中国的国家资本主义 不只是扶持风电
国内国外，中国的国有企业日益陷入困境。
本周，美国总统巴拉克·奥巴马决定，阻止中国的一个民营企业购买仅位于美国俄勒冈州的美国军事设施附近的风力发电场。暂且不论此决定的正确与否――的确有与美国大选密切相关的嫌疑――这迎合了应当警惕中国商人和当权者的某种模式。在西方，中国许多的顶尖企业遭遇怀疑：电信巨头华为，在美国的一些市场被封杀；国有石油企业中国海洋石油总公司，在加拿大竞标收购Nexen公司，引发了轩然大波。不仅仅是在西方，缅甸领导人，很难说是西方资本主义者，也转而反对某些中国的企业。
怀疑论背后的认知――因中国大型国有企业（国有企业缩写SOEs）的重新出现而强化――认为中国的商业与党走得太近。许多当政者认为国有企业的发展有助于中国崛起。而事实恰恰相反：是国有企业从中国的进步中赚钱兑现，更重要的是，现在貌似国有企业必将阻碍国家的未来发展。
国家退出
20世纪90年代，扶持国有企业有背后有一个逻辑。目睹前苏联的国有资产落入寡头手中，中国建立了一批特定的国有企业，向其提供低价借款、土地和能源，以便这些财富将会给党保留。它们中最强的企业是世界级别的。2009年，中国石化和中国移动的利润相加超过了中国民营企业500强利润的总和。着眼于长远且雄心勃勃，国有企业吸引了国家最优秀的毕业生。在拯救中国经济于全球金融危机的投资狂潮中，这些国有企业出力甚多，它们的发展壮大被批评者称之为“国进民退”：国有企业向前推进，民营企业往后撤退。党鼓励一些重要行业的国有企业整合，并保护他们免受国外的竞争。
其后果是，国家在很多方面吃了苦头。中国的独立研究发现，如果失去所有的政府补助和隐性补贴，国有企业将是亏损的。他们几乎没有向政府支付过股利。相反，大部分财富最终流向了国有企业的老总与其政治靠山，大多是党领导人的子女，他们非常有权势，常常超越按理应对其进行监管的机构。若非重新投入国有企业，用来增添企业实力与背后老板的财富，资金的配置本可有效得多。这些既得利益者从而成为一些政治和经济改革的最强硬反对者，因为一旦改革，失去最多的将是他们。
国有企业的权力损害了在华的外国有企业业，后者越来越多被监管机构或市场准入壁垒排斥在外。在国外，国有企业也引起问题――并不只是在美国被质疑。缅甸领导人已经厌倦了本国被中国国有企业不负责任地掠夺――这也是该国最近决定向西方开放的原因之一。最重要的是，国有企业损害了国内的中小企业，这些企业严重缺乏资金而饿死。这就打击了中国的竹式资本家②，而目前经济放缓时，比以往任何时候都更需要他们的魄力和创新。
从中央计划经济转向，中国所走的道路是勇敢的。前总理朱镕基，在上世纪90年代末重击最薄弱的国有企业。但是，10多年后，令人担忧的是，那些在重击中的幸存者看来正在强化它们的控制力。党需要面对既得利益者，开始着手国有企业私有化，开放行业竞争，并允许私营部门再次帮助拉动中国前进。在中国，一些改革者明白这些势在必行。4月份，温家宝总理发表讲话，抨击了大型国有银行的垄断权力。但他即将卸任，而目前尚不清楚11月产生的新领导班子中，谁将接手这些事情。强硬派担忧党的生存正在受到威胁。但过去30年的经济奇迹就是这样。
China’s state capitalism Not just tilting at windmills
China’s state-owned enterprises are increasingly getting it into trouble—abroad and at home
HIS week Barack Obama decided to block a private Chinese company from buying a wind farm near an American military installation in Oregon. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the president’s decision—and it does come suspiciously close to the American election—it fits into a pattern that should worry China’s businesspeople and rulers. In the West many of China’s best companies are treated with suspicion: Huawei, a telecoms giant, has been blocked from some markets in America, and a bid by CNOOC, a state oil firm, to buy Canada’s Nexen has raised a storm. And it is not just the West. The leaders of Myanmar, hardly democratic capitalists, have also turned against some Chinese firms .
Behind this suspicion lies the perception—strengthened by the re-emergence of the country’s vast state-owned enterprises (SOEs)—that China’s businesses are too close to the Communist Party. Many in the regime believe the SOEs’ growth has helped China’s rise. The reverse is true: the SOEs have cashed in on China’s progress. Far more importantly, they now look sure to hinder it in the future.
Retreat of the state
In the 1990s, there was a logic behind promoting the SOEs. Having seen post-Soviet state assets fall into the hands of oligarchs, China built up a select group of SOEs with cheap loans, land and energy, so that the wealth would remain with the party. The best of them are world-class. The combined profits of Sinopec and China Mobile in 2009 were greater than the profits of China’s 500 largest private firms together. Long-term and ambitious, the SOEs increasingly attract the country’s best graduates. They contributed heavily to the investment splurge that rescued China’s economy from the global financial crisis, contributing to a process critics call guojin mintui; “the state advances, the private sector retreats”. The party has encouraged the consolidation of SOEs in important industries, and protected them from foreign competition .
In many ways the state suffers as a result. An independent Chinese study has found that if all the government’s grants and hidden subsidies were taken away, the SOEs would lose money. They pay hardly any dividends back to the government. Instead much of the wealth has ended up enriching SOEs’ chiefs and political patrons, frequently sons and daughters of Communist Party leaders, who are so powerful that they often outrank the heads of bodies supposed to regulate them. Money that could be much more efficiently allocated is instead reinvested into SOEs, reinforcing their strength, and their bosses’ fortunes. These vested interests are in turn some of the most strident opponents of political and economic reform, since they are the ones with the most to lose.
The SOEs’ power harms foreign firms inChina, which are increasingly frozen out by regulatory or market-access barriers. Abroad, the SOEs also cause problems—and not just suspicions in America.Myanmar’s leaders have tired of the plundering of their country by unaccountable Chinese SOEs—one reason for their recent decision to open to the West. Most important of all, SOEs damage small and medium-sized Chinese enterprises, which are starved of money. This deprives China of the bamboo capitalists whose drive and innovation is needed more than ever now that economic growth is slowing.
The road China has taken from a centrally planned economy has been brave. The former prime minister, Zhu Rongji, in the late 1990s, took a sledgehammer to the weakest SOEs. But, more than a decade later, it is worrying to see those that survived tightening their grip. The party needs to take on the vested interests, start to privatise SOEs, open their sectors to competition and allow the private sector once again to help pull China forward. Some reformers in China know this must happen. In April the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, gave a speech attacking the monopoly power of big state banks. But he is stepping down, and it is not clear who might champion the cause in the new leadership that takes office in November. Hardliners fear that the survival of the Communist Party is at stake. But so is the economic miracle of the past 30 years.
经济学家
2012-10-07
经济学家
738次
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