【英语财经】中国经济已过巅峰？ Like Soviet Russia in 1959, has China already peaked?

“Living in a world strewn with the wreckage of the Soviet empire it is hard for most people to realise that there was a time when the Soviet economy, far from being a byword for the failure of socialism, was one of the wonders of the world – that when Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the UN podium and declared, ‘We will bury you’, it was an economic rather than a military boast”. Paul Krugman (1994)

When in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev visited the Unites States, the spectacular economic growth recorded by the Soviet Union was commonly regarded as a challenge to the supremacy of the western model of democratic capitalism. Impressive statistics, such as its manufacturing output of tractors, mesmerised western opinion formers. Newsweek warned that the Soviet Union might well be “on the high road to economic domination of the world”.

Krugman’s economic analysis suggested that this “economic miracle” could be explained simply by the “rapid growth in inputs: expansion of employment, increases in education levels, and, above all, massive investment in physical capital,” and that the subsequent collapse of the Soviet economic model stemmed from its failure to increase “units of output per units of input”. With falling productivity, Soviet growth would inevitably slow as returns on investment diminished.

Perhaps there are parallels with perceptions of the Chinese economy today? The Chinese economic model has been to establish itself as the world’s lowest cost manufacturer by utilising cheap (rural) migrant labour on an unprecedented scale, and then to recycle the current account surplus from these exports on an equally unprecedented capital spending boom.

Accordingly, as the supply of cheap (rural) migrant labour slows and capital build in manufacturing, housing and infrastructure outstrips sustainable utilisation then – without commensurate gains in productivity – growth will slow down. Given that the economic model requires surplus savings to be ploughed back into new production, consumption remains relatively depressed. As with the post-1950s Soviet Union, there is a tipping point when the economic model stops working.

China’s response to the global financial crisis in 2009 – a stimulus programme equivalent to 16 per cent of gross domestic product – is now widely regarded as a policy error. Local governments were provided with bank loans to finance capital spending on infrastructure, housing and manufacturing in order to achieve mandated GDP targets. Money supply (M2) doubled between 2007 and 2011, with over half of all bank lending directed toward infrastructure projects. Much of the capital formation was non-productive and wasteful.

The stimulus also resulted in local party officials enriching themselves through appropriation of revenues from land sales, kick-backs and often ownership of the construction companies involved. This resulted in a conspicuous consumption boom amongst Chinese elites and more recently a subsequent backlash in the form of an “anti-corruption” purge.

The Chinese banking industry has also been weakened. No major economy can sustain annualised loan growth of 30 per cent without a subsequent rapid deterioration in asset quality. There is a general reluctance across the industry to recognise bad loans: liquidity to unprofitable or insolvent borrowers is simply rolled and, as such, the “true” non-performing loan ratio is likely to be in double digits, compared to a hard-to-believe official rate of just 2 per cent. At best, the Chinese banking system will find itself short of equity and unable to allocate capital to profitable ventures that support sustainable economic growth. At worst, lack of confidence in a rotten and corrupt banking system will result in a wholesale loss of confidence in Chinese assets.

The trade-off between the short-term pain of reducing excess capacity in a wide range of economic activities and the long-term gain of more efficient mobilisation of resources is now widely recognised. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how capacity is shut down, as financing to “zombie” corporates is often supplied by regional banks under the influence of local government, reluctant to create localised unemployment and unrest.

A symptom of this structural over-capacity is that factor gate prices are currently falling at an annualised double digit rate. Only by adjusting nominal output by this massive GDP deflator can it be argued that Chinese manufacturing is still contributing to overall economic growth.

There is the potential for this excess manufacturing capacity to be at least partially absorbed by exports. But China is no longer the world’s lowest cost manufacturer, not only because the supply of additional cheap labour has diminished, but because its currency (by virtue of being pegged to the US dollar) has risen significantly against its Asian peers (by 30 per cent over the past five years on a trade weighted basis).

The Beijing government sees a strong and stable exchange rate as politically desirable: in part given its desire for the prestige of an international hard currency; but also because of a lack of confidence in its economic prospects that a devaluation would betray.

The Chinese economic model is now in crisis. As such, the question we should be asking is whether China, like the Soviet Union in 1959, has already peaked?

Barry Norris is founder and CEO of Argonaut Capital, a London-based asset manager

“生活在一个苏联帝国已经土崩瓦解的时代，大多数人很难意识到曾几何时苏联经济是一个世界奇迹，而不是社会主义失败的代名词－－那时，赫鲁晓夫用鞋子敲着联合国的主席台，宣称：‘我们将会埋葬你们。’他不是在炫耀军事，而是在炫耀经济。”——保罗?克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman, 1994)

1959年尼基塔·赫鲁晓夫(Nikita Khrushchev)访问美国时，苏联录得的惊人经济增速普遍被视为对西方民主资本主义模式霸主地位的挑战。令人印象深刻的统计数据——如拖拉机产量——令西方意见领袖目瞪口呆。《新闻周刊》(Newsweek)警告称，苏联很可能已经“走在从经济上主宰世界的大道上”。

克鲁格曼的经济学分析似乎表明，解释这种“经济奇迹”其实很简单：“投入的快速增长：就业扩大、教育水平提高以及（最重要的）物质资本的大规模投资”，而致使苏联经济模式后来崩溃的原因是其未能增加“每单位投入的单位产出”。由于生产率不断下滑，苏联经济增长随着投资回报的减少而不可避免地放缓。

这或许与人们对当前中国经济的看法有相似之处？中国迄今的经济模式是，将其自身打造成世界成本最低的制造商——通过以空前的规模利用廉价农民工劳动力，然后把出口带来的经常账户盈余重新投入同样空前规模的资本支出热潮。

因此，随着廉价农民工劳动力供应放缓，随着投入制造业、房地产和基础设施的资本超出可持续的利用率，结果是（在生产率没有相应提升的情况下）经济增长减速。鉴于这种经济模式要求将过剩储蓄重新投入新的生产，消费将保持相对低迷。就像上世纪50年代之后的苏联，这种经济模式迟早会在某个临界点上停摆。

中国应对2009年全球金融危机的举措——一项相当于国内生产总值(GDP) 16%的刺激计划——如今被广泛视为一项政策失误。地方政府得到了大量银行贷款，用于为基础设施、住房及制造业的资本支出提供资金，以便实现上级规定的GDP目标。2007年至2011年，广义货币供应量(M2)翻了一番，一半以上的银行放贷被投入基础设施项目。很大一部分资本形成是非生产性和浪费的。

刺激计划还使得地方党政官员通过侵占土地出让收入、收受回扣以及染指承接项目的建筑企业的所有权来中饱私囊。这带来了官场精英群体的炫耀性消费热潮，以及随后以“反腐败斗争”为形式的强烈反弹。

中国银行业也遭到削弱。任何主要经济体都无法在不出现资产质量迅速恶化的情况下，维持30%的年度贷款增速。中国银行业普遍不愿承认不良贷款：发放给不盈利或资不抵债的借款人的流动性只是被滚转，因此，真实的不良贷款率很可能在两位数，而仅为2%的官方数据难以令人信服。往好了说，中国的银行体系将发现自己缺乏股本，无法向支撑可持续经济增长的盈利企业分配资本。在最坏的情况下，对烂透了的腐败银行体系缺乏信心将导致市场对中国资产全面丧失信心。

如今各方普遍认同的一点是，在降低各种经济活动过剩产能的短痛与更高效率分配资源带来的长期收益之间，是存在取舍的。然而，很难看到这些产能被关停，因为“僵尸”企业的融资往往是由受地方政府影响的地方银行提供，而地方政府不愿看到当地出现失业和不安定。

这种结构性产能过剩的一个症状是，出厂价格正在以两位数的年率下跌。只是在借助这个很大的GDP平减指数调整名义产出之后，才能辩称中国制造业仍在对整体经济增长做出贡献。

这些过剩产能至少有一部分可以通过出口消化。但中国已不再是世界成本最低的制造商，不仅是因为额外的廉价劳动力供应已经减少，人民币（由于盯住美元）相对亚洲其他货币也已大幅升值（在贸易加权基础上，过去五年升值30%)。

北京方面将强大而稳定的汇率视为在政治上可取：部分原因在于对人民币成为国际硬通货声誉的渴望，也是因为对本国的经济前景缺乏信心（让人民币贬值就暴露了这一点）。

中国的经济模式如今正处于危机之中。因此，我们要问的是：中国是否同1959年的苏联一样已经走过巅峰？

巴里?诺里斯(Barry Norris)是总部位于伦敦的资产管理公司Argonaut Capital的创始人和首席执行官

译者/申凯