经济学人 (The Economist)

这周世界 (The world this week)

政治 (Politics)

畅所欲言 (Speaking freely)

乔·拜登签署了价值950亿美元的军事援助方案。美国总统表示，这项立法是必要的，以抵御像哈马斯这样的“恐怖分子”和俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京这样的“暴君”。其中，610亿美元用于援助乌克兰。根据五角大楼的说法，武器将在几天内开始流向乌克兰。经过六个月的僵局，国会以压倒多数的票数通过了这项法案。共和党强硬派呼吁解雇迈克·约翰逊，他们党的众议院议长，后者与民主党合作绕过他们。

Joe Biden signed a military-aid packageworth $95bn. America’s president said the legislation was necessary to fend off “terrorists” like Hamas and “tyrants” like Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Of the aid, $61bn is to help Ukraine. Arms will begin flowing within days, according to the Pentagon. Congress overwhelmingly passed the bill following six months of deadlock. Republican hardliners called for the sacking of Mike Johnson, their party’s House speaker, who worked with Democrats to bypass them.

这项协议还包括为以色列提供170亿美元的援助，尽管有人担心其士兵在加沙地带和约旦河西岸侵犯人权。以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡对美国可能对一支以色列营提出制裁的报道作出愤怒回应，并承诺“抗争”任何处罚。联合国表示，在加沙的两家医院发现了大规模的集体坟墓。联合国呼吁进行独立调查。

The deal also carries $17bn of aid for Israel, despite concerns that its soldiers are violating human rights in Gaza and the West Bank. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, responded angrily to reports that America might impose sanctions on an Israeli battalion and promised to “fight” any penalties. The UN said that it had found mass graves containing bodies at two hospitals in Gaza. It called for independent investigations.

该援助方案的最后一部分将用于台湾。美国对这个岛屿的支持对中美关系造成了压力，中国声称台湾是其领土。美国首席外交官安东尼·布林肯访华，以保持沟通渠道的开放，并警告中国不要向俄罗斯提供武器零部件和双用途产品。

The final tranche of military aid in the package will go to Taiwan. American backing for the island has weighed on relations with China, which claims Taiwan as its own. Antony Blinken, America’s top diplomat, visited China to keep communication channels open—and warn China against providing weapon parts and dual-use products to Russia.

针对加沙战争的学生抗议活动席卷了包括哥伦比亚大学和耶鲁大学在内的美国精英大学。数百名亲巴勒斯坦示威者被逮捕。许多人设立了营地。白宫谴责“明显的反犹太主义言论”。

Student protests against the war in Gaza swept elite American universities, including Columbia and Yale. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested. Many have set up encampments. The White House condemned “blatantly antisemitic” statements.

唐纳德·特朗普的隐瞒款项审判在曼哈顿开始。检察官在开庭陈词中将选举舞弊与未披露的付款联系起来，据称这些付款是为了压制特朗普在2016年竞选总统时的性生活传闻。在亚利桑那州的另一场审判中，特朗普的几名盟友，包括他的前律师鲁迪·朱利安尼，因涉嫌干扰2020年选举而被起诉。前总统本人没有被控。

Donald Trump’s hush-moneytrial kicked off in Manhattan. Prosecutors used their opening arguments to link electoral fraud to undisclosed payments, allegedly made to suppress stories of Mr Trump’s sex life when he ran for president in 2016. In a separate trial in Arizona, several of Mr Trump’s allies, including his ex-lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were indicted for alleged electoral interference in 2020. The former president was not charged.

全球最大选举在印度开始。七个阶段中的第一个阶段将持续到6月。在几个投票站报告了武装冲突和投票机损坏，那里的投票将被重新进行。印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪及其人民党(BJP)预计将赢得第三个任期。

Voting in the world’s largest election started in India. The first of seven stages runs until June. Armed clashes and damage to voting machines were reported at several polling stations, where voting will be repeated. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are expected to win a third term in power.

美国与菲律宾在南中国海举行了联合军事演习。与此同时，中国在其青岛港市接待了来自29个国家的海军官员，讨论对海上安全的威胁。

America held joint military drills with the Philippines in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, China hosted naval officials from 29 countries in its port city of Qingdao to discuss threats to maritime security.

菲律宾的一家法院禁止金黄稻米，这是一种实验性谷物，经过改良可携带β-胡萝卜素，即维生素A的化学前体，用于对抗儿童失明。法院称存在“严重”的健康和环境问题。

A court in the Philippines banned golden rice, an experimental grain modified to carry beta-carotene, a chemical precursor of vitamin A, added to combat childhood blindness. It cited “severe” health and environmental concerns.

企业家埃隆·马斯克与澳大利亚就在悉尼一座教堂发生的刺杀事件的视频访问权发生冲突。他批评法院下令将X社交媒体平台上的暴力视频从全球删除，认为这是对“整个互联网”的审查。澳大利亚领导人安东尼·阿尔班斯表示，马斯克是一个“傲慢的亿万富翁，认为自己凌驾于法律之上”。

Elon Musk, an entrepreneur, clashed with Australia about access to footage of a stabbing in a church in Sydney. He decried a court order to remove the violent video from X, his social-media platform, across the world as a step towards censoring “the entire internet”. Australia’s leader, Anthony Albanese, said Mr Musk was an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law”.

以色列打击了伊朗的防空系统，以报复伊朗在4月13日发动的空前袭击。美国驻叙利亚的部队面临新一轮的袭击，伊拉克的民兵向他们的空军基地发射火箭。

Israel struck an Iranian air-defence system in retaliation for Iran’s unprecedented assault on April 13th. American troops in Syria faced renewed attacks, as militias in Iraq fired rockets at their air base.

阿哈龙·哈利瓦辞去以色列军方情报局局长职务。他是首位因未能制止哈马斯于2023年10月发动袭击而辞职的高级官员。

Aharon Haliva stepped down as head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate. He is the first senior official to resign over the failure to stop Hamas’s attack in October 2023.

围绕苏丹城市埃尔法舍尔的战斗结束了对其避免卷入该国内战的休战。这座拥有160万居民的城市是北达尔富尔最后一个未沦陷的城市。

Fighting around the Sudanese city of el-Fasher ended a truce that had shielded it from the country’s civil war. The city of some 1.6m residents was the last holdout in North Darfur not to have fallen to militias.

英国通过一项法律，将不受欢迎的寻求庇护者送往卢旺达，以阻止人们冒险横渡英吉利海峡。活动人士谴责这项法律昂贵且不人道；联合国官员已敦促英国重新考虑这一计划。英国总理里希·苏纳克表示，将于7月开始转移。去年，约有3万人乘船到达英国。本周一艘超载的小艇沉没造成五人死亡。

Britain passed a law to send unwanted asylum-seekers to Rwanda to deter people from making the perilous journey across the English Channel. Campaigners decry the law as expensive and inhumane; UN officials have urged Britain to rethink the plan. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said transfers would begin by July. Last year some 30,000 people arrived in Britain on boats. Five died when an overcrowded dinghy sank this week.

苏格兰国民党与苏格兰绿党之间的实行权力分享的协议结束得相当激烈。苏格兰决定终止这项安排不久之后，放弃了2030年的脱碳目标；苏格兰将现在组成少数派政府。

The power-sharing agreement between the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish Greens came to an acrimonious end. The SNP’s decision to halt the arrangement comes soon after Scotland ditched its decarbonisation targets for 2030; the SNP will now form a minority government.

厄瓜多尔的一名空军士兵在公投中投票

厄瓜多尔人进行了一次公投，以赋予警察和军队与黑帮作斗争的权力。该国已成为拉丁美洲最危险的国家之一。厄瓜多尔总统丹尼尔·诺博亚主导的前所未有的安全措施包括加大对绑架等黑帮犯罪的惩罚力度、军人巡逻街头，以及将黑帮头目引渡至美国合法化。

Ecuadoreans voted in a referendum to empower the police and army to fight gangsters. The country has become one of Latin America’s deadliest. The unprecedented security measures, spearheaded by Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s president, include harsher penalties for gang-related crimes such as kidnapping, soldiers patrolling streets and legalising extraditions of gang bosses to the United States.

Pedro Sánchez 想要辞去西班牙总理职务，因为一家法院对其妻子展开了腐败调查。社会党领袖在周一发布公告前取消了自己的行程。

Pedro Sánchez threatened to step down asSpain’s prime minister as a court opened a corruption investigation into his wife. The Socialist leader cleared his calendar ahead of an announcement on Monday.

俄罗斯副国防部长Timur Ivanov被指控收受贿赂。(他否认了这些指控。) 在俄罗斯，腐败严重，但自2022年入侵乌克兰以来，高层打击行动相当罕见。活动人士称，负责军事投资项目的伊万诺夫先生从俄罗斯轰炸乌克兰城市马里乌波尔后的建筑工作中获利。

Timur Ivanov, Russia’s deputy defence minister, was accused of taking bribes. (He denies the charges.) Corruption is rife in Russia but high-level crackdowns have been rare since it attacked Ukraine in 2022. Activists say Mr Ivanov, who is in charge of military investment projects, profited from construction work in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after it was bombed by Russia.

乌克兰试图动员适龄男子加入军队，因为面临严重的人手短缺来对抗俄罗斯。符合征兵条件的男子将被拒绝在国外领事服务–这是外交部长德米特罗·库列巴为了“恢复对留在乌克兰和离开乌克兰的人的公平态度”而采取的一项措施。

Ukraine tried to press draft-age men to join its army as it faced an acute shortage of manpower to fight Russia. Men eligible for conscription will be denied consular services abroad—a measure to “restore fair attitudes” towards those who stayed in Ukraine and those who left, said Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister.

有四名德国人因涉嫌为中国间谍而被捕。其中一人Jian Guo 是极右翼德国选择党的员工。

Four Germans were arrested on suspicion of spying for China. One of them, Jian Guo, was a staffer for the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

加那利群岛数千名抗议者要求限制旅游业，他们认为旅游业破坏了自然环境，推高了房价。这个有220万人口的西班牙群岛在2023年有1400万游客。特内里费总统罗莎·达维拉建议对自然景点设定游客上限和收费。在别处，威尼斯成为世界上第一个向游客收费入城的城市。

Thousands of protesters in the Canary Islands called for curbs on tourism, which they say is spoiling nature and inflating house prices. The Spanish archipelago of 2.2m people had 14m visitors in 2023. Rosa Dávila, president of Tenerife, suggested putting in place visitor limits and fees for natural attractions. Elsewhere, Venice became the world’s first city to charge tourists to enter.

回到目录

这周世界 (The world this week)

商业 (Business)

波音，波音，消失。 (Boeing, Boeing, gone)

随着美国的电动车行业出现停滞，__特斯拉__宣布了令人沮丧的第一季度业绩。收入下降至210亿美元，同比减少9％，公司的营业利润率减少了一半。然而，股东们找到了值得庆祝的地方，因为公司表示新款更实惠的车型将比预期更早投产。特斯拉的股价在业绩发布后上涨了12％，今年已经下跌了三分之一。

As America’s electric-vehicle industry sputters, Tesla announced gloomy first-quarter results. Revenue fell to $21bn, a decline of 9% year on year, and the firm’s operating margin fell by half. Shareholders, however, found something to celebrate as the firm said that new, more affordable models would go into production sooner than expected. Tesla’s share price, which has fallen by more than a third this year, climbed by 12% after its earnings release.

__波音__在第一季度现金流失39亿美元，亏损3.55亿美元。业绩结果比预期好，但无法让这家飞机制造商摆脱深度危机。该公司的首席执行宣布辞职，此前两个月，波音公司的737 max飞机之一的机身面板爆裂。其中一项考虑的纠正措施是收购__Spirit AeroSystems__，这是一个之前曾分拆的麻烦供应商。

Boeing burned through $3.9bn of cash and made a loss of $355m in the first quarter. The results were better than feared but will not pull the aircraft-maker out of its deep crisis. In March its boss announced his resignation, two months after the blowout of a fuselage panel from one of Boeing’s 737 max planes. Among the corrective actions being considered is an acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems, a troublesome supplier it had previously spun off.

根据采购经理人指数，__欧洲__的商业活动在四月份增加超出预期的水平。这一增长主要源于服务业，活动增长是自2023年5月以来最大的。

Business activity in Europe rose more than expected in April, according to the purchasing-managers’ index. The gain is explained by services, where activity increased by the most since May 2023.

作为一项为乌克兰、以色列和台湾分配军事援助的法案，美国总统乔·拜登签署了强制__字节跳动__（即__抖音__的中国母公司）在一年内出售这款热门应用程序的法律措施，否则将在美国被禁止。中国政府可能会抵制任何强制性出售，而该公司可能会试图在法庭上挑战这项法律，称其违反了言论自由权。

As part of a bill allocating military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, America’s president, Joe Biden, signed into law measures that will force ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, to divest the popular app within a year or face a ban in America. China’s government is likely to resist any forced sale, and the firm could seek to challenge the law in the courts, arguing that it violates the right to free speech.

欧洲委员会对中国的医疗器械市场展开了调查，称欧洲制造商在采购过程中面临歧视。官员们还根据新的反补贴法令突袭了中国安检设备供应商__Nuctech__在欧洲的办公室。这些举措将进一步加剧欧洲与中国之间的贸易关系紧张局势，自从欧洲于去年十月开始调查中国电动车以来，这个问题就备受关注。

The European Commission launched a probe into the medical-device market in China, claiming that European manufacturers face discrimination in procurement processes. Officials also raided the European offices of Nuctech, a Chinese security-equipment supplier, under new anti-subsidy laws. These moves will further strain trade relations between Europe and China, which have been in focus since Europe launched an investigation into Chinese electric vehicles in October.

澳大利亚最大的石油和天然气生产商因其气候行动计划面临反叛。__伍德赛能源__的提案被其年度股东大会上58％的股东否决，尽管有一场反对其连任的运动，得到了代理顾问Glass Lewis的支持，公司董事长仍然成功保住了自己的职位。

Australia’s biggest oil-and-gas producer faced a revolt over its climate action plan. Woodside Energy’s proposal was rejected by 58% of shareholders at its annual general meeting, though the firm’s chairman managed to keep his job, despite a campaign against his reappointment backed by Glass Lewis, a proxy adviser.

香港今年最大规模的首次公开募股失败了。泡泡茶制造商__茶百道__的股价在首日交易中暴跌了高达38％，在筹集了26亿港元（合330亿美元）后。

Hong Kong’s largest initial public offering of the year flopped. Shares in Chabaidao plunged by as much as 38% on their first day of trading after the firm, which makes bubble tea, raised HK$2.6bn ($330m).

__英国央行__告诉银行开始对与私募股权公司的关系进行压力测试。中央银行表示，它发现银行的风险管理程序存在缺陷，并且私募市场的增长使得银行在业务的许多领域都受到了暴露。

The Bank of England has told banks to begin stress-testing their relationships with private-equity firms. The central bank said it had uncovered gaps in banks’ risk-management processes and that the growth of private markets meant banks were exposed across many parts of their business.

__Kering__在向投资者发出上个月的盈利预警后，宣布了黯淡的季度业绩。其旗下最大品牌__古驰__的销售同比下降了21％。

After issuing a profit warning to investors last month, Kering announced bleak quarterly results. Sales at Gucci, its biggest brand, declined by 21% year on year.

由于英镑走软和大宗商品价格上涨，英国__富时100指数__创下历史新高。然而，这对于缓解有关英国股票市场进一步出走的担忧或抱怨指数近年相对表现不佳的问题，作用有限。

Britain’s FTSE 100 crept to a record high after a weaker pound and higher commodity prices boosted the index. This will do little to quell fears of further exits from Britain’s stockmarket, however, or complaints about the index’s poor relative performance in recent years.

__美国联邦贸易委员会__（FTC）投票通过了禁止禁竞争协议的决定。这家美国托拉斯打破者表示，近五分之一的美国人受限于约束条款，限制了离职后在竞争对手工作的能力，而这一禁令将导致更高的工资和更多的创新。__美国商会__迅速在德克萨斯州法院提起诉讼，挑战这些规定。此外，FTC还起诉阻止一项价值85亿美元的零售企业合并。它表示，允许__Tapestry__（旗下品牌包括Coach和Kate Spade）收购__Capri__（拥有Michael Kors）将使其在“高档”奢侈手提包市场占据主导地位。

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted to ban non-compete agreements. The American trustbuster said that nearly one in five Americans are bound by clauses that limit their ability to work for a competitor if they leave their employer, and that a ban would result in higher wages and more innovation. The US Chamber of Commerce quickly filed a lawsuit challenging the rules in a Texas court. Separately, the FTC sued to stop an $8.5bn retail merger. It said that allowing Tapestry, whose brands include Coach and Kate Spade, to buy Capri, which owns Michael Kors, would give it a dominant share of the “accessible” luxury handbag market.

__必和必拓__提出收购__英美资源集团__的要约，这将是十多年来最大的矿业交易。这项以股份交易为基础的并购交易还涉及英美转让其南非铂金和铁矿石业务，将极大扩展必和必拓的铜业务。任何交易都可能面临来自反垄断当局等重大监管障碍。

BHP offered to buy Anglo American in what would be the biggest mining deal in more than a decade. The all-share merger, which would also involve Anglo hiving off its South African platinum and iron-ore units, would greatly expand the copper footprint of BHP. Any transaction could face significant regulatory hurdles, including from antitrust authorities.

Meta increased its revenue to $36bn in the first quarter, a rise of 27% year on year. Profits more than doubled, to $12bn. Investors, however, were unimpressed by its revenue guidance for the current quarter and plans to boost investment in artificial intelligence.

Meta 在第一季度实现的营收达到了360亿美元，同比增长27%。利润增加超过一倍，达到120亿美元。然而，投资者对其当前季度的营收预测和加大对人工智能投资计划并不感到满意。

回到目录

这周世界 (The world this week)

卡尔的漫画 (KAL’s cartoon)

这周世界2024年4月27日 (The world this week April 27th 2024)

深入探讨本周漫画的主题：挖掘更深入中国与俄罗斯的关系越来越牢固中国、俄罗斯和伊朗如何建立更紧密关系中国专家认为俄罗斯在乌克兰必将失败

Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon:Chaguan: China’s ties with Russia are growing more solid How China, Russia and Iran are forging closer ties Russia is sure to lose in Ukraine, reckons a Chinese expert on Russia

回到目录

本周世界 | 经济学人 (The world this week | The Economist)

本周封面 (This week’s cover)

我们看世界的方式 (How we saw the world)

在纳伦德拉·莫迪有望连任印度总理的六周之前，我们的封面领导关注了该国的经济。

SIX WEEKS before Narendra Modi is expected to win a third term as India’s prime minister, our cover leader focuses on the country’s economy.

莫迪先生领导下的印度是一个在去全球化和强人领导下如何变得更富有的实验。在未来10-20年内，能否实现快速增长并避免动荡将决定14亿人民和世界经济的命运。莫迪的方案正在奏效，但只能做到一定程度。但如果你正在寻找“下一个中国”：一个由制造业主导的奇迹，那么你在这里找不到。该国正在发展，而此时商品贸易停滞不前且工厂自动化。因此，它需要开创一种新的增长模式。

Mr Modi’s India is an experiment in how to get richer amid deglobalisation and under strongman leadership. Whether it can grow fast and avoid unrest over the next 10-20 years will shape the fate of 1.4bn people and the world economy. Mr Modi’s formula is working—up to a point. But if you are looking for “the next China”—a manufacturing-led miracle—you won’t find it here. The country is developing at a time of stagnating goods trade and factory automation. It therefore needs to pioneer a new model for growth.

领导：印度经济有多强劲？特别报告：印度通讯

Leader: How strong is India’s economy?Special report: The Indian express

回到目录

领导者 | 一个新经济大国的崛起 (Leaders | The rise of a new economic power)

印度的经济实力如何？ (How strong is India’s economy?)

虽然不是下一个中国，但它仍有可能改变自身和世界 (It isn’t the next China, but it could still transform itself and the world)

在六周后，人们预计纳伦德拉·莫迪(Narendra Modi)将赢得印度总理的第三个任期，巩固他作为尼赫鲁以来印度最重要领导人的地位。这位茶贩之子的选举成功反映了他的政治技巧、印度教民族主义思想的力量以及他对民主制度的侵蚀。但这也反映了普通选民和精英们的观念，他们认为他正在给印度带来繁荣和权力。

In six weeks’ time Narendra Modi is expected to win a third term as India’s prime minister, cementing his status as its most important leader since Nehru. The electoral success of this tea-seller’s son reflects his political skill, the potency of his Hindu-nationalist ideology and his erosion of democratic institutions. But it also reflects a sense among ordinary voters and elites that he is bringing India prosperity and power.

莫迪先生所领导的印度是一个在去全球化和强人领导下如何变得更富裕的实验。在未来10-20年内，它能否快速增长并避免动荡将决定14亿人口和世界经济的命运。正如我们的特别报道所解释的，莫迪的方案正在奏效——但存在着印度的成功能够持续下去以及是否取决于他继续掌权的问题。

Mr Modi’s India is an experiment in how to get richer amid deglobalisation and under strongman leadership. Whether it can grow fast and avoid unrest over the next 10-20 years will shape the fate of 1.4bn people and the world economy. As our special report explains, Mr Modi’s formula is working—up to a point. But there are questions over whether India’s success can last and whether it depends on him remaining in power.

阅读我们关于印度经济的特别报道

Read our special report on India’s economy

阅读我们关于纳伦德拉·莫迪如何美言国民的报道

Read our report on how Narendra Modi sweet-talks the nation

作为全球增长最快的大国，印度以每年6-7%的增速不断扩张。新数据显示私营部门的信心达到自2010年以来的最高水平。作为第五大经济体，印度到2027年可能排名第三，仅次于美国和中国。印度的影响力正以新的方式显现。美国企业在印度拥有150万员工，超过其他任何外国。其股市是世界第四大市值，航空市场排名第三。印度对俄罗斯石油的购买推动了全球价格。不断增长的财富意味着更多的地缘政治影响力。在胡塞武装扰乱苏伊士运河后，印度在中东部署了十艘军舰。乔·拜登和唐纳德·特朗普总统对其进行了追逐，但未争议印度将继续保持作为独立行动者的地位。

India, the world’s fastest-growing big country, is expanding at an annual rate of 6-7%. New data show private-sector confidence at its highest since 2010. Already the fifth-largest economy, it may rank third by 2027, after America and China. India’s clout is showing up in new ways. American firms have 1.5m staff in India, more than in any other foreign country. Its stockmarket is the world’s fourth-most-valuable, while the aviation market ranks third. India’s purchases of Russian oil move global prices. Rising wealth means more geopolitical heft. After the Houthis disrupted the Suez canal, India deployed ten warships in the Middle East. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have courted it without disputing that it will remain an independent actor.

如果你正在寻找“下一个中国”—一个以制造业为主导的奇迹—那么印度并不是。该国正在发展，同时全球商品贸易停滞不前，工厂自动化也在推进。因此，印度需要开拓一种新的增长模式。其中的一个支柱是熟悉的：一个将庞大单一市场紧密联系在一起的基础设施大规模项目。印度拥有149个机场，是十年前的两倍，每年还在新增10,000公里的公路和15GW的太阳能产能。其中一些基础设施是无形的，包括数字支付、现代资本市场和银行，以及统一的数字税收制度。所有这些让企业能够利用国家规模的经济。

If you are looking for “the next China”—a manufacturing-led miracle—it isn’t India. The country is developing at a time of stagnating goods trade and factory automation. It therefore needs to pioneer a new model for growth. One pillar of this is familiar: a massive programme of infrastructure that knits together a vast single market. India has 149 airports, double the number a decade ago, and is adding 10,000km of roads and 15gw of solar-energy capacity a year. Some of this infrastructure is intangible, including digital payments, modern capital markets and banks, and a unified digital tax system. All this allows firms to exploit national economies of scale.

第二个更新颖的支柱是服务出口，已经达到gdp的10%。全球服务贸易仍在增长，印度it公司推出了“全球能力中心”—这些中心销售给跨国公司研发和法律、会计等服务。然而，尽管拥有高科技园区，印度仍然是一个半农村社会。这解释了经济模式的最后支柱，即数以亿计的贫困印度人接受数字转移支付的新型福利制度。新数据表明，以2017年价格计算生活在每日2.15美元以下的人口比例——一个全球贫困的衡量标准——已经从2011年的12%降至不到5%。

A second, more novel pillar is services exports, which have reached 10% of gdp. Global trade in services is still growing and Indian it firms have marketed “global capability centres”—hubs that sell multinationals r&d and services such as law and accounting. Yet despite its slick tech campuses, India is still a semirural society. That explains the economic model’s final pillar, a new type of welfare system in which hundreds of millions of poor Indians receive digital transfer-payments. New data suggest the share of the population living on less than $2.15 a day in 2017 prices, a global measure of poverty, has fallen below 5% from 12% in 2011.

莫迪先生应该得到多少荣誉？他最成功的政策借鉴了1990年代和2000年代兴起于印度的自由主义议程，但这并没有错。他值得称赞是因为推动了停滞的改革，亲自监督关键决策，并且逼迫官僚主义的落后者和反对者。有人说他助长了裙带资本主义。然而，尽管有些大公司受到照顾，但企业集中度正在下降，腐败已经减少，业务呈现出丰富的多样性。作为ceo和民粹主义者的结合体，莫迪热衷于幻灯片展示和集会。如果他再赢得五年任期，印度将继续强劲增长。它的中产阶级也将如此：有6000万人年收入超过1万美元；据高盛估计，到2027年，这一数字将达到1亿人，高盛目前在印度的员工中有20%。

How much credit does Mr Modi deserve? His most successful policies draw on the liberal agenda that emerged in India in the 1990s and 2000s, but there is nothing wrong with that. He deserves credit for forcing through stalled reforms, personally overseeing key decisions and browbeating laggards and opponents in the bureaucracy. Some say he has fostered crony capitalism. Yet although some big firms get favours, concentration in business is falling, corruption has waned and business boasts a rich diversity. A cross between a ceo and a populist, Mr Modi relishes PowerPoint presentations as much as rallies. If he wins five more years, India will continue to grow strongly. So will its middle class: 60m people earn over $10,000 a year; by 2027, 100m will, reckons Goldman Sachs, a bank that now has 20% of its staff in India.

然而，印度面临着一个艰巨的问题。在10亿劳动年龄人口中，只有大约1亿人有正式工作。其余大部分人受困于临时工作或失业。莫迪的平凡起点帮助他与这些人交流。为了吸收部分印度的空余劳动力，他正在利用一个国营激励计划来促进制造业。但即使该计划达到目标，也只会创造700万个工作。习近平主席鼓吹的中国出口激增计划只会让任务变得更艰巨。

Yet India faces a daunting problem. Out of a working-age population of 1bn, only 100m or so have formal jobs. Most of the rest are stuck in casual work or joblessness. Mr Modi’s humble beginnings help him speak to these people. To absorb some of India’s spare labour he is using a state-run incentive scheme to promote manufacturing. But even if the scheme hits its targets, it will create just 7m jobs. President Xi Jinping’s plan for a Chinese export surge will only make the task harder.

印度经济必须创造大规模就业机会来维持其增长。一条途径是进一步发展IT行业，作为数字化世界的中心，以及一系列出口产业，包括数字金融、食品和国防（与美国建立更紧密的联系将有所帮助）。这些产业的工人支出将进一步在其他领域创造更多就业机会，从建筑到酒店。一个高效的、统一的国内市场将提高整体生产率，而有针对性的福利政策可以帮助那些落后的人。为此，印度必须改革教育和农业，并促使人口稠密的北部向南部和西部大城市更大规模地迁移。

India’s economy must generate mass employment to sustain its growth. One path would be an even bigger it sector, acting as a hub for a digitising world, and a cluster of export industries, including digital finance, food and defence (where stronger links with America would help). Spending by workers in these industries would in turn create more jobs in other sectors, from construction to hotels. An efficient, single domestic market would raise overall productivity and well-targeted welfare could help those who fall behind. For this, India would have to transform education and agriculture, and enable much more migration from the populous north to the big southern and western cities.

按照这些宏大的标准评价，莫迪先生表现得言之不净。他领导的人民党拥有一些才华和想法，但大多数时间都专注于意识形态和针对穆斯林。逐渐崛起的不自由主义压制了政治反对派和言论自由。企业害怕莫迪可能是解释投资尚未大幅增长的原因。在2030年代为巨大社会变革做准备的过程几乎还没有开始。重塑教育、城市和农业将需要不由人民党领导的邦政府和面临混乱的社会团体的合作，但莫迪粗暴的政治手法已经让许多人疏远。

Judged by those epic standards, Mr Modi has too little to say. His Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) has some talent and ideas but is mostly focused on ideology and Muslim-bashing. A rising illiberalism has curtailed political opposition and free speech. The fact that firms fear Mr Modi may explain why investment has yet to surge. The process of preparing the public for huge social change in the 2030s has barely begun. Remaking education, cities and agriculture will require the co-operation of state governments that are not led by the bjp and social groups that are facing disruption, but Mr Modi’s rebarbative politics have left many of them estranged.

对于印度及其重量级经济体来说，问题不在于莫迪是否获胜，而在于他是否会进化。73岁的他可能会发现自己的管理能力在减弱。为了打造与上世纪90年代出现的改革议程相当的新议程，并培育一个繁荣的知识经济，奖励人们自主思考，他必须约束自己专断的冲动。为了吸引更多本地和外国投资，并找到一个注重增长的接班人，他的党派将需要遏制其沙文主义政治。若无法做到这一点，莫迪先生国家复兴的使命将无法兑现其承诺。 ■

The question for India and its heavyweight economy is not whether Mr Modi wins, but whether he will evolve. Aged 73, he may find his powers of management fade. To create a new reform agenda on a par with the one that emerged out of the 1990s, and to foster a thriving knowledge economy that rewards people for thinking for themselves, he will have to temper his autocratic impulses. To attract more local and foreign investment and to find a growth-minded successor, his party will need to curb its chauvinistic politics. If not, Mr Modi’s mission of national renewal will not live up to its promise. ■

回到目录

领导者 | 目前的好消息 (Leaders | Good news, for now)

美国最新的援助只会给乌克兰暂时的喘息时间 (America’s latest aid will give Ukraine only a temporary reprieve)

华盛顿的斗争之苦是未来的风险预兆。 (The bitterness of the struggle in Washington is a sign of trouble ahead)

为一个人扔一个救生衣可以消除即时的危险。但如果他离安全处几英里远且海水寒冷，他仍然处于危险之中。基本上，这就是在总统乔·拜登于4月24日签署了一项长期拖延的法案之后对乌克兰进行思考的方式。这将拨出价值610亿美元的军事和财政援助，帮助其抵抗俄罗斯**入侵者，并提供资金给以色列和台湾。如果资金没有到位，尽管在六个月的国会僵局期间这种可能性似乎存在，乌克兰面临在夏季初预期的新一轮俄罗斯攻势中失去更多领土的前景。哎呀，尽管610亿美元维持了乌克兰的生存，但它仍然远离岸边。

THROW A MAN a life jacket and you remove an immediate danger. But if he is miles from safety and the waters are frigid, he is still in peril. That, more or less, is how to think about Ukraine after President Joe Biden signed a long-delayed bill on April 24th. This will allocate $61bn-worth of military and financial assistance to help it fight back against the Russian invaders, as well as providing money for Israel and Taiwan. Had the cash not come through, as seemed possible during six months of congressional deadlock, Ukraine faced the prospect of losing yet more of its territory to a fresh Russian offensive expected early in the summer. Alas, although $61bn keeps Ukraine afloat, it remains far from the shore.

对乌克兰的好消息是，最新的美国援助将很快在前线上产生影响。自资金从秋季开始枯竭以来，重要物资，特别是炮弹的短缺变得愈发紧迫。俄罗斯每发射一枚炮弹，乌克兰就还击五次或更多。随着弹药已经储存在波兰的美国基地，这一限制现在将得到缓解。随着炮弹的到来，俄罗斯将发现在集中兵力和坦克进行新一轮攻击时更加危险。将急需的无人机和导弹拦截器送入乌克兰将需要更长时间，但最终俄罗斯将不再控制天空，特别是在前线上。

The good news for Ukraine is that the latest American package will soon be felt on the front lines. Since funds began to dwindle in the autumn, shortages of crucial supplies, especially shells, have become ever more pressing. Russia has been firing five or more rounds for every one Ukraine sends the other way. With munitions already stockpiled at American bases in Poland, that constraint will now be eased. As shells arrive, so Russia will find it more dangerous to concentrate men and tanks for fresh assaults. Getting much-needed drone- and missile-interceptors into Ukraine will take longer, but eventually Russia will no longer control the skies, especially over the front lines.

点击此处阅读我们最近对乌克兰战争的报道的更多内容

然而，这一消息也受到一些令人深思的现实情况的制衡。首先，尽管新援助将增强乌克兰的防御能力，但它并不足以帮助其夺回已失去给俄罗斯的领土，如今已经占到其陆地总面积的18%左右（一半在2014年被占领，一半是在2022年入侵后被占领的）。去年夏天失败的反攻行动教训重大，乌克兰在人员和物资方面付出了沉重代价，夺取领土是困难的。无人机和卫星使战场变得透明，消除了战争的迷雾，使摧毁人员和装甲集中地变得更容易。持续的僵局现在对乌克兰来说是更为现实的希望。

However, this news is tempered by some sobering facts. First, although the new package will boost Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, it is not enough to help it recapture the territory it has lost to Russia, which now amounts to around 18% of its land mass (half seized in 2014, half after the invasion in 2022). The lesson of last summer’s failed counter-offensive, which cost Ukraine dearly in terms of men and materiel, is that taking territory is hard. Drones and satellites have made the battlefield transparent, lifting the fog of war and making it easier to destroy concentrations of men and armour. Continued stalemate is now a more realistic hope for Ukraine.

其次，国会为通过这项法案而进行的争执是未来困难的迹象。610亿美元大致与美国在战争前约20个月左右为乌克兰所花费的金额相匹配，之后其资金便告耗尽。因此，新资金到2025年后期可能已经用尽。即使还有余额，到那时候新当选的唐纳德·特朗普可能决定不再使用它们。如果拜登先生仍然在任，刚刚经历的泄气的战斗将不得不在明年再次进行。这最新的美国援助可能会成为最后一次。

Second, the battle in Congress to get the bill passed is a sign of trouble ahead. The $61bn roughly matches what America spent on Ukraine in the first 20 months or so of the war, after which its funding ran out. The new money may therefore be used up by the latter part of 2025. Even if funds are left over, by then a newly elected Donald Trump may decide not to use them. If Mr Biden is still president, the demoralising battle just fought will have to be fought again next year. This latest American package may turn out to be the last.

这就是为什么欧洲领导人认为美国援助仅仅是暂时的喘息是错误的原因。这场战争可能会拖延下去，可能会持续多年。自乌克兰在2022年11月将俄罗斯人赶回第聂伯河以来，也就是近18个月前，前线几乎没有移动，尽管付出了极大的生命损失。乌克兰的盟友可能会敦促其用土地换取安全，但很难想象一个既能满足乌克兰又能令俄罗斯满意的协议。在某一时刻，一方可能会放弃，但目前还没有迹象。

That is why European leaders would be wrong to see American aid as anything more than a temporary reprieve. The chances are that this war will drag on, possibly for many years. Since Ukraine drove the Russians back across the Dnieper river in November 2022, almost 18 months ago, the front line has barely shifted, despite an immense loss of life. Ukraine’s allies may urge it to trade land for security, but it is hard to see an agreement that could satisfy both Ukraine and Russia. At some point one side or the other may give up, but there is no sign of it yet.

西方的目标是，正确地说，努力使乌克兰稳定、安全、繁荣，使其处于可防御的边界之内，并朝着欧洲联盟和北约的成员资格迈进。在华盛顿的激烈斗争表明，欧洲领导人已经注意到他们将不得不承担更多的责任，承担更大的国防工业。尽管欧洲是向乌克兰提供财政和人道主义援助最大的捐助者，在军事援助方面，欧洲和美国的支出大致相当。由于美国的援助，欧洲领导人有更多时间解决如何帮助乌克兰取胜的问题。任务的繁重意味着他们的工作同样紧迫。 ■

The West’s goal is, rightly, a stable, secure and prospering Ukraine that lies within defensible borders and is progressing towards membership of the European Union and NATO. The bitterness of the struggle in Washington means European leaders are on notice that they will have to carry more of the burden for bringing this about, and will need a larger defence industry. Although Europe is the biggest donor of financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, in terms of military assistance European and American spending have been roughly the same. Thanks to the American lifeline, Europe’s leaders have more time to sort out how to help Ukraine win. The size of the task means that their work is no less urgent. ■

回到目录

领导者 | 重回正轨 (Leaders | Back on the road)

不要对特斯拉及其电动汽车竞争对手感到沮丧 (Don’t be gloomy about Tesla and its EV rivals)

这个行业经历了糟糕的几个月。但需求很可能会增加。 (The industry has had a terrible few months. But demand is likely to pick up)

唐纳德·特朗普在电动汽车方面可能是对的吗？今年三月，美国前总统兼电动汽车头号批评者抱怨称它们“成本过高”和“续航能力不强”。许多汽车购买者似乎也同意这一观点。在美国，电动汽车的交付量在过去的三个季度中没有增长。在自诩为绿色典范的欧洲，上个月的销量同比下降了11%。4月23日，作为电动汽车革命的代名词的特斯拉报告称季度业绩不佳，销售额和收入均出现下滑。自1月1日以来，特斯拉的股市价值已蒸发3300亿美元。五家电动汽车的竞争者，他们在2021年的市值总额接近4000亿美元，如今仅为580亿美元。

COULD DONALD TRUMP be right about electric vehicles? In March America’s former president, and its EV-basher-in-chief, complained that they “cost too much” and “don’t go far”. Many car buyers seem to agree. In America deliveries of EVs have not risen in the past three quarters. In greener-than-thou Europe they fell last month, by 11% year on year. On April 23rd Tesla, a byword for the electric revolution, reported poor quarterly results, with falling sales and revenues. It has shed $330bn in stockmarket value since January 1st. Five ev wannabes, collectively worth close to $400bn in 2021, are valued at a mere $58bn today.

在急于提升电动汽车产量之后，传统车企正在急刹车。福特推迟了120亿美元的计划投资于电动汽车。梅赛德斯-奔驰现在表示，他们将在2030年之前实现电动汽车销量达到与汽油车相同的目标，比最初承诺的时间晚了五年。你可能会得出结论，电动化的未来岌岌可危。

Having raced to boost EV production, established carmakers are slamming on the brakes. Ford has delayed $12bn in planned EV investments. Mercedes-Benz now says it will reach its goal of selling as many EVs as petrol cars by 2030, five years later than originally promised. You may conclude that the electrified future is in peril.

这样的断言太过悲观。事实上，有很多理由引起对需求上升的期望。该行业极有可能在今天的低迷之后走向更加可持续的无碳汽车之路。乐观的一个理由是最近的放缓在一定程度上是周期性的。2021年和2022年，现金充裕的消费者进行了疫情后的消费狂潮，销售额快速增长。许多现在没有被购买的电动汽车是在那时购买的，正如很多现在闲置不用的笔记本电脑、智能手机和其他小工具也是。较高的利率意味着，两年前汽车贷款年利率低于5%的美国人，现在不得不支付超过8%。这是一个问题，特别是在很多地方，典型的电动汽车仍比其汽油动力替代品要贵40-60%。

That would be much too gloomy. In fact there are good reasons to expect demand to pick up. The industry may well emerge from today’s dip on a more sustainable course towards carbon-free motoring. One reason for optimism is that the recent slowdown is partly cyclical. Sales grew rapidly in 2021 and 2022 as cash-rich consumers went on a post-pandemic spending spree. Many EVs that are not being bought now were purchased back then—as were lots of laptops, smartphones and other gizmos that are now languishing. Higher interest rates mean that Americans who paid less than 5% a year on a car loan two years ago now have to pay more than 8%. That is a problem, especially when in many places the typical EV remains 40-60% pricier than its petrol-powered alternative.

特朗普先生在有关电动汽车成本的观点或许在今天还有一定道理，但这种情况不会持续太久——这是另一个排除悲观情绪的理由。许多型号的绿色溢价正在缩小。诸如锂等电池矿物的价格已经下降，电池价格也有所降低。五年前，电动SUV的价格是其高耗油同类车的两到三倍，但性能并未提高两到三倍。如今，你可以以不到4万美元的价格购买一辆福特F-150闪电版，仅比该热门皮卡的汽油版多4000美元，而这4000美元一年就能通过不用汽油而节省下来（汽油价格与锂不同，并未降低）。通过大约20万个充电桩之一轻松充电，这一数字是2020年的两倍，在美国提供。在中国，根据官方预测者、国际能源机构表示，电动汽车的平均价格已经比传统汽车更便宜，甚至还未考虑运营成本。小型电动汽车的价格是同类化石燃料汽车的三分之二。咨询公司艾伦咨询的一项新调查发现，97%的中国汽车购买者表示他们的下一辆车将是电动汽车。

Mr Trump may have a point on evs’ cost today, but not for much longer—another reason to dismiss the gloom. The green premium is narrowing for many models. Prices of battery minerals such as lithium have fallen, as have prices of the cells they go into. Five years ago electric SUVs were two to three times the cost of their gas-guzzling cousins, without being two to three times as good. Today you can buy a Ford F-150 Lightning for less than $40,000, just $4,000 more than the petrol version of the popular pickup—$4,000 that you earn back in a single year by not having to fill it up with petrol (which, in contrast to lithium, is not getting cheaper). It is easier to juice up, too, at one of roughly 200,000 charging ports across America, twice the number available in 2020. In China electric cars are already the cheaper option on average, says the International Energy Agency, an official forecaster, even before running costs. Small EVs are two-thirds the price of a comparable fossil-fuel runaround. A new survey by AlixPartners, a consultancy, found that 97% of Chinese car buyers say their next car will run on batteries.

西方汽车制造商或许也应该从中国经验中吸取教训。早期采用者购买特斯拉作为身份象征，而中国人现在购买它的竞争对手比亚迪生产的汽车，因为它们物美价廉。西方制造商应该更加注重大众市场模型，不再忽视中档车型。在他们这样做之前，高昂的价格将继续压制需求，使规模经济难以实现。福特预计其着迷于皮卡的电动部门今年至少将亏损50亿美元。

Western carmakers may also draw lessons from the Chinese experience. Whereas early adopters bought a Tesla as a status symbol, the Chinese are now buying cars made by its rival, BYD, because they are good value. Western makers should fixate less on high-end models and stop neglecting the middle-of-the-road. Until they do, high prices will keep demand subdued and economies of scale elusive. Ford expects its pickup-obsessed electric division to lose at least $5bn this year.

投资者变得更具洞察力应该是有帮助的。他们不再准备将数十亿美元投入任何一家业务较为合理的电动初创公司中。而且他们会奖励那些具有大众市场雄心的公司。本月早些时候有报道称埃隆·马斯克将取消一款价格为2.5万美元的汽车，而选择一大批自动驾驶机器人车，特斯拉的股价应声下跌。4月23日，当他改弦易辙时，股价反弹。通用汽车的股价截至目前已增长25%，其高管在本周的财报电话会议上大力宣扬即将推出的大众市场电动汽车。

The fact that investors are becoming more discerning should help. They are no longer prepared to pour billions into any e-startup with a passable slide deck. And they are rewarding firms with mass-market ambitions. Tesla’s stock price plunged when it was reported earlier this month that Elon Musk would scrap a $25,000 car in favour of a fleet of self-driving robots. The share price bounced back on April 23rd, after he performed a u-turn. Shares in General Motors, whose bosses talked up its coming mass-market EVs on an earnings call this week, have gained 25% so far this year.

西方政府担心气候变化和石油价格，可以采取更多措施推动电动汽车革命的发展，例如为中国的汽车制造商开放更多市场准入机会。AlixPartners发现，十分之七的美国人、英国人、法国人和德国人表示，如果中国电动汽车的价格比非中国替代品便宜20%，他们会考虑购买，而这个价格差接近真实的价格差异。

Western governments worried about climate change and oil prices could do more to speed along the ev revolution, by giving Chinese carmakers more access to their markets. AlixPartners found that seven in ten Americans, Britons, French and Germans would consider an EV from China if it cost 20% less than a non-Chinese alternative—which is close to the real price difference.

迄今为止，政策制定者们一直致力于扩大充电设施的能力（这是一个受欢迎的举措），并提供补贴（这一举措则相对不那么受欢迎）。他们最好是消除阻碍中国电动汽车进入市场的障碍。这样既可以取悦司机，又可以通过提高竞争力，促使现有的汽车制造商改进他们的电动汽车产品。 ■

So far policymakers have focused on expanding charging capacity (which is welcome) and handing out subsidies (which is less so). They would do better to lift the barriers that keep Chinese EVs from their roads. That would please motorists and, by boosting competition, jolt incumbent carmakers into cleaning up their EV act. ■

回到目录

领袖 | Brechrit? (Leaders | Brechrit?)

为什么退出欧洲人权公约对英国来说是个不明智的想法 (Why leaving the ECHR would be a bad idea for Britain)

保守党纯洁度的下一个试金石 (The next litmus test of Tory purity)

在理想世界中，糟糕的想法会逐渐被淡化。在英国执政的保守党中，这些想法有很大可能成为官方政策。脱离该国的最大贸易伙伴？当然可以。将寻求庇护者送往非洲？让我们这样做。现在又有一项计划的推力在背后：退出《欧洲人权公约（ECHR）。

In an ideal world, bad ideas would fade into irrelevance. In Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, they have a good chance of becoming official policy. Divorce the country’s largest trading partner? Sure. Send asylum-seekers to Africa? Let’s do it. Now there is momentum behind another scheme: leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

欧洲人权公约是一个包含个人权利和自由的框架，英国是二战后第一个签署该公约的国家。对于保守党内的一部分人来说，欧洲人权公约长期以来一直是一个刺激因素；如今，它变成了一种侮辱。在2022年，执行该公约的法院阻止了将寻求庇护者驱逐到卢旺达的航班；本周，议会通过了一项荒诞的法律，将卢旺达定为一个安全国家，并允许部长们无视类似的禁令。首相瑞士·萨纳克警告称，没有外国法院会阻止卢旺达计划的进行。如果瑞士在下次选举被踢出，退出欧洲人权公约几乎肯定会成为领导候选人的试金石。

The ECHR is a set of individual rights and freedoms that Britain was the first country to sign up to after the second world war. For chunks of the Tory party, the ECHR has long been an irritant; now it is an affront. In 2022 the court that enforces it blocked flights deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda; this week Parliament passed a through-the-looking-glass law designating Rwanda a safe country and allowing ministers to ignore similar injunctions. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, warned that no “foreign court” would stop the Rwanda scheme from getting off the ground. Leaving the ECHR will almost certainly be a litmus test for leadership candidates if Mr Sunak is turfed out at the next election.

法院位于斯特拉斯堡，几乎可以确定会引起争议。基于权利的法律往往容易产生泛泛的判决，可能会偏离政治范畴。今年四月，该法院裁定瑞士未能应对气候变化侵犯了一群老年妇女的隐私权和家庭生活权。2002年，该法院引用隐私权为其具有影响力的裁决，让一名英国跨性别女性更改了她的出生证明。该法院也存在不透明性，直到最近，法官可以在匿名情况下发布紧急禁令。

For more on Britons’ voting intentions, see our poll tracker, updated daily

但这些都不足以构成退出欧洲人权公约的充分理由。首先，在庇护这个狭窄问题上，斯特拉斯堡的法官得到了英国最高国内法院的支持，该法院去年表示卢旺达是不安全的。这一判断基于一系列国际协议和法律（实际上，保守党愤怒的更公平的目标可能是《日内瓦公约》，它告诉国家谁应该获得庇护）。英国非法移民问题的恶化是由国内功能失调加剧的。英国批准移民庇护请求的比例高于法国和德国，而且处理这些请求的时间过长，因此许多寻求庇护者在此期间可能会消失在人群中。欧洲人权公约是一个复杂问题的方便替罪羊。

The court, based in Strasbourg, is almost certain to be contentious. Laws based on rights lend themselves to wide-ranging judgments that can stray into politics. In April it ruled that Switzerland’s failure to combat climate change had violated the right to privacy and family life of a group of elderly women. The right to privacy was cited in an influential ECHR ruling in 2002 that let a British trans woman change her birth certificate. The court is also opaque; until recently, judges could issue emergency injunctions without being named.

其次，退出的成本比好处更为清晰。从欧洲人权公约退出在影响方面无法与脱欧相提并论，但这将耗费时间和精力，收益却不明显。公约的遵守已融入《圣诞协议（Good Friday Agreement）》，这是1998年为了结束北爱尔兰30年宗派冲突而达成的协议，并融入了与欧盟签订的脱欧后贸易协定。这也会向全世界发出英国另一个不良信号。国际义务强加约束于国家政府，这是公认的道理。一个以法治为基础的中等规模开放经济体不希望自己以不太喜欢的协议为响声。

But none of this adds up to a compelling argument for walking out of the ECHR. First, on the narrow issue of asylum, the judges in Strasbourg were backed up by Britain’s highest domestic court, which said last year that Rwanda was unsafe. That judgment was based on a myriad of international agreements and laws (indeed, a fairer target for Tory ire may be the Geneva Convention, which tells countries who should be granted asylum). The problem of illegal migration into Britain is compounded by domestic dysfunction. The country grants a higher proportion of asylum requests than either France or Germany, and takes so long to process them that many asylum-seekers can disappear into the crowds in the meantime. The ECHR is a useful scapegoat for a complex problem.

当改革是一个选择时，留在其中就成为第三个理由。该法院可以是务实的：最近关于法官匿名规则的变更，以及对于发布紧急禁令的更加严格的标准，很大程度上归功于英国的压力。瑞士的气候裁决似乎没有那么激进。该法院也可以进行改革。自1951年以来，其成员已达成16个修改协议；2013年英国引入了一个协议，强调国家当局更适合做出决策。保守党的强硬派似乎完全不感兴趣从内部改变事物。

Second, the costs of leaving are clearer than the benefits. Withdrawal from the ECHR would bear no comparison with Brexit in terms of its impact, but it would suck up time and energy for little obvious reward. Adherence to the convention is sewn into the Good Friday Agreement, the deal struck in 1998 to end 30 years of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland, and into the post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union. It would also send another bad signal about Britain to the wider world. It is axiomatic that international obligations impose constraints on national governments. A mid-size, open economy whose appeal rests on the rule of law does not want a reputation for resiling from agreements it does not much like.

考虑到在民意调查中的绝对领先地位，工党的立场在短期内比保守党更为重要，如果工党赢得选举，就没有退出欧洲人权公约的计划。但英国两大政党之一的保守党的趋势并非一些细枝末节。如果退出欧洲人权公约成为保守党的确立立场，这将表明他们眼中怪诞的追求比该国紧迫问题更为重要。另一个糟糕的想法将更进一步成为政策。

That is especially true when reform is an option—the third argument for staying in. The court can be pragmatic: recent changes to the rules about judges’ anonymity, along with much tougher criteria for issuing emergency injunctions, owed much to pressure from Britain. The Swiss climate judgment was less sweeping than it might seem. The court can also be reformed. Since 1951 its members have agreed on 16 amending “protocols”; one was introduced by Britain in 2013 and underlined that national authorities are often better placed to make decisions. Tory hardliners seem wholly uninterested in changing things from within.

Given its commanding lead in the polls, the position of the Labour Party matters more in the short term than that of the Tory party—and Labour has no plans to quit the ECHR if it wins the election. But the trajectory of the Conservatives, one of Britain’s two big parties, is not some minor detail. If leaving the ECHR becomes the Tories’ settled position, it will show that quixotic pursuits matter more to them than the country’s pressing problems. And another bad idea will be further advanced on the path to becoming policy. ■

回到目录

领导者 | 断骨蓝调 (Leaders | Breakbone blues)

随着地球变暖，要当心登革热 (As the planet warms, watch out for dengue fever)

一种由蚊子传播的疾病正在蔓延，必须加以控制。 (A mosquito-borne disease is spreading—and must be curbed)

与隐蔽、传播疟疾的姐妹相比，埃及伊蚊的女性会发出令人沮丧的嗡嗡声来预示其靠近。她的叮咬比她的嗡嗡声更加让人难受。如果她携带黄病毒病原体，她的受害者就可能感染登革热。大多数感染都没有症状，但少数不幸的人将患上“骨折热”，这种疾病会引起严重的关节疼痛、出血，有时还会导致死亡。这病的后遗症，了解甚少，包括疲劳和认知受损。埃及伊蚊的数量是如此之多，以至于美国疾病控制和预防中心估计全球每年有1亿人感染登革热。

Unlike her stealthy, malaria-spreading cousin, the female Aedes aegypti signals her approach with an exasperating drone.Her bite is far worse than her buzz. If she carries a flaviviruspathogen, her victim can be infected with dengue fever. Most infections pass without symptoms, but an unfortunate few are racked with “breakbone fever”, which causes severe joint pain, haemorrhage and, occasionally, death. The after-effects, which are poorly understood, include fatigue and cognitive impairment. Aedes is so plentiful that the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reckons 100m people around the world fall sick with dengue every year.

感染登革热的人数急剧上升。根据世界卫生组织（WHO）的数据，2000年有大约2万人死于该病。而今年至少会有4万人丧生。相比之下，WHO表示，从2000年到2022年，疟疾的死亡人数减少了30%。

The number of people contracting dengue has risen dramatically. In 2000 about 20,000 people died of it, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). This year at least 40,000 will perish. By contrast, between 2000 and 2022, deaths from malaria declined by 30%, the WHO says.

可怕的热病及其后遗症是登革热最沉重的负担。病例数上升得比死亡人数快得多。拥有最严重感染区域 的拉丁美洲根据联合国的巴拿马厄美洲卫生组织数据显示，2000年至2005年间平均每年有53.5万病例，在2023年达到了460万。而在2024年早期已经达到了590万。埃及伊蚊让巴西人患病如此严重，以至于可能会让全国国内生产总值减少0.2%。巴西一些受登革热影响地区的学校辍学率约比未受其影响的地区高出约5%。

The terrible fever and its after-effects are dengue’s greatest burdens. Cases have risen much faster than deaths. Latin America, the worst-afflicted region, had an average of 535,000 cases a year in 2000-05, according to the Pan American Health Organisation, an arm of the UN. In 2023 it suffered 4.6m. Already in 2024 there have been 5.9m (see chart). Aedes sickens Brazilians so badly that it could drag down national GDP by 0.2%. Schools in parts of the country afflicted with dengue suffer dropout rates that are about 5% higher than those spared it.

痛苦可能会进一步增加并传播至热带以外的地区。埃及伊蚊对温度微小变化敏感，随着地球变暖，它们的分布范围一直在扩大。传播疟疾的按蚊已经在世界大部分地区生根。埃及伊蚊尚未如此。根据气候变化的当前趋势模拟显示，埃及伊蚊将蔓延至欧洲南部和美国大部分地区，使另外20亿人面临感染登革热的风险。

The suffering is likely to rise further and spread beyond the tropics. Aedes mosquitoes are sensitive to small changes in temperature and their range has been expanding as the planet warms. Anopheles, thespecies that spreads malaria, is already established in most of the world. Aedes is not. Modelling suggests that, on current trends of climate change, Aedes will spread into large parts of southern Europe and the United States, putting another 2bn people at risk of getting dengue.

城市化也有助于疾病的传播。随着人们聚集在城市中，每只蚊子在其短暂的两周寿命内可以叮咬更多受害者。在以前几乎没有受到这种疾病影响的地方，如孟加拉国和印度，病例数量正在快速增加。近年来，加利福尼亚、南欧及亚热带非洲的登革热病例也在增加。

Urbanisation also helps the disease spread. As people cluster in cities, each individual mosquito can bite more victims during its short, two-week lifespan. Cases are rising fast in places that had not previously suffered much from the disease, including Bangladesh and India. In recent years cases of dengue have been growing in California, southern Europe and subtropical Africa, too.

世界必须为这种热病做好准备。尽管富裕的北半球日益面临风险，但最受影响的是世界上贫困的地区。挣扎的经济体很难承受由于疾病造成的生产力损失。而要为可能限制其传播的措施付费也并非易事。床网是一个廉价且有效的遏制疟疾的方式，但并不适用于登革热，因为与按蚊不同，埃及伊蚊在白天叮咬人。

The world must prepare for much more of the fever. Although the rich northern hemisphere is increasingly at risk, it is the poorer parts of the world that will suffer most. Struggling economies can ill afford to have their productivity sapped by the disease. Nor will it be easy for them to pay for measures that might restrict its spread. Bed nets, a cheap and effective way to curb malaria, do not work for dengue, since Aedes, unlike Anopheles, bites people during the day.

新加坡长期以来一直在与登革热作斗争。有能力支付公共卫生工作者的军队穿梭于城市街道，搜寻蚊子孳生的积水，用吸管吸走这些积水并处以罚款。这个城市模拟疫情爆发，然后在预测的震中区部署穿着防护服的杀虫剂喷雾军团。拉丁美洲国家也有类似的灭菌军团，但由于预算有限而需要覆盖的面积广阔，他们在遏制该疾病在该地区迅速增长方面并未取得很大进展。贫民窟是一个难以追踪蚊子滋生地的艰难之地。

Singapore has long done a fine job of fighting dengue. It helps that it is rich enough to pay armies of public-health workers to traipse through its streets, searching out the standing water in which mosquitoes breed, pipetting puddles and issuing fines. The city-state models outbreaks and then deploys platoons of insecticide sprayers in hazmat suits to the predicted epicentres. Latin American countries have hazmat armies too, but with modest budgets and vast areas to cover, they have not done much to slow dengue’s explosive growth in the region. Slums are hard places in which to track down mosquito breeding-grounds.

因此，考虑采取其他方法是明智的。自2016年以来，新加坡一直在实施另一种高科技登革热计划。该计划每周释放500万只感染沃尔巴赫细菌的蚊子。这可以防止它们或其后代传播导致登革热的病毒，成本约为每年3500万美元，即每位居民6美元。结合开发中的新疫苗，这提供了一种不依赖大量发现积水搜寻者的对抗登革热的方法。在哥伦比亚进行的沃尔巴赫细菌感染试验显示，释放这些蚊子的地区登革热发病率下降了94%。全球最大的沃尔巴赫细菌蚊子工厂预计将于今年在巴西城市库里蒂巴投入运营。随着登革热的传播，其他地方也应该效仿。目标应该是将埃及伊蚊的嗡鸣变成一种麻烦，而不是威胁。 ■

So it is wise to consider other approaches. Since 2016 Singapore has been running another, higher-tech dengue programme. Every week it releases 5m mosquitoes infected with wolbachia bacteria. This prevents them or their offspring from transmitting the virus that causes dengue and costs about $35m a year, or $6 per resident. Combined with new vaccines under development, it provides a way of fighting dengue that does not rely on legions of standing-water spotters. Trials of wolbachia infection in Colombia have seen a 94% drop in dengue incidents in the area where the mosquitoes are released. The world’s largest wolbachia-mosquito factory is due to start operations in the Brazilian city of Curitiba this year. As dengue spreads, other places should follow. The aim should be to turn Aedes’ buzz into a nuisance, rather than a menace. ■

回到目录

中国 | 骡马与摩托车队 (China | Mules and motorcades)

中国网络如何大规模洗白黑钱 (How Chinese networks clean dirty money on a vast scale)

这些暗黑“银行”正成为跨国犯罪团伙的首选融资方 (These shadowy “banks” are becoming the financiers of choice for transnational criminal gangs)

如今美国和中国在任何事情上进行合作已经是很少见的了。 《经济学人》发行当时，美国国务卿安东尼·布林肯正在访问中国，部分原因是向他的东道主施压，要求他们停止向俄罗斯国防工业部门发送与武器有关的材料。他很幸运如果能得到一个礼貌的微笑。因此，值得注意的是，这两个国家最近决定在另一个领域加强相互支持，即打击洗钱。本月他们启动了一项双边论坛来讨论这个问题。与俄罗斯不同，这对他们两国来说都是一个大问题。

IT IS RARE these days for America and China to co-operate on anything. As The Economist went to press, America’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was on a trip to China, in part to press his hosts to stop sending weapons-related materials to Russia’s defence industries. He will be lucky to get a polite smile. So it is noteworthy that the two countries have recently decided to boost mutual support in another domain: the fight against money-laundering. This month they launched a bilateral forum to discuss the problem. Unlike Russia, it is a big one for both of them.

近年来，洗钱威胁不断增长，得到了由中国地下网络提供支持的新技术的推动，这些技术可以使脏钱在几分钟内被洗净。对于跨国犯罪团伙来说，这些暗黑的“银行”正在变成首选的金融贷款人。要遏制它们，这两个大国需要进行交谈。在它们之间的政治不和中，关于洗钱的讨论已经多年停滞。美国财政部的一位官员称，它们的恢复标志着“一个巨大的变化，一个巨大的积极变化”。

The menace has grown in recent years, fuelled by underground Chinese networks equipped with new technologies that can enable dirty money to be washed clean in minutes. For transnational criminal gangs, these shadowy “banks” are becoming the financiers of choice. Suppressing them requires the two great powers to talk. Amid their political rancour, discussions about money-laundering had been on ice for years. Their resumption marks “a big change, a big positive change”, says an official from America’s Treasury Department.

在美国，这个威胁是生死攸关的问题。截至2023年11月，超过105,000名美国人被吸食毒品，主要是来自墨西哥的芬太尼和其他合成阿片类药物而导致死亡。中国地下银行通过迅速和低成本地帮助墨西哥贩毒集团洗钱，在其中扮演了至关重要的角色。

In America the threat is a matter of life and death. In the 12 months to November 2023 more than 105,000 Americans were killed by overdosing on drugs, mainly fentanyl and other synthetic opioids smuggled into the country from Mexico. Chinese underground banks play a crucial role in this by enabling Mexican cartels to launder their proceeds swiftly and at low cost.

2021年《美国情报杂志》发表了一篇论文，作者是美国国务院的弗吉尼亚·肯特和马里兰国家情报大学的罗伯特·盖伊，他们论及中国资金处理组织的“无血政变”，指出近年来，这些组织在墨西哥基本上取代了本国的组织。作者将这些中国经营者称为“一种新而具有挑战性的洗钱敌人”。

In a paper published in 2021 by the American Intelligence Journal, Virginia Kent of the State Department and Robert Gay of the National Intelligence University in Maryland wrote of a “bloodless coup” by Chinese money-handling organisations, noting how, in recent years, they have largely displaced home-grown ones in Mexico. The authors called these Chinese operators “a new and more challenging money-laundering foe”.

美国政府一直在发出警告。在2022年的“国家洗钱风险评估”中，财政部强调了中国非法融资的涉及，称毒贩们正在越来越多地利用它。该部门发布的最新报告指出，自那时起，中国组织已经“更加普遍”，并且现在是全球洗钱中的“关键行为者”之一。美国官员希望，新的洗钱论坛以及今年由美国和中国发起的另一个旨在打击毒品贩运的论坛将有助于打击它们。

The American government has been sounding the alarm. In its “National Money Laundering Risk Assessment” of 2022, the Treasury Department highlighted the involvement of Chinese illicit finance, saying that drug-traffickers were making increasing use of it. The department’s latest such report, published in February, said that Chinese organisations had since become “more prevalent” and were now among the “key actors” laundering money around the globe. American officials hope that the new money-laundering forum, along with another launched by America and China this year to tackle drug-trafficking, will help fight them.

其他当局也纷纷加入。2019年，欧盟警察机构欧洲刑警组织表示，亚洲犯罪团伙，特别是中国团伙，进行的洗钱对欧洲构成了“日益严重的威胁”。它称中国黑帮“极其灵活”，称他们正在处理从各种犯罪活动中获得的“大量收益”。2022年1月，联合国毒品和犯罪问题办公室报告称，东南亚的“地下银行体系”正在发生“革命性”变化，这些变化涉及从赌场到加密货币等各种事物。其提供的细节表明，中国黑帮处于领先地位。

Other authorities have been chiming in, too. In 2019 Europol, the EU’s police agency, said money-laundering by Asian criminal groups, particularly Chinese ones, presented a “growing threat to Europe”. It called the Chinese gangs “extremely flexible”, saying they were handling “substantial proceeds” from a variety of criminal activity. In January the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported on a “revolution” under way in South-East Asia’s “underground banking architecture”, involving everything from casinos to cryptocurrency. The details it provided suggested that Chinese gangs were at the forefront.

中国的焦虑也很明显。他们担心地下银行为逃避中国严格的外汇管制提供了渠道（资本外流，即使是合法手段也是一个持久性的头痛：见图表）。中国大陆人一年只被允许汇出不超过5万美元。对于许多富裕的中国人来说，这远远不够。

China’s anxiety is evident, too. It worries about the conduit provided by underground banks for evading the country’s strict foreign-exchange controls (capital flight, even by legitimate means, is a persistent headache: see chart). Mainland Chinese are not allowed to send more than $50,000 a year out of the country. For many rich Chinese, that is far from enough.

中国人经常求助于非法金融家，不是为了洗钱，而是为了将他们的一些财富转移出国。随着中国经济的动荡，这种需求很可能会增长。其中一些人是犯罪分子，包括想要将非法获得的财富转移到中国警方无法触及的腐败官员。他们有理由感到紧张：中国领导人习近平一直在打击腐败。2022年，最高检察院表示，反洗钱工作是“维护国家政治和金融安全的重大国家战略” 的一部分。据官方媒体称，中国正在就自2007年实施以来最大的反洗钱法律变革进行工作。

Chinese often turn to illicit financiers not to launder cash, but to move some of their wealth abroad. Such demand is only likely to grow as China’s economy falters. Some of these people are criminals, including corrupt officials who want to park their ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of China’s police. They have cause to be nervous: China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has been waging a war against graft. In 2022 the chief prosecutor’s office said anti-money-laundering efforts were part of “a major national strategy for maintaining the country’s political and financial security”. According to state media, China is working on the biggest changes to its anti-money-laundering law since it came into force in 2007.

若干因素让这个问题变得更加棘手。首先是feiqian（飞钱）系统，基于这个世纪老传统的非正规银行文化正在迅速演变。其起源与犯罪无关。这始于商贩们在无需携带现金跨越长距离时结算账目的方式。就像在中东和南亚流行的hawala系统一样，feiqian依赖于信任：一个地点的两方之间交换的一笔钱将在另一个地点进行等额的交易。

Several factors are making the problem much harder to deal with. First is the rapid evolution of a centuries-old culture of informal banking based on what is often known as the feiqian (flying money) system. Its origins have nothing to do with crime. It began as a way for traders to settle accounts without the need to carry cash over long distances. Like the hawala system that is popular in the Middle East and South Asia, feiqian depends on trust: a sum of money exchanged between two parties in one location is matched by an equivalent transaction in another.

在中国，feiqian一直被广泛使用，作为快速完成国际交易的方式，免除了银行的累赘。中国海外工人通常使用这种方式向家乡汇款。中国人普遍使用的即时消息软件微信，常常与他们的银行账户相连，加剧了feiqian系统的发展。

In China feiqian has remained in common use as a way of getting international deals done quickly, without the encumbrance of banks. Chinese workers abroad often use such methods to send remittances home. The near-universal use among Chinese of WeChat, a messaging app that is often linked to people’s bank accounts, has turbocharged the feiqian system.

美国的阿片类药物成瘾危机进一步推动了它的兴起。一部分通过毒品需求产生的数十亿美元现金以相当大的风险走私回墨西哥卡特尔手中。一部分被交给墨西哥的洗钱者，他们收取高额佣金：根据Kent女士和Gay先生的说法，通常在8%至12%之间。中国的洗钱者提供了更便宜甚至几乎是免费的选项。

America’s opioid epidemic has given it a further boost. Some of the billions of dollars in cash generated by drug demand is smuggled back, at considerable risk, to the cartels in Mexico. Some is handed over to Mexican money-launderers, who charge high commissions: usually between 8% and 12%, according to Ms Kent and Mr Gay. Chinese launderers provide a much cheaper option, even virtually free.

这要归功于feiqian系统和中国人想要获得美元的巨大需求。中国洗钱者拿走毒品钱，高价卖给人民币：feiqian让美国的买家从他们在中国的银行账户向由洗钱者控制的一个或多个中国账户发送等值的人民币。由于没有钱物跨越国界，这种交换对美国调查人员来说极难被发现。这些金额通常被细分成小额，不会引起中国执法者的注意。中国的人民币随后可用于购买商品，并运往墨西哥出售，所得的墨西哥比索则交给卡特尔。中国经纪人在收到脏钱后几乎立即安排投递比索。“他们非常非常高效地执行自己的任务，”英国税务机构前调查员劳伦斯·豪兰德如是说。

This is made possible both by the feiqian system and the huge needs of Chinese wanting access to dollars. The Chinese money-launderers take the drug money and sell it for yuan at a high profit: feiqian enables a buyer in America to send the specified equivalent in yuan from their bank account in China to one or more accounts in China controlled by the launderers. With no money crossing borders, this kind of swap is extremely difficult for America’s investigators to spot. The sums are often broken up into smaller amounts that do not draw the attention of China’s enforcers, either. The yuan in China may then be used there to buy goods that are shipped to Mexico and sold for pesos that are handed over to the cartels. The Chinese brokers arrange delivery of the pesos nearly instantly after the receipt of the dirty dollars. “They are very, very efficient at what they do,” says Laurence Howland, a former investigator at Britain’s tax agency.

欧洲的走私犯也逐渐采纳了这一思路。10月，意大利警方逮捕了33人，涉嫌为毒品走私者洗钱超过5000万欧元（5300万美元）。被拘留的人员中包括七名中国公民。负责该行动的一名意大利官员对新闻机构路透社表示，据推测，涉嫌洗钱者处理的金额可能远远大于警方已经侦测到的。同月，意大利和西班牙警方逮捕了78人，涉嫌参与大麻贩运网络。欧洲刑警组织称，这个团伙涉及多国人员，包括阿尔巴尼亚人和摩洛哥人。毒品运输的支付由中国feiqian银行家处理。

Traffickers in Europe are picking up on this idea, too. In October police in Italy arrested 33 people for alleged involvement in laundering more than €50m ($53m) for drug-traffickers. Among those detained were seven Chinese citizens. An Italian officer in charge of the operation suggested to Reuters, a news agency, that the amount handled by the alleged launderers was probably far greater than the police had managed to detect. Also that month, police in Italy and Spain arrested 78 people for alleged participation in a cannabis-trafficking network. Europol said the syndicate had involved people of several nationalities, including Albanians and Moroccans. Payments for drug shipments were handled by Chinese feiqian bankers.

东南亚各国政府面临来自跨国有组织犯罪的“前所未有挑战”，根据联合国毒品和犯罪问题办公室（UNODC）所述。向新加坡打听一下，最近几个月以来，该国沦陷于其有史以来最大规模的洗钱丑闻中。涉案金额涉及在银行账户或奢侈物业、汽车和黄金等资产中持有的逾20亿美元的查封或冻结。本月，新加坡法院对与该案有关的十名中国公民中的两人判刑。其中一人被判13个月监禁，另一人则被判处14个月监禁。其中一人的没收资产价值超过1.2亿美元。

In South-East Asia governments face “unprecedented challenges” from transnational organised crime, according to the UNODC. Ask Singapore, which has been rocked in recent months by its biggest money-laundering scandal. It has involved the seizure or freezing of more than $2bn held in bank accounts or as assets such as luxury properties, cars and gold. This month a court in Singapore sentenced two of ten Chinese citizens (some of them holding other passports as well) who were arrested in connection with the case. The pair have been given terms of 13 months and 14 months in prison. One forfeited assets worth more than $120m.

UNODC表示，该地区有组织犯罪得以蓬勃发展，原因是老挝、缅甸和泰国“金三角”地区申请合成毒品的数量达到“创纪录”水平。由于增长迅速的地下银行网络，这些地区的有组织犯罪得以发展，它们使用赌场、在线博彩平台和加密货币来洗涤走私者的钱。中国努力防止其公民接触所有这些事情（例如警告在国外参观赌场可能被中国警方视为非法行为），但并未解决问题。“如今，无论在哪个司法管辖区的赌博法律如何，架设一个在线赌场操作从技术上和资本上都变得更加容易”，UNODC表示。

The UNODC says organised crime in the region has flourished thanks to “record levels” of the production of synthetic drugs in the “Golden Triangle” of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. They have been served by fast-growing underground banking networks that use casinos, online betting platforms and cryptocurrencies to launder the traffickers’ money. China’s efforts to prevent its citizens’ access to all of these (warning, for example, that visiting casinos abroad may be considered illegal by Chinese police) have not ended the problem. “It has never been easier to set up an online casino operation with limited technical expertise and overhead capital, irrespective of gambling laws within a given jurisdiction,” the UNODC said.

与中国经纪人联系也变得容易。社交媒体上如Facebook和微信上到处都是他们的服务提供。地下银行家（在网上通常称为chedui或车队）使用这些互联网平台招募人们作为“拉钱的马”，即那些允许他们的银行账户用于洗钱的人。他们经常针对海外的中国留学生，这些学生可能被佣金所吸引，却对风险毫无察觉。去年十二月，欧洲刑警组织宣布已经在26个国家确定了将近1.1万名拉钱的人和500名招聘者，导致全球逮捕了1000多人。

It is also easy to hook up with the Chinese brokers. Offers of their services abound on social media such as Facebook and WeChat. Underground bankers (often referred to online as chedui, or motorcades) use such internet platforms to recruit people as “money mules”, as those who allow their bank accounts to be used for laundering are known. They often target Chinese students abroad, who may be attracted by commissions and unaware of the risks. In December Europol announced it had identified nearly 11,000 mules and 500 recruiters in 26 countries, leading to the arrest of more than 1,000 people around the world.

2022年，中国警方发起了为期三年的反洗钱运动，迄今已将2300多人送上法庭。去年十二月宣布的一个案例涉及在17个省级地区逮捕了74人，涉嫌通过废钱交易处理了近160亿人民币（21亿美元）资金。据称，他们通过1000多个银行账户转移资金，每个账户平均每天的交易金额为300万元。这只是冰山一角。美国表示，每年有超过1500亿美元的非法收益在中国流动。

In 2022 China’s police launched a three-year campaign against money-laundering that has so far brought more than 2,300 people to court. One case, announced in December, involved the arrest of 74 people in 17 provincial-level areas suspected of handling nearly 16bn yuan ($2.1bn) in feiqian-style deals. They allegedly moved money through more than 1,000 bank accounts, each with an average daily turnover of 3m yuan. This is the tip of the iceberg. America says more than $150bn in illicit proceeds moves through China annually.

美国财政部长珍妮特·耶伦在本月早些时候访问北京时宣布了中国与美国就打击洗钱问题进行合作的协议。她表示，她的国家“无法独自完成”。她说，中国和其他国家监管制度的薄弱之处正在帮助卷入人口贩卖和欺诈等活动的犯罪团伙。但即使怀着最大的善意，控制如今变得如此庞大、复杂且容易隐匿的洗钱问题也将是困难的。对于两国官员而言，这两个相互关切且缺乏共同执法经验的国家，这将更加困难。 ■

China’s agreement with America to liaise in the fight against money-laundering was announced by America’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, during a visit to Beijing earlier this month. Her country, she said, “cannot do it alone”. She said weaknesses in regulatory regimes in China and other countries were helping criminal gangs involved in everything from human-trafficking to fraud. But even with the best will in the world it would be hard to control a problem so large, complex and easily hidden as money-laundering has become. For officials in two mutually wary countries that have little experience of joint law enforcement, it will be harder still. ■

回到目录

中国 | 有点像朋友 (China | Friends, sorta)

为什么中国不太可能约束伊朗 (Why China is unlikely to restrain Iran)

北京官员关注的是中国的利益，而非他人的。 (Officials in Beijing are looking out for China’s interests, not anyone else’s)

今年早些时候，当伊朗支持的也门胡塞叛军在红海袭击商船时，美国向中国寻求帮助。据称，在与中国官员的会谈中，美国官员要求他们敦促伊朗控制胡塞叛军。几个月后，以色列袭击了叙利亚的伊朗领事馆，美国再次接近其最大的竞争对手。这一次据说是要求中国告诉伊朗不要进行报复。

EARLIER THIS year, when the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen were attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea, America approached China for help. In talks with their Chinese counterparts, American officials reportedly asked them to urge Iran to rein in the Houthis. Months later, after Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Syria, America again approached its biggest rival. This time it was said to have asked China to tell Iran not to retaliate.

在像这样的危机中，中国似乎是一个有用的中间人。它与伊朗有着良好的关系。去年，它促成了伊朗和沙特阿拉伯重建外交关系的协议。它还允许伊朗加入其地区安全组织上海合作组织，以及金砖五国，一个由大型新兴经济体组成的集团。在伊朗和沙特的和解之后，中国的最高外交官王毅宣布了中东地区的“和解浪潮”。

During crises like these China would seem a useful interlocutor. It has good relations with Iran. Last year it facilitated a deal to re-establish diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It also allowed Iran to join its regional security group, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, as well as the BRICS, a bloc of big emerging economies. After the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, heralded a “wave of reconciliation” in the Middle East.

但除了那项协议外，中国似乎没有太大兴趣为了和解而约束伊朗。胡塞叛军没有停止他们的袭击，伊朗也没有在这个月对以色列进行报复。中国在这两种情况下都不太可能向伊朗施加太大的压力。即使施加了，伊朗也许也不会听从。他们的关系并不像表面看起来那么融洽。对于中国来说，优先考虑的是推动自己的利益。

But beyond that agreement, it does not appear that China has much interest in holding Iran back for the sake of reconciliation. The Houthis did not stop their attacks, nor did Iran refrain from retaliating against Israel this month. It is unlikely that China put much pressure on Iran in either case. And even if it had, Iran may not have listened. There is less to their relationship than meets the eye. For China, the priority is advancing its own interests.

三年前，中国和伊朗签署了一项似乎是全面的为期25年的合作协议，涉及中国向伊朗投资4000亿美元。但2022年，中国仅在伊朗投资了1970万美元，而在以色列投资了2.79亿美元。华盛顿智库大西洋理事会的Jonathan Fulton称，伊朗认为中国的贸易和投资“有点侮辱性”。伊朗充斥着中国的进口产品，但中国除了石油产品外从伊朗购买相对较少。

Three years ago China and Iran signed what appeared to be a sweeping 25-year co-operation agreement, said to involve $400bn in new Chinese investment in Iran. But China invested just $19.7m in Iran in 2022, compared with $279m in Israel. Iran sees China’s trade and investment as “kind of insulting”, says Jonathan Fulton of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank in Washington. Iran is awash in Chinese imports, but China buys relatively little from Iran apart from hydrocarbons.

在许多方面，这种关系由石油定义。中国购买了伊朗生产的大约90%的黑色原油，规避了美国的制裁。因此，中国为伊朗提供了经济生命线。但中国考虑的是自己的经济。伊朗的石油价格便宜，帮助中国实现能源供应的多样化。去年秋天，中国的购买量达到了历史新高，但在冬天暂时停滞，因为伊朗升价。

In many ways the relationship is defined by oil. China buys roughly 90% of the black stuff produced by Iran, sidestepping American sanctions. It thus provides Iran with an economic lifeline. But China has its own economy in mind. Iranian oil is cheap and lets China diversify its energy supply. Its purchases hit a record high last autumn, but temporarily stalled in the winter when Iranian sellers raised prices.

中国反对美国对大多数国家的制裁，并试图躲避这些制裁。从伊朗进口的石油经常被改标为马来西亚货，以折扣价销售给被称为“小锅炉房”的中国独立小型炼油厂。中国的大型国有炼油企业避开伊朗石油，以免受美国惩罚。但哥伦比亚大学的Erica Downs称，这些小锅炉房“非常机会主义”，并且不太受美国金融体系的影响。

China opposes American sanctions on most countries—and seeks to outsmart them. The oil imported from Iran is often relabelled as Malaysian and sold at a discount to small independent Chinese refineries known as “teapots”. China’s big state refiners steer clear of Iranian oil for fear of punishment by America. But the teapots are “highly opportunistic” and less exposed to America’s financial system, says Erica Downs of Columbia University.

中国的愤世嫉俗态度不仅体现在石油贸易中。据说中国可能没有要求胡塞叛军停止袭击红海的所有商船，但据称它已达成协议，让自己的船只免遭袭击。

China’s cynical approach extends beyond the oil trade. It may not have pressed the Houthis to stop attacking all commercial ships in the Red Sea, but it is said to have struck a deal to spare its own vessels.

当伊朗对以色列进行报复时，中国表示支持。北京官员赞扬伊朗的克制，并谴责以色列对伊朗和加沙的侵略行为。一份由国有小报《环球时报》发表的社论称：“缓解中东紧张局势的主要关键在于美国约束以色列，而不是中国‘约束’伊朗。”伦敦智库查塔姆议会的Ahmed Aboudouh表示，这一论点在该地区得到了广泛认同。“由于加沙战争，美国在中东地区的影响力正在下降。中国正在利用这一点，”他说。“中国不会花费政治资本来扭转这一趋势，以帮助美国。” ■

And when Iran hit back against Israel this month, China was supportive. Officials in Beijing praised Iran’s restraint and condemned Israel’s aggression against Iran and in Gaza. “The main key to easing tensions in the Middle East lies in the US restraining Israel, not China ‘reining in’ Iran,” said an editorial by the Global Times, a state-run tabloid. That argument is playing well in the region, says Ahmed Aboudouh of Chatham House, a think-tank in London. “America is declining in the Middle East in terms of influence because of the Gaza war. China is taking advantage of that,” he says. “It wouldn’t spend political capital to turn that around for the US.” ■

回到目录

中国 | 统计豆 (China | Bean counting)

中国的年轻人纷纷涌向购买黄金 (China’s young people are rushing to buy gold)

他们在动荡时期寻求安全。 (They seek security in troubled times)

中国的黄金市场占全球销量的大约五分之一，曾吸引着一群年长的人群。许多购买者是中年妇女，她们想增加自己的“蛋巢”或购买粗链手镯。但是如今，中国的黄金商店经常为20多岁的顾客提供服务。被“Z世代”（即1997年至2012年出生的人）青睐的社交媒体小红书 上充满了对这种贵金属的讨论。

CHINA’S GOLD market, which accounts for about a fifth of global sales, used to attract an older crowd. Many buyers were middle-aged women looking to add to their nest-eggs or buy chunky bracelets. But these days Chinese gold shops regularly serve customers in their 20s. Xiaohongshu, a social-media site favoured by “Generation Z” (those born between 1997 and 2012), is buzzing with talk of the precious metal.

年轻人手头并没有太多闲钱。城市里的青年失业率约为15%。许多公司都在削减工资。因此，年轻人希望充分利用他们所拥有的少许存款。但是传统的投资表现不佳。股票市场下跌，房价连续十个月下跌。

Young people don’t have much spare cash. The youth-unemployment rate in cities is about 15%. Many companies are cutting salaries. So youngsters are hoping to make the most of what little savings they have. But traditional investments aren’t doing well. The stockmarket is slumping and house prices have fallen for ten months in a row.

然而，金价正在飙升。截至4月24日，黄金价格达到每盎司2320美元，比年初上涨了12%。全球其他地方的购买者出于通胀恐惧（中国并没有这个问题）和地缘政治担忧而采购。增加需求的另一个重要原因是中国的央行。在与美国的紧张关系中，中国央行一直在购买黄金以实现货币储备的多样化。

The international price of gold, though, is soaring. It stood at $2,320 per ounce on April 24th, up 12% since the start of the year. Customers elsewhere are buying because of inflation fears (China doesn’t have this problem) and geopolitical concerns. Another big reason for increased demand is China’s central bank. It has been purchasing gold to diversify its holdings away from dollars amid tensions with America.

大多数年轻人买不起整条金条。因此，他们选择购买金豆。每粒金豆约重一克，可以从银行和珠宝商那里以约600元（80美元）的价格买到。在社交媒体上，黄金爱好者们摇晃着玻璃猪形储钱罐，里面装满着他们的黄金收藏品。一位说，“那轻微的叮当声让我充满成就感。可以储存金豆直到退休。”

Most young people cannot afford to buy gold by the bar. So they are buying it by the bean instead. Weighing about a gram, the beans can be picked up for about 600 yuan ($80) from banks and jewellers. In videos on social media gold bugs shake glass piggy banks containing their collections. “The clitter-clatter fills me with a sense of accomplishment,” says one. “I can save beans until I retire.”

黄金首饰也越来越受欢迎，作为一种奢侈品，与手袋或鞋子不同，它可能会升值。“你觉得自己花了钱却又没有花钱，”一位热衷者告诉当地媒体。一位北京的销售员表示，年轻女性正在抢购“中国时尚”设计的首饰，这些设计带有国家象征。一些公司开始在他们的产品上压印上上世纪90年代流行的日本卡通人物。

Gold jewellery is also increasingly popular as a luxury good that, unlike handbags or shoes, might increase in value. “You feel like you’re spending money without spending money,” one enthusiast told local media. Young women are snapping up “China chic” designs, which feature national symbols, says a salesman in Beijing. Some companies have started embossing their products with Japanese cartoon characters that were popular in the 1990s.

然而，缺乏经验的黄金爱好者容易受人利用。许多年轻人抱怨说，他们的金豆被掺杂其他金属，或者被修剪得比所宣称的重量要轻。购买者应该使用喷灯烧烤他们的黄金来检查其纯度，网上有影响力者说。只是要小心不要把你的积蓄熔化。 ■

Inexperienced gold bugs, though, are easy to take advantage of. Many young people complain that their beans have been adulterated with other metals or shaved to weigh less than advertised. Buyers should blowtorch their gold to check its purity, say online influencers. Just be careful not to melt your savings. ■

回到目录

中国 | 察觀 (China | Chaguan)

中國與俄羅斯的關係日益鞏固 (China’s ties with Russia are growing more solid)

我们的专栏作家参观了位于中国最先进的太空港的未来俄羅斯前哨站。 (Our columnist visits a future Russian outpost in China’s most advanced spaceport)

中国第一个热带太空发射场——文昌，证明了国家的自豪感。在冷战期间，中国从戈壁沙漠和其他荒凉内陆地点发射火箭，以防敌人的攻击。然而，一旦中国更加有信心可以吓阻入侵者，文昌便成为了通往太空的重要门户。这座位于海南南部的靠近赤道的发射场，得益于地球的自转，每次发射都会得到一定的推动。这片棕榈树环绕的海岸地带使得最大的长征系列火箭可以通过海路运送。文昌终于在2016年开放。其备受保护的发射区旁边是一个科普教育中心（不对外开放），还有火箭的复制品、挥舞国旗的宇航员雕像以及其他吸引游客的土味景点，就像是对佛罗里达州的一种共产党致敬。

CHINA’S FIRST tropical spaceport, Wenchang, is proof of national swagger. During the cold war, China launched rockets from the Gobi desert and other desolate inland spots, for fear of enemy attack. Once China was more confident that it could deter invaders, though, Wenchang became a fine gateway to space. This close to the equator, on the southern island of Hainan, the Earth’s rotation gives a boost to every launch. The palm-fringed coastal site allows the largest Long March rockets to be delivered by sea. Wenchang finally opened in 2016. Its well-guarded launch areas are flanked by a science-education centre (closed to foreign visitors), replicas of rockets, statues of flag-waving astronauts and other tourist kitsch, like a Communist Party homage to Florida.

在这个展示中国技术的地方，一个有幸的外国朋友——俄罗斯，被赋予了一块宝贵的产权。莫斯科电力工程学院，一个大型俄罗斯技术大学，受邀在文昌开设一个航空航天工程和科学的分校，容纳一万名学生。俄罗斯和中国学者及官员于一月份举行了奠基仪式。尽管这片40公顷的校园现在还是一片荒地，中国媒体已经宣布，这所海南学院将会是一个以俄罗斯为主导的学院，而非与中国大学合作的联合办学。

Here, in this showcase for Chinese technology, a privileged foreign friend—Russia—is being given a precious piece of real estate. Moscow Power Engineering Institute, a large Russian technical university, has been invited to open a branch in Wenchang with room for 10,000 students of aerospace engineering and science. Russian and Chinese scholars and officials held a ground-breaking ceremony in January. Though the 40-hectare campus is bare earth for now, Chinese media have already announced that, unusually, the Hainan institute will be a Russian-led academy, rather than a joint venture with a Chinese university.

俄罗斯在文昌的基地将毗邻一个巨大但尚未完工的太空科技园。在一个潮湿的工作日，一个起重机的森林耸立在未来的实验室、卫星组装棚和雷达接收站上空。这一主要场地表明中俄太空合作一直受到两国互相猜疑的阻碍，现在却在迅速发展。

Russia’s outpost in Wenchang will be next to a vast, partly built space-technology park. On a muggy weekday a forest of cranes rises above future laboratories, a satellite-assembly shed and a radar receiving station. The prime site is evidence that Sino-Russian space co-operation, long held back by mutual suspicion between the countries, is surging ahead.

中国航空航天研究院去年发表的一项研究中举例说明了这一点，该研究是美国空军的研究机构。该研究详细描述了俄罗斯日益愿意帮助中国建设导弹预警和防御系统，并向中国出售先进的火箭发动机，克服了对中国将俄罗斯技术转卖给他国的顾虑。研究提到，中俄就连接各自的卫星导航系统北斗和格洛纳斯达成协议。两国承诺在月球上建立一个联合基地，共同合作探测太空碎片——这项技术也对跟踪敌对国家的卫星很有用。该研究援引了中国最高领导人习近平的话，将中俄间的技术合作与“全球治理体系改革”的计划联系在一起（即，推动美国从舞台中心）。

Examples abound in a study published last year by the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a research arm of the US Air Force. The study details Russia’s growing willingness to help China build missile-warning and defence systems, and to sell it advanced rocket engines, overcoming qualms about China selling Russian technology to others. It describes Chinese and Russian agreements to link up their respective satellite-navigation systems, Beidouand Glonass. The two countries have pledged to build a joint base on the Moon and to work together on detecting space debris—a technology also useful for tracking an adversary’s satellites. The study quotes Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader, linking technical co-operation with Russia to plans for “the reform of the global governance system” (ie, pushing America from centre stage).

该研究描述了这两国为何走得更近。中国希望利用俄罗斯在太空领域几十年的专业知识。俄罗斯的太空计划需要中国的资金。自2014年弗拉基米尔·普京入侵克里米亚以来，俄罗斯一直希望获得中国零部件。普京于2022年发动了对乌克兰的全面战争，导致中俄关系变得更加密切。甚至在宁静的文昌，普通中国公民也开始留意到这一点。

The study describes why the countries have moved closer. China wants to harness Russia’s decades of expertise in space. Russia’s space programme needs China’s money. It has also wanted access to Chinese components ever since Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and Russia was hit by Western sanctions. Mr Putin’s all-out war on Ukraine, launched in 2022, has caused ties between China and Russia to grow even deeper. Ordinary Chinese citizens are noticing, including in sleepy Wenchang.

赵晨曦是文昌市外语学院俄语系系主任。这是一所远比她所在城市即将到来的俄罗斯分校要朴素得多的职业学校。不过，莫斯科学校的开办应该会让她的俄语学生“对自己未来的职业更有信心”，她说。她可能是对的。观察者会见到一些在俄罗斯文化课程中的学生，他们将俄罗斯视为一个充满机会的地方。有几个计划转到西伯利亚阿尔泰州立大学学习。其中一位姓高的20岁学生称普京为“非常专横”，是仅次于习近平的令他钦佩的人。

Zhao Chenxi is head of the Russian department at the Hainan College of Foreign Studies, a vocational school in Wenchang. It is a far humbler institution than the Russian-run campus due in her city. But the Moscow school’s opening should make her Russian-language pupils “more confident about their future careers”, she says. She may be right. Chaguan met students in a Russian culture class who described Russia as a land of opportunity. Several plan to transfer to Altai State University in Western Siberia. One of them is a 20-year-old surnamed Gao. He calls Mr Putin “very imperious” and the person he admires the most after Xi Jinping.

太空合作和中国对俄罗斯的更广泛支持之间有一些相似之处。克里米亚入侵之后的西方制裁迫使俄罗斯太空产业克服对中国的疑虑。如今，美国官员指责中国公司向俄罗斯国防工业供应微电子元件、无人机发动机和机床，用于制造导弹、坦克和飞机以应对乌克兰战争。这些双用途物品破坏了西方旨在削弱俄罗斯武器供应的制裁。实施制裁是一种合理策略。然而，它们把俄罗斯推向了中国的怀抱。俄罗斯向东方运送折扣石油和天然气，并进口中国的电子产品、汽车等。

There are parallels between space co-operation and China’s broader support for Russia. Western sanctions after the Crimea invasion pushed Russia’s space industry to overcome its doubts about China. Today American officials accuse Chinese firms of supplying microelectronics, drone engines and machine tools that Russia’s defence industry uses to make missiles, tanks and aircraft for the war against Ukraine. Those dual-use items undermine Western sanctions meant to starve Russia of weaponry. Imposing sanctions was a rational strategy. Yet they have pushed Russia into China’s arms. Russia sends discounted oil and gas eastwards, and imports Chinese electronics, cars and more.

甚至在4月24日美国国务卿布林肯登陆中国进行短暂访问之前，拜登政府和中国政府公开就支撑普京战争机器的向俄罗斯的商业销售问题展开争论。随着乔·拜登总统及其团队对中国商品征收越来越高的关税，并对对华敏感高科技出口实施越来越严格的禁令，他们无法可信地利用准入美国市场的承诺来改变中国行为。取而代之，拜登团队采取了双轨方法。首先是对为俄罗斯国防工业提供融资的中国银行实施美国制裁的威胁。接下来是暗示如果中国公司帮助俄罗斯攻击乌克兰，欧洲更开放的市场可能开始封闭。

Even before Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, landed in China on April 24th for a brief visit, the Biden administration and China’s government were arguing, publicly, about commercial sales to Russia that prop up Mr Putin’s war machine. With President Joe Biden and his team imposing ever-higher tariffs on Chinese goods and ever-stricter bans on sensitive high-tech exports to China, they cannot credibly use promises of access to American markets to change Chinese behaviour. Instead Team Biden is taking a twin-track approach. First come threats of American sanctions on Chinese banks that finance sales to Russia’s defence industry. Next, suggestions that Europe’s more open markets may start to close if Chinese firms help Russia to attack Ukraine.

美国的制裁是一个强大的威胁：从美元中脱离的银行将失去大多数国际市场的准入。中国是否确实相信自己面临失去欧洲市场的风险尚不清楚。德国总理奥拉夫·肖尔茨于4月16日在北京会见习近平时提出了向俄罗斯销售双用途物品的问题。中国领导人在乌克兰问题上没有表现出任何让步。

American sanctions are a powerful threat: banks cut off from the dollar lose access to most international markets. It is less clear that China really believes it is risking the loss of European markets. When Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, met Mr Xi in Beijing on April 16th, he raised the issue of dual-use items sold to Russia. China’s leader gave no detectable ground on Ukraine.

多年来，美国和西方政治人物一直安慰自己，认为中国和俄罗斯是一种不平等、不稳定的“便利婚姻”，这对双方都不太合适。相互不信任确实限制了双方的联系。但仔细观察，包括文昌等偏远地区，中俄利益正在以可能长久的方式对齐。■

For years American and Western politicians have taken comfort in the notion that China and Russia were in an unequal, unstable “marriage of convenience” that suited neither very well. Mutual distrust did constrain ties. But look carefully, including in far-off spots like Wenchang, and Sino-Russian interests are aligning in ways that may prove enduring. ■

更多来自《经济学人》中国专栏作家查官的文章:增长老龄化的阴暗面（4月18日）新疆的斋月是什么样子（4月11日）中国对待世界的生猛之举（4月4日）

Read more from Chaguan, our columnist on China:The dark side of growing old (Apr 18th)What Ramadan is like in Xinjiang (Apr 11th)China’s tin-eared approach to the world (Apr 4th)

回到目录

美国 | 笨拙的大学镇压 (United States | Clumsy college crackdowns)

美国应对学生抗议的努力严重失败 (Efforts to tackle student protests in America have backfired badly)

哥伦比亚大学的警方干预激发了其他大学的抗议 (Police intervention at Columbia has provoked protests at other universities)

伊莉莎·“丽西”·贝克之所以想去哥伦比亚大学（位于纽约的常春藤盟校），其中一个原因是它的中东历史项目。他热爱自己的第一年大学生活，并表示在哥伦比亚大学这个犹太学生身份感觉“非常棒”。但自从10月7日哈马斯袭击以色列之后，校园氛围发生了变化。几天内便出现了抗议活动。他听到学生们呼吁进行一场起义。他一直被告知：“你的理解是错误的”，但他说，本周校园里的反犹主义潜流无法被误解。其他犹太学生说，他们被告知：“我们要来找你们了，离开我们的校园。”

PART OF THE reason Elisha “Lishi” Baker wanted to go to Columbia University, an Ivy League university in New York, was its Middle Eastern History programme. He loved his first year and says he “felt great as a Jewish student at Columbia”. But since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th, the atmosphere on campus has changed. Within days there were protests. He heard students calling for an intifada. He kept being told: “You’re interpreting it wrong”, but this week there was no misinterpreting, he says, the undercurrent of antisemitism on campus. “We’re coming for you,” other Jewish students say they were told: “Get off our campus.”

校长们正在努力管理校园内的言论自由：如何处理亲巴勒斯坦抗议活动？在看到哈佛大学和宾夕法尼亚大学校长在采取怯懦回应后被迫辞职后，他们尝试了更强硬的方式。他们面临着过度纠正的危险。

University presidents are struggling with policing free speech on campus: how to deal with pro-Palestinian protests? Having seen the heads of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania being forced to step down after their timid responses, they are trying a tougher approach. They are in danger of over-correcting.

最近麻烦的导火索是4月18日警方清理哥伦比亚大学帐篷和抗议者，逮捕了100多名学生。大学言论自由中心的贾米尔·贾费尔写道，这是一个“令人担忧的决定”，并补充说“我们不明白露营和抗议如何构成了足以证明升级的危险”。根据纽约市警察局（NYPD）的说法，被逮捕的抗议者是和平的，没有反抗。“太可怕了，”目击了逮捕过程的莱拉·萨利巴说。“所有这些警察突然到处涌来，我们的人都穿着全副武装。”几天后，附近的草坪上又出现了另一个露营地。

The trigger for the latest troubles was the clearing by police of tents and protesters at Columbia on April 18th, and the arrest of more than a hundred students. This was an “alarming decision”, wrote Jameel Jaffer, from the university’s free-speech centre, adding that “it was not evident to us how the encampment and protest posed such a danger” as to justify the escalation. According to the New York Police Department (NYPD), the arrested protesters were peaceful and offered no resistance. “It was so scary,” says Layla Saliba, who saw the arrests. “All these cops just swarming everywhere and we had people in like full riot gear.” Within days another encampment sprang up on a nearby lawn.

哥伦比亚大学校长米努什·沙菲克在大学网站上发布的一封信中写道，由于其他努力失败，她请求纽约市警察局介入：她这样做是“出于对哥伦比亚大学校园安全的极度关注”。这一举动只激化了事态。“讽刺的是，为了平息事态并控制露营地，管理层引发了这场风暴，”大学法学教授戴维·波森说。

In a letter posted on Columbia’s website Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, wrote that she asked the NYPD to intervene after other efforts failed: she did so “out of an abundance of concern for the safety of Columbia’s campus”. The move only inflamed matters. “The irony is that in trying to quiet things down and assert control over the encampment, the administration unleashed this firestorm,” says David Pozen, a law professor at the university.

这场风暴蔓延开来，帐篷露营地不仅仅出现在哥伦比亚大学。学生抗议者的要求基本相同：从以色列公司和向以色列销售武器的任何武器制造商那里撤资；终止与以色列机构的学术合作；谴责以色列在战争中的行动。

That firestorm spread, with tent encampments popping up far beyond Columbia. The demands by student protesters are largely the same: divest endowments from Israeli firms and any weapons manufacturers that sell there; end academic partnerships with Israeli institutions; and condemn Israel’s actions in the war.

就像在哥伦比亚大学一样，其他地方的管理人员克服了召唤警察的不愿。4月22日，约50名抗议者因参与耶鲁大学广场一周的占领而被指控非法侵入（抗议者第二天又回来了）。在纽约大学，警方解散了一次模仿的露营地，逮捕超过130人。在得州大学，数十人在穿着防暴装备的州警冲击校园后被捕。“这些抗议者该关进监狱，”得州州长格雷格·艾伯特在X写道。警方试图清理南加州大学（USC）校园时，与抗议者发生冲突。

As at Columbia, administrators elsewhere are overcoming their reluctance to call the cops. On April 22nd nearly 50 protesters were charged with trespassing for taking part in a week-long occupation of a plaza at Yale (protesters returned the next day). At New York University police broke up a copycat encampment, arresting more than 130. At the University of Texas dozens were arrested after state troopers in riot gear swept through the campus. “These protesters belong in jail,” Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, wrote on X. Police clashed with protesters as they attempted to clear the campus at the University of Southern California (USC).

早在哥伦比亚大学的灾难之前，一些破坏行为已经让管理人员感到不安。今年2月，加州大学伯克利分校的亲巴勒斯坦活动人士打碎了通往以色列演讲者讲座的玻璃门。几周后，其他人中断了法学院院长厄温·切米林斯基在家中举办的活动。

Long before the debacle at Columbia, instances of disruptive behaviour had put administrators on edge. In February pro-Palestinian activists at UC Berkeley shattered a glass door leading to a lecture by an Israeli speaker. Weeks later others interrupted an event at the home of Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school.

去年，哥伦比亚大学暂停了两个压力团体公正支持巴勒斯坦和犹太和平之声，因为他们组织了未经授权的示威活动。纽约民主自由联盟对此提起了诉讼。同样引起争议的是南加州大学决定取消其亲巴勒斯坦的毕业生代表演讲；学校提到了安全威胁。南加州大学随后取消了毕业典礼上的所有嘉宾演讲。

Last year Columbia suspended two pressure groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, for organising unauthorised demonstrations. The New York Civil Liberties Union has sued over the move. Equally controversial was USC’s decision to cancel the graduation speech of its pro-Palestinian valedictorian, who is Muslim; the school cited safety threats. USC has since cancelled all guest speakers at commencement.

管理美国大学曾经是一个美差；现在是个雷区。4月17日，沙菲克博士成为最新一位在众议院教育委员会面对关于校园内反犹主义问题审问的校长。不像去年12月在哈佛和宾夕法尼亚大学犯错的校长，沙菲克博士暂时挺过了。当被问及克劳丁·盖（哈佛）和伊丽莎白·马吉尔（宾夕法尼亚）两位校长曾为之苦恼的问题（呼吁对犹太人进行种族灭绝是否违反了他们的大学行为准则）时，她和同事们简单地回答：“是的，违反了。”

Presiding over an American university was once a plum job; now it is a minefield. On April 17th Dr Shafik was the latest president to be grilled by the House Education Committee about antisemitism on campus. Unlike the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who fumbled their appearances in December, Dr Shafik survived—for now. When asked the question that both Claudine Gay, at Harvard, and Elizabeth Magill, at Pennsylvania, had struggled with (whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their university’s code of conduct), she and her colleagues answered simply: “Yes, it does.”

批评者称她并未充分捍卫言论自由。杰弗尔先生写道，大学的规定确保了对“即使对某些听众来说是令人反感或冒犯的言论”进行广泛保护。在她自己的公开信中，沙菲克博士坚称：“我们不能让一个团体指定条款，试图破坏像毕业典礼这样重要的里程碑，以推进他们的观点。”

Critics say she has not defended free speech adequately. The university’s rules, wrote Mr Jaffer, guarantee broad protection “even for speech that is objectionable or offensive to some listeners”. In her own public letter, Dr Shafik insists: “we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view.”

沙菲克博士尚未摆脱困境。捐助者们焦躁不安，政客们在旁观望：4月24日，众议院发言人迈克·约翰逊来到哥伦比亚大学并表示，动用国民警卫队应该是一种选择。他告诉对他大喊大叫的学生们要“享受你们的言论自由”，并称沙菲克博士是“一个非常软弱和无能的领导者”。至于沙菲克博士，则夸耀在与学生抗议者的谈判中取得的进展，提出了内部解决的可能性。

Dr Shafik is not out of the woods. Donors are restive and politicians are circling: on April 24th the House speaker, Mike Johnson, visited Columbia and said calling in the National Guard should be an option. He told students who heckled him to “enjoy your free speech”, and described Dr Shafik as “a very weak and inept leader”. For her part, Dr Shafik touted progress in talks with student protesters, raising the possibility of an internal resolution.

在哥伦比亚大学，大部分未参与抗议的学生的生活现在被打断了。课程部分转为线上授课。直升机在上空盘旋。抗议者在大门外的喇叭声如此之大，以至于为了进行医学院入学考试的练习测试，学生们找不到一个安静的地方。 ■

At Columbia, life is now disrupted for the majority of students not taking part in protests. Classes have moved partially online. Helicopters circle above. The bullhorns from protesters outside the gates are so loud that students studying for the MCAT, an exam for medical school, cannot find a quiet spot for practice tests. ■

回到目录

美国 | 中间派稳守 (United States | The centre holds)

国会中的两党合作是否能持续下去？ (Will the dramatic burst of bipartisanship in Congress last?)

尽管拥有重要程序权力，美国的极右势力对政策影响微乎其微。 (For all its procedural power, America’s hard right has had stunningly little influence on policy)

美国政治发生了一件引人注目的事情。尽管存在极端两极分化，但一股跨党派合作之风使得国会得以通过至关重要的立法，尽管众议院中有一群顽固的障碍者提出反对意见。这是怎么发生的呢？

Something remarkable just happened in American politics. Despite intense polarisation, a burst of bipartisanship has enabled Congress to pass vital legislation, over the objections of hard-core obstructionists in the House of Representatives. How was this possible?

共和党在第118届国会开始时，拥有美国历史上第五小的众议院多数席位，而其极端成员似乎牢牢控制着局面。在经历了令人羞愧的15轮投票后，凯文·麦卡锡成为议长。为了赢得这个职位，麦卡锡同意让极右派成员加入强大的规则委员会，他们常常会削弱党内领导的地位。他还接受了一项变动，允许国会的一名议员提出对他罢免的投票。狂战士党团的影响力在2023年10月八名共和党人与民主党一起投票罢免麦卡锡议长之时达到了顶峰。

The Republican Party began the 118th Congress holding the fifth-narrowest House majority in American history—and its most extreme members appeared firmly in control. Kevin McCarthy became speaker after a humiliating 15 rounds of voting. As a way to win the job, Mr McCarthy agreed to place hard-right members on the powerful Rules Committee, where they could routinely undermine the party’s leaders. He also accepted a change that allowed a single member of Congress to call a vote on his ouster. The influence of the berserker caucus peaked when eight Republicans voted with the Democratic Party to remove Mr McCarthy from the speakership in October 2023.

然而，尽管这些极端人物具有强大的程序性权力，他们对政策的影响却极其有限。对乌克兰和其他盟友提供援助的立法通过只是最新的例子。乔·拜登总统于4月24日签署了这项法案（以及一项禁止TikTok的跨党派举措，除非这个应用被中国所有者出售）。

Stay up to date with our new daily update, The US in brief, and our presidential poll tracker.

在2023年春天，麦卡锡就削减自由支出与提高美国借贷限额达成协议。众议院自由党团大声抗议这些削减不够。尽管71名共和党人反对《财政责任法》，但在民主党的帮助下，这项立法还是通过了。共和党内部的叛乱势力只能在麦卡锡保住议长职位的情况下抱怨。

Read more of our coverage of the US elections of 2024.

然而，在2023年9月避免政府关门即将迈出的步伐却太远了。路易斯安那州的国会议员迈克·约翰逊在众议院经历了数周的混乱后取代了麦卡锡。他通过短期支出法案维持了政府的资金，这正是让麦卡锡被开除的罪名，但共和党不希望再经历寻找新议长的折磨。共和党内部的分歧削弱了他们与白宫和民主党掌控的参议院的讨价还价能力，最终约翰逊通过了与麦卡锡一年前谈判达成的与当年度剩余时间相关的解决方案，这两者有着惊人的相似性。

However, the extremists have had stunningly little influence on policy, despite their formidable procedural power. The passage of legislation to aid Ukraine and other allies is only the latest example. President Joe Biden signed it into law on April 24th (along with a bipartisan move to ban TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese owner).

极右派在对乌克兰提供资金的争斗中表现出更为糟糕的立法无能。许多保守派要求对美国的移民制度进行 drastical 的修改，一组参议员为将近1000亿美元的资金支持分别给乌克兰、以色列和台湾达成协议，这将是几十年来最严厉的移民法案。由于受到唐纳德·特朗普的压力，许多共和党人拒绝了这项提议，特朗普认为他在为重返白宫竞选诸多得益于南部边境危机。

In the spring of 2023 Mr McCarthy negotiated a deal to modestly cut discretionary spending in exchange for an increase to America’s borrowing limit. The House Freedom Caucus howled that the reductions were insufficient. Although 71 Republicans voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the legislation still passed with help from Democrats. The insurgent wing of the Republican Party could only grumble as Mr McCarthy held on to his job.

约翰逊议长在担任议长之前曾多次反对对乌克兰提供援助，部分受到情报简报的影响，他提出的法案与参议院的法案非常相似，但他将其分为多个部分。尽管大多数共和党人支持债务上限提高和政府拨款法案，但大多数拒绝了对乌克兰的新援助。讽刺的是，许多人抱怨并未采取任何措施来应对美国的边境问题。共和党的强硬派在先前谈判中几乎一无所获，然而国会仍然为乌克兰提供了610亿美元。虽然来得有些晚，但这将对乌克兰的战争努力产生重要影响。

But averting a government shutdown in September 2023 was a step too far. Mike Johnson, a Louisiana congressman, replaced Mr McCarthy after several weeks of chaos in the lower chamber. He kept the government funded with short-term spending bills, the sin for which Mr McCarthy was excommunicated, but Republicans were not eager to go through the ordeal of finding yet another speaker. Republican divisions undermined the party’s bargaining power with the White House and the Democrat-controlled Senate, and Mr Johnson eventually passed a solution for the remainder of the fiscal year that bore a striking resemblance to what Mr McCarthy had negotiated a year before.

就在极右派情绪高涨之际，特朗普站在了议长一边。特朗普在4月22日的一次广播采访中说：“我们只有一个多数，好吗？他不能随心所欲。我认为他是个很好的人。”

The hard right betrayed even greater legislative ineptitude in its fight against funding for Ukraine. Many conservatives demanded drastic changes to America’s immigration system, and a group of senators negotiated what would have been the most restrictive immigration law in decades in exchange for nearly $100bn in funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Republicans rejected the proposal because of pressure from Donald Trump, who sees the crisis on America’s southern border as a political winner as he campaigns for a new stint in the White House.

目前，约翰逊在他的职位上看起来是稳固的。来自乔治亚州的激进女议员玛乔里·泰勒·格林威胁说要罢免他，但她尚未迫使这一问题成为现实。“国会山的古老格言是在你有足够票数时才进行投票，”前共和党领导助手道格·海耶说，“显然玛乔里·泰勒·格林手中并没有足够的票数。”

Mr Johnson, who had voted against Ukraine aid several times before taking the speaker’s gavel, had a change of heart, swayed in part by intelligence briefings. The legislation he put to the House was remarkably similar to the Senate bill, though he broke it into several pieces. Whereas a majority of Republicans supported the debt-ceiling increase and the government-funding bills, most rejected the new aid for Ukraine. Ironically, many complained that nothing had been done to tackle America’s porous border. Republican hardliners won virtually nothing they had sought in earlier negotiations, yet Congress still provided $61bn for Ukraine. Though shamefully late, it will make a big difference to Ukraine’s war effort.

一大多数众议院共和党人会支持约翰逊，就像他们支持麦卡锡一样，但这位新议长也赢得了一些民主党人的好感。“尽管存在明显的党派之争，但现在众议院的运作实际上由一群共和党人和民主党人共同掌控，”共和党两位前议长助手之一 Brendan Buck 曾写道。

While the hard right was up in arms, Mr Trump stood by the speaker. “We have a majority of one, OK?” Mr Trump said in a radio interview on April 22nd. “It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do. I think he’s a very good person.”

约翰逊对乌克兰的立场转变并不意味着国会在本届任期剩下的时间里将推动许多重要立法，尤其是在竞选季节缩短了立法日程的情况下。可以预料会有一些微调——约翰逊正在考虑对”特定受益者“的款项分配方式进行调整，这可能是为了在共和党内部获得支持而采取的举措，但不会有像外援方案那样引人注目的事情。认真对待弹劾拜登的努力是不太可能的：即使尝试也会疏远许多暗中帮助约翰逊保持权力的民主党人。

For now Mr Johnson appears secure in his position. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an excitable congresswoman from Georgia, has threatened to oust him, but has yet to force the question. “The old maxim on Capitol Hill is that you vote when you have the votes,” says Doug Heye, a former Republican leadership aide. “Clearly Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t have the votes.”

美国这位意外的议长会在下一年领导众议院共和党吗？保住众议院不会轻松，而且失去多数席位的党派往往会解雇他们的领导人。共和党将不得不增加多数席位来给约翰逊一个机会，而特朗普的认可力量主要取决于他是否赢得总统大选。众议院共和党众议员惩罚那些做正确事情的领导人的历史并没有帮助。■

A strong majority of House Republicans would back Mr Johnson, as they did Mr McCarthy, but the new speaker has also built goodwill with some Democrats. “For all its rank partisanship, the House right now is functionally and uneasily governed by a group of Republicans and Democrats,” wrote Brendan Buck, a former aide to two Republican speakers.

Mr Johnson’s shift on Ukraine does not mean Congress will take up much serious legislation for the remainder of this term, especially as the campaign season shrinks the legislative calendar. Expect some tweaks—Mr Johnson is considering changes to how “earmarks”, which designate a specific recipient for certain spending, are made in funding bills, probably an attempt to shore up support with conservatives—but nothing as salient as the foreign-aid package. A serious effort to impeach Mr Biden is unlikely: even trying would alienate many of the Democrats implicitly helping Mr Johnson remain in power.

Will America’s accidental speaker be leading House Republicans next year? Retaining the House won’t be easy, and parties that lose their majorities tend to fire their leaders. The Republican Party will have to increase its majority to give Mr Johnson a chance, and the power of a Trump endorsement would depend largely on whether he wins the presidency. It doesn’t help that House Republicans have a history of punishing their leaders for doing the right thing. ■

回到目录

美国 | 联邦能源监管委员会 (United States | What the FERC)

你从未听说过的最重要气候机构 (The most important climate agency you’ve never heard of)

笨拙的国会让美国的联邦能源监管委员会备受瞩目 (An inept Congress puts America’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the spotlight)

清洁能源转型对能源狂热爱好者来说带来了奇迹。并非因为某种特定政策的胜利，而是因为那些非专业人士实际上正在努力理解他们在说什么。在过去两年里，“能源许可”，比如批准电力输电线路等，成为美国最热门的立法话题之一。规划改革的尝试失败了。但热衷于暂定环境影响声明和土地利用规划的人们的时刻并未结束。那些新近着迷于暂定环境影响声明和土地利用规划的人们将很快将注意力转向联邦能源监管委员会（FERC），这是一个监管跨州能源传输的默默无闻的独立机构。

THE CLEAN-ENERGY transition is doing wonders for energy nerds. Not because of any particular policy triumph, but because people beyond wonkdom are actually trying to understand what they are saying. Several times in the past two years “energy permitting”, such as the approval of electricity-transmission lines, became one of the hottest legislative topics in America. Attempts at planning reform failed. But the nerds’ moment in the sun is not over. Those newly captivated by provisional environmental-impact statements and land-use planning will soon turn their attention to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an obscure, independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of energy.

2022年，国会通过了《通货膨胀削减法案（IRA）》，这是一项充满了为清洁能源基础设施提供税收激励的气候法律。乔·拜登总统和民主党人赢得了西弗吉尼亚州中间派参议员乔·曼钦的支持，承诺他们还将努力简化获得许可的繁琐过程。太阳能和风电场的获批可能需要几年时间，跨州输电线路更需要更长时间。加快规划至关重要。2023年普林斯顿大学的一项研究发现，为了最大程度地实现《IRA》的减碳效益，美国需要比最近的历史水平快50%扩大电力输电容量。

In 2022 Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a climate law full of tax incentives for clean-energy infrastructure. President Joe Biden and Democrats won the support of Joe Manchin, a centrist senator for West Virginia, by promising that they would also seek to ease the cumbersome process of obtaining permits. It can take years for solar and wind farms to be approved, and even longer for interstate transmission lines. Speeding up planning is crucial. A study from Princeton University in 2023 found that America needs to expand electricity-transmission capacity 50% faster than its recent historical rate to reap the maximum decarbonisation benefits of the IRA.

发起一场建设热潮的一种方法是，让国会授予FERC允许跨州输电线路的权力，就像对天然气管道那样，这样可以更快地通过规划过程。但在这方面的进展已经停滞不前。还有其他好主意正在酝酿。科罗拉多州民主党参议员约翰·西肯卢珀提出的一项法案将规定各地区之间可以转移一定量的电力。这可以使在极端天气期间更容易转移电力，降低了能源稀缺地区的成本，并帮助各州实现清洁能源发电目标。

One way to launch a building boom would be for Congress to grant FERC the power to permit interstate transmission lines as it does for natural-gas pipelines, which sail much quicker through planning processes. But progress there has stalled. Other good ideas are floating around. One bill, from John Hickenlooper, a Democratic senator for Colorado, would mandate that regions be able to transfer a certain amount of electricity between them. That could make it easier to move power around during extreme weather, reduce costs for consumers where energy is now scarce and help states meet their clean-energy-generation targets.

然而，进步派民主党人对匆忙通过项目持谨慎态度。尽管共和党人长期以来一直支持更容易获得许可，但他们也希望更容易建设化石燃料基础设施。结果是陷入僵局。国会行动不力，导致各机构试图自己加快进度。

Yet progressive Democrats are wary of rushing projects through. And though Republicans have long favoured making permits easier to get, they would like to make it easier to build fossil-fuel infrastructure, too. The result is a stalemate. The lack of congressional action leaves agencies trying to speed things up themselves.

进入FERC。未来几个月可能决定该委员会在可预见未来的有效性。原因有二。

Enter FERC. The next few months could determine how effective the commission will prove to be for the foreseeable future, for two reasons.

首先，在5月13日将发布一项最终规定，该规定可能要求输电开发商未来20年进行规划，并确定谁应该为新的跨州输电线路买单。输电反对复杂体系在等待。环保人士和“邻避者”对这类项目如何破坏景观持怀疑态度，并常常起诉以推迟项目。许多公用事业公司是当地的垄断企业，建设跨州输电线路可能引入来自他们地区以外的发电商的竞争。哈佛大学电力法倡议主任阿里·佩斯科称：“这关乎他们对我们的电力来自何处的控制权，输电可能会破坏这种控制。”。。

First, a final rule is set to be released on May 13th that could require transmission developers to plan 20 years into the future and that works out who should pay for new interstate lines. The transmission-opposition-complex is waiting. Environmentalists and NIMBYs are suspicious of how such projects mar the landscape, and often sue to delay them. Many utilities are local monopolies, and building interstate transmission could introduce competition from power generators beyond their regions. “It’s all about the control they have over where our power comes from, and transmission can disrupt that control,” says Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University.

政治也可能妨碍事情进展。在FERC最初于2022年发布其规则后，17个共和党总检察长辩称，该委员会想通过新的输电线路将可再生能源强加给抵制的州，并且并未获得国会授权这么做。最高法院可能会对这一观点持开放态度。在2022年的《西弗吉尼亚诉环保署》一案中，法院使用“重要问题原则”基于类似理由取消了环保署规则，这也需要输电运营商花费时间来遵守新规定。佩斯科先生估计遵守和法律挑战可能会使规则的实施推迟数年。

Politics also threatens to get in the way. After FERC initially released its rule in 2022, 17 Republican attorneys-general argued that the commission wants to inflict renewable energy on states that resist it via new transmission lines, and that it does not have authority from Congress to do so. The Supreme Court may be amenable to this argument. In West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency, in 2022, the court used the “major questions doctrine” to strike down an EPA rule regulating greenhouse-gas emissions on similar grounds. It will also take time for transmission operators to comply with the new rule. Mr Peskoe reckons that compliance and legal challenges could delay the rule’s implementation by several years.

影响FERC改变能源格局的第二个因素是其规模：它正在缩减。按理应该由总统提名并经参议院确认的五名委员组成。但曼钦阻止了委员会主席的连任提名，去年又一名委员的任期到期，另一名委员计划于6月离职。如果FERC减至两名委员，那么它就失去了法定人数，干净能源联盟的凯特琳·马奎斯指出。在这种情况下，“他们将无法作为一个决策机构运作”，她补充说。

The second factor that will affect FERC’s power to change the energy landscape is the commission’s size: it is shrinking. It is supposed to be made up of five members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But Mr Manchin blocked the renomination of the commission’s chairman in 2022, another member’s term expired last year and a third commissioner is scheduled to leave in June. If FERC goes down to two commissioners then it loses a quorum, notes Caitlin Marquis of Advanced Energy United, a clean-energy lobby group. In that case, “they can’t function as a decision-making body,” she adds.

在二月，拜登先生宣布了三位提名人选，他们将使委员会恢复到完整的人员编制──只要他们确实获得确认。到目前为止，他们的提名似乎没有争议，但美国有毒的政治格局让即便是能源迷也变得迷信起来。当鉴赏家们思考这些提名人选的前景时，他们经常说：“我不想破坏它。” ■

In February Mr Biden announced three nominees who would bring the commission back to full strength—provided that they are indeed confirmed. Their nominations appear uncontroversial so far, but America’s toxic politics have made even energy nerds superstitious. The common refrain from the cognoscenti when contemplating the nominees’ prospects is: “I don’t want to jinx it.”■

通过我们的《美国简讯》和《平衡核对》，及时了解美国政治动态，前者是我们每日新闻简报，快速分析最重要的选举新闻，后者则是我们的列克星敦专栏作家每周发表的文章，审视美国民主的现状以及对选民重要的议题。

Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.

回到目录

美国 | 回到原点 (United States | Back to square one)

乔·拜登是否会受益于全美谋杀率的下降？ (Will Joe Biden benefit from falling murder rates across America?)

暴力似乎正在回到疫情前的水平 (Violence seems to be returning to pre-pandemic levels)

唐纳德·特朗普少有政治家像他那样谈论暴力。今年早些时候，前总统在密歇根州大急流城举行了自获得共和党提名以来的第一次集会，当时他被身着制服的警长们簇拥着登上舞台。他声称，美国正被敌对政府故意派遣的杀人外国人压倒，这些外国人正在寻求将本国的监狱排空。特朗普声称，黑帮成员“实际上藏在灌木丛中”。总体而言，根据他的说法，犯罪率“只会朝着一个方向发展，而且会非常糟糕”。

Few politicians talk about violence as much as Donald Trump. In early April, when the former president held his first rally since wrapping up the Republican nomination in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he came onto the stage flanked by uniformed sheriffs. America, he argued, is being overwhelmed by murderous foreigners deliberately sent by hostile governments seeking to empty their prisons at home. Gang members, Mr Trump claimed, are “hiding in bushes, actually, they say”. Overall, he argued, crime rates are “only going in one direction and it’s going to be very bad”.

不幸的是对特朗普而言，但对大多数美国人而言却是好事，现有的数据表明，大多数犯罪的确只朝着一个方向发展——下降。三月份，美国联邦调查局发布了（部分）全国数据，显示在2023年最后一个季度，各类暴力犯罪在城市、郊区和农村地区都有所下降。这证实了城市层面的数据在去年年中已经显示的情况：在2020年夏天（特朗普仍任总统时）几乎所有地方开始的暴力浪潮在2022年已经在大多数地方达到顶峰。作为所有犯罪中最破坏性且统计最可靠的犯罪，谋杀现在正朝着疫情前水平回归。

Unfortunately for Mr Trump, but happily for most Americans, what data there are suggest that most crime is indeed only going in one direction—down. In March the fbi released (partial) national data showing that violent crime of all sorts dropped in cities, suburbs and rural areas alike in the final quarter of 2023. That confirmed what city-level data were already indicating by the middle of last year: that the wave of violence that started almost everywhere across America in the summer of 2020 (when Mr Trump was still president) had crested in most places in 2022. Murder, both the most damaging and the most reliably counted of all crimes, is now heading back towards pre-pandemic levels.

通过我们的新每日更新简要美国，以及总统民意调查追踪器，随时了解最新情况。

Stay up to date with our new daily update, The US in brief, and our presidential poll tracker.

阅读更多有关 2024年美国选举的报道。

Read more of our coverage of the US elections of 2024.

根据由代表美国和加拿大警长的主要城市警长协会发布的数据，去年，在覆盖的69个美国警察部门中，谋杀总数下降了大约10%。最近从私人分析公司ah Datalytics搜集的数据表明，今年迄今为止，这一数字仍在下降（见图表1）。在一些大城市，如波士顿、费城和巴尔的摩，下降幅度尤为显著。该公司的数据还表明，甚至去年激增的汽车盗窃潮也可能已开始稍微减少。

Last year, according to data published by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents police chiefs in the United States and Canada, in the 69 American police departments covered, the total number of murders declined by roughly 10%. More recent data gathered from police departments by ah Datalytics, a private analysis firm, suggest that the total has continued to drop so far this year (see chart 1). In some big cities, such as Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, the size of the falls has been especially striking. The firm’s figures also suggest that even the flood of car theft that swelled last year may have begun to ebb slightly.

解释犯罪何以下降或上升是棘手的。ah Datalytics的Jeff Asher表示，这一下降最好的解释就是疫情结束。在美国，大多数谋杀是由导致枪战的争论引起的，通常涉及年轻人。病毒传播时，学校等公共服务关闭，导致更多年轻人被推上街头。更高程度的压力可能导致更多争论。现在情况有所好转。此外还有一些政策变化。例如，许多城市已投入大量联邦资金用于“暴力制止者”，他们试图在争斗升级为枪击之前识别和缓解矛盾。

Explaining why crime falls or rises is tricky. The best explanation for this fall, says Jeff Asher, of ah Datalytics, is simply the end of the pandemic. Most murders in America are the result of arguments that escalate to gunfights, typically between young men. When the virus was spreading, schools and other public services closed, and so more youngsters were pushed onto the streets. Higher levels of stress may have led to more arguments. Now things are somewhat back to normal. Added to that are a few policy changes. For example, many cities have invested plentiful federal money in “violence interrupters” who try to identify and de-escalate fights before they turn into shootings.

更低的犯罪率会帮助乔·拜登赢得连任吗？当然，这比相反情况好。但收益可能有限。民意调查显示，大部分公众认为犯罪仍在上升。拜登面临的一个更大问题是，警察普遍趋向保守派，许多人支持认为特朗普将让他们继续按照以往方式履行职责的特朗普。

Will lower crime help Joe Biden win re-election? Certainly, it is better than the opposite. But the gains are likely to be limited. Polling suggests much of the public thinks crime is still rising. One of the bigger problems Mr Biden has is that police officers are generally conservative, and many are backing Mr Trump, who they think will let them continue to do their job the way they always have.

在过去的几年里，总体而言，共和党人热情拥抱警察。例如，本月早些时候，佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯签署了一项将“骚扰”警察定为犯罪并禁止民众“进行针对执法人员的非法调查”的法律。相比之下，拜登至少在言辞上致力于警察改革。缅因州科尔比学院的教授尼尔·格罗斯表示：“这对总统来说有点危险。”

In the past few years, Republicans in general have enthusiastically hugged cops. For example, earlier this month Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law that criminalises “harassment” of police officers and bans civilians from “carrying out extra-judicial investigations against law enforcement”. Mr Biden, by contrast, is at least rhetorically committed to police reform. “It is a bit of a danger zone” for the president, says Neil Gross, a professor at Colby College in Maine.

具有讽刺意味的是，特朗普的方法似乎更可能导致犯罪增加。在拜登执政期间，民主党人对警察的信任度上升（见图表2）。当警察受到信任时，犯罪案件得以解决，犯罪率往往会下降。当信任被破坏——例如警察开枪击杀他人——犯罪就会增加。

The irony is that Mr Trump’s approach seems more likely to generate crime. Under Mr Biden trust in the police has risen among Democrats (see chart 2). When police are trusted, crimes are solved, and crime rates tend to fall. When trust is destroyed—by, say, a police killing—crime rises.

去年看到谋杀率上升的地方之一是 孟菲斯，田纳西。该城市在上年一月被撼动，当时一名年轻、手无寸铁且无辜的男子 Tyre Nichols 被便衣警察打死，这些警察来自一支“战术队”，他们曾扣留了他的汽车。孟菲斯的谋杀案件今年有所下降。但是上个月，该州的共和党人推翻了一个旨在结束这类不正当扣留的市级法令。如果川普先生赢得选举，他可能会有更多暴力事件可谈论。 ■

Among the places that saw a rise in the murder rate last year was Memphis, Tennessee. That city was shaken up last January when a young, unarmed and innocent man, Tyre Nichols, was brutally beaten to death by plainclothes officers from a “tactical squad” who had stopped his car. Murders in Memphis have edged down this year. But last month Republicans in the state overturned a city-level ordinance intended to end such unwarranted stops. If Mr Trump wins the election, he may get more violence to talk about. ■

回到目录

美国 | 终止争议 (United States | Termination disputation)

最近的堕胎案中，最高法院似乎支持爱达荷州 (In its latest abortion case the Supreme Court seems to back Idaho)

《美国诉莫伊尔》案询问联邦法是否保护妊娠威胁到女性健康的妇女 (Moyle v US asks if federal law protects women whose pregnancies threaten their health)

2022年，五名最高法院大法官表示他们会将堕胎问题交还给“立法机构”。两年过去了，这个说法听起来似乎有些一厢情愿：法院发现自己再次卷入美国的堕胎争论之中。一个月前，问题是关于堕胎药的获取——反对堕胎的人似乎注定要失败。4月24日，问题是各州是否可以通过禁止堕胎的法律来压倒涉及紧急护理的联邦法律。

IN 2022, five Supreme Court justices wrote that they were returning the issue of abortion to “legislative bodies”. Two years on, that sounds like wishful thinking: the court finds itself right back in the middle of America’s abortion battle. A month ago the issue was access to abortion pills—a fight opponents of abortion seem destined to lose. On April 24th the question was whether state bans that criminalise terminations are trumped by a federal law concerning emergency care.

1986年通过的急救保健法案（EMTALA）要求接受联邦资助的医院为前往急诊室的人提供“稳定治疗”。在2022年，拜登政府通知医院，这项义务包括在一个女性怀孕对她的健康构成立即风险时提供堕胎手术。但同年通过的爱达荷捍卫生命法案禁止除了强奸或乱伦案例，或者“为了防止孕妇死亡而必要”的情况下堕胎。《莫伊尔对美国》处理的是女性健康立即面临风险但并非濒临死亡的情况。

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labour Act (EMTALA), passed in 1986, requires hospitals receiving federal funding to offer “stabilising treatment” to people showing up in their emergency rooms (ERs). In 2022 the Biden administration notified hospitals that this duty includes offering abortion when a woman’s pregnancy poses immediate risks to her health. But a law passed that year—the Idaho Defence of Life Act—prohibits abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman”. Moyle v United States concerns cases where a woman’s health is at imminent risk but she is not at death’s door.

捍卫爱达荷法案的乔舒亚·特纳面临三名自由派大法官的猛烈攻击。爱达荷的法律明确承认当一个女性“生命岌岌可危”时，堕胎是医疗护理的标准，埃拉娜·卡根法官认为。那么EMTALA是否可以将同样的标准延伸到她的“健康岌岌可危”和她可能“失去生殖器官”的情况？嗯，特纳先生说，这涉及到“棘手的医学问题，激发了深层神学和道德问题”，应由各州回答。“如果联邦法律没有就你所描述的棘手问题表达立场，这回答会很好，”卡根法官反驳道。“但EMTALA表明你不必等到那个人处于临死边缘。”

Joshua Turner, defending Idaho’s statute, faced a barrage from the three liberal justices. Idaho’s law explicitly recognises abortion as the standard of medical care when a woman’s “life is in peril”, Justice Elana Kagan noted. So can’t EMTALA extend that same standard to cases when her “health is in peril” and she could “lose her reproductive organs”? Well, Mr Turner said, that raises “tough medical questions that implicate deeply theological and moral questions” that states should answer. “That would be a good response if federal law did not take a position on what you characterise as a tough question,” Justice Kagan retorted. But EMTALA “says that you don’t have to wait until the person is on the verge of death”.

索尼娅·索托马约尔大法官引用了佛罗里达州的“一个真实女性”案例，她被医生认为需要堕胎以避免感染和失控的大出血，但被送回家。医生“拒绝给她治疗，因为他们不能确认她会死。”她后来回到医院，出血并昏倒后，堕胎救了她的生命。爱达荷的法律是否要求一个女性经历类似的经历？特纳先生无法给出明确答案。克坦基·布朗·杰克逊大法官向特纳先生讲解了宪法的至高性条款，该条款规定“联邦政府的声明优先执行”。

Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the case of “a real woman” in Florida who was sent home from hospital despite doctors believing she needed an abortion to avoid sepsis and uncontrolled haemorrhage. Doctors “refused to treat her because they couldn’t say she would die.” She later returned to the hospital, after bleeding at home and passing out, and an abortion saved her life. Would Idaho’s law require a woman to endure a similar experience? Mr Turner could not give a clear answer. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson walked Mr Turner through a discourse on the constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states that “what the federal government says takes precedence”.

法院的保守派大法官在很大程度上避免讨论妇女生殖健康问题。但他们提出了对拜登政府立场的三条攻击路径，表明他们的同情心倾向于爱达荷州。

The court’s conservative justices largely steered clear of questions of women’s reproductive health. But they voiced three lines of attack on the Biden administration’s position, suggesting that their sympathies lay with Idaho.

萨穆尔·阿利托、艾米·科尼·巴雷特、尼尔·戈萨奇和克拉伦斯·托马斯大法官都指出EMTALA是根据宪法的支出条款制定的，并探讨政府是否可以合理地在未提供紧急堕胎时扣留医疗保险金。特纳辩称这种条件必须在法规本身“清晰明了”。检察长伊丽莎白·普雷洛加建议法院不应考虑这一论点，因为下级法院“没有处理”这一问题。保守派大法官提出了良心豁免的问题—反对堕胎的医生是否必须遵守联邦法令。但普雷洛加坚称“个别医生永远不会被要求进行堕胎”。

Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas all noted that EMTALA was enacted under the constitution’s Spending Clause and probed whether it was proper for the government to withhold Medicare funds unless emergency abortions are provided. Mr Turner argued that such conditions must be “clear and unambiguous” in the statute itself. Elizabeth Prelogar, the solicitor-general, suggested that the court should not consider this argument as the lower courts “did not address” it. Conservative justices raised the question of conscience exemptions—whether doctors who object to abortion would have to follow a federal mandate. But Ms Prelogar insisted that “individual doctors are never required to perform an abortion”.

对拜登政府立场的一个反对意见似乎得到了更多支持：通过EMTALA增加一个健康例外将会引发一系列借由精神健康主张进行的选择性堕胎的担忧。普雷洛加努力消除了这些担忧：用终止怀孕来对待一个因“一些严重的精神健康紧急情况”而前往急诊室的女性将是“极其不道德的”，她说。

One objection to the Biden administration’s position seemed to gain more traction: the worry that adding a health exception via EMTALA would invite a host of elective abortions via mental-health claims. Ms Prelogar strove to allay concerns: it would be “incredibly unethical” to treat a woman who comes to the ER “with some grave mental-health emergency” by terminating her pregnancy, she said.

加州戴维斯大学法学教授玛丽·齐格勒表示，虽然“爱达荷似乎会获胜”，但对大法官将如何为这样一个裁决加以解释存在“很多歧义”，因为听证会探讨的所有路径都是模糊不清的。相比之下，听证会上最突出的时刻也许是卡根法官的观察，在该法案生效后，已有三名女性从爱达荷一家医院被空运送走。她说：“强迫某人搭乘直升飞机”不可能是正确的护理标准。■

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said that, though it “seems like Idaho will prevail”, there is “a lot of ambiguity” about how the justices will justify such a ruling, as all of the pathways explored in the hearing are murky. By contrast, perhaps the starkest moment in the hearing was Justice Kagan’s observation that six women have been airlifted out of state from one Idaho hospital since the law went into effect. “It can’t be the right standard of care”, she said, “to force somebody into a helicopter.” ■

回到目录

美国 | 剧透警告 (United States | Spoiler alert)

特朗普法庭的报道 (A dispatch from Donald Trump’s courtroom)

两场斗争的故事 (A tale of two struggles)

每场审判都涉及两种斗争，洞察美国法庭的观察家珍妮特·马尔科姆写道。一种吸引人，另一种令人乏味，这两种都在上周在曼哈顿的法庭中展现出来，唐纳德·特朗普的审判。

Every trial involves two struggles, wrote Janet Malcolm, a shrewd observer of the American courtroom. One is engrossing, the other is stultifying, and both have been on full display at Donald Trump’s trial in a Manhattan courtroom in this past week.

第一场较量——令人兴奋的部分——是关于故事本身。谁能更好地讲述：检察官还是辩护人？针对特朗普的指控很轻微：涉及他是否伪造商业记录以掩盖对一名色情明星的付款，以便她保持对一段旧恋情的沉默。作为一个故事，这缺乏严肃性。因此，渴望夸大自己案件的检察官声称，这实际上是关于“选举舞弊，纯而简单”的，因为付款发生在2016年总统选举前夕，剥夺了选民的信息。“剧透警告，”特朗普的律师托德·布兰奇回答道。这种封口费“没有任何违法行为”；试图影响选举是“被称为民主”。

The first contest—the exciting one—is about the narrative itself. Who can tell it better: prosecutors or the defence? The charges against Mr Trump are minor: they concern whether he falsified business records to conceal a payment to a porn star so that she would keep quiet about an old tryst. As a story, that lacks gravitas. So prosecutors, keen to inflate their case, claim it is really about “election fraud, pure and simple”, since the payment came on the eve of the 2016 presidential vote and denied information to voters. “Spoiler alert,” retorted Todd Blanche, Mr Trump’s lawyer. There was “nothing illegal” about the hush money; trying to influence an election is “called democracy”.

首位作证的是大卫·佩克，前小报出版商，特朗普的朋友，他参与了这笔付款。在竞选期间，他从意图让候选人难堪的消息来源那里购买了故事，尽管他并没有打算发表这些消息。“支票簿新闻业”，佩克先生称之。每间房中的每位记者都露出惊讶的表情。

Stay up to date with our new daily update, The US in brief, and our presidential poll tracker.

到目前为止，一切都很引人入胜。然而，如果您的通讯员说马尔科姆描述的第二场比赛没有在法庭上上演，那将是在撒谎。她称这场比赛为“叙述本身与证据规则的约束之间的斗争，后者旨在阻止其流动并削弱其力量”。换句话说，审判会变得乏味。程序方面的干扰是持续不断的。异议、庭外会议、走廊、需要去厕所以及对午餐选择怀疑破坏了每一方想要讲述的故事。

Read more of our coverage of the US elections of 2024.

每个人都感受到了这一点——甚至是最关键的人。果不其然，在审判的第五天结束时，特朗普坐在那里：转动着一支钢笔，看起来无比无聊。这位前总统还可以期待大约再持续六个星期的审判。■

First to testify was David Pecker, a former tabloid publisher and friend of Mr Trump who helped orchestrate the payment. During the campaign he bought stories from sources intent on embarrassing the candidate, though he had no intention of running them. “Chequebook journalism”, Mr Pecker called this. Cue raised eyebrows from every journalist in the room.

So far, so engrossing. Yet your correspondent would be fibbing if he said the second contest described by Malcolm had not played out in court, too. She called this the “struggle of narrative itself against the constraints of the rules of evidence, which seek to arrest its flow and blunt its force”. In other words, trials get tedious. Interruptions about procedure are constant. Objections, sidebars, the need to run to the toilet and ruminations about what to eat for lunch spoil the story that each side wants to tell.

Everyone feels it—even the person with most at stake. Sure enough, towards the end of the trial’s fifth day, there sat Mr Trump: twirling a pen and looking immensely bored. And the former president can look forward to about six more weeks of this. ■

回到目录

美利坚合众国 | 莱克星顿 (United States | Lexington)

校园为乔·拜登而来 (The campus is coming for Joe Biden)

就像1968年那样，民主党人冒着成为混乱和战争候选人的风险 (As in 1968, the Democrat risks being the candidate of chaos and war)

激进时髦的鉴赏家如今在常去的常春藤盟校会看到很多可供记录的东西：黑色或红色的克夫耶、康加鼓、民谣歌曲、俚俗的标语（“拉拉们支持撤资”），以及那些哗众取宠的阿拉伯发音，“加沙”、“尼加拉瓜”这些词在上个世纪80年代支持尼加拉瓜桑地诺派活动人士的西班牙式口音都让人想起。

Aconnoisseur of radical chic can find plenty to catalogue these days while observing pro-Palestine protests on Ivy League campuses: the black or red keffiyehs, the conga drums, the folk songs, the kitschy signs (“Dykes 4 Divestment”) and the showy Arabic pronunciations of “Gaza”, so reminiscent of the Spanish-ish inflection given to “Nicaragua” by pro-Sandinista activists back in the 1980s.

除此之外，抗议者们还表现出一种精致的交叉举动：哥伦比亚大学南草坪上的圆顶帐篷群——“加沙团结露营地”上的白板上 scribbled 的九个“社区守则”之三写着，“我们意识到我们以游客的身份，对于我们中的许多人来说，在这片土地上，我们是殖民者”。这片土地曾经是美洲土著居民的家园，而哥伦比亚则因“与黑人和棕色人种的哈莱姆社区的被迫迁移有关”而有罪。

And then there are the dainty intersectional gestures of the protesters: “We recognise our role as visitors and, for many of us, colonisers, on this land,” reads the third of nine “community guidelines” scrawled on a whiteboard in the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment”, the bivouac of domed tents on Columbia University’s south lawn. Not only was the land once inhabited by native Americans, but Columbia was guilty of “complicity in the displacement of the Black and Brown Harlem community”.

然而，这些政治品味的象征只不过是表面的。它们可能会让观察者误解许多抗议者的愤怒程度，误解这种愤怒有多深刻，以及它是如何在大学中造成分裂，将一些阿拉伯裔学生及其盟友对抗一些犹太学生及其盟友。在精英学府里，多年来对言辞规范的不均衡应用，对那些被言辞冒犯的人给予的关注不一，导致了学生、校友、教师甚至校长们对规则感到困惑，以及如何实施这些规则。这使得他们陷入了关于如何对待所争议的内容的争论之中。在哥伦比亚，校长米努什·沙菲克在四月18日要求纽约市警察驱散先前的一次露营活动，并逮捕了100多名学生，引发了教职工的反抗。

But such emblems of political taste are superficial. They might mislead the observer about the anger of many protesters, about how deeply it is felt and how deeply it is dividing universities, pitting some Arab-American students and their allies against some Jewish students and theirs. At elite institutions, years of uneven application of speech codes, of unequal attention to those offended by speech, have left students, alumni, faculty and even presidents seeming uncertain what the rules are and how to enforce them. This has doomed them to fighting about how to fight about what they are fighting about. At Columbia, a decision by the president, Minouche Shafik, to get New York City police to break up a previous encampment on April 18th, arresting more than 100 students, has touched off a faculty revolt.

四月22日，教职员工聚集在主要行政建筑洛校长图书馆的花岗石台阶上，要求校长为学生道歉并宽大处理。历史学教授克里斯托弗·布朗是其中一位发言者，他指责沙菲克危及学生，并在警察突袭前一天的众议院委员会作证时没有捍卫哥伦比亚的卓越。布朗教授宣称：“她已经失去了领导这所伟大大学的特权。”引起数百名学生的喧哗欢呼，还有“辞职！”的口号传出。学校表示正在与学生就新露营活动进行协商，与此同时，工作人员在附近摆放椅子，为下个月的毕业典礼做准备。

On April 22nd faculty gathered on the granite steps of Low Memorial Library, the main administrative building, to demand an apology and amnesty for the students. One speaker, Christopher Brown, a professor of history, accused Dr Shafik of endangering the students and of failing to defend Columbia’s excellence in testimony to a House committee the day before the police raid. “She has forfeited the privilege to lead this great university,” Professor Brown declared, to raucous cheers and a chant of “Resign!” from hundreds of students. The university says it is negotiating with students over the new encampment, even as workers set up chairs nearby for next month’s commencement.

所有这些愤怒也正围绕着另一个机构以及其领导人乔·拜登，即民主党。哥伦比亚抗议者的标志性事件是1968年四月该校的种族正义和反越南战争斗争，导致了警方的镇压和700多名学生的逮捕。对于全国的民主党来说，1968年也正成为一个标志性的时刻，一个不祥的时刻。那年的校园抗议在八月的芝加哥民主党全国代表大会上找到了焦点，在今年同样的八月，该党计划在那里召开会议。

All this outrage is closing in on another institution, the Democratic Party, and its leader, President Joe Biden. The touchstone for the Columbia protesters is the struggle on that campus in April 1968 for racial justice and against the Vietnam war, which culminated in a police crackdown and more than 700 arrests. For Democrats nationally, 1968 is also becoming a touchstone, an ominous one. The campus protests that year found a focus in the Democratic National Convention in August in Chicago, where the party plans to convene in the same month this year.

1968年，持赞成和抗议立场的代表们在越南问题上争吵不休。最终，民主党否决了反战提案，并提名明尼苏达州自由派人士、时任林登·约翰逊副总统的胡伯特·汉弗莱，被指为亲战的人物。全国电视观众惊骇地看着芝加哥警察用催泪瓦斯和警棍袭击代表酒店外的抗议者。超过650名抗议者被逮捕，许多人受伤，包括许多警察。

In 1968 pro- and anti-war delegates shouted and bickered over Vietnam. In the end the Democrats voted down an anti-war plank and nominated Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesota liberal who, as Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president, was tarred as pro-war. A national television audience watched in horror as Chicago police attacked protesters outside the delegates’ hotel with tear gas and clubs. More than 650 protesters were arrested and scores were hurt, as were many police officers.

在芝加哥发生混乱对于拜登来说是不利的，因为他正像在2020年一样，作为正常情况的候选人。但是，剧情几乎肯定不会像1968年那样激烈。虽然巴勒斯坦组织想要在党的以色列政纲中进行修改，但这种斗争不再在大会上展开。拜登的助手们将控制党纲，就像他们将控制大会的脚本一样，现在只是一档特别乏味的电视节目。和1968年一样，芝加哥在签发抗议许可证方面有些吝啬，但警察总监拉里·斯兰宁表示，该部门正在准备应对“大规模的第一修正案活动”，采取“合乎宪法的执法措施”。许多与1968年的表面相似之处很可能最终被证明只是表面现象。

Any chaos in Chicago would be bad for Mr Biden, who is running, as in 2020, as the candidate of normality. But the drama will almost certainly not be as intense as in 1968. Pro-Palestine groups want to rewrite the party’s plank on Israel, yet such fights no longer play out on convention floors. Mr Biden’s aides will control the platform, as they will the script of the convention, now just a particularly dull TV show. As in 1968, Chicago is being stingy with permits to protest, but the police superintendent, Larry Snelling, has said the department is preparing to respond to “large-scale First Amendment activity” with “constitutional policing”. Many of the superficial parallels to 1968 will probably prove to be just that.

“不可避免地存在一个并行，”曾作为民主社会学生会领袖在1968年芝加哥遭到殴打和逮捕的比尔·艾尔斯说，“那便是中西部大自由派胡伯特·汉弗莱试图过于晚地摆脱对越南战争的支持者形象。”受反对战争抗议者的困扰，汉弗莱努力团结民主党，并最终在狭隘地输给了理查德·尼克松。艾尔斯博士说：“历史的讽刺。尼克松怎么会作为和平候选人当选呢？这里是一个伟大的反共战争、好战野心家。” 尽管担任总统后尼克松加剧了战争，但作为候选人，他声称有一个“秘密计划”来结束战争。唐纳德·特朗普曾表示他将在一天内结束乌克兰战争，并告诉以色列“结束它吧”的加沙战争。

Still, “There is a parallel that’s unavoidable,” says Bill Ayers, who as a leader of Students for a Democratic Society was beaten and arrested in Chicago in 1968. “And that is that Hubert Humphrey, the great liberal from the Midwest, tried way too late to extract himself from being a cheerleader for Vietnam.” Dogged by anti-war protesters, Humphrey struggled to unite Democrats and ultimately lost narrowly to Richard Nixon. “Irony of history,” Dr Ayers says. “How could Richard Nixon be elected as a peace candidate? Here’s a great anti-communist warmongering prick.” Though as president Nixon would intensify the war, he claimed as a candidate to have a “secret plan” to end it. Donald Trump has said he would end the Ukraine war in a day and, referring to the war in Gaza, has told Israel to “get it over with”.

也许拜登先生将成功斡旋加沙的停火，愤怒情绪将会消散。也许今天高喊“种族灭绝乔”口号的抗议者仍然会投票支持他。后来帮助创立激进组织“地下天气”并作为逃犯度过多年的艾尔斯博士投票给了汉弗莱，“我总是投给两害相较选项中的较小害，”他说：“因为他们更少恶。”他认为投票是一种实用而非道德行为，这些话或许值得其他活动人士倾听。

Maybe Mr Biden will succeed in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, and the anger will dissipate. Maybe the protesters chanting today against “Genocide Joe” will nevertheless show up to vote for him. Dr Ayers, who went on to help found the militant Weather Underground and spent years as a fugitive, pulled the lever for Humphrey. “I always vote for the lesser of two evils,” he says, “because they’re less evil.” He argues that voting is a practical rather than moral act, words other activists might take to heart.

顺便提一下，哥伦比亚大学的一些思虑周到的活动人士也许有一些值得教给每个人的东西, 无论是校园内还是校园外。“我们致力于假设最好的意图，当犯错时给予自己和他人宽容，并目的在于处理和修复冲突，”加沙团结露营的第八条社区准则说道。 ■

The more thoughtful of Columbia’s activists, by the way, may also have something to teach everyone else, on campus and off. “We commit to assuming best intentions, granting ourselves and others grace when mistakes are made,” reads the eighth community guideline in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, “and approaching conflict with the goal of addressing and repairing.” ■

*更多来自我们专栏作家莱克星顿的关于美国政治的文章：Truth Social是唐纳德·特朗普的一个扭曲胜利 (4月18日)美国进步人士正在让自己难过吗？ (4月4日)斯多米·丹尼尔斯案件类似于过去的丑闻 (3月27日)*

Read more from Lexington, our columnist on American politics:Truth Social is a mind-bending win for Donald Trump (Apr 18th)Are American progressives making themselves sad? (Apr 4th)The case of Stormy Daniels echoes past scandals (Mar 27th)

回到目录

商业 | 合资企业 (Business | Joint adventures)

如何在21世纪打造全球商业帝国 (How to build a global business empire in the 21st century)

迪士尼、福特、微软与准合并时代 (Disney, Ford, Microsoft and the age of the quasi-merger)

没有一个公司是孤立的。所有公司都签订合同并与其他公司竞争。相反，当老板们决定一种关系最好由命令来管理时，一家公司可能会收购另一家公司，就像1500亿美元矿业巨头BHP在4月24日提议要收购价值350亿美元的竞争对手英美公司一样。然而，在合同和完全承诺之间有很多种方式，可以使公司结合资金、知识或其他资源，而不必完全实现联姻。

No firm is an island. All strike contracts and compete with others. Conversely, when bosses decide a relationship would be better governed by fiat, one firm may acquire another—as BHP, a $150bn mining giant, proposed to do with a $35bn rival, Anglo American, on April 24th. Yet between the poles of contract and total commitment are plenty of ways for firms to combine capital, knowledge or other resources, without fully tying the knot.

这种中间安排在整个经济领域越来越受到青睐，从科技和人工智能（AI）到汽车制造和能源。根据咨询公司安可拉的数据，尽管2023年公司收购交易停滞不前，但合资企业（JVs）和合作伙伴关系的数量增加了40%。这些合资项目在快速技术变革和倾向保护主义的地区特别受欢迎，这种情况如今困扰着富裕和贫穷国家。随着商业壁垒的提升，利率持续上扬，监管部门对收购行为持谨慎态度，这种联姻正成为扩大商业帝国的首选方式，正如包括迪士尼、福特和微软在内的公司最近的行动所展示的那样。可称之为准并购时代。

Such in-between arrangements are winning favour across the economy, from tech and artificial intelligence (AI) to carmaking and energy. While corporate takeovers stalled in 2023, a few mega-mergers notwithstanding, the number of joint ventures (JVs) and partnerships jumped by 40%, according to Ankura, a consultancy. They are especially popular in areas of rapid technological change and in places given to protectionism, which these days afflicts rich and poor countries alike. With barriers to commerce rising, high interest rates contining to bite and regulators bridling at takeovers, such liaisons are becoming the go-to way to enlarge a business empire, as the recent actions of companies including Disney, Ford and Microsoft illustrate. Call it the age of the quasi-merger.

合作范围明确时，公司通常选择通过合资企业共同拥有一个独立实体的所有权。今年2月，迪士尼宣布推出一个新的体育流媒体服务，将其ESPN网络与两家竞争对手福克斯和华纳兄弟探索的内容汇集在一起。几周后，在印度，它与印度巨头信实达成85亿美元的协议，联手开展类似的业务。

When the scope of co-operation is clear, firms often choose to share ownership of a separate entity through a JV. In February Disney announced a new sports-streaming service bringing together its ESPN network with the content of two rivals, Fox and Warner Bros Discovery. Weeks later it made a similar move in India, joining forces with Reliance, a giant Indian conglomerate, in an $8.5bn deal.

许多结构更加模糊。微软已与一些最热门的人工智能模型制造商建立了合作关系：旧金山的OpenAI、巴黎的Mistral和本月的阿布扎比的G42。这些投资让这家全球最有价值的公司在Mistral和G42持有少数股份。在为OpenAI提供130亿美元支持后，微软在这家ChatGPT制造商的盈利子公司中持有非控制性利益。今年2月，美国汽车制造商福特与中国电池巨头宁德时代合作，在密歇根州建立35亿美元的电池工厂。宁德时代将通过许可协议提供专业技术，但不拥有该项目的股份。如果抖音的中国所有者字节跳动出售该应用而不是在美国关闭该应用，根据一项新法律规定，这款短视频应用可能最终会落入一组西方公司的手中。

Many constructs are fuzzier. Microsoft has forged partnerships with some of the hottest makers of AI models: OpenAI of San Francisco, Mistral of Paris and, this month, G42 of Abu Dhabi. The investments give the world’s most valuable firm minority stakes in Mistral and G42. After backing OpenAI to the tune of $13bn, it holds a non-controlling interest in the ChatGPT-maker’s for-profit subsidiary. In February Ford, an American carmaker, joined forces with CATL, a Chinese battery giant, to build a $3.5bn battery factory in Michigan. CATL would bring the know-how via a licensing deal, but not own a stake in the project. If TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sells the app rather than shutting up shop in America, as a new law dictates, the short-video time-sink may end up in the hands of a consortium of Western firms.

准并购并非新鲜事。长期以来，公司一直合作管理项目成本、新技术和制造狂热的政府。今年，法国的雷诺和日本的日产庆祝汽车制造业最大联盟的25周年，另一家日本公司三菱于2016年加入。通用电气航空部门和法国赛峰合资创办的CFM International自上世纪70年代以来一直在制造飞机发动机。纽约大学的Melissa Schilling指出，在上世纪90年代，公司们争先恐后地组建伙伴关系，以利用当时新兴技术——互联网。包括中国在内的发展中国家常常要求外国公司通过与本地合作伙伴的合资企业提供技术以利用廉价劳动力和广阔市场。

Quasi-mergers are not new. Firms have long teamed up to manage project costs, new technologies and manufacturing-obsessed governments. This year Renault of France and Nissan of Japan are celebrating a quarter-century of carmaking’s biggest alliance, which Mitsubishi, another Japanese firm, joined in 2016. CFM International, co-owned by GE Aerospace, an American industrial giant, and Safran, a French one, has been making aircraft engines since the 1970s. In the 1990s, notes Melissa Schilling of New York University, companies scrambled to form partnerships to capitalise on the new technology of the day—the internet. Developing countries, including China, have often obliged foreigners looking to take advantage of cheap labour and vast markets to hand over technology through JVs with local partners.

如今，更加复杂的世界正在导致更加复杂的安排。其中一个热点再次出现在车辆制造领域。该行业正在由内燃发动机向电动车辆（EVs）的转变以及对中国企业主导市场的去工业化的担忧而改头换面。今年10月，由菲亚特克莱斯勒和PSA集团合并而成的Stellantis，后者拥有标致和雪铁龙，宣布购买了Leapmotor 20%的股份，并建立了一家合资公司，用于在国外建造和销售这家中国公司的电动车辆。（Stellantis最大的股东是经济学人的母公司的部分所有者。）接下来的一个月，雷诺和日产（Nissan）通过了一项新的、更松散的协议，包括更平等的交叉持股关系。三月，日产和另一家日本竞争对手本田表示他们正在探讨开展战略合作伙伴关系，以开发电动车辆。

Today’s more complicated world is leading to more complicated arrangements. One hotspot is, again, carmaking. The industry is being remade by the shift from combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs)—and by fears of deindustrialisation as Chinese firms dominate the market. In October Stellantis, formed by the merger in 2021 of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group, owner of Peugeot and Citroën, announced the purchase of 20% of Leapmotor and the establishment of a JV to build and sell the Chinese firm’s EVs abroad. (Stellantis’s biggest shareholder part-owns The Economist’s parent company.) The next month Renault and Nissan ratified a new, looser pact with more equal cross-shareholdings. In March Nissan and Honda, another Japanese rival, said they were exploring a strategic partnership to develop EVs.

许多新的汽车制造企业并不仅仅关于制造汽车——至少不是直接制造。去年，Stellantis收购了麦克尤恩铜业近20%的股份，作为一项协议的一部分（该协议还涉及到巨头力拓）以在阿根廷开采这种红色金属。这些铜最终可能会运往印第安纳州科科莫，Stellantis在那里拥有两家电池工厂的49%股权，这两家工厂正在与三星SDI合作建造，三星SDI是三星电子的一家部分所有者。Stellantis还是IONNA的成员，IONNA是由七家汽车制造商组成的一家合资公司，计划在美国建造3万个充电站。

Many of the new carmaking ventures are not about making cars—at least not directly. Last year Stellantis bought nearly 20% of McEwen Copper, a small miner, as part of a deal (which also involves Rio Tinto, a giant one) to extract the red metal in Argentina. That copper may eventually make its way to Kokomo, Indiana, where Stellantis owns 49% of two battery factories being built with Samsung SDI, a South Korean battery firm part-owned by the electronics giant of the same name. Stellantis is also part of IONNA, a JV among seven carmakers that plans to build 30,000 charging stations in America.

与笨拙汽车制造商之间的合作旨在分摊成本的合作相比，数字巨头正在构建类似复杂的合作网络。与汽车制造商之间的合作不同，人工智能交易更多地与反垄断执法机构坚信大型科技公司已经太过庞大有关。今年三月，亚马逊表示已投资40亿美元收购了Anthropic，确保其客户获得该人工智能公司的Claude 3模型，并自诩为该模型制造商的“关键云服务提供商”。Alphabet已经承诺向Anthropic提供多达20亿美元，并且自豪地宣称该初创公司利用了其云基础设施。

Digital titans are building similarly intricate webs of co-operation. In contrast to those between lumbering carmakers, whose rationale is to spread costs, the AI deals have more to do with antitrust cops’ conviction that big tech is already too big. In March Amazon said it had invested $4bn in Anthropic, securing access to the AI firm’s Claude 3 model for its customers and crowning itself the model-maker’s “primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads”. Alphabet has promised Anthropic up to $2bn and also crowed that the startup uses its cloud infrastructure.

人工智能最雄心勃勃的交易者，微软，充分意识到粘性的红色法规可能带来的危险。该公司对动视暴雪进行全面收购花费了近两年时间才完成，并且几乎被信任监管机构拦截。这家软件巨头首次于2016年开始与OpenAI 合作；130亿美元后，微软正在将OpenAI的模型整合到其消费者和企业产品中。在该初创公司遭受动荡的阴影中，这在去年导致其老板山姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）迅速被解雇和重新雇佣，微软开始分散其赌注。

AI’s most ambitious dealmaker, Microsoft, is well aware of the dangers posed by stickier red tape. Its full-blown acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a video-game developer, took nearly two years to complete and was nearly derailed by trustbusters. The software behemoth first began working with OpenAI in 2016; $13bn later and it is integrating OpenAI’s models into its consumer and enterprise products. In the shadow of turbulence at the startup, which in November led to the swift firing and re-hiring of its boss, Sam Altman, Microsoft has begun to spread its bets.

尽管2月份宣布的1600万美元对Mistral的投资可能很少，但它有助于将法国成为人工智能强国的最好机会带入到微软的轨道。今年三月，科技世界被一项更具创造性的“无协议”交易所震惊，Inflection AI的高级员工转移到了微软。据报道，该初创公司的其他投资者将通过一项不寻常的许可协议得到补偿。（Inflection的一位创始人，也转至微软，同时也是经济学人的母公司的董事会成员。）微软的15亿美元G42交易一半是合作一半是高风险的外交，该交易带来了美国和阿联酋政府之间在人工智能方面更紧密合作的希望。

The $16m investment in Mistral, announced in February, may be tiny but helps bring France’s best shot at becoming an AI superpower into Microsoft’s orbit. In March the tech world was stunned by an even more creative “no-deal” deal whereby senior employees at Inflection AI, another model-maker, decamped to Microsoft. The startup’s other investors are reportedly being compensated by an unusual licensing agreement. (One of Inflection’s founders, who also moved to Microsoft, sits on the board of The Economist’s corporate parent.) Microsoft’s $1.5bn G42 transaction is half partnership and half high-stakes diplomacy—the deal came with hope of closer co-operation on AI between the American and Emirati governments.

几乎合并浪潮的成功很难预测。尽管联盟比收购更容易通过监管者的审查，但它们仍可能发生瓦解。去年，美国航空公司和捷蓝航空在美国东海岸结束了他们的合作，之后遭到美国司法部的起诉。迪士尼的新体育企业受到反垄断监管者的密切关注。今年早些时候，美国的另一家反垄断信托机构，美国联邦贸易委员会，就人工智能交易展开了调查。欧洲和英国的监管机构也有类似的说法。

The success of the quasi-merger wave is hard to predict. Though alliances pass the desks of regulators more easily than takeovers, they can still come unstuck. Last year American Airlines and JetBlue ended theirs on America’s east coast after being sued by the Department of Justice. Disney’s new sports venture is getting a close look from antitrust referees. Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission, another American trustbuster, opened an inquiry into the AI deals. European and British regulators are making similar noises.

跨境交易，特别是在新兴经济体中的合作，一直需要仔细管理，以免政治关系密切的当地人反对外国合作伙伴，或者整个司法管辖区变得不值得投资。西方国家对自由市场的背离在一定程度上全球化了这种政治不确定性。合作或合资中固有的灵活性却不存在于全面收购中，这可能使这种结构在政治上更为可接受。但即使是经过精心设计以避免纠缠的交易也可能受到审查。尽管CATL与福特的合作不涉及中国企业的股权投资，但这并未阻止美国立法者呼吁对该交易进行严格审查。

Cross-border deals, in particular, tread a narrow path. Teaming up in emerging economies has always needed careful management, lest politically connected locals turn on foreign partners or an entire jurisdiction becomes uninvestable. The turn away from free markets in the West has, to some extent, globalised this political uncertainty. The flexibility inherent in a partnership or JV but absent from a full-on takeover could make such structures more politically acceptable. But even transactions crafted to avoid tripping wires can come under scrutiny. Although CATL’s partnership with Ford does not involve an equity investment by the Chinese firm, that hasn’t stopped American lawmakers from calling for close scrutiny of the deal.

也许对于这种新型合作关系最大的威胁就是合作伙伴。调整公司的激励机制一直是一个难题。准合并的重要细节往往保密，让股东对老板们到底同意了什么一无所知。争端时有发生。今年三月，一位美国法官裁定沃尔玛可以结束与大都会银行的合作伙伴关系，因为这家超市和信用卡提供商在协议条款上发生了分歧。一场充满紧张局势的语言博弈让石油行业坐立不安。埃克森美孚正在与一家较小的竞争对手赫斯展开争斗，就他们在圭亚那的合资企业如果赫斯被埃克森的竞争对手美国超级主要竞争对手雪佛龙收购后应该发生什么而争执不休。

Perhaps the biggest threat to the new-fangled partnerships is the partners. Aligning firms’ incentives is notoriously tricky. The crucial fine print of quasi-mergers is kept secret, giving shareholders little insight into what bosses have actually agreed to. Disputes are ten a penny. In March an American judge ruled that Walmart could end its partnership with Capital One after the supermarket and credit-card provider fell out over the terms of their agreement. A fraught game of linguistic chess has the oil industry on the edge of its seat. ExxonMobil is warring with Hess, a smaller rival, over what should happen to their JV in Guyana should Hess sell itself to Chevron, Exxon’s rival American supermajor.

全球电动汽车销售的放缓将给汽车制造商的新构想带来压力（福特已经缩减了其密歇根电池厂的计划）。作为一种新技术，人工智能提出了诸如安全或版权之类的新问题，这些问题可能不适合共同决策。准合并势在必行。许多可能只会被证明是准成功。 ■

A global slowdown in EV sales will put stress on carmakers’ new constructs (Ford has already scaled back plans for its battery plant in Michigan). Being a novel technology, AI raises novel questions about things like safety or copyright that may not lend themselves to shared decision-making. Quasi-mergers are here to stay. Many may prove only quasi-successful. ■

回到目录

商业 | 变革的翅膀 (Business | Wings of change)

有谁能让波音摆脱它的俯冲？ (Can anyone pull Boeing out of its nosedive?)

这家美国飞机制造商需要一位非常出色的飞行员。 (The American planemaker needs one hell of a pilot)

今年初，波音（Boeing）遭遇的困境几乎是前所未有的糟糕。在一月份，一块遮盖未使用应急出口的面板从俄勒冈州上空的一架737 MAX飞机上脱落。幸运的是，飞机安全着陆。一项初步调查得出的结论是，应该固定面板的螺栓遗漏了。这一事件引发了内部调查，并导致联邦监管机构前往波音工厂审计生产流程。更令人担忧的是，4月16日，一位告密者声称，787梦幻客机（787 Dreamliners）存在未被承认的缺陷，这反映出公司缺乏“安全文化”。

Few companies have had a worse start to the year than Boeing. In January a panel masking an unused emergency exit blew out of a 737 MAX over Oregon. Thankfully the plane landed safely. A preliminary probe into the near-disaster concluded that the bolts that should keep the panel in place were missing. The incident prompted internal investigations and brought federal regulators to Boeing’s factories to audit manufacturing processes. If that were not enough, on April 16th a whistleblower claimed that unacknowledged defects with 787 Dreamliners were symptomatic of a firm with “no safety culture”.

这种加剧的关注立即带来的后果就是飞机交付数量急剧下降——第一季度交付了83架商用飞机，而一年前为130架，而且惹人注目的是，空客（Airbus）交付了142架，这是波音的欧洲竞争对手（见图表）。这种损失在Dave Calhoun于4月24日公布季度业绩时显而易见。在宣布净亏损3.55亿美元后，他试图向持怀疑态度的投资者保证公司正在积极解决其生产问题。在财报电话会议上，还悬而未决的是波音的下一任首席执行官人选，在一个月前，Dave Calhoun 宣布将于年底离任，在此之前对管理层进行了大规模重组并立即任命了新董事长。

The immediate consequences of the added scrutiny was a sharp fall in deliveries of planes—83 commercial jets in the first quarter, compared with 130 a year ago and, gratingly, with 142 by Airbus, Boeing’s European arch-rival (see chart). The damage was apparent when Dave Calhoun, its boss, presented quarterly results on April 24th. After announcing a net loss of $355m, he sought to assure sceptical investors that the company was making good progress in resolving its manufacturing problems. Hanging over the earnings call was also the question of Boeing’s next pilot, after Mr Calhoun a month ago announced his departure at the end of the year amid a big shake-up of management and the immediate appointment of a new chairman.

Calhoun的继任者将面临一项极其艰巨的工作。与空客的命运相比，波音的滑坡形势更为突出。2017年，这家美国公司的市值是其唯一竞争对手的2.5倍；如今大致相同。自2019年以来，当整个737 MAX机队因两起由于软件故障导致的致命事故而被停飞将近两年后，波音的年度净损失已达245亿美元。而同期，空客的利润接近100亿美元。波音的5700架飞机订单远远低于空客的7700架。

Mr Calhoun’s successor will face an unenviable in-tray. A comparison with the fortunes of Airbus highlights Boeing’s slide. In 2017 the market value of the American firm was two and half times its only rival’s; now it is roughly the same. Since 2019, when the entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded for nearly two years after two fatal accidents attributable to faulty software, Boeing’s combined annual net losses have amounted to $24.5bn. In that period Airbus has made profits of nearly $10bn. Boeing’s orders of 5,700 planes are far below the 7,700 in the European firm’s books.

航空战略（Aviation Strategy）这家咨询公司概括了波音众多危机的根源。对“季度业绩和股价增长的痴迷”导致过多的现金返还给股东，而过少投入于开发新产品或确保生产质量。2014年至2020年间，波音在股息和股票回购上分发了610亿美元。受益的不仅仅是股东，管理人员也受益匪浅，他们的奖金与雇主不断飙升的股价挂钩。美国银行（Bank of America）的Ron Epstein指出，1997年与麦道公司（McDonnell Douglas）的合并预示着“从工程卓越向文化转变的转变”。波音开始偏袒短期财务管理而忽略了长期产业的企业文化，而空客则更少关注投资者，更专注于飞机的研发，这可能在几十年的时间内进行循环。

The roots of Boeing’s many crises are summed up by Aviation Strategy, a consultancy. An “obsession with quarterly results and share price momentum” resulted in too much cash being returned to shareholders and too little put into developing new products or ensuring production quality. Between 2014 and 2020 Boeing handed out $61bn in dividends and share buy-backs. It was not just shareholders who benefited. So did managers, whose bonuses were tied to their employer’s surging share price. Ron Epstein of Bank of America notes that a merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 foreshadowed a “cultural shift away from engineering excellence”. Boeing began to favour short-term financial management in a long-term industry, while Airbus focused less on investors and more on its aircraft, which might have a life-cycle measured in decades.

扭转该文化滑坡将是新任首席执行官面临的最艰巨任务。这可能需要多年的时间。更为紧迫的是，Dave Calhoun的继任者必须加快737 MAX的生产，并引导这个系列及其他长程飞机的新型号取得认证。同时，他或她必须为下一代短程客机做好准备。航空公司对波音推迟交付737 MAX感到愤怒。等待波音改善质量控制计划的监管机构已经将产量限制在每月38架。波音的困境意味着直到年底之前实际上不会达到那种产量，到那时空客可能已经在生产65架其竞争对手A320。

Reversing the cultural slide will be the hardest job for the new boss. It could take years. More immediately Mr Calhoun’s replacement will have to ramp up production of the 737 MAX and guide new variants of this and other, long-haul planes to certification. At the same time, he or she must prepare the ground for the next generation of short-haul passenger jets. Airlines are angry with Boeing for delivery delays of the 737 MAX. Regulators, awaiting Boeing’s plan to improve quality control, have capped production at 38 a month. Boeing’s troubles mean that it does not actually expect to hit that rate until later in the year, by which time Airbus may be making 65 of its competing A320s.

推迟可能会产生持久影响。对于航空公司来说，转投空客并非易事，尤其因为这家欧洲公司的短程客机交付名额一直到本十年末都是满额的。然而，当航空公司感到不能再依赖波音时，一个转折点可能会到来。有传言称美国联合航空公司正考虑替换一个交付推迟五年、尚未获得认证且无交付前景的737 MAX大型版本的订单。

Delays could have a lasting effect. Switching to Airbus would be no easy matter for airlines, not least because the European firm has no free delivery slots for its short-haul jets until the end of the decade. Yet a point could come when carriers feel they can no longer depend on Boeing. United Airlines is rumoured to be considering replacing an order for a larger version of the 737 MAX that is five years behind schedule and, with certification still pending, with no prospect of delivery.

波音仰仗其过去作为美国产业巨头的声誉已不再足够。正如Epstein所观察到的那样，它可能“太大而无法失败，但不至于太大而平庸”。一个陷入困境的波音可能打开竞争者的大门。中国商飞（COMAC）长期计划打破这种垄断，不过迄今为止还没有一款能真正与波音或空客竞争的飞机。巴西制造商天马航空工业（Embraer）可能也会将其制造的小型地区客机推向大型飞机市场。

Boeing’s reliance on its past reputation as an American industrial behemoth won’t cut it. As Mr Epstein observes, it may be “too big to fail but it is not too big to be mediocre”. A struggling Boeing could open the door for challengers. COMAC, a Chinese one, has long-standing plans to break the duopoly, though so far without a plane that can truly compete with a Boeing or an Airbus. Embraer, a Brazilian maker of smaller regional jets, could also make a move into bigger aircraft.

新的短途喷气飞机预计将于2035年左右投入使用，这是一项庞大而昂贵的任务，卡尔霍恩先生估计将耗资500亿美元。令投资者担忧的是，这一数字几乎是波音之前全新设计飞机的两倍。选择正确的技术是波音必须做对的任务。但一些观察人士担心，自2004年787飞机推出以来，波音还没有推出过全新飞机，可能已经失去了开展这样一项庞大计划的机构记忆。

New short-haul jets, likely to enter service around 2035, are another priority. It is a huge and expensive task that Mr Calhoun reckons will cost $50bn. To investors’ consternation, that is nearly double the figure for Boeing’s previous clean-sheet designs. Choosing the right technology is a task that Boeing has to get right. But some observers fear that the firm, which has not launched an all-new plane since the 787 in 2004, may have lost the institutional memory for such a huge undertaking.

新任老板将继承其他问题。波音三分之一的收入来自于其国防和航天部门。该部门的利润曾经可以使波音免受客机业务周期性影响。然而，在过去两年里，这部门已经转为亏损。波音无法有效管理固定价格开发交易，同时五角大楼越来越倾向于这种交易而非传统的“成本加成”合同，后者可以将大部分财务风险转嫁给承包商。波音还远远落后于埃隆·马斯克的SpaceX，后者的火箭已经在为国际空间站提供服务。而波音的竞争对手Starliner目前尚未进行载人测试飞行。

The new boss will inherit other problems. A third of Boeing’s revenues comes from its defence-and-space arm. The division’s profits used to insulate Boeing from the cycles of the passenger-jet business. In the past two years they have turned to losses. Boeing has mismanaged fixed-price development deals, even as the Pentagon increasingly favours these to conventional “cost-plus” contracts, which remove most financial risk from the contractor. Boeing has also fallen far behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose rockets are already serving the International Space Station. Starliner, the rival vehicle from Boeing, has yet to make a crewed test flight.

那么，谁将接管控制杆？外部候选人寥寥无几。成功扭转通用电气的领头羊地位的拉里·卡尔普似乎已自我排除。领导2019年创立国防公司L3哈里斯的合并的比尔·布朗相反正要担任工业集团3M的高管职位。目前负责Spirit AeroSystems的帕特·沙纳汉可能是一个有望人选，但因为波音正试图收购他的公司以改善监督，所以有些棘手。最有可能的内部人选是斯蒂芬妮·波普，最近晋升为商用飞机部门负责人。过去接受波音的最高职位是板上钉钉的选择。现在波普女士或其他任何人都会认真思考。■

Who, then, might take the yoke? External candidates are thin on the ground. Larry Culp, who has successfully turned around GE, another troubled icon of America Inc, appears to have ruled himself out. Bill Brown, who led the merger that in 2019 created L3Harris, a defence company, is instead taking the top job at 3M, an industrial conglomerate. Pat Shanahan, currently the boss of Spirit AeroSystems, one of Boeing’s suppliers, could be a contender—were it not for the fact that Boeing is seeking to acquire his company in an effort to improve oversight. The most plausible insider is Stephanie Pope, promoted to head of the commercial-aircraft division in the recent reshuffle. Accepting the top job at Boeing would once have been a no-brainer. Now Ms Pope, or anyone else, will think long and hard about it. ■

回到目录

商业 | 缠身其中 (Business | Tinderboxed in)

战争会扑灭海湾的全球商业野心吗？ (Will war snuff out the Gulf’s global business ambitions?)

遍布各地的公司都感受到了冲突的影响。 (Companies far and wide are feeling the effects of the conflict)

它被认为是新的中东：一个更为安宁、中立的中转站，在这里阿拉伯人和犹太人、什叶派伊朗人和逊尼派阿拉伯人、美国人、中国人甚至俄罗斯人都可以共同追求利润。在过去六个月里，这个愿景首先受到以沙特阿拉伯和阿联酋领导人为主要倡导者、并受到全球首席执行官们支持的冲击，被以色列与哈马斯激进分子在加沙的战争所冲击，然后又被犹太国家与伊朗之间有史以来首次的直接交火所冲击。这个梦想能否经受住回到动荡时期的考验呢？

It was supposed to be the new Middle East: a quieter, neutral entrepot where Arabs and Jews, Shia Iranians and Sunni Arabs, Americans, Chinese and even Russians could all rub along in the common pursuit of profit. In the past six months that vision, championed most vigorously by leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and embraced by chief executives the world over, has come under assault—first by Israel’s war with Hamas militants in Gaza, then, this month, by the first ever direct exchange of fire between the Jewish state and Iran. Can the dream withstand the throwback to turmoil?

值得庆幸的是，伊朗和以色列（在很大程度上是无辜的）的袭击和反击并未升级为更大规模的冲突。然而，加上加沙更为血腥的战争及其在埃及、约旦和黎巴嫩等地所造成的影响，导致导弹冲突让该地区处于焦虑中，而其商业野心也变得不确定。

Thankfully, the Iranian and Israeli (largely victimless) strike and counterstrike have not escalated into a larger conflict. However, combined with the much bloodier war in Gaza and its fallout in places like Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, the missile skirmish leaves the region on tenterhooks—and its commercial ambitions in a state of uncertainty.

在哈马斯于10月7日对以色列发动的恐怖袭击六个月之后，对全球商业影响最为直接的连锁敌对行动发生在该地区的水域。也门胡塞叛军声称出于与加沙人的团结，一直在红海地区向船只发射伊朗导弹。4月13日，伊朗在阿曼湾扣押了其所称为“与以色列有关联”的商船，据称是因为“违反海事法，并未回应伊朗当局的呼叫”。

Six months after Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel on October 7th, the knock-on hostilities with the most immediate consequences for global business have occurred along the region’s waterways. Houthi rebels in Yemen have, ostensibly in solidarity with Gazans, been firing Iranian missiles on ships plying the Red Sea. On April 13th Iran seized what it described as an “Israeli-linked” merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman, allegedly for “violating maritime laws and not answering calls made by Iranian authorities”.

全球第二大集装箱船运公司丹麦商船公司马士基已暂停在沙特阿拉伯和阿曼的停靠，并将船只改道绕过非洲，使得亚洲和欧洲之间的运输时间增加了两到三周。总体来说，与去年十月相比，船只在约旦的停靠次数减少了65%，在沙特阿拉伯减少了40%。货运量在连接红海两端的巴布尔曼德布海峡和苏伊士运河，以及连接波斯湾和阿拉伯海的霍尔木兹海峡地区下降了高达75%。

A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s second-biggest container-shipping company, has suspended port calls in Saudi Arabia and Oman, and rerouted ships around Africa, adding two or three weeks to transit times between Asia and Europe. Overall, ships are making 65% fewer stops in Jordan and 40% fewer in Saudi Arabia than they were last October. The volume of freight has sunk by as much as 75% across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal, at either end of the Red Sea, and across the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

许多油轮远离汹涌的海域。游轮公司取消或改道航线。准备前往海滩度假的游客们远离埃及和约旦，而这两个国家有10-15%的GDP依赖于这些游客。计划在2030年吸引该地区的1.6亿游客，是2023年三倍的数量，正在渐行渐远。

Many oil tankers are steering clear of the rough waters. Cruise lines have cancelled or rerouted voyages. Beach-ready tourists are staying away from Egypt and Jordan, which depend on them for 10-15% of GDP. Hopes of luring 160m tourists a year to the region by 2030, three times the number in 2023, are receding.

跨国企业也感受到了战斗的间接影响。在拥有400多家跨国公司办事处的以色列，高管们担心雇员会被征召入伍服预备役。美国的进步派亲巴勒斯坦科技工作者正推动谷歌放弃在以色列的价值12亿美元的云计算项目。该冲突导致Snap的收入增长放缓。这家社交媒体公司表示，广告商正在削减在该地区的支出，而其中3亿用户中有3000万每日用户在该地区居住。拥有Facebook和Instagram的Meta也表达了类似的担忧。

Multinational businesses are feeling indirect effects of the fighting, too. In Israel, where more than 400 multinational firms have offices, executives worry about employees being called up for reserve duty. Progressive pro-Palestinian tech workers in America are pushing Google to drop a $1.2bn cloud-computing project in Israel. The conflict has contributed to slowing revenue growth at Snap. The social-media company says that advertisers are cutting spending in the region, where 30m of its 400m or so daily users reside. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has voiced similar concerns.

与此同时，可口可乐和星巴克等美国品牌在穆斯林国家面临抵制，消费者对美国坚定支持以色列感到愤怒。一些餐厅拒绝供应百事可乐或可口可乐，而是提供Matrix Cola等本地替代品。今年2月，麦当劳总裁表示，汉堡连锁店在中东地区的销售受到“明显影响”（在以色列，该连锁店买下了以色列经营者，因为他免费为以色列士兵提供餐食）。

Meanwhile, American brands such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks are facing boycotts in Muslim countries, where consumers are angry at America’s steadfast support for Israel. Some restaurants refuse to serve Pepsi or Coke, instead offering local alternatives like Matrix Cola. In February the boss of McDonald’s said the burger chain was facing a “pronounced impact” on Middle Eastern sales (it bought out the Israeli franchise owner, after he offered meals to Israeli soldiers free of charge).

自2017年至2022年间，五个阿拉伯国家（埃及、阿曼、卡塔尔、沙特阿拉伯和阿联酋）的年度外国直接投资几乎翻了一番，但现在显示出了减缓的迹象。即使全球交易正在回升，在1月至三月中旬，私募基金和风险投资家在中东的交易额仅不到10亿美元，而2021年的季度平均交易额为47亿美元（见图表）。一家海湾公司主席表示在这样的时刻，“私营部门不太可能“冒险”。一位私人股权高管补充说，现在一切都是关于“对额外投资保持谨慎”。一位欧洲首席执行官解释说，公司必须更加深入考虑“基础设施的物理保护、选择融资伙伴的方式以及围绕新项目的风险情景”。自去年十月以来，沙特和阿联酋债券的收益率已经上升，违约保险价格也同步走高，这表明投资者感到不安。

Having nearly doubled between 2017 and 2022, annual foreign direct investments in five Arab economies—Egypt, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—are showing signs of softening. Between January and mid-March, even as global dealmaking has rebounded, buy-out barons and venture capitalists struck less than $1bn-worth of transactions in the Middle East, down from a quarterly average of $4.7bn in 2021 (see chart). The private sector is unlikely to be “adventurous at a time like this”, says the chairman of a Gulf-based company. “You want to remain much more liquid.” Now it is all about being “cautious with extra investment”, adds a private-equity executive. Companies must think harder about “physical protection of infrastructure, the way you choose your financing partners and risk scenarios around new projects”, explains a European chief executive. Yields on Saudi and Emirati bonds have risen since October, as has the price to insure those bonds against default, suggesting that investors are jittery.

Not everyone is exercising the same level of caution. Amazon’s cloud-computing arm still plans to spend at least $5bn on Saudi data centres, drawn by cheap energy and a strategic location. Microsoft, a tech titan with a rival cloud offering, is also building server farms and, in the UAE, a 5G mobile network. This month it announced a $1.5bn investment in G42, an Emirati artificial-intelligence darling. Rather than give in to its progressive techies on the Israeli project, Google has sacked 50 of the rabble-rousers. Last year Asian companies announced more than $29bn-worth of investments in the Middle East.

不是每个人都在采取相同程度的谨慎。亚马逊的云计算部门仍计划在沙特投资至少50亿美元建立数据中心，吸引了便宜的能源和战略位置。微软，一家拥有竞争云服务的科技巨头，也正在建设服务器农场，并在阿联酋建立5G移动网络。本月，微软宣布对阿联酋人工智能公司G42进行15亿美元的投资。谷歌没有向其在以色列项目上的进步技术人员妥协，而是解雇了50名煽动性的员工。去年，亚洲企业在中东宣布了逾290亿美元的投资。

Overall, though, the mood in business circles is one of concern. Even if the conflict does not spiral out of control, the flare-ups could, executives worry, prompt the region’s rulers to funnel resources away from economic development and towards security and stability. That has happened before—but never against the backdrop of a business boom. ■

不过，总体上，商界的氛围是担忧。即使冲突没有失控，高管们担心，爆发的冲突可能导致该地区的统治者将资源从经济发展转向安全与稳定。这种情况以前曾发生过，但从未出现在商业蓬勃发展的背景下。 ■

回到目录

商业 | 巴特尔比 (Business | Bartleby)

嘘！想读点关于谣言和暗示的东西吗？ (Pssst! Want to read something about rumour and innuendo?)

工作场所的闲言碎语 (Gossip in the workplace)

流言蜚语无所不在。根据加州大学河滨分校的梅根·罗宾斯和亚历山大·卡兰的一项估计，人们平均每天花费52分钟谈论他人。流言蜚语渗透到了工作场所。你可以在同事之间的对话中听到它；你知道去哪里可以获取最新一轮流言。你能感觉到流言蜚语即将出现：声音突然变低，可能还会有一些戏剧性地四处张望，以确保对象听不见。有时，它会明确地被提出，就像在酒会上端出来的小吃：“你想听一点流言吗？”是的，你几乎可以肯定会想要听。

Gossip is everywhere. On one estimate, from Megan Robbins and Alexander Karan of University of California, Riverside, people spend 52 minutes a day on average talking about other people. Gossip pervades the workplace. You hear it in conversations among colleagues; you know who to go to for the latest round of it. You can tell when gossip is imminent: voices suddenly lower and there may well be some theatrical looking around to check that the target is not in earshot. Sometimes it is offered up explicitly, like a vol-au-vent at a drinks party: “Do you want to hear a bit of gossip?” And yes, you almost certainly do.

管理者也有消息渠道。流言蜚语的学者们（这些人聚在一起开会时会发生什么是未来研究的课题）倾向于将它描述为关于不在场的人的非正式评估信息的交流。这种交流既可以是赞美的，也可以是批评的。按照这个定义，不和员工们八卦的老板可能并没有恰当地履行自己的职责。

Managers have grapevines, too. Scholars of gossip (what happens when these people all get together at a conference is a subject for future research) tend to describe it as informal exchanges of evaluative information about people who aren’t there. Those exchanges can be complimentary as well as critical. By that definition, bosses who do not gossip about employees may not be doing their job properly.

流言蜚语的无处不在表明它一定有一些好处。谈论同事肯定更有趣，尤其是当他们被偷偷看到共同进入酒店房间时，而不是谈论最新一季的数字。进化心理学家们还认为，八卦有助于灌输社会规范。在他们的著作《社会大脑》中，特蕾西·卡米勒里、萨曼莎·洛基和罗宾·邓巴指出了南非狩猎采集群体使用八卦来批评那些不分享狩猎战利品的人的例子。

Its ubiquity suggests that gossip must have some benefits. It is definitely a lot more entertaining to talk about colleagues, particularly if they are seen furtively entering a hotel room together, than the latest set of quarterly numbers. Evolutionary psychologists also reckon that gossip is helpful in instilling social norms. In their book “The Social Brain”, Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey and Robin Dunbar point to the example of hunter-gatherer groups in southern Africa who use gossip to convey criticism of those who fail to share the spoils of successful hunts.

类似的行为也在工作场所中出现。阿姆斯特丹大学的特伦斯·多雷斯·克鲁斯及其合著者最近的一篇论文中，被要求参与者是否会传播关于一个经常懈怠并让别人替他工作的人的流言。人们更有可能把这则信息传递给那些将不得不与这个无能之辈共事的人，而不是那些不会的人。消息传播形成声誉的部分知识，可以作为不良行为的威慑力。

Similar behaviour is visible in the workplace. In a recent paper by Terence Dores Cruz of the University of Amsterdam and his co-authors, participants were asked whether they would share gossip about someone who was constantly slacking off and leaving others to do the work. People were more likely to pass that piece of information on to a person who was going to have to work with this good-for-nothing than to one who was not. The knowledge that reputations are partly forged through gossip can act as a deterrent to bad behaviour.

但是，这种声誉效应也是担忧八卦的原因之一。有时会出现激励机制，传播关于他人的不准确信息。另一个由科学家金·彼得斯和米格尔·丰塞卡进行的实验发现，当八卦传播者被告知他们之间存在竞争时，谎言出现的频率是真实情况的两倍。

But that reputational effect is also one reason to worry about gossip. For sometimes incentives emerge to spread inaccurate information about other people. Another experiment, conducted by Kim Peters and Miguel Fonseca of the University of Exeter, found, among other things, that lies cropped up twice as frequently when gossipers were told they were in competition with each other.

一个相关问题是，人们对消极八卦的兴趣大于对积极八卦的兴趣。Colin上个月在生成销售线索方面做得很棒这则消息不会传播开来。但如果他们的内容足够爆炸性，即使是完全的谎言也会传播。例如，2021年加拿大安大略省的一位志愿消防员因为被地方政府解雇，理由是她与消防员进行了不当性行为的虚假传言，获得了高额赔偿。

A related problem is that people are drawn to negative gossip more than positive gossip. The news that Colin did a great job generating sales leads last month is not going to spread far and wide. But if they are juicy enough, even outright falsehoods will circulate. In 2021 the Ontario Superior Court in Canada awarded hefty damages to an employee at a volunteer fire department who had been fired by the local municipality on the basis of false rumours that she had engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviour with firefighters.

如果八卦会给其目标带来困扰，那对于分享信息的人也可能不利。八卦的一个奇怪之处在于每个人都会八卦，然而人们经常又对此指手画脚。杜伦大学商学院的玛丽亚·卡卡利卡及其合著者最近的一篇论文发现，被视为八卦者不太可能有助于你的职业生涯。参与者被给定一个情景，其中某人传播负面个人八卦关于同事。他们不仅表示不赞同；还说他们更有可能给予八卦者较低的绩效评级，并建议减少奖金。如果你是办公室八卦的武汉活动市场，是谣言可靠复制的地方，你最终可能会受到同等怀疑对待。

If gossip can cause distress to its targets, it can also be bad for the people sharing information. One of the oddities of gossip is that everyone does it and yet it is so often frowned upon. A recent paper by Maria Kakarika of Durham University Business School and her co-authors found that being seen as a gossipmonger is unlikely to help your career. Participants were given a scenario in which someone spread negative personal gossip about a colleague. They were not just disapproving; they also said they would be more likely to give the gossiper lower performance ratings and to recommend bonus reductions. If you are the Wuhan wet market of office gossip, the place where rumour reliably replicates, you may end up being treated with similar suspicion.

那么管理者们应该如何看待八卦呢？完全消除它将需要一个警察国家，并且无论如何都会剥夺组织一种潜在有用的自我调节行为。然而，管理者可以减少对八卦的需求。

What then should managers make of gossip? Getting rid of it entirely would require a police state, and in any case deprive the organisation of a potentially useful form of self-regulating behaviour. However, managers can dampen demand for it.

如果有关大事件的不确定性，比如裁员或任命新老板，八卦将蓬勃发展。如果人们认为受到不公平对待，他们会想向同事倾诉。如果工人的工作令他们厌倦，他们将通过琐事闲聊缓解乏味。治疗过度八卦的一种方式是进行良好的管理。■

If there is uncertainty around a big event like lay-offs or the appointment of a new boss, gossip will flourish. If people think they are being treated unfairly, then they will want to vent about it to co-workers. If workers have jobs that bore them rigid, they will alleviate the tedium with chit-chat. One cure for excess gossip is decent management. ■

Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:The lessons of woke Scrabble (Apr 18th)Productivity gurus through time: a match-up (Apr 11th)The six rules of fire drills (Apr 4th)

回到目录

商业 | 社交媒体与安全 (Business | Social media and security)

国会告诉中国：出售TikTok，否则我们将禁止它 (Congress tells China: sell TikTok or we’ll ban it)

如今只有美国的法院能拯救这款视频应用 (Only America’s courts can save the video app now)

编辑说明（4月24日）：乔·拜登签署法案后，本故事已更新。

Editor’s note (April 24th): This story was updated after Joe Biden signed the bill into law.

仅两个月前，乔·拜登加入了TikTok，他发布了一段名为“lol hey guys”的短视频。4月24日，美国总统批准了一项可能禁止这款热门应用的法案。前一天，参议院通过了一项措施，打击“外国对手控制的应用程序”，包括TikTok，在将军事援助分配给乌克兰、以色列和台湾的立法方案中。拜登总统毫不拖延地签署了这项法案，不顾他的30万追随者或TikTok的1.7亿美国用户的感受。

Joe Biden joined TikTok only two months ago, with a short video entitled “lol hey guys”. On April 24th America’s president approved a bill that could ban the popular app. The previous day, the Senate had passed a measure to crack down on “foreign adversary controlled applications”, including TikTok, as part of a package of legislation allocating military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Mr Biden wasted no time signing it into law, no matter the feelings of his 300,000 followers, or TikTok’s 170m American users.

该法律赋予了TikTok的中国所有者字节跳动最多12个月的时间将其出售给非中国利益。（先前版本的法案允许6个月；新的截止日期恰好将此事推迟到了11月的选举之后。）有各种可能的买家被炒作。微软、甲骨文和沃尔玛过去都表现出对TikTok的兴趣。前财政部长史蒂文·姆努钦表示，他正在组建一个投资者团队。

The law gives ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, up to 12 months to sell to non-Chinese interests. (A previous version of the bill allowed six months; the new deadline pushes the matter conveniently beyond November’s elections.) A wild selection of possible buyers is touted. Microsoft, Oracle and Walmart have all shown an interest in TikTok in the past. Steven Mnuchin, a former Treasury secretary, says he is putting together a group of investors.

他们可能无法获得竞标机会。中国政府在字节跳动的子公司中拥有股权，表示不愿意放弃TikTok。中国政府已将该应用的推荐算法定为敏感技术，其出口需得到官方批准。今年3月，中国政府发言人警告称，在TikTok的情况下，“相关方应严格遵守中国法律法规。” 一些人认为，这番言论是对字节跳动的警告。

They may not get the chance to bid. China’s government, which owns a stake in a ByteDance subsidiary, has indicated it does not want to part with TikTok. It has classified the app’s recommendation algorithm as a sensitive technology, whose export needs official approval. In March a Chinese government spokesman warned that, in the case of TikTok, “the relevant party should strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.” The comment was read by some as a warning to ByteDance.

这将使TikTok别无选择，只能在美国关闭，去年该应用在美国赚取了160亿美元的收入，根据《金融时报》。因此，公司寄希望于向美国强大的法庭上诉。4月21日向员工发出的备忘录描述了这项新法案，当时该法案刚刚获得众议院通过，称其为侵害用户第一修正案权利的“明显违反”，该权利确保言论自由。

That would leave TikTok no choice but to shut down in America, where last year it earned revenues of $16bn, according to the Financial Times. The company is therefore pinning its hopes on an appeal to America’s mighty courts. A memo sent to staff on April 21st described the new bill, which at the time had just been passed by the House of Representatives, as a “clear violation of [users’] First Amendment rights”, which enshrine freedom of speech.

斯坦福法学院的伊芙琳·道克认为，TikTok有一个强有力的案件。“几十年的判例认为政府不能因为不喜欢其内容就禁止某种形式的交流，即使涉及外国对手，”她说。TikTok此前曾在法庭上取得胜利。去年，法官推翻了蒙大拿州实施的一项禁令，部分原因是出于言论自由。前总统唐纳德·特朗普颁布的禁止该应用的行政命令在2020年被法官阻止。

TikTok has a strong case, believes Evelyn Douek of Stanford Law School. “Decades of precedent hold that the government can’t ban a form of communication because they don’t like the content on it, even when it involves foreign adversaries,” she says. TikTok has won in court before. Last year a judge overturned a ban imposed by the state of Montana, partly on free-speech grounds. An executive order to ban the app by then-president Donald Trump was blocked by judges in 2020.

支持禁止的人称问题不在于TikTok上的内容，而在于公司的行为。有指控称其收集用户数据和操纵用户所见内容，而TikTok否认这些指控。如果法庭可以被说服TikTok有不良行为，言论自由的辩护不一定会拯救它。1986年，纽约一家成人书店在最高法院上诉其关闭的案件中输掉了，法官认为关闭书店的原因不是其图书内容，而是书店内发生的其他非法活动。

Those in favour of a ban say the problem is not the content on TikTok, but the company’s conduct. It is accused of harvesting users’ data and manipulating what they see, both of which it denies. If courts can be persuaded that TikTok is up to no good, a free-speech defence will not necessarily save it. In 1986 an adult-book seller in New York lost a Supreme Court appeal against its closure, when judges argued that the reason for its shutdown was not the content of its books, but other, illegal activity taking place on the premises.

如果TikTok获胜，它可能会成为社交媒体中更强大的力量。经纪人伯恩斯坦的马克·舒姆利克认为，“TikTok一直在与国内竞争举手投足，”而其竞争对手Meta已经提出技术解决方案，帮助其广告客户规避苹果引入的iPhone隐私变更，TikTok一直保持谨慎行事。如果法院消除了禁令的威胁，该公司“可能会有动力加速前进，”舒姆利克指出。这也可能制止高级人员的流失。从迪士尼挖来的前首席执行官凯文·迈耶在特朗普努力禁止该应用的过程中离职。其首席运营官Vanessa Pappas去年离职。现在，据报道，首席法律顾问埃里克·安德森正准备离职。

If TikTok wins, it could become an even stronger force in social media. “TikTok has been fighting with one hand tied behind its back against domestic competition,” argues Mark Shmulik of Bernstein, a broker. While Meta, its arch rival, has come up with technical fixes to help its advertisers get around privacy changes Apple introduced for iPhones, TikTok has played it safe. If courts remove the threat of a ban, the company “could feel empowered to step on the gas”, Mr Shmulik notes. It might also stem the exodus of senior staff. Kevin Mayer, a former chief executive hired from Disney, left amid Mr Trump’s efforts to ban the app. Vanessa Pappas, its chief operating officer, departed last year. Now Erich Andersen, the chief counsel, is reportedly preparing to move on.

不管法庭上发生什么，TikTok已经在思考哪些国家可能会效仿美国强硬的立场。TikTok在印度有2亿用户，在2020年（连同其他几家中国应用）在中印边境冲突后被禁止。印度尼西亚和巴基斯坦等国家曾实施，后来解除了短期禁令。塔利班自然而然地在重返阿富汗权力后禁止了TikTok。

Whatever happens in court, TikTok is already wondering which countries might follow America’s hawkish lead. India, where TikTok had 200m users, banned it in 2020 (along with several other Chinese apps) following a skirmish at the border with China. Countries including Indonesia and Pakistan have imposed and then lifted short-term prohibitions. The Taliban, naturally, outlawed TikTok on returning to power in Afghanistan.

更加吸引的市场目前看起来是安全的。目前没有任何欧洲大国要求出售TikTok。但是欧洲在涉及中国安全事务时，最终通常会效仿美国，就像在对中国电信设备制造商华为的迟来反制行动上一样。各国采取行动的意愿在一定程度上取决于它们与美国之间的安全关系密切程度。美国在“五眼”情报联盟中的成员——澳大利亚、英国、加拿大和新西兰——已经在政府设备上禁止使用TikTok。

Juicier markets look safe for now. No big European country is demanding TikTok be sold. But Europe has a record of eventually following America when it comes to China-related security matters, as in the case of its belated clampdown on Huawei, a Chinese maker of telecoms gear. Countries’ willingness to act will depend partly on the closeness of their security relationship with America. America’s fellow members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance—Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand—have already banned TikTok on government devices.

对TikTok的进一步限制可能会干扰不仅社交媒体市场，如果中国选择进行报复，也可能波及更多领域。本月早些时候，中国发出了警告，以国家安全为由禁止应用商店提供WhatsApp和Meta旗下产品Threads这对应用。中国可能会让许多其他大型美国公司的生活变得困难。特斯拉因中国汽车销量下降而受到影响。苹果在中国的iPhone销量正在下降。像AMD这样的美国芯片制造商也受到了打击，因为中国鼓励其智能手机制造商使用国产芯片。美国可能会发现，禁止一款短视频应用会带来长期后果。■

Further restrictions on TikTok could disrupt more than the market for social media—if China chooses to retaliate. It fired a warning shot earlier this month, banning app stores from offering apps including WhatsApp and Threads, a pair of Meta products, on national-security grounds. China could make life difficult for plenty of other big American companies. Tesla is suffering because of falling car sales in China. Apple’s iPhone sales in the country are ebbing. American chipmakers like AMD are being hurt, too, as China encourages its smartphone-makers to use domestic chips. America may find that banning a short-video app has long-term consequences. ■

回到目录

商业 | 熊彼特 (Business | Schumpeter)

特斯拉面临身份危机：是汽车制造商还是科技公司？ (Tesla faces an identity crisis: carmaker or tech firm?)

埃隆·马斯克的魔幻困境。 (Elon Musk’s fiendish conundrum)

在埃隆·马斯克于4月23日揭晓特斯拉第一季度业绩之前的夜晚，你的专栏作家将车停下，注意到洛杉矶有一个未来感十足的车辆连接到特斯拉充电站。那是一辆深紫色的赛博卡车。透过着色窗户，闪烁的灯光在其后闪烁。它看起来如此楔形，角度分明和超凡脱俗，以至于可以在新的启示录电影“内战”中充当一辆装甲运兵车。

On the night before Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s first-quarter results on April 23rd, your columnist brought his car to a halt, noticing a futuristic vehicle hooked up to a Tesla charging station in Los Angeles. It was a dark-purple Cybertruck. Twinkling lights glittered behind the tinted windows. It looked so wedgelike, angular and otherworldly that it could have moonlighted as an armoured personnel carrier in “Civil War”, a new apocalyptic film.

车主丹尼斯·王是特斯拉的信徒。除了他四个月大的赛博卡车外，他还拥有马斯克的原始（“性感”）四重奏：S、3、X和Y模型。自2018年以来，他持有该公司股份。他对马斯克充满信心。尽管特斯拉股价在年初业绩报告之前下跌了40%，并且最近几周宣布车辆销量下降和空前裁员，他仍然认为这位亿万富翁是最适合经营公司的人。即使由于卡车启动器卡住而导致一个尴尬的赛博卡车召回，他说，这一问题很快就得到了解决，他指着踏板上的一颗新螺栓。

Its owner, Dennis Wang, is a Tesla devotee. Besides his four-month-old Cybertruck, he has owned Mr Musk’s original (“sexy”) quartet: the Models S, 3, X and Y. He has held shares in the company since 2018. He has full faith in Mr Musk. Despite a 40% plunge in Tesla’s share price this year in the run-up to the earnings report, as well as the announcement in recent weeks of falling vehicle sales and unprecedented lay-offs, he believes the billionaire remains the best person to run the company. Even an embarrassing Cybertruck recall, caused by a stuck accelerator, was quickly fixed, he says, pointing to a new bolt in the pedal.

然而，尽管王先生如此喜爱特斯拉，但他并不认为特斯拉是一家汽车公司。他称其为一家科技公司。正如他所说，所有电动汽车（EV）提供类似的驾驶体验。区别在于软件——仪表板下的大脑。在特斯拉的案例中，这就是最新版本的自动驾驶技术，他称之为“绝妙”。他的观点得到了许多特斯拉忠实粉丝的认同。这就是为什么该公司的股票交易价格呈现出典型快速软件公司的盈利倍数，而不是金属加工商。

Yet however much Mr Wang loves Teslas, he does not think of Tesla as a car firm. He says it is a tech company. As he puts it, all electric vehicles (EVs) offer a similar driving experience. What differentiates them is the software—the brains beneath the dashboard. In Tesla’s case, that is the latest version of its self-driving technology, which he calls “fantastic”. His view is shared by many Tesla loyalists. It is why the company’s shares trade at a multiple of earnings typical of a zippy software firm, not of a metal-basher.

华尔街持有不同看法。尽管投资者希望特斯拉有朝一日能够从其时髦的人工智能（AI）中获利，但目前他们希望通过销售更多汽车来恢复增长——价格尽量低廉。因此，当特斯拉在一份除了营收、利润率和自由现金流全部暴跌之外概述了在2025年开始生产不依赖大规模新投资的经济款车型的计划时，投资者松了口气。特斯拉的股价立即飙升超过10％。可以说，这是来自单车经济学家们的500亿美元支持。

Wall Street takes a different view. Though investors hope Tesla will one day make money from its snazzy artificial intelligence (AI), for now they want it to restore growth by selling more cars—the cheaper the better. Hence the sigh of relief when Tesla outlined plans within an otherwise dismal earnings report (revenues, profit margins and free cashflow all crashed) to start producing affordable vehicles by 2025 that would not rely on big new investments. Tesla’s share price promptly soared more than 10%. Call that a $50bn thumbs-up from the unit-economics guys.

马斯克过去有一段既执着又犹豫的历史。当投资者对2010年代末特斯拉电动汽车的需求表示怀疑时，他承诺股东其所谓的全自动驾驶（FSD）技术将在2020年让100万辆机器人出租车上路。但这并未发生，所以在疫情期间，特斯拉的销售激增时，他改变了说辞。他夸耀销售增长速度比亨利·福特的T型车更快，而且特斯拉立志到2030年年销售2000万辆电动汽车。

Mr Musk has a history of trying to have it both ways. When investors were doubtful about demand for Tesla’s EVs at the end of the 2010s, he promised shareholders that its so-called full self-driving (FSD) technology would put 1m robotaxis on the road by 2020. That did not happen, so during the pandemic, as Tesla’s sales rocketed, he changed his tune. He boasted that sales were growing faster than Henry Ford’s Model T, and that Tesla aspired to sell 20m EVs a year by 2030.

今年，特斯拉能否卖出超过2023年180万辆汽车存在变数。所以，马斯克再次改变了说辞。他再次强调了FSD，但这次有了新的转折：他告诉分析师，最新版本的技术非常出色，不用亲眼尝试是无法理解公司的。他甚至说道：“如果有人认为特斯拉不能解决自主性，我认为他们不应该是这家公司的投资者。”他竞争性的叙述在投资类型中产生了困惑。特斯拉既可以是一家汽车公司，也可以是一家科技公司吗？总体来看，答案是肯定的。但这取决于你谈论的市场是哪一个。

This year it is touch and go whether Tesla will sell more than the 1.8m cars it shipped in 2023. So Mr Musk has flipped the script again. Once more he is highlighting FSD, though this time with a twist: the latest version is so good, he told analysts this week, that it is impossible to understand the company without trying it. He went so far as to say: “If someone doesn’t believe Tesla will solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company.” His competing narratives create quite the conundrum among investment types. Can Tesla be a car company as well as a tech company? The answer, broadly, is yes. But it depends on which of its markets you are talking about.

从增长价值的角度来看，没有比中国更重要的国家了。它是世界上最大的电动汽车市场，尽管增长放缓，但销量仍比美国增长要快得多。然而，竞争激烈，价格战正在摧毁特斯拉在那里的业务。特斯拉还没有透露其计划中的便宜车型将在哪里销售。但如果这种便宜车型在全球范围内推出，这可能有助于它抵御来自比亚迪（中国的一个低成本竞争对手）的竞争，后者不仅是中国最大的电动汽车销售商，而且在全球范围内也有很强的影响力（尽管不在美国）。

From a volume-growth perspective, no country is more important than China. It is the world’s biggest EV market, and though growth is slowing, sales are still rising much faster than in America. However, competition is fierce and a price war is shredding Tesla’s business there. Tesla has not said where the cheaper model it is planning will be sold. But if it is made available globally, it could help it fend off competition from BYD, a low-cost Chinese competitor that is not just the biggest EV seller in China but also has a strong presence around the world (though not in America).

特斯拉的美国本土市场则不同。马斯克的公司已经是市场领导者，所以其增长前景可能受到了限制，更不用说混合动力汽车的兴起了。然而，它必须销售更多汽车以生成现金，用于购买其运行FSD技术所需的大量AI芯片。这就是廉价车型的应用之处。它可以帮助特斯拉跨越一座通往未来的桥梁，同时它试图克服汽车驾驶人的巨大的工程和监管挑战。

Tesla’s American home turf is different. Mr Musk’s firm is already the market leader, so its growth prospects are probably constrained, more so because of the rising popularity of hybrids. Yet it has to sell more cars to generate cash to fund the purchase of huge volumes of AI chips that it needs to run its FSD technology. That is where a cheaper car comes in. It could help Tesla cross a bridge to the future while it attempts to overcome the huge engineering and regulatory challenges necessary for cars to drive people, rather than the other way round.

前方有许多潜在的障碍。首先是士气可能会崩溃的风险。除了裁减了其十分之一的员工之外，特斯拉最近还失去了几位备受尊敬的高管（最新一位在季度业绩电话会议上宣布了离职）。其次，马斯克与大型投资者之间的信任脆弱不堪。谁知道如果下个月的股东会议上大多数人投票反对董事会恢复他2018年被特拉华法官废除的560亿美元薪酬，他会作何反应。第三，马斯克经营特斯拉之外的许多其他企业的困难被他那种易怒的爆发所加剧，这种爆发常常会留下一片废墟。

There are lots of potential roadblocks ahead. First is the risk of crumbling morale. Besides the sacking of one-tenth of its workforce, Tesla has lost several highly respected executives recently (the latest announced his departure on the quarterly earnings call). Second, trust between Mr Musk and big investors is gossamer-thin. Who knows how he will react if a majority at next month’s shareholder meeting vote against the board’s efforts to reinstate his $56bn payout from 2018 that was voided by a Delaware judge. Third, the difficulty of running many businesses besides Tesla is compounded by Mr Musk’s “demon mode”—irascible outbursts that can leave rubble in their wake.

和许多马斯克粉丝一样，王先生预计特斯拉老板会挺过难关。作为一家汽车制造商，马斯克表现出色。一位Cybertruck车主坐在后座，他的柯基在后座欢快地奔跑时说，这是他拥有过的最舒适的汽车。作为一名技术专家，马斯克不断进步。尽管王先生承认最新版本的FSD需要司机监督，但他表示在通勤时能够“坐下来放松一下”对他来说和一大笔钱一样有价值。最重要的是，在将工程梦想变为现实方面，没有人能与马斯克相提并论。正如他所说，“如果埃隆想在你的头里植入芯片，你就会被植入芯片。”只是不要指望它按照承诺的时间点立即植入。在此期间，准备好见证其导师式人物的崩溃。■

Like many Muskophiles, Mr Wang expects Tesla’s boss to pull through. As a carmaker, Mr Musk excels. The Cybertruck, says its driver as his corgi scampers on the back seat, is the most comfortable car he has ever owned. As a technologist, Mr Musk continues to improve. Though Mr Wang acknowledges that the latest version of FSD requires driver supervision, he says being able to “sit back and decompress” on his commute is as valuable to him as a pot of money. Above all, no one matches Mr Musk when it comes to turning engineering dreams into reality. As he puts it, “If Elon wants to put a chip in your head, you will get a chip in your head.” Just don’t expect it to be implanted until years after it is promised. And be prepared for its Svengali to melt down in the meantime. ■

阅读更多关于全球商业的专栏作家舒默佩特的文章：链接已删除

Read more from Schumpeter, our columnist on global business:What is weighing on CEOs’ minds this earnings season? (Apr 18th)Generative AI has a clean-energy problem (Apr 11th)Why Japan Inc is no longer in thrall to America (Apr 2nd)

回到目录

国际 | 闭关自守规则，好吗 (International | Autarky rules OK)

科技战国即将进入激烈新阶段 (The tech wars are about to enter a fiery new phase)

美国、中国和霸权之争。 (America, China and the battle for supremacy)

信息和能源的流动支撑着所有的经济活动，先进技术支持着这一切。因此，在美国和中国之间的技术战中赌注极高。这场战争始于唐纳德·特朗普的首个任期，即2017年至2021年间，如今在乔·拜登执政期间仍在继续。中国领导人习近平对美国对“掐断技术”的出口管制感到愤怒。这场斗争正在重塑全球的关系和供应链，其成本正在不断增加。估算各有不同，但国际货币基金组织认为，跨对立阵营之间高科技贸易的消除可能每年造成相当于全球 GDP 1.2% 的损失，约合1万亿美元。

FLOWS OF INFORMATION and energy underpin all economic activity, and advanced technologies support both. Hence the sky-high stakes in the tech wars between America and China. Started during Donald Trump’s first term in office, between 2017 and 2021, they have continued under Joe Biden. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, bridles at America’s export controls on “chokehold technologies”. The struggle is reshaping relationships and supply chains the world over. And its costs are mounting. Estimates vary, but the IMF reckons that the elimination of high-tech trade across rival blocs could cost as much as 1.2% of global GDP each year—about $1trn.

陆军战争学院的埃文·埃利斯表示，中国或美国控制能源和信息技术是一个“种族文明问题”。未来几年这场对抗的紧张局势可能会加剧。无论是拜登还是特朗普，都不会回避挑战中国，也许这是华盛顿兼容并蓄的问题中最得到支持的一个。而对于中国放弃其在全球秩序中的正当地位，对习近平来说是难以想象的。

Whether China or America controls energy and information technologies is an “ethno-civilisational question”, says Evan Ellis of the Army War College. The temperature of the confrontation is likely to rise over the coming years. Neither Mr Biden nor Mr Trump will shrink from challenging China, perhaps the issue which enjoys the highest level of bipartisan support in Washington. And for China to back down from what it sees as its rightful place in the global order is unthinkable for Mr Xi.

技术战的下一阶段将在两个主要领域展开。其一是芯片制造，它构建了世界的信息处理基础设施，包括培训和运行人工智能软件的基础设施。中国对芯片生产的任何程度的控制对美国都是无法容忍的。另一个领域是绿色技术，因为其组件可能成为整个全球经济的支柱。对于中国而言，该领域公司的实力不仅是二十年集中产业政策的自然结果，还确认了其在全球领导地位中的重要角色。

The next stage of the tech wars will play out in two major arenas. One is chipmaking, which creates the world’s information-processing infrastructure, including the one that trains and runs artificially intelligent software. Any degree of Chinese control over the production of chips is intolerable to America. The other is green technology, as its components may become the backbone of the entire global economy. For China the strength of its companies in this arena is not just a natural consequence of two decades of focused industrial policy, but a confirmation of its important role as a global leader.

目前，争端在应用程序领域展开。4月23日，美国国会通过了一项法案，要求美国使用的视频平台TikTok的中国所有者在270天内出售其股份，否则将面临禁令。几天前，中国当局强迫苹果从其中国应用商店移除WhatsApp和Threads，这两个平台由Meta公司拥有。但尽管有这些抗议声音，应用程序是一个次要问题，因为它们需要芯片和能源来运行，而非相反。

At the moment the battle is over apps. On April 23rd Congress passed a bill asking the Chinese owners of TikTok, a video platform used by 170m Americans, to sell up in 270 days or face a ban. Days before Chinese authorities forced Apple to drop WhatsApp and Threads, platforms owned by Meta, from its Chinese app store. But despite the outcries, apps are a second-order concern as they require chips and energy to run—not the reverse.

考虑两国当前的立场。美国正在推动芯片制造商在其国土上扩大尖端生产。政府于4月8日宣布向台湾的台积电提供66亿美元的补贴，用于亚利桑那州建设新的三座生产厂。4月15日，又向韩国的三星提供64亿美元，在德克萨斯州建立生产厂。这些举措属于其于2022年推出的2800亿美元的芯片与科学法案，该法案鼓励建设生产厂和为其培训员工。此外，美国的工具包中还有“通胀减缓法案”（IRA），这是于2022年通过的一项3690亿美元的绿色补贴方案。它通过税收抵免支持国内绿色设备的生产。同时，美国对中国的太阳能电池板和电动汽车分别征收高关税，分别为14.25%和25%。

Consider the current positions of the two countries. America is pushing chipmakers to expand cutting-edge production on its shores. On April 8th the government announced $6.6bn in subsidies for Taiwan’s TSMC for three new fabs in Arizona. On April 15th came $6.4bn for South Korea’s Samsung to build fabs in Texas. The moves fall under its $280bn Chips and Science Act, an industrial policy introduced in 2022, which incentivises the creation of fabs and the training of staff for them. Also in America’s toolkit is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a $369bn green-subsidy package passed in 2022. It supports domestic production of green gear through tax credits. Meanwhile, America maintains high tariffs on Chinese solar panels and EVs, of 14.25% and 25% respectively.

然而，中国在绿色技术方面仍领先。隆基是全球最大的太阳能电池板制造商；宁德时代是最大的电池制造商，比亚迪正在与特斯拉争夺全球最大电动汽车制造商的头衔。然而，尽管中国在过去十年里政府补贴约1500亿美元，但中国的芯片制造并没有取得如此惊人的成果。在某种程度上，这是美国在过去两年内成功阻止芯片制造技术流入中国的体现。

China has nonetheless raced ahead in green tech. Longi is the world’s largest solar-panel manufacturer; CATL is the largest battery maker and BYD is wrestling with Tesla for the title of the world’s largest maker of EVs. Chinese chipmaking has not panned out so spectacularly, however, despite government subsidies of about $150bn over the past ten years. That is to some degree a measure of America’s success in blocking the flow of chipmaking technology into the country over the past two years.

那么接下来在芯片制造方面会发生什么呢？技术战的第一批受害者是华为。特朗普政府对其进行了精心制定的出口控制，现在已经用于对整个中国。问题在于美国11月的大选之后会发生什么。不管谁赢得胜利，下一任总统几乎肯定会针对其他中国科技公司发起一个新的、类似华为的运动。部分原因是因为中国鹰派将主导任何新一届美国内阁。

So what next when it comes to chipmaking? The first casualty in the tech wars was Huawei. It was the company on which the Trump administration honed the export controls that are now used on China as a whole. The question is what comes after America’s election in November. Whoever wins, the next president will almost certainly launch a new, Huawei-style campaign against other Chinese tech firms. This is partly because China hawks will pack any new American cabinet.

在特朗普执政期间，外国公司可能有额外的担忧。台积电就是其中之一：去年七月，特朗普曾抱怨台湾夺走了美国的芯片业务。但最引人注目的还是韩国的SK海力士和三星公司，自2020年以来在中国投资了约350亿美元。一位在中国科技政策上工作的国会议员办公室职员表示，“特朗普2.0将会对韩国人更加强硬”。他说，在特朗普执政期间，美国的补贴将附带一个要求，即不能在任何情况下投资于中国。

Under a Trump presidency, foreign companies may have extra reasons to fret. TSMC is one such: in July last year Mr Trump grumbled that Taiwan had taken away America’s chip business. But it is South Korean chip firms, SK Hynix and Samsung, that stand out most, having invested some $35bn in China since 2020. “Trump 2.0 is going to play a lot more hardball with the Koreans,” says one congressional staffer who works on Chinese tech policy. Under Mr Trump, he says, American subsidies will come with a requirement not to invest in China at all.

相关行业的公司处于高度警惕状态。 MGI Tech是中国巨头BGI的一个分支机构，生产基因测序设备，可能成为目标。特别是共和党人对MGI的机器被安装在欧洲医院感到不满。“可能会对出口到中国的量子技术进行重大多边控制”，一位共和党办公室工作人员表示。这可能意在阻止中国获得未来可能变得重要的量子计算和传感技术，而不是等到它们在市场上证明自己。

Firms in related industries are on alert. MGI Tech, a spin-off of the Chinese giant BGI which makes genome-sequencing equipment, is likely to be a target. Republicans, in particular, are upset that MGI’s machines have been installed in European hospitals. “Major multilateral controls on quantum technology” being exported to China are also likely, says a Republican staffer. That may be intended to deny China access to quantum computing and sensing technologies which may become important in the future, rather than waiting until they prove themselves in the market.

美国公司也并非全然放松。尽管顾问和律师们相信芯片法案将继续有效，但一些大公司，比如英特尔，可能渴望确保规范其根据该法案下的支付的合同是牢不可破的。“我们要确保这是具有法律约束力的,” 一位芯片执行官表示。

American corporations are not entirely relaxed, either. Although advisers and lawyers believe the Chips Act will remain in force, some big companies, such as Intel, may be keen to know that the contracts governing their disbursements under it are ironclad. “We want to make sure that is legally binding,” says a chip executive.

科技公司老板可能还不喜欢讨论对工业和安全局（BIS）进行改革。这是负责出口控制的机构，在过去的六年中广泛被用来打击中国科技公司。许多共和党人和部分民主党人认为，BIS工作人员一直在拖延这些控制措施。但一位科技公司老板表示，芯片公司依赖该局的机构。如果BIS受到抨击，一些公司可能会考虑将一些业务转移到国外并调整供应链，以摆脱华盛顿的控制。

Tech bosses may also dislike discussions about reforming the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). This is the agency in charge of the export controls which have been used extensively over the past six years to attack Chinese technology firms. Many Republicans and some Democrats believe that BIS staff have been slow-pedalling the controls. But chip firms rely on the bureau’s machinery, according to one tech boss. Some would consider moving some operations abroad and altering supply chains if BIS comes under fire, so as to be freer of Washington’s control.

如果美国对中国芯片制造商采取行动，中国缺乏不明显自我破坏的对策。它在去年找到了一种方法：对砷化镓和锗进行出口管制，这两种材料在芯片制造过程中虽小但重要。中国之所以能这么做是因为它在2022年分别提供全球98%和60%的产量。然而，与美国对知识产权的控制相比，商品出口控制是软弱的。

If America acts against Chinese chipmakers, China lacks responses which are not obviously self-destructive. It found one last year: placing export controls on gallium and germanium, two materials which are small but important ingredients in the chipmaking process. China could do so because it supplied 98% and 60% of global output in 2022. Commodity-export controls are weak, however, compared with America’s grip on intellectual property.

更有力的是中国努力主导生产技术不那么先进的芯片。在技术之争中一个悬而未决的问题是，中国在较低级别芯片制造上的控制程度能否满足全球对发现在电动汽车和智能电网中的这种计算需求。

More powerful are Chinese efforts to dominate the production of less technologically advanced chips. One open question in the tech wars is the extent to which growing Chinese control of less advanced chip manufacturing can satisfy global demand for the sort of computation that is found in EVs and smart grids.

那么绿色技术呢？美国几乎没有可以禁止中国进口的东西，因此未来几年其计划是不向其市场提供访问权限，而该市场是全球第二大市场，并说服盟友采取同样的做法。拜登可能会继续他在任上走的有益气候的道路。他将加强与盟友的联系，利用公共资金加速美国的减碳进程，同时阻止很多，如果不是全部，来自中国的进口。特朗普另当别论。关于他可能采取的更具侵略性、与气候无关的方法的讨论已经让美国和世界各地的高管们感到不安。

What about green technologies? America has little it could deny China, and so its plan over the coming years is to withhold access to its market, the world’s second-largest, and to persuade allies to do the same. Mr Biden will probably continue down the climate-friendly path he has followed in office. He will reinforce links with allies and use public money to accelerate America’s decarbonisation while blocking many, if not all, Chinese imports. Mr Trump is a different story. Talk of the more aggressive, climate-agnostic approach that he is likely to adopt is already rattling executives in America and around the world.

IRA应该可以在两位领导下均生存下来。“没有共和党人会说‘我支持它’，但我认为他们OK让IRA继续存在”，一位共和党内部人士称。这可能是因为至今1060亿美元中的740亿美元的IRA刺激投资已有的去向是共和党郡。一个极端的目标可能是从IRA鼓励创建的供应链中移除任何和所有中国组件。“中国公司获得一分钱的机会将要结束,” 同一位内部人士表示。这一法案有可能从一个气候倡议转变为一项专门支持美国高科技制造的倡议。

The IRA should survive either man. “No Republican is going to say ‘I support it’, but I think they’re OK with the IRA continuing to exist,” says one Republican insider. That may be because $74bn of the $106bn IRA-stimulated investment to date has gone to Republican counties. An extreme aim may be to remove any and all Chinese components from the supply chains whose creation the IRA is encouraging. “The ability for Chinese companies to receive a single dime from the IRA is going to go,” says the same insider. It’s possible that the act morphs from a climate initiative into one exclusively supporting high-tech manufacturing in America.

汽车行业可能是在反对绿色浪潮中最艰难的行业之一。特朗普称电动汽车为“骗局”，并表示中国制造的电动汽车会毁掉美国的汽车行业。这使汽车公司进退两难。一位游说者表示，最大的汽车公司已制定了与中国电池公司在美国建立合资企业的计划。到目前为止，只有福特公司公开谈论了其从CATL许可技术的计划；紧接着是共和党的攻击。“我知道公司已经商议了这些事情。我猜他们在等待，因为如果特朗普再次当选，这些[协议]将会瓦解,” 游说者解释。

The automotive industry could be among those which struggle most amid an anti-green onslaught. Mr Trump has called EVs a “hoax” and says Chinese-made EVs will destroy America’s car industry. That leaves car firms in a bind. The biggest, says one lobbyist, have developed plans to establish joint ventures with Chinese battery companies on American soil. So far only Ford has spoken publicly about its plans to license technology from CATL; Republican attacks followed. “I know that companies have negotiated these things. I suspect they’re waiting, because if Trump gets elected these [deals] will disintegrate,” explains the lobbyist.

中国的太阳能、电动汽车和电池公司将继续努力找到进入美国和欧洲市场的途径。可能是通过与国内公司的合资企业，或者通过在美国与其签署自由贸易协定的墨西哥等国建立工厂。但中国国内市场以及西方以外的世界市场提供了大量机会；中国在2023年安装的太阳能产能超过了美国迄今总装机量。在芯片领域，中国有市场霸权，但没有技术支配地位。而在绿色技术方面，中国两者兼备。

Chinese solar, EV and battery firms will keep trying to find ways into the American and European markets. That could be through joint ventures with domestic companies, or through factories built in countries such as Mexico with which America has a free-trade agreement. But China’s domestic market, and that of the world outside the West, provides plenty of opportunity; China installed more solar in 2023 than America has in total. In chips China has market power, but not technological dominance. With green tech it has both.

延长技术战争可能产生的潜在影响令人深思。任何一届美国政府如果在所有方面与中国对抗，就可能失去对最重要的领域的关注。中国的绿色技术出口在全球范围内蓬勃发展（见图表），中国国内的安装速度比其他任何地方都要快，因此拒绝美国市场的准入可能并不会很大程度削弱中国企业的控制力。而对控制向中国输送先进技术采取更为单边的方法可能会损害拜登政府近年来与日本等国建立起来的脆弱的合作关系。美国的政策也可能疏远欧洲盟友。美国的政策制定者报道称，他们的欧洲同行对于针对中国的出口管制和对外投资审查并不感兴趣。

The potential effects of prolonging the tech wars are sobering. Any American administration that fights China on every front could lose focus on the fronts that matter most. Chinese green-tech exports are booming all around the world (see chart), and installations within China are growing faster than anywhere else, so denying access to the American market may not do much to weaken the grip of Chinese firms. And a more unilateral approach to controlling the flow of advanced technologies into China may harm the fragile co-operative relationship that the Biden administration has built with the Japanese, among others, in recent years. American policy could also alienate European allies. American policymakers report a lack of interest from their European counterparts on export controls and outbound investment screening against China.

但技术战争可能产生的最大成本是世界信息和能源技术行业的二分化，导致经济增长乏力和减缓脱碳进程。这可能会加速企业为了开发适用于中国市场的产品而进行的秘密努力，而这些产品是美国政府几乎无法控制的。这可能会无意中赋予中国更多权力，以在使用其设备的世界各地设定技术标准。

But the biggest costs of the tech wars could be the bifurcation of the world’s information and energy-technology industries, leading to sagging economic growth and slower decarbonisation. They will probably accelerate firms’ secretive efforts to develop offerings for the Chinese market over which the American government has little or no control. That could inadvertently give China more power to set technological standards in parts of the world that use its equipment.

拜登政府对中国和技术的态度相对可预测。因此，它的干扰性较小。据所有报道，特朗普先生将与拜登的政策背道而驰，即使这是他自己第一任期的延续。不幸的是，更为激进的运动可能导致对美国、中国和世界造成更糟糕的后果。 ■

The Biden administration’s approach to China and technology has been relatively predictable. For that reason, it has been less disruptive. By all accounts, Mr Trump would break with Mr Biden’s policy even though it is a continuation of his own first term. Unfortunately, an even more aggressive campaign may lead to worse outcomes for America, China and the world. ■

回到目录

金融与经济 | 资本主义崩溃 (Finance and economics | Broke capitalism)

美国政治如何影响投资 (How American politics has infected investing)

当心：采取立场可能很昂贵。 (Beware: taking a stand can be expensive)

对冲基金的品牌是一个线索。1789 Capital是去年成立的，以美国国会提出《权利法案》的那一年命名。它为投资者提供机会，投入资金到据说有三个关键主题的领域：一个平行的保守经济，迎合那些想要避免受到自由主义思想冲击的消费者；远离自由贸易的转变；以及受到环境、社会和治理（ESG）投资趋势处罚的企业。其创始人奥米德·马利克，曾是一名银行家，曾为反疫苗、遥不可及的总统候选人罗伯特·肯尼迪举办筹款活动。

The hedge fund’s branding is a clue. 1789 Capital was set up last year and named after the year Congress proposed America’s bill of rights. It offers investors the chance to put money into what it says are three key themes: a parallel conservative economy catering to consumers who want to avoid being bombarded with liberal ideas; the shift away from free trade; and firms that have been penalised by the environment, social and governance (ESG) investment trend. Its founder, Omeed Malik, a former banker, has hosted fundraisers for Robert Kennedy junior, an anti-vaccination, long-shot presidential candidate.

订阅我们的新每日更新，《简报中的我们》，以及我们的总统民意调查追踪器。

Stay up to date with our new daily update, The us in brief, and our presidential poll tracker.

查看更多有关2024年美国大选的报道。

Read more of our coverage of the us elections of 2024.

1789 Capital是一个趋势的一部分：美国政治正在影响投资。民主党和共和党对世界的看法出现了分歧；许多美国人希望通过任何方式表达他们的政治身份；还有一些人认为他们的钱可以影响企业的行为。所有这些都在影响着投资决策。例如，投资于一些新颖交易所交易基金（ETFs），如跟踪某些政客投资组合的基金，规模虽小，却有更重要的其他发展情况。例如，有130亿美元从贝莱德（BlackRock）的账户中撤回，因为共和党的州抵制支持ESG的资产管理公司。唐纳德·特朗普和乔·拜登之间的激烈对决可能会进一步推动这一趋势。

1789 Capital is part of a trend: American politics is infecting investing. A gap has opened up between how Democrats and Republicans view the world; many Americans want to express their political identities by any means possible; and others see their money as a way to sway businesses’ behaviour. All this is influencing investment decisions. The amount of money invested in, say, novelty exchange-traded funds (ETFs), such as those tracking the portfolios of certain politicians, is small, but other developments are more significant. Some $13bn has been withdrawn from BlackRock’s accounts, for instance, as Republican states boycott asset managers that support ESG. A bitter rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden will probably supercharge the trend.

根据不列颠哥伦比亚大学的Elena Pikulina和合著者的一份工作论文，民主党和共和党零售投资者的投资组合在奥巴马执政期间中途开始分歧，然后稳定扩大。通过将投资顾问的数据与县级选举结果相结合，研究人员表明居住在共和党倾向县的投资者回避那些公司股票，其首席执行官向民主党捐款；而在民主党倾向县的投资者在担心公司对待工人的情况时不太可能投资。选民也间接影响其政治代表所作的决定，比如可以看到ESG的抵制活动。

According to a working paper by Elena Pikulina of the University of British Columbia and co-authors, the portfolios of Democrat and Republican retail investors began to diverge half-way through Barack Obama’s presidency, before consistently widening. By combining data from investment advisers with county-level election results, the researchers show that investors in Republican-leaning counties shun stocks of firms where the chief executive has made donations to the Democrats, while those in Democrat-leaning counties are less likely to invest in a firm when there are concerns about its treatment of workers. Voters also indirectly influence decisions made by their political representatives, as can be seen with the ESG boycotts.

是什么驱使着这种行为？一种可能性是民主党和共和党在经济走向上存在分歧，因此对于哪些投资将表现最佳存在分歧。据这一解读，这种分歧不是投资者试图实现政治结果的后果，而是政治性的世界观的产物。华盛顿大学圣路易斯分校的Maarten Meeuwis及其同事的一篇文章发现，美国投资者的风险偏好会随着白宫的人物而变化。2016年总统选举后，一些倾向民主党的投资者卖掉股票，购买债券——这表明他们对未来感到担忧。而共和党则相反。尽管只有相对少数人做出了这样的举动，但那些这样做的人通常会将超过四分之一的持股转换。

What motivates this behaviour? One possibility is that Democrats and Republicans simply disagree about the direction of the economy and, as a result, about which investments will perform best. Under this reading, rather than being the consequence of investors trying to achieve political outcomes, the divide is a product of politically inflected views of the world. A paper by Maarten Meeuwis of Washington University in St Louis and colleagues finds that the risk appetite of American investors shifts according to who is in the White House. After the presidential election in 2016 some Democrat-leaning investors sold stocks and bought bonds—a sign they were worried about the future. Republicans did the opposite. Although only a relatively small number of people made such moves, those who did typically shifted more than a quarter of their holdings.

作者认为这些决定反映了人们对经济数据的不同解读。民主党和共和党在消费者信心上存在分歧。当总统来自自己的政党时，两者对经济的看法更为乐观，控制通货膨胀和失业率。密歇根大学的消费者信心调查发现，在政治上存在明显分歧——比年龄或收入的分歧更大。在拜登执政期间，共和党人平均预计未来一年的通货膨胀率比民主党人高出2.4个百分点。

The authors argue these decisions reflect differing interpretations of economic data. They mirror a divide between Democrats and Republicans on consumer confidence. Both are more upbeat about the economy when the president is from their own party, controlling for inflation and unemployment. A consumer-sentiment survey by the University of Michigan finds a significant divergence along political lines—bigger than that along the lines of age or income. During Mr Biden’s time in office, Republicans have on average expected 2.4 percentage points more inflation in the year ahead than Democrats.

然而，不同的世界观并不能完全解释这一趋势。似乎，党派支持者也在买入股票，这也是一种表达支持的方式，就像他们可能会张贴一位候选人的海报一样。真相社交，特朗普先生的社交媒体控股公司，在三月在纳斯达克上市时暴涨，支持者争相购买股票。在特朗普2016年的胜选之后，民主党倾向的地区的赌徒投资更多的是清洁能源公司，即使该结果可能对这些企业不利。共同作者之一华盛顿大学的Stephen Siegel称，对这些投资者来说，回报并不如支持事业那么重要。

Yet different world views do not entirely explain the trend. It seems partisans are buying shares as an expression of support, too, much as they might put up a candidate’s poster. Truth Social, Mr Trump’s social-media holding firm, surged when it listed on the Nasdaq in March, as supporters rushed to buy the stock. After Mr Trump’s win in 2016, punters in Democrat-leaning counties invested more in clean-energy firms, even though the result was likely to be bad news for such businesses. To these investors, returns matter less than identification with the cause, says Stephen Siegel of the University of Washington, one of Ms Pikulina’s co-authors.

党派投资者也希望改变企业行为。自共和党州开始从 BlackRock 撤资以来，该公司老板 Larry Fink 已经开始避免使用 ESG。其他知名资产管理人和银行家也是如此。与此同时，南加州大学的Matthew Kahn及其同事的一项研究发现，当一个美国州的养老金基金更倾向民主党时，也就是说，当新的州长上任时，其投资企业会更快减少碳排放量。

Partisan investors also hope to change business behaviour. Since Republican states began to pull money from BlackRock, the firm’s boss, Larry Fink, has begun to shy away from referring to esg. So have other prominent asset managers and bankers. Meanwhile, a study by Matthew Kahn of the University of Southern California and colleagues finds that when an American state’s pension fund becomes more Democrat-aligned—say, when a new governor comes in—the firms it is invested in reduce their carbon emissions quicker.

党派投资对金融家来说既是问题也是机会。 ESG 投资的兴起最初使资产管理人能够与竞争对手区分开来。2021年，约有1,200亿美元流入这样的基金。但在 2023 年最后一个季度，它们首次出现净流出。现在的难题是如何在不惹恼任何一方的情况下吸引两边的买家，随着新话题的进入，这一任务变得越来越困难。去年十月，佛罗里达州州长 Ron DeSantis 要求 Morningstar Sustainalytics，一家数据公司，在 90 天内要么“澄清其业务惯例，要么停止抵制以色列”。他认为该公司的 ESG 指标将投资以色列的公司列为风险。Morningstar 委托的一份独立报告建议放弃一个特定标签，这个标签是为在“占领领土”经营的公司设立的，该公司打算采纳这一建议。佛罗里达州已经将 Morningstar 从警告名单中去除。

Partisan investing is both problem and opportunity for financiers. The rise of ESG investing at first allowed asset managers to distinguish themselves from rivals. Around $120bn flowed into such funds in 2021. But in the final quarter of 2023 they saw net outflows for the first time. The difficulty now is to sell to both sides without annoying either—a task that is becoming harder as new topics enter the fray. In October Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, gave Morningstar Sustainalytics, a data firm, 90 days to either “clarify its business practices or cease its boycott of Israel”. He argued that its ESG metrics classified companies as a risk for having invested in Israel. An independent report commissioned by Morningstar has recommended dropping a specific tag for companies that operate in “occupied territories”—advice that the firm intends to follow. Florida has since removed Morningstar from the warning list.

并非只有保守派在大做文章。资产管理公司 Vanguard 被激进分子抨击退出了 Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative，一个行业机构。今年一月，运动项目公司 Sunrise Project 在公司所在地宾夕法尼亚州播放广告，指责该公司向恶霸屈服。

It is not just conservatives making a fuss. Vanguard, an asset manager, has been targeted by activists for exiting the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, an industry body. In January the Sunrise Project, a campaign group, began running advertisements in Pennsylvania, the firm’s home state, accusing it of giving in to bullies.

与此同时，小型公司可以取悦党派。长期以来，存在着那些在投资决策上运用自由主义视角的基金，比如成立于 1984 年的 Parnassus Investments。右翼公司也加入了其中。除了 1789 Capital，还有 Strive Asset Management，由前共和党总统候选人 Vivek Ramaswamy 于 2022 年创立，该公司为投资者提供一个专注于化石燃料的美国能源 ETF，其简称为 DRLL。

At the same time, smaller firms can indulge partisans. There have long been funds that apply a liberal lens to investment decisions, such as Parnassus Investments, which was established in 1984. They are being joined by right-wing ones. As well as 1789 Capital, there is Strive Asset Management, set up in 2022 by Vivek Ramaswamy, an ertswhile Republican presidential candidate, which offers investors an American energy etf that focuses on fossil fuels and has the ticker DRLL.

采取立场可能是昂贵的。美联储和宾夕法尼亚大学的研究人员发现，反 ESG 抵制行动提高了德克萨斯州政府借来的 320 亿美元债务的利息成本，使利息增加了 3-5 亿美元，因为实行 ESG 政策的银行撤出了债券销售的承销工作。民主党人在 2016 年特朗普胜选时抛售股票可能会错失后来的一波股市涨势。在选举后一年，标普500指数上涨了21%。

Taking a stand can be expensive. Researchers at the Federal Reserve and the University of Pennsylvania have found that anti-ESG boycotts raised the cost of interest on $32bn borrowed by Texan municipalities by $300m-500m, as banks with ESG policies withdrew from underwriting bond sales. Democrats who shifted out of stocks when Mr Trump won in 2016 would have lost out on a post-election rally. In the year after the vote, the S&P 500 rose by 21%.

市场蓬勃发展在于看法的差异：每位卖方都需要一位买方，每位买方都需要一位卖方。提供投资者表达这些观点的机会的基金不一定是坏事。但美国资本主义建立在不惜一切代价追求利润的基础上。近几十年来，投资者纷纷涌向跟踪市场的指数基金，这些基金提供分散化和低费用。在党派投资者试图重塑经济以符合其价值观，而不是根据对经济的信念而进行投注的程度上，他们将为此买单。 ■

Markets thrive on differences of opinion: every seller needs a buyer and every buyer needs a seller. Funds that offer investors a chance to express those opinions are not necessarily a bad thing. But American capitalism has been built on the pursuit of profit at all costs. In recent decades, investors have flocked to index funds, which track the market, offering diversification and low fees. To the extent that partisan investors are trying to reshape the economy to align with their values, rather than betting on beliefs about the economy, they are going to pay for it. ■

回到目录

金融与经济 | 积极行动起来 (Finance and economics | Hop to it)

不喜欢工作？为竞争对手公司辞职 (Don’t like your job? Quit for a rival firm)

莉娜·可汗希望解放美国工人 (Lina Khan hopes to free the American worker)

美国有五分之一的员工在其合同中有不竞争条款，禁止他们离职去加入竞争对手。由于联邦贸易委员会于4月23日发布的一个新规定，这些条款可能很快就会失效。倡导者希望这将为美国经济注入活力并导致更高的工资；批评者警告说这将抑制投资。

A fifth of American workers have a non-compete clause in their contract, barring them from leaving to join a rival. Owing to a new rule issued by the Federal Trade Commission on April 23rd, these clauses may soon be voided. Advocates hope this will inject dynamism into the American economy and lead to stronger wages; critics warn it will stifle investment.

关于不竞争条款的辩论是一个古老的话题，可以追溯到15世纪的欧洲。法庭通常支持试图摆脱导师控制的学徒。然而，在工业革命时期，观点发生了转变。支持不竞争条款的主要论点——过去和现在都是——是它们保护了对捍卫商业秘密有可理解兴趣的公司。有了这样的条款，公司变得更愿意进行大量投资和培训员工，他们有信心能够从中获益。HEC巴黎的Jessica Jeffers最近发表的一项研究发现，当美国各州使不竞争条款更容易执行时，公司的实物投资增加了多达39%。

The debate about non-compete clauses is an old one, dating back to Europe in the 1400s. Courts generally came down on the side of apprentices trying to escape the clutches of their mentors. In the Industrial Revolution, though, views shifted. The main argument in support of non-compete clauses—then and now—is that they protect firms with an understandable interest in defending trade secrets. With them in place, companies become more willing to make hefty investments and train up workers, confident that they will reap the benefits from both. A recently published study by Jessica Jeffers of HEC Paris found that when American states make non-competes easier to enforce, firms increase their physical investments by as much as 39%.

不幸的是，许多老板滥用了这种控制权力。例如，2014年有一个荒谬的例子是，吉米约翰三明治连锁店的一名员工分享了公司合同条款的副本，该条款禁止员工在离开两年内跳槽到任何竞争对手。不仅三明治艺术家受到限制，从理发师到服务员，从事基本工作的美国人约10%面临类似的限制。

Unfortunately, many bosses abuse the power that such control gives them. In one risible example from 2014 a worker at Jimmy John’s, a sandwich chain, shared a copy of the company’s contract terms, which barred staffers from jumping to any competitor within two years of leaving. Sandwich artists are not the only Americans doing basic jobs who are so constrained. Studies have found that about 10% of those on minimum wages, from barbers to waiters, face similar restrictions.

即使对于高技能员工而言，这些限制的优点也是值得怀疑的。加州，许多世界上最具颠覆性技术公司的总部，长期以来已经禁止公司阻止希望加入竞争对手的员工。Jeffers女士的研究指出了一个权衡：尽管现有公司从限制跳槽中受益，但她发现这样的规定导致了知识密集型行业新公司入驻降低了7%。因此，它们代表了对创新的阻碍。

Even for highly skilled employees, the merits of these limitations are questionable. California, home to many of the world’s most disruptive tech firms, has long prohibited companies from stopping employees who wish to join rivals. Ms Jeffers’s research points to a trade-off: although existing firms benefited from job-hopping restrictions, she found such rules led to a 7% fall in new companies entering knowledge-intensive sectors. They thus represent an impediment to innovation.

在美国，对不竞争条款的潮流已经逆转。至少有十个州已经禁止其用于低工资工人。4月23日，FTC提高了赌注，投票支持全面禁令。根据规定，对年薪超过151,164美元的高管维持现有的不竞争条款是允许的，但所有其他的不竞争条款将不再执行，雇主也将被禁止创建任何新的，包括高管在内的不竞争条款。FTC预计这一禁令将使企业创造率提高3%，并使平均工人年收入增加约500美元。

The tide has been turning against non-competes in America. At least ten states have blocked their use for low-wage workers. On April 23rd the FTC upped the ante, voting for a sweeping ban. Under the rules, existing non-competes for executives making over $151,164 a year can be maintained, but all other non-competes will no longer be enforced, and employers will be barred from creating any new ones, including for executives. The FTC anticipates that the ban will lift the rate of business creation by 3% and increase earnings for the average worker by about $500 per year.

对于FTC的主席，由拜登任命的Lina Khan来说，这项禁令将是其在试图挑战大公司权力的竞选中的一项罕见的成就。禁令是否会在预定的六个月后生效是不确定的。美国商会几乎立即在德克萨斯州的法庭起诉了FTC，辩称虽然该机构可以挑战特定的商业行为，但它缺乏创立法规所需的宪法授权。换句话说，这一禁令将涉及到另一场竞争辩论：联邦机构是否有权与国会竞争制定规则。■

For Lina Khan, the Biden-appointed head of the FTC, the ban would be a rare accomplishment in her otherwise wayward campaign to re-engineer competition law in America, as she tries to take on the power of big companies. Whether the ban will actually go into force in six months, as scheduled, is uncertain. Almost immediately the US Chamber of Commerce sued the FTC in a Texas court, arguing that although the agency can challenge specific business practices, it lacks the constitutional authority required to create regulation. The ban, in other words, will come down to another competition debate: whether federal agencies have the right to compete with Congress in making rules. ■

回到目录

金融与经济 | 即将发生的斗争 (Finance and economics | Battles to come)

为什么更强的美元很危险 (Why a stronger dollar is dangerous)

它为一场令人不快的特朗普-中国新冲突做好了铺垫 (It sets the stage for a nasty new Trump-China clash, among other things)

美元看起来强劲。随着美国经济保持强劲增长，投资者已经减少押注美联储将降息的赌注，资金涌入美国市场， 绿背书飙升。根据货币篮子指数测算，今年已上升了4％；基本面指向进一步升值。随着一场快要到来的总统选举，民主党和共和党都决心促进美国制造业，世界正处于一个新的强劲美元地缘政治时期。

The dollar is looking formidable. As American growth has stayed strong and investors have scaled back bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, money has flooded into the country’s markets—and the greenback has shot up. It has risen by 4% this year, measured against a trade-weighted basket of currencies; the fundamentals point to further appreciation. With a presidential election looming, and both Democrats and Republicans determined to promote American manufacturing, the world is on the verge of a new period of strong-dollar geopolitics.

这一情况更加困难，因为美元的强势反映了其他地方的薄弱。到2023年底，美国经济比2019年底大了8％。同一时期，英国、法国、德国和日本的经济增长不到2％。日元对美元是34年低点。欧元从年初的1.10下跌到1.07美元(见图表1)。一些交易员现在在打赌，这对将在明年初达到平价。

This situation is made still more difficult by the fact that the currency’s strength reflects weakness elsewhere. By the end of 2023, America’s economy was 8% larger than at the end of 2019. Those of Britain, France, Germany and Japan each grew by less than 2% during the same period. The yen is at a 34-year low against the dollar. The euro has dropped to $1.07 from $1.10 at the start of the year (see chart 1). Some traders are now betting that the pair will reach parity by the beginning of next year.

如果唐纳德·特朗普在11月赢得选举，那么战争的舞台已经搭好。强劲的美元往往会提高美国出口商品的价格，降低进口商品价格，进而扩大国家持续的贸易逆差，特朗普先生数十年来一直抱怨这个问题。据《政治》(Politico)网站报道，特朗普时期对中国征收关税的首席谈判代表罗伯特·莱特希泽希望美元贬值。国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁克里斯塔琳·乔治耶娃于4月18日警告了这些发展对全球金融稳定性的影响。

Should Donald Trump win in November, the scene is therefore set for a fight. A strong dollar tends to raise the price of American exports and lower the price of imports, widening the country’s persistent trade deficit—a bugbear of Mr Trump’s for many decades. Robert Lighthizer, the architect of tariffs against China during Mr Trump’s time in the White House, wants to weaken the dollar, according to Politico, a news website. President Joe Biden has made no public pronouncements on the currency, but a strong dollar complicates his manufacturing agenda, too.

许多国家拥有丰富的外汇储备，他们可以出售以支撑本国货币：日本持有1.3万亿美元，印度6430亿美元，韩国4190亿美元。然而，任何救济措施都只是暂时的。尽管在2022年，当美联储开始提高利率时，出售减缓了美元走强，但并没有阻止它。中央银行和财政部不愿在毫无意义的斗争上浪费他们的储备。

Elsewhere, a mighty greenback is good for exporters that have costs denominated in other currencies. But high American interest rates and a strong dollar generate imported inflation, which is now exacerbated by relatively high oil prices. In addition, companies that have borrowed in dollars face steeper repayments. On April 18th Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF, warned about the impact of these developments on global financial stability.

另一个选择是国际协调来遏制美元的攀升。这一协调的开端可追溯到4月16日，当时美国、日本和韩国的财长发表了一份联合声明，表达了对日元和韩元贬值的担忧。这可能是更多干预的前兆，即通过联合出售外汇储备，阻止这两种亚洲货币进一步贬值。

Many countries have ample foreign-exchange reserves that they could sell to bolster their currencies: Japan has $1.3trn, India $643bn and South Korea $419bn. Yet any relief would be temporary. Although sales slowed the strengthening of the dollar in 2022, when the Fed began raising interest rates, they did not stop it. Central banks and finance ministries are loth to waste their holdings on fruitless fights.

但无论这些国家多么希望取得一致，经济无法避免地使他们分道扬镳。毕竟，日元和韩元疲弱是由美国和其他国家之间利率差异所驱动的。韩国两年期政府债券收益率约为3.5％，日本为0.3％，同期到期的美国国债则提供5％的收益(见图表2)。如果美国的利率持续明显高于其他国家，寻求回报的投资者将面临一个简单的选择，并且他们的决定将支持美元。

Another option is international co-ordination to halt the greenback’s climb. The beginnings of this were on display on April 16th, when the finance ministers of America, Japan and South Korea issued a joint statement expressing concern about the slump of the yen and won. This may be the precursor to more intervention, in the form of joint sales of foreign-exchange reserves, to prevent the two Asian currencies from weakening further.

此外，还有一些美国不太可能合作的国家。根据高盛集团，中国3月的外汇净流出约为390亿美元，这是自2016年以来第四大月度流出量——投资者正在逃离该国低迷的经济。人民币自年初以来一直在稳步贬值美元，从3月中旬开始更迅速，从7.18上涨到7.25美元。美国银行预计，在9月美国的选举活动全面展开时，人民币将达到7.45美元。这将使人民币达到2007年以来的最低水平，为中国最新的出口推动提供助力。廉价的中国电动汽车可能即将变得更加便宜。

But as much as these countries may want to be on the same page, economics is unavoidably pulling them apart. After all, yen and won weakness is driven by the gap in interest rates between America and other countries. South Korea’s two-year government bonds offer a return of around 3.5%, and Japan’s just 0.3%, while American Treasuries maturing at the same time offer 5% (see chart 2). If interest rates stay markedly higher in America, investors seeking returns face a straightforward choice—and their decisions will buttress the dollar.

即使是保护主义者在美国也许愿意暂时忽视盟友的疲软货币。但他们不太可能对中国采取这样的态度。这增加了进一步关税和制裁的风险，甚至可能导致中国重新被列入美国的货币操纵国名单。只要美国的经济表现优异，美元很可能保持强势。只要美国政客认为这是一个令人担忧的原因，贸易紧张局势就会升级。 ■

Then there are countries with which America is less likely to co-operate. According to Goldman Sachs, a bank, China saw $39bn or so in foreign-exchange outflows in March—the fourth most of any month since 2016—as investors fled the country’s languishing economy. The yuan has weakened steadily against the dollar since the beginning of the year, and more rapidly from mid-March, since when the dollar has risen from 7.18 yuan to 7.25. Bank of America expects it to reach 7.45 by September, when America’s election campaign will be in full flow. That would place the yuan at its weakest since 2007, providing a boost to China’s latest export drive. Cheap Chinese electric vehicles may be about to become cheaper still.

Even protectionists in America may be willing to overlook allies’ weak currencies, at least for a time. They are less likely to do so for China. This raises the risk of further tariffs and sanctions, and maybe even the return of China to America’s list of currency manipulators. As long as America’s economy outperforms, the dollar is likely to remain strong. And as long as American politicians see that as a cause for concern, trade tensions are sure to rise. ■

回到目录

金融与经济 | 财政惨败 (Finance and economics | Fiscal fiasco)

中国当局现在已经对交通罚款上瘾 (Chinese authorities are now addicted to traffic fines)

这向你传达了关于该国经济困境的信息。 (What that tells you about the country’s economic woes)

马依佳怡于十一月被关押。她并不是站在广场上要求政治权利。也不是从国库偷窃。相反，她的罪行是要求一个拖欠债务者偿还债务。马依佳怡是一名承包商，贵州省六盘水市的地方政府欠她22亿元人民币（3000万美元）用于建造学校。官员们只提供了她区区1200万元人民币，她拒绝了。

Ma Yijiayi was locked up in November. She did not stand in a square demanding political rights. Nor did she steal from state coffers. Instead, her crime was to ask a deadbeat debtor to pay her back. The local government in Liupanshui, a city in the province of Guizhou, owes Ms Ma, who is a contractor, 220m yuan ($30m) for building schools. Officials had offered her a mere 12m yuan. She refused.

中国公民和企业主越来越成为地方政府不择手段地稳固财政的受害者。一份一月的调查发现，河北省警察去年开出的几乎所有交通罚单都是建立在虚假索赔的基础上。在相邻地区，卡车司机声称官员在操纵天平，对超重载货物罚款过高。涨价的停车费和更严格的餐馆检查也成为市政府的收入来源。

Chinese citizens and business owners are increasingly victims of unscrupulous attempts by local governments to shore up their finances. An investigation in January found that almost all the traffic fines issued last year by police officers in Hebei province rested on bogus claims. In a neighbouring region, truck drivers allege that officials are putting their fingers on the scale, issuing excessive penalties for overweight loads. Jacked-up parking fees and stricter inspection of restaurants have also become municipal money-spinners.

创造性的筹款活动展示了地方政府是何等绝望地寻找新收入来源。从2021年到2023年，省级当局的非税收入增长了20%，是税收增长速度的三倍。财政部表示，这笔现金来自于从国有资产中榨取资金，比如在桥梁上收取通行费用。但是北京的领导人对地方政府偷窃行为可能也起到了作用，同时也损害了公众信任，开始变得越来越坦诚。

Creative money-raising demonstrates just how desperate local governments are to find new sources of income. Between 2021 and 2023 provincial authorities’ non-tax revenues grew by 20%, three times faster than their tax takings. The Ministry of Finance says the cash came from squeezing money from state assets, such as by putting tolls on bridges. But leaders in Beijing have been increasingly open about worries that pickpocketing local governments may be playing a role, too—and hurting public trust in the process.

地方政府面临严峻的财政困境。经济增长放缓，公共土地销售下降以及房地产市场的动荡使收入减少。据商业杂志财新称，除两个以外，中国所有省份预测今年的税收收入增长将低于去年。4月9日，一家评级机构惠誉提到日益扩大的预算赤字为将中国的信用展望调降至负面的理由。

Local authorities face a dire financial situation. Slower economic growth, compounded by falling public land sales and turmoil in the property market, has dented revenues. All but two of China’s provinces are forecasting lower growth in their tax takes this year than last, according to Cai**xin, a business magazine. On April 9th Fitch, a rating agency, cited yawning budget deficits as a justification for downgrading China’s credit outlook to negative.

中国中央政府很难确定地方政府的负债金额。大量债务由子公司金融实体持有，不在官方资产负债表上。加州大学圣迭戈分校的维克多·施和乔纳森·埃尔科比估计，地方政府欠款9万亿至11万亿人民币，相当于国内生产总值的75-91%。中国半数以上省份报告称债务占GDP比率超过50%。据咨询公司Trivium称，自去年三月以来，地方政府违约的地方政府部门数量增加了三倍多。

China’s central government struggles to put a number on local-government liabilities. Lots of debt is held by subsidiary financial entities and off official balance-sheets. Victor Shih and Jonathan Elkobi of the University of California, San Diego, estimate that local governments owe 90trn-110trn yuan, or 75-91% of national GDP. Over half of China’s provinces report debt-to-GDP ratios above 50%. The number of local-government vehicles in default has more than tripled since March last year, according to Trivium, a consultancy.

中央政府有能力提供一些援助。其债务负担相对较轻，并从税收和国有企业中获得大量现金流。去年十月，决策者表示将发行1万亿元人民币的债券支付给地方政府。尽管如此，他们试图逃避对地方债务的责任，而是敦促地方政府削减支出。今年三月，中国总理李强批评了“面子工程”。由李先生领导的中国国务院已要求十几个省份的干部停止非必要基础设施投资。

The central government can afford to provide some assistance. Its debt burden is relatively light, and it receives hefty cash-flows from taxes and state-owned firms. In October policymakers said that they would issue 1trn yuan in bonds for payments to local authorities. Nevertheless, they have tried to skirt responsibility for local debt, instead pushing municipalities to curtail spending. In March Li Qiang, China’s premier, criticised “vanity projects”. China’s cabinet, led by Mr Li, has told cadres in a dozen provinces to end non-essential infrastructure investment.

中国财政权力的划分长期存在争议。这些斗争可以追溯到上世纪九十年代，当时中国的前任之一朱镕基从地方官员手中夺回了收入。中国的联邦体系存在所谓的“垂直财政不平衡”问题：地方政府负责教育、医疗保健和投资支出，但百分之五十以上的税收收入流向中央政府。相比之下，地方干部在征收罚款时保留了所有的收入。

China’s division of fiscal firepower has long been contested. Struggles date back to the 1990s when Zhu Rongji, one of Mr Li’s predecessors, wrenched back revenues from local officials. China’s federal system suffers from what technocrats call “vertical fiscal imbalance”: local governments are saddled with responsibility for education, health care and investment spending, but lose out on more than half of tax revenues to the central authorities. By contrast, local cadres retain all the income that they receive when levying fines.

今年二月，中央政府加大了打击快手地方官员的行动。它惩罚了被指控滥用职权的干部，通过国家机构发布简明指令并修改立法以坚持“法治治理”。这些举措会起多大作用？也许并不会。在2021年前一轮打击行动之后，任意罚款变得更加普遍。地方政府发现，鉴于其财政状况，他们根本别无选择。虽然马依佳怡的案件现在正在中央政府的调查中，但其他企业主可能会遭遇类似命运。■

In February the central government stepped up its campaign against fast-fingered local officials. It punished cadres accused of overreach, issued terse directives through state organs and amended legislation in order to insist on “law-based governance”. Will these moves make a difference? Perhaps not. Arbitrary fines became still more common after a previous crackdown in 2021. Local governments found that they simply had no alternative given the state of their finances. Although Ms Ma’s case is now being investigated by central authorities, a similar fate probably awaits other business owners. ■

回到目录

财务和经济 | 沙漠美元 (Finance and economics | Desert dollars)

阿联酋正在利用财富基金获得外交影响力 (The UAE is using a wealth fund to gain diplomatic sway)

并建设度假胜地 (And to build holiday resorts)

主权财富基金很少关心外交政策。那些在海外投资的基金通常是为了确保稳定回报或分散持有资产，因此它们往往持有美国国债和西方股票。许多基金已经开始在本国增加投资，以推动国家增长计划。但阿联酋的一家财富基金——ADQ，正在走向另一条道路。

Sovereign wealth funds seldom worry about foreign policy. Those that invest abroad typically do so in order to ensure stable returns or diversify holdings, meaning they tend to hold Treasuries and Western stocks. Many have started to spend more at home in order to advance national growth plans. But ADQ, one of the United Arab Emirates’s wealth funds, is heading in a different direction.

这家拥有1990亿美元资产管理规模的基金，相当于阿联酋国内生产总值的五分之二，已经决定采取一种新方法。虽然超过80%的资金被用于国内基础设施和相关企业，例如阿提哈德航空公司和AD港口，这反映了该基金在2018年成立后的投资。新的雄心是在国外施加阿联酋的影响力——为此愿意大举投资。

With $199bn of assets under management, an amount equivalent to two-fifths of the UAE’s GDP, the fund has decided to take a new approach. Although more than 80% of its capital is tied up in domestic infrastructure and related firms, such as Etihad Airways and AD Ports, this reflects spending in the years after the fund was established in 2018. The new ambition is to exert the UAE’s influence abroad—on which it is willing to spend big.

阿提哈德和AD港口的投资，例如投资货运运营商和刚果港口，已使ADQ成为非洲最活跃的财富基金之一。去年，它与土耳其签署了115亿美元的协议，包括出口融资和地震后重建；还在讨论为创建连接亚洲、欧洲和中东的贸易路线的波斯普鲁斯海峡铁路提供融资。ADQ迄今最大的交易发生在二月，当时该基金提供了350亿美元援助包中的240亿美元，拯救埃及免于债务违约。ADQ不仅仅是资助了这笔交易，它的现金还购买了该国的一段地中海海岸线，将成为度假胜地、金融中心和自由贸易区。

Investments by Etihad and AD Ports, in things such as a cargo operator and a Congolese port, have made ADQ one of the most active wealth funds in Africa. Last year it signed $11.5bn of deals with Turkey, including in export financing and post-earthquake reconstruction; it is also in discussions about financing a railway across the Bosporus Strait, which would create a trade route linking Asia, Europe and the Middle East. ADQ’s biggest deal yet was signed in February, when the fund provided $24bn of a $35bn package to rescue Egypt from default. Rather than merely bankrolling the deal, ADQ’s cash bought a stretch of the country’s Mediterranean coast, which will become a holiday destination, financial hub and free-trade zone.

这种疯狂的活动反映了阿联酋相信自己有机会施加影响力。沙特阿拉伯正在将注意力转向内部，专注于其”愿景2030”议程，旨在减少对石油的依赖。这个王国在截至2022年的十年间，对中东的救助份额下降到39%，而在此之前的四十年里为65%。海湾地区的其他国家现在都在急于支出，而阿联酋也渴望赢得影响力的竞争。

This frenetic activity reflects the UAE’s belief that it has an opportunity to exert influence. Saudi Arabia is turning inward as it focuses on its “Vision 2030” agenda, intended to reduce its reliance on oil. The kingdom’s share of bail-outs in the Middle East fell to 39% in the decade to 2022, down from 65% in the four decades before that. Other countries in the Gulf are now rushing to spend, and the UAE is eager to win the race for influence.

ADQ的投资对潜在受援国尤其具有吸引力，因为它们类似于私募股权。就像收购巨头承担了非流动性投资，然后专注于改善运营一样，ADQ试图扩大港口和房地产帝国，而不是被动地持有购买物业。

ADQ’s investments are particularly attractive to potential recipients as they are akin to private-equity stakes. Much as buy-out barons take on illiquid investments, and then focus on improving operations, so ADQ attempts to expand ports and property empires, rather than passively sitting on purchases.

因此，ADQ的投资往往与贸易协议同步进行，包括4月24日与肯尼亚签署的协议。该基金与包括阿塞拜疆、约旦和阿曼在内的国家建立了合资企业，这三个国家均签署了这种协议。它还与埃及和土耳其进行投资。正如一份ADQ文件所述，这些联盟将研发努力结合在一起，并创造符合相关企业利益的战略。它们还建立了更紧密的联盟，并有助于分散风险。

Thus ADQ’s investments often go hand-in-hand with trade deals, including one signed with Kenya on April 24th. The fund has joint ventures with countries including Azerbaijan, Jordan and Oman, all three of which have inked such agreements. It is also investing alongside Egypt and Turkey. As an ADQ paper states, such alliances align research-and-development efforts and create strategies to benefit portfolio firms with similar interests. They also forge closer alliances and help spread risk.

阿联酋统治者不仅希望对接受其投资的国家施加更多影响力。比如，在ADQ与埃及达成协议之后，该基金能够帮助完成国际货币基金组织的交易。随后，埃及镑被允许更自由地交易，并迅速贬值。但目前该国再也不会濒临崩溃——ADQ成功推动了一桩困难的交易达成。这将增强阿联酋在华盛顿乃至全球的地位。

Emirati rulers do not just want more influence over the countries that receive their investments, however. After ADQ’s deal with Egypt, for instance, the fund was able to help complete an IMF deal. Following this, the Egyptian pound was allowed to trade more freely, and duly sank. But for now the country is no longer teetering on the edge of collapse—and ADQ was able to get a difficult deal over the line. This will have boosted the UAE’s standing in Washington and beyond.

对于财富基金的管理者来说，财务业绩并不是首要关注点。ADQ并没有设立明确的目标，这与其他类似机构相比是不太典型的。它的报告也没有提供很多数字。ADQ的投资负责人雅普·卡尔克曼表示：“我们的影响力超越财务回报，跨越社会障碍，对人们的生计立即产生影响。”换句话说，将外交政策目标和投资混为一谈并不是确保回报的法宝。■

Financial results are less of a concern for the wealth fund’s administrators. ADQ has not been set explicit targets, as is typical with other similar institutions. Its reports do not provide many figures. “Our impact extends beyond financial returns, transcending social barriers with an immediate effect on people’s livelihoods,” Jaap Kalkman, ADQ’s investment boss, has said. Or to put it more plainly: mixing foreign-policy goals and investments is hardly a formula for guaranteed returns. ■

回到目录

金融与经济 | Buttonwood (Finance and economics | Buttonwood)

美国股市可能会下跌多少？ (How far could America’s stockmarket fall?)

随着廉价货币的前景渐行渐远，股票看起来异常脆弱。 (With the prospect of cheaper money receding, shares look unusually vulnerable)

警报铃声的声音越来越难以忽视。2024年第一季度结束时，美国股市以惊人的速度走出了一波强劲上涨，其基准标普500指数在之前22周中有18周上涨。然而现在情况大不相同：在过去三周中，它已经连续下跌。同时看看个别股票，投资者从狂喜到不安的摇摆可见一斑。英伟达是标普500指数连胜的明星，其股价在10月到3月间增长了一倍以上。4月19日，它在一天之内暴跌了惊人的10%，使公司市值蒸发了2000多亿美元。导致暴跌的糟糕消息呢？并没有。

The sound of alarm bells is becoming harder to ignore. America’s stockmarket finished the first quarter of 2024 on an astonishing tear, with its benchmark S&P 500 index having risen in 18 out of the preceding 22 weeks. No longer: it has fallen over each of the past three. Look at individual stocks, meanwhile, and it is clear just how far investors have swung from euphoria to twitchiness. Nvidia was the poster child of the S&P 500’s winning streak, seeing its share price more than double between October and March. On April 19th it fell by a gut-churning 10% over the course of a single day, wiping more than $200bn from the company’s market value. The awful news that precipitated the plunge? There wasn’t any.

如果有什么使人恐慌的理由的话，那就是廉价资金的前景在渐行渐远。美国消费者价格在截至3月的一年内上涨了3.5%。这个涨幅过高，使得联邦储备委员会不太可能立即降息，除非发生某种灾难性事件。因此，投资者相应地减少了他们的赌注。但还有另外一件事。正如英伟达的震荡所表明的，转折点与理性分析无关，更多地取决于群体心理。近几天市场有所复苏，这表明存在许多不确定性。现在的问题是情绪是否会继续变差。

If there is a reason for this attack of the vapours, it is that the prospect of cheaper money is receding into the distance. American consumer prices rose by 3.5% in the year to March. That is far too high for the Federal Reserve to consider cutting interest rates imminently unless something calamitous happens. Thus investors have pared their bets accordingly. But something else is going on, too. As the size of the Nvidia jolt suggests, turning-points have less to do with sober-headed analysis than mob psychology. Markets have recovered a bit in recent days, suggesting plenty of uncertainty. The question now is whether the mood will continue to darken.

这将由群体决定。然而，当投资者在考虑是不是要恐慌时，美国股市处于一个异常脆弱的地位。股票价值很少像今天这样高，这意味着它们还有更大的下跌空间，更容易受到投资者情绪变化的影响。与政府债券利率不断走高相比，股票的预期回报看起来特别不吸引人。如果崩盘来临，所有的因素都已经就位，使得它可能特别严重。

That will be determined by the mob. Yet as investors ponder whether or not to panic, America’s stockmarket is in an unusually precarious position. Shares have rarely been valued more highly than they are today, giving them further to fall and making them more vulnerable to changing investor sentiment. Relative to ever higher interest rates on government bonds, expected returns on stocks look especially unattractive. If a crash does loom, all the pieces are in place for it to be particularly nasty.

首先看看估值。由耶鲁大学的罗伯特·希勒（Robert Shiller）推广的经济周期调整后的市盈率（CAPE）比在20世纪20年代末甚至更高。该指标的当前水平只有在千禧年之交和2021年才超过。这两次都在市场崩盘之前。而且高的CAPE不仅仅是一个不祥之兆。许多学术研究已经表明，股票的盈利收益率——或者说市盈率的倒数——是对未来回报的一个相当不错的预测指标。这很符合常理，因为公司的盈利是其价值的最终来源。

Take valuations first. The cyclically adjusted price-earnings (CAPE) ratio, which was popularised by Robert Shiller of Yale University, is now higher than it was even in the late 1920s. The ratio’s current level has been exceeded only around the turn of the millennium and in 2021. Both occasions preceded market crashes. And a high CAPE is more than just a bad omen. A lot of academic work has demonstrated that the earnings yield—or inverse of the price-to-earnings ratio—on stocks is a reasonably good predictor of their future returns. This makes intuitive sense, given that a company’s earnings are the ultimate source of its value.

CAPE比率是一个特别有用的信号，因为它包含了十年的收益，平滑了噪音。当它升高时，预期未来回报很低——而目前，它几乎是其长期平均水平的两倍。要回归至接近这个平均值将需要非常大的震荡。更糟糕的是，高的CAPE使得这样的下跌更有可能发生，因为它给了投资者抛售低收益股票的理由。

The CAPE ratio is an especially useful signal because it incorporates ten years’ worth of earnings, smoothing out noise. When it is elevated, expected future returns are low—and at present, it is nearly twice as high as its long-run average. Reversion to anywhere near the mean would take an earth-shaking drop. Worse, the high CAPE makes such a fall more likely, by giving investors reason to dump low-yielding stocks.

再加上重新接受高利率将长期存在的现实，形势看起来更加脆弱。就像盈利收益率是股票预期回报的代理一样，政府债券的实际收益率表明了它们的预期回报。两者之间的差距因风险偏好的变化而随时间变化，但从未像目前这样低，只有两个百分点。

Couple this with a renewed acceptance that high interest rates are here to stay, and things look shakier still. Just as the earnings yield is a proxy for stocks’ expected returns, so real yields on government bonds indicate their expected returns. The gap between the two therefore measures the additional reward investors anticipate for holding riskier shares over safer government debt. It varies over time according to the prevailing risk appetite, but has seldom been as low as its current two percentage points.

回归至长期平均水平，约为四个百分点，将导致股价在当前债券收益率下降29%。然而，值得怀疑的是，即使经历了如此大的下跌，投资者的风险偏好是否仍会达到平均水平。在2010年代大部分时间里，收益差距约为六个百分点；在2007-2009年金融危机后的动荡几年中，这个差距更接近八个百分点。要恢复至那些水平，将需要分别下跌47%和57%。

A reversion to the average, which is around four percentage points, would entail share prices dropping by 29% at current bond yields. It seems improbable, however, that investors’ risk appetites would still be average immediately after such a large drop. For much of the 2010s the yield gap hovered around six percentage points; in the traumatic years following the financial crisis of 2007-09, it was more like eight. A return to those levels would require share-price crashes of 47% and 57%, respectively.

将所有这些告诉一位华尔街的牛市支持者，那个回答就显而易见了：盈利将会增长，可能会受到人工智能的强力推动。未来的回报就是这样推动的，以至于基于过去利润的低收益无意义。然而过去几十年的经验表明了另外一种情况。低盈利收益率确实可能表明盈利将会增长，但历史上它们更多地预示着较低的回报。也许这一次有所不同——即使从长远来看并非如此，在未来一段时间内股价可能还会继续上涨。然而，一旦情绪发生改变，要小心了。 ■

Put all this to a Wall Street bull and the retort is straightforward: earnings will grow, possibly supercharged by artificial intelligence. It is this which will drive future returns, such that low yields based on past profits are meaningless. Yet the past few decades suggest otherwise. Low earnings yields might indeed indicate that earnings will rise, but historically they have portended poor returns instead. Perhaps this time is different—and even if that is not the case in the long run, share prices could keep rising for a while yet. Once the mood does turn, though, watch out. ■

阅读更多关于我们的财经专栏作家Buttonwood的文章：为什么股市正在消失（4月18日）中国央行和Costco顾客有什么共同之处（4月11日）如何建立一个全球货币（4月4日）*

Read more from Buttonwood, our columnist on financial markets:Why the stockmarket is disappearing (Apr 18th)What China’s central bank and Costco shoppers have in common (Apr 11th)How to build a global currency (Apr 4th)

回到目录

金融与经济 | 自由交易 (Finance and economics | Free exchange)

通胀在道德上错了吗？ (Is inflation morally wrong?)

工人们这样认为。经济学家持不同意见。 (Workers think so. Economists disagree)

在其他历史学家眼中，只是一群挨饿的农民，而 E.P. 汤普森却看到了对资本主义的抵抗。研究英国18世纪的粮食暴动，这位马克思主义历史学家创造了“道德经济”这个术语。他认为，暴动者的行为动机并不仅仅来自空腹，而是出于对面包师、农民和磨坊主违反家长制度的信仰，这种制度暗示他们应该限制利润、本地销售粮食，不要囤积粮食。汤普森认为，逐渐地，道德经济正被市场经济取代，市场经济的价格遵循供求法则的非道德逻辑，而不是在紧缺时期什么是“公平价格”的概念。

Where other historians saw a mob of hungry peasants, E.P. Thompson saw resistance to capitalism. Studying England’s 18th-century food riots, the Marxist historian coined the term “moral economy”. The rioters, he argued, were not motivated purely by empty bellies, but by a belief that the bakers, farmers and millers had violated paternalist customs, which suggested they should limit their profit, sell locally and not hold back grain. Gradually, Thompson argued, the moral economy was being displaced by a market economy, in which prices follow the amoral logic of supply and demand, rather than ideas of what would be a “fair price” in times of scarcity.

美国人可能没有因为面包价格而暴动，但他们感到愤怒。乔·拜登总统现在面临着一场艰难的连任竞选。摇摆选民特别对通货膨胀感到恼火，因为自拜登上任以来，物价水平已累计上升了19%。然而，这让许多左翼经济学家感到沮丧，他们认为美国劳动力市场紧张，实际工资在上涨，是一个巨大的成功。对他们来说，通货膨胀是拜登先生实施的财政刺激和产业政策混合的一个恼人而且现在顽固的副产品。这并非主要问题。

Americans may not be rioting over bread prices, but they are angry. President Joe Biden now faces a tight race for re-election. Swing voters are particularly annoyed about inflation, as the price level has risen by a cumulative 19% since Mr Biden’s inauguration. Yet this frustrates many left-wing economists, who see the tight labour market and rising real wages in America as a great success. To them, inflation is an irritating—and now stubborn—by-product of the mixture of fiscal stimulus and industrial policy pursued by Mr Biden. It is not the main story.

哈佛大学的斯蒂芬妮·斯坦切娃的一篇新工作论文有助于解释这种分歧。斯坦切娃提出了“我们为什么讨厌通货膨胀？”这个问题，该问题是对罗伯特·希勒 1997年发表的一篇论文的更新，后者后来获得了诺贝尔经济学奖。她通过两项调查向美国人提出了一系列封闭问题，比如“通货膨胀对您的储蓄产生了怎样的影响？”，以及开放性问题，比如“您如何用自己的话来定义‘通货膨胀’？”结果显示，汤普森关于“道德经济”的概念，他认为已被市场冷酷逻辑取代，仍然具有普遍吸引力。

A new working paper by Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard University helps explain the divergence. Ms Stantcheva asks, “Why do we dislike inflation?”, which updates a paper published in 1997 by Robert Shiller, who later won a Nobel prize in economics. Using two surveys, she posed Americans a series of closed questions, such as “How have your savings been affected by inflation?”, and open-ended ones, such as “How would you define ‘inflation’ in your own words?”. The results show that Thompson’s concept of the “moral economy”, which he thought had been displaced by the cold logic of the market, still has popular appeal.

回答斯坦切娃调查的美国人有许多原因感到愤怒。大多数人认为通货膨胀不可避免地意味着实际收入的减少。他们表示，物价上涨使生活更加负担不起，并让他们担心无法负担基本生活开支。回答者并未认为通货膨胀与失业之间存在权衡—经济学家们称之为“菲利普斯曲线”，但他们认为这两者会同时上升。约70%的人认为通货膨胀并非经济繁荣的标志，而是一个“萧条”状态的指标。大约三分之一的人认为减少通货膨胀比金融稳定、降低失业率或增长更重要。简而言之，回答者真的讨厌物价上涨。

Americans who responded to Ms Stantcheva’s surveys were angry for a number of reasons. Most believed that inflation inevitably meant a reduction in real incomes. They said that rising prices made life more unaffordable and prompted them to worry they would not be able to afford the basics. Respondents did not see a trade-off between inflation and unemployment—referred to as the “Phillips curve” by economists—but thought that the two would rise in parallel. Some 70% did not view inflation as a sign of a booming economy, but as an indication of one in a “poor state”. Around a third saw reducing inflation as a bigger priority than financial stability, reducing unemployment or increasing growth. In short, respondents really hated rising prices.

其中一些信念反映了当前通货膨胀期间发生的情况。新冠疫情爆发后，实际收入确实下降了，因为物价上涨的速度超过了工资。直到过去几年，工资才增长到足以弥补差距。例如，食品和燃料等基本生活用品的价格上涨速度比通货篮中的其他物品更快。即使收入在增加，看到更多资金用于必需品仍然令人恼火。而且通货膨胀并非总是伴随着强劲的劳动力市场。例如，在2007年至2009年的全球金融危机期间，高昂的大宗商品价格导致通货膨胀与全球经济一起疲软。在备受关注的上世纪70年代的通货膨胀期，失业率上升。

Some of their beliefs reflected what has happened during the current spell of inflation. Following the covid-19 pandemic, real incomes did indeed fall, as prices rose faster than wages. It is only over the past couple of years that wages have grown sufficiently to make up the difference. The price of basics, such as food and fuel, has risen faster than other items in the inflation basket. And even if your income is rising, it is irritating to see a greater share go on necessities. Nor does inflation always accompany a strong labour market. During the global financial crisis of 2007-09, for instance, high commodity prices produced a situation in which inflation rose at the same time as the global economy weakened. During the inflation of the 1970s, which looms large in the popular memory, unemployment rose.

那么，为什么一些经济学家对物价上涨更为轻松呢？通货膨胀确实带来困难：它可能会损害央行的信誉，并导致债权人向债务人的任意再分配。不断更新价格也会给企业带来成本。但如果所有价格以相同的速度调整，这种变化并没有许多工人所认为的那么重大。这并不意味着工人变穷，就像用英尺而不是厘米来测量一个人的身高并不意味着他们在变矮一样。此外，通货膨胀往往是由于劳动力市场就业紧张造成的，就像目前美国的情况一样。因此，通货膨胀应该伴随着低失业率和工资上涨，这有助于弥补价格更频繁变动的恼人之处。

Why, then, are some economists more relaxed about rising prices? Inflation does present difficulties: it can undermine central-bank credibility and causes arbitrary redistribution from creditors to debtors. The constant updating of prices also carries costs for companies. Yet if all prices are adjusting at the same rate, the change is not as consequential as many workers believe. It no more means that workers are getting poorer than measuring someone’s height in feet rather than centimetres would mean that they are getting shorter. What is more, inflation is often the consequence of a hot labour market, as is the case in America at the moment. It should, therefore, be accompanied by low unemployment and rising wages, which help compensate for the irritation of prices changing more frequently.

类似于18世纪英格兰的暴乱者，美国人认为物价上涨基本上是不公平的。参与斯坦切娃调查的回答者暗示通货膨胀扩大了贫富差距，而企业允许价格上涨是因为公司贪婪。她指出，他们“倾向于相信雇主在设定工资方面拥有很大的权力和自由裁量权”。在他们看来，通货膨胀并非是来自数亿人做出数万亿决策的现象。这是由“最终决策者”对他们施加的一种现象。

Much like rioters in 18th-century England, Americans believe that price rises are fundamentally unfair. Respondents to Ms Stantcheva’s surveys suggested that inflation widened the gap between rich and poor, while businesses allowed prices to rise because of corporate greed. They also “tend to believe that employers have a lot of power and discretion in setting wages”, notes Ms Stantcheva. In their view, inflation is not a phenomenon that emerges from hundreds of millions of people taking trillions of decisions. It is something inflicted on them by people at the top of totem pole.

然而，工人们仍然很少给企业或政府以惊人的强劲劳动力市场。工资上涨通常被视为个体的责任：对辛勤工作的应得回报。那些得到加薪的调查受访者中，有一倍的人更倾向于将其归因于自己的工作表现，而不是通货膨胀。然而，无论左翼经济学家多么有说服力，美国人不会感谢拜登政府，认为这是他们自己的成功。

Yet workers still gave little credit to businesses or the government for an astonishingly strong labour market. Wage rises were generally seen as the responsibility of the individual: a well-deserved reward for hard work. Those survey respondents who had received a pay rise were twice as likely to attribute it to their on-the-job performance as to inflation. However persuasive left wing-economists may be, Americans will not thank the Biden administration for what they see as their own success.

暴乱经常是适得其反的。据汤普森称，在18世纪的英格兰，恐惧的农民决定不将他们的庄稼带到市场上去。由于投机者被恐吓而被迫将购物货物存放在仓库中，而不是将其运送到全国各地，导致英格兰其他地区的短缺情况恶化。在一种道德经济中，对对错的担忧超过了效率，给归责者以及被归责者都带来了成本。这并不会让那些受到评判的人感到更舒适，拜登先生现在也心知肚明。

Riots are often counter-productive. In 18th-century England, according to Thompson, terrified farmers decided not to bring their crops to market. Shortages worsened in other parts of England as speculators were intimidated into keeping purchases in storage, rather than shipping them across the country. In a moral economy concerns about what is right and wrong outweigh efficiency, imposing a cost on those assigning blame as well as those being blamed. That does not make it any more comfortable for those being judged, as Mr Biden is now all too aware. ■

阅读更多来自《自由交易》专栏的文章，关于经济学：[IMF能解决贫困世界的债务危机吗？](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/18/can-the-imf-solve-the-poor-worlds-debt-crisis)（4月18日）[当技术解决一切后，人类将会做什么？](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/article91216-prod.ece)（4月9日）[丹尼尔·卡尼曼是一个善于提出戏弄性问题的大师](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/article90917-prod.ece)（4月4日）

Read more from Free exchange, our column on economics:Can the IMF solve the poor world’s debt crisis? (Apr 18th)What will humans do if technology solves everything? (Apr 9th)Daniel Kahneman was a master of teasing questions (Apr 4th)

回到目录

科学技术 | 大脑与身体 (Science and technology | Brain v body)

许多精神健康疾病具有身体触发因素 (Many mental-health conditions have bodily triggers)

精神科医生终于开始串联这些因果关系。 (Psychiatrists are at long last starting to connect the dots)

抽搭症状始于Jessica Huitson仅12岁的时候。随着时间的推移，她的病情恶化，直到出现全身抽动并被紧急送往医院。但是她所在的当地医院，在英格兰的达勒姆，却对此持轻蔑态度，建议她患有焦虑症这样的心理健康疾病，并认为她可能是花太多时间在TikTok上观看视频。她的母亲描述这段经历是“有失尊严的”。事实上，Jessica患有一种由链球菌引发的自身免疫性疾病。这种疾病被称为链球菌相关的儿童自身免疫神经精神障碍（PANDAS）。当这一感染被识别并治疗时，她的症状最终开始改善。

THE TICS started when Jessica Huitson was only 12 years old. Over time her condition worsened until she was having whole-body fits and being rushed to hospital. But her local hospital, in Durham, England, was dismissive, suggesting she had anxiety, a mental-health condition, and that she was probably spending too much time watching videos on TikTok. Her mother describes the experience as “belittling”. In fact, Jessica had an autoimmune condition brought on by a bacterial infection with Streptococcus. The condition is known as Paediatric Autoimmune-Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus (PANDAS). When the infection was identified and treated, her symptoms finally began to improve.

Huitson女士并不是唯一一个因大脑功能障碍被误认为是心理障碍的人。越来越多的证据表明，多种感染在某些情况下可以触发强迫症、抽搐、焦虑、抑郁乃至精神病等疾病。而感染只是这一难题中的一小部分。越来越清楚的是，炎症性疾病和代谢性疾病也可能对心理健康产生重大影响，尽管精神科医生很少会考虑这些因素。所有这些都反映了精神病学中的大问题。

Ms Huitson is not alone in having a dysfunction in the brain mistaken for one in the mind. Evidence is accumulating that an array of infections can, in some cases, trigger conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, tics, anxiety, depression and even psychosis. And infections are one small piece of the puzzle. It is increasingly clear that inflammatory disorders and metabolic conditions can also have sizeable effects on mental health, though psychiatrists rarely look for them. All this is symptomatic of large problems in psychiatry.

对精神健康生物学的修订理解可能对那些目前治疗不佳的数百万心理健康患者产生深远影响。例如，超过90%的躁郁症患者在一生中会有复发的疾病；在患有强迫症（OCD）的儿童中，超过46%无法实现缓解。大约50-60%的抑郁症患者尝试多种不同药物后最终会有反应。

A revised understanding could have profound consequences for the millions of people with mental-health conditions that are currently poorly treated. For example, over 90% of patients with bipolar disorder will have recurrent illness during their lives; and in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) over 46% do not achieve remission. Some 50-60% of patients with depression eventually respond after trying many different drugs.

对于这个领域的一些人来说，对精神健康生物学的更深入了解，结合可能来自实验室测试的清晰生物学特征，将会导致更准确的诊断和更有针对性的治疗。

For some in the profession, a deeper understanding of the biology of mental health, tied to clear biological fingerprints of the kind that might come from a laboratory test, will lead to more accurate diagnoses and better targeted treatments.

精神病学领域历来侧重于症状的描述和分类，而不是潜在原因。精神疾病诊断和统计手册（DSM），有时被称为精神病学的圣经，于1952年问世，包含描述、症状和诊断标准。一方面，它为诊断带来了有益的一致性。但另一方面，它将患者分组，却没有任何对其病情背后机制的认识。例如，抑郁症和焦虑症的症状之间有很多重叠，以至于一些人怀疑它们实际上是否甚至是不同的疾病类别。同时，抑郁症和焦虑症有许多不同的亚型，例如有无广场恐惧症的惊恐障碍就是不同的诊断，这些亚型并非都有意义上的区分。这可能导致参与药物试验的病人群如此多样化，以至于药物和疗法失败仅仅是因为研究对象之间共同点太少。

The field of psychiatry has historically been focused around the description and classification of symptoms, rather than on underlying causes. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), sometimes known as the bible of psychiatry, emerged in 1952 and contains descriptions, symptoms and diagnostic criteria. On the one hand, it has brought helpful consistency to diagnosis. But on the other, it has grouped patients into cohorts without any sense of the underlying mechanisms behind their conditions. There is so much overlap between the symptoms of depression and anxiety, for example, that some wonder if these are actually even separate categories of illness. At the same time, depression and anxiety come in many different subtypes—panic disorder with and without agoraphobia, for example, are distinct diagnoses—not all of which may be meaningfully distinct. This can lead to patient groups in drug trials being so diverse that drugs and therapies fail simply because the cohort being studied has too little in common.

先前试图找到精神疾病病因的努力陷入困境。2013年，美国政府机构国家精神卫生研究所冒险摆脱基于DSM症状分类的研究。资金被投入到希望直接将基因与行为联系起来的大脑疾病过程的基础研究中。共资助了约200亿美元的新研究，但这一想法失败得惨重——大多数发现的基因效果微乎其微。杜克大学的精神病学教授Allen Frances将寻找这些生物标志的努力称为“令人着迷的智力冒险，但在临床上完全是失败的”。

Previous attempts to find causal mechanisms for mental-health conditions have run into difficulty. In 2013 the National Institute of Mental Health, an American government agency, made a heroic gamble to move away from research based on the DSM’s symptom-based categories. Money was funnelled into basic research on disease processes of the brain, hoping to directly connect genes to behaviours. Some $20bn of new research was funded but the idea failed spectacularly—most of the genes uncovered had tiny effects. Allen Frances, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University, calls the search for such biomarkers “a fascinating intellectual adventure, but a complete clinical flop”.

显然，单单基因并非答案。德国弗莱堡大学医院的精神病学和心理疗法教授Ludger Tebartz van Elst表示，许多不同疾病，如精神分裂症、注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）、焦虑和自闭症，都可以由同一遗传紊乱22q11.2引发，该紊乱是由染色体22的一小段缺失引起的。

Genes alone are clearly not the answer. Ludger Tebartz van Elst, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University Hospital Freiburg, in Germany, says that many different conditions such as schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety and autism can be triggered by the same genetic disorder, 22q11.2, caused by the loss of a small piece of chromosome 22.

尽管有这种悲观的训诫，精神病学的转变有望出现。其中一些转变源于对使用越来越复杂技术寻找神经生物标志的兴趣的重新唤起。此外，人们越来越意识到一些心理健康疾病实际上有需要作为医学疾病而非精神疾病治疗的触发器或根源。

Despite this counsel of misery, a shift in psychiatry is potentially on the horizon. Some of this is coming from a revived interest in finding neurological biomarkers with ever-more sophisticated technology. In addition, there is a greater understanding that some mental-health conditions actually have triggers or roots which need to be treated as medical conditions rather than psychiatric ones.

2007年的一个关键时刻发生在宾夕法尼亚大学，当时工作人员发现，100名出现快速恶化的精神症状或认知障碍的患者实际上患有自身免疫性疾病。他们的身体产生了针对神经元中关键受体NMDA受体的抗体。这些抗体导致大脑肿胀，可以引发一系列症状，包括偏执狂、幻觉和攻击性等。该疾病被命名为“抗NMDA受体脑炎”。最重要的是，在许多情况下，可以通过清除抗体、使用免疫疗法药物或类固醇来治疗。对首次发作精神病的患者的研究发现，5%至10%的患者也患有攻击大脑的抗体。

A key moment came in 2007, when work at the University of Pennsylvania showed that 100 patients with rapidly progressing psychiatric symptoms or cognitive impairments actually had an autoimmune disease. Their bodies were creating antibodies against key receptors in nerve cells known as NMDA receptors. These lead to brain swelling and can trigger a range of symptoms including paranoia, hallucinations and aggression. The disease was dubbed “anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis”. Most important of all, in many cases it was treatable by removing the antibodies, or using immunotherapy drugs or steroids. Studies of patients having a first episode of psychosis have found that between 5% and 10% also have brain-attacking antibodies.

Old woodcut illustration of a skeleton with three repeating red circles overlayed

似乎在少数情况下，OCD也可能是由免疫系统引起的。这在儿童疾病 PANDAS 中可以看到，Huitson女士在2021年被诊断患有这种病。但有时也会在成年人中发现。一名64岁的男子报告说，他花了大量时间痴迷地修剪草坪，然后第二天回想起自己的行为时感到后悔和内疚。研究人员发现，这些症状是由抗体攻击他大脑中的神经元引起的。

It seems likely that, in rare cases, OCD can be caused by the immune system, too. This is seen in the childhood condition PANDAS, with which Ms Huitson was diagnosed in 2021. But it is also sometimes found in adults. One 64-year-old man reported spending an extraordinary amount of time obsessively trimming his lawn only to look back on this behaviour the next day with feelings of regret and guilt. Researchers found these symptoms were being caused by antibodies attacking the neurons in his brain.

最近，牛津大学的精神病学负责人贝琳达·莱诺克斯对成千上万名患有精神病的患者进行了测试。她发现大约6%的患者的血样中抗体水平增高，其中大部分瞄准的是 NMDA 受体。她表示，目前尚不清楚一组抗体如何能导致从癫痫到精神病和脑炎等不同的临床表现。也不清楚为什么会产生这些抗体，或者它们是否能穿过控制脑部进入的脑-血管屏障。不过，她认为它们会——优先粘附于海马区，这解释了它们如何影响记忆，导致妄想和幻觉。

More recently, Belinda Lennox, head of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, has conducted tests on thousands of patients with psychosis. She has found increased rates of antibodies in the blood samples of about 6% of patients, mostly targeting the NMDA receptors. She says it remains unknown how a single set of antibodies is capable of producing clinical presentations ranging from seizures to psychosis and encephalitis. Nor is it known why these antibodies are made, or if they can cross the blood-brain barrier, a membrane that controls access to the brain. She assumes, though, that they do—preferentially sticking to the hippocampus, which would explain how they affect memory and lead to delusions and hallucinations.

莱诺克斯博士表示，医学思维需要转变以认识免疫系统对大脑可能造成的伤害。她说，“百万美元的问题”是这些情况是否可治疗。她目前正在进行试验以获取更多信息。关于患有免疫驱动精神病的患者的研究表明，一系列策略，包括去除抗体、服用免疫疗法药物或类固醇，可以是有效的治疗方法。

Dr Lennox says a shift in medical thinking is needed to appreciate the damage the immune system can do to the brain. The “million dollar question”, she says, is whether these conditions are treatable. She is now running trials to find out more. Work on patients with immune-driven psychosis suggests that a range of strategies including removing antibodies and taking immunotherapy drugs or steroids can be effective treatments.

另一个重要发现是代谢紊乱也可能影响精神健康。大脑是一个耗能机构，与能量通路相关的代谢变化已被指与多种疾病有关，包括精神分裂症、躁郁症、精神病、进食障碍和重度抑郁症。在斯坦福大学有一个代谢精神病门诊，患者在那里接受饮食和生活方式改变以及药物治疗。门诊的一个研究重点是生酮饮食的潜在益处，该饮食限制碳水化合物摄入。这种饮食迫使身体燃烧脂肪以获得能量，从而产生被称为酮的化学物质，当葡萄糖供应有限时，它们可以作为大脑的燃料来源。

Another important discovery is that metabolic disturbances can also affect mental health. The brain is an energy-hungry organ, and metabolic alterations related to energy pathways have been implicated in a diverse range of conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, eating disorders and major depressive disorder. At Stanford University there is a metabolic psychiatry clinic where patients are treated with diet and lifestyle changes, along with medication. One active area of research at the clinic is the potential benefits of the ketogenic diet, in which carbohydrate intake is limited. This diet forces the body to burn fat for energy, thereby creating chemicals known as ketones which can act as a fuel source for the brain when glucose is in limited supply.

负责Baszucki集团脑科学的科克·耐伦表示，全球正在进行13项试验，研究代谢疗法对严重精神疾病的影响。初步结果显示，“大批人群以令人难以置信的方式做出回应。这些是用药失败、言语疗法、经颅磁刺激甚至电惊厥疗法等手段都未能治愈的患者。”他说他一直在遇到因低碳水化合物饮食带来的情绪改善而进入代谢领域的精神病医生。预计将在接下来的一年左右公布随机对照试验的结果。

Kirk Nylen, head of neuroscience for Baszucki Group, an American charity that funds brain research, says 13 trials are under way worldwide looking at the effects of metabolic therapies on serious mental illness. Preliminary results have shown a “large group of people responding in an incredibly meaningful way. These are people that have failed drugs, talk therapy, trans-cranial stimulation and maybe electroconvulsive-shock therapy.” He says that he keeps meeting psychiatrists who have come to the metabolic field because of patients whose low-carb diets were followed by huge improvements in mood. Results from randomised controlled trials are expected in the next year or so.

不仅是对免疫系统和代谢系统的理解在提升。现在正以前所未有的速度解析大量数据，有时借助人工智能，以揭示此前隐藏在公眼之中的联系。

It is not only understanding of the immune and metabolic systems that is improving. Vast quantities of data are now being parsed with unprecedented speed, sometimes with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), to uncover connections previously hidden in plain sight.

这最终可能会将生物学更加置于精神健康诊断的中心位置，潜在地导致更个性化的治疗方法，以及更好的治疗。2023年10月初，生物医学数据库英国生物银行发布的数据显示，有抑郁症发作的人血液中明显较高水平的炎性蛋白质，如细胞因子。去年的一项研究还发现，约四分之一的抑郁症患者存在低水平炎症的证据。在其他研究中发现，存在炎症的患者对抗抑郁药的反应较差。

This could at long last bring biology more centrally into the diagnosis of mental health, potentially leading to more individualised treatments, as well as better ones. In early October 2023, UK Biobank, a biomedical database, published data revealing that people with depressive episodes had significantly higher levels of inflammatory proteins, such as cytokines, in the blood. A study last year also found about a quarter of depressed patients had evidence of low-grade inflammation. This could be useful to know as other work suggests patients with inflammation respond poorly to antidepressants.

Old woodcut illustration of a brain with a number of random red circles overlayed

![一幅旧木刻插图展示了一个大脑，上面覆盖着许多随机的红色圆圈]

More innovation is under way. A number of researchers are exploring different ways of improving the diagnosis of ADHD, for example, classifying patients into a number of different subgroups, some of which may have been previously unknown. In three separate announcements in February 2024, different groups announced the discovery of biomarkers that could predict the risks of dementia, autism and psychosis. The search for better diagnostic tools is also likely to be accelerated by the use of AI. One firm, Cognoa, is already using AI to diagnose autism in children by analysing footage of their behaviour—side-stepping the long waits for clinicians. Another outfit, the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) in California, has used AI to create an entirely new map of the protein-protein interactions (and the molecular networks) involved in autism. This will greatly facilitate further explorations of diagnostic tools and treatments.

更多创新正在进行中。许多研究人员正在探索不同的方式来改善对注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）的诊断，例如将患者分类为多个不同的亚组，其中一些可能以前是未知的。在2024年2月的三项单独声明中，不同的团体宣布发现了可以预测痴呆症、自闭症和精神病风险的生物标志物。寻找更好的诊断工具也可能受益于人工智能的应用。一家名为Cognoa的公司已经开始利用人工智能通过分析儿童行为的录像来诊断自闭症，从而避开了长时间等候临床医生的情况。加利福尼亚的Quantitative Biosciences Institute（QBI）另一家公司则利用人工智能创建了一个全新的蛋白质相互作用图（以及涉及自闭症的分子网络）。这将极大地促进对诊断工具和治疗方法的进一步探索。

All such developments are promising. But many of the field’s problems could be resolved by relaxing the distinctions that exist today between neurology, which studies and treats physical, structural and functional disorders of the brain, and psychiatry, which deals with mental, emotional and behavioural disorders. Dr Lennox finds it extraordinary that the treatment options differ so completely if a patient ends up on a neurology ward or a psychiatric ward. She wants antibody testing to be more routine in Britain when someone presents with a sudden post-viral mental illness that does not get better with standard treatments. Thomas Pollak, a senior clinical lecturer and consultant neuropsychiatrist at King’s College London, says MRI scans should probably be used on patients after their first episode of psychosis as, in 5% to 6% of patients, it would change the way they are treated.

所有这些发展都是令人鼓舞的。但是该领域的许多问题可能通过放宽当今存在的神经学和精神病学之间的区别来解决。神经学研究和治疗大脑的物理、结构和功能障碍，而精神病学处理精神、情绪和行为障碍。Lennox博士发现，如果患者最终进入神经科病房或精神科病房，治疗选择却完全不同，这让她感到非常惊讶。她希望在英国，当有人出现不能通过标准治疗改善的突发病毒后精神疾病时，抗体测试能更加常规化。伦敦大学国王学院的高级临床讲师兼顾问神经病学家Thomas Pollak表示，应该在患者首次出现精神病发作后使用核磁共振扫描，因为在5%至6%的患者中，这将改变他们的治疗方式。

This rift between neurology and psychiatry is greater in Anglo-Saxon countries, says Dr Tebartz van Elst. (These are countries including America, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand.) In Germany, psychiatry and neurology are more integrated, with neurologists training in psychiatry, and psychiatrists doing a year of neurology as part of their training. That makes it easier for investigational work to be done. He says he offers most patients with first-time psychosis or other severe psychiatric syndromes an MRI of the brain, an electroencephalogram, lab tests for inflammation, and a lumbar puncture to find evidence to support different treatments in some patients. The price tag, around €1,000 ($1,070), is no more than the cost of hospitalising a patient for three or four days, says Dr Tebartz van Elst, so may be good value for money.

医学博士Tebartz van Elst表示，神经学和精神病学之间的这种分歧在盎格鲁-撒克逊国家更大。在德国，精神病学和神经学更加融合，神经科医生接受精神病学培训，而精神病医生在培训中要学习一年的神经学知识。这样更容易进行研究工作。他表示，他会对大多数首次出现精神病发作或其他严重精神综合症的患者进行脑部核磁共振、脑电图、炎症实验室检查以及腰椎穿刺，以找到支持某些患者不同治疗方式的证据。Tebartz van Elst医生表示，这项工作的价格约为1000欧元（1070美元），不会超过医院住院三到四天的费用，因此可能物有所值。

All this work will one day put psychiatry, and its patients, on a firmer footing. It is already offering validation for some of those for whom the field has failed.

所有这些工作迟早都会使精神病学及其患者站稳脚跟。它已经为那些领域未能成功的人提供了验证。

Jessica Huitson is only one of them. Diagnosed and treated too late, she still struggles with her condition and her future is uncertain. Those with ME/CFS, a post-infectious condition which comes with a series of cognitive problems such as attention and concentration deficits, were once dismissed as malingering or diagnosed with “yuppie flu”. New work suggests it is associated with both immune and metabolic dysfunction.

Jessica Huitson就是其中之一。由于诊断和治疗太晚，她仍在与自己的病情抗争，未来充满不确定性。患上ME/CFS，这是一种与感染后疾病相关的情况，伴随一系列认知问题，如注意力和集中力缺陷，曾经被认为是装病或被诊断为“雅皮病”。新的研究表明它与免疫和代谢功能障碍有关。

Some wonder whether these conditions are the tip of a much larger iceberg. The prize in finding out more will be better patient care and outcomes. Biology is coming, whether psychiatry is ready or not.■

一些人想知道这些病情是否只是更大冰山的一角。更多了解的奖赏将是更好的患者护理和预后。无论精神病学是否准备就绪，生物学都在不断发展。■

回到目录

科学技术 | Second sight (Science and technology | Second sight)

令人难忘的影像让时间变得慢些 (Memorable images make time pass more slowly)

这种效应可以让我们的大脑有更多时间处理信息。 (The effect could give our brains longer to process information)

时间在玩得开心时会明显变快。但事实证明，当人们看到值得记住的东西时，时间会变慢。根据4月22日发表在《自然人类行为》杂志上的一项研究，人们对时间流逝的感知可以受到眼前图像的记忆性的影响。科学家们提出这种效应可能是大脑在需要作出即时决定之前窃取更多处理时间的一种方式。

TIME FAMOUSLY speeds up when you are having fun. But it slows down, it turns out, when one looks at something worth remembering. According to research published on April 22nd in Nature Human Behaviour, people’s sense of how fast time passes can be influenced by the memorability of the images in front of them. Scientists propose this effect could be a way for the brain to sneak in more processing time before a snap decision needs to be made.

由美国乔治梅森大学的认知神经科学家马丁·维纳领导的一个团队测试了视觉刺激如何改变人们对时间的体验。他们向几十名参与者展示了各种场景的图像，从空荡荡的箱子房间到人满为患的体育场，每幅图像的展示时间介于300至900毫秒之间。每次观看后，参与者都要说出他们在图像前停留的时间是短还是长。他们的回答显示，当图像展示大场景，比如空旷的仓库时，时间似乎过得更快。而当图像展示被物体堆满的空间时，比如塞满物品的车库，相反的情况发生了。

A team led by Martin Wiener, a cognitive neuroscientist at George Mason University in America, tested how visual stimuli alter people’s experience of time. They showed several dozen participants images of different scenes—from empty box rooms to filled stadiums—for between 300 and 900 milliseconds. After each one the participants had to say if the time spent looking at the image was short or long. Their responses revealed that, when the images featured large scenes, such as a vacant warehouse, more time seemed to have passed. The opposite happened when the images were of spaces cluttered with objects, such as an overfull garage.

这是很奇怪的。先前的研究发现，随着大小的增加，时间被拉长的体验也会增加；例如，如果人们在相同时间内看到不同数字的图像，他们会认为较大的数字展示时间更长。但是，拥挤的场景似乎与这种趋势相悖。为了查看是否有其他因素起作用，研究人员进行了另一个实验，使用了在记忆性上有所差异的图像。人类更容易记住着重于人物、行动和中心放置物体的图像。维纳博士的团队使用了一个包含6万幅图像的数据集，其中每幅图像都根据其记忆性进行了评判（带着花的男人：易记，多叶植物：不那么易记）。

That was strange. Previous research has found that the experience of stretched time increases with size; for instance, if people are flashed images of different numbers for equal lengths of time, they think the higher numbers are shown for longer. But the cluttered scenes seemed to contradict that trend. To see if something else was at play, the researchers ran another experiment using pictures that differed in memorability. Humans better remember pictures focused on people, actions and centrally placed objects. Dr Wiener’s team used images from a 60,000-image data set, where each image had been judged on its memorability (a man with flowers in his beard: memorable. Foliage: less so).

图像越容易记住，时间似乎被拉长得越多。反之亦然：当参与者第二天被叫回实验室时，他们更容易记住让时间放缓的图像。为了解释这一结果，团队将易记图像输入到一个专门设计用于识别图像中物体的神经网络中，其处理速度与人类相关。或许有些出乎意料的是，它在处理更易记图像时速度更快。研究人员认为这种在人工神经网络中的效应可能类似于人类大脑中的情况。如果是这样，这可能是解释为何时间有时会似乎变慢的关键。

The more memorable the image, the more it seemed to stretch time. It also worked in reverse: when participants were called back to the lab a day later, they were better at remembering the time-slowing pictures. To help explain the result, the team fed the memorability pictures to a neural network designed to spot objects in images at a pace that correlates with humans. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it was faster at processing more memorable pictures. The researchers believe that this effect in the artificial neural network may be analogous to what happens in human brains. If so, it could be the key to explaining why time sometimes seems to slow down.

目前还不清楚处理速度如何导致时间感知的改变，但研究人员认为，连接点在于大脑如何优先处理传入信息。他们提出了一个新模型，即大脑在遇到重要、相关或易记事物时会尝试进行更多的处理。他们认为，它通过让秒数似乎流逝得更慢的方式来实现这一点，可能是为了在身体做出反应之前完成更多处理。例如，维纳博士表示，如果人类面对捕食者，思维可能需要持续更长时间是有用的。

Exactly how processing speed leads to altered time perception is still unclear, but the researchers believe the connection lies in how the brain prioritises incoming information. They propose a new model in which the brain tries to do more processing when it encounters something important, relevant or memorable. It does so, they suggest, by making seconds seem to pass slower, possibly as a way to get more processing done before the body reacts. If a human came face-to-face with a predator, for example, a more sustained burst of thought might be useful, says Dr Wiener.

乌得勒支大学的实验心理学家克里斯·帕芬表示，这是一种全新且引人注目的思考时间对大脑意味着什么的方式。他说，这将使时间成为我们处理世界的首要方面，而不仅仅是衡量某事花费多长时间的标准。尽管目前仅仅是一个假设，但它的易记性是无可争议的。■

That is a new and compelling way to think about what time means for the brain, says Chris Paffen, an experimental psychologist at Utrecht University who was not involved with the work. It would make time “a primary aspect of how we deal with the world”, rather than just a measure of how long something takes, he says. Though it remains little more than a hypothesis for now, its memorability is undisputed. ■

回到目录

科学技术 | 滴答 (Science and technology | Tick tock)

气候变化正在减缓地球自转 (Climate change is slowing Earth’s rotation)

这为世界的时间守护者简化了事情。 (This simplifies things for the world’s timekeepers)

完美的一天应该有86,400秒：地球自转一圈需要24小时，每小时60分钟，每分钟60秒。但这些简单计算的明显精确性忽略了行星的混乱现实。潮汐力与地球核心中湍急的洋流以及地表冰盖的重新分布导致地球的自转速度每年都会略微变化。

THE PERFECT day should have 86,400 seconds: 24 hours for Earth to spin around its axis, 60 minutes in each hour, and 60 seconds in each minute. But the apparent precision of these simple calculations ignores the messy reality of planetary bodies. Tidal forces, combined with the roiling currents in Earth’s core and the redistribution of ice sheets at its surface, cause the planet’s rate of spin to vary ever so slightly from year to year.

这一烦恼在1967年得到解决，新秒的定义源自于极其精确的原子钟中铯原子的振动。这两种秒，太阳秒和原子秒，几乎完全相等。但并非完全相等。以1972年为例，应该有31,622,400秒。然而，根据原子秒计算，地球绕太阳完成的全程需要31,622,401.14秒。结果，又增加了两秒：第一次“闰秒”。其中一次是在那一年的6月30日，弥补了滞后；第二次则是预计即将出现的额外秒。它被添加在当年最后一天的最后一分钟。

This irritant was scotched in 1967 with the definition of a new second, derived from the vibrations of caesium atoms inside uber-precise atomic clocks. The two seconds, solar and atomic, are almost exactly equivalent. But not quite. The leap year 1972, for example, should have had 31,622,400 seconds. Reckoned by atomic seconds, however, Earth’s full journey around the sun took 31,622,401.14. As a result, two additional seconds were added: the very first “leap seconds”. One, on June 30th that year, made up for the lag; the second anticipated an impending additional one. It was added to the very last minute of the year’s very last day.

**有一段时间，闰秒是定期出现的。自1972年至2016年，一共出现27次。由于地球自转逐渐加速，使得太阳秒追赶上了原子秒，自那时起就再也没有出现过。事实上，未来几年内，国际地球自转服务组织（IERS）的时间迷们可能需要实施一种全新的“负闰秒”。换句话说，在未来的某个12月31日午夜时分，会经历一个59秒长的分钟。这种调整对于依赖完美时间记录的组织，从股市到电网，都是一个令人头痛的前景。但一项新研究表明，气候变化将为它们带来一些额外的宝贵时间。

For a while, leap seconds were a regular fixture. Between 1972 and 2016, there were 27. Owing to a gradual acceleration in Earth’s spin that has allowed solar seconds to catch up with atomic ones, there have not been any since. In fact, within the next few years the time nerds of the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS), the body that decides when leap seconds should fall, may need to implement an entirely novel “negative leap second”. On some future December 31st, in other words, the stroke of midnight will follow a 59-second minute. Such adjustments are a vexing prospect for organisations reliant on perfect timekeeping, from stockmarkets to power grids. But a new study suggests that climate change will buy them some welcome extra time.

在上个月发表在《自然》杂志上的一篇论文中，加利福尼亚大学圣迭戈分校对时间有兴趣的地球物理学家邓肯·阿格纽解开了导致地球自转加速的各种因素。为此，他使用了包括激光测量地月距离、地球重力扰动和古代日食记录在内的一系列数据来源。他得出结论，最近自转加速的部分原因是地球熔融核心中涟漪的湍流。自最后一次冰河时代结束（约12000年前）以来极地冰盖的融化也使地球自转加快。冰盖的重量压扁了极地；随后的消融使地壳回弹并变得更加球形化。这导致了地球自转的加速，这个效应对于体操运动员将手臂蜷在身体旋转得更快是熟悉的。

In a paper published in Nature last month, Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist with an interest in timekeeping at the University of California in San Diego, disentangled the various factors that are causing Earth’s spin to accelerate. To do so, he used a range of data sources including laser measurements of the distance between Earth and the Moon, disturbances to Earth’s gravity, and records of ancient eclipses. Partly responsible for the recent speed-up, he concluded, are the currents that ripple through Earth’s molten core. The melting of the polar ice sheet since the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago, has also made Earth spin faster. Their weight squashed the poles; their subsequent disappearance allowed Earth’s crust to rebound and become more spherical. This caused an acceleration in the planet’s spin, an effect familiar to skaters tucking in their arms to rotate faster.

阿格纽博士还发现了对抗的效应。近几十年来，气候变化一直在使格陵兰和南极洲冰盖缩小，将水量从陆地转移到海洋中并重新分布。通过减少两个地区的质量，融化减少了它们的引力作用，净效果是将水“推开”离开它们的海岸。从格陵兰冰盖消失的水最明显地汇集在赤道附近和南半球。从南极冰盖释放的水则基本上相反。追踪这些水量从陆地到海洋如何移动的冰川学家因此发现，这导致了远离极地向赤道方向的移动。布里斯托大学的冰川学家乔纳森·班伯表示，这意味着地球的腰围在变粗。这个效应并不巨大——每年用毫米计算，但足以对地球的自转产生减速效应。

Dr Agnew also found effects pulling in the other direction. In recent decades, climate change has been shrinking the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, shifting water mass off the land and into the oceans where it can be redistributed. By reducing both regions’ mass, the melt decreases their gravitational pull, with the net effect of “pushing” water away from their shores. Water lost from the Greenland ice sheet ends up pooling most noticeably around the equator and in the southern hemisphere. The opposite, more or less, is true for water released from the Antarctic ice sheet. Glaciologists who have tracked how all this water mass moves around from land to oceans have consequently found a shift away from the poles and towards the equator. That means Earth’s waistline is thickening, says Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol. The effect is not huge—it is measured in millimetres per year—but is nonetheless enough to exert a braking effect on Earth’s spin.

这也推迟了负闰秒的需求。如果没有气候变化，当前的趋势表明IERS将在短短两年内需要实施一个负闰秒。阿格纽博士的计算表明，他们有时间直至2029年。这段时间将让依赖原子钟精确性的系统软件工程师设计出能够处理负闰秒的新程序。

It is also delaying the need for a negative leap-second. Without climate change, current trends suggest IERS will need to implement one within just two years. Dr Agnew’s calculations suggest they have until 2029. That time will allow software engineers running systems reliant on the precision of atomic clocks to devise new programs capable of handling the negative leap second.

另外，一些人建议，IERS可以利用这段时间完全取消这个概念。太阳秒和原子秒已允许相差一秒。将这种容差延伸到一分钟可能会消除未来几十年闰秒的需要。对于全球的时间记录者们来说，那一天可能是能够接近完美的时刻了。■

Alternatively, as some have suggested, IERS could use that time to eliminate the concept entirely. Solar seconds and atomic ones are already allowed to differ by one second. Extending that tolerance to one minute would probably eliminate the need for leap seconds of all kinds for decades to come. For timekeepers the world over, that day may be as close to perfect as it is ever possible to get. ■

Curious about the world? To enjoy our mind-expanding science coverage, sign up to Simply Science, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.

回到目录

亚洲 | 特朗普证明的老虎 (Asia | Trump-proof tiger)

菲律宾正在悄然变得更加富裕 (Without fanfare, the Philippines is getting richer)

而且它的经济异常地不受美国政治的影响 (And its economy is unusually well-defended against American politics)

在科塔巴托机场，旅客们必须加入一条又长又潮湿的队伍来支付10比索的税款（不到0.20美元）。交出现金后——不接受卡支付——他们必须等待，三名悠闲的官员会出具一张纸质收据并加盖戳章。如果他们能通过将税款添加到机票上来避免这个麻烦，大多数人会很高兴，即使税费增加十倍也是如此。然而，这项简单的改革尚未发生，或许因为这三名悠闲的官员会因此失去工作。

At Cotabato airport travellers must join a long sweaty queue to pay a tax of ten pesos (less than $0.20). Having handed over their cash—cards are not accepted—they must wait while three unhurried officials produce a paper receipt and stamp it. If they could avoid this hassle by having the tax added to their ticket, most would be delighted, even if the tax were ten times larger. Yet this simple reform has not happened, perhaps because it would cost those three unhurried officials their jobs.

到菲律宾的游客有充足的时间想象如何使其交通系统变得更少令人沮丧。当他们不在摇摇欲坠的机场排队时，他们经常会被困在交通拥堵中。从郊区到菲律宾首都马尼拉市中心的典型通勤需要两个小时，其中近30分钟是在等待公交车的到来。

Visitors to the Philippines have ample time to imagine ways to make its transport system less frustrating. When not queuing in rickety airports, they are often stuck in traffic. A typical commute from an outlying suburb to the centre of Manila, the capital, takes two hours, including nearly 30 minutes waiting for a bus to show up.

然而，情况正在改善。道路正在铺设，桥梁正在建造。今年二月，政府选定了一个私人财团来改建并扩建马尼拉主要机场的能力。今年晚些时候，预计将授予合同以现代化几个地区机场。预计马尼拉将在2029年拥有第一条地铁线。

Yet things are improving. Roads are being paved, bridges built. In February the government picked a private consortium to revamp and double the capacity of Manila’s main airport. Later this year, it is expected to award contracts to modernise several regional airports, too. Manila is scheduled to have its first underground metro line by 2029.

菲律宾对于投资者来说通常不是首选：既不像印度那样成为一个庞然大物，也不像越南那样成为一个制造业巨星。但自2012年以来，菲律宾的经济增长每年约为6%（疫情期间除外）。在各种政权统治下，从自由主义者贝尼尼奥·阿基诺总统（2010-2016）到蛮横的总统罗德里戈·杜特尔特（2016-2022），经济一直在悄然繁荣。根据图表1，在费迪南德·马克思总统（人称“邦邦”）领导下，这种增长将继续。世界银行称菲律宾很快将是一个中高收入国家。

The Philippines is often an afterthought for investors: neither a giant like India nor a manufacturing superstar like Vietnam. But growth has been brisk at around 6% a year since 2012 (except during the pandemic). The economy has quietly boomed under a variety of regimes, from the liberal President Benigno Aquino (2010-16) to the thuggish President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-22). The run is set to continue under President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos (see chart 1). The World Bank says the Philippines will soon be an upper-middle-income country.

鉴于其政治局势，这一点可能令人惊讶。马克思先生，一个可怕的掠夺者的儿子，于2022年当选为最高领导人。一个旨在修复家族声誉的大规模虚假信息运动帮助他当选。然而，企业认为他的政府比前任更有能力。杜特尔特先生用他在达沃市市长多年的时间里结识的喝酒朋友充当关键职位，而马克思先生则大多任命技术官员。他的经济团队受到广泛称赞。大型综合企业阿亚拉的首席财务官阿尔贝托·德·拉拉萨巴尔表示：“我们赞赏政府与私营部门之间的高度合作。”

This might seem surprising, given its politics. Mr Marcos, the son of an appalling kleptocrat, was elected to the top job in 2022. He was helped by a massive campaign of disinformation aimed at rehabilitating the family name. Still, businesses rate his administration as more competent than his predecessor’s. Whereas Mr Duterte filled key posts with his drinking buddies from Davao, the city where he was mayor for many years, Mr Marcos has mostly appointed technocrats. His economic team is widely praised. “We appreciate the high level of collaboration between the government and the private sector,” says Alberto De Larrazabal, the chief financial officer of Ayala, a conglomerate.

许多关于菲律宾乐观的原因与谁掌权无关。该国正处于一个人口优势时期，有大量劳动年龄人口。由于一半的人仍住在农村，转变从务农到获得更高薪资的城市工作的潜力巨大。但治理也很重要，迄今为止，马克思先生远不及许多观察者担心的那么糟糕。

Many of the reasons for optimism about the Philippines have nothing to do with who is in charge. The country is at a demographic sweet spot, with a bulge of working-age citizens. With half its people still living in the countryside, there is plenty of potential to shift from farming to better-paid urban jobs. But governance matters, too, and so far Mr Marcos is nowhere near as bad as many observers feared.

他继续前任努力改善连接该岛国7600个岛屿与世界的基础设施。世界银行的恩迪阿梅·迪奥普表示，在菲律宾，物理和数字基础设施投资回报率更高，因为“差距巨大”。对人权的尊重提高了投资回报率。杜特尔特先生曾公开呼吁警察杀害涉毒嫌犯，导致成千上万宗非法处决，而马克思先生强调对成瘾者的治疗。警方仍频繁开枪击毙人，但该国没有再有领导人说出像“如果涉及人权问题，我一点也不在乎”之类的话。这可能使投资者对在那里做生意感到不那么胆怯。

He has continued with his predecessor’s efforts to upgrade the infrastructure linking the archipelago’s 7,600 islands to each other and the world. Returns on investment in physical and digital infrastructure in the Philippines are higher than in neighbouring countries because “the gaps are huge”, says Ndiamé Diop of the World Bank. An improvement in respect for human rights helps, too. Whereas Mr Duterte loudly urged police to murder drug suspects, leading to thousands of extra-judicial executions, Mr Marcos stresses treatment for addicts. The police still shoot a lot of people, but the country no longer has a leader who says things like: “If it involves human rights, I don’t give a shit.” That probably makes investors less skittish about doing business there.

马克思先生已吸引外国投资用于改善宽带接入，其不平衡性严重；国会正在考虑一项旨在推动该领域更多竞争的法案。全国数字身份系统的推出将使菲律宾人更容易在网上办理业务并获得政府服务。自2020年开始实施，约70%的菲律宾人已注册：这是令人印象深刻的数字，尽管远远落后于更贫穷的印度近乎100%的注册率。

Mr Marcos has wooed foreign investment in improving broadband access, which is wildly uneven; congress is mulling a bill to spur more competition in this area. The roll-out of a national digital-identity system should make it easier for Filipinos to do business and get access to government services online. Since it began in 2020, roughly 70% of Filipinos have enrolled: impressive, though far behind the nearly 100% rate in India, a poorer country.

像它的许多邻国一样，菲律宾担心特朗普再次当选总统。他的关税上调可能会伤害菲律宾的电子产品出口。但该国有着一些可靠的外币来源，可能不受特朗普的影响。

Like many of its neighbours, the Philippines worries about another Donald Trump presidency. His tariff hikes could hurt its exports of electronic goods. But it has handy sources of foreign currency that may be Trump-proof.

一种来源是菲律宾200万在国外工作的公民汇款，他们在大海上驾驶船只或在海湾照料患者，这些汇款支撑着菲律宾的外汇储备，相当于菲律宾劳动力的4%，每年汇回国内相当于国内生产总值的9%，这是一股源源不断的现金流，即使在疫情期间也能稳定流动。这些汇款推动了每个村庄的小型企业发展。科塔巴托的年轻母亲Norhaya Daud说，她在卡塔尔做家政工的收入是她在国内的五倍，她用这些储蓄购买了土地。现在她种植玉米和椰子，并经营村里的商店。

One is remittances from its 2m citizens working abroad, steering ships on the high seas or nursing patients in the Gulf (see chart 2). Though their numbers are equivalent to a mere 4% of the labour force in the Philippines, they send home the equivalent of 9% of GDP a year, a cash gusher that flowed steadily even during the pandemic. Remittances kick-start small businesses in every village. Norhaya Daud, a young mother in Cotabato, says she earned five times as much as a domestic worker in Qatar as she could have at home, and used the savings to buy land. Now she grows corn and coconuts, and runs a village shop.

另一个不受特朗普影响的美元来源是旅游业，在机场改善时可能会蓬勃发展。菲律宾有巨大的未开发潜力：温暖的气候、原始的海滩、可供潜水的珊瑚礁和好客的文化。然而，2022年其吸引的国际游客仅为泰国的五分之一，部分原因是到那里旅行实在太困难。投行瑞银证券预测，到2030年，每年游客人数将从2023年的550万激增至4300万，旅游收入将从国内生产总值的9%增长到22%。

Another Trump-proof source of dollars is tourism, which could boom when the airports improve. The Philippines has enormous untapped potential: warm weather, pristine beaches, coral reefs to snorkel over and a culture of hospitality. Yet it attracted only a fifth as many international tourists as Thailand in 2022, partly because it is so hard to get there. CLSA, a bank, predicts that annual tourist arrivals will soar from 5.5m in 2023 to 43m by 2030, and tourism revenues will grow from 9% of GDP to a hefty 22%.

这种乐观情景面临的最大威胁是地缘政治问题：菲律宾经常与中国就其无稽之谈的对菲律宾水域的主张发生冲突，中国政府可能会警告中国游客不要去那里。

The biggest threat to this cheerful scenario is geopolitics: the Philippines often clashes with China over its baseless claims to Philippine waters, and China’s government could warn Chinese tourists not to go there.

第三个具有韧性的来源是服务出口，这可能不像实物商品那样受到未来贸易战的影响。菲律宾的呼叫中心工作人员精通英语，熟悉棒球，因此受到美国企业的青睐。该国的商业流程外包公司雇佣了超过170万人。行业协会IBPAP的主席杰克·马德里预计，2024年收入将增长近9%，达到400亿美元，因为银行和医疗保险公司会将更多后勤业务转移到海外。

The third source of resilience is exports of services, which may be less affected by a future trade war than physical goods. With their fluent English and familiarity with baseball, Filipino call-centre workers are much in demand by American firms. The country’s business-process outsourcing firms employ more than 1.7m people. Jack Madrid, the head of IBPAP, the industry association, predicts revenue will grow by nearly 9% in 2024 to $40bn, as banks and health insurers move more back-office operations offshore.

有些人担心人工智能会摧毁呼叫中心的工作岗位，但IBPAP研究主管多明尼克·利戈表示怀疑。当今该行业的增长受限于缺乏足够熟练的员工。他预测，人工智能可以帮助提高那些能力较差的员工的生产率。

Some expect artificial intelligence to destroy jobs in call centres, but Dominic Ligot, the head of research at IBPAP, doubts it. Today the industry’s growth is constrained by a lack of sufficiently skilled staff. AI could help make the less capable ones more productive, he predicts.

然而仍然存在障碍。菲律宾的农民不得拥有超过五公顷的土地，因此农场仍然小而低效率。几项法律限制外国投资：外国人不得在广泛的领域拥有超过40%的股份，从公共采购到贸易各个领域都受到限制。马科斯先生承诺放宽外国所有权规定，但遭到了激烈抵制。

Obstacles remain. No farmer in the Philippines may own more than five hectares, so farms stay tiny and inefficient. Several laws discourage foreign investment: foreigners may not own stakes of more than 40% in a wide variety of industries, from public procurement to trading. Mr Marcos promises to ease rules on foreign ownership, but has met fierce resistance.

全球环境变化难以预料。本月初，马科斯访问了白宫，与美国总统乔·拜登和日本首相岸田文郎举行了一次峰会，受到热烈欢迎。但拜登明年可能不再担任总统，特朗普可能会突然对外包宣战。与中国的关系目前糟糕，可能变得更糟。尽管如此，“尽管世界上发生的一切，菲律宾的商界人士对未来持谨慎乐观态度，”De Larrazabal先生说。 ■

And the global environment is deeply unpredictable. When Mr Marcos visited the White House earlier this month for a summit with President Joe Biden and Japan’s prime minister, Kishida Fumio, he received a warm welcome. But Mr Biden may not be president next year, and Mr Trump could suddenly declare war on outsourcing. Relations with China, meanwhile, are dismal and could get worse. Nonetheless, “there’s a guarded optimism among businesspeople in the Philippines, despite everything that’s happening in the world,” says Mr De Larrazabal. ■

回到目录

亚洲 | 不再只是中国制造 (Asia | No longer just made in China)

中国公司正在扩张至东南亚 (Chinese firms are expanding in South-East Asia)

这股新兴商业侨民年轻、受过良好教育且雄心勃勃。 (This new business diaspora is younger, better-educated and ambitious)

2021年，总部位于中国的PalFish的创始人意识到其未来在海外。中国政府刚刚对私人辅导展开了打压行动，习近平总书记指责该行业滥用中国家长的教育焦虑。在决定扩张到拉丁美洲、中东或俄罗斯之前，该公司最终选择了东南亚。三年后，该地区有1000万学生使用该平台。

In 2021 the founders of PalFish, a platform based in China which connects English teachers and students, realised its future lay abroad. The Chinese government had just launched a crackdown on private tutoring, after Xi Jinping, its leader, accused the industry of preying on the educational anxieties of China’s parents. The firm considered expanding to Latin America, the Middle East or Russia before landing on South-East Asia. Three years on, 10m students in the region use it.

PalFish只是一个更广泛趋势中的一部分。虽然准确数字很难获取，但据信在东南亚有成千上万家中国公司，习近平领导下的中国政治不确定性，再加上经济增长放缓，迫使企业寻找海外机会。这种新型中国商业侨民与以往不同：他们更加富有、受过良好教育，并且抱有超越东南亚的雄心。

PalFish is part of a broader trend. Exact numbers for Chinese companies in South-East Asia are hard to come by, but there are thought to be thousands, as unpredictable politics in Mr Xi’s China, coupled with a slowing economy, are forcing businesses to look for opportunities elsewhere. This new Chinese business diaspora is different from previous ones: it is wealthier, highly educated and with ambitions beyond South-East Asia.

中国公司走出国门扩张的原因之一是政治因素。乔·拜登政府比之前的唐纳德·特朗普更多地针对中国制造的产品进行了控制。中国企业有时会通过将工厂迁至该地区的国家来规避这些限制。一位两年前搬到越南首都河内的中国商人估计，现在北部越南有40%的工厂由中国人拥有。从中国到印度尼西亚、马来西亚和越南的年度外国直接投资在2022年达到80亿美元，是10年前的四倍。

One reason why Chinese firms are expanding abroad is political. President Joe Biden’s administration has added more controls to those introduced by Donald Trump on products made in China. Chinese firms sometimes bypass these restrictions by moving factories to countries in the region. One Chinese businessman who moved to Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, nearly two decades ago estimates that 40% of factories in northern Vietnam are now Chinese-owned. Annual foreign direct investment from China to Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam hit $8bn in 2022, quadruple the amount a decade earlier.

东南亚各地的中国企业家用一个词来概括他们的海外愿望：juan。这个缩写来自“内卷”，这个词用来描述额外投入不再产生更多产出的情况。80年代和90年代出生的企业家表示，无论他们如何努力工作，在中国不会得到更好的生活质量。中国庞大的人口使得极度激烈的竞争几乎不可能保持在某个领域的领先地位，尤其是随着中国消费者变得更加挑剔。

Chinese entrepreneurs across South-East Asia sum up their desire to go abroad with one word: juan. This abbreviation comes from neijuan or “involution”, a term used to describe how extra input no longer yields more output. Entrepreneurs born in the 1980s and 1990s say that no matter how hard they work, they will not be rewarded with a better quality of life in China. One result of the country’s enormous population is that extreme levels of competition make it almost impossible to stay at the top of one’s field, especially as Chinese consumers become more demanding.

对于某些商业类型来说，疫情是一个转折点。“我们受够了被封锁的日子，”一位中国企业家说。他和许多朋友在中国边境开放后立即出国。但在过去几年里，他们发现他们在该地区的业务比在中国好。他说:“现在，这是一个实际的业务决策，让我们继续扩张到东南亚…而不是单方面对中国共产党的憎恨。”

And for some business types, the pandemic was a turning point. “We got fed up being locked up,” says one Chinese entrepreneur. He, along with many of his friends, fled abroad once China opened its borders. But over the past few years, they have found that their operations in the region are faring better than in China. “Now, it is a pragmatic business decision that keeps us expanding into South-East Asia…rather than a single-minded hatred of the Chinese Communist Party,” he says.

印尼是中国公司最重要的市场。一些与中国有联系的大公司已经在那里设立了办事处。总部位于印尼首都雅加达的快递公司J&T Express 在2023年是香港第二大首次公开发行。它得到了腾讯等中国科技公司的支持。与此同时，世界上最大的不锈钢和镍生产商青山集团 主导了该国的镍加工业。除了这些巨头，该地区还涌现出大量中小企业。2022年，中国在东南亚医疗领域的年度投资为16亿美元，是2015年的三倍。

Indonesia is the most important market for Chinese firms. Several big companies with links to China have set up shop there. J&T Express, a courier company based in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, was the second-biggest initial public offering of 2023 in Hong Kong. It is backed by Chinese investors including Tencent, a Chinese tech firm. Meanwhile Tsingshan, the world’s largest producer of stainless steel and nickel, dominates nickel processing in the country. Beyond the giants, a myriad of smaller companies have emerged across the region. In 2022 China’s annual investment in South-East Asia’s medical sector was $1.6bn, triple that of 2015.

刘媛是一位经商顾问，帮助中国企业扩张到越南。她表示，她的大多数客户没有在该地区定居的计划。这与以往很多中国侨民世代相传的做法形成鲜明对比，他们是在逃离贫困和内战时在摇摇欲坠的船上往东南亚定居的。这一新一代的信念不同：东南亚的未来与北方的经济强国紧密相连。但他们也希望能将扩张范围拓展到更西方地区。■

Liu Yuan, a business consultant who helps Chinese businesses expand to Vietnam, says that most of her clients have no plans to settle permanently in the region. This is in stark contrast to many previous generations of the Chinese diaspora, who made South-East Asia their home when fleeing poverty and civil war, often in rickety boats. This new generation is driven by a different belief: that the future of South-East Asia is inextricably tied to the economic powerhouse to its north. But they are also hoping that they will expand farther West, too. ■

回到目录

亚洲 | 榕树 (Asia | Banyan)

牵绊菲律宾的家族纷争 (The family feud that holds the Philippines back)

马科斯家族和杜特尔特家族之间的争吵使政治变得不可预测。 (Squabbling between the Marcos and Duterte clans makes politics unpredictable)

像《罗密欧和朱丽叶》一样，菲律宾总统和副总统来自富有、强大的家族，他们之间经常是水火不容。但不同于莎士比亚笔下那对命运多舛的恋人，斐迪南德“邦邦”马科斯和莎拉·杜特尔特彼此深恶痛绝。这使得治理菲律宾比本应更容易的要困难得多。

Like Romeo and Juliet, the president and vice-president of the Philippines come from rich, powerful families that are constantly at daggers drawn. Unlike Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos and Sara Duterte detest each other. This makes governing the Philippines rather harder than it should be.

这两个家族都有肮脏的历史。马科斯先生是专制者马科斯的儿子，同样名叫斐迪南德·马科斯，他窃取了数十亿资产，折磨了成千上万的人，并在1986年被一场人民起义推翻。（他在三年后去世。）杜特尔特女士则是罗德里戈·杜特尔特的女儿，后者在2016年至2022年担任总统，鼓励大规模谋杀毒品犯罪嫌疑人，并称教皇是“婊子的儿子”。

Both families have grubby histories. Mr Marcos is the son of a despot, also called Ferdinand Marcos, who stole billions, tortured thousands and was ousted by a popular uprising in 1986. (He died three years later.) Ms Duterte is the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, who as president from 2016-22 urged the wholesale murder of drug suspects and called the pope a “son of a whore”.

马科斯家族和杜特尔特家族过去合作过。莎拉·杜特尔特的祖父曾在马科斯长者的内阁任职。她的父亲允许那位已故的贪污犯的尸体被埋葬在国家英雄墓地。这两个家族在2022年的选举中结成了不稳定的联盟：杜特尔特女士参加了副总统这个独立选举，有传言称她将在2028年竞选总统。但现在，他们公开对立。

The Marcoses and Dutertes have co-operated in the past. Sara Duterte’s grandpa served in Marcos senior’s cabinet. Her father allowed the late kleptocrat’s corpse to be buried in the national heroes’ cemetery. The two dynasties formed an uneasy alliance to win an election in 2022: Ms Duterte stood for the number-two job, which is chosen separately, with a rumoured understanding that she will run for the top one in 2028. But now they are openly feuding.

去年早些时候就听到了分歧的早期警讯，当时马科斯的政府停止向杜特尔特女士的办公室提供数百万美元的“保密基金”，这些基金没有严格审计，总统可以任意挥震。今年事情变得更加紧张。马科斯先生提议修改宪法，删除阻碍外国直接投资的条款。杜特尔特家族担心他可能会以此为借口放宽任期限制。目前他被禁止连任。如果发生变化，莎拉·杜特尔特通往总统职位的道路将变得更加复杂。

Early squeals of discord were audible last year, when Mr Marcos’s government stopped giving Ms Duterte’s office millions of dollars in “confidential funds”, which are not rigorously audited, and which the president uses by the shovelful. This year things have heated up. Mr Marcos has suggested revising the constitution to remove clauses that hinder foreign direct investment. The Dutertes fear he may use this as a pretext to relax term limits. Currently he is barred from running for re-election. If that changes, Sara Duterte’s path to the presidency gets more complicated.

今年1月，杜特尔特女士的兄弟，一位市长，呼吁马科斯先生辞职。她的父亲指责马科斯先生是“吸毒成瘾者”。马科斯先生暗示他的前任被八年前摩托车事故后所服用的镇痛药芬太尼蒙蔽了判断。

In January Ms Duterte’s brother, a mayor, called on Mr Marcos to resign. Her father accused Mr Marcos of being a “drug addict”. Mr Marcos suggested that his predecessor’s mind was clouded by fentanyl, a painkiller he has admitted to taking after a motorcycle crash eight years ago.

前总统杜特尔特升高了赌注，威胁说如果马科斯先生篡改宪法，杜特尔特家族的据点——南部菲律宾群岛第二大岛棉兰老岛，可能会独立。这种解体国家的空谈引发了警报，尤其是因为棉兰老岛最近曾发生过恐怖的分裂主义暴力事件。马科斯的官员威胁对策独立分子实施严厉制裁。4月14日，杜特尔特在一次集会上，一位杰出的议员敦促军队和警察停止支持马科斯，这样他就必须辞职。这位议员后来道歉了，但气氛仍然动荡。

Former President Duterte upped the stakes by threatening that if Mr Marcos tinkers with the constitution, the Duterte family stronghold, Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippine archipelago, might secede. Such loose talk of dismantling the country set off alarm bells, especially since Mindanao has a recent history of horrific separatist violence. Marcos officials threatened stiff penalties for fomentors of secession. At a Duterte rally on April 14th a prominent lawmaker urged the army and police to stop supporting Mr Marcos, so he would have to resign. The lawmaker later apologised, but the atmosphere remains turbulent.

这场争执有三个重要原因。首先，它使外交政策变得更加不可预测。杜特尔特先生亲近中国；马科斯先生则急转向美国，让其进入军事基地，并获得保护承诺。中国声称杜特尔特先生口头同意通过不修复有争议的暗礁上的菲律宾前哨站来缓和南中国海的紧张局势。马科斯先生反驳说，如果存在这样的秘密协议，那将是无效的。杜特尔特先生称马科斯为“婆婆嘴”，因为他寻求总统乔·拜登的帮助。如果他的女儿成为下一任总统，没有人确定关系会如何变化。

The feud matters for three reasons. First, it makes foreign policy less predictable. Mr Duterte cosied up to China; Mr Marcos has pivoted sharply back to America, giving it access to military bases and extracting promises of protection. China claims Mr Duterte verbally agreed to ease tensions in the South China Sea by not repairing a Philippine outpost on a disputed reef. Mr Marcos retorts that if such a secret agreement exists, it is null and void. Mr Duterte calls Mr Marcos a “crybaby” for seeking help from President Joe Biden. No one is sure how ties might shift if his daughter is the next president.

其次，尽管在马科斯先生的统治下，菲律宾比在杜特尔特先生的时候更加运转良好，但这场争执是一个不太有帮助的干扰。杜特尔特女士想成为国防部长。马科斯先生，也许不太相信她手持那些枪支，于是让她负责学校。政党“关心教师联盟”抱怨说这份工作应该交给更懂得教育且较少渴望至高权力的人担任。由于杜特尔特女士的父亲，因部分得益于新冠疫情，导致教育严重损失。

Second, although the country is better-run under Mr Marcos than it was under Mr Duterte, the feud is an unhelpful distraction. Ms Duterte wanted to be defence minister. Mr Marcos, who perhaps does not trust her with all those guns, put her in charge of schools instead. The Alliance of Concerned Teachers, a political party, gripes that the job should have gone to someone who knows more about education and is less concerned with scrabbling for supreme power. Covid learning loss was dire, partly thanks to Ms Duterte’s dad.

第三，这场争端可能使下一届选举竞选活动比以往更加肮脏和恶劣。两个家族都有很多东西要失去。国际刑事法院正在调查杜特尔特先生在反毒战争中是否犯有反人类罪。马科斯先生发誓不会合作，但最近确实允许调查人员进入该国，并有朝一日可能开始协助他们。与此同时，一家负责追回马科斯长者下的数十亿资产的委员会现在由马科斯小马科斯的委任的人员运营，取得的进展可以预计会比较有限。菲律宾是一个具有巨大潜力的国家。蒙太古家族和卡普莱家族的统治并非实现潜力的最佳方式。 ■

Third, the feud could make the next election campaign even dirtier and nastier than previous ones. Both families have much to lose. The International Criminal Court is investigating Mr Duterte for crimes against humanity during his anti-drug war. Mr Marcos has vowed not to co-operate, but has recently allowed investigators into the country and could one day start helping them. Meanwhile, a commission charged with retrieving some of the billions stolen under Marcos senior is now run by appointees of Mr Marcos junior, and making predictably little headway. The Philippines is a country of immense potential. Rule by Montagues and Capulets is not the best way to realise it. ■

Read more from Banyan, our columnist on Asia:Lawrence Wong will be only the fourth PM in Singapore’s history (Apr 18th)Some Australians are increasingly sceptical of AUKUS (Apr 11th)For a glimpse at Japan’s future, look at its convenience stores (Apr 4th)

回到目录

亚洲 | 太平洋重心 (Asia | Pacific pivot)

马尔代夫正在拉近与中国的关系 (The Maldives is cosying up to China)

一场压倒性的选举证实了这一趋势。 (A landslide election confirms the trend)

马尔代夫 往往让人联想到在洁白无瑕的沙滩上享受鸡尾酒，在温柔摇曳的棕榈树的映衬下。很少会涉及到地缘政治的想法。然而，在这周，随着总统Mohamed Muizzu领导的人民国民大会党在议会选举中赢得压倒性胜利，夺得超过三分之二的席位，地缘政治却成为了焦点。

THE MALDIVES tends to evoke images of cocktails enjoyed on pristine white beaches framed by gently swaying palm trees. Thoughts of geopolitics rarely feature. Yet they were to the fore this week as the People’s National Congress, the party of President Mohamed Muizzu, won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, claiming over two-thirds of seats.

这次胜利很可能会帮助去年11月上任的Mohamed Muizzu总统改变国家外交政策。他试图实现竞选承诺，将这个群岛重新定位远离印度，传统上是马尔代夫最亲近的区域经济和安全伙伴，并加强与中国的合作。

The victory is likely to help Mr Muizzu, who took over as president in November, change his country’s foreign policy. He has sought to make good on an election promise to reorient the archipelago away from India, traditionally the Maldives’ closest regional economic and security partner, and step up co-operation with China.

印度和中国都有兴趣在马尔代夫保持基地，该地处几条重要航运航线附近，可能在更广泛的区域冲突中变得重要。两国都在基础设施方面投资，尽管大多数交易的条件并未公开。历史上，印度占优势。然而，中国加大了努力。目前，马尔代夫对中国的债务约为13亿美元，占其总债务的19%，而对印度的债务不及十分之一。

Both India and China have an interest in maintaining a base in the Maldives, which sits near several important shipping lanes and could become important in a wider regional conflict. Both countries have invested in infrastructure, though they have not published the conditions of most deals. Historically, India has had the edge. Yet China has stepped up its efforts. The Maldives now owes about $1.3bn to China, or 19% of its total debt, compared with less than a tenth of that for India.

Mohamed Muizzu声称他的外交政策只是“亲马尔代夫”，而不是亲中国或印度。然而，他在去年的总统选举中以“印度滚出去”为口号获胜。他承诺清除印度在环礁的少量军事存在，这些包括数十名士兵驻守印度捐赠的救援直升机，并吸引更多来自中国的投资。上任后，他放弃了前任们遵循的传统，所有前任总统都会选择印度作为外国首次访问地。相反，他首先访问了土耳其，然后是阿拉伯联合酋长国。今年一月，他进行了为期五天的国事访问中国，与习近平主席会面并签署了一系列合作协议。他尚未访问印度。

Mr Muizzu claims that his foreign policy is merely “pro-Maldives” rather than pro- or anti-China or India. Yet he won last year’s presidential election on an “India out” platform. He promised to rid the atoll of India’s small military presence, which consists of a few dozen soldiers manning rescue helicopters donated by India, and to attract more investment from China. After he took office he eschewed the tradition adhered to by his predecessors, all of whom made their first foreign visit to Delhi. Instead, he went first to Turkey and then to the United Arab Emirates. In January he made a five-day state visit to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping and signed a raft of co-operation agreements. He has yet to visit India.

这种转变在旅游业中已经显而易见，旅游业几乎占到了马尔代夫7千亿美元经济总量的全部（小部分来自金鱼贸易）。直到去年，印度游客是最多的游客群体，2023年有21万名印度游客，占总数的11%以上。而今年第一季度，印度游客的数量下降到34,847人，与前一年同期的56,208人相比。这一下降可能与印度在一月份发起的抵制呼声有关，当时Mohamed Muizzu的三名初级部长发表了被视为对印度总理Narendra Modi和印度海滩的旅游潜力贬损的言论。中国游客则弥补了这一缺口：过去三个月来到达的中国游客为67,399人，而去年同期仅为17,691人。

The pivot is already visible in tourism, which accounts for virtually all of the Maldives’ $7bn economy (a small chunk is generated by the tuna trade). Until last year, Indians were the largest group of tourists, with 210,000 visiting in 2023, more than 11% of the total. During the first quarter of this year, the number of Indian visitors dropped to 34,847, compared with 56,208 during the same period in the previous year. The drop was probably related to boycott calls from India in January after three of Mr Muizzu’s junior ministers made what were seen as derogatory remarks about Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and the tourism potential of India’s beaches. Chinese tourists made up for this: 67,399 arrived over the past three months, up from 17,691 in the same period last year.

然而，Mohamed Muizzu不太可能完全与印度决裂。预计印度军队将在未来几周内撤离该岛。但他们可能会被民用人员取代。印度并没有暂停对该国的基础设施投资，Mohamed Muizzu也没有要求这样做。两国继续讨论如何扩大经济合作。Mohamed Muizzu似乎意识到，对于小国家而言，拥有两个强大的朋友胜过一个。■

Yet Mr Muizzu is unlikely to break completely with India. The withdrawal of India’s troops from the islands is expected to be completed over the coming weeks. But they are likely to be replaced with civilian crew. India has not paused its infrastructure investments in the country, nor has Mr Muizzu asked it to. The two countries continue to discuss how to expand economic co-operation. Mr Muizzu seems to realise that for small countries, two big friends are better than one. ■

回到目录

亚洲｜反击男权主义的工作 (Asia | Jobs v the patriarchy)

只招聘女性的工厂能帮助更多印度女性就业吗？ (Can women-only factories help more Indian women into work?)

电动汽车制造商 Ola 正在努力探寻答案 (Ola, an electric-scooter manufacturer, is trying to find out)

当来自印度南部泰米尔纳德邦一个村庄的22岁卡维普利亚（KAVIPRIYA）决定去工厂工作时，她的家人并不是很高兴。“我的婆婆希望我呆在家里照顾两岁的儿子，”她解释道。她的亲戚最终接受了这个决定，因为他们意识到卡维普利亚将能赚取不菲的收入，作为丈夫作为出租车司机的补充。

WHEN KAVIPRIYA, a 22-year-old from a village in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, decided to take a factory job, her family was not thrilled. “My mother-in-law wanted me to stay at home and look after my two-year-old son,” she explains. Her relatives eventually came around when they realised that Kavipriya would be earning good money to supplement her husband’s income as a cab driver.

像她这样的女性仍然是少数。2023年，只有33%的印度女性参与了劳动力市场，而全球女性参与率大约为50%，邻国孟加拉国为37%，两国在经济和社会特征上有很多共同之处。唯一比印度更少女性从事工作的国家是穆斯林保守派北非和中东一些国家、塔利班统治下的阿富汗以及印度麻烦的邻国巴基斯坦。然而，卡维普利亚的经历也展示了将更多女性带入工作的一种方式：通过设计工作方式以符合她们和家人的期望。

Women like her are still unusual. In 2023 only 33% of Indian women were active in the labour market, compared with around 50% of women globally and 37% in neighbouring Bangladesh, with which India shares many economic and social characteristics. The only countries where fewer women work are a handful of conservative Muslim countries across North Africa and the Middle East, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and Pakistan, India’s troubled neighbour. Yet Kavipriya’s experience also illustrates one way of bringing more women into work: by designing jobs in a way that is acceptable to them and their families.

在某种程度上，印度职场女性面临的困境正是印度工人的困境。几十年来，该国的劳动力市场未能创造足够的新工作机会来吸纳日益增长的年轻人口。根据国际劳工组织三月发布的一份报告，在2000年至2012年期间，就业岗位以每年约1.6%的速度增长，而国内生产总值（GDP）平均每年增长6.2%。在2012年至2019年期间，尽管GDP持续以每年6.7%的速度增长，但就业没有增长，根据该报告。在那20年的时间里，女性劳动参与率从31%下降到26%，男性从82%下降到75%。

In part, the woes of India’s working women are just the woes of India’s workers. For decades, the country’s labour market has not generated enough new jobs to absorb the country’s young and growing population. Between 2000 and 2012, employment increased by about 1.6% a year, even as GDP grew by 6.2% a year on average. Between 2012 and 2019, employment did not grow at all, even as GDP continued to grow by 6.7% a year, according to a report published by the International Labour Organisation in March. During that 20-year period, women’s participation in the labour market declined from 31% to 26%; men’s from 82% to 75%.

这种鸿沟加剧了长期存在的保守规范，这些规范阻止了女性走出家门工作。根据2022年皮尤民意调查，80%的印度人认为在就业岗位稀缺时，应优先考虑男性；在同一份调查中，三分之二的受访者表示妻子必须始终顺从丈夫。政府于2020年发布的一项时间利用调查发现，女性每天花近七个半小时在无酬家务上，而男性只花了不到两个小时。

The disparity is reinforced by persistent conservative norms that discourage women from working outside the home. Fully 80% of Indians believe that when jobs are scarce, men should be given preference, according to a Pew poll published in 2022; two-thirds of respondents told the same survey that a wife must always obey her husband. A time-use survey published by the government in 2020 found that women spent nearly seven and a half hours a day on unpaid housework, compared with just over two hours for men.

规范经常压倒女性工作的经济收益，如在泰米尔纳德邦钦奈市执教女性三轮车司机的奇特拉•阿（Chitra AR）指出。“一名学员的丈夫和父亲在她开始从事驾驶工作时停止和她交谈，尽管他们确实需要那笔钱，”她说。20多岁的鲁比（Rubi）在德里为年轻女性组织领导力课程，她表示自己大部分时间都在劝说家庭放心让女儿外出。

Norms frequently trump the financial benefits of women’s work, says Chitra AR, who trains female auto-rickshaw drivers in Chennai in Tamil Nadu. “One trainee’s husband and father stopped speaking to her when she took up driving, even though they really needed the money,” she says. Rubi, a 20-something who organises leadership courses for young women in Delhi, says she spends most of her time persuading families to let their daughters out of the house at all.

然而，有方法可以在安抚保守家庭的担忧的同时，促使女性参与工作。卡维普利亚就是一个例子。她在泰米尔纳德邦的一家由Ola公司经营的电动汽车工厂工作。她在明亮通风的装配线上工作，每月赚取20000卢比（240美元），根据本地标准是相当不错的工资。该工厂的目标是雇佣大约10000人，一旦达到全员编制目标，装配线将仅由女性工作人员组成。大多数员工来自周边村庄。Ola提供巴士确保她们安全到达。

Yet there are ways to nudge women into work while assuaging the fears of conservative families. Kavipriya is a case in point. Her factory in Tamil Nadu is run by Ola, a company that makes electric scooters. She works on a brightly lit, airy assembly line making 20,000 rupees ($240) a month, a decent wage by local standards. The aim is for the factory to employ around 10,000 people and for the assembly line to be staffed exclusively by women once it reaches full capacity. Most workers are from the surrounding villages. Ola provides buses to ensure they get there safely.

这种仅限女性或女性占多数的工厂可以创造良性循环，合同制造商Zetwerk公司的约什•福尔格（Josh Foulger）说，他曾为以前的雇主在泰米尔纳德邦和邻近的安得拉邦建立了几家这样的工厂。“我们的许多工人介绍了他们的朋友和邻居，”他说。一旦周围地区的人意识到这份工作安全且薪酬体面，反对声便逐渐消失。其他问题则更为棘手。“我们过去经常有男子在工厂大门外游荡，并追逐运送女性工人的公交车。”加强的安保最终解决了这些问题。

Such women-only or women-majority factories can create a virtuous cycle, says Josh Foulger of Zetwerk, a contract manufacturer, who set up several in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for previous employers. “Many of our workers referred their friends and neighbours,” he says. Once people from the surrounding areas realised that the jobs were safe and decently paid, the objections died down. Other problems were trickier to solve. “We used to have men lurking outside the factory gates and chase the buses transporting women workers.” A heavier security presence eventually put paid to the lurkers.

福尔格先生良性循环的成果可以在孟加拉国看到。伦敦国王学院的艾丽丝•埃文斯（Alice Evans）认为，尽管孟加拉国的保守规范与印度类似，但该国更成功地使女性参与工作，这在很大程度上归功于更好的就业机会。其服装业雇用约260万名女性（印度，人口是孟加拉国的八倍，整个制造业中仅雇用160万女性）。与印度的同事拉克希（Lakhi）相比，24岁的孟加拉国首都达卡附近村庄的女性在申请到离家40分钟的工厂工作时没有遇到阻力。“这里的人们习惯于女性工作，他们知道这对家庭收入有好处。”

The results of Mr Foulger’s virtuous cycle can be observed in Bangladesh. Though similarly conservative norms as in India prevail there, the country has been more successful at getting women into work, largely owing to the better availability of jobs, argues Alice Evans of King’s College in London. Its garment industry employs around 2.6m women. (India, with eight times the population, employs a total of 1.6m women across the entire manufacturing sector.) Unlike her colleague in India Lakhi, a 24-year-old from a village near Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, faced no resistance when she applied to work in a factory 40 minutes from her house. “People here are used to women working, they know it’s good for the family income.”

印度会走上类似的道路吗？有迹象表明可能会。自大流行以来，印度女性在劳动力市场上的参与率开始重新增长，之前已经下降了将近二十年。这表明该国可能正在沿着克劳迪娅·戈尔丁（Claudia Goldin）所勾勒的U型发展轨迹前进，她因对女性和工作的洞察力去年获得了诺贝尔经济学奖。戈尔丁女士发现，在赖以维持生活的水平上，女性被迫与其他人一起工作，往往是在家庭农场上。随着收入的增加和工作迁出家庭，女性倾向于离开劳动力市场，因为男性的收入足以养家糊口，女性的工作遭到了鄙视。随着收入的进一步增加，女性的教育水平和白领工作的可获得性改善，她们以更多的人数回到了工作中。

Will India embark on a similar trajectory? There are signs that it might. Since the pandemic Indian women’s participation in the labour market has begun to grow again, after declining for nearly two decades. That suggests the country may be following the U-shaped development trajectory sketched out by Claudia Goldin, who was awarded the Nobel prize for economics last year for her insights into women and work. Ms Goldin found that at subsistence level women are forced to work along with everyone else, often on the family farm. As incomes rise and jobs move out of the home, they tend to leave the labour force, because men make enough to provide for the household and women’s work is frowned upon. As incomes rise higher, and women’s education levels and the availability of white-collar jobs improve, they return to work in greater numbers.

然而，尽管印度女性劳动力市场参与率的下降看起来与戈尔丁女士的分析一致，但班加罗尔阿齐姆·普瑞姆吉大学的经济学家罗莎·亚伯拉罕(Rosa Abraham)指出，最近的反弹似乎更多地是由于陷入困境的女性被迫重返她们先前放弃过的艰苦的农业劳动，而不是受到更好工作的可获得性的推动。这意味着一旦她们的经济状况改善，这种情况很可能会逆转。印度将需要更多奥拉工厂来沿着戈尔丁女士U型图形的高处前进。 ■

Yet even though the decline in women’s labour-market participation in India looks consistent with Ms Goldin’s analysis, the recent uptick appears to have been driven less by the availability of better jobs and more by women in dire financial straits being forced to return to the hard agricultural work they had previously left, cautions Rosa Abraham, an economist at Azim Premji University in Bangalore. That means it is likely to reverse, once their economic circumstances improve. India will need many more Ola factories to travel up the far side of Ms Goldin’s U-shape. ■

回到目录

亚洲 | 回到未来 (Asia | Back to the future)

为什么日本人喜爱CD？ (Why do the Japanese love CDs?)

他们对流媒体的接受程度没有像世界其他地方那样热情 (They have not taken to streaming as keenly as the rest of the world)

当王子在1982年的热门歌曲《1999》中唱出“今晚，我要狂欢，就像是1999年一样”的时候，他描述的是一个迎接千禧年末日的派对。他可能在唱的是音乐产业。根据国际唱片业联合会（IFPI）的数据，在1999年，全球录音音乐收入飙升至220亿美元（相当于2023年的400亿美元）。这一收入主要是由激光唱片（CD）推动的。在接下来的15年里，随着消费者转向流媒体，这些收入将下降。IFPI最近报告称，流媒体占收入的67%。CD只占10%。

When Prince sang “Tonight, I’m gonna party like it’s 1999” on his 1982 hit “1999”, he was describing a party during a turn-of-the-millennium apocalypse. He could have been singing about the music industry. In 1999, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), global recorded-music revenues soared to $22bn ($40bn in 2023 prices). That revenue was largely driven by the compact disc (CD). Over the next 15 years, those revenues would fall as consumers turned to streaming. The IFPI recently reported that streaming accounts for 67% of revenues. CDs account for just 10%.

但在日本，时间似乎停滞了。在2023年，39%的录音收入来自CD销售，使日本成为全球第二大音乐市场（见图）。乍一看，这可能是由于人口统计。日本近30%的人口年龄在65岁或以上。但是老年听众在其他地方已经开始使用流媒体：尽管意大利有24%的市民年龄在65岁或以上，但65%的录音音乐收入来自流媒体。

But in Japan it seems time has stood still. In 2023, 39% of recorded revenues came from CDs there, making Japan the second-biggest music market globally (see chart). On the face of it, this may be down to demography. Nearly 30% of the Japanese population is 65 or older. But older listeners have cottoned on to streaming elsewhere: although 24% of Italian citizens are 65 or older, 65% of recorded-music revenues come from streaming.

日本CD市场的两个因素解释了这种现象。第一个是价格管制。1953年，日本政府设立了称为“最高价格制度”（saihan seido）的价格零售维持系统，以防止其产品贬值。该系统赋予版权所有者设定某些知识产权类别价格的能力，包括实体产品，如CD。由于零售商和转售商无法以价格竞争，价格被抬高，消费者几乎没有选择。音乐公司能够利用这种垄断力量来维持现状。日本的艺人经纪公司也阻止他们的艺人出现在流媒体平台上。

Instead, two factors explain the Japanese market for CDs. The first is price controls. In 1953 Japan’s government, concerned about its products being devalued, established saihan seido, or its “price retail maintenance system”. This system gave copyright owners the ability to set the prices for certain classes of intellectual property, including physical products such as CDs. Because retailers and resellers could not compete on prices, they were inflated and consumers had few alternatives. Music companies are able to leverage this monopoly power to maintain the status quo. Japanese talent agencies also stopped their artists from being on streaming platforms.

第二个因素是，在“最高价格制度”建立后的几十年里，这些经纪公司开始将表演者营销为“偶像”。维持这种偶像地位的一部分方式是通过活动，通常只有购买CD的粉丝才有资格参加。一些人购买多张CD以增加与流行明星见面的机会。东京的Tower Records唱片店的几层楼专门为偶像而设。这种粉丝文化也使CD在韩国保持活力。去年，33%的录音音乐收入来自CD销售。

The second factor is that, in the decades after the establishment of saihan seido, these talent agencies began to market performers as “idols”. Part of the way that this idol status is maintained is through events, which fans are typically only eligible for if they purchase a CD. Some buy several in order to up their chances of an encounter with a pop star. The branch of Tower Records, a record shop, in Tokyo has several floors dedicated to idols. This type of fan culture has kept the CD alive in South Korea, too. Fully 33% of recorded-music revenues came from CDs there last year.

尽管如此，CD似乎正在失去对日本音乐爱好者的控制。2019年，CD占该岛国录音音乐收入的49%，而流媒体只占18%。去年，流媒体激增至36%。很快，日本的听歌习惯似乎会与其他富裕国家相似。 ■

Despite this, however, the CD does seem to be losing its grip over Japanese music fans. In 2019 CDs accounted for 49% of recorded-music revenues on the island nation, while streaming only accounted for 18%. Last year streaming surged to 36%. Soon, it seems, Japanese listening habits will mirror those in the rest of the rich world. ■

回到目录

文化 | 江南style与古拉格style (Culture | Gangnam style v gulag style)

为何韩国流行文化风靡而朝鲜未能 (Why South Korean pop culture rocks and North Korea’s does not)

独裁扼杀创造力与快乐 (Dictatorship stifles creativity and joy)

朝鲜的统治者一直对艺术持有强烈看法。该政权的创建者金日成曾表示，艺术家应该通过作品“激起对敌人的燃烧仇恨”。他的儿子和继任者金正日是如此狂热的电影爱好者，以至于绑架了一名韩国导演和他的前妻女演员，强迫他们制作宣传电影，包括一部（出人意料的好）具有革命色彩的怪兽大片《哥斯拉》风格。现任统治者金正恩要求“蕴含时代情感的杰作”，这意味着对他的赞美。

North Korea’s rulers have always had strong views on art. Kim Il Sung, the regime’s founding despot, said artists should “arouse burning hatred for the enemy through their works”. His son and successor, Kim Jong Il, was such a cinema enthusiast that he kidnapped a South Korean director and his actress ex-wife and forced them to make propaganda films, including a (surprisingly good) revolutionary Godzilla-style monster flick. Kim Jong Un, the current ruler, demands “masterpieces pulsating with the sentiment of the times”, by which he means praise for himself.

韩国总统可能也对艺术有看法。但由于是民主国家，其艺术家并不需要在意他的想法。这有助于解释为何韩国流行文化欢乐地传播到了世界各地，而朝鲜的“人民文化”没有。

The president of South Korea probably has views on the arts, too. But because it is a democracy, its artists do not have to care what he thinks. Which helps explain why South Korean pop culture has spread joy across the world, whereas North Korean “people’s culture” has not.

在YouTube上，韩国说唱视频《江南Style》已经被观看了50亿次——几乎是北方受欢迎的儿童歌曲《吻》的60倍。在在线电影数据库IMDb上，排名前列的韩国电影有数十万次的评分；而北部的则几乎没有。差距如此之大，只有对数尺度才能说明（见图表）。

On YouTube “Gangnam Style”, a South Korean rap video, has been viewed 5bn times—nearly 60 times as often as “Kiss”, a popular children’s song from the North. On IMDb, an online film database, the top South Korean films have hundreds of thousands of ratings; the top northern ones, hardly any. The gulf is so vast that only a logarithmic scale can illustrate it (see charts).

文化的成功转化为金钱。根据音像制品业国际联合会的数据，去年世界销量前十的专辑中有一半是韩国的。该国的流行文化出口额在2022年达到了惊人的130亿美元，远远超过了2013年不到50亿美元的水平。这一数额使得朝鲜的全部官方出口商品和服务相比显得微不足道。

Cultural success translates into cash. Half of the top ten bestselling albums in the world last year were South Korean, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade group. The country’s pop-culture exports were a whopping $13bn in 2022, up from just under $5bn in 2013. This sum dwarfs North Korea’s official exports of all goods and services combined.

两个朝鲜共享着5000年的历史，仅在第二次世界大战后分离。因此，比较两国现代流行文化，可以为我们提供政治对创造力的影响提供一个有用的见解。

The two Koreas share 5,000 years of history and were separated only after the second world war. So a comparison of their modern pop culture offers a useful insight into the effect of politics on creativity.

第一个区别在于自由。在南方，艺术家有权批评、讽刺和揭示不舒服的事实。《寄生虫》是2020年第一个获得奥斯卡最佳影片奖的外语片，它描绘了在韩国（按照富裕国家标准）并不那么糟糕的不平等。电视剧《鱿鱼游戏》以相同主题进行了血腥而原创的阐释：身无分文的选手在虚构游戏节目中竞争巨额奖金——输了就面临死亡。

The first difference is freedom. In the South, artists are allowed to criticise, satirise and expose uncomfortable truths. “Parasite”, the first foreign film to win Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020, presents a bleak picture of inequality in South Korea (which is not especially bad by rich-country standards). “Squid Game”, a television series, offers a gory and original take on the same theme: cash-strapped contestants in an imaginary game show compete for a huge jackpot—and face death if they lose.

北朝鲜人只能批评南方。一家北方报纸称《寄生虫》是一部关于首尔工薪阶层问题的“杰作”。但凡涉及朝鲜的艺术必须颂扬政权，并且谴责其敌人。这导致了枯燥、刻板的作品。

North Koreans are free only to criticise the South. One northern newspaper called “Parasite” a “masterpiece” for its examination of working-class woes in Seoul. But any art about North Korea must glorify the regime and vilify its enemies. This makes for dreary, predictable fare.

在过去的五年里，朝鲜发行的唯一特色电影是《一天一夜》，一个关于一名朴素护士揭露反革命者的乏味故事。而韩国节目描绘了复杂的主人公面临艰难道德选择，而朝鲜节目中的人物只能简单的分为好（英雄工人）或坏（叛徒、间谍）。外国角色要么是邪恶的（美国人、日本人），要么是对金氏家族无比忠诚并且不真实。

The sole feature film North Korea has released in the past five years is “A Day and a Night”, a tiresome yarn about a humble nurse exposing counter-revolutionaries. Whereas South Korean shows depict complex protagonists facing difficult moral choices, characters in North Korean ones must simply be good (heroic workers) or bad (traitors, spies). Foreign characters are either evil (Americans, Japanese) or implausibly devoted to the Kim family.

此外，所有角色必须由从未得罪过政权的演员扮演。这种要求是具有追溯性的，这可能造成尴尬。电视剧《太洪塘党组书记》的主演角色，关于一个土地复垦项目种植马铃薯的故事，最初由崔雄哲饰演，后来由于不明原因被贬低了地位。据传言，他与金正恩的叔叔有关，该叔叔于2013年因叛国罪被处决，几乎被抹去了历史。当这个节目最近被重新播放时，崔先生的面孔和声音已经被数字处理删除，并替换成了另一位演员。

Furthermore, all parts must be played by actors who have never displeased the regime. This applies retroactively, which can be awkward. The lead role in “The Taehongdang Party Secretary”, a television drama about a land-reclamation project to grow potatoes, was originally played by Choe Ung Chol, who later fell from grace for unclear reasons. (Rumour has it that he was associated with Kim Jong Un’s uncle, who was executed for treason in 2013 and more or less airbrushed out of history.) When the show was recently rebroadcast, Mr Choe’s face and voice had been digitally removed from every scene and replaced with those of a new actor.

思想上的一致性也延伸到了音乐领域。《领导人，请下令！》是一首典型的浮夸的国歌，配有士兵们高步走和冲向阵地的视频和火焰屏风。很少有外国人喜欢这样的音乐，很多朝鲜人只是假装喜欢。在14岁时从朝鲜逃到韩国的崔日花回忆说，她和朋友们会“扭曲”经政府批准的歌曲的歌词，用“爱”和“朋友”取代“荣耀”和金氏王朝，这样做会冒着牺牲几分钟的艺术自由而遭受可怕惩罚的风险。

Ideological conformity extends to music, too. “Leader, Just Give Us Your Order!” is a typically bombastic anthem, with a video of soldiers goose-stepping and charging into battle through sheets of fire. Few foreigners enjoy such tracks, and many North Koreans only pretend to. Choi Il-hwa, who escaped from North Korea when she was 14, recalls that she and her friends would “twist the lyrics” of state-approved songs, substituting “love” and “friends” for “glory” and the Kim dynasty, thus risking horrific punishment for a few moments of artistic freedom.

第二个重大区别涉及外国影响。韩国艺术家广泛借鉴。电影导演，比如朴赞郁和奉俊昊，从香港黑帮电影、台湾新现实主义电影和美国经典中获得启发。Blackpink，首个能够登顶美国公告牌流行榜两百强的女性K-pop团体，以独特的风格重新演绎美国嘻哈和流行音乐。在他们的首支歌曲“Whistle”中，他们用混合的英语和韩语在闪烁的陷阱式高帽鼓声中说唱。伯恩斯坦研究员苏保京估计，韩国音乐公司从新发布的作品中获利80-95%，因此他们始终在追逐新的声音来剽窃。

The second big difference concerns foreign influence. South Korean artists borrow widely. Film directors such as Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho draw inspiration from Hong Kong gangster movies, Taiwanese neo-realist flicks and American classics. Blackpink, the first female K-pop group to top America’s Billboard Top 200, reimagine American hip-hop and pop in a style that is uniquely their own. On their debut song, “Whistle”, they rap in a mix of English and Korean over skittering trap-style hi-hats. South Korean music firms make 80-95% of their profit from new releases, estimates Suh Bo-kyung of Bernstein Research, so they are always after new sounds to plunder.

相比之下，朝鲜艺术家必须假装好的想法只有来自朝鲜，尤其是金氏家族。该国的国家意识形态是主体（自力更生）。仅仅因为拥有外国电影或音乐，公民就可能被送往古拉格。金正日警告称外国人的“堕落流行音乐”将“刺激低俗和不健康的放纵主义”。

North Korean artists, by contrast, must pretend that good ideas come only from North Korea, and especially from the Kim family. The state ideology is juche (self-reliance). Citizens can be sent to the gulag merely for possessing foreign films or music. Kim Jong Il warned that the “corrupt pop music” of foreigners would “stimulate vulgar and unhealthy hedonism”.

只有少数受信任的艺术家被允许接触外国资料，并通常掩饰他们的借鉴。因此，许多朝鲜手机游戏是未经授权的山寨版本，模仿西方游戏如“愤怒的小鸟”和“宝石迷阵”，这些游戏在朝鲜封锁的互联网上不可用。它最著名的原创游戏“平壤飙车手”是一个毫无灵感的驾驶模拟游戏。它的主要优点在于逼真：街道与首都的街道一样空旷，那里只有富人拥有汽车。

Just a few trusted artists are allowed access to foreign material, and typically disguise their borrowing. Thus, many North Korean mobile games are uncredited rip-offs of Western titles like “Angry Birds” and “Bejewelled”, which are unavailable on North Korea’s walled-off internet. Its most famous original game, “Pyongyang Racer”, is an uninspired driving simulation. Its main virtue is verisimilitude: the streets are as empty as those of the capital, where only the rich own cars.

第三个区别是资本主义。韩国的流行文化是由各种私营公司制作的。这些公司丑闻不断，以及以过度管理明星的生活而臭名昭著。但他们从不忘记粉丝有选择。

The third difference is capitalism. Pop culture in South Korea is produced by a variety of private companies. These firms are scandal-prone and notorious for micromanaging stars’ lives. But they never forget that fans have choices.

意识到他们的国家只有5200万人口，他们努力取悦全球观众，就如同韩国工业公司致力于出口汽车和手机一样。K-pop团体通常包含具有不同风格的成员，他们讲不同的语言，并且有时来自不同的国家。歌词和视频往往比他们的西方对应物更不淫秽，这使得它们在更多国家的审查和家长中更受欢迎。韩国艺术家迅速拥抱新技术。例如，该国是网络漫画的先驱，这是一种设计成在手机屏幕上向下滚动的漫画形式。韩国人现在主导日本网络漫画市场。

Mindful that their country has just 52m people, they have strived to please a global audience, just as South Korean industrial firms have aimed to export cars and mobile phones. K-pop groups often feature members with different styles, who speak different languages and sometimes come from different countries. Lyrics and videos tend to be less raunchy than their Western equivalents, making them palatable to censors and parents in more of the world. South Korean artists have been swift to embrace new technology. For example, the country is a pioneer of webtoons, a form of comic designed to be scrolled downwards on a phone screen. Koreans now dominate the Japanese webtoon market.

最重要的是，韩国艺术家已经探讨了普遍的主题。电视剧如“乌贼游戏”和“辉煌”（涉及霸凌）探讨经济和社会不公义的方式引起了全球观众的共鸣，他们“分享着相似的痛苦”，加拿大温哥华西蒙弗雷泽大学的金达龙说。

Most important, South Korean artists have grappled with universal themes. The way that television series such as “Squid Game” and “The Glory” (which deals with bullying) explore economic and social injustice resonates with global audiences, who “share similar agonies”, says Jin Dal-yong of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

相比之下，朝鲜的流行文化是由国家指导的，旨在取悦一个人。由于金正恩的生活经历有些不同寻常 - 他是被培养成为一位上帝一样的国王，可以让任何惹怒或嘲笑他的人处于死地 - 这并不总是会产生普通人能够获得共鸣的内容。

North Korean pop culture, by contrast, is state-directed and aims to please one man. Since Kim Jong Un’s life experiences are a trifle unusual—he was brought up to be a god-king and can have anyone who annoys or ridicules him put to death—this does not always yield content to which normal people can relate.

在朝鲜电视上的“祖父的老故事”这个儿童节目中，一个“帝国主义者”狼撕裂一只兔子。（一首韩国儿童歌曲“宝宝鲨鱼”则血少且更受欢迎。）在系列漫画“病态世界”中，读者被邀请俯视一些堕落的外国风俗，比如美国的吃比赛。

On “Grandfather’s Old Tales”, a children’s show on North Korean television, an “imperialist” wolf rips apart a rabbit. (“Baby Shark”, a South Korean children’s song, is less bloody and far more popular.) In “A Sick and Twisted World”, a comic book series, readers are invited to look down on depraved foreign customs, such as eating contests in America.

公平地说，金正恩曾试图使该国的一些文化产出现代化。2012年，他亲自发起了Moranbong，一个穿着短裙的女子乐队，这正是全世界狂欢“江南Style”之时。Moranbong标志着对开放的一种调情：成员们演奏了西方歌曲的翻唱，比如“My Way”和“洛奇”的主题曲。但自那时起，该团体变得更加保守，摒弃了性感的服装，穿起了军装，高歌“飞吧，我们的党旗”并提供核导弹摧毁美国的视频。

To be fair, Mr Kim has tried to modernise some of his country’s cultural output. He personally launched Moranbong, a girl band in short skirts, in 2012, around the time when the whole world was dancing to “Gangnam Style”. Moranbong signalled a flirtation with openness: members played covers of Western songs such as “My Way” and the theme from “Rocky”. But since then the group has grown more conservative, ditching their risqué outfits for military garb, belting out songs such as “Fly High, Our Party Flag” and offering videos of nuclear missiles destroying America.

尽管困难重重，朝鲜艺术家偶尔也会创作出能打动人心的作品。“金同志去飞翔”，这是一部2012年关于一个煤矿工人想成为空中飞人的电影，受到了外国电影节观众的好评，就像“少女的日记”一样，这是一个关于一个女孩努力接受父亲对工作的承诺的成长故事。

Occasionally, despite the obstacles, North Korean artists produce art that speaks to people. “Comrade Kim Goes Flying”, a film from 2012 about a coalminer who wants to be a trapeze artist, was well-received by foreign film-festival-goers, as was “A Schoolgirl’s Diary”, a coming-of-age tale about a girl struggling to accept her father’s commitment to his work.

数年后，崔女士和父母一起开车时，她放了一些朝鲜流行音乐，包括《口哨》。不是 Blackpink 的歌，而是一首类似的爱情主题，带有明显朝鲜风格的歌词：“今天我微笑着告诉你，我的生产目标已经超过了预期的三倍。”崔女士的父亲开始怀旧起来。忽略那些压抑的词语；这些曲调帮助他意识到，怀念他出生的地方是可以接受的，即使他绝对不想回去。

Years after she escaped, Ms Choi and her parents were driving, and she put on some North Korean pop, including “Whistle”. Not the Blackpink song, but one with a similar love theme and an unmistakably North Korean lyric: “Today I smiled and told you I’d exceeded production goals three-fold.” Ms Choi’s father grew nostalgic. Ignore the oppressive words; the tunes helped him realise it was OK to miss the place where he was born, even if he has absolutely no desire to return.

朝鲜也有天才：能画漫画的漫画家，创作曲调的作曲家。只是他们的统治者让他们无法前进。在硬实力方面，两个朝鲜处于同一重量级，这要感谢朝鲜拥有核武器。但在文化上，南方是一个巨人，而朝鲜的软实力就像为何要让一个共产主义专政制度成为世袭制度那样站不住脚。■

North Korea has talent: cartoonists who can draw, composers who can create a tune. It is only their rulers who hold them back. When it comes to hard power, the two Koreas are in the same weight class, thanks to the North’s nuclear weapons. But culturally, the South is a colossus, whereas the North’s soft power is as weak as the rationale for making a communist dictatorship hereditary. ■

回到目录

文化 | 从象牙塔到时代人物 (Culture | From ivory tower to person of the hour)

谁害怕茱迪斯·巴特勒，“酷儿理论教母”？ (Who’s afraid of Judith Butler, the “godmother of queer theory”?)

谁害怕性别？作者朱迪丝·巴特勒。法拉，斯特劳斯和吉鲁斯出版社；320 页；30 美元。艾伦·兰恩出版社；25英镑

Who’s Afraid of Gender? By Judith Butler. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 320 pages; $30. Allen Lane; £25

曾经，关于性别的古怪理论被限制在社会科学系的边缘。现在，这些观点——尤其是性别可变的想法——到处都在讨论，从家庭餐桌和酒吧到州立立法机构，这多亏了一些学者。其中最重要的是加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的朱迪斯·巴特勒，她被誉为“酷儿理论之母”。随着巴特勒开始的革命最近遭遇更多知识和政治上的抵制，这位作者为其进行了新书的辩护。

There was a time when outlandish theories about gender were confined to the fringes of social-science faculties. Now such notions—and particularly the idea that sex is mutable—are debated everywhere, from kitchen tables and pubs to state legislatures, thanks to a few academics. Chief among them is Judith Butler of the University of California, Berkeley, known as “the godmother of queer theory”. As the revolution Butler helped start has recently met with more intellectual and political resistance, the author has written a new book in its defence.

巴特勒（更喜欢用称谓“他们”）在学术圈里因《性别问题》（1990）这本难以理解的书而声名鹊起，一些学生读过，而另一些则假装读过。巴特勒借鉴了女性主义思想家的观点，探讨了“性别”（男性和女性的生物范畴）和“性别”（与这些范畴相关联的行为）的概念。巴特勒认为性别是“表演性的”而不是由性别确定的；像“男人”和“女人”这样的术语并不有益，应该重新想象。“性别问题”已成为后现代社会科学的经典之一。

Butler (who prefers to go by the pronoun “they”) shot to fame in academic circles with “Gender Trouble” (1990), a difficult book that some students read and others pretended they had. Drawing on ideas of feminist thinkers, Butler examined concepts of “sex” (the biological categories of male and female) and “gender” (the behaviours associated with those categories). Butler argued that gender is “performative” rather than defined by sex; terms such as “man” and “woman” were not helpful and should be reimagined. “Gender Trouble” has become part of the post-modern social-science canon.

巴特勒成长在一个许多人怀有刻板看法的世界，认为男人和女人应该看起来和行事应该如何。作为一名女同性恋者，在上世纪70年代出柜后面临恐同情绪的巴特勒问道为什么一个女人必须 feminine 并且希望男性，而一个男性必须 masculine 并且渴求女性。巴特勒随后发展了酷儿理论——一种意识形态，称性别认同高于生物性别来定义一个人的身份——在令人费解的学术散文中推广这一概念。

Butler grew up in a world where many held rigid views about how men and women should look and behave. As a lesbian who faced homophobia after coming out in the 1970s, Butler asked why a woman had to be feminine and desire men, and a man be masculine and desire women. Butler went on to develop queer theory—an ideology that says that gender identity trumps biological sex in defining who a person is—promoting this concept in notoriously impenetrable academic prose.

《谁害怕性别？》是巴特勒的第一本非学术书籍，其中有很多内容出乎意料的清晰易懂。这在一定程度上是因为主题不是性别的边缘和更多政治活动的街头。作者谴责了将同志视为二等公民的宗教领袖，并详细描述了他们在发展中国家仍然受到歧视的令人震惊方式。巴特勒正确指出了讨论“性别”可能引发的政治右翼的道德恐慌（并抨击了唐纳德·特朗普及其在这方面的机会主义），并且关注那些与性别烦恼和历史偏见作斗争的人们。

“Who’s Afraid of Gender?” is Butler’s first non-academic book, and much of it is surprisingly lucid. That is partly because the subject matter is less the wilder fringes of gender and more the mean streets of political activism. The author calls out religious leaders who treat gay people as second-class citizens and details the appalling way they are still discriminated against in the developing world. Butler correctly points to the moral panic that discussions of “gender” can engender on the political right (and rails against Donald Trump and his opportunism in this regard) and, crucially, draws attention to people struggling with dysphoria and the historical prejudices they have suffered.

问题在于不久后，作者离开了同性恋权益倡导的道路，陷入了意识形态的兔子洞中。在对所谓的性别事实进行批评之后不久，TQ+ 掩盖了 LGB。结果是一锅充满虚伪挑衅的炒菜，配以大量的后现代文字沙拉。读者不禁想知道巴特勒是如何影响深远的。

The problem is that pretty soon, the author leaves the path of gay-rights advocacy and disappears down an ideological rabbit hole. Soon after critiques of “the so-called facts of sex”, the TQ+ overwhelms the LGB. The result is a stir-fry of disingenuous provocations, served up with a large portion of post-modern word salad. The reader is left wondering how Butler ever became so influential.

在引言中，作者写道，抵制运动背后更强大的不是对进步运动的强烈反对，而是“恢复一个父权梦寐以求的秩序”。与其有条不紊地对抗批评者的论点，巴特勒直接抨击他们——比如那些认为男性不应参加女子运动的过时科学。然后巴特勒将性别与妇女权益、同性恋权益和合法堕胎放在一起，暗示任何肯定生物性别重要性的人必须反对这些事情。

In the introduction, the author writes that pushback is driven by something stronger than a backlash against progressive movements, namely “the restoration of a patriarchal dream-order”. Rather than methodically taking on critics’ arguments, Butler assails them—for instance the “outmoded science” that says males should not compete in women’s sport. Then Butler goes on to place gender in the same basket as women’s rights, gay rights and legal abortion, suggesting that anyone who asserts the importance of biological sex must be against those things.

巴特勒抹黑日益壮大的支持这些关于性别的观点的自由心态女性大军，包括 J.K. 罗琳，称她们为与教皇、特朗普先生和弗拉基米尔 · 普京结盟的歇斯底里右翼人士。不久之后，作者陷入了交织各种压迫的泥淖中，指责那些批评巴特勒观点的人支持“白人至上主义”。最后，所有反对者都成了极端分子。“法西斯主义” 和 “法西斯主义者” 这些词出现了将近 70 次。

Butler smears the growing army of liberal-minded women who oppose these views on sex and gender, including J.K. Rowling, as hysterical right-wingers allied with the pope, Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin. Soon the author descends into the quicksand of intersectionality, where all oppressions overlap, accusing people who criticise the Butler perspective of buttressing “white supremacy”. By the end, all opponents are extremists. The words “fascism” and “fascist” appear nearly 70 times.

这本书是一个关于善意活动如何过度扩张的教训。作者为一项理论借出了智力信誉，如最近在关于英格兰青年性别服务的Cass Review中揭示，这项理论给许多年轻人带来了伤害，其中一些人是自闭症患者、抑郁症患者或简单地是同性恋者。一些活动人士运用巴特勒的理论，将那些反对为未成年人使用异性激素的人标签为“偏执分子”。

The book is a lesson in how well-meaning activism can overreach. The author has lent intellectual credibility to a theory that has, as recently revealed in the Cass Review commissioned about England’s youth-gender services, caused harm to many young people, some of whom are autistic, depressed or simply gay. Channelling Butler’s theories, some activists are labelling those who oppose giving minors cross-sex hormones as “bigots”.

这正伤害了巴特勒曾经为之奋斗的事业。越来越多感到疏远的不仅仅是保守派和民粹主义者。出自巴特勒思想的政策令美国中部地区的民众感到困扰，他们支持所有人有权过上自己想要的生活，但担心意识形态洗脑和保护妇女儿童的问题。这正推动他们在政治上向右转。巴特勒问谁害怕性别。这个问题问错了。越来越多自由人士反对的不是抽象的名词，而是作者所代表的混乱思维所带来的现实后果。 ■

This is hurting the causes that Butler once stood for. It is not just conservatives and populists who are increasingly alienated. The policies that have resulted from Butler’s ideas are troubling folk in middle America, who support the right of all to live as they wish but worry about ideological brainwashing and the safeguarding of women and children. This is pushing them to the right politically. Butler asks who is afraid of gender. It is the wrong question. What a growing number of liberal people object to is not an abstract noun but the real-world consequences of the muddled thinking that the author typifies. ■

回到目录

文化 | 威尼斯的潮起潮落 (Culture | The tides of Venice)

从间谍到海平面上升，威尼斯的历史令人着迷 (From spies to sea-level rise, Venice’s history is enthralling)

Dennis Romano为这座城市的过去和未来编写了一部精彩的记录 (Dennis Romano has produced a sparkling account of the city’s past and future)

威尼斯。丹尼斯·罗马诺（Dennis Romano）著。牛津大学出版社；800页；41.95美元和31.99英镑

Venice. By Dennis Romano. Oxford University Press; 800 pages; $41.95 and £31.99

参观威尼斯双年展，这是世界上最大的艺术博览会之一，于4月20日开幕，将持续到11月底，常常引发一种令人不安的情感。人们来看展览中展示的作品遍布这座城市，却最终离开时感到内疚，因为对威尼斯本身的艺术作品关注太少。

Visiting the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s largest art fairs that opened on April 20th and runs until late November, often evokes a disconcerting emotion. You come to see the works on display in the exhibitions that sprawl across the city, only to leave feeling guilty at having paid too little attention to the work of art that is Venice itself.

被它的美丽所迷惑，对其不可思议之处感到惊叹，外来者很少能做出客观评价。丹尼斯·罗马诺，纽约锡拉丘兹大学的荣誉教授，在撰写这本城市的新历史时认为，“去浪漫化威尼斯并不会使其失去力量，反而会使这座水上城市和所有威尼斯人的成就更加引人入胜和卓越。”

Bedazzled by its loveliness and wondering at its sheer implausibility, outsiders have seldom managed to make objective appraisals. Dennis Romano, an emeritus professor at Syracuse University in New York, embarked on this new history of the city with the notion that “deromanticising Venice does not strip it of its power. It makes the achievements of the lagoon city and of all Venetians more fascinating and remarkable still.”

成果令人振奋。不要在意他的书上空洞的副标题（“威尼斯湖城的卓越历史”）。这是当代历史写作的最高水准：清晰、富有趣味性，同时又具有学术严谨性。罗马诺已经撰写了四本关于这座城市漫长而动荡历史的书。通过第五本书，他为21世纪的威尼斯所做的工作就像英国历史学家和旅行作家约翰·朱利斯·诺里奇（John Julius Norwich）在20世纪为这座城市所做的工作一样。随着时间的推移，这部巨著应逐渐取代其杰出的前辈，成为英语读者更好地了解威尼斯丰富过去的首选历史著作。

The result is a triumph. Ignore the vacuous subtitle of his book (“The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City”). This is contemporary historical writing of the highest quality: clear, entertaining and yet academically rigorous. Mr Romano has already written four books on the city’s long and turbulent history. With his fifth he has done for Venice in the 21st century what John Julius Norwich, an English historian and travel writer, did for the city in the 20th. As time goes by, this monumental chronicle should gradually replace its distinguished forerunner as the history of choice for readers in English who want to better understand Venice’s rich past.

诺里奇的作品讲述了威尼斯共和国的故事，该共和国持续了1000多年，直到被1797年拿破仑摧毁。这是更为全面的记载。它涵盖了威尼斯从难以捉摸的起源到今天的整个故事，探讨了由大规模旅游带来的问题。事实上，它甚至展望到数千年后的未来，那时“沉降和构造覆盖会将北亚得里亚海转变成陆地”。威尼斯，如果幸存下来，将变成陆地城市。

Norwich’s work told the story of the Venetian Republic, which endured for more than 1,000 years until swept out of existence by Napoleon in 1797. This is a more comprehensive account. It covers the entire story from Venice’s elusive origins to today’s city, wrestling with the problems that arise from mass tourism. It goes even further, in fact, looking ahead to thousands of years from now when “sedimentation and tectonic overriding will transform the northern Adriatic into dry land”. Venice, if it has survived, will be landlocked.

罗马诺在另一点上也与诺里奇不同，他放弃了按总督逐个总督的方式：正如他所说，威尼斯的共和国统治者大多是无趣的一群。相反，他在宽泛的时间顺序叙述中融入了大量社会和经济历史。他还涉及到诸如16世纪间谍活动这类古怪但耐人寻味的领域。无可避免地，威尼斯人经常使用商业词汇：预测某人“因债务而入狱，将在六月被释放”暗指“土耳其舰队将在六月航行”。一位犹太间谍使用“棉花袋”代表土耳其军舰。

Mr Romano also differs from Norwich in discarding a doge-by-doge approach: as he remarks, Venice’s republican rulers were, for the most part, a colourless bunch. Instead, he weaves a great deal of social and economic history into the broadly chronological narrative. He also digresses into such arcane but intriguing fields as 16th-century espionage. Inevitably, the Venetians often deployed the vocabulary of commerce: a prediction that someone “in prison for debts would be released in June” was code for “the Turkish fleet will sail in June”. A Jewish spy used “sacks of cotton” to denote Turkish galleys.

主题化的处理意味着读者有时会被拉回和推移时间，但效果是更好地理解政治、外交和军事背景。了解到法蒂玛哈里发统治时期的埃及急需木材和沥青，有助于解释为什么到12世纪，对于整个东地中海而言，威尼斯，而不是埃及，成为主导的海上势力。

The thematic treatment means readers are sometimes whisked back and forth in time, but the effect is to make more sense of the politics, the diplomacy and the military context. Knowing that Egypt during the Fatimid caliphate was desperately short of timber and pitch helps explain why Venice, and not Egypt, for all its wealth and might, became the dominant naval power in the eastern Mediterranean by the 12th century.

尽管这种支配力量并不总是得到基督徒的认可。这座水上城市在君士坦丁堡的掠夺中发挥了决定性作用，尽管这加强了威尼斯的商业地位，但却使拜占庭帝国和基督教欧洲的东部边境岌岌可危。中世纪的威尼斯商人欣然交易奴隶，尤其是那些从黑海周边地区捕获的奴隶，并且引起了连续教皇的愤怒，大部分奴隶被出售给了穆斯林国家。罗马诺没有深入探讨这一点，但最坚强和能干的男性成为奴隶雇佣兵，与基督教军队在黎凡特地区等地作战。

Not that this dominance was always put to a use of which fellow Christians approved. The lagoon city played a decisive role in the sack of Constantinople, which, though it strengthened Venice’s commercial position, irretrievably weakened the Byzantine Empire and Christian Europe’s eastern flank. Medieval Venetian merchants cheerfully traded slaves, particularly those extracted from the lands around the Black Sea—and, to the outrage of successive popes, sold most to Muslim states. Mr Romano does not develop this point, but the strongest and ablest males became enslaved mercenaries and battled Christian troops in the Levant and beyond.

威尼斯一直有着黑暗的方面。它给了社区们他们的名称（getto，一个铸造厂，正是威尼斯最初的社区所在地）；正如罗马诺所展示的那样，它在19世纪的贫民窟和欧洲其他地区一样肮脏。然而，它的存活事实证明了威尼斯人的不屈不挠。在其令人惊叹的创造力、脆弱性和韧性中，威尼斯成为人类的隐喻。 ■

Venice has always had dark aspects. It gave ghettos their name (getto, a foundry, was where Venice’s original ghetto was in the 1500s); as Mr Romano shows, its slums in the 19th century were as squalid as any in Europe. Yet the very fact of its survival is testament to the Venetians. In its spectacular ingenuity, fragility and resilience Venice is a metaphor for humankind. ■

回到目录

文化 | 杀手般的微笑 (Culture | The killer smile)

亚马逊究竟有多无情？ (How ruthless is Amazon, really?)

简单地将商业描绘为力量对抗正义是过于简单化的。 (It is too simplistic to portray business as a battle of might versus right)

一切战争。作者：达娜·马蒂奥利。小布朗出版社；416页；32.50美元。Torva出版社；22英镑。

The Everything War. By Dana Mattioli. Little, Brown; 416 pages; $32.50. Torva; £22

2009年至2010年，亚马逊为了尿布而发动了一场战争。当时身价约为500亿美元的电子商务巨头锁定了一家初创公司Diapers.com，这家公司在年轻妈妈中拥有忠实的粉丝群。它首先对其进行监视。然后进行了突袭，当天将自家婴儿产品的价格削减30%，并试图收购这家公司。亚马逊的降价几乎压垮了Diapers.com，迫使其将自己卖给了它的宿敌。Diapers的创始人马克·洛尔至今未能原谅亚马逊。后来，他领导了沃尔玛的电子商务部门，这是亚马逊最大的竞争对手，部分原因是为了报复。他在近期一次活动中坦言，“这种感觉仍然让人触动”，读者也赞同。

In 2009-10 Amazon went to war over nappies. The e-commerce giant, then worth about $50bn, identified a startup, Diapers.com, that had a devoted following among young mums. First it stalked it. Then it pounced, reaching out to buy the company on the same day that it slashed the price of its own baby products by 30%. Amazon’s price cuts almost crushed Diapers.com, forcing it to sell itself to its nemesis. Marc Lore, Diapers’ founder, has not forgiven Amazon. He later went on to lead the e-commerce division of Walmart, its biggest rival, partly to get his own back. “It’s still triggering,” he admitted at a recent event attended by your reviewer.

Diapers.com的故事是《一切战争》中众多揭露亚马逊的负面故事之一，其他知名品牌在其中也感受到了来自亚马逊的威胁，从鞋类品牌Allbirds到超市连锁店Trader Joe’s。在《华尔街日报》工作的作者达娜·马蒂奥利一直追踪报道亚马逊；她的有关亚马逊滥用卖家数据的报道引起了国会的关注。她是反垄断的倡导者，这本书试图描绘这家公司据称的权力滥用。

The story of Diapers.com is one of many damning narratives about Amazon that run through “The Everything War”, which relates how other well-known brands have felt its hot breath on their necks, from Allbirds, a shoemaker, to Trader Joe’s, a supermarket chain. At the Wall Street Journal, Dana Mattioli, the author, has doggedly pursued Amazon; her stories on its misuse of sellers’ data have caught Congress’s eye. She is on the antitrust warpath, and the book tries to portray the company’s supposed misuse of power.

该书开篇引用了2017年《耶鲁法学杂志》的一篇文章，名为“亚马逊的反垄断悖论”，作者是一位名叫莉娜·卡恩的27岁法学学生。结尾则是现任联邦贸易委员会（FTC）主席的卡恩女士，她对亚马逊提起了诉讼。去年九月，FTC和17位州检察长对亚马逊提起诉讼，指控其通过利用权力提高价格、降低购物者和供应商服务质量的方式运作非法垄断，同时扼杀竞争。亚马逊称这起诉讼是误导性的。

The book starts by quoting an article in the Yale Law Journal in 2017 called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”, written by a 27-year-old law student called Lina Khan. It ends with Ms Khan, now chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a trustbusting and consumer-welfare agency, throwing the book at Amazon. Last September the FTC and 17 state attorneys-general sued Amazon, accusing it of operating an illegal monopoly by using its power to raise prices and degrade service for shoppers and vendors, while stifling competition. Amazon calls the lawsuit misguided.

当这类主题和范围如今正被卡恩女士企图颠覆几十年来反垄断执法的时候，这应该是引人入胜的读物。但实际情况并非如此。尽管作者追踪亚马逊的报道如履薄冰，但故事仍然支离破碎，没有出现令人惊讶的“抓住”时刻。出乎意料的是，卡恩女士将FTC针对亚马逊的案件重点放在不同行为上，而非马蒂奥利女士所叙述的那类行为。

Such subject matter and scope, just as Ms Khan is attempting to turn decades of antitrust enforcement on its head, should make for gripping reading. But it does not. For all the shoe leather the author treads in pursuit of Amazon, her story is rambling, and there is no “gotcha” moment. Unexpectedly, Ms Khan has focused the FTC’s case against Amazon on different behaviour than the sort Ms Mattioli chronicles.

为了弥补这一点，马蒂奥利大声疾呼。她的语气有时候如此片面，以至于让人同情亚马逊。其创始人杰夫·贝佐斯不仅贪婪地渴望胜利，而且有一种“杀手本能”，他试图把这种本能强加给自己的员工。它让竞争对手“尸横遍野”。它有一种“残酷无情的文化”。她称其顾客至上是一项指导原则，但说这只是掩盖了“不道德行为”。

To make up for that, Ms Mattioli yells. Her tone is, at times, so one-sided it makes you sympathise with Amazon. Jeff Bezos, its founder, does not just have a rapacious hunger to win, he has a “killer instinct” that he tries to impose on his staff. It leaves rivals’ “corpses in its wake”. It has a “cut-throat culture”. Its customer obsession, which she says is a guiding principle, is cover for “unethical behaviour”.

遗憾的是，对于试图打倒知名公司或商界人士的许多书籍来说，这种叙述方式并不少见。偶尔会有深入调查报道导致公司倒台，比如约翰·卡雷鲁（John Carreyrou）的“坏血”，帮助揭露了血液检测初创公司Theranos的欺诈行为。但其他缺乏足够指控证据的书籍往往倾向于煽动性言辞。

Sadly, this is a feature of too many books trying to tear down prominent firms or business people. Occasionally, works of investigative reporting are so incisive that they bring down a company. Think “Bad Blood”, by John Carreyrou, which helped expose the fraud of Theranos, a blood-testing startup. But others that lack sufficient incriminatory evidence tend to resort to rabble-rousing rhetoric.

亚马逊凸显了企业集中的许多矛盾之处；这并非简单的强权对抗正义的故事。有时，摧毁竞争对手对企业的生存和发展至关重要。即使是美国的投资大师沃伦·巴菲特也喜欢拥有“护城河”来阻挡竞争。毫无疑问，亚马逊在建立帝国的过程中对一些竞争对手、客户和雇员采取了严厉手段。但是，顾客和供应商如此忠诚，以至于在面临可能剥夺他们心爱的Prime会员资格的任何监管打击时，他们都会挺身而出为其辩护。

Amazon highlights many of the contradictions of corporate concentration; it is not a simple tale of might versus right. Sometimes crushing rivals is essential for businesses to survive and thrive. Even Warren Buffett, America’s investing guru, likes companies with “moats” to keep the competition at bay. No doubt it has treated some rivals, clients and employees harshly in the course of establishing its empire. But customers and vendors are so loyal, they spring to its defence when it faces any regulatory onslaught that could deprive them of their beloved Prime membership.

马蒂奥利暗示了美国反垄断法的一个深层问题。政治家们未能完善竞争法，使其适应在根深蒂固的寡头时代。为了让亚马逊和其他科技巨头履行责任，国会的种种尝试在一片游说攻势中渐渐烟消云散。可能这本书中对亚马逊最明智的描述来自卡恩女士本人：“贝佐斯似乎是通过首先绘制反垄断法地图，然后设计出了巧妙绕过它们的路线”。 ■

Ms Mattioli hints at one of the deepest problems of antitrust in America. Politicians have failed to tighten up competition law to make it fit for an era of entrenched oligopolies, and congressional attempts to hold Amazon and other tech giants to account have fizzled out amid a barrage of lobbying. Probably the wisest description of Amazon in the book comes from Ms Khan herself: “It is as if Bezos charted the company’s growth by first drawing a map of antitrust laws, and then devising routes to smoothly bypass them.” ■

回到目录

文化 | 《丛林之书》 (Culture | Jungle book)

《漩涡》一百年前问世，预示了生态文学 (“The Vortex”, written 100 years ago, anticipated eco-literature)

拉丁美洲最重要的书籍之一也及时。 (One of Latin America’s most important books is also timely)

这本书已经深深地影响了总统们的思想和言论。最近，哥伦比亚领导人Gustavo Petro赞扬了何塞·尤斯塔西奥·里维拉（José Eustasio Rivera）的中篇小说《La Vorágine》（“漩涡”），认为书中的文字“仍然闪耀如星”，展示了“丛林的毁灭只会让人类充满仇恨”。彼得罗先生和巴西总统卢拉·达席尔瓦（Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva）在波哥大国际书展上都谈到了《漩涡》。今年的文学盛会庆祝了文学与自然之间的关系，以及《漩涡》的百年出版纪念，这部小说是在1924年4月写成的。

The book is on the minds and lips of presidents. Recently Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s leader, praised “La Vorágine” (“The Vortex”), a novella by José Eustasio Rivera, for having words that “still shine like stars” and showing how “the destruction of the jungle fills human beings with nothing but hatred”. Mr Petro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, both spoke about “The Vortex” at the International Book Fair of Bogotá. This year’s biblio-bonanza is celebrating the relationship between literature and nature, as well as the centenary of the publication of “The Vortex”, which was written in April 1924.

里维拉通过一个矛盾的叙述者阿图罗·科瓦来讲述他的故事，科瓦在波哥大诱惑了一个名叫艾莉西亚的女人，然后带她逃到东部的los llanos。贪婪和残忍驱使着他们遇到的人们，这些人只渴望“偷取橡胶和猎杀印第安人”。

Rivera told his story through Arturo Cova, an equivocal narrator who seduces a woman, Alicia, in Bogotá and then flees with her to los llanos in the east. Greed and cruelty drive the people they encounter, who desire only to “steal rubber and hunt Indians”.

《漩涡》唤起了这个地区的殖民历史，当时征服者掠夺丛林，屠杀居民以追求财富。书中还谴责了橡胶工业对亚马逊中担任契约工人的土著人造成的虐待，亚马逊是世界上最大的热带雨林。随着森林被掠夺，环境保护与经济增长之间的拉锯战加剧，这本书显得现代而及时。

“The Vortex” evokes the region’s colonial history, when conquistadors pillaged jungles and slaughtered inhabitants in pursuit of riches. It also excoriates the abuses that the rubber industry inflicted on indigenous people serving as indentured workers in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. As the forest is despoiled and a tug-of-war plays out between those wanting to prioritise environmental protection over economic growth, the book feels modern and timely.

这本书也可以被视为先驱性的生态文学。里维拉生动而诗意的散文将丛林描绘成一个有生命的存在，“一个绿色的地狱”，它与不断入侵的人类对抗。雷鸣般的急流淹没了人类；蚂蚁像蝎子一样具有剧毒，捕食人类肉体。科瓦在故事中某个时刻甚至听到了一棵树的复仇性思绪。

It can also be read as pioneering eco-literature. Rivera’s vivid, poetic prose transforms the jungle into a living being, “a green hell” that fights back against its persistent invaders. Thundering rapids drown men; ants as poisonous as scorpions prey on human flesh. At one point Cova hears a tree’s vengeful thoughts.

到了《漩涡》的结尾，雨林吞噬了主人公。书中传达的信息是，如果生态系统的破坏持续下去，人类将会受到痛苦。幸运的是，由巴西和哥伦比亚领导的**保护努力](https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/04/07/brazil-and-colombia-are-curbing-destruction-of-amazon-rainforest)正专注于保护亚马逊剩余的部分。但许多森林砍伐仍在继续。没有人能确切地知道一百年后会剩下什么。■

By the end of “The Vortex”, the rainforest devours the protagonist. The message is that, if the destruction of ecosystems persists, humans suffer. Fortunately, renewed conservation efforts led by Brazil and Colombia are focused on preserving what remains of the Amazon. But plenty of deforestation continues. No one can be sure of what will be left a hundred years from now. ■

回到目录

文化 | 摇摆起来 (Culture | Shake it off)

泰勒·斯威夫特达到巅峰了吗？ (Has Taylor Swift peaked?)

这位音乐家在商业上达到了巅峰，但在创作上并非如此。 (The musician is at the height of her commercial, but not her creative, power)

泰勒·斯威夫特极有可能是21世纪——甚至有史以来——最受欢迎的表演者。根据分析公司 Luminate 的数据，2023年美国十大最畅销专辑中有五张属于她。斯威夫特的专辑在 Billboard 榜单上的累计上榜周数达到了384周，超过了之前由披头士保持的纪录。她正在进行有史以来最 利润丰厚的巡回演出的中段。去年，该演出的电影版本在票房上的收入超过了2.6亿美元。

TAYLOR SWIFT has a strong claim to being the most popular entertainer of the 21st century—and perhaps of all time. Five of the ten most popular albums in America in 2023 were hers, according to Luminate, an analytics firm. Ms Swift’s albums have now cumulatively racked up 384 weeks in the top ten of the Billboard chart, beating a record previously held by the Beatles. She is halfway through the most lucrative concert tour ever. A film version of it grossed over $260m at the box office last year.

在4月19日，她发布了一张名为“The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”的双专辑。在这31首歌曲中，斯威夫特挥舞着她的手术刀，剖析了最近的每一段感情。很少有词曲作者像她一样善于将心碎转化为热门单曲。（正如她在“Blank Space”中唱的那样，“高尚”肯定一直都是“值得的疼痛”）。不幸的是，在这张专辑中，她放弃了适合跳舞的流行曲风，转而采用了与标题暗示一样沮丧的风格。

On April 19th she released a double album entitled “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”. Over the course of 31 songs, Ms Swift wields her scalpel and dissects every inch of her recent relationships. Few songwriters have been better at transmuting heartbreak into hits. (“The high”, as she sang on “Blank Space”, has surely always been “worth the pain”.) Unfortunately, on this album, she has eschewed danceable pop for something as downcast as the title implies.

那种“我知道你是个麻烦人”和“我们永远不会和好”的令人难忘的歌词被抛弃了，取而代之的是梦幻的合成音、柔和的鼓声和慵懒的人声。斯威夫特擅长演绎忧郁和怀旧，然而，“The Tortured Poets Department”既忧郁又平淡，缺乏令人难忘的特色。作为一个从一个过早成名的乡村歌手起步的女性，她的新歌词听起来令人感到幼稚，押韵缺乏想象力。“像我失去了我的双胞胎 / 即使不能拥有他，也算了，”她在“Down Bad”中唱道。

Gone are the irresistibly catchy choruses of “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, replaced with dreamy synths, muted drums and languorous vocals. Ms Swift can do melancholy and wistfulness well. Yet “The Tortured Poets Department” is mournful without being memorable. For a woman who launched her career as a precocious country-singing teen, her new lyrics sound jarringly immature, with unimaginative rhymes. “Like I lost my twin / Fuck it if I can’t have him,” she sings in “Down Bad”.

令人关注的是，她的明星地位让许多狂热的斯威夫特粉丝仍然争相购买这张专辑：在发布的第一天，“The Tortured Poets Department”在美国售出了140万份。然而，一些人开始打破沉默，坦言认为这些歌曲令人失望且雷同。斯威夫特是否也会陷入那些在各自领域达到巅峰的人士（从创作者到首席执行官）会陷入的陷阱呢？也许没有人——包括她的词曲合作者——愿意告诉音乐界最大的明星，她的曲调乏味。

It is a sign of her stardom that many Swifties rushed to buy the record anyway: within a day of its release “The Tortured Poets Department” sold 1.4m copies in America. But some are breaking ranks to confess that they think the songs are underwhelming and samey. Is Ms Swift falling into the trap that ensnares those who reach the highest echelons of their fields, from auteurs to chief executives? Perhaps no one—including her songwriting collaborators—wants to tell music’s biggest star that her tunes are bland.

在“我可以用一颗破碎的心做到”中，她吹嘘自己“如此高效，简直就是一门艺术”。事实上，在名声鹊起的伟大艺术家发行长篇双专辑是非常普遍的：想想披头士在“白专辑”上的30首歌曲，或者布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀在“河流”上的20首歌曲。但这两者都可能受益于更有选择性的编辑，却仍成为了今天备受珍爱的经典作品。对于斯威夫特来说，是她的作品质量，而不是数量，使她脱颖而出。

On “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” she boasts that she is “so productive, it’s an art”. Indeed it is quite common for great artists at the height of their fame to release lengthy double albums: think of the Beatles’ 30 songs on the “White Album” or Bruce Springsteen’s 20 on “The River”. But both of those could have benefited from more selective editing and still have become the treasured classics that they are today. For Ms Swift, it is the quality of her output, not the quantity, that has set her apart from her peers.

斯威夫特最新的作品与她通常的水准相去甚远。在其中一首歌曲中，她声称自己正在“闪耀的巅峰”。无论是忠实的粉丝还是偶尔听众都可能会想知道这种光芒是否正在褪去。■

Ms Swift’s latest offering is some way short of her usual standard. In one of the songs, she claims to be in “her glittering prime”. Fans both devoted and casual may wonder if the lustre is fading. ■

回到目录

特别报道 | 印度快报 (Special report | The India express)

为了其下一个增长阶段，印度需要一个新的改革议程 (For its next phase of growth, India needs a new reform agenda)

根据阿尔琼·拉马尼和托马斯·伊斯顿的说法，通过正确的改变，印度可以成为全球增长的引擎。 (With the right changes, it can become an engine of global growth, say Arjun Ramani and Thomas Easton)

编辑注: 这是本周发布的关于印度经济的六章文章中的第一章。

Editor’s note: This is the first of a six-chapter article on the economy of India, published this week.

一月份在北方邦城市阿约提亚的拉姆神庙的祭坛仪式对印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪至关重要；因此，那些寻求他认可的人的出席就成为了必须。参与的随员不仅包括政客、官员和外国贵宾，还有印度最大的企业老板。北方邦并不是他们常去的地方，阿约提亚直到最近也不是巨头们经常光顾的目的地。现在，这里有着115家酒店正在兴建，一些一月访客可能很快会找到回来的理由。

The consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a city in Uttar Pradesh, in January was a matter of supreme importance to Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister; attendance was thus de rigueur for those seeking his approval. The attendant courtiers included not just politicians, officials and foreign dignitaries but also India’s biggest corporate bosses. Uttar Pradesh is not their normal stamping ground, and Ayodhya has not until recently been much of a destination for tycoons. Now it has 115 hotels under construction, and some of those January visitors may soon be finding reasons to return.

北方邦，即up，是印度人口最多的邦，也是最贫困的之一。拥有两亿四千万人口，这个邦将成为世界第六大国家。其人均名义gdp为1000美元，不到全国平均水平的一半；按此计算，它将排在世界第174位，与塔吉克斯坦和多哥并列。

Uttar Pradesh, known as up, is India’s most populous state and also one of its poorest. With 240m people, it would be the world’s sixth-largest country. Its nominal gdp per person is $1,000, less than half the national average; on that basis it would rank around 174th in the world, alongside Tajikistan and Togo.

但在过去五年里，这里的经济增长率为5.3%——比全国平均水平高出一个百分点——自2021年以来，为9.2%。印度的最高发展金融公司说，该邦政府的投资占产出的比例在印度是最高的，达到了6.6%。新的道路在邦内交织而过。up的首席部长约吉·阿迪安納特是莫迪的忠实追随者，他正在削减繁文缛节，打击犯罪，以吸引商业。一个生动的例子是：长期以来，酒业一直是犯罪团伙融资的来源，如上升的税收所示，现在正在成为正规经济的一部分。

But over the past five years it has been growing at an annual rate of 5.3%—a percentage point faster than the national average—and, since 2021, at 9.2%. The state government’s investment, as a percentage of output, is the highest in India, at 6.6%, says hdfc Bank. New roads crisscross the state. up’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, a keen follower of Mr Modi, is clearing red tape and cracking down on crime to attract business. One vivid example: the liquor trade, long a source of financing for criminals, is becoming part of the formal economy, as shown by rising tax receipts.

谈及印度经济前景的时候，常常聚焦于科技中心班加罗尔或金融中心孟买。但莫迪的“viksit Bharat”（即发展为发达国家，在2047年达到人均gdp 14000美元）的雄心需要有一个更宽广的视野。这是一个让印度所有28个邦在经济上有能力相互竞争的视角，为商业领袖提供更多机遇，不仅局限于富裕的南方。

Talk of India’s economic prospects often focus on Bangalore, the tech hub, or Mumbai, the financial centre. But Mr Modi’s ambition of viksit Bharat, or developed-country status, by 2047 (in the form of a gdp per head of $14,000) needs a broader perspective. It is one in which all the 28 states are capable of competing against each other economically, giving business leaders opportunities beyond the prosperous south.

有迹象表明这种情况正在发生。二月份，塔塔电子公司宣布将在阿萨姆邦投资30亿美元兴建一家芯片工厂，在这个偏远邦创造2.7万个就业岗位。五月份，印度将开设规模最大的疫苗厂，地处上升中的米岗邦。但所需变革才刚刚开始。

There are signs that this is happening. In February Tata Electronics said it would invest $3bn in a chip plant in Assam, creating 27,000 jobs in the remote state. In May, what will be India’s biggest vaccine plant will open in Odisha, a middling state on the rise. But the needed change is only just getting under way.

认为莫迪是强有力的经济管理者是印度选民们支持他在本月和五月举行投票，可能会让他连任第三个五年任期的一个原因。2023年第四季度gdp增长率达到了令人瞩目的8.4%（尽管由于印度衡量gdp的方法存在一些怪异所以实质增长趋势更接近6.5%）。但是，在莫迪执政期间的整体增长并不引人注目，因为自上世纪90年代初开始实行自由化政策以来印度的标准下一直处于广泛放缓状态。那是印度精英们认为独立后几十年高度管制的社会主义体制（即“许可制度统治”）需要整体改革的时候，这个过程具有令人瞩目的连续性，尽管政治潮流不断变化。在三十年的改革过程中，增长率平均为6.4%。在莫迪执政的十年间，增长率平均为5.6%，与全球增长放缓态势相符。

The idea that Mr Modi is a strong economic manager is one reason Indians, who go to the polls this month and in May, are likely to give him a third ﬁve-year term in office. gdp grew at a blistering 8.4% in the year to the fourth quarter of 2023 (though the underlying trend is closer to 6.5% because of quirks in how India measures gdp). But overall growth during Mr Modi’s tenure has not been remarkable by the country’s standards since it embarked on a path of liberalisation in the early 1990s. That was when India’s elites decided that the highly regulated socialist system (the “licence raj”) of the decades following independence needed wholesale reform, a process which has played out with remarkable continuity, despite changing political tides. Over three decades of reform, growth has averaged 6.4% a year. Though it has averaged 5.6% during the decade of Mr Modi’s rule, that has been in line with a broader slowdown in global growth.

然而，自疫情爆发以来的强劲增长和前景看好让选民满意，也给外界观察员留下了深刻印象，尤其是当这与全球增长依然疲软的情况相比。自2021年以来，印度一直是增长最快的大国经济体，6.5%的增长将是全球平均水平的两倍以上。如果这个平均水平维持在3%左右，本十年印度将占总量的15%甚至更多。但与近年其他国家相比，这一增长可能看起来令人失望。在鼎盛时期，东亚国家增长率超过10%。中国和印度在20世纪80年代的人均收入相似。中国现在的人均收入是印度的五倍。

Yet robust growth since the pandemic and a strong outlook ahead has pleased voters and impressed outside observers, not least because it is measured against a world where growth remains sluggish.Since 2021 India has been the world’s fastest-growing large economy, and 6.5% growth would be more than twice the global average. If that average stays around 3%, India would account for 15% or more of the total this decade. But compared with other countries in the recent past, the rate might seem disappointing. East Asian countries grew at rates above 10% in their heyday. China and India had similar incomes per person in the 1980s. China is now five times richer.

在印度，很少有人相信该国能够实现两位数增长。东亚国家受益于大量外国投资的涌入和一个产业结构就业丰富的低技能制造业的出口。这帮助它们加深了与全球价值链的联系，这是在猖獗全球化时期的事情。印度的崛起开始较晚并走了不同的道路。这并不令人惊讶；由于其规模、宗教和语言的多样性，它是独特的。政府的责任在中央和各邦之间划分，这使得快速改革变得复杂。

Few in India believe the country can achieve double-digit growth. The East Asian countries benefited from huge inflows of foreign investment and the exports of a job-rich low-skill manufacturing sector. That helped them deepen their links to global value chains at a time of rampant globalisation. India’s rise began later and followed a different path. That is hardly a surprise; in its size, religious and linguistic variety, it is unique. Governmental responsibilities are divided between the centre and the states in ways that make rapid reform tricky.

印度的发展道路因此变得独特：其出口不是由制造业主导，而是由一个生产效率高但就业机会少的信息技术和服务业领导，其企业由几个庞大的综合企业领导，以及一长串小型非正规企业。维持6%或更高的增长率将产生重大影响。一家银行高盛预计印度将在本十年成为世界第三大经济体。只要将增长率提高半个百分点，祈祷好运并放眼未来，甚至可能在2070年达到第一名的位置（见图表1），尽管其人均财富仍只有中国的一半，美国的四分之一（见图表2）。

India’s path has, therefore, been singular: its exports have been led not by manufacturing but by a productive yet job-poor it and services sector, and its companies are led by a handful of sprawling conglomerates along with a long tail of small informal businesses. Sustaining growth rates of 6% or more would be consequential. Goldman Sachs, a bank, expects India to become the world’s third-largest national economy this decade. Bump growth rates up just half a percentage point, cross your fingers and extrapolate wildly and it could even reach the number-one spot by 2070 (see chart 1), though it would still only be half as rich as China and a quarter as rich as America per person (see chart 2).

要实现这种增长，以及有望推动增长，未来必须有所不同。由于印度令人瞩目的多样性，没有简单的全国性良方。这将需要从提高纺织等劳动密集型行业的竞争力到在高科技领域取得更大所见的功力。这将需要一个更加深入的单一市场以促进国内企业，更多的创新以在全球前沿出口，以及一个更强大的政府来提供基本服务，确保印度丰富的年轻人才得以释放。

To achieve that growth, and have a fighting chance of boosting it, the future must look different. Because of the country’s remarkable diversity, there is no simple national nostrum. It will need everything from increasing competitiveness in labour-intensive sectors like textiles to growing prowess in high-tech sectors that blend services and manufacturing. That will require a deeper single market to boost domestic business, more innovation to export at the global frontier, and a stronger state that delivers on basic services to ensure India’s copious young talent is unleashed.

莫迪先生的两任任期在这方面取得了一些进展。金融部门得到了清理并享有越来越多的全球信誉。企业部门的股本回报率高于全球平均水平。这反映了一种更为健康的商业环境，包括2017年推出的全国货物和服务税，跨越州界并创造超过旧有基于州的系统的收入。公共基础设施投资激增（见图表3）；国家道路网在十年内增长了60％，是前一个十年增速的两倍。

Mr Modi’s two terms have seen progress on some of this. The financial sector has been cleaned up and enjoys growing global credibility. The corporate sector has a return on equity above the global average. That reflects a healthier business environment, including a national goods-and-services tax, introduced in 2017, that works across state lines and creates revenues which exceed those of the old state-based system. Public-infrastructure investment is surging (see chart 3); the national road network has grown by 60% over ten years, double the rate of the previous decade.

数字基础设施变得更加令人印象深刻。建立起名为Aadhaar的国家身份认证系统，这个系统是由前一届政府开始推动的，为30亿印度人每月使用的付款系统奠定了基础（见图表4）。如今，大多数家庭都能够拥有银行账户。福利支付现在通过电子方式进行，信贷更易获得。自2015年以来，印度新企业的注册数量增加了三倍。

Digital infrastructure has become even more impressive. Building up the national identity system called Aadhaar, begun by the previous government, has laid the foundation for a payment system that 300m Indians use every month (see chart 4). It has also enabled most households to get a bank account. Welfare payments are now paid electronically and credit is easier to access. The number of new business registrations in India has tripled since 2015.

但是无法回避经济的短板。劳动力市场疲弱，大多数印度人处于失业或完全脱离劳动力市场状态。这限制了消费，而出口无法弥补这一不足。印度的教育在一定程度上要为此负责，并且城市缺乏为了容纳从农村迁往城市地区的大规模人口迁移而需要的治理水平，这对提高生产率有潜在好处。解决这些问题需要中央和各邦政府之间比进行金融改革更多的合作，而莫迪先生与各邦政府之间的关系并不是他的强项。有些邦，如北方邦，是由总理类型的政治家领导的。很多则不是。

But there is no avoiding the economy’s shortcomings. The labour market is weak, with a majority of Indians underemployed or out of the labour force altogether. That limits consumption, and exports do not make up the shortfall. Indian education is partly to blame and cities lack the governance needed to accommodate vast shifts of people from rural to urban areas, a potential boon for productivity. Tackling these issues needs a lot more co-operation between central and state governments than financial reform does, and better relations with state governments have not been Mr Modi’s strong suit. Some, like up’s, are led by politicians of the prime minister’s stamp. Many are not.

莫迪先生强硬的管理风格取得了一些好处，尤其是推动了一些重大国家项目。但同时，他也走向了霸道和日益威权主义的做法。然而，该国的基本政治结构仍然是民主的，因此需要建立共识。三十年的改革为印度实现规模奠定了基础。要发挥其潜力，需要一个与1991年的那个一样雄心勃勃的新议程。在审视印度的发展方向以确定其发展方向时，一个很好的起点是看印度如何将弱点转化为优势：金融部门。 ■

Mr Modi’s muscular management style has had some benefits, not least pushing through some big national projects. It has also strayed into bullying and an increasingly authoritarian approach. Yet the country’s basic political structure is still democratic, so consensus-building will be needed. Thirty years of reform have laid a foundation for India to reach scale. To achieve its potential, a new agenda just as ambitious as that of 1991 is needed. In surveying the landscape to ascertain where India is heading, a good place to start is where it has turned weakness into strength: the financial sector. ■

回到目录

特别报道 | 意外的赢家 (Special report | Surprise winner)

过去十年，印度的金融体系得到了巨大改善 (India’s financial system has improved dramatically in the past decade)

未来还将有更多变化。 (There is much more change to come)

编辑注: 这是本周发布的关于印度经济的六章文章中的第二章。

Editor’s note: This is the second of a six-chapter article on the economy of India, published this week.

1873年出版的《伦巴德街》中，当时是《经济学人》的编辑沃尔特·巴吉特写道，伦敦城的成功建立在利用其他地方存放在地板下的资金并投入使用。他可能会喜欢现代印度所展现的情况。

In “lombard street”, published in 1873, Walter Bagehot, then editor of The Economist, wrote that the City of London’s success was based on taking funds that elsewhere were kept under floorboards, and putting them to use. He might have found what is unfolding in modern India to his liking.

但要利用这些闲置资金，首先必须修复系统。在纳伦德拉·莫迪成为总理之前的2013年，一家银行摩根士丹利将印度与其他出现金融问题的国家——巴西、印度尼西亚、南非和土耳其一起划为“脆弱五国”。印度薄弱的资本市场导致了三大问题：金融和支付平衡的不稳定；普通民众没有储蓄途径；企业的资金成本过高。同时高通胀率和国有银行不良贷款问题日益严重。

But for those dormant funds to be used, the system first had to be repaired. In 2013, the year before Narendra Modi became prime minister, Morgan Stanley, a bank, had grouped India with other financially troubled countries—Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey—into what it called the “fragile five”. India’s weak capital markets were contributing to three big problems: financial and balance-of-payments instability; no way for ordinary people to save; and a high cost of capital for business. There was also high inflation and a growing problem of non-performing loans at state-run banks.

十年过去了，通货膨胀稳定了（虽然有点高），印度对外部资金流的依赖性减少。它拥有大量外汇储备、强劲的国内储蓄和充裕的汇率管理。还需更多变革。但改革已将其移至相对强势的位置。印度金融体系，也就是印度本身，正变得更加可信。

Ten years on, inflation is stable (if a little high) and India is less dependent on capital flows from abroad. It has large foreign-exchange reserves, strong domestic savings, and adequate exchange-rate management. More change is needed. But reforms have moved it to a position of comparative strength. Indian finance, and thus India itself, is becoming more credible.

在2010年，当时是金融体系最大组成部分的国有银行已经腐朽并且威胁着拖垮其他部分。但在2013年，前一届政府请来了芝加哥大学教授拉古拉姆·拉詹来领导印度储备银行（RBI）。他发起了一场“资产质量审查”，正式确认了该国“双重资产负债表问题”，即银行和公司资产负债表上的漏洞。2016年引入了新的破产法典。价值1,060亿美元的坏账被注销，并有政府注资、强制金融整合和新规定。

In 2010 state-run banks, then the largest component of the financial system, were rotten and threatened to drag down the rest. But in 2013, the previous government brought in a professor from the University of Chicago, Raghuram Rajan, to run the Reserve Bank of India (rbi). He initiated an “asset quality review” that put an official stamp on the country’s “twin-balance-sheet problem”, the holes on both bank and corporate balance sheets. In 2016 a new bankruptcy code was introduced. Bad loans worth $106bn were written off, and there was an injection of government money, forced financial consolidation and new rules.

2017年至2019年间，政府将27家国有银行合并为12家。规定也做出了变更，允许新加坡的星展银行在2020年收购拉克什米维拉斯银行，这是首次有外部实体拥有庞大的分行网络。更严格的报告制度带来了令人震惊的事实，导致了五家印度重要金融机构的失败。

Between 2017 and 2019, the government merged 27 government-run banks into 12. Rules were changed to allow dbs, a Singaporean bank, to acquire Lakshmi Vilas bank in 2020, allowing an outsider to have a large branch network for the first time. The tighter reporting regime brought revelations which led to the failure of five major Indian financial institutions.

印度看起来可能会在金融悬崖边狂跌。回顾过去，已达到了一个拐点。国有控制的银行的不良贷款率从2018年的15%下降至资产的4%。

It looked like India might fall off a financial cliff. In retrospect, an inflection point had been reached. Non-performing loans at state-controlled banks have since declined from 15% in 2018 to 4% of assets.

随着系统中最薄弱的部分得到加强，几十年前萌芽的其它方面也开始显现，首先是新兴的几家私人银行。1994年成立的 HDFC银行 现在是市值全球第十大的银行。它的股本回报率为16%。摩根大通，美国领先银行，回报率为12%;欧洲银行平均回报率仅为其一半多。

As the weakest components of the system were strengthened, other aspects that had been seeded decades before came into their own,starting with a handful of new private banks. hdfc Bank, founded in 1994, is now the world’s tenth-most valuable bank by market capitalisation. It returns 16% on equity. JPMorgan, America’s leading bank, returns 12%; European banks, on average, just over half that.

新的更健康的体系使得信贷能够用于消费、房屋和工业。自2015年以来，私人银行的分行数量增加了60%，达到163,000家（美国有78,000家）。这在村庄产生了巨大影响，因为消费信贷从向周息10%的本地放贷人转变为银行贷款，年利率为15%以下。

The new healthier system has enabled credit to be available for consumption,housing and industry. The private banks have boosted the number of branches by 60% since 2015 to 163,000 (America has 78,000). This has had a huge effect in villages, as consumer finance has shifted from local lenders charging 10% per week to bank loans at annual rates of 15% or below.

帮助贫困人口开设基本银行账户的大力推动至关重要——自2014年以来已经开设了5.2亿个，并且现在持有280亿美元——这对将印度的大众变为储户、资本提供者，以及可能的企业家具有重要意义。由于这些账户与印度新的数字支付和身份识别系统相连，它们是可用于评估和授信的记录。这可能解释了最近对小企业贷款的增加。

The big push to help poor people open basic bank accounts—520m have been opened since 2014, and they now hold $28bn—has been crucial, helping to transform India’s masses into savers, providers of capital and, possibly, entrepreneurs. Since the accounts are linked to India’s new digital payment and identification system, they are records that can be used to evaluate and grant credit. This may explain a recent increase in lending to small businesses.

股票市场也繁荣，反映了印度业务的成功和可用资本的扩大。十年前，印度股票市场的市值比西班牙小。现在与香港齐头并进，仅次于美国、中国和日本。根据长期增长率，咨询公司BCG表示，印度在2036年将成为第二大股票市场。自2019年以来，持有某种形式股票的印度人口比例从7%上升至20%。通过“系统性投资计划”每月进行的小额资金支付急剧增加。从2013年到2023年，基金管理资产增加了600%以上。它们现在占到印度市场股权的9%。流入股市的资金并非闲置。截至2024年，创纪录数量的公司已经上市。

Stockmarkets, too, are booming, reflecting the success of Indian business and the expansion of available capital. Ten years ago, capitalisation of India’s stockmarkets was smaller than Spain’s. Now neck and neck with Hong Kong’s, only America’s, China’s and Japan’s surpass them. Based on long-term growth rates, bcg, a consultancy, says India’s will become the second-largest in 2036. The proportion of the population owning shares of some sort has risen from 7% to 20% since 2019. Small monthly payments into mutual funds through “systematic investment plans” have risen sharply. From 2013 to 2023, fund assets under management rose by over 600%. They now account for 9% of equity holdings in the Indian market. Money flowing into the stockmarket is not idle. A record number of firms has gone public already in 2024.

在发达市场中，这种增长看起来可能像是一个泡沫，这可能是故事的一部分。这也可能只是迎头赶上。印度私人金融体系的设计师之一Deepak Parekh进行的一项研究发现，基金资产仅相当于国内生产总值的17%，而发达市场平均为80%。这种“低渗透度”在其他领域也很明显，比如消费信贷，占国内生产总值的37%，而中国为62%，美国为80%。

In developed markets, this kind of growthcould seem like a bubble, and that may be part of the story. It may also just be catch-up. A study by Deepak Parekh, one of the architects of India’s private financial system, found that fund assets equate to only 17% of gdp, compared with an average of 80% in developed markets. This “under-penetration” is clear in other areas such as consumer credit, totalling 37% of gdp compared with 62% in China and 80% in America.

印度金融体系正在慢慢重新调整自己以应对这些不平衡。2006年，56%的资产在银行体系中。到2022年，这一比例为48%，波士顿咨询集团预测到2030年将缩减至36%（见图表）。在银行的位置上将会出现更成熟的资本市场组成部分：基金、养老金、保险公司、私人股本以及更多风险投资。2022年政府上市的印度人寿保险公司在2023年以市值排名全球第四。在这些不断扩张的领域中一个常见的主题是它们希望利用资本促进增长。

The Indian financial system is slowly reconfiguring itself to deal with these imbalances. In 2006, 56% of assets were in thebanking system. In 2022 the proportion was 48% and bcg predicts that will shrink to 36% by 2030 (see chart). In place of the banks will come components of more mature capital markets: funds, pensions, insurance companies, private equity and more venture capital. Life Insurance Company of India, listed by the government in 2022, was the world’s fourth-largest life insurer in 2023 by market value. A common theme in these expanding sectors is their desire to use capital to foster growth.

好事并非都是美好的。从2020年开始涌入的外国风险投资由于一些大型科技初创企业的失败而崩溃，从2021年的创纪录的420亿美元下降到2024年第一季度的25亿美元。私人公司常见的公布的估值被写下；许多公司将会崩溃。但所有这些似乎并没有影响到普通公众或国内股市。

Not everything is rosy. A surge of foreign venture capital starting in 2020 has imploded as a result of some big tech startup failures, from a record $42bn in 2021 to $2.5bn in the first quarter of 2024. Commonly published valuations of private firms are being written down; many will crash. But none of this seems to affect the general public or the domestic stockmarket.

债券市场也还处在早期发展阶段。虽然它增长并变得更加自由，但它仍然是为了资助政府运转且很大程度上只对最大的公司可用。即便对于它们来说，印度需要的最适合大型资本投资的长期债务通常是不可获得的，必须在海外获得，并需要额外成本。然而，一个更健康的体系创造了自己的机遇。印度已要求所有大型全球评级机构将其处境边缘的垃圾级评级升级，这一级别自2000年代中期以来未曾改变。

The bond market, too, is still in an early stage of development. It has grown and become more free, but it is still run to finance the government and is largely unavailable for all but the largest firms. Even for them, the long-term debt that is best suited for the big capital investments that India needs is often unavailable, and must be obtained overseas, with additional costs. However, a healthier system creates its own opportunities. India has asked all the big global ratings agencies to upgrade its borderline junk status, which has been left unchanged since the mid 2000s.

一次升级将会标志着印度地位的提升。它还将有助于降低妨碍投资和增长的资本成本。最有实力的公司支付的银行贷款利率为8%或更高，而新加坡或美国为6%以下，日本为2%以下。而且，高主权评级将为长期企业债券的发行提供支撑。

An upgrade would signal India’s rising stature. It would also help to lower the capital costs which impede investment and growth. The most solvent companies pay 8% or more on bank loans, compared with under 6% in Singapore or America and under 2% in Japan. What is more, a high sovereign rating would provide an underpinning for the issuance of long-term corporate debt.

9月，摩根大通将印度纳入政府债券指数，而彭博社表示将在1月做同样操作。到3月为止，外国投资组合投资达到了创纪录的400亿美元。资金的运用变得更加明智。巴格霍特可能会赞不绝口。 ■

In September, JPMorgan will be adding India to a government-bond index, in January Bloomberg indicated it will do the same. Foreign portfolio investment hit a record $40bn in the year to March. Money is being put to better use. Bagehot might applaud. ■

回到目录

特别报道 | 运行中的无政府状态 (Special report | Functioning anarchy)

印度艰难的商业环境正在改善 (India’s difficult business environment is improving)

这些变化让印度企业变得更加灵活 (The changes are allowing Indian firms to become more dynamic)

拉梅什·穆塔拉玛林加姆在25年前在印度南部城市科伊马托尔的一个小作坊创立了一家制造公司阿尔法工艺。如今，该公司在一个占地4,500平方米（50,000平方英尺）的工厂内运营，堆满了铝铸件。公司雇佣了400名员工，并将很快开设一个类似规模的第二家工厂。客户包括印度初创公司，尤其是快速增长的当地轻型电动车制造商Ola Electric，以及英国的阿斯顿·马丁和美国的约翰·迪尔等全球公司。

Ramesh Muthuramalingam founded Alphacraft, a manufacturing firm, 25 years ago in a small workshop in the southern city of Coimbatore. It now operates out of a 4,500 square-metre (50,000 square-foot) factory, piled with aluminium cast parts. It employs 400 people and will soon open a second facility of similar size. Customers include Indian startups, notably Ola Electric, a fast-growing local scooter manufacturer, and global companies including Britain’s Aston Martin and America’s John Deere.

外国公司现在对阿尔法工艺这样的公司产生了新兴兴趣，原因是三个转变：想要减少对中国的依赖；认为印度生产现在可以满足全球标准；印度本身是一个增长迅速的市场，支持本国产品的生产。

Foreign firms are newly interested in companies like Alphacraft because of three shifts:a desire to lessen their dependence on China; a belief that Indian production can now meet global standards; and the fact that India itself is a fast growing market that favours local production for its own products.

穆塔拉玛林加姆表示，过去发展的最大障碍不是客户，而是融资。在公司的大部分历史中，15%以上的利率很常见，如果有资金的话。在过去的一年里，他们支付的利率已降至10%。融资的可获性得到了改善，尽管长期资本投资最适合的长期债务仍然很少。过渡到单一货物和服务税，采用电子申报，使得在其他邦的销售变得更容易。

In the past, the biggest block to growth was not customers, but financing, says Mr Muthuramalingam. For most of the firm’s existence, interest rates over 15% were common, if money was available at all. Over the past year, the rate it pays has fallen to 10%. Availability has improved, though the long-term debt best suited to capital investment remains scarce. The shift to a single goods-and-services tax, electronically filed, has made sales in other states easier.

像阿尔法工艺这样的公司的增长和多元化表明，印度变得更加开放。一系列亲商政策，其中一些是在前任政府下开始的，但目前政府继续推行的，对此至关重要。这就是为什么大部分印度企业支持莫迪先生连任第三届任期。

The growth and diversification of firms like Alphacraft suggest India is becoming more open. A spate of pro-business policies, some of which began under previous governments but have been pursued by the current one, have been crucial for this. That is why most of corporate India backs a third term for Mr Modi.

改革也反映了印度企业正在发生的更广泛变化。一个世纪前，经历了疯狂增长期的美国企业界经历了深刻的结构变化，所有者让位给了专业经理人，公司根据股东的需求进行了重组。现在印度也在出现一些类似的情况。

The reforms also reflect a broader change going on within Indian business. A century ago the American corporate world, after a period of frenetic growth, underwent profound structural change as owners gave way to professional managers, and companies reconfigured themselves in accordance with shareholder demands. Some of that is now happening in India.

根据持有市值，印度所谓的“发起人”（即那些控制公司的股东，通常是创始人或其后代）仍掌控着在印度证券交易所交易的公司价值略高于一半。印度国家证券交易所的一项研究发现，2009年至2019年间公司被发起人控制的比例有所下降；虽然这一趋势已经趋于稳定，但其他证据表明非发起人管理越来越受重视。一家高管搜索公司ema Partners进行的一项关于百万美元薪酬计划的调查显示，在2016年，声称年薪能达到百万美元水平的外部人员数量从61人增加到2023年的 119人。

Based on the market value of holdings, what are known in India as “promoters” (that is, those who have a controlling stake in the company, usually the founders or their descendants) still own slightly more than half of the value of companies trading on the Indian exchange. A study by the National Stock Exchange has found that control of companies by promoters declined between 2009 and 2019; though that trend has since levelled off, other evidence suggests that non-promoter management is increasingly valued. A survey by ema Partners, an executive-search firm, on million-dollar compensation packages showed the number of outsiders who have reported salaries which put them in that bracket has risen from 61 in 2016 to 119 in 2023.

在印度经商的困难和广泛可获得的融资不足是导致大型企业主导经济的两个原因之一——它们既能获得融资，又能应对棘手的政府。但是这种情况有所改变的迹象。一家资产管理公司Marcellus的研究指出，在2019年，印度前二十家公司赚取了所有利润的79%。这一比例在截至2023年3月的财政年度中降至仅38%。bse500指数中前十家公司所占市值份额从33%下降到26%。变化是由成功公司不断扩展引起的。自2000年以来，市值超过10亿美元的上市公司数量增加了20倍。

The difficulties of doing business in India and the lack of broadly available finance are two reasons why large conglomerates have dominated the economy—they have been able both to obtain finance and handle a prickly state. But there are hints of change. A study by Marcellus, a money-management firm, concluded that in 2019 the top 20 companies in India earned 79% of all profits. The figure fell to just 38% in the fiscal year ending in March 2023. The share of the bse500’s market capitalisation held by the top 10 firms has fallen from 33% to 26% in the same period. The shift is being driven by the expanding breadth of successful companies. The number of listed firms valued at more than $1bn has increased 20-fold since 2000.

尽管如此，大型企业仍具有影响力。信实工业主导电信和炼油，并正在扩张娱乐业务。阿达尼集团是最大的机场和海港管理者，也是第二大水泥和电力生产商。尽管更广泛的企业集中可能在减弱，但这些公司的市场份额仍在不断增加。最近的数据可能只是疫情后的暂时现象。塔塔集团通过子公司，是最大的it咨询公司，还拥有汽车、酒店和钢铁业务。巴杰集团拥有最大的非银行金融公司，并生产家用电器、摩托车和人力车。

That said, the big conglomerates are still influential. Reliance Industries dominates telecoms and refining, and is expanding into entertainment. The Adani Group is the largest manager of airports and seaports and the second-largest producer of cement and power. Though broader corporate concentration may be weakening, these firms have seen continually increasing market shares. The recent data could turn out to be a post-covid blip. Tata Sons is, through subsidiaries, the biggest of all, owning the largest it consultancy and interests in cars, hotels and steel. The Bajaj Group owns the largest non-banking finance company and builds appliances, motorcycles and rickshaws.

国有企业仍然扮演着重要角色。在印度证券交易所上市的这些公司的总市值为8040亿美元。印度斯坦航空公司（国防）、印度电力金融公司（能源项目融资）和印度国家银行在各自领域占据主导地位。

State-controlled firms also continue to play a big role. The collective valuation of those listed on India’s stock exchanges is $804bn. Hindustan Aeronautics (defence), pfc (financing of energy projects) and the State Bank of India all dominate their sectors.

一些由外资控制的公司仍然很重要，包括印度联合利华和雀巢的消费品，马鲁蒂铃木和本田的汽车，以及谷歌和亚马逊的技术。一些全球供应链已经转移，因为印度已成为越来越多“中国+1”战略中的“+1”。

A handful of foreign-controlled firms remain important, including Hindustan Unilever and Nestlé in consumer products, Maruti Suzuki and Honda in vehicles, and Google and Amazon in tech. And some global supply chains have shifted as India has become the “+1” in an increasing number of China+1 strategies.

然而，其他外国消费品公司，如惠而浦，以及大型制药公司，如阿斯利康，以及迪士尼等文化偶像，都在减少他们的股份或与当地合作伙伴合作，因为他们发现在印度独自行动是困难的。直接外国投资流向印度，这在2020年飙升至全球总量的6.2%，自那时以来已跌至十年低点（2023年第三季度的全球总量的1.1%）。这部分是由于更高的利率，也是因为外国公司面临的艰难营运环境。

But other foreign consumer-product companies, such as Whirlpool, and giant pharmaceutical companies, such as AstraZeneca, as well as cultural icons such as Disney, are reducing their stakesor teaming up with a local partner, having found that India is a tough place to go it alone. Foreign-direct-investment flows into India, which surged in 2020 to 6.2% of the world’s total, have since fallen to a decadal low (1.1% of the world in the third quarter of 2023). This is partly due to higher interest rates, but also because of the tough operating environment for foreign firms.

许多印度公司现在表现不错。自2015年以来，杠杆已在下降，以至于财政部长最近表示，印度已经从过度杠杆的银行和公司的弱点转变为拥有健康银行和低杠杆公司的优势。自2019年以来，上市公司的净资产收益率一直在提高，并且超过了全球平均水平。在除了封锁期间之外，自2018年3月以来，利润一直在大幅增长。随着像村庄放贷和小推车销售等非正规活动向银行和商店转移，经济得到了提振。

Many Indian companies are now doing well. Leverage has been declining since 2015, such that the finance minister recently said India has swung from the weakness of overleveraged banks and firms to the strength of healthy banks and underleveraged firms. Return on equity for listed companies has been improving since 2019 and exceeds the global average. Profits, lockdown excepted, have been rising strongly since March 2018. The economy has been boosted as informal activities like village money-lending and pushcart sales shift to banks and stores.

有些地方出现了灾难性情况。Byju’s是曾经是印度估值最高的初创企业，达到220亿美元，现在几乎已经破产。Paytm，几年前短暂的创业资本热潮中的另一颗明星，在推广印度电子支付方面扮演了至关重要的角色。在2021年ipo时，其估值达到200亿美元。其股价已经从上市后的高点下跌了73%，反映了将有价值的服务变为盈利企业是多么困难。

There have been pockets of disaster. Byju’s, an ed-tech firm that was once India’s highest-valued startup, at $22bn, is now almost insolvent. Paytm, another star of the short-lived venture-capital boom of a few years ago, played a critical role in spreading electronic payments in India. It was valued at $20bn at the time of its ipo in 2021. Its share price has fallen 73% from the post-offering peak, a reflection of how hard it is to turn a valuable service into a profitable business.

但规模较小的制造业公司正在壮大。诸如Alphacraft之类的公司正在改变泰米尔纳德邦等邦的面貌。沿着新修建的道路，一个庞大的电子装配产业已经崛起，由像塔塔这样的本土公司和富士康、和和宏达电等外国公司领导。已经有新的工厂生产电动汽车、绿色能源产品、鞋子和服装。自2021年以来，在这个邦已有100亿美元投资于130个新项目，另外还有48个项目正在进行中。

But smaller manufacturing firms are growing. States such as Tamil Nadu, home of Alphacraft, are being transformed by them. Along the new roads there, a vast electronics-assembly industry has emerged, led by local firms like Tata and foreign ones like Foxconn and Pegatron. There are new factories for electric vehicles, green-energy products, shoes and clothing. Since 2021, $10bn has been invested in 130 new projects in the state, with another 48 under way.

一个重要的新发展是“全球能力中心”——这是由全球最大公司使用的技术中心。与过去的外包呼叫中心不同，这些中心还提供工程、半导体设计、研发自动化以及产品开发等服务。在泰米尔纳德邦，新进入者包括UPS和洛氏制药公司。全国其他地方的大约1600个这样的中心为汇丰银行、Target和Tesco等公司提供服务。在某种程度上，这些中心像为外国企业生产产品的中国工厂，但更加重要。它们不仅仅接受订单；越来越多地自己发布订单。

One important new development is “global capability centres”—tech centres used by the world’s biggest firms. Unlike the outsourced call centres of old, these also provide engineering, semiconductor design and r&d automation, as well as product development. In Tamil Nadu new entrants include ups and Roche Pharma. Some 1,600 others across the country serve firms such as hsbc, Target and Tesco. These centres are, in some ways, like the Chinese factories manufacturing for foreign firms, but more important. They do not just take orders; increasingly they give them, too.

由于它们的产品是数据，它们免受在印度做生意时的许多疯狂因素的影响，从交通堵塞到阻碍性的海关程序。总部设在浦那的咨询公司Wizmatic的一项新研究表明，这些中心雇佣了320万人，创造了1210亿美元的收入，其中包括1020亿美元的出口外汇，使其成为印度最大的部门之一。

Since their product is data, they are immune from much of the craziness of doing business in India, from bad traffic to obstructive customs procedures. A new study by Wizmatic, a consultancy based in Pune, says they employ 3.2m people, generating $121bn in revenues including $102bn in foreign currency from exports, making them one of the biggest sectors in India.

政府在帮助所有这些变革方面变得越来越积极主动。政府在清理和稳定金融部门方面已经做了大量工作。管理方面的变化已导致企业创立数量激增。中央政府成立了一个部门来除去营商障碍。在2020年，完全在线设立公司成为可能。同年，政府在14个领域引入了“生产链激励”（PLI），这涉及直接支付至少收入的4%以帮助公司建立业务，一旦达到规模，这些激励将逐渐减少。2019年，企业税从35%降至25%。

The government has become increasingly pro-active in helping all of these changes. It has done much to clean up and stabilise the financial sector. Administrative changes have led to a surge in business creation. A central-government department has been created to remove obstacles to doing business. In 2020 it became possible to set up a company entirely online. In the same year the government introduced “production-linked incentives” (pli) in 14 sectors, which involve direct payments of at least 4% of revenues, to help firms get established and then phase them out once scale has been achieved. In 2019 corporate taxes were reduced from 35% to 25%.

在这种背景下，印度正在变得更具创新性。一家名为PatentVector的分析公司的一项研究显示，由于申请流程得以简化，印度专利的价值在过去五年中增长了三倍以上。一个私人太空产业已经出现，超过200家公司填满了这一领域。其中两家公司正处于即将发射火箭的边缘。

Against this background, India is becoming more innovative. A study by PatentVector, an analytics firm, showed the valuation of Indian patents has more than tripled over the past five years, as the filing process has been simplified. A private space industry has emerged, with more than 200 firms filling the sector. Two are on the verge of launching rockets.

许多问题仍然存在。营商环境的改善还不够。法律纠纷积压严重——截至十二月，法院中有5000万起待处理案件。获得可用陆地、启动裁员以及基于功绩聘用员工仍然困难。新项目仍可能需要几十个许可证。太多问题仍然围绕着如何找到并取悦那些能够解决问题的人展开。

Many problems remain. Ease of doing business has not improved enough. Legal disputes are backlogged—as of December, there were 50m cases pending in the courts. It remains hard to obtain usable land, to initiate redundancies, and to hire on the basis of merit. New projects can still require dozens of permits. Too much still revolves around finding, and buttering up, the person who can get things done.

所有这些也许可以解释为什么政府的资本投资大力推动尚未像莫迪先生期望的那样“吸引”私营部门。《经济学人》对在上市公司bse500指数中的企业进行的分析，利用了来自彭博社的数据，显示截至2023年3月的财政年度，投资占收入比例为6.3%，低于疫情前的7%。乐观主义者希望，2022年创新项目的公告数量的增加，表明即将到来的激增。

All this may explain why the government’s capital investment push has yet to “crowd in” the private sector to the degree Mr Modi would like. The Economist’s analysis of firms in the bse500 index of listed firms, using data from Bloomberg, shows that investment as a share of revenues was 6.3% in the financial year to March 2023, down from 7% before covid. Optimists hope that announcements of new projects, which rose to decadal highs in 2022, indicate an impending surge.

政策不确定性也是一个问题。对进口和出口的税收和关税经常变动。2016年取消两张最大面额钞票使小型企业岌岌可危，并震惊了大型企业。企业担心政治干预，以及法治在印度是否可靠。根据咨询公司Henley and Partners收集的数据，2022年和2023年印度有1.4万百万富翁净流出，仅次于中国，略高于俄罗斯。

There is also policy uncertainty. Taxes and tariffs on imports and exports change frequently. The demonetisation of the two-largest banknotes in 2016 crushed small businesses and startled large ones. Firms worry about political interference, and whether the rule of law is reliable in India. According to data collected by Henley and Partners, a consultancy, India had a net outflow of 14,000 millionaires in 2022 and 2023, the highest after China and just beating Russia.

仍然需要进行许多变革。但政府甚至被视为解决方案的增长部分，而不是问题的最大部分，这一点清楚地表明了印度已经取得了多么大的进步。■

Much change still needs to happen. But that the government is even being talked about as a growing part of the solution, rather than the biggest part of the problem, makes it clear how far India has come. ■

回到目录

特别报道 | 一个棘手的三人组 (Special report | A tricky trio)

印度的领导者必须应对三个经济弱点 (India’s leaders must deal with three economic weaknesses)

为了使增长更加可持续，它需要更加广泛基础 (For growth to become more sustainable, it needs to be broader based)

当印度反对党国大党的资深议员沙什·塔鲁尔批评当前的滴灌经济模式并称其为“滴漏型经济”并没有真正滴下来时，他有些道理。这类估计方法有点模糊，但从2000年到2022年，印度前1%的人口所占财富份额从33%增长到41%，使印度成为仅次于巴西的世界第二不平等的主要国家。然而，在其他方面，问题在于缺乏向上滴漏。经济并未使低收入者成为增长的源泉。

When shashi tharoor, a stalwart member of parliament for the opposition Congress Party, criticises the current growth model as “trickle-down economics” that doesn’t trickle down, he has a partial point. Estimates of this nature are fuzzy, but from 2000 to 2022, the wealth share of the top 1% of Indians grew from 33% to 41%, making India the second-most unequal major country in the world, after Brazil. In other ways, though, the problem is a lack of trickle up. The economy is not allowing those with low incomes to become a source of growth.

印度经济存在三个相互关联的缺陷：贫困意味着需求不足；劳动力市场人才短缺；增长效益在地理上分布不均。尽管该国通过再分配在减少贫困影响方面取得了一定进展，但还是有一些程度上缓解了这些缺陷所带来的痛苦；生活水平正在提高。但是，如果经济增长要持续下去，这些根深蒂固的缺陷必须得到解决。

India’s economy has three intertwined deficiencies: its poverty means there is not enough demand; there are not enough people in the workforce; and there is not enough geographical spread in the benefits of growth. The progress that the country has made in reducing the effects of poverty through redistribution goes some way to minimising the pain of these deficiencies; the standard of living is improving (see charts). But if economic growth is to last, these deep-seated deficiencies must be addressed.

首先来看需求不足的问题。尽管印度的国内生产总值为3.7万亿美元，但仅有6000万人年收入超过1万美元。不到5%。过去十年，人均消费只增长了每年2.5-3%。

Start with the lack of demand. Though India’s gdp is $3.7trn, just 60m of its people earn over $10,000 a year. That is less than 5%. Over the past decade consumption per head grew by just 2.5-3% a year.

当国内需求不足时，显而易见的答案是通过出口开拓外国市场需求。与中国崛起相比，印度应该是一个制造业巨头，出口到各个国家和地区，因为中国拥有史上最大规模的廉价劳动力市场。【插入图片】这样的比较可能会暗示，部分原因是大部分廉价劳动力缺乏技能所导致。但还有其他因素在起作用。

When domestic demand is insufficient, the obvious answer is to tap into foreign demand through exports. A casual comparison to the rise of China might suggest that, blessed with the largest pool of cheap labour in a single market that the world has ever seen, India should be a manufacturing giant exporting to all and sundry. Part of the reason that it is not is that too much of that cheap labour is unskilled. But there are other factors at play.

总部位于德里的智库“Prosperiti”的布瓦那·阿南指出，上世纪90年代印度的改革仅限于国家层面；对土地和劳动力市场的管制，大部分都未触及。这与那时正将中国转变为出口强国的改革形成鲜明对比：中国的土地和劳动力市场非常灵活。即使在今天，印度仍然有法律要求工厂在员工超过100人时需经州政府批准辞退工人。莫迪的经济顾问委员会的普纳姆·古普塔表示，科技行业远远优于制造业的一个原因是它的管制要少得多。

Bhuvana Anand of Prosperiti, a Delhi-based think-tank, points out that the Indian reforms of the 1990s were restricted to the national level; regulations on land and labour, which are state matters, went mostly untouched. That is in stark contrast to the reforms which were turning China into an export powerhouse at the same time: there land and labour markets were very flexible. Even today, India has laws that require factories to get state permission to fire workers if they have over 100 employees on the books. One reason the tech sector has so outperformed manufacturing is that it has been far less regulated, says Poonam Gupta of Mr Modi’s Economic Advisory Council.

众所周知，正如拉古拉姆·拉詹和罗希特·兰巴在最近的著作《打破模式》中所观察的那样，中国的增长创造了一个世界，追随其脚步已不再是一个选项。中国已经把世界作为工厂，制造业越来越趋向自动化。中国源自于其在全球化快速发展时期所获得的力量，这也是世界现在走向去全球化的原因之一，这一发展在一定程度上有利于印度，但也是一个巨大挑战。

What is more, as Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba observe in “Breaking the Mould”, a recent book, China’s growth created a world where following in its path is no longer an option. China already serves the world as a workshop, and manufacturing has become more automated. The power China has derived from its growth at a time of rapid globalisation is one of the reasons why the world is now de-globalising, a development that helps India in as much as “China+1” policies may favour it but which is also a big challenge.

担任政府先进制造业委员会主席的已退休的商人帕万·戈埃纳卡表示，如今印度出口商与中国相比面临着较大的成本劣势。他认为这个差距主要来自于物流成本、高昂的成本（如能源成本）、其他国家对印度出口征收的关税，以及参与企业的规模不足。他称这些问题都正在得到解决。

Pawan Goenka, a retired businessman who heads a government committee on advanced manufacturing, says that today Indian exporters are at a big cost disadvantage compared with those in China. He breaks the gap down into logistics costs, high factor costs (such as for power), the tariffs other countries put on Indian exports and a lack of scale on the part of the ﬁrms involved—“All of which”, he says, “are being worked on.”

基础设施投资可以改善物流，政府可以在贸易方面做些事情。莫迪政府长期回避签订贸易协议，但目前已在追求多项贸易协议，希望减少对农产品、汽车和纺织品出口的关税。

Infrastructure investment can help with logistics, and the government can do something about trade. Having fought shy of trade agreements for some time, Mr Modi’s government is now pursuing a number of them in the hope of cutting tariffs on its exports of agricultural goods, cars and textiles.

基于这些措施和其他措施需要一定时间才能产生预期效果，政府还在提供补贴以鼓励出口：向包括外国企业在内的14个行业的企业提供总值260亿美元的生产链激励计划（pli）。截至目前仅发放了10亿美元，一些人对政府对该计划的承诺表示怀疑。

On the basis that these and other measures will take time to have their desired effects, the government is also offering subsidies to encourage exporters: a $26bn pot of production-linked incentives (pli) for firms (including foreign ones) in 14 industries. With only $1bn disbursed to date, some have doubts about the government’s commitment to the scheme.

电子产品已经成为一抹亮色。2023年，苹果计划增加在印度生产的iPhone产量，占全球供应的7%，到2026年将增至20%；据报道已达到14%。谷歌将很快开始在印度生产Pixel手机。苹果的信心表明，借助对外国公司的开放，印度可以在高科技产品上竞争。但这还没有改变总体发展方向。印度在全球制造业出口中的份额保持平稳。企业投资和外商直接投资尚未起飞。

Electronics have emerged as a bright spot. In 2023 came the news that Apple planned to increase its production of iPhones in India, then around 7% of global supply, to 20% by 2026; it is reported to have already reached 14%. Google will soon begin making Pixel phones in India. Apple’s confidence suggests that, with openness to foreign companies, India can compete in high-tech products. But that has yet to change the overall trajectory. India’s share of global manufactured exports is flat. Corporate investment and foreign direct investment have yet to take off.

没有打开出口市场会限制劳动力需求，进而导致就业市场疲软：这是第二个缺陷，也是由人口结构恶化而加剧的。印度一半以上的人口年龄不满25岁。每年有1000万人加入劳动力大军。这本应是经济的福音。不幸的是，并没有以相应速度创造出高效的就业机会。

Not cracking the export market limits the demand for labour, contributing to a sluggish job market: the second deficiency, and one that is being exacerbated by demographics. Over half India’s population is under 25. Every year 10m people join the workforce. That should be a boon for the economy. Unfortunately it is not creating productive jobs at a commensurate rate.

获取真正问题规模的把握很难，尤其在涉及女性问题时，她们的劳动参与率尤其低。印度政府首席经济顾问阿南塔·纳格斯瓦兰在最近的专栏中指出，随着家庭从农业转变，并且收入增加，预计人们会预期女性退出市场型工作。事实上，2023年的诺贝尔经济学奖部分归因于一项工作，该工作显示随着国家发展，女性劳动参与率会遵循“u型曲线”，先下降后上升。然而，这种现象应该普遍存在，而印度的比率似乎远远低于其他国家。背后有许多复杂因素。但也有简单的因素，比如限制性的劳动法；例如，在许多邦，妇女是不允许夜间工作的。

Getting a handle on the true size of the problem is hard, particularly when it comes to women, whose labour-force participation is particularly low. Anantha Nageswaran, the government’s chief economic adviser, noted in a recent column that one should expect women to drop out of market-based work as families shift away from agriculture and incomes increase. Indeed, the Nobel prize in economics in 2023 was awarded partly for work showing that female labour-force participation follows a “u-curve” as countries develop, dropping and then rising again. Yet this phenomenon should apply broadly, and India’s rate seems to be well below that in other countries (see chart). There are many complex factors behind this. But there are also simple ones like restrictive labour laws; in many states, for example, women are not allowed to work night shifts.

而且，可能推动这种变化的从农业转变很难看到。印度就业中农业的份额仍然高达43%，高于2019年的41%。2022-23年的数据显示，自2012年最后一次调查以来，农村地区的真实消费年增长率仅约为3％，城市地区则为2.4％。

What is more, the shift away from agriculture which might drive such a change is hard to see. The share of Indian employment in agriculture remains high at 43%, up from 41% in 2019. Data for 2022-23 suggest that real consumption grew only about 3% a year in rural areas and 2.4% a year in urban areas, on average, since the last survey in 2012.

第三个缺陷是不同地区绩效的差异。像班加罗尔这样的南方城市和南欧一样富裕。而北部的一些地区则像撒哈拉以南的非洲一样贫困。德里政府正在竭力帮助贫困地区，让富裕地区感到愤怒，因为他们贡献了绝大部分的税收。一些贫困邦，比如北方邦，正在吸引投资。然而，在过去的十年里，南部最南端的七个邦与其他21个邦之间的人均收入差距从35％增加到50％。南部有五个邦占据了66%的it服务出口和30%的外国直接投资，尽管人口不到总人口的20％。

The third deficiency is variation in performance across regions. Southern cities like Bangalore are as rich as southern Europe. Parts of the north are like sub-Saharan Africa. The government in Delhi is trying hard to help poor regions, much to the annoyance of rich ones which contribute the bulk of tax revenue. Some poor states, like UP, are attracting investment. Yet over the past decade, the gap in income per person between the southernmost seven states and the 21 others has grown from 35% to 50%. Five states in the south are home to 66% of it-services exports and 30% of foreign direct investment despite having less than 20% of the population.

有迹象表明，邦际竞争正在刺激一些贫困邦的投资。但大规模的迁移也是必要的。印度有1亿临时移民在富裕地区工作，并将汇款寄回家乡。然而，永久性迁徙，即移民带着家人一起来，似乎不足以弥补贫困邦较高的出生率。

There are signs that interstate competition is spurring investment in some poor states. But large-scale migration is also needed. India has 100m temporary migrants who work in rich areas and send remittances back home. Yet permanent movement, where migrants bring their families, appears too small to compensate for higher birth rates in poor states.

印度已经找到了缓解这些问题的方法。政府为大多数贫困家庭提供了银行账户，并直接向这些账户发送福利支付。在截至2023年3月的财政年度，政府通过这种方式发送了450亿美元的现金（占国内生产总值的1.2%）。

India has found ways to alleviate some of this. The government has given most poor households bank accounts to which it sends welfare payments directly. In the fiscal year to March 2023, it sent $45bn in cash (1.2% of gdp) this way.

还有无数其他项目。“我们已经建造了4000万套房屋，足够供应澳大利亚每个居民；建造了1.1亿个厕所，相当于德国人均一个；2530万市民获得了自来水管道，这样就涵盖巴西所有人口，”莫迪先生在G20中的代表阿米塔布·坎特说道。再加上众多州级项目，你会看到一个部分印度地区增长并补偿其他地区的体系。根据世界银行的数据，贫困率（2017年以每日2.15美元为阈值）已经从2000年的40%下降到2021年的13%。利用2022-23年消费调查数据更新的贫困计算方法显示，贫困率已降至5%以下。寿命增加，婴儿死亡率下降。

There are countless other programmes. “We’ve built 40m houses, enough for every person living in Australia; 110m toilets, one for every German; and piped water for 253m citizens, that would cover everyone in Brazil,” says Amitabh Kant, Mr Modi’s sherpa to the g20. Include numerous state-level programmes and you have a system in which part of India grows and compensates the rest. Poverty rates (at a threshold of $2.15 a day in 2017) have fallen from 40% in 2000 to just 13% by 2021, according to the World Bank. An updated method for calculating poverty using data from the 2022-23 consumption survey, suggests it has fallen below 5%. Life expectancy is up, and infant mortality down.

2014-2018年担任印度政府首席经济顾问的阿尔温德·苏布拉马尼安指出，新的福利安排涉及“公共提供私人产品”。在一个健康的市场经济中，市民应该购买自己的煤气。政府应该专注于教育这样的公共产品；私人消费和出口将推动经济增长。鉴于这三个缺陷，政府已经介入。 ■

Arvind Subramanian, the government’s chief economic adviser in 2014-18, notes the new welfare set-up involves the “public provision of private goods”. In a healthy market economy, citizens would buy their own cooking gas. Governments would focus on public goods like education; private consumption and exports would fuel growth. In the light of the three deficiencies, the government has stepped in. ■

回到目录

特别报告 | 恒星太阳 (Special report | Stellar solar)

为印度经济带来巨大好处 (Going green could bring huge benefits for India’s economy)

但也带来许多紧张情绪。 (But it is also bringing plenty of tensions)

每天有1,000辆卡车挤过一条单车道通往印度与巴基斯坦边境附近的Khavda，为Adani集团的730平方公里太阳能和风能发电厂建设。项目完成后，总装机容量为30千兆瓦（gw），可提供印度当前电力消耗的4%。

Every day 1,000 trucks jostle along a single-lane road to Khavda, near India’s border with Pakistan, to build the Adani Group’s 730 square kilometre solar and wind farm. When completed, the project, with 30 gigawatts (gw) of capacity, could provide 4% of India’s current electricity consumption.

总体而言，Gautam Adani计划到2030年建设45gw的可再生能源装机容量。他和印度最大的大亨Mukesh Ambani将共同在未来十年内在可再生能源领域投资1,500亿美元。在过去五年中，印度新安装的发电容量中超过80%都是在可再生能源领域。印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪希望到2030年将可再生能源装机容量增加到500gw。

In all, Gautam Adani plans to build 45gw of renewable-energy capacity by 2030. Between them, he and Mukesh Ambani, India’s biggest tycoon, will together invest $150bn over the next decade in renewables. Over the past five years, over 80% of the newly installed generating capacity in India has been in the renewable sector. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, wants to increase renewable capacity to 500gw by 2030.

令人印象深刻；也是迫切需要的。印度的燃煤发电厂是导致2019年约100万印度人死亡的恶劣户外空气质量的主要贡献者；加上室内空气污染，导致大约60万人死亡，据一项在《柳叶刀》杂志上的研究，这些影响被计算为印度国内生产总值的1.4%。发电站也排放大量二氧化碳：2022年达到1.8千兆吨，占全球燃煤排放总量的12%，且呈上升趋势。印度在全球化石燃料和工业累计排放中所占比重很低：仅为3%。但作为受气候变暖影响最严重的国家之一，印度对未来排放尽可能低有着强烈兴趣，这将意味着需要在国内进行清洁。

Impressive stuff; also sorely needed. India’s coal-fired power plants are a major contributor to the atrocious outdoor air quality that killed around 1m Indians in 2019; add this burden to the indoor air pollution which kills around 600,000 and the total effect is calculated to be costing India 1.4% of annual output, according to a study in the Lancet. The power stations also pump out a lot of carbon dioxide: 1.8 gigatonnes in 2022, 12% of all the world’s emissions from coal, and rising. India’s share of the world’s cumulative emissions from fossil fuels and industry is very low: just 3%. But as a country which will be very badly affected by a hotter climate, it has a powerful interest in future emissions being as low as possible, and that will mean cleaning up at home.

尽管如此，印度的排放量仍在增加。燃煤发电站使过去20年中印度电力消耗量增长了两倍。即使实现可再生目标，这需要建设速度从今天的15gw每年增加到几乎60gw每年，但随着消费增长速度，政府认为还需要更多：根据电力部长R.K.辛格的说法，到2031年将需要新增80gw的燃煤装机容量。

Despite all this, India’s emissions continue to rise. Coal-fired power stations have allowed a tripling in the country’s electrical power consumption in the past 20 years. Even if its renewable goals are reached, which would require the pace of the build-out to increase from today’s 15GW a year to almost 60GW a year, the rate at which consumption is growing leads the government to think more will be needed: 80gw of new coal capacity by 2031, according to R.K. Singh, the minister for power.

有明显的激励做更多。太阳能电池板价格便宜且正变得更便宜，而且印度阳光充沛，使其比其他地方的价值更高；此外，屋顶太阳能电池板得到了大量补贴。允许企业减少对国有电力配电委员会的依赖的太阳能装机提供了巨大的节省潜力：长期以来，“discomms”向工业额外收费以补贴农业。

There are clear incentives for doing more. Solar panels are cheap and getting cheaper, and India is a sun-drenched place, making them even better value than they are elsewhere; what is more, roof-top solar is heavily subsidised. Solar installations which allow businesses to reduce their reliance on the state-owned power-distribution commissions offer the potential for big savings: the “discomms” have long charged industry extra to subsidise agriculture.

但也存在降低的障碍。政府正在削减繁文缛节，以更快地将可再生能源项目连接到输电系统，并利用逆向拍卖来优先考虑最具成本效益的项目。

There are also barriers to bring down. The government is slashing red tape to get renewable projects connected to transmission systems faster and using reverse auctions to prioritise the most cost-effective ones.

如果太阳能带来电动车，将获得更多重大收益。电动摩托车和汽车不仅将进一步减少空气污染，减少经济对全球油价的敏感性，这是一种长期的脆弱来源。在印度制造，或使用印度电池（Ola Electric正在泰米尔纳德邦建造一家电池超级工厂，宣称将是全球最大的），在签署正确的贸易协议后，还可以提供一个令人兴奋的出口市场，为世界提供与从中国出口的产品不同的选择。

If solar power brings with it electric vehicles, there are more big wins. Electric scooters and cars will not just further reduce air pollution and reduce the economy’s exposure to global oil prices, a chronic source of vulnerability. Those manufactured in India, or using Indian batteries (Ola Electric is building a battery gigafactory in Tamil Nadu which it says will be the largest in the world), could also, with the right trade deals in place, offer an exciting export market, offering the world an alternative to those exported from China.

事情并不会一帆风顺。除其他因素外，中国不希望有竞争对手。清洁能源公司ReNew的老板Sumant Sinha称，中国正在阻止出口用于制造太阳能晶体片的设备，以防止印度在绿色供应链中立足。印度外交官指责中国“倾销”电池、电动车和其他清洁技术产品到全球市场。绿色雄心将印度置于一场贸易战的中心。

It will not be plain sailing. Among other things, China does not want a rival. Sumant Sinha, the boss of ReNew, a clean-energy firm, says the country is blocking the export of equipment to make solar wafers so as to prevent India gaining a foothold in green supply-chains. Indian diplomats accuse China of “dumping” batteries , electric vehicles and other clean-tech goods on global markets. Green ambitions have put India in the middle of a trade war. ■

回到目录

特别报道 | 为未来打造基础 (Special report | Building for the future)

印度若要维持增长，必须进行更深层次的改变 (India must make much deeper changes if it is to sustain its growth)

提升人力资本及改善中央与各邦之间的关系至关重要。 (Improved human capital and a better relationship between the centre and the states will be crucial)

18世纪初，印度是世界上两大经济体之一，另一个是中国。其中一部分原因在于人口数量庞大，而对于印度来说，被领导工业革命的国家殖民化了这一切。1947年从英国获得独立时，印度仅占世界经济的3%（根据购买力调整）。1991年开始实施大规模自由化时，这一比例为1.1%（按市场汇率计算）。如今，印度经济规模占全球的3.6%，分散在18%的全球人口中。如果能够保持每年6%或更高的增长，就像过去30年一直做的那样，在这个现代国家100周年时，印度将占全球经济的10%或更多。而根据其他地区增长的假设，到2070年代，印度可能重新进入世界经济的最高层次。

At the start of the 18th century India was one of the world’s two largest economies, with China the other. Part of that came down to sheer population and, in India’s case, being colonised by the country which led the Industrial Revolution put paid to that. When it achieved independence from Britain in 1947, India made up just 3% of the world economy (adjusted for purchasing power). In 1991, when its great liberalisation started, the figure was 1.1% (at market exchange rates). Today it is 3.6%, spread between 18% of the world’s population. If it can keep growing at 6% or more, as it has for the past 30 years, then by the time of the modern country’s 100th birthday, itwill represent 10% or more of the world economy. And depending on assumptions about growth elsewhere, it could be back in the top rank by the 2070s.

但30年的这种增长还有很大挑战，它需要一个比过去30年推动自由化的广泛而深刻的国家共识。这将需要中央政府、邦政府和经济增长将集中的城市之间达成一项新的协议。而作为印度, 即使是印度，这需要灵活性。对于世界上人口最多且多样性最广泛的国家，并没有一种简单的适合所有情况的方法。

But 30 more years of such growth is a tall order, and it will need a wider and deeper national consensus than that which drove the past 30 years of liberalisation. It will require a new compact between central government, state government and the cities where growth will be concentrated. And, India being India, it will require flexibility. There is no simple one size fits all for the world’s most populous and diverse country.

其中有一些可以通过加深自由化来实现，迄今为止，大多数印度精英都支持自由化，而这可以由中央政府单独完成，选举政治允许的话。这一议程的一个明显部分是贸易。

Some of this can be achieved by deepening the liberalisation which has been supported by most of India’s elites so far and which can be achieved by central government on its own, electoral politics permitting. An obvious part of this agenda is trade.

在他任职期间的大部分时间里，莫迪对贸易协定持矛盾态度，反映出过去的协定伤害了印度的信念。一位向莫迪提供建议的工业家表示，印度与所有错误的国家签署了自由贸易协议，而且原因完全错误。不过，这位工业家补充道，人们越来越意识到增长需要出口，而出口需要协议。新战略的确切轮廓还不明朗，但自2021年以来，印度已与澳大利亚、阿联酋以及今年三月与四个小型欧洲国家达成了协议。英国可能跟进。美国市场虽因其国内政治原因暂不在议程内，但与欧盟的谈判正在进行。

For much of his tenure, Mr Modi has been ambivalent about trade deals, reflecting a belief that past deals hurt India. The country “signed ftas with all the wrong countries…for all the wrong reasons,” says an industrialist who advises Mr Modi. The industrialist adds, though, that there is growing recognition that growth requires exports, and exports require deals. The exact contours of the new strategy are unclear but, since 2021, India has done deals with Australia, the uae and, in March, four small European states. Britain could follow. The biggest prizes are the markets of America, the European Union and Asia. Though America is off the table because of its own domestic politics, negotiations with the eu are ongoing.

自由化的一个附带好处是，印度可以放弃目前向出口商提供的补贴。智库icrier的研究人员最近的一项分析表明，补贴和关税在一定程度上互相抵消。过去十年里，平均关税水平从13%增长到18%，这推高了进口商品的价格，而出口商需要这些商品，因为印度的国内供应商太过稀少，无法成为充足的替代品。政府既加速又制动，或许这就是解释为什么补贴至今还未取得太多成果的原因。

A side-benefit of liberalisation would be that India could step back from the subsidies it currently offers exporters. A recent analysis by researchers at icrier, a think-tank, suggests the subsidies and tariffs are partly cancelling each other out. Average tariff levels have grown from 13% to 18% in the past decade, driving up the prices of imported goods which exporters need, as India’s domestic suppliers are too meagre to be an adequate substitute. The fact that the government has its feet on both accelerator and brake may explain why the subsidies have not yet borne much fruit.

中央政府还可以做很多事情来增加税基。印度税收占GDP的比率为一般水平的18%，过去十年几乎没有变化。仅有0.3%的印度人缴纳了76%的所得税，这表明税基需要扩大。其影响之一是80%的债务占GDP比例，这是大型新兴经济体中排名第三，带来的利息支出占了年度预算的20%。商品服务税（gst）的引入表明税制改革是可能的，并可以增加税收。进一步简化税制将提高遵从度和回报率。

There is also much the central government can do to boost the tax base. India’s tax-to-gdp ratio is a middling 18% and has barely budged over the past decade. Just 0.3% of Indians pay 76% of income tax, suggesting the base needs to expand. One impact is an 80% debt-to-gdp ratio, the third largest among big emerging economies, which brings with it interest payments which eat up 20% of the annual budget. The introduction of the goods-and-service tax (gst) shows that tax reform is possible and can increase revenues. Further simplifying the tax system would boost compliance and returns.

额外的收入可能用于研发。印度的研发支出占GDP的0.7%。在中国为2.4%，在经合组织国家，平均为2.7%。印度的公司特别滞后。马哈拉施特拉邦的老板努沙德·福布斯表示，韩国公司三星的研发支出超过了整个印度的总和。更多的资金将使顶尖研究人员留在印度。简化官僚手续也是一种方式。国际合作仍然深陷繁文缛节中。

One of the things more revenue might be used for is R&D. India’s r&d spending is 0.7% of GDP. In China it is 2.4%, in oecd countries, on average 2.7%. Companies are especially lagging in India. Naushad Forbes, a boss in Maharashtra, says that Samsung, a South Korean firm, spends more on r&d than all of India combined. More money would keep top researchers in India. Cutting bureaucracy would, too. International collaboration remains mired in red tape.

还有其他改进政府预算的方法。从国有实体中进行股权出售将减少总债务，同时使更多经济领域面向竞争。一个明显可以削减支出的地方是农业补贴，占了 nearly 10% 的预算。但这些是一个政治雷区，总理只进入过一些领域，而且都没有成功。

There are other ways to improve the government’s budget. Divestment from state-owned entities would cut overall debts as well as opening more of the economy up to competition. An obvious place to cut spending is on agricultural subsidies, which make up nearly 10% of the budget. But these are a political minefield into which the prime minister has made only a few forays, none of them successful.

可能帮助他做到这一点的一件事是与邦之间建立新关系。中央政府和邦之间权力分配是使印度成为可能的一件事，也是让治理印度变得艰巨的原因之一。许多看似明显的但仍未完成的改革都涉及到印度宪法将权力在中央和邦之间划分（如劳工、能源或教育领域），或完全投入邦的领域（如土地）。

One of the things which might help him do so is a new relationship with the states. The division of power between the centre and the states is one of the things which makes India possible—and also one of the things that can make governing it feel impossible. Many of the reforms which seem obvious to outsiders but remain undone are in domains where the Indian constitution divides power between centre and states (as with labour, energy or schooling) or invests it in the states alone (as with land).

建立共识因此是必要的，不仅仅是在精英之间，自上世纪90年代以来一直在进行的自由化案例中已经讨论过，而是在全国各个团体之间，他们的利益往往只有部分一致。印度已故财政部长阿伦•贾特利对通过商品服务税法案起到了至关重要的作用，因为他帮助说服各州政府为了国家市场的利益而牺牲自治权。目前还没有人承担起这一角色。

Building consensus is thus a necessity, not just among elites, as has been done with the case for liberalisation since the 1990s, but among groups nationwide whose interests are often only partially aligned. India’s late finance minister, Arun Jaitley, was crucial to the passage of the gst because he helped convince state governments to sacrifice autonomy for the sake of the national market. No one has taken on that role.

更需要更多这样的桥梁建设者；只有通过各级政府的积极参与，明天的改革才能实现。以加深国内市场为例，这对提供就业机会和促进增长至关重要。在国家层面上，新的劳动法仍然具有限制性，但至少已经简化了一系列规定。在州和地方层面的障碍甚至更大。合同执行力仍然薄弱。一项研究发现，在地方法院填补法官空缺将带来的经济收益是成本的30倍。土地使用限制和高负债的国有能源分配公司使企业成本上升。

The need for more such bridge-builders is great; only by securing active participation between all levels of government will the reforms of tomorrow be achieved. Take the deepening of the internal market, which is vital to providing jobs and new scope for growth. At the national level a new labour code is still restrictive, but it has at least shortened a list of rules. The obstacles are even greater at the state and local levels. Contract enforcement remains weak. One study found that filling judge vacancies in district courts would produce economic gains 30 times the costs. Land-use restrictions and highly indebted state-run energy-distribution companies raise costs for firms.

或者以教育为例。任何严肃的计划来推动印度经济增长还需要深化精英人才之外的人力资本。即使认为印度应该专注于制造业也是如此。一家计划在本十年内将南印度的投资率翻倍的全球制造商的老板表示，他在雇用设计和营销等角色时面临更大的人才瓶颈，而不是在工厂工人方面。

Or take schooling. Any serious plan to boost Indian growth also requires far deeper human capital beyond the elites. This is true even if you think India should focus on manufacturing. The boss of a global manufacturer that is planning to double its rate of investment in south India this decade, says he faces bigger talent bottlenecks hiring for roles like design and marketing than for factory workers.

印度目前在小学阶段实现了几乎普遍入学率。但是一个全国性的调查显示，在2010年代，学生们的学习成果停滞不前，然后在大流行期间下降。到2022年，只有五分之二的农村印度小学毕业生能阅读供二年级学生阅读的文本。教师工资并不低，但教师缺席率往往是20-30%，这表明存在着较差的治理。而且教学也过分局限。内部迁移的障碍之一是学校经常采用地方语言，而不是全国性语言进行教学。尽管中央政府可能希望推动改革，但它无法这样做；教育机构的运作在于州和地方层面，中央政府无法介入。

India now has near universal enrolment in primary school. But aser, a nationwide survey, suggests that outcomes plateaued in the 2010s and then fell during the pandemic. In 2022 only two-fifths of students leaving primary school in rural India could read a text intended for second-years. Teacher pay is not bad, yet teacher absentee rates are often 20-30%, suggesting poor governance. And teaching is parochial, too. One of the barriers to internal migration is that schools often teach in regional languages, not national ones. Much as central government might like to drive reform, it cannot; the machinery of education operates at a state and local level to which it has no access.

印度人民党内的领导人没有否认这一点。他们认为各州越来越在争相吸引投资，正如莫迪在掌管古吉拉特邦时所做的那样，这是一个令人乐观的原因。一些人认为中央政府应该利用其对大部分税收的控制权作为一种手段和诱因，激励更多的州遵循国家的优先事项。仍然有一些人认为，如果印度人民党在更多的邦（如乌克兰邦的拉塔亚总督）拥有控制权，并且在中央拥有绝对多数，国家的问题将得到解决。但是有理由认为需要某种更深层次和更微妙的努力。

Leaders within the bjp do not deny this. They suggest the fact that states are increasingly competing with each other for investment, as Mr Modi did when he ran Gujarat, is a reason for optimism. Some think the central government should use its control over most tax revenues as a stick and a carrot to incentivise more states to follow national priorities. Still others argue that if only the bjp had control over more states, as it does through leaders like Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, and a whacking majority in the centre, the country’s problems would be solved. But there are reasons to think something deeper and subtler is needed.

印度需要的许多事情——从提高法院效率到加强教育——都取决于提高能力，尤其是在地方层面。1992年，印度修正宪法，将政府许多职能下放到地方一级。但这一修正仅在纸面上。正如第15届财政委员会主席尼•K•辛格所言，“三个“F”——资金、职员和职能”并未随之而来。仅有15%的政府员工在地方一级工作：在中国和美国，这一数字为60%。地方政府的支出仅占资源的3%，而中国则占50%。

Much of what India needs—from making courts efficient to shoring up education—depends on improved capacity, especially at the local level. In 1992 India amended its constitution to shift many functions of government to the local level. But the amendment stayed on paper. As N.K. Singh, the chairman of the 15th Finance Commission observes, “the three F’s—funds, functionaries and functions” did not follow. Just 15% of government employees work at the local level: in China and America the figure is 60%. Local government spending accounts for a paltry 3% of resources, compared with 50% in China.

地方并不一定意味着小规模。在大城市，存在“治理失调”的问题，选举产生的市长只是象征性角色，控制权在州政府任命的官僚手中，这些官僚对地方关切反应较弱。印度大部分仍然视自己为基本上是农业社会，因此治理经常忽视城市的需求。一位政府顾问表示，“一个笑话是你成为马哈拉施特拉邦首席部长，是为了控制孟买。”由于大部分增长来自城市，这一点尤为重要。城市需要成为创新中心，设有管理良好的大学，周围环绕着创业者的需求不断增加，使这一问题变得尤为紧迫。

Local does not necessarily mean small-scale. The problems of “governance mismatch” are acute in big cities, where elected mayors are ceremonial and control sits with state-appointed bureaucrats less responsive to local concerns. Much of India still sees itself as fundamentally agrarian, and so governance often ignores the needs of cities. “The joke is that you become the chief minister of Maharashtra in order to gain control of Bombay,” says an adviser to the government. Since most growth comes from the cities this matters a lot. The increasing need for cities to become centres of innovation, with well-run universities surrounded by entrepreneurs, makes the issue particularly pressing.

总体而言，印度政府的质量与其行使的规模成正比。这使得将权力下放至治理链条似乎对中央和州政府都充满了困难。但对于一个真正大国要迅速发展，某种重构是必要的。邓小平领导下的中国改革者早就意识到了这一点。印度则尚未掌握这个技巧。

Broadly speaking, the quality of Indian government is proportional to the scale on which it is exercised. This makes the idea of delegating power down the chain of governance seem fraught to central and state governments alike. But for a really large country to develop quickly some such restructuring is necessary. Chinese reformers under Deng Xiaoping realised this early on. India has yet to grasp the nettle.

A national conversation is needed to obtain the buy-in of groups that stand to lose from reform. Mr Modi has made progress extending his party’s support among lower-class groups, but there is still a big divide between urban and rural areas and between the centre and the southern states, and Mr Modi has stirred up animosity towards Muslims and other minorities. In 2020 he tried to reform agriculture, but pushed through the changes without consulting anyone, causing massive protests, and ended up backing down. Bolstering city governance has stalled because no one wants to give up power.

需要开展全国性对话，以获得改革中将遭受损失的群体的支持。莫迪先生已经在扩大他的政党在底层群体中的支持方面取得了进展，但城乡之间、中央和南部邦之间仍存在巨大分歧，莫迪还煽动了对穆斯林和其他少数群体的敌意。2020年，他试图进行农业改革，但在未征询任何人的情况下推行了这些改变，引发了大规模抗议，最终不得不妥协。加强城市治理的努力陷入停滞，因为没有人愿意放弃权力。

India is a diverse democracy, in which no party has ever won more than half the vote, and a federal one made up of 36 diverse states and territories. Leaders cannot bulldoze everything through. That is why building a lasting consensus around reform is essential to sustaining India’s rise, a consensus as enduring as that on liberalisation in the early 1990s but far wider based. If that can be done, not only will 1.4bn people be better served, but the world at large could have a new engine of growth. ■

印度是一个多元化的民主国家，没有任何政党曾经赢得过半数以上的选票，它是由36个各自独特的邦和领土组成的联邦国家。领导者们不能一意孤行。这就是为什么围绕改革建立持久共识对维系印度崛起至关重要，这种共识应该像上世纪90年代初的自由化共识一样持久，但基础更广泛。如果能够做到这一点，不仅将为14亿人民提供更好的服务，而且全球可能会拥有一个新的增长引擎。 ■

回到目录

经济学人 (The Economist)

本周世界

领袖

中国

美国

商业

国际

财经

科技

亚洲

文化

专题报道

政治 (Politics)

畅所欲言 (Speaking freely)

商业 (Business)

波音，波音，消失。 (Boeing, Boeing, gone)

卡尔的漫画 (KAL’s cartoon)

这周世界2024年4月27日 (The world this week April 27th 2024)

本周封面 (This week’s cover)

我们看世界的方式 (How we saw the world)

印度的经济实力如何？ (How strong is India’s economy?)

虽然不是下一个中国，但它仍有可能改变自身和世界 (It isn’t the next China, but it could still transform itself and the world)

美国最新的援助只会给乌克兰暂时的喘息时间 (America’s latest aid will give Ukraine only a temporary reprieve)

华盛顿的斗争之苦是未来的风险预兆。 (The bitterness of the struggle in Washington is a sign of trouble ahead)

不要对特斯拉及其电动汽车竞争对手感到沮丧 (Don’t be gloomy about Tesla and its EV rivals)

这个行业经历了糟糕的几个月。但需求很可能会增加。 (The industry has had a terrible few months. But demand is likely to pick up)

为什么退出欧洲人权公约对英国来说是个不明智的想法 (Why leaving the ECHR would be a bad idea for Britain)

保守党纯洁度的下一个试金石 (The next litmus test of Tory purity)

随着地球变暖，要当心登革热 (As the planet warms, watch out for dengue fever)

一种由蚊子传播的疾病正在蔓延，必须加以控制。 (A mosquito-borne disease is spreading—and must be curbed)

中国网络如何大规模洗白黑钱 (How Chinese networks clean dirty money on a vast scale)

这些暗黑“银行”正成为跨国犯罪团伙的首选融资方 (These shadowy “banks” are becoming the financiers of choice for transnational criminal gangs)

为什么中国不太可能约束伊朗 (Why China is unlikely to restrain Iran)

北京官员关注的是中国的利益，而非他人的。 (Officials in Beijing are looking out for China’s interests, not anyone else’s)

中国的年轻人纷纷涌向购买黄金 (China’s young people are rushing to buy gold)

他们在动荡时期寻求安全。 (They seek security in troubled times)

中國與俄羅斯的關係日益鞏固 (China’s ties with Russia are growing more solid)

我们的专栏作家参观了位于中国最先进的太空港的未来俄羅斯前哨站。 (Our columnist visits a future Russian outpost in China’s most advanced spaceport)

美国应对学生抗议的努力严重失败 (Efforts to tackle student protests in America have backfired badly)

哥伦比亚大学的警方干预激发了其他大学的抗议 (Police intervention at Columbia has provoked protests at other universities)

国会中的两党合作是否能持续下去？ (Will the dramatic burst of bipartisanship in Congress last?)

尽管拥有重要程序权力，美国的极右势力对政策影响微乎其微。 (For all its procedural power, America’s hard right has had stunningly little influence on policy)

你从未听说过的最重要气候机构 (The most important climate agency you’ve never heard of)

笨拙的国会让美国的联邦能源监管委员会备受瞩目 (An inept Congress puts America’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the spotlight)

乔·拜登是否会受益于全美谋杀率的下降？ (Will Joe Biden benefit from falling murder rates across America?)

暴力似乎正在回到疫情前的水平 (Violence seems to be returning to pre-pandemic levels)

最近的堕胎案中，最高法院似乎支持爱达荷州 (In its latest abortion case the Supreme Court seems to back Idaho)

《美国诉莫伊尔》案询问联邦法是否保护妊娠威胁到女性健康的妇女 (Moyle v US asks if federal law protects women whose pregnancies threaten their health)

特朗普法庭的报道 (A dispatch from Donald Trump’s courtroom)

两场斗争的故事 (A tale of two struggles)

校园为乔·拜登而来 (The campus is coming for Joe Biden)

就像1968年那样，民主党人冒着成为混乱和战争候选人的风险 (As in 1968, the Democrat risks being the candidate of chaos and war)

如何在21世纪打造全球商业帝国 (How to build a global business empire in the 21st century)

迪士尼、福特、微软与准合并时代 (Disney, Ford, Microsoft and the age of the quasi-merger)

有谁能让波音摆脱它的俯冲？ (Can anyone pull Boeing out of its nosedive?)

这家美国飞机制造商需要一位非常出色的飞行员。 (The American planemaker needs one hell of a pilot)

战争会扑灭海湾的全球商业野心吗？ (Will war snuff out the Gulf’s global business ambitions?)

遍布各地的公司都感受到了冲突的影响。 (Companies far and wide are feeling the effects of the conflict)

嘘！想读点关于谣言和暗示的东西吗？ (Pssst! Want to read something about rumour and innuendo?)

工作场所的闲言碎语 (Gossip in the workplace)

国会告诉中国：出售TikTok，否则我们将禁止它 (Congress tells China: sell TikTok or we’ll ban it)

如今只有美国的法院能拯救这款视频应用 (Only America’s courts can save the video app now)

特斯拉面临身份危机：是汽车制造商还是科技公司？ (Tesla faces an identity crisis: carmaker or tech firm?)

埃隆·马斯克的魔幻困境。 (Elon Musk’s fiendish conundrum)

科技战国即将进入激烈新阶段 (The tech wars are about to enter a fiery new phase)

美国、中国和霸权之争。 (America, China and the battle for supremacy)

美国政治如何影响投资 (How American politics has infected investing)

当心：采取立场可能很昂贵。 (Beware: taking a stand can be expensive)

不喜欢工作？为竞争对手公司辞职 (Don’t like your job? Quit for a rival firm)

莉娜·可汗希望解放美国工人 (Lina Khan hopes to free the American worker)

为什么更强的美元很危险 (Why a stronger dollar is dangerous)

它为一场令人不快的特朗普-中国新冲突做好了铺垫 (It sets the stage for a nasty new Trump-China clash, among other things)

中国当局现在已经对交通罚款上瘾 (Chinese authorities are now addicted to traffic fines)

这向你传达了关于该国经济困境的信息。 (What that tells you about the country’s economic woes)

阿联酋正在利用财富基金获得外交影响力 (The UAE is using a wealth fund to gain diplomatic sway)

并建设度假胜地 (And to build holiday resorts)

美国股市可能会下跌多少？ (How far could America’s stockmarket fall?)

随着廉价货币的前景渐行渐远，股票看起来异常脆弱。 (With the prospect of cheaper money receding, shares look unusually vulnerable)

通胀在道德上错了吗？ (Is inflation morally wrong?)

工人们这样认为。经济学家持不同意见。 (Workers think so. Economists disagree)

谁害怕性别？作者朱迪丝·巴特勒。法拉，斯特劳斯和吉鲁斯出版社；320 页；30 美元。艾伦·兰恩出版社；25英镑