印度与中国的“龟兔赛跑” Time for India's tortoise to turn on the speed

When Indians talk about China, many fall back on what is essentially a tortoise-and-hare rendering of their relative performance. The story goes something like this: “Sure, China has its 30-year record of double-digit growth, its gleaming skyscrapers and its eight-lane superhighways. But India has the ‘soft architecture', the democracy, the rule of law and the freedom of speech that provide shock absorbers and make its economic prospects more enduring.” The implication is that, while authoritarian China may have raced out of the traps, sooner or later it will falter. India, playing the long game, will keep up a measured pace and one day surpass it.

当印度人谈到中国时，许多人会把两国的相对表现归结于一个龟兔赛跑的故事。情况大抵如 此：“的确，中国拥有长达30年的两位数增长记录、熠熠生辉的摩天大楼和8车道的高速公路。但印度拥有‘软结构'，民主制度、法制和言论自由，这为印度提 供了缓冲，并使其经济前景更具持久性。”言下之意是，尽管威权中国可能已迅速摆脱了困境，但迟早会步履蹒跚。而打持久战的印度将保持稳定的步伐，终有一天 会超越中国。

If India is indeed the tortoise, its performance is all too convincing. In 1991, the year Indian reforms got going, its per capita income was roughly the same as China's. Today, China's is more than three times higher. It is not that India has been terribly slow. Indeed, in the 1990s, it finally sloughed off its lacklustre “Hindu rate” of growth and began to expand at a halfway decent clip of 5.5 per cent a year. From 2000, that notched up higher still – to about 7.5 per cent. The only problem – when it comes to comparisons – is that China has done even better, expanding at 10 per cent a year over the same period. By the magic of compound growth, it has streaked ahead.

如果印度真的是一只“乌龟”，那它的表现实在是令人叹服。1991年，印度开始施行改 革，当时其人均收入大致与中国相仿。如今，中国的人均收入是印度的3倍多。这并不是说印度的增长速度太慢。实际上，上世纪90年代，印度最终摆脱了缓慢的 “印度式增长”，开始以每年5.5%这种还算像样的速度扩张。从2000年开始，印度经济增长进一步提速，达到了7.5%左右。谈到两国之间的对比，印度 唯一的问题在于：中国同期表现得更好，以每年10%的速度增长。凭借复合增长的魔力，中国已遥遥领先。

One does not need to accept the tortoise-and-hare analogy to believe that India, too, has a reasonable shot at double-digit growth. This year, it is expected to grow at about 8.5 per cent. Even Manmohan Singh, the quietly spoken prime minister who – as finance minister in the early 1990s – helped dismantle some of the obstacles to rapid expansion, has said 10 per cent growth is a reasonable medium-term proposition. Last week, K.M. Chandrasekhar, the government's cabinet secretary, became the latest official to conjure up the double-digit genie, saying it would become reality if only the farming sector could be prodded into a modest 4 per cent growth.

要相信印度也有理由实现两位数的增长，人们无须接受龟兔赛跑的类比。今年，预计印度经 济将增长8.5%左右。甚至连出言谨慎的印度总理曼莫汉•辛格(Manmohan Singh)也表示，10%的增长是一个合理的中期目标。上世纪90年代初，作为印度财长的辛格曾帮助消除阻碍印度快速扩张的一些障碍。近日，印度政府内 阁部长K•M•钱德拉塞卡(K.M. Chandrasekhar)成为最新一位认为印度经济将创造两位数增长奇迹的官员，他表示，只要农业实现4%的温和增长，这就将成为现实。

Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, who has just returned to New York after three years in Asia, has long stressed India's potential. For years, he says, it has had a “better micro story” than China, with its world-class companies and entrepreneurs, its large English-speaking and IT-competent workforce, and its prudently regulated banking system.

长期以来，摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的斯蒂芬•罗奇(Stephen Roach)一直强调印度的潜力。在亚洲工作3年后，罗奇刚刚返回纽约。他表示，多年来，印度拥有比中国“更好的微观状况”，该国拥有世界级的企业和企业 家、大量说英语的人和优秀的IT人才，以及监管谨慎的银行体系。

Now, he says, India is steadily overcoming its “macro-deficiencies”. Its gross domestic savings rate soared from the low-20s as percentage of output in the late-1990s to the high-30s by 2008. Foreign direct investment, though not yet at China's ear-popping heights, has quadrupled since 2005 to a very handy $40bn. Similarly, though ambition continues to run ahead of reality, India has become serious about improving its woeful infrastructure. Putting all this together, Mr Roach reckons it could emerge as “Asia's biggest surprise in the years immediately ahead”.

他表示，如今，印度正稳步克服“宏观缺陷”。该国国内储蓄占产出的比率，已从上世纪 90年代末的20%多一点，飙升至2008年的近40%。尽管印度的外国直接投资水平尚未达到中国那样的惊人高位，但已是2005年的4倍，达到400亿 美元的水平。同样，尽管梦想仍超出了现实，但印度已开始认真考虑改善该国糟糕的基础设施问题。罗奇认为，综合上述因素，“未来几年”，印度可能会成为“亚 洲最大的奇迹”。

What would need to happen? Even as the tantalising prospect of truly transformational growth looms into view, there are those in Mr Singh's ideologically scattered alliance who remain sceptical about the reforms that have made it possible. After all, 40 per cent of India's children remain malnourished and a recently released Oxford study found there were more desperately poor people living in just eight Indian states than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Given such a terrible backlog of poverty, it is easy to see why there are doubts – even anger – about policies that have benefited an apparently narrow sub-set of Indians. More should indeed be done to spread the fruits of growth to India's most vulnerable.

印度需要采取何种措施？尽管印度已浮现真正变革性增长的诱人前景，但在辛格意识形态四 分五裂的联合政府，仍然有一些人对于改革能否实现这一目标表示怀疑。毕竟，印度仍有40%的儿童营养不良，而牛津大学(Oxford)最近公布的一项研究 发现，生活在印度8个邦的赤贫人口的数量，超过了整个撒哈拉以南的非洲地区。鉴于贫困问题如此严重，我们很容易理解，为什么人们对于惠及狭窄少数印度人群 的政策持怀疑态度，甚至感到愤怒。实际上，印度应付出更多努力，让印度最脆弱的人群也能分享增长的成果。

But that, alone, is not enough. Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics and law at Columbia University, says only by pushing ahead with what he calls “Stage 2 reforms” can India create the necessary wealth to go around. There is only so much you can do with per capita income at $1,000. Indian officials tend to roll their eyes at what they call the “laundry list of reforms” that are continually urged on them: reducing subsidies, raising limits on foreign ownership, speeding up privatisation and deepening India's capital markets. There are even those who say India does not need to do anything to achieve faster growth. It can just wait until its demographic dividend, born of one of the world's youngest populations, kicks in. (A report from Goldman Sachs this week said India's expanding workforce could add up to 4 percentage points of annual growth over the next decade.)

然而，仅凭这一点是不够的。哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)经济学和法学教授格迪什•巴格沃蒂(Jagdish Bhagwati)表示，只有推进他所谓的“第二阶段改革”，印度才能创造必要的财富，让更广泛的人群分享。在人均收入1000美元的情况下，你能做的只 有这么多。印度官员往往对外界敦促他们实施的所谓“改革清单”表示不屑：减少补贴、放宽对外资所有权的限制、加速私有化进程以及深化印度资本市场。甚至有 人表示，印度什么都不必做，就能实现更快的增长。印度只需静待人口红利的出现——印度是全球最人口结构最年轻的国家之一。（高盛(Goldman Sachs)上周的一份报告称，未来10年，印度日益增加的劳动力人口，可能为年度增幅贡献4个百分点。）

But India should not rely on that. Mr Singh should give economic liberalisation one more push. Even if one does not buy the argument that the Chinese hare will be overtaken by the Indian tortoise, there is no reason why India cannot accelerate towards Chinese rates of growth. For India's poor, hundreds of millions of whom have seen precious little benefit from its success so far, that moment cannot come soon enough.

然而，印度不应依赖于此。辛格应进一步推动经济自由化。即便有人并不认为，印度“龟”将超越中国“兔”，印度也没有理由不加快追赶中国的步伐。对于印度穷人而言，这一刻不可能很快到来——数亿人还没有从印度迄今为止的成功中获益。