[分享](连载)国外主流媒体对中国经济发展的一些评论(原汁英语)

我觉得这个主题蛮好的,怎么不继续传了呢?

很好，有时间一定好好看看。

these articles are really good because we know what China is in foreigners' eyes. Hope more foreign media coverage about China, which shows about the development of China and we can think the questins foreign media asked and try to find some measures to address these issues.

Thanks Lou Zhu!

你的贴子字体忽大忽小,看起来实在伤眼睛。若能都象13楼那样字体适中就好了

谢谢楼主了,真是好心啊.英语真的是很重要,不过国内学界经济学功底深厚又兼具英文修养的学者还是不太多啊

同意楼上的看法,所以英语是一定要好好学的

楼主是个勤快人，也非常有心，做了一件好事。功德无量啊，佩服佩服～

China’s Central Bank Raises Rates in Latest Effort to Slow the Economy

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: August 19, 2006 New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/business/worldbusiness/19yuan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

HONG KONG, Aug. 18 — China’s central bank raised interest rates on Friday evening, the latest in a series of moves by the government to choke off a binge in speculative lending and investment that threatens to saddle the country’s banks with more bad loans if the economy slows.

The People’s Bank of China raised interest rates for one-year bank loans and bank deposits each by 27-hundredths of a percentage point. Economists had been predicting an interest-rate increase, China’s second this year, after government statisticians announced last month that economic growth reached a torrid 11.3 percent in the second quarter.

The government has already increased restrictions on bank lending policies, raised bank reserve requirements and even reprimanded regional officials who pursue speculative construction projects in defiance of Beijing’s instructions. Chinese officials have hinted at further brakes on the economy in the months to come.

“It’s still too little,” said Qu Hongbin, HSBC’s chief China economist. The People’s Bank of China said in a statement that the rate increases were intended to “curb demand for long-term loans and the overly rapid expansion in fixed-asset investment.”

The interest rate increase came despite announcements over the last week that consumer prices had fallen in each of the last three months and that growth slowed last month for industrial production and for investments in factories and other fixed assets. The latest data somewhat reduced the pressure on China’s central bankers to act.

“I don’t think they are desperate — this is a pre-emptive policy; I don’t think the economy is overheating,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, a currency strategist and economist in the Hong Kong office of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The People’s Bank of China has been much slower than the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates over the last two years. Keeping interest rates low has made it a little less attractive to invest in China. This has slowed a flood of speculative money that poured into the country last year and threatened to force China to allow its currency to rise more quickly against the dollar.

The relatively low interest rates have also, however, reignited a frenzy of construction of apartment buildings and factories. Investors have borrowed heavily from state-owned banks in the hope of reaping large profits if the economy continues to expand rapidly. If economic growth falters, these loans could be added to the banks’ already large portfolios of bad debts.

The central bank raised the benchmark rate for one-year bank loans to corporations to 6.12 percent on Friday

Friday’s rate increase comes despite a series of signs over the last week that rapidly rising investments have not yet caused the broader economy to overheat.

Annual growth in industrial production slowed sharply last month, to 16.7 percent from 19.5 percent in June. Even the annual growth in investment in office towers, shopping malls and other urban fixed assets dropped last month to 27.4 percent from 33.5 percent in June.

After rising early this year, the consumer price index fell steadily through May, June and July, and was just 1 percent higher in July than a year ago. That suggested the Chinese economy has not yet run into shortages of labor, transportation and other bottlenecks that could drive prices sharply higher.

By contrast, prices surged in 2004, the last time the Chinese economy experienced an investment frenzy that prompted the government to hit the brakes. Inflation jumped then from nine-tenths of a percent in August 2003 to 5.3 percent a year later as railroads proved unable to ship enough goods, power stations failed to keep up with electricity demand and other shortfalls appeared.

While industrial and price statistics for July gave some sign that problems are under control this year, bank lending and the money supply continued to rise last month. That prompted many analysts to predict that China could face higher inflation and loan defaults in the future if not enough is done to tackle the investment boom now.

In another sign that the central bank is more worried about speculative investment than a broader overheating of the economy, the People’s Bank of China took two steps on Friday that appeared to be aimed at helping consumers.

The central bank gave regulatory approval for commercial banks to offer bigger interest rate discounts for home buyers seeking mortgages. And the central bank raised the interest rate that banks can pay on one-year deposits to 2.52 percent from 2.25 percent.

Higher interest rates on deposits will probably help households, who save up to half their incomes these days and put most of their savings in banks because the country’s stock markets have a poor image and bonds are very hard to trade.

The government has also not resorted to potentially its biggest weapon for slowing the economy: allowing faster appreciation of the currency, known as the yuan or renminbi. This would make Chinese goods more expensive overseas, slowing demand for them and curbing the growth of China’s enormous export sector. The United States, the European Union and Japan have periodically made requests for a currency adjustment.

Having used two tools, raising bank reserve requirements and interest rates, central bank officials “don’t want to add a third one into the mix, particularly one that’s unpredictable,” Mr. Simpfendorfer said.

Unions Gain Ground at Wal-Mart in China

Door Also Opens To Communist Party Branches

By Elaine Kurtenbach

Associated Press
Friday, August 25, 2006; Page D05 Washington Post

SHANGHAI, Aug. 24 -- Wal-Mart, capitalist retailer for the masses, now has its first Communist Party branch.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a bastion of private business, has fought efforts to form unions elsewhere in its worldwide operations. But in recent weeks it has agreed to work with the state-sanctioned labor federation to allow unions at its outlets in China, where it has 30,000 employees.

Earlier this month, a party branch, a Communist Youth League branch and a labor union were set up at a Wal-Mart outlet in China's northeastern rust-belt city Shenyang, a staff member in the store's communications department said Thursday, confirming Chinese media reports.

As is typical of many media-shy Chinese, she gave only her surname, Liu. She would not discuss further details.

Repeated phone calls to the public relations department of Wal-Mart's China headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen were not answered Thursday afternoon.

The All-China Federation of Trade Unions, reportedly at the behest of Chinese President Hu Jintao, has been campaigning for several years to set up party-controlled unions in Wal-Mart branches, as well as with other companies with partial foreign ownership.

Wal-Mart, which has 60 stores in 30 Chinese cities, resisted for two years before employees in the southeastern city of Quanzhou voted to set up a union in late July.

Shenyang Wal-Mart has two party members and 16 Communist Youth League members out of its 389 employees, according to the official New China News Agency, which carried the news as an "urgent" bulletin.

It is not clear exactly how the party branch would operate. The news agency report stressed that its function would be to promote better business.

The party and youth league branches "will encourage members to play an exemplary role in doing a good job and that will be helpful to business development," it quoted Chen Lie, a Communist Party district leader in Shenyang, as saying.

Chen said the groups would not interfere with management or operations of the retailer, which is based in Bentonville, Ark.

Since July, employees of at least 16 other Wal-Marts in China have formed unions, according to the trade union federation, an umbrella group permitted by the communist government. Overall, China aims to unionize employees at 60 percent of its foreign companies by the end of this year.

China does not allow independent labor organizations. Unions usually represent the workforce of a single company or outlet, rather than an industry, and they have traditionally been allied with management.

The Communist leadership has sought to preserve the party's influence in the business sector despite sweeping capitalist reforms and a huge influx of foreign capital and management.

Once a thriving industrial hub of China's planned economy, where factory workers enjoyed elite status and cradle-to-grave benefits, Shenyang has experienced massive layoffs in recent years.

China's aging population to slow economy: report

Reuters
Sunday, August 20, 2006; 11:18 PM

By Washington Post

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's one-child policy has led to an aging population and labor shortages that could undermine a key basis for the country's economic growth -- its seemingly endless supply of cheap workers, a newspaper said on Monday.

Family planning policies started since the late 1970s have prevented the birth of hundreds of millions of people, but incomes have not risen fast enough to support pensioners, the China Youth Daily cited a government report as saying.

"In the not too distant future there will be a day when there is an end to the unlimited labor supply," the state newspaper said. "It is this that had been one of the most basic advantages of China's recent economic development."

The report, produced by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government think tank, said industry had yet to face up to this fact despite factories in economic heartlands in Guangdong and near Shanghai already finding it hard to get workers. "Although China wants to change the proportion of manufacturing industry (in the economy), it will take a long time, and today there are no signs or motion toward this adjustment happening," it said. "The labor force is doubtless the most basic support of economic development."

According to a United Nations study released last year, the number of people aged 60 or over is expected to rise to 31 percent of the population in 2050, or more than 430 million people, from just 10.9 percent last year.

That would be well above the projected world average of 21.7 percent in 2050.

The report said the appearance of an aging population in a developing country where per capita GDP has only just exceeded $1,000 was "unprecedented."

"The country is unique in the world in that is it aging first without becoming affluent," it said.

Since China began opening up to the outside world almost 30 years ago, millions of people have flooded to cities from the countryside looking for work, and have helped turn the country into the world's factory, making everything from shoes to cars.

Analysts have warned that China faces a "pension time bomb" from its aging population.