Keeping it Simple | Ep. 44: Cosmic Latte
发布时间 2025-01-13 19:30:21 来源
All right, thank you all for joining us for our very first keeping it simple of 2025. We are certainly setting the stage right here today with a very special guest on today's episode. We have Leland Miller with us, who is an industry veteran, an expert on the topic of China's economy and financial system and the co-founder of the China Beige Book. And of course, it would not be keeping it simple without our lovely hosts, Michael Wien and Holly Basman. Also please remember that this is meant to be entertaining and is not investment advice. And if you have any questions during the webinar, please feel free to submit them using the Q&A function.
好的，非常感谢大家加入我们 2025 年的首次“简单明了”节目。我们今天有幸邀请到一位特别的嘉宾。我们有请 Leland Miller，他是行业资深人士，也是中国经济和金融体系方面的专家，同时还是中国褐皮书的联合创始人。当然，如果没有我们的可爱主持人 Michael Wien 和 Holly Basman，就称不上“简单明了”了。另外，请记住此节目主要是为了娱乐，并非投资建议。如果您在网络研讨会期间有任何问题，请随时通过问答功能提交。
But with that, my colleague and Leland Biffler is all yours. Fantastic. I don't think I've ever been described as lovely before. That's an interesting change. Okay, so Leland, it's a pleasure to have you on board. I've been following your work for a number of years. And as I mentioned in our preview, you and I got the chance to hang out together at David Kotok's camp co-talk up in Maine this past summer. You were much better at the fishing than I was. But we had a lot of conversations around China, the incoming administration, trade, etc. And I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity. Start 2025 off because it really does feel like the topic of the year is ultimately going to be around tariffs, the implementation of tariffs, the reaction to tariffs, etc. And China of course is sitting front and center unless of course we're talking about Greenland or Canada or whatever we decide to distract ourselves with. Maybe you could just give a brief introduction of what the China beige book is and what you do in the context of your analysis of China and to a lesser extent other markets around the world.
不过说完这些，我的同事利兰·比夫勒就要全权负责了。太好了。我想我从来没有被形容为可爱过，这是个有趣的变化。好的，利兰，欢迎你加入团队。我关注你的工作已经有好几年了。就像我在介绍时提到的，今年夏天我们在缅因州的David Kotok营地一起度过了一段时间。你比我钓鱼强多了。但我们就中国、新政府、贸易等话题进行了很多讨论。我觉得这会是一个很好的机会。2025年开始，因为关税以及其实施和反应等内容似乎成为了年度话题，而中国则明显是其中的焦点，除非我们决定转移注意力去讨论格陵兰或加拿大等。也许你可以简单介绍一下什么是《中国米色书》，以及你在分析中国市场和其他国际市场中的角色。
Sure. I'm glad to be here. I'm excited for this conversation. China beige book is the largest private data collection operation in the world focused on the Chinese economy. So we decided a long time ago is that if you are using statistics from Beijing, then you're apt to be misled. I don't think this is a surprise right now. It was a surprise to a lot of people when we started this about 15 years ago. And what we wanted to do is not just put out a number for China, GDP of 7.8% or a PMI of 51.4 that nobody really knew at that bad. And it certainly didn't tell the story of all the different China's. We wanted to actually track all the different China's stories and we wanted to track all the different regions in China, all the different sectors. We wanted to see the divergences between private and state behavior. We wanted to see the difference between small firms and large firms.
当然。我很高兴能够参与进来，对这次对话感到十分期待。中国褐皮书是全球最大的私人数据收集项目之一，专注于中国经济。我们早在很久以前就意识到，如果你依赖北京发布的统计数据，很可能会被误导。我认为这一点现在已经不是秘密了。然而，在我们大约15年前开始这项工作时，很多人对此感到意外。我们的目标不仅仅是给出一个关于中国的宏观数字，比如7.8%的国内生产总值（GDP）增长率或51.4的采购经理人指数（PMI），因为这些数字无法反映中国的真实情况。我们实际想要追踪的是中国经济的多样化故事，覆盖所有的地区和行业。我们希望看到私企与国企行为的差异，以及小型企业与大型企业之间的不同。
We wanted to see not just what's happening on the growth side, but what's happening on the credit side, what's happening in shadow finance, which obviously reflect both of those reflect government policy and stimulus. We wanted to see monetary policy and fiscal policy in action. We wanted to track the labor market. We wanted to track inflation. So rather than get a number or two or three, which is essentially what the markets are used to doing for China, just grabbing on their favorite three or five or seven China metrics. We wanted to create a broader platform with hundreds and now thousands of different metrics on China to say, here's what's happening all the different China stories. And we aggregated the data, we start from the ground up, we aggregate the data, thousands of firms over the course of the year. It's tens of thousands of firms. And we tell the story of all the different China's and we tell it through the lens of not just here is what GDP growth is, but here's what's happening in credit and here's what's happening in jobs and here's what's happening in inflation, all the really important baskets that people should be watching.
我们希望不仅仅了解经济增长方面的情况，还想了解信贷领域的动态，以及影子金融的变化，这些都显然反映了政府的政策和刺激措施。我们想看到货币政策和财政政策的实际效果，还想追踪劳动力市场和通货膨胀的变化。因此，我们不满足于和市场一样，仅仅关注一两个或三五个中国的指标，而是希望建立一个更广泛的平台，包含数百甚至上千个不同的中国指标，以便全面展示中国的各种动态。我们从基础数据做起，汇总每年成千上万家公司的数据，讲述中国的多样化故事。我们不仅仅提供GDP增长的数据，还展示信贷、就业和通货膨胀等各个重要领域的发展，这是人们应该关注的关键因素。
So obviously the name China beige book is in reference to the Fed's beige book, the survey of local business conditions. It is just like you're describing basically built from the bottom up surveys of individual businesses discussions with various sectors of the economy and providing that rich detail that we're all used to getting from the Federal Reserve beige book, you're providing that with the China beige book.
显然，“中国米色书”的名称是参考了美联储的“米色书”，这是一个关于当地商业状况的调查。就像你所描述的那样，它基本上是通过对个别企业的调查以及与不同行业的讨论，从底层构建而成的，提供了丰富的细节信息。这种丰富的细节是我们从美联储的“米色书”中所习惯获取的，而“中国米色书”提供了类似的详细信息。
One of the ways I became aware of your work was in 2015 2016, I think it was actually I started doing work for Peter Thiel on the China story. And one of the things that became very, very clear was this phenomenon that the underlying data meant almost nothing, right? And in particular, we were focused on inflation in China at that point. This was the time period of the, the purse virus, the porcine flu component that things called blue nose for pigs, but it was causing an explosive increase in pork prices that was not showing up anywhere in the official data. It was one of those really remarkable moments where you're like, oh my God, none of this is actually true. Nothing we're being told is accurate.
我在2015-2016年间了解到你的工作的其中一个途径是，我开始为彼得·蒂尔研究关于中国的情况。当时一个非常明显的现象是，基础数据几乎毫无意义。我们当时特别关注中国的通货膨胀。这段期间正值“猪蓝耳病”爆发，这种猪流感导致猪肉价格飙升，但这一变化在官方数据中丝毫没有体现。这实在是一个令人震惊的时刻，让人明白过来，天啊，我们被告知的一切其实都不准确。
We're familiar with the term Potemkin village to indicate a structure that has been built to portray a simulacrum of a real world in success. A lot of people I think of grown increasingly aware that there is a component of that in China and the Chinese data. Does that feel fair as an assessment at this point? It seems eminently fair. I mean, look, if back back 15 years ago, there was a lot of convincing you had to do in order to explain to people the Chinese data are, are, are, you know, will mislead you. Some of them are manipulated. Some of them are wrong.
我们熟悉“波将金村”这个词，用来形容一种为了营造成功的假象而建造的结构。我认为，越来越多的人意识到这种现象在中国及其数据中存在。这样的评估是否公平？似乎非常公平。要知道，在15年前，你需要做很多工作来说服人们，中国的数据会误导你。其中一些被操控，一些是错误的。
Some of the data sets don't work. I don't think you need much convincing for people now. But, you know, the big mistake that people made along the way was, you know, they said for many years, all right, well, maybe GDP is manipulated, but, you know, they say there's this who Lee Kuchiang index and, you know, it's electricity consumption. It's real cargo. It's these other things. You know, we'll just track those and get the real story. But of course, with all metrics in China, the second that they're tracked by markets and they become meaningful, then they become manipulated by the government.
有些数据集不起作用。我认为现在不需要花太多力气说服人们。但你知道，人们一路上犯的一个大错误就是，他们多年来一直说，好吧，也许GDP被操纵了，但是，他们说有个“李克强指数”，你知道，就是电力消费、铁路货运这些东西。我们只要跟踪这些指标，就能得到真实的情况。但事实上，中国所有的指标，一旦被市场关注并变得有意义，政府就会对其进行操控。
They become meaningless. So there hasn't, there won't, hasn't been, there won't ever be a real proxy of all the different things that are happening in China because it's not a Beijing, Beijing's interest to let them do it. Now there used to be this pushback, oh, no, we don't manipulate our data. We're going to grow 8% forever. That's just going to happen. Now they're not even really hiding it. Now, you know, we could go back 15, 10, 15 years and talk about all the ways that the data don't make sense and how monthly data don't fit with quarterly data or don't fit with the annual data series.
它们变得毫无意义。因此，没有，也不会有，也从未有过关于中国发生的所有不同情况的真实代理数据，因为这不符合北京的利益让他们这样做。过去会有一种反驳，说："哦，不，我们不操纵我们的数据。我们将永远增长8%。这就是将要发生的事情。" 但现在他们甚至不再掩饰这一点了。我们可以回到10到15年前，讨论数据不合理的种种方式，比如月度数据与季度数据或年度数据不符的情况。
But look at just what's happened in the last, you know, handful of years. You know, there has been massive restatements that are totally unexplained on retail sales data and fixed asset investment. And we're talking about trillions of yuan, not, not millions, not billions, trillions of yuan restatements that are done without any explanation. In the last year, you saw youth unemployment rate completely rejiggered and revised and it was, it was dropped down and then it was brought back up in a different form.
但是看看过去几年发生的事情。零售销售数据和固定资产投资出现了巨大的重新调整，而这些调整完全没有解释。这涉及到的是数万亿人民币的调整，不是数百万，也不是数十亿，而是数万亿。在去年，青年失业率也被彻底修改和调整，先是被降低，然后又以另一种形式被调高。
You know, you see the how the, so the housing component of GDP has just been changed in the last several weeks. You know, you have a whole bunch of different data changes that are going on right now and they're being very open about it. They're not even hiding this right now. So while they don't want people talking bad about the economy, it's no longer defensible to say, well, I think the data are good enough because it used to be the idea was, well, they're directionally correct. They're not accurate, but they're directionally correct. Has China, Facebook showed for over a decade, that's usually not correct either. They're very lagging and they're often completely short changing the down turns. So which means they're also short changing the up turns and cyclically, they're not even, you know, directly correct most of the time.
你知道吗，最近几周GDP中的住房部分已经被修改了。当前有许多数据正在变化，他们对此非常公开，不再隐藏这些信息。所以，尽管他们不希望人们对经济发表负面评论，但现在已经无法再为数据辩护说「我认为数据足够好」，因为以前的观点是数据在趋势上是正确的，虽然不够精确，但方向是对的。然而，中国和Facebook在过去十多年中显示，通常这种说法也不正确。数据往往滞后，并且在经济下行时严重低估了情况，这也意味着它们在经济上行时同样被低估。因此，在周期性变化方面，它们大多数时候甚至在方向上也不正确。
So you really are in a hard place if you're relying on on official data. Lee, when does anybody in China actually know the real numbers or they, they can, you know, in little pockets and they're hidden there like this top of the government know the real data. I suspect so. We've had so a lot of conversations about this. Do I think that, that, that, that, that, you know, the leadership in Beijing has much better numbers than they released to the public? I'm sure of it. I mean, they see some of our, some of our data, not directly, but, but they see it and, you know, and, and, and the other part of it is when we look at a lot of the stuff that happens in the credit universe, it makes a lot more sense through the lens of what we're putting out than what they're putting out. If you try to match, you know, stimulus statements and what actually happens with, with the credit data, you see a story that sometimes makes more sense when you look at it through the real data that we put out than, than government data. I suspect that they have much, much better data behind the curtain in Beijing. It's certainly better than they put out to the masses.
如果你依赖官方数据，那么你确实处于一个困难的境地。李，在中国，是否有人真正知道真实的数据，还是说只有政府高层知道呢？我怀疑是的。我们就这个问题进行了很多讨论。我认为北京的领导层掌握的数字要比他们对公众公布的要精确得多，我对此深信不疑。虽然他们不直接看到我们的一些数据，但他们能看到这些信息。再者，当我们观察信贷市场的许多现象时，通过我们的数据来看，会比通过他们公布的数据更有道理。比如，当你对比刺激政策声明和真实发生的信贷数据，有时候通过我们的真实数据来看，故事会更合理。我怀疑在北京幕后的数据要比他们向公众发布的好得多，肯定比他们给大众看到的要好。
I actually wonder because you know that these local provinces, you know, they have to hit their numbers or they end up in Siberia. Well, that's a big point, right? For, for decades, the problem has been not just, it wasn't just one, you know, scheming person in Beijing who was changing sevens to ones or ones to nines. You know, this was the problem with, with localities and with provincial governments who since the, you know, the, you know, the great leap forward would say, you know, here's, here's our numbers were being promoted based on GDP growth. So we're boosting all our numbers. And then even if the central government wants to do a better job, and I do think the central government has wanted to do a better job in terms of data collecting the numbers they were getting from the localities, the regions, et cetera, were, were, were garbage.
我其实在想，因为你知道这些地方省份必须实现他们的业绩目标，否则就会面临严厉的惩罚。这可是个大问题，对不对？几十年来，不仅仅是北京的某个官员在篡改数字，从7变成1或者从1变成9。这问题存在于地方和省级政府，自大跃进以来，他们为了获得晋升，往往依据GDP增长来汇报数字，因此他们会夸大所有的数据。即使中央政府想要改进数据收集工作，我确实认为中央政府是有这个意愿的，但他们从地方、区域等获得的数据却是极其不可靠的。
So they have worked very hard to rectify some of this. So some of the data are better. On the other hand, when they find serious that they don't like that they're broadcasting to publicly, they shut them down. They changed them and, and it's a mess. So there's both good and bad happening, but the data, you can't really follow it. If you want to do more. Why is it in China's interest to go and produce bad data? Let's see. My name's rather helps them. Well, for years and years and years, you got promoted based on good data. And the other part was the system wasn't based about, you know, let's, let's do our best.
他们已经非常努力地去纠正其中一些问题，所以有些数据变得更好了。另一方面，当他们发现一些严重的问题，特别是他们不愿意公开的，他们就会关闭这些数据，进行更改，因此情况变得混乱。因此，情况有好有坏，但数据实际上是很难跟踪的。如果你想做更多的分析，为什么从中国的利益角度去生产不准确的数据呢？让我们来看看。我的名字反而帮助了他们。多年来，你的升迁是基于好数据的。另一方面，这个系统的基础并不是“让我们尽最大努力来做到最好”。
And it was about we have an 8% GDP growth target. We're going to hit that target. And we, the way we do it is through like organic growth of four and a half percent, you're not giving quarter. And then we stimulate the economy in order to keep going up, you know, by building a lot of things, funneling tons of credit into property, whatever it might be. And then you stimulate the economy enough to hit that 8%. If you don't hit that 8%, then you claim you hit that 8%. But the idea was always about making targets. It's a command economy. You want to, you want to make targets. And then you want to hit those targets. And that is success. And for years and years and years, the social contract that the party had with the people was based around saying, we have these high level growth targets. We're going to hit these growth targets. And in the process, we're going to make you rich. Now this all changed back in 2021.
我们的目标是实现8%的GDP增长。我们打算实现这一目标。我们的方法是通过4.5%的自然增长，然后通过刺激经济来保持增长，比如建设大量基础设施，向房地产市场注入大量信贷等。这样，我们才有可能达到8%的增长目标。如果没有达到8%，那就声称已经达到了。关键在于设定目标并实现这些目标，这是计划经济的特点。多年来，政府与人民的“社会契约”都是基于这样一个承诺：我们有这些高增长目标，我们会实现这些增长目标，同时会让大家变得富有。不过，这一切在2021年发生了变化。
I mean, we have been screaming from the, from the mountains, you know, on CNBC and Bloomberg and Fox, everywhere else where, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're talking about how the China's economic paradigm has shifted dramatically since about 2020, 2021. But for years and years and years, there was enormous incentive to, to say you hit the target because that was success in that system. Yeah, I think this is one of the things I would highlight two separate components to it, right? One is it is not so much that it is in Beijing's interest to present the data other than at least prior to about 2018.
我的意思是，自2020年或2021年以来，中国的经济模式发生了巨大变化，我们一直在不同的平台上大声疾呼，例如在CNBC、彭博和福克斯等媒体上。多年来，人们有很大的动力去宣称达标，因为在那个体制中，这意味着成功。我想强调两个不同的方面。首先，在2018年之前，北京并没有太多的动力去展示不同于官方数据的数据。
There was a lot of interest in attracting foreign direct investment. So you, you would basically want to show an economy that was robust and growing and, and offer effectively dangle access to the Chinese domestic market in exchange for technology transfers, et cetera. That now has largely disappeared. Is that fair, Leland? Yeah, well, they still want the foreign investment, but, but it's, it's not a tier one priority anymore. And they, you know, they would like to show that the economy is doing, you know, relatively well, they don't want people to think that they're mis-managing and it's collapsing. And that's where the sensitivities recently have come in. But by and large, the social contract is not geared around hitting these numbers.
对吸引外国直接投资曾经有很大兴趣。因此，基本上，你会希望展示一个强劲和增长的经济体，并有效地以进入中国国内市场为交换，来获得技术转让等等。不过，这种情况现在基本上已经消失了。这样说公平吗，Leland？是的，他们仍然希望获得外国投资，但这已经不再是首要任务了。而且，他们希望向外界展示经济状况相对良好，不希望人们觉得他们管理不善、经济崩溃。最近的敏感点就在于此。但总的来说，社会契约并不以实现这些经济指标为核心目标。
You know, Xi Jinping is not saying to the people, I'm going to hit 5% GDP. And if I don't, then I'm going to admit I'm doing a bad job. What he's going to say is we need to have growth. It's in the air. It's, it's around 5%. You don't get it. We're just going to say we got around 5%. But what we're really worried about it, national security priorities right now. So we're, we're, we're acknowledging the fact that the Chinese economic model, as we knew it for decades, is over. It's at an end. And, and because of that, what, there was a move away. It was this isn't, this wasn't, this was Xi Jinping.
你知道的，习近平并不会告诉人民，我要实现5%的GDP增长，如果没做到就承认自己做得不好。他会说，我们需要增长，目标是在5%左右。如果没达到目标，我们就说大约5%。但我们真正关心的是国家安全优先事项。所以我们承认，过去几十年来我们所熟知的中国经济模式已经结束了。正因为如此，我们进行了转变，这样的改变是习近平推动的。
This was the Communist Party moving away from the idea of high levels of growth, saying, we have got to adopt slower levels of growth because we can't keep pumping this much credit in the economy. And we have to sort of gear down to slower, healthier growth. And if we can maintain a stable level of growth, we'll have a stronger economy and we'll also allow us to focus where we need to focus, which is all these potential national security vulnerabilities, whether it's supply chains or its payment systems, its reliance on the dollar, it's, you know, it's reliant on, you know, need to focus on the military.
这是共产党在转变思路，从追求高增长转向接受较慢增速，因为我们无法继续向经济中注入如此多的信贷。我们必须调整到较慢但更健康的增长水平。如果我们能够保持稳定的增长，我们的经济将更加强劲，并且可以让我们专注于需要关注的领域，比如供应链、支付系统、对美元的依赖，以及军事等潜在的国家安全漏洞。
All these other things, that's where Xi Jinping is focused on right now, not this high level of growth stuff. So they really had to migrate for the old bottle to the new model as a matter of survival. Yeah, I was going to say another one of my friends, Michael Pettis, regularly talks about the idea that GDP is a solved for number in China, that you decide you want 5% and you will then plug for everything else. I certainly saw evidence of that historically. You intimated that may have changed, that now it's more just, let's just say it happened. Well, it certainly was way, look, Pettis is a friend.
所有这些其他事情才是习近平目前关注的重点，而不是追求高水平的经济增长。因此，他们真的不得不从旧模式转向新的模式，这是生存的需要。是的，我想说的是，我的另一个朋友迈克尔·佩蒂斯经常提到，中国的GDP其实是一个可以人为控制的数字，你决定想要实现5%的增长，然后就会调整其他方面。我过去的确看到过这样的现象。你暗示过这可能已经改变了，现在更多的是，只是说增长发生了。嗯，确实是这样，佩蒂斯是我的朋友。
I agree with him on so many things. I think that was absolutely the way that the system worked. I think a large extent still works that way. I just don't think they have the obsession over hitting growth targets. I mean, the reason that you, you know, you turn on your Bloomberg terminal and you see headline after headline about GDP growth targets is because Western, you know, equity research teams at the big banks don't have anything else to focus on. So they're like, well, is China going to hit its growth this year and they're going to write a big report about it?
我在很多事情上都同意他的看法。我认为这就是这个系统以前运作的方式，并且在很大程度上，现在依然如此。不过，我觉得他们并没有那么执着于达成增长目标。我的意思是，你在开Bloomberg终端时，为什么会看到一个又一个关于GDP增长目标的头条新闻，是因为西方的大银行的股票研究团队没有其他重点可关注。所以他们就会关注中国今年是否能实现增长，并对此撰写一份详细报告。
They don't have their own data to say, hey, we're tracking this and that's interesting. I'm tracking that. That's interesting. Sometimes they're not even allowed to talk about these things. So there were the obsession about hitting GDP growth targets right now, I think is more Western economists, Western bank analysts, et cetera, who were obsessed with that. I think in Beijing, what they want to do is they want to make sure that they've got a stable enough economy. And the reason you saw this, you know, bigger stimulus program, which wasn't, you know, back in late September of 2024, which was by no means what people said it was at the very beginning. It was never a, you know, draggy moment. It was never a, you know, whatever it takes moment. But the reason they stepped in with a louder stimulus than they had before is because they were worried about a doom confidence loop.
他们没有自己的数据来给外界展示，比如说，“嘿，我们正在追踪这个，真有意思。我也在追踪那个，也挺有意思。”有时候，他们甚至不被允许讨论这些事情。现在，对于实现GDP增长目标的痴迷，我觉得更多的是来自西方的经济学家和银行分析师，他们对此很执着。我认为在北京，他们更关心的是确保经济足够稳定。你看到在2024年9月底推出一个更大规模的刺激计划，这并不是一开始人们所说的那种“德拉吉时刻”或“竭尽所能的时刻”。但他们之所以比以往推出更强烈的刺激措施，是因为担心信心崩溃的恶性循环。
So you could talk about stabilized economy, but when, when property prices continue to go down and that's a years, years, years long battle that they're fighting and you have, you know, suppressed consumption and you have foreign investors who are depressed, then negative investor sentiment, negative corporate sentiment, negative consumer sentiment, they all feed on each other and you have the potential for a horrible feedback loop. And stopping that doom confidence loop where we could really spread contagion into the wider economy is what they wanted to do. So they stepped in. They said, no, look, we're going to do bigger things. They didn't do most of them, but they said the gut, you know, the message was the government's behind you. The government's going to put a put on the on the stock market. It's going to stimulate housing. It's going to stimulate some of the things we haven't forgotten about you, even though we're not doing stimulus like we did the old days, we're not forgetting about you because they're not worried about hitting growth targets on the top side, but they are worried about the bottom falling out. So that's when they're step in when they see things potentially falling through the floor.
你可以讨论经济稳定，但是当房价持续下跌，而这是一个需要多年斗争的问题时，加上消费不振以及外国投资者信心不足，投资者、企业和消费者的负面情绪互相影响，就可能形成一个可怕的恶性循环。他们希望阻止这种不良的信心循环，以避免危机蔓延到更广泛的经济中。因此，他们采取了行动，表示要做出更大努力。虽然他们大部分承诺的措施还未落实，但政府传递的信息是政府在支持你。政府将对股市进行干预，刺激房地产市场，提醒大家即使不再像过去那样广泛刺激经济，但也没有被遗忘，因为政府不太担心增长目标，但他们担心的是经济的底线会崩溃。正是在看到经济可能出现严重下滑时，他们才会采取措施干预。
You actually know what the GDP of China is. Does anyone actually know it? No. I mean, we have, you know, our chief economist puts out as part as just part of a, you know, friendly competition. What, you know, what we think the number is it was, you know, was nowhere near 5% for 2024, you know, shot. I don't need the girl. I'm the change. I mean, the actual number. Yeah, no, no, nobody knows that you can't recreate it because it's based on a zillion data points that only the government has. You can recreate some of the proxies for you can get a, but what we wanted to do from the very beginning is not recreate a proxy for the GDP number because in China, the GDP growth number, even if we know it and nobody actually knows the number, then it's problematic because what GDP growth is is aggregate growth. It's not productive growth.
你实际上知道中国的GDP是多少。真的有人知道吗？不。我是说，我们的首席经济学家只是出于友好的竞争，发布了我们认为的数字是多少。我们认为的数字远达不到2024年的5%。但实际上，这个确切的数字呢？是的，没有人知道，你无法重现它，因为它基于无数只有政府才有的数据点。你可以重建一些指标来获得接近的值，但我们从一开始就不打算重建GDP数字的指标，因为在中国，即便我们知道GDP增长的数字，但没人真正知道确切的数字，这本身就是个问题。因为GDP增长指的是总增长，而不是有效增长。
So we used to always tell the story, you know, at the old days, if you wanted to get hit in 8, 8 or 10 or 12% growth, you build a bridge, you tear it down, you build the same bridge, you tear it down, you build the same bridge, you get to tear it down and you do it a million times over and over until you hit 8% to 12% GDP on your economy. Now, obviously, it's a little tug and cheek, but it's not too different from the mindset you can have about GDP growth as just this very blunt instrument. It doesn't mean these are productive investments. It doesn't mean there's going to be any return on these investments in the future. It just means you're producing for producing sake.
我们过去常常讲这样一个故事：在过去，如果你想要实现8%、10%或12%的经济增长，你就修一座桥，然后拆掉；再修一座同样的桥，又拆掉；如此反复，一百万次，直到你实现8%到12%的GDP增长。当然，这只是个夸张的说法，但它体现了人们对待GDP增长的想法，就像一个非常生硬的工具。这并不意味着这些投资是有成效的，也不意味着将来会有任何回报。这只是为了生产而生产。
And so what we didn't want to do with China, Basement, in the very beginning, and yes, we're always sucked into the GDP growth discussion because that's what markets like to obsess over. But we wanted to get away from the idea that we were going to put a proxy number out on GDP because in the end, while I can tell you a little bit about where the Chinese economy is and a little bit where the government's mindset is, it's just not that important. What's really, really important is the credit environment because, you know, if you're looking and you're seeing what we've seen for the last several years, but a little bit of a change in the last couple months, but we've seen years and years and years of some of the lowest interest rates paid by firms that we've ever seen. So all these firms are telling us what the cost of capital is. It's just dropped through the bottom and yet there's no pickup and borrowing. There's no pickup and loan applications. There's no pickup and in pent-up demand. So there's no interest in accessing capital despite the fact that rates continue to ease down.
我们在一开始讨论中国经济时，并不想过多关注GDP增长，因为虽然市场总是对这个话题热衷，但我们更想摆脱单纯依赖GDP作为指标的思维方式。实际上，虽然我可以谈论一些关于中国经济现状和政府心态的信息，但这些并不是最关键的。真正重要的是信贷环境。过去几年，我们已经观察到了变化，尤其在过去几个月，这些变化更加明显。我们看到企业支付的利率处在历史低位，这些企业提供的信息显示资本成本已经跌至谷底。但是即便如此，借贷申请并没有增长，隐藏的需求也没有释放。尽管利率不断降低，但企业还是对于资本的获取缺乏热情。
That is critical because that tells you something about what stimulus leverage the government has. It tells you about sediment on the ground at corporates. Tells you a nice story. So we have tried to focus China, Facebook on the things that really matter rather than trying to recreate the government growth story and try to downplay it or go off in a separate direction. One pause for one second. Harley, let's toss up our survey questions. Exactly. I want to get to that. Yeah. It's almost like we've been doing this a while now. We do. Let's bring up our first survey question. Or I guess we'll bring them all three up here. We can't answer these, but the questions are China's total GDP will exceed that of the US by 2030, 2050, 2070 or never. China's per capita GDP. Same question. And broad tariffs on China by 2026 of 0%, no change from current policies.
这非常重要，因为它能告诉你政府在刺激经济方面有多少杠杆作用。这也能让你了解企业现状，并且提供了一个有趣的视角。因此，我们试图将中国和Facebook的注意力集中在真正重要的事情上，而不是试图重塑政府的增长故事或者将其淡化或转向其他方向。稍等一下。哈利，让我们来看一下我们的调查问题。对，我也想说这个。我们已经做这个有一段时间了，对吧？好，来看看我们的第一个调查问题吧。或者我们可以一起看看这三个问题。虽然我们不能直接回答这些问题，但问题是：在2030年、2050年、2070年或永远中国总GDP会超过美国吗？中国的人均GDP呢？以及到2026年对中国的广泛关税会是0%吗，还是会继续保持当前政策不变？
There are some tariffs on there just to be very clear. 10%, 25% and 60%. So we cannot answer these. And then, Leland, I want to get your perspective on these. I have a strong hunch in which direction it's going to go. Wow. That is a harsh crowd. Look at that. 58% never. Its best choice is 27% by 2050. And never is pretty much the overwhelming odds on China's per capita GDP. I think that feels pretty safe. And then broad tariffs of 10% to 25% kind of holding the peak. Leland, what's your reaction? I think you have some pretty smart listeners.
有一些关税在这里，只是为了明确说明：10%、25%和60%。所以我们无法回答这些问题。然后，利兰，我想听听你对这些的看法。我有一种强烈的预感知道事情会往哪个方向走。哇，人群真是难以取悦。看看这个，58%的人认为永远不会达到。这方面最好的选择是在2050年达到27%。对中国的人均GDP来说，永远是压倒性的概率。我觉得这似乎很安全。然后是10%到25%的普遍关税，保持在峰值。利兰，你有什么反应？我觉得你的听众很聪明。
So in terms of passing on GDP, I say never. Not that it's important, but the interesting thing about this. This debate was always sort of a dumb one in that if China really wanted to pass the US on GDP growth, it could do it by still in an economy. But it would be going against everything it's pulled back in the last several years, including deflating the property bubble. It's going against everything that it has been talking about having smarter, more advanced growth, healthier growth. And so to the extent that it actually did ever pass the United States, which I don't think it ever will, it would actually be a negative. It would not be a show of strength by China, it would be a show of weakness. It would show that they're having to go back on all these things they thought were important because they need to send a signal.
关于是否超越美国的GDP，我认为永远不会。虽然这并不重要，但有意思的是，这个讨论一直都有些荒谬。如果中国真的想在GDP增长上超越美国，它可以通过刺激经济来实现。但是这样做会违背中国过去几年一直以来的努力，包括给房地产泡沫降温。这样做也违背了中国一直强调的关于实现更聪明、更加先进、更健康的增长方式的目标。因此，即使有一天中国真的超越了美国——我不认为这会发生——这反而是个负面现象。这不是中国实力的展示，而是其软弱的一种表现。因为这意味着中国需要抛弃它们认为重要的事情，只是为了传递某种信号。
It would be sort of a panic signal, I would say. The per capita one is easy. They're never going to pass the United States per capita. I don't think that's ever going to be in any kind of doubt. The tariff one, I'm going to be a little cagion because I'm involved in some of this stuff to an extent. What I will say on a broad comment on tariffs, and this is something we, you and I have talked about a little bit before, markets, I don't think truly appreciate. They're smart to say the zero percent going up was at zero, so that was smart. They're going to be tariffs on China. We're going to have to see what the, what the, what President Trump decides to do and what the reaction will be and what the response function, and the counter response function will be.
这相当于是一个让人恐慌的信号，我觉得。以人均来说，这个比较简单。他们永远都不会在人均方面超过美国。我觉得这点毋庸置疑。至于关税方面，我会谨慎些，因为我在某种程度上参与了一些相关事务。关于关税，我想广泛地说一点，这也是我们之前稍微讨论过的——市场实际上没有真正理解其中的奥妙。说关税从零开始逐步增加是明智的，这是聪明的做法。他们将对中国征收关税。我们必须看看特朗普总统会决定怎么做，以及会有什么反应，回应的机制是什么，以及反应后的反应机制会是什么。
But I think that the thing that markets are getting very wrong right now is they're not appreciating a degree to which the President Trump wants to use tariffs to restructure the domestic economy and international trading relationships. There's so much talk about tariffs being this deal making tool, and there's a little bit of that. And there are examples of that right now, maybe Canada, with Mexico, etc. We want to quid pro quo and you'll drop the tariffs if they do what I want. They want. Terrorists are not that either with China or with global tariffs. There is a belief that one that the trade deficit the United States has, both bilaterally with China and also writ large with the world, is a national security crisis. And there's going to be more and more talk about how this trade deficit is a national security crisis that the President needs to step in and rectify for the US national and economic security. It's also tariffs in this administration's mind are pay for us for things that can happen back at home. If you're having a bunch of tariff revenue, then the narrative, and I don't want to get into the economics of this, but the narrative is we're taxing. We're taxing foreign companies and other countries and we're using them to cut taxes and Americans and American businesses. That's the narrative they like. And it's a narrative they want to use for the tax bill coming up.
我觉得市场目前的一个重大误判是，他们没有充分认识到特朗普总统想利用关税来重组国内经济和国际贸易关系的程度。虽然对关税作为谈判工具的讨论很多，并且有一些例子说明了这一点，比如说与加拿大和墨西哥等国。但是，这只是很小的一部分。而且关税政策不仅仅是对中国或全球的工具。有人认为，美国与中国的双边贸易逆差，以及与整个世界的贸易逆差，是国家安全危机。而且将会有越来越多的讨论认为这种贸易逆差是一个国家安全危机，总统需要介入以维护美国的国家和经济安全。在本届政府看来，关税也是解决国内事务的资金来源。如果有大量关税收入，那么表面的叙述是我们在对外国公司和其他国家课税，并利用这些收入来为美国人和美国企业减税。这是他们喜欢的叙述，也是他们希望用于即将到来的税收法案的理由。
So there's a lot of things that tariffs do in the minds of the incoming administration that are far beyond just deal making tools. And I don't think that's appreciated by the street who just thinks that Trump keeps one eye on the stock market the whole time. And the other eye, he's sort of figuring out what his next deal is. Not that he doesn't do those two things, but I think that there are bigger priorities for the second term. So that's a really, I mean, that's a really interesting point to lead into some of the discussion that you were kind enough to share some of your newer material on. I'd like to put up a couple of slides. The first two are ones that I added to your presentation. I just want to toss these up here quickly. And I apologize to everybody in advance that I am unfortunately in a hotel room in Phoenix, which sounds far more sorted than it actually is. And therefore I may stumble a little bit over some of these things as we pull them forward.
所以，在即将上任的政府看来，关税的作用远不止是交易工具。我认为，人们没有意识到这一点，华尔街只是认为特朗普一直在盯着股市，同时也在思考下一步交易的计划。虽然他确实在做这两件事，但我认为第二任期会有更重要的优先事项。这是个非常有趣的观点，值得我们展开讨论。感谢你分享了一些新的资料，我想展示几张幻灯片。前两张是我在你的演示中新增的，我只是想简单介绍一下。提前向大家道歉，我目前在凤凰城的一个酒店房间，听起来比实际情况复杂得多，因此在讲解时可能会有些磕绊。
Okay. So let's go to the very first chart here, hopefully. I somewhat jokingly refer to this as the world's most important chart because to me, it really is it is, I'll be honest with you, I am somewhat mystified by the dynamics of what's playing out in the rate markets in the United States and other Western countries. And I made a very important choice to put multiple countries onto this chart because what we're watching is not the United States. We're not watching the UK rate sell off. We're not watching Australian rate sell off. We're not watching Canadian rate sell off. We are watching all Western rates sell off relative to what's happening in China, which is going in the opposite direction. Does that feel like a fair characterization to you, Leland?
好的，让我们来看第一个图表，希望我们能顺利导航到这里。我有点开玩笑地称之为“世界上最重要的图表”，因为对我来说，确实是这样。坦白说，我对美国和其他西方国家利率市场上正在发生的动态感到有点困惑。我做了一个非常重要的决定，就是将多个国家的数据放在这个图表上，因为我们现在关注的不是单一国家的利率变化。我们不是在关注美国、英国、澳大利亚或加拿大的利率下跌，而是在关注所有西方国家的利率相对于中国正在走完全相反方向的变化。这是不是一个公平的描述呢，Leland?
Yeah, I think when you're looking at what's happening in China, there's a couple dynamics at play. There's fear of deflation. There's fear that the economy is going to get worse. And there's fear of tariffs and the effect that might have on the yuan and a stronger dollar. And so I think there's a lot of things that go into this. But it also reflects the fact that for the last several years, you've been talking about high inflation and high interest rates in the United States and interest rates that have gone down and down and down in China. One of the problems that people have in understanding the credit environment in China is that they're always grabbing on something and saying, well, maybe this is sort of the proxy rate for the benchmark rate for China. There is no public benchmark interest rate for China. And what we see when we survey thousands and thousands and thousands of firms see what they're actually paying for capital and compare that to what some of these benchmark interest rates are, they look totally different.
是的，我认为在观察中国目前情况时，有几个动态因素在起作用。有对通货紧缩的担忧，对经济可能恶化的担忧，以及对关税可能对人民币和美元走强的影响的担忧。所以，我认为有很多因素在其中发挥作用。但这也反映出，过去几年里，美国一直在谈论高通胀和高利率，而中国的利率却不断下降。人们在理解中国的信贷环境时遇到的一个问题是，他们总是试图找到一个东西，说这可能是中国的基准利率的替代指标。但实际上中国并没有公开的基准利率。当我们调查成千上万家企业，看看它们实际上支付的资本成本，并将其与一些所谓的基准利率进行比较时，发现两者完全不同。
So a lot of people talk about how the loan primary, for instance, was this proxy of sorts for what interest rates were in China. The loan primary didn't move for month after month after month after month after month. While we were watching interest rates paid by corporates go down and down and down and down and down. So not only was this wrong, it was directly wrong over and over and over and over and over again. What we saw was monetary easing continuing in China. And as I said before, there was no pickup and borrowing. So it was two things. It was lower rates than people understood. And it was a directionality of lower rates that had continued over the course of several years. And there was also this gloom by firms on the ground who didn't want to borrow even at these low rates. She combined that with deflation. Everything is sort of bringing a culture of fear. And that's why you're seeing charts like this.
很多人通常会提到贷款基准利率，比如说，它某种程度上代表了中国的利率水平。然而，贷款基准利率连续多个月没有变化，而与此同时，公司支付的利率却一直在下降。所以不仅这是错误的，而且是反复一再的错误。我们观察到的是中国的货币宽松政策在持续。正如我之前所说，借贷需求并没有增加。这有两个原因：一是利率比人们理解的还要低，二是低利率的趋势持续了好几年。另外，企业普遍对未来感到悲观，即使在低利率的情况下也不愿意借贷。结合通货紧缩的因素，一切似乎都在带来一种恐惧的氛围。因此，你才会看到这样的图表。
So when I think about that culture of fear, though, I would flip that and say that there's an extraordinary amount of fear about the West losing control of particularly the extended, the longer portion of the curve. I liken this to the poleto phobia that Harley suffered from early in his career. It did ultimately come true for Harley is, is there something going on that is causing the West to have rates move in the opposite direction? And China, is it potentially the investment that you're highlighting that could come guided by the Trump administration? It certainly can't be debt levels because I look at Australia with the debt to GDP of 25% and falling. And I compare that to the fears around the United States at 120% and theoretically rising. It feels like there's something else going on. And the only place around the world that's going the opposite direction of any real significance is China. It suggests there has to be a link of one form or another.
当我想到那种恐惧的文化时，我会反过来说，人们非常担心西方在控制能力上的丧失，尤其是在较长期的方面。我把这种情况比作哈雷在他职业生涯早期所遭受的杆恐惧症，最终对哈雷来说这成为了现实。那么，是不是有什么事情正在发生，导致西方的利率向相反的方向移动？而中国，是否是因为特朗普政府所导向的可能投资在发挥作用呢？显然，这不可能是债务水平的问题，因为当我看到澳大利亚的债务与GDP比率是25%并且在下降时，而美国却高达120%且理论上还在上升时，就觉得应该还有其他因素。在全世界范围内，唯一朝着不同方向发展的主要国家是中国，这表明其中必然有一定联系。
Yeah, well, I think there's a couple of concerns. I mean, obviously the uncontrollable fiscal spending in the United States is worried people. It hasn't, it hasn't, you know, affected bond markets in the way people thought for a long time. But it's certainly, it's certainly in the background, you know, and certainly the plan that Trump has laid out if we are to take him mostly at his word or entirely at his word is something that would be worrisome in some people's minds on the fiscal spending side. It'd be dollar strong. So I think it's the combination of all these things they're seeing. But yeah, look, I mean, these charts have baffled people for years. And so it's, I think it's a bunch of different factors are playing to this. Well, they certainly have baffled me far more than they've baffled Harley, but I'll stack that up to relative simplicity of interpretation. Let's stick on. Mike, is it, is it the China market just cooked anyways? I mean, the whole thing. It's a big book. Is it the answer to your pride or do you mean cooked or do you mean steam or recreation or it's a closed economy more or less with capital controls than they do what they want to do.
好的，我想这里有几个值得关注的问题。显然，美国无法控制的财政支出让人们感到担忧。这种情况一直以来并没有像人们想象的那样影响债券市场，但显然它一直存在于背景中。此外，如果按照特朗普所说的去理解他的计划，那么从财政支出方面来看，有些人会觉得这让人忧虑。美元可能因此走强。所以我认为是这些因素的综合影响造成了目前的状况。不过，这些图表这些年来确实让人困惑不已。所以我认为有很多不同的因素共同作用。好吧，它们确实让我比让Harley更困惑，但我认为这是因为解释上的相对简单性。让我们继续。迈克，中国市场真的已经达到极限了吗？整个市场都是一本大书。你是不是问，市场已经无法增长，还是在问市场经过调整或重新崛起？中国本质上是一个有资本管制的封闭经济，他们可以按照自己的意愿行事。
Harley, it's a closed economy that exporting a trillion dollar surplus to the rest of the world. That's an absurd statement. What they want to do, they set the rate where they want to set the rate and they steal our IP. I mean, it's not a public market. The rate we're seeing is not a market rate. It's a controlled rate. The same way when rates got down to where they were three years ago, it's a controlled rate. But they'd put it there. I think that's a more important statement. I think the Fed has put the rate there this time around as well. Exactly.
哈利，这是一个封闭的经济体，却向世界其他地方出口了一万亿的顺差。这是一个荒谬的说法。他们的做法是，他们在他们想要的地方设定汇率，并窃取我们的知识产权。我的意思是，这不是一个公开市场。我们看到的汇率不是市场汇率，而是一个受控的汇率。就像三年前的汇率降到那样低的时候一样，那也是一个受控的汇率，但他们将其设定在那里。我认为这是一个更重要的说法。我认为这次美联储也是这样设定的，确实如此。
What's that? Yes, exactly. Okay. So, so, so we'll blame Jerome then. That's fine. Let's talk a little bit about China itself though because one of the things that is happening is that we're seeing the policy rate, the overnight rate start to actually drift down. It is now following as you pointed out, Leland, it persisted kind of this 2% level for years and years and years, even as we saw the corporate sector move, the higher levels of the higher real interest rates that emerged, given the low levels of core inflation in China, suggest some explanation for why the borrowing hadn't picked up. But does that, does that feel correct or do you think that like, is this simply a function of rates are now just following inflation lower in China alongside the surplus capacity, alongside slowing population growth, etc.?
那是什么？对，没错。好的，所以，我们就责怪杰罗姆吧。没关系。不过，让我们稍微聊一下中国本身，因为其中一件正在发生的事情是，我们看到政策利率，也就是隔夜利率，开始有所下降。正如你指出的，利兰，它已经在大约2%的水平维持了很多年，即使在企业部门遇到更高的实际利率水平时。考虑到中国核心通胀率较低，这种情况似乎可以解释为什么借贷一直没有增加。但这听起来对吗？或者你认为这仅仅是因为利率现在只是随着中国的通胀下降而降低，伴随着过剩的产能和人口增长的放缓等因素？
No, I think there's something more than that. I mean, look, that that's not irrelevant to the question, but I think it's more than that. People still underestimate the effect that two things. One, the downward shift in terms of economic growth and less stimulus and so it was like a less government supported growth path combined by COVID-0. I mean, COVID-0 crushed the sentiment of the Chinese people. I mean, we tracked the data throughout that. They shut down huge chunks of the economy. I think it traumatized the whole world, but I think there's a huge, it was a huge, hugely traumatic experience in China. And so coming both during COVID-0 and after the relaxation of the curbs and in the aftermath, when everyone was expecting this explosive surge of consumer spending, which was always outlandish to expect, the idea was, well, it's over, we're going to come back. But no, what businesses has it seen has said, we don't like what we're seeing on the horizon. There's no longer all this support. We've got a downward trajectory of the economy.
不，我认为这不止于此。虽然这与问题无关紧要，但我认为还有更深层次的原因。人们低估了两件事情的影响：首先是经济增长的放缓和减少的刺激措施，导致政府对经济的支持力度减弱，再加上清零政策（COVID-0）。清零政策彻底打击了中国民众的信心。我们在这期间一直在追踪数据，他们关闭了大量经济领域。我认为这对全世界都是一次重大的创伤，尤其是在中国是一种巨大的创伤。因此，无论是在清零政策期间，还是在放松管制后的后疫情时代，当大家都期待着消费的爆发式反弹时，这种期望其实一直是过于夸大的。大家以为疫情结束，我们将东山再起。但事实上，企业反馈的信息是，他们对未来的前景不乐观，因为不再有足够的支持，经济正走向下行。
I mean, for years and years and years, you know, yeah, people were getting super rich, but we didn't care because the economy was growing extremely fast pace and everybody, you know, all the boats were rising at that time. Now it's a much slower pace. There's much less government support. The credit is being strangled from certain areas of the economy in order to guide it and to advance manufacturing and other places that are more Nash security focused, much less than a property. People have 70% 60, 70%, you know, the number who knows what the actual number is of their household assets in property in China.
我的意思是，多年来，虽然有人变得非常富有，但我们并不在意，因为那时经济增长非常快，大家的状况都在改善。现在的经济增长速度要慢得多，政府的支持也少了。为了引导经济和促进制造业以及其他与国家安全更相关的领域，政府对某些领域的信贷进行了限制，而房地产的支持少了许多。在中国，人们大约有60%到70%的家庭资产是房地产，具体数值谁也说不准。
And what has been happening to property for the last number of years? It's going down and down and down and down and down. And yes, every once in a while, they step into support one area in the economy or, you know, to buy up presold homes or do this or do that. So they're not absent, but they're certainly not stopping what is a long, many years long from the trajectory of deflating the property bubble in order to make property less of a growth driver. And as a result, what's happening there is that people are looking at their, you know, they're feeling less wealthy. There's a wealth effect there.
过去几年来，房地产市场一直在下滑，一次又一次的下跌。虽然偶尔会有一些支持经济某个领域的措施，比方说购买预售房或采取其他行动，所以他们并没有完全放手不管，但这些措施显然没有阻止长期以来房地产泡沫的逐渐萎缩。他们的目标是让房地产不再成为经济增长的主要推动力。结果是，人们开始感受到财富的缩水，产生了一种财富效应。
You combine that with the fact they don't like what's happening, you know, in COVID, they don't like what's happening in international relations. They don't like what's happening in some of these other areas. You know, you have a very gloomy corporate environment, a very gloomy consumer environment. And I think that's the reason people aren't borrowing. They're not hiring and they're not investing for the future because they don't like what that horizon looks like.
结合他们对目前疫情、国际关系和其他一些领域的看法，可以发现他们并不满意现状。整个企业环境和消费者环境都显得非常悲观。我认为，这就是为什么人们不愿意借贷、不愿意招聘，也不愿意为未来投资，因为他们对前景感到不乐观。
So first, I actually want to apologize to the audience. I just realized in looking at this chart that there's an era, the data doesn't exist prior to 2013. So it is not like the overnight rate was zero and then suddenly hike to 3%. So my apologies for that. I will take a lashing with a wet noodle from Harley later. But there is a little bit of a change in what you're seeing in the data sets now. And it is small.
首先，我想向观众道歉。我刚刚在查看这张图表时发现了一个问题：2013年之前的数据是不存在的。所以，并不是说隔夜利率一直是零，然后突然提高到3%。对此我感到抱歉，之后我会接受Harley的批评。但是，你现在看到的数据中确实有一些细微的变化。虽然变化很小。
Let's be very, very clear, right? But you are actually seeing the interest rates are now starting to, we're beginning to see a little bit of a response that's coming through on the borrowing side as the corporate sector is hitting all time new lows for interest rates. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. So this is, this is totally fresh data. It's only a few days old. And so the optimistic piece after what I just said, which would seem totally gloomy, is that in the last quarter, we actually saw a tick up in some of these borrowing categories, bond issuance categories, pent up demand, loan applications, et cetera, for several years.
让我们非常清楚地说明这一点，好吗？你会发现，目前利率正在开始产生一些影响，企业部门的贷款利率正在降至历史新低。这种评估合理吗？是的。这是非常新的数据，仅有几天的时间。因此，在我刚才所说的听起来很悲观的信息中，有一个乐观的部分是，在上个季度，我们确实看到一些借贷类别、债券发行类别、积压需求、贷款申请等在过去几年中有所回升。
And since the big, 2022, they started dropping rates quite dramatically. And there was no pickup, there was no pickup in borrowing. You just kept having quarter after quarter, month after month of just some of the lowest near record lows or at record lows every single month, no matter what they were pricing capital at, nobody wanted to borrow. You've seen a little pickup in the last quarter or so, you know, particularly and in the last month or so, because why was it the stimulus program? Was it something else? Who knows? But there's just this.
自从2022年开始，他们就大幅降低利率。然而，借贷需求并没有上升，无论他们如何定价资金，每个月的借贷需求都持续保持在接近历史最低水平或创下历史新低。一直是一个季度接一个季度，一个月又一个月的低迷。最近一个季度，尤其是最近一个月，借贷需求出现了一些回升。但这是因为刺激计划吗？还是其他原因？没人能确定。不过，确实有这种情况发生。
So there's some positivity in some of the latest data. It's good also because it looked like nothing they could do or say would actually get people off the couches. So we were at the point where, you know, you'd have positive headlines, you would have no real tensions in the US-China relationship, relatively speaking. You know, you wouldn't have any bad headlines and yet still firms on the ground didn't want to borrow. The big firms didn't, the small firms didn't, the ones in between didn't. So the fact that there's been a pickup in capital access and desire, you know, loan demand, the pickup in the last quarter is positive. I don't want to oversell it.
最近的数据中有一些积极的迹象出现。这是一件好事，因为之前似乎无论他们做什么或者说什么，都无法让人们行动起来。我们处在这样一个阶段：即使有了积极的新闻报道，即使美中关系中并没有真正的紧张局势，也没有什么负面的新闻，但实际上的企业仍不想借贷。无论是大企业、小企业还是中型企业，都没有借贷的意愿。因此，最近一个季度资本获取和借贷意愿的增加是一个积极的现象。不过，我也不想过于夸大其词。
We talk about putting lipstick on a pig. You don't want to oversell this. But at the same time, it's good to see from China's standpoint that there is a sort of a tick up in loan demand because it was looking for a long while, then maybe you're not going to ever see that no matter what they do. So this is a little bit of positivity amidst the otherwise sort of gloomy story I was telling. And that shows up a little bit. We're seeing that across all size firms, right? It's not just the state dominated, the state sponsored firms that are showing this. You're actually starting to see borrowing by the smaller firms as well now.
我们常说“给猪涂口红”，意思是不要过度美化某事。但同时，从中国的角度来看，看到贷款需求有所上升还是件好事。因为过去很长一段时间，这种需求似乎就不存在，无论采取什么措施都没有改善。所以，这算是一个在整体略显悲观的故事中带来的一点积极迹象。而且这种变化已经显现出来了。不仅是那些由国家主导、国家支持的企业展现了这种趋势，现在我们也开始看到小型企业也在借款。
Yeah, that's exactly right. So the reason that we're actually writing about this as opposed to storing it as a sort of footnote to look back at later is that we're seeing the story across all the important cohorts. It's happening across sectors. It's happening across regions. It's happening, you know, firm ownership, private and state. It's happening, you know, large firms, SMEs and even micro firms. So when you see it across the country, across the sectors, you know, across all the different ownership categories, then you know, it's actually real. One of the problems with the data during COVID is the government would produce a result. And we would also see that result, but it would be like, this is the result only happening in tier one cities at state own enterprises that are gigantic. And they would tell the story and that would be their China story. And what we were saying, you know, during COVID was, okay, congratulations, Shanghai large state enterprise, you're not doing too terribly, but you move out of the tier one tier two cities and the country is a disaster case. You know, so what you like to see when you're when you're talking about a trend is you like to see it across all these different categories. And the positive story comes to the fact not just that there was the tick up, but it happened across all these different categories.
是的，完全正确。我们之所以写这篇文章，而不是把它简单作为一个备注记录下来，是因为我们在所有重要群体中看到了这个现象。这种情况不仅出现在各个行业，还出现在各个地区。无论是企业所有权方面的私人企业还是国有企业，都在发生着变化。而且，不仅大企业如此，中小企业甚至微型企业也都有所表现。所以，当这种现象在全国、各行业、不同所有权类别中普遍存在时，你就知道这是真实的。在疫情期间，数据的一个问题是政府公布的结果可能是片面的。我们看到的结果有时仅仅发生在一线城市的大型国有企业，而政府就以此来讲述他们的"中国故事"。然而，我们在疫情期间指出，虽然上海的大型国有企业可能成绩不错，但当你离开一、二线城市，情况就不容乐观。因此，当我们讨论一个趋势时，我们希望看到它在所有这些不同类别中普遍存在。而积极的故事不仅在于有所改善，更在于这种改善在多个不同的类别中同时发生。
Now, let me play devil's advocate for a second because the last time we kind of saw this type of broad borrowing strength or credit impulse hit China, it was tied to the tariffs under Trump. Is there a function or is there a risk that what we're seeing as effectively prophylactic borrowing to make sure that the firms have access to capital in the uncertainty that comes in 2025? Absolutely. And I mean, you saw the next board orders earlier in the year in our data. So we tried manufacturing very closely and we saw it wasn't a very good year for manufacturing Q4 was bad because all the front running, which the Chinese firms had done was already basically over by the beginning of Q4. But they, you know, it's a very good chance that they're they're looking at the, you know, the point you're making, which is a good one is that firms can borrow for two different reasons. They could either see a great reason to borrow and they want to up their investment reinvested themselves or they could be under desperation or really worried about the future. More borrowing doesn't mean good or bad without the context. And we don't know what the entire context is right now. It's positive that something that that what was monetary easing that was totally ineffective, monetary easing for several years had seen a disruption in the last quarter. But it could prove to be that the Chinese firms are saying, Oh my gosh, we're about to go at it again with Trump and we're going to, you know, fast our seat belts and get ready for this. And we're going to borrow and then we're going to sit on our hands while disaster strikes next year. Yeah, right. And with with very low borrowing costs, record low borrowing costs, let's put some cash on the balance sheet. We're going to have flexibility.
现在，让我来扮演一下反对者的角色。因为上一次我们看到类似的广泛借贷增长或信贷冲动对中国的影响，是与特朗普征收的关税有关。我们是否存在一个可能或风险，即我们目前看到的这种有效的“预防性”借贷，是为了确保企业在2025年即将到来的不确定性中能够获得资本？完全有可能。我指的是，我们在年初的数据中看到了下一批订单。我们密切关注制造业，发现这一年的制造业表现不佳，第四季度尤其糟糕，因为中国企业在第四季度初就已经完成了提前的备货。但你知道，很有可能他们正关注你的观点，企业借贷可能出于两个不同的原因：要么是看到借贷的好时机，想增加投资；要么是在担心未来的情况下借贷。没有背景的借贷行为并不意味着好或坏，我们目前并不知道全部的背景。积极的一方面是，曾经多年无效的货币宽松政策在最后一个季度中出现了变化。这可能表明中国企业在考虑，“哦天哪，我们可能又要和特朗普对抗了，我们要系紧安全带，做好准备。”他们进行借贷，然后在灾难来临前筹备资金。是的，面对极低的借贷成本，历史最低的借贷成本，把一些现金留在资产负债表上，以便保持灵活性。
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I don't know the answer either. And that's it is a source of concern for me because anytime China does actually succeeded as stimulus, I think you I think you and I talked about this. In 2009, the aftermath of the global financial crisis, I literally took my entire family to China and spent three weeks traveling around precisely because I was so surprised at the level of stimulus and level of demand that I was seeing coming out of China. That was a genuine boom that was being driven. From large by a bazooka, right? This feels a little bit more like a highly motivated teenager just shot in the in the butt with a pellet gun. Yeah. You know, we'll see if that's correct or not, but it is certainly interesting and has peaked our interest had simplified as well. Once again, just broad everything, although interestingly enough, and I wanted to get your thoughts on exactly what this means, we're seeing it and everything except for the traditional commodity space. Right. Usually when borrowing hits China, it shows up in the commodity space because that is secured lending. You can effectively point to receipts in a warehouse. We're not seeing that. Does that does that help you clarify the thinking around what does this actually mean or is it just yet another data point we have to consider? Well, you know, we we've written a lot about this because we we've seen dynamics and steel and aluminum look a little bit different. So there wasn't some sort of glaring pain, you know, pan commodities take away from some of this. But I think that the reason borrowing so low, it's a policy decision to do that because they're worried about all these overcapacity things. They're worried about tariffs.
好的，让我来帮你翻译这段文字：
是的，我跟你实话实说。我也不知道答案。这让我感到担忧，因为每当中国的刺激措施真的奏效时，我想你和我都讨论过这个问题。2009年，全球金融危机后，我真的带着全家去中国旅行了三周，正是因为我对中国发出的刺激和需求水平感到惊讶。那时确实是由大规模刺激引发的真正经济繁荣。然而现在，这种感觉更像是一个充满干劲的青少年被气枪打了一下。对吧。我们将看看是否正确，但这确实很有趣，而且引起了我们的兴趣。这一现象广泛存在，但有趣的是，除了传统的商品领域。通常，当中国的借贷增加时，会反映在商品领域，因为这是有担保的借贷，可以指向仓库中的收据。但我们没有看到这种情况。这是否有助于厘清你的思路，这实际意味着什么，还是只是我们需要考虑的另一个数据点？
你知道的，我们对此写了很多，因为我们看到钢铁和铝的动态有些不同。所以从中没有看到一些明显的全行业商品回落的痛苦。但我认为借贷如此低的原因是一个政策决定，因为他们担心这些过剩产能问题，也担心关税。
They're worrying about they're worrying about some of the steel. They are trying to get some of this steel production and other things under control. And so they they periodically go through these clampdowns where they won't let commodities firms access more capital because it just goes to production and they've got all these problems with exports and they got problems with trade tensions. So I think right now there's there's there's there's a policy decision made to not let commodities firms access capital, you know, much at all. And so whether that's another thing that's sort of a reaction to tariffs and sort of a preview of worries, but you know, pre Trump and pre 2025 trade wars, not war, but trade wars, we'll see. But usually, usually some of the commodity stuff is they don't want that to get they're trying to gear that down right now. So that's interesting.
他们正在担心一些钢铁问题。他们试图控制一些钢铁生产和其他相关事务。因此，他们定期进行限制措施，不允许大宗商品公司获得更多资金，因为这些资金只会用于生产，而他们在出口和贸易摩擦上面临许多问题。我认为当前有一项政策决策是几乎不让大宗商品公司获得资金。这可能是一种对关税的反应，也可能是在特朗普和2025年之前的贸易摩擦的担忧的预演。不过通常情况下，他们不希望大宗商品相关事务扩大，所以他们目前试图减少这些活动。这很有趣。
Yeah, I mean, that certainly would be consistent with an economy that is struggling with relative shortages of labor, right? You'd want to focus on the value added components within manufacturing. Do you have any further granularity in terms of is it the all feared auto sector or is it an electronics or is there any further granularity you can offer there? Oh, yeah. I mean, we track all the sectors, including autos. So, you know, it's interesting. We talked about policy being a being an issue in some of these things. The auto autos are now a massive trade issue, not just for the United States, but for the European Union. We talk about it usually through the lens of electric vehicles, but actually most of China's over capacity is, you know, the traditional internal combustion engines.
是的，我的意思是，这确实与一个在劳动力相对短缺中挣扎的经济体相一致，对吧？你会想要关注制造业中增加附加值的部分。你能否提供更多的细节，是在大家都担心的汽车行业，还是在电子行业，或者你有什么更详细的信息可以分享吗？哦，是的。我想说我们追踪所有行业，包括汽车。所以，你知道，我们谈过政策在其中的一些问题上是一大因素。汽车现在不仅对美国，而且对欧盟来说都是一个重大的贸易问题。我们通常从电动汽车的角度来谈论它，但实际上中国的大部分产能过剩是在传统的内燃机上。
And so they have got a massive production of cars. They've also got some of the better, you know, electric vehicle and hybrid cars in the world at cheaper prices. And so they're exporting those more, which is why they're becoming a becoming such a an area of trade friction. But I think that the idea here is is that during parts of this year, there was a desire to sort of gear that sector down. There's also a massive price war going on. So inside the auto sector, particularly in the electric vehicle world, there are enormous there are tons of companies that are barely surviving and are forced to cut prices, cut prices, cut prices, because the quality of the cars in China is so good. And they built up this new robust ecosystem so aggressively that now there's just a complete price war, you know, battle and you're going to see company after company fail, fail, fail. The reason you're seeing so many exports abroad on these years is because some of the only ways that these firms could survive is by taking themselves out of the Chinese market, which is already largely saturated and trying to send these things abroad where their cars are hyper competitive, if not the clear, you know, winning option, the Chinese option. So there's an issue inside autos. A lot of there's a much larger story building itself within the auto sector specifically. Let me expand upon.
他们的汽车产量非常庞大，而且他们还生产了一些世界上更好的电动车和混合动力车，价格也相对较低。因此，他们正在增加这些汽车的出口，这也是为什么汽车业正在成为一种贸易摩擦的领域。今年部分时间里，有人希望稍微控制一下这个行业的发展。同时，汽车行业内也正在进行一场大规模的价格战，特别是在电动车领域。有大量公司勉强维持生存，被迫一再降价。因为中国汽车的质量非常好，他们非常积极地建立了一个全新的、强大的生态系统，现在市场上充满了价格战。因此，很多公司可能会接连倒闭。近年来，你会看到这么多汽车出口到国外，因为这些企业要生存下去的唯一途径之一，就是走出已经高度饱和的中国市场，将汽车出口到国外市场，在这些市场上，中国汽车要么高度有竞争力，要么就是明显的赢家。因此，汽车行业内部确实存在一些问题，特别是在汽车行业内有一个更大的故事正在酝酿。我可以进一步展开说明。
Do you might was talking about just now, do you see any longer term idea planning or adjusting for the demographics in China, like in theory, they're probably dropped by a third of the past 50 years, is you touched on any bad that's too far away from you? No, I mean, we see it on certainly on a policy side, they're high into robotics. They're high in moving to advanced technology. And so like they're there, they're answer to a falling working population will be to move up the chain and try to produce more things that take fewer people to build and can use more robots and production with fewer people. So there are reactions to the changing demographics, but these are things are going to happen gradually as technology progresses over the course of many, many years.
你是否刚才谈到过，是否有关于中国人口结构的长期规划或调整？理论上，他们可能在过去50年中减少了三分之一的人口，你是否接触到任何对未来的预测？实际上，我们确实看到了在政策层面上的应对。他们在大力发展机器人技术和先进技术。面对劳动力人口减少，他们的应对措施是提升产业链，尝试生产更多需要更少人力但可以使用更多机器人来生产的产品。因此，他们对人口结构变化是有反应的，不过这些措施会随着技术的进步逐渐实施，需要许多年的时间。
When people talk about the headwinds for China, they usually say, well, debt and demographics and I absolutely agree. But the debt already has an effect on the economy right now. Demographics is actually not really hitting them in painful ways yet. In some ways, it's having a salutary effect in the short term because when you have fewer workers, it's less hard to restructure industries and do other things because you don't have all these people who are struggling don't have jobs. You actually need people jobs.
当人们谈到中国面临的阻力时，他们通常会提到债务和人口结构。我完全同意这种看法。然而，债务已经对目前的经济产生了影响。人口问题实际上暂时还没有对中国造成严重的影响。从某种程度上讲，短期内它还有积极作用，因为当劳动力减少时，重组产业和进行其他变革会比较容易，因为你不会面临大量失业人口的问题。实际上，你需要提供工作机会给人们。
So you need more jobs. So the demographic effects aren't really kicking in. They're going to be a massive issue for China for years and years and years, but they're not really affecting things beyond just a lot of investment into robotics and other advanced production techniques. Mike, I have a few hope a request is for you. You don't mind. No, go for it. Let's hear about the Pope. I think talk is a closed or not. You mean, is the is the is the company could go away from the US market? Is it going to be banned? And are we going to get our children and grandchildren back?
所以你需要更多的工作岗位。因此，人口效应还没有真正显现出来。虽然这些问题将在未来多年对中国产生重大影响，但目前它们对社会的影响主要体现在大量的机器人和其他先进生产技术的投资上。迈克，我有几个请求，希望你能听一下。可以吗？当然，说说关于教皇的事吧。我想知道这个事是否结束了。你的意思是这个公司会离开美国市场吗？它会被禁止吗？我们能把我们的孩子和孙辈带回来吗？
I think so. It's not impossible that if Trump used, you know, an enormous amount of political capital that that maybe some things could be done. But I think I think this issue is done. But it's it's it's the fact that he's the fact that he's publicly put his position on there doesn't change where it is in the courts and where it is in Congress. But but it's it's not a it's not 100% done deal, but I think it's a done deal. In the next four years, they get it. So the 2027 number comes from the fact that Xi Jinping ordered his military to be able to invade Taiwan by 2027. There's also a whole bunch of, you know, military anniversary dates that are around, you know, that are 2027 around that that that that that that that that then the numbers based on the US government and its allies then took 2027 as it's as its number for having to be prepared for a Chinese invasion.
我认为是这样的。虽然特朗普如果动用大量政治资本可能会有一些事情可以完成，但我觉得这个问题已经基本定局。他公开表明立场的事实并不会改变法院和国会的现状。虽然不能说完全定局，但我认为大局已定。在未来四年内，他们可能会实现这一点。2027年的数字源于习近平要求他的军队在2027年做好入侵台湾的准备。此外，还有一系列与2027年有关的军事纪念日，美国政府及其盟友因此也将2027年作为需要为中国可能入侵做好准备的年份。
You know, the irony of all this is that while the number is sort of based around the Xi Jinping idea of, you know, you know, 2027 be prepared and the US is like, okay, well, we're going to be prepared if you're prepared. There is a lot of sense to it because right now the Chinese ability to invade isn't quite there. But the US and Taiwanese and other allied ability to defend Taiwan also isn't particularly strong right now. So it's going to be a battle of wills for the next several years to see where we are, you know, how much deterrence is the western side doing in order to show China that there's going to be severe repercussions and pain from an invasion of Taiwan. That's TBD, you know, that China will, you know, the wherewithal on building up their their their coast. It's essentially their coastline there near near abroad is even exaggeration. It's it's their coastline.
你知道，这件事的讽刺之处在于，虽然这个数字有点以习近平的想法为基础，就是到2027年做好准备，而美国的态度是，如果你准备好了，那我们也准备好。这个逻辑是有道理的，因为目前中国的入侵能力还不够强，而美台和其他盟友的防御能力也不是特别强。所以，未来几年将是一场意志的较量，要看西方能采取多少威慑措施来向中国表明，入侵台湾会带来严重的后果和痛苦。是否做到这一点还有待观察。中国在建设自己的海岸线方面的决心很大，因为这基本上就是他们的海岸。
They are putting enormous amounts of, you know, of resources and time and bandwidth into building up their missile capacity and their naval capacity and the shipbuilding capacity, but we're at large, all these things, their drone capacity. So they're putting in the time effort and money to be able to do what they say what they want to do. The question is what will the western response be on this? The next 20 years will China will Taiwan be absorbed into China, which might just happen by natural shopping fire. I mean, what's your view on that big idea? I think it's more likely that you have a conflict over Taiwan, not maybe not in the next three years. Maybe at the end of the decade, I think it becomes a lot more likely and it will be dictated in large part by how much deterrence the United States puts on the Taiwan issue.
他们投入了大量的资源、时间和精力，包括其导弹能力、海军能力和造船能力等各方面的发展，同时也包括无人机能力。因此，他们正在倾注时间、努力和资金去实现他们所说的目标。问题在于西方会对此作何回应？在接下来的20年里，台湾是否会被中国纳入版图？这可能会在不动声色中发生。您对此有何看法？我认为，更有可能的是台湾问题上会发生冲突，可能不会在未来三年内，但到本十年末，我认为冲突的可能性会大大增加，而这在很大程度上将取决于美国在台湾问题上施加了多少威慑力。
You know, if we're saying we're not going to let China do it, it's a priority for US national security not to let that happen. And importantly, you know, the Taiwanese agree with that and we have Japanese backing and potentially Filipino backing and some other things, then then there's a way to deter this longer and then it becomes less likely. But I think that the most difficult window is probably around, you know, the last couple of years of this decade when Chinese military capabilities are going like this, US deterrence, we don't know where it's going to be. US resources are spread out around the globe and all these different theaters.
你知道，如果我们说我们不会让中国这样做，那么这就成为了美国国家安全的一个优先事项，防止这一情况的发生。而且重要的是，台湾方面也同意这一点，我们还得到了日本的支持，可能还有菲律宾的一些支持和其他因素，这样就有了一种延长威慑的方式，从而使可能性降低。 但我认为最困难的时期可能是在这个十年的最后几年，因为那时中国的军事实力正在飞速发展，而美国的威慑力，我们不知道会如何。美国的资源在全球和各个不同的地区分散。
You know, we're not Taiwan is years and years and years backlog. I think it's nine years at this point backlogged on some of the things they've already bought. That means that things that they bought years ago, we haven't delivered them. And one reason we haven't delivered them is because we don't have a built up industrial base. Another reason we haven't delivered them is because we're sending stuff all over the world and we're not focusing on what our, you know, sent, you know, topmost threats are. So there's, there's a lot of discussions here. There's a lot of seriousness that needs to be had in order to create the deterrent capability in order to make sure that that there's not a Chinese invasion.
你知道，台湾的一些采购已经积压了很多年。目前积压的时间大概是九年。这意味着几年前他们购买的东西，我们还没有交付。我们没有交付的一个原因是我们的工业基础不够健全。另一个原因是我们把物资送到了世界各地，而没有专注于我们面临的最大威胁。因此，需要进行大量的讨论，并认真对待这些问题，以便建立足够的威慑能力，确保中国不会入侵。
But I think it's a lot scarier than markets think. I don't think it's imminent, but I also think that the risks of this between now and the decade are much higher than markets expect. One of the components, really, just very quickly that I think has actually now passed is there was a risk if we go back two or three years ago, there was a risk of effectively a fifth column type action within Taiwan. There had been an extraordinary amount of incursion of Chinese intelligence operations into Taiwan. And Taiwan was largely operating from the premise of there is no real issue here.
我认为这比市场想象的要可怕得多。我不觉得这种情况是立刻要发生的，但我也认为从现在到这个十年末，这种情况的风险要比市场预期的高得多。其中一个因素，其实，很快就过去了，如果我们回到两三年前，当时存在一种潜在的内部叛乱风险。大量中国情报活动渗透到台湾，而台湾基本上是以“这里没有真正的问题”这种想法在运作。
So flights were occurring every half hour into China, straight out of Taipei. The underlying exposure was very, very high. There seems to have been a recognition of those risks and there's much more security against that kind of red dawn type invasion as compared to the frontal assault. And the frontal assault, I just want to lay this last part out, is it's, it's very hard to explain to people how extreme and challenging and amphibious assault on Taiwan would be. Remember that the English channel for D-Day was, I think it's 18.7 miles or 19.2 miles. I can't remember exactly. The Taiwanese straight is 60 miles and it's some of the world's most rough seas during a significant fraction of the year. And it is really, really hard to pull off that direct frontal assault.
从台北直接飞往中国的航班每半小时就有一趟，潜在的接触频率非常高。似乎大家已经意识到了这些风险，并且在防范那种类似于“红色黎明”式入侵方面已经加强了安全措施，相比之下，面对面的攻击则更难以应对。我想强调的是，两栖攻击台湾有多极端和具有挑战性。这一点很难向人们解释。想想看，诺曼底登陆日的英吉利海峡大概是18.7英里或者19.2英里（具体记不清了），而台湾海峡是60英里，并且在一年中的很大部分时间里，是世界上最动荡的海域之一。因此，直接正面进攻是非常非常困难的。
So far more likely is something like an encirclement and a blockade and an attempt to stop things. But even there, you're really challenged because of the presence of air travel. Are you going to shoot down US flights into Taiwan? It's going to be a challenging one to pull off. I very much am sympathetic with Leylin's point, but I did want to actually highlight. There was a moment in time that is now seems to have passed talking to various members in the US military that there was an exposure that is really no longer there. It feels like we've addressed that part of it.
到目前为止，更有可能发生的是对台湾的包围和封锁，以及试图阻止任何动向的措施。然而，由于航空旅行的存在，这仍然面临很大的挑战。你会击落飞往台湾的美国航班吗？这将是一个难以实施的举措。我非常理解Leylin的观点，但我想强调的是，曾经有一段时间，通过与美国军方的成员交流，他们意识到的一个漏洞，如今似乎已经不存在了。看起来我们已经解决了那个问题。
Leylin, do you have any thoughts or comments there? No, I agree with all that. I will make the additional point though that the Taiwan needs government has gotten serious about this in just the way you said. There's a, they're changing the way the military has run. They're increasing conscription. They're actually moving away from stupid four months of service to, it was mostly goose stepping around the island and not firing any guns to much more serious military training. So they're doing a lot of the things that they need to do.
莱林，你有什么想法或意见吗？没有，我同意这些说法。不过，我想补充一点，那就是台湾政府确实像你说的那样，开始认真对待这个问题。他们正在改变军事运营的方式，加强征兵政策。台湾正在从原本愚蠢的四个月兵役（主要是在岛上走个步，没有实战训练）过渡到更加严肃的军事训练。因此，他们正在做很多需要做的事情。
The real challenge right now is making sure that there's, the Taiwanese people understand what's at stake here because at the end of the day, no matter what every other government and other other people, every other military in the world wants to do there, if the Taiwanese people don't want to defend themselves, this is going to be an impossible battle. So there needs to be a level of seriousness that there is not quite yet amongst the Taiwanese people. I know Taiwan well, I studied my Mandarin there many years ago and do a lot of Taiwan straight stuff all the time.
目前的真正挑战是确保台湾人民理解事关重大，因为归根结底，如果台湾人民自己不愿意保卫自己，那么无论世界上其他政府或军队想在那里做什么，都会变得不可能。因此，台湾人民需要具备一种目前尚未完全存在的严肃态度。我对台湾很了解，很多年前我在那学习过中文，也一直在关注台湾海峡的事务。
The real worry is that they have been so used to this China threat being nearby and just not ever being this real problem for so many years that the joke is that they just sit around drinking their latte while the Americans screw around with their guns. There's a lot of truth to that. So there needs to be a level of seriousness about the threat that is posed by China's potential invasion and that it's not quite penetrating yet. But what we've seen from the government side, it has been very, very positive over the course of a number of years.
真正让人担忧的是，多年来他们习惯了把中国威胁看作一种存在于附近但并不真实的问题，所以有人开玩笑说他们只是一边喝着拿铁，一边看美国人瞎折腾。这个笑话是有几分真实的。所以，人们需要认真对待中国可能入侵的威胁，而这一点尚未完全引起重视。然而，我们看到，在过去几年中，政府方面的反应一直非常积极。
So the trajectory is going in the right direction and there is a lot of polling that's been done showing that there is more recognition of the seriousness of this. The question is, is it going to be done in time? It's Taiwan going to get its act together in time and in, you know, I hope so. I suppose they were lattes and think there's a high probability it's more bubble tea, but go ahead, Harley. I'm sorry. This show is investment entertainment and this question is not really your gig per se, but I kind of have to ask it, is it a good idea to push money into invest in China? And from our standpoint, like buying listed companies or buying futures on the continent, we can't invest locally. Would you advise investing in China now?
因此，趋势正在朝正确的方向发展，而且已经有很多民意调查表明，人们越来越认识到这个问题的严重性。问题在于，这是否能及时完成？台湾能否及时有所作为？我希望如此。我猜他们更喜欢拿铁，但更可能是珍珠奶茶。不过，请继续，哈雷。不好意思，这个节目是投资娱乐，而这个问题不完全是你的领域，但我不得不问，现在把资金投入到中国投资是否是个好主意？从我们的角度来看，比如购买上市公司或在大陆买期货，我们无法在当地投资。你会建议现在投资中国吗？
Would you chase David Tepper? No, look, well, you know, the idea here is that if you were a very nimble hedge fund, you think you have an advantage to jump in and out of markets and those exist, you know, we speak to these guys all the time, then there are ways you could certainly make money. I mean, they send signals sometime that they're going to support the stock market. And if you're looking at short term asset markets, you can still make money in China. The difference between what happened in the old days and what's happening now is, you know, these big lumbering asset managers would go in there and they didn't have any really China expertise on staff and they barely hired anybody to teach them.
你会追随大卫·泰珀吗？不，听我说，你知道，这里的意思是，如果你是一家灵活的对冲基金，认为自己有能力快速进出市场，那么这样的机会确实存在，我们一直跟这些人交流，那你确实有可能赚钱。比如说，他们有时会发出信号表明他们要支持股市。如果你关注短期资产市场，你在中国还是能赚钱。与过去相比，现在的不同之处在于，以前那些庞大的资产管理公司进入市场时，通常没有具备中国市场专业知识的团队，他们几乎没有雇请任何人来指导。
And they go buy their China tech company and then they just wait for the dividend to pay out every quarter. And there was no real China analysis. There's no China watching. There was no maneuverability in any of their trades. And those guys all got massacred when Alibaba went down and 10 cent went down. There's no way they could operate in China right now in any real fashion. If you're a nimble hedge fund, sure you could go in there. I think with the landscape, so there's still hedge fund opportunities and there's going to be based on what the government's doing. And if you have data like ours, you can see what they're doing, the credit side.
他们购买了中国的科技公司，然后就只是等待每季度的分红。而在这过程中，几乎没有进行实质的中国市场分析，也没有密切关注中国市场动态。他们的交易缺乏灵活性，因此当阿里巴巴和腾讯股价下跌时，他们都遭受了巨大的损失。 目前他们在中国无法真正有效地运作。但是，如果你是一只灵活的对冲基金，就可以进入中国市场。我认为在当前的形势下，依旧存在对冲基金的机会，并且这些机会将取决于政府的行动。如果你拥有像我们这样的数据，你就能了解他们在信贷方面的举动。
So there's still ways of getting in and out of China and making money, not doubting that. I think what's really changed is on the side where a lot of US funds would go in and they'd invest in AI and they'd invest in all kinds of Chinese technology companies, those are being shut down. Those pathage ways are being shut down. Certainly not fast enough. But I think that if you're going in there to invest in technology, it's going to be used by the People's Liberation Army to shoot back at American troops when they're defending Taiwan. I think you should rethink your business model on that part of the investment universe.
所以，尽管仍然有方法能够进出中国并赚钱，但我认为真正的变化发生在美国的许多基金去投资中国的人工智能和各种技术公司方面，这些路径正在被关闭。当然，这一过程还不够快。但我认为，如果你要去投资技术，而该技术可能被解放军用来反击保护台湾的美军，你应该重新考虑你在这部分投资领域的商业模式。
I think more like an idiot like me though, you're looking at the macro idea of where the US economy is, where it's going. And then the Chinese economy, where it's going from a macro basis, should I go sell off 10% of my SPY and buy that in Chinese, diversified Chinese investment or not? I wouldn't. Absolutely not. But here's the real key point. In China, the stock market is not the real economy. And what a lot of times when people get confused is they say, oh, well, I'm seeing really like, you know, frothy activity in the stock market and therefore the economy must be getting better. You see this, you know, you see the reverse.
我认为像我这样的笨蛋一样思考。你关注的是美国经济的整体状况及其发展方向。而对于中国经济，从宏观角度来看，它的发展方向如何。我是否应该卖掉我10%的SPY股票，然后把这些资金投入多元化的中国投资中？我不会这样做，绝对不会。但真正的关键点在于：中国的股市并不代表真实的经济。很多时候人们常常会混淆，以为股市的活跃就意味着经济在变好。你会看到相反的情况。
They're just not the same thing. And so what you could have next year is you could have a situation where Trump threatens tariffs. The Chinese government comes out and says, okay, well, we're going to have to do a little bit bigger stimulus and we're going to may not be consumption stimulus, but we're going to certainly use the word a lot. And so people who like that do a lot of bigger stimulus. It makes stocks go up. So you could see this, you could see the economy under duress and you could see stocks go up for, you know, cyclically different, you know, spiking next year opportunistically.
它们根本不是一回事。因此，明年你可能会遇到这样的情况：特朗普可能威胁要加征关税。然后，中国政府回应说，好吧，我们将不得不推出更大规模的刺激措施，虽然可能不会是消费刺激，但我们肯定会频繁提到这个词。因此，那些喜欢这种做法的人可能会推动更大规模的刺激措施，进而使股市上涨。所以，你可能会看到这样的情况：尽管经济承受压力，但由于循环性和机会主义的不同因素，股市在来年可能会上涨。
So, you know, you could get in and out of China making money from the stock market while the economy is under significant duress. There are people who do that. We don't invest in China, you know, and I don't personally invest in China. So that's not something that I do. But next year, you can have a story where the stock market is intriguing to some people and the real economy is very depressing to other people and the macro situation's not good, but you could have diverging stories like that. It may everything may be bad next year, but certainly you could have the divergence that I just talked about.
所以，你知道，有些人在中国经济压力很大的时候，通过股市进行投资进出赚取利润。确实有人这样做。我们并不在中国投资，我个人也不投资于中国，所以这不是我会做的事情。但明年，可能会出现这样的局面：股市对一些人来说很有吸引力，而实体经济对其他人来说却很令人沮丧，宏观经济形势也不好，但可能会出现这样的分化局面。明年可能整体情况不佳，但这种分化的现象确实是可能出现的。
So, Leland, we have a question that fits in with kind of one of my key hypotheses. And I just want to direct you very quickly back to the most important chart in the world here for one second. That's, of course, that's not, as I said, I apologize. I'm operating off of a, oh, come on. Let's see if I can get this to show before we have to hop off because we're starting to run short on time here. Let's see. Let's try doing this one. Okay, there we go. Come on. I always wear a mask. Okay. Hit the wrong button. Open the wrong. Yeah, I know. I'm a little worried that, you know, Harley's only fan account is going to pop up if I click on the wrong button here. I apologize. I can't.
所以，利兰，我们有个问题和我的一个关键假设有些关联。我想快速带你看看这里一张非常重要的图表。不好意思，有点乱。我这就操作一下，希望在我们时间紧张之前能展示给你看。让我试试这个。好了，总算搞定了。我总是戴着口罩。哎呀，按错了按钮，打开了错误的东西。我有点担心如果点错按钮，会不小心打开哈利的粉丝专页。抱歉。
Well, referring back to that chart that shows the divergence between interest rates, we were asked the question from one of our listeners, why is China buying gold? And one of the things that I think is happening, and I think it helps to explain why Western bonds are selling off while the while Chinese bonds are rallying is in the aftermath of the Russian sanctions we saw basically purchases by China of Western bonds go to zero. What are that's going to gold? Do you have any insights? I mean, I think we know why they're concerned about sanctions and the potential for effectively taking away those bonds if they accumulate those resources, particularly if Taiwan is the flashpoint that you and I both think is a risk. Where else is that money going? Because it's a trillion dollars on a global basis. We can't find it.
好的，回到那张显示利率分化的图表，有位听众问我们，为什么中国在购买黄金？我认为，这可以解释为什么西方债券在抛售，而中国债券却在上涨。在俄罗斯制裁之后，我们看到中国基本停止购买西方债券。那么这些资金转向黄金了吗？你有什么见解吗？我想，我们都知道他们担心制裁，以及如果积累了这些资源特别是在台湾成为你我都认为有风险的焦点时，有可能被有效没收这些债券。那么这些钱还去了哪里呢？毕竟这涉及到全球范围内一万亿美元的资金，但是我们却找不到它。
I do have insight into this. And the answer is it's a lot of it. Most of it's still going back to US assets and the way that this is done. So look, China sees what happens with Russia. It also understood even before the Russia invasion of Ukraine, its vulnerabilities in terms of reliance on the dollar, payment systems, its investment in US assets. It has a lot of vulnerabilities to US government sanctions and other things. It would like to get away from the dollar, but it can't. There's no other liquid pool of liquidity that it could invest in that would be safe and that would keep the stability of the system. So what it's been doing is some of its formal buys. Well, one, it's been buying on the margins. It's been buying more gold. If you can buy something else, you're buying a little more gold, you're buying a little bit more maybe of some of these other mid-major currencies. But at the end of the day, you got to buy dollars. And you're not looking at the yen. You're not going to Euro and say, wow, those things are so much better. What you're doing is you're formally buying fewer bonds through China, and then you're buying more through your third party, your counterparties that are cloaked through Luxembourg, through Cayman's, through some of the other European states that allow you to do this.
我确实对这个问题有一些见解。答案是，其实很多资金还是回流到美国资产上，这就是当前的状况。中国看到俄罗斯的情况后，意识到自己在依赖美元、支付系统以及对美国资产投资方面的脆弱性。即使在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰之前，中国就已经意识到这些问题。它有很多容易受到美国政府制裁的地方和其他风险。中国想要摆脱对美元的依赖，但目前来说无法做到。因为没有其他同样安全且具有良好流动性的投资渠道来维持系统稳定。因此，中国正在采取一些策略调整。首先，它在边际上增持了一些黄金。在有可能的情况下，中国会多购入一些其他中等重要的货币。然而，最终还是得买美元，因为不可能转向日元或欧元，觉得它们更好。中国在减少通过直接渠道购买美国债券，而是通过第三方或合作伙伴进行购买，这些往往隐藏在卢森堡、开曼群岛以及其他一些允许这种做法的欧洲国家中。
So I don't think that they're buying. I think it went down once. It did go down, but I think that what you're seeing is not sort of this drop down of the reliance on the dollar or their purchase of US assets or their holdings of US assets. It's a lot of buying, selling to the front door and buying to the back door that's happening right now. You can't get away from the dollar. It's not possible. And if they'd ever tried to, they would be putting the stability of the system under peril. So I think that's absolutely right.
所以我不认为他们在减少购买。我认为资产价值曾经下跌过一次，确实是下跌过。但我觉得现在你看到的，并不是他们对美元依赖程度的下降，也不是对美国资产的购买或持有的减少。现在的情况更像是通过前门卖出，同时从后门买入的行为。你无法摆脱美元，这是不可能的。如果他们真的尝试这样做，将使整个系统的稳定性处于危险之中。所以我认为这种看法是完全正确的。
I'm going to toss out another component of the hypothesis. Given the concerns about sanctions on sovereign assets, it's much easier to track who's holding treasuries because you're ultimately sending a dividend, but an interest coupon payment to them. It's much harder to track private sector assets. Would some of the inexplicable tightness in the credit sector, we just saw corporate bankruptcies hit the highest levels in history in the United States, and yet credit spreads are near the tightness in history? Could some of this be a function of those funds being directed into the private sector in the United States?
我要提出假设的另一个组成部分。考虑到对对主权资产制裁的担忧，追踪谁持有国债要容易得多，因为最终你要向他们发送利息付款。然而，追踪私营部门的资产要困难得多。在信贷市场方面，我们刚刚看到美国的企业破产率达到了历史最高水平，但信贷利差却接近历史紧缩水平。这种现象是否可能部分归因于这些资金流入了美国的私营部门？
Sure. I mean, nobody really knows the extent of US assets. Where is this trade surplus gone? What all have they bought? We don't know. Quite frankly, the idea of having more transparency. Forget about just outbound investment restrictions, which were almost made into law in the continuing resolution a few weeks ago, but then we're kicked to the curb and we may not see them again for a while, unfortunately. But part of the whole reason about that is forget the fact that we should be restricting some of this and screening it. We should understand what those flows are. We don't understand the degree to which we have a problem or not in certain places because we refuse to have any type of visibility into the data. Treasury Department doesn't want to do it because it thinks it's going to hurt investment. You know, Commerce Department hasn't won historically won't do it because it's going to hurt investment.
当然。我是说，其实没人真正了解美国资产的规模。那么，这些贸易顺差去了哪里？他们究竟买了什么？我们不知道。坦率说，增加透明度的想法很重要。先不讨论几周前几乎被纳入持续决议案、但后来被搁置、可能要暂时见不到的对外投资限制。核心问题在于，我们不光应该限制和筛选一些东西，还应该弄清这些资金流动的具体情况。由于我们拒绝了解这些数据，我们无法判断某些地方是否存在严重问题。财政部不愿这么做，因为他们认为这样会影响投资。而商务部从历史上看也不愿这么做，原因同样是担心影响投资。
What we need to do is get better visibility into where US funds are going into China and where other Chinese funds are going in the United States. And that should just be the very foundation of the approach before you even get to policy. Just get visibility into what's happening. I think that's absolutely right. I've highlighted in some of my notes the growing calls for transparency in particular loans to non-depository financial institutions. I'm hearing from representatives that are associated with FINRA that are associated with OMB that are associated with FinSec, etc. That they are all concerned about this data quality.
我们需要更清晰地了解美国资金流入中国的方向，以及中国资金流入美国的方向。这应该是我们采取任何政策之前的基础。首先就是要了解情况。我认为这是非常正确的。在我的一些记录中，我强调了对特别是向非存款类金融机构提供贷款的透明度的日益呼声。我听说与FINRA、OMB、金融安全局等相关的代表们都对此类数据的质量表示担忧。
That is a perfect note on which to end this. Leland, you are so generous with your time. You are so copious in your knowledge of the system. I'm really glad we got that last question in there. That was absolutely fantastic. And I just want to, again, offer an extension of thanks. I know that you're going to be playing a role in the incoming administration on a couple of fronts. We all wish you the greatest success as US citizens and as friends of yours. So thank you again for joining us. Look forward to talking to you soon.
这真是一个完美的结束。Leland，你非常慷慨地给予了我们你的时间，而且你对这个系统的了解非常丰富。我真的很高兴我们有机会问了最后一个问题，那真是太精彩了。我再次向你表达感谢。据我所知，你将在新一届政府中担任多个角色。作为美国公民和你的朋友，我们都祝愿你取得最大的成功。再次感谢你参加我们的活动，期待很快再次与你交流。
Thank you all for having me. I enjoyed it. Yeah. Thank you, Leland, so much for coming on. That was an incredible conversation. Thanks for everyone who tuned into this webinar as well. And make sure you sign up for next month's webinar featuring special guest volunteer Hadad, moderated by Mike and also one of our fantastic Marcus strategists, Chris Bregueta, Harley is taking a bit of a break next month. Thanks again, everyone, and have a good night.
感谢大家的邀请。我很享受这个过程。是的，非常感谢你,Leland,参与这次活动。那是一场很棒的对话。也感谢所有参与这次网络研讨会的人。请务必报名参加下个月的网络研讨会，届时将有特别嘉宾志愿者Hadad，由Mike主持，还有我们非常出色的Marcus战略家Chris Bregueta。Harley下个月将休息一下。再次感谢大家，祝各位晚安。