being cast as both miser and wanton.

在参观了鄂尔多斯和三亚之后，人们很容易认同查诺斯的观点，即中国从南到北都处在过度投资中。但是“过度投资”的确切含义是什么呢？一个明显的后果是 超出正常需求的投资，需要大量吸引外资和出口。这将造成货币危机，如同1997-1998年爆发的亚洲金融危机。一些经历过那次危机的人开始担心中国不计 后果的向毫无价值的领域投资。尽管中国经济中，投资占GDP 的比重比危机前的东南亚国家还要高，到目前为止它仍然在保持增长。由于拥有饱受争议的经常账户盈余，中国是一个资本净输出国。事实上，在批评中国天量投资 开支的同时，许多人认为中国人过度节俭的消费导致了全球需求不足。中国经济处在一种尴尬的极端情况——吝啬和奢侈并存

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Even an extravagance like Kangbashi is best understood as an attempt to soak up saving. The Ordos prefecture, to which it belongs, is home to a sixth of China’s coal reserves and a third of its natural gas (not to mention its rare earths and soft goat’s wool). According to Ting Lu of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Kangbashi is an attempt to prevent Ordos’s commodity earnings from disappearing to other parts of the country.

奢侈的康巴什在中国被认为是吸引储蓄的典范。鄂尔多斯辖区蕴藏着中国六分之一的煤碳和三分之一的天然气，更不用说它的稀土和羊毛。根据来自美银美林的陆婷，康巴什的建设是当地政府希望保留矿藏财富，防止资本外流的手段。

China as a whole saved an extraordinary 51% of its GDP last year. Until China’s investment rate exceeds that share, there is no cause for concern, says Qu Hongbin of HSBC. Anything China fails to invest at home must be invested overseas. “The most wasteful investment China now has is US Treasuries,” he adds.

中国整体的储蓄在去年达到了GDP的51%，如此之高相当罕见。来自汇丰银行的屈宏斌认为在中国的投资率低于储蓄率时，不必担心。中国国内不能满足的投资部分必须投向海外。屈宏斌补充道：“中国最不值的投资是购买美国国债。”

When talking about thrift, economists sometimes draw on a parable of prudence written three centuries ago by Daniel Defoe. In that novel the resourceful Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on a remote island, saves and replants four quarts of barley. The reward for his thrift is a harvest of 80 quarts, a return of 1,900%.

在谈到储蓄的时候，经济学家经常引用三个世纪前丹尼尔?笛福的寓言。在小说中，因船舶失事而漂流荒岛的鲁滨逊机智的储藏和种植了四夸脱大麦，得到的回报是80夸脱，净收益19倍。

Castaway capital 被抛弃的资本

Investment is made out of saving, which requires consumption to be deferred. The returns to investment must be set against the disadvantage of having to wait. In Robinson Crusoe, the saving and the investing are both done by the same Englishman, alone on his island. In a more complicated economy, households must save so that entrepreneurs can invest. In most economies their saving is voluntary, but China has found ways of imposing the patience its high investment rate requires.

投资来自储蓄，储蓄来自节省的消费。投资回报必须能够补偿储蓄的成本。对鲁滨逊来说，储蓄和投资全部由一个处于荒岛的英国人操作。在复杂的多的经济中，企业的投资来自家庭储蓄。在大多数国家，储蓄是自愿的。但是在中国，政府能够找到办法，得到高投资率所需要的储蓄。

Michael Pettis of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University argues that the Chinese government suppresses consumption in favour of producers, many of them state-owned. It keeps the currency undervalued, which makes imports expensive and exports cheap, thereby discouraging the consumption of foreign goods and encouraging production for foreign customers. It caps interest rates on bank deposits, depriving households of interest income and transferring it to corporate borrowers. And because some of China’s markets remain largely sheltered from competition, a few incumbent firms can extract high

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prices and reinvest the profits. The government has, in effect, confiscated quarts of barley from the people who might want to eat them, making them available as seedcorn instead.

北京大学光华管理学院的迈克尔?佩蒂斯认为中国政府抑制消费有利于生产者，其中许多事国有企业。它保持者货币低估，造成进口商品昂贵，出口商品廉价，从而 抑制了进口，鼓励了出口。它限制银行利率水平，剥夺了家庭的利息收入，转移给企业贷款者。另外，由于中国许多市场被少数国有企业垄断，他们能够高价获利， 并且再投资。中国政府实际上从人们手中征收了一些原本用来食用的大麦用作种子。

What has China got in return? Investment, unlike consumption, is cumulative; it leaves behind a stock of machinery, buildings and infrastructure. If China’s capital stock were already too big for its needs, further thrift would indeed be pointless. In fact, though, the

country’s overall capital stock is still small relative to its population and medium-sized relative to its economy. In 2010, its capital stock per person was only 7% of America’s (converted at market exchange rates), according to Andrew Batson and Janet Zhang of GK Dragonomics, a consultancy in Beijing. Even measured at purchasing-power parity, China has only about a fifth of America’s capital stock per person, depending on how its PPP rate is calculated.

那中国的收益是什么？跟消费不同的是，投资是可以积累的；大规模投资留下了机器，建筑和基础设施。如果中国的资本存量已经大于需求，那么继续增加储蓄是毫 无意义的。实际上，相对于中国的人口，现有的资本存量仍然较小；相对与中国的经济总量，现有资本存量也只处于中等水平。根据北京一家咨询机构龙洲经济分析 员安德鲁?波士顿和珍妮特?张的测算，在2010年，中国的人均资本存量仅相当于美国的7%（以市场汇率换算）。即使以购买力平价测算，中国的人均资本存 量也仅相当于美国的20%，根据购买力平价汇率不同可能有差异。

Boom, boom 爆破，爆破

China needs to “produce lots more of almost everything”, argues Scott Sumner of Bentley University, even if it does not produce “everything in the right order”. Its furious homebuilding, for example, has unnerved the government and cast a shadow over its banks, which worry

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about defaults on property loans. But it still needs more places for people to live. In 2010 it had 140m-150m urban homes, according to Rosealea Yao of GK Dragonomics, 85m short of the number of urban households. About three-quarters of China’s migrant workers are squeezed into rented housing or dormitories provided by their employer.

本特利大学的斯科特?苏姆勒认为，在所有的领域中国都需要生产更多的商品，即使生产不能够完全有序。以中国天量的住房建设为例，政府对此焦头烂额。银行也 因此承担着巨大的违约风险。但是中国人毕竟还是需要更多的住房居住。根据龙洲经济的罗斯利?姚，2010年，中国城镇共有1.4亿-1.5亿套住房，还有 8500万城市家庭没有住房。大约四分之三的农民工只能租房或者栖身雇主提供的宿舍。

Nor is China’s capital stock conspicuously large relative to the size of its economy. It amounted to about 2.5 times China’s GDP in 2008, according to the APO. That was the same as America’s figure and much lower than Japan’s. Thanks to China’s stimulus-driven investment spree, the ratio increased to 2.9 in 2010, but that still does not look wildly out of line.

相对于中国的经济总量，中国的资本存量也没有明显过量。根据APO的数据，2008年中国的资本存量相当于GDP的2.5倍。这个水平跟美国一致，但是比日本要低。由于中国的投资刺激政策，这个比例在2010年提高到2.9，也没有明显过分。

Malinvestors of great wealth 财富的无效投资者

In Defoe’s tale, Robinson Crusoe spends five months making a canoe for himself, felling a cedar-tree, paring away its branches and chiselling out its innards. Only after this

“inexpressible labour” does he find that the canoe is too heavy to be pushed the 100 yards to the shore. That is not an example of overinvestment (Crusoe did need a canoe), but “malinvestment”. Crusoe devoted his energy to the wrong enterprise in the wrong place.

在笛福的小说中，鲁滨逊花了五个月的时间造了一艘独木舟。他砍倒一颗杉树，去掉枝叶，挖空树干。但是在难以形容的艰难劳动之后，他发现独木舟太重，没法推 到100码以外的海滩。这不是过度投资（鲁滨逊需要独木舟），但是是无效投资。鲁滨逊在错误的地方错误的对象上花费了精力。

It is surprisingly hard to show that China has overinvested, but easier to show that it has invested unwisely. Of China’s misguided canoe-builders, two are worth singling out: its local governments (see article) and its state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

奇怪的是很难找到证据证明中国已经处于过度投资，但是可以很容易的发现有很多投资是不明智的。在中国的无效投资者中，两个值得特别重视：地方政府和国有企业。

China’s SOEs endured a dramatic downsizing and restructuring in the 1990s. Thousands of them were allowed to go bankrupt, yet those that survived this cull remain a prominent

feature of Chinese capitalism. Even in the retail, wholesale and restaurant businesses there are over 20,000 of them, according to Zhang Wenkui of China’s Development Research Centre.

中国的国有企业在1990s年代经历了大规模的裁撤和重组。数以千计的国有企业破产，但是那些剩下的仍然在中国经济中占据支配地位。中国发展研究中心的张文魁表示即使是在零售、批发和餐饮业，目前还有超过20000家国企。

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SOEs are responsible for about 35% of the fixed-asset investments made by Chinese firms. They can invest so much because they have become immensely profitable. The 120 or so big enterprises owned by the central government last year earned net profits of 917 billion yuan ($142 billion), according to their supervisor, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). It cites their profitability as evidence of their efficiency. But even now, returns on equity among SOEs are substantially lower than among private firms. Nor do SOEs really “earn” their returns. The markets they occupy tend to be

uncompetitive, as the OECD has shown, and their inputs of land, energy and credit are artificially cheap. Researchers at Unirule, a Beijing think-tank, have shown that the SOEs’ profits from 2001 to 2008 would have turned into big losses had they paid the market rate for their loans and land.

国有企业的掌握了中国企业固定资产投资的35%。他们能够大规模投资的原因是他们利润丰厚。根据中国国有资产监督管理委员会的统计，中央政府控制的120 家大型企业去年净利润达到9170亿人民币（1420亿美元）。国资委用国企的盈利来证明他们的效率。但是直到目前，国有企业的资本回报仍然低于私营企 业。国企并不是真正在盈利。OECD的研究显示，国企所占据的市场是低竞争的，他们投入的土地，能源和信贷都是人为压低的。北京一家智库天则经济研究所发 现，在2001-2008年间，如果按市场价格支付贷款利息和土地租金，国企将出现巨额亏损。

Even if the SOEs deserved their large profits, they would not be able to reinvest them if they paid proper dividends to their shareholders, principally the state. Since a 2007 reform, dividends have increased to 5-15% of profits, depending on the industry. But in other countries state enterprises typically pay out half, according to the World Bank. Moreover, SOE dividends are not handed over to the finance ministry to spend as it sees fit but paid into a special budget reserved for financing state enterprises. SOE dividends, in other words, are divided among SOEs.

即使国企得到的利润是合理地，如果他们向股东支付合理的红利之后，将很难有能力再投资。从2007年的一项改革开始，国企红利上缴比例增加到5%-15% 之间，根据所在行业有所不同。但是，根据世界银行的研究，其他国家的国有企业通常要支付50%。更有甚者，国企的利润并非上缴国家财政，而是上交到一个特 别的预算账户用来为国企融资。国企红利，说白了，就是国企之间的分赃。

The wrong sort of investment 错误的投资

Loren Brandt and Zhu Xiaodong of the University of Toronto argue that China’s worst imbalance is not between investment and consumption but between SOE investment and private investment. According to their calculations, if state capitalists had not enjoyed

privileged access to capital, China could have achieved the same growth between 1978 and 2007 with an investment rate of only 21% of GDP, about half its actual rate. A similar

conclusion was reached by David Dollar, now at America’s Treasury, and Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia Business School. They reckon that two-thirds of the capital employed by the SOEs should have been invested by private firms instead. Karl Marx made his case for collective ownership of the means of production in “Das Kapital”. Messrs Dollar and Wei called their riposte “Das (Wasted) Kapital”.

多伦多大学的劳伦?布兰特和朱晓东认为，中国最严重的失衡不是投资和消费，而是国企投资和私人投资。根据他们的测算，如果国企没后获得廉价资本支持，在 1978年-2007年之间，

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中国达到同样的增长仅仅需要投资GDP的21%，而不是50%。现在任职美国财政部的大卫?多拉和哥伦比亚商学院的魏尚金也 得出了类似的结论。他们认为国企投资中，有三分之二应该由私人投资。卡尔?马克思在《资本论》中论述了集体所有制的生产方式。多拉和魏称之为浪费的资本。

Perhaps the best that can be said of China’s SOEs is that they give the country’s ruling party a direct stake in the economy’s prosperity. Li-Wen Lin and Curtis Milhaupt of Columbia

University argue that the networks linking the party to the SOEs, and the SOEs to each other, help to forge an “encompassing” coalition, a concept they draw from Mancur Olson, a political scientist. The members of such a coalition “own so much of the society that they have an important incentive to be actively concerned about how productive it is”. China’s rulers not only own large swathes of industry, they have also installed their sons and daughters in senior positions at the big firms.

也许国有企业最大的优点在于它们为执政党提供了直接控制经济繁荣工具。哥伦比亚大学的林立文和卡迪斯?米尔哈特认为国企和党之间，国企和国企之间的网络有 助于形成一个“包容性”联盟，这个概念来自政治学家蒙克?奥尔森。联盟内的成员“拥有大量的社会资源，以至于他们有足够的激励去关注它的生产”。中国的执 政者不仅在经济中占据大部分，还让他们的子女在大公司中占据高位。

The SOEs provide some reassurance that the government will remain committed to

economic growth, according to Mr Milhaupt and another co-author, Ronald Gilson. The party officials embedded in them are like “hostages” to economic fortune, “the children of the monarch placed in the hands of those who need to rely upon the monarch”. That gives

private entrepreneurs confidence, because the growth thus guaranteed will eventually benefit them as well—although they will have to work harder for their rewards.

米尔哈特和另一位共同作者诺纳德?吉尔孙认为国有企业向政府提供了控制经济增长的再保险。国企中的中共官员被视为经济财富的人质，“统治者的孩子交给了那 些依靠统治者的人手中”。这为私营企业提供了信心，因为经济增长最终使他们自己也受益——尽管他们将不得不更辛苦的工作。

What are the implications of China’s malinvestment for its economic progress? At its worst, China’s growth model adds insult to injury. It suppresses consumption and forces saving, then misinvests the proceeds in speculative assets or excess capacity. It is as if Crusoe were forced to scatter more than half his barley on the soil, then leave part of the harvest to rot.

在中国的经济发展过程中，无效投资的意义何在？最坏的情况下，将使中国的发展雪上加霜。抑制消费，强迫储蓄，然后胡乱投资导致投机资产和产能过剩。这就像鲁滨逊被强迫拿出他一大半的大麦做种子，然后在丰收后留下一部分给老鼠。

The rot may not become apparent at once. Goods for which there is no demand at home can be sold abroad. And surplus plant and machinery can be kept busy making capital goods for another round of investment that will only add to the problem. But when the building dust settles, a number of consequences become clear. First, consumption is lower than it could be, because of the extra saving. GDP, properly measured, is also lower than it appears, because so much of it is investment, and some of that investment is ultimately valueless. It follows that the capital stock, properly measured, is also smaller than it seems, because a lot of it is rotten. That would make for a very different kind of island parable, a tale of needless austerity and squandered effort.

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老鼠的面目一开始可能不是那么明显。国内没有需求的货物可以卖到国外。过剩的工厂和机器可以保持生产，制造的资本品又被用到新一轮的投资中，这样的后果类 似饮鸩止渴。当尘埃落定，一系列恶果逐渐清晰。首先，由于过度储蓄，消费低于合理水平。真实的GDP将比统计的要低，因为投资占比过大，而相当一部分投资 是无用的。其次是资本累的真实水平也会比统计的要低，因为一部分被窃取。这会产生一个与鲁滨逊完全不同的寓言，一个毫无意义的节俭和浪费并存的故事。

Fortunately there is another side to China’s story. It has not only accumulated physical

capital but also acquired more know-how, better technology and cleverer techniques. That is why foreign multinationals in the country rely on local suppliers—and also why they fear local rivals. A Chinese motorbike-maker studied by John Strauss of the University of Southern California and his co-authors started out producing the metal casings for exhaust pipes. Then it learnt how to make the whole pipe. Next it mastered the pistons. Eventually it made the entire bike.

幸运的是故事中中国还有另一面。中国经济不仅在积累物质资本，同时也吸收了更好的技术和工艺。这就是在中国的外国跨国公司依赖于本地供应商的原因，这也是 他们害怕本地竞争者的原因。南加州大学的约翰?斯特劳斯和他的合作者研究的一个中国摩托车制造商最初生产的是废气管的金属壳，然后这家企业学会了制造废气 管，之后是活塞，最后他们学会了制造整个摩托车。

China “bears” like Mr Chanos sometimes neglect this side of the country’s progress. In his 2010 presentation he compared China to the Soviet Union, another empire in the east that enjoyed a stretch of beguiling economic growth. Like the Soviet command economy, China is good at marshalling inputs of capital and labour, he pointed out, but China has failed to

generate growth in output per input, just as the Soviet Union failed before it. Yet this analogy with the Soviet Union is preposterous.

查诺斯先生等唱空中国者常常忽略了中国经济中正面的因素。在2010年的演讲中，他将中国同前苏联相提并论，前苏联也曾经历过令人惊叹的经济增长。他指 出，像前苏联一样，中国也善于集中资本和劳动投入，但是中国每单位投入的产出如同前苏联一样是低效的。因此，这个将中国同苏联相类比的分析是荒谬的。

Economists refer to a rise in output per input of capital and labour as a gain in “total factor productivity”. Such gains have many sources. One textile boss got 20% more out of his seamstresses by playing background music in his factory, recalls Arnold Harberger of the University of California at Los Angeles. The striking thing about the growth in China’s total factor productivity is not its absence but its speed: the fastest in the world over the past decade. Between 2000 and 2008 it contributed 43% of the country’s economic growth,

according to the APO. That is just as big a contribution as the brute accumulation of capital, which accounted for 44% (excluding information technology). Thus even if some of China’s recent investment has in fact been wasted, China’s progress cannot be written off.

经济学家使用“全要素生产率”来表示投入单位资本和劳动的产出。这种产出有多重形式。加州大学洛杉矶分校的阿诺德?哈伯格实验发现，一个纺织商通过在工厂 播放背景音乐是女裁缝工人的产出提高了20%。中国的全要素生产率增长方面引人注目的是他的速度：过去的十年中全球增长最快的国家。APO研究发现在 2000年——2008年间，全要素生产率贡献了中国经济增长的43%。该比率跟资本积累的贡献率44%相差无几（不包括信息技术）。因此，尽管中国近期 的一些投资被浪费掉了，中国的进步仍然不可忽视。

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经越来越厌恶中国的增长模式所带来的副作用：物质丰富了，自然资源却枯竭了；大量资产建立了，产权却被剥夺了。

Some party elites and vested interests may also have grown complacent, worrying more about how to divide the economic spoils than how to enlarge them. But at least in their

rhetoric, leaders do not appear to be resting on their laurels. Asked about China’s prospects of becoming the world’s number one economy, Li Wei, head of the Development Research Centre, which advises China’s cabinet, saw no reason to celebrate. The country’s income per person still ranks around number 90 in the world. And even if its GDP overtakes

America’s by the end of the decade, China will remain as poor as Brazil or Poland are today, by one estimate.

一些党内精英和特权阶级也许自鸣得意，关心的更多是如何瓜分经济利益，而不是如何扩大经济利益。但至少根据他们的华丽言辞，领导人不应该满足现状，不思进 取。为中国国务院提供建议的发展研究中心主任李伟在被问及中国成为世界第一经济大国的前景时，表示看不到任何庆祝的理由。这个国家人均收入仍排在世界第 90位。据有关人士预测，即使中国的GDP在2020年超越美国，中国仍旧会像今天的巴西或波兰这样贫穷。

Hubris may be less of a danger than its opposite, a kind of economic diffidence. If China is still poor in the minds of policymakers, they may conclude that the economy is not yet ready for reforms that are in fact overdue. They may feel that a poor developing country does not need a more sophisticated financial system, cannot cope with a more flexible exchange rate and cannot afford to let its rural masses settle in the cities with their families.

经济上的不自信也许比狂妄自大更危险。如果中国领导人觉得国家仍然是贫穷的，他们也许会得出结论，当前的经济还未为改革做好准备，但其实早就应该开始改革 了；他们也许会认为一个贫穷的发展中国家不需要更为复杂的金融体系，不能应付更灵活的汇率，也无法使其农村大众安家于城市。

As long as the demand for investment remains strong and the supply of saving captive, China’s policymakers can feel confident that their country’s economy will continue to enjoy rapid growth and stability. But the faster that China expands, the sooner it will outgrow the development model that has served it so well for so long. Japan began to change its growth model back in the mid-1970s. By some measures China has already reached a similar stage of development, and yet its reforms remain tardy and timid.

只要投资欲望仍旧强烈，储蓄供应仍旧可得，中国的领导人就会自信其国家经济能持续快速稳定发展。但中国发展越快，就会越早脱离一直以来良好运作的经济模 式。日本在20世纪70年代中期改变了其发展模式。据某些指标显示，中国已经到达一个与当时的日本相似的发展阶段。但是改革一事仍是拖泥带水，止步不前。

School rules 学派之说

There are at least three schools of thought on China’s economic prospects over the next few years. The first sees few dangers ahead. China has expanded quickly, always beating

forecasts, and will continue to do so for the time being. It is a huge, fast-developing country with plenty of room yet to grow. It invests a lot—and so it should. These investments might not always generate good returns for the bankers that lent the money. But they will contribute more to the economy than they cost.

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对今后几年中国经济发展前景的看法，至少有三种流派学说。第一种学说表示没什么风险，中国发展迅速，总是打破预测，将来也会是这样。这是一个快速发展中的 国家，也仍有很大发展空间。它投资巨大，也理应如此。虽然这些投资并不总是给贷款的银行家们带来好的收益，但对经济的贡献要比付出的代价更多。

The second school of thought argues that China’s imbalances could overwhelm it. It cannot sustain its current high rate of investment, but there is nothing else to replace this as a

source of demand. Much of the credit extended by banks and shadow banks to keep growth going will sour. A government that owes its legitimacy entirely to growth will find it hard to contain the disappointment that a slowdown will entail.

第二种学派认为，中国的不平衡会使其失败。中国无法保持如今的高投资率，但没有其他东西能代替投资成为其需求来源。为保持经济的增长趋势，大量由银行和影子银行发放的信贷被延长还款期限，最后将变成坏账。其政府被认为是合理的，完全是由于经济的增长。这样的政府会发现，经济衰退时导致的失望将是他们难以控制的。

This special report subscribes to a third school of thought. It argues that China does face significant problems, but nothing it cannot handle. It has not obviously overinvested, but it has often invested unwisely. That is imposing real losses on Chinese developers, depositors and taxpayers. However, China’s financial system is better equipped than many others to ride out these losses. It may be inefficient in its allocation of capital, but it is quite stable. Indeed, it is resilient for some of the same reasons that it is inefficient.

这次的特别报告中表述了第三种流派的看法。他们认为，中国的确面临一些重要难题，但没有一个是不能攻克的。中国政府没有明显的过度投资行为，但的确经常投资地不够明智。这是将其实际损失强加在了开发商、存款人和纳税人身上。然而，中国的金融体系比其他很多国家都能更好地承受损失。也许其资本分配不够高效，但却足够稳定。事实上，导致低效率的一部分原因也恰恰是其拥有良好回弹力的原因。

“Our country must develop. If we do not develop then we will be bullied. Development is the only hard truth”

“我们的国家一定要发展，不发展就会受人欺负，发展才是硬道理。”

Until recently most economists believed that China was heavily dependent on exports. But it has carried on growing even as its current-account surplus has shrunk, and trade has

subtracted from growth, not added to it. The country is undoubtedly investment-dependent, but its biggest problem is malinvestment not overinvestment. Most people believe that its past malinvestment will impede future growth. This special report has raised doubts about that. Clearly China would be better off had it not wasted so much capital. But if the capital stock is not as good as it should be, that gives the country all the more room for improvement.

直到最近，大部分经济学家都依旧认为中国极大程度地依赖出口。但即使在往来账户顺差减少、贸易减少的情况下，中国经济仍然持续增长。这个国家无疑属于投资 依赖型，但它最大的问题不在于过度投资，而在于投资不当。许多人认为它过去的不正当投资会阻碍其未来发展。特别报告中对此有所质疑。毫无疑问，如果不是浪 费了这么多资本，中国的境况会更好。但如果资本存量不如它应该成为的那样，将会给中国带来更多的改进空间。

If the investment rate does fall, China will need another source of demand. The obvious place to look is household consumption, but consumers may not rise to the challenge. This special report has argued that a much higher rate of government consumption would be

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equally desirable—and perhaps more feasible.

如果中国的投资率的确下降了，它将需要另外的需求来源。一个明显的方向是居民消费。但可能消费者们还不足以应对这个挑战。特别报告中指出，大幅度提高政府消费也会同样可取，而且说不定更为可行。

As China’s capital accumulates, its population ages and its villages empty, saving will grow less abundant and good investment opportunities will become scarcer. China will then need to use its resources more judiciously. That will require it to free up its financial system, introducing more efficiency even at some cost to stability.

随着中国的资本累积，人口趋向老龄化，农村趋向真空化，存款量会越来越不充足，良好的投资机遇也会更少。中国需要更明智地使用其财力。这就要求其要开放金融体系，引进更高效率机制，即使会给稳定造成一些代价。

China is a vastly more prosperous and expansive country than it was 20 years ago. It has broader horizons and can afford a wider range of concerns. Development is no longer China’s only truth. But it is still hard.

如今的中国比20年前的中国要繁荣、广阔的多。它拥有更宽广的视野，可以承受更广泛的关注。发展再也不是中国唯一的道理，但仍然是需要坚持的重要道路。 http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67779-1-1.html译者clarelan

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And even if some of China’s past investment has been futile, adding nothing worthwhile to the capital stock, there is a consolation: it will leave more scope to invest later, suggesting that the country’s potential for growth is even larger than the optimists think. The right kind of investment can still generate high returns. But what if the mistaken investments of the past disrupt the financial system, preventing resources from being deployed more effectively in the future?

尽管中国过去的部分投资是无用的，对增加资本存量毫无价值，至少还有一点：它为未来的投资留下了空间，显示着中国的增长潜力比乐观者的估计还要大。正确的投资还将产生丰厚的回报。但是，如果过去错误的投资扰乱了金融系统，在未来妨碍着资源的有效利用，事情将是怎么样的呢？

http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67767-1-1.html译者jmline

The ballad of Mr Guo 郭先生的歌谣

What makes local-government officials tick 地方官员为何如此

May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

SINGING KARAOKE WITH Taiwanese investors, smearing birthday cake on the cheeks of an American factory owner, knocking back baijiu, a Chinese spirit, with property developers: Guo Yongchang would do anything to attract investment to Gushi, a county of 1.6m people in Henan province, where he served as party secretary. His antics are recorded in “The

Transition Period”, a remarkable fly-on-the-wall documentary about his last months in office, filmed by Zhou Hao.

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河南省信阳市固始县,现有人口160万。郭永昌作为县委书记，为了给固始县招商引资，他可以做任何事情。他会同台湾投资商唱卡拉ok，往美国工厂主脸上抹 生日蛋糕，和房地产开发商们一起狂饮白酒。周浩暗中拍摄的一部记录片《过渡时期》很值得人注意，片中记录了郭永昌调任前几个月这些古怪而滑稽的行为。

Mr Guo persuades one developer to raise the price of his flats because Gushi people are interested only in the priciest properties. After a boozy dinner he drapes himself over the developer’s shoulder and extracts a promise from him to add more storeys to his tower to outdo the one in the neighbouring city.

郭永昌劝说一个房地产开发商提高房价，因为他说固始县人只对最贵的房地产感兴趣。吃过晚饭后，喝地醉醺醺他把手搭在这位开发商肩上，硬是逼着开发商同意将大楼再盖高几层，目的是为了超过临市的大楼高度。

The one-upmanship exemplified by Mr Guo has generated great economic dynamism, but also great inefficiency. When the central government tries to stop economic overheating, local governments resist. Conversely, when the government urged the banks to support its 2008 stimulus effort, local governments scrambled to claim an outsized share of the lending. The result is a local-government debt burden worth over a fifth of China’s 2011 GDP.

郭永昌这种总是想胜人一筹的做法，活跃了固始县的经济，但是也造成了极大地浪费。当中央政府竭力遏制经济过热时，地方政府却不予配合。相反，当政府敦促各 银行配合政府刺激2008年经济发展政策时，地方政府却纷纷宣称贷款份额过大。结果是地方政府债务负担超过了中国2011年国内生产总值的五分之一。

The worst abuses, however, involve land. Local officials can convert collectively owned rural plots into land for private development. Since farmers cannot sell their land directly to

developers, they have to accept what the government is willing to pay. Often that is not very much.

然而最糟糕的是滥用土地。地方政府可将公有农村土地转为私人开发用地。因为农民无权直接将土地卖给开发商，他们便只有被迫接受政府给出的价格。而通常来说，政府给出的价格一向不高。

Such perverse incentives have caused China’s towns and cities to grow faster in area than they have grown in population. Their outward ripple has engulfed some rural communities without quite erasing them. The perimeter of Wenzhou city in Zhejiang province, to take one example, now encompasses clutches of farmhouses, complete with vegetable plots,

quacking ducks and free-range children. This results in some incongruous sights. Parked outside one farmhouse are an Audi, a Mercedes and a Porsche. Alas, they do not belong to the locals but to city slickers who want their hub caps repainted.

这种错误的刺激措施使中国城镇面积增长比人口增长还快。城市的快速蔓延吞没了一些农村社区，但仍保留有很多农村的迹象。举例来讲，浙江省温州市的外围是一 些农家，菜地，呱呱乱叫的鸭子，和自由撒欢的孩子们。这就造成了一些不和谐的想象。在农家门口停放的是奥迪，奔驰和保时捷。唉，但他们都不是当地人的，而 是那些时髦的城里人的。他们把车停在这儿只是想让人给他们把车子的毂盖重新漆一下。

Oddly, where electoral reforms have given Chinese villagers a bigger say in local

government, growth tends to slow, according to Monica Martinez-Bravo of Johns Hopkins University and her colleagues. This is partly because elected local officials shift their efforts

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from expanding the economy to providing public goods, such as safe water. But it is also because a scattered electorate cannot monitor them as closely as their party superiors can.

奇怪的是，根据约翰霍普金斯大学的莫妮卡?马丁内斯?布拉沃（Monica Martinez-Bravo）和她的同事的研究，选举改革给了中国村民在地方政府上更大的话语权，但是实行村民选举的地区经济增速却趋于放缓。造车这种 状况的一部分原因是被选举的地方官员，不再一心努力扩张经济了，而是转向了提供公共产品，例如提供安全用水方面。但同时也是因为选民过于分散，因此无法做 到像地方官员党内的上级领导那样可以密切监管他们。

Fear of their bosses and hunger for revenues keep local officials on their toes. Mr Guo, star of “The Transition Period”, was eventually convicted of bribery. He was not entirely honest in the performance of his duties, and not always sober either. But with all the parties, banquets and karaoke, no one could accuse him of being lazy.

一方面害怕上级领导，一方面要努力增加财政收入，这使得地方官员们时刻保持警觉。《过渡时期》中的名人郭永昌最终贪污受贿被判刑。在任期间，他并非完全恪尽职守，也并不是总是清醒的。但是看看他参加的所有聚会，晚宴，和卡拉ok， 没有人可以责备他懒惰。 http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67795-1-1.html译者chengziwendy

Finance 金融

Bending not breaking 弯而不折

China’s financial system looks quake-proof, but for how long? 中国的金融系统看上去是抗震的，但是又能持续多久呢？

May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

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VISITORS TO SICHUAN’S atmospheric mountains, home to both Tibetan and Qiang

minorities, used to skip Yingxiu village on their way to more scenic spots higher up. But the devastating earthquake that struck the area in May 2008 has turned the village into an unlikely tourist attraction. The earthquake killed 6,566 people in the village, over 40% of its population. Its five-storey middle school collapsed, killing 55 people. Nineteen students and two teachers remain buried in the rubble.

四川境内云雾缭绕的山区是藏族和羌族这两个少数民族的家园，前往此处的游客曾经都是跳过映秀镇直接前往更高处的旅游景点。但是2008年5月发生在该区域 的极具破坏力的地震却意外将这个小镇变成了游客向往之地。地震造成该镇6566人死亡，也就是超过40%的人口。该镇一座5层的中学楼倒塌，55人死亡。 19名学生和2位老师依旧被埋葬于砾石当中。

Four years on, the crumpled school remains. It has been preserved as a memorial to the disaster, but almost every other sign of the quake has been erased. The village is full of new homes with friezes painted in strong Tibetan colours. Other buildings are topped with flat roof terraces, a white concrete triangle in each corner, echoing the white stones that adorn traditional Qiang architecture. The new homes look a little like Qiang stone houses on the outside, one villager concedes. “But inside they are all Han.”

4年过去了，倒塌的学校犹在。它被作为灾难的纪念物保留了下来，而几乎所有其他地震的痕迹都已被抹去。新建的住宅遍布小镇，屋带绘有浓郁的藏族色彩。有的 建筑物屋顶是呈阶梯状的平顶，每个屋角上都是一个白色的水泥三角形，与用来装饰传统羌族建筑的白色石头相映衬。新房子从外面看与羌族石屋倒是有几分相像， 一个村民说，“但是从里面看，它们就全然是汉族（特征）了。”

Yingxiu is an example of “outstanding reconstruction”, according to a billboard en route. Outside this showcase village, people have rebuilt their lives with less government help. But there is no denying that China set about reconstructing the earthquake zone with a speed and determination few other countries would be able to match. A propaganda poster shows Hu Jintao, China’s president, bullhorn in hand, declaring that “Nothing Can Stop the Chinese”.

映秀是“非凡的重建”的榜样，一座路边的广告牌写道。在这个展示性的镇子外面，人们在重建生活时来自政府的帮助就要少一些。但是不可否认，中国着手重建地 震灾区的速度和决心鲜有国家能够匹敌。一个政治宣传海报展示了中国国家主席胡锦涛手持喇叭宣告“任何事都不能阻止中国人民。”

The earthquake did great damage to the region’s property and infrastructure. But although it left the local economy worse off, the pace of economic activity picked up in the wake of the disaster. There was much to do precisely because so much had been lost. Even today the mountain road is lined with lorries.

地震给地区的财产和基础设施造成了严重损坏。但是虽然它恶化了当地经济，灾后经济活动的

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节奏却在加速。正因为失去了太多，所以大有可为之事。甚至到今天山间公路上还是成排的卡车。

Some economists worry that China may soon suffer a different kind of economic disaster: a financial tremor of unknown magnitude. Pivot Capital Management, a hedge fund in Monaco, argues that China’s recent investment spree was driven by a “credit frenzy” which will turn into a painful “credit bust”.

一些经济学家担心中国也许很快将遭受一种不同的经济灾难：一场震级不明的金融震荡。位于摩纳哥的对冲基金Pivot Capital Management认为中国近期的投资热潮是受到“信贷狂热”的驱使，后者将变成一个痛苦的“信用破产”。

Lending jumped from 122% of GDP in 2008 to 171% just two years later, according to

Charlene Chu of Fitch, a ratings agency, who counts some items (such as credit from lightly regulated “trust” companies) that do not show up in the official figures. This surge in credit is reminiscent of the run-up to America’s financial crisis in 2008, Japan’s in 1991 and South Korea’s a few years later (see chart 5), Ms Chu argues. When Fitch plugged China’s figures into its disaster warning system (the “macroprudential risk indicator”), the model suggested a 60% chance of a banking crisis by the middle of next year.

评级机构惠誉的朱夏莲把一些未被官方数字列示出来的项目（比如从很少受到监管的“信托”公司放出的信贷）计算在内。据该机构显示，借贷从2008年的占 GDP的122%跃升至两年后的171%，朱夏莲女士争论说，这一信贷激增与2008年的美国金融危机、1991年日本金融危机以及几年后的韩国金融危机 到来前的冲刺阶段一脉相承。当惠誉公司把中国的数据录入它的灾难预警系统（“宏观审慎风险指示器”），该模型预示明年年中前银行业发生危机的可能性为 60%。

China’s frenzied loan-making has traditionally been matched by equally impressive deposit-taking. Even now, most households have few alternative havens for their money. This

captive source of cheap deposits leaves China’s banks largely shock-proof. They make a lot

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sitting on docile deposits may struggle to match the timing of cash pay-outs and inflows, Ms Chu frets. The banking regulator may also be worried. It has now banned maturities of less than a month.

截止2012年一季度末，这些产品达到10.4万亿元，惠誉的朱女士说。那将超过存款总额的12%。大多数的到期日很短，使得购买者可以随意按月购买。习 惯于坐等存款到来的银行也许要为赶上货币结付与进账速度而努力挣扎了，朱女士急言道。银行监管者也许同样会担心。它现在禁止还款期限少于一个月。

The recent proliferation of wealth-management products amounts to a de-facto liberalisation of interest rates, Ms Chu argues. The growing competition for deposits is showing up in other ways too. When the finance ministry auctions its own six-month deposits, banks are now willing to offer rates as high as 6.8%, more than twice the maximum they are able to offer to ordinary depositors.

近期理财产品的激增相当于是一个实际上的利率自由化，朱女士争论说。对存款日渐激烈的竞争同样体现在其他方面。当财政部拍卖其半年期的存款时，银行现在愿意给出高达6.8%的利率，这比他们能够为普通储户给出的最高利率还要高两倍。

The government may seek to formalise this de facto liberalisation, gradually allowing banks more freedom to set rates on large long-term deposits—the kind that will otherwise

disappear from banks’ books. Net corporate deposits, for example, did not grow at all in 2011. Higher rates would help attract them back.

政府也许会寻求使这一事实上的自由化规范起来，逐步给予银行更多自由来对长期的大额存款设定利率——否则这种存款将会从银行的账簿上消失。比如净公司存款，在2011年根本没有增长。更高的利率将有助于把它们吸引回来。

That would also raise banks’ costs of funding, forcing China to become more efficient in its allocation of capital. At the moment the system is segregated between big enterprises, which enjoy relatively low borrowing costs, and credit-starved private firms that could potentially earn much higher returns on investment. In a freer financial system, competition would begin to close this gap. If interest rates went up to match the return on capital, Chinese investment would fall by 3% of GDP, according to a study by Nan Geng and Papa N’Diaye of the IMF.

那同样也会提高银行的融资成本，迫使中国在资本配置上更有效率。在当前，系统被隔离成两部分：享有较低借款成本的大企业以及信贷匮乏的私有企业，后者潜在 的投资回报率要高得多。在一个更自由的金融系统中，竞争会逐步结束这一隔离。一项由国际货币基金组织的Nan Geng和Papa N’Diaye的研究表明，如果利率上升到和资产回报率相持平，中国的投资下降（幅度）将是GDP的3%。

More flexible interest rates would also raise Chinese consumption, says Nick Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He calculates that if banks paid something resembling a market interest rate on their vast deposits, household income would increase

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by 2% of GDP. Higher incomes, he argues, would cause their spending to rise and their saving rate to fall. The idea that higher rates will make people save less is unorthodox, but Mr Lardy argues that the higher income from saving will have a bigger effect than the higher reward offered for it. Chinese households save towards a goal, he suggests, such as the down-payment on a house or the cost of a potential medical emergency. Lower the return to saving, and they will just save even harder to achieve their goal.

更加灵活的利率同样能够提振中国的消费，彼得森国际经济学院的尼克?拉蒂说。他的计算表明如果银行对他们的海量储户付给像是市场利率的（回报），家庭收入 将会上升2%的

GDP。他争论说：更高的收入能够使得他们的支出上升、储蓄率下降。更高的利率将使人们更少去储蓄，这一观点是个悖论，但是拉蒂辩称从存款 中获取更高收入能比给存款以更高奖励的作用要大。他建议，中国的家庭为一个目标而储蓄，比如一套住房的首付或者是潜在的医学紧急情况的花费。降低存款回 报，他们将会更加努力存钱去实现他们的目标。

Research by Malhar Nabar of the IMF suggests that higher interest rates would indeed bring down saving rates, but the effects would be modest. If the real rate on one-year deposits rose from roughly 0% today to a more reasonable 3%, it would lower household saving by only about 0.5% of GDP, he calculates. But if higher interest rates alone will not liberate Chinese consumption, what will?

国际货币基金组织的Malhar Nabar所做的研究表明，更高的利率确实将会压低存款利率，但其效果不明显。他预测，如果一年期存款的实际利率从今天的0%上升到更合理的3%，它将会 降低的家庭储蓄大约为GDP的0.5%。但是如果单是高利率不能释放中国的消费，什么才能呢？

注：The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s (commonly dubbed the S&L crisis) was the failure of about 747 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States. A savings and loan or \and makes mortgage, car and other personal loans to individual members—a cooperative venture known in the United Kingdom as a Building Society. \estimated that the total cost for resolving the 747 failed institutions was $87.9 billion.\remainder of the bailout was paid for by charges on savings and loan accounts—which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s. hina

http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67940-1-1.html译者shyerplayer

Homeric wisdom 荷马式智慧

Easier cross-border capital flows may help liberalise interest rates 更自由的资本跨界流动也许能促进利率的自由化

May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

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SPEECHMAKERS LIKE TO claim that the Chinese word for crisis (weiji) contains the

characters for both danger and opportunity. Most linguists dispute this. Either way, China’s economic policymakers don’t seem to believe it. For them, a crisis is a reason to batten down the hatches.

演讲者们总喜欢说，中文里的危机一词中，“危”代表危险，“机”代表机遇。不过大多数语言学家都反驳这一观点。但中国经济的决策者们似乎并不信奉任何一方。因为对他们而言，危机意味着准备着手面对困境。

In 1996 China’s government told the IMF that it intended to remove its controls on

international capital flows within five to ten years. But when the Asian financial crisis struck a year later, China’s government retreated into its shell.

1996年，中国政府向国际货币基金组织表示，它计划在五到十年之内解除对国际资本流动的控制。然而一年之后亚洲金融危机来袭，中国政府的此番表态便不见下文。

Sixteen years later the timing looks better. Fear of capital outflows has been assuaged by China’s vast foreign-exchange reserves. The opposite danger—excessive capital inflows—has also eased. Indeed, the yuan has come under downward pressure at several points in the past year.

十六年后，时机看起来更为成熟。中国拥有巨额的外汇储备，因此政府对资本流出的担忧也就相对减轻。反过来，过多的资本流入的危险也被削弱。事实确实如此，人民币去年曾几度面临贬值压力。

Reformers in the government are testing the waters. In April regulators raised the amount that “qualified” foreign

investors can venture in the country’s securities markets to $80 billion, and eased the limit that similarly qualified Chinese investors can whisk out of the country. The central bank also loosened its grip on the currency a little, widening the yuan’s daily band from 0.5% either way to 1%.

政府中的改革者们正在试水深浅。今年四月，监管者们将“合格”的境外投资者在中国证券市场的总投资额提升至800亿美元，同时也放宽了合格的国内投资者在境外投资的金额限制。央行稍微放宽了对人民币的管制，RMB的日上下行浮动率从0.5个百分点提高到1个百分点。

China has no obvious need for foreign capital: its own saving is more than enough to meet its investment needs. So liberalisers may have ulterior motives in mind, calculating that external liberalisation will force the pace of domestic financial reform. If capital could move more freely across borders, the authorities would struggle to keep interest rates artificially low—unless they were prepared to let capital flee and the currency fall.

中国对外国资本的需求不甚凸显：因为其自身的储备额远超其所需的投资额。因此改革者们也许有其隐秘目的，他们估计，国外资金流动的自由化将迫使国内金融改革的步伐加快。如果资本能够更加自由地跨境流动，如果资本跨境流动更加自由，则除非当局打算让资本外逃、人民

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币贬值，否则他们难以人为保持低水平利率。

By opening the capital account soon, China could claim several prizes, reformers argue. Its investors could acquire foreign firms at low prices, thanks to European turmoil and American caution. The country could also take advantage of the world’s disillusion with the dollar to promote the yuan as an international store of value and medium of exchange.

改革者们指出，中国将在近期开放其资本账户，或许会有几项好处。如今，欧洲水深火热，美国也不敢妄动，正因如此，中国的投资者才得以以低价收购国外公司。当下，全世界都不再对美元抱有幻想，中国可能会趁势推动人民币的国际化，使其成为国际储备货币及交换媒介。

Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution calls this a “Trojan horse” strategy, after the gift horse described by Homer that tricked the Trojans into opening their gates. The reformers’ ploy poses some risks. If China opens the capital account before it reforms its SOEs, foreign lending may help feed their investment hunger. An open border would also make it harder to contain a domestic banking crisis. A different Homer put it best. Told that Chinese uses the same word for crisis and opportunity, Homer Simpson exclaimed: “Yes! Crisa-tunity!” A premature opening of the capital account would be just that.

布鲁金斯研究所的研究人员艾斯娃?普拉萨德将中国资本账户的开放称作“特洛伊木马”战略，将其比作荷马描述的诱使特洛伊人打开城门的战利品木马。不过中国改革者的策略也存在某些风险。如果中国在改革其国有企业之前便开放了资本账户，外国借贷可能会助长国企的投资欲望。但如果资金可以自由跨境流动，控制国内银行业危机会更为不易。另一位荷马（荷马?辛普森，《辛普森一家》中的角色，译者注）在被告知中文里的危机既指危险也指机遇后，他给出了最精辟的概括。他惊呼道：“太棒了！危-机！”其实，过早地开放资本账户便是如此。 http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67787-1-1.html译者vivijourney

Special report: China's economy 特别报道：中国经济现状

Shades of grey 挥之不去的阴影

Wenzhou’s shadow banking system has taken a knock 温州影子银行体系【注1】遭受挫折 May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

THE SMALL-BUSINESS association of Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province renowned for its scrappy entrepreneurialism, used to inhabit spartan premises in the city centre, but in March it graduated to plusher offices 15 floors up on the fringes of the city. It is a sign that Wenzhou’s brand of wheeler-dealer capitalism is being spruced up.

浙江温州“中小企业协会”以它活跃的企业主义文化久负盛名，曾坐落于市中央的斯巴达式大楼，而今年三月在郊区重新升级的15层豪华办事处表明，以精明著称的温州商人资本市场开始逐渐回暖。

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The desk of Zhou Dewen, the association’s head, must be ten feet long. But he still does most of his talking on the couch or in a nearby restaurant where he entertains visiting

businessmen. In his office, Mr Zhou hears a pitch from Mao Shuhui, who runs the province’s first and only etiquette company. Her clients include the local tax office and a number of mostly state-owned banks. Their staff sometimes need a few pointers, she says. Their hair can be messy and their gestures impolite. Placing a finger on each corner of her mouth, she teaches them how to smile as though they mean it.

虽然会长周德文的办公桌有十英尺长，当招待来访的商人时，他仍喜欢把谈话地点选在沙发或附近的餐馆。在办公室，周先生正在和毛淑慧高谈阔论，毛淑慧经营着 浙江省第一家也是唯一一家礼仪公司，她的客户主要来自地税局和国有银行。她说，那些机构的员工头发总是乱糟糟，仪态也不优雅，所以有时候需要一些礼仪培 训，她把手指放到自己的嘴角，比划着如何教他们微笑。

However wide their grins, China’s banks have not been much help to most Wenzhou entrepreneurs. Long-established firms like Ritai, the shoe-manufacturing outfit run by Mr Zhou’s deputy, Jin Zhexin, can get a loan if it is guaranteed by a more creditworthy

enterprise. But most Wenzhou entrepreneurs have turned elsewhere. Businessmen with money to spare lend it directly to firms in need, without a bank as middleman. Wenzhou’s shadow financial system amounted to 110 billion yuan in 2010, according to one estimate, equivalent to 38% of the city’s GDP.

可是无论员工怎么微笑，对大部分温州企业家来说，中国的银行也不会给他们很多帮助。周先生的代理人金哲新掌管着一家已有悠久历史的日泰鞋厂，如果他能找到更多有信誉的企业做担保的话，他才能获得贷款，所以多数企业家开始另谋他法：商人们开始不通过银行做担保而直接把钱贷给危难中的企业，据统计，温州的影子金融体系在2010年已达到1100亿元，相当于该市GDP的38%。

In escaping China’s financial repression, however, the city’s informal lending system also ducked out of its financial safety system, including its prudential safeguards and its lender of last resort. As the central bank tightened credit in 2010 and 2011, desperate borrowers drew too heavily on grey finance, taking loans they could not repay. Some simply fled. Unnerved, informal lenders began calling in their loans and refusing new ones. The crisis fed on itself. Eventually the government cracked down on borrowers and lenders alike, so the money dried up completely.

在避开中国金融管制的同时，温州的私人信贷体系也在处理自身的金融安全问题，这不仅涉及自己谨慎的保障措施，还有它的最后借贷人。当中央银行在2010和 2011年收紧信贷制度时，绝望的贷款人被迫转向沉重的“灰色金融”，去接受那些无力偿还的贷款，有的甚至直接跑路，而紧张的私人债权人开始收回他们的贷 款并不再放出新的贷款，他们终于自己给自己制造了危机。最后政府开始打击民间放贷人和借贷人与其类似机构，所以私人资金市场也干涸了。

In Wenzhou’s Fortune Centre, where the most successful lenders once congregated, all that is left of one shadow financier are the indentations on a plaque where its name used to be. In another office, an erstwhile private lender has gone for a completely different sort of

business, investing 10m yuan in a TV spy caper set during the Japanese occupation. He wears a Dennis Hopper T-shirt and keeps cans of Budweiser in the office fridge. In the past he could arrange a loan with a single telephone call. Now “the trust is destroyed.”

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温州财富中心曾是大腕级债权人云集的地方，而现在只剩下伤痕累累的牌匾，牌匾上影子金融家的名字还历历在目。而另一家办事处曾是一个私人债权人追寻完全不 同商业模式的地方，在日本占据时期投资1000万在非法电视监控系统上，他常穿着丹尼斯?霍珀的T恤，喝着办公室冰箱里的百威啤酒，一个电话就能安排一次 贷款，而现在“这份信任已经不复存在”。

In the absence of trust, lenders demand more tangible collateral. The manager of Dongkai Pawnshop says his business has benefited from the crisis. People who could previously borrow on the strength of their relationships must now offer something solid, like the 100g gold bar commemorating the Beijing Olympics that is for sale in the lobby.

由于缺乏信任，放贷人常常要求用有形资产做抵押。东开典当的负责人说它们的业务由于危机还提升不少，以前人们可以靠过硬的人际关系来获得借款，而现在必须提供实体抵押，比如100克的北京奥运会纪念版金条就正在大厅摆放待售。

In March the central government unveiled a number of sensible reforms to tame the

Wenzhou system without crushing it. Informal lenders will henceforth need to be registered, more private capital will be encouraged and the issuance of high-yield bonds approved. Yet the government still resists the more elegant solution to the problem proposed by Mr Zhou: allowing borrowers and lenders the freedom to set whatever interest rate they like.

中央政府在三月颁布了一系列有益的改革措施以改善温州的状况，今后私人债权人要进行注册登记，鼓励更多的私人资本进入市场并且高利贷的发行要经过核准和认可，但政府依然拒绝周先生提出的更好方案——让借贷双方自由选择他们想要的利率。

from the print edition | Special report

【注1】影子银行又称为影子金融体系或者影子银行系统(Shadow Banking system)，是指房地产贷款被加工成有价证券，交易到资本市场，房地产业传统上由银行系统承担的融资功能逐渐被投资所替代，属于银行的证券化活动。影 子银行系统的概念由美国太平洋投资管理公司执行董事麦卡利首次提出并被广泛采用，又称为平行银行系统(The Parallel Banking

System)，它包括投资银行、对冲基金、货币市场基金、债券保险公司、结构性投资工具(SIVs)等非银行金融机构。这些机构通常从事放款，也接受抵押，是通过杠杆操作持有大量证券、债券和复杂金融工具的金融机构。在带来金融市场繁荣的同时，影子银行的快速发展和高杠杆操作给整个金融体系带来了巨大的脆弱性，并成为此次全球金融危机的主要推手。 http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67693-1-1.html译者sj1205

Consumers 消费者

Dipping into the kitty 动用资金

Chinese consumption is about much more than shopping 中国的消费不仅限于购物

May 26th 2012 | from the print edition

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An important source of demand 一个巨大的潜在市场

ZHANG GUIDONG GREW up on a farm in Anhui, a poor inland province, where China’s

economic reforms made a humble beginning. He left home for Beijing in 1995 with only a few years’ schooling. First he sold belts and lighters in Tiananmen Square. When that was banned, he joined some friends from back home in Beijing’s Silk Market, where he sold vegetables and silk items to the staff of the embassies nearby.

张贵东（音译）在安徽省的一个农场长大。安徽省改革起步较晚，是一个经济落后的内陆省。1995年，只上过几年学的他，离开家乡，到北京闯荡。最初，他在 天安门广场买皮带和打火机。后来，不上在天安门摆摊了，他便同几个老家来的朋友一起，在北京丝绸市场卖些蔬菜和丝绸类商品，顾客多为附近大使馆的职员。

The Silk Market is famous for selling brand-name goods at suspiciously low prices, often to tourists who seem to enjoy the combination of rip-offs and knock-offs. Fined many times for selling fakes, Mr Zhang eventually decided to change his strategy. He sought a licence to sell genuine goods under the brand “Hello Kitty”. A white bobtailed cat that first appeared on a purse in the 1970s, Kitty now counts as Asia’s answer to Mickey Mouse.

丝绸市场出名之处在于，那里卖的品牌商品价格低得令人生疑。光顾这里的通常是些游客。他们似乎很喜欢这里的东西，因为在市面上贵得离谱的品牌商品，在这里 却能以低价买到仿制品。因出售假冒伪劣商品被罚多次后，张贵东最终决定改变策略。经过一番努力，他申请到了出售Hello Kitty真品货物的经销权。Hello Kitty 是一只短尾白猫。20世纪70年代，第一次出项在一种钱包上。现在，Hello Kitty堪称是亚洲的米老鼠了。

The brand’s guardians were initially worried by all the fakes on sale in the market, but in the

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end they were persuaded that the place was trying to clean itself up. Mr Zhang’s business is now doing well. In March he was set to move from his old ten-square-metre stall on the ground floor to a 15-square-metre spot on the third floor, where the market is grouping its more reputable outlets. Most of the other stallholders are also from the countryside, Mr Zhang notes. “I never dreamt that I could one day have a life like this.”

Hello Kitty品牌维护者最初因丝绸市场上卖的假冒伪劣商品而忧心忡忡。但最后他们还是被说服，相信丝绸市场正在自我整顿。现在，张贵东的生意做得很好。三月 份，他正准备从原来十平方米的地摊挪到市场三楼一个十五平方米的地方。哪了，正组织一批更加规范的商店。张贵东说，其余的摊主多数也是来自农村。“过去我 从来没敢想过，有一天可以过上这样的日子。 ”他说道。

Most people think of China as an industrial powerhouse, not a consumer’s paradise.

Household consumption as a percentage of GDP fell for ten years in a row from 2001. By the end of that decade it amounted to only 34% of GDP, about 19 points below Japan’s lowest post-war ratio and 15 points below South Korea’s. America’s consumption did not dip far below 50% of GDP even during the second world war, as Mr Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics points out in his book, “Sustaining China’s Economic Growth”. But this declining ratio is deceptive. Consumption in China has actually been growing faster than in any other big country. It is just that China’s GDP has been growing even more rapidly. 大多数人都把中国看作是一个工业重地，却从不认为中国式消费者的天堂。自2001年起，连续十年，中国的家庭消费占GDP比重逐年下降。2010年底，家 庭收入占GDP比重为

34%，这个数据比战后日本的最低数据还低约19%, 比韩国低约15%。正如彼得森国际经济研究所的高级研究员尼古拉斯?拉蒂(Nicholas Lardy)在他《维持中国经济增长》一书中指出的，即使在二战期间，美国的消费占GDP比重也没跌破50%。然而，这种表面看似逐年下降的比率并非真 实。中国消费增长其实比任何一个大国都要快。只不过，中国GDP增长比消费增长更快罢了。

Consumption always lags income, both on the way up and on the way down, argue Carl

Bonham of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Calla Wiemer of the University of Southern California. This is partly because people choose to “smooth” their consumption over time, but also because people generally hesitate to abandon a lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed. Although China’s output and income surged after 2000, its consumption habits have yet to catch up.

夏威夷大学马诺亚分校的卡尔?博纳姆（Carl Bonham）和南加利福尼亚大学的威尔默（Calla Wiemer）表示，不论是在上升期还是在下降期，消费总是落后于增长。一方面是由于人们更喜欢细水长流的消费方式，手头有存款，以备不时之需。另一方面 是因为，普遍来讲，人们不愿意放弃早已习惯的生活方式。虽然自2000年以后，中国的生产和人民收入都飞速提升，但是人们的消费习惯并没有跟上。

Bootstrap businessmen from the boondocks do not always know what to do with their

newfound wealth, according to research by Jacqueline Elfick, a cultural anthropologist. One couple, newly arrived in Shenzhen, lined their entire flat with bathroom tiles. Another

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complained that their bathroom windows lacked the blue translucent glass found in rural toilet blocks. A homebuyer who had never previously lived in anything bigger than a two-room flat took a residence with six rooms, filling four of them with dining suites.

文化人类学家杰奎琳?艾尔菲克（Jacqueline Elfick）研究表明，偏远地区走出的商人，经过自己努力挣到钱后，却不知道如何花。一堆刚搬到深圳的夫妇，把整个公寓都铺上了浴室瓷砖。另一对责抱怨 他们卫生间的窗户上没有农村厕所上的蓝色半透明玻璃。一个之前从未住过两间以上公寓的购房者，买了一个六间房的公寓后，将四间房都摆满了餐桌椅。

But consumer habits are evolving. In Shenzhen, notes Ms Elfick, the constant churn of the population and relative absence of established hierarchies means “you are what you buy.” The new rich announce themselves by spending profusely. They favour “heavy ornate

furniture in faux Baroque”. In Sanya, an advert for one luxury residence shows a painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps hanging on the wall as a woman in a low-backed evening dress lingers by the window.

但是中国人的消费习惯正在改变。艾尔菲克指出，在深圳，人口的不断融合加上相对而言还未完全建立起来的社会等级制度，意味着“买的东西决定身价”。刚富起 来的人靠大手大脚地花钱来显示自己富有。他们喜欢“装饰华丽的仿巴洛克风格的家具”。在三亚，一个豪华居所的广告是这样的：一个穿露背装晚礼服的女人悠闲 地站在窗边，墙上却挂着一幅拿破仑穿越阿尔卑斯山的油画。

But there is also a growing class of discerning customers who look down on ostentation. They pride themselves on their appreciation of wine, tea and coffee. In Beijing the TV

screens that now pop up in taxis teach passengers how to judge a wine’s intensity and why they should not overfill their glass. “Knowledge of how to consume has in itself become a commodity,” Ms Elfick writes.

但是，也出现了越来越多的有见识的消费者阶层，他们以自己鉴赏葡萄酒、茶、咖啡的品味而自豪，看不起卖弄摆阔的人。北京出租车的电视上，教乘客如何判断葡萄酒的浓度，以及为何不应当将酒杯倒满。艾尔菲克写道：“关于如何消费的知识本身已经成为了一种商品。” Just as consumption failed to grow as quickly as incomes over the past decade, it will fail to slow as quickly over the decade to come. As China’s growth eases from 10% a year to something closer to 7% during this decade, consumption will rise naturally as a share of GDP.

正如过去的几十年中消费增速始终落后于收入增速一样，接下来的十年中，消费放缓的速度也不会超过收入放缓速度。这十年间，当中国经济增速会放缓，由10%的年增长率降为约7%时, 消费占GDP比重自然会上升。

Some economists think it has already begun to do so. Yiping Huang of Barclays Capital says the official statistics fail to reflect a surge in consumer spending since 2008. They are

particularly bad at capturing extra spending on accommodation, such as rent payments by tenants or the benefits enjoyed by owner-occupiers.

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一些经济学家认为，中国消费支出占GDP的比重其实已经开始上升了。巴克莱资本的黄益平说，官方数据并没有显示自2008年起，消费支出的飞速上升。这些数据并没有很好地捕捉到人们在住宿方面的额外消费。例如，房客付的租金和房东所得的利益。

One proxy for consumer spending is retail sales, which have grown much faster than GDP in recent years. Unfortunately, these statistics are no better at capturing expenditure on

accommodation. And in China they include many things other than household consumption, such as government purchases and trade in industrial products like basic chemicals. But even when those items are stripped out, Mr Huang shows, sales are rising fast.

消费支出的一个风向标是零售。最近几年，零售增长速度比GDP 要快得多。 不幸的是，这些数据也不能很好地捕捉到住宿方面的支出。在中国，出家庭消费外，其实零售还包括很多，例如国家收购，基础化学原料等工业产品的贸易。但是， 黄益平表示，即使不算所有这些项目，销售的增长也很快。

He thinks that the level of expenditure as well as its growth may be understated. Despite the conspicuous consumption, a lot of income and spending is hidden from the prying eyes of taxmen and statisticians. The best effort to throw light on this shadow income is a study by Wang Xialou of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation. His team asked about 4,000 of their friends how much they earned and spent. The answers they got were more candid, though also less representative, than official surveys. After doing some statistical tricks to eliminate the bias, Mr Wang calculated that the disposable income of China’s households was 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) higher than the official 2008 figure of 14 trillion yuan. Drawing on this work, Mr Huang thinks that private consumption may have accounted for 41% of GDP in 2010, about seven points higher than the official figure (see chart 6).

黄益平认为，可能低估了支出水平和增长速度。尽管消费显而易见，很多收入和支持仍然逃过了税务人员和统计学家的法眼金睛。针对这个问题贡献最突出的是中国 经济改革研究基金会

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