中国现在壕起来了，十年前领导们挺担心的

《世界报业辛迪加》4月2日刊登复旦大学经济学院院长张军文章《中国经济巨变的十年》

文：张军

译：杨雨晴

2008年之后，西方进入了困难时期，先后经历了金融危机、经济衰退和艰辛的复苏。对于中国而言，2008年同样是个重要的转折点，但它开启的却是十年飞速发展期，这是几乎无人预料到的。

当时，美国投资银行雷曼兄弟破产，引发全球金融危机，中国领导人当然也感到十分担心。而那年一月的南方雪灾、五月的汶川地震等自然灾害以及三月的西藏暴力犯罪事件更是加重了他们的忧虑。

那时候，中国最担心的事似乎正在成为现实。尽管八月的北京奥运会令世人印象深刻，但中国股市从2007年6124点的高位一路“跳水”跌到了2008年10月的1664点。这样的跌幅是前所未有的。

但中国政府仍然坚持执行长期规划，调整出口导向型经济增长模式向国内消费型转变。事实上，全球经济危机恰好迫使中国正视其过于依赖外部需求的风险，这进一步坚定了中国转型的决心。

中国的努力换来了巨大的回报。在过去十年里，千千万万中国人跻身中产阶层，使这个群体扩大到2至3亿人。2015年时，中国中产阶层的平均财富就达到了13.9万美元，财富总量超过28万亿美元，这个数字超过了美国和日本中产阶层的16.8万亿美元和9.7万亿美元。

中国中产阶层拥有巨大的能量。在过去十年里，中国消费者购买了全球70%的奢侈品。尽管人均汽车拥有量仅为全球平均水平的一半，但自2008年以来，中国汽车市场已超过美国，稳坐全球汽车销售量榜首。另外，2018年中国出境旅游人次突破了1.5亿。

如此强大的中产阶层横空出世，意味着中国政府面临至关重要的战略机遇。中国核心经济智囊刘鹤曾于2013年写道，2008年金融危机之前，中国的目标是成为全球生产中心，通过制造业吸引国际资本和知识；而在2008年危机发生之后，中国首要的战略目标变成了在控制债务风险和提振总体需求的同时大幅刺激经济，以鼓励国内消费和投资，从而减小外部震荡对中国的影响。

作为该计划的一部分，中国进行大规模基础设施投资，比如新建高速铁路将近3万公里。仅去年一年，中国高铁网络总运量将近20亿人次。互联互通程度的提升使各地区之间的经济联系变得更加紧密，城镇化快速推进，消费水平也大幅提升。

在此基础上，中国企业还在发达国家通过并购获取关键技术，投资高利润基础设施。这样一来，中国2018年的经济规模几乎达到了2008年的三倍，国内生产总值突破90万亿人民币（13.6万亿美元）。换种说法，2006年中国GDP还只有日本的一半，但到了2016年却是日本的2.3倍。

当然，中国也遇到了一些新的挑战。土地和住房价格飞速飙升，以至于人们担心城市房地产价格会出现泡沫。信贷增长也带来了新的风险。但总体而言，中国在扩张性经济政策的支撑下迅速崛起，成为了全球经济强国。

在中国新的增长模式中，有一个关键特征是在领导人规划之外的，当然就更别说获得什么产业政策的扶持了：那就是着眼消费的创新产业。它在2008年以前几乎不存在，但如今却在对中国经济发挥越来越重要的推动作用。

目前，中国的电子商务和移动支付都处于全球领先水平。2018年，中国的移动支付总额达到了24万亿美元，是美国的160倍。十年前曾经处于龙头地位的国有银行和石化企业，现在已经被电子商务和互联网巨头阿里巴巴和腾讯赶超。如今，互联网企业和技术公司每年能为中国创造几千万的就业岗位。

与此同时，过去一直是增长引擎和就业大户的制造业，如今开始走下坡路，部分是因为受到工资水平快速提高的影响。这使得中国经济结构发生了根本性变化。

传统的GDP指标已经无法反映中国的经济结构转型，但许多经济学家并没有把精力花在研究这种转型上，而是专心致志给中国的增长叙事挑毛病。例如，布鲁金斯学会最近发布研究报告，称中国实际经济规模比官方公布的数据小约12％。

找这种茬没什么意义。中国经济过去十年所经历的变化是影响广泛、前所未见和至关重要的。与其试图证明中国的成绩没那么亮眼，倒不如花功夫去理解中国的经济转型，这样做对世界的意义要大得多。

China’s Decade of Sweeping Economic Change

For the West, the year 2008 marked the beginning of a difficult period of crisis, recession, and uneven recovery. For China, 2008 was also an important turning point, but one followed by a decade of rapid progress that few could have foreseen.

Of course, when the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering a global financial crisis, China’s leaders were deeply worried. Their concerns were compounded by natural disasters – including severe freezing rain and snow storms in the south in January 2008 and the devastating Sichuan earthquake five months later, which killed 70,000 Chinese – as well as unrest in Tibet.

At first, China’s fears seemed to be coming true. Despite hosting an impressive Olympics in Beijing that August, its stock market plunged from its 2007 high of 6,124 to 1,664 in October 2008, in what amounted to a record-breaking crash.

But the Chinese authorities remained dedicated to their long-term plan to revise the country’s growth model, by shifting away from exports and toward domestic consumption. In fact, the global economic crisis served to strengthen that commitment, as it underscored the risks of China’s dependence on foreign demand.

This commitment has paid off. Over the last decade, many millions of Chinese have joined the middle class, which is now 200-300 million strong. With an average net worth of $139,000 per person, this group’s total spending power could amount to over $28 trillion, compared to $16.8 trillion in the United States and $9.7 trillion in Japan.

China’s middle class is already wielding that power. China accounts for 70% of global luxury purchases annually over the past decade. Though per capita car ownership is only around half the global average, since 2008, the Chinese have consistently been the world’s leading auto purchasers, surpassing Americans. In 2018, more than 150 million Chinese traveled abroad.

For China’s authorities, fostering the emergence of such a formidable middle class was a crucial strategic opportunity. As Liu He, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s top economic aide, wrote in 2013, the goal for China, prior to the crisis, lay in becoming a global production center; achieving it would attract international capital and knowledge. After 2008, China’s strategic imperatives shifted to reducing debt risk and boosting aggregate demand, while deploying massive economic stimulus to encourage domestic consumption and investment, thereby decreasing China’s vulnerability to external shocks.

As part of this initiative, China pursued large-scale infrastructure investments, such as building nearly 30,000 kilometers (18,600 miles) of high-speed railway. Increased connectivity – last year alone, that railway network carried nearly two billion passengers – facilitated much closer regional economic ties, propelled urbanization, and enhanced consumption substantially.

Thanks to such efforts – together with mergers and acquisitions to acquire key technologies and lucrative infrastructure investments in developed economies – China’s economy almost tripled in size from 2008 to 2018, with GDP reaching CN¥90 trillion ($13.6 trillion). Whereas China’s GDP was 50% smaller than Japan’s in 2008, by 2016, it was 2.3 times larger.

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To be sure, difficult challenges emerged. Land and housing values soared, with urban real-estate prices rising so fast that many feared a bubble. Credit growth raised further risks. Overall, however, expansionary policies supported China’s rapid emergence as a global economic power globally.

But China’s leaders did not plan one crucial feature of this growth pattern, let alone bring it about with industrial policy: the consumption-focused innovative industries that barely existed in 2008 and that are increasingly propelling the Chinese economy today.

China is now the global leader in e-commerce and mobile payments. In 2018, mobile payments in China amounted to $24 trillion – 160 times the US figure. The state-owned banks and petrochemical companies that were China’s top-ranking firms in 2008 have been surpassed by e-commerce and internet giants Alibaba and Tencent. Internet and technology firms are now creating tens of millions of jobs per year.

Meanwhile, the performance of the manufacturing sector – long the main engine of China’s development and still the country’s largest employer – has weakened, undermined in part by rapid wage growth. The result has been a fundamental change in the structural composition of China’s economy.

Yet rather than exploring this shift – which is not captured in traditional measures of GDP – many economists have focused on trying to poke holes in China’s growth narrative. A recent Brookings Institution study, for example, estimates that China’s economy is about 12% smaller than official figures indicate.

This does little good. The changes China’s economy has undergone over the last decade are sweeping, unprecedented, and essential. The world would be far better served by an effort to understand them than by attempting to prove that the country’s achievements are less impressive than they are.

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