In Downturn, China Exploits Path to Growth
GUANGZHOU, China — The global economic downturn, and efforts to reverse it, will probably make China an even stronger economic competitor than it was before the crisis.
China, the world’s third-largest economy behind the United States and Japan, had already become more assertive; now it is exploiting its unusual position as a country with piles of cash and a strong banking system, at a time when many countries have neither, to acquire natural resources and make new friends.
Last week, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, even reminded Washington that as one of the United States’ biggest creditors, China expects Washington to safeguard its investment.
China’s leaders are turning economic crisis to competitive advantage, said economic analysts.
The country is using its nearly $600 billion economic stimulus package to make its companies better able to compete in markets at home and abroad, to retrain migrant workers on an immense scale and to rapidly expand subsidies for research and development. Construction has already begun on new highways and rail lines that are likely to permanently reduce transportation costs.
And while American leaders struggle to revive lending — in the latest effort with a $15 billion program to help small businesses — Chinese banks lent more in the last three months than in the preceding 12 months.
“The recent tweaks to the stimulus package indicate a sharper focus on the long-term competitiveness of Chinese industry,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a former China division chief at the International Monetary Fund. “Higher expenditures on education and research and development, along with amounts already committed to infrastructure investment, will boost the economy’s productivity.”
The international economic slowdown is also doing some things that Chinese authorities had tried and failed to do for four years: slow inflation, reverse what had been an ever-growing dependence on exports and pop a real estate bubble before it could grow even bigger.
The recession in most of the large economies in the world is inflicting real pain here — causing a record plunge in Chinese exports, putting 20 million migrant workers from within China out of their jobs and raising the potential for increased and sustained social unrest. But as President Hu Jintao told the National People’s Congress last week, “Challenge and opportunity always come together — under certain conditions, one could be transformed into the other.”
To that end, Chinese companies are shopping for foreign businesses to acquire. The commerce ministry is now leading a delegation of corporate executives to Europe for the ministry’s first mergers and acquisitions trip; the executives are looking at companies in the automotive, textiles, food, energy, machinery, electronics and environmental protection sectors.
The government initiatives coincide with some immediate benefits of the slowdown for China. For instance, air freight and ocean shipping costs have plunged by as much as two-thirds since last summer as demand has fallen.
Blue-collar wages, which had doubled in four years in some coastal cities, have fallen for many workers this winter, causing personal pain but reviving China’s advantage in labor costs.
Unemployment has pushed down the piece rates that factories pay for each garment sewn or toy assembled. Overtime has practically disappeared.
Lao Shu-jen, a migrant worker from Jiangxi province who works at a blue jeans factory here, said that he earned $350 a month late last year but would be lucky to earn $220 a month this spring.
“There are a lot of blue jeans” piling up in the back of the factory with no sign of buyers, he said.
College graduates and highly qualified middle managers, in acutely short supply a year ago, are now widely available because of layoffs. They are likely to stay that way as universities expand — although white-collar unemployment could pose a threat of social unrest. Limited job opportunities for students contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago.
Some jobs are still available now. Four days after a shoe factory closed here for lack of orders, laying off several hundred workers, there were four ads on the factory’s front gate from other shoe factories seeking to hire skilled workers.
Unskilled laborers face the greatest difficulty finding jobs. But with subsidies from Beijing, provincial governments have embarked on large-scale vocational training programs of the sort that the United States has discussed but not actually tried.
Guangdong province alone, here in southeastern China, is quadrupling its vocational training program this year to teach four million workers engaged in three-month or six-month programs.
The main comparable program in the United States, under the Workforce Investment Act, has been training fewer than 250,000 a year, although President Obama’s stimulus program provides funding that could double the number of American workers in training programs.
The Guangdong training programs are half in the classroom and half in the factory, usually the business that plans to employ the trainees. By increasing productivity, training programs can hold down corporate labor costs per unit of production for years to come.
China’s huge training programs may also help preserve social stability by keeping the unemployed off the streets, although Chinese officials deny that is their intention.
Multinationals are cutting back less in China than elsewhere — and some are even expanding.
Intel is shutting down semiconductor production lines sooner than previously planned at older, smaller operations in Malaysia and the Philippines as it opens a large, new factory in Chengdu in western China.
IMI Plc., the big British manufacturer of items as diverse as power plant valves and brewery equipment, has just announced an accelerated shift of operations to China, India and the Czech Republic, after cutting its global work force by 10 percent since December.
And Hon Hai, the 600,000-employee Taiwanese company that is one of the world’s largest contract manufacturers of products like the Apple iPhone and Nintendo Wii game console, has just increased employment by nearly 5 percent in China even as it cuts overall employment by 3 to 5 percent.
Yet China’s economy still has weaknesses. Little is being done to shift the economy away from a heavy reliance on capital spending and toward greater consumption. The social safety net of pensions, health care and education barely exists, so Chinese families save heavily.
Strict government policies on labor and the environment, intended to address serious shortfalls in both and imposed a year ago when China felt more confident of its economic strength, are prompting low-tech industries like toy manufacturing to move to other, less stringent countries.
Top labor officials insisted during the National People’s Congress that they would resist suggestions from some Chinese executives that the new standards be relaxed.
德语媒体 | 2009.03.16
新模式未成熟中国经济不容太乐观
《商报》：中国新模式远未成熟
根据中国官方公布的数字，2月份中国的出口总额比去年锐减25.7%。经济学家们不排除中国今年全年的外贸结算出现负增长的可能。《商报》就该消息写道：
"数字显示了一个主要问题：在经济危机的形势下，美国消费者大把花钱购物、中国经济依靠美国消费热支撑的老一套分工模式已陷入困境，而期待亚洲中产阶层起到更大作用、自己形成更大需求的新模式还远远没有成熟，无法补偿因国外需求减少造成的损失。
“2月份出口额的下跌使中国的外贸盈余减少到48亿美元，这是数年来的最低水平。专家们预计，今后几个月，出口下降幅度将大于进口下降幅度，所以外 贸盈余减少的趋势将持续下去。2月份，中国的进口额也减少了24.1%。而2008年底，北京出示的外贸盈余为4400亿美元，比2007年增长了 20%。
“为了重新激活出口，中国政府宣布将逐步把出口税降至零。按商务部长陈德铭所说，中国生产的商品中，三分之一输往外国，但经济学家们认为，实际比例 要高得多。由于中国目前价格下降，许多中国人添购物品时更多在等待观望，北京以刺激国内需求来弥补出口减少的计划看来难以成功。"
《法兰克福汇报》：在华德国中型企业受重创
中国的出口商品中，相当大的一部分是外资企业产品，全球经济危机使这些企业同样受到重创。在中国的德国中型企业尤其首当其冲，《法兰克福汇报》介绍了这些企业的困境：
"几乎所有在中国的中型企业都在与这一没有预料到的情况作斗争。不久前，许多公司还年复一年地向德国总部报告年均增长30%的好消息。去年十一月， 它们预计今年也许至少能增长5%，可没有想到销售额现在就急剧下降。许多企业缺乏流动资金的问题日趋严重，手头不宽裕的欧洲母公司要求它们在中国只能动用 自己先前在当地的赢利所得。
“美国一家咨询公司的经理说，'大多数中型企业三个月还能挺下来，六个月的危机就难熬了，如果持续一年，谁也不知道该怎么办。'他又说：'中国目前的形势比人们所说和所感受到的情况更为严重。'
“在联邦快递等跨国公司悄悄撤离中国、另外一些供应配件的公司集团也把在中国投资的计划'无期限'延长之际，中型企业已经度日如年。邻近上海的太仓 是德国施瓦本地区企业家的生产据点，那里越来越多的经管人员迫于总部压力，做好了破产的准备。但自然没有人愿意公开宣布自己将离开这个希望之国，因为这样 做在政治上极不明智，谁知道或早或晚也许总有一天又要回到中国呢？"
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