Yahoo Finance on 23.5.2020
reported the following:
China Is Too Rich to Splurge on
Infrastructure
Bloomberg David Fickling,Bloomberg 2 hours 5 minutes ago
Reactions Reblog on Tumblr Share Tweet Email
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- How much more stimulus can the
Chinese economy take?
It’s a question of
crucial importance after Beijing unveiled its 2020 economic policy plans
Friday. China’s 4 trillion yuan ($562 billion) stimulus package in the wake of
the global financial crisis paved the way for its transformation over the past
decade. In the 2000s, the country was a low-cost assembly room for the world’s
supply chains. Now it’s an increasingly confident middle-income power, with a
burgeoning consumer class and world-beating infrastructure.
In trying to establish a path out of
the current economic slump, those gleaming high-speed rail lines, metro
systems, apartment buildings and electricity networks pose a problem. China has
invested so lavishly in infrastructure over the past decade that its endowment
of public capital is now richer on a per-person basis than that of Germany,
Spain, South Korea or the U.K. — despite economic output that remains many
times lower.
Further spending is unlikely to deliver the same kick to
gross domestic product as it did in the past. Indeed, it’s most likely to
reduce the rate of return on future investment. If it ends up distracting from
the problems of a shrinking labor force and lackluster productivity, it could
sow the seeds of an economic stagnation that may take decades to escape.
That’s one reason why the policy announced Friday — issuing 3.75 trillion yuan of local
government bonds, and an additional 1 trillion yuan to deal with the
coronavirus — looks so modest. While the aggregate amount is a little more than
the 2008 stimulus, China’s economy is about three times bigger, so the impact
will be comparatively slight.
To see how much China’s physical
infrastructure has changed over the past decade, it’s worth looking at the
International Monetary Fund’s global investment dataset. In the eight years
through 2008, China’s public capital stock increased by $7.58 trillion, lifting
its share of the global total to 26% from about 19%. In the subsequent eight
years, that pace nearly doubled: $13.39 trillion was added, giving China about
35% of the world’s public capital.
This matters because standard models see long-run economic
growth as the sum of labor, capital and productivity. In the early stages of
industrialization, a country’s labor force is boosted by migration from the
countryside and improving life expectancy, while the building of physical
infrastructure allows workers to generate output more effectively. The result
is a headlong rate of economic growth like that seen in 19th century Europe and
America, mid-20th century Japan and Russia, and China over the past few
decades.
That model starts to come apart as countries grow richer.
The growth in the workforce slows down as rural areas empty out, people begin
having smaller families, and the population ages. China lost 2.5 million
workers in 2019, three times more than Japan and the European Union put
together. Meanwhile, capital investment becomes less productive over time,
because more spending is needed to keep up with depreciation, and the return on
new investment declines as the stock of infrastructure grows. If societies fail
to use their resources more productively, the result is relative or absolute
stagnation — the middle-income trap that for decades has stopped countries such
as Mexico, Russia, Malaysia and South Africa from joining the ranks of rich
nations.
China’s willingness to invest aggressively in upgrading its
infrastructure in recent decades is a welcome lesson to countries such as the
U.K., where run-down public assets have put a brake on economic growth. At the
same time, developed countries aren’t entirely wrong in demanding that such
spending should pass some sort of cost-benefit analysis. Capital growth pursued
without an eye to improving productivity will fail to deliver the wanted boost
to growth, while the attendant debt and costs of servicing it crowd out more
worthwhile investments. That can turn glistening infrastructure from an
economic boon into a burden, as my colleague Anjani Trivedi has argued.
China's reluctance to pull the trigger on industrial
stimulus in recent years is a welcome sign that policy makers are well aware of
this risk. Total debt is running at more than three times GDP, and while the
central government accounts for a relatively small portion of that sum, it's
ultimately on the hook thanks to the intermingling of its own borrowing with
that of provincial and local governments.
That means any ambitious plans for 5G networks, artificial
intelligence and other high-tech stimulus should be taken with caution. China
has ridden the tide of aggressive public investment to turn itself from a poor
country to a middle-income power. If it doesn’t learn to restrain that habit,
though, a middle-income power is all it will ever be.
(Note: David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist
covering commodities, as well as industrial and consumer companies. He has been
a reporter for Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the
Financial Times and the Guardian.)
Translation
（彭博社觀點）-中國經濟還能採取多少刺激措施？
在北京周五宣布2020年經濟政策計劃後，它成為至關重要的問題。全球金融危機爆發後，中國的4萬億元人民幣（合5,620億美元）刺激計劃從過去十年作出轉型而鋪平了道路。在2000年代，該國是全球供應鏈的低成本裝配室。現在，隨著新興的消費階層和世界一流的基礎設施，它已成為越來越有信心的中等收入國家。
在嘗試擺脫當前經濟不景氣的道路時，那些閃閃發光的高鐵，地鐵系統，公寓樓和電網構成了問題。在過去的十年中，中國在基礎設施上的投資如此巨大，以至於其人均公共資本的分配如今已超過德國，西班牙，韓國或英國，儘管相比其經濟出產仍然低很多倍。
進一步的支出不可能像過去那樣對國內生產總值產生同樣的影響。確實，它最有可能降低未來投資的回報率。如果它最終分薄了回應勞動力減少和生產力低迷的問題，那麼它可能會播下經濟停滯的種子，這可能需要數十年的時間才能擺脫。
這就是周五宣布該政策（發行3.75萬億元人民幣的地方政府債券和另外1萬億元人民幣用於處理冠狀病毒）是如此溫和的原因之一。雖然總額比2008年的刺激方案略高一點，但中國的經濟規模現已是大約當其時三倍，因此影響力相對較小。
要了解過去十年中國的有形基礎設施發生了多大變化，值得一看國際貨幣基金組織（International
Monetary Fund）的全球投資數據集。截至2008年的八年中，中國的公共資本存量增加了7.58萬億美元，佔全球公共資本總額的比例從約19％上升至26％。在隨後的八年中，這一步伐幾乎翻了一番：增加了13.39萬億美元，使中國擁有世界35％的公共資本。
這很重要，因為標準型楷模將長期的經濟增長視為勞動力，資本和生產率的總和。在工業化的早期階段，一個國家的勞動力因從農村移民和改善預期壽命而得到增長，而有形基礎設施的建設使工人能夠更有效地產生產出。結果是，在過去的幾十年中，我們看到經濟增長率達到了驚人的水平，如19世紀的歐美，20世紀中葉的日本和俄羅斯以及在過去幾十年的中國。
隨著國家變得更加富裕，這種模式開始瓦解。隨著農村地區的空缺，人們開始擁有較小的家庭以及人口老齡化，勞動力的增長放緩。中國在2019年損失了250萬工人，是日本和歐盟總和的三倍。同時，隨著時間的流逝，資本投資的生產效率下降，因為需要更多的支出來跟上折舊的步伐，並且隨著基礎設施存量的增加，新投資的回報也會下降。如果社會不能更有效地利用其資源，那麼結果就是相對或絕對停滯不前 – 幾十年來，中等收入陷阱使墨西哥，俄羅斯，馬來西亞和南非等國家無法加入富裕國家行列。
近幾十年來，中國願意大力投資以升級其基礎設施，這對英國等的國家來說是受用的教訓，在這些國家，公共資產破舊已阻礙了經濟增長。同時，發達國家要求這類支出應通過某種成本效益分析並不是完全錯誤的。在追求資本增長時, 只是著眼於提高生產率是將無法提供想要的增長推動力，隨之而來的債務和維修費用處理會排擠了更多有價值的投資。正如我的同事安賈尼·特里維迪（Anjani
Trivedi）所指出的那樣，這可能使閃閃發光的基礎設施從經濟利益變成負擔。
近年來，中國不願拉動工業刺激措施，這是一個可喜的跡象，表明政策制定者已充分意識到這一風險。總債務是GDP的三倍多，雖然中央政府只佔其中的一小部分，但由於其自身的借款與省級和地方政府的借款是混合在一起，故最終亦會與地方債務纏上。
這意味著對於5G網絡，人工智能和其他高科技刺激措施的任何雄心勃勃的計劃都應謹慎對待。中國騎上了積極的公共投資浪潮，將自己從貧窮的國家轉變為中等收入國家。但是，如果它不學會克制習慣，那麼將永遠逗留在中等收入的強國。
This article helps me understand
the future economic development of China. It fills in a few knowledge gaps of mine
in understanding the big picture of the economic development paths of modern societies.
沒有留言:
張貼留言