中国去产能到底该由谁来买单

“Policies come from above, counter-reactions from below” goes a proverb cited to explain the Chinese government’s opaque inner workings.

有人用一句俗语来解释中国政府不透明的内部运作：“上有政策，下有对策”。

That phenomenon has been on open display at the annual session of the National People’s Congress, where a central government plan to tackle industrial overcapacity has met a chorus of complaints over who is to foot the bill.

此次中国全国人大年度会议就暴露出这种现象。中央政府计划要解决工业产能过剩，却因谁来买单的问题而遭到一致抱怨。

For the past two weeks, Beijing has acknowledged that solving the problem will involve job losses — almost 6m, by some estimates. Beijing has proposed that central government should establish a Rmb100bn ($15bn) fund to retrain workers but specified that local governments and the companies must foot part of the bill. In return, banks would be expected to provide new loans.

过去两周，北京方面已承认解决这个问题将引发失业。据部分人估计，失业人数将达600万。北京方面提出中央政府应成立1000亿元人民币（合150亿美元）专项奖补资金，用于职工的再培训，但规定地方政府及企业必须承担部分费用。作为回报，银行预计会提供新的贷款。

“Enterprises should be the major actors, local governments should play a co-ordinating role and central government should provide due support, while the responsibility for making sure that overcapacity reductions happen in a locality will be on the relevant provincial-level government,” the finance ministry said in its annual report.

中国财政部在年度报告中表示：“坚持‘市场倒逼、企业主体、地方组织、中央支持’……省级政府对本地区化解过剩产能负总责。”

The problem with this cost-sharing solution is that local governments in coal, oil or steel-dependent regions are seeing their revenues hit as their local champions go broke. While apparently supportive of Premier Li Keqiang’s plan, regional representatives have been using the NPC to suggest Beijing should be shouldering more of the burden.

这种成本分摊方案的问题在于，在那些依赖煤炭、石油或钢铁行业的地区，随着本地龙头企业相继破产，地方政府的财政收入也将受到冲击。地方代表们虽貌似支持中国总理李克强的计划，但一直在利用全国人大会议暗示中央政府应担起更多责任。

Lu Hao, governor of resource-dependent Heilongjiang province on the border with Siberia, is one of them. In the past two years the province has weathered protests by unpaid teachers and angry pensioners of China National Petroleum Corp, the national oil company. In October, state-owned Longmay Coal announced it would have to lay off 100,000 of its 248,000 workers.

黑龙江省省长陆昊就是其中一员。毗邻西伯利亚的黑龙江省是个资源依赖型省份。过去两年，该省频发抗议活动，抗议者有被欠薪的教师，还有国企中国石油天然气集团公司(CNPC)愤怒的退休员工。去年10月，拥有24.8万名员工的国企龙煤(Longmay)宣布将被迫裁员10万人。

Longmay’s wage bill was equivalent to a third of Heilongjiang’s revenues, Mr Lu pointed out in a provincial NPC session. The drop in oil prices meant Rmb10bn less in taxes, while central-government mandated minimum grain prices cost the province Rmb12bn out of its Rmb116.5bn budget, he said.

陆昊在全国人大黑龙江省代表团会议期间指出，龙煤一年的工资总额相当于全省政府性基金预算收入的三分之一。他表示，油价下降导致本级财政减收100亿元人民币，同时中央政府规定的最低粮食价格，导致该省1165亿元人民币的预算收入减收120亿元人民币。

Other coal-dependent provinces were more blunt. The Shaanxi provincial work report paid lip service to Mr Li’s idea of addressing “zombie companies” that are in effect bankrupt. Its solution — “central government subsidies”.

其他依赖煤炭的省份更加直言不讳。陕西省工作报告口头上支持李克强对于清理实际已经破产的“僵尸企业”的想法，而其解决方案却是“争取中央专项奖补资金”。

Fiscal reforms are supposed to increase local government’s share of tax revenue but the plans to shut debt-laden production lines and officially recognise workers who have not been paid in months as unemployed are increasing the strain on local coffers.

财政改革本应增加地方政府税收份额，但关闭负债累累的生产线、正式承认被欠薪数月的工人为失业的计划，将加大地方财政的压力。

Zhang Jie, of the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University in Beijing, said local governments with a dwindling revenue base might not have the money for over-capacity reduction plans. “To tackle the great obstacles facing the overcapacity reduction efforts in these regions from both local interests and existing economic development challenges, it’s necessary for the central government to directly set up funds,” he said.

中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院的张杰表示，部分地方政府收入基础不断缩小，可能没有资金实施去产能计划。他表示：“针对这些特定地区的去产能工作中可能面临的巨大地方利益阻力以及现实存在的经济发展挑战，有必要由中央政府直接出台……专项基金。”

Meanwhile, regions with a smaller state-owned enterprise lobby are balking at bailing out state companies at all.

同时，国企游说力量较弱的地区则不愿为国有企业纾困。

“There’s no need to pay a lot of money to compensate companies for shutting down their equipment,” argued Xie Chaoying, director of the Economic and Information Commission of the southern province of Hunan. “The government’s duty is to effectively serve the workers laid off from the overcapacity reduction so that those who can still get another job get the training needed, those who are unemployable get unemployment insurance, and those whose situations are worse get social benefits.”

湖南省经济和信息化委员会主任谢超英表示：“没有必要再拿大量的资金把人家的设备拆掉，又补钱给他……政府的责任是对于在去产能过程中出现的待岗工人，怎么有效地服务，能够转行的进行培训，失业的有失业保险，再不行还有最低保障。”