關注社會:中國改革攻堅之戰

China is entering upon a difficult transition to both lower growth and a different pattern of growth. This is the conclusion I drew from this year's China Development Forum in Beijing. Moreover, it is likely to be a political as well as an economic transition. These two transitions will also interact with one another in complex ways. The past record of economic success, under Communist party rule, does not guarantee a comparably successful future.
中國正步入一個艱難的轉型期，既要降低經濟增速，又要改變增長模式。這是我從今年在北京召開的中國發展高層論壇(China Development Forum)得出的結論。此外，這可能既是一種經濟轉型，又是一種政治轉型，這兩種轉型還將以複雜的方式互相作用。中國過去在共產黨領導下所取得的經濟成就，不一定確保未來會同樣成功。
Readers do not need to take my word. They can take those of the outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, who said on March 14: "The reform in China has come to a critical stage. Without the success of political structural reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute economic structural reform. The gains we have made in reform and development may be lost, new problems that have cropped up in China's society cannot be fundamentally resolved and such historical tragedy as the Cultural Revolution may happen again."
讀者不必相信我的話。但他們可以相信即將卸任的中國國務院總理溫家寶在3月14日的講話：“現在改革到了攻堅階段。沒有政治體制改革的成功，經濟體制改革不可能進行到底，已經取得的改革和建設成果還有可能得而復失，社會上新產生的問題也不能從根本上得到解決，‘文化大革命’這樣的歷史悲劇還有可能重新發生。”
These political questions are of great importance. But the economic transition, in itself, will be hard enough. China is coming to the end of what economists call "extensive growth" – driven by rising inputs of labour and capital. It must now move to "intensive growth" – driven by improving skills and technology. Among other consequences, China's rate of growth will slow sharply from its average annual rate of close to 10 per cent of the past three decades. Making this transition harder is the nature of China's extensive growth, particularly the extraordinary rate of investment and heavy reliance on investment as a source of demand (see charts).
這些政治問題當然非常重要，但經濟轉型本身已經足夠艱難了。中國正在結束經濟學家們所說的“粗放型增長”——指依靠增加勞動力和資本投入實現經濟增長。中國現在必須轉向“集約型增長”模式，依靠技能和科技的提高實現經濟增長。由此帶來的一個後果就是，中國經濟增長率將從過去30年平均每年近10%的水平大幅下滑。中國粗放型增長的本質加大了這一轉型的難度，尤其是超高的投資率以及嚴重依賴於投資作爲需求來源（見圖表）。
China is ceasing to be a labour surplus country, in terms of the development model of the late West Indian Nobel laureate, Sir Arthur Lewis. Lewis argued that the subsistence income of surplus labour in agriculture set a low ceiling for wages in the modern sector. This made the latter extremely profitable. Provided the high profits were reinvested, as in China, the rate of growth of the modern sector and so of the economy would be very high. But, at some point, labour would become scarcer in agriculture, so raising the price of labour to the modern sector. Profits would be squeezed and savings and investment would fall as the economy matured.
用已故諾貝爾獎得主、西印度羣島人阿瑟?劉易斯爵士(Sir Arthur Lewis)的發展模型來看，中國將不再是一個勞動力過剩國家。劉易斯認爲，農業剩餘勞動力維持生計所需的收入，爲現代部門的薪資設置了一個較低的上限。這讓現代部門得以實現極高的盈利能力。如果將這些高利潤用於再投資，就像中國那樣，現代部門乃至整個經濟的增長率將會非常高。但在某一個時間，農業勞動力將變得更加稀缺，從而提高現代部門的勞動力價格。隨着經濟的成熟，利潤將遭到擠壓，儲蓄和投資將下降。

The China of 35 years ago was a surplus labour economy. Today that is true no longer, partly because growth and urbanisation have been so rapid: since the beginning of reform the Chinese economy has grown more than 20-fold, in real terms, and half of China's population is now urban. In addition, China's low birth rate means that the working age population (15-64) will reach a peak of 996m in 2015. A paper by Cai Fang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences states that "labour shortage has become rampant throughout the country since it broke out in coastal areas in 2004. In 2011, manufacturing enterprises came across unprecedented and universal difficulties in recruiting labour". Mr Fang's paper gives compelling evidence of the consequent rise in real wages and shrinking profits.
35年前的中國是一個勞動力過剩國家。現在則不是這樣，部分原因是經濟增長和城市化進程特別迅速：自從改革開始以來，中國經濟實際增長了20多倍，現在城鎮人口已超過一半。另外，中國的低出生率意味着，勞動年齡人口（15歲至64歲）將在2015年達到9.96億的峯值水平。中國社會科學院(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)研究員蔡昉的一篇論文稱，“自2004年以來，沿海地區的民工荒逐漸演變爲普遍的招工難和漲薪潮”。蔡昉的論文給出了令人信服的證據，證明其結果是實際薪資上漲和利潤縮水。
China is now at the Lewis turning point. One consequence is that, at a given investment rate, the ratio of capital to labour will rise faster and returns also fall faster. Indeed, strong evidence of such rising capital intensity emerged even before the Lewis turning point. According to Louis Kuijs, a former World Bank economist, the contribution to higher labour productivity of the rising ratio of capital to labour (as opposed to the contribution of a higher "total factor productivity" (TFP), or overall productivity) rose from 45 per cent between 1978 and 1994 to 64 per cent between 1995 and 2009.
中國現在正處於劉易斯拐點。一個結果是，在投資率一定的情況下，資本與勞動力的比率將更快上升，回報率也會更快下滑。實際上，在劉易斯拐點到來之前，就有一些有力的證據證明資本密集度在不斷增強。前世界銀行(World Bank)經濟學家高路易(Louis Kuijs)表示，中國資本與勞動力的比率不斷上升（而非“全要素生產率”的提高）對提高勞動生產率的貢獻，從1978年至1994年間的45%升至1995年至2009年間的64%。

This has to change. China's growth must be driven by rising TFP, which will sustain profits, rather than rising ratios of capital to labour, which will lead to declining profits, particularly now that real wages are rising fast. Some decline in profits is desirable, given the maldistribution of income. Taken too far, it would damage potential growth.
這一點必須改變。中國經濟增長必須由全要素生產率的提升（這將保持利潤）來推動，而非資本與勞動力比率的上升（這將造成利潤下滑），尤其是在目前實際薪資水平正迅速提升的情況下。鑑於收入分配不公，利潤出現一些下滑是合理的。但如果幅度過大，它將破壞潛在增長。
The difficulty of making the transition to growth driven by technical progress is one reason why so many countries have fallen into what has come to be called the "middle-income trap". China, now a middle-income country, is determined to become a high-income country by 2030. That will take deep reforms, which are laid out in a remarkable recent joint report by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council.* Those reforms will adversely affect vested interests, particularly in local government and state-owned enterprises. That is surely a big reason why Mr Wen thinks political reforms matter.
轉向由技術進步推動增長的模式並非易事，這也是爲什麼有那麼多國家陷入了所謂的“中等收入陷阱”的原因之一。中國現在是一箇中等收入國家，並決心到2030年躋身高收入國家行列。這需要深化改革。最近由世界銀行和中國國務院發展研究中心聯合發佈的一份值得注意的報告* ，對這些改革措施做出了闡述。這些改革措施將會對既得利益者造成衝擊，尤其是地方政府和國有企業。這肯定也是溫家寶看重政治改革的一個重要原因。
The need to make difficult reforms, to sustain growth in the next two decades, is China's longer-term challenge. In trying to get there, it confronts the short-term risks of a hard landing, as Nouriel Roubini of the Stern School of Business at New York University pointed out at the conference. China's government is targeting annual growth of 7.5 per cent this year and of 7 per cent in the current five-year plan period. Some such slowdown seems inevitable. As growth slows, the need for extraordinary investment rates will also decline (see chart).
實行艱難的改革，從而在未來20年維持經濟增長，這是中國面臨的一個長期挑戰。美國紐約大學斯特恩商學院(Stern School of Business at New York University)教授魯裏埃爾?魯比尼(Nouriel Roubini)在會上指出，爲了實現這一目標，中國需要面對經濟硬着陸的短期風險。中國政府爲今年經濟增長設定的目標是7.5%，今後五年的增長預期目標是7%。一定程度的增長放緩似乎是不可避免的。隨着增長放緩，高得驚人的投資率也會下降（見圖表）。
Yet getting from an investment rate of 50 per cent of gross domestic product to one of 35 per cent, without a deep recession on the way, requires an offsetting surge in consumption. China has no easy way to engineer such a surge, which is why its response to the crisis has been still higher investment. In addition, China has come to rely heavily on investment in property construction: over the past 13 years investment in housing has grown at an average annual rate of 26 per cent. Such growth will not continue.
然而，要想將投資率從GDP的50%下降到35%，期間又不發生嚴重的經濟衰退，就需要大幅增加消費來彌補。中國很難實現這樣的消費激增，因此中國應對當前危機的手段仍然是加大投資。此外，中國一直高度依賴房地產建設投資：過去13年中，房地產建設投資年均增長26%。這樣的增長是不可持續的。
China may indeed manage the transition to a very different kind of economic growth. The country still has vast potential to catch up. But the challenges of adjusting to the new pattern will be huge. Plenty of middle-income countries have failed. It is difficult to argue against China, given past successes. The best reason for confidence is that top policy makers lack such complacency.
中國或許真的能成功轉變經濟增長模式，仍然有巨大的趕超潛力。但是調整到新的增長模式將面臨巨大的挑戰。許多中等收入國家都失敗了。鑑於中國過去所取得的成功，人們很難看低中國。對中國抱有信心最好的理由是，中國的最高決策者並不自滿。
* China 2030,
*《2030年的中國：建設現代、和諧、有創造力的高收入社會》，
譯者:何黎