CER Sep. 2014

Youth employment: Grads’ SOE dreams hamper private sector

SEPTEMBER 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 9

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Q&A: Slowing China growth may not pose a global risk

Forever farmers?

No longer rural on paper, migrants still face barriers to true urban integration

中经评论：O2O变局

SEPTEMBER 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 9

2014 FEATURED CONTENT SEPTEMBER VOL. 25, NO. 9

THE HOUSE VIEW Published monthly since 1990 Publisher China Economic Review Publishing Editor Oliver Pearce Staff Writer Hudson Lockett Chinese Editor Liu Chen Associate Editor Skye Sun Contributors Tom Nunlist Interns Kangning Chen, Nathalia Hardie, Colleen Howe Art Director Jason Wong Editor at Large Graham Earnshaw Associate Publisher Gareth Powell Director of Sales and Marketing Ralph Wang Account Manager Jerry Cheng CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW (ISSN: 1350-6390) is published by China Economic Review Publishing Enquiries cer@ChinaEconomicReview.com Subscriptions subscriptions@ChinaEconomicReview.com Addresses The Plaza Building, 102 Lee High Road London, SE13 5PT, England Room 1801, 18F Public Bank Centre 120 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong Hong Kong printer 01 Printing Limited Suite M, 3/F, Tower 3, Kwun Tong Industrial Centre, 448 Kwun Tong Road, Kowloon CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW welcomes letters. Please write to the editor at: letters@ChinaEconomicReview.com Advertising enquiries ads@ChinaEconomicReview.com Hong Kong: +852 3174 6136 Shanghai: +8621 5187 9633 ext 811

04 LET ‘EM IN | China should let its migrants live where they work

MONTH IN REVIEW 06 NEWS BRIEF | The biggest China news stories in August

Q&A AND COLUMNS 08 OVERLOOKED CONSEQUENCES | The biggest impact of Beijing’s resource quest has been on global trading prices

10 A RISKY PROPOSITION | Zennon Kapron, a China financial expert and author of Chomping at the Bitcoin, says the virtual currency still poses too much risk for Chinese financial regulators

12 LOWER TIER COMMERCIAL MARKETS | James Shepherd, Head of Research Greater China at Cushman & Wakefield, discusses the prospects for commercial property markets in lower-tier cities

14 CHINA AND GLOBAL GROWTH | Increasing concerns that slowing growth in China poses a risk to the global economy are likely unfounded

16 MAKING ‘CHINDIA’ A REALITY | Confidence is high that a new Indian PM can build stronger ties with China despite previous efforts having failed to overcome obstacles 18 SIMPLIFYING THE SYSTEM | Separate social and private insurance systems are an economic bottleneck

COVER STORY 20 HUKOU REFORM: LONG WAY FROM HOME | Despite changes, policy still ties migrants to their rural land and blocks them from city benefits in all but name

BUSINESS 26 YOUTH EMPLOYMENT | Chinese graduates prefer working for SOEs, and that could be bad for the economy

ECONOMICS & POLICY 28 DISSEMINATING DIRTY DATA | Chinese scientists have HKABC membership membership approved approved and and certifi certified ed HKABC

developed the “Short-horse” national pollution forecast, which races past the laggard efforts of Chinese officials

THE HOUSE VIE W

Let ‘em in With the abolishment of the “agricultural” hukou class, China has taken a good first step in the right direction, but it’s time to take a lot more

P

rior to this year, the new administration seemed poised to try ending practices dividing China into rural and urban residents and, in so doing, take a necessary step in combatting the growing inequality that has accompanied the country’s rise. China’s Communist Party leadership, in particular premier Li Keqiang, have stressed the importance of urbanization as a means to both address the increasingly dire rural-urban wealth gap and to unlock the spending potential of Chinese in the countryside.

Bringing them into the fold of the county’s middle class, the thinking goes, would swell its ranks and its pocketbooks, providing a boost to discretionary spending while raising living standards.

With the State Council’s latest announcement that the household registration system will no longer classify citizens as agricultural (rural) or non-agricultural (urban), China would seem to be on track to implement real reform. But as has been the case with previous efforts to spearhead hukou (registered residence) reform, the latest changes have been mostly surface-level and show that the leadership still isn’t willing to let migrants put down roots where they work: the big cities, where jobs are most plentiful and which have benefitted most from the rural workforce’s cheap labor. In truth the hukou system still has plenty of restrictions to effectively bar rural Chinese from enjoying government-provided benefits outside their hometowns, and land laws still won’t let them sell their land freely and at fair prices.

Changes to the rural land system are perhaps the most politically charged, since the collectivization of rural land was made to prevent accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few rapacious landlords at the

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China Economic Review | September 2014

expense of an uneducated peasantry.

A more practical objection to land reform is that farmers would be cheated when selling their land, or will burn through their new money so quickly in the city that it would be better to not let them sell it off at all. However trial programs in eastern China show that, when handled carefully and transparently, farmers can benefit substantially from receiving land rights more like those already enjoyed by their urban brethren.

This would of course deprive local governments of one of their main sources of income: land requisition.

Governments often partner with the collectives charged with guarding farmers’ interests to buy rural land at dirt-cheap prices, then rezone it as urban to be sold at huge profit. This is all done without farmers’ consent, meaning that the system offers none of the protection it claims to provide.

That means that new sources of fund-

ing for local governments – provided, for example, by tax reforms enacted by the central government –- are another precondition for fair and open rural land markets.

The need for new income sources is also true of the big cities that now host most migrants. In the meantime, city governments, which now serve as gatekeepers to their own hukou supplies, should use their power over local policy to employ less often the harshest tools at their disposal for enforcing the local-migrant divide.

Beijing, for example, has seen officials deny public education to hundreds of migrant children whose parents can’t meet the city’s unreasonable documentation requirements.

Such enforcement exacerbates social tensions by pursuing a course of local protectionism. More cities should take their cues from Shanghai and Guangdong, whose migrant communities, while still not granted full residence, are at least afforded access to more basic necessities, and are better able to avoid splitting up so that their children can attend class back in their registered hometown.

The most restrictive elements of the hukou system were ostensibly put in place to avoid a repeat of the gross inequalities of the pre-PRC days. Without collectives regulating land, party leaders feared a minority of powerful landlords would once more gather obscene wealth at the expense of a majority of peasant farmers tied by debt and duty to the land they tilled. Reforms have lifted millions here out of poverty since the end of China’s high-Maoist days, but the local-migrant divide and rural land system now threaten to enshrine a new urban landowning elite. If urbanization is the goal, whatever form it takes will need to allow people freedom of movement and ownership in equal measure.

NEWS ROUNDUP

MONTH IN REVIEW

Credit: David Woo

Chinese officials in more than 70 small cities and counties have dropped GDP as a performance metric, Financial Times reported, citing state media. The move, which follows a directive issued by top leaders last year, is among the first concrete signs of China switching its blind pursuit of economic growth at all costs towards measures that encourage better quality of life by focusing more on environmental protection and reducing poverty. “Using GDP as the main assessment method has caused a lot of problems, like unequal income distribution, problems with the social welfare system and environmental costs,” said Xie Yaxuan, an analyst at China Merchants Securities.

credit and financing figures where the amount of cash flowing into China tumbled to a near six-year low in July of RMB273.1 billion (US$44.34 billion). The central bank seemingly downplayed the drop but the dour news rattled some economists who are worried about demand in the property sector and the willingness of banks to lend.

The Chinese property market showed further signs of weakening in July, with real estate investment slowing and sales falling sharply despite efforts by many local governments to support the troubled sector, Reuters reported, citing property analysts.

Housing sales skidded 16.3% in July compared with a year ago in terms of floor space. New construction fell 12.8% in January-July as developers tried to clear huge inventories of unsold homes but have failed to attract many buyers, who expect further price declines. Analysts said the unwinding of property controls would lend some support to the market in coming months but a greater concern would be whether authorities made credit more readily available to borrowers.

Finance Despite a burst of government stimulus, the Chinese economy showed further signs of softening in July, Reuters reported, citing official data.

This suggests more policy support may be needed to keep growth on track as a property downturn worsens. The biggest surprise came from

Bank of China, China’s fourth biggest lender, plans a RMB30.7 billion (US$5 billion) bond sale that will be the largest of all tier-1 notes in the country, Bloomberg reported. Bank of China plans to issue the bonds in various currencies, which may include the Chinese yuan and the US dollar. The Beijing-based lender

FREE TRADE SUCCESS: Amazon to begin operations outside Shanghai's free trade zone to the greater China market

is targeting a 6% to 7% coupon. The bank reported in August that it had more than doubled the amount it set aside for bad loans as profit growth cooled to the slowest pace in five quarters amid a slump in economic expansion.

Credit: epSos .de

Economy

For the first time, investment banks in China have raised more money from assisting with private sector IPOs than state-owned enterprise IPOs, Financial Times reported, citing Credit Suisse. Just a third of banks’ fees from equity-raising this year have come from state-owned companies, compared with more than half in 2013, and an average of two-thirds during the boom years of Chinese listings between 2005 and

CHINA BY NUMBERS truck drivers protest in Ningbo

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China Economic Review | September 2014

85% US investor visas snapped up by Chinese

Chinese “economic fugitives” living in US

150

2.3% How much consumer inflation rose in July

2010. The swing is a sign of the stateowned sector’s interest in broadening its funding options beyond raising equity, as well as its decreased interest in pursuing listings since Beijing signalled plans to reform the sector.

Politics & Society

China’s President Xi Jinping looks set to continue his campaign against corruption, with senior executives of state-owned enterprises as his next target, Xinhua reported. It gave a list of SOE executives and their perks, including extravagant meals, fancy cars and games of golf.

Xi had vowed at a meeting to eliminate these kinds of expenses attached to senior positions at SOEs and to cut salaries. Xinhua noted that public discontent over high salaries at SOEs was mounting, especially in monopolised sectors where high pay levels were deemed particularly unjustified.

Thirty-eight people were detained and eleven were still on the run after authorities intercepted 30,000 tonnes of chicken feet to which suppliers had added excess hydrogen peroxide, Reuters reported, citing Xinhua.

Zhejiang police said in a microblog post they had broken up 35 sales net-

52% decline in gold sales in China in Q2 from a year earlier

works for tainted chicken feet, valued at over RMB300 million (US$48.76 million). According to the Hong Kong government’s Centre for Food Safety, Oral ingestion of 3% hydrogen peroxide solutions generally does not result in severe toxicity but may result in vomiting, mild irritation to mucosa and burns in the mouth, throat and stomach. The exact level found in the chicken feet was not reported.

Business

In what may become the first success story of Shanghai’s free-trade zone, Amazon said it will begin operating out of the zone to better penetrate the greater China market, The Wall Street Journal reported. The deal signed with zone authorities allows Amazon to open the company’s global platforms to Chinese consumers, enabling them to import bags and books normally available for delivery only in other countries. In a separate statement Shanghai municipal authorities also said Amazon will open a logistics warehouse to expand exports of goods from Chinese companies.

China’s Ministry of Health said it will seek to speed up the development of the country’s medical device industry and promote wider use of local products to “effectively control unreasonable increases in the cost of medical care and reduce the burden on patients,” Reuters reported.

Incentives to encourage hospitals to use Chinese-made medical devices may increase the extent of protectionism and is a potential threat to global medical device makers. The US, Europe and Japan currently dominate around three-quarters of China’s medical device market, which was worth RMB212 billion (US$34.51 billion) last year.

Boeing planes bought

by BOC Aviation

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32% increase in the number of daily users of Weibo in June from a year earlier

The European Chamber of Commerce said in a statement that there have been allegations of Chinese antitrust authorities using intimidation tactics to convince European companies to submit to penalties without a hearing as well as warning companies not to challenge investigations or to involve lawyers, governments or chambers of commerce, Bloomberg reported. Names of companies being probed have also been reported in the media during investigations, which is “highly unlike rule-of-law behavior,” said chamber vice president Stefan Sack. The comments come as authorities pressured seven carmakers to cut prices and raided the offices of software maker Microsoft.

Credit: Tim Wang

Credit: Robert Scoble

NEWS ROUNDUP

Chinese regulators have found Mercedes-Benz guilty of manipulating prices for after-sale services, Xinhua reported. The National Development and Reform Commission launched an investigation into the auto industry following state media complaints that foreign carmakers such as VW, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz were overcharging customers for vehicles and spare parts. The Xinhua report made no mention of possible penalties for Mercedes, though the commission can impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s China revenues for the previous year.

number of LNG tankers expected to be built in China by the end of 2020

50 China Economic Review | September 2014

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Q&A : THE PRICE OF OIL

Overlooked consequences The biggest impact of Beijing’s resource quest has been on global trading prices

W

hile we fixate on sexy headlines about Chinese military threats C iin the South China Sea, ffor instance, we miss the bigger picture. China’s b rrelentless resource quest has the greatest impact h oon trading prices, which may not make for headMichael Levi m lline news, but is a very important reality.

Michael Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and author of By All Means Necessary takes us through China’s resource quest and how it will change the world.

Your new book takes us through China’s resource quest and how it will change the world. What is the key takeaway message from this work?

To me there are two very large takeaways. The first is, while we fixate on the sexy headlines about how Chinese workers in Africa are changing society there or on how Chinese behavior in the South and East China Sea is creating military risks, by far the biggest consequence of China’s resource quest so far has been through its simple impact on trading prices. That’s had consequences for producers and consumers all over the world regardless of whether they have direct interactions with China. We often skip over that, but it’s enormous.

The second big takeaway to me is that while China’s changing the world, China’s engagement with the world is changing China in big ways as well. You see that in the behavior of Chinese companies on the ground in the countries where they invest. You see it in the way that China thinks about military deployments, about cooperation in securing sea lanes.

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China Economic Review | September 2014

You see that in the way that China is addressing its own demand and its own production opportunities, as it responds by itself to the high prices that it’s played a critical part in creating. Its impact on China itself, as China’s resource quest evolves, I think is something that’s been under-appreciated but that over the long run will be very consequential.

In terms of impacting climate change, how does China compare globally and what can we expect over the next 5-10 years?

What we do see is an interaction between China’s efforts to deal with its local environmental problems, its efforts to provide security of supply for its energy sources, and the climate outcomes that develop. To the extent that China feels more confident, for example, in securing natural gas from a variety of sources – domestic, LNG, Russia, Turkmenistan – it becomes more willing to use natural gas to replace coal as a way of cutting local air pollution. That, in turn, has benefits for global climate change.

I think that’s how you think about the impact of China’s resource quest on climate change. It’s the sort of second order effect. I would’ve said a few years ago that extreme Chinese concerns about the security of natural gas supplies means that there won’t be a substantial shift from coal in that direction, which itself has timing implications, but this changing level of confidence, together with much greater concerns about local air pollution, starts to tilt things in a different direction.

BP recently signed a 20-year deal to supply China National Offshore Oil Corp. with LNG. What is so significant about the deal, and what does it mean for the LNG market?

There’s a general belief even among a lot of people who watch the LNG markets closely that China has no

involvement in exports of US natural gas. It’s certainly true that no Chinese company has signed a contract with an operator of a US LNG terminal.

But, I was struck during a visit to China last month to hear people describe what they thought was upcoming exports of US natural gas to China. What they identified were situations where traders who had contracts with US LNG exporters had, in turn, other contracts to sell their gas on to CNOOC. The indicator in these situations was that the contracts they signed, first with BG and now with BP, have prices for delivered gas that are partially indexed to natural gas rather than to oil.

Without seeing the contracts, no one knows whether this is linked to physical flows as well. But at a minimum, it means that the emergence of the United States as an LNG exporter has created an opportunity for buyers, including buyers in China, to diversify some of their price risks that are traditionally being associated with LNG imports.

How is China’s resource hunger changing the face of competition globally for oil and gas plays in frontier venues in Africa and the Middle East?

Still, I think you need to distinguish between two different kinds of frontier venues. Chinese companies appear to have considerably more appetite for politically risky places. You’ve seen that in Sudan, for example. That’s a place where they have a peculiar kind of competitive advantage over Western firms.

Where I think the competitive advantage has been overstated, at least by casual observers, is in frontier places that are frontier because of their technical difficulties. The Chinese companies still are not on the cutting edge.

They still need to partner, at a minimum, with Western companies, and that constrains their ability to directly

Q&A: THE PRICE OF OIL

out-compete Western multinationals, because in so many cases they need the Western multinationals.

You saw that, for example, in the more technically complicated parts of the Iranian natural gas sector. When Western companies pulled out because of sanctions, there was a fear that Chinese companies would fill in and undermine the impact of sanctions. It turned out that in a lot of cases, the Chinese companies weren’t capable of operating the projects, or needed equipment from Europe or the United States that they simply couldn’t get.

weeks, you want to talk to an expert on Iraq and on Kurdistan. I think the big question looming over all this is the long-run impact.

Most forecasts that foresee US$100-ish oil prices definitely assume that a significant part of delivering that comes from Iraq, and if the political and security situations aren’t conducive to substantially more investments that part isn’t there. That’s why you’re seeing the more distant oil prices perk up by more than near term ones, because people are concerned about this long-term ability to deliver.

With the Islamic State now in control of a large swath of land bridging Syria and Iraq, and arguably in control of all of Syria’s relevant oilfields, how outsized do you expect the disruptions to be in the coming weeks and months, keeping in mind that so far the crisis has not begun to affect Iraqi oil exports?

To understand impacts in the coming

Who has been benefiting the most from Iraqi oil?

Look, the big oil consumers benefit from Iraqi oil regardless of whether they actually import oil from Iraq.

I think one of the big fallacies in people’s thinking about the Iraqi oil sector has been the focus on who’s making money producing the oil. The bigger impact is on consumers. It’s not

clear to me that the Chinese make money producing Iraqi oil, at least as producers; but as consumers – to the extent that Iraqi oil production holds world prices down – the Chinese, the United States and also some other countries benefit.

On a numbers basis it wouldn’t surprise me if Jordan benefits enormously, not because of their economic relationship, but because Jordan spends so much money on oil imports.

Anything that keeps production up and holds prices down is good for Jordan. I mean that’s the way you think about it, not just in terms of who’s getting the chance to make US$2 a barrel producing the stuff.

This is an edited version of an interview conducted by James Stafford, editor of energy industry website Oilprice.com. Republished with permission.

China Economic Review | September 2014

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Q&A : BITCOIN IN CHINA

A risky proposition Zennon Kapron, a China financial expert and author of Chomping at the Bitcoin, says the virtual currency poses too much of a financial risk for Chinese regulators at present

W What does the future llook like for bitcoin in China in the next year C aand looking beyond tthat?

I think certainly bitcoin eexchanges will continue tto exist in China. A few oof these exchanges have eexternal funding and Zennon Kapron sso they need to find a b business model to move forward with. Obviously with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) regulations a lot of the traditional business of using bitcoins to buy goods or services has been cut out of the market as well as the ability of bitcoin exchanges to fund directly from bank accounts. A lot of those exchanges are looking at opening US dollar businesses offshore and expanding internationally. The other aspect of bitcoin is the bitcoin miners. There is a huge concentration of bitcoin mining equipment manufacturers and actual mining farms in the South of China, and those will continue because mining isn’t strictly illegal in China, very difficult to detect and electricity tends to be a bit cheaper in mainland China.

So is China a major bitcoin miner?

One of the things that sets China apart [as a center for bitcoin mining] is relatively cheap electricity because China’s electricity just costs less in general and is somewhat subsidized by the government. In many cases people suspect that some of the bitcoin miners actually have relationships with their local electricity authority and so they get almost free power, which is important as the profitability of running an exchange depends a lot on power costs. So in South China where electricity is cheaper or places like Iceland that 10

China Economic Review | September 2014

“If bitcoin is accepted globally, China will have to work out a way to handle bitcoin as well and connect it into the economy in some way” have mining or data centers that are near sources of cold air or natural cooling, they have an advantage.

Do you see the PBOC allowing some bitcoin or some other form of crypto currency as a useable currency in the near future?

I think in the next five years we won’t see much of a change in the position of PBOC on bitcoin or other virtual currencies. Right now the PBOC has got a lot on its plate already with the reforms and regulations both from the banking and capital market side that they need to work through the system. In addition there is liberalizing interest rates and opening up the capital account. So with all those things, bitcoin presents somewhat of an unnecessary risk for the regulators right now and there’s really no need for them to allow it on the market. It’s potential to actually help the financial industry in China is not as great as in other parts of the world.

Chinese regulators have cracked down pretty hard on bitcoin in the domestic financial system, but how does that stack up against the response of other Asian countries?

If you look at the regulations from the PBOC they’re actually, in my belief, fairly well thought out. Technically bitcoin is not illegal in China,

so what the government has done is kind of push the banks to sever the direct relationships with the bitcoin exchanges which makes speculating in bitcoin, buying bitcoin, selling bitcoin a little bit more difficult for both the exchanges and the investors and the speculators.

What we see with regulations across the region is that the more developed financial markets like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore have had slightly more pragmatic approaches to regulations whereas some of the smaller markets or simply less mature markets like South East Asia outside of Singapore had a more “shoot from the hip” kind of response to regulation. In Vietnam and Thailand bitcoin is essentially illegal.

PBOC claims that the digital currency carries unacceptable risks.

What is the legitimacy of this claim?

Individual Chinese nationals are allowed to convert up to US$50,000 currency every year to take out of the country and invest how they see fit. The idea of it initially was that a lot of the high net worth individuals were buying bitcoins and sending them anywhere in the world besides China and then selling them off in a different currency. There are actually much cheaper ways of doing this and a lot of the high net worth individuals in China have had these ways for decades already. In one particular instance we knew of an agent who was able to take an individual’s renminbi and the next day have it in Hong Kong dollars for less than 1%. When you consider the foreign exchange risk of holding bitcoin and the fees that you often pay for buying and selling the virtual currency, it doesn’t really make sense for wealthy individuals.

Q&A: BITCOIN IN CHINA

In terms of the capital control, whilst that could be a risk we didn’t see that as being a primary risk. The problem with bitcoin is that it introduces unnecessary systemic risk and as the government pushes forward with reforms the financial industry is already facing a number of challenges and headwinds in terms of shadow banking industry, decreasing deposits at the state owned banks and increased competitive pressures from both the domestic and foreign banks coming into the market. So bitcoin essentially introduces an additional risk that provides very little benefit for the citizens or for the government in China Bitcoin prices have dropped around 40-45% this year. How much has that been due to weakening demand from Chinese investors?

It’s difficult to tell how exactly how much of the buying and usage of bitcoin is coming from China because of the fact that it is a somewhat anonymous and fully decentralized currency. Certainly the Chinese speculators are moving out of the market but the very hard core speculators are still in the market for the most part. In our interviews we did find some speculators that were smaller individual investors who had say RMB12,000 invested in bitcoin that bought high and sold low so they’re definitely not in the market [anymore]. The average Chinese investor is very used to speculative investments; if you look at the stock market in 2007 and 2008, [it] went through the bubble before it popped. Everyone was involved in the stock market.

The Chinese are very used to get rich schemes and bitcoin fell within that so that drove a lot of speculators to buying bitcoin, and I think certainly that some of them selling out has lowered the price. I mean if you look at what drove up the price in the first place when it hit peaks around the end of November last year, over US$1,000, that was purely driven

by Chinese speculation and you can see at certain points of Chinese exchanges bitcoin was selling higher on Chinese exchanges than it was on Western exchanges, a clear indication of the volume and drive.

If the Chinese government legitimized bitcoin and made it out to be a legitimate investment channel this might draw some of the excess money that flows into property or shadow banking. What are your thoughts on that?

A lot of these things, shadow banking, real estate and the stock market are somewhat under the control of the Chinese government. Whereas if bitcoin was somewhat legitimized in China and was completely out of the government’s control, that opens up a new level of risk and that instead of taking risk away from the market, it’s actually adding risk to the market and I think that will be challenging for the government to overcome. So I can’t see that happening How important is China in the global acceptance of bitcoin?

If bitcoin is accepted globally, China will have to work out a way to handle bitcoin as well and connect it into the economy in some way. But in terms of China contributing to the acceptance of bitcoin and the growth of bitcoin and the potential of acceptance of bitcoin as a legitimate alternative to fiat currencies, I don’t believe China will play a great role in that.

If China or the US or any large economy or economic block opened up a little bit more to bitcoin, there could be more widespread acceptance.

The challenge with any form of payment beyond cash is making it easier than what is already out there and if you look at a place like Hong Kong, for example, with the Octopus card, it’s so convenient to not just use on the metro but in 7/11 [stores] and in so many different venues. The question is how to make bitcoin, how to make mobile payments easier than that. Right now it’s just not there. In addition, within China, the benefits that bitcoin provides are not as competitive as they are in other places because merchant fees and China UnionPay charges are much lower. There are a wide range of third party online payment options like Alipay that are out there already so it doesn’t offer that many benefits in terms of payments or acceptance. The utility of bitcoin in China is somewhat limited China Economic Review | September 2014

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Q&A : OFFICES IN LO WER-TIER CITIES

Lower tier commercial markets James Shepherd, Executive Director and Head of Research Greater China at Cushman & Wakefield, discusses the prospects for the commercial property market in lower-tier cities

I appears that demand It ffor new commercial ffloor space is weakeniing and vacancy rates iin many lower-tier citiies are rising sharply.

IIs this what you are sseeing?

That depends very T much on which sector m James Shepherd o of commercial we are discussing, the city and d sometimes even the specific district but in general yes, demand is cooling and vacancy has increased.

Do you agree that demand for offices in third-tier cities and lower is generally quite weak as most companies that make it big would prefer to set up headquarters in a larger city? What does the office market look in lower-tier cities?

Third-tier cities do not have the developed, high-quality office markets that we are familiar with in first-tier and some second-tier markets. Office accommodation in third-tier cities is typically made up of low-end strata titled developments or smaller components of larger mixed-use projects that are designated for office use.

Businesses in such localities are often from the secondary industry sector with local manufacturing operations where their company offices would form part of a much larger manufacturing complex, and these are typically outside the downtown areas.

Buyers of strata titled offices in these markets would typically be business owners of local manufacturing companies. The China headquarters of larger organizations operating across China or across international markets will always be attracted to major business hubs but will often look to set up other operations in second and possibly even third-tier 12

China Economic Review | September 2014

“Shoppers’ preferences are changing all the time, and at the thirdtier city level that there is still room for a major shift in general consumer preferences, much more so than in firsttier cities” cities. Such businesses will look very carefully at technology infrastructure, the number of good nearby educational establishments and proximity to major markets, amongst other factors.

If even Shanghai is struggling to digest current commercial space, what is the outlook for lower-tier cities that are not as rich and are seeing lots of new floor area being added?

Each city needs to be considered on its own merits and clearly Shanghai is in a very different phase of its development than China’s second- and third-tier cities. The success of projects in less wealthy cities depends very much on the local supply dynamic, often at a district or catchment level, infrastructure development and to a large extent the product positioning – don’t be setting up a flagship Louis Vuitton store.

We’ve seen often in China that the retail market can be a “winner takes all” environment and you can frequently observe fantastic successes just blocks from spectacular failures

based on what would appear to be relatively minor differences in location, design, positioning, management, visibility, infrastructure, access, marketing, specification, timing, tenant mix, etc. Developers that really take the time to understand retailing and retailers and do thorough market research at a local level will always come out on top.

Shoppers’ preferences are changing all the time, and at the third-tier city level that there is still room for a major shift in general consumer preferences, much more so than in first-tier cities. In many cases thirdtier city disposable incomes are on the rise and money flow from family members elsewhere in China is likely to be increasing too.

Many regions in emerging parts of China are currently struggling with an economic slowdown.

Although there are some signs of a slight recovery in the second quarter, growth is still weak. How will this affect the commercial property market in lower-tier cities?

China is still observed to be one of the world’s strongest economic growth stories, and recent improvements to the PMI will have an impact on third-tier cities which rely predominantly on manufacturing. Yes, we will have to increasingly get used to lower growth rates and cooling of the overall economy, but at the current stage the office and retail supply situation is having a much more profound impact on the commercial real estate sector than the overall state of the economy.

For developers of commercial projects in these third-tier cities the prevailing challenges are predominantly led by fierce competition, reduced cash-flow from sales activities and the lack of readily available development financing.

Q&A: OFFICES IN LO WER-TIER CITIES

What risks do investors need to look out for when investing in China’s second- and third-tier commercial property markets?

Less well evolved legal systems, varying degrees of implementation of policy, title issues, fewer highquality investment opportunities, higher degree of stratification and unclear ownership structures. Often there are grey areas that can present both an opportunity and a threat.

Commercial property projects in Shanghai would typically have comparatively clean asset structures, have possibly even traded multiple times previously and are set up and designed to be easy to transact, whereas projects in third-tier cities are not nearly as likely to benefit from such clarity.

Some cities are heavily exposed to specific industry sectors and also can experience tough competition from strong neighboring cit-

ies. In this case investors should ask themselves whether that particular city’s industry is going to see strong growth and generate a strong business environment or will plateau, or worse yet see their product markets collapse.

In mid-February local officials in Suzhou issued a limit on the amount of floor space commercial developers could sell before projects were finished, the first commercial property restrictions seen in the market. Is it a red flag for commercial property?

We believe that this has been done to protect property buyers, so we see this as a positive move. Given that it reduces the risk to investors we see it in some ways as a “green light” if anything. However, the fact that this policy has been introduced suggests some strata-titled investors have been starting to get burned. We also know

that some construction projects have already halted in Suzhou, likely due to a lack of funding. In this respect this change in policy raises some concerns for the struggling Suzhou property development market. Over and above this, the move will place increased pressure on strata titled developers of office projects who typically leverage heavily, and rely to a considerable extent on pre-sales cash flow. This could spell disaster for many developers who simply don’t have sufficient cash flow to complete projects, but in turn could present a buying opportunity for opportunistic investors to acquire partially completed projects at bargain pricing before seeing the project through to completion.

The full version of this interview is available on our website chinaeconomicreview.com

China Economic Review | September 2014

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OP-ED: SHAKING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

China and global growth There are increasing concerns that slowing growth in China poses a risk to the global economy. These concerns are likely to prove unfounded

E

arlier this year a RMB3 billion (US$487 milllion) trust fund issued

by China Credit Trust b C Co. and marketed to ccustomers at Industrial aand Commercial Bank oof China threatened to default. Though in the d Paul Taylor e end investors did not ssuffer significant losses, the episode highlighted the riskiness of the rapid growth in trusts and wealth management products in China. A related and long-running concern of the China bears is the real estate sector. Construction is important for GDP and employment, but it is also connected to several other vulnerable sectors. Real estate has been a huge beneficiary of shadow bank lending; furthermore, construction is a major source of demand for producers of steel and concrete (many of which are already struggling with capacity) and land (sales of which underpin the budgets of many local governments). Financial firms, policymakers and increasingly the popular media have warned that a crisis in China’s shadow banking or real estate sectors could pose a threat to the global economy – that it could even represent another “Lehman moment.”

There are some reasons why these fears may be overstated. Most bullish commentators have focused on the possibilities of containing any crisis domestically. For example, although it has grown rapidly, China’s shadow banking sector is still relatively small at 30% of bank assets (compared to 170% in the US). While real estate prices have increased sharply, incomes have mostly kept pace and demand, at least in first-tier cities, seems solid. Compared to most countries, the Chinese government has plentiful re14

China Economic Review | September 2014

sources and tools to combat any crisis.

For example, it can directly influence bank lending in a way that governments in developed countries cannot.

Even if China does avoid a crisis, it appears inevitable that growth will have to slow as it transitions to a more sustainable growth model. This too has caused concern that China may cease to be the engine of global growth. However, my recent research suggests that the world has little to fear from a slowdown in the Chinese economy. There are two main channels through which economic shocks can be transmitted between countries: Trade and finance. Let us consider each in turn.

One might expect that growth in trading countries such as China would have a bigger effect on other countries than countries that trade little. In fact, historically, openness has no statistically significant rela-

tionship with the transmission of growth internationally. However, the trade balance does matter: Growth in deficit countries affects other countries more than that in surplus countries.

How do we explain this? Exports are driven by foreign demand, so there is no reason to suppose that that demand would automatically decline if a country suffered a domestic recession. However, imports would probably fall and this would hurt foreign exporters and overseas growth. We would expect this effect to be particularly strong during a global recession when demand is most scarce. This is indeed what we see in the data.

Although China trades a lot, it runs a surplus. Furthermore, many of China’s imports are supplies for their exports. If exports are not hit, there is no reason to suppose these imports would fall. For both these reasons, an

China: Open for trade, closed to finance Imports/GDP (2012)

30%

Foreign Liabilities of Banks/GDP (Q4, 2013)

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% China

Japan

US

Sources: World Bank, Bank of International Settlements (BIS), People’s Bank of China (PBOC), Z-Ben Advisors Note: BIS figures for foreign liabilities of banks not available for China. Data for China replicated as closely as possible from PBOC statistics.

OP-ED: SHAKING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

EXAGGERATED CONCERNS: Research suggests that the world has little to fear from a slowdown in the Chinese economy

economic slowdown in China may not have much effect on the rest of the world via trade.

How about finance? If we look at the historical data, we find that finance is a more significant channel for the transmission of economic growth than trade. The effect is particularly strong during times of economic crisis (such as the period after the 2008 subprime crisis), and has been growing stronger over time as the financial world becomes more integrated. For example, when the market in mortgage backed securities in the US collapsed after 2008, German Landesbanks, regionally organized lenders mainly involved in wholesale banking, were found to have large exposure to such assets, which necessitated government bailouts.

China is much more closed to finance than trade. While banks in most developed countries have significant international exposure, Chinese banks are almost exclusively domestic. This is partly the result of regulations that limit foreign participation in China’s financial sector, the limited convertibility of the renminbi and a focus on providing services to domestic state-owned enterprises. This financial isolation may have costs for

“China today is in some respects similar to Japan in the 1990s, but with a much more closed financial system. Whether China’s growth slows suddenly (as a result of a crisis) or gradually (as part of a transition to a new growth model) the global economy will probably be fine” the Chinese economy (something the government seems eager to address with proposed reforms), but it also provides protection from foreign economic problems. This was one of the reasons China was relatively unscathed by the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and subprime crises in 2008.

The reverse is also likely to be true.

Foreigners have little financial exposure to the Chinese financial system and so a crisis in China is unlikely to spread by the financial channel.

There is recent precedent to support this view. Japan suffered a major financial and real estate crisis in 1990 that led to a sharp slowing of growth.

At the time, it was the second-largest economy in the world, and a major trading nation. Despite this, the Japanese crisis was largely a domestic affair with little contagion to other economies. China today is in some respects similar to Japan in the 1990s, but with a much more closed financial system. Whether China’s growth slows suddenly (as a result of a crisis) or gradually (as part of a transition to a new growth model) the global economy will probably be fine.

Paul Armstrong-Taylor is Resident Professor of International Economics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and author of the forthcoming paper ‘Effects of Trade and Financial Links on Transmission of Economic Growth’ in the journal Frontiers of Economics in China.

China Economic Review | September 2014

15

OP-ED: CHINDIA

Making ‘Chindia’ a reality Confidence is high that a new Indian PM can build stronger ties with China, but previous efforts have failed to overcome the numerous obstacles between the rivals

N

early a decade ago, in late 2006, the then President of China, P President Hu Jintao P met with India’s Prime m Minister Manmohan M Singh in New Delhi S with a promise to join w fforces through close Alicia Garcia-Herrero e economic collaboration aand arrive at a mutuaally acceptable resoluttion to long standing ggeopolitical disputes.

The two nations have T had a hostile past, being h iinvolved in a 1962 border war, China’s closed ness with India’s rival n neighbor, Pakistan, and n differences over Tibetd aan sovereignty. A first Sumedh Deorukhkar vvisit in over 10 years by a Chinese head of state, the Hu-Singh meeting caught the world’s attention as it saw a formidable team in the making.

Given the world’s top two fastest growing economies, a complimentary economic structure – China’s manufacturing prowess and India’s technology-based services economy – and together representing one third of the world’s population, the possibilities of cooperation were vast. So much so that “Chindia” (splicing China and India) became a celebrated hybridization that denoted a fast growing success story. Singh forecasted China-India bilateral trade to double to US$40 billion by 2010 while Beijing proclaimed that China and India were sincere friends, partners for cooperation.

Fast forward to 2014 and it seems that the Hu-Singh meeting was merely symbolic, and “Chindia” turned out to be a myth rather than reality. Al16

China Economic Review | September 2014

“For China, talks of peaceful coexistence and an ‘all round strategic partnership’ with India seems more of an astute diplomatic move aimed at rebutting recent criticism from world leaders over China’s territorial ambitions while also stealing a march over the US, which seeks stronger ties with India as a hedge against China in Asia. ” though bilateral trade between the two countries has more than tripled since 2006 to US$65.5 billion in 2013, it remains highly lopsided. India’s trade deficit with China topped US$31.4 billion last year (equal to 3.5% of India’s GDP) attributable in part to a widening productivity gap between the two economies, but also to the fact they don’t have a single Free Trade Agreement (FTA) while there remain far too many barriers to trade and investment.

The bulk of India’s exports to China are raw materials, mainly iron ore, while China exports a wide range of sophisticated manufactured goods, mainly machinery and telecoms equipment. Meanwhile, China’s territorial disputes continue to drag on as

sporadic clashes over India’s northern border with China raise security concerns, in turn undermining bilateral trade and economic relations.

Putting diplomacy to the test, China’s relationship with its other neighbors, such as Vietnam and Japan, have soured of late over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, in turn also leading to indirect confrontation with Japan’s ally, the US. Given recent overtures by Japan to strengthen trade and investment relations with India, managing ChinaIndia ties would be a delicate balancing act for both nuclear powers.

For China, talks of peaceful coexistence and an “all round strategic partnership” with India seems more of an astute diplomatic move aimed at rebutting recent criticism from world leaders over China’s territorial ambitions while also stealing a march over the US, which seeks stronger ties with India as a hedge against China in Asia.

For India, meanwhile, the stakes are much higher for a stronger, friendlier and balanced India-China relationship given the strong economic undertone, although excessive engagement with China may risk jeopardizing India’s trade relations with Japan, its longtime business partner.

Against this backdrop, the onus of turning the “Chindia” project into reality lies with India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met in July on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Brazil. The group of five decided to provide an alternative source of financing for BRICS countries and other emerging economies by establishing the New Development Bank (NDB) and a multibillion dollar infrastructure investment fund. The NDB will begin with an initial capital of US$50 billion, which would eventually grow to US$100

OP-ED: CHINDIA

billion, to be paid in equally by all five founding members.

However, an equal weight in capital is a double edged sword, particularly for India, which is highly infrastructure-starved with an estimated need for long term project finance at about US$1 trillion. Notwithstanding an equal say in the BRICS bank’s lending decisions, India may actually be obligated to finance other countries’ infrastructure projects if the BRICS develop beyond its original borders.

The fact that the headquarters will be in Shanghai, albeit headed by an Indian CEO, adds to the difficulties of controlling the lending destination of the NBD’s funds. Given India’s already high fiscal deficit (at 4.6% of GDP) and stretched domestic funding position, getting an approval from Indian lawmakers to release its share of funds to capitalize the NDB could take a long while – getting congressional clearance in

each member country for capital contribution is a precondition for making the NDB operational.

Raising hopes of a deeper engagement towards stronger India-China ties, Xi is scheduled to visit India this September while Modi has been invited to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in China in November, a first APEC attendance for India. Furthermore, Xi has asked India to deepen involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose members include China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

While China attempts to connect India to its eastern allies and in turn to score over the US and Japan, India’s approach to these meetings would be one of cautious optimism. For one, the legacy of distrust and suspicion between the two nations needs to be conquered in order to establish strong

reciprocal partnerships. Furthermore, speaking the same geopolitical language is as critical as the need to pen a landmark FTA, strike infrastructure investment deals and allow greater market access between the two sides.

At a time when domestic reforms have been the centerpiece of policy formulation in both the nations – India working towards boosting investments while China attempts to encourage household consumption – a productive relationship between India and China based on sustainable framework would go a long way towards making “Chindia” a force to reckon with.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero is the chief economist for emerging markets at BBVA. Sumedh Deorukhkar is a senior economist at BBVA in Mumbai.

China Economic Review | September 2014

17

OP-ED: INSURANCE

Simplifying the system Separate social and private insurance systems are an economic bottleneck

T

o most Chinese, the world of insurance is sshrouded in mystery.

No one is quite sure N eexactly what we do, and who else can you think w oof whose business is tryiing to sell people serviices which they hope Michael Pennington tthey don’t have to use?

When international W medical insurers entered the China market in the early 2000s, perceptions of us then were far from favorable.

At that time, anybody involved in buying or selling insurance was basically looked at as a huangniu – or street scalper – a somewhat derogatory term commonly used to describe guys hanging around outside sports and concert venues trying to flog tickets of dubious authenticity.

But over a decade later, perceptions are finally changing as middle class Chinese begin to put more trust in insurance products and seek to protect themselves, their families and their businesses. The rapidly growing pool of expatriate workers also want the best protection.

The catalyst for this change occurred in July 2011 when China’s new Social Insurance Law came into effect.

It mandated that companies trading in China enroll each employee in five insurance programs: Basic pension, basic medical, work-related injury, unemployment compensation, and maternity insurance. In addition the law set out to narrow the gap between urban and rural healthcare provision regardless of employment status, and to make it easier for personal social insurance accounts to move across provincial borders, essentially to make the labor force more mobile. Foreign employees and their employers were also obliged by the new law to make social insurance system contributions, adding more red tape and financial 18

China Economic Review | September 2014

costs for international and, increasingly, Chinese companies seeking to hire international talent.

Despite the law having officially come into effect over three years ago, there are regional variations on its interpretation and implementation. Looking at the issue of foreign worker’s contributions, this is mandatory in Beijing and Guangzhou, but so far, Shanghai has remained exempt.

In Beijing, the monthly contribution employers need to make for each of their staff averages to a little over RMB4,000 (US$650) per month – a significant amount.

When it came into force, there were differing opinions on it in the business community. None were pleased about the significantly higher cost of hiring foreign employees, but some thought it was only fair since similar laws exist in most developed countries. In order for the social insurance system to become practical for foreigners, many obstacles will need to be overcome. Yet if this can be successful, it would present the opportunity to overhaul the all medical insurance in a way that will also have positive benefits for Chinese citizens.

The quality of Chinese public hospitals varies widely, at least when compared with facilities in the West. That’s to say nothing of privacy levels in

treatment rooms, nor the practicalities of navigating the Chinese healthcare system if one does not speak Chinese.

So foreign workers and employers couldn’t really be blamed for wondering what they would really get out of their mandatory social contributions.

Most foreigners already have their own private insurance arrangements to cover treatment at private hospitals which obligatory Chinese social health insurance contributions do not cover. Moreover, the majority of foreigner workers only stay in China for a few years, and certainly very few stay long enough to even think about using any Chinese state retirement fund they may have paid into.

The Chinese authorities could address this situation by allowing insurers to design a system that integrates mandatory social contributions and coverage arrangements. This would mean foreign workers’ contributions to China’s social health insurance system don’t go to waste. There are a few such schemes in China at the moment being rolled out, but these are very much in their infancy: HR managers and chief financial officers need to pressure their brokers to offer such kinds of coverage, not only to benefit their employees but also to encourage the insurance world to speed up the rollout of these new programs.

HEALTH CARE EQUALITY: Increased demand for Western-standard healthcare in China sees the number of new private health insurance deals soaring

OP-ED: INSURANCE

This is the time to act. Due to recent high-level insurance fraud cases in China, official scrutiny of brokers and insurers is being tightened – so we in the industry must now take the lead to help improve health insurance regulation when it is under the microscope.

And after years of non-enforcement, the authorities are cracking down on foreign firms who purchase insurance overseas – it’s now only legal to buy from licensed brokers and insurers, so there’s little alternative.

Anyone connected with a foreign company in China may be thinking pressing for foreign staff to get a better health insurance deal in China is of course a positive goal, but it is just a drop in the ocean of China’s massive employee pool.

Demand from Chinese consumers for western-standard healthcare is soaring. Most Chinese are frustrated by the poor level of medical care that they receive and with the domestic medical system in general; they share

many of the complaints that foreigners have. An executive at a major insurer in Shanghai told me his firm was signing up 350 Chinese a day with private health insurance deals. That’s rapidly expanding demand by any standard.

Where are all these potential patients going to seek the treatment they are paying a higher premium for?

Increasingly, international hospitals and the VIP departments at Chinese hospitals. The Chinese government should encourage the creation of an insurance system where everyone in China can also use private healthcare treatment without their social insurance contributions going to waste, not only foreigners. Knowing their healthcare contributions would not be going to waste would encourage more Chinese to get a better standard of treatment. This would increase their general well-being and sense of security, and raise the overall level of healthcare provision in China by funding expansion of international and private Chi-

nese hospitals. State coffers would also see a boost from the greatly increased tax which could be earned from insurers on the premiums they earn.

Also, with the peace of mind that comes with knowing you could get a high standard treatment for serious illnesses without being hit by a massive bill, the “rainy day” funds kept by many Chinese could be ploughed into the economy through consumption, one of the main goals of the government.

At the same time, China-based firms would also find it easier and less costly to attract and retain elite talent who expect top healthcare packages.

Insurance brokers would gladly shed their mysterious reputation for all of these goals.

Michael Pennington is Operations Manager at One World Cover, a division of Wanley Insurance Brokers.

China Economic Review | September 2014

19

ON THE MOVE: China’s migrants are still beating feet for its top-tier cities, but current urbanization policy wants them to settle elsewhere

Hukou reform: long way from home DESPITE CHANGES, POLICY STILL TIES MIGRANTS TO THEIR RURAL LAND AND BLOCKS THEM FROM CITY BENEFITS IN ALL BUT NAME

COVER STORY: HUKOU REFORM

W

hen China’s State Council announced in late July that it would end the official division of Chinese residents into rural and urban, it ended a practice that for almost six decades represented the worst of the country’s oft-decried residence permit, or hukou, system. When introduced in the late 50’s the restrictive policy bifurcated Chinese into an urban minority with governmentprovided benefits and a rural majority expected to feed both cities and itself.

Today over half of China’s population already lives in the cities. A blueprint for the country’s urbanization announced in March plans for 60% of the population to be urban by 2020, meaning another 100 million Chinese will move to cities. The plan also calls for 45% of the population to have urban hukou, meaning another 250 million once-rural residents will need to be registered in cities. This would theoretically entitle them to better benefits in areas such as health care and education.

The recent State Council provided general outlines on how the central government wants urbanization to proceed: few to no residency rules for those migrating to smaller cities, and increasingly stringent requirements as urban populations pass the 1 and 3 million marks. Cities with over 5 million people can use a “points” system to decide who is accorded residence, a practice already used by larger cities like Beijing that weeds out the vast majority of hukou hopefuls in favor of high-earning or highly educated applicants.

China Economic Review | September 2014

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Credit: reibai

COVER STORY: HUKOU REFORM

CUTTING COSTS: Refusing migrant workers and their families full social benefits is seen as a way to avoid an influx of expenses, but economic opportunities will continue to draw people to China’s big cities

Low-hanging reform However, these developments are less impressive in light of the policy and population shifts of recent decades, which lessened the importance of the urban-rural split on paper, but reinforced it as the central government handed over hukou decision-making to cities themselves. And while many urban residents rode China’s real estate boom to riches, land policy regulating farmers’ plots remained a collectively-owned holdover from the country’s pre-Deng days. The result is an urban underclass in China’s toptier cities, but not of them. That still seems unlikely to change.

“In terms of what is the impact of these new regulations on the flow of migrants, I’d say pretty much nil,” said Michele Geraci, assistant professor and head of the China Economic Policy Program at the Nottingham University Business School in China as well as maker of a documentary on urbanization in China. “In a way the announcement is just an officialization of what was already happening in practice. [Migrants] cannot move where they want to move, they can only move where they don’t want to move.”

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China Economic Review | September 2014

Indeed, in an exhaustive overview of hukou policy and reforms for The China Quarterly in 2008, China scholars Kam Wing Chan and William Buckingham documented many of the measures mentioned in the latest announcement being practiced by cities around the country already facing an influx of migrant workers without the funding or infrastructure to handle them.

“The cumulative effect of these [2008] reforms is not abolition of the hukou,” wrote Chan and Buckingham, “but devolution of responsibility for hukou policies to local governments, which in many cases actually makes permanent migration of peasants to cities harder than before.”

Social benefits split In truth, the rural-urban distinction was vestigial even before the new administration’s debut. That’s because hukou classification previously had two types of classification: urban-rural and local-migrant.

Thus, until recently, one could in most major Chinese cities come across urban locals, urban migrants, rural migrants, and even rural locals, whose agricultural land often borders

a city proper but has yet to be officially incorporated into the municipality’s urban territory. To appreciate how policy evolved to make the urban-rural aspect largely irrelevant requires a peek into the tangled skein of hukou history.

In the years after the hukou system was established in 1958, the urbanrural distinction served to determine who received state-provided benefits such as entitlement to state-subsidized grain rations, state housing, employment and medical care. Rural hukou holders had to fend for themselves on all these fronts and others, as the state expected farmers to be self-sufficient. Thanks to strict control and regulation by the central government, changing one’s hukou from rural to urban – and enjoying the attendant benefits – was all but impossible for most.

Up to the cities However by the early 90’s urban hukou status had lost much of its former cache and, with the end of grain rationing in 1992 throughout most of China, most of its significance. By as early as 1993 a State Council working group was already circulating a proposal draft calling for the end of the urban-rural hukou distinction and adoption of a unified system that categorized citizens based only on their permanent residence; it also recommended allowing local governments to manage their own hukou-related affairs.

The former suggestion was dropped, but by mid-decade cities were running the hukou show. By 2001 the other aspect of hukou classification – local vs migrant – was the only one that really mattered. As social services formerly provided by the central government also devolved to local governments, citizens’ stateprovided benefits came to depend primarily on where they were registered – meaning city governments had both the means and motive to deny outsiders access to social benefits.

Kam Wing Chan, co-author of the 2008 hukou paper, says he expects population flow to big cities will continue, since that’s where most jobs

COVER STORY: HUKOU REFORM

are being created. How local governments actually implement policy in light of the new guidelines is still basically up to them. “They can make it very hard or make it very easy depending on what they want to do,” Chan said.

This land is their land Despite the end of rural-urban distinction, the government made clear that it isn’t going to end one of the main benefits of rural residence: the right to farm a small patch of land.

Many migrants from the countryside view returning to the fields as a fallback option of last resort should urban employment opportunities dry up. In fact, the latest reforms do allow migrants from the countryside to keep that right even if they manage to snag an urban hukou elsewhere; but even here, former rural hukou holders get short shrift thanks to China’s land classification scheme.

Land in China is divided broadly into two categories, urban and agricultural. While all land is technically the state’s, the 70-year leases on urban land can be bought and sold freely. Agricultural land, including all that granted to former rural hukou holders, is still owned by local collectives established in the late 50’s, and is leased to farmers for extendable 30-year terms – without trading rights. No matter how valuable a farmer’s plot might become, the right to sell it remains with the collective. And while collectives can’t develop that land, they can sell it, and local governments can reclassify it as urban. The two can and often do collude to swipe the earth out from under local farmers’ feet.

A draft of China’s latest urbanization plan released in November promised farmers the chance to finally mortgage their land or transfer use rights, and would’ve established village markets for trading those. This was all absent from the final version in March, and the latest policy announcement only promises to preserve farmers’ right to plow these parcels after they urbanize. Hao Zhou, China economist for ANZ Bank in Shanghai, said the reform of China’s

rural-urban land ownership rights divide was still uncertain. “If everyone in rural areas can obtain the right to the land for themselves it will make a huge difference, because it means that China will protect the specific ownership of specific farmers going forward,” Zhou said. “But it’s not clear whether China will do that.”

Still voting with their feet Nor are migrants moving where they central government wants them to, despite its strategy to make smaller cities more attractive. A study by research firm GK Dragonomics found that investment policies that target the urban-rural wealth gap by investing in smaller-scale cities may have encouraged relatively expensive, wasteful projects among some even though many saw their populations decline from 2000-2010. Meanwhile, some larger cities saw relative underinvestment compared to their population growth during the same period, meaning they had fewer resources to deal with the migratory consequences of their economic success.

Under the latest guidelines, 14 of the cities that saw relative overinvestment would impose additional hukou requirements, and seven of those had populations nearing the five million mark at which migration requirements are now supposed to become even more strict. But even the classification scheme for city population is troubled: the new State Council document refers to ‘urban districts’” when breaking down city size. That would make the city of Shantou in Guangdong province, for example, a 5-million city with access to the most strict hukou requirements – even though far fewer actually live in the city proper.

For these reasons and more, China’s current urbanization drive fails to address the systemic problems that make its now former famers second class citizens in the top-tier cities where most of them live and work.

Without real changes to land ownership and social welfare policies, the urban-rural divide will persist - even as those on either side of the gulf live increasingly together.

China Economic Review | September 2014

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COVER STORY: HUKOU REFORM

Hukou views: Policy and property prices In late July the State council released its latest plans for reforming the hukou (housing registration) system. Under the plan, rural and urban hukou status will be merged into a single residency category that is applicable to all, though a localmigrant distinction remains.

Meanwhile, education, healthcare, employment, social security, housing and land systems will, under certain conditions, become available to long-term, nonnative city residents, as well as new arrivals that have obtained a local hukou. The State Council also intends to move 100 million people from the countryside into cities by 2020 to give the urbanization process an added push, especially in lower-tier cities, and the implications of all this for property markets could be significant. In a special feature for our cover story this month, CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW sought out the views of five experts on how the latest reforms could affect residential and commercial property across China.

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China Economic Review | September 2014

Regina Yang, Head of China Research, Knight Frank “At the current stage, there is only a general guideline for hukou reform, and no detailed polices were announced by any local governments,” Yang said. “We don’t see any signs of price movements on the [property] market caused by the hukou reform [in the immediate future]. The latest hukou reform says that the government will remove the limits on hukou registration in townships and small cities, easing restrictions in medium-sized cities, and control the population size in big cities, which means the population will be mainly imported to small and medium-size cities, including tier four cities, and home price in these cities may increase in a long run.”

However, in the short run, “we don’t think the prices in those regions will be boosted by the reform significantly.” Still, with much of the population settled in small and medium-size cities, the demand for commercial property in these cities will increase, and developers will adjust their strategies to accommodate this change, she said. The oversupply issue of commercial properties across China, in particular in tier three and four cities, might be thus solved. Yang said that in large and mega-cities migrants prefer to rent homes when they initially arrive due to high home prices.

“In medium-sized and small cities, migrants will be more likely choose to buy homes, as the prices there are not as high.”

Michael Kilbaner, Head of Research for Greater China, JLL Kilbaner suggested there will be “no significant commercial real estate impact at this point” as the government continues its tight migration controls on tier-one and tier-two cities. “I think one of the concerns would be just a huge physical inflow of people that those cities might not be able to handle,” he said. Even

though the main targets of the hukou reforms are China’s smaller cities, JLL doesn’t foresee a drastic impact in property prices: “The government is able to talk about easing hukous in lower-tier cities because some of those cities are actually seeing population decreases. There’s not really that much commercial development in those lower-tier cities.” And while the government has pledged to move 100 million new rural residents to cities by 2020, Kilbaner was curious, “how much of that [100 million] is already physically in those cities?”

What remains for these migrants is being given the opportunity to access social services in the places to which they've already moved: “I think that probably the majority of those ‘100 million’ people already live [in cities], they just can’t send their kids to school or can't access medical care or the social services in those cities.”

While the recent hukou reforms are a critical step for China as a country, Kilbaner said that “at this point there aren’t any critical implications for commercial real estate. But that is not to take away from the importance of these reforms for the country as a whole. To some extent it’s a little bit of a wait and see issue.”

Eddie Heng, Head of CBRE Consulting, China China’s State Council announcement to promote urbanization by easing eligibility controls for urban residency permits has wide implications and in particular has some important impacts on the real estate market.

The policy will lower entry barriers for smaller cities with populations of less than one million, but will maintain barriers in the large and superlarge cities, causing stronger demand for real estate assets in the longer term in lower-tier cities. However, first and second-tier cities will remain the preferred destinations, with the demand for their residential and commercial real estate remaining strong.

“We expect that regional clusters

COVER STORY: HUKOU REFORM

a planned loosening of some hukou restrictions, “a softness in property prices in all city tiers in China will likely persist for a while.”

URBANIZATION PUSH: The Chinese government’s drive for urbanization has potential repercussions on the nation’s property market

will emerge as a magnet for investment and migration, for example in cities such as Wuhan and Changsha. First-tier cities will continue to grow given their attractive underlying economics. However, to handle this, first-tier cities will need much better urban and infrastructure planning,” Heng said. “Both Beijing and Shanghai currently have a population of over 20 million and are already facing challenges. Better planning could enable mega cities to emerge in China that still offer good quality of life to residents.” As for potential short-term construction excesses in lower-tier cities, “recent history shows that, rather than rely on fundamental demand, local governments tend to support investment in urban and real estate development to drive local GDP growth. Given that shifting both industrial bases and large resident populations is a gradual process, investors should be mindful of signs of excessive construction in lower tier cities in the near term.”

Hao Zhou, China Economist, ANZ Bank Looking at current urbanization plans, Zhou said ANZ forecasts that any significant property price impacts on the real estate market that result from policy reforms will happen in

the longer term. “China will not push rural farmers to become urban residents at a very rapid pace. They will make it a gradual process to nurture this kind of new system.” In the longer term, these reforms could have relatively positive impacts on residential, commercial and industrial property: “Demand for residential properties will be there, and secondly, consumption will be picking up.”

The removal of property restrictions varies across different cities, meaning there won't be a single, homogenous effect in terms of construction across the country, Zhou said. “But the most important thing is that the supply and demand conditions in the different cities have been relatively imbalanced, especially in the thirdand fourth- tier cities that have seen a lot of supply, but where demand is not that solid.” In the short term, government reforms will only provide a temporary boost for property prices across China, especially for the lower-tier cities where the reforms are mainly directed. Following the latest changes, Zhou said, China’s real estate environment will be dependent on overarching factors such as the broader economic environment and the levels of property supply and demand. Currently, property supplies are still quite high in comparison to property demand, so despite

Lu Ting, Chief China Economist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch “We estimate that there are about 27 million empty apartments in China, partly the result of the poor urbanization of migrant workers that meant they did not buy homes in the cities they worked in,” Lu said. For Lu and his team, reforming the hukou system to encourage greater migration to cities would be positive for the property market and therefore prices, as it would reverse what they see as the misallocation of real estate in China. “We have argued that China’s housing supply is misallocated, between urban and rural, developed and less developed regions, and big and small cities." he said. "The effort to urbanize hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers has been hampered by the hukou system, which determines an individual’s ability to access public resources based on region, and by an unfair land ownership system.” Lu said that the hukou reform mentioned in the new State Council statement could help to reallocate housing strategically. Building homes where they are needed could offer support to the property market, and hukou reform could enable this by giving rural residents the incentives to move to where they work and not be forced to buy homes where they are from, which has skewed construction. This view suggests that new urbanization, driven by reforms to hukou and land ownership, will change the housing landscape. In the past, people bought homes where they were from; in the future, people will buy homes where they work, meaning that people will actually buy more of the houses that are built and reduce wasteful construction that hurts developers and local governments. “There will be ghost towns as people move to cities with jobs, and more small developers will likely go bust,” Lu and his team wrote in a June report, “but we see little chance of a systematic crisis.”

China Economic Review | September 2014

25

BUSINESS: YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

STATE AFFECTION: 53% of Chinese graduates hope to land a job at a state owned enterprise rather than work in the private sector

Youth employment Chinese graduates prefer working for SOEs, and that could be bad for the economy

C

hinese people have a thing for working for “the system.”

Officialdom as the natural outlet for good scholars has been shaping people’s mindsets since the feudal era. Although globalization and the opening up of the economy might have cooled this thinking somewhat among university graduates, the post-2008 era has seen a resurgence of stability minded students.

Previously popular private sector employers including foreign firms have gradually lost their appeal amid heavy layoffs and salary cuts following the global financial crisis. In a recent survey conducted by ChinaHR.com, a major online recruitment agency, 53% of graduates surveyed said they hoped to land a job at a state-owned enterprise, or SOE. This is just the latest evidence that state employers are firmly back in favor.

While the state's allure – fixed working hours and generous benefits – is understandable, young graduates’ preference for the state sector is worrying for the economy. If fewer graduates are willing to work in the non-state sector, then private com26

China Economic Review | September 2014

panies that are the biggest employers and drivers of innovation are at risk of losing out on top talent, which could hurt China’s competiveness.

“This affection towards the system is dangerous as talented graduates flock to SOEs, fewer smart minds are supplied to the private sector [that] is in dire need of capable young men,” Wang Xiaozhang, a professor of sociology at Zhejiang University, told the state-run People’s Daily in an interview.

Before the financial crisis, the wind blew in a different direction.

The pre-2008 era saw soaring affection towards private and foreign enterprises among fresh graduates.

Foreign employers were, for a time, a byword for humanized management and high salaries, and carried an excellent reputation. Working at a foreign firm was seen as an honor, whereas work at an SOE was often deemed repetitive, menial and unchallenging, with low pay. Ambitious and capable graduates mostly ignored such roles.

The 2008 financial crisis disrupted this new employment order. In the eyes of many graduates the crisis

fundamentally revealed private and foreign firms’ vulnerability amid economic turbulence: Propelled forward by a bullish economy, they could also be destroyed by a sluggish one. Disillusioned, graduates soon came to realize that a high salary today could transform into unemployment tomorrow. There is no security in the private sector; after the storm struck, they sought refuge in the arms of the state.

Chinese society’s fondness for the “iron rice bowl,” a cradle-to-grave employment and welfare system created under the planned economy and dismantled in the 1990s, is storming back against the broad background of a slowing economy. Not only is economic growth at its lowest in over a decade but a surge in the number of university students in the same period also means there are more graduates competing for jobs.

“If I need to die, I would try anything to die in the system,” has become a popular phrase on social media among struggling and increasingly insecure graduates. Because state firms dominate vast and strategically significant sectors including

BUSINESS: YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

infrastructure, defense, telecoms and, to a significant extent, finance, it is assumed that the government would keep SOEs alive to ensure the normal functioning of the state in bad times – meaning that state employees would be the last to lose their jobs.

But even in good economic times a job at an SOE is lucrative. Government policies have the power to make or break businesses and whole economic sectors, and this uneven allocation of resources has elevated SOEs to an elite status. China Mobile and Bank of China were cited as the most sought-after employers among students graduating from university this year, according to a separate poll by ChinaHR.com. Telecoms and banking, basically monopoly sectors, were the most attractive fields to work in, the survey found: On the whole, the average employee works stable hours with no overtime on weekends and their job is essentially assured.

Yet the biggest attraction of working at an SOE for recent graduates goes beyond comfortable hours and a steady paycheck. Many of China’s young want to live and work in the big cities, where economic growth is mature and residents have the benefit of the best healthcare and education services that the country can provide.

More than four-fifths of respondents to the first survey said they want to find work in a first or second-tier city.

“Met with an elementary school classmate of my husband’s today who has just moved upward from a local branch of an SOE in his hometown to work at the firm’s Beijing headquarters. The company has moved the family’s seat of registered residence to Beijing, which solves the kid’s education problem,” Rachel, a resident of Beijing, wrote in a post on her Sina Weibo microblog earlier this year.

Under China’s housing registration system, known as hukou, only people registered in a city can access local welfare benefits. In late July the central government announced its latest plans to reform this system, but restrictions won’t disappear overnight.

Foreign and private firms are often not able to arrange a hukou transfer for their employees, something that

SOEs with political connections can easily fix.

A frothy housing market also makes state employment a prize target. A decade ago it was still reasonable for a new graduate with a decent job to buy a home even in a big city like Beijing, but as prices have skyrocketed newer grads have been priced out. Employees at SOEs have access to cheap housing through the so-called welfare housing allocation system. Smart graduates have the calculation correct: They may not see streams of money flowing into their pockets today, but it will eventually be decent, and the hidden reduction of expenditure is considerable.

Salaries at private and foreign firms are generally higher than at state enterprises, but so are the pressures. For many graduates, however, working within the system means political connections that can come in useful further down the line. This is in some ways the biggest and most pervasive source of the brain drain from private to state sector.

Academics are worried that this uneven allocation of resources could eventually transform into an unbalanced distribution of talent in the long run, leaving the private sector to wither even more and suppressing creativity and innovation.

“Young people longing for stability suppress a country’s energy and innovation,” said Chen Bulei, a professor at Southwest University of Political Science and Law. “First-class talents should pursue innovative, challenging and high-return careers in order to set the country on the track of constant innovation,” Chen told People’s Daily.

The importance of attracting top minds to the private sector should not be underplayed. According to official data from 2013, private firms create more than 90% of new jobs in China.

“China’s private sector generates most of the country’s employment opportunities,” Bill Adams, senior international economist at PNC Financial Services, told China Economic Review. “Even more than its direct contribution to job and GDP growth, China’s private sector has been instrumental in making

China’s economy more productive, more efficient, and more responsive to market forces.”

Policymakers are aware of the need to support the private sector.

The slowing economy has forced the administration of Xi Jinping to push ahead with cutting red tape, boosting funding to small and medium enterprises and improving training to make sure the country produces workers the economy needs.

In the meantime the reach of the state sector is being scaled back. Last November’s Plenum was the trigger for a series of SOE reforms that include opening 80 projects to private capital and programs to make state firms operate more like marketfocused entities.

Yet the role of the private sector is slowly evolving, unlike under the previous political administration, which did much to advance state interests.

Private firms are growing, driving innovation and absorbing talent.

Even a major psychological barrier among risk-averse graduates appears to have been broken. In a survey published in April by Universum, an employer branding consultancy, the number of Chinese university graduates looking to work at a startup in 2014 almost tripled from a year earlier. The number of people looking to start their own firm also inched up.

However, as long as university leavers prefer to work for government companies, private firms will continue to suffer. “Competition with state-owned enterprises, who have a reputation for offering good compensation, job security, and work-life balance, puts increasing pressure on domestic and foreign private employers to offer their Chinese workforces better compensation, job security, and work-life balance,” noted Adams.

Most simply can’t afford to compete.

Young Chinese people’s obsession with security, stability and the desire to work for an SOE reveals the imperfect reward mechanism for employment outside the system, according to Chen. There has to be change. “We need to eliminate unfair advantages provided within the system and add more security to the private sector.”

China Economic Review | September 2014

27

E CO N O M I C S & P O L I C Y: P O L LU T I O N F O R E C A S T I N G

BE PREPARED: A new national pollution forecast allows Chinese to better plan ahead for the nation’s haziest days

Disseminating dirty data Chinese scientists have developed the “Short-horse” national pollution forecast, which races past the laggard efforts of Chinese officials

P

eking university professor Xie Shaodong was tired of China’s longtime lack of a national pollution forecast, and tired of excuses.

So he and two colleagues decided to do something about it. This summer the launch of the Short-horse Forecast (“aima yubao”) not only marked China’s first national pollution forecasting resource, but the public debut of the non-government outfit behind it, run and operated by independent scientists.

“The government says over and over it’s difficult,” Xie told local news outfit Caixin, but “the people have needs, too. We had the capability, and just came out with our own first.

28

China Economic Review | September 2014

If that can finally push the government to do the same, then good.”

The five-day forecast site marks an attempt by citizens to go where officials long refused to tread, and to do so with as much authority as a nongovernment actor here can muster.

The site has yet to meet with open official opposition since the group registered the site’s domain name late last year, and a smartphone app is already in the works according to the site’s blog. But practices long endemic to mainland pollution reporting may ultimately undermine the forecast’s actual effectiveness in promoting better awareness and understanding of China’s hazardous air conditions.

Official air quality forecasts of varying range have existed in China for decades, but as of yet no plans for an official nationwide report have been announced. In that time, awareness of the dangers of air pollution has mounted, and the need for advance warning of severe pollution has become more urgent. A joint report published this year by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council estimated the annual economic cost of air pollution to the country ranged from at least US$100 billion to more than US$300 billion. That’s not including the potential for severe long-term impacts on small children and

A rising star in the MICE market of Linyi City Interview with Sergio Bretti, General Manager of Pullman Linyi Lushang Could you briefly introduce Pullman Linyi Lushang?

We are an international brand hotel with 312 rooms and suites located beside the Yi River, the longest in Shandong Province, and face the largest public park on the river’s banks. The airport as well as the railway station is only 15 minutes drive away so it is very convenient for business and tourism travel purposes. The hotel offers many facilities such as an international restaurant, the Café One, ne, which features an open kitchen and a variety of dishes from Asia and Euurope, and offers local traditional food od as well. The Gold Garden, our Chiinese restaurant, is located on the seccond floor of the building and offers a selection of dishes from the Guanggdong and Sichuan regions as well as he providing local Linyi cuisine. The Lobby Bar is a public area with live ve entertainment to create the environnment for business and casual guests ts to gather and enjoying the moment. nt. ep The Fit Lounge is a place to keep hy. your mind and body fit and healthy. mWe provide a heated indoor swimnd ming pool as well as a Yoga room, and le.

Sauna and Jacuzzi are also available. es 70% of the hotel rooms and suites vhave stunning views of the Linyi Rivve er and Phoenix Park. The Executive he Club situated on the 31st floor is the nd jewel of the hotel with the City and Linyi River views.

As a leading brand under the he lumbrella of Accor, why did Pullman seek to expand its business to Linyi?

Linyi City has developed in the busiiness world very fast in the last five ve years. There has been an increment nt in the international business travelers rs and so there was a need to have an inn-

ternational hotel here. I am honored to be the first foreigner and the opening General Manager of the Pullman Lushang. We have been open almost two years now and looking at today’s results, we can say it was the right decision to be here.

What unique MICE experience can this historical city and your hotel bring to its MICE guests? What measures will your hotel take to promote “having having MICE events in Linyi”?

Our facility such as the Grand Ballroom can accommodate up to 1,000 delegates with state of the art equipment. The Paris room can seat up to 120 people for lunches or dinners. We participate p p in a national sales call to promote Linyi as a MICE destination as well as local business companies which are launching their product nationally or internationally.

Could you elaborate on Pullman’s impressive “innovative breaks”?

The Pullman Linyi meeting theme breaks can be a yoga class or sports activities such as basketball, soccer and darts, or a tea ceremony (mostly for foreigner guests). All the events aim to provide our guests with wellbeing and enjoyment. And of course food for coffee breaks plays a very important role as well.

Your hotel organized a splendid wedding show in June this year. Do you mind sharing with our readers?

Wedding is a very important event for us and for our guests.

There-

fore much attention is dedicated to making sure to cover all the details possible. And the success is shown in the bride and the groom’s happiness on the day and it makes us happy as well. This specific wedding event had more than 1,000 people or 100 tables for lunch. The hotel’s entrance is transformed into a different era with the groom coming to the hotel’s driveway on a horse and the bride in a carriage, both dressed in ancient red dress, which is very spectacular.

The ballroom as well has a unique set up with ancient decoration all the way to the ballroom’s entrance. It is like walking into a different world.

Definitely must be one of the most rewarding and interesting events.

CO-PUBLISHED ARTICLE

Q&A: SERGIO BRET TI

E CO N O M I C S & P O L I C Y: P O L LU T I O N F O R E C A S T I N G

infants: Higher mortality rates, birth defects and impaired cognition are all likely effects of growing up in China’s nigh-omnipresent haze.

One might then expect a warm welcome for any tool that could help mitigate this damage, and the Shorthorse Forecast is just such an instrument. While city or regional government pollution forecasts typically look one to three days ahead, Short-horse predicts a full five days, covers the entire country and provides city-specific forecasts for most major urban centers. It also gives regional forecasts for the Yangtze River Delta, the Chengdu-Chongqing area, the Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-HebeiTianjin region.

Short-horse currently forecasts both coarse-particle pollution and the more dangerous fine-particle pollution known as PM2.5. It also predicts ozone levels, sandstorms and other hazards, together with more run of the mill conditions like temperature and humidity. According to Caixin, the group hopes the site can provide an independent third party forecast for local governments’ air quality forecasting units, and can become an important reference platform for those units to raise the accuracy of their forecasting for such “manmade” phenomena. While the site’s design may look more nag than steed, Short-horse still seems like a win for everyone except, perhaps, the environment officials it’s put to shame.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection has dragged its feet on providing such a comprehensive forecast for years.

But there may be a catch in provision 22 of China’s forecasting law, which states that any organizations or individuals outside the state aren’t allowed to distribute weather forecasts or severe weather warnings to the public. Caixin’s report asserts that the Short-horse Forecast is legal as haze and similar air quality problems are brought about by man-made pollution. Therefore, they shouldn’t fall under the category of natural atmospheric activity. That may be an overly sunny assumption: PM2.5 particles may be man-made, but ozone particles and sandstorms are naturally 32

China Economic Review | September 2014

occurring, even if their intensity and frequency are compounded by human behavior. The same goes for other forecasted phenomena provided by the site, such as temperature extremes and average wind speed.

But it’s not only the legal status of the site that may be question: its accuracy is also uncertain. While the Short-horse has incorporated a prediction model endorsed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for improved accuracy, the sources of information for pollution emissions levels, the method used to classify forecasted levels and the forecast’s online-exclusive nature remain problematic.

First, many government-reported levels of pollution probably lowball the actual figures by a substantial margin. In Beijing, where the US Embassy tweets hourly Air Quality Index (AQI) readings – the closest municipal monitoring stations and city-wide average often give much lower readings, by anywhere from 20-70 points on the popularly used 500-point scale. Similar discrepancies can be seen in other Chinese cities where US consulates also provide AQI feeds, and it is reasonable to expect comparable underreporting from other local governments.

Second, even if pollution levels are accurately reported, the way they are normally classified in China – including on Short-horse – misrepresents how dangerous to citizens’ health a given level of pollution really is.

For example, the US EPA brands

an AQI reading of 50-100 “moderate”, while the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection labels the same range “good”; the EPA calls an AQI reading of between 150-200 “unhealthy”, while the MEP calls it “moderate”. When asked about this divergence, officials have sought shelter under the umbrella of Chinese exceptionalism, claiming it is inappropriate to evaluate China’s air quality using foreign standards.

Finally, Short-horse forecast is only available to the net-savvy.

While a growing number of Chinese are getting online, mostly via smart phone, older generations often still rely on print media or TV news broadcasts for their forecasting information. Old-timers aren’t necessarily in the habit of checking their locale’s pollution level before planning an outing; even on the most hazardous of hazy days, Beijing’s grandparents can be seen teetering through parks and neighborhood streets, hand in hand with their toddling progeny.

Without an official pollution forecast run prominently in major papers and newscasts, two of China’s most vulnerable groups – family elders and the young children they’re often left to take care of – will likely remain regularly exposed.

Based on the above wrinkles in an otherwise positive development, it is worth asking whether a forecast system, official or not, can pressure local governments to do much more than become better at manipulating the data they publish. And before Shorthorse can prompt the government to publish an official national forecast, it probably needs national visibility.

That’s far from assured, as the Caixin report mentioned is one of, if not the only example of coverage the platform has received to date.

While the Short-horse Forecast may be an admirable step in the right direction by the civil sector, it still doesn’t fill the gap left by transparent and well-enforced pollution disclosure laws. The environmental interests of both citizens and the government may ultimately aligned, but real progress will require substantial catch-up on the part of the lattereven if just to match a pony’s pace.

2014ฤ9Ꮬఓ

www.cerchinese.com

O2O变局 创业思维 移动购物风头正劲

目录

ቤ਋‫ފ‬ 34 常识

35 ௡ୡ ॖෂ৺ူ 36 O2O变局

જᄌ 38 移动购物风头正劲 40 互联网金融争奇斗艳 42 国资改革再起航 44 楼市还有机会么

ᓜ౺

36

ॖෂ৺ူ

45 创业思维

P3P‫ܤ‬௜

ఘᒦਪ 46 茶

常识

新观察

互联网不会使人类越来越理想化 文 | 海晨

当

34

商业，而是不人云亦云，追风逐月。

我们在谈论互联网思维时，我们在

然而互联网也潜伏着隐忧，如信息共

说什么？互联网思维已是大热的新

享可能导致私密信息的泄露。互联网带来

当所有人都成为同一个村的村民时，

词，关于其核心内涵则众说纷纭，给予种

了前所未有的自由度，同时也更需要制定

他们的思维模式是否也会日益趋同？只需

种解读的几乎都是商场中人：雷军的“七

和遵循给予自由以约束和保护的规则。

要听从村长发号施令即可？而我们希望互

字诀”，马化腾的“马七条”，还有陈光

消费主义借互联网营销大行其道，

联网时代能包容思想的差异性和多元化。

锋提出的“十二大思维”。对于这些条条

而后者利用消费主义鼓惑消费者，两者相

诚如万维网创始人蒂姆·伯纳斯-李所期望

框框，一言以蔽之，无非是当今数字时代

辅相成。过度商业化和无孔不入的营销手

的，“人类交流扩大的前提是，我们在部

的商业思维。

段，可能使更多受众沦为消费主义信徒，

分理解的状况下能够容忍差异。”

如果撇开商业，纯从信息传播的角度

进而被塑造成马尔库塞抨击的“单向度的

互联网能否使人类越来越理想化？具

去观察，我们会发现互联网已将全球联成

人”。基于互联网的购物狂、自拍狂等就

有英国经验主义文化背景的万维网创始人

了“地球村”，验证了麦克卢汉“媒介即

是其中的极端，堪称新一代“瘾君子”。

并不这么看，他写道：“并非如此。我们

信息”的论断。互联网最大限度地实现了

“这是一个充满捷径思维的时代，我

不过是更好地联系在一起，联结成一个更

信息共享以及受众的互动与参与，对于长

们最需要的是常识。”科特勒给热捧互联

好的状况。”这应该也是一种基于对人性

期垄断公共信息资源的传统媒体构成了巨

网思维的人们当头浇下一盆凉水，这位营

和社会透彻认识的常识。而无论是商业还

大挑战。互联网将培根“知识就是力量”

销学家所指的还是商业常识。财经媒体不

是生活，这类冷静而理智的常识将会胜过

改写为“信息共享就是力量”。

谈商业又能谈什么？那就以人文性来观照

各种时髦的思维。

China Economic Review | September 2014

聚焦

深圳前海新区将建成人民币国际化和金融改革示范区

市场与产业

纷纷加入商务租车站队，滴滴和快的在出

成为新的物流聚集区，但基础设施还未达

前海将为港企带来重大商机

租车打车市场火拼了一年多，争夺积累了

到西方标准，亟需向交通基础设施领域投

高力国际近日发布白皮书指出，计划到

大量的用户和流量，但其盈利模式尚未清

资。具有丰富经验的中国正在积极帮助邻

2020年成为亚洲曼哈顿的深圳前海，发展

晰。打车软件的集体扎堆商务租车将助推

国发展基础设施。

现状及势头良好。前海总建设投资约3898

在线租车市场进入更为激烈的竞争阶段，

亿元，至今前海地区共完成10个商业地块

在线租车市场竞争格局将会发生重大变

影视基金偏爱直投影视项目

的出让，平均地价从每平方米8077元到

化。随着打车软件的进入，租车市场移动

清科研究中心分析师申伶坤在近期报告中

28000元，价格差距显著。目前已有超过

端势必会随之发展，未来移动互联网租车

分析了基金投资影视项目的情况。基金投

10000家企业进驻前海，大部份为新注册

有望引领在线租车市场进入新的发展阶

资影视领域起源于上世纪90年代的好莱

企业，将在该区寻找面积1000平方米以上

段，并影响和改变用户出行及用车习惯。

坞。今年7月上映的电影《后会无期》制片 人中有经纬创投的影子。7月杭州新鼎明影

的写字楼单位。前海较高的投资回报率， 将吸引投资者寻求长期的租金收入与更高

新兴市场物流业将大幅增长

视投资管理有限公司和中御资产管理（湖

的资金收益。前海61%的土地规划（1600

罗兰贝格管理咨询公司与巴克莱银行近期

南）有限公司联手推出了专注于投资电影

万平方米）将用于写字楼物业，由于临近

共同发布《全球物流市场发展趋势分析》

行业的基金，该基金目标规模为5000万元

香港，将可以缓解香港供应量的短缺问

报告指出，物流公司必须调整，以适应

人民币，拟投资《舌尖上的中国》和《中

题。同时，前海还是人民币国际化及金融

极具挑战性的新市场趋势。同时，物流业

国合伙人2》等8部尚在筹备的电影项目。

改革的示范区，香港将能从其不断增加的

也迎来新机遇，如地区市场更加重要、电

另外，上海电影集团与复星集团共同发起

人民币业务中受惠。通过更深层次合作，

子商务壮大、更多行业领域需要特种服务

设立上影复星文化产业投资基金，主要专

将为香港企业带来重大商机。

等。地区市场对物流的影响日益明显，亚

注于国内外优质电影或电视剧等项目的投

洲与欧洲尤其突出，东南亚需求非常大，

资和引进。面对影视行业的巨大利益，越

移动互联将改变租车市场

当地市场让物流企业更加关注增长前景良

来越多机构开始参与其中。影视基金投资

易观智库数据显示，今年第二季度中国

好与高利润的领域，例如汽车、消费品与

有两种运作模式，一是投资影视公司股

在线租车市场规模近40亿元，环比增长

工业品领域。欧洲与北美汽车市场已经饱

权，另外是直接投资影视项目。投资公司

22.5%。易观智库分析认为，随着以神

和，物流企业应关注具有可持续发展潜力

股权对投资人的要求较高，投资金额较

州租车、易到租车为代表的在线租车企业

的市场。从现在起到2017年，包括中国、

大，周期也较长；而直接投资影视项目，

对市场的培养及教育，不仅满足了中高端

印度尼西亚、泰国、马来西亚、菲律宾以

可以将资金投资多部影视需作品，既可分

人群的租车出行需求，更普及和提高了用

及越南等在内的新兴市场物流业将大幅增

散风险，又能保证一定比例的收益，因此

户对在线租车市场的认知程度。打车软件

长，年增长率将超过10%。东南亚已发展

机构更偏爱直接投资影视项目。

China Economic Review | September 2014

35

封面故事

O2O变局 聚焦国内线上线下商业模式的最新发展态势

迷陈小姐很想去看摇滚歌星汪峰在

歌

主流？田峥分析认为，O2O模式与音乐产

北京鸟巢国家体育场举行的超级巡

业、文化产业的融合性比较深，客观来看

乐视在智能家电的布局也比较早和

回演唱会，不巧的是当天她去上海出差，

都属于虚拟内容，他们的交付性本身就适

快，核心是尽可能降低用户使用乐视的服

如果在过去就只能遗憾地错过了，但在当

合互联网的发展。从营销角度看，可以用

务成本，大力推广智能硬件。田峥表示，

今互联网时代，身在上海的她可以通过网

互联网营销方式卖门票和各种衍生品，很

未来硬件布局做大之后，可以为电商导

络同步观看现场演唱会的直播。

多人已经形成在网上买票的习惯；从交付

流，成为广告入口。乐视与传统电视厂商

这场于8月2日开播的汪峰演唱会是在

交互的角度看，不同的付费能享受不同的

的玩法完全不同，传统电视厂商是纯卖硬

乐视TV超级电视和互联网上同步直播，实

体验：好的体验在现场，廉价票可以享受

件，乐视是通过硬件训培育用户使用习

现了线上线下同步观看，线上线下均采取

网络直播。他判断“未来肯定会单独出现

惯，从而粘住用户。

付费形式，“现场演出+付费直播”创造了

纯线上的演唱会，今天已经有很多只在网

全新的商业模式。

上播放的内容，纯内容网络直播的形式一

最早提出O2O概念的是兰佩尔

定会有”。

万达携手百度腾讯 近期万达宣布与百度和腾讯联手组

（Alex Rampell），他通过对一些著名

这样的合作蕴含着更深层次的产业布

建电商公司，总投资约50亿元，万达持股

团购和生活服务类电商的研究发现，它们

局战略思维。乐视近期开始布局电影，显

70%，百度和腾讯各持股15%，欲打造全

都是线上线下商务，简单来说就是线上交

示其将要进军娱乐文化影视产业。田峥看

球最大O2O电商企业。

易，线下消费。此后，国内电商专家张波

到，乐视视频的优势在于拥有大量的正版

易观国际分析师王小星分析认为，

也提出了自己的定义，“O2O就是在移动

内容，乐视布局智能硬件也是基于内容优

三家的合作与传统电商不同，是以万达线

互联网时代，生活消费领域通过线上（虚

势。阿里和腾讯也在布局文化影视产业，

下资源为基础，努力实现电商O2O模式

拟世界）和线下（现实世界）互动的一种

他们的优势就是拥有大量用户，而劣势则

的尝试。万达拥有万达广场、酒店、度假

新型商业模式”。O2O商务模式引入国内 仅三四年，却遍地开花，发展日新月异， 近期更是变化多端，呈现出乱花渐欲迷人 眼的格局。而上述演唱会同步直播仅是众 多好戏中的一出而已。

娱乐行业全新模式 汪峰与乐视的这次合作既是O2O模 式在娱乐领域的新尝试，也是互联网思维 与演唱会的成功结合。易观商业解决方案 副总裁田峥指出，这种全新的商业模式对 音乐行业现有模式具一定颠覆性。过去， 音乐行业基于音乐内容在中国的销售很薄 弱，主要还是演唱会和代言之类，目前全 球各地也在打击盗版、开始建立防盗版的 机制，要想内容更好地变现，就要看用户 是否有这种付费的习惯。而现在互联网的 用户基本已经形成付费习惯。 互联网直播技术发展并不完善，未 来传统音乐演艺与互联网结合是否会成为

36

是在内容版权方面。

China Economic Review | September 2014

三家联手欲打造全球最大O2O企业

O2O变局

区在内的丰富线下资源，预计今年消费将

货品直邮服务，再次激起各界对跨境电商

健品等。其中，按10%计征的税额会显示

达到15亿人次；百度拥有线上搜索、服务

的关注。易观最新研究报告显示，去年中

在商品价格中，并连同总价一并支付。上

分发以及LBS定位服务资源；而腾讯的优

国跨境电商市场交易规模为2.7万亿元人

海成为国内首个跨境电子商务试点城市。

势则是以QQ和微信为代表的社交资源。

民币，实现28.8%的增长率。随着全球消

高力国际统计数据显示，自贸区设立

他判断三家合作的主要目标：一是通过线

费者网购习惯的形成，跨境网购服务和基

所催生的需求已使业主从中受益，去年保

上线下联动，实现对万达线下资源的充分

础设施的不断完善，商业环节不断优化，

税物流物业平均租金同比涨幅达13%。倘

引流，并通过广泛的社交资源形成消费者

跨境网购的在出口电商中的占比将逐步扩

若对于跨境电商物流物业的潜在需求能得

群落和会员体系，提高万达电商的用户粘

大。目前88.9%的跨境电商交易额由出口

以释放，当前租金水平将有望显著提升。

性和影响力。另一个是打通账号与会员体

电商贡献，进出口电商结构失衡，出口电

“物流地产的热潮正在推向住宅和商

系，推出支付与互联网金融与产品，建立

商作为占比最高的跨境电商形式，将逐步

业开发商，我们看到平安、万通、复星、

积分联盟，实现大数据融合、WIFI共享和

迈入高速发展期。

万科等开发商也开始染指物流地产。”邓

产品整合，形成全方位线上线下一体化会

高力国际在近日发布的报告中指出，

懿君补充道，“跨境电商在自贸区内的运

员体系，构筑万达+百度+腾讯O2O电商大

随着国内跨境电子商务的兴起与发展，仓

营仍缺乏定位方面的解决方案，如税务、

生态圈。而能否建立打通三方数据的联盟

储及物流的需求应运而生，物流地产将重

海关、商检等都将面临考验。跨境电商的

是万达电商计划成功的关键。

新成为投资者的新宠。

运营成果大家将拭目以待，未来如果自贸

万达电商计划主要基于万达商业地

“跨境电子商务的兴起，为消费者省

产，因而有别于传统电商模式。“阿里优

去部分税赋，我们也看到近日自贸区内直

势的B2C和C2C电商市场和万达O2O模式

销中心进口商品销售火爆，消费者直接购

的直接竞争关系较弱，更多竞争将会出现

买境外货品，这种新型的模式也为开发商

在周边业务以及对其他产业和厂商的辐射

在物流仓储市场创造了新的机遇。”高力

O2O模式是将线下资源与线上平台结

作用上。短期内阿里的电商霸主地位难以

国际产业及工业地产服务部中国区执行董

合。而目前在线路教育面临的问题就是，

撼动。”王小星分析道。

事邓懿君说道。

如何将线下优质教学资源与线上平台渠道

跨境电商催热地产

应运而生。跨境通可以为消费者从网站订

互联网巨头对在线教育虎视眈眈。百

购海外商品，诸如服饰、鞋类、奶粉及保

度注资传课网和万学教育，淘宝同学强势

上海自由贸易区正式挂牌后，跨境通 亚马逊宣布在上海自贸区建立海外

区在其他省市拓展试点，将会为每个城市 区域的物流地产市场带来机遇。”

线上线下资源整合

完美结合。

上线以及腾讯QQ加入课程直播功能，腾 讯课堂上线。近期腾讯又与新东方联合布 局在线教育。两者的战略合作无论在技术 和资源，还是在用户、品牌和流量上都具 一定优势。 易观智库分析师郭阳表示，侧重研 发独特的移动学习产品可整合新东方丰富 的教育内容资源以及腾讯的互联网技术与 渗透率的优势。双方的强强联合将对移动 教育行业带来冲击。两者的联合扩大至移 动端的教育领域，导致市场竞争格局的变 革。他认为，腾讯和新东方的结合多少会 优化在线教育的用户体验，但由于市场尚 未成熟，有效解决还需时日。 线下线上的资源整合能使虚拟营销落 到实处。O2O模式被认为是移动互联网时 代的商业革命，未来将成为主流的社会化 营销方式。不过无论怎样的商业模式，根 本是要能提供更好的服务和产品，使消费 亚马逊将在上海自贸区建立直邮服务

者获得更完美的体验。

China Economic Review | September 2014

37

话题

移动购物风头正劲 移动购物促进电商变革并挑战移动安全

基

于移动互联网的新商业模式风起云 涌，而移动购物亦渐成重要的消费

方式。目前国内手机购物市场处于快速发 展期，今年第二季度交易规模已达1680亿 元，同比增长高达256%。这是易观智库 最新季度监测报告提供的信息。移动购物 时代的来临，推动电商企业发生变革，也 对移动支付的创新发展和移动安全产业提 出了挑战。

电商蜕变 从今年第二季度来看，移动端网购 依然保持较快增长势头。易观智库分析认 为，一方面，随着闪购等营销模式的发 展，移动端购物的便利性逐渐体现，消费 者习惯日渐形成；另一方面，各大电商在 移动端的宣传推广力度不断加强，特别是 6·18大促期间移动端的大量优惠活动，加 速了消费者向移动端的转移，各大电商来

移动支付短期内很难重现今年初的爆发式增长

自移动端的订单量也实现大幅度增长。 从市场份额看，手机淘宝+天猫的份 额达85%，主要得益于较早在移动端布

竞争势态，但在细分市场仍有巨大市场空 间。

局，手机京东市场份额排名第二，较上个

1号店董事长于刚预测，电子商务将

为1.12亿台，其中智能手机销量为1.03亿

季度有7%的提高，与腾讯合作，使之得到

来的主战场不是在PC，而是在移动设备，

台，约占整体手机市场92%，这些数据来

微信和手机QQ的流量支持，再加上6 · 18

移动购物将成为未来5年国内电子商务的

自易观智库最新发布的报告。易观智库分

期间大力促销，市场份额得以迅速提升。

发展趋势。移动用户有很多特点，购买的

析认为，第二季度内，4G手机销量上升趋

基于闪购消费者对时间的灵活需求，特卖

频次更高、更零碎，购买的高峰不是在白

势明显，季度内销量已突破千万量级。在

电商手机唯品会暂列第三，苏宁易购和当

天，而是在晚上、周末和节假日。“移动

3G系列手机销量下降的情况下，4G手机

当网凭借在年中的大力促销，特别是当当

购物将会革PC电子商务的命，我们要做好

成为了手机市场销量上涨的主要推动者。

网移动端的优惠活动，导致移动端的订单

准备，我们要迎接这场新的革命。而要做

中国联通和中国电信在6月底获发FDD-

量占比快速提升；移动电商买卖宝则通过

好移动购物，不能简单地将PC电子商务

LTE的试验网牌照，未来也将会有更多用

差异化定位，对三四线城市市场的深耕以

搬到移动上，而要充分利用移动设备的特

户选择由3G向4G业务过度。

及自有品牌手机的热销，市场占有率暂列

征。”他说道。

易观智库分析认为，移动网购除了前

而品牌竞争格局中，小米由上季度 的第五名提升至第二名，份额提升十分明

第七。

38

智能手机则继续热销。国内手机市场 （不含水货和山寨机）今年第二季度销量

智能升级

显。小米的快速增长主要源于红米Note

端产品和入口的竞争，还包括后端整体供

移动购物的强劲增长得益于手机上网

手机发布。这款手机补充了小米大屏手机

应链的竞争，厂商通过加强供应链管理、

普及。去年底全国手机上网用户已达5亿，

的市场空缺，为红米系列手机增加了竞争

提升用户体验，有机会在移动端抢占部分

而PC上网用户也仅5.9亿。预计到2017年

力，采用官网预约销售也达到了有效宣传

市场，长期来看，移动端或复制PC端的

手机上网用户将超过PC用户。

红米系列手机的目的，为市场做了良好铺

China Economic Review | September 2014

话题

垫。但是小米手机同样面临国产厂商的市

动支付市场份额的排名降到了第三位，而

在继续增长的同时，短期内将很难重现去

场挤压，而且小米缺乏高端机型直接导致

拉卡拉则上升到第二位。

年第三季度到今年第一季度期间的爆发式

其无法在高端市场与大厂产品有效竞争。

本季度二维码支付的暂停对支付宝、

增长。移动支付市场目前交易场景还比较

三星由于缺乏市场创新，业内国产品牌也

财付通等移动支付厂商的业务拓展影响较

单调，第二季度增长主要来自移动网购和

不断推出高端品牌来对抗三星，虽然有新

大，虽然现在还没有明确二维码的开启日

个人的转账、还款等常规消费，未来移动

品GalaxyS5的助阵，但仍然无法阻止三

期，但很多第三方支付厂商甚至银行都在

支付的重心会放在构建创新支付场景上。

星份额缩水。苹果借助4G业务进一步扩大

后台为二维码支付的重新启动做足准备工

如今年上半年支付宝钱包陆续推出一些项

手机市场的销量，相比上一个季度有小幅

作。未来二维码支付的启动与否，将直接

目，让用户可以通过支付宝钱包预订、购

上涨。易观智库分析指出，整体而言，智

决定中国移动支付市场的创新模式、市场

物、查询和支付，全面覆盖医疗卫生、公

能手机市场的格局已趋于稳定，国产厂商

推广和市场交易规模的增长。

共服务和城市商圈，重金构建O2O的相关

有望取代市场龙头的位置。

易观智库发现，今年第一季度宝宝类

支付场景，打造钱包平台化的地位。

产品的申购金额占据了移动互联网支付交

支付创新

易规模的45%，本季度由于货币基金收益

安全至上

根据易观智库数据显示，第二季度中

率的走低，余额宝和理财通的申购额均出

近年智能手机的不断普及网络技术

国第三方支付市场移动支付（不包含短信

现了较大程度下滑，直接影响到移动支付

的逐步提升，手机安全问题也日益凸显。

支付）交易额规模达到1.64万亿元，由于

的交易规模。但移动支付在本季度依然能

易观智库研究发现，手机安全威胁主要有

余额宝和理财通交易规模的下滑，本季度

保持增长态势，说明用户经过类余额宝理

针对手机硬件的恶意程序、吸话费吸流量

移动支付交易规模的环比增长为0.2%，呈

财、微信红包、移动网购和打车补贴等营

恶意程序、骚扰及诈骗短信和电话、个人

现出微小增长。

销方式的大力推广，用户已经逐渐养成了

隐私窃取、银行卡信息窃取等。而且移动

本季度中国第三方支付市场移动支付

移动支付的习惯，而支付宝钱包和微信支

互联网对各行业的渗透越来越高，包括金

业市场格局发生较大变化，支付宝、拉卡

付为代表账户型支付的模式，也已经成为

融、水利、电力和政务等领域。

拉和财付通分别位居市场前三位，其中支

当前移动用户的主流支付方式。

易观智库表示，政府的重视以及市

付宝钱包的份额已经接近80%。因为微信

易观智库分析认为，一旦互联网理财

场的推动，将促使移动安全的建设渗透到

支付理财通交易规模的下降，财付通在移

回归闲置资金理财的本质，移动支付市场

产业链各个环节，包括应用商店、终端厂 商、开发者及运营商等等，构建全产业链 的安全生态成为未来发展趋势。同时，大

2013Q2-2014Q2中国第三方支付市场 移动支付交易额规模 交 交易额（亿元人民币）

数据与云计算的出现对信息安全提出了更 高的挑战与要求，未来企业在信息安全方

环 环比增长率

面的资源投入将逐步增加，这也为安全厂

18,000

200%

商提供了良好的发展机遇。

150%

提升，对安全软件的使用意愿也在提高。

173.1%

目前，网民对移动安全的认知在逐步 12,000

110.5%

根据易观智库最新发布的报告显示，第二

131.9% 100% 76.6% %

0.2%

6,000 3,343

7,750.8

达2.5亿，排在市场前三名的为360手机 50%

16,317.5

1,224

0% 2013Q2

2013Q3

2013Q4

2014Q1

卫士、腾讯手机管家和百度手机卫士。移 动支付业务的兴起与快速发展，手机财产

16,353

0

季度中国手机安全应用市场活跃用户规模

2014Q2

安全问题引起市场高度重视，也成为促进 移动安全市场发展的又一驱动力。易观智

说明：以上数据根据厂商访谈，易观自有监测数据和易观研究模型估算获得，易观会根据最新 了解的数据对历史数据进行微调。本报告所指移动支付指用户通过移动终端、借助移动互联网 （3G、GPRS、WIFI等）实现的交易资金支付、转帐、收款等资金流转活动，包括手机客户 端、应用内支付、刷卡器等各类新型移动支付方式，不包括短信支付。

库提出，安全软件厂商应抓住市场机遇，

来源：eMarketer · 易观智库 Source: Enfodesk © Analysys International

更多的商业价值，促进移动安全产业的新

加快对用户使用行为的培育，提升产品体 验，以获得更高的市场渗透率，衍生出 发展。

China Economic Review | September 2014

39

话题

互联网金融争奇斗艳 透视近期在线金融领域各大企业的新动向

商巨头与金融服务业的融合愈加

电

阿里巴巴而言将享受更多利润，给资本市

计国家认可的转接平台有望向大型支付公

紧密。阿里集团于8月13日向美国

场带来更多想象空间。阿里集团靠电商起

司开放，鉴于这种行业变化，易观智库分

证券交易委员会（SEC）递交了最新招

家，掌握海量企业和消费者交易数据，从

析认为，除了从商户收单维度（商户端）

股书。文件显示，未来在监管允许的前提

以消费行为数据及交易数据为基础建立的

反映第三方支付市场发展情况外，从平台

下，支付宝的母公司小微金融服务集团将

金融信用评价体系角度来看，阿里与金融

转接维度（银行端）研究主要支付机构对

以33%的直接股权置换阿里巴巴对小微金

服务的契合度相当高。如果阿里集团可以

于更详细、准确了解支付企业的业务发展

服集团的利润分享和股权价值补偿权益，

顺利在小微金服集团合格IPO时得到监管

同样具有重要意义。

这意味着在2011年将支付宝剥离之后，阿

许可直接持股，对阿里股东非常有利，将

易观智库数据报告显示，今年第二季

里有意重新间接持有支付宝股权。

给资本市场更多想象空间。而对支付宝而

度，因为互联网巨头在战略上进一步加快

根据2011年阿里巴巴集团、雅虎、

言，可以留存更多利润，并有可能减少财

了用户向移动端的迁移和余额宝申购金额

软银与支付宝签订的协议，阿里巴巴集

务上的曝光度以利于日常运营。但这个协

的下降，本季度互联网平台转接平台交易

团可以分享支付宝大约49.9%的税前利

议同样存在风险，唐佳分析，新协议不能

额增长率仅比上季度有小幅度上涨，互联

润，协议修订后，阿里巴巴可以分享小微

保证各方分享小微金服未来的长期发展，

网收单交易额环比增长率则出现下降，维

金服集团37.5%的利润，且当小微金服集

若未来小微金服集团以监管作为挡箭牌拒

持低速增长。

团或支付宝在合格IPO时，阿里巴巴有权

绝阿里继续享受利润分享，直接支付一次

其中互联网转接平台的交易额达到

在监管允许的情况下继续获得每年的利润

性现金回报，阿里集团将不能享受小微金

2.3万亿元，环比上季度增长5%。互联网

分享。小微金服集团作为支付宝的股东，

服集团长期发展带来的利润回报。

转接平台的支付宝，银联和财付通位列前

持有支付宝、天弘基金、招财宝、众安在

三。市场份额变动较大，尤其是银联在转

在线支付变化多端

线、中小企业贷款等资产。 易观智库分析师唐佳认为，此举对

接平台的份额增长十分迅猛。

随着中国支付市场逐渐走向开放，预

本季度互联网收单的交易规模为1.99 万亿元，环比增长率为1.8%，创下历年第 二季度增长率新低。支付宝、财付通和银

2013Q2-2014Q2中国网上银行交易规模 交 交易规模（万亿元人民币）

环 环比增长率

联商务分别占据市场前三位，支付宝已经

同 同比增长率

40%

500 30.3%

30.1% 26.4%

400

27.8%

将业务重心转移到移动支付，其互联网支 付的市场份额下降明显，互联网收单前三 家占比也是近一年来首次低于80%，而银

30%

联商务则因为6月份的强力促销份额增长明 显。

19.6% 20%

300

与去年同期相比，今年中期银行的资 金面较为宽松，类余额宝理财产品的收率

200

10%

11.2% .2% 5.3%

100 299.5

315.5

7.8%

8.7%

3.5% 3 5% 326.7

352.1

2013Q3

2013Q4

2014Q1

数据说明：综合上市公司财报、企业访谈及易观核算模型，为预测值 来源：eMarketer · 易观智库 Source: Enfodesk © Analysys International

China Economic Review | September 2014

2014Q2

元，相比第一季度下降了2200亿元，也另 支付宝在互联网收单的市场份额有了一定

382.7 -10%

2013Q2

40

降。余额宝第二季度申购金额为7101亿 0%

0

逐步降低，申购金额也有了一定程度的下

程度的下降。而第二季度支付宝在互联网 支付方面的重点明显放在了跨境支付上。 和日本、泰国、韩国和德国等多家海外知 名电商合作进行支付宝付款，并与全球最 大退税机构环球蓝联合作海外购物退税。

话题

银联商务在第二季度投入超过2亿 元，联手商业银行、品牌商户、大电商， 发起的首届“6·2儿童消费节”，全方位面 向线下、线上以及移动支付各类渠道，推 出系列支付促销活动。带动交易额的大幅 度增长，也拉动银联商务在互联网收单和 转接方面的份额有了较大上升。 第二季度快钱发布了支付2.0策略， 在支付基础上叠加金融服务、财务管理、 营销管理等服务，深度挖掘企业需求。

网银格局相对稳定 根据易观智库产业数据库最新发布数 据显示，今年第二季度中国网上银行市场 整体交易规模近383万亿元人民币，环比 增长8.7%，同比增长27.8%。 余额宝等互联网理财产品的出现，将 众多的线下用户带到了线上，并逐步培养 了线上理财习惯，在众多人群逐渐走到线 上并逐步接受线上交易和理财观念的大背 景下，商业银行电子银行业务的发展也迎

互联网企业踊跃进入金融领域

来了大好契机。 去年以来，网上银行新增客户数环比

企业涉入金融领域对自身所带来的冲击。

当前市场现状中P2P厂商相互差距

增长保持相对稳定，商业银行的发力重心

未来将会有更多的银行系P2P、直销银行

较小，市场仍处于不稳定状态。从定性角

逐渐转向客户活跃度的提升，通过丰富服

以及银行系电商出现，而银行的信誉背书

度看，第二季度P2P行业成熟度正逐渐提

务场景、优惠费率引导、线上营销与线下

则是其最大的竞争优势。

升。在市场推广方面，关键词营销、门户 展位广告等，以及不定期的让利活动（注

网点体验相结合等措施来促进客户线上交 易习惯的养成，实现发挥网络渠道优势，

移动网贷苗头初显

册、邀请有礼形式）成常规营销方式，起

降低商业银行运营成本的目的。通过几年

易观智库数据显示，今年第二季度

到了良好的效果。而部分平台采用包装美

间的发展，用户对于网上银行的接受程度

P2P网贷市场相较第一季度有明显增长，

女客服形式来吸引用户眼球的目的，属于

与前期已有较大提升，而电商的持续火热

行业交易规模达381亿，环比增长26%。

短期行为，毕竟资金收益及安全性只与风

与网络渠道理财产品的日渐丰富，将推动 网上银行交易规模继续保持稳定增长。

网络金融，尤其是P2P网贷形式，受 到银监会等监管部门高度重视，其作为金

控相关，待投资人恢复理性后该效果不可 持续。

第二季度，市场份额格局保持相对稳

融服务创新，提升了资金融通的效率，盘

从厂商创新动态上看，少数P2P企业

定，工、建、农、中四大行依然凭借庞大

活了巨量民间资本进入实体经济。由于行

开始尝试移动金融服务，例如合拍在线在

的客户群体分别位列市场前四位，合计拥

业规范欠缺，业内从业者资质良莠不齐，

4月份上线了手机wap版投标功能，经申请

有超过七成的市场份额，交通银行与招商

但在具体监管细则下发之前，市场尚有容

开通手机投标功能后，即可使用手机、浏

银行分别紧随其后。

许试错机会存在，P2P网贷产业将继续保

览器、合拍微信订阅号等登录合拍微站点

在第二季度的营销活动中，工行、建

持扩张状态。在行业快速发展过程中，借

进行投标；人人贷开发出了针对iOS系统

行与交行等多家商业银行均开展了以世界

款人的线上自然迁移速度要远低于网络投

客户端，支持的功能包括预定理财计划，

杯为主题的相关营销活动，以最受关注的

资人增长之间的矛盾越发突出，巨大缺口

查询、购买散标等，安卓平台暂未涉及。

热点事件带动客户营销活动的关注。易观

使得业内企业线下展业成为必要的辅助手

在移动互联网用户已然超越互联网用户的

智库分析认为，未来商业银行将不断加强

段，平台交易繁荣的背后却是高昂的展业

背景下，抢占移动端入口对网贷企业未来

在互联网金融领域的布局，以应对互联网

成本及借贷成本，值得从业者警惕。

发展将有重要意义。

China Economic Review | September 2014

41

话题

国资改革再起航 发展混合所有制经济系国资国企改革主线

本轮国企改革的重点是混合制改革 图为上海自贸区港口远景

中

央企业高管薪酬制度改革将出现重

西、山西、青海、广东等10多个省市出台

企股权比例结构，加快开放性市场化联合

大突破。中央全面深化改革领导小

国资国企改革方案，并且都明确提出了发

重组，实施股权激励和员工持股，明晰企

组第四次会议通过了两个和央企高管薪酬

展混合所有制。国务院国资委官员日前也

业改制重组的决策程序，规范财务审计和

改革有关的文件，明确提出“对不合理的

表示，国资委目前正在研究国企改革顶层

企业价值评估，坚持市场决定对象和发现

偏高、过高收入进行调整”。据2013年上

设计方案，而此次推行的混合所有制改革

价格，平等保障相关利益主体合法权益，

市公司年报曝露，上市央企负责人平均年

将有很大突破，未来大部分国企都要实行

完善国企改制的政策和环境。

薪80多万元，年薪最高者近900万元，一

混合所有制，并鼓励非公经济控股，允许

家亏损几十亿元的上市央企负责人年薪居

混合所有制企业员工持股。

42

轮上海国资国企改革的主要工作就是发展 混合所有制经济、分类监管、设立国资流

然有80多万元。另有数据显示，2010至 2011年，国资委下属央企负责人平均年薪

清科研究中心分析师曹紫婷认为，本

上海领跑

动平台和建立约束激励机制，该政策的发 布，将对下一轮改革起到具体指导作用。

在65万至70万元之间。而全国城镇非私营

发展混合所有制经济系国资国企改革

单位就业人员年平均工资尚不到5万元，城

主线。今年7月7日上海印发《关于推进本

在新一轮国资国企改革中，上海市

镇私营单位就业人员年平均工资则少于3万

市国有企业积极发展混合所有制经济的若

处于众多省市中的领先地位。自十八届三

元。央企负责人超高的年薪遭到人们的侧

干意见（试行）》。明确上海国资改革的

中全会提出积极发展混合所有制经济，上

目和诟病。

主要目标，指出在未来3到5年，基本完成

海国资国企改革便将其作为改革主线路之

央企高管薪酬改革是新一波国资改革

国有企业公司制改革，实现股权多元化，

一。去年12月17日，上海发布《关于进

的重要组成部分。到今年8月下旬，已有北

发展混合所有制经济等。同时针对发展混

一步深化上海国资改革促进企业发展的意

京、天津、上海、重庆、甘肃、山东、江

合所有制经济推出九条具体措施，分别

见》（国资改革20条），在该轮改革方案

苏、云南、湖南、贵州、四川、湖北、江

是：推进国企公司制股份制改革；优化国

中就提到，要打造符合市场经济运行规律

China Economic Review | September 2014

话题

的公众公司。积极发展混合所有制经济， 加快企业制股份制改革，实现整体上市或 核心业务资产上市。 截至今年第一季度，在混合所有制经 济方面，部分国企已经开始动作：城投控 股引入弘毅（上海）股权投资基金中心成 为战略投资者一事完成股权过户手续，弘 毅基金将持有城投控股10%的股权；绿地 集团借壳金丰投资，上海地产集团及其全 资子公司中星集团、上海城投总公司、上 海格林兰持股比例均不超过30%；永辉超 市斥资近5000万元认购653.59万金枫酒 业股份，占金枫酒业此次非公开发行结束 后总分的1.27%。

国资国企改革应力戒国有资产流失等弊端

官方数据显示，上海市国资委系统 混合所有制企业已占系统企业总数63%、

性业务资产上市。该举措将提高企业证券

展。曹紫婷分析认为，对于PE机构而言，

资产总额55%、归属母公司所有者权益

化水平，除一些科研院所和投资公司之

该轮改革释放出经营机制市场化红利，股

60.1%、主营业务收入83.5%、净利润

外，目前上海市属大型国企均有一家或多

权多元化和混合所有制的开放使得PE机构

92.4%。自上海国资改革20条发布以来，

家上市公司，随着改革的推进，这类企业

获得更多机会介入国企，帮助企业实现市

国企积极参与并购重组，力度超前，也让

资产注入的可能性非常大。

场化和专业化、完善公司治理、建立有效

外界对改革前景充满期待。

在本次上海国资混合所有制改革措

机制，从而提升企业效率，寻求回报。这

“目前上海已基本形成以混合所有制

施中，优化国有企业股权比例结构被放在

个过程有望使双方获得双赢，激发股权投

经济为主的发展格局，但仍存在国有股比

突出位置。《意见》明确，要根据不同企

资机构参与国企改革的积极性。

例过高、企业经营机制不够灵活、集团公

业的功能定位，合理设定国有股权比例。

司改革不到位等问题。”曹紫婷分析道。

具体来看，负责国有资本运营的国有资本

改革路径

克服障碍

管理公司可保持国有全资；负责基础设施

国资改革并非一路坦途，目前还存

和功能区域开发建设、提供公共服务和保

在着很大障碍。混合所有制改革的核心在

此次出台的《意见》是针对上海国

障改善民生的功能类和公共服务类国有企

于让社会资本加入到国资中去。而有报道

资改革20条的进一步细化与推进。从《意

业，可保持国有全资或国有控股；战略性

称，目前大部分民营企业对参与国企改革

见》的9条具体措施分析，上海国有企业

新兴产业、先进制造业和现代服务业中的

抱观望态度。因为参股国资国企需要投入

积极发展混合所有制经济，发展公众公司

国有重点骨干企业，可保持国有控股或相

巨额资本，但民营企业又不能掌握国企的

主要通过三个途径：一是国有企业公司制

对控股；一般竞争性领域的国有企业则根

决策权，且民企的经营决策理念与国企大

股份制改革，包括整体上市、核心业务资

据发展实际，按照市场规则有序进退、合

相径庭，两者很难凑合。

产上市、公司股份制改革以及探索特殊管

理流动。另外，上海混合所有制改革措施

另一方面，部分国企经营不佳，甚至

理股制度四个方面；二是加快开放性市场

的重点是引入非国有资本。《意见》明

负债累累。财政部最新数据显示，今年前

化联合重组，聚焦产业链、价值链、从国

确，要坚持市场原则，即企业改制重组涉

7个月，国企成本增幅依然高于收入增幅，

有经济、非公有制经济两个方面加大开放

及国有股权、产权或资产转让、增资扩股

负债增幅高于资产增幅。到7月末，国有企

性市场化双向联合重组的力度；三是实施

等，应在证券市场、产权市场等场所公开

业资产总额97.87万亿元，负债总额63.85

股权激励和员工持股，鼓励整体上市企业

进行，以求公允透明。此举意味着今后一

万亿元，负债率高达65%。有鉴于此，民

集团、符合条件的竞争类企业集团及下属

些国企中，国有资本将不再控股，而是退

企也担心自己投入的资本会被拿去低债。

企业，以及国有及国有控股的转制科研院

居第二或第三大股东。

改革应建立市场定价机制，坚持规则

所、高新技术企业实施股权激励。同时，

上海国资改革9条具体措施出台后，

和程序的透明公开公正，力戒暗箱操作和

《意见》明确提出推进三种不同类型的国

民营资本可借此契机进入上海国有资本，

国资流失等弊端。国企属全民所有，因此

企核心资产上市，即竞争类企业主营业务

既有助于提升国有企业竞争力，又能移出

在改革过程中，社会公众理应拥有监督和

资产、功能类和公共服务类国有企业竞争

空间扶持重点产业，有助于转型升级发

参与的权利。

China Economic Review | September 2014

43

话题

楼市还有机会么 转型中的房地产市场可能仍有发展空间

今

年以来的房地产市场回调，出乎绝 大多数业内人士的意料，被认为是

近十年来市场在没有政策外力干预下的首 次“主动”调整。 诺亚财富旗下歌斐资产的数据分析显 示，房地产市场整体存量供不应求的格局 依然未变，今年以来一二线城市普遍出现 的市场成交回落就不会是所谓的行业大拐 点，而依然只是房地产市场运行过程中的 周期性调整，但本轮调整与过去几轮有着 显著区别。 “我们住宅的快速增长的蜜月即便结 束了，并不代表我们的幸福没有了……我 们的日子依然要过，而且要很好得过，幸

这轮回落仍然是周期性调整

福仍然在前面。”万通控股董事长冯仑在 2014年诺亚财富房地产金融高峰论坛上如

很多人以为政府调控房地产行业的

市的便利性；而银行信贷宽松对其影响非

是说道。住房和城乡建设政策研究中心主

时机选择是房价，但房地产市场上真正与

常积极，这将推动其刚需、首改类群体入

任秦虹表示，房地产行业未来波动就是一

此紧密挂钩的是房地产开发投资和商品住

市，成为市场交易量企稳回升的基础，成

个常态。虽多项指标都在下滑，但依然认

宅销售量，前者对固定资产投资的贡献率

规模的复苏预计将在明年初。

为今年房地产市场仍然是调整、波动，而

长期保持在20%左右，而后者则直接决定

第二类是目前正面临高库存压力的城

不是崩盘或者不是暴跌。华远地产董事长

房地产交易税费的规模，进而影响财政收

市，典型如杭州、宁波、呼和浩特等，客

任志强则认为，城镇化率或加速，房地产

入。歌斐资产预计，从政策取舍看，行业

观而言，这类城市即便限购解禁恐怕也不

市场仍有发展空间。

数据越差，对冲政策越强，下半年房地产

足以结束市场的低迷状态。这类城市的市

政策趋松、限购政策取消或是大势所趋。

场何时回暖仍将取决于房价何时能下降到

针对部分投资人关于目前房地产行业 状况不佳，地产基金是否会生存困难的担

今年第二季度以来，各地纷纷开始调

忧，歌斐资产创始合伙人兼总裁殷哲回应

整政策。在整体政策环境趋松的情况下，

第三类是市场处于扩张期、供求矛盾

道：“这恰恰是地产基金的发展机会……

不排除有更多城市也进入政策放松的行

初显的城市，主要是内陆省会级城市和沿

总体看来，在房地产市场逐步转型的过程

列。在歌斐资产看来，例外的可能是北上

海发达三线城市。这样的城市再加上限购

中，地产基金有较大的发展空间。”

广深一线城市，但预计在执行层面上寻找

放松的利好，下半年市场将有可能出现明

一些“操作空间”还是有可能的。

显上行，个别城市甚至有可能在第三季度

而从财富管理角度看，风险可以对行 业变革起到催化作用，诺亚财富董事局主 席兼CEO汪静波如是认为。

44

新的供求平衡点。

即应声而涨。

四类市场四种态势

第四类是房地产处于初步发展期、房

歌斐资产在论坛上发布了今年下半年

歌斐资产表示，下半年行业政策面和

价也并不高的城市，主要是少数省会城市

房地产投资策略报告。报告认为，进入下

银行信贷面双重趋好应是大概率事件，但

和多数三线城市。这类城市在大势走强的

半年之后，行业整体的恐慌气氛正在逐步

从具体城市看，还存在一定分化。

鼓舞下，市场交易量将稳步提升，部分前

缓解，越来越多的城市取消限购，近期从

第一类北上广深一线城市短期内限

媒体的报道方向上看，与年初也有较大差

购政策仍不存在取消的基础，但在大环境

歌斐资产认为，这轮市场回落依然不

距，在此背景上，市场其实已经具备企稳

松动的情况下，预计执行层面将较之前有

是趋势性的，全国层面的房地产市场规模

回升的基础。

所软化，这一定程度上将增加高端需求入

依然具有扩张空间。

China Economic Review | September 2014

两年房价停涨的城市或将迎来补涨机会。

专栏

创业思维 从扎克伯格身上互联网创业者看到了什么 文 | 海潮

互

联网创业在国内已经热了10多年。

具美国的小众文化背景，且有国际市场支

球，就会看到一个在互联网世界影响巨大

从宏观层面来看，经历过2001年

撑，这些条件点点网都不具备。还面临微

的身影：Facebook创始人马克·扎克伯

的网络泡沫后，既有大喜也有大悲；从微

博和豆瓣的挤压，导致其在创业一年后就

格。他常随身携带一个名为“The

观角度而言，众多创业者前赴后继，上演

陷入困境。

of Change”的笔记本，上面题写着甘地

Book

了一出出可歌可泣的悲喜剧。而今，创业

书中也有针对性地提出了一些解决之

的“欲变世界，先变其身”。此人的思维

又开始向移动互联升级，悲喜交加的故事

道。如在“自己定义的需求不一定是真需

方式有何独特之处？《像扎克伯格一样思

仍在重复着。

求”中提出：“要找出用户真正的需求，

考》一书宣称揭示了他的五个商业秘密： 激情、目的、人、产品和伙伴。

10多年前有一本《大败局》流传甚

不妨参考《精益创业》提倡的MVP概念，

广，书中剖析了一些著名企业从颠峰跌落

意即‘最简可行产品’—用最快、最简

曾在2013年9月采访过扎克伯格的易

到谷底的案例，予经营者和创业者以警

明的方式建立一个可用的产品原型，这个

宝支付联合创始人余晨相信，扎克伯格是

醒。彼时，互联网创业小荷才露尖尖角，

原型要表达出你最终想要的产品效果，然

新时代的马克·奥勒留（撰写《沉思录》

尚未进入其视野。

后通过市场检验，快速迭代调整产品。”

的古罗马皇帝）或者是斯多葛主义者，并

“即便是在以开放著称的互联网行

诚如腾讯公司创始人之一张志东所

且认为“扎克伯格的成功源自他宏大的内

业，也鲜有关乎创业实战的反思和教训。

说，“创业路上有许多未知的难关，容易

心”。这似乎表明，在余晨心目中，这位

是时候做一些改变了。”腾讯科技频道主

跌倒摔跤甚至碰得头破血流，创业者的勇

互联网时代的商业霸主也是具内省意识的

编龙兵华如此写道。腾讯这家10多年前互

气和执着非常值得尊敬，他们的深刻反思

哲人。是否存在拔高和误读，不得而知。

联网创业的标杆企业，当今国内互联网行

是最有价值的思想。”

问题是，从扎克伯格身上国内互联网创业

业的三大巨头之一，其自身的成长历程已

教训足够沉重，成功的案例也许更

颇堪玩味。从去年下半年起，腾讯科技频

能让思维发散。将视野从国内拓宽到全

者看到了什么？能否促使他们花费更多时 间进行沉思？

道连续推出互联网创业的“教训”主题访 谈，剖析了在创业或转型阶段遭遇重大挫 折的凡客诚品、点点网、今夜酒店特价、 巨鲸音乐网、拉手网等17家互联网创业企 业，通过采访这些企业的创始人，挖掘其 中的经验与教训，最后形成了《教训：互 联网创业必须避免的八大教训》一书。 创业者首先要思考的就是选择怎样 的商业模式。在中国互联网10多年的创业 史中，复制美国硅谷的商业模式是一条捷 径。其中既有成功落地的，也有饱尝水土 不服苦果的。第一个教训就是探讨这一首 要问题。书中有案例为证：“曾成功运作 校内网的许朝军创办了点点网，试图复制 国外轻博客网站Tumblr的辉煌，但事与愿 违，点点最终没能达到市场的预期，其他 的中国模仿者也都销声匿迹。” 原因在于“中美经济和文化背景不同 导致的用户差异”：Tumblr的轻博客独

此人的思维方式有何独特之处

China Economic Review | September 2014

45

看中国

茶 茶文化是中国社会需要竭力保护和传承的传统文化之一 文 | 晏格文 (Graham Earnshaw)

晏格文

我

几乎每天都要向

身秦国发源于中原北部，此地是中华文明

贸易。在中国，鸦片自古以来就为中医所

维基百科“请

的孕育核心。公元前316年，秦国军队横

用，到了18世纪，更被知识分子和官僚阶

教”数十次。如果你询问

扫并占领古蜀国，而彼时距离秦朝最具权

层广泛用作毒品吸食。中国商人从英国廉

它茶叶的起源，它给出的

势的秦始皇统一中国尚有近一个世纪。等

价购入大量鸦片的行为无疑打破了阶层划

答案会是—中国。但通

到古蜀国被征服时，秦人早已对茶叶颇为

分，令鸦片成为毒害中国社会各阶层的根

常而言，维基百科的回

熟稔。掌控茶叶的来源也可能是他们入侵

源。

答，就好像人生，并非能

古蜀国的原因之一。

够一言以蔽之，毕竟这不

而被历史误读并称之为“鸦片战争”

台。尽管在某些地方，它依旧因药用价值

是黑白分明的是非问题。

的冲突核心绝对是“茶叶”。这场19世

而被使用，或者也用作熬汤的调味品，特

最近，我有机会向一位中国茶文化专

纪中叶满清政府统治下的中国和英国的冲

别是在四川山区（就我亲身经历而言）。

家询问关于茶叶起源的看法。他认为茶叶

突，真正起因并非鸦片，而是茶叶。当时

当鸦片在历史长河里“稍纵即逝”，茶叶

最早来自于先秦时期的古蜀国，也就是如

英国正从中国大量购入茶叶，而中国商人

则历经洗礼，境况更佳，成为了中国人日

今成都所在的四川盆地。但我也曾听说在

只接受白银支付，拒绝以机器、纺织品等

常生活的基本组成。

与四川盆地相距甚远的云南森林里发现过

商品置换。英国提供的来自欧洲和世界各

对于茶叶，我几乎一无所知，但也相

最古老的茶树（也就是世间所有茶树的始

地的货品并不受到中国商人的欢迎。我推

信它有益健康，尤其对长期饮酒者具有极

祖）。另外也有一种说法，茶叶起源于缅

测主要原因是满清政府闭关锁国、禁止外

大功效。当今社会正经历着文化剧变，其

甸北部和泰国西北部，同样也是某些专家

来物品的决策，而非中国人民对这些外来

中，茶文化是中国社会需要竭力保护和传

认为对稻米文化发源具有贡献的地方。

商品不感兴趣。毕竟“好奇”也是一种普

承的传统文化之一。

无论第一棵收获茶叶的茶树位于何

世价值。

处，它的存在都要早于公元前4世纪，也即

英国从中国购买茶叶，白银逐渐消耗

早于秦朝建立的公元前221年。秦朝的前

殆尽，因此必须另寻一项商品以平衡两国

中国人种植茶树已有2000多年历史

46

随着时间流逝，鸦片逐渐退出历史舞

China Economic Review | September 2014

上一次我用加奶与加糖的英式方法喝 茶，还要追溯到大约1972年。而在中国， 饮一杯好茶，是无需任何添加的。

LISTING Accounting Firms

www.lufthansa.com.cn

Suite 628, 6/F Shanghai Centre,

Tel: +86 10 6444 8900

S101 Beijing Lufthansa Center

1376 Nanjing Road West,

Fax: +86 10 6445 3870

50 Liangmaqiao Road, Chaoyang

Shanghai

agan@harrowbeijing.cn

Tel: +86 10 6468 8838

Tel: +86 21 6279 8660

Northwest Airlines Airport

mba@mbs-worldwide.ac.cn

Office www.nwa.com 32271 Passenger Terminal 2, Capital International Airport

Saint Paul American School

Tel: +86 010 6459 7827

www.stpaulschool.cn

Harris Corporate Services Ltd

KLM - Greater China Regional

18 Guan Ao Yuan, Longgang

www.harrissec.com.cn

Office

Shanghai Office

www.klm.com.cn

Tongji University SIMBA

100192

Suite 904, OOCL Plaza,

1609-1611 Kuntai International

A309 Sino-French Center, Tongji

PRC

841 Yan An Zhong Road,

Mansion, B12 Chaoyangmenwai

University, 1239 Siping Road

Tel: +86 137 1881 0084

Jing’An,

Avenue, Chaoyang, Beijing

Shanghai, PRC

spasadmissions@gmail.com

Shanghai, PRC

Tel: +86 10 5922 0747

Tel: +86 21 6598 0610

Shanghai

Tel: +86 21 6289 8813

Fax: +86 10 5879 7621

Fax: +86 21 6598 3540

Livingston American School

Fax:+86 21 6289 8816

Shanghai

China Europe Int’l Business

www.laschina.org

info.sh@harrissec.com.cn

Air France - Shanghai Office

School

580 Ganxi Road

Beijing Office

www.airfrance.com.cn

(CEIBS) MBA

Tel: +86 21 6238 3511

Room 2302, E-Tower, No.12

3901B Ciro’s Plaza

www.ceibs.edu

Fax:+86 21 5218 0390

Guanghua Road, Chaoyang,

388 Nanjing Road West

Tel: +86 21 2890 5555

Shanghai Community

Beijing, PRC

Tel: +86 21 6334 5702

Fax: +86 21 2890 5200

International School (Pudong

Tel: +86 10 6591 8087

mail.corporate.sha@airfrance.fr

admissions@ceibs.edu

Campus)

Shanghai Jiaotong-Euromed

www.scischina.org

Fax: +86 10 8599 9882 info.bj@harrissec.com.cn

Business Schools

Road Qinghe, Haidian, Beijing

Management AEMBA Program

800 Xiuyan Road, Kangqiao,

Guangzhou Office

Shanghai

(MBA/EMBA)

Pudong

Room D-E, 11/F, Yueyun

Fudan University - Washington

www.aemba.com.cn

Tel: +86 21 5812 9888

Building

University EMBA

Tel: +86 21 5230 1598

Fax:+86 21 5812 9000

3 Zhongshan 2nd Road

www.olin.wustl.edu/shanghai

Fax: +86 21 5230 3357

British International School

Guangzhou, PRC

(English)

aemba@sjtu.edu.cn

Shanghai - Pudong Campus

Tel: +86 20 8762 0508

www.fdms.edu.cn/olin (Chinese)

www.bisshanghai.com

International Schools

Fax: +86 20 3762 0543

Room 710, 670 Guoshun Road

info.gz@harrissec.com.cn

Shanghai, China, 200433

600 Cambridge Forest New Town, Lane 2729 Hunan Road,

Hong Kong Office

Tel: +86 21 5566 4788

Pudong

7/F, Hong Kong Trade Centre

Fax: +86 21 6565 4103

Tel: +86 21 5812 7455

161-167 Des Voeux Road Central

Hotels

Hong Kong, PRC Tel: +852 2541 6632

Shanghai

Fax: +852 2541 9339

Grand Mercure Hongqiao

info@harrissec.com.hk

Airlines

48

Harrow International School

Shanghai

Manchester Business School

Beijing

www.grandmercurehongqiao.com

Part-time Global MBA

www.harrowbeijing.cn

369 Xian Xia Road, Chang Ning

Beijing

http://china.portals.mbs.ac.uk

No. 5, 4th Block, Anzhenxili

Shanghai

Lufthansa German Airlines

Starts December 2013,

Chaoyang, Beijing 100029

Tel: +86 21 5153 3300

Beijing Office

Shanghai

PRC

Fax: +86 21 5153 3555

China Economic Review | September 2014

reservation@

2302-2303, 2201-2206 Hongyi

China 200040

grandmercurehongqiao-shanghai.

International Plaza, 288 Jiujiang

Tel: +86 21 6087 1515

com

Road, Shanghai

Fax: +86 21 6087 1955

Tel: +86 21 2321 7888

Leasing Enquiries

shresume@hudson.com

Tel: +86 21 6087 2499 Tel: +86 21 6087 2488

Language Schools MandarinKing www.mandarinking.cn

Park View Apartment

Real Estate/ Serviced Apartments

wwww.parkview-sh.com Block 1-4, No. 888

Shanghai

Changning Road

No.555 West Nanjing Road,

Shanghai, 200042

Zhejiang Narada Grand Hotel

Room 1207 12th Floor, Plaza

Tel: +86 21 5241 8028

www.wtcgh.com

555 Shanghai

leasing@parkview-sh.com

122 Shuguang Road,Hangzhou,

PRC

Savills Residence Century Park

China 310007

Course Inquiry: 400 618 6685

www.savillsresidence.com

Tel: +86 0571 8799 0888

Office Tel: +86 21 6209 1063

No. 1703, Lane 1883, Huamu

hotel@wtcgh.com

Office Tel: +86 21 6209 8671

Oakwood Residence Shanghai

Road Pudong

study@mandarinking.cn

www.oakwoodasia.com

Shanghai 201303

103 Wuning Road, Putuo District,

PRC

Shanghai 200063

Tel: +86 21 5197 6688 info@savillsresidence.com

HR/Recruitment Beijing

PR Agencies

Beijing Deco Personal Services

Ketchum Newscan Public

China

Ltd.

Relations

Tel: +86 21 6183 0830

china.adecco.com

www.ketchum.com

reservations.ors@oakwoodasia.

D 9/F Tower II China Central

Shanghai

com

Place, 79 Jianguo Road,

218 Tianmu Road West

Chaoyang, Beijing

Tel: +86 21 6353 2288

Tel: +86 010 5920 4320

Fax: +86 21 6353 2276

Fax: +86 010 5920 4322

Beijing

beijing.cn@adecco.com

A6, Chaoyangmenwai Avenue

Guangdong

Chaoyang

Levin Human Resources

Tel: +86 10 5907 0055

Development (Guangzhou) Ltd.

Fax: +86 10 5907 0188

www.levin.com.hk

Ogilvy Group

Lanson Place Central Park

Sandhill Plaza

V15 4/F Goldlion Digital Network

www.ogilvy.com

Residences

www.sandhillplaza.cn

Center, 138 Tiyu Road East,

Beijing

enquiry.lpcp@lansonplace.com

2290 Zuchongzhi Rd, Zhangjiang

Tianhe,

9/F Huali Building, 58 Jinbao

Tower 23, Central Park

Hi-Tech Park

Guangzhou, Guangdong

Street, Dongcheng

No. 6 Chaoyangmenwai Avenue

Shanghai 201303

Tel: +86 020 2886 0665

Tel: +86 10 8520 6000

Chaoyang, Beijing 100020

Tel: +86 21 6075 2555

Fax: +86 020 3878 1801

Fax: +86 10 8520 6060

Tel: +86 10 8588 9588

Leasing@sandhill.cn

Fax: +86 10 8588 9599

Shenyang

Shanghai

Shenyang International

info@levin.com.hk Shanghai

Real Estate/Commercial

Real Estate/ Business Park

ADP China

Jing An Kerry Centre

Lanson Place Jin Qiao Serviced

Software Park

30/F Golden Bell Plaza, 98

www.jingankerrycentre.com

Residences

No.860-1 Shangshengou,

Huaihai Road Central, Shanghai

Unit 901, 9F, Tower 1

enquiry.lpjq@lansonplace.com

Dongling, Shenyang City,

Tel: +86 021 2326 7999

Jing An Kerry Centre

No. 27 & 28, Lane 399 Zao

Liaoning Province, 110167

Hudson Recruitment

1515 Nanjing Road West

Zhuang Road, Pudong, Shanghai

Tel: +86 24 8378 0500

(Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

Shanghai

Tel: +86 21 5013 3888

Fax: +86 24 8378 0528

China Economic Review | September 2014

49

LISTING Real Estate/HOPSCA

16/F, East Tower,

8/F, 8 Lujiang Road, Siming

5/F, West Office Tower, 1376

Dongfangshouzuo No.1

District

Nanjing Road West, Jing’an

Chongren St. Jinbi Road, Wuhua

Apollo Business Center

District

District

Apollo Huaihai Center [New]

Regus Plaza 66

NANJING (2 LOCATIONS)

4/F, Fuxing Commercial Building

15/F, Tower 2, No.1266 West

Regus Jinling-Asia Pacific

139 Ruijin Road (No.1)

Nanjing Road, Jing’an District

Tower [COMING SOON]

Huangpu, Shanghai

Regus Shanghai Bund Centre

8/F, Jinling Hotel Asia Pacific

Tel: 021-6136-6088

Shanghai Jiatinghui Property

18/F, 222 Yan’an Road East,

Tower No.2, Hanzhong Road,

Apollo Flagship Center

Development Co., Ltd

Huangpu District

Gulou District

Apollo Building

www.antinganting.com.cn

GUANGZHOU (7 LOCATIONS)

NINGBO (2 LOCATIONS)

1440 Yan’an Road (M)

Life Hub @ Anting No 1033

Regus Guangdong

Regus Raffles City

Jing’an, Shanghai

Moyu Rd S, Anting, Shanghai

International Building [NEW]

8/F, No.99 South Daqing Road,

Tel: 021-6133-1888

Tel: +86 21 6950 2255

7/F, Main Tower, 339 Huanshi

Jiangbei District

Apollo Tomson Center

Fax: +86 21 6950 2833

Road East, Yuexiu District

SUZHOU

22/F, Tomson Commercial

jean.liu@chongbang.com

Regus The Place

Regus JinHope Plaza [NEW]

Building

[COMING SOON]

11/F, Tower 2, 88 Hua Chi

710 Dongfang Road

8/F, 618 Xingang East Road,

Street, SIP

Pudong, Shanghai

Haizhu District

TIANJIN (2 LOCATIONS)

Tel: 021-6165-2288

SHENZHEN (6 LOCATIONS)

Regus Tianjin Centre

Apollo Xuhui Center

Regus Panglin Plaza

8/F, No.219 Nanjing Road,

16/F, Feidiao International Building

35/F, 2002 Jiabin Road, Luohu

Heping District

1065 Zhaojiabang Road

District

WUXI

Tel: 021-5158-1688

Regus A8 Building

Regus Hongdou International

Apollo Hongqiao Center

15/F, A8 Music Building,

Plaza [NEW]

26/F, New Town Center Building

No.1002 Keyuan Road,

25/F, No.531 Zhongshan Road,

83 Loushanguan Road

Regus Serviced Office

Tech Zone, Nanshan District,

Chong’an District

Tel: 021-3133-2688

• FLEXIBLE OFFICE LEASES

CHENGDU (3 LOCATIONS)

WUHAN (2 LOCATIONS)

Vantone Commercial Center

Regus Square One

Regus Poly Plaza [NEW]

www.VantoneCommercialCenter.

11/F, No.18 Dongyu Street,

18/F, No.99 Zhongnan Road,

com

Jinjiang District

Wuchang District

Level 26 & 27, Tower D, Vantone

CHONGQING (2 LOCATIONS)

XI’AN

Center, No 6 Chaowai Ave

Regus HNA Poly Plaza

Regus Capita Mall Office

Chaoyang, Beijing

• FIND MORE ON REGUS.CN

[COMING SOON]

[COMING SOON]

Tel: +86 10 5905 5905

BEIJING (14 LOCATIONS)

35/F, No.235 Minsheng Road,

11/F, No.64 South 2nd Ring

Regus Beijing Taikang

Yuzhong District

Road, Yanta District

Financial Tower [NEW]

DALIAN (2 LOCATIONS)

XIAMEN

23/F, 38 East Third Ring Road,

Regus Xiwang Tower

Regus International Plaza

Chaoyang District

[COMING SOON]

Regus Beijing NCI Centre

9/F, 136 Zhongshan Road,

To have your company featured in these pages, please contact our

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Excel Centre

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12/F, 6 Wudinghou Street,

Road, Xihu District

2205, Shanghai Plaza, No.138 Huaihaizhong Rd, Shanghai, China, 200021

Xicheng District

KUNMING

ᒦਪ࿟਱ှઠ਱ᒦവ138੓࿟਱ਓ‫ޝ‬2205 ᎆ‫ܠ‬ǖ200021

SHANGHAI (26 LOCATIONS)

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FROM 1 DAY TO 1 YEAR • QUICK AND EASY TO SET UP FOR 1-200 PEOPLE • PRICES FROM RMB 180 PER MONTH

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China Economic Review | September 2014

Q&A: A state-owned hospitality giant turns to the middle class

Q&A: Chinese universities lead their emerging world peers

FEBRUARY 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 2

China Mobile is learning to live with WeChat and Weibo

MARCH 2014 VOL. 25, NO. 3

www.chinaeconomicreview.com

Regulatory surprises await Chinese miners in Greenland

Feeding China

Overpriced and overcrowded

Keeping 1.3 billion people full at mealtimes is now a global matter

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