信息技术与新型全球化_公共英语阅读理解

信息技术与新型全球化

Just as South Korea has changed, so newly industrialising countries are less keen on setting up entire industries at home and instead try to insert themselves into global supply chains. Sometimes this means changing, not just exploiting, their comparative advantage. Baldwin cites Vietnam, which joined Honda’s supply network by starting to manufacture motorcycle parts using production and technical expertise imported from the parent company. Thus Vietnam’s existing advantage of low-cost labour joined with the management and technical know-how of Japan to create a new specialism. Those economies that succeed can grow very quickly, producing a “Great Convergence” of poor and rich that provides the book’s title.

正如韩国的转变一样，其他新兴工业化国家也不再那么急于把整个产业都布局在国内，而是试图引导本国企业融入全球供应链。有时这意味着这些国家需要改变自身的比较优势、而不仅仅是利用。鲍德温举了越南的例子，该国加入了本田(Honda)的供应网络，开始运用引进自本田母公司的生产技术制造摩托车零部件。由此，越南现有的低成本劳动力优势与日本的管理和技术经验结合在了一起，创造出了一种新的专长。那些获得成功的经济体能以很快的速度增长，进而导致了穷国和富国之间的“大融合”(Great Convergence)，这也正是鲍德温这本书的书名。

This framework explains a lot about current tensions around globalisation. For one, the stricken manufacturing towns of the American Midwest, many of whose poorer inhabitants switched to voting for Donald Trump, have experienced first-hand what it feels like rapidly to become a redundant link in a global value chain. (Much of this also owes to changing technology, not trade, but as the US trade representative Michael Froman is fond of saying, no one gets a vote on technology.)