触不可及英语观后感:Responsible China gets what it wants - Focus ...

来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/05/01 22:33:09

Responsible China gets what it wants

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2011-4-2 08:52

By Benjamin A Shobert

It has been an overused phrase, the challenge from the West that China become a "responsible stakeholder" in international institutions, that the country learn to abide by rules and regulations that larger, more developed countries have found work in everyone's best interest (or so those in the West believe).


But as China's role in these global institutions has evolved, not everyone welcomes their presence and growing influence. It has become increasingly obvious to many that China is a particularly quick study in terms of getting these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to work for them in ways that are not always consistent with other countries' objectives.


On March 17, Stephen Olson and Clyde Prestowitz of The Economic Strategy Institute released a report commissioned by the Congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), which looked at "The Evolving Role of China in International Institutions".


The report's findings show that China is developing an increasingly mature understanding of how, when and where to leverage its power within the context and confines of the international rule sets, whether those be from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or regional institutions like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.


Cumulatively, the report illustrates China's growing awareness that it can selectively engage where doing so benefits its national interests, while staying distant from issues it believes will harm its ability to pursue its nationalistic economic model.


Overarching the whole of Olson and Prestowitz's analysis is a realization that the Global Financial Crisis (which they refer to as the GFC) both accelerated existing trends that were moving power away from the West towards China, while equally introducing new fault lines that are likely to reframe international power politics. As they write in the report:


The United States is emerging from the GFC in a weakened economic condition, saddled with a debilitating level of debt, persistently high unemployment, and anemic growth rates. Perhaps of equal if not greater importance is the reputational damage that has been done to the philosophical pillars upon which the US model of capitalism has been built: the primacy of the marketplace, a light government hand, free and open trade and investment policies, and a public and private mentality of borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend.


Harsh words, but not harsher than those from Chinese officials, worried about their large dollar-denominated holdings of US Treasuries and America's ongoing financial problems. Comments like those from Xu Nuojin, deputy director of the People's Bank of China in Guangzhou, earlier this year suggesting that "[China] should change the single-currency focus on buying US Treasuries and adopt a more diversified structure for foreign exchange reserves to reduce risk" are troubling not only because of their immediate and most visible translation, but also indicate a more assertive China, willing to verbalize its frustrations over America's policies more publicly than ever in the past. The days of China keeping its opinions to itself, of following the standards other more evolved countries demand of it, appear to now be long gone.


Why does China now feel comfortable taking these latitudes? Olson and Prestowitz write that this is largely understandable because the Chinese model now seems to be somehow superior to the American model: "China, meanwhile, is emerging from the GFC in a stronger relative economic position, having just overtaken Japan as the second largest economy in the world. Of potentially greater long-term importance is the fact that the fallout from the GFC has, especially in the eyes of many in the developing world, bolstered the credibility of China's economic development model, and fed a growing sense that while the 20th Century was the American Century, the 21st Century might just be China's."


This realization colors China's next generation of leaders who, while still very interested in maintaining a positive engagement with international institutions, now believe they have both the obligation and opportunity to reshape and - in particularly egregious cases - rewrite those standards that defined the early stages of China's re-entry into the world economy. The USCC report from Olson and Prestowitz notes, "China did not have a seat at the table when the rules were written for the first-generation international institutions ... It will use its rising influence to shape, to the extent it can, the rules of the game."


For readers of this report who reside in Washington, perhaps the most important conclusions in Olson and Prestowitz's review are what they call the "two truisms" about China's view of how it should participate within established international organizations. The first, downplayed by those on Capitol Hill who wish to believe that China harbors some latent desire to foment revolution, is that "China's greatest objective is stability". This reality can be seen in how the country views America's own economy and the mutually assured economic destruction that would have happened had the US fully imploded during the global financial crisis.


When congressmen wring their hands and worry over China deliberately accumulating dollars only to crush America, they need to recall that China's engagement with the world is predicated on its own need to access American markets profitably, and that doing so requires a healthy US economy.


The USSC report by Olson and Prestowitz reinforces this: "Chinese leaders need - above all else - to ensure the existence of a benign and conducive global environment for China to continue to grow economically at a fast but sustainable pace - in short, to continue its 'peaceful rise'."


They go on to comment on the domestic political implications should China not be able to provide this: "Should Chinese policy makers stumble, and fail to deliver the required growth, the societal and political impacts could be severe. Chinese society and culture is undergoing a profound and probably irreversible shift ... The amount of pressure this places on the Chinese leadership to continue to deliver jobs, prosperity, and higher standards of living is intense."


While this first truism is important to understand as a counterweight to those who would place upon China's political class the worst of intentions, the second truism the report identifies is perhaps the most interesting: "International organizations do not create the prevailing world economic or strategic order - they reflect the prevailing world order."


In this, Olson and Prestowitz identify one of the most illuminating aspects of this report, and one that speaks directly to the means by which China will engage international institutions over the coming decades: an attempt to reshape them where possible, and create new ones where necessary, to reflect the increasing role of China, the East, and emerging economies at large within the context of global rule sets.


China, for all its admittedly still large shortcomings in its sense of responsibility within these NGOs, brings a powerful voice to the table not only for its own country, but for other emerging economies who feel the international rule sets are a sort of economic colonialism, designed to keep their economies at arm's length from the sort of economic advantages more developed countries look to keep for themselves.


Olson and Prestowitz use the IMF and World Bank to make their point in this regard: China's own financial development model is, at least as seen by those in the emerging world, a better fit for their needs. Perhaps this is because China looks less closely at issues those in the developed West pause at, and perhaps China is not to be credited for its willingness to overlook almost anything in the single minded pursuit of its economic interests, but the reality is China's approach works better, at least as seen from those in the Third World.


As the report states, "China's model of development assistance - no conditionality - plus lightning-quick speed and competency in execution - is favorably viewed in many quarters throughout the developing world, and stands in sharp contrast to the ambivalence with which many World Bank or IMF programs are viewed."


Speed is not always a virtue, and it could be that in China's rush to secure development deals as part of its own pursuit of natural resources, Beijing overlooks major problems with the people it is doing business with; however, in the short term, the combination of China's model having strength and vitality when the American model has shown weakness and fragility, the country understands that it now has a certain legitimacy that will allow it to reshape global institutions more into its liking.


But natural resources are not all that motivates China's role in global rule setting institutions. In many cases, China's view of these NGOs is a vehicle by which it can secure technology. According to Olson and Prestowitz, this is easily seen in China's engagement with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC):


In terms of what China wants, APEC's third pillar - economic and technical cooperation - seems to be most relevant ... China has been remarkably effective in using its institutional memberships to access knowledge and technical know-how that it considers to be important to its ongoing economic development.


Reading the analysis completed by Olson and Prestowitz for the USCC, one is left with the realization that China's view looking up the hill towards international respectability is, in some ways, an enviable one, and one America can certainly appreciate from days when it was the newcomer, and even from moments when its growing influence upended existing international governing principles, as China is doing to America now.


As Olson and Prestowitz point out in their comments about China's view of how to engage APEC, China has real clarity on its future - where it needs to go and what it needs to do - to continue growing.


Conversely, America lacks this same sense of conviction, and finds its own engagement with international institutions to be inefficient, burdensome, and counter-productive to the country's economic growth. While China finds ways to maneuver around, work within, and exert influence on existing international institutions in order to get what it believes is in its own best interests, America is left feeling that its involvement with these same organizations is a more an obligation than an opportunity.
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