中国崛起，澳大利亚春寒料峭

　 中国崛起，澳大利亚春寒料峭

　简介

　中国在太平洋地区崭露锋芒，对澳大利亚的矿产工业展开一系列收购，澳大利亚国内众说纷纭。

　外人们总是把澳大利亚与袋鼠、宽边皮凉帽和歌剧院联系在一起，但是澳大利亚本地人却不这么干。他们的心之所系是他们与生俱来的富国之本——深埋地下的宝贵矿产：铁矿、铝土、黄铜和煤，还有镍、黄金和铀。?

　这就解释了为何中国宣布今年将大量涉足澳洲矿产业的消息使得很多澳大利亚人捶胸顿足。

　自从三家中国国有企业宣称，它们即将收购澳大利亚矿业总值220亿美元的股份（这相当于中国过去3年的投资总和）后，这国家两千多万人民中的一些对此报之以愤愤不平的国家主义态度。

　澳大利亚总理陆克文倾向于支持这笔交易，这使他甚至被支持者批评成“对中国太过掉以轻心”。反对派们更是鼓吹一个恐怖的幽灵的存在——他们觉得澳大利亚在未来会成为一个巨大的露天煤矿，他们的人民胼手胝足做牛做马，而北京却坐享其成。

　“那可是中华‘共产主义’人民共和国，百分之百由共产主义分子控制，他们把我们的国土和地下的矿产都买下来，接着再卖给他们自己。”议会中的国家党领袖巴那比－乔伊斯（Barnaby Joyce）如是说，“然后我们将会靠着一点佣金糊口。他们肯定会对我们尽可能一毛不拔。”

　但是，就在第一笔交易完成的几个月后，之前尖锐的反对意见渐渐被另一种隐约的不安气氛所替代——新的中国巨人正在崭露锋芒，而伴随着它的崛起，澳大利亚虽不寻常却长期稳定的地缘政治格局是否会由此改变？

　在这方面，澳大利亚并不孤独。从菲律宾到越南，中国的远郊近邻们一直在重新盘算生存于一个新晋统治势力的羽翼下的好处——以及潜在的风险。

　一直以来，澳大利亚这样一个综合了英国殖民统治、美国精神和欧洲懒散的生活方式的国家是西方世界针对东方势力的前哨站。但是似乎一夜之间，中国成为了澳大利亚最大的贸易伙伴，最大的游客输出国之一，最大的国债和主要的土地不动产买家。

　出于对钢铁的饥渴，中国吞下了澳大利亚一半的铁矿石出口份额，而且中国的纺织工厂买下了澳大利亚过半的出口羊毛。超过12万的中国留学生在澳大利亚求学。

　尽管比起英美长期积蓄的投资，中国的购买量还是相形见绌，但是它正在奋起直追。

　与此同时，澳大利亚人们突然回过头，发现他们对他们最好的新朋友还所知甚少，甚至不太信任。

　“势头已经从全盘接受转到对这些贸易展开思索的阶段，”悉尼大学国际安全研究中心主任阿兰－杜邦（Alan DuPont）说到，“这不仅仅是关乎于中澳之间。这也是世界对中国将来会如何扮演一个大国的角色的观察。”

　这不是一个新生事物。早在一百多年前，澳大利亚人就忍受过被渴望工业原料的日不落帝国奴役的痛苦；在20世纪中叶，他们曾为会不会成为美国的附属国而惶惶不可终日。当上世纪70年代“大和公司”们抢购澳大利亚企业时，对于东京的猜疑曾如野火燎原一般在人们心中蔓延开来。

　而英美两国后来被证明是良好的合作伙伴，日本在留下一付烂摊子之后灰溜溜地走了。现在，澳大利亚人正在问：中国会是怎么样的呢？

　从一方面来看，中国肯定会有所不同。若是西方公司，就算对澳大利亚的资源再虎视眈眈如饥似渴，它们并不受本国政府的直接指挥。而中国的资源公司大部分都在政府的控制之下。

　中国有11.5万家国有企业，而个中翘楚——超过150家的大型企业是被中央政府控制的。这些企业涵盖采矿、钢铁、金融、通信和其他支柱产业，也像西方企业一样追求利润。政府管理它们，为它们指派高层，评估它们的业绩。但是总的来说，这些企业认为共产党的领导不至于干涉商业策略。

　就算那是千真万确的，但由于中国长期坚持国有企业在支柱产业的核心地位，国家利益和企业利益之间的界线已经变得模棱两可。

　以钢铁为例。中国是世界第一产钢大国，但是矿石原料大量依靠进口。这就让人怀疑中国可能会收购矿业公司来帮助维持稳定的矿石价格。

　但是如果中国为了维持矿石价格稳定而展开工作，那就可能会导致它的钢铁生产企业比澳大利亚采矿企业获利更多。近几个月，这话题刚开始引人关注，因为中国最大的钢铁生产企业由于价格太高而拒绝从澳大利亚进口矿石。

　另一个问题是，中国的战略投资——例如对美国国债的收购——会不会有朝一日从经贸活动转变成为一个施加外交影响的渠道？

　中国人参与了三家澳大利亚矿业公司的收购竞标——福泰思科金属（Fortescue Metals）、澳兹矿业（OZ Minerals）和力拓（Rio Tinto）。他们密切地关注着事情的进展。目前为止，一切还是扑朔迷离。

　其中最小的一宗交易，8.4亿美元收购深陷泥潭的铁矿开采公司——福泰思科金属的部分股权，很快取得了澳大利亚监管部门的批准。但是作为针对海外投资的最后一道防线，澳大利亚外国投资审查委员会否决了18亿美元收购澳兹矿业（世界第二大锌矿公司）部分股份的计划。其中原因乃是澳大利亚军方认为中国可能会利用这个机会，针对离澳兹矿井不远的一个航空实验基地展开间谍活动。在剔除那个有嫌疑的矿井——那是澳兹矿业主要资产之———以后，这个简化方案终于被批准。

　但是引起最大忧虑的，还是中铝195亿美元收购力拓的股份、债券和开采权的计划。这是中国有史以来对外国公司的最大单笔投资。

　中铝在2008年收购了力拓9.3％的股份，试图在力拓因为经济危机而陷入低谷时掌握更多股份。如果今年的方案一经通过，那中国即将拥有这家世界第三大矿业公司18.5％的股份。

　明确声明了它的独立性。中铝的澳大利亚发言人做出回应说：“中铝以商业实体的身份运作，与中国的政治进程无关。”

　很多澳大利亚专家赞成这个说法。前澳大利亚驻北京大使、本人也是一家金矿公司的老板的罗斯－伽纳特（Ross Garnaut）在一次接收采访时表示，现代中国企业其实只是名义上的国营，事实上他们就像西方公司一样，激烈竞争，追逐利润。

　他还说到：“如果你觉得中铝那样的铝业巨头会为了增加它在钢铁业的竞争对手的利益而自毁长城，那你对中国大型企业之间的动态关系简直是一无所知。”另外，就算是澳大利亚自己的反垄断组织也认为中国没有能力影响铁矿石——力拓的主要产品——的价格。

　关于中国的意图，尽管其他专家有许多不同意见，一个在上海的澳大利亚生意掮客保罗－加森（Paul Glasson）注意到中国的国内储备仅仅能够充足供应45种战略矿物中的一半多一点。而到了2020年，将会只有6种战略矿物需求能够得到很好的满足。

　“作为一个有13亿人口的国家，面临着复杂的局势，又有着这样的资源短缺，政府避重就轻把责任都转移到国有企业身上的举动是否明智，这需要打一个问号。”他说，“如果到时候上面不知道下级在干什么，反而会让事情更糟。”

　加森先生说公有制其实很有好处，比如更深厚的经济实力，以及更远大的战略眼光。他觉得北京对于国营企业的不作为正在制造一个巨大的问题。

　事实上，就算能顺利完成收购，中铝也只是占据了力拓董事会17席中的2席。而且它还得在发生与力拓的利益矛盾时牺牲己方的好处。

　出席4月力拓年会的股东们对中国的收购也没有太大反应，他们只是抱怨为何把资产甩卖给一个有明显利益冲突的政府买家。在中铝和力拓达成协议后，力拓的股价一路飘红，也证明了中铝精明地抄了一回经济危机的底。股价越上升，人们越无暇顾及中铝的收购。

　但一些机构投资者表示他们会反对收购，因为就算监管部门批准，收购还需要股东的同意。这就又意味着一些问题。

　陆克文总理的支持者表示，来自中国的投资为澳大利亚经济注入大量资金，创造了新的贸易机会。但是反对意见表示，陆克文在帮北京做成这笔生意。有小道消息宣称在去年北京奥运期间陆克文的笔记本电脑被中国黑客入侵，而且他的国防部长也被曝光收了一份来自一名和中国军方有密切联系的中国朋友的礼物。

　这些“指控”四处蔓延，连澳大利亚军方都把中国当成是潜在的敌手。一项新签署的国防战略透露了澳大利亚自二战以来最大规模的军队建设。究其源头，还是因为中国在经济和军事上的崛起，以及美国在太平洋地区的日渐衰落。

　最近，一个富有的澳大利亚商人——著名的乔伊斯先生，反对派的领袖——开始了一场抵制中铝收购案的电视广告闪电战。主旨就是澳大利亚正在把它的矿藏卖给一个不以澳大利亚的国家利益为优先的“外国政府”。这不可能影响到监管部门的审议，但是却给陆克文政府的焦虑火上浇油——他们也已经意识到这个问题。

　陆克文，作为一个会说普通话的前驻北京外交官，对解决此事帮助甚微。经过在澳大利亚首都堪培拉秘密会见中国宣传部长之后，他为中国在全球金融地位上的提升而在G20伦敦经济会议上四处游说，使得他被冠以中国的“巡回大使”的绰号。

　陆克文对谣言采取置之不理的态度，但是似乎仍然有鲠在喉：在伦敦峰会，他的工作人员悄悄地询问，能不能在电视直播期间不把他的位置安排在中国驻澳大利亚大使旁边。（后来这个要求被拒绝了）

　澳大利亚外国投资委员会表示将使用额外的60天来考虑中铝的收购案。希望澳大利亚人的心理不适会通过设置这些障碍而减弱一些。到了5月，另一家中国国营企业，中国有色，将试图以1.84亿美元收购利纳斯公司（Lynas Corporation）51.6％的股份。

　利纳斯是一家稀土矿业公司，也因为全球经济危机而处于资金短缺的状况。评论界很快注意到，中国有色在“世界上最压抑的国家”——缅甸运作着大型镍矿和铁矿，同时把金矿开采扩展到了朝鲜。

　“利纳斯即将成为一个在缅甸晒干草的集团的一员，政府能够接受这个事实么？”一个在澳洲主要报纸之一工作的澳大利亚人问，“关于投资道德的规定上哪去了？”

　中铝的高层可能要为中国有色糟糕的收购时机而懊恼——中铝在缅甸也有贸易。但是另一方面，这恰恰能成为说明中国政府并没有成为企业策略的幕后推手的有力证据。

　不过，至少有一名中铝的高管不用为这事费心。2008和2009收购力拓计划的总设计师，原中铝公司总经理肖亚庆已经在三月份进入了一个为全中国设置政策的团队——调任国务院副秘书长。

　Australia, Nourishing China’s Economic Engine, Questions Ties

　Glenn Hunt

　The Rio Tinto mining company. A Chinese company has bid for $19.5 billion Rio Tinto stock.

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　By MICHAEL WINES

　Published: June 2, 2009

　SYDNEY, Australia — If outlanders tend to associate Australia with kangaroos, broad-brim leather hats and an opera house, many Australians are different. They think of iron ore and bauxite, copper and coal, nickel, gold and uranium, a trove of mineral riches that is their nation’s birthright and the bedrock of its prosperity.

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　Uneasy Engagement

　Seller's Remorse

　This is the first in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China's emergence as a global power.

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　Australia’s Economy Grew in Last Quarter (June 2, 2009)

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　Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg News

　Australia vetoed part of a $1.8 billion bid for Oz, a large zinc miner, because the military raised the prospect of Chinese espionage at an Oz mine not far from an aerospace test site.

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　Which explains much of the breast-beating that has ensued since the Chinese announced plans this year to buy a big chunk of it.

　Since three state owned Chinese companies said they would buy stakes in Australia’s storied mining industry totaling $22 billion — as much as China’s entire investment here in the last three years — some of this nation’s 21.3 million people have reacted with aggrieved nationalism.

　The government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which generally favors the sales, has been savaged as na?vely cozy with China, a view some in his own military appear to share. Opposition politicians have flogged the specter of an Australian future more or less as a giant open-pit mine in which the locals toil, but Beijing takes the profits.

　“It’s the Communist People’s Republic of China, 100 percent Communist-owned, buying up sections of the country and minerals in the ground which they will then sell to the Communist People’s Republic of China,” said Barnaby Joyce, who is a leader of the National Party in Parliament. “And we’re going to live off the commission on the way through. They’ll try to make sure we get as little as possible.”

　But a few months after the first of the deals was announced, a sharp initial backlash has given way to a more subtle queasiness over whether Australia’s place in the region, anomalous but secure for so long, is about to be altered by the new Chinese giant looming over its horizon.

　Nor is Australia alone. From the Philippines to Vietnam, China’s neighbors are recalculating the benefits — and potential deficits — of life in the shadow of a newly dominant nation.

　Australia has always been the West’s outpost in the East, the British penal colony with American spunk and European joie de vivre. But seemingly overnight, China has become Australia’s biggest trading partner, one of its biggest tourism customers, the largest single buyer of its government debt, a major buyer of farmland and real estate.

　China’s hunger for steel gobbles up half of Australia’s iron ore exports, and its textile factories buy more than half of Australia’s wool. Over 120,000 Chinese students throng to Australian schools and universities.

　Although China’s purchases remain dwarfed by cumulative investments of the Americans and the British, they are growing much faster.

　And suddenly, Australians are stepping back, realizing that their new best friend is someone they really do not know very well, much less trust.

　“The momentum has shifted from being broadly receptive to these deals to having a hard think at this,” said Alan DuPont, who heads the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. “This is not just about China and Australia. It’s about how the world sees China playing its role in the future as a great power.”

　Surviving Corporate Invasions

　This is not a new question. More than a century ago, Australians fretted about becoming vassals of the resource-hungry British Empire; then, in the mid-1900s, they feared becoming an American subsidiary. When Japan Inc. began snapping up companies in the 1970s, suspicion of Tokyo ran rampant.

　The British and Americans proved good corporate citizens, however, and Japan’s expansion faded amid economic problems. Now, Australians are asking whether China will be different.

　In one way, it assuredly is. Western companies, if at one time equally ravenous for Australia’s resources, are not direct appendages of their national governments. The dominant shareholder in major Chinese resources companies is the Chinese government.

　China has 115,000 state owned companies; the cream are more than 150 giants controlled by the central government. Those corporations — in mining, steel, finance, communications and other crucial areas — seek to make profits much as Western companies do. Government boards audit them, appoint their top executives and evaluate their performance, but in general, the companies insist, Communist Party leaders do not meddle in business strategy.

　Even if that is true, China has long insisted on maintaining state control over companies in crucial industries, blurring the line between national and corporate interests.

　Take steel. China makes more steel than any other nation, but it is highly dependent on iron ore imports to keep its mills humming. That raises suspicions that China may want big stakes in mining companies now to help ensure stable prices in the future.

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　But if China works to keep iron ore prices stable, that might benefit steel producers more than it does Australian mining companies. That concern has only grown in recent months, as China’s largest steel producers have rejected as insufficient offers of lower prices from Australian mining companies.

　There is also the question of whether China’s stake in strategic industries — like its investment in United States Treasury bonds — could one day morph from a business deal to an instrument of diplomatic influence.

　The Chinese bids for parts of the three Australian mining companies — Fortescue Metals, Oz Minerals and Rio Tinto Ltd. — have been raptly watched for Australia’s answers. So far, they are mixed.

　The smallest deal, an $840 million bid for part of Fortescue, a struggling iron ore miner, won Australian regulators’ quick approval. But Australia’s foreign investments review board, the central gatekeeper for overseas purchases, vetoed part of a $1.8 billion bid for Oz, the world’s second largest zinc miner. The reason: Australia’s military raised the prospect of Chinese espionage at an Oz mine not far from an aerospace test site. A pared-down deal was approved after the suspect mine, the core of Oz Minerals’ assets, was excised from the deal.

　But it is the proposed purchase by the Aluminum Company of China, or Chinalco, of $19.5 billion in Rio Tinto stock, bonds and mining rights — China’s biggest investment in a foreign company — that has caused the most angst.

　Chinalco, which bought 9.3 percent of Rio Tinto in 2008, proposed taking a larger stake after the global economic collapse drove Rio into financial straits. If approved, the new investment would give China an 18.5 percent share of the world’s third largest mining company.

　Chinalco unequivocally asserts its independence. “Chinalco operates as a commercial entity, at arm’s length from Chinese political processes,” the company’s Australian spokesman said in a written response to questions.

　Many Australian experts agree. Modern Chinese corporations are state-run in name only, Ross Garnaut, an economist, former Australian ambassador to Beijing and himself the head of a gold-mining company, said in an interview. In practice, he said, they are just like their Western counterparts — fiercely competitive, and focused on profit.

　“You don’t know anything about the dynamics of relations between major corporations in China if you think a major aluminum company like Chinalco would sacrifice its profits to increase profits for one of its rivals in the steel industry,” he said. Even Australia’s antitrust regulators have concluded that the Chinese would be unable to influence the price of iron ore, a crucial Rio Tinto product, were the Rio deal to go through.

　Intentions Arouse Suspicions

　Yet other experts have a much different view of China’s intentions. Paul Glasson, a Shanghai-based Australian who brokers deals between Chinese and Australian businesses, notes that China’s domestic reserves can meet demand for fewer than half of 45 strategic minerals. By 2020, it will have sufficient supplies of only six.

　“In a nation of 1.3 billion people, with the complex issues they face, with such resource deprivation, would it be wise for the government to abdicate that responsibility to S.O.E.’s?” he asked, using the abbreviation for state owned enterprises. “Claiming the head doesn’t know what the body is doing just makes the situation difficult.”

　Mr. Glasson says state ownership actually brings advantages — among them, deep pockets and a focus beyond the next quarterly statement — that any merger partner might find attractive. But Beijing’s denial of a role in its state owned companies, he said, is creating a credibility problem.

　In fact, Chinalco would be very much a junior partner if the Rio deal were to go through, with just two seats on a 17-seat board of directors. Chinalco would have to recuse itself from any Rio issues that posed a conflict of interest.

　Chinalco would also not be able to guarantee a supply of ore to other Chinese companies, although the companies envision new efforts to market iron and aluminum ore inside China.

　Shareholders at Rio’s annual meeting in April were unimpressed. They denounced the proposed deal as a fire sale of assets to a government buyer whose interests were starkly at odds with their own. As if to underscore the point, Rio’s share price has risen sharply since the Chinalco agreement was announced, suggesting that Chinalco shrewdly struck a deal at the nadir of the financial crisis. With every gain in Rio’s stock price, the Chinalco deal looks less attractive.

　Some institutional investors have suggested that they will oppose the bid, which requires shareholder approval, even if regulators approve it this year. And that seems in some question.

　Allies of Prime Minister Rudd argue that increased Chinese investment pumps money into Australia’s economy and opens new trade opportunities. But Mr. Rudd’s opponents say he does Beijing’s bidding. Among a drip of well-timed news leaks were claims that Chinese spies sought to hack into Mr. Rudd’s laptop during last year’s Olympic Games, and that his defense minister had failed to disclose gifts from a Chinese friend with ties to Beijing’s military establishment.

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　Those allegations have been flying even as the Australian military has become more focused on China as a potential rival. A newly issued defense strategy proposes the biggest Australian military buildup since World War II, driven in part by a forecast of rising Chinese economic and military power, and a slow American fade in the Pacific.

　And recently, a wealthy Australian businessman began a television advertising blitz opposing the Rio-Chinalco deal, featuring Mr. Joyce, an opposition leader. The theme — that Australia is selling its mineral wealth to a “foreign government” that may not have Australians’ interest foremost — is unlikely to affect regulators’ deliberations. But it stokes a larger disquiet of which Mr. Rudd’s government is acutely aware.

　Mr. Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking ex-diplomat in Beijing, has not helped his cause: after an unannounced meeting with China’s propaganda minister in Canberra, Australia’s capital, he lobbied for a greater Chinese role in global finance at the Group of 20 economic meeting in London, leading critics to dub him China’s “roving ambassador.”

　Mr. Rudd shrugged off the gibes, but seemed stung: in London, his staff quietly asked that he not be seated next to Beijing’s ambassador to Australia during a television broadcast (the request was refused).

　Australia’s foreign investments board has given itself an additional 60 days to consider the Chinalco-Rio deal. But hopes that some of Australians’ unease might ebb during that breather took a hit in May, when another state owned Chinese company, China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group, proposed a $184 million purchase of 51.6 percent of another miner, Lynas Corporation.

　Lynas, which mines rare-earth minerals, also has been left short of cash by the global economic crisis. Critics were quick to note that China Nonferrous operates huge nickel and iron ore mines in Myanmar, widely denounced as one of the world’s most repressive nations, and has extensive gold-mining operations in North Korea.

　“So Lynas would become part of a group which makes hay in Burma. Can the government live with that?” The Australian, one of the nation’s major newspapers, asked. “What are the rules about ethical investments?”

　The executives at Chinalco, which also has operations in Myanmar, might be expected to rue the bad timing of China Nonferrous. On the other hand, it could be promoted as evidence that the government does not stage-manage corporate strategy.

　But at least one Chinalco executive no longer has those worries. The company’s chairman, Xiao Yaqing, the architect of both the 2008 and 2009 purchases of Rio assets, left the company in March after being promoted — to deputy head of the State Council, the team of cabinet ministers that sets policy for all China.