莎翁(Shakespeare)笔下的凯撒大帝(Julius Caesar)希望自己周围都是膘肥体胖的人，因为精瘦、饥饿的人比较危险。如果该准则同样适用于国际关系，那么，世界其它各国应该会对上周的一则消息表示欢迎：即，按名义国内生产总值(GDP)计算，中国已经超过日本，成为世界第二大经济体。不过，遗憾的是，名义GDP并不能很好地反映出一个自在满足、对外无威胁国家的内部实情。人均收入是一个相对更好的指标——尽管可能并非完美。所以，鉴于中国3678美元的人均收入尚不到日本的十分之一，上述转折点可能不会给凯撒带来多少安慰，因为尽管中国近年的增长速度惊人，但它显然仍是一个很穷的国家。
一个令人不安的历史事实是：全球经济中的重大权力转移是危险的。它们往往伴随着极度的金融混乱、汇率动荡与贸易摩擦。这是因为，胸怀大志的新起之秀通常是有贸易保护主义倾向的债权国，不愿承担与其经济实力相称的国际职责。
想想一战后英国霸权向美国霸权的转变。自1918年起，尽管从盟国那里收取了战债，但美国拒绝了《凡尔赛和约》(Versailles treaty)、退出了国际联盟(League of Nations)、对德国赔款问题袖手旁观。英国在贸易上的自由开放态度，使美国实现了巨额贸易顺差。此外，在兴旺的20世纪20年代(Roaring Twenties)，年轻无经验的美联储(Fed)推行了宽松的货币政策，而且不明智地努力支撑状况不佳的英镑。
当美联储姗姗来迟地在1929年将由此导致的泡沫戳破时，爵士乐时代(Jazz Age)戛然而止、银行陷入崩溃、萧条紧随而至。美国将自身需求不足问题输出至其它国家的做法，使得它未能提供领导力，阻止灾难性竞相贬值的爆发，而且，它也不愿意扮演濒临破产银行全球最后贷款人的角色。
第二个例子是战后的日本。日本的经济增长是出口导向型，且受到了日元低估与出口补贴的推动。只要日本不是经济大国，这个模式就还管用。然而，到上世纪60年代末，日本已经跻身世界第二大经济体。而且它还拥有巨额对美贸易顺差。
国际社会在里根时代(Reagan era)解决失衡与稳定被高估美元的努力，导致了意想不到的后果，尤其是，与美联储1927年支撑英镑一样，日本对日元兑美元汇率的干预，也推动了泡沫的形成。泡沫被戳破后，日本陷入了长达20年的经济停滞。
美国所面临的中国挑战也属于出口导向型，且中国经常账户盈余是欧亚储蓄过度的最大促成因素。储蓄过度导致了信贷泡沫、全球失衡，这些是金融危机背后的因素。尽管中国取得了成功，但它的经济模式导致了浪费的过度投资，且没有让老百姓享受到足够的好处——中国老百姓私人消费在GDP中所占份额是亚洲最低的。在一个经济以两位数速度增长的国家，就业率每年的增长率仅为区区的1%，且储蓄的实际回报率为负。与日本的鼎盛时期一样，中国人目前的生活质量比人均收入数字显示的还要差，污染、掺假食品与糟糕的就业环境给健康带来了诸多威胁。
中国以人民币低估推动的出口导向型增长迄今之所以可行，仅仅是因为美国与其它赤字国家一直愿意经营巨额债务，为家庭消费及如今的政府支出融资。困难在于，由此导致的失衡并非是可持续的，因为债务枯竭的那一点正在靠近。不过，正如朗伯德街研究公司(Lombard Street Research)的查尔斯•杜马斯(Charles Dumas)在新书《全球化裂口》(Globalisation Fractures)中所辩称的，各国政府应对危机的政策，太过于狭隘地关注金融问题，而忽略了全球失衡。该书主要写的是领先工业国家政策的不相容性。
世界经济所需要的是，债务国与债权国重新让自身的经济恢复平衡。债务国需要整理它们的资产负债表，债权国需要增加国内消费、允许本国货币升值、减轻对出口的依赖。这也会给中国带来好处，因为中国的经济正处于失衡状态。它无法在维持人为低汇率的同时，阻止通胀、资产价格泡沫等诸多问题。不过，改革所面临的障碍是巨大的。杜马斯表示，增加消费的再平衡举措，其关键或许在于政府放松对其公民的控制，而这不太可能会发生。此外，还会有强大的团体游说政府不要实施此类改革，尤其是效率低下的生产商。廉价的人民币让这些生产商不需要付出多大力气就能获取利润，且他们的经济生存仍依赖于人民币的继续低估。
因此，目前存在一个中国政策僵局。世界如何逃脱中国模式可能带来的可怕的经济后果？一种做法或许是勉强对付过去：美国以放松财政与货币政策的做法，应付即将到来的经济放缓，而代价是债务高企与随后的信贷紧缩。另一种做法是，美国财政保守派阻止预算放松，但维持宽松的货币政策。这将导致美国经常账户赤字收缩得更早，而非更晚。
不管采取哪种做法，中国遭遇保护主义反弹的风险都将增加。不管在哪种情景下，全球债权国最终将会看到它们的主要市场逐渐枯竭。主要区别只在于时间的不同。或许，你会问，这些债权国何时才会醒悟？
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034245
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar wanted to have men about him who were fat because lean and hungry men were dangerous. If the same principle applies in international relations, this week’s news that China has overtaken the world’s second-largest economy, Japan, in terms of nominal gross domestic product should be welcome to the rest of the world. Yet nominal GDP is unfortunately a poor guide to what constitutes a satisfied, unthreatening state. Per capita income is a better, if imperfect, pointer. And since China’s per capita income of $3,678 is still less than a 10th of Japan’s, Caesar would have drawn little comfort from this watershed, given that China clearly remains a very poor country despite its spectacular recent growth rate.
It is a discomfiting historical fact that great power shifts in the global economy are dangerous. They have tended to coincide with extreme financial dislocation, currency turbulence and trade friction. This is because the aspiring new boy on the block is usually a protectionist-inclined creditor country that is reluctant to shoulder international responsibility commensurate with its economic strength.
Consider the transition from British to US hegemony after the first world war. From 1918 the US rejected the Versailles treaty, opted out of the League of Nations and had nothing to do with German reparations, although it collected war debts from the allies. Britain’s liberal attitude to trade allowed the US to run a big trade surplus. Meantime, the young and inexperienced Federal Reserve pursued lax monetary policies in the Roaring Twenties while unwisely trying to prop up the ailing pound.
When the Fed belatedly pricked the resulting bubble in 1929, the Jazz Age came to an abrupt end, banks collapsed and the depression ensued. As the US exported its problem of deficient demand to the rest of the world, it failed to provide leadership to prevent an outbreak of disastrous competitive devaluations and was unwilling to act as a global lender of last resort to collapsing banks.
The next case in point is postwar Japan. Japanese economic growth was export-led, fuelled by an undervalued yen and subsidies for exporters. It was a model that worked as long as Japan was not a significant economic power. Yet by the late 1960s Japan was the second largest economy in the world. It was also running a huge trade surplus with the US.
International efforts to address imbalances and stabilise an overvalued dollar in the Reagan era had unintended consequences – not least that Japanese intervention in the yen-dollar rate had the same bubble-inducing outcome as the Fed’s efforts to prop up sterling in 1927. The pricking of the bubble led to 20 years of economic stagnation.
China’s challenge to the US is similarly export-led and its current account surplus is the biggest contributor to the Eurasian savings glut that led to the credit bubble and the global imbalances behind the financial crisis. Yet despite its success, China’s economic model generates wasteful over-investment and under-delivers to ordinary people, who have the lowest share of private consumption in GDP in Asia. In a country that enjoys double-digit growth rates, employment growth has been running at a paltry 1 per cent a year, while real returns on savings are negative. As with Japan at its peak, the economy delivers a poorer quality of life than the per capita income figures suggest, with pollution, adulterated food and bad employment conditions posing threats to health.
China’s export-led growth, fuelled by an undervalued renminbi, has been possible only because the US and other deficit countries have been willing to run up large debts to finance household consumption and now government spending. The snag is that the resulting imbalances are not sustainable because the point of debt exhaustion is close. Yet as Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research argues in Globalisation Fractures, a new book on the incompatibility of the policies of the leading industrial countries, the policy response to the crisis has been too narrowly focused on financial issues rather than global imbalances.
What is needed globally is for both debtor and creditor countries to rebalance their economies. The debtors need to tidy their balance sheets, while the creditors need to bump up domestic consumption, let currencies float and reduce export dependence. This would also be in China’s own interest because its economy is in disequilibrium. It cannot, among other things, prevent inflation and asset-price bubbles while running an artificially low exchange rate. Yet the obstacles to change are formidable. The key to rebalancing towards consumption, says Mr Dumas, may be relaxation of government control over its citizens, which is unlikely to happen. There are also powerful lobbies against change, not least the inefficient producers who have been featherbedded by a cheap currency and whose economic survival depends on continuing undervaluation.
There is, then, a Chinese policy impasse. How does the world escape from its dire potential economic consequences? One scenario might be muddle-through: the US responds to an impending economic slowdown with looser fiscal and monetary policy, at the cost of racking up more debt and a crunch later on. Another would see US fiscal conservatives prevent budgetary loosening, while monetary policy remains lax. This would cause the US current account deficit to shrink sooner rather than later.
Either way, the risks of a protectionist backlash against China would rise. Under either scenario, the world’s creditor countries would ultimately see their chief market dry up. The main difference is in the timing. When, you might well ask, will the creditors wake up?
The writer is an FT columnist
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