[評論]現在不是批鬥中國的時候

[pursuistmi (common people)]

This is not the time to attack China
By Michael Pettis

Published: February 17 2009 19:57 | Last updated: February 17 2009 19:57

Last week’s trade numbers from China could not have been more dismal. After
declining by 2.8 per cent year on year in December, China’s exports
plummeted 17.5 per cent in January, placing huge pressure on the country’s
manufacturing sector. Already unemployment in China is surging.

上禮拜，中國在貿易方面的數字表現前所未見地慘烈。去年12月中國出口下滑2.8％。
今年一月則是急墜17.5％，對中國製造業造成極大壓力。失業率已經不斷攀升。

Chinese import numbers are even more dismaying. After dropping 21.3 per cent
in December, imports fell a staggering 43.1 per cent in January.

中國在進口方面的數字跌幅更是可怕。去年十二月大幅滑落21.3％以後，一月自由落體，
掉了43.1％。

At first glance there seems to be a silver lining in the export numbers: they
are not as bad as those reported by some other Asian countries. In December,
for example, Taiwan’s exports fell by 42 per cent, South Korea’s by 17 per
cent and Japan’s by 35 per cent, capping many months of contraction. Less
developed Asian countries also performed worse than China, which suggests
China may have increased its competitive edge over its trading rivals. But it
is precisely this relative outperformance that indicates the severity of the
adjustment yet to take place. China’s trade surplus for January was a
mind-blowing $39.1bn (€31.1bn, ￡27.4bn), just under November’s all-time
high of $40.1bn and edging out December’s $39bn for second place. In
comparison, in the first half of 2008 China’s average monthly trade surplus
was an already high $16.7bn. In the second half it surged to $32.9bn.

初看出口數字，好像也有樂觀的空間，畢竟中國出口沒有比亞洲其他一些國家來得糟。
以十二月為例，台灣出口掉了42％，南韓掉了17％，而日本則是多月衰退之餘，
破表表現，掉了35％。亞洲幾個開發中國家也沒中國好。或許這些現象代表中國的表現
較其對手而言，反而更有競爭力了。但這種相對勝利所代表的，其實是改善措施
遲遲未落實，以致情況險峻。中國一月出超391億美金，只比去年十二月的401億
稍低。比較起來，中國於2008年上半年出超早就167億，下半年則躍升329億，成長幾乎
一倍。

The global economy is experiencing a sharp contraction in demand – which
must be “shared” among all of the world’s producers. The decline in
Chinese exports means that Chinese producers, of course, are absorbing part
of that contraction; but the bigger decline in imports means that Chinese
consumers are contributing a greater amount to the contraction in global
demand.

全球經濟目前需求大幅緊縮，而緊縮幅度必為世界各生產者共同承擔。中國出口下滑，
代表中國生產者在承受緊縮之苦。但進口方面大幅滑落，代表中國消費者在製造全球
需求緊縮。

The net result is non-Chinese producers must absorb more than 100 per cent of
the contraction in demand from non-Chinese consumers. In a world of
contracting demand China, the world’s leading exporter of overcapacity, is
actually adding to global overcapacity. It will be hard to convince China’s
trading partners that this is fair.

總論之，非中國生產者必須吸收承擔超過百分之一百非中國消費者所製造出來的
需求緊縮。全球需求緊縮之際，中國這個產能過盛的出口大國，其實是讓世界過渡膨脹。
中國的貿易伙伴不可能會認為這是公平的。

But this does not mean that Chinese policymakers are knowingly engaging in
predatory trading behaviour. On the contrary, although they seem unable –
 some might say unwilling – to understand China’s role in the global
imbalance (much like the US failed to understand its role in 1930), they
would nonetheless like nothing more than to see China increase consumption
sharply. To that end they have unveiled a fiscal stimulus package and forced
banks to expand lending at a pace so rapid – January’s new loans equalled
one-third of all new loans in 2008 – it will almost certainly lead to a
sharp rise in non-performing loans.

但這不代表中國當局正在採取掠奪者式的貿易行為。與此相反，雖然中國的貿易伙伴
似乎無法（或不願）理解中國在世界的不對等重量（一如美國在1930年代並沒有理解
自己在世界體系中的角色），他們還是希望中國能夠大幅增加消費。就此問題，這些
貿易伙伴端出了一套又一套的經濟刺激方案，逼迫銀行迅速擴大借貸業務（一月新借
貸款總額為2008年所有新借貸款總額的三分之二），而此速度快到幾乎賭定會導致
不良借款量迅速累積。

But in fact their efforts have only increased total consumption, not net
consumption. China’s outdated development model, a banking system that
seriously misallocates capital and its weak consumer base make it very
difficult for China’s fiscal stimulus to cause a rapid net increase in
consumption.

這些伙伴國家只增加了總消費額，而非淨消費額。中國已然過時的發展模型，即一套
無法妥善置產、僅擁有疲弱顧客基礎的銀行系統，使得中國經濟復甦方案無法迅速提高
淨消費額。

Take the recent expansion in lending. The Chinese banking system in some
sense is the mirror image of that of the US. Whereas American banks
accommodated expansion of liquidity of the past decade by making imprudent
loans to the consumer sector, Chinese banks responded to their own surge in
domestic liquidity by channelling lending into overinvestment.

以最近借貸業務擴大為例。中國銀行系統有點類似美國的系統。美國銀處理過去十年
間流動性不斷擴張的方式，就是提供客戶端不智的貸款，而中國銀行則是將國內膨脹的
流動性以貸款形式導入生產端，產生過度投資。

US banks are cutting off consumer lending as they contract, but Chinese banks
are actually increasing their lending to the manufacturing and infrastructure
sector in order to generate growth and employment. Although the employment
effect of this lending will contribute to total global demand if it takes
workers off the unemployment queue, the consequent increase in production may
easily overwhelm it, so that China will continue to export huge amounts of
overcapacity into a world struggling with collapsing demand.

美國銀行遭遇緊縮的手段是切斷客戶端借貸供應，但中國銀行反而是增加借貸給製造業
和基礎建設部門，產生成長率以及工作機會。雖然這種借貸形勢所製造出來的工作機會
（若能夠減少失業人數）可對全球總需求產生貢獻，但生產擴張的力道反而會抵銷這種
貢獻，於是中國會持續大量過度出口給需求面已經崩盤的世界經濟。

This can easily lead to worsening trade friction. Already Asian countries
from India to Indonesia are squabbling fiercely over Chinese exports and
western economies from France to the US are veering towards protection.

這個模式會導致貿易爭端。亞洲國家如印度和印尼已經對中國出口倍感憎惡，而西方
經濟體如法國和美國則逐漸邁向保護主義。

But trade war is not the solution. Threatening China with trade sanctions if
it does not rapidly reduce the rising overcapacity it is forcing on to the
rest of the world will not work. There is very little Chinese policymakers
can do in the short run without causing a collapse in the export sector and a
rise in unemployment so rapid that it could lead to social instability.

但貿易戰不是解套之道。以貿易制裁威脅中國，要求降低其對世界的過渡出口，
是不管用的。中國執政者在短期間沒有很多選擇。多數手段都會造成出口部門崩潰，
失業率迅速攀升，導致社會不穩定。

The world must recognise that China can adjust, but it cannot adjust
immediately. It will take several years to do so, and will require
significant changes in both its financial system and in its development
model. To that end large economies need to work out a plan in which China is
given a reasonable amount of time to make what will inevitably be a difficult
transition. As part of the plan, the US, Europe and other big economies must
assure open markets to Chinese exports.

世界各國必須瞭解中國可以自我調整，但無法立即調整。中國必須要花很多年，
並且需要許多改變，包括金融系統方面，以及其國家發展模型方面等。因此，各大型
經濟體必須要擬出一套計畫，讓中國有合理、足夠的時間，推動一場很困難的轉變。
這套計畫中，美國、歐洲、以及其他大型經濟體，必須敞開市場，吸收中國出口。

The world, with US president Barack Obama in the lead, has a tremendous
opportunity to help China through a difficult transition and, in so doing,
create a new sustainable global balance of payments and a favourable
institutional framework that will govern trade and capital relations for
decades to come. If not, the advantages trade deficit countries receive from
pushing the full burden of adjustment on to trade surplus countries will be
overwhelmed by a global environment of deep mistrust and hostility.

以歐巴馬為首的世界體系，協助中國推動轉變是綽綽有餘。同時，這個世界體系也能
夠創造出新而穩固的全球資金平衡，以及持久且有利的制度框架，來管理貿易和資本
關係。

This is not the time to attack China. China has a serious overcapacity
problem that can best be worked out in global co-operation over four to five
years. To demand a quick resolution will bring nothing but trouble.

現在不宜批鬥中國。中國有過熱問題，而解決的方法就是透過全球合作機制，且必須
持續四到五年之久。若硬是要求最快速的解決方案，只會製造問題。

The writer is a professor of finance at Guanghua School, Peking University
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/543674b6-fd04-11dd-a103-000077b07658.html





Asia and the crisis: Unlucky numbers
By David Pilling

Published: February 9 2009 20:34 | Last updated: February 9 2009 20:34


Pick a number, any number. For Asia, they are all likely to be bad. Lau
Wong-fat, the unfortunate Hong Kong official designated to select a
fortune-telling stick on the city’s behalf during recent lunar new year
celebrations, plucked out the number 27, seen by those present as the
unluckiest possible omen for the year. A fortune teller at Che Kung temple,
shrouded in incense and consulting the heavens for inspiration, declared it
meant Hong Kong could not isolate itself from global economic turmoil.

But no such master of divination was needed. Not only Hong Kong, which as a
port city and financial centre thrives on its openness to fast-dwindling
world trade, but the whole of Asia is in trouble. All over the region,
particularly in manufacturing-heavy south-east and north-east Asia,
government statisticians have been summoning up evil-eye numbers of their own.

One of the worst came from Japan, whose conservative banks had been slow to
buy toxic assets, making the economy seemingly less threatened by recession.
That illusion ended when statistics showed that exports had fallen a shocking
35 per cent in December from a year earlier as demand for cars, electronics
and precision equipment collapsed around the world.

That was followed by a stream of further bad data including a nearly 10 per
cent month-on-month drop in industrial production, a sharp rise in
unemployment to 4.4 per cent (see below) and a fall in headline inflation
that suggests a return to deflation is just around the corner. So sharp has
been the deterioration that the International Monetary Fund has forecast a
contraction in gross domestic product of 2.6 per cent this year, suggesting
Japan could fare even worse than the US, the origin of the credit crisis.

Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan vie with Japan for the swiftest downturn.
Singapore, the canary in the coalmine of global trade because of its open
economy, could contract by up to 5 per cent this year in what would be the
deepest recession since the city-state’s birth in 1965. The IMF is
predicting a 4 per cent contraction in South Korea, though the government in
Seoul is sticking much more optimistic.

Nor is China, an economy that is at least expected to grow by a respectable
6-8 per cent this year, immune from heart-stopping statistics. Last week, the
government estimated that no fewer than 20m rural migrant workers, 15 per
cent of the total, had lost their jobs as export-oriented factories shut
their gates. Blue skies in Hong Kong are testimony to the closure of
polluting plants across the border in the Pearl River delta.

The speed and ferocity of Asia’s downturn has taken aback even the
pessimists. “Whilst Asia was not the epicentre of the crisis it has been hit
hard,” said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF managing director, last week. His
organisation expects regional growth of just 2.7 per cent, a fraction of the
9 per cent achieved in 2007 and a percentage point lower even than it managed
during its own financial crisis a decade ago. That crisis was largely
self-inflicted, the product of an overdependence on fickle flows of foreign
finance. This time, the region’s balance sheets are in better shape and the
crisis began elsewhere. So why does Asia appear set for an even harder fall?

The short answer is trade. As Mr Strauss-Kahn says, Asia is more intimately
bound to the global economy than it was a decade ago. The region has grown
spectacularly on the back of exports but the “bad side of the coin” is that
this makes it more vulnerable now. At the time of the previous crisis,
exports accounted for 37 per cent of developing Asia’s output, according to
economists at Morgan Stanley. A decade later, that had risen to 47 per cent
as governments sought to build large foreign currency reserves to protect
themselves against the current-account shocks that had floored them before.
The upshot was that Asia swapped dependence on external financing for
dependence on external demand.

This matters hugely for a world that, until just a few months ago, had
assumed that the financial crisis jolting the west would somehow pass Asia
by. A corollary of that flawed assumption was that China – and to a lesser
extent Japan and India – could somehow shoulder the global economic burden
by substituting for fast-disappearing US and European demand. That hope
ignored the fact that, with the exception of Japan, no Asian economy yet
possesses anything like the scale to play such a role. But, more important,
it missed the point of how entrenched Asia’s export-dependent model is and
how difficult it will be to convert its economies into ones powered by
domestic demand. As N.K. Singh, a member of India’s parliament, says: “It
is not just a matter of hey presto.”

Indeed not. Cem Karacadag of Credit Suisse calculates that exports, net of
their import content, account for as much as two-thirds of GDP in Hong Kong
and Singapore, almost half of the output of Malaysia and Thailand and
one-third for South Korea and Taiwan. He says the initial impact of a 10 per
cent fall in exports – without taking into account secondary effects,
including inevitable job losses and a fall in consumer sentiment – would cut
2 percentage points off growth in South Korea and Taiwan and leave Hong Kong
and Singapore each 7 percentage points worse off.

Jong Wha-Lee of the Asian Development Bank says a sharp rise over recent
years in intra-regional trade disguises the fact that 60 per cent of final
demand for Asian goods comes from developed countries. As western consumers
postpone purchases, a lot of intra-Asian trade – much of it components,
inputs and capital equipment – has also evaporated. As if this were not bad
enough, economies that rely on tourism are receiving an additional body blow
as visitor numbers fall. Tourism makes up 5-7 per cent of GDP in Hong Kong,
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Moreover, if employment of foreign workers
in the Gulf and elsewhere falls as fast as expected, then
remittance-dependent countries from the Philippines to parts of India are
also in for a shock.

At the other end of the development scale, Japan is undergoing factory
closures as companies slide into the red. Toyota, the leading car
manufacturer, has warned amid collapsing US sales that it would make an
operating loss of Y450bn ($5bn, €3.8bn, ￡3.2bn) this year, its first since
1950. Just a few months ago it was predicting a Y600bn profit.

In China, the slowdown contrasts with breakneck 13 per cent growth in 2007.
There are tentative signs – including a sharp recovery in bank lending –
 that growth, which slowed to 6.8 per cent in the fourth quarter, may have
hit bottom as a barrage of government stimulus measures begins to take
effect. Beijing was fairly quick to recognise the severity of the slowdown,
announcing as early as November a Rmb4,000bn ($585bn, €447bn, ￡390bn)
stimulus package. Many other governments are still playing catch-up. Last
week, Australia became the latest to formulate a big stimulus package,
announcing A$42bn ($29bn, €22bn, ￡19bn) in extra spending. Japan, whose
deadlocked parliament is fighting over stimulus measures, has come up with a
string of unorthodox actions, including the central bank’s decision last
week to buy up to Y1,000bn of shares owned by banks.

Even if such moves help dull the pain of the external demand shock, the
bigger worry is what comes next. Michael Pettis, a finance professor at
Peking University, argues that China (and others) will have to engineer a
massive rebalancing of their economies towards domestic-led growth if they
are to adjust to a world in which US consumers must rebuild depleted savings.

“In the best possible world, Chinese consumption would rise by exactly the
same amount as US consumption drops,” he says. But given that the US economy
is more than three times the size of China’s, the magnitude of such an
adjustment is likely to be beyond it.

“There is no longer any choice for Asia,” concurs Clyde Prestowitz,
president of the Economic Strategy Institute who warned for years that global
imbalances were unsustainable. “Asia has to start consuming more but I am
not sure that the Asian leaders I have been speaking to get it,” he says,
adding that this would require changes to credit provision, tax incentives
and regulation. “The export-led model has outlived its usefulness.”

If Mr Prestowitz is right, the global crisis means more than a cyclical shock
to Asian economies. Rather it signifies the start of a profound – and no
doubt painful – transformation as they adjust to a world in which the US
consumer is no longer the buyer of last resort. Whether Asian economies are
up to that long-term challenge is something on which fortune tellers might
usefully comment.

JOB INSECURITY IN JAPAN: ‘TEMPS ARE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST’

It took the worst economic downturn in decades to bring home to Shungo Horita
that he was on the wrong side of Japan’s great labour divide.

Aged 24, Mr Horita had worked for more than two years alongside permanent
staff at a food preparation plant on Tokyo’s outer fringes, processing eggs
for convenience store sandwiches. But he was a contract worker from a
temporary employment agency and, while Japanese companies are famously
reluctant to fire permanent staff, they are showing little compunction about
shedding temps.

In mid-December, Mr Horita’s agency told him he would no longer be required
– and must vacate his employer-subsidised one-room apartment by the end of
the month. “I was really angry,” he says. Temps “are discriminated
against: we get less in pay and bonuses – and we are easily fired”.

Mr Horita is far from alone. With Japan’s industrial output plunging by 9.6
per cent month-on-month in December, “irregular staff” such as part-timers
and temps are bearing the brunt of the slowdown. The government says an
unprecedented 125,000 irregular employees – mainly temps in manufacturing –
 will lose their jobs in the six months to March. An industry estimate puts
the figure at closer to 400,000.

Such numbers reflect in part a transformation in the workforce over the past
decade and a half, wrought by a reluctance to hire permanent staff among
companies suffering from the bursting of a 1980s asset bubble. As part of a
liberalisation of labour laws, 2004 legalisation allowed temps to be used in
manufacturing.

A greater use of non-permanent staff – now one-third of the workforce – has
helped Japanese manufacturers to maintain competitiveness. But temps and
part-timers with little or no employment insurance are badly placed to play
the role of economic buffer. Even when working, Mr Horita was lucky to have
more than Y10,000 ($110, ￡75, €85) a month left over from his Y160,000 pay,
after food and his Y50,000 rent: “It was basically impossible to save money.
”

Unable to find work before his eviction, on new year’s night he queued for
free food and a place to sleep at a tent village near Tokyo’s imperial
palace. The sight of hundreds of such newly unemployed at the “dispatch
workers’ village” set up by unions and campaigners against poverty, shocked
many and helped to make irregular labour one of Japan’s hottest political
topics.

Opposition politicians – likely to win power from the long-ruling Liberal
Democratic party this year – are demanding a reversal of the 2004 reform.
Taro Aso (above), prime minister and leader of the LDP, has pledged to review
the system and ban the use of temps engaged on a day-to-day basis.

Tsuyoshi Takagi, president of Rengo, Japan’s biggest trade union
confederation, says temps are being treated “the same as robots”, adding: “
We need to go back to the old way.”

Mr Horita has learnt from his time at the egg plant that he needs a less
vulnerable job. “I want to be a regular employee,” he says. “I don’t want
the same to happen again.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009



POINTERS TO ASIA’S AGONY:

Anecdotal evidence from across Asia suggests the slowdown is beginning to
have a profound effect on people’s lives, writes David Pilling.

Even in India, an economy less exposed to trade than much of the region, many
businesses are paring back, cutting overtime or going to a shorter working
week. At the weekend, 600 of the 1,600 discount food outlets of Subhiksha
Trading Services were looted because the company had run out of money to pay
security guards. The retailer’s difficulties underline how lack of credit,
the second channel through which the crisis is spreading to Asian business,
is bringing companies low.

Corporate Japan, whose best companies are the most exposed to trade, has
announced a string of losses and factory closures. The coastal cities of
China, where prosperity has risen rapidly, show signs of consumer caution
everywhere, from a stronger growth in the second-hand car market than for new
vehicles, to the more modest buckets of chicken that diners order at
take-away restaurants.

Macao’s cranes stand idle after the building boom in ever more lavish casino
complexes stopped dead. Middle-class Taiwan, where much wealth depends on now
desperate chip and flat-screen display makers, has seen a sixfold increase in
business at self-service petrol stations as people save a few cents a litre.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/65599c38-f6e1-11dd-8a1f-0000779fd2ac.html
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◆ From: 140.123.43.211
推 lkcs:太監的故事
推 vicklin:歐美剝屑中國勞力造成泡沫現在自食惡果罷了
※ 編輯: pursuistmi      來自: 140.123.43.211       (02/18 18:34)
※ 編輯: pursuistmi      來自: 220.129.164.172      (02/18 20:36)
※ 編輯: pursuistmi      來自: 220.129.164.172      (02/18 20:46)
→ flamesky:中國進口的主要是資源，石油，礦石，這種東西對世界需求
→ flamesky:好像影響不大。而進口下跌主要是這些大宗貨品太便宜了
→ flamesky:並不能說明太多問題
→ Oceanian:這些人沒有一個知道今年1月比去年1月多放5天假麼﹖
→ Oceanian:等著看他們對2月的數據有啥反應。
※ 編輯: pursuistmi      來自: 140.123.43.211       (02/19 11:19)