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，我们已经习惯于世界经济的一种特定愿景，它包含着不断加速的互联互通，这种互联互通推动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.

越来越巨型的集装箱货船承载着不断扩大的全球贸易，暴增的数据流支撑着日益国际化的数字经济，供应链穿越国界在全球延伸，为消费者送上价格越来越便宜、质量越来越好的产品。

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.

如果这种趋势已几乎走到尽头，会发生什么？考虑到世界贸易的现状和技术变化的速度，很容易论证这样一个命题：是时候重新审视当前流行的观念了。

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，全球贸易增长已经放缓。世界贸易组织(WTO)数据显示，2008年金融危机之前，全球货物贸易量以年均6%的速度增长。过去3年，增速已放缓至年均2.4%，一些指标显示，今年前6个月，全球贸易创下了自2009年以来的最差表现。

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.

导致这种局面的部分原因是全球经济复苏乏力。乐观者认为，一旦世界经济重新走向繁荣，全球贸易也会随之好转。

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，引起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，他们在很大程度上将此归因于甚至在经济危机之前就开始的更为永久性的转变。其中最大的变化因素是中国——曾经通过在全球供应链中扮演至关重要的装配角色（进口零部件、出口制成品）实现繁荣的中国，已开始在国内复制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“迁回”或“迁近”国内，为的是在更大程度上免受灾害影响，或是因为中国工资成本上升使得在距离本国更近的地方生产更加划算。

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“添加制造”(additive manufacturing)，即多数人所称的3D打印，以及即将到来的由人工智能驱动的机器人大量出现的景象——放在一起，很难设想一种与我们此前的想象全然相同的全球化前景。

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打印出的机器人可以在3D打印机上自行制作机器人，那会发生什么？那时的世界贸易会是什么样子的？

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.

对于今年接任WTO首席经济学家的罗伯特錠湞曼(Robert Koopman)来说，与其说我们所看到的是全球化的终结，不如说是其他人所称的“超全球化”(hyperglobalisation)时代的结束，后者近几十年来伴随着中国等经济体的崛起。

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，我们所掌握的全球贸易数据也存在巨大漏洞，不足以评估服务或数据越来越大的流动，也不能很好呈现新的数字世界中的贸易的真正形态。

“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.”

“我认为我们可能错过了一个重要部分，”他说，“但我们不会知道——直至我们发现如何衡量它。”

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.

对于正在发生的情况以及未来趋向，还有另一种看法。这种观点认为，我们正在经历另一个伟大自由化时代的开端，假以时日，它可能产生对全球经济增长的提振，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定——乌拉圭回合(Uruguay Round)谈判最终创建了WTO——距今已有20多年了。尝试敲定新的全球协定但陷入僵局的多哈回合(Doha Round)谈判已进行了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个或更多大型地区或行业贸易谈判正在进行，它们包含一种新型的愿景，并且在应对新的贸易议题，如数据自由流动以及电子商务的壁垒。这些谈判包括由12个国家不久前刚刚达成（但仍须各国立法机构批准）的《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》(TPP)，该协定覆盖美国、日本及其他经济体，共计占全球经济的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，目的都是开放服务业和环保产品贸易。拉丁美洲和非洲新建立的区域贸易组织正在站稳脚跟，并寻找实现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接在一起，形成一个新的全球化景象，促使我们再次反思自己的全球经济愿景。