中國政府旗下國企改革做的不夠到位

Last month, reports that the Chinese government would reform state-owned enterprises gave shares of listed SOEs a big one-day boost. Over the weekend, guidelines for the reforms were released and, yesterday, stocks fell — and rightly so.

上月，有關中國政府將改革國有企業的報道曾使上市國企的股價當日大幅上漲。在剛剛過去的週末，《關於深化國有企業改革的指導意見》正式發佈，週一中國股市下跌——而且跌得有道理。

The impact of substantive reform would be huge. SOEs account for two-fifths of GDP, according to Goldman Sachs, and they employ one-tenth of China’s workforce. Neither capital nor workers are particularly productive, though. Reliant on state support and artificially cheap capital, SOEs tend to have far lower returns on equity than private enterprises. SOEs (excluding banks) have delivered virtually no earnings growth over the past five years, Macquarie points out. Over the same period the private sector profit growth was in the double digits.

實質性改革的影響將是巨大的。根據高盛(Goldman Sachs)的數據，國有企業佔中國國內生產總值(GDP)的五分之二，僱用中國十分之一的勞動力。不過，無論是資本或是工人的生產率都不是特別高。依賴國家支持和人爲廉價資本的國企，股本回報率往往比民營企業低得多。麥格理(Macquarie)指出，剔除銀行後，國有企業在過去5年裏幾乎毫無盈利增長。同期民營部門的利潤增長達到兩位數。

Reform will not be easy to achieve. Vested interests are hard to unseat and allowing large employers to go under, or even deliver big cost savings, is politically difficult. Details of the new proposals are scant. Share sales will be encouraged, but the SOEs that trade already prove that a public listing hardly guarantees productivity.

改革將是不容易實現的。既得利益者難以請走，讓大型僱主倒閉（甚至只是實現大幅成本節省）的政治難度很大。新的改革方案細節較少。發售股票將得到鼓勵，但已經上市的國企證明，上市並不能保證提高生產率。

This is not the first time SOE reform has been on the agenda, and efforts to date have hardly been radical. Last year, state refiner Sinopec sold a stake in its retail arm to domestic private investors. This year, China’s two big railway equipment manufacturers, Hong Kong and mainland-listed CSR Corp and China CNR, merged to become CRRC. The impact of these steps has so far been limited. Asset reshuffling has yet to render significant improvements in performance or meaningful capacity shrinkage.

這不是國企改革第一次被提上日程，迄今的力度很難說是到位的。去年，國有煉油企業中石化(Sinopec)向國內私人投資者出售了零售部門的一部分股份。今年，中國的兩大鐵路設備製造商、在香港和內地上市的中國北車(CNR)和中國南車(CSR)合併成爲中國中車(CRRC)。這些步驟的影響迄今有限。資產重組尚未帶來顯著的績效提高或是有意義的產能縮減。

What would real reform look like? Allowing SOEs to go bust or at least shut unproductive businesses outright would be a start. So would changes in the lending policies of the state-owned banks, which put private enterprise and SOEs on equal footing. Short of substantive steps such as these, talk of reform is that and nothing more.

真正的改革會是什麼樣的？允許國企破產（或至少是關閉績效不佳的業務部門）將是一個開始。改變國有銀行的放貸政策、對民營企業與國有企業一視同仁，也將是真正的改革。若沒有這樣的實質性步驟，有關改革的言論就將僅僅是言論而已。