【英语科技】中国收购通用汽车子公司意义非凡

You don't need to understand exchange rates and trade wars to grasp the economic change that has come to Saginaw, Mich. Remarkably, the largest private employer there will soon be the city government of Beijing.

In the weeks ahead, a 104-year-old unit of General Motors will be sold to new owners from China. The unit made steering equipment for decades under the name Saginaw Steering Gear. Now known as Nexteer, it employs 8,300 people around the world. Its new Beijing owners call themselves Pacific Century Motors.

You and the rest of the world probably missed this $450 million deal. General Motors, still controlled by the U.S. government, gave it little attention this summer as it readied its own high-profile return to the stock market.

But it is one of the landmark deals of the era, the first time Chinese investors have bought a U.S. industrial operation of such scale and history: Twenty-two factories around the globe, six engineering centers, 14 customer-support centers. All of it will be run from Saginaw, where devotion to the company extended to a now-defunct hockey team.

The deal will, of course, test China's nascent foreign investment and management prowess. But it is shaping up to be more of a test stateside, where attitudes against China continue to coarsen as unemployment stays stubbornly high and politicians complain about China taking U.S. jobs, if not U.S. pride.

During World War II, Saginaw Steering Gear manufactured M1 carbines used by Marines in the Pacific.

'Did it really need to be sold to the Chinese?' asks Roger Kahn, a Michigan state senator from Saginaw. 'I want to see businesses successful in the U.S. owned in the U.S. This doesn't meet the standard.'

Ironically, at the G-20 conference in Seoul this week, U.S. leaders are trying to cajole China to buy more from the U.S., to help right a trade deficit that hit $28 billion in August alone. Such imbalances, they say, helped feed the credit craze that culminated in the 2008 financial crisis.

All of these things are conveniently abstract at G-20 meetings. In Saginaw, they are experiencing first hand the collision of two economies in motion, of Chinese ambition and American pride.

People inside and outside the company seem gingerly accepting of Pacific Century, a venture of the city of Beijing's investment arm and a closely held Beijing auto parts company called Tempo Group.

Nexteer was in bad straits in recent years. It has been starved for capital. Its customers -- other car companies -- preferred it to be independent and not a part of GM.

Once Nexteer hit the auction block, the Chinese investors proved surprisingly thorough, even though some of them didn't speak English, said a person familiar with the transaction. They funded their deal with all cash, using no debt. And the opportunity for Nexteer to penetrate the Chinese auto market, soon to be the world's largest, was a selling point for GM, this person said.

Beating out Korean and U.S. private-equity buyers, the two sides announced their deal at a small July news conference in Saginaw. U.S. and Chinese flags flanked the dais.

'I'm sure there are a lot of people who are not happy they're Chinese-owned,' says Scott Somers, who runs Mid-States Bolt & Screw, down the road from Nexteer, which is a customer. 'But at this point it seems to be a positive thing. Lots of businesses are involved with that complex and depend on it for their livelihood.'

The feeling is more begrudging for the workers inside the company. One, who called the Chinese 'commies,' complained to a union official that the U.S. flag and a P.O.W.-M.I.A. memorial flag were taken down when Chinese officials visited recently. A company spokesman said he had no knowledge of any flags being taken down.

One can sympathize with the union's worries of a Trojan horse. Auto parts have remained a key U.S. export. And Nexteer's new owners are eager to buy the company because of its more than 1,000 patents, says Jack Chen, an investment banker at Los Angeles's Transworld Capital Group who helped arrange the deal. 'This dramatically shortens the technology gap between China and the rest of the world,' he said in an interview.

It is hard to know just how the technology will make its way back to China in the years ahead. Nor whether that will hurt or help the people who work in Michigan or those served by the Beijing city government. Meantime, Saginaw must strike a practical arrangement. Chinese capital and access to its home markets is once again giving the city some optimism after unemployment spiked to 14% early this year. The firm is adding 100 engineering jobs this year. It is expected to raise its United Way contribution after having to reduce its gifts.

More broadly, direct Chinese investment on U.S. shores may help improve the countries' fraught trade relationship, in the same way that a wave of Japanese auto plants did here in the 1980s and 1990s.

More investment may also give the U.S. leverage to encourage China to open up its borders to U.S. firms, which are frequently hamstrung by onerous investment rules.

The U.S. was built on foreign investment for centuries, reminds Dewey & LeBoeuf attorney Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade negotiator. 'And we should bolster any investment that encourages U.S. manufacturing, including from China. We'd rather build it here than there.'

And so it begins. The Pacific Century. First stop, Saginaw.

要弄明白美国密歇根州萨吉诺县面临的经济变革，你无需深入了解汇率和贸易战。萨吉诺最大的私营公司不久将归于北京市政府旗下，可谓引人瞩目。

未来几周内，通用汽车公司(General Motors)旗下有着104年历史的子公司将卖给来自中国的新业主。这个曾经名为萨吉诺转向器(Saginaw Steering Gear)的公司制造汽车转向器长达数十年之久，现在公司更名为Nexteer，在全球拥有8,300名员工，其新东家是北京的太平洋世纪汽车系统有限公司(Pacific Century Motors，下称“太平洋世纪汽车”)。

GM/European Pressphoto Agency有关各方今年7月在底特律签署萨吉诺的转让协议不仅你，可能世界其他人也都没有注意到这个价值4.5亿美元的收购交易。仍为美国政府控股的通用汽车因忙于准备高调重返股市，几乎完全没有关注今年夏天的这起交易。

但其实这是这个时代具有里程碑意义的交易之一，中国投资者首次收购了如此大规模和悠久历史的美国制造业公司。Nexteer在全球拥有22个工厂、6个工程中心和14个客户支持中心。所有这些业务的运行都决定于萨吉诺。曾几何时，对公司热忱和忠诚的源泉就从萨吉诺这里向外辐射，扩散至一个现已不复存在的公司团队。

该收购协议无疑是对中国尚未成熟的对外投资和管理技能的一个考验。不过该协议在美国国内的意义绝不是考验中国那么简单。美国国内的反华情绪继续加剧，原因是美国失业率高居不下，政客纷纷抱怨中国抢走了美国人的工作甚至美国的辉煌。

第二次世界大战期间，美国海军陆战队在太平洋战场上使用的M1卡宾枪就是萨吉诺转向器公司生产的。

来自萨吉诺、现任密歇根州参议员的卡恩(Roger Kahn)说，这个公司真的不得不卖给中国人吗？我希望看到美国公司在美国人的手里经营得红红火火，现在的状况可不符合这个标准。

具有讽刺意味的是，本周即将在韩国首尔召开的20国集团(G20)会议上，美国领导人会试图劝诱中国从美国购买更多的产品和服务，借以调整美国对华贸易逆差。美国对中国的贸易逆差仅8月份一个月就高达280亿美元。美国领导人说，这些贸易不平衡助长了美国的借贷热潮，最终导致2008年的金融危机爆发。

这些问题恰好都是20国集团会议所要讨论的议题，但比较抽象。而萨吉诺却亲身感受到了中国野心与美国骄傲真实碰撞的滋味。

Nexteer公司内部员工和外围人士似乎对太平洋世纪汽车的态度是小心翼翼地接受，后者是北京市政府一个投资机构和北京汽车零备件公司天宝集团(Tempo Group)组建的实体。

Nexteer近几年深陷窘境，资金极度不足。该公司的客户，也就是其它汽车制造商，更愿意让Nexteer从通用汽车中独立出来。

一位知情人士说，当Nexteer上了拍卖台，中国投资者出人意料地抛出了大手笔，尽管他们中有些人不会讲英文。他们全部付现金，没有使用贷款。这位知情人士说，此次Nexteer打入中国汽车市场的机会是通用汽车的一个卖点，中国不久将成为全球最大的汽车市场。

中国打败了韩国和美国的私募股权并购公司，七月份在萨吉诺举行的一个小型新闻发布会上，双方宣布了这一交易。

Mid-States Bolt & Screw公司老板萨默斯（Scott Somers）说，我肯定有很多人不满他们被中国拥有，但现在这似乎是一件好事，许多公司都与这个工业区息息相关，依赖它生存和发展。该公司位于Nexteer附近，是Nexteer的客户。

公司内部员工更是不情愿。其中一个把中国人叫做“共产主义者”的人向工会官员抱怨说，中国官员最近来访的时候美国国旗和战俘和战争失踪人员纪念旗（P.O.W.-M.I.A.）被降下来了。一位公司发言人说他对降旗一无所知。

工会对“特洛伊木马”闯入的担忧值得同情。汽车零件仍是美国出口的关键领域。洛杉矶传世资本集团（Transworld Capital Group）投资银行家陈仲华曾协助促成这项交易，他说，Nexteer的新主人渴望收购该公司，因为它有1000多项专利。他在采访中说，这将大大缩小了中国和世界其他各国的技术差距。

只不过我们很难知道这些技术在未来几年会如何进入中国，也很难知道这对在密歇根的员工或为北京市政府工作的人是好还是坏。同时，萨吉诺必须促成一项实际约定。中国资本及其进入中国本土市场再次给了这个城市一线希望，今年早些时候其失业率突破了14%。今年Nexteer新添了100个工程工作岗位。预计它将会增加对美国联合慈善总会（United Way）的募捐，之前因资金短缺不得不减少其捐赠。

更广泛的影响是，中国直接在美国投资也许会有助于改善美国糟糕的贸易关系，就像20世纪80年代和90年代日本汽车工厂在这里的做法一样。

更多的投资可能也会使美国更能鼓励中国向美国公司敞开大门，繁复的投资规定妨碍了美国公司的投资。

美国Dewey & LeBoeuf律师事务所律师、曾任美国贸易谈判代表的沃尔夫（Alan Wolff）回忆道，几百年来美国一直依赖于外国投资，我们应该支持任何能够有益于美国制造业的投资，包括中国，我们宁愿在这里发展壮大。

于是太平洋世纪就拉开了序幕，第一站从萨吉诺开始。