《红色资本主义》(Red Capitalism)
作者：卡尔•沃特(Carl Walter)、侯伟(Fraser Howie)
约翰•威利父子公司(John Wiley & Sons)出版，定价19.99英镑（29.95美元）
金融危机给美国模式的资本主义带来了沉重打击。中国官员们毫不迟疑地大肆宣扬这一点——值此之际，经济力量的平衡转向亚洲，令他们欣喜不已。不过，对于他们自己的模式能在多大程度上经得起仔细审视，仍存在一些问题。卡尔•沃特(Carl Walter)和侯伟(Fraser Howie)都是长期关注中国银行业和证券市场的专家，在《红色资本主义》(Red Capitalism)一书中，两位作者提出了不少问题；他们的结论也较为率直。
实际上，中国存在两种经济体制。其中一种由外资公司和家庭经营的私人企业主导，它们创造出令人瞩目的经济增长，主要集中在广东省和长三角地区。这些地区运行着自由市场形式的资本主义，与19世纪的英国较为相似。它们吸引了中国70%的外来投资，贡献着70%以上的出口——尽管这得益于人为操纵汇率。
另一种则是增长较慢的经济体制，由国有企业主导，它们仍为员工提供某些社会保障。尽管主导深圳和上海证券交易所的只是国有企业的少数股权，但这仍是一种以银行为基础的模式。
中国的国有体系有着西方金融模式的诸多表象，比如股票交易所、债券市场、银行间市场等，但沃特和侯伟认为，这只是一种伪装。在股票市场中，首次公开募股(IPO)不过是资本在国有实体之间的重新分配，其间间或有资本流向了散户投资者。政府债券市场主要是在国有企业的不同部门之间进行换手，施行的是官方决定的利率，与银行收取的利率没什么不同。资本配置受共产党控制。
如果说本书中有一个英雄，那就是朱�基。他担任总理期间，将国有企业向外资开放，并强化了市场约束。他对因国有企业拒绝还贷而背负不良贷款重负的四大国有银行进行了资产重组。朱�基2003年卸任后，中国人民银行(PBOC)的官员们不顾财政部的强烈反对，继续推行这一改革方案。
2008年全球危机来袭，银行疯狂放贷驱动的庞大刺激计划，令10年改革成果付诸东流。财政部建立了自己的主权财富基金中国投资公司(China Investment Corp)，与央行下属的基金相互竞争，并利用中投夺回银行业体系的很大控制权。雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的倒闭，使改革派人士丧失了信誉度和影响力。
故事的某些内容已为人所熟知，但两位作者赋予了故事丰富的分析细节和政治掌故，给人留下了深刻印象。他们的结论是，这个体系属于病态的疲弱，如不深化改革，大型银行将不断需要补充资本。他们估计，2009年底中国公共部门债务占国内生产总值(GDP)的76%；他们担心，由于增长过度依赖通过举债筹集的资本投资，公共部门债务将出现不可阻挡地增长。
他们认为，由于这种对负债的依赖，在可预见的未来，肯定无法出现重大的利率和汇率改革，外资也无法实质性地参与金融市场。现实情况是：国有垄断和寡头企业不希望看到变革或外国竞争。沃特和侯伟反问道，在这些人及其家族成员和下属们能够掠夺中国市场、并聚敛巨额利润的情况下，他们怎么会希望变革与外资竞争呢？两位作者指出，目前，中国政府实际上是为商业利益所主宰。
这种说法简直是一种控诉。一个问题在于：两位作者是否对金融体系脆弱和公共部门债务的经济后果过于危言耸听？只要经济以目前的速度增长，维系脆弱的银行业体系和管理债务负担应该不会过于困难——平心而论，沃特和侯伟也承认这一点。正如日本所发现的那样：难的是在赶超时期结束之后，建立起基于市场价格信号、更为有效的资本配置机制。
另一个问题，是应当以何种标准来评判中国。看起来，两位作者常常因为中国对市场资本主义的贬损而感到震惊。然而就这些缺陷而言，中国与众多其它发展中国家并无不同。尽管如此，中国却决意参与大国竞争；人民币的储备货币地位，是共产党眼中的希冀。《红色资本主义》一书颇具说服力地阐明，中国的经济和金融体系尚未作好支撑此种希冀的充分准备。
注：本文作者为英国《金融时报》专栏作家
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001036911
Red Capitalism
By Carl Walter and Fraser Howie
John Wiley & Sons, 19.99 ($29.95)
The financial crisis has delivered a heavy blow to the American model of capitalism. Chinese officials do not hesitate to trumpet the point as they rejoice in the shift in the balance of economic power to Asia. Yet there are questions about how well their own model stands up to scrutiny. In Red Capitalism Carl Walter and Fraser Howie, both long-standing experts in Chinese banking and securities markets, ask quite a few; and their conclusions are unflattering.
There are, in effect, two Chinese economies. One is dominated by foreign-owned and family-run private companies that generate phenomenal growth mainly in Guangdong and the Yangtze River Delta. These two areas, which operate a free market form of capitalism not unlike Britain’s in the 19th century, attract 70 per cent of China’s foreign investment and contribute more than 70 per cent of exports, albeit with the help of a manipulated exchange rate.
Then there is the slower-growth economy dominated by state-owned enterprise, which still provides some social security for its workers. This is a bank-based model, even if the stock exchanges of Shenzhen and Shanghai are dominated by minority stakes in state-owned companies.
While the state-owned system has many of the trappings of western financial models such as stock exchanges, bond markets, interbank markets and so forth, Walter and Howie argue that this is just camouflage. On the exchanges, initial public offerings merely redistribute capital among state entities with occasional leakage to retail investors. The government bond market mainly shuffles paper between different arms of state enterprise at officially administered interest rates no different from those charged by banks. Capital allocation is controlled by the Communist party.
If the book has a hero, it is Zhu Rongji. While premier, he opened up state-owned enterprise to foreign capital and to increased market discipline. The big four banks, saddled with non-performing loans that state enterprise had declined to service, were recapitalised. This reform programme was taken forward after Mr Zhu’s departure in 2003 by officials at the People’s Bank of China against fierce opposition from the Ministry of Finance.
Come the global crisis in 2008, a huge stimulus package driven by frenetic bank lending swept away 10 years of reform. Having set up its own sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation, in competition with the central bank’s fund, the Ministry of Finance used it to claw back control of large chunks of the banking system. The collapse of Lehman Brothers thus robbed the reformists of credibility and influence.
Parts of this story are familiar, but the authors bring to it an impressive wealth of analytical detail and political nous. They conclude that the system is endemically weak and that the big banks will come back repeatedly for capital without further reform. They worry that public sector debt, which they estimate at 76 per cent of gross domestic product at the end of 2009, will increase inexorably because so much growth depends on debt-financed capital investment.
That debt dependence, they argue, ensures there will be no meaningful reform of interest rates, exchange rates or material foreign involvement in the financial markets for the foreseeable future. The reality is that state-owned monopolies and oligopolies do not want change or foreign competition. Why would they, ask Walter and Howie, when they and their family associates and retainers can plunder the country’s markets and amass huge profits? Business interests, they suggest, are now the de facto rulers of China’s government.
This is quite an indictment. One question is whether the authors scaremonger too much about the economic consequences of financial fragility and public sector debt. With growth at anything like the current rate it should not be too difficult to carry a weak banking system and manage the debt burden – which, in fairness, Walter and Howie acknowledge. The difficult trick, as Japan has found, is to establish more efficient capital allocation based on market price signals once the long catch-up period is over.
Another question is by what standards should China be judged. The authors frequently appear shocked by the country’s derogations from market-based capitalism. Yet in most of these failings China is no different from numerous other developing countries. That said, China is bent on superpower rivalry; reserve currency status for the renminbi is a glint in the party’s eye. Red Capitalism puts a powerful case that its economy and financial system are not fully equipped to support such aspirations.
The writer is an FT columnist
没有评论:
发表评论