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中国的调整

Mar 23, 2012 Jeffrey Frankel

巴林—中国观察家们正在拭目以待，看中国到底是成功软着陆、给过热经济降温并达到可持续性更强的增长率，还是会重蹈邻邦覆辙重重坠落。但对有些人来说——特别是大选年的美国政客——唯一感兴趣的是中国的贸易平衡。

诚然，人民币不久前还处于严重低估的状态，中国的贸易盈余也相当巨大。但这一状态正在改变。调整的力量正在中国经济中见效，因此对中国的外部观点也应该作出调整。

中国的贸易盈余在2008年达到了3 000亿美元的高峰，此后一直在下降。（事实上，官方数据显示，2月份出现了310亿美元的赤字，为1998年以来最大。）到底发生了什么事一目了然。自30年前重新加入全球经济以来，贸易伙伴便一直在抢购中国的出口制造品，这是因为中国的低工资使得这些产品极具竞争力。但是，近几年来，相对价格已开始改变。

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Jeffrey Frankel

Writing for PS since 2000
147 Commentaries

Jeffrey Frankel, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, previously served as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is a research associate at the US National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee, the official US arbiter of recession and recovery.

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Jeffrey Frankel Apr 6, 2012

Reply to Shriya Anand --
Thanks for your comment/question. I think the major determinants of the US trade balance in general are US macro forces: growth rate, exchange rate, national saving, and national investment. The reason that the US current account has had a downward trend over the last half-century is that national saving has had a downward trend (though the deficit is currently much smaller than in 2007-08). Of course American politicians pay a lot of attention to the bilateral trade balance with China. But economists consider the bilateral balance to be of little significance, beyond the extent to which it reflects China's overall surplus and America's overall deficit.
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Shriya Anand Apr 5, 2012

What are the implications of this for the US trade deficit? The US trade deficit is increasing, while China's trade surplus is falling (even if one disagrees with official Chinese data and is not convinced about the magnitude of the change, there is no doubt that there is a reduction in the surplus). Does that mean the composition of American trade is changing, and that the US - China trade relationship is becoming less sizable?
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Gregor Schubert Mar 29, 2012

The laws of international economics still apply indeed.

This conclusion could have been take one step further to an observation that was only hinted at in this article: The laws of politics also still apply. That is, the political process will forever see exports as glorious, and imports as treason because the mercantilist zero-sum view form gold-standard time still captures the public imagination.

Thus, accoridng to this politician view of the world, a Chinese current account surplus must be bad for other countries, whose trade deficits destroy jobs. Nevermind that the empirical evidence from the most recent decades always show rising trade deficits for booming economies (US up to 2007, Asian Tigers before 1998, Japan and Korea in the 60s and 70s) that often reverse into surpluses as domestic economies founder (the US trade deficit 2008-2009 - that must have been a great economic time then!).

The elephant in the room here is domestic aggregate demand: since central banks control the demand within their currency area, the trade balance simply becomes a matter of balancing domestic opportunities of consumption and investment with international opportunities and allowing foreigners to do the same. As GDP is roughly determined by domestic supply and domestic demand management to ensure full employment, trade balances become irrelevant for GDP growth. But if politicians understood monetary policy...well let's just say that is a world we should hope for but not wait for.
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Milo Jones Mar 27, 2012

Some people called the slowdown of China a year ago. See: "Has China peaked? An exercise in forecasting using Neustadt and May’s History framework: at http://bit.ly/v5O69i They key question to me seems to be whether they will be able to maintain political stability as the economy (and employment!) contract. And remember, Japan was a lot richer before its dramatic demographic decline began. Finally, most commentary dramatically overstates the ability of the CCP to "control" events (see"China’s Present, the World’s Future, and the Pretense of Knowledge" at http://bit.ly/vSPuX8).
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中国的调整

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