[分享](连载)国外主流媒体对中国经济发展的一些评论(原汁英语)

是 否 +2 论坛币

k人 参与回答

经管之家送您一份

应届毕业生专属福利!

求职就业群

赵安豆老师微信：zhaoandou666

经管之家联合CDA

送您一个全额奖学金名额~ !

立即领取

感谢您参与论坛问题回答

经管之家送您两个论坛币！

+2 论坛币

    为了了解世界对中国经济发展的看法，我准备在本论坛开设一个讨论专题∶国外主流媒体对中国经济发展的评价。借人家的镜子可以照照自己。

   除涉及敏感问题外，我一般原文转载。在了解信息的同时，也一起学习英语。

  衷心希望在这个论坛上有所收获。

[此贴子已经被鬼魅魍魉于2009-6-4 15:56:58编辑过]

扫码加我 拉你入群

请注明：姓名-公司-职位

以便审核进群资格，未注明则拒绝

分享0 收藏6 回帖

关键词：中国经济发展 主流媒体 经济发展 中国经济 流媒体 英语 经济发展 主流 原汁

China Unveils Plan to Aid Farmers, but Avoids Land Issue

By JIM YARDLEY http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/international/23rural.html

BEIJING, Feb. 22 — The Chinese government, faced with rising inequality and unrest in the countryside, formally announced major initiatives this week to expand health, education and welfare benefits for farmers but left unresolved the fundamental issue of whether they should be allowed to buy or sell their land.

In recent days President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have given speeches about the "new socialist countryside" initiative, and the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled legislature, is expected to make the rural program the centerpiece of a new five-year plan during its annual meeting next month.

The program, which emerged in broad form in October, includes free education for many rural students, increased subsidy payments for farmers, new government financing for medical care and further government investment in rural public works. A specific price tag has not been announced, though rural spending is expected to rise significantly.

"The central government has changed direction to focus on uneven development," said Wen Tiejun, dean of the School of Agriculture and Rural Development at People's University here. "The economic gap is creating social conflict, and social conflict has become a more and more serious problem."

At a news conference on Wednesday morning, Chen Xiwen, the top government adviser on rural issues, outlined parts of the program and said the government must help defray the huge debts of rural governments as China enters "a new historical period" in which the central government can better balance economic development.

Mr. Chen said agriculture and rural savings had helped finance the boom in China's cities and coastal regions, so money now must be redirected into the countryside.

But he said the program did not include any immediate changes in rural land policy, an issue that many experts consider to be at the heart of the urban-rural inequality problem. Illegal land seizures have caused rising rural protests and violence in recent years as local officials have confiscated farmland and resold it to developers for fat profits. Farmers are often cheated and left with little compensation.

The resulting social instability has alarmed the government, and even Prime Minister Wen has warned that China must avoid a "historic error" over illegal land grabs.

Inequality has also widened in recent years, with rural residents each earning about $400 a year, less than a third of the incomes of their urban counterparts. But many researchers say the gap is actually far larger when health care and other social benefits provided to many urban residents are factored in.

Under the Chinese Constitution, farmland is collectively held by villages, so individual farmers, who hold leases, have limited control. Local governments have easily exploited the law to claim land for development projects.

Some experts say that government should be eliminated as a middleman in land sales and that farmers should be granted rights to negotiate and profit from selling land. In cities residents cannot own land, but they can own apartments, houses or commercial real estate that sit atop it. As a result, a real estate boom has helped city residents but largely bypassed the countryside.

Pointing into the indefinite future, Mr. Chen acknowledged that China would eventually need "to propose steadily reforming the land acquisition system itself." But he said any changes must happen slowly to protect the country's farming output.

Meanwhile, Mr. Chen said, farmers will be given more compensation after land confiscations. He suggested that urban social welfare benefits should be extended to peasants who were left landless.

He said China already had strict laws on land confiscations but conceded that the "implementation" of those laws had lagged. Indeed, violent protests by farmers trying to block local government land grabs recently erupted in Guangdong Province. At least four people were killed in the city of Dongzhou after the police fired on protesters.

Mr. Wen, the People's University scholar, said that land privatization alone could not ensure rural prosperity and noted that other developing countries with private land rights still suffered from widespread rural poverty. By turning its attention to the countryside, China is following the path taken by Japan and South Korea, which both bulked up rural development as their economies grew and social tensions arose, he said.

But he added that defusing social unrest is only one incentive for China to improve the rural economy. China's economy, now built largely on foreign trade, depends on expanding its consumer market, and rural areas represent a drag on domestic demand. Even though roughly two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion people are rural residents, the countryside accounts for only a third of retail sales for consumer products in China.

"If you can invest in rural areas and increase the cash income of people," Mr. Wen said, "you can increase domestic demand. China must increase domestic demand and not just depend on foreign trade."

Source: STRATEGIC FORECASTING

China: The Green GDP Debate

By Bart Mongoven

China's national assembly will soon open debate on whether the country should adopt a "green GDP." Officials in Beijing have talked of such a step for years, but it appears that discussions will be quite serious in the assembly session that opens March 5. If the measure is adopted, it would mean that China would begin to publicize its gross domestic product not only in traditional terms, which measure economic output, but also in the "green" sense, by subtracting from the gross domestic product (GDP) the costs of environmental damage and the toll that pollution takes on human health.

If China does begin to measure and publicize green GDP, there could be ramifications throughout the global economy. For one thing, the nation's buying habits and manufacturing priorities likely would shift in ways that reward efficiency, the reduction of pollution and improved land-use practices.

It is not clear exactly what this might mean for the world economy as a whole, but certainly the manufacturers of efficient and lower-polluting, or "clean," technologies would reap rewards. Moreover, the adoption of such a standard in China could encourage the industrialized world to adopt similar measures, particularly if the move gives China useful insights into what economic activities are beneficial or detrimental to the nation in the long term.

Green GDP has been held out for decades by environmentalists as a potentially powerful tool for exploring ways to "internalize external costs," -- or, in other words, to include the cost to "the commons" in the price of the product. Sen. Al Gore championed the concept in his 1990 book, "Earth in the Balance," and Norway has published a measure of green GDP since 1992.

The allure of the concept is clear: Policymakers long have wandered in the dark when faced with the difficulty of determining whether certain manufacturing or industrial practices were truly beneficial or detrimental to the economy, let alone to society. Traditional GDP measures one side of the equation -- production -- but fails to consider the benefits gained versus the resources used up or destroyed in the process of production.

To borrow the classic description of this conundrum, one could describe the act of throwing a rock and breaking a window as productive effort: Laborers would be needed to clean up the damage, glassmakers and manufacturers would make a new window, and workers would be employed to install it. The green GDP methodology, however, would subtract -- at minimum -- the resources used to extract the silica for the new glass and the energy used by manufacturers in shaping the window.

In a macroeconomic sense, China has been breaking windows with rocks for more than a decade.

A Credible Debate?

Beijing appears to be in the midst of a major international public relations push in general, and China's current discussions of publishing a green GDP should be viewed in this context. At the most cynical level, the discussion could be construed as a way for Beijing to buy itself some breathing room on the international front while it focuses on difficult economic and social reforms internally. However, China does have bona fide reasons to be concerned with environmental and health issues related to growth, and at least some of the discussion appears to be quite sincere.

It is impossible to predict precisely what Beijing might learn from a green GDP measure. If based on the most widely accepted models and principles, such a measure probably would show negative growth for the Chinese economy. It follows, then, that China's measure would not strictly follow widely accepted principles. Instead, it likely would be shaped to account primarily for resource usage (coal, oil and gas) and for resources that have clearly been destroyed or taken out of productive capacity for a long period of time (such as the Songhua River, which has been heavily contaminated).

Specifics aside, any measure adopted almost certainly would show that the 9 percent annual growth rate China claims for its economy is not benefiting its population nearly as much as a lower, more ecologically benign rate might. This dovetails nicely with Prime Minister Hu Jintao's recently announced five-year growth plan, which calls for slower, more managed economic growth than did the strategy of Jiang Zemin.

Such motivations notwithstanding, it is clear that China's energy system is woefully inefficient: Industry relies primarily on old, coal-burning technologies that contribute to smog, cause lung ailments and render drinking water toxic. In fact, air and water in some parts of China are so polluted that they can scarcely support life.  This is a particular problem in the East, where pollution-related illness reduces worker productivity and shortens life expectancies.

In the rapidly industrializing sections of China, this dynamic has taken on political overtones as well. The term "pollution riot" has been coined to describe uprisings in small cities and villages, with residents protesting over chemical spills, leaks, eruptions and other mishaps. For example, a three-day riot last July in Xinchang, in Zhejiang province, led to the shutdown of a local factory that was dumping untreated effluents into the area's river. For locals in such places, pollution is about much more than smog or a ruined river. It is also a symbol of a greater and intensely personal set of complaints -- about corruption, inequality and social changes -- that has dramatically altered their lives and their views about their society, their country and the safety of their families. The "pollution riots" are not started by environmentalists, and they are not about the environment per se -- but pollution is a visible outgrowth of the issues that spark the protests, and it is quite tangible in these communities.

The local officials who are targets of the public's rage are viewed as consciously trading clean air and water for rapid economic growth and, by extension, their own personal prestige and wealth. Increasingly, Chinese citizens are letting it be known that they do not approve of this trade.

By taking up the issue of a green GDP, Beijing could address both the concerns of the public and some that are harbored, for different reasons, by the central government. A green GDP measure would help to establish a subtly different set of expectations for local government officials, who heretofore have been rewarded for finding the fastest path to economic growth, regardless of the costs to the community. By factoring in other considerations, local and regional leaders -- who, notably, have become difficult for the central government to control in some areas -- could be encouraged to work toward the long-term goals of slower-paced, cleaner industrial growth rather than lunging for short-term profits. And Beijing could begin to reassert its political authority over wayward government officials, with larger social and economic concerns in mind. The central government already has begun to consider environmental issues in reviewing the performance of local officials, and Beijing would like to add energy efficiency to that process as well.

There is yet another political motive for the green GDP discussion: China's global prestige would be boosted if it established itself as a pioneer in balancing and measuring the economic and environmental costs of development. At the very least, as the 2008 Olympics approach, Beijing feels the need not only to clean up the capital city's environment but also to keep the attention of reporters from around the world focused in key areas -- China's rapid growth and dedication to environmental responsibilities -- rather than the harm that growth has caused to the environment.

At this point, China is a pariah in sustainable-development circles around the world. But in adopting an effective green GDP -- one that could become a model for other industrialized countries -- it could repair its image in the eyes of the international community. This is particularly important as international negotiations continue toward a follow-on treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. If successful, the treaty would require dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. China could benefit from having some environmental credibility when these discussions get rough.

Implications of the Debate

Exactly how far China goes toward a green GDP will depend entirely on how well the move serves the central government's concerns about social and economic stability. That said, the ramifications of a move in this direction potentially would be vast. Certainly, if Beijing were able to address even half of the problems outlined above, the move likely would be seen in retrospect as helping to preserve stability in China. The effects also could be felt around the globe.

The first outsiders to benefit would be the companies that specialize in advanced, "clean" energy technologies, which otherwise might be beyond the purchasing power of Chinese municipalities. Manufacturers of various energy-efficient products would be in demand across China. Large technology and construction companies could face dramatic increases in demand for efficient technologies, as could smaller companies developing cutting-edge, efficient technologies.

This could bring new competitors, sensing an opportunity, into the "clean-tech" industry. Research into and development of cleaner technologies would increase, and a significant threshold in economies of scale might be reached. As they become less expensive, these technologies might generally outpace less efficient rivals throughout the industrialized world.

Viewed from an even higher level, increased economies of scale in the clean-tech arena could -- like the consumer reaction to $50 per barrel oil -- fundamentally alter the relationship between production and energy usage. Just as energy used per unit of GDP plummeted as a result of the Arab oil embargoes in the 1970s, a revolution in energy-efficient technology (particularly if combined with shifts in consumer demand) could further de-link energy usage and economic growth.

If the green GDP movement should be successful in China, other industrialized nations would have incentives to measure their own green GDP as well. Thus far, none of the major economic powers are pursuing such a move; doing it properly is a tremendous undertaking, from both a political and statistical research perspective.

China, however, has covered significant ground already on the theoretical side. Beijing has been working with many of the leading figures in the sustainable-development movement to determine how to build a measure of green GDP. There have been consultations with leaders in economics, finance, natural resources, industry and health. If this work bears fruit, a useful model will emerge.

China's model likely could not be applied directly to the United States or other countries, however. It would have to be modified to account for differences in the way the countries value certain resources.

In the United States, the greatest hurdle would be the political battles between federal government officials and members of Congress, who would have to agree on methods for quantifying values for natural resources. If the green GDP movement were to gain traction in the United States, it is more likely that indirect means would be used. For instance, a credible institution associated with a university or think-tank would build a model and release its findings at a time that coincided with the Commerce Department's annual announcement of GDP. This, by the way, is how Wall Street and economists currently measure consumer confidence (figures developed at the University of Michigan) and business outlook (a figure determined by the Conference Board).

If a green GDP measure proves over time to be an effective way of assessing a nation's economy, the market is likely to listen -- whether the U.S. federal government embraces the figure or not.

Source: STRATEGIC FORECASTING / Bart Mongoven  

[此贴子已经被鬼魅魍魉于2008-11-7 9:39:48编辑过]

Economy in China Is No. 5 in World

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/business/25yuan.html?ex=1141016400&en=7082c11630fe5892&ei=5070

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: January 25, 2006

HONG KONG, Jan. 25 - The Chinese economy grew at an annual pace of 9.9 percent last year, the third consecutive year of roughly 10 percent growth, government statisticians in Beijing said on Wednesday morning.

The statistics, showing a national economic output of $2.26 trillion, sent China soaring past France, with which it was roughly tied in 2004, to become the world's fourth-largest economy, after the United States, Japan and Germany.

Some economists say the actual value of China's output has surpassed Germany's as well, after adjusting for the low value of China's currency and its low domestic prices.

Rising exports have helped lift China to an average annual growth rate of 9.6 percent over the last quarter century. But economists said that Wednesday's figures showed that domestic demand - particularly investment but also consumer spending - was becoming increasingly important as well.

Liang Hong, a Goldman Sachs economist, noted that retail sales in China climbed 12.5 percent last year. "We believe domestic demand will increasingly become a much more important driver for growth, and China will become a more positive force for global demand in the coming years," she wrote in a report.

Chinese Gov't to Spend More on Countryside

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101139.html?sub=new

By JOE McDONALD

The Associated PressTuesday, February 21, 2006; 4:18 PM

BEIJING -- A Chinese government plan issued Tuesday promises to spend more on schools, health care and aid for farmers in the poor countryside, where communist leaders worry about potentially explosive unrest over poverty and other problems.The document, released by the Cabinet, is the first in a series setting out priorities for 2006. It comes as Beijing tries to assure rural China, home to 800 million people, that it is making progress in spreading prosperity to farmers, poor workers and others left behind by the nation's 26-year economic boom.

The plan "makes it clear that China is tilting fiscal investment to agriculture and farmers, and shifting the focus of infrastructure construction from cities to countryside," the official Xinhua News Agency said in announcing the plan.The effort reflects long-term party goals, in place even before President Hu Jintao took office in 2003, that call for shifting focus from China's booming eastern cities to the vast countryside.Capitalist-style reforms begun in 1979 have helped millions of Chinese lift themselves out of poverty. But many more have seen little change and are struggling with stagnant incomes, corruption and the seizure of farmland for redevelopment. Many families in the countryside get by on only a few hundred dollars a year.China's economy is expected to extend its streak of sizzling growth this year, expanding by more than 9 percent. But a sobering report in September by an official think tank warned that half of all income goes to the top one-fifth of the population, while the bottom one-fifth gets just 4.7 percent.Rural anger has ignited thousands of protests in areas throughout China. Some have turned violent, and at least four people were reported killed in recent months when police attacked protesters in villages in the southern province of Guangdong.The plan announced Tuesday is meant to put into effect a five-year economic development blueprint approved in October by the ruling Communist Party. That document called for more "social fairness" and said Chinese leaders want to "narrow the yawning gap between the rural and urban areas and promote social harmony."The latest plan was billed as an effort to "construct a `new socialist countryside.'"It promises the equivalent of at least $1.86 billion in farm subsidies, subsidized medical care and other aid, according to Xinhua and China Central Television. They said school fees would be eliminated this year in China's poor west and in other rural areas in 2007.The reports did not give a total figure for spending. The national budget is due to be issued during the annual session of parliament, which begins March 5."With these favorable policies, Chinese farmers are not far from enjoying a new life of tax-free farming, free education and cheap medication," said Ma Xiaohe, an agricultural expert with the Cabinet's State Development and Reform Commission, according to Xinhua.Foreign analysts say communist leaders are both alarmed by the political threat of rural unrest and genuinely dismayed by the plight of Chinese farmers, who formed the bedrock of the ruling party's 1949 revolution.The government already has promised to spend billions of dollars on roads, schools and other facilities for western China, home to restive Muslims and other ethnic minorities.Last year, the government eliminated the country's tax on farm production

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-3-23 10:55:29编辑过]

（建议）楼主辛苦了，请求一下，把字体稍微修改一下好吗？要不看起来太不舒服了。

Not All Roads Lead to China

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/business/worldbusiness/28asia.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

By WAYNE ARNOLD

Published: February 28, 2006 (New York Times)

SINGAPORE, Feb. 27 — From automobiles to semiconductors, China is fast catching up with the rest of the world in manufacturing prowess, making it a formidable competitor for exporters everywhere. But does its rise necessarily spell doom for Southeast Asia's big manufacturing centers?Not according to Teh Hok Peng, a manager at the Taiwanese electronics maker BenQ's factory in Penang, Malaysia.Four years ago, as high-tech factory jobs in Malaysia were shifting to China and obituaries were being written for Southeast Asia's electronics industry, Mr. Teh went with the trend: he packed up his wife and two small children and moved to Suzhou to manage BenQ's factory there as it began shifting production out of Penang.Since then, however, Southeast Asia's big economies have proved the doomsayers wrong. Instead of shutting their factories and relying on raw material exports as many pessimists predicted, the more prosperous countries — Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines — have generated a roughly $20 billion trade surplus with China in 2004, supplying it with sophisticated electronic components. For the first eight months of 2005, the surplus was $13.6 billion.In contrast, the United States trade deficit with China was $201.6 billion in 2005, while the European Union's was $70 billion.Today, Mr. Teh is back in Penang managing BenQ's factory, convinced that, while China may be closing the technological gap, it still has a long way to go to unseat Southeast Asia as a base for electronics exporters. "China remains attractive thanks to the size of its market," he said, "but the multinationals will never leave here completely." While Southeast Asia seems to have staved off the worst, a debate has arisen in the region: can China's southern neighbors remain strong exporters, feeding its appetite for components, or will China inexorably draw those industries inside its own borders?Trade figures indicate that China is fast gaining self-sufficiency in electronics parts, and that Southeast Asia's trade surplus may have peaked. Yet Southeast Asia's factories are still humming, suggesting that two electronics centers are emerging, somewhat interdependent, but rivals all the same."People are suddenly saying, 'We shouldn't be expanding in China at the exclusion of everything else,' " said Dharmo Soejanto, an analyst at Kim Eng Securities in Singapore. "They're taking a more balanced view of the world. China is not going to manufacture everything."In particular, manufacturers have found unexpected obstacles in China. Rampant technology piracy, resurgent nationalism and — surprisingly in a country of 1.3 billion people — a dire shortage of highly skilled labor are raising costs in China so fast that many manufacturers are looking back to Southeast Asia. Even as foreign investment continued to flood into China last year, anecdotal evidence suggested the pendulum might be swinging slightly to the south: Intel has applied to build a $605 million semiconductor factory in Vietnam. Infineon Technologies of Germany is building a $1 billion chip plant near Penang, and the Japanese company Matsushita Electric Industrial is planning a plant in Singapore to assemble plasma-display televisions.Others, however, believe China will prove a magnet, with its knockout combination of a huge market and low salaries. "It's just a reality of the business model," said Mario Morales, an electronics supply chain analyst at the market research firm IDC in San Mateo, Calif. "People are outsourcing a lot more, and China has established a pretty good infrastructure."That would be consistent with the trend of the last few years. The flood of investment into China since its entry to the World Trade Organization in 2001 has come largely at Southeast Asia's expense. Foreign direct investment into Southeast Asia has fallen by one-third since 1996. In 2004, Japan invested twice as much in China as it did in Southeast Asia. The impact was powerful. The Malaysian government estimates that almost 15 percent of Penang's manufacturing jobs were lost from 2001 to 2003. By 2002, pessimists were talking about a "huge sucking sound" of investment halting Southeast Asia's industrialization. But then something different happened: Southeast Asia experienced a boom in exports of electronics components to its supposed nemesis. In 2003, Southeast Asia's exports to China jumped by more than 50 percent, led by a 67 percent jump in electronics shipments. Many government officials and industry experts heralded this development as evidence that Southeast Asia was "climbing the high-tech ladder" ahead of China. But it was not long before Southeast Asia's component manufacturers started heading north too."The contract manufacturers, the component manufacturers, the guys that build the boards and the parts, followed their customers along to China," Mr. Soejanto at Kim Eng Securities said.

Published: February 28, 2006
(Page 2 of 2) This migration has created what some economists say is a worrying trend: shipments of electronic components to China are growing more slowly than China's own exports of electronic goods. Economists say that means manufacturers in China are buying more components at home. While some economists say the slowdown in components exports is a temporary product of China's efforts to slow its economy, others say it portends the long, inevitable decline predicted five years ago. As for Southeast Asia's hope of climbing the high-tech ladder, China may have an edge there, too. China's companies outspend most Southeast Asia companies on R.& D. And Beijing's carrot-and-stick approach to investment ensures that companies hold back only their very latest technology. "China can encourage investment and penalize those who don't import technology," said Xavier Chong, chief executive of the Singapore company Ellipsiz, which services semiconductor makers. China already accounts for nearly 12 percent of global chip production, according to IDC, and Chinese factories now verge on state of the art, according to Betty Lin, an analyst at IDC in Taipei. While Southeast Asia has failed to create a single major international brand, China is following in the footsteps of Japan and South Korea with brand electronics exporters of its own — TCL in televisions and Haier in home appliances.The outlook is not entirely negative for Southeast Asia, though. China's rise has hastened efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to lower tariffs and other barriers to create a common market of its own 544 million consumers.But a bigger factor in Southeast Asia's nascent revival are the disadvantages manufacturers face in China. China suffers power shortages, for example, while Singapore's top-notch infrastructure continues to draw investment: 3M, ASML, Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. are just a few of the big names that have announced plans to build new factories in the island-state.Anti-Japanese riots last year convinced many Japanese companies, analysts say, that they need to offset their China risk with a presence in Southeast Asia. Some manufacturers have even begun to require that their suppliers in China have sources of supply outside, said Heng Huck Lee, executive director of Globetronics, a semiconductor company based in Penang.Weak intellectual-property protections are another problem, and many companies fear that competitors will steal their best product designs. But the most common frustration foreign investors face in China — and one of the biggest surprises — is the spiraling cost of increasingly scarce skilled labor, which on China's eastern seaboard can roughly approximate salaries in some of its Southeast Asian rivals. Indeed, executives say hiring an engineer in Guangdong already costs more than hiring one in Malaysia. The result, they say, is rampant job-hopping among highly skilled and factory-floor Chinese workers. At BenQ's factory in Suzhou, Mr. Teh said, four of every five employees were poached each year. Engineers are so highly prized that BenQ has to offer them interest-free housing loans. "I don't see a compelling reason to build there," said Mr. Chong at Ellipsiz. When Ellipsiz decided to build its own chip equipment plant in 2004, it chose Vietnam. Globetronics built two plants in China, and has been disappointed. While it plans to keep one of its China factories, Globetronics sold its chip-testing plant in Shanghai last year. Mr. Heng, Globetronics' executive director, commented: "Cost-wise, it's terrible. We didn't make anything back from the investment."

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-3-23 10:58:05编辑过]

March 12, 2006

A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies

By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, March 11 — For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed had been buried by China's long streak of fast economic growth.

The controversy has forced the government to shelve a draft law to protect property rights that had been expected to win pro forma passage, and highlighted the resurgent influence of a small but vocal group of socialist-leaning scholars and policy advisers. These old-style leftist thinkers have used China's rising income gap and increasing social unrest to raise doubts about what they see as the country's headlong pursuit of private wealth and market-driven economic development.

The roots of the current debate can be traced to a biting critique of the property rights law that circulated on the Internet last summer. The critique's author, Gong Xiantian, a professor at Beijing University Law School, accused the legal experts who wrote the draft of "copying capitalist civil law like slaves," and offering equal protection to "a rich man's car and a beggar man's stick." Most of all, he protested that the proposed law did not state that "socialist property is inviolable," a once sacred legal concept in China.

Those who dismissed his attack as a throwback to an earlier era underestimated the continued appeal of socialist ideas in a country where glaring disparities between rich and poor, rampant corruption, labor abuses and land seizures offer daily reminders of how far China has strayed from its official ideology.

"Our government only moves forward when it feels there is a strong consensus," said Mao Shoulong, a public policy specialist at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "Right now, the consensus is eroding and there is a debate over ideology, which we haven't seen for some time."

The divide does not appear likely to derail China's market-led growth. President Hu Jintao, in what Chinese political experts and party members said was a clear reference to the debate, told legislative delegates last week that China must "unshakably persist with economic reform."

China has generally stuck by its market-opening commitments to the World Trade Organization. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, has allowed billions of dollars in foreign investment to flow into the once tightly protected financial sector.

Legislative officials insist that the proposed law, which has taken eight years to prepare and is intended to codify a more expansive notion of property rights added to the Constitution in 2003, will sooner or later be enacted, though possibly with some significant modifications.

But Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen wittingly or unwittingly invited the debate when they made tackling growing inequality a center of their propaganda efforts, political analysts say. The state-run news media are abuzz with calls to make "social equity" the focus of economic policy, replacing the earlier leadership's emphasis on rapid growth and wealth creation.

Since his rise to power in 2002, Mr. Hu has also tried to establish his leftist credentials, extolling Marxism, praising Mao and bankrolling research to make the country's official but often ignored socialist ideology more relevant to the current era.

He told party leaders in 2004 to study how Cuba and North Korea maintained political order, party officials say. And he has tried to distance himself from his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who invited private businessmen to join the Communist Party and was viewed as permitting well-connected officials to enrich themselves with public property at the expense of the poor.

"Hu is himself a centrist who is not really pursuing one agenda or the other," observed a party official who said he could be punished for talking about leadership politics if he were quoted by name. "But he did pull us to the left to restore balance, and that gave the old guard an opportunity it has not had in years."

As a result, analysts say, the leadership may find it harder to pursue market-oriented solutions to some pressing problems, like providing health care to rural residents, grappling with rampant corruption in the state sector, expanding access to education and overhauling banks, insurance and securities companies.

Beijing's new plan to address its rural woes, labeled "building a new socialist countryside," promises an infusion of government cash for peasants and rural areas. But it steers clear of tackling some restrictions on economic activity, like a ban on private land sales in the countryside, that many pro-market economists say have left peasants economically disenfranchised.

"My impression is that allowing an expanded role for the market in education and health care is off the table," said Mr. Mao, the Tsinghua policy expert. "Rural land ownership is also too sensitive to consider now."

The tensions reflect rising concern that breakneck growth averaging nearly 10 percent annually over 20 years has left China richer but also dirtier and, by the standards of the one-party state, politically volatile.

Corruption, pollution, land seizures and arbitrary fees and taxes are among the leading causes of a surge in social unrest. Riots have become a fixture of rural life in China — more than 200 "mass incidents of unrest" occurred each day in 2004, police statistics show — undermining the party's insistence on social stability.

Many Western and some Chinese experts have argued that these problems stem from China's authoritarian political system, and that they will not easily go away until people have a greater say in how they are governed. But the Communist Party and many left-leaning scholars reject that view. They say the ills are caused by capitalist excesses and rising inequality, which they say requires that the government reassert itself in economic affairs.

One measurement of inequality, the gap between the average incomes of urban and rural residents, has risen to about 3.3 to 1, according to the United Nations Development Program, higher than similar measures in the United States and one of the world's highest. A study by the party's Central Research Office estimates that the ratio could rise to 4 to 1 by 2020 if current trends continue, a level some Chinese economists say could incite wider social turmoil.

Such political fears seemed to give an opening to critics who felt economic policies had strayed too far toward capitalism. The strength of leftist opposition had faded throughout the 1990's after Deng Xiaoping, who called economic development "hard truth," and later Mr. Jiang tolerated little ideological discussion of the direction of changes.

Liu Guoguang, a Marxist economist and a former vice director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stimulated an outpouring of opinions about inequality last summer when he gave a private talk that was transcribed and posted on the Internet. His talk supported the emphasis on growth and development but called for a much larger role for the government in managing economic affairs.

In a subsequent interview with Business Watch, a state-run magazine, Mr. Liu said, "If you establish a market economy in a place like China, where the rule of law is imperfect, if you do not emphasize the socialist spirit of fairness and social responsibility, then the market economy you establish is going to be an elitist market economy."

He has been joined by other scholars, including Mr. Gong, whose incendiary polemic on the property law prompted a succession of sympathetic essays and study sessions.

Also contributing to the response is the Hong Kong-based economist Lang Xianping, who has used a television show to pillory what he describes as raids on state assets by managers and foreign investors.

One top official who has come under scrutiny is Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank governor and a promoter of market initiatives. Mr. Zhou attracted foreign investment to the financial sector, partly delinked China's currency from the United States dollar and steered the three biggest state-owned banks toward stock market listings overseas.

Mr. Zhou was attacked directly in a widely circulated Hong Kong newspaper article and indirectly by commentators in Beijing, who accuse financial officials of selling China's most valuable assets too cheaply.

Ji Baocheng, president of People's University in Beijing, criticized Mr. Zhou's banking changes in a public session of the legislature last week. He cited the big Hong Kong stock market listing of China Construction Bank, which was completed after the government injected billions of dollars to clean up its balance sheet.

Mr. Ji said the government priced shares in the bank too low, given the fresh infusion of capital, and he accused officials of "blindly sacrificing the interests of China and its people."

The government defends the overseas listings as a necessary step to raise capital, attract foreign experts to the boards and executive offices of the troubled banks and put the financial system on sounder footing.

Some pro-market economists, who seemed ascendant in the 1990's and early in this decade and now often sound defensive, have denounced the leftist revival as dangerous. Many also criticize the Hu-Wen administration for micromanaging investment and bank loans, tinkering with property and stock markets and declining to extend market-oriented policies to the countryside.

Zhou Ruijing, a retired newspaper editor associated with the pro-market camp, captured the sentiment in a January magazine essay.

"A widening gap between rich and poor is not the fault of market reforms," he wrote. "It's the natural result of them, which is neither good nor bad, but quite predictable."

Premier Says China Beset by Corruption and Rural Land Issues

By JIM YARDLEY

Published: March 14, 2006 , NYtimes

BEIJING, Tuesday, March 14 — Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said Tuesday that China's rapid economic rise is being accompanied by a "high concentration of all kinds of acute problems," including official corruption by some officials who "have violated the rights of the people."Mr. Wen also said the government had "no surprise" revaluations planned for its currency this year.He described the "land issue" as the biggest problem facing hundreds of millions of farmers but suggested that government land policy would not change. Instead, he said enforcement of existing policy must be strengthened to protect farmers' rights at a time when illegal land seizures have fueled protests in the countryside.Mr. Wen's remarks came in a wide-ranging, nationally televised news conference that marked the close of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, the legislature run by the Communist Party. Before the news conference, the Congress approved a new five-year economic plan that top leaders say represents a "historic" policy shift intended to close the income gap between urban and rural areas and create a "new socialist countryside."But one major rural issue — whether farmers can have more control over the sale of their leased farmland — seems unlikely to change in the near future. Government studies show that at least 40 million farmers have been left landless in recent years, often because of illegal seizures by local officials who exploit the current policy. That policy grants villages collective ownership over farmland, which is then leased to individual farmers. Corrupt officials often seize farmland and sell out to developers at a fat profit, while farmers get little compensation.Mr. Wen said more enforcement is needed to ensure that farmers' land rights are protected and that they are paid fair compensation when their land is confiscated. But he praised the current policy as a pillar of China's quarter century of reforms.Mr. Wen answered questions from Chinese and foreign reporters on questions that ranged from Taiwan to fiscal policy. He strongly criticized President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan for recently shutting down an obscure government agency involved with studying reunification between Taiwan and mainland China.But Mr. Wen's broader tone was restrained. He said the Chinese government would still be willing to negotiate with any Taiwanese political party, including Mr. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party, as long as they had renounced the idea of seeking independence.Asked about an ongoing government crackdown against the Chinese media, including intensifying efforts to censor the Internet, Mr. Wen said China has freedom of expression but also quoted George Bernard Shaw, saying "Freedom also comes with responsibility." He said Chinese Web sites should "refrain from misleading the general public or exerting negative impacts on social order."At his news briefing a year ago, Mr. Wen suggested that a surprise currency revaluation was possible. Later in the year, the government changed monetary policy to break its formal link to the American dollar for a new policy that has led to a roughly 3 percent rise in the value of the Chinese renminbi.Mr. Wen noted that China was still at an early point in its ongoing modernization drive and that while the country had made achievements in reducing poverty, it still faced serious challenges. He said China had failed in particular to meet its pollution goals for the past five-year plan and now planned to emphasize more environmentally friendly policies.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-3-23 10:34:33编辑过]

楼主的做法很好!只是你的贴子字体忽大忽小,看起来实在伤眼睛。若能都象13楼那样字体适中就好了。