【英语财经】二手车市场是中国有待挖掘的富矿 China’s secret weapon: used car salesmen

You have probably read, in the Financial Times and elsewhere, that China is the world’s largest car market.

It is not. It is the world’s largest new car market, with sales of 21.1m units last year compared with 17.4m in the US. When used cars are included, the US auto market swells to more than 40m units, against less than 30m total passenger car sales in China.

In value terms, the gap between the two markets is even larger. In 2014, the overall value of US car sales was almost $1.2tn, more than twice as large as China’s $470bn.

This is not surprising, considering that two-thirds of cars on Chinese roads are less than five years old and 80 per cent of all buyers are first-time drivers. The latter fact explains why crossing an intersection in China can be a harrowing experience for pedestrians.

Put another way, an industry that most Americans, Europeans and Japanese have grown up with and now take for granted does not yet even exist in China. Dismiss a shady character as a “used car salesman” and most Chinese people will not understand the reference.

As Chinese leaders gather at their annual parliamentary session later this week, it is worth bearing in mind that they are doing so in a country where one cannot very easily buy a used car.

That fact should reassure Chinese politicians and multinational executives worried about the pace of growth in the world’s second-largest economy, which will be a topic of much discussion at the National People’s Congress.

Government officials insist that the rising “new economy” will balance out the declining “old economy”, allowing the country to grow at an average rate of 6.5 per cent through 2020. The creation of entirely new industries will further support growth.

The inevitable rise of what will soon be the world’s largest used car market is one such example. While its emergence will initially cannibalise some new car sales — primarily those of cheap domestic brands — the potential for growth is huge. In most developed auto markets, there are at least two used car sales for every one new car sale. In China the ratio is inverted, with roughly three new car transactions for every used car sold.

Another new industry whose time should come soon is China’s private jet sector, which is a fraction of the size of its US counterpart.

But the development of business aviation has been constrained in China by the military’s grip on airspace and many of the smaller airports best suited for private jets. Similarly, a giant new used car market will not spring up by itself. Complicated financial reforms will need to be hammered out in order to facilitate its development.

As Janet Lewis at Macquarie Securities in Hong Kong points out, while regulations governing the sale of used cars vary from province to province, in general dealers must act as brokers between sellers and buyers. That is because value added tax would be incurred if they took temporary ownership of vehicles, putting further strain on already tight cash flows.

When such wrinkles are finally ironed out, the inevitable surge in Chinese used car sales will also benefit car manufacturers now contending with a “new normal” of falling margins in what has historically been their most lucrative market.

In developed economies, ancillary activities including maintenance, trade-ins and used car sales have helped dealers sustain profits as new car margins are squeezed. But in China dealers have too often been, as industry consultant Bill Russo puts it, “dogs who just want to be fed”, solely reliant on buoyant new car demand.

When the going got tougher over recent years, dealers demanded ever bigger discounts and one-off subsidies from their manufacturer suppliers. By contrast, in the boom years after the global financial crisis, China was one of the few countries where to own a car dealership was to collect a lazy economic rent. The pickings were so easy that in at least one recent high-profile corruption case, a senior official’s son was gifted a stake in a Toyota dealership.

The emergence of a proper Chinese used car market will help everyone from the ruling Communist party by boosting economic growth, to the world’s largest multinational carmakers by boosting dealer profits. Who knew that used car salesmen could be such an asset to society?

你很有可能在英国《金融时报》和其他地方读到过，中国是世界上最大的汽车市场。

其实并非如此。中国是世界最大的新车市场，去年中国卖出了2110万辆新车，相比之下美国卖出了1740万辆新车。然而，如果算上二手车，美国的汽车市场销量就扩大到逾4000万辆，而中国的乘用车销售总量不到3000万辆。

在销售总值方面，中国和美国的差距就更大了。2014年，美国的汽车销售总值近1.2万亿美元，是中国（4700亿美元）的两倍还多。

考虑到中国道路上行驶的汽车有三分之二车龄不到5年，而且80%的汽车买主都是第一次当司机，这并不让人惊讶。后一个事实解释了为何行人在中国交叉路口处过马路可能是一种可怕的经历。

换句话说，伴随着当今大多数美国人、欧洲人和日本人长大，他们已经习以为常的一个行业，在中国压根还不存在。如果你不屑地称一个鬼鬼祟祟的人为“二手车推销员”，大多数中国人不会懂你的意思。

中国正在召开一年一度的两会，值得铭记一点：在会议召开之际的中国，人们仍然无法轻而易举地买一辆二手车。

上述事实应该能够安抚忧心于这个世界第二大经济体增速的中国政治人士和跨国公司高管。中国经济增速放缓是全国人大会议肯定会大量讨论的议题。

政府官员坚称，“新经济”的兴起将平衡“旧经济”的衰落，使从现在到2020年中国能够以6.5%的平均增速增长。全新产业的建立将进一步为增长提供支撑。

中国二手车市场不可阻挡的崛起就是一例，它将很快成为世界最大的二手车市场。尽管这个市场的出现最初会蚕食一些新车销售——主要是那些便宜的国产品牌汽车——但这个市场的增长潜力是巨大的。在大多数发达汽车市场，每卖出1辆新车都至少对应卖出2辆二手车。在中国，这一比例倒了过来，大约每卖出1辆二手车对应卖出3辆新车。

另一个不久后应会进入好光景的新行业是中国的私人飞机行业。中国该行业的规模仅为美国的零头。

但在中国，军方对空域、以及许多适合私人飞机起降的较小型机场的掌控，限制了商务航空的发展。同样，一个巨大的新的二手车市场将不会自己冒出来。中国将需要制定出复杂的财税改革方案，为二手车市场的发展提供便利。

正如麦格理(Macquarie)驻香港的珍妮特?刘易斯(Janet Lewis)所指出的那样，尽管不同省份的二手车管理规章不尽相同，但总体来说，经销商必须充当买家和卖家之间的经纪人。这是因为，如果经销商充当车辆的临时所有者，将产生增值税，这会导致他们原本紧张的现金流更加紧绷。

当此类障碍最终得到清除之后，中国二手车销售势必将激增，汽车生产商也会从中受益。在这个曾经最赚钱的市场上，汽车生产商如今正艰难应对利润率下滑的“新常态”。

在发达经济体，当新车利润遭挤压时，包括维修保养、折价换新和二手车销售在内的辅助性活动帮助经销商维持了利润。但在中国，正如汽车业顾问罗威(Bill Russo)所述，经销商几乎总是“在眼巴巴地等着放粮”，完全依赖旺盛的新车需求。

当近几年形势变得更严峻时，经销商不断要求供应厂商提供更大的折扣和一次性补贴。相比之下，在全球金融危机后的景气时期，中国是为数不多的拥有一家汽车经销商便可以轻松收取经济租金的国家之一。钱财来得如此容易，结果在近来至少一起引起轰动的贪腐案中，高官之子获赠了一家丰田(Toyota)经销商的部分股权。

中国出现一个像样的二手车市场，将有利于所有人——对执政党中共而言，可以提振经济增长；对大型跨国车企而言，可以增加经销商的利润。谁曾想到二手车推销员还能成为如此有用的社会栋梁呢？

译者/何黎