自
冷战结束以来，世界各大国总体上达成了一个共识，即让市场竞争而不是政府计划来决定经济产出。中国的国家经济战略扰乱了这种共识，看看太阳能大亨朱共山的崛起历程，就可以知道为什么这么说。2007年，生产太阳能电池板的主要材料多晶硅出现短缺，威胁到中国刚刚兴起的太阳能产业。当时多晶硅价格飙升，2008年涨价到每公斤450美元，一年之内涨了10倍。外国公司主导了多晶硅的生产，并把高成本转嫁给中国。
北京迅速采取应对措施，把国内多晶硅供应的开发列为全国重点任务。大量资金从国有企业和银行涌进多晶硅生产商，地方政府加快了新建工厂的审批流程。
在西方，多晶硅工厂要经过冗长的审批，得花数年时间才能建起来。朱共山为建厂筹资10亿美元后，不到15个月即开工生产。仅几年时间，他就打造了世界最大的多晶硅生产企业之一：保利协鑫能源控股有限公司(GCL-Poly Energy Holding Ltd.)。中国的主权财富基金以7.10亿美元购买了保利协鑫20%的股权。今天中国生产着世界约四分之一的多晶硅，并控制着全球太阳能设备成品约一半的市场。
西方对中国的愤怒主要集中于北京的低汇率政策。在上周末于首尔举行的20国集团(G20)峰会上，美国总统奥巴马就对这种政策大加抨击。朱共山跃升世界前列让人看到了一个更深层次的问题：中国的国家经济战略是详尽而多面的，并在多个领域对美国和其他大国构成了挑战。
中国国家经济战略的核心，是让国有龙头企业和其他全国龙头企业大力获取先进技术，同时按有利于出口企业的方向管理汇率。它利用国家对金融系统的控制，把廉价资金导入国内各个产业，并导入其他资源丰富的国家，因为这些国家的石油和矿产是中国维持高速增长所需要的。
中国是一个发展中国家，同时也是一个正在崛起的超级大国，其政策在一定程度上就是这样一种独特状态的产物。它的领导人并不认为市场是优越的，他们认为，国家权力才是维持稳定和增长、进而维持共产党执政地位的关键。
它所表现出来的办事效率，已经使自己成为一个榜样，特别是在西方很多国家的公众对市场效力、政治家能力的信心出现动摇的时候。中国已经是世界最大的出口国，今年很有可能超过日本，成为世界第二大经济体。
Bloomberg News
曾任美国总统克林顿贸易代表的巴尔舍夫斯基说，中国和俄罗斯等由国家主导的经济强国崛起，正在削弱已经成熟的战后贸易体系。
西方的批评者说，中国的政策是一种重商主义，目的在于通过操纵贸易积累财富，依据是中国2.6万亿美元的外汇储备。美国和欧盟已多次针对北京的政策向世贸组织起诉，并采取其他贸易措施。它们还不断敦促中国允许人民币更快升值，认为中国拒绝人民币更快升值加剧了全球经济的失衡。
外资公司的高管已经开始公开抱怨。7月份，在德国产业界人士与中国总理公开会面期间，西门子(Siemens AG)首席执行长罗旭德(Peter Loscher)和化工企业巴斯夫公司(BASF SE)董事长贺斌杰，针对外资公司要获得市场准入就得转移宝贵知识产权的措施，表达了他们的担忧。
一些观察人士认为，中国政府的观念根植于洗刷以19世纪鸦片战争为开端的“百年国耻”的渴望。这些批评人士认为，中国着重发展“自主创新”，也就是培养本土科技，必然会对其他国家的技术加以利用。例如，中国高铁基于的就是从德国、法国和日本制造商引进的技术。
纽约咨询公司欧亚集团（Eurasia Group）的总裁布里默（Ian Bremmer）说，中国人已经向我们展示，如果他们有能力扼杀你的模式并夺走你的利润，那么他们就会付诸行动。在其所着《自由市场的终结》（The End of the Free Market）一书中，布里默说中国所引领的“国家资本主义”的兴起有可能削弱美国的竞争优势。
然而目前来看，跨国公司并未从中国逃走，因为对那些国内市场已经饱和的公司来说，中国仍是实现增长的重要来源。
中国的战略与日本在经济崛起时采用的政策类似，这些政策同样惹怒了美国。但中国如此庞大的规模──人口是日本的十倍──使其成为一个更可怕的威胁。同时，由于中国近几十年来愿意向外资企业开放其某些行业，对全球商界来说，中国成了一个远比当时的日本更重要的市场，这也给了中国政府相当大的筹码。
Bloomberg News
中国的主权财富基金以7.10亿美元购买了保利协鑫20%的股权。今天中国生产着世界约四分之一的多晶硅，并控制着全球太阳能设备成品约一半的市场。
温家宝说，中国始终致力于为外商投资企业创造开放公平的良好环境。
政府在中国经济中一直扮演着重要角色，但在始于20世纪70年代末的大部分改革岁月里，随着集体农庄的逐渐取消以及效率不高的国有工业企业纷纷关闭，政府的作用开始淡化了。2001年中国加入WTO表明中国领导人为进一步实现市场自由化下了重注。结果赌赢了，过去十年中国经济飞速增长。
而政府的作用却再次强大起来。许多分析师说，一大批行业仍然被国有企业所控制，外资企业的介入受到严格控，这导致自由化的脚步减慢了。中国几乎所有的主要银行、三大主要石油公司、三大电信运营商和主流媒体都是政府所有。
European Pressphoto Agency
中国总理温家宝说，中国始终致力于为外商投资企业创造开放公平的良好环境。
从煤矿到互联网，中国政府对诸多行业的参与越来越强，中国的市场经济拥护者因而创造了“国进民退”这个词，意思是政府前进、私有企业后退。经济合作与发展组织（OECD）今年1月份的一份报告说，在包括俄罗斯在内被调查的29个国家中，中国经济的竞争度最低。北京大学著名经济学家钱颍一曾说，过去这几年的市场经济改革似乎在倒退，他对此十分担忧。
政府在经济中的重要角色使其在实现自身政策目标方面拥有了巨大力量。这通常体现在宏大的五年规划中（有时是十五年规划）。对卡特彼勒公司（Caterpillar Inc.）和波音公司（Boeing Co.）等依赖于中国市场的西方企业巨头来说，这些毛泽东时代计划经济的遗留物对它们的业绩至关重要。目前，中国是卡特彼勒收入增长最快的市场之一，也是波音公司商务飞机除美国之外的最大买家。
中国政府最重要的目标之一是：逐渐消除中国对昂贵的外国科技产品的依赖。这一进程从1978年邓小平实行对外开放政策时就开始了，大量外资企业涌入中国，他们的技术也纷纷被引进来。微软（Microsoft Corp.）和摩托罗拉（Motorola Inc.）等公司在中国设立了研发机构，培养了一大批中国科学家、工程师和职业经理人。
Bloomberg News
电信设备生产商华为技术有限公司是一家私有企业，长期以来其海外扩张一直受到中国国家开发银行的支持。
其中绿色科技是重点发展领域。旨在迅速提升中国绿色科技产业的“火炬计划”提出，为厂房建设提供低价土地、出口税减免以及甚至为企业家提供三年免费住房等政策吸引国内外的企业家到中国发展。
以邓训明为例，这位在中国出生的美国公民是美国太阳能界的先锋人物，他的发明点亮了纽约时代广场(Times Square)上的首个太阳能广告牌。
邓训明的公司Xunlight Corp.一直受到美国财政资助，同时也受到那些热切希望美国能够赢得开发新能源技术竞赛的政治家所欢迎。该公司接受的州政府和联邦政府的拨款、贷款和税收抵免等资金共超过5,000万美元，而美国政府之所以会提供这些资助，其目的之一是增加俄亥俄州托莱多的就业，托莱多是该公司的总部所在地。
但两年前，邓训明在上海附近一个巨大的工业园区设立了分支机构，雇佣员工100名，在这里生产的薄膜太阳能电池板再出口到美国。邓训明1985年离开中国，前往美国芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)学习。
邓训明说，他试图让自己在中国的经营保持“低调”。Xunlight网站上没有提及其中国业务，邓训明在采访中拒绝对其中国工厂发表评论。他说，中国今后会是一个很好的市场，但目前欧洲的市场相对更大，我们正集中精力关注欧美市场，但同时我们也在开发中国市场，因为中国市场规模最终有可能变得更大。
中国一方面在寻找新科技，另一方面让银行向国家致力培育的产业提供低息信贷。中国政府将银行存款利率设定得低于国内经济和通胀增涨率，这意味着中国家庭实际上通过银行储蓄在为政府“宠幸”的产业进行补贴。
Associated Press
邓训明（左起第二位）的公司Xunlight Corp.一直受到美国财政资助，该公司接受的州政府和联邦政府的拨款、贷款和税收抵免等资金共超过5,000万美元。两年前，邓训明在上海附近一个巨大的工业园区设立了分支机构，在这里生产的薄膜太阳能电池板再出口到美国。
美国电信运营商Sprint Nextel Corp.前不久拒绝了华为及另外一家中国电信设备制造商中兴通讯股份有限公司(ZTE Corp.)对一份数十亿美元合同的竞标，原因是美国担心这两家公司与中国军方有关联。Sprint公司此举对于艰难挺进美国市场的华为来说是个挫折，同时也显示美国对中国政策的日益担心开始使中国蒙受损失。美国市场是华为的一大主要市场。
此外，华为还面临来自欧洲的投诉，投诉认为华为有中国政府撑腰，这让它获得了不公平的竞争优势。但华为与中兴通讯均表示，其设备不会对美国安全构成威胁，并否认自己以不正当的方式受惠于中国政府的支持。
对于中国来说，最大的风险可能来自国内。一些企图利用国家政策在高科技领域进行突破的尝试最终以失败告终。一个旨在复制英特尔公司(Intel Corp.)和高级微设备公司(Advanced Micro Devices Inc.)微处理器特点的中国本土研制的微处理器项目，耗费了数年时间，而英特尔和高级为设备公司的产品依旧在不断发展。还有一项中国研制的移动电话技术，尽管中国政府强迫其国内最大的电话公司采用了这项技术，但它在国外的销售尚未获得明显成绩。
长远来看，中国面临一系列挑战，这些挑战威胁自身经济增长，其中包括近几十年来限制生育的独生子政策导致中国人口迅速老龄化以及中国速度惊人的工业化带来的环境破坏。
目前，西方国家对中国如此高的工业化速度保持警惕。美国前任贸易谈判代表巴尔舍夫斯基(Barshefsky)说，美国经济严重疲软，于是将任何潜在威胁无限放大，而美国面临的竞争在这段时期更为严峻。她说，对于现行制度存在着深刻的质疑，几乎上升到了理论高度。
Jason Dean / Andrew Browne / Shai Oster
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
Since the end of the Cold War, the world's powers have generally agreed on the wisdom of letting market competition -- more than government planning -- shape economic outcomes. China's national economic strategy is disrupting that consensus, and a look at the ascent of solar-energy magnate Zhu Gongshan explains why.
A shortage of polycrystalline silicon -- the main raw material for solar panels -- was threatening China's burgeoning solar-energy industry in 2007. Polysilicon prices soared, hitting $450 a kilogram in 2008, up tenfold in a year. Foreign companies dominated production and were passing those high costs onto China.
Beijing's response was swift: development of domestic polysilicon supplies was declared a national priority. Money poured in to manufacturers from state-owned companies and banks; local governments expedited approvals for new plants.
In the West, polysilicon plants take years to build, requiring lengthy approvals. Mr. Zhu, an entrepreneur who raised $1 billion for a plant, started production within 15 months. In just a few years, he created one of the world's biggest polysilicon makers, GCL-Poly Energy Holding Ltd. China's sovereign-wealth fund bought 20% of GCL-Poly for $710 million. Today, China makes about a quarter of the world's polysilicon and controls roughly half the global market for finished solar-power equipment.
Western anger with China has focused on Beijing's cheap-currency policy; President Obama blasted the practice at the G-20 summit in Seoul last weekend. Mr. Zhu's sprint to the top points to a deeper issue: China's national economic strategy is detailed and multifaceted, and it is challenging the U.S. and other powers on a number of fronts.
Central to China's approach are policies that champion state-owned firms and other so-called national champions, seek aggressively to obtain advanced technology, and manage its exchange rate to benefit exporters. It leverages state control of the financial system to channel low-cost capital to domestic industries -- and to resource-rich foreign nations whose oil and minerals China needs to maintain rapid growth.
China's policies are partly a product of its unique status: a developing country that is also a rising superpower. Its leaders don't assume the market is preeminent. Rather, they see state power as essential to maintaining stability and growth, and thereby ensuring continued Communist Party rule.
It's a model with a track record of getting things done, especially at a time when public faith in the efficacy of markets and the competence of politicians is shaken in much of the West. Already the world's biggest exporter, China is on track to pass Japan this year as the second-biggest economy.
Charlene Barshefsky, who as U.S. trade representative under President Bill Clinton helped negotiate China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, says the rise of powerful state-led economies like China and Russia is undermining the established post-World War II trading system. When these economies decide that 'entire new industries should be created by the government,' says Ms. Barshefsky, it tilts the playing field against the private sector.
Western critics say China's practices are a form of mercantilism aimed at piling up wealth by manipulating trade. They point to China's $2.6 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. The U.S. and the European Union have lodged a series of WTO cases and other trade actions targeting Beijing's policies, and hammer China's refusal to let its currency appreciate more quickly, which they argue fuels global economic imbalances.
Top executives at foreign companies have started griping publicly. In July, Peter Loscher, Siemens AG chief executive, and Jurgen Hambrecht, chairman of chemical company BASF SE, in a public meeting between German industrialists and China's premier, raised concerns about efforts to compel foreign companies to transfer valuable intellectual property in order to gain market access.
Some observers think Beijing's vision is rooted in a desire to avenge China's 'century of humiliation' that started with the 19th-century opium wars. Such critics believe that China's focus on 'indigenous innovation' -- nurturing home-grown technologies -- entails appropriating others' technology. China's high-speed trains, for instance, are based on technology introduced to China by German, French and Japanese makers.
'The Chinese have shown that if they have the ability to kill your model and take your profits, they will,' says Ian Bremmer, president of New York-based consultancy Eurasia Group. His book, 'The End of the Free Market,' argues that a rising tide of 'state capitalism' led by China threatens to erode the competitive edge of the U.S.
So far, though, multinationals aren't staying away, because China remains a vital source of growth for companies whose domestic markets are saturated.
China's strategy echoes the policies Japan employed in its economic rise -- policies that also rankled the U.S. But China's sheer scale -- its population is 10 times Japan's -- makes it a more formidable threat. Also, its willingness in recent decades to open some industries to foreign firms makes its market far more important for global business than Japan's ever was, giving Beijing much greater leverage.
Chinese leaders have begun to acknowledge the backlash. At the World Economic Forum in Tianjin in September, Premier Wen Jiabao said that the recent debate about China among foreign investors 'is not all due to misunderstanding by foreign companies. It's also because our policies were not clear enough.'
'China is committed to creating an open and fair environment for foreign-invested enterprises,' Mr. Wen said.
The state has always played a big role in China's economy, but for most of the reform era that started in the late 1970s, it retreated as state-owned collective farms were dismantled and inefficient state industrial enterprises closed. Accession to the WTO in 2001 represented a big bet by the leadership on liberalizing markets further. The gamble paid off, with growth rocketing much of the past decade.
But the state is again ascendant. Many analysts say the pace of liberalization has slowed, and point to vast swaths of industry still controlled by state companies and tightly restricted for foreigners. The government owns almost all major banks in China, its three major oil companies, its three telecom carriers and its major media firms.
According to China's Ministry of Finance, assets of all state enterprises in 2008 totaled about $6 trillion, equal to 133% of annual economic output that year. By comparison, total assets of the agency that controls government enterprises in France, whose dirigiste policies give it one of the biggest state sectors among major Western economies, were 539 billion euros ($686 billion) in 2008, about 28% of the size of France's economy.
The government's increased involvement in sectors from coal mining to the Internet has spawned the phrase guojin mintui, or 'the state advances, the private sector retreats,' among market proponents in China. A January report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said China's economy had the least competition of 29 surveyed, including Russia's. Prominent Chinese economist Qian Yingyi of Peking University has said he worries over what appears to be 'a reversal of market-oriented reforms in the last couple of years.'
The state's huge role in the economy gives it enormous sway to pursue its policy goals, which are often laid out in voluminous five-year (sometimes 15-year) plans. These relics of the Mao-era command economy are central to the corporate fortunes of Western giants like Caterpillar Inc. and Boeing Co. that rely on the country's market. China is now one of the biggest sources of revenue growth for Caterpillar, and is the biggest buyer of commercial jets outside the U.S., according to Boeing.
One of Beijing's most important goals: wean China off expensive foreign technology. It is a process that began with the 'open door' economic policies launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 that brought in waves of foreign technology firms. Companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Motorola Inc. set up R&D facilities and helped train a generation of Chinese scientists, engineers and managers.
That process is now in overdrive. In 2006, China's leadership unveiled the 'National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology,' a blueprint for turning China into a tech powerhouse by 2020. The plan calls for nearly doubling the share of gross domestic product devoted to research and development, to 2.5% from 1.3% in 2005.
One area of hot pursuit: green technology. China's 'Torch' program fast-tracks industries, attracting entrepreneurs with offers of cheap land for factories, export tax breaks and even a free apartment for three years.
Take the case of Deng Xunming, a China-born U.S. citizen who is a pioneer of America's solar industry and whose innovations light up the first solar-powered billboard on New York's Times Square.
His company, Xunlight Corp., has been nurtured by U.S. financial aid and embraced by politicians eager for the U.S. to win the race to develop new energy technologies. Xunlight has pulled in more than $50 million in state and federal grants, loans and tax credits, partly aimed at bringing needed jobs to Toledo, Ohio, where the company is based.
But two years ago, Mr. Deng, who left China in 1985 to study at the University of Chicago, set up a Xunlight unit on a giant industrial estate near Shanghai. The company now also makes its thin-film solar panels there and employs 100 workers. The panels are exported back to the U.S.
Mr. Deng says he is trying to keep the Chinese operation 'low key.' It isn't mentioned on Xunlight's website, and Mr. Deng declined to comment on the China factory in an interview. 'China will be a good market for the future,' he said. 'But right now, the bigger market is in Europe. We're putting our attention on the Europe and U.S. market. But meanwhile we're developing efforts for the China market,' which could eventually be bigger, he said.
While the state seeks new technology, it also uses control of banking to feed cheap credit to industries it wants to foster. The government sets interest rates for China's bank depositors low relative to rates of growth and inflation. That means Chinese households, through the banks, effectively subsidize the state's industrial darlings.
Privately held telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Techologies Co. has long had its overseas expansion supported by China Development Bank, which in 2004 extended a five-year, $10 billion credit line and routinely lends money to foreign buyers to finance their purchases of Huawei products. Revenue has risen more than 200% in the past five years, and it has become one of the top three telecommunications companies, along with Nokia Siemens Networks and Telefon AB LM Ericsson.
Sprint Nextel Corp. recently excluded Huawei and fellow Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp. from a contract worth billions of dollars, prompted by U.S. fears that the companies have ties to China's military. The Sprint decision was a setback for Huawei in the one major market it has had difficulty penetrating, the U.S., and shows how mounting concerns over China's policies are starting to exact a cost.
Huawei has also faced complaints in Europe that Chinese government backing gives it an unfair advantage. Both Huawei and ZTE have said their equipment poses no threat to U.S. security, and deny benefiting unfairly from government support.
For China, the biggest risks may be internal. Some attempts to generate high-tech breakthroughs by fiat have fizzled. A drive to produce a home-grown microprocessor took years to replicate features of those from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., whose products had continued to evolve. A Chinese-developed mobile phone technology has yet to gather significant momentum abroad, despite the government forcing China's largest phone company to adopt it.
Longer term, China faces a host of challenges that threaten growth. They include a population that is aging quickly because the one-child policy limited births in recent decades, and environmental damage resulting from the country's breakneck pace of industrialization.
For now, that pace has the West on guard. 'Our competition has gotten tougher during a period for the U.S. of profound economic weakness that magnifies any perceived threat,' says Ms. Barshefsky, the former U.S. trade representative. There is a 'significant and profound -- almost theological -- question about the rules as they exist.'
Jason Dean / Andrew Browne / Shai Oster
A shortage of polycrystalline silicon -- the main raw material for solar panels -- was threatening China's burgeoning solar-energy industry in 2007. Polysilicon prices soared, hitting $450 a kilogram in 2008, up tenfold in a year. Foreign companies dominated production and were passing those high costs onto China.
Beijing's response was swift: development of domestic polysilicon supplies was declared a national priority. Money poured in to manufacturers from state-owned companies and banks; local governments expedited approvals for new plants.
In the West, polysilicon plants take years to build, requiring lengthy approvals. Mr. Zhu, an entrepreneur who raised $1 billion for a plant, started production within 15 months. In just a few years, he created one of the world's biggest polysilicon makers, GCL-Poly Energy Holding Ltd. China's sovereign-wealth fund bought 20% of GCL-Poly for $710 million. Today, China makes about a quarter of the world's polysilicon and controls roughly half the global market for finished solar-power equipment.
Western anger with China has focused on Beijing's cheap-currency policy; President Obama blasted the practice at the G-20 summit in Seoul last weekend. Mr. Zhu's sprint to the top points to a deeper issue: China's national economic strategy is detailed and multifaceted, and it is challenging the U.S. and other powers on a number of fronts.
Central to China's approach are policies that champion state-owned firms and other so-called national champions, seek aggressively to obtain advanced technology, and manage its exchange rate to benefit exporters. It leverages state control of the financial system to channel low-cost capital to domestic industries -- and to resource-rich foreign nations whose oil and minerals China needs to maintain rapid growth.
China's policies are partly a product of its unique status: a developing country that is also a rising superpower. Its leaders don't assume the market is preeminent. Rather, they see state power as essential to maintaining stability and growth, and thereby ensuring continued Communist Party rule.
It's a model with a track record of getting things done, especially at a time when public faith in the efficacy of markets and the competence of politicians is shaken in much of the West. Already the world's biggest exporter, China is on track to pass Japan this year as the second-biggest economy.
Charlene Barshefsky, who as U.S. trade representative under President Bill Clinton helped negotiate China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, says the rise of powerful state-led economies like China and Russia is undermining the established post-World War II trading system. When these economies decide that 'entire new industries should be created by the government,' says Ms. Barshefsky, it tilts the playing field against the private sector.
Western critics say China's practices are a form of mercantilism aimed at piling up wealth by manipulating trade. They point to China's $2.6 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. The U.S. and the European Union have lodged a series of WTO cases and other trade actions targeting Beijing's policies, and hammer China's refusal to let its currency appreciate more quickly, which they argue fuels global economic imbalances.
Top executives at foreign companies have started griping publicly. In July, Peter Loscher, Siemens AG chief executive, and Jurgen Hambrecht, chairman of chemical company BASF SE, in a public meeting between German industrialists and China's premier, raised concerns about efforts to compel foreign companies to transfer valuable intellectual property in order to gain market access.
Some observers think Beijing's vision is rooted in a desire to avenge China's 'century of humiliation' that started with the 19th-century opium wars. Such critics believe that China's focus on 'indigenous innovation' -- nurturing home-grown technologies -- entails appropriating others' technology. China's high-speed trains, for instance, are based on technology introduced to China by German, French and Japanese makers.
'The Chinese have shown that if they have the ability to kill your model and take your profits, they will,' says Ian Bremmer, president of New York-based consultancy Eurasia Group. His book, 'The End of the Free Market,' argues that a rising tide of 'state capitalism' led by China threatens to erode the competitive edge of the U.S.
So far, though, multinationals aren't staying away, because China remains a vital source of growth for companies whose domestic markets are saturated.
China's strategy echoes the policies Japan employed in its economic rise -- policies that also rankled the U.S. But China's sheer scale -- its population is 10 times Japan's -- makes it a more formidable threat. Also, its willingness in recent decades to open some industries to foreign firms makes its market far more important for global business than Japan's ever was, giving Beijing much greater leverage.
Chinese leaders have begun to acknowledge the backlash. At the World Economic Forum in Tianjin in September, Premier Wen Jiabao said that the recent debate about China among foreign investors 'is not all due to misunderstanding by foreign companies. It's also because our policies were not clear enough.'
'China is committed to creating an open and fair environment for foreign-invested enterprises,' Mr. Wen said.
The state has always played a big role in China's economy, but for most of the reform era that started in the late 1970s, it retreated as state-owned collective farms were dismantled and inefficient state industrial enterprises closed. Accession to the WTO in 2001 represented a big bet by the leadership on liberalizing markets further. The gamble paid off, with growth rocketing much of the past decade.
But the state is again ascendant. Many analysts say the pace of liberalization has slowed, and point to vast swaths of industry still controlled by state companies and tightly restricted for foreigners. The government owns almost all major banks in China, its three major oil companies, its three telecom carriers and its major media firms.
According to China's Ministry of Finance, assets of all state enterprises in 2008 totaled about $6 trillion, equal to 133% of annual economic output that year. By comparison, total assets of the agency that controls government enterprises in France, whose dirigiste policies give it one of the biggest state sectors among major Western economies, were 539 billion euros ($686 billion) in 2008, about 28% of the size of France's economy.
The government's increased involvement in sectors from coal mining to the Internet has spawned the phrase guojin mintui, or 'the state advances, the private sector retreats,' among market proponents in China. A January report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said China's economy had the least competition of 29 surveyed, including Russia's. Prominent Chinese economist Qian Yingyi of Peking University has said he worries over what appears to be 'a reversal of market-oriented reforms in the last couple of years.'
The state's huge role in the economy gives it enormous sway to pursue its policy goals, which are often laid out in voluminous five-year (sometimes 15-year) plans. These relics of the Mao-era command economy are central to the corporate fortunes of Western giants like Caterpillar Inc. and Boeing Co. that rely on the country's market. China is now one of the biggest sources of revenue growth for Caterpillar, and is the biggest buyer of commercial jets outside the U.S., according to Boeing.
One of Beijing's most important goals: wean China off expensive foreign technology. It is a process that began with the 'open door' economic policies launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 that brought in waves of foreign technology firms. Companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Motorola Inc. set up R&D facilities and helped train a generation of Chinese scientists, engineers and managers.
That process is now in overdrive. In 2006, China's leadership unveiled the 'National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology,' a blueprint for turning China into a tech powerhouse by 2020. The plan calls for nearly doubling the share of gross domestic product devoted to research and development, to 2.5% from 1.3% in 2005.
One area of hot pursuit: green technology. China's 'Torch' program fast-tracks industries, attracting entrepreneurs with offers of cheap land for factories, export tax breaks and even a free apartment for three years.
Take the case of Deng Xunming, a China-born U.S. citizen who is a pioneer of America's solar industry and whose innovations light up the first solar-powered billboard on New York's Times Square.
His company, Xunlight Corp., has been nurtured by U.S. financial aid and embraced by politicians eager for the U.S. to win the race to develop new energy technologies. Xunlight has pulled in more than $50 million in state and federal grants, loans and tax credits, partly aimed at bringing needed jobs to Toledo, Ohio, where the company is based.
But two years ago, Mr. Deng, who left China in 1985 to study at the University of Chicago, set up a Xunlight unit on a giant industrial estate near Shanghai. The company now also makes its thin-film solar panels there and employs 100 workers. The panels are exported back to the U.S.
Mr. Deng says he is trying to keep the Chinese operation 'low key.' It isn't mentioned on Xunlight's website, and Mr. Deng declined to comment on the China factory in an interview. 'China will be a good market for the future,' he said. 'But right now, the bigger market is in Europe. We're putting our attention on the Europe and U.S. market. But meanwhile we're developing efforts for the China market,' which could eventually be bigger, he said.
While the state seeks new technology, it also uses control of banking to feed cheap credit to industries it wants to foster. The government sets interest rates for China's bank depositors low relative to rates of growth and inflation. That means Chinese households, through the banks, effectively subsidize the state's industrial darlings.
Privately held telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Techologies Co. has long had its overseas expansion supported by China Development Bank, which in 2004 extended a five-year, $10 billion credit line and routinely lends money to foreign buyers to finance their purchases of Huawei products. Revenue has risen more than 200% in the past five years, and it has become one of the top three telecommunications companies, along with Nokia Siemens Networks and Telefon AB LM Ericsson.
Sprint Nextel Corp. recently excluded Huawei and fellow Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp. from a contract worth billions of dollars, prompted by U.S. fears that the companies have ties to China's military. The Sprint decision was a setback for Huawei in the one major market it has had difficulty penetrating, the U.S., and shows how mounting concerns over China's policies are starting to exact a cost.
Huawei has also faced complaints in Europe that Chinese government backing gives it an unfair advantage. Both Huawei and ZTE have said their equipment poses no threat to U.S. security, and deny benefiting unfairly from government support.
For China, the biggest risks may be internal. Some attempts to generate high-tech breakthroughs by fiat have fizzled. A drive to produce a home-grown microprocessor took years to replicate features of those from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., whose products had continued to evolve. A Chinese-developed mobile phone technology has yet to gather significant momentum abroad, despite the government forcing China's largest phone company to adopt it.
Longer term, China faces a host of challenges that threaten growth. They include a population that is aging quickly because the one-child policy limited births in recent decades, and environmental damage resulting from the country's breakneck pace of industrialization.
For now, that pace has the West on guard. 'Our competition has gotten tougher during a period for the U.S. of profound economic weakness that magnifies any perceived threat,' says Ms. Barshefsky, the former U.S. trade representative. There is a 'significant and profound -- almost theological -- question about the rules as they exist.'
Jason Dean / Andrew Browne / Shai Oster
没有评论:
发表评论