全球增长新引擎何在？
上一个千年最大的意料之外的后果，或许就是1492年哥伦布(Columbus)误打误撞发现美洲大陆。这位热那亚探险家原本试图探索一条通往亚洲的海上通道——这条通道直到6年后才由葡萄牙探险家瓦斯科•达伽马(Vasco da Gama)发现。达伽马没有向西穿过大西洋，而是向南航行，随后折向东，开辟了欧洲通往传说中的东印度(Indies)的海上通道，从而实现了哥伦布的梦想。
For the Europeans, the Indies had long been the source of essential spices that allowed them preserve food for winter, an advantage that meant they were a source of great wealth, even more so than the “incalculable amount of trade” Marco Polo suggested China offered.
当时的东印度早已是欧洲人生活中不可缺少的香料的来源地，这些香料让欧洲人能够保存过冬的食物。东印度的这一条件意味着它是巨额财富的源泉，就这一点而言，据马可•波罗(Marco Polo)所说提供“无法估量的贸易量”的中国都比不上它。
Da Gama’s 1498 breakthrough was the beginning of the end of the Asian bazaar that was Venice: the lucrative land-based trade of the Eurasian Silk Road would henceforth increasingly come via the Indian and Atlantic oceans thus disintermediating those terrestrial caravanserais that had previously grown rich on that through traffic. The British and Dutch East Indies companies would, by cutting out Venetian and other middlemen, become the Amazon of their age . . . except that, unlike Amazon, they would become vastly profitable too!
达伽马在1498年取得的历史性突破，是当时的亚洲商品集散地威尼斯衰落的开始：从那以后，利润丰厚的欧亚陆上丝绸之路贸易日益让位于经由印度洋和大西洋的海上贸易，那些早先靠陆路贸易带来的客流而变得富裕的陆上商队驿站城市，丧失了中间商的地位。英、荷东印度公司通过挤掉威尼斯人和其他中间商，成为它们那个时代的亚马逊(Amazon)……与亚马逊不一样的是，它们后来也赚取了暴利!
In passing, it is worth noting that so great was the profit that the Indies produced for the British and the Dutch, it was to cement the institutional cornerstones of modern capitalism: joint stock companies, limited liability and stock exchanges.
顺便说一句，有必要指出，东印度为英国和荷兰人创造了如此丰厚的利润，以致于它巩固了成为现代资本主义基石的几种制度：股份公司、有限责任公司和股票交易所。
More than 500 years later, at the dawn of the third millennium, the promise of the Indies may again be about to be realised.
500多年后，在第三个千年的开端，东印度所蕴含的希望可能再次即将获得实现。
While China’s gross domestic product today is still growing at an extraordinarily fast 6 per cent plus per annum — notable because as the world’s second-largest economy there can now be no dismissing its efforts because they are “off a low base” — there is another growth story that is emerging behind or rather beneath China. Largely but not wholly based in countries either in or around the Indian Ocean, the Three Indies region will most probably be the leading growth engine for the global economy through 2050.
在中国国内生产总值(GDP)仍在以每年6%以上的惊人速度快速增长——因为中国已经是全球第二大经济体，“起点已经不低了”，这样的速度是令人瞩目和不容忽视的——的同时，还有一个增长故事正跟在中国后面或者说在中国以南浮现出来。从现在到2050年，基本上但并非全部位于印度洋周边国家的三印度(Three Indies)地区，最有可能成为全球经济的主要增长引擎。
This is an almost mechanical prediction: this region’s rise will be all but guaranteed by the monsoon winds of favourable demographics and productivity growth. Combined, these two essential strands of the DNA of economic growth will drive the Three Indies region forward.
这几乎是一种机械预测：得益于有利的人口条件和生产率增长，该地区的兴起是十拿九稳的。这两个经济增长的基本DNA将共同推动三印度地区前行。
Who then makes up this new growth engine? It has three flywheels: Indochina, the modern-day East Indies and the Indian subcontinent. Indochina embraces Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia. The East Indies takes in the archipelagos of Indonesia and the Philippines with Timor Leste, Brunei with arguably the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak also members. The Indian subcontinent covers India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal. And, at its geographic heart, Singapore can already claim to be this region’s entrepôt.
这个新全球增长引擎由哪些部分组成?它有3个飞轮：中南半岛(Indochina，又名印度支那)、现代东印度群岛和印度次大陆。中南半岛包括越南、老挝、柬埔寨、泰国、缅甸和马来西亚。东印度群岛包括印尼群岛和菲律宾，以及东帝汶和文莱，可以说还有马来西亚的沙巴(Sabah)和沙捞越(Sarawak)。印度次大陆包括印度、巴基斯坦、孟加拉国、斯里兰卡、马尔代夫和尼泊尔。位于该地区中心位置的新加坡已经可以宣称是该地区的贸易枢纽。
The three regions have 2.4bn people, almost a third of the world’s population: Indochina, 270m; the Indies, 375m and the Indian subcontinent, 1750m. It comprises seven of the world’s top 20 most populous nations including — by 2025 — its most populous: India.
这3个地区有24亿人口，几乎占到全球人口的三分之一：中南半岛有2.7亿人，东印度群岛有3.75亿人，而印度次大陆有17.5亿人口。它包括全球20个人口最多国家中的7个，其中就有到2025年将会成为全球人口最多国家的印度。
The inbuilt human advantage that this region possesses is that almost all its vast pool of labour is both low-cost in US dollars per hour wage terms and contains within it a large number of semi-skilled and skilled workers. It also makes up more than half of the world’s young people. This explains why the countries winning in the latest lap of the Great Race to secure new factory locations are the likes of Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “make in India” initiative has now added India to this list of favoured manufacturing bases.
该地区拥有的内在人口优势是，几乎所有的劳动力人口不仅按美元时薪计算是低成本的，而且其中还有大量的半熟练和熟练工人。它还拥有世界上逾一半的年轻人。这解释了为何在争夺新工厂落户的这场“大赛”(Great Race)中，最新一轮获胜的都是越南、印尼和孟加拉国这类国家。印度总理纳伦德拉•莫迪(Narendra Modi)提出的“印度制造”倡议，让印度如今也登上了热门制造业基地的名单。
One recent economic theory seeking to explain the mysteries of economic growth has been put forward by the Observatory of Economic Complexity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their Complexity Atlas unequivocally highlights the Indian Ocean basin as being the hottest spot on the planet in terms of where economic growth is likely to be highest in the foreseeable future. Anchoring and leading this prediction — as its does the whole region — is India whose GDP growth is forecast to average 7 per cent per annum in the decade to 2020.
麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)的经济复杂性观测组织(Observatory of Economic Complexity)最近提出了一个寻求解释经济增长之谜的经济理论。他们编制的《经济复杂性地图册》(The Atlas of Economic Complexity)将印度洋海盆明确标记为在可预见的未来经济最有可能增长最快的地区。支撑并引领这种预测的是印度，预计后者在截至2020年的十年里的GDP年均增速将为7%。
Confirmation of this prediction comes from the corporate think-tank, the Conference Board: they also see the Indian Ocean basin as the region likely to register the highest productivity growth in the next decade.
确认该预测的是企业智库机构世界大型企业研究会(The Conference Board)：他们还把印度洋海盆视为未来10年可能录得最高生产率增长的地区。
The Chinese, known for an ability to make historical insights relevant to the modern era, have, in acknowledging these forecasts, revived the ancient concept of the terrestrial and maritime Silk Roads that connected Asia’s east to Europe. In doing so, they aim to capitalise on re-emerging trade links via their One Belt, One Road initiative: this involves extensive investment by them in the transport infrastructure of Eurasia’s “belt” and the Indian Ocean’s “road”. Echoing the logic of British railway building from China to Chile and India to Canada in the late 1800s, Chinese geo-strategists must surely be anticipating that, before long, as was the case for Marco Polo during the 13th century, many roads will again lead to Beijing.
因以史为鉴能力而闻名的中国人，认可了这些预测，重新启动了古时连接亚洲东部和欧洲的陆上和海上丝绸之路的概念。他们这样做的目的，是通过他们的“一带一路”(One Belt, One Road)倡议来利用重新兴起的贸易联系。这一倡议涉及到在欧亚“丝绸之路经济带”和印度洋“海上丝绸之路”大规模投资交通基础设施。这与十九世纪末英国在从中国到智利、从印度到加拿大的世界各地兴建铁路的逻辑一致，中国的地缘政治战略家必定认为，用不了多久，条条大路就会再次通北京，就像13世纪马可•波罗看到的情景一样。
The Three Indies region has a number of other commercial advantages. Many of its nations are familiar with the world’s business language, English, with a good number also having their legal systems rooted in English law. It is home to a number of very entrepreneurial communities: for example the Hadhramis, Ishmailis, Gujaratis and Huaqiao. The region will be a huge beneficiary of the coming renewable energy revolution as it taps both its solar and wind resources as well as exploiting the second stage of that revolution: desalination. It is the most politically neutral of the three Great Ocean regions: while it houses outposts of former European empires, the Indian Ocean has no permanent member of the UN Security Council on its shores. And it has tech savvy India at its heart.
三印度地区还有很多其他商业优势。该地区很多国家都熟练地使用全世界经商的通用语言——英语，还有很多国家的法律体系都跟源于英国法。这里生活着很多非常富有企业家精神的族群：比如哈德拉毛人(Hadhrami)、伊斯玛仪派(Ismaili)、古吉拉特人(Gujaratis)和华侨。该地区将利用太阳能和风能资源，从而大大受益于即将到来的可再生能源革命，同时也将探索这场革命的第二个阶段：利用可再生能源进行海水淡化。在三个大洋(Great Ocean)沿岸地区中，印度洋沿岸地区是政治上最为中立的：尽管这里曾经是一些前欧洲帝国的前哨，但印度洋沿岸地区没有任何一个国家是联合国安理会(UN Security Council)常任理事国。而且精通科技的印度就在该地区的中心。
In due course, there are other nations adjacent to this region, especially those in eastern Africa, Australia and perhaps even in a post-oil Middle East, that will be drawn into the gravitational pull of this new dynamo. Indeed, some such as Kenya and Ethiopia are already feeling its pull.
在适当的时候，将会有其他毗邻该地区的国家——特别是东非的几个国家、澳大利亚、甚至可能包括后石油时代的中东国家——被这个新引擎的引力捕获。的确，肯尼亚和埃塞俄比亚等一些国家已经感受到了它的引力。
When, in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached his first Asian port at Calicut in India, he was surprised to find he was in the midst the most prosperous trading basin on earth. Since then, the global economy has seen its oceanic centre of economic gravity move first to the Atlantic and increasingly now to the Pacific. By 2050, the Indian Ocean basin — centred on the Three Indies region — could be well on its way to reviving much of its former commercial glory.
1498年，当瓦斯科•达伽马第一次抵达亚洲港口、印度的卡利卡特时，他惊讶地发现自己正置身于地球上最繁忙的贸易港中。从那之后，全球经济引力的大洋中心先是转向大西洋、如今正逐渐转向太平洋。到2050年，以三印度地区为中心的印度洋海盆很可能早已开始再现过去的商业辉煌了。
Michael Power is strategist at Investec Asset Management
本文作者为天达资产管理公司(Investec Asset Management)的策略师
