China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, adopted last month, provides the road map it will follow. Yet it is not really a plan; rather, it is a coherent interconnected set of policy priorities to support the economy’s structural evolution – and thus to maintain rapid growth – over the period of the plan and beyond.

　　So a great deal is at stake, both internally and externally. Growth in the world’s emerging economies now depends on China, the main export partner for a growing list of major economies including Japan, South Korea, India, and Brazil.

　　There are at least five important interconnected transitions embedded in China’s new Five-Year Plan:

　　• Changing the economy’s growth model or supply side structure, as labor costs rise, global market shares become large enough to limit expansion, and advanced countries’ growth momentum slows for an unknown period of time;

　　• Rebalancing demand, from investment and exports to domestic consumption;

　　• Accommodating a rapidly urbanizing population, and ensuring that incentives are structured to bring about as orderly a process of social change as possible;

　　• Building the institutions necessary for achieving inclusiveness and equal opportunity;

　　• Assuming international responsibility for stability, growth, and sustainability, including tackling climate change.

　　The challenge for China is implementation, which means reform and systemic change. International experience suggests that the balance between planning and markets shifts toward markets as countries becomes richer. The structural evolution that underpins growth will increasingly be driven by market opportunities and entrepreneurial initiative. A huge number of new businesses need to be created.

　　To support this shift, much is required. Labor-intensive industries in the tradable sector must be allowed to decline. Many companies may survive, but only by moving to different parts of the global economy or up the value-added chain domestically: up or out. A rising nominal and real exchange rate can propel structural change; a weak-currency policy is a trap.

　　The financial sector must be developed in order to create more savings options and supply credit and equity capital efficiently to new and growing businesses, which China needs in order to attract the rural population to cities (even as export sectors move up the skill and value-added hierarchy). Many of these jobs will be in the domestic, urban, non-tradable service sector.

　　But urbanization faces another obstacle: the hukou system of residency permits, which restricts mobility and bars migrants (an estimated 200 million people) from becoming full-status urban citizens. Chinese officials’ reluctance to eliminate hukou quickly reflects their observation of the social consequences of rapid or unbalanced urbanization elsewhere, though problems caused by internal migration in other countries typically reflect the absence of opportunity in rural areas, not the attraction of opportunities in urban areas.

　　As the scope of the private sector expands, legal structures and policies that support competition, entry and exit, market openness, intellectual property, and social safety nets will also be needed. The move to higher-value-added links of domestic and global supply chains will require more effective education and expanded investment in the economy’s intellectual and technological underpinnings. The balance between technology imports and domestic innovation will continue to shift steadily toward the latter.

　　The Chinese public sector has a huge balance sheet, including land, a vast array of infrastructure, massive foreign-exchange reserves, and major equity positions in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which account for more than one-half of net fixed assets and one-third of profits in the corporate sector. In all countries, these assets should be held in trust for citizens and deployed in pursuit of economic and social development. China has an exemplary record in this area. Unlike most countries, China has not struggled to get public-sector investment up to levels that support sustained high growth.

　　But there are now issues. Investments are justified and support economic and social development when they have high private and social returns. Elements of the investment portfolio in the public sector and the SOEs are beginning to fail this test.

　　To be fair, given the SOEs’ legacy costs (stemming from their responsibilities for social services and insurance), together with their financial distress in the 1990’s, it made sense for a while to let them keep their retained earnings and not place additional claims on them through the government budget.

　　No longer. If SOEs’ reinvested income is not subject to a high return criterion, growth will eventually slow. The portion that falls short needs to be redirected to higher-return investments in either the public or private sector, to household income, or to essential public services and social insurance.

　　The SOEs compete in product and labor markets with the private sector, but less so in capital markets. While wages and incomes are rising now and appear to have broken the iron grip of the surplus labor pool, the growth pattern requires this structural demand-side shift toward more disposable income, greater government consumption, and high-return investment. We suspect but do not know that consumption will increase. Properly recycled savings, including corporate profits, could go back mainly into high-return public- or private-sector investments. Both contribute to aggregate domestic demand, and the structural shifts on the supply side will be driven by the “right” mix of aggregate demand, with the low-return component on the investment side removed.

　　Thus, the Five-Year Plan’s goal is to recompose (not expand) aggregate demand in order to sustain growth and avoid the diminishing-returns trap that is the principal risk of China’s current investment pattern. Changing that pattern will require a restructured financial system that allocates savings efficiently, based on fiscal and capital-market discipline and corporate-governance reform. Designing that system will be an important part of achieving the high-return investment and expanded consumption that Chinese leaders want – and that China’s economy needs.

　　中國剛通過的“十二五”規(guī)劃，為其發(fā)展軌道制定了路線圖。不管從其內(nèi)部還是外部考慮，一場巨變都即將開始。在新的“十二五”規(guī)劃中，至少體現(xiàn)出五個重要轉變：

　　第一，隨著勞動力成本的上漲，全球市場的份額已達到足以限制進一步擴張的程度，以及在一段長短未知的時期內(nèi)發(fā)達國家的經(jīng)濟增長動力放緩。因此，中國的經(jīng)濟增長模式及供應端的結構會出現(xiàn)轉變。

　　第二，從投資、出口到消費，重新實現(xiàn)需求的平衡。

　　第三，接納迅速城市化的人口，確保一系列激勵機制已經(jīng)建立，能夠確保類似于老齡化這樣的社會變化過程的平穩(wěn)度過成為可能。

　　第四，為了提供非排他且公平的機遇，建立一系列必要的機構。

　　第五，在維護穩(wěn)定、增長以及可持續(xù)發(fā)展方面承擔國際性責任，包括應對全球氣候變化。

　　對于中國而言，其挑戰(zhàn)在于如何將其貫徹實施。為了支撐這一改變，必須允許貿(mào)易部門中一系列勞動密集型產(chǎn)業(yè)的衰落。

　　這些行業(yè)里的很多公司可能仍會生存下來，但可行的方式只能是通過轉移至全球經(jīng)濟的不同區(qū)域，或者是升級至國內(nèi)的高附加值生產(chǎn)鏈條。也就是說，要么升級，要么出局。名義匯率和實際匯率的不斷升值能適當助力結構轉變，而疲軟的貨幣政策則是一個陷阱。

　　為創(chuàng)造更多的儲蓄選擇，且針對新型及發(fā)展中的一系列行業(yè)有效地提供信用及實體資本，金融部門應該變得成熟起來。這種轉變是中國所需要的，以便吸引農(nóng)村人口向城市轉移，尤其是在出口行業(yè)向技能和高附加值的行業(yè)轉移的大背景下。

　　但中國的城市化還面臨著一個難題——城市戶口體系。這一體系限制人口流動，給農(nóng)民移民成為正式城市居民設定了一系列的限制。

　　中國官員們在迅速取消戶口制度方面所表現(xiàn)出的不情愿，其所反映出來的，是他們對于其他國家的城市化過程中所表現(xiàn)出來的一系列社會后果的認識。在其他國家，內(nèi)部移民所導致的一系列問題反射出的是農(nóng)村地區(qū)缺乏機會，而不是城市地區(qū)里的一系列機會的吸引力。

　　隨著私營部門規(guī)模的擴大，法律及政策體系支持競爭、市場準入、市場退出、市場公開及社會保障體系等方面的法律體系需要健全。

　　要實現(xiàn)向國內(nèi)及全球經(jīng)濟供應鏈條中高附加值環(huán)節(jié)的轉變，將需要的是更加有效的教育，以及在經(jīng)濟的產(chǎn)權和技術領域里的加大投資。

　　中國的公共部門擁有龐大的資產(chǎn)負債表，健全的基礎設施，大量的外匯儲備及對于國有企業(yè)的絕對掌控地位。在所有國家，這些資產(chǎn)應為了服務人民而掌握在信托基金手中，其行為應服務于經(jīng)濟和社會發(fā)展的目標。

　　而在這一領域，中國是一個例外。與絕大多數(shù)國家不同，中國并沒有努力讓公共部門的投資水平達到可以支持持續(xù)高增長的水平。

　　只有當一系列的投資能取得一系列高額的私人和社會回報時，這些投資才是合理的，才能支持經(jīng)濟和社會的發(fā)展。公平地說，考慮到國有企業(yè)的遺留成本，加上其在1990年的糟糕表現(xiàn)，讓它們能留存收益且不通過政府預算使其承擔更多的責任，在一段時期內(nèi)保持這種局面是合情合理的。

　　然而，情況已不再是這樣。如果國有企業(yè)的再投資收益不受高回報率的制約，最終增長的速度將會放緩。沒能滿足一系列要求的這部分資源，將會被重新投入到能獲得更高回報率的投資領域里。

　　為維持經(jīng)濟增長且避免出現(xiàn)風險，“十二五”規(guī)劃的目標是將龐大的總需求重組。而改變舊有的格局，則需要重建金融體系。

　　新體系將以財政和資本市場準則的建立以及公司治理為基礎。新體系可以有效配置儲蓄資金。設計這種新體系將成為實現(xiàn)高回報率投資和擴大消費目標的重要手段，而這也正是中國經(jīng)濟所需要的。