经济学人下载:中国当小心中等收入困境

Yukon Huang of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says doomsayers are wrong to be so concerned about the fall in the ratio of household consumption to GDP. True, it has dropped from around 50% two decades ago to 35% today, among the lowest levels in the world, whereas investment is among the world’s highest; but such a decline, he says, is not unusual for an industrialising country. The efficiency of stimulus spending may be questionable, “but how efficient do you expect stimulus money to be?” He thinks growth could remain at 7-8% for a long time.

华盛顿智库卡内基国际和平基金的黄育川说，灾难预言者如此关注家庭消费相对国内生产总值的比例下降是错误的。的确，二十年来这个比例由大约50%下降到现在35%，这个比例在世界上属于最低之列，然而投资却位于世界最前列；他说，对于一个正在进行工业化的国家，家庭消费比例下降不足为奇。用于刺激经济的支出使用效率如何是存在疑问的，“但是又能期望刺激经济的钱如何有效使用呢？”他认为中国经济可以长期保持7-8%的增长。

The bears’ grumbles
But many analysts are far less sanguine. Some worry that China could be approaching a Japanese-style crisis: a boom in exports and investment along with bubbly property markets, followed by many years of stagnation. In China’s case the added sting would be that it has not yet got rich. Officials and experts debate endlessly whether the country is slowly heading towards a “middle-income trap”. China was already a lower-middle-income country last year, with a GDP per person of around $4,400. The fear is that it might suffer the same stagnation and turbulence as Latin American economies in the 1980s and 1990s.

悲观者的牢骚

但是许多分析家远非如此乐观。有些分析家担心中国正走入日本式的危机：出口及投资高速增长同时房地产市场泡沫越来越大，随之而来是持续多年的滞涨。而中国将更烦恼的问题是它还没有富裕。政府官员及专家一直争论中国会不会慢慢走入“中等收入困境”。去年中国的人均国内生产总值大约为4，400美元，已经是中低收入国家。人们担心它可能遭遇拉丁美洲各国在上世纪八九十年代所经历的滞涨与动荡。

The drafters of the new five-year plan adopted in March were clearly hoping to head off such a calamity. Five-year plans have evolved since the Mao era when they were used by the government to micromanage the economy, but they are still meant to play a crucial role in setting the economic tone. “China model” fans love them because, at least in theory, they commit leaders to an economic strategy that will not be undermined by the chop-and-change policymaking of democracies. When Mr Wen’s successor takes over in 2013, the current plan will still have more than two years to run. It calls for faster change in the “pattern of economic development” to address the imbalances, and sees boosting consumption as critical to this.

3月份出台的新五年计划的起草者显然希望避免这样的灾难。政府用以微观管理经济的五年计划自毛泽东时代以来有所演进，但是它们在设定经济基调中仍然起着至关重要的作用。“中国经济增长模式”的拥护者支持实行五年计划，因为至少在理论上它使领导人遵循一定的经济战略，不同于民主国家经济政策删改频频而效果大受削弱。2013年下一任总理接任后，现在实行的五年计划还将继续执行两年。它要求“经济增长模式”实现更快的转变，以解决经济发展的不平衡问题，而促进消费将在其中起到至关重要的作用。