李開復(fù)：中國(guó)搞21世紀(jì)數(shù)字經(jīng)濟(jì)的條件比美國(guó)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(guó)的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資家李開復(fù)(Kai-Fu Lee)共進(jìn)晚餐。他跟我講起了一本有趣的反烏托邦科幻小說(shuō)《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(jiǎng)(Hugo Award)最佳短中篇小說(shuō)獎(jiǎng)。這本書講的是一個(gè)過(guò)于擁擠、嚴(yán)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(shí)時(shí)間，第二等和第三等的居民不得不分用另外24小時(shí)的時(shí)間，其中悲慘的5000萬(wàn)底層人口過(guò)著一種邋遢、惡劣的生活，并且擁有的時(shí)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?yàn)槲乙恢痹谒伎歼@樣一個(gè)問(wèn)題：我們這個(gè)時(shí)代的主要經(jīng)濟(jì)矢量，包括技術(shù)驅(qū)動(dòng)的就業(yè)破壞、工資停滯和政治兩極分化，未來(lái)幾年里將在美中兩國(guó)造成什么樣的影響?李開復(fù)幫助谷歌(Google)啟動(dòng)了中國(guó)業(yè)務(wù)，他還投資了中國(guó)一些頂級(jí)的創(chuàng)業(yè)型企業(yè)。他提出了一個(gè)強(qiáng)有力的觀點(diǎn)，即中國(guó)搞21世紀(jì)數(shù)字經(jīng)濟(jì)的條件比美國(guó)有利，因?yàn)橹袊?guó)政府善于——借用馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)的話來(lái)說(shuō)——“快速行動(dòng)，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(guó)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(dāng)然會(huì)受到損害，但算法也將因此變得更加豐富。干細(xì)胞倫理?什么干細(xì)胞倫理?巨大的消費(fèi)市場(chǎng)，以及持續(xù)的增長(zhǎng)潛力，將使中國(guó)有可能發(fā)展出一套頗具經(jīng)濟(jì)效益且獨(dú)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(yīng)鏈與消費(fèi)者連接起來(lái)。

“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(lái)有一個(gè)問(wèn)題是，還有什么理由購(gòu)買西方品牌?”李開復(fù)說(shuō)。這跟英國(guó)《金融時(shí)報(bào)》旗下《投資參考》(FT Confidential)近期的一份報(bào)告提到的問(wèn)題類似。“我認(rèn)為，你將看到中國(guó)不但在國(guó)內(nèi)、而且在東盟(ASEAN)和許多中東國(guó)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(guó)仍在艱難應(yīng)對(duì)跟美國(guó)相同的顛覆性問(wèn)題：收入不平等、技能短缺，以及必須實(shí)施教育改革以培養(yǎng)適應(yīng)21世紀(jì)數(shù)字經(jīng)濟(jì)的勞動(dòng)隊(duì)伍。問(wèn)題在于，指令和控制型的經(jīng)濟(jì)是將讓中國(guó)變得過(guò)于脆弱、乃至無(wú)法駕馭這種變遷，還是剛好相反，將給予中國(guó)一種力量、讓它安然度過(guò)一段就業(yè)破壞的時(shí)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(dòng)者創(chuàng)造了虛假的工作崗位，以維持社會(huì)穩(wěn)定。在現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中，中國(guó)和美國(guó)都將不得不思考如何創(chuàng)造更多的真實(shí)崗位。