The Sleeping Lion Has Wakened睡狮已醒

文/戴维·P.戈德曼 译/杨树锋

By David P. Goldman

自1942年英国驻新加坡部队向山下奉文投降以来，西方对亚洲强国的观点从未转变如此之快。2015年中国股市泡沫破裂时，西方主流观点认为，一场堪比2008年美国次贷危机或2013年南欧准经济崩溃的债务危机，将使中国经济繁荣风光不再。

[2]鉴于2017年中国股市以美元计流通股大盘上涨了43%（以基于摩根士丹利资本国际公司的交易所交易基金为基准），西方观点正在破产。桥水——世界最大的对冲基金——正为中国的投资渠道筹资。美国银行预测亚洲股市将在此轮牛市中翻番。2017年9月12日彭博社头条标题为：“对冲基金过去热衷做空中国，现在则不复从前”。

[3]但随着美元于2014和2015年间对其他货币急剧升值，中国的利率也有上浮以维持人民币对美元的高汇率。其后果是，2015年人民币实际利率升至6%的高点，而高企的实际利率抑制了工业价格并挤压企业利润，迫使企业大幅举债偿息。

[4] 2015年8月，人民币对美元贬值，这是一个让中国借款人用本币替代偿还美元债务的信号。他们抛售约1万亿美元的本币用来购入美元偿债，同时中国人民银行则向他们售出美元，回收人民币。

[5]中国官方外汇储备下降了1万亿美元，而企业美元债也下降同样金额，因此——正如国际清算银行（以及笔者）在2016年所指出——中国的净债权状况几乎没什么变化。实际上中国净资本外流微乎其微，抑或根本没有发生，然而西方投资界和经济专家将此次资产负债表调整误读为资本外逃。

[6]截至2017年初，中国的生产价格上升，实际利率下降，外储亦稳定下来；企业利润飙涨，企业杠杆缩短，大盘欣欣向荣。

[7]投资者对中国股市的看法转变只能算刚开始，然而美国企业界对中国长期以来一直看多。同时，中国公司在全球电子产品市场份额从2012年的30%增长到2016年的近60%，而到2017年底，这个比例将增至87%。中国是世界上最大的电子元器件市场，任何美国企业都无法承受不在此大举布局的代价。

[8]特朗普总统曾否决收购莱迪思半导体的项目，因而登上头条。这本不该发生。莱迪思是二线公司，而且生产线已经移师亚洲。但是作为进入中国市场的条件，美国顶尖技术公司向中国出售传家宝早已行之有年。

[9]正如《纽约时报》2017年8月4日所报道：

为进入中国市场，美国公司不得不转让技术，设立合资公司，降低价格并且栽培本土玩家。这些举措构筑了中国宏伟蓝图的基石，即让中国公司掌控核心技术领域，比如人工智能和半导体……隐忧在于，这些与中国合作的美国公司可能在作茧自缚，并把关键技术拱手相让。

AMD和惠普正与中国公司合作开发服务器芯片，为自家产品制造对手。英特尔则正与中国合作制造高端移动芯片，与高通竞争。IBM已同意转让能让中国挺进暴利的银行大型机业务的宝贵技术。

[10]数字时代的每项重要发明都来自美国，从集成电路到半导体激光、太阳能电池、平板显示器、传感器和发光二极管。除了集成电路，目前全球电子工业元器件的全部产出几乎都来自亚洲，而且中国正展开一项追赶计划，力图成为世界半导体生产大国。

[11]干预美国公司向中国的技术转让将危及中短期营收。在中国的崛起中，美国公司正活得有滋有味，公司首席执行官们担忧的是未来五年的股价，而不是十年后美国的竞争地位。

[12]总体而言，西方分析家对中国万亿级的“一带一路”倡议以前颇不以为然。不过，就在去年，新铺设的铁路线已经连接了中国和伊朗、土耳其，由此直达西欧，极大降低了欧亚大陆运输的时间和成本。目前有两条联通伊朗的铁路线在运营。

[13] 9月6日，首列驶向德黑兰的火车从中国西北部宁夏回族自治区首府银川出发，历经15日抵达伊朗首都，仅用海运时间的一半。10月，连接中国和土耳其及南高加索的巴库—第比利斯—卡尔斯铁路线投入运营。中国已是土耳其最大的进口来源地。

[14]因此，一度为人忽略的西部变成了中国经济最具活力的地区。根据米尔肯研究院近期研究，中国发展最快的城市是成都，一个位于四川省、人口1230万的大都会。能够在地图上找到成都的西方人寥寥无几，而这恰好证明“一带一路”倡议开局顺利。

[15]铁路线搭建西亚通往北京的纽带。中国公司可以借此将元器件打包装进集装箱发往土耳其的生产线，由当地低成本劳力组装，再进而出口到欧洲和非洲。来自中国的数字革命与“一带一路”倡议交相辉映。伴随着移动宽带在境内无远弗届的触角，中国是首个从现金支付过渡到数字支付的新兴经济体。

[16]像阿里巴巴和腾讯这样的公司将农村地区带入全球经济市场。凭借马云的蚂蚁金服这样的平台，曾经靠口粮田自给自足或在菜场站摊的中国人正蜕变成手持资本市场门票的企业家，通过阿里巴巴行销全球。

[17]有了中国的示范和技术，土耳其计划在2023年成为无现金社会。中国现在制造了全球90%的智能手机。在新兴市场，中国的低成本手机生产商正形成称雄之势。谷歌新近与中国手机制造商小米组建合资企业，在印度市场营销中端、高性能智能机。

[18]中国也在重塑周边经济。其战略影响显见而又深远。土耳其现在是向东朝中国看齐，而非向西朝欧洲看齐。长期仰仗中国规避西方禁运的伊朗，其油气开采愈发倚赖中资。

[19]美国在西亚的影响力正在快速消解。土耳其的北约成员国身份现在徒有其名。它刚从俄罗斯订购了S-400防空系统，视北约抗议如无物。由于叙利亚库尔德武装的胜利将促进其在伊朗和土耳其境内的独立运动，土耳其还联手伊朗进行镇压。

[20]突然之间，从中国南海到博斯普鲁斯海峡，美国每有行动都会感受到中国的影响。这和山下奉文在马来西亚丛林中的进击又不等同。但无论如何，美国领导层的软弱、自满和无能，已然超越了当年驻守新加坡英军传说中的愚蠢。 □

Economic boom continues with electronics industry domination and infrastructure growth through trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.伴随着电子产业称雄和万亿级“一带一路”倡议下基建增长，（中国）经济持续繁荣。

Not since the British garrison at Singapore surrendered to Tomoyuki Yamashita in 1942 has Western opinion of an Asian power changed so fast.When China’s 2015 stock market bubble popped, prevailing Western opinion held that China’s economic boom would flame out in a debt crisis comparable to America’s subprime disaster of 2008 or the near collapse of Europe’s southern tier in 2013.

[2] Now that China’s tradeable stock market has risen by 43% during 2017 in US dollar terms (with the MSCI-based ETF as a benchmark), Western opinion is melting up. Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, is raising money for a China investment vehicle. Bank of America now predicts Asian stocks will double in the present bull run. “Hedge Funds Used to Love Shorting China.Now, Not So Much,” declared a Bloomberg headline Sept. 12.

[3] But as the US dollar rose sharply against all other currencies during 2014 and 2015, the Chinese interest rates also rose in order to maintain the RMB’s high exchange rate with the dollar. This brought real interest rates to a peak of 6% in 2015, and high real interest rates suppressed industrial prices and squeezed corporate profits, forcing enterprises to borrow heavily to pay debt service.

[4] In August 2015 the RMB dropped against the dollar, a signal to China’s borrowers to pay back dollar debts and replace them with local-currency loans.They sold roughly $1 trillion of local currency to buy dollars with which to pay back their dollar loans, and the PBOC sold them dollars for local currency.

[5] China’s of ficial reserves fell by $1 trillion and corporate dollar debt fell by$1 trillion, so that China’s net creditor position was little changed, as Bank for International Settlements economists pointed out in 2016 (as did this writer).There was little or no net capital outflow, but the Western investment community and economics profession mis-took this balance-sheet adjustment for capital flight.

[6] By early 2017, producer prices were rising, real interest rates were falling and Chinese reserves stabilized.Corporate profits surged, corporate leverage declined and stock prices boomed.

[7] Investor opinion about the Chinese stock market has only begun to change, but corporate America has been bullish on China all along. Chinese companies’ share of global electronics production, meanwhile, rose from 30%in 2012 to nearly 60% in 2016, and this share will rise to 87% by the end of the present year. China is the world’s largest market for electronic components and no American company can afford not to have a major presence there.

[8] President’s Trump veto of a purchase of Lattice Semiconductor drew headlines, but shouldn’t have. Lattice is a second-tier firm whose production facilities have already moved to Asia.But America’s top of the line tech companies have been selling their family jewels to China for years, as a condition of entry into the Chinese market.

[9] As the New York Times reported Aug. 4, 2017:

To gain access to the Chinese market,American companies are being forced to transfer technology, create joint ventures, lower prices and aid homegrown players. Those efforts form the backbone of China’s ambitious plan to ensure that China’s companies dominate core areas of technology like artificial intelligence and semiconductors… The worry is that by teaming up with China, American companies could be sowing the seeds of their own destruction, as well as handing over critical technology.

Advanced Micro Devices and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are working with Chinese companies to develop server chips, creating rivals to their own product. Intel is working with the Chinese to build high-end mobile chips, in competition with Qualcomm. IBM has agreed to transfer valuable technology that could enable China to break into the lucrative mainframe banking business.

[10] America produced every important invention in the digital age, from integrated circuits to semiconductor lasers, solar cells, flat panel displays, sensors and light-emitting diodes. Except for integrate circuits, Asia now produces virtually all the world’s output of these building-blocks of the electronics industry, and China has a crash program underway to become the world’s major producer of semiconductors.

[11] Interfering with US companies’tech transfer to China would hurt revenues in the short- and medium-term.US companies are making a good living on the rise of China, and CEO’s worry about their stock price during the next five years, not about America’s competitive position in 10 years.

[12] Western analysts in general dismissed China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). During the past year, though, new rail lines have lined China to Iran, Turkey and from there to Western Europe, drastically reducing the time and cost of shipping across the Eurasian continent. Two rail links to Iran are now in operation.

[13] On September 6, the first train to Teheran departed from Yinchuan,capital of northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, with a 15-day journey time to Iran’s capital, half as long as sea transport. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway linking China with Turkey and the South Caucasus begins operations in October. China already is Turkey’s largest source of imports.

[14] As a result, once-neglected areas of Western China have become the most dynamic zones in the China’s economy.According to a recent study by the Milken Institute, the fastest-growing city in China is Chengdu, a metropolis of 12.3 million people in Sichuan province. Few Westerners can find Chengdu on a map, but it exemplifies the initial success of BRI.

[15] Rail links bind Western Asia to Beijing. Chinese companies will be able to pack components into containers for assembly by low-cost Turkish labor, and further export to Europe and Africa. The digital revolution coming from China is as important as BRI. China is the first emerging economy to shift from cash to digital payments, as mobile broadband reaches the outlying parts of the Chinese economy.

[16] Companies like Alibaba and Tencent draw rural areas into a global economic marketplace. Chinese who once tilled subsistence plots or manned market stalls are turning into entrepreneurs with access to capital markets through such platforms as Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, and global sales through Alibaba.

[17] Turkey plans to become a cashless society by 2023, using the Chinese example and Chinese technology. China now makes 90% of the world’s smartphones. Its low-cost handset producers stand to dominate emerging markets.Google has just established a joint venture with China’s handset manufacturer Xiaomi to market mid-range, highperformance smartphones in India.

[18] China is transforming the economics on its periphery. This has obvious and deep strategic implications.Turkey now looks East to China rather than West to the European Community for its economic future. Iran, long dependent on Chinese trade to circumvent the Western embargo, is increasingly dependent on Chinese investment for oil and gas extraction.

[19] American influence in Western Asia is eroding quickly. Turkey is now a NATO member in name only; it has bought Russia’s S-400 air defense system over NATO protests, and it has allied with Iran to suppress Kurdish forces in Syria whose success threatens to strengthen Kurdish independence movements in Iran as well as Turkey.

[20] Suddenly, from the South China Sea to the Bosporus, the United States cannot move without brushing up against Chinese in fluence. It’s not quite the same as Yamashita’s march across the Malaysian jungle. But if anything,the fecklessness, complacency and incompetence of America’s leaders exceeds the fabled stupidity of the British at Singapore. ■