理查德·沃纳：华盛顿式的“开展”打着比较优势的幌子，就为阻止开展

发布时间：2025-05-06　点此：531次

【文/观察者网专栏作者理查德·沃纳】

我国国家主席习近平于2013年提出了“一带一路”建议，该建议在2017年被写入我国共产党党章。这凸显了“一带一路”对我国的重要含义，一起清晰它是一个长时间性的项目。咱们知道“一带一路”建议对我国很重要，那么它对国际又有何含义呢？

要想了解“一带一路”建议的国际含义，就需求先了解二战后开展我国家的状况。其时构建的布雷顿森林系统，以及其总部设在华盛顿的部属安排国际钱银基金安排和国际银行，在此期间起到了至关重要的效果。

1942年，以美国和英国为首的26国反法西斯同盟将自己从头命名为“联合国”。其间的许多国家，首要包含苏联、我国、英国及其殖民地以及美国及其殖民地等国，在新罕布什尔州布雷顿森林的一个高档高尔夫沙龙度假村举办会议。在那里，他们正式拟定了战后以美元为中心的新国际钱银系统的相关方案。

这一系统开端要求一切钱银与美元坚持固定汇率，而美元自身能够按规定汇率兑换成黄金。这一系统一向保持到52年前，即1971年8月。1960年代，美国中心银行和美国银行很多制作美元，被美国出资者用来收买全球各地的企业、土地和财物，激怒了当地公民。法国开端将自己的美元储藏兑换成黄金，导致美国的黄金储藏下降。跟着法国水兵舰艇不断前往曼哈顿将黄金运回法国，美国时任总统尼克松在1971年8月15日宣告了闻名的声明，宣告美国将“暂停”美元兑换黄金，等于美国违反了布雷顿森林固定汇率系统下的责任。

在这次“尼克松冲击”的一个月前，发生了另一件大事：时任美国总统国家安全业务助理的基辛格成为首个拜访新我国的美国政府高档官员。趁便说一句，虽然基辛格现已年过百岁，但半个多世纪后，他又重访了我国。

基辛格初次访华时，美国正面临着交易赤字胀大和政府预算赤字激增的两层问题，后者是由于军事和情报（包含在数十个国家发起战役和政变举动）开销不断添加形成的，前者是由于成功的交易净出口国日本和德国没有想要购买的美国制作产品。

当美国不再答应按固定汇率用美元兑换黄金时，美元估值跌落了。为了保持军事霸权，美国领导人以为有必要阻挠美元跌落，经过德国和日本等国的进口需求找到了解决办法：后者的大部分动力都需求进口。因而，美元从黄金支撑的美元变成了石油支撑的美元，即所谓的“石油美元”。

美国在最大的产油国沙特阿拉伯布置了戎行，并达成了一项协议，即美国将支撑沙特阿拉伯政府和王室，后者作为交换条件赞同只用美元出售石油，并将沙特阿拉伯由此取得的美元储藏的80%出资回美国国债，然后为美国政府供给应对预算赤字的资金，变相为美国的海外战役供给资金。

2021年，在叙利亚油田的美军。（图源：AFP）

德国和日本需求持有美元，以购买经济运转所需的动力。当然，他们也探究了一些代替方案，比方德国逐步开端从苏联进口天然气，由于苏联的天然气供给一向很牢靠。

支撑美元的另一个过程是策划石油价格的大幅上涨，这实质上是将很多资源从制作业强国德国和日本搬运到沙特阿拉伯和美国。为此，基辛格不得不与沙特人斡旋，迫使他们将石油价格举高四倍，这在1974年1月得以完成。

为了搬运人们的视野，并分布油价上涨是由于欧佩克石油禁运的说法，美联储实力范围内的中心银行，包含英格兰央行、日本央行和德国央行，在1971年和1972年一起开端大规模扩展钱银供给，鼓舞银行信贷的张狂扩张，用于房地产投机和消费。

这导致了1970年代的通货胀大，虽然官方的干流说法是通货胀大是战役及其随后的动力禁运形成的。正如基辛格时隔50年再度访华相同，半个世纪后，西方再次企图将最近的通胀甩锅给所谓的“俄罗斯捍卫乌克兰边境新树立共和国的军事举动”，而这实际上是美联储、英格兰央行和欧洲央行共同在2020年3月大规模扩张银行信贷的成果。因而，美国的经济和政治霸权在1970年代得以连续。

与此一起，国际钱银基金安排和国际银行等布雷顿森林安排，被用来办理全球许多国家和公民的去殖民化和独立运动：英国、美国、法国、比利时和荷兰等海外殖民帝国面临着越来越多的当地人要求政治独立的压力。已然这些国家曾在第二次国际大战期间辩称自己是为了自在和民主而与德国奋斗，他们现在很难再延迟在其直接操控下的开展我国家大多数人口的“去殖民化”进程。

非洲去殖民化进程

西方现代“开展经济学”教科书告知咱们，正是这一“去殖民化”进程发明了这门新的学科。这些教科书指出，这门学科在上世纪中叶之前并不存在，之所以创建这门学科，是由于越来越多的前殖民地开端独立。

可是，开展经济学并不是由这些新独立国家的首要思想家创建的！相反，它是由英国和美国的经济学家创建的。这就提醒了“开展经济学”的真实意图：假使殖民国家干流经济学家开设这门英文学科的意图是协助各国和各区域快速开展，从开展我国家位置迈向发达国家队伍，那么这门学科的前史本应与殖民主义一起诞生；关于殖民国家的思想家来说，最合适于刻画一个国家并执行正确政策的机遇，显然是当该国直承受殖民者操控之时。

可是，在几个世纪的殖民控制期间，西方并没有以为需求这样的“开展经济学”，只要当殖民者不得不抛弃对其殖民地的正式政治和军事操控时，他们才会想到这些前殖民地臣民需求考虑怎么开展经济。那么，这些前殖民地凭什么要信任在全面殖民主义年代没有开展自己经济的前殖民主子呢？他们真的应该直接接收殖民主子临别时递给他们的关于怎么开展经济的书本吗？

为了避免前殖民地臣民对“崇高”和“仁慈”的前殖民主子的建议发生抵触情绪，总部设在华盛顿的国际钱银基金安排和国际银行安排使用金钱的力气，使“开展经济学”的新规则更具说服力，他们在发放借款时包含了闻名的“附加条件”。

其他安排，包含美洲开发银行等区域性开发银行、美国国际开发署、经济协作与开展安排（OECD）以及日益具有影响力的欧盟官僚安排，也都在重复和强化华盛顿一致的“开展经济学”。这些华盛顿安排和美国实力范围内的许多其他安排（包含欧洲大部分区域）都在宣传英语“开展经济学”的观念，即各国需求放松控制、实施自在化和私有化，并向外国竞争者开放市场，答应外国出资进入。

他们宣传的首要观念是，经济增加和开展需求很多的金融“储蓄”，假如国家储蓄率低，就能够用国际银行（如国际钱银基金安排和国际银行自身）借给它们的钱作为“外国储蓄”。这使得许多开展我国家债台高筑，外国借款人能够经过“债转股”和其他“协助”它们的安排，垂手可得地取得这些国家的资源。

咱们能够“以成果论英豪”。国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的70余年来，在100多个开展我国家中，没有一个国家经过它们的支撑从开展我国家队伍决断跨进发达国家队伍。这并不古怪，由于前史记录标明，自在交易和自在市场政策从未使一个国家成为经济强国。相反，一切的经济强国都曾实施挑选性交易和工业维护政策，以开展巨大的本乡工业。

国际钱银基金安排（图源：Business Standard）

但这不只是意味着国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的“开展经济学”失利了。乃至能够说，这种经济学是被故意规划出来的，意图是阻挠经济开展，使开展我国家处于依靠状况，使其资源能够被贱价攫取。华盛顿式的“开展”打着“比较优势”的幌子，劝说开展我国家把要点放在低附加值的产品出口上，但由于这些产品的价格相关于高附加值的产品呈长时间下降趋势，因而这些开展我国家会呈现国际收支赤字，有必要借入外国资金，钱银也会疲软，然后导致债款圈套，一起使其资源对发达国家来说变得越来越廉价。

的确也有国家从开展我国家转变为发达国家。可是，按人均收入衡量，只要五个国家或区域决断迈向了发达国家队伍，它们是日本、韩国、新加坡和我国及其区域（包含台湾）。可是，这些国家和区域无视华盛顿形式的“开展经济学”，采取了国际钱银基金安排和国际银行明令禁止的政策，如重生工业维护、工业政策、依靠国内银行信贷发明而非外国钱银，即中心银行对高附加值工业的银行信贷进行“窗口辅导”，一起按捺用于消费和财物购买的银行信贷，然后完成了真实的经济开展。当然，我国比前史上任何其他国家脱节赤贫的人数都要多，这要归功于其违反华盛顿一致“开展经济学”的政策。

1980年代末，日本政府和许多大藏省官员向国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的领导层指出，他们的政策是有缺点的，应该向高增速的东亚经济体学习，以了解怎么快速开展经济。可是，美国在日本、韩国乃至我国台湾区域都有驻军，这意味着他们无法应战或改动美国主导的国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的做法。因而，开展我国际依然笼罩在旨在阻止经济开展的“开展经济学”的阴云之下。

接下来，我国在国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的正式股东大会以及国际峰会和会议上做出了许多真挚的测验，建议应该改动国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的政策，其他国家也应该在国际钱银基金安排和国际银行中具有更大的发言权，由于美国的主导位置现已过期，并且也没有为大多数国家带来经济上的成功。但我国企图改进这一系统的尽力遭到了美国的回绝。

有必要指出的是，我国一向坚持自己共同的开展路途，并不屈服于美国的霸权。我国在上海和北京树立了新开发银行和亚洲基础设施出资银行，并积极参与金砖国家集团。我国还加强了上海协作安排的活动。现在，开展我国家有了不同的挑选，不用再屈服于国际钱银基金安排和国际银行的布雷顿森林系统，承受西方实质上的殖民控制连续。

新开发银行总部（图源：Bb3015）

与华盛顿主导的系统不同，我国不干涉开展我国家的政治，也不强加相似国际钱银基金安排的“条件”，后者的“条件”乃至包含要求修正宪法（如1997年亚洲危机后，国际钱银基金安排对泰国提出的要求）。相反，在“一带一路”建议下，我国将其巨额外汇储藏出资开展我国家的基础设施，直接协助该国开展经济，并促进双边交易和昌盛。

开展我国家对一个没有殖民前史的国家供给的这一代替方案感到感谢。接下来，我国需求像邓小平在国内推进我国经济敏捷兴起那样，建议开展我国家树立许多小型当地银行。这将是代替华盛顿过错的“开展经济学”的终究方案。“开展经济学”以为银行并不重要，并迫使各国将要点放在股市开展上，虽然股市事实上并不会带来经济增加，反而会滋长美国和英国式的赌场资本主义。

我国摒弃了苏联年代单一银行的中心方案准则，将经济决议计划权力下放，由不计其数家当地小银行的数十万名借款人员担任评价数百万小企业和微型企业的借款请求，这让我国巨大的经济取得巨大的收益。这一政策造就了一个强壮且巨大的中产阶级，意味着不平等现象的下降和国家的昌盛，这要归功于一般公民强壮的购买力。而华盛顿的“开展经济学”却使许多十分赤贫的人和一小撮极端赋有的精英受益者之间的距离不断扩展。

“一带一路”建议之所以对国际含义严重，还有另一个原因：跟着石油美元系统的溃散，沙特阿拉伯现在也开端用公民币出售石油，人们越来越期望脱节美国霸权和华盛顿式新殖民主义的高压控制。金砖国家安排和“一带一路”相得益彰，而经过金砖国家安排，现在有望树立一个代替精神萎顿的石油美元的国际钱银系统，促进平和交易与协作，而不需求为之发起石油和动力战役。

以下为英语原文：

The Belt and Road Initiative was launched in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping. In 2017, it became enshrined in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. This underlined the significance of this program for the People’s Republic. It also makes clear that this is a long-term project. So we know that the Belt and Road Initiative is important for China. But how important is it for the world?

To understand the international significance of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, it is necessary to understand what has happened with developing countries in the post-war era, namely under the Bretton Woods system and its Washington-based institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

After the US and UK-led anti-German and anti-Japanese international military alliance of 26 countries, known as “the Allies”, rebranded themselves as “the United Nations” in 1942, the growing number of military allies – largely consisting of the Soviet Union, representatives for China, and Imperial Britain and its colonies, as well as the United States and its colonies – met in a golf club resort for very wealthy guests in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. There they formalised plans of a new international monetary system for the post-war era, at the centre of which was going to be the US dollar.

The system that was decided upon initially operated by using fixed exchange rates against the US dollar, while the dollar itself could be exchanged into gold at an administered exchange rate. This system was to hold up until 52 years ago, namely until August 1971. After a decade of massive US dollar creation by the US central bank and US banks in the 1960s had angered people in countries whose companies, land and other assets had been bought up by US investors, France had insisted on exchanging many of its resulting dollar reserves into gold. US gold reserves declined. As French Navy ships arrived in Manhattan to carry gold back to France, US president Nixon felt prompted to make his famous announcement on 15 August 1971 that the US would “temporarily” suspend dollar convertibility into gold – a US default on its obligations to the members of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system.

One month before this “Nixon shock”, another important event had happened: With US National Security Council member and former Rockefeller employee Henry Kissinger the first visit to China of a senior member of the US government administration to modern China took place – by the way a trip Henry Kissinger has just repeated, more than half a century later, despite his old age of now 100 years.

At the time of his first visit, the US was suffering from the twin problems of a ballooning trade deficit and a surging government budget deficit. The latter had been caused by the rising spending on military and secret service operations, including the wars and regime change operations in dozens of countries. The former was due to the successful exporting and current account surplus nations Japan and Germany failing to find enough attractive US-made goods they wanted to buy.

When the US rescinded its promise to allow the exchange of US dollars into gold at a set exchange rate, the dollar fell and to maintain military hegemony, US leaders felt this fall had to be stopped. The solution was found in the importing needs of countries like Germany and Japan: most of their energy was imported. The US dollar was thus transformed from the gold-backed dollar into the oil-backed dollar, known as the “petro-dollar”.

US troops were deployed in the largest oil producing country, Saudi Arabia, and a deal was made that its government and royal family would be supported by the US, in exchange for the promise to sell oil only against the US dollar, and invest 80% of the resulting abundance in US dollar reserves in Saudi Arabia back into US Treasuries, thus funding the government budget deficit, and with it, the US foreign wars.

Germany and Japan now needed US dollars, in order to be able to buy the energy needed to operate their economies. Of course, some alternatives were explored, namely Germany gradually began to import gas from the Soviet Union, which always delivered reliably.

The other step to underpin the US dollar was to engineer a massive hike in the oil price, which would essentially transfer vast resources from manufacturing powerhouses Germany and Japan to Saudi Arabia and the United States. For this, Henry Kissinger had to arm-twist the Saudis to quadruple the oil price, which happened in January 1974. To divert the attention from the true sequence and cause of these events, as outlined here, and instead spread the narrative that the driving force of events was the OPEC oil embargo, central banks in the sphere of influence of the Federal Reserve, which included the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Bundesbank, had simultaneously set out in 1971 and 1972 to massively expand the money supply by encouraging a grotesque expansion in bank credit, for property speculation and consumption.

This caused the inflation of the 1970s, despite the dominant official narrative that the inflation was the result of a war and its subsequent energy embargo. (Like Henry Kissinger’s visit to China, also this scenario has recurred half a century later: it was not the Russian military operation to defend the newly formed Republics on Ukraine’s borders that caused the inflation of 2021 and 2022, but the massive expansion in bank credit, coordinated by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and ECB and implemented in March 2020).

As a result, US economic and political dominance continued in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the Bretton Woods institutions of the IMF and the World Bank had been used to manage what has been billed as a de-colonisation and movement towards independence of many countries and peoples across the globe: The British, US, French, Belgian and Dutch overseas colonial empires faced increasing demands by locals for political independence. Having argued that their fight in the second world war against Germany was for freedom and democracy, it was now difficult for these countries to delay decolonisation for the majority of the population in the world living in developing countries that were under their direct control.

We are told by modern English-language textbooks in “Development Economics” that it was this de-colonialisation that created a new academic discipline taught at their universities, called “Development Economics”. The development economics textbooks point out that this discipline did not exist until the 1950s and 1960s and it was created, because an increasing number of former colonies were becoming independent.

But development economics was not created by the leading thinkers of those newly independent countries! Instead, it was created by British and US economists. This, then, revealed the true purpose of “Development Economics”: Had the task of this English-language discipline by leading economists in the colonial powers been to teach countries and regions how to rapidly develop and move from developing country status to developed country status, it would be as old as colonialism itself: What better time is there for colonial thinkers to shape a country and implement the right policies that will result in rapid economic development, than when the country is under the control of the colonial masters.

However, during centuries of colonial rule, no need was seen for such “Development Economics”. It was only when the colonial masters had to give up their formal political and military control over their colonies that they came up with the idea that these former colonial subjects needed advice on how to develop their economies. Why should the former colonies trust their former colonial masters that had not developed Development Economics during the era of full-blown colonialism? Should they really accept uncritically the books on How to Develop Your Economy handed to them as they said good-bye to their colonial masters and became independent states?

To fend off any potential reluctance by the former colonial subjects to such advice from the sage and well-meaning former colonial rulers, the Washington-based institutions of IMF and World Bank would use the power of money to make the new rules of “Development Economics” more persuasive. The IMF and World Bank famously use “conditionality” when they dispense their loans. Other organisations, including the regional development banks, such as the Interamerican Development Bank, USAID, the OECD and the increasingly influential European Brussels-based bureaucracy, would repeat and re-enforce the Washington Consensus kind of “Development Economics”. These Washington institutions and the many other organisations under the US sphere of influence, which includes much of Europe, preach the insights of the English-language “Development Economics”, namely that countries need to deregulate, liberalise and privatise, as well as open up their markets to foreign competition and allow foreign investment to come in. The key insight they preach is that for economic growth and development, significant financial “savings” are necessary, and if countries have low savings rates, they can borrow “foreign savings” in the form of money lent to them by international banks, such as the IMF and World Bank themselves. This has indebted many developing countries to such proportions that their resources can be easily acquired by the foreign lenders in “debt-for-equity” swaps and other arrangements to “help them”.

We can tell whether a tree is good by looking at its fruits. The bottom line of the 75 years of IMF and World Bank international development policies is that there is not a single country among the more than 100 developing countries that have, thanks to IMF and World Bank-backed policies, moved decisively from developing country status to developed country status. This is not surprising, because the historical record shows that free trade and free market policies have never enabled a country to become an economic power. Instead, all economic powers had previously engaged in selective trade policy and infant industry protection in order to develop a large indigenous industry.

But it’s not just that the IMF and World Bank “Development Economics” failed to deliver. It can even be argued that it was deliberately designed in order to prevent economic development and instead keep developing countries in a state of dependency where their resources could be extracted at low cost. For the Washington-type of “development” consists in persuading developing countries, under the guise of “comparative advantage” to focus on low value-added commodities exports, but because their prices decline over long time periods relative to high value-added finished manufacturing goods, these developing countries will experience balance of payments deficits, feel the need for borrowing foreign money and their currencies weaken, causing debt traps – while making their resources ever cheaper for the rich countries to acquire.

This is not to say that there are no countries that moved from developing country to developed country status. However, there are only five countries or regions that did make a decisive move, measured by per capita income, to developed country status, namely Japan, South Korea, Singapore and China and its regions (including Taiwan). However, they achieved true economic development by ignoring the Washington-style “Development Economics” and adopting policies that are explicitly forbidden by the IMF and the World Bank, such as infant industry protection, industrial policy, and reliance on domestic bank credit creation instead of foreign money, whereby the central banks deployed ‘window guidance’ of bank credit to high value-added industries, while suppressing bank credit for consumption and asset purchases. China of course holds the prize for lifting more people out of poverty than any other country in history, thanks to policies that defied the Washington Consensus-type of “Development Economics”.

In the late 1980s, the Japanese government and many Finance Ministry officials pointed out to the leadership of the IMF and the World Bank that their policies were flawed and instead one should learn from the high growth East Asian economies in order to learn how to develop countries rapidly. But having US troops in Japan, Korea and even the Chinese region of Taiwan meant that voices from these regions could not challenge, let alone, change, the US-dominated IMF and World Bank practice. So the developing world remained under the cloud of “Development Economics” of the type that was designed to prevent economic development.

Next, China made many sincere attempts at formal IMF and World Bank shareholder meetings and at international summits and meetings to argue that IMF and World Bank policies should be changed, and also that other countries should have a bigger voice in the IMF and World Bank, as the US dominance was outdated and also had not resulted in economic success for the majority of countries. But such Chinese attempts to improve the system were rebuffed by the US.

As a consequence the Chinese leadership devised a bold alternative. This is the Belt and Road Initiative launched by President Xi Jinping. China established the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Shanghai and Beijing, and became active in the BRICS group of countries. China also stepped up the activities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Now developing countries have different options and do not need to submit to the de facto continuation of colonial rule via economic policies that the Bretton Woods system of IMF and World Bank had fostered.

Unlike the Washington-led system, China does not interfere in the politics of developing countries and does not impose IMF-style “conditionality” that often goes as far as demanding changes to the constitution (as the IMF demanded from Thailand after the 1997 Asian crisis). Instead, under the Belt and Road Initiative China invests its vast foreign exchange reserves in developing countries in the form of impressive infrastructure investments that directly help develop the receiver countries’ economies and encourage mutual trade and prosperity. Developing countries are grateful for this alternative offered by a country that does not have a history of colonising other countries. What is needed next is for China to champion the establishment of many small local banks in developing countries, just as Deng Xiaoping did at home to launch the rapid rise of the Chinese economy. This would be the ultimate alternative to the Washington-based wrong-headed “Development Economics”, which considers banks unimportant and presses countries to instead focus on stock market development, despite the fact that stock markets do not result in economic growth, but instead fuel US and UK-style casino capitalism.

China’s vast economy has benefitted greatly by abandoning the old Soviet-era mono-bank system of central planning and introducing decentralisation of economic decision-making, delegated to hundreds of thousands of loan officers working for thousands of small local banks evaluating the loan applications of millions of small firms and micro-businesses. This creates a strong and large middle-class, which means inequality declines and the country can prosper, thanks to the strong purchasing power of the average citizen – while the Washington “Development Economics” has presided over an ever-growing disparity between many very poor people and a small elite of extremely rich beneficiaries.

The Belt and Road Initiative is significant for the world for another reason: As the petro-dollar system is crumbling, with Saudi Arabia now selling oil also against the Chinese currency, there is a growing desire to move away from US dominance and the heavy hand of Washington-style neo-colonialism. Through the BRICS initiative, which complements the Belt and Road Initiative, there is now the prospect of an alternative international monetary system that facilitates peaceful trade and cooperation, and does not require oil and energy wars, as is the case with the ailing petro-dollar.

Professor Richard A. Werner, D.Phil. (Oxon), is professor of banking and economics at the University of Winchester. He previously was full professor of economics or finance at Goethe University, Frankfurt, the University of Southampton and Fudan University, Shanghai. His book Princes of the Yen (Quantumpublishers.com) was a number one bestseller in Japan. In 1995, he proposed a new monetary policy for post-crisis countries, which he called “Quantitative Easing”. Based on his Quantity Theory of Disaggregated Credit he warned in 1991 that the Japanese banking system and economy would collapse and move into a great depression. His website is www.professorwerner.org

告发/反应