如果你得到了一份诱人的工作，工作的地点是在俄罗斯、墨西哥、巴西、哥伦比亚或其他拥有巨大潜力的新兴市场，你会接受这份工作吗？或者，你是否会郑重其事地考虑自己真的愿意把家人也带过去？而且你是否会想，如果家人安全让人日夜悬心，自己晚上还能不能安然入睡？

    最近，我和两名新兴市场的高层人士聊了聊。他们让我想到了人们经常忽视的两个重大问题，同时也是很多新兴市场所面临的问题：人身安全问题及其近亲“腐败问题”。这两个问题无法量化，因此我们经常认为它们并不重要，而且总是把注意力放在了中国经济今年是增长6%还是增长8%这样的问题上。但是，安全和腐败问题会对商业人士的决策产生重大影响，只是没有人愿意公开讨论罢了。

    第一位是巴西某私营公司的首席执行官。他是巴西当地人，与妻子和三个孩子住在里约热内卢一栋十分别致但并不大的房子里。他所在的公司也不是特别有名。他告诉我，他所有的车都配备了武器。他说，他并不担心他自己。“不法分子不会绑架我，他们也许会尝试绑架我妻子或孩子。”他为妻子和孩子雇了专业司机。他说，高管们自己通常不会乘坐配有武器的车，而是打出租车，这样显得低调，不引人注目，而且更安全。

    第二位是墨西哥顶尖的经济学家，过去30年中经常出入政府。我们对墨西哥经济进行了深入探讨。在我看来，很多分析师对墨西哥经济持乐观态度，但他却不是这样。我问起墨西哥总统佩尼亚•涅托面临的最大的挑战是什么时，他对这个问题给出了一个与经济毫无关系的答案。他不假思索地回答说：“安全问题”。他指出，政府实际上对很大一部分国土都没有控制权，因此在解决这个问题之前，政府难以在经济上有所作为。

    毫无疑问，新兴市场的安全问题正得到改善。最近，也就是索契冬奥会前夕，俄罗斯所发生的爆炸事件是对普京总统“终极硬汉”策略的讽刺。去年的ArcelorMittal（MT）高管弗吉利欧•卡马乔谋杀案至今仍悬而未决，而事件的幕后指使者显然是贩毒集团；就在上周，反对贩毒集团的一群武装分子占领了当地一个城镇的政府。此前，贩毒分子一直在这个城镇横行霸道。过去的一年中，多名中国企业高管人间蒸发，抓他们的人并不是犯罪分子，而是全力打击腐败的中国调查人员。几个月来，这些高管一直杳无音讯。

    几乎没有人愿意公开讨论人身安全问题，因此有关这类事件的消息并不多。但是它们跟大家愿意谈论的贸易平衡、利率等话题没有什么区别，都是切切实实存在的问题。而且，这些问题才是决定新兴经济体的未来的根本性问题。（财富中文网）

    译者：翔  

    If you were offered an attractive job in Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, or another high-potential emerging market, would you take it? Or would you think seriously about whether you really wanted to bring your family there and wonder if you'd be able to sleep at night worrying about their safety?

    Talking recently with a couple of high-level players from emerging markets, I was reminded of how frequently we ignore two of the most significant issues that many of those markets face: personal security and its close cousin, corruption. They're impossible to quantify, so we often conclude that they're not important, obsessing instead over whether China will grow at 6% or 8% this year. But safety and corruption influence business people's decisions importantly. It's just that no one wants to talk about any of it publicly.

    Player No. 1 is the CEO of a privately held Brazilian company. He's a native Brazilian and lives in a beautiful but not large house in Rio de Janeiro with his wife and three young kids. His company isn't especially well known. He tells me that all of his cars are armored. He isn't worried about himself, he says. "The bad guys aren't going to kidnap me. They're going to try to kidnap my wife or kids." His wife and kids are driven around by a professional driver. Executives themselves often forego the armored car, he says, preferring to hail a cab -- unostentatious, anonymous, more secure.

    Player No. 2 is a top economist in Mexico who has been in and out of government over the past 30 years. We talk at length about Mexico's economy -- he isn't as upbeat as many of the analysts I've been reading -- but when I ask him to name the top issue facing President Peña Nieto, his answer has nothing to do with the economy. "Security," he answers immediately. The government simply isn't in control of large parts of the country, he points out, and it's hard to do much for the economy until that gets fixed.

    It's by no means clear that security is improving in emerging markets. The recent bombings in Russia, just ahead of the winter Olympics, mock President Putin's ultra-tough-guy tactics. The murder in Mexico last year of a top ArcelorMittal (MT) executive, Virgilio Camacho, apparently on the orders of a drug cartel, remains unsolved; just this past weekend, a group of armed vigilantes opposed to the cartel took over the government of a town where the cartel has run free. Several top Chinese executives have vanished in the past year, taken not by criminals but by Chinese investigators who are apparently cracking down on corruption. These men haven't been heard from in months.

    Talking publicly about personal danger is in almost no one's interest, so we don't hear much about these issues. But they're just as real as the subjects everyone would rather talk about -- trade balances, interest rates, etc. -- and for the future of emerging economies, they're far more fundamental.