《经济学人》2015年4月15日China's economy

原文

China's economy

Coming down to earth

Chinese growth is losing altitude. Will it be a soft or hard landing?

Apr 15th 2015 | ZHENGZHOU | Online extra

WHEN “60 Minutes”, an American television news programme, visited a new district in the

metropolis of Zhengzhou in 2013, it made it the poster-child for China’s property bubble.

“We found what they call a ghost city,” said Lesley Stahl, the host. “Uninhabited for miles,

and miles, and miles, and miles.” Two years on, she would not be able to say the same.

The empty streets where she stood have a steady stream of cars during the day. Workers

saunter out of offices at lunch. Laundry hangs in the windows of the subdivisions.

The new district (pictured above), situated on the eastern side of Zhengzhou, a city of 9m

in central China, took off when the provincial and city governments relocated many of their

offices there. Then, high schools with university-sized campuses began admitting

students, drawing families to the area. Last autumn one of the world's biggest children's

hospitals opened, a gleaming facility with cheery colours and 1,100 beds. Chen Jinbo, one

of the area’s earlier residents, bemoans the lost quiet of a few years ago. “Rush hour is a

hassle now.”

The success of Zhengzhou’s development belies some of the worst fears about China’s

overinvestment. What appear to be ghost cities can, with the right catalysts and a bit of

time, acquire flesh and bones. Yet it also marks a turning-point for the Chinese economy.

Zhengzhou still has ambitious plans, not least for a massive logistics hub around its

airport. With such a big urban area already built up, though, vast construction projects

have a progressively smaller impact on the economy. The city’s GDP growth fell to 9.3%

last year from an average of more than 13% over the preceding decade. The downward

trend will continue. As the capital of Henan, one of the country’s poorest provinces,

Zhengzhou had anchored the country’s last, large, fast-growth frontier. Its maturation

signals that the slowing of China’s economy is not a cyclical blip but a structural downshift.

When growth flagged in powerful coastal provinces a few years ago, the poorer interior

picked up the slack. It was large enough to do so, for a time. Henan and the other inland

provinces that have a similar level of income per head have 430m residents, nearly a third

of China’s total. If they were a sovereign country, they would form the world’s

seventh-biggest economy, ahead of both Brazil and India. The far west is China’s final

underdeveloped region but it carries much less weight: it makes up less than a tenth of the

national population.

So the question for China is not whether growth will rebound to anything like the

double-digit pace of the past. Instead, it is whether its slowdown will be a gradual

descent—a little bumpy at times but free from crisis—or a sudden, dangerous lurch lower.

Figures released on April 15th revealed a further loss of altitude: GDP in the first quarter

grew by 7% from a year earlier, the lowest since the depths of the global financial crisis in

early 2009. Signs of stress are emerging: capital is leaving the country, public finances

are more stretched and bad debts are rising.

Yet that is not the full story. China also has impressive underlying strengths and a new

determination to fix its most harmful distortions. “Growth will keep on declining,” says

Xiang Songzuo, chief economist with Agricultural Bank of China, a state-owned lender.

“Our main wish is that the decline go smoothly.”

Storm warning

The darkest cloud over China is its property market. Factoring in its impact from steel to

furniture, it has powered nearly a fifth of the economy. Now, it is set to subtract from

growth. House prices have fallen by 6% over the past year, the steepest drop since

records began. It is not the first time that the property market has looked fragile, but

previous dips were driven by deliberate policies to cool the market. In recent months, it

has been the opposite: demand has failed to respond to a series of boosts such as

cheaper mortgage rates. This has prompted predictions of a coming crash.

Problems are real but such disaster warnings rest on a misdiagnosis. The oft-heard idea

that China is sitting on mountains of unsold homes is an exaggeration. Those making this

claim point to the gap between property sales and construction. Sales of residential

housing last year were 20% higher than they were in 2009, but projects under way have

more than doubled since then, according to official data. If true, it would take five years to

consume the pipeline of homes being built, up from three before the global financial crisis.

But many of those projects are in fact little more than holes in the ground. Some have

been halted for a lack of funds, others because developers want to wait to sell into a

stronger market. The evidence for this is actual construction activity, indicated by property

completions as well as cement production (see chart 1). These are a much closer fit with

sales. It will take 16 months to clear China’s inventory of new homes at the current sales

rate, up from ten months when the market was in better shape, according to E-House, a

property consultancy. This points to a deterioration but hardly a nightmare.

That China’s property market is not about to collapse under the weight of oversupply is, of

course, good. The bad news is that its growth is stalling. The housing sector started to

take off early this century after the government allowed ownership of private property.

Mass migration to cities added to demand; China’s urbanisation rate has more than

doubled to 55% today from 26% in 1990. Both these factors are fading. Many Chinese

have already upgraded to snazzier flats than their original state-issued boxes. And though

millions continue to move to cities every year, the pace of urbanisation is slowing.

Many analysts now expect housing sales, which have reached about 10m units annually,

to start falling soon. There will still be homes aplenty to build but fewer with each passing

year. Those who were over-optimistic about the longevity of the boom are paying a price.

Chinese steelmakers had created capacity for 1.2 billion tonnes a year. The 820m tonnes

produced last year may well be the top.

Property is thus turning from a driver into a drag for the Chinese economy. Wang Tao of

UBS, a bank, estimates that every ten percentage-point drop in construction growth cuts

as much as three percentage points off GDP. She forecasts a deceleration of about half

that size this year.

The more sedate reality is sinking in. In the south of Henan province, the county of Gushi

had wanted to expand its central city to reach a population of 1.2m, from 500,000 now.

Construction work is feverish. The clang of hammers and the growl of diggers reverberate

throughout its streets. But with housing sales failing to meet expectations, Gushi has

lowered its sights. It is aiming instead for a population of 800,000. Muddy fields on the

outskirts that had been zoned for development seem destined to remain untouched.

Dragged down by debt

One way China could rekindle its property market is by using its banks to pump cash into

the economy, as it did in 2008 when the global financial crisis struck. Yet that would be a

dreadful mistake. Officials have their hands full already trying to deal with the legacy of the

previous lending binge. Total debt has surged, rising from about 150% of GDP in 2008 to

more than 250% today (see chart 2). Increases of smaller magnitudes were precursors to

financial turmoil in Japan in the 1990s and much of the West over the past decade.

With debt clogging up the economy’s gears, Chinese lending has grown less potent. In the

six years before the financial crisis, each yuan of new credit resulted in about five yuan of

economic output. In the six years since the crisis, each yuan of credit has yielded three of

output. Banks report that a mere 1.25% of their assets have soured, but investors price

their shares as if the true number is closer to 10%. Within banks themselves, there is

distrust. “The headquarters don’t believe the provinces,” says a credit officer with a major

lender.

Until recently China could grow its way out of debt trouble. That is no longer an option.

With inflation low and the economy weakening, nominal growth is half as fast as a few

years earlier. The financial system is also far more complex than it was in the late 1990s,

the last time China had a surge in bad debts. State-owned banks accounted for almost all

lending back then. Since the financial crisis their share has fallen to less than two-thirds.

Loosely regulated “shadow banks” make up much of the rest.

But there is no ironclad law that a big rise in debt must result in crisis. Much depends on

how liabilities are managed. China has several advantages. The vast majority of its debts

are held at home. In many cases both debtors and creditors answer to the same master,

the government. A state-owned bank is not about to call in a loan from a state-owned

shipbuilder. This buys it time to sort out the mess. Debts are also concentrated.

Households have not borrowed much, nor has the central government. The main culprits

are local governments and a relatively narrow group of companies: state-owned

enterprises, property developers and construction firms.

China’s defences are now being tested by the prospect of the first big default in its

property sector. Kaisa, a developer embroiled in a corruption case, is in negotiations with

bondholders to restructure its debt. So far there has been no contagion throughout the

financial industry. Investors have come to the same conclusion as Moody’s, a ratings

agency: it is an isolated case, not symptomatic of systemic risks.

In that respect, China’s real debt problem is similar to its property malaise. An acute crisis

is unlikely, but the prognosis is still bleak. Credit growth has fallen below 15%

year-on-year, down by about a quarter from the average of the past decade. But since

nominal growth is even slower, China’s debt-to-GDP level continues to rise. Lending will

thus have to slow yet further, one more dark cloud over the horizon.

Back-up power

Reporting about China’s economy sometimes gives the impression that it is one giant

credit-fuelled property bubble. Were that true, the twin slowdowns in construction and

lending would be enough to wrestle growth down to the low single digits, perhaps even

into recession—a scenario touted for years by the most bearish analysts. China’s

downturn still has a way to run but such pessimism has consistently been wide of the

mark. A simple, if under-appreciated, reason is that it is a continental-sized economy, with

a lot more going for it than one or two industries. And although the days of explosive

catch-up growth are over now that China has gained middle-income status, it has scope

for more moderate catch-up. Its per-capita GDP at purchasing-power parity is $12,000,

not quite two-thirds that of Turkey and barely a third of South Korea’s.

A much-needed shift towards consumption-led growth is just getting under way.

Investment accounts for 50% of economic output, well beyond what even Japan and

South Korea registered in their most intensive growth phases. Without rebalancing,

overcapacity in industry would only get more severe, further undermining the return on

capital. At last, there are glimmers of hope. Investment growth has halved in recent years

but consumption growth has held steady; in future, as China’s growth slows, consumption

should contribute a bigger share of it (see chart 3).

This is in part testament to the government’s progress in constructing a social safety net.

Health insurance, old-age benefits and free schooling, though works in progress, appear

to have helped check the remarkable propensity of Chinese to save. At about 40% of

income, the household savings rate has stopped rising in the past few years.

。

Still more important is a change in economic structure. Services took over from industry a

few years ago as the biggest part of China’s economy, and the gap has since widened.

Last year services accounted for 48.2% of output; industry’s share was down to 42.6%.

Services are more labour-intensive, which brings two benefits. First, China is now able to

generate many more jobs at lower levels of growth. Though growth dipped to its slowest in

more than two decades last year, China created 13.2m new urban jobs, an all-time high.

Second, the strong jobs market has allowed wages to keep on rising at a steady clip, a

prerequisite for getting people to consume more.

Even in Gushi, a county officially classified as impoverished, people throng to clothing

stores, beauty parlours and the town’s one foreign restaurant (a KFC). Like many there,

Zhang Youling, 43, spent much of his adult life away, going to where the jobs were. He

worked as a builder in Beijing, a courier in Shanghai and an ice-cream wholesaler in

Zhengzhou before returning to Gushi to be with his wife and two children. For the coming

summer, he has set aside 6,000 yuan ($970) to take them to Beijing on holiday. “We used

to save everything. These days we have the confidence to spend some of what we earn,”

he says.

Changing course

It would be complacent to expect that rebalancing alone will spare China from trouble.

Surging debt and property over-investment stem from flaws in the economy’s foundations.

Regulations constrain investment options, making property one of the few viable assets;

this drives up house prices. Local governments have limited tax powers, and so rely on

land sales; this leads to more property development. The belief that the central

government will always prop up cities induces banks to lend with little regard for

creditworthiness; this heaps bad debt onto the economy.

Why the age of rapid emerging-market growth is ending

These interlinked problems were easily ignored while growth surged ahead. Now the

government can avoid them no longer. It is trying three kinds of reform.

The first is financial liberalisation. Monetary policy is virtually unrecognisable from five

years earlier, when the central bank controlled all key interest rates. Funding costs

throughout the economy are now more market-based. Banks compete for deposits with

an array of investment products; households place 30% of their savings in bank-account

substitutes, up from 5% in 2009. Official deposit rates are still fixed, but regulators have

given banks flexibility (currently, a 2.5-3.25% range) and hint at full liberalisation within a

year.

The government has also relaxed capital controls. Companies previously needed

approval for overseas investments above $100m; late last year the threshold was raised

to $1 billion. In recent months, capital outflows have surged. Some say this is because

Chinese are losing faith in their country. Regulators are far more sanguine, pointing to it

as a sign of a better-balanced economy. The alternative—trapping money in China at

artificially low interest rates and encouraging wasteful investment—was bound to be more

destructive.

The second area for reform is fiscal, a push that has just begun. The problem is that

municipalities have too many spending obligations and not enough revenue. The central

government will provide more funding and give local governments new taxation powers.

Under a revised budget law, all provinces are, for the first time, allowed to issue bonds,

albeit subject to central approval. The finance ministry has also started to mop up their

debts; it plans to restructure 1 trillion yuan of liabilities.

Bureaucratic reforms are the third focus. Here, progress has been uneven. Changes to

the household-registration system, or

hukou, to allow rural citizens to settle in big cities

have been halting. More is needed to make for a healthier labour market. China has also

disappointed those hoping for bold reforms of sluggish state-owned enterprises, but

smaller shifts may help. By injecting assets from unlisted state parents into listed

subsidiaries, groups such as Citic will face closer market scrutiny. At the same time, the

government is loosening its grip on other important levers. It has simplified the process for

registering new companies. Entrepreneurs can now, for instance, use non-cash assets as

capital. They created some 3.6m firms last year, up by nearly 50% from 2013.

Reforms are themselves generating new risks. A bull run in the stockmarket over the past

six months is beginning to resemble the asset bubbles that often arise when countries

plunge into financial liberalisation. But keeping the previous economic system in place

would be more dangerous. It would make growth faster in the short term but at the cost of

ever more debt, heightening the risk of an eventual crash. Taken together, the policy shifts

should smooth China’s transition to slower but more resilient growth.

The transition will take time. For now, investment still accounts for half the economy. In

Zhengzhou, a layer of construction dust covers much of the city’s southern half. Along

with building a vast new airport terminal, workers are digging tunnels for five new subway

lines. Traffic is snarled for hours in the evening as trucks haul pillars into place for

elevated highways. The pressing concern for residents stuck in the congestion is not

economic collapse but rather the continued headaches of growth, even if it is a little

weaker than last year.

译文

中国经济

回到现实

中国增长不再高企。这会是软着陆抑或硬着陆？

美国新闻节目“60分钟”在2013年到访郑州市的一个新区时，曾把它当做中国房地产泡沫的典型。“我们明白了他们口中的鬼城”，主持人莱斯利·斯塔尔（Lesley Stahl）说道。“无人居住，几公里，几公里，再几公里以外都无人居住”。两年之后，她不能够再说同样的话了。当年她所站的空旷街道，现在已经车水马龙日日川流不息。职员们陆续走出办公室去吃午餐。住宅区的窗户挂着衣物。

郑州是中国中原地区的一个城市，有900万人口，自从省市政府大多办公室搬迁到这里，这个城市开始高速发展，新区（如上图）就坐落在郑州东边。接着，相当于大学校园规模的高中开始接收新生，吸引许多家庭在此落户。去年秋季，世界最大的儿童医院开张，设施崭新，彩绚丽，可容纳1100个床位。早期居民陈金波（音译）叹息几年前的清静已不复存在。“高峰时期现在已是熙熙攘攘”。

郑州发展的成功让很多担心中国过度投资的忧虑得到释怀。通过适当的催化和时间作用，看似鬼城的地方也可重获生机。而这也是中国经济的一个转折点。郑州还有雄心壮志的计划，至少要在机场周边配建物流中心。但大面积城区已建好，大型建筑项目对经济影响变小。这个城市的GDP增长率去年跌至9.3%，而以往十多年以来其平均增值为13%。下行趋势将

继续。河南是全国最贫困省之一，作为河南省会，郑州有着全中国最后、大型而高增长的靠山。它的成熟信号显示中国经济的放缓并非周期性的波动而是结构性的调档。

当早几年前强劲的沿海城市增长放缓，较弱的内陆城市则担起担子。内地面积广，在相当一段时间能肩负重任。河南和其他人均收入相似的内陆省份，总居住人口达到四亿三千万，几乎是中国总人口的三分之一。如果他们是一个独立国家，那将是世界上第七大经济体，超过巴西和印度。中国的西部是最后未开发的区域，但那里作用较小：其人口数量仅占全国十分之一。

所以中国的问题不是增长能否回弹到像过去的两位数。相反地，而是关于它的减速能否平稳—时而有颠簸但不会出现危机—或者突然而危险的崩跌。4月15日发布的数据显示再次下滑：第一季度GDP比去年增长7%，是自2009年初全球金融危机以来的最低点。压力迹象开始显现：资本正流出中国，公共财政愈加紧张而坏账增加。

但那不是事实的全部。中国也有令人印象深刻的潜在优势，她也有新的决心去纠正危害最大的扭曲。“增长将持续下降”，国有银行中国农业银行首席经济学家向松祚说，“我们最大的希望是能保持平稳下降”。

暴风雨预警

中国头上最大的乌云是房地产市场。其影响涉及行业从钢铁到家具，拉动了经济近五分之一的增长。现在，它成了增长的负因素。过去一年房产价格已下降6%，是有史以来最大跌幅。房地产看起来脆弱，这不是第一次出现，但之前是由于政策有意调控降温。最近几个月，情况刚好相反：一系列提振市场政策出台，比如降低贷款率，但需求反馈不积极。这引发了房地产即将破产的预言。

问题真实存在，但如此灾难性的警告则表明诊断错误。中国未售楼房堆积如山，这种老生常谈有点夸张。持那种见解的人看到房地产销售和建设不匹配。去年居民房屋销售量比2009年增长20%，而根据官方数据，在建项目量则翻了一倍。那样的话，将需要五年的时间去消化在建房屋，而全球金融危机出现之前，预估只需三年时间。

但是大多数项目实际并未怎么动工。有些因缺乏资金已暂停，其他则因开发商想等市场好一些再动工和开卖。如此推测的证据是实际建设活动，包括房地产竣工量以及水泥生产量（见图表1）。那样比较符合销售情况。根据房地产咨询公司E-House, 照现在的销售速度，需用时16个月来清空中国新房屋的库存，而早前市场较好的时候，预估只需10个月。这表明情况有所恶化但远未及噩梦的程度。

中国房地产市场不会因过度供应而崩溃，这当然是好事。但坏消息是中国增长在停滞。上世纪早期政府开放私人财产权，房产业开始腾飞。大批人口涌入城市，提高需求；中国城市化水平翻了一倍多，从1990年的26%提高到今天的55%。这些因素都在衰退。许多中国人已经从国家分配的住房，搬到更大的公寓里。虽然每年都有数百万人继续迁往城市，城市化的步伐正在放缓。

房屋销售每年达到一千万套，现在许多分析家预期将很快开始滑落。未来依然有很多房子要建，但是数量会逐年减少。那些认为房地产将长期繁荣而过度乐观的人正在付出代价。中国钢铁制造已达到12亿吨年产能。去年可能最多只生产了八亿两千万吨。

因此房地产从拉动中国经济增长的动力，变成拖累的阻力。瑞士联合银行（UBS）的王涛（音译）估计，建设行业增长每下跌10个百分点，GDP将下跌三个百分点。她预测今年的减速是上述的一半规模。

更为冷静的现实开始为人们所了解。在河南省的南部，固始县曾打算城区扩张，人口总数从50万扩大到1200万。建筑工程热火朝天。锤子的叮当声和挖掘机的咆哮声充斥着整个街道。但随着房屋销售量低于预期，固始开始放低眼光。它现在的目标是80万人口。郊区那原本规划的开发地现在是一片泥泞，似乎注定无人踏足。

被负债拖累下行

中国可重燃房地产市场的一个办法，是利用银行向经济注入资本，正如2008全球金融危机爆发时所做的那样。但那将会是糟糕的错误。官员们处理之前借贷潮的历史遗留问题，已经忙的焦头烂额。总负债大幅上升，2008年负债占GDP150%，至今已升到年GDP的250%（见图表2）。比这幅度小的负债增幅，在上世纪九十年代已造成日本财政混乱，而过去十年中，更小幅度的增幅造成了西方大多国家金融动荡。

随着负债阻滞经济发展，中国借贷也不像以前给力。金融危机出现之前的6年里，每1元借贷可造就5元的经济产出。危机后的6年里，每1元借贷仅产出3元收益。银行报告称只有1.25%的资产恶化，但从投资者股票定价看来，真实数据似乎接近10%。银行之间也存在不信任感。“总部不相信省部”，主要银行的一位信贷官员说道。

直到最近，中国或可依靠自己走出债务困扰。除此已无其他选择。低通货膨胀和经济疲软，名义上的增长率是早些年的一半而已。而且金融系统也远比90年代末的复杂得多，那是中国上一次经历坏账激增的时候。当时国有银行包揽了几乎所有坏账的借贷。自金融危机起，国有银行的坏账借贷份额降到不足三分之二。管制宽松的“影子银行”占剩余的大多数。

但没有铁定的法律规定债务大幅上升必定导致危机。很大程度上取决于如何进行责任管理。中国有几项优势。绝大多数的债务发生在本国。许多情况下，债权人和债务人听命于同一个主人，政府。一家国有银行不会强行收回一家国企船厂的贷款。这样为收拾局面争取了时间。债务也很集中。家庭并未借多少贷款，中央政府也没有。主要是当地政府，和相对较集中的一些企业集团：国有企业，房地产开发商和建筑公司。

中国的防御正遭受房地产行业一个重大违约的测试。房地产开发商佳兆业卷入一宗腐败案，在与债权人谈判进行债务重组。目前为止并未波及整个金融行业。投资者得出的结论和穆迪评级机构的一样：这是个独立个案，并非系统性风险的症状。

在这方面，中国真正的债务问题类似于房地产萎靡。不至于发生严重的危机，但预后仍然暗淡。信用增长已逐年跌至15%以下，比过去十年的平均值下降四分之一。不过，自名义国内生产总值增长放缓，中国债务率水平持续上升。放贷依然会继续放缓，又一片乌云笼罩上空。

后备电源

关于中国经济的报道有时给人一种印象，就是一个巨大的信贷推动的房地产泡沫。如果属实，那么建筑和借贷的双向下行已足以让经济增长下跌至单位数低增长值，或许还有导致衰退----这是持悲观态度经济学家们多年吹捧的景象。中国仍有很长的一段时间处在低迷状态，但这种悲观主义一向是不靠谱的。不全面地说，一个简单的原因是它的经济规模相当于一个

大陆，除了一两个行业以外还有许多行业可提升经济。虽然追赶爆炸式增长的时代已经过去，因中国已进入中等收入状态，它有空间继续慢慢追赶。按购买力平价计算的人均GDP是12,000美金，不足土耳其的三分之二，仅为韩国的三分之一。

中国迫切需要转向消费主导型增长，而这种转向只是刚刚开始。投资占据经济输出的50%，远远高于日本和韩国在增长最密集阶段所占的比例。失去平衡，产能过剩产业将只会变得更严峻，进一步消弱资产回报率。最后，希望的曙光是有的。投资增长在近年来已经减少了一般，但消费增长保持稳定，将来，随着中国经济增长放缓，消费应该有更大的贡献份额（见图表3）。

这在一定程度上证明了政府在构建社会安全网方面的进步。医疗保险，养老福利和免费教育，虽然还在进行中，似乎能帮助改变中国人的储蓄倾向。储蓄占家庭收入的40%，这个比例在过去几年已经不再往上攀升了

更重要的是经济结构转型。早些年服务业取代工业成为中国经济最大支柱产业，且所占比例越拉越大。去年服务业占产出48.2%，工业比例则降至42.6%。相比业，服务业更为劳动力集中，因此带来双面效应。第一，中国在增长率下滑的情况下能创造大量岗位。去年增长率虽然跌至近二十年来最低点，但中国创造了1320万新的城镇工作，创历史新高。第二，强劲的就业市场带动工资持续稳定的增长，从而带动消费。

即便在固始这样一个官方评定的贫困县，人们蜂拥至服装店，美容院和镇上的外国餐厅（肯德基KFC）。像许多当地人一样，43岁的张有林（音译），他成年后的大部分时间都辗转在外地工作。他在北京当过建筑工人，在上海当过快递员，在郑州批发冰淇淋，最后回到固始与妻子和两个孩子一起生活。今年夏天，他预算了6000元（970美金）的花费带家人到北京游玩。他说，过去我们总是省吃俭用存钱。现在我们有信心将部分收入拿出来消费。

如果认为重新平衡就能将中国从困扰中解放出来，这是个自负的想法。负债的增长和房地产过度投资根源在于经济基础的缺陷。法规约束投资选择，使房地产成为少数可行的投资资产之一，从而推高了房价。地方政府税收权利有限，并依赖于土地销售，这导致了更多地产开发。坚信中央政府将一贯支持城市建设，诱发银行放贷而较少考虑信誉，这导致经济中出现一堆坏账。

改变航道

随着经济急速增长，这些交错纵横的问题很容易被忽略。现在政府无可避免地要面对了，开始尝试推行三项改革。

首先是金融自由。5年前中央银行还掌控了所有关键利率，而今货币政策已面目一新。现在贯穿整个经济的融资成本更以市场为主。银行推出大量投资产品以竞相争取存款；家庭存款有30%用于银行账户存款之外的项目，比2009年的5%大幅上升。官方存款率仍然固定，但法规已经给银行一定灵活度（目前是2.5~3.25%左右）并且暗示将在一年内全面自由化。

政府还放松了资本控制。之前超过一亿美元的海外投资需要政府审批；去年底放低门槛，十亿美元起的投资才需审批。近几个月，资本流出迅速增长。有些认为这是因为人们对中国失去信心。监管机构比较乐观，指出这是经济更为平衡的迹象。那些利用低利率套取现金并鼓励浪费投资的，才是更具有破坏力的。

第二是财政改革，这股推力才刚刚开始。问题在于市政公债有太多支出义务而没有足够收入。中央政府将提供更多资金，并授予地方政府新税收权力。根据修订的预算法，首次规定所有省份都可发行债券，中央批准即可。财政部也开始吸收他们的债务，计划重组一万亿元债务。

第三是政务改革。这方面的进展不平衡。户籍登记制度或户口从农村落户到大城市的计划已叫停。劳动力市场还有待改善。中国未能达到大刀阔斧地改革国有企业的期望，但规模较小的变化是有的。未上市国有总公司注资上市子公司，中信等企业将面临市场的审查。与此同时，政府放松其他重要杠杆的控制。新公司的注册流程简化了。例如，企业家现在可以用非现金资产作为资本。去年新增了360万公司，较2013年增长了近50%。

改革本身会产生新问题。过去6个月出现的牛市股市，与陷入金融自由后常常会出现的资产泡沫相似。但维持原有的经济体系一成不变才是更危险的。那样或可短期内助长经济，但代价是更多负债，最终崩溃的风险更高。综上所述，政策转变应使中国平稳步入更缓慢而有弹性的增长。

这需要个过程。目前来说，投资仍然占据经济的半壁江山。在郑州，南部有一半地方都在施工。一个庞大的新航站楼在修，另外还有五条新地铁隧道在动工。每天晚上，因卡车整理高架路的支撑柱，交通拥挤长达几个小时。这些拥堵的人们考虑的迫切问题，不是由于经济崩溃，而是经济持续增长带来的烦恼，即便较之去年有所缓解。