评论｜中国经济飞跃发展的背后是什么？

编者按：中国已经公布了第十四个五年计划，并提出经济总量或人均收入将于2035年翻一番。有人对此目标表示怀疑，也有一些人认为中国过去四十年的经济发展足以证明中国的能力。中国经济飞跃发展的背后是什么？纽约市立大学研究生中心社会经济不平等中心高级学者布兰科•米兰诺维奇分享他对此事的观察和看法。本篇仅代表专家观点，不代表本台观点。

Editor's note: China has laid out the 14th Five-Year Plan and aims to double the economic output or per capita income by 2035. Some have cast doubts on the country's ability to achieve this goal, while others point to the last forty years of development as proof of China's developmental capacity. What lies at the center of China's economic transformation? Branko Milanović, the Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center, shares his observations and opinions on this matter. The opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Adriel Kasonta: It is said that the Chinese transformation is starkly unique in the world's economic history. What, in your opinion, is at the foundation of China's success?

有人说中国的经济变革是世界经济史上独一无二的事件 你认为中国成功的根源是什么？

Branko Milanovic: Let’s start with the sort of purely empirical part. And empirically it’s true that never in the history of the world have so many people increased their incomes so much over such a continuous-time. In other words, we are basically talking about more than a billion people increasing their incomes at a rate of about 8 percent per year for 40 years. So, nothing similar had ever happened. 

让我们先从纯经验的角度看待这个问题。从历史经验上看，世界上的确从来没有这么多人能如此长时间、大幅度提高自己的收入。换言之，40年来，10多亿中国人实现了每年约8%的收入增长。历史上从未发生过类似的情况 

If you look at the Industrial Revolution in England, of course, the rates of growth then were much lower - they were less than 2 percent a year. Even if you look at Japan, the rates of growth were higher, higher compared to the Industrial Revolution, at about the Chinese level, but obviously, the population was less than one-tenth of China’s population, and it did not last for 40 years. So, it’s a unique development.

如果你看看工业革命时期的英国，当时的增长率要低得多，每年才不到2%。即使你看日本，它的经济增长率高于工业革命时期的英国，与中国增速相当，但日本的人口不到中国的十分之一。而且日本的高增速并未持续40年之久。因此，中国的经济发展确实是一幅奇景。

We can generally say on the side of agriculture, the change was in 1978 with the responsibility system, where actually land became de facto private and actually production decisions were privatized. At first, everything which was above a certain quota was kept by the private individuals. Afterward, that has changed then basically agricultural sector operates as if it were entirely private, although the land is still not privately owned, technically, I don’t think it’s an issue. You have many parts in the West where actually the land is also owned for 99 years, but it doesn’t really make any difference in the behavior of people. 

在农业领域，变化始于1978年，中国开始实施联产承包责任制。私人拥有了土地的实际使用权，可以自行做出生产决定。起初，高于一定上缴指标的粮食可由私人保留。后来，基本上整个农业领域都实现了生产经营的私有化。尽管准确来说，土地所有权仍归国家，但我认为这并无大碍。在许多西方国家里，人们拥有99年的土地所有权，但这并不会对人们的行为产生任何影响。

And that revolution was really quite spectacular because it led to an incredible increase first of income of Chinese farmers, and also it spread to what was then called, it is still called, “township and village enterprises” which employed rural labor, but producing not agricultural goods but actually industrial and manufacturing goods. And that change in 1978 all the way to the late 1980s produced also a significant decline in inequalities. So, it was actually good in terms of both growth and reduction of rural inequality. After that, the developments moved to the industrial areas. So we had really started with the late 1980s, we had changes in the industrial and the urban areas. 

这场农业领域的改革可谓波澜壮阔。因为它使得中国农民的收入出现惊人增长，并催生出所谓的“乡镇企业”。这些企业雇用农村劳动力，生产工业和制造业领域的非农业产品。从1978年一直到80年代末的改革举措也使得中国的收入差距显著缩小。因此，从经济增长和改善城乡不平等状况的角度来说，简直是一举两得。在那之后，工业成为重点发展方向。因此，从80年代末开始，中国的工业和城市建设经历了一系列改革。

But this is simply a sort of description. But it’s kind of much harder to say what the reasons are because China did not use the sort of typical way that many countries were supposed to develop. Chinese regional development was quite uneven - it’s getting now a little bit more even, but it was uneven. 

The role of the state was quite important, particularly in banking, then infrastructure, and all the key industries like iron, steel, electricity, things like that. So, the development pattern, or the package, that China used was quite unique. 

这只是事实的罗列。但要说背后的原因是什么就有点难了。因为中国没有采取多数国家传统的发展方式。过去，中国的区域发展相当不平衡。虽然现在变得稍微平衡了一点，但依然存在不平衡。政府在各行各业中扮演着重要的角色，特别是在银行业、基础设施建设、以及钢铁、电力等重点行业中。所以说，中国采取的发展方式或者说政策组合是相当独特的。 

It could be actually possibly used in a few other countries. We see now attempts to do that for example in Ethiopia, Vietnam used a relatively similar approach. So, there are many things that one can learn not only from China, but from the countries that are using similar approaches.

它实际上也可以适用于其他的一些国家。我们现在看到有些国家在做这样的尝试。比如说埃塞俄比亚、越南等国就采用了类似的发展方式。因此，我们不仅可以从中国学习借鉴很多经验，还可以从采取类似发展方式的其他国家学习借鉴。

Kasonta: How do you evaluate China's poverty alleviation and the global poverty reduction campaign? 

你如何评价目前中国的脱贫工作和全球的减贫行动？ 

Milanovic: China’s success in poverty alleviation is huge. We were saying that in the beginning, if you have 8 percent growth per annum, obviously what you do you actually reduce poverty. So, that poverty has been significantly reduced. 

中国取得了巨大的脱贫成就。我们在一开始就谈到了这一点，如果每年都能实现8%的增长，这显然有助于减少贫困。结果便是中国的贫困人口数大幅减少。

Still, poverty does remain, particularly in rural areas. And you see that in income distributions that these were the bottom of the Chinese distribution. In the rural area, it is very poor by global standards – we are talking about people who are about 20 percentile globally. That situation with urban areas is obviously better. 

但是贫困问题依然存在，特别是在农村地区。就收入分配而言，中国农村地区是底层收入群体。按照国际标准衡量，也算得上非常贫困，这些人的收入处于全球后20%的水平。城市地区的情况显然要好一些。

But when it comes to the world, COVID-19 has been a huge shock, and not only has been, it actually continues to be, and we have no idea for how long it will be. So, it would probably push the world back. It could be as long as and as much as ten years in the improvements because we would be essentially push back to the situation that existed ten years ago in terms of total poverty. So, it’s a little bit like a Sisyphus in a Greek myth – you kind of rolled rock all the way to the top of the mountain and then the virus comes and rolls that rock all the way down to where you started from. So, the world will have to start and do that anew, but this is not unexpected. The crisis had had a tremendous impact on real growth and a very severe impact on poor people.

就全球总体情况而言，疫情造成了严重的冲击。不仅前段时间如此，现在依然如此，我们不知道疫情影响会持续多久。疫情可能会使全球发展出现倒退，倒退幅度可达十多年。

因为贫困情况可能会回到十年前的水平。这不禁让人想起希腊神话中的人物西西弗斯 - 辛辛苦苦地将石头推上山顶，然而疫情来袭，前功尽弃，那块石头一路滚回起点。世界各国将不得不重新踏上减贫征程。但这并不令人感到意外，此次危机对实体经济增长造成了巨大冲击，对贫困人口产生了非常严重的影响。

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