增長放緩房市蕭條 中國股市爲何逆勢飆升

Surely this has to end in tears, doesn’t it?

結局終將是痛苦的，不是嗎？

China’s stock market is not so much defying gravity as defying logic, after a dizzying 32% rally since the end of October. That’s despite increasing evidence of stress in the financial sector and a slowing economy, the latter underlined again Monday by some shockingly weak trade data.

10月底以來，中國股市回升了32%，如此增長實在有些讓人看不懂。因爲與此同時，越來越多的證據表明，中國金融部門壓力不小，而中國經濟也在放緩。本週一公佈的進出口貿易數據極爲疲軟，再次凸顯了中國經濟的放緩。

The Shanghai Composite index rose another 2.9% Monday to close above 3,000 for the first time since early 2010. It had risen 9.5% last week alone, in a week that ended with a spokesman for China’s equivalent of the SEC pleading at a press conference for investors to “respect the market, fear the market and…not blindly follow the trend of speculation.”

本週一，上證綜合指數（The Shanghai Composite index）繼續上漲，漲幅2.9％，自2010年年初以來，首次收於3000點以上。僅在上週，該指數就上漲了9.5％。上週五，中國證監會新聞發言人在新聞發佈會上表示，希望廣大投資者“尊重市場、敬畏市場……不要盲目跟風炒作”。

Just to recap: China’s economy is growing at its slowest rate since 2009. Although officials statistics and government pronouncements suggest it’s still above 7% year-on-year, house prices are falling in every major city across the country, bad loans in the banking system are rising at their fastest rate in years, and the central bank has had to intervene on more than one occasion in the last month to keep a febrile domestic money market stable.

簡言之：目前中國經濟增速處於2009年來的最低點。儘管根據官方統計數據和政府聲明，中國經濟仍同比增長7％以上，但全國所有主要城市的房價都在下跌，銀行系統不良貸款上升速度多年未見，上個月，央行不得不再次出手干預，使狂熱的國內貨幣市場維持穩定。

For those people (who, until recently, included premier Li Keqiang) who don’t entirely trust the official GDP data, hard indicators such as rail shipments and electricity consumption are also on a trend that is at best flatlining. HSBC/Markit’spurchasing managers index suggests manufacturing output and employment both fell in November.

對於那些不完全相信官方GDP數據的人士（中國總理李克強也是其中一員）而言，鐵路運輸和電力消耗等硬性指標的走勢也頂多算得上持平。匯豐/Markit公佈的採購經理人指數（PMI）顯示，11月，製造業產出和就業雙雙下跌。

The usual counter-argument to such bearishness is that China is re-focusing its economy on services, which are less energy-intensive and have no real correlation to rail cargoes. And it’s true that HSBC/Markit’sServices PMI was still at 53.0 in November, suggesting a decent clip of growth (even if that too was the slowest rate since May).

對此，常用的反駁論據是，中國經濟正將重心轉移到服務業上，而服務業能源密集性較低，而且不會影響鐵路貨運。確實，匯豐/Markit公佈的11月服務業PMI仍爲53.0，顯示服務業仍略有增長（雖然增速也是5月以來最慢的）。

But figures released Monday showed that imports were down 6.7% on the year in November, way below forecasts of a 3.5% increase. Even if much of that was due to lower prices for commodities from oil to iron ore, the figures hardly suggest surging domestic demand.

但週一公佈的數據顯示，今年11月，中國進口同比下降6.7％，遠低於增長3.5％的預期。雖然進口額下降很大程度上是因爲石油、鐵礦等大宗商品價格下跌，但就數字來看，中國的內需並無大幅增長。