【英语财经】中国经济刺激举措效力减弱 China’s fizz goes flat, even with far bigger credit stimuli

China’s sugar highs do not last as long as they used to. The saccharine stimulus of 2009-10, which relied on heaped spoonfuls of debt-fuelled investment, kept the economy fizzing at least until the end of 2011. But the impact of far larger credit infusions this year is much more feeble.

An economic equivalent of insulin resistance appears to be setting in. So large is the credit injection that much of it cannot be productively absorbed. This has led to liquidity spillovers that have spurred a speculative frenzy on commodity exchanges.

A tide of money has flowed into China’s commodity exchanges, bidding up iron ore and steel prices this year by about 50 per cent. So fevered did trading become that in April one steel futures contract alone recorded a turnover of 1.4bn tonnes. But in the last few days, prices and volumes have slumped.

The wild swings distract attention from a basic truth: money is losing the power to energise important economic muscles. Asset prices in the all-important property market — which drove China’s recovery from the 2008 financial crisis — are now so high relative to household incomes that it is hard to envisage another sustained rally.

On average, it would take 25 years, 33 years, 36 years and 19 years of household income in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou respectively for a family to buy a 90 sq m apartment, according to calculations by Mizuho Securities in Hong Kong. By contrast, London house prices are 9.2 times average earnings for first-time buyers, according to Nationwide data.

Dynamism among companies also appears hobbled. Chronic overcapacity in the traditional industries of steel, coal, aluminium and cement has depressed earnings and profits, exacerbating debt strains. The International Monetary Fund estimates that $1.3tn in corporate debt — or almost one in six of the business loans on Chinese banks’ books — was owed by companies that brought in less in revenues than they owned in interest payments.

So unleashing a new tide of credit to ease debt problems is “like smoking opium to look healthy”, said Professor Li Weisen of Fudan University, according to the South China Morning Post.

Indeed, the fading buzz gained from artificial stimulus is clear from macro numbers. China expanded total domestic credit by Rmb12tn, or 34 per cent of gross domestic product, in the year to November 2009 — significantly less than the Rmb27.9tn, or 40 per cent of GDP, in the year to February this year, according to Bernstein Research.

But while the 2009 stimulus reinvigorated growth from 6.1 per cent in the first quarter to a full-year GDP growth rate of 9.2 per cent, the flood of credit seen in the year to February has been accompanied by a gentle decline in GDP headline numbers.

All this has important implications for the wider world. In 2009-10, China was praised as a dependable locomotive that helped haul the global economy on to a path of recovery from the financial crisis, partly through its growing demand for emerging markets’ commodities.

Now the risk is that it becomes the opposite: a source of instability and unreliable price signals to developing economies.

So riven is Beijing by conflicting policy objectives that regular economic trend reversals seem assured. Local authorities have announced attempts to tame a rise in property prices that is only a few months old.

More broadly, though, China still appears uncertain on where it stands between Marx and the market. At the 18th Party Congress in 2012, Beijing announced that the market would take a “decisive” role in allocating resources.

Since then, however, its actions have told a different story. Gao Xiqing, a Tsinghua University professor and former head of the China Investment Corporation, a sovereign wealth fund, told a US audience last month of his doubts about the reform process. “Are we allowing [the market] to be the decisive force? It doesn’t look like it,” Mr Gao said, according to a transcript.

This basic contradiction underlies others. Beijing says it wants to strip out industrial overcapacity and shut down “zombie” companies but is also flooding the economy with cheap credit. It is committed to opening the capital account but has stepped up curbs on capital outflows. It was content to see stock prices rally last year but intervened heavily when prices slumped.

Chairman Mao Zedong used to warn revolutionary cadres to remain obdurate against the flattery of capitalists — or, as he put it, the “sugar-coated bullets of the bourgeoisie”. Beijing’s challenge now is how to descend from its sugar high without crashing the economy.

中国的“糖亢奋”（sugar high，指摄入大量糖后短时间内出现的亢奋状态——译者注）并未持续像过去那么长的时间。2009年到2010年期间“甜得发腻的”刺激举措，曾令中国经济的亢奋状态至少保持到了2011年底。那一次的刺激举措，依赖的是大笔大笔以债务拉动的投资。然而，今年规模大得多的信贷注入，作用却小得多。

一种经济上的“胰岛素抗性”似乎正在出现。信贷注入的规模如此之大，以至于大部分信贷不能得到有效吸收。这种状况导致了流动性溢出效应，在大宗商品交易所中激发了一轮投机狂潮。

一波资金涌入了中国的大宗商品交易所，将今年的铁矿石和钢的价格哄抬了大约50%。交易变得如此狂热，以至于4月份仅仅一份钢铁期货合同就曾录得14亿吨的成交量。不过，在过去几天里，价格和成交量已经大幅下滑。

疯狂的波动让人容易忽略一个基本事实：资金正在失去为重要的经济发动机注入能量的能力。在至关重要的房地产市场（曾拉动中国从2008年金融危机中复苏），资产价格如今相对家庭收入已经如此之高，以至于很难想象会出现又一场持续上涨。

根据香港瑞穗证券(Mizuho Securities)的计算，平均而言，北京、上海、深圳和广州的家庭要购买一套90平米的公寓，分别需要花费25年、33年、36年和19年的家庭收入。相比之下，根据全英房屋贷款协会(Nationwide)的数据，伦敦的房价是首次购房者平均收入的9.2倍。

企业的活力似乎也受到了抑制。钢铁、煤炭、铝和水泥这些传统产业长期的产能过剩，抑制了收益和利润，加剧了债务压力。据国际货币基金组织(IMF)估计，公司债中有1.3万亿美元（相当于中国各银行账目上商业贷款的近六分之一）的负债方是营收不够偿付利息的企业。

因此，据《南华早报》报道，复旦大学(Fudan University)教授李维森表示，通过注入新一波信贷来缓解债务问题“就像为了看起来健康而抽鸦片”。

事实上，通过宏观数据能够明显看出，人为刺激举措所制造的活力越来越少。根据伯恩斯坦研究公司(Bernstein Research)的数据，在截至2009年11月份的一年时间里，中国国内信贷的总规模扩大了12万亿元人民币，与国内生产总值(GDP)之比为34%，而在截至今年2月的一年里，这一数字是27.9万亿元人民币，与GDP之比为40%，前者大大低于后者。

然而，2009年的刺激举措把GDP增长速度从第一季度的6.1%重新提振至全年的9.2%，截至今年2月份的一年里出现的信贷潮，却伴随着GDP增速的缓慢下滑。

在更广的全球层面，所有这一切都有重要影响。2009年到2010年，中国曾被赞誉为可以依赖的火车头，帮助拉动全球经济摆脱金融危机、走上了复苏的轨道——这在一定程度上是通过中国对新兴市场大宗商品日益增长的需求实现的。

如今的风险则在于，中国的作用颠倒了：它成为新兴经济体的动荡及不可靠价格信号的源头。

相互矛盾的政策目标让中国政府如此左右为难，导致经济态势时不时的逆转似乎成为一种必然现象。目前，地方当局已宣布了多种举措，试图限制只出现了几个月的房价攀升。

不过，从更广的层面说，中国似乎仍不能确定自己的立场居于马克思(Marx)主义和市场之间的什么位置。在2012年的中共十八大上，中国政府曾宣布要让市场在资源配置中起“决定”作用。

然而，自那以来中国的行动却与此大不相同。上个月，曾执掌中国投资公司（China Investment Corporation，中国的主权财富基金）的清华大学(Tsinghua University)教授高西庆，在美国向听众表达了对改革进程的质疑。根据一份演讲文字稿，高西庆表示：“我们正在让（市场）成为决定力量么？看起来似乎并非如此。”

这种基本矛盾是引发其他矛盾的根本原因。中国政府表示希望去除工业过剩产能，关闭“僵尸”企业，然而中国政府同时还在向整个经济体注入大量廉价信贷。中国政府承诺要开放资本账户，却已加大了对资金外流的限制。去年看到股价上涨时，中国政府十分满意，而在股价暴跌时，政府却大举干预。

中国国家主席毛泽东曾警告革命干部坚决抵制资本家的巴结奉承——也就是他所说的“资产阶级的糖衣炮弹”。如今，中国政府的挑战是如何在不导致经济崩溃的情况下摆脱“糖亢奋”。

译者/简易