华盛顿邮报：中国要什么？

影音王

　　过去几个月来，有些外交官跟我私下抱怨某个大国的外交政策傲慢自大。只不过他们说的不是美国，而是中国。一位来自发展中国家的高级官员跟我说了些幕后消息--他（她）不愿透露身份以免触怒北京--“以前，中国的官员们与我们接触时给我们的感觉是他们非常愿意与我们同舟共济，而且非常热情。但现在他们只会向我们列要求。”驻北京的外交官们说，中国官员现在对待他们的态度和几年前不一样了。有一位抱怨说，甚至与高级官员见个面都开始变难了。“那些以前频繁与我见面的人现在开始拒绝约见我了，”上周一位外交官在北京跟我这样说。
　　某种程度上说这是可以理解的。成功催生自信，美国人已经很明白这一点了。中国现在非常成功。全球金融危机后，中国被公认为是打了一场胜仗──其庞大的财政刺激计划造就了新一轮的基础设施建设热潮；银行稳定；消费者拥有高水平的储蓄率；政府持续增持外汇储备，迄今外汇储备总额已近2.5万亿美元。不过，上周，在与一些中国政府内外的人士交谈后，令我印象最为深刻的倒不是所谓傲慢自大的问题，而是正在折磨中国人的疑虑、不确定性和担心。
　　这些与我交谈的人对中国政府在技术上掌控经济的能力仍旧很有信心。当华尔街忧心于一个经济过热的中国时，中国的这些人则似乎很确定中国政府有能力调整经济，使之保持稳固的增长──就像一直以来的那样。担心北京的房地产市场泡沫？事实上，银行已被责令停止发放抵押贷款，同时政府很可能提高房产税。在北京，一个家庭不能购买一套以上的住房。【译者注：北京近期房产政策应为：以家庭为单位，二套房的贷款利率上调，并且各家银行停止对第三套房发放贷款。】一旦泡沫消退，这些政策十有八九将被取消。
　　然而更深层次的变化正在发生。最近几个星期，中国经历了戏剧性的劳工抗议──本田遭遇了罢工危机；富士康（苹果iPhone的代工厂）遭遇了诡异的“N连跳”自杀事件。有学者称其为“世界工厂模式的终结”，在这种模式下，中国将成为全球的低薪制造商。“我们的经济不能一直挤榨劳动者权益，因为这不是工人愿意接受的模式，”人民大学劳动关系研究所所长常凯说道。
　　这与中国政府几年前的观点相去甚远。以前，中国政府官员们认为，提高工人薪资水平将会导致订单外流到越南和哥伦比亚等新兴劳动力市场。北京现代工会副主席张之雄曾在2003年说道：“罢工会损害中国的声誉，”同时他保证说不会有罢工事件发生。而现在， 国际劳工组织驻北京的产业关系高级专家李昌徽则预言说，工会和集体谈判制度将不可避免地成为中国劳资关系的一部分，这将推动工人薪资的上涨。
　　前面提到的这些言辞全部引自《中国日报》──中国的官方英文报纸。这样的话，在5年前，不论用中文、英文还是别的什么语言，都不会在中国出现，而现在，诸如此类的争论在私人层面则更为坦诚。一位中国商人与我在北京共进午餐时对我说，“从许多方面来说，金融危机和美国模式的衰败对我们很不利。你看，我们不再有真正的意识形态，我们不知信仰在哪里。我们曾以为我们追求的是另一种美国梦──自由化、开放、发展，但随之而来的是你们的经济危机。可以说，这证明了我们的强大，可是，我们的未来去向何方？”
　　在中国现行的政治转型的背景下，这种忧虑正不断加重。 中国的最高领导层将在两年内换届，并且，新任的主席和总理将不再与邓小平这位改革开放的总建筑师有任何个人联系。这将带来广泛的影响。中国已经很清楚其自身是一个大国，并在国际舞台上要求更多的尊重和更多的话语权。但是，由于受制于对其自身狭隘利益的保护，中国似乎始终无法确定在国际上它想要什么。中国更广泛的外交政策目标是什么？中国将是美国的盟友还是敌手？中国想要塑造一个什么样的世界？

　　中国正迎来一个新的时代，但是无论在意识形态上还是在操作上，中国都没有做好准备。这也许就能解释为什么北京在诸如核扩散、朝鲜、伊朗等问题上一再踌躇不前。其实，这不是傲慢，而是矛盾。这一点，美国已然从其早期的大国岁月中知晓。
　　作者是《新闻周刊》国际版主编。电子邮件地址为comments@fareedzakaria.com.

英文原文：


What does China want?
By Fareed Zakaria
Monday, June 7, 2010
BEIJING
Over the past few months, foreign diplomats have privately groused to me about a world power's arrogant foreign policy. Except that they're talking about China, not the United States. A senior official from a developing country said, on background, so as not to anger Beijing: "Chinese officials used to meet with us with a great sense of solidarity and warmth. Now they read us a list of demands." Diplomats in Beijing report that Chinese officials now treat them differently than they did just a few years ago. One complained that even getting meetings with senior officials had become difficult. "People I used to see routinely now refuse to give me an appointment," one said to me in Beijing last week.
Some of this is understandable. Success breeds confidence, as Americans well know. And China has been very successful. By common consent, the country has come out on top after the global economic crisis. Its massive fiscal stimulus is building a new generation of infrastructure; its banks are stable; its consumers have high savings rates; and the government keeps piling up reserves, which now total almost $2.5 trillion. But in discussions with people in and out of the Chinese government last week, I was struck less by arrogance than by the doubt, uncertainty and apprehension that seemed to be plaguing the Chinese.

My interlocutors remained confident about the regime's technical ability to handle the economy. While Wall Street frets about an overheating China, most people here seemed sure that the government would be able to adjust to keep growth steady -- as it has in the past. Worried about a frothy real estate market in Beijing? Well, banks have been ordered to stop giving mortgages, and property taxes are set to be raised. Beijingers cannot buy more than one apartment per family. Once the froth subsides, the rules will, in all likelihood, be revoked.

But deeper changes are also underway. China has had dramatic labor protests in recent weeks, from strikes at a Honda factory to grim accounts of suicide at the vast Foxconn complex, where iPhones are assembled. One scholar calls this "the end of the world-factory model," under which China would be the globe's low-wage manufacturer. "Our economy can't keep squeezing labor benefits because workers are unwilling to accept it," says Chang Kai, director of the Renmin University's Labor Institute.

This is a far cry from the government's attitude only a few years ago, when officials warned that if Chinese workers asked for pay raises, businesses would move to Vietnam and Cambodia. In 2003 Zhang Zhixiong, deputy chairman of the labor union for Hyundai in Beijing, said, "Strikes in China jeopardize the country's reputation," and promised there would be none. Now Lee Chang-hee, at Beijing's International Labor Organization, predicts that unions and collective bargaining are inevitably going to become part of China's landscape, driving up wages.

The quotations in the paragraphs above all come from China Daily, an English-language newspaper published by the government. Nothing like this would have appeared in any language five years ago in China, and the debate gets even more honest in private. A Chinese businessman said to me over lunch in Beijing, "In many ways the financial crisis and the discrediting of the American model has been bad for us. You see, we don't really have an ideology anymore. We don't know what we believe in. We used to think it was some version of the American Dream -- liberalize, open up, grow. But then you had your crisis. We can say, it proves we're strong. But where do we go now?"

The angst is being exacerbated by China's ongoing political transition, in which the top leadership will be replaced in two years, and in which for the first time, the new president and premier will have no personal connection with or blessing from Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China. This has broader consequences. China knows it is now a great power and demands that it be respected and listened to. But short of protecting its narrow interests, the regime still doesn't seem sure what it wants internationally. What are its broader foreign policy goals? Is it an ally or a rival of the United States? What kind of a world does it hope to shape?

China is entering a new era but seems ideologically and operationally ill prepared for it. That might explain why Beijing has been hesitant and halting in its attitudes on nuclear proliferation, North Korea and Iran. It is less arrogant than ambivalent, something the United States also knows well from its own early history as a great power.
Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International. His e-mail address is comments@fareedzakaria.com.
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