肇始于2007年下半年的全球金融危机，在一年之后突然发威，将主要工业化国家拖入衰退的深渊，并直接考验新兴市场经济应对危机的能力。对中国而言，这场考验才刚刚开始，2009年或许是判断中国经济耐冲击能力的关键时期。

　　在新年里，中国将在结构调整上面临或进或退的选择。退或许可以保一时的经济稳定，但以未来更大的调整和经济波动为代价；进虽可以利用目前全球经济放慢的机会，建立更加独立和可持续的经济发展模式，却不得不承受短期调整阵痛。

　　无论如何，2009年中国经济转型的压力比任何时候都更真实，且难以回避

脆弱模式

　　在过去30年中，中国经济发展的外向型程度不断提高。以人民币计价的出口占GDP的比重，从1978年的不到5％翻番到了1986年的10.5％，到1994年又加倍上升到了21.6％。亚洲金融危机之后，中国外向型经济进入了八年的调整期，直到2002年出口占GDP的比重才突破前期的高点，达到22.4％。2001年中国加入WTO以及之后全球化的迅猛浪潮，把中国出口占GDP的比重推到了2007年37.5％的历史新高，如果没有2005年开始的汇改，占比很可能又已经在2002年较高的水平上实现了翻番。

　　以出口占GDP的比重来衡量一个经济的外向型程度，中国不是最高的，但却是大国中最高的之一。世界银行的统计资料显示，2005年中国美元计价的出口占GDP的比重为37.3％，高于全球平均的27％，在2007年全球十大经济体中仅次于德国（40.7％）和加拿大（37.9％），也高于同属新兴市场经济的俄罗斯（35.2％）、印度（19.9％）和巴西（15.1％）。

　　在全球金融危机的冲击之下，中国外向型经济的脆弱程度远超出我们已有的经验。一般认为，这次始于发达国家的金融危机，对中国经济的直接影响应该不大。一方面，从中国金融体系的角度来看，近几年虽然对外开放的程度在逐步加大，但中国投资者直接投资于海外金融机构和产品的程度还有限，遭受的直接投资损失尚在可控的范围之内。另一方面，外贸顺差占GDP的比重仍然较小，在2005年以前一直没有超过5％，到2007年时攀升至8.1％，约为2万亿元人民币。

　　然而，2008年10月以来经济出现的大幅度下滑表明，外需放慢已经严重损害了中国经济增长的基本面。经济调整的深度已经超过了亚洲金融危机之后的调整，对外需的过度依赖显然放大了外需放慢对中国经济的冲击。中国出口同比增长从2008年10月的19.2％直落到11月的-2.2％，一些出口企业早在2008年夏天就感受到了外需的寒意，这些企业提前收缩生产规模。在外需市场持续疲弱的情况下，国内工业生产很可能会继续收缩，直到刺激内需的政策逐步见效。

出口放慢对经济的影响是全局性的，也是因为中国出口产品的产业链相对较长，其对整个经济的拉动或阻碍作用明显。就人民币计价的出口增长而言，重工业产品出口仍然保持了相对稳定的增长，2006年和2007年其出口增幅分别为18.4％和15％，2008年1月-10月的同比增幅略微放慢至14.1％，而同期轻工业产品出口增幅分别为26.1％、22.1％和1.4％。这表明，在中国出口产品中，劳动力相对密集的轻工产品遭遇的出口寒流远大于重工业行业。尽管轻工业产品出口所占比重大约只有30％，但对就业和整个上游产业链的负面影响却不可低估。

增量在哪里

　　从政策层面来看，2007年下半年以来，中国政府实行的宏观调控政策主要从平衡贸易和防止经济过热着手，为国内经济降温，对防止经济和市场继续冲高后更为激烈的调整起到了一定的作用。但宏观政策调整并没有配合有效的结构调整措施，在抑制一部分增长的同时为经济谋求新的增长点。国内股市、房地产市场和汽车市场的调整在2008年上半年就已经开始，这是市场快速发展后的正常调整，不过国内市场调整与国外经济向下周期重叠后产生的共振，打击了市场的信心，投资者担心短期内经济增长后继乏力。

　　另外，最近两年大量国有企业上市，非国有企业占投资的比重不断提高，整个经济中企业对业绩的关心程度有明显的改善，在面临经济不确定性时，企业积极消化库存，在生产和投资安排上更为谨慎，使得经济下调的速度明显加快。

　　在企业和消费者发现观望是最好的选择的时候，政府政策将决定2009年甚至更长一段时间里中国经济的基本走势。政府出台的“4万亿”刺激经济计划，以及后来推出的一系列政策调整，显示政府决心通过稳定外需、扩大内需的方式实现“保增长”的目标。具体而言，为了达到稳定外需的目的，过去两年里为平衡贸易而采取的改革措施中的大部分被修正，这包括出口退税的上调、出口关税下调和人民币的小幅贬值等；扩大内需的主要政策措施更加注重投资，特别是地方政府强烈的投资冲动，很可能将中国经济的列车再次推向投资的快车道。

　　目前的政策取向仍然是保传统经济增长方式下的增长，2009年经济“保八”的目标应该有可能实现。假设明年人民币计价的外贸顺差保持零或略负的增长，2007年时净出口对GDP增长的近3个百分点的贡献就会消失；关键是要判断出口放慢对经济增长负的溢出效应，假设外需放慢通过产业链影响经济的其他部门同样3个百分点的增长，在不考虑政府刺激经济计划的前提下，明年经济增长或许会滑落到6％。如果政府“4万亿”的计划能够额外拉动经济增长2个百分点，明年GDP有可能实现8％左右的增长。

　　那么，2009年经济增长的增量在哪里呢？如果美国和其他工业化国家的经济持续衰退，明年稳定外需的任务将非常艰巨。即使政府进一步加大力度鼓励出口，过分强调稳定外需很可能会将中国经济发展的主导权拱手让给别人，并且需要以更加扭曲经济结构为代价且不确定性很大。自2008年下半年以来，中国持有美国国债的增幅逐步加快，7月-10月较上月增持的额度分别为150亿美元、237亿美元、446亿美元和659亿美元。在美国去杠杆化的浪潮下，中美之间的失衡不但没有改善反而加剧了，为此中国将被动承担美元潜在的贬值和通胀风险，以及美国国债的流动性风险。

　　通过大量增加国内投资的方式扩大内需，很可能是未来两年稳定经济的着力点。但如果消费不能得到有效刺激，两年后中国GDP的结构将更加向投资倾斜，投资占GDP的比重很可能超过50％，跨入世界最高的行列。按照世界银行的统计资料，2005年中国资本形成总额占GDP的比重为43.9％，当年有该项统计的近180个国家和地区中，仅有五个高于中国。

　　退一步而言，即使稳定外需和投资扩张的政策能够见效，环境的变化已经今非昔比，严重影响政策的效率。由于外需环境的改变，去杠杆化意味着即使外部经济复苏，短期内也难以回到危机前的最高点。在未来的很长时间里，中国制造业仍然在人工成本和较长的产业链上具有比较优势，但比较优势的发挥更多地将以中国出口质的提升，而不是量的叠加。再加上企业结构的调整，上市公司、金融机构和私营企业的业绩约束明显强化，传统的稳定经济手段的效率也大不如从前。

　　2009年，中国经济转型的压力扑面而来，在传统的出口和投资之外，寻找新的增长点是惟一可能的选择。作为崛起中的大国，中国已经进入了从一个传统的出口大国向消费大国转变的关键时期。挖掘国内庞大的消费市场的潜力，不但可以改善民生，还可以为中国制造业的再生提供良好的机遇。从根本上讲，刺激消费就是要实现生产者与消费者之间、国家与居民之间的收入再分配，从改革税收体制和理顺价格机制着手，改革内需，激励消费。以可操作的政策推动经济结构的“战略性调整”，是重振市场信心的根本途径。

The global financial crisis, which originally commenced in the second half of 2007, gathered sudden momentum a year later and came to burst with full force, plunging the major industrialized countries into the abyss of recession and posing direct challenges to the emerging markets to cope with the economic crisis. As far as China is concerned, I would like to content that the challenges have just begun and are to last in the years to come. The year 2009 is perhaps the most critical period in which to examine the ability to of Chinese economy to withstand the growing impact of this global financial upheaval.

In the year 2009, China faces two alternatives in its economic restructuring—either going forward or turning back. If it chooses turning back, a temporary period of economic stability might be guaranteed but the price is that there would be even more challenging restructuring and more serious economic fluctuations in the future. If it chooses to go forward, it will have to undergo intense agonies resulting from sudden mal-adaptations of short-term restructuring, although it can develop a more independent and more sustainable pattern of economic growth by making use of the current slowdown of the world economy.

Whichever alternative is to be chosen, in the year 2009 the pressure for Chinese economy to seek transformation is greater than ever before and there is no room for evasion.

A Fragile Pattern

Over the past three decades, the dependence on export has kept mounting in the overall economic growth pattern of China. The percentage of the export (valued in terms of the Chinese currency RMB) in the nation’s GDP has doubled from less than 5% in 1978 to about 10.5% in 1986, which further doubled to reach 21.6% in 1994. After the Asian financial crisis, China’s export-oriented economy entered an important period of adjustment. It was only in 2002 that the proportion of export in the overall GDP exceeded the previously-established record, reaching 22.4％. In 2001, China assumed full accession into the WTO, which coincided with the rapidly expanding waves of globalization, pushing the percentage of China’s export in the country’s GDP to the record high of 37.5% in 2007. If it had not been for the dampening effect caused by the foreign exchange reform that started in 2005, the percentage would have doubled on the basis of the already high level of 22.4％ in 2002.

If we measure a country’s level of dependency on international trade by examining the proportion a country’s export accounts for in its GDP, China does not have the highest level of dependency. Nevertheless, its dependency on international trade is one of the highest. According to the statistics released by the World Bank, in 2005, the percentage of export in China’s GDP (valued in terms of US dollars) was 37.3％, which was higher than the average global level of 27％. Among the top ten world economies in 2007, China was second only to Germany (40.7％）and Canada (37.9％). Compared with other emerging markets, China was higher than other economies including Russia （35.2％）, India （19.9％）and Brazil （15.1％）.

With the unprecedented impact of the global financial crisis, the fragile nature of Chinese economy has become fully demonstrated—the fragility of China’s international trade has far exceeded our conventional expectations and experiences. It is generally believed that the current global financial crisis is largely confined to developed countries; its direct impact on Chinese economy is rather limited. On one hand, although in recent years China’s financial system has gradually become more and more open to the international capital market, Chinese investors have had quite limited direct investment in overseas financial institutions and products. For this reason, the losses resulting from the limited direct investment are within the bearable and controllable dimensions. On the other hand, the surplus from the international trade still constitutes a comparatively small proportion in the country’s GDP. Before 2005, the percentage never exceeded 5％ and in 2007 it rose to 8.1％，equivalent to 2 trillion RMB.

However, the substantial decline in economic growth since October 2008 has unmistakably indicated that the reduction of demands in the international market for Chinese products has seriously undermined the very foundation of the Chinese economy. Economic adjustment has reached a level of depth much beyond that in the immediate wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The excessive dependency on external demands has obviously amplified the impact produced by the reduction of such external demands on the Chinese economy. Compared with the same periods in the previous year, the growth in Chinese export plummeted from 19.2% in October 2008 to -2.2% in November. As early as the summer of 2008, quite a number of export-oriented enterprises in China had already experienced the mounting challenges arising from the shrinking of international demands, consequently those enterprises had already started to reduce their production scale much ahead of others. With the market of international demands for Chinese products continuously going sluggish, it is highly probable that China’s domestic industrial production will continue to keep shrinking, until the policies of stimulating domestic consumption start to produce concrete outcomes.

The slowdown in export has produced an effect on Chinese economy as a whole. This is because the industrial chain of China’s exported products is considerably long; the success or failure of the export industry has a marked impact on the promotion or impediment of economic development of the country. As far as the export valued in terms of Chinese RMB is concerned, the export of the products in heavy industry still maintains a steady growth, the magnitude of the export growth reached 18.4% and 15% in 2006 and 2007 respectively whereas the average growth rate from January to October 2008 reached 14.1 percent, showing a slight decline. By contrast, the export growth of the products of light industry declined drastically during the same periods, from 26.1％ through 22.1％ to 1.4％. This fully demonstrates that among all the exported products manufactured by China, the challenges incurred by the products of light industries, industries which are relatively labor-intensive, are significantly greater than those incurred by the products of the heavy industry. Although the products of the light industry account for only 30% percent in the total export volume of industrial products, the negative impact on employment and on the upper streams of the industrial chains should not be underestimated.

How Growth Can Be Achieved?

On the policy level, the macroeconomic manipulative policies implemented by the Chinese government since the second half of 2007 are designed primarily to balance trade and prevent the overheating of the economic growth. By cooling down the domestic economy, the policies produced certain positive effect on averting the potentially more drastic economic restructuring as a result of the uncontrolled economic and market expansion. Unfortunately, the reorientations in the macro economic policy failed to have the effective support of the corresponding measures in structural changes. As a consequence, while the growth in certain industries was suppressed, the growth in other industries kept surging. Domestically, the stock market, the real estates market and the automobile market started to adjust as early as the first half of 2008. Those adjustments were quite normal in view of a period of rapid market growth prior to the adjustments. However, those adjustments in China’s domestic market coincided and overlapped with the downward cycle of the world economy as a whole. The downturns in both domestic and international markets are combined to produce an exceedingly heavy blow on the confidence of the market. Chinese investors have become extremely worried that the economy lacks a necessary basis to gain recovery on a short-term basis.

In addition, over the past two years, an increasing number of Chinese state-owned enterprises have become listed on the stock market. At the same time, the investment by non-state-owned enterprises has kept rising in volume. All those factors have combined to make all the enterprises increasingly concerned with their actual performance and the ability to make profits. Faced with growing uncertainties in economic growth, most enterprises have chosen to sell what they have produced and are becoming more and more cautious in planning their production and investment. This will obviously contribute to the escalation of the economic downturn.

While enterprises and consumers find that the best course of action for them to take is to wait and see, it is the government whose policies will determine the general trend of Chinese economy in the year 2009 and even in years to come. The economic stimulation plan worth 4 trillion RMB as issued by the Chinese government, together with a whole series of subsequent policy changes, fully embodies the government’s determination to guarantee the nation’s GDP growth by stabilizing the external demands and expanding the domestic demands. More specifically, in order to stabilize the external demands, most of the reform measures over the past two years designed to maintain trade balance have been modified, replaced by the increase in the tax returns on exported products, decrease in the export tariffs, and small-scale depreciations of RMB. Most of the major policies and measures designed to stimulate domestic demands are focused on investment. In particular, the strong investment impulses on the part of the local governments will very likely place the locomotive of Chinese economy on the fast track of investment.

The policies currently being implemented are still directed toward an attempt to guarantee the conventional mode of economic growth. Under such circumstances, the objective to maintain a 8% growth rate in the country’s GDP in 2009 is feasible. Suppose the surplus in foreign trade (valued in terms of RMB) in 2009 maintains a zero or slightly negative growth rate, then, nearly 3 % contributed by the net export to GDP in 2007 will disappear. The key lies in an accurate determination of the negative spill-out effect of reduced export on the country’s economic growth. Suppose that the reduction in external demands would lead to a decline, by means of the industrial chains, in other sectors of the economy by 3%, without taking into account the government’s economic stimulation plan, the growth rate in China’s GDP in 2009 might decline and only reach 6％. However, if the government’s “4-Trillion-RMB Stimulation Plan” can create an additional growth in GDP by 2%, then, it is possible that China’s GDP in the year 2009 can expect to maintain a growth rate by 8％.

After all, how can this 8% growth rate in economic performance be achieved for 2009? If the economies of the United States and other industrialized countries continue to deteriorate or remain in recession, the task for the Chinese government to stabilize external demands in 2009 will be indeed very formidable. Even if the government has been reinforcing its support for export, such practices might backfire as excessive emphasis on stabilizing external demands would lead China to relinquish its ability to dominate the growth pattern of its own economy. Another possible outcome is that its economic structure will become more distorted and the number of uncertainties in future economic development will keep increasing. Since the second half of 2008, China has increased its share of holding the national debts issued by the United States government. Over a 4-month period from July to October, China bought 150 billion, 237 billion, 446 billion and 659 billion of American government debts respectively. Amid the mounting campaign of de-leveraging in the United States, the trade disequilibrium between China and the United States, instead of being lessened, has become more aggravated. For this reason, China will have to risk, very passively, the potential depreciation of US dollars and inflation, and will have to face the hazards inherent in the liquidity of American debts.

To expand domestic demands by substantially increasing the scale of domestic investment will become the major effort in the coming two years to stabilize China’s economy. However, if consumption cannot be effectively stimulated, the structure of China’s GDP in the coming two years will be more heavily dominated by investment; investment will probably contribute over 50% to GDP, which will be one of the highest percentages in the world.

Even though the policies of stabilizing external demands and expanding investment can become effective, the changes in the economic environment are such that the efficacy of the policies is seriously undermined. Due to the changes in the pattern of external demands, de-leveraging means that, even if world economy as a whole can gradually gain recovery, it is impossible for to research the height of the pre-crisis period on a short-term basis. For a quite long time in the future, the comparative advantages of China’s manufacturing industry will still lie in lower cost of labor and longer industrial chains. However, such comparative advantages can be fully exploited only by enhancing the quality of the products to be manufactured, not by the increase in the quantity of the products. In addition, corporate organizations are making more structural adjustments while listed companies, financial institutions and private enterprises are more dominated by the need for better performance and profitability. Under such circumstances, the conventional measures of stabilizing the economy will not be as effective as they used to be.

For the year 2009 and the years to follow, the need for China’s economy to transform is more urgent than ever before. Apart from the conventional practices of export and investment, to find new areas of economic growth seems to be the only alternative. As an emerging economy, China has reached a critical phase in which key transition must be effected—from a major country whose economy is heavily export-oriented to a major country of domestic consumption. By tapping the potential of the country’s domestic consumption market, we can not only improve the quality of life of the general public but also create wonderful chances for the revitalization of China’s manufacturing industry. Essentially speaking, the stimulation of domestic consumption is to achieve income redistributions between the producers and the consumers, and between the state and its citizens. The best point of entry is to introduce reform in the existing taxation system and improve the mechanism of pricing various commodities. The stimulation of consumption will in turn stimulate domestic demands. By introducing policies that are easy to operate, we can expect to achieve “strategic adjustments” in our economic structure. This will be the fundamental way to enhance the market confidence.