【英语财经】中国股市暴跌焉知非福 China should celebrate as its stock market plummets

China should celebrate the collapse of its stock market. That was not the instinct of officials last summer when the Shanghai Composite index lost close to one-third of its value in four short weeks.

Back then, Beijing launched investigations into what it called “malicious short selling” and spent $200bn to prop up falling equity prices. But give the Communist party its due. When one trick stops working, officials are not shy to admit it.

The Shanghai Composite fell 7 per cent yesterday; further falls are likely. Yet we are unlikely to see more of the heavy handed intervention to which officials resorted in 2015. This is not because Beijing does not have the means to prop up the index, but rather because officials have come to believe it desirable for high stock market valuations to be unwound. Large sections of the public are beginning to agree with them.

The most salutary moments in Chinese politics often involve such sharp reversals. It was, after all, the realisation that four decades of central planning had produced only backwardness and starvation that led Beijing to abandon Soviet-style governance in the 1980s.

Since then the country has pursued an industrial policy that has transformed China from an impoverished agrarian backwater into a manufacturing powerhouse that is one of the world’s largest economies. It is a formidable turnround — even if it has consumed vast resources, polluted the environment and yielded less of an improvement in living standards than might have been expected.

In recent years that strategy, too, became untenable, as corporate debts piled up and financial returns diminished. In the meantime, a growing number of local governments were troubled by unsustainable debts.

Things came to a head in 2014 when, with none of the theoretical spinning that usually accompanies a major change of policy in Beijing, officials began to see what they could do to pump up the stock market. The idea was to stimulate the economy without the huge burden of public spending that would come attached to a programme of fiscal stimulus.

The trouble with this approach is that the public foots the bill, not via the tax system, but through the more insidious form of redistribution that occurs when an investor buys shares at a price that has temporarily been inflated by official action. From the beginning, this policy was on questionable moral ground. It was becoming increasingly perilous, too, because the faster the stocks rose, the harder they could fall.

Even after yesterday’s sharp fall, the Shanghai stock market index is more than 40 per cent higher than it was for two years before prices began to take off in late 2014. Shares are likely to fall further. That will be painful for investors. But, outside the financial markets at least, it need not lead to drama.

Realising this, President Xi Jinping is again changing course and has begun touting the virtues of supply-side reform. This looks like a sure sign that Beijing has had its fill of stock market tinkering and is turning instead to a watered-down version of Reaganomics.

The new policy has two major elements. The first involves making it easier for business to operate by eliminating tedious bureaucracy. The second entails giving the private sector a bigger role in public works projects, which in the past have been dominated by notoriously corrupt state-controlled firms.

These are good ideas as far as they go. But the government is showing no sense of urgency, and even if it did, such limited measures are not nearly enough. Tax cuts and privatisation should also be on the agenda.

Still, as the Chinese have discovered on their long journey to prosperity, when you are hungry, half a loaf is better than none.

The writer is author of “Party Man, Company Man: Is China’s State Sector Doomed?”

中国应该庆祝国内股市的崩盘。但这不是中国官员去年夏天股市暴跌时的本能反应，当时上证综指(Shanghai Composite)四周跌去了近三分之一。

那时候，北京方面对它所称的“恶意做空”行为展开调查，并动用2000亿美元资金救市。不过，平心而论，当一种办法失效时，共产党官员并不耻于承认这一点。

周一上证综指下跌近7%；后市有可能进一步下跌。但我们不太可能看到官方像2015年那样又采取重拳干预措施。不是因为北京方面缺乏推高指数的手段，而是因为官员们开始认识到，让过高的股市估值降下来一些是可取的。很大一部分公众也开始认同这一点。

中国政治中最好的时刻往往和这种突然逆转有关。在上世纪80年代，正是认识到了40年的中央计划带来的只有倒退和饥荒，中国政府才放弃了苏联式的治理。

此后中国推行工业发展政策，从一个贫穷落后农业国家转变为一个制造业大国，跻身世界最大经济体之列。这是令人惊叹的转变，即使这个过程消耗了大量资源，污染了环境，民众生活水平的提高也低于原本可能的预期。

然而，近年来，随着企业债务不断增加、经济收益下降，这一策略也开始失效。与此同时，越来越多的地方政府背负着不可持续的债务。

大戏在2014年上演，在没有拿出任何理论作为铺垫——中国重大政策转变通常都有理论作支持——的情况下，官员开始想方设法为股市推波助澜。个中意图是刺激经济，同时又不给公共开支带来巨大负担——如果推出财政刺激方案就势必造成这种负担。

这种策略的问题在于，公众不是通过税收，而是通过一种更隐蔽的再分配方式为这种刺激方式埋单。在投资者购买价格因官方行为而暂时抬高的股票时，这种再分配就发生了。从一开始，这项政策在道德层面就是有问题的。这项政策还会变得越来越危险，因为股票涨得越快，就可能跌得越狠。

即使是在昨天的暴跌之后，上证综指也比2014年末股价开始大涨之前高出40%以上。股价可能会进一步下跌。这会给投资者带来痛苦。但至少在金融市场之外，这不一定会引起很大波澜。

认识到这一点以后，国家主席习近平再次改弦易辙，开始宣扬供给侧改革的好处。看起来，这似乎是北京方面已经厌烦了对股市进行小修小补，转向简化版“里根经济学”的一个确凿迹象。

新政策有两大要素。首先是简化繁文缛节，为企业经营提供便利。其次是让私营行业在公共工程项目中扮演更重要的角色。过去，这类项目一直由以腐败著称的国有企业把持。

这些想法本身是很好的。但现在政府方面显得毫无紧迫感，即使有那么一点儿，这些有限的措施也远远不够。减税和私有化也应该提上日程。

尽管如此，就像中国人在他们漫长的致富道路上所发现的那样，当你饥饿的时候，半块面包也比什么都没有强。

本文作者著有《Party Man, Company Man: Is China's State Capitalism Doomed?》一书

译者/何黎