Jeffrey Sachs 不断变化的全球格局

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/01/22/the-shifting-global-landscape/O844Wwn9EYsB5yXGSVPkLK/story.html

在 1776 年出版的《国富论》中，亚当·斯密描述了全球化的早期事件，即克里斯托弗·哥伦布于 1492 年发现从欧洲到美洲的海上航线，以及瓦斯科·达伽马于 1498 年从欧洲航行到印度。“美洲的发现和通过好望角前往东印度群岛的航道的发现，是人类历史上记载的两件最伟大、最重要的事件，”斯密写道。历史证明了斯密的判断是正确的。我们这一代人的命运就是开启全球化的另一个重要篇章，这要求美国和其他世界大国重新思考外交政策。

史密斯指出，全球化应该提高全球福祉，“通过在某种程度上将世界上最遥远的地区联合起来，使他们能够满足彼此的需求，增加彼此的享受，鼓励彼此的工业。” 他还指出，在哥伦布和达伽马航行之后的第一波全球化浪潮中，美洲和亚洲的原住民遭受了苦难，因为欧洲的“武力优势”使欧洲人能够“肆无忌惮地犯下各种不公正行为”，包括奴役和政治统治。

然而，史密斯还预见了未来的时代，在那里，原住民“可能会变得更强大，或者欧洲人会变得更弱”，从而实现“勇气和力量的平等”，从而相互“尊重彼此的权利”。史密斯相信，国际贸易和“知识的相互交流”（思想和技术的国际流动）将加速实现平等。

史密斯的愿景已经实现。我们这一代人正处于历史的转折点，欧洲（以及后来的美国）几个世纪以来的全球优势正被亚洲、非洲、中东和美洲“本土人口”的崛起所抵消。过去 75 年，甚至可以说是过去 125 年，美国的外交政策都是以北大西洋地区（即西欧和美国）主导的世界经济为前提的。这种北大西洋全球化现在即将结束。我们现在看到的世界各地紧张局势是旧秩序消亡的征兆。

想想哥伦布和达伽马时代的世界。根据已故经济史学家安格斯·麦迪逊对全球的估计，1500 年的世界人口大致如下。世界人口约为 4.4 亿，其地区分布如下：亚洲 65%；非洲 11%；欧洲（东欧和西欧）20%；美洲 4%。根据麦迪逊的说法，世界产出的分布为亚洲 65%；非洲 8%；欧洲 24%；美洲 3%。世界普遍贫穷，农业发达，大型农业帝国位于东亚和南亚。

虽然哥伦布之后的发现和商业时代让欧洲在亚洲站稳了脚跟，并导致了欧洲对美洲的征服，但真正创造了欧洲世界的是英国的工业革命——由蒸汽机、工业钢铁生产、科学农业和纺织机械化引领。到 1900 年，世界在经济和政治上基本掌握在欧洲手中。亚洲仍然是全球人口的中心，但不再是世界经济的中心。

人口和收入的份额大致如下。 1900 年的世界人口约为 16 亿，分布如下：亚洲 56%；欧洲 27%；非洲 7%；美洲 9%。根据麦迪逊的说法，世界产出的分布现在是：亚洲 28%；欧洲 47%；非洲 3%；美洲 20%，其中大部分来自美国经济。亚洲的经济地位急剧下降；欧洲的地位却飙升。如果我们只关注西欧、美国和加拿大（北大西洋经济体），它们在世界产出中的份额在 1900 年高达 51%。

特别要注意中国的情况。据估计，中国在 1500 年占世界经济的 25%，但在 1900 年仅为 11%。显然，亚洲在世界上的主导地位已被工业革命颠覆。到 1900 年，世界已牢牢掌握在北大西洋列强手中。尤其是英国，统治着海洋，以至于这个时代通常被称为“不列颠和平”，尽管全球和平并不像欧洲人想象的那么普遍，因为欧洲正在非洲和亚洲各地作战和征服土地，并镇压当地人民的暴力叛乱（欧洲人称之为“恐怖主义”）。

1914 年至 1945 年间，欧洲几乎陷入政治自杀：两次世界大战和一次大萧条。到 1950 年，北大西洋的领导地位已从饱受战争摧残的英国转移到美国。欧洲前希特勒时代的科学领袖们一个接一个地来到美国。截至 1950 年，美国占世界??经济的 27% 左右，而西欧约占 26%，苏联占 9%，中国仅占 5%。

1942 年，《时代》杂志编辑亨利·卢斯宣布美国世纪到来。美国人很快就接受了这个想法。它符合美国长期以来的叙事：美国是一个特殊的国家，是上帝建立以结束旧世界背信弃义的国家，是一个有天命要使北美大陆文明化的国家（通过对土著居民进行种族清洗和种族灭绝），后来又使世界文明化，是“人类最后的希望”。

从 1945 年到 1991 年，美国的外交政策旨在赢得冷战。尽管美国主导着世界经济，但苏联领导的共产主义集团形成了对立的意识形态和地缘政治威胁。虽然“遏制”苏联成为主流教条，但美国“首要主义者”与美国“现实主义者”之间出现了斗争，前者认为遏制是美国领导整个世界体系的更宏大概念的垫脚石，后者则以更传统的权力平衡视角看待遏制。有趣且值得注意的是，遏制概念之父乔治·凯南对首要主义者的观点表示哀叹，认为它危险地傲慢，是对美国善良和权力的断言，是虚幻的、无法实现的。第三组人，我之前称之为合作主义者，认为冷战本身是一场不必要的，或至少是夸张的大国对抗，可以通过美国和苏联之间的直接合作来克服。

第二次世界大战的结束（大体上）标志着欧洲帝国在非洲和亚洲的终结，尽管非殖民化进程持续了数十年，而且往往充满暴力。美国经常将非殖民化与冷战本身混为一谈，因此自愿继承各种反殖民斗争，当然最显著、最具破坏性的是越南战争，在 1955 年法国撤军后，美国在那里与越南的民族团结进行了长达二十年的斗争，但没有成功。同样，美国试图在后殖民时代的中东地区维护自己的意志，部分是为了阻止苏联，部分是为了让埃克森美孚和雪佛龙留在国内。

随着欧洲帝国的消失，非洲和亚洲新独立的国家有了新的机会来投资自己的未来，特别是在教育、公共卫生和基础设施方面。至少有些国家抓住了这个机会。随着 1949 年中华人民共和国的成立，中国开始崛起。欧洲 200 年来日益增长的主导地位开始让位于“追赶”的过程，至少一些前殖民地国家（其中亚洲最为成功）开始采用现代技术，普及识字和疾病控制，并通过融入全球生产体系，总体上实现了比北大西洋领先国家更快的经济发展速度。北大西洋领先国家和发展中国家“追随者”之间的差距终于开始缩小。

当然，最大的成功故事是亚洲。首先，日本迅速从二战中恢复过来，并开始建设工业强国。然后是“亚洲四小龙”：香港、新加坡、台湾和韩国。然后是中国，1978 年毛泽东去世后，邓小平上台，中国开始了市场改革。亚洲的榜样激励了东欧和苏联从 20 世纪 80 年代中期开始的市场改革，而米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫的上台使得改革成为可能。最初的成果更多的是政治而非经济。东欧于 1989 年和平脱离苏联，随后苏联本身于 1991 年底解体为 15 个加盟共和国。

1992 年，美国至上主义者放眼世界，看到了他们对美国领导（和主宰）世界的愿景的证实。大敌已不复存在。美国和苏联的两极权力结构现在变成了单极世界，他们想象中的“历史的终结”即将到来。

美国至上主义者没有意识到的是，1992 年也将标志着中国经济增长加速的转折点。1992 年，美国占世界??总产出的 20%，而中国仅占 5%。经过二十五年的高速增长，中国在 2016 年的全球经济份额已降至 16%，而中国则以 18% 的份额略微超过美国（所有这些最新数据均来自 IMF 的估计）。中国

此外，信息技术的激增将支撑下一代全球经济增长，并正在全球迅速蔓延；技术革命将创造全球财富，而不仅仅是美国的财富。中国现在是世界上最大的互联网用户，宽带接入在世界各地都在飙升。

人口趋势也将使世界经济的重心向亚洲和非洲转移。考虑一下：1950 年，美国、加拿大和欧洲占世界人口的 29%。到 2015 年，这一比例下降到 15%。到 2050 年，这一比例将进一步下降，可能降至 12% 左右（根据联合国的预测）。相比之下，非洲在 1950 年仅占世界人口的 9%；2015 年为 15%；预计到 2050 年将达到 25% 左右。2050 年美国占世界??人口的比例将在 4% 左右，与目前的份额相差不大。

美国需要重新考虑其外交政策，因为世界已经发生了根本性的变化，亚洲和非洲正在快速“追赶”增长；世界范围的 IT 革命仍在加速；全球人口模式也发生了重大变化。

关键点就在这里。北大西洋的主导地位是世界历史的一个阶段，现在即将结束。它始于哥伦布，随着詹姆斯·瓦特和他的蒸汽机的出现而腾飞，在 1945 年之前一直由大英帝国制度化，然后进入所谓的美国世纪，但现在已经走到了尽头。美国仍然强大而富有，但不再占主导地位。

我们不是要进入中国世纪、印度世纪或任何其他世纪，而是要进入世界世纪。技术的快速传播和民族国家近乎普遍的主权意味着没有一个国家或地区能够在经济、技术或人口方面主宰世界。此外，随着世界人口增长放缓和世界人口老龄化，各国将由老年人口组成。 1950 年，中国人口的中位年龄（一半人口年龄较大，一半人口年龄较小）为 24 岁，到 2015 年上升至 37 岁。预计到 2050 年将上升至 50 岁。美国人也不再年轻，到本世纪中叶，中位年龄为 42 岁。历史表明，人口中年轻人的膨胀往往是冲突的导火索；现在，我们将面临老年人口的膨胀。

如果我的观点大体正确，我们这个时代最大的外交政策挑战将是管理许多相互竞争和技术先进的地区之间的合作，最紧迫的是应对我们共同的环境和健康危机。我们应该超越帝国、非殖民化和冷战时代。世界正在走向亚当·斯密很久以前预见的“勇气和力量的平等”。我们应该高兴地进入可持续发展时代，在这个时代，所有国家，特别是大国的首要目标是共同努力保护环境，消除极端贫困的残余，并防止因一个地方或民族对另一个地方或民族的统治的过时观念而陷入毫无意义的暴力。

杰弗里·萨克斯是哥伦比亚大学可持续发展中心的大学教授和主任，也是《可持续发展时代》一书的作者。

In “The Wealth of Nations,” published in 1776, Adam Smith described the early events of globalization that commenced with Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the sea route from Europe to the Americas in 1492, and Vasco da Gama’s voyage from Europe to India in 1498. “The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind,” wrote Smith. History has vindicated Smith’s judgment. It is our generation’s fate to usher in another fundamental chapter of globalization, one which requires a rethinking of foreign policy by the United States and other world powers.

Smith noted that globalization should raise global well-being, “by uniting, in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyments, and to encourage one another’s industry.” He also noted that in the first wave of globalization following the voyages of Columbus and da Gama, the native populations of the Americas and Asia suffered because Europe’s “superiority of force” enabled the Europeans to “commit with impunity every sort of injustice,” including enslavement and political domination.

Yet Smith also foresaw a future era in which the native populations “may grow stronger, or those of Europe grow weaker” to arrive at an “equality of courage and force” that could lead to a mutual “respect for the rights of one another.” Smith believed that international commerce and the “mutual communication of knowledge” (the international flow of ideas and technology) would hasten that day of equality.

Smith’s vision has arrived. Our generation is at a cusp of history, in which centuries of European (and later American) global ascendancy is now being counterbalanced by the rise of “native populations” in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. America’s foreign policy during the past 75 years, and arguably during the past 125 years, has been premised on a world economy led by the North Atlantic region, meaning Western Europe and the United States. That kind of North Atlantic globalization is now reaching an end. The tensions we see now around the world are symptomatic of the passing of the old order.

Consider the world at the time of Columbus and da Gama. According to global estimates made by the late economic historian Angus Maddison, the world population as of 1500 was roughly as follows. The world’s population of around 440 million people was distributed regionally as follows: Asia, 65 percent; Africa, 11 percent; Europe (East and West), 20 percent; and the Americas, 4 percent. The distribution of world output was, according to Maddison, Asia at 65 percent; Africa, 8 percent; Europe, 24 percent; and the Americas, 3 percent. The world was uniformly poor and rural, and the great agrarian empires were in East and South Asia.

While the age of discovery and commerce after Columbus gave Europe footholds in Asia and led to European conquests of the Americas, it was the Industrial Revolution in England—ushered in by the steam engine, industrial steel production, scientific farming, and the mechanization of textiles—that truly created the European world. By 1900, the world was largely in Europe’s hands, both economically and politically. Asia was still the center of the global population, but no longer of the world economy.

The shares of population and income were roughly as follows. The world population in 1900 was now around 1.6 billion, distributed as follows: Asia, 56 percent; Europe, 27 percent; Africa, 7 percent; and the Americas, 9 percent. The distribution of world output, according to Maddison, was now: Asia, 28 percent; Europe, 47 percent; Africa, 3 percent; and the Americas 20 percent, most of that coming from the US economy. Asia’s economic role has shrunk sharply; Europe’s has soared. If we restrict attention to Western Europe, the United States, and Canada (the North Atlantic economies), their share of world output stood at a remarkable 51 percent in 1900.

Note especially what had happened to China. According to the estimates, China’s share of the world economy was 25 percent in 1500 but only 11 percent in 1900. Clearly, Asia’s leading role in the world had been turned on its head by the Industrial Revolution. By 1900, the world was firmly in the hands of the North Atlantic powers. Britain, in particular, ruled the waves, so much so that the era is often called Pax Britannica, though global pax (peace) was not quite as common as in the European imagination, since Europe was fighting and conquering lands throughout Africa and Asia, and suppressing violent insurrections (known as “terrorism” to the Europeans) by local resistance to European rule.

Europe committed near political suicide between 1914 and 1945: two world wars and a Great Depression. By 1950, the North Atlantic leadership had passed from a war-broken Britain to the United States. Europe’s pre-Hitler scientific leadership arrived in the United States, refugee by refugee. As of 1950, the United States stood at around 27 percent of the world economy, compared with approximately 26 percent for Western Europe, 9 percent for the Soviet Union, and just 5 percent for China.

In 1942, Time magazine editor Henry Luce proclaimed the American Century. Americans quickly bought into the idea. It fit with a longstanding US narrative: the United States as the exceptional country, the country God established to end Old World perfidy, the country with a Manifest Destiny to civilize the North American continent (through the ethnic cleansing and genocide of native populations) and later the world, the “last great hope of mankind.”

From 1945 to 1991, US foreign policy was structured to prevail in the Cold War. Though the United States dominated the world economy, the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union formed a rival ideology and a geopolitical threat. While “containment” of the Soviet Union became the prevailing dogma, a struggle emerged between US “primacists,” who saw containment as a stepping-stone to an even more grandiose concept, US leadership of the entire world system, and US “realists,” who viewed containment in more traditional balance-of-power terms. Interestingly and notably, the conceptual father of containment, George Kennan, bemoaned the primacist vision, viewing it as dangerously hubristic, an assertion of US goodness and power that was illusory and unachievable. A third group, whom I have earlier called cooperatists, believed that the Cold War itself was an unnecessary, or at least exaggerated, great-power confrontation that could be overcome through direct cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The end of World War II marked (by and large) the end of the European empires in Africa and Asia, though the process of decolonization stretched out over decades and was often violent. The United States often confused decolonization with the Cold War itself, and therefore became a voluntary heir to various anticolonial struggles, of course most notably and destructively in Vietnam, where the United States fought unsuccessfully against the national unity of Vietnam for two decades after France’s withdrawal in 1955. Similarly, the United States tried to assert its will in the postcolonial Middle East, in part to keep the Soviet Union out and in part to keep ExxonMobil and Chevron in.

With Europe’s empires gone, the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia had a new opportunity to invest in their own futures, especially in education, public health, and infrastructure. At least some of the countries made good on that opportunity. China began to stir with the People’s Republic of China established in 1949. What had been 200 years of growing European dominance began to give way to a process of “catching up,” whereby at least some of the formerly colonized countries, most successfully in Asia, began to adopt modern technologies, spread literacy and disease control, and generally achieve economic development at a pace faster than in the North Atlantic leading countries through incorporation into global production systems. The gap between the North Atlantic leaders and developing-country “followers” finally began to narrow.

The greatest success story, of course, was Asia. First, Japan quickly recovered from World War II, and began to build an industrial powerhouse. Then came the “Asian tigers”: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea. And then came China, with the market reforms commencing in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping ascended to power after Mao Zedong’s death. Asia’s example inspired market reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from the mid-1980s, made possible by the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev. The initial results were more political than economic. Eastern Europe peacefully broke away from the Soviet Union in 1989, and then the Soviet Union itself dissolved into its 15 republics at the end of 1991.

In 1992, the US primacists looked out over the world and saw confirmation of their vision of a US-led (and dominated) world. The great enemy was gone. The bipolar power structure of the United States and the Soviet Union was now a unipolar world, and the “End of History” was, they imagined, at hand.

What the primacists didn’t realize is that 1992 would also mark an inflection point in the acceleration of China’s growth. In 1992, the United States produced 20 percent of world output and China a mere 5 percent. After a quarter-century of supercharged Chinese growth, in 2016 the US share had declined to 16 percent and China’s had slightly overtaken the United States at 18 percent (all these recent data according to IMF estimates). China has caught up with history.

Moreover, the surge of information technology, which will underpin the next generation of global economic growth, is spreading rapidly throughout the world; the technological revolution will create global wealth, not US wealth alone. China is now by the far the world’s largest Internet user, and broadband access is soaring in all regions of the world.

Population trends will also shift the weight of the world economy towards Asia and Africa. Consider this: In 1950, the United States, Canada and Europe constituted 29 percent of the world population. By 2015, this had declined to 15 percent. By 2050, the share will decline further, perhaps to around 12 percent (based on UN projections). Africa, by contrast, had just 9 percent of the world’s population in 1950; 15 percent in 2015; and around 25 percent expected as of 2050. The US share of the world population in 2050 will be around 4 percent, not too far from its current share.

The United States will need to rethink its foreign policy in a world that has changed fundamentally, with rapid “catch-up” growth in Asia and now Africa; a worldwide IT revolution still picking up speed; and major changes in global population patterns.

Here is the key point. The dominance of the North Atlantic was a phase of world history that is now closing. It began with Columbus, took off with James Watt and his steam engine, was institutionalized in the British Empire until 1945 and then in the so-called American century, but has now run its course. The United States remains strong and rich, but no longer dominant.

We are not heading into the China Century, or the India Century, or any other, but a World Century. The rapid spread of technology and the near-universal sovereignty of nation states means that no single country or region will dominate the world in economy, technology, or population. Moreover, with world population growth slowing and the world population aging, countries will be populated by older people. The median age of the Chinese population (the age at which half are older and half younger) was 24 years in 1950 and rose to 37 years as of 2015. It is projected to rise to 50 years by 2050. Americans, too, will be no spring chickens, with a median age of 42 years as of mid-century. History has shown that a bulge of youth in the population has often been tinder for conflict; now we will have a bulge of the elderly.

If my view is broadly correct, the great foreign policy challenge of our age will be to manage cooperation among many competing and technologically advanced regions, and most urgently to face up to our common environmental and health crises. We should move past the age of empires, decolonization, and Cold Wars. The world is arriving at the “equality of courage and force” long ago foreseen by Adam Smith. We should gladly enter the Age of Sustainable Development, in which the preeminent aim of all countries, and especially the great powers, is to work together to protect the environment, end the remnants of extreme poverty, and guard against a senseless descent into violence based on antiquated ideas of the dominance of one place or people over another.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and author of “The Age of Sustainable Development.”

Jeffrey Sachs 不断变化的全球格局

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