中国：下一个品牌超级大国？
不难想象，到2100年，众多中国拥有或建立的品牌，将塑造全球的消费者意识，
中美两国之间紧张的贸易关系从来都是媒体关注的热点。但是，这两个国家也有达成共识的时候：两国领导人都希望中国人民打开钱包多多消费。二者的分歧在于：消费者代写商业文书到底该买哪些商品。此争执体现在多个方面，眼下有关人民币价值的争论，就是其中之一。
美国领导人的一贯看法是中国在“操纵”人民币。如果中国领导人允许人民币升值，其购买力就会随之提高，中国消费者用于购买进口商品的开支就能相应增加，增幅可以达到5%、10%甚至20%（美国政府希望人民币升值20%）。经过漫长的等待之后，我们被告知，如果中国领导人准许，中国消费者便能贡献自己的绵薄之力，拯救依然动荡不堪的全球经济。
但此结论是建立在一个经不住推敲的假设上的：即作为制造业超级强国，中国只希望继续维持现状，而对于从迪斯尼电影到由美国公司管理的投资基金等高增值的产品和服务，全部依赖进口。
事实上，中国的抱负远不止于此。中国采取的战略，与后工业时代的美国和西欧等国毫无二致：宣传中国品牌，提高品牌所有者的知名度，规范对品牌的管理，进而提升在价值链上的位置；从更广泛的意义上说，就是建立靠服务驱动而非靠制造驱动的经济。中国的目标是要成为品牌超级强国。为达到这个目的，中国政府正在大力推动国内和国际知名品牌发展壮大。
而且，中国政府会不遗余力确保实现中国品牌策略。与美国等国家相比，在中国，品牌塑造显然是一个有关经济民族主义的问题。
在多数美国人的心目中，品牌塑造取决于公司自身和市场，而与政府官员以及国家无关。美国人认为，将iPod塑造成为家喻户晓的品牌，是苹果公司的本分，而与美国政府无关。
但是，在中国，消费者想买哪些产品以及最终买了哪些产品，并不仅仅是“自由市场”和个人选择的问题那么简单。中国消费者的选择还取决于当前中国领导人采取的政策。特别是那些鼓励具有国际竞争力的中国本土品牌迅速发展的政策，尽管中国政府更大程度地向在华跨国公司开放了当地市场。
中国不愿意人民币升值也就不足为奇了。如今，限制消费者购买进口产品的难度比从前大大增加了。自从中国加入了世界贸易组织（WTO），中国政府已不可能确保消费者像从前一样只买国货。过去，他们限制进口商品的手段包括：禁止进口、控制用于购买进口商品的外汇的兑换，或者抬高关税，以致外国商品价格高得令普通中国百姓望而却步。
现在，中国决策者担心，由于国内消费者可以接触到的外国品牌大大增多，他们逐渐会更加青睐这些品牌，而导致中国长期处于品牌链低端，只能靠艰苦的手工劳动，换取微薄的收入，所获得的品牌“增值”微乎其微。所谓增值，也就是产品的生产成本与通过销售、分销以及零售等渠道获得增值后的最终价格之间的差价。中国采取品牌经济发展战略，敦促国有和私有公司投资数十亿人民币塑造中国品牌，根本原因即在于此。
中国对于国有品牌竞争力表现出深切担忧。这有点儿像前苏联于1957年率先发射人造地球卫星之后，美国为了赢得太空竞赛，全国上下齐心协力赶超对手的迫切心情。与此类似，由于中国消费者更钟情于外国品牌，中国领导人认为他们需要尽早建立自有品牌，或者收购国际品牌。在中国，建立自有品牌或收购国际品牌被视为事关国家经济安全和民族自豪感的大事。中国希望，它所拥有的国际品牌不仅能反映其在商业领域取得的巨大成功，也能体现出世界一流强国的地位。
中国政府希望在各类消费类产品和服务中，包括高科技消费电子产品（比如总部位于顺德的“美的”品牌，顺德与香港毗邻）领域，均建立具有竞争力的品牌；与此同时，还要重振中医药公司同仁堂等“老字号”。
中国全力打造国有品牌的战略还体现在服务领域。中国商务部（Ministry of Commerce）制定了雄心勃勃的发展目标，其中包括打造100个餐厅品牌、50个酒店品牌，此外，美容业、洗衣业以及家政服务业也要创出各自的知名品牌。为达到这个目标，中国政府出台了相应的政策，催生出一批横向联合的大型跨国公司，以与外国跨国公司相抗衡。
中国消费者在这场“战役”中可谓进退两难，他们对国有品牌可谓爱恨交加。这种复杂的矛盾情绪具体体现为，一方面他们呼吁政府保护国有品牌，使它们不至于被外国品牌打垮；而另一方面，他们又主动购买外国产品。比如，在去年反日货游行的照片上，可以清晰地看到，许多示威者手持日产手机或相机，场面极为讽刺。同一年，中国最大的私营调研机构发现，尽管存在着反日情绪和反日游行，但近半数的受访者表示他们会购买日本品牌的汽车。
中国拥有或管理的品牌会在21世纪大显身手吗？不远的将来，你会开起吉利车，利用中国电信提供的无线上网服务，使用百度访问互联网，并且在国美采购所有电子产品吗？很难说。
但是有一点很清楚，那就是中国领导人目前在不遗余力地推动这些品牌的发展，让它们先占领中国市场，然后是整个世界。同时，尽管全球的消费者们可能会为中国生产出更好的捕鼠器、搜索引擎或者汽车发动机而欢呼，但是，这些消费者也别忘了，他们在做出这些选择时，并非总是身处完全自由开放的市场之中。
代写商业文书中国品牌的早期战绩有好有坏。但是别忘了，好戏才刚刚开始。不难想象，到2100年，众多中国拥有或建立的品牌，将塑造全球的消费者意识，就如同今天可口可乐（Coke）、谷歌（Google）以及丰田（Toyota）的所作所为一样。
卡尔•哥什在牛津大学教授中国现代史。本文选自他的新著《世界追随中国的步伐：中国消费者如何改变一切》（As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything）。
China: The next branding superpower?
Trade tensions between China and the United States dominate the headlines. But the two countries actually agree on one thing: Both Chinese and American leaders want Chinese to buy more, much more. Yet they disagree over what those consumers should buy. This struggle manifests itself in many ways, including the ongoing dispute over the value of the Chinese currency, the renminbi.
Among American leaders the conventional wisdom holds that China "manipulates" its currency. If only Chinese policy leaders would allow the currency to appreciate, thereby increasing its buying power, Chinese consumers would have more to spend on imports, 5%, 10%, even 20% more (20% being the stated amount by which Washington wants the Chinese currency to increase in value). At long last, we are told, Chinese consumers could do their part to rescue the still sputtering global economy, if only their leaders consented.
This view rests on a faulty assumption, the assumption that China, which is now a manufacturing superpower, wants to remain only a manufacturing superpower that imports higher value added products and services ranging from Disney movies to American-managed investment funds.
China's ambitions, however, are greater. China is pursuing the same strategy as the post-industrial economies of the U.S. and Western Europe -- attempting to move up the value chain by promoting the ownership and management of Chinese brands and, more generally, developing a service-driven rather than a manufacturing-driven economy. China's goal is to become a branding superpower. To achieve it Beijing is pushing for the rapid development of nationally and internationally competitive brands.
And Beijing will go to great lengths to ensure the advent of Chinese brands. In China, branding is more overtly an issue of economic nationalism than in countries such as the United States.
Most Americans associate the work of branding with companies and the marketplace, not with government officials and the state. Americans think it is Apple's job to make the iPod brand a household name, not the U.S. government's.
But in China, what consumers desire and buy are not simply consequences of "the free market" and individual choice. Rather, Chinese consumer choices are also the consequence of ongoing policy decisions by China's leaders, especially the decision to encourage the rapid development of internationally competitive Chinese-based brands even while allowing multinational companies much greater access to Chinese consumers.
Little wonder why China is reluctant to allow its currency to appreciate. Limiting the appeal of imports is harder than it used to be. In the post-WTO world, the Chinese state can no longer ensure consumer loyalty the way it used to: by banning imports, limiting access to the foreign currency needed to buy imports, or levying tariffs so high that foreign goods become prohibitively expensive.
Now Chinese policy makers fear that as foreign brands gain better access to Chinese consumers, those consumers will learn to prefer such brands, leaving the country permanently stuck at the low end of the brand chain, doing the hard manual labor and collecting low wages but owning precious little of a brand's "value-added," the difference between the cost of making something and the value added through marketing, distribution, and retail sales. This provides the logic of China's economic development strategy of urging state and private companies to spend billions building brands.
It is hard to exaggerate China's current level of national anxiety over the competitiveness of Chinese brands. Its historical analogue might be the urgency in the United States to win the Space Race after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957. Similarly, Chinese leaders believe they need to launch national brands or gain ownership of international ones before it's too late, the country's consumers committed to buying foreign-owned brands. Building or buying brands is considered a matter of national economic security and, of course, of national pride -- China wants its own international brands to reflect its commercial success and its status as a first-rate power.
The Chinese government wants to develop competitive brands across the spectrum of consumer products and services, including high-tech consumer electronics (such as Midea, headquartered in Shunde, near Hong Kong), and to revive "established brands" such as Tongrentang, the traditional medicine company.
This push to create Chinese-owned brands also applies to the service sector, where the Ministry of Commerce has set ambitious targets that include developing 100 restaurant brands, 50 hotel brands, and prominent brands in the beauty, laundry, and home service industries. To help reach these goals, state policies have promoted the creation of large-scale, horizontally integrated multinational corporations to compete against foreign multinationals.
Chinese consumers are caught in between and often demonstrate a deep ambivalence toward domestic brands, as reflected in consumers' demands that the government protect Chinese brands against international rivals even as those consumers simultaneously buy foreign products. Photographs of anti-Japanese protests this past year, for instance, ironically show many protesters holding Japanese cell phones and cameras. That same year, China's biggest private pollster found that despite popular anti-Japanese sentiments and protests, almost half of those surveyed said they would buy a Japanese car.
Will Chinese-owned and managed brands dominate the twentieth-first century? Will the near future find you driving a Chery car, surfing the internet via Baidu.com http://www.1daixie.com/over China Telecom wireless, and shopping at Gome for all your electronic toys? That's unclear.
But what's clear is that Chinese leaders are making a big push to try to have such brands dominate first China, next the world. And while consumers the world over may well celebrate any successes by Chinese for building a better mousetrap, search engine, or car engine, such consumers might also remember that their choices are not always made in completely free markets.
Early results for Chinese brands are mixed but we have only just begun and it's easy to imagine that, by 2100, consumer consciousness the world over will be shaped by as many Chinese-owned or created brands as they are now by the Cokes (KO, Fortune 500), Googles (GOOG, Fortune 500), and Toyotas (TM) of the world.
代写商业文书 Karl Gerth teaches modern Chinese history at Oxford University. This article is adapted from his new book, As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything.