態度: 俄羅斯選擇孤立 中國選擇融合

China gets it. Russia doesn't.

中國明白了。俄羅斯卻沒有。

For now, Vladimir Putin appears to be outsmarting the West. The Group of Seven nations called on Russia Wednesday to 'cease all efforts to annex Crimea' and condemned its 'unprovoked violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.' But there was no sign of real, meaningful sanctions. And that's because Europe--for now--needs Russia's gas.

暫時而言，俄羅斯總統普京(Vladimir Putin)現在似乎比西方國家技高一籌。七大工業國(Group of Seven)週三呼籲俄羅斯停止一切吞併克里米亞的努力，並譴責俄羅斯無故侵犯烏克蘭主權的行爲。但沒有跡象顯示俄羅斯將真正受到有實質意義的制裁。原因在於歐洲目前需要俄羅斯的天然氣。

The good news is that future Russian presidents will find it harder to follow in Mr. Putin's footsteps. In due time, capacity improvements in world energy markets will erode Russia's ability to use its mammoth supplies of natural gas to hold its neighbors hostage. Russia will eventually have to join, rather fight against, the modern global economy. It's as if the protesters who ousted Ukraine's Russia-leaning President, Viktor Yanukovych, moved a few years too early.

好消息是，俄羅斯未來的總統將發現他們很難追隨普京的腳步。在未來的某個時間，全球能源市場產能的提高將削弱俄羅斯利用其龐大天然氣供應來挾持鄰國的能力。俄羅斯最終將不得不加入現代全球經濟，而不是與之對抗。只不過那些抗議者推翻烏克蘭親俄羅斯總統亞努科維奇(Viktor Yanukovych)的時間或許稍微早了幾年。

By contrast, policymakers in that other former communist power seem to understand that the world is changing and that their economy's standing hinges upon integration rather than isolation. China is hardly a model international citizen--it engages in restrictive trade practices, cyber-spying and saber-rattling over regional territorial claims. But at least some key officials--notably People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan--are deliberately setting a path of liberalization that will eventually compel their country to fall in line with international norms.

相比之下，另一個前共產主義陣營中的國家的決策者似乎瞭解世界正在變化，意識到經濟地位取決於融合而非孤立。很難把中國看做標準的國際公民，因爲中國採取限制性貿易措施，展開網絡間諜活動，並咄咄逼人地提出地區領土主張。但至少一些關鍵的官員正在刻意設定自由化之路，而這將最終推動中國遵循國際慣例。其中最明顯的便是中國央行行長周小川。

This week, Mr. Zhou announced that interest rate policy would be fully liberalized in one to two years and that a fully floating, convertible yuan wouldn't be far behind. His comments didn't grab headlines in the way that Mr. Putin's troop maneuvers in Crimea did. But these actions will generate market pressures that will drive further political and economic reform in China, shifting it toward a more market-driven and consumer-focused economy to the benefit of its own citizens and those of rest of the world.

本週，周小川宣佈利率將在兩年內完全放開，人民幣距離自由浮動和完全可兌換也不遠了。和普京派軍隊進入克里米亞相比，周小川的講話並不是那麼重要的消息。但這些行動將帶來市場壓力，進一步推動中國的政治和經濟改革，使中國經濟向更加依賴於市場力量的消費主導型經濟轉型，從而令中國民衆和世界其他地方受益。

Once China removes a cap on deposit rates and forces banks to compete for savings, the artificially cheap borrowing rates that have propped up thousands of inefficient government-connected enterprises and allowed them to flood the world with cheap goods will have to be phased out. Next, as local banks' profit margins shrink, the government will need to fully open up the Chinese capital account. This will bring welcome cheap foreign capital into the economy, but it will also radically shake up the hitherto cloistered Chinese financial system. The end result will be a wholesale restructuring of the Chinese economy, which in turn will test the viability of a centrally planned system and the Communist Party apparatus that has thrived off it. Big changes are afoot.

一旦中國取消存款利率上限，迫使銀行爲攬儲而展開競爭，則中國被人爲壓低的借款利率將最終一去不復返。這樣的低利率造就了成千上萬低效率的政府相關企業，並讓它們得以在全球大量銷售廉價商品。接下來，隨着中國本地銀行的利潤率收窄，中國政府將需要完全放開中國的資本項目。這將爲中國經濟引入受歡迎的低成本外資，但這同時也將從根本上動搖中國至今仍與外界相對隔絕的金融體系。最終的結果將是中國經濟的大規模重組，而這反過來又將檢驗中央計劃體制的可行性以及中共通過中央計劃而發展出來的運作方式。巨大的變革正在醞釀之中。

These are incredibly bold moves in China. But they are also realistic and pragmatic. With financial innovations --digital currencies, for example--making it ever harder to shut out world economic forces, Beijing knows it can't swim against the tide. The evolving Chinese model recognizes that in the 21st century, true power comes from a nation's ability to harness the innovative drive of global competition. In Russia, by contrast, power is seen as a function of military might and control of natural resources.

這些都是中國極其大膽的舉措。但這些措施也是現實而可行的。隨着諸如電子貨幣之類的金融創新使得世界經濟力量越來越難以被拒之門外，北京深知其不能逆潮流而動。不斷變革中的中國模式認識到，在21世紀，真正的實力來自一國利用全球競爭創新動力的能力。相比之下，俄羅斯則認爲，實力是軍事力量和對自然資源的控制。

But this model of power is at the mercy of changes in the rest of the world's energy capacity. Just look at Venezuela, which for many years used its oil monopoly to cajole Latin American states into defying the liberal economic prescriptions of the Washington Consensus. With technological advances now allowing the U.S. to extract ever growing amounts of domestic shale oil and gas, Venezuela's influence is rapidly waning. Not coincidentally, it is now gripped by a roiling financial and political crisis, with inflation hitting 56%.

但這種力量模式受制於世界其他地方能源產能的變化。委內瑞拉就是一個例子。該國多年來利用其原油壟斷地位誘使拉美國家反對“華盛頓共識”(Washington Consensus)提出的自由經濟政策。現在，技術進步令美國得以在本土開採越來越多的頁岩油氣，委內瑞拉的影響力正迅速減弱。同時委內瑞拉現在正陷入一場動盪的金融和政治危機，通脹率高達56%，這絕非偶然。

For now, Russia is avoiding such a fate. The E.U.'s hands are tied so long as it needs Russian gas to keep the power on. The U.K. foreign secretary's suggestion this week that the E.U. will purchase more gas from the U.S. wasn't much of a threat while the infrastructure needed to get liquefied natural gas across the Atlantic is still lacking. The best anyone could suggest was Poland's idea that E.U. member countries pool their bargaining power and jointly negotiate gas contracts with Russia.

俄羅斯目前暫時避免了這種命運。只要歐洲還需要俄羅斯的天然氣發電，歐盟(EU)就難以對俄羅斯採取什麼措施。英國外交大臣本週表態稱，歐盟將從美國購買更多的天然氣，這話還沒有太大的威脅，原因是目前仍缺乏跨越大西洋輸送液化天然氣的基礎設施。最好的建議就是波蘭提出的辦法，即集合歐盟成員國的議價能力，聯合起來共同與俄羅斯談判天然氣合約。

But Russia's belligerence in Ukraine will inspire an acceleration in the upgrade of production infrastructure elsewhere. What better reason to open up hydraulic fracturing, or fracking -- the technology behind the U.S. shale revolution -- in hitherto inaccessible gas fields in Eastern Europe and the U.K.? And there's now greater incentive to build the liquefaction and re-gasification plants, along with the shipping ports and vessels, that will transport U.S. LNG into Europe's power generation plants.

但俄羅斯在烏克蘭問題上的好戰性將促使世界其他地區加快升級能源生產設施。要在東歐和英國迄今尚難以開採的天然氣田採用美國頁岩氣革命所用的水力壓裂技術，這是再好不過的理由了。同時，現在修建液化再氣化工廠以及運輸口岸和船隻的理由也更充分了，這些設施將把美國的液化天然氣輸送到歐洲的發電廠。

Such advances could quickly challenge Russia's closed model of economic and political power. With energy export revenues shrinking, speculators would attack the ruble, eventually running Moscow's sizable foreign-currency reserves dry and forcing a depreciation that provokes defaults by Russian companies on their dollar-based loans. Much like 1998, wealthy Russians would again flee into dollars, euros or pounds, and inflation would return along with economic and political chaos.

這類技術進步可能很快對俄羅斯封閉的經濟和政治權力模式形成挑戰。隨着能源出口收入的下降，投機者將會攻擊俄羅斯盧布，最終讓莫斯科龐大的外匯儲備趨於枯竭，並迫使盧布貶值，這會引起俄羅斯企業的美元貸款違約。與1998年的情形一樣，俄羅斯的富人將再次通過搶購美元、歐元或英鎊來規避風險，俄羅斯也將重新受到通脹的衝擊，並再次陷入經濟和政治動盪。

These changes won't happen overnight. But this is exactly the path that Mr. Putin is laying out.

這些變化不會一夜之間就出現。但這正是普京現在安排的道路。