经济学人 中国的工人宣言

中国即将拥有世界十大购物商场中的七家。然而中国家庭很难说得上是最热切的购物者。消费开支占GDP的份额从九十年代初的47%下降到2006年36%，这在大经济体中是最低的。美国家庭则走另一个极端，消费占GDP70%。

　　人们普遍认同中国需要重新平衡其经济，亲消费而疏出口。这不仅可以让将来的增长更稳定，而且可以减少中国巨大的贸易盈余。然而，要促进消费的份额，你首先得搞清楚它为何下降。流行的说法是中国家庭储存更多收入，因为养老金、医疗保健和教育方面的不确定性加大。这导致经济学家把重点放在如何鼓励家庭更多地消费的收入。

　　这种理论的问题在于在过去十年家庭的储蓄率有降无升。根据世界银行驻北京办公室经济学家高路易（Louis Kuijs）的说法，家庭储蓄占GDP的份额从九十年代中期的21%下降到2006年的15%。相对于个人可支配收入，储蓄率已经从超过30%下降到25%。高路易表示，中国的整体国内储蓄率自九十年代末以来一直大幅增长，但所有这些增长都来自公司和政府。

　　消费占GDP的比率下降并没有反映储蓄的增长；相反，它很大程度上可以解释为进入家庭的国民收入份额大幅下降，而利润及政府税收的份额在上升。最明显的是工资占GDP份额的下降。世界银行估计这已经从1998年的53%下降到2005年的41%。

　　最近几年，许多国家都经历劳动力收入份额的减少，但没有那个地方像中国下降的幅度那么大。这部分反映中国过剩的劳动力，相比起这个经济体庞大的生产力收益，他们的工资相对降低。但你可能以为如果工资相对于工人的产出价值而言低了，公司将雇用更多的工人，从而缓和工资份额的降低。相反，就业的增长一直异常缓慢。国际货币基金组织的一份报告把这归咎于虚弱的金融部门。大公司容易获得信贷，但较小型的私人公司难以筹集到周转资金，这反过来限制了它们的雇用。

　　关于创造就业进展缓慢，高路易强调了一个可能更加重要的原因：一种资本沉重（capital-heavy）的增长模式。低利率鼓励资本密集型生产。由于国有公司没有向政府支付红利，它们可以把所有利润用于资本设备，投资得到进一步推动。政府抑制土地和能源等投入的价格，这对制造业的关照甚于更劳动密集型的服务业，从而促进了资本密集型产业发展。它不愿意让人民币升值得更快，这也刺激了制造业商品的生产。

　　在美国，近年来劳动力收入份额的下降被投资收入的增长抵消，因此家庭总收入占GDP的份额相当稳定。然而，在中国，家庭投资收入很少。银行存款利率与GDP增长率相比非常低，而且家庭的持股率不算高。小部分公司上市，而且甚至是那些公司也可以保留大部分的利润而不是分发红利，因为股东的压力很软。

　　所有这些的言下之意是，如果中国要把增长组合转向消费，敦促家庭花掉更多的收入是不够的；政府还将需要增加流向家庭的国民收入。高路易认为这将要求增长组成从资本密集型的制造业转向劳动力密集型的服务业。他建议一揽子改革方案，包括：金融自由化，提高资本成本；粉碎偏爱制造业甚于服务业的税制扭曲；提高能源等工业投入的成本；消除对劳动力密集型服务的限制，例如对付垄断；增强汇率以刺激国内服务业的发展。增加政府在医疗保健、教育和社会保障方面的开支也会鼓励家庭少存钱，多消费。

　　更劳动密集型的增长将促进家庭收入和消费占GDP的份额，而且帮助减少贸易盈余。但可能更重要的是，允许工人享受快速增长的更多成果业有助于预防未来的社会动荡，而且当经济较少依赖耗能产业，还可以减少污染。

A workers' manifesto for China

Oct 11th 2007

From The Economist print edition

How workers are losing out in China, and why it matters to the rest of the world

CHINA will soon boast seven of the world's ten biggest shopping malls. Yet Chinese households are hardly the most eager shoppers. Consumer spending has fallen from 47% of GDP in the early 1990s to only 36% in 2006, the lowest proportion in any large economy (see left-hand chart). At the other extreme, American households consume 70% of GDP.

It is widely agreed that China needs to rebalance its economy in favour of consumption and away from exports. Not only would this make future growth more sustainable, but it would also reduce China's huge trade surplus. However, to boost the share of consumption, you first need to understand why it has been declining. The popular explanation is that Chinese households have been saving an increased slice of their income because of greater uncertainty over the provision of pensions, health care and education. This leads economists to focus on how to encourage households to spend more of their income.

The problem with this theory is that in the past decade households' saving rate has fallen not risen. According to Louis Kuijs*, an economist at the World Bank's Beijing office, household saving fell from 21% of GDP in the mid-1990s to 15% in 2006. Relative to personal disposable income, the saving rate has fallen from over 30% to 25%. This is very high compared with America, where households save less than 1% of their income, but it is lower than India's household saving rate. China's total domestic saving rate is higher and has increased strongly since the late 1990s, but all of this increase, says Mr Kuijs, has come from firms and the government.

The decline in the ratio of consumption to GDP does not reflect increased saving; instead, it is largely explained by a sharp drop in the share of national income going to households (in the form of wages, government transfers and investment income), while the shares of profits and government revenues have risen. Most dramatic has been the fall in the share of wages in GDP. The World Bank estimates that this has dropped from 53% in 1998 to 41% in 2005 (see right-hand chart, above), and data from the industrial sector suggest it fell further in 2006. In the United States, supposedly a beacon of capitalism, wages take a much bigger 56% of national income.

Not enough labour, too much capital

Many countries have seen a fall in the share of labour income in recent years, but nowhere has the drop been as huge as in China. This partly reflects China's large pool of surplus labour, which has depressed wages relative to the economy's large productivity gains. But you might expect that if wages are low relative to the value of workers' output, firms will hire more staff, which will moderate the decline in the wage share. Instead, the growth in jobs has been unusually slow. An IMF working paper** blames this on the weak financial sector. Big firms have easy access to credit, but smaller private firms find it hard to raise finance for working capital, which in turn restricts their hiring.

Mr Kuijs stresses a potentially more important reason for the slow pace of job creation: a capital-heavy model of growth. Low interest rates have encouraged capital-intensive production. Investment has been further boosted by the fact that state-owned firms do not pay dividends to the government, allowing them to spend all their profits on capital equipment. The government has also promoted capital-intensive development by favouring manufacturing over the more labour-intensive services sector by holding down the prices of inputs such as land and energy. Its reluctance to allow the yuan to rise faster has also stimulated the production of manufactured goods.

In America, the fall in the share of labour income in recent years has been offset by rising investment income, so total household income has stayed fairly steady as a portion of GDP. In China, however, households' investment income is tiny and has declined to only 2% of GDP in 2005, compared with around 15% in America. Interest rates on bank deposits are very low compared with GDP growth and households' shareholdings are modest. A small proportion of firms are listed, and even those that are have been able to retain most of their profits rather than distribute dividends because shareholder pressure is weak.

The implication of all this is that if China is to shift the mix of growth towards consumption, urging households to spend more of their income will not be enough; the government will also need to increase the share of national income going to households. Mr Kuijs argues that this will require a shift in the composition of growth from capital-intensive manufacturing towards labour-intensive services. He recommends a package of reforms which include: financial liberalisation to lift the cost of capital; scrapping distortions in the tax system which favour manufacturing over services; increasing the prices of industrial inputs such as energy; removing restrictions on the development of labour-intensive services by, for example, tackling monopolies; and a stronger exchange rate to stimulate production in domestic service industries. Increased government spending on health care, education and a social safety net would also encourage households to save less and spend more.

More labour-intensive growth would boost household income and consumption as a share of GDP and so help to reduce the trade surplus. But, perhaps more importantly, by allowing workers to enjoy more of the rewards of rapid growth it could also help to prevent future social unrest, and it would reduce pollution as the economy became less dependent on energy-guzzling industries.