台灣還要再向中國經濟靠攏嗎? 台灣人別再被馬先生騙啦!!
(參看中國的幽靈城市及商場: http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/ccshsu-clement/article?mid=9047&prev=9049&next=9039 )
Chinese Economist Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt
What I’m about to say is
all true. But under
this system, we are not
allowed to speak
the truth.
– Larry Lang
China's
economy has a reputation for being strong
and
prosperous, but according to an economics
professor
who is also a well-known Chinese
television
personality, the country's Gross Domestic
Product
is going in reverse.
Larry
Lang, chair professor of finance at the
Chinese
University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture,
which
he did not think was being recorded, that
the
Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—
on
the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable
formulation:
every province in China is Greece.
The
restrictions Lang placed on the Oct 22
speech
in Shenyang City, in northern China’s
Liaoning
Province, included no audio or video
recording,
and no media. He can be heard saying
that
people should not post his speech online, or
“everyone
will look bad”, in the audio that is now on
YouTube.
In
the unusual, closed-door lecture, Lang gave
a
frank analysis of the Chinese economy and the
censorship
that is placed on intellectuals and public
figures.
“What I’m about to say is all true. But under
this
system, we are not allowed to speak the truth,”
he
said.
Despite
Lang's polished, high-profile
appearances
on TV, he said: “Don’t think that we are
living
in a peaceful time now. Actually the media
cannot
report anything at all. Those of us who do TV
shows
are so miserable and frustrated, because we
cannot
do any programmes. As long as something is
related
to the government, we cannot report about
it.”
He
said that the regime does not listen to experts,
and
that Party officials are insufferably arrogant. "If
you
don’t agree with him, he thinks you are against
him,”
he said.
Lang's
assessment that the regime is bankrupt
was
based on five conjectures.
Firstly, the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion
yuan (S$7.35 trillion).
This calculation is arrived at by
adding
up Chinese local government debt (between
16
trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or S$3.27 trillion and
S$3.98
trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned
enterprises
(another 16 trillion, he said). But with
interest
of 2 trillion per year, he thinks things will
unravel
quickly.
Secondly, the regime’s officially published
inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real
inflation
rate is 16 percent, according to Lang.
Thirdly, there is serious excess capacity in
the economy, and private consumption is only
30 percent of economic activity. Lang said that
beginning
this July, the Purchasing Managers Index,
a
measure of the manufacturing industry, plunged
to
a new low of 50.7. This is an indication, in his view,
that
China’s economy is in recession.
Fourthly, the regime’s officially published GDP of
9 percent is also fabricated. According to Lang’s data,
China’s
GDP has decreased 10 percent. He said that
the
bloated figures come from the dramatic increase
in
infrastructure construction, including real estate
development,
railways, and highways each year
(accounting
for up to 70 percent of GDP in 2010).
Fifthly, taxes are too high. Last year, taxes on
Chinese
businesses (including direct and indirect
taxes)
were at 70 percent of earnings. The individual
tax
rate sits at 81.6 percent, Lang said.
Once
the "economic tsunami" starts, the regime
will
lose credibility, and China will become the
poorest
country in the world, Lang said.
Several
commentators have expressed broad
agreement
with Lang's analysis.
Professor
Frank Xie at the University of South
Carolina,
Aiken, said that the idea of China going
bankrupt
is not far fetched. Major construction
projects
have helped inflate the GDP, he says. “On
the
surface, it is a big number, but inflation is even
higher.
So in reality, China’s economy is in recession.”
Further,
Xie said that official figures should not
be
relied on. The regime’s vice premier, Li Keqiang,
for
example, admitted to a U.S. diplomat—as
mentioned
in a cable from 15 March 2007 obtained
by
a Wikileak—that he does not believe the statistics
produced
by lower-level officials, and when he was
the
governor of Liaoning Province, “had to personally
see
the hard data”.
Cheng
Xiaonong, an economist and former
aide
to ousted Party leader Zhao Ziyang, said that
high praise of the "China
model" is often made on
the basis of the high-visibility
construction projects,
a big GDP, and much money in foreign
reserves.
"They
pay little attention to things such as whether
people's basic rights are guaranteed, or their living
standard has improved or not," he said.
Behind
the control of the economy by fiat, which
can
have the appearance of being efficient, there
is
enormous waste and corruption, Cheng said. It
means
that little spending is done on education,
welfare,
the health system, and so on.
Cheng
says that for the last decade, the
Chinese
regime has accumulated its wealth
primarily by
promoting real estate development,
buying urban
and suburban residential properties at
low prices (or
simply taking them), and selling
them to developers
at high prices.
According
to Cheng, the goals of regime
officials
(to enrich themselves and increase their
power) are
in
direct conflict with those of the people—so social
injustice
expands, and economic propaganda meant
to
portray the situation as otherwise prevails.
Few
scholars inside the country dare to speak as
Lang
has, Cheng said. And that is probably because
he has a
professorship in Hong Kong.
New York Times
Will China Break?
Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting — and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.
Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.
I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on the Chinese situation, in part because it’s so hard to know what’s really happening. All economic statistics are best seen as a peculiarly boring form of science fiction, but China’s numbers are more fictional than most. I’d turn to real China experts for guidance, but no two experts seem to be telling the same story.
Still, even the official data are troubling — and recent news is sufficiently dramatic to ring alarm bells.
The most striking thing about the Chinese economy over the past decade was the way household consumption, although rising, lagged behind overall growth. At this point consumer spending is only about 35 percent of G.D.P., about half the level in the United States.
So who’s buying the goods and services China produces? Part of the answer is, well, us: as the consumer share of the economy declined, China increasingly relied on trade surpluses to keep manufacturing afloat. But the bigger story from China’s point of view is investment spending, which has soared to almost half of G.D.P.
The obvious question is, with consumer demand relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. And surely much of the rest of the increase was from firms expanding to sell to the burgeoning construction industry.
Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back — think coastal Florida.
And there was another parallel with U.S. experience: as credit boomed, much of it came not from banks but from an unsupervised, unprotected shadow banking system. There were huge differences in detail: shadow banking American style tended to involve prestigious Wall Street firms and complex financial instruments, while the Chinese version tends to run through underground banks and even pawnshops. Yet the consequences were similar: in China as in America a few years ago, the financial system may be much more vulnerable than data on conventional banking reveal.
Now the bubble is visibly bursting. How much damage will it do to the Chinese economy — and the world?
Some commentators say not to worry, that China has strong, smart leaders who will do whatever is necessary to cope with a downturn. Implied though not often stated is the thought that China can do what it takes because it doesn’t have to worry about democratic niceties.
To me, however, these sound like famous last words. After all, I remember very well getting similar assurances about Japan in the 1980s, where the brilliant bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance supposedly had everything under control. And later, there were assurances that America would never, ever, repeat the mistakes that led to Japan’s lost decade — when we are, in reality, doing even worse than Japan did.
For what it’s worth, statements about economic policy from Chinese officials don’t strike me as being especially clear-headed. In particular, the way China has been lashing out at foreigners — among other things, imposing a punitive tariff on imports of U.S.-made autos that will do nothing to help its economy but will help poison trade relations — does not sound like a mature government that knows what it’s doing.
And anecdotal evidence suggests that while China’s government may not be constrained by rule of law, it is constrained by pervasive corruption, which means that what actually happens at the local level may bear little resemblance to what is ordered in Beijing.
I hope that I’m being needlessly alarmist here. But it’s impossible not to be worried: China’s story just sounds too much like the crack-ups we’ve already seen elsewhere. And a world economy already suffering from the mess in Europe really, really doesn’t need a new epicenter of crisis.
