中國應吸取日本救市教訓 China risks repeating the errors of Japan

Just over a decade ago I wrote a book about the rise and fall of 20th century Japanese finance. I later discovered that a pirated Chinese language copy had been produced.

10年多一點以前，我寫過一本關於20世紀日本金融興衰的書籍。後來我發現，這本書出現了中文盜版版本。

Chinese regulators and bankers came to see me about the book and explained. “We want to understand what happened so we can be different,” the mantra went; Japan’s crazy 1980s bubble was being studied to show what policymakers should not do.

中國監管者和銀行家因爲這本書來找我，並解釋了他們的思路：“我們希望明白髮生了什麼事情，以便得到不同的結果。”中國方面在研究日本上世紀80年代的瘋狂泡沫，以便讓政策制定者引以爲戒。

It is a point Beijing needs to relearn now, in relation not so much to Japan’s bubble, but to the aftermath. If you want to see what can happen when a government tries to prop up stock and land prices, Tokyo’s story is sobering. It shows that not only do interventions carry a financial cost (since they rarely work for long), but that they can be a lasting drag on investor psychology.

北京方面現在有必要溫習日本的教訓，這與其說是泡沫的教訓，不如說是泡沫破裂之後的教訓。如果你想要看看政府試圖支撐股票和土地價格的時候會發生什麼情況，那麼東京的故事令人警醒。它表明，干預不僅會有財務成本（因爲它們極少持續管用），而且會對投資者的心理造成持久拖累。

Consider the parallels. In the past two decades China has delivered impressively high economic growth by investing heavily to build an industrial export machine. This was supported by a bank-centred, state-controlled financial system that channelled cheap funding to favoured industries at the expense of consumers. The price of money, in other words, was set by autocratic fiat.

想想兩國的相似之處。在過去20年裏，中國通過大舉投資打造工業出口機器，實現了引人注目的高速經濟增長。這種增長受到以銀行爲中心、政府控制的金融體系的支持，後者在犧牲消費者利益爲代價，向重點行業輸送廉價融資。換言之，資金的價格由官方制定。

This is roughly what Japan also did in the decades after world war two (although such state control was more subtle and indirect in Japan than in China).

這基本上也是日本在二戰後幾十年所做的事情（儘管與中國相比，日本的此類政府控制更爲微妙和間接）。

But Japan’s model changed from the 1970s onwards. As the country’s economy matured, Japanese companies had less need for bank-supplied cheap credit, and, as it grew wealthy, investors started hunting for places to put their cash. The government slowly started to move away from a bank-dominated, tightly controlled financial system towards something that had the trappings of capital markets open to the outside world. However, Japan’s pace of liberalisation was belated and uneven (if not downright arbitrary) and asset price bubbles developed as capital swirled around.

但日本模式從上世紀70年代開始改變。隨着日本經濟發展成熟，日本公司對銀行廉價信貸的需求下降，而且隨着日本越來越富裕，投資者開始尋找投資機會。日本政府逐漸開始從銀行佔據主導地位、受到嚴格控制的金融體系，轉向貌似向外部世界開放的某種資本市場。然而，日本的自由化步伐既遲緩又沒有章法（即使不是完全武斷的話），隨着大量資本涌動，資產價格被推高，形成了泡沫。

Monetary policy and exchange rate swings made the problem worse. So, by the end of the 1980s, stock and land prices had soared — in much the same way that they have in China, as Beijing has also tiptoed towards patchy liberalisation and embraced some capital market structures.

貨幣政策和匯率波動讓問題更加惡化。因此，到了上世紀80年代末，股票和土地價格大幅飆升——這在很大程度上和中國一樣。中國政府近年也不規則地小步走向自由化，擁抱一些資本市場架構。

But the really important lesson is what happened next in Japan.

但真正重要的教訓在於日本接下來發生的事情。

In December 1989, the Nikkei share index hit a peak of 38,915.87, but then tumbled, falling 60 per cent in the next two years. Japanese bureaucrats initially assumed this was just a temporary decline, so did not ask banks to reprice the value of their investments or loans. But then, as prices kept falling, the government tried to prop up asset prices, sometimes with explicit share purchases — but usually via more subtle forms of intervention (banks kept rolling over bad loans and big companies kept supporting each others’ share prices).

1989年12月，日經股指觸及38915.87點的峯值，但隨後大幅下跌，在接下來的兩年裏跌幅高達60%。日本官僚最初以爲這只是臨時性的下跌，因此沒有要求銀行重新定價它們投資或貸款的價值。但接下來隨着價格不斷下跌，日本政府試圖提振資產價格，有時採取公開的購股舉措，但通常是通過更爲隱祕的干預措施（銀行持續滾轉壞賬，大公司持續相互支撐股價）。

This worked — for a while. By the mid 1990s share prices seemed to have stabilised at lower levels. But in 1997, when news seeped out that the banks were sitting on massive unrecognised losses (which later totalled almost $1tn), a financial crisis erupted, and asset prices slid. By that point, the system was also plagued by a pernicious lack of trust.

這些舉措取得了效果，不過只是暫時的。到上世紀90年代中期，股價似乎在較低水平企穩。但在1997年有消息傳出銀行擁有大量未確認虧損（後來總數達到近1萬億美元）的時候，金融危機爆發了，資產價格暴跌。到了那時，金融體系也深受信任嚴重匱乏的困擾。

After a decade of (largely futile) meddling, investors no longer believed that Japanese bureaucrats were as powerful as they had seemed in the decades after the second world war. But they did not have much faith in “market” prices either, since everyone knew these were being propped up. Japan was thus in a limbo: the traditional pillars of faith that once supported asset values had crumbled, but there was nothing else to replace them.

在持續10年基本上徒勞的干預之後，投資者不再相信日本官僚真像二戰後幾十年裏貌似的那麼無所不能。但他們也對“市場”價格沒有多大信心，因爲所有人都知道，這些是得到扶持的價格。日本因此陷入困境：曾經支持資產價值的傳統信心支柱崩塌，但沒有其他支柱可以代替它們。

Nobody really knew the “clearing prices” of assets, as traders like to say, or how far prices might fall if markets were free. Investors were haunted by an uneasy fear that bad news could seep that would push prices down again.

沒有人真正知道資產的“清算價格”（交易員喜歡說的術語），也就是如果市場不受干預的話，價格將會下跌多少。投資者感到憂心忡忡，擔心可能曝出再次壓低價格的壞消息。

Maybe China will avoid Japan’s mistakes; certainly some officials seem keen to try. But right now, the historical echoes are strong. This summer, the Chinese government has used an estimated $200bn to buy shares, and it is now seeking to intimidate investors to prevent share sales. Yet the markets have fallen by about 40 per cent from their peak. Faith in bureaucrats’ ability to underwrite prices is slipping, but trust in market mechanisms is also being undermined.

或許中國將不會重蹈日本覆轍；一些官員肯定似乎熱衷於嘗試。但就現在而言，兩者的歷史相似性十分突出。今年夏季，中國政府動用約2000億美元購股，現在它正設法威逼投資者以阻止他們拋售股票。然而市場距今年最高點已下跌大約40%。市場逐漸不再相信官僚有能力兜底價格，但投資者對市場機制的信任也遭到削弱。

Better just hope, in other words, that Beijing remembers how dangerous it can be when nobody knows how to establish values and when there are no clearing prices, as it looks east across the sea.

換言之，人們最好還是希望中國政府能夠隔海東望，記取日本的教訓：在沒有人知道如何確立價值、沒有任何清算價格的時候，局面有可能多麼危險。