|
【序言】爱股网投资文摘收录50多名国内知名价值投资博客的文章，从而为广大用户提供最新、最有价值的投资文摘。在这里你可以领略投资高手们的投资理念，关注他们的投资组合，了解他们的选股思路以及他们对个股和行业的看法。
—————————————————————————————————————————————2010-12-26 20:16:59 新浪博客 夕饮冰
----Dian L. Chu
China has been ranked as the top growing country among the G20
since 2001 and is expected to retain that title for at least
another five years (See Growth Chart). However, the news coming out
of China for the past three months has not been good. It is looking
more and more that it is not a question of if China is a bubble and
going to burst, but when.
The country has major infrastructure issues, troubling
population dynamics, poorly aligned employment outcomes, inflation
problems, a real estate bubble, an opaque and potentially insolvent
banking system (had mark-to-market accounting been applied),
geo-political problems with North Korea and Taiwan, and an
underperforming stock market in 2010 (see stock comparison
chart).
Smart Money Rushing Out
While the hot money is flooding into China, the smart local money
is doing everything they can to get their money outside of China,
which partly explains why Shanghai SE Composite has underperformed
other markets for the past year or so (see Comparison Chart).
The many issues of China could conspire to become the biggest train
wreck waiting to happen, and potentially dwarf any little budget
problems in Europe by a factor of ten.
Big Trouble In Big China
China has a population related societal structural problem. The
nation has tried to utilize the vast manpower to its advantage over
the last two decades building a powerhouse manufacturing economy
through the availability of low cost workers, which supplied the
world with lower cost goods.
Nevertheless, the harsh reality is that the nation's
infrastructure, quality jobs, food, and overall resources are too
scarce to support such mass population, while achieving the
government`s goal of a smooth transition to a developed middle
class to sustain an internal demand model going forward.
If you think having riots in Greece over the pension retirement age
being raised is bad, just wait till riots breaking out in Beijing
and other cities over a 90 cent bowl of noodle soup now costing
four dollars due to food shortages, and a runaway inflation
problem.
Loose Lending = Non-performing Projects
This is only reinforced by some of the news events taking place
over the last three months. Let`s start with the raising of banks
reserve requirements by the central bank, which is the sixth such
increase in 2010.
These measures are meant to curb the excess lending which has
fueled much of the overbuilding and real estate speculation
occurred over the past two years as China`s central bank initially
wanted to avert a recession by artificially creating demand for
workers and construction projects to replace lagging demand from
the developed economies.
The problem is that too much lending has occurred, and bad lending
at that. Because of the cheap available credit, now you have cement
companies and manufacturing firms getting bank loans to invest in
endeavors such as real estate, which is outside of their core
expertise and competency.
Real Estate Misery Loves Company – China &
Spain
The result is a bunch of excess inventory and poorly thought-out
construction projects which have no means of recouping the initial
investment needed to repay the bank loans.
This practice is similar to Spain`s situation now where they have
entire uninhabited building complexes that have yet to be marked to
market, and will probably ultimately be demolished. But at least in
Spain, even though it was a construction boom, it was engineered by
developers in Spain, and not by some manufacturing outfits like
those in China.
So, multiply the bad business project factor by ten and you get an
understanding of the magnitude of bad loans on the books of Chinese
banks. The problem is being further exacerbated by the practice
similar to Spain`s of banks making additional loans to the
businesses just so that they can then turnaround and pay back the
interest owed on the original loans.
The only way this would work out is if these projects magically
develop revenue streams. Unfortunately, in the case of Spain, a 20%
unemployment rate, coupled with a still overvalued housing market
in which prices still need to come down significantly, would
suggest that by the time the Spanish economy recovers enough to
support the excess inventory, the abandoned projects are run down
and uninhabitable.
A similar scenario could play out in China as well.
True Smart Money Wary of the Write-off
Domino
Furthermore, China`s practice of overbuilding at the height of real
estate valuations makes even haircuts on loan write-offs an
untenable practice for banks, and by further throwing good money
after bad, the ultimate mark- to-market effect could be
catastrophic for Chinese Banks.
This is the main reason all the major Chinese banks have gone to
the market in 2010 to raise more capital before investors wise up
to the underlying deficits these banks face, as these bad loans
eventually would need to be written off the books.
Victor Shih, a Northwestern University professor estimates that
Chinese local governments borrowed some 11.4 trillion renminbi at
the end of 2009, and that local government financing loans to be
roughly one-third of China's 2009 GDP.
Shih reckons the most likely scenario over the next few years is
that there would be increases of non-performing loans ratio from
local governments. This would require a large scale of
recapitalization of the Chinese banking system, which would eat up
a large share of China's foreign exchange reserves and possibly
slow down growth.
I do believe Beijing is quite capable of a few bailouts and
surviving a widespread banking crisis, but this most definitely
will not bode well for the financial markets. That's most likely
why you see insiders removing capital from direct exposure to the
inevitable re-pricing that will happen throughout Chinese markets
from real estate to the stock market.
This can be seen at this early stage by the underperformance of the
Chinese stock market compared to other global markets. Remember,
foreigners cannot invest directly in these markets, so these
capital outflows are truly the smart money.
Logistic Gridlock Crimping the Middle Class
Next let`s look at the recent news regarding a severe cutback in
automobile registrations in Beijing to 240,000 in 2011 from 700,000
registered in 2010 by the municipal government. Other large cities
in China are bound to follow. This is most likely related to the
reported 9-day traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway in
August, and other extended traffic jams throughout China in
2010.
China is trying to build infrastructure projects after the fact;
whereas with proper central planning these should have been
established far ahead of the massive transition from a rural,
agricultural based populous to that of a modern, large city based
business and manufacturing concentration.
Simply put, it is impossible for all the Chinese citizens who want
and can afford automobiles to be able to own and utilize this form
of transport without a total breakdown in the transportation
system. We are seeing the early stages of complete and
counterproductive gridlock in the transportation system of China,
and it is only going to get worse over the next decade.
No Jobs for College Grads
For all the talk about how China graduates more engineers each
year, and other college educated young people who have strong
backgrounds in the hard sciences than most developed nations
combined, this is actually another sign of problems to come over
the next decade in China.
China`s wealth and emergence into the second largest business
economy hasn`t been built around the need for these types of mind
and skill set. So literally you have a large mismatch between the
types of available jobs in China, that are supported by the heavy
manufacturing and construction intensive focus of the past twenty
years, to that of the recently educated pool of graduates who have
grown in sizable numbers over the past five years.
The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
This results in a large human asset class that China is currently
wasting, as most of the newly educated workforce is working in jobs
which require little or no advanced education at the university
level. So you have highly educated university graduates in areas
like engineering and accounting working low level service and sales
jobs that pay less than many manufacturing jobs.
In short, there are too many highly educated Chinese citizens
graduating each year for the number of jobs available needing their
skill set because China`s economic model isn`t built around these
type of jobs. This type of misaligned employment outcomes never
ends well; it usually manifests itself in increased civil and
social unrest.
8% Inflation in 2011
The next major challenge for China is a skyrocketing inflation,
which at its root is the fact that there are too many people
chasing too few resources. This fundamental flaw in population
dynamics underpins many of the problems that China faces going
forward.
Recent CPI data for November illustrates the inflation problem in
China with a reading of 5.1% from a year ago comparison, this is up
from a 4.4% reading for the previous month. Couple this with the
latest 4% hike in fuel prices in China because of rising oil
prices, you could expect future CPI and PPI reports to reflect even
higher rates of inflation.
For now, most of the year over year spike has revolved around
higher food prices as energy has mainly been flat for 2010 thanks
mostly to government subsidies. Now that energy prices have entered
the picture, China will start to experience even more inflation
pressures in 2011.
Furthermore, with the undervalued yuan pegged to the dollar, it is
only getting worse for China in 2011 due to Fed's QE2 pressures on
the dollar. The real inflation rate for Chinese citizens for 2011
will probably approach 8% next year.
An Asian Contagion by China?
This escalating inflation concern is further compounded by
Beijing's lack of decisive action to combat the problem by delaying
a much needed currency appreciation, and hiking interest rates in a
timely fashion. There is no getting around the fact that these two
things need to occur as soon as possible.
By the time the Chinese government is forced to implement these
tightening tools, the damage to the economy is most likely already
done. The longer China delays the inevitable serious tightening
measures, the harder the economic crash that will occur in the
aftermath of these policy changes. And it is unlikely to end well.
The resultant impact will probably take the rest of the Asian
economies down with it – an Asian Contagion scenario.
History Repeats Itself
Eventually central planners and finance ministers around the world
might start to understand that policies which lead to bubbles being
formed in the first place are counterproductive in the long run.
But until that lesson is learned, it seems like we are doomed to
repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Right now, there are more and more signs coming out of China that
all is not well with its economy, and the likelihood of a more
severe downturn in the future is a distinct possibility, unless its
policy makers take decisive and prudent actions to minimize the
damage of a hard landing.
Dian L. Chu, M.B.A., C.P.M. and Chartered Economist, is a market
analyst and financial writer regularly contributing to Seeking
Alpha, Zero Hedge, and other major investment websites. Ms. Chu has
been syndicated to Reuters, USA Today, NPR, and BusinessWeek. She
blogs at Economic Forecasts
& Opinions.
—————————————————————————————————————————————
【备注】该文章来源于http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_052abca00100nx8w.html,爱股网不对其内容负责。请各位运用独立思考的能力，去其糟粕、取其精华。 |
发表于 2011-10-16 23:09:53
