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印度城市化爲何輸給中國

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Expectations are high that India will finally realise its full economic potential through a combination of Modi magic, its abundant young labour force and a more liberal policy regime. A recent adjustment in the country’s accounting has led to claims that it may already have replaced China as the world’s fastest growing economy. Yet, if India is to achieve the same sustained success as China, it needs to take a hard look at why its urbanisation process has failed so miserably in comparison.

人們普遍預期,有了莫迪(Modi)的“魔法”、充裕的年輕勞動力以及更爲自由的政策機制,印度最終將充分實現其經濟潛力。最近印度調整了國內生產總值(GDP)計算方式,結果使一些人宣稱,該國可能已經取代中國成爲全球增長最快的經濟體。然而,要想像中國那樣取得持續成功,印度就需要認真審視一下,與中國相比,本國的城市化進程爲何遭遇慘敗。

印度城市化爲何輸給中國

Four decades ago, these two most populous and poor countries faced similar economic prospects. With the bulk of their labour force stuck in subsistence farming and a relative scarcity of natural resources, the success or failure of their development efforts would be defined by their urbanisation process. In 1980, India was further ahead than China with an urbanisation ratio of 25 per cent ratio compared with the latter’s 20 per cent. Today, China has more than doubled its ratio to 53 per cent, while India’s has edged up only slightly to 32 per cent — and even at that level is marked by more pervasive pockets of slums. Some believe that China may have even reached saturation point.

40年前,這兩個世界上人口最多、最爲貧窮的國家面臨類似的經濟前景。由於大部分勞動力一直從事自給農業,而且自然資源相對匱乏,它們發展努力的成功與否將由城市化進程決定。1980年,印度的城市化率爲25%,比中國的20%領先一步。現在,中國的城市化率增長一倍多至53%,而印度僅略微增長至32%,甚至在這個水平上,它的城市還以更爲隨處可見的貧民窟爲特點。一些人相信,中國的城市化率甚至可能已經達到了飽和點。

China’s rapid industrialisation-driven urbanisation process led to a sustained double-digit surge in real wages, which uplifted some 600m rural people out of poverty and accounted for half the country’s 10 per cent annual gross domestic product growth rates from 1980-2010. In contrast, despite its impressive service-sector development, India has not managed to develop a vibrant manufacturing sector and most of its labour force is still mired in low-productivity rural activities.

中國由工業化驅動的快速城市化進程導致其實際薪資水平持續兩位數增長,從而使得約6億農村人口擺脫貧困,同時中國從1980年到2010年平均每年10%的GDP增長有一半來源於此。相比之下,儘管服務業發展引人矚目,但印度沒有實現製造業部門的蓬勃發展,大部分勞動力仍從事生產率低下的農業活動。

Thus, it is not surprising that many see a revamped urbanisation process as being critical to India’s development agenda. Much of the current discussion has focused on the nuts and bolts of improving urban institutions, education and municipal financing to encourage larger and more productive cities. But most of it misses the point. China’s success occurred despite it having similarly weak institutions and, unlike India, it still has a restrictive residency system that discourages rural workers from relocating to urban commercial centres. However, in today’s India the basic incentives for a more dynamic and productivity-driven urbanisation process do not exist. If they are to be established, there needs to be a much better understanding of the nature of the problem.

因此,並不令人意外的是,許多人認爲調整城市化進程對印度的發展日程至關重要。當前討論大多集中在改善城市制度、教育和市政融資的細節上,目的是促進規模更大、生產效率更高的城市產生。但這種討論大多沒說到點子上。儘管中國的制度同樣有缺陷,而且與印度不同,現在它仍保留着阻止農村人口遷移到城市商業中心的限制性戶籍制度,但中國仍取得了成功。然而,在今天的印度,並不存在讓城市化進程更具活力、以及由生產率推動城市化進程的基本刺激因素。要想創造這些刺激因素,就需要更好地理解問題的本質。

The reason why India has failed and China succeeded can be illustrated by two simple indicators: their respective ratios of urban to rural incomes and the prices of urban property.

兩個簡單指標可以闡明印度失敗而中國成功的原因:兩國各自的城市與農村收入比,以及城市房價。

The ratio of incomes gives a sense of the relative differences in productivity between the cities and countryside. For China, this ratio is 3.2 – the highest in world. On average, urban workers are more than three times as productive as rural workers and are being compensated accordingly. No wonder some 270m migrant workers have flocked to the cities to secure better paying industrial jobs. For India, the same measure gives a ratio of 1.6, one of the lowest for emerging market economies, indicating that urban productivity is only moderately higher than in rural areas, and cities do not offer such a magnet of higher earnings.

收入比可以讓人們瞭解城市和農村生產率的相對差距。中國的該比率爲3.2,爲全球最高水平。平均而言,城市勞動者的生產率是農村勞動者的3倍多,相應的薪酬比也是3倍多。因此約2.7億農民工蜂擁至城市來從事薪資更高的工業工作就不足爲奇了。同時印度的該比率是1.6,在新興市場經濟體中的最低之列,這表明其城市的生產率僅略高於農村地區,城市也缺乏更高收入的吸引力。

The other key indicator is the relative difference in property prices in China versus India. China’s mega-cities have seen a five-fold increase in property prices in renminbi terms, or nearly seven-fold in US dollars over the past decade. No wonder concerns about a possible property bubble in China dominate global financial news. Yet despite these astounding increases, property prices in Beijing and Shanghai are still only half those of their Indian counterparts of New Delhi and Mumbai.

另一個關鍵指標是中印房價的相對差距。在過去10年裏,中國特大型城市的房價按人民幣計算上漲了4倍,按美元計算上漲近6倍。難怪全球金融新聞都是對中國房地產泡沫的擔憂。然而,儘管房價漲幅驚人,但北京和上海的房價仍然只有印度新德里和孟買的一半。

So because the productivity-related benefits are so much lower in India, the incentive for rural workers to migrate to the cities is much less than in China and this is accentuated by the relatively higher cost of living in Indian cities due to exorbitant property prices. These same inflated property prices coupled with other factors — notably logistical bottlenecks — put Indian manufacturers at a cost disadvantage in competing in global markets despite their lower wages. The net effect is to hobble India’s progress.

因此,由於印度與生產率相關的好處要低得多,農村勞動者遷移至城市的動機就遠低於中國,同時由於房價高得離譜,印度城市生活成本相對較高,農村勞動者就更不願遷移至城市。同樣虛高的房價加上其他因素(尤其是物流瓶頸),使得印度製造商在全球市場競爭時處於成本方面的劣勢,儘管它們的薪資水平較低。最終結果就是阻礙了印度的發展。

India’s lower urban-to-rural productivity ratio is partly the result of well-recognised distortions in its investment and pricing regime, as highlighted in studies done by the World Bank and IMF. But less widely understood is the negative impact of urban land-management policies.

正如世界銀行(World Bank)和國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)的研究強調的那樣,印度城市生產率與農村生產率之比較低,部分是因爲其廣爲人知的投資和定價機制的扭曲,但較少人認識到城市土地管理政策帶來的負面影響。

India’s excessively high property prices reflect a combination of two archaic practices. One is the legacy of its colonial past in reserving large parcels of valuable urban land for government use, including sprawling and wasteful estates for civil servants and military cantonments. The other comes from outdated and overly rigid building codes that discourage concentrated development of commercial activity and housing in the core of its major cities. This pushes development to the outer suburbs, making it difficult to realise the agglomeration benefits that drive productivity gains.

印度房價過高反映出兩種陳舊做法的影響。一個是過去殖民地時代遺留下來的做法,即將大塊寶貴的城市土地保留下來供政府使用,包括爲公務員和兵營保留龐大且浪費性的地產。另一個做法則產生於過時且過分僵化的建築法令,這些法令不鼓勵在主要城市的核心區集中開發商業活動和住房。這把開發活動趕到了郊外,從而很難通過集羣化來提升生產率。

Unless these issues are addressed, India cannot realise the growth benefits from a more rapid urbanisation-cum-industrialisation process which has characterised China and much of east Asia over the past four decades.

除非這些問題得到解決,否則印度不可能獲得更加快速的城市化和工業化進程帶來的發展益處——而在過去40年裏,快速城市化和工業化是中國和大部分東亞國家的特點。