| On the train a few weeks ago, I sat next to a burly garment supplier. He spent the entire trip – when not yelling at his ex-wife-to-be on the phone (“you made your bed love, you lie in it”) – calling clients and telling them that their prices were going up. Those who asked questions were told that factory prices were rising in China and that they were taking the hit. End of story. | 幾周前我坐火車旅行，旁邊坐了一位魁梧的服裝供應商。在整個旅行期間，這位供應商除了在電話中對即將離婚的妻子吼叫外（“親愛的，自作孽不可逭”），就是給客戶打電話告訴他們產(chǎn)品將要漲價。那些詢問原因的人被告知，中國工廠的價格正在上漲，他們正受到?jīng)_擊。沒什么可商量的。 |
| I told this to a City audience a few days later during a debate with Matt Ridley on whether optimism or pessimism is the correct approach to the future – only to hear a voice piping up from the floor telling me I knew nothing about inflation in China. | 幾天后，我在金融城與馬特•里德利(Matt Ridley)辯論對未來應保持樂觀還是悲觀時，向聽眾講了這件事。結(jié)果臺下冒出來一個聲音說，我不了解中國的通脹情況。 |
| This interruption came from a young dress designer at the back. She told us that the factories she uses would bump up their prices every couple of months: these days, if you don’t take the price you are given on the spot, it goes up in 24 hours. That’s real inflation. | 打斷我的是坐在后排的一個年輕服裝設(shè)計師，她告訴我，她使用的中國工廠每隔幾個月就會漲價：現(xiàn)如今，如果你當場不接受報價，24小時內(nèi)就會漲價。這是真實的通脹。 |
| But the interesting bit was that the fast-moving prices have prompted her to do her sums again: she is moving her production back to Europe. It won’t cost less, but it certainly won’t cost any more. It will also allow her to keep an eye on quality – which has apparently been falling as fast as prices are rising at those Chinese factories. | 但是有趣的是，中國價格快速增長促使她重新清醒思考：她正在將生產(chǎn)線遷回歐洲。雖然這不能降低成本，但肯定也不會再增加成本。而且這樣一來她還能夠監(jiān)督產(chǎn)品質(zhì)量——顯然，在那些中國工廠，產(chǎn)品質(zhì)量下降的速度與價格上漲的速度一樣快。 |
| For more on how fast prices are rising, look at www.shanghaiscrap.com, where you can see pictures of packs of instant noodles in a Shanghai convenience store. According to the blogger, the clerks aren’t bothering to print new price labels for the noodles as prices rise; they simply “cross them out and write in the new [substantially higher] ones”. That’s also real inflation. | 要想更多地了解價格上漲有多快，你可以登錄www.shanghaiscrap.com看看。該博客上面配發(fā)了上海一家便利店里袋裝方便面的圖片。博主表示，隨著價格的上漲，店員們都懶得打印新的價格標簽；而只是“用筆把舊價格劃掉，寫上（高得多的）新價格”。這也是真實的通脹。 |
| This is anecdotal evidence but it suggests that, given the wage pressures building behind it, the consumer price index in China might, just might, be a tad higher than the official number of 4.6 per cent suggests. | 這是坊間證據(jù)，但它表明，考慮到背后的薪資上漲壓力，中國的消費者價格指數(shù)或許（僅僅是或許）要稍稍高于官方公布的4.6%的水平。 |
| It also chimes with news of minimum wage rises in Chinese cities: pay is about to rise 20 per cent in Beijing, 10 per cent in Shanghai and 19 per cent in Guangdong. Shanghai’s mayor says this is about “rational income distribution”. But odds are it has something to do with staff shortages (young Chinese workers are becoming more demanding) and the odd strike as well. | 它還與中國各城市最低工資水平上漲的消息相吻合：北京計劃將最低工資水平提高20%，上海提高10%，廣東提高19%。上海市市長表示，這事關(guān)“合理收入分配”。但這十之八九與勞動力短缺（年輕的中國工人正變得越來越挑剔）和零散的罷工有點關(guān)系。 |
| Either way, you could make a reasonable argument that 30 years into its 10 per cent a year GDP expansion, China is beginning to price itself out of the low-cost manufacturing market. Leave out Malaysia and Thailand, says a note from Liberum Capital, and the average worker in China is now more expensive than the average worker in any other emerging Asian economy. | 無論是哪種原因，你都能得出一個合理的結(jié)論，即在國內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值(GDP)以10%的年均增速增長了30年之后，中國自身的勞動力成本開始上升，不再是低成本制造業(yè)市場。倫敦Liberum Capital在一篇報告中指出，除去馬來西亞和泰國，目前中國普通工人的價格比其它亞洲新興經(jīng)濟體的普通工人都要高。 |
| One thing all this should remind us about is the power of demographics. Years of one-child policies have left the Chinese population nastily unbalanced. Today, its dependency ratio hovers around 40 per cent. That’s good – it means 60 per cent of the population is of working age. But as the only children reach working age and their parents retire, this ratio changes fast: by 2040 it will be well over 50 per cent and by 2050, over 60 per cent. If employers think young Chinese workers are stroppy now, they should wait until the poor things are trying to support two parents each, as well as their own children. | 所有這些都應該提醒我們注意到人口結(jié)構(gòu)的力量。由于多年實施計劃生育政策，中國的人口結(jié)構(gòu)嚴重失衡。如今，中國的撫養(yǎng)比率徘徊在40%左右。這個水平很好——它意味著60%的人口處于勞動年齡。但是隨著獨生子女到達勞動年齡和他們的父母退休，該比率將很快改變：到2040年，撫養(yǎng)比率將遠遠超過50%，到2050年，將超過60%。如果雇主認為現(xiàn)在年輕的中國工人難以應付，且等到這些可憐的家伙既要供養(yǎng)父母又要供養(yǎng)子女的時再看吧。 |
| However, this shift from a nation of the youngish to a nation of the old won’t just affect China’s economy. It will, if things work out as they have in the US, affect its stock market, too. | 然而，中國從年輕人的國家轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)槔淆g化國家，受影響的不只是中國經(jīng)濟。如果情況像美國那樣發(fā)展，它還可能會影響股市。 |
| Société Générale has a neat chart that plots the growth rate of retirees in the US against the Shiller price/earnings ratio for the US equity market. And guess what? It’s a pretty good correlation. When not many people are retiring, the stock market gets more expensive (more people are saving for retirement). When lots are retiring, it gets cheaper (people take their money out). The same goes for house prices: working people upsize, retirees downsize so the more retirees you have knocking around, the less likely it is that house prices will rise. | 法國興業(yè)銀行(Société Générale)繪制了一幅簡潔的圖表——將美國退休人口增長率曲線與美國股市的“席勒市盈率”(Shiller PE)曲線進行了比較。猜猜是什么情況？它們的關(guān)聯(lián)性相當強。當達到退休年齡的人口不多時，股市較為昂貴（有更多人為退休攢錢）。當很多人即將退休時，股市變得較便宜（人們紛紛把錢從股市中撤出）。房價也是同樣的走勢：處于勞動年齡的人多了，退休的人就會減少，因此退休的人越多，房價上漲的可能性就越低。 |
| Anyone looking for corroboration of the argument need only look to Japan where the working age population as a percentage of the total population began to fall in the early 1990s – a time that marked the start of a 20-year grind-down in domestic asset prices. | 任何為這種觀點尋求佐證的人只需看看日本就可以了。上世紀90年代初，日本勞動人口占總?cè)丝诘谋壤_始下降，而那個時期也標志著日本國內(nèi)資產(chǎn)價格連續(xù)20年下降周期的開端。 |
| That doesn’t bode well for US asset prices over the next couple of decades given that the working population as a percentage of the total population, having risen from 1990 through to 2008, is now set to fall until some time in the region of 2030. It bodes really badly for the Chinese stock market where the ratio of working-age people to retirees will shift much faster – starting in 2014, according to Standard Chartered. By 2030, the median age in the US is forecast to be 40. In China it will be 41. Just one more reason to stay out of the Chinese stock market. | 從1990年直到2008年，美國勞動人口占總?cè)丝诒壤恢痹谏蠞q。但目前該比例開始下降，并會一直延續(xù)至本世紀30年代。這對未來20年的美國資產(chǎn)價格來說不是什么好兆頭。中國勞動人口與退休人口比率的轉(zhuǎn)變速度將要快得多，這對中國股市也是不祥之兆——根據(jù)渣打銀行(Standard Chartered)的數(shù)據(jù)，將從2014年開始。預計到2030年，美國人口年齡中值將達到40歲，中國將達到41歲。這只是又一個遠離中國股市的理由。 |
| Merryn Somerset Webb is editor-in-chief of Money Week and previously worked as a stockbroker. The views expressed in her column are personal. | 本文作者是《Money Week》主編，曾擔任股票經(jīng)紀人。本文僅代表個人觀點。 |
