标准翻译

案例1：

 

中国能否避免增长危机？

作者J. Stewart Black是欧洲工商管理学院（INSEAD）教授，Allen J. Morrison是美国亚利桑那州立大学雷鸟国际管理学院教授。

中国正在崛起，这毋庸置疑。在2018年《财富》世界500强中，中国有111家企业入围，仅略逊于美国的126家。1995年，仅有3家中资企业榜上有名。而到了2018年，这3家企业已跻身全球前十。一些评论家预测，中国将在不久的将来取代美国，成为拥有世界500强企业最多的国家。

以上预测完全有可能成为现实，担这种欢欣鼓舞的情绪很可能延续不了太长时间。日本的前车之鉴是我们提出质疑的原因：1995年，日本入围世界500强的企业数量高居世界第二，与美国仅相差4家。日本的这一成就得益于长达数十年的高速增长——从1973年到1995年，日本经济增长了1171%，年均增速达到12%。中国与日本的情况几乎一样：中国的经济规模从1995年的7350亿美元增加到了2018年的12.2万亿美元，年均增速达到16.6%。中国的GDP增长与入围全球500强企业数量增长之间的相关性高达99%。

我们认为，全球大企业中中资企业比重上升，依赖的是中国国内经济的发展，这一点与日本类似。2018年入围全球500强的前3家中资企业（国家电网、中石化和中石油）的收入中，有85%源于国内业务。在上榜的111家中资企业中，有87家是国企，它们的大部分收入都来自国内。不仅如此，对许多入围500强的中资私企来说，其收入也主要来源于国内。例如，科技巨头阿里巴巴和腾讯的收入中，分别有74%和80%来自国内。只有极少数企业是例外，如华为和联想的海外销售收入分别达到总收入的50%和75%。显然，一旦中国经济增速显著放缓，绝大多数入围全球500强的中资企业很可能遭受冲击。

同时我们认为，中国增速下降是不可避免的。人口数据显示，中国的适龄劳动力正在萎缩。在劳动生产率没有大幅提升的前提下，劳动力萎缩必然导致经济增速放缓。日本也经历过类似的人口变化，且日本生产率的增长至今仍不足以维持经济增长。中国很难克服日本当年的困境，因为中国过去20年赖以维持高增长的几个主要因素已经大幅减弱，包括初始的生产率水平较低，农村劳动力供给富裕，易于获得外国技术等。

中国扭转经济放缓的另一个选择是拓宽国际市场并增加出口，但这也面临重重困难。中国“嗜债如命”，这可能挤占用于开拓国际市场所需的资本，降低出口竞争力。同时，中国的管理模式也不利于鼓励企业创新。据此我们认为，中资企业巨头在经历前期的高增长后，前景不容乐观。下面，让我们首先看看中国的人口形势。

一、人口灾难

中国和日本的人口结构惊人相似。2015年至2035年，中国的适龄劳动力（15岁至64岁）预计将下降9%，到2050年将下降20%。这意味着中国将损失2亿劳动力，这一规模超过了德国、法国、英国、意大利、比利时、荷兰和瑞士的适龄劳动力总和。过去20年中，日本的人口结构也经历了类似变化。1997年至2017年，日本的劳动力下降了13.4%。

中国“臭名昭著”的独生子女政策始于1979年。许多人认为，该政策是导致中国生育率从2.9（指每户子女数量，下同）至1995年1.6的罪魁祸首。不过，人口统计数据显示，该政策只是加速了中国本已在下降的生育率。早在该政策出台的10年前，中国的出生率就已经开始下降，这体现了一个普遍规律，即生活水平上升后生育率会下降。日本没有出台独生子女政策，出生率也从1965年的2.1下降至1989年的1.6。

一国的劳动者同时也是最主要的消费者。如果适龄劳动力下降，企业销售收入也将下降。日本的全球性大企业已经经历了这一问题。随着劳动力减少，日本国内消费下降，日资企业逐渐跌落500强榜单。日本劳动力的下降，与跌出500强的日资企业数量之间的相关性高达94%。中国的情况也是一样。

一国要对抗劳动力萎缩，主要有两种办法：一是鼓励移民、提高劳动人口数量，二是提高余下劳动力的生产率。通过引入移民来抵御生育率下降，这一做法在中国不大可能实现，这是因为中国并不欢迎劳动移民，这与日本类似。世界银行数据显示，2015年，中国常住人口中只有不到千分之一是外国人。日本外国人比重的历史峰值略高于中国当前水平，但在2015年也只有1.7%。相较而言，美国、德国的注册外国人比重都超过了15%。

一国也可通过大幅提高劳动生产率来抵消适龄劳动力萎缩的负面影响。企业的生产率提高了，就可以向更少的劳动者支付更高的工资，同时依然保持盈利。劳动者收入增加，会提高单个劳动者的消费水平。但上述效应并未在日本出现。在适龄劳动力在1997年达到顶峰前的20年中，日本劳动生产率年均增速达到13%。但此后20年中，劳动力在萎缩，劳动力年均增速也下降至1%以下。其中，生产率的提升大部分来自制造业，而非占日本经济总量70%的服务业。

领导危机

与中国的当前情况类似，1995年入围《财富》500强榜单的日本公司，有85%的销售收入来自国内。当日本的适龄劳动力开始萎缩、国内生产率停滞不前时，企业高管们无法通过鼓励“内产外销”和“外产外销”来弥补销售收入的损失。原因何在？

当年，我们曾与日本企业合作，从中得到的第一手信息显示，除了少数几家已具备国际视野的企业（如索尼、东芝和丰田）外，其他大多数日资企业的管理层都认为日本经济总会复苏，直至最终他们认识到事实并非如此。入围1995年财富榜500强的日资企业巨头，直到2002年前后才彻底调整了战略，专注于扩展国际业务。

不幸的是，在日本企业中，同时懂国内和国际市场的企业家很少，而且几乎没有国际经验丰富的外籍高管。原因是完全可以理解的：日资企业为什么要为仅占总收入15%的外国市场培养领导人才呢？对于那些前途大好的日本企业家而言，为什么要冒险接受外派任务，到国外发展而远离主要业务呢？

此外，日本企业过去对外国人才缺乏吸引力，这是因为他们在晋升过程中，考察的主要是在国内市场的业绩。我们的研究发现，从2005年到2010年，日资企业的所有高管和董事会职位，都是由日本人担任的，且几乎全是男性。正因如此，国际经验丰富而精干的外籍人才对加盟日企心存犹豫。目前来看，日资企业高管缺乏多样性的状况并没有改变。我们在2018年入围全球500强的52家日资企业中，随机挑选了20家进行研究，发现近97%的高管和超过98%的董事会成员是日本人，且男性比例超过90%。

在调整战略后，日资企业终于看到国际业务开始增长，但这时金融危机爆发了。随之而来的经济衰退严重打击了日本的出口，其在2009年下降了25.4%，且在之后三年都没有恢复。但“外产外销”模式受经济衰退的影响较小，显示日资企业对海外业务的投入开始产生回报。但即便如此，日企在这方面明显落后于它们的全球竞争对手，日本的海外资产投资与GDP的比值较其他国家低的多。实际上，真实情况甚至比上述比值所显示的还要差，这是因为该比值的增长并非源于分子（海外投资）的增加，而仅仅是分母（GDP）的下降。在不到一代人的时间里，日本在全球500强的名单中就失去了巅峰时期65%的企业。鉴于日企高层将长期缺乏全球性领导人才，我们预计上述状况在短期不会显著好转。

中资企业与日资企业存在类似情况，令人担忧。我们在2018年全球500强榜单的中资企业中，随机抽取了20家进行研究，发现97%以上的董事会成员和近97%的高管是中国人。这20家企业有13家是国企（占65%），与500强中全部中资企业的这一比例相似（71%）。样本中，7家私企的人员多样性也一样低，仅友邦保险（一家大型保险公司）是例外。我们在入围全球500强的中资企业中，随机选取了另外10家私企进行研究，发现其管理层的多元化程度略高于国企，但也不尽人意：80%以上的董事会成员和87.3%的高管是中国人。因此，尽管我们预计未来几年中资企业领导层的多样性将改善，但短期内不会达到西方成功跨国公司的类似水平。

虽然中资企业的CEO等高管们既无法改变中国的人口现状、也不能改变中国生产率放缓背后的宏观经济力量，但我们所说的“领导危机”是企业文化方面的挑战，这是他们力所能及的，就像是他们所面临的亟待应对的其他众多挑战一样。中资企业必须学会放弃紧盯国内市场的层级化管理模式，学习世界上最成功跨国企业的创新能力和快速反映能力。

培育全球性的领导人才

许多西方跨国公司都已其快速反应能力、适应能力和创新能力而闻名于世。这些竞争优势并不是偶然出现的，它们源于这些企业的管理文化和管理能力，而这都是企业大力采纳、引入和培育的产物。例如，瑞士巨头雀巢公司在全球极具竞争力，这是因为其特意打造多元化的领导团队，培育出了一种外向型的管理文化。理论上，中资企业也可以这样做，但其必须在5个方面改变其管理风格。具体来看，中资企业的管理层必须做到：

一是学会尊重。在研究中，我们听到了两条关于中资企业和高管的不满意见。其一是近期某国一名政府官员透露的，一些大型中资企业近年来在这个国家进行了大量投资。他表示，“或许是因为中国太大且实现了长期高增长，中国高管多少显得有些傲慢。他们认为自己可以操纵供应商，忽视当地群体利益，并像在国内那样肆意破坏环境”。这与30年前我们听到的关于美国和欧洲企业高管的不满类似。美欧企业都从过去的挫折中认识到，有些做法在国内行得通，在国外不一定奏效。中资企业的高管们如果想成功实现“外产外销”战略，就必须吸取这个教训。

其二是中资企业在开展国际业务时，仅仅考虑了中国自己的利益。一位当地企业高管表示，“每家企业多少都会顾忌自身利益，但这的中资企业似乎只关心如何从本地攫取利益，帮助中国获利”。东道国的利益相关方越来越多地要求外资企业为东道国和社区创造价值，而不仅仅是从中获取利益。这些不满意见体现了一种以中国为中心的思维模式，其已不能适应当今的全球营商环境。

二是引进人才。中资企业要加快引进全球各地的领导人才，这不仅是让他们以电子邮件或电话会议形式参与运营，更是要他们亲身实地的参与到企业的运作中。雀巢公司在瑞士沃韦的总部和办事处拥有约2600名员工，其中有800人是外国人。

在企业的核心运营部门引入外国人才，这对企业培养领导人才、提高多样性、拓宽公司视角、建立网络和增进互信至关重要。我们与中资企业合作的30多年中，还没有看到哪家企业真正认真地引入过外国管理人才。在这方面，日资企业也并不成功。中资企业的管理层不愿充分引进外国领导人才，这不仅会抑制企业创新，更使企业无法对东道国本地动向做出有效反应，同时也会阻碍其他外国优秀领导人才加盟。

三是调整外派模式。跨国企业一般会将总部人员外派至海外分部。虽然这么做能带来沟通上的便利，但研究显示这也存在很大局限性。美欧跨国企业从过去经验中汲取教训，在派驻海外分部的人员中大大增加了第三国员工的数量。例如，雀巢公司在全球各地驻有2000余名员工，但其中超过85%都不是瑞士人。潜在的领导人才通常会在职业生涯早期的驻外经历中得到历练，培养全球视野和工作能力。

不幸的是，比起瑞士企业，中资企业与日资企业更为相似。过去几十年的研究显示，日资企业外派的人员中，本国人的比例比其他大多数发达国家企业高出近一倍。中资企业的情况与之类似。这种模式会使企业难以吸引和留住优秀外国人才。如果要避免该模式带来的长期负面影响，就不能走日本的老路。

四是加大力度培育领导人才。要填补领导人才的空缺，不仅需要增加外派锻炼机会，还需要提供正式的培训项目。这种培训项目往往包括多个学习模块，他们应将参培人员多次聚集在一起，通过各种活动使他们保持联系。瑞银、雀巢和瑞士ABB集团都与知名商学院一起开设了定制式的课程，并将参与该课程作为晋升的必要条件。在培训中，参培人员会接触到企业之外的人才和最佳做法，这是十分有意义的。

中资企业更多是将培养领导人才视为一种培训。因此，尽管他们在技术和基本经营技能上投入了大量资源，但对培育全球性的领导人才往往做的不够。中资企业往往很少关注培训项目的内容和参培人员的参与度，而是拘泥于过时的教授模式，众多参培人员在大教室里听讲座，很多人一直在玩手机。

客观地说，一些中资企业已经着手培养全球性的管理人才。2018年，阿里巴巴在中国成立了领导力学院，开设了为期16个月的全英语课程，参培人员需要在三个业务部门轮岗。对此，其他中资企业也应该密切关注。

五是在海外创新。中国政府的“中国制造2025”计划面临着诸多挑战，特别是如果中国坚持只在本国创新，将面临更多挑战。许多全球领先的跨国企业，包括武田制药等日资企业，已在国外建立了战略创新中心。许多企业明智地将这些中心设在有利于培育创新的地区，包括特拉维夫、柏林、奥斯汀、波士顿和温哥华等地。当然，要取得成功，需要的不仅是设施投资和招聘顶尖人才，更重要的是培育正确的企业文化，这对这些投入的成功至关重要。这意味中国须改变以自我为中心的理念。好消息是，先前提到的4项建议，都有助于实现第5点。

结论

大多数中资企业有望利用它们的现有规模和生态系统维持国内优势，但它们在拓展国际业务方面准备的还远远不够，恐难维持全球排名。如果不在理念和方法上作出重大调整，中资企业将无法提高生产率，难以抵消中国劳动力骤降产生的负面影响。我们预测，如果中资企业不调整目前的管理层构成，将会重蹈日资业的覆辙，逐渐跌出世界五百强榜单。

 

（后附原文）

https://hbr.org/2019/09/can-china-avoid-a-growth-crisis

 

Can China Avoid a Growth Crisis?

by J. Stewart Black and Allen J. Morrison

 

Here’s no question that China is on the rise. In 2018, Fortune’s Global 500 ranking included 111 firms headquartered in China—just a handful fewer than the United States’ 126. In 1995, only three Chinese firms made the list; in 2018, three were in the top 10. No wonder some observers predict that China will soon overtake the U.S. as the home to the highest number of Fortune 500 firms.

It’s entirely possible that this could happen, but the triumph would likely be fleeting. Our skepticism is rooted in Japan’s example: In 1995, Japan was second only to the United States on the Fortune 500 list, with just four fewer companies. It had achieved that position thanks to several decades of soaring growth in the domestic economy—an astounding 1,171% from 1973 to 1995, a growth factor of 12. The China story is almost identical: Since 1995, the domestic economy has grown by a factor of 16.6, from just $735 billion to $12.2 trillion today, and the correlation between the rise of Chinese GDP and the ascent of Chinese firms onto the Global 500 list is 99%.

In our view, China’s share of global business is predicated, as was Japan’s, on a dynamic domestic economy. The top three Chinese companies on the Fortune list in 2018—State Grid Corporation of China, China Petrochemical Corporation, and China National Petroleum Corporation—generated more than 85% of their revenue domestically. They, along with 84 others out of China’s 111, are state-owned enterprises, or SOEs; you would expect such companies to be reliant on domestic revenue for growth. But many of the privately owned enterprises (POEs) on the list also generate the bulk of their revenue from domestic customers. The numbers for tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, for example, are 74% and 80%, respectively. The implication is clear: With a few exceptions—notably Huawei and Lenovo, which generate 50% and 75%, respectively, from sales in foreign markets—the great majority of the Chinese companies on the Global 500 would be vulnerable to a major slowdown in the domestic economy.

And a slowdown is inevitable, we believe. Demographic data shows that China’s working-age population is shrinking. In the absence of drastic improvements in labor productivity, a smaller workforce means a lower GDP growth rate. Japan has experienced a similar decline in working-age population, and it has been unable to achieve the productivity gains necessary to maintain growth. It is unlikely that China’s firms will succeed where Japan’s have failed, primarily because the factors that have driven China’s spectacular growth over the past 20 years—a low baseline of productivity to begin with, an excess supply of rural workers, and easy access to foreign technology—have significantly weakened.

China’s other option for averting an economic slowdown—boosting international sales and exports—also faces headwinds: China’s penchant for debt could hamstring attempts to innovate by reducing the capital available for investment in international sales and dampening the country’s export competitiveness. And Chinese management style is antithetical to fostering innovation. For these reasons, we believe that after a meteoric rise, China’s giants could face a rocky future. Let’s begin with a review of the demographics.

The Demographic Disaster

The demographic parallels between China and Japan are striking. China’s working population (people aged 15 to 64) is estimated to fall by 9% from 2015 to 2035, and by 20% in 2050. That’s a loss of 200 million people—more than the total working-age populations of Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland combined. Japan has experienced a similar decline over the past two decades: Its working population fell 13.4% from 1997 to 2017.

The Rise and Fall of Working-Age Populations

The steep decline in China’s working-age population is likely to be accompanied by a sizeable drop in GDP in the absence of dramatic gains in labor productivity. Japan experienced a similar decline in its working-age population and was unable to boost productivity enough to maintain GDP growth.R1905F_BLACK_RISE

Visual Library

China’s infamous one-child policy, implemented in 1979, is often seen as the reason the birth rate fell from 2.9 children per family to 1.6 in 1995. But demographic data suggests that the policy only accelerated a decline that China was already experiencing. The country’s birth rate began falling a decade earlier, reflecting a nearly universal pattern of economic development in which birth rates fall as standards of living rise. In Japan, the birth rate fell from 2.1 in 1965 to 1.6 in 1989 without the help of a one-child policy.

A country’s workers are its most powerful consumers; when the working-age population shrinks, so do revenues. That has already happened to Japan’s global giants. As the country’s working-age population fell, domestic consumption faltered, and Japanese firms started sliding off the Global 500 list. The correlation between the decline in the working-age population and Japanese firms’ leaving the Global 500 was 94%. China faces the same situation.

Two key ways a country can compensate for a shrinking workforce are by boosting the number of workers through immigration and by boosting the productivity of the remaining workers. Immigration as a countervailing force to a falling birth rate seems unlikely for China, which, like Japan, is not known for welcoming foreign workers. According to World Bank data, in 2015 less than one-tenth of one percent of the people living in China were foreigners. During Japan’s heyday, that country’s rate was somewhat higher, but still only 1.7% of people living in Japan in 2015 were registered foreigners. By contrast, the number of registered foreigners in both the United States and Germany that year was about 15% of the total population.

Countries can also offset a shrinking working age population through dramatic improvements in labor productivity. With increased productivity, companies can pay fewer workers more money and still remain profitable, and the higher pay translates into higher domestic consumption per worker. In Japan’s case, the improvements didn’t happen. The country averaged 13% per year in productivity gains for the 20 years leading up to its peak working-age population in 1997. But in the two decades that followed, during which the workforce shrank, productivity growth averaged less than 1% per year. And the vast majority of those gains came from the manufacturing sector, not the service sector, which now represents 70% of Japan’s economy.

China’s penchant for debt will likely hamstring attempts to innovate.

China seems to be following a similar path. Although its productivity growth averaged 15.5% from 1995 to 2013, when its working-age population reached its peak, productivity growth slowed to an average of just 5.7% from 2014 to 2018. In other words, China’s productivity growth rate is decelerating just when it needs to speed up. This gloomy scenario is especially problematic for China’s SOEs. Although they have larger revenues than POEs, on average, they also have significantly higher numbers of employees (a median of 143,927 versus 77,073) and lower profits (a median of $746 million versus $1.7 billion). That means they are heading into the slowdown with a productivity growth rate significantly lower, on average, than that of the POEs, as measured by revenue per employee ($326,338 versus $496,172) and profits per employee ($5,355 versus $22,507).

Can China correct or compensate for its falling productivity? That will depend on the long-term outlook for the main drivers of its labor productivity and on the ability of its firms to replace falling domestic revenues with exports (producing in China and selling abroad) and international sales (producing abroad and selling abroad).

The Outlook for China’s Productivity

To assess the outlook for Chinese productivity, we have to determine whether the factors contributing to its impressive growth to date are likely to improve, stay the same, or decline. Economists and business strategists point to three drivers of China’s growth: the fact that the country started with a very low productivity level, an excess of rural workers available to migrate to more-productive city jobs, and firms’ ability to trade market access for productivity-enhancing foreign technology.

A low productivity baseline.

In 1994 China’s GDP was just $564 billion, and its GDP per capita was only $473. In 2014, GDP topped $10 trillion. The economic reality is that the larger GDP gets, the harder it becomes to maintain the same rate of growth. A falling number of workers compounds the challenge. Suppose a country is growing at a rate of 6%. If its workforce falls by 3%, productivity growth from that smaller workforce has to increase to 9.3% just to sustain the baseline. The difficulty of achieving this over long periods is obvious.

An excess supply of labor.

Most experts acknowledge that the migration of people from rural areas devoid of modern machinery and technology to industrialized urban areas plays a big role in driving productivity in a developing economy. It certainly did in Japan’s recovery after World War II and in China over the past 25 years. But internal migration happens only if a country has an excess supply of rural labor. That no longer appears to be the case in China. Over the past 10 years, migration from rural to urban areas has dropped precipitously, with just 0.3% of the population leaving the countryside in 2016, according to the Chinese government. In the 10 years prior to that, more than 280 million workers migrated from the countryside to the city. This slowdown is starting to be reflected in higher pay: Wages for migrant workers in the eastern urban regions of the country rose by 7.4% in 2016.

Will China Follow Japan’s Path?

Powered by meteoric growth in the domestic economy, China is poised to overtake the United States as the home of the most Fortune Global 500 companies. But it faces the same challenges that reversed Japan’s trajectory in the late 1990s.

These indicators suggest that China is reaching what’s called the Lewis turning point (LTP)—that is, when migration from country to town effectively stops. Many economists believe that China reached its LTP prior to 2018. Many of the residential areas built in major cities over the past 10 years to accommodate expected internal migration remain vacant. Some reports put the number of unoccupied apartments, almost all located in urban areas, at more than 64 million. Based on this evidence, China’s recent announcement that it plans to move another 250 million people from rural to urban areas by 2025 may be wishful thinking.

Easy technology expropriation.

Foreign firms increasingly recognize that giving away proprietary technology in return for market access makes little sense in China’s mature, increasingly competitive business landscape. UNCTAD data reveals that FDI flows into China—a reasonable proxy for investment in local technological capabilities—grew by an average of only 2% per year from 2012 to 2017, down from the 10% annual average from 2002 to 2012. Companies such as GoPro, Panasonic, Sony, Hasbro, Revlon, and L’Oréal have recently closed shop or significantly reduced investments in the country. And many more multinationals are reconsidering expansion plans because of an unwillingness to trade technology for market access along with concerns about tariffs, political pressure, and rising wages.

Chinese companies’ activities abroad are also coming under scrutiny. Foreign governments and companies increasingly see Chinese tech giants as security threats, as reflected in the recent high-profile arrests of executives from Huawei and the restriction of business with that company imposed by governments in the United States, Canada, and the UK. Western companies and agencies have accelerated their efforts to protect databases and proprietary technologies from Chinese hackers, which we can assume will further slow the transfer of foreign technology into China.

The Chinese government recognizes that the days of easy productivity gains via technology expropriation are over. In 2015 it released its Made in China 2025 plan, which calls for transforming 10 strategic industries into world leaders through homegrown technology innovation. But successfully shifting from strategies based on imitation and expropriation to ones focused on creation and innovation requires changes in organizational culture so large that the majority of companies from all countries fail in such attempts. To think that Chinese companies will fare better defies the odds, despite all the government support they get. What’s more, many Chinese companies favor top-down, autocratic approaches to management, which is inconsistent with a culture of innovation. And Chinese companies face another uniquely Chinese hurdle: All companies with more than 50 employees must have a Communist Party representative on-site. This muddies decision making, skews rewards, and bureaucratizes the innovation process.

For these reasons, we believe that Chinese corporations will have a hard time achieving the productivity gains that will be required in the future. That leaves only one way for them to keep their places on the Global 500: by boosting exports and international sales. But two serious obstacles stand in the way: high levels of debt and a conservative, inward-focused management culture.

China’s Debt Crisis

China’s government debt is about $34 trillion—266% of GDP—and is growing fast. Corporate debt is also on the rise. According to July 2018 data provided by the Ministry of Finance, total debt among China’s state-owned firms amounted to more than $16 trillion, up 8.8% from the previous year. That’s about 15% more than the debt of all U.S. nonfinancial corporations combined. China’s indebtedness has quadrupled in the past seven years, and it grew 14% in 2017 alone.

China’s Declining Birth Rate

Many observers point to China’s infamous one-child policy as the catalyst for its declining birth rate. However, World Bank data shows that the birth rate had already begun to slow more than a decade earlier. The drop is most likely associated with the near-universal pattern whereby birth rates fall as standards of living rise.

So far China has been able to sustain this level of borrowing, largely thanks to robust internal rates of savings; that allows it to avoid the high interest rates that outside lenders might charge. It continues to run a large current-account surplus—that is, it exports a greater value of goods and services than it imports—which has enabled it to be a net lender to other nations. It still has the potential to simply grow its way out of the problem, even as the economy slows down—provided debt does not continue to mount at current rates. That, however, is a big proviso. China has long had a penchant for borrowing in order to stimulate the economy. If, as we predict, a shrinking workforce and lower productivity growth cause the economy to slow further, the government will be likely to double-down on borrowing, particularly through SOEs. That will only reduce the capital available for investment in international sales and do little to improve the country’s export competitiveness.

But even if Chinese firms had plenty of capital to invest in international sales capabilities, they would still face a more fundamental challenge: their management culture.

A Crisis of Leadership

Like China’s firms today, Japan’s Fortune 500 companies in 1995 derived 85% of their revenues from domestic sales. When Japan’s working population began to shrink and domestic productivity stalled, executives were unable to compensate for the hit to their revenues through exports and international sales. Why?

From our firsthand experience working with Japanese firms at the time, we found that, with the exception of a handful of firms (such as Sony, Toshiba, and Toyota) that were already international in outlook, most management teams refused to accept that the domestic economy was not going to revive until they simply couldn’t deny the reality any longer. It took until about 2002 before Japan’s 1995 giants had fully refocused their strategies on international growth.

About the art: In his project, “Yiwu Commodity City,” photographer Richard John Seymour explores the largest small-commodity wholesale market in the world. Located in Yiwu, China, thousands of stalls exhibit slight variations on particular items.

Unfortunately in Japanese firms, Japanese leaders who understood both their domestic markets and international ones were in short supply, while internationally experienced non-Japanese top executives were virtually nonexistent. The reason was perfectly understandable: Why would companies put significant focus on developing leaders for markets representing only 15% of revenues? And why would rising Japanese leaders risk their careers by taking expatriate assignments away from the main action?

Moreover, Japanese firms were not attractive to foreign talent, because the path to advancement lay through achievement in the domestic market. Our research found that from 2005 to 2010 essentially all the top executives and board members of Japanese firms were Japanese nationals. Also, nearly 100% were male. Recognizing this, non-Japanese leaders who had international experience and savvy were hesitant to join Japanese firms. The lack of diversity at the top has not changed. We examined a random sample of 20 of the 52 Japanese companies on the 2018 Global 500 list and found that nearly 97% of all executives and more than 98% of all board members were Japanese nationals, and more than 90% were male.

Following their shift in strategic focus, Japanese firms finally started to see a boost from international business—just when the financial crisis erupted. The ensuing recession hit Japanese exports hard: They slumped by 25.4% in 2009 and didn’t recover for three years. International sales were less affected by the recession as the investments in overseas operations began to pay off. But even so, Japanese firms significantly lagged their global rivals on this front, with dramatically lower levels of investment in foreign assets as a percentage of GDP. The underperformance was actually larger than the graphic suggests, because some of the increase in the rate came from a flat denominator (GDP) rather than from increases in the numerator (overseas investments). As a consequence, Japanese firms lost 65% of their peak share of the Global 500 list in less than a generation. Given the persistent lack of global leadership at the top, we do not predict a major recovery in the near future.

Can Exports and International Sales Make the Difference?

Companies can compensate for a declining working-age population, even in the absence of productivity gains, by increasing exports and international sales. China leads the world in exports in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of GDP, it lags other nations—suggesting its largest firms risk losing their Global 500 rankings in a domestic slowdown.

The parallels with Chinese firms are worrying. We also looked at a random sample of 20 Chinese firms on the 2018 Global 500 list and found that just over 97% of board members and just under 97% of executives were Chinese nationals. Thirteen of the 20 firms were SOEs (65%), similar to the share on the list overall (71%). The seven POE firms in our sample demonstrated similarly low levels of diversity, with one, notable exception—AIA, a major insurance company. We then examined an additional 10 randomly chosen POEs from the Global 500 list. Here we found a somewhat higher level of leadership diversity than in SOEs, but it was hardly convincing: Over 80% of the board members and 87.3% of the senior managers were Chinese nationals. So although we do anticipate that leadership diversity will increase somewhat in the years ahead, we don’t expect the composition of top teams in Chinese firms to resemble those of successful Western multinationals any time soon.

There is little that CEOs and executives can do to change China’s demographic realities and the macroeconomic forces behind the productivity slowdown. But the leadership crisis we have described is a cultural challenge that is within their capabilities to manage, as are many of the other innovation challenges they face. Chinese firms must learn to rely less on an inward-looking, hierarchical approach to management and more on the innovativeness and agility that characterize the world’s most successful multinationals.

Many Western multinationals are known for agility, adaptiveness, and innovation. These sources of competitive advantage don’t happen by accident; they are the consequences of a management culture and capabilities that firms deliberately adopt, acquire, and develop. The Swiss giant Nestlé, for example, is competitive globally because it has deliberately diversified its leadership pipeline and created an outward-looking management culture. Chinese firms could theoretically do the same. But their management style would have to change in five important ways. Specifically, China’s corporate leaders must:

In our work, we hear two complaints about Chinese businesses and executives. The first is best captured by a government official in a country in which a number of important Chinese firms have made significant investments over the past few years: “Maybe it’s because China is so big and has been growing so fast for so long, but Chinese executives come in and are a bit arrogant and think they can manipulate suppliers, ignore communities, and discount the environment like they do back home.” We heard similar complaints about American and to a lesser extent European executives 30 years ago. All have learned through bitter experience that what works at home does not necessarily work abroad. This is a lesson that more Chinese executives will need to absorb if their efforts to boost international sales are to succeed.

The second complaint relates to a mindset that we call international business for China. “Every company has a degree of self-interest,” one executive told us, “but Chinese companies [operating] here seem to care only about how to suck out value for their own benefit and to help China overall.” Stakeholders increasingly demand that foreign businesses create value for, and not simply extract value from, the countries and communities in which they operate. These common complaints reflect a China-centric mindset that is out of step with today’s global business environment.

Chinese firms need to accelerate their efforts to bring global leaders together, not just via email or teleconference but in person. Nestlé has about 2,600 employees at its headquarters and offices in Vevey, Switzerland. An estimated 800 of them are foreigners.

This level of inpatriation, or bringing people into the center for international assignments, is viewed as necessary to develop leaders, bring diversity and breadth of perspective to the company, and build networks and trust. In our work with Chinese companies over the past 30-plus years, we have yet to see one that supports any serious inpatriation. Japanese firms have also failed in this regard. Chinese leaders’ reluctance to fully integrate international leaders stymies innovation, creates barriers to local responsiveness, and sends powerful messages of exclusion to talented leaders outside the country.

Leadership diversity correlates with strong international sales and exports, research shows. Our analysis reveals that Chinese firms are headed almost entirely by Chinese nationals, indicating that they will likely struggle, as Japanese firms did, to compensate for a slowdown in domestic growth with exports and sales abroad. Switzerland leads the developed world in both leadership diversity and in exports and foreign assets as a share of GDP.

It is natural for globalizing firms to send expatriates from the mother ship out to foreign satellites. Although there are benefits in terms of ease of communication, research has documented the serious limitations of this approach. Learning from experience, American and European multinationals have significantly added “third-country nationals” to international assignments. Nestlé, for example, has over 2,000 expatriates around the world, but more than 85% of them are not Swiss. Potential leaders typically get foreign postings early in their careers to test and develop their global perspective and potential.

Unfortunately, Chinese firms look much more like Japanese firms than like Swiss firms. Decades of research have shown that Japanese firms proportionately send nearly twice as many “home-country nationals” to foreign outposts as do firms from most other developed countries. Chinese firms are headed down the same path. They will need to break the pattern if they are to avoid the long-term liabilities of this approach, not the least of which is difficulty attracting and retaining the best and brightest foreign leaders.

Filling the global leadership pipeline requires not only expat assignments but also formal training programs. In many cases, these programs include multiple learning modules that bring participants together more than once and have projects and other activities that keep people connected even while they are back home and physically separated. UBS, Nestlé, and ABB all run customized programs in conjunction with major business schools that are required for advancement. The exposure to people and best practices outside the company are particularly valuable.

Chinese firms tend to regard leadership development as a training function—so while they often spend heavily on technical training and basic business skills, their commitment to developing global leaders is frequently lacking. They pay little attention to program content or participant engagement, sticking with a dated education model that emphasizes mass lectures in huge auditoriums filled with participants who never put down their smartphones.

In fairness, a few Chinese companies have begun embracing the development of global executives. In 2018, Alibaba set up a leadership academy comprising a 16-month, all-English program in China. The participants are required to rotate across three business units. Other Chinese firms should pay close attention.

The government’s Made in China 2025 initiative faces many challenges, especially if it insists that innovation can only happen at home. A number of leading global firms, including Japanese firms such as Takeda Pharmaceutical, have established strategic innovation centers in foreign countries. Many wisely choose to locate them in geographic hotbeds of innovation, including Tel Aviv, Berlin, Austin, Boston, and Vancouver. Of course, success requires more than just investing in facilities or even hiring top people. The right culture is also essential for the success of these investments. That means that the China-centric mentality will have to change. The good news is that all the previous recommendations mentioned here will help this fifth one succeed.

CONCLUSION

Although most Chinese firms are well positioned to use their size and ecosystems for domestic advantage, they are ill-prepared for the global expansion they will need to undertake if they are to maintain their newly acquired global rankings. Absent a major pivot in thinking and approach, they will be unable to deliver the productivity gains needed to offset the consequences of the steepening decline in the country’s working-age population. If the current leadership composition continues, we predict that like Japanese firms before them, Chinese companies will begin to slide off the Global 500.

 

 

案例2： 

 

中国债券违约数量飙升

 

11月25日，中央 人民广播电台推出了一套微纪 录节目（略……）。但与中国在官方宣传中的标准做法不同，这套节目的第一集并没有关注中国快速的经济增长或光鲜的创新成果，而是聚焦于对陷入财 务困境的企业开展重组的债权人委员会。中国在债务问题上的态度，已从几年前的矢口否认迅速转变为公开应对，而上述微纪录节目即是这一转变的最新信号。

中国债市的情况证实了这一变化。中国到2014年才出现了债市的首次违约。2018年，违约债券的规模已达到1170亿元人民币（165亿美元），是此前峰值的三倍。2019年，中国违约债券规模估计与2018年大致相当。惠誉数据显示，2019年前三季度，中国约有1%的债券发行人违约，仅略低于全球平均水平。标普则称，中国的债券违约正“成为常态”。

中国人民银行试图告诉市场，这种“新常态”是债市健康运行的表现。人民银行11月25日发布的《金融稳定报告》认为，债券违约增加说明中国债市正日趋成熟。报告还指出，随着投资者的风险敏感度增加，资本将流向更具投资价值的企业，推动经济更好增长。

人民银行在一定程度上是正确的。对于任何一个有效运行的债市而言，违约都是必不可少的。但中国的问题在于：当前债市违约上升的总体趋势，掩盖了国企与民企之间的巨大差异。惠誉数据显示，今年未按时偿债的企业中，89%是民企。标普计算显示，2014年以来，12%的私企债务人发生了违约，而仅有0.2%的国企发生违约。过去两年，中国私企的违约率高于全球垃圾债发行人违约率。

上述现象增加了投资者对国企债券的偏好，因为他们相信政府通常会为其提供支持。今年，国企在新发债中的比例很高，私企则几乎被完全挤出。换言之，资金并未如央行所愿流向最具投资价值的企业，而是流向了关系最硬的企业。

要改变这一现状，最简单的做法是让更多国企违约。近年来仅有少数国企因出现违约，这无法说服投资者相信政府已允许更多国企违约。

因此，天津物产集团事件显得十分重要。该集团是天津市政府所有的大宗商品进出口企业，其于11月22日向债权人提出减计最高达到64%的本金的要求。尽管其债券仅在离岸市场发行，但由于许多债权人都来自国内，因此也会波及国内市场。若该债券最终违约，将是上世纪90年代末以来中国国企在海外市场上的最大一笔违约。不过，这仅仅是迈向允许更多国企违约的一个进展。在这方面，官方宣传可有所作为：当中国的国家电台加大力度报道国企面临的困境时，中国在国企违约问题上才算有了新的进展。

 

（后附原文）

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/11/28/bond-defaults-have-soared-in-china

 

Bond defaults have soared in China

-- But officials and some investors see it as a sign of a healthier market

 

（略）For a state broadcaster, that might sound perfectly normal. But the theme of its first report was neither China’s stellar growth nor its sparkling innovations. Rather than such standard fare for propagandists, it focused on creditor committees, which aim to restructure companies that have run into financial difficulties. It was the latest sign of China’s rapid shift from denying that it had a debt problem just a few years ago to grappling with it publicly.

The bond market bears out the change. It was only in 2014 that China experienced its first default on a domestically traded bond. In 2018 defaults hit 117bn yuan ($16.5bn), triple the previous high. This year defaults are on track to reach roughly the same value. About 1% of all issuers defaulted in the first three quarters of this year, just a little below the global level, according to Fitch, a ratings agency. Bond defaults, says s&p Global, another ratings company, are “becoming a norm”.

……

（由于版权原因，本文只显示部分内容，请查看原文链接）