9月中国外贸回暖，但增长隐忧未散

    如果市场对明显的好消息都无动于衷，那说明状况确实不妙。

    由于担心全球经济放缓步伐过快，各国股市上周均陷入恐慌。因此，人们可能盼着，世界第二大经济体——中国的外贸数据能超出预期，在本周给大家注入些许乐观情绪。

    今年9月份，中国出口同比增长15.3%，高于8月份9.4%的增速，比12%的预测值也高出不少。对美国和欧洲市场的发货量均增长了15%左右。考虑到德国、法国和意大利等欧洲国家的经济已几乎陷入停滞，对欧出口的增长看来成果尤为显著。

    然而，亚洲股市周一仍跌跌不休，部分原因是人们担心上述数据可能有些靠不住——这种担心也不是第一次出现了。上证指数和日经指数分别下跌了0.4%和1.2%。

    具体来看，9月份中国内地对香港出口同比猛增34%，而8月份对香港出口刚下跌了2.1%。这在一定程度上表明，中国出口数据的增长很大程度上可能并非源于真实的出口贸易，而是源自变相外汇市场投机的影响。

    中国的资本账户控制很严格，只允许根据实际贸易需要来购汇和结汇。因此，内地企业经常向自己的香港子公司虚开发票，制造有名无实的进出口交易，以便扩大或缩小自身对外汇市场波动的风险敞口。澳新银行（ANZ）分析师指出，对香港出口的增长“正值过去几个月人民币再次升值”。

    不过，中国进出口数据的另一面，显现出了更令人鼓舞的信号——进口在8月份下跌2.4%后，在9月份同比增长了7%，但上升原因可能并不如中国政府或西方经济学家所愿。在很大程度上，带动当月进口增长的是原油以及（用于炼钢的）铁矿石进口增加。中国政府正努力向内需驱动型经济转型，而上述数据实难作为转型的有力证据。

    今年，中国政府的目标是保持约7.5%的经济增长率，而国际货币基金组织（IMF）仍维持对中国今明两年经济增长率分别为7.4%和7.1%的预测。IMF上周下调了对全球大多数经济体的增长预期，其悲观预测成为引发股市下跌的原因之一。许多分析师担心，房地产泡沫破裂会导致中国经济出现更加急剧的减速。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie

    You know things in the markets are bad when they don’t even react well to what appears to be good news.

    Fears that the world economy was slowing down too fast threw global stock markets into a funk last week, so it might have been expected that better-than-forecast trade data from China, the world’s second-largest economy, would have injected a bit of optimism into everyone’s Monday morning.

    China’s exports rose 15.3% on the year in September, accelerating from a rate of 9.4% in August and comfortably above the 12% expected. Shipments to the U.S. and E.U. both grew by around 15%, a particularly decent clip in the case of Europe, where Germany, France and Italy have all but ground to a halt.

    But Asian stock markets continued to sell off Monday, partly because of fears–not for the first time–that there may be something fishy about the numbers. The benchmark Shanghai index fell 0.4%, and the Japanese Nikkei fell 1.2%.

    Specifically, exports to Hong Kong leaped 34% on the year in September, having been down 2.1% in August. That suggested to some that much of the improvement in the data might not be down to real exports as such, but rather to disguised bets on the foreign exchange market.

    China’s capital account is tightly controlled and only allows foreign exchange to be bought or sold when needed for real underlying trade. As a result, mainland businesses often fake invoices to subsidiaries in Hong Kong to generate phantom exports or imports when they want to take on, or reduce, exposure to swings in currency markets. Analysts at ANZ noted that the rise in exports to Hong Kong were “coincident with the renewed renminbi appreciation in the last few months.”

    But there were more encouraging signs from the other side of the trade data. Imports rose 7% on the year, having fallen 2.4% in the year to August, but perhaps not for the reasons either Beijing or western economists would want. Much of the increase was due to more purchases of iron ore (for steel) and crude oil–hardly clear evidence of the kind of rebalancing towards domestic consumption that the authorities are aiming for.

    China’s government is trying to sustain a growth rate of around 7.5% this year. The International Monetary Fund, whose gloomy predictions last week were one of the triggers for the market sell-offs, left its forecast for this year and 2015 unchanged at 7.4% and 7.1%, respectively, even while it downgraded it forecasts for most of the rest of the world. Many analysts are concerned that the collapse of a real estate bubble may lead to a sharper slowdown.