It was the sort of good news that makes everything look worse. We now know that China's economy surged 13 percent in 2007, elbowing aside Germany to become the world's third biggest economy. China's National Bureau of Statistics had previously put 2007 GDP growth at 11.9 percent, but on Wednesday the bureau revised that figure upward.
Nobody celebrated. Far from popping champagne corks, China-watching economists -- to say nothing of nervous Chinese officials -- are keeping an ear cocked for the sound of mobs and breaking glass.The economic crisis has stirred fears of greater instability as laid-off workers protest. Indeed, some 1,000 construction workers rioted over unpaid wages on Tuesday, Reuters reported citing the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy. About 500 riot police battled the protesters for control of a bridge over the Yangtzse River in Anhui Province, and 10 workers were injured, according to the report.
Already, officials highly-placed enough to know have warned that China may not make its official target of 8 percent growth in 2009. That's serious because 8 percent is the magic number the government says it needs to keep unemployment manageable. Making the 8 percent target will be "exceptionally arduous", Liu Mingkang, chairman of the Central Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) was reported by Bloomberg as saying on Monday. That's blunt language for a bank regulator. These guys normally try to sound as boring as possible to avoid panicking the markets. But he's not alone. "There are downside risks to the goal", China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said. And Premier Wen Jiabao has promised yet more money to top up the government's already-$600 billion stimulus pot before Chinese New Year starts next weekend. The country's stimulus package is the biggest in the world set against the overall size of its economy and only the US has outstripped it in monetary terms.
Government and private sector economists expect the economy to have expanded in 2008 by just over 9 percent when the data is released later this month. There's less harmony on 2009 forecasts, though, which some economists are pitching as low as 5 percent. With other major economies shrinking that might sound good, but China is still poor despite nudging into third place on the podium behind the US and Japan. China's per capita income averages only $2,360 a year, according to the World Bank. So what then if NBS' number crunchers have found an extra $113.8 billion-worth of goods and services in 2007, raising the overall output to $3.76 trillion compared to Germany's $3.32 trillion, based on that year's average exchange rate. It just emphasises the scale and speed of the slowdown.
Government officials normally like to put an upbeat swing on things but they've been unusually explicit about the risks unemployment poses to social stability. State-run magazine Outlook has carried a series of articles warning of a potential rise in "mass incidents". Its latest issue contained a warning of "unprecedented challenges" from a top Communist Party official in charge of coordinating the courts, public prosecutions and regional justice departments. "It will be a challenging task to maintain and control law and order in the country this year", Chen Jiping was quoted as saying. Chen is deputy secretary-general of the Party's Central Political and Legislative Affairs Committee.
So how bad is unemployment? It's hard to say, frankly. Officially urban unemployment is 4%, but this excludes many types of people -- including the farmers-turned-factory-hands who're at the sharp end of the slowdown. Researchers think 10 percent may be nearer the mark. About 10 million jobless migrant workers have already returned to their villages, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (HRSS) says. Other soundings suggest this is a wild underestimate. Take Henan, China's most populous province. Henan's provincial HRSS bureau says nearly 5 million migrants have come home, and it's bracing for up to 3 million more when Chinese New Year starts on 25 January. The deputy governor had pledged a busy program vocational training to help them. Does the provincial HRSS bureau not report upwards? The only certainty is that Chinese New Year - the country's most important holiday - will bring a wave of lay-offs.
In a sign of how frayed nerves and tempers are, even the nation's President Hu Jintao is fretting himself over the shortage of train-tickets that could anger already-resentful migrants trying to get home. China's railways will carry 188 million passengers ahead of the holiday, or 13.7 million more than at 2008's new year festival. President Hu has ordered the Ministry of Railways to "use their brains" to solve the ticket problem, thus "ensuring the Spring Festival mission is completed smoothly", according to the ministry's website.
Don't think China is grinding to a halt. There are bright spots. Retail sales grew more than 20% year-on-year in the final quarter of 2008, suggesting urban white collar workers still feel comfortable, having got over their intial economic fright. Banking lending in December more than doubled on the previous month (to RMB 772 billion, up from RMB 477 billion in November) -- a sure sign banks are dishing out stimulus funds to fund make-work construction projects, and being ordered to keep some distressed firms afloat.
But the picture is stark. Any gloating about being bigger than Germany would seem pointless as -- like China and the US -- the two countries' fates are so closely tied. Export factories are shedding jobs. The EU is China's biggest trading partner, and Germany is the EU's biggest economy. Exports account for only 9 percent of China's economic growth, but their real importance is much bigger as pain is rippling up and down the exporter's service and supply chains. New hiring in many service sector companies will ultimately depend on the export sector. "The multiplier effect of the exporters in China is just massive," says Jerry Lou, head of China equities research at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. "Europe is the largest client for China, and with the sharp depreciation of the currency and unemployment skyrocketing, I find it very hard to believe that this mess will [start to] be fixed within six months" as the most upbeat Chinese estimates suggest, says Lou.
译文:
这个时代的好与坏
虽然看上去所有的事情都变得糟糕了，但是这却不失为一条好消息。我们现在都知道，中国的经济在2007年巨涨13%，由此超越了德国跻身世界第三大经济强国。中国国家统计局在之前就称2007年的GDP增长率为11．9%, 而在周三，统计局已经将该数字进行了最新修改。
但是却没有人为此庆祝。与之相反的是，许多关注中国的经济学家们——对紧张的中国官员什么都没说——而是竖起耳朵等着听民众的声音和混乱的吵闹声。由于下岗工人的抗议，经济危机已经引起了民众对社会不稳定的巨大恐惧。实际上，在周二，一些建筑工人因为得不到酬劳而发起了暴乱，路透社引用了香港人权与民主信息中心的报道。大约五百名防暴警察为了控制住安徽省内的一座跨长江大桥加入了这场斗争，据报道其中有十名工人受伤。
官员们都发出预警说中国可能无法在2009年完成之前提出的8%的经济增长的目标，这一点被高度强调。这将形势变得非常严峻，因为这8%是政府声称要用来稳定就业率的神奇指数。而要完成着8%的目标，就变得“尤其的艰辛”，据彭博社（Bloomberg）报道，中国银行业监督管理委员会主席刘明康在周一如是说。说出这些话对于一个银行监督者来说，是一件非常艰难的事情，因为这些官员通常都会说一些令人厌烦却能够防止市场混乱的话。但是他不是孤零零的一个人，中国中央银行行长周小川也说：“要到达目标，恐怕市场会有下滑的风险。”。总理温家宝仍保证说在下周末也就是中国的新年之前，会有更多的资金投入来补充政府已经投入的六千亿美元的市场刺激机制里。中国针对起经济规模而做出的刺激市场的行为在全球来说都是规模最大的，只有美国在投入的资金上超越了中国。
无论是政府部门还是私营企业的经济学家们都期待着本月末将要提出的2008年的数据能够扩大到超过9%。在2009年的预测时，尽管一些经济学家认为将会低至5%，但是总体还是比较协调的。随着一些其他的经济体都缩水，虽然这是一个好消息，但是即使中国跻身于世界第三位仅次于美国和日本，中国依旧贫穷。根据世界银行的统计，中国年人均收入只有2360美元。那么接下来如果国家标准局的那些对数字很在行的人发现在2007年有一项额外的价值1138亿美元的货物和服务，且因此才将GDP增加至三万七千六百亿美元，并且根据当年的平均汇率，超过了德国的三万三千两百亿美元，这只是强调了经济衰退的范围有限和速度减缓。
政府官员总爱把事情说的振奋人心，但却很少直接说出失业率会对社会稳定性造成的风险。政府创办的杂志《新视线》已经发表了一系列的文章警告说可能会发生集中的事变，并且有潜在的增长趋势。其最新的一期包含了一项由一名共产党负责协调法院，公诉和地区司法部门的最高官员提出的关于“空前的挑战”的警告。“这有可能在今年成为一项挑战性的任务，要我们维护并控制国内的法律和秩序。”陈冀平说道。陈冀平是中央政法委副秘书长。
那么，失业率到底有多严重呢？老实说，这很难讲。官方的数据是城市失业率为4%，但是该数据排除了很多人群——其中包括农民转业为工人的人群，而他们却是在经济下滑的风口浪尖上的那些人。调查者认为该实际数据应该接近10%左右。人力资源和社会保障部（HRSS)部长说，大约一千万物业民工已经回到了原籍。而一些其他的声音则暗示说这项数据远远低于了实际的情况。就河南省来说，河南是中国人口最多的省份，该省的人力资源和社会保障局称大约五百万的民工已经回乡，并且比较肯定的是在1月25日中国的春节来临之前还会有三百万民工回来。省长保证说已经开始了一个职业培训的项目来帮助这些工人。该省的人力资源和社会保障局是不是没有上报数字呢？唯一能确定的是——中国最重要的节日春节——会带来一波下岗潮。
作为局势紧张的表示，甚至连国家主席胡锦涛对于春运火车票的短缺而感到万分的苦恼，火车票的短缺很容易惹怒那些已经心怀怨恨还急着回家的民工们。中国铁路已经在节前运送了一亿八千八百万乘客了，相比2008年春节期间，已经多出一千三百万七千人次了。据铁路部门的网站介绍，胡主席还要求了铁路部门要“用脑”解决车票问题，从而“保证春运任务能够顺利完成”。
不要以为中国就慢慢停下来了，其实也是有亮点的。零售行业的业绩在2008年第四季度同比增长了20%，这也意味着城市白领仍然过着舒适的生活，已经完全度过了他们对于经济危机的惊慌。银行贷款在12月份也比前一个月增加了一倍多（从11月份的四千七百七十亿上涨到了七千七百二十亿人民币）——一项可靠的迹象表明银行正将一笔刺激资金投入一些需要启动资金的建设项目，并且被要求帮助一些贫困的企业免于经济受困。
但是我们面前的景象是赤裸裸的。任何因为经济超过德国而显示出来的沾沾自喜都会显得毫无意义——就好像中国和美国——这两个国家的命运是紧紧连在一起的。出口工厂正在减少工作。欧盟是中国最大的贸易伙伴，而德国正是欧盟之中最大的经济体。在中国的经济增长中，出口只占了9%，但是对他们来说，其更大的重要性的是出口商的服务和供应链的上下波动。“中国出口商的乘数效应非常巨大”，中国摩根士丹利执行董事兼中国估价师娄刚说，“欧洲是中国最大的客户，随着货币的贬值和失业率的猛增，很难令人相信这场混乱会在半年之内（开始）被稳定下来。”