今天華盛頓郵報一篇文章, 呼籲應該實事求是地評價中國, 並與明天中午網上與讀者互動

今天華盛頓郵報一篇文章, 呼籲美國人應該實事求是地評價中國, 並與明天中午網上 與讀者互動 轉載者按: 兩個作者根據自己在中國二十年的經曆, 很及時的提醒美國人, 要認識真實的中國, 崛起但也危機重重. 文中提到中國是所有發達國家沒有經曆過的. 未富先老(想到計 劃生育的後果嗎? 以及最近的民工荒), 以及極端的水資源短缺和汙染. 兩位作者認為美國媒體最近大力宣揚中國的實力和威脅, 借以唱衰美國, 是少數 政治家別有用心. 有意思的是, 中國媒體, 似乎也很熱衷唱衰美國, 並自以為已擠 身發達國家行列. (國家整體實力達到發達國家水平比人均生活水平達到發達國家水 平應該是兩個完全不同的概念. 如果論打仗, 國家整體實力是很有關聯的, 但居家過 日子, 還是用人均比較合理.) 從這方麵講, 兩個國家都需要更多了解真實的對方. 就像孫子兵法裏說的, 知己知彼, 才能百戰不殆. 兩位作者 Steven Mufson and John Pomfret, are reporters on the national staff of The Washington Post and former Post Beijing bureau chiefs. They will be online to chat with readers on Monday, March 1, at 12 p.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion. 附原文: There's a new Red Scare. But is China really so scary? By Steven Mufson and John Pomfret
Sunday, February 28, 2010

With the American economy struggling and the political system in gridlock, there is one thing everyone in Washington seems to agree on: The Chinese do it better. Cyberspace? China has an army of hackers ready to read your most intimate e-mails and spy on corporations and super-secret government agencies. (Just ask Google.) Education? China is churning out engineers almost as fast as it's making toys. Military prowess? China is catching up, so quickly that it is about to deploy an anti-ship ballistic missile that could make life on a U.S. aircraft carrier a perilous affair. The economy? China has gone from cheap-clothing-maker to America's banker. Governance? At least they can build a high-speed train. And energy? Look out, Red China is going green! This new Red Scare says a lot about America's collective psyche at this moment. A nation with a per capita income of $6,546 -- ensconced above Ukraine and below Namibia, according to the International Monetary Fund -- is putting the fear of God, or Mao, into our hearts. Here's our commander in chief, President Obama, talking about clean energy this month: "Countries like China are moving even faster. . . . I'm not going to settle for a situation where the United States comes in second place or third place or fourth place in what will be the most important economic engine in the future." And the nation's pundit in chief, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, even sees some virtue in the Chinese Communist Party's monopoly on political power: "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages." In the past, when Washington worried about China, it was mainly in terms of a military threat: Would we go to war? Would China replace the Soviet Union as our rival in a post-Cold War world? Or we fretted about it as a global workshop: China would suck manufacturing jobs out of our economy with a cheap currency and cheaper labor. But today, the threat China poses -- real or imagined -- has flooded into every arena in which our two nations can possibly compete. And it's not just in Washington. Asked in a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month whether this century would be more of an "American century" or more of a "Chinese century," many Americans across the country chose China. Respondents divided evenly between the United States and China on who would dominate the global economy and tilted toward Beijing on who would most influence world affairs overall. "We have completely lost perspective on what constitutes reality in China today," said Elizabeth Economy, the director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "There is a lot that is incredible about China's economic story, but there is as much that is not working well on both the political and economic fronts. We need to understand the nuances of this story -- on China's innovation, renewables, economic growth, etc. -- to ensure that all the hype from Beijing, and from our own media and politicians, doesn't lead us to skew our own policy." Having lived in China during the past two decades, we have witnessed and chronicled its remarkable economic and social transformation. But the notion that China poses an imminent threat to all aspects of American life reveals more about us than it does about China and its capabilities. The enthusiasm with which our politicians and pundits manufacture Chinese straw men points more to unease at home than to success inside the Great Wall. This is not to say that China isn't doing many things right or that we couldn't learn a thing or two from our Chinese friends. But in large part, politicians, activists and commentators push the new Red Scare to advance particular agendas in Washington. If you want to promote clean energy and get the government to invest in this sector, what better way to frame the issue than as a contest against the Chinese and call it the "new Sputnik"? Want to resuscitate the F-22 fighter jet? No better country than China to invoke as the menace of the future. Take green technology. China does make huge numbers of solar devices, but the most common are low-tech rooftop water-heaters or cheap, low-efficiency photovoltaic panels. For its new showcase of high-tech renewable energy in the western town of Ordos, China is planning to import photovoltaic panels made by U.S.-based First Solar and is hoping the company will set up manufacturing in China. Even if government subsidies allow China to more than triple its photovoltaic installations this year, it will still trail Germany, Italy, the United States and Japan, according to iSuppli, a market research firm. China does have dozens of wind-turbine manufacturers, but their quality lags far behind that of General Electric, not to mention Europe's Vestas and Siemens. And although a Chinese power company has some technology that might be useful for carbon capture and storage, which many companies see as the key to cutting greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, it has built only a tiny version to capture carbon dioxide for making soda, rather than exploring needed innovations in storage. If not for our economic distress, we might be applauding China's clean-energy advances; after all, one first-place position we have ceded to China is in greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting those emissions is a job big enough for both of our economies to tackle. But domestic anxieties have morphed into anxiety about China. "Every day we wait in this nation, China is going to eat our lunch," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this month. Arguing for nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources and cleaner ways to use coal, Graham said: "The Chinese don't need 60 votes. I guess they just need one guy's vote over there -- and that guy's voted. . . . And we're stuck in neutral here." Like others, Graham emphasizes the China threat to propel his fellow lawmakers into action. "Six months ago, my biggest worry was that an emissions deal would make American business less competitive compared to China," he said on a different day. "Now my concern is that every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy." In other areas, politicians and pundits also have a tendency to overestimate China's strengths -- in ways that leave China looking more ominous than it really is. Recent reports about how China is threatening to take the lead in scientific research seem to ignore the serious problems it is facing with plagiarism and faked results. Projections of China's economic growth seem to shortchange the country's looming demographic crisis: It is going to be the first nation in the world to grow old before it gets rich. By the middle of this century the percentage of its population above age 60 will be higher than in the United States, and more than 100 million Chinese will be older than 80. China also faces serious water shortages that could hurt enterprises from wheat farms to power plants to microchip manufacturers. And about all those engineers? In 2006, the New York Times reported that China graduates 600,000 a year compared with 70,000 in the United States. The Times report was quoted on the House floor. Just one problem: China's statisticians count car mechanics and refrigerator repairmen as "engineers." We've seen this movie before, and it didn't end in disaster for the United States. Some decades ago, Americans were obsessed with another emerging Asian giant: Japan. People were so overwrought about the "threat" that autoworkers smashed imported Japanese cars. On June 19, 1982, a Chrysler supervisor and his stepson, who had been laid off from a Michigan auto plant, killed a Chinese American man they apparently thought was Japanese. Author Michael Crichton's 1992 potboiler "Rising Sun" summed up the nation's fears. In 1991, 60 percent of Americans in an ABC News/NHK poll said they viewed Japan's economic strength as a threat to the United States. But then something happened. Japan's economy lost its game. The 1990s became a "lost decade," so much so that during the toughest days of the recent financial crisis, Japan was invoked as a cautionary tale, lest we not do enough to jump-start our economy. Now, some experts, such as Kenneth Lieberthal, a former senior director for Asia at the National Security Council and a man who has taught us a lot about China, say using China's green-tech rise as an excuse to whip America into shape isn't such a bad idea, because the result -- a cleaner environment or a more high-tech workforce -- makes a lot of sense. And certainly it's better to compete on that than on the size of our respective militaries. But there is a certain irony to the new Red Scare. When we reported from China in the 1990s, some Chinese neoconservatives achieved rock-star popularity there for promoting the notion that the United States was conspiring to contain China, militarily and economically. They argued that global economic growth was a zero-sum game and that China's gain would be America's loss; as a result, Beijing had to be more assertive in its dealings with the United States. Legions of U.S. diplomats and business leaders said no, no, no. They assured China that the two nations could grow together. Americans tried to teach Chinese the meaning of the expression "win-win." And that is the way introductory economics courses teach it. As N. Gregory Mankiw, a former chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, writes in his popular textbook: Trade "is not like a sports contest, where one side wins and the other side loses. In fact, the opposite is true. Trade between two countries can make each country better off." And yet a sports contest -- or worse -- is exactly what the U.S.-Chinese relationship sounds like these days. In discussing energy at the Feb. 3 meeting with governors, Obama warned: "We can't afford to spin our wheels while the rest of the world speeds ahead." Speeding ahead is a worthy goal, but the United States does not need a bogeyman on its tail to get moving. What may seem like a throwaway line here could damage U.S. relations there, and there are enough reasons for tension with China without manufacturing new ones. As the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said: "If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril." China is no enemy, but inflating the challenge from China could be just as dangerous as underestimating it.

所有跟帖： 

• r u saying china's success is inflated by american -sh40- ♀ (94 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 你真認為中國有很多"冒富大叔"? 等美國人打過來, 才發現搞錯了 LOL -wadcChinese- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 人民幣發多了的緣故，如果真正比財富不一定，中國人的 -Oona- ♀ (50 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 是的， 就像老顧， 住著幾百萬的豪房， 每天照樣登自行車上班 -wadcChinese- ♀ (62 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 財富(us dollar) saved in bank will be almost worthless -sh40- ♀ (55 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 3:1? rmb:$=20:1 -Oona- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 知道這幾天人民幣兌美元跌了不？如果人民幣升值，2萬億 -Oona- ♀ (120 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• sooner or later it will be. within a decade. -sh40- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 是你主觀判斷吧，中國這種經濟模式10年能夠轉換好並立起來？ -Oona- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 如果比較冷靜地看的話，中國完全是一個經濟殖民地，經濟 -Oona- ♀ (128 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 騎車既鍛煉身體又減輕環境汙染.當然,能騎車也說明家和辦公室近 -爬牆黨- ♀ (11 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• the Benz the bimmer they r driving r all more expensive -sh40- ♀ (51 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 嗯，在美國居家過日子，還是不錯的，有漢堡包，大牛排， -europe- ♀ (104 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 最關鍵的是資源，是對糧食，石油，鐵礦，煤礦的控製 -爬牆黨- ♀ (252 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 有一定道理，但是你說的那些沒有用的土地，下麵可是有很多 -pudonghao- ♀ (8 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 耕地麵積少，但如果礦產豐富也好，但據說石油不多的。 -Oona- ♀ (140 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 非常同意。：-） -pudonghao- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 握手握手：-----))))) -Oona- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 隻有一個優勢就是勞動力多而且便宜，麵積不能比，中國 -Oona- ♀ (102 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 中國目前比不上美國的關鍵之處在對資源的控製和占有. -爬牆黨- ♀ (478 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 隻有你這樣的人喜歡傭人! -簡單明了- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 中國在進步，是肯定的。即使占人口絕大多數的人，生活 -pudonghao- ♀ (311 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 你忽略了一個最重要的東西 -義和團八旗軍- ♀ (154 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 頂這個！蘇聯/東歐輸在了軟件，而不是硬件。 -馭風而行- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 俄國依舊是大國.至少比沒有美英的歐洲和日本強. -爬牆黨- ♀ (41 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 因為盎格魯撒克遜的先輩能幹.有AAABCNI -爬牆黨- ♀ (261 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 德日不行？俄國更強？怎麽比的？ -馭風而行- ♀ (0 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 怎麽比,互相打一架,公平合理吧. -爬牆黨- ♀ (65 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 13:03:06

• 中國是很在乎外界對自己的評價的 -wadcChinese- ♂ (45 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 14:01:20

• 什麽時候美國真正客觀， -子英- ♀ (30 bytes) () 03/01/2010 postreply 14:57:13

• 你什麽時候"實事求是"？ 中國對G8,G2嗤之以鼻。從不願出頭。 -紐約唐人- ♂ (0 bytes) () 03/02/2010 postreply 04:33:38