Is China's Rapid Economic Development Good for U.S.?
Chinese oil company Cnooc Ltd.'s takeover bid for Unocal Corp. has brought into sharp relief two opposing American views on China's rapid economic development.
Many in Congress and the Pentagon think it may hasten an inevitable clash between the U.S. and China for economic and political leadership in the world. Many businessmen and academics, however, think China's growing wealth and international economic ties will make it more democratic and a force for global stability. Both have history on their side.
Brad DeLong, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley, sees a useful parallel in Britain's policy toward the emerging industrial colossus of the United States in the 19th century.
CHINA INC.'S MUSCLE
? Page One: Cnooc Uses Wall Street Tactics in Unocal Bid
? White House Review Called for on Cnooc
? Shades of MCI: Unocal Battle May Be Lengthy
? China's Push Is Like Japan's, Sort of
? Unocal's Allure Lies in the Promise of Known Assets
? China's Muscle Masks Falling Profitability
? Page One: Competing Unocal Suitors Set Strategies
? Page One: Oil Battle Sets Showdown Over China
? Heard on the Street: Get Ready for China Inc.'s Moves
As late as the 1840s, he notes, the U.S. and Britain -- then the world's sole superpower -- came close to war over territorial disputes in the Pacific Northwest and the lucrative fur trade there. But in subsequent decades Britain chose to accommodate, rather than suppress, the U.S. By 1900, the notion of conflict was widely regarded "as silly, simply because the trade and economic connections were so tight and the political systems so compatible," Mr. DeLong said.
Similarly, he argues the world will be safer if the Chinese in time see the U.S. as having aided, rather than hampered, their economic development.
History, though, also offers counterexamples. Germany was catching up to Britain at the same time as was the U.S. but that relationship ended in war. Similarly, Japan was more open to imports and foreign investment before World War II than after, yet its rapid industrialization, especially later under a nationalist military government, ultimately made it a more formidable adversary of the U.S.
"There is no deterministic relation" between economic advance and war or peace, said Charles Maier, a Harvard University historian. Katherine Barbieri, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina, has found that countries that trade more with each other are actually more likely to fight, in part because deeper relationships generate more things to fight about. "Trade generates wealth but...certain countries may take that wealth and direct it to military purposes," she said. "We're giving China the power to build a very strong military."
China isn't easy to categorize. It has pursued market-based economic liberalization, foreign trade and foreign investment to lift its mostly poor, rural population out of poverty. It has a growing business elite, many with U.S. educations. Yet it remains a one-party state with a host of strategic friction points with the U.S.
Since President Nixon led the U.S. opening to China in the early 1970s, every administration has wavered between seeing Beijing as clear friend or potential foe. Some Asia specialists within the Bush administration now worry that the U.S. trade deficit with China, which topped $160 billion last year, cannot be sustained without political repercussions. There is also growing alarm, even within the more accommodating State Department, that China's pursuit of energy resources is propping up unsavory governments in places like Burma and Venezuela.
Some of the more alarming views of China's intentions will be laid out in a Pentagon assessment of China's military, which is expected to come out next week after a long delay and heated internal debate. Defense officials indicate that the report hasn't been notably toned down through the interagency vetting process, and will still contain a list of potential conflict scenarios that some in the White House and the State Department had hoped to strip out.
The widely differing views of China were vividly evident in 2001 when military and Wall Street officials came together at the World Trade Center in New York to share thoughts on the impact of China's economic and military rise. The organizer, Thomas Barnett, then a teacher at the U.S. Naval War College, hoped to bring the two constituencies closer together. Instead, their opposing views were reinforced.
Mr. Barnett, now a writer and consultant, says the Wall Street participants concluded, "'When I think of the security issues I realize how a strategic partnership with China is all the more imperative,' and the military guys would say, 'Wow, realizing all the economic competition, war with China is that much more inevitable.' "
Americans in general are likewise ambivalent. In an annual exercise, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last year conducted a poll asking the public to rate their degree of warmth or chilliness toward several countries on a scale from zero to 100. China earned an average score of 44 degrees, 10 degrees cooler than Mexico but just three degrees cooler than France and seven degrees warmer than Saudi Arabia.
Even "within China, there are people who think of China's expansionist prospects and military modernization, and see the country as being something like Japan or Germany pre-World War II," said Charles Wolf, an Asia scholar at the Rand Corp., a think tank in California. "Then there are others who put huge emphasis on the peaceful rise of China."
Mr. Barnett argues that most of Asia's economic success stories had, in effect, one-party government as China does today: Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. Today, all are important trading partners and pro-U.S. Meantime, North Korea, which cut itself off from the world, is mired in poverty and one of the U.S.'s chief antagonists.
History suggests that while economic engagement helps prevent conflict between countries, by itself it isn't enough. During the 1920s, Japan had low import tariffs and its democratic, civilian government encouraged domestic alliances with European and American companies to hasten Japan's technological catch-up, said Hideaki Miyajima, a Japanese economic historian at Waseda University in Tokyo and a visiting scholar at Harvard. General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. operated Japan's only major automobile assembly plants. The heads of Japan's "zaibatsu" -- urban industrial conglomerates -- were pro-Western. Many sent their children to U.S. universities.
But these pro-Western elites were too weak to resist the forces of militarism and imperial expansion. Mr. Miyajima said the Depression fell disproportionately on Japan's large agricultural population, which was the military's power base. It increased economic inequality and fueled resentment of the traditional business elite.
In 1932, military-backed right-wing nationalists assassinated both Japan's prime minister and one of its leading business figures, Takuma Dan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated manager of the Mitsui Group zaibatsu. In 1936-37, the military completed its takeover and began to limit imports and foreign investment in militarily strategic industries, such as steel, automobiles and machinery. GM and Ford were forced to leave; Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. took their place.
Germany's rivalry with Britain is similarly complex. In 1910, Norman Angell, a British economist, wrote in "The Great Illusion" that Europe's great powers had become so economically interdependent that war was unthinkable. Harvard's Mr. Maier says the hypothesis was plausible. Britain's old-line industrial elites saw Germany as a threat, while its emerging financial elites saw it as an opportunity. Within Germany, Ruhr-based heavy industry favored the army buildup and were more willing to risk conflict with Britain, while Hamburg-based trading interests were more pro-British, though supportive of the German fleet buildup.
British-Germany naval rivalry didn't lead to war itself, says Mr. Maier; rather, entangling alliances between Germany and Austria-Hungary on one hand and Britain and Russia on the other, were a more proximate cause.
中国经济迅速增长于美国利也弊也？
最近，中国海洋石油公司(Cnooc Ltd.)出价竞购美国加州联合石油公司(Unocal Corp.)，此举使得有关中国经济迅速发展的影响的两种截然相反的观点一下子凸显出来。
美国国会(Congress)和五角大楼(Pentagon)的许多人士都认为，此举将加速中美双方在追求全球经济和政治领导地位时出现不可避免的冲突。然而，许多商界和学术界人士则认为，迅速增长的经济实力和国际经贸联系将推动中国的民主化进程，并使其成为一支有助于全球稳定的力量。这两派人物都有自己的历史依据。
美国加州大学(University of California)伯克利分校经济史学家德朗(Brad DeLong)认为，美国在19世纪以工业帝国的形象日益崛起的时候，英国应对这一局面所采取的政策可以作为一个有益的借鉴。
他指出，十九世纪四十年代，美国和当时世界唯一的超级大国英国在太平洋西北海岸地区的领土争端和在那一地区的毛皮贸易已大有引发战争的危险。但在随后的几十年时间里，英国决定放弃压制政策而选择了与美国共处。德朗说，在1900年之前，冲突被普遍视为一种“愚蠢的”概念，“因为相互的经贸联系是那么紧密，而且大家的政治体系也很一致。”
同样道理，德朗认为如果中国能认识到美国有益于而不是有损于它的经济发展，那么世界将变得更加安全。
但从历史上看，也曾出现过相反的情况。德国基本与美国在同一时间赶上了英国，但英德关系却在战争中毁于一旦。在第二次世界大战前，日本对进口和外国投资的态度比战后还要开放。然而，日本迅速的工业化进程、特别军国主义政府的统治，最终使它成为美国的一个更可怕的对手。
哈佛大学(Harvard University)历史学家梅尔(Charles Maier)说，经济发展与战争或和平并不存在很确定的关系。南卡罗来纳大学政治学家巴比利(Katherine Barbieri)在研究中发现，双边贸易密切的国家实际上更有可能发生战争，这在一定程度上是因为关系越密切，牵涉到的利益纠纷也就越多。
她说：“贸易带来财富……但有些国家会将财富用于军事目的。现在我们正在使中国获得得以建立强大军事实力的力量。”
要对中国作出准确的描述并不容易。中国正在推进以市场为基础的经济自由化、扩大国际贸易和外国投资，以解决广大农村贫困人口的生存问题。中国的商业精英阶层日益壮大，许多人都有美国教育背景。但它仍是一个一党专政的国家，与美国存在一系列的战略冲突。
自从美国前总统尼克松(Nixon)上世纪七十年代为中美关系打开大门以来，历届政府在对待中国的态度上一直摇摆不定，要么将中国视为当然的朋友，要么就是潜在的敌人。布什政府的一些亚洲事务专家现在担心，美国2004年高达1,600亿美元的对华贸易逆差不可能不产生政治影响。
但即使是在政策越来越宽容的美国国务院(State Department)，有一种警告声也甚嚣尘上：一些人认为，对缅甸和委内瑞拉等不受美国欢迎的国家，中国在那里的能源追求是对该国政府的大力支持。
估计在五角大楼下周将发表的对中国军事力量的评估报告中，人们会听到一些更让人担忧的观点。对这份迟迟未能出笼的报告，五角大楼内部存在著激烈争论。国防部官员指出，这份报告在汇集内部各部门意见时，整体基调并未明显缓和。报告还将包涵一份可能出现的冲突因素清单，而这些因素是白宫和国务院一直都希望能消除的。
2001年，美国军方人士和华尔街金融界管理人士曾在纽约原世界贸易中心(World Trade Center)就中国经济和军事实力壮大所产生的影响交换过意见。在那次的讨论中可以明显看出，人们对中国的看法差异很大。这次活动的组织者、当时美国海军战争学院(U.S. Naval War College)教师贝内特(Thomas Barnett)希望能加深双方的相互理解，但事与愿违，双方不但各执己见，分歧反而更大了。
现身为作家和咨询顾问的贝内特说，华尔街人士认为，如果谈到安全问题，那么与中国建立战略性伙伴关系势在必行；而军方人士则强烈表示，鉴于经济上的所有这些竞争，与中国的战争很有可能在所难免。
而普通美国人的看法则模棱两可。芝加哥外交关系协会(Chicago Council on Foreign Relations)去年在进行例行年度调查时，要求受访者就他们对一些国家的好恶打分，分值在0-100之间。调查结果显示，中国的得分是44，比墨西哥低10分，但只比法国低3分；比沙特阿拉伯高7分。
加州智囊机构兰德公司(Rand Corp.)的亚洲问题学者沃尔夫(Charles Wolf)说，即使是在中国国内，也有人在思考中国的扩张前景和军事现代化的影响，并认为中国现在有点像二战前的日本或德国。当然，也有其他人强调中国是在和平崛起。
贝内特认为，在亚洲，经济发展很成功的国家和地区大都像中国一样实际是一党制政府，如新加坡、韩国、日本、台湾。目前，这些亲美国的政府也都是美国的重要贸易伙伴。而自我隔绝与外部世界的朝鲜深陷在贫困的泥沼中，而它是美国最主要的敌对国之一。
历史表明，尽管经济联系有助于防止国家间的冲突，但仅靠经济联系还是不够的。日本早稻田大学(Waseda University)经济史学家、哈佛大学访问学者Hideaki Miyajima说，上世纪二十年代，日本的关税很低，民选政府鼓励国内企业与欧美公司合作，以帮助日本在技术上尽早迎头赶上。
当时，日本仅有的几个重要的汽车装配厂是通用汽车(General Motors Corp.)和福特汽车(Ford Motor Co.)经营的。日本大财阀的掌门人都是亲西方的。许多人都把孩子送到美国念大学。
但这些亲西方精英人士的力量太弱，不足以遏制日本的军国主义势力和帝国主义的扩张。Miyajima说，日本的广大农村地区发生了大萧条，而大量的农村人口正是日本的主要兵源。大萧条加剧了城乡经济差距，激发了农民们对传统商业精英的仇恨。
1932年，军国主义支持下的右翼民族主义者刺杀了当时的日本首相以及日本商界名流Takuma Dan。Takuma Dan毕业于美国麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)，是大财阀三井物产(Mitsui Group)的总经理。1936-37年，军国主义者掌管了政府，随即开始在关乎军事战略的行业如钢铁、汽车、机械等行业开始限制进口和外国投资。通用和福特被迫离开，丰田汽车(Toyota Motor Corp.)和日产汽车(Nissan Motor Co.)取而代之。
德国和英国的竞争关系同样也很复杂。1910年，英国经济学家安吉尔(Norman Angell)在《大幻想》(The Great Illusion)一书中写道，欧洲强国之间在经济上相互非常依赖，战争几乎是不可想象的事。哈佛大学的梅尔说，这种推论听来很有道理，但实际并非如此。英国工业界的老派精英人士认为德国是一个巨大的威胁，而新生的金融业人士则将德国视为他们的发展机会。
至于德国国内，一方面是鲁尔重工业基地的人希望军队扩张，为此甚至宁愿冒与英国开战的危险；而另一方面，汉堡的贸易界人士则比较亲英，虽然他们支持德国扩大海上舰队。
梅尔说，英德两国并非因为在海上的竞争而导致战争的。实际上，当时的状况是：一方面是德国和奥匈帝国之间错综复杂的联盟关系，另一方面有英国和俄罗斯的复杂关系，这才是导致战争的最直接的原因。
