http://www.ecocn.org/thread-58615-1-1.html Converging economies 经济合流
One-track bind 必由之路
To become rich, the emerging markets must spring the middle-income trap 要成为发达国家，新兴市场必须跳过中等收入陷阱 Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition 
WITH A MAXIMUM speed of 430kph (267mph),the Shanghai magnetic-levitation (or maglev) train is as much fairground rideas vital cog in the city’s transport system. A stretch of the 30km track fromLongyang Road to Pudong International Airport runs alongside a motorway. The speedingcars left behind are a guide to how fast the train is moving. For passengerswho like to quantify their thrills, a digital speedometer in each carriagecounts up the train’s acceleration to its top speed before the numbers tumbleagain as the train slows towards the airport terminal.
最高时速430公里（267英里）的上海磁悬浮不仅是一条展示线，也是该市交通系统重要的组成部分。这条全长30公里的轨道线串联起了龙阳路和浦东国际机场。被甩在身后的飞驰的汽车凸显了这列车有多么的快速。对那些想量化这种兴奋体验的乘客来说，每节车厢上的数字记速仪显示列车加速到全速前进以及到站前的速度高低变化过程。
The Shanghai maglev is a powerful symbolof China’s modernity—even if the technology was developed in the 1960s inslowcoach Britain and the kit was made by Siemens, a German engineering firm.But the venture is not a money-spinner. On a midsummer afternoon, the train ishalf-empty and many of its occupants are tourists travelling just for fun. Thatis because, for all its impressive speed, the maglev is not a great way to getto or from the airport. Tickets are too pricey for all but rich business folkand foreign tourists, and those customers find the line inconvenient. Once theyalight at Longyang Road they are still some way from the financial district andthe best hotels.
即便该技术诞生于1960年代的英国，这条线路也是由德国的工程公司西门子所造，上海磁悬浮依然是中国现代化的有力象征。但风险在于它赚不了钱。在一个盛夏的下午，该车有一半座位空置，大多数乘客都是体验乐趣的游客。这种现象的原因在于，尽管其速度惊人，但磁悬浮却不是到达或离开机场的一种好方法。昂贵的票价只有有钱的商务人士和外国旅游者才会购买，但这条线对他们而言却一点也不方便，在龙阳路下车以后，离金融区和高级酒店还有很长一段路。
Sceptics about China’s economic miraclesee the Shanghai shuttle as an example of how badly state-directed banksallocate capital. China invests some 50% of its GDP, more than double theaverage in rich countries. The big capital projects of state-owned enterprises,such as railways, receive funding on easy terms, but interest rates paid on bank deposits are capped. A system that favours certain borrowers over ordinarysavers or bank shareholders is bound to back ill-judged projects and run up baddebts, argue the bears. A collision between two high-speed trains in China onJuly 23rd, which killed 40 and left 191 injured, seemed only to confirm thosesuspicions.
中国经济奇迹的怀疑者把上海磁悬浮作为政府指导的银行资本配置如何不合理的范例。投资大约占了中国GDP的50%，2倍于发达国家的平均值有余。铁路这样的国有企业的大项目很容易获得资金，但付给银行的利息却很低。唱衰者说：一个偏向于特定借款人而不是普通储蓄人或银行利益相关者的体系注定会支持评估不当的项目和滋生坏账。导致40死191伤的7.23高速列车追尾事件看起来只是为这种怀疑论增加了注脚。
Let’s leapfrog 一起来跳背
But there is a kinder interpretation of China’sappetite for prestige projects such as high-speed rail. Its leaders must knowthat as an economy develops it cannot rely indefinitely on copying themachinery and know-how of richer countries. The better-off a country becomes,the closer its technology is to best practice and the fewer of its workers areleft in low-productivity jobs such as farming. The easy catch-up gains areexhausted and the economy slows or gets stuck. One way out of this“middle-income trap” is by trying to leapfrog the technology leaders.
但对中国偏好高铁这样的大项目也有一种理解。领导们肯定知道不能一直靠复制发达国家的机械和做法来发展经济。经济越是发达，科技的应用越普遍，从事农业生产这样低生产力工作的人也越少。简单的追赶的所得已经耗尽，经济减速甚至停滞。走出“中等收入陷阱”的一种方法就是尝试着跳背过技术领先者。
China’s recent growth has been soimpressive that it seems churlish to question whether it can continue. Yet thecountry will find it more difficult to grow quickly as it becomes richer, aswill India and Brazil. All three big emerging markets need to find ways toavoid the inflation that has bedevilled developing countries in the past, andto strike a good balance between consumption and investment, foreign anddomestic demand.
中国这些年的发展过于瞩目，以至于质疑其能否继续这种势头的想法看起来有些粗俗无礼。但中国会发现随着其越来越富裕，保持快速增长越来越难，面临同样问题的还有巴西和印度。这三大新兴市场需要设法避免曾肆虐于发达国家的通胀，还要在消费与投资，外国与国内需求间找到平衡点。
China’s reliance on exports and oninvestment that supports export industries has reached its limits. The countrynow needs to shift the balance towards domestic demand, which requires capitalto be redirected toward the smaller enterprises that serve consumers. Brazil isalmost the mirror image of China. It has a thriving consumer economy which itis finding hard to keep in check. Its high interest rates discourage theinvestment spending it needs to improve its poor productivity record. And itneeds to make sure that the strong currency that comes with a booming commoditysector does not leave it with too narrow an industrial base. India, likeBrazil, is prone to overheating and has a current-account deficit, thoughthanks to its high investment rate its productivity record is closer toChina’s.
中国依赖的出口和支持出口的投资已经遇到瓶颈。它现在需要转向内需来平衡发展，这需要重新引导资本进入那些服务消费者的小企业。而巴西几乎是中国的在镜子的另一面。它的消费欣欣向荣，难以约束。高利率阻碍了其所需的对落后产能的投资。它还要确保伴随繁荣的商品市场而来的强势货币不会进一步压缩薄弱的工业基础。印度和巴西一样很可能面临经济过热以及现金账户亏损，但好在其投资率较高，产能水平和中国相当。
The problems of middle-aged developmentwill soon afflict China and others, according to research by Barry Eichengreenof the University of California, Berkeley, Donghyun Park of the AsianDevelopment Bank and Kwanho Shin of Korea University. They examinedmiddle-income countries (with earnings per person of at least $10,000 in 2005prices) which in the past half-century had enjoyed average GDP growth of atleast 3.5% for several years but whose growth rate had subsequently fallen byat least two percentage points. The research confirmed their hunch that theloss of momentum is mostly due to economic maturity rather than a shortage ofworkers or a slackening in investment. The workforce grew at the same rateafter the slowdown as before it, and its quality kept improving: indeed theaverage worker acquired skills at a slightly faster rate after the economy hadslowed. The increase in physical capital (factories, offices, roads, machinesand so on) tailed off, but this accounted for only a small fraction of the dropin GDP growth.
根据加州伯克利分校的Barry Eichengreen，亚洲开发银行的Donghyun Park和韩国大学的Kwanho Shin的一项调查，中年发展问题将会很快影响中国和其他两国。他们花了几年时间观察了一些中等收入国家（按2005年价格计算人均收入至少1w美刀），他们的增长率在过去半个世纪中保持在3.5%以上但现在下降了至少2个百分点。这项研究证实了他们的预感即增势的丢失大多源于经济的逐渐成熟而非缺少劳工或投资减缓。劳动力的增长率和经济放缓前一样，而且水平不断提高：事实上在经济减速以后劳工平均的技能获取速度还有所提高。实体资产（工厂、办公楼、道路、机械等）增长越来越弱，但这只是GDP增速减缓的一小部分原因。
Instead, most of that drop was caused bya slump in “total factor productivity”—the efficiency with which workers andcapital are used. “Growth slowdowns, in a nutshell, are productivity-growthslowdowns,” write Mr Eichengreen and his colleagues. A decline in total factorproductivity is what you would expect when the “easy” phase of economicdevelopment comes to a close. Moving underemployed villagers into urban jobs infactories and offices with imported equipment raises productivity. But as ruralslack is used up there are no more such gains to be had.
事实上，绝大部分下跌缘于“全要素生产率”——即工人和资本使用效率的下跌。“简单的说，增长放缓就是生产率增长的放缓”Eichengreen和他同事这样写道。当经济发展的“初级”阶段走到尽头，就会出现全要素生产率的下滑。把无业的农村人口转移到城市中那些采用了进口设备的工厂和办公楼中去上班提高了生产率。但当闲散的农村资源也被利用光以后就没这么多便当可捞了。
According to the three economists, thissort of slowdown is most likely to happen when average income reaches around$16,000 in 2005 prices; when income per person rises to 58% of that in theworld’s leading economy; or when the share of employment in manufacturing getsto 23%. Those three thresholds—of which the absolute level of income is themost important—will not necessarily all be reached at the same time. China mayalready have hit the manufacturing target, and if its economy sustains a growthrate of around 9%, the average income threshold will soon be breached. But therelative income threshold remains far off. In 2010 China’s income per personwas 16% of America’s, according to the IMF.
根据这三位经济学家的推断，当人均收入为1万6千美金（按2005年价格水平计算）；人均收入约合世界领先经济体58%时；制造业从业人员占劳工比23%时，当出现这三种情况——尤以人均收入的绝对值最为重要——三种条件也不必同时满足，这种减速就很可能发生。中国可能已经触及了制造业的条件，如果其经济增长率维持在9%左右，那么平均收入的设定可能很快就可以达到。但人均相对收入仍然很低。根据IMF数据，2010年中国人均收入只有美国的16%。
The research shows that economies suchas China’s, with an undervalued currency and a low rate of consumer spending,are more likely to suffer such a growth slowdown. These milestones are based onaverages of many countries that lived through sudden slowdowns, and theirexperiences varied widely, cautions Mr Eichengreen. These are not iron laws.Even so, it seems certain that a slowdown will follow once the easier part ofthe catching up has been done. The question is whether China can mitigate thisby changing its growth model.
该项研究表明向中国这样的经济体，靠着低估值的货币和低消费，更可能遭受这种停滞。Eichengreen警告说这些关键点都是基于曾遭受突然的经济停滞的国家的平均值，而且样本国经历各不相同。这些不是铁律。即便如此，在简易的发展方式遇到瓶颈后看起来这种减缓注定会发生。问题是中国能否通过改变发展方式来减轻受到的冲击。
Last year’s model 去年的模型
That model has proved successful inother parts of Asia. It is export-led, so demand has been mainly from abroad.To meet it, China has mobilised its vast reserves of cheap labour, to which ithas added a fast-growing stock of physical capital, much of it imported butfinanced from the country’s own savings. Because of China’s capital-intensivegrowth model, consumer spending has an unusually small share of GDP: in 2010 itfell to only 34% (see chart 1). This only adds to the reliance on exports.
这种方式在亚洲其他国家证明是行之有效的。它由出口驱动，所以需求主要来自国外。为适应其需求，中国腾挪转移了其巨大的廉价劳动力储备，使实物资产快速增加，虽然很多来自进口，但钱确是花的自己的。由于中国的资本密集型增长模式，消费占GDP的比重过于小了：2010年降到只有34%（见上表）。这只会增加对出口的依赖。
China’s financial set-up reinforces thismodel. The flow of capital across its borders is heavily policed. China hascurbed the rise in its currency, and kept its exports competitive, by buyinghuge quantities of dollars and other foreign currencies, amassing $3.2 trillionof foreign-exchange reserves, worth 54% of China’s 2010 GDP.
中国的金融体系强化了这种模式。资金的跨国流通被严格管制。中国还通过购入巨量的美元和其他货币限制人民币的升值，保持出口的竞争力，总计3.2万亿的外汇储备约合2010年GDP的54%。
The banking system is closely managed bythe state. Foreign banks account for barely 2% of total bank assets. The cashcreated to keep the yuan down is mopped up by forcing China’s banks to buylow-yielding “sterilisation” bonds or to hold more cash in reserve. Interestrates are set in favour of state-owned companies (often monopoly suppliers toexporters) but offer little reward for householders. Credit for consumers isstill scarce.
银行系统被政府牢牢把持。外资银行占银行总资产的比例只有区区2%。通过迫使银行购买低收益率的“不毛”债券或增加先进储备来吸收那些为保持人民币低汇率而增发的货币。银行利率设定时考虑国有企业（大多是出口的垄断企业）的偏好，但对国内消费者少有顾及。信贷消费还很稀缺。
China’s growing weight in the world economymeans it cannot rely indefinitely on other countries’ spending. The debtoverhang in parts of the rich world means that China’s foreign customers arehard-pressed. And the country is a drain on demand from the rest of the world:its current-account surplus (a measure of its excess saving) rose above 10% ofGDP in 2007, though it has since halved. This is a source of tension: theAmericans complain that China’s exchange-rate policy provides its exporterswith an unfair subsidy at the expense of their own workers. The export-ledstrategy is also beginning to lose its potency. Each rural migrant set to workon machinery to serve China’s foreign customers is harder to find than thelast.
中国的发展在世界经济中的比重意味着其不能无限的依赖其他国家的支出。发达国家面临的债务危机表明中国的外国主顾们手头吃紧。而人民币是其他国家需求的抽水泵：其货币账户盈余（一种过量储蓄的衡量方式）GDP占比在2007年超过10%，不过此后减了一半。这会造成紧张对立：美国人抱怨中国的汇率政策以减少自己员工福利为代价为其出口提供不公平的补贴。出口导向策略也开始潜力耗尽。现在招募为出口企业打工的农民工比过去要难得到。  
If China is to avoid the middle-incometrap, it needs to develop its domestic market. It must switch fromindiscriminately amassing factories, ports and other fixed assets to a morefinely graded allocation of capital and workers that allows small service firmsto flourish. That transition will be helped along by two factors. As theworking population starts to shrink around 2015, the household saving rateshould fall because countries with fewer earners and a larger proportion ofdependents tend to spend more. And China already devotes a bigger share of itsGDP to research and development than do other countries with similar incomelevels. That gives it a better chance of sustaining productivity growth whenthe gains from adopting existing technologies run out. But other facets ofChina’s economy militate against change. For example, the World Bank ranksChina 65th out of 183 countries for giving companies access to credit, behindIndia (in 32nd place).
如果中国打算避免中等收入陷阱，它需要发展国内市场。它必须从粗放的堆积工厂、港口和其他固定资产转向资本和劳力更有效的配置，繁荣小型服务企业。以下两点将有助于这种转型。随着劳动人口在2015年开始减少，储蓄率应该会下滑因为赚钱的少了而需要赡养的人比例增加，他们的支出是要增加的。而且相比于同等收入的其他国家中国已经投入了相当大比重的GDP用于科研。这使其在现有技术带来的增长无以为继时有更大的可能性维持生产率增长。但中国经济的其他因素也会阻碍其转型。比如说，在世界银行给出的公司获得信贷的便利性排名中，中国排在全部183个国家的第65位，位列排名32位的印度之后。
The obstacles are formidable. Shiftingto an economy that concentrates on consumers will mean dislocating entireindustries. Higher wages in China, which are needed for this sort ofrebalancing, are already driving some textile jobs to Vietnam and Cambodia.Removing implicit subsidies to rents and interest rates would cut many firms’profits and stir opposition. Banks used to dishing out capital at thegovernment’s say-so would need to make finer judgments, withholding money fromindustries with low returns and moving it to promising new ventures. But willthey be able to tell the difference between the two?
这种阻碍难以克服。转变成一个消费为主的经济意味着要打乱整个工业体系。这种重新平衡所需的更高的工资，已经是一些纺织类职位转移到了越南和柬埔寨。切断对租金和利率的隐形补贴会使很多公司无法盈利，引发抗议。银行过去按政府意愿钱发钱，现在需要做更精细的评判，把钱从低回报的行业转移到鼓励新兴产业。但他们能说出这两者间的区别吗？
Brazil is the textbook example of afast-growing country that hit a wall (though it is not covered in the study byMr Eichengreen and his colleagues). Its economy grew by an average of almost 7%a year between 1945 and 1980. GDP per person rose from just 12% of America’s to 28%, according to the Maddison statistics. But then convergence went intoreverse. The debts accumulated to pay for imported machinery became cripplingas interest rates shot up. Industries that had served a protected home marketwere revealed as inefficient. A weak currency and wage indexation fed firstinflation and then hyperinflation.
巴西是一个快速增长遇到瓶颈的国家的典型代表（不过这在Eichengreen和他同事的研究中并未涉及）。根据Maddison statistics的统计，其在1945至1980年间的经济平均增速为7%，人均GDP从美国的12%涨到28%。然后事情就开始反转了。由于利息率猛增，购买进口机械的债务逐渐积累以致积重难返。受保护的国内产业终究是扶不起的阿斗。弱势货币和工资指数化先是引发通胀，之后演化为恶性通胀。
A series of monetary and fiscal reformsin the 1990s tamed inflation and arrested the decline in relative income.Brazil’s income per person is now above 20% of America’s level. But the economysuffers from frailties that are the mirror-image of China’s. Investment is 19%of GDP, well below China’s and quite low even by rich-world standards. That isone reason why productivity is feeble, though Brazil’s woeful education systemand decrepit infrastructure are also to blame. The economy tends to grow ataround 4% a year, faster than most rich countries but more slowly than Brazil’semerging-market peers.
1990年代的一系列货币和财政改革克服了通胀并阻止了相对收入的下滑。巴西的人均收入现在已经超过美国的20%。但遭受脆弱之苦的经济就像中国的另一面。投资只有GDP的19%，远低于中国，甚至按发达国家的水准来衡量也相当低。一个原因是生产率低下，虽然巴西可怜的教育系统和破落的基础设施也难辞其咎。经济预期增速为4%，比绝大多数发达国家都高，但比其新兴市场同伙要低。
Weak investment reflects low domesticsaving. Brazil still habitually runs a current-account deficit. This relianceon foreign capital has left it vulnerable to periodic balance-of-paymentscrises, though it has piled up $344 billion of foreign-currency reserves tofend them off in future. Brazil’s net foreign liabilities (private and public)amount to $700 billion, compared with China’s net assets of £1.8 trillion.
疲软的投资反映了低水平的国内储蓄。巴西的现金账户仍然经常为负。虽然它积累了3440亿美元的外汇储备以提高未来的抵御力，但对外国资本的依赖使其对周期性的国际收支账户风险抵抗力很低。巴西外资净负债（私人和公共）总值为7千亿美元，而中国的外资净资产为1.8万亿美元。
The flip side of Brazil’s low saving isstrong consumer spending, at 61% of GDP last year. The business of providingloans to householders is booming. This is in part because BNDES, thestate-owned development bank, provides subsidised loans to Brazil’s bigstate-directed companies and to some other firms. That limits opportunities forbusiness lending, so private banks must look elsewhere.
巴西低储蓄率的另一面是旺盛的消费，占到GDP的61%。向国内消费者提供贷款的业务正蓬勃发展。这部分是由于其国有银行巴西国家社会经济发展银行向国有大公司和一些其他企业提供贷款补贴。这限制了借贷的机会，私人银行只好另寻出路。
Brazil’s economy has two greatstrengths. Its population of working age is growing quickly, and it is rich innatural resources at a time when emerging markets are industrialising at anunprecedented rate. Brazil vies with Australia as the world’s largest exporterof iron ore, much of it to China. Its plentiful arable land is astonishinglyfecund (in some places three harvests a year are possible), thanks to an amplesupply of sun and fresh water. The “sub-salt” reservoirs off Brazil’ssouth-eastern shore contain at least 13 billion barrels of oil.
巴西经济有两点优势。它的劳动力人口快速增加，而且其自然资源丰富，足以满足新兴市场空前的工业化需求。巴西和澳大利亚是全球最大的铁矿石出口国，绝大部分卖到了中国。感谢丰沛的阳光和水，其广袤的耕地异常肥沃（某些地方一年三熟都有可能）。其东南沿海的盐下层储油层至少蕴含130亿桶原油。
The commodities boom and the oil findshave freed Brazil from its traditional balance-of-payments constraints. Foreignmoney is flooding in, lured by Brazil’s high interest rates and the expectedearnings once the oil starts to flow. But that creates a new problem: a strongcurrency that hurts the country’s exporters outside the resource industries.
商品的繁荣和油田的探明有助于巴西摆脱国际收支账户的窘境。受高利率引诱和对石油投产后的收入预期，外资纷纷涌入。但这也带来了新问题：强势货币有损资源行业以外的出口商的利益。
The textbook remedy for this sort of“Dutch disease” is to raise productivity or lower costs in tradable industriesthat do not benefit from the resource boom. In August the government said itwould abolish payroll taxes in four labour-intensive industries: footwear,clothing, furniture and software. There is ample scope to further lower the“Brazil cost”—local shorthand for a range of handicaps including ramshackleroads, high interest rates, jobs levies, taxes and bureaucracy.
对这种“荷兰病”的典型药方是提高生产率或者降低不能从资源繁荣中获益的贸易行业的成本。今年八月政府宣布将会废除4个劳动密集型行业：制鞋、服装、家具和软件行业的工资税。巴西在未来降本有足够的空间——简单瞄一眼就有：破烂的道路、高利率、高失业率、高税率和官僚主义。
Brazil is one of the most onerouscountries to do business in, coming 127th out of 183 in the World Bank’sranking. Hiring and firing is costly and closing a business can take years. Thetax system is complex and bedevilled by rules that often conflict. “If you’rehonest and want to comply with the tax code, you need an accountant and a taxlawyer for life,” laments one São Paulo-based economist.
巴西是这个世界上做生意最麻烦的国家之一，在世界银行183个国家中排名第127位。雇佣和解雇员工都很费钱，企业倒闭的程序好几年。税收体系复杂还常因为自相矛盾的规定而变得一团糟。圣保罗的一位经济学家吐槽说：“如果你诚实守信依法完税，那你一辈子都要会计和税务律师的协助”。
Real interest rates in Brazil are amongthe highest in the world. The central bank’s benchmark rate is 12% and may needto rise again to tame inflation, which is well above the target of 4.5%. Highrates are in part a legacy of past inflation that punished saving and rewardedborrowing. A culture of saving has yet to take firm root, so demand for creditoutstrips supply. Fiscal laxity has also played a part. The economy is runningat or beyond full capacity. The jobless rate is 6%; it has rarely been lower.Brazil’s budget ought to be in surplus. Government debt is rolled over everythree years and crowds out other borrowing. But a market for longer-term debtwould require a commitment to keeping public-sector payrolls and state pensionsin check.
巴西的实际利率是全球最高的之一。央行的标准利率是12%而且有可能再次上调以抗击通胀，这比4.5%的目标高了不少。高利率部分是之前存款有害、借款有利的通胀的后遗症。储蓄文化还未萌芽，因此对信贷的需求大于供给。宽松的财政也是一部分原因。经济一直处于或高于全速状态。失业率6%，从没低过。巴西的预算应该很充足。政府过去三年拖延还债并挤出其他借款人。但一个长期债务市场需要按时支付公共部门工资和国家养老金的承诺。
Brazil hopes that the oil discoverieswill be exploited in a way that helps other industries rather than harmingthem. The government has insisted that Petrobras, the state-controlled oilgiant with sole operating rights in the sub-salt field, must buy most of itssupplies in Brazil.
巴西希望石油的发现会刺激而不是打击其他产业的发展。政府强调国有的石油巨头Petrobras，这个盐下层油田的独家开采权所有人，只能从国内采购设备。
Eike Batista, a colourful magnate withinterests in mining, oil exploration and logistics, is building a port completewith shipyard (in tandem with Hyundai, a South Korean firm) to comply with thelocal-content rules. “The demand from Petrobras could fill two shipyards,” hesays. A modern port will encourage foreign manufacturers to build factoriesalong Brazil’s coast and serve the domestic market. “Brazil will not be trappedin commodities,” he insists. But others worry that Brazil is flirting with astate-influenced and inward-facing model of industrialisation that has failedbefore.
涉足矿石、石油开采和物流的多元化巨富Eike Batista和韩国现代一起建造了一个配有造船厂的港口以满足本地化要求。他说“Petrobras的需求可以满足两个造船厂”。一个现代化的港口会鼓励外企在巴西沿海建造工厂，参与其国内市场。他坚持说“巴西不会陷入消费类商品的泥潭”。但有人担心巴西只是轻率的尝试国家主导的，内生型的工业化，而这以前以失败告终。
Brazil and China need to make differentsorts of transitions if they are to sustain their development. Brazil has tosave and invest more; China needs to consume more. Brazil is rich in resources;China is hungry for them. Brazil is short of good roads and railways; some ofChina’s will attract too little traffic. Brazil is young; China is ageing.“Perhaps they should merge,” is the wry suggestion of Arminio Fraga, a formercentral-bank governor of Brazil who now runs Gávea Investments in Rio deJaneiro.
巴西和中国如果想要保持这种发展势头，需要不同的转型。巴西要提高储蓄和加大投资；中国要扩大消费。巴西资源丰富，而中国对此需求迫切。巴西缺少良好的公路和铁路，而中国的一些路则少有通行。巴西是个年轻国家，而中国历史悠久。曾经的巴西央行高官，现在在里约经营者一家叫Gavea Investments的公司的Arminio Fraga打趣的说,：“也许他们该合为一体”
India’s bumpy road 印度的崎岖路。
India’s main challenges are a mix ofthose facing Brazil and China. Like China, India has enjoyed a recent growthrate above the emerging-market norm, at around 8% a year. It ought to be doingbetter still: after all, it is poorer than China, so the scope for catching upis greater. Investment is a healthy 38% of GDP. Much of India’s investment isfinanced out of companies’ own pockets, a symptom of an immature financialsystem. Most firms cannot rely on external funding, though giant Indianconglomerates, such as Tata, are able to tap into international capitalmarkets.
印度的主要挑战是中巴版的混合体。和中国一样，印度最近发展要快于一般的新兴国家，差不多有8%。它还可以做的更好些，毕竟它比中国要穷，所以向上的空间更大。投资占GDP的38%，是一个合适比例。印度的很多投资都是公司自掏腰包，这是其金融系统不成熟的表现。虽然塔塔这样的印度巨头们可以在国际市场融资，但绝大多数公司无法依赖外部资金。
Like Brazil, India is in desperate needof better roads to link its far-flung internal markets. It is a young country,with its working-age population set to grow at 1.7% a year until 2015, a fasterrate even than Brazil’s. But too many of its people are educated badly, if atall. As in Brazil, companies often have to provide remedial education to bringrecruits up to scratch. Arcane laws stand in the way of a well-functioning jobsmarket. Corruption is a blight on infrastructure projects. The economy is proneto overheating and has a current-account deficit.
和巴西一样，印度急需公路来连接其间距遥远的国内市场。它是个年轻的国度，2015年前劳动人口年均增长1.7%，甚至比巴西还高。但大多数印度人即便不是文盲也没受过良好教育。和巴西情况类似，公司需要对雇员做针对性培训以使其满足工作要求。一些奇怪的法律阻碍了一个运作良好的劳动力市场的形成。腐败是基础建设项目的毒瘤。经济有过热危险，而现金账户为负。
This speaks of a deeper weakness inemerging markets. In the past they have not been good at managing internaldemand. Relying on exports allowed them to grow and save at the same time. Nowthat the rich world’s economies are struggling, that has become harder, raisingthe prospect of the sort of ills that led to emerging-market crises in thepast: excess government spending, rapid credit growth and inflation. Thetransition from middle-income to rich economy relies on sound monetary, fiscaland regulatory policies, says Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF chief economist nowat Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
这涉及了一个新兴市场的深层问题。过去他们没有好好的梳理国内需求。仅靠出口可以使他们得到发展，增加储备。现如今发达国家经济低迷，这条旧路不好走了，还提高了过去种种引起新兴市场危机的可能性：过量的政府支出、急速的信贷放量和通胀。IMF前首席经济学家Rajan说从中等收入转型到发达国家靠的是健全的货币、财政和监管政策。
The fear of renewed trouble in thedebt-laden rich-world economies has meant that Brazil and India have been slowto stop local inflationary pressures from building. China passed its first bigtest filling in for rich-world demand when it increased bank credit by anastonishing one-third during 2009. It was a welcome stimulus to the local andglobal economy, but there are growing doubts about the wisdom of many of thoseloans. The debts run up by local authorities to finance infrastructure are ofparticular concern.
对发达国家债务危机再次发作的担忧意味着巴西和印度在缓解通胀压力上已经慢了。中国2009年通过令人吃惊的提高1/3的信贷幅度经受住了第一次外需减少的测验。这是对本国及全球经济的一次受欢迎的刺激措施，但也有对这些贷款如何有效利用的担忧。那些地方政府筹措的用于支持基础设施建设的贷款尤其令人担心。
China bulls argue that the expenditurewas essential to the country’s rebalancing. Better transport links between therich coastal cities and poorer western regions were needed to develop China’sinternal market. Sceptics see roads with no cars, trains with few passengersand empty buildings. Some reports say 2 trillion yuan of local-authority loanshave gone sour. Worryingly, some of the foreign investors who had rushed totake stakes in Chinese banks are slinking away. Bank of America, which hasproblems in its home market, has sold half its stake in China ConstructionBank.
中国唱多者辩称说这对保持该国的资产平衡是很必要的，需要连接富裕的东部沿海城市与西部穷困乡村的道路来刺激内需。持怀疑论者说路山没什么车，铁路乘客寥寥，房屋空无人住。一些报道说大约2万亿人民币的地方债已经违约。令人担心的是，一些曾蜂拥争夺中国银行股权的外资银行正悄悄撤离。美国银行在本土遭到了些麻烦，已经卖掉了其持有的一半的建行股份。
Even so, stabilising aggregate demandmay prove easier than settling the social conflicts or tackling the industrialstasis that entrap middle-income countries. This depends not only on awell-tuned economic engine; it also relies on how fairly the pain of adjustmentis shared, says Harvard University’s Dani Rodrik. Societies torn by class orother rivalries are often set back by economic change. Democracies with rulesand procedures for settling disputes and compensating losers tend to do better.
即便如此，保持总需求的稳定要比解决社会冲突或疏通停滞的工业这些使中等收入国家发展停滞的问题要容易。哈佛大学的Dani Rodrik说：这不仅取决于协调良好的经济引擎，还要看调整的痛苦是如何分摊的。因阶级或其他竞争因素造成的社会分化在经济转型中会受到拖延。有规章有方法来解决争端、抚恤损失者的民主制度作用会大一些。
Mr Rodrik contrasts South Korea’sbounce-back from the East Asian crisis in 1998 (as well as from earliertroubles) with the slump endured by Brazil and other Latin American countriesin the 1980s. South Korean industry had been tested in export markets so itcould build a recovery on its industrial strength. Brazil had lacked thatstrength. But South Korea was also able to recover more quickly because eachinterest group agreed to absorb some of the pain from the downturn. Thegovernment said it would do its best to help the country get over the crisisbut firms should do their bit by avoiding lay-offs and unions should moderatetheir wage demands. In Brazil, by contrast, everyone tried to shift the pain oflower living standards onto others. Inflation took off and Brazil’s GDP perperson stagnated for 15 years.
Rodrik把韩国经历1998年东亚经融危机（以及之前的困难）后的反弹之道和1980年代巴西和其他南美国家遭受的暴跌做了对比。韩国的工业经受住了出口的考验所以它可以在其强大的工业基础上反弹。巴西没有这种优势。但韩国能如此快速的回复还因为各利益集团都愿意为经济的低迷承担一份责任。政府说它会竭尽所能摆脱危机，但企业也要做好分内事避免裁员，工会则要抑制他们的工资需求。在巴西则刚好相反，每个人都想把生活水准下降的痛苦转嫁给他人。通胀肆虐，巴西的人均GDP停滞了15年。
China may have the stronger economy,says Mr Rodrik, but Brazil and India are likely to be better at handling thesocial mobility that comes with being a middle-income country. All three ofthese emerging-market giants will have to work hard to avoid the middle-incometrap. Their recent economic performance is good but experience suggests thatthere will be setbacks. Yet as the rich world stumbles from crisis to crisis,the prosperity gap is closing fast. America’s claim to economic leadershiplooks increasingly threadbare, and one of its long-held privileges—having theworld’s main reserve currency—is under threat.
Rodrik说，中国的经济也许强大一些，但巴西和印度在处理伴随进入中等收入国家以后出现的社会流动性方面做得更好。这三个国家都要努力避免陷入中等收入陷阱。它们现今的经济表现良好，但经验表明会有些挫折。然而随着发达国家不断的遭遇危机，它们之间的差距正在缩小。美国经济霸主的地位越来越受到挑战，而其长期的一项特权——作为世界主要结算货币的发行国——也遭到了威胁。 | 
发表于 2011-9-29 21:07
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