大环境无时无刻不在变 理解世界贸易新常态

Where has all the trade gone? Looking at the figures, a casual observer might conclude that globalisation is in crisis. Total trade in goods and services, having initially bounced back from the global financial crisis, has slowed sharply. Usually growing twice as fast as the world economy, it is underperforming gross domestic product for the first time in four decades.

贸易都去哪儿了？从数据看，外行人可能会得出结论——全球化正处于危机中。全球金融危机过后，世界商品及服务贸易最初强劲反弹，但之后又急剧放缓。全球贸易增速通常是全球经济增速的两倍，现在却低于国内生产总值(GDP)增速，这是40年来首次出现的局面。

In reality, the situation is less dire. The period since the financial crisis is certainly not a re-run of the retreat from free trade in the Great Depression. Despite some governments indulging in “murky protectionism” – using regulations to disadvantage foreign competitors – there has been no wholesale resort to trade barriers.

现实情况倒没有那么可怕。金融危机爆发后，大萧条时期自由贸易倒退的现象并没重演。尽管一些政府沉迷于“隐秘的保护主义”，利用法规使外国竞争者处于不利境地，但没有一个国家大规模采用贸易壁垒。

Last week, economists from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank came up with a more plausible explanation: the global system is going through a structural change. Activity that previously involved cross-border trade has been brought within national economies, notably China. A slowing of measured trade growth is not therefore a cause for alarm. It does, however, underline that policy makers should be alert to assess and shape the changing future of globalisation.

上周，国际货币基金组织(IMF)和世界银行(World Bank)的经济学家拿出了一个更可信的解释：全球体系正经历结构性变化。此前涉及跨境贸易的经济活动已开始转向各国经济体内部，尤其是中国。因此，统计显示的贸易增长放缓不应引起震惊，但它突显了政策制定者应保持警觉，随时评估和影响全球化不断变化的未来。

During the growth of “Factory Asia” in the 1990s and 2000s, east Asian economies spontaneously arranged themselves into a production line for manufactured goods, with China often the final assembly stage. Many goods marked “Made in China” had most of their value added in other countries, including their markets of final destination such as Japan and the US.

在20世纪90年代和21世纪头10年的“亚洲工厂”增长期内，东亚经济体自发地将自己安排成一条制成品的生产线，往往由中国负责总装。许多标有“中国制造”的商品，其绝大部分附加值都是在其他国家实现的，包括日本和美国等最终市场。

That pattern is now changing. According to the calculations of the IMF and World Bank, “Made in China” more closely means what it says. In a trend starting well before the global financial crisis, the share of imported inputs in Chinese exports has fallen from more than 50 per cent in 2000 to less than 35 per cent today.

然而这种模式正在改变。根据IMF和世行的计算，“中国制造”如今更加名副其实。早在全球金融危机爆发前，进口原材料在中国出口产品中所占比例已呈下降趋势，从2000年的50%以上降至今天的不足35%。

Accordingly, the responsiveness of trade to GDP growth has undergone a long-term reduction, which may prove permanent. Other factors may push it further in the same direction. While the world is not exactly running out of low-cost workers, the obvious candidates to take the lead in labour-intensive manufacturing – south Asia and India – are yet to do so. And emerging technologies such as 3D printing will reduce the dependence of manufacturing on low-cost labour and bring production closer to the final consumer.

相应地，贸易对GDP增长的反应灵敏程度经历了一个长期下降过程，这有可能是永久性的。该趋势受到了其他因素的进一步推动。虽然全球并未真的缺少低成本劳动力，但有望接过劳动密集型制造业接力棒的两大明显候选者——东南亚和印度——尚未接棒。3D打印等新兴技术也将降低制造业对低成本劳动力的依赖，让产品生产可以从地理上更靠近最终消费者。

The implications for policy makers of these changes are manifold. The traditional focus of trade policy, formal pacts on tariffs and subsidies, is too narrow. Instead, governments should look at a range of issues that affect their economies’ ability to participate in globalisation. Foreign direct investment, for example, is becoming more important than trade. Whatever the merits may be of individual investment treaties, the principle of protecting investors’ rights under domestic law has become ever more important.

这些变化对政策制定者的影响是多方面的。贸易政策的传统焦点——关税和补贴的正式协定——如今已过于狭隘。政府应转而关注影响其经济参与全球化能力的一系列问题。例如，外国直接投资正变得比贸易更重要。无论个别投资条约有何优点，根据国内法律保护投资者权益的原则正变得日益重要。

Globalisation and trade are often regarded as the same thing. They are not. Most tariffs have already dropped rapidly and are rarely the determining factor in locating production. Technology and output will disperse globally according to countries’ capacity to adopt them, not their success in wringing marginal treaty concessions out of trading partners.

全球化和贸易往往被视为一回事，其实不是。大多数关税已快速下调，不再是确定生产地址的决定性因素。技术和制造将根据各国的接纳能力（而不是它们在谈判条约时讨价还价、从贸易伙伴那里得到鸡毛蒜皮的让步的本事）在全球分布。

The recent slow growth in trade is not a disaster. It reflects the fact that, for all the drawbacks of its model, China has managed to go beyond the final-assembly stage to head up the value chain. Other economies can too. The most important barriers to global commerce are not between economies: they are within them.

近年贸易增长的放缓不是一场灾难。它反映了这样一个事实：中国经济模式尽管存在种种弊端，但它成功超越了总装工序的角色，开始向价值链上方移动。其他经济体也能做到这一点。全球贸易最重要的障碍并不存在于经济体之间，而是在各经济体的内部。