經濟學家警告中國金融危機難以避免

Kenneth Rogoff has long warned of a potential financial crisis in China.

肯尼思·羅格夫(Kenneth Rogoff)早就對中國潛在的金融危機發出過警告。

Mr. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University, accurately predicted the eurozone debt crisis and for years has been telling anyone who would listen that China posed the next big threat to the global economy. He is starting to look right, again.

羅格夫是哈佛大學的經濟學教授，他曾準確地預測了歐元區的債務危機，多年來他也一直在對人們說，中國將給全球經濟帶來下一個大的威脅。這回，他又看起來是對的了。

“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could,” Mr. Rogoff said on Monday from Cambridge, Mass., repeating a favorite line from Rudi Dornbusch, the German economist. (Mr. Rogoff sat in on Mr. Dornbusch’s class at M.I.T. in 1977.)

“就經濟上的事情而言，其發生所需的時間比你認爲的要長，但發生的速度比你認爲可能的要快，”羅格夫週一在馬薩諸塞州的坎布里奇，重述了德國經濟學家魯迪·多恩布什(Rudi Dornbusch)常說的一句話（羅格夫1977年曾在麻省理工學院旁聽過多恩布什的課）。

Mr. Rogoff, who is a chess grandmaster, has made a career of studying financial crises. After the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Rogoff co-wrote “This Time Is Different,” a seminal book that examined eight centuries of financial crises.

羅格夫還是國際象棋特級大師，他把研究金融危機當作一生的職業。2008年的金融危機之後，羅格夫與他人合著了一部具有重大意思的書《這次不同》(This Time Is Different)，書中探討了八個世紀裏發生的金融危機。

Every financial crisis, he and his co-author, Carmen M. Reinhart, concluded, stems from the same simple problem: too much debt.

他和書的共同作者卡門·M·萊因哈特(Carmen M. Reinhart)得出的結論是，每次經濟危機都源於同一個簡單的問題：太多的債務。

To understand the wild machinations of the stock market in recent days in the United States and abroad, you need to look no further than China’s astounding debt load and sputtering economy — and its ability to infect the rest of the world.

要想了解最近幾天美國及世界股市瘋狂背後的原因，你不需要更多的知識，只要看看中國驚人的債務負擔和泄氣的經濟就夠了，再就是中國影響世界各地的能力。

“China is the classic ‘This time is different’ story,” Mr. Rogoff said, rattling off all the different rationalizations for why the country convinced itself — and many others — that it could load up on debt but was somehow immune to the laws of economic gravity. He cited the government’s control over the markets, the hundreds of millions of workers migrating to cities and the country’s saving rate of about 30 percent of disposable income as just some of the reasons China was said to be impervious to a severe downturn.

羅格夫說，“中國是《這次不同》的一個典型故事。”他列舉了中國所有不同的、用來說服自己和許多其他人的理性解釋，爲什麼中國可以讓債務不斷增長，卻有某種辦法能讓自己不受經濟學規律的限制。他列舉的理由包括，政府對市場的控制、數百萬農民工進城，以及高達人均可支配收入30％的國內儲蓄率，據說這些都是人們認爲中國經濟不會嚴重衰退的理由。

“It’s very vulnerable,” Mr. Rogoff added. “There is a lot of debt.”

“目前的經濟岌岌可危，”羅格夫補充道。“有大量的債務。”

How much debt remains an open question, given the opacity of China’s market. The country’s debt load rose from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion by mid-2014, according to a report published earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, China. “At 282 percent of G.D.P., China’s debt as a share of G.D.P., while manageable, is larger than that of the United States or Germany,” said the McKinsey study. “Several factors are worrisome: Half of loans are linked directly or indirectly to China’s real estate market, unregulated shadow banking accounts for nearly half of new lending, and the debt of many local governments is likely unsustainable.”

鑑於中國市場的不透明度，債務多少的問題仍然沒有定論。諮詢公司麥肯錫(McKinsey& Company)中國公司今年早些時候發佈的一份報告稱，中國的債務負擔從2007年的7萬億美元增加到2014年中期的28萬億美元。“中國的債務規模是國內生產總值(GDP)的282%，這個比例雖然處於可控狀態，但高於美國或德國，”麥肯錫的研究稱。“有幾個因素令人擔憂：一半的貸款都和中國的房地產市場有直接或間接聯繫，不受監管的影子銀行佔了新增貸款的將近一半，許多地方政府的債務可能缺乏可持續性。”

The question then becomes how interconnected China’s economy is to the rest of the world. That’s exactly what investors have been trying to determine over the last several weeks as China’s government has devalued its currency and tried — and failed — to stabilize its plummeting stock market. The drop has been worsened, in part, by debt as overextended Chinese speculators who borrowed money to buy stocks are now being forced to sell, creating a vicious cycle.

因此問題變爲，中國經濟與世界其他地區有什麼樣的關聯。這正是投資者們在過去幾周裏，眼看着中國政府採取讓人民幣貶值、並試圖穩定股市大跌但最終失敗等做法時，一直試圖搞明白的問題。股市的下跌進一步惡化，這部分是債務造成的，因爲借錢買股票的中國投機者曾過度貸款，而現正他們被迫出售股票，形成惡性循環。

“How does all that ricochet to emerging markets?” Mr. Rogoff said in discussing the effect of China’s slowdown on commodity producers like Brazil, whose economy is in a tailspin. “Look at Russia. It’s amazing they haven’t had a financial crisis yet.”

“所有這些給新興市場帶來了怎樣的反彈呢？”羅格夫在討論中國經濟放緩對巴西等大宗商品生產國的影響時問道，巴西的經濟情況目前一片混亂。“看看俄羅斯吧。驚人的是，他們居然還沒有發生金融危機。”

Mr. Rogoff is not the first person to identify China as a potential risk. Earlier this year, this column highlighted the views of Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary and a Sinophile, who said, “Frankly, it’s not a question of if, but when, China’s financial system will face a reckoning and have to contend with a wave of credit losses and debt restructurings.” And the hedge fund manager James Chanos has been sounding the alarm on China for years, recently declaring, “Whatever you might think, it’s worse.”

羅格夫並不是認定中國存在潛在風險的第一人。今年早些時候，本欄目曾介紹過前財政部長、親中國人士小亨利·M·保爾森(Henry M. Paulson Jr.)的觀點，他說，“坦率地講，中國金融體系將面臨一次總清算，不得不對付一輪信貸損失和債務重組問題，這不是會不會發生、而是何時發生的問題。”而對衝基金經理詹姆斯·S·查諾斯(James S. Chanos)多年來一直在對中國的問題發出警告，他最近宣稱，“不管你可能怎樣認爲，都只會更糟糕。”

There are, of course, significant political reasons China needs to convince the world and its own citizens that it can manage its convulsing financial markets and slowing economy. “Financial meltdown leads to a social meltdown, which leads to a political meltdown,” Mr. Rogoff said. “That’s the real fear.”

中國需要說服世界和本國公民，它能管理本國震盪的金融市場和經濟增長放緩的問題，當然是有明顯的政治原因的。“金融危機導致社會崩潰，從而導致政治危機，”羅格夫說。“這纔是真正可怕的事情。”

Mr. Rogoff pointed to another factor that has contributed to China’s financial woes.

羅格夫指出，給中國金融製造問題的還有另一種因素。

“The crisis in Tianjin fed into the mix,” he said, referring to the deadly explosion on Aug. 12 in the port city, which killed more than 100 people. Mr. Rogoff said the explosion had undermined the credibility of the Chinese government because so many questions remained unanswered, and the response had been inadequate.

“天津的危機也助長了這個問題，”他說，他指的是8月12日發生在這個港口城市的致命爆炸，事件已造成100多人死亡。羅格夫說，爆炸摧毀了中國政府的公信力，因爲許多問題至今仍沒有答案，而且政府對爆炸的響應很不充分。

So does Mr. Rogoff believe that China is headed for a terrible “hard landing” that will lead to a global recession?

那麼說，羅格夫是否認爲，中國正在走向一個可怕的“硬着陸”，並將導致全球經濟衰退呢？

Well, despite the market tumult and his persistent warnings, Mr. Rogoff says he believes that the last several weeks have raised the prospects of a meaningful crisis. But with China’s trillions of dollars in reserves, he thinks the country may have sufficient tools to prevent a calamity that spreads across the globe — at least for now.

這個嘛，儘管市場出現動盪，他也曾不斷髮出警告，羅格夫說他認爲，過去幾周已提出了重大危機的可能性問題。但考慮到中國仍有數萬億美元的外匯儲備，他認爲中國也許有足夠的工具來防止災難蔓延到世界各地，至少目前如此。

“If you had to bet,” Mr. Rogoff said, “you’d still bet they’d pull it out.”

羅格夫說，“如果必須打賭的話，還是賭他們能擺脫困境爲好。”