He Fan, Professor of Economics, HSBC School of Business, Beijing, Director of Maritime Silk Road Research Center
Zhu He, Postdoctoral Scholar, Peking University & Assistant Director of Silk Road Research Center
Li Chaohui, Research Assistant, Haitian Silk Road Research Center, HSBC School of Business, Peking University

This article was originally published in the Business Standard as ‘China’s version of globalisation’, 14 October 2017. This is part of a series by Chinese economists facilitated by the ICS. The original text in Chinese follows below the English version.

In the past 40 years, China has achieved sustained high rate of economic growth after the implementation of the policy of reforms and opening up. This has generated worldwide attention for the “Chinese miracle.” In 1980, China’s exports amounted to only 5.9% of GDP and its foreign investment abroad was only just over US$1.6 billion; by 2013, the latter figure had increased to US$290 billion.

China’s integration into the world economy essentially began in the 1990s. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping, the then national leader, during his visit to the southern part of the country for the first time put forward the idea that China should open up. This pronouncement can be said to have laid the basic framework for the Chinese economy in the next 10 or 20 years. Since then, a large number of workers have migrated from the rural areas to the urban centres while a significant amount of foreign capital has been invested in the coastal areas of China. As a result of the combination of foreign capital and China’s cheap labour force, Chinese coastal areas became the centre of assembling processed products, which were then exported abroad. This is characteristically a very Chinese model of opening up to the outside world. In the course of this phenomenon, the assimilation of China into the world economy has increased substantially.

The international environment of that time was also very favorable to China. In the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, world globalization was at its peak. Western countries in general, supported China’s opening up policy. At that time, the international situation was also relatively stable while the international economy was shifting from traditional inter-industry trade to intra-industry trade driven by emerging technologies such as the internet. This provided China with greater opportunities to enter the global production network. It was able to not only draw in more foreign capital but also benefitted from foreign investments in the technology sectors leading to a spillover effect.

Chinese business enterprises have very strong learning abilities; hence the ability of the manufacturing industry to enhance labor productivity is very fast. This has been further strengthened and attained its peak since China joined the WTO in 2000. From 2005-2007, it was China’s exports and imports that drove China’s economic growth.

With the global financial crisis in 2008, China’s globalization process entered a new stage. First, China’s trade surplus as a proportion of GDP decreased steadily. Second, China’s capacity to draw FDI also declined significantly. In 2014, Chinese FDI abroad surpassed FDI in China. Third, since 2014, China’s foreign exchange reserves of approximately US$4 trillion began to decline. This has more or less stabilized around US$3 trillion in recent times.

All these factors point toward the various internal and external changes within the Chinese economy. Externally, post the global financial crisis, globalization has slowed, trade protectionism has intensified and China’s increased reliance on exports has further impeded the Chinese economy. Internally, China is conscious of the great imbalance that has plagued its development model in the past. Very high rates of savings and excessive dependence on investments have been the two main causes for China’s trade imbalance.

Farmers from the China’s countryside have spent their youth working and contributing to its export enterprises, and earning foreign exchange by exporting cheap products to the markets abroad. While the income that they earned abroad is deposited in Chinese banks, creating huge forex reserves for the country, China invests most of these reserves in US treasury bonds with very low rate of gains. One point of view therefore, is that China has already fallen into the “dollar trap” because it is accompanied by lack of material benefits and loss of efficiency. Moreover, China has found it difficult to assume a positive and more responsive method to deal with this situation.

After the global financial crisis of 2008, China planned to give serious consideration to both the domestic and international markets and, in fact, gave more importance to the development of the domestic market. Until now there has been some success but there is scope for improvement.

On the one hand, due to the importance given to the development of the domestic market, China’s domestic rate of consumption has increased at a very high rate thereby creating a new domestic consumer market. A significant number of Chinese companies are now more active in the domestic markets, notable among them the internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu.

On the other hand, China has seen a decline in its ability to upgrade its manufacturing industries. Foreign enterprises are no longer favored in China as they were in the past. Many, including even local Chinese companies, are now considering shifting production to emerging market economies like Indonesia and Vietnam to make use of the comparative advantage in labour costs.

It is against this backdrop, that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has put forward the ‘belt and road’ initiative, which is, in fact, a Chinese version of globalization.

Overall, China’s economy and globalization have had a shared evolutionary relationship – China has been the biggest beneficiary of globalization while it has, at the same time, attempted to adjust the tempo of globalization to suit its own needs. If there is anything that can be learned from China and globalization then it is the fact that China was able to make the right decisions at the right time.

中国与全球化

何帆 北大汇丰商学院经济学教授，海上丝路研究中心主任

朱鹤 北京大学博士后，海上丝路研究中心主任助理

李超慧 北大汇丰商学院海上丝路研究中心研究助理

在过去将近40年，中国推行了改革开放政策并实现了持续高速经济增长。这是令世人瞩目的“中国奇迹”。但是，如果比较20世纪80年代和90年代的中国经济，我们会发现在80年代中国参与全球化的程度仍然较低。20世纪80年代，中国主要推行的政策是国内改革。比如，在中国的农村地区废除了原来的集体农庄制度，给农民更多生产的积极性；给城市里企业管理层和工人更多自主权；中央政府给予地方政府更多的自主权。这些措施直接促使中国经济的发展。然而，从对外贸易或FDI等角度来看，20世纪80年代的中国融入世界经济的程度处于较低水平。1980年，中国的出口额仅占GDP的5.9%，是现在水平的四分之一。1980年，中国对外投资16.59亿美元，而2013年中国对外投资达2900亿美元。

中国真正融入全球化始于20世纪90年代。1992年，时任国家领导人邓小平到中国的南方视察，提出中国要加快对外开放，正是奠定了未来十年乃至二十年中国经济的基本面貌。从那之后，大量的农民工从农村进入到城市，大量的外资进入到中国的沿海地区。外国的资本和中国的廉价劳动力在中国的沿海地区汇合，组装加工产品之后再出口到国外。这是一种非常有中国特色的对外开放模式。在这个过程中，中国和世界经济的融合程度大幅提高。质言之，中国经济之所以能够成功且迅速地融入全球化，是由于在正确的时间做出了正确的决策。

当时的国际环境也对中国非常有利。20世纪90年代，冷战结束后世界全球化同时处于鼎盛的时期。西方国家对中国的对外开放政策持善意的支持。当时的国际环境相对比较稳定，国际经济正从传统的产业间贸易转变为有互联网等新兴技术推动的产业内贸易。这为中国提供了更多加入到全球生产网络的机会。在这个过程中中国不仅吸收了更多国外的资本，而且从外商投资中获得了技术的溢出效应。中国企业的学习能力非常强，所以制造业生产劳动生产率提高速度非常快。2000年，中国正式加入WTO，上述过程得到进一步强化并逐渐达到顶峰。2005年到2007年，中国的进出口一度成为拉动中国经济增长的主要因素。

2008年，全球金融危机爆发，中国的全球化进程进入了新阶段。其一，中国的贸易顺差占GDP的比例逐渐下降。其二，中国吸引的FDI也开始下降。2014年，中国的对外直接投资超过了中国吸引的外商直接投资。其三，外汇储备在2014年达到接近4万亿的水平之后开始回落，并于近期稳定在3万亿左右。

这些变化反映出了中国经济面临的外部变化和内部变化。从外部的变化来看，全球金融危机之后，全球化有退潮趋势，各国贸易保护主义抬头，客观上对中国经济继续出口扩大出口造成了障碍。从内因来看，中国也意识到在过去的发展模式中存在着巨大的不平衡性。中国的储蓄率过高，过度重视投资，这是导致中国外部失衡的主要原因。大量的农民工把他们的青春贡献在出口企业，通过向海外市场出口廉价产品赚取外汇。然后，企业将挣得的外汇卖给中国央行，中国因此逐渐积累了巨大的官方外汇储备。但出于流动性和安全性的考虑，中国将外汇储备中的大多数投资于收益率很低的美国国债。有的观点认为，中国已经陷入了“美元陷阱”，因为这背后存在着巨大的福利损失和效率损失，而中国又很难采取积极的应对方式。

表 中美两国对外投资经济产和收益比较（单位：亿美元）

 

	中国		美国
	投资收益	净资产	投资收益	净资产
2004	-58	2764	734	-23634
2005	-176	4077	787	-18579
2006	-71	6402	547	-18085
2007	37	11881	1111	-12795
2008	222	14938	1578	-39953
2009	-157	14905	1323	-26276
2010	-381	16880	1857	-25118
2011	-853	16884	2290	-44550
2012	-352	18665	2244	-45183
2013	-945	19960	2284	-53727
2014	-125	16028	2343	-70461
2015	-734	15965	1934	-72806

 

事实上，在2008年全球金融危机之后，中国提出要兼顾国内和国际两个市场，并重视发展国内市场。到目前为止，国内国外并重的战略有成功之处，亦有值得商榷的地方。

一方面，受益于对国内市场的重视，中国的国内消费实现了较快的增长速度，并基本形成了新兴的国内消费市场。很多中国的企业现在更多地活跃于国内市场，尤其是有一些互联网企业，如阿里巴巴、腾讯和百度等等。另一方面，中国制造业升级换代的速度有所下降。外资企业不再像过去那样青睐中国。很多外资企业，甚至包括中国的本土企业，正在考虑将生产转移到像印度尼西亚、越南等具有劳动力比较优势的新兴市场国家。

在新的背景下，中国国家领导人习近平提出了“一带一路”倡议。“一带一路”倡议的核心思想其实就是中国版的全球化。正如习近平总书记在达沃斯世界经济论坛中指出来的，“一带一路”是为“共商合作大计，共建合作平台，共享合作成果，为解决当前世界和区域经济面临的问题寻找方案，为实现联动式发展注入新能量，造福各国人民。”

整体来看,中国经济与全球化其实是一个共同演化的关系。在这个过程中，中国是全球化的最大受益者，同时在努力调整全球化的节奏，以形成更好的合作关系。如果从中国与全球化能够得到什么启示，那么最重要的启示是中国在正确的时间做了正确的选择。