u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/01/13/americans-see-chi
Which country is the world’s leading economic power?
Almost half of Americans (47%) think it’s China, according to a poll by the
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, while only 31% think the
United States is still out front.
Reuters
With Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao are scheduled to meet
in Washinton D.C. next week.
Game over. No wonder China comes out top in a list of countries representing
the “greatest danger” to the U.S., just above North Korea — and well
above Iran — in the same poll.
More In China-US
* Netizens React: Stealth Fighter Test Flight
* Stealth Fighter Test Flight With Color Commentary
* Economists React: China Trade Surplus
* Video: U.S. Again Nudges China On North Korea
* California Pollution: Made in China?
In fact, the U.S. economy is about three times the size of China’s in
nominal terms, and its GDP per capita is roughly 10 times bigger. But when
it comes to popular perceptions of China in America, those facts apparently
don’t matter. Ahead of President Obama’s meeting next week with his
Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, the one statistic everybody is looking at is
the alarming unemployment rate, hovering just below 10%. For China, it’s
around 4%.
Americans are worried about jobs, and China is widely perceived as stealing
them, through mercantilist trade policies, an undervalued currency and other
underhanded methods. The same poll finds that 53% of respondents think the
U.S. should get tougher with China on economic and trade issues.
The United States, it’s often said, needs a good global rivalry to get it
going. In the decades after World War II, the former Soviet Union served
that purpose. Japan was the bogeyman back in the 1980s when its economy was
on a tear.
Now it’s China’s turn.
American politicians have done a fine job translating China-phobia into
votes. With Mr. Hu’s visit, however, the Obama administration has to be a
bit cautious. On the one hand, Mr. Obama needs to show some concrete results
from the meeting, particular on currency. But his administration must also
manage public expectations. Mr. Hu also has to attend to a domestic
constituency, which increasingly is portraying the U.S. as the Big Threat
and is in no mood for concessions. A stronger yuan, and more liberal Chinese
investment rules, won’t magically restore U.S. jobs. And China is a bright
spot for U.S. exporters: A trade war would hurt both sides.
Hence the caveats in a speech by Timothy Geithner, the U.S. Treasury
Secretary, delivered on Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies in which he draws up a long laundry list of U.S.
complaints about China.
“Even as we work to encourage further reforms in China,” Mr. Geithner said
, “we need to understand that our strength as a nation will depend, not on
choices made by China’s leaders, but on the choices we make here at home.”
Interestingly, while Americans tend to grossly exaggerate China’s economic
prowess, Chinese themselves downplay it. A recent poll conducted by the
Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party tabloid, found that only 12% of
respondents believe that China has already become a superpower.
–Andrew Browne | f**x
发帖数: 4325 | 2 已经遇到不少白人对我的经济观点表示惊讶。典型回答是："China's economy is
smaller than the US‘? Are you sure?" |
|
