貿易戰暴露習近平的領導能力不足
https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20190508/...p/zh-hant/
中美貿易戰的最後階段好像臨近了。川普總統用真貨——美國的實力——打賭，顯然佔了上風，國家主席習近平很可能做出的讓步將不僅僅是象徵性的。如果協議能達成的話，最終宣布的時候，川普肯定會在Twitter上大肆炫耀，一定程度上這是為了在他本人以及政策方面陷入麻煩的情況下，夯實自己的連任資格。對習近平來說，幾乎任何協議都可能意味著大丟面子。
習近平上任時，中國還處於其所謂的經濟奇蹟的鼎盛時期（而美國卻尚未擺脫2008～2009年大衰退後遺症的影響）。習近平在2012年底出任中國共產黨總書記，2013年初成為中華人民共和國主席。他的反腐敗運動立刻大受歡迎。他提出了「中國夢」，這個讓國家和人民富強安康的模糊願景似乎點燃了許多公民的熱情。他向美國總統巴拉克·歐巴馬(Barack Obama)提出建立「新型大國關係」的建議，那只會取悅有帝國渴望的中國漢族大多數。
但是，在一個沒有明顯反對聲音、禁止「妄議中央」的國家，做這些逞強表演並不難。另一方面，貿易戰提供了第一次真正判定習近平領導能力的機會。而且，他的表現也許看來並不好——即使你認為與貿易戰有關的挫折不重要。
首先，習近平根本沒有管理好美中關係。相比之下，自從這個共產主義國家1949年成立以來，每位中國領導人都認識到這些關係至關重要，都努力改善它們，並從中獲得了巨大的利益。
1971年，毛澤東為打破僵局，籌划了乒乓外交，尼克森總統在中國與蘇聯的對峙時支持了毛澤東。鄧小平竭盡全力向美國示好，吉米·卡特總統在1979年把與中國的正式關係從台北轉移到北京。20世紀80年代，中共領導人胡耀邦、趙紫陽邀請米爾頓·弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)和其他美國經濟學家訪問中國，為政府提建議；此後，美國的資本和技術開始流入中國。
1997年，江澤民對美國進行了為期八天的訪問，參觀維吉尼亞州威廉斯堡的時候，他還戴上了一頂殖民地時代的三角帽。接下來，比爾·柯林頓為中國在2001年加入世界貿易組織助了一臂之力。
2003至2013年胡錦濤執政期間，中國最巧妙地利用了美國的開放（和天真）。廉價的中國進口商品給美國造成了失控的雙邊貿易逆差。孔子學院這個既是語言學校、又是影響代理機構構成的網路，開始在美國的大學和高中生根發芽。（如今已有100多所孔子學院遍布美國。）中國風險投資家帶著從美國金融市場籌集的資金湧入矽谷，然後悄悄地吸走了美國的尖端技術，將其注入中國自己的高技術基地。
但習近平一直在聲勢浩大地堅持強硬路線。在他的領導下，反美言論在官方媒體流傳。中國政府已明確表示要挑戰美國在亞洲的軍事存在。中國政府對台灣、在南海採取咄咄逼人的行動，還派遣中國戰艦穿過阿拉斯加海岸附近的美國海域。（雖然中國政府聲稱，那只是在行使國際公認的「無害通過」權，但此舉顯然是在炫耀武力。）
北京的國家當局試圖籠絡中國的大批海外僑民，希望建立一個有助於在其他國家進行政治滲透，並將高技術從那些國家轉移出來的網路。為此，他們既採取了公開策略，比如官方的招攬項目「千人計劃」，也採取了由中共的影響機器統一戰線負責的祕密行動。
這些努力在一些美國人當中敲響了警鐘。知名學者和前美國政府官員組成的兩個小組分別在2017年和2018年提出，美國需要從根本上改變對中國的看法。這些小組的成員都屬於溫和派，大都對中國懷有好感。然而，他們的一些建議與川普政府中鷹派的觀點不謀而合，鷹派人士認為中國是美國的頭號敵人和安全威脅。習近平對這種巨變顯然毫無覺察，川普用關稅戰打擊中國的做法讓習近平措手不及。
中美兩國的爭端正在亞洲其他地方以及澳洲、紐西蘭和歐洲產生連鎖反應。上月的中歐布魯塞爾峰會後，中國同意「改善」歐盟國家的市場准入，停止強制歐盟企業轉讓技術，並討論減少政府對中國企業提供補貼的可能性（其他國家的政府認為這種補貼對外國企業構成一種不公平的競爭優勢）。儘管這些讓步是用聯合聲明的那種溫和、相互承諾的語言做出的，但它們對中國來說是一個明顯的挫折，將削弱中國的全球野心。
為什麼這一切都發生在習近平時代呢？也許歷史提供了答案。
20世紀50年代末，毛澤東開始挑戰蘇聯在國際共產主義運動中的領導地位。國際共產主義運動當時希望推翻以美國為首的世界秩序的強大力量。毛澤東也在尋求全球主導地位，這符合中國的皇帝是普天下合法統治者的傳統概念。但毛澤東自不量力；當時的中國還不夠強大。蘇聯取消對中國的援助計劃、撤走在華技術專家的決定，給中國表現不佳的社會主義經濟造成了嚴重打擊。
與毛澤東的蘇聯做法相似，習近平可能在挑戰美國的全球領導地位上來得太猛、太早了點。
習近平的第二個主要的不足是，他未能提出一套前後一致的政策，來阻止中國經濟在多年的出色表現之後進入長期下行。中國2018年的國內生產總值(GDP)增長率是28年來最低的。今年第一季度的GDP增長率為6.4%，與1993年同期的15.4%的歷史最高水平相差甚遠。雖然6.4%的增長率會讓許多西方國家羨慕，但是，增長率的這種下降應該引起中國領導層的擔憂，因為這突顯了中國經濟的結構性問題——尤其是人口迅速老齡化、勞動力萎縮，以及總債務與GDP的比值已在2018年第一季度接近300%。日本銀行野村證券(Nomura)估計，以人民幣計價的債券違約率在2017年至2018年間翻了兩番。
受人口結構和債務的拖累，中國幾乎無法通過更多的私人投資和消費來增長經濟。更糟糕的是，由於中國經濟中已經存在巨大的過剩產能（比如新建的鬼城），政府的刺激措施並不十分有效。根據國際貨幣基金組織的數據，2008年，一萬億元人民幣的信貸能製造一萬億元人民幣的經濟產出；到2017年時，這一比例為3.5比1。
然而，習近平在解決這些結構性問題上幾乎沒做什麼。
雖然在本世紀頭十年的後期，嚴重人口問題的證據已經很明顯了，但習近平只是在2016年用二胎政策取代了獨生子女政策。這遠遠不夠，而且也太晚了。中國每年的新生兒數量自改變政策以來一直在下降。2018年的新生兒數量是1961年以來最低的，而1961年曾發生了嚴重的饑荒。習近平2015年批准的經濟刺激計劃，比他的前任在2009年推出的緊急救援計劃的數額高出25%，2009年的計劃為了應對全球金融危機而實施的。就在習近平一直在口頭上表示有必要讓經濟擺脫依賴政府投資的同時，據《富比士》的一篇文章，僅在今年1月和2月，他的政府就一而再、再而三地提供新貸款和新融資超過了2015年的總和。
人們對習近平的第三個批評是，在他的領導下，中國促成或縱容了中國公民和實體在世界各地的某些行為，這些行為既損害了中國的國際聲譽，也有損自身的道德結構。
以知識產權為例。美國似乎掌握了確鑿證據，表明中國王牌高技術公司華為有獎勵員工竊取知識產權的政策。而且，正如我以前所寫，根據中國2017年的《國家情報法》，這種政策得到鼓勵，甚至可以說是強制性的。
傳統上，理想的中國是一個堅守嚴格的道德和行為規範的儒家國家。然而，雖然習近平在國內大力打擊腐敗，但他卻在國外鼓勵道德墮落；他心目中的中國是一個愛國賊的國家。可以說，所有的華人都因此丟了面子，現在，海外的無辜者可能會受到草率的牽連。
人們普遍把習近平視為毛澤東以來最強大的中國領導人。去年修訂憲法後，他有可能終身擔任國家主席——除非他在領導上的嚴重失誤給了國內對手讓他下台的足夠理由。
練乙錚是一名香港及亞洲事務評論員，目前在日本甲府市的山梨學院大學(Yamanashi Gakuin University)擔任經濟學教授，他還是一名觀點文章作者。
翻譯：Cindy Hao
Xi Jinping Wanted Global Dominance. He Overshot.
China wasn’t ready for the trade war with the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opini...1557388486
By Yi-Zheng Lian
Mr. Lian is a former lead writer and chief editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal.
The endgame in the trade war between China and the United States seems near. President Trump, betting with real currency — American strength — apparently has the upper hand, and the concessions President Xi Jinping is likely to make won’t be mere tokens. When — if? — an agreement is finally announced, Mr. Trump will surely fire off bragging tweets, partly to shore up his credentials for a second term, amid personal and policy troubles. For Mr. Xi, almost any deal could mean a very serious loss of face.
Mr. Xi assumed power when China was still riding high on its so-called economic miracle (and the United States remained mired in the aftereffects of the 2008-9 recession). He became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) in late 2012 and president of the People’s Republic in early 2013. His anticorruption campaign was instantly popular. He championed the “Chinese Dream,” a vague vision of prosperity, strength and well-being for the country and its people, that seemed to fire up many citizens. His proposal to President Barack Obama to establish a “New Model of Major Country Relations” could only please Han-majority Chinese with imperial yearnings.
But those were easy stunts, performed in a country with no audible opposition and that bans “reckless” talk about the government. The trade war, on the other hand, is the first real occasion to assess Mr. Xi’s leadership capabilities. And his performance might not look so good, even if one discounts the setbacks related to the trade war.
First and foremost, Mr. Xi has utterly failed to manage the United States–Chinese relationship. In contrast, every Chinese leader since the founding of the communist state in 1949 had recognized the paramount importance of those ties, worked hard to improve them — and reaped huge benefits.
Mao staged Ping-Pong diplomacy to break the ice in 1971, and President Nixon supported him in his standoff against the Soviet Union. Deng Xiaoping went all-out to woo the United States, and President Jimmy Carter switched recognition of China from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. During the 1980s, the C.C.P. leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang invited Milton Friedman and other American economists to visit and provide advice; after that, American capital and technology started flowing into China. In 1997, Jiang Zemin made an eight-day visit to the United States — at one point, while in Williamsburg, Va., putting on a three-cornered colonial hat. Bill Clinton then gave China a strong push to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001.
The Hu Jintao years, 2003–13, saw China’s most tactful exploitation of American openness (and naïveté). Cheap Chinese imports created runaway bilateral trade deficits for the United States. The Confucius Institutes, a network of language schools cum influence agencies, began to take root in American universities and high schools. (Today, there are more than 100 throughout the United States.) Chinese venture capitalists flooded Silicon Valley with money raised in American financial markets — then quietly siphoned off cutting-edge American expertise and injected it into China’s own high-tech hub.
But Mr. Xi has been aggressively hard-line. Under him, anti-American rhetoric has spread in official media. The Chinese government has been explicit about wanting to challenge the United States’s military presence in Asia. It has made aggressive moves toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. It has sent Chinese battleships through American waters off the coast of Alaska. (It claimed to only be exercising the internationally recognized right of “innocent passage,” but the move clearly was a show of force.)
State authorities in Beijing try to co-opt members of China’s vast diaspora, hoping to develop a network that will facilitate political infiltration into other countries and high-tech transfers out of them. To this end, they resort to both overt schemes, like the Thousand Talents Plan, an official headhunting program, and covert tactics overseen by the C.C.P.’s influence machine, the United Front.
These efforts have set off alarms among some Americans. In 2017 and 2018, two groups of blue-ribbon scholars and ex-officials from previous United States administrations advocated a fundamental change in America’s view of China. Their members were moderates and mostly well-disposed toward China. Yet some of their recommendations dovetailed with the views of the Trump administration hawks who consider China to be America’s number-one enemy and security threat. Mr. Xi, apparently oblivious to this sea change, was caught unprepared when Mr. Trump hit China with a tariff war.
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The dispute is having a knock-on effect elsewhere in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Europe. After a summit in Brussels last month, China agreed to grant European Union countries “improved” market access, stop the forced transfer of technology and discuss the possibility of curtailing state subsidies to Chinese companies, which, other governments say, gives them an unfair competitive advantage. Although these concessions were presented in the mild, mutual-promise language of a joint statement, they were a clear setback for China and will blunt its global ambitions.
Why is all of this happening under Mr. Xi? History suggests an answer.
In the late 1950s, Mao began to challenge the Soviet Union’s leadership of the international communist movement, then a potent force that hoped to overturn the United States-led world order. Mao was also seeking global dominance, in line with the traditional concept that the emperor of the Middle Kingdom was the rightful ruler of “tian xia” (天下), everything under the heavens. But Mao overreached; China wasn’t strong enough for that then. The Soviet Union’s decision to scrap aid programs to China and pull out its scientific and technological advisers there dealt a severe blow to China’s underperforming socialist economy.
Like Mao with the Soviets, Mr. Xi may have challenged the global leadership of the United States too hard and too soon.
Mr. Xi’s second major shortcoming has been his failure to articulate a coherent set of policies to stop the Chinese economy’s long-term weakening, after many years of stellar performance. China’s gross-domestic-product growth in 2018 was the weakest in 28 years. The figure for the first quarter of this year was 6.4 percent, compared with the record high of 15.4 percent for the same period in 1993. Even that number would be the envy of many Western states, but the decline should concern China’s leadership because it underlines the country’s structural problems — notably, a rapidly graying population, a shrinking labor force and a total debt-to-G.D.P. ratio that neared 300 percent in the first quarter of 2018. The Japanese bank Nomura has estimated that defaults on bonds denominated in renminbi (also known as yuan) quadrupled between 2017 and 2018.
Weighed down by demographics and debt, China can hardly expand through more private investment and consumption. Worse, since its economy already has some huge excess capacities (think newly built ghost towns), government stimulus isn’t very effective. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2008, it took one trillion yuan of credit to generate one trillion yuan of economic output; by 2017, the ratio was 3.5-to-1.
Yet Xi has done little to address these structural issues.
Evidence of severe demographic problems had become apparent by the late 2000s, but in 2016 Mr. Xi merely replaced the one-child policy with a two-child policy. Too little, too late. China’s number of newborns per year has dropped since the changes. The 2018 total was the lowest since 1961, a year struck by a terrible famine. Mr. Xi signed off on an economic stimulus package in 2015 that was 25 percent larger than his predecessor’s emergency plan in 2009, which had been implemented as a response to the global financial crisis. And again, in January and February of this year alone, even while Mr. Xi has been paying lip service to the need to wean the economy off state support, the government offered new loans and financing exceeding the package for all of 2015, according to an article in Forbes.
A third criticism of Mr. Xi is that under him, China has sponsored or condoned actions by Chinese citizens and entities worldwide that have damaged the country’s international reputation while degrading its own moral fabric.
Take intellectual property, for example. The United States seems to have hard evidence that it was the policy of Huawei, a flagship Chinese high-tech company, to reward employees for I.P. theft. And, as I have written before, such a policy is encouraged, arguably even mandatory, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law.
Traditionally, the ideal Chinese state is a Confucian state that adheres to strict moral and behavioral norms. Yet for all his cracking down on corruption at home, Mr. Xi has encouraged moral turpitude abroad; his vision of China is a nation of patriotic thieves. All Chinese arguably have lost face as a result, and now innocent people overseas may be dismissed out of hand as guilty by association.
Mr. Xi is widely seen as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. After the Constitution was amended last year, he could be president for life — unless his serious failures of leadership give his opponents at home enough reason to cut him short.
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本帖最後由 U52.5U4G 於 2019-5-9 01:19 編輯 ]
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