f********8
发帖数: 1417 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: fighter888 (fighter), 信区: Military
标 题: 华尔街日报无情嘲弄中国借钱给别人上瘾
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Tue Aug 9 00:10:18 2011, 美东)
The Chinese government and its media outlets are using Standard & Poor's U.S
. credit downgrade to give Washington a tongue lashing for its "debt
addiction." And it's no surprise that Beijing would take the chance to score
points domestically and rebuke the know-it-alls at the U.S. Treasury,
having been on the receiving end of their hectoring for so long.
On the other hand, who are the Chinese kidding with their chest-pounding
economic nationalism? A People's Daily commentary yesterday threatened to
use China's holdings of U.S. debt as a "financial weapon" to deter arms
sales to Taiwan. The official Xinhua news agency's Saturday editorial was a
hilarious moral lecture, suggesting that an addicted America's ability to
print dollars should be put under "international supervision." But if
borrowing is really an addiction that has sapped America's self-discipline,
China is both the pusher and a user.
The real reason Beijing is anthropomorphizing the bond market is to deflect
domestic criticism over losses on the investment of its $3.2 trillion in
foreign exchange reserves. Chinese are asking why Beijing continues to lend
their wealth to Americans rather than using it on development at home. The
question arises from a misconception that Beijing has encouraged, which is
that the reserves represent the earnings of the Chinese people, their "blood
and sweat."
The reality is less admirable. The People's Bank of China (PBoC) accumulated
its forex reserves by borrowing yuan from the Chinese people. The U.S.
dollar assets and yuan liabilities are roughly balanced on the central bank'
s balance sheet. If the U.S. government is addicted to debt, so is China's.
The purpose of that precarious balance sheet is to subsidize exports by
keeping the yuan's value low and deferring inflation. An economy like China'
s that is enjoying rapid productivity growth would normally see rising real
wages and hence benign inflation that would increase the cost of its exports
. Because that process has been stopped, China's exporters remain
competitive across a range of labor-intensive products such as shoes and
garments in which the country no longer has a true comparative advantage.
Were the PBoC to stop buying U.S. Treasurys and other dollar assets, the
result would be an immediate increase in the yuan's value. The losses on U.S
. investments as the yuan slowly appreciates are one part of the cost for
the export-subsidy policy.
The Chinese economy has become dangerously dependent on exports and
investment in future export capacity for growth. Unwinding that dependence
and encouraging domestic consumption requires boosting household incomes,
which have been depressed by low interest rates on savings—another cost of
Beijing's policies. Chinese leaders have been talking about rebalancing the
economy in favor of consumption for the better part of a decade, but that
can't happen as long as they continue to accumulate reserves.
In the short term Chinese threats to stop buying U.S. debt are empty, since
there are no other asset markets deep and liquid enough to absorb the
purchases needed to keep the yuan stable. Were China to buy euros or yen in
sufficiently large quantities, it would soon run into a protectionist
backlash in Europe and Japan as those nations ran trade deficits. The U.S.
willingness to run a persistent trade deficit is key to the dollar's status
as a reserve currency.
In the longer term, the world should hope that China does stop buying U.S.
debt and makes the yuan convertible. China's economic policy makers
understand that they have to liberalize their financial system and integrate
it into the world economy. But that also means freeing the system from
Communist Party political control, as well as breaking with powerful state-
owned enterprises that benefit from export subsidies and cheap credit. This
makes agreement between President Obama and the tea party look easy by
comparison.
The U.S. has certainly allowed unsustainable spending to continue too long.
But the Chinese should refrain from self-congratulation. They'll endure more
painful withdrawal symptoms than the U.S. will when the PBoC ends its own
unsustainable borrowing. |
|
