[转帖] [2012.05.26]Prudence without a purpose 无意义的节俭

showcraft

http://www.ecocn.org/thread-67767-1-1.html
摘要：本文考察了中国经济增长中长期存在的严重失衡：消费过低，储蓄过高——投资过高；重点关注投资的低效率和浪费投资现象；当然作为The Economist一贯的风格，文章也提到了中国经济中正面的因素，为唱空中国者和唱多中国者都提供了证据。最终如何，大家自己判断吧。同时，拭目以待，或者投身实践……

Investment
投资
Prudence without a purpose
无意义的节俭
Misinvestment is a bigger problem than overinvestment
投资不当的危害比过度投资更大


May 26th 2012 | from the print edition


China’s answer to Dubai
中国的迪拜

GENGHIS KHAN SQUARE in Kangbashi, a new city in the northern province of Inner Mongolia, is as big as Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But unlike Tiananmen Square, it has only one woman to sweep it. It takes her six hours, she says, though longer after the sandstorms that sweep in from the Gobi desert. Kangbashi, or “new Ordos”, as it is known, is easy to clean because it is all but empty. China’s most famous “ghost city”, it has attracted a lot of journalists eager to illustrate China’s overinvestment, but not many residents.

在中国北部的内蒙古自治区，康巴什新城建设的成吉思汗广场同北京的天安门广场一样宏大。跟天安门广场所不同的是它只有一个清洁工保洁。这位清洁工说清扫一遍康巴什广场要六个小时，如果遇到附件沙漠吹过来的沙尘暴则需要更久。鄂尔多斯新城康巴什之所以容易清扫是因为它是一座空城。作为中国最著名的鬼城，它吸引了众多试图证明中国处于过度投资的记者，和少得可怜的居民。

Ordos was one of the prime exhibits in an infamous presentation by Jim Chanos, a well-known short-seller, at the London School of Economics in January 2010. Mr Chanos argued that China’s growth was predicated on an unsustainable mobilisation of capital—investment that provides only for further investment. China, he quipped, was “Dubai times 1,000”.

2010年一月在伦敦政治经济学院的一次讲座中，著名的卖空者吉姆•查诺斯将鄂尔多斯作为他演讲的主要论据。查诺斯先生认为中国的增长建立在不可持续的资本流动上——资本全部投入到更大的投资中。他戏言中国的泡沫繁荣是迪拜的1000倍。

His tongue-in-cheek reference to the bling-swept, debt-drenched emirate caused a stir. But not everywhere in China shrinks from the comparison. One property development that actively courts it is Phoenix Island, off the coast of tropical Sanya, China’s southernmost city. It is a largely man-made islet, much like Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah. Its centrepiece will be a curvaceous seven-star hotel, rather like Dubai’s Burj Al Arab, only shaped like a wishbone not a sail. The five pod-like buildings already up resemble the unopened buds of some strange flower. Coated in light-emitting diodes, they erupt into a lightshow at night, featuring adverts for Chanel and Louis Vuitton.

他的玩笑借用了财富尽失，债务缠身的酋长国，引起了极大的反响。这种例子在中国不止一个。在中国最南端的城市三亚，一个地产开发项目正在离岸的凤凰岛如火如荼的进行着。它是一个巨大地人工岛，很像迪拜的棕榈岛。凤凰岛项目的核心是一个超豪华的七星级酒店，如同迪拜的帆船酒店，所不同的是这个酒店将是Y字型的。这个五荚形建筑模仿一种稀奇的花蕾建造。酒店的外部布有LED灯墙，播放着香奈儿和路易威登的广告。

After a visit to Ordos or Sanya, it is tempting to agree with Mr Chanos that China has overinvested from its northern steppe to its southern shores. But what exactly does it mean for a country to “overinvest”? One clear sign would be investment that was running well ahead of saving, requiring heavy foreign borrowing and buying. The result could be a currency crisis, like the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Some veterans of that episode worry about China’s reckless investment in tasteless property. But although China invests more of its GDP than those crisis-struck economies ever did, it also saves far more. It is a net exporter of capital, as its controversial current-account surplus attests. Indeed, for every critic bashing China for reckless investment spending there is another accusing it of depressing world demand through excessive thrift. China is in the odd position of being cast as both miser and wanton.

在参观了鄂尔多斯和三亚之后，人们很容易认同查诺斯的观点，即中国从南到北都处在过度投资中。但是“过度投资”的确切含义是什么呢？一个明显的后果是超出正常需求的投资，需要大量吸引外资和出口。这将造成货币危机，如同1997-1998年爆发的亚洲金融危机。一些经历过那次危机的人开始担心中国不计后果的向毫无价值的领域投资。尽管中国经济中，投资占GDP 的比重比危机前的东南亚国家还要高，到目前为止它仍然在保持增长。由于拥有饱受争议的经常账户盈余，中国是一个资本净输出国。事实上，在批评中国天量投资开支的同时，许多人认为中国人过度节俭的消费导致了全球需求不足。中国经济处在一种尴尬的极端情况——吝啬和奢侈并存

Even an extravagance like Kangbashi is best understood as an attempt to soak up saving. The Ordos prefecture, to which it belongs, is home to a sixth of China’s coal reserves and a third of its natural gas (not to mention its rare earths and soft goat’s wool). According to Ting Lu of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Kangbashi is an attempt to prevent Ordos’s commodity earnings from disappearing to other parts of the country.

奢侈的康巴什在中国被认为是吸引储蓄的典范。鄂尔多斯辖区蕴藏着中国六分之一的煤碳和三分之一的天然气，更不用说它的稀土和羊毛。根据来自美银美林的陆婷，康巴什的建设是当地政府希望保留矿藏财富，防止资本外流的手段。

China as a whole saved an extraordinary 51% of its GDP last year. Until China’s investment rate exceeds that share, there is no cause for concern, says Qu Hongbin of HSBC. Anything China fails to invest at home must be invested overseas. “The most wasteful investment China now has is US Treasuries,” he adds.

中国整体的储蓄在去年达到了GDP的51%，如此之高相当罕见。来自汇丰银行的屈宏斌认为在中国的投资率低于储蓄率时，不必担心。中国国内不能满足的投资部分必须投向海外。屈宏斌补充道：“中国最不值的投资是购买美国国债。”

When talking about thrift, economists sometimes draw on a parable of prudence written three centuries ago by Daniel Defoe. In that novel the resourceful Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on a remote island, saves and replants four quarts of barley. The reward for his thrift is a harvest of 80 quarts, a return of 1,900%.

在谈到储蓄的时候，经济学家经常引用三个世纪前丹尼尔•笛福的寓言。在小说中，因船舶失事而漂流荒岛的鲁滨逊机智的储藏和种植了四夸脱大麦，得到的回报是80夸脱，净收益19倍。

Castaway capital
被抛弃的资本

Investment is made out of saving, which requires consumption to be deferred. The returns to investment must be set against the disadvantage of having to wait. In Robinson Crusoe, the saving and the investing are both done by the same Englishman, alone on his island. In a more complicated economy, households must save so that entrepreneurs can invest. In most economies their saving is voluntary, but China has found ways of imposing the patience its high investment rate requires.

投资来自储蓄，储蓄来自节省的消费。投资回报必须能够补偿储蓄的成本。对鲁滨逊来说，储蓄和投资全部由一个处于荒岛的英国人操作。在复杂的多的经济中，企业的投资来自家庭储蓄。在大多数国家，储蓄是自愿的。但是在中国，政府能够找到办法，得到高投资率所需要的储蓄。

Michael Pettis of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University argues that the Chinese government suppresses consumption in favour of producers, many of them state-owned. It keeps the currency undervalued, which makes imports expensive and exports cheap, thereby discouraging the consumption of foreign goods and encouraging production for foreign customers. It caps interest rates on bank deposits, depriving households of interest income and transferring it to corporate borrowers. And because some of China’s markets remain largely sheltered from competition, a few incumbent firms can extract high prices and reinvest the profits. The government has, in effect, confiscated quarts of barley from the people who might want to eat them, making them available as seedcorn instead.

北京大学光华管理学院的迈克尔•佩蒂斯认为中国政府抑制消费有利于生产者，其中许多事国有企业。它保持者货币低估，造成进口商品昂贵，出口商品廉价，从而抑制了进口，鼓励了出口。它限制银行利率水平，剥夺了家庭的利息收入，转移给企业贷款者。另外，由于中国许多市场被少数国有企业垄断，他们能够高价获利，并且再投资。中国政府实际上从人们手中征收了一些原本用来食用的大麦用作种子。

What has China got in return? Investment, unlike consumption, is cumulative; it leaves behind a stock of machinery, buildings and infrastructure. If China’s capital stock were already too big for its needs, further thrift would indeed be pointless. In fact, though, the country’s overall capital stock is still small relative to its population and medium-sized relative to its economy. In 2010, its capital stock per person was only 7% of America’s (converted at market exchange rates), according to Andrew Batson and Janet Zhang of GK Dragonomics, a consultancy in Beijing. Even measured at purchasing-power parity, China has only about a fifth of America’s capital stock per person, depending on how its PPP rate is calculated.

那中国的收益是什么？跟消费不同的是，投资是可以积累的；大规模投资留下了机器，建筑和基础设施。如果中国的资本存量已经大于需求，那么继续增加储蓄是毫无意义的。实际上，相对于中国的人口，现有的资本存量仍然较小；相对与中国的经济总量，现有资本存量也只处于中等水平。根据北京一家咨询机构龙洲经济分析员安德鲁•波士顿和珍妮特•张的测算，在2010年，中国的人均资本存量仅相当于美国的7%（以市场汇率换算）。即使以购买力平价测算，中国的人均资本存量也仅相当于美国的20%，根据购买力平价汇率不同可能有差异。


Boom, boom
爆破，爆破

China needs to “produce lots more of almost everything”, argues Scott Sumner of Bentley University, even if it does not produce “everything in the right order”. Its furious homebuilding, for example, has unnerved the government and cast a shadow over its banks, which worry about defaults on property loans. But it still needs more places for people to live. In 2010 it had 140m-150m urban homes, according to Rosealea Yao of GK Dragonomics, 85m short of the number of urban households. About three-quarters of China’s migrant workers are squeezed into rented housing or dormitories provided by their employer.

本特利大学的斯科特•苏姆勒认为，在所有的领域中国都需要生产更多的商品，即使生产不能够完全有序。以中国天量的住房建设为例，政府对此焦头烂额。银行也因此承担着巨大的违约风险。但是中国人毕竟还是需要更多的住房居住。根据龙洲经济的罗斯利•姚，2010年，中国城镇共有1.4亿-1.5亿套住房，还有8500万城市家庭没有住房。大约四分之三的农民工只能租房或者栖身雇主提供的宿舍。

Nor is China’s capital stock conspicuously large relative to the size of its economy. It amounted to about 2.5 times China’s GDP in 2008, according to the APO. That was the same as America’s figure and much lower than Japan’s. Thanks to China’s stimulus-driven investment spree, the ratio increased to 2.9 in 2010, but that still does not look wildly out of line.

相对于中国的经济总量，中国的资本存量也没有明显过量。根据APO的数据，2008年中国的资本存量相当于GDP的2.5倍。这个水平跟美国一致，但是比日本要低。由于中国的投资刺激政策，这个比例在2010年提高到2.9，也没有明显过分。

Malinvestors of great wealth
财富的无效投资者

In Defoe’s tale, Robinson Crusoe spends five months making a canoe for himself, felling a cedar-tree, paring away its branches and chiselling out its innards. Only after this “inexpressible labour” does he find that the canoe is too heavy to be pushed the 100 yards to the shore. That is not an example of overinvestment (Crusoe did need a canoe), but “malinvestment”. Crusoe devoted his energy to the wrong enterprise in the wrong place.

在笛福的小说中，鲁滨逊花了五个月的时间造了一艘独木舟。他砍倒一颗杉树，去掉枝叶，挖空树干。但是在难以形容的艰难劳动之后，他发现独木舟太重，没法推到100码以外的海滩。这不是过度投资（鲁滨逊需要独木舟），但是是无效投资。鲁滨逊在错误的地方错误的对象上花费了精力。

It is surprisingly hard to show that China has overinvested, but easier to show that it has invested unwisely. Of China’s misguided canoe-builders, two are worth singling out: its local governments (see article) and its state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

奇怪的是很难找到证据证明中国已经处于过度投资，但是可以很容易的发现有很多投资是不明智的。在中国的无效投资者中，两个值得特别重视：地方政府和国有企业。

China’s SOEs endured a dramatic downsizing and restructuring in the 1990s. Thousands of them were allowed to go bankrupt, yet those that survived this cull remain a prominent feature of Chinese capitalism. Even in the retail, wholesale and restaurant businesses there are over 20,000 of them, according to Zhang Wenkui of China’s Development Research Centre.

中国的国有企业在1990s年代经历了大规模的裁撤和重组。数以千计的国有企业破产，但是那些剩下的仍然在中国经济中占据支配地位。中国发展研究中心的张文魁表示即使是在零售、批发和餐饮业，目前还有超过20000家国企。

SOEs are responsible for about 35% of the fixed-asset investments made by Chinese firms. They can invest so much because they have become immensely profitable. The 120 or so big enterprises owned by the central government last year earned net profits of 917 billion yuan ($142 billion), according to their supervisor, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). It cites their profitability as evidence of their efficiency. But even now, returns on equity among SOEs are substantially lower than among private firms. Nor do SOEs really “earn” their returns. The markets they occupy tend to be uncompetitive, as the OECD has shown, and their inputs of land, energy and credit are artificially cheap. Researchers at Unirule, a Beijing think-tank, have shown that the SOEs’ profits from 2001 to 2008 would have turned into big losses had they paid the market rate for their loans and land.

国有企业的掌握了中国企业固定资产投资的35%。他们能够大规模投资的原因是他们利润丰厚。根据中国国有资产监督管理委员会的统计，中央政府控制的120家大型企业去年净利润达到9170亿人民币（1420亿美元）。国资委用国企的盈利来证明他们的效率。但是直到目前，国有企业的资本回报仍然低于私营企业。国企并不是真正在盈利。OECD的研究显示，国企所占据的市场是低竞争的，他们投入的土地，能源和信贷都是人为压低的。北京一家智库天则经济研究所发现，在2001-2008年间，如果按市场价格支付贷款利息和土地租金，国企将出现巨额亏损。

Even if the SOEs deserved their large profits, they would not be able to reinvest them if they paid proper dividends to their shareholders, principally the state. Since a 2007 reform, dividends have increased to 5-15% of profits, depending on the industry. But in other countries state enterprises typically pay out half, according to the World Bank. Moreover, SOE dividends are not handed over to the finance ministry to spend as it sees fit but paid into a special budget reserved for financing state enterprises. SOE dividends, in other words, are divided among SOEs.

即使国企得到的利润是合理地，如果他们向股东支付合理的红利之后，将很难有能力再投资。从2007年的一项改革开始，国企红利上缴比例增加到5%-15%之间，根据所在行业有所不同。但是，根据世界银行的研究，其他国家的国有企业通常要支付50%。更有甚者，国企的利润并非上缴国家财政，而是上交到一个特别的预算账户用来为国企融资。国企红利，说白了，就是国企之间的分赃。

The wrong sort of investment
错误的投资

Loren Brandt and Zhu Xiaodong of the University of Toronto argue that China’s worst imbalance is not between investment and consumption but between SOE investment and private investment. According to their calculations, if state capitalists had not enjoyed privileged access to capital, China could have achieved the same growth between 1978 and 2007 with an investment rate of only 21% of GDP, about half its actual rate. A similar conclusion was reached by David Dollar, now at America’s Treasury, and Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia Business School. They reckon that two-thirds of the capital employed by the SOEs should have been invested by private firms instead. Karl Marx made his case for collective ownership of the means of production in “Das Kapital”. Messrs Dollar and Wei called their riposte “Das (Wasted) Kapital”.

多伦多大学的劳伦•布兰特和朱晓东认为，中国最严重的失衡不是投资和消费，而是国企投资和私人投资。根据他们的测算，如果国企没后获得廉价资本支持，在1978年-2007年之间，中国达到同样的增长仅仅需要投资GDP的21%，而不是50%。现在任职美国财政部的大卫•多拉和哥伦比亚商学院的魏尚金也得出了类似的结论。他们认为国企投资中，有三分之二应该由私人投资。卡尔•马克思在《资本论》中论述了集体所有制的生产方式。多拉和魏称之为浪费的资本。

Perhaps the best that can be said of China’s SOEs is that they give the country’s ruling party a direct stake in the economy’s prosperity. Li-Wen Lin and Curtis Milhaupt of Columbia University argue that the networks linking the party to the SOEs, and the SOEs to each other, help to forge an “encompassing” coalition, a concept they draw from Mancur Olson, a political scientist. The members of such a coalition “own so much of the society that they have an important incentive to be actively concerned about how productive it is”. China’s rulers not only own large swathes of industry, they have also installed their sons and daughters in senior positions at the big firms.

也许国有企业最大的优点在于它们为执政党提供了直接控制经济繁荣工具。哥伦比亚大学的林立文和卡迪斯•米尔哈特认为国企和党之间，国企和国企之间的网络有助于形成一个“包容性”联盟，这个概念来自政治学家蒙克•奥尔森。联盟内的成员“拥有大量的社会资源，以至于他们有足够的激励去关注它的生产”。中国的执政者不仅在经济中占据大部分，还让他们的子女在大公司中占据高位。

The SOEs provide some reassurance that the government will remain committed to economic growth, according to Mr Milhaupt and another co-author, Ronald Gilson. The party officials embedded in them are like “hostages” to economic fortune, “the children of the monarch placed in the hands of those who need to rely upon the monarch”. That gives private entrepreneurs confidence, because the growth thus guaranteed will eventually benefit them as well—although they will have to work harder for their rewards.

米尔哈特和另一位共同作者诺纳德•吉尔孙认为国有企业向政府提供了控制经济增长的再保险。国企中的中共官员被视为经济财富的人质，“统治者的孩子交给了那些依靠统治者的人手中”。这为私营企业提供了信心，因为经济增长最终使他们自己也受益——尽管他们将不得不更辛苦的工作。

What are the implications of China’s malinvestment for its economic progress? At its worst, China’s growth model adds insult to injury. It suppresses consumption and forces saving, then misinvests the proceeds in speculative assets or excess capacity. It is as if Crusoe were forced to scatter more than half his barley on the soil, then leave part of the harvest to rot.

在中国的经济发展过程中，无效投资的意义何在？最坏的情况下，将使中国的发展雪上加霜。抑制消费，强迫储蓄，然后胡乱投资导致投机资产和产能过剩。这就像鲁滨逊被强迫拿出他一大半的大麦做种子，然后在丰收后留下一部分给老鼠。

The rot may not become apparent at once. Goods for which there is no demand at home can be sold abroad. And surplus plant and machinery can be kept busy making capital goods for another round of investment that will only add to the problem. But when the building dust settles, a number of consequences become clear. First, consumption is lower than it could be, because of the extra saving. GDP, properly measured, is also lower than it appears, because so much of it is investment, and some of that investment is ultimately valueless. It follows that the capital stock, properly measured, is also smaller than it seems, because a lot of it is rotten. That would make for a very different kind of island parable, a tale of needless austerity and squandered effort.

老鼠的面目一开始可能不是那么明显。国内没有需求的货物可以卖到国外。过剩的工厂和机器可以保持生产，制造的资本品又被用到新一轮的投资中，这样的后果类似饮鸩止渴。当尘埃落定，一系列恶果逐渐清晰。首先，由于过度储蓄，消费低于合理水平。真实的GDP将比统计的要低，因为投资占比过大，而相当一部分投资是无用的。其次是资本累的真实水平也会比统计的要低，因为一部分被窃取。这会产生一个与鲁滨逊完全不同的寓言，一个毫无意义的节俭和浪费并存的故事。

Fortunately there is another side to China’s story. It has not only accumulated physical capital but also acquired more know-how, better technology and cleverer techniques. That is why foreign multinationals in the country rely on local suppliers—and also why they fear local rivals. A Chinese motorbike-maker studied by John Strauss of the University of Southern California and his co-authors started out producing the metal casings for exhaust pipes. Then it learnt how to make the whole pipe. Next it mastered the pistons. Eventually it made the entire bike.

幸运的是故事中中国还有另一面。中国经济不仅在积累物质资本，同时也吸收了更好的技术和工艺。这就是在中国的外国跨国公司依赖于本地供应商的原因，这也是他们害怕本地竞争者的原因。南加州大学的约翰•斯特劳斯和他的合作者研究的一个中国摩托车制造商最初生产的是废气管的金属壳，然后这家企业学会了制造废气管，之后是活塞，最后他们学会了制造整个摩托车。

China “bears” like Mr Chanos sometimes neglect this side of the country’s progress. In his 2010 presentation he compared China to the Soviet Union, another empire in the east that enjoyed a stretch of beguiling economic growth. Like the Soviet command economy, China is good at marshalling inputs of capital and labour, he pointed out, but China has failed to generate growth in output per input, just as the Soviet Union failed before it. Yet this analogy with the Soviet Union is preposterous.

查诺斯先生等唱空中国者常常忽略了中国经济中正面的因素。在2010年的演讲中，他将中国同前苏联相提并论，前苏联也曾经历过令人惊叹的经济增长。他指出，像前苏联一样，中国也善于集中资本和劳动投入，但是中国每单位投入的产出如同前苏联一样是低效的。因此，这个将中国同苏联相类比的分析是荒谬的。

Economists refer to a rise in output per input of capital and labour as a gain in “total factor productivity”. Such gains have many sources. One textile boss got 20% more out of his seamstresses by playing background music in his factory, recalls Arnold Harberger of the University of California at Los Angeles. The striking thing about the growth in China’s total factor productivity is not its absence but its speed: the fastest in the world over the past decade. Between 2000 and 2008 it contributed 43% of the country’s economic growth, according to the APO. That is just as big a contribution as the brute accumulation of capital, which accounted for 44% (excluding information technology). Thus even if some of China’s recent investment has in fact been wasted, China’s progress cannot be written off.

经济学家使用“全要素生产率”来表示投入单位资本和劳动的产出。这种产出有多重形式。加州大学洛杉矶分校的阿诺德•哈伯格实验发现，一个纺织商通过在工厂播放背景音乐是女裁缝工人的产出提高了20%。中国的全要素生产率增长方面引人注目的是他的速度：过去的十年中全球增长最快的国家。APO研究发现在2000年——2008年间，全要素生产率贡献了中国经济增长的43%。该比率跟资本积累的贡献率44%相差无几（不包括信息技术）。因此，尽管中国近期的一些投资被浪费掉了，中国的进步仍然不可忽视。



And even if some of China’s past investment has been futile, adding nothing worthwhile to the capital stock, there is a consolation: it will leave more scope to invest later, suggesting that the country’s potential for growth is even larger than the optimists think. The right kind of investment can still generate high returns. But what if the mistaken investments of the past disrupt the financial system, preventing resources from being deployed more effectively in the future?

尽管中国过去的部分投资是无用的，对增加资本存量毫无价值，至少还有一点：它为未来的投资留下了空间，显示着中国的增长潜力比乐观者的估计还要大。正确的投资还将产生丰厚的回报。但是，如果过去错误的投资扰乱了金融系统，在未来妨碍着资源的有效利用，事情将是怎么样的呢？

jianmin

这篇文章说到了点子上。不过，船大的好处就是，即使有一部分船漏水了，可是，船仍然可以前进，并且有时间边前进边修补。