風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
誰害怕中國公司？
作者：史蒂夫·洛爾 2005 年 7 月 24 日
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/business/yourmoney/whos-afraid-of-china-inc.html?
威廉·A·賴因施 (WILLIAM A. REINSCH) 是一位公開宣稱的自由貿易者，他對中國在國際經濟中地位的上升表示歡迎。 畢竟，他是國家對外貿易委員會的主席，該組織成立於 1914 年，旨在促進“開放的世界貿易體係”。 事實上，當賴因施擔任克林頓政府的高級貿易官員時，他曾受到一些安全分析師的指責，他們表示，賴因施將商業問題置於國家安全之上，對中國態度軟弱。
但就連賴因施先生也對中國試圖收購美國中型石油公司優尼科 (Unocal) 感到不安。 優尼科收購競賽的結果尚不確定，上周其董事會接受了雪佛龍改進後的收購要約。 然而，受政府支持的中國石油公司中海油仍然提出了更高的報價，而且可能會提高賭注。
如果中國的競購繼續進行，賴因什希望看到對該交易進行徹底的國家安全審查，審查範圍將超出通常關注的武器技術，包括能源安全。 “我們的陸軍、海軍和空軍依靠石油運行，”他解釋道。
石油是最終的地緣政治商品——正如丹尼爾·耶金（Daniel Yergin）將其史詩般的石油和國際政治史稱為“獎品”。 即使中海油未能收購優尼科，這種追求也將中國挑戰的雙方推到了一起，並成為公眾辯論的焦點。 因為中國既是經濟全球化的引擎，又是新興的軍事強國。 用象征性的速記法來說，它是擁有一支軍隊的沃爾瑪。
兩側的劃分並不整齊。 但那些關注經濟的人往往認為，盡管關係緊張，但夥伴關係、合作和樂觀的理由，而安全專家則更為悲觀，並預計戰略衝突是兩種截然不同的政治體係未來可能出現的情況。
中國分析人士認為，在中國也存在兩個陣營：安全鷹派和經濟現代主義者。 現代主義者認為中國將與美國一起成為21世紀第二大經濟強國，兩國將分享貿易關係加強和全球增長帶來的收益。 鷹派認為這種觀點很天真，並擔心美國的政策是保持世界唯一的超級大國地位並遏製中國的崛起。 因此，鷹派人士表示，中國的回應是試圖削弱美國的霸權，削弱美國壓製中國的力量。
中國的兩麵形象最近都十分明顯。 兩周前，中國高級軍事官員朱成虎少將表示，如果美國軍隊幹預台灣問題的任何衝突，中國應該對美國使用核武器。 隨後，迫於美國和其他貿易夥伴的壓力，中國於上周四宣布，將不再將人民幣與美元緊密掛鉤。 這是一個謹慎的步驟，短期內不會對緩解中國對美國的巨額貿易順差產生太大作用。 但此舉是靈活性和包容性的標誌。
“我們是否不可避免地將彼此視為對手，或者我們是否看到一個雙方都受益的全球化世界？這是一個大問題，”克林頓政府期間國家安全委員會高級官員肯尼思·利伯特撒爾(Kenneth Lieberthal)表示。
“無論怎樣，這一框架將推動大量政策決策，”中國分析師、密歇根大學商學院教授利伯特撒爾補充道。
這就是中國問題：機遇還是威脅？ 如果不出意外的話，中海油對優尼科的收購表明，美國對中國的看法是多麽不穩定，而且在國家安全和貿易問題上的焦慮是多麽深重。
人們很容易將華盛頓視為一個空談工廠，但國會的抗議範圍卻很大。 共和黨和民主黨在參眾兩院紛紛提出了批評中海油收購計劃的決議和立法提案。 加利福尼亞州共和黨眾議員理查德·龐博(Richard W. Pombo)上個月提出的一項決議宣稱，允許中國公司收購優尼科將“威脅損害美國的國家安全”。 最終以 398 比 15 的投票結果通過。
北達科他州民主黨參議員拜倫·多根起草了三項反中海油立法，其中包括要求國會對此次收購進行為期六個月的調查，以及禁止該交易的法案。 多根先生以公平貿易為由反對中國的舉動。 他說，中國政府不會允許美國公司收購中國石油公司。 “那麽他們到底為什麽能夠購買一家美國石油公司呢？” 多根先生說道。
然而，中國的收購要約引發了多根對貿易和全球化更深層次的擔憂。 他談到製造業工作崗位流失到中國、中國的知識產權盜版者非法複製美國電影和軟件，以及對中國的貿易逆差正在急劇上升，而且看不到盡頭。 “貿易應該是互利的，但與中國的貿易當然不是這樣，”多根先生說。
國會的風暴增加了圍繞中海油競購的政治風險。 該出價為 185 億美元，仍然高於雪佛龍 170 億美元的加價報價。 但華爾街分析師表示，中海油必須出價更高才有機會獲勝，中海油的報價比雪佛龍的出價要高得多，以彌補政府對中國報價審核的延遲，甚至華盛頓可能阻止中國交易的可能性。
這將是一個極端的步驟，但根據憲法第一條第 8 款，國會有權“監管與外國的貿易”。 “我的感覺是，國會不會對中海油收購案獲得批準袖手旁觀，”國會谘詢小組美中經濟與安全審查委員會主席理查德·達馬托 (C. Richard D'Amato) 表示。 “這就是政治現實。”
中海油及其顧問誤讀了華盛頓的政治環境。 擁有南加州大學研究生學位的中海油董事長傅成玉表示，他對政治批評的強烈程度感到驚訝。 一位接近中海油的人士表示，如果中海油能夠與一家美國石油公司作為合作夥伴參與競購，那麽它的道路將會更加順利。這一方案曾被短暫考慮過，但遭到拒絕。
這位人士表示，這個想法是，這家美國公司將收購優尼科在美國的資產，而中海油則獲得了這筆交易的主要利益——優尼科在亞洲的海上天然氣田及其在海上勘探和生產方麵的專業知識。 天然氣儲量和技術被認為對中國實現到 2020 年擺脫煤炭並通過天然氣發電占全國 20% 電力的目標具有戰略意義。 與美國合作夥伴建立了聯係，因此該交易的威脅性較小，也不會成為美國中國政治的避雷針，”該人士表示。
也許吧，但許多經濟學家和貿易專家認為，美國對中海油競購的焦慮更多地反映了美國的情況，而不是中國或中海油策略的問題。 “所有這些確實表明了我們社會對全球化的焦慮，”裏根政府貿易官員、華盛頓經濟戰略研究所所長克萊德·V·普雷斯托維茨(Clyde V. Prestowitz)說。 “我們現在在經濟上與中國如此相互依賴，我們選擇了這條道路。”
2001年，華盛頓推動中國融入國際經濟並加入世界貿易組織。美國公司已將大部分製造業務外包給中國工廠。 多年來，美國消費者一直在中國瘋狂購物，購買從衣服到電腦等中國製造的一切產品。 這就是為什麽美國去年對中國的貿易逆差達到創紀錄的1620億美元。 中國擁有7000億美元的外匯儲備，其中大部分是美元。 它通過投資美國國債來回收大部分資金； 這使得美國的利率保持在較低水平，從而推動了房地產的繁榮。
“我們把他們用來收購優尼科的錢交給了中國，”普雷斯托維茨先生說。他是一本關於財富和權力向亞洲轉移的新書《三十億新資本家》（Basic Books，2005 年）的作者。 “現在我們告訴中國人，請繼續投資我們的債券，但你不能將他們的盈餘的一小部分投資於一家石油公司。這對我們來說真的很困惑和虛偽。”
在其他人看來混亂不堪的情況下，克林頓政府中央情報局局長詹姆斯·伍爾西 (R. James Woolsey) 卻認為挑戰中海石油的收購戰略是明確的。 伍爾西承認，石油是一種全球貿易商品，但在由於中國和印度等快速增長國家的需求不斷增長而導致市場緊張的市場中，石油也是一種戰略資源。 伍爾西先生說，這是在人們開始考慮恐怖分子破壞中東一個重要油田的行為可能產生的影響之前。
“中國實際上假設可能存在石油短缺，”博思艾倫谘詢公司副總裁伍爾西說。
伍爾西先生認為中國是一個有著挑戰美國的軍事野心的國家，也是一個不尊重人權和言論自由的政治體係。 在伍爾西看來，中海油是“共產主義獨裁政權”的企業工具。
裏根政府國防部高級官員小弗蘭克·加夫尼(Frank Gaffney Jr.)表示，中海油的舉動是確保中國擁有實現其總體國家設計的資源的一步。 “中國的戰略是取代美國成為世界頭號經濟強國，並在必要時在軍事上擊敗我們，”安全政策中心主席加夫尼表示。
威廉·布萊爾公司的戰略關注範圍要小得多。 直到最近，芝加哥投資公司威廉·布萊爾(William Blair)還是中海油的最大外部股東，而中海油的多數股權由中國政府持有。 但最近幾周，威廉·布萊爾出售了其價值約 1.6 億美元的股份，原因是擔心中海油的行為太像一家國有公司，而不夠像一家試圖為股東帶來最大回報的資本主義企業，戴維·梅裏安 (David Merjan) 解釋道。 該公司的基金經理。
梅裏安表示，對優尼科的高額收購引發了人們對中海油是否真正獨立於中國政府的懷疑。 “如果中國打算向外部股東出售像中海油這樣的公司的股票，那麽它不應該是為了中國經濟政策的利益而進行的，”梅裏安表示。
中海油及其對優尼科的收購似乎是中國發展道路的一部分。 中海油正在尋求政府的大量幫助，以西方石油公司無法獲得的條件提供了約 70 億美元的貸款。 因此，中海油可能願意並且能夠支付過高的價格。 是的，中國正在將在世界各地尋找石油和天然氣資產作為國家優先事項。 盡管如此，這種情況仍然發生在一個正在穩步走向市場經濟的國家，盡管這個國家的中央控製程度比美國人所認為的自由市場經濟要多。
擁有 6000 萬黨員——比法國人口還多——的中國共產黨確實在指導經濟，盡管隨著時間的推移越來越少。 “但可以將其視為中國官僚資本主義政黨，”密歇根大學的利伯特撒爾先生說。 “這與共產主義沒有任何關係。”
利伯特先生認為自己是對中國持樂觀態度的人之一。 他表示，全球化以及中美經濟的持續一體化可以實現互利共贏。 效仿台灣和韓國的模式，中產階級的富裕和教育在更多中國人口中的普及最終應該成為民主自由化的力量。
“我百分百確定我是對的嗎？不，但這是我所做的長期賭注，”利伯特先生說。 “如果你讓悲觀主義者——那些相信美國和中國將不可避免地成為敵人的人——來推動政策，那麽結果將是他們預測的那樣。”
Who's Afraid of China Inc.?
By Steve Lohr
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/business/yourmoney/whos-afraid-of-china-inc.html?
WILLIAM A. REINSCH, an avowed free trader, welcomes China's rising stature in the international economy. After all, he is the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, an organization founded in 1914 to promote an "open world trading system." Indeed, when he was a senior trade official in the Clinton administration, Mr. Reinsch was chided by some security analysts who said he was being soft on China by placing matters of commerce ahead of national security.
But even Mr. Reinsch is uneasy about China's attempt to buy Unocal, a midsize American oil company. The outcome of the takeover contest for Unocal is uncertain, and last week its board embraced an improved offer from Chevron. Yet Cnooc, a government-backed Chinese oil company, still has the higher offer -- and it could up the ante.
If the Chinese bid proceeds, Mr. Reinsch wants to see a thorough national security review of the deal, one that goes beyond the usual focus on weapons technology to include energy security. "Our Army, Navy and Air Force run on oil," he explained.
Oil is the ultimate geopolitical commodity -- it is "The Prize," as Daniel Yergin titled his epic history of petroleum and international politics. And even if Cnooc fails to grab Unocal, the pursuit has pushed the two sides of the Chinese challenge together and into the spotlight of public debate. For China is both an engine of economic globalization and an emerging military power. In symbolic shorthand, it is Wal-Mart with an army.
The two sides aren't neatly divided. But those who focus on economics tend to see partnership, cooperation and reasons for optimism despite tensions, while security experts are more pessimistic and anticipate strategic conflict as the likely future for two political systems that are so different.
In China, there are also two camps -- the security hawks and the economic modernists, according to China analysts. The modernists see China joining the United States as the second great economic power of the 21st century, and the two nations sharing the gains from increased trade ties and global growth. The hawks regard that view as naïve, and fret that American policy is to remain the world's only superpower and to curb China's rise. So China's response, the hawks say, is to try to erode United States hegemony and reduce America's power to hold China down.
Both faces of China have been evident recently. Two weeks ago, a senior Chinese military official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan. Then, bowing to pressure from the United States and other trading partners, China announced last Thursday that it would no longer peg its currency tightly to the dollar. It is a measured step, and it will not do much to moderate China's huge trade surplus with the United States anytime soon. But the move is a sign of flexibility and accommodation.
"Do we see each other inevitably as antagonists, or do we see a world of globalization from which both sides benefit? That is the big issue," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior official in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.
"And that framework, one way or another," added Mr. Lieberthal, a China analyst and a professor at the University of Michigan business school, "will drive an enormous number of policy decisions."
So that is the China question: Is it an opportunity or a threat? If nothing else, the Cnooc bid for Unocal has shown how unsettled American thinking is on China and how deep the anxieties run, both in matters of national security and trade.
It is easy to dismiss Washington as a hot-air factory, but the scope of the outcry in Congress is significant. Resolutions and legislative proposals, all critical of Cnooc's takeover bid, have piled up in the House and Senate, from Republicans and Democrats. A resolution presented last month by Representative Richard W. Pombo, a California Republican, declared that permitting the Chinese company to buy Unocal would "threaten to impair the national security of the United States." It passed, 398 to 15.
Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, has drafted three pieces of anti-Cnooc legislation that range from calling for a six-month Congressional inquiry into the bid to a bill that would prohibit the deal. Mr. Dorgan objects to the Chinese move on fair-trade grounds. The Chinese government, he says, would not allow an American company to buy a Chinese oil company. "So why on earth should they be able to buy an American oil company?" Mr. Dorgan said.
Yet the Chinese takeover bid taps into a deeper concern about trade and globalization for Mr. Dorgan. He talks of manufacturing jobs lost to China, intellectual-property pirates in China illegally copying American movies and software, and a trade deficit with China that is rising astronomically with no end in sight. "Trade should be mutually beneficial, and it is certainly not with China," Mr. Dorgan said.
The tempest in Congress has increased the political risks surrounding the Cnooc bid. At $18.5 billion, the bid remains higher than Chevron's sweetened offer of $17 billion. But Wall Street analysts say Cnooc will have to go higher to have a chance to win, offering a sizable premium over the Chevron bid to compensate for delays of a government review of the Chinese offer or even the possibility that Washington may block a Chinese deal.
It would be an extreme step, but Congress has the power to "regulate commerce with foreign nations," under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. "My sense is that Congress is not going to stand still for a Cnooc takeover being approved," said C. Richard D'Amato, chairman of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory group to Congress. "That is the political reality."
Cnooc and its advisers misread the political environment in Washington. Fu Chengyu, the Cnooc chairman who earned a graduate degree from the University of Southern California, has said he was surprised by the intensity of political criticism. Cnooc's path would have been smoother if it had joined with an American oil company as a partner in its bid, an option that was considered briefly but rejected, according to a person close to the company.
The idea, the person said, would have been that the American company would acquire Unocal's assets in the United States, while Cnooc took the main prize in the deal -- Unocal's offshore natural gas fields in Asia and its expertise in offshore exploration and production. The gas reserves and skill are considered strategic to China's goal of moving away from coal and generating 20 percent of the nation's electricity from natural gas by 2020. "It would have been better to have not made this big move a head-on attack, to have linked up with an American partner so the deal would have been less threatening and less a lightning rod for China politics in the United States," the person said.
Perhaps, but many economists and trade specialists contend that the American angst over the Cnooc bid says more about the United States than it does about China or Cnooc's tactics. "All this really points to the anxieties about globalization in our own society," said Clyde V. Prestowitz, a trade official in the Reagan administration and president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. "We are so economically interdependent with China now and we chose that path."
Washington pushed for China's integration into the international economy and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. American companies have farmed out much of their manufacturing to Chinese factories. American consumers have been on a Chinese shopping spree for years, buying everything from clothes to computers made there. That is why the United States had a record $162 billion trade deficit with China last year. China sits on $700 billion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly in dollars. It recycles those funds in good part by investing in United States Treasury bonds; that keeps American interest rates low, fueling the real estate boom.
"We handed China the money they are using to try to buy Unocal," said Mr. Prestowitz, author of a new book on the shift of wealth and power to Asia, "Three Billion New Capitalists" (Basic Books, 2005). "And now we're telling the Chinese, please keep investing in our bonds but you can't invest what amounts to a sliver of their surplus in an oil company. That's really confused and hypocritical on our part."
Where others see muddle, R. James Woolsey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Clinton administration, sees strategic clarity in challenging the Cnooc bid. Oil is a globally traded commodity, Mr. Woolsey concedes, but it is also a strategic resource in a market that is tightening because of rising demand from fast-growing nations like China and India. That, Mr. Woolsey says, is before one begins thinking of the possible impact of, say, an act of terrorist sabotage in a crucial Middle East oil field.
"China is realistically assuming there may be a shortage of oil," said Mr. Woolsey, a vice president in the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm.
In China, Mr. Woolsey sees a nation with military ambitions to challenge the United States, and a political system with little regard for human rights and free speech. Cnooc, in Mr. Woolsey's view, is the corporate vehicle of "a Communist dictatorship."
The Cnooc move, according to Frank Gaffney Jr., a senior Defense Department official in the Reagan administration, is a step to ensure that China has the resources for its overarching national design. "China's strategy is to supplant the United States as the premier economic power in the world and, should it become necessary, defeat us militarily," said Mr. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy.
The strategic concern was much narrower at William Blair & Company. Until recently, William Blair, the investment firm in Chicago, was the largest outside shareholder in Cnooc, which is majority-owned by the Chinese government. But William Blair sold off its stake, worth about $160 million, in recent weeks because of worries that Cnooc was behaving too much like a state-owned company and not enough like a capitalist enterprise trying to maximize returns to shareholders, explained David Merjan, a fund manager at the firm.
The pricey bid for Unocal, Mr. Merjan said, raised doubts about how independent Cnooc really was from the Chinese government. "If China is going to sell shares in a company like Cnooc to outside shareholders, it should not be run for the benefit of Chinese economic policy," Mr. Merjan said.
CNOOC and its pursuit of Unocal, it seems, are part of China's evolutionary path. Cnooc is playing its hand with plenty of government help, about $7 billion in loans on terms Western oil companies could not hope to get. Accordingly, Cnooc may be willing and able to overpay. Yes, China is hunting for oil and gas assets around the world as a national priority. Still, that is happening in a nation that is drifting steadily toward a market economy, though one with more central control than Americans view as a free-market economy.
The Chinese Communist Party, with 60 million members -- more than the population of France -- does guide the economy, if less and less over time. "But think of it as the Chinese bureaucratic capitalist party," said Mr. Lieberthal of the University of Michigan. "It has nothing really to do with Communism."
Mr. Lieberthal counts himself as among the optimists on China. Globalization, he says, and continued integration of the Chinese and American economies can work to mutual benefit. The spread of middle-class affluence and education across more of the Chinese population should eventually be a force for democratic liberalization, following the pattern of Taiwan and South Korea.
"Am I a hundred percent sure I'm right? No, but that's the long-term bet I'd make," Mr. Lieberthal said. "And if you let the pessimists -- the people who believe that the U.S. and China will inevitably be enemies -- drive policy, then the outcome will be the one they predict."
