作为全球顶尖电信设备制造商之一，华为(Huawei)喜欢把自己描述成一家私有的创新型企业，其所有者是其两万名员工。但在审视这家总部位于深圳、增长迅猛的企业时，大多数美国官员眼睛里看到的只有中国国旗的红色。在打入美国市场方面，华为再一次败下阵来。上月，华为收购两家美国企业的努力双双受挫，它对互联网软件集团2wire和摩托罗拉(Motorola)旗下子公司的竞购均遭到拒绝。尽管在这两宗竞购中，华为的出价都是最高的，但出售方担心美国监管部门会以国家安全为由阻止收购，因此拒绝了华为的收购意向。购得上述两家企业的分别是英国的佩斯(Pace)和芬兰的诺基亚(Nokia)。
华为进军美国市场并不是头一次受挫。2008年，华为就曾放弃对电脑设备制造商3Com的竞购，原因是美国政府担心华为会获得与军方有关的反黑客技术。华为的出身对它毫无帮助。华为由中国人民解放军前军官任正非创建，迄今未能打消外界对它有中国军方背景的怀疑，尽管它予以了坚决否认。
华为近期受到的回绝令中国政府愤愤不已。《环球时报》(Global Times)一篇评论文章指责西方人对中国企业抱有偏见，认为每笔交易都有政府插手。文章写道，尽管全球化日渐加强，但冷战时代那堵无形之墙仍在东西方之间若隐若现。
正如该文所说，尽管华为的例子比较极端，但它却阐明了一个更广泛的问题。上世纪80年代，日本企业经常受到指责，说它们在实施政府策划的一些卑鄙阴谋。与此类似，中国企业如今也被广泛认为是在推进“中国公司”议程。2005年，中国国有企业中海油(CNOOC)出价185亿美元收购美国油气集团优尼科(Unocal)，却因美国担心中国政府利用国家力量攫取全球资产而告失败。同样，中国国有金属集团中铝(Chinalco)去年向力拓(Rio Tinto)注资195亿美元的尝试，在澳大利亚引发了政治反弹。交易终被取消。
中国的收购并非全都半途而废。联想(Lenovo)就获得美国有关部门的许可，收购了IBM亏损的个人电脑部门。但此类交易都必须接受美国外国投资委员会(CFIUS)的严格审查。今年6月，由于白宫以安全为由提出反对，一家美国光纤制造商和一家中国投资公司组建合资企业的计划甚至还没有提交CFIUS就已告流产。
美国官员毫不掩饰自己的担心。美国驻华大使洪博培(Jon Huntsman)上周在一次讲话中承认，美国人往往对国有企业持怀疑态度。曾在里根(Reagan)政府担任美国贸易官员的克莱德•普雷斯托维茨(Clyde Prestowitz)提出，美国在对抗中国政府的重商主义政策方面不够警惕。他认为，中国的产业政策由官僚所主导，充斥着政府激励措施、政府贷款、政府引导的整合和政府策划的海外扩张。在谈到这一点时，他表示：“对手不再是原来的对手，招数也不再是原来的招数。”
普雷斯托维茨最近撰写了一本讲述美国丧失竞争力的书，名为《美国的不肖子孙》(The Betrayal of American Posterity)。在他看来，美国正重蹈英国19世纪末的覆辙。他表示，英国当时对自由市场机制太过信任，因此被美国和德国等重商主义国家赶超。在冷战的背景下，日本、台湾及其它东南亚国家和地区也借助类似的产业政策赶了上来。他说，现在轮到了中国，但力度要大得多。“我不是说中国人不该做他们正在做的事情。我只是说，美国人不该和英国人一样蠢。”
亚洲协会(Asia Society)中国问题专家夏伟(Orville Schell)有不同的看法。他担心，美国可能对中国的投资过于警惕了，因此恐怕会错失机会，吸引不到目前从中国流出的巨额资本。他提到最近发生的一件事：中国鞍钢集团(Anshan Steel)计划向美国（算不上繁荣的）钢铁业投资1.75亿美元，但遭到50名美国国会议员的反对。“资本之河正在倒流，”夏伟谈到中国庞大的外汇储备及投资实物资产的需求时表示。“我理解对国家安全的关切，但我们不应自绝于这些资本流。”
这就是美国目前面临的两难困境。它必须判断来自中国的投资是中国企业的商业决策，还是中共中央构思的宏大计划的组成部分。如果它推测是后者（至少在某些情况下，它有理由这么认为），那么它必须判定，接受这类投资是否会对本国构成战略或安全威胁。此外，在美国确实觉察到此类威胁时，它还必须能够心平气和地听任海量的中国资本流向别的地方。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001033980
Huawei, one of the world's top telecommunications equipment manufacturers, likes to portray itself as an innovative, privately held business owned by its 20,000 employees. But all that most American officials see when they look at the fast-growing Shenzhen-based company is the red of the Chinese flag. Once again, Huawei has failed to crack the US market. Last month, its attempts to buy two US companies were thwarted when one bid for 2wire, an internet software group, and another for a unit of Motorola were rejected. Though Huawei had offered the highest price in both instances, fears that US regulators would block the acquisitions on security grounds short-circuited the process. The companies were sold instead to Pace of the UK and Nokia of Finland.
It is not the first time Huawei's American parade has been washed out. In 2008, it dropped its bid for computer-equipment maker 3Com because of Washington's concerns it could gain access to military-related anti-hacking technology. Huawei's provenance hardly helps. Founded by Ren Zhengfei, a former officer in the People's Liberation Army, it has failed to shake off suspicions that it is a front for the Chinese military, something it vigorously denies.
The recent rebuffs have provoked anger in Beijing. An opinion piece in the Global Times, a tabloid, accused westerners of being prejudiced against Chinese companies and seeing the hand of the state in every transaction. “Despite intensified globalisation, the invisible wall of the cold war era still looms between the west and the east,” it said.
As the article suggested, Huawei, though an extreme example, illustrates a much wider point. Just as in the 1980s, when Japanese companies were routinely accused of carrying out some dastardly, state-orchestrated plot, Chinese companies are now widely viewed as pursuing a China Inc agenda. In 2005, an $18.5bn bid by state-owned CNOOC for Unocal, a US oil and gas group, fell foul of US misgivings that Beijing was using state muscle to grab global assets. Similarly, an attempt last year by Chinalco, China's state-owned metals group, to invest $19.5bn in Rio Tinto provoked a political backlash in Australia. The deal was dropped.
Not all Chinese acquisitions are derailed. Lenovo was allowed by US authorities to buy the loss-making PC unit of IBM. But all such deals must be vetted by the US Committee on Foreign Investment (Cfius). This June, a joint venture between a US fibre-optics maker and a Chinese investment corporation never even made it to Cfius because of security objections from the White House.
US officials are not coy about their unease. In a speech last week, Jon Huntsman, US ambassador to Beijing, conceded that Americans tended to be suspicious of state-owned companies. Clyde Prestowitz, a US trade official in the Reagan administration, argues that the US is not vigilant enough in combating Beijing's mercantilist policies. “It's not the same animal playing the same game,” he says, referring to what he regards as China's bureaucratic-led industrial policy, replete with state incentives, state lending, state-led consolidation and state-orchestrated forays abroad.
In the view of Mr Prestowitz, who recently wrote The Betrayal of American Posterity, a book about the country's loss of competitiveness, the US is repeating the mistake that Britain made at the end of the 19th century. Then, he says, the UK put too much faith in the workings of the free market, throwing away its advantage to mercantilist nations such as US and Germany. Japan and other south-east Asian nations such as Taiwan, got away with similar industrial policies in the context of the cold war. Now China is at it, but on a far larger scale, he says. “I'm not saying the Chinese are wrong to be doing what they are doing. I'm just saying that the US should not be as dumb as the Brits.”
Orville Schell, a China expert at the Asia Society, has a different take. He worries that the US is in danger of being overly wary of Chinese investments. As a result, he fears, it could miss out on the huge amounts of capital now flowing out of China. He points to a recent case in which 50 US lawmakers objected to plans by China's Anshan Steel to invest $175m in America's (hardly booming) steel industry. “The river of capital is flowing backwards,” he says of China's huge foreign exchange reserves and its need to invest in real assets. “I understand national security concerns, but we shouldn't cut ourselves off from these capital flows.”
This is the dilemma now facing the US. It must decide whether Chinese companies are making commercial decisions or whether they are part of some grand plan fashioned at Communist party HQ. If it suspects the latter, as it has at least occasional cause to, it must determine whether accepting such investments poses either a strategic or a security threat. And when the US does detect such a threat, it will have to be prepared to sit serenely on the sidelines as a wall of Chinese money goes elsewhere.
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