China

How China’s current account surplus will evolve in the coming years is one of the key questions on the economic outlook, both for China itself and for the global economy. China’s increasingly competitive manufacturing sector will continue to power ahead, to expand exports and to gain global market share. At the same time, China’s domestic economy should continue to grow rapidly, thereby drawing imports. However, how this will on balance play out with regard to the current account surplus is less certain. It will largely depend on how much progress is made with rebalancing the economy.

China’s export volumes have continued to rise very rapidly in recent years.An increasing array of manufacturing sectors is becoming more competitive internationally, including many types of machinery and equipment. Competitiveness is boosted by technological catch up, movement up the value chain, and economies of scale as well as by traditional strengths such as infrastructure and the business climate. Reflecting these factors, labor productivity growth in manufacturing has remained solid, thus helping containing unit labor costs despite respectable wage growth.

Some have argued that China is losing its competitive edge because its export prices are rising. However, that is an incorrect inference. Higher raw commodity prices mean export prices are rising all over the world—not just in China. Prices of US imports from China are now rising at the same pace as those of US imports of manufactured goods from developed countries. But those of US imports of manufactured goods from other emerging markets and developing countries are rising faster. On this price metric, the most we can say is that China’s competitiveness is improving at a slower pace than before.

(Originally posted in English)

这是我在为撰写新一期《中国经济季报》重新审视中国近期经济发展、前景展望和政策寓意之后写的第一篇博文。在这篇概要之后，过几天我还会写一篇博文探讨关于相对价格的某些有趣的中期趋势以及外贸对中国经济的相对重要性（本期《季报》也讨论了这些问题）。

“正常化”这个词在最近讨论经济增长结构和宏观经济政策立场时大量出现，在中国也一样。但这是难以避免的。在2010年期间，中国的增长结果开始趋向“正常化”，这出现在2009年的投机风潮过后，大规模的政府主导的内需大幅增加抵消了出口的巨大收缩。2010年下半年，宏观经济政策立场也开始回归“正常化”。我猜我们许多人都用“正常化”这个词来形容或者建议采取一种与“正常化”的经济前景相一致的宏观政策立场，而不是采取一种特别紧缩的立场。

(Originally posted in English)

作为一个跟踪宏观经济发展的研究人员来说，与数据打交道是我的日常工作。我很高兴现在有了一个新工具来帮助我处理数据和做研究分析，这就是世界银行新近推出的开放数据平台。根据我现有的使用经验，它主要有两大特点：

(Originally posted in English)

食品价格近来备受关注。关注的焦点是近期动态及短期走向，这一点可以理解，但在本文中，我尽力回顾一些长期趋势，以便作出进一步分析预测。

本世纪初以来，食品相关价格趋涨（见图1）。2000年以来，农业附加值平减指数继上世纪九十年代中后期下滑之后年均上涨了8%。从生产价格指数看，食品价格（出厂价）涨幅要小得多，原因是食品加工业其它投入的价格涨幅较小，同时食品加工生产率迅速提高抑制了食品原材料价格上涨的传递。