Zhao Jian is the founding president of the Xijing Research Institute and a member of the China Chief Economist Forum
An economy, a society, and a personThe most important thing is how to learn to say goodbye to the past。In the transformation of the economy and society, many times the risks and costs do not come from the future, but from the past. The burden of history is heavy, and the old production capacity and vested interests are desperately clinging to the defects, and if you want to "establish a new", you must "break the old". Therefore, in the process of social transformation that has said goodbye to the past, there are very few peaceful transitions, and most of them have experienced huge crises, even leading to bloody revolutions.
Today,China may be in the midst of the most ambitious and thrilling farewell in the 45 years of reform and opening up – bidding farewell to the high-speed "flight" of the past and building a high-quality "landing" for the future。One of the most concentrated manifestations is:Learn how to say goodbye to real estate and the corresponding land finances。Perhaps only by bidding farewell to real estate and land can China completely move from an agricultural civilization to an industrial civilization, from a traditional society to a modern society.
The unique land finance is like moving from the countryside to the towns"The second land reformIt is the era of "economic construction as the center".The most powerful force for social mobilizationThe local government, banks, real estate developers, the children of farmers who dream of migrating from the countryside to the city, as well as the upstream industrial capital such as steel, concrete, and machinery, have all been vigorously mobilized, and the formal transformation from rural China to urban China has been basically completed.
Today, this transformation is largely complete in the eyes of the top, and all that remains is to say goodbye to the past:
Say goodbye to land finance, which accounts for more than half of the local ** income, may account for more than seventy percent if the relevant land financing is added;
Say goodbye to the demand created by real estateIts significance is not only one percent of GDP, but also closely related to more than 50 industries, such as home improvement, building materials, greening, property, handling, cleaning, etc., which are closely related to the employment of ordinary people;
Say goodbye to real estate finance, so that the people's main wealth storage position "housing not speculation", de-financialization, social property needs to be fiercely revalued, which also means the revaluation of the value of liabilities, from the balance sheet expansion under the assumption of inflation and housing prices to the asset-liability recession under deflation and housing prices continued to decline. An aging society and a debt-ridden society.
Obviously, this farewell was not as easy as it was originally thought. From the "three red lines" to topple the dominoes of credit, to the "three arrows" trying to rebuild this long industrial chain and credit chain relationship, it is obviously impossible. I repeat:The essence of the modern economy is a credit economy, and the credit economy is irreversible. The implementation process of the policy is also asymmetrical, "from evil as collapse, from good as ascending"; The essence of credit is trust, and it can be destroyed overnight, but it takes years to rebuild trust. Very simple metaphor,There are nine birds in the trees, and a single gunshot can scare them all away, but how hard it is to get them all back! The old leader has long reminded us that we must respect the inherent regularity of things, and pay attention to methods, methods, and methods in doing work.
Learn to say goodbye to real estate, which is a major proposition for every country and economyAnd it's not just China。How many years did Japan spend more than 30 years on this farewell, more than 20 years for the United States, and how many years did China take for China? From a maximum of 12% of GDP in real estate, it has fallen to 6% todayIt took just over two yearsThe same landing of an aircraft at an altitude of 10,000 meters, is it a gradual deceleration of speed and taxiing, or a direct high-altitude fall? The same landing, the same farewell, different postures, you have to face different risks and pains. Do we often use Japan as a lesson, but we seem to be inadvertently repeating the mistakes of the past? If so, will there also be a long season of debt and balance sheet repair?
Here, the reason why I call this farewell "long" is not only that I cannot easily part with "this shore", but also that the process of finding "the other shore" will also be long and tortuous. It is not easy to "break", and the long pain is not as good as the short pain, but it is even more difficult to "stand", and the process of "standing" will be extremely long. Of course, "breaking" is not the goal, "establishing" is the goal. A lot of the time,Broken like a collapse, standing like a climbAn asymmetrical historical evolutionary process。Don't take it for granted that if it is broken, there will be a stand, this is a kind of mechanism.
In the same farewell process,China is very different from JapanThe biggest difference is that the biggest correlation with real estate is finance in China and finance in Japan。So in this farewell process, the first problem is the financial stability of the local government. Today, the society is full of haze, it seems that there is a shortage of money everywhere, and the company's main business income seems to be good, but it is all receivables and payables, the account period has been extended several times, and there are more and more problems of arrears and wages. Tracing the source along the debt chain,Often the source is the local ** and state-owned enterprises
It is not easy to be a local **, with limited financial rights and unlimited powers, plus three years of fighting the epidemic, almost overdrawing the family's funds. In order to ensure daily operation, all the cash borrowed from all over the world is used to ensure basic wages and expenses, how can there be any money left over to repay the debts, let alone increase people's livelihood and engage in local economic development? If we do not see these problems now, it is easy to misjudge the situation and the tone of the policy.
The current situation, a farewell to the extensive development model of the past, is an inevitable encounter in the society of "transformation + development". According to Rostow's take-off theory, an airplane should never fly at high altitude and high speed all the timeThere will always be a day when Lu will come, otherwise the factor fuel will not be able to keep up. The high-speed flight of China's plane relied on large-scale investment and construction, and the fuel used was not only labor and heavy industrial capital formed by industrialization, but also a steady stream of debts (borrowed capital). We interpret the characteristics and problems of this large investment and construction from the two sides of "yang" and "yin".
From the "yang" side,China's past model of large investment and constructionIt's all fixed assets, super durable goods, which is the most circuitous part of what Bombavik calls "roundabout production".。Houses can be used for 50 years, highways, airports, urban road networks, high-speed rail, subways, etc., can be used for decades or even hundreds of years. Roundabout production is one of the characteristics, which means that the time to convert into final consumption value and cash flow is slow and circuitous. In fact, among the many projects that use land finance and land finance as funds and capital, many projects are not only difficult to break even in the short term, but also many are long-term negative cash flows. That is, not only is the profit at full cost (plus depreciation) a loss, but the profit margin after deducting depreciation is also negative. Many of the circuitous production facilities formed by these large investments are negative equity and are a significant burden.
On the "yin" side, it is the formation of these infrastructure and fixed assets, often with huge debts。Borrowing is also a mobilization mechanism, in Schumpeter's words, "purchasing power formed out of thin air". This is nothing short of a miracle compared to a debt-free economy, because by borrowing, money can fall from the sky. However, of course, there is no pie in the sky, and banks and other financial institutions will certainly not lend to a person without "credit" for private debt or borrowing with very hard budget constraints (this is the core point of my debate with many scholars in the first half of the year). However, local ** and state-owned enterprises are different, and there is an inherent problem of "soft budget constraints". With the credit endorsement of the state, they can overdraw credit to a large extent. Although it has invested in some projects with "social benefits", due to the unclear accounting of these accounts, a large number of moral hazard and adverse selection problems have arisen, resulting in a serious phenomenon of national advancement and retreat.
At this time, pay attention to the reminders of the two scholarsOne is Mr. Huang Renyu, the founder of the "big history" theory, he believes that the core cause of the failure of the Ming Dynasty is the financial collapse, and the core cause of the fiscal collapse is"There is a lack of clear numerical managementThe other is the Austrian economist Basbard, who argues that "the Great Depression was a punishment for the waste of investment stimulated by excessive debt."
So in the next few years, more than ten years,It will be a season of "long goodbyes".It will also be a season of "long search". Actually,The future is hereEach of us is already in such a season, and those who are still dressed in midsummer attire and still immersed in the illusion of feasting will of course be swept away by the cold winds of autumn. Sowing seeds in the autumn is, of course, "the harder you work, the more you lose".
But,The past is not goneThe balance sheet is still filled with the things of the past, but it has withered and ossified all over the mountains. In the long season, the coldest time has not yet arrived, and preparing for winter storage is the most rational choice. However, if you have the ability to build a greenhouse, you will be immune to the macroclimate around the clock, and you can continue to sow and harvest, and dominate the season of asset shortage. Of course, this requires hardcore resources, transcendent cognition, and tenacious will to create hardcore assets.