China's strength begins at home
Bill Gates recently pronounced that China had created “a brand-new form of capitalism” with consumers at its centre. Unless he meant foreign consumers, it is a curious claim, given that China's consumption/gross domestic product ratio has been steadily declining. It is a sign that China's growth is increasingly driven by investments, which many economists and officials in China have warned is an unsustainable trend.
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Mr Gates' remark was also a reminder of how western observers typically gloss over the institutional shortcomings in China's system, even while the Chinese themselves are increasingly voicing their complaints about the issues and obstacles to doing business in China. Even China's beleaguered banks have their fans in the west. In a new report, McKinsey, the management consultants, tout the superiority ofChina's financial system over India's. This is a remarkable judgment. Chinese analysts have long pronounced China's banking system “technically insolvent” and, in implicit agreement, the Chinese government has injected more than $60bn (￡33bn) to recapitalise the banking system. Every year for the past five years, India's stock market has outperformed China's, and China's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio is several multiples of India's. India has also consistently outperformed China in corporate governance rankings.
I experienced this split perspective in a previous job, researching China's institutions. In the equivalent of a performance review in the corporate world, a senior professor who had visited China only once and spoke no Chinese declared that I (Chinese born and raised) did not understand China. Is there such a systematic difference in perspective between Chinese and westerners? Part of it is ignorance. China's achievements are visible and telegenic the easily available and compressed GDP data, the skyscrapers, impressive highways, ultra-modern airports and so on. But few ask how the building boom is financed. A huge portion of China's urban boom has been financed by massive yet indirect taxation on peasantry including fees for education in rural areas; possible future reductions in pension payouts for China's rapidly ageing population; curbing of bank credit to millions of small domestic private entrepreneurs. To truly understand this dynamic, one must either know the country beyond the impression of a casual tourist or experience the burdens of the system first hand.
Another reason for the rosy foreign perspective is that the Chinese government has historically favoured foreign business over domestic. Foreign companies operating in China often find it a better place to do business compared with their domestic private counterparts. In a recent world business environment survey administered by the World Bank, more domestic private companies said they saw China's business environment as constraining than foreign companies did in seven out of 10 areas, ranging from labour laws to corruption.
Take the recent Fortune Global Forum in Beijing. While top Chinese leaders have attended each of its three Fortune forums held in China, I am not aware of a single occasion where the same leaders attended a similar gathering of domestic private entrepreneurs. While one can tout the benefits of foreign direct investment, the simple arithmetic is that economic contributions from the domestic private sector have dwarfed those of the foreign sector. In urban areas in 2003, the domestic private sector employed some 48m workers, compared with just 8.6m in the foreign sector. China's vast countryside is virtually untouched by FDI and yet China's rural entrepreneurs have created another 100m non-agricultural jobs.
The policy biases in favour of foreign investors are real and substantial. In 2002, the state-owned banking system lent Rmb172bn to foreign companies operating in China. In the same year, its loans to the domestic private sector amounted to just Rmb39.2bn. In any other country, it would be unimaginable for a government to treat its own entrepreneurs so shabbily. But even some prominent western economists do not view institutional reforms as a priority for China. Their view is heavily influenced by their experiences elsewhere. Many have dealt with disaster economies in Latin America or Africa. Whatever its institutional imperfections, China's performance, in comparison has been unambiguously stellar. China's institutions are not good, they would acknowledge, but good enough. This is an understandable but flawed perspective. For one thing, a private entrepreneur in rural China does not get up every morning congratulating himself for not living in Africa. What matters is that his businesses are starved of financing and his commercial opportunities are being squandered by corruption and red tape. The costs of China's institutional shortcomings are high precisely because its economic and social fundamentals are so good. Yes, China's achievements are real, but careful analysis by academics such as Alwyn Young, a University of Chicago professor, shows its growth has been “respectable, but by no means extraordinary”.
Two remarkable facts need to be kept in mind. First, every single economy that has caught up with the west since the second world war is located in east Asia. Second, the only two east Asian economies not to have caught up are China and North Korea. Many courageous academics, journalists and entrepreneurs in China risk their careers to push for institutional reforms. The least we can do is not to undermine their efforts.
The writer, associate professor MIT Sloan School of Management, is author of Selling China (Cambridge University Press)
《新百家》：请勿美化中国
比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)最近宣称，中国创造出一种以消费者为中心的“崭新的资本主义形式”。除非他指的是外国消费者，不然那就是种怪论，因为中国的消费额与国内生产总值之比一直在稳步下降。这一迹象表明，中国的增长越来越多地受投资拉动，中国许多经济学家和官员已警告说，这是一种无法维持的趋势。
盖茨先生的话也提醒人们，西方观察人士通常是在美化中国的机制缺陷，即便此时中国人自己也正越来越多地抱怨在本国经商所面临的种种问题和障碍。甚至连陷入困境的中国各家银行在西方也有着拥趸。管理咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey)在一份新报告中，吹捧中国的金融体系比印度的优越。这种说法引人注目。中国分析师长期以来都宣称中国的银行体系“从技术性上讲已资不抵债”，中国政府对此予以默认，并已注资600多亿美元(合330亿英镑)，用以调整银行系统的资本结构。过去5年中，印度股市的表现年年超越中国股市，而中国的不良贷款(NPL)比率是印度的数倍。在公司治理排名方面，印度也总是超越中国。
我在前一任研究中国制度的工作中，就体验到这种观点的分歧。在相当于企业界的一次绩效评议中，一位只访问过中国一次、且不会说中文的资深教授，却说我（在中国土生土长）不了解中国。中国人和西方人在视野上存在着这样一种系统性的分歧吗？这其中一部分是无知。中国的成绩是显著的，电视上就能看到――到处都是、压缩的GDP数据、摩天大楼、令人赞叹的高速公路、超现代化的机场，等等。但鲜有人会问建筑业迅猛发展的资金从何而来。中国城市繁荣兴起的很大一部分资金来自于沉重而间接的农民赋税，包括农村地区的教育经费，也来自于未来可能减少向中国快速老龄化的人口所支付的养老金，还来自于限制对数以百万计的国内小型私营企业家发放的银行信贷。要真正了解这一动态机制，对中国的认识必须超越一位匆匆过客，或者就要亲自体验体制的重负。
另一个导致外国人乐观的原因是，在历史上，中国政府更关照外企，而不是国内企业。与国内同类私营企业相比，在华经营的外企通常会认为中国的经营环境更优越。最近，世界银行(World Bank)对世界商业环境进行一次调查，调查涉及从劳动法到腐败的10个方面，而在其中7个方面，认为中国商业环境抑制了经营的国内私企比外企要多。
就拿最近的北京财富全球论坛（Fortune Global Forum）来说。在中国举行的三次财富论坛，中国高层领导每次都有出席。我还没发现这些领导人出席过哪怕一次国内私营企业家的类似聚会。虽然人们可以吹捧外国直接投资的好处，但只要简单算一算都能看出，国内私企的经济贡献使外企相形见绌。2003年，在城市里，国内私营企业雇佣了大约4800万名工人，而外企仅雇佣了860万。外来直接投资基本上尚未触及中国广大的农村地区，而中国的农村企业家已创造了另外1亿个非农就业岗位。
有利外国投资者的政策倾斜真实而且程度不小。2002年，国有银行系统向在华运营的外企发放了1720亿元人民币贷款，而就在同一年，它向国内私营企业发放的贷款仅为392亿元。政府如此不公平地对待自己的企业家，这在其它任何一个国家都是不可想象的。然而，即使是一些著名的西方经济学家也不将机制改革视为中国的当务之急。他们在其它地方的经验严重影响了他们的观点。这些经济学家中，很多人都处理过拉美或非洲国家陷入经济灾难的问题。相比之下，无论其机制缺陷有多严重，中国的表现都显然是出色的。他们会承认中国的机制是不好，但已经足够好了。这种观点可以理解，但存在缺陷。首先，中国农村的私营企业家不会在每天早晨起床时庆幸自己没有活在非洲。对他来说，重要的是他的企业极度渴望得到资金，而且腐败和官僚作风还让他白白错失商机。中国机制缺陷的成本之所以高，正是因为它的经济和社会基本面非常良好。没错，中国的成就是实实在在的，但芝加哥大学（University of Chicago）阿尔文?杨(Alwyn Young)等学者的细致分析表明，中国的增长“令人敬佩但决不是卓越非凡的”。
有两件值得注意的事需要铭记在心。首先，自二次大战以来，赶上西方的所有单个经济体都位于东亚；第二，仅有的两个未赶上的经济体就是中国和朝鲜。很多勇敢的中国学者、记者和企业家冒着职业风险来推动机制改革。我们至少不要损害他们的努力。
本文作者系美国麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院副教授。
