中澳不大可能成为合作伙伴。不仅仅因为地理上的间隔，更是因为不同的历史造就不同的国家。中国又一次成为东亚地区最重要的国家，而澳大利亚仍是边缘地带的中等国家
马克彼森Mark Beeson
西澳大利亚大学国际政治学与国际关系教授
亚太批判研究丛书主编，当代政治合作编辑
近期文章请参见：
http://uwa.academia.edu/MarkBeeson/About
往期作品请参见：
http://theconversation.com/columns/mark-beeson-60300
尽管两国存在差异，它们除了发展良好合作关系，也少有其他选择。原因并不难理解：资源贸易对两国繁荣和经济安全至关重要。尽管如此，两国在维系友好关系时，也会偶遇阻力。
中澳关系阻力的根源来自美国，美国是澳大利亚的首要安全伙伴，同时也在与中国竞争地区影响力。大多数澳大利亚政策制定者认为，中国是澳大利亚的经济伙伴，美国是澳大利亚的持久战略伙伴，这并不矛盾。然而事实比较复杂，经济和战略紧密相连，澳大利亚将经济和战略区分开来的政策不一定奏效。
从澳大利亚政府对亚投行的态度可以窥见端倪，中国设立亚洲基础设施投资银行，用以替代历史上由美国主导的余勇尚在的国际架构。澳政府对此产生两种态度：经济领域的部长们赞成加入亚投行，但是迫于美国的压力，总理及国防部反对加入亚投行。
尽管美国施压，澳大利亚最终加入亚投行，这证明中澳关系十分重要。建立亚投行也表明中国对现有国际秩序是多么不满，并打算奋力尝试改变它。
中国对于现有的所谓布雷顿森林体系、特别是国际货币基金组织和世界银行无法施加与其经济地位相称的影响力备感不安，失望，于是中国决定自谋出路。除了美日作为显而易见的反对人，其他国家都在排队加入亚投行。
这并不是重现其他国家承认中国霸权地位的古代东亚“朝贡体系”，却也意义非凡。这也不仅是简单表明中国软实力在增加，或观念影响力在增强。恰恰相反一旦得以成功实施，通过提供亚洲急需的基础设施资金，会不由自主地确保将中国置于一个不断扩展并相互连接的地区生产网络中心地位。
如果中国地缘经济影响力增强只是一种孤立现象的话，那么，澳大利亚决策者或许可以不为所动，毕竟这是澳大利亚历史性经济接触大故事中的一部分。在强大的外部经济力量塑造下，澳大利亚一直是规则接受者，而非规则制定者。
令这种情况雪上加霜，同时变得模糊和好坏参半的是，中国的崛起也在削弱许多澳大利亚决策者原来以为坚如磐石的战略环境。
中国崛起的反面就是美国的相对衰落。由于澳大利亚在军事上与美国紧密结盟，所以，美国的战争目标及其实现目标的能力无疑对澳大利亚比对大多数国家更具有影响。当然，亚洲其他国家同样担心中国崛起的战略影响以及中国日益强势地追求在南中国海的领土主张,但是少有国家如澳大利亚，向来对美国提供战略空头支票。
澳大利亚决策者面临的关键性长期问题是，中国究竟是机遇还是威胁。换句话说，中国是否能够成为一支稳定的力量，成为如罗伯特·佐利克所说的，“负责任的利益攸关方”，从而让它的许多邻居不必过于担心它所造成的可能的安全威胁。
中国：负责任的利益攸关方？
无论中国决策者如今怎样做都会非同小可，而不仅是影响中国人民，任何对此持有异议的人，都在近期全球股市动荡面前哑口无言了，这种动荡生动说明了中国对于全球经济是多么重要。
“能力越大，责任越大”是政界的时尚格言。话虽好听，事实却非如此。恰恰相反，中国发生的事情，不论好坏，都会对世界其他地方产生强大并且通常是立刻显现的影响。实际上，中国和美国看起来都不是负责任的利益攸关方。
毕竟，我们仍然集体卷入了一场历史上最大的经济试验——“量化宽松”，或如由来已久的印币。政策得以实施，因为它被判定为符合美国预想的国家利益，量化宽松的目的是向依旧脆弱的经济注入流动性，并向美元施加下行压力。意味深长之义在于这项政策的实施，几乎完全没有考虑对其他国家的影响，尤其是对潜在的动荡危机的新兴市场的影响。
强国可以做出这种举措，因为它们有能力这样做。无论会造成多少连带伤害，没有人可以阻止美国的单方行为。尽管中国呼吁所谓发展中世界即一般情况下被边缘化的国家团结一致，我们是否能够期待中国的行为方式有所不同？或许不能。
然而，既然中国既想在由美国创立的现有国际秩序中占据中心角色，又想在它自己希望替代的体系中以中国为中心，那么人民币的决定就决不可等闲视之。中国人民银行官员一定知道，他们的行为会引起最大关注，并产生重要的经济和政治后果。
所以，为什么中国最高领导人会批准这项对中国国际角色和国内局势发出如此扑朔迷离信号的政策呢？他们肯定已经意识到，这些举动有可能会再次点燃所谓的货币战争，影响国际货币基金组织把人民币纳入构成“特别提款权”的货币篮子，而这是中国经济精英的夙愿。
在这种局势下，并非不合道理的推测是，中国领导层非常担心国内经济状况，因此，准备承受某些国际批评或名誉损失，因为不这样做的风险值太大。中国政府的合法性极大地体现在它有能力保持经济增长和发展，习近平认识到了这一点，并显然对近来的贬值行动予以支持。
相对微调人民币价值将有多大影响另当别论。例如，国内制造业不景气，不可能由于竞争力的微小（边际）改变得到扭转。更加重要且自相矛盾的是，地方政府试图通过离岸（海外）举债来挽救日益恶化的资产负债表时，会忽然发现还债成本明显上升。
迄今，中国共产党领导人在经营资本主义经济方面十分成功，但恰恰是这些成功已经以不可检验并且危险的方式增加了预期。近期上海股市剧烈波动无可辩驳地印证了前美联储主席艾伦·格林斯潘提出的所谓“非理性繁荣”。中国不计其数的空置公寓更加显著无误地印证了中国经济曾经不可抑制的活力。
凡此种种，所有这些对澳大利亚来说都非同寻常。眨眼间，不单是资源领域经历了由繁荣到衰落的过渡。中国较为精明的投资者正在不遗余力地将财产转移到国外，脱离中国当局的掌控，脱离看上去日益脆弱的本国经济。即使在悉尼，澳大利亚的不动产看起来也更加便宜和安全。中国资本日益外逃，也许会对澳大利亚产生很大影响。
一方面，上述情况可能给澳大利亚决策者造成难题，但与此同时，它们不应当对中国正在把国内优选事项提在可能要承担的国际责任之上感到意外，所以，我们为什么要期待一个假定的战略竞争对手会大相径庭？
像澳大利亚这样的相对小国，会不可避免地寻求军事上或经济上的强大朋友或盟友，以保障自身安全。不管澳大利亚决策者愿意与否，他们应该适应中国在军事和经济方面将施加更大影响力，而美国将必然变得不再那么重要的观念。澳大利亚的思想和政策是否也将反映这一重要变化，另当别论。
Australia’s unlikely partner
By Mark Beeson
Professor of InternationalPolitics
Political Science andInternational Relations M257
The University of WesternAustralia Crawley WA 6009 Australia
Series editor, CriticalStudies of the Asia-Pacific:
Co-editor, Contemporary Politics
For a selection of recent articles, see:http://uwa.academia.edu/MarkBeeson/About
Antipodemia: https://theconversation.com/columns/mark-beeson-60300
China and Australiaare unlikely partners. Not only are they a long way apart geographically, butvery different historical forces and influences have also shaped them. China has once again become the mostimportant country in East Asia, while Australia remains a rather minor ‘middlepower’ on the margins of the region.
And yet while theymay not have much in common, they have little choice other than to develop agood working relationship. The reason is not difficult to understand: for bothcountries, the resource trade is vital to continuing national prosperity andeconomic security. But despite the importance of the bilateral economicrelationship, both countries have occasionally had their difficulties inmaintaining cordial ties.
Australia’s difficultiesstem from the fact that its principal security partner is the United States,which is currently locked in a growing contest with China for regionalinfluence. Most Australian policymakers argue that it doesn’t have to choosebetween its economic relationship with China and its enduring strategicrelationship with the US. Things are not quite that simple, however. Economicand strategic policies are, in fact, closely connected. It is not clear whetherthe Australian policy approach of trying to keep them compartmentalisedseparately will actually work.
The problems this iscausing for the Australian government are evident in the way it responded toChina’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiative, which wasdeveloped by China as an alternative to the extant institutional architecturehistorically dominated by the US. TheAustralian government was fundamentally split: economic ministers supportedAustralia’s membership of the AIIB, while the prime minister and defence wantedto stay out – as they had been urged to do by the US.
The fact that theAustralian government eventually decided to join the AIIB in defiance of theUS’s wishes indicates just how important relations with China have become. The establishment of the AIIB also indicates justhow unhappy China is with the prevailing international order, and how far it isprepared to go to try and change it.
Frustrated by itsinability to exert an influence in keeping with its economic status in theexisting so-called “Bretton Woods” institutions – especially the InternationalMonetary Fund and the World Bank – China has decided to develop its own. Withthe noteworthy exception of the US and Japan, other countries have been queuingup to join.
This is not quite there-emergence of the old East Asian Tribute system in which other statesacknowledged Chinese hegemony, but it is significant nevertheless. Importantly,it is not simply an expression of China’s growing soft power or ideationalinfluence. On the contrary, if successfully realised, the provision ofmuch-needed infrastructure funding in Asia promises to quite literally cementChina’s place at the centre of an expanding, interconnected regional productionnetwork.
If China’s expandinggeoeconomic influence were occurring in isolation, Australian policymakersmight be able to live with it. After all, this has been the big story aboutAustralia’s historical economic engagement with the world. Australia has been arule taker rather than a rule maker, and one that has been shaped by powerful externaleconomic forces.
What makes thisdifficult, and what accounts for all the ambivalence and mixed messages, isthat China’s rise is also undermining the strategic environment that manyAustralian policymakers thought was set in stone.
The flipside ofChina’s rise has been America’s relative decline. Because Australia is soclosely aligned to the US militarily, American policy goals and its capacity topursue them necessarily have greater implications for Australia than for mostcountries. True, other states in the region are also concerned about thestrategic implications of China’s rise and its increasingly aggressive pursuitof territorial claims in the South China Sea. But few other countries offer theUS the sort of blank strategic cheque that Australia traditionally does.
The key long-termquestion for Australian policymakers is whether China will be more of anopportunity or a threat. In other words, could China become a force forstability and what Robert Zoelick famously called a ‘responsible stakeholder’that might actually make many of its neighbours less concerned about thepossible security threat it poses?
China: Theresponsible stakeholder?
Whatever China’spolicymakers do these days matters a lot, and not just to its own people. Onthe contrary, for better or worse what happens in China has a powerful andoften immediate impact on the rest of the world. Any doubts about this ideahave been put to rest by the recent volatility in global stock markets, whichprovided a stark illustration of just how important China is to the globaleconomy.
One of the morepopular adages in politics is that with great power comes great responsibility.It’s a nice idea, but not one that is supported by a great deal of evidence.Indeed, neither China nor the US look like responsible stakeholders in thisregard.
We are, after all,still collectively engaged in one of the biggest economic experiments inhistory – ‘quantitative easing’, or printing money as it used to be known. Thispolicy was embarked upon because it was judged to be in America’s perceivednational interests. Its intention was to pump liquidity into a still-fragileeconomy and put downward pressure on the American dollar. Significantly, it wasdone with little regard for its possible impact on other countries, especiallythe potentially volatile and vulnerable emerging markets.
Powerful nations dothese sorts of things because they can. No one can stop the US from actingunilaterally no matter what the collateraldamage may be. Should we expect anything different from China, despite itsclaims of solidarity with the normally marginalised countries of the so-calleddeveloping world? Perhaps not.
And yet given thatChina is trying to position itself as a central player in both the existinginstitutional order created by the US, as well as its own vision of analternative regime with China at its centre, the decision to devalue itscurrency cannot have been taken lightly. Officials at the People’s Bank ofChina must have understood that their actions would attract great attention andhave significant economic and political consequences.
So why would China’stop leaders authorise a policy that would send such mixed messages about itsinternational role and domestic circumstances? They must have realised thatsuch actions would potentially reignite the so-called currency wars and raisequestions about including the yuan in the IMF’s basket of currencies thatconstitute “special drawing rights” – a long-held ambition of China’s economicelites.
Underthe circumstances it’s not unreasonable to infer that China’s leadership is soworried about the state of the domestic economy that it is prepared to suffersome international criticism and reputational damage because the risks of notdoing so are simply too great. The legitimacy of the Chinese government restsoverwhelmingly on its ability to keep delivering economic growth anddevelopment. Xi Jinping recognises this and has apparently given his support torecent moves.
Whether a relativelyminor adjustment in the value of the yuan will have much affect is quiteanother question. The downturn in domestic manufacturing, for example, isunlikely to be reversed by a marginal change in its competitiveness. Even moreimportantly and paradoxically, the local governments that have tried to shoreup their deteriorating balance sheets by borrowing offshore will suddenly findthe cost of repaying such loans has gone up markedly.
China’scommunist leaders have proved themselves to be rather good at running acapitalist economy, thus far. But its very success may have increasedexpectations in unsustainable and dangerous ways. The recent gyrations inShanghai’s stock market are the most visible manifestation of China’s versionof what former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan called ‘irrationalexuberance’. The thousands of unoccupied apartment blocks across China are aneven more tangible testament to the formerly irrepressible dynamism of theChinese economy.
All of this mattersenormously for Australia. It is not just the resource sector that has gone fromboom to bust in the blink of any eye. China’s cannier investors are assiduouslyworking to shift their wealth offshore, out of reach of Chinese authorities andan increasingly fragile looking domestic economy. Australian real estate – evenin Sydney – still looks comparatively cheap and safe. All of this is contributing to growingcapital flight from China. This may have major consequences for the likes ofAustralia.
While all this maycreate headaches for Australian policymakers, we shouldn’t be too surprisedthat their counterparts in China are putting domestic priorities ahead ofpossible international responsibilities. Even allies have been known to behavein this way. So why should we expect a notional strategic rival to act anydifferently?
It may be inevitablethat a relatively minor power such as Australia would look for powerful friendsand allies to underpin its security, whether that is the military or theeconomic variety. Whether Australianpolicymakers like it or not, they may have to get used to the idea that Chinawill exert a growing influence on both and that the US will inevitably becomeless important as a consequence. Whether thinking and policy in Australia willalso reflect this material change is another question.