中国GDP增长难掩私营部门颓势

HONG KONG — Millions of Chinese businessPeople like Ou Chengbi are seeing scant signs of recovery in their country’s economy, even as data released Wednesday morning suggest growth is stabilizing.

香港——尽管周三上午发布的数字暗示中国的经济增长正趋于稳定，但是，像欧成壁（Ou Chengbi，音译）这样的几百万中国商人，还没有看到多少迹象表明国家经济正在复苏。

Ms. Ou, a butcher at an open-air market on the outskirts of Guangzhou in southeastern China, dripped perspiration near the unrefrigerated slabs of beef in her stall as she described how as recently as last winter, she could still chop up an entire cow each day and sell it all.

欧女士在中国东南城市广州的一个郊外露天市场卖肉，她汗流满面地站在摆着没有冷冻的牛肉的摊子旁，讲述着就在去年冬天，她还怎样能把每天屠宰的一整头牛卖出去。

“Now I can only sell half a cow a day,” she said.

“现在我每天只能卖掉半头牛，”她说。

The National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing said Wednesday that growth in gross domestic product edged up in the second quarter to 7.5 percent compared with a year ago. But independent surveys of businesses across China show that in sector after sector, sales and confidence are still deteriorating.

位于北京的国家统计局周三表示，与去年同期相比，第二季度的国内生产总值小幅上升，增长速度达到7.5%。然而，对中国各地工商业的独立调查显示，在各个行业中，销售额和信心仍在继续恶化。

“All of them are pointing in the opposite direction from this supposed G.D.P. number,” said Leland Miller, the president of China Beige Book International, a New York data service that surveys 2,200 private businesses across China each quarter to gauge economic activity.

“所有这些都指向与这个所谓的GDP数字相反的方向，”中国褐皮书国际公司(China Beige Book International)总裁勒兰德·米勒(Leland Miller)说，该公司是纽约的一家数据服务机构，每个季度都对中国各地的2200家私营商家做问卷调查，以衡量中国的经济活动。

Three of the four cylinders of the Chinese economy — exports, private sector construction and retail sales — are sputtering. But the fourth, government investment and spending, is running strong, propelled by redoubled lending this spring by the state-controlled banking system to the national railroad system, local governments and state-owned enterprises.

中国经济引擎的四个缸中有三个在熄火：出口业、私营建筑业，以及零售业。只是政府投资和开支这第四个缸有强大的动力，动力来自今年春季国有银行对国家铁路系统、地方政府，以国有企业的加倍贷款。

The result has been frenzied spending on the construction of new railroad lines — up 32.1 percent in June from a year earlier — and subsidized housing. Steel output in China is setting records by tonnage as a result, even as the number of housing starts in the private sector falls steeply.

在新铁路线建设和补贴住房上的投资疯狂增长，截至6月，铁路建设开支与过去一年相比增长了32.1%。结果是以吨为计的中国钢铁产量达到历史最高水平，虽然私营行业住房建设的开工量大幅下降。

Total lending has now risen faster than economic output, even before adjusting for inflation, in every quarter since late 2011. Lending accelerated further in June, according to figures released on Tuesday by the People’s Bank of China. Yet Mr. Miller’s survey and others show that private businesses are becoming less and less interested in borrowing money because they see few opportunities to invest it profitably.

如今，贷款总额的增长速度已超过2011年底以来每个季度的经济增长速度，即使没有将通货膨胀考虑进去的话。中国人民银行周二发布的数字显示，放贷在6月份进一步加速。但是，米勒的调查及其数据显示，私营行业对贷款的兴趣越来越小，因为人们看不到多少能让投资赢利的机会。

“Generally speaking, comparing recent months to the same period last year, business has been very slow and very quiet,” said Kay Lam, the manager of UB Office Systems, an office furniture store in Guangzhou.

“总的来说，最近几个月与去年同期相比，生意一直很慢，很冷清，”广州一家办公家具店“优美办公系统”(UB Office Systems)经理林佳（Kay Lam，音译）说。

Chinese officials have repeatedly called for rebalancing the economy: encouraging more spending by households, which save nearly half their incomes, and less dependence on debt-financed investment projects. But each time growth starts to fall below the official target of roughly 7.5 percent — as it did in the first quarter, when it was 7.4 percent — the government quickly opens the spigots for further credit.

中国官员们多次呼吁要重新平衡经济：鼓励家庭更多地消费，(中国家庭将收入的一半存起来)，减少对用贷款来投资项目的依赖。但是，每次经济增长速度降到低于官方的7.5%的目标时，比如今年第一季度的增长速度为7.4%，政府又很快打开更多贷款的水龙头。

Some economists inside and outside the government say China has a choice: slow down lending and accept steady declines in economic growth each year, or continue heavy lending and risk a sharp drop in economic growth someday when the financial system begins to teeter. But nobody knows when that might happen.

政府内部和外部的一些经济学家说，中国面临一个选择：减缓贷款，接受每年经济增长速度的稳步下降；或继续大幅贷款，从而承担金融系统出现问题时，经济增长有朝一日迅猛下跌的风险。但没人知道那会在什么时候发生。

“Although there is no way to predict with accuracy and certainty the point at which China will reach the limits of its debt capacity, I believe that current rates of credit expansion can continue at most for another 3-4 years,” Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, wrote in his newsletter after the release of the economic data.

“虽然还没有办法能准确和确定地预测，中国将在什么时候达到其举债能力极限，我认为目前的信贷扩张速度最多可再继续3到4年，”北京大学光华管理学院金融学教授迈克尔·佩蒂斯(Michael Pettis)在经济数据出来后自己发的通讯中这样写道。

Yet China’s economic outlook retains pockets of long-term strength. One of them is that tens of millions of Chinese workers have more money each year to spend. The data Wednesday showed that average wages for migrant workers were up another 10.6 percent this summer from a year ago, nearly five times the increase in consumer prices over the past year, at just 2.3 percent.

然而，中国的经济前景中有一些能维持长久强盛的方面。其中一个是数以千万计的中国工人每年都有更多的钱可花。周三的数据显示，农民工的平均工资在今年夏天与一年前相比增长了10.6%，几乎是过去一年中居民消费价格2.3%增长率的5倍。

Migrants, often with less than a high school degree, have fared better than more educated young people in China’s job market in recent years, however, as a quintupling in the number of college graduates has produced a glut in a country still heavily reliant on blue-collar sectors like construction and manufacturing.

农民工通常没有受过高中教育，但是，在中国近年来的职业市场上，他们比受过更多教育的年轻人有更多的机会，因为大学毕业生人数翻了五番导致过剩，而这个国家在很大程度上仍依赖诸如建筑业和制造业等蓝领行业。

Retail sales are growing strongly, up 12.4 percent in June from a year earlier, according to the government figures released Wednesday, nearly matching a pace of 12.5 percent in May. But that has not been fast enough to offset the deceleration in private sector investment as housing prices deflate.

根据政府周三发布的数字，零售业销售额增长强劲，与一年前相比，6月份增长了12.4%，与5月份12.5%的增长率几乎持平。但是，这种长速还不足以抵消私营行业投资随着房价下跌的加速下降。