关注社会:中国改革攻坚之战

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.
中国正步入一个艰难的转型期，既要降低经济增速，又要改变增长模式。这是我从今年在北京召开的中国发展高层论坛(China Development Forum)得出的结论。此外，这可能既是一种经济转型，又是一种政治转型，这两种转型还将以复杂的方式互相作用。中国过去在共产党领导下所取得的经济成就，不一定确保未来会同样成功。
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."
读者不必相信我的话。但他们可以相信即将卸任的中国国务院总理温家宝在3月14日的讲话：“现在改革到了攻坚阶段。没有政治体制改革的成功，经济体制改革不可能进行到底，已经取得的改革和建设成果还有可能得而复失，社会上新产生的问题也不能从根本上得到解决，‘文化大革命’这样的历史悲剧还有可能重新发生。”
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).
这些政治问题当然非常重要，但经济转型本身已经足够艰难了。中国正在结束经济学家们所说的“粗放型增长”——指依靠增加劳动力和资本投入实现经济增长。中国现在必须转向“集约型增长”模式，依靠技能和科技的提高实现经济增长。由此带来的一个后果就是，中国经济增长率将从过去30年平均每年近10%的水平大幅下滑。中国粗放型增长的本质加大了这一转型的难度，尤其是超高的投资率以及严重依赖于投资作为需求来源（见图表）。
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.
用已故诺贝尔奖得主、西印度群岛人阿瑟?刘易斯爵士(Sir Arthur Lewis)的发展模型来看，中国将不再是一个劳动力过剩国家。刘易斯认为，农业剩余劳动力维持生计所需的收入，为现代部门的薪资设置了一个较低的上限。这让现代部门得以实现极高的盈利能力。如果将这些高利润用于再投资，就像中国那样，现代部门乃至整个经济的增长率将会非常高。但在某一个时间，农业劳动力将变得更加稀缺，从而提高现代部门的劳动力价格。随着经济的成熟，利润将遭到挤压，储蓄和投资将下降。

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年前的中国是一个劳动力过剩国家。现在则不是这样，部分原因是经济增长和城市化进程特别迅速：自从改革开始以来，中国经济实际增长了20多倍，现在城镇人口已超过一半。另外，中国的低出生率意味着，劳动年龄人口（15岁至64岁）将在2015年达到9.96亿的峰值水平。中国社会科学院(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)研究员蔡昉的一篇论文称，“自2004年以来，沿海地区的民工荒逐渐演变为普遍的招工难和涨薪潮”。蔡昉的论文给出了令人信服的证据，证明其结果是实际薪资上涨和利润缩水。
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.
中国现在正处于刘易斯拐点。一个结果是，在投资率一定的情况下，资本与劳动力的比率将更快上升，回报率也会更快下滑。实际上，在刘易斯拐点到来之前，就有一些有力的证据证明资本密集度在不断增强。前世界银行(World Bank)经济学家高路易(Louis Kuijs)表示，中国资本与劳动力的比率不断上升（而非“全要素生产率”的提高）对提高劳动生产率的贡献，从1978年至1994年间的45%升至1995年至2009年间的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.
这一点必须改变。中国经济增长必须由全要素生产率的提升（这将保持利润）来推动，而非资本与劳动力比率的上升（这将造成利润下滑），尤其是在目前实际薪资水平正迅速提升的情况下。鉴于收入分配不公，利润出现一些下滑是合理的。但如果幅度过大，它将破坏潜在增长。
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.
转向由技术进步推动增长的模式并非易事，这也是为什么有那么多国家陷入了所谓的“中等收入陷阱”的原因之一。中国现在是一个中等收入国家，并决心到2030年跻身高收入国家行列。这需要深化改革。最近由世界银行和中国国务院发展研究中心联合发布的一份值得注意的报告* ，对这些改革措施做出了阐述。这些改革措施将会对既得利益者造成冲击，尤其是地方政府和国有企业。这肯定也是温家宝看重政治改革的一个重要原因。
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).
实行艰难的改革，从而在未来20年维持经济增长，这是中国面临的一个长期挑战。美国纽约大学斯特恩商学院(Stern School of Business at New York University)教授鲁里埃尔?鲁比尼(Nouriel Roubini)在会上指出，为了实现这一目标，中国需要面对经济硬着陆的短期风险。中国政府为今年经济增长设定的目标是7.5%，今后五年的增长预期目标是7%。一定程度的增长放缓似乎是不可避免的。随着增长放缓，高得惊人的投资率也会下降（见图表）。
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，要想将投资率从GDP的50%下降到35%，期间又不发生严重的经济衰退，就需要大幅增加消费来弥补。中国很难实现这样的消费激增，因此中国应对当前危机的手段仍然是加大投资。此外，中国一直高度依赖房地产建设投资：过去13年中，房地产建设投资年均增长26%。这样的增长是不可持续的。
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.
中国或许真的能成功转变经济增长模式，仍然有巨大的赶超潜力。但是调整到新的增长模式将面临巨大的挑战。许多中等收入国家都失败了。鉴于中国过去所取得的成功，人们很难看低中国。对中国抱有信心最好的理由是，中国的最高决策者并不自满。
* China 2030,
*《2030年的中国：建设现代、和谐、有创造力的高收入社会》，
译者:何黎