经常与中国官员交谈的人，一定很熟悉“中国还是一个发展中国家”的口头禅。然而我上周访问的上海，却戳穿了这种谦逊的表述。上海有着8车道的宽阔道路、现代便捷的地铁，霓虹闪烁的摩天大楼鳞次栉比，还有巨大的新机场和时尚的酒店，这座中国商业之都怎么都称得上发达。
当然，这座城市里也有穷人。而且上海也不能等同于中国，中国仍有1.5亿人口（总人口逾13亿）每天的生活费不到2美元。但即便如此，中国坚称自己仍是一个贫穷的发展中国家，也开始有些站不住脚。毕竟，中国坐拥超过2.5万亿美元的外汇储备。
在一些重要的方面，中国已成为一个富国。但继续坚称自己是“发展中国家”，已成为中国在关键政治和经济变革议题上的挡箭牌，这些变革对于全球其他国家意义重大。
中国表示，由于自己还不够发达，无法考虑允许人民币汇率在外汇市场上自由浮动。中国通过资本管控和持续干预外汇市场来控制汇率水平。但人为压低人民币汇率，使中国积累了巨额贸易顺差，这不仅是中美关系紧张的一个重要原因，还造成了“全球汇率战”的议论声四起，以及国际经济体系的崩溃。
如果中国只是一个中等规模国家，世界各国大可对其货币政策不闻不问。然而，中国目前是全球最大的出口国、最大的制造国和第二大经济体。但它同时也是贸易大国中唯一采取资本管控、以阻止本币汇率升至市场水平的国家。这种奇怪现象是当前全球经济关系紧张的关键所在。
即使是美国人，也并未要求中国在一夜之间就实现货币完全可兑换。中国的银行体系仍不够成熟，不足以应对可能产生的“热钱”流动。但全球其他国家的有权利期望中国允许人民币更快升值，并制定实现汇率水平由市场确定的时间表。
然而上周，当我在上海向中国学术界人士提出上述建议时，他们的反应明显十分冷淡。他们表示，如果中国允许人民币汇率水平由市场决定，美国就会故意借助其金融机构，影响中国的稳定。再者，既然美国如此在意自身的竞争力，为什么不把工资降到中国的水平呢？
此番交流显示，本应是一个技术性经济问题的汇率管理，现在却成为高度情绪化和政治化的议题。以至于眼下在中国，呼吁民主甚至都比呼吁人民币升值容易一些。
这一悖论在中国总理温家宝身上体现得淋漓尽致。最近几个月，温家宝在多个场合谈到中国需要走向民主，这引起了轰动。不管温家宝本意如何，这个在中国官方媒体上一度几乎禁绝的词语，如今能够随意使用，这令人感到惊讶。然而在汇率问题上，温家宝却坚守正统立场。他最近警告称，强迫人民币升值有可能造成（中国的）社会动荡，而这会影响全球的稳定。
有关汇率和民主问题的辩论中，措辞惊人地相似。在这两个问题上，官方的口径都是中国尚未做好准备好——你知道，中国还是一个发展中国家。但无论在政治上还是经济上，随着中国越来越富有，这种措辞的说服力都不断减弱。目前，中国人均国内生产总值(GDP)了超过印度尼西亚，后者也是一个人口众多的亚洲国家，已经完成了从独裁到民主政治的转变。
说到民主，中国真正的不同之处并不是贫穷，而是跌宕悲情的历史、辽阔的疆域，以及政府对于更开放的政治体制会助长西藏和新疆分离主义活动的担忧。
指望中国立即采取浮动汇率并不现实，同样，要求中国明天就施行一人一票的选举制度也有些不切实际。但如果中国从显著改善出版自由等公民自由、以及促进司法独立起步，将既符合中国人民的利益，也符合外国人的利益。
中国政府一直坚称，中国国内的政治进展，无关外国人的合法利益。但是，又是由于中国太大，这种主张难以自圆其说。未来15年，中国的经济规模有望超过美国。届时，全球最强大的经济体将不是一个民主国家，这将是一个多世纪以来首次出现这种情况。世界其他国家有理由对此保持警觉。
中国政府喜欢喊口号。鉴于习近平2012年出任下一任国家主席的安排已然明朗，为这位新领袖提几句新口号倒也合适。我的建议是“强势国家，强势货币”，或者“自由国家，浮动汇率”。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035229
Anybody who talks regularly to Chinese officials will be familiar with the mantra that “China is a developing country”. But Shanghai, which I visited last week, mocks this modest description. With its eight-lane highways, its modern and efficient subway, its forest of neon-lit skyscrapers, giant new airport and chic hotels, China’s commercial capital is defiantly developed.
Of course, the city has pockets of poverty. And Shanghai is not China, where 150m people (out of a total Chinese population of more than 1.3bn) still live on less than $2 a day. Even so, China’s insistence that it is a poor, developing nation is beginning to wear a little thin. This, after all, is a country that is sitting on more than $2,500bn worth of foreign reserves.
In important ways, China is now a rich nation. But its insistence that it is still a “developing country” has become a shield to protect itself against vital political and economic changes that matter profoundly to the rest of the world.
China says that it is too underdeveloped to contemplate letting its currency float freely on the foreign exchange markets. Instead it is managing the level of its currency, through capital controls and constant intervention on the foreign-exchange markets. But by holding the value of the renminbi down artificially, China has built up a vast trade surplus and created a major source of tension with the US, causing talk of “global currency wars” and a breakdown of the international economic system.
If China was simply a medium-sized country, the world could shrug off its currency policies. But it is now the world’s largest exporter, the world’s largest manufacturer and its second-largest economy. And yet it is the only major trading nation to use capital controls to prevent its currency rising to market levels. It is that anomaly that is at the heart of current global economic tensions.
Even the Americans are not asking China to move to a fully-convertible currency overnight. The country’s banking system is probably still too unsophisticated to cope with the flows of “hot money” that would generate. But the rest of the world does have a right to expect China to allow its currency to rise faster – and to set a time-frame to move to market-determined exchange rates.
Yet when I made that suggestion to a group of Chinese academics in Shanghai last week I got a distinctly frosty response. If China let the level of the renminbi be determined by the markets, I was told, the US would deliberately use its financial institutions to destabilise China. And another thing: if the Americans care so much about their competitiveness, why didn’t they just pay themselves wages at Chinese levels?
That exchange showed that what should be a technical economic issue – currency management – has now become highly emotional and politicised. So much so, that it now seems easier to call for democracy in China than to call for a stronger currency.
This paradox is personified by Wen Jiabao, the prime minister. In recent months Mr Wen has created a stir by talking on several occasions of the need for China to move towards democracy. Whatever Mr Wen actually means, it is striking that a word that used to be all but banned by the official Chinese media is now being bandied about. Yet on the currency issue, Mr Wen is orthodoxy itself. He recently warned that forcing China to have a stronger currency risked causing social chaos that would then destabilise the whole world.
The terms of the currency and democracy arguments are oddly similar. In both cases the official line has been that China is not yet ready – it is still a developing nation, you see. But with politics, as with economics, that line of argument gets less persuasive as the country gets richer. China now has a higher per-capita gross domestic product than Indonesia, another very populous Asian nation that has already made the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
The real Chinese exception when it comes to democracy is not the country’s relative poverty – but its turbulent and tragic history, its huge size and the government’s fear that a more open political system would encourage separatism in the provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang.
Just as it is unrealistic to expect China to move instantly to a floating exchange rate, so it is unreasonable to demand that China should move to one-man, one-vote tomorrow. But both Chinese people and foreigners have an interest in seeing China make a start by considerably improving civil liberties, such as freedom of the press and independence of the courts.
The Chinese government insists that foreigners have no legitimate interest in the country’s internal political development. But once again China’s sheer size makes that argument hard to maintain. In the next 15 years the Chinese economy is likely to become bigger than that of the US. At that stage, for the first time for a century and more, the world’s most powerful economy would not be a democracy. The rest of the world would be legitimately alarmed by that.
The Chinese government likes slogans. In the week in which it became clear that the country’s next president in 2012 will be Xi Jinping, it seems appropriate to propose a couple of slogans for the new man. My suggestions would be “Strong country, strong currency”. Or “Free country, floating exchange rate”.
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