美聯儲躲不掉的中國經濟問題

You don’t hear much these days about capital outflows from China. The renminbi seems well behaved, and China’s foreign exchange reserves have stayed stable in the past couple of months. Sure, the economy itself faces a bunch of challenges, as the government hasn’t quite found a way to maintain rapid growth rates without a dangerous degree of reliance on credit. But you don’t get the sense that the Chinese are falling over themselves in a rush to buy dollars.

這些天你沒有聽到太多關於中國資本外流的消息。人民幣似乎表現良好，中國的外匯儲備在過去兩個月裏保持穩定。當然，中國經濟本身面臨諸多挑戰，中國政府還沒有找到方法保持經濟快速增長而不使信貸依賴達到危險水平。但你沒有中國人正在爭先恐後地購買美元的感覺。

The Fed might take heart from this. On two occasions in the past year, the US Federal Reserve’s intentions to raise interest rates have been confounded by financial turbulence caused by large outflows from China. The first was last summer, when the Fed was forced to postpone rate hikes following a surge in flows from China after the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) introduced a new regime for fixing the renminbi on August 11th. The second was this winter, when another surge in outflows that coincided with the Fed’s December rate hike made it impossible for the Fed to keep doing so. So, if capital seems happy to stay in China, is it now ‘safe’ for the Fed to tighten US monetary policy?

美聯儲(Fed)可能從中獲得解脫。在過去一年裏，美聯儲的加息意圖兩次因中國大規模資本外流引起的金融動盪而落空。第一次是去年夏季，當時中國人民銀行(PBOC)在8月11日推出新的人民幣匯率形成機制，導致資本外流急劇飆升，美聯儲被迫推遲加息。第二次是去年冬季，在美聯儲12月加息的同時，中國又一次出現了大規模的資本外流，這讓美聯儲不可能繼續加息。因此，如果資本看上去樂意留在中國，那麼美聯儲現在收緊美國貨幣政策是不是就是“安全”的？

Not quite. Actually, the main reason why capital isn’t flowing from China these days is precisely because of the fact that the Fed hasn’t been expected to raise rates. If that were to change, capital outflows from China would once again become a source of global risk aversion.

未必。實際上，最近資本沒有流出中國的主要原因正是外界預期美聯儲不會加息。如果這種預期發生改變，中國資本外流將會再次引發全球性的風險規避行爲。

US monetary policy and the capital account of China’s balance of payments are joined at the hip. To understand why, it is important to look back to the period 2009-2013, when many emerging economies took advantage of very loose US monetary policy and borrowed heavily in dollars. Borrowers in Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey all responded to the Fed’s Quantitative Easing by adding relatively cheap dollar liabilities to their balance sheets.

美國貨幣政策和中國國際收支資本賬戶的關係極爲密切。要明白其中原因，就要回過頭來看看2009年至2013年這段時期，當時許多新興經濟體利用美聯儲異常寬鬆的貨幣政策，大舉借入美元債務。面對美聯儲的量化寬鬆政策，巴西、俄羅斯、印度、印尼、墨西哥和土耳其的借款人全都增加了相對低成本的美元債務。

But the way China borrowed dollars during this period was quite different to the others. While most countries issued dollar bonds with relatively long maturities to institutional investors, the bulk of the dollars that China borrowed during this period came from International banks with rather short maturities.

但中國在此期間借入美元債務的方式與其他國家截然不同。大多數國家是向機構投資者發行期限相對較長的美元債券，但中國在此期間借入的美元債務有大量借自國際銀行，而且期限短。

At the end of 2008, China’s external debt to foreign banks was less than $200bn, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) (which almost certainly understates the scale of this borrowing). By early 2014, that stock had risen to over $1tn. Astonishingly, a full 80 per cent of this debt carried original maturities of less than one year. No other emerging economy borrowed so much at such short maturities from banks. To do so would have been a ‘rookie error’: most of these countries knew from their own painful financial histories that sensible borrowing is done by issuing long-dated debt.

國際清算銀行(BIS)的數據顯示，在2008年底，中國欠境外銀行的外債不到2000億美元（幾乎可以肯定，國際清算銀行低估了中國的借債規模）。到2014年初，中國欠境外銀行的外債升至1萬億美元以上。令人吃驚的是，這些債務中有80%的初始期限不足一年。沒有哪個其他新興經濟體向銀行借入期限如此短的這麼多債務。這是“菜鳥纔會犯下的錯誤”：這些國家大多從自身慘痛的金融歷史中明白，發行長期債券纔是明智的。

The reason why the Chinese borrowed so many dollars with such short maturities lies in the attractiveness of the ‘carry trade’: Chinese banks and firms could borrow dollars very cheaply, sell them for renminbi and then buy a Wealth Management Product (a deposit-like instrument) yielding, say, 6 per cent. And for most of this period, the renminbi was also appreciating predictably against the dollar. So they were profiting not just from the China-US interest rate differential, but also from the capital gain delivered by ‘shorting’ a weakening dollar.

中國借入這麼多短期美元債務的原因是“套利交易”的吸引力：中國的銀行和企業可以以極低成本借入美元，然後兌換成人民幣買入比如說收益率爲6%的理財產品（一種類似存款的工具）。在此期間的大部分時間裏，人民幣對美元也在如預期那樣升值。因此他們的利潤不只來自中國和美國的利率差異，而且還來自“做空”弱勢美元帶來的資本收益。

The accumulation of short-term dollar debt by Chinese borrowers created a feedback loop between US monetary policy and China’s capital account, in the following way.

中國借款者借入的短期美元債務不斷積累，通過以下方式在美國貨幣政策和中國資本賬戶之間形成了一個反饋迴路。

Step one: the Fed is expected to raise rates (or, as in December, actually does). Step two: capital is sucked from China, because tighter US monetary policy both strengthens the dollar and cuts the China-US interest differential, giving Chinese borrowers good reasons to unwind their short-dollar positions. Step three: the ensuing capital outflows from China fuel global risk aversion, adding volatility to international capital markets. Step four: that volatility makes it too dangerous for the Fed to tighten policy.

第一步，美聯儲預計將會加息（或者就像去年12月那樣真的加息了）。第二步，資本從中國流出，因爲美國貨幣政策收緊既讓美元升值，又降低了中美利差，這讓中國借款者有理由將美元空頭頭寸平倉。第三步，隨後中國資本外流引發全球避險情緒，加大國際資本市場的波動。第四步，這種波動讓美聯儲收緊政策的風險過大。

A circuit-breaker is at work, then: the Fed’s ability to raise rates is hobbled by the market volatility which is created by the impact that US monetary tightening has on capital flows from China.

接着斷路器開始工作：美聯儲加息能力受到市場波動的削弱，而市場波動正是因爲美國收緊貨幣政策對中國資本外流的影響導致的。

Over time, this feedback loop is likely to lose its force, and China’s capital account might stop being a burden on the Fed. But we’re not there yet. At the end of last year, the cross-border debt that China owed to international banks was still over $750bn, according to BIS data.

隨着時間的推移，這種反饋迴路可能失效，中國資本賬戶可能不再是美聯儲的負擔。但我們現在還沒有到那一刻。國際清算銀行的數據顯示，在去年年末，中國欠國際銀行的跨境債務仍超過7500億美元。

That means the Fed still has a ‘China problem’: any effort it makes to tighten policy will, once more, activate the feedback loop and suck capital from China with what are now predictable consequences. And since net capital outflows are generally unsupportive of growth, the underlying economic problem that China faces can only be made worse by US monetary tightening.

這意味着，美聯儲仍面臨“中國問題”：其任何收緊貨幣政策的努力將再次激活這種反饋迴路，促使資本流出中國，帶來現在可以預料的結果。由於資本淨流出通常對經濟增長不利，中國面臨的基本經濟問題只會因美國收緊貨幣政策而變得更爲嚴峻。