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世界经济增长乏力,我们对全球化的看法错了吗
Why It Seems Everything We Knew About the Global Economy Is No Longer True

来源:纽约时报    2023-06-19 03:39



        When the world’s business and political leaders gathered in 2018 at the annual economic forum in Davos, the mood was jubilant. Growth in every major country was on an upswing. The global economy, declared Christine Lagarde, then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, “is in a very sweet spot.”        2018年,当全球商界和政界领袖齐聚达沃斯参加年度经济论坛时,气氛一片欢腾。所有主要国家的经济增长都在上升。时任国际货币基金组织总裁克里斯蒂娜·拉加德宣称,全球经济“正处于极佳态势”。
        Five years later, the outlook has decidedly soured.        五年后,前景明显恶化。
        “Nearly all the economic forces that powered progress and prosperity over the last three decades are fading,” the World Bank warned in a recent analysis. “The result could be a lost decade in the making — not just for some countries or regions as has occurred in the past — but for the whole world.”        “过去30年推动进步和繁荣的几乎所有经济力量都在消退,”世界银行在最近的一份分析报告中警告称:“其结果可能会是迎来一个‘失去的十年’——不只是像过去那样,在一些国家或地区发生——而是在整个世界。”
        A lot has happened between then and now: A global pandemic hit; war erupted in Europe; tensions between the United States and China boiled. And inflation, thought to be safely stored away with disco album collections, returned with a vengeance.        从那时到现在,发生了很多事情:全球疫情;欧洲战争;美国和中国之间的紧张关系白热化。而被认为已经像迪斯科唱片收藏一样被妥善保存起来的通货膨胀却卷土重来。
        But as the dust has settled, it has suddenly seemed as if almost everything we thought we knew about the world economy was wrong.        但是,随着尘埃落定,突然间,我们发现自己对世界经济的了解似乎都是错误的。
        The economic conventions that policymakers had relied on since the Berlin Wall fell more than 30 years ago — the unfailing superiority of open markets, liberalized trade and maximum efficiency — look to be running off the rails.        自30多年前柏林墙倒塌以来,政策制定者一直依赖的经济约定——开放市场、自由贸易和效率最大化的永恒优势——似乎正在偏离轨道。
        During the Covid-19 pandemic, the ceaseless drive to integrate the global economy and reduce costs left health care workers without face masks and medical gloves, carmakers without semiconductors, sawmills without lumber and sneaker buyers without Nikes.        在新冠病毒大流行期间,不断推动全球经济一体化和降低成本的驱动力导致医护人员没有口罩和医用手套,汽车制造商没有半导体,锯木厂没有木材,运动鞋购买者没有耐克。
        The idea that trade and shared economic interests would prevent military conflicts was trampled last year under the boots of Russian soldiers in Ukraine.        去年入侵乌克兰的俄罗斯士兵把贸易和共同经济利益可以防止军事冲突的理念也踩了个粉碎。
        And increasing bouts of extreme weather that destroyed crops, forced migrations and halted power plants has illustrated that the market’s invisible hand was not protecting the planet.        越来越多的极端天气摧毁了农作物,迫使人们迁徙,使发电厂停运,这表明市场看不见的手并没有保护地球。
        Now, as the second year of war in Ukraine grinds on and countries struggle with limp growth and persistent inflation, questions about the emerging economic playing field have taken center stage.        如今,随着乌克兰战争进入第二年,各国经济增长乏力、通胀持续,有关新兴经济竞争领域的问题成了人们关注的焦点。
        Globalization, seen in recent decades as unstoppable a force as gravity, is clearly evolving in unpredictable ways. The move away from an integrated world economy is accelerating. And the best way to respond is a subject of fierce debate.        近几十年来,全球化被视为一种像地心引力一样不可阻挡的力量,但它显然正在以不可预测的方式发展。脱离一体化世界经济的步伐正在加快。应对的最佳方式成为激辩话题。
        Of course, challenges to the reigning economic consensus had been growing for a while.        当然,对占主导地位的经济共识的挑战已经酝酿多时。
        “We saw before the pandemic began that the wealthiest countries were getting frustrated by international trade, believing — whether correctly or not — that somehow this was hurting them, their jobs and standards of living,” said Betsey Stevenson, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration.        奥巴马政府经济顾问委员会成员贝琪·史蒂文森说:“我们看到,在疫情开始之前,最富裕的国家对国际贸易感到沮丧,他们相信——不管正确与否——这在某种程度上损害了他们、他们的工作和生活水平。”
        The financial meltdown in 2008 came close to tanking the global financial system. Britain pulled out of the European Union in 2016. President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on China in 2017, spurring a mini trade war.        2008年的金融危机几乎摧毁了全球金融体系。英国于2016年退出欧盟。特朗普总统在2017年对中国征收关税,引发了一场小型贸易战。
        But starting with Covid-19, the rat-a-tat series of crises exposed with startling clarity vulnerabilities that demanded attention.        但从新冠病毒开始,一系列针锋相对的危机将需要关注的漏洞彻底暴露了出来。
        As the consulting firm EY concluded in its 2023 Geostrategic Outlook, the trends behind the shift away from ever-increasing globalization “were accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic — and then they have been supercharged by the war in Ukraine.”        正如咨询公司安永在其《2023年地缘战略展望》中总结的那样,从一度增长的全球化中脱离出来的背后趋势“被新冠大流行加速了——然后又被乌克兰战争加剧了”。
        It was the ‘end of history.’        这是“历史的终结”。
        Today’s sense of unease is a stark contrast with the heady triumphalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. It was a period when a theorist could declare that the fall of communism marked “the end of history” — that liberal democratic ideas not only vanquished rivals, but represented “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution.”        如今的不安与1991年12月苏联解体后那种令人兴奋的必胜信念形成了鲜明对比。在那个时期,一位理论家可以宣称共产主义的垮台标志着“历史的终结”——自由民主思想不仅击败了对手,而且代表了“人类意识形态进化的终点”。
        Associated economic theories about the ineluctable rise of worldwide free market capitalism took on a similar sheen of invincibility and inevitability. Open markets, hands-off government and the relentless pursuit of efficiency would offer the best route to prosperity.        有关全球自由市场资本主义必然崛起的相关经济理论也蒙上了类似的光泽,仿佛不可战胜、不可避免。开放市场、不干涉的政府和对效率的不懈追求将提供通往繁荣的最佳途径。
        It was believed that a new world where goods, money and information crisscrossed the globe would essentially sweep away the old order of Cold War conflicts and undemocratic regimes.        人们认为,商品、金钱和信息在全球纵横交错的新世界将基本上扫除冷战冲突和不民主政权的旧秩序。
        There was reason for optimism. During the 1990s, inflation was low while employment, wages and productivity were up. Global trade nearly doubled. Investments in developing countries surged. The stock market rose.        人们有理由感到乐观。在20世纪90年代,通货膨胀率很低,而就业率、工资和生产率都在上升。全球贸易几乎翻了一番。对发展中国家的投资激增。股市上涨。
        The World Trade Organization was established in 1995 to enforce the rules. China’s entry six years later was seen as transformative. And linking a huge market with 142 countries would irresistibly draw the Asian giant toward democracy.        世界贸易组织于1995年成立,以执行这些规则。六年后,中国的加入被视为具有变革意义。一个庞大的市场与142个国家建立连接,将不可避免地把这个亚洲巨人引向民主。
        China, along with South Korea, Malaysia and others, turned struggling farmers into productive urban factory workers. The furniture, toys and electronics they sold around the world generated tremendous growth.        中国与韩国、马来西亚等国家一起,把艰难度日的农民变成了有生产力的城市工厂工人。他们在世界各地销售的家具、玩具和电子产品带来了巨大的增长。
        The favored economic road map helped produce fabulous wealth, lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and spur wondrous technological advances.        这张人们情有独钟的经济路线图帮助创造了惊人的财富,使数亿人摆脱了贫困,并推动了惊人的技术进步。
        But there were stunning failures as well. Globalization hastened climate change and deepened inequalities.        但也有令人震惊的失败。全球化加速了气候变化,加深了不平等。
        In the United States and other advanced economies, many industrial jobs were exported to lower-wage countries, removing a springboard to the middle class.        在美国和其他发达经济体,许多产业工人岗位被出口到工资较低的国家,人们失去了通向中产阶级的跳板。
        Policymakers always knew there would be winners and losers. Still, the market was left to decide how to deploy labor, technology and capital in the belief that efficiency and growth would automatically follow. Only afterward, the thinking went, should politicians step in to redistribute gains or help those left without jobs or prospects.        政策制定者一直都知道,总会有赢家和输家。尽管如此,他们仍然让市场来决定如何配置劳动力、技术和资本,相信效率和增长会自动随之而来,认为只有在此之后,政治人士才应该介入,重新分配收益,或者帮助那些失去工作或希望的人。
        Companies embarked on a worldwide scavenger hunt for low-wage workers, regardless of worker protections, environmental impact or democratic rights. They found many of them in places like Mexico, Vietnam and China.        企业不顾工人保护、环境影响或民主权利,开始在全球范围内寻找低薪工人。他们在墨西哥、越南和中国等地发现了许多这样的人。
        Television, T-shirts and tacos were cheaper than ever, but many essentials like health care, housing and higher education were increasingly out of reach.        电视、T恤和玉米饼比以往任何时候都便宜,但医疗、住房和高等教育等许多必需品却越来越遥不可及。
        The job exodus pushed down wages at home and undercut workers’ bargaining power, spurring anti-immigrant sentiments and strengthening hard-right populist leaders like Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France.        就业外流压低了国内工资,削弱了工人的议价能力,激发了反移民情绪,并加强了美国的唐纳德·特朗普、匈牙利的欧尔班·维克托和法国的马琳·勒庞等极右翼民粹主义领导人的地位。
        In advanced industrial giants like the United States, Britain and several European countries, political leaders turned out to be unable or unwilling to more broadly reapportion rewards and burdens.        在美国、英国和几个欧洲国家等发达工业大国,政治领导人无法或不愿更广泛地重新分配回报和负担。
        Nor were they able to prevent damaging environmental fallout. Transporting goods around the globe increased greenhouse gas emissions. Producing for a world of consumers strained natural resources, encouraging overfishing in Southeast Asia and illegal deforestation in Brazil. And cheap production facilities polluted countries without adequate environmental standards.        他们也没有能力阻止破坏性的环境影响。在全球范围内运输货物增加了温室气体排放。为全世界的消费者生产使自然资源紧张,助长了东南亚的过度捕捞和巴西的非法砍伐森林。廉价的生产设施污染了没有适当环境标准的国家。
        It turned out that markets on their own weren’t able to automatically distribute gains fairly or spur developing countries to grow or establish democratic institutions.        事实证明,市场本身无法自动公平地分配收益,也无法刺激发展中国家发展或建立民主制度。
        Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in a recent speech that a central fallacy in American economic policy had been to assume “that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently — no matter what our competitors did, no matter how big our shared challenges grew, and no matter how many guardrails we took down.”        美国国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文在最近的一次演讲中说,美国经济政策的一个核心谬误是假设“无论我们的竞争对手做了什么,无论我们共同面临的挑战有多大,无论我们拆除了多少护栏,市场总是能有效地配置资本”。
        The proliferation of economic exchanges between nations also failed to usher in a promised democratic renaissance.        国与国之间经济交流的激增也未能带来承诺的民主复兴。
        Communist-led China turned out to be the global economic system’s biggest beneficiary — and perhaps master gamesman — without embracing democratic values.        事实证明,共产党领导下的中国是全球经济体系最大的受益者——或许也是这个体系的博弈高手——但却没有拥抱民主价值观。
        “Capitalist tools in socialist hands,” the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in 1992, when his country was developing into the world’s factory floor. China’s astonishing growth transformed it into the world’s second largest economy and a major engine of global growth. All along, though, Beijing maintained a tight grip on its raw materials, land, capital, energy, credit and labor, as well as the movements and speech of its people.        “资本主义的工具掌握在社会主义者手中,”1992年,中国领导人邓小平说道。当时中国正在发展成为世界工厂。中国惊人的增长使其成为世界第二大经济体和全球增长的主要引擎。然而,一直以来,北京对原材料、土地、资本、能源、信贷和劳动力,以及人民的行动和言论都保持着严格的控制。
        Money flowed in, and poor countries paid the price.        资金来了,贫穷国家付出了代价。
        In developing countries, the results could be dire.        在发展中国家,结果可能很糟糕。
        The economic havoc wreaked by the pandemic combined with soaring food and fuel prices caused by the war in Ukraine have created a spate of debt crises. Rising interest rates have made those crises worse. Debts, like energy and food, are often priced in dollars on the world market, so when U.S. rates go up, debt payments get more expensive.        大流行病造成的经济破坏,加上乌克兰战争导致的食品和燃料价格飙升引发了一连串的债务危机。利率上升使这些危机更加严重。和能源和食品一样,债务在世界市场上通常以美元计价,因此当美国利率上升时,债务偿付变得更加昂贵。
        The cycle of loans and bailouts, though, has deeper roots.        不过,贷款和纾困的循环有着更深的根源。
        Poorer nations were pressured to lift all restrictions on capital moving in and out of the country. The argument was that money, like goods, should flow freely among nations. Allowing governments, businesses and individuals to borrow from foreign lenders would finance industrial development and key infrastructure.        较贫穷的国家被迫全面取消资本进出该国的限制。这样做的理由是,资金像商品一样,应该在国家之间自由流动。允许政府、企业和个人向外国贷方借款,将为工业发展和关键基础设施提供资金。
        “Financial globalization was supposed to usher in an era of robust growth and fiscal stability in the developing world,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But “it ended up doing the opposite.”        “金融全球化本应将发展中国家带入一个强劲增长和财政稳定的时代,”马萨诸塞大学阿姆赫斯特分校的经济学家贾亚蒂·戈什说。但“结果适得其反”。
        Some loans — whether from private lenders or institutions like the World Bank — didn’t produce enough returns to pay off the debt. Others were poured into speculative schemes, half-baked proposals, vanity projects or corrupt officials’ bank accounts. And debtors remained at the mercy of rising interest rates that swelled the size of debt payments in a heartbeat.        一些贷款——无论是来自私人贷方还是来自世界银行等机构——都没有产生足够的回报来偿还债务。还有一些贷款则被投入投机项目、不完善的提案、面子工程,或进入了腐败官员的银行账户。债务国仍然受到利率左右,利率上升会瞬间增加债务偿付的规模。
        Over the years, reckless lending, asset bubbles, currency fluctuations and official mismanagement led to boom-and-bust cycles in Asia, Russia, Latin America and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, extravagant projects undertaken by the government, from ports to cricket stadiums, helped drive the country into bankruptcy last year as citizens scavenged for food and the central bank, in a barter arrangement, paid for Iranian oil with tea leaves.        多年来,不计后果的贷款、资产泡沫、货币波动和官方管理不善导致亚洲、俄罗斯、拉丁美洲和其他地方出现了繁荣与萧条的周期循环。在斯里兰卡,政府发起的从港口到板球场的奢侈项目导致该国去年陷入破产,国民四处寻找食物,而中央银行以易货交易的方式用茶叶支付伊朗石油的费用。
        It’s a “Ponzi scheme,” Ms. Ghosh said.        这是一个“庞氏骗局”,戈什说。
        Private lenders who got spooked that they would not be repaid abruptly cut off the flow of money, leaving countries in the lurch.        私人贷方担心债务国无法偿还,突然切断了资金流动,使这些国家陷入困境。
        And the mandated austerity that accompanied bailouts from the International Monetary Fund, which compelled overextended governments to slash spending, often brought widespread misery by cutting public assistance, pensions, education and health care.        国际货币基金组织(IMF)的纾困伴随着强制性紧缩政策,迫使过度扩张的政府削减开支,通常通过削减公共援助、养老金、教育和医疗保健,导致许多人受苦。
        Even I.M.F. economists acknowledged in 2016 that instead of delivering growth, such policies “increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion.”        就连IMF经济学家都在2016年承认,此类政策非但没有带来增长,反而“加剧了不平等,进而危及持久发展”。
        Disenchantment with the West’s style of lending gave China the opportunity to become an aggressive creditor in countries like Argentina, Mongolia, Egypt and Suriname.        对西方借贷方式的失望让中国有机会向阿根廷、蒙古、埃及和苏里南等国家大肆贷款。
        Self-reliance replaces cheap imports.        自给自足取代廉价进口。
        While the collapse of the Soviet Union cleared the way for the domination of free-market orthodoxy, the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has now decisively unmoored it.        虽然苏联的解体为正统的自由市场主宰经济扫清了道路,但俄罗斯联邦对乌克兰的入侵现在已经决定性地让这条道路脱离。
        The story of the international economy today, said Henry Farrell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is about “how geopolitics is gobbling up hyperglobalization.”        约翰霍普金斯大学高级国际研究学院教授亨利·法雷尔说,当今国际经济可以概述为“地缘政治如何吞噬超级全球化”。
        Old-world style great power politics accomplished what the threat of catastrophic climate collapse, seething social unrest and widening inequality could not: It upended assumptions about the global economic order.        旧世界风格的大国政治颠覆了对全球经济秩序的假设——这是灾难性气候崩溃、激烈的社会动荡和日益扩大的不平等带来的威胁都未能做到的。
        Josep Borrell, the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, put it bluntly in a speech 10 months after the invasion of Ukraine: “We have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security.” Europe got cheap energy from Russia and cheap manufactured goods from China. “This is a world that is no longer there,” he said.        欧盟外交事务和安全政策负责人何塞普·博雷尔在乌克兰遭入侵10个月后的一次演讲中直言:“我们已经将繁荣的来源与安全的来源脱钩了。”欧洲从俄罗斯获得廉价能源,从中国获得廉价制成品。“那样的世界已经不存在了,”他说。
        Supply-chain chokeholds stemming from the pandemic and subsequent recovery had already underscored the fragility of a globally sourced economy. As political tensions over the war grew, policymakers quickly added self-reliance and strength to the goals of growth and efficiency.        大流行和随后的复苏造成的供应链瓶颈已经凸显了全球采购经济的脆弱性。随着战争引起的政治紧张局势加剧,政策制定者迅速将自给自足和实力添加到增长和效率的目标中。
        “Our supply chains are not secure, and they’re not resilient,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said last spring. Trade relationships should be built around “trusted partners,” she said, even if it means “a somewhat higher level of cost, a somewhat less efficient system.”        “我们的供应链不安全,也没有弹性,”财政部长珍妮特·L·耶伦去年春天表示。她说,贸易关系的建立应该围绕“可信赖的合作伙伴”,即使这意味着“成本水平稍高,系统效率稍低”。
        “It was naïve to think that markets are just about efficiency and that they’re not also about power,” said Abraham Newman, a co-author with Mr. Farrell of “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.”        “认为市场只关乎效率而不关乎权力的想法太天真了,”亚伯拉罕·纽曼说,他与法雷尔合著了《地下帝国:美国如何武器化世界经济》(Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy)一书。
        Economic networks, by their very nature, create power imbalances and pressure points because countries have varying capabilities, resources and vulnerabilities.        经济网络的性质决定了它会造成权力失衡和压力点,因为各国的能力、资源和弱点各不相同。
        Russia, which had supplied 40 percent of the European Union’s natural gas, tried to use that dependency to pressure the bloc to withdraw its support of Ukraine.        俄罗斯供应了欧盟40%的天然气,它试图利用欧盟的依赖性向其施压,要求其撤回对乌克兰的支持。
        The United States and its allies used their domination of the global financial system to remove major Russian banks from the international payments system.        美国及其盟国利用其对全球金融体系的主导地位将俄罗斯主要银行从国际支付体系中移除。
        China has retaliated against trading partners by restricting access to its enormous market.        中国限制贸易伙伴进入其巨大市场以进行报复。
        The extreme concentrations of critical suppliers and information technology networks has generated additional choke points.        关键供应商和信息技术网络的极端集中产生了更多的瓶颈。
        China manufactures 80 percent of the world’s solar panels. Taiwan produces 92 percent of tiny advanced semiconductors. Much of the world’s trade and transactions are figured in U.S. dollars.        中国制造了世界上80%的太阳能电池板。台湾生产92%的微型先进半导体。世界上的大部分贸易和交易都是以美元计算的。
        The new reality is reflected in American policy. The United States — the central architect of the liberalized economic order and the World Trade Organization — has turned away from more comprehensive free trade agreements and repeatedly refused to abide by W.T.O. decisions.        新的现实反映在美国的政策中。美国——自由化经济秩序和世界贸易组织的主要缔造者——已经背弃了更全面的自由贸易协定,并一再拒绝遵守世贸组织的决定。
        Security concerns have led the Biden administration to block Chinese investment in American businesses and limit China’s access to private data on citizens and to new technologies.        安全问题导致拜登政府阻止中国对美国企业的投资,并限制中国获取美国公民个人数据和新技术。
        And it has embraced Chinese-style industrial policy, offering gargantuan subsidies for electric vehicles, batteries, wind farms, solar plants and more to secure supply chains and speed the transition to renewable energy.        它还采纳了中国式的产业政策,为电动汽车、电池、风电场、太阳能发电厂等提供巨额补贴,以确保供应链安全并加快向可再生能源的过渡。
        “Ignoring the economic dependencies that had built up over the decades of liberalization had become really perilous,” Mr. Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said. Adherence to “oversimplified market efficiency,” he added, proved to be a mistake.        “忽视几十年来自由化建立起来的经济依赖性已经变得非常危险。”国家安全顾问沙利文说。他还说,事实证明,坚持“过于简单化的市场效率”是错误的。
        While the previous economic orthodoxy has been partly abandoned, it is not clear what will replace it. Improvisation is the order of the day. Perhaps the only assumption that can be confidently relied on now is that the path to prosperity and policy trade-offs will become murkier.        虽然之前的经济正统已被部分抛弃,但尚不清楚将由什么取代。当下的主流做法是即兴发挥。也许现在唯一肯定靠得住的假设是,通往繁荣和政策权衡的道路将变得更加不清不楚。
                
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