【英语中国】为什么说中国经济高增长率难以持续

China's remarkable growth rate is unlikely to last. No country in history has managed to grow nearly so fast for so long.

'China is defying the law of gravity at the moment,' says New York University economist William Easterly, who has tracked economic development for decades. 'But that doesn't mean that gravity is wrong.'

Mr. Easterly calculates that a country in the top 10% of growth champions between 1985 to 1995 had just an 18% chance of repeating that record the following decade, research he began in the early 1990s with Lawrence Summers, then the World Bank's chief economist and now the top White House economic adviser.

Over the 30-year period ending 2007, China grew more than 8% a year and has accelerated to about 10% growth over the last five years despite recessions in the wealthy nations with which it trades. 'In the history of humankind, no country has ever grown for 30 years at the rate China has grown,' says Harvard University economist Ricardo Hausmann, who has calculated 30-year growth rates for the world's significant economics from 1960 through 2007.

Botswana, No. 2 in the Hausmann rankings, grew about 8% a year in the 30 years ending 1991. That's a special case: 'two million people living next to a diamond mine,' Mr. Hausmann calls it. Botswana's recent growth has been far more modest. Last year, its economy contracted 6% as global demand for commodities plummeted.

No. 3 is Singapore, whose best 30-year growth was 6.9% a year. Japan, once a famous growth champion, topped out at 5.3% a year in the three decades ending 1990, making it number nine on Mr. Hausmann's list of 118 nations.

The U.S.'s best 30 years range from 1960 to 1990, with average growth of 2.3%; that's good for No. 55 on the growth rankings.

Developing countries regularly go through bursts of growth, but they rarely last more than a generation. They sometimes end badly. Japan suffered the debilitating effects of bursting housing bubble in 1990. The Asia financial crisis battered fast-growing Korea in 1997.

Mr. Hausmann, along with Harvard colleagues Dani Rodrik and Lant Prichett, surveyed 110 countries between 1975 and 1992 and identified 80 episodes of what they labeled 'growth acceleration'-in which a country grew at least 3.5% a year for at least eight years.

During any decade, the economists calculated, a country has a 25% chance of experiencing such an acceleration for any of a variety of reasons - improvements in trade, finance or governance, for instance. But the growth usually peters out in one country and takes off in another.

From 1900 to 2000, NYU's Mr. Easterly says, per-capita growth of all countries ranged between 1% to 3% a year. Nearly all the nations on the high end so far, he says, are democratic capitalist countries - and the additional growth over long periods of time made them rich.

'When we make too much of growth spurts,' he says, 'it like making too much of a basketball player who has a hot hand.'

中国骄人的经济增长率不太可能持久。历史上没有一个国家曾经以类似的高速保持如此长时间的增长。

纽约大学(New York University)的经济学家伊斯特利(William Easterly)说，中国此刻的增长不符合经济规律，但这并不意味着经济规律有错。数十年来，伊斯特利一直在跟踪全球经济发展状况。

根据伊斯特利的统计，1985年至1995年这10年间，经济增速排名前10%的国家，在下一个10年间仍能保持这一纪录的机率仅为18%。上世纪90年代初，伊斯特利与时任世界银行首席经济学家、现为白宫经济顾问的萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)一同开始了这项研究。

截至2007年的30年间，中国的年增长率超过8%。近五年，尽管其富裕的贸易伙伴陷入衰退，中国的增长率仍加速至10%左右。哈佛大学(Harvard University)的经济学家豪斯曼(Ricardo Hausmann)说，在人类历史上，没有一个国家曾以中国的速度增长了30年。豪斯曼计算了1960年到2007年间世界主要经济体的30年增长率。

在豪斯曼的排名中，博茨瓦纳排名第二，到1991年为止的30年间，这个国家的年增长率约为8%。豪斯曼说，这是个特殊的例子，200万人居住在钻石矿旁。博茨瓦纳近年的增长率低了很多。去年，由于全球对大宗商品的需求猛降，博茨瓦纳的经济萎缩了6%。

第三名是新加坡，在1991年之前的30年间，它的年增长率为6.9%。增速曾排名世界第一的日本在截至1990年的30年间，其年增长率为5.3%，在118个国家中排名第九。

美国增长最快的30年是1960年至1990年，年均增速为2.3%，在豪斯曼的排名中名列第55。

发展中国家经常经历爆炸式增长阶段，但极少能持续一代人以上的时间，且有时结局很差。在1990年房地产泡沫破裂之后，日本经受了经济虚弱的痛苦时期。1997年的亚洲金融危机让快速增长的韩国伤痕累累。

豪斯曼与哈佛大学的同事罗德瑞克(Dani Rodrik)和普里切特(Lant Prichett)一同调查了110个国家1975年至1992年的经济增长情况，并发现了80个“加速增长”案例，即一个国家的经济增长速度至少连续八年在3.5%以上。

根据这些经济学家的计算，在任意十年间，一个国家有25%的机率可经历此类加速增长阶段。其原因各不相同，例如贸易、财政或管理的改善等。但这种增长通常会在一个国家逐渐消失，然后又在另一个国家开始。

纽约大学的伊斯特利说，从1900年到2000年，世界各国的年人均增长率介于1%至3%之间。迄今为止，人均增长率较高的国家几乎全是资本主义民主国家，这种长期的较高增长让这些国家变得富有。

他说，过分强调爆炸式经济增长，就像过分看重一名手风很顺的篮球运动员一样。