U.S. Urges Chinese To Save Less, Buy More
Move to Reduce Trade Deficit Wins Backers
In Beijing, but Might Not Assuage U.S. Critics
Treasury department officials have a new strategy for lessening America's trade frictions with China: Get Chinese consumers to save less and spend more.
Beijing has chased the same elusive goal itself with limited success. But Treasury Secretary John Snow, who strolled through a village market in central China yesterday, believes Beijing needs to revamp its tax code, make consumer credit easier to get, and rebuild the social safety net so people can dip into their savings and head to stores.
After viewing slabs of fatty pork and nibbling on a fried pastry, Mr. Snow extolled the virtues of the average Chinese buying "more stuff," be it Chinese-made sofas or new ovens. "We see the growth of consumerism ... as going directly to what is most on our mind, which is the global imbalance" in trade, he said.
Secretary Snow (at right) toured a market in the village of Mulan.
Mr. Snow's new consumerist line has another attraction. It gives him a softer alternative to twisting China's arm over its still-rigid currency system, now the main sore spot in the two countries' trade relationship. China is set this year to rack up a trade surplus with the U.S. of more than $200 billion, up from $162 billion last year. Just yesterday, the Commerce Department announced that the gap in trade with China widened 4.65% to $18.47 billion in August from July, while the overall U.S. trade deficit grew 1.8% to $59.03 billion.
The U.S. wants China to spend more and save a little less not simply to get the Chinese to buy more American imports -- though that would be applauded. The idea is to get China's domestic market moving faster so its big companies grow by selling to people at home, not only by shipping more goods to the U.S., which adds to America's trade deficit and generates political pressure for protectionist measures that the Bush administration doesn't want.
Mr. Snow's new tack has won supporters in Beijing, but may earn him little breathing room at home. Measures to liberate China's consumers could take years to put in place, while critics in Congress and within U.S. industry want immediate action. Hence their focus on China's currency, the yuan, which they argue is kept at an unfairly cheap price to spur exports.
"The Treasury line on domestic demand growth in China is fine so long as it doesn't become a substitute for pushing for a further appreciation" of the yuan, says Morris Goldstein, an economist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.
China dropped the yuan's fix to the dollar and pushed its value up by just more than 2% in July. But since then, Beijing has said it will pursue any further loosening at its own pace, a point repeated yesterday by Finance Minister Jin Renqing. Mr. Jin will join Mr. Snow and other top U.S. officials Sunday for two days of joint economic talks in Beijing.
Treasury secretaries going back to the Reagan era have pursued a similar save-less-and-spend-more line with Japan. But in China's case, Mr. Snow jumped on the consumer wagon just in the past few months, largely at the urging of his new undersecretary for international affairs, Timothy Adams.
They have found plenty of support in Beijing, particularly with the head of the People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan. "In the major global economies the influence of domestic consumption on the trade balance is far greater than that of foreign exchange rate adjustments," Mr. Zhou recently told Caijing, a Chinese business magazine.
Andy Xie, Morgan Stanley & Co.'s chief regional economist based in Hong Kong, estimated recently that China's economy "is more than twice as dependent on trade and fixed investment as on average in the world." The gross value of China's exports and fixed asset investment, he figured, could reach 89% of the country's gross domestic product this year, compared with 60% in 2001.
China, meanwhile, has the highest savings rate -- at around 50% -- of any major economy. The reasons for that are many. China has no real pension system, or government-funded health care, and housing costs are soaring. "There is enormous precautionary savings," Mr. Adams says.
The question, then, is how to get more of China's 1.2 billion people to free up some of their savings and spend at home. China has had some success in encouraging consumerism. Car ownership was almost entirely reserved for companies and the government in the first few years after Buicks started rolling off the General Motors Corp. assembly line in Shanghai in 1999. Now, the U.S. auto maker says as much as 80% of the Buicks it sells are bought by individuals, while the rate is even higher for more moderately priced Chevrolets.
A home-ownership boom has supported a number of ancillary industries, encouraging an influx of companies like Home Depot Inc. and IKEA offering new products to consumers. Luxury goods makers, like France's LVMH Mo?t Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, are fast expanding and report strong performance.
Yet the government remains concerned that the public is still being far too cautious, and has tried to change that. In 1999, Beijing launched a nationwide program dubbed "holiday economics" -- one-week periods in May and October when factory owners and businesses are encouraged to give their workers time off to shop. Beijing also has sanctioned a range of credit-card programs, including Citibank's joint venture in Shanghai that says it issues around 30,000 cards a month.
Still, personal savings have continued to soar. They hovered at around 5.9 trillion yuan in 1999, but are now around five times that level. In the U.S., the reality is just the opposite: People save far too little and often spend more than they have.
Mr. Snow and his team are compiling a financial action plan that they intend to put before top Chinese officials during economic talks this weekend. The U.S. wants Beijing to allow foreign securities firms to set up independent subsidiaries in China and to offer a larger array of consumer-finance products. Treasury is also urging the government to open the way for credit-rating services and other measures that improve access to car loans and personal credit cards.
Longer term, the U.S. would like to see China cut the personal income-tax rate and divert more money from the massive fixed-asset investments in buildings and factories toward social programs like pensions and health care.
Mr. Snow's visit to the village of Mulan outside Chengdu clogged the streets with security guards and black sedans, interrupting the very shopping he wants to encourage. But it did spur some investment: In the week before Mr. Snow arrived, city officials painted stair railings and building facades, and paved several streets.
美国敦促中国人少存钱，多消费
美国财政部官员在缓解美中贸易摩擦方面有了一个新策略：让中国人少存钱，多消费。
北京对此表示赞同。事实上，这也是中国政府长期以来追求的目标，只不过迄今为止成效不大罢了。美国财政部长斯诺(John Snow)说，他相信中国政府需要修改税法，方便公众申请消费贷款，重建社会保障体系，以便人们能够少存钱，多消费。斯诺周四忙里偷闲在中国中部某地逛了一个农村集贸市场。
在看了市场上的猪肉销售摊点并品尝了一个油炸饼后，斯诺开始宣扬起让普通中国人购买“更多东西”的好处，不管他们是买国产沙发还是新烤箱。斯诺说：“当我们一门心思想著全球贸易失衡问题时......我们在这里看到了消费主义观念的上升。”
斯诺新举起的这面消费主义大旗还有另外一个好处。它使斯诺在与中国围绕仍然缺乏灵活性的人民币汇率制度斗法时可以做到软硬兼施。中国的汇率制度现在是中美贸易不平衡的症结所在。中国今年的对美贸易顺差有望超过2,000亿美元，大大高于去年的1,620亿美元。
但斯诺的这一新策略却不大可能使他在国内的日子更好过些。释放中国人消费能力的政策措施可能要多年后才能逐步到位，而美国国会和美国产业界的批评人士要求现在就采取行动。因此他们将炮口对准了中国的人民币，声称人民币汇率被保持在低位使中国出口商获得了不公平的贸易优势。
华盛顿国际经济研究所(Institute for International Economics)经济学家莫里斯?戈德斯坦(Morris Goldstein)说：“美国财政部鼓励中国增加消费的做法没问题，只要它不以此作为推动人民币进一步升值的替代做法就行。”
中国在今年7月份放弃了将人民币汇率与美元挂钩的做法，将人民币兑美元汇率小幅上调2%。自那以来中国政府一再表示将按照自己的步骤逐步放松对人民币汇率的控制，中国财政部长金人庆周四重申了这一观点。从周日开始，金人庆将与斯诺等美国官员在北京开始为期两天的会谈。
早在里根总统当政时期，当时的美国财政部长们就曾要求日本鼓励国人少存钱、多消费。而斯诺只是过去几个月来才开始向中国挥动消费主义大旗，这主要应归功于美国财政部负责国际事务的新任副部长蒂莫西?亚当斯(Timothy Adams)的推动。
美国官员们在北京觅得了众多知音，其中就包括中国人民银行(People's Bank of China)行长周小川。周小川最近对中文杂志《财经》表示：“从世界各主要经济体的情况看，与汇率调整相比，国内消费对贸易平衡的影响要大得多。”中国政府早就认识到，经济增长最终必须走上主要依靠国内消费来推动的道路，仅仅依靠出口、外商投资和政府支出是不行的。
美国财政部的目标与其说是鼓励中国购买更多美国产品，不如说是使中国转为更加依靠国内市场以实现经济增长， 这样中国企业就会将实现业务增长的著眼点放在国内市场，而不会只盯著国际市场。
摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)驻香港的亚太区首席经济学家谢国忠(Andy Xie)最近估计，中国经济对外贸和固定资产投资的依赖度是世界平均水平的两倍多。他指出，中国今年的出口额和固定资产投资额合计将相当于今年国内生产总值的89%，而2001年时这一比率是60%。
中国的储蓄率是世界最高的，如果将个人存款、企业存款和其他类型的存款都算上，中国的储蓄率高达50%左右，在主要经济体中位居首席。造成这一局面的原因很多。中国没有一个真正的退休金体系，中国许多居民也享受不到政府出资的医疗保健福利。住房成本一直在大幅上涨。美国财政部副部长亚当斯说，中国人的存款中有相当一部分是属于预防性存款。
这就产生了一个问题，如何能使13亿中国人中有更多的人将他们的这类存款动用一部分。中国在鼓励消费主义方面已经取得了一些成效。通用汽车公司(General Motors Corp.)在上海的别克(Buicks)轿车装配厂1999年投产后的头几年，购买这些汽车的几乎全都是企业和政府机构。而现在，通用汽车在华出售的别克轿车中有多达80%是个人购买的，至于该公司价格更便宜的雪佛兰(Chevrolet)轿车，私人购买的比例就更高了。
个人购房热的兴起带动了众多相关产业的发展，并促使Home Depot Inc.和宜家国际公司(IKEA International A/S)等跨国企业推出了专门针对中国消费者的新产品。而莫特-轩尼诗-路易威登(LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton)等奢侈品生产商也在中国快速进行著业务扩张，并取得了良好业绩。
但中国政府还是担心公众在支出方面仍然太过谨慎。政府已采取了一些措施来改变这一局面。从1999年起，它开始在全国范围内大力倡导“假日经济”，每年都会有三次长达一周的公共假日，这时政府机构和企业都会放假，目的就是鼓励人们多花钱，无论他们是选择外出旅行还是在本地购物。中国政府还批准了一系列信用卡项目，其中包括花旗集团(Citigroup Inc.)在上海成立的一家合资企业，该公司称它现在一个月可发行3万张左右信用卡。
然而个人储蓄额仍在大幅增长。1999年时中国的个人存款额约为人民币5.9万亿元，现在已经增长了三倍。而美国的情况恰好相反，人们存钱太少，常常是寅吃卯粮。
在本周末举行的会谈中，斯诺一行将把一份金融行动计划摆在中国高层官员面前。美国希望北京允许外资保险公司在华设立独立的分支机构，并获准在华提供更多种类的消费者金融产品。美国财政部还将敦促中国政府为提供信贷评级等服务创造条件，从而为金融机构扩大汽车贷款和个人信贷服务提供便利。
中长期而言，美国希望中国能够下调个人所得税，将更多资金从固定资产投资项目转向退休金和医疗保健等社会保障项目。
中国已经朝这一方向迈出了几步。政府砍掉了众多针对农民的收费项目，农民占中国人口的大多数，他们的收入也是各阶层中最低的。中共高层官员在刚刚结束的中共十六届五中全会上保证，未来几年将加强医疗保健、教育和退休金体系建设。
当斯诺兴师动众前往成都郊外的木兰村参观时，保安和车队一时间堵塞了街衢，也给人们购物造成了不便，而这可不是斯诺所乐见的。但斯诺的到访确实给成都掀起了一股小小的投资热。市政官员们在斯诺到访问前一周粉刷了楼梯扶手和建筑物外墙，并整修了几条主要大街的路面。
