As India’s prime minister goes to China, Indians should learn that they have less to fear from their giant neighbour than they think
隨著印度總理的訪華，印度人應(yīng)該知道，對(duì)于中國這樣一個(gè)大國鄰居，他們想象中的畏懼其實(shí)遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)大于實(shí)際情況。
英文原載《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》(The Economist, Jun 24th 2003)
譯注：Diana
SOME comparisons are stark[絕對(duì)的] enough to generate a national inferiority[劣等] complex[情結(jié)]. In 1980, India had about 687m people, 300m fewer than China. Living standards, as measured by purchasing power per head, were roughly the same. Then, as China embraced modernity with a sometimes ugly but burning passion, it left India behind. In the next 21 years, India outperformed[勝過] its neighbour in almost nothing but population growth.
很多方面的比較足以使他們產(chǎn)生這種民族自卑感。在1980年，印度有大約6.87億人口，比中國還少3億人。而兩個(gè)國家的生活水平，如果按照人均購買力來算的話，基本相同。然而憑著一種燃燒著的激情，雖然這種激情有時(shí)盡顯丑態(tài)，中國的現(xiàn)代化建設(shè)將印度遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)的甩在了后面。在接下來的21年里，印度超越中國鄰居的表現(xiàn)僅僅在人口的增長方面。
By 2001, India had 1,033m people against China’s 1,272m. But China’s national income per head, according to the World Bank, was $890, nearly double India’s $450. Adjusted for[以..判斷] purchasing power, the Chinese were still 70% wealthier than Indians were. Some 5% of Chinese now live below the national poverty line, compared with 29% of Indians.
在2001年，印度有1，033，000，000人口，而中國只有1，272，000，000。而根據(jù)世界銀行的統(tǒng)計(jì)，中國的人均國民收入是890美元，是450美元的印度的近兩倍。在購買力上，中國仍比印度富70%。大約有5%的中國人生活在貧困線以下，而印度有29%的人。
Many Indians now often ask why the West is so obsessed with[困惑] China’s economic success. But the obsession[困惑] is India’s, too. Comparison with China has become a distorting mirror in which Indians see their country’s shortcomings grotesquely magnified[荒誕般擴(kuò)大]. The same goes for India’s sense of geopolitical[地緣政治] inferiority. An accident of history made China one of the five permanent, veto-wielding[常任理事] members of the United Nations Security Council, but that seat now seems to belong to it as of right. India, feeling it should have one too, is just one of a number of big countries with a claim, and laments[哀傷] its comparative geopolitical weakness.
許多印度人現(xiàn)在常常想不通為什么西方人對(duì)中國的經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展成就如此困惑。而事實(shí)上，印度人自己何嘗不是這樣。與中國的比較已經(jīng)成為印度人民荒誕般放大自己國家缺點(diǎn)的一面哈哈鏡。同樣的，也使他們產(chǎn)生了這種地緣政治劣勢感。一個(gè)偶然的歷史事件使中國成為了聯(lián)合國安理會(huì)具有表決權(quán)的五個(gè)常任理事國之一，而現(xiàn)在看來，這個(gè)席位則理應(yīng)屬于中國。印度雖感自己也應(yīng)獲得一個(gè)這樣的地位，但只不過是很多強(qiáng)烈要求的大國之一，并為自己這種地緣政治上的弱勢而哀傷。
For Indians, the “Chinese threat” comes in at least three forms: the geopolitical panic that rivalry with[競爭] China may one day lead to another war between them; the economic nightmare of an India of underemployed farm labourers spending their meagre[微薄的] earnings on imported Chinese goods; and the ideological[意識(shí)形態(tài)的] doubt that maybe India’s heroic experiment with democracy has exacted an even higher price than has China’s erratic[反復(fù)無常的] dictatorship.
對(duì)于印度，所謂“中國威脅論”來自至少以下三種形式：一是地緣政治恐慌，即同中國的競爭有朝一日終會(huì)導(dǎo)致他們間的另一場戰(zhàn)爭；二是經(jīng)濟(jì)厄運(yùn)，即印度大量閑置的農(nóng)村勞動(dòng)力花著微薄的收入去購買由中國進(jìn)口的商品；三是意識(shí)形態(tài)的動(dòng)搖，即也許比起中國的隨意性很大的專制政治，印度英勇的民主試驗(yàn)反而需要付出更高的代價(jià)。
This was not the way Jawaharlal Nehru[尼赫魯（1889-1964）印度首任總理] planned it. India’s relations with China are still scarred by the bitterness that ended its first prime minister’s dream of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai[印地秦尼，巴依巴依（中印人民是兄弟）], Indo-Chinese brotherhood, sealed in a treaty in 1954. Sibling tension soon surfaced, and sharpened when India gave sanctuary[避難] in 1959 to the Dalai Lama[達(dá)賴?yán)颹 and 100,000 of his followers as they fled[逃亡] China’s suppression[鎮(zhèn)壓] of an uprising[起義] in Tibet. It ended, in humiliating betrayal for Mr Nehru and India, in the war of 1962. The conflict, which grew out of territorial disputes[領(lǐng)土爭端], ended in a comprehensive Chinese victory.
It took a quarter of a century for relations to return to something like normal. In 1988 the two prime ministers, Rajiv Gandhi and Li Peng, agreed to set the border dispute to one side. Since then there have been 14 meetings of a joint working group set up to tackle it. Last year Zhu Rongji, then Chinese prime minister, came to India, and his Indian counterpart, Atal Behari Vajpayee, is repaying the visit this week—the first time an Indian prime minister has travelled to China since 1993.
On many international issues—such as the war in Iraq—the two countries agree. Moreover, bilateral trade has grown from a paltry $338m in 1992 to nearly $5 billion in 2002. On the first day of Mr Vajpayee's visit, Indian and Chinese officials signed a series of agreements, including one easing visa rules and a Chinese promise of $500m for India's infrastructure. “We should focus on the simple truth that there is no objective reason for discord between us and neither of us is a threat to the other,” said Mr Vajpayee. The following day, India and China appointed envoys to resolve their long-running border dispute (China still refuses to recognise India’s incorporation of Sikkim in 1975 as a state of the Indian union) and India explicitly recognised Tibet as part of China, though it showed no sign of being prepared to hand over the Dalai Lama.
At times, the mask of mutual respect slips. When India exploded a nuclear bomb in 1998, its defence minister, George Fernandes, let it be known that the arsenal was needed not so much because of Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions as because of the long-term threat from China. It was certainly true that India’s nuclear programme, started in the mid-1960s, was a response to its defeat in the 1962 war and to China’s acquisition of the bomb two years later.
A widely held belief colours Indian analysis of China’s economic policies as well as its diplomacy: that Beijing has a grand and cunning plan, which survives all its political turmoil. Many Indian businessmen and policymakers react to evidence of China’s superior economic performance first with denial, and then with anger: China, it is well known, stir-fries its books, especially its GDP and investment numbers; India, suffering in comparison, is the victim of geopolitical statistical fraud.
It is true that China’s figures are highly dubious. According to the official data, China received $52.7 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) last year; India got just 4% of that amount, $2.3 billion. But Sadhana Srivastava, in an article in India’s Economic and Political Weekly, has recalculated both India’s and China’s figures for the year 2000 to make a fairer comparison. He found that China’s FDI fell by half, while India’s more than tripled.
However, even on this basis, India was still attracting just 40% of the amount of foreign investment that went to China. Much of the gap is attributable to the activities of overseas Chinese—in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South-East Asia and America. They have ploughed far more of their money back into the motherland than have non-resident Indians, despite Indians’ economic success in many countries.
Making things better
Nor, statistical quibbling aside, can there be much argument about the relative pace of growth fuelled by such investment. China’s growth may be patchy, localised and exaggerated. But all the evidence of the senses suggests that it is far faster than India’s. That is especially true of industrial growth, and above all of manufacturing, which in 2002 made up just 15% of India’s GDP, compared with 35% of China’s. Indian manufacturers scratch their heads in bafflement at China’s ability to undercut them, usually blaming it on hidden support in the form of subsidised raw materials and soft credit. A recent report explained lower Chinese prices largely in terms of a tedious accumulation of minor cost disadvantages borne by Indian industry. The biggest, accounting for as much as half the difference, are sales and excise taxes, followed by the cost of capital. India’s much higher import duties—a trade-weighted average of around 24% compared with China’s 13%—also push up the cost of inputs.
Policy changes could do much to help India catch up: cutting import duties; simplifying and cutting indirect taxes; reducing the list of industries “reserved” for small companies; easing labour laws to make hiring and firing and the use of contract workers easier. Indeed some of these reforms are already, slowly, under way, or at least under consideration.
But almost all of them are politically difficult. The government has been loth to antagonise the many interest groups that have opposed reforms of one kind or another. Many Indians believe that a large part of the blame for their country’s inferior economic performance must be borne by the political system. China, the argument goes, is a dictatorship where the government and the businesses it favours can do what they want—change laws, build infrastructure, secure licences, fiddle their books—all without brooking any opposition. In India, however, not only does every step require dealing with an inept, corrupt and intrusive bureaucracy, but the democratic system itself also imposes extra costs and delays. For every important and helpful reform, there is a powerful lobby that will oppose it.
Such a political comparison, however, contains many misperceptions. First, as those who have done business in China know, decision-making there is far more erratic and far more prone to profiteering by rent-seeking officials than it appears to some envious Indians. Second, much that holds India’s economy and businesses back has little to do with democracy as such: corruption, fiscal mismanagement, a lack of international ambition and a history of over-protection at home. Where India overcomes these obstacles, and has a clear competitive advantage—as in software and other information-technology services—it can be a huge success.
隨著印度總理的訪華，印度人應(yīng)該知道，對(duì)于中國這樣一個(gè)大國鄰居，他們想象中的畏懼其實(shí)遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)大于實(shí)際情況。
英文原載《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》(The Economist, Jun 24th 2003)
譯注：Diana
SOME comparisons are stark[絕對(duì)的] enough to generate a national inferiority[劣等] complex[情結(jié)]. In 1980, India had about 687m people, 300m fewer than China. Living standards, as measured by purchasing power per head, were roughly the same. Then, as China embraced modernity with a sometimes ugly but burning passion, it left India behind. In the next 21 years, India outperformed[勝過] its neighbour in almost nothing but population growth.
很多方面的比較足以使他們產(chǎn)生這種民族自卑感。在1980年，印度有大約6.87億人口，比中國還少3億人。而兩個(gè)國家的生活水平，如果按照人均購買力來算的話，基本相同。然而憑著一種燃燒著的激情，雖然這種激情有時(shí)盡顯丑態(tài)，中國的現(xiàn)代化建設(shè)將印度遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)的甩在了后面。在接下來的21年里，印度超越中國鄰居的表現(xiàn)僅僅在人口的增長方面。
By 2001, India had 1,033m people against China’s 1,272m. But China’s national income per head, according to the World Bank, was $890, nearly double India’s $450. Adjusted for[以..判斷] purchasing power, the Chinese were still 70% wealthier than Indians were. Some 5% of Chinese now live below the national poverty line, compared with 29% of Indians.
在2001年，印度有1，033，000，000人口，而中國只有1，272，000，000。而根據(jù)世界銀行的統(tǒng)計(jì)，中國的人均國民收入是890美元，是450美元的印度的近兩倍。在購買力上，中國仍比印度富70%。大約有5%的中國人生活在貧困線以下，而印度有29%的人。
Many Indians now often ask why the West is so obsessed with[困惑] China’s economic success. But the obsession[困惑] is India’s, too. Comparison with China has become a distorting mirror in which Indians see their country’s shortcomings grotesquely magnified[荒誕般擴(kuò)大]. The same goes for India’s sense of geopolitical[地緣政治] inferiority. An accident of history made China one of the five permanent, veto-wielding[常任理事] members of the United Nations Security Council, but that seat now seems to belong to it as of right. India, feeling it should have one too, is just one of a number of big countries with a claim, and laments[哀傷] its comparative geopolitical weakness.
許多印度人現(xiàn)在常常想不通為什么西方人對(duì)中國的經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展成就如此困惑。而事實(shí)上，印度人自己何嘗不是這樣。與中國的比較已經(jīng)成為印度人民荒誕般放大自己國家缺點(diǎn)的一面哈哈鏡。同樣的，也使他們產(chǎn)生了這種地緣政治劣勢感。一個(gè)偶然的歷史事件使中國成為了聯(lián)合國安理會(huì)具有表決權(quán)的五個(gè)常任理事國之一，而現(xiàn)在看來，這個(gè)席位則理應(yīng)屬于中國。印度雖感自己也應(yīng)獲得一個(gè)這樣的地位，但只不過是很多強(qiáng)烈要求的大國之一，并為自己這種地緣政治上的弱勢而哀傷。
For Indians, the “Chinese threat” comes in at least three forms: the geopolitical panic that rivalry with[競爭] China may one day lead to another war between them; the economic nightmare of an India of underemployed farm labourers spending their meagre[微薄的] earnings on imported Chinese goods; and the ideological[意識(shí)形態(tài)的] doubt that maybe India’s heroic experiment with democracy has exacted an even higher price than has China’s erratic[反復(fù)無常的] dictatorship.
對(duì)于印度，所謂“中國威脅論”來自至少以下三種形式：一是地緣政治恐慌，即同中國的競爭有朝一日終會(huì)導(dǎo)致他們間的另一場戰(zhàn)爭；二是經(jīng)濟(jì)厄運(yùn)，即印度大量閑置的農(nóng)村勞動(dòng)力花著微薄的收入去購買由中國進(jìn)口的商品；三是意識(shí)形態(tài)的動(dòng)搖，即也許比起中國的隨意性很大的專制政治，印度英勇的民主試驗(yàn)反而需要付出更高的代價(jià)。
This was not the way Jawaharlal Nehru[尼赫魯（1889-1964）印度首任總理] planned it. India’s relations with China are still scarred by the bitterness that ended its first prime minister’s dream of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai[印地秦尼，巴依巴依（中印人民是兄弟）], Indo-Chinese brotherhood, sealed in a treaty in 1954. Sibling tension soon surfaced, and sharpened when India gave sanctuary[避難] in 1959 to the Dalai Lama[達(dá)賴?yán)颹 and 100,000 of his followers as they fled[逃亡] China’s suppression[鎮(zhèn)壓] of an uprising[起義] in Tibet. It ended, in humiliating betrayal for Mr Nehru and India, in the war of 1962. The conflict, which grew out of territorial disputes[領(lǐng)土爭端], ended in a comprehensive Chinese victory.
It took a quarter of a century for relations to return to something like normal. In 1988 the two prime ministers, Rajiv Gandhi and Li Peng, agreed to set the border dispute to one side. Since then there have been 14 meetings of a joint working group set up to tackle it. Last year Zhu Rongji, then Chinese prime minister, came to India, and his Indian counterpart, Atal Behari Vajpayee, is repaying the visit this week—the first time an Indian prime minister has travelled to China since 1993.
On many international issues—such as the war in Iraq—the two countries agree. Moreover, bilateral trade has grown from a paltry $338m in 1992 to nearly $5 billion in 2002. On the first day of Mr Vajpayee's visit, Indian and Chinese officials signed a series of agreements, including one easing visa rules and a Chinese promise of $500m for India's infrastructure. “We should focus on the simple truth that there is no objective reason for discord between us and neither of us is a threat to the other,” said Mr Vajpayee. The following day, India and China appointed envoys to resolve their long-running border dispute (China still refuses to recognise India’s incorporation of Sikkim in 1975 as a state of the Indian union) and India explicitly recognised Tibet as part of China, though it showed no sign of being prepared to hand over the Dalai Lama.
At times, the mask of mutual respect slips. When India exploded a nuclear bomb in 1998, its defence minister, George Fernandes, let it be known that the arsenal was needed not so much because of Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions as because of the long-term threat from China. It was certainly true that India’s nuclear programme, started in the mid-1960s, was a response to its defeat in the 1962 war and to China’s acquisition of the bomb two years later.
A widely held belief colours Indian analysis of China’s economic policies as well as its diplomacy: that Beijing has a grand and cunning plan, which survives all its political turmoil. Many Indian businessmen and policymakers react to evidence of China’s superior economic performance first with denial, and then with anger: China, it is well known, stir-fries its books, especially its GDP and investment numbers; India, suffering in comparison, is the victim of geopolitical statistical fraud.
It is true that China’s figures are highly dubious. According to the official data, China received $52.7 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) last year; India got just 4% of that amount, $2.3 billion. But Sadhana Srivastava, in an article in India’s Economic and Political Weekly, has recalculated both India’s and China’s figures for the year 2000 to make a fairer comparison. He found that China’s FDI fell by half, while India’s more than tripled.
However, even on this basis, India was still attracting just 40% of the amount of foreign investment that went to China. Much of the gap is attributable to the activities of overseas Chinese—in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South-East Asia and America. They have ploughed far more of their money back into the motherland than have non-resident Indians, despite Indians’ economic success in many countries.
Making things better
Nor, statistical quibbling aside, can there be much argument about the relative pace of growth fuelled by such investment. China’s growth may be patchy, localised and exaggerated. But all the evidence of the senses suggests that it is far faster than India’s. That is especially true of industrial growth, and above all of manufacturing, which in 2002 made up just 15% of India’s GDP, compared with 35% of China’s. Indian manufacturers scratch their heads in bafflement at China’s ability to undercut them, usually blaming it on hidden support in the form of subsidised raw materials and soft credit. A recent report explained lower Chinese prices largely in terms of a tedious accumulation of minor cost disadvantages borne by Indian industry. The biggest, accounting for as much as half the difference, are sales and excise taxes, followed by the cost of capital. India’s much higher import duties—a trade-weighted average of around 24% compared with China’s 13%—also push up the cost of inputs.
Policy changes could do much to help India catch up: cutting import duties; simplifying and cutting indirect taxes; reducing the list of industries “reserved” for small companies; easing labour laws to make hiring and firing and the use of contract workers easier. Indeed some of these reforms are already, slowly, under way, or at least under consideration.
But almost all of them are politically difficult. The government has been loth to antagonise the many interest groups that have opposed reforms of one kind or another. Many Indians believe that a large part of the blame for their country’s inferior economic performance must be borne by the political system. China, the argument goes, is a dictatorship where the government and the businesses it favours can do what they want—change laws, build infrastructure, secure licences, fiddle their books—all without brooking any opposition. In India, however, not only does every step require dealing with an inept, corrupt and intrusive bureaucracy, but the democratic system itself also imposes extra costs and delays. For every important and helpful reform, there is a powerful lobby that will oppose it.
Such a political comparison, however, contains many misperceptions. First, as those who have done business in China know, decision-making there is far more erratic and far more prone to profiteering by rent-seeking officials than it appears to some envious Indians. Second, much that holds India’s economy and businesses back has little to do with democracy as such: corruption, fiscal mismanagement, a lack of international ambition and a history of over-protection at home. Where India overcomes these obstacles, and has a clear competitive advantage—as in software and other information-technology services—it can be a huge success.