增长放缓、房市萧条——中国股市为何逆势飙升？

    简言之：目前中国经济增速处于2009年来的最低点。尽管根据官方统计数据和政府声明，中国经济仍同比增长7％以上，但全国所有主要城市的房价都在下跌，银行系统不良贷款上升速度多年未见，上个月，央行不得不再次出手干预，使狂热的国内货币市场维持稳定。

    对于那些不完全相信官方GDP数据的人士（中国总理李克强也是其中一员）而言，铁路运输和电力消耗等硬性指标的走势也顶多算得上持平。汇丰/Markit公布的采购经理人指数（PMI）显示，11月，制造业产出和就业双双下跌。

    对此，常用的反驳论据是，中国经济正将重心转移到服务业上，而服务业能源密集性较低，而且不会影响铁路货运。确实，汇丰/Markit公布的11月服务业PMI仍为53.0，显示服务业仍略有增长（虽然增速也是5月以来最慢的）。

    但周一公布的数据显示，今年11月，中国进口同比下降6.7％，远低于增长3.5％的预期。虽然进口额下降很大程度上是因为石油、铁矿等大宗商品价格下跌，但就数字来看，中国的内需并无大幅增长。

    Just to recap: China’s economy is growing at its slowest rate since 2009. Although officials statistics and government pronouncements suggest it’s still above 7% year-on-year, house prices are falling in every major city across the country, bad loans in the banking system are rising at their fastest rate in years, and the central bank has had to intervene on more than one occasion in the last month to keep a febrile domestic money market stable.

    For those people (who, until recently, included premier Li Keqiang) who don’t entirely trust the official GDP data, hard indicators such as rail shipments and electricity consumption are also on a trend that is at best flatlining. HSBC/Markit’spurchasing managers index suggests manufacturing output and employment both fell in November.

    The usual counter-argument to such bearishness is that China is re-focusing its economy on services, which are less energy-intensive and have no real correlation to rail cargoes. And it’s true that HSBC/Markit’sServices PMI was still at 53.0 in November, suggesting a decent clip of growth (even if that too was the slowest rate since May).

    But figures released Monday showed that imports were down 6.7% on the year in November, way below forecasts of a 3.5% increase. Even if much of that was due to lower prices for commodities from oil to iron ore, the figures hardly suggest surging domestic demand.