李開復：中國搞21世紀數(shù)字經(jīng)濟的條件比美國有利

A few evenings ago, I had dinner with the Chinese venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee. He told me about an interesting dystopian sci-fi novel, Folding Beijing, which was translated into English recently and promptly won the Hugo Award for best novelette. The book is about an overcrowded and strictly class-divided capital city in which “first-tier” residents enjoy a normal 24-hour day, and second- and third-tier citizens have to split another 24-hour period between them, with the unfortunate lower 50m living in a way that is nasty, brutish, and — quite literally — short.

幾天前，我跟中國的風險投資家李開復(Kai-Fu Lee)共進晚餐。他跟我講起了一本有趣的反烏托邦科幻小說《北京折疊》(Folding Beijing)，不久前這本書被譯成英文，很快獲得了雨果獎(Hugo Award)最佳短中篇小說獎。這本書講的是一個過于擁擠、嚴格按照階層劃分的首都。在北京，第一等居民享受正常的24小時時間，第二等和第三等的居民不得不分用另外24小時的時間，其中悲慘的5000萬底層人口過著一種邋遢、惡劣的生活，并且擁有的時間更短。

Why do I mention this? Because I have been thinking a lot about how the major economic vectors of our time — technology-driven job destruction, wage stagnation, and political polarisation — will play out in both the US and China over the next few years. Lee, who helped launch Google in China and has invested in many of the country’s top start-ups, made a strong case that the Chinese were better positioned for the 21st century digital economy than America because the government could, as Mark Zuckerberg would put it, move fast and break things.

我為何要講這件事?因為我一直在思考這樣一個問題：我們這個時代的主要經(jīng)濟矢量，包括技術驅動的就業(yè)破壞、工資停滯和政治兩極分化，未來幾年里將在美中兩國造成什么樣的影響?李開復幫助谷歌(Google)啟動了中國業(yè)務，他還投資了中國一些頂級的創(chuàng)業(yè)型企業(yè)。他提出了一個強有力的觀點，即中國搞21世紀數(shù)字經(jīng)濟的條件比美國有利，因為中國政府善于——借用馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)的話來說——“快速行動，破除陳規(guī)”。

Already, the Chinese are plowing ahead with mass data gathering in smart cities; citizens' privacy will of course suffer but the algorithms will be richer as a result. Stem cell ethics? What stem cell ethics? China’s massive consumer market and its continued growth potential will make it possible to develop a digital ecosystem that might exist quite profitability and independently from the West, with home grown brands like Xiaomi and Huawei already connecting the dots up through the digital supply chain to the consumer.

中國人已開始在智慧城市開展大數(shù)據(jù)收集工作;公民的隱私當然會受到損害，但算法也將因此變得更加豐富。干細胞倫理?什么干細胞倫理?巨大的消費市場，以及持續(xù)的增長潛力，將使中國有可能發(fā)展出一套頗具經(jīng)濟效益且獨立于西方的數(shù)字生態(tài)系統(tǒng)，目前小米(Xiaomi)和華為(Huawei)等一些本土品牌已把數(shù)字供應鏈與消費者連接起來。

“The question in the future will be why buy a Western brand?” said Lee, something that’s mirrored in a recent FT Confidential Research survey. “I think you’ll see China owning the digital ecosystem not only at home, but also in ASEAN and many Middle Eastern countries.”

“未來有一個問題是，還有什么理由購買西方品牌?”李開復說。這跟英國《金融時報》旗下《投資參考》(FT Confidential)近期的一份報告提到的問題類似。“我認為，你將看到中國不但在國內、而且在東盟(ASEAN)和許多中東國家擁有數(shù)字生態(tài)系統(tǒng)。”

China still struggles with all the same disruptive issues that the US does: income inequality, a skills gap, and the need for educational reform to train a 21st century digital workforce. The question is whether being a command and control economy will make the country too brittle to navigate this evolution, or, conversely, give it the power to move through a period of job destruction and avoid the middle-income trap. In Folding Beijing, the government creates faux jobs for low level workers to maintain social stability. In real life, both China and the US will have to figure out how to create more of the real thing.

中國仍在艱難應對跟美國相同的顛覆性問題：收入不平等、技能短缺，以及必須實施教育改革以培養(yǎng)適應21世紀數(shù)字經(jīng)濟的勞動隊伍。問題在于，指令和控制型的經(jīng)濟是將讓中國變得過于脆弱、乃至無法駕馭這種變遷，還是剛好相反，將給予中國一種力量、讓它安然度過一段就業(yè)破壞的時期并避免落入中等收入陷阱?在《北京折疊》中，政府為底層勞動者創(chuàng)造了虛假的工作崗位，以維持社會穩(wěn)定。在現(xiàn)實生活中，中國和美國都將不得不思考如何創(chuàng)造更多的真實崗位。