与中国分手并不像看起来那么容易
2024-03-23 20:10阅读：
归根结底，如果不首先剖析商业运作的不同渠道，就无法准确评估中美“去风险”的规模。这不仅仅是关于传统的贸易方式——出口和进口。对外投资和外国分公司活动也要考虑在内，从这个角度来看，事情就变得复杂多了。
Breaking Up With China Isn't as Easy as It
Looks
By Joseph Quinlan
Who says breaking up is hard to do? Washington and Beijing are
making it look easy and painless—giving solace to the
markets.
Recent trade data support a narrative that the U.S. and China are
“derisking,” in other words, that U.S. businesses are seeking to
decrease their dependence on China. Investors could be forgiven for
thinking the world’s two largest economies are on course for an
amicable economic separation. And, by association, that “derisking”
hasn’t been all that threatening and disruptive to companies or the
capital markets.
However, t
he inconvenient truth is that traditional trade figures don’t give
a complete picture of the massive U.S. commercial stakes in China.
These stakes aren’t based on trade alone. Rather, they are built
more off U.S. foreign direct investment in China and the attendant
activities of U.S. foreign affiliates operating in-country.
These particular facets of commerce are little recognized or
understood on Wall Street, and could lead investors to
underestimate the potentially adverse effects of a U.S.-Sino
breakup.
Traditional trade statistics seem to suggest that economic
decoupling is already underway. U.S. imports from China, for
instance, accounted for only 13.9% of total U.S. imports in 2023,
down from a record high of 21.6% in 2017. U.S. goods imports from
China slumped 20% last year, while U.S. exports to the mainland
dropped 4%. In the aggregate, total U.S.-China trade in goods is
now hovering at multiyear lows. Mexico was America’s top supplier
of imports in 2023.
But figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the U.S.
is still deeply connected to China. The number of U.S. affiliates
in China was 1,956 in 2021, exceeding the number of affiliates in
such markets as Germany, France, Japan, and virtually all of South
America. These affiliates employed over 1.2 million Chinese
workers, produced nearly $100 billion in total output annually in
China, spent over $5.5 billion on research and development, and
generated $472 billion in affiliate sales.
U.S. affiliate sales in China, by the way, are among the largest in
the world, and are over three times larger than what the U.S.
exports to China in a year.
In other words, U.S. exports to China don’t even begin to capture
how much business China generates for U.S. businesses each year.
Success in China requires that firms be based in China. Hence, the
near 12-fold increase in U.S. foreign direct investment (on a
historic cost basis) from 2000 to 2022 and the corresponding
18-fold increase in affiliate sales over roughly the same time
frame.
As the U.S. investment presence in China has grown over the past
decades, so has the payoff. Income earned by U.S. foreign
affiliates in China has soared since 2000 and now easily outstrips
what U.S. affiliates earn in wealthier markets such as Germany and
France each year. U.S. foreign affiliate income in China ($8.7
billion) was up roughly 1% in the first nine months of last year
compared to a year earlier, above comparable levels in France ($5.2
billion), Germany ($7.7 billion), and India ($6.7 billion).
The bottom line is that China remains one of the most profitable
foreign markets in the world for U.S. companies, especially in
consumer goods, food and beverages, automobiles, and related
products.
Yes, U.S. firms have begun to diversify their China-centric supply
chains. U.S. firms have been successful in finding alternative
sources of supply outside of China—and hence the decline in U.S.
imports. However, finding alternative sources of demand from China
may not even be possible.
Case in point: India is a legitimate alternative to China when it
comes to labor and the reconfiguration of global supply chains.
It’s far from ready, however, to offset China as a source of
demand. India’s per capita income is less than one-third of
China’s. As such, India’s personal consumption expenditures in 2022
($2.1 trillion) were well under China’s figure for the same year
($6.7 trillion).
The cold reality is that China remains a key source of demand and
earnings for many U.S. firms, and is likely to remain so.
In the end, you can’t accurately assess the scale of U.S.-China
de-risking without first dissecting the different channels by which
business operates. It isn’t just through traditional means of
trade—or export and imports. Foreign investment and foreign
affiliate activities must also be included, and when viewed through
this lens, things become a great deal more complicated. For U.S.
multinationals that have sunk millions in investment in China over
the past few decades, this complexity is particularly risky.
Between China’s push for self-sufficiency and the U.S. bipartisan,
anti-China embrace on trade and investment, investors should expect
more volatility and uncertainty around the large-cap earnings of
U.S. multinationals most exposed to China.
