年度忽悠巨作:2016年中国经济是否会崩溃 [美国媒体]

Will 2016 Bring the Collapse of China’s Economy?

2016年中国经济是否会崩溃

Gordon G. Chang

作者:章家敦

December 29, 2015

2015/12/29



Last Monday, at the conclusion of China’s closed-door Central Economic Work Conference, Beijing’s public relations machine went into high gear to show that the country’s leaders had come up with a viable plan to rescue the economy.

中国的闭门中央经济工作会议总结于上周一结束.与此同时,北京的公关机器正在开足马力进行宣传,意图让公众们相信中国的领导人们已经计划出了一个可行的方案来拯救经济.

Unfortunately, they do not now have such a plan. In reality, they decided to continue strategies that both created China’s current predicament and failed this year to restart growth.

不幸的是,北京当局并没有这样的计划.事实上,他们决定维持现有的政策:这样的政策导致了如今的困境以及本年度失败的经济复苏计划.

The severity of China’s economic problems—and the inability to implement long-term solutions—mean almost all geopolitical assumptions about tomorrow are wrong. Virtually everyone today sees China as a major power in the future. Yet the country’s extraordinary economic difficulties will result in a collapse or a long-term decline, and either outcome suggests China will return to the ranks of weak states.

中国的经济困境以及无力提供长期解决方案---这会导致地缘政治从新思考中国的未来.今天世界上每一个国家都把中国当作一个未来的主要强国,但是中国严重的经济问题会导致中国经济崩溃,至少是长期衰退.这样的结果会导致中国重回弱国行列.

As an initial matter, China’s current situation is far worse than the official National Bureau of Statistics reports. The NBS maintains that the country’s gross domestic product rose 6.9 percent during the third calendar quarter of this year after increases of 7.0 percent during each of the first two quarters.

中国目前的经济形势远比国家统计局所公布的要严峻,这是问题的根本.国家统计局认为中国第三季度的GDP增长为6.9%,而中国前两个季度增长率为7%.

Willem Buiter, Citigroup’s chief economist, a few months ago suggested the rate was closer to 4 percent, and growth could be as low as the 2.2 percent that people in Beijing were privately talking about mid-year. The most reliable indicator of Chinese economic activity remains the consumption of electricity, and for the first eleven months of the year electricity consumption increased by only 0.7 percent according to China’s National Energy Administration.

花旗集团的首席经济学家威廉姆比特认为,几个月前北京当局的私下讨论曾"建议"年中的名义增长应该接近4%,实际增长应该降低至2.2%左右.作为中国最可靠的经济指标---电力消耗,援引国家能源局的数据,中国2015年前七个月的电力消耗仅增长0.7%.

Other statistics confirm extremely slow growth. For instance, imports, a sign of both manufacturing and consumption trends, fell 8.7 percent in November in dollar terms, marking a record thirteen straight months of decline. Exports were down 6.8 percent, the fifth straight month in the red.

其他的统计数据同样证明了中国经济减速.比如说进口量这个制造业与消费趋势的标志,以美元计算11月降低8.7%个百分点,而且是创纪录的连续十三个月的下降.11月出口量同样下滑6.8个百分点,为连续第五个月的减速.

Especially disturbing is price data. In Q3, nominal GDP growth of 6.2 percent was less than the officially reported real growth of 6.9 percent. China, therefore, looks like it is now caught in the deflationary trap of falling prices. Deflation, in turn, suggests a 1930s-style crash is increasingly possible. China has too much debt—perhaps as much as 350 percent of GDP at the moment—which becomes impossible to service in an era of rapidly declining prices. The country over the last year has seen a number of “first” defaults. So far, the central and provincial authorities have managed rescues for many of the obligors, but at some point they will have no choice but to let failing borrowers go under in far greater numbers.

价格数据尤其令人不安,中国第三季度的实际增长为6.2%低于官方预测的6.9%.这意味着中国陷入了价格下跌的通缩陷阱,通货紧缩意味着中国可能重蹈美国30年代大萧条的覆辙.中国高达GDP350%的债务会在价格下跌中处于尴尬的地位,这个国家在违约方面创造了许多第一,中央和地方政府别无选择,必须救助债务人,尽管这样做只会让日后破产的金额越滚越大.

In these circumstances, the best case scenario for China is several decades of recession or recession-like stagnation, much like Japan experienced in the 1990s and the first decade of this century. China’s leaders won’t say the goal of the just-completed Work Conference was to avoid the sudden adjustment of a collapse, but that appears to be the case.

在这种情况下,最好的情况是重蹈日本"失落的二十年",中国当局的工作会议似乎是为了避免崩溃的突然发生.

To their credit, however, Beijing has been more candid in recent days. “The economy will follow an L-shaped path, and it won’t be a V-shaped path going forward,” said “a senior Chinese official with direct knowledge of the meeting” to the Wall Street Journal, indicating growth rates will not recover soon.

值得称道的是,最近几天北京的官员变得更加坦诚.中国的一位官员对<华尔街日报>表示:中国经济将呈"L"型稳健路径,而不是"V"型的冒进路径,这意味这经济增长速度不会很快恢复.

Chinese technocrats see consumption saving the economy, but that’s unlikely to be the case. Consumer demand is not high, despite what unnamed officials told the media at the conclusion of the Work Conference. Indicators, such as the corporate earnings of retailers and consumer products companies, paint a picture of spending in China growing at an anemic pace.

一位不愿透漏姓名的官员告诉媒体会议上的结论:中国专家们希望依靠消费拯救经济,但这不太现实.从零售商和消费产品企业的盈利数据来看消费需求不高,中国依靠消费支出的增长将会非常缓慢.

At the same time, manufacturing, the heart of the economy for decades, looks like it is contracting quickly, and services growth, despite official numbers, is low. Both these developments have implications for consumption. In China, consumption has been the result of growth, not the cause of it, and it is unlikely spending can power the economy on its own for long.

与此同时,中国的核心经济,制造业看起来正在快速萎缩,伴随而来的服务业的增长,尽管从官方数据来看很低.在中国消费是经济增长的结果,而不是诱因.
消费是不会长期占据中国经济主导地位的.

Beijing’s technocrats say observers should not be concerned by the overall picture. “A lot of countries always worry about the slowing down of the Chinese economy and they worry about a lack of policy stimulus in China,” said “a senior Chinese policy official familiar with the planning” to the Financial Times. “This worry is unwarranted because fiscal and monetary policy—and other policies—will still be quite accommodative compared to the other major economies.”

北京的技术官僚称观察人士不应担心中国经济的整理图景:"许多国家总是关心中国经济的放缓,他们担心中国缺乏刺激政策."一位熟悉政策规划的中国高级官员向英国<金融时报>表示:"和其他主要经济体相比中国实施的依然是十分宽松的财政和货币政策,不比对此过度担忧."

There are two principal things wrong with the statement from the insider official. First, only reform offers China sustainable growth, but Beijing is opting for stimulus instead. Accordingly, China is about to embark on another debt binge. As Chen Long of Gavekal Dragonomics told the Financial Times, the central government will take on larger fiscal deficits and permit lower-tier governments to dive even deeper into bonds. At the same time, said Long, local government finance vehicles “will be allowed to borrow at full speed.”

这样的官方声明有两个原则性的错误,首先只有改革能为中国提供持续性的增长,而不是刺激政策,中国即将以你过来一个新的债务爆炸增长.<龙舟经讯>的陈长告诉英国<金融时报>:"中央政府将承担更多的债务,地方政府处境会更加糟糕,地方政府的甚至允许地方融资平台快速借贷"

Stimulus, at this late stage, will go into unproductive investment just as it did after the last credit splurge, which then-premier Wen Jiabao authorized at the end of 2008. And the problem has grown worse over time. In 2007, each dollar of new credit added 83 cents of output. By 2013, that figure had dropped to 17 cents, and now it is probably even less.

现阶段的刺激政策,非生产性投资的会像08年温相的"四万亿"政策一样被挥霍.随着时间的推移问题会变得更糟:07年每一美元的投入会有83美分的产出,13年这个数字降至17美分.现在可能更少.

The efficiency of investment is important because new obligations must eventually be paid back. So Beijing, in effect, is buying growth by making its critical debt problem even worse. Yes, building another “ghost city” creates gross domestic product during construction, but such a project just drags down the economy from the moment the workers pack up their tools.

由于有新的债务需要被偿还,所以投资的回报率是很重要的.北京的政策事实上使得债务危机变得更糟:中国的"鬼城"在建设期间的确会促进GDP增长,一旦工程结束后反而会会拖累中国经济.

Second, Beijing’s stimulus has not been working for more than a year. For instance, six reductions in benchmark interest rates since November of last year and five reductions of the bank reserve-requirement ratio since February have had no noticeable effect. This monetary stimulus has been unproductive because there has been a lack of demand for money. Central government technocrats have been busy creating cash—M2, the broad gauge of money supply, was up 13.5 percent in October and a 17-month high of 13.7 percent last month—but few see a need for it. So creating money this year has not in fact resulted in growth.

其次,中国的刺激政策已经有一年多没有奏效了,例如从去年11月起六次消减基准利率和2月以来五次消减银行准备金率都没有明显效果.由于一直缺乏对资金的需求,这种货币政策正在变得徒劳.中央的技术官僚一直忙于创造广义货币,提高货币发行量.十月份增加13.5%,11月达到17个月以来最高的13.7%,这样做并没有必要也就不会迎来经济增长.

And the same can also be said for fiscal stimulus. Fiscal spending, a good measure of the government’s overall stimulative efforts, has accelerated as the year has progressed, now reaching fantastic numbers, up 25.9 percent in August, 26.9 percent in September, 36.1 percent in October and 25.9 percent last month. For the first eleven months, such spending rose 18.9 percent while revenue increased only 8 percent.

政府的财政支出同样可以视为刺激政策,随着一年的发展,这个神奇的数字8月份上涨了25.9%,九月份上涨了26.9%,十月份则为36.1%.前11个月这个的政府支出总体增长了18.9%,但税收仅有8%的增幅.

Chinese officials can promise more fiscal and monetary stimulus, but it’s hard to see how any of the pump priming will change the downward momentum.

中国官员提供更多的财政和货币刺激,但并不能挽回经济下行的颓势.

The Chinese people have not been buying what their government has been saying about the economy. How do we know this? They have been taking their money out of the country as fast as they can. In Q3, there was $460.6 billion of net capital outflow, as documented by Bloomberg.

中国人民并没有买政府的账,他们正在快速的"取钱".援引自彭博社的记录,第三季度中国资本净流出达4606亿美元.

Bloomberg reports the outflow in October was $62 billion. Beijing was able to slow the flood that month by imposing informal capital controls on top of its official array of barriers. Last month, however, the outflow appears to have picked up from October as foreign exchange reserves fell by an officially reported $87.2 billion—and perhaps the decline was larger as Beijing has in the second half of the year been underreporting the reductions in its reserves. No economy—not even one the size of China’s—can survive outflows of this dimension.

彭博社报道十月份资本流出打620亿美元,对资本进行非正式管制是北京官员十月份面临的一系列障碍.然而上个月,资本流出比十月份的官方报道多出872以美元,也许降幅会更大,因为中国官方瞒报了外汇储备的减少.没有经济可以维持中国这样大小的经济体存活.

The Chinese economy has never made sense, but confidence, both inside and outside the country, held it together. Now, the confidence is disappearing fast, and Beijing does not know how to get it back, except by repackaging solutions that have not worked. China’s technocratic leaders cannot change the downward direction of their economy. The most they can do now is slow the rate of descent with policies that will likely make the ultimate reckoning even worse.

中国经济从来就没有意义,但是对中国经济的信心却在国内外蔓延开来.而现在,信心正在快速消失,北京无可奈何,除了重新包装别无他法.中国的技术官僚无法改变中国经济低迷的颓势,现在他们所做的补救可能会史中国经济的最终清算变得更糟.

And it is no secret why Beijing is opting for short-term fixes. China’s economy is now too fragile to withstand the wrenching change that would result from the structural reforms that are necessary for long-term expansion.

尽管这不是什么秘密但为何北京选择短期修复?因为中国的经济太脆弱,痛苦的变化会导致长期的必要性结构改革.

And that brings us to the world’s most fundamental misconception. China, most analysts think, will dominate the international system for the rest of this century. Yet whether the economy’s downturn is a crash or a long period of decline, Beijing’s diplomats soon will not be able to afford to make promised investments abroad, fulfill aid commitments or write-off debts, all things that buy geopolitical influence for a regime that cannot export its ideals. Chinese generals and admirals will not have the cash to build or buy the aircraft carriers, submarines, satellites, and moon bases they now contemplate. Civilian officials will not be in the position to provide needed services at home.

这些因素给我们带来了世界上最基本的误解,多数分析师认为中国会成为本世纪最重要的国际体系.然而中国经济的崩溃或是长期衰退会导致北京外交官们无法兑现自己海外投资的成诺,又或是履行援助成诺和减免海外债务.依靠这种办法取得地缘政治影响力的国家无法实现自己的理想.中国军队不会有资金来购买航母和潜艇,卫星和月球基地也会不复存在.中国官员们也会无法履行他们的职责.

China’s rise, in short, will be cut off, and Chinese dominance of the region and the international system, something analysts say is inevitable, will have to wait at least decades.

简而言之,中国的崛起会被终止,而一些分析家认为的中国将会取得的地区与国际领导地位也会被推迟数十年之久.

The economy, as all know, has been central to China’s rise. After all, it allowed telecom entrepreneur Wang Jing to announce the building of a canal three times longer than the one in Panama, across Nicaragua. He also planned two deep-water ports, an airport, an artificial lake, a tourist area, a free-trade zone, roads and factories. His closely held vehicle already received an initial 50-year concession from Daniel Ortega’s government and had planned to start construction sometime during the next calendar quarter.

我们都知道经济是中国崛起的关键,(各种例证略)中国海量的海外工程建设与投资证明了这一点.

That grand project, however, is now on hold because China’s stock market crash, beginning in mid-June, resulted in the loss of most of Wang’s net worth. Wang may still harbor grand ambitions, but now he has no means to achieve them.

这些巨型海外项目,却因为中国六月的股市崩盘而流失其大部分的净资产.某些投资者依然有野心,但却没有办法实现.

China’s brassy leaders also think big, but soon their dreams will be beyond their grasp as well. In all likelihood, the fate of their plans tomorrow will mirror Wang’s today.

中国傲慢的领导人们很快就会意识到他们的梦想会超出自己的理解,他们未来的命运会重蹈今天中国投资者的覆辙.



Spectator of Geopolitics
As most people already know, Gordon Chang has been talking like this for decades, since 2001, so he has been wrong in his numerous predictions.
Greece, in which Euro is used as its currency, can't implement stimulus plans, unless through the Central Bank of Europe. But this is not a problem for the US or Japan, both have implemented their own stimulus plans. Most other countries that have their own independent currency can use the same old trick. So there is a simple solution handy.
China can also implement its own quantitative easing at will, to lessen the negative effects of shrinking demands.
The economic slowdown of China right now, is caused by those of Japan and Europe. China, as the biggest trader in the world, is inevitably impacted.

很多人都已经知道,章副局从2001开始就不断重复这样的话,他的预测好像就没对过.希腊作为一个使用欧元的国家不能进行刺激政策,除非欧央行允许,但是美国和日本都有自己的刺激计划.大多数有自己独立货币的国家都可以有刺激政策,这是个很简单的伎俩.
中国自然可以实施自己量化宽松,减少负面影响.中国现在的经济放缓是欧洲和日本导致的,中国作为世界最大的交易者,不可避免的会受到影响.

thomaswalter
GGC is just talking nonsense. 
But shameful that this guy was born in China.

TG在胡扯,但章副局作为一个在中国出生的人讲这样的话很可耻.

Paco Lilzz
He's not born in China. He's half white, and half what? taiwanese?

他有不是中国出生的,有一半白人血统,另外一半可能是台湾血统?

[color=rgb(0, 0, 0) !important]fu-yu-chin 
half primate as -----apes,donkeykong????

他另外一半可能有猩猩血统???

crazyi
There is an appropriate title for this kind of American-born Chinese: the banana man, a while heart inside with a yellow skin outside.

美国出生的华人有个适合的称呼:香蕉人,内白外黄.

future 
These articles, by this huckster/End Times author -- are on the same level as Alien Abductions and BigFoot TV series.

这些出自这个喧嚣且过时的作者的文章就和外星人影视作品一样离奇

Every few months, someone announces the apocalypse as some shift takes place in China's economy -- now being adjusted to move from dependence on inexpensive labor to internal consumption.

每隔几个月都会有人宣布中国经济发生转变,如今的故事是从廉价劳动力到内部消费的转型.

China has experienced nothing like the American/"free market" collapse of 2008 -- which roiled economies across the globe -- but not China's.[backcolor=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8)]That event drained the life-blood from the American middle class, and it remains anemic after decades of crimped wages replaced by disastrously overextended credit.

中国的经历一点都不像美国2008年所做的,--自由市场的崩溃扰乱了全世界,但这却不是中国做的.08年所发生的一切耗尽了美国中产的生命力,数十年无力的挣扎如今又掉进了信贷这个黑暗的陷阱.

Emergence of things like Trump are evidence of a Weimar-like danger as Americans fire in the dark at each other, unable to correctly interpret the cause of their distress.

美国出现床破这类人才是大众痛苦的根源,而且他们并不能解释其原因

There are and will be no Utopias -- including China.

世界上并没有什么乌托邦,包括中国.

But China has a coherent group of leaders in charge, executing a coherent plan that can be adjusted.

但是中国有一群连贯的领导人和连贯的政策可以随时调整.

Ever more, America is a mob scene, including its confused and desperate "leadership" class.

美国现在就像一个暴徒,对其自身的"领导力"感到困惑和绝望

No doubt some of them read this stuff and feel better.

这就是为什么有些美国人就喜欢读章副局的文章