【转帖】China contemplates change

[zhoujj2000]

Oct 13th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

As China forecasts another year of GDP growth above 9% and America’s treasury secretary tries again to persuade Beijing to revalue the yuan, China's government does seem to be preparing to change its approach to economic growth. However, its main concern is not American policymakers but China's poor

ONE could practically hear the teeth gnashing and the garments being rent in Washington and Brussels. On Tuesday October 11th, China’s planning agency announced that GDP had grown at an annual rate of 9.4% in the first nine months of 2005, causing it to raise its forecast for the full year to 9.2%, from 8.8%. The agency also predicted a record trade surplus of $79 billion for this year, more than twice last year’s, even though the export growth rate has slowed somewhat. With workers in the West already up in arms about low-wage competition from China, news that the peril to the east is growing even faster than expected is the last thing politicians in the developed world wanted to hear.

In recent months, those politicians have been battling assiduously to keep China’s good fortune from spilling too far into their domestic markets. The European Union has only recently resolved the “Bra Wars” contretemps, in which Chinese-made clothes piled up at European customs points thanks to import quotas imposed at the beginning of the summer, and retailers facing empty shelves howled for relief. The United States, too, has been pressuring China over textiles. This week, as John Snow, the American treasury secretary, visited Beijing, negotiators sought to reach an agreement on Chinese textiles. American manufacturers have been pushing for the kind of comprehensive quota agreement that the EU reached with China. But on Thursday, the American negotiators reported that they had once again failed to reach a deal on the touchy issue.

Americans are also pressuring China because of its currency, which some on Capitol Hill claim is undervalued against the dollar by as much as 40%. This makes China’s goods irresistibly attractive to American consumers, who have been on a buying binge thanks to low interest rates (in turn helped by China’s stockpiling of US Treasuries), running down savings and taking on debt to finance their spending. Figures released on Thursday showed that surging shipments of clothing and textiles pushed America's imports from China to a record $22.4 billion in August.

Mr Snow is using his visit to press the case for a looser currency peg. Though China revalued the yuan in July, pegging it to a basket of currencies rather than only the dollar, it has moved only a couple of percentage points against the American currency, far too little to hold back the flood of imports into the United States. On Tuesday, Mr Snow said that while he applauds steps towards a more liberal currency regime, America wanted to encourage China to “move forward” on the issue. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, China's finance minister, Jin Renqing, rebuffed Mr Snow's demands: “Using revaluation of the renminbi [yuan] to resolve global imbalances, particularly the imbalances of certain countries, is impossible and also unnecessary,” he said.

Mr Snow is treading reasonably cautiously for now. He said last week that he did not want to threaten China with trade sanctions over the issue, and the Treasury has delayed its bi-annual report, which will contain its assessment of China’s currency situation, until this week’s meetings are concluded. But many in Congress are pushing for bolder action. Last week Chuck Schumer, a New York senator, told Mr Snow that he would expect the report to label China a “currency manipulator” unless the yuan is allowed to fluctuate more. Mr Schumer is also co-sponsoring a bill to slap tariffs of 27.5% on Chinese imports unless China revalues, which has substantial support in Congress. The growing protectionist sentiment among America’s legislators has had little obvious effect on the Chinese, who continue to resist fiercely any appearance of caving in to American demands.

This is not the first time the Chinese have stood their ground. In the late 1990s, many saw the yuan as overvalued. But China resisted pressure to devalue in order to avoid exacerbating the Asian financial crisis. It is also worth noting that while China does benefit in some ways from an undervalued currency now, it has opened its markets to a greater extent than some other Asian countries during rapid, export-led development.

Addressing inequality
Nonetheless, China’s leaders may finally be readying themselves for a change in the mercantilist, growth-at-any-cost model that has prevailed for decades. The Communist Party leaders’ annual meeting on economic policy ended on Tuesday with word of a strategic shift: from now on, there will be more emphasis on redressing the inequality and social disruption that market reforms have left in their wake.

The most immediate worry for China’s leaders is social unrest. Last year, the government documented more than 70,000 demonstrations, attended by some 3m protesters. The government is caught in a bind. It needs the export sector to continue booming, in order to absorb surplus labour from the countryside and moribund state-owned companies. But it is aware that the rapid growth of recent years has opened fractures that could grow even wider.

If China can heal some of those rifts with a greater focus on rescuing those left behind by the new prosperity, this may in turn take some of the pressure off the government to subsidise export workers through currency management. It may also help China to develop domestic demand that can take up the slack when America’s appetite for cheap goods falters, as it inevitably must given the paucity of its national savings.

But though details are sketchy, it seems improbable that China’s move towards more balanced economic growth will be anything like the kind of radical leap that foreign observers would like. There are some brands of wealth redistribution that would make foreign investors very jittery, such as higher taxes. Hu Jintao, China’s president, is still consolidating power; even if he had a radical vision of a China less dependent on the cravings of the American consumer, it would have to wait until his command of the party was firmer. More importantly, it would have to wait until Chinese consumers became sufficiently confident in the social safety-net and the provision of affordable health care and education that they were willing to save less and spend more. But where is the money for pensions and the like going to come from?

And though the rising tide of China’s economy undoubtedly has the power to lift all boats, there are worrying rigidities in the system, caused by the under-development of its financial system and the fact that economic reform has not been accompanied by political reform. Officials rightly fret that further economic changes could undermine the stability of the party’s rule. Amid all the talk of addressing the wealth gap, the party’s plenum reiterated a commitment to rapid growth by restating a goal of raising China’s GDP to double its 2000 level by 2010. As long as China’s expansion remains export-driven, western politicians may just have to learn to live with a new and unpredictable economic power.

[eve]

最后一句说的好！

[zhoujj2000]

讲得比较客观,符合实际.但是这个假设很容易随着当权者的野心而打破

[eve]

哪方当权者？

[starmouse]

这两天党员们不都忙着保先吗？
不要把经济和政治的关系想得那么绝对，这个里面是没有什么定论的

[eve]

大人在说话 小孩子不要插嘴

[zhoujj2000]

我个人认为,中国还是不要称霸好. 大家齐心搞建设.既然GDP已经全球第六了,下一部应该考虑切实地提高国民生活水平.而不是一味追求政绩.
另外,经济基础决定上层建筑.上层建筑反作用与经济基础.
如果我们国家的经济强大了,如果出现强势的激进派政治人物,很难保证中共永远不称王不称霸.这一条还是应该写进宪法比较好.

[starmouse]

作者: eve

大人在说话 小孩子不要插嘴

好的，阿婆

[eve]

经济增长的方式一定需要改变 国民素质需要提升 教育支出和教育激励制度必须有所保障

[zhoujj2000]

教育的确很重要,国民建立正确的世界观,价值观,人生观.
领导人也必须清醒地认识到,不能一味求发展,求政绩.
要建立一套符合和谐社会的价值理念, 在东方国家,孔子的价值观可以被考虑用来重新提出.
现在国内拜金主义很严重. 应该要好好治一治.

[eve]

拜金不一定不好 重要的是要有道德操守 和一个社会严密的机制来抵制负面效应
在美国 政府官员受贿很难 为什么？ 因为有一个框架 这个是政体还有政府机制决定的 当你送一幅中国丝毯 虽然实际价值不高 但是他们就有人认为手工艺品的价值相当高 认为这是贿赂 一旦有人这样认为 类似弹劾拉 类似起诉拉 类似媒体曝光拉 防不胜防 官员一直处于这样的警醒状态 就算不是贿赂意图 他们还是会拒绝
就算是贿赂 那基本上是白送 因为他们根本没有权利涉足不是应有范围内的职权 如果是 那么下一道环节必定不是他负责 这样分权分职 贿赂是没用的 除非你是超级超级富有 但是超级超级富有的人在美国一般都是纳税大户 哄还来不及 要贿什么赂呀

故， 拜金有理但是必须要有道德和机制来防止不经济

[starmouse]

其实很早就有人提过，在中国寡头政治是比较难以实现的

另：你们在讨论的东西好泛哪

[zhoujj2000]

作者: starmouse

其实很早就有人提过，在中国寡头政治是比较难以实现的

另：你们在讨论的东西好泛哪

泛泛而谈,只为交流思想.
太专业,太技术的东西也不在这里谈.