| Yes, during the production process or the business process, we all hope to maximize the profits to ourselves. Our lives are very short, and if in this way we can acquire greater profits and acquire personal wealth, we can meet our needs in this life. But, with regard to this, we should, in addition to our personal profit, also consider the question of social welfare. Uh, “social welfare” means that when you produce a, a thing, there are not only costs to you personally, but also, perhaps you’ve used up [a portion] of some people’s lives and all kinds, all kinds of steps. Uh, because of this, there’s a so-called “social cost.”
Suppose these social costs are not, are not taken care of, then we can lower our total costs. In that case, our selling price ought to be lower. So, with regard to the large volume of mainland China’s exports in recent years, these cheap exports, I think this is a problem to which we must pay extremely close attention because after these cheap, cheap ex- exports, the ultimate result is that you, you destroy your domestic production resources. They’re also giving rise to problems with the social environment and the ecology. So, in the future the social costs are extremely high.
OK, so what I advocate is that we not just look at the costs to you personally. We should also look look at the total social cost. Take a simple example. Look, many underdeveloped nations, such as, like uh, let’s not talk about African nations, let’s say nations like Taiwan and Korea were 10 or 20 years ago. They developed, many, uh, manufacturing industries. These industries were all ones that advanced nations didn’t want to develop,1 so they moved them to backward countries, these more second-tier manufacturing nations to to produce [goods]. In this way, their nations avoided, uh, pollution problems. Now, another way of viewing this is to say that they exported pollution to these other nations.
So, I, we think that we need to think about the very long term with regard to employment and pollution. Uh, we need to consider not only how much we produce now, how large our profits are now; we should also consider the long-term benefits to our nation and people. Therefore, these social costs and personal costs are an extremely important issue to consider. Thank you.
1 Throughout this paragraph, the speaker is using “manufacturing industries” to refer to both the industries and the goods they produce. Consequently, shengchan can here be read as either “produce” or “develop.” | Yes,在这个生产过程中呢还有和企业过程中，我们都希望满足自己最大的利润。因为这个我们生命非常有限，这样我们的得到比较高的利润呢,得到个人财富的话，可以满足我们这一生的需要。可是这方面呢除了啊个人的利润，我们应该想到一个社会的福利的问题。啊所谓社会福利，就是说你生产一个啊一个东西，那不但是有自己的成本,也会也许会消耗到社会其他人的啊生活跟各种各种啊步调。啊因为这样的关系就有一个所谓社会成本在里面。所以我们考虑的问题，不但是个人成本也要社会成本。
这个社会成本假如没有没有照顾的话，我们就会把我们整个成本呢啊低估了，那这样的话就觉得我们卖的价格应该比较便宜。所以这个对现在中国大陆就说最近出口很多,以廉价出口来讲，我觉得这个是应该非常注意的一个问题。因为廉廉价输输出以后,最后结果呢就会你你破坏国内的生产资源。而且还有社会环境，还有生态的问题。那这样呢，以后这个社会成本是非常高的。
Ok， 所以我的主张就是说我们不只是看个人成本，应该更看看到看到整个社会成本。一个很简单的例子，你看，很多落后国家比如说象哦哦哦其他非洲国家不要谈了，就象过去哦10，20年象台湾韩国这些国家。他们哦生产很多所谓哎制造业。这制造业都是先进国家不要生产，拿到落后国这些比较次一级的生产国家去去做生产。这样呢他们国内就没有所谓的啊那个污染的问题。那从另外方面呢，这些污染就输出到其他这些国家来。
所以我我们觉得对对在就业或污染这方面我们要做一个非常啊长期的考虑。啊要考虑的不但是现在我们生产多少得到多少利益，就从长期来讲应该考虑到对自己国家民族还有未来的的利益。所以这个啊社会成本跟个人成本是非常重要的一个课题要考虑的。谢谢！ |