2010 年上海外国语大学英语翻译基础考研真题
MDGS Millennium Development Goals 千禧年发展计划
Ban Ki-moon 潘基文
國務卿 Secretary of State
雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)
次贷危机 subprime lending crisis
西部大开发战略 strategy of western development
经济 > 中国经济
China's bubbles
Alot of things in China carry a whiff of excess. The cost of garlic is among them:
wholesale prices have almost quadrupled since March. Ahalving of the planting area
last year, and belief in the bulb's powers to ward off swine flu, provide some
justification for the surge. But anecdotes of unbridled trading activity in Jinxiang
county, home to China's largest garlic plant, suggest that the most likely cause
is the most obvious – the abundant liquidity swilling through the system. New
loans in China may top Rmb10,000bn this year, double the run-rate of the preceding
years; 2010 should bring another Rmb7-8,000bn.
In the week that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund,
said asset bubbles were a cost worth paying for reviving growth through loose
monetary policy, China needs to distinguish between good ones and bad ones. Abubble
in garlic is small, financed by private speculators, and relatively harmless when
it bursts. Bubbles in productive assets – roads, bridges, telecom lines – are
also tolerable; capital has been put in place that can be exploited by somebody.
But bubbles in property – financed by banks, on non-productive assets – are
doubly destructive. Zhang Xin, chief executive of Soho China, one of the country's
most successful privately owned developers, believes that rampant wasteful
investment in commercial property has already undermined China's long-term
prospects. As for housing, which China began privatising just 11 years ago, prices
rose at an annualised rate of 9 per cent between September and October –
significantly higher than the ongoing 2.25 per cent one-year deposit rate and the
5.31 per cent one-year lending rate. What's more, this was the eighth successive
month of above-trend growth in the national house price index. So far, attempts to
arrest price rises have been minor – restrictions on second home mortgages here,
loan discounts in exchange for bigger down payments there. Two years ago another
eight-month hot streak was enough for authorities to start cooling in earnest. They
should start again now.