评论 | “一带一路”尽显中国大格局
Editor's note: As the BRICs heads of state meeting kicks off a week of international summits, the issue of economic recovery and future development is at the center of various agendas. China is committed to push economic development through the Belt and Road Initiative as laid out in the 14th Five-Year Plan. Some see it as China extending its sphere of influence while others question whether the project is profitable for its participants. What is China's motive? And what exactly is the philosophy behind this massive international developmental project? Branko Milanović, 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.
编者按：金砖国家首脑峰拉开本周各类国际峰会的序幕。全球经济恢复与发展将是重点议题。中国在第十四个五年计划中阐明一带一路将是发展的重点项目。有人认为这是中国在扩展自己的势力范围，也有人质疑这个项目到底是否可以给参与国带来经济利益。中国提出该倡议的出发点是什么？应该如何理解“一带一路”背后的理念？纽约市立大学研究生中心高级学者布兰科·米兰诺维奇分享他的观察和看法。本篇仅代表专家观点，不代表本台观点。
Adriel Kasonta: Some say that the Belt and Road Initiative is a new form of colonialism and imperialism. What do you think is China’s motive? How do you think China’s attitude towards international relations is different from that of the West?
有人说 “一带一路”倡议是殖民主义和帝国主义的新表现形式。你认为中国的出发点是什么？中国对国际关系的态度与西方有何不同？
Branko Milanović: Western approach was essentially an approach of proselytizing religiously, but also an approach of which the objective was economic domination - largely plunder, if we want to speak things frankly.
西方国家的做法本质上就是在传播宗教信仰，并在经济领域追求全球主导地位。直白地说，主要通过掠夺来实现此目标。
But Belt and Road Initiative, in principle, I might think I’m actually very much in favor of it. The idea, I think, is the basic idea of integrating the entire Eurasian space. You know, think of the fact that actually many of these countries are countries with fairly old history like Turkey, Uzbekistan for example. And being integrated into this large space and trading with both Russia and China, and Iran, and the Middle East, and of course India, would actually really make that area and particularly Asia become, to some extent, economically the centre of the world.
从原则上讲，我其实非常看好“一带一路”倡议。我认为，该倡议的基本理念就是实现整个欧亚地区的一体化发展 。事实上，许多“一带一路”沿线国家的历史都十分悠久。例如土耳其、乌兹别克斯坦等国，他们通过融入这片大区域，与俄罗斯、中国、伊朗、中东以及印度开展贸易往来。这实际上将使该地区，尤其是亚洲，在一定程度上成为全球经济中心。
Now, the part of Belt and Road Initiative which attracts lots of attention has to do with Africa. The Chinese are criticized for doing the projects basically using only their own technology, manpower, and so on. Well, that, according to the studies that have been done, is not exactly true. Actually, the involvement of people from the countries where the projects are being taken is quite significant in terms of work and labor, even engineering.
如今 “一带一路”倡议在非洲的落地状况也备受关注。有人批评中国在开展项目时，基本上都用本国的技术和人员。然而研究结果表明，这种说法并不准确。实际上，就工作、劳动力、甚至是工程施工而言，项目所在国的人员参与度是相当高的。
And the story about the debt trap, that basically you borrow so much and you’re then unable to repay, and then the Chinese takeover different things that belong to you, I think it’s overdone. Because, if the debt was such a big issue, it would’ve been a big issue not only with China, it could be an issue with any country. So, I think it’s overdone.
有人说非洲陷入了中国所设的“债务陷阱”，意指非洲国家借钱太多、无力偿还，于是中国就要非洲国家用各类资产来抵债。我认为这言过其实。如果说债务真是个大问题，那么非洲各国不仅欠中国很多债，他们也欠其他国家大笔债务。所以我认为这种夸张的说法。
And I actually believe that the Chinese approach, which goes after infrastructural project, replicates what really turned out to be successful in China. In other words, unless you have good infrastructure, you really cannot have economic growth; you cannot attract foreign investors; you cannot actually have people come there and participate in economic activity. So, China, in that sense, is actually trying to replicate in Africa what was successful at home. So, I think one should actually support that rather than permanently claim that they’re negative sides.
在我看来，中国在非洲以基础设施建设促进发展的方式。恰恰在当初也帮助中国实现了经济腾飞 。换言之，除非一个国家拥有良好的基础设施。否则将很难实现经济增长，因为它无法吸引外国投资者、无法让人们去那里参与经济活动。因此，从这个意义上讲，中国实际上是想在非洲复制国内的成功经验 。我认为人们应该支持这种做法，而不是一口咬定这是消极的行为。
And I think the integration of Africa is little bit like what we were saying before for the Eurasian continent, this is actually thinking in a grand scale of things. And what I actually like about Chinese approach oftentimes is that actually it is able to think about the grander scale of things. So, we don’t simply do small projects, we’re actually trying to think of the projects that would actually have a huge advantage in bringing into the sort of market economy production large parts of the world.
我觉得非洲的一体化有点像我们之前说的欧亚大陆一体化。这其实是在一个大格局上进行通盘考虑。我其实很多时候都挺喜欢中国的做法，因为中国看待事物的方式显得很有格局。中国并不是简单地做一些小项目，而是在不断探索一些具有巨大前景的优势项目，让世界绝大部分地区步入市场经济的生产中去。
Now, let’s look at Africa. Africa is actually the only continent with very significant increase in population. So, African importance will definitely increase in the 21st century. But what is also crucial for Africa is that it starts catching up on per capita terms with other parts of the world and rich countries.
接下来，让我们看看非洲。非洲是唯一一个人口大幅增加的大陆。因此在21世纪，非洲的重要性肯定会提高。但是对非洲来说，同样至关重要的是，在很多方面，它的人均水平开始赶上世界其他地区和富裕国家。
So, if one doesn’t do anything and just believes, as many international organizations believe, that Africa is going to grow simply because you organize transparency projects, you organize NGOs, you organize conferences in nice cities, I don’t think this is going to work. And actually we have seen that it basically doesn’t work. You need more than that, and you need actually some real investments. You need to go back to what West was actually doing in the 60s and the 70s – building physical things that are useful - and certainly roads are useful.
因此，如果非洲不踏踏实实搞建设，而去相信某些国际组织的观点，即搞一些提升透明度的项目，设立非政府组织，在环境优美的城市办几场国际会议就能帮助非洲实现发展，我个人认为这是行不通的。实际上，我们已经看到上述做法是行不通的。除那些工作之外，非洲还需要实实在在的投资。你需要回顾下上世纪60~70年代西方国家的做法，他们也在大兴土木搞建设、修建道路等具有实际用途的基础设施。
And even if some of them are not profitable - we know for example for China, the fast trains are not profitable in a simple generating income. We know that actually for Spain – Spain had a very good system of railroads, of fast trains, and they are also losing money. But the externalities that are provided, and of course the economists have been talking about that for years, by that integration are huge. So, they cannot be captured by the train itself. Because if you put the price on a train so high, then nobody of course is going to use the train to ship the goods. The trains are going to be loss-making enterprise, but they would actually contribute -when I say trains, I mean also the roads and the infrastructure projects - a lot. So, it seems to me that on balance these are really good ideas.
即使其中部分项目无法实现盈利，比如中国高铁依然处于不盈利的状态。实际上，西班牙也拥有非常发达的高铁网络。他们的高铁运营也处于亏损状态，但是这种一体化发展项目能提供巨大的外溢效应。当然，经济学家多年来一直在谈论这一点。这种外溢效应无法集中体现在铁路企业的报表上。因为如果铁路交通定价过高，那就没有人会选择铁路进行货运。虽然说铁路交通公司会面临亏损，但是它们会对整个经济贡献巨大。其实不仅是铁路公路，其他基础设施项目也是如此。因此，在我看来，总的来说，这些都是非常好的想法。
Kasonta: Is it true that the BRI may represent a major shift in developmental philosophy? If yes, then in what sense?
“一带一路”倡议能否代表发展理念方面的重大变革？如果能，这种变革体现在哪些方面？
Milanović: There are two things that seems to me to be crucial. One is working on actual projects, physical projects, rather than working on changes in regulation, government structure, and this kind of soft areas. So, actually the project objective is to build a road, not necessarily to change the taxation system. You know, that’s the difference.
在我看来，有两点至关重要。首先“一带一路”倡议聚焦于实际项目，建设项目，而不是推动法律法规、政府架构等体制机制方面的变革。因此，倡议的目标就是修路，而不是去改变一国的税收制度。所以说，这就是其不同之处。
So, the emphasis from the Chinese perspective is on the hard projects. Well, that was, as I’ve mentioned before. something that the World Bank, for example, has been doing in the 50s, in the 60s, and the 70s. The emphasis was on the hard projects, the emphasis was not on changing the incentives or the instruments that the government was using. That started with structural adjustment landing, where actually the balanced change from working on hard projects to working on so-called “soft changes” in policy. So, that’s one first difference between what China seems to be doing now, compared to what international financial institutions are doing.
在中国看来，重点在于建设物理设施。我之前也提到过，世界银行在上世纪50~70年代就在不断推进类似的工作，把重点放在物理设施建设，而非试图改变政府的激励措施或手段。后来，随着世界银行的结构调整落地，它从单纯地关注基建项目逐步转变为关注政策领域的调整。因此，这是中国目前正在做的事情与国际金融机构所做的事情之间的主要区别。
The second big difference, which is somewhat related to the first, is that China officially does not want to interfere in policies of those countries. Again, this is not something that China has invented. If you go back again to what international financial institutions did in the 50s, in the 60s, and the 70s, they didn’t interfere in political space very much, because they wanted to keep economics separate from politics. So that they don’t actually scare many of the African countries that were non-aligned or some of them were closed politically to the (former) Soviet Union.
第二点与第一点有一定的联系，那就是中国政府明确指出不干预“一带一路”沿线国家的政策。同样，这种态度并非中国首创。如果你回顾上世纪50~70年代国际金融机构的做法，你会发现他们也不涉足政治领域。因为他们想把经济和政治分开，这样他们就不会令不结盟的非洲国家感到不安。因为有些非洲国家与前苏联保持着紧密的政治关系。
So, the basic story then is the difference between Chinese approach and Western approach today is twofold: First, emphasis on hard projects versus soft projects, and non-interference versus interference. What I wanted to mention and to explain is that these two parts of the Chinese approach – hard projects plus non-interference – were something that the West did in the past as well. So, it’s not something that neither China invented nor is it something that we have to criticize China for as if the West had never done it. So, it’s simply going back to the older approach, and in some respects that approach might have been even better than the more recent approach of political interference with policy sort of dialogue, or policy demands that are often made out of countries that borrow.
归根到底，中国的做法和西方的做法之间存在着两点区别。即推动实际建设项目，而非推动政策调整，以及不干预项目所在国的政策。说上面一番话，我想表达的是，中国做法的两大要素——聚焦项目建设和不干预别国政策——也曾经是西方国家的做事准则。因此，这不是中国自创的体系。西方国家也不必批评中国，因为他们自己也曾那样做过。所以说，中国只是使用了老方法，而且老方法在某些方面比当下西方国家采取的政治干预手段、开展所谓的政策对话、或对负债国提出政策要求更有效。