人们很容易对中国兴奋过度。一旦看多者停止预测近乎无限的增长，不再竞相宣布一个比一个更早的中国成为世界第一大经济体的日子，看空者就开始宣称中国已濒临崩溃。过去两个月，有识之士的共识似乎已经从前一种观点转变成后者。这在一定程度上体现了现实，令人可喜。尽管2009年实现了骄人的增长，但中国仍然存在严重的结构性问题，而去年的增长质量实际上加剧了这些问题。许多观察家如今似乎刚从梦中惊醒，开始正面这个事实。
中国存在结构性问题，不应让我们感到惊讶。没有人有理由指望，一个国家上层建筑的顺应速度能赶上经济和社会体系的变化。而上层建筑不相适应必然会形成几段艰难调整时期。历史上每个快速发展的经济体都是如此。
但是我们需要设想中国可能会如何调整。正如日本在上世纪80年代的情况一样，中国相对于世界其他地区的出口增长构成了最严重的不相称状况之一。当在全球贸易中所占份额极小时，中国应对国内经济萎缩的传统措施——提高基础设施和产能投资——对全球国际收支的影响可以忽略不计。世界其它地区很轻松就能吸收随后出现的出口激增。
而今，中国已经是世界第一大出口国，其贸易顺差在全球GDP中所占比重也是有史以来的最高水平之一。这限制了中国应对国内经济萎缩的能力。世界不再能够轻松接纳其增长政策。
中国的金融体系和应对政策会有所调整，但既不会很容易也不会很快。增加私人消费在中国GDP中所占比重，需要取消许多将收入系统性转移出家庭部门的方法，用于补贴制造业、基础设施和房地产开发领域的投资。
和平常一样，调整的速度及痛苦程度将主要取决于国家的资产负债状况。资产负债表不稳定的国家调整起来会粗暴而快速；资产负债表较为稳定的国家能够放慢调整速度，从而降低社会成本。
中国问题专家早就知道世界似乎突然才意识到的一个事实：中国国家资产负债表上的债务要比人们以为的多得多，特别是不稳定的或有债务。我们的第一反应就是断定：中国已濒临崩溃。但这只是基于对中国资产负债表的片面了解。没错，中国的债务的确比许多人设想的要多，其中大部分以不可行的低流动性资产为抵押，但债务的流动性也比我们想象的要低得多。资本管制、高储蓄率以及有限的投资选择，将使中国能够在调整期间保护好自己的资产负债表。
中国会崩溃吗？不会。中国可能会经历痛苦的金融紧缩，但这并不一定会导致增长率暴跌。相反，中国将下大力气解决过度投资和产能过剩的问题——随着上世纪70年代中期以来有利的人口状况出现逆转，这两个问题将使中国的增长显著放缓。但与此同时，中国还将面临三种更加有利的局面。
首先，中国将继续快速实现城市化，这将提高家庭收入，创造新的增长来源。其次，即便劳动力减少，教育和基础设施投资的增加也会提高工人的生产力。第三，剧烈紧缩将迫使中国政府最终开放金融体系，将资源从效率低下的国有部门转移到中小企业，从而提高生产力。
中国的增长几乎必然会显著放缓，但尽管如此，这个国家还是会继续以比世界其它地区更快的速度发展。它在全球GDP中所占的份额也会上升。
每一个成功的新兴国家都经历过增长的中断，而且与看多者疯狂的宣言正相反，最近几十年，就连中国也经历过至少三次经济危机。否认出现艰难调整期的可能性毫无历史意义。但调整不代表着崩溃。
本文作者为北京大学金融学教授、卡内基基金会(Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)高级研究员。
译者/何黎
It is easy to get over-excited about China. When bulls aren't predicting near infinite-growth and competing to proclaim earlier and earlier dates by which China's economy will become the world's largest, bears are proclaiming the country on the verge of collapse. In the past two months informed consensus seems to have shifted from the former view to the latter. To some extent this represents a welcome dose of reality. In spite of outstanding growth rates in 2009, China nonetheless has serious structural problems that were actually exacerbated by the quality of last year's growth. Many observers seem now to be waking up to this fact.
That China has structural problems should not have surprised us. No one could have reasonably hoped that the country's institutions would adapt as quickly as its underlying economic and social systems have changed, and institutional mismatches must result in periods of difficult adjustment. This has been true of every rapidly developing economy in history.
But we need perspective on how China is likely to adjust. As with Japan in the 1980s, China's export growth relative to the rest of the world has created one of its most serious mismatches. When its share of global trade was tiny, China's traditional response to domestic economic contraction – to boost investment in infrastructure and production capacity – had a negligible impact on the global balance of payments. The subsequent surge in exports could easily be absorbed by the rest of the world.
Today, China is the world's largest exporter and its trade surplus among the highest ever as a share of global gross domestic product. This limits its ability to respond to domestic contractions. The world can no longer easily accommodate its growth policies.
China's financial system and policy responses will adjust, but neither easily nor quickly. Increasing the private consumption share of Chinese GDP will involve unwinding the many ways that income has been systematically transferred from the household sector to subsidise investment in manufacturing, infrastructure and real estate development.
The speed and pain of the adjustment will depend, as it usually does, largely on the shape of the national balance sheet. Countries with unstable balance sheets adjust brutally and quickly; those with more stable balance sheets can slow their adjustment, and so reduce its social cost.
China specialists have known for a long time what the world suddenly seems to be discovering: that China's national balance sheet contains much more debt, especially in the way of unstable contingent liabilities, than had been assumed. The first reaction is to conclude that China is on the verge of collapse. But this is based on only a partial understanding of the balance sheet. Yes, there is a lot more debt than many supposed, much of it collateralised by non-viable, illiquid assets, but liabilities are also a lot less liquid than we might think. Capital controls, a high savings rate and limited alternative investments will allow China to defend the domestic balance sheet while it works through the adjustment.
Will China collapse? No. It may have a painful financial contraction, but this will not necessarily lead to a collapse in growth. Instead it will grind away at its overinvestment and excess capacity, which, with a reversal of the favourable demographics enjoyed since the mid-1970s, will slow growth sharply, but this will coincide with three more favourable circumstances.
First, China will continue to urbanise rapidly, which will raise household income and create new sources of growth. Second, even as the workforce declines, increased education and infrastructure spending will raise worker productivity. Third, a sharp contraction will force Beijing finally to liberalise the financial system and transfer resources from the inefficient state sector to small and medium enterprises, increasing productivity.
Chinese growth will almost certainly slow dramatically, but the country will nonetheless continue to grow faster than the rest of the world. Its share of global GDP will rise.
No successful emerging country has experienced unbroken growth and, contrary to inane claims by bulls, even China has had at least three economic crises in recent decades. Denying the possibility of difficult adjustment periods makes no historical sense. But adjustment is not collapse.
The writer is a finance professor at Peking University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001031513
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