【英语财经】中国：债务驱动的投资热潮已经到头 China gives up the ghost of its debt-fuelled boom

One of the factors behind today’s exceptionally low global interest rates has been the return of excess savings in Asia since the turn of the decade. Much of this excess saving is channelled through foreign-exchange reserves. So the fact that China’s official reserves fell to $3.65tn in July from a peak of $3.99tn a year earlier is striking, especially against the background of the botched attempt to prop up Chinese equities. Note, too, that other emerging markets are using up official reserves to support their ailing currencies, Russia being a notable case in point. Could it be that one of the great drivers of the search for yield is going into reverse?

If China and others are serious about rebalancing their economies away from investment towards consumption, all those savings surpluses would undoubtedly shrink. Another group of excess savers, the petro-economies, are also seeing their reserves shrink as the fall in energy prices causes revenues to dwindle. The fallout will not be confined to the US Treasury market, which is the world’s main repository for official funds. In previous periods of weak oil prices budgetary strain has caused energy-producing states to raid their sovereign wealth funds to plug fiscal holes. That means that equities and property could feel some backwash.

That said, the picture is very complicated. The recent overall decline in the official reserves of emerging market countries may partly reflect valuation effects. Because reserves are measured in dollars, holdings of euros, sterling and other non-dollar currencies will cause the reserve number to shrink. That impact will have been magnified where countries have rebalanced their reserve portfolios to maintain fixed currency weightings in response to the appreciation of the dollar.

In the case of China, rebalancing the economy could lead to more excess savings rather than less if the current high level of investment falls faster than the even higher level of savings. That would be tough for the rest of the world. It would imply a large current account surplus that would inflict a deflationary impulse outside China. And if Beijing moves to full capital account liberalisation, the composition of the outflows would change. Private capital would gravitate more to equities and property than to bonds.

In this very opaque territory where the waters have been greatly muddied by wildly volatile Chinese stock markets, one or two things seem clear. China is at the end of the wasteful debt-fuelled investment boom that created ghost towns and imposed more spare capacity on already lossmaking industries. The economy is slowing more than official figures suggest. In such an uncertain environment, it seems entirely plausible that investment will indeed fall faster than savings.

Yet this might not be so terrible for the economies and stock markets of the developed world. One of the most important reasons for the anaemic recovery is weak consumption — a consequence of the debt hangover and fiscal austerity. The collapse in oil prices is now prompting consumers to spend. While China’s producer price deflation and probable future currency depreciation will make it dauntingly competitive against other producers, Charles Dumas, chairman of Lombard Street Research, argues that it will be fine if the world’s consumers can buy Chinese goods more cheaply, releasing income for other spending.

The world, he adds, can simultaneously meet the twin needs for less debt and more consumption only if household incomes increase so that spending can rise without borrowing — in sharp contrast to the 2003-07 pattern that caused the financial crisis.

That increase in consumption, together with the rise in investment that would follow, would of course remove another big factor behind the low global interest rates: debt-constrained demand. But even if markets find it hard to cope with the Federal Reserve’s first policy rate rise, a scenario where household incomes were rising without injections of more debt would make the creep back to interest-rate normality much easier to bear.

John Plender is an FT columnist

当今全球极低利率背后的因素之一，是亚洲自进入本10年开始再次出现储蓄过剩。这些过剩储蓄有很大部分通过外汇储备流向了全世界。因此，中国官方外汇储备今年7月从一年前3.99万亿美元的峰值降至3.65万亿美元引人注目（根据最新数字，到今年8月底，中国外汇储备较7月底减少2.6%，至3.557万亿美元——编者注），尤其是在政府拯救股市努力失败的背景下。也请注意，还有其他新兴市场正在消耗官方储备来支撑本国陷入困境的货币——俄罗斯就是一个显著的例子。追求收益的一大驱动力是否可能已经发生了逆转？

如果中国和其他国家当真想要实现经济从投资拉动型向消费拉动型的再平衡，所有这些储蓄盈余无疑都会缩水。另一类储蓄过剩国家（即石油生产国）的外汇储备也在缩水，因为能源价格下跌导致这些国家的收入减少。由此带来的影响并不仅局限于作为各国官方储备主要吸纳者的美国国债市场。以往油价疲软时期，预算紧张曾使得能源生产国从本国主权财富基金中拿钱填补财政窟窿。这意味着股市和房地产可能会受到一定程度的冲击。

话虽如此，当前的形势非常复杂。近期新兴市场国家官方储备的整体下降或许可以在一定程度上反映估值效应。因为外汇储备以美元计算，持有欧元、英镑及其他非美元货币将导致外储缩水。在一些为应对美元升值而调整了外储投资组合、以维持固定货币权重的国家，这种影响肯定还被放大了。

在中国，经济再平衡可能会导致更多（而非更少）的过剩储蓄，如果当前的高投资水平比更高的储蓄水平下降速度更快的话。这将让世界其他国家的日子不好过。它意味着巨大的经常账户盈余，这种盈余将在中国以外的地方造成通缩压力。而且，如果中国政府完全开放资本账户，资本流出的构成将会改变。比起债券，私人资本将更多地被吸引至股市和房地产。

在这个很不透明的国度，急剧震荡的股市已经将水搅得极为浑浊，但有一、两件事似乎已经明朗。中国靠债务驱动的投资热潮已经到头，这场浪费资源的投资热潮造就了一个个鬼城，并迫使一个个已经处于亏损的行业上马了更多闲置产能。中国经济放缓的程度比官方数据所显示的更为严峻。在如此不确定的环境中，投资下降的速度真正超过储蓄似乎是完全合理的。

然而，对于发达世界的经济体和股市来说，这或许没那么可怕。复苏乏力的最重要原因之一是消费疲软，这种疲软是债务负担与财政紧缩共同导致的。如今，石油价格暴跌正推动消费者进行消费。虽然中国的工业生产者出厂价格指数(PPI)下跌以及未来可能的人民币贬值将使中国相对于其他生产国的竞争力显著提升，但朗伯德街研究公司(Lombard Street Research)董事长查尔斯?杜马(Charles Dumas)认为，如果世界各地的消费者能以更低的价格购买中国商品的话，那也不错，便宜的中国商品为消费者省下的钱会让他们可以在其他方面支出。

他补充说，世界可以同时满足更少债务和更多消费的双重需求，只要家庭收入增加、使得支出可以在不借贷的情况下增加——完全不同于2003-07年导致了金融危机的模式。

当然，消费增加连同随之而来的投资上升将会消除全球低利率背后的另一大因素：被债务困住手脚的需求。但即使市场觉得很难应对美联储(Fed)的首次加息，这种情形——家庭收入在无需注入更多债务的情况下增长——也将使利率缓慢回归正常变得容易忍受得多。

注：约翰?普伦德(John Plender)是英国《金融时报》专栏作家。

译者/陈隆祥