自2010年以来，中国的增长大幅放缓，并可能进一步放缓——如此前景让中国国内外投资者和市场大为紧张。全球经济的诸多传统引擎（如美国）早已开启了低速模式，在这样的情况下，中国的表现正变得越来越重要。
但如今，中国出口和制造业相关指数的增长率有所下落，主要是拜外部需求（特别是欧洲需求）萎靡所致。而中国当局目前正在削减中国增长的另一主要推进器——公共部门投资的规模，因为低回报项目所形成的总需求很快就会变得不可持续。
政府动用了包括金融部门信用纪律在内的大量工具抑制投资需求。从根本上说，政府对公共部门投资融资的担保正在收回——理应如此。
但是，为了绕过国家主导的金融系统的限制，影子银行已经发展起来，孕育了新的风险：经济扭曲；依赖过度杠杆推动消费、房地产、公司和政府部门的增长；以及与监管不足相关的危险。结果，投资者担心中国将滑入过度负债的增长模式，而这正是让发达经济体如今举步维艰的模式。
中国在使国内消费成为未来增长驱动力方面花了大力气。但前世界银行副行长林毅夫强烈指出，投资仍将是、也应该是关键的增长引擎，在中国的增长模式中，国内消费不应该被推动至自然极限之外，进入基于增加消费债务的高杠杆模式。
这似乎是正确的。风险在于，林毅夫的警告会被解释为坚持投资导向模式的观点，而投资导向意味着更多的低回报公共部门项目和被选中行业的产能过剩。创造增长的正确目标是基于消费和高回报投资的正确组合的国内总需求。
分析师和投资者至少有两大相关疑虑。其一，面临增长趋缓，决策者将求助于过度投资或杠杆（或兼而有之），这会带来动荡。其二，决策者既不求助于过度投资，也不求助于杠杆，也不启动其他替代引擎，导致增长进一步的放缓，带来不可预测的国内政治后果和严重的国外经济后果。
简言之，许多投资者之所以紧张，是因为中国的未来增长故事不够清晰。毫无疑问，和过去比起来，未来的增长故事的确要模糊一些，但往日不可追矣。
没有迅速安抚这些疑虑的切实办法。只有时间、将于今年秋季公布的系统性改革政策的实施以及实际经济表现能够通过某种方式安抚疑虑。
如果成功，增长模式的改变将在数年内发生。因此，你应该寻找的是朝正确方向的运动，而这相当清晰。
其一是比较优势的变迁。工资的增加要求生产率的提高。这意味着增加经济的可贸易和不可贸易部门的资本和人力资本密集度。
在可贸易部门，你应该寻找结构性变化和产出向全球供应链更高附加值部分的变迁。在这方面，创新和支持创新的条件——包括竞争和市场进出自由——起着重要作用。如果决策者选择基于受内外竞争保护的大规模国家主导部门的模式，那么创新目标不可能实现，未来增长将受到消极影响。
与此同时，非贸易部门应该增长。随着中国的变富，其中产阶级公民不但会购买汽车、电子产品和电器等可贸易商品，也会购买住房和一系列不可贸易服务。对这一规模庞大且不断增长的需求源的高效的供给端响应要求诸多服务业的监管改革，包括金融、产品安全、交通和物流等方面。
但家庭仍然收入过少、储蓄率过高。通过重重叠叠的公司和公共部门控制收入使得将投资带动型增长模式推向低回报（甚至负回报）更加容易了。因此整体财政系统是中国改革日程的关键项，特别是公共资本管理。
财政改革将决定很多事情：国内收入和需求的组成（将推动供给端的结构性变化）、各级政府间收入和支出的分配及其所隐含的激励。在中国外部，这部分改革日程最不为人所了解。
此外，社会服务和社会保障需要加强，以扭转不平等性恶化的局面。除此之外，更包容的增长取决于城市化进程的完成情况（创造现代经济的基础）、解决腐败和市场机会不公、大力减轻众所周知的严重的环境问题等因素。
在我看来，全球经济的重要部分和外部需求都不利，中国（目前）接受增长减速同时等待新增长引擎运转起来是个好信号。这表明决策者意在长期可持续增长，对于长期使用会导致有缺陷的不可持续增长模式的政策更加小心翼翼了。
寻找在这些结构性变化和改革的关键要素上的进步似乎是正确的立场。如果市场混淆了中国的长期日程或对此表示悲观，但结构性变化和改革的方向是积极的，那么将会出现在刚刚过去的较为繁荣的光景中所找不到的投资机会。
China’s growth has slowed considerably since 2010, and it may slow even more – a prospect that is rattling investors and markets well beyond China’s borders. With many of the global economy’s traditional growth engines – like the United States – stuck in low gear, China’s performance has become increasingly important.
But now growth rates for Chinese exports and related indices in manufacturing have fallen, largely owing to weak external demand, especially in Europe. And the Chinese authorities are now scaling back the other major driver of their country’s growth, public-sector investment, as low-return projects seem to generate aggregate demand but prove unsustainable fairly quickly.
The government is using a variety of instruments, including financial-sector credit discipline, to rein in investment demand. Essentially, the government guarantee associated with financing public-sector investment is being withdrawn – as it should be.
But, to circumvent the restrictions in the state-dominated financial system, a shadow banking system has developed, raising new risks: economic distortions; reliance on excess leverage to drive growth in the consumer, real estate, corporate, and government sectors; and dangers associated with inadequate regulation. As a result, investors are worried that China could slip into the excess-leverage growth model that has served many developed economies so poorly.
Much has been made of domestic consumption as a driver of Chinese growth in the future. But Justin Lin, a former World Bank chief economist, has argued forcefully that investment will and should remain a key growth driver, and that domestic consumption in China’s growth pattern should not be pushed beyond its natural limits into a high-leverage model based on rising consumer debt.
That seems right. The risk is that Lin’s warning will be interpreted as an argument for sticking with an investment-led model, which would imply more low-return public-sector projects and excess capacity in selected industries. The right target for generating growth is domestic aggregate demand based on the right mix of consumption and high-return investment.
Analysts and investors have at least two related concerns. One is that, facing declining growth, policymakers will resort to excess investment or leverage (or both), creating instability. The other is that they will resort to neither, and that no alternative growth engines will have been started, leading to an extended slowdown with unpredictable political consequences at home and serious economic consequences abroad.
In short, many investors are nervous because China’s future growth story is unclear to them. It is certainly less clear than the previous story, which cannot be retold.
There is no real way to allay these concerns quickly. Only time, implementation of the policy and systemic reforms to be revealed this fall, and actual economic performance will settle the matter one way or the other.
The shift in the growth pattern, if successful, will occur over several years. So, what one should be looking for is movement in the right directions, which are fairly clear.
One is a shift in comparative advantage. Rising incomes require rising productivity. That means increasing capital and human capital intensity across both the tradable and non-tradable sectors of the economy.
On the tradable side, one should look for structural change and a shift in output to higher-value-added components of global supply chains. Here, innovation and the conditions that support it – including competition and free entry and exit from the market – play an important role. If policymakers choose a model based on a large state-dominated sector protected from internal and external competition, innovation objectives are unlikely to be met, adversely affecting future growth.
Meanwhile, the non-tradable side should grow. As China becomes richer, its middle-class citizens will not just buy more tradable goods like cars, electronics, and appliances; they will buy housing and a host of non-tradable services, too. An efficient supply-side response to this large and growing source of demand requires regulatory reform in many services, including finance, product safety, transport, and logistics.
But households still control too little income and save at very high rates. The control of income by the overlapping corporate and public sectors makes it easier to push the investment-led growth model to the point of low (or even negative) returns. So the entire fiscal system is a crucial item on China’s reform agenda, especially management of public capital.
Fiscal reform will determine many things: the components of domestic income and demand that will drive structural change on the supply side, the allocation of income and expenditure across levels of government, and the embedded incentives that this allocation implies. Outside of China, this part of the reform agenda is the least well understood.
Moreover, social services and social security will need to be strengthened in order to reverse a pattern of rising inequality. Beyond that, more inclusive growth depends on the completion of the urbanization process that underpins the creation of a modern economy; addressing corruption and unequal access to market opportunities; and aggressively mitigating well-known and serious environmental problems.
With significant elements of the global economy and external demand facing headwinds, China’s acceptance (so far) of a growth slowdown, while its new growth engines kick in, is a good sign, in my view. It suggests that policymakers are playing for longer-run sustainable growth and have become warier of policies that, if used persistently, amount to a defective, unsustainable growth model.
Watching for progress on these key elements of structural change and reform seems to be the right stance. If markets are confused or pessimistic about China’s longer-term agenda, but if the direction of structural change and reform is positive, there may be investment opportunities that were absent in the more exuberant recent past.
(Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business.)
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