可樂的CEO ：與美相比，他更喜歡中國的經營環境。
西方一直認為，自由與繁榮是象愛情與婚姻一樣不可分。可越來越多的跨國公司的高管和投資者認為，沒有政治自由一樣可以有經濟繁榮，健全的民主體製一樣可以貧困。有人套用歌手Janis Joplin 的歌詞，自由，無非就是一無所有。當然，在西方，這並不是主流的看法。
Should Coke’s CEO Prefer China’s Business Climate?
You can have business and industry without political freedom. And you can have a functioning democracy without prosperity. For a while. Over the long term, there's a general consensus that one needs the other to thrive — without property rights protection, there's less innovation. Information-intensive businesses can't develop when freedom of expression is curtailed.
On the other hand, some CEOs and investors seem to take the Janis Joplin line in Me and Bobby McGee: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
This week, Coca-Cola CEO Mukhtar Kent told the Financial Times that he prefers the business climate in China to that of the U.S. As Alan Rappeport reports, Kent complained about Washington gridlock and an unfriendly tax system, and compared China to a well-managed company with which it was easy to conduct business. "You have a one-stop shop in terms of the Chinese foreign investment agency and local governments are fighting for investment with each other," he said.
And from Russia comes news that Vladimir Putin, who has essentially run the show during his absence from the presidency, is coming back. A rule change will permit Putin to serve two more six-year terms, which would give him a regnum that rivals Stalin's in length. On Wednesday, Andrew Kramer reported in the New York Times that business types are psyched. "A consensus is emerging among bankers, economists and companies that evaluate market risk that the return of Vladimir V. Putin as Russia's president will be a net positive for foreign investors — regardless of whether they support the politics of it." Kramer cites a report by Citigroup strategist Kingsmill Bond [awesome name!—ed.] that concludes investors will be "pleased that the political uncertainty is over."
What's up with this? Perhaps Kent and the Putin-istas haven't read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, or Benjamin Friedman's The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, which describe how freedom and rising living standards are like love and marriage — you can't have one without the other, and they're mutually reinforcing.
But drill down a little, and it's obvious that these globalists have a very parochial of view of how government systems help or hinder business. As Rappeport describes it, one of Kent's big complaints is that "U.S. states did not compete enough with each other to attract businesses while Chinese provinces were clamoring to draw investment from international companies." States and cities in the U.S. may not be willing to throw sufficient fistfuls of dollars at the company to entice it to set up shop. But in China, where government entities routinely favor one business over another as a matter of course, localities are much more willing to do so. Capitalism!
And why are businesses are enthused about the return of Putin? Kramer writes: "According to this analysis, the reunification of power in the Russian president in both title and practice — even one, like Mr. Putin, who has a track record of abrogating contracts — creates a more predictable long-term outlook for companies like Exxon Mobil, which has just agreed to a major oil exploration deal in the Russian Arctic." Got that? Without a reliable system of rule of law, gigantic global companies have to rely on the personal favor of an arbitrary executive for contracts to be honored.
Both Russia and China are characterized by a pretty serious lack of freedom — economic and political. And while the current systems may be good for business of some companies, it's hard to argue that they are good for business generically, and better for business than the U.S. Russia, a country where prominent businessmen are jailed, where state control of media is high, and corruption is a bigger industry than vodka, ranks 143rd in the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. Sample nugget: "In PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2009 Global Economic Crime Survey, Russia was in last place with 71 percent of respondents having reported experiencing economic crime, of which bribery and corruption were a major component."
China came in 135rd in the same ranking, with low grades for transparency. China doesn't have political gridlock because it locks up many of those who want to participate in politics. There is a lot of business to be done in China, but companies and individuals don't really have the freedom to build their companies and businesses as they see fit. Just last week, Super Girl, China's highly popular answer to American Idol, was cancelled by the authorities. One of the widely suspected reasons: The concept of voting for a favorite singer was dangerously close to the concept of actually voting for representatives and political leaders.
Multinationals like Coca-Cola are generally progressive on issues such as global warming, sustainability and diversity. But when it comes to issues of political freedom, they're much more timid, even agnostic.
Ironically, Coca-Cola has experienced some of the vicissitudes of doing business in China. One of the ways companies grow is by buying other companies. And the U.S., has a pretty clear and permissive policy on mergers and acquisitions. Last year, when Coca-Cola said it wanted to buy the North American operations of a big Coca-Cola bottler, CCE Enterprises, nobody stood in its way. By contrast, the Chinese government in the fall of 2010 stopped Coca-Cola's effort to buy the Huiyuan Fruit Juice Company.
Even in crony capitalism, not all cronies are created equal.
Daniel Gross is economics editor at Yahoo! Finance.
Email him at grossdaniel11@yahoo.com; follow him on Twitter @grossdm.
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