对立还是趋同:试析发展融资领域的“美国方式”

Contestation or Convergence:Examining the “American Approach” in Development Finance

近年来,为抗衡中国在基础设施建设和国际发展融资领域日益提升的影响力,美国提出了“重建更好世界”倡议等一系列竞争政策,旨在以鼓励私营资本的、市场主导的“美国方式”对抗“一带一路”倡议。本文认为,“市场主导”并不是美国实施发展融资的主要特点。美国通过主导两个国际机制影响基建资金的流向——国际发展机制和国际出口信贷机制;前者主要依靠政府分配资金,后者则限制政府干预企业行为。相反,后发国家则倾向于将发展融资作为产业政策的一部分,以官方融资激励企业前往发展中国家开展业务。面对中国等发展中国家的崛起,发达工业国家开始转而采用后发国家的方式,美国主导的国际机制呈现“南方化”。“重建更好世界”倡议体现了美国方式向中国方式的趋同。

In recent years, the Biden administration has introduced the BuildBack Better World(B3W) Initiative and a series of adversarial policies tocounter China’s increasing influence in infrastructure and development fi-nance, aiming to rival the Belt and Road Initiative with a private-invest-ment driven, market-based American approach. This paper argues that“market-ness” does not characterize the way the U. S. practices develop-ment finance. The U.S. affects the flow of infrastructure-financing capitalthrough leading two international regimes, the international development re-gime and the international export-credit regime. The former relies on therole of the state in credit allocation, whereas the latter limits state interven-tion in firms’ commercially oriented business. In contrast, late-developed e-conomies practice development finance as a part of their industrial policies,using official credits to incentivize firms to conduct business in developingcountries. Facing the rise of the developing countries like China, advancedindustrial economies have begun to adopt development finance approachespracticed by late-developed economies, and the U.S.-led international re-gimes have been undergoing “southernisation.” The B3W Initiative there-fore demonstrates a convergence of the development finance approaches ofthe two countries.