评论 | 不平等正在撼动国际秩序
Editor's note: In 2016, those who didn't reap the benefit of globalization created seismic shifts in international politics. Today, COVID-19 is throwing more people into the deep-end. How's inequality shaping today's world? Branko Milanović, senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center, shares his views on this matter. The opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Adriel Kasonta: The predicted similarity in income levels across the entire Eurasian continent and North America is said to reduce global inequality. What geo-economic and geopolitical repercussions can we expect to be associated with this development?
有意见认为，欧亚大陆同北美的收入水平趋同将改善全球不平等现象。这种趋势将带来怎样的地缘经济和政治变化？
Branko Milanović: Well, there will be many possible political repercussions of that. When you put one, which is very obvious and which we already see now, the center of economic activity is shifting toward the Pacific. And where Asia and also the Pacific side of the United States would become most important. When you even look today in the amount of shipping, the Pacific has overtaken the Atlantic. So, We have this shift not in the balance of economic power, but also in the center of gravity of the world economy.
这会带来许多潜在的政治后果。首先让我们来看一个非常明显，已经发生的变化。世界经济活动的中心正在转向太平洋区域。亚洲、美国的太平洋沿岸将成为最为重要的地区。事实上，就目前的航运量而言，太平洋已经超过了大西洋。这不仅仅是经济权力平衡的转移，同时也是世界经济重心的转移。
The second change, which also we already see now, is that more and more people from Asia, not only China, but I'm talking about countries like China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, more and more people from those countries are now becoming part of the global top 20 percent, or 10 percent or even, in some cases, top 1 percent.
第二个变化，其实我们现在也正在见证，就是越来越多的亚洲人，不仅仅是中国，我说的是新兴的亚洲国家-中国、印度、越南、印度尼西亚、泰国等。这些国家中越来越多的人正在进入世界最富裕的人口的前 20%, 10%, 甚至1%。
This is a big change because here we are talking about the ordinal, the ranking. When you actually have an increase in income, that is obviously principal good for everybody. But when we have rankings, rankings are given - you have 100 percentiles – that's given. So, if somebody moves into your percentiles, as the Chinese are now moving into the percentiles top of income distribution that traditionally were entirely populated by people from the Western countries. As they move there, then of course people from the Western countries who used to be in those top percentiles have to obviously move down. And I think this is a potentially big change because that was something that has never happened in the last 200 years.
从排名来讲，这是非常重大的变化。收入增长对所有人都是有益的，但排名是固定的，只能从这100%中排。也就是说，如果有人占的比例大了，比如中国人现在正在逐渐占据收入分配的顶部席位，而这些席位过去往往全被西方国家的人所占。随着中国人的排名往上走，那些习惯看到自己在榜单顶部的西方人显然就不得不挪位子，他们就会下降。我认为这是潜在的一大变革，在过去200年间从未发生过。
And that would make a difference for self-perception of many people in the West about where they belong. It would also make Western income distributions look much more diverse than they used to – what I want to say by that is that nowadays, and until recently that was the case, you had even poor people in Western countries being placed relatively high in the income distribution of the world.
而这也会令很多西方人的自我认知剧变，也会让西方的收入分布情况比过去看起来要更加多样化。意思就是，直到最近的一段时间情况就是这样，就算是西方国家的穷人，在世界的收入分配图上也处于相对高的地方。
And moreover, many of the consumption patterns are now globally dominated, and if you’re not at the top globally, then certain consumption baskets would not be available to you. I think a nice example is for example of tourism and travel. Now, of course, during the coronavirus we cannot travel much, but at some point this would be over, we hope. If you actually have people who in the West slip and fall in relative rankings, certain things which are expensive like international travel would become really unaffordable to them.
此外，很多消费模式现在是有全球主导性的。如果你不处于全球顶级的位子，那么某些消费对你来说就无法获取。旅游、旅行就是很好的例子。当然，现在由于疫情的原因，我们不能过多出门旅游。但我们期望这总有结束的一天。如果有一些西方人在相对排名上确实下滑或下降了，如国际旅行这种有些昂贵的事情对他们而言将变得真的无法负担。
So, it is not totally relevant what your position in the global income distribution is, even if your income by itself is still increasing, but somebody is overtaking you. In other words, your income is maybe going up by 2 percent a year, but somebody who has an increase of 8 percent a year would gradually be richer than you. If certain countries fall behind in income behind China and other Asian countries, real estate, which now is highly valued in Europe, would actually be owned by foreigners. So, that's another sort of development.
所以，你的收入在全球所处的位置并不是非常重要。就算你的收入仍在增长，但有人正在超过你。换句话说，你的收入可能每年增长2%，但是一个年增长率为8%的人会逐渐变得比你富有。如果某些国家在收入上掉队了，落后于中国和其他亚洲国家，那现在欧洲标价很高的房地产实际上会成为外国人的资产。这也是发展的另一种形式。
So, it does cause some problems whether it is an ideal situation for a city to become basically empty of its local inhabitants. It's an issue. So, I can go on with examples like that, but you get the idea that actually the change in the economic power between the continents will have many other political, and social, and consumption way repercussions.
一个缺少本地居民的城市对城市管理来讲可能会造成一些问题。这是一个问题。我也可以再给出一个类似的例子，不过你应该已经懂了，各大洲之间经济实力的变化的确会对政治、社会和消费方式产生其他的影响。
Kasonta: Given the widening income inequality in the West, can we expect further push backs against globalization?
随着西方世界收入不平等现象不断加剧，我们是不是会看到越来越多的逆全球化现象？
Milanović: Yeah, I think it does resemble what was called in those days disarticulation and disarticulation essentially meant that you had a sliver, some percentage of population in less developed countries that have been fully integrated in the global economy. And then you had a hinterland population that really was not integrated. They continued producing really in a sort of often times non-market way, they were basically subsistence producers.
是的。我认为这和以前所说的“错位现象”很像。所谓“错位”就是说有一部分人，不太发达的国家中有一部分的人已经全盘融入了全球经济。还有一些内陆地区的人口则全然没有融入，而是继续以一种非市场的方式进行经济生产。他们基本上是自给自足的生产者。
Now, obviously the West is not like that because it is much more developed. But the basic idea that you can take from disarticulation is that you have a group of local population that could be 10, 20, 30 percent and they are actually doing quite well and they are fully integrated into the world economy. And then you had the middle class in many Western countries, the United States in particular, that have not been integrated, or actually the integration had worked against them because they lost their jobs or they got new jobs at the lower wage than they had before. So, this is the entire problem of the middle class decline in the United States, which has clear political implications, and not only the U.S., you can also say it for Gilets Jaunes movement in France that represents the same problem. So, there will be sort of dissatisfaction with globalization.
显然当下的西方世界并不是这样，因为西方要发达得多。但基本的“错位”概念是在于，当地人口中的一部分，可能是10%、20%、30%，这些人活得很不错，完全融入到了世界经济中去。但是你也能看到许多西方国家的中产阶级，尤其是美国的中产阶级，没有融入进去，或者说是融合对他们不利，因为他们失去了工作或者新工作的工资比以前更低。所以，这就是美国中产阶级衰落问题的根源所在，也显然影响到了政治运转。不仅仅是美国，你也可以说法国的黄马甲运动背后也是同样的问题。因此，的确会有一些对全球化的不满。
I’m not sure that despite the COVID-19 and despite all the issues that we have now that globalization would be reversed. Simply because the incentives the globalization produces are so large. In other words, if you can make much more money by employing people in a different country compared to employing the people in your own country, there is very little that can stop you about that. So, in other words, the incentives are there and they will continue to be there.
尽管有新冠肺炎疫情，尽管我们现在面临着各种问题，我也不确定全球化是否会逆转。简而言之，全球化带来的好处实在是太大了。换句话说，如果你雇佣他国员工能比雇佣自己国家的人赚到更多的钱，基本没什么能阻止你去这么做。激励因素已经存在，而且将继续存在。
Moreover, the technology to do that is there, and this is not going to disappear. Actually, you can even argue as we have now seen the ability to do many more things online and virtually that the technology that we already knew that existed, but with the COVID-19 started using much more frequently, would further make globalization attractive.
此外，科学技术已经足够成熟，可以支持全球化。而且也不会就简单地消失。事实上你甚至可以说，我们现在能在线，虚拟地做更多的事情了。许多类似的技术早已存在，但新冠肺炎疫情让它们得到了更多应用。这也会让全球化变得更有吸引力。
Kasonta: Some believe that inequality is at the root of current U.S. hostile views towards foreign countries, including China. How much do you see the inequality contributing to the increasing nationalistic politics in the U.S.? Is the economy at the core of the current international crisis?
有人认为 不平等是美国目前对包括中国在内的外国人持敌对态度的根源。你认为这种不平等在多大程度上导致了美国政治中日益增长的民族主义情绪？经济是当前国际危机的核心吗？
Milanović: Yeah, I agree with that actually. I agree with that because it's inequality and polarization. In other words, what has happened in the U.S. is that you had very unequal growth rates across the income distribution. When you have very unequal growth rates - I mean lower growth rate of income among the middle class than among the rich - then obviously inequalities increase.
是的，我同意。我之所以同意，是因为这其实就是不平等和两极分化的体现。换言之，在美国发生的一切就是各收入阶层之间非常不均的增长速率。当出现增长速率不均时，也即中产阶级的收入增长速度比富有阶级低的时候，不平等现象会显著的增长。
But just saying inequality, I think, is not sufficient. One has to say it is polarization between those people at the very top who had very specific skills. You know, many of them are in the financial sector, many of them have done graduate studies, they have MBAs or they are being very successful CEOs or they actually founders of the new enterprises or they are very much at ease with the new technology, and then you have lots of people who had typical middle class what used to be called "blue collar" jobs, and these jobs have generally either been less prestigious, they're paying less, they're under pressure from Chinese imports and they are under pressure from outsourcing. So, yes, actually inequality in the U.S. has contributed to that rejection by some parts of the population of globalization, political polarization, and even cultural wars. There is no doubt about that.
但只谈不平等，我觉得是不够的。必须提到精英人士和中产阶级之间的两极分化。这些人中，很多人都在金融领域工作、很多人都读过研究生、有工商管理硕士学位，或是非常成功的首席执行官，要不就是新企业的创立者，亦或是对新科技得心应手。还有很多人就是典型的中产阶级工作者，也就是以前说的“蓝领”。这些工作总体上而言不像以前那样受人尊重了。他们的工资更低，受到进口中国产品的压力，也受到工作机会外流的威胁。所以，实际上美国的不平等现象也促使部分人口拒绝全球化，导致政治两极分化，甚至导致了文化战争，这一点毋庸置疑。
But I just want to say that saying inequality alone is not sufficient. One has to explain how that inequality worked and how it has produced this very huge abyss, even in perception, in culture, between people, so much so that when you watch what one group of people says or actually what media that are close to them say with the media from the other group, you're basically wondering if you're in the same country at all because the perceptions of reality are so far apart that they don't seem to be talking about the same thing at all.
但我想指出的是单单讨论不平等现象是不够的，必须要解释不平等现象的机理，是什么导致了观点、文化上产生了如此深的鸿沟。甚至于人们谈及另外一群人说的内容的时候，或他们亲近的媒体谈及另一群体的媒体所说的内容的时候，你会质疑这到底是不是在同一个国家，因为他们对事实的认知实在是差得太多了，他们看起来根本就不像是在讨论同一件事。