陶短房：白宫否认伊万卡出任世行行长，那下一任究竟会是谁？

文 | 全球化智库（CCG）特邀研究员陶短房

Laurence Brahm: We have a smaller planet

By Laurence Brahm, a senior research fellow at CCG What are the differences between Chinese and Westerners in terms of their life attitude? I think those differences are becoming less and less, as there are more and more similarities. Those similarities are a factor of communication, trade, globalizing ideas, and the fact that we are having more global integration among more countries and cultures. You find Chinese people here drinking red wine and eating Western food. You go to America, and you find people eating Chinese food, Japanese food, Thai food and so on. You see Westerners learning traditional Asian martial arts. Now in the gyms trending across China, you see Chinese learning mixed martial arts fighting and Western boxing. The truth is that we have a smaller planet. This is a whole different era today. Chinese are all over the world. They are buying the international brands and, in many ways, driving the consumption of those brands. They have no barriers and no surprises. It’s not about seeing the foreigners, as they’ve seen the world. And they are bringing a lot of those ideas back, just like during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when Chang’an was the melting pot and everything was coming in. In many ways, China’s major cities today, and now the second-tier cities, are melting pots. All kinds of international influences are coming in and mixing with Chinese culture in this kind of fusion complex, which has always really been the foundation of China’s own unique culture. It takes, it absorbs, it brings things together and it makes them uniquely Chinese. What’s happening is that we see more communication. With that, we will have more understanding, and a breakdown of barriers and stereotypes. You can enjoy my world, yes, and I can enjoy your world. In that sense, our world is smaller. What’s very important is if we can work together to save that world against the costs and threats of climate change, of human-induced pollution. Remember, this planet is just a little spaceship orbiting in a huge universe. We all have to work together to steer it in the right direction. While China was struggling with complete scarcity in the past, it is now one of the biggest buyers of luxury goods. Has the accumulation of wealth brought changes to the Chinese people’s value system? There’s a concept in economics called conspicuous consumption. When people suddenly have money, they want to show it. I remember when I just came to China in 1981, this was an economy of scarcity. There was nothing. You had money, but there was nothing to buy. Slowly with investment, with trade, with integration with the rest of the world, they began to have things. In the 80s, they began to have electronics, and they filled their homes with refrigerators, washing machines and things that they never had before. Previously, people had to buy their food that day to cook for that day, because there were no refrigerators. At the end of the 80s, people’s homes were filled with electronics. It was not about being able to meet their needs; it was about wanting to show others that they had accumulated their wealth. Then they began the cycle of brand buying and showing off wealth -- who has the bigger house, or who has the bigger car. But that’s not the narrative of the young generation in China today. I’ve seen more young Chinese as hippies in Nepal and India. They see the world differently from their parents. Today’s youth in China are coming up with really creative ideas and having a whole different vision of values, and of presenting those values not through conspicuous consumption, but alternative styles. The whole vision of the Chinese future is changing very rapidly with the new generation. You can’t lock onto the old conspicuous consumption and say that is China. That was China. But now with the millennial generation, and younger, it’s changing really fast. One of the things that’s happening now is that, with more and more foreign students coming to China and more Chinese students going abroad, a lot of the barriers that existed in the old generations are coming down, and they are coming down quite quickly. It’s one thing to read about China in the newspaper, or to see it on the news. It’s another thing to have gone to China to study, to work, to live, to be with people and to make friends locally. It’s this type of people-to-people communication. If it can be brought to the level of politicians, there will be no trade wars, and there will be no conflicts. It’s not a question of integrating Chinese culture with the world’s culture, or vice versa. I think it’s a question of expanding the bandwidth of understanding. The more we understand something, the less we are afraid of it. Fear arises from lack of understanding. Fear arises from the unknown. If we know, then we are not afraid. One of the things that happens to somebody when they leave their culture and live in another culture is that they evolve into that culture. You have in many ways a whole generation now of hybrid cultures and fusion cultures. I’d like to think of us as global nomads. We are international citizens who don’t necessarily belong to one culture or another. Hopefully we can embrace many cultures, and in that respect, bring our planet a little closer together. About Author  Laurence Brahm, a senior research fellow at Center for China and Globalization(CCG), an author of Zhu Rongji and the Transformation of Modern China.

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Laurence Brahm: Can Kung Fu Panda as ’Dragon warrior’ save the planet?

By Laurence Brahm, a senior research fellow at CCG The cartoon movie Kung Fu Panda portrays a character who, from his outside appearance, seems uncoordinated because of his enormous size. However, when Kung Fu Panda focuses his determination, he can become agile and swift, surprising everyone by his speed of his action. Sound familiar? At each stage of China’s economic reforms, it had to step forward away from its sheer weight carried from the past, and its massive population. When its leaders determined to achieve something, somehow the central system of the nation fell in line, and change inevitably followed. Author calls for green energy as the next business and financial mega trend at a climate conference in 2015. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]   The draft policy document on ecological civilization drafted by myself and Zhu Yanlai was submitted to China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and also to Li Wei, former personal secretary to Zhu Rongji. Li was now the minister heading the State Council Economic Development Research Center, the foremost economic think tank of the premier. He endorsed the need to expand the still nascent concept of ecological civilization into an elaborated policy that could unlock the perceived contradiction between environmental protection and economic growth. With his support of this idea, the document and project was taken over by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, where I was soon appointed senior adviser.  Simultaneously to the European Union’s Environmental Director General on China’s green growth policies under a China-EU Dialogues framework agreement supported research teams involving both European and Chinese energy experts. Why EU’s involvement? Europe has some of the most advanced technology on renewable energy and green finance. However, the population of most European countries is smaller than many of China’s big cities. By combining European technology with China’s scale of production and infrastructural rollout, costs of renewable energy could come down drastically. Working with the ministry of Environmental Protection Strategic Policy Research Institute, we condensed the Ecological Civilization Sixteen Measures into a five-pillar framework. This framework was not based on any Western model, but rather, on a traditional Chinese matrix called the Five Elements consisting of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth (Jin Mu Shui Huo Tu). The five pillars include 1) “Earth” state infrastructure investment into renewables and smart transport (the “Great Green Grid”), 2) “Water” fiscal and credit policy to guide businesses in adopting renewable and efficient energy, 3) “Metal” replacing GDP with a broader, more inclusive, set of measures, 4) “Wood” a macro-coordinating policy body to provide a structural framework coordinating genuine green growth among ministries, 5) “Fire” education to transition values toward conservation. Core to the success of this policy transition would be creating a fresh awareness among Chinese people that all things are connected and that we need new measures of success and pride other than material ones. At the Ministry of Finance, one official commented quite frankly. “China should use economic crisis as opportunity and get rid of outdated enterprises and push green." He then added, "The current generation of government officials knows that this needs to be done. The Great Green Grid is a bigger challenge than the reforms of 1980s and 1990s.” With carefully guided state policy, things can happen in China quickly. This requires political willpower. As a managed market, ultimately a political decision is required to put in place the right policies that can guide market forces to make wind and solar power competitive with fossil fuels. By 2013, China’s new President, Xi Jinping, had officially pronounced the concept of "ecological civilization" and called for quality rather than quantity growth. They wanted to project a non-theory-based pragmatic set of alternatives. When Rob Parenteau, an independent financial adviser based in San Francisco, heard of the green growth policy proposals underway for China, he wrote the following: "Yes, and with the banking system essentially an extension of their fiscal policy, they [China] have the capacity to drive down the unit costs of production and push out the technological frontier on green tech. Done right, they could end up owning the 21st century industries while correcting their own growth path toward one more sustainable than the current suicidal one. Meanwhile, in the US, we will be debating whether we can afford to saddle future generations with the horrible curse of public debt…which is actually an asset held by households… that can help finance the construction and implementation of public assets... that improve the profitability and prospects for the business sector as well as lower future cost trajectories. Solarize all public buildings in the southern half of the US and insulate all government buildings in the northern half, as an opening Green New Deal. Create jobs, teach skills, and scale up demand to drive down unit costs. Or wait until the Chinese own the whole thing.” Whether in North America or Europe, Asia or Africa, a plethora of renewable energy and energy saving industries will need to replace our old existing systems. With the potential to roll out a spectrum of new employment opportunities for both white and blue collar, in sectors ranging from finance, engineering, environmental science, transportation, and infrastructure. Does Washington really want change? Does it want to evolve and lead renewable and efficient energy as a mega trend and the next driver of global growth? Or will Washington politicians sit back and let others take the lead as its economy declines further because it is fossilized in old ways and ideological debates? The problem is that America is locked in a political stalemate that defies rationality. The politics have become like the economics, ideological, not pragmatic, only black and white, without any room for grey. Regardless of which side you take, Democrat or Republican, the result is that views are stagnant and entrenched--one side votes opposite the other side just for the sake of it. It is no longer logical politics, but that kind of vindictiveness that comes about when nobody has an answer but everyone wants somebody to blame. So the strategy is to blame the other side. It has just become an knee-jerk reaction, which means that any form of logic-like, let’s try to avoid a crisis rather than just react to another one-is off the game board altogether. Even NiccolòMachiavelli, if he could see this mess, would throw up his hands and tell the Prince to call it a day. There is just nothing you can do with these guys. So maybe at the end of the day, through ecological civilization, Kung Fu Panda as Dragon Warrior will save the planet. With massive programs for renewable and efficient energy, together with smart transport on a scale never before seen, green energy investments will be the next economic mega trend for the world. In Kung Fu, there’s a concept called external power (Wai Gong) and internal energy (nei gong) involving qi, which is subtle ultimate energy. Transforming the energy systems, smart environmental technology and perspectives of our planet, maybe ecological civilization will be China’s greatest soft power. About Author  Laurence Brahm, a senior research fellow at Center for China and Globalization(CCG), founding director of the Himalayan Consensus.