老外对当前中国经济的看法

原题：对中国经济危机的透彻解析

作者：chubbytabby
龙腾翻译

One of the biggest economic stories in the world right now is the sharp slowdown in China’s economy. On Monday, the country reported that it had grown just 7.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013, a worrisome drop from previous quarters.

当今世界上最大的经济新闻是中国的经济急转直下。周一，中国公布其二季度增长率仅达7.5%，与前一季度相比，增长率下降令人担忧。



A laborer welds a steel frame at a residential construction site in Hefei, Anhui province, July 15. China’s annual GDP growth slowed to 7.5 percent in April to June – the ninth quarter in the last 10 that expansion has weakened. (Jianan Yu/Reuters)

一个工人在合肥一个建筑工地上焊接钢结构。中国4-6月年GDP增速放缓至7.5%，是过去10个季度中第9个扩张减弱的季度。

To get a clearer sense of why China is in such economic turmoil — and whether it could drag the rest of the world down with it — I called up Patrick Chovanec, a longtime China watcher who is currently chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management and was formerly an associate professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing. A transcript of our talk follows.

要搞明白为什么中国经济会如此混乱——以及中国是否会把其他国家拖下水——我致电Patrick Chovanec，一位长期的中国观察家，他目前是Silvercrest资产管理公司的首席战略分析师，之前他曾任清华大学经济管理学院的副教授。以下是我们的对话文稿。

Brad Plumer: Let’s assume I know nothing whatsoever about China. How would you explain why the country is suddenly facing all these economic problems and making headlines? It seemed like China was booming.

Brad Plumer: 我们假设我对中国一无所知。你如何向我解说为什么中国突然一下子面临这么多经济问题，还成了特大新闻？看上去中国欣欣向荣啊。

Patrick Chovanec:
If you want to understand where China is right now, you have to go back and look at China’s growth model for the last 30 years, which has been a classic export-led growth model.

Patrick Chovanec: 如果你想了解中国现在的处境，你就得回过头看看中国过去30年的发展模式，那是典型的出口带动经济增长模式。

That doesn’t mean all of China’s growth came from exports, but the country has been using external demand to ramp up industrial investment in a way that could not be sustained if it was relying purely on its own domestic market.

虽然中国的全部增长并非都来自出口，但是中国一直利用外部需求来增加工业投资，而如果仅靠中国国内市场，这种方式难以为继。

This is the same approach that Japan, South Korea, and countries in Southeast Asia have all used — they turned their poverty into a competitive advantage, using cheap labor to sell to markets abroad that did have demand. That allowed them to suppress domestic consumption and channel as many resources as possible into investment. Normally that creates an imbalanced economy, but they could make up the difference by selling abroad.

日本、韩国、东南亚都用过这一招。他们把他们的贫困转化为竞争优势，利用便宜的劳力把产品销往海外。这样他们就能抑制国内消费，而把资源尽量集中于投资。这一般会造成经济不平衡，但是他们能够通过出口来弥补这一差异。

BP: Then why isn’t export-led growth working for China anymore?

BP: 那为什么现在出口拉动增长的方式在中国不灵了呢？

PC:
The problem is that this model works well for a developing economy, but when you become the second-largest economy in the world, as China has, it’s very difficult for the rest of the world to absorb those imbalances. If China wants to produce more than it consumes, someone else has to consume more than they produce.

PC: 问题在于这种方式对于发展中经济很见效，但是当你成了世界第二大经济体，正如中国这样，其他国家就很难吸收这些不平衡了。如果中国想要生产比自己能消费的更多，那就要有其他国家消费大于自己的产出。

And after the financial crisis in 2008, there were signs that those other countries could not afford to go deeper into debt to consume that much. So you started to see a significant falloff in Chinese exports, beginning in 2008.

在2008年金融危机之后，有迹象表明其他国家不能够再消费那么多而陷入更深的债务。所以你看到自2008年开始中国的出口锐减。

BP: Wait. If China’s export model was already faltering back in 2008, how did the country manage to keep growing so strongly over the last five years?

BP: 等一下。如果中国的出口模式已经在2008年的时候陷入停顿了，中国是怎么在其后5年保持强劲增长的呢?

PC:
China responded to this falloff in exports by engineering a monetary stimulus. That translated into a lending boom, which translated into an investment boom. So as Chinese net exports came down from 8 percent of GDP to 2 percent of GDP, investment in China rose from 43 percent to almost 50 percent.

PC: 中国通过货币刺激来应对出口的减少。货币刺激变成借贷膨胀，然后又变成遍地投资。当中国的净出口占GDP的比例从8%降到2%的时候，投资则从43%上升到50%。

BP: And when you say China went on an investment boom, what does this mean? People started building houses and factories?

BP: 你说中国遍地投资，是什么意思？人们开始造房子和工厂？

PC:
Right. China had lost external demand, so the country doubled down on investment. China had essentially been keeping GDP growth high by creating new infrastructure, housing, factories. The problem is that, in order for this all to be real, there has to be an end-user. In the past, demand from overseas could make up the difference. But that’s not going to materialize anymore. The demand has to be domestic.

PC: 是的。中国失去了外需，所以中国加倍进行投资。中国通过建设基础设施、房地产、建工厂来保持GDP的高增长。问题是，要使这一切真的有用，就必须有一个最终用户。过去，海外需求可以弥补差异。但是现在外需没有了，需求必须来自国内。

BP: Let’s see if I have this right. Eventually someone has to start buying the stuff China produces. It can’t just keep building factories forever with no customers. But if demand isn’t going to come from the United States or Europe or other countries, it has to come from within China. So how does that happen?

BP: 我看看是不是理解对了。最后必须有一个人来买中国的产品。中国不可能在没有顾客的情况下没完没了地造工厂。但是如果需求不是来自美国或欧洲或其他国家，那就必须来自中国国内。那么这是怎么发生的呢？

PC:
There’s a widespread recognition that this shift is needed. But under the old growth model, the entire economy had been geared to diverting resources away from the household sector and toward investment. That includes tax policies, it includes exchange-rate policy, keeping the renminbi weak. So China needs to change those policies.

PC: 有一个广泛的认知，就是这个调整是必需的。但是在中国旧有的增长模式下，整个经济的构成都是把资源从家庭部门转移到投资上去，包括税收政策、汇率政策，压低人民币汇率。所以中国需要改变这些政策。



A worker cycles through the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) refinery in Beijing. (Nelson Ching/Bloomberg)

一个工人骑车穿过中石化的精炼厂

The problem is that if you do this, you knock the legs out of the investment boom that’s driving growth. And a Chinese economy driven by internal consumption would look very different from today’s economy, with different winners and losers. So the companies that are succeeding today don’t want to see the model change.

问题是如果你这么做，那你是砍掉了拉动增长率的投资马车的轮子。而由内需驱动的中国经济会跟现在的中国经济非常不同，有不同的赢家和输家。所以现在赚钱的企业不想模式有所改变。

BP: Let’s break this all down in more detail. What has China been investing in, exactly? And what are the signs that the country has invested too much (as one recent IMF study has suggested)?

BP: 我们把问题拆开来细说。中国到底在投资什么？怎么看出来中国过度投资了（正如最近世界货币基金组织所指出的）？

PC:
Housing has made up about a quarter of investment — residential and commercial structures. Commercial real estate has outstripped demand to a serious degree. There’s also business investment, expansion of factories.

PC: 房地产——住宅和商用楼——已经构成了投资的1/4。商业房地产供大于求已经到了很严重的地步。还有商业投资，扩大厂房。

We see massive overcapacity in certain industries. One of the largest shipyards in China declared bankruptcy. Another shipyard run by a Chinese company is asking the government for a bailout. In the solar sector in China, we’ve seen two big bankruptcies of some of the largest manufacturers in the world. There are similar pressures in steel and aluminum.

我们看到某些行业严重产能过剩。中国最大的造船厂之一宣布破产。另一家造船厂请求政府救援。在光伏行业，两家世界最大的企业破产。同样的压力还存在于钢铁和铝业。

BP: Are there good examples of boondoggles that have been created through this investment boom?

BP: 能举例说明这场投资狂潮催生出的华而不实的项目吗？

PC:
There are some obvious examples, things like an Olympic-sized stadium in a fourth-tier city without a team. A lot of the high-speed rail lines China built won’t make economic sense, although some will. There are also a lot of airports that receive a flight or two per day. But a lot of the over-investment isn’t always obvious on the face.

PC: 有一些显而易见的例子。比如一个四线城市建了个奥林匹克级别的体育馆，却没有一支球队。尽管中国的一些高铁线会赚钱，但是很多高铁线路没有任何经济意义。还有很多机场每天只有一两次航班。但是很多过度投资并不体现在表面上。

I’ve visited ports where you take the tour, see the presentation, and think, okay, this makes sense, it will help unlock growth in the region. But then you drive an hour down the road, and there’s another port with exactly the same business model. And it turns out there are five ports in the same province. Back before 2008, these projects would have been vetted and maybe only one would have been approved. But during the investment boom all five were approved. And they cannibalize each other.

我造访过一些港口，在那里你参个观、看个幻灯展示片，然后你想，Ok，这还挺有用的，能够促进这个地区发展。但是当你沿路开一个小时的车，然后出现了一个一模一样的港口。其实那个省有5个这样的港口。2008年之前，这些项目必须经审查，而且可能只有一个会得到批准。但是在投资热中5个都批准了，并且它们还互相竞争。

BP: So why do banks and other lenders keep pouring money into these projects? It sounds like lenders don’t care if they invest in projects that don’t pan out.

BP: 那为什么银行和其他贷款人一直往这些项目里砸钱呢？好像他们并不在乎投资的项目不能赚钱。

PC:
Here’s one concrete example. The way many investments take place and are rolled out is through private loan management vehicles, which will often promise 12 percent returns or higher on assets. When people go to the bank to buy these products, they think, hey, this can’t fail. The implication is that the state-run bank or government will stand behind these instruments. This belief is widespread. That leads to an incredibly distorted investment market, where no one’s looking carefully at the risk. Too much investment is based on the perception that the government is the guarantor of everything.

PC: 有一个例子很说明问题。很多投资项目是通过私人贷款理财产品实现的，这些产品许诺12%或者更高的资产回报率。人们去银行买这些产品的时候，他们想，嘿，这不会有问题的。人们认为国有银行或者政府会为这些理财产品兜底。这种想法非常普遍。这就导致了极度扭曲的投资市场，没人仔细考虑风险。太多的投资建立在政府会为所有的一切担保的概念上。

BP: So this explains why China’s banking system is now facing problems?

BP: 所以这就解释了为什么中国的银行系统现在面临问题了？

PC:
Right. In a healthy banking system, the bank will lend money out to you, and you eventually pay the bank back the principal plus interest. The bank gets that capital back and lends it out to the next person.

PC: 是的。健康的银行系统中，银行把钱借给你，最终你连本带息归还银行。银行回笼资金后再借给下一个人。

But now let’s look at an economy that’s mainly driven by investment, where that’s half of GDP. Every year the investment budget has to get bigger and bigger. China has to build more roads, bridges, and highways and so on this year than it did last year in order for investment to contribute to GDP growth.

但是现在我们看看一个主要由投资驱动的经济，投资在其GDP中占了50%。每年投资预算都得越做越高。中国不得不每年建造更多的道路、桥梁、高速等等，好让投资继续为GDP增长做贡献。

So now I’m a bank, and I have to finance that. If the investments I’m making aren’t generating a return, if they’re not being utilized, then I’m not getting paid back. That means the only way I can make new loans is through credit expansion. So credit keeps growing in the banking system. But so does the burden of bad debt.

现在我是银行，我必须为这些项目融资。如果我投资的项目不赚钱，如果这些项目无人使用，那我就收不回资金。那就意味着我只能通过信贷扩张来投放新的贷款。所以在银行体系中信贷持续增长，但同时坏账的负担也在增多。

BP: That doesn’t sound good. But can’t China just keep stimulating its economy to stay afloat?

BP: 听上去不妙。但是中国能不能一直刺激经济就这样维持下去？

PC:
What people don’t realize is that since October of last year, China has had a huge burst of stimulus, a massive expansion in lending. In the fourth quarter of 2012, credit expanded by around $600 billion. In the first quarter of this year it was about $1 trillion.

PC: 人们没有意识到的是，自从去年10月份以来，中国有一波很大的刺激措施，贷款大幅扩张。2012年四季度，信贷规模增加了6000亿美元，今年一季度的时候增加了一万亿美元。



A man gestures as he watches stock activity at a stock exchange in Huaibei, China. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

一个人在证交所观看股票变动情况

About half of that lending is coming through “shadow” investment vehicles, which promise high returns and where it’s not clear who bears the risk. The top securities regulator in China wrote an op-ed when he was the head of the Bank of China likening these vehicles to Ponzi schemes. They’re now paying out from money coming in rather than from the return on their assets. It’s a dangerous type of financing.

约有一半的贷款来自“影子”理财产品，这些理财产品许诺高回报，但是没有说明谁承担风险。中国的证券监管机关领导在他还是中行董事长的时候写了一篇文章，把这些理财产品比作庞氏骗局。现在他们是借新债还旧债，而不是以项目投资收益来偿债。这是一种危险的融资行为。

And the important thing to realize is that for all this credit expansion, the returns are rapidly declining. So the old model of trying to pump in money and boost investment, it’s not working anymore. It’s not going to things that create growth.

还要认识到一点很重要的事，相对这些信贷扩张，回报在迅速下降。所以吸入资金促进投资的老方式现在不管用了。这些钱到不了促增长的地方上去。

BP: If everyone knows this massive credit expansion isn’t working, can’t the Chinese government figure out some way to rein in lending?

BP: 如果所有人都知道了巨量信贷扩张不管用了，中国政府能不能想个法子控制借贷？

PC:
The Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, has said that we can’t keep stimulating the economy this way, it’s not going to produce results, we need to rein in credit, try to adjust toward more balance growth. But when they tried to rein in shadow credit, we saw what happened with a credit crisis about a month ago.

PC: 中国总理李可强说过，我们不能继续以这种方式刺激经济，这不会产生效果，我们要限制信贷，调整为更平衡的发展。但是当中国尝试控制影子贷款的时候，我们看到了一个月前发生的信贷危机。

Trying to rein in the rate of credit expansion leaves banks exposed. The banks have become addicted to these rates of credit expansion — not just to finance a continued investment boom, but to paper over their losses. So it’s a delicate line they’re trying to walk.

控制贷款扩张速度使银行暴露出弱点。银行已经对信贷扩张上瘾了——不仅是继续为投资狂潮融资，也为了隐瞒坏账。所以他们是在走钢丝。

BP: Now how does China shift its economy and find a more sustainable way to grow?

BP: 那中国如何调整其经济，找出一条更可持续发展的道路？

PC:
It could take a bunch of different forms. You could have consumption rising from 6 percent growth to 13 percent growth, which would allow GDP to keep its recent pace of around 9 to 10 percent per year. Or you could have a collapse in investment but consumption could remain resilient, which means China’s GDP growth would fall to 3 to 4 percent per year.

PC: 有几种不同的方式。可以把消费从6%的增长率提高到13%，这样可以使GDP保持每年9-10%的现有增长水平。或者可以来一次投资崩溃，但是消费可能维持强劲，这意味着中国的GDP增速降低到每年3-4%。

There are all sorts of different ways it could go. But my concern is that the longer China puts off a correction — and it’s been put off for years — the harsher it will be.

中国有各种不同的方式。但是我担心的是，中国把调整越往后拖——已经拖了几年了——结果会越惨烈。

BP: But what exact steps would a correction entail?

BP: 但是调整到底有哪些步骤呢？

PC:
It would mean reining in credit expansion and focusing on ways to allocate credit more efficiently. That means imposing hard budget constraints. What has been lacking in China is market discipline. Companies in China have been able to borrow indefinitely and were rewarded as long as they kept getting bigger. They could invest in anything as long as it added to GDP growth — even if it didn’t generate a return.

PC: 这意味着限制信贷扩张，着眼于更有效的配置资金。意味着实施严厉的预算限制。中国缺少的是市场规范。中国的公司能够无限制的借款，只要它们能够越做越大。它们可以投资给任何能增加GDP增长率的东西——就算这些投资根本不产生效益。

BP: Does that mean the government and state banks would have to start letting more companies fail? No more bailouts and endless credit to paper over bad loans?

BP: 这是不是说政府和国有银行必须让更多的公司破产？不再有政府救援和无限的信贷来隐瞒坏账？

PC:
You have to have a process of creative destruction. I don’t think there is a way for China to undergo that correction without serious disruption. In the short run, that will probably mean lower GDP growth, perhaps even negative growth. There’s the potential for financial instability, with investment products or banks defaulting as they’re revealed to be overextended. I’m not sure there’s a way to avoid that now.

PC: 必须有一个创造性破坏的过程。我不认为中国能够没有严重破坏的情况下进行调整。短期来说，很可能是更低的GDP增速，甚至可能负增长。随着理财产品或银行因过度扩张而违约，还会有金融不稳的可能性。我现在想不出是否有办法避免这些情况。

BP: The latest news is that China was growing at 7.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013. That’s obviously below China’s recent growth rates, but it still seems like reasonably fast growth. Is 7.5 percent really so bad?

BP: 最新的消息是中国在2013年二季度增速为7.5%。明显低于中国近期的增速，但是看起来还是相当高的。7.5%真的那么糟吗？

PC:
The 7.5 percent number is a number that has to be approved by the Politburo and the State Council. There are many people, including myself, who don’t believe it, and think that number underestimates the depth of the slowdown that’s taking place in China. For annual GDP growth last year, I personally think it was more around 5.5 percent as opposed to the 7.8 percent that was reported. I’m hardly alone in that respect.

PC: 7.5%是个必须经过政治局和国务院批准的数字。有很多人，包括我自己，不相信这个数字。这个数字低估了中国的减速的幅度。我个人认为中国去年GDP增长为5.5%，而不是报道的7.8%。有这种看法的不止我一个。

There was a famous WikiLeaks cable in which now-Premier Li Keqiang told U.S. diplomats that he doesn’t even look at official GDP numbers. Instead he looks at more concrete numbers, like rail cargo shipments, energy consumption, and credit expansion. And there was a chart I tweeted about a week ago showing that if you looked at this “Li Keqiang index,” the Chinese economy is now below the low point it hit in 2009, when the official GDP was reported as 6.5 percent and some people even felt the economy was in recession. So there’s a lot of skepticism about the numbers.

有一条很出名的维基解密说，现任总理李可强曾对美国外交官说他根本不看官方的GDP数据。他看更可信的数据，比如铁路货运量、能源消耗量和信贷扩张量。一周前我推特了一张表，如果你看“李可强指数”，中国的经济现在低于2009年的低点，当时官方公布的GDP增长率是6.5%，有人甚至觉得经济处于衰退了。所以对于中国的GDP有很多怀疑。

BP: What’s a best-case scenario for China?

BP: 对于中国，最好的可能是怎样的？

PC:
The good news is that if the Chinese economy goes through this process of adjustment, and if the economy is no longer diverting resources to unproductive purposes… if that happens, then there are real areas for potential productivity gains in the Chinese economy.

PC: 好消息是如果中国的经济经受住了调整的过程，如果中国不再把资源投入到非生产性的目的上。。。如果是这样的话，中国经济有真正有潜在生产效益的领域。

There’s agriculture, logistics, the consumer economy, retail, consumer brands, health care, services. All those areas have potential for huge gains if resources are directed in a responsible way, which means there’s accountability and the potential for failure.

农业、物流、消费经济、零售、消费品牌、医疗、服务业。如果以一种负责任的方式地把资源导向这些行业，负责任是说有可靠性和失败的可能，所有这些行业都有巨大的盈利潜能。

The other piece of good news is that China has accumulated $3.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. That represents China’s global buying power, the ability of Chinese to start consuming more than they produce. That means that if China was willing, it could see a sharp slowdown in GDP as part of its adjustment but still sustain its standards of living. China has a cushion that it’s earned for itself. The problem is that doing so would represent a drastic change in China’s relationship with the global economy.

另一个好消息是中国积累了3.4万亿美元的外汇储备。这代表了中国的国际购买力，代表中国有了消费多于自己产出的能力。这意味着，如果中国愿意，它可以为了经济调整而让GDP急剧减速，但仍然维持其生活标准。中国为自己赚得了一个缓冲。问题是这么做将使得中国与全球经济的关系发生剧烈的变化。

So there are options, but they require very different thinking about the direction of the Chinese economy. And it’s human nature to do what works until it stops working. That wasthe problem Japan ran into when it faced an adjustment in the 1980s. The country resisted moving away from its successful export-led growth model.

所以有不同的选项需要对中国经济走向有不同的思考方式。人类的本性是一条路走到黑直到撞南墙。这是日本在1980年代面临调整时遇到的问题。日本不肯放弃其成功的出口拉动经济增长方式。

BP: What’s the worst-case scenario for China?

BP: 中国最坏的可能又是什么呢？

PC:
They continue to try squeeze every bit of growth from their existing growth model. Continue to create overcapacity. And they end up with an economy that either drifts like Japan’s did in the early 1990s, where they keep the economy from collapsing by over-investing. Or worse, they can’t keep that up and serious financial instability results, in the form of bank failures. I’m not predicting that, but that’s a possibility.

PC: 中国继续从现存的模式中挤增长。继续制造产能过剩。最后中国要么落得像日本在1990年代时那样，日本当时通过过度投资来避免经济崩溃。或者更糟，中国没办法维持下去，严重的金融动荡导致银行破产。我不是在预言，但是有这种可能。

BP: Now what does China’s slowdown mean for the United States or other countries around the world?

BP: 中国经济放缓对美国和其他国家意味着什么？

PC:
Right, how it affects rest of the world. It depends on where you sit relative to the Chinese economy. There are countries and industries where China’s investment boom has been a net driver of growth. Australia or Brazil selling iron ore to China, for example. And to the to extent that China’s investment boom buckles under its own weight and collapses, those countries will be hard hit.

PC: 中国经济放缓如何影响其他国家。这取决于这个国家与中国经济的关系。对于有的国家和行业，中国的投资热是增长的纯驱动力。比如澳大利亚和巴西卖铁矿石给中国。中国的投资热自己把自己压垮了的话，这些国家也会受到重大打击。

Another example in the United States is Caterpillar, which has seen demand for construction equipment fall off pretty dramatically in the past year. To its credit, Caterpillar has been pretty cautious about not selling on credit, unlike its competitors. But it’s still been hit pretty hard.

另一个例子是美国的卡特彼勒公司，去年他们的建筑设备订单暴跌。好在卡特彼勒非常谨慎，不赊账，不像他们的竞争对手那样。但是卡特彼勒还是受打击很大。

But let’s say China’s GDP falls but consumption ends up remaining pretty resilient over the medium-term. Then companies like Yum or GM or Wal-Mart could continue to grow and thrive in a Chinese economy rebalanced toward consumption. If you’re selling services or finished goods into China, it will depend on China’s willingness to open up these sectors, which are often restricted, but there’s a lot of potential growth there — and room for productivity gains in services, health care.

但是如果从中期来看，中国的GDP下降了，但是消费保持相当强劲。像Yum、通用汽车、沃尔玛这样的公司可以继续在中国的消费经济中繁荣发展。如果你向中国销售产成品或者提供服务，这要看中国放开这些行业的意愿，通常这是受限制的，但是这里有很大的发展潜能，服务及医疗的效率收益有很大空间。

In some cases, they might find it easier to expand. Right now, if you’re Wal-Mart and you want to open up a store in China, you have to compete with people who are paying top price for land in order to build luxury condos for sky-high prices.

在一些情况下，他们可能发现扩张更容易。现在的话，如果你是沃尔玛，想在中国开店，你得跟付了巨款圈地，在上面建豪华天价公寓的人竞争。

The way I’d put it is this. China is facing a process of creative destruction right now. The creativity potential is real. But the destruction is real too. And you can put emphasis on whichever you want.

我这么说吧。中国正面临创造性破坏的过程。创造性潜能是真实的，破坏也是真实的。随你想把重点放在哪边


原题：对中国经济危机的透彻解析

作者：chubbytabby
龙腾翻译

One of the biggest economic stories in the world right now is the sharp slowdown in China’s economy. On Monday, the country reported that it had grown just 7.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013, a worrisome drop from previous quarters.

当今世界上最大的经济新闻是中国的经济急转直下。周一，中国公布其二季度增长率仅达7.5%，与前一季度相比，增长率下降令人担忧。



A laborer welds a steel frame at a residential construction site in Hefei, Anhui province, July 15. China’s annual GDP growth slowed to 7.5 percent in April to June – the ninth quarter in the last 10 that expansion has weakened. (Jianan Yu/Reuters)

一个工人在合肥一个建筑工地上焊接钢结构。中国4-6月年GDP增速放缓至7.5%，是过去10个季度中第9个扩张减弱的季度。

To get a clearer sense of why China is in such economic turmoil — and whether it could drag the rest of the world down with it — I called up Patrick Chovanec, a longtime China watcher who is currently chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management and was formerly an associate professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing. A transcript of our talk follows.

要搞明白为什么中国经济会如此混乱——以及中国是否会把其他国家拖下水——我致电Patrick Chovanec，一位长期的中国观察家，他目前是Silvercrest资产管理公司的首席战略分析师，之前他曾任清华大学经济管理学院的副教授。以下是我们的对话文稿。

Brad Plumer: Let’s assume I know nothing whatsoever about China. How would you explain why the country is suddenly facing all these economic problems and making headlines? It seemed like China was booming.

Brad Plumer: 我们假设我对中国一无所知。你如何向我解说为什么中国突然一下子面临这么多经济问题，还成了特大新闻？看上去中国欣欣向荣啊。

Patrick Chovanec:
If you want to understand where China is right now, you have to go back and look at China’s growth model for the last 30 years, which has been a classic export-led growth model.

Patrick Chovanec: 如果你想了解中国现在的处境，你就得回过头看看中国过去30年的发展模式，那是典型的出口带动经济增长模式。

That doesn’t mean all of China’s growth came from exports, but the country has been using external demand to ramp up industrial investment in a way that could not be sustained if it was relying purely on its own domestic market.

虽然中国的全部增长并非都来自出口，但是中国一直利用外部需求来增加工业投资，而如果仅靠中国国内市场，这种方式难以为继。

This is the same approach that Japan, South Korea, and countries in Southeast Asia have all used — they turned their poverty into a competitive advantage, using cheap labor to sell to markets abroad that did have demand. That allowed them to suppress domestic consumption and channel as many resources as possible into investment. Normally that creates an imbalanced economy, but they could make up the difference by selling abroad.

日本、韩国、东南亚都用过这一招。他们把他们的贫困转化为竞争优势，利用便宜的劳力把产品销往海外。这样他们就能抑制国内消费，而把资源尽量集中于投资。这一般会造成经济不平衡，但是他们能够通过出口来弥补这一差异。

BP: Then why isn’t export-led growth working for China anymore?

BP: 那为什么现在出口拉动增长的方式在中国不灵了呢？

PC:
The problem is that this model works well for a developing economy, but when you become the second-largest economy in the world, as China has, it’s very difficult for the rest of the world to absorb those imbalances. If China wants to produce more than it consumes, someone else has to consume more than they produce.

PC: 问题在于这种方式对于发展中经济很见效，但是当你成了世界第二大经济体，正如中国这样，其他国家就很难吸收这些不平衡了。如果中国想要生产比自己能消费的更多，那就要有其他国家消费大于自己的产出。

And after the financial crisis in 2008, there were signs that those other countries could not afford to go deeper into debt to consume that much. So you started to see a significant falloff in Chinese exports, beginning in 2008.

在2008年金融危机之后，有迹象表明其他国家不能够再消费那么多而陷入更深的债务。所以你看到自2008年开始中国的出口锐减。

BP: Wait. If China’s export model was already faltering back in 2008, how did the country manage to keep growing so strongly over the last five years?

BP: 等一下。如果中国的出口模式已经在2008年的时候陷入停顿了，中国是怎么在其后5年保持强劲增长的呢?

PC:
China responded to this falloff in exports by engineering a monetary stimulus. That translated into a lending boom, which translated into an investment boom. So as Chinese net exports came down from 8 percent of GDP to 2 percent of GDP, investment in China rose from 43 percent to almost 50 percent.

PC: 中国通过货币刺激来应对出口的减少。货币刺激变成借贷膨胀，然后又变成遍地投资。当中国的净出口占GDP的比例从8%降到2%的时候，投资则从43%上升到50%。

BP: And when you say China went on an investment boom, what does this mean? People started building houses and factories?

BP: 你说中国遍地投资，是什么意思？人们开始造房子和工厂？

PC:
Right. China had lost external demand, so the country doubled down on investment. China had essentially been keeping GDP growth high by creating new infrastructure, housing, factories. The problem is that, in order for this all to be real, there has to be an end-user. In the past, demand from overseas could make up the difference. But that’s not going to materialize anymore. The demand has to be domestic.

PC: 是的。中国失去了外需，所以中国加倍进行投资。中国通过建设基础设施、房地产、建工厂来保持GDP的高增长。问题是，要使这一切真的有用，就必须有一个最终用户。过去，海外需求可以弥补差异。但是现在外需没有了，需求必须来自国内。

BP: Let’s see if I have this right. Eventually someone has to start buying the stuff China produces. It can’t just keep building factories forever with no customers. But if demand isn’t going to come from the United States or Europe or other countries, it has to come from within China. So how does that happen?

BP: 我看看是不是理解对了。最后必须有一个人来买中国的产品。中国不可能在没有顾客的情况下没完没了地造工厂。但是如果需求不是来自美国或欧洲或其他国家，那就必须来自中国国内。那么这是怎么发生的呢？

PC:
There’s a widespread recognition that this shift is needed. But under the old growth model, the entire economy had been geared to diverting resources away from the household sector and toward investment. That includes tax policies, it includes exchange-rate policy, keeping the renminbi weak. So China needs to change those policies.

PC: 有一个广泛的认知，就是这个调整是必需的。但是在中国旧有的增长模式下，整个经济的构成都是把资源从家庭部门转移到投资上去，包括税收政策、汇率政策，压低人民币汇率。所以中国需要改变这些政策。



A worker cycles through the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) refinery in Beijing. (Nelson Ching/Bloomberg)

一个工人骑车穿过中石化的精炼厂

The problem is that if you do this, you knock the legs out of the investment boom that’s driving growth. And a Chinese economy driven by internal consumption would look very different from today’s economy, with different winners and losers. So the companies that are succeeding today don’t want to see the model change.

问题是如果你这么做，那你是砍掉了拉动增长率的投资马车的轮子。而由内需驱动的中国经济会跟现在的中国经济非常不同，有不同的赢家和输家。所以现在赚钱的企业不想模式有所改变。

BP: Let’s break this all down in more detail. What has China been investing in, exactly? And what are the signs that the country has invested too much (as one recent IMF study has suggested)?

BP: 我们把问题拆开来细说。中国到底在投资什么？怎么看出来中国过度投资了（正如最近世界货币基金组织所指出的）？

PC:
Housing has made up about a quarter of investment — residential and commercial structures. Commercial real estate has outstripped demand to a serious degree. There’s also business investment, expansion of factories.

PC: 房地产——住宅和商用楼——已经构成了投资的1/4。商业房地产供大于求已经到了很严重的地步。还有商业投资，扩大厂房。

We see massive overcapacity in certain industries. One of the largest shipyards in China declared bankruptcy. Another shipyard run by a Chinese company is asking the government for a bailout. In the solar sector in China, we’ve seen two big bankruptcies of some of the largest manufacturers in the world. There are similar pressures in steel and aluminum.

我们看到某些行业严重产能过剩。中国最大的造船厂之一宣布破产。另一家造船厂请求政府救援。在光伏行业，两家世界最大的企业破产。同样的压力还存在于钢铁和铝业。

BP: Are there good examples of boondoggles that have been created through this investment boom?

BP: 能举例说明这场投资狂潮催生出的华而不实的项目吗？

PC:
There are some obvious examples, things like an Olympic-sized stadium in a fourth-tier city without a team. A lot of the high-speed rail lines China built won’t make economic sense, although some will. There are also a lot of airports that receive a flight or two per day. But a lot of the over-investment isn’t always obvious on the face.

PC: 有一些显而易见的例子。比如一个四线城市建了个奥林匹克级别的体育馆，却没有一支球队。尽管中国的一些高铁线会赚钱，但是很多高铁线路没有任何经济意义。还有很多机场每天只有一两次航班。但是很多过度投资并不体现在表面上。

I’ve visited ports where you take the tour, see the presentation, and think, okay, this makes sense, it will help unlock growth in the region. But then you drive an hour down the road, and there’s another port with exactly the same business model. And it turns out there are five ports in the same province. Back before 2008, these projects would have been vetted and maybe only one would have been approved. But during the investment boom all five were approved. And they cannibalize each other.

我造访过一些港口，在那里你参个观、看个幻灯展示片，然后你想，Ok，这还挺有用的，能够促进这个地区发展。但是当你沿路开一个小时的车，然后出现了一个一模一样的港口。其实那个省有5个这样的港口。2008年之前，这些项目必须经审查，而且可能只有一个会得到批准。但是在投资热中5个都批准了，并且它们还互相竞争。

BP: So why do banks and other lenders keep pouring money into these projects? It sounds like lenders don’t care if they invest in projects that don’t pan out.

BP: 那为什么银行和其他贷款人一直往这些项目里砸钱呢？好像他们并不在乎投资的项目不能赚钱。

PC:
Here’s one concrete example. The way many investments take place and are rolled out is through private loan management vehicles, which will often promise 12 percent returns or higher on assets. When people go to the bank to buy these products, they think, hey, this can’t fail. The implication is that the state-run bank or government will stand behind these instruments. This belief is widespread. That leads to an incredibly distorted investment market, where no one’s looking carefully at the risk. Too much investment is based on the perception that the government is the guarantor of everything.

PC: 有一个例子很说明问题。很多投资项目是通过私人贷款理财产品实现的，这些产品许诺12%或者更高的资产回报率。人们去银行买这些产品的时候，他们想，嘿，这不会有问题的。人们认为国有银行或者政府会为这些理财产品兜底。这种想法非常普遍。这就导致了极度扭曲的投资市场，没人仔细考虑风险。太多的投资建立在政府会为所有的一切担保的概念上。

BP: So this explains why China’s banking system is now facing problems?

BP: 所以这就解释了为什么中国的银行系统现在面临问题了？

PC:
Right. In a healthy banking system, the bank will lend money out to you, and you eventually pay the bank back the principal plus interest. The bank gets that capital back and lends it out to the next person.

PC: 是的。健康的银行系统中，银行把钱借给你，最终你连本带息归还银行。银行回笼资金后再借给下一个人。

But now let’s look at an economy that’s mainly driven by investment, where that’s half of GDP. Every year the investment budget has to get bigger and bigger. China has to build more roads, bridges, and highways and so on this year than it did last year in order for investment to contribute to GDP growth.

但是现在我们看看一个主要由投资驱动的经济，投资在其GDP中占了50%。每年投资预算都得越做越高。中国不得不每年建造更多的道路、桥梁、高速等等，好让投资继续为GDP增长做贡献。

So now I’m a bank, and I have to finance that. If the investments I’m making aren’t generating a return, if they’re not being utilized, then I’m not getting paid back. That means the only way I can make new loans is through credit expansion. So credit keeps growing in the banking system. But so does the burden of bad debt.

现在我是银行，我必须为这些项目融资。如果我投资的项目不赚钱，如果这些项目无人使用，那我就收不回资金。那就意味着我只能通过信贷扩张来投放新的贷款。所以在银行体系中信贷持续增长，但同时坏账的负担也在增多。

BP: That doesn’t sound good. But can’t China just keep stimulating its economy to stay afloat?

BP: 听上去不妙。但是中国能不能一直刺激经济就这样维持下去？

PC:
What people don’t realize is that since October of last year, China has had a huge burst of stimulus, a massive expansion in lending. In the fourth quarter of 2012, credit expanded by around $600 billion. In the first quarter of this year it was about $1 trillion.

PC: 人们没有意识到的是，自从去年10月份以来，中国有一波很大的刺激措施，贷款大幅扩张。2012年四季度，信贷规模增加了6000亿美元，今年一季度的时候增加了一万亿美元。



A man gestures as he watches stock activity at a stock exchange in Huaibei, China. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

一个人在证交所观看股票变动情况

About half of that lending is coming through “shadow” investment vehicles, which promise high returns and where it’s not clear who bears the risk. The top securities regulator in China wrote an op-ed when he was the head of the Bank of China likening these vehicles to Ponzi schemes. They’re now paying out from money coming in rather than from the return on their assets. It’s a dangerous type of financing.

约有一半的贷款来自“影子”理财产品，这些理财产品许诺高回报，但是没有说明谁承担风险。中国的证券监管机关领导在他还是中行董事长的时候写了一篇文章，把这些理财产品比作庞氏骗局。现在他们是借新债还旧债，而不是以项目投资收益来偿债。这是一种危险的融资行为。

And the important thing to realize is that for all this credit expansion, the returns are rapidly declining. So the old model of trying to pump in money and boost investment, it’s not working anymore. It’s not going to things that create growth.

还要认识到一点很重要的事，相对这些信贷扩张，回报在迅速下降。所以吸入资金促进投资的老方式现在不管用了。这些钱到不了促增长的地方上去。

BP: If everyone knows this massive credit expansion isn’t working, can’t the Chinese government figure out some way to rein in lending?

BP: 如果所有人都知道了巨量信贷扩张不管用了，中国政府能不能想个法子控制借贷？

PC:
The Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, has said that we can’t keep stimulating the economy this way, it’s not going to produce results, we need to rein in credit, try to adjust toward more balance growth. But when they tried to rein in shadow credit, we saw what happened with a credit crisis about a month ago.

PC: 中国总理李可强说过，我们不能继续以这种方式刺激经济，这不会产生效果，我们要限制信贷，调整为更平衡的发展。但是当中国尝试控制影子贷款的时候，我们看到了一个月前发生的信贷危机。

Trying to rein in the rate of credit expansion leaves banks exposed. The banks have become addicted to these rates of credit expansion — not just to finance a continued investment boom, but to paper over their losses. So it’s a delicate line they’re trying to walk.

控制贷款扩张速度使银行暴露出弱点。银行已经对信贷扩张上瘾了——不仅是继续为投资狂潮融资，也为了隐瞒坏账。所以他们是在走钢丝。

BP: Now how does China shift its economy and find a more sustainable way to grow?

BP: 那中国如何调整其经济，找出一条更可持续发展的道路？

PC:
It could take a bunch of different forms. You could have consumption rising from 6 percent growth to 13 percent growth, which would allow GDP to keep its recent pace of around 9 to 10 percent per year. Or you could have a collapse in investment but consumption could remain resilient, which means China’s GDP growth would fall to 3 to 4 percent per year.

PC: 有几种不同的方式。可以把消费从6%的增长率提高到13%，这样可以使GDP保持每年9-10%的现有增长水平。或者可以来一次投资崩溃，但是消费可能维持强劲，这意味着中国的GDP增速降低到每年3-4%。

There are all sorts of different ways it could go. But my concern is that the longer China puts off a correction — and it’s been put off for years — the harsher it will be.

中国有各种不同的方式。但是我担心的是，中国把调整越往后拖——已经拖了几年了——结果会越惨烈。

BP: But what exact steps would a correction entail?

BP: 但是调整到底有哪些步骤呢？

PC:
It would mean reining in credit expansion and focusing on ways to allocate credit more efficiently. That means imposing hard budget constraints. What has been lacking in China is market discipline. Companies in China have been able to borrow indefinitely and were rewarded as long as they kept getting bigger. They could invest in anything as long as it added to GDP growth — even if it didn’t generate a return.

PC: 这意味着限制信贷扩张，着眼于更有效的配置资金。意味着实施严厉的预算限制。中国缺少的是市场规范。中国的公司能够无限制的借款，只要它们能够越做越大。它们可以投资给任何能增加GDP增长率的东西——就算这些投资根本不产生效益。

BP: Does that mean the government and state banks would have to start letting more companies fail? No more bailouts and endless credit to paper over bad loans?

BP: 这是不是说政府和国有银行必须让更多的公司破产？不再有政府救援和无限的信贷来隐瞒坏账？

PC:
You have to have a process of creative destruction. I don’t think there is a way for China to undergo that correction without serious disruption. In the short run, that will probably mean lower GDP growth, perhaps even negative growth. There’s the potential for financial instability, with investment products or banks defaulting as they’re revealed to be overextended. I’m not sure there’s a way to avoid that now.

PC: 必须有一个创造性破坏的过程。我不认为中国能够没有严重破坏的情况下进行调整。短期来说，很可能是更低的GDP增速，甚至可能负增长。随着理财产品或银行因过度扩张而违约，还会有金融不稳的可能性。我现在想不出是否有办法避免这些情况。

BP: The latest news is that China was growing at 7.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013. That’s obviously below China’s recent growth rates, but it still seems like reasonably fast growth. Is 7.5 percent really so bad?

BP: 最新的消息是中国在2013年二季度增速为7.5%。明显低于中国近期的增速，但是看起来还是相当高的。7.5%真的那么糟吗？

PC:
The 7.5 percent number is a number that has to be approved by the Politburo and the State Council. There are many people, including myself, who don’t believe it, and think that number underestimates the depth of the slowdown that’s taking place in China. For annual GDP growth last year, I personally think it was more around 5.5 percent as opposed to the 7.8 percent that was reported. I’m hardly alone in that respect.

PC: 7.5%是个必须经过政治局和国务院批准的数字。有很多人，包括我自己，不相信这个数字。这个数字低估了中国的减速的幅度。我个人认为中国去年GDP增长为5.5%，而不是报道的7.8%。有这种看法的不止我一个。

There was a famous WikiLeaks cable in which now-Premier Li Keqiang told U.S. diplomats that he doesn’t even look at official GDP numbers. Instead he looks at more concrete numbers, like rail cargo shipments, energy consumption, and credit expansion. And there was a chart I tweeted about a week ago showing that if you looked at this “Li Keqiang index,” the Chinese economy is now below the low point it hit in 2009, when the official GDP was reported as 6.5 percent and some people even felt the economy was in recession. So there’s a lot of skepticism about the numbers.

有一条很出名的维基解密说，现任总理李可强曾对美国外交官说他根本不看官方的GDP数据。他看更可信的数据，比如铁路货运量、能源消耗量和信贷扩张量。一周前我推特了一张表，如果你看“李可强指数”，中国的经济现在低于2009年的低点，当时官方公布的GDP增长率是6.5%，有人甚至觉得经济处于衰退了。所以对于中国的GDP有很多怀疑。

BP: What’s a best-case scenario for China?

BP: 对于中国，最好的可能是怎样的？

PC:
The good news is that if the Chinese economy goes through this process of adjustment, and if the economy is no longer diverting resources to unproductive purposes… if that happens, then there are real areas for potential productivity gains in the Chinese economy.

PC: 好消息是如果中国的经济经受住了调整的过程，如果中国不再把资源投入到非生产性的目的上。。。如果是这样的话，中国经济有真正有潜在生产效益的领域。

There’s agriculture, logistics, the consumer economy, retail, consumer brands, health care, services. All those areas have potential for huge gains if resources are directed in a responsible way, which means there’s accountability and the potential for failure.

农业、物流、消费经济、零售、消费品牌、医疗、服务业。如果以一种负责任的方式地把资源导向这些行业，负责任是说有可靠性和失败的可能，所有这些行业都有巨大的盈利潜能。

The other piece of good news is that China has accumulated $3.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. That represents China’s global buying power, the ability of Chinese to start consuming more than they produce. That means that if China was willing, it could see a sharp slowdown in GDP as part of its adjustment but still sustain its standards of living. China has a cushion that it’s earned for itself. The problem is that doing so would represent a drastic change in China’s relationship with the global economy.

另一个好消息是中国积累了3.4万亿美元的外汇储备。这代表了中国的国际购买力，代表中国有了消费多于自己产出的能力。这意味着，如果中国愿意，它可以为了经济调整而让GDP急剧减速，但仍然维持其生活标准。中国为自己赚得了一个缓冲。问题是这么做将使得中国与全球经济的关系发生剧烈的变化。

So there are options, but they require very different thinking about the direction of the Chinese economy. And it’s human nature to do what works until it stops working. That wasthe problem Japan ran into when it faced an adjustment in the 1980s. The country resisted moving away from its successful export-led growth model.

所以有不同的选项需要对中国经济走向有不同的思考方式。人类的本性是一条路走到黑直到撞南墙。这是日本在1980年代面临调整时遇到的问题。日本不肯放弃其成功的出口拉动经济增长方式。

BP: What’s the worst-case scenario for China?

BP: 中国最坏的可能又是什么呢？

PC:
They continue to try squeeze every bit of growth from their existing growth model. Continue to create overcapacity. And they end up with an economy that either drifts like Japan’s did in the early 1990s, where they keep the economy from collapsing by over-investing. Or worse, they can’t keep that up and serious financial instability results, in the form of bank failures. I’m not predicting that, but that’s a possibility.

PC: 中国继续从现存的模式中挤增长。继续制造产能过剩。最后中国要么落得像日本在1990年代时那样，日本当时通过过度投资来避免经济崩溃。或者更糟，中国没办法维持下去，严重的金融动荡导致银行破产。我不是在预言，但是有这种可能。

BP: Now what does China’s slowdown mean for the United States or other countries around the world?

BP: 中国经济放缓对美国和其他国家意味着什么？

PC:
Right, how it affects rest of the world. It depends on where you sit relative to the Chinese economy. There are countries and industries where China’s investment boom has been a net driver of growth. Australia or Brazil selling iron ore to China, for example. And to the to extent that China’s investment boom buckles under its own weight and collapses, those countries will be hard hit.

PC: 中国经济放缓如何影响其他国家。这取决于这个国家与中国经济的关系。对于有的国家和行业，中国的投资热是增长的纯驱动力。比如澳大利亚和巴西卖铁矿石给中国。中国的投资热自己把自己压垮了的话，这些国家也会受到重大打击。

Another example in the United States is Caterpillar, which has seen demand for construction equipment fall off pretty dramatically in the past year. To its credit, Caterpillar has been pretty cautious about not selling on credit, unlike its competitors. But it’s still been hit pretty hard.

另一个例子是美国的卡特彼勒公司，去年他们的建筑设备订单暴跌。好在卡特彼勒非常谨慎，不赊账，不像他们的竞争对手那样。但是卡特彼勒还是受打击很大。

But let’s say China’s GDP falls but consumption ends up remaining pretty resilient over the medium-term. Then companies like Yum or GM or Wal-Mart could continue to grow and thrive in a Chinese economy rebalanced toward consumption. If you’re selling services or finished goods into China, it will depend on China’s willingness to open up these sectors, which are often restricted, but there’s a lot of potential growth there — and room for productivity gains in services, health care.

但是如果从中期来看，中国的GDP下降了，但是消费保持相当强劲。像Yum、通用汽车、沃尔玛这样的公司可以继续在中国的消费经济中繁荣发展。如果你向中国销售产成品或者提供服务，这要看中国放开这些行业的意愿，通常这是受限制的，但是这里有很大的发展潜能，服务及医疗的效率收益有很大空间。

In some cases, they might find it easier to expand. Right now, if you’re Wal-Mart and you want to open up a store in China, you have to compete with people who are paying top price for land in order to build luxury condos for sky-high prices.

在一些情况下，他们可能发现扩张更容易。现在的话，如果你是沃尔玛，想在中国开店，你得跟付了巨款圈地，在上面建豪华天价公寓的人竞争。

The way I’d put it is this. China is facing a process of creative destruction right now. The creativity potential is real. But the destruction is real too. And you can put emphasis on whichever you want.

我这么说吧。中国正面临创造性破坏的过程。创造性潜能是真实的，破坏也是真实的。随你想把重点放在哪边