东南亚拯救英国？做梦去吧
马来西亚采用英式三脚插头，汽车在道路左侧行驶，精英们用拿腔拿调的英语口音对鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson，伦敦前市长、现任英国外交大臣——译者注)的职业计划发表内行的见解。吉隆坡的独立广场(Merdeka Square)甚至仍有一个古老的混凝土板球场。1957年，在马来西亚独立的那个夜晚，英国国旗(Union Jack)就在这里落下。该国总理总理纳吉布•拉扎克(Najib Razak)是英国马莱文学院(Malvern College)和诺丁汉大学(Nottingham University)的校友。
If Brexiters have a plan, it involves upwardly mobile former colonies such as Malaysia and Singapore. These are supposed to replace European countries as the UK’s key trading partners. Many Brexiters also imagine “global Britain” as a swashbuckling trade hub à la Singapore. Daniel Hannan, theorist of Brexit, launched his free-trading think-tank last month by saying, “I’m looking at [the] high commissioner of Singapore [in the front row]. They have gone from being half as rich as us to twice as rich. What was the magic formula? Just do it. They dropped their barriers.”
如果支持英国退欧者有一份计划，该计划会涉及马来西亚和新加坡等处于升势的前殖民地。它们理应取代欧洲国家，成为英国的关键贸易伙伴。许多支持退欧者还把“全球的英国”想象为一个像新加坡那样敢做敢为的贸易枢纽。退欧派理论家丹尼尔•汉南(Daniel Hannan)上月在成立他的支持自由贸易的智库时表示，“我在看着(坐在前排的)新加坡高级专员。新加坡的富有程度已从我们的一半变为我们的两倍。魔力秘方是什么?只管去做。他们移除了自己的壁垒。”
Can Southeast Asia save Brexit? Visiting the region last week, I asked local investors and officials what they thought. Certainly, Britons once dominated business there. “When I first came to Kuala Lumpur in 1968, the bus tickets were printed in London,” one retired businessman told me, “and the British trading houses were everything.” That’s over. Most Malaysian elites now regard the UK chiefly as a place to study, buy property and watch football. Today the UK is only Malaysia’s 17th largest trading partner.
东南亚能够拯救英国退欧吗?最近访问该地区时，我询问了当地投资者和官员的想法。无疑，英国人曾经主宰那里的商业。“当我在1968年第一次到吉隆坡时，公交车车票还是在伦敦印刷的，”一位退休商人告诉我，“英国商行主宰着一切。”那种局面已结束了。如今，大多数马来西亚精英主要把英国视为购买房产、观看足球赛、让子女留学的地方。英国现在只是马来西亚的第17大贸易伙伴。
Might that be because we’ve been held back by the EU, which can’t even conclude free-trade deals with Malaysia and Singapore? Not exactly. Germany and the Netherlands out-trade Britain with Malaysia. And Singapore’s high commissioner, Chi Hsia Foo, told a gathering in London last month: “You will be surprised to learn you are not our largest trading partner in the EU.” The Germans, Dutch and French rank higher.
这会不会是因为我们一直受到欧盟(EU)拖累，因为欧盟甚至不能与马来西亚和新加坡达成自由贸易协定?事实并非如此。德国和荷兰对马来西亚的贸易，超过了英国与马来西亚之间的贸易。新加坡高级专员符祺霞(Chi Hsia Foo)上月在英国的一个会议上表示：“你将惊讶地发现，你们并非我们在欧盟的最大贸易伙伴。”德国、荷兰和法国对新加坡的贸易，都超过了英国与新加坡之间的贸易。
Britain and Singapore are already in informal trade talks, Foo told me. But British trade with the region would have to skyrocket to compensate for even the mildest dip in British-European trade. The UK’s trade with Malaysia in 2015 totalled 16.45bn ringgit (£2.75bn). British-Belgian trade was about £25bn.
符祺霞告诉我，英国和新加坡已在进行非正式贸易会谈。但英国与东南亚的贸易将必须一飞冲天，才能抵消英国与欧盟贸易哪怕极小幅度的减少。2015年，英国与马来西亚之间的贸易总额为164.5亿林吉特(合27.5亿英镑)，而英国与比利时之间的贸易大约为250亿英镑。
I didn’t meet any Malaysian businesspeople who expected skyrocketing trade. One investor foresaw a failed Brexit putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street. “Then Britain becomes uninvestable, like in the 1970s.” A very senior investor gave me his take on Brexit: “Odd!” He knows London intimately, and always considered it the obvious spot for a European headquarters. But as another businessman grumbled: “Now you will have to have two European offices, one in London and one in the EU. Knowing Malaysians, they’ll still have a London office because they like English football.”
在我遇到的马来西亚商人中，没有一个人预计英国与马来西亚的贸易会一飞冲天。一位投资者预测退欧失败，导致工党领导人杰里米•科尔宾(Jeremy Corbyn)入主唐宁街(Downing Street)。“然后英国变得不可投资，就像1970年代那样。”一位非常资深的投资者向我介绍了他对英国退欧的看法：“匪夷所思!”他个人非常了解伦敦，以往总认为伦敦是显而易见的企业欧洲总部所在地。但正如另一名商人所抱怨的那样：“现在，你将不得不设立两个欧洲办事处，一个在伦敦，另一个在欧盟。以我对马来西亚人的了解，他们仍将设立伦敦办事处，就因为他们喜欢英格兰足球。”
Most Malaysian businesspeople talked about Brexit more as a personal than a business issue. The pound’s slide made flats and university fees cheaper. On the downside, an anti-immigration UK might not want their children — already, many Malaysians prefer to study in Australia.
大多数马来西亚商人在谈论英国退欧时，更多是把它作为一个私人问题，而不是商业问题。英镑下跌使得公寓和大学学费更便宜。而不利因素是，反移民情绪高涨的英国也许根本不欢迎他们的孩子——已经有很多马来西亚人宁愿到澳大利亚留学。
I heard several complaints that Brexit was distracting British decision-makers from other issues. One entrepreneur said he’d been told by an overburdened British bank: “You are our last priority.” British officials, desperate for trade deals, don’t have the head space to brainstorm with Southeast Asians about the geopolitical risks of a rising China. Nor are they busy pressuring Malaysia’s leader Najib about his jailing of the country’s de facto opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar’s daughter, Nurul Izzah, told me: “Right now the British concern seems to be better trade and economic ties between the countries.”
我听到好几个人抱怨称，英国退欧夺走了英国决策者在其他问题上的注意力。一位企业家表示，英国一家负担过重的银行告诉他：“你是我行排在末尾的优先事项。”一心想达成贸易协议的英国官员们，根本没有心思与东南亚人讨论中国崛起的地缘政治风险。他们也没有因为马来西亚领导人纳吉布把该国事实上的反对派领导人安瓦尔•易卜拉欣(Anwar Ibrahim)投入监狱而忙于向他施压。安瓦尔的女儿努尔•伊扎(Nurul Izzah)告诉我：“眼下英国人关心的似乎只是两国之间更好的经贸纽带。”
But Brexit isn’t keeping Malaysians awake. The fact is that they don’t need Britain any more. “There are too many other options now,” says Chandran Nair, the Malaysian who heads the Global Institute for Tomorrow think-tank. Empire is over. Towering over that Kuala Lumpur cricket pitch are Chinese-style skyscrapers. One evening, listening to the Islamic call to prayer fill the air, I wondered whether nativist Brexiters would really find Malaysia so congenial. Swiss investigators claim that billions were misappropriated from companies linked to a sovereign fund Najib created; he denies wrongdoing. Are Brexiters sure he's a better partner than Jean-Claude Juncker?
但是，英国退欧并未让马来西亚人夜不能寐。事实是，他们再也不需要英国了。“现在有太多的选择，”智库全球未来研究所(Global Institute for Tomorrow)的马来西亚负责人程子俊(Chandran Nair)表示。大英帝国已终结。俯视吉隆坡板球场的是中式摩天大楼。某一天晚上，听着满耳的伊斯兰教宣礼声，我纳闷支持退欧的英国本土主义者是否真会发现马来西亚跟他们意气相投。瑞士调查人员称，有人从与纳吉布创立的一家主权基金有关系的多家公司挪用了巨额资金;纳吉布否认有任何不当行为。支持英国退欧者真的确定，他是比让-克洛德•容克(Jean-Claude Juncker)更好的合作伙伴吗?
As for Britain becoming a cold Singapore, no one I spoke to could see it. Foo noted that Singapore is a much smaller country than Britain, in a much more populous region. Nor did she consider her country low-tax and low-regulation. Singapore regulates tightly, and its corporation tax rate is 17 per cent, exactly the level the UK had already decided to drop to pre-Brexit. Other people pointed out that Singapore has by some measures the world’s highest-ranked schools system, the world’s second-busiest port, and a majority-immigrant population — not like Britain, then. London could be Singapore. Britain can’t.
至于说英国成为一个寒冷的新加坡，跟我交谈的所有人都认为不可能。符祺霞指出，新加坡比英国小得多，同时地处一个人口多得多的地区。她也不认为自己的国家是低税收和宽松监管的。新加坡实行严格监管，公司税税率为17%，跟英国在退欧公投前就决定降至的水平完全一样。其他人还指出，新加坡拥有以某些指标衡量世界排名最高的学校体系、世界上繁忙程度第二的港口，以及移民占多数的人口——说到底，还是不像英国。伦敦可能成为新加坡，英国则不能。
It’s easy to spin political fantasies about faraway countries. I flew home with the funny feeling that for many Brexiters trade is an afterthought, a retrospective justification for a Brexit driven by deeper instincts.
借用遥远的国度炒作政治幻想是容易的。我飞回英国时，心里有种怪异的感觉：对于许多支持英国退欧者而言，贸易是一件事后想起来的事情;他们折腾的英国退欧是受到更深层次本能的驱使，而他们得手之后才回过头来找理由。
Illustration by Harry Haysom
插图：哈里•海索姆(Harry Haysom)
