为了避免经济急剧下滑，中国推出了一揽子经济刺激计划，打算投入人民币4万亿元（合5,810亿美元）主要用于铁路、机场和其他硬资产项目。然而，其中只有1%的预算将用于增加社会服务。

许多学者表示，如果中国想在未来几年继续保持快速增长，持续提高居民生活水平，就需要纠正这一失衡的比例。刺激国内消费者增加支出将有助于支撑经济增长，降低中国经济对出口的依赖，但除非中国政府减轻中国家庭在教育、医疗和养老方面的负担，否则国内消费者支出不会增加。增强人民体质、提高人民文化素质也有利于推动经济增长。

联合国发展项目委员会(United Nations Development Program)驻华负责人马和励(Khalid Malik)表示，中国需要投资人力资本，保证未来的高速增长。

不难理解中国为何如此大力投资基础设施建设。建筑是中国经济中放缓最严重的部分，因此最需要获得支撑。投资基建能够迅速见到成效，也是中国在1998年渡过亚洲金融危机所采取的有效策略。

不过，发展基建可能不足以支撑经济长期增长──尤其对中国而言，该国的投资比率已经位于主要经济体中的最高行列。一些人担心中国可能最终会重蹈日本的覆辙，即便已经没有值得投资的项目，但日本仍在继续支出。

然而，打造一个社会保障体系在中国已被证明是项尤为艰巨的挑战。中国国家主席胡锦涛和总理温家宝已经提高了对社会项目的重视程度，但项目支出的步伐通常赶不上政府承诺。1997年，中国政府曾表示计划到2000年将每年国内生产总值(GDP)的4%用于教育。这个目标从未实现：去年中国教育总支出仅占GDP的2.8%。

中国人力资源和社会保障部农村社会保险司司长赵殿国近期在联合国一个论坛上表示，我们不缺少目标。我们所缺少的是实现这些目标的具体政策和举措。

在美国，发展社会项目是应对经济下滑的常规举措之一。美国国会已经通过了一项延长失业救济的议案，当选总统奥巴马(Barack Obama)承诺将于明年1月宣誓就职后实施的一揽子经济刺激计划可能会包括更多这方面的措施。正在讨论的方案包括增加对低收入家庭医疗成本的扶持力度，扩大食品补助和学校拨款，并进一步延长失业救济。

布什政府早些时候推出了退税举措，意在提振消费者支出。但在个人所得税方面做文章可能对中国不会有这么大的帮助，因为中国还处在萌芽状态的税务体系税基过于薄弱难以实施。

而且增加社会支出在中国不可思议的困难，原因是负责项目融资和运行的政府部门常常不明确。中国是个有着庞大行政体制的大国：有31个省、333个市、2,859个县和694,745个村。几十年来，北京方面在社会支出上一直缺乏指引，通常是让地方政府自己筹措资金。

相比只会花钱的社会保障项目，地方政府通常更有兴趣支持能提高税收收入的工业项目。比如，城市低保户收入保障项目只触及到了符合低保标准人群的一小部分，而且在最近几年中享受低保的人群并没有明显的扩大。

北京方面常常无法控制地方政府的财政支出项目，地方政府关注的首要问题与中央不同。地方政府官员抱怨说新项目缺乏资金保障，而中央政府官员则担心他们拨到各省的资金可能会去向不明。Capital Economics驻伦敦的马克•威廉姆斯(Mark Williams)说，中央政府很难监控地方政府的财政支出。

缺乏社会保障体系是中国消费者大量储蓄的原因之一。城市家庭的储蓄额占了收入的逾四分之一，而且比例还在逐渐上升。这种节俭与其说是显示了勤俭持家的美德，不如说是显示了大部分家庭背负的巨大压力。

中国有很多公共机制在向市场经济过渡的过程中消亡了，而且大部分没有被重新补充上来。在今天的中国，贫困人口的救济和老年人的退休金都非常低。几乎没有政府或是私人提供的医疗保险。因此中国家庭需要承担起教育、医疗和抚养老人的重担；而在欧洲，这些费用都普遍由政府或私人机构承担了，美国要比欧洲差一点。

乐观人士指出，中国政府在过去几年中一直在建立社会保障体系，比如推行九年义务教育，扩大农村贫困人口的医疗和福利待遇。虽然现在规模较小，但新的项目意味着政府现在可能有更大的能力来兑现自己的承诺。

世界银行中国局局长杜大伟(David Dollar)说，体制结构已经建立了，因此政府可以迅速增加支出。他预计在明年3月份的财政预算中会出现更多这类新的支出。

政府表示，提高居民的生活水平是刺激计划的首要任务：政府已经承诺增加城乡贫困居民的退休金和福利救济。还会有人民币48亿元的新增贷款用于支持贫困农村地区的数千家诊所。虽然这和中国其他的支出计划相比规模不大，但这也是一个开端。

面对要求采取更多刺激措施向消费者提供更为直接的援助的呼声，中国领导人可能会在未来的几周中采取更多措施。不过长期的解决办法还要求理顺中央和地方政府间的分工，这项棘手的任务可能会需要花数年时间。In its drive to avoid a sharp economic downturn, China plans to spend four trillion yuan ($581 billion) on a stimulus package that focuses on railways, airports and other hard assets. But just 1% of that sum is going to increased social services.

That balance needs to be corrected, many scholars say, if China is to keep growing rapidly and improving living standards in the years ahead. More spending by its own consumers would both support growth and reduce reliance on exports, but that isn't going to happen unless the government eases the burden on families to provide for education, health care and old age. A healthier and better-educated populace should also be more productive.

'You need investment in human capital to produce high growth rates in the future,' says Khalid Malik, head of the United Nations Development Program in China.

It is easy to understand why China is investing so heavily in infrastructure. Construction is the part of the economy that has slowed most sharply, and thus is most in need of support. Putting money into infrastructure has a quick payoff and is a tested strategy that China employed in 1998 to pull out of the Asian financial crisis.

But improving infrastructure may not be enough to support long-term growth -- especially in China, which already has one of the highest investment rates of any major economy. Some worry that China could eventually go down the same road as Japan, which kept spending even after officials ran out of worthwhile projects.

Yet weaving a social safety net has proved a particularly tricky task in China. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have made social programs a higher priority, but spending has usually lagged behind government promises. In 1997, the government said it would spend 4% of China's annual gross domestic product on education by 2000. The goal was never reached: last year spending totaled 2.8% of GDP.

'We have no shortage of goals and targets. What we lack are specific policies and measures to achieve these targets,' Zhao Dianguo, director of the department of rural social security at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said at a recent U.N. forum.

In the U.S., expansion of social programs is a conventional part of measures to cope with economic downturns. Congress has already passed an extension of unemployment benefits, and more measures are likely in the stimulus package President-elect Barack Obama has promised to push through after he takes office in January. Options being discussed include increasing support for lower-income families' health-care costs, expanding food stamps and college grants, and further extending jobless benefits.

Earlier, the administration of President George W. Bush offered tax rebates to boost consumer spending. But fiddling with personal taxes wouldn't help as much in China. That is because the country's nascent tax system covers so few people to begin with.

And increasing social spending is surprisingly difficult in China because it is often unclear which parts of government are responsible for funding and operating the programs. China is a huge country with a bureaucracy to match: It has 31 provinces, 333 municipalities, 2,859 counties and 694,745 rural villages. For decades, there has been little direction on this issue from Beijing, which generally lets local governments fend for themselves financially.

Local officials are often more interested in supporting industrial projects that boost their tax revenue than in expanding social programs that only cost them money. For instance, the program to support incomes of the worst-off -- the urban minimum living allowance, often known by its Chinese shorthand dibao -- reaches only a fraction of the people who are eligible for it, and its rolls haven't significantly expanded in recent years.

Beijing often doesn't have the means to control how money is spent locally, where priorities are different. While local officials complain of unfunded mandates for new programs, central officials worry that any money they send down to the provinces will get lost. 'The central government has great difficulty in monitoring local government spending,' says Mark Williams of Capital Economics in London.

The lack of much of a social safety net is one reason that Chinese consumers save so much. Urban households put away more than a quarter of their income, and that proportion has been gradually rising. That thrift is less a sign of virtue than of the great pressures on most families.

Many of China's public institutions collapsed in the transition to a market economy and have mostly not been replaced. In today's China, welfare for the poorest and pensions for the elderly are minimal. There is little government or private health insurance. So families need to pay for education, health care and to support aged parents -- expenses that are broadly covered in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S.

Optimists point out that China's government has been building up social programs for the past couple of years, such as free primary education and expanded health and welfare benefits for the rural poor. Though they are small now, the new programs mean the government may now be better able to live up to its promises.

'The institutional structure is in place so that the government can increase spending quite significantly,' says David Dollar, head of the World Bank's China office. He expects more of that new spending to show up in the next budget in March.

The government says improving living standards is a priority of the stimulus plan: It has promised to increase state pensions and welfare payments to the urban and rural poor. There is also 4.8 billion yuan in new funds going to support thousands of clinics in poor rural areas. That isn't much compared with China's other spending plans, but it's a start.

And China's leaders, facing many calls for additional stimulus measures that will more directly aid consumers, could well do more in coming weeks. But a longer-term fix also requires sorting out the division of labor between central and local governments -- a messy task that could take years.

Andrew Batson

var en_headline="China's Social Spending A Key To Long-Term Growth"; var en_bodytext="In its drive to avoid a sharp economic downturn, China plans to spend four trillion yuan ($581 billion) on a stimulus package that focuses on railways, airports and other hard assets. But just 1% of that sum is going to increased social services.

That balance needs to be corrected, many scholars say, if China is to keep growing rapidly and improving living standards in the years ahead. More spending by its own consumers would both support growth and reduce reliance on exports, but that isn't going to happen unless the government eases the burden on families to provide for education, health care and old age. A healthier and better-educated populace should also be more productive.

'You need investment in human capital to produce high growth rates in the future,' says Khalid Malik, head of the United Nations Development Program in China.

It is easy to understand why China is investing so heavily in infrastructure. Construction is the part of the economy that has slowed most sharply, and thus is most in need of support. Putting money into infrastructure has a quick payoff and is a tested strategy that China employed in 1998 to pull out of the Asian financial crisis.

But improving infrastructure may not be enough to support long-term growth -- especially in China, which already has one of the highest investment rates of any major economy. Some worry that China could eventually go down the same road as Japan, which kept spending even after officials ran out of worthwhile projects.

Yet weaving a social safety net has proved a particularly tricky task in China. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have made social programs a higher priority, but spending has usually lagged behind government promises. In 1997, the government said it would spend 4% of China's annual gross domestic product on education by 2000. The goal was never reached: last year spending totaled 2.8% of GDP.

'We have no shortage of goals and targets. What we lack are specific policies and measures to achieve these targets,' Zhao Dianguo, director of the department of rural social security at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said at a recent U.N. forum.

In the U.S., expansion of social programs is a conventional part of measures to cope with economic downturns. Congress has already passed an extension of unemployment benefits, and more measures are likely in the stimulus package President-elect Barack Obama has promised to push through after he takes office in January. Options being discussed include increasing support for lower-income families' health-care costs, expanding food stamps and college grants, and further extending jobless benefits.

Earlier, the administration of President George W. Bush offered tax rebates to boost consumer spending. But fiddling with personal taxes wouldn't help as much in China. That is because the country's nascent tax system covers so few people to begin with.

And increasing social spending is surprisingly difficult in China because it is often unclear which parts of government are responsible for funding and operating the programs. China is a huge country with a bureaucracy to match: It has 31 provinces, 333 municipalities, 2,859 counties and 694,745 rural villages. For decades, there has been little direction on this issue from Beijing, which generally lets local governments fend for themselves financially.

Local officials are often more interested in supporting industrial projects that boost their tax revenue than in expanding social programs that only cost them money. For instance, the program to support incomes of the worst-off -- the urban minimum living allowance, often known by its Chinese shorthand dibao -- reaches only a fraction of the people who are eligible for it, and its rolls haven't significantly expanded in recent years.

Beijing often doesn't have the means to control how money is spent locally, where priorities are different. While local officials complain of unfunded mandates for new programs, central officials worry that any money they send down to the provinces will get lost. 'The central government has great difficulty in monitoring local government spending,' says Mark Williams of Capital Economics in London.

The lack of much of a social safety net is one reason that Chinese consumers save so much. Urban households put away more than a quarter of their income, and that proportion has been gradually rising. That thrift is less a sign of virtue than of the great pressures on most families.

Many of China's public institutions collapsed in the transition to a market economy and have mostly not been replaced. In today's China, welfare for the poorest and pensions for the elderly are minimal. There is little government or private health insurance. So families need to pay for education, health care and to support aged parents -- expenses that are broadly covered in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S.

Optimists point out that China's government has been building up social programs for the past couple of years, such as free primary education and expanded health and welfare benefits for the rural poor. Though they are small now, the new programs mean the government may now be better able to live up to its promises.

'The institutional structure is in place so that the government can increase spending quite significantly,' says David Dollar, head of the World Bank's China office. He expects more of that new spending to show up in the next budget in March.

The government says improving living standards is a priority of the stimulus plan: It has promised to increase state pensions and welfare payments to the urban and rural poor. There is also 4.8 billion yuan in new funds going to support thousands of clinics in poor rural areas. That isn't much compared with China's other spending plans, but it's a start.

And China's leaders, facing many calls for additional stimulus measures that will more directly aid consumers, could well do more in coming weeks. But a longer-term fix also requires sorting out the division of labor between central and local governments -- a messy task that could take years.

http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20081208/chw091620.asp?source=whatnews1

[此贴子已经被作者于2008-12-8 11:17:25编辑过]