We have now moved into a third epoch in the history of the postwar global economic order. The first went from the late 1940s to the 1970s and was characterised by liberalisation, principally among the high-income countries closely allied to the US in the context of the cold war. From the 1980s and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, more radical forms of economic liberalism, known as “neoliberalism”, spread across the world. The creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 and the accession of China in 2001 were high water marks of this second era.
我們現在進入了戰後全球經濟秩序演變史上的第三個時代。第一個時代從上世紀40年代末到70年代爲止，其特徵是冷戰背景下的自由化，主要發生在與美國有親密盟友關係的高收入國家。從上世紀80年代起，特別是蘇聯解體以後，更爲激進的經濟自由主義——被稱作「新自由主義」(neoliberalism)——在全世界遍地開花。1995年世界貿易組織(WTO)成立和2001年中國加入世界貿易組織是第二個時代中最濃墨重彩的時刻。