美国需要正确地看待中国.docVIP

Dont Fear the Dragon By Mortimer B. Zuckerman Posted Sunday, August 27, 2006 Americans view China with both fascination and fear. We dont know whether to be scared (because of its military potential and onetime alliance with Soviet communism) or applaud (because of the way it is entering the modern world while cherishing its ancient culture). We need to get our perspective right. The first thing to realize is that China is still a poor country. The second: Its leadership does not seek a conflict that would diminish the rising standard of living-because thats the cornerstone on which the legitimacy of the Chinese government depends. Chinas size obscures the limits to its ambition and power. Short of water, decent farmland, and energy resources, it must accommodate 10 million to 13 million people a year moving from farms to cities-where wages average only about 2 percent of those in the United States. Tens of millions of urban Chinese have had to face the end of their iron rice bowl in which state enterprises provided housing, pensions, and healthcare. Hundreds of millions of rural Chinese have no basic health coverage. The one-child policy, which averted 300 million births over the past nearly 30 years, has given them more dependents and fewer workers. It is thus a country that may grow old before it grows rich. Chinas growth has been sustained by a 40 percent savings rate, a prodigious work ethic, and more than $500 billion in foreign capital. Yet the leaders know that it will take an additional 45 years before China can claim to be a modernized, medium-level developed country. Misguided investments mostly dictated by state companies account for 60 percent of the bad bank debt and underperforming ventures that yield only around 1.5 percent per year. The near ubiquitous label Made in China masks the fact that China owns none of the 5,000 major brands dominating the world market, nor a single financial institution capable of operating at the global level. Growing pa