【英语中国】央行胡晓炼引用弗里德曼

Discussing how China's fixed exchange-rate policy has led to domestic inflation, People's Bank of China Vice Governor Hu Xiaolian turned up the rhetorical heat on Monday, quoting none other than legendary free-market economist Milton Friedman.

Hu cited a characteristically sharp passage from Friedman's laissez-faire manifesto 'Free to Choose,' in which he said: 'Inflation is a disease, a dangerous and sometimes fatal disease, a disease that if not checked in time can destroy a society.'

'Looking at China's situation, those who suffer greatest from inflation are the low-income masses, especially China's over 40 million poor urban residents and nearly 100 million poor migrant workers, a situation which if improperly handled will effect social equality and stability,' Hu said in a statement posted on the PBOC's website.

It may seem odd for a top Chinese Communist official to cite Friedman so approvingly. But Hu's serious concerns over inflation and her reference to Friedman both underscore that the views of China's central bankers are actually not far from the international consensus among economists. Indeed, Hu's recent series of three statements on exchange rate policy at times reads rather like the arguments made for years by the keenest critics of China's fixed exchange rate, from the International Monetary Fund to the U.S. Treasury.

In Monday's statement, Hu goes into great detail to explain how the policy of keeping the yuan fixed against the dollar forced the PBOC to buy up foreign exchange with yuan, flooding the domestic economy with liquidity that the bank was unable to soak back up despite its best efforts. Though consumer price inflation has been mild, high commodity, real-estate and asset prices in recent years are all at least partly because of this dynamic, Hu argues.

PBOC elites have long been said to harbor more liberal, market-friendly and worldly views than their counterparts at other economic agencies in Beijing. But unlike the central banks of other major economies, the PBOC is not independent, and major decisions such as exchange-rate policy are actually determined by the top political leadership. If the PBOC wants a truly more flexible exchange rate, it has to make the case for that policy internally, and increasingly, it seems, in the public domain.

It remains to be seen if opponents of a substantially stronger yuan will resume making their own case to the Chinese public, and more importantly, where exactly China's true decision-makers stand on the issue.

在讨论中国的固定汇率政策如何导致了国内的通货膨胀时，中国央行副行长胡晓炼周一令论战升温，引用的正是倡导自由市场的传奇式经济学家米尔顿•弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)的话。

胡晓炼引用了弗里德曼有关放任主义政策的宣言性书籍《自由选择》(Free to Choose)中一段具有代表性的犀利言辞：通货膨胀是一种疾病，通货膨胀是一种危险的有时甚至会致命的疾病，如不及时制止会摧毁整个社会。

Bloomberg News米尔顿•弗里德曼和妻子罗丝在天安门广场的合影，拍摄日期不详胡晓炼在中国央行网站上公布的一份声明中说，“从中国的现实来看，受通货膨胀损害最大的是低收入群体，尤其是我国4000多万的城镇低收入群体和近亿人的农民工，处理不当容易对社会公平和稳定造成影响”。

一位共产党高层官员以如此认同的态度引用弗里德曼的话，这看起来可能有些奇怪。不过，胡晓炼对通胀的严重担忧和她对弗里德曼的引用都凸显出中国央行官员们的看法实际上与经济学家达成的国际共识相去并不遥远。实际上，胡晓炼最近就汇率政策连续发表的三份声明有时看起来与从国际货币基金组织(IMF)到美国财政部等中国固定汇率最尖锐的批评者多年来的说法非常相像。

在周一的声明中，胡晓炼详细解释了保持人民币兑美元汇率固定的政策如何迫使央行用人民币买进外汇，央行竭尽全力也无法消化的流动性充斥了国内经济。胡晓炼说，近年来，虽然中国CPI基本稳定在较低的水平，但广义价格水平，如PPI（生产者价格指数）、房地产等资产价格都有较大幅度上涨。

据说，中国央行官员们的观点一直比中国其他经济机构中的官员更开放、对市场更友好、更见多识广。不过，与其他主要经济体的央行不同的是，中国央行不是独立的，像汇率政策等重大决策实际上是由最高政治领导层做出的。如果中国央行希望实施真正更加灵活的汇率，在内部它必须为这一政策找到很好的理由，看起来，也需要越来越多地说服公众。

反对人民币大幅升值的人士是否会继续游说中国公众，这仍是个问号。更重要的是，中国真正的决策人士在这个问题上到底持什么立场。