本来，在哪个国家都是一样的。何况是中国，一个无比聪明的国家。
November 12, 2008
Don't count on China to save the worldBeijing's £375bn economic package makes it a world player. But its own interests will come first。
Jonathan Fenby
When China puts on a show it does so on a grand scale. After all the pomp and circumstance at the Olympics in August, Beijing raised its economic sights this week with a £375 billion stimulus package to pump fresh life into Chinese growth.
The actual amount of new money being committed is opaque, but the political effect is undeniable - both for the People's Republic and for world leaders meeting at the G20 summit in Washington this weekend.
China has a great advantage over Western governments in the present crisis as its banks are state owned. The financial system has been only partially liberalised. Currency movements are controlled - after a strong rise in the yuan attracted a flood of speculative “hot money”, the authorities took it off the foreign exchange table to keep it stable.
China's financial system is inefficient in many ways, and conceals serious weaknesses, but the People's Republic does not have to concern itself with bank bailouts. As for the stock markets in Shanghai and Shezhen, they slumped before the downturn elsewhere, and have become largely irrelevant, even if plenty of individual investors are licking their wounds from a 60 per cent fall from the peak of 2007.
What concerns Beijing is the impact of falling global demand on exports, with quarterly growth below 10 per cent. After a healthy fiscal surplus last year and in the first half of 2008, China's leadership has dived in head first with promises of huge spending on infrastructure. Details are unclear, and some observers think a lot of the total is programmes already in the pipeline. But the main beneficiaries will be transport, housing, rural infrastructure, water, electricity, technological innovation and reconstruction after the Sichuan earthquake.
As the financial crisis mounted, some commentators speculated that China might use its $2 trillion stockpile of foreign reserves to bail out financial institutions in the West. Given Beijing's losses on earlier investments in foreign institutions, that was a non-starter. But President Hu Jintao will go to Washington this weekend with a different message that others will find hard to match - “We've announced our stimulus package: what are you going to do?”
Other leaders can hardly cavil - as Gordon Brown noted yesterday: “A fiscal stimulus in one country can benefit from fiscal stimuluses that are taking place in other countries.” The problem may be that they simply do not have the kind of money China can wave in the air. How much will Barack Obama be able to rustle up when he gets to the White House?
The father of China's economic reform, Deng Xiaoping, always advised his country to advance cautiously and with as little noise as possible. China does not want a global leadership role. It prefers to let others make the running, probably looking to President Sarkozy as its chosen baton carrier after his talks with Hu in Beijing last month. Its prime concern is to boost the domestic economy, not bail out the world. That, it insists, is its best contribution to the world crisis.
But this week's package serves China's long-term interests as well. Its infrastructure needs modernisation, particularly the railways. The property sector must be weaned off speculation. The countryside must be brought up to speed.
The leadership's interest in safeguarding growth goes beyond a desire to preside over an expanding economy. In the 30 years since Deng launched China's market-led economic reforms, Marxism-Maoism has withered. The legitimacy of the one-party regime rests on its ability to provide increasing material well-being for its 1.3 billion people.
With wealth disparities widening, Hu and the Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have to maintain growth and provide millions of new jobs. They have to rebalance the economy away from exports to domestic demand, away from fixed-assets investment towards consumption, away from labour-intensive, low value-added goods to more advanced products - the first contract for sale of Chinese airliners to a US leasing firm have been signed while machinery and cars were the fastest growing export sectors in the first half of this year.
Sunday's announcement is a step on that path. But it also underlines the shift in the global balance as China's size and resources make it much more than a provider of cheap exports. Its economic health will become more and more entwined with the rest of the world's in ways of which Deng Xiaoping can only have dreamt. The weekend summit will provide an opportunity to chart how that relationship will develop but one thing is certain: for China, China's interests predominate. Mr Brown and others can only hope that there really is symbiosis between Beijing and the rest of the world.
中文翻译如下：
中国就是大手笔。继八月烟花绚烂的奥运会之后，北京拿出3750亿英镑的经济刺激方案给中国增长注入生气。
承诺的数额是不透明的，但政治效应却不可否认——对中国以及将在本周末参加华盛顿G20金融峰会的各国领袖而言都如此。
面对目前的危机，比起西方政府，中国有一个大优势，因为它大银行是国有的。金融体系只是部分自由化。货币的运转是受控的——人民币一度强劲升值，吸引了大量投机“热钱”，此后当局就不让它自由浮动，以保持稳定。
从很多方面来看，中国的金融体系效率低下，而且掩盖着严重的弱点，但中国不用担心银行救援。至于深沪股市，它们在别处进入低迷之前就已经下跌，而且已经变得基本上不相干了，只是很多散户投资者要自舔伤口——跟2007年高峰期相比，股市下跌60% 。
北京担心的是全球需求减退对出口的影响，以及低于10%的季度增长率。凭着去年以及2008年上半年强劲的财政盈余，中国领导人得以承诺庞大的基础设施支出。细节尚不明朗，而且一些观察家认为当中很多是之前已经考虑的方案。但主要的受惠方将是交通、住房、农村基础设施、水、电、技术革新以及四川地震灾区重建。
随着金融危机加剧，一些评论员猜测中国可能动用2万亿美元的外汇储备拯救西方的金融机构。鉴于北京早期在外国机构投资方面的失败，那是没可能的事。但中国国家主席胡锦涛本周末将前往华盛顿，带去一个不同的信息——“我们已经宣布了我们的刺激方案：你们打算做什么？”而其他国家会发现自己很难跟中国比。
其他国家的领袖几乎无法挑剔——诚如英国首相布朗昨日（11日）所言，一国的财政刺激可以受益于别国采取的财政刺激。问题是它们根本没有中国可以拿出来的那种钱。奥巴马入主白宫之后可以搞到多少？
中国经济改革之父邓小平总是建议他的国家谨慎前行，尽可能不要声张。中国并不想要全球领袖的角色。它情愿让其他人带头，法国总统萨科奇上月与胡锦涛在北京会晤，中国很可能希望他接过接力棒。中国主要担心的是推动国内经济，而不是拯救世界。它坚称，这就是它对世界危机的最大贡献。
但本周的方案也符合中国的长期利益。它的基础设施需要进行现代化，特别是铁路。房地产市场必须摆脱投机。农村必须加速发展。
领导人对保增长的兴趣并不仅仅是一种维持经济扩张的愿望。自邓小平发起市场经济改革以来的三十年里，马克思毛泽东主义已经枯萎。一党专政的合法性有赖于它为13亿人提供物质福利的能力。
贫富差距日益扩大，胡锦涛和中国总理温家宝不得不维持增长，为数以百万计的人们提供新的就业岗位。他们不得不重新平衡经济，使之从出口型转向内需型，从固定资产投资型转向消费型，从劳动密集型低附加价值商品转向更加高档的产品——中国向美国企业出售客机的第一份合同已经签署，而且在今年上半年，机械和汽车是增长最快的出口部门。
9日宣布的刺激方案正是朝这个方向迈出的一步。但它也凸显全球平衡的转变，中国的庞大以及资源注定中国不仅是廉价出口品供应商。它的经济健康将和世界的密不可分，其程度是邓小平只有在做梦时才能想象的。本周末的峰会将提供一个机会，记录这种关系将会怎样发展，不过可以肯定一件事：中国会以中国利益为主。布朗和其他人只能希望北京和世界各地之间真的有着共生关系。
这道理哪里都说的通，哪里都正确！
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