去年，作家兼政治分析家伊恩•布雷默(Ian Bremmer)受邀出席于中国驻纽约总领事馆召开的一场会议，讨论全球金融危机。时任中国外交部副部长的何亚非半开玩笑地向在场嘉宾问道：“既然自由市场已经宣告失败，那么你们认为，政府应该在经济中扮演怎样的角色才算恰当？”
国家资本主义算不上什么新鲜玩意，但眼下呈现出强劲的上升势头。除却金融危机削弱了人们对华盛顿自冷战结束以来一直提倡的自由市场政策的信心之外，中国及其特有的“市场列宁主义”(market-Leninism)的不断崛起也使下面这种观点平添了几分可敬之处：即政府应在经济中扮演一个重要乃至主导的角色。
如果说弗朗西斯•福山(Francis Fukuyama)所著的《历史的终结》(The End of History)似乎定义了上世纪90年代初的学术时代精神，那么主导当前这场讨论的就是像布雷默的《国家资本主义之崛起》(The Rise of State Capitalism)这样的书。
“如今，西方国家要为自由市场体系辩护变得愈加困难，而中国与俄罗斯则更容易主张只有政府才能拯救经济于悬崖边缘。毕竟，政府支出在美中两国的经济复苏中都扮演了关键角色，”布雷默表示。
“金融危机为中国政府提供了新的依据，证明开明的政府管理能够针对自由市场天生的过度行为提供保护。这项试验的规模很可能还会扩大，并继续对塑造全球经济产生日益重大的影响。”
从俄罗斯到海湾地区，还有许多其它国家也在实行某种形式的国家资本主义。事实上，全球大约四分之三的石油储备都掌握在国有能源公司手中。然而，要说到国家资本主义的代言人，还得属中国。
十年前，中国国有部门似乎正处在崩溃的边缘。上世纪90年代末，数百家国有企业被迫倒闭，成千上万的工人因此失去工作。而现如今，国有部门看上去十分强健。
中国国资委最近发布的一份报告显示，中国大型国有企业的利润总额在2003年至2009年间以每年22%的速度增长，1998年它们占国内生产总值(GDP)的比重只有0.3%，到2009年已经增长到2.1%。
借本次金融危机之机，中国为本土企业提供了积极的财政支持，鼓励它们走出国门，在能源和原材料等领域签署了多项把握住良机的协议——以期在获得重要大宗商品供应保障的同时，打造自己的新跨国企业。
中国还一直向西方跨国企业施压，要求他们提供重要技术以交换市场准入权。中国当局意在让部分本土企业获得这些技术。
在鼓励“自主创新”的指导原则下，中国实施了一系列政策，涉及范围从专利法、技术标准到采购政策和产品批准规定。许多外资科技企业认为，这些政策对他们的知识产权构成了严重威胁。
“这些自主创新产业政策清楚表明，中国已经转守为攻，”驻北京咨询顾问、中国美国商会(American Chamber of Commerce)前会长麦健陆(James McGregor)表示。
“在这个过程中，许多单一行业和单一产品企业可能会遭遇灭顶之灾。全球市场可能会变得愈加扭曲，而最终的结果是全球创新遭遇极度深寒。”
不过，人们很容易过度震撼于中国国有部门表面的实力。首先，这些企业的整体盈利能力并不如看上去那么强大。这些利润中约有一半仅来自4家公司——中国移动(China Mobile)以及石油与天然气三巨头——它们都拥有半垄断地位。
虽说中国可能拥有全球最大的几家银行，但如果政府没有施行对储户不利的高额存贷利差，它们的利润便会剧减。
打造国家级冠军企业的努力面临许多问题。中国最成功的两家汽车企业——奇瑞(Chery)以及最近收购了沃尔沃(Volvo)的吉利(Geely)——并不是中国政府规划部门想要支持的企业。
与此同时，重新复苏的国有部门形成的一些潜在威胁也被过分夸大。中国的石油公司签订的长期供应合约并没有导致全球石油库存缩水。它们在苏丹和伊朗等地的投资是在扩大国际油气供应。出于政治原因，西方跨国企业被禁止进入上述地区。
最重要的是，中国发展模式尚未遭遇最严峻的挑战。和在中国一样，在发展重工业与制造业（这两个产业要求能够随时获取资金）、推进城市化方面，有力的政府主导在其它国家也很奏效。
但大型官僚机构在催生创新方面的成绩就远没有那么令人惊叹了。而中国领导层相信，创新对于中国经济的长远前景非常重要。这才是中国国家资本主义将面临的真正考验。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034643
Last year, the writer and political analyst Ian Bremmer was invited to a meeting at the Chinese consulate in New York to discuss the global financial crisis. He Yafei, China’s then vice-foreign-minister, asked the assembled group partly in jest: “Now that the free market has failed, what do you think is the proper role for the state in the economy?”
State capitalism is hardly a new phenomenon, but it is very much in the ascendant at the moment. Not only has the financial crisis sapped confidence in the sorts of free-market policies that Washington has promoted since the end of the cold war, but the continued rise of China with its particular blend of “market-Leninism” has given new respectability to the idea of the state taking a large, even dominant, role in the economy.
If Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History seemed to define to intellectual zeitgeist of the early 1990s, then it is books such as Mr Bremmer’s recent The Rise of State Capitalism that are dominating discussion at the moment.
“It’s now much harder for westerners to champion a free-market system and easier for China and Russia to argue that only governments can save economies on the brink. After all, government spending has been essential for recovery in both America and China,” says Mr Bremmer.
“The financial crisis has provided Beijing with new evidence that enlightened state management will offer protection from the natural excesses of free markets. This experiment will probably expand, and continue to exert a growing influence on the shape of the global economy.”
There are plenty of other countries that operate a form of state capitalism, from Russia to the Gulf. Indeed, around three-quarters of global oil reserves are in the hands of state-owned energy companies. Yet, it is China that is the poster-boy for state capitalism.
A decade ago, the Chinese state sector seemed on the verge of collapse. In the late 1990s, hundreds of companies were forced to close and tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Yet the sector now looks to be in rude health.
According to a recent report by the body that manages the country’s largest state-owned companies, their profits rose by 22 per cent a year from 2003 to 2009, when they accounted for 2.1 per cent of national GDP, up from 0.3 per cent in 1998.
Taking advantage of the crisis, China has been providing aggressive financial backing to its companies to go overseas and sign opportunistic deals in sectors such as energy and raw materials – hoping to forge new multinationals while securing supplies of vital commodities.
China has also been putting increased pressure on multinationals to hand over important technologies in return for access to its market. The authorities intend to make the know-how available to some of their own companies.
Under the rubric of promoting “indigenous innovation”, China has introduced a string of policies – ranging from patent laws and technology standards to procurement policies and product approval rules – that many foreign technology companies believe are a huge threat to their intellectual property.
“With these indigenous innovation industrial policies, it is clear that China has switched from defence to offence,” says Jim McGregor, a Beijing-based consultant and former director of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
“Many single-industry and single-product companies could be destroyed in the process. Global markets are likely to become increasingly distorted, and the end result could be a chilling effect on innovation globally.”
Yet it is easy to be overly impressed by the apparent potency of China’s state sector. For a start, there is less to these companies’ headline profitability than meets the eye. About half of those profits come from just four companies – China Mobile and the three oil and gas giants – which have semi-monopoly positions.
China may have the biggest banks in the world, but their profits would collapse if the government did not impose large interest rate spreads that penalise depositors.
Efforts to create national champions have faced many problems. China’s two most successful car companies – Chery and Geely, which recently acquired Volvo – were not the ones that planners in Beijing chose to support.
At the same time, some of the potential threats from the resurgent state sector are also overblown. China’s oil companies are not shrinking global oil stocks by inking long-term supply deals. Their investments in places such as Sudan and Iran, where western multinationals are barred for political reasons, are expanding international oil and gas supplies.
Most of all, the biggest challenge for the Chinese model is yet to come. Heavy state direction has worked in other countries, as it is working in China now, to develop heavy industry and manufacturing – which require ready access to capital – and to promote urbanisation.
Yet large bureaucracies have a much less impressive record at producing the innovation that Chinese leaders believe is crucial to the long-term future of the economy. That will be the real test for Chinese state capitalism.
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