【英语财经】中国市场动荡引发的思考 China markets: Looking for clues

China’s market regulator had a chance to explain itself last Friday at the end of a week that had seen self-inflicted turmoil on the country’s stock exchanges rock international markets for the second time since July.

Amid complaints that global markets — which had their worst start to the year for two decades — needed more guidance on China’s intentions, there were also rumours that Xiao Gang, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, could lose his job.

Rather than address either subject, however, the CSRC instead used the weekly press conference to discuss its role in a Communist party initiative to promote development of the agricultural sector and poverty alleviation.

To global investors, who increasingly take their daily trading cue from China’s economic data and market moves, the response to the turmoil looked farcical. To Chinese investors, it passed for governance as usual in the world’s second-largest economy.

The market turmoil, exacerbated by a shift in the Chinese central bank’s management of the renminbi, begs the question of whether the opaque party-state is fit for purpose when it comes to managing one of the world’s most pivotal financial markets and delivering the level of transparency expected by the international community. It has also raised doubts about whether the team assembled by President Xi Jinping, who has consolidated power more rapidly than any Chinese ruler since Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, is capable of executing the country’s much larger reform programme — of which market regulation and currency policy are just two parts.

“For all their faults, Xi’s predecessors consistently gave domestic and foreign investors confidence that over time, there would be more space for markets and the private sector,” argues Arthur Kroeber at Gavekal Dragonomics, a Beijing-based consultancy. “Xi has failed to live up to this history?.?.?.?At the most basic level, we have no idea whether he understands what modern markets require, or how he proposes to reconcile their demands with the Leninist-Confucianist paternalism he is imposing on the rest of society.”

Even analysts at state-owned banks were left scratching their heads. “Because of China’s lack of policy communication over the path towards the new-float regime?.?.?.?exchange rate ‘flexibility’ has become a major source of uncertainty, rather than a cushion against external shocks,” CICC analysts Xiangrong Yu and Hong Liang wrote last week. “The renminbi’s fluctuations could raise risk premiums over the global market, leading to sizeable asset reallocation and complicating the US decision to hike interest rates.”

Xi tightens his grip

The day before the CSRC briefing, a disastrous new “circuit breaker” championed by Mr Xiao had stopped trading for the day after just 29 minutes. But state television did not mention either the crash or the day’s other big news — the global jitters stemming from the renminbi’s rapid depreciation against the US dollar.

Instead China Central Television’s main evening bulletin led with Mr Xi chairing a meeting on the development of a “Yangtze river economic zone” and visiting the People’s Liberation Army’s 13th Group Army in Chongqing. There he lauded tales of Red Army soldiers’ heroism and sacrifices under their revolutionary hero, Mao Zedong. “It vividly shows what it means to follow the party with an iron heart,” he said.

Such discipline, according to Mr Xi, also involves knowing when to keep your mouth shut. In November, the party issued guidelines barring its 88m members from “improper discussion”.

Newspaper editors, professors and police chiefs have since been sacked for not toeing Mr Xi’s line on issues as diverse as the party’s handling of ethnic unrest in the region of Xinjiang and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

“To address these sorts of challenges you want a society that’s debating, discussing and charting a path towards resolution,” says Rodney Jones at Wigram Capital, an economic advisory company. “You want engagement. But no one in China can discuss [the country’s challenges] apart from a selected few.”

Vacancy for economics tsar

Unlike his predecessors, Mr Xi does not have a standout financial or economic tsar with clear authority. The man with the richest financial and economic experience at the top of the party hierarchy, Wang Qishan, has been diverted to lead the president’s signature anti-corruption campaign.

“Party rule has always been the number one priority — we all know that — but under Xi Jinping the distance between the political agenda and the economic one has widened,” says Andrew Polk, Beijing-based economist for the Conference Board. “I think that’s reflected in the fact there isn’t an economic heavyweight.”

Responsibility for the economics brief nominally falls to Premier Li Keqiang. But in terms of economic experience he pales in comparison to the likes of Zhu Rongji, who drove through landmark reforms as vice-premier and premier in the 1990s.

Mr Li’s predecessor, Wen Jiabao, was similarly inexperienced but at least had Mr Wang serving under him as a vice-premier.

By contrast, the most senior of China’s four current vice-premiers is Zhang Gaoli, known for his “borrow-and-build now, repay later” approach to economic development while party boss in the port city of Tianjin.

One of Mr Xi’s top aides, Liu He, is often cited as being one of the country’s most powerful economic officials. However, he only sits on the Central Committee — the fourth-highest party organ — while his official government title is vice-minister at the National Development and Reform Commission, the former state planning agency. This makes Mr Liu more of an influential adviser to the president than a power broker in his own right.

The impression of a vacuum at the top in terms of economic leadership was reinforced by the degree to which the central bank’s new currency policy seemed to exacerbate the selling pressure on the country’s stock market.

In the summer, the CSRC and the People’s Bank of China managed to spark, respectively, a market crisis in July and currency confusion in August; last week the two institutions contributed to a market and currency panic on the same day, January 7.

In other economies, markets can at least look to independent and powerful central banks for direction in times of crisis.

But the PBoC and its governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, have nothing like the independence and power of their international counterparts and have been humbled over the past week. The PBoC reports to Mr Li’s state council.

Mr Zhou, who turns 68 later this month and has been in charge of the PBoC since 2002, secured one of the biggest prizes of his career in November, when the International Monetary Fund recognised the renminbi as an official reserve currency under its special drawing rights (SDR) regime.

If its path to SDR inclusion was bumpy the renminbi has had an even rougher ride since. In August, the PBoC announced a “one-off” 2 per cent devaluation in a move aimed at making the currency more market driven — a key condition for SDR status.

Many international investors interpreted the move as the first shot in a new “currency war” and it took two days for the central bank to brief the media to calm the situation. By then the damage had been done, with global markets tanking and selling pressure on the renminbi intensifying.

Over the rest of 2015, the central bank used hundreds of billions of dollars from the country’s foreign exchange reserves to slow the renminbi’s depreciation. But within weeks of winning SDR approval and with the cost of supporting the currency unsustainable, the PBoC signalled that investors should instead focus on the currency’s performance against a basket of 13 currencies.

Before that message had been fully absorbed, the central bank stepped back and watched as the renminbi fell 1.5 per cent against the dollar in the first week of trading in January — a sharp fall for the carefully managed currency that again scared Chinese and international investors alike.

Need to do better

Joe Zhang, a veteran financial executive, argues that the PBoC, for years a proponent of renminbi strength against the dollar, didn’t appreciate how its adjustment would be interpreted abroad.

“The global reaction to China’s tinkering of the currency in August was dramatic and that caught Beijing by surprise,” he says. “They thought a 2 per cent adjustment wasn’t a big deal. They hadn’t anticipated the reaction.”

That could, in turn, curb the drive for reform. While Hao Hong, chief China strategist at Bank of Communications International, thinks that Chinese policymakers need to proceed slowly with capital-account reform given the risk of capital flight, he also believes that they erred by missing the opportunity to do it earlier, when depreciation and outflow pressures were much weaker.

“It’s a matter of timing,” Mr Hong says. “When the renminbi is substantially overvalued [and] the property market is substantially overvalued, people want to get out of here?.?.?.?If you reform now, it will give people the impression that you are losing control.”

By the end of last week, the PBoC sounded as tone-deaf as the CSRC. It initially blamed “speculative forces” for the renminbi’s recent falls against the dollar and rounded out the week with a long review of the “fruitful results” it had achieved “under the leadership of the party and the state council”.

Some party and government officials recognise that China now has a public relations problem when it comes to financial policy and are working to remedy the deficiency.

In a rare background briefing for foreign media last month, one senior government official admitted that “there is a need to do a better communication job with the rest of the world [because] what we do really affects the rest of the world”.

But progress is slow.

“Some people within the central bank say, ‘Listen, we need to get better at communication but it’s really hard based on the way we make policy’,” says Mr Polk at the Conference Board.

“Then you have other people in the PBoC who say we don’t necessarily need any more transparency. So the message is all over the place even in terms of whether or not there should be better messaging.”

Additional reporting by Wan Li and Christian Shepherd

中国市场监管机构在1月8日有一个解释自己的机会，此前中国股市自导自演的动荡自去年7月以来第二次震动全球市场。

在有关全球市场（遭遇20年来最糟糕的开年表现）需要更多有关中国意图的指引的抱怨声中，还有传言称，中国证监会(CSRC)主席肖钢可能离职。

然而，中国证监会当时在其每周例行的新闻发布会上没有讨论这两个话题中的任何一个，而是讨论了该机构在中国共产党提出的促进农业发展和减贫计划中的作用。

对于日趋从中国经济数据和市场动向寻觅日常操盘线索的全球投资者而言，这种回应市场动荡的方式看上去有些荒唐。但对于中国投资者而言，这种回应被视为全球第二大经济体的治理常态。

而中国央行人民币管理政策的变化加剧了此次市场动荡。此次动荡带来了一个问题：就管理全球最关键的金融市场之一、提供国际社会期待的透明度而言，不透明的党国体制是否合适？市场动荡还引发了这样的疑问：中国国家主席习近平组织的团队能否执行中国规模大得多的改革计划（市场监管和汇率政策只是其中的两个方面）？习近平巩固权力的速度快于自上世纪80年代邓小平以来的任何一位中国领导人。

“尽管有种种不足之处，习近平的前任们总能为国内外投资者带来信心，使他们相信：假以时日，市场和私营部门将获得更大空间，”总部位于北京的咨询机构龙洲经讯(GaveKal Dragonomics)的葛艺豪(Arthur Kroeber)辩称，“习近平没能延续这段历史……在最基本的层面，我们不清楚他懂不懂现代市场的要求，或者他准备怎样把这些现代市场的要求与他强加给社会的列宁主义-儒家式的家长作风协调起来。”

甚至连中国国有银行的分析师也摸不着头脑。“由于中国在通向新的浮动汇率制度的道路上缺乏政策沟通……汇率‘弹性’已成为不确定性的一大来源，而非应对外部冲击的缓冲，”中金公司(CICC)分析师余向荣和梁红上周写道，“人民币波动可能会提升全球市场的风险溢价，导致规模可观的资产重新配置，并让美国的加息决定复杂化。”

习近平收紧控制

在证监会召开新闻发布会的前一天，肖钢曾经倡导的灾难性的“熔断”机制在开盘仅29分钟后就中断了当天的交易。但官方电视台既没有提及股市“熔断”，也没有提及当天的另一条重大消息：人民币兑美元快速贬值导致全球恐慌。



相反，央视(CCTV)晚间主要新闻栏目的头条是习近平主持“长江经济带”发展座谈会以及在重庆视察解放军第13集团军。他称赞了红军战士在革命英雄毛泽东领导下的英雄主义和牺牲故事。他表示：“这就是‘铁心跟党走’的生动写照。”

按照习近平的意思，这样的纪律还包括知道应该在什么时候谨言慎行。去年11月，中国共产党发布准则，禁止8800万党员“妄议中央大政方针”。

此后，报纸编辑、教授和公安局长因没有在各种问题上与习近平保持一致而被解职，这些问题包括党对新疆地区民族不安定以及香港民主抗议的处置。

“要应对这类挑战，你需要整个社会辩论、讨论，绘制一条通向解决方案的路径。”经济咨询公司Wigram Capital的罗德尼?琼斯(Rodney Jones)表示，“你希望得到参与。但在中国，除了少数被选中的精英外，没有人能讨论（国家面临的挑战）。”

经济“沙皇”职位空缺

与前任不同，习近平手下没有一位拥有明确权威的出色的金融或经济“沙皇”。在中共中央最高层，金融和经济经验最为丰富的官员是王岐山，他已被分派领导习近平标志性的反腐败斗争。



“维护党的领导一直是头号优先任务——这一点我们都懂——但在习近平的领导下，政治议程与经济议程之间的距离被拉大了，”世界大型企业联合会(Conference Board)驻北京经济学家安德鲁?波尔克(Andrew Polk)表示，“我认为，这反映在现在没有一位经济重量级人物这个事实上。”

经济领域的责任名义上落在总理李克强身上。但从经济管理经验的角度来看，他逊色于朱镕基等人。朱镕基曾在上世纪90年代担任中国国务院副总理和总理期间推行过具有里程碑意义的改革。

李克强的前任温家宝同样经验不足，但他至少有王岐山担任副总理。

相比之下，中国4位现任副总理中最资深的是张高丽，他在担任天津市委书记期间以“先借钱建设，以后偿还”的经济发展观出名。

习近平的高级助手之一刘鹤往往被视为中国最具实权的经济官员之一。然而，他只是中共第四大权力机构中央委员会的委员，在政府中的官方头衔是发改委副主任。这表明刘鹤在更大程度上是中国国家主席的有影响力的顾问，而不是可以独当一面的呼风唤雨者。

中国央行新的汇率政策似乎加剧了国内股市的抛售压力，这强化了外界对于中国缺乏高层经济干将的印象。

去年夏季，中国证监会在7月引发了一场市场危机，而中国人民银行在8月引发外汇市场混乱；这两家机构又在1月7日同一天导致市场和汇率恐慌。

在其他经济体，市场在危机期间至少可以向独立而强大的央行寻求指引。

但中国人民银行及其行长周小川的独立性和权力根本比不上国际同行。中国人民银行向国务院汇报工作。

本月底将年满68岁的周小川自2002年以来一直担任中国人民银行行长，并在去年11月获得了其职业生涯中最大的成就之一：国际货币基金组织(IMF)在其特别提款权(SDR)机制下承认人民币是一种官方储备货币。

如果说争取进入SDR货币篮子的道路不平坦，那么人民币自“入篮”以来的遭遇更加坎坷。去年8月，中国人民央行宣布“一次性”贬值2%，此举旨在让人民币汇率在更大程度上由市场力量决定——这是纳入SDR的关键条件。

许多国际投资者将此举解读为新的“汇率战争”的第一枪，中国人民央行花了两天时间向媒体说明情况以安抚局面。但那时破坏已经造成，全球市场暴跌，人民币抛售压力加剧。

在2015年剩余时间里，中国央行动用数千亿美元的外汇储备来减缓人民币贬值。但在人民币被成功纳入SDR几周后，随着支持人民币汇率的代价不可持续，中国人民银行发出信号暗示，投资者应该转而聚焦于人民币兑一篮子13种货币的表现。

在市场还未充分吸收这一信息之前，中国央行退出市场观望，而人民币兑美元汇率在今年1月的第一周下跌1.5%——对受到严格管控的人民币来说，这是巨大的跌幅，再次让国内和国际投资者感到恐慌。

有必要做得更好

金融业资深高管张化桥(Joe Zhang)辩称，多年来一直主张人民币相对于美元保持强势的中国人民银行，并不了解海外将怎样解读它的政策调整。

他说：“全球对去年8月中国调整人民币汇率的反应是戏剧性的，这让北京方面感到意外。他们以为2%的调整不是件大事。他们没有预料到反应会那么大。”

这进而可能抑制改革动力。尽管交银国际(Bocom International)首席中国策略师洪灏认为，鉴于资本外流的风险，中国政策制定者有必要慢慢推进资本账户改革，但他也相信，之前他们错失了机遇，没有在人民币贬值和资本外流压力弱得多的时候这么做。

洪灏表示：“这是时机问题。当人民币大幅高估，房地产市场大幅高估的时候，人们想要离开这里……现在改革将让人觉得你正在失去控制。”

而当时中国人民银行听起来和证监会一样不着调。它最初将人民币兑美元汇率最近的下跌归咎于“投机势力”，并发表长文，阐述其“在党和国务院的领导下”实现的“成果”。

一些党政官员认识到，就金融政策而言，中国现在存在一个公共关系问题，并在着手修补这种不足。

中国政府上月罕见地向外国媒体通报了情况，一位高级官员承认，“有必要加强与全球其他国家的沟通，因为我们的举措真的会影响全球其他国家”。

但进展是缓慢的。

世界大型企业联合会的波尔克表示：“央行的一些人说，‘听着，我们需要加强沟通，但基于我们制定政策的方式，这真的很难’。”

“接着还有央行的其他人说，我们不一定需要更多透明度。因此即使是在应不应该改进信息发布的问题上，也是存在分歧的。”

万丽和克里斯蒂安?谢泼德(Christian Shepherd)补充报道

译者/何黎