Do not get impaled on the spikes of China's success
China's rapid growth in the past decade has brought it front and centre into the global economy. It has become the "world's factory", the base for off-shore manufacturing for leading companies worldwide. Now experts believe China will move upstream into design and innovation by expanding its science workforce, improving its universities and attracting the world's top technology companies.
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But China's remarkable growth is the product of only a handful of propulsive regions, which attract the lion's share of its talented people, generate the bulk of its innovations and create most of its wealth. To interact effectively with this rising economic star the west will have to recognise that China is the most extreme example of the "spiky" nature of globalisation. Even as globalisation causes economic activity to decentralise - giving rise to the increasingly "flat world" chronicled by Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist - it simultaneously concentrates innovation, talent and wealth in a small number of peaks or spikes.
Outside manufacturing, China's most notable achievements have come in technology. In 2004, China's Lenovo acquired IBM's ThinkPad brand of notebook computers and a growing number of US, European and Japanese companies have opened Chinese innovation centres. Yet China ranks just 36th of 45 countries on the Global Creativity Index, an indicator I developed to measure a country's progress on the three Ts of economic growth: technology, talent and tolerance. On technology, China is 28th, on a par with Croatia and Ukraine but behind India. Its technological prowess is extremely concentrated. Just six regions - Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Shenyang and Guangzhou - produce the majority of Chinese innovations.
In talent, China is equally spiky. It ranks last of all countries measured, with only 1.5 per cent of its population holding a bachelor's degree or above - compared with 6 per cent in India and about 20 per cent in the US, Europe and Japan. While the top 10 Chinese regions account for just 16 per cent of its population, they house nearly half of its talent-producing universities, according to a study I conducted with a George Mason University graduate student, Tairan Li.
China is incredibly uneven when it comes to the openness of its culture. Shanghai and Beijing are buzzing cosmopolitan centres. Shanghai, an urban agglomeration the size of Los Angeles with 18m inhabitants, is determined to transform itself into a world-class creative centre by investing in culture, fostering a bustling restaurant and nightlife district and establishing a social climate that values individualism and self-expression. In doing so it is pulling further away from its Chinese counterparts. As a nation, China scores among the bottom of the pack, alongside Romania and Ukraine and behind India, on the global self-expression scale of Ronald Inglehart, Michigan University professor. This may prove China's biggest roadblock to further growth in the creative economy.
Indeed, China is a tale of two economies: innovative, rapidly growing cosmopolitan peaks line its east coast, set apart from a vast, rural interior where more than three-quarters of a billion people toil in pre-industrial conditions. According to Gallup surveys, incomes in China's top 10 urban regions are more than five times those of the rural sector - and are diverging further every day. A Chinese student of mine summed it up succinctly: "In Shanghai, regular middle-class people live better than in the United States. While in the countryside just outside the city they live in what can only be described as pre-civilised conditions." Almost half of China's population lives on less than $2 a day and 800m farmers cannot afford to see a doctor.
The uneven nature of the Chinese economy is registering in the nation's politics. China's countryside was the scene of more than 87,000 riots and demonstrations in 2005, more than quadruple the number a decade ago. The government is now scrambling to develop programmes to spur rural development.
As it readies itself for the future, China must address the uneven nature of its economic advance, allowing growth to continue while responding to the concerns of the millions being left behind. The west must recognise China as the latest expression of globalisation's spiky side, a phenomenon whose economic, social and political perils are just beginning to manifest.
The writer is the Hirst professor of public policy at George Mason University and author of The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent (HarperBusiness)
中国：一个国家，两个经济体？
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国过去十年经济迅速增长，已把自己推到全球经济的中心舞台，成了“世界工厂”，全球领先企业的海外生产基地。现在，专家们相信，中国将向上游前进，通过扩大科学人才队伍，改善大学教育并吸引世界顶尖的技术公司，进入设计和革新领域。
但中国的显著增长只是源自一小部分有推动力的地区，这些地区吸引了大部分优秀人才，产生了多数创新成果，创造了大部分财富。为了与中国这个上升的经济明星有效互动，西方必须认识到，中国是全球化“尖峰/低谷”特征的极端体现。全球化在使经济活动分散开来，令世界日益“扁平”的同时，也让创新、人才和财富向少数“尖峰”地区集中。“扁平世界”一词来自《纽约时报》(New York Times)专栏作家托马斯?弗里德曼(Thomas Friedman)对经济活动分散现象的描述。
在制造业之外，中国最令人瞩目的成就在技术领域。2004年，中国联想(Lenovo)收购了IBM的笔记本电脑品牌ThinkPad，而且越来越多美国、欧洲和日本企业开办了中国创新中心。但中国的全球创造力指数(Global Creativity Index)在45个国家中仅列第36位。这个指数是我发展的，用来从3个方面，即技术、人才和包容度，衡量一个国家在经济增长方面的进步 。在技术方面，中国列第28位，与克罗地亚和乌克兰齐平，落后于印度。中国的技术实力高度集中。仅6个地区：北京、上海、天津、深圳、沈阳和广州，产生大部分中国创新。
人才方面，中国也同样呈现“尖峰/低谷”特征，在所有被测国家中排名最后，其中拥有学士及以上学位的人仅占总人口的1.5%――与之相比，印度为6%，美国、欧洲和日本约为20%。根据我和乔治-梅森大学(George Mason University)研究生李泰然(Tairan Li，音译)共同进行的研究显示，中国领先的10个地区人口仅占全国总人口的16%，而近半数培养人才的大学集中在这些地区。
中国的文化开放程度呈现令人难以置信的不均衡。上海和北京是喧嚣的国际化中心城市。上海的城区规模与洛杉矶相当，拥有1800万居民，它致力于通过文化领域的投资，营造一个繁华的餐饮和夜生活区域，并建立一种崇尚个人主义和个性表达的社会风气，将自己转变为世界一流的创造中心。在此过程中，上海已使自己进一步远离其它中国城市。以密歇根大学(Michigan University)教授罗纳德?英格尔哈特(Ronald Inglehart)的全球自我展现标准衡量，作为一个国家，中国的排名位于底部，与罗马尼亚和乌克兰相当，排在印度之后。这可能成为中国创意经济进一步发展的最大绊脚石。
事实上，中国有两个经济体：创新的、迅速增长的国际都市分布在东部沿海地区；与之形成对比的是广大农村内陆地区，逾7.5亿人口在前工业时代条件下艰辛劳作。据盖洛普(Gallup)调查，中国十大领先城市的居民收入是农村地区的5倍多，而且还在不断扩大。我的一位中国学生精辟地总结道：“在上海，普通中产阶级比在美国生活得好。而就在这个城市外的农村，生活条件只能用文明前水平来形容。”几乎一半中国人口每天的生活费不到2美元，有8亿农民看不起病。
中国经济发展不均衡的特性已在政治上表现出来。2005年，中国农村发生逾8.7万起暴乱和示威事件，比10年前多出逾4倍。中国政府正匆忙制定促进农村发展的计划。
在准备迎接未来的同时，中国必须解决经济发展不平衡的矛盾，在保持经济增长的同时，也要关心那些落在后面的数亿民众。西方必须认识到中国在全球化中的尖峰/低谷特征，其经济、社会和政治弊端刚刚开始显现。
本文作者是美国乔治梅森大学(George Mason University)公共政策教授，著有《创造型人才的流失：全球争夺人才的新浪潮》(The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent)一书(Harper Business出版)。
