【英语财经】旧经济指标难释中国增长全貌 Old economy focus ‘understates’ Chinese growth

China’s economy is rapidly rebalancing towards domestic consumption, undermining bears who focus too much on the country’s struggling industrial base, both BNP Paribas and Michael Hasenstab, Franklin Templeton’s high-profile fund manager, argue.

Widespread distrust of China’s official economic growth data has led many observers to construct their own measures of activity, often based on variables such as rail freight, which has plunged this year, and steel production, which is forecast to fall 3 per cent next year after rising at an average rate of 15 per cent a year between 2000 and 2013.

Growth in industrial output more broadly has slowed to 5.6 per cent, from the double-digit rate regularly recorded until last year.

But some analysts argue this focus on China’s “old economy” increasingly tells only half the story.

“There is too much emphasis on old indicators such as industrial output, steel production, etc. It’s worthwhile to look at passenger [rail] traffic versus freight traffic growth, online sales growth, movie box office revenue growth,” says Chi Lo, senior economist for Greater China at BNP Paribas Investment Partners. “Traditional macro indicators tell a distorted story.”

Mr Hasenstab, manager of the $58bn Templeton Global Bond fund, agrees. “China’s economy is rebalancing,” he says. “Some of the traditional engines of growth, in manufacturing, real estate and local government spending, have stalled or contracted.

Parts of China’s industrial sector suffer from severe overcapacity and are contracting.

“However, those sectors are only part of China’s economy — the old economy. The service sector has been expanding rapidly, fuelling wage growth and supporting consumption.”

According to BNPP IP, rail freight volumes are currently contracting at an annualised rate of more than 15 per cent. However, passenger traffic is up by almost as much, as the first chart shows.

Moreover, online shopping revenues are increasing at an annual rate of more than 50 per cent and cinema box office revenues at a rate of more than 40 per cent.

“There isn’t huge evidence of a crisis in China. The crisis is in industries that assumed China would continue to grow at its historic rate,” says Simon Roberts, head of global equities at BNPP IP.

The French house draws much of its confidence from data suggesting that, even as Chinese economic growth has slowed from 12 per cent to 6.9 per cent over the past five years, according to the official data, employment has held up.

Moreover, within the overall jobs tally, employment in the primary sector, which includes the likes of agriculture and mining, and which accounted for almost half of workers as recently as 2004, has fallen significantly, as the second chart shows.

Workers have instead migrated to the secondary sector, which encapsulates manufacturing and construction and, more tellingly, the tertiary sector, otherwise known as services.

“The growth of the service sector is absorbing labour that is being shed from the traditional heavy industry and manufacturing sectors. As the overall labour force growth slows, the service sector expansion can suffice to maintain full employment,” says Mr Hasenstab.

The particularly rapid growth of China’s tertiary sector can be seen in the third chart. From little more than 20 per cent of the economy in 1980, the tertiary sector now accounts for half of a significantly larger economy. In 2013, it overtook the secondary sector — now declining as a share of GDP — to become the largest component of China’s gross domestic product.

“The tertiary sector accounts for 41 per cent of employment, and rising, but 63 per cent of GDP growth in 2014,” says Caroline Yu Maurer, head of Greater China equities at BNPP IP.

“The industrial statistics don’t look good but, for example, China is seeing airline passenger growth of 10 per cent a year.”

Ms Maurer argues that this bifurcation in growth is evident in China’s mainland equity market, where stocks exposed to the country’s old economy have barely budged since the start of 2013, while new economy stocks (including Chinese companies’ US-listed American depositary receipts) have almost doubled in value.

As the final chart shows, stocks in BNPP IP’s narrow definition of the new economy, incorporating just technology, healthcare, alternative energy and environmental equipment, have risen two-and-a-half-fold since January 2013.

Any continuation of these trends could be increasingly valuable to investors in China’s mainland A-share market. A decision by MSCI, the index provider, to include American depositary receipts in its MSCI China index from May means the new economy weighting in the index is likely to rise from 26 per cent to about 40 per cent.

Mr Hasenstab expects the Chinese economy to grow by something akin to its current official 6.9 per cent pace in 2016. Mr Lo broadly agrees, although he says that “in aggregate this new sector [of China’s economy] is not strong enough to make up for the old sector, therefore China will have to keep [monetary and fiscal] policy easy”.

Not everyone is convinced, however. John-Paul Smith, partner at Ecstrat, an investment advisory firm, accepts that service sector growth is a natural consequence of China’s urbanisation.

However, he remains suspicious of the official data, which suggest that “other” activities, including healthcare, education, professional services and information, now account for 20 per cent of GDP and financial intermediation, 8.5 per cent.

“These figures compare with 24.5 per cent and 7.2 per cent respectively in the US and have been growing strongly even as the rest of the economy has been struggling, which appears to be frankly nonsensical given that the US economy is so much more developed,” Mr Smith says.

Furthermore, he argues that China’s consumers, and by extension its service sector, are being propped up artificially by the ever greater leverage being pumped into the economy. Moreover, the fate of the service sector is, itself, tied to that of manufacturers.

“A hard landing in the industrial sector would not only impact the potentially insolvent enterprises, but also the employees of government and financial institutions, which have strong links with the most vulnerable industries,” he says.

“The likely impact on the service sector would also spread the impact of the pain of the problems in manufacturing from the heavily industrialised regions such as the north-east, towards the tier one and tier two cities, where consumer spending has been growing strongly over recent years.”

In other words, if manufacturers “hit the wall, the idea that consumer spending won’t take a big hit is absolutely fanciful in the extreme”.

Some are comparing China’s rebalancing away from manufacturing to the experience of the UK in the early 1980s. However, Mr Smith argues the comparison is “invalid” because Beijing is propping up its lossmaking industrial companies and encouraging them to export their surplus production, rather than letting them go to the wall, as the UK did.

Until this necessary retrenchment does happen, either via a wave of bankruptcies or a longer process of attrition, he believes it is impossible to judge the true state of the rest of the Chinese economy.

Fearing a “big impact” when this does happen, Mr Smith believes there is a good chance of China experiencing a “sudden stop” in the next couple of years, with economic growth dropping to zero.

富兰克林邓普顿(Franklin Templeton)的知名基金经理迈克尔?哈森施塔布(Michael Hasenstab)与法国巴黎银行(BNP Paribas)都认为，中国经济正迅速转向国内消费，这挑战了那些过于关注中国工业部门困境的看空者的观点。

对中国官方经济增长数据的普遍不信任，让许多观察人士都构建起自己对经济活动的测算方法——通常基于铁路货运（今年已经大幅下降）以及钢产量（2000年至2013年间平均年增速为15%，而明年预计将下降3%）等变量。

更广泛地讲，工业产出增速已从直至去年还经常录得的两位数放缓至5.6%。

但一些分析师认为，这种对中国“旧经济”的关注越来越只能让人们看清一半现实。

“人们过于看重一些旧指标，如工业产出、钢铁产量等。更值得看的是（铁路）客运相对货运的增长、在线销售的增长、电影票房收入的增长，”法国巴黎投资管理公司(BNP Paribas Investment Partners, BNPP IP)大中华区高级经济学家罗念慈(Chi Lo)说，“传统宏观指标反映的现实是扭曲的。”



规模580亿美元的邓普顿全球债券基金(Templeton Global Bond Fund)的经理哈森施塔布对此表示赞同。“中国经济正在进行再平衡，”他说，“一些传统的经济增长引擎——制造业、房地产及地方政府支出——已经停滞或萎缩。”

中国部分工业部门遭遇了严重的产能过剩，正在收缩。

“然而，这些部门只是中国经济——旧经济——的一部分。中国的服务业一直在迅速扩张，推动工资上涨并支撑消费。”

BNPP IP的数据显示，当前，铁路货运量正在以超过15%的年率收缩。然而，如图一所示，客运量正在以几乎相同的速度增长。

此外，在线销售收入正在以每年超过50%的速度增长，而电影票房收入增速达到了40%以上。



BNPP IP全球股票业务主管西蒙?罗伯茨(Simon Roberts)说：“没有充分证据证明中国陷入了危机。只是某些假设中国会继续以过去的速度增长的行业出现了危机。”

这家法国投资管理公司的信心主要来自中国就业数据：尽管官方数据显示，过去五年中国经济增速已从12%放缓到6.9%，但就业保持强劲。

此外，如图二所示，在整体就业数据中，第一产业（包括农业、矿业之类的部门）就业人数已大幅下降，而直至2004年该产业还占了几乎一半的劳动力。



大量劳动者已转移至第二产业（包括制造业、建筑业）以及更能说明问题的第三产业，即服务业。

哈森施塔布说：“不断增长的服务业正在吸收从传统重工业和制造业分流出的劳动力。随着整体劳动力增长放缓，服务业的扩大足以维持充分就业。”

从图三中可以看出，中国的服务业增长尤其迅速。从1980年仅占经济的20%多一点开始，服务业如今已占据显著扩大的中国经济的半壁江山。2013年，服务业已超过第二产业（占中国国内生产总值(GDP)的比例正在下降）成为GDP的最大组成部分。

BNPP IP大中华区股票业务主管莫勒(Caroline Yu Maurer)说：“服务业占总体就业的41%，而且还在上升，却贡献了2014年GDP增长的63%。”

“虽然工业统计数据不好看，但是（例如）中国航空旅客数量却以每年10%的速度增长。”

莫勒认为，这种增长的分化在中国内地股市有明显体现：与中国旧经济相关的股票现在的价格与2013年初比几乎没有变化，而与新经济相关的股票（包括中国公司在美上市的美国存托凭证）的价格几乎翻了一番。

正如图四所示，BNPP IP狭义定义下的新经济（仅包括科技、医疗、新能源及环保设备）股票自2013年1月以来已上涨2.5倍。



对中国内地A股市场的投资者而言，这些趋势的任何延续都将变得越来越有价值。指数提供商MSCI明晟近日决定，将一些中资公司的美国存托凭证纳入MSCI明晟中国指数之中，这意味着新经济在该指数中的权重可能将从26%上升至40%左右。

哈森施塔布预测，2016年中国的经济增长率将接近目前6.9%的官方增长数据。罗念慈基本同意这一说法，尽管他表示“在总量上，中国的新（经济）部门还没有强大到足以弥补旧部门，因此中国将不得不保持宽松的（货币和财政）政策”。

然而，并非每个人都确信这一点。投资咨询机构Ecstrat的约翰-保罗?史密斯(John-Paul Smith)认可服务业增长是中国城市化进程的自然结果。

但他依然怀疑官方数据。据官方数据，医疗、教育、专业服务和信息产业等“其他”活动占GDP的20%，金融中介活动则占8.5%。

“即使中国经济的其他领域一直处于困境，这些数据的增长也一直十分强劲，而美国对应的数据分别是24.5%和7.2%，考虑到美国经济要发达得多，坦白说这看起来很荒谬，”史密斯说。

此外，他认为中国的消费者，乃至中国的服务业，都是依靠注入中国经济中、越来越大的杠杆人为支撑起来的。而且，服务业和制造业的命运是相互关联的。

“工业部门的硬着陆不仅会影响那些存在破产风险的企业，还会影响政府和金融机构的雇员，因为政府和金融机构与那些最脆弱的工业紧密相连，”他说。

“对服务业可能造成的影响，还会使制造业的问题带来的伤痛从东北等重工业地区蔓延到一二线城市，近年来后者的消费者支出一直在强劲增长。”

换句话说，如果制造业“碰壁，认为消费者支出不会受到重大冲击绝对是异想天开”。

一些人把中国减少对制造业依赖的再平衡过程和英国在上世纪80年代初期的经历相比。然而，史密斯认为这种比较是“没有意义的”，因为北京方面正在支撑亏损的工业企业，鼓励它们出口过剩产能，而不是像英国那样让这些企业破产。

他认为，除非必要的缩减通过一轮破产或者时间更长的消耗过程实现，否则不可能判断中国经济其他部门的真实情况。

史密斯担心，当这种情况发生的时候，会带来“重大影响”。他相信，在接下来几年里，中国有很高的几率经历“骤停”，经济增长会降至零。

译者/何黎