中国股市暴跌，贸易战一触即发？

上周连续两天，在股市暴跌自动触发“熔断机制”之后，中国监管机构不得不中止股票交易。设定这项机制，原本是为了促进金融市场的稳定。

造成中国股市暴跌的原因有很多，但多数分析师认为，中国央行推动人民币贬值是主因。我的同事斯科特•森德罗斯基在周四曾写道：“中国央行下调了人民币兑美元的所谓参考汇率，创下8月份以来的最大下调幅度，由此导致人民币在两天内贬值两个百分点。这令各界担忧，中国政府正在通过货币贬值的方式来刺激经济增长；中国经济目前面临的困难其实要远远高于预期。”

几十年来，中国管理汇率的方式一直都是美国观察家关注的焦点问题，因为经济学家们一直怀疑，中国推动人民币贬值的目的在于补贴制造和出口行业。但近几年，随着中国政府允许人民币升值，以推动经济摆脱对投资和出口的高度依赖，更多地依靠国内消费驱动，从而实现经济再平衡，这些担忧有所减轻。

但中国经济今年急速放缓，再加上股票市场大幅下跌，导致这种分析思路遭到质疑。人民币正在贬值这一事实意味着，中国经济向消费驱动转型的努力遇到了困难。

今年早些时候，中国允许人民币兑美元汇率在更宽的区间内浮动。但人民币并未升值，反而开始贬值，上周四，中国政府允许（有人认为是强制）人民币再次贬值，创下5年来人民币兑美元的最低价。

在有些人看来，这听起来像是一场货币战争，中国正在通过更廉价的货币促进出口，以提振迅速疲软的经济。但也有人认为，相比之前几十年，现在的美元持续走强，让人民币贬值是说得通的。

但不论你对人民币贬值的动机持怎样的观点，非常明显的一点是，人民币贬值将给全球经济带来连锁反应。这就是美国和其他股票市场上周四暴跌的原因所在。

最大的担忧是，全球经济体针对非常有限的全球需求而展开的贸易战会日益加剧。作为中国在亚洲的主要竞争对手之一，越南的货币越南盾今年已经三次贬值，上一次是在8月份。澳新银行集团经济学家尤金尼亚•法波恩•维克托里诺和艾琳•张在当时的一份研究报告中指出：“今天的政策行动，对于及时应对中国的人民币贬值，具有积极效果。”

与此同时，其他主要出口国，如日本和韩国等，也在密切关注人民币的未来走向。今年早些时候，韩元跌至三年来的最低水平，而近几年，日本央行也在积极推动大规模货币刺激政策。日本政府坚称，此举只是为了刺激国内需求，经济政策研究所的经济学家罗伯特•斯科特等却认为，日本的策略不同于美联储的量化宽松政策，它直接导致美国每年丧失几十万个工作岗位。

正如经济学家和中国问题专家迈克尔•佩蒂斯所说，中国今天的问题凸显出全球经济需求的严重不足。目前在全球各大经济体中，没有一个是通过不断提高的收入而获得高速增长的。直至现在，中国经济的高速增长一直是政府鼓励过度投资并维持低工资水平的结果，这种政策的目的在于促进出口和增加就业。而少数几个贸易持续逆差的大型经济体，如美国和英国等，并没有能力购买中国和其他出口国家努力推销的产品。

因此，面对日益疲软的需求，出口国家将继续展开激烈的厮杀。只有时间才能告诉我们，中国经济最终能否摆脱出口依赖症。但现在可以确定的是，从长远来看，中国在进行必要改革之前等待的时间越长，这个全球第二大经济体就将变得越不稳定。（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

审校：任文科

For the second day in one week, China’s regulators shut down trading on its stock markets after sharp declines triggered automatic “circuit breakers” aimed at promoting financial stability in the country.

The reasons for China’s stock market troubles are many, but most analysts pointed to a move by the central bank to weaken China’s currency—the renminbi—as the primary cause for the decline. As my colleague Scott Cendrowski wrote Thursday,“China’s central bank lowered the yuan’s so-called reference rate, its trading peg to the U.S. dollar, by the largest margin since August, when the yuan dropped a couple percentage points over two days. That created a fear that China’s leaders are using a weaker currency to spark growth for an economy that is struggling more than expected.”

China’s management of its currency has been fascination for American observers for decades, as economists have long suspected that China undervalued its currency in order to subsidize its manufacturing and export industry. But those fears subsided in recent years, as the Chinese government allowed its currency to appreciate as part of a broader effort to rebalance its economy away from relying on investment and exports to one reliant more on domestic consumption.

But the sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy this year, paired with big losses in its equity markets, has thrown that analysis into question. And the fact that China’s currency is falling now is a sign that the transition the economy was supposed to be making towards the consumer is in trouble.

Earlier this year, China allowed its currency, the renminbi, to trade within a wider band around the value of the dollar, to which its value is pegged. But instead of rising in value, the renminbi fell against the dollar, and on Thursday the Chinese government allowed (or forced, depending on whom you ask) its currency to go down again, to its lowest value against the dollar in five years.

For some, this smacks of rank currency wars, with China fighting its quickly weakening economy with a cheaper currency to boost exports. Others argue that with the dollar stronger today than it has been in decades, it only makes sense to allow the yuan to weaken in response to this.

But wherever you come down on China’s motivations for its devaluation, it’s clear that a cheaper renminbi will send ripple effects through the global economy. And that’s likely why stocks in the U.S. and elsewhere plunged on Thursday.

The biggest fear is a deepening of a trade war that is being fought between the world’s economies over a very limited supply of global demand. One of China’s main competitors in the region, Vietnam, has moved three separate times this year to devalue its currency, with the last coming in August. “The policy action today is positive in its promptness in response to China’s devaluation,” Eugenia Fabon Victorino and Irene Cheung, analysts at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said in a research note at the time.

Meanwhile, other big exporters like Japan and Korea, have been watching the moves in the renminbi closely. Korea’s won hit a three year low earlier this year, while the Japanese central bank has been engaged in massive monetary stimulus in recent years. The Japanese government argues that this is purely to stimulate domestic demand, but economists like Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute have argued that Japan’s tactics are different than, for instance, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, and that currency manipulation on the part of Japan has cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.

As economist and China expert Michael Pettis has argued, what China’s troubles today underscore is the dearth of demand in the global economy. There are virtually no economies on earth today that are growing quickly as the result of rising incomes. Instead China’s rapid growth, until recently, has mostly been the product of a government policy that encourages excessive investment and keeps wages low in order to boost exports and employment. The few large economies that run trade deficits, though, like the United States and the U.K., don’t have the capacity to buy everything that China and the rest of the world’s exporters are trying to sell.

And therefore, it’s likely we’ll continue to see exporters fighting for every scrap of slow growing demand. Only time will tell whether China can ween itself off its dependency on exports. But what is certain is that the longer China waits to make the necessary reforms, the less stable the world’s second largest economy will be in the long run.