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1. A radical change in mentalities is under way both in the public sector, which has now been forced to admit that its own means of action are insufficient to meet their development targets, and the private sector, which is becoming aware of its capacity to contribute to the developing countries’ emergence on the world stage in the role of future partners in local and global markets.
Dialogue can be established within the framework of an already increasing number of forums, as well as in project formulation. The presence of other civil society actors and support from the international organizations – as much in the thinking and debate as in the actions undertaken– are crucial factors or enabling people to make sense of the new prospects for cooperation.
The new twenty-first century world order demands that decision-making be opened up to dialogue with new actors. Civil society’s innovative energy has already produced a good number of important initiatives and proposals in many areas. And the business world offers economic resources and know-how that can greatly contribute to development strategy deployment and the promotion of cultural diversity. These are the reasons behind the United Nations Secretary-General's decision to launch the “Global Compact” programme, which outlines a basic code of ethics for private sector partnership. UNESCO intends to establish cultural patronage agreements with businesses aimed, inter alia, at supporting the initiatives of countries in the South.
2. Economists have long been a natural constituency in favor of growth. Since even the richest country has limited resources, the central economic problem is choice: Shall we fund tax cuts for the rich or investment in infrastructure and research and development, war in Iraq or assistance for the poor in developing countries and our own? By providing more total resources, growth should, in theory, make these choices less painful.
The United States, however, has powerfully demonstrated that while growth increases supply, it also raises aspirations. Choices that rich countries have to make thus seem to be no easier than those confronting poor countries, even though the tradeoffs are more heart-wrenching in the case of the poor. Brazil, for example, must choose whether to use its limited health budget to pay full-market price for AIDS drugs; some AIDS victims may live as a result, but people in need of other health care will die, because money that could have been spent on their needs is simply not there. More growth-provided resources, in this instance, mean the difference between life and death.
Still, growth has had its critics. There is a well-developed populist antigrowth literature concerned with, among other things, the impact of growth on the environment and on poverty.
Historically, economists have questioned whether, at least in the early stages of development, growth is accompanied by societal goods such as greater equality and a better environment. Nobel Prize-winning economist Simon Kuznets argued, based on experiences largely before World War II, that there is an increase in inequality in the early stages of development. Arthur Lewis, another Nobel economist, went further: greater inequality, he argued, is necessary to generate the savings that growth requires. A later generation of economists has posited the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve: the early stages of growth cause environmental degradation, not environmental health.
Kuznets and his descendants held out the prospect that eventually growth would bring more social justice (greater equality, less poverty) and a better environment. But there is nothing inevitable about this -- which means that even if it has been true in the past, it may not be in the future. Inequality did seem to fall in the United States after the Great Depression, but in the last 30 years it has increased enormously. Many forms of pollution have gone down as richer countries have turned their mind to air-quality issues, but greenhouse gas emissions -- with all the dangers they present for global warming -- have continued to increase with economic growth, especially in the United States.
3. 中国是欧亚地区重要的国家。中国的发展离不开世界，更离不开欧亚地区。同样，世界的发展、欧亚地区的发展也离不开中国。中国的发展给世界各国尤其是欧亚地区国家带来重要机遇。中国稳定和谐的政治社会环境、丰富优秀的劳动力资源和潜力巨大的市场，为与世界各国尤其是欧亚地区国家开展互利互惠的经济合作提供了理想的场所。我们高兴地看到，通过这些年的不懈努力，中国的中西部地区和东北等老工业基地有了长足进步，呈现美好的发展前景。我们欢迎欧亚地区国家积极参与中国西部大开发和东北老工业基地振兴，增强中国与欧亚地区各国互利合作的生机与活力。欧亚地区国家与中国有传统友谊，经济互补性强，中国政府将鼓励、支持中国企业与欧亚地区发展贸易、投资办厂，实现共同发展。
4. 中国公司想创造世界品牌，外国公司想增加在中国的销量，这些都正改变着中国的设计产业。中国制造商意识到，若他们想在本国市场脱颖而出，在外国市场崭露头角，就必须设计更好的产品。索尼这样的外国公司也开始明白，从前海外公司常把随便什么地方设计的产品拿到中国来卖，而现在，中国消费者变得更加挑剔，他们不再那样容易满足了。
尽管全球大量的电子产品和鞋等都是中国制造，但这些产品的设计都是在欧美或日本完成的。中国公司制造自己品牌的产品时，通常是模仿国外。但如今不同了，他们都想开创自己的品牌。随着中国公司在设计上的改进，跨国公司意识到，他们的产品需要专门针对中国消费者的品味进行“量身定做”了。这些使中国设计产业开始繁荣起来。中国公司开始建立设计中心或雇人帮他们打造自己的品牌。成百上千的设计顾问公司在上海、北京和广州涌现。国外年轻设计师也开始拥入中国，想在这个全球最有活力的消费市场上一试身手。
现在，中国约有400所学院提供设计课程，每年有1万名毕业生。一些中国设计师获得国际大奖，许多人开始到米兰、东京、纽约等地工作。设计成为中国最热门的专业之一，甚至已渗入到社会生活中。 |
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发表于 2006-1-18 15:53:00