When the World Opened the Gates of China

With a congressional vote looming in the spring of 2000, President Bill Clinton mustered his best arguments for why lawmakers should approve his proposed deal for China to join the World Trade Organization.

2000年春，国会投票即将进行，比尔·克林顿总统使尽浑身解数，向议员解释为何应该批准他的提议，让中国加入世界贸易组织。

Adding China would link Beijing to Western economies and reduce the government’s ability to control its vast population, he said in a speech that March at Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies.

当年三月，他在约翰霍普金斯高级国际研究学院发表演讲时说，让中国加入世贸会把北京和西方经济体联系起来，降低中国政府控制其巨大人口的能力。

“By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products, it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom,” Mr. Clinton said. “When individuals have the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.”

“加入世界贸易组织，中国不仅同意进口更多美国商品，还同意进口民主国家最珍视的价值之一——经济自由，”克林顿说。“当个人不仅有权做梦，还有权实现梦想，他们会获得更大的话语权。”

Mr. Clinton’s idealistic rhetoric played well among most of Washington’s elites, but a trade lawyer often dismissed as a protectionist, Robert Lighthizer, was skeptical. As he had warned in a New York Times op-ed a few years earlier, if admitted to the WTO, mercantilist China would become a “dominant” trading nation. “Virtually no manufacturing job in [the U.S.] will be safe,” he wrote.

克林顿先生的理想主义说辞在华盛顿的精英圈子里很受用，但一个被斥为保护主义者的贸易律师却心存疑虑，他是罗伯特·莱特希泽。几年前，他给《纽约时报》评论投稿说，如进入世贸组织，奉行重商主义的中国将成为“垄断性”贸易国家。“事实上，（美国）没有一个制造业岗位是安全的。”

Mr. Lighthizer is now the U.S. Trade Representative, President Donald Trump’s chief negotiator on global trade. In the administration’s view, allowing China to enter the WTO in 2001 was a historic mistake that cost the U.S. millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in accumulated trade deficits. The U.S. is now bypassing WTO rules and threatening Beijing with tariffs on up to $500 billion of imported goods.

莱特希泽先生现在是美国贸易代表、总统唐纳德·特朗普的首席国际贸易谈判官。在本届政府看来，允许中国在2001年加入世界贸易组织是历史性错误，让美国数百万工作岗位流失，并积累了数万亿贸易逆差。美国现在正抛弃世贸组织规则，威胁要对5000亿中国进口商品征收关税。

The moves against China are part of Mr. Trump’s wider effort to upend longstanding U.S. policy on trade and also the international institutions and agreements that govern trade. Whether the administration’s shift is a much-needed corrective or a disastrous reversal depends in large part on how one views the original decision to bring China into the international trade regime.

特朗普政府有个大计划，要颠覆美国长期贸易政策，同时颠覆治理贸易的国际体制和协定，对中国采取行动是其中一部分。本届政府的转向到底是亟待推行的一种矫正抑或是灾难性的逆转，这基本得看你如何看待让中国加入国际贸易体系的最初决定。

Given China’s enormous presence in the world economy today, it’s difficult to remember how economically backward the country was in the early 1990s. Inflation hit 24% in 1994. Nearly 60% of the population lived on less than $1.90 a day. Bicycles jammed the streets, not cars.

考虑到如今中国在世界经济中的大块头地位，很难想起该国九十年代初在经济上有多么落后。1994年，中国通胀率达24%，近60%的人口每天只靠不足1.9美元为生。街上全是自行车，没有汽车。

Chinese reformers saw their country’s entry into the WTO as a way to modernize. To join, China would have to reduce sky-high trade barriers and allow a greater role for foreign firms. State-owned firms would finally face competition, and private enterprise, they hoped, would soar. 

中国改革者认为加入世贸组织是实现现代化的一种方法。为了加入世贸组织，中国必须削减高耸的贸易壁垒，允许外国公司发挥更大作用。国有公司必须最终面对竞争，他们希望私有企业能繁荣起来。

“WTO membership works like a wrecking ball, smashing whatever is left in the old edifice of the planned economy,” said Jin Liqun, China’s vice minister of finance at the time.

时任中国财政部副部长金立群说，加入世贸就像推动一个破碎球，捣毁计划经济旧建筑中的一切。

The WTO is a membership organization. To get in, China had to cut deals with all the members but most importantly with the U.S., the world’s dominant economy. U.S. officials thought they were driving a hard bargain. 

世贸组织是成员国组织，要加入世贸，中国必须和所有成员国达成协议，但最重要的是世界最大经济体美国。美国官员认为谈判很艰苦。

The deal forced Beijing to slash tariffs, permit foreign investment in Chinese industries and give foreign banks more freedom to do business. For a dozen years, Beijing also agreed, the U.S. could block Chinese imports that threatened specific American industries.

协议迫使中国大幅削减关税，允许外资企业在中国各行业投资，并给予外资银行更多经商自由。十多年来，北京也同意，中国进口商品威胁到美国特定产业，美国可以制裁。

In exchange for the Chinese concessions, the U.S. just had to surrender its annual rite of deciding whether to grant China “most favored nation” status as a trading partner, ensuring full access to the American market. China’s allies in Congress had succeeded each year in getting the measure through anyway, but by allowing China into the WTO, the annual reviews would end.

为了让中国做出让步，美国必须放弃每年对是否给予中国“最惠国”地位作出决定的权利，确保中国商品可以完全进入美国市场。虽然中国在国会的盟友每年都成功批准中国这一地位，但允许中国加入世贸组织，每年的审查都没了。

Mr. Clinton also linked China’s WTO accession to the democratic vision of President Woodrow Wilson, who dreamed, he said, of “a world full of free markets, free elections and free peoples working together.” The growth of the internet, in particular, would undermine Beijing’s control and make China more like the U.S., Mr. Clinton argued. (He declined to comment for this article.)

克林顿先生将中国加入世贸组织与伍德罗·威尔逊总统的民主愿景联系起来，威尔逊梦想着“一个自由市场、自由选举和自由的人民携手共进的世界”。克林顿认为，互联网的发展尤其削弱了政府控制，让中国更像美国。（他拒绝对这篇文章发表评论。）

Many shared this hopeful view, pointing to the examples of South Korea and Taiwan, which had shaken off dictatorships as they became more prosperous. Henry Rowen, chairman of the Reagan administration’s National Intelligence Council, forecast in 1999 that China would “join the club of nations well along the road to democracy” in 2015, when he expected its per capita GDP to reach $7,000. As it turned out, China hit that mark two years sooner than he had predicted, but even now, it is far from being a democracy.

许多人同意这种预判，认为韩国和台湾就是如此。里根政府全国情报委员会主席亨利·罗文1999年预测，中国将在2015年加入民主俱乐部，他预计那时中国的人均GDP将达到7000美元，结果中国2013年就达到了人均GDP目标。

A coalition of labor, environmental and human-rights groups opposed China’s admission to the WTO. Robert Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-backed research group, cranked out alarming numbers. In 2000, he forecast that nearly a million U.S. manufacturing jobs would be lost to Chinese competition.

工会、环境和人权组织联合起来反对中国加入世贸组织。工会支持的研究集团经济政策研究所经济学家罗伯特·斯科特估了个惊人数据。2000年，他预计接近50万美国制造业岗位将在中国竞争下流失。

Donald Trump was absent from the debate. In 2000, he toyed with a run for president and wrote a campaign book, “The America We Deserve,” which called China the U.S.’s “biggest long-term challenge.” But he didn’t mention the WTO decision. He did say he would appoint himself U.S. Trade Representative and negotiate better deals.

唐纳德·特朗普没有参与讨论。2000年，他提出要竞选总统，还写了一本竞选图书《我们值得拥有的美国》，书中将中国说成美国“最大的长期挑战”。但他没有提及世贸组织的决定，尽管他的确表示准备任命自己为美国贸易代表，拿到更好的条件。

After the deal, foreign investment in Beijing mushroomed from $47 billion in 2001 to $124 billion a decade later. The lower investment and import restrictions required of China as part of its WTO entry also encouraged multinationals to rush in, as did the prospect of serving the vast Chinese market. China became the world’s manufacturing floor, and Chinese imports to the U.S. soared.

签订协议后，北京的外国投资从2001年的470亿美元暴增到10年后的1240亿美元。中国加入世贸组织降低了投资和进口限制，这也鼓励了跨国公司蜂拥而入，中国市场前景一片光明。中国成为世界的制造业车间，中国出口美国商品暴增。

Looking back now, whose expectations for the wider impact of the deal proved most accurate? On the issue of U.S. manufacturing jobs, critics made the right call. A study by the MIT economist David Autor and colleagues calculated that Chinese competition cost the U.S. some 2.4 million jobs between 1999 and 2011, battering factory towns that made labor-intensive goods.

中国加入世贸带来更广阔冲击，回头看，谁的预测更准确呢？在美国制造业岗位问题上，批评者们说对了。麻省理工学院经济学家大卫·奥特和同事计算，来自中国的竞争让美国在1999年到2011年间丢失了250万个岗位，打击了生产劳动密集型产品的工业城市。

That result haunts one of Mr. Clinton’s senior China negotiators, Robert B. Cassidy, who believes that his work only helped big businesses, not ordinary workers. “When you retire you like to think that you accomplished a lot,” he says now, at age 73. “What kind of benefit did I produce from working around the clock? I was incredibly disappointed.”

结果让克林顿的对华高级谈判者罗伯特·卡西迪忧心忡忡，他认为他的工作只对大企业有利，对普通工人没有好处。“当你退休时，你希望自己取得很大成就，”如今73岁的他说。“我没日没夜地工作带来什么好处呢？我太失望了。”

Nor did China open up politically, as many WTO advocates had hoped. 

……

China’s leaders believed that they needed unchallenged authority to carry out economic reform in the face of opposition from entrenched interests. The point of freer markets, in their view, was to encourage competition and prevent the system from becoming sclerotic, not to bolster individual rights.

As for President Clinton and his allies in the WTO debate, they can point to real gains from integrating China into the global economy. 

至于克林顿总统和他的盟友，他们可以在世贸组织讨论中指出让中国融入全球经济的真正益处。

According to the World Bank, some 400 million Chinese have been lifted from extreme poverty—that is, from living on less than $1.90 a day—since 1999. And during the global recession of 2008 and 2009, China was able to go on a spending spree that supported global demand. Chinese building projects sucked in iron ore, coal, oil and other commodities, boosting other developing nations.

根据世界银行数据，1999年以来，约4亿中国人脱贫，此前他们每天生活费不到1.9美元。2008年和2009年全球经济衰退时，中国能大笔消费以支撑全球需求。中国的基础设施建设消耗了铁矿石、煤炭、石油和其他商品，促进了其他发展中国家的发展。

Today, technology companies tap the Chinese market to boost profits and defray research costs. Last year, about 20% of Apple Computer Inc.’s sales came from China, up from about 12% in 2011. The low inflation associated with cheap imports, together with Chinese purchases of U.S. government bonds, has also helped to hold down interest rates, making it cheaper for Americans to buy not only clothes and electronics but also homes and cars.

今天，科技公司去中国市场提高利润和削减研发成本。去年，苹果电脑公司约20%的销售收入来自中国，2011年只有约12%。廉价进口商品导致低通胀，再加上中国购买美国政府国债，这也拉低了利率，让美国人不仅能买到便宜的衣服和电子商品，还能买到便宜的房子和汽车。

Economic reform has waxed and waned in China. The WTO deal was supposed to curb the power of China’s state-owned enterprises, which Beijing pledged would operate on commercial terms only. By some measures, that has occurred. 

中国的经济改革起起伏伏。加入世贸组织预计将遏制中国国有企业的权力，北京承诺按商业逻辑行事。在某些尺度上，确实如此。

Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, estimates that state-owned firms now account for just 20% of China’s industrial output, down from double that share in 2001.

彼得森国际经济研究所中国问题专家尼古拉斯·拉迪预计，现在国有企业只占中国工业产值的20%，而2001年则占40%。

But there has been a reversal in the past few years, according to Mr. Lardy. State investment in the economy is growing as much as three times faster than private investment, he says. State firms have once again become the heart of Chinese economic policy-making.

但拉迪称，最近几年出现反复。经济体中的国家投资比民间投资增长速度快两倍。国有企业再次成为中国经济决策的核心。

Beijing is counting on such firms to become global leaders in semiconductors, electric vehicles, robotics and other high-technology sectors and is funding them through subsidies and financing from state banks. 

北京指望国有公司成为半导体、电子设备、机器人和其他高科技部门的全球领导者，通过补贴和国有银行融资的方式资助它们。

These initiatives have raised protests from U.S. companies that now find themselves competing with the Chinese state. In solar and wind power, for example, state investment created a glut that drove many foreign companies out of business.

这些举动引发美国公司的抗议，它们发现自己在和中国这个国家竞争。例如在太阳能和风能领域，国家投资制造了大量剩余产品，将外国公司挤出了该行业。

China never fully followed through on its WTO pledge to allow foreign banks to operate in its local currency. It also pledged not to force foreign firms to transfer their technology, but today about one in five companies—many in aerospace and chemical industries—say that they’ve been pressured to do just that in order to do business in China, according to a July survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

中国并未完全履行入市承诺，允许外资银行以当地货币开展业务。中国还承诺不迫使外国公司转让技术，但7月位于上海的美国商会一项调查显示，如今五分之一的公司表示他们受到压力转让技术，以便在中国做生意，公司主要来自航空航天和化工行业。

At a WTO session this month, China’s vice minister of commerce, Wang Shouwen, denied that China twists arms to gain technology. Arrangements on technology are “absolutely contractual behavior based on voluntary business deals,” Mr. Wang said in July, according to a Geneva trade official.

本月WTO会议上，中国商务部副部长王受文否认中国以不正当方式获取技术。日内瓦一位贸易官员称，王受文说，对技术的安排是“基于自愿商业交易的绝对合规的行为”。

China has also maneuvered to its advantage within the WTO. In one case it blocked exports of scarce raw materials needed by high-tech industries, hurting foreign firms. When the WTO ruled against Beijing on one set of restrictions, it removed the barriers—but then blocked another set of raw materials. 

中国还设法利用世贸规则。中国阻止高科技产业所需的稀有原材料出口，伤害了外国公司。世贸组织判决北京不能对某种原材料施加限制时，北京取消了限制，但随后对另一种原材料进行限制。

Other Chinese efforts to win an advantage in trade have happened outside the WTO’s purview. For years after joining the international trade regime, Beijing kept its currency undervalued by 30%, boosting Chinese exports by making them cheaper abroad, says Brad Setser, a currency expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

中国在贸易上获取优势的办法不限于世贸管辖范围。外交关系委员会货币专家布拉德·赛斯特说，加入国际贸易体系多年后，北京让货币贬值30%，促进中国出口。

Charlene Barshefsky, who was Mr. Clinton’s U.S. Trade Representative, says that her successors could have used the WTO to sue China to live up to its agreements. She points in particular to provisions that protected U.S. industries from escalating Chinese imports. President George W. Bush turned down all import-surge cases brought by American companies, and President Barack Obama approved just one. Neither brought any cases on their own.

克林顿先生的美国贸易代表沙琳·巴舍夫斯基说，她的继任者应该在世贸组织起诉中国，让中国履行承诺。她特别指出那些保护美国产业、抵制中国进口品日益增加的条款。小布什总统拒绝了美国公司提出的所有有关进口高涨的案子，奥巴马总统只批准了一个。两届政府都没有主动提出诉讼。

A former senior Bush administration official said that “the national interest was not served by raising protectionist barriers.” Growth in imports, the former official says, doesn’t mean that China has acted improperly. Obama officials made similar arguments.

前布什政府高级官员说，“贸易保护主义壁垒不符合国家利益”。这位官员说，进口增长不意味着中国行为不当。奥巴马政府官员也这样说。

Mr. Lighthizer, who is now helping to call the shots on U.S. trade policy, says that if the WTO deal had failed in Congress, “uncertainty would have kept the trade deficit from growing and probably would have saved millions of manufacturing jobs.”

现在负责美国贸易政策的莱特希泽先生说，如果让中国加入世贸组织的协议未获国会通过，“这种不确定性本可以阻止贸易逆差增长，或许可以挽救成百上千万制造业岗位”。

But other WTO opponents believe that congressional rejection wouldn’t have made much of a difference for the U.S. With its vast supply of industrious, low-wage workers, China would have continued to rise as an export powerhouse, they say. Indeed, in the 15 years before its WTO entry, U.S. imports from China grew at a faster rate than in the 15 years after, albeit from a much lower base.

但也有世贸反对者相信，国会的拒绝不会给美国带来什么不同。有着大量勤劳、低薪的工人，中国将继续成为出口大国。确实，加入世贸组织前15年中，美国从中国的进口比中国加入世贸组织15年后还快，尽管基数低。

Keeping China out of the WTO might have delayed by a few years the damage to U.S. communities from low-cost imports, though it’s not clear that the extra time would have helped. In the 17 years since China’s entry, the U.S. has poured few resources into worker retraining programs or other social safety net programs for laid-off workers. The programs in which it did invest had mixed results.

不让中国加入世贸组织，或许能将低成本进口商品对美国的损害延缓几年，尽管多出几年是否有用尚不清楚。中国入世17年来，美国几乎未给工人再培训或其他下岗工人的社会安全网项目投入过什么资源。过去投资这些项目的结果好坏参半。

“I don’t know that [a defeat for the Clinton WTO deal] would have made a difference,” says David Bonior, a former Democratic House Minority Whip, who led the congressional fight against it.

“我不知道是否会有不同，”前民主党少数党党鞭戴维·博尼尔说，他曾领导国会议员反对中国入世。

Ms. Barshefsky still believes in a multilateral approach to China. She would revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade pact between the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations, which Mr. Trump discarded on his first working day in office, and extend it to other Asian nations and Europe. The members could negotiate new rules of trade, cutting tariffs and covering state-owned enterprises, import surges, subsidies and other issues relevant to China.

巴舍夫斯基女士仍然相信要对中国采取多边主义方式。她建议重兴跨太平洋伙伴关系并把其他亚洲国家和欧洲包含进来，这是美国和11个环太平洋国家签订的自贸协定，特朗普上任第一天就退出了。她认为，成员国可以就新的贸易规则进行讨论，削减关税，管理国有企业、进口暴涨、补贴和其他与中国有关的问题。

“Then China would need to make a decision,” she says. “It can come on board, or it can decide it doesn’t want full access to 60% of the global economy.”

“然后中国就要做出决定了，”她说。“中国可以来谈，或者决定不加入占全球经济六成的体系。”

Mr. Lighthizer has a different view. The U.S. should go it alone and threaten China with heavy tariffs, he says, largely leaving the WTO out of the mix as an adjudicator of U.S. grievances.

莱特希泽先生却不这么看。他认为美国应该自己干，以高额关税威胁中国，把世贸组织扔到一边，不把世贸组织当做解决美国不满的裁决者。

“The notion that our problems with China can be solved by bringing more cases at the WTO alone is naive at best and at worst distracts policy makers from facing the gravity of the challenge,” his agency said in a January 2018 report.

他所在的机构在2018年1月的报告中说：“我们与中国的问题，光是通过在世贸组织提交更多的诉讼案就能够得以解决，这种想法说好听点是天真的，说难听点是转移决策者的注意力，忽视了严峻的挑战”。

Instead, the USTR said, the U.S. must rely on its own economic muscle. “Ultimately, that’s all you have anyway,” Mr. Lighthizer says.

相反，美国贸易代表署说，美国要依靠自己的经济实力。“说到底，还是要看经济实力，”莱特希泽说。

瞅啥  来源：《英文联播》

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