【文/观察者网专栏作者 理查德·沃纳】

中国国家主席习近平于2013年提出了“一带一路”倡议，该倡议在2017年被写入中国共产党党章。这凸显了“一带一路”对中国的重要意义，同时明确它是一个长期性的项目。我们知道“一带一路”倡议对中国很重要，那么它对世界又有何意义呢？

要想理解“一带一路”倡议的国际意义，就需要先了解二战后发展中国家的情况。当时构建的布雷顿森林体系，以及其总部设在华盛顿的下属机构国际货币基金组织和世界银行，在此期间起到了至关重要的作用。

1942年，以美国和英国为首的26国反法西斯同盟将自己重新命名为“联合国”。其中的许多国家，主要包括苏联、中国、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级高尔夫俱乐部度假村举行会议。在那里，他们正式制定了战后以美元为核心的新国际货币体系的相关计划。

这一体系最初要求所有货币与美元保持固定汇率，而美元本身可以按规定汇率兑换成黄金。这一体系一直维持到52年前，即1971年8月。1960年代，美国中央银行和美国银行大量制造美元，被美国投资者用来收购全球各地的企业、土地和资产，激怒了当地人民。法国开始将自己的美元储备兑换成黄金，导致美国的黄金储备下降。随着法国海军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日发表了著名的声明，宣布美国将“暂停”美元兑换黄金，等于美国违背了布雷顿森林固定汇率体系下的义务。

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事务助理的基辛格成为首个访问新中国的美国政府高级官员。顺便说一句，尽管基辛格已经年过百岁，但半个多世纪后，他又重访了中国。

基辛格首次访华时，美国正面临着贸易赤字膨胀和政府预算赤字激增的双重问题，后者是由于军事和情报（包括在数十个国家发动战争和政变行动）支出不断增加造成的，前者是由于成功的贸易净出口国日本和德国没有想要购买的美国制造商品。

当美国不再允许按固定汇率用美元兑换黄金时，美元估值下跌了。为了维持军事霸权，美国领导人认为必须阻止美元下跌，通过德国和日本等国的进口需求找到了解决办法：后者的大部分能源都需要进口。因此，美元从黄金支持的美元变成了石油支持的美元，即所谓的“石油美元”。

美国在最大的产油国沙特阿拉伯部署了军队，并达成了一项协议，即美国将支持沙特阿拉伯政府和王室，后者作为交换条件同意只用美元出售石油，并将沙特阿拉伯由此获得的美元储备的80%投资回美国国债，从而为美国政府提供应对预算赤字的资金，变相为美国的海外战争提供资金。

2021年，在叙利亚油田的美军。（图源：AFP）

德国和日本需要持有美元，以购买经济运行所需的能源。当然，他们也探索了一些替代方案，比如德国逐渐开始从苏联进口天然气，因为苏联的天然气供应一直很可靠。

支撑美元的另一个步骤是策划石油价格的大幅上涨，这实质上是将大量资源从制造业强国德国和日本转移到沙特阿拉伯和美国。为此，基辛格不得不与沙特人周旋，迫使他们将石油价格抬高四倍，这在1974年1月得以实现。

为了转移人们的视线，并散布油价上涨是因为欧佩克石油禁运的说法，美联储势力范围内的中央银行，包括英格兰央行、日本央行和德国央行，在1971年和1972年同时开始大规模扩大货币供应，鼓励银行信贷的疯狂扩张，用于房地产投机和消费。

这导致了1970年代的通货膨胀，尽管官方的主流说法是通货膨胀是战争及其随后的能源禁运造成的。正如基辛格时隔50年再度访华一样，半个世纪后，西方再次试图将最近的通胀甩锅给所谓的“俄罗斯保卫乌克兰边境新成立共和国的军事行动”，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后果。因此，美国的经济和政治霸权在1970年代得以延续。

与此同时，国际货币基金组织和世界银行等布雷顿森林机构，被用来管理全球许多国家和人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。既然这些国家曾在第二次世界大战期间辩称自己是为了自由和民主而与德国斗争，他们现在很难再拖延在其直接控制下的发展中国家大多数人口的“去殖民化”进程。

非洲去殖民化进程

西方现代“发展经济学”教科书告诉我们，正是这一“去殖民化”进程创造了这门新的学科。这些教科书指出，这门学科在上世纪中叶之前并不存在，之所以创立这门学科，是因为越来越多的前殖民地开始独立。

但是，发展经济学并不是由这些新独立国家的主要思想家创立的！相反，它是由英国和美国的经济学家创立的。这就揭示了“发展经济学”的真正目的：倘若殖民国家主流经济学家开设这门英文学科的目的是帮助各国和各地区快速发展，从发展中国家地位迈向发达国家行列，那么这门学科的历史本应与殖民主义一同诞生；对于殖民国家的思想家来说，最合适于塑造一个国家并落实正确政策的时机，显然是当该国直接受殖民者控制之时。

然而，在几个世纪的殖民统治期间，西方并没有认为需要这样的“发展经济学”，只有当殖民者不得不放弃对其殖民地的正式政治和军事控制时，他们才会想到这些前殖民地臣民需要考虑如何发展经济。那么，这些前殖民地凭什么要相信在全面殖民主义时代没有发展自己经济的前殖民主子呢？他们真的应该直接接纳殖民主子临别时递给他们的关于如何发展经济的书籍吗？

为了防止前殖民地臣民对“高尚”和“善良”的前殖民主子的建议产生抵触情绪，总部设在华盛顿的国际货币基金组织和世界银行机构利用金钱的力量，使“发展经济学”的新规则更具说服力，他们在发放贷款时包含了著名的“附加条件”。

其他组织，包括美洲开发银行等地区性开发银行、美国国际开发署、经济合作与发展组织（OECD）以及日益具有影响力的欧盟官僚机构，也都在重复和强化华盛顿共识的“发展经济学”。这些华盛顿机构和美国势力范围内的许多其他组织（包括欧洲大部分地区）都在宣扬英语“发展经济学”的观点，即各国需要放松管制、实行自由化和私有化，并向外国竞争者开放市场，允许外国投资进入。

他们宣扬的主要观点是，经济增长和发展需要大量的金融“储蓄”，如果国家储蓄率低，就可以用国际银行（如国际货币基金组织和世界银行本身）借给它们的钱作为“外国储蓄”。这使得许多发展中国家负债累累，外国贷款人可以通过“债转股”和其他“帮助”它们的安排，轻而易举地获得这些国家的资源。

我们可以“以结果论英雄”。国际货币基金组织和世界银行的70余年来，在100多个发展中国家中，没有一个国家通过它们的支持从发展中国家行列果断迈进发达国家行列。这并不奇怪，因为历史记录表明，自由贸易和自由市场政策从未使一个国家成为经济强国。相反，所有的经济强国都曾实行选择性贸易和产业保护政策，以发展庞大的本土产业。

国际货币基金组织（图源：Business Standard）

但这不仅仅意味着国际货币基金组织和世界银行的“发展经济学”失败了。甚至可以说，这种经济学是被蓄意设计出来的，目的是阻止经济发展，使发展中国家处于依赖状态，使其资源可以被低价攫取。华盛顿式的“发展”打着“比较优势”的幌子，劝说发展中国家把重点放在低附加值的商品出口上，但由于这些商品的价格相对于高附加值的产品呈长期下降趋势，因此这些发展中国家会出现国际收支赤字，必须借入外国资金，货币也会疲软，从而导致债务陷阱，同时使其资源对发达国家来说变得越来越便宜。

确实也有国家从发展中国家转变为发达国家。然而，按人均收入衡量，只有五个国家或地区果断迈向了发达国家行列，它们是日本、韩国、新加坡和中国及其地区（包括台湾）。然而，这些国家和地区无视华盛顿模式的“发展经济学”，采取了国际货币基金组织和世界银行明令禁止的政策，如新生产业保护、产业政策、依赖国内银行信贷创造而非外国货币，即中央银行对高附加值产业的银行信贷进行“窗口指导”，同时抑制用于消费和资产购买的银行信贷，从而实现了真正的经济发展。当然，中国比历史上任何其他国家摆脱贫困的人数都要多，这要归功于其违背华盛顿共识“发展经济学”的政策。

1980年代末，日本政府和许多大藏省官员向国际货币基金组织和世界银行的领导层指出，他们的政策是有缺陷的，应该向高增速的东亚经济体学习，以了解如何快速发展经济。但是，美国在日本、韩国甚至中国台湾地区都有驻军，这意味着他们无法挑战或改变美国主导的国际货币基金组织和世界银行的做法。因此，发展中世界仍然笼罩在旨在阻碍经济发展的“发展经济学”的阴云之下。

接下来，中国在国际货币基金组织和世界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诚的尝试，主张应该改变国际货币基金组织和世界银行的政策，其他国家也应该在国际货币基金组织和世界银行中拥有更大的发言权，因为美国的主导地位已经过时，而且也没有为大多数国家带来经济上的成功。但中国试图改善这一体系的努力遭到了美国的拒绝。

必须指出的是，中国一直坚持自己独特的发展道路，并不屈从于美国的霸权。中国在上海和北京成立了新开发银行和亚洲基础设施投资银行，并积极参与金砖国家集团。中国还加强了上海合作组织的活动。现在，发展中国家有了不同的选择，不必再屈从于国际货币基金组织和世界银行的布雷顿森林体系，接受西方实质上的殖民统治延续。

新开发银行总部（图源：Bb3015）

与华盛顿主导的体系不同，中国不干涉发展中国家的政治，也不强加类似国际货币基金组织的“条件”，后者的“条件”甚至包括要求修改宪法（如1997年亚洲危机后，国际货币基金组织对泰国提出的要求）。相反，在“一带一路”倡议下，中国将其巨额外汇储备投资发展中国家的基础设施，直接帮助该国发展经济，并促进双边贸易和繁荣。

发展中国家对一个没有殖民历史的国家提供的这一替代方案感到感激。接下来，中国需要像邓小平在国内推动中国经济迅速崛起那样，倡导发展中国家建立许多小型地方银行。这将是替代华盛顿错误的“发展经济学”的最终方案。“发展经济学”认为银行并不重要，并迫使各国将重点放在股市发展上，尽管股市事实上并不会带来经济增长，反而会助长美国和英国式的赌场资本主义。

中国摒弃了苏联时代单一银行的中央计划制度，将经济决策权力下放，由成千上万家地方小银行的数十万名贷款人员负责评估数百万小企业和微型企业的贷款申请，这让中国庞大的经济获得巨大的收益。这一方针造就了一个强大且庞大的中产阶级，意味着不平等现象的下降和国家的繁荣，这要归功于普通公民强大的购买力。而华盛顿的“发展经济学”却使许多非常贫穷的人和一小撮极其富有的精英受益者之间的差距不断扩大。

“一带一路”倡议之所以对世界意义重大，还有另一个原因：随着石油美元体系的崩溃，沙特阿拉伯现在也开始用人民币出售石油，人们越来越希望摆脱美国霸权和华盛顿式新殖民主义的高压统治。金砖国家组织和“一带一路”相辅相成，而通过金砖国家组织，现在有望建立一个替代萎靡不振的石油美元的国际货币体系，促进和平贸易与合作，而不需要为之发动石油和能源战争。

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

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