The way forward
Pain and prosperity
China is following a well-trodden but dangerous path
前进路上
痛并繁荣着
中国踏上一条前人常走但仍布满荆棘的道路
AT THE TIME, the “Five-Year Plan for a New Economy” seemed a courageous fresh start. The government vowed to wind down controls on interest rates, allow companies to borrow abroad, open domestic markets to foreign investors and sell its holdings in dozens of state-owned enterprises. Officials had promised at last to end “delay and vacillation”, remarked a leading reformist. Five years later the currency was plunging and banks’ bad loans were surging. It took a bail-out from the International Mo
neta
ry Fund to douse the fire.
彼时，“新经济的五年计划”看来是一个大胆的崭新开端。政府誓要放松对利率的控制，允许企业海外借贷，向海外投资者开放国内市场，并卖掉手中几十家国企的股份。一位改革派领导者说，官员们总算承诺不再“犹疑拖延”。五年后，货币汇率大跌，银行坏账激增，要依靠国际货币基金组织救火方才脱离险情。
An imagined scenario of what lies ahead for China? No; this is a potted account of South Korea’s economic history in 1993-97, a period of bold deregulation that culminated in financial turmoil. Parallels with China are imperfect. For a start, South Korea’s vulnerability stemmed from the fatal combination of a whopping current-account deficit and a reliance on short-term foreign funding; China has neither to worry about. Yet two lessons are relevant to it. First, moving from a state-directed financial system to a market-based one is almost bound to cause serious turbulence. China is following a successful Asian development model pioneered by Japan and replicated by both Taiwan and South Korea. Their governments were unabashed in protecting infant industries and promoting exports and used banks to mobilise domestic savings for capital-heavy investment. In all three countries the benefits of such controls eventually faded away, but undoing them caused trouble, in the form of property and stockmarket bubbles in Japan in the 1980s; similar, if slightly smaller, bubbles in Taiwan by 1990; and South Korea’s financial crisis in 1997-98.
这是想象中中国未来的情景吗？不，这是对韩国1993至1997年间经济历史的概括。这段时期里，政府大胆放松管制，最终导致金融动荡。中国的情况与之并不完全可比。首先，当时韩国经常项目赤字巨大，又依赖短期国外融资，二者的致命结合正是韩国经济脆弱的根源。这两方面中国都无须担心，但是有两个教训值得借鉴。首先，国家控制的金融体系转型为市场化体系的过程几乎一定会造成严重动荡。中国发展遵循的是亚洲发展的成功模式。这一模式由日本首创，台湾和韩国继而效仿。它们的政府毫不掩饰地保护稚嫩的工业、推动出口，并利用银行调动国内储蓄用于资本密集型投资。政府控制的好处在日、韩、台最终逐渐减弱，但放手的过程引发了问题。在日本，20世纪八十年代出现了地产和股市泡沫；台湾到了1990年也出现了类似的泡沫，或许规模稍小；而韩国则在1997至1998年间发生了金融危机。
Such problems are not confined to Asia. Carlos Díaz-Alejandro, an economist, arrived at the same diagnosis in Latin America decades ago. The title of his classic 1985 paper went to the nub of it: “Goodbye Financial Repression, Hello Financial Crash”. Details vary from place to place, but there are common features. The most significant is the moral hazard that builds up in managed financial systems over time. Because the state wields so much control, lenders and investors alike come to count on it as a backstop when trouble arises. As Mr Díaz-Alejandro wrote, “warnings that intervention will not be forthcoming appear to be simply not believable.”
此类问题并非亚洲所独有。经济学家卡洛斯·迪亚兹-亚历杭德罗（Carlos Díaz-Alejandro）几十年前在拉美就得出了同样的结论。他发表于1985年的经典论文的标题 《别了，金融抑制；来了，金融危机》一语中的。不同国家和地区放松管制的过程在细节上虽有不同，但存在共性。最突出的就是受管制的金融体系随着时间积累起来的道德风险。由于政府掌握极大的控制权，贷款机构和投资者都认为在出现问题时可以依靠政府支持。正如迪亚兹-亚历杭德罗写道：“说不再会有政府干预好像根本就不可信。”
Deregulatory risk
Belief in the government’s role as guarantor is particularly dangerous when deregulation begins. Suddenly, opportunities arise for higher profits because returns are no longer capped, but financial institutions do not yet have proper risk safeguards in place. Some might even calculate that it is in their interest to expand as quickly as possible, gambling that by the time the government pulls the plug on guarantees they will have become “too big to fail”.
放松管制的风险
管制放松开始之时，认为政府会扮演担保人角色的想法尤为危险。突然之间，投资回报没有上限了，有机会获取更高利润，但此时金融机构还没有适当的风险防范机制就位。有些企业甚至可能盘算出，符合自身利益的做法就是尽快扩张，赌定在政府不再提供担保之前，它们已经“大到不能倒”了。
These dynamics are already at play in China. Over the past few years its banks have been piling on risk through their shadow operations. To attract funding, they have offered higher rates to depositors through wealth-management products. They have put more of their cash into higher-return assets, often dodging regulatory limits to do so. Mid-sized banks, those on the cusp of too-big-to-fail status, have been the wildest. Insurers, peer-to-peer lenders and asset managers, among others, have all been drawn into the race to offer higher yields, at the very moment when growth is slowing and returns are declining. And whereas the official preference is to move slowly, money is not waiting around. If need be, it will move abroad.
这些变数已经在中国起作用了。过去几年中，通过影子运作，银行一直在积聚风险。为吸引资金，它们通过理财产品给储户更高的利息，还把大量现金投入更高回报的资产，且经常为此避开监管限制。接近“大到不能倒”之列的中型银行此类行为最为猖獗。增长放缓、回报降低之际，保险公司、P2P贷款公司和资产管理公司以及其他金融机构也都投身提供更高回报的竞赛之中。虽然政府希望缓慢推进变革，资金却毫不等待。有需要的话，资金还会转移到海外。
If deregulation involves such dangers, why would anyone want to risk it? The reason is that repressed financial systems eventually outlive their usefulness. Dysfunctions begin to corrode previously potent growth models. Returns on capital decline as banks roll over loans to struggling companies. Shadow banks flourish as companies and investors work around rules. Controlled capital accounts come apart at the seams. These ills are already far advanced in China. Just look at the growing amount of debt it employs to fuel short-term growth.
如果放松管制危险多多，为什么还要放手一搏呢？原因就在于受压抑的金融体系最终会失去其效用。运转失常开始损害以往有效的增长模式。银行向陷入困境的企业提供贷款展期，资本回报下降；企业和投资者规避监管规则，影子银行业务兴旺；受管制的资本账户捉襟见肘。这些弊病在中国已发展到相当的程度，只要看看中国为推动短期增长而承受的债务水平就知道了。
The second, more hopeful, lesson from the experiences of other Asian dynamos is that financial tumult need not spell the end of development. In recent years it has become fashionable to present crises as opportunities, but that is far too glib; the effects of a crisis are unpredictable and the damage to people’s lives all too real. Yet it is also clear that mistakes did not stop South Korea or Taiwan from subsequently doing well. Precautions are needed to limit the turmoil, but putting off change indefinitely will spell steady decline.
第二个来自亚洲经济活跃国家放松管制历程的教训更有希望，即随之而来的金融动荡并非就意味着发展的终结。近年来，将危机描绘为机遇的做法成为时尚，但那太过肤浅了。危机的影响不可预测，对人们生活的影响却实实在在。然而还有一点很清楚，即错误并没有妨碍韩国或台湾日后成绩斐然。为限制动荡的规模有必要采取防范措施，但无限期推延变革却注定招致经济的持续下滑。
China’s financial reforms have been edging in the right direction, but not fast enough. Many observers expect it to follow Japan towards chronic malaise. For China, that would be even worse. When Japan stumbled, its people’s incomes were close to American levels, but average Chinese incomes today are just a quarter of those in America.
中国的金融改革一直在朝着
正确的
方向缓慢前进，但速度还不够快。很多观察家预计中国会像日本那样陷入长期低迷。对于中国而言，情况可能还会更糟。日本经济增长停滞时，其国民收入水平已接近美国，而中国现在的人均收入仅为美国的四分之一。
China, however, is different from Japan in a number of ways. Some are helpful: it is less developed than Japan was in the 1980s, giving it more scope for catch-up growth—and for recovery from financial missteps; its exchange rate is under pressure to depreciate, not appreciate; its property bubble is less gigantic; and its stockmarket has already crashed.
然而 ，中国与日本在很多方面有所不同。有些不同是有益的：中国现在的发展水平不及上世纪80年代的日本，在追上时有更多的增长机会，也更容易从金融失策中恢复过来；人民币汇率面临贬值而非升值的压力；房地产泡沫没有日本当年那么大，而且股市已经崩盘。
Ideological differences are more worrying. The Communist Party is, almost by definition, wary of the market and suspicious of the West. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, economists who trained abroad eventually returned home and pushed for reform. China has an embarrassment of talented citizens with global experience, but many of those who have returned have grown frustrated with the party’s grip and left government. Without more political openness, the road to financial reform will be fraught.
更令人担忧的是意识形态方面的差异。共产党——几乎从定义上——就会对市场小心警惕，对西方世界心怀疑虑。 在日本、韩国和台湾，在国外接受教育的经济学家最终回归本土，推动了改革。中国则在这一点上面临窘境：它不乏具备国际经验的本国人才，但其中很多归国人士对党的严密掌控感到气馁，继而辞去政府职务。若政治上不进一步开放，金融改革之路将困难重重。
There is another big difference to consider. China’s weight in the global economy is far larger than that of any other country whose banks have gone through a similar transition. The case for change is plain: the government needs to cede more control to the market to make the financial system work and to unleash the economy’s potential. Even if it gets it right, the process will be rough for China and bumpy for the world. The alternative—that it fiddles while its banks falter—is too awful to contemplate.
还有另外一个重大的差异需要考虑。相比任何一个银行业经过类似变革的国家，中国在全球经济中的份量都要大得多。推动变革的理由很明白：政府需要更多地放权于市场，让金融体系正常运作并释放经济体的潜力。不过即使路走对了，这一过程对中国而言注定充满坎坷，对全球也不会平坦。如果走上另一条路——在银行业步履蹒跚的时候仍无所作为——后果将不堪设想。