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- 【征集】西西河的经济学，及清流措施，需要主动参与者，『稷下学宫』新认证方式，24年网站打算和努力目标
主题：【求助】为什么美国要中国放开油价呢，对美国有什么好处呢 -- imming
家园 【求助】为什么美国要中国放开油价呢，对美国有什么好处呢 怕 中国向国际市场走私 ？
家园 华尔街日报的文章 不全文翻译了，挑几个重点吧：
1.包括希拉力.克林顿在内的16个参议员向布什写信，要求他向中国施压，使中国减少油价补贴，油价市场化。美国财Paulson最近也在呼吁人民币提价的同时，呼吁中国放开燃油价格。
2.中国从周五开始提高汽油价格17％，柴油价格18％，电价4.7%，提价后中国汽油价格将达到3.06美元一加仑，（低于美国零售价，但就象大多数分析提到的，中国汽油价钱里面是不包括养路费的，考虑到这一点，中美两国的汽油零售价几乎相同）
3.要求中国放开燃油价格的声音是基于这样一种简单的经济分析：价格决定需求，中国人为的压低燃油价格导致了过高的国内需求，从而拉高了国际市场的需求，导致油价高企。
4.中国放开油价的新闻宣布之后，伦敦石油期货价格果然应声而落。
5.有分析认为，放开燃油价格之后的短时间内，中国的燃油需求会上升，这是因为前一段价格控制的过低，炼油商没有热情供应，导致许多需要燃油的方面得不到供给，而价格放开之后，炼油商的供给会增加，而需求方面的价格弹性短期内还表现不出来，反而可能会出现实际售油量增加的情况。
6.从长期看，放开油价对中国经济的影响是正面的，市场价格会驱使人们理性的决定自己的用油量，厂商会考虑采用更高效率的用油进行生产。
7.实际上，过去5年，每年世界用油量增长都小于1％，所以把油价上涨归结到中国身上，纯属无稽之谈。
全文见回帖（字数限制）
- 复 华尔街日报的文章
家园 花一个 今天原油期货价格回调了四块多，还是很正面的。且看明天的后续走势。
- 复 华尔街日报的文章
家园 【文摘】WSJ 文章 （part 1) China Lifts Energy PricesBEIJING -- With its controlled energy-pricing system under the strain of oil at $130-plus a barrel, China's government said it will increase retail prices for gasoline, diesel and electricity.
The moves will pass on some of the gains in global energy prices to Chinese consumers, as many international industry and government officials had urged China to do, at a time when inflation is a rising concern. Those higher rates will in turn push up costs for businesses, potentially pushing up prices for the goods China supplies to the world. But the changes fall short of the wholesale revamping of price controls that some had called for.
[Image]
Getty Images
Cyclists ride by a PetroChina price-board near a petrol station in Beijing.
The price increases, announced late Thursday in Beijing after local markets had closed, seem certain to intensify the increasingly heated debate over China's role in the global oil market and its influence on prices. Oil futures dropped immediately after the announcement on the expectation that higher retail prices would curb China's purchases of crude. Many experts have been warning in recent weeks that an increase fuel prices would actually cause a spike in China's oil demand that could exacerbate price gains in the near term.
China last raised domestic fuel prices by 10% last November, when oil was around $90 a barrel. The new hikes, which take effect Friday, are the biggest in four years, and will push the base prices up by 17% for gasoline and by 18% for diesel, the National Development and Reform Commission said. That base price can differ from the price at the pump. The commission said the increases will lead to average retail prices of about 7,540 yuan a ton for gasoline, or about $3.06 a gallon. Electricity prices, also state-set, will rise an average 4.7% nationwide.
China is the world's second-largest oil consumer, after the U.S., and has long been cited as a key driver of the years-long boom in global oil prices. With the sharp run-up in oil in recent months, Beijing's longstanding policy of fixing retail prices for gasoline, diesel and electricity has been getting unprecedented attention. Critics blame it for disrupting market signals, helping sustain demand for oil and coal and pushing prices higher.
With inflation an increasing worry world-wide, the political furor over China's price controls has been threatening to supplant the longstanding tussle over its exchange-rate policies as the nation's most contentious international economic issue. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been talking more about energy. He has urged Beijing to abandon its fuel-price controls, saying the U.S. found out the hard way in the 1970s they don't work, and raised the issue again at this week's U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.
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"China's on the verge of being the main thing the U.S. blames for high oil prices, replacing the Saudis. It's close," said Trevor Houser, a China energy specialist at Rhodium Group, a New York consultancy. "The people in Washington complaining about price controls are the same people talking about" the yuan, China's currency, he said.
On Wednesday, 16 Democratic senators sent a letter to U.S. officials in President George W. Bush's administration that blamed China's price controls for high oil prices and urged them to press Beijing on the issue. Signers included former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "What Americans see happening at the pump is driven, in part, by what is happening in China," they wrote.
Those tensions will be on the agenda when Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping attends this weekend's summit of oil producers and consumers in Saudi Arabia.
The new increases don't dismantle the system of government-set prices, though China has indicated it seeks deeper changes. Zhang Xiaoqiang, a vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, which sets fuel prices, said this week that "we are firm in our resolve" to reform the pricing system. But with the country facing the highest inflation in more than a decade -- more than 8% this year -- officials seem unwilling to expose Chinese consumers to the full brunt of global oil-price swings. There is deep concern over social stability, and the price increases was accompanied by announcement of programs to minimize their impact on the poor.
[China oil charts]
The logic behind the criticism of that policy is straightforward: By keeping down the prices that its companies and consumers pay for fuel, China is impeding the normal market mechanisms that would cause demand to soften as global prices soar.
太长了，还有一部分
家园 part 2 So far, the main effect of China's price controls hasn't been to allow its consumers to splurge on energy in blissful ignorance of higher prices elsewhere. It has been to make it unprofitable for Chinese refiners to supply gas and diesel, as they have to buy crude oil at global prices but sell their products at controlled local prices. Those producers are pulling back from the market, creating widespread fuel shortages. Similarly, power plants' losses have been mounting as they burn coal bought at market prices to sell electricity at a low state-set price, and power shortages have been spreading.
That means Chinese consumers are actually buying less energy than they would otherwise, not more. Raise prices enough to make refining profitable again, and refiners and power producers will rush to meet all the demand that has been stored up for the past several months.
"The continued fuel shortages that have beset the country since 2007 suggest that pent-up demand remains considerable," the International Energy Agency wrote in its latest oil-market report. Because of all that demand waiting in the wings, "oil demand growth in China could even accelerate if a retail price hike improved the supply picture," the agency said.
After the last 10% price increase in November, the country's oil demand didn't slow significantly, and global crude prices have risen about 50% since then.
It isn't clear the latest price increases will completely put refiners in the black: Some analysts had estimated this would require a 25% price increase. In New York trade Thursday, Asian depositary receipts of Chinese oil companies soared. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, was up 9.4% and PetroChina Co. by 6% on Beijing's announcement.
Supplies of fuel could improve quickly because many refiners and distributors seem to have been anticipating a price rise in recent weeks. The controlled prices gave them an incentive to build up supplies of gas and diesel, so they can cash in by selling at higher prices later.
While there are no firm figures on stockpiles, China's fuel imports have picked up recently: May's diesel imports were the third highest on record, and China was a net importer of gasoline for the month, for the first time on record.
That kind of behavior is one reason why analysts said the price controls add volatility to international markets. The longer-term distortion of artificially low prices is in how they encourage consumers to drive more, or businesses to build less efficient plants. Higher fuel prices might eventually encourage consumers to be more efficient, but given the nature of China's oil use and its booming economy, that response might be less pronounced than some observers expect.
"If the economy is going to click along at 10% in China, you're going to have oil-demand growth, even at high prices," said Mr. Houser of Rhodium Group. High prices only curb demand if oil users can switch to less energy-intensive alternatives, and there aren't many of those in China now, he said. Most Chinese cities are poorly served by public transit, giving commuters fewer choices. Its rail lines are usually filled to capacity, making diesel-burning truck transport one of the only options for businesses.
While it is routine to cite China's strong demand for energy as a reason for high oil prices, oil's price is set globally, and total global oil consumption has been rising by a little more than 1% a year for the past five years. That is one reason why many analysts said factors such as supply constraints, political uncertainties or the still-uncertain influence of financial speculation in commodities are also important.
"China is a relatively small consumer of petroleum. So I'm hard pressed to see why China is taking the blame," said Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics, a consultancy in the U.S. China is a big player in other commodity markets. It accounts for half of global demand for steel and a quarter of the global demand for copper, but makes up less than 10% of global oil consumption. "It's an error to extrapolate China's role in the steel market or the copper market to the oil market. It's guilt by association," he said.
家园 表面上是为了“公平竞争”吧 压制油价等于是在变相给国内企业补贴，增加它们在国际市场上的竞争力。这和美国要求人民币增值是一致的，为了要减少贸易逆差。
