主题：有人看过最近ECONOMIST的一篇关于新经济秩序的文章 -- 远航

Surprise!

Sep 14th 2006

From The Economist print edition

The balance of economic power in the world is changing. Good

IF ECONOMISTS have a tendency to trust their figures too much, politicians often pay numbers too little

attention; and they do so at their peril. Napoleon dismissed Britain as a nation of shopkeepers, but its

emerging might as a trading power helped fight him off. In the cold war Western strategists probably

spent too much time worrying about the Soviet Union's military clout, and not enough analysing its

commercial frailties. Economics does not determine history, but it does provide the backbeat. And

something dramatic has been happening to the numbers recently.

As our survey this week points out, the emerging world now accounts for over half of global economic

output, measured in purchasing-power parity (which allows for lower prices in poorer countries). Many

economists prefer to measure GDP using current exchange rates (which put the emerging world's

proportion closer to 30%). But even on this basis the newcomers accounted for well over half of the

growth in global output last year. And a barrage of statistics shows economic power shifting away from

the °∞developed°± economies (basically North America, western Europe, Japan and Australasia) towards

emerging ones, especially in Asia. Developing countries chew up over half of the world's energy and hold

most of its foreign-exchange reserves. Their share of exports has jumped from 20% in 1970 to 43%

today. And, although Africa still lags behind, the growth is fairly broadly spread: they may be the most

talked about, yet Brazil, Russia, India and China account for only two-fifths of emerging-world output.

No social or economic change this big takes place without friction. The most obvious sign is the uproar

about jobs being °∞outsourced°± to India and China. The howls will get louder as globalisation affects everricher

voters. But there are wider ramifications too. In Asia China's rise has helped push Japan and India

closer to the United States, and South Korea further away from it. The once-poor world is scouring the

earth for mineral rights, trying to buy Californian oil firms, accounting for ever more carbon emissions

and making its weight felt in international negotiations on everything from trade to proliferation to the

secretary-generalship of the United Nations.

An idea whose time has come, again

There are weaknesses in some of the growth stories. China's population is ageing and India's schools are

rotten. Perhaps the emerging world won't continue to motor along at nearly three times the rich world's

pace. Maybe it will take a little longer than 2040 to fulfil Goldman Sachs's prediction that the world's ten

biggest economies, using market exchange rates, will include Brazil, Russia, Mexico, India and China. But these are arguments about when, not whether, change will happen. And things could speed up: even the

rosiest predictions underestimated Asia's ability to recover from its 1997 financial crisis.

This shift is not as extraordinary as it first seems. A historical perspective shows it to be the restoration

of the old order. After all, China and India were the world's biggest economies until the mid-19th

century, when technology and a spirit of freedom enabled the West to leap ahead. Nor should it be

regarded as frightening. The West, as well as hundreds of millions of people in developing countries, has

benefited from emerging-world growth. Globalisation is not a zero-sum game: Mexicans, Koreans and

Poles are not growing at the expense of Americans, Japanese and Germans. Developing countries already

buy half the combined exports of America, Japan and the euro area. As they get richer they will buy

more. The world is on course for its fastest-ever decade of growth in GDP per head, which has been

powering ahead at an annual rate of 3.2% since 2000°(TM)far faster than during the great period of

globalisation that ended with the first world war.

Somme where, over the rainbow

If that comparison raises spectres, so it should. A century ago Edwardian globalists were predicting ever

more peace and prosperity°(TM)only to see those dreams blown apart on the fields of Flanders. The

momentum behind globalisation is considerable; but pushing trade barriers lower depends on political

will. It is doubtful that any American president would follow the example of the Chinese emperor

Qianlong, who announced in 1793 that the then economic superpower had no interest in °∞foreign

manufactures°±, setting his country on the road to two centuries of impoverishment. But there are a few

worrying omens in the air, notably the collapse of the Doha round of trade talks.