China Confusion: Ascendant Power or Troubled Economy?

Investors can’t help but notice two kinds of news coming out of China these days. One tells a story of near-panic-driven stock market declines, a falling currency, high and rising debt levels, and a rapid slowdown in growth — all adding up to evidence of a so-called hard landing for the world’s second-largest economy. The other type of news portrays a confident, rising superpower that is setting up institutions to rival theWorld Bankand the International Monetary Fund, a country whose companies are embarking on a record-breaking spree of offshore acquisitions while its wealthy elite drive up property prices from Manhattan to Mayfair.

中国正越来越多地向世界呈现一种两极性格，使其贸易伙伴和全球投资者感到困惑，他们似乎无法就哪种描述更准确达成一致。使问题更为复杂的是，中国官员如今似乎更容易犯错。在经济高速增长时，中国官员似乎泰然自若、有条不紊。监管机构去年夏天突然干预股市，人民币突然小幅贬值，令投资者感到恐慌，加剧了市场波动，而不是让人放心。官员们很少公开谈论他们策略背后的基本原理，当他们真的谈论时，他们往往会发出混杂的信号，他们是否有能力应对中国艰难的转型，以及是否致力于改革，以使中国摆脱投资和出口拉动型增长，转而更加依赖国内消费和私营部门发展，这两个问题都引发了人们的质疑。

今年对中国的担忧格外突出，因为轮到北京首次担任20国集团（g20）主席。中国在2010年超过日本成为世界第二大经济体，目前国内生产总值（gdp）为11.3万亿美元，几乎是亚洲邻国的三倍。它在组建新的多边贷款机构方面发挥了领导作用亚洲基础设施投资银行and theNew Development Bank— placing officials in Beijing in a unique position to challenge their counterparts in the U.S., Europe and Japan, who for decades collectively set the rules of global finance through the G-7, the World Bank and the IMF.

“这是中国第一次在世界经济协调政策中发挥了如此关键作用，”高盛亚洲的前副主席Kenneth Courtis说，他现在正在掌握他自己的投资公司，他的投资公司，壮大投资控股。据说，谈到中国硬着陆，托管说，大陆仍然是全球经济实力的源泉。中国在2015年产生了近40％的世界增长，当然，今年正在努力做同样的事情。“她不仅仅是牵着体重，”他说。“记住，中国的GDP是13％至14％。”

有些人就不那么乐观。上个月穆迪发票estors Service lowered the outlook on its China sovereign debt rating of Aa3 to negative from stable, citing concerns about a weakening of the country’s fiscal and financial position. Moody’s noted a rise in government debt to 40.6 percent of GDP at the end of 2015 and a huge decline of $762 billion in foreign exchange reserves last year. In addition, the rating agency said there was increasing “uncertainty about the authorities’ capacity to implement reforms — given the scale of reform challenges — to address imbalances in the economy.”

围绕中国银行和非金融企业的债务担忧更为严重。企业杠杆率大幅上升，是因为当局在2008-09年金融危机后通过大幅增加银行贷款刺激了经济。尽管官方数据显示，不到1%的香港银行贷款表现不佳，但J.P.摩根银行业分析师Katherine Lei最近的一份报告称，如果一家银行通过影子银行系统贷款，其中包括通过经纪公司发放的信贷，那么NPLS的实际水平约为7%。财富管理产品和其他渠道。

“After 2008, when Beijing launched a massive investment push, the global ruling elite all praised China for saving the global economy,” says Andy Xie, an independent strategist in Shanghai who previously worked as Morgan Stanley’s chief economist in Asia. Since 2008, China has increased overall credit — including bank lending, shadow banking credit and government borrowing — by more than $20 trillion, or 176 percent of GDP, to finance the construction of factories, apartment buildings, roads and railways, he says. But, Xie adds, “investment does not guarantee final demand.”

信贷的快速增长造成了房地产价格的泡沫，并推动了通过信用合作社、信托和其他组成影子银行部门的实体发放的短期贷款的激增。分析人士估计，该行业有5万亿美元的未偿贷款，相当于GDP的44%，其中大部分信贷发放给与地方政府相关的企业，并投资于需要数年才能成熟的基础设施项目。分析人士不禁质疑，如果出现大量违约，中国政府将如何应对危机。

The Chinese central government has allowed some local governments to sell municipal and provincial bonds in an effort to convert the short-term loans to longer-term debt instruments, but these efforts may not work fast enough to avert a sharp rise in NPLs. In a worst-case scenario, such bad debts could surge to 20 percent of GDP, says J.P. Morgan’s Lei. That estimate “is far from our base case,” she writes in her report, “but if it happens, China’s commercial banking system would need 5 trillion yuan of capital.” The government, which still sits on more than $3 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, can afford to recapitalize its banks, Lei says, but that would just perpetuate the credit dependency that leaves the economy vulnerable.

马修斯国际资本管理公司（Matthews International Capital Management）资深中国观察家兼投资策略师安迪•罗斯曼（Andy Rothman）表示，经济本身具有双重性质，既会引发乐观情绪，也会引发悲观情绪，从而对实际前景产生不确定性。马修斯国际资本管理公司是旧金山一家专注于亚洲业务的资产管理公司，市值237亿美元。

“Manufacturing weakness has led to the development of a distinct rust belt in China, where industries related to construction and natural-resources extraction are concentrated,” says Rothman, who went to China in 1983 as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, then worked as a Shanghai-based strategist with Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia for 14 years before joining Matthews International in 2014. The rust belt consists of five provinces where GDP growth was only 5 percent in 2015 and unemployment is nearly double the national average of 4 percent. By contrast, China’s other 26 provinces, home to 84 percent of the population, grew at a rate of about 8 percent last year, Rothman estimates.

罗斯曼说，在经济增长缓慢的省份——东北工业区的黑龙江、辽宁和吉林，以及北京南部和西部依赖采矿业的陕西和河南，由于产能过剩或缺乏竞争力，数千家雇用数百万工人的国有企业需要重组。但他表示，债务主要集中在相对较少的国有企业，而为中国创造大部分新就业和投资的私营企业已经去杠杆化。

Notwithstanding the severity of China’s challenges, there are signs that government reform efforts are moving the economy away from its dependence on public sector investment and export-led growth. For the first time, services and private sector consumption accounted for more than half of the country’s GDP, or 51.4 percent, in 2015, up from 41.4 percent a decade ago. The strength of those sectors is mitigating weakness in manufacturing and construction, Rothman says. If this rebalancing continues, China’s economic deceleration will be gradual, he contends.

然而，新的刺激措施正在引起一些分析人士的担忧，即政策制定者在改革方面态度温和，以维护社会稳定。

Less than a week after China hosted the G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in late February in Shanghai, PremierLi Keqiangannounced a slew of initiatives aimed at supporting growth. They included cuts in bank reserve ratios and mortgage down-payment requirements, an expansion of value-added tax reductions to all industries and a $245 billion budget for infrastructure spending this year. Li also announced a $15 billion allocation to retrain several millions of workers who will be laid off as a result of the massive restructuring of state-owned companies.

李克强3月5日在北京向全国人大代表表示，中国政府今年的财政赤字占GDP的比例为3%，高于2015年的2.3%，为1949年以来的最高水平，以确保经济增长的“合理区间”。他还设定了2016年6.5%至7%的增长目标，低于2014年的7.5%和2015年的7%。这是中国政府首次采用区间而非精确的增长目标。

官员面临着艰难的平衡行动，在努力减少过度的能力同时保持社会稳定，一些分析师认为李的措施没有得到平衡权。虽然长期以来，但政府在长远来看，它需要消除过剩的能力，虽然希望经济繁殖，但江富洪证券的香港首席亚经济学家。“随着稳定经济的更多关注，结构改革可能会推迟，”他说。“然而，我们认为，只有通过具体的结构改革，中国才能提高生产力并使增长可持续发展。”

MANY OFFICIALS CAME TO THE G-20 meeting worried about China’s health and the impact of its slowdown on their own economies. At a news conference in Hong Kong on his way to the G-20, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said concern about Chinese growth was one of the main causes of global financial market instability.

在会议上，中国官员试图向他们的合作伙伴保证，北京仍然致力于将追踪增长的经济改革。他们发誓不要从事元的任何竞争贬值。为他们，西方官员敦促北京继续经济和市场改革，并在其行动中更加透明;美国财政部秘书雅各布Lew在G-20的一些演讲和媒体陈述中敲响了这一主题。“我们欢迎中国努力过渡到更具消费的经济，包括通过支持家庭需求和减少产业能力的行动的财政政策，”刘刘记者在峰会上告诉记者。“中国继续以有序的方式朝着更多的市场确定的汇率和透明汇率政策，并明确将其行动传达给市场，这也是至关重要的。”

China’s currency, which weakened again in November and December, has stabilized lately at about 6.5 to the dollar. But many analysts believe the yuan needs to decline further to facilitate the country’s economic evolution.

“The yuan should fall over time,” says Paul Schulte, who heads his own, Hong Kong–based research firm, Schulte Research International. “This is part of an economy in transition from an investment-led to a consumption-led engine. Korea had this in the 1990s. Japan had this in the 1980s. The U.S. had this in the 1960s. Europe’s turn was in the 1970s.”

中国官员表明，任何人民币的弱点都会是渐进的。该国主权财富基金的高级主管说，领导力非常清楚，它不能摆脱现行经济放缓的方式，中国投资公司（CIC），他向政府提供财政政策，并谈到匿名的条件。主管说，“中国买不起货币或贸易战”。“官员将让货币逐渐滑动到未来几年的美国美元不低于七元，并将在那里保持稳定的时间。”

中国官员开始意识到，他们的市场比以往任何时候都更与全球金融市场紧密相连，他们无法逃避解决遥远国家投资者的担忧。在最近的达沃斯世界经济论坛上，习近平主席的一位顾问承认，糟糕的沟通导致了全球市场对中国货币贬值的担忧。中国证监会副主席、中共一个重要金融政策委员会委员方星海在达沃斯论坛上表示：我们的体系结构没有与市场无缝沟通，他试图向投资者保证，中国政府没有追求竞争性贬值。他补充道：“我们肯定能学到东西。”

The poor communication reflects the fact that the Communist Party leadership is still trying to find the right balance between giving in to market forces and controlling markets through administrative planning, says Laurence Brahm, a Beijing-based lawyer and entrepreneur who has advised the Chinese government on initiatives including the 2007 launch of CIC.

At the moment, the leadership is having a difficult time finding the middle ground. Consider the run-up to last summer’s stock market rout and the authorities’ response to it. Officials spoke favorably about the stock market in late 2014 and early 2015, leading many investors to believe the authorities were sanctioning a bull market. When prices fell by more than a third between June and August 2015, wiping some $5 trillion off Chinese equity values and triggering major sell-offs around the world, the authorities took a heavy hand, temporarily banning margin trading and selling by certain major shareholders and targeting people accused of short-selling or destabilizing the market.

“The leadership encouraged a bull market in a short period of time and then took drastic action against market participants, punishing them for following through on the government’s encouragement,” Brahm says.

As part of the crackdown, the authorities arrested half a dozen executives of China’s largest investment bank, CITIC Securities Co. They also arrested Xu Xiang, a billionaire and founder of hedge fund firm Zexi Investment Management, on charges of insider trading.

“中国自由化了许多杠杆式金融工具，其中开设了潘多拉的轰炸机，”德拉姆说。“最终，泰森看到了什么即将来临，短缺市场。人们赔钱，对政府生气。所以它通过逮捕Tycoons和Punters来回愤怒的投资者，然后使用明确的行政而不是市场机制来支撑市场。“

The policy confusion and mixed signals stem in part from the fact that President Xi has been muscling in on Premier Li’s territory, sources say. Premiers have traditionally managed economic affairs while presidents focused on politics, foreign policy and defense. Xi, however, has seized control of all portfolios since taking over as head of the Communist Party in 2012. Technocrats like central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan have made fewer public pronouncements under Xi’s leadership; Liu He, head of the General Office of the Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and a senior aide to Xi, is often quoted in Chinese media these days.

美国银行银行总裁安德鲁集会检测中国在中国官僚通知水平上升，因为官员不同意过去关于如何应对国家的挑战。

“As with most countries, there are different groups with different agendas controlling economic policy,” says Collier, who is now founder and head of Orient Capital Research, a Hong Kong–based firm that advises hedge funds. The central bank and the Ministry of Finance were at odds on how to deal with the stock market crisis last summer.

科利尔说，内部紧张局势导致“政治精英中不太老练的成员试图绕过技术官僚进行最后一轮竞选”，他指出，政府花了3000亿美元试图支撑市场，但毫无结果他们赢得了这场战争，但在夏末市场急剧下跌时输掉了这场战争。”

除了官僚争斗,官员have made some glaring policy missteps lately. The most notable occurred at the start of January, when regulators activated a so-called circuit breaker in a bid to steady the stock market. Although circuit breakers are common in the West, China’s had two trigger points set too close together. If the market index dropped by 5 percent, trading would be halted for 15 minutes; if the decline reached 7 percent when the market reopened, authorities would shut it down for the day.

在1月4日新系统推出当天，熔断器非但没有促进市场稳定，反而引发恐慌性抛售，迫使当局当天关闭市场。在暂停两天后，抛售在1月7日再次引发市场停牌。曾倡导引入断路器的中国证监会主席肖钢今年2月被免职，由中国农业银行前董事长刘士余接任。

中国中国大学的兼职教授和最近的书籍的作者，中国仍然是一个混合经济的经济“随着国家菲亚特的不安共存。”Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping: Renaissance, Reform, or Retrogression?“XI希望党的州仪器保持控制经济的重要部门，”他说。“因此，北京将继续允许国有企业集团控制关键领域，包括石油和天然气，银行，电信和航空公司。”

Even as the government says it remains committed to market-oriented economic reforms, Xi is pushing the party back to its leftist roots with his efforts to concentrate power in his own hands. China experts say the president is backpedaling on much-needed political reforms and using strong-arm tactics to silence opponents within and outside the party. His anticorruption campaign has led to the arrest and jailing of tens of thousands of cadres, including more than two dozen officials of ministerial rank or higher.

“中国曾经再次被恐惧抓住了，以自从毛泽东时代以来，”加州克莱蒙特麦肯纳大学政府教授Minxin Pei说。“从中国共产党的内蒙古到大学讲座和行政套房，苛刻的指责和骚扰惩罚的幽灵正在跟踪中国的政治，智力和商业精英。”

在过去12个月里，一批商界大亨和官员被逮捕或一度失踪，没有任何官方解释。其中的首席执行官是上海复星国际（Fosun International）的董事长郭广昌，他风度翩翩，常被称为“中国的沃伦•巴菲特”（Warren Buffett）。过去五年，郭广昌和中国最大的私人投资集团复星（Fosun）斥资50多亿美元收购了一系列离岸资产，包括法国度假村运营商俱乐部é迪特兰ée和prime纽约房地产公司。

郭,消息人士称保留之前的关系Chinese leadership under president Jiang Zemin, disappeared for almost two weeks in December, causing investors to panic and Fosun shares to drop 9 percent. It was later revealed that he was assisting anticorruption officials who were investigating a former Shanghai vice mayor.

The Fosun executive finally reappeared in public at a well-publicized dinner in New York City. Guo has remained free since then and apparently is not being targeted for criminal charges, but the incident illustrates the lack of transparency of China’s political system, under which politicians and business leaders can disappear with no official explanation and without due process.

马修斯国际公司的罗斯曼说：“过去几年，在法治方面没有任何进展。”这是我确实预计在未来几十年会发生的事情，共产党确实明白，他们确实需要建立法治，才能继续执政，但法治不是一朝一夕就能实现的。”

The prospect of a more powerful but also more volatile and unpredictable China poses a challenge to the country’s major trading partners. Many analysts expect Beijing to use its G-20 presidency to assert its influence and challenge the global status quo.

“Compared to the hosts of previous years, Beijing will use its G-20 presidency to project both hard and soft power,” says author Lam. “Xi wants China to play a greater role on the global stage, particularly in reshaping the international financial order.” He also wants to use the G-20 to position the yuan as a major global currency following its inclusion in December in the Special Drawing Right, the currency basket of the International Monetary Fund, Lam adds.

More broadly, China will use its G-20 presidency to advance its ultimate objective of establishing a new financial architecture that will rival Bretton Woods institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, analysts say. This includes the recently launched Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB.), a Beijing-led institution that has attracted more than 50 countries as members, and theNew Development Bank, an initiative with China’s partner BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.

去年，当英国政府同意加入AIIB时，中国政府雄心勃勃，极大地鼓舞了奥巴马的雄心。伦敦的决定促使多个欧洲国家政府效仿。

伦敦公司政策和资源委员会主席Mark Boleat表示，许多欧洲政客对中国的全球力量崛起而不是美国同行，这一欧洲政客均更加舒适。

“The G-20 presidency is a part of the natural process of China becoming an import-driven economic power,” Boleat says. “There is goodwill for China as a leading player, but one has to keep in mind that it will take time for China to become effective in these global institutions.”

中国国家主席的另一个优先事项是“一带一路”倡议，该倡议旨在发展连接中国与东南亚、中亚和欧洲市场的公路、铁路和海运基础设施，顾问布拉姆说因此，作为20国集团主席，习近平将致力于与全球金融体系接轨，并试图调整许多坐标，使之与目前正在出现的两条平行轨道保持一致——南北合作和南南合作，两者之间几乎没有重叠，”他解释说。

一些分析人员担心驳回玻璃扶正可能会威胁区域或全球稳定的风险。

“China is beginning to involve itself more in global issues, but instead of becoming a responsible stakeholder in the liberal international order, it seems to have chosen to focus on creating parallel governance structures, which it can shape according to its own preferences,” says Wolfgang Ischinger, a veteran German diplomat who chairs the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of security and defense officials that was held in mid-February. “And its increasing assertiveness, most visibly in the East and South China Seas, continues to worry its smaller neighbors, who wish for a stronger U.S. role in the region.”

In Beijing, however, analysts believe Xi’s agenda is marked more by cooperation than by confrontation. “The G-20 presidency can help China to promote its multilateral efforts,” says Hong Liang, chief economist and head of research at中国国际资本公司北京一家投资银行特别是，中国可能会强调，这些新机构只会在补充而不是挑战现有发展机构方面发挥作用。这样，中国就能提高20国集团国家对这些倡议的接受程度。”

北京证券律师、政府金融改革政策顾问关安平说，美国及其欧洲和日本盟友不必把中国的野心视为威胁他表示：“中国不会试图将其政治模式强加于新兴市场受援国的喉咙，以此作为融资的条件。”他补充说，北京“通过贸易和商业寻求影响力，在金融地缘政治方面完全没有意识形态。”

关说：“中国还有很多东西要向美国、欧洲和日本学习。”我们所寻求的只是尊重，”他解释道，并补充说，中国推出开发银行是因为美国阻挠中国在IMF和世界银行的运作中获得更大发言权的努力。去年12月，美国国会终于批准了IMF的配额改革，使中国和其他新兴市场国家在IMF中发挥更大的作用，而这距离IMF首次提出配额改革已有5年之久。

对于怀疑和批评中国经济和政治实力的人来说，关有一个简单的信息。”是的，我们正在放缓，并且将继续放缓，是的，我们面临着巨大的改革挑战，需要很多年才能解决，”他说，“但我们的增长也将持续几十年，这是因为我们致力于应对挑战——我们没有把头埋在沙子里。无论美国、欧洲或日本喜不喜欢，中国都将在未来多年扮演重要角色。”

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