We have become used in recent decades to a particular vision of the world economy, which comprises accelerating interconnections that drive globalisation and international business.最近几十年，我们早已习惯于世界经济的一种特定愿景，它包括着大大加快的互联互通，这种互联互通推展着全球化和国际商业往来。Bigger and bigger container ships carry the load of expanding global trade, surging flows of data feed an increasingly international digital economy and supply chains sprawl across borders and spit out consumer products that are ever cheaper and better.更加巨型的集装箱货船支撑着不断扩大的全球贸易，激增的数据流承托着日益国际化的数字经济，供应链穿过国界在全球伸延，为消费者送来上价格更加低廉、质量更加好的产品。

What if that version of events has almost run its course? Consider what is happening in the world of trade and the rate of technological change and it is easy to construct a case that it is time to re-examine the prevailing view.如果这种趋势已完全回头到走过，不会再次发生什么？考虑到世界贸易的现状和技术变化的速度，很更容易论证这样一个命题：是时候新的检视当前风行的观念了。The first piece of evidence is that the expansion of global trade has slowed. Before the 2008 financial crisis the volume of worldwide trade in goods expanded at an average of 6 per cent annually, according to the World Trade Organisation. In the past three years growth has slowed to an average of 2.4 per cent, with some measures showing that global trade recorded its worst performance since 2009 in the first six months of this year.第一个证据是，全球贸易快速增长早已上升。

世界贸易组织(WTO)数据表明，2008年金融危机之前，全球货物贸易量以年均6%的速度快速增长。过去3年，增长速度已上升至年均2.4%，一些指标表明，今年前6个月，全球贸易刷新了自2009年以来的最好展现出。Part of the reason for that is the anaemic recovery in the global economy. Once the world booms again then so will global trade, optimists argue.造成这种局面的部分原因是全球经济衰退力弱。

乐观者指出，一旦世界经济新的南北兴旺，全球贸易也不会随之恶化。Yet there are also structural reasons for the change. When economists from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund examined the trend last year they attributed a significant part of the difference to more permanent shifts that began even before the crisis. The biggest of those is that China, which has made its fortune by playing a crucial, assembly-focused role in global supply chains importing parts and exporting finished goods, has begun to replicate large parts of that supply chain at home.然而，引发这种变化的还有结构性原因。当世界银行(World Bank)与国际货币基金组织(IMF)的经济学家们去年研究这一趋势时，他们在相当大程度上将此归咎于甚至在经济危机之前就开始的更加永久性的改变。其中仅次于的变化因素是中国——曾多次通过在全球供应链中扮演着至关重要的组装角色（进口零部件、出口制成品）构建兴旺的中国，已开始在国内拷贝这条供应链的很多环节。

That is happening alongside moves by companies in other large economies such as Japan and the US to “reshore” or “nearshore” supply chains to make them more disaster proof or because rising wage costs in China have made producing closer to home more economic.与此同时，日本、美国等其他大型经济体的企业将供应链“迁到”或“迁近”国内，为的是在更大程度上免遭灾害影响，或是因为中国工资成本上升使得在距离本国更加将近的地方生产更为昂贵。Pair those trends with technological innovations such as “additive manufacturing”, or what most of us think of as 3D printing, and the impending March of the Robots, driven by artificial intelligence, and it is hard to imagine a vision of globalisation remaining quite as we imagined.将这些趋势与技术创新——如“加到生产”(additive manufacturing)，即多数人所称之为的3D打印机，以及将要来临的由人工智能驱动的机器人大量经常出现的景象——放到一起，很难设想一种与我们此前的想象毕竟完全相同的全球化前景。What if one day 3D-printed robots can make their own 3D-printed robots? What happens to world trade then?如果有一天，3D打印机出有的机器人可以在3D打印机上自行制作机器人，那不会再次发生什么？那时的世界贸易不会是什么样子的？To Robert Koopman, who took over as the WTO’s chief economist this year, what we are seeing is not so much the end of globalisation but the end of an era of what others have called “hyperglobalisation” that accompanied the emergence of economies such as China’s in recent decades.对于今年接替WTO首席经济学家的罗伯特錠湞曼(Robert Koopman)来说，与其说我们所看见的是全球化的落幕，不如说是其他人所称的“超强全球化”(hyperglobalisation)时代的完结，后者将近几十年来预示着中国等经济体的兴起。

The data we have on global trade also has huge holes, he says, and is not good enough to assess the growing flows of services or data, or what trade in a new digital world really looks like.他说道，我们所掌控的全球贸易数据也不存在极大漏洞，足以评估服务或数据更加大的流动，也无法很好呈现出新的数字世界中的贸易的确实形态。“I do think we may be missing an important part of the story,” he says. “But we won’t know until we find out how to measure it.”“我指出我们有可能错失了一个最重要部分，”他说道，“但我们会告诉——以后我们找到如何取决于它。”There is another vision of what is happening and of where we are heading. This holds that we are living through the beginnings of another great age of liberalisation that may in time yield its own boost to global growth and perhaps its own version of globalisation.对于正在再次发生的情况以及未来趋向，还有另一种观点。这种观点指出，我们正在经历另一个最出色自由化时代的开端，假以时日，它有可能产生对全球经济快速增长的提振，甚至自己版本的全球化。

The last great multilateral trade agreement — the culmination of the Uruguay Round that led to the creation of the WTO — is more than 20 years old. The stalled previous attempt to yield another global agreement, the Doha Round, is 14 years old and counting.上一份大型多边贸易协议——乌拉圭淘汰赛(Uruguay Round)谈判最后创立了WTO——距今已有20多年了。尝试定案新的全球协议但陷入僵局的多哈淘汰赛(Doha Round)谈判已展开了14年，仍一筹莫展。There are a half-dozen or more big regional or sectoral trade negotiations under way globally, however, that contain a new kind of promise and that are tackling new trade issues such as the barriers to the free flow of data and ecommerce. Among those is the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership — agreed this week though subject to ratification — which includes the US and Japan and other economies making up some 40 per cent of the global economy.然而，全球范围内还有6个或更加多大型地区或行业贸易谈判正在展开，它们包括一种新型的愿景，并且在应付新的贸易议题，如数据权利流动以及电子商务的壁垒。

这些谈判还包括由12个国家不久前刚达成协议（但须各国立法机构批准后）的《横跨太平洋伙伴关系协议》(TPP)，该协议覆盖面积美国、日本及其他经济体，总计占到全球经济的40%左右。There are transatlantic negotiations between the EU and the US and others to liberalise the services industry and the trade in environmental goods. New regional trade blocs in Latin America and Africa are finding their feet and ways to integrate whole economic neighbourhoods.还有欧盟与美国之间的跨大西洋谈判以及其他谈判，目的都是对外开放服务业和环保产品贸易。

拉丁美洲和非洲新的创建的区域贸易组织正在站稳脚跟，并找寻构建整个周边经济区域一体化的方式。The bigger promise is that they could one day be stitched together and piece by piece a new picture of globalisation might emerge that causes us to rethink our vision for the global economy once again.更大的愿景是，他们有一天可以被一块块地拼凑在一起，构成一个新的全球化景象，促成我们再度反省自己的全球经济愿景。

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