中国房地产遭遇人口结构预警

China’s previously overheated property market has been in the doldrums for most of this year but things are likely to get a lot worse, because of demographic shifts that are about to reverse a main driver of the decades-long boom.

中国先前过热的房地产市场在今年大部分时间持续低迷，但今后可能会更加糟糕，因为过去数十年房地产繁荣的主要推动因素——人口结构即将发生变化。

According to newly published research, the size of China’s main property-buying population — people aged 25 to 49 — will peak next year and then start to decline, just as a huge glut of new apartments hits the market.

根据新公布的研究报告，中国购房主力人口（25岁至49岁之间人群）将在明年达到峰值，随后就会开始下降，而与此同时还有大量超过需求数量的新公寓投放市场。

This demographic will shrink drastically from 2018, with the number of urban homebuying Chinese falling much faster than contemporaries from the countryside, who are far less likely to have the means to buy expensive apartments, according to Ai Jingwei, an expert on Chinese real estate and author of the research.

中国房地产专家、报告作者艾经纬表示，购房人口数量将从2018年起大幅下降，城市购房者人数下降速度将远远超过同时期的农村购房者，而且后者有能力购买昂贵公寓房的可能性也要低得多。

The real estate sector has been the most important driver of growth in the world’s second-largest economy for most of the past decade, as house prices soared and construction of apartments mushroomed across the entire country.

在过去十年的大部分时间里，房地产业一直是这个全球第二大经济体最重要的增长引擎，在此期间中国房价飙升，新开工楼盘在全国遍地开花。

Moody’s Analytics estimates the building, sale and outfitting of apartments accounted for 23 per cent of Chinese gross domestic product last year.

据穆迪分析(Moody’s Analytics)估计，去年房地产的建造、销售和配套占到中国国内生产总值(GDP)的23%。

The long-term health of the property sector is still seen as crucial to maintaining the high growth rates to which China has become accustomed.

中国已习惯了高增长率，房地产行业的长远健康仍被视为保持高增长率的关键因素。

But after years of white-hot growth, Chinese property sales fell 10 per cent in the first 10 months of 2014 from a year earlier, prompting the steepest annual drop in nationwide prices in October since the data series began in 2011.

但在多年过热增长之后，中国房地产销售在今年前十个月同比下降10%，促使10月全国房价出现自2011年官方开始发布这项数据（即国家统计局发布的70个大中城市新建商品住宅销售价格变动情况——译者注）以来的同比最大跌幅。

Still, the fall in volumes and prices has so far been relatively mild and developers across China have continued to expand their inventories, albeit at a slower pace, in the hopes of a recovery next year and beyond.

然而，房地产销量和价格的下跌迄今仍相对温和，中国各地的房地产开发商寄望于明年乃至更远的未来市场会出现复苏，仍在继续扩大库存，尽管步伐有所放缓。

Most analysts argue this worsening oversupply is the biggest threat to China’s all-important property market.

房地产市场对中国至关重要，大多数分析师认为，这种日益恶化的过度供应是房地产市场面临的最大威胁。

“Developers are currently sitting on 5.6m units of unsold property, according to official statistics, a figure that has almost doubled in the space of two years,” says Mark Williams, economist at Capital Economics. “In reality the overhang is probably even larger.”

凯投宏观(Capital Economics)经济学家马克•威廉姆斯(Mark Williams)表示：“官方统计数据显示，目前开发商手中的待售商品房数量高达560万套，这一数字在两年的时间里几乎翻了一番。实际的待售商品房数量甚至可能还不止这么多。”

Mr Ai calculates that China probably now has more than seven years worth of unsold real estate inventory. But he argues that a shrinking pool of potential homebuyers is an even more worrying long-term challenge.

艾经纬估算，中国现在待售和在建的住宅很可能需要7年多时间才能消化完。但他认为，从长期来看，潜在购房人口缩减是更令人担忧的挑战。

“From 2015 China’s house-buying demographic will start to shrink and the property market will undergo a structural shift in demand,” Mr Ai told the Financial Times. “We are actually likely to see a serious structural shortfall in purchasing power.”

艾经纬向英国《金融时报》表示：“从2015年开始，中国购房年龄人口数量将开始下降，房地产市场将经历需求结构改变，事实上，我们有可能看到购买力出现严重的结构性短缺。”

He calculates the number of people in China in the 25 to 49 age group will peak next year at about 568m, before dropping to 543m in 2020 and falling below 500m by 2025, compared with 547m in 2010.

他估计，中国25岁至49岁人口数量将在明年达到5.68亿的峰值，随后在2020年降至5.43亿，到2025年降至5亿以下，而在2010年该数据是5.47亿人。

China’s official working-age population (people aged 15-59) peaked in 2012 and has shrunk by several million in each of the past two years, according to government statistics.

政府统计数据显示，中国劳动年龄人口（15岁至59岁之间）的官方数据在2012年达到峰值，并在过去两年里每年下降数百万人。

This demographic shift has been exacerbated by the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s to control the country’s population.

中国在上世纪70年代末和80年代初、为控制人口数量而出台的计划生育政策，加剧了人口结构变化形势的恶化。

The shift has already been manifested in tighter labour markets and higher wages in many sectors.

劳动力市场趋紧和许多行业工资上涨已经体现了这种转变。

One of the more alarming revelations from Mr Ai’s research is the apparent correlation between a declining working-age population and the bursting of real estate bubbles in other countries in the past.

艾经纬的研究报告中更令人不安的发现之一是，历史上其他国家劳动年龄人口下降和房地产泡沫破裂之间看上去存在相关性。

The most obvious and disturbing example from China’s perspective is that of Japan, which saw its working-age population peak in 1992, just one year after an enormous real estate bubble began to deflate.

从中国的角度来说，最明显且最令人不安的例子是日本的房地产市场，后者的劳动年龄人口在1992年达到峰值，仅仅一年后巨大的房地产泡沫就开始破裂。