The world economy
世界经济
Japain
大涸时代
Feb 21st 2008
From The Economist print edition
The world’s second-biggest economy is still in a funk—and politics is the problem 世界第二大经济大国一蹶不振，政策不利竟是元凶
THE ghost of Japan’s “lost decade” haunts the United States. As the consequences of America’s burst housing bubble are felt through financial markets, it has become popular to ask whether Japan’s awful experience of boom-and-bust has lessons for other rich countries facing, at best, sharp slowdowns. Japan’s property-and-stockmarket bubble burst in 1990, creating bad loans equivalent in the end to about one-fifth of GDP. The economy began growing properly again only 12 years later, and only in 2005 could Japan say it had put financial stress and debt-deflation behind it. Even today the country’s nominal GDP remains below its peak in the 1990s—a brutal measure of lost opportunities.
“失去的十年”是日本经济挥之不去的阴霾，现在又缠上美国了。目前，国际金融市场广受美国房产泡沫余波影响，业内广为关注的一个问题是其他发达国家能否吸取日本经济从一飞冲天到持续低迷的悲惨教训，以更好地面临—最乐观估计—经济大幅放缓的挑战。1990年，日本房产和股市泡沫破裂，因此造成的坏账最后占国内生产总值的五分之一。12年后，日本经济才有复苏迹象。直到2005年，日本才终于可以说是摆脱了财政压力和债务紧缩。即使是今天，日本的名义国内生产总值也低于90年代的峰值—这残酷地表明日本失去的机会有多少。
Yet ghosts can deceive. Similarities exist between Japan then and America today, notably the way that a financial crisis threatens the “real” economy. But the differences outnumber them. Japan should indeed be a source of worry—not, however, because other rich countries are destined for the same economic plughole, but because it is the world’s second-biggest economy and it has not tackled the fundamental causes of its malaise.
但幽灵也有骗人时。当年日本经济状况和如今美国的确实存在相似之处，尤其是财务危机近乎以相同的方式威胁到了“实际”经济。但两者的差别较之相似之处更甚。日本确实可成为他国的前车之鉴，不是因为它预示着其他发达国家也会像它一样重蹈覆辙，而是因为作为世界第二大经济大国，日本没有解决造成这场混乱的根本。
A tale of two crunches
双沉记Even by today’s gloomiest assumptions, Japan’s bust dwarfs America’s, if in part because its boom did too. Take for instance the collapse in the equity market. America’s S&P 500 is down just 8% from its 1999 peak. The Nikkei 225 share index is now nearly two-thirds below its 1989 peak. In commercial property the comparison between the two boom-and-busts is almost as dramatic.
即使拿今天最悲观的标准衡量，当年日本经济所遭受的打击也远甚如今的美国。这或许是因为当年日本经济增长之快也远甚美国。拿证券市场作为例子来说，美国标普500指数只比1999年峰值低8%，而日经225指数比起1989年的峰值缩水近三分之二。日本的商业地产的命运也和股市一样的悲惨。 The more important difference, though, is how each country got into its mess and then responded to it. In America, the government can be blamed for inadequate oversight of the vast market in slicing and dicing mortgages, but it has reacted aggressively to the bust, with monetary and fiscal stimulus. Financial institutions are busy declaring their losses. In Japan, the government was deeply complicit in puffing up the market and complicit, too, in hiding the ensuing mess for years.
但两者更重要的区别体现在遭遇危机后政府的回应上。在美国，政府可能因对市场风险估计不足，导致抵押贷款泛滥而遭受谴责。但政府对此的反应是积极的，会出台一系列货币和财政刺激政策来挽救。金融部门也会纷纷公布资产损失。然而在日本，政府会忙于造成市场繁荣假象，并会多年掩盖种种混乱迹象。
Japan’s economy is still held back by its politicians (see article). Though much has changed since 1990, a cyclical slowdown is now laying bare Japan’s structural shortcomings. A few years ago, people hoped that Japan, which is still a bigger economic power than China and has some marvellous companies, would help take up some of the slack in the world economy if America tired; that now looks unlikely. Productivity is disastrously low: the return on new investment is around half that in America. Consumption is still flagging, thanks in part to companies’ failure to increase wages. Bureaucratic blunders have cost the economy dearly, and Japan needs a swathe of reforms to trade and competition without which the economy will continue to disappoint.
日本的经济现在仍受无能的政客拖累。虽然1990年以来这已经有所改观，但眼下的经济放缓还是暴露了日本经济结构性缺陷。几年前，人们寄希望于日本，希望这个经济实力比中国还强大，拥有数家全球赫赫有名的公司的国家能够在美国经济陷入疲软时成为世界经济的排头兵。现在看来这不太可能。日本国内生产力出奇地低：新投资项目的回报率只有美国的一半。消费持续低迷，部分原因是日本公司职员工资未能增长。政府部门犯下的一系列错误使日本经济损失惨重。日本现在需要一系列贸易和竞争机制改革，否则的话，日本经济将继续令人失望。
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for the best part of half a century and remains a machine of pork and patronage, has given up trying to tackle these problems. What reformist tendencies it had under the maverick Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister between 2001 and 2006, have now gone into reverse. To make matters worse, last July the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won control of the upper house of the Diet (parliament). The constitution never envisaged upper and lower houses of the Diet being controlled by opposing parties, and since the upper house has nearly equal powers to the lower one, the opposition can frustrate virtually every government initiative.
日本自民党统治政坛大半个世纪，仍旧是墨守陈规，不愿意着手改革。2001至2006年，执政风格独树一帜的小泉纯一郎出任首相期间，日本曾一度出现过改革趋势。但随着小泉离任，这一趋势也戛然而止。更糟的是，去年7月，反对党民主党掌控了上议院。日本宪法从没料到内阁上议院和下议院会分别由两个党派掌控。由于上议院的权力和下议院旗鼓相当，因此政府的任何提案都可能遭到强烈反对。
Thus Yasuo Fukuda, prime minister since September, spent his first four months in office fighting to reauthorise a solitary refuelling ship operating in the Indian Ocean. Now the government is locked in grinding battles with the DPJ over bills to authorise a budget for the fiscal year that starts in April and to appoint a new governor of the Bank of Japan on March 19th.
正因为如此，福田康夫九月上台后的头四个月所做的工作就是重新授权日本自卫队在印度洋的供油活动。现在，就四月开始的财政年预算草案的授权问题，政府又和民主党闹得不可开交。这还不算在3月19日之前要委任新一任日本银行行长。
But the problem is not merely a constitutional one. Japan is at an uncomfortable point: no longer a one-party state, yet still far from being a competitive democracy with rival parties alternating in power. Both main parties are riven by contradictions: both contain modernisers alongside a grizzled old guard of conservatives and socialists. Political chaos has allowed the old forces within the LDP—the factions, the conservative bureaucrats, the builders and the farmers—to reassert their influence. Meanwhile, the DPJ’s leader, Ichiro Ozawa, who used to have a reformist streak, now sounds like an old-style LDP boss.
但问题还不局限于宪法。日本现在处境尴尬：虽说已不是一党执政，但离建立一个充满竞争的民主机制还很遥远。两个主要政党党内分化严重：一边是年轻的改革派，一边是白发苍苍的保守派。政治局面混乱使自民党内的旧势力—小派系，保守派官僚，房屋开发商和农民可以重拾影响力。以此同时，之前大有改革之势的民主党领导人小泽一郎现在看来和一个老派的自民党领导人没什么区别。
Japan’s politics is skidding for the buffers. The crash may come as early as March, over budget differences. One way to avoid it, some politicians think, is for the LDP and the DPJ to form the kind of “grand coalition” which Mr Fukuda and Mr Ozawa talked about in November. This plan was thwarted when the rest of the DPJ leadership, rightly, balked: in effect, it would have taken Japan back towards being a one-party state, distributing largesse rather than reforming the economy.
日本政治正滑向缓冲区。由于就预算意见不统一，可能三月日本政坛就会再次出现动荡。一些政治家认为解决之道之一就是让自民党和民主党组建“大联合政府”。去年11月份，福田康夫和小泽一郎也就此事有过接触。这项计划受到自民党其他领导人的阻挠，最后也不了了之。事实上，所谓组建“大联合政府”只会使日本倒退到一党执政。到那时，政府只会忙于分发赏赐而置经济改革于不顾。
Time for a good wash
是改头换面的时候了
Yet the buffers may be the best place for Japan. Or rather, a general election—perhaps a string of elections—offers the best chance of forcing parties to confront their inconsistencies, offering voters real choices rather than candidates who compete to bring home the bacon.
然而缓冲是日本最好的选择。更准确的说是举行大选—也许一系列选举—才是迫使政党直面自身矛盾，还选民真正选择权（而不是什么只会假公济私的候选人）的最佳时机。
There are glimmers of hope. A cross-party group of modernising politicians, academics and businessmen has formed a pressure group, Sentaku (with connotations both of choice and of giving things a good wash). Radically, they want to decentralise the top-heavy system in which local politicians are in thrall to Tokyo’s pork providers; they think the main parties should campaign on coherent manifestos; and they are urging ordinary Japanese, who do not readily bother their heads about such things, to reflect on the folly of voting for politicians who smother their districts in unused highways and bridges that lead nowhere—the visible blight of failed politics.
但希望尚存。两党派中的改革派政治家﹑学术人士和商界人士组成了一支名为Sentaku的压力小组（意思是选择和改头换面）。他们激进地认为头重脚轻的政治体系应该下放权力，因为地方政客已经沦为东京权贵们的走狗；他们希望主要政党应该有份条理清晰的竞选声明；他们甚至还敦促日本老百姓就给那些政客投票进行反省，虽说日本老百姓不会找这样的麻烦。由于那些政客政绩拙劣，日本市区变得拥挤不堪，到处都是废弃不用的高速公路和桥—这也许就是日本政界失败的见证。
Many politicians say a general election would only add to the chaos. That is the argument of a political class grown fat on a broken system. Voters need a chance to start putting it right. If choice is chaos, bring it on.
许多政治家认为举行大选只会添乱。这只是那些在破裂的体系中养肥的政客的观点。选民需要一次复兴的机会。如果选择意味着混乱的话，那就混乱吧。
美国与日本在面对政策失误时的态度和应对方法的偏差，或许是东西方文化差异造成？
比较，受中国影响和在夹缝中成长起来的日本文化，或许更爱面子些……