2011年02月01日 07:07 AM

远离中国股市？

China could price itself out of all sorts of markets

《Money Week》主编 梅里恩•萨默塞特•韦布 为英国《金融时报》撰稿

 评论[4条] 中文

 

On the train a few weeks ago, I sat next to a burly garment supplier. He spent the entire trip – when not yelling at his ex-wife-to-be on the phone (“you made your bed love, you lie in it”) – calling clients and telling them that their prices were going up. Those who asked questions were told that factory prices were rising in China and that they were taking the hit. End of story.	几周前我坐火车旅行，旁边坐了一位魁梧的服装供应商。在整个旅行期间，这位供应商除了在电话中对即将离婚的妻子吼叫外（“亲爱的，自作孽不可逭”），就是给客户打电话告诉他们产品将要涨价。那些询问原因的人被告知，中国工厂的价格正在上涨，他们正受到冲击。没什么可商量的。
I told this to a City audience a few days later during a debate with Matt Ridley on whether optimism or pessimism is the correct approach to the future – only to hear a voice piping up from the floor telling me I knew nothing about inflation in China.	几天后，我在金融城与马特•里德利(Matt Ridley)辩论对未来应保持乐观还是悲观时，向听众讲了这件事。结果台下冒出来一个声音说，我不了解中国的通胀情况。
This interruption came from a young dress designer at the back. She told us that the factories she uses would bump up their prices every couple of months: these days, if you don’t take the price you are given on the spot, it goes up in 24 hours. That’s real inflation.	打断我的是坐在后排的一个年轻服装设计师，她告诉我，她使用的中国工厂每隔几个月就会涨价：现如今，如果你当场不接受报价，24小时内就会涨价。这是真实的通胀。
But the interesting bit was that the fast-moving prices have prompted her to do her sums again: she is moving her production back to Europe. It won’t cost less, but it certainly won’t cost any more. It will also allow her to keep an eye on quality – which has apparently been falling as fast as prices are rising at those Chinese factories.	但是有趣的是，中国价格快速增长促使她重新清醒思考：她正在将生产线迁回欧洲。虽然这不能降低成本，但肯定也不会再增加成本。而且这样一来她还能够监督产品质量——显然，在那些中国工厂，产品质量下降的速度与价格上涨的速度一样快。
For more on how fast prices are rising, look at www.shanghaiscrap.com, where you can see pictures of packs of instant noodles in a Shanghai convenience store. According to the blogger, the clerks aren’t bothering to print new price labels for the noodles as prices rise; they simply “cross them out and write in the new [substantially higher] ones”. That’s also real inflation.	要想更多地了解价格上涨有多快，你可以登录www.shanghaiscrap.com看看。该博客上面配发了上海一家便利店里袋装方便面的图片。博主表示，随着价格的上涨，店员们都懒得打印新的价格标签；而只是“用笔把旧价格划掉，写上（高得多的）新价格”。这也是真实的通胀。
This is anecdotal evidence but it suggests that, given the wage pressures building behind it, the consumer price index in China might, just might, be a tad higher than the official number of 4.6 per cent suggests.	这是坊间证据，但它表明，考虑到背后的薪资上涨压力，中国的消费者价格指数或许（仅仅是或许）要稍稍高于官方公布的4.6%的水平。
It also chimes with news of minimum wage rises in Chinese cities: pay is about to rise 20 per cent in Beijing, 10 per cent in Shanghai and 19 per cent in Guangdong. Shanghai’s mayor says this is about “rational income distribution”. But odds are it has something to do with staff shortages (young Chinese workers are becoming more demanding) and the odd strike as well.	它还与中国各城市最低工资水平上涨的消息相吻合：北京计划将最低工资水平提高20%，上海提高10%，广东提高19%。上海市市长表示，这事关“合理收入分配”。但这十之八九与劳动力短缺（年轻的中国工人正变得越来越挑剔）和零散的罢工有点关系。
Either way, you could make a reasonable argument that 30 years into its 10 per cent a year GDP expansion, China is beginning to price itself out of the low-cost manufacturing market. Leave out Malaysia and Thailand, says a note from Liberum Capital, and the average worker in China is now more expensive than the average worker in any other emerging Asian economy.	无论是哪种原因，你都能得出一个合理的结论，即在国内生产总值(GDP)以10%的年均增速增长了30年之后，中国自身的劳动力成本开始上升，不再是低成本制造业市场。伦敦Liberum Capital在一篇报告中指出，除去马来西亚和泰国，目前中国普通工人的价格比其它亚洲新兴经济体的普通工人都要高。
One thing all this should remind us about is the power of demographics. Years of one-child policies have left the Chinese population nastily unbalanced. Today, its dependency ratio hovers around 40 per cent. That’s good – it means 60 per cent of the population is of working age. But as the only children reach working age and their parents retire, this ratio changes fast: by 2040 it will be well over 50 per cent and by 2050, over 60 per cent. If employers think young Chinese workers are stroppy now, they should wait until the poor things are trying to support two parents each, as well as their own children.	所有这些都应该提醒我们注意到人口结构的力量。由于多年实施计划生育政策，中国的人口结构严重失衡。如今，中国的抚养比率徘徊在40%左右。这个水平很好——它意味着60%的人口处于劳动年龄。但是随着独生子女到达劳动年龄和他们的父母退休，该比率将很快改变：到2040年，抚养比率将远远超过50%，到2050年，将超过60%。如果雇主认为现在年轻的中国工人难以应付，且等到这些可怜的家伙既要供养父母又要供养子女的时再看吧。
However, this shift from a nation of the youngish to a nation of the old won’t just affect China’s economy. It will, if things work out as they have in the US, affect its stock market, too.	然而，中国从年轻人的国家转变为老龄化国家，受影响的不只是中国经济。如果情况像美国那样发展，它还可能会影响股市。
Société Générale has a neat chart that plots the growth rate of retirees in the US against the Shiller price/earnings ratio for the US equity market. And guess what? It’s a pretty good correlation. When not many people are retiring, the stock market gets more expensive (more people are saving for retirement). When lots are retiring, it gets cheaper (people take their money out). The same goes for house prices: working people upsize, retirees downsize so the more retirees you have knocking around, the less likely it is that house prices will rise.	法国兴业银行(Société Générale)绘制了一幅简洁的图表——将美国退休人口增长率曲线与美国股市的“席勒市盈率”(Shiller PE)曲线进行了比较。猜猜是什么情况？它们的关联性相当强。当达到退休年龄的人口不多时，股市较为昂贵（有更多人为退休攒钱）。当很多人即将退休时，股市变得较便宜（人们纷纷把钱从股市中撤出）。房价也是同样的走势：处于劳动年龄的人多了，退休的人就会减少，因此退休的人越多，房价上涨的可能性就越低。
Anyone looking for corroboration of the argument need only look to Japan where the working age population as a percentage of the total population began to fall in the early 1990s – a time that marked the start of a 20-year grind-down in domestic asset prices.	任何为这种观点寻求佐证的人只需看看日本就可以了。上世纪90年代初，日本劳动人口占总人口的比例开始下降，而那个时期也标志着日本国内资产价格连续20年下降周期的开端。
That doesn’t bode well for US asset prices over the next couple of decades given that the working population as a percentage of the total population, having risen from 1990 through to 2008, is now set to fall until some time in the region of 2030. It bodes really badly for the Chinese stock market where the ratio of working-age people to retirees will shift much faster – starting in 2014, according to Standard Chartered. By 2030, the median age in the US is forecast to be 40. In China it will be 41. Just one more reason to stay out of the Chinese stock market.	从1990年直到2008年，美国劳动人口占总人口比例一直在上涨。但目前该比例开始下降，并会一直延续至本世纪30年代。这对未来20年的美国资产价格来说不是什么好兆头。中国劳动人口与退休人口比率的转变速度将要快得多，这对中国股市也是不祥之兆——根据渣打银行(Standard Chartered)的数据，将从2014年开始。预计到2030年，美国人口年龄中值将达到40岁，中国将达到41岁。这只是又一个远离中国股市的理由。
Merryn Somerset Webb is editor-in-chief of Money Week and previously worked as a stockbroker. The views expressed in her column are personal.	本文作者是《Money Week》主编，曾担任股票经纪人。本文仅代表个人观点。