中国债务威胁 | 金融时报
China's debt threat: time to rein in the lending boom
"If something can't go on forever, it will stop." This statement by Herbert Stein, chairman of the US council of economic advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, tells us that debt cannot grow faster than an economy forever. That is going to be true for China, too. What we do not know is when and how it will end. Will it be sooner or later? Will it be easy to cope with or will it be devastating?
“如果某物无法永远持续下去，它就会停下来，”理查德·尼克松和吉拉德·福特政府时期美国经济顾问理事会主席赫伯特·斯泰因的话告诉我们，债务不可能永远比经济增长快。这对中国也适用，只是我们不知道它何时结束、如何结束。它马上就会到来，抑或还有些时日？问题容易应对，抑或一片狼藉？
The manageability of China’s enormous domestic debts will be of great importance, not just for China, but for the many economies whose exports depend on it. We cannot yet know how the debt surge will end. but we do know how it started. The trigger was the global financial crisis.
中国巨大国内债务的可管理性，不仅对中国至关重要，对许多依赖中国市场的出口型经济体而言也是如此。我们无法得知债务快速增长会如何结束，但我们知道它是如何开始的：起因是全球金融危机。
Between early 2004 and late 2008, Chinese gross debt was stable at between 170 and 180 per cent of gross domestic product. This was higher than in other emerging countries, but not much higher. This seemed manageable.
2004年初到2008年末，中国总债务维持稳定，位于GDP的1.7到1.8倍之间。这比其它新兴国家高，但也没高太多，看起来可以应付。
Then, in 2008, came the meltdown of the western financial system and subsequent deep recession in high-income countries. China responded with a huge investment programme amounting to some 12.5 per cent of GDP, probably the biggest ever peacetime stimulus.
到了2008年，西方金融体系崩盘，高收入国家随后陷入深度衰退。中国的应对方式是天量投资计划，堪称和平时期最大规模的刺激，相当于GDP的约12.5%。
The challenge confronting Beijing was to offset the impact on demand of a fall in China's net exports of 6 per cent of GDP between 2007 and 2011. In 2007, net exports had been close to 9 per cent of GDP. Since this was neither economically nor politically sustainable, the fall was permanent. Such a decline in net external demand needed a permanent offset.
北京面对的挑战是冲销 2007年到2011年中国净出口需求下降6%的影响。2007年，净出口对GDP贡献为9%。这一比例在经济上或政治上都是不可持续的，因此降下来就回不去了，因此净外部需求的下降需要一种持久性的补偿。
Given the structure of the economy and the levers in the hands of the authorities, only investment could be increased quickly enough and on a large enough scale. As a result the share of gross investment in GDP soared from an already extremely high 41 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 48 per cent in 2010.
考虑到经济结构以及当局手中的杠杆，只能快速并大幅增加投资，结果总投资占GDP比重大幅增加，从2007年41%的极高位增加到2010年的48%。
This huge investment boom maintained measured growth at close to 10 per cent after the crisis. It also led to a huge and sustained surge in debt, predominantly to non-financial corporations, including off-balance sheet local government financing vehicles.
金融危机后，这种大规模投资热维持接近10%的增长，这也导致了债务大幅度持续攀升，主要是非金融机构，包括地方政府的表外融资工具。
But ominously, far from raising China’s underlying rate of growth, a marked slowdown followed. In the longer term, China’s raised investment rate has delivered the disturbing combination of more debt and slower growth.
但糟糕的是，这非但没有推升中国潜在增长率，经济反而明显放缓。长期而言，中国增加的投资率导致了债务高企、增长放缓这两种共同后果。
According to the Institute for International Finance, between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2018 China’s gross debt exploded from 171 to 299 per cent of GDP.
国际金融研究所数据显示，2008年第四季度到2018年第一季度，中国总债务从占GDP的171%增加到299%。
A simple measure of the efficiency of the investment is the incremental capital output ratio, which measures the ratio of the investment rate to the growth rate. Until the crisis, the ICOR had not exceeded four for any sustained period. Ever since 2011, it has been close to six. It was as though the high-income countries had passed the credit baton to China. For Beijing, this response to the financial crisis had an additional drawback — distracting it away from a necessary rebalancing of its economy.
简单衡量投资效益的方法是增量资本产出比率，后者是投资增长率与经济增长率的比值。危机前，这一数值从未长期超过4。自2011以来，增量资本产出比率接近6。这好比高收入国家将信贷接力棒传给了中国。对北京而言，对金融危机的这种应对方式有更多的缺陷，搁浅了必要的经济平衡措施。
In 2007, then premier Wen Jiabao declared that China’s growth was “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable”. In that year, net exports were 9 per cent of GDP, up from 2 per cent in 2000, investment was 41 per cent of GDP, up from 34 per cent in 2000, public and private consumption were a mere 50 per cent of GDP, down from 63 per cent in 2000, and gross debt was 174 per cent of GDP, up from 146 per cent in late 2000.
2007年，温家宝宣布中国增长“不稳定、不平衡、不协调和不可持续”。当年，净出口占GDP的9%，2000年的比重是2%；投资占GDP的41%，2000年的比重是34%；公私消费只占GDP的50%，2000年的比重是63%；总债务是GDP的174%，2000年末为146%。
By 2017, net exports were back down to 2 per cent of GDP: that did represent a rebalancing. But investment was still higher than in 2007, at 44 per cent of GDP, private and public consumption was still only 54 per cent of GDP and debt had soared to three times GDP. In sum, the rebalancing of China’s external accounts came at the cost of still greater domestic imbalances.
2017年，净出口对GDP的贡献率降回2%，这确实是一种再平衡。但投资占比44%，依然比2007年高，公私消费仍然只占GDP的54%，债务增加到GDP的三倍。总体而言，中国对外账户的再平衡，其代价是国内出现更大的失衡。
So what happens now? There are four conceivable possibilities: a crisis, followed by lower growth; a crisis, not followed by lower growth; no crisis, but reduced growth; and no crisis and no reduction in growth.
现在情况如何呢？有四种可能性：危机后增长放缓；危机后增长不放缓；没有危机，但增长放缓；没有危机，增长也没有放缓。
In a paper published in 2010, Moritz Schularick of the Free University Berlin and Alan Taylor of the University of California Davis argued that “credit growth is a powerful predictor of financial crises”. This finding was from a database of 14 high-income countries.
柏林自由大学的莫里茨·舒拉里克和加州大学戴维斯分校的阿兰·泰勒2010年发表的一篇论文认为，“债务增长是经济危机强有力的预警”，发现基于14个高收入国家的数据。
Yet a paper by Sally Chen and Joong Shik Kang of the IMF, published this year, argues that the evidence also applies to China, saying: “China’s credit boom is one of the largest and longest in history. Historical precedents of ‘safe’ credit booms of such magnitude and speed are few and far from comforting.”
国际货币基金组织陈方楠和康仲植今年发表的一篇论文认为这一证据也适用于中国，“中国的信贷增长是历史上规模最大、增长最久的。历史证据中，这种规模和速度的信贷增长能保持‘安全’几乎没有，这令人忧虑。”
This analysis suggests that a crisis of some kind is likely. The salient characteristics of a system liable to a crisis are high leverage, maturity mismatches, credit risk and opacity. China’s financial system has all these features.
分析表明可能发生某种危机。容易发生危机的系统，其最显著的特征是高杠杆、期限错配、信用危机和不透明性。中国的金融系统拥有所有这些特征。
Among other things, China has a shadow banking sector, though a study by the Bank for International Settlements argues that “securitisation and market-based instruments still play only a limited role”. It is, in all, less complex and more directly connected to the banks than the US system was.
需要注意的是，中国还有影子银行，尽管国际清算银行的一项研究认为，“证券化和基于市场的工具发挥的作用仍然有限”。总的来说，影子银行部门没有美国的系统那么复杂，与银行的直接关联更紧密。
So why might the outcome in China be different than elsewhere? One answer is that the high indebtedness is just a result of China’s extraordinarily high savings rates. But its national savings rates were already very high before the crisis, when the levels of indebtedness were not exploding. Another proposition is that the rapid credit growth simply reflects normal expansion in the provision of financial services. But the IMF paper notes: “The leverage ratio in China is significantly higher than in countries with similar levels of development.”
中国的情况为什么和其他地区不一样呢？一种解释是高负债率只是中国超高储蓄率的一个结果。但国家的储蓄率在经济危机前已经很高了，可当时的负债水平并没有爆炸性增长。另外一种说法是，信贷快速增长只是金融服务供给的正常扩张，但国际货币基金组织的论文指出：“中国的杠杆率比其它同发展水平国家都高得多”。
It could also be argued that China is a creditor nation with a controlled capital account. That makes it relatively invulnerable to a run by foreign lenders of the kind familiar to observers of financial crises in emerging economies. Yet financial crises are possible in countries that are relatively immune to such runs: Japan in the 1990s is an example.
你可以说中国是一个资本账户有管制的债权国。这让中国相对没那么脆弱，不会像其它经济体发生金融危机时那样，被外国银行抽资挤兑。但相对不受抽资困扰的国家也会发生金融危机，九十年代的日本就是一例。
Another response is that China’s banking system has a lower ratio of credit to deposits than those of most countries that have experienced funding crises. But this ignores non-loan assets. In China the ratio of non-loan assets — assets other than conventional bank loans — to total assets was 50 per cent in 2016, a relatively high level. This is one indicator of the scale of China’s shadow banking system.
另一种回应是，中国的银行体系存贷率比多数经历过融资危机的国家低。可这忽略了非贷款资产。中国非贷款资产占总资产比例，2016年是50%，水平不低。这是中国影子银行规模的一个标志。
It is also asserted that the financial system’s assets are relatively sound. True, lending to non-financial corporate borrowers accounted for just over a half of the increase in debt between late 2008 and early 2018. But the quality of much of this lending is questionable. Moreover, “if debt is rising, but GDP is not, then the payment capacity is deteriorating”, the IMF paper argues.
还有人说，金融系统的资产相对安全。没错，2008年末到2018年初，非金融公司贷款只占增长的一半多一点，但很多贷款的质量都成问题。另外，“如果债务增加，GDP没有增加，偿付能力就会恶化，”世界货币基金组织的论文说。
The strongest reply is that the government is powerful and has a well-run central bank, effective control over the banking system, ownership of vast domestic and foreign assets, untapped fiscal capacity and tight controls over transactions with, and by, foreigners. If it were determined to protect the financial system from collapse it could do so. But if gross debt were to rise above 400 per cent of GDP over the next decade, even that would be less certain.
最有力的回应是政府很强大，有运行良好的央行，有效控制着银行体系，并拥有大量国内和国外资产，有巨大财政能力可用，并严格控制着涉外和外国人的交易。如果国家决心不让金融体系崩溃，就可以不崩溃。但如果未来十年，总债务增加到GDP的400%以上，这种能力也说不好了。
Imagine, however, that there is a financial crisis. Would it be followed by lower growth? The answer is: yes, in both the short and long term. In the short term, a financial crisis would be followed by weaker investment. Given the decline in the trend rate of growth, the economically justified rate can hardly be higher than it was in 2000, when it was 34 per cent of GDP. That is 10 percentage points below the actual rate in 2017. If this adjustment were to come quickly, in the aftermath of a crisis, such a decline would generate an outright recession.
然而试想一下，如果真有一场金融危机，会导致增长放缓吗？答案是是肯定的，不论短期还是长期。从短期看，金融危机危机后投资会放缓。考虑到趋势增长率下滑，那时的投资比重不太可能高于2000年的水平，当时投资占GDP比重为34%。这比2017年的实际水平低10个百分点。如果这种调整在危机发生后很快出现，降幅会导致全面衰退。
The extent and duration of such a recession would depend on how far and how quickly other spending would rise. China might be tempted to revert to a weaker exchange rate and a big increase in net exports. But the Trump administration would not tolerate this.
这种衰退的广度和持续时间要看其他支出增长的广度和速度。中国可能会让汇率走低从而大幅提高净出口，但特朗普政府不会同意。
The alternative would be much higher private and public consumption. The constraints on the former are persistently high household savings rates and the low share of household disposable incomes (incomes after taxes and transfers) in GDP. The latter fell from 67 per cent of GDP in 1997 to 57 per cent in 2007. This has reversed a little, to an estimated 61 per cent in 2015, but estimates by the World Bank suggest it has fallen a little since then.
另一个选项是增加私人和公共消费。对前者的制约主要是持续的高家庭储蓄率和GDP中家庭可支配收入比例较低。家庭可支配收入1997年占GDP的67%，2007年下滑到57%。现在情况有所改善，2015年估计比重为61%，但世界银行估计表明此后又有所下降。
A surge in consumption sufficient to offset the impact on domestic demand of a big cut in investment spending would be impossible without a far bigger shift in incomes towards households. Moreover, that would squeeze profits, which would reduce investment still further. Ultimately, the only plausible offset to the impact of a big crisis in demand would be a huge increase in spending financed by central government.
如果家庭收入不能提高，想通过增加消费来弥补因投资不足造成的内需不振是不可能的。这反过来会压低利润，从而进一步降低投资。最后，应对危机影响的唯一可行选项就是中央政府支出大规模增加。
A crisis, then, would probably mean a recession in the short term. In the longer term, growth would also slow from current reported levels. That would be largely because a significant part of the credit-fuelled investment spending had been wasted, partly in building unneeded dwellings and excessive industrial capacity.
危机可能意味着短期的衰退。从长期看，增长也会降下来，主要原因是由信贷驱动的投资支出大部分都浪费了，兴建了没有需求的住宅和过量的产能。
What about a more palatable world with no crisis? This would represent a soft landing. The longer the authorities take to control debt trends the more difficult it will be to achieve such an outcome.
假设遇到不发生危机的好事会怎样呢？这意味着软着陆。当局管住债务膨胀用的时间越长，实现软着陆的难度越大。
But this is clearly the animating principle behind current policy, which is aimed at strengthening the financial system and halting the trend towards higher debt. Just how difficult it will be to stick to those principles is shown by this week’s announcement of another round of infrastructure spending, in order to stimulate demand. That implies more investment and debt. But the trade war with the US may make such backsliding inevitable.
但当前的政策显然有积极动向，它们旨在强化金融体系，控制债务规模。但要坚持下去有多难，从本周另一轮旨在刺激需求的基建投资计划就能看出端倪。这种刺激意味着更多的投资和债务。但同美国的贸易战可能让这种退步难以避免。
How likely is success? The encouraging feature of the relatively recent past is that debt has stabilised, relative to GDP, since early 2017. Yet officially reported growth has held up. An obvious question then is whether the economic policy team, now under the leadership of vice-premier Liu He, has already found a way to sustain growth without increasing indebtedness. It is reasonable to be sceptical. After all, China has only achieved this one period of stable debt ratios since 2008. Given its reliance on high investment, debt might need to rise rapidly again.
去杠杆成功的可能性有多大呢？最近有一些好的迹象，2017年初以来，债务占GDP的比重稳定下来，但官方的经济增长数据也慢了。那么问题来了，中国经济决策团队是否已经找到了不增加负债却能维持增长的办法。这值得怀疑，毕竟中国2008年以来只有这一个时期债务占比稳定下来。考虑到对高投资的依赖，债务可能再次快速增加。
Furthermore, the slowdown in credit growth could be an example of Goodhart's law, named after Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics. It states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”This has long been true of GDP in China. Might it now be true of reported debt?
另外，信贷增长放缓可能是古德哈特定律的一个例证，该法则取自伦敦经济学院的查尔斯·古德哈特。该定律认为“当一种手段成为了目的，就不再是好手段了。”这一直适用于中国的GDP，现在可能也适用于公布的债务。
The People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist party, reported in May 2016 that an “authoritative figure said “high leverage is the ‘original sin’ that leads to risks in the market for foreign exchange, stocks, bonds, real estate and bank credit”.
《人民日报》2016年5月报道，一个“权威人士”说，高杠杆是导致外汇、股票、债券、房地产和银行信贷市场危机的“原罪”。
Furthermore, “according to the authoritative figure, the country should make deleveraging a priority, and the ‘fantasy’ of stimulating the economy through monetary easing should be dropped. The country needs to be proactive in dealing with rising bad loans, rather than hiding them.”
权威人士说，国家应该将去杠杆作为首要任务，丢掉通过货币宽松来刺激经济的幻想。国家应该积极应对增长的不良债务，而不是掩盖它们。
The authoritative person was right. China has a choice between a whimper today and a destructive bang tomorrow. It can curb the debt surge and allow growth to slow now, or risk a crisis followed by a more severe slowdown later.
权威人士说得对。中国必须做出选择，不是今天抹眼泪，就是明天全完蛋。中国可以现在遏制债务膨胀，让经济增长放缓，否则就准备遭遇危机，然后眼看着经济大幅放缓。
Making the needed changes will be difficult, particularly now, when a trade war has begun. The time has come to halt China’s debt surge.
做出必要的改变很难，尤其现在贸易战开始之时。现在到了遏止中国债务膨胀的时候了。