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与中国的冷战 玩不转

(2023-03-29 08:16:13) 下一个

与中国的冷战将颠覆一切

DAVID BROOKS 2023年3月24日
 
所以,我想我们正处于一场新的冷战之中。两党领导人都成了对华鹰派。风传台湾将会发生战争。习近平发誓要主宰这个世纪。
 
我不禁思忖:这场冷战会是什么样子?这一次冷战会像上一次冷战那样改变美国社会吗?
关于这场冷战,我注意到的第一件事是军备竞赛和经济竞赛融合在了一起。到目前为止,冲突的一个主要焦点是微芯片,这种小玩意儿不仅能驱动你的汽车和手机,还能引导导弹,对训练人工智能系统也是必要的。谁主导了芯片制造,谁就主导了市场和战场。
 
其次,地缘政治不同。正如克里斯·米勒在他的《芯片战争》一书中指出的那样,微芯片行业由少数非常成功的企业主导。90%以上最先进的芯片都是由台湾一家公司生产。一家荷兰公司生产制造尖端芯片所需的所有光刻机。位于加州圣克拉拉的两家公司垄断了图形处理单元的设计,这种部件对在数据中心运行人工智能应用程序至关重要。
 
这些瓶颈对中国来说是不可容忍的。如果西方能阻止中国获得尖端技术,那么它就能阻止中国。因此,中国的意图是实现芯片自给自足。美国的意图是在芯片方面比现在更加自给自足,并建立一个排除中国的全球芯片联盟。
 
美国的外交政策已经沿着这些路线迅速重新调整。在过去两届政府中,美国积极采取行动,阻止中国获得制造最先进芯片所需的软件技术和设备。拜登政府切断的不只是中国军工企业,而是所有中国企业。这看上去是一种合乎常理的预防措施,但是换个角度来看又有些夸张:美国的官方政策是让一个拥有近15亿人口的国家变得更贫穷。
 
更让我惊讶的是新冷战对国内政治的重新安排。从亚历山大·汉密尔顿1791年的《制造业报告》开始,一直有美国人支持产业政策——利用政府来加强私营经济部门。但这种治理方式通常处于边缘地位。
 
现在,当涉及到绿色技术和芯片时,它成了美国政治的中心。去年,国会通过了《芯片法案》,为鼓励美国芯片生产提供了520亿美元的拨款、税收抵免和其他补贴。这一产业政策会让汉密尔顿瞠目结舌,为之鼓掌。
 
在接下来的几年和几十年里,中国将在一系列尖端技术领域,向自己的产业政策项目投入大量资金。战略与国际研究中心的一位分析师估计,中国在工业项目上支出的GDP已经是美国的12倍以上
 
在未来几年里,美国领导人必须弄清楚这些支出的效果如何,以及如何应对。这场冷战的主力军将是技术精英,甚至比上一场冷战更甚。双方可能都将在他们受教育程度最高的公民身上投入大量资金——在民粹主义怨恨的时代,这是一种危险的局面。
 
你已经可以开始看到一系列新的政治分歧。位于中心的是那些支持《芯片法案》的新汉密尔顿主义者——包括拜登政府和17名反特朗普派的共和党人,他们在参议院与民主党人一起投票支持该法案。
 
在右翼,已经有一系列民粹主义者在军事方面对中国超级强硬,但他们不接受产业政策。我们为什么要把那么多钱花在精英身上?你凭什么认为政府比市场更聪明?
 
在左翼,是那些希望利用产业政策为进步目标服务的人。拜登政府已经对接受《芯片法案》支持的公司发布了数量惊人的命令。这些命令将迫使企业服务于一些与产业不相关的进步优先事项——儿童保育政策、增加工会、环境目标,种族正义等。与其说它是一个专注于提振芯片的计划,不如说它寻求同时实现所有功能。
 
人们希望,随着冷战气氛的加剧,我们的政治将变得更加严肃。在上一次冷战期间,当美国人去投票时,他们意识到自己的投票可能生死攸关。这种感觉可能会再次出现。
 
在这个时代,治理国家需要非凡的、经验丰富的政治家才能——运行工业项目,但不令其变得臃肿;在不引发贸易战的情况下部分地去全球化经济;在不羞辱中国的情况下稳步超越中国。如果中国意识到自己每年都在进一步落后,那么对台湾的入侵可能会更加迫在眉睫。
 
 有人问米勒,在未来五年内,中美之间发生危险的军事冲突,会有多大可能制造出一场相当于大萧条的经济危机。他认为可能性是20%。
这样高的可能似乎足以令人集中精神应对。

The Cold War With China Is Changing Everything

 
 

So I guess we’re in a new cold war. Leaders of both parties have become China hawks. There are rumblings of war over Taiwan. Xi Jinping vows to dominate the century.

I can’t help wondering: What will this cold war look like? Will this one transform American society the way the last one did?

The first thing I notice about this cold war is that the arms race and the economics race are fused. A chief focus of the conflict so far has been microchips, the little gizmos that not only make your car and phone work, but also guide missiles and are necessary to train artificial intelligence systems. Whoever dominates chip manufacturing dominates the market as well as the battlefield.

Second, the geopolitics are different. As Chris Miller notes in his book “Chip War,” the microchip sector is dominated by a few highly successful businesses. More than 90 percent of the most advanced chips are made by one company in Taiwan. One Dutch company makes all the lithography machines that are required to build cutting-edge chips. Two Santa Clara, Calif., companies monopolize the design of graphic processing units, critical for running A.I. applications in data centers.

 

These choke points represent an intolerable situation for China. If the West can block off China’s access to cutting-edge technology, then it can block off China. So China’s intention is to approach chip self-sufficiency. America’s intention is to become more chip self-sufficient than it is now and to create a global chip alliance that excludes China.

American foreign policy has been rapidly rearranged along these lines. Over the last two administrations, the United States has moved aggressively to block China from getting the software technology and equipment it needs to build the most advanced chips. The Biden administration is cutting off not just Chinese military companies, but all Chinese companies. This seems like a common-sense safeguard, but put another way, it’s kind of dramatic: Official U.S. policy is to make a nation of almost a billion and a half people poorer.

I’m even more amazed by how the new cold war is rearranging domestic politics. There have always been Americans, stretching back to Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures in 1791, who supported industrial policy — using government to strengthen private economic sectors. But this governing approach has generally been on the margins.

Now it is at the center of American politics, when it comes to both green technology and chips. Last year Congress passed the CHIPS Act, with $52 billion in grants, tax credits and other subsidies to encourage American chip production. That’s an industrial policy that would leave Hamilton gaping and applauding.

Over the next years and decades, China is going to pour immense amounts of money into its own industrial policy programs, across a range of cutting-edge technologies. One analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates China already spends over 12 times as much of its G.D.P. on industrial programs as the United States does.

 

Over these coming years, U.S. leaders will have to figure out how effective that spending is and how to respond. Even more than the last cold war, this one will be waged by technological elites. Both sides are probably going to be spending lots of money on their most educated citizens — a dangerous situation in an age of populist resentments.

Already you can begin to see a new set of political fissures. In the center are the sort of Neo-Hamiltonians who supported the CHIPS Act — including the Biden administration and the 17 non-Trumpy Republicans who voted with Democrats for the act in the Senate.

On the right, there are already a range of populists who are super-hawkish on China when it comes to military affairs but don’t believe in industrial policy. Why should we spend all that money on elites? What makes you think the government is smarter than the market?

On the left are those who want to use industrial policy to serve progressive goals. The Biden administration has issued an incredible number of diktats for companies that receive CHIPS Act support. These diktats would force businesses to behave in ways that serve a number of extraneous progressive priorities — child care policy, increased unionization, environmental goals, racial justice, etc. Rather than being a program focused on boosting chips, it seeks to be everything all at once.

One would hope that as the cold war atmosphere intensifies our politics will get more serious. When Americans went to the polls during the last cold war, they realized their vote could be a matter of life and death. It may feel like that again.

 

Governing during this era will require extraordinary levels of experienced statesmanship — running industrial programs that don’t become bloated, partially deglobalizing the economy without setting off trade wars, steadily outcompeting China without humiliating it. If China realizes it is falling further behind every year, then an invasion of Taiwan may be more imminent.

Miller was asked what were the odds that over the next five years a dangerous military clash between the United States and China would produce an economic crisis equivalent to the Great Depression. He put the odds at 20 percent.

That seems high enough to focus the mind.

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