谁害怕中国公司？
作者：史蒂夫·洛尔 2005 年 7 月 24 日
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/business/yourmoney/whos-afraid-of-china-inc.html?
威廉·A·赖因施 (WILLIAM A. REINSCH) 是一位公开宣称的自由贸易者，他对中国在国际经济中地位的上升表示欢迎。 毕竟，他是国家对外贸易委员会的主席，该组织成立于 1914 年，旨在促进“开放的世界贸易体系”。 事实上，当赖因施担任克林顿政府的高级贸易官员时，他曾受到一些安全分析师的指责，他们表示，赖因施将商业问题置于国家安全之上，对中国态度软弱。
但就连赖因施先生也对中国试图收购美国中型石油公司优尼科 (Unocal) 感到不安。 优尼科收购竞赛的结果尚不确定，上周其董事会接受了雪佛龙改进后的收购要约。 然而，受政府支持的中国石油公司中海油仍然提出了更高的报价，而且可能会提高赌注。
如果中国的竞购继续进行，赖因什希望看到对该交易进行彻底的国家安全审查，审查范围将超出通常关注的武器技术，包括能源安全。 “我们的陆军、海军和空军依靠石油运行，”他解释道。
石油是最终的地缘政治商品——正如丹尼尔·耶金（Daniel Yergin）将其史诗般的石油和国际政治史称为“奖品”。 即使中海油未能收购优尼科，这种追求也将中国挑战的双方推到了一起，并成为公众辩论的焦点。 因为中国既是经济全球化的引擎，又是新兴的军事强国。 用象征性的速记法来说，它是拥有一支军队的沃尔玛。
两侧的划分并不整齐。 但那些关注经济的人往往认为，尽管关系紧张，但伙伴关系、合作和乐观的理由，而安全专家则更为悲观，并预计战略冲突是两种截然不同的政治体系未来可能出现的情况。
中国分析人士认为，在中国也存在两个阵营：安全鹰派和经济现代主义者。 现代主义者认为中国将与美国一起成为21世纪第二大经济强国，两国将分享贸易关系加强和全球增长带来的收益。 鹰派认为这种观点很天真，并担心美国的政策是保持世界唯一的超级大国地位并遏制中国的崛起。 因此，鹰派人士表示，中国的回应是试图削弱美国的霸权，削弱美国压制中国的力量。
中国的两面形象最近都十分明显。 两周前，中国高级军事官员朱成虎少将表示，如果美国军队干预台湾问题的任何冲突，中国应该对美国使用核武器。 随后，迫于美国和其他贸易伙伴的压力，中国于上周四宣布，将不再将人民币与美元紧密挂钩。 这是一个谨慎的步骤，短期内不会对缓解中国对美国的巨额贸易顺差产生太大作用。 但此举是灵活性和包容性的标志。
“我们是否不可避免地将彼此视为对手，或者我们是否看到一个双方都受益的全球化世界？这是一个大问题，”克林顿政府期间国家安全委员会高级官员肯尼思·利伯特撒尔(Kenneth Lieberthal)表示。
“无论怎样，这一框架将推动大量政策决策，”中国分析师、密歇根大学商学院教授利伯特撒尔补充道。
这就是中国问题：机遇还是威胁？ 如果不出意外的话，中海油对优尼科的收购表明，美国对中国的看法是多么不稳定，而且在国家安全和贸易问题上的焦虑是多么深重。
人们很容易将华盛顿视为一个空谈工厂，但国会的抗议范围却很大。 共和党和民主党在参众两院纷纷提出了批评中海油收购计划的决议和立法提案。 加利福尼亚州共和党众议员理查德·庞博(Richard W. Pombo)上个月提出的一项决议宣称，允许中国公司收购优尼科将“威胁损害美国的国家安全”。 最终以 398 比 15 的投票结果通过。
北达科他州民主党参议员拜伦·多根起草了三项反中海油立法，其中包括要求国会对此次收购进行为期六个月的调查，以及禁止该交易的法案。 多根先生以公平贸易为由反对中国的举动。 他说，中国政府不会允许美国公司收购中国石油公司。 “那么他们到底为什么能够购买一家美国石油公司呢？” 多根先生说道。
然而，中国的收购要约引发了多根对贸易和全球化更深层次的担忧。 他谈到制造业工作岗位流失到中国、中国的知识产权盗版者非法复制美国电影和软件，以及对中国的贸易逆差正在急剧上升，而且看不到尽头。 “贸易应该是互利的，但与中国的贸易当然不是这样，”多根先生说。
国会的风暴增加了围绕中海油竞购的政治风险。 该出价为 185 亿美元，仍然高于雪佛龙 170 亿美元的加价报价。 但华尔街分析师表示，中海油必须出价更高才有机会获胜，中海油的报价比雪佛龙的出价要高得多，以弥补政府对中国报价审核的延迟，甚至华盛顿可能阻止中国交易的可能性。
这将是一个极端的步骤，但根据宪法第一条第 8 款，国会有权“监管与外国的贸易”。 “我的感觉是，国会不会对中海油收购案获得批准袖手旁观，”国会咨询小组美中经济与安全审查委员会主席理查德·达马托 (C. Richard D'Amato) 表示。 “这就是政治现实。”
中海油及其顾问误读了华盛顿的政治环境。 拥有南加州大学研究生学位的中海油董事长傅成玉表示，他对政治批评的强烈程度感到惊讶。 一位接近中海油的人士表示，如果中海油能够与一家美国石油公司作为合作伙伴参与竞购，那么它的道路将会更加顺利。这一方案曾被短暂考虑过，但遭到拒绝。
这位人士表示，这个想法是，这家美国公司将收购优尼科在美国的资产，而中海油则获得了这笔交易的主要利益——优尼科在亚洲的海上天然气田及其在海上勘探和生产方面的专业知识。 天然气储量和技术被认为对中国实现到 2020 年摆脱煤炭并通过天然气发电占全国 20% 电力的目标具有战略意义。 与美国合作伙伴建立了联系，因此该交易的威胁性较小，也不会成为美国中国政治的避雷针，”该人士表示。
也许吧，但许多经济学家和贸易专家认为，美国对中海油竞购的焦虑更多地反映了美国的情况，而不是中国或中海油策略的问题。 “所有这些确实表明了我们社会对全球化的焦虑，”里根政府贸易官员、华盛顿经济战略研究所所长克莱德·V·普雷斯托维茨(Clyde V. Prestowitz)说。 “我们现在在经济上与中国如此相互依赖，我们选择了这条道路。”
2001年，华盛顿推动中国融入国际经济并加入世界贸易组织。美国公司已将大部分制造业务外包给中国工厂。 多年来，美国消费者一直在中国疯狂购物，购买从衣服到电脑等中国制造的一切产品。 这就是为什么美国去年对中国的贸易逆差达到创纪录的1620亿美元。 中国拥有7000亿美元的外汇储备，其中大部分是美元。 它通过投资美国国债来回收大部分资金； 这使得美国的利率保持在较低水平，从而推动了房地产的繁荣。
“我们把他们用来收购优尼科的钱交给了中国，”普雷斯托维茨先生说。他是一本关于财富和权力向亚洲转移的新书《三十亿新资本家》（Basic Books，2005 年）的作者。 “现在我们告诉中国人，请继续投资我们的债券，但你不能将他们的盈余的一小部分投资于一家石油公司。这对我们来说真的很困惑和虚伪。”
在其他人看来混乱不堪的情况下，克林顿政府中央情报局局长詹姆斯·伍尔西 (R. James Woolsey) 却认为挑战中海石油的收购战略是明确的。 伍尔西承认，石油是一种全球贸易商品，但在由于中国和印度等快速增长国家的需求不断增长而导致市场紧张的市场中，石油也是一种战略资源。 伍尔西先生说，这是在人们开始考虑恐怖分子破坏中东一个重要油田的行为可能产生的影响之前。
“中国实际上假设可能存在石油短缺，”博思艾伦咨询公司副总裁伍尔西说。
伍尔西先生认为中国是一个有着挑战美国的军事野心的国家，也是一个不尊重人权和言论自由的政治体系。 在伍尔西看来，中海油是“共产主义独裁政权”的企业工具。
里根政府国防部高级官员小弗兰克·加夫尼(Frank Gaffney Jr.)表示，中海油的举动是确保中国拥有实现其总体国家设计的资源的一步。 “中国的战略是取代美国成为世界头号经济强国，并在必要时在军事上击败我们，”安全政策中心主席加夫尼表示。
威廉·布莱尔公司的战略关注范围要小得多。 直到最近，芝加哥投资公司威廉·布莱尔(William Blair)还是中海油的最大外部股东，而中海油的多数股权由中国政府持有。 但最近几周，威廉·布莱尔出售了其价值约 1.6 亿美元的股份，原因是担心中海油的行为太像一家国有公司，而不够像一家试图为股东带来最大回报的资本主义企业，戴维·梅里安 (David Merjan) 解释道。 该公司的基金经理。
梅里安表示，对优尼科的高额收购引发了人们对中海油是否真正独立于中国政府的怀疑。 “如果中国打算向外部股东出售像中海油这样的公司的股票，那么它不应该是为了中国经济政策的利益而进行的，”梅里安表示。
中海油及其对优尼科的收购似乎是中国发展道路的一部分。 中海油正在寻求政府的大量帮助，以西方石油公司无法获得的条件提供了约 70 亿美元的贷款。 因此，中海油可能愿意并且能够支付过高的价格。 是的，中国正在将在世界各地寻找石油和天然气资产作为国家优先事项。 尽管如此，这种情况仍然发生在一个正在稳步走向市场经济的国家，尽管这个国家的中央控制程度比美国人所认为的自由市场经济要多。
拥有 6000 万党员——比法国人口还多——的中国共产党确实在指导经济，尽管随着时间的推移越来越少。 “但可以将其视为中国官僚资本主义政党，”密歇根大学的利伯特撒尔先生说。 “这与共产主义没有任何关系。”
利伯特先生认为自己是对中国持乐观态度的人之一。 他表示，全球化以及中美经济的持续一体化可以实现互利共赢。 效仿台湾和韩国的模式，中产阶级的富裕和教育在更多中国人口中的普及最终应该成为民主自由化的力量。
“我百分百确定我是对的吗？不，但这是我所做的长期赌注，”利伯特先生说。 “如果你让悲观主义者——那些相信美国和中国将不可避免地成为敌人的人——来推动政策，那么结果将是他们预测的那样。”
Who's Afraid of China Inc.?
By Steve Lohr
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/business/yourmoney/whos-afraid-of-china-inc.html?
WILLIAM A. REINSCH, an avowed free trader, welcomes China's rising stature in the international economy. After all, he is the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, an organization founded in 1914 to promote an "open world trading system." Indeed, when he was a senior trade official in the Clinton administration, Mr. Reinsch was chided by some security analysts who said he was being soft on China by placing matters of commerce ahead of national security.
But even Mr. Reinsch is uneasy about China's attempt to buy Unocal, a midsize American oil company. The outcome of the takeover contest for Unocal is uncertain, and last week its board embraced an improved offer from Chevron. Yet Cnooc, a government-backed Chinese oil company, still has the higher offer -- and it could up the ante.
If the Chinese bid proceeds, Mr. Reinsch wants to see a thorough national security review of the deal, one that goes beyond the usual focus on weapons technology to include energy security. "Our Army, Navy and Air Force run on oil," he explained.
Oil is the ultimate geopolitical commodity -- it is "The Prize," as Daniel Yergin titled his epic history of petroleum and international politics. And even if Cnooc fails to grab Unocal, the pursuit has pushed the two sides of the Chinese challenge together and into the spotlight of public debate. For China is both an engine of economic globalization and an emerging military power. In symbolic shorthand, it is Wal-Mart with an army.
The two sides aren't neatly divided. But those who focus on economics tend to see partnership, cooperation and reasons for optimism despite tensions, while security experts are more pessimistic and anticipate strategic conflict as the likely future for two political systems that are so different.
In China, there are also two camps -- the security hawks and the economic modernists, according to China analysts. The modernists see China joining the United States as the second great economic power of the 21st century, and the two nations sharing the gains from increased trade ties and global growth. The hawks regard that view as naïve, and fret that American policy is to remain the world's only superpower and to curb China's rise. So China's response, the hawks say, is to try to erode United States hegemony and reduce America's power to hold China down.
Both faces of China have been evident recently. Two weeks ago, a senior Chinese military official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan. Then, bowing to pressure from the United States and other trading partners, China announced last Thursday that it would no longer peg its currency tightly to the dollar. It is a measured step, and it will not do much to moderate China's huge trade surplus with the United States anytime soon. But the move is a sign of flexibility and accommodation.
"Do we see each other inevitably as antagonists, or do we see a world of globalization from which both sides benefit? That is the big issue," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior official in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.
"And that framework, one way or another," added Mr. Lieberthal, a China analyst and a professor at the University of Michigan business school, "will drive an enormous number of policy decisions."
So that is the China question: Is it an opportunity or a threat? If nothing else, the Cnooc bid for Unocal has shown how unsettled American thinking is on China and how deep the anxieties run, both in matters of national security and trade.
It is easy to dismiss Washington as a hot-air factory, but the scope of the outcry in Congress is significant. Resolutions and legislative proposals, all critical of Cnooc's takeover bid, have piled up in the House and Senate, from Republicans and Democrats. A resolution presented last month by Representative Richard W. Pombo, a California Republican, declared that permitting the Chinese company to buy Unocal would "threaten to impair the national security of the United States." It passed, 398 to 15.
Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, has drafted three pieces of anti-Cnooc legislation that range from calling for a six-month Congressional inquiry into the bid to a bill that would prohibit the deal. Mr. Dorgan objects to the Chinese move on fair-trade grounds. The Chinese government, he says, would not allow an American company to buy a Chinese oil company. "So why on earth should they be able to buy an American oil company?" Mr. Dorgan said.
Yet the Chinese takeover bid taps into a deeper concern about trade and globalization for Mr. Dorgan. He talks of manufacturing jobs lost to China, intellectual-property pirates in China illegally copying American movies and software, and a trade deficit with China that is rising astronomically with no end in sight. "Trade should be mutually beneficial, and it is certainly not with China," Mr. Dorgan said.
The tempest in Congress has increased the political risks surrounding the Cnooc bid. At $18.5 billion, the bid remains higher than Chevron's sweetened offer of $17 billion. But Wall Street analysts say Cnooc will have to go higher to have a chance to win, offering a sizable premium over the Chevron bid to compensate for delays of a government review of the Chinese offer or even the possibility that Washington may block a Chinese deal.
It would be an extreme step, but Congress has the power to "regulate commerce with foreign nations," under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. "My sense is that Congress is not going to stand still for a Cnooc takeover being approved," said C. Richard D'Amato, chairman of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory group to Congress. "That is the political reality."
Cnooc and its advisers misread the political environment in Washington. Fu Chengyu, the Cnooc chairman who earned a graduate degree from the University of Southern California, has said he was surprised by the intensity of political criticism. Cnooc's path would have been smoother if it had joined with an American oil company as a partner in its bid, an option that was considered briefly but rejected, according to a person close to the company.
The idea, the person said, would have been that the American company would acquire Unocal's assets in the United States, while Cnooc took the main prize in the deal -- Unocal's offshore natural gas fields in Asia and its expertise in offshore exploration and production. The gas reserves and skill are considered strategic to China's goal of moving away from coal and generating 20 percent of the nation's electricity from natural gas by 2020. "It would have been better to have not made this big move a head-on attack, to have linked up with an American partner so the deal would have been less threatening and less a lightning rod for China politics in the United States," the person said.
Perhaps, but many economists and trade specialists contend that the American angst over the Cnooc bid says more about the United States than it does about China or Cnooc's tactics. "All this really points to the anxieties about globalization in our own society," said Clyde V. Prestowitz, a trade official in the Reagan administration and president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. "We are so economically interdependent with China now and we chose that path."
Washington pushed for China's integration into the international economy and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. American companies have farmed out much of their manufacturing to Chinese factories. American consumers have been on a Chinese shopping spree for years, buying everything from clothes to computers made there. That is why the United States had a record $162 billion trade deficit with China last year. China sits on $700 billion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly in dollars. It recycles those funds in good part by investing in United States Treasury bonds; that keeps American interest rates low, fueling the real estate boom.
"We handed China the money they are using to try to buy Unocal," said Mr. Prestowitz, author of a new book on the shift of wealth and power to Asia, "Three Billion New Capitalists" (Basic Books, 2005). "And now we're telling the Chinese, please keep investing in our bonds but you can't invest what amounts to a sliver of their surplus in an oil company. That's really confused and hypocritical on our part."
Where others see muddle, R. James Woolsey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Clinton administration, sees strategic clarity in challenging the Cnooc bid. Oil is a globally traded commodity, Mr. Woolsey concedes, but it is also a strategic resource in a market that is tightening because of rising demand from fast-growing nations like China and India. That, Mr. Woolsey says, is before one begins thinking of the possible impact of, say, an act of terrorist sabotage in a crucial Middle East oil field.
"China is realistically assuming there may be a shortage of oil," said Mr. Woolsey, a vice president in the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm.
In China, Mr. Woolsey sees a nation with military ambitions to challenge the United States, and a political system with little regard for human rights and free speech. Cnooc, in Mr. Woolsey's view, is the corporate vehicle of "a Communist dictatorship."
The Cnooc move, according to Frank Gaffney Jr., a senior Defense Department official in the Reagan administration, is a step to ensure that China has the resources for its overarching national design. "China's strategy is to supplant the United States as the premier economic power in the world and, should it become necessary, defeat us militarily," said Mr. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy.
The strategic concern was much narrower at William Blair & Company. Until recently, William Blair, the investment firm in Chicago, was the largest outside shareholder in Cnooc, which is majority-owned by the Chinese government. But William Blair sold off its stake, worth about $160 million, in recent weeks because of worries that Cnooc was behaving too much like a state-owned company and not enough like a capitalist enterprise trying to maximize returns to shareholders, explained David Merjan, a fund manager at the firm.
The pricey bid for Unocal, Mr. Merjan said, raised doubts about how independent Cnooc really was from the Chinese government. "If China is going to sell shares in a company like Cnooc to outside shareholders, it should not be run for the benefit of Chinese economic policy," Mr. Merjan said.
CNOOC and its pursuit of Unocal, it seems, are part of China's evolutionary path. Cnooc is playing its hand with plenty of government help, about $7 billion in loans on terms Western oil companies could not hope to get. Accordingly, Cnooc may be willing and able to overpay. Yes, China is hunting for oil and gas assets around the world as a national priority. Still, that is happening in a nation that is drifting steadily toward a market economy, though one with more central control than Americans view as a free-market economy.
The Chinese Communist Party, with 60 million members -- more than the population of France -- does guide the economy, if less and less over time. "But think of it as the Chinese bureaucratic capitalist party," said Mr. Lieberthal of the University of Michigan. "It has nothing really to do with Communism."
Mr. Lieberthal counts himself as among the optimists on China. Globalization, he says, and continued integration of the Chinese and American economies can work to mutual benefit. The spread of middle-class affluence and education across more of the Chinese population should eventually be a force for democratic liberalization, following the pattern of Taiwan and South Korea.
"Am I a hundred percent sure I'm right? No, but that's the long-term bet I'd make," Mr. Lieberthal said. "And if you let the pessimists -- the people who believe that the U.S. and China will inevitably be enemies -- drive policy, then the outcome will be the one they predict."
