全球化开倒车（节选）

    今年9月的一个早晨，精力充沛的法国人、世贸组织（World Trade Organization）总干事帕斯卡尔•拉米站在一屋子经济学家面前，开始发表他对世界经济健康状况的年度解读。“今年和去年一样，都以经济剧烈震荡为特征，”他开场就说。“经济增长放缓、高失业率和新发布的贸易数据都让人担忧。”这不是什么经济新症状。但最后一句话，提到令人担忧的最新贸易数据，还是让很多人竖起了耳朵。

    过去20年的大部分时间里，全球贸易增速一直高于全球经济增速，通常是后者的2倍左右。2006年GDP增长3.5%，贸易增长8%，是此次危机爆发前最后一年经济健康的年份。看起来，这个比例就像是个完美的金齿轮，将整个地球更紧密地联系了起来。但最近24个月的有些情况，看起来很像是贸易休克。不只是贸易不再以2倍的经济增速增长，相反，贸易在放缓。在一些重点地区，贸易增速已低于GDP增速——而且，今年全球贸易增速将再次低于20年来的平均增速。可能最能体现全球化热情的海外资产投资数据也已经降至40%，显著低于2008年时的50%多。这样的变化足以让经济学家们开始质疑：全球化是否正在倒退？

    拉米表示，世界的联系越来越紧密，这是我们预测未来时的核心假设。有鉴于此，这样的数据确实令人担忧。这些变化对政治的影响不亚于对市场的影响。人们应该还记得全球保护主义盛行的年代，清楚国际合作停滞的后果，想到18世纪法国经济学家弗雷德里克•巴师夏的冷酷论断就会忧心忡忡：“一旦商品不能跨越国界，军队就会跨越国界。”美国从开放的世界贸易秩序中获得了最多的好处。因此，如今看着美国人反对国际贸易，就好像看着人们正在想办法摆脱重力一样。但如今的状况就是：2/3的美国人相信，发展国际贸易对这个国家有害。

    在本文随后几页，我想用这些冰冷的贸易数据来讲述一个更大范围内的趋势，一个正在发生的深层次变化：内部的崛起。过去20年的全球化带来地区和国家间相互联系度的提升，成就了全新的全球生活品质。冷战结束后，全球长舒了一口气，人们开始探索外面的世界。公司、天性和度假都引导我们前往世界最遥远的角落。现在，我们在身边看到了一些不同的东西。我们发现每个地方都出现了世界“内向化”发展的迹象，这个时代将由“内部”决定成功、提供增长。不论是公司、国家，甚至个人职业，都是如此。一切就像“外部”曾经起到的作用一样。想一想：

    • 过去20年的大部分时间里，中国经济的发展是受到对外开放和低廉的劳工成本推动。低廉的劳工成本使得中国成为了世界工厂。但未来10年，中国需要尽快修复失衡的内部体系。正如中国官员去年在解释中国新的五年计划时所述：“全球化的黄金时代可能已经过去。”

    One morning this past September, Pascal Lamy, the energetic Frenchman who heads the World Trade Organization, stood in front of a room of economists and began his annual recitation on the health of the world's economy. "This year, like last, has been marked by extraordinary economic turbulence," he began. "Sluggish economic growth rates, high unemployment, and newly released figures on world trade that are just as worrying." It was not an unfamiliar diagnosis. But that last bit, the mention of the worrying new trade data, caught a number of ears.

    For most of the past 20 years trade has raced ahead of global economic growth, usually at about double its pace. GDP grew by 3.5% in 2006, the last healthy, pre-crisis year, and trade at 8%. This was, it seemed, a golden ratchet binding the planet ever closer. But the most recent 24 months show something that looks an awful lot like a trade shock. It isn't just that trade is no longer doubling -- it's slowing. In some crucial areas trade growth has slipped below GDP growth -- and this year, globally we'll be below the 20-year average rate of trade growth yet again. Figures on investment in assets held overseas, probably the best indicator of enthusiasm for globalism, are drifting down toward 40%, from more than 50% in 2008. The move is serious enough that economists have begun to ask: Is globalization running backward?

    Given that the idea of a more interconnected world has been at the heart of our assumptions about our future, such figures are, as Lamy said, worrying. They echo in our politics as loudly as they do in our markets. People remember a world of protectionism, understand the consequences of no international cooperation, and nervously consider the icy historical proposition of 18th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat: "When goods don't cross borders, armies will." Watching the country that in recent years has benefited most from an open world-trading order rebel against it is like hearing that people are looking for ways to opt out of gravity. But here it is: Two-thirds of Americans now believe more trade is bad for the country.

    What I want to do in the next few pages is start with those chilling trade numbers to tell a larger story, the story of a deep shift now under way: The rise of the inside. The past 20 years of globalization delivered a quantity of connectedness that produced a whole new quality of global life. At the end of the Cold War, the world released a big, tense breath and began stretching out. Our companies, our instincts, our vacations -- all led us to the farthest corners of the planet. Now, all around us, we see something different. We find everywhere signs of a world turning inward and of an era when the inside will define success and deliver growth -- for companies, for nations, even for your career -- in the way the outside once did. Consider:

    • For most of the past 20 years China's development was driven by opening to the outside and by low labor costs that made it the world's factory. But the next 10 years will be defined by fixing, urgently, its broken internal systems. As officials in Beijing noted last year when explaining their new five-year plan: "The golden age of globalization may come to a halt."