财经观察 1887 --- 中国是如何看这个世界的

最新一期经济学人：中国是如何看这个世界的?(图) 经济学人

The Economist：中国是如何看世界的 - How China sees the world

再糟糕的事情也总会有受益人。对中国很多人而言，冲击全球经济的风暴带来令人鼓舞的信息。中国在过去三十年的崛起令人惊讶。但它缺少一个可以充分满足极端民族主义者的因素：西方随之没落。如今，资本主义的中心地带处于恐惧之中。欧洲和日本陷入战后最严重的衰退，几乎丧失了成为对手的资格。超级大国美国已经过了巅峰期。尽管在公开场合，中国领导人避免表现出必胜的信念，但北京有一种感觉：中央王国重获全球支配权在望。

 　　中国总理温家宝不再坚持说中国是世界事务中一位谦卑的玩家，希望侧重本国的经济发展。他谈及中国是“大国（great power）”，担心美国的挥霍无度会危及他摆在那里的一万亿美元储备金。美国新财长称中国操纵汇率的不慎言论被斥为荒唐；同样，适时地表现忏悔的希拉里受到北京的欢迎。本月可见一个明显的意图，在南海制造一起低层面的、与美国间谍船对峙的事件。然而，美国人至少还可以引起关注。而欧洲已是远处的一个斑点，被忽略了：欧盟峰会被取消，法国仍然因为萨科齐胆敢会晤达赖喇嘛而被列入黑名单。

 

 　　有一个大想法已经扩散到中国之外：如今的地缘政治是两极事务，只有美国和中国够得上分量。这样，下月在伦敦召开的不是G20会议，而是奥巴马与胡锦涛之间的G2峰会。这不仅令欧洲人（欧洲刚刚摆脱布什单极政治，不希望看到它被太平洋双寡头政治取代）担心，而且令日本担心（日本人对他们的亚洲对手长期持偏执态度）。而且对华盛顿也产生了影响，国会对美国最强劲对手的强烈关注可能引发保护主义。
　　
　　赤色分子

 　　在恐慌蔓延之前，值得指出的是，中国新近的自信既反映了虚弱，也反映了实力。用温家宝的话来说，这仍然是一个面临新世纪最困难一年的贫穷国家。最近关于失业人数的猜想（2000万）暗示问题的严重性。世界银行已经把中国今年增长率的预期下调到6.5%. 与大多数地方相比，这是一个强劲的数字，但对很多习惯于双位数增长率的中国人而言，这感觉上就像是衰退。那里每年都会发生成千上万起示威，从征地开发问题，到下岗工人问题，到环境恶化的副作用问题等，都是示威的起因。即使中国奇迹般实现官方的8%增长目标，这些冤情仍会加深。

 　　中国远未能散发自信，经济体系以及它想成为何种大国的问题都引起激烈的辩论。自由派呼吁加大开放。而且中国领导人还要面对左翼民族主义的不满，他们认为低迷时期是停止国内市场改革的机会，认为中国应该在海外更加尖利地伸张自己的主张。一个愤怒的中国可能转向仇外心理，但并非所有的民族主义左翼事业都是如此危险，例如呼吁增强国家迫切需要的公共服务和社会保障网络的事业。

 　　中国正处于一个比许多西方人想象中更加危险的境地。世界不是两极，而且可能永远不会变成那样。欧盟尽管有种种缺点，但仍然是世界上最大的经济体。印度的人口将超过中国的。但这并不能掩盖中国的相对力量明显增长的事实——西方和中国自身都需要为此而调整。

 　　对奥巴马而言，这意味着努力实现一个艰难的平衡动作。从长远来看，如果他到离任时还没能设法诱使中国（以及印度和巴西）更加坚定地融入自由主义的多边体系，那么历史学家可以判断他是失败的。从短期来看，他需要让中国恪守其诺言，并斥责中国的失误：希拉里访问时应该责备它的西藏和人权问题。布什政府很重视欢迎中国成为国际体系中“负责任的利益攸关者”的想法。G20是一个机会，给予中国比在G7和G8这些小俱乐部中所能获得的更大的全球决策权。但这也是中国展示自己可以负责任地行使其新影响力的机会。
　　
　　帐单

 　　中国作为世界公民的记录俗套得惊人。从伊朗到苏丹等众多问题上，它动用了它主要的地缘政治资产——联合国安理会常任理事国地位，去阻挠进步，借口说自己不想干涉别国内政。可悲的是，这需要时间来改变。但目前有更加紧迫的世界经济问题，在这方面有行动的空间。

 　　在过去四分之一世纪，从全球化中收获最多的国家是中国。数以亿计的中国人走出祈求生存的阶段，迈进中产阶级。在这个进程中，中国是一位脾气暴躁的接受者。它促使最新一轮世界贸易谈判出轨。G20会议给它提供了一个展示自己改变心意的机会。特别是，它被要求增强国际货币基金组织的资源，以便该组织能够拯救东欧等遭受危机冲击的地区。北京有些人情愿忽视国际货币基金组织，因为它可能帮助已经发展了“反华心态”的前共产主义国家。超越这种挑剔并拿出支付行动本身只是一小步。但这将表明中央王国已经明白成为大国意味着什么。
 

IT IS an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China even the buffeting by the gale that has hit the global economy has a bracing message. The rise of China over the past three decades has been astonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully to satisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an accompanying decline of the West. Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands. Europe and Japan, embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worth consideration as rivals. America, the superpower, has passed its peak. Although in public China’s leaders eschew triumphalism, there is a sense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom’s global ascendancy is at hand (see article).

 China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, no longer sticks to the script that China is a humble player in world affairs that wants to focus on its own economic development. He talks of China as a “great power” and worries about America’s profligate spending endangering his $1 trillion nest egg there. Incautious remarks by the new American treasury secretary about China manipulating its currency were dismissed as ridiculous; a duly penitent Hillary Clinton was welcomed in Beijing, but as an equal. This month saw an apparent attempt to engineer a low-level naval confrontation with an American spy ship in the South China Sea. Yet at least the Americans get noticed. Europe, that speck on the horizon, is ignored: an EU summit was cancelled and France is still blacklisted because Nicolas Sarkozy dared to meet the Dalai Lama.

Already a big idea has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics is now a bipolar affair, with America and China the only two that matter. Thus in London next month the real business will not be the G20 meeting but the “G2” summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. This not only worries the Europeans, who, having got rid of George Bush’s unipolar politics, have no wish to see it replaced by a Pacific duopoly, and the Japanese, who have long been paranoid about their rivals in Asia. It also seems to be having an effect in Washington, where Congress’s fascination with America’s nearest rival risks acquiring a protectionist edge.

 Reds under the bedBefore panic spreads, it is worth noting that China’s new assertiveness reflects weakness as well as strength. This remains a poor country facing, in Mr Wen’s words, its most difficult year of the new century. The latest wild guess at how many jobs have already been lost—20m—hints at the scale of the problem. The World Bank has cut its forecast for China’s growth this year to 6.5%. That is robust compared with almost anywhere else, but to many Chinese, used to double-digit rates, it will feel like a recession. Already there are tens of thousands of protests each year: from those robbed of their land for development; from laid-off workers; from those suffering the side-effects of environmental despoliation. Even if China magically achieves its official 8% target, the grievances will worsen.

 Far from oozing self-confidence, China is witnessing a fierce debate both about its economic system and the sort of great power it wants to be—and it is a debate the government does not like. This year the regime curtailed even the perfunctory annual meeting of its parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), preferring to confine discussion to back-rooms and obscure internet forums. Liberals calling for greater openness are being dealt with in the time-honoured repressive fashion. But China’s leaders also face rumblings of discontent from leftist nationalists, who see the downturn as a chance to halt market-oriented reforms at home, and for China to assert itself more stridently abroad. An angry China can veer into xenophobia, but not all the nationalist left’s causes are so dangerous: one is for the better public services and social-safety net the country sorely needs.

 So China is in a more precarious situation than many Westerners think. The world is not bipolar and may never become so. The EU, for all its faults, is the world’s biggest economy. India’s population will overtake China’s. But that does not obscure the fact that China’s relative power is plainly growing—and both the West and China itself need to adjust to this.

 For Mr Obama, this means pulling off a difficult balancing act. In the longer term, if he has not managed to seduce China (and for that matter India and Brazil) more firmly into the liberal multilateral system by the time he leaves office, then historians may judge him a failure. In the short term he needs to hold China to its promises and to scold it for its lapses: Mrs Clinton should have taken it to task over Tibet and human rights when she was there. The Bush administration made much of the idea of welcoming China as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. The G20 is a chance to give China a bigger stake in global decision-making than was available in the small clubs of the G7 and G8. But it is also a chance for China to show it can exercise its new influence responsibly.

 The bill for the great Chinese takeawayChina’s record as a citizen of the world is strikingly threadbare. On a host of issues from Iran to Sudan, it has used its main geopolitical asset, its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, to obstruct progress, hiding behind the excuse that it does not want to intervene in other countries’ affairs. That, sadly, will take time to change. But on the more immediate issue at hand, the world economy, there is room for action.

 Over the past quarter-century no country has gained more from globalisation than China. Hundreds of millions of its people have been dragged out of subsistence into the middle class. China has been a grumpy taker in this process. It helped derail the latest round of world trade talks. The G20 meeting offers it a chance to show a change of heart. In particular, it is being asked to bolster the IMF’s resources so that the fund can rescue crisis-hit countries in places like eastern Europe. Some in Beijing would prefer to ignore the IMF, since it might help ex-communist countries that have developed “an anti-China mentality”. Rising above such cavilling and paying up would be a small step in itself. But it would be a sign that the Middle Kingdom has understood what it is to be a great power.