中國真的“作弊”了嗎？

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-15/china-may-not-be-cheating-as-much-as-u-s-thinks

Economics

Is China Really Cheating?

The evidence of Chinese malfeasance on trade, technology and intellectual property is a lot thinner than most people assume. 

By 

Stephen Roach

January 15, 2019, 5:00 PM EST



Estimates of the cost of Chinese IP theft are dubious. 

 Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

Repetition breeds reality. Such is the case with allegations the U.S. has leveled at China in their budding economic Cold War. Across the American political spectrum, it’s now taken for granted that China forces U.S. companies to transfer critical technology in order to do business on the mainland, engages in rampant hacking and theft of intellectual property, and massively and unfairly subsidizes its high-tech industries — all of which contributes to fears that the country poses an existential threat to America’s prosperity.

Like many longtime observers of China, I’ve been getting more than my fair share of airtime over the past several months. Typically, the interview starts with a false premise followed by a loaded question: “Everyone knows that China is stealing hundreds of billions of dollars a year in U.S. intellectual property. Isn’t it high time for America to stand up to its greatest economic threat?”

But, what exactly does “everybody” really know? This assertion is drawn from the findings of the “IP Commission Report” co-chaired by two renowned public servants, former Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., now ambassador to Russia. In 2017, the commission estimated that intellectual-property theft cost the U.S. economy somewhere between $225 billion and $600 billion annually, an exceptionally broad range. Stolen trade secrets are thought to account for 80-90 percent of the total, the remainder being counterfeit and pirated hardware and software. 

When it comes to stolen trade secrets, though, there’s a problem. There’s no hard data to support the estimates. The IP Commission rests its case on a 2014 studyby PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade, which itself relies on dubious “proxy modeling” — in essence, coming up with statistical guesstimates using available data on nefarious activities such as narcotics trafficking, corruption, occupational fraud and illicit financial flows. While these are problematic features of any nation, it takes a rather large leap of faith to convert this information into the 1-3 percent of GDP that the IP Commission claims is lost to theft of intellectual property.

The commission’s estimates of how much of this loss to attribute to China are even more dubious. They come from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which reported $1.35 billion in seizures of counterfeit and pirated goods in 2015. Another model — this one constructed by researchers at the OECD— was used to convert this to a U.S. total. Then 87 percent of that was attributed to China — 52 percent from the mainland and 35 percent from Hong Kong. With no direct tally available for pirated software, once again a “model” (from the Business Software Alliance) was used to impute 61 percent of that total to Asia Pacific. 

Meanwhile, no attempt was made to quantify the Chinese share of stolen trade secrets, which, as noted above, accounts for the bulk of the overall estimate of America’s IP losses. The bottom line: The only thing “everybody knows” about China’s alleged IP theft from the U.S. comes from flimsy evidence derived from highly dubious models.

Unfortunately, an equally suspicious approach was used to support the case leveled by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in the so-called Section 301 reportpublished last March and used to justify America’s tariff war against China. The heart of the USTR’s case is that companies are forced to transfer technology when they enter into mainland joint ventures.

Within the JV structure, a voluntary contract between two parties, it’s hardly shocking that U.S. and Chinese partners share talent, strategies, operating systems, process designs and, yes, production technologies in their collective efforts to build a new business.

But, even the USTR confesses it has no hard evidence to prove that this sharing is forced— the essence of the allegation. Buried on page 19 of the 182-page USTR report is the admission that “transfer policies and practices have become more implicit, often carried out through oral instructions and ‘behind closed doors.’” Here, following the highly questionable precedent of the IP Commission, the USTR also rests its case on proxy surveys conducted by the U.S.-China Business Council, in which 19 percent of respondents claim they’ve been forced to transfer technology to their Chinese partners. Curiously, in the council’s latest survey (conducted in 2018), 99 percent of respondents saw no deterioration in IP protection over the past year.

Bias even creeps into the evidence on cyber-attacks presented by the USTR. While there have been reports of very recent cyber incursions by state-sponsored Chinese hackers, most of the allegations documented by the USTR predate a September 2015 cyber accord signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. 

Finally, while state-sponsored industrial policies (such as “Made in China 2025”) are alleged to be a unique and unfair effort by China to dominate leading-edge industries such as artificial intelligence, little mention is made of similar industrial policies long supported by Japan, Germany, and even the U.S. through its Pentagon-centric R&D program. Nor is there any effort to provide serious economic analysis of the outsize U.S.-China bilateral trade imbalance — the political lightning rod in the trade battle — as but one piece of America’s multilateral deficits with 102 nations that have long afflicted a savings-short U.S. economy.

China is far from perfect and must be held accountable for verifiable economic transgressions. But America’s case against China is based on anecdotes and shaky evidence that don’t stand up to serious scrutiny. As a trade war now morphs into a cold war, the current U.S. administration would be wise to stop relying on such “alternative facts” to wage its battles. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Stephen Roach at stephen.roach@yale.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Nisid Hajari at nhajari@bloomberg.net

Stephen Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of "Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China



斯蒂芬·羅奇：美國在貿易、科技與知識產權領域指控中國的證據很單薄

2019-01-17 08:30:26

【翻譯/ 觀察者網郭涵】

近日，美國耶魯大學教授、摩根士丹利亞洲區前主席斯蒂芬·羅奇（Stephen Roach）在彭博社撰文表示，美國聲稱中國在“知識產權保護”、“外資強迫技術轉讓”等問題上“作弊” ，以此為理由對中國發起貿易戰。然而，得出這些結論的方法與數據均十分可疑，美方的說法經不起嚴肅推敲。

觀察者網全文翻譯，僅供參考。



美國學者斯蒂芬·羅奇文章：《中國真的“作弊”了嗎？》

同樣的話重複一萬遍就成為真理，在中美兩國間的“經濟冷戰”逐漸發端之際，這話用來形容美方對中國的指控可謂恰如其分。美國兩黨政客均理所當然地認為，中國政府“強迫”在華美國公司轉讓關鍵技術，“大肆偷竊與侵犯”美國的知識產權，並對本國的高科技產業提供“龐大且不公平”的政府補貼——這些指控加深了美國人的恐懼，認為中國對美國的繁榮構成“生死存亡”的威脅。

同很多長期觀察中國的人士一道，最近幾個月我也頻繁接受采訪。典型的流程是，採訪者上來就基於錯誤前提拋出一堆問題，比如：“所有人都知道，中國每年'偷竊'的美國知識產權價值數千億美元。難道現在不應該站起來，反擊這個對美國來說最大的經濟威脅嗎？”

但是，“所有人”到底知道什麼呢？這個說法源自一份“知識產權委員會報告（IP Commission Report）”，該委員會主席包括兩名知名公務員，前國家情報局局長丹尼斯·布萊爾（Dennis Blair）與前任猶他州州長、現駐俄大使洪博培（Jon Huntsman Jr.）。



“知識產權委員會”2017年發布的報告

該委員會2017年估計，美國每年因“知識產權偷竊”問題導致2250億至6000億美元左右的經濟損失，範圍波動很大。其中，80%到90%的部分由“被偷走”的商業機密組成，剩下的則是偽造與盜版的軟硬件。

不過，對於這些“被偷走”的商業機密存在一個問題，即沒有具體數據能支撐其估值。“知識產權委員會”的計算基於普華永道（PwC）與“責任企業與貿易中心”（CERATe.org）一項2014年的研究。而這份研究本身則依賴可信度存疑的“代理模型”（proxy modeling）方法——一言以蔽之，對於給美國造成的經濟損失，其統計學意義上的猜估是基於相關犯罪活動的現成數據，比如毒品走私、腐敗、職業欺詐與非法資金流動。

這些情況在各國都不少見，但“知識產權委員會”聲稱，因知識產權問題造成的損失約為美國1%到3%的國民生產總值（GDP），從上述對非法活動的猜估到這個結論，“步子邁得也太遠了”。



美國國務院網站介紹，美國每年因知識產權相關犯罪損失約2270億美元

而對於因中國造成損失的部分，該委員會的估計就更有待商榷了。他們的數據來源於美國海關與邊境保衛局（CBP），後者2015年收繳了價值13.5億美元的偽造與盜版商品。接下來，他們通過經濟合作與發展組織（OECD）的另一個模型，將其轉換成對美國總共造成的損失。

然後他們得出結論，稱其中87%的部分來自中國——大陸與香港地區的被收繳品分別佔52%與35%。此外，在缺少有關盜版軟件直接數據的情況下，他們在報告中又使用了來自“商業軟件聯盟”（Business Software Alliance）的一個“模型”，聲稱有61%的盜版軟件來自亞太地區。

與此同時，對於美國整個“失竊”的商業機密中，有多少份額是因中國導致，報告也沒有提供量化的結果，畢竟以他們的說法，中國才是美國知識產權損失的“罪魁禍首”。

整件事說到底就是：“所有人都知道”的所謂“中國偷竊知識產權”的指控，其實建立在高度可疑的模型與單薄的證據基礎上。

令人遺憾的是，美國貿易代表處（USTR）在去年3月所謂的“301調查報告”中也通過這類可疑的方法，試圖為美國對華髮起關稅進行辯護。其指控的核心在於，美國公司在中國開展業務需要與中國公司建立合資企業，並“被迫”向後者轉讓技術。

建立合資企業是兩方自願簽署的協議，在這一架構裡，美中商業夥伴相互分享才華、戰略、操作系統、流程設計以及生產技術，都是為了共同拓展生意，這不值得大驚小怪。

何況，就連美國貿易代表處也承認，他們沒有確鑿證據證明美國公司確實“受到脅迫”而轉讓技術，這正是美方指控的核心。在182頁的301報告書中，USTR在第19頁承認，“（技術）轉讓的政策與實踐已經變得更加含蓄，通常是基於口頭指示與'後門'商議”。



“301報告書”第19頁末尾稱，2001年以後，中國的轉讓政策與實踐“更加含蓄”

在這裡，USTR採取了類似知識產權委員會的十分可疑的方法——代理調研（proxy survey），來源於非政府組織“美中貿易全國委員會”（USCBC）開展的一項調查。調查結果顯示，19%的受訪者稱在華有過被“強制技術轉讓”的經歷。

有意思的是，在該委員會2018年的最新調查中，99%的受訪者表示，過去一年來，在知識產權保護問題上，情況並沒有惡化。



2019年1月1日，最高人民法院知識產權法庭在北京揭牌成立，即日起履行法定職責圖源：《解放日報》

這些偏見甚至蔓延至USTR關於網絡攻擊的“證據”上。儘管最近有報告稱，美國遭受了來自中國政府支持的黑客攻擊，可USTR在聲明中記載的絕大多數來自中國的攻擊都發生在2015年9月，也即時任總統奧巴馬與中國國家主席習近平簽署網絡協議之前。

最後，中國有如“中國製造2025”等政府支持、“獨特且不公平”的行業發展政策，其目的號稱是在人工智能等高新領域搶占制高點。儘管如此，卻很少人提到日本、德國長期以來對有關行業提供支持的政策。就連美國國防部，也通過相關的研發項目在這類領域提供國家支持。

而對於貿易戰中的“政治避雷針”——美中貿易不平衡問題，沒有人去做認真嚴肅的經濟學分析。畢竟對於儲蓄不足的美國經濟來說，這僅是其與102個國家逆差的一部分。

中國遠非完美，對於其被證實的經濟違規行為，也要追究責任。但美國現在對中國的指控建立在道聽途說與可疑的證據之上，經不起嚴肅推敲。隨著如今“貿易戰”有向“冷戰”轉變的傾向，這屆美國政府若足夠明智，就不該打著所謂的“另類事實”（alternative facts）開戰。