China’s economy
中国经济
Not just another fake
并非是简单的昨日重现
Jan 14th 2010 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
译者：evensan（经济学人中文论坛）
http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/
The similarities between China today and Japan in the 1980s may look ominous. But China’s boom is unlikely to give way to prolonged slump
中国的经济现状和日本在20世纪80年代的经历极其相似，这似乎是不太好的兆头。但是中国的繁荣也不可能只是昙花一现
Illustration by Derek Bacon
CHINA rebounded more swiftly from the global downturn than any other big economy, thanks largely to its enormous monetary and fiscal stimulus. In the year to the fourth quarter of 2009, its real GDP is estimated to have grown by more than 10%. But many sceptics claim that its recovery is built on wobbly foundations. Indeed, they say, China now looks ominously like Japan in the late 1980s before its bubble burst and two lost decades of sluggish growth began. Worse, were China to falter now, while the recovery in rich countries is still fragile, it would be a severe blow not just at home but to the whole of the world economy.
在这一轮的全球经济衰退中，中国领先于其它的大型经济体迅速反弹，这在很大程度上要归功于中国政府庞大的货币和财政刺激方案。截止到2009年四季度，预计中国的真实GDP增长率会超过10%。但是很多的怀疑人士抱怨说中国经济复苏的基础岌岌可危。他们说，事实上，中国的现状看起来不容客观，像极了20世纪80年代晚期泡沫崩盘前的日本，那次泡沫危机后日本经历了历时20年的经济低迷。更糟糕的是，如果在如今发达国家经济尚未恢复元气的情况下中国经济走上日本的老路的话，下一轮沉重的打击针对的不仅仅是中国而是整个全球经济。
On the face of it, the similarities between China today and bubble-era Japan are worrying. Extraordinarily high saving and an undervalued exchange rate have fuelled rapid export-led growth and the world’s biggest current-account surplus. Chronic overinvestment has, it is argued, resulted in vast excess capacity and falling returns on capital. A flood of bank lending threatens a future surge in bad loans, while markets for shares and property look dangerously frothy.
从表面上来看，中国经济现状同泡沫时代日本的相似处让人感到忧虑。异常高企的储蓄率和被低估的汇率为出口拉动的经济增长提供了助推力，同时了带来了世界上最大的经常账户盈余。据称，长期的过度投资导致了大规模的产能过剩，以及资本盈利率的减少。在股票和资本市场走向泡沫深渊的同时，天量贷款额的发放带来的是未来坏账飙升的危险。
Just as in the late 1980s, when Japan’s economy was tipped to overtake America’s, China’s strong rebound has led many to proclaim that it will become number one sooner than expected. In contrast, a recent flurry of bearish reports warn that China’s economy could soon implode. James Chanos, a hedge-fund investor (and one of the first analysts to spot that Enron’s profits were pure fiction), says that China is “Dubai times 1,000, or worse”. Another hedge fund, Pivot Capital Management, argues that the chances of a hard landing, with a slump in capital spending and a banking crisis, are increasing.
正向20世纪80年代末期日本经济全速赶超美国时一样，中国的强势反弹使得很多人宣称中国会比预想中更快的成为全球经济的领军人物。与此相反，最近一系列言辞犀利的文章发出了这样的警告：中国经济可能会很快走向崩溃。詹姆斯•查诺斯,是一位对冲基金投资者，同时也是第一位指出安然的利润表纯属伪造的分析人士，他说“中国经济崩溃带来的影响会是杜拜的1000倍甚至更高”。另一家名为Pivot资本管理的对冲基金称，伴随着资本支出减少和银行危机的硬着陆的可能性越来越大。
Scary stuff. However, a close inspection of pessimists’ three main concerns—overvalued asset prices, overinvestment and excessive bank lending—suggests that China’s economy is more robust than they think. Start with asset markets. Chinese share prices are nowhere near as giddy as Japan’s were in the late 1980s. In 1989 Tokyo’s stockmarket had a price-earnings ratio of almost 70; today’s figure for Shanghai A shares is 28, well below its long-run average of 37. Granted, prices jumped by 80% last year, but markets in other large emerging economies went up even more: Brazil, India and Russia rose by an average of 120% in dollar terms. And Chinese profits have rebounded faster than those elsewhere. In the three months to November, industrial profits were 70% higher than a year before.
然而，让我们仔细分析一下悲观人士三个主要的担忧：被高估的资产价值，过度投资以及超额的银行贷款，我们会发现中国经济的强劲势头远超过了这些人的估量。从资本市场开始分析。中国的股价的波动比世界其它地区的更接近日本在20世纪80年代末期的股市行情。1989年东京证券交易所的市盈率是70%左右；如今上海证券交易所A股的市盈率是28倍；远低于37倍的长期平均水平。诚然，去年的股指上涨幅度达到了80%,但是其它新兴市场的股票市场上涨的幅度更大：以美元标价，巴西、印度和俄罗斯股价平均上涨幅度达到了120%。而中国的利润要比其它地区反弹的迅速。截止到11月的三个月里，工业利润同去年同期相比增长了70%。
China’s property market is certainly hot. Prices of new apartments in Beijing and Shanghai leapt by 50-60% during 2009. Some lavish projects have much in common with those in Dubai—notably “The World”, a luxury development in Tianjin, 120km (75 miles) from Beijing, in which homes will be arranged as a map of the world, along with the world’s biggest indoor ski slope and a seven-star hotel.
中国的楼市确实过热了。北京和上海的房价在2009年飙升了50%-60%。一些奢华的房产项目同迪拜的建筑有的一拼，在距北京120千米（75公里）路程的天津市，在一项名为“星耀五洲”的奢侈的基建项目中，其住房构成萎缩世界版图，其中还包括有全球最大的室内滑雪场和七星级酒店。
Average home prices nationally, however, cannot yet be called a bubble. On January 14th the National Development and Reform Commission reported that average prices in 70 cities had climbed by 8% in the year to December, the fastest pace for 18 months; other measures suggest a bigger rise. But this followed a fall in prices in 2008. By most measures average prices have fallen relative to incomes in the past decade (see chart 1).
然而，全国范围内的平均房价上涨不能被划入泡沫的范畴。1月14号，国家发改委的报告称，截止到12月，70个城市的平均房价上涨了8%，这是18个月来上涨幅度最大的一次；其它的指标显示的上涨幅度更大。但是这次房价上涨是紧跟着2008年房价下跌而来的。但是过去10年里，大多数指标所反映的平均价格与收入的比例呈下降态势。
The most cited evidence of a bubble—and hence of impending collapse—is the ratio of average home prices to average annual household incomes. This is almost ten in China; in most developed economies it is only four or five. However, Tao Wang, an economist at UBS, argues that this rich-world yardstick is misleading. Chinese homebuyers do not have average incomes but come largely from the richest 20-30% of the urban population. Using this group’s average income, the ratio falls to rich-world levels. In Japan the price-income ratio hit 18 in 1990, obliging some buyers to take out 100-year mortgages.
在描述泡沫以及尤其引发的潜在衰退时，最常被借用的一个例子就是平均房价 同年平均家庭收入的比例。在中国这个比例差不多是10；在大多数的发达国家只有4或者5.然而你，瑞银的经济学家王涛称同发达国家的数据做对比具有误导性。中国的购房者不是那些拿着平均收入的人，而大部分是城市人口中20%-30%的富裕人群。如果用这组人的平均收入来计算的话，平均房价同年平均家庭收入的比例会降到同发达国家相同的水平。日本的价格对收入比例在1990年达到了18，迫使一些人背负了为期100年的按揭贷款。
Furthermore, Chinese homes carry much less debt than Japanese properties did 20 years ago. One-quarter of Chinese buyers pay cash. The average mortgage covers only about half of a property’s value. Owner-occupiers must make a minimum deposit of 20%, investors one of 40%. Chinese households’ total debt stands at only 35% of their disposable income, compared with 130% in Japan in 1990.
此外，中国的住房所承载的债务量要比20年前日本房产业的债务负担少很多。中国有1/4的购房者选择现金支付。平均贷款量只占到房产价值的不到一半。中国家庭的债务量只占到其可支配收入的35%，同比之下1990年的日本，该比例是130%。
China’s property boom is being financed mainly by saving, not bank lending. According to Yan Wang, an economist at BCA Research, a Canadian firm, only about one-fifth of the cost of new construction (commercial and residential) is financed by bank lending. Loans to homebuyers and property developers account for only 17% of Chinese banks’ total, against 56% for American banks. A bubble pumped up by saving is much less dangerous than one fuelled by credit. When the market begins to crack, highly leveraged speculators are forced to sell, pushing prices lower, which causes more borrowers to default.
中国火热的楼市更大程度上是由储蓄而非银行信贷拉动的。根据加拿大BCA研究公司的王燕所说，在中国只有1/5的新建筑（包括商用和住房建设）是由靠银行借贷来融资的。面向住房购买者和开发商的贷款只占到中国银行总贷款额的17%，相反美国的比例是56%。储蓄助长的泡沫远比信贷滋生的泡沫风险小。当市场开始崩盘时，高杠杆率的投机者被迫出售资产，促使资产价格下滑，从而导致借方违约。
Even if China does not (yet) have a credit-fuelled housing bubble, the fact that property prices in Beijing and Shanghai are beyond the reach of most ordinary people is a serious social problem. The government has not kept its promise to build more low-cost housing, and it is clearly worried about rising prices. In an attempt to thwart speculators, it has reimposed a sales tax on homes sold within five years, has tightened the stricter rules on mortgages for investment properties and is trying to crack down on illegal flows of foreign capital into the property market. The government does not want to come down too hard, as it did in 2007 by cutting off credit, because it needs a lively property sector to support economic recovery. But if it does not tighten policy soon, a full-blown bubble is likely to inflate.
即使中国并不存在（或还未出现）信贷滋生的住房泡沫，北京和上海的房价已经超出了普通百姓所能承受的极限这一事实已经成了一个严肃的社会问题。政府尚未遵守承诺开始兴建廉租房，但是很明显政府对房价的飙涨已经开始担忧。
The world’s capital
世界资本
China’s second apparent point of similarity to Japan is overinvestment. Total fixed investment jumped to an estimated 47% of GDP last year—ten points more than in Japan at its peak. Chinese investment is certainly high: in most developed countries it accounts for around 20% of GDP. But you cannot infer waste from a high investment ratio alone. It is hard to argue that China has added too much to its capital stock when, per person, it has only about 5% of what America or Japan has. China does have excess capacity in some industries, such as steel and cement. But across the economy as a whole, concerns about overinvestment tend to be exaggerated.
中国同20世纪80年代末期的日本另一个相同点是过度投资。去年，总的固定投资额占GDP的比例跃升到47%-这比日本峰值的水平还高10个百分点。中国的投资肯定是太高了：在一些发达国家固定投资占GDP的比例大约是20%左右。但是你不能就凭一个较高的投资比例来说明投资存在浪费现象。在中国的人均资本还只是日美人均资本量的大约5%的时候，很难下定论说中国资本存量过剩。中国在诸如钢铁和水泥这样的行业确实存在过剩的资本。但是纵观中国经济全局，过度投资的担忧有些被夸大了。
Pivot Capital Management points to China’s incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR), which is calculated as annual investment divided by the annual increase in GDP, as evidence of the collapsing efficiency of investment. Pivot argues that in 2009 China’s ICOR was more than double its average in the 1980s and 1990s, implying that it required much more investment to generate an additional unit of output. However, it is misleading to look at the ICOR for a single year. With slower GDP growth, because of a collapse in global demand, the ICOR rose sharply everywhere. The return to investment in terms of growth over a longer period is more informative. Measuring this way, BCA Research finds no significant increase in China’s ICOR over the past three decades.
Pivot资本管理公司借用增量资本产出比例（简称ICOR）指出中国投资效率的下滑，ICOR的计算方法是用年度投资额除以年度GDP增量。Pivot称2009年中国的ICOR比20世纪80，90年代的平均水平多出一倍还要多。然而，但看某一年的ICOR会具有迷惑性。在全球需求低迷导致的GDP增长缓慢的背景下，全世界的ICOR都在急剧上涨。从长期增长的角度来看资本回报率更有意义。从这个角度看，BCA研究公司发现过去30年里中国的ICOR值没有太明显的上扬。
Mr Chanos has drawn parallels between China and the huge misallocation of resources in the Soviet Union, arguing that China is heading the same way. The best measure of efficiency is total factor productivity (TFP), the increase in output not directly accounted for by extra inputs of capital and labour. If China were as wasteful as Mr Chanos contends, its TFP growth would be negative, as the Soviet Union’s was. Yet over the past two decades China has enjoyed the fastest growth in TFP of any country in the world.
詹姆斯•查诺斯（James Chanos）将中国通苏联的资源错误配置联系起来，称中国正在走苏联的老路。衡量资源配置效率最好的标准是全要素效率（TFP），产出增长并非直接用额外的资本或是劳动力投入来解释的。如果中的资源浪费达到了查诺斯先生所声称的程度，那么其TFP增长将会像当年的苏联一样，呈现负值。然而，过去20年里，中国的TFP增速快过了世界任何国家。
Even in industries which clearly do have excess capacity, China’s critics overstate their case. A recent report by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China estimates that in early 2009 the steel industry was operating at only 72% of capacity. That was at the depth of the global downturn. Demand has picked up strongly since then. The report claims that the industry’s overcapacity is illustrated by “a startling figure”: in 2008, China’s output of steel per person was higher than America’s. So what? At China’s stage of industrialisation it should use a lot of steel. A more relevant yardstick is the America of the early 20th century. According to Ms Wang of UBS, China’s steel capacity of almost 0.5kg (about 1lb) per person is slightly lower than America’s output in 1920 (0.6kg) and far below Japan’s peak of 1.1kg in 1973.
即使是在明显存在过剩产能的行业，批评人士的抨击也有点过了。一项由欧盟驻华商会发布的最新报告估算，2009年早些时候钢铁行业实际运营的产能只有其总产能的72%。而那个时候正是全球萧条的谷底时期。之后需求强势回弹。报告称钢铁行业的产能过剩可以由一个“令人吃惊的数据”来反应：2008年，中国的人均钢铁产出超过了美国。这又能说明什么呢？以中国工业化的进程来看，它确实存在着巨大的钢铁需求。更贴切的衡量标准时20世纪早期的美国。根据瑞银王先生的说法，中国接近0.5kg的人均钢铁产能略低于美国1920年人均0.6kg的水平，也远低于日本1973年人均1.1kg的峰值水平。
Many commentators complain that China’s capital-spending spree last year has merely exacerbated its industrial overcapacity. However, the boom was driven mainly by infrastructure investment, whereas investment in manufacturing slowed quite sharply (see chart 2). Given the scale of the spending, some money is sure to have been wasted, but by and large, investment in roads, railways and the electricity grid will help China sustain its growth in the years ahead.
很多批评人士抱怨中国去年毫无节制的资本支出只不过是加重了其工业行业的产能过剩。然而，资本消费饕餮主要是由基础建设带动的，相反，制造业的投资在急速下滑（见表2）。在如此大规模的支出背景下，一些钱肯定是打水漂了，但是总的来说，大兴道路，铁路和电网会对中国未来数年的持续增长起到帮助。
Some analysts disagree. Pivot, for instance, argues that China’s infrastructure has already reached an advanced level. It has six of the world’s ten longest bridges and it boasts the world’s fastest train; there is little room for further productive investment. That is nonsense. A country in which two-fifths of villages lack a paved road to the nearest market town still has plenty of scope for building roads. The same goes for railways. Again, a comparison of China today with the America of a century ago is pertinent. China has roughly the same land area as America, but 13 times more people than the United States did then. Yet on current plans it will have only 110,000km of railway by 2012, compared with more than 400,000km in America in 1916. Unlike Japan, which built “bridges to nowhere” to prop up its economy, China needs better infrastructure.
一些分析人士对此持反对意见。例如，Pivot公司称中国的基础建设已经达到了先进的水平。世界上最长的桥梁中中国占了6座，并且以拥有世界上最快的火车为荣，基建方面良性投资的空间已经不大。这种言论纯属废话。一个2/5的村庄依然缺乏通往附近城镇农贸市场的柏油路的国家，道路建设的空间还非常大。铁路建设的情况也是一样。像之前提到过的那样，拿如今的中国通一个世纪前的美国相比才有意义。中美两国的国土面积相差无几，但是人口数量是当时美国的13倍。然而照目前的计划看，到2012年中国的铁路保有量只有11万km，同比之下1916年的美国这个数字是40万km还多。同日本“没有兴建桥梁的客观需要”来支撑经济不一样，中国需要更好的基础设施。
It is true that in the short term, the revenue from some infrastructure projects may not be enough to service debts, so the government will have to cover losses. But in the long term such projects should lift productivity across the economy. During Britain’s railway mania in the mid-19th century, few railways made a decent financial return, but they brought huge long-term economic benefits.
确实，从短期来看，一些基建项目上的回报可能不够支付为其投入的债务，所以损失部分只有由政府来承担。但是从长期来看，这些基础项目会提升整个经济的生产效率。英国在20世纪中期的铁路投资热潮中，没有一条铁路能立竿见影的收到利益回报，但是他们带来了巨大的长期经济收益。
The biggest cause for worry about China is the third point of similarity to Japan: the recent tidal wave of bank lending. Total credit jumped by more than 30% last year. Even assuming that this slows to less than 20% this year, as the government has hinted, total credit outstanding could hit 135% of GDP by December. The authorities are perturbed. This week they increased banks’ reserve requirement ratio by half a percentage point. They have also raised the yield on central-bank bills.
对中国现状最大的担心来自其同当年日本的第三个相似处：最近的银行信贷浪潮。去年总的信贷跃升了30%多。即便假设今年的放贷步伐能减缓到政府暗示的20%以下，总的信贷额可能会在年底占到GDP的135%。权威人士开始惴惴不安起来。本周，央行将存款准备金利率上调了0.5个百分点。同时上调的还有央行票据的收益率。
However, too many commentators talk as if Chinese banks have been on a lending binge for years. Instead, the spurt in 2009, which was engineered by the government to revive the economy, followed several years in which credit grew more slowly than GDP (see chart 3). Michael Buchanan, of Goldman Sachs, estimates that since 2004 China’s excess credit (the gap between the growth rates of credit and nominal GDP) has risen by less than in most developed economies.
然而，很多的评论人士认为中国的银行已经身处天量信贷盛宴多年。相反，在09年由政府经济刺激方案拉动的信贷井喷之前的几年里，信贷增量远低于GDP的增速（见表3）。根据高盛的Michael Buchanan的估算，自2004年来，中国超额信贷量（信贷和名义GDP增速的差额）的增速要比大部分发达国家的低。
Even so, recent lending has been excessive; combined with overcapacity in some industries, it is likely to cause an increase in banks’ non-performing loans. Ms Wang calculates that if 20% of all new lending last year and another 10% of this year’s lending turned bad, this would create new bad loans equivalent to 5.5% of GDP by 2012, on top of 2% now. That is far from trivial, but well below the 40% of GDP that bad loans amounted to in the late 1990s.
即便如此，近期的信贷是过量了；再加上一些行业的产能过剩，这可能会增加银行的坏账的数量。根据王先生的计算，去年新增贷款中的20%以及今年新增贷款的10%会被证实为坏账，这会导致到2012年，新增坏账的数目相当于GDP的5.5%，远高于现在2%的水平。这一分析并非毫无意义，但是远低于20世纪90年代末期等于40%GDP量的坏账数目。
Much of the past year’s bank lending should really be viewed as a form of fiscal stimulus. Infrastructure projects that have little hope of repaying loans will end up back on the government’s books. It would have been much better if such projects had been financed more transparently through the government’s budget, but the important question is whether the state can afford to cover the losses.
世界上，过去几年大多数的银行信贷应该被视作一种财政刺激方案。无力偿还债务的基础建设项目贷款最终会记到政府头上。如果这些融资能更加透明的反映在政府赤字中的话情况会好一些，但是很重要的一个问题是政府是否有能力承担这些损失。
Official gross government debt is less than 20% of GDP, but China bears argue that this is an understatement, because it excludes local-government debt and the bonds issued by the asset-management companies that took over banks’ previous non-performing loans. Total government debt could be 50% of GDP. But that is well below the average ratio in rich countries, of around 90%. Moreover, the Chinese government owns lots of assets, for example shares of listed companies which are worth 35% of GDP.
官方公布的政府总债务量占GDP的不到20%，但是中国境内的卖空者称其中存在着瞒报，因为官方数字中没有包括地方政府的债务以及由资产管理公司发行的旨在弥补银行之前坏账的债券数目。总的政府债务会占到GDP的50%。但这一数字还是远低于发达国家接近90%的比例。此外，中国政府手握大量的资产，例如价值GDP总量35%的的上市公司股份。
Ying and yang
阴阳之道
Even if, as argued above, concerns about a financial crash in China are premature, the risks of a dangerous bubble and excessive investment will clearly increase if credit continues to expand at its recent pace. The stitching on the Chinese economy could fray and burst. Would that imply the end of China’s era of rapid growth?
即使存在着以上的这些争论，对中国金融崩盘的担忧是从未消除过的，如果信贷继续按现有的速度大步前进的话，灾难性泡沫和过度投资的风险将会明显提高。中国经济的伤口会崩裂。这会不会暗示着飞速增长的中国时代的终结？
Predictions that China is heading for a prolonged Japanese-style slump ignore big differences between China today and Japan in the late 1980s. Japan was already a mature, developed economy, with a GDP per person close to that of America. China is still a poor, developing country, whose GDP per person is less than one-tenth of America’s or Japan’s. It has ample room to play catch-up with rich economies by adding to its capital stock, importing foreign technology and boosting productivity by shifting labour from farms to factories. This would make it easier for China to recover from the bursting of a bubble.
那些声称中国正在走向日本式长期衰退的预言忽略了现今中国通20世纪80年代末期日本最大的不同点。日本早已经是一个成熟的发达的经济体，其人均GDP已经接近美国。中国却仍然是一个贫穷的发展中国家，其人均GDP还不到美日的1/10。中国通过增加资本存量，引进国外技术以及通过劳动力从农到工的配置来拉动生产效率的方式追赶发达经济体的空间还很大。这会使得中国走出泡沫破裂的影响变得更容易。
Chart 4 examines the relationship between growth rates and income per head for six Asian economies. Each plot shows a country’s growth rate and GDP per person relative to America’s for successive ten-year periods, starting when their rapid growth took off. It illustrates how growth rates slow as economies catch up with America, the technological leader. The fact that China’s GDP per head is much lower than Japan’s in the 1980s suggests that its growth potential over the next decade is much higher. Even though China’s labour force will start shrinking after 2016, rapid productivity gains mean that its trend GDP growth rate is still around 8%, down from 10% in the past decade.
图4说明了6个亚洲经济体中经济增长率同人均收入的关系。每一个点反应的是一个连续的10年里，以美国为基数的各国增长率以及人均GDP，计算的起点是从各国开始告诉增长的年份。图反应的是在经济体追赶技术先驱美国的过程中增长率是如何变缓的。事实是20世纪80年代中国的人均GDP远低于日本的，这意味着接下来10年里中国巨大的潜在增长能力。尽管中国的劳动力会在2016年后开始萎缩，增长迅速的生产率意味着中国的潜在GDP增长率还会保持在8%左右，低于过去10年10%的增长水平。
Japan’s stockmarket and land-price bubbles in the early 1960s offer a better (and more cheerful) analogy to China than the 1980s bubble era does. Japan’s economy was poorer then, although relative to America its GDP per person was more than double China’s today, and its trend rate of growth was around 9%. According to HSBC, after the bubble burst in 1962-65, Japan’s annual growth rate dipped to just under 6%, but then quickly rebounded to 10% for much of the next decade.
对于中国来说，20世纪60年代早期发生在日本的股市和地价泡沫要比20世纪80年代的泡沫借鉴性更强也更令人感到愉快。当时的日本经济比80年代更差，尽管那时其人均GDP同美国相比比现今中国的情况好了一倍还多而且经济的增长趋势接近9%。根据汇丰的研究，在泡沫破裂后的1962-1965年间，日本的年增长率下探到了6%以下，但是接下来的10年里迅速回升到10%的水平。
South Korea and Taiwan, which experienced big stockmarket bubbles in the 1980s, are also worth examining. In the five years to 1990, Taipei’s stockmarket surged by 1,600% (in dollar terms) and Seoul’s by 700%, easily beating Tokyo’s 450% gain in the same period. After share prices slumped, annual growth in both South Korea and Taiwan slowed to around 6%, but soon regained its previous pace of 7-8%.
同样在20世纪80年代末期经历过股市泡沫的韩国和台湾的也值得借鉴。截止到1990年的5年里，以美元计价的台北股市飙升了1600%，首尔的涨幅是700%，很轻易的就超越了同期日本450%的涨幅。股价下跌后，韩国和台湾的年度经济增长率都跌到了6%左右，但是不久就回到了之前7%-8%的增长率。
The higher a country’s potential growth rate, the easier it is for the economy to recover after a bubble bursts, so long as its fiscal and external finances are in reasonable shape. Rapid growth in nominal GDP means that asset prices do not need to fall so far to regain fair value, bad loans are easier to work off and excess capacity can be more quickly absorbed by rising demand. The experience of Japan in the 1960s suggests that if China’s bubble bursts, it will hurt growth temporarily but not lead to prolonged stagnation.
一国的潜在经济增长率越高，其在泡沫破裂后的复苏就越容易，只要该国的国内财政和外部金融情况良好就可以。名义GDP的快速增长意味着资产价格无需下调以回到均衡水平，坏账更容易被抵消，日益增长的需求也能迅速的吸收过剩的产能。日本在20世纪60年代的经历告诉我们，如果中国的泡沫破裂的话，会在短期内伤及经济增长但不会导致长期萧条。
However, it is Japan’s experience after the 1980s that most influences the thinking of policymakers in Beijing. Many blame Japan’s deflation and its lost decades of growth on the fact that its government caved in to American demands for an appreciation of the yen. In 1985 central banks in the big rich economies agreed, in the Plaza Accord, to intervene to push down the dollar. By 1988 the yen had risen by more than 100% against the greenback. One reason why policymakers in Beijing have resisted a big rise in the yuan is that they fear it could send their economy, like Japan’s, into a deflationary slump.
然而，最大程度上影响北京当局政策决策者的正是日本在20世纪80年代后的遭遇。很多人将日本的通胀和十年内经济呆滞的事实怪罪于日本政府将日元升值使得日本经济要看美国的消费者的眼色。1985年，发达经济体的中央银行家们通过了广场协议，通过干预迫使美元贬值。到1988年，日元对美元升值幅度超过了100%。北京的政策制定者之所以拒绝人民币大幅升值的一个原因就是害怕升值会将中国经济推向日本当年通货紧缩和经济衰退的老路上。
The wrong lesson
反面教材
Illustration by Derek Bacon
Yet Japan’s real mistake was not that it allowed the yen to rise, but that it had previously resisted an appreciation for too long, so that when it did happen the yen soared. A second error was that Japan tried to offset the adverse economic effects of a strong yen with over-lax monetary policy. If policy had been tighter, the financial bubble would have been smaller and its aftermath less painful.
然而日本最大的问题并不是因为政府允许日元升值，而是之前很长一段时间对升值的打压，所以当升值发生的时候就发生了飙升的现象。第二个错误是日本试图用过度宽松的货币政策来冲销强势日元带来的负面经济效应。如果升值后政策持紧的话，金融泡沫不会那么庞大而且之后的日本也会少吃点苦头。
This offers two important lessons to China. First, it is better to let the exchange rate rise sooner and more gradually than to risk a much sharper appreciation later. Second, monetary policy should not be too slack. Raising reserve requirements is a small step in the right direction. Despite the bears’ growling, China’s economic collapse is neither imminent nor inevitable. But if it continues to draw the wrong lesson from the tale of Japan, then one day its economy may look just as tatty.
日本的这些经历为中国提供了两个重要的教训。首先，最好是尽快并且平稳的允许汇率上调，而不是在之后冒着激进式升值的风险。其次，货币政策不要太过宽松。调高准备金率是朝正确方向迈出的一小步。尽管卖空者怨声载道，中国的经济崩盘不可能近在咫尺也并非无可避免。但是如果中国还是以日本这个反面教材为榜样的话，那么总有一天中国经济会变得千疮百孔。
