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A Bailout Beijing Would Cheer 北京将为之喝彩的救援行动
By David Ignatius Thursday, October 16, 2008美国《华盛顿邮报》网站10月16日文章
We are all Chinese now. That is, we have a nominally capitalist economy, but we don't trust the freewheeling private market when it comes to the crunch. So we turn to the government for protection and stability.
我们现在都是中国人了。换言之，我们名义上实行的是资本主义经济，但当危机来临时，我们却不信任自由的私营市场，因此我们转而向政府寻求保护来稳定市场。
The new interventionism isn't so much socialist as it is Confucian -- a belief that a public-private partnership of the wise ones will get us out of the mess. And if it's any consolation, the Chinese are becoming more like us, even as we are becoming more like them.
新干涉主义并非社会主义而更像儒家思想，明智的公有私有之伙伴关系将会收拾我们的烂摊子。如果说有什么安慰的话，那就是中国正变得越来越像我们，我们正变得越来越像他们。
A Chinese preview of this week's government-funded recapitalization of the banks came in the Hong Kong stock market crash of August 1998. To counter a typhoon of speculation that had battered the local market, Chinese authorities intervened to buy up sagging stocks with public money. The government spent $15.1 billion to acquire about 7.3 percent of the companies in the blue-chip Hang Seng Index.
早在1998年香港股市遭遇危机的时候，中国就实施过像本周美国政府救助银行一样的举措。为了对付重创当地市场的大规模投机行为，中国政府动用公共资金买进了下跌的股票，花费了151亿，持有了大约百分之7.3的恒生指数蓝筹股公司的股票。
Free-market partisans in the West were shocked by the Chinese intervention and decried it as a dangerous precedent. But it helped stabilize the Hong Kong market. Now, that earlier bailout seems modest indeed -- compared with the quasi-nationalization of the world's leading banks we're seeing this week.
当时，西方自由市场的参与者对中国政府的干预行为感到震惊，称这是一个“危险的先例”。但这的确帮助维护了香港市场的稳定。现在看来，这一救援行动实在算不上什么--尤其是与我们本周所看到的对世界几大银行的准国有化措施相比。
The Chinese have stayed edgy about markets, even as their version of capitalism has created unprecedented growth and prosperity. They preferred to run very large trade surpluses, a kind of forced public saving, rather than spend their new wealth. And they resisted pressure to revalue their currency upward, as market forces would have dictated, because they feared the consequences.
在中国长期保持增长的市场，作为其独特版本的资本主义已经创造了前所未有的增长和繁荣。他们擅长经营巨大的贸易盈余以及拥有庞大的公共储蓄，而不是消耗他们的新财富。他们抗拒升值的压力和汇率完全由市场力量来决定，因为他们担心造成严重的后果。
A Chinese central banker explained to me in Beijing a few years ago that he believed Japan's "lost decade" of economic stagnation was a result of letting the Japanese yen appreciate too rapidly during the boom years, and that the Chinese wouldn't make the same mistake. The Chinese were also squeamish as they watched the Russians during their wild "oligarch capitalism" phase in the 1990s. The Russian model was too raucous, too rapacious.
几年前，在北京，中国央行官员向我解释，他认为日本“失去的十年”经济停滞的原因，是在经济繁荣的年代让日元升值过快，而中国将不会犯同样的错误。中国显然比较谨慎，因为他们看到了俄罗斯在20世纪90年代滋生“寡头资本主义”的阶段，俄罗斯模式太吵杂了，太贪婪了。
It will take many months for the dust of this crisis to settle and to make judgments about the shape of the new order. But already, my favorite futurist, Peter Schwartz of the Monitor Group, predicts that we are entering a new political and economic paradigm. "Clearly, we have just moved a big step away from democratic capitalism," he says.
做出正确的判断并解决这场金融危机，形成市场新秩序，将会需要数月或者更长的时间，但是已经曙光初现，我最喜爱的未来预言家，彼得施瓦茨预测，我们正在进入一个新的政治和经济模式。“显然，我们远离民主资本主义，刚刚移动了一大步，”他说。
One source of instability that must be fixed is the structural imbalance in global trade that came to be known as "Bretton Woods II." Essentially, it meant that the Chinese and other Asian economies would run large trade surpluses and fund the corresponding U.S. trade deficits by buying Treasury bonds -- in effect lending us the money to finance our overconsumption. That helped create the huge pools of capital that sloshed around international markets, and the low interest rates that encouraged investors to take too many risks.
全球贸易结构性失衡是一个不稳定的根源，必须调整，被称之为“布雷顿伍兹体系II”，从本质上讲，这意味着相对应美国的贸易赤字，中国和其他亚洲经济体操持着巨大的贸易盈余和基金，用来购买美国国债--实际上是我们过度消费的贷款资金，低利率鼓励了投资者甘冒太多的风险，推波助澜形成的金融海啸波及了全球市场。
The Bretton Woods II regime must evolve into something more stable. In the simplest terms, the fix will require more consumption by China, and less by the United States. It's a tricky transition: After the shocks of the past few months, the Chinese will want to be less vulnerable to global markets; they will put more emphasis on domestic growth and consumption and less on export markets. But China and the West still need each other, perhaps more than ever.
“布雷顿伍兹体系II”，世界必须趋于稳定平衡的新秩序，最简单的说，解决这些问题，需要中国去更多的消费，而美国则需要减少消费。这是一个复杂的转型：在经历了几个月动荡之后，中国希望不要受到全球市场更大的冲击，他们将更加重视国内经济增长和消费增长，尽量减少对出口市场的依赖。但是，中国和西方仍然需要对方，也许比以往任何时候都更加彼此需要。
One hopeful sign last week was that the Chinese were moving toward private ownership, even as America and Europe were moving away from it. The Chinese government announced a new rural policy aimed at allowing millions of farmers to own the land they have been working. This would create a huge new reserve of private wealth in China, which could power domestic spending and growth.
上周，一个充满希望的迹象是，中国人正在努力走向私有制，即便在美国和欧洲，人们正在远离它。中国政府宣布了一项新的农村政策，旨在使数以百万计的农民拥有土地的承包经营权流转，这将创建一个巨大的新的私人财富的储备，并可能增强国内消费和促进经济增长。
The reality that has come home to all of us during the great panic of 2008 is that nobody likes living on the knife-edge of the market. We want the dynamism and flexibility that a capitalist economy uniquely provides. But we want protection, too -- a safety net for ourselves and our families when markets fail.
在2008年的这场大恐慌中，我们都要面对的一个现实是，没有人希望站在市场的刀刃上过活。我们需要资本主义经济所独有的活力和灵活性，但我们也需要保护---一个在市场崩溃的时候，能保护我们和家人的安全网。
Lucky, prosperous people disdain this human need for protection when times are good and relief is going to the destitute and unlucky. But let's not hear any more thundering about self-reliance and the "school of hard knocks" from the bankers and trust-fund babies who are the beneficiaries of the bailout. We are all Chinese now, for better or worse, and we're all eating from the same bowl.
当美好时代，救济给与穷困和不幸的人们的时候，幸运、富裕的人们，一贯蔑视人类这一保护的需要。现如今，我们没有听到任何来自银行家和信托基金雷鸣般的“自力更生”和“逆境把我们锤炼成才”的口号，而他们这会儿则是政府救市计划中嗷嗷待哺的婴儿。现在，我们都是中国人，无论是好还是坏，我们都端着同样的饭碗。
The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.
作者是PostGlobal共同主办者，这是一个国际问题的在线讨论。他的e - mail地址是davidignatius@washpost.com 。
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