北大光华教授 迈克尔·佩蒂斯：中国的GDP是什么？

北大光华金融学教授 卡内基国际和平基金会高级研究员

翻译：陈达飞

原文：What Is GDP in China?

本文发表于2018年，但并未过时。现在阅读，意味深长。

有两个必要条件，可以让中国将GDP增长作为一个“外生变量”，这是其他国家无法做到的。第一，必须没有硬性预算约束，它允许一个经济体年复一年地从事不创造价值的活动。其次，由此产生的坏账不能冲销。一旦这两个条件得到满足(就中国而言)，中国政府就可以设定自己喜欢的任何增长目标，只要拥有必要的债务能力，就可以实现这一目标。

——Michael Pettis

The Chinese economy is not growing at 6.5 percent. It is probably growing by less than half of that. Not everyone agrees that the rate is that low, of course, but there is nonetheless a running debate about what is really happening in the Chinese economy and whether or not the country’s reported GDP growth is accurate.

中国经济增速没有6.5%，可能连它的一半都不到。当然，并不是所有人都同意中国目前的增长率有那么低。但关于中国经济到底发生了什么，以及中国公布的国内生产总值增速是否准确，仍存在持续的争论。

The reason for the wide spread skepticism is the disconnect between the official data and perceptions on the ground. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s economic growth in every quarter last year exceeded 6.5 percent. While that is much lower than the heady growth rates China has experienced for most of the past forty years, it is still, by most measures, a very brisk rate of growth.

人们普遍持怀疑态度的原因是，官方数据与实际情况脱节了。根据国家统计局的数据，中国去年每个季度的经济增长都超过了6.5%。尽管这远低于中国在过去四十年大部分时间里所经历的高速增长，但从多数指标来看，中国的经济增长仍然非常强劲。

And yet, when you speak to Chinese businesses, economists, or analysts, it is hard to find any economic sector enjoying decent growth. Almost everyone is complaining bitterly about terribly difficult conditions, rising bankruptcies, a collapsing stock market, and dashed expectations. In my eighteen years in China, I have never seen this level of financial worry and unhappiness.

然而，当你与中国企业、经济学家或分析人士交谈时，你很难发现任何一个经济部门有像样的增长。几乎每个人都在痛苦地抱怨极其艰难的环境、不断上升的破产的概率、崩溃的股市以及糟糕的预期。在中国的18年里，我从未见过人们有这种程度的财务困局和不快乐。

These concerns have even breached academia. One of my students told me yesterday that there was a huge increase last semester on the university website in the number of students selling their belongings because they are hard up for cash. They are selling their phones, computers, clothing, and lots of other possessions. He said the amount of selling is noticeably higher than last year, enough so that everyone is talking about it. And he indicated that this is apparently happening at other schools too. It seems that the poor and middle-class kids are squeezed for cash because they are getting much less money from home than they have in the past.

这些情况甚至已经蔓延到了学术界。我的一个学生昨天告诉我，上学期在学校网站上出售个人物品的学生人数有了很大的增长，因为他们手头拮据。他们正在出售他们的手机、电脑、衣服和许多其他财产。他说，销量明显高于去年，足以让所有人都在谈论它。他指出，这种情况在其他学校也很普遍。穷人和中产阶级的孩子似乎手头拮据，因为他们从家里得到的钱比过去少得多。

This isn’t what you’d expect to hear from an economy growing at more than 6.5 percent. So what does it mean exactly to say thatChina’s GDP is growing at that pace? It turns out that there are three completely different sets of problems that affect how China’s GDP growth statistics should be interpreted. Analysts must keep these three problems straightand make sure that they don’t confuse matters by conflating these separate issues.

这不是你所期望的在一个经济增长率超过6.5%的国家里看到的情景。那么，中国GDP以这样的速度增长到底意味着什么呢?事实证明，有三种完全不同的问题会影响中国GDP增长数据的解读。分析人士必须把这三个问题弄清楚，并确保他们不会把这三个独立的问题混为一谈。

WHATDOES GDP MEASURE?

GDP衡量什么?

The first set of problems relates to the meaning of GDP itself. This challenge affects not just China but the rest of the world aswell. This is especially true for advanced economies with substantial technology and service sectors that employ technology whose value may be substantially understated by an inability to count it accurately.

第一类问题与GDP本身的内涵有关。这一挑战不仅涉及到中国，也影响世界其他地区。对于拥有大量技术和服务部门的发达经济体来说尤其如此，这些经济体使用的技术的价值可能由于无法准确计算而被大大低估。

GDP is typically assumed to measure the creation of real economic value. If a country’s GDP rises by 5 percent over the course of ayear, for example, this is interpreted to mean that the amount of wealth the country produced in the last year is 5 percent greater than in the previous year. In other words, it would be assumed that the country’s ability to servicedebt would have increased by 5 percent, which means roughly the same thing.

GDP通常被用来衡量实体经济的价值创造。例如，如果一个国家的GDP在一年中增长了5%，这就意味着该国去年创造的财富比前一年多5%。换句话说，这也意味着这个国家偿还债务的能力增加了5%。两种说法基本相同。

But there is no way to truly measure a country’s creation of real economic value, as GDP is just a proxy for whatever it is thought to measure. Economists have agreed which measurements go into calculating GDP,and the resulting sum is referred to as a country’s aggregate GDP, or the value of everything produced locally in that economy.

但是，无法真正衡量一个国家创造的实际经济价值，因为GDP只衡量它被认为应该衡量什么的一个指标。经济学家们已经就GDP应该衡量什么达成了一致意见，最终的结果被称为一个国家的GDP总量，或者该经济体在当地生产的所有东西的价值。

Of course, not all value-creating activities arecounted when GDP is measured. For instance, if you teach your friend Spanishfor free, you add to the wealth of the economy, but you do not add to GDP. Bycontrast, if he does pay you, the country’s GDP does increase by the amount ofmoney you are paid, even though you are adding exactly the same value to the economy itself whether he pays you or not. In addition, not all measuredactivity actually creates value: building a bridge to nowhere, for example,creates exactly the same increase in GDP as building a much-needed bridge.

另外，并不是所有的创造价值活动都被计入GDP。例如，如果你免费教你的朋友西班牙语，你增加了一个经济体的财富，但你没有增加它的GDP。相反，如果他给你钱，这个国家的GDP就会随着你收入的增加而增加，即使你给经济本身增加的价值与他给你的完全相同。此外，并非所有计量的经济活动都能创造价值：例如，修建一座不通往任何地方的桥梁，与修建一座有刚需的桥梁，所带来的GDP增幅完全相同。

No proxy of economic value is perfect, of course, but there are real questions about whether GDP is imperfect to the point of being useless as a proxy. Does GDP really do a good job of capturing all the valuecreation in an economy? While this is a serious problem everywhere, it may beeven more of a problem in China because of the huge amount of investment in nonproductive activities that is counted in China’s GDP data even though this investment does not add to the country’s wealth or its debt-servicing capacity.

当然，没有一种经济价值的指标是完美的，但GDP作为一个指标是否不完美到了无用的地步，确实存在一些问题。GDP真的能很好地捕捉经济中的所有价值创造吗?尽管这在世界各地都是一个严重的问题，但在中国，这个问题可能更严重，因为中国GDP数据中计入了对非生产性活动的巨额投资，即使这些投资并未增加中国的财富或偿债能力。

HOWACCURATE ARE CHINA’S GDP STATISTICS?

中国的GDP统计有多准确?

The second set of problems has to do with how carefully and faithfully Chinese statisticians at the National Bureau of Statistics are calculating the agreed-upon elements that go into measuring GDP. Do they tendto collect the data in the way that introduces mistakes that are systematically biased (upward, to show higher than actual GDP, I would assume)? Or are they actually lying to please their political bosses?

第二类问题与中国国家统计局的统计人员如何仔细、忠实地计算用于衡量GDP的公认要素有关。他们是否倾向于以一种引入系统性偏差的错误的方式来收集数据(我认为是向上偏误，数据高于实际GDP)?或者他们确实在为了取悦他们的领导而撒谎?

I am pretty sure that China’s economic data collection is distorted in ways that smooth out volatility, but otherwise I assume, at least until very recently, that theNational Bureau of Statistics has followed generally accepted rules forcalculating GDP more or less correctly. I don’t have a high level of confidencein my assumption though: as I pointed out earlier, it is hard to find any sector of the Chinese economy that is behavingthe way you’d expect a country growing at more than 6.5 percent to behave. Furthermore, especially in recent years, it has been hard to reconcile other economic proxies with the GDP numbers. (See, for example, this article by Johns Hopkins University economists Bob Barbera and Yinghao Hu, which itself refersto a satellite imaging study.)

我很确定，为了消除波动性，中国的经济数据收集方法是扭曲的。但我认为，至少直到最近，中国国家统计局在计算GDP时或多或少遵循了普遍接受的规则。不过，我对这个假设没有很高的信心：正如我早些时候指出的，很难找到任何一个中国经济部门的表现符合你对一个增长率超过6.5%的国家的预期。此外，特别是近年来，很难将其他经济指标与GDP数据协调起来。(比如，约翰霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)经济学家鲍勃巴贝拉(BobBarbera)和胡英豪撰写的这篇文章，它是一项卫星成像研究。)

What is more, people whose work I greatly respect, like Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital, seem very much to doubt the data and argue that China’s actual growth rate is much lower than the posted numbers, largely because the data is falsified at some level of the collection process. But whatever the case may be, if there is indeed a substantial discrepancy between what the statisticians actually measure and what they are claiming to measure,it is very hard to make predictions about how long the over statement will continue and how much of an adjustment it will eventually undergo.

更重要的是，我非常尊重J Capital的杨思安(Anne Stevenson-Yang)等人的工作，他们似乎非常怀疑这些数据，认为中国的实际增长率远远低于公布的数据，主要是因为数据在收集过程的某个层面上是伪造的。但无论情况如何，如果统计学家实际测量的数据与他们声称测量的数据之间确实存在巨大差异，就很难预测这种夸大会持续多久，以及最终会经历多大程度的调整。

IS GDPMEASURED AS AN OUTPUT OR AN INPUT?

GDP是以产出还是以投入来衡量的?

The third set of problems with GDP occurs in a very limited number of cases globally (today, China is the main example). But the implications are much greater. This has to do with whether GDP is even beingused as a proxy for economic activity. In China, reported GDP does not tell observers about the economy’s performance; rather, it tells people how rapidly Beijing thinks it can impose the necessary adjustments on the Chinese economy. This is because GDP means something different in China than it does in most other major economies.

GDP的第三类问题在全球范围内都是比较少见(今天，中国是主要的例子)，但影响要大得多。这与GDP是否被用作经济活动的指标有关。在中国，公布的GDP数据没法告诉观察人士它的经济表现如何；相反，它告诉人们，中国政府认为自己能够以多快的速度对中国经济进行必要的调整。这是因为GDP在中国的意义不同于在大多数其他主要经济体。

In any economic system, GDP is supposed to be a measure of output, and in most countries that is exactly what it measures, however messily. The economy does what it does, in other words, and at the end of agiven time period, statisticians measure the things economists agree to includein the relevant calculations, and they express the change over time as thescale of GDP growth for that period.

在任何经济体系中，GDP都应该是产出的衡量标准。在大多数国家，也确实如此，尽管标准很混乱。换句话说，经济自我运行，在一个给定的时间段内，统计学家们会去衡量经济学家们同意在相关指标中包含的东西。经济学家们将这段时间内的产出的变化表示为GDP。

This is not what happens in China, where GDP is actually an input determinedannually as the country’s GDP growth target. The growth target of a given time period is decided well ahead of time, and to achieve it, various entities,including local governments, engage in the requisite amount of activity, usually funded by debt. As long as China has debt capacity, and as long as it can postpone the writing down ofnonproductive assets, Beijing can achieve any growth target it desires.

但中国的情况并非如此。实际上，GDP是作为中国GDP增长目标所确定的一项“外生变量”。一段时间内的增长目标是提前确定的。为了实现这一目标，包括地方政府在内的各种实体通常以债务的形式进行必要的活动。只要中国拥有债务能力，只要它能够推迟对非生产性资产的减记，中国政府就能实现自己希望的任何增长目标。

But this arrangement changes the meaning of GDP. Reported GDP in China is no longer ameasure of economic growth, but rather a measure of political intention. As any systems theorist knows, input data reveals nothing about the performance ofa system. So when analysts discuss what reported GDP indicates about the health of the Chinese economy, such thinking involves a very basic mistake in systems theory—a systems input can only offer insights about the goals of the operators, never about the performance of thesystem itself.

这改变了GDP的含义。中国公布的GDP不再是衡量经济增长的指标，而是衡量政治意图的指标。任何系统理论家都知道，“外生变量”不能揭示系统的性能。因此，当分析人士将中国的GDP与其经济健康状况联系在一起时，这种想法涉及系统理论中一个非常基本的错误——“输入变量”（相当于外生变量）只能提供对行为人目标的洞察，而不能提供对系统本身效能的洞察。

In practical terms, this means that once Beijing sets a GDP growth target, local governments are expected to generate enough economic activity to reach that target, and they are able to borrow as much as they needto do so. If this activity were productive, there wouldn’t be a problem,although it would be an amazing coincidence (or a truly incredible feat ofprognostication) for the amount of productive activity truly to equal thegrowth target. What would be more likely in that case is that GDP growth would consistently exceed the target, which is indeed what happened until about adecade or so ago.

实际上，这意味着，一旦中国政府设定了GDP增长目标，地方政府反推多少经济活动才足以实现这一目标，以及他们能够借到多少钱。如果这些活动是有经济效益的，就不会有问题，尽管这将是一个惊人的巧合(或一个真正难以置信的神预测)——生产活动的数量将真正等于增长目标。但在这种情况下，更有可能出现的情况是，GDP增长将持续超过目标，这种情况直到大约10年前才有所改变。

But if the economic activity isn’t productive, thereare two requirements that allow China to set GDP growth as a system’s input ina way other countries are unable to do. First,there must be no hard budget constraints, so as to allow economic entities topersist in value-destroying behavior year after year. Second, the resulting bad debt cannot be written down. Once these two conditions are met—and they arein China’s case—Beijing can set any growth target it likes and, as long as ithas the necessary debt capacity, it can achieve that target.

但是，如果经济活动是非生产性的，有两个必要条件，可以让中国将GDP增长作为一个“外生变量”，这是其他国家无法做到的。第一，必须没有硬性预算约束，它允许一个经济体年复一年地从事不创造价值的活动。其次，由此产生的坏账不能冲销。一旦这两个条件得到满足(就中国而言)，中国政府就可以设定自己喜欢的任何增长目标，只要拥有必要的债务能力，就可以实现这一目标。

But notice that achieving the target reveals nothing about the country’s real economic growth, for which GDP is supposed to be(however imperfectly) a proxy. Once GDP growth becomes a system’s input, rather than an output, it does not indicate anything about the economy’s health or performance.

但请注意，实现这一目标并没有揭示出中国的实际经济增长情况，而GDP本应(无论多么不完美)代表实际经济增长。一旦GDP增长成为一个系统的投入，而不是产出，它就不能表明经济的健康或表现。

CONCLUSION

结论

There is likely to be no end this year to the discussions about China’s economic growth rate and its relationship to GDP. By now, observers widely agree that China’s economy is not as strong as the GDP data suggests. And I suspect that only a handful of the least imaginative resolutely-mainstream economists (and, weirdly enough, this is more likely to be true of foreign than Chinese ones) still believe that China’s economy is as healthy and brisk as would be expected froma country whose GDP is growing at 6.5 percent and is expected to grow next yearby more than 6 percent.

今年有关中国经济增长率及其与GDP关系的讨论很可能不会结束。到目前为止，观察人士普遍认为，中国经济不像GDP数据显示的那么强劲。我怀疑，只有一小撮缺乏想象力的迷之自信的主流经济学家(奇怪地是，他们在其他国家比在中国还要多)仍然相信，中国经济健康而活跃，正如人们所预期的那样。中国的国内生产总值(GDP)目前增长6.5%，预计明年将增长6%以上。

The problems facing the Chinese economy, and the worries expressed by Chinese leaders, are so deep that it no longer requires much imagination to figure out that reported GDP in China simply does not represent what we think it represents elsewhere. Yet some economists have notalways understood the implications, and they often seem to refuse to adjust their methodologies to take into account the aforementioned problems withChina’s reported GDP data. Yesterday, for example, I read a report written by an economist that discussed the implications of China’s PPP-adjusted GDP being the biggest in the world.

中国经济面临的问题，以及中国领导人表达的担忧如此之深，以至于人们不再需要太多想象就能明白，中国公布的国内生产总值并不等价于我们在其他国家看到的GDP。然而，一些经济学家并不总是理解其中的含义，他们似乎常常拒绝调整自己的方法，以考虑中国公布的GDP数据中存在的上述问题。例如，昨天我读了一位经济学家撰写的一份报告，该报告讨论了中国经购买力平价调整后的国内生产总值(GDP)位居全球第一的影响。

But any observers that are at all skeptical about the relationship between the Chinese economy and its reported GDP must dismiss the PPP-adjustment as almost complete nonsense. (I don’t mean that the PPP-adjusted data is less accurate for China than it is for other countries: I mean, quiteliterally, that it is almost complete nonsense). Any ratio based on reported GDP figures can only be comparably meaningful for China to the extent that China’s reported GDP numbers have the same relationship to the underlying economy—or to whatever GDP is thought to mean—as corresponding numbers in other countries do. But surely few observers still believe that.

但任何对中国经济与其公布的国内生产总值(GDP)之间关系持怀疑态度的观察人士，都必须将购买力平价的调整视为胡扯。（我的意思不是说，经购买力平价调整后的数据对中国的准确性不如对其他国家。我的意思是，毫不夸张地说，这几乎完全是无稽之谈）。任何基于中国官方报告的GDP数据的比率，只有在中国公布的GDP数据与经济有着相同关系的情况下——或者，只有在中国的GDP的内涵与其他国家一致时——这一比率对中国才具有同等意义。但很明显，很少有人相信这一点。

The point is that if there has been a divergence between China’s reported GDP figures and the country’s underlying economy, there are at least three completely different ways that this discrepancy can manifest itself. Observers too often confuse the three, however. For example, I have said many times that I believe that if China’s GDP were to be expressed ina way that is comparable with that of other countries, it would be growing at less than half the current reported growth rate.

关键是，如果中国公布的GDP数据与经济（真实表现）存在差异，那么这种差异至少可以通过三种完全不同的方式自发地表现出来。然而，观察家们常常混淆这三者。例如，我已经说过很多次，我相信，如果中国的GDP以一种与其他国家相同的方式来核算，它的增长率将不到目前报告的增长率的一半。

A lot of people interpret this to mean that I think Beijing is falsifying the data, but I don’t mean that at all. In my mind, the biggest problem is that China’sreported GDP is an input into the economic system, not a measured output.To make China’s GDP figures comparable to those of other countries, the input numbers would have to be adjusted with some relevant output, such as the amountof bad debt that should be (but isn’t) written down in a given time period. Ifthis amount were subtracted from China’s nominal GDP growth rate, the resulting adjusted growth rate probably would be a lot closer to what economists think ofas GDP than the country’s actual reported GDP data is.

很多人认为，我在暗示北京在伪造数据，我并不是这个意思。在我看来，最大的问题是，中国公布的GDP是对经济体系的投入，而不是应该衡量的产出。为了使中国的GDP数据与其他国家的GDP数据可比，中国的GDP必须要依据相关产出的数据做相应的调整，比如在给定的时间段内应当(但没有)减记的坏账数额。如果从中国名义GDP增长率中减去这一数字，那么调整后的增长率可能会比中国实际公布的GDP数据更接近经济学家们所认为的GDP。

感谢复旦王永钦教授推荐，王老师还推荐此文：《China‘s Slowdown：More There than Meets the Eye》（https://cfe.econ.jhu.edu/chinas-slowdown-meets-eye/）