【英语中国】目前非投资中国股市最佳时机

I've just returned from a wonderful two-week trip to China and I defy anyone who visits this vast country not to return brimming with confidence in the future. I did – even though the local stock markets tanked during my stay.

While I was there, I wanted to look at the wider macroeconomic picture – and for this my guide was US economist Michael Pettis. He is a finance professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, as well as being chief strategist at Shenyin Wanguo Securities in Hong Kong, and author of the China Financial Markets blog at www.mpettis.com.

At the core of his argument is this simple idea. China is expanding at a rapid rate, fuelled by cheap credit and massive government spending on infrastructure. This massive increase in output and capacity must be paid for in some way – and the real cost is to consumers who don't receive a fair return on their savings because interest rates are kept artificially low. So every time you travel on one of China's impressive new high-speed trains, you're actually travelling on a fiscal black hole! )

Pettis believes China is experiencing a major mis-allocation of capital to a range of massive projects, which have the net effect of repressing household income and consumption at the expense of the country's rampant export sector. He finds little evidence that this is about to change soon – exports are booming again and the government continues to invest like there's no tomorrow. But Pettis suggests a crunch is not far away and we'll see it first in what he calls “debt capacity”. He argues that government debt is much higher than the official 20 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) because it needs to include all the debt at municipal and provincial level, which is guaranteed by central government. He thinks this is nearer 70-80 per cent of GDP and growing quickly.

This alternative take on China's economic vulnerability leads to some difficult conclusions for equity investors.

First, Pettis reckons that investing in China will be a roller-coaster ride. “The government is very worried about the real estate bubble and is trying to hammer it down, but they're not addressing underlying liquidity, so it's going to go somewhere else,” he argues. “My guess is, that after a period of stability in the equity markets in China, they're going to surge”. Then, Pettis reckons, we'll see another bust, followed by years of below par economic growth as domestic consumption starts to recover.

Second, Pettis is deeply suspicious of fund managers who reckon they can find value stocks in China. “To be a fundamental investor, you need good macro data. We don't really have it. You need good financial statement data. Impossible. When you take fund managers out to drinks, they tell you what matters: underlying liquidity, and government policy!”

Third, he is cynical about fund managers tracking down fast-growing small and mid-cap companies “If you assume we've reached an end to that [exporting] process and we now need Chinese consumption, then we've got a really big problem – because in order to get consumption to grow?.?.?. you've got to [stop] the household sector subsidising manufacturers. If you remove those subsidies, what happens to the growth of those companies? We don't really know.”

So, how should investors react? “If I were going to invest in China, I would want to invest in good, solid companies that will benefit from consumption growth,” Pettis told me. “Stay in the best, most liquid stuff at least for a few more years because we've got a really tough road ahead of us. Then at some point, it makes sense to go back into

the risky assets like developing countries and consumer orientated companies in China.”

I hope to be going back to visit both, very soon.

我刚刚结束了为期两周的精彩中国之旅。我相信，每个造访这个泱泱大国的人，返程时都会对未来充满信心。我就是这样——尽管在我旅行期间，当地股市大幅下挫。

我在中国的时候，希望对中国的经济形势有一个更宏观的了解——因此我的向导是美国经济学家迈克尔?佩蒂斯(Michael Pettis)。佩蒂斯是北京大学光华管理学院(Peking University's Guanghua School of Management)金融学教授，申银万国证券(Shenyin Wanguo Securities)驻香港首席策略师，以及“中国金融市场”(China Financial Markets)博客的作者。

佩蒂斯论点的核心是一个简单的观点：在廉价信贷和政府大规模基础设施支出的推动下，中国正在快速扩张。这种产出和产能的大幅增长必定要有人付出代价——消费者承担了真正的成本：由于利率被人为保持在低位，他们的储蓄没有获得公平回报。因此每当你乘坐中国令人印象深刻的新高速列车时，你实际上乘坐的是一个财政黑洞！

佩蒂斯认为，中国目前的情况，是将大量资本不适当地配置到了一系列大型项目上，其后果是抑制了家庭收入和消费，损害了中国强劲的出口行业。他几乎没有找到这种情况很快会改变的证据——出口再次繁荣，政府继续大举投资，就像世界末日来临一样。但佩蒂斯认为，一场危机已为时不远，我们会首先在他所称的“借债能力”上看到这一点。他认为，中国政府债务占国内生产总值(GDP)的比例远高于官方宣称的20%，因为政府债务应当包括由中央政府担保的所有省市级债务。他提出，这一比例更接近GDP的70%至80%，而且在迅速上升。

对股票投资者而言，这种对中国经济弱点的另一种看法会得出一些艰难的结论。

首先，佩蒂斯估计在中国投资将经历过山车行情。他认为：“中国政府非常担心房地产泡沫，并努力进行抑制，但他们没有解决潜在的流动性，因此它将流向其它领域。我猜测，经过一段时期的稳定之后，中国股市将大幅上涨。”然后，佩蒂斯认为，股市将再次崩盘，随后在国内消费开始复苏之际，经济出现多年的低增长。

其次，佩蒂斯对认为能够在中国找到价值股票的基金经理深表怀疑。“要成为一名基本面投资者，你需要良好的宏观数据——眼下我们的确没有。你还需要良好的财务报表数据——这是根本不可能的。当你邀请基金经理出去喝酒时，他们会告诉你什么才是重要的：潜在的流动性和政府政策！”

第三，佩蒂斯对基金经理跟踪快速成长的中小市值公司的说法感到怀疑。“如果你认为我们已经结束了那种（出口）进程，现在需要中国消费了，那么我们就会遇到真正的大问题——因为为了实现消费的增长……你不得不（停止）家庭部门对制造业的补贴。如果去掉这些补贴，那些公司的增长怎么办？我们真的不知道。”

那么，投资者应该怎么做呢？佩蒂斯告诉我：“如果我要到中国投资，我会希望投资那些将受益于消费增长、实力强劲的好公司。我们至少还得在最好、最具流动性的资产上呆上几年，因为未来的道路真的还很艰难。然后到了某个时刻，就有必要重新投资于发展中国家和中国的消费主导型公司等高风险资产了。”

我希望很快就能重新投资于上述两种资产。

译者/君悦