态度: 俄罗斯选择孤立 中国选择融合

China gets it. Russia doesn't.

中国明白了。俄罗斯却没有。

For now, Vladimir Putin appears to be outsmarting the West. The Group of Seven nations called on Russia Wednesday to 'cease all efforts to annex Crimea' and condemned its 'unprovoked violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.' But there was no sign of real, meaningful sanctions. And that's because Europe--for now--needs Russia's gas.

暂时而言，俄罗斯总统普京(Vladimir Putin)现在似乎比西方国家技高一筹。七大工业国(Group of Seven)周三呼吁俄罗斯停止一切吞并克里米亚的努力，并谴责俄罗斯无故侵犯乌克兰主权的行为。但没有迹象显示俄罗斯将真正受到有实质意义的制裁。原因在于欧洲目前需要俄罗斯的天然气。

The good news is that future Russian presidents will find it harder to follow in Mr. Putin's footsteps. In due time, capacity improvements in world energy markets will erode Russia's ability to use its mammoth supplies of natural gas to hold its neighbors hostage. Russia will eventually have to join, rather fight against, the modern global economy. It's as if the protesters who ousted Ukraine's Russia-leaning President, Viktor Yanukovych, moved a few years too early.

好消息是，俄罗斯未来的总统将发现他们很难追随普京的脚步。在未来的某个时间，全球能源市场产能的提高将削弱俄罗斯利用其庞大天然气供应来挟持邻国的能力。俄罗斯最终将不得不加入现代全球经济，而不是与之对抗。只不过那些抗议者推翻乌克兰亲俄罗斯总统亚努科维奇(Viktor Yanukovych)的时间或许稍微早了几年。

By contrast, policymakers in that other former communist power seem to understand that the world is changing and that their economy's standing hinges upon integration rather than isolation. China is hardly a model international citizen--it engages in restrictive trade practices, cyber-spying and saber-rattling over regional territorial claims. But at least some key officials--notably People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan--are deliberately setting a path of liberalization that will eventually compel their country to fall in line with international norms.

相比之下，另一个前共产主义阵营中的国家的决策者似乎了解世界正在变化，意识到经济地位取决于融合而非孤立。很难把中国看做标准的国际公民，因为中国采取限制性贸易措施，展开网络间谍活动，并咄咄逼人地提出地区领土主张。但至少一些关键的官员正在刻意设定自由化之路，而这将最终推动中国遵循国际惯例。其中最明显的便是中国央行行长周小川。

This week, Mr. Zhou announced that interest rate policy would be fully liberalized in one to two years and that a fully floating, convertible yuan wouldn't be far behind. His comments didn't grab headlines in the way that Mr. Putin's troop maneuvers in Crimea did. But these actions will generate market pressures that will drive further political and economic reform in China, shifting it toward a more market-driven and consumer-focused economy to the benefit of its own citizens and those of rest of the world.

本周，周小川宣布利率将在两年内完全放开，人民币距离自由浮动和完全可兑换也不远了。和普京派军队进入克里米亚相比，周小川的讲话并不是那么重要的消息。但这些行动将带来市场压力，进一步推动中国的政治和经济改革，使中国经济向更加依赖于市场力量的消费主导型经济转型，从而令中国民众和世界其他地方受益。

Once China removes a cap on deposit rates and forces banks to compete for savings, the artificially cheap borrowing rates that have propped up thousands of inefficient government-connected enterprises and allowed them to flood the world with cheap goods will have to be phased out. Next, as local banks' profit margins shrink, the government will need to fully open up the Chinese capital account. This will bring welcome cheap foreign capital into the economy, but it will also radically shake up the hitherto cloistered Chinese financial system. The end result will be a wholesale restructuring of the Chinese economy, which in turn will test the viability of a centrally planned system and the Communist Party apparatus that has thrived off it. Big changes are afoot.

一旦中国取消存款利率上限，迫使银行为揽储而展开竞争，则中国被人为压低的借款利率将最终一去不复返。这样的低利率造就了成千上万低效率的政府相关企业，并让它们得以在全球大量销售廉价商品。接下来，随着中国本地银行的利润率收窄，中国政府将需要完全放开中国的资本项目。这将为中国经济引入受欢迎的低成本外资，但这同时也将从根本上动摇中国至今仍与外界相对隔绝的金融体系。最终的结果将是中国经济的大规模重组，而这反过来又将检验中央计划体制的可行性以及中共通过中央计划而发展出来的运作方式。巨大的变革正在酝酿之中。

These are incredibly bold moves in China. But they are also realistic and pragmatic. With financial innovations --digital currencies, for example--making it ever harder to shut out world economic forces, Beijing knows it can't swim against the tide. The evolving Chinese model recognizes that in the 21st century, true power comes from a nation's ability to harness the innovative drive of global competition. In Russia, by contrast, power is seen as a function of military might and control of natural resources.

这些都是中国极其大胆的举措。但这些措施也是现实而可行的。随着诸如电子货币之类的金融创新使得世界经济力量越来越难以被拒之门外，北京深知其不能逆潮流而动。不断变革中的中国模式认识到，在21世纪，真正的实力来自一国利用全球竞争创新动力的能力。相比之下，俄罗斯则认为，实力是军事力量和对自然资源的控制。

But this model of power is at the mercy of changes in the rest of the world's energy capacity. Just look at Venezuela, which for many years used its oil monopoly to cajole Latin American states into defying the liberal economic prescriptions of the Washington Consensus. With technological advances now allowing the U.S. to extract ever growing amounts of domestic shale oil and gas, Venezuela's influence is rapidly waning. Not coincidentally, it is now gripped by a roiling financial and political crisis, with inflation hitting 56%.

但这种力量模式受制于世界其他地方能源产能的变化。委内瑞拉就是一个例子。该国多年来利用其原油垄断地位诱使拉美国家反对“华盛顿共识”(Washington Consensus)提出的自由经济政策。现在，技术进步令美国得以在本土开采越来越多的页岩油气，委内瑞拉的影响力正迅速减弱。同时委内瑞拉现在正陷入一场动荡的金融和政治危机，通胀率高达56%，这绝非偶然。

For now, Russia is avoiding such a fate. The E.U.'s hands are tied so long as it needs Russian gas to keep the power on. The U.K. foreign secretary's suggestion this week that the E.U. will purchase more gas from the U.S. wasn't much of a threat while the infrastructure needed to get liquefied natural gas across the Atlantic is still lacking. The best anyone could suggest was Poland's idea that E.U. member countries pool their bargaining power and jointly negotiate gas contracts with Russia.

俄罗斯目前暂时避免了这种命运。只要欧洲还需要俄罗斯的天然气发电，欧盟(EU)就难以对俄罗斯采取什么措施。英国外交大臣本周表态称，欧盟将从美国购买更多的天然气，这话还没有太大的威胁，原因是目前仍缺乏跨越大西洋输送液化天然气的基础设施。最好的建议就是波兰提出的办法，即集合欧盟成员国的议价能力，联合起来共同与俄罗斯谈判天然气合约。

But Russia's belligerence in Ukraine will inspire an acceleration in the upgrade of production infrastructure elsewhere. What better reason to open up hydraulic fracturing, or fracking -- the technology behind the U.S. shale revolution -- in hitherto inaccessible gas fields in Eastern Europe and the U.K.? And there's now greater incentive to build the liquefaction and re-gasification plants, along with the shipping ports and vessels, that will transport U.S. LNG into Europe's power generation plants.

但俄罗斯在乌克兰问题上的好战性将促使世界其他地区加快升级能源生产设施。要在东欧和英国迄今尚难以开采的天然气田采用美国页岩气革命所用的水力压裂技术，这是再好不过的理由了。同时，现在修建液化再气化工厂以及运输口岸和船只的理由也更充分了，这些设施将把美国的液化天然气输送到欧洲的发电厂。

Such advances could quickly challenge Russia's closed model of economic and political power. With energy export revenues shrinking, speculators would attack the ruble, eventually running Moscow's sizable foreign-currency reserves dry and forcing a depreciation that provokes defaults by Russian companies on their dollar-based loans. Much like 1998, wealthy Russians would again flee into dollars, euros or pounds, and inflation would return along with economic and political chaos.

这类技术进步可能很快对俄罗斯封闭的经济和政治权力模式形成挑战。随着能源出口收入的下降，投机者将会攻击俄罗斯卢布，最终让莫斯科庞大的外汇储备趋于枯竭，并迫使卢布贬值，这会引起俄罗斯企业的美元贷款违约。与1998年的情形一样，俄罗斯的富人将再次通过抢购美元、欧元或英镑来规避风险，俄罗斯也将重新受到通胀的冲击，并再次陷入经济和政治动荡。

These changes won't happen overnight. But this is exactly the path that Mr. Putin is laying out.

这些变化不会一夜之间就出现。但这正是普京现在安排的道路。