美国有敌人吗？有！但不是中国，而是……

CNN网站5月26日刊登哥伦比亚大学经济学教授、哈佛国际研究中心主任杰弗里·萨克斯文章《美国经济问题的根源不在于中国，而在于美国企业的贪婪》

文：Jeffrey Sachs

译：马力

中国不是美国的敌人。中国这个国家在努力通过教育、国际贸易、基础设施投资和技术进步来提高国民生活水平。简而言之，中国的所作所为，是任何一个积贫积弱的国家在那样的历史现实面前都应该做的。但现在特朗普政府却把阻止中国发展作为目标，这对美国和全世界来说可能都将是一场灾难。

美国国内的不平等现象日益突出，中国却被当成了替罪羊。尽管多年以来，中美贸易关系一直是互惠的，然而由于中国生产率提高、劳动力成本相对较低，一些美国工人（尤其是中西部的那些工人）在与中国的激烈竞争中被抛在了后面。我们不应因为这种正常的市场竞争现象而指责中国，而应该对本国那些利润飞涨的跨国公司征税，利用这笔税金去帮助工薪阶层，重建美国破败的基础设施，开展再就业培训，以及增加尖端技术领域投资。

我们应该明白，中国经历了长期的地缘政治挫败和经济政策失误，它现在只是在努力弥补失去的时间。知道一点历史背景有助于理解中国过去40年的经济发展。

1839年，英国向中国发动了第一次鸦片战争，原因是中国拒绝英国商人继续向中国人贩卖具有成瘾性的鸦片。1842年，英国赢得了那场战争，中国遭遇了耻辱性的失败，这在一定程度上诱发了名为“太平天国”的大规模民间起义。太平天国运动导致2000万人丧生。1856年，中国与英法两国之间又爆发了第二次鸦片战争，其结果是中国的主权和国内稳定不断遭受侵蚀。

19世纪末，中国在战场上败给了刚走上工业化道路的日本，又面临欧洲和美国单方面提出的通商贸易要求。这些国耻激发了中国另一场民间起义，而它在外国列强的镇压下再次宣告失败。

1911年，清王朝的历史终于走向终结。中国很快进入了军阀混战的时代，国内冲突不断。1931年，日本人开始侵略中国。第二次世界大战结束后，中国陷入内战，直到1949年，我们今天熟知的中华人民共和国才宣告成立。其后中国又经历了大跃进和文革等一系列挫折，国家稳定受到大范围冲击。

1978年，邓小平当政后掀起了席卷全国的经济改革大潮，市场经济快速发展起来。尽管四十年来中国实现了令人难以置信的高速增长，但百余年来的贫穷困苦、社会动荡、民族屈辱和外敌入侵仍让中国人记忆犹新。这一次，中国领导人将牢牢把握正确的方向，这就意味着他们不会再向美国或其他西方强国委曲求全。

以市场价格计算，如今的中国已经是全球第二大经济体。即便如此，中国仍然处于脱贫致富的过程当中。国际货币基金组织的数据显示，1980年中国人均GDP仅为美国的2.5%，到2018年这个比值也只是上升到15.3%。如果按照购买力平价标准——即以同一套“国际物价”衡量所有国家的GDP——计算，2018年中国人均GDP刚刚超过美国的28.9%。

中国大陆基本上沿袭了此前日本、韩国、新加坡以及香港和台湾地区的发展战略。从经济角度来看，对于一个追赶型的国家来说，中国并没有做什么反常的事。美国像念口头禅一样抱怨中国“窃取”了自己的技术。事实上，这种观点把问题看得过于简单了。

相对落后的国家实现技术升级的方式有很多，比如学习、模仿、购买、并购、外资，以及广泛应用专利权到期的知识产权，当然也包括抄袭。在那些发展日新月异的技术领域，围绕知识产权的争夺总是难以避免的，甚至美国公司之间也是如此，这种竞争其实只是全球经济体系日常运行的一部分而已。技术领域的高管们很清楚，不可能指望保护措施来维持自己的领先地位，必须不断创新。

19世纪初，美国咬定英国不放松，吸取了大量技术。任何一个国家，只要它希望缩小与先进国家之间的技术差距，都必须吸收国外的技术。众所周知，美国在二战结束后招纳了一批前纳粹火箭专家，而美国的弹道导弹项目就是在他们的协助下完成的。

如果把中国换做另一个人口没那么多的亚洲国家，比如人口5000万左右的韩国，它必然会被美国赞誉为一个伟大的发展奇迹。当然中国的发展确实是伟大奇迹，但由于中国体量太大，它的存在驳回了美国主导全世界的妄想。毕竟，美国人口仅占全球人口的4.2%，还不到中国的四分之一。今天的现实情况是，随着技术和知识以前所未见的高速度在全球扩散，不论美国还是中国都无法完全主导这个世界。

对华贸易为美国提供了大量的廉价中低端消费品以及质量越来越好的制成品。它也导致美国那些与中国存在直接竞争关系的产业工作岗位流失，比如制造业。然而这本是国际贸易的正常现象。给中国扣上“不公平贸易行为”的做法是错误的，因为众多美国企业通过在华生产或对华出口获得了大量利益。同时美国消费者也通过购买中国的廉价产品提高了自己的生活水平。中美两国应当继续协商，改善双边和多边贸易规则，而不是单方面威胁发起贸易战并给对方扣大帽子。

国际贸易理论、实践和政策有个最基本耳朵原则，那就是不中断贸易活动，因为一旦中断将导致人民生活水平下降、经济危机和国际冲突。我们应当互相分享经济增长带来的红利。如此一来，贸易活动中的受益者可以为失利者提供某种补偿。

但美国今天的资本主义制度早已偏离“罗斯福新政”所倡导的合作精神，在这样的情况下，赢家断然拒绝与他人分享自己的胜利果实。正因为缺乏共享，美国政治才会在贸易问题上如此矛盾深重。可以说，贪婪全面主导着华盛顿的政策。

美国真正的斗争对象不是中国，而是美国自己的那些大公司。其中许多公司的财富已经堆成了山，却不让自己的员工获得体面的收入。美国企业领袖和富豪群体积极推动减税、扩大垄断并把制造业外包到劳动力成本低廉的国家，为了增加利润他们无所不用其极，却拒绝任何有助于促进美国社会公平的政策。

特朗普不断打压中国，他似乎以为中国会再度向西方强国屈服。美国蓄意击垮华为等成功的中国企业，所以才会陡然发难，单方面改变国际贸易规则。过去40年以来，中国一直遵守着西方制定的游戏规则，逐步实现经济赶超，其做法跟美国的亚洲盟友们当年没什么区别。如今美国企图发动一场新的冷战，对中国釜底抽薪。

除非我们能拿出更高的智慧，否则美国可能会卷入对华冲突的泥潭。这场冲突将首先发生在经济领域，然后扩散到地缘政治甚至军事领域。这对所有人而言都是一场彻底的灾难。但由于当下的美国政治极度肤浅和堕落，我们还是踏上了这条路。

对华贸易战解决不了美国的经济问题。正相反，我们应该在国内寻找解决方案：包括更实惠的医疗服务、更优质的教育、现代化的基础设施、提高最低工资标准，以及打击美国企业的贪婪。在这个过程中我们将认识到：美国与其鲁莽地、不公平地挑衅中国，远远不如与之合作获益更多。

China is not the source of our economic problems -- corporate greed is

China is not an enemy. It is a nation trying to raise its living standards through education, international trade, infrastructure investment, and improved technologies. In short, it is doing what any country should do when confronted with the historical reality of being poor and far behind more powerful countries. Yet the Trump administration is now aiming to stop China's development, which could prove to be disastrous for both the United States and the entire world.

China is being made a scapegoat for rising inequality in the United States. While US trade relations with China have been mutually beneficial over the years, some US workers have been left behind, notably Midwestern factory workers facing competition due to rising productivity and comparatively low (though rising) labor costs in China. Instead of blaming China for this normal phenomenon of market competition, we should be taxing the soaring corporate profits of our own multinational corporations and using the revenues to help working-class households, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, promote new job skills and invest in cutting-edge science and technology.

We should understand that China is merely trying to make up for lost time after a very long period of geopolitical setbacks and related economic failures. Here is important historical background that is useful to understand China's economic development in the past 40 years.

In 1839, Britain attacked China because it refused to allow British traders to continue providing Chinese people with addictive opium. Britain prevailed, and the humiliation of China's defeat in the First Opium War, ending in 1842, contributed in part to a mass uprising against the Qing Dynasty called the Taiping Rebellion that ended up causing more than 20 million deaths. A Second Opium War against Britain and France ultimately led to the continued erosion of China's power and internal stability.

Toward the end of the 19th century, China lost a war to the newly industrializing Japan, and was subjected to yet more one-sided demands by Europe and the United States for trade. These humiliations led to another rebellion, followed by yet another defeat, at the hands of foreign powers.

China's Qing Dynasty fell in 1911, after which China quickly succumbed to warlords, internal strife and Japan's invasion of China beginning in 1931. The end of World War II was followed by civil war, the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and then the upheavals of Maoism, including millions of deaths from famine in the Great Leap Forward, which ended in the early 1960s, and the mass destabilization of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath until 1977.

China's rapid development on a market basis therefore started only in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping came to power and launched sweeping economic reforms. While China has seen incredible growth in the past four decades, the legacy of more than a century of poverty, instability, invasion and foreign threats still looms large. Chinese leaders would like to get things right this time, and that means they are unwilling to bow to the United States or other Western powers again.

China is now the second-largest economy in the world, when GDP is measured at market prices. Yet it is a country still in the process of catching up from poverty. In 1980, according to IMF data, China's GDP per capita was a mere 2.5% of the United States, and by 2018 had reached only 15.3% of the US level. When GDP is measured in purchasing-power-parity terms, by using a common set of "international prices" to value GDP in all countries, China's income per capita in 2018 was a bit higher at 28.9% of the United States.

China has roughly followed the same development strategy as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore before it. From an economic standpoint, it is not doing anything particularly unusual for a country that is playing catch up.The constant US refrain that China "steals" technologies is highly simplistic.

Countries that are lagging behind upgrade their technologies in many ways, through study, imitation, purchases, mergers, foreign investments, extensive use of off-patent knowledge and, yes, copying. And with any fast-changing technologies, there are always running battles over intellectual property. That's true even among US companies today -- this kind of competition is simply a part of the global economic system. Technology leaders know they shouldn't count on keeping their lead through protection, but through continued innovation.

The United States relentlessly adopted British technologies in the early 19th century. And when any country wants to close a technology gap, it recruits know-how from abroad. The US ballistic missile program, as it is well known, was built with the help of former Nazi rocket scientists recruited to the United States after World War II.

If China were a less populous Asian country, say like South Korea, with a little more than 50 million people, it would simply be hailed by the United States as a great development success story -- which it is. But because it is so big, China refutes America's pretensions to run the world. The United States, after all, is a mere 4.2% of the world's population, less than a fourth of China's. The truth is that neither country is in a position to dominate the world today, as technologies and know-how are spreading more quickly across the globe than ever before.

Trade with China provides the United States with low-cost consumer goods and increasingly high-quality products. It also causes job losses in sectors such as manufacturing that compete directly with China. That is how trade works. To accuse China of unfairness in this is wrong -- plenty of American companies have reaped the benefits of manufacturing in China or exporting goods there. And US consumers enjoy higher living standards as a result of China's low-cost goods. The US and China should continue to negotiate and develop improved rules for bilateral and multilateral trade instead of stoking a trade war with one-sided threats and over-the-top accusations.

The most basic lesson of trade theory, practice and policy is not to stop trade -- which would lead to falling living standards, economic crisis and conflict. Instead, we should share the benefits of economic growth so that the winners who benefit compensate the losers.

Yet under American capitalism, which has long strayed from the cooperative spirit of the New Deal era, today's winners flat-out reject sharing their winnings. As a result of this lack of sharing, American politics are fraught with conflicts over trade. Greed comprehensively dominates Washington policies.

The real battle is not with China but with America's own giant companies, many of which are raking in fortunes while failing to pay their own workers decent wages. America's business leaders and the mega-rich push for tax cuts, more monopoly power and offshoring -- anything to make a bigger profit -- while rejecting any policies to make American society fairer.

Trump is lashing out against China, ostensibly believing that it will once again bow to a Western power. It is willfully trying to crush successful companies like Huawei by changing the rules of international trade abruptly and unilaterally. China has been playing by Western rules for the past 40 years, gradually catching up the way that America's Asian allies did in the past. Now the United States is trying to pull the rug out from under China by launching a new Cold War.

Unless some greater wisdom prevails, we could spin toward conflict with China, first economically, then geopolitically and militarily, with utter disaster for all. There will be no winners in such a conflict. Yet such is the profound shallowness and corruption of US politics today that we are on such a path.

A trade war with China won't solve our economic problems. Instead we need homegrown solutions: affordable health care, better schools, modernized infrastructure, higher minimum wages and a crackdown on corporate greed. In the process, we would also learn that we have far more to gain through cooperation with China rather than reckless and unfair provocation.

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