【英语中国】经济增长放缓 中国准备好了吗？

In this corn-growing hamlet in northern China, signs are emerging that the nation's supercharged economic growth may be reaching its limit.

A bottomless pool of inexpensive migrant labor has long been one of China's greatest resources, fueling its manufacturing boom. But all the able-bodied workers have left this village already, leaving mostly the elderly. 'All the young men have gone out to work,' says Wang Shuzhen, 58 years old, whose two sons left town, one to work in construction, the other as a driver.

Fewer migrant workers are heading to China's manufacturing zones along the coasts because villages like Dashimen are tapped out, putting pressure on wages and sparking worries about labor shortages. Job centers in the Pearl River Delta, the manufacturing heartland of southern China, had 9% more vacancies than applicants in the first quarter, according to a survey by China's labor ministry.

The Chinese economic juggernaut is still outrunning these trends. Government data Thursday showed continued robust growth. First-half gross domestic product rose 11.1%, implying that second-quarter growth slowed from the first quarter's 11.9% pace.

Some big engines of long-term growth look unlikely to sputter: consumer spending by China's newly affluent, and the migration of hundreds of millions of people to the nation's cities. Chinese industries from sheet glass to automobiles to electronics are emerging as potentially deadly rivals to American, Japanese and European champions.

But managing China's economic trajectory is getting trickier, Chinese officials and economists say. 'The growth rates of the past can't be sustained forever,' says Li Shantong, an economist at the Development Research Center, a government think tank in Beijing. China needs to adapt to a future where exports and infrastructure are less important, and more growth comes from technology and innovation, she says. 'It may not be as fast as in the past. But we can't continue with the same resource-intensive pattern.'

Higher wages at home and low-wage competition from other countries will make it harder for China, already the world's largest exporter, to maintain rapid export growth. Real-estate bubbles have developed in places like the tropical island province of Hainan, prompting the government to take steps to try to cool those markets so they don't threaten the financial system.

The favorable demographics that have supplied manpower for economic growth are changing. China's working-age population, age 15 to 64, has grown continuously. But partly because most families are limited to one child, growth of this working population is slowing, according to the United Nations. The labor pool is expected to peak around 2015, and then decline, according to U.N. projections. In China, manual laborers tend to stop working before age 65, due both to the demands of the work and to employers' preference for younger workers.

China's favored tool for supporting growth -- vast, bank-financed investments in infrastructure -- may not work as well in the future, as it becomes harder to find worthwhile projects. China's great economic challenge is likely to be ensuring a transition to slower growth is gradual and manageable, rather than sharp and disruptive.

Growth here has stemmed in part from China's drive to catch up with wealthy nations on technology, infrastructure and education. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore went through similar periods, and the rapid growth there eventually slowed.

'No country grows at 8% to 10% indefinitely,' says Dwight Perkins, a Harvard University economist who forecast the Chinese economic boom ignited three decades ago by market reforms. 'In all countries, that growth rate comes to an end.' China's economic growth has averaged more than 9% a year since 1978. Mr. Perkins figures the high-growth phase has, at most, a decade left to run.

Diminishing growth in China would have profound consequences for the global economy. Resource-rich countries in Latin America and Africa depend on expanding Chinese markets. Mature economies such as the U.S. and Europe look to China as an export market and a new place to invest.

Inside China, sustained high growth has made it easier for the government to put off dealing with a host of problems, from bad loans created by state-controlled banks to sharp social divisions between rural and urban residents. The country's grand political bargain has been simple: Communist Party rule in exchange for increased prosperity and higher living standards.

Government officials are giving voice to the need to plan for a different kind of economic future. 'The international financial crisis has caused a major change in the external conditions for China's development,' Vice Premier Li Keqiang said earlier this year. The government needs to accelerate overhauls to the structure of the economy, he said, in order to lay a foundation for 'stable and rapid economic growth over the long term.'

The most anticipated problem is an end to some 35 years of steady growth of the working-age population, which fueled the expansion when China liberalized its economy. The demographic changes added about 1.8 percentage points of economic growth annually since the late 1970s, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. But by 2030, the CSIS predicts, the contraction in the working-age population will reduce growth by 0.7 percentage points a year.

In places like Dashimen, in northern Hebei province, everyone who can physically labor is already working in jobs in the cities. Yin Zhen, the 61-year-old husband of Ms. Wang, says he was a migrant worker himself until employers started passing him over for younger men about five years ago.

With growth of the labor force slowing, migrant workers are in a stronger position to bargain with employers. A central-bank survey this year showed average wages for migrant workers, who traditionally fill the least-skilled slots and have little economic power, rose 17.8% from a year earlier.

Those gains will improve the lives of the poorest urban workers. They also will make it tougher for Chinese exporters of low-end merchandise like apparel and toys to continue to compete mainly on price. Exporters will have to keep boosting productivity to make up for higher wages, and start making higher-end products that are less price-sensitive.

That puts trade, one of China's great growth drivers, under pressure. China's exports have grown by an average of 21% a year over the past decade. With markets in Europe and the U.S likely to grow slowly over the next few years, China will be hard-pressed to sustain that pace.

Qi Lihong, import-and-export department manager of Tonglu Spring River Knitting Group, a garment maker in Hangzhou, says higher wages and government-mandated benefits have pushed her labor costs up about 10% this year. To attract workers in the tightening labor market, the company is building nicer dormitories.

The higher costs complicate Spring River's effort to rebound from the global economic slump. Annual revenues dropped to $28 million last year, from a peak of $40 million in 2006. For labor-intensive products like textiles and clothing, there are now cheaper places to manufacture than China. Average wages in Vietnam and Pakistan are just one-third of China's. 'We can see that more orders are flowing to the low-cost countries,' Ms. Qi says.

On the beaches of Hainan, off China's southern coast, another threat to China's continued growth has risen. The office buildings in downtown Haikou, the provincial capital -- evidence of a real-estate boom and bust in the early 1990s -- now are dwarfed by new luxury apartment buildings and resorts.

Apartments at the Serenity Coast development in the resort town of Sanya start at around $1 million. 'Chinese people are getting rich and learning how to consume,' says Xu Nengli, director at Kinderly Real Estate, the project's sales agent.

Serenity Coast's sales averaged more than $400 million a month in 2009, and more buildings are still going up. 'Everyone thinks this business is easy to do and wants to jump in the market,' Mr. Xu says. New investment in Hainan real estate has more than doubled this year, according to official figures, and prices are up an average of 50%.

Concerns are mounting about a real-estate bubble in Hainan and other places where the rush to profit from real estate has pushed up prices. Attempting to head off a crisis, Beijing is requiring banks to tighten mortgage-lending standards. Many cities have restricted purchases by nonresidents.

Partly as a result, sales have cooled somewhat, especially in the hottest real-estate markets. But if Beijing applies too many restraints, it could hurt construction, a major source of jobs.

So far, the government has been successful in shielding China from the worst of the global financial crisis, thanks in part to a surge in construction projects such as roads, bridges and airports.

Even before the stimulus, investment accounted for 44% of China's economy, a higher level than Japan or South Korea ever reached in their modernization drives. The returns on those investments matter enormously for how China grows.

The latest round of public works, however, might not boost the economy as much as core first-wave infrastructure projects, such as the national highway system, did in earlier years.

In Qingdao, a thriving port city in Shandong province, the construction boom is in full swing. The city is squeezed onto the eastern edge of Jiaozhou Bay, with the only room for expansion to the north and west. A highway curves around the bay, but it is often choked with traffic. In response, the local government has begun building a 17-mile bridge across the bay. The cost: $1.4 billion, mostly covered by bank loans. 'Economic development drives traffic, and traffic drives economic development,' says Shao Xinpeng, chief engineer of Shandong Hi-Speed Qingdao Expressway Co., the state company building the bridge.

But the bridge will face competition from a much-shorter tunnel also linking downtown Qingdao to the bay's west side. Min Zhengliang, an economist at Qingdao University, is skeptical. 'To spend so much money to save only 20 minutes of driving time is just not worth it,' he says.

China's banking system, which is mainly state-controlled, has financed many such projects. Banks made loans last year worth one-third of economic output, and this year they are on track to hit 20% of GDP -- a total of roughly $2.5 trillion in new credit over two years. (At the peak of the U.S. credit boom, new borrowing through banks and credit markets amounted to 18% of GDP, though China is growing much faster.) That credit load could limit China's ability to drive future growth through such spending.

Yet China has flourished the past 30 years by constantly reinventing its economy, abandoning failed experiments and pursuing successful ones. Xiao Geng, the Beijing-based director of the Columbia Global Center in East Asia, ticks off a number of must-do policy fixes: improve the social safety net, ease price controls on energy and capital, and alter the dominant role of state enterprises.

'It really requires very dramatic, deep and consistent reforms to have sustainable growth in the future,' he says. 'I'm worried, but still quite confident they will manage to do it.'

Zumapress图为四川一家工厂新招的学徒工。虽然中国经济仍在高速增长，但已经在为工作年龄人口的减少做准备。在大石门这个中国北方生产玉米的村庄，有迹象显示中国极具动力的经济增长可能正在接近上限。

无穷无尽的廉价民工一直是中国最大的资源之一，促进了中国制造业的繁荣。但所有身体强壮的劳动力已经离开了这个村庄，留下的多数是老年人。今年58岁的王树珍说，所有男青年都已经外出工作了。她的两个儿子也离开了村镇，一个在建筑业工作，另一个是司机。

为何中国经济能保持高速增长，曾经绊倒其它高速发展中国家的灾难是否会降临中国？世界银行首席经济学家林毅夫近日就这些问题接受了《华尔街日报》的专访。前往中国沿海制造业地区的民工越来越少，因为像大石门这样的村庄里的劳动力已被挖掘一空，工人工资承受着上升的压力，而且引发对劳动力短缺的忧虑。根据中国人力资源和社会保障部的调查，在中国南方制造业中心的珠江三角洲地区的就业中心，今年第一季度职位供大于求的比率为9%。

中国经济这一庞然大物仍在这些趋势的背景之下超速增长。周四公布的政府数据显示出经济仍在强劲增长。上半年国内生产总值（GDP）较上年同期增长11.1%，这说明第二季度的经济增速低于第一季度增长的11.9%。

经济长期增长的一些巨大引擎似乎不太可能停息下来：中国新富的支出以及亿万人移民到城市。从平板玻璃到汽车再到电子产品，中国各产业正在成为美国、日本和欧洲大型企业的潜在竞争对手。

但中国官员和经济学家说，对中国经济发展轨道的控制越来越难了。国务院发展研究中心经济学家李善同说，过去的经济增长率不会永远持续下去。她说，中国需要适应出口和基建业重要性下降、更多经济增长来源于科技和创新的的未来走势。经济可能不会像以往那样快速增长，但我们不能再继续资源密集型的发展模式了。

图表：中国近年来的重要经济数据中国国内工资上涨，而其他国家工资较低使中国这一全球最大出口国更难维持快速的出口增长。地产泡沫已出现在海南等地区，促使政府拿出措施给这些市场降温，以使它们不致威胁金融体系。

促进经济增长的有利的人口结构正在发生着改变。根据联合国数据，年龄介于15至64岁的中国就业年龄人口虽在持续增长，但部分由于多数家庭只能生一个孩子，就业人口的增长正在放缓。联合国预计，劳动力资源预计将在2015年左右达到顶点，然后开始下降。在中国，体力劳动者一般在65岁前退休，这既是工作的需要，也因为雇主更愿意聘用年轻工人。

对基建业大量的、银行资助的投资一直是中国支持经济增长的有利工具，但这在未来可能也不会奏效，因为越来越难找到有价值的项目。中国经济面临的重大挑战可能是，确保经济放缓的过程是逐步和可控制的，而不是急速和破坏性的。

中国经济增长部分源于中国意欲在科技、基建和教育方面赶上富裕国家。日本、韩国、中国台湾和新加坡都经过了相似的时期，经济快速增长最终将放缓。

哈佛大学经济学家帕金斯(Dwight Perkins)说，没有哪个国家能永远以8%-10%的速度增长，在所有的国家，这样的增长速度最终都会走到尽头。他预测了三十年前由市场改革催生的中国经济发展热潮。自1978年以来，中国经济平均每年增幅超过9%。帕金斯估计当前的高增长阶段最多还能持续十年。

中国经济增长一旦减缓，将对全球经济产生深远影响。拉丁美洲和非洲资源丰富的国家有赖于中国日渐扩大的市场。美国和欧洲等成熟经济体则将中国作为出口市场，也是新的投资目的地。

在中国内部，持续的高速增长令政府更轻易地推迟应对众多问题，从国有银行的贷款坏帐到城乡居民之间的巨大社会差距等等。中国最重大的政治交易一直很简单：坚持共产党的统治，换取经济繁荣和生活水平的提高。

政府官员表达了计划一种不同的经济未来的必要性。国务院副总理李克强今年早些时候说，“国际金融危机使我国发展的外部环境发生了重大变化”。他说，政府需加快经济结构调整，以便“促进国民经济长期平稳较快发展”。

最在人们预料之中的问题是适龄劳动人口持续了约35年的稳步增长将结束。中国经济改革开放之际，劳动人口的增长推动了经济发展。据华盛顿智库战略与国际研究中心(Center for Strategic and International Studies)的数据，自70年代末以来，人口构成的改变每年为经济增长贡献了约1.8个百分点。不过该中心预测，到2030年前，劳动人口的萎缩每年将使经济增幅减少0.7个百分点。

Kersten Zhang/The Wall Street Journal大石门村的尹震和王树珍夫妇在河北省北部的大石门等地，有劳动能力的人都已经到城市中工作了。王树珍61岁的丈夫尹震（音）说，他自己曾经是一名农民工，直到约五年前他的雇主开始选择更年轻的人而不再用他了。

随着劳动人口增长的放缓，农民工有了更足的底气与雇主讨价还价。中国央行今年的一项调查显示，农民工的平均工资同比上涨了17.8%。农民工通常从事最不需技能的工作，经济上没什么自主权。

工资的上涨将改善这些最贫困的城市工人的生活，还将增大服装、玩具等中国低端产品出口商继续依靠价格进行竞争的难度。出口商必须持续提高劳动生产率，以便弥补工资的上涨，并开始生产对价格较不敏感的更高端产品。

这就令贸易这个中国最主要的增长引擎之一处于承压状态。过去10年来，中国出口额平均每年增长21%。在未来几年欧美市场很可能放缓的情况下，中国将难以保持这样的增速。

杭州服装生产商桐庐富春江织造集团有限公司进出口部经理齐丽红（音）说，工资的上涨和政府下令实行的福利使她的劳动力成本今年上升了约10%。为了在不断紧张的劳动力市场上吸引工人，该公司开始修建更好的宿舍。

成本的上升加大了桐庐富春江织造集团有限公司走出全球经济低迷的难度。去年，该公司的年收入从2006年4,000万美元的高点减少至2,800万美元。对于纺织品和服装等劳动密集型产品，如今有比中国更便宜的生产地。越南和巴基斯坦的平均工资只有中国的三分之一。齐丽红说，我们可以看到有更多的订单流入低成本国家。

中国经济持续增长面临的又一威胁出现在海南省的海滩上。省会城市海口的写字楼虽然见证了上世纪90年代初地产业的兴衰，但与新建的豪华公寓和度假村相比则相形见绌。

度假 地三亚的半山半岛公寓起价约为100万美元，该项目的销售代理金达利筑地(Kinderly Real Estate)的营销总监徐能力说，中国人越来越富有了，正在学着如何消费。

半山半岛2009年每月平均销售额超过4亿美元，更多建筑正在拔地而起。徐能力说，每个人都认为这一行好做，希望进入这一市场。根据官方数据，今年对海南房地产的新投资增加了一倍多，海南房地产的价格平均上涨了50%。

人们越加担心海南和其他地区的房地产泡沫推高了房价。为了防范危机，北京方面正在要求银行提高抵押贷款标准，许多城市纷纷限制非本地居民购买房屋。

其结果是，销售有些放缓，尤其是最热点地区的房地产市场。但如果北京使用太多限制措施，或将损及就业岗位的主要来源──建筑业。

部分受益于道路、桥梁和机场等营建项目的增多，中国政府迄今在避免中国受到本次金融危机最严重冲击方面一直干得不错。

即使在实施经济刺激政策前，投资对中国经济增长的贡献率已达44%，高于日本和韩国在各自现代化进程中所创下的水平，这些投资的回报率很大程度上关乎中国经济将如何增长。

但与前些年全国高速公路体系等第一批核心基建项目相比，新一轮公共工程项目在促进经济增长方面的效用可能会下降。

山东省日益繁荣的港口城市青岛正在热火朝天地进行城市建设。该市位于胶州湾的东部，只有向北部和西部发展的空间。沿胶州湾有一条公路，但经常堵车，为解决这一问题，地方政府已开始建设一条17英里长的跨海大桥，但成本是14亿美元，主要由银行贷款支持。

建设这座大桥的山东高速青岛公路有限公司的总工程师邵新鹏说，经济发展带动了交通，交通又推动了经济发展。

但有一条隧道也连接青岛市区和胶州湾西侧，它的长度更短，这座大桥面临着这条隧道的竞争。青岛大学经济学家闵正良对跨海大桥持怀疑态度，他说，花这么多钱只节省20分钟的车程，真是不值。

中国的银行体系为许多这样的工程提供了融资。去年的银行贷款额相当于国内生产总值(GDP)的三分之一，今年有望相当于GDP的20%。过去两年新增贷款总计约为2.5万亿美元（在美国信贷热潮的高峰期，通过银行和信贷市场发放的新增贷款相当于GDP的18%，不过中国的经济发展更快。）由此导致的信贷负担可能将抑制中国未来通过银行贷款推动经济增长的能力。

过去30年中国通过不断进行经济改革，摒弃失败的做法，贯彻成功的经验，实现了经济繁荣。哥伦比亚大学全球研究中心驻东亚地区主管肖耿教授列出了几项必须进行的政策调整：改善社会保障体系、放松对能源和资本的价格控制，以及改变国有企业在经济中的主导地位。

他说，中国经济未来要实现可持续增长，确实需要非常巨大、深刻和持续的改革，我有点担心，但仍相当相信中国能做到这一点。