中国政府旗下国企改革做的不够到位

Last month, reports that the Chinese government would reform state-owned enterprises gave shares of listed SOEs a big one-day boost. Over the weekend, guidelines for the reforms were released and, yesterday, stocks fell — and rightly so.

上月，有关中国政府将改革国有企业的报道曾使上市国企的股价当日大幅上涨。在刚刚过去的周末，《关于深化国有企业改革的指导意见》正式发布，周一中国股市下跌——而且跌得有道理。

The impact of substantive reform would be huge. SOEs account for two-fifths of GDP, according to Goldman Sachs, and they employ one-tenth of China’s workforce. Neither capital nor workers are particularly productive, though. Reliant on state support and artificially cheap capital, SOEs tend to have far lower returns on equity than private enterprises. SOEs (excluding banks) have delivered virtually no earnings growth over the past five years, Macquarie points out. Over the same period the private sector profit growth was in the double digits.

实质性改革的影响将是巨大的。根据高盛(Goldman Sachs)的数据，国有企业占中国国内生产总值(GDP)的五分之二，雇用中国十分之一的劳动力。不过，无论是资本或是工人的生产率都不是特别高。依赖国家支持和人为廉价资本的国企，股本回报率往往比民营企业低得多。麦格理(Macquarie)指出，剔除银行后，国有企业在过去5年里几乎毫无盈利增长。同期民营部门的利润增长达到两位数。

Reform will not be easy to achieve. Vested interests are hard to unseat and allowing large employers to go under, or even deliver big cost savings, is politically difficult. Details of the new proposals are scant. Share sales will be encouraged, but the SOEs that trade already prove that a public listing hardly guarantees productivity.

改革将是不容易实现的。既得利益者难以请走，让大型雇主倒闭（甚至只是实现大幅成本节省）的政治难度很大。新的改革方案细节较少。发售股票将得到鼓励，但已经上市的国企证明，上市并不能保证提高生产率。

This is not the first time SOE reform has been on the agenda, and efforts to date have hardly been radical. Last year, state refiner Sinopec sold a stake in its retail arm to domestic private investors. This year, China’s two big railway equipment manufacturers, Hong Kong and mainland-listed CSR Corp and China CNR, merged to become CRRC. The impact of these steps has so far been limited. Asset reshuffling has yet to render significant improvements in performance or meaningful capacity shrinkage.

这不是国企改革第一次被提上日程，迄今的力度很难说是到位的。去年，国有炼油企业中石化(Sinopec)向国内私人投资者出售了零售部门的一部分股份。今年，中国的两大铁路设备制造商、在香港和内地上市的中国北车(CNR)和中国南车(CSR)合并成为中国中车(CRRC)。这些步骤的影响迄今有限。资产重组尚未带来显著的绩效提高或是有意义的产能缩减。

What would real reform look like? Allowing SOEs to go bust or at least shut unproductive businesses outright would be a start. So would changes in the lending policies of the state-owned banks, which put private enterprise and SOEs on equal footing. Short of substantive steps such as these, talk of reform is that and nothing more.

真正的改革会是什么样的？允许国企破产（或至少是关闭绩效不佳的业务部门）将是一个开始。改变国有银行的放贷政策、对民营企业与国有企业一视同仁，也将是真正的改革。若没有这样的实质性步骤，有关改革的言论就将仅仅是言论而已。