张维为对话斯蒂格利茨:被特朗普破坏的全球化,该恢复了

来源:观察者网

2020-11-09 07:34

张维为

张维为作者

复旦大学特聘教授,中国研究院院长,春秋发展战略研究院研究员

斯蒂格利茨

斯蒂格利茨作者

诺贝尔经济学奖得主

在经历了旷日持久的计票之后,拜登最终领先特朗普胜出。

于是人们有了另一种期盼:民主党拜登入主白宫,被特朗普破坏的全球秩序会重新恢复吗?

这四年,特朗普破坏的可不少:退出国际组织、大谈美国优先,曾经建立全球化秩序的美国,成了秩序的最大阻碍。

但中国在这个过程中,始终秉持开放心态,从未放弃推动全球化,“一带一路”、进博会就是行动。中国构建的这些全球化平台,也正在让世界受益。

近日,围绕“新自由主义与全球化危机”,复旦大学中国研究院院长张维为对话诺贝尔经济学奖得主、世界银行首席经济学家斯蒂格利茨。本文为第三部分“选举就能救美国吗?”,更多内容请点击#张维为对话斯蒂格利茨#

杨晗轶:经历了几十年的经济全球化,各国之间,至少中国和美国之间的联系已相当紧密,几乎是一种内在的联系。我有一个问题,我们知道全球化的好处不成比例地流向了富人和权贵,既然他们在全球化当中获得了巨大的好处,为什么他们要支持那些鼓动“脱钩”的政治势力呢?如果他们不支持这些势力,“脱钩”又怎么脱得成呢?

斯蒂格利茨:这个问题很有意思。我认为,美国所发生的情况是,大公司曾经是1980年开始的这一轮全球化的主要推手,但后来的局势发展令它们大感失望。而他们之所以会感到失望,部分原因是它们曾经把中国当作一座金山,认为13亿人口的巨大市场可以产生巨额的利润。结果实际情况没有完全遂它们的心愿。它们的确获得了不少利润,但利润在逐渐下降。

我认为这背后有几个原因:

第一,中国的工资水平已经上涨,不再是廉价劳动力的来源,因此这些企业在向其他劳动力更便宜的国家转移。它们学会了如何外包,但中国不再像过去那样被视为外包利润的来源。

第二,有的美国企业赚钱靠的是无视环保标准,而现在中国在环保标准方面比过去规范多了。因此它们只能去找下一个允许自己践踏环境的国家。希望它们找不到这样的地方。

第三,中国在发展本土企业方面做得非常出色,我自己开的沃尔沃汽车就是中资企业所有。事实上中国已经取得巨大的进步,而中资企业在中国国内市场的竞争也非常激烈。

对于你提出的问题,一个最直接的答案是美国企业远远不像过去那样,积极支持中美保持紧密联系。它们对知识产权被盗和企业向某些市场扩张受限制等情况有很多抱怨。但我认为它们最根本的不满还是,中国不再像过去期望的那样一直是巨额利润的来源。

张维为:我们大家都同意,中国也许算得上全球化几个最主要的受益方之一。即便是今天,大部分中国人仍然支持全球化。我个人认为,美国大公司作为一个整体在很大程度上受益于全球化。但如你在书中所提到的,美国因为政治体制、政治制度问题、各种僵局等原因,大公司的收益并没有得到比较公平的分配,在整个美国社会,至少一部分收益应该分配给普通民众。这也是为什么很多美国人对全球化愤愤不平。

目前,我们看到中美之间的科技战、贸易战,看到美国对华为、抖音、蚂蚁集团的阻挠和限制。我在想,这是不是一种你所说的经济权力的延伸,美国大企业在美国政府的支持下对抗中资企业。我认为当下存在这样的情况,它们害怕跟我们展开自由公平的竞争。

斯蒂格利茨:在我看来,很明显各种企业一直以来都在寻求政府帮助。有个笑话是这么说的,企业相信竞争,但只相信其他行业应该竞争,自己的行业最好不要有竞争,竞争都是别人的事,人都是这么想的。我发现商人们永远反对补贴,除非自己的行业是受补贴的对象。“自由市场”是对别人而言的,而不是对自己而言的。每个企业都说自己情况特殊,需要帮助和保护,竞争对我来说是有害的,是不公平的。这是企业的天性,你得习惯这一点。这就是现实,但公共政策应当极力禁止大公司利用政府权力来为自己的利益服务。这不是政府该做的事。

我认为我们仍然需要多边主义。经济学家说得很有道理,贸易真正的好处是全球性的,区域性贸易协定解决不了这个问题。这可能导致我同事贾格迪什·巴格沃蒂所指的“意大利面碗”现象,不同贸易协定之中的条款互相重叠、使规则复杂化。

对我而言,我认为最大的挑战在于,“铁幕”倒塌也就是冷战正式结束之后,弗朗西斯·福山写了本很有影响力的书《历史的终结》,这是一种盲目乐观的幻想,幻想所有国家最终都会成为自由主义民主国家和自由市场经济体。当时支持贸易自由化的理由之一是,它将加速历史终结之日的到来,届时所有国家都将是自由民主国家,奉行自由市场经济。

现在已没人相信这种幻想了。我们的政治和经济制度没有朝同样的终点收敛,未来世界各国可能会在不同体制下各自前行。这一点具有非常重大的意义,因为如果所有人都在同一套经济体制里面,游戏规则制定起来比较容易;但如果几种不同的经济体制同时存在,要制定堪称公平、合理的规则就非常困难。

挑战在于,当你认识到贸易不一定能导致体制趋同,未来不同的政治和经济体制将同时存在,要如何对贸易收益加以利用?在这个需要我们围绕气候变化、大流行、全球繁荣以及援助贫穷国家开展合作的时代,世界要怎么组织起来?需要合作的方面还有很多。我们要如何一方面合作,一方面接受一个现实,即我们支持的政治和经济体制大不相同?

在这种意义上,我们将成为竞争者,尽管我不愿意这样表述,但是我们对社会未来发展方向的愿景确实差异很大。我们不需要对彼此进行说教,但我们保有截然不同的观点。问题在于,在那样一个世界里,如果我们希望在地球可承受范围内享受远离冲突的富足生活,彼此间要如何和平共处,并展开许多必要的合作?

张维为:听完斯蒂格利茨教授这番心态开放、引人深思的话语,我觉得你才是美国总统的理想人选。这将为人类带来很多福祉。

回到关于全球化的问题,我认为出于可以理解的原因,这个过程将经历重新适应和调整。区域化趋势将变得更强,或许会出现某种形式的欧洲一体化、亚洲一体化和北美一体化。而中国则是这种趋势中的新因素,因为按购买力平价计算,中国目前已经是全球最大经济体,是130个国家的最大贸易伙伴。中国倡导一种新型的、建立在共商、共建、共享等核心理念上的全球化,具体体现在“一带一路”倡议上,它是规模最大的(国际合作平台)。我真心希望它对所有国家都开放,目前它已经是世界最大的、基于互惠原则的新型全球化平台。有些美国企业已经加入,欧洲企业正在加入,总的来说这是个宏伟的项目。我们需要一些这样的着眼全人类的伟大项目,衷心希望大多数国家都能从中受益。

(翻页查看英文版)

Yang Hanyi:After decades of economic globalization, we have become, at least China and the United States has become so tightly and almost intrinsically bound with each other. And I have one question, which is that since the rich and powerful- we know that the benefits of globalization have gone disproportionately to the rich and powerful- and since they are the ones that have been tremendously benefited from globalization, why should they support those political forces advocating for decoupling? If they don't support those forces and how could decoupling effort ever be successful?

Stiglitz: That's a very interesting question. I think what has happened in the United States is that the corporate interests that were very much behind the globalization as it occurred beginning in 1980 have become disillusioned with the way things have turned out. And I think they've gotten disillusioned partly because they thought there was a gold mine in China. They thought that a huge market of 1.3 billion people was going to generate huge amounts of profits. And it turned out to be not so. They've gotten a lot of profits, but those profits have declined. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. The first is wages in China have gone up. So it's not the source of cheap labor that it was before, that's why they're going to other countries where labor is cheaper. So they've learned how to outsource, but China is not viewed in that way as the source of profits as it was before. Secondly, some of the American corporations made profits out of ignoring environmental and other standards. And China now is being much better with environmental standards. And so they're looking for other places where they can abuse environmental standards. Hopefully they won't find any, but but that's... The third is that China has been very successful in developing its own companies. The auto industry, you have a very successful auto (industry). I drive a Volvo which is owned by a Chinese company. The reality is that China has made enormous progress, and competition inside of China, from Chinese companies is very intense. The direct answer to your question is the corporate agenda for a linkage has been very strongly weakened. They complain a lot about the theft of intellectual property or restrictions on expansion in certain markets. But I think the underlying complaint is really that it's not being the source of profits that it once was hoped to be.

Zhang Weiwei: As we all agree, perhaps China is one of the few major beneficiaries of globalization. Even today, most Chinese support globalization. From my point of view, US corporations have also on the whole benefitted a lot from globalization. But I think due to what you have mentioned in your book, the political system, political institutional issues, gridlocks, whatever, somehow the interests have not been fairly distributed, at least part of it is redistributed across American society for the ordinary people. That's why a lot of people have grievances against globalization.

And I was wondering, at this time there is this tech war, trade war between China and United States. We saw the restriction on Huawei, Tiktok, and Ant Group. I wonder whether there is also what I call an extension of what you have described as power, economic power, US corporations supported by US government vis-a-vis the Chinese companies. I think there is an element of that. They are afraid of what we call the free and fair competition.

Stiglitz: I think clearly companies have always turned to governments for help. The joke is they believe in competition, but in other sectors, not their own, and for other people, the same thing. I always noticed businessmen were always against subsidies except in their own sector. Free market is something that applies to other people, but not to myself. Every company always says I'm in a special circumstance where I need assistance, protection, competition will be destructive, unfair. So that's the nature and you just have get used to it. That's the reality, but public policy should be very much not to allow large corporations to use the power of government to advance their interests.That's not what government is supposed to be doing.

I think there is still a need for multilateralism. Economists have made a strong argument that the real benefits of trade are global, and regional trade agreement don't resolve that.You can get what my colleague Jagdish Bhagwati refers to "Spaghetti Bowl" of complications of overlapping trade agreements with different provisions. To me, I think the biggest challange is the following. After the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the end of the cold war officially, Francis Fukiyama wrote this very influential book called The End of History, and it's sort of pollyannaish fantasy that we will all wind up as liberal democracies and free market economies.One of the arguments for trade liberalization was that it would hurry on the day of End of History where everybody  is a liberal democracy and a free-market economy. That fantasy, nobody believes in that any more. We're not converging to the same political and economic system, we're likely to have, going forward, different parts of the world working on different systems. That has very important implications, because the rules of game are easy to write if everybody is in the same economic system. But when there are different economic systems, writing what might be called fair, reasonable rules are really difficult.

The challenge is going to be, once you regonize that trade is not going to be necessarily leading into the convergence, there's going to be different politcal and economic systems,how do we take advantage of the gains to trade; how do we organize a world where we have to cooperate on climate change, on pandemics, on global prosperity, on assitance to poor countries, so many areas that we have to cooperate. How do we get that cooperation, and at the same time, recognize, we will be arguing for very different political and economic systems?

We will be, in that sense, I don't want to say, competitors, but there are very different visions that we will be putting forward for the direction of society. We don't have to lecture each other, but we have very diffrent views. And the question is, how in that kind of world do we live peacefully together, cooperate in the many many areas that we have to cooperate, if we're going to succeed in living a prosperous life without conflict and within our planetary boundaries?

Zhang Weiwei: Having heard this very open-minded, thought-provoking statement from Professor Stiglitz, I think, ideally, Professor Stiglitz, you have to become the US president. That will bring so much welfare and benefit to mankind. Come back to Kris's question concerning globalization, I agree that there will be readjustment for understandable reasons. Regionalization will become stronger, perhaps there will be a kind of European integration, Asian integration, North American integration. And there's a new element, because China now is, by purchasing power (parity), already the largest economy, with 130 countries as its largest trading partner, China is advocating what we call a new type of globalization based on the key message of what we call "discussing together, building together, and benefitting together" as characterized by this Belt & Road Initiative, which is the largest scale... I hope really it's open to all countries, it's a platform- at the moment the world's largest platform- for a new type of globalization based on mutual benefit. Some US companies have already joined in, European companies are now joining in, but this is a grand project. We need some grand projects for mankind. Hopefully most countries will benefit from it.

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中美竞争 中美贸易 全球化 经济全球化
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