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中国经济放缓万岁(Long Live China's Slowdown)

17/04/2013|Stephen S. RoachProject Syndicate
At 7.7%, China's annual GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was slower than many expected. While the data were hardly devastating relative to a consensus forecast of 8.2%, many (including me) expected a second consecutive quarterly rebound from the slowdown that appeared to have ended in the third quarter of 2012. China doubters around the world were quick to pounce on the number, expressing fears of a stall, or even a dreaded double dip.
But slower GDP growth is actually good for China, provided that it reflects the long-awaited structural transformation of the world's most dynamic economy. The broad outlines of this transformation are well known - a shift from export- and investment-led growth to an economic structure that draws greater support from domestic private consumption. Less well known is that a rebalanced China should have a slower growth rate - the first hints of which may now be evident.
A rebalanced China can grow more slowly for one simple reason: By drawing increased support from services-led consumer demand, China's new model will embrace a more labor-intensive growth recipe. The numbers seem to bear that out. China's services sector requires about 35% more jobs per unit of GDP than do manufacturing and construction - the primary drivers of the old model.
That number has potentially huge implications, because it means that China could grow at an annual rate in the 7-8% range and still achieve its objectives with respect to employment and poverty reduction. China has struggled to attain these goals with anything less than 10% growth, because the old model was not generating enough jobs per unit of output. As Chinese manufacturing moved up the value chain, firms increasingly replaced workers with machines embodying the latest technologies. As a result, its economic model spawned a labor-saving, capital-intensive growth dynamic.
Stephen S. Roach, a faculty member at 
Yale University and former Chairman of
 Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of

The Next Asia.
On one level, that made sense. Capital-labor substitution is at the heart of modern productivity strategies for manufacturing-based economies. But it left China in a deepening hole: increasingly deficient in jobs per unit of output, it needed more units of output to absorb its surplus labor. Ultimately, that became more of a problem than a solution. The old manufacturing model, which fueled an unprecedented 20-fold increase in per capita income relative to the early 1990's, also sowed the seeds of excessive resource consumption and environmental degradation.
Services-led growth is, in many ways, the antidote to the "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and ultimately unsustainable" growth model that former Premier Wen Jiabao's famously criticized in 2007. Yet services offer more than just a labor-intensive growth path. Compared to manufacturing, they have much smaller resource and carbon footprints. A services-led model provides China with an alternative, environmentally friendlier, and ultimately more sustainable economic structure.
It is premature, of course, to conclude that a services-led transformation to slower growth is now at hand. The latest data hint at such a possibility, with the tertiary sector (services) expanding at an 8.3% annual rate in the first quarter of this year - the third consecutive quarter of acceleration and a half-percentage point faster than the 7.8% first-quarter gain recorded by the secondary sector (manufacturing and construction). But it will take more than a few quarters of mildly encouraging data to validate such an important shift in the Chinese economy's underlying structure.
Not surprisingly, China skeptics are putting a different spin on the latest growth numbers. Fears of a shadow-bank-induced credit bubble now top the worry list, reinforcing longstanding concerns that China may succumb to the dreaded "middle-income trap" - a sustained growth slowdown that has ensnared most high-growth emerging economies at the juncture that China has now reached.
China is hardly immune to such a possibility. But it is unlikely to occur if China can carry out the services-led pro-consumption rebalancing that remains the core strategic initiative of its current (12th) Five-Year Plan. Invariably, the middle-income trap afflicts those emerging economies that cling to early-stage development models for too long. For China, the risk will be highest if it sticks with the timeworn recipe of unbalanced manufacturing- and construction-led growth, which has created such serious sustainability problems.
If China fails to rebalance, weak external demand from a crisis-battered developed world will continue to hobble its export machine, forcing it to up the ante on a credit- and investment-led growth model - in effect, doubling down on resource-intensive and environmentally damaging growth. But I remain hopeful that China's new leadership team will move quickly to implement its new model. There are no viable alternatives.
Financial markets, as well as growth-starved developed economies, are not thrilled with the natural rhythm of slower growth that a rebalanced Chinese economy is likely to experience. Resource industries - indeed, resource-based economies like Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Russia - have become addicted to China's old strain of unsustainable hyper-growth. Yet China knows that it is time to break that dangerous habit.
The United States is likely to have a different problem with consumer-led growth in China. After all, higher private consumption implies an end to China's surplus saving - and thus to the seemingly open-ended recycling of that surplus into dollar-based assets such as US Treasury bills. Who will then fund America's budget deficit - and on what terms?
Just as China must embrace slower growth as a natural consequence of its rebalancing imperative, the rest of the world will need to figure out how to cope when it does.

22/05/2013|人民网


  中国经济放缓已是被普遍接受的事实,但此前多数机构对“保8”仍持乐观态度,不过近期多数机构已将2013年中国的GDP增速调降至8%以下
  宏观经济面生出两个细节:5月份以来,金融机构纷纷下调对中国经济增速的预期;5月21日,中国央行为应对外汇占款而采取的资金回笼力度悄悄减低。
  分析人士认为,当前资金面的紧张与外部资金流入趋缓甚至出逃不无关系。联讯证券宏观分析师杨为敩认为,不排除央行将在公开市场实施资金净投放操作。

中国前4月表现出的增长疲弱态势开始引起国际投资者关注。截至5月21日,包括标普、美银美林和摩根大通在内的15家金融机构下调了中国经济增速预期。虽然中国经济放缓已是被普遍接受的事实,但此前多数机构对“保8”仍持乐观态度,不过近期多数机构已将2013年中国的GDP增速调降至8%以下。
  摩根大通首席经济学家朱海斌认为,中国的制造业投资持续放缓,工业增加值的回升势头也弱于预期,且有迹象显示需求不振且制造业疲软态势正在向服务业蔓延。
  数据显示,渣打集团已将对今年中国经济增速的预期从此前的8.3%下调至7.7%;荷兰国际集团则从之前的9%下调至7.8%;汇丰则从8.6%调至8.2%;法国兴业银行的预测最为“悲观”,仅7.4%。
  在金融机构纷纷下调经济增速预期之时,央行连续数周在公开市场开展资金净回笼操作,并重启了3月期央票发行,应对连续5个月增长的外汇占款。就在上周,公开市场到期资金规模创下今年以来单周最大到期量,而央行亦相应提升了公开市场回笼力度,最终实现净回笼350亿元。但5月21日,中国人民银行公告显示,央行当日在公开市场发行了100亿元的3月期央票和90亿元的28天期正回购,较上周二820亿元的总规模明显缩量。
  数据显示,由于本周到期资金为1580亿元,而5月21日央行回笼资金仅为190亿元,即便周四央行会继续发行央票和实施正回购,但本周资金净投放的格局已然形成。
  杨为敩指出,“在前期公开市场回笼加码、财政缴款进入季节性高峰期,特别是外部热钱流入步伐放慢的背景下,最近几天银行间市场资金面开始变得紧张起来。”
  数据显示,Shibor(上海银行间同业拆放利率)各品种利率近期出现连续大涨现象,其中隔夜拆放利率自5月15日起连续上涨150个基点。5月21日在央行公开市场操作缩量的背景下,各品种利率水平涨幅有所趋缓。杨为敩认为,如果流动性宽松格局出现拐点性变化,不排除央行将在公开市场重新实施资金净投放操作。


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