【经济学人】全球经济 | 2016.11.19 | 总第744期

BILL CLINTON once called globalisation “the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water”. It pushes countries to specialise and swap, making them richer, and the world smaller. In “The Great Convergence”, Richard Baldwin, a Geneva-based economist, adds an important detail: like wind and water, globalisation is powerful, but can be inconstant or even destructive. Unless beloved notions catch up with reality, politicians will be pushed to make grave mistakes.

比尔-克林顿曾经称全球化为：“经济就像风和水那样的自然力量一样，影响着人类。”全球化推动国家的专业化发展与国家间的交换，这使这些国家变得更富有，同时拉近国家间的距离。理查德-鲍尔温，一名日内瓦经济学家，在《大融合》这部书中增加了一些很重要的细节：全球化确实像风和水那样有力量，但是全球化更变化无常，更具有毁灭性。除非备受吹捧的观点成为了现实，否则政治家们将会为势所驱而犯一些严重错误。

• Equivalent：等价物

Richard Baldwin

In an economist’s dream world, things, ideas and people would flow freely across borders. Reality is stickier, and stuff less mobile—so much so that it trapped humankind’s ancestors into village-level economies. Constraints on trade once bundled consumption and production together, limiting their growth.

在经济学家所憧憬的世界里，物品、思想以及人类可以不受边界限制而进行自由互通。然而现实情况更为困难，流动性并不那么大—— 所以这也限制了我们祖先的经济发展，使其停留在乡村级别。在贸易方面的限制曾经将消费和生产捆绑在一起，同时也阻碍了这二者的发展。

• consumption：消费

Mr Baldwin’s grand theory of globalisation is of a series of unbundlings, driven by sequential collapses in the cost of moving things and ideas across space. From the domestication of the camel around 1,000BC to the first commercial steam engine in 1712, the first great wave of globalisation unbundled production and consumption. From 1820, British prices were set by international demand, and café-goers could sip Chinese tea sweetened with Jamaican sugar.

鲍尔温主要的全球化理论是关于一系列的解绑，这种解绑得益于区域间物品交换和思想交流费用的连续下跌。从大约公元1000年驯化的骆驼到1712年的首辆商用蒸汽机，这场全球化的第一次浪潮解绑了消费和产品。1820年以后，英国商品价格由当时国际需求而定，当时的咖啡爱好者已经能享用添加了牙买加糖的中国茶。

• Collapse：价格下跌

Though moving goods became cheap, until the very end of the 20th century moving ideas was expensive. Mr Baldwin invites readers over 50 to remember international calls costing $5 a minute, or the $50 price of sending a single document by an overnight courier. This encouraged industries to cluster. The hubs of economic activity emerged in the countries we now know as the G7. In this form of globalisation, national teams of ideas and workers battled for market share, and became richer in the process. Mr Baldwin uses the analogy of two sports teams swapping players to improve their performance.

尽管运输货物变得廉价，但是直到20世纪末，思想传递仍是昂贵的。鲍尔温邀请了50岁以上的读者，这些读者回忆道，当时的国际电话费是每分钟5美元，或者使用连夜快递方式发一封文件的价格是50美金。这促使工业聚集在一起。经济活动中心也出现在我们现所熟知的七国集团中。在此种国际化方式下，国内有想法的团队和工人们奋力抢占市场份额，并在此过程中变得更加富有。鲍尔温用两组运动队作比喻，这两组运动队以交换运动员来提高运动员的水平。

• Analogy：类似处

But since the 1990s globalisation has changed radically, as the internet has lifted the cost of moving ideas, and fuelled a second unbundling. Now that co-ordinating international production is cheaper, faster and safer, supply chains ignore borders to go sprawling across the world. A Canadian aeroplane-maker can direct a team of Mexican engineers. Apple can combine American design with Chinese assembly lines. With many products made everywhere, trade has been, in effect, denationalised.

但是从20世纪90年代以来，全球化形式发生了巨大变化，互联网提高了传递思想的成本，促进了消费和产品的第二次解绑。如今，国际生产合作价格更低，效率更高，更安全；供应链打破国界，遍布世界各地。一个加拿大飞机制造商可以领导一个墨西哥的工程师团队。苹果公司可以把美国的设计和中国的流水线结合起来。许多产品生产遍布世界各个角落，所以事实上，贸易已呈国际化。

• Sprawling：无休止的蔓延

• Assembly line：流水线

The pace of change and the new ease with which rich-world companies can outsource work have eliminated the old boundaries around knowledge and created a new, more unsettling trade landscape. Once, textile-mill workers in South Carolina had exclusive access to American technology. Although it might seem that they have lost out to competition from Mexican workers, more accurately they face an altogether more formidable competitor: Mexican workers made more productive by American know-how.

变化的步伐和发达国家公司业务外包的便利性消除了阻碍知识交流的旧边界，创建了一个崭新的，却更令人担忧的贸易盛景。曾经，南卡罗来纳州的纺织厂工人具有美国技术的独家访问权。但是他们似乎在竞争中输给了墨西哥工人，更准确的来说，他们正面临一个非常强大的竞争对手：墨西哥工人拥有更高效的美国技术。

• Exclusive access：独家访问

• Know-how：秘诀、专门技术

Continuing the sports analogy, Mr Baldwin says that today’s trade is like the coach of a top team being allowed to offer his services to underdogs. The coach gets rich from the doubled market for his services, while the better team gets a sudden surprise from the newly skilled competition. Mr Baldwin says that discontent with globalisation stems in part from an “ill-defined sense that it is no longer a sport for national teams”.

继续之前那个运动的类比，鲍尔温说现在的贸易就像顶级队的教练得到了允许为水平低的团队服务。当较好的一个团队可以在新技术竞争中得到惊喜时，这个教练便能从这两支队伍中获利而变得富有。鲍尔温说对全球化的不满来自于一种不明确的感觉，这种感觉就是：全球化这场运动不再只属于国内运动队。

• Underdog：弱者、弱方、比赛中处于劣势者

To placate voters by raising tariffs is to tackle 21st-century globalisation with tools better suited to the 20th (or even 19th) century. Given the new world of global supply chains, a tariff is like erecting a wall in the middle of a factory. Mr Baldwin’s 21st-century policies involve setting common rules and standards to make companies feel secure that their supply chains will work. These are the goals of trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or Britain’s membership of the European Union’s customs union—both under threat. And he says little on how to win over disgruntled voters, save a few lines on support for workers rather than jobs, and a vague plea to share gains between winners and losers.

期待您的翻译，您可以将翻译留言到文章底部，第二天会有详细解析哦。在提供全球供应链的新世界中，关税就像在工厂的中间建的一堵墙。鲍尔温的21世纪政策谈到了建立一般规则和标准，让公司对他们供应链的持续运转有信心。这也是一些贸易协议的目标，比如跨太平洋伙伴关系，英国加入欧盟关税同盟——都在这种威胁下存活着。鲍尔温鲜少探讨如何获得不满选民的支持，也不怎么着墨描写如何给工人提供支持而不是给工作岗位提供支持，也不怎么谈在成功者和失败者之间分享收益的请求。

• tariff：关税

• disgruntled：不满的

Mr Baldwin is too sanguine about the politics of globalisation. His rosy vision of the future imagines globalisation unshackled from its third constraint, as labour is made mobile by robots allowing people to offer their services remotely. In a different world, perhaps. A quip from his conclusion, written before America’s presidential election, has unintended weight. “Not even the future is what it used to be.”

鲍尔温对于政治全球化很有自信。他对未来有着美好的憧憬，想象着全球化从第三方约束的枷锁中解脱出来，劳动因为机器人而流动起来，人们也因此可以远程提供服务，也许是从别的世界那里提供服务。他的结尾写于美国总统竞选之前，这结尾里的一句妙语有着意想不到的分量，“甚至未来也不会是它以往的模样”。

• unshackled：从...解脱出来

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