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现在我们是主宰。”我不知道奥巴马(Barack Obama)最近出席二十国集团领导人首尔峰会时，是否在中国国家主席胡锦涛头顶上飘浮着的“思想泡泡”里看到了这样的话。如果说总统希望看到什么变化的话，那么他可以确信——就中国的货币政策而言——他所得到的只是细微的变化。美国财长盖特纳(Timothy Geithner)在中国人拒绝了他应对全球经常专案失衡问题的建议后，可能也听到了“现在我们是主宰”这句话。美联储主席贝南克(Ben Bernanke)为刺激美国经济而宣布了新一轮的“量化宽松”政策后，也受到了同样的待遇——中国的一位主流评论员称其举动是“失控”和“不负责任的”。“现在我们是主宰。”这句话毫无疑问是我过去两周以来在中国反复听到的一个说法。我之所以留下了这样的印象，并不是因为我在紫禁城旁的太庙参加了那次光彩夺目、堪与奥运媲美的盛大聚会。钟乐、武术以及女子鼓乐队的表演是西方游客预想得到的东西。真正给我信号、告诉我中国同西方的关系发生了变化的，是我遇到的一些经济学家所表现出的那种轻描淡写但却明白无误的自信。
成思危是其中的一位，他在晚宴上向我介绍了中国希望成为绿色能源技术领导者的计划。觥筹交错之际，中国人民银行顾问夏斌概述了中国推行全面私有化方案的必要性，“甚至连人民大会堂也不例外。”而来自清华大学的李稻葵则用完美的英语表达了他对中国博士素质的不满。
你再也找不出比他们更厉害的人来讨论当今经济史上最有趣的这两个问题了：为什么在紫禁城建成五个世纪以来，西方不仅控制了中国，而且还控制了世界其他地区？现在西方处于支配地位的时代正在走向终结吗？
李稻葵和他的共同作者管汉晖在一篇尚未发表的出色的英文论文中批驳了时下流行的一种观点，即中国在1800年以前在经济上一直都和西方并驾齐驱。他们指出，明朝时期(1402-1626)中国的人均GDP停滞不前，远低于工业革命前的英国。当时中国的农业经济仍然占据绝对的主导地位，生产率低下的农耕作业占GDP的90%。在1520年后的100年间，中国人的国民储蓄率实际上是负值。明朝末期的中国没有资本积累，相反，它的资本一直都是在减少的。
加利福尼亚大学欧文分校(University of California, Irvine)的历史学教授肯尼士•波梅兰茨(Kenneth Pomeranz)所说的东方和西方的“大分流”在很早以前就开始了。甚至已故的经济学家安格斯•麦迪森(Angus Maddison)关于1700年中国普通百姓的生活水准要比当时美利坚土地上的民众生活略为富裕的说法，或许也显得有些过于乐观了。不过他估计在1600年，英国的人均GDP就已比中国高出60%时，还是很贴近实际的。
在接下来的几百年里，中国仍然停滞不前，甚至在20世纪还出现了倒退，而英语国家却突飞猛进，西北欧国家也紧跟着它们的步伐。到1820年，美国的人均GDP是中国的两倍；到1870年，超过中国将近5倍；到1913年，这一比率接近了10比1。
尽管受到大萧条的严重干扰，但美国并没有经历中国在20世纪中期遭遇的毁灭性苦难，包括革命、内战、日本入侵、再次革命、人为造成的 荒和再再次（“文化”）革命。按照购买力平价来计算（将两国不同的生活成本考虑在内），在1968年，美国民众的生活要比中国的老百姓富裕33倍。如果按照现值美元来计算，两国人民生活水准的差距最大时约为70：1。
这曾是根本性的全球失衡，是几个世纪以来经济和政治分流的结果。它是怎么发生的呢？现在结束了吗？
过去两年来，在我为自己即将出版的这本新书开展调研时，我认为西方开发出了“其他国家”并不具备的六个“杀手级程式”。它们是：
——竞争：欧洲国家在政治上四分五裂，而且在每一个君主国或者共和国里存在着多个互相竞争的集团。
——科学革命：17世纪所有重大的数学、天文学、物理学、化学和生物学上的突破均发生在西欧国家。
——法治和代议政制：这一最佳的社会政治体系出现在英语国家，其基础是财产权和财产拥有者权利在选举产生的立法机构中的体现。
——现代医学：包括热带疾病控制在内的所有19和20世纪的医学进步都由西欧人和北美人做出。
——消费社会：发生工业革命的地方不仅拥有提高生产力的技术，还会对更多、更好、更便宜的商品产生需求，而这种需求是从棉织服装开始的。
——职业道德：西方人最早将更广泛而密集的劳动和更高的储蓄率结合在一起，从而促进了资本的持续积累。
这六个“杀手级程式”曾是西方取得优势地位的关键。我们这个时代的故事——可以追溯至日本的明治时期（1867-1912）——就是“世界上的其他国家”最终开始下载这些程式。这一进程远非一帆风顺。日本人搞不清楚西方文化中哪些是关键要素，所以他们最后把一切都照搬了过去，从西方的服饰和发型到对外国进行殖民统治。不幸的是，他们建造帝国的时期恰好是帝国主义的成本开始超过其利益的时候。而亚洲其他大国——特别是印度——在错误的前提上浪费了数十年的时光，它们认为苏联开创的社会主义制度优越于以市场为基础的西方制度。
但从20世纪50年代开始，越来越多的东亚国家追随日本效仿西方的工业模式。从纺织业和钢铁业开始，沿着价值链向上攀升。这时，它们对西方程式的下载也变得更具选择性。竞争和代议政制在亚洲的发展中并未发挥重大作用，相反，亚洲国家更关注科学、医学、消费社会和职业道德（那里的新教徒人数比马克斯•韦伯(Max Weber)预想的要少——韦伯发现，新教徒更具有资本主义精神。他们倾向于学习经济、金融、理工科、医学等等，在社会上从事的职业也多是收益较高的职业，赚钱欲望旺盛[译者注]）。如今，新加坡在世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)的竞争力排行榜上位列第三。香港位列第11位，接着是台湾（第13位）、韩国（第22位）和中国（第27位）。从历史上来看，这大致也是这些国家推行经济西方化的先后顺序。
现在，中国的人均GDP是美国的19%，而在30年前经济改革之初，这一数字仅为4%。香港、日本和新加坡早在1950年的时候就达到了这个水准，台湾在1970年、韩国在1975年也先后达到了这一水准。世界大型企业联合会(Conference Board)公布的资料显示，新加坡现在的人均GDP比美国高21%，香港与美国大致持平，日本和台湾比美国低大约25%，韩国则比美国低36%。只有蠢人才会打赌中国在未来几十年不会沿着同样的轨迹发展。
中国的工业化革命规模最大、速度最快。在26年的时间里，中国的GDP增长了10倍。而英国在1830年后花了70年的时间才实现了4倍的经济增长。根据国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)的资料，中国占全球GDP的份额（按现价计算）将于2013年超过10%。高盛(Goldman Sachs)进一步预测说，中国的GDP将在2027年超过美国，正如它最近超过了日本一样。
然后，从某些方面看，亚洲世纪已经来临了。中国在全球制造业的份额在过去10年间已经超越了德国和日本，并即将超越美国。中国最大的城市上海早已坐上了世界超大型城市的头号交椅，孟买紧随其后，而美国的城市却都望尘莫及。
没有什么比隐隐逼近的美国财政危机更能确定无疑地加快全球经济力量从西方向东方的转移。希腊因为债务收入比高达312%而早已陷入绝境。但是根据摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的资料，美国的债务收入比已经达到了358%。美国国会预算办公室(Congressional Budget Office)预计，联邦债务需要支付的利息将从目前占联邦税收收入的9%上升至2020年的20%，2030年的36%和2040年的58%。唯有能够印制世界上最主要储备货币的“过度特权”给了美国喘息的机会，但是这种非常特权正在受到来自中国政府越来越多的攻击。
对于很多评论员来说，美国联邦储备局(Federal Reserve)重启量化宽松政策似乎是要点燃美国和中国之间的货币战争。奥巴马总统9月份在纽约宣称，如果“中国人不采取措施”停止对其货币的操纵行为，“那么我们还有其他的手段保护美国的利益。”中国总理温家宝迅速对此作出了回应，“不要压人民币升值……中国出口企业将大量倒闭，工人将失业，农民工将返乡，社会很难稳定。如果中国经济和社会出现问题，将会给世界带来灾难。”
这样的你来我往像一出皮影戏——中国一种用人物剪影来表演故事的传统戏剧。实际上，当今的货币战争是发生在“Chimerica”——我这样称呼中美联合经济体——和世界其他国家之间。如果美国不断地印刷货币，而中国仍能有效地让人民币紧盯住美元，那么双方都将受益。印尼、巴西等国家将遭受损失，它们实际的贸易加权汇率自2008年1月以来已经分别上升了18%和17%。
但是，现在谁从这种伙伴关系中获益更多呢？由于中国当前的总产值比危机前增长了20%，而美国的总产值现在仍比危机前的水准要低2%，答案似乎一目了然。美国的政策制定者可能会念起“他们需要我们，正如我们需要他们一样”的咒语，然后摆出预言家的姿态提起劳伦斯•萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)那句“经济上的同归于尽”的名言。然而，中国人早已制定了计划，以降低对美元储备积累和补贴出口的依赖。这种策略并不是要按西方帝国主义模式来统领世界，也不是要将中国重建为“天朝上国”——亚太地区各国来朝的宗主国。
这些资料为上述和其他商品的出口商带来了巨大的利益。中国已经成为澳大利亚最大的出口市场，2009年澳大利亚对中国的出口额占到其出口总额的22%。中国购买了巴西12%和南非10%的出口商品，同时也是日本和德国高端成品的大买家。中国曾经主要是低价制品的出口国，如今它足足占据了全球经济增长的五分之一，成为了别国产品最具活力的新兴市场。这也为中国赢得了朋友。
但是，中国人有理由对变幻莫测的全球商品价格感到紧张。不然的话，他们应该对过去几年来巨大的价格波动做出怎样的反应呢？所以，他们更多地向海外投资是有道理的。仅仅在2010年1月份，中国就向世界上的75个国家和地区的420家海外企业进行了价值24亿美元的直接投资，其中绝大多数是亚洲和非洲国家。投资最多的领域是矿产、交通运输和石油化工。如今，中国的运营模式在整个非洲都很好地建立了起来。典型的交易是利用对高速公路和其他基础设施的投资换取对矿藏和农业用地的长期租赁，而不过问人权问题和政治腐败。
不断增加对海外自然资源的投资，不仅是减少中国受美元贬值影响的多样化战略，而且至少还可以增加中国的金融力量，特别是通过其庞大而富有影响力的主权财富基金。另外，它还使中国宏大的海军扩张计划变得理所当然。用东海舰队(East Sea Fleet)副司令员、海军少将张华臣的话说，“随着中国经济利益的不断延伸，海军希望更好地保护运输线路和我们主要海上航线的安全。”中国已将南海列为其“核心国家利益”，并且计划在巴基斯坦、缅甸和斯里兰卡修建深水港。
最后，与认为中国只配当“加州设计”产品生产线的观点相反，这个国家正在不断地加强创新，有意成为诸如世界领先的风力涡轮机和光电板等产品的生产国。2007年，中国申请新专利的数量超过了德国。这是东方崛起大趋势的一个部分。2008年，中国、印度、日本和韩国的专利申请数量之和首次超过了西方。
“新生”力量对“没落”力量造成的困境总是令人痛苦的。为了抵制德国的崛起，英国付出的代价的确太过惨重；而当它默默地成为美国的小兄弟时，情形就要容易得多。美国对中国是该遏制还是该适应呢？民调显示，普通美国民众和总统一样不知该如何抉择。在皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)最近的一项调查中，49%的受访者表示他们不希望中国“超过美国成为世界上的主要超级大国”，但46%的受访者持相反的观点。
许多西方评论员都认为，苏联解体之后，适应一个新的全球秩序非常困难。（现在谁还能毫不畏缩地记起关于美国超级强权的讨论？）但是，冷战持续了40多年，苏联从未在经济上有可能超过美国。我们现在正在经历的是西方主导世界500年的尾声。这一次，不论从经济上还是从地缘政治上来讲，来自东方的挑战真真切切。
北京的先生们可能现在还不是主宰。但有一点是确定的：他们不再是学徒了。
（尼尔•弗格森[Niall Ferguson]是哈佛大学[Harvard University]的历史学教授和哈佛商学院[Harvard Business School]的工商管理学教授，其新着《文明：西方与其他地区》(Civilization: The West and the Rest)将于明年3月出版。）
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
http://cn.wsj.com/gb/20101201/opn150700.asp?source=newsletter
Niall Ferguson
'We are the masters now.' I wonder if President Barack Obama saw those words in the thought bubble over the head of his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at the G20 summit in Seoul last week. If the president was hoping for change he could believe in -- in China's currency policy, that is -- all he got was small change. Maybe Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also heard 'We are the masters now' as the Chinese shot down his proposal for capping imbalances in global current accounts. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke got the same treatment when he announced a new round of 'quantitative easing' to try to jump start the U.S. economy, a move described by one leading Chinese commentator as 'uncontrolled' and 'irresponsible.'
'We are the masters now.' That was certainly the refrain that I kept hearing in my head when I was in China two weeks ago. It wasn't so much the glitzy, Olympic-quality party I attended in the Tai Miao Temple, next to the Forbidden City, that made this impression. The displays of bell ringing, martial arts and all-girl drumming are the kind of thing that Western visitors expect. It was the understated but unmistakable self-confidence of the economists I met that told me something had changed in relations between China and the West.
One of them, Cheng Siwei, explained over dinner China's plan to become a leader in green energy technology. Between swigs of rice wine, Xia Bin, an adviser to the People's Bank of China, outlined the need for a thorough privatization program, 'including even the Great Hall of the People.' And in faultless English, David Li of Tsinghua University confessed his dissatisfaction with the quality of Chinese Ph.D.s.
You could not ask for smarter people with whom to discuss the two most interesting questions in economic history today: Why did the West come to dominate not only China but the rest of the world in the five centuries after the Forbidden City was built? And is that period of Western dominance now finally coming to an end?
In a brilliant paper that has yet to be published in English, Mr. Li and his co-author Guan Hanhui demolish the fashionable view that China was economically neck-and-neck with the West until as recently as 1800. Per capita gross domestic product, they show, stagnated in the Ming era (1402-1626) and was significantly lower than that of pre-industrial Britain. China still had an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, with low-productivity cultivation accounting for 90% of GDP. And for a century after 1520, the Chinese national savings rate was actually negative. There was no capital accumulation in late Ming China; rather the opposite.
The story of what Kenneth Pomeranz, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, has called 'the Great Divergence' between East and West began much earlier. Even the late economist Angus Maddison may have been over-optimistic when he argued that in 1700 the average inhabitant of China was probably slightly better off than the average inhabitant of the future United States. Mr. Maddison was closer to the mark when he estimated that, in 1600, per capita GDP in Britain was already 60% higher than in China.
For the next several hundred years, China continued to stagnate and, in the 20th century, even to retreat, while the English-speaking world, closely followed by northwestern Europe, surged ahead. By 1820 U.S. per capita GDP was twice that of China; by 1870 it was nearly five times greater; by 1913 the ratio was nearly 10 to one.
Despite the painful interruption of the Great Depression, the U.S. suffered nothing so devastating as China's wretched mid-20th century ordeal of revolution, civil war, Japanese invasion, more revolution, man-made famine and yet more ('cultural') revolution. In 1968 the average American was 33 times richer than the average Chinese, using figures calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity (allowing for the different costs of living in the two countries). Calculated in current dollar terms, the differential at its peak was more like 70 to 1.
This was the ultimate global imbalance, the result of centuries of economic and political divergence. How did it come about? And is it over?
As I've researched my forthcoming book over the past two years, I've concluded that the West developed six 'killer applications' that 'the Rest' lacked. These were:
-- Competition: Europe was politically fragmented, and within each monarchy or republic there were multiple competing corporate entities.
-- The Scientific Revolution: All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology happened in Western Europe.
-- The rule of law and representative government: This optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.
-- Modern medicine: All the major 19th- and 20th-century advances in health care, including the control of tropical diseases, were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.
-- The consumer society: The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.
-- The work ethic: Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.
Those six killer apps were the key to Western ascendancy. The story of our time, which can be traced back to the reign of the Meiji Emperor in Japan (1867-1912), is that the Rest finally began to download them. It was far from a smooth process. The Japanese had no idea which elements of Western culture were the crucial ones, so they ended up copying everything, from Western clothes and hairstyles to the practice of colonizing foreign peoples. Unfortunately, they took up empire-building at precisely the moment when the costs of imperialism began to exceed the benefits. Other Asian powers -- notably India -- wasted decades on the erroneous premise that the socialist institutions pioneered in the Soviet Union were superior to the market-based institutions of the West.
Beginning in the 1950s, however, a growing band of East Asian countries followed Japan in mimicking the West's industrial model, beginning with textiles and steel and moving up the value chain from there. The downloading of Western applications was now more selective. Competition and representative government did not figure much in Asian development, which instead focused on science, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic (less Protestant than Max Weber had thought). Today Singapore is ranked third in the World Economic Forum's assessment of competitiveness. Hong Kong is 11th, followed by Taiwan (13th), South Korea (22nd) and China (27th). This is roughly the order, historically, in which these countries Westernized their economies.
Today per capita GDP in China is 19% that of the U.S., compared with 4% when economic reform began just over 30 years ago. Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore were already there as early as 1950; Taiwan got there in 1970, and South Korea got there in 1975. According to the Conference Board, Singapore's per capita GDP is now 21% higher than that of the U.S., Hong Kong's is about the same, Japan's and Taiwan's are about 25% lower, and South Korea's 36% lower. Only a foolhardy man would bet against China's following the same trajectory in the decades ahead.
China's has been the biggest and fastest of all the industrialization revolutions. In the space of 26 years, China's GDP grew by a factor of 10. It took the U.K. 70 years after 1830 to grow by a factor of four. According to the International Monetary Fund, China's share of global GDP (measured in current prices) will pass the 10% mark in 2013. Goldman Sachs continues to forecast that China will overtake the U.S. in terms of GDP in 2027, just as it recently overtook Japan.
But in some ways the Asian century has already arrived. China is on the brink of surpassing the American share of global manufacturing, having overtaken Germany and Japan in the past 10 years. China's biggest city, Shanghai, already sits atop the ranks of the world's megacities, with Mumbai right behind; no American city comes close.
Nothing is more certain to accelerate the shift of global economic power from West to East than the looming U.S. fiscal crisis. With a debt-to-revenue ratio of 312%, Greece is in dire straits already. But the debt-to-revenue ratio of the U.S. is 358%, according to Morgan Stanley. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that interest payments on the federal debt will rise from 9% of federal tax revenues to 20% in 2020, 36% in 2030 and 58% in 2040. Only America's 'exorbitant privilege' of being able to print the world's premier reserve currency gives it breathing space. Yet this very privilege is under mounting attack from the Chinese government.
For many commentators, the resumption of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve has appeared to spark a currency war between the U.S. and China. If the 'Chinese don't take actions' to end the manipulation of their currency, President Obama declared in New York in September, 'we have other means of protecting U.S. interests.' The Chinese premier Wen Jiabao was quick to respond: 'Do not work to pressure us on the renminbi rate. . . . Many of our exporting companies would have to close down, migrant workers would have to return to their villages. If China saw social and economic turbulence, then it would be a disaster for the world.'
(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires
November 19, 2010 18:13 ET (23:13 GMT)
WSJ(11/20) REVIEW: In China's Orbit -2-
Such exchanges are a form of pi ying xi, China's traditional shadow puppet theater. In reality, today's currency war is between 'Chimerica' -- as I've called the united economies of China and America -- and the rest of the world. If the U.S. prints money while China effectively still pegs its currency to the dollar, both parties benefit. The losers are countries like Indonesia and Brazil, whose real trade-weighted exchange rates have appreciated since January 2008 by 18% and 17%, respectively.
But who now gains more from this partnership? With China's output currently 20% above its pre-crisis level and that of the U.S. still 2% below, the answer seems clear. American policy-makers may utter the mantra that 'they need us as much as we need them' and refer ominously to Lawrence Summers's famous phrase about 'mutually assured financial destruction.' But the Chinese already have a plan to reduce their dependence on dollar reserve accumulation and subsidized exports. It is a strategy not so much for world domination on the model of Western imperialism as for reestablishing China as the Middle Kingdom -- the dominant tributary state in the Asia-Pacific region.
If I had to summarize China's new grand strategy, I would do it, Chinese-style, as the Four 'Mores': Consume more, import more, invest abroad more and innovate more. In each case, a change of economic strategy pays a handsome geopolitical dividend. By consuming more, China can reduce its trade surplus and, in the process, endear itself to its major trading partners, especially the other emerging markets. China recently overtook the U.S. as the world's biggest automobile market (14 million sales a year, compared to 11 million), and its demand is projected to rise tenfold in the years ahead. By 2035, according to the International Energy Agency, China will be using a fifth of all global energy, a 75% increase since 2008. It accounted for about 46% of global coal consumption in 2009, the World Coal Institute estimates, and consumes a similar share of the world's aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc production. Last year China used twice as much crude steel as the European Union, United States and Japan combined.
Such figures translate into major gains for the exporters of these and other commodities. China is already Australia's biggest export market, accounting for 22% of Australian exports in 2009. It buys 12% of Brazil's exports and 10% of South Africa's. It has also become a big purchaser of high-end manufactured goods from Japan and Germany. Once China was mainly an exporter of low-price manufactures. Now that it accounts for fully a fifth of global growth, it has become the most dynamic new market for other people's stuff. And that wins friends.
The Chinese are justifiably nervous, however, about the vagaries of world commodity prices. How could they feel otherwise after the huge price swings of the past few years? So it makes sense for them to invest abroad more. In January 2010 alone, the Chinese made direct investments worth a total of $2.4 billion in 420 overseas enterprises in 75 countries and regions. The overwhelming majority of these were in Asia and Africa. The biggest sectors were mining, transportation and petrochemicals. Across Africa, the Chinese mode of operation is now well established. Typical deals exchange highway and other infrastructure investments for long leases of mines or agricultural land, with no questions asked about human rights abuses or political corruption.
Growing overseas investment in natural resources not only makes sense as a diversification strategy to reduce China's exposure to the risk of dollar depreciation. It also allows China to increase its financial power, not least through its vast and influential sovereign wealth fund. And it justifies ambitious plans for naval expansion. In the words of Rear Admiral Zhang Huachen, deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet: 'With the expansion of the country's economic interests, the navy wants to better protect the country's transportation routes and the safety of our major sea-lanes.' The South China Sea has already been declared a 'core national interest,' and deep-water ports are projected in Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka.
Finally, and contrary to the view that China is condemned to remain an assembly line for products 'designed in California,' the country is innovating more, aiming to become, for example, the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels. In 2007 China overtook Germany in terms of new patent applications. This is part of a wider story of Eastern ascendancy. In 2008, for the first time, the number of patent applications from China, India, Japan and South Korea exceeded those from the West.
The dilemma posed to the 'departing' power by the 'arriving' power is always agonizing. The cost of resisting Germany's rise was heavy indeed for Britain; it was much easier to slide quietly into the role of junior partner to the U.S. Should America seek to contain China or to accommodate it? Opinion polls suggest that ordinary Americans are no more certain how to respond than the president. In a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 49% of respondents said they did not expect China to 'overtake the U.S. as the world's main superpower,' but 46% took the opposite view.
Coming to terms with a new global order was hard enough after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which went to the heads of many Western commentators. (Who now remembers talk of American hyperpuissance without a wince?) But the Cold War lasted little more than four decades, and the Soviet Union never came close to overtaking the U.S. economically. What we are living through now is the end of 500 years of Western predominance. This time the Eastern challenger is for real, both economically and geopolitically.
The gentlemen in Beijing may not be the masters just yet. But one thing is certain: They are no longer the apprentices.
(Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. His next book, 'Civilization: The West and the Rest,' will be published in March.)
'We are the masters now.' I wonder if President Barack Obama saw those words in the thought bubble over the head of his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at the G20 summit in Seoul last week. If the president was hoping for change he could believe in -- in China's currency policy, that is -- all he got was small change. Maybe Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also heard 'We are the masters now' as the Chinese shot down his proposal for capping imbalances in global current accounts. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke got the same treatment when he announced a new round of 'quantitative easing' to try to jump start the U.S. economy, a move described by one leading Chinese commentator as 'uncontrolled' and 'irresponsible.'
'We are the masters now.' That was certainly the refrain that I kept hearing in my head when I was in China two weeks ago. It wasn't so much the glitzy, Olympic-quality party I attended in the Tai Miao Temple, next to the Forbidden City, that made this impression. The displays of bell ringing, martial arts and all-girl drumming are the kind of thing that Western visitors expect. It was the understated but unmistakable self-confidence of the economists I met that told me something had changed in relations between China and the West.
One of them, Cheng Siwei, explained over dinner China's plan to become a leader in green energy technology. Between swigs of rice wine, Xia Bin, an adviser to the People's Bank of China, outlined the need for a thorough privatization program, 'including even the Great Hall of the People.' And in faultless English, David Li of Tsinghua University confessed his dissatisfaction with the quality of Chinese Ph.D.s.
You could not ask for smarter people with whom to discuss the two most interesting questions in economic history today: Why did the West come to dominate not only China but the rest of the world in the five centuries after the Forbidden City was built? And is that period of Western dominance now finally coming to an end?
In a brilliant paper that has yet to be published in English, Mr. Li and his co-author Guan Hanhui demolish the fashionable view that China was economically neck-and-neck with the West until as recently as 1800. Per capita gross domestic product, they show, stagnated in the Ming era (1402-1626) and was significantly lower than that of pre-industrial Britain. China still had an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, with low-productivity cultivation accounting for 90% of GDP. And for a century after 1520, the Chinese national savings rate was actually negative. There was no capital accumulation in late Ming China; rather the opposite.
The story of what Kenneth Pomeranz, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, has called 'the Great Divergence' between East and West began much earlier. Even the late economist Angus Maddison may have been over-optimistic when he argued that in 1700 the average inhabitant of China was probably slightly better off than the average inhabitant of the future United States. Mr. Maddison was closer to the mark when he estimated that, in 1600, per capita GDP in Britain was already 60% higher than in China.
For the next several hundred years, China continued to stagnate and, in the 20th century, even to retreat, while the English-speaking world, closely followed by northwestern Europe, surged ahead. By 1820 U.S. per capita GDP was twice that of China; by 1870 it was nearly five times greater; by 1913 the ratio was nearly 10 to one.
Despite the painful interruption of the Great Depression, the U.S. suffered nothing so devastating as China's wretched mid-20th century ordeal of revolution, civil war, Japanese invasion, more revolution, man-made famine and yet more ('cultural') revolution. In 1968 the average American was 33 times richer than the average Chinese, using figures calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity (allowing for the different costs of living in the two countries). Calculated in current dollar terms, the differential at its peak was more like 70 to 1.
This was the ultimate global imbalance, the result of centuries of economic and political divergence. How did it come about? And is it over?
As I've researched my forthcoming book over the past two years, I've concluded that the West developed six 'killer applications' that 'the Rest' lacked. These were:
-- Competition: Europe was politically fragmented, and within each monarchy or republic there were multiple competing corporate entities.
-- The Scientific Revolution: All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology happened in Western Europe.
-- The rule of law and representative government: This optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.
-- Modern medicine: All the major 19th- and 20th-century advances in health care, including the control of tropical diseases, were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.
-- The consumer society: The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.
-- The work ethic: Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.
Those six killer apps were the key to Western ascendancy. The story of our time, which can be traced back to the reign of the Meiji Emperor in Japan (1867-1912), is that the Rest finally began to download them. It was far from a smooth process. The Japanese had no idea which elements of Western culture were the crucial ones, so they ended up copying everything, from Western clothes and hairstyles to the practice of colonizing foreign peoples. Unfortunately, they took up empire-building at precisely the moment when the costs of imperialism began to exceed the benefits. Other Asian powers -- notably India -- wasted decades on the erroneous premise that the socialist institutions pioneered in the Soviet Union were superior to the market-based institutions of the West.
Beginning in the 1950s, however, a growing band of East Asian countries followed Japan in mimicking the West's industrial model, beginning with textiles and steel and moving up the value chain from there. The downloading of Western applications was now more selective. Competition and representative government did not figure much in Asian development, which instead focused on science, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic (less Protestant than Max Weber had thought). Today Singapore is ranked third in the World Economic Forum's assessment of competitiveness. Hong Kong is 11th, followed by Taiwan (13th), South Korea (22nd) and China (27th). This is roughly the order, historically, in which these countries Westernized their economies.
Today per capita GDP in China is 19% that of the U.S., compared with 4% when economic reform began just over 30 years ago. Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore were already there as early as 1950; Taiwan got there in 1970, and South Korea got there in 1975. According to the Conference Board, Singapore's per capita GDP is now 21% higher than that of the U.S., Hong Kong's is about the same, Japan's and Taiwan's are about 25% lower, and South Korea's 36% lower. Only a foolhardy man would bet against China's following the same trajectory in the decades ahead.
China's has been the biggest and fastest of all the industrialization revolutions. In the space of 26 years, China's GDP grew by a factor of 10. It took the U.K. 70 years after 1830 to grow by a factor of four. According to the International Monetary Fund, China's share of global GDP (measured in current prices) will pass the 10% mark in 2013. Goldman Sachs continues to forecast that China will overtake the U.S. in terms of GDP in 2027, just as it recently overtook Japan.
But in some ways the Asian century has already arrived. China is on the brink of surpassing the American share of global manufacturing, having overtaken Germany and Japan in the past 10 years. China's biggest city, Shanghai, already sits atop the ranks of the world's megacities, with Mumbai right behind; no American city comes close.
Nothing is more certain to accelerate the shift of global economic power from West to East than the looming U.S. fiscal crisis. With a debt-to-revenue ratio of 312%, Greece is in dire straits already. But the debt-to-revenue ratio of the U.S. is 358%, according to Morgan Stanley. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that interest payments on the federal debt will rise from 9% of federal tax revenues to 20% in 2020, 36% in 2030 and 58% in 2040. Only America's 'exorbitant privilege' of being able to print the world's premier reserve currency gives it breathing space. Yet this very privilege is under mounting attack from the Chinese government.
For many commentators, the resumption of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve has appeared to spark a currency war between the U.S. and China. If the 'Chinese don't take actions' to end the manipulation of their currency, President Obama declared in New York in September, 'we have other means of protecting U.S. interests.' The Chinese premier Wen Jiabao was quick to respond: 'Do not work to pressure us on the renminbi rate. . . . Many of our exporting companies would have to close down, migrant workers would have to return to their villages. If China saw social and economic turbulence, then it would be a disaster for the world.'
(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires
November 19, 2010 18:13 ET (23:13 GMT)
WSJ(11/20) REVIEW: In China's Orbit -2-
Such exchanges are a form of pi ying xi, China's traditional shadow puppet theater. In reality, today's currency war is between 'Chimerica' -- as I've called the united economies of China and America -- and the rest of the world. If the U.S. prints money while China effectively still pegs its currency to the dollar, both parties benefit. The losers are countries like Indonesia and Brazil, whose real trade-weighted exchange rates have appreciated since January 2008 by 18% and 17%, respectively.
But who now gains more from this partnership? With China's output currently 20% above its pre-crisis level and that of the U.S. still 2% below, the answer seems clear. American policy-makers may utter the mantra that 'they need us as much as we need them' and refer ominously to Lawrence Summers's famous phrase about 'mutually assured financial destruction.' But the Chinese already have a plan to reduce their dependence on dollar reserve accumulation and subsidized exports. It is a strategy not so much for world domination on the model of Western imperialism as for reestablishing China as the Middle Kingdom -- the dominant tributary state in the Asia-Pacific region.
If I had to summarize China's new grand strategy, I would do it, Chinese-style, as the Four 'Mores': Consume more, import more, invest abroad more and innovate more. In each case, a change of economic strategy pays a handsome geopolitical dividend. By consuming more, China can reduce its trade surplus and, in the process, endear itself to its major trading partners, especially the other emerging markets. China recently overtook the U.S. as the world's biggest automobile market (14 million sales a year, compared to 11 million), and its demand is projected to rise tenfold in the years ahead. By 2035, according to the International Energy Agency, China will be using a fifth of all global energy, a 75% increase since 2008. It accounted for about 46% of global coal consumption in 2009, the World Coal Institute estimates, and consumes a similar share of the world's aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc production. Last year China used twice as much crude steel as the European Union, United States and Japan combined.
Such figures translate into major gains for the exporters of these and other commodities. China is already Australia's biggest export market, accounting for 22% of Australian exports in 2009. It buys 12% of Brazil's exports and 10% of South Africa's. It has also become a big purchaser of high-end manufactured goods from Japan and Germany. Once China was mainly an exporter of low-price manufactures. Now that it accounts for fully a fifth of global growth, it has become the most dynamic new market for other people's stuff. And that wins friends.
The Chinese are justifiably nervous, however, about the vagaries of world commodity prices. How could they feel otherwise after the huge price swings of the past few years? So it makes sense for them to invest abroad more. In January 2010 alone, the Chinese made direct investments worth a total of $2.4 billion in 420 overseas enterprises in 75 countries and regions. The overwhelming majority of these were in Asia and Africa. The biggest sectors were mining, transportation and petrochemicals. Across Africa, the Chinese mode of operation is now well established. Typical deals exchange highway and other infrastructure investments for long leases of mines or agricultural land, with no questions asked about human rights abuses or political corruption.
Growing overseas investment in natural resources not only makes sense as a diversification strategy to reduce China's exposure to the risk of dollar depreciation. It also allows China to increase its financial power, not least through its vast and influential sovereign wealth fund. And it justifies ambitious plans for naval expansion. In the words of Rear Admiral Zhang Huachen, deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet: 'With the expansion of the country's economic interests, the navy wants to better protect the country's transportation routes and the safety of our major sea-lanes.' The South China Sea has already been declared a 'core national interest,' and deep-water ports are projected in Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka.
Finally, and contrary to the view that China is condemned to remain an assembly line for products 'designed in California,' the country is innovating more, aiming to become, for example, the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels. In 2007 China overtook Germany in terms of new patent applications. This is part of a wider story of Eastern ascendancy. In 2008, for the first time, the number of patent applications from China, India, Japan and South Korea exceeded those from the West.
The dilemma posed to the 'departing' power by the 'arriving' power is always agonizing. The cost of resisting Germany's rise was heavy indeed for Britain; it was much easier to slide quietly into the role of junior partner to the U.S. Should America seek to contain China or to accommodate it? Opinion polls suggest that ordinary Americans are no more certain how to respond than the president. In a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 49% of respondents said they did not expect China to 'overtake the U.S. as the world's main superpower,' but 46% took the opposite view.
Coming to terms with a new global order was hard enough after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which went to the heads of many Western commentators. (Who now remembers talk of American hyperpuissance without a wince?) But the Cold War lasted little more than four decades, and the Soviet Union never came close to overtaking the U.S. economically. What we are living through now is the end of 500 years of Western predominance. This time the Eastern challenger is for real, both economically and geopolitically.
The gentlemen in Beijing may not be the masters just yet. But one thing is certain: They are no longer the apprentices.
(Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. His next book, 'Civilization: The West and the Rest,' will be published in March.)
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