丘亦生：央企實驗室

中信集團取道注資中信泰富（267）變相上市，事成後市值將大躍進，隨時是另一隻和黃（013），我見內地媒體開始將兩者作比較，更隱隱然有取而代之的意味。雖然我覺得，中信與和黃根本是不同品種的企業，但由於中信集團將連中信泰富的恒指成份股地位都會照單全收，故此不少
港人還是要被動增持在恒指比重大增的中信集團。

市值大　佔恒指比重增

中信集團今次注資兼把總部遷冊香港，被視為習李政府下的國企改革再啟動，但實際操作，可能只是把2006年後沒有再批准的紅籌上市重開綠燈。不過，由於涉及注資規模近3,000億港元，日後市值很可能超越長實（001）及銀娛（027），中信集團在恒指的比重，肯定會較中信泰富大增。

是次大動作被視為央企改革的先頭部隊，代表之後可能有更多央企效法，港股多了生意當然叫好，但對投資者來說又意味着甚麼？

現時在恒指中，已有不少份屬央企的成份股，我利用Webb-site.com的總回報（計入股價升值及股息因素）數據，統計了這些央企過去5年的複式總回報，原來只有11.3%，較所有成份股的平均總回報18%低出不少。

這些央企，普遍市值龐大，好像在恒指成份股中十大市值裏，央企便佔其四，但在總回報榜上卻剛好相反，只有昆侖能源（135）一隻上榜，國壽（2628）更加位列成份股總回報榜末，5年計入股息都要輸1.4%。又如工行（1398）雖然賺過3,000億港紙，但5年股價總共只升12%，遠遜恒生（0011）的61%及滙豐（0005）的90%。


央企有包袱　跟着政策走

這幾年恒指跑輸美股及不少股市，與幾隻央企如中移動、工行、建行、國壽等巨無霸表現乏善足陳，恐怕脫不了關係。

做得央企，當然蒙國策照顧，有特權及各種顯性或隱性補貼，但另一方面，又要背負不少的任務及包袱，股東回報很多時並不是首要考慮。
中央一吹雞，央企便要跟着政策主旋律走，借錢的放水，「走出去」的便要做海外收購，又或要根據中國外交的風向簽訂合同，這些決定多少是考證過回報及風險後出手，內裏的策略考慮，是基於公司自身，還是國策的要求？

那些年，一眾央企上市，都說要透過上市推動企業改革及管治，釋放生產力，但這場實驗已做了很多次，又有多少能突破自身的框框，把品牌及產品推向另一層次？

香港打開門做生意，當然歡迎各式千億實驗，但恒指基金及盈富基金（2800）是很多人主動或被動的投資選擇，所以呼籲編製恒指的大佬不要來者不拒，令恒指被這些實驗的種種風險折騰，限制一下這些央企佔恒指的比重，保住這個代表港股Q嘜標誌的指數及散戶的荷包。

 Stephen S. Roach: The End of Chinese Central Planning


That was the question I asked Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei this week at the 15th annual China Development Forum, which brings together top Chinese officials and an international delegation of academics, leaders of multilateral organizations, and business executives. Having attended the CDF since former Premier Zhu Rongji initiated it in 2000, I can attest to its role as one of China’s most important platforms for debate. Zhu welcomed the exchange of views at the Forum as a true intellectual test for China’s reformers.

It was in that spirit that I posed my question to Lou, whom I have known since the late 1990’s. In that period, he has been Deputy Minister of Finance, founding Chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation, and now Minister of Finance. I have always found him to be direct, intellectually curious, a first-rate analytical thinker, and a forward-looking advocate of market-based reforms. He is cut from the same cloth as his mentor, Zhu.

My question was set in the context of the new thrust of Chinese reforms announced at last November’s Third Plenum of the 18thCentral Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which emphasized the“decisive role” of market forces in shaping the next phase of China’s economic development.

I prefaced my question by underscoring the inherent contradiction between a target and a forecast in framing China’s major economic objectives. I argued that the former embodied the obsolete straitjacket of central planning, while the latter was far more consistent with market-based outcomes. A target perpetuates the image of the all-powerful state-directed Chinese growth machine – a government that will essentially stop at nothing to hit a predetermined number.

While it may seem like splitting hairs, continuing to frame the economic goal as a target sends a message of determined and explicit guidance that now seems at odds with the government’s market-oriented intentions. Wouldn’t dropping the concept send a far more powerful message?Isn’t it time for China to let go of the last vestiges of its centrally planned past?

Lou’s response: “Good question.”

China, he went on, is in fact moving away from its once single-minded emphasis on growth targeting. The government now stresses three macroeconomic goals – job creation, price stability, and GDP growth. And, as evidenced by the annual “work report” that the premier recently submitted to China’s National People’s Congress, the current emphasis is in that order, with GDP growth at the bottom of the list.
This gives China and its policymakers considerable room for maneuver in coping with the current growth slowdown.Unlike most Western observers, who are fixated on the slightest deviation from the official growth target, Chinese officials are actually far more open-minded.They care less about GDP growth per se and more about the labor content of the gains in output.

This is particularly relevant in light of the important threshold that has now been reached by the structural transformation of the Chinese economy – the long-awaited shift to a services-led growth dynamic. Services, which now account for the largest share of the economy, require close to30% more jobs per unit of output than the manufacturing and construction sectors combined. In an increasingly services-led, labor-intensive economy,China’s economic managers can afford to be more relaxed about a GDP slowdown.

Last year was a case in point. At the start of 2013, the government announced that it was targeting ten million new urban jobs. In fact, the economy added 13.1 million workers – even though GDP expanded by “only” 7.7%. In other words, if China can hit its employment goal with 7.5% GDP growth, there is no reason for its policymakers to panic and roll out the heavy counter-cyclical artillery. That, in fact, was pretty much the message conveyed by a broad cross-section of senior officials at this year’s CDF: Slowdown, yes; major policy response, no.

Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of the People’s Bank of China, was just as emphatic on this point. The PBOC, he argued, does not pursue a single target. Instead, it frames monetary policy in accordance with what he called a “multi-objective function” comprised of goals for price stability, employment, GDP growth, and the external balance-of-payments – the latter factor added to recognize the PBOC’s authority over currency policy.

The trick, Zhou stressed, is to assign weights to each of the four goals in the multi-objective policy function. He conceded that the weighting problem has now been seriously complicated by the new need to pay greater attention to financial stability.

All of this paints China with a very different brush than was used during the first 30 years of its growth miracle.Since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms of the early 1980’s, less and less attention has been paid to the numerical targets of central planning. The State Planning Commission evolved into the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) –though it is still housed in the same building on Yuetan Street in Beijing.And, over time, economic managers succeeded in drastically curtailing sector-by-sector Soviet-style planning. But there was still a plan and an aggregate growth target – and an all-powerful NDRC hanging on to the levers of control.

Those days are now over. A new “leading committee” on reforms is marginalizing the NDRC, and China’s most senior fiscal and monetary policymakers – Lou Jiwei and Zhou Xiaochuan – are close to taking the final step in the long journey to a market-based economy. Their shared interpretation of flexible growth targeting puts them basically in the same camp as policymakers in most of the developed world. The plan is now a goal-setting exercise. From now on, fluctuations in the Chinese economy, and the policy responses that those fluctuations imply, need to be considered in that vein.

Stephen S. Roach, former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale’s School of Management. He is the author of the new book Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.