中国的软实力--腐败文化如何威胁美国主权
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Hidden Agenda: How China's Culture Of Corruption Threatens U.S. Sovereignty
----Eamonn Fingleton（ Irish journalist and author）
“Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” The old adage accurately sums up what an epochal farce the United States has made of its “strategic partnership” with China.
As recent reports of China’s culture of graft make clear, the Chinese and American systems are not exactly compatible. Whereas America strives to stamp out corruption (with varying degrees of success, of course), corruption in China is not only considered a fact of life but in some ways is actually encouraged by the Chinese authorities.
All this is lost on America’s culturally blind mainstream media but for anyone who knows East Asia it is obvious. The Confucian model of authoritarian control works by a principle I call “selective enforcement.” The idea is that while a lot of things are nominally illegal, within accepted limits the law is irrelevant – provided only you don’t rock the boat on larger issues of more concern to the authorities. Thus in China, things like routine bribery, price fixing, and tax evasion are just business as usual, and in normal circumstances no one raises an eyebrow. The authorities, however, retain the right to crack down – and crack down hard – on anyone who is considered to be making a nuisance of himself on issues of national policy. Those who might dare to challenge China’s covertly mercantilist trade policy, for instance, are putting their heads in the dragon’s jaws, and the law will be enforced selectively against them.
The most highly publicized case of selective enforcement right now is that of Bo Xilai, the former top official who was arraigned in court last week for, among other charges, accepting huge bribes. More about him in a moment but first let’s consider Beijing’s usual suspects: foreign corporations with investments in China. Their interests are by definition not precisely aligned with China’s. For a start they may want to repatriate some of their Chinese profits. Worse, they may want to sell goods in China that – horrors! – were not made there. Worse still, they may complain to their home governments that the Chinese market is not (shall we whisper this?) fully open to imports. In such instances, the mere hint that the law might be selectively enforced against them is generally effective in getting the foreigners to back off.
Threats work particularly with U.S. corporations, which even by the spineless standards of other foreign corporations are easy marks. Unlike their Japanese, Korean, and continental European counterparts, they are under relentless pressure to deliver quarterly results and hate anything that might, even momentarily, upset their earnings applecart. A further problem is that they are bound by the extraterritorial reach of American law, most notably the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act but also anti-trust law. Disclosure of any of the more controversial maneuvers they have to resort to to drum up business in China automatically gets them into trouble with U.S. law. (As I have pointed out many times, Japanese corporations are far more successful in selling to China: one advantage the Japanese enjoy is they are in no way restrained by any Japanese equivalent of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)
A major irony is that a sanctimonious American press can always be relied on to do Beijing’s business in lambasting any foreign corporation that gets caught in the selective-enforcement spider’s web. A current example is Eli Lilly which has been accused of giving kickbacks to Chinese doctors. European pharmaceutical companies that are facing similar allegations include Paris-based Sanofi, Basel-based Novartis, and London-based GlaxoSmithKline (disclosure: I own stock in Glaxo). Again, pace the Western press, the issue seems to be merely selective enforcement.
An even more striking example of the injustice of all this is JPMorgan Chase, which is under investigation by, of all things, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for hiring Chinese “princelings” – sons and daughters of key Chinese officials. The strategy is a standard way for foreign corporations to avoid giving outright bribes to top officials. But the point here is that if this is all Morgan has gotten up to in China, by comparison with other U.S. investment banks it is squeaky clean. In reality probably the only reason the SEC is going after Morgan is because it has been spoon-fed information by trolls acting for the Beijing establishment. In other words, this is just a variant of the standard selective enforcement gambit but with Beijing using American institutions to discipline an uppity American entity. (Is this the same SEC that for years turned a blind eye to dozens of so-called Red Chip scams, in which fraudulently run US-listed Chinese corporations were allowed to bilk U.S. investors?)
Looking to the future, the selective enforcement principle offers Beijing almost limitless opportunities to control American business and finance. The implications for Wall Street in particular are obvious to anyone who reads between the lines. Wall Street has long been Beijing’s principal mouthpiece in shaping China-friendly policies in Washington. The erstwhile self-styled “masters of the universe” now glory in a role as sniveling collaborators with one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes. It is an arrangement that works for both Wall Street and China. The only ones left out are the American people.
Now for Bo Xilai. The mainstream media are right that this is a show trial but it is a show trial with a difference. While the conventional wisdom is that things will end badly for him, my guess is that he is going to be shown mercy. The true reasons for his fall from grace are far from clear (and much of the official story is highly implausible, not least the role played by his wife). The only reasonable guess is that there is something in the background that has not come out and probably never will. He will probably have to serve some token jail sentence but will certainly escape the death penalty, which has often in the past been invoked in similar bribery cases. My upbeat view is based mainly on the Chinese authorities’ rather elaborate public relations approach. If they were planning to put a bullet in the back of his head or give him life in prison, they would have minimized the publicity build-up. Instead they have granted the foreign media everything short of seats in the courthouse. It seems clear that Beijing wants the West to view this as a Western-style trial in which, contrary to all tradition throughout East Asia, the defendant really has been given his day in court. Bo has played his part to perfection as a flawed but far-from-villainous character. Importantly he seems in his testimony to have said nothing that would truly rock the boat. He may have to go to appeal to get leniency but he will get it — and a carefully choreographed show trial will end with the West concluding that the Chinese legal system is moving in a Westerly direction. It won’t be true — but that’s public relations and Beijing is increasingly g
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