人民币正在贬值，但仍在升值
经济学人：
China owes a lot to foreign investment. Long before Foxconn started making iPhones for Apple, manufacturers from Hong Kong tiptoed across the border to Guangdong in search of cheap labour. In 1982 Jetta, a toymaker, opened a spray-painting plant among the nearby lychee orchards of Dongguan, according to “Toy Town”, a book by Sarah Monks. Water for a shower was boiled in a wok; the plant was in a tin shack. At another firm, Ms Monks reports, the workers decided that Mickey Mouse’s nose should be red, not black.
中国欠外国投资很多。早在富士康开始为苹果生产 iPhone 之前，香港制造商就偷偷越过边境前往广东寻找廉价劳动力。据莎拉·蒙克斯 (Sarah Monks) 所著的《玩具城》一书记载，1982 年，玩具制造商捷达 (Jetta) 在东莞附近的荔枝园里开设了一家喷漆厂。洗澡的水在锅里煮沸；工厂位于一个铁皮棚屋里。蒙克斯女士报告说，在另一家公司，工人们决定米老鼠的鼻子应该是红色的，而不是黑色的。
By the end of last year, the accumulated stock of direct investment in China amounted to almost $3.5trn. But in the third quarter of this year, something remarkable happened. The flow of fdi turned negative, for the first time since quarterly data began in 1998 (see chart 1). Foreign investors removed more money from the country than they put in, through a mixture of repatriated profits, repaid intra-firm loans and asset sales.
截至去年底，对华直接投资累计存量近3.5万亿美元。但今年第三季度，发生了一些引人注目的事情。 FDI 流量自 1998 年开始提供季度数据以来首次出现负值（见图 1）。外国投资者通过汇回利润、偿还公司内部贷款和资产出售等方式，从该国撤出的资金多于投入的资金。
This reversal may reflect foreign disillusionment with China’s economic prospects and policymaking. Although the country will most probably meet its official growth target of 5% this year, it could shrink in dollar terms, according to the imf’s latest forecasts. China’s government has unnerved many investors with its overbearing reaction to the covid-19 pandemic, its regulatory crackdown on technology companies and its investigations of foreign due-diligence firms, including Bain, Capvision and Mintz.
这种逆转可能反映了外国对中国经济前景和政策制定的失望。尽管该国今年很可能实现 5% 的官方增长目标，但根据国际货币基金组织的最新预测，以美元计算的经济增长可能会萎缩。中国政府对covid-19大流行的专横反应、对科技公司的监管打压以及对贝恩、凯盛和明茨等外国尽职调查公司的调查，令许多投资者感到不安。
Intensifying geopolitical rivalry has not helped either. It is becoming harder for foreign investors to find opportunities that are both commercially exciting and politically palatable in their home and host countries. In a survey of its members published in March, the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that 24% were considering relocating manufacturing out of China or had already begun to do so, up from only 14% the year before.
地缘政治竞争的加剧也无济于事。外国投资者在本国和东道国寻找既具有商业吸引力又具有政治吸引力的机会变得越来越困难。中国美国商会在 3 月份发布的一项对其会员的调查中发现，24% 的会员正在考虑将制造业迁出中国或已经开始这样做，而去年这一比例仅为 14%。
But the sharp reversal in the third quarter may also reflect a technical calculation. As interest rates remain high in America and fall in China, multinational companies have an incentive to spirit spare cash out of the country and unwind any loans to their subsidiaries that can be replaced with Chinese funding. “Many firms can now borrow more cheaply in China and nearly all can earn a higher return on their financial reserves by moving them offshore,” points out Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics, a research firm.
但三季度的大幅反转或许也反映出了技术面的考量。由于美国利率居高不下，而中国利率下降，跨国公司有动力将闲置资金转移出中国，并解除向其子公司提供的任何可以用中国资金替代的贷款。研究公司凯投宏观的朱利安·埃文斯-普里查德指出：“许多公司现在可以在中国以更便宜的价格借款，而且几乎所有公司都可以通过将资金转移到海外来获得更高的财务储备回报。”
The combination of an interest-rate gap and a geopolitical gulf has, then, hurt one kind of globalisation. But it may be helping another kind: the embrace of China’s currency, the yuan (or “redback”, as it is sometimes called outside the country).
因此，利率差距和地缘政治鸿沟的结合损害了某种全球化。但这可能有助于另一种方式：接受中国的货币人民币（或“Redback”，国外有时称之为“Redback”）。
In a report last month, China’s central bank pointed out that the cost of borrowing in yuan had fallen relative to other big economies. As a result, foreign firms had issued 106bn yuan ($15bn) worth of yuan-denominated “Panda bonds” in China during the first eight months of the year, an increase of 58% compared with the same period in 2022. Indeed, in September the yuan surpassed the euro to become the second-most-popular currency for trade financing, with 6% of lending, according to swift, a payments-messaging firm.
中国央行在上个月的一份报告中指出，相对于其他大型经济体，人民币借贷成本已经下降。因此，今年前 8 个月，外国公司在中国发行了价值 1,060 亿元人民币（合 150 亿美元）的人民币计价“熊猫债”，与 2022 年同期相比增长了 58%。据支付信息公司 Swift 称，9 月份，人民币超越欧元，成为贸易融资中第二受欢迎的货币，占贷款的 6%。
A meticulous new report on China’s overseas lending by AidData at William and Mary, an American university, also shows how government-owned lenders have made a “strategic pivot” away from the dollar in their lending to low- and middle-income countries (see chart 2). The share of new commitments in yuan soared from 6% in 2013 to 50% in 2021.
美国威廉玛丽大学的 AidData 发布了一份关于中国海外贷款的详尽新报告，该报告还显示了政府所有的贷款机构在向低收入和中等收入国家提供贷款时如何从美元转向“战略支点”（参见图2）。人民币新承诺份额从2013年的6%飙升至2021年的50%。
Many of these loans were made by China’s central bank to countries that are in debt distress. The recipients were then able to use the yuan to repay Chinese creditors and the imf, preserving their scarce dollar reserves for other needs. The authors of the AidData report wonder if China’s rulers saw a chance to “kill several birds with one stone”—preventing defaults and encouraging the international use of the yuan at the same time.
其中许多贷款是中国央行向陷入债务困境的国家提供的。然后，受援国就能够使用人民币偿还中国债权人和国际货币基金组织的债务，保留其稀缺的美元储备以满足其他需求。 AidData报告的作者想知道，中国统治者是否看到了“一箭多雕”的机会——防止违约并同时鼓励人民币在国际上使用。
After all, countries that borrow in the yuan are more likely to use the currency for international payments, according to work by Saleem Bahaj of University College, London and Ricardo Reis of the London School of Economics. Forty economies have now signed a swap agreement with China’s central bank, which obliges it to temporarily exchange yuan for an equivalent amount of the other party’s currency. Signing such an agreement increases the yuan’s share in a country’s international payments by 1.3 percentage points, they find.
毕竟，根据伦敦大学学院的萨利姆·巴哈吉和伦敦经济学院的里卡多·雷斯的研究，以人民币借款的国家更有可能使用人民币进行国际支付。目前已有四十个经济体与中国央行签署了互换协议，要求中国央行暂时将人民币兑换成等值的对方货币。他们发现，签署这样的协议将使人民币在一国国际支付中的份额增加1.3个百分点。
The sanctions imposed on Russia by America and Europe have also helped the yuan. Indeed, more than half of mainland China’s transactions with the rest of the world are now settled in its own currency, points out Mr Evans-Pritchard. In the pioneering province of Guangdong the share is even higher, at over 54% in the first three quarters of this year. Guangdong’s workers never got Mickey to embrace a red nose. But the province has at least persuaded some foreigners to embrace the redback. ■
美国和欧洲对俄罗斯的制裁也给人民币带来了帮助。埃文斯-普里查德指出，事实上，中国大陆与世界其他地区一半以上的交易现在都是以本国货币结算的。在先行省份广东，这一比例更高，今年前三季度已超过54%。广东的工人从来没有让米奇抱过红鼻子。但该省至少说服了一些外国人接受红背金。
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