The strange paradox of economic nationalism
In his blackly humorous book, Mr China, Tim Clissold relates how he and a US business partner blew some $400m in the 1990s buying mainland companies that turned out to be duds. The pair would have a quite different problem today. Chinese companies are generally better run than a decade ago. But they are becoming harder for foreigners to acquire.
Lengthening official delays in approving deals, combined with a political backlash over foreign companies' growing role in the economy, have put international investors on guard. China's door may still be open, but those waiting outside are less sure of a welcome than even six months ago.
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Keep-out signs are also being posted elsewhere in Asia. In Japan, "poison pill" defences are multiplying, while takeover rules have been weighted against foreign bidders. In South Korea, where economic nationalism has a long lineage, its latest progeny is the idea of using "golden shares" to block unwelcome bid approaches.
Such reactions are perhaps understandable in long-closed economies that have opened up to foreign capital as never before: most dramatically so in China, whose foreign direct investment stock now equals 28 per cent of gross domestic product. While FDI levels are much lower in Japan and Korea, one-quarter of Tokyo's stock exchange and almost half of Seoul's are foreign-owned.
Hostile bids from abroad are still unknown in both countries. But many Koreans seethe at the profits reaped by foreign investors who moved in after its 1998 economic crisis. In Japan, the buccaneering tactics of corporate raiders such as the disgraced Takafumi Horie and the unravelling of cross-shareholdings that long shielded local groups from takeover have left boardrooms fearing that the next wave of "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism could be the real thing.
It should also be no great surprise that economic nationalism is in vogue in Asia when it is already resurgent in the west, with Asian bidders among its prime targets. The US Congress's veto in 2005 of the bid by CNOOC, the Chinese oil group, for Unocal and European governments' unsuccessful efforts to stop Mittal Steel buying Arcelor suggest wagons are being circled worldwide.
This outbreak of defensiveness embodies one paradox and several myths. The paradox is that foreign investors offering to build new facilities are courted and fêted almost everywhere. Yet in many countries, trying to buy local businesses, even with their managers' assent, can lead them into a nationalistic minefield.
The ambivalence reflects a widespread belief that greenfield investments are somehow "better" because they visibly raise national output, employment and exports, while acquisitions diminish local ownership and appear to add little of value to the economy. Yet the distinction is largely meaningless. FDI's greatest value is as a mechanism for transferring skills, ideas and technology across borders. They can be transmitted just as efficiently - sometimes more so - through acquisitions as through greenfield plants. Renault's revival of Nissan and the recovery under foreign ownership of troubled Japanese and Korean banks are cases in point.
Another myth is that foreign ownership turns companies into mere branches of remote head offices. Not only is the evidence for that claim moot; it is at odds with multinational companies' growing tendency to localise decisions and with western workers' complaints that offshore outsourcing is displacing ever more highly skilled jobs at home. Nor, contrary to popular perceptions, do foreign-owned companies, in general, seem more ruthless than local ones about moving work abroad.
Equally misplaced are fears that foreign takeovers threaten national economic sovereignty. These fears are often greatest in countries such as Korea, where local producers wield excessive power. The critical issue is not nationality of ownership, but the adequacy of market regulation and competition enforcement.
Of course, not all foreign takeovers generate local benefits. But neither do all greenfield projects. The point is that one method of investment is not inherently more beneficial than the other, but that the results depend on the specifics of every case.
The most dangerous myth of all is that some sectors must remain locally owned because of their "strategic" importance. A very few, such as defence contracting, may genuinely qualify. But the idea has more often served to protect weak or failing businesses: airlines in the US, car and computer makers in Europe and steel and shipbuilding companies globally.
The intrinsically elastic definition of "strategic industry" invites its misuse. In France, it has been invoked to defend Danone, a food processor, against the threat of takeover. In China, where the label is applied to thousands of state-owned companies - most far less efficient than their privately owned counterparts - it seems recently to have been extended to a troubled producer of earth-moving equipment.
Typically, the main beneficiaries of such policies have not been national economies, but the managers of "strategic" companies and their bureaucratic overlords. Their status confers state patronage, privileged access to power and, above all, the trump card of protectionist petitioners down the ages: a licence to portray themselves, however misleadingly, as the true representatives and custodians of the national interest.
自相矛盾的“经济排外”
在
颇具黑色幽默的《中国通》(Mr China)一书中，作者祈立天(Tim Clissold)讲述了这样一个故事：20世纪90年代，他和一位美国生意合伙人挥霍掉约4亿美元，用于收购中国大陆的公司，但这些公司均以失败告终。要是在今天，这两人会面临截然不同的问题。相比10年前，中国企业的经营状况普遍得到改善。但外国人想要收购，就变得更困难了。
官方批准交易的时间越来越长，并且对于外国企业在经济中扮演的日益重要的角色，政治上出现了抵抗情绪，这两个动向令国际投资者却步。中国的大门也许仍然敞开，但即便与短短半年前相比，那些在门外等待的人是否会受到欢迎，就没有那么肯定了。
亚洲其它国家也在发出“外人莫入”的信号。在日本，“毒丸计划”(poison pill)防御措施日益增多，而且收购法规不利于外国竞购者。韩国的经济民族主义源远流长，其最新理念是利用“金股”(golden shares)封杀不受欢迎的竞购接洽。
对于一些长期封闭、如今对外资开放程度前所未有的经济体而言，出现此类反应或许可以理解，尤其是中国，其外商直接投资总额相当于国内生产总值(GDP)的28%。虽然日韩两国的外商直接投资水平要低得多，但在东京和首尔证交所中，外商持有的股票分别占四分之一和近一半。
在这两个国家，来自海外的敌意收购仍是陌生概念。但对于1998年经济危机后进入韩国的外国投资者获取的丰厚利润，许多韩国人气愤不已。在日本，身败名裂的堀江贵文(Takafumi Horie)等“企业掠夺者”采取的掠夺战术，而长期保护本土企业集团免遭并购的交叉持股模式不断解体，令各家企业的董事会担心，下一波“盎格鲁撒克逊”资本主义可能带来可怕的冲击。
经济民族主义在亚洲流行不算意外，因为它在西方也已复苏，其主要目标便是亚洲竞购者。2005年，美国国会否决了中国石油集团中海油(CNOOC)对优尼科(Unocal)的竞购，欧洲各国政府则试图阻止米塔尔钢铁(Mittal Steel)收购阿赛洛(Arcelor)，尽管未能成功。这些说明，经济民族主义正在全球兴起。
排外行动的爆发，体现了一个矛盾和几个“神话”。矛盾在于，在几乎每个地方，有意建设新项目的外国投资者会受到礼遇和款待；而如果它们试图收购当地企业，即便得到了企业管理者的同意，也会导致它们陷入民族主义的雷区。
这种矛盾心理反映了一个普遍的观念，即新项目投资(greenfield investment)似乎“更好”，因为它能明显提高经济产出、就业率以及出口额，而并购却削减了本国拥有的企业所有权，且似乎不增加经济价值。但这种区别基本上没有意义。外商直接投资最大的价值在于，它是一种跨境转移技能、创意和技术的机制。但这种转移同样可通过收购实现，而且通过收购转移的效率有时还高于新项目投资。雷诺(Renault)重振日产(Nissan)，以及陷入困境的日韩银行在外资入主后恢复生机，便是有力的例证。
另一个“神话”是，企业在外资入主后便沦为总公司遥控的分部。这种说法的论据不仅缺乏意义，而且也不符合跨国公司日趋决策本地化的趋势，以及西方国家工人抱怨离岸外包正侵蚀更多本国高技术工作的现实。与多数人的看法相反，在将工作机会转移至海外这个问题上，外资公司总体上并不比本地公司更无情。
同样没有道理的是，人们担心外资收购会威胁国家经济主权。这种担忧通常在韩国等本土制造商掌握过多权力的国家最为强烈。关键不是所有权的国籍，而是市场监管和竞争政策执行是否充分。
当然，并非所有外资收购都会为本国带来效益，但新投资项目不也是这样吗？关键在于，一种投资方式并不是从根本上比另一种更有益，而是取决于每个项目的具体情况。
在所有“神话”中，最危险的莫过于，一些行业鉴于其“战略”重要性，必须保持本国所有权。实际上，只有很少行业（如国防合同承包）也许真正符合这一定义。但这种观点却被经常用于保护弱势或濒临倒闭的企业：美国的航空公司、欧洲的汽车和电脑制造商，以及全球范围内的钢铁和船舶制造公司。
“战略行业”这一定义本身就颇具弹性，从而导致了它的滥用。在法国，它被用以帮助食品加工商达能(Danone)抵御收购威胁。在中国，这一标签被贴在成千上万的国有企业身上，尽管它们的经营效率大多远不如民营企业。最近，一家陷入困境的掘土机制造商似乎也被冠以“战略企业”之名。
通常情况下，这些政策的主要受益方并不是国民经济，而是“战略”企业的管理层和他们的官僚上级。他们的身份使他们获得了政府的保护、获取权力的特权，最重要的是，获得自古以来保护主义提倡者的王牌：一张混淆视听、将自己描绘成国家利益代表者和守护者的许可证。
