回首中国当年的4万亿大刺激

中国股市再次下跌，熊态渐显。这些天来，多位经济学家都指出中国经济存在深层次问题。但在2010年，中国曾是左派经济学家的最爱。

2008年底到2009年，中美两国都推出了刺激措施。但一年过后，中国经济似乎回到了正轨，美国经济则依然停滞不前。保罗•克鲁格曼等具有左派倾向的经济学家认为，原因在于规模。美国的刺激规模一直太小。2010年克鲁格曼曾撰文指出：“韩国和中国的刺激力度均远远超过所有西方国家，而且成效明显。”

就在2014年，圣路易斯联储银行还公布了一份研究报告，探讨了中国和西方发达国家在经济上的迥异表现。该行经济学家Yi Wen和Jing Wu称，中国的经济走势要好得多，原因是：

中国实施了大胆而果断的财政刺激措施，而其他主要国家都不敢这样做。特别要指出的是，中国政府聪明地把国企作为2009年积极对经济予以刺激的财政工具，这完全符合凯恩斯主义的观点，即通过增加政府支出来对总需求进行管理。

然而，考虑到近来的情况，或许已经到了重新考量此类分析的时候。2015年12月以来，上证指数已下跌近20%；和2015年6月的高点相比，该指数的跌幅还要深得多。分析师和中国政府也已大幅调整他们的经济增长预期。

这种局面说明，十年来一直表现出色的中国经济存在缺陷，它的基础一直是不可持续的资本积累和出口增长。我们曾经看到过这样的场面，比如20世纪50年代的苏联、70年代的巴西以及80年代的日本。这些政府都采取了鼓励投资的政策，他们为利率设定上限，这样企业就可以利用低成本贷款；他们还刻意压低本币汇率，目的是促进出口。这样的政策使得公司可以通过投资获利，甚至是在这些投资不符合经济原理的情况下。

在上述事例中，经济长期繁荣过后就是痛苦的泡沫破裂过程。20世纪80年代初发生经济衰退后，巴西多年来一直受到通胀、低增长和政局不稳的困扰。90年代初日本受到了金融危机的冲击，从此再未真正实现过复苏。

2009年称赞中国刺激措施规模较大的那些经济学家可能没有考虑到，这样做的基础是有缺陷的增长模式，是鼓励国企增加投资。实施刺激后，投资对中国GDP的贡献率飙升至50%以上，这样的水平在现代经济史上闻所未闻，而且很大一部分投资的背后推手都是政府。

从这个角度来看，中国的刺激措施并不那么注重为经济创造需求，它更多的是鼓励公司来创造供给，无论最终产品是否有市场。如今我们看到了这种做法的影响，那就是大宗商品价格暴跌以及全球制造业出现滑坡，原因是产出远远超过满足需求所需的水平。

考虑到衰退最终达到的水平，美国联邦政府本可以采取时间更长，也更有可持续性的经济刺激措施。但这并不是说，中国的刺激措施就是明智之举。由于中国存在失衡问题，一味地大举刺激而不致力于通过改革来扭转失衡，这只会让情况变得更糟。现在，中国乃至整个世界都在应付刺激措施带来的影响。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

校对：詹妮

China’s stock market fell yet again, pushing it into bear market territory.More than a few economists these days are starting to say there are deep problems in China’s economy, but back in 2010, China was the darling of the economic left.

Both China and the U.S. had embarked on stimulus efforts in late 2008 and 2009. A year later, though, China’s economy seemed to be back on track, while the U.S. was still stuck. Left leaning economists, like Paul Krugman, said the reason was size. The U.S.’s stimulus effort had been too small. As Krugman wrote back in 2010, “Korea and China both engaged in much more aggressive stimulus than any Western nation—and it has worked out well.”

As recently as last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a research paper that contemplated the divergent performances of the Chinese economy with those in the developed west. The economists Yi Wen and Jing Wu argued that that China performed so much better because:

China implemented bold, decisive fiscal stimulus programs that no other major nations dared to adopt. In particular, the Chinese government cleverly used its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a fiscal instrument to implement its aggressive stimulus programs in 2009, consistent with the very Keynesian notion of aggregate demand management through increased government spending.

In the light of recent events, however, it might be time to rethink this analysis. The Shanghai stock market is down roughly 20% since December, and much more since its peak last June, while analysts and the Chinese government have been sharply revising their estimates for economic growth.

This dynamic puts into sharp relief the flaw of China’s outstanding economic performance over the past decade: It’s been been based on an unsustainable build up of capital and growth in exports. We’ve seen this story before, be it the Soviet Union in the 1950s, Brazil in the 1970s, or Japan in the 1980s. In each of these cases the governments pursued policies that encouraged investment—like capping interest rates so that businesses could take advantage of cheap loans, and artificially cheapening the currency to promote exports. Such policies make it profitable for businesses to invest, even when these investments don’t make economic sense.

And in each of these cases, the long economic boom was followed by a painful bust. Brazil was plagued for years by inflation, slow growth, and political instability following the collapse of their economy in the early 1980s. The Japanese suffered from a financial crisis in the early 1990s from which they’ve never really recovered.

The economists who praised China’s stimulus package for its relative size in 2009 were likely not considering that it doubled down on this flawed growth model, encouraging more investment by state-owned enterprises. After China’s stimulus package, the share of GDP that came from investment, much of it spurred by the government, soared to above 50%—an unheard of level in recent economic history.

Taken in this light, China’s stimulus was less about making up for the lack of demand in the economy, and more about encouraging businesses to create supply regardless of whether there was demand for the end product. We’re seeing the effects of this approach today, with collapsing commodity prices and a global downturn in the manufacturing industry, as the world produces far too much than is needed to meet global demand.

The United States likely could have used a longer and more sustained stimulus effort from the federal government, taking into account how large the recession ended up being. But that doesn’t mean that China’s stimulus was wise. Given the imbalances in the Chinese system, a large stimulus without a commitment to reforms to reverse those imbalances amounted to just kicking the can down the road. Now China, and the world, is dealing with the consequences.