2012年12月3日

我看好的几个行业

以前一个宝钢等于几个招行,现在一个招行等于几个宝钢。这就是行业变迁的力量。

随着时代的进步、技术的发展,我国消费水平的提升等原因,行业发展也呈现阶段性的变迁,在符合发展趋势的行业中,往往容易产生巨大的公司。分析未来有很大的不确定性,特别是在时间点上往往预测不准,不是早多少年,就是晚多少年。所以仅仅对几个行业做简单的趋势判断。

 

一是品牌消费品、医药和医疗服务仍有巨大的增长空间。只要我国的经济发展没有倒退,品牌消费就是主基调,并且行业发展相对稳定。我国广大地区还是非常贫穷,工人、农民等收入比较低,消费不起、看不起病的人多的是。随着城镇化的发展,收入的提升,人们会把更多的钱花在吃喝玩乐上,或者进行医药和医疗的消费,延长生命来进一步吃喝玩乐。


二是中高端制造业继续向中国转移。中国没有什么技术含量的低端制造业,以及核心在外方的代工行业,发展到现在的确出现人力成本快速上升问题。随着人工成本的上升,这些行业就有可能迁移到东南亚、印度、非洲等成本更低的国家。但中高端的制造业行业转移的速度比较慢,因为这些行业保持优势的不仅仅是成本,还有技术、本地市场规模、行业政策鼓励等。比如分析一下看欧美向日韩、日韩向中国印度的汽车制造业的转移情况,速度要远低于低端制造业的转移;另外,日本的家电行业的落败,也是近几年才出现的,转移到中国的速度比较慢。而现在中国和日本的人工成本差别在10倍以上,并且中国成为最大的消费市场,才能使转移进一步加剧。低成本成本、技术突破、巨大本地市场的合力,往往才能导致中高端制造业的转移,所以中高端制造业向中国转移才刚开始,我不担心成为上升对我国中高端制造业的影响。另外,我国的制造业以前长期停留在低端的水平,跟不国家政策、国有企业主导有很大的关系,没有根本上激发民营企业的积极性、没有给聪明的人机会,只是让一些边缘的低端加工业大发展起来,造就了举世闻名的温州义乌小商品城,可这不能代表中国的未来。但这些年国家政策和环境有了很大的变化,随着我国在经济方面的放开,出了像华为、中兴、联想、格力、海尔、三一重工等这些走出国门的企业。有14亿人口的中国未来富裕生活依靠的不可能是很多人说的服务业、消费业等,更可能是中高端的制造业,成为世界的电子、装备、汽车、飞机等等制造中心。

 

三是互联网行业有很多发展机遇,并产生许多冲浪性的公司。互联网行业是个投入规模小、具有明显的网络经济、边际成本为零、外部经济性巨大等特点的行业。这些特点也决定在发展的初期,竞争异常激烈,但能存活的公司往往就会形成相对的垄断,企业规模和收益都很大。但这个行业发展过快,商业模式被替代的风险时时存在,公司选择存在巨大的困难。比如本来风平浪静的收费杀毒软件行业突然就消失了,现在变成了免费+增值服务的模式,百度凭借竞价排名系统赚的盆满钵满,现在这种赚钱的模式也可能被颠覆。


http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_554a56860101eh13.html

2012年11月30日

凡客诚品被指四年烧钱不止 反思大冒进收缩战线

  孟岩峰

  "我们是有裁员,可这是从年初就开始的结构调整的延续。"面对最近微博上"凡客"裁员25%的说法,凡客公关总监焦宏宇指25%数据不实。

  凡客诚品[微博]CEO陈年对本报表示,一年前,凡客准备赴美上市,"2011年停下IPO,现在看来是对的。"

  "看这一年的中概股,其实我们还是很庆幸的,没有选择流血上市。"焦宏宇称。如今一年已过,备受诟病的资金、库存及人事变动等问题依然被提及,今年如风达大面积裁员及供应商削减等也让凡客在2012年依然遭受非议。

  不过陈年本人对外界的非议并不十分在意,11月29日,他对本报回应称,"只要凡客变成一个健康的公司,强壮起来,上不上市并不重要。"

  缩减溯源

  "如风达的业务并不是我对其他电商不开放,而是这个需求不存在了。"

  按陈年所说,"2011年11月到香港请索罗斯吃饭,他说从今天到12月8日什么都不要做。" 后来陈年得知,索罗斯在饭局两天之后,给欧盟写了信,发表关于欧洲局势的观点;也正是在12月8日,索罗斯等人开会,对经济形势也作出了预判。

  陈年称,巧合的是,凡客预期挂牌时间是12月8日。由于12月8日后美股持续弱势,凡客最终放弃IPO。

  临门一脚最终未果,舆论亦将凡客未能上市的原因归于库存、资金及人事变动等。

  凡客在质疑中开始"刮骨祛毒"。"现在没上市,还能去做一些大的架构调整,如果一旦上市,每一个动作都是要通过层层审批的,如果上市之后发现走错路会更痛苦。"焦宏宇称。

  2012年8月,凡客诚品(Vancl)全资自建的配送公司如风达收缩,经营快递的城市由26个减到6个,仅保留北上广深及西安和武汉。

  "凡客作为服装商,销售有淡旺季之分。如风达作为快递公司同样面临淡旺季。"陈年解释,"一旦进入淡季,这么大的队伍怎么去消化?2010年到2011年,电商泡沫,无数小电商遍地开花。如果这个都做起来,那么对快递业的需求是井喷的。"然而事与愿违,小电商死掉很多,"如风达的业务并不是我对其他电商不开放,而是这个需求不存在了"。陈年表示。

  凡客回应称,"没有订单业务,我们也没必要支撑那么大的队伍。"

  反思冒进

  互相推诿与个人权利太大甚至导致个别环节出现腐败

  除人员调整外,曾经快速提振业绩的结构也被彻底打散。

  今年之前,凡客只有两个一级事业部,基础产品部与新产品部。7个二级中心,包括营销、推广、品牌、仓储、物流及呼叫中心。基础产品部负责衬衫、帆布鞋等各类产品的销售规划和产品规划;新产品部则负责生产及工厂下单等。

  而基础产品部每一种产品,比如衬衫或者鞋,都可能有上百个品类,就导致了一个人可能同时管几条产品线的销售规划,一个人甚至有签几千万合同的权利。

  而彼时的陈年也说过一句豪言壮语,从2010年的10亿宣称2011年达到百亿,继而到2012年到300亿。五年的规模更是到了惊人的1500亿。

  或是此前有上市的冲动,这样的规划对上那样的结构便造就了凡客大跃进式的发展。

  陈年曾透露:某产品线新负责人,决定大力发展配饰,承接5亿任务。部门却只有10个人,随即三个月内决定招聘至50人。但人员到位之前,每人每天需要完成300个sku(单品)才能保证完成任务。因此不断寻找供应商并不断扩充品类,质量也受到影响,大量库存也由此积压。

  在其他产品线上,情况类似。而结果便是每天产品线都疯狂招人完成任务量,导致陈年觉得办公楼居然没几天就坐满了。

  而生产部门与营销部门则积怨已深,营销部门销售不好便指责产品难看,产品则指责营销差。这样的互相推诿与个人权利太大甚至导致个别环节出现腐败,陈年必须为整个架构进行重新组织。

  目前,在今年6月份,凡客最终确定了6大6小事业部,19条产品线,4大生产中心,1个质检中心。

  将大类产品作为事业部运营,包括鞋子、运动休闲类产品、衬衫针织、女装等等。"这样的好处就是专人专项,每一个人可能只是负责鞋子中的一种单品或几种单品,而非原来几条产品线。"焦宏宇表示,"每一个事业部都有一个营销中心,这样事业部也能为其库存负责。"

  而4大生产中心则与事业部平行,负责与供应商联系,彻底杜绝此前不同部门为了业绩而疯狂下单不计库存的行为。

  而调整结构的同时,凡客也在减少供应商与sku。"我们现在就剩100多个供应商了,减了一半吧;而且sku也由此前的巅峰20多万、不计类型的产品减到了现在的六七万个,因为此前觉得只要有平台什么都做,什么小家电和生活用品都有,但长期看这样的产品不适合凡客这样的品牌,所以砍掉;而营销成本则是比去年缩减了一半。"焦宏宇表示,一系列缩减,最终让凡客将毛利率从去年的30%提升至今年40%至50%。

  "通过调整,我们知道什么能做,什么不能做。让凡客产品回到我们力所能及的尺度中。未来去慢慢探索创新试错的可能,即使错,我们也知道如何控制公司了。"陈年表示。

  自身如何造血

  在没上市的情况下,烧钱总会烧完

  陈年希望四季度盈利。这样的行为似乎更像是为其未来"打包票"。一直以来,凡客都在亏损,烧钱。尤其是在过去的四年中,凡客吸引了6轮、4.22亿美元的投资。

  一位凡客高管曾坦言:"已经6轮融资了,即使不上市也不会有人投资了。所以在没上市的情况下,烧钱总会烧完,必须拥有自身造血能力才是最重要的。"

  而陈年目前的想法也是上市与否不重要,只要企业自身健康。

  凡客第四季度能否盈利非常重要,关系到是否能提振投资者信心,凡客是否有自己造血而非继续靠输血过活的能力。

  然而,凡客大动作调整改革,上市或仍然没有那么容易。有消息称如果凡客IPO,其估值应高达45亿美元,但现在的资本市场环境,投行承销压力很大。

  对于即将结束的2012年,陈年说,"资本市场好我们就上,不好我们自己活得也不错。"


http://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/gsnews/20121130/031513848121.shtml

2012年11月29日

联想智能手机销量大增 机遇与挑战并存 Lenovo Grows Quickly in Smartphones but Challenges Ahead

全球范围来看,苹果(Apple Inc.)和三星电子(Samsung Electronics Co.)或许可以说是智能手机市场的主导者,但在中国,却杀出一个增长迅猛、危及其领先地位的竞争者。

Lenovo
联想Ideaphone K860智能手机
生产个人电脑(PC)的中国企业联想集团有限公司(Lenovo Group Ltd.)今年第三季度售出的智能手机数量是苹果的两倍,同时也拉近了它与中国市场上销量最大的三星电子的差距,且大有赶超之势。研究人员普遍预计,中国将于今年超越美国,成为世界上最大的智能手机市场。但在迅速扩张的同时,联想的智能手机业务也面临挑战:如何在一个对手如林、拼价格且难以赚到钱的行业里挤压出利润?

由于中国需求旺盛,今年第三季度联想智能手机的销量较上年同期高出了17倍,这说明全球智能手机市场的整体增长不再靠美国或其他成熟市场推动。此外,这还引出了另一个问题:全球智能手机行业是否会出现苹果和三星电子之外的第三个赢家?目前只有苹果和三星电子两家智能手机生产商实现了强劲利润。分析人士说,尽管前路挑战重重,联想仍有迎难而上的潜力。

巴克莱(Barclays)负责硬件技术业的董事总经理杨应超说,联想的优势在于,它中国市场的PC业务很赚钱,可为智能手机的扩张提供资金。他说,PC业务获利使得联想可优先考虑智能手机业务的增长问题,而不是盈利。今年第三季度,联想在中国市场上的PC业务实现了5.9%的营运利润率。

由于中国和其它新兴市场上初次使用智能手机的用户有着爆炸性需求,全球智能手机市场的格局正在不断变化,这为苹果和三星电子以外的竞争者带来了潜在机遇,它们可争取到足够的挑战这两位巨头的规模经济。不过,这里也存在巨大挑战,即廉价智能机在市场上会遭遇激烈的价格竞争,原因是市场上有很多竞争者在拼销量,因此可能面临长期不盈利的风险。

联想说,自己的智能手机业务目前并不盈利,但没有披露亏损数据。不过据研究机构Gartner的统计,联想占中国智能手机市场的份额已从去年第三季度的仅1.7%大幅增至今年第三季度的14.8%,仅次于三星电子16.7%的占比,大大领先于苹果的6.9%。中国是联想智能手机销量最大的市场。Gartner预测联想将在明年底之前成为中国第一大智能手机生产商。


联想首席执行长杨元庆在本月公司召开的电话会议上说,由于营销投入和销售渠道等原因,联想还未能在智能手机领域获利。杨元庆说,他预计未来两至三个季度后,该业务将在中国市场实现盈利。

此外,联想也在努力扩大其海外手机业务。该公司的智能手机目前在印度、印尼、越南、菲律宾和俄罗斯有售。联想还计划进军其它新兴市场。

联想发言人谢弗(Jeff Shafer)说,我们在智能手机业务上的眼光极其长远。他说,一旦联想能够夺取10%以上的市场份额,在市场上与组件供应商和电信运营商打交道时就会有更大的议价权,进而可以降低成本并持续盈利。他还说,如果联想在中国的智能手机业务能够盈利,这笔利润还可能为联想在其他业务领域的增长提供资金。

国际数据公司(IDC)的数据显示,由于联想在华智能手机业务迅猛增长,在截至9月底的一个季度,联想在全球智能手机市场中所占的份额为3.7%,较上年同期的0.37%大幅上升。据加拿大经纪公司Canaccord Genuity的数据,苹果和三星的智能手机发货量在全球总发货量中占了近一半,此外,部分由于诺基亚(Nokia Corp.)和Research In Motion Ltd.等其他竞争对手的亏损,苹果和三星的利润占了行业总利润的106%。

尽管如此,令一些分析人士感到怀疑的是,联想的这样一种战略是否能够在全球成功实施。

里昂证券(CLSA)亚太地区科技产业研究部主管巴拉特(Nicolas Baratte)说,这种先是在销量上争取获得较大的市场份额、然后再努力提高利润率的战略很少成功。他说,激烈的价格竞争使利润率微薄,因为大部分智能手机厂家都难以使自己的产品与众不同。

其他分析人士说,在中国,由于品牌认知度和广泛的分销渠道,联想的智能手机业务可能比竞争对手处于更有利的位置,但该公司可能在海外面临较大挑战。

谢弗说,过去几年中,联想一直在努力加强全球品牌打造和营销工作,在海外市场中消费者对其个人电脑的认知度将有助于使其智能手机获得与众不同的地位。

分析人士说,即便联想的智能手机业务在中国实现盈利,其利润率面临的压力也不会减轻。他们指出,低端手机降价的速度比预期更快。据里昂证券上周发布的报告,过去一年里,中国入门级智能手机的价格累计跌了40%到50%。如今,更多价格在人民币1,000元左右的智能手机都具有更高的配置,比如更大的屏幕、更高像素的摄像头和更快的处理器。报告说,由此暗示出的一个令人担心的问题是,这类手机在质量和性能方面与价格更高的品牌手机相差并不大。

据该公司说,联想部分智能手机在中国的售价不到人民币1,000元,而联想高端手机售价在2,000元以上。

联想亚太及拉美区总裁杜伊尔(Milko van Duijl)上个月接受《华尔街日报》采访时说,我们下定决心提供很多不同产品──包括形形色色的各类产品,不止是高端和低端智能手机,也有中档手机。

联想2005年收购了国际商业机器公司(IBM)的个人电脑业务。国际数据公司的数据显示,联想目前是全球第二大个人电脑销售商,预计将很快超过惠普(Hewlett-Packard Co.)坐上头把交椅。不过,与智能手机和平板电脑相比,传统个人电脑市场的增长潜力有限。

联想2010年推出首款智能手机,去年组建了一个新的业务部门──移动互联和数字家庭业务集团,专注于智能手机和平板电脑的开发。今年5月,该公司宣布将投资约8亿美元在中国新建一个移动产品开发生产中心。

Juro Osawa

(更新完成)

(本文版权归道琼斯公司所有,未经许可不得翻译或转载。)


Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. may be the dominant smartphone brands in the world, but in China, there's a fast-growing competitor that threatens their leadership.

Chinese personal-computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. sold twice as many smartphones than Apple in the third quarter and moved closer to overtaking Samsung as the largest vendor in the country, which is widely forecast by researchers to outgrow the U.S. as the biggest smartphone market in the world this year. But Lenovo's smartphone business is also facing a challenge as it expands quickly: how to squeeze out a profit in an industry where many players compete on price and struggle to make money.

Lenovo's smartphone sales in the three months through September grew 18 times from a year earlier thanks to strong demand in China, indicating that the overall growth in the world-wide smartphone market is no longer driven by the U.S. or other mature markets. That also raises the question as to whether there could be a third winner in the global smartphone industry, other than Apple and Samsung--the only two handset vendors enjoying strong profits now. Analysts say Lenovo has the potential, despite many challenges ahead.

'Lenovo's strength is that its China PC business is a cash cow that can fund the cost of its smartphone expansion,' said Barclays managing director Kirk Yang, who covers the technology hardware industry. Profits from PCs allow Lenovo's smartphone business to prioritize growth over profitability for now, he said. Lenovo's PC business in China had an operating margin of 5.9% in the quarter through September.

Explosive demand among first-time smartphone users in China and other emerging markets is changing the dynamics in the global handset market, creating potential opportunities for players other than Apple and Samsung to obtain enough economies of scale to take on the two giants. The big challenge, however, is the fierce price competition in the market for inexpensive smartphones: many players trying to outsell each other in that market risk becoming chronically unprofitable.

Lenovo says that its smartphone business is unprofitable, without disclosing the loss figure. But its market share in China, where it sells most of its handsets, soared to 14.8% in the quarter through September from just 1.7% a year earlier. That's second only to Samsung's 16.7% and well ahead of Apple's 6.9%, according to Gartner, which predicts that Lenovo will become the No. 1 smartphone vendor in China by next year.

Lenovo Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing said during a conference call this month that the company hasn't been able to generate a profit in smartphones due in part to investment in marketing and sales channels. Mr. Yang said he expects the business to become profitable in China in two to three quarters.

Lenovo is also trying to expand its mobile business outside China - it now sells smartphones in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Russia, and plans to enter other emerging markets.

'We have a very long-term view on our smartphone business,' said Lenovo spokesman Jeff Shafer. Once the company can grab market share of more than 10%, the scale gives it more bargaining power in dealing with component suppliers and telecommunications carriers in the market, resulting in lower costs and consistent profits, he said. If the smartphone business in China becomes profitable, that profit could also help fund growth elsewhere, he added.

Globally, Lenovo held a 3.7% share of the smartphone market in the quarter through September, up sharply from 0.37% a year earlier, thanks to its rapid growth in China, according to IDC. Apple and Samsung not only accounted for nearly half of world-wide smartphone shipments, but also 106% of the industry's profits due in part to losses at other competitors like Nokia Corp. and Research In Motion Ltd., according to Canadian brokerage firm Canaccord Genuity.

Still, some analysts are skeptical about whether such a strategy can be executed successfully world-wide.

'The strategy of initially seeking a large market share in terms of volume, and then trying to increase margins later, rarely works,' said Nicolas Baratte, CLSA's head of technology research for the Asia Pacific region. Intense price competition keeps margins thin because most smartphone vendors are unable to differentiate their products, he said.

In China, Lenovo's smartphone business may be better positioned than rivals due to brand recognition and wide distribution channels, but the company may face greater challenges abroad, other analysts said.

Mr. Shafer said that Lenovo has been trying to strengthen its global branding and marketing over the past few years, and consumer recognition of its PCs in overseas markets will help differentiate its smartphones.

Even if Lenovo's smartphone business becomes profitable in China, pressure on its margins won't ease, analysts say, noting that prices of low-end handsets are falling faster than expectations. Over the past year, the prices of entry-level smartphones in China have dropped by 40% to 50%, according to a CLSA report last week. More smartphones sold at about 1,000 yuan ($160) now come with higher technological specifications, such as larger screens, better cameras and more powerful processors. 'The scary implication here is that these phones do not differ greatly in terms of quality and performance' from higher-priced branded handsets, the report said.

Some Lenovo smartphones in China sell for less than 1,000 yuan, while its high-end models are over 2,000 yuan, according to the company.

'We are very determined to offer many different products - a wide range of choice that covers everything, not just high-end or low-end (smartphones) but also in the middle,' said Milko van Duijl, Lenovo's president of Asia Pacific and Latin America in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last month.

Lenovo, which acquired International Business Machines Corp.'s PC business in 2005, is now the world's second-largest PC vendor, according to IDC, and is expected to become No. 1 soon by overtaking Hewlett-Packard Co. Still, the potential growth in the overall market for traditional PCs is limited compared with smartphones and tablets.

Lenovo launched its first smartphone in 2010 and created a new business unit called the Mobile Internet Digital Home group last year to focus on developing smartphones and tablets. In May, the company announced plans to invest about $800 million on a new facility in China to develop and produce mobile products.

Juro Osawa
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2012年11月25日

职业性格测试 你了解几分? True or False: These Tests Can Tell if You Are Right for This Job

求职面试中,应聘者在握手时的表现或许至关重要。不过,能让企业了解到握手背后的真实情况的则是性格测试。

电子产品零售商HHGregg、汽车租赁企业Avis Budget Group集团以及通信公司Sprint Nextel等各类企业都在采用性格测试来考察求职者的责任心、外向性格以及其他可能有助于造就成功职业生涯(亦或毁掉职业生涯)的性格特征。

此类测试题极少直截了当,其答案也是如此,毕竟其中涉及到了心理学。应聘者可能会试图给出他们认为企业想听到的回答,不大可能会承认自己的性格缺陷或不良行为。许多心理学家认为,其后果是此类测试题所测试到的东西还非常不明确。

此外,出题者也指出,单单一个回答本身并没有什么意义,必须把它与其他一系列回答放在一起考量。为了实现最佳的预测结果,企业常常找出其表现优异的应聘者表现出了什么性格特征,然后对这些特征进行测试。

下文介绍了一些性格测试的样题、心理学家与试题设计者对各测试题实际要考察的是什么、受试者的回答会如何被阐释。

1. 看电视时,相比文艺节目,我一般更喜欢看动作片。

A) 经常

B) ?

C) 很少

这道测试题取自16种个性因素问卷(Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire,简称“16PF”),该测试题的发布者、人格及能力测试研究所(Institute for Personality and Ability Testing)的首席心理学家拉尔夫•A.莫滕森(Ralph A. Mortensen)称,该题考查的是答题者对逻辑及感觉与直觉的偏好。喜欢看动作片的人可能更注重事实,这是从事分析类工作的重要特质。那些回答为“很少”的人可能更具有创造力。如果答题者选择了B选项中的问号,其提供的信息量就不多,它可能表示答题者看动作片与文艺节目的时间相差无几,又或者是他们对此不确定。

Noah Woods
2. 是非题:“大家常常对我期望过高。”

这道题选自加州心理调查表(California Psychological Inventory),该测试题的发布者CPP公司的研究主管里奇•汤普森(Rich Thompson)称,该题能够表明答题者的“概念流利性”,即理解复杂概念的能力。回答为“是”的答题者可能容易被压力压垮、不相信自己的才能。

3. 是非题:“我喜欢参加派对和社交。”

回答为“是”可能表明你能在“社交能力”方面加分,表明你性格外向。但是,它会让你在“独立性”方面减分。汤普森博士称,它可能表明“你喜欢成为大众的一份子,而如果你喜欢融入大众的话,或许你就容易随大流”。

4. 从以下选项中选择最能反映你观点的一句话。然后从剩余的选项中选出最不符合你观点的一句话。

A.我不是非得规定和控制议程。

B.伤害他人的感情基本毫无必要。

C.我通常是最先与陌生人攀谈的人。

D.我绝不会踩着别人来保证自己获得成功。

这道测试题选自Caliper Profile,它测试的是答题者的(A)控制欲、(B)情感敏感度、(C)合群程度以及(D)强势性格。由Caliper公司发布的Caliper Profile评测对23种分组的性格特点进行了比较。根据答题者对这道题的回答,有些人可能会被认为更加敏感而不够强势,但这并不代表他们就是软弱之人。选择其他选项可能表示这些人更加强势而自我约束能力不强。Caliper公司的创始人兼首席执行长赫布•格林伯格(Herb Greenberg)指出,这都是相对的,而且某些特质在特定的工作岗位中更加重要。

5. 是非题:“很多事情我都做得比我认识的几乎每一个人都要好。”

这道题选自Hogan Assessment Systems公司的霍根性格调查表(Hogan Personality Inventory),该公司的高级顾问贾瑞特•夏尔胡普(Jarrett Shalhoop)称,对这道测试题回答“是”可能表明答题者自信或自大,而回答为“否”传达出的则是答题者的谦逊或不安全感。

6. 是非题:“我不介意别人告诉我要做什么。”

夏尔胡普称,回答为“是”的人或许能够很好地遵照指示,情况特别严重的人可能没有能力独自行动。回答为“否”的人表明其独立,但也有可能表明其人难以管理。

7. 下列情况更符合还是更不符合你的实际情况,依照五分制为此评分。

“受到别人夸奖时总是觉得不安。”

选自WorkPlace Big Five Profile 4.0的这道题测试的是谦逊或自豪的程度,有助于发掘自信成功的销售人员。设计这份测试资料的应用认知研究中心(Center for Applied Cognitive Studies)的研发总经理皮尔斯•J.霍华德(Pierce J. Howard)称,自豪是一种重要的特质,但是谦逊在学术界或宗教界则更被看重。他说:“对于这方面的受众来说,过分注重仪表和施展魅力不起作用。”

MELISSA KORN

(本文版权归道琼斯公司所有,未经许可不得翻译或转载。)


An applicant's handshake may be crucial at a job interview. But a personality test can tell a company what's behind that handshake.

Companies as varied as electronics retailer HHGregg Inc., rental-car agency Avis Budget Group Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. all use personality tests to help assess job applicants for conscientiousness, extroversion or other traits that may be useful in forging a successful career─or, alternatively, derail one.

The questions are rarely straightforward, and neither are the answers. Psychology is involved, after all. Applicants may try to give answers they think the company wants to hear, and aren't likely to admit to character flaws or bad behavior. So there can be a great deal of opacity regarding what the questions are even measuring, psychologists say.

Moreover, test makers say a single answer holds little meaning in its own right and must be weighed alongside a series of other responses. For the best predictive results, companies often find out what traits their high performers display, and then test for those characteristics.

Here is a sampling of personality-test questions, what psychologists and test designers say about what each question is really looking for, and how the range of possible responses could be interpreted.

1. On television, I usually prefer watching an action movie than a program about art.

A) Often

B) ?

C) Rarely

This question, from 16PF, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, addresses an applicant's preference for logic versus feelings and intuition, says Ralph A. Mortensen, chief psychologist of the test's publisher, the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing. Someone opting for an action flick may be more fact-focused, an important trait for analytical jobs. Those who answer 'rarely' may have more creative personalities. If they choose the question mark on B, it doesn't tell you much: Perhaps they do both an equal amount or perhaps they simply aren't sure.

2. True or False: People often expect too much of me.

This question, from the California Psychological Inventory, indicates a test taker's 'conceptual fluency,' or ability to understand complex concepts, says Rich Thompson, director of research at test publisher CPP Inc. Someone who answers 'True' is likely to be easily overwhelmed and may not believe in his or her own talent.

3. True or False: I like parties and socials.

A 'True' response would be a positive sign for the 'sociability' scale, indicating an outgoing personality. But it's a negative for 'independence.' It could mean 'you like being part of a crowd,' Dr. Thompson says. 'And if you like being part of a crowd, perhaps you follow the crowd.'

4. Select one statement that reflects the viewpoint most like yours. Then, from the remaining choices, select the one statement that least reflects your viewpoint.

A. I don't necessarily need to define and control the agenda.

B. It's almost never necessary to hurt other people's feelings.

C. I'm usually the first person to strike up a conversation with strangers.

D. I would never step over others in order to ensure my own success.

This question, from the Caliper Profile, measures someone's need to be controlling (A), as well as their sensitivity (B), gregariousness (C) and aggressiveness (D). The assessment, published by Caliper Corp., compares groupings of 23 personality traits. While some people may be deemed more sensitive than aggressive, based on their responses to this question, that doesn't mean they're pushovers. Other statements may reveal those same people are more aggressive than they are self-disciplined. 'It's all relative,' says Herb Greenberg, Caliper's founder and chief executive, and certain traits will be more important for certain jobs.

5. True or false: I do many things better than almost everyone I know.

Responding 'True' to this question from the Hogan Personality Inventory could indicate confidence or arrogance, while a 'False' response conveys humility or insecurity, says Jarrett Shalhoop, senior consultant at Hogan Assessment Systems.

6. True or false: I don't mind being told what to do.

Someone saying 'True' may follow directions well, or in the extreme may be incapable of independent action. A 'False' response suggests autonomy, or could indicate the respondent is difficult to manage, Dr. Shalhoop says.

7. Answer the following on a five-point scale, whether it is more true or more false.

'Is uneasy when receiving praise.'

This statement, from the WorkPlace Big Five Profile 4.0, measures humility and pride, helpful in identifying confident, successful salespeople. Pride is important, but humility is valued more in academic or religious settings, says Pierce J. Howard, managing director of research and development at the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies, which created the profile. 'Spit and polish and charm are not going to do it for that sort of audience,' Dr. Howard says.

MELISSA KORN

2012年11月20日

中国新一代领导人:李克强 Next Premier Came Of Age In Era Of Openness

1978年底,一群中国法学学生在东部城市南京实习时,首次听说北京的异见人士在市里的一道砖�上张贴政治诗歌、宣传页和标语。

据其中的一位学生说,李克强就在这群学生之列。李克强上周四成为中共新领导班子中的二号人物,并将于明年3月出任国务院总理,主掌世界第二大经济体。

Reuters / AP
互动图:中国新一代领导人
一开始,部分在南京实习的学生想赶紧回到北京,参加"民主�"运动。但他们的教授禁止他们这样做,警告说"民主�"运动将是昙花一现。学生们待在了南京;"民主�"被封,很多在上面张贴标语的人被投入监狱。

这件小事从一定程度上显示出1978年至1982年李克强在北京大学学习时中国活跃的气氛,李克强在那时首次接触到西方法律和政治概念。那个时期正值毛泽东去世、中国开始市场化改革后,中国不同寻常的开放。

围绕上周中共领导层换届的主要问题之一是,李克强是否会利用自己所受的教育来鼓励现任总理温家宝经常讲到但从未实施的改革。

从很大程度上这将取决于他与习近平的关系。习近平上周四接替胡锦涛成为中共中央总书记。

据党内人士说,在新一届中央政治局常委会的七位常委中,仅有两位是胡锦涛的门生,李克强是其中的一位,他也是胡锦涛首选的接班人。习近平和其他四位常委则是胡锦涛的前任江泽民所支持的。

但李克强成为党内二号人物,地位早早获得了提升:温家宝在中央政治局常委中仅排在第三位,排在第二位的是全国人大常委会委员长。或许更重要的是,除习近平外,李克强是中共新一代领导人中唯一一个将在五年任期后连任常委的人,而2017年将可能有更多胡锦涛的盟友成为常委。

分析人士说,李克强绝非戈尔巴乔夫(Mikhail Gorbachev):他的整个政治生涯在党内行事都很谨慎,他的保护人胡锦涛担任中共中央总书记的10年,中国经济改革陷入停顿,一些政治自由被取消。但据党内人士和政治分析人士说,李克强学生时代接触的西方思想以及他的很多同辈人追求的折中主义仕途,这些都使他有别于上一代及新一代领导人中的很多人。

他也是为数不多的英语相对流利的领导人之一。

新加坡国立大学(National University of Singapore)教授薄智跃说,李克强必须改变自己的思维方式,以便在官僚环境下取得成功,但李克强内心深处实际上是一个自由派,无论是政治方面还是经济方面。李克强在北大求学时,薄智跃也是北大学生,并且认识李克强。薄智跃说,从思想观念上说,他非常开放。

同习近平等其它几位新任常委一样,李克强这一代人在十几岁时经历了1966至1976年文化大革命的动乱,曾接受过"上山下乡"的"再教育"。

但令李克强与众不同的是,他完全依靠自己的才华考上了大学,是1949年以来中国首批学习西方法学和政治理论的大学生之一。这和习近平有着明显不同,后者的父亲是一位知名革命领袖。

按照习近平自己的描述,1975年他离开农村并进入北京的清华大学学习是由于当地中共官员和他父亲求情。当时中国的大学还处于混乱之中,很多大学教师都还还在"下放",没有返校。

李克强是"七七级"的一员。"七七级"是指1977年参加高考进入大学学习的一批人。经过文革动荡期间漫长的中断之后,中国在毛泽东去世后的1977年恢复了高考制度,当年的高考是中国历史上竞争最激烈的一次。

李克强在北京大学的同学中,有几个人后来参加了1989年在天安门广场举行的民主抗议活动。这场抗议活动遭到了中国军方的镇压,从而结束了中国在政治上相对开放的10年。

在课余时间,北大学生常常聚集在校内知名的"三角地"交换各类书籍、音乐和理念。大家还听台湾流行歌手邓丽君的歌,当时邓丽君的歌被斥为"靡靡之音"而遭禁。

在2008年发表的一份有关学生时代的简短回忆录中,李克强写道,在这个时期,知识在以爆炸式的速度增长。我到北大不仅是学知识,而且是为了塑造一种气质,掌握一门学科。

李克强的同学回忆说,李克强很安静,学习非常刻苦,大多数时间都用于学习英文。他的同学何勤华在一篇回忆录中说,李克强走路时,在食堂排队买饭时,甚至在骑车或等公交车时都在背英语。

他的同学说,李克强同那些后来成为异见人士的活动分子走得不是特别近。

但李克强深受他的教授之一龚祥瑞的影响。龚祥瑞教授上世纪30年代曾留学伦敦政治经济学院(London School of Economics),曾公开主张多党制的优点。

龚祥瑞选择李克强进入一个小组翻译英国法学家丹宁勋爵(Lord Denning)的名著《法律的正当程序》(The Due Process of Law),并请李克强帮助他准备一本行政法方面的新书。

参与翻译丹宁勋爵这本著作的另外一位译者是杨百揆。杨百揆是李克强的同学,因为参加89事件而被判入狱11个月。

不过李克强同一个学生组织进行的带有试验性质的竞争性选举划清了界限,转而在中共体制内逐级晋升。

1982年从北大毕业后,李克强在共青团工作了15年,后来重回北大读在职研究生,在厉以宁教授的指导下攻读经济学硕士学位。厉以宁是中国最早主张市场化改革的人士之一,人称"厉股份"。

李克强的论文是关于城市化的──中国官员最近在与一位西方银行家的会谈中一再提到城市化问题。随着未来10年中国领导人努力通过刺激内需、特别是农民工的消费而实现经济再平衡,城市化将是中国面临的一个重要问题。

李克强的学术及政府工作背景与温家宝截然不同。温家宝学地质出身,工作后先是在中国偏远的西北部地区做了14年的地质学家。在出任总理之前,他从未担任过部长或主持一个省的工作。

李克强曾任中国人口第一大省河南省的省委书记及中国工业化程度最高的省份之一辽宁省的省委书记。他现为常务副总理,辅佐温家宝管理经济。

从李克强的从政记录看,他胜任其职,但表现并不突出。

一些人将河南的一桩丑闻归咎于他。上世纪90年代,河南有数万人在卖血后感染了HIV病毒。李克强的同班同学说,这个问题始于李克强在河南的前任。

在辽宁省,李克强因推出一项棚户区改造及为一百万人改善住房的计划而被人们牢记。担任副总理期间,他还负责实施一项2015年前建设3,600万套保障房的计划,他说保障房可以帮助推动消费。

美国官员说,在实现中国经济再平衡的问题上,李克强听起来比温家宝更真诚。他们认为温家宝有时只是走走过场。实际上,李克强常常使用"城市化"这个词而不是"再平衡"。

李克强今年还批准出版了世界银行(World Bank)与国务院发展研究中心撰写的报告《中国2030》(China 2030)。该报告主张打破很有影响的国有企业的垄断。

李克强对政治改革的看法则没有这么明确,但他的同班同学说,由于他的很多亲密朋友是律师、法官和法学教授,他清楚地了解中国法律制度的薄弱。

他的一位同班同学说,他明白问题所在,但问题是,他能否改变这种体制,抑或是被体制所改变?

JEREMY PAGE

(Bob Davis对本文亦有贡献)


77级:恢复高考后的首批大学生

李克强在高考竞争史无前例激烈的一年进入了北大求学。同一时期在北大上学的人包括:

―王绍光:"新左派"、香港中文大学(Chinese University of Hong Kong)教授

―张伟:曾是中共官员,在89事件后辞职,后去剑桥大学(Cambridge)教授经济学

―何勤华:华东政法大学校长

―王军涛:上世纪80年代一份地下杂志的发行人,89事件后入狱四年,后流亡美国。

―杜春:司法部律师公证工作指导司司长

―杨百揆:89事件中曾参与撰写请愿书,后因"反革命罪"入狱

(更新完成)

(本文版权归道琼斯公司所有,未经许可不得翻译或转载。)


In late 1978, a group of Chinese law students were on a field trip to the eastern city of Nanjing when they first heard that dissidents in Beijing were pasting political poems, pamphlets and slogans on a brick wall downtown.

Among the students, according to one of them, was Li Keqiang, the man who on Thursday took the No. 2 slot in a new Communist Party leadership and is set to become premier and chief steward of the world's second-largest economy in March.

At first, some of the students in Nanjing wanted to rush back to Beijing to join the 'Democracy Wall' movement. But their professor forbade them, warning that the movement would be short-lived. The students stayed in Nanjing; the Democracy Wall was shut down and many of those who used it were jailed.

The episode gives a taste of the heady atmosphere in which Mr. Li was first exposed to Western concepts of law and politics while studying at Peking University from 1978 to 1982─an era of unusual openness following the death of Chairman Mao Zedong and the launch of market-oriented reforms.

One of the key questions surrounding this week's leadership change is whether Mr. Li will draw on his education to encourage the kind of reforms that the current premier, Wen Jiabao, often spoke about but never delivered.

Much will depend on his relationship with Xi Jinping, who replaced Hu Jintao as party chief on Thursday.

Mr. Li is one of only two protégés of Mr. Hu in the new seven-man leadership and was his first choice as successor, according to party insiders. Mr. Xi and four others are backed by Mr. Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin.

But Mr. Li was given an early boost when he garnered the second rank in the party: Mr. Wen had only been No. 3, with the No. 2 spot held by the head of China's rubber-stamp parliament. Perhaps more important, Mr. Li is the only member of the new leadership apart from Mr. Xi who will stay on beyond the next five-year term, and more Hu allies could join the body in 2017.

Mr. Li is no Mikhail Gorbachev: He has toed the party line for his entire career and his patron, Mr. Hu, has presided over a decade in which economic reforms stalled and some political freedoms were rolled back, analysts say. But his exposure to Western ideas as a student, and the eclectic careers pursued by many of his contemporaries, set him apart from many in both the previous and the new generation of leaders, according to party insiders and political analysts.

He is also one of the few leaders with relatively fluent English.

'He has had to modify his way of thinking to succeed in a bureaucratic environment, but deep down Li Keqiang is really a liberal, politically and economically,' said Bo Zhiyue, a professor at the National University of Singapore, who was a contemporary and an acquaintance of Mr. Li's at Peking University. 'Intellectually, he's very open.'

Like other members of the new Standing Committee, including Mr. Xi, Mr. Li is part of a generation who were taken out of school as teenagers and sent into the countryside for 're-education' during the turmoil of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

What makes him different─especially from Mr. Xi, whose father was a famous revolutionary─is that he relied solely on his talents to win a university place and was among the first students since 1949 to study Western law and political theory.

Mr. Xi, according to his own accounts, secured his escape from the countryside and a place at Beijing's Tsinghua University in 1975 thanks to lobbying by local party officials and his own father. At that time, the university was still in chaos and many teachers had not returned from internal exile.

Mr. Li was one of the 'Class of '77' who won their university places in the most competitive entry examinations in China's history in 1977─the year after Mao's deaths when exams were revived after a long hiatus amid the Cultural Revolution turmoil.

His contemporaries at Peking University included several people who later became involved in the pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square in 1989, which were crushed by the military, bringing to an end the decade of relative political openness.

In their spare time, students used to congregate in an area known as the 'Triangle' to exchange books, music and ideas. They listened to songs by Teresa Teng, a Taiwanese pop star whose music was banned for being too sensual.

'In this period, knowledge was expanding with the speed of an explosion,' Mr. Li wrote in a brief memoir of his student days published in 2008. 'I came here looking not just for knowledge, but to mold a kind of temperament, to master a kind of academic discipline.'

Classmates remember Mr. Li as a quiet, obsessively hardworking student who spent much of his time trying to master English. 'He recited it while he was walking, while queuing to eat in the canteen, even when riding or waiting for the bus,' recalled He Qinhua, a classmate, in a memoir.

Contemporaries say he wasn't particularly close to those who went on to become dissidents.

But Mr. Li was strongly influenced by one of his professors, Gong Xiangrui, who had studied at the London School of Economics in the 1930s and who publicly advocated the virtues of a multiparty system.

Mr. Gong chose Mr. Li to be part of a group to help translate the book 'The Due Process of Law' by Lord Denning, the British jurist, and to prepare a new book on administrative law.

One of the others who helped translate Lord Denning's book was Yang Baikui, a fellow student who was jailed for 11 months for his role in the 1989 demonstrations.

Mr. Li, though, distanced himself from experimental competitive elections for one student body, and instead climbed through the ranks of the Communist system.

Graduating in 1982, he spent 15 years in the Communist Youth League, but returned to Peking University to do a part-time master's degree in economics under professor Li Yining, an early advocate of market reforms, known as 'Mr. Shareholding.'

Li Keqiang wrote his thesis on urbanization─something Chinese officials repeatedly pointed out in recent meetings with one Western banker. Urbanization is a critical issue for China over the next decade as leaders try to rebalance its economy by stimulating domestic consumption, especially among rural migrants.

His academic and administrative records stand in contrast to those of Mr. Wen, who studied geology and spent the first 14 years of his career working as a geologist in China's remote northwest. He had never been a minister or run a province when he became premier.

Mr. Li has governed Henan, China's most populous province, and Liaoning, one of its most industrialized. Most recently, he has been executive vice premier, helping Mr. Wen to run the economy.

Mr. Li's record in government has been competent if unremarkable.

Some blame him for a scandal in Henan, in which tens of thousands of people were infected with HIV after giving to blood banks in the 1990s. Classmates say that the problem began under Mr. Li's predecessor in Henan.

In Liaoning, Mr. Li is remembered for spearheading a plan to renovate slums and improve housing for a million people. As vice premier, he also championed a campaign to build 36 million affordable homes by 2015, arguing that social housing helps to boost consumption.

U.S. officials say Mr. Li sounds more sincere about rebalancing China's economy than Mr. Wen, who they believed sometimes was just going through the motions. In fact, Mr. Li often uses the word 'urbanization' instead of 'rebalancing.'

Mr. Li also endorsed publication this year of a report called 'China 2030' prepared by the World Bank and China's state-backed Development Research Center, which advocated breaking apart powerful state sector monopolies.

His views on political reform are less clear, but classmates say he has a clear understanding of the weakness of China's legal system as many of his close friends are lawyers, judges and law professors.

'He understands the problem,' said one classmate. 'The question is: Can he change the system, or has the system changed him?'

JEREMY PAGE
─Bob Davis contributed to this article.

Class of '77

Li Keqiang won entry to Peking University in a year of record competition for a spot. Among his contemporaries:

Wang Shaoguang ─ 'New leftist' professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Zhang Wei ─ Onetime party highflier who resigned after Tiananmen and went on to teach economics at Cambridge

He Qinhua ─ President of the East China University of Political Science and Law

Wang Juntao ─ Publisher of an underground magazine in the 1980s who spent four years in prison after the Tiananmen crackdown and went into exile in the U.S.

Du Chun ─ Director of the Ministry of Justice's Department for Directing Lawyers and Notarization

Yang Baikui ─ Jailed on 'counterrevolutionary' charges after helping to write petitions in the 1989 demonstrations

2012年11月17日

图解中国经济:胡锦涛主政下的十年 Charting China's Economy: A Decade Under Hu Jintao

任何一位中国领导人来说,其面临的首要任务是确保经济以足够快的速度增长,从而能够支撑就业、维护社会稳定。从这方面看,即将离任的领导人胡锦涛和温家宝在过去10年取得了巨大成功。中国经济增长强劲、就业率维持在高位、中共的统治得到了保障。

但在表象之下,有越来越多的迹象表明中国社会存在种种疲态:出口和房地产行业面临巨大压力;民营企业家被挤出市场;不平等和腐败现象激增;人们担心胡锦涛及其团队推行的改革不足以支撑下一个十年的经济增长。

在中南海主政10年之后,胡锦涛在经济方面交出了一份怎样的答卷?《中国实时报》栏目制作了多张图表为您一一梳理:



中国国内生产总值(GDP)快速增长,胡锦涛在位期间中国经济年均增速超过10%。由于有效应对了全球金融危机,中国赢得了世界的喝彩。中国经济增速和就业率在危机发生后仍然维持在正常的轨道上,并为世界经济的复苏做出了贡献。

快速增长的经济令中国一跃超过英国、法国、德国和日本,成为仅次于美国的全球第二大经济体。这令中国市场成为全球各企业的目标,使中国领导人在全球治理中得以发挥更大的作用,并促使西方批评家在人权问题上软化了立场。

美国国务卿希拉里•克林顿(Hilary Clinton)在2009年2月时说,在人权问题上向中国施压不能对全球经济危机、全球气候变化危机以及安全危机造成影响。从中可以明显看出其语气的转变。

中国民众也受益于快速增长的中国经济,生活水平大幅上升。国际货币基金组织(IMF)的数据显示,按购买力衡量的中国人均GDP水平从2002年的2,800美元增加到2012年预估的9,100美元,增幅达到两倍多。

快速增长的中国经济毅然决然地把中国带出贫穷国家的行列,进入中等收入国家群体。但几乎没有迹象表明中国开启了民主化进程。中国也并没有向外界预期那样,出现财富增加催生政治改革的现象。


中国经济保持10年快速增长的确是一个了不起的纪录。但其中很大一部分功劳要归于胡锦涛的前任江泽民。江泽民引导了影响深远的改革,为这10年的经济增长奠定了基础。不过,这些改革对经济的拉动作用眼下已经不断减弱。

中国在2001年加入世界贸易组织(WTO)令中国迎来了一个出口繁荣期。从2002年至2007年,中国出口年均增速接近30%。但随着中国成长为世界上最大的出口国,其在全球市场的份额超过10%,中国出口进一步扩张的空间也变得有限。不断上升的工资水平和不断升值的人民币均削弱了中国出口竞争力。

温州男杰剃须刀厂负责人陈朱南说,中国加入WTO之后出口业迅速蓬勃发展。温州的生意非常红火。

现在情况就没有那么好了。陈朱南说,2007年是一个分水岭。在此之前出口行业生意不错,但2007年后情况越来越糟。特别是今年,生意真的非常难做。2012年头十个月出口增速同比回落至7.8%的水平。

房地产行业走上了一条类似的道路。1998年,随着中国城市中的工厂宿舍和破旧住房升级为现代公寓,政府开始放开房地产市场,启动了逾10年之久的建设狂潮。从2002年至2010年,新建住宅施工面积以每年平均17%的速度增长,房地产成为推动内需的最重要行业。但随着飙升的房价与百姓收入脱节,政府被迫采取严格的控制措施,以遏制购房需求。

其结果是,供应过剩使中国城市周边出现大量无人居住的地区,市区里留下很多烂尾楼。2012年前10个月,新建住宅施工面积同比下降了12.7%。

江泽民和当时的国务院总理朱�基改革中国臃肿而不赚钱的国有企业,关闭了成千上万家低效企业。这为私营企业的繁荣发展创造了空间,为过去10年的经济增长打下了基础。

在胡锦涛主政时期,由于政府大力支持大型国有企业,之前取得的一些成果付之东流。虽然国有企业在企业总数中所占的比重持续下滑,2011年降至5%,但由于国有企业仍在经济的制高点占有主导地位,其产出在总产出中所占的比重一直保持在相对较高的26%。


劳动力和资本存量的迅速增长推高了中国的经济产出,胡锦涛也因此受益。他的继任者们将不会这么幸运。

过去10年,中国适龄劳动人口增加了数千万人。这提高了生产力,使工资保持在较低水平,进而极大地提高了出口竞争力。联合国的预测显示,未来10年中国劳动人口数量将见顶并开始减少。

10年前,中国的工厂缺少生产产品的机器设备,城市缺少将产品运至市场所需的道路和铁路。甚至是在2012年,中国的资本存量依然远远低于美国的水平。但经过10年狂热的支出后,单位投资创造的效益开始下降。

日本一桥大学(Hitotsubashi University)中国数据研究专家伍晓鹰(Harry Wu)估计,从2001年至2010年,中国每增加一个单位资本,能增加0.13个单位产出,单位产出量低于上世纪90年代的0.17和80年代高点时的0.24。伍晓鹰还是世界大型企业联合会中国经济与企业研究中心(The Conference Board China Center for Economics and Business)的高级顾问。

2009年至2010年中国为应对金融危机而大幅增加的放贷也损害了未来的经济增长前景。据“中国实时报”栏目估计,未偿贷款与GDP之比从2002年的约116%上升至2011年的172%。要想降低这个比率,需要将信贷增速降至名义GDP的增速以下。中国新一代领导人不能依靠大规模放贷来支持经济增长。


胡锦涛将和谐发展──即更公平地分享财富不断增长带来的好处──作为其战略的一个重要组成部分。尽管如此,中国的贫富差距已经扩大到令人担忧的水平。

贫富分化的程度在官方数据中没有得到体现,这一定程度上是因为中国的精英阶层不愿向政府统计人员披露其财富的详细情况。但学术调查显示,中国的分配不公已经达到了拉美的水平。

王小鲁2008年进行的一项调查显示,中国城市居民中收入最高那10%的人每年平均可支配收入为人民币13.9万元,比普通收入者高出六倍,比收入最低那10%的人高24倍。由于富有家庭的储蓄率比贫穷家庭的储蓄率要高,因此收入不公现象有助于解释中国的高储蓄率和低消费现象。

中国精英阶层收入非常高的原因之一是腐败。政府控制着重要投资项目和土地等清廉指数(Corruption Perceptions Index),中国以3.6分(总分10分)的得分排在第七十五位,跟同为“金砖国家”的巴西和印度差不多。

和征地、环境恶化等问题一起,腐败等因素导致社会进一步动荡。可靠数据很难取得,但清华大学教授孙立平曾说,2010年群体性事件有180,000起,高于2002年胡锦涛当上总书记时的50,000起。怎样管理不再那么和谐的社会,将是中国新一届领导层的面临的一个挑战。


在改革方面,胡锦涛及其团队并非完全无所建树。

他们的最大成就,是改善了公共服务和福利供给。2011年教育支出占GDP的4%,高于2002年的2.2%。医疗、养老保险范围扩大,而取消农业税有助于提高中国6.5亿农村人口的收入。

在金融行业,四大国有银行上市,在它们的贷款决策之中加入了市场约束的元素。作为经济再平衡关键工具的利率也已经部分自由化,这意味着家庭储户的回报率提高,这是朝着增加收入、提振消费的方向迈出的一步。

同为再平衡工具的汇率也已自由化。人民币从2005年与美元脱钩以来,已相对美元升值31%。2012年,人民币波动区间扩大,让市场对其走势有了更大的决定权。

人民币走强从一个方面降低了中国对外贸易的失衡,2011年经常账户顺差占GDP比例已经从2007年10.1%的高位降至2.8%。

再平衡也获得了政府控制范围之外力量的支持。劳动力供应的减少带来工资的快速上涨。来自江西省的40岁农民工刘兴顺(音)目前在深圳一家家具厂工作。他对“中国实时报”栏目说,2000年他一个月工资在1,000元(合160美元)左右,现在一个月能挣4,000元到5,000元。

工资上涨对于推动中国家庭消费增长有着至关重要的意义。然而,改革议程中的关键元素仍然未解,比如放开经济中被政府控制的行业,引入竞争,又如强化农民土地权利,改革不公正的城乡户籍制度等。


在胡锦涛引退之际,一些初步迹象表明,人们等待已久的中国经济再平衡可能终于开始了。

家庭消费占GDP比重从2002年的44%降至2010年的34.9%,远低于美国或亚洲邻国的水平。2011年又小幅升至35.4%。按国际标准和历史标准衡量,这个比例仍然非常低,但正在朝着正确的方向变动。

2012年,家庭收入的增长超过了GDP的增长。家庭收入占GDP比例的增加──这样消费者可以拿更多的钱去购物──是再平衡的核心所在。

这些变化到底是投资、出口暂缓之际的昙花一现,还是中国经济实现再平衡这个趋势的开始,将是确定胡锦涛经济遗产的一个关键因素。

Tom Orlik

(更新完成)

(本文版权归道琼斯公司所有,未经许可不得翻译或转载。)


The number one task for any Chinese leader: securing fast enough economic growth to shore up employment and social stability. On that basis, outgoing leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's decade at the top was a resounding success. Growth was strong, employment was high, and the Communist Party's rule secure.

Beneath the surface though, there are growing signs of strain: exhausted exports and real estate sectors, private entrepreneurs choked out of the market, burgeoning inequality and corruption, and fears that reform by Mr. Hu and his team has been insufficient to underpin another decade of growth.

After ten years behind the big desk at Zhongnanhai, what is Mr. Hu's economic legacy? China Real Time charts it out:

China's GDP growth blistered, averaging more than 10% a year during Mr. Hu's time in office. China won plaudits for an effective response to the financial crisis keeping growth and employment on track and contributing to the world recovery.

Rapid growth catapulted China up the global economic rankings, overtaking the UK, France, Germany and Japan to claim second place, behind only the United States. That made the Chinese market a target for the world's corporations, won its leaders an expanded role in global governance, and encouraged critics in the West to soften their tone on human rights.

In a noticeable rhetorical shift, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in February 2009 that pressing China on human rights 'can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis'

China's citizens benefited from rapid growth with a sharp increase in their standard of living. GDP per capita measured in purchasing power terms more than tripled from $2,800 in 2002 to a forecast $9,100 in 2012 according to the International Monetary Fund.

That lifted China decisively out of the ranks of poor nations, and into the middle-income bracket. With few signs of democratization, China also defied expectations that rising wealth would lead to political reform.

Ten years of rapid growth is an impressive record. But much of the credit must go to Mr. Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin, who shepherded far reaching reforms that laid the foundations of the decade's growth. The boost from those reforms is now running its course.

China's entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001 ushered in an export boom, with exports averaging nearly 30% annual growth from 2002-07. But as China has grown to be the world's largest exporter, with more than 10% of the global market, the room for further expansion is limited. Rising wages, and a stronger yuan, have also taken a toll on export competitiveness.

'The exporting industry was booming right after China joined the WTO. Business in Wenzhou was great' said Chen Zhunan, director of Wenzhou Nanjie Razor Factory.

Now things are not so good. 'The year 2007 is like the watershed. Before 2007, the export industry was doing good, but after 2007, it is becoming worse and worse. Especially this year, it is very difficult to do business,' said Mr. Chen. Export growth has fallen back to 7.8% year-on-year in the first ten months of 2012.

Real estate follows a similar trajectory. In 1998, the government opened the market, kicking off more than a decade of frenetic construction as urban China moved from factory dormitories and crumbling tenements to modern apartments. From 2002 to 2010, new residential floor space under construction averaged 17% annual growth, and real estate became the single most important driver of domestic demand. But as prices rose out of line with incomes, the government was forced to impose draconian controls, choking off demand.

The result: Oversupply has left China's cities ringed with empty suburbs and skylines littered with half-finished tower blocks. New floor space under construction shrank 12.7% year-over-year in the first ten months of 2012.

Jiang Zemin and then-Premier Zhu Rongji took a knife to China's bloated and unprofitable state sector, closing thousands of unproductive enterprises. That opened up space for private sector firms to flourish, underwriting the growth of the last decade.

Under Mr. Hu's administration, some of those gains have been reversed, as the government has thrown its weight behind state champions. The number of state-owned enterprises as a share of the total has continued to fall, dropping to 5% in 2011. But with SOEs still dominant in the commanding heights of the economy, their share of total output has remained relatively buoyant at 26%.

Mr. Hu also benefited from rapid additions to the labor force and capital stock that boosted China's output. His successors will not be so fortunate.

China added tens of millions to its working-aged population in the last decade. That added to production and kept wages low supercharging export competitiveness. In the decade ahead, projections from the United Nations show the workforce will plateau in size and then start to shrink.

A decade ago, China's factories were short of machines to produce goods and its cities lacked the roads and rails necessary to take them to market. Even in 2012, capital stock remains way below the level of the U.S. But after a decade of frenetic spending, the benefits of an extra unit of investment have been reduced.

China data whiz Harry Wu of Hitotsubashi University and The Conference Board China Center estimates that from 2001 to 2010 each additional unit of capital added 0.13 units to output, down from 0.17 in the 1990s and a high of 0.24 in the 1980s.

A lending splurge in 2009-10 as China responded to the financial crisis has also hurt future growth prospects. The ratio of outstanding credit to GDP has risen from around 116% in 2002 to 172% in 2011 according to China Real Time estimates. Bringing that ratio down will require growth in credit to fall below growth in nominal GDP. China's new leaders can't splurge on loans to support growth.

Mr. Hu made harmonious development sharing the benefits of rising wealth more evenly a key part of his strategy. Despite that, the gap between China's haves and have-nots has widened to worrying levels.

The extent of inequality is hidden in the official data, partly because China's elite are reluctant to disclose details of their wealth to government statisticians. But academic surveys point to levels of inequality hitting Latin American levels.

A survey of by Wang Xiaolu in 2008 found that the top 10% of China's urban dwellers had average disposable income of 139,000 yuan a year, 7 times more than average earners, and 25 times more than the bottom 10%. With rich households saving more of their income than poor, that income inequality helps explain China's high savings rate and low consumption.

Part of the explanation for very high incomes amongst China’s elite is corruption. Government control of major investment projects, and key resources like land, offers multiple opportunities for graft. China ranks 75th in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, with a score of 3.6 out of ten. That’s around the same level as fellow BRICs Brazil and India.

Along with problems like land grabs and environmental degradation, corruption has contributed to an increase in social unrest. Reliable data is hard to come by but Sun Liping, a professor at Tsinghua University, has said that there were 180,000 mass incidents in 2010. That’s up from 50,000 in 2002 when Mr. Hu took over. Governing a less harmonious society will be a challenge for China’s new leaders.

Mr. Hu and his team have not been entirely asleep at the wheel on reform.

Top of the list of achievements is improved public services and welfare provision. Education spending hit 4% of GDP in 2011, up from 2.2% in 2002. Health and pension coverage have expanded, and elimination of agricultural taxes helped raise incomes for China’s 650 million rural dwellers.

In the financial sector, the big four state-owned banks were listed on the public markets, bringing an element of market discipline to their lending decisions. Interest rates, a key instrument of economic rebalancing, have been partially liberalized. That means higher returns to household savers a step to increasing incomes and boosting consumption.

China’s exchange rate another instrument of rebalancing has also been liberalized. The yuan has risen 31% against the dollar since the peg was broken in 2005. In 2012, the band in which the yuan trades was widened giving the markets a great say in how it moves.

A stronger currency has helped reduce the imbalance in China’s trade, with the current account surplus shrinking to 2.8% of GDP in 2011 from a high of 10.1% in 2007.

Rebalancing is also receiving support from forces outside of the government’s control. A diminished supply of workers is driving up wages at a rapid clip. Liu Xingshun, a 40-year-old migrant worker from Jiangxi province, currently working in a furniture factory in Shenzhen, told China Real Time he made about 1,000 yuan ($160) a month in the year 2000. Now he makes 4,000 to 5,000 yuan.

Higher wages are essential to fuel an increase in China’s household consumption. But key elements of the reform agenda, from opening state-dominated sectors of the economy to competition, to strengthening farmers’ land rights, and reforming the iniquitous system of urban and rural residence rights, remain undone.

As Mr. Hu bows out, there are tentative signs that the long-awaited rebalancing of China’s economy may finally be underway.

The share of household consumption in GDP fell from 44% in 2002 to 34.9% in 2010, way below the level in the U.S., or China’s Asian neighbors. In 2011, it ticked up to 35.4%. That’s still very low in international and historical comparison, but it’s a move in the right direction.

In 2012, growth in household income has accelerated past GDP. A rising share of household income in GDP giving consumers more cash to spend at the shops is the essence of rebalancing.

Whether these changes represent a blip as investment and exports take a breather, or the beginning of a trend as China’s economy regains its balance, will be a key factor in determining Mr. Hu’s economic legacy.

Tom Orlik

2012年11月8日

中共十八大召开 新领导层即将亮相 China Party to Meet to Anoint Next Leaders

Zuma Press
周三,北京人民大会堂,中共十八大预备会议上举手表决的场景。为期一周的十八大将产生新的领导人和新一届政治局常委会。

共十八大周四开幕,开启了10年一次的权力过渡,一个亟待解决的问题随之出现:新一届领导人是否愿意并且能够从根本上彻底改革僵化的政治体制和疲态尽显的经济增长模式?

中国是否志在进行有意义的改革?有关这个问题的种种迹象最早也要到为期一周的十八大下周四进入高潮时才能揭晓。届时,新一届政治局常委(中国最高领导机构)将按照职位高低陆续登上北京人民大会堂的一个深红色讲台集体亮相。

互动图:图解中共18大与领导层调整
其中一个线索在于有多少常委将和习近平一起亮相。外界普遍预计目前身为中国国家副主席的习近平将作为新一任中共中央总书记和1949年建国以来第五代领导班子的核心首先亮相。

中共十八大周四上午在北京人民大会堂开幕,即将卸任的中国国家主席、党总书记胡锦涛发表讲话,承认中共面临众多挑战。他说,全党必须牢记人民对我们的信任和期待,这显然是指公众对官员腐败和发展不平衡越来越大的担忧。他还说,发展不平衡、不协调、不可持续仍是突出问题。

中国国有电视台给了出席会议的江泽民很长时间的镜头,表明前一代领导人在新领导集体的选拔上仍然具有影响力。江泽民在1989年至2002年期间担任党总书记。

新一届政治局常委的人数和构成可谓讳莫如深,常委人选是由即将离任和已经退休的领导人在幕后反复博弈最终敲定的。但中共党内人士说,在过去几周内已经达成的一个共识是,将由九个席位构成的常委会缩减了两人,其中包括一位负责国内政法委工作的常委。

Greg Baker/Associated Press
图片:回首历次中共全国代表大会
中共党内人士说,这一共识也有可能在最后一刻破裂。但如果政治局常委的人数确实缩减至七人,这将有利于习近平在常委中促成共识,也可能朝遏制公安权力、加强法治的方向迈出一步。

另一个强烈信号将是过往政绩中力推政治改革的两位候选人是否均能进入新一届政治局常委会:一位是广东省委书记汪洋,另一位是中组部部长李源潮。

现年59岁的习近平在上任之际恰逢中共面临一系列挑战,其中包括中国经济增速放缓,收入差距日益扩大导致的社会动荡以及一个日益有能力通过社交媒体组织政治对立活动的城市年轻人群。

今年三季度中国经济同比增速放缓至7.4%,是自金融危机以来最慢的增速。远低于过去10年高达两位数的增长速度。更糟糕的是,经济产出的构成表明中国经济日渐失衡,2011年投资在总产出中的占比接近50%,而家庭消费在其中的占比仅为35%。

Associated Press
周三,一名武警在北京天安门广场站岗。
想让中国经济走上可持续发展的道路,同时让消费在中国经济中发挥更大的作用,这需要进行一轮短期内会降低中国经济增速的痛苦改革。改革同时会伤及中国社会中最有权势的几个群体的利益,这包括地方官员、国有企业和房地产开发商。这几个群体均受益于当前经济对大量投资的依赖。

政治分析人士说,中国已经达成了一个广泛共识,即如果不进行这样的改革,中国经济可能停滞,其进入发达国家行列的雄心将会受挫,社会紧张形势可能加剧,并有可能演变成威胁政权的暴力行动。

在国际上,中国因领土争端而与多个邻国关系越来越紧张。与此同时,美国在亚洲加强了防务联系,并重新确认了其在亚洲的影响力,同时在中国同朝鲜、伊朗和叙利亚的关系上向北京施压。

中国新的领导层形成之时,美国总统奥巴马(Barack Obama)刚刚获得连任。能否与美国这个关键出口市场和技术来源保持稳定的关系、以及有没有决心发展与中国崛起为全球经济大国相匹配的军事力量,也将成为外界评价他们的标准。中国在成为全球经济大国之后,从拉丁美洲到中东地区都有利益需要保护。

中共之前和平有序的权力交接只有过一次,即2002年。今年权力的交接计划则因薄熙来丑闻的爆发而早早陷入混乱。这位昔日政坛野心家曾经是最有可能进入新一届政治局常委会的人选之一。

薄熙来的妻子在今年8月被判谋杀一位英国商人,现在他本人也面临着刑事指控。另一位党内新秀令计划在今年3月卷入丑闻:当时他的儿子在北京驾驶一辆法拉利高速行驶撞车身亡,之后令计划企图掩盖这起事故。

上个月,即将离任的国务院总理温家宝的家人发表一份罕见声明,否认一篇说他们积累的财富达27亿美元的报道。即便是在党内,现在也有越来越高的呼声要求开展大刀阔斧的经济改革(特别是打破国有企业垄断)和政治改革,以解决最近这些丑闻背后的核心问题:官员滥用权力,很多党的领导人积聚了巨额财富。

这意味着下周即将走上前台的新一届领导人将面临国内外前所未有的审视,看他们是否愿意直面过去10年胡锦涛执政时期基本被忽略的那些问题。胡锦涛现任国家主席和党总书记,即将离任。

历史学家章立凡说,党内上下有一种共识,不能再像以前那样执政,必须改革;但在实践中,习近平要挑战妨碍改革的利益集团,则必须得到其他领导人的强力支持。章立凡的父亲同习近平的父亲曾是亲密盟友。

确保能进入新一届常委会的只有两位不会马上退休的现任常委:习近平和国务院副总理李克强。李克强学过法律和经济专业,被普遍认为将接任负责经济管理的总理一职。

其他成员则在过去几个月由即将离任的领导人和十来位已经退休的党内"元老"挑选。在这一过程中,每一位领导人和元老都努力确保亲信得到提拔,以保护他们在退休期间的私人利益和政治影响。

党内人士说,缩减政治局常委会人数的提议是出于党内高层的一种担忧:自从2002年江泽民辞去党总书记一职、常委会从七人扩大到九人以来,这个机构已经变得过于臃肿、寡断。

他们的其他担忧还有:过去五年的国内安全首脑周永康作为政法委书记积累了过大的权力。政法委掌管着公安、检察院、法院和情报机关。

为中共领导层提供建议的一名学者说,政治局常委会意识到,他们不希望在做决策的时候,其中有人带着枪。

这个提议的另一个结果是,瘦身之后的政治局常委会仅有五个空缺席位。政治局常委的数量多年来几经增减,但习惯上一直是奇数。

最近几天,北京的政治观察人士和党内人士暗示,落选者中可能包括两名因尝试有限的政治改革而闻名的候选人。

广东省委书记汪洋曾经尝试取消对非政府组织的限制,去年,他与抗议政府统治的村民经过谈判达成解决方案,并因此受到了好评。

外界认为,汪洋是胡锦涛和温家宝青睐的候选人,但受到其他领导人反对。有些人认为他的改革方式太过激进,有些人则认为他太年轻,应等到2017年再晋升常委。汪洋今年57岁。

更加出人意料的是,最近几周,反对中央组织部长李源潮进入常委会的声音也在增强。李源潮2002年曾在哈佛大学肯尼迪政治学院(Harvard's Kennedy School of Government)学习,并曾指导实施了一些旨在实行更大党内民主的试点计划。

根据维基解密(WikiLeaks)公布的一份美国外交电文,李源潮2007年曾告诉美国外交官,二、三十年之后,中国的政治局和政治局常委会可能会实行竞争性选举。

今年7月,李源潮邀请美国和欧洲的商界高管为中国国企领导举办讲座,告诉他们要专注于商业而不是政治。

前佛罗里达州议员韦克斯勒(Robert Wexler)最近几年见过李源潮。他说,李源潮在政治上的开放态度让他印象深刻。一次晚宴之后,他们在没有明显安保人员的情况下沿着南京的大街散步,与当地市民寒暄和互动。

他说,与民众一起散步,这几乎是一种非常美国式的做法。

汪洋和李源潮都不是西方意义上的自由派。汪洋镇压过广东其他地区发生的抗议活动。波士顿大学(Boston University)教授傅士卓(Joseph Fewsmith)研究过李源潮的政治改革尝试,他说,这些政治改革尝试都受到了中共的严格控制。

但是如果缺少他们二人中的任何一个,政治局常委会都会更加有可能会被保守派人物控制,许多保守派人物都与前国家主席江泽民有关系。

布鲁金斯学会(Brookings Institution)的中国政治专家李成说,如果李源潮和汪洋都没有进入新的政治局常委会,这将向世界发出一个消极信号。

他说,人们将会对中国急需的政治改革的前景更加悲观。

Jeremy Page

(Bob Davis、Brian Spegele、Tom Orlik 、James T. Areddy 对本文亦有贡献)

在中国选出新的领导阵容之际应当关注什么

政治局常委会的规模是否从九人缩减为七人──这样更容易达成共识,也会表明国内安全首脑的重要性已经下降。

现任组织部长李源潮是否未能进入政治局常委会──这对即将卸任的党总书记胡锦涛和政治改革派会是一记沉重打击。

广东省委书记汪洋是否落选──同样是对改革派的打击,但没那么严重,因为他可能在2017年进入常委会,届时还能任职10年。

可能担任下届总理的李克强是否第二个走出来──这表明以前排在第三位的总理一职在中共领导体系中的重要性上升。

目前任副总理的王歧山是否最后一个或倒数第二个走出来──表明他承担了反腐败职责,以避免在处理经济问题上与李克强发生冲突。

胡锦涛是否保留中央军委主席的职务──表明他在至多未来两年内仍将具有极大的政治影响力。

是否有外交政策专家被提拔为中央政治局委员──这会平衡军方在外交政策上的影响。

中央政治局委员选举时是否差额选举──表明中共有扩大党内民主的意愿。

《华尔街日报》研究

(更新完成)

(本文版权归道琼斯公司所有,未经许可不得翻译或转载。)


As China launches a once-a-decade transition of power at a Communist Party Congress that opens Thursday, the burning question is: Will the new lineup of leaders to be willing and able to radically overhaul an ossified political system and a growth model that has run out of steam?

The first signs of whether China is in for meaningful reform won't come until the culmination of the weeklong congress next Thursday, when the new Politburo Standing Committee--China's top governing body--files out in order of seniority onto a crimson podium in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

One clue will lie in how many people appear alongside Xi Jinping, the current vice president who is widely expected to appear first on the podium as the new party chief and figurehead of the 'fifth generation' of leaders since the revolution of 1949.

The congress opened on Thursday morning in Beijing's Great Hall of the People with a speech from Hu Jintao, China's departing president and party chief, who nodded to the challenges the party faces. 'The whole party must keep in mind the trust the people have placed in us and the great expectation they have of us,' he said, in an apparent allusion to rising public concerns about official corruption and unbalanced growth. He added, 'unbalanced uncoordinated and unsustainable development remains a big problem.'

State television lingered on the presence of Jiang Zemin, who was party chief from 1989 to 2002, suggesting the continued influence of the previous generation of leaders in picking the new slate.

The size and composition of the new Standing Committee is a closely guarded secret, thrashed out in backroom deals between departing and retired leaders, but party insiders say a consensus was reached in the past few weeks to cut two of the nine seats, including the one that controls the vast domestic-security apparatus.

That consensus could crumble at the last minute, party insiders say, but if the Standing Committee is indeed shrunk that way, it would help Mr. Xi to forge consensus among his peers, and could be step toward reining in police powers and strengthening the rule of law.

Another strong signal will be whether the new lineup includes one or both of the two candidates with the strongest track record on political reform: Wang Yang, the Party chief of Guangdong Province, and Li Yuanchao, the head of the Organization Department.

Mr. Xi, 59 years old, is taking over as the party confronts a raft of challenges, including a slowing economy, social unrest amid rising income inequality and a young urban population increasingly able to organize political opposition via social media.

China's growth slowed to 7.4% year-to-year in the third quarter of 2012, its lowest rate since the financial crisis, and well below the double-digit pace of the past decade. Worse, the composition of output shows an economy veering off balance, with investment contributing close to 50% of the total, and the share of household consumption just 35% in 2011.

Putting growth on a sustainable path, with a stronger role for consumption, will require painful reforms that could push growth lower in the short term. It also cuts against the interest of the most powerful players in China's society: local officials, state-owned enterprises and real-estate developers, who all benefit from the economy's current tilt toward heavy investment.

There is a broad consensus in China that without such reforms, the economy could stagnate, dooming its ambitions to graduate to the ranks of developed nations and exacerbating social tensions that could explode into regime-threatening violence, political analysts say.

Internationally, China is facing mounting tensions with many of it neighbors over territorial disputes at the same time as the U.S. shores up defense ties and reasserts its influence in Asia, while pressing Beijing over its ties with North Korea, Iran and Syria.

China's new lineup, to be rolled out just as the U.S. has re-elected President Barack Obama, will also be judged by its ability to keep on track relations with the U.S., a key market for Chinese exports and a source of technology, as well as a commitment to develop military power commensurate with China's rise as a global economic powerhouse with interests to protect from Latin America to the Middle East.

The party has managed a peaceful and orderly transition of power only once before--in 2002--and plans for this year's transition were thrown into turmoil early on by the scandal surrounding Bo Xilai, a former political highflier who was once a front-runner for promotion to the new Standing Committee.

Mr. Bo, whose wife was convicted in August of murdering a British businessman, is now facing criminal charges. Another rising star in the Party, Ling Jihua, was engulfed in scandal in March when he tried to cover up an accident in which his son was killed driving a Ferrari at high speed through Beijing.

Last month, the family of departing Premier Wen Jiabao issued a rare statement denying a media report that it had amassed a fortune worth $2.7 billion. Even within the party, there are now increasingly vocal calls for aggressive economic change--especially steps to break apart state-sector monopolies--and political reforms to address the issues at the core of the recent scandals: official abuse of power and the enormous wealth accumulated by many party leaders.

That means the new leadership that appears on the podium next week will be scrutinized like never before, both inside and outside China, for clues about their commitment to confront the problems that were largely ignored over the past decade under the departing president and party chief, Hu Jintao.

'There is a common understanding at all levels in the party that they cannot rule the same way as before: there has to be change,' said Zhang Lifan, a historian whose father was a close ally of Mr. Xi's father. 'But in practice, Mr. Xi needs strong support from other leaders if he is to challenge the interest groups preventing reform.'

The only people with guaranteed seats on the new Standing Committee are the two current members who are not retiring: Mr. Xi and current Vice Premier Li Keqiang, a lawyer and economist by training who is widely expected to take over as premier, the post responsible for managing the economy.

The other members have been selected over the past few months by departing leaders and about a dozen retired party 'elders,' each of whom has tried to ensure promotion of acolytes to preserve their private interests and political influence in retirement.

Party insiders say the proposal to shrink the Standing Committee grew out of concerns within the political elite that the body had become too ungainly and indecisive since being expanded from seven to nine in 2002, when Jiang Zemin stepped down as party chief.

Their other concern was that the domestic security chief for the last five years, Zhou Yongkang, has accumulated excessive powers as head of a shadowy body called the Politics and Law Commission, which oversees police, prosecutors, judges and spies.

'They realized that when they make the decisions, they don't want one of those at the table to be holding a gun,' said one academic who advises the party leadership.

The flip side of the proposal is that it would leave only five spare seats on the leaner Standing Committee, which has expanded and contracted over the years but traditionally always has an odd number of members.

In recent days, political observers and party insiders in Beijing have suggested that among those who could miss out are the two candidates known for their experiments with limited political reforms.

Wang Yang, the Guangdong party chief, has experimented with lifting restrictions on nongovernmental organizations and won plaudits for reaching a negotiated solution with villagers who revolted against party rule last year.

He is considered a favorite of Messrs. Hu and Wen, but he is opposed by other leaders who consider his approach to reform too progressive or who believe he is too young, at 57, to be promoted this year and should wait instead until 2017, according to party insiders.

More unexpectedly, opposition has grown in recent weeks to Li Yuanchao, the Organization Department chief, who studied at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2002 and has overseen pilot schemes encouraging greater democracy within the party.

He told U.S. diplomats in 2007 that China could hold competitive elections for the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee in 20-30 years, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

In July of this year, he invited U.S. and European business executives to lecture leaders of China's state-owned enterprises about the need to focus on commercial matters, rather than political imperatives.

Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman who has met Mr. Li in recent years, said he was impressed with his political openness. After one dinner, they strolled along a Nanjing promenade with no apparent security, greeting and engaging with local residents, Mr. Wexler recalled.

'It was almost a very American political thing to do, to take a walk amongst your constituents,' he said.

Neither Mr. Wang nor Mr. Li are liberals in a Western sense. Mr. Wang has crushed protests in other parts of Guangdong, and Joseph Fewsmith, a Boston University professor who has studied Mr. Li's experiments with political reform, says they were all tightly controlled by the party.

But a Standing Committee without either of them would be more likely to be dominated by conservative figures, many of them with links to Mr. Jiang, the former president.

'If neither Li Yuanchao nor Wang Yang is on the new Politburo Standing Committee, it will send a negative signal to the world,' said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

'People will be even more pessimistic about China's much needed political reform.'

Jeremy Page

Bob Davis, Brian Spegele, Tom Orlik and James T. Areddy contributed to this article.

What to look for as China presents its new leader lineup

If Politburo Standing Committee is cut to seven from nine─should make it easier to reach consensus, and would also suggest the role of domestic security chief has been downgraded.

If Li Yuanchao, current Organization Department chief, is not included─a serious blow for departing party chief Hu Jintao, and for advocates of political reform.

If Wang Yang, party chief of Guangdong, is left out─also a blow for reformists, though less serious as he could join in 2017 and still serve 10 years.

If Li Keqiang, the likely future premier, walks out second─suggests the position of premier has been upgraded from No. 3 in Party hierarchy.

If Wang Qishan, current vice premier, is one of two last to walk out─suggests he has taken anticorruption job to avoid tension with Li Keqiang on handling economy.

If Hu Jintao remains head of the Central Military Commission─suggests he will retain significant political influence for up to two years.

If a foreign-policy expert is promoted to the wider Politburo─would help to counterbalance military influence in foreign policy.

If there are more candidates than seats in the election of Politburo members─could signal commitment to expand in-party democracy.

─WSJ research

2012年11月3日

闲话投研之五:消费品行业的百年老店?

有朋友问我消费品行业有哪些公司有长期投资价值?他认为我们现在大多数获得品牌溢价的消费品,都是境外品牌,国内值得看的企业并不多,中国大多数消费品,靠成本取胜,很难做成品牌,根本没前途。

其实我对此的研究并不深,也还在持续学习的过程中。
就目前的理解而言,我同意他关于很难做成品牌的观点,在我国确实新创品牌的环境——不论是人还是体制——并不是那么的好。所以要从还在创品牌的公司中找有长期投资价值对象,赌的成份有点大,毕竟过去这些年我们看到的情况是,很多所谓的品牌一茬一茬的像割麦子一样的倒了。
所以在考虑长远投资价值的问题之前,我们或许更应该想想的是,什么样的企业有能力活的很长很长,成为百年老店?
我认为至少这两类有可能可以:一是,有相对靠谱的人,经营着一个已经有历史积淀的品牌,这是可遇不可求的;二是,把产品的品质及消费者的体验作为重中之重,不急功近利,愿意用很长的时间来做品牌。这就更为难得了。
当然,无论是他们里的哪类,拥有良好的企业文化和机制都是前提。倘若没有,就算一度辉煌,也将黯淡沉寂。

 

另外,说说我理解的品牌吧,其实在我这儿品牌并不是孤立的几个中文字或是几个英文字母哦,它至少包含了几重意思在里头:产品本身(包括品质),定位,配称(例如销售通路)。好好做品牌指的就是要把这些都做好,哪块做的不好哪块就重要。考虑目前中国的现状,绝大多数消费品公司在品质的把控上做的很不够的,所以品质的问题就变的很重要了。

用加多宝做王老吉来举例,就算定位定的再好,品质不行,或是消费者不是在哪儿想喝王老吉都能买到,这个快销业的奇迹也发生不了吧。

关于怎么把一个品牌做起来,芒格的一篇演讲非常有学习价值,我反复研读过很多遍,也贴在我的博客上了,地址是:http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5308f7670102e1km.html


http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5308f7670102e6f6.html

市盈率二则的扩展讨论

比较懒,博客的微博的评论就不一一回复了。可能孤零零的两条有些单薄,那么延伸开来谈谈吧。

1)为什么会有这两则?
昨儿有朋友看到后立马联系我说觉得这是很basic的东西呀,为什么我还这么慎重的把它们列出来呢,难不成蛰伏了一段时间已经严重退步了?
我说我退步了是很正常的,凡事不进则退嘛,都闲散好一阵子了。接着,我问他两个问题:第一,能否做到在任何时候都不考虑同类公司估值水平,以及公司历史上的估值水平?第二,10PE的格力和20PE的茅台相比较,能否不假思索的说茅台未必比格力贵?他没有正面回答。
我想,所有觉得这两条很basic的亲们,都可以问问自己这两条问题哦。其实我在这上面也是没过关的,比如我也曾一闪念过:为什么国外的酒类公司增长不如茅台可是市盈率还跟茅台差不多哦?

2)现金流贴现才是王道吧?
是的,没错的,非常对,现金流贴现是王道,它是思维方式的王道。其实在第一则中,"一个公司现在股价贵不贵,不仅跟同类公司是多少倍市盈率无关,也跟这个公司过去的市盈率水平关系不大,它只跟从今往后公司能够实现的业绩增长有关。",这种跟过去划清界限、跟同侪划清界限的行为后头,体现的就是现金流贴现的思维方式哦。

310%和10倍是啥意思?
在回答这个问题之前,先说说我为什么反复强调现金流贴现是一种思维方式,而不是具体的估值方法呢?做过DCF模型的同学们应该清楚,模型里的值只要有小小的变化,结果就会有大大的不同哦。尤其是永续增长率,除了"拍脑袋"这一神技之外,估计找不到其他的技术去预测这个数值。因此,如果哪位较真了非得用DCF算出来一个结果,很遗憾这可能就是巴老所说的"精确的错误"哦。
既然DCF给不了我们公司究竟该值多少钱的结论,那可行的方案是什么?按照该前辈的指导思想,公司该值多少钱,是自己能看到的公司未来能赚到的利润乘以PE。那么,既然我们不能借鉴公司过往PE和同类公司的PE,我们该如何判断未来公司的合理PE水平呢?答案是:如果我们在当前并不清楚那个时点之后公司的业绩增长,其实我们是无法判断那时公司"合理"PE水平的。
找不到"合理"的,就只能主观了。主观的就是,如果我们在投资时期望能获得10%的回报,那我们就可以接受公司以10PE来作价。同理,如果希望有12%的回报,那么就用8倍的PE作价。
举个例子,假定我们看得到茅台在2020年之前有机会赚到600亿的单年净利润,那么我们从主观上接受它的6000亿市值。当然在从现在到2020的过程中,我们对茅台的跟踪也会让我们对它形成新的判断,包括对更远的未来的判断,这个并不是静态和一成不变的。

4)第二则讨论的是什么?
有必要说明一下,第二则讨论的并非"企业该不该负债经营"的问题,而是"我们评估企业价格时要不要考虑负债"的问题。
大部分亲们的回复中说的其实都是前者哦,很抱歉那是跑题了呢。

5)为什么要考虑净负债?
首先,什么是净负债?一般来说是金融负债(主要是有息有偿还期的负债)减去金融资产(主要是现金及现金等价物),如果要更加谨慎些,可以再考虑一下应付预收的类负债项减去应收预付的类资产项。
好了,为什么要考虑净负债呢?有人在我微博上回帖说,债权人不享受利润分配,所以不用考虑它...我有点无语。
我们都知道,巴老投资体系的核心是买生意买企业而不是买股票。假如我们是按照这个理念指引的话,又怎么能不考虑负债的问题呢?
一个用100亿收了一家企业的收购方,在享受了利润分配的同时,同时承担了偿还债权人债务的义务,这是收购方的隐性成本呀。

6)企业该不该负债经营?
鉴于大量回复中其实讨论的是这个问题,这里也就单列出来谈一谈。这实在是个复杂的问题,我能力有限给不出答案,不过有几条或许是common sense
第一,当资本回报率高于债务成本时,可以适当举债。
第二,想活的长,尽量不负债或是少负债。任何企业的经营,都会必然在某个时候遇到困境,高负债的企业很有可能因为负债而迈不过这道槛。
另外,用前辈的话说,企业负债经营相当于我们用margin做投资,如果我们能认同投资时不用margin,为何却能认同我们投资的企业在经营时用margin

7)两则的本质是神马?
本质是,买公司而不是买股票。

重要提示:本文只是拿茅台举例子,亲们请不要跟贴讨论茅台哦,不然又跑题了。欲讨论茅台请移步雪球上老任的大楼。地址是:http://xueqiu.com/9206125741/22055245