提高最低工资于中国有利 于世界无害

The silver lining of wage increase
By Stephen S. Roach (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-27 11:48

Notwithstanding all the hype over rising wages in China, it is entirely premature to declare an end to the global labor cost arbitrage that has long worked in China's favor. China remains highly competitive by international standards, and the recent round of sharp increase in wages is not likely to alter that key conclusion.

Actually, the current outbreak of increase in minimum wages is largely going according to the script of China's 2004 labor reform, which required local governments to raise minimum wages at least every other year. But circumstances changed relative to conditions prevailing at the time that reform was implemented, and the script had to be discarded - at least for a while.

In the depths of the global financial crisis in late 2008, when Chinese exports were under severe downward pressure, the government ordered a deferral of scheduled increases in minimum wages in an effort to combat mounting recessionary risks.

But now, in the face of a more stable global climate and impressive resilience in the Chinese economy, that emergency policy is being relaxed. In that important respect, recent increases in minimum wages should be seen as a catch-up from previously slated hikes that had been foregone during the crisis.

The data on international wage comparisons, too, do not point to dramatic deterioration in China's wage advantage. According to research published in the Monthly Labor Review of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in April 2009, compensation of Chinese manufacturing workers was only $0.81 per hour in 2006 - just 2.7 percent of comparable costs in the US, 3.4 percent of that in Japan, and 2.2 percent of compensation rates in Europe.

While these figures are now out of date by nearly four years, they underscore the magnitude of the gap between China and the developed world - and how difficult it would be to close that gap even under the most excessive of Chinese wage inflation scenarios.

For example, if Chinese manufacturing wages had increased at an average annual rate of 25 percent during the 2007-10 period - which is highly unlikely for reasons noted below - the hourly compensation rate would be just $1.98 in 2010. That would boost Chinese compensation to only about 4 percent of US pay rates - barely making a dent in narrowing the arbitrage with major industrial economies. A similar comparison would be evident with other countries in the developing world. At $1.98 per hour in 2010, Chinese hourly compensation in manufacturing would still be less than 15 percent of that elsewhere in East Asia (ex Japan) and only about half the pay rate in Mexico.

It is important to stress that this 25 percent hypothetical wage-inflation scenario is well beyond the outer bound of any conceivable outcome for China. While minimum wage gains in some provinces may well be rising at such a clip this year, there is good reason to believe that between one-third and one-half of all Chinese manufacturing employees are currently paid above the minimum wage.

Inasmuch as higher paid workers would be largely unaffected by recent actions, total wage increases would be considerably less than those accruing to the low end of the Chinese pay-scale.

At the same time, it is equally important to assess increases in Chinese labor compensation in the context of rapidly rising worker productivity. Based on data from the World Bank, annualized productivity growth in the Chinese manufacturing sector appears to have been running in the 10 percent to 15 percent range since 1990 - not all that dissimilar from gains in real hourly compensation. That would imply only marginal upward pressure on unit labor costs, suggesting little underlying deterioration in Chinese competitiveness.

Moreover, the impact of rising wage pressures also needs to be judged in the context of other dimensions of China's competitive advantage, namely, scale, infrastructure, pan-Asian supply-chain logistics, and the relatively recent installation of state-of-the-art production technologies. China has lost little, or none, of the edge in those critically important areas.

Finally, it is important to note that increasing worker compensation is a key ingredient of China's pro-consumption growth strategy. A serious shortfall in the growth of consumer purchasing power remains a critical problem for an unbalanced Chinese economy. Personal income currently amounts to just 40 percent of Chinese GDP - decidedly sub-par by international standards and down over 10 percentage points from the 51 percent reading in 2000. That needs to change if China is ever going to come to grips with its rebalancing imperatives.

Yet that could well be the real silver lining to this story. To the extent that compensation increases now outstrip the growth in GDP, the labor income share will begin to rise. That sets the stage for increases in household purchasing power, which are critical for pushing China's consumption share of its GDP up from the rock-bottom 36 percent reading in 2009.

Rather than bemoaning the end of low Chinese labor costs, the global debate should focus more on the constructive implications of this important development for the long-awaited pro-consumption rebalancing of the Chinese economy.

The author is non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and a member of the faculty of Yale University. He has the book, The Next Asia, to his credit.

提高最低工资于中国有利 于世界无害

尽管最近关于中国劳动力成本上升的议论不绝于耳，但我认为此时宣告中国劳动力套利优势已经终结为时尚早。同国际水平相比，中国的工资水平仍然很低，因此中国近期新一轮的工资上涨并不会使中国丧失劳动力成本低廉的优势。

这次中国国内工资水平上涨主要依据的是2004年3月1日起施行的《最低工资规定》。该规定要求中国各地最低工资标准每两年至少调整一次。但在2008年的金融危机中，中国出口严重受挫，经济面临巨大压力，为了应对金融危机，当时中国政府决定将2008年的工资上涨计划推迟。

现如今，中国应对金融危机成绩显著，并且全球经济形势也趋于稳定，由此一来，之前的应急措施便显得没有必要了。所以，最近的工资上调不过是弥补了2008年未上涨的工资而已。

相较于世界各国劳动力较高的工资，中国劳动力的竞争力依然明显。美国劳动统计局2009年4月发行的《劳动评论月刊》中有数据显示，2006年中国劳动力每小时的工资为0.81美元，仅为美国同期劳动力每小时工资水平的2.7%，日本的3.4%，欧盟的2.2%。

尽管2006年的数据显得有些过时，但我们还是可以看到，中国和发达国家劳动成本之间存在着巨大鸿沟。因此，即便中国再次上调工资，也很难将这一鸿沟填平。

举例来说，假设中国在2007年至2010年中按平均25%的年率将工资水平上调（根据以下提及的原因，这一假设不可能成立），到2010年中国平均工资每小时也只有1.98美元，仅为美国同期每小时工资水平的4%，这对于缩小中国同主要工业国家之间的工资鸿沟作用微乎其微。同样，中国和其他发达国家的工资差也大抵如此。此外，即使2010年中国制造业工人每小时工资达到1.98美元，这一水平也不及东亚国家的15%（不包括日本），仅为墨西哥的50%。

需要强调的是，就中国目前的状况而言，最低工资涨幅25%的假设根本不可能实现。尽管一些省份最低工资的涨幅已经达到了这样的水平，但放眼全国，仍有一半甚至三分之二的工人工资水平仍在最低工资标准以下。

鉴于此次工资标准的调整对于高收入者来说基本没有影响，总体工资水平的增长将大大低于低收入者工资增长水平。

与此同时，这次工资上调的大背景是中国整体生产力的提高。根据世界银行的数据，自1990年以来，中国制造业的生产力年增长率保持在10%到15%之间，但生产力的增长并没有完全真实地体现在工人的工资收入里。这表明中国单位劳动力成本增加缓慢，也意味着这次工资上调不会削弱中国廉价劳动力的竞争力。

此外，在考察这次工资上调对中国竞争力影响的时候，我们还应考虑到中国所具有的优势，如巨大的生产规模，完善的基础设施，强大的泛亚洲物流链，以及近期采用的最为先进的生产技术。在这些非常重要的领域，中国并没有丧失自己的优势。

最后，我们还要强调的一点是，提高最低工资标准是中国向消费型经济转变的重要策略之一。对中国来说，购买力的严重不足仍然是阻碍经济发展的一大障碍。目前中国的个人收入仅占GDP的40%，远远低于国际水平，同时比2000年51%的比例还要低10个百分点。考虑到经济平衡的重要性，中国必须努力改变这一状况。

这也将成为中国发展的一次机遇。考虑到现在工资的增长超过GDP的增长，中国应进一步扩大公民收入在GDP中所占的比重，为提高家庭购买力奠定基础，而这也对提高消费在GDP中所占的份额至关重要。2009年，中国的消费对GDP的贡献只有36%。

归根结底，国际社会不应为中国廉价劳动力时代的结束感到悲哀，而应把注意力放在中国向消费型经济转变所作出的努力，以及这一中国期待已久的经济状况为全球经济带来的建设性作用上。

英文原文请见： http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-07/27/content_11052286.htm。特别说明：因中英文写作风格不同，中文稿件与英文原文不完全对应。（作者是摩根士丹利首席经济学家,《未来的亚洲》作者 Stephen S. Roach 编译 刘江波 编辑 潘忠明）