【英语中国】西方看不懂中国式增长

“The Great Wall ... is evidence of a historical inability of people in this part of the planet to communicate, to confer and jointly determine how best to deploy enormous reserves of human energy and intellect.”

------Ryszard Kapuscinski

China was one of the first foreign assignments for the great journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. It was not a success. He bemoaned in his last book, Travels with Herodotus, that he failed to penetrate the country, and never slipped the control of his minders.

But he did make a trip to the Great Wall, where he marvelled at the Chinese propensity to build walls. Over history, “hundreds upon hundreds of millions hours” were “spent building walls” that could have been spent more productively. For him, the Great Wall was a metaphor for the way China's society was organised and its relationship with the rest of the world.

The Wall, and the sense of incomprehension that goes with it, also stands as a metaphor for global investors' current worries.

Economic decisions made in China now have effects far beyond the Wall. That is because China's economy accounts for virtually all of the world's growth. According to Barclays Capital, Chinese gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 14.6 per cent in the second quarter. Including China, global growth was 1.6 per cent; without it, it was flat to slightly down.

Thus commodity prices started to rise as China embarked on buying raw materials at low prices. The dollar started to gain against almost all currencies last summer when China decided to peg its currency to the US currency once more.

And, as events on Wednesday showed, the Chinese stock market is under close international scrutiny.

So China's growth is impressive but it has left many analysts baffled.

Until China launched a “stimulus” spending plan in the depths of the crisis last year, it appeared to be slowing down. Electricity generation was down, as were exports.

Exports and imports are still falling, and yet retail sales were up 15 per cent in June, while bank loans were up 34.5 per cent.

Many western observers are reluctant to believe these numbers. This may be due to western incomprehension that the Chinese way of doing things can work. Tim Bond, of Barclays Capital, suggests they are “unwilling to believe that the region is capable of endogenous growth”.

But the sceptics have an important case. They allege that China is staging its own crude repeat of the mistakes made by the US earlier in this decade, when cheap money led to the credit bubble.

They argue that new loans are unsustainable and cannot have been spent productively in such a short time. Instead, logic suggests the money must have gone into assets such as stocks or property.

Since the stimulus, the Shanghai Composite index has doubled, while real estate prices have risen.

But Shanghai has only just suffered the bursting of a stock bubble. Starting from the summer of 2005, it gained 500 per cent, then crashed by 72 per cent. The chart shows the striking similarity with the 1990s Nasdaq bubble. Both were driven by new retail investors. With this recent history, it is remarkable for stocks to pick up again so quickly. This is why the events of Wednesday aroused concern.

Press reports suggested that Chinese banks would be required to rein in their lending. A large initial public offering came to market, after nine months in which there had been a ban on equity issues.

So it seemed that a government limit on the supply of shares was being lifted, while government support for demand (through bank loans) was being removed. In the space of an hour, the Shanghai market fell more than 7 per cent, showing real fears of a bubble.

Next day, the People's Bank of China said it would “unswervingly continue to apply appropriately loose monetary policy” – and stocks regained all their losses. This sequence of events makes the Shanghai market look almost totally a confection of the government's making.

John Makin, writing for the American Enterprise Institute think-tank, went so far as to allege a “bogus boom”. Under Chinese accounting, he said, goods count as having been sold when they are shipped to retailers, not when they are bought by consumers (explaining retail sales growth). Bank loans count towards GDP from the moment they are disbursed, rather than when they are spent – even if companies cannot find a use for them or put them into stocks.

Maybe the sceptics are right, and the stimulus money is being wasted on the modern-day equivalent of wall building. Or the optimists, currently in the ascendant in world markets, may be right that China is successfully unleashing the potential of its huge domestic market.

But the sense of incomprehension that Kapuscinski described half a century ago still persists.
 

“长城……只能证明，生活在我们这块星球上的人类不能相互谅解，不会坐到一个圆桌旁共商怎样合理利用人类巨大的资源和智慧。”
——雷沙德•卡普钦斯基 (Ryszard Kapuscinski)

伟大记者雷沙德•卡普钦斯基最初的外派任务之一，就是前往中国。此行并不成功。在最后的著作《与希罗多德一起旅行》(Travels with Herodotus)中，卡普钦斯基抱怨说他无法理解这个国家，而且他从来都摆脱不掉负责接待他的人。

但他的确游览了长城。在那里，他对中国人建造城墙的癖好感到惊奇。在历史上，“无数时间花在建造城墙上”，而这些时间本可以用在更有价值的事情上。在他看来，长城象征着中国社会的组织方式及其与世界其它地区的关系。

长城及其隐含的隔阂感，也可视作全球投资者当前忧虑的象征。

如今，中国经济决策的影响已远远超出长城之外。这是因为，全球经济的增长几乎全部来自中国经济。根据巴克莱资本(Barclays Capital)的数据，今年第二季度，中国国内生产总值(GDP)较去年同期增长14.6%。包括中国在内，全球经济增长1.6%；不计中国，全球经济则持平，甚至略有下滑。

因此，随着中国开始在低位购买原材料，大宗商品价格开始上涨；去年夏天当中国决定再次将人民币与美元挂钩时，美元汇率几乎全线上扬。

而上周三的事件表明，中国股市正受到国际社会的密切关注。

中国的经济增长势头令人印象深刻，却让许多分析师困惑不已。

去年，在此次危机的严重关头启动“刺激性”支出计划之前，中国经济似乎在放缓。发电量下降，出口亦然。

目前，中国的进出口仍在下滑，但6月零售销售增长15%，银行贷款亦增加34.5%。

许多西方观察者不愿相信这些数字。这或许是因为，西方无法理解中国的行事方式能够奏效。巴克莱资本的蒂姆•邦德(Tim Bond)表示，他们“不愿相信，这个地区能够实现内生增长” 。

但怀疑者有一个重要理由。他们声称，中国正在生硬地重蹈美国在本世纪初的覆辙，当时，廉价资金引发了信贷泡沫。

他们声称，新增贷款是不可持续的，而且在如此短的时间内，这些贷款不可能得到有效的利用。合理的推测是，这些资金肯定流入了股票或房地产等资产。

自从中国政府出台经济刺激措施以来，上证综指已累计上涨一倍，同时房价也一直攀升。

然而，上海刚刚经历了一轮股市泡沫的破裂。自2005年夏天起，上证综指上涨500%，而后猛挫72%。从图表上看，这与上世纪90年代的纳斯达克(Nasdaq)泡沫惊人的相似。二者均是受到新散户的推动。鉴于最近的历史，上海股市能够如此迅速地再次回升，委实不同寻常。这就是上周三的股市走势之所以引起人们担忧的原因。

媒体报道称，中国政府将要求银行控制信贷投放。在禁止股票发行9个月之后，一波大规模的首次公开发行(IPO)涌入市场。

中国政府似乎正在解除对股票供应的限制，同时也正在撤消对需求的支持（指通过银行贷款对需求形成的支持）。短短一小时之内，上海股市下挫逾7%，这表明投资者确实对泡沫感到担忧。

翌日，中国人民银行(PBoC)表示，“要坚定不移地继续执行适度宽松的货币政策”。股市随之收复全部失地。这一连串事件，让上海股市看起来几乎完全像是政府制作的一道甜点。

以至于美国企业研究所(American Enterprise Institute)智库的学者约翰•马金(John Makin)将这一切称之为“虚假繁荣”(bogus boom)。他表示，根据中国的会计方法，只要商品运送到零售商手上，就算作商品已出售，而不是在消费者购买商品（这解释了零售销售的增长）后；银行贷款在发放时就被计入GDP，而非在得到使用的时候——即使企业找不到资金用途，或者将其投入股市。

或许怀疑者是对的，刺激性资金正被浪费在当今的“长城工程”上；或许乐观者（目前在全球市场上这一派的影响力正在增强）也是对的，中国正成功地释放出其巨大的国内市场潜力。

然而，半个世纪前卡普钦斯基所说的无法相互谅解的感觉，至今依然存在。

译者/岱嵩