【英语财经】中国经济靠服务业再续辉煌？ Many reasons to hope that China’s success story continues

By the end of this year JD.com, a Chinese company often likened to Amazon, will employ 150,000 people, almost four times as many as it did two years ago. These workers, who mostly deliver packages across the mainland by bicycle or car, are hardly living what President Xi Jinping would call the Chinese dream. Still, it is better than working for a low-end textile manufacturer or one of the steamy electronics factories across the border from Hong Kong.

The expansion of companies such as JD helps explain how the mainland has continued to create jobs at an impressive rate, even as economic growth has slowed. China generated 7.2m new jobs between January and June last year, better than it managed the year before, when official statistics show the economy was growing faster. “The quality of growth is more important than the speed of growth,” says a report from Citic Capital.

Many jobs are paying more, too. Except in the perennially depressed north-east of the country, incomes have been rising by between 10 and 15 per cent a year. In India, and most developed markets, by contrast, incomes have barely risen at all. Better-paid workers should also mean China can rely more on domestic consumption, instead of pouring yet more concrete in a country that has already built too many steel mills and cement plants.

As Chinese manufacturing costs rise and export markets soften, the hope is that rising demand for labour-intensive services can help absorb workers who are not needed in factories, which are increasingly automated and no longer as busy as they were.

This hope is felt far beyond Beijing. If China’s fledgling consumer economy fails to take flight, Beijing will keep its factories busy by allowing the renminbi to fall. Cheaper Chinese exports will mainly hurt workers in Bangladesh and Vietnam, so far the principal beneficiaries of rising costs in their giant neighbour.

But the effects will be felt in emerging markets as far afield as Brazil, Peru and South Africa. A more dramatic depreciation of the redback would inflict even more stress on emerging markets whose prospects and currencies are already under pressure. Even developed markets in the west would not be immune. “Investors are coming to terms with what a Chinese renminbi devaluation means for western markets,” says Albert Edwards, a global strategist at Société Générale in London and longtime bear. “It means global deflation and recession. The western manufacturing sector will choke under this imported deflationary tourniquet.”

Cheap imports from China are not all that western companies have to fear; high-quality ones are even more worrisome. Here, domestic producers have been making formidable progress. Well-heeled entrepreneurs and investors in China who two years ago were sporting iPhones have switched their allegiance from Apple to Huawei. That is not because of price but quality.

The global supply chain that China dominated in recent years is today becoming an internal Chinese supply chain, especially in electronics. More and more products that were once assembled in vast Chinese factories using components shipped in from afar are now made entirely in China. Some economists now speak of the “de-globalisation” of manufacturing. China’s overall trade volume is estimated to have shrunk by 2 per cent last year, although its trading partners registered sharper drops. Services now contribute more to Chinese growth than industry, according to JPMorgan’s chief China economist Haibin Zhu, who talks of a “two-speed economy”.

December was the fifth consecutive month when surveys of purchasing managers in China’s manufacturing industry found more pessimists than optimists, with output, new orders and export orders all falling, according to JPMorgan. Equivalent surveys in the services sector have been in positive territory, but the good cheer may not last.

“When an economy is hurtling toward recession,” the pessimistic Mr Edwards points out, “it is almost always the manufacturing sector that takes the less volatile services sector by the hand and leads it into a recessionary underworld.”

It is not clear whether China can keep its recent success going. But many have reason to hope so. As turmoil in global markets has shown, what is bad news for China is even worse for the rest of the world.

到今年底，京东(JD.com)——一家经常被比作中国亚马逊(Amazon)的公司——的员工总数将达到15万，几乎为两年前的4倍。这些员工中大部分人的工作就是骑着电动车在全国各个地方派送包裹，他们的生活很难跟中国国家主席习近平所说的中国梦划上等号。尽管如此，这也胜过在低端纺织厂里工作，或在内地挨着香港的那些电子厂里工作，那里一年多数时候天气湿热。

中国内地之所以能够在经济增速放缓的情况下继续以惊人的速度创造就业，其缘由可从京东等企业的扩张中找到。2015年上半年，中国城镇新增就业近720万人，多于2014年同期，尽管2014年同期的官方经济增速更快。“增长质量比增长速度更重要，”中信资本(Citic Capital)的一份报告表示。

许多工作的收入也在提高。除了长期萎靡不振的东北，其他地区的收入年增速在10%至15%之间。相比之下，在印度和大多数发达市场，收入近年来几乎根本没有增加。劳动者收入提高应该也意味着，中国经济可以更多地依赖国内消费，而不是继续大兴土木——中国已经建了太多的钢铁厂和水泥厂。

在中国制造业成本上升、出口市场疲软之际，人们希望，对劳动密集型服务越来越大的需求，可以帮助吸收工厂不需要的劳动力。如今的工厂自动化程度越来越高，生产也不再像以往那么繁忙。

在距离北京很远的地方，人们都感受到了这种希望。如果中国羽翼未丰的消费者经济未能起飞，那么中国政府将通过允许人民币贬值，让中国众多工厂继续忙碌下去。中国出口商品价格降低，主要损害的将是孟加拉国和越南工人的利益——他们到目前为止一直是这个巨型邻国劳动力成本不断上升的主要受益者。

但是，在像巴西、秘鲁和南非这样遥远的地方，人们也将感受到这些影响。如果人民币出现更大幅度贬值，那么势必给那些前景和汇率已然在承压的新兴市场带去更大压力。

就连西方发达市场也不会幸免。“关于人民币贬值对西方市场意味着什么，投资者已逐渐达成共识。”法国兴业银行(Société Générale)驻伦敦的全球策略师艾伯特?爱德华兹(Albert Edwards)表示，“它意味着全球通缩和衰退。在这种输入性紧缩的压迫下，西方制造业将被掐死。”

西方企业需要担心的不只是中国出口的廉价商品，优质的中国商品更需要担心。在产品质量方面，国内生产商已取得了巨大的进步。有些富有的中国企业家和投资者两年前还是苹果(Apple)的忠实用户，如今却投入了华为(Huawei)的怀抱。这不是因为价格，而是因为质量。

近年来由中国唱主角的全球供应链，如今开始变成一条中国内部供应链，尤其是在电子产品方面。越来越多的产品，原来是利用远方运来的组件在中国的巨型工厂里组装而成，如今则完完全全在中国制造。现在，一些经济学家开始谈论制造业的“去全球化”。去年，据估计中国的对外贸易总量下降了2%。摩根大通(JPMorgan)首席中国经济学家朱海斌表示，现在服务业对中国经济增长的贡献大于工业。朱海斌把中国称为一个“双速经济体”。

去年12月，财新Markit制造业采购经理人指数(PMI)连续第10个月低于荣枯线，产出、新增订单和新增出口订单量都出现下降。财新Markit服务业采购经理人指数(PMI)一直保持在荣枯线以上，但这种乐观情绪或许不会持久。

“当一个经济体猛烈地转向衰退时，”持悲观看法的爱德华兹指出，“几乎总是制造业拉着波动更小的服务业，一起滑入衰退。”

中国能否继续谱写近年来的成功，目前尚不可知。但许多人有理由对中国抱有这样的希望。正如全球市场动荡所显示，如果什么情况对中国而言是坏消息，那么对世界其他地方而言就是更坏的消息。

译者/邢嵬