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經濟活動實務篇 -- 開欄文
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瀏覽2,323 ｜回應6｜推薦2 |
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為了把主題相近文章集中在一起，以便於搜尋；近兩年來我採取為特定議題建立「專欄」的做法。
本於理工科學生慣有的思考模式，我看問題總是喜歡把它們分成「理論」和「實務」兩個層面或層次。例如，本部落格有以下各欄：
1) 《中國經濟之計劃篇》和《中國經濟之狀況篇》；
2) 《「戰爭」、「反戰」、與「和平」》和《中東風雲錄》、《俄烏戰爭現況》等；
3) 《端正觀念篇》和《人際關係篇》、《自我提升篇》等。
準此，我也把「全球經濟網」這一版的相關議題歸入：《經濟學之理論篇》和《經濟學之實務篇》、《經濟學之花絮篇》三個專欄。
未來在整合時會有將文章移置、重刊這些動作；造成不便，尚請見諒。
本文於 修改第 2 次
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美國出手拉抬後之日圓慘跌 -- Chris Price
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請參考：
* U.S. Treasury is paying $3 billion a day in interest on national debt, says the CBO—having spent $10 billion to prop up the currency of its top lender
* Japan, Bretton Woods 2.0, and the End of the Carry Era
Yen sinks as US-Japan intervention unravels
Currency’s continued decline will ring alarm bells in the White House over possible sale of American debt
Chris Price, 08/10/26
The Japanese yen has suffered its sharpest sell-off since February as an American attempt to prop up the ailing currency unravels.
The yen fell by as much as 1pc to 159 to the dollar on Monday, wiping out around half of its gains since last week, when the US treasury bought the currency for the first time in 15 years.
Japan's currency dropped to a 40-year low in July amid a wide discrepancy in interest rates between the two countries, with rates far higher in the US.
The decline will add to pressure on the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates to support its currency. It has also raised questions among investors about whether Donald Trump's administration will be forced to intervene for a second time to bolster the yen.
The latest fall will ring alarm bells in the US that its Asian ally could sell off its substantial holdings of American debt to further prop up the yen.
Such a move would push up the cost of US government borrowing, which is already under strain from the US's $40tn (£30tn) debt burden.
Seth Carpenter, the chief global economist at Morgan Stanley, said: "The US-Japan intervention does not change our outlook on the fundamental drivers of the yen."
The yen has fallen despite the Bank of Japan raising interest rates in recent years.
Rates have risen from negative 0.1pc in 2024 to 1pc today as the world's fourth-largest economy reflates after decades of malaise since the early 1990s.
However, rates remain well below levels in the US, where the Federal Reserve's funds rate sits in a range of 3.5pc to 3.75pc.
The Japanese government confirmed last week that it had taken action with the US to boost the yen and counteract "excessive volatility and disorderly movements in recent months".
The intervention triggered a sharp spike in the value of the currency as traders betting on declines in the currency were forced to recalibrate their positions.
In a statement last week Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said the White House would "strongly support Japan's decisive market and monetary steps to correct the substantial undervaluation of the yen".
He said: "The Takaichi government is moving into an exciting new phase of Abenomics, as nearly 15 years of powerful stimulus have created durable, robust underlying economic dynamics."
Speculators cut their bets on declines in the Japanese yen by the most in more than 12 years, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday.
Claudio Irigoyen, a global economist at Bank of America, warned the intervention would raise pressure on the Bank of Japan to raise rates further.
He said: "Foreign currency intervention is generally ineffective unless imbalances are addressed.
"Coordinated intervention raises the need for credible policy follow-through in Japan to stabilise the yen.
"The Bank of Japan will likely be under high pressure if the Fed hikes in September, in our view."
Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser at Allianz, said on Monday: "The yen has been weakening gradually since the large joint Japan–US FX intervention, a sharp reminder that the key to fixing a currency 'mispricing' is getting the policy mix right.
"The longer Japan delays in doing so, the more elusive the goal of this historic intervention becomes."
Markets are pricing a 60pc probability that policymakers at the Bank of Japan will vote to increase interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 1.25pc at its next meeting in September.
Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics, warned that the decline in the yen alongside rising government costs in Japan showed that investors are becoming less confident about the government's spending plans.
He added: "Markets have become concerned that the government's rhetoric points to a less disciplined fiscal regime in future."
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中國輸出降低其它國家通膨 -- Eleanor Pringle
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2008前後，格林斯潘已經在美國眾院某次聽證會中指出：中國貨物對美國經濟這個降低通膨的「正效應」。另請參見本欄2026/07/24貼文。
China’s exports are so huge they’re now lowering inflation in other countries
Eleanor Pringle, 07/28/26
The "Liberation Day" tariffs of April 2, 2025, were the best example of President Trump's economic nationalism—the concept that nations should prioritize their own industries and workforce over global trade, using protectionist policies when necessary.
Trump was particularly harsh toward China, slapping the country with various tariffs of up to 50% (until they were ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court).
But none of that appears to have held China back. The United States' biggest economic rival leads the pack when it comes to exports, which are continuing to grow, while its imports continue to pull back. Those exports are so cheap and ubiquitous that they're reducing inflation in some developed markets, according to Goldman Sachs.
According to data from the Chinese government, even U.S. imports from China are on the rise—suggesting that the trade war did not wean American households off cheaper Chinese goods.
In June, the General Administration of Customs for the People's Republic of China reported that it had exported goods and services worth $43 billion to the U.S., and nearly $216 billion for the year to date. Conversely, it reported imports of $14.6 billion in July: The trade balance, already heavily weighted to China's benefit, saw exports to the U.S. rise 0.2% year on year, and imports drop 0.8%.
It appears the new levies between the global powers have changed the behavior of Chinese consumers and businesses far more than they have American.
The U.S. government data tells a different—and possibly misleading—story. Census Bureau data show that the U.S. has imported only $104 billion so far this calendar year, averaging about $20 billion per month. The discrepancy is "not because ships are sinking mid-Pacific," UBS's Paul Donovan highlighted Friday. "This level of distortion is unique to Sino-U.S. trade. If imports from China are not identified as coming from China, the importer may pay a lower (or no) tax."
Donovan describes the discrepancy as "evidence that tariffs are being avoided."
Regardless of the differences between the U.S. and Chinese numbers, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note over the weekend that Chinese exports to the rest of the world are now so significant they're helping keep the price of living lower in developed markets.
"Chinese exporters to non-U.S. [developed markets (DMs)] have grown rapidly since the pandemic," Megan Peters wrote in a note over the weekend, highlighting some of this strength derives from reallocation from the U.S. Peters adds: "At the same time, Chinese imports from the rest of the world have pulled back amid an increased push for self-sufficiency."
Makeup and skincare imports, for example, have fallen by approximately 55% since 2023, while automotive imports have fallen by approximately the same levels since mid-2023, the data compiled by Goldman Sachs shows.
Clothing and accessories, and medical and pharmaceutical products, have also fallen by more than 20% compared to the pre-pandemic trend.
The inflation boon
In his Liberation Day tariff speech, President Trump said that foreign nations had subsidized their exports to undercut U.S. pricing, and that the U.S. had been "looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike" as a result.
But developed markets outside the U.S. have actually benefited from the cheaper goods during a period of sticky inflation. Using a cross-country trade-inflation panel, Peters writes that for every 1 percentage point increase in Chinese exports to a country since 2024, there is a 0.5% decline in goods prices. On average, the trade link has lowered goods prices by 0.6% in non-U.S. developed markets so far.
But Trump's trade war means the U.S. won't be one of the beneficiaries from the longer-term disinflationary measures of importing from China.
Of course, any perceived inflation benefit of importing must be offset by the fact that domestic producers are potentially being undercut, making their businesses less prosperous.
Peters writes: "We have previously argued that increased goods supply from China should exert a meaningful disinflationary impulse across [developed markets], especially in Europe … We expect these effects to continue to build going forward, both because the impacts of realized trade shifts may not yet be fully reflected in consumer prices, and because our China economics team expects the current account surplus will continue to widen."
"Although the main driver of our relatively benign inflation outlook is that domestic supply and demand broadly appear in balance, these Chinese trade dynamics are another reason why inflation will likely return to near-target levels [set by central banks] in major DMs in the upcoming years."
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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中國重商政策影響全球經濟 -- Arvind Subramanian
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雖然下文和本欄上一篇都以「中國經濟」為主旨，但兩文作者都從「世界觀」為立論點；故置於此欄，而非「中國脈動錄」版。
The Mother of All Economic Shocks Is Chinese Mercantilism
Arvind Subramanian, 07/13/26
Because analysts tend to put the United States at the center of the global economic story, they have overlooked the single most important force of the past 50 years. But it will be obvious to later generations that Chinese mercantilism has been more globally consequential than any other economic shock or policy choice.
WASHINGTON, DC—In the long sweep of history, China’s economic performance over the past 50 years will obviously stand out for the sheer scale and pace of quality-of-life improvements within that country. But China’s impact on the rest of the world has still been underappreciated.
True, if the retrospective gaze were confined to global shocks in the post-World War II period, a few defining ones would be the 1970s oil embargos, which led to a large and permanent productivity slowdown in advanced economies; and the 2008 financial crisis, which brought globalization to a screeching halt and called into question the American model of finance-addled capitalism. The US Federal Reserve’s policies have also had clear global effects. For example, Paul Volcker’s tightening in the early 1980s precipitated a developing-country debt crisis, and the quantitative easing that began under Ben Bernanke ultimately fueled capital flows to emerging markets, thus sustaining high growth in the 2000s.
But Chinese mercantilism has arguably been even more consequential than any of these episodes. If it has not been recognized as such, that is because it has not been a one-off event, but rather a more persistent force that is often conflated with China’s growth performance more broadly. The latent bias that leads analysts to place the United States at the center of the global economy has caused many to overlook just how game-changing Chinese mercantilism has been—in terms of both global public goods and global public bads.
On the asset side of the ledger, three entries stand out.
The first is Chinese mercantilism’s contribution to the Great Moderation. After the high inflation of the 1970s, global inflation declined and remained low until the COVID-19 pandemic. While sound monetary policymaking and central-bank independence were important factors, it was China’s aggressive mercantilism that consistently supplied the world with low-priced manufactured goods. Low inflation resulted from a combination of substantially rising prices of non-tradable services such as health and education (where productivity growth is more elusive), and falling or stagnant prices of traded goods, courtesy of China.
Without China’s contribution, central bankers’ job in advanced economies would have been far more difficult. While serving as governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney often spoke about the beneficial impact of “globalization” on the Great Moderation. But “globalization” abstracts from the real source.
The second global public good deriving from Chinese mercantilism concerns climate-change mitigation. The renewables revolution is mostly a solar one, and it has been made possible by the supply of low-cost Chinese solar panels and, increasingly, batteries (which provide power when the sun isn’t shining).
A collection of PS commentaries examining how a few individuals amassed unprecedented wealth—and how they are using it to dismantle democracy. Featuring insights from Cristina Enache, Brooke Harrington, James Livingston, Michael Madowitz, Ann Pettifor, Matt Simonton, and Quinn Slobodian.
Before the solar revolution, climate policy was stuck in the calculus of trade-offs—sacrificing current consumption via carbon taxes for future gains in reduced emissions. Since the politics of selling that to a present-oriented public proved impossible, serious progress on climate change stalled in rich countries. But now, Chinese mercantilism has rendered emissions reductions compatible with growth and dynamism, making the renewables revolution available to all countries. Future generations may well thank China for staving off, or at least delaying, dire planetary outcomes.
A third benefit followed. In large parts of the developing world where centralized domestic power systems are dysfunctional, cheap Chinese solar panels have broadened access to energy. Though not a permanent solution, Chinese-made solar panels and batteries are a substantial improvement on the status quo for the world’s poor. In Pakistan, for example, solar accounts for up to one-fifth of grid-supplied electricity.
But now we come to the liability side of the balance sheet. As David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson showed a decade ago, the first China Shock accelerated de-industrialization (without being the sole cause) in politically consequential parts of the US. And now, a second China shock is devastating the German auto sector, upon which the country’s broader industrial ecosystem of small and midsize firms—the Mittelstand—depends. (“politically consequential parts of the US.” 一語暗指：川普 1.0和川普 2.0)
Moreover, a third China shock—or what might be described more accurately as a squeeze—has arguably had even greater consequences in thwarting industrialization and development possibilities for a wide range of low- and middle-income countries, as my recent work with Shoumitro Chatterjee shows. Unlike the first two shocks, this one has been less visible. The impact shows up not in job cuts or factory closures, but rather in terms of factories never built, export markets never entered, capabilities never accumulated, and development paths never opened. That is the real toll of the China squeeze.
By quantifying the determinants of hard power, my 2011 book, Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, predicted that China’s rise would occur sooner than the world expected. But even that analysis did not account for the extent to which China’s relentless mercantilism would influence the world, for better and worse. Single-handedly consigning the global hegemon (America) to self-doubt and reduced potency, while also devastating Europe’s largest power (Germany) economically, is an “accomplishment” with few parallels in history.
Chinese mercantilism has done more than US economic developments or Fed policies to change the world in this millennium. Though the unfolding Donald Trump shock may yet prove more consequential in the decades ahead, it will have none of the redeeming benefits of China’s economic model—only liabilities as far as the eye can see.
Arvind Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and co-author (with Devesh Kapur) of A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey (HarperCollins India, 2025). He’s been writing for PS since 2012.
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中國「競爭力」來源大解密 -- Kai Guo
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索引：
flying geese structure：「雁行(理論)」結構
OECD：「經濟合作暨發展組織」，簡稱「經合組織」。
STEM：「理工科」(科學、技術、工程、及數學)
Subsidies Do Not Explain China’s Competitiveness
Kai Guo, 07/17/26
Like every major economy, China uses industrial policy, and its subsidies have mattered. But subsidies are no longer the most convincing explanation for Chinese firms’ emergence as global leaders in industries that used to be the exclusive domain of advanced economies.
BEIJING—Chinese firms have achieved global leadership in industries once assumed to be the preserve of advanced economies: electric vehicles, batteries, industrial robots, solar panels, and AI—to name just a few. The standard explanation for this success is that the Chinese state subsidizes production, an argument that has now been given the institutional weight of a major OECD report.
This particular report matters because its conclusions are likely to shape policy debates well beyond the OECD itself. Yet the subsidy story is incomplete and increasingly inadequate. Like every major economy, China does use industrial policy, and its subsidies have mattered. But subsidies are no longer the most convincing explanation for Chinese firms’ growing competitiveness. The OECD is applying an old framework to an economy that has changed.
The report’s first weakness is methodological. The OECD’s estimates rely heavily on the concept of “below-market borrowing,” treating loans priced below China’s Loan Prime Rate as subsidized finance. But the LPR is not a preferential policy rate. It is closer to an average commercial lending rate in China’s banking system.
The arithmetic is revealing. China’s five-year LPR is around 3.5%, while yields on 30-year government bonds are roughly 2.2% and ten-year bonds around 1.7%. A firm borrowing near the LPR is paying far more than the sovereign itself. Treating such lending as subsidized finance risks converting ordinary commercial borrowing into statistical evidence of government support.
The data tell a similarly awkward story. Evidence from more than 5,300 listed Chinese non-financial firms shows that the bulk of bank lending still flows to state-owned enterprises in traditional sectors such as infrastructure, utilities, and construction. Many of China’s most competitive firms, by contrast, rely increasingly on retained earnings, equity financing, and capital markets.
The timing is no less important. Between 2023 and 2025, subsidy intensity among listed new-economy firms declined substantially, and not by accident. While rising local-government debt sharply constrained local authorities’ capacity to provide support, the Chinese government’s push to build a unified national market sought to curb local protectionism and subsidy competition among regions. Thus, China’s emerging industries achieved their strongest gains during a period when subsidy intensity was declining, and when local governments’ budget constraints were hardening.
A collection of PS commentaries examining how a few individuals amassed unprecedented wealth—and how they are using it to dismantle democracy. Featuring insights from Cristina Enache, Brooke Harrington, James Livingston, Michael Madowitz, Ann Pettifor, Matt Simonton, and Quinn Slobodian.
The same interpretive problem appears in discussions of China’s current-account surplus. Its recent increase is often read as evidence that China has doubled down on export-led growth. But the simpler explanation lies in the domestic economy. After the property downturn, investment weakened more than national saving, and since the current-account balance is the difference between saving and investment, the surplus widened almost mechanically. Much of the adjustment reflects a property cycle, not a deliberate export strategy.
How does one explain China’s competitiveness, then? The answer does not lie in a single policy, but rather in the interaction of industrial organization, human capital, innovation, and market scale.
China now contains multiple stages of industrial development within one national market. Frontier metropolitan areas coexist with vast manufacturing networks, which creates an internal “flying geese” structure—moving some production to lower-cost inland regions—that spans much of the industrial value chain. Products can be designed, tested, manufactured, and commercialized within a single integrated ecosystem before being deployed across a market of more than 1.4 billion people.
Scale alone is not the point. The advantage lies in the interaction between scale, supply chains, competition, and technical capacity. Dense supplier networks shorten feedback loops, large domestic markets accelerate commercialization, and fierce competition forces firms to innovate and improve quickly. The resulting industrial strength reflects structural capabilities, not subsidies.
Human capital is equally important. China produces roughly 3.6 million STEM graduates and 1.3 million engineers per year—more than any other economy. This high-skill workforce then improves manufacturing processes, absorbs and adapts technologies, solves production bottlenecks, and increasingly supports innovation. China’s greatest industrial asset today is probably not financial capital, but engineering capital.
A subsidy-centered explanation of Chinese competitiveness misses all of this. It focuses on policy instruments while underestimating the industrial ecosystem in which firms operate. It counts government support but gives too little weight to technical talent, market scale, supply-chain depth, and the speed with which Chinese firms move from adoption to innovation.
China still faces serious challenges, of course. It needs higher household consumption, better resource allocation, and a lower external imbalance. But addressing these problems will not weaken Chinese firms. Deeper capital markets, stronger domestic demand, and a more unified national market will more likely than not reinforce many of the capabilities that have underpinned their rise.
The OECD is right to examine China’s industrial policies. But the real question is not how much China subsidizes its firms. It is how much those subsidies have translated into China’s industrial success. Subsidies were never the whole story, and as China’s economy has evolved and grown more competitive, they explain far less than the OECD assumes.
Kai Guo is Executive President and Senior Fellow of the CF40 Institute. He’s been writing for PS since 2026.
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《國資之殤》觀後 -- 胡承渝
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** 本文原發表於2025/10/26；因新增此欄，移置於此。造成不便，尚請見諒。
國資之殤
胡承渝，2025/10/22
公營與私營的爭論，由來已久。西漢時的一次大辯論，紀錄在《鹽鐵論》一書中。這可能是全世界第一本專門記載公、私營辯論的專書。
主張鹽、鐡國營的桑弘羊說：私營造成奢侈富豪，對平民不公，對國家不利。
主張私營的儒生則說：國營的產品價格高而質量差，不合人民需要；而且官員以之聚斂集財。雙方的論點，到現在還不失其合理性。
1950 年代，中國經過公私合營的步驟，把一切工商業都收歸國有。固然消滅了資本家對工人的剝削，阻止他們聚集巨大財富；但國營公司的僵化，也限制了生產力的發展。所以改革開放後，又要發展私有經濟，而公私合營也成為一個手段。不過這次公私合營的目的與開國時相反，不是要消滅私營事業，而是想以私營公司的活力，配合國營事業的實力，各取所長，實現「中國特色的社會主義」。
這項政策對中國經濟的發展，確實有重大的貢獻。但也成為某些人轉移國營財產的手段。這個視頻就以最近的「娃哈哈」和「萬科集團」為例，分析他們的手法。
請參考視頻：國資之殤 -- 娃哈哈、萬科啟示錄【湯山老王】
編後記：
這是胡承渝先生看了《國資之殤》視頻之後，在另一個論壇發表的短評。我一向很敬佩承渝兄的見解；稍微做了段落和標點符號的更改後，轉刊於此。標題中的「觀後」兩字是我加上的。
這個議題很重要，希望大家參予討論。
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中國企業成功祕訣--Lloyd Lee
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** 本文原發表於2025/10/24；因新增此欄，移置於此。造成不便，尚請見諒。
Rivian CEO says the company tore down a highly popular Chinese EV. Here's what he thought.
Lloyd Lee, 10/23/25
* Rivian isn't in the Chinese market, but it still pays attention to EVs abroad.
* CEO RJ Scaringe told BI that the company tore down a Xiaomi SU7 to learn what's inside.
* The CEO said the SU7 is "nicely done," but there's nothing new to learn from it.
Rivian doesn't have a footprint in China's highly competitive EV market, where companies like BYD and Xiaomi reign supreme.
That doesn't mean the California-based EV maker isn't paying close attention to the world abroad.
In an interview with Business Insider, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said the company tore down a Xiaomi SU7, a highly popular EV sedan in China, as part of an industry-standard practice of benchmarking other vehicles in the market.
The SU7 is the Chinese smartphone juggernaut's success story. It was launched in early 2024 with a starting price tag of $30,000 and helped Xiaomi blow past its annual delivery expectations by November of the same year.
The car was praised by Ford CEO Jim Farley. Business Insider previously wrote that the SU7 delivered on performance. After Rivian took a look, Scaringe agrees.
"I'd say it's a really well executed, heavily vertically-integrated technology platform," Scaringe said, referring to how the company develops the car's tech stack in-house. "Nicely done."
The CEO said the SU7 would be one of the cars he'd consider buying if he were living in China — that is, of course, since Rivian's not there.
However, Scaringe said there's no secret sauce inside the car that makes the SU7 cheap and a runaway success in the country.
"Cost — we understood how they've arrived there," Scaringe said, adding that "there's nothing we learned from the teardown."
The CEO points to macroeconomic factors like the low cost of labor and the Chinese government's support for EVs.
"The cost of capital is zero or negative, meaning they get paid to put up plants," Scaringe said of Chinese companies. "It's a very different opportunity."
Scaringe added that, while the US has provided loans, the idea of a production plant being supported through a government grant is "just not something that exists in the US."
The Department of Energy announced in January a $6.6 billion loan to support Rivian's new manufacturing plant in Georgia.
A mix of looser regulatory hurdles, lower labor costs, and more government subsidies allow China to churn out more affordable electric cars, Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, previously told Business Insider.
"When you take the cost of capital down to zero or less than zero and you have a cost of labor that's very low — you can do the math, you can build a spreadsheet that can arrive at exactly how they're doing it," Scaringe said.
It's a factor that the Rivian CEO said he wished more people talked about to de-mystify why China's rate of electrification surpasses that of the US.
"I think it's like Wizard of Oz," he said. "I think when people think there's a Wizard of Oz, it's not helpful. It's like there is no magic in the world. Everything could be analyzed and calculated."
Read the original article on Business Insider
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