轩辕剑天之痕符鬼小窝:Can the U.S. and China Build Trust to Establi...

来源：百度文库编辑：九乡新闻网时间：2024/04/29 13:49:56

Can the U.S. and China Build Trust to Establish Institutions?

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2011-5-13 14:15

By Michael Tai

Financial crisis and climate change—two of the mankind’s greatest challenges in the twenty-first century urgently require Sino-U.S. cooperation and leadership. The 2008 global financial crisis set in motion the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Steps must be taken to improve global financial regulation in order to minimize if not avert the next financial crisis. Meanwhile, climate change is causing massive damage and social dislocation especially among poor countries. Draught, flooding and deforestation have wiped out virtually all the gains by development aid to Africa in the last half century.

Today China and the U.S. together emit 48 percent of global greenhouse gases, and any effective program to reduce global emission and mitigate damage will require them working in tandem.

Everyone agrees that U.S.-China relations are one of the most important bilateral relations in the twenty-first century. During President Hu Jintao’s 2011 state visit to the U.S.,

President Obama noted that it is easy to focus only on the differences of culture or perspective, but he hoped that both countries will never forget their shared values – “a reverence for family; the belief that, with education and hard work and with sacrifice, the future is what we make it; and most of all, the desire to give our children a better life.” President Hu in turn toasted to “the health of President and Mrs. Obama; to the health of all friends present here; to the stronger friendship between the people of China and the United States; and to the steady growth of China-U.S. Relations.” As is often the case, however, such staged events belie the lack of trust between the two nations.

Building Trust

Can China and the U.S. build trust? International relations are more complex than interpersonal relations but trust-building between two nations is no different from trust-building between two people. Trust involves two parties, whereby each is willing to be vulnerable to the actions of the other on the basis that neither will betray the other, even if they are not able to control the other’s actions. Trust-building between the U.S. and China faces several obstacles including flawed perception, complex national interests, and a cocktail of historical, cultural, psychological, and emotional factors.

An urgent task at hand is dismantling wrong perceptions. Is China a developing country struggling with demographic, economic, political, and security problems that threaten its very survival or is it a rising power set on replacing the U.S. as the global hegemon? The U.S. continues to view China through Cold War lenses while China, having suffered at the hands of foreign powers in the past, is determined not to be leaned on or bullied again. American media routinely produce lopsided reports about China focusing on human rights, trade imbalance, and security issues without commensurate coverage of China’s contributions toward world peace and prosperity.

By demonizing China, the U.S. media is preparing the American public for potential confrontation with China. Such biased reporting together with sharp public criticism by American politicians serve only to confirm Chinese suspicion that America is bent on containing China and frustrating her legitimate aspirations. Indeed the best way to make China an enemy is to treat her as one. America fails to see that unlike the Soviet Union, China has no ideological ax to grind nor is it in a position to challenge American military power for decades to come. What matters most to the Chinese ruling party and its legitimacy and very survival is national economic development. As Premier Wen Jiabao points out, China is a big country of 1.3 billion people and every problem multiplied by 1.3 billion becomes a huge problem. The CCP’s greatest nightmare is social unrest, not U.S. primacy.

The Power of the Purse

Wall Street banks wield enormous influence in Washington–influence it uses to resist necessary regulation. Many of the very people in public office whose duty it is to regulate the financial industry come from the ranks of financial institutions. Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs before he became treasury secretary. Current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s chief of staff is former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson, an appointment brazenly made the same day Geithner announced rules to reduce the role of lobbyists in government agency decisions.

Wall Street banks, now bigger and more powerful than before, are back to business as usual, and financial institutions which received hefty bailouts continue to pay huge salaries and bonuses. According to a report published March 31, 2011, by the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), regulators approved generous compensation to senior executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-backed mortgage finance giants, with little scrutiny or analysis. The companies paid a combined $17 million to their chief executives and the top six executives received $35.4 million in 2009 and 2010, the two full years when the companies were nationalized. Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over in September 2008, the companies’ mortgage losses have required a $153 billion infusion from taxpayers, and according to government estimates, total losses may reach $363 billion through 2013. Meanwhile academics not immune to the influence of the banks (some even serve on the board of major banks such as Morgan Stanley) continue to argue against tighter regulation.

Asia largely escaped the U.S. financial contagion because it stayed away from U.S. subprime mortgage derivatives. China’s robust capital controls shielded the Chinese financial system from the storm. However, China was not immune to the wider U.S. economic downturn which led to a sharp drop in exports to the U.S., the closure of many Chinese factories, and a surge in unemployment. Hence, China too—like any country vulnerable to U.S. financial shocks—has a stake in fiduciary regulatory reform of the U.S. financial system. Given the infiltration by bankers and their lobbyists into the corridors of power, however, what hope is there for the U.S. and China to work together to improve financial regulation?

Climate Change

While the dangers posed by climate change are well known in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, they are less well appreciated in the United States. Despite former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, there is deep skepticism among sectors of the American public and government that climate change is man made. To combat climate change, the United Nations sponsored the Kyoto Protocol, a multilateral treaty to collectively cut emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane by 5.2 percent below the emission levels of 1990 by 2012. While almost every country in the world signed the protocol (169 nations), the United States, until recently the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, refused to ratify the treaty on the grounds that it would hurt the U.S. economy.

China and India ratified the Kyoto Protocol but are not obligated to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the moment as they are developing countries: they were not seen as the main culprits for emissions during the period of industrialization that caused global warming today. As a result of this loophole, the West has outsourced much of its carbon emissions to China and India. Much of the production in China is fueled by demand from the West and domestic consumption behavior influenced by the West.

While keen to develop its economy and raise living standards, Chinese leaders are aware of the price the country is paying for that development—heavy environmental degradation, and soil and water contamination that affects food safety and endangers the health of the people and of the leaders themselves too. Because it suffers the direct impact of pollution, China is far more motivated than the U.S. to tackle carbon emission. While it rejects a cap to its emissions, China’s carbon intensity, or the amount of emission per dollar of GDP, has declined steadily since the 1980s. A strict emissions cap at this stage is possible for China only by putting the brakes on its economic growth and risking factory closures, large scale unemployment, and major social unrest. With the U.S., Europe, and Japan in recession and China the sole engine of growth keeping the world from sliding into depression, instability or turmoil in China now promises disastrous consequences for the global economy.

Given these circumstances, can the U.S. and China build trust and establish institutions to regulate global finance and combat climate change? How do two nations deeply suspicious of each other build goodwill? What are the forces at play and how does one mitigate or harness them to build trust instead of animosity?

Since the end of the Second World War, the U.S. has used military force overtly or covertly in many parts of the world. Despite the oft proffered notion that the U.S. champions peace and democracy, its penchant for war cannot be disregarded. President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke against the U.S. military industrial complex while Senator William Fulbright warned his country against the arrogance of power. For world peace and prosperity, no effort must be spared to build trust between China and America.

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