The tigers that lost their roar 喑哑的亚洲虎

The tigers that lost their roar
喑哑的亚洲虎

Feb 28th 2008 | BANGKOK AND KUALA LUMPUR
From The Economist print edition

Other emerging economies are producing world-class companies by the dozen. Why aren't the countries of South-East Asia?
其它新兴经济体正在成打成打地产生世界级的公司，为什么东南亚国家不是这样？

Illustration by James Fryer


IT IS easy to forget, now that China and India are all the rage, thatuntil ten years ago South-East Asia was the world's fastest-developingregion, winning the sort of investor attention and breathless columninches that the two new giants now enjoy. The region has, slowly,recovered from the blight of 1997-98. It has recently had several yearsof strong growth (see chart 1) and its governments' finances have beengreatly improved. Even so, after all this time the region's five maineconomies—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore andThailand—are still notable for the near-absence of companies that couldtruly be called world-class.
鉴于中国和印度风头正健，人们很容易忘记直到十年以前东南亚都是世界上发展最快的地区，赢得了各类投资者的注意力和铺天盖地的新闻版面，如今这两样东西由两位新巨人享有。该地区已经慢慢从1997－98年的打击中恢复过来，最近几年都有着强劲的增长（见图1），并且其政府财政有了极大的改观。尽管如此，该地区的五个主要经济体——印度尼西亚、马来西亚、菲律宾、新加坡和泰国——仍然几乎没有能够称得上世界级的公司。



The region has 570m people and had a head start in economic developmentover much of the rest of Asia. So why does it still have no globalconsumer brands of the stature of South Korea's Samsung and LG? Whereare its rising technology leaders, like Taiwan's AU Optronics andTaiwan Semiconductor? Where are its equivalents of India'sworld-conquering Tata Steel, Ranbaxy and Wipro? Or China'smarket-devouring Huawei and Lenovo? Ask an investor in London or NewYork to name globally respected South-East Asian firms and the answeris unlikely to consist of much more than Singapore Airlines.
该地区有5亿7千万人，与亚洲的其余国家相比拥有经济发展上的领先优势。那为什么它没有像韩国三星和LG那样的全球消费品牌呢？它们的技术领先者，像台湾的友达光电（AU Optronics）和台积电（Taiwan Semiconductor）在哪里呢？像印度的征服世界的塔塔钢铁（TataSteel），Ranbaxy和Wipro在哪里呢？像中国的吞噬市场的华为（Huawei）和联想（Lenovo）又在哪里呢？问一位伦敦或纽约的投资者，要其举出一个全球敬仰的东南亚公司，那么答案除了新加坡航空（Singapore Airlines）之外不大可能有更多了。

In a recent book, “Asian Godfathers”, Joe Studwell, a journalist,examines this failure in stark terms. The region's business scene, hesays, remains dominated by old-fashioned, mediocre, sprawlingconglomerates, run at the whims of ageing patriarchal owners. Thesefirms' core competence, such as it is, is exploiting their cosyconnections with governing elites. Their profits come fromrent-seeking: being handed generous state contracts and concessions, orusing their sway with officialdom to keep potential competitors out. Ifthey need technology, they buy it from abroad. As a result, Mr Studwellsays, the region has “no indigenous, large-scale companies producingworld-class products and services.”
新闻记者JoeStudwell在最近的一本书《亚洲教父》中，用直白的语言考察了这个失败。他说，该地区的经济舞台仍由旧式、平庸、四处扩张的大联合企业占据着，这些企业被正在老去的族长式所有者随心所欲地经营着。这些公司最拿手的，尽管不咋的，就是利用它们与统治精英的亲密关系。他们的利润来自于寻租：被给予慷慨的国家合同和特许，或利用他们对官员们的影响力来将潜在的竞争者排除在外。如果他们需要技术，他们就从国外买。结果，Studwell先生说，该地区没有“源于本地的、规模大的公司生产世界级的产品和服务”。