信息技術(shù)與新型全球化
Every newspaper picture editor knows the score. If it’s a story about trade, it gets illustrated with a photo of a gargantuan cargo ship piled high with containers. And every amateur apostle of the free market, along with a few government ministers, knows that all you need to do to win an argument about trade is to cite the theory of comparative advantage and you’re pretty much done.
任何一位報(bào)紙圖片編輯都知道這個(gè)套路。如果這是一篇有關(guān)貿(mào)易的報(bào)道，與之搭配的圖片就應(yīng)該展現(xiàn)一艘巨大的貨輪，船上集裝箱高高堆起。任何一位自由市場的業(yè)余倡導(dǎo)者以及一些政府部門的部長也都知道，要想在有關(guān)貿(mào)易的爭論中取勝，你只需要引用一下比較優(yōu)勢理論。
Much public understanding about trade and globalisation is either scant or trapped in models and realities that owe more to the 20th century, and sometimes the 19th, than to today. At a moment when the downsides of trade and globalisation are cited as causes of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of rightwing populism in Europe, getting the analysis right is a matter of rather more than academic interest.
公眾對(duì)貿(mào)易和全球化的認(rèn)識(shí)要么匱乏，要么陷在模型或?qū)嵗凶卟怀鰜恚疫@些模型或?qū)嵗ǔ８喾从车氖嵌兰o(jì)、有時(shí)甚至是十九世紀(jì)的情況，而非當(dāng)下的現(xiàn)實(shí)。鑒于貿(mào)易和全球化的負(fù)面影響在當(dāng)下被用作解釋英國脫歐、唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)當(dāng)選美國總統(tǒng)以及右翼民粹主義在歐洲興起的原因，進(jìn)行正確的分析就不僅僅是學(xué)術(shù)界感興趣的問題了。
Enter, with exemplary timing, this excellent book by Richard Baldwin, an academic with a strong applied focus, who combines a professorship at the Graduate Institute in Geneva with the presidency of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a renowned network of economists.
這本來自理查德?鮑德溫(Richard Baldwin)的杰作對(duì)上市時(shí)間的把握堪稱典范。鮑德溫是一位高度重視研究現(xiàn)實(shí)問題的學(xué)者，他是日內(nèi)瓦國際研究所(Graduate Institute in Geneva)的教授，同時(shí)還是經(jīng)濟(jì)政策研究中心(Centre for Economic Policy Research)的主席。后者是一個(gè)頗具聲望的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家聯(lián)盟。
For its time and as far as it goes, the 19th-century theory of comparative advantage is fine. Countries specialise in what they are relatively good at: high-wage and capital-rich 19th-century Europe did higher-technology industry, poorer countries such as India did agriculture and small-scale manufactures. Thus, given the productivity gains in manufacturing, began the “Great Divergence” that meant the richer countries pulling away from the rest.
就其所產(chǎn)生的年代及其所討論的深度而言，誕生于19世紀(jì)的比較優(yōu)勢理論是很好的。國家應(yīng)專注于自身相對(duì)擅長的領(lǐng)域：例如十九世紀(jì)時(shí)高工資、資本充裕的歐洲國家就大力發(fā)展了技術(shù)含量較高的工業(yè)，印度等收入較低的國家就主要發(fā)展農(nóng)業(yè)和小型制造業(yè)。因此，在制造業(yè)生產(chǎn)率提升的影響下，“大分裂”(Great Divergence)發(fā)生了，而這意味著高收入國家相對(duì)于世界其他地區(qū)的領(lǐng)先優(yōu)勢拉大。
But Baldwin’s analysis notes this was only one form of globalisation. His framework posits three “cascading constraints” that hold back the globalisation of markets, namely the costs of moving goods, ideas and people. Initially, all were bundled together: early societies stayed where they were, passed down information to the next generation and ate what they grew. The first wave of globalisation that created the Great Divergence expanded markets via the falling cost of transporting physical goods, thanks to the steamship and the railway.
但鮑德溫的分析指出，這只是全球化的一種表現(xiàn)形式。他的分析框架提出了三種阻礙市場全球化的“逐層遞進(jìn)限制”，即貨物運(yùn)輸成本、觀念傳播成本以及人員流動(dòng)成本。最初這三種成本是混合在一起的：在早期社會(huì)形態(tài)中，人們幾乎不怎么離開居住地，把信息傳遞給下一代，吃的也是自己種植生產(chǎn)的食物。導(dǎo)致了“大分裂”的第一波全球化浪潮通過降低實(shí)體貨物運(yùn)輸成本拓展了市場空間，這主要?dú)w功于蒸汽船和鐵路的出現(xiàn)。
But the globalisation that began around 1990 and led to the astonishing rise — in fact, re-emergence — of China and other emerging market giants reflected a relaxation of the constraint on ideas. Digitisation and communications allowed the monitoring and control of supply chains that had previously been bundled together in one economy to be split up into dozens or hundreds of stages, which were then allocated to producers around the globe according to efficiency and cost.
而始于1990年前后、推動(dòng)了中國和其他主要新興市場經(jīng)濟(jì)體崛起——更準(zhǔn)確的說是重新崛起——的那一輪全球化浪潮反映了限制觀念傳播因素的放松。數(shù)字化以及現(xiàn)代通訊使得監(jiān)督控制供應(yīng)鏈的過程可以分散化，將過去集中在一個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體境內(nèi)的生產(chǎn)線分拆為數(shù)十道甚至上百道工序，并根據(jù)成本和效率指標(biāo)分發(fā)給世界各地的生產(chǎn)商。
Baldwin describes very well how this changes the simple country-by-country focus of comparative advantage, with some real-world case studies. South Korea, for example, shifted from its original model of operating an entire car industry at home to setting up an international automotive supply chain. With production processes being broken up into individual pieces and tasks, the sophistication goes to finer degrees. Some groups of workers, who can provide the necessary skills for the cheapest rate, prosper; some languish. Manufacturing sectors in rich countries require workers with very different skills, historically more typical of the service sector, such as management and design.
鮑德溫出色刻畫了這一新情況是如何改變各個(gè)國家單純側(cè)重于本國比較優(yōu)勢的做法的，并對(duì)一些真實(shí)案例進(jìn)行了討論。例如，韓國改變了最初在國內(nèi)運(yùn)營一整條汽車生產(chǎn)線的模式，轉(zhuǎn)而建設(shè)國際化的汽車供應(yīng)鏈。隨著制造流程被打碎成了一個(gè)個(gè)單一任務(wù)，復(fù)雜的生產(chǎn)過程進(jìn)入了一個(gè)更加精細(xì)的階段。部分工人群體發(fā)展壯大——他們能以最低的工資提供必要的技能；部分群體逐漸沒落。高收入國家的制造業(yè)部門需要工人具備非常不同的技能，例如管理和設(shè)計(jì)能力，而過去對(duì)這些技能的要求常見于服務(wù)業(yè)。
Just as South Korea has changed, so newly industrialising countries are less keen on setting up entire industries at home and instead try to insert themselves into global supply chains. Sometimes this means changing, not just exploiting, their comparative advantage. Baldwin cites Vietnam, which joined Honda’s supply network by starting to manufacture motorcycle parts using production and technical expertise imported from the parent company. Thus Vietnam’s existing advantage of low-cost labour joined with the management and technical know-how of Japan to create a new specialism. Those economies that succeed can grow very quickly, producing a “Great Convergence” of poor and rich that provides the book’s title.
正如韓國的轉(zhuǎn)變一樣，其他新興工業(yè)化國家也不再那么急于把整個(gè)產(chǎn)業(yè)都布局在國內(nèi)，而是試圖引導(dǎo)本國企業(yè)融入全球供應(yīng)鏈。有時(shí)這意味著這些國家需要改變自身的比較優(yōu)勢、而不僅僅是利用。鮑德溫舉了越南的例子，該國加入了本田(Honda)的供應(yīng)網(wǎng)絡(luò)，開始運(yùn)用引進(jìn)自本田母公司的生產(chǎn)技術(shù)制造摩托車零部件。由此，越南現(xiàn)有的低成本勞動(dòng)力優(yōu)勢與日本的管理和技術(shù)經(jīng)驗(yàn)結(jié)合在了一起，創(chuàng)造出了一種新的專長。那些獲得成功的經(jīng)濟(jì)體能以很快的速度增長，進(jìn)而導(dǎo)致了窮國和富國之間的“大融合”(Great Convergence)，這也正是鮑德溫這本書的書名。
This framework explains a lot about current tensions around globalisation. For one, the stricken manufacturing towns of the American Midwest, many of whose poorer inhabitants switched to voting for Donald Trump, have experienced first-hand what it feels like rapidly to become a redundant link in a global value chain. (Much of this also owes to changing technology, not trade, but as the US trade representative Michael Froman is fond of saying, no one gets a vote on technology.)
這個(gè)框架能從很多方面解釋當(dāng)前圍繞全球化的緊張氛圍。其一是，美國中西部地區(qū)受沖擊的制造業(yè)城鎮(zhèn)——這些地方的大量低收入居民將選票投給了唐納德?特朗普——親身感受到了在全球價(jià)值鏈中迅速變得多余的滋味。（這種變化在很大程度上是由技術(shù)進(jìn)步而非貿(mào)易導(dǎo)致的，但正如美國貿(mào)易代表邁克?弗羅曼(Mike Froman)喜歡說的那樣，人們無法對(duì)技術(shù)進(jìn)行投票。）
Second, it shows why modern trade deals, such as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and EU, are centred on rules protecting patents and copyrights, and allowing foreign corporations to sue governments if they feel their investments are being expropriated. Multinationals are less concerned with goods tariffs, which are now generally low and belong to an earlier era of trade governance, than they are with trying to protect the specialist knowledge on which their global supply chains depend.
其二是，該框架展現(xiàn)了現(xiàn)代貿(mào)易協(xié)議——例如美國與歐盟之間仍在談判的《跨大西洋貿(mào)易與投資伙伴關(guān)系協(xié)定》(Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)——為何把重點(diǎn)放在了保護(hù)專利和版權(quán)的規(guī)則，以及允許外國企業(yè)在認(rèn)為自身投資被侵吞的情況下起訴政府的規(guī)則。比起目前總體處于較低水平、屬于貿(mào)易管制時(shí)代之物的商品關(guān)稅，跨國公司如今更關(guān)心的是保護(hù)自己的全球供應(yīng)鏈所依存的專業(yè)知識(shí)。
It also foresees the future of globalisation once technology has relaxed the third constraint, the movement of people. The easier it becomes to manage processes from afar — improved videoconferencing, remote-controlled robots — the more virtual immigration can substitute for actual and the specialisation of global supply chains proceed even faster.
該書還預(yù)測了在科技發(fā)展放松了對(duì)人員流動(dòng)的限制之后全球化的未來走向。遠(yuǎn)程管理生產(chǎn)流程變得越容易——例如依靠更好的視頻會(huì)議技術(shù)或遠(yuǎn)程操縱機(jī)器人——虛擬人員遷移就越是能夠代替實(shí)際遷移，全球供應(yīng)鏈將以比以往更快的速度走向?qū)ｉT化。
Baldwin’s work seems likely to become a standard, perhaps indispensable, guide to understanding how globalisation has got us here and where it is likely to take us next. There can be few more vital subjects today that will benefit from this sort of clear and comprehensive exposition.
鮑德溫的這本著作很可能將成為幫助我們理解全球化如何帶領(lǐng)我們走到現(xiàn)在、以及下一步將引領(lǐng)我們走向何方的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)讀物，甚至可能是必讀之書。就當(dāng)前而言，在能夠受益于這種清晰而全面的論述的議題中，沒有幾個(gè)能比全球化議題更重要了。
The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, by Richard Baldwin, Harvard University Press, RRP￡22.95/$29.95, 344 pages
《大融合：信息技術(shù)與新型全球化》(The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization),理查德?鮑德溫著，哈佛大學(xué)出版社(Harvard University Press)，建議零售價(jià)22.95英鎊/29.95美元，344頁
Alan Beattie is the FT’s Brussels leader writer
艾倫?貝蒂(Alan Beattie)是英國金融時(shí)報(bào)駐布魯塞爾主筆
Every newspaper picture editor knows the score. If it’s a story about trade, it gets illustrated with a photo of a gargantuan cargo ship piled high with containers. And every amateur apostle of the free market, along with a few government ministers, knows that all you need to do to win an argument about trade is to cite the theory of comparative advantage and you’re pretty much done.
任何一位報(bào)紙圖片編輯都知道這個(gè)套路。如果這是一篇有關(guān)貿(mào)易的報(bào)道，與之搭配的圖片就應(yīng)該展現(xiàn)一艘巨大的貨輪，船上集裝箱高高堆起。任何一位自由市場的業(yè)余倡導(dǎo)者以及一些政府部門的部長也都知道，要想在有關(guān)貿(mào)易的爭論中取勝，你只需要引用一下比較優(yōu)勢理論。
Much public understanding about trade and globalisation is either scant or trapped in models and realities that owe more to the 20th century, and sometimes the 19th, than to today. At a moment when the downsides of trade and globalisation are cited as causes of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of rightwing populism in Europe, getting the analysis right is a matter of rather more than academic interest.
公眾對(duì)貿(mào)易和全球化的認(rèn)識(shí)要么匱乏，要么陷在模型或?qū)嵗凶卟怀鰜恚疫@些模型或?qū)嵗ǔ８喾从车氖嵌兰o(jì)、有時(shí)甚至是十九世紀(jì)的情況，而非當(dāng)下的現(xiàn)實(shí)。鑒于貿(mào)易和全球化的負(fù)面影響在當(dāng)下被用作解釋英國脫歐、唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)當(dāng)選美國總統(tǒng)以及右翼民粹主義在歐洲興起的原因，進(jìn)行正確的分析就不僅僅是學(xué)術(shù)界感興趣的問題了。
Enter, with exemplary timing, this excellent book by Richard Baldwin, an academic with a strong applied focus, who combines a professorship at the Graduate Institute in Geneva with the presidency of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a renowned network of economists.
這本來自理查德?鮑德溫(Richard Baldwin)的杰作對(duì)上市時(shí)間的把握堪稱典范。鮑德溫是一位高度重視研究現(xiàn)實(shí)問題的學(xué)者，他是日內(nèi)瓦國際研究所(Graduate Institute in Geneva)的教授，同時(shí)還是經(jīng)濟(jì)政策研究中心(Centre for Economic Policy Research)的主席。后者是一個(gè)頗具聲望的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家聯(lián)盟。
For its time and as far as it goes, the 19th-century theory of comparative advantage is fine. Countries specialise in what they are relatively good at: high-wage and capital-rich 19th-century Europe did higher-technology industry, poorer countries such as India did agriculture and small-scale manufactures. Thus, given the productivity gains in manufacturing, began the “Great Divergence” that meant the richer countries pulling away from the rest.
就其所產(chǎn)生的年代及其所討論的深度而言，誕生于19世紀(jì)的比較優(yōu)勢理論是很好的。國家應(yīng)專注于自身相對(duì)擅長的領(lǐng)域：例如十九世紀(jì)時(shí)高工資、資本充裕的歐洲國家就大力發(fā)展了技術(shù)含量較高的工業(yè)，印度等收入較低的國家就主要發(fā)展農(nóng)業(yè)和小型制造業(yè)。因此，在制造業(yè)生產(chǎn)率提升的影響下，“大分裂”(Great Divergence)發(fā)生了，而這意味著高收入國家相對(duì)于世界其他地區(qū)的領(lǐng)先優(yōu)勢拉大。
But Baldwin’s analysis notes this was only one form of globalisation. His framework posits three “cascading constraints” that hold back the globalisation of markets, namely the costs of moving goods, ideas and people. Initially, all were bundled together: early societies stayed where they were, passed down information to the next generation and ate what they grew. The first wave of globalisation that created the Great Divergence expanded markets via the falling cost of transporting physical goods, thanks to the steamship and the railway.
但鮑德溫的分析指出，這只是全球化的一種表現(xiàn)形式。他的分析框架提出了三種阻礙市場全球化的“逐層遞進(jìn)限制”，即貨物運(yùn)輸成本、觀念傳播成本以及人員流動(dòng)成本。最初這三種成本是混合在一起的：在早期社會(huì)形態(tài)中，人們幾乎不怎么離開居住地，把信息傳遞給下一代，吃的也是自己種植生產(chǎn)的食物。導(dǎo)致了“大分裂”的第一波全球化浪潮通過降低實(shí)體貨物運(yùn)輸成本拓展了市場空間，這主要?dú)w功于蒸汽船和鐵路的出現(xiàn)。
But the globalisation that began around 1990 and led to the astonishing rise — in fact, re-emergence — of China and other emerging market giants reflected a relaxation of the constraint on ideas. Digitisation and communications allowed the monitoring and control of supply chains that had previously been bundled together in one economy to be split up into dozens or hundreds of stages, which were then allocated to producers around the globe according to efficiency and cost.
而始于1990年前后、推動(dòng)了中國和其他主要新興市場經(jīng)濟(jì)體崛起——更準(zhǔn)確的說是重新崛起——的那一輪全球化浪潮反映了限制觀念傳播因素的放松。數(shù)字化以及現(xiàn)代通訊使得監(jiān)督控制供應(yīng)鏈的過程可以分散化，將過去集中在一個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體境內(nèi)的生產(chǎn)線分拆為數(shù)十道甚至上百道工序，并根據(jù)成本和效率指標(biāo)分發(fā)給世界各地的生產(chǎn)商。
Baldwin describes very well how this changes the simple country-by-country focus of comparative advantage, with some real-world case studies. South Korea, for example, shifted from its original model of operating an entire car industry at home to setting up an international automotive supply chain. With production processes being broken up into individual pieces and tasks, the sophistication goes to finer degrees. Some groups of workers, who can provide the necessary skills for the cheapest rate, prosper; some languish. Manufacturing sectors in rich countries require workers with very different skills, historically more typical of the service sector, such as management and design.
鮑德溫出色刻畫了這一新情況是如何改變各個(gè)國家單純側(cè)重于本國比較優(yōu)勢的做法的，并對(duì)一些真實(shí)案例進(jìn)行了討論。例如，韓國改變了最初在國內(nèi)運(yùn)營一整條汽車生產(chǎn)線的模式，轉(zhuǎn)而建設(shè)國際化的汽車供應(yīng)鏈。隨著制造流程被打碎成了一個(gè)個(gè)單一任務(wù)，復(fù)雜的生產(chǎn)過程進(jìn)入了一個(gè)更加精細(xì)的階段。部分工人群體發(fā)展壯大——他們能以最低的工資提供必要的技能；部分群體逐漸沒落。高收入國家的制造業(yè)部門需要工人具備非常不同的技能，例如管理和設(shè)計(jì)能力，而過去對(duì)這些技能的要求常見于服務(wù)業(yè)。
Just as South Korea has changed, so newly industrialising countries are less keen on setting up entire industries at home and instead try to insert themselves into global supply chains. Sometimes this means changing, not just exploiting, their comparative advantage. Baldwin cites Vietnam, which joined Honda’s supply network by starting to manufacture motorcycle parts using production and technical expertise imported from the parent company. Thus Vietnam’s existing advantage of low-cost labour joined with the management and technical know-how of Japan to create a new specialism. Those economies that succeed can grow very quickly, producing a “Great Convergence” of poor and rich that provides the book’s title.
正如韓國的轉(zhuǎn)變一樣，其他新興工業(yè)化國家也不再那么急于把整個(gè)產(chǎn)業(yè)都布局在國內(nèi)，而是試圖引導(dǎo)本國企業(yè)融入全球供應(yīng)鏈。有時(shí)這意味著這些國家需要改變自身的比較優(yōu)勢、而不僅僅是利用。鮑德溫舉了越南的例子，該國加入了本田(Honda)的供應(yīng)網(wǎng)絡(luò)，開始運(yùn)用引進(jìn)自本田母公司的生產(chǎn)技術(shù)制造摩托車零部件。由此，越南現(xiàn)有的低成本勞動(dòng)力優(yōu)勢與日本的管理和技術(shù)經(jīng)驗(yàn)結(jié)合在了一起，創(chuàng)造出了一種新的專長。那些獲得成功的經(jīng)濟(jì)體能以很快的速度增長，進(jìn)而導(dǎo)致了窮國和富國之間的“大融合”(Great Convergence)，這也正是鮑德溫這本書的書名。
This framework explains a lot about current tensions around globalisation. For one, the stricken manufacturing towns of the American Midwest, many of whose poorer inhabitants switched to voting for Donald Trump, have experienced first-hand what it feels like rapidly to become a redundant link in a global value chain. (Much of this also owes to changing technology, not trade, but as the US trade representative Michael Froman is fond of saying, no one gets a vote on technology.)
這個(gè)框架能從很多方面解釋當(dāng)前圍繞全球化的緊張氛圍。其一是，美國中西部地區(qū)受沖擊的制造業(yè)城鎮(zhèn)——這些地方的大量低收入居民將選票投給了唐納德?特朗普——親身感受到了在全球價(jià)值鏈中迅速變得多余的滋味。（這種變化在很大程度上是由技術(shù)進(jìn)步而非貿(mào)易導(dǎo)致的，但正如美國貿(mào)易代表邁克?弗羅曼(Mike Froman)喜歡說的那樣，人們無法對(duì)技術(shù)進(jìn)行投票。）
Second, it shows why modern trade deals, such as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and EU, are centred on rules protecting patents and copyrights, and allowing foreign corporations to sue governments if they feel their investments are being expropriated. Multinationals are less concerned with goods tariffs, which are now generally low and belong to an earlier era of trade governance, than they are with trying to protect the specialist knowledge on which their global supply chains depend.
其二是，該框架展現(xiàn)了現(xiàn)代貿(mào)易協(xié)議——例如美國與歐盟之間仍在談判的《跨大西洋貿(mào)易與投資伙伴關(guān)系協(xié)定》(Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)——為何把重點(diǎn)放在了保護(hù)專利和版權(quán)的規(guī)則，以及允許外國企業(yè)在認(rèn)為自身投資被侵吞的情況下起訴政府的規(guī)則。比起目前總體處于較低水平、屬于貿(mào)易管制時(shí)代之物的商品關(guān)稅，跨國公司如今更關(guān)心的是保護(hù)自己的全球供應(yīng)鏈所依存的專業(yè)知識(shí)。
It also foresees the future of globalisation once technology has relaxed the third constraint, the movement of people. The easier it becomes to manage processes from afar — improved videoconferencing, remote-controlled robots — the more virtual immigration can substitute for actual and the specialisation of global supply chains proceed even faster.
該書還預(yù)測了在科技發(fā)展放松了對(duì)人員流動(dòng)的限制之后全球化的未來走向。遠(yuǎn)程管理生產(chǎn)流程變得越容易——例如依靠更好的視頻會(huì)議技術(shù)或遠(yuǎn)程操縱機(jī)器人——虛擬人員遷移就越是能夠代替實(shí)際遷移，全球供應(yīng)鏈將以比以往更快的速度走向?qū)ｉT化。
Baldwin’s work seems likely to become a standard, perhaps indispensable, guide to understanding how globalisation has got us here and where it is likely to take us next. There can be few more vital subjects today that will benefit from this sort of clear and comprehensive exposition.
鮑德溫的這本著作很可能將成為幫助我們理解全球化如何帶領(lǐng)我們走到現(xiàn)在、以及下一步將引領(lǐng)我們走向何方的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)讀物，甚至可能是必讀之書。就當(dāng)前而言，在能夠受益于這種清晰而全面的論述的議題中，沒有幾個(gè)能比全球化議題更重要了。
The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, by Richard Baldwin, Harvard University Press, RRP￡22.95/$29.95, 344 pages
《大融合：信息技術(shù)與新型全球化》(The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization),理查德?鮑德溫著，哈佛大學(xué)出版社(Harvard University Press)，建議零售價(jià)22.95英鎊/29.95美元，344頁
Alan Beattie is the FT’s Brussels leader writer
艾倫?貝蒂(Alan Beattie)是英國金融時(shí)報(bào)駐布魯塞爾主筆
