【英语中国】中国并非风景独好

If there are winners from the financial crisis, many of them are, by common consent, in Asia. With the US economy punctured by Wall Street, China is widely perceived to be the global top dog designate. On this view, not only has the geopolitical balance shifted east but portfolio flows will follow suit. Welcome to the new investment reality.

As with most conventional wisdom there is an element of truth in it. China's fiscal position is very strong relative to the West and its recovery has been very rapid. The region more generally has been spared the horrors of the banking crisis, having gone through financial fire in 1997-98.

Where the problem arises is in translating economic growth into investment return. Shanghai has scarcely been a goldmine for investors. Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research notes that after the violent ups and downs of the past couple of years the Shanghai Composite in mid-September was about 3.5-4 times its level of 15 years ago, yielding a compound annual gain of 8.5-9 per cent.

This, he rightly adds, is pretty dismal in a country with a 10 per cent trend rate of real growth, or average nominal growth of 15 per cent. And it is a very risky return at that, given the huge volatility of Chinese stock prices. The story is similar in much of the rest of Asia, with the notable exceptions of India and Hong Kong.

In considering whether investors will do better in future, it is worth drawing a parallel with Japan in the 1980s. At that time Japan's export-led growth thrust was in trouble. A model that had worked well for a small economy suddenly became a recipe for trade friction with the US and Europe, as Japan turned into a global economic giant. The bankruptcy of the model was then revealed by the collapse of twin stock market and real-estate bubbles and a subsequent banking debacle.

During the boom, Japanese corporate capitalism was not exactly shareholder friendly. Companies were run primarily for the benefit of management and employees. Little profit was paid out in dividends and there was no management accountability to shareholders.

Domestic and foreign investors nonetheless bought shares enthusiastically and were rewarded in the form of capital growth. Their enthusiasm became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As with Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, everything went well provided they continued to put money into the market. Then the bubble burst and shares have not been near their boomtime values since.

Today's China is a similarly uncomfortable bedfellow for the economies of the developed world. Its export-led growth model, supported by an undervalued exchange rate, causes mounting trade friction while its excess savings pile up in dollar IOUs on a scale even greater than they did with Japan in the 1980s or today.

The approach to capitalism is also relatively hostile to the shareholder interest. The family model predominates, which means that in the quoted sector there is a perennial potential conflict of interest with outside shareholders, who are often short-changed as a result of opaque related party transactions. Accountability is further muddied by the presence of communist party officials who can call the shots from below board level.

China is nowhere near a denouement of the kind faced by Japan in 1990. It remains a developing country and still has catch-up potential. Its super-Keynesian expansionary response to the global recession has put the economy back into top gear.

The medium term is more complicated. The US and other deficit countries will be raising savings and tolerating currency weakness for some time. Japan and Germany have no desire to turn into net importers. Yet the world's largest countries cannot all be net exporters.

For its part, China cannot persist in a fiscal expansion heavily biased towards sub-optimal investment. If it does not rebalance the economy towards increased consumption, it faces a difficult adjustment to a more hostile global environment that will entail lower domestic growth and employment. Against that awkward problem of transition, continuing stock market volatility seems likely, with an associated risk of bubbles, bursts and governance scandals.

It would be foolish, moreover, to write off the US. Provided it can put together a credible medium-term fiscal policy, it has huge advantages: an excellent productivity record, a relatively benign demographic profile, the most flexible labour market in the developed world and the legitimacy that comes from democratic process.

Not that China has done badly. For a country in the catch-up phase in the middle of a global economic crisis, its unique form of consultative Leninism has shown itself to be very robust. How it will stand up as the economy matures and faces the adverse demographics inflicted by the one-child policy is another matter. The shift of economic power to the East is a complex phenomenon, with no simple investment lesson to be drawn.

人们普遍认为，如果说金融危机中存在赢家，那么其中许多都在亚洲。由于华尔街已经挫伤了美国经济，因此中国被广泛视为未来的全球第一。根据这一观点，不仅地缘政治平衡的重心已经东移，投资组合资金流也将随之转移。这就是新的投资现实。

就像大多数传统智慧一样，上述观点有一定道理。相对西方，中国的财政状况非常稳健，复苏速度也很快。在经历了1997-98年的金融风暴之后，亚洲地区总体上躲过了本轮银行业危机的肆虐。

问题出在把经济增长转化为投资回报上。对投资者来说，上海算不上是座金矿。朗伯德街研究(Lombard Street Research)的查尔斯•杜马斯(Charles Dumas)指出，经历了过去两三年的暴涨暴跌之后，今年9月中旬的上证综指是15年前水平的3.5到4倍，复合年收益率为8.5%到9%。

他恰如其分地补充道，在一个趋势实际增长率达10%、年均名义增长率达15%的国家，上述收益颇为惨淡。而且，鉴于中国股价的巨大波动性，这样的回报率还伴随着很高的风险。其它大多数亚洲国家的情况大同小异，只有印度和香港是明显的例外。

若要判断投资者未来能否获得更高回报，则有必要把中国与上世纪80年代的日本做个比较。当时，日本由出口带动经济迅猛增长的模式陷入了困境。随着日本成为全球经济大国，这一对小型经济体很管用的模式，忽然成了制造与美国及欧洲之间贸易摩擦的祸手。如出一辙的股市泡沫和地产泡沫的破裂，以及随之而来的银行业危机，都揭示了这一模式的破产。

在繁荣期，日本的公司资本主义对股东不甚友好。公司的运作主要是为了管理层和员工的利益。以股息形式支付的利润少之又少，管理层也不对股东负责。

尽管如此，日本国内外的投资者还是踊跃购买股票，并获得了资本增值的回报。他们的踊跃成为一种自我实现的预言。就像伯纳德•马多夫(Bernard Madoff)的庞氏骗局一样，只要他们继续把钱投入市场，一切就都进展顺利。然后，泡沫破裂了。自那以来，股价就从未接近繁荣期的价位。

作为发达国家经济体的伙伴国，今天的中国也处于类似的尴尬境地。中国由低估汇率支撑的出口带动型增长模式，引发了大量贸易摩擦，而过剩的储蓄则使其手中的美元“白条”堆积如山——甚至超过了日本在上世纪80年代或今天的持有规模。

其对待资本主义的方式也相对不利于股东利益。家族模式占据主导地位，这意味着，在上市公司中，长期存在与外部股东的潜在利益冲突——不透明的关联交易往往令这些股东吃亏。共产党官员可以从董事会之下的层面上发号施令，令问责制更加模糊不清。

中国距上世纪90年代日本所面临的那种结局还很远，它仍然是个发展中国家，还有迎头赶上的潜力。它为应对全球衰退而实施的扩张政策，把凯恩斯主义发挥到了极致，也令经济恢复了高速增长。

中期前景较为复杂。未来相当一段时间内，美国和其它赤字国将提高储蓄，并容许本币走弱。日本和德国不愿成为净进口国，而几个世界大国又不可能全是净出口国。

就中国本身而言，严重倾向次优投资的财政扩张将难以为继。中国若不重新平衡经济，使其侧重于提高消费，它将很难适应更为不利的全球环境，届时国内经济增长率和就业率势必双双下降。在转型这个尴尬问题得到解决之前，股市似乎很可能会继续震荡，同时还可能出现与之相关的泡沫、泡沫破裂和治理丑闻。

此外，完全无视美国将是愚蠢的。美国拥有巨大的优势——前提是它能制定出一份可信的中期财政政策——包括优异的生产率记录，相对良性的人口状况，发达国家中最灵活的劳动力市场，以及民主程序所赋予的合法性。

中国干得也不差。对一个在全球经济衰退期处在追赶阶段的国家来说，中国独特的“协商式列宁主义”(consultative Leninism)表现出了强大的生命力。随着经济进入成熟期、独生子女政策造成的人口结构问题开始显现，中国将如何做到屹立不倒，则另当别论。经济实力的东移是个复杂现象，不可能从中得出一条简单的投资经验。

译者/何黎