【英语财经】中国加大铁路投资以提振经济 China targets railways to put its economy right back on track

For those who wish to understand today’s China, a new documentary called The Iron Ministry is not a bad place to start. Filmed entirely on China’s trains as they cross the countryside, it follows hopeful job seekers from the country to the city, and factory workers returning to their birthplace.

Most of the trains are a far cry from the Maglev that transports passengers from the outskirts of Shanghai to the Pudong airport, or the bullet trains that speed between major cities at 300 kilometres an hour. No matter. The network has facilitated the migration to cities that has done so much to fuel China’s growth in recent years, as well as laying the foundation for rising property values beyond the country’s first-tier cities.

Now, as part of China’s latest fiscal stimulus, there will be even more railway construction. Railway companies are already among the biggest beneficiaries of several new Beijing’s initiatives, including the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the peculiarly named “One Belt One Road” programme. This will commission railways beyond China’s own borders, down through Southeast Asia and across Central Asia. China is also exporting its rail expertise: in early September, China Railway Rolling Stock (

CRRC

) broke ground for a factory in the US where it will construct cars for the Boston subway system.

On first glance, the latest fiscal stimulus appears to be a return to an economic model which the country had supposedly outgrown. Shen Jianguang, Mizuho Securities’ Hong Kong-based economist, says the Ministry of Finance “took a quantum leap in the scale of fiscal stimulus”. But it was also something of a great leap backwards.

Consumption and services were supposed to replace investment and manufacturing as the catalyst for growth. The private sector was meant to be embraced, even as it made inroads into the activities, revenues and profits of the state sector. However, the latest spending would seem to be doing the opposite: adding to excess capacity and aggravating the burden of debt that the country can ill-afford.

The new programme also comes at a time when it is easy to conclude that the country’s progress to super-economic status has been derailed. This summer has not been kind to China. The efficacy of investment has been falling, which means that each increment in growth requires ever more capital. Local governments and state owned enterprises have too much debt. What was meant to be a slowing bull market that would allow companies to raise equity cheaply and use it to reduce their debt went badly off track, becoming a full rout. Although the price of property in 35 of China’s cities is up, the overall softening in the property market is still expected to subtract 1.5 percentage points from GDP growth this year, after a similar impact in 2014, according to Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS in Hong Kong.

In addition, the latest round of state enterprise reform is far less dramatic than many had hoped. “The key issue remains whether it will be real restructuring or simply the creation by mergers of politically connected national champions,” writes Christopher Wood for the CLSA unit of Beijing-based Citic Securities.

Train maker CRRC is itself the product of a government-orchestrated merger between the two dominant railway companies. That June deal — aimed at creating a group that could win overseas business — marked a departure from earlier policy that splitting up government monopolies would foster efficiency through competition.

The return to old-style state spending on big projects could still prove to be a short-term measure. “We believe infrastructure investment can only offer temporary support to growth until corporate investment and household spending recover,” writes Ms Wang. “It is not a long-term solution to offset weaker trend growth.”

Meanwhile, though, the train passengers in the documentary express hopes for the future in ways that show China’s growth dream is still alive (at least, the passengers in second class do — a conductor refuses to let the film-maker into first class as he lacks the right ticket). And, to the extent that railway investment fuelled China’s growth, policy has been sound: the Chinese version of fiscal stimulus has produced more efficient train and metro services, rather than the property booms and stock market bubbles stemming from quantitative easing in the US.

对于希望理解当今中国的人而言，一部名为《铁道》(The Iron Ministry)的新纪录片是个不错的开始。这部纪录片完全是在穿越中国乡村地区的火车上拍摄的，影片跟随着心怀希望的求职者从农村到城市，也跟随着工厂工人返回他们的出生地。

影片中的大部分列车与从上海近郊至浦东机场的磁悬浮列车，或者在中国主要城市间以逾300公里时速疾驰的子弹头列车相去甚远。没关系。铁路网为农民进城务工创造了条件，近几十年这种迁移为推动中国的发展贡献良多，同时铁路网也奠定了一线城市以外地区房价上涨的基础。

现在，作为中国最新的财政刺激计划的一部分，中国将兴建更多铁路。铁路企业已经受益于北京方面的几项新倡议——包括亚洲基础设施投资银行(AIIB)和名称奇特的“一带一路”(One Belt One Road)项目。“一带一路”会将铁路建设到中国的边界之外，向南穿过东南亚，向西穿过中亚。中国还出口铁路技术：9月初，中国中车(CRRC)在美国的一家工厂破土动工，该工厂将为波士顿的地铁系统制造地铁车辆。

乍看之下，最新的财政刺激计划似乎是回归中国理应不再需要的经济模式。瑞穗证券(Mizuho Securities)驻香港经济学家沈建光表示，财政部“在财政刺激的规模上迈出了巨大的一步”。但在某种意义上，此举也是倒退了一大步。

消费和服务理应替代投资和制造业，成为增长的催化剂。私营部门理应得到欢迎，即便它挤入国营部门的经营活动范围，争夺营收和利润。然而，最近的支出似乎与此背道而驰：增加了过剩的产能，加剧了国家已经难以负担的债务。

新计划出台之际，人们还很容易得出结论认为，中国迈向超级经济大国地位的进程已经脱轨。今年夏天，中国的境况并不好。投资效率一直在下降，这意味着实现单位增长所需要的资本越来越多。地方政府和国有企业债台高筑。原本希望通过一个放慢速度的牛市，让企业能够以低廉成本募集股本，并用募资所得减少债务，但这一招严重失手，变成了股市全面下滑。按照瑞银(UBS)常驻香港的首席中国经济学家汪涛的说法，尽管中国有35个城市的房价上涨，但预计房地产市场的整体走软将使今年的国内生产总值(GDP)增长减少1.5个百分点，而2014年也出现过类似的影响。

此外，最新一轮国企改革远不如许多人期望的那么激动人心。“关键问题依然是，这是真正的重组，还是只是通过合并创建有政治后台的国家冠军企业，”北京中信证券(Citic Securities)旗下的里昂证券(CLSA)分析师克里斯托弗?伍德(Christopher Wood)表示。

列车制造商中国中车就是政府主导的两大铁路企业合并的产物。这起在6月进行的交易旨在打造一个能够赢得海外业务的集团，标志着北京方面偏离更早以前的政策——分拆政府垄断企业，通过竞争来增进效率。

重启国家对大型项目的支出，这种旧模式仍有可能是合理的短期措施。“我们相信，基础设施投资只能暂时对增长提供支持，直至企业投资和家庭支出恢复过来，”汪涛表示，“这不是抵消增长势头走弱的长期解决办法。”

不过，上述纪录片中的火车乘客表达了对未来的希望，表明中国的增长梦仍有生命力（至少二等座车厢里的乘客心怀希望——检票员拒绝让该片摄制者进入一等座车厢，因为他没有一等座车厢的票）。而且，就铁路投资对中国经济的助推作用而言，政策是靠谱的：比起美国量化宽松造成的房地产热潮和股市泡沫，中国版的财政刺激至少带来了更有效率的火车和地铁服务。

译者/许雯佳