China’s High-Wire Act: Downshifting Growth Without Slipping Into Stagnation


习近平已明确表示，对不惜一切代价追求经济增长不感兴趣，他要的是“高质量发展”。现在的问题是他能否带领中国走上一条新的道路，顺利从高增长过渡到低增长，而不使经济陷入长期停滞。


图为中国广东省东莞市的一个车间。

中国经济增长奇迹已经结束，中国领导人习近平似乎无动于衷。 6park.com
It is the end of the Chinese growth miracle as we know it, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping seems fine with that. 6park.com
    
现在的问题是，他能否带领中国走上一条新的道路，并让全中国和他保持步调一致。 6park.com
The question now is whether he can steer the country onto a new course—and keep the rest of China on board. 6park.com
    
在经历了三年疫情的扭曲之后，中国作为全球第二大经济体的长期发展轨迹逐渐清晰起来，这种经济停滞不前的趋势如果发生在前几任中国领导人任内，恐怕会让他们紧张不已。 6park.com
After three years of pandemic-era distortions, the longer-term trajectory of the world’s second-largest economy is coming into focus, and it is showing a plateauing of growth that would have alarmed previous Chinese leaders. 6park.com
    
但习近平的侧重点不在这里。近年来，他已明确表示对不惜一切代价追求经济增长不感兴趣。他要的是“高质量发展”，这是个有点模糊的概念，经济学家和顾问们认为，这个概念包含了更加重视国家安全、政治稳定和社会平等。 6park.com
Xi, however, has different priorities. He has made clear in recent years that growth at all costs isn’t what he is interested in. What he wants instead is what he calls “high-quality development,” a somewhat nebulous concept that economists and advisers say includes a greater emphasis on national security, political stability and social equality.



在越来越重视意识形态的纯洁性的同时，习近平不太在乎市场的看法了，这一点从中国政府周一突然宣布取消总理李强一年一度的记者会的安排中可见一斑。 6park.com
With his increased focus on ideological purity, he cares less about keeping up appearances for the markets—as evidenced by a surprise announcement on Monday that Beijing is axing Premier Li Qiang’s annual appearance before journalists to field questions on the economy.  6park.com
    
为了推进这些目标，习近平愿意接受经济增长放缓，相信这些新的侧重点有助于加强中共控制，增强中国对抗西方大国的能力，恢复中国应有的国际地位。 6park.com
Xi is willing to accept slower growth in return for advancing these goals because he thinks the new priorities will strengthen Communist Party control and bolster China’s ability to stand up to Western powers, helping restore the country to its rightful place in the world. 6park.com
   
从高增长过渡到低增长对任何政府来说都是一项棘手的挑战。在地缘政治威胁加剧且国内不满情绪高涨的情况下，实现这一目标的难度更大。 6park.com
Carrying out a transition from rapid growth to a slower pace is a tricky challenge for any government. Trying to pull it off in the midst of mounting geopolitical threats and rising internal dissatisfaction will prove especially challenging. 6park.com
    
风险在于习近平可能矫枉过正，让中国经济陷入长期停滞，就像上世纪90年代的日本一样，并在这一过程中引发更多不满。 6park.com
The risk is that Xi overcorrects and allows China’s economy to slip into long-term stagnation, as Japan did in the 1990s—and triggers more dissent in the process. 6park.com
    
最近几个月来，中共领导层转变侧重点的迹象在更多地方显现出来，其中包括习近平的讲话，对外资企业的突查，还有中国国安部门公开呼吁民众对外国威胁提高警惕。 6park.com
Signs of the leadership’s shifting emphasis have been popping up in more places in recent months: in Xi’s speeches; in raids on foreign businesses; and in public-service announcements by the country’s spy agency calling on China’s people to become more vigilant against foreign threats. 6park.com
    
习近平在去年的一次讲话中说：“安全是发展的基础，稳定是强盛的前提。” 6park.com
“Security is the bedrock of development, while stability is a prerequisite for prosperity,” Xi said in a speech last year.  6park.com
    
中共侧重点的转变还体现在一些没有做的事情上，最明显的就是大手笔的刺激政策迟迟没有出台，例如大规模的政府基建投资，过去这些措施曾在经济放缓时为经济注入强心剂。而如今，虽然经济学家和投资者近期纷纷呼吁中国政府采取更多措施刺激经济增长，但习近平明确表示，大水漫灌式的措施是浪费行为，是谋短利积长痛。 6park.com
The signs are also manifest in what is missing—most conspicuously, in big-ticket stimulus measures such as the government infrastructure-spending sprees that provided economic jolts during previous slowdowns. Despite a chorus of recent calls from economists and investors for Beijing to do more to stimulate growth, Xi has made clear that he sees bazooka-style measures as acts of profligacy, storing up long-term pain in the name of short-term gain. 6park.com
    
周二，李强在北京举行的全国人大会议上公布了中国的官方经济增长目标，更多证据显示出中国的转变。 6park.com
More evidence of China’s shift came on Tuesday, when Li unveiled the country’s official economic-growth target at an annual legislative session in Beijing. 6park.com
   
李强表示，今年中国GDP增长目标为5%左右，与去年持平。这个目标虽然高于许多外部经济学家的预期，但也再次证明中国政府愿意接受长期较低的经济增长，低于全球长期以来所依赖的中国经济增速。 6park.com
Li said the government would aim for around 5% growth in gross domestic product this year, the same level as last year. The target, while higher than many outside economists’ forecasts, reaffirms Beijing’s willingness to live with a permanently lower level of economic expansion than the blazing growth that the world had long come to rely on. 6park.com
    
国际货币基金组织(IMF)预测今年中国经济会增长4.6%，这将是中国经济除新冠疫情期间外几十年来最低的增长率。 6park.com
The International Monetary Fund has penciled in 4.6% growth this year, the lowest in decades apart from the pandemic period. 6park.com
   
诚然，没有谁指望中国能永远保持两位数的增长速度。但中国的增长率已经降至不比美国和韩国等成熟的发达经济体快太多的水平，许多经济学家惊讶于这种放缓过程之快。 6park.com
To be sure, nobody expected China’s growth to continue at a double-digit percentage growth pace forever. But the speed with which China’s growth rate has slowed to levels not far above those of mature developed economies like the U.S. and South Korea has surprised many economists. 6park.com
    
中国人均GDP目前更接近墨西哥或泰国，如果增长率低于成熟发达经济体，那么中国将被锁定在中等收入国家的位置，这会对中国内政、国际关系和全球经济产生不确定的影响。 6park.com
Leveling off at a lower level of development than those countries—China’s per capita GDP is somewhere closer to Mexico or Thailand—would also lock in the country’s middle-income status, with uncertain implications for China’s domestic politics, for its relationship with other countries and for the global economy.


中国广东省东莞市一面墙上张贴的招聘广告。


中国重庆果园港集装箱码头上的繁忙景象。

旧模式退场

在习近平之前的三位领导人执政的几十年里，中国的发展模式简单明了，就是把增长放在第一位。这让中国得以释放民智，提高人民生活水平，地方官员和企业家相互配合，共同推动经济建设，在这一过程中，中国的国库日益充盈，全球影响力也得到提升。 6park.com
For decades under Xi’s three immediate predecessors, China’s playbook was clarifying in its simplicity, placing growth front and center. It allowed China to unleash the resourcefulness of its population and raise living standards, as local officials and entrepreneurs aligned themselves in a common cause that filled the country’s coffers and bolstered its global clout. 6park.com
     
这种维系了几十年并被普遍接受的模式在2017年10月宣告终结，习近平利用中共全国代表大会为取消国家主席任期限制铺路，并宣示了一个“新时代”的到来，经济增长已不再是中共领导层最关心的问题。 6park.com
This decadeslong orthodoxy came to an end in October 2017, when Xi used a Communist Party congress to remove presidential term limits and to hail the advent of a “new era” in which China’s leader effectively declared that growth was no longer the leadership’s paramount concern. 6park.com
   
次年，时任美国总统特朗普(Donald Trump)发动了贸易战，中美关系进入了一个风雨飘摇的时期。而三年的抗疫隔离措施以及更多的地缘政治紧张局势使得习近平愈发重视经济和战略层面的韧性。 6park.com
The following year brought the beginning of a trade war launched by then-President Donald Trump, inaugurating a period of stormier relations with the U.S. Three years of Covid-19 isolation and more geopolitical tensions only reinforced Xi’s preoccupation with economic and strategic resilience. 6park.com
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这些担忧有助于解释为什么习近平在2021年曾寻求制约民营部门，整顿营利性教培公司、消费互联网平台和房地产开发商。这些举措重创了经济，也让外国投资者错愕，但这似乎并没有让习近平和其他高级干部感到不安，他们几乎没有采取任何措施来缓解压力，即使有专家呼吁取消某些措施。 6park.com
Those concerns help explain why, in 2021, Xi sought to rein in the private sector, cracking down on for-profit education companies, consumer internet platforms and real-estate developers. Those moves hammered the economy and stunned foreign investors, but that didn’t seem to perturb Xi and other senior cadres, who did little to ease the pressure even as experts called for a lifting of some measures. 6park.com
    
从那以后，人们越来越清楚地认识到，这些举措是长期战略的一部分，目的是重申共产党的权威及其意识形态优先事项；减少过度的风险承担行为；加强经济抵御潜在冲击的能力，最重要的是要化解被许多决策者视为定时炸弹的房地产泡沫。 6park.com
It has since become clearer that the moves were part of a longer-term strategy to reassert Communist Party authority and its ideological priorities; reduce excessive risk-taking; and fortify the economy against potential shocks, most importantly by defusing a property bubble that many policymakers regarded as a ticking time bomb. 6park.com
    
研究机构龙洲经讯(Gavekal Dragonomics)中国研究负责人白安儒(Andrew Batson)表示，这传达出来的信息是：除了增长，生活中还有其他事情，因此需要重新平衡优先事项。 6park.com
“The message is, ‘There are other things in life other than growth, so we need to rebalance the priorities,’” says Andrew Batson, head of China research at Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm.


人们在北京寻找零工机会。

下一步行动存在不确定性

外部经济学家和学者支持习近平的一些措施，以及中国为提升在制造业价值链上的地位以及促进研究与创新所做的其他努力。 6park.com
Outside economists and scholars have supported some of Xi’s measures, along with other efforts by China to move up the manufacturing value chain and promote research and innovation. 6park.com
    
但他们也表示，鉴于中国面临的诸多不利因素，包括巨额债务负担、不利的人口结构以及与西方贸易伙伴日益紧张的关系，习近平的许多目标要想实现并不容易。 6park.com
But they also say that many of Xi’s aims will be hard to achieve given the many headwinds China faces, including a massive debt load, unfavorable demographics and rising tensions with China’s trading partners in the West. 6park.com
    
习近平的计划也让中国的许多基层官员不知该如何推进，领导层的许多新目标与多年来一直激励着中国前行的“致富光荣”精神相比，要更加模糊，也更缺乏吸引力。这可能会加剧政策的瘫痪，使规避风险的地方官员不愿为中国经济问题寻找创造性的解决方案，同时加剧随着经济放缓而产生的痛楚。 6park.com
Xi’s plans also leave many lower-level officials in China less sure about how to proceed, since many of the leadership’s newer goals are more vague—and less appealing—than the “to get rich is glorious” ethos that animated China for so many years. That could exacerbate policy paralysis and a reluctance among risk-averse local officials to find creative solutions to the country’s economic problems, while feeding a sense of malaise that has set in as the economy has slowed. 6park.com
    
经济学家们认为，要想让中国经济站稳脚跟就必须进行酝酿已久的改革。但这些改革多年来一直停滞不前，其中包括开征房产税、发展养老金体系、提高退休年龄和重组地方政府资产负债表。 6park.com
Long-mooted overhauls that economists say are necessary to put China on a surer footing—including efforts to introduce a property tax, develop the pension system, raise the retirement age and restructure local government balance sheets—have been stalled for years. 6park.com
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经济的进一步萎靡不振也将波及中国以外的地区，尤其是当工厂主们寻求将在国内卖不出去的过剩货物转移到全球市场上时。 6park.com
Further economic listlessness will also play out beyond China’s borders, especially as factory owners seek to unload excess goods they can’t sell at home on global markets. 6park.com
   
“中国国家主席习近平和共产党领导层面临的问题是，他们的目标在本质上不够引人注目，或是无法回答下级官员在考虑该怎么做时提出的所有问题”，在纽约和上海设有办事处的咨询顾问公司Teneo的董事总经理Gabriel Wildau说。“现在已经不清楚中国要往哪里去，也不知道其总体目标到底是什么。” 6park.com
“The problem for President Xi and the Communist Party leadership is that their objectives are not intrinsically compelling enough, or answer all the questions that lower-level officials are asking as they figure out what to do,” says Gabriel Wildau, a managing director at Teneo, a consulting and advisory firm with offices in New York and Shanghai. “It’s no longer clear where China is going or what the overarching objective really is.” 6park.com
    
但即使习近平正感到焦虑，他也不会表现出来。Wildau说：“一些从旧有的增长至上模式中获益的精英感到不满，但他并不在意；在这个国家经历痛苦的转型期间，他们现在可以吃点苦头了。” 6park.com
But if Xi is feeling any anxiety, he isn’t showing it. “The fact that some elites who benefited from the old growth-above-all model are not happy doesn’t bother him,” Wildau says. “They can eat some bitter now while the country goes through this wrenching transition.”