俄羅斯科技企業爲何落後於中印
Earlier this year, the FT wrote that, as far as emerging market equity investors are concerned, the Brics are dead, and have been replaced by the Ticks.
今年早些時候，英國《金融時報》曾寫道，就新興市場股票投資者而言，金磚國家(Brics)已經名存實亡，取代它的是Ticks。
The rationale was that the collapse in commodity prices has badly holed the economies of Brazil and Russia which, in alliance with China and India, had formed the Brics quartet dreamt up by Jim O’Neill, then chief economist of Goldman Sachs, in 2001.
理由是大宗商品價格下跌重創了巴西和俄羅斯經濟。當年這兩個國家連同中國和印度被時任高盛(Goldman Sachs)首席經濟學家的吉姆•奧尼爾(Jim O'Neill)稱爲“金磚四國”(Bric)。
Instead, equity investors were buying into the Ticks, which feature Taiwan and (South) Korea, alongside China and India, ignominiously dumping Brazil and Russia in the process, as the first chart shows.
相反，今年早些時候股票投資者轉而買入包含臺灣和韓國的Ticks，同時大舉拋售巴西和俄羅斯的股票，如圖表一所示。
A key driver of the trend was the rise of technology companies in emerging markets, a sector in which each of the Ticks excels but Brazil and Russia do not.
該趨勢的關鍵推動因素是新興市場科技公司崛起，Ticks所有經濟體的科技股板塊均表現出色，而巴西和俄羅斯的科技公司表現欠佳。
As the second chart shows, tech stocks account for 35.9 per cent of Taiwan’s stock market capitalisation, 14.1 per cent of the Indian market and 9 per cent of that of South Korea.
如圖表二所示，科技股佔臺灣股市市值的比重爲35.9%，佔印度股市的比重爲14.1%，佔韓國股市比重爲9%。
Admittedly, technology stocks only constitute 4.8 per cent of China’s mainland equity market, but this is misleading.
應該承認，科技股佔中國內地股市的比重僅爲4.8%，但是該數據具有誤導性。
As China’s onshore A shares are not yet included in MSCI’s flagship Emerging Market index, which is followed by most EM fund managers, what is meant by “China” is really Hong Kong.
由於中國A股尚未被納入多數新興市場基金經理追蹤的MSCI新興市場指數，所謂的“中國”實際上是指香港。
As the chart shows, Hong Kong has an 11.6 per cent weighting to tech stocks. Moreover, many of China’s largest technology companies, such as Alibaba, Baidu and Netease, are listed in New York but are also included in the MSCI EM index (as indeed are Taiwan and South Korea, for those who get hot under the collar about the FT describing them as emerging markets).
如圖表二所示，香港科技板塊的比重爲11.6%。此外，中國很多大型科技公司——比如阿里巴巴(Alibaba)、百度(Baidu)和網易(Netease)——都是在紐約上市，但是也被納入MSCI新興市場指數（臺灣和韓國也是，這些經濟體對於被英國《金融時報》形容爲新興市場感到不快）。
Yet tech stocks account for just 4.1 per cent of the Russian stock market. This, admittedly, is not a pitifully low level: it is higher than in the European Union, Canada, Australia and poor old Brazil, where the weighting towards tech is a princely 0.3 per cent.
不過，科技股佔俄羅斯股市的比重僅爲4.1%。說實話，這並不是低得可憐的水平：它高於歐盟、加拿大、澳大利亞和可憐的巴西的科技股比重。科技股佔巴西股市的比重僅有區區0.3%。
Yet, to someone whose formative years were lived during the cold war, when the Soviet Union and its arch nemesis the US were the two technological superpowers dominating the planet, it still seems odd.
不過，對於那些在冷戰時期——當時的蘇聯及其死對頭美國是主宰整個地球的兩個技術超級大國——長大的人來說，這看上去仍有些奇怪。
The USSR was, of course, the first country to launch an artificial earth satellite and to send a man into space. Its rockets remain the only way astronauts, even those from the west, can reach the International Space Station.
蘇聯當然是首個發射人造衛星、首個把宇航員送入太空的國家。俄羅斯的火箭至今仍是宇航員（包括西方宇航員）進入國際空間站的唯一方式。
The Soviet Union’s strength in physics and mathematics ensured the country could match the best of America’s military technology, particularly in the nuclear sphere.
蘇聯在物理和數學方面的優勢確保了它可以與美國的尖端軍事技術、特別是核技術相匹敵。
So it might seem slightly puzzling that, when it comes to producing technology companies, Russia now lags so far behind the likes of China and India. “What the hell has gone wrong?” asks one person with knowledge of Russian industry.
因此，或許有點令人費解的是，在孕育科技企業方面，俄羅斯如今遠遠落後於中國和印度等國家。“到底出了什麼問題？”一名熟悉俄羅斯工業的人士問道。
There appears to be little consensus as to what precisely has gone wrong, and what Moscow needs to do to better exploit its impressive scientific legacy.
對於俄羅斯到底出了什麼問題、莫斯科方面需要採取什麼行動才能更好地挖掘其令人印象深刻的科技遺產，各方似乎沒有什麼共識。
To David Lubin, head of emerging markets economics at Citi, part of the answer lies in Russia’s limited freedom of expression.
在花旗(Citi)的新興市場經濟主管戴維•盧賓(David Lubin)看來，部分原因在於俄羅斯的言論自由有限。
“No one in Russia has much sense of being able to do things. I guess the explanation for that is deep in the political system and political culture. You have got to allow dissent and disagreement and artistic self expression to allow the innovation that technology relies on,” he says.
“俄羅斯沒人具有自己能夠成就一番事業的感覺。我猜其原因深植於政治體制和政治文化。你必須允許異見、分歧和藝術性的自我表達，才能使科技賴以發展的創新涌現出來，”他稱。
“To have depth you need to have political freedom, and no one does that like the US,” adds Mr Lubin, who cites the example of Lady Gaga, an often outlandishly attired singer, performing during the half-time interval of this year’s Super Bowl, the most watched event in the US television calendar, as an example of the sort of cultural freedom Russia would never countenance.
“要有深度，你必須具有政治自由，在這一點上沒有國家能像美國那樣，”盧賓稱，他以Lady Gaga今年在美國電視收視率最高的盛事超級碗(Super Bowl)中場休息時獻唱爲例，說明在俄羅斯永遠得不到支持的那種文化自由。Lady Gaga是一位歌手，常常穿着離經叛道的奇特服裝。
Having said that, countries such as China are not particularly noted for encouraging freedom of thought and expression either.
話雖如此，中國等國家也並不以鼓勵思想自由和言論自由而聞名。
In contrast Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow-based investment bank, believes Russia has been a little more successful in the tech field than might at first appear.
相反，莫斯科投行晉新資本(Renaissance Capital)的全球首席經濟學家查爾斯•羅伯遜(Charles Robertson)認爲，俄羅斯在科技領域比乍看之下更成功一些。
Mr Robertson cites the examples of Yandex, Russia’s answer to Google, and , an internet group controlled by billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Perhaps less intuitively, he also argues Magnit, the country’s largest food retailer, can be regarded as a tech company.
羅伯遜以俄羅斯版的谷歌(Google) Yandex、以及由億萬富翁愛利舍•烏斯馬諾夫(Alisher Usmanov)控股的互聯網集團爲例。他還認爲，也許不那麼直觀的是，俄羅斯最大的食品零售商Magnit可以被視爲科技公司。
“Retail is about logistics and the management of logistics. Magnit has developed [those operations] itself. It’s very sophisticated, it’s like Amazon,” Mr Robertson says.
“零售是關於物流和物流管理的行業。Magnit自己發展了這些業務。這些業務的技術含量很高，就像亞馬遜(Amazon)，”羅伯遜稱。
More broadly, he is hopeful that a “big push” from the Russian government to develop small and medium-sized enterprises will help improve the situation further.
整體而言，他對俄羅斯政府“大力推動”中小企業發展將進一步改善局面抱有希望。
“They know they have got too few people working in SMEs and too many in large companies. It’s about letting SMEs thrive and I think a lot of it will come in tech,” Mr Robertson says.
“他們知道在中小企業工作的人太少了，在大企業工作的人太多了。這其中的關鍵在於讓中小企業蓬勃發展，我認爲很多中小企業將在科技行業涌現，”羅伯遜稱。
Konstantin Styrin, assistant professor of economics at Moscow’s New Economic School, believes the main obstacle is the “poor quality of institutions” such as the rule of law, protection of property rights and the lack of an independent judiciary.
莫斯科新經濟學院(New Economic School)經濟學助理教授康斯坦丁•斯特林(Konstantin Styrin)認爲，主要障礙在於法治、產權保護、缺乏獨立司法體系等“制度劣質”。
Although these deficiencies are likely to sap activity across all industries, he believes the technology sector may be particularly sensitive to the quality of institutions because of its relatively high-risk nature.
儘管這些缺陷很可能抑制所有行業的活力，但是他認爲，由於相對高風險的特性，科技行業對制度質量可能格外敏感。
“Excessive regulation” is another handicap, Mr Styrin argues. “Businesses must comply with a huge number of rules and regulations. Many people believe that following all of them would be prohibitively costly. This implies that every firm has to violate some of those rules and therefore is vulnerable in the face of an inspection by tax authorities, fire department, etc.”
斯特林認爲，“過度監管”是另一個障礙。“企業必須遵守大量的規章制度。很多人認爲遵循所有規章制度的代價過於高昂。這意味着每家公司都不得不違反部分法規，因此他們在面對稅務、消防等部門的檢查時相當脆弱。”
Edward Crawley, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Moscow-based Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, instead argues that the root of the problem stems from the break-up of the communist system.
麻省理工學院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)航空航天學教授、莫斯科的斯科爾科沃理工學院(Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology)的共同創始人愛德華•克勞利(Edward Crawley)則認爲，問題的根源在於共產黨體制解體。
While the US still has an array of national laboratories and corporate research and development centres, many of the equivalent institutions in Russia “completely ceased to exist” when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
美國仍然擁有一大批國家實驗室和企業研發中心，而俄羅斯的很多類似機構在1991年蘇聯解體時“徹底關停”了。
As a result, the bridge between universities and commerce was broken, a disconnect the Skolkovo centre was designed to help rectify.
其結果是高校與商界之間的橋樑垮塌，創辦斯科爾科沃創新中心的初衷就是幫助糾正這種脫節。
“There are very few sectors where you can take an idea right out of university and make a company of it. The maturation process of technology through to delivery into a product usually requires several intermediary steps,” Prof Crawley says.
“很少有什麼行業是你可以從高校得到創意、然後以此打造一家公司的。從技術到產品的成熟過程通常需要一些中間步驟，”克勞利稱。
He argues that the UK, another country with a respectable academic scientific tradition but little success in producing tech companies (a meagre 1.5 per cent of the UK’s market cap) suffers from the same problem.
他認爲，同樣擁有受人尊敬的學術科學傳統、但在孕育科技企業方面鮮有建樹的英國受制於同樣的問題。科技企業在英國股市的市值佔比僅爲區區1.5%。
“There are some similarities between the systems in Russia and the UK, which also has excellent universities and good industry and also doesn’t have a connection [between them],” Prof Crawley says.
“俄羅斯和英國的體制之間存在一些相似性，英國也擁有出色的大學和經營有方的工業，（但兩者之間）也沒有銜接，”克勞利教授稱。
Between 2003 and 2006 he was executive director of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, a joint venture with the British university, and he welcomes the creation of a series of “catapult centres” by the UK government to attempt to address this disconnect.
2003年至2006年間，克勞利曾擔任劍橋—麻省理工研究院（Cambridge-MIT Institute，與劍橋共同成立的合資企業）的執行董事。他歡迎英國政府創建一系列“彈射中心”(catapult centre)以解決這種脫節的舉措。
Despite the problems in Russia, Prof Crawley argues the country has still had some success in developing tech companies in sectors with “low capitalisation”, such as Yandex and Kaspersky Lab, a privately held data security group.
儘管俄羅斯存在問題，但克勞利教授認爲該國在“低資本化”行業發展科技公司方面還是有一些成功，比如Yandex和私有的數據安全集團卡巴斯基實驗室(Kaspersky Lab)。
It has also retained its “excellence” in a handful of strategic industries such as aeronautics, nuclear energy and space technology, he argues, where the country has done a better job in keeping the intermediary chain alive.
他認爲，俄羅斯也保留了其在少數戰略性產業（比如航空、核能源和空間技術）的“卓越”，同時該國在保持中介鏈活力方面做得比較好。
David Nangle, managing director of Vostok Emerging Finance, a venture capital group specialising in fintech, believes Russia’s struggles are wider than just a difficulty in commercialising technology.
專注金融科技的風險資本集團沃斯托克新興金融(Vostok Emerging Finance)的董事總經理戴維•南戈爾(David Nangle)認爲，俄羅斯的困難不僅在於技術商業化。
“Even if you look beyond technology, Russians don’t export well. The global brands that come out of Russia are few and far between. It exports people well, not brands and technology,” says Mr Nangle, who lived in Russia for six years.
“即使你考慮科技以外的領域，俄羅斯人在出口方面也鮮有建樹。出自俄羅斯的全球品牌少之又少。它輸出了優秀人才，但品牌和技術不行，”曾在俄羅斯生活了6年的南戈爾稱。
He points out that a good number of chief technical officers in Silicon Valley and in Israel’s tech sector are from the former Soviet Union, such as Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, suggesting the pipeline of talent is there.
他指出，硅谷和以色列科技行業有很多來自前蘇聯的首席技術官，比如PayPal聯合創始人馬克斯•萊文奇恩(Max Levchin)，這似乎表明俄羅斯能夠源源不斷地培養人才。
The problem, he believes, is that Russia does not have the “enabling environment” of somewhere like Silicon Valley, which has “an ease of doing business, a lack of fear of failure and the belief that you can do anything”.
他認爲，問題是俄羅斯沒有像硅谷那樣“讓人施展才華的環境”，硅谷擁有“便利的營商條件、無懼失敗、以及一切皆有可能的信念”。
In addition, Silicon Valley has an abundance of capital, something he says Russian tech companies are starved of.
另外，硅谷擁有充足的資本，南戈爾稱這是俄羅斯科技企業得不到的。
“It’s very hard to get global capital to want to support young companies in Russia, but they are willing to put billions into some other countries,” he says.
“很難說服全球資本支持俄羅斯的年輕企業，儘管它們願意在其他一些國家投入巨資，”他稱。
“Many global private equity houses are prepared to look at other emerging markets like Asia and Brazil, but currently not Russia. I was in Pakistan last week and global [investors] are starting to invest there,” says Mr Nangle, whose own firm is endeavouring to buck the trend with investments in TCS Group Holding, a London-listed provider of online retail financial services under the Tinkoff brand, and Revo, an early-stage merchant payments company.
“很多全球私人股本公司都準備看看亞洲和巴西等其他新興市場，但是目前並未考慮俄羅斯。我上週去了巴基斯坦，全球（投資者）正開始投資那裏，”南戈爾稱。他自己的公司正努力逆勢而行，投資了在倫敦上市的在線金融零售服務提供商TCS Group Holding（以Tinkoff爲品牌）以及處於發展初期的商家支付公司Revo。
While western sanctions imposed in the wake of the Ukraine conflict currently muddy the water, Mr Nangle says even before that many investors were concerned about corporate governance in Russia, although he argues this is an issue across many emerging markets.
儘管目前西方因烏克蘭衝突而對俄羅斯實施的制裁使情況變得複雜，但南戈爾稱，即使是在制裁之前也有很多投資者擔心俄羅斯的企業治理，儘管他辯稱這是很多新興市場普遍存在的問題。
He remains “a believer” in the medium-term opportunities in the Russian online, ecommerce and general tech sectors, citing the likes of TCS and Yandex. Yet, he fears Russia may have now missed its window of opportunity to fully regain its cold war-era strength.
他仍然相信俄羅斯的在線、電子商務和一般技術行業存在中期機遇，並以TCS和Yandex之類的公司爲例證。不過，他擔心俄羅斯可能已經錯過了全面恢復冷戰時代實力的機遇之窗。
“Overall, I think it’s a massive opportunity lost. Russia could have gone toe-to-toe with the US in developing another Silicon Valley. Education systems in Asia are going to crush the world, let alone Russia,” he says, envisaging Asian dominance of the tech sphere in a generation’s time.
“總的來說，我認爲它失去了重大機遇。俄羅斯原本可以和美國並駕齊驅，打造另一個硅谷。亞洲的教育體系將會碾壓世界，更別提俄羅斯了，”南戈爾稱。他預測亞洲將在一代人時間裏主導科技領域。
Prof Crawley, at least, is more optimistic. He says that scientific education, at least through to masters level, remains strong and “the standard of students we [Skolkovo] are able to attract is on a par with MIT, Cambridge and Oxford”.
至少克勞利教授更樂觀些。他稱，俄羅斯的理科教育仍然強大，至少在碩士級別或以下是如此，“我們斯科爾科沃可以吸引到的學生的水準與MIT、劍橋和牛津不相上下”。
In particular, he believes Russia’s ongoing strength in applied mathematics will, eventually, allow it to make its mark in areas such as IT networks, IT security and data analysis.
特別是，他認爲俄羅斯在應用數學方面保持的強大實力，最終將使其IT網絡、IT安全和數據分析等領域取得成就。
