主题：【整理】中美贸易歧视 -- 懒虫123

转贴 外链出处

2007年6月以来工业产值比较（％）

　　●一个世纪以来，美国第一次失去了世界头号工业制造国的地位，让位给中国

　　●全球金融危机以来，中国工业产值翻了一番，而美国没有增长

　　●现在，中国的工业产值是美国的126%

　　目前在世的人们，一生从未经历过这样一件事——美国竟然不是世界工业的领头羊。世界最新数据表明，中国已经取代美国，成为世界头号工业生产国，而且，是“远远”超过。这结束了美国长达一个世纪在该领域的领袖历史，因此，清晰记录这其中究竟发生了什么，并仔细分析它代表了中国经济发展的含义，具有重大意义。

　　联合国日前发布的数据显示，在金融危机前的2007年，中国工业生产总值只有美国的62%，而到了2011年，中国工业生产总值就已经是美国的120%——2011年，中国工业生产总值达2.9万亿美元，美国为2.4万亿美元。

　　联合国2012年数据目前尚未发布，所以笔者用美国中央情报局的数据来佐证笔者关于以下趋势的判断——2011年12月至2012年12月，中国工业产出增长了10.3%，而美国只增长2.7%。美国中央情报局《世界概况》数据显示，2012年中国工业总产值3.7万亿美元（译者注：由于中国国内统计与国际统计方法不同，不具有可比性，文中所有国际对比均采用国际通用标准），美国只有2.9万亿美元——意味着，中国工业总产值是美国的126%。

　　在工业总产值中，我们仅以制造业为例——即排除矿业、电力、天然气、水务的产值——2007年，中国的产值是美国的62%，2011年，这个数字变成了123%。不仅是2011年，中国超过美国的幅度在2012年、2013年继续增大。

　　不仅美国式微，全球没有任何一个国家可以“望中国项背”。2011年，中国工业总产值是德国的346%，是日本的235%。

　　除了上文分析的联合国数据，另一全球权威统计者——世界银行，该数据进一步显示了这一全球历史性的颠覆，尽管世界银行与联合国的价值统计方法不同。世界银行数据与联合国数据有微弱差异——2007年，中国工业总产值只有美国的60%，2011年却达到了121%。

　　因此，从联合国、世界银行、美国中央情报局的数据都可以看出来，中国从2007年连美国工业产值的2/3都不足，发展到“远远超过”美国工业产值，仅用了6年。

　　所以，如果说以前中国在全球金融危机前是“世界工厂”，那么现在，中国“世界工厂”地位不仅没有下降，反而大大加强了。

　　在过去6年中，中国工业产值几乎翻了一番，而美国、欧洲、日本却连危机前水平都还未恢复。8月7日中国统计局发布的数据显示，2007年7月至2013年7月，中国工业产值增长了97%，而美国却下降了1%。尽管欧洲和日本尚未公布2013年7月工业产值数据，但2007年7月到2013年6月的数据也可以说明这一问题——欧洲下降了9%，而日本下降了更多，达到17%。

　　正是由于中国的惊人增长，发展中国家工业产值对全球格局的颠覆才引起了目前的广泛讨论——至可比数据公布之日止，过去6年至2013年6月，发达经济体的工业产值下降了7%，而发展中国家却增长了65%。

　　从全球格局变化背后的意义来分析，中国工业产值的上涨所蕴含的深意和影响远远超过工业自身，这对于中国人均GDP的增长、人民生活水平的提高具有关键作用。因为从生产率来看，与其他经济领域相比，特别是相较于服务业，工业是最容易取得生产率快速增长的领域，所以欧洲、日本的工业产值下降以及美国工业产值增长的相对停滞，意味着中国正在缩小本国与发达经济体的生产率差距。

　　正是由于工业产值的大幅增长，中国得以妥善消化人民币大幅升值的压力，而这又直接产生了积极效应——中国进口的价格相对降低，人民生活水平相对提升。

　　除了人均GDP、进出口、人民生活水平的积极影响之外，中国工业产值的大幅提升及与各地区的对比，使得“美国工业是否强势复苏”争论结果昭然若揭——目前波士顿咨询公司认为美国工业复苏强劲，而高盛和其他分析机构则得出了正确的结论，即美国工业并未强势复苏。而中国的经济学家，如郎咸平，撰文表示美国正在大举复苏，而中国工业正经历危机，此类言论在数据面前，显得如此愚昧——数据表明中国工业产值几乎翻了一番，而美国却丝毫未涨。

　　然而，尽管进步巨大，中国成就却不可夸大。中国工业产值目前只是总金额远超美国，而美国仍然是全球实质上的技术领袖，中国需要相当长时间才能赶上。从全球收入来看，美国工业企业的收入仍然是中国企业的4倍——尽管2007年至2013年，中国工业企业收入已经超过德国工业企业，成为全球第三。

　　通过对全球主要经济体工业产值的对比分析，可以发现，与中国工业产值的巨大发展相比，美国引起媒体巨大注意力的油气“水力压裂法”只是微不足道的小插曲而已——正如数据表明的，美国工业甚至连危机前的水平都尚未恢复，更别提巨大发展。

　　整整100年，美国从未被任何国家取代其工业领袖国地位。中国现已确立了其世界第一工业生产国地位，这是中国经济发展的重要一步。而世界工业格局的颠覆，不仅是中国，更是世界经济的历史性时刻。

这篇文章晚了点，中国其实在2010年就完成了对美国工业总量的超越，包括发电量和能源消耗量等硬指标。

英文2012年4月的旧闻

the U.S. is no longer the world’s unchallenged economic superpower.

外链出处

Has China ALREADY Passed the U.S. as the World’s Largest Economy?

Posted on April 5, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog

Report: China Surpassed U.S. in 2010

While the IMF forecasts that China will surpass America as the world’s top economy in 2016, it may have already become dog top.

As Arvind Subramanian – former assistant director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund, and now senior fellow jointly at the Peterson Institute for International Economics – noted in January:

Some time in 2010, the Chinese economy overtook that of the United States. My calculations of GDP for … are based on new estimates of GDP that will soon be published by the Penn World Tables (PWT) under the guidance of Professor Alan Heston at the University of Pennsylvania.

***

According to the IMF’s latest estimates for 2010, the value of total US GDP was $14.6 trillion while that of China was $5.7 trillion.

But it has long been recognized by many economists that using the market exchange rate to value goods and services is misleading about the real costs of living in two countries. Such goods and services as medical services, retail and constructions services, and haircuts—which are not traded across borders—are cheaper in poorer countries because labor is abundant. Using the market exchange rate to compare living standards across countries understates the benefits that citizens in poor countries enjoy from having access to these goods and services.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) estimates—which take account of these differing costs—are an alternative and, in some respects, more revealing way of computing and comparing standards of living and economic size across countries.

***

The size of the Chinese economy in 2010 was about $14.8 trillion dollars—surpassing that of the United States.

***

A second correction relates to [the fact that when] a currency appreciates, the movement is akin to an increase in the average cost of living.

***

These two adjustments increase China’s GDP from the current estimate of $10.1 trillion to $14.8 trillion (an increase of 47 percent, of which 27 percent is due to the revision in the 2005 estimate, and the rest due to smaller-than-assumed increases in the cost of living between 2005 and 2010). This $14.8 trillion figure exceeds US GDP of $14.6 trillion.

***

The GDP per capita (the average standard of living) is now about 4.3 times greater in the US than in China compared with a multiple of 6.3 without my corrections (and compared with a multiple of 11 if GDP is computed using market exchange rates).

***

[One] explanation of China’s behavior [in failing to provide more accurate estimaes] has to do with exchange rate politics. Had all prices been collected, China’s average price level (cost of living) would have been substantially lower. And this would have resulted in estimates of undervaluation of the Chinese currency of close to 40 percent against the dollar (see Subramanian 2010 for the connection between China’s price level and the implications for estimating whether currencies are under or overvalued). China’s trading partners would have had additional technical ammunition to deploy against its highly sensitive but demonstrably beggar-thy-neighbor exchange rate policy.

Economist Simon Taylor – finance professor and director of the finance program at Cambridge (and former JPMorgan and Citigroup alum) – writes:

The forecast [from the] Peterson Institute of International Economics [argues] that Chinese economic output already matched that of the US in 2010 (at purchasing power parity – more of that below). And, more dramatically, that the renminbi could overtake the dollar far more quickly than generally expected

***

If the new report is even roughly accurate, China’s real economic output overtook that of the US several years ago. Even if it’s still somewhat inaccurate, the timing of when China is number one is now imminent, not some next-decade event.

But leading Chinese economic analyst Michael Pettis is not impressed:

China’s economy is already bigger than the US economy according to PPP. I am not disputing Subramanian’s numbers, but comparisons between two such disparate economies on a PPP basis of course have no meaningful content at all. The fact that it is much cheaper to get a haircut or massage in China … tells us very little about the two countries that we wouldn’t have already known.

***

This whole exercise is pretty meaningless, and not only for the reason you might think – that economic growth is not a horse race between countries. It is meaningless for a far more fundamental reason, and this is because the comparable official GDP numbers for China (and PPP numbers start with the official numbers and then adjust for local prices) are wrong.

GDP may be higher

I am not just saying this because, according to Wikileaks, Li Keqiang doesn’t take the official GDP numbers too seriously. This was widely reported, but isn’t really news. None of us take the official GDP numbers too seriously, especially since it is almost impossible to produce good data in a large economy that is transforming itself so rapidly. I am saying that the GDP numbers are wrong for a more fundamental reason.

GDP is supposed to measure the total value of goods and services produced in China, but there are several problems with the official numbers. There are problems with all GDP numbers, but the biases, especially in the developed countries, are fairly consistent, which makes cross-country comparisons more or less meaningful. But in China there are additional problems, which make cross-country comparisons very complicated.

First of all we know that a lot of Chinese income – more than in most other major countries – is hidden, for whatever reasons, and this tends to pull down reported GDP numbers. One plausible recent estimate is that roughly 10% of total income is hidden beyond the NBS surveys, and so this suggests that GDP might really be substantially higher.

***

Second, when you compare the US and China (or any two countries), you have to think carefully about the exchange rate you’re using.

***

What if you believe that the RMB is undervalued by 20% and held there only because of PBoC intervention? Doesn’t that mean that if the PBoC were to stop intervening China’s GDP would automatically be 20% larger relative to the US?

Yes, it should be larger, but not by 20%. The difference should be less than 20%, but how much less depends on how much of China’s GDP growth can be explained by the undervalued currency.

If part of the country’s high growth rate is a consequence of the undervalued exchange rate, and certainly Beijing seems to believe it is, than raising the value of the RMB would automatically cause a slowdown in Chinese growth. That is why analysts should consider the relationship between the two when they make projections, and by the way they are implicitly (if not very accurately) doing so when they calculate PPP numbers.

GDP may also be lower

But there is more. So far nearly all the adjustments and predictions about Chinese growth that we have seen in the press suggest that the “real” size of China’s economy requires upward revisions of official GDP numbers, but that might reflect China hype more than a judicious approach might justify. What if China’s GDP numbers seriously overstate the true value of China’s economy?

There are at least two very good reasons to believe that they might. The first is environmental degradation. To understand why, it is worth remembering that if an individual earns $100, but in so doing destroys $100 worth of his own assets, then a strict accounting would say that he earned nothing.

The same is true with the environment, which has a real economic value that can be adversely affected by certain kinds of economic activity. For example here is an article that came out four months ago on Bloomberg:

China, the world’s worst polluter, needs to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product a year — 680 billion yuan at 2009 figures — to clean up 30 years of industrial waste, said He Ping, chairman of the Washington-based International Fund for China’s Environment. Mun Sing Ho, a senior economist at Dale W. Jorgenson Associates and a visiting scholar at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, put the range at 2 percent to 4 percent of GDP.

Failure to spend that much — equivalent to the annual GDP of Vietnam — may cost the Chinese economy half as much again in blighted crops, health costs and pollution-related expenses, He said: “The cleanup can’t catch up with the speed of pollution” if spending is less.

This article suggests that a significant portion of Chinese growth came with a destruction of value that should have been deducted from that growth. After all, if you create net $100 of chemicals, but in so doing you pollute a nearby river to the extent that future economic production associated with the river is reduced by $100 (there will be less fishing, perhaps, or less agricultural production, or less usable water, or more health care costs), then the net value you created is 0, not $100, although of course you as the polluter might earn $100 today while the rest of the country loses $100 over the future.

There is no objective way to figure out how much of Chinese GDP growth should be reversed because of environmental degradation (and in this China is simply an extreme case – most countries to a lesser extent have this problem), but there is no question that the number is big, and the result is that we overestimate China’s GDP growth today and will underestimate GDP growth tomorrow. In other words environmental degradation simply causes us to take future growth and count it today.

And it is not just environmental degradation that may require a downward adjustment in GDP. What about misallocated investment?

***

Every country wastes investment, but China does it on a massive scale. I would argue that at least 1-2 percentage points of Chinese growth, perhaps even more, might consist of this kind of misallocated investment-driven growth.

When you add the impact of misallocated investment and environmental degradation, the necessary cumulative adjustment to Chinese GDP might be huge. For example, if the two adjustments combined range from 2 to 4 percentage points annually, over one decade China’s “true” GDP (whatever that means), would be below the official numbers by anywhere from 16-31%. Over twenty years official GDP would be overstated by 31-52%. That means that we are massively overstating GDP today and will experience very low apparent GDP growth for many years in the future as the official number returns to some reasonable approximation of the real number.

These are big adjustments, both above and below the official GDP numbers. This is why I find the whole horserace to predict the earliest date by which China’s economy will overtake the US to be so silly. What we are in effect doing is predicting the date by which an economy that is officially $6 trillion, but in reality anywhere from $3 trillion to $15 trillion in size, will overtake another economy that is roughly around $15 trillion in size.

And this is not the first time we have played this game. Look at Japan. Fifteen to twenty years ago Japan’s GDP was officially 17-18% of the world’s GDP and it was rapidly catching up to the US. Today it is 8%, and there seems to be no chance of it every catching up.

But can this really be true? Or is it possible that Japan’s official GDP growth was vastly inflated by misallocated investment before 1990, and vastly deflated by the repayment of that investment after 1990?

I think it’s the latter. If you look at the growth in Japan’s household consumption, you will find that household consumption grew much more slowly than GDP before 1990, and much more quickly after 1990. Household consumption might be at least as good an indicator of the real growth in wealth as production-side GDP numbers. So might it not be true that Japan’s official GDP was too high before 1990, and it has been slowly adjusting since then? And if this could have happened in Japan, whose investment growth was high but way below China’s, why can’t it happen here?

Under these conditions what’s the point of predicting when China’s economy will officially overtake the US? We simply have no idea, and we cannot draw any conclusions from the numbers. Can the horserace generate headlines? Yes. Can it generate understanding? Not much.

Pettis naively assumes that the U.S. economic numbers aren’t fudged, and that they adequately adjust for environmental degradation and misallocated capital. Given the widespread environmental and economic cover-ups – and misallocation of capital (and see this) – I’m not so confident.

Moreover, China’s main credit rating agency – Dagong – argues that the U.S. economy is actually much closer to $5 than $15 trillion:

One thing is clear: the U.S. is no longer the world’s unchallenged economic superpower.