Despite Criticism, US Cos Never Had It So Good
PITY THE AMERICAN businessman or woman dealing with China. Judging from the noise coming out of Washington in recent weeks, United States business is being cut a very raw deal by Beijing. China manipulated the renminbi to create a $103 billion trade surplus with Washington last year and sucked American jobs overseas. It welshed on market-opening commitments made when it joined the World Trade Organization almost two years ago and continues the wholesale piracy of foreigners' intellectual-property rights.
If that sounds like a tale of woe and misery, that's because it's meant to. But unfortunately for its authors -- a mix of U.S. politicians and manufacturing interests -- the bulk of the evidence points to the opposite conclusion: U.S. business never had it so good in China. Despite the real difficulties of doing business here, profits are up sharply and most U.S. companies are planning to significantly boost their investments in the coming years.
A report released by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing on September 25 paints a rosy picture compared to just a few years ago, when many foreign companies were shackled to domestic partners and the China market was considerably more opaque than today. According to a survey of 254 member companies by AmCham, 75% made a profit last year, with the majority of those making substantially more money than they did the previous year. A total of 42% reported that profit margins at their China operations were higher than their worldwide margins and 81% said they had plans to expand their China business. The report also notes that business conditions in China "have improved substantially over the last five years" and that this is expected to continue over the next five.
In fact, China is opening large parts of its economy at a very fast pace -- especially on the trade front. "China is, roughly, three times more open than Japan. This year, for the very first time, China is going to import more than Japan does," Nicholas Lardy, an expert on China's economy at the Washington-based Institute for International Economics, told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on September 11.
But despite all this, China looks likely to emerge as U.S. trading enemy No. 1 all the way to the November 2004 U.S. elections unless there's some narrowing of the trade deficit. "Perceptions of job and income security have long been the defining issue in U.S. presidential campaigns. It's hard to believe that it will be any different this time around," Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, told the U.S.-China Congressional Commission in late September.
So China will have to manage this extra degree of complication in its relationship with the U.S. over the coming months, which will feature an October meeting between U.S. President George Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao, visits to China by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, and the first U.S. swing by Premier Wen Jiabao. What will Beijing give? Many argue that on current trends, it doesn't have to give anything. "I think they're going to give them [U.S. critics] what they've been giving them -- 22% export growth. Beijing is thinking: 'What more do they want from us?'" says Andy Rothman, China analyst for CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.
But in order to smooth those upcoming meetings, China will for sure need to offer something. It certainly isn't about to float its currency. Even though capital has been flowing into the country in recent months, the spectre of capital flight remains strong in authorities' minds. The one thing that holds the country's rickety banking system together is the fact that depositors can do very little else with their money. And Beijing has enough trouble keeping tabs on corporate financial chicanery without the possibility that Chinese companies might be borrowing in foreign currency to finance business at home. That combination, unchecked in Southeast Asia for years, was what led to the Asian financial crisis.
That crisis rocked the economic strategy of the Chinese leadership and killed all talk of open capital markets in China. Jonathan Anderson, chief Asian economist at UBS in Hong Kong and a former head of the International Monetary Fund in China, recalls that when he first took up the post in Beijing in 1996 the country was aiming at making its currency fully convertible by 2001. Now such a move is at least a decade away, according to Li Yushi, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation attached to the Ministry of Commerce. "The big difference is the Asian Crisis," says Anderson.
A more likely scenario, nearly everyone watching the situation says, is a gradual, managed widening of the trading bands for the renminbi, accompanied by equally gradual, managed opening of foreign-investment options for Chinese. Most see a widening of the renminbi band of 3%-5%, probably sometime in the next 18 months.
What would happen in that case? The truth is, not much on the trade front. Indeed, for all the hot air emanating from politicians in Washington, there's no real signal of what the renminbi's proper value is. Cliff Tan, a Singapore-based economist with Citigroup, figures that on current trends, China's global trade balance could be in balance by the middle of next year. "The major cause of China's booming exports is not an undervalued currency," Chicago-based economist David Hale told a U.S. congressional committee on September 25. "It is an upsurge of foreign direct investment which has significantly boosted China's productive capacity and managerial competence."
Meanwhile, as Chinese exports power across the Pacific, U.S. goods are shooting in the other direction. Exports to China rose by 22% in the first seven months of this year compared to a rise of only 3% to the rest of the world. More and more agricultural products are also heading to China. U.S. agricultural exports to China for the first seven months of this year were up 139% on the same period last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The vast trade gap between the two countries is largely a result of China's ability to undercut other developing countries, combined with America's low overall savings rate. As China's economy moves rapidly up the value chain, the U.S. will probably never again produce the kinds of consumer goods that are the bulk of China's exports. "Even if Wal-Mart had to stop buying microwave ovens, computers and shirts from China they would buy instead from Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico, not from North Carolina or Ohio," Rothman says.
Nor does China pose a threat to the global trading system. Asian exports to the country are booming -- raw materials and intermediate goods that are processed for onward export, and also goods for domestic consumption. Pan-Asian exports to China more than doubled between 1995 and 2002, from $72 billion to $161 billion. Imports for domestic consumption grew from $42 billion to $79 billion while imports for reprocessing soared from $30 billion to $82 billion. Imports for reprocessing account for 51% of China's imports from East Asia, compared to 41% in 1995, Hale contends.
As a result, China is now running trade deficits with other East Asian countries, essentially buying their raw materials and components and processing them for shipment to North America and Europe, where China runs trade surpluses. On the basis of Chinese data, Hale figures the country has trade deficits of $13 billion with South Korea, $7.6 billion with Asean, $5 billion with Japan and $1.3 billion with Australia. Taiwan says its trade surplus with the mainland reached $25 billion last year. Its exports to China now exceed 13% of the island's GDP.
That's not a country with a massively undervalued currency. "If China is less able to import, that's going to be bad news," says Chen Xingdong, a Beijing-based economist with BNP Paribas.
Even if criticism of the renminbi's value is misguided, Beijing still has to deal with U.S. perceptions that it competes unfairly with American industry. There is a range of things China may use to placate detractors ahead of forthcoming meetings -- particularly during Wen's U.S. trip. By early next year it will reduce export rebates from an average of 15% to 11% for manufactured goods, says Li at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation. He admits the main reason for this is so the government can save on paying out rebates to exporters, but it will lower margins for all China-based exporters and thus China can still present it as a concession to American critics.
Many argue China is likely to use typical mercantile diplomacy as well. Wen could, for instance, head to the U.S. with an announcement of a large purchase of Boeing aircraft over the coming years. China's last big airliner order went to Airbus, so many aviation industry officials figure that Boeing is in line to benefit next. Other possibilities could be new licences for American companies in insurance, or a long-awaited opening of the car-finance sector.
Li also points to recent low-level advances in the rights of private citizens and companies to hold and transfer foreign currency abroad as evidence that China is incrementally easing exchange regulations. Another possibility: a move away from the current dollar peg to link the renminbi to the currencies of its major trading partners, the U.S., Japan and European Union. This basket arrangement, which Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, advocated in Shanghai in September, would more truly reflect the value of the Chinese currency while still giving it a strong measure of stability. "This is feasible and could be done within one or two years," says Li.
In the end, though, the pressure on the renminbi comes from the growing fracas that is the U.S. election cycle. So the solution could come from that direction as well, and the best hope for China would be an upturn in the U.S. economy. "As long as the U.S. economy is weak, people are going to be looking at China," says Anderson. "But if the economy there goes into a strong recovery, then this issue could well be forgotten about again."
穿越太平洋风暴
跟中国做生意的美国商人真是可怜！从华盛顿最近几周发出的抗议声中可以作出这种判断，美国企业受到北京方面极不公平待遇的打击。美国声称，中国管制人民币汇率，从而使去年对美国的贸易顺差达到1,030亿美元，并使美国的就业机会转移到海外。中国未履行在大约两年前加入世界贸易组织（World Trade Organization, 简称:WTO）时许下的开放市场承诺，并继续大规模地侵犯外国人的知识产权。
如果这听起来像是一篇关于痛苦和灾难的控诉，那是因为它的作者想要达到这种效果。但对于代表美国政客和制造商利益的作者来说，不幸的是，大量的证据都指向相反的结论：美国企业在中国的良好境况前所未有。尽管在这里做生意确实很难，但美国企业的利润急剧增长，大部分美国公司都计划在未来几年大量增加投资。
北京美国商会(American Chamber of Commerce)在9月25日发表的一份报告中描绘了一幅在华投资的瑰丽图景，与几年前形成鲜明对比，当时，许多外资企业都受到国内合作伙伴的束缚，而且市场远不如现在透明。美国商会对254家会员企业的调查显示，75%的企业去年盈利，其中大多数企业的利润大大高于前一年。总共有42%的企业宣布中国业务的利润率高于全球范围的利润率，有81%的企业表示他们计划扩展中国业务。这份报告还指出，企业经营环境在过去5年中大为改善，而且预计在未来5年还将继续朝好的方向发展。
事实上，中国正在以非常快的速度开放大部分经济领域，尤其是贸易方面。在美国参议院外交委员会(Senate Foreign Relations Committee)9月11日举行的听证会上，华盛顿国际经济研究所(Institute for International Economics)的中国经济专家尼古拉斯?拉迪(Nicholas Lardy)说，中国的开放程度几乎比日本高出三倍。今年中国的进口将首次超过日本。
尽管存在上述种种有利证据，但是在2004年11月的美国总统大选之前，中国看起来会一直被视为美国的头号贸易敌人，除非美国对中国的贸易逆差能够缩小。
摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的首席经济学家斯蒂芬?罗奇(Stephen Roach)在9月底对国会美国－中国委员会(U.S.-China Congressional Commission)表示，在就业和收入保障上的看法一直是美国总统选举活动中的决定性问题。这次选举也不会有任何不同。
因此，中国在未来几个月内将不得不应对中美关系中存在的这种额外的复杂因素，双方关系的代表性事件将是美国总统乔治?布什(George Bush)与中国国家主席胡锦涛在10月份举行的会晤、美国贸易代表罗伯特?策利克(Robert Zoellick)和商务部部长唐纳德?埃文斯(Donald Evans)访问中国以及中国国务院总理温家宝首次访问美国。北京将给美国什么好处呢？许多人认为，根据目前的趋势，中国不必给任何好处。里昂证券亚太地区市场(CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets)的中国市场分析师安迪?罗特曼(Andy Rothman)说，他认为中国给他们（美国的批评家）的将是一直以来正在给予的东西－22%的出口增长。北京方面在想：他们还要向中国要求什么呢？
但是，为了让即将举行的会议顺利进行，中国肯定必须付出些东西。这当然不会是允许人民币自由浮动。虽然在最近数月一直有资本流入中国，但资本外逃的幽灵依然强烈地萦绕在管理当局的脑海中。中国摇摇欲坠的银行体系得以维系的一个原因是存款人几乎没有其他的投资途径。并且在中国公司不能借入外币为国内业务融资的情况下，北京在监控企业融资行为上已经是困难重重。上述两个因素结合在一起，数年来在东南亚地区未得到抑制，曾经导致了亚洲金融危机。
这场危机动摇了中国领导层的经济改革策略，并使所有关于中国开放资本市场的谈论划上句号。瑞银(UBS)驻香港的首席亚洲经济学家、国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)驻中国地区前任主管乔纳森?安德森(Jonathan Anderson)回忆说，当他于1996年首次赴北京上任时，中国的目标是在2001年之前实现人民币完全可自由兑换。隶属于中国商务部的中国国际贸易与经济合作研究院(Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation)的副院长李雨时说，现在这一举动起码要等到10年以后。
关注此事的人几乎都认为，一种更有可能的假设是，逐渐、有管理地放宽人民币汇率交易区间，同时也逐渐、有管理地对中国人开放对外投资途径。大部分人预计人民币波动区间将被放宽3%-5%，可能在未来18个月的某个时候实行。
在这种情况下会发生什么？事实是，贸易方面不会有多大变化。实际上，华盛顿的政客们都在夸大其词，并没有真实的信号显示人民币的合理价值究竟是多少。花旗集团(Citigroup)驻新加坡的经济学家Cliff Tan指出，根据目前的趋势，中国的全球贸易余额到明年年中可能为收支平衡。驻芝加哥的经济学家大卫?黑尔(David Hale)在9月25日告诉美国国会的一个委员会，导致中国出口迅猛增长的主要原因不是人民币价值被低估。而是外商直接投资的增长，这大大提高了中国的生产能力和管理能力。
在中国的出口跨越太平洋的同时，美国商品则流向相反的方向。今年前7个月美国对中国的出口增长了22%，而对世界其他地方的出口仅增长3%。越来越多的农产品也流向中国。美国农业部(U.S. Department of Agriculture)的数据显示，今年前7个月对中国的农产品出口较上年同期增长139%。
两国之间存在巨大的贸易差额主要是由于中国能够从其他发展中国家手中抢走生意，再加上美国的整体储蓄率较低。中国经济在产业价值链上迅速上升，而美国可能再也不会生产中国向其出口的大部分消费品。罗特曼说，即使沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)停止从中国购买微波炉、电脑和衬衫，他们也会从印尼、泰国或墨西哥购买，而不会从北卡罗来纳州或俄亥俄州购买。
中国也不会对全球贸易体系构成威胁。亚洲对该国的出口正在增长－原材料和半成品进行加工后再出口，也有一部分用于国内消费。在1995年至2002年期间，泛亚地区对中国的出口额增长了一倍多，从720亿美元提高到1,610亿美元。其中，中国用于国内消费的进口商品额从420亿美元增至790亿美元，而用于再加工的进口商品额从300亿美元猛增至820亿美元。黑尔说，进口再加工的商品额占中国从东亚地区进口总额的51%，1995年这个比例为41%。
这样，中国现在对其他东亚国家都是贸易逆差，主要是购买他们的原材料和零部件，经过加工后出口到北美和欧洲。中国对北美和欧洲国家多为贸易顺差。根据中国的数据，黑尔估计，中国对韩国的贸易逆差为130亿美元，对东盟的逆差为76亿美元，对日本的逆差为50亿美元，对澳大利亚的逆差为13亿美元。台湾称，去年对大陆的贸易顺差达到250亿美元。现在台湾对大陆的出口占本地生产总值的比例超过13%。
中国的货币价值整体上并没有被低估。BNP百富勤(BNP Paribas)驻北京的经济学家陈兴动说，如果中国的进口能力减弱，那将是个坏消息。
即使对人民币价值的批评是被误导的结果，北京仍然要应对美国认定中国与其进行不公平竞争的局面。中国可能采取一系列措施在即将举行的会晤之前安抚恶意批评者，尤其是在温家宝访美期间。中国国际贸易与经济合作研究院的李雨时说，到明年年初，中国将把制成品的出口退税平均税率从15%下调至11%。他承认，主要原因是这样一来，政府就可以节省对出口商的退税支出，但此举将使中国出口商的利润率降低，因而还可以当作对美国批评家的一种妥协。
许多人认为，中国可能同时还采用典型的商业外交政策。例如，温家宝可以在访问美国时宣布在未来几年大量购买波音(Boeing)飞机。中国上一笔大额飞机订单给了空中客车(Airbus)，因此，许多航空业人士指出，按照顺序，波音将成为下一个受益者。其他可能采取的措施包括：允许更多美国公司在中国从事保险业或期待已久的开放汽车融资领域。
李雨时还举出了一个显示中国正在逐渐放松外汇管制的例证：即最近公民个人和企业可持有或向海外汇出外币的权利略有提高。另一个可能性是：将目前人民币对美元的钉住汇率改为钉住主要贸易伙伴（美国、日本和欧盟）的一篮子货币。世界银行(World Bank)前任首席经济学家约瑟夫?斯蒂格利茨(Joseph Stiglitz)9月份在上海主张，这种钉住一篮子货币的安排将更真实地反映人民币的价值，同时还提供了保持汇率稳定的强有力措施。李雨时说，这是可行的，可能在一到两年内实行。
最后，人民币面临的压力来自美国大选期间一般都会不断高涨的抱怨之声。因此解决之道也可以循著这个方向去获得，美国经济好转对中国而言是最佳的期待。安德森说，只要美国经济疲软，人们就总是把矛头对准中国。但如果经济开始强劲反弹，这个问题就会再次被遗忘。
