主题：【讨论】一篇关于中国转型的文章 -- aokrayd

这里有一篇关于中国转型的文章： http://seekingalpha.com/article/222301-why-china-faces-a-difficult-economic-transition

我自己简单地加一点评论，并非翻译：

The Chinese growth model is a muscular version of the Asian development model and shares fundamental features with other development strategies that generated periods of “miracle” growth, including Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s. While it can generate tremendous growth, it also leads inexorably to deep imbalances. China seems to have long passed the inflection point and may be on the verge of a very difficult transition into a different growth model.

At the heart of this model are subsidies for manufacturing and investment paid for by households. In some cases, as with Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, the household costs are explicit — Brazil taxed household income heavily and invested the proceeds in manufacturing and infrastructure. The Asian variety relies on less explicit mechanisms to accomplish the same purpose.

我们常说中国特色的社会主义，但实际上中国所走的道路和巴西，墨西哥，以及日本及其他一些亚洲国家所走的道路是相当类似的。但是规模更大。十几年前有一本很轰动的书，叫顾准文集。当时还有另一本，叫顾准日记。书中有一段我印象非常深的话（我手头没有原书，全凭印象）：日本的奇迹无他，廉价的技术劳动力和外来资本的结合。中国也可走同样的道路。顾准74年就去世了。我不知道他在今天会对中国的经济作何评价。但我希望不是另一段让我印象极其深刻的话：苏联的崩溃以成定局，军工与重工集团把持了国家的经济命脉与政治势力，并拒绝改动。这几段话大约是作者72年在干校写下的。

The Asia model uses three primary mechanisms to ensure households pay for investment. First, wage growth is constrained to a level well below the growth in worker productivity, forcing workers to subsidize employers. Second, the exchange rate is undervalued. This reduces the real value of wages by raising import costs, while subsidizing manufacturers in the tradable goods sector.

所谓出口导向型经济思路就是以本国的低成本吸引外来投资与技术，同时利用政府扶持的集中优势迅速扩大生产并抢占市场份额，从而为未来的利润作保障，并提高本国的技术水平与生活水平，建立起进一步发展的基础。出口导向作的最好的日本与德国，但两国都以多年陷入停滞。无他，出口导向本身是一种附庸型经济。严重依赖于接收国的经济状况。而另一方面，出口导向要求本国的生产成本必须始终低于接收国和与之竞争的国家。这又是另一个天然的限制。当然，如果出口导向国能够在技术上超越接收国从而使之反向依赖则能够突破一些限制，日本和德国在这方面都有突破。但是长期的发展模式会使经济结构呈现畸形，从而使全面的突破非常困难。而出口导向是不能形成以我为主的经济结构，从而也不可能真正解决就业问题。

Third — and most powerfully — is financial repression. Most savings in these countries are in the form of bank deposits, and the banks are controlled by the monetary authorities who determine the direction of credit, socialize the risks, and set lending and deposit rates.

Very low lending and deposit rates create a powerful mechanism for using household savings to boost growth by heavily subsidizing the cost of capital. In the case of China, every year an astonishing 5–10 percent of GDP is transferred from household savers to banks and borrowers in the form of repressed interest rates. And the low cost of capital explains the seeming paradox of China’s capital-intensive, rather than labor-intensive, growth — labor may be cheap, but capital is almost free.

The result of this enormously successful model is so much investment-driven and employment-generating growth that even with massive transfers from households, household income surges nonetheless. As China was clocking in growth rates of 10–12 percent annually for the past decade, household income, and with it household consumption, grew 8–9 percent annually.

But there are at least two constraints to this model. In early stages, when investment is low, the diversion of household wealth to invest in capacity and infrastructure will probably be economically productive. But the longer heavily-subsidized investment continues the more likely cheap capital and socialized credit risk funding economically wasteful projects. At some point, capital users begin to destroy wealth rather than create it, but nonetheless show profits by passing more than 100 percent of the losses onto households.

Second, policies that force households to subsidize growth are likely to generate much faster growth in production than consumption — increases in household consumption are largely a function of increases in household income. In that case, large and growing trade surpluses are needed to absorb the balance.

经济结构的畸形最明显的反应在金融上。国家强制性的低利率一面迫使全民补帖制造业，而另一面也使得金融业始终无法健康的发展。但是金融业对现代经济起着至关重要的作用。低成本的投资一面使得投资效率低下，另一面使投资与政治权力紧密结合在一起，形成官商一体的恶性结构。同时进一步限制着民间财富的增长。两年来的刺激极其突出的反映出了这一致命弱点。很难相信几万亿的错置投资会对中国的经济不会产生长期的持续的负面影响，并进一步扭曲中国的经济结构。

This is what happened in China over the past decade. And as long as the rest of the world — primarily the United States and the trade deficit countries in Europe — have been able to absorb rising trade surplus, the declining share of Chinese production absorbed by domestic households didn’t matter much.

But by 2007 China’s trade surplus as a share of global GDP had become the highest recorded in 100 years — perhaps ever — and the rest of the world found it increasing difficult to absorb the surplus. To make matters worse, the global financial crisis sharply reduced the ability and willingness of other countries to even maintain its current trade deficits.

China has hit both constraints — capital is wasted, perhaps on an unprecedented scale, and the world is finding it increasingly difficult to absorb excess Chinese capacity. For all its past success, China now needs to urgently abandon the development model.

The earlier China makes the change, the less painful the adjustment will be — but it will be difficult regardless. China must raise wages, interest rates, and the value of its currency, but if it does so quickly it could cause severe financial distress to businesses and projects heavily dependent on subsidized costs. And the resulting surge in unemployment could actually cause consumption to decline just as Chinese competitiveness abroad deteriorates. If it adjusts slowly, China will need other countries to accommodate the sluggish pace, but it is not at all clear that the rest of the world, and most importantly the United States and Europe, will allow their trade deficits to shrink so gradually.

The historical precedents for this kind of adjustment are not encouraging, and the steps China needs to take dwarfs those of its predecessors. Like it or not, China must change its growth model. And the speed with which it does so will affect global growth for many years.

现在大家以经在热烈地讨论中国经济何时超越美国，但在我看来，更应该讨论的是当年日本超越意大利后发生了什么。今天的中国在我看来不仅形势与当年日本类似，所采取的步骤几乎也无二致。这样的前景是很不乐观的。

最后说几句题外话。去年全世界政府史无前例地协调干涉似乎解决了金融危机的问题。但是金融危机的产生其根源在于全球化进程中的供需失调与贫富分化加剧。而政府的干涉根本没有触及这个问题。反而是使其进一步恶化。因此解决了金融危机，但经济危机仍在加剧。二次探底不是可能，而是必然。即使美国人愿意继续打白条，中国愿意继续接收，04年以来的局面也不可持续，必须早谋划出路。

另外我注意到一个很有意思的问题。去年的政府干预把世界人民的眼光一下都吸引到了政府身上，似乎真的是政策的改变就将引导经济走向健康的发展。如果这样为什么我们还要从计划经济转变为市场经济，苏联为什么会消失，而日本何至于还不能走出衰退，美国的BERNAKE更是在04年声称以经解决了经济发展的DEPRESSION的问题。政府干涉到底带来了什么，到底应该扮演一个什么样的角色，这是一个很有意思的问题。