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本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2012-2-21 14:54 编辑
We're All State Capitalists NowThedebate about whether America or China willultimately triumph is a red herring that distracts us from the real contest ofour time.
BY NIALL FERGUSON | FEBRUARY 9, 2012原文有些长，认领的同学可以节选
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/09/we_re_all_state_capitalists_now
Ifthere is one issue on which the rival candidates for the U.S. presidency agree,it's that America's global leadership will endure. Mitt Romney insistsit is not a "post-American century," while Barack Obama declaredin his State of the Union address that "anyonewho tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline orthat our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about."
Theymust enjoy this kind of chest-beating in Beijing.
Thata resurgent China poses a challenge to American power -- especially in theAsia-Pacific region -- has been clear for some time to those who know whatthey're talking about. The real question is whether the United States hasa credible response. Should it apply some version of the "containment theory" thatthe late George Kennan recommended for dealing with the Soviet challenge after1945? Or something more subtle, like the "co-evolution" suggested by formerSecretary of State Henry Kissinger?
Leaveaside the military and diplomatic calculus and consider only the economicchallenge China poses to the United States. This is not just a matter of scale,though it is no small matter that, according to the IMF, China's GDP will overtakethat of the United States within four years on the basis of purchasing powerparity. Nor is it only about the pace of China's growth, though any Asianexporter forced to choose between China and America would be inclined to choosethe former; their trade with China is growing far more rapidly than trade with theUnited States.
No,according to some commentators, the contest between the two Asian superpowersis also fundamentally a contest between economic models: market capitalism vs. state capitalism. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos this January,David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group expresseda widely held view that the Chinese model of state capitalism is pulling aheadof the U.S. market model. "We've gotto work through these problems," Rubenstein said. "If we don't do [so], in three or fouryears … the game will be over for the type of capitalism that many of us havelived through and thought was the best type." I think this view is dead wrong.But it's interesting to see why so many influential people now subscribe to it.
Marketcapitalism has certainly had a rough five years. Remember the WashingtonConsensus? That was the to-do list of 10 economic policies designed toAmericanize emerging markets back in the 1990s. The U.S. government andinternational financial institutions urged countries to impose fiscaldiscipline and reduce or eliminate budget deficits, broaden the tax base andlower tax rates, allow the market to set interest and exchange rates, andliberalize trade and capital flows. When Asian economies were hit by the 1997-1998 financialcrisis, American critics were quick to bemoan the defects of"crony capitalism" in the region, and they appeared to have economic history ontheir side.
Yettoday, in the aftermath of the biggest U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression,the world looks very different. Not only did the 2008-2009 meltdown of financial markets seem to expose the fundamental fragility of the capitalist system,but China's apparent ability to withstand the reverberations of Wall Street'simplosion also suggested the possibility of a new "Beijing Consensus" based oncentral planning and state control of volatile market forces.
Inhis book TheEnd of the Free Market, the Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer argues thatauthoritarian governments all over the world have "invented something new:state capitalism":
In this system, governments use various kinds of state-owned companies to manage the exploitation of resources that they consider the state's crown jewels and to create and maintain large numbers of jobs. They use select privately owned companies to dominate certain economic sectors. They use so-called sovereign wealth funds to invest their extra cash in ways that maximize the state's profits. In all three cases, the state is using markets to create wealth that can be directed as political officials see fit. And in all three cases, the ultimate motive is not economic (maximizing growth) but political (maximizing the state's power and the leadership's chances of survival). This is a form of capitalism but one in which the state acts as the dominant economic player and uses markets primarily for political gain.
ForBremmer, state capitalism poses a grave "threat" not only to the free marketmodel, but also to democracy in the developing world.
Althoughapplicable to states all over the globe, at root this is an argument aboutChina. Bremmer himself writes that "China holds the key." But is it in factcorrect to ascribe China's success to the state rather than the market? Theanswer depends on where you go in China. In Shanghai orChongqing, for example, the central government does indeed loom very large. InWenzhou, by comparison, the economy is as vigorously entrepreneurial andmarket-driven as anywhere I have ever been.
True,China's economy continues to be managed on the basis of a five-year plan, anauthoritarian tradition that goes all the way back to Josef Stalin. As I write,however, the Chinese authorities are grappling with a problem that owes more tomarket forces than to the plan: the aftermath of an urban real estate bubblecaused by the massive 2009-2010 credit expansion. Among China experts, thehot topic of the moment is the new shadow banking system in cities such asWenzhou, which last year enabled developers and investors to carry on buildingand selling apartment blocks even as the People's Bank of China sought torestrict lending by raising rates and bank reserve requirements.
Talkto some eminent Chinese economists, and you could be forgiven for concludingthat the ultimate aim of policy is to get rid of state capitalism altogether."We need to privatize all the state-owned enterprises," one leading economisttold me over dinner in Beijing a year ago. "We even need to privatize the GreatHall of the People." He also claimed to have said this to President Hu Jintao."Hu couldn't tell if I was serious or if I was joking," he told me proudly.
Ultimately, it is an unhelpful oversimplification to divide the world into"market capitalist" and "state capitalist" camps. The reality is that mostcountries are arranged along a spectrum where both the intent andthe extent of state intervention in the economy vary. Only extreme libertariansargue that the state has no role whatsoever to play in the economy. As adevotee of Adam Smith, I accept without qualification his argument in The Wealth of Nations that the benefitsof free trade and the division of labor will be enjoyed only in countries withrational laws and institutions. I also agree with Silicon Valley visionaryPeter Thiel that, under the right circumstances (e.g., in time of war),governments are capable of forcing the direction and pace of technologicalchange: Think the Manhattan Project.
Butthe question today is not whether the state or the market should be in charge.The real question is which countries' laws and institutions are best, not only atachieving rapid economic growth but also, equally importantly, at distributingthe fruits of growth in a way that citizens deem to be just.
Letus begin by asking a simple question that can be answered with empirical data:Where in the world is the role of the state greatest in economic life, andwhere is it smallest? The answer lies in data the IMF publishes on "generalgovernment total expenditure" as a percentage of GDP. At one extreme arecountries like East Timor and Iraq, where government expenditure exceeds GDP;at the other end are countries like Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Myanmar, where it is anabsurdly low share of total output.
Beyondthese outliers we have China, whose spending represents 23 percent of GDP, downfrom around 28 percent three decades ago. By this measure, China ranks 147thout of 183 countries for which data are available. Germany ranks 24th, withgovernment spending accounting for 48 percent of GDP. The United States,meanwhile, is 44th with 44 percent of GDP. By this measure, state capitalism isa European, not an Asian, phenomenon: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France,Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden all have highergovernment spending relative to GDP than Germany. The Danish figure is 58percent, more than twice that of the Chinese.
Theresults are similar if one focuses on government consumption -- the share ofGDP accounted for by government purchases of goods and services, asopposed to transfers or investment. Again, ignoring the outliers, it is Europewhose states play the biggest role in the economy as buyers: Denmark (27percent) is far ahead of Germany (18 percent), while the United States is at 17percent. China? 13 percent. For Hong Kong, the figure is 8 percent. For Macao,7 percent.
WhereChina does lead the West is in the enormous share of gross fixed capital formation(jargon for investment in hard assets) accounted for by the public sector.According to World Bank data, thisamounted to 21 percent of China's GDP in 2008, among the highest figures in theworld, reflecting the still-leading role that government plays ininfrastructure investment. The equivalent figures for developed Westerncountries are vanishingly small; in the West the state is a spendthrift, not aninvestor, borrowing money to pay for goods and services. On the other hand, thepublic sector's share of Chinese investment has been falling steeply during the past 10years. Here too the Chinese trend is away from state capitalism.
Ofcourse, none of these quantitative measures of the state's role tells ushow well government is actuallyworking. For that we must turn to very different kinds of data. Every year theWorld Economic Forum (WEF) publishes a GlobalCompetitiveness Index, which assesses countries from all kinds of differentangles, including the economic efficiency of their public-sector institutions. Since the current methodology was adopted in 2004, theUnited States' average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, oneof the steepest declines among developed economies. China's score, meanwhile,has leapt from 4.29 to 4.90.
Evenmore fascinating is the WEF's ExecutiveOpinion Survey, which produces a significant amount of the data that goesinto the Global Competitiveness Index. The table below selects 15 measures of government efficacy, focusing on aspects of the rule of law ranging from theprotection of private property rights to the policing of corruption and thecontrol of organized crime. These are appropriate things to measure because,regardless of whether a state is nominally a market economy or a state-ledeconomy, the quality of its legal institutions will, in practice, have animpact on the ease with which business can be done.
Table: Measuresof the rule of law from the WEF Executive Opinion Survey, 2011-2012
(Note: Most indicatorsderived from the Executive Opinion Survey are expressed as scores on a1-7 scale, with 7 being the most desirable outcome.)
Itis an astonishing yet scarcely acknowledged fact that on no fewer than 14 outof 15 issues relating to property rights and governance, the UnitedStates now fares markedly worse than Hong Kong. Even mainland China does betterin two areas. Indeed, the United States makes the global top 20 in only one:investor protection, where it is tied for fifth. On every other count, itsreputation is shockingly bad.
Theimplications are clear. If we are to understand the changing relationshipbetween the state and the market in the world today, we must eschew crudegeneralizations about "state capitalism," a term that is really not much morevaluable today than the Marxist-Leninist term "state monopoly capitalism" was backwhen Rudolf Hilferding coined it a century ago.
Noone seriously denies that the state has a role to play in economic life. Thequestion is what that role should be and how it can be performed in ways thatsimultaneously enhance economic efficiency and minimize the kind ofrent-seeking behavior -- "corruption" in all its shapes and forms -- that tendsto arise wherever the public and private sectors meet.
Weare all state capitalists now -- and we have been for over a century, eversince the modern state began its steady growth in the late 19th century, whenAdolph Wagner first formulated his law of rising state expenditures. But thereare myriad forms of state capitalism, from the enlightened autocracy ofSingapore to the dysfunctional tyranny of Zimbabwe, from the egalitarian nannystate of Denmark to the individualist's paradise that is Ron Paul's Texas.
Thereal contest of our time is not between a state-capitalist China and a market-capitalist America, with Europe somewhere in the middle. It is a contest thatgoes on within all three regions as we all struggle to strike the right balancebetween the economic institutions that generate wealth and the politicalinstitutions that regulate and redistribute it.
Thecharacter of this century -- whether it is "post-American," Chinese, orsomething none of us yet expects -- will be determined by which politicalsystem gets that balance right.
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