中国改革何去何从？

    鉴于国有企业在中国经济中的主导地位，要实现这位副总理的这个期许仍然不是一件容易的事，但他确实说了这番话，而且这恰恰是诸多与会的西方和亚洲企业领袖们所希望听到的。

    中国已经到了发展的关键阶段，也就是经济学家所说的“中等收入过渡阶段”。在这个阶段，人均收入（与发达国家水平相比仍处于非常低的水平）和国内消费支出将提高，对出口的依存度将降低。诺贝尔经济奖得主、纽约大学（NYU）教授迈克尔•斯宾塞在全体大会上对与会代表说：“在这个阶段，大多数发展中国家的增长步伐会放缓，甚至停滞不前。日本、台湾、韩国、新加坡和香港是例外，但闯过这一关很难。多数国家失败的原因在于，与其他处于早期发展阶段的发展中国家相比失去了劳动力成本优势；同时，既得利益团体倾向于控制政策议程，妨碍所需的结构性变革继续推进。而这两个现象在中国都已经有所体现。”

    除此之外，斯宾塞还指出，中国在进入这个发展阶段后，至少有三个独特的特征会让这个转型变得更加困难：第一，中国经济的绝对规模；第二，发达国家经济的普遍低迷；第三，中国在全球经济中仍在不断提升的主导地位。斯宾塞说，其他国家“可以只关注本土增长和发展，而不用在复杂的国内事务和国际事务之间刻意寻求平衡。”

    世贸组织总干事帕斯卡尔•拉米是乐观派的代表之一。拉米表示，中国和世界目前所面临的大多数问题都可以找到解决办法。真正的挑战在于将认知转化为行动。他说，目前，中国较其他国家有三大优势：第一，“有考虑长远发展的内在倾向”；第二，“对政府特有的容忍度”；最后，“中国很大一部分集体资源仍掌握在政府手中”，而这为中国带来了优势，可能会加速变革的步伐。

    多位发言人反复指出，作为世界人口第一大国的中国必须促进消费支出。菲亚特（Fiat）董事长约翰•埃尔坎讲述了亨利•福特的故事以及革命性的5美元最低薪资（福特1914年为自己工厂的工人所设立的日薪标准）。当时，这个薪资标准让美国汽车工人有钱去购买自己生产出来的产品，还帮助催生了一大批充满活力的中产阶级。埃尔坎是在“从世界工厂到世界市场”的分组会上发表的这番讲话，会上发言的还有梅西百货公司（Macy’s）的首席执行官特瑞•朗德根和安利（Amway）联席创始人理查德•德沃斯。他们都希望中国向世界市场的这一转型能够加速。

    出席座谈的还包括中国电子商务巨人阿里巴巴集团（Alibaba Group）的首席策略师曾鸣，它的交易数量已经超过了亚马逊（Amazon）和eBay的交易数量总和。曾鸣非常清楚中国消费者对他公司的重要性，而涉及消费者对国家大繁荣的重要性，曾鸣更是心知肚明。他们是中国奇迹得以延续的关键所在。（财富中文网）

    That last will continue to be a challenge, given the dominance of state-owned enterprises in the Chinese economy, but that's what he's saying, and it's exactly what the many captains of Western and Asian industry in attendance wanted to hear.

    China has reached a critical stage in its growth—what economists refer to as the "middle-income transition." That's when per-capita income (which remains very low in China by developed country standards) rises, together with domestic consumer spending, and reliance on exports falls. "Most developing countries slow down and get stuck at this stage," Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence of NYU told the delegates in a plenary session." Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong are exceptions, but it's hard. Among the reasons most fail, both of which are present to some degree already in China, are the loss of the wage advantage to other, earlier-stage developing countries; and the tendency of vested interests to control the policy agenda and block needed structural changes.

    What's more, as Spence pointed out, China enters this phase of its development with at least three unique characteristics that could make the transition harder still: One, the sheer scale of its economy; two, widespread weakness in the developed world; and three, China's dominant and still growing position in the global economy. Other countries, Spence said, "could focus on domestic growth and development in general without doing a delicate balancing act" between a complex domestic agenda on the one hand and a complex global agenda on the other.

    Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization, was among those expressing optimism. Most problems facing China and the world today, Lamy noted, are problems we know how to solve. The challenge lies with translating knowledge into action. Here, he said, China has three advantages over other countries: one, "a propensity…to consider long-term matters;" two, "a specific tolerance for authority;" and finally, the fact that in China "a significant amount of collective resources is still in the hands of the government," which gives it the leverage, potentially, to speed the pace of change.

    Speaker after speaker returned to the need to boost consumer spending inside the world's most populous country. Fiat Chairman John Elkann told the story of Henry Ford and the revolutionary $5 minimum wage, which gave U.S. autoworkers the means to buy the products of their labor and helped spark the creation of a large and vibrant middle class. Elkann was speaking at a session on China's transition from world factory to world market, where he was joined by Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos. All have an obvious interest in speeding that transition.

    But also on the panel was Zeng Ming, chief strategist for Alibaba Group, China's e-commerce juggernaut, which handles more transactions than Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) combined. Ming knows full well how important Chinese consumers are to his company, not to mention China's larger prosperity. They're the key to sustaining the Chinese miracle.