【英语中国】《稀缺中国》作者：中国不止缺资源

The slowdown in China's economy is preoccupying economists and businesses the world over. How much will it slow? Will Beijing move to stimulate growth? What pace of growth is politically acceptable?

A question rarely asked is what happens if China's economy starts running out of the things it needs to keep growing. What if the cost of the things needed to meet the expectations and realize the aspirations of Chinese people become expensive as they become scarce?

That's the question posed by Damien Ma, a fellow at The Paulson Institute, and William Adams, senior international economist at the PNC Financial Services GroupPNC -0.47%, in their new book 'In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Stop China's Ascent in the Next Decade.' With China already dealing with the environmental fallout of 20 years of runaway growth-- such as declining water resources and toxic land-- Messrs. Ma and Adams argue the greatest constraint on China's future development is the scarcity of resources.

However, rather than limit their analysis to primary goods like food, energy and iron ore, they extend the concept of scarcity to include social and political issues: How does China meet the demands of a growing middle class for greater access to quality education or provide well-paying jobs for university graduates? How does it control spiraling housing prices when a generation of young people are priced out of the market, undermining their marriage prospects?

China Real Time recently caught up with Messrs. Ma and Adams. Edited excerpts.

How did the two of you come to work together on the book?

Adams: Damien and I have been talking for years about how the constant back and forth between the 'China is rising' bulls and the 'China is collapsing' bears just misses the point. Last year, when we both found ourselves relatively removed from the big centers of China analysis and commentary--me in Pittsburgh and he in Vermont--the setting seemed right to write a book that would lay out a different way of thinking about China and its future.

How do you rate China's ability to manage the environmental constraints, resource scarcity and rising expectations of its population in coming years?
Ma: Many Chinese, let alone Western observers, have a hard time coming to terms with the vast and rapid changes of the past generation. So we attempted to provide a realistic appraisal of contemporary China--accomplishments, successes, warts and all--and to also assess its constraints and challenges in a balanced way.

The resource scarcity issue is one clear illustration of that dichotomy. China was endowed with limited natural resources from the get-go, but the incredibly resource- and energy-intensive growth model of the last 10-15 years has exerted enormous pressures on these already scarce endowments--and the ripple effects of this kind of growth on future development are going to become more evident over the next decade.

As for forecasting, we are more focused on correcting misconceptions about where China is today than predicting where it will be tomorrow. And we've seen how many prognosticators of China's future have gotten it wrong time and again. Over the course of China's modern history, it has systematically outperformed outside observers' expectations for its ability to adapt to change.

How did you come to see China's challenges as fundamentally boiling down to the limits of both the economy and the political system to supply what people want and need?

Adams: The first third of the book is generally about resource scarcity, covering energy and other commodities, food and labor. Typically less remarked upon is how economic change is constraining the range of choices available to China's politics. There's a feedback loop here. The more we thought about it, the more we realized the idea of scarcity captures a lot of the economic, political, and social issues that are top of mind for both Chinese leaders and the Chinese public, and the interactions between them.

Beijing has heralded urbanization as the driver of economic growth into the future. Can further, centrally driven urbanization provide the answers, or will it exacerbate the problems discussed in the book?

Ma: It depends on how China urbanizes. Most advanced industrial economies are highly urbanized, and urban hubs are the engines of consumption and innovation in those countries. But creating an open and innovative economy is more complicated than just making sure everyone lives in cities.

We are watching in particular to see how China deals with the legacies of its 'urban bias' in policy and preferential treatment for urbanites, for how it creates opportunities for the migrant and rural populations, and for how the urban Chinese middle class reacts to these changes and to rising expectations for the urban life they feel entitled to.

In terms of pushing forward change and reform, what should be Beijing's priority? Where does it need to start?

Adams: Ironically, you see the recipe for their first steps all the time in Xinhua, the People's Daily and the other official mouthpieces--more transparency, more responsive government, controlling corruption, continuing reforms to the state sector, rationalizing resource prices, and so on. The challenge is that not much can be accomplished on these fronts without some pretty complex institutional reforms and more separation between state and society.

Of course that's easier said than done. We suspect the challenges of scarcity that we highlight will echo in many of the issues addressed at the upcoming Third Plenum--that is, less emphasis on economic growth, more on social and institutional priorities. The Chinese refer to this as the hardware versus software problem: they've built pretty good hardware very, very quickly, and now need to build their way out of their software deficit.

How did you two get involved with China?

Ma: I suppose a combination of early interest, intellectual curiosity and path dependence. When we were taking our first courses on Chinese history or politics in college, China wasn't really on most Americans' minds. The turning point was likely the Beijing Olympics, when the 'China story' suddenly exploded, at least in the United States. A lot more people began paying attention to this giant country that in some ways resembled the United States but was also quite distinct from it in various other ways.

Adams: For me it was a combination of a terrific social studies teacher in high school who was a retired West Point instructor, and bombing the Spanish placement test in my first week at Harvard and needing to fulfill a foreign language requirement. Before becoming an economist, I started out as a student of contemporary Chinese culture, which probably helped me tune in to the interplay between a changing economy and the tensions in contemporary society and politics.

To what extent did your experiences living and traveling in China get you thinking about the issues of scarcity here?

Ma: Personally, as a child of Chinese immigrants from the Great Leap Forward generation, I was feted with countless stories from my parents about the 'Great Famine' or, in their re-telling, the 'Three-Year Natural Disaster.' So I suppose the notion of scarcity has followed me for a long time subconsciously. But as our academic studies and professional careers have taken us to the country regularly over the last decade, limited supplies of everything were a daily experience. From the subway seats and personal space to getting water and visiting a Chinese hospital (yes, I dared doing so a few times), there is fierce competition for everything and everyone seems to be racing just half a step ahead of the next.

Adams: The longer you live in China, the more apparent scarcity's effect on the life of the average Chinese person becomes. I've gotten a few chuckles out of Chinese friends when I tell them we wrote a whole book on scarcity in China --it's utterly obvious to any native of the place. But a lot of Americans find ourselves so dazzled or freaked out by China's rise that we overlook the limitations that scarcity is imposing on the country and its role in the world.

Of all the issues you cover in the book, which changes will China have the most trouble making?

Adams: You're asking me to pick a favorite child here! If you held a gun to my head, I'd say resource issues seem most intractable, in large part because resources are finite and cannot just be invented or redesigned, at least not yet. Institutions can be reformed and new ideologies can be thought up more easily than land, water and energy can be created from thin air--and China's economy is on track to demand a lot more of these resources.

中国经济增速放缓已经成了全球经济学家和企业界人士全神贯注的一个问题。放缓多少？北京是否会采取措施刺激增长？在政治层面什么样的增长率才是可接受的？

一个很少有人问到的问题是：如果中国经济保持增长所需的那些东西都用光了，会发生什么情况？如果满足中国人的期望、实现中国人的渴望所需要的那些东西在变得稀缺的时候成本也变得更高的话，那该怎么办？

FT Press这就是马旸(Damien Ma)和叶文斌(William Adams)在他们合写的新书《稀缺中国》(In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Stop China's Ascent in the Next Decade)中提出的问题。马旸是保尔森学院(Paulson Institute)的研究员，叶文斌是PNC金融服务集团(PNC Financial Services Group)的资深国际经济学家。眼下，中国已经在应对20年高速增长带来的环境后遗症，比如水资源萎缩，土壤毒化等，马旸和叶文斌却认为，对中国未来发展最大的约束是资源匮乏。

不过，马旸和叶文斌并没有把分析局限在食品、能源和铁矿石等初级商品方面，他们还把稀缺的概念延伸到了社会和政治问题方面。中国如何满足日益壮大的中产阶级对于接受更高质量的教育或为大学毕业生提供体面薪酬的工作等需求？在一代年轻人因房价太高被挤出市场、婚姻前景受到打击之时，中国该如何控制螺旋式上升的房价？

“中国实时报”栏目近期采访了马旸和叶文斌。以下是经过编辑的采访内容。

《华尔街日报》：你们二位是怎么想到一起写这本书的？

叶文斌：认为“中国正在崛起”的乐观者和相信“中国行将崩溃”的看空人士一直在反复争论，马旸和我这些年来一直在讨论这些观点如何言不及义。去年，我们两个发现自己相对来说远离了中国分析评论的中心地带，我到了匹兹堡，他去了佛蒙特，这样的情形似乎适合写一本书，讨论一下如何以不同的方式思考中国以及中国的未来。

《华尔街日报》：你对未来几年中国管理环境约束、资源匮乏和人们不断上升的期望的能力如何评价？

马旸：不光是西方的观察家，很多中国人都很难跟上过去这二三十年中国发生的巨大且迅速的变化，所以我们希望能对当下的中国进行一次切合实际的评估，包括成就、成功、缺失等等，同时以一种平衡的方式评估中国面临的约束和挑战。

资源稀缺问题清楚地表明了这种二元对立。从一开始，中国的自然资源条件就有限，但过去10年到15年那种极度的资源和能源密集型增长模式已经对本就稀缺的自然条件造成了巨大的压力，而且在未来的10年当中，这种增长对未来发展的涟漪效应将变得越来越明显。

至于预测，我们更注重纠正有关中国当下处境的错误观念，而不是预测中国明天会处于什么境地。而且我们也已经看到，很多对中国的未来进行预测的人一次又一次地犯错。在中国现代史的进程中，中国不断超越外部观察家对于中国适应变革的能力的预期。

《华尔街日报》：你们怎么会得出结论说，中国的挑战归根结底就是经济和政治体制供应人们所需的限制？

叶文斌：这本书前面三分之一的篇幅是对资源稀缺进行综述，包括能源和其他大宗商品、食品和劳动力。一般较少有人关注的是经济变化如何对中国的政治选择造成约束。这里面存在一个反馈回路。我们对这个问题想得越多，我们就越来越意识到，稀缺这个观念很好地概括了很多经济、政治和社会问题，以及这些问题间的相互作用，这些问题既是中国领导人最关心的问题，也是中国民众最关心的问题。

《华尔街日报》：北京一直将城市化宣称为未来经济增长的动力。由中央政府推动的进一步城市化能否解决书中提及的问题，或是加剧这些问题？

马旸：这取决于中国城市化的方式。大多数发达的工业经济体城市化程度很高，这些国家的城市中心是消费与创新的动力。但打造开放创新的经济比确保所有人都住在城市里要复杂得多。

我们尤其关注中国如何处理其政策的城市偏向以及城市居民待遇更好所遗留的问题，中国如何为农民工和农村人口创造机会，中国城市中产阶级如何应对这些变化以及对他们觉得自己应当享有的城市生活越来越高的期望。

《华尔街日报》：在推动变化和改革方面，中国政府应当优先考虑什么问题？需要从哪里着手？

叶文斌：讽刺的是，关于他们首先应当做什么，你在新华社、《人民日报》和其他官方喉舌的报道中一直能看到——加大透明度、让政府更负责、控制腐败、继续国营部门的改革、让资源价格合理化，等等。其中的挑战在于，如果不进行相当完备的机构改革、不实现政府与社会的进一步分离，在这些方面就不太可能有太大的成果。

当然，这些说起来容易做起来难。我们猜想，即将召开的中共三中全会所关注的许多问题将反映我们所强调的稀缺难题，也就是减少对于经济增长的重视，更多地关注社会和制度方面的重大问题。中国政府将这种情况说成“硬件与软件”的问题：他们已经飞速地建造了相当牢固的硬件，现在需要想办法解决软件方面的不足。

《华尔街日报》：你们两位是如何深入了解中国的？

马旸：我认为这是早期的兴趣、求知欲以及路径依赖的综合。我们在大学首次接触中国历史或政治方面的课程时，大多数美国人其实还并不关心中国。其转折点可能是北京奥运会，“中国故事”突然引发大量关注，至少在美国是这样。更多的人开始关注这个大国，它在一些方面与美国相似，但同时又在其他很多方面与美国截然不同。

叶文斌：对我来说，这一种合力造成的。我在高中的时候碰到了一位非常棒的社会研究的老师，他是从西点(West Point)退下来的一个教官，另外，我在哈佛的第一周就搞砸了西班牙语入学测试，需要在外语学习方面达到要求。在成为经济学家之前，我还修了当代中国文化，这对我了解不断变化的经济和当代社会和政治中的紧张情势之间的关系可能有些帮助。

《华尔街日报》：你们在中国生活和旅行的经历对你们思考中国的稀缺问题有什么帮助吗？

马旸：就我个人而言，我是大跃进一代中国移民的孩子，我父母跟我讲了很多有关大 荒的故事——在他们的讲述中用的是“三年自然灾害”这种表述。所以我觉得，稀缺这个观念已经在潜意识里跟了我很久。但是，在过去10年里，随着我们的学术研究和职业要求让我们越来越多地与中国接触，所有东西都供应受限成了一种日常体验。从地铁座位、个人空间到水、上医院（是的，我壮着胆子在中国去了几次医院），不管什么东西都有激烈的竞争，每个人似乎都想要比别人快半拍。

叶文斌：你在中国生活的时间越长，稀缺对普通中国人的影响就看得越明显。当我告诉我的中国朋友们我写了一本关于中国的稀缺的书的时候，他们笑了，对任何一个生长在中国的人来说，这简直再明显不过了。但很多美国人被中国的崛起惊呆了，吓坏了，忘记了稀缺给中国带来的束缚，以及稀缺在这个世界中起到的作用。

《华尔街日报》：在你们的书里写到的所有的问题当中，中国最难在哪些问题上做出改变？

叶文斌：你这是在让我选最喜欢哪个孩子啊！如果你拿枪对着我的头的话，我会说，资源问题似乎是最难解决的，很大一部分原因在于，资源是有限的，不能发明出来，也不能重新设计出来，至少现在还不能。制度可以改革，新的意识形态可以设计出来，但土地、水和能源都不能无中生有，而中国经济对这些资源的需求将越来越大。