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赏析版2013年3月经济学人文章（英汉双语对照）汇集
Contents
Quantum Gas Goes below Absolute Zero .............................................................................. 1
[2013.03.02] The workshop heroes 美国与二战：车里的英雄 .............................................. 3
[2013.03.02] Special report: Emerging Africa 崛起的非洲..................................................... 7
[2013.０3.０2]Lexington: The view from Maine streets ....................................................... 13
[2013.03.02] The penny drops 一美分硬币终将退出市场 ................................................. 16
[2013.03.02] Obsessions 那些痴狂 ................................................................................... 18
[2013.03.02] Cuba’s leaders: The new man 古巴政坛新星................................................... 21
[2013.03.02] A hard pounding, this 军工行业遭受重击....................................................... 25
[2013.03.07] Timed out 是时候和《时代》说分手了......................................................... 31
[2013.03.09]Net benefits 网络净收益 ............................................................................... 33
[2013.03.09] Now for the reckoning 下面，让咱们来算算总账吧 ....................................... 37
[2013.03.09] Fixing the fat cats 修理肥猫 ........................................................................ 48
[2013.03.09] Flights of fancy 从幻想到空中翱翔............................................................... 50
[2013.03.13] To a war footing 朝鲜半岛正在走向战争 ....................................................... 53
[2013.03.16] Silicon Spring break 硅谷狂欢 ...................................................................... 55
[2013.03.16] Looking for India’s Zuckerberg 寻找印度的扎克伯格 ..................................... 59
[2013.03.16] Russia after Stalin 斯大林离去后的俄罗斯 .................................................... 62
[2013.03.16] High, wide or handsome?............................................................................... 65
[2013.03.16]Credit watch 信贷观察 .................................................................................. 69
[2013-03-16] The economy 美国竞争力报道 － 经济....................................................... 72
[2013.03.16] Immigration: Own goal 移民问题：美国自摆乌龙........................................ 77
[2013.03.23]The Alibaba phenomenon 阿里巴巴现象......................................................... 84
[2013.03.23] Vape ’em if you got ’em 拿到手，吸两口 ...................................................... 88
[2013.03.23] The joy of stats 玩转统计学 .......................................................................... 90
[2013.03.23] Here comes the cavalry 救兵来也 .................................................................. 93
[2013.03.30]Can India become a great power? 印度能成为大国吗？ ................................... 95
[2013.03.23] The price of detachment 退居二线的代价 ...................................................... 98
[2013.03.30]Bottoms up 经济转型：基本面分析..............................................................102 America’s JOBS Act Still not working ...............................................................................106 1
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Quantum Gas Goes below Absolute Zero
【导读】根据热力学原理，绝对零度是不可达到的；但最新研究结果表明，事实并非如此…… Quantum Gas Goes below Absolute Zero
量子气体的温度达到绝对零度以下
时间:2013-01-14 15:17 来源:环球科学
Ultracold atoms pave way for negative-Kelvin materials
超冷原子为负绝对温度材料铺平了道路
Temperature in a gas can reach below absolute zero thanks to a quirk of quantum physics. Image: PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek/Thinkstock
量子物理的一种反常现象可以让某种气体的温度达到绝对零度以下
照片来自PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek/Thinkstock
From Nature magazine 本文选自《自然》杂志
It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery.
这话听起来比地狱冰封了还不靠谱，但物理学家们已经史无前例地创造了一种温度低于绝对零度的原子气体。他们的方法为制造负开氏温度的材料和新型量子仪器打开了大门，而且还可能有助于解决一个宇宙学的千古谜团。
Lord Kelvin defined the absolute temperature scale in the mid-1800s in such a way that nothing could be colder than absolute zero. Physicists later realized that the absolute temperature of a gas is related to the average energy of its particles. Absolute zero corresponds to the theoretical state in which particles have no energy at all, and higher temperatures correspond to higher average energies.
19世纪中叶，开尔文勋爵（Lord Kelvin）认为任何物体的温度都不可能达到绝对零度以下，并以此定义了绝对温标。物理学家们后来意识到，某种气体的绝对温度与其粒子的平均动能相关。绝对零度对应于粒子完全没有动能的理论状态；较高的温度对应于较高的平均动能。
However, by the 1950s, physicists working with more exotic systems began to realise that this isn't always true: Technically, you read off the temperature of a system from a graph that plots the probabilities of its particles being found with certain energies. Normally, most particles have average or near-average energies, with only a few particles zipping around at higher energies. In theory, if the situation is reversed, with more particles having higher, rather than lower, energies, the plot would flip over and the sign of the temperature would 1
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change from a positive to a negative absolute temperature, explains Ulrich Schneider, a physicist at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.
然而到了20世纪50年代，一些研究更不寻常的物质系统的物理学家开始认识到这种说法并非总是正确的：在具体操作时，人们根据某种曲线读出系统的温度，这种曲线描绘了该系统中粒子具有某些动能的几率。在正常情况下，大多数粒子的动能为平均动能或接近平均动能，只有少数粒子以较高动能运动。德国慕尼黑市的路德维希?马克西米兰大学（Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany）的物理学家尤里奇?施奈达（Ulrich Schneider）解释说：从理论上说，如果这种状况逆转，即如果较多粒子的动能不是较低而是较高，这一曲线就会翻转，这会改变绝对温度的符号，由正绝对温度变为负绝对温度。
Peaks and valleys
山顶与山谷
Schneider and his colleagues reached such sub-absolute-zero temperatures with an ultracold quantum gas made up of potassium atoms. Using lasers and magnetic fields, they kept the individual atoms in a lattice arrangement. At positive temperatures, the atoms repel, making the configuration stable. The team then quickly adjusted the magnetic fields, causing the atoms to attract rather than repel each other. ―This suddenly shifts the atoms from their most stable, lowest-energy state to the highest possible energy state, before they can react,‖ says Schneider. ―It’s like walking through a valley, then instantly finding yourself on the mountain peak.‖
施奈达和他的同事们是利用钾原子组成的超冷量子气体达到这一绝对零度以下温度的。利用激光与磁场，他们让单个原子保持点阵排列。在正绝对温度下原子相互排斥，这使该点阵稳定。然后研究小组迅速调整磁场，让原子之间由排斥转为吸引。―这便在原子有所反应之前突然把它们从能量最低的最稳定状态转变为可能达到的最高能量状态，‖施奈达说。―这就像你正在山谷中行走，但顷刻之间发现自己来到了山顶。‖
At positive temperatures, such a reversal would be unstable and the atoms would collapse inwards. But the team also adjusted the trapping laser field to make it more energetically favourable for the atoms to stick in their positions. This result, described today in Science, marks the gas’s transition from just above absolute zero to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero.
这样的逆转在正绝对温度下不稳定，会让原子向内坍塌。但该小组也调整了激光阱场，让原子停留在原处在能量上更为有利。今天的《科学》杂志是这样描述的：这样做的结果标志着气体的温度从刚好在绝对零度之上向绝对零度之下十亿分之几度转变。
Wolfgang Ketterle, a physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who has previously demonstrated negative absolute temperatures in a magnetic system, calls the latest work an ―experimental tour de force‖. Exotic high-energy states that are hard to generate in the laboratory at positive temperatures become stable at negative absolute temperatures — ―as though you can stand a pyramid on its head and not worry about it toppling over,‖ he notes — and so such techniques can allow these states to be studied in detail. ―This may be a way to create new forms of matter in the laboratory,‖ Ketterle adds.
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位于剑桥的麻省理工学院（Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge）物理学家、诺贝尔奖金得主沃尔夫冈?克特勒（Wolfgang Ketterle）曾在一种磁系统中证实了负绝对温度的存在，他称这一最新成果是一项―实验杰作‖。在正绝对温度下很难在实验室产生的非寻常高能态在负绝对温度下变得稳定了，―这就像你可以把一座金字塔头朝下放又不必担心它会倾覆‖，因此这种方法可以让人们得以详细地研究这些状态。―这或许会是在实验室中创造物质新形式的一种方法。‖
If built, such systems would behave in strange ways, says Achim Rosch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cologne in Germany, who proposed the technique used by Schneider and his team. For instance, Rosch and his colleagues have calculated that whereas clouds of atoms would normally be pulled downwards by gravity, if part of the cloud is at a negative absolute temperature, some atoms will move upwards, apparently defying gravity.
这种实验方法是德国科隆大学（University of Cologne in Germany）的理论物理学家阿齐姆?洛什（Achim Rosch）建议施奈达和他的团队使用的；前者认为，一旦这样的系统建成，它们将会有异乎寻常的表现方式。例如，洛什与他的同事们所进行的计算说明，尽管原子云通常会受重力作用向下运动，但如果云的一部份处于负绝对温度下，有些原子就会明显地对抗引力向上运动。
Another peculiarity of the sub-absolute-zero gas is that it mimics 'dark energy', the mysterious force that pushes the Universe to expand at an ever-faster rate against the inward pull of gravity. Schneider notes that the attractive atoms in the gas produced by the team also want to collapse inwards, but do not because the negative absolute temperature stabilises them. ―It’s interesting that this weird feature pops up in the Universe and also in the lab,‖ he says. ―This may be something that cosmologists should look at more closely.‖ 温度在绝对零度以下的气体的另一个奇异现象是它对―暗能量‖的模仿；后者是推动宇宙对抗向心引力，并以日益增加的速率向外膨胀的神秘力量。施奈达强调，在该研究小组制造的气体中，互相吸引的原子也有向内坍塌的倾向，但负绝对温度对其稳定作用使这种情况没有发生。―有趣的是，这一出现在宇宙中的奇异特点也出现在实验室中，‖他如是说。―这或许是宇宙学家应该更仔细地研究的现象。‖
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on January 3, 2012.
本文于2012年1月3日首发，现经《自然》杂志允许在此重刊。
By Zeeya Merali and Nature magazine
兹亚?米拉里，《自然》杂志
原文地址：http://www.aIhUaU.com... olute-zero#comments转载声明：本文来自环球科学（huanqiukexue.com），转载请注明出处
译者：悠悠万事97
[2013.03.02] The workshop heroes 美国与二战：车里的英雄
【导读】同盟国之所以在二战中获胜，工程师功不可没
America and the second world war
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美国与二战 The workshop heroes
车间里的英雄
A tribute to the unsung workers
向二战中的无名工作者致敬
Mar 2nd 2013 |From the print edition
Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers who Turned the Tide in the Second World War. By Paul Kennedy.Random House; 436 pages; $30. Allen Lane; ￡25. Buy
NEARLY 70 years after the second world war and with most of the combatants now dead, a leading historian can praise the Wehrmacht. Not, of course, its evil racism but its military prowess. On the battlefields, writes Paul Kennedy of Yale University, Germany’s soldiers earned universal respect for their ―capacity to react swiftly and fiercely to an assault on any front‖. His superlatives continue to flow. The Wehrmacht possessed a fabulous capacity to recover and strike back; Germany’s paratroopers were ultra- competent; the Reich fought with astounding tenacity.
第二次世界大战已经过去了将近七十年，大多数参战老兵也已经离开人世。今时今日，杰出的历史学家可以去赞扬德国国防军【注2】了。当然，不是去赞扬它那罪恶的种族歧视，而是去赞扬它那非凡的军事实力。耶鲁大学的保罗?肯尼迪写道，德国将士―无论在哪一条战线上都能迅猛地应对敌军的突袭‖，因此在战场上赢得了广泛尊重。肯尼迪还赞赏道：德国国防军具备令人难以置信的恢复能力和反击能力；德军的伞兵极为优秀；德意志帝国的军人打起仗来出乎意料地顽强。
How then did Germany come to lose the war? The British-born historian strives to avoid reductionism. Unlike others, he says, he does not claim that the Allies’ victory can be explained solely by brute force or by a wonder weapon or by some magical decrypting system. There were multiple factors. Some have been exaggerated. Bletchley Park was ―certainly far less important‖ than most of the popular literature about the codebreakers suggests. Sir Arthur ―Bomber‖ Harris’s determination not to target the enemy’s oil, transport and electricity grids but to blast cities instead was, he writes, a ―weird panacea‖. 那么，为什么德国还是输掉了这场战争？在阐述这个问题时，肯尼迪这位生于英国的历史学家竭力避免了还原论【注3】。和别人不同，他不认为可以把同盟国的胜利单纯地归功于武力、新型兵器或是什么神奇的解码系统。这场胜利存在诸多因素，而有些因素被人为夸大了。 4
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在很多关于解码人员的通俗文学中，布莱切利园【注4】对同盟国在二战中的胜利起到了重要作用，―这显然言过其实了‖。肯尼迪写道，阿瑟?―轰炸机‖?哈里斯【注5】当年决定不去攻击敌军的石油线路、运输系统和电网，而是去轰炸各大城市——这是一种―兵行诡道的万能战术‖。
Against this, Mr Kennedy argues, some reasons for the Allies’ success deserve much greater emphasis. One of them, the stupendous might of America’s military-industrial complex, was recognised at last in Arthur Herman’s ―Freedom’s Forge‖, reviewed here last year. Mr Kennedy celebrates another crucial component: the role of engineers. What they invented, improvised and improved had, by 1943, begun to turn the tide against Germany and Japan.
相反，肯尼迪认为，有些因素让同盟国取得了胜利，却远未得到足够的重视。其一就是美国的军事工业复合体所发挥出的惊人威力——事隔多年之后，这种威力终于在阿瑟?赫尔曼的《锻造自由的熔炉》一书中得到了认可（去年本报曾经刊载过这部作品的书评）。肯尼迪赞颂了另一个至关重要的胜利因素：那就是工程师们在二战中所扮演的角色。到1943年为止，他们的工作成果已经开始为同盟国扭转战局了，德国和日本的优势不复存在。
By then long-range B-24 Liberator bombers protected convoys of merchant ships crossing the Atlantic; Hedgehog grenades destroyed Grand Admiral Karl D?nitz’s U-boats; B-17 Flying Fortress bombers flew from airfields in England deep into Germany and drove the Japanese back in the Pacific; T-34 tanks led the blood-soaked Soviet counter-attack on the Eastern Front; Mustang fighter planes decimated Germany’s flying aces.
彼时彼刻， B-24―解放者‖远程轰炸机保护着横跨大西洋的商船队伍；―刺猬弹‖炸毁了德国海军元帅卡尔?邓尼兹的 U 型潜艇；B-17―空中堡垒‖轰炸机从英格兰的机场起飞，深入德国境内，并在太平洋战区击退了日军；苏军在东方战线发动了浴血反攻，而前方开路的正是一架架 T-34 坦克；德军的制空王牌也被―野马‖战斗机尽数歼灭【注6】。
Mr Kennedy also rescues the engineers of the US Navy Construction Battalions from relative obscurity. Popularly known as the ―Seabees‖, these were the units that built the bases, the installations, the assembly points and the roads that carried the Allied fight forward. Their achievements more than justify Mr Kennedy’s assertion that engineers are essential to military victory. Yet, as he rightly complains, historians of grand campaigns all too often take their work for granted and assume that troops, fleets and air squadrons can be moved long distances by the stroke of a pen on a large map.
肯尼迪还让美国海军建设营的工程师从幕后走到了台前。这些人被公众称为―海蜂‖【注7】，负责建造基地、集合点，并为同盟国军队铺设进军道路。肯尼迪坚称工程师在二战的军事胜利中功不可没，而―海蜂‖取得的成就也充分证明了这一点。然而，肯尼迪也抱怨道（这种抱怨合情合理）：研究大型战争的历史学家往往不重视工程师的工作，认为只要在作战地图上大笔一挥，海陆空三军就能深入敌方腹地。
Seabee statistics are still amazing. In the Pacific alone they built, in the midst of war, 111 major airstrips and 441 piers, tanks for the storage of 100m gallons of fuel, housing for
1.5m men and hospitals for 70,000 patients. The famous photograph of General Douglas MacArthur (pictured) fulfilling his ―I shall return‖ promise to the Philippines was possible 5
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only after skilful Seabees had managed the pontoon bridges and causeway units that brought the army ashore—along with the photographers, of course.
今天看来，关于―海蜂‖的统计数据仍然令人惊讶。在二战期间，他们仅在太平洋战区就铺设了111条大型飞机跑道、搭建了441个码头、制造了可贮存一亿加仑燃料的油桶、修建了可居住150万人的营房以及可接纳7万名病人的多家医院。上将道格拉斯?麦克阿瑟（如图）离开菲律宾群岛时曾经承诺：―我还会回来的‖。而如果没有技术高超的―海蜂‖来搭筑浮桥、修建堤道的话，美军也就无法登岸了，麦克阿瑟的诺言也将无法实现——当然，假如没有―海蜂‖，就连拍下这张著名照片的摄影记者都将无法到场。
Mr Kennedy’s best-known book is ―The Rise and Fall of Great Powers‖ (1987) and his knowledge of earlier conflicts adds depth and colour to his history of the middle years of the war. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Duke of Marlborough, Napoleon, William Tecumseh Sherman and others march across the pages as Mr Kennedy compares and contrasts their actions with those of their counterparts in 1943-44. And he is able to cite several instances of British-American-Soviet bickering to sustain the Duke of Wellington’s grumble that having enemies is nothing like as bad as having allies.
肯尼迪最为知名的作品当数1987年出版的《大国的兴衰》。他研究过历史上的军事冲突，这一点也使他笔下的二战中期历史颇具深度、姿彩纷呈。肯尼迪把1943到1944年间的二战将领和历史上的将领放在一起，比较他们的军事行动；读者在字里行间仿佛看到了亚历山大大帝、尤利乌斯?凯撒、马尔堡公爵、拿破仑、威廉?特库姆塞?舍曼这些历史名将当年的英姿。威灵顿公爵曾经抱怨说，有盟友要比有敌人糟糕很多。而肯尼迪可以从英美苏三国之间的龃龉中找到例证来证明威灵顿公爵的这种说法。
译者注：
1. （Paul Kennedy，1945年－ ），是英国出生的历史学家，专长于国际关系。他在牛津大学获得了博士学位，1970年到1983年期间在 East Anglia 大学担任历史学教授，后任耶鲁大学教授。他出版了很多关于英国皇家海军、大国争霸、太平洋战争等主题的书籍，其代表作《大国的兴衰》探讨了1500年至今国际舞台上大国兴替的历史。
2. 德国国防军（德语：Wehrmacht）是1935至1945年间纳粹德国的军事力量。第二次世界大战期间的国防军包括陆军、海军和空军。纳粹党的武装党卫队单位有时也配属于国防军。
3. 或还原主义（Reductionism，又译化约论），是一种哲学思想，认为复杂的系统、事务、现象可以通过将其化解为各部分之组合的方法，加以理解和描述。
还原论的思想在自然科学中有很大影响，例如认为化学是以物理学为基础，生物学是以化学为基础，等等。在社会科学中，围绕还原论的观点有很大争议，例如心理学是否能够归结于生物学，社会学是否能归结于心理学，政治学能否归结于社会学，等等。
4. （Bletchley Park），又称X电台（Station X），是一座位于英格兰米尔顿凯恩斯（Milton Keynes）布莱切利镇内的宅第。在第二次世界大战期间，布莱切利园曾经是英国政府进行密码解读的主要地方，轴心国的密码与密码文件，如恩尼格玛密码机等，一般都会送到那里进行解码。自恩尼格玛密码机被破译后，布莱切利园所收集到的军事情报一概被代号为ULTRA；尽管现今有部份人对这些情报的功用提出质疑，但普遍认为，ULTRA除帮助了盟军外，还提早结束战争。
布莱切利园已为一所向公众开放的博物馆。
5. 阿瑟?特拉弗斯?哈里斯（Arthur Trayes Harris，1892—1984），第二次世界大战时期先后担任英国皇家空军副参谋长和轰炸航空兵司令，成为皇家空军元帅，是―轰炸机致胜论‖的倡 6
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导者。人称―轰炸机‖哈里斯。因主张对平民无差别轰炸被称为―屠夫‖。
6. （B-24 Liberator）是美国于第二次世界大战投入使用的一种重型轰炸机，由共和飞机公司（Consolidated Aircraft）研制，在战时活跃于西线、中缅印战区和太平洋战场。
(B-17 Flying Fortress) 是美国波音在1930年代为美国陆军航空队所发展的的四引擎重型轰炸机。
是苏联于1940年到1958年生产的中型坦克，分别是装上76.2毫米炮的T-34/76和85毫米炮的T-34/85，两者的炮塔设计并不相同，其设计思路皆对后世的坦克发展有着深远及革命性的影响。
，即P-51战斗机，是美国陆军航空队在二次世界大战期间最有名的战斗机之一，也是美国海陆两军所使用的单引擎战斗机当中航程最长，对于欧洲与太平洋战区战略轰炸护航最重要的机种，并且一直使用到朝鲜战争为止。
7. 相关资料
Seabees are members of the United States Navy construction battalions. The word Seabee is a proper noun that comes from the initials of Construction Battalion (CB) of the United States Navy. The Seabees have a history of building bases, bulldozing and paving thousands of miles of roadway and airstrips, and accomplishing a myriad of other construction projects in a wide variety of military theaters dating back to World War II. http://ecocn.org/thread-180993-1-1.html 译者：剑刃
[2013.03.02] Special report: Emerging Africa 崛起的非洲
Africa rising
非洲崛起
A hopeful continent
希望的大陆
African lives have already greatly improved over the past decade, says Oliver August. The next ten years will be even better
非洲人的生活状况在过去十年有了极大的改善，Oliver August说。这十年将会更好。
Mar 2nd 2013 |From the print edition
THREE STUDENTS ARE hunched over an iPad at a beach café on Senegal’s Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost tip of the world’s poorest continent. They are reading online news stories about Moldova, one of Europe’s most miserable countries. One headline reads: ―Four drunken soldiers rape woman‖. Another says Moldovan men have a 19% chance of dying from excessive drinking and 58% will die from smoking-related diseases. Others deal with sex-trafficking. Such stories have become a staple of Africa’s thriving media, along with austerity tales from Greece. They inspire pity and disbelief, just as tales of disease and disorder in Africa have long done in the rich world.
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在塞内加尔的佛得角半岛，世界最贫穷大陆的最西端，三个学生在一家海边咖啡厅里挤在一起看iPad。他们正在看网上关于摩尔多瓦的新闻故事，而摩尔多瓦是欧洲最糟糕的国家之
一。一则头条写着：―四军人醉酒轮奸妇女‖。另一则说摩尔多瓦男性19%死于过量饮酒，58%将死于吸烟有关的疾病。其它的则是有关性奴贸易的。此类新闻已经成为蓬勃发展的非洲媒体的重要内容，还有就是有关希腊财政紧缩的故事。这些故事让人感到怜悯与怀疑，正如关于非洲疾病与骚乱的故事长久以来在发达国家中的影响一样。
Sitting on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, the three students sip cappuccinos and look out over a paved road shaded by palm trees where restaurants with white tablecloths serve green-spotted crabs. A local artist is hawking framed pictures of semi-clad peasant girls under a string of coloured lights. This is where slave ships used to depart for the New World. ―Way over there, do they know how much has changed?‖ asks one of the students, pointing beyond the oil tankers on the distant horizon.
这三个学生一边啜着卡布奇诺，一边向外望去。这里是塞内加尔首都达喀尔郊区，平整的马路旁椰树成荫，路边铺着洁白桌布的餐厅里，客人们正享用着海鲜。五彩缤纷的灯光下，一个当地的艺术家正在叫卖有框的画作，画中是半裸的农家女孩。开往新大陆的运奴船曾在这里起航。―远在那边的人们，知道这里有多大变化吗？‖其中一个学生问道，一边用手指着远处油轮所在的地平线的另一边。
This special report will paint a picture at odds with Western images of Africa. War, famine and dictators have become rarer. People still struggle to make ends meet, just as they do in China and India. They don’t always have enough to eat, they may lack education, they despair at daily injustices and some want to emigrate. But most Africans no longer fear a violent or premature end and can hope to see their children do well. That applies across much of the continent, including the sub-Saharan part, the main focus of this report.
本篇特别报道将描绘的画卷，与西方对非洲的印象有所不同。战争、饥馑与独裁者越来越少，然而人们仍要努力养家糊口，正如中国人和印度人一样。他们时常缺衣少食，教育落后，处处可见的不公平让他们绝望，有些人希望移民。但大多数非洲人不再因暴力或早夭而恐惧，可以有望看到自己的后代过得更好。整个大陆的大部分地区都是如此，包括本文所重点关注的撒哈拉以南地区。
African statistics are often unreliable, but broadly the numbers suggest that human development in sub-Saharan Africa has made huge leaps. Secondary-school enrolment grew by 48% between 2000 and 2008 after many states expanded their education programmes and scrapped school fees. Over the past decade malaria deaths in some of the worst-affected countries have declined by 30% and HIV infections by up to 74%. Life expectancy across Africa has increased by about 10% and child mortality rates in most countries have been falling steeply.
非洲的统计数据常不可信，但总体而言，从数据上能看出撒哈拉以南非洲的人类发展发生了巨大飞跃。中学入学人数在2000-2008年间增长了48%，因为许多国家拓展了教育方案，取消了学费。过去十年，一些疟疾最严重国家的死亡率下降了30%，而艾滋病最严重国家的感染率下降了74%。整个非洲的预期寿命增加了10%，大多数国家的儿童死亡率都大幅下降。
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A booming economy has made a big difference. Over the past ten years real income per person has increased by more than 30%, whereas in the previous 20 years it shrank by nearly 10%. Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent just now. Over the next decade its GDP is expected to rise by an average of 6% a year, not least thanks to foreign direct investment. FDI has gone from $15 billion in 2002 to $37 billion in 2006 and $46 billion in 2012 (see chart).
经济繁荣产生了重大影响。过去十年的人均实际收入增加超过30%，而再之前20年则缩水了近10%。非洲如今已是世界增长最快的大陆。未来10年，非洲的GDP增长预期为每年6%，外国直接投资尤其重要。FDI已从2002年的150亿增加到2006年的370亿和2012年的460亿美元（见图）。
Many goods and services that used to be scarce, including telephones, are now widely available. Africa has three mobile phones for every four people, the same as India. By 2017 nearly 30% of households are expected to have a television set, an almost fivefold increase over ten years. Nigeria produces more movies than America does. Film-makers, novelists, designers, musicians and artists thrive in a new climate of hope. Opinion polls show that almost two-thirds of Africans think this year will be better than last, double the European rate.
诸如电话之类的许多产品和服务在过去常常缺乏，如今已是寻常之物。每四个非洲人就有三部手机，同印度一样。到2017年，约30%的家庭将拥有电视，十年间增长了近四倍。尼日利亚的电影产量已高于美国。电影制作人，小说家，设计师、音乐人和艺术家们在希望的新时代里兴旺发展。意见调查显示，近三分之二的非洲人认为今年将好于去年，比例比欧洲高一倍。 Africa is too big to follow one script, so its countries are taking different routes to becoming better places. In Senegal the key is a vibrant democracy. From the humid beaches of Cap-Vert to the flyblown desert interior, politicians conduct election campaigns that Western voters would recognise. They make extravagant promises, some of which they will even keep. Crucially, they respect democratic institutions. When President Abdoulaye Wade last year tried to stand for a third term, in breach of term limits, he was ridiculed. A popular cartoon showed him in a bar ordering a third cup of coffee and removing a sign saying, ―Everyone just two cups‖. More than two dozen opposition candidates formed a united front and inflicted a stinging defeat on him, which he swiftly accepted. Dakar celebrated wildly, then went back to work the next day.
非洲太大了，发展上不能走单一模式，所以各国的道路不尽相同。在塞内加尔，关键在于充满活力的民主。从湿热的佛得角海滩到苍蝇飞舞的沙漠内陆，政客们为选战而努力，西方的选民们对此不会陌生。他们做出夸大的承诺，还是有些承诺会兑现的。最关键的是，他们尊重民主制度。当阿卜杜拉耶?瓦德总统（Abdoulaye Wade）去年想突破任期限制连任第三届时，他成了人们的笑料。在一幅流传很广的漫画中，他在咖啡店里点了第三杯咖啡，却把店里―每人限两杯‖的牌子藏了起来。二十多位反对派参选人组成了联合阵线反对他，总统惨败，却旋即接受了选举结果。达喀尔一片欢腾，而第二天仍然照常上班。
At the end of the cold war only three African countries (out of 53 at the time) had democracies; since then the number has risen to 25, of varying shades, and many more 9
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countries hold imperfect but worthwhile elections (22 in 2012 alone). Only four out of now 55 countries—Eritrea, Swaziland, Libya and Somalia—lack a multi-party constitution, and the last two will get one soon. Armies mostly stay in their barracks. Big-man leaders are becoming rarer, though some authoritarian states survive. And on the whole more democracy has led to better governance: politicians who want to be re-elected need to show results.
冷战结束时，非洲当时的53个国家中只有三个是民主国家，之后这一数字上升到25个，程度各异。许多国家还举行选举，虽非完美，但也值得努力（仅2012年就有22次）。如今非洲55国中仅四个――厄立特里亚、斯威士兰、利比亚和索马里――非多党制，后两者很快将成为多党制。军队通常驻扎在兵营里。虽然还存在些独裁国家，但大佬式领袖越来越少。总体而言，更多的民主有助于提高行政能力。政客们想再次当选就得拿出成绩。
Ways to salvation
救赎之路
Where democracy has struggled to establish itself, African countries have taken three other paths to improving their citizens’ lives. First, many have stopped fighting. War and civil strife have declined dramatically. Local conflicts occasionally flare up, but in the past decade Africa’s wars have become a lot less deadly. Perennial hotspots such as Angola, Chad, Eritrea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are quiet, leaving millions better off, and even Congo, Somalia and Sudan are much less violent than they used to be. Parts of Mali were seized by Islamists last year, then liberated by French troops in January, though unrest continues. The number of coups, which averaged 20 per decade in 1960-90, has fallen to an average of ten.
民主正在非洲立足，非洲各国还通过三条其它途径来改善人民的生活。第一，许多国家已停战。战争与国内冲突已显著减少，虽然偶有局部战火，但过去十年来非洲的战争已远不像从前般致命。诸如安哥位、乍得、厄立特里亚、利比里亚和塞拉利昂这样的长期热点已逐渐平静，数百万人得到安宁。即使像刚果、索马里和苏丹也远不像从前那样暴力。去年马里部分地区被伊斯兰极端分子占领，今年一月被法国军队解放，但局势仍然不稳。在1960-90年代，非洲平均每十年政变20次，如今已平均十次。
Second, more private citizens are engaging with politics, some in civil-society groups, others in aid efforts or as protesters. The beginnings of the Arab spring in north Africa two years ago inspired the rest of the continent. In Angola youth activists invoke the events farther north. In Senegal a group of rap artists formed the nucleus of the coalition that ousted Mr Wade.
第二，更多的公民个体参与到政治中来，有些组成公民社会团体，其他人参与救援或抗议。两年前北非萌芽的阿拉伯之春激励了非洲的其它地方。在安哥拉，年轻的活动人士以遥远北方发生的事情来支持自己的活动。在塞内加尔，以一群说唱艺术家为核心的联合运动驱逐了瓦德先生。
Third, Africa’s retreat from socialist economic models has generally made everyone better off. Some countries, such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, still put the state in the lead. Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister from 1995 until his death last year, achieved impressive 10
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gains by taking development into his own (occasionally bloodstained) hands. Others, such as Kenya and Nigeria, have empowered private business by removing red tape. Yet others are benefiting from a commodities boom, driven by increased demand from China, which has become Africa’s biggest trading partner. Over the past decade African trade with China has risen from $11 billion to $166 billion. Copper-rich Zambia and oil-soaked Ghana are using full coffers to pay for new schools and hospitals, even if some of the money is stolen along the way.
第三，非洲放弃了社会主义经济模式，总体上让所有人都受益。有些国家，如埃塞俄比亚和卢旺达，仍然以国家为先。梅莱斯?泽纳维（Meles Zenawi）从1995年起担任埃塞俄比亚总理直到去年死去，在将发展成果据为己有上可谓硕果累累（偶尔果子上有点血污）。其它如肯尼亚和尼日利亚，取消了繁文缛节从而使私有企业充满活力。还有些则从贸易上获益。中国的需求不断增加，带来了繁荣的贸易，如今已是非洲最大的贸易伙伴。过去十年间中非贸易额由110亿美元上升至1660亿美元。富铜的赞比亚和多油的加纳都赚得盆满钵盈，有钱来盖新的学校和医院，即使有些钱被顺便偷去了。
Inevitably, Africa’s rise is being hyped. Boosters proclaim an ―African century‖ and talk of ―the China of tomorrow‖ or ―a new India‖. Sceptics retort that Africa has seen false dawns before. They fear that foreign investors will exploit locals and that the continent will be ―not lifted but looted‖. They also worry that many officials are corrupt, and that those who are straight often lack expertise, putting them at a disadvantage in negotiations with investors. 非洲崛起不可避免地被炒做了。鼓吹者宣告―非洲的世纪‖，说着―明日的中国‖或―新的印度‖。怀疑者则反驳说非洲有过虚幻的曙光。他们担心外国投资者来剥削当地人，非洲大陆―不是被改善了而是被扫荡了‖。他们还担心许多官员腐败，而正直的官员又往往能力不足，与投资者谈判时处于不利地位。
So who is right? To find out, your correspondent travelled overland across the continent from Dakar to Cape Town (see map), taking in regional centres such as Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg as well as plenty of bush and desert. Each part of the trip focused on one of the big themes with which the continent is grappling—political violence, governance, economic development—as outlined in the articles that follow.
哪一方是对的？为了寻找答案，本文作者从达喀尔由陆路穿越非洲大陆到达开普敦（见图），走过了地区中心如拉各斯、内罗毕和约翰内斯堡，也穿过了许多丛林和沙漠。每一段旅程都着眼于非洲正努力解决的主要问题之一――政治暴力、政府治理与经济发展――后面文章中将概述之。
The journey covered some 15,800 miles (25,400km) on rivers, railways and roads, almost all of them paved and open for business. Not once was your correspondent asked for a bribe along the way, though a few drivers may have given small gratuities to policemen. The trip took 112 days, and on all but nine of them e-mail by smartphone was available. It was rarely dangerous or difficult. Borders were easily crossed and visas could be had for a few dollars on the spot or within a day in the nearest capital. By contrast, in 2001, when Paul Theroux researched his epic travel book, ―Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town‖, he was shot at, forced into detours and subjected to endless discomforts. 本次旅程总长2.54万公里，包括水路、铁路和公路，几乎全部是修筑好可以商业通行的。 11
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本文作者没有一次遇到索贿，倒是有几次给了警察一些小礼物。行程总共112天，除九天外全部可由智能手机进行邮件联系。旅程很少有危险，也没有什么困难。边境很容易通过，只需几美元即可现场办理签证，或在一天之内在最近的首都办理。相比之下，Paul Theroux在2001年为他的史诗游记《黑星远征：从开罗到开普敦》而探险时，遭到过枪击，被迫绕道，一路都得忍受无尽的不适。
Another decade from now a traveller may well see an end to hunger in some African countries, steeply rising agricultural production in others, the start of industrial manufacturing for export, the emergence of a broad retail sector, more integrated transport networks, fairer elections, more effective governments, widespread access to technology even among many of the poor and ever-rising commodity incomes. Not everywhere. This report covers plenty of places where progress falls short. But their number is shrinking.
从现在起的未来十年，旅行者很可能看到有些非洲国家不再饥饿，有些国家农产品大幅增产，开始出口工业产品，出现覆盖广泛的零售产业，更加完整的交通网络，更公正的选举，更高效的政府，即使穷人中也可普遍接触到新技术，以及更高的贸易收入。并非所有地方，本报告也涵盖了许多进展较慢的地方，但这样的地方越来越少。
Wait for it
耐心等待
The biggest reason to be hopeful is that it takes time for results from past investment to come through, and many such benefits have yet to materialise. Billions have already been put into roads and schools over the past decade; the tech revolution has only just reached the more remote corners of the continent; plenty of new oilfields and gold mines have been tapped but are not yet producing revenues. The aid pipeline too is fairly full. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation alone has invested $1.7 billion in Africa since 2006 but acknowledges that ―it takes years and years to shift the system.‖ Some aid will be wasted, some new roads will remain empty and more than a few barrels of oil will be stolen. Yet whereas currently not even half of Africa’s countries are what the World Bank calls ―middle income‖ (defined as at least $1,000 per person a year), by 2025 the bank expects most African countries to have reached that stage.
抱有希望的最大原因在于，从开始投资到见到成效是需要时间的，许多收益还尚未实现。过去十年已有数十亿投入修路和建学校；技术革新才刚刚到达这片大陆更偏僻的角落；已经开采了许多新的油井和金矿但还没有开始赢利。援助渠道也相当完整。单是比尔和梅琳达?盖茨基金会（Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation）从2006年起就向非洲投资了17亿美元，但也承认―要过许多年才能实现系统性转变。‖有些援助会被浪费，有些新修的道路仍会无人使用，远不止几桶的石油会被偷走。如今不到一半的非洲国家能达到世界银行的―中等收入‖标准（至少年人均1000美元），到2025年，世行预测大多数将可以达到。
As the hand-painted number 3 bus pulls out of Cap-Vert and travels through the streets of Dakar, the views, bathed in buttery late-afternoon sunlight, reflect aspects of Africa’s current triumphs and tribulations. On the left are new tenement buildings with running water for the urban poor. On a hill to the right stands a 160-foot (49-metre) bronze statue 12
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of a man with a muscular torso resembling Mr Wade in his younger years on which he spent $27m of public money. The bus leaves the capital behind and chugs on, passing craggy cliffs and flooded pastures, single-room huts and mangrove forests. Several hours later it crosses a muddy creek near the city of Ziguinchor, heading south towards Guinea-Bissau.
手工刷漆的三号巴士驶出了佛得角，在达喀尔的街道中穿行。沐浴在黄昏时分金黄色阳光中的景色，折射出非洲如今的成就与苦难。左边是为城市穷人新建的带自来水的廉租楼，右边的小山上，矗立着一座49米高的青铜雕像。这是一个身躯强健的男性，像年轻时的瓦德先生，他在这上面花了2700万美元公款。汽车驶离了首都，嘎嘎地前行，经过崎岖的悬崖和洪水淹没的牧场，简易棚屋和红树林。七小时后，汽车穿过济金绍尔市（Ziguinchor）旁的一条泥泞小溪，向南驶向几内亚比绍。 译者：Lichee
[2013.03.02]Lexington: The view from Maine streets
Lexington
列克星敦 The view from Maine streets
缅因人民，你们怎么看？
Barack Obama’s talk of peace does not convince a city marked by war 战争之都缅因质疑奥巴马的和平之说
Mar 2nd 2013 |From the print edition
AFTER long years of messy combat, America’s mission in Afghanistan is going to have a swift and tidy ending, Barack Obama recently told Congress. This spring American forces will move to a support role behind Afghan allies. By the end of next year the war will be over, the mission completed. After a grinding decade, Mr Obama declared ringingly in his state-of-the-union address that ―our brave men and women in uniform‖ are coming home. 近来，贝拉克?奥巴马告诉国会，经过长年混战，美国将干净利落地完结阿富汗任务。今年春季，美军将把一线作战的任务交给盟友阿富汗，自己转为后方支援。明年年末，这场战争就会落幕，而美国也将顺利完成任务。奥巴马在国情咨文演讲中高调宣布，十年的磨难结束了，―在战场上拼搏的英雄儿女‖即将回归故里。
That pledge earned a standing ovation. Beyond Washington, in the sort of American communities that provide the backbone of the armed forces, it prompts a more complicated response. The small city of South Portland in Maine is one of many obscure places to be heavily touched by war since the September 11th 2001 attacks. No state has lost more soldiers in Afghanistan, per person, than Maine—a fertile recruiting ground in every conflict since the civil war and still today home to an unusual number of veterans. And the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns cost South Portland dearer than most places in Maine. 13
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A windswept coastal city of 25,000, it lost four local men, three of them young graduates from the same high school.
听到总统的承诺，人们纷纷起立鼓掌。然而，在华府之外，在部队主力军诞生之处的地区反应复杂一些。位于缅因州的小城市南波特兰就是态度不明的地区之一。2001年9?11袭击事件之后，这些地区在阿富汗战争中倍受影响。按牺牲士兵占总人口的比例来看，缅因是在阿富汗战争中损失最为严重的州——自南北战争以来的每场战争中，缅因州都输送了大量兵力；至今，缅因仍是大量老兵的故乡。在美阿战争和美伊战争中，南波特兰的牺牲人数也超过缅因其他地区。这个风急浪高的海滨城市总人口仅2.5万，却在战争中失去了四名同胞，其中三名还是毕业于同一高中的校友。
One town cannot represent American opinion. Yet talking to a cross-section of locals, as well as to state military and government officials, the same observations come up repeatedly. It may be useful to record some of them.一座小城的意见不能代表整个美国。但是，在和当地各个领域人民以及和缅因将士、政府官员的对话中，也能听到相同的声音。也许，将这些想法部分记录下来会起到一定的作用。
The cheering in Washington feels painfully premature to those whose neighbours and relatives are still in Afghanistan, or waiting for fresh deployments there with regular or part-time units. A Maine national guard unit left the day after Mr Obama’s speech on February 12th, and more will follow this year. South Portland’s police department is still missing an officer, on duty in Afghanistan. At Broadway Variety, a convenience store which has sent hundreds of care packages to South Portlanders serving overseas, collections continue for fresh parcels of cookies, candy and other home comforts. 看到华府一片欢腾，赴阿富汗军人的家属、邻居以及等待新一轮部署的常备军人和后备军人内心充满苦楚，感叹华府人民过于幼稚。2013年2月12日，奥巴马发表和平演讲。仅一日之后，缅因一支国家警卫队就离开家乡奔赴阿富汗，而今年还会有更多战士被送去阿富汗。南波特兰警察局的一位警官上了阿富汗战场，至今未归。一家名为百老汇杂货的便利店已经给在海外奋战的南波特兰战士送去了数百箱爱心包裹。现在店里的还在源源不断的送着新鲜的袋装饼干、糖果等物品，让他们感受到来自故乡的温暖。
In South Portland the pre-announced ending of the war feels perilous, not stirring. Worries loom about the safety of the last troops, and angst about signs of hostility from Afghans supposed to be allies. Even the most vocally patriotic doubt that the war will end in a way that brings ―closure‖. Jake Myrick, an Iraq war veteran and campaigner for ex-soldiers, loyally complains that the media do not show the good works being done by Americans in Afghanistan. But after news reports of Afghan forces killing their American trainers, he still wrote in protest to Maine’s governor demanding the withdrawal of the state’s national guardsmen, fearing the Pentagon had lost sight of its war goals.
在南波特兰，提前宣告战事走向尾声并未让人们欢呼雀跃，相反，人们觉得此举过于冒险。人们开始担心驻扎在阿富汗的最后一批军人是否安全，开始焦虑本该是盟友的阿富汗人却显露出敌对的迹象。甚至那些口口声声说着自己忠贞爱国的志士也不相信战事会利利索索的结束。Jake Myrick是美伊战争的老兵，一直致力于退伍军人运动，他的控诉发自肺腑：媒体并未报道国人在阿富汗完成了什么伟业。但当他在最新消息中读到阿富汗军队杀死了美军教官后，他依然坚持向缅因州长写信抗议，要求撤回警卫队，因为他害怕五角大楼已经忘了战 14
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争的目标。
The commander of Maine’s national guard, Brigadier-General James Campbell, says that explaining the war’s final stages is ―hard‖. As troops are drawn down, he questions the war constantly, fearing a moment when a grieving parent or spouse asks why their loved one died, ―and I don’t have an answer‖.
担任缅因国家警卫队指挥的James Campbell准将说，战事的最后阶段不好解释。随着军中人数减少，他不断质疑这场战争，他害怕悲伤的父母或配偶问他为何自己的挚爱会离去，他说―我也不知道答案‖。
No more global crusades, please 请不要再四处征战了
Support for the troops has healed old griefs, which is some comfort to Vietnam veterans who recall coming home to be blamed for an unpopular war. The sight of mostly blue-collar boys pulling on their country’s uniform has narrowed social divisions in a community split by wealth, says Laurie Wood, a local school principal and the aunt of one of the dead. Ideological differences have also been trumped, if not healed, by respect for the troops: although that change only took place after local boys died. The city votes Democratic at election time, but—this being northern New England—it has plenty of prickly independents and libertarian-tinged Republicans too. Starting during the Iraq war, some military families and supporters strung yellow ribbons from lamp posts and electricity poles, prompting other residents to say the city was being made to look pro-war. The argument lasted years and ―really divided‖ South Portland, recalls the city’s chief administrator, James Gailey. A handsome stone memorial in the city’s main park, dedicated in 2011, is an ―overdue‖ statement of thanks for military service, says the mayor, Tom Blake. It is also the product of a truce between the pro- and anti-ribbon camps, who were persuaded to back a monument as a compromise.
越战老兵每每回想起当年回归故乡，人们谴责他们不应该参与一场不得民心的战争时，内心就会涌起悲伤。现在，人们对军队的支持，或许可以抚平旧时的创伤。缅因当地一所学校的校长Laurie Wood在战争中失去了侄子，她表示，多数工人披上了战甲，此举拉近了由财富差距产生的社会分裂。对军队的尊重，如果没消除思想上的隔阂，至少点醒了人们的意识，但是仅当来自本地的士兵牺牲后才有了这些变化。该市在选举中支持民主党，但是新英格兰北部地区也有很多敏感的无党派人士和带有自由论色彩的共和党人士。自美阿战争起，有些军属和支持战争的人民就开始在路灯和电线杆上系上黄丝带[1]，让其他居民也感受到本市对战事的支持。行政长官James Gailey回忆道，双方的争论持续了数年，这才是南波特兰市分裂的―真正原因‖。2011年，该市在中央公园树立了一块气派的石碑，市长Tom Blake说这是对人民参军报效祖国的―挽歌‖。石碑同样也是双方阵营休战的成果。黄丝带运动支持派说服反对派相信，支持立碑既是做出让步。
Yet some fear that reverence for the troops has dangerously dulled public curiosity. Ms Wood’s beloved nephew, Justin Buxbaum, found himself at war after signing up, aged 16, because without military grants ―he didn’t know how to pay for college,‖ she says. Once in Afghanistan he died in an accident when a roommate’s gun fell and went off. That isn’t the 15
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story that people want to hear, she says, but the details matter less and less as time passes, being subsumed into an ―amorphous‖ narrative about heroism. Many stopped paying close attention after Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were killed, she says.
然而，有人担心，拥军行为让人们变得麻木迟钝，减少了对战事的关注。Wood女士心爱的侄子Justin Buxbaum年仅16岁，他刚签署了协议就上了战场，Wood解释说，如果没有军饷，―他就没钱交大学学费了。‖在阿富汗从军期间，Justin室友的手枪意外滑落走了火，Justin也因此丧生。她说，但人们不喜欢这种故事，随着时间的推移，真实的细节变得越来越不重要，一切都会湮没于对英雄主义的抽象叙述。她还表示，萨达姆?侯赛因和奥萨马?本?拉登死后，很多人都不在密切关注战事了。
Brigadier-General Campbell admits to being dismayed when he walks through American airports in uniform and strangers try to buy him sandwiches. Volunteer soldiers need no sympathy, he says. On the whole, he says, the people of Maine are more sensible than that, especially those who seek to join the armed forces, whose numbers have not fallen. Maine’s military recruits are asking to serve their country, but ―not really signing up to some great moral cause,‖ the general says.
Campbell准将承认，当他穿着军装穿过机场以及陌生人给他买三明治时，他内心感到很诧异。他说，志愿参军的战士不需要同情。他表示，总的来说，缅因人不应该只了解到这一层面，尤其是那些有志加入军队的人，因为他们的人数有增无减。这位准将说，缅因州招募来的新兵一心只想报效祖国，而不是为了什么―崇高的理想‖。
All America may need a dose of such pragmatism, if South Portlanders are right. They call their city more overtly patriotic than a decade ago, yet more cynical, too. For all Mr Obama’s assurances, many fear an untidy ending in Afghanistan, and further messy crises to follow. Whether fresh interventions might be justified divides them. In short, they will believe in the homecoming of the brave when they see it.
如果南波特兰人民的行为没错，所有美国人都应该学学这股务实的劲头。他们认为市民流露出的爱国情怀比十年前更为明显，但同时也更为偏激。尽管奥巴马作出了保证，但仍有人担心阿富汗战争不会结束得很利索，反而随后将会危机四起。新一轮的干预措施是否合理，他们意见不一。简言之，只有亲眼看到勇士们回归故乡，他们才会相信这场战争确实已经结束。
译者注：
1.黄丝带：表示等待久违的亲人回来，来源于1971年10月14日《纽约时报》上的一个小说，后改编成歌曲，故事大意也在歌里。
http://ecocn.org/thread-181026-1-1.html 译者：BearDY
[2013.03.02] The penny drops 一美分硬币终将退出市场
The coinage
硬币制造
The penny drops
一美分硬币终将退出市场
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The case against small bits of metal
小额硬币退市事件
Mar 2nd 2013 | WASHINGTON, DC |From the print edition
MOST people would not pay two cents for something worth one. But America’s government spent $116m last year doing just that. The money-losing purchase was money itself: the penny, which has cost more than a cent to produce since 2006, due mainly to the price of zinc, the coin’s primary ingredient.
价值一美分的东西，多数人不会花两美分购买。去年，美国政府却耗费1.16亿美元反其道而行之。偏偏这冤枉钱又花在了钱本身：一美分硬币。06年起，由于主要原材料锌价格的上涨，一美分硬币的成本便已超过其面值。
Steel is not much better, as Canada has learned. The government there recently ditched its steel-based penny. American politicians, while loth to take lessons from their northern neighbours, may have noticed. In an online forum on February 14th Barack Obama intimated that the penny was no longer change he believes in.
钢材也好不了多少，这一点加拿大深有体会。该国政府刚刚废除其钢制的一分硬币。美国政客们，虽说不愿借鉴北部邻国的经验，也可能注意到这一点。2月14日，奥巴马于某在线论坛上表示，虽然他一直提倡―改变更换‖，但是―更换‖一美分零钱已不在他提倡的事物之列。
Fifty years ago a handful of pennies would buy a hamburger at McDonald’s, but inflation means the coin won’t even get you one French fry today. Relegated to jars and lost behind cushions, the penny is failing to perform its primary function: to facilitate commerce. Vending machines and parking meters don’t accept it. Penny scourges note that fiddling with them adds some two seconds to each transaction, costing the economy many millions of dollars a year.
50年前，几美分便可买到一个麦当劳汉堡，但由于通胀，如今却连买一根炸薯条都不够。一美分硬币要么被丢进存钱罐，要么滚到垫子后面消失不见，如今的它已无法发挥其主要功能 ：简化交易。就连自动售货机和停车计时器都不接受它。一美分硬币的批评者认为它还会使每份交易多花费2秒钟左右的时间，从而导致每年数百万美元的经济损失。
Penny lovers and zinc-industry lobbyists counter that the coin’s demise would cost consumers, as merchants would round prices up to the nearest nickel. Some economists disagree, suggesting that shop keepers might in fact round down in order to avoid moving from a price of, say, $9.99 to $10. Americans anyway seem willing to accept a fee for penny removal, as evidenced by the self-imposed cost of leaving them idle and the success of coin-counting machines, which take a cut when turning them into bills.
一美分硬币爱好者与锌产业游说者认为，一美分硬币一旦消失，顾客便会蒙受损失，因为商家会将价钱撩到面值最近的五美分。经济学家却不以为然，因为为避免价格从9.99美元上涨至10美元等情况的发生，商家反而可能抹零。但无论如何，美国民众似乎甘愿为废除一美分硬币缴费，他们宁愿多花钱也不愿用它，而硬币兑换机（在将硬币兑换为钞票时会收取 17
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一定费用）的广泛运用同样能够证明这一点。
Other countries have eliminated low-value coins with less-than-dire results, and indeed, so has America. In 1857 it ditched the half-cent, then worth nearly as much in real terms as today’s dime. This has led some to suggest killing the nickel, which costs about ten cents to make, as well as the penny.
美国和其他国家都曾尝试废除小面值硬币，且并未造成可怕的后果。1857年，美国废除了半美分硬币。按实值计算，当时的半美分相当于如今的十美分。于是有人呼吁废除五美分（造价为十美分）和一美分硬币。
Congress has not authorised coin culling as yet, so the Mint is studying ways to make pennies more cheaply. Mr Obama, meanwhile, is finding value in the penny’s symbolism. ―One of the things you see chronically in government is it’s very hard to get rid of things that don’t work so that we can then invest in the things that do,‖ said the president. ―The penny, I think, ends up being a good metaphor for some of the larger problems we got.‖ 国会至今仍未批准废除一美分硬币，所以铸造厂正研究如何降低其成本。奥巴马也同时在寻找其象征意义中存在的价值。他说：―一直以来你们也看到了，政府很难取消那些没有实际用处的事物，并转投其它有益的事物。我想，这一美分硬币就形象地说明了我们曾面对的其它一些大问题。 ‖
译者：林木木
[2013.03.02] Obsessions 那些痴狂
R.B. Kitaj
罗纳德·布鲁克斯·基塔伊
Obsessions
那些痴狂
Two British shows evaluate the work of a controversial American artist 一位备受人争议的美国画家，两场品鉴其作品的英国画展
Mar 2nd 2013 |From the print edition
A DECADE before he killed himself in 2007 at the age of 74, R.B. Kitaj, an American painter, left Britain, where he had lived since the 1950s, and moved, with his young son, to Los Angeles. A retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1994 had drawn caustic personal reviews. When his 47-year-old wife, Sandra Fisher, also a painter, died just a fortnight after the exhibition closed, Kitaj blamed the critics and turned against his adoptive nation.
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从1950年代开始，美国画家罗纳德·布鲁克斯·基塔伊就一直生活在英国。然而1994年泰特美术馆的一场回顾展引来了针对个人的尖刻评论。画展结束后仅仅两个星期，他47岁的妻子、同为画家的桑德菈·费希尔便撒手人寰。基塔伊迁怒于那些评论家，并同他旅居的这个国家反目成仇。1997年，他带着年轻的儿子离开英国，前往洛杉矶。10年后，74岁的基塔伊自杀身亡。
Now two shows, drawn from the Jewish Museum in Berlin, offer a reassessment of this passionate and difficult artist. The Jewish Museum in London’s Camden Town has chosen a small selection of works in which Kitaj confronted most explicitly the questions of his Jewish identity. ―Unpacking My Library‖, which he began in 1990, shows a white-haired figure contorted, bent almost double, from the effort of concealing a book in his jacket. The figure has the moustache and spectacles of one of Kitaj’s intellectual heroes, Walter Benjamin, a Jewish essayist, but this is undoubtedly Kitaj. A self-confessed bibliophile, the artist wrote in 1990, ―my books feed into the pictures I make with an untutored passion.‖
对这位充满激情却又性格乖张的画家，当前举办的两场画展做出了重新评价。展出的作品均来自柏林的犹太博物馆。展馆之一是伦敦卡姆登镇的犹太博物馆，它挑选的是一组为数不多的作品：在这些画中，作者正视自己犹太身份的方式最为直白。《开箱整理我的藏书》是1990年开始创作的。画中，一个满头白发的人由于竭力想把书藏到外套中，几乎将身子弯成了一张弓。他的胡须和眼睛很像作者的知识偶像之一、犹太作家瓦尔特·本雅明，但却无疑是作者本人。基塔伊承认自己爱书成狂，他在1990年写道：―我的画会以质朴的激情，从我的书中吸取养分。‖
Here in microcosm is what makes Kitaj one of the most significant painters in post-war Europe and also what maddens so many of his detractors. The painting is full of movement and precisely articulated emotion. It is partly comic—the hero trying to slip away from helping his wife arrange the house—but it is also an assertion of identity, both as an intellectual of the Jewish diaspora, and as a writer. Kitaj’s paintings are always figurative, but like books, they need to be read or unpacked, which his critics find pretentious.
此画正是基塔伊画风的缩影。这一画风让他享誉战后的欧洲画坛，也让众多诋毁他的人为之抓狂。《开箱》一画动感十足，其间饱蘸的情感拿捏得十分准确。作品有几分滑稽（比如不愿帮妻子收拾房间、试图溜之大吉的主人公），但也是对身份的坚持：既有流离海外的犹太知识分子这一身份，也有秉笔耕耘的作家这一身份。基塔伊的绘画都是表象艺术，不过同书籍一样，它们需要观者的解读；这在批评者眼中却甚是造作。
Kitaj’s obsessive concern with his Jewishness started in the early 1970s, after he read Hannah Arendt’s account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust. For 14 years on and off he worked on ―Desk Murder‖, finishing the painting in 1984. Invoking Arendt’s phrase, ―desk murderer‖, it shows the spooky outlines of a 1940s office set against a blood-red background, which morphs into the shape of a mobile gas van. ―The Listener (Joe Singer in Hiding)‖ from 1980 vividly conjures in pastel a Holocaust survivor, a surrogate for Kitaj himself, hunched underground and visibly tense with fear.
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汉娜·阿伦特有一部作品讲述的是审判阿道夫·艾希曼（组织犹太人大屠杀的凶手之一）。基塔伊在1970年代初拜读这部作品之后，便开始十分重视自己的犹太身份，甚至沉迷其中。绘画《办公桌旁的谋杀》就援引了阿伦特的―办公桌旁的凶手‖这一措辞。这幅作品，他断断续续地画了14年，才于1984年完成。画中，一套1940年代的办公物件呈现出阴森恐怖的轮廓，而血红的背景则幻化成一辆流动毒气车的形状。创作于1980年的《乔·辛格在藏身处侧耳倾听》用彩粉生动地描绘出一位大屠杀幸存者的形象：他躬身藏在地下，惊惧之色一目了然，而这一形象指代的恰恰是基塔伊本人。 In ―The Wedding‖ (pictured), completed in 1993, Kitaj himself, wearing the yarmulka, dances with his wife at their wedding surrounded by his best man, David Hockney, and their Jewish friends—Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff—whom he had dubbed the School of London. ―If Not, Not‖, his masterpiece from the mid-1970s, is mesmerising, lusciously painted and formally resolved. The dreamlike blue lake is inspired by Giorgione’s ―The Tempest‖ overborne by the looming gates of Auschwitz, in a landscape littered with symbolic objects and people. Kitaj acknowledged his debt here to Eliot, another American émigré, and to the idea of the ―waste land‖ of T.S. Eliot’s great poem ―as an antechamber to hell‖.
图中的这幅《婚礼》完成于1993年。这是基塔伊自己的婚礼，画中的他头戴犹太便帽，与妻子翩翩起舞，周围是他的伴郎大卫·霍克尼，以及他们的犹太朋友卢西安·弗洛伊德、弗兰克·奥尔巴赫和里昂·科索夫（也即基塔伊口中的―伦敦画派‖）。《如果不是，那便不是》是他1970年代中期的大作。这幅作品画风艳丽，形式完美，令人心醉神迷。画中，一泓碧蓝色的湖水如梦似幻，其灵感正是来自乔尔乔涅的《暴风雨》；湖水上方森然笼罩着奥斯维辛集中营的大门，而四周原野则零散堆砌着富有象征意味的物品和人物。基塔伊借此向同为美国侨民的托马斯·艾略特致谢，并感谢其伟大诗篇中的―荒原‖这一意境：在他看来，―荒原‖正―如通往地狱的前厅‖。
The second Kitaj show, at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, picks up another thread in the artist’s imagination: his allegiance to a line of modernist thinking that included Jewish intellectuals as well as those occasional anti-Semites, Eliot and Ezra Pound. Among the important canvasses that reflect Kitaj’s broader philosophical and political thinking are ―The Ohio Gang‖ (1964), with its ferocious Maenad, a follower of Dionysus, sweeping in from the side, the compelling ―Juan de la Cruz‖ (1967), with its conflicted African-American soldier, and the huge contemporary history painting, ―Pacific Coast Highway‖ (1973), with its multilayered references. None of these is easy, but they share essential qualities: exhilarating draughtsmanship, boldly expressive colour and conceptual ambition.
另一场画展是在奇切斯特市的帕兰特屋画廊。它所挑选的是作者意象的另一主线，那就是他对一种现代主义思潮的忠诚（这一思潮中既有犹太知识分子，也有偶尔反犹的艾略特和埃兹拉·庞德）。基塔伊的不少油画都能反映他在哲学和政治方面更为广泛的思考，而以下几幅都是其中的重要作品：在1964年的《俄亥俄帮》中，酒神迪奥尼索司的信徒美娜德从一侧气势汹汹地掠来；1967年的《―圣十字‖胡安》是一幅引人入胜的作品，画中的美国黑人士兵满脸都是矛盾的神情；而1973年的巨幅现代历史画《太平洋海岸公路》则有多层次的旁征博引。所有这些作品都不简单，却都有一些共同的基本特征：赏心悦目的绘画技巧，大胆而 20
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极具表现力的色彩运用，以及宏大的艺术构思。
A final room contains some of the explosive works that Kitaj painted after 1994, including the marvellously vituperative ―The Killer-Critic Assassinated by his Widower, Even‖, painted the year he left Britain. Nearly two decades after the Tate show, these exhibitions prove just how good Kitaj was at marshalling complex ideas into a coherent and forceful image. 最后一个展厅陈列的是1994年之后、基塔伊在盛怒之下所绘的一些作品。其中《刺杀夺命评论家，为亡妻雪恨》就是他在离开英国的那一年所画；作品充满了刻毒的诅咒，却又令人叹服。在泰特回顾展结束将近20年后，这些画展恰好表明，基塔伊是多么擅长将复杂的思想融入一幅条理清晰、震撼有力的图像。
译者：chengius
[2013.03.02] Cuba’s leaders: The new man 古巴政坛新星 【导读】：半个多世纪以来，卡斯特罗兄弟二人一直执掌着古巴的政权。2月24日，古巴国务委员会主席劳尔·卡斯特罗在古巴全国人民政权代表大会上出人意料地宣布，他将在 2018年第二任期届满后退休。如果劳尔兑现承诺，自1959年古巴革命以来延续至今的―卡斯特罗时代‖将在五年后正式终结。
Cuba’s leaders
古巴领导人
The new man
政坛新星
The Castros unveil their successor
卡斯特罗兄弟宣布接班人人选
Mar 2nd 2013 | HAVANA |From the print edition
Díaz-Canel, ideologically firm
意志坚定的迪亚斯-卡内尔
EVER since Raúl Castro replaced his ailing brother, Fidel, as Cuba’s president in 2008, he has made clear that his overriding aim is to organise an orderly political and economic transition to ensure that the ruling Communist Party remains in power after both men die. Progress towards that goal has been painstakingly slow, and sometimes crablike. But another step was taken at the opening of a newly installed National Assembly on February 24th, when Raúl began a second presidential term. Not only did he repeat that it would be his last. He also hailed the appointment as first vice-president of Miguel Díaz- Canel, a former higher-education minister, saying this represented ―a defining step in the 21
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configuration of the country’s future leadership‖.
劳尔?卡斯特罗（Raúl Castro）于2008年接替身体有恙的哥哥菲德尔?卡斯特罗（Fidel），成为古巴国务委员会主席。自那之后，他就明确表明自己任上的头等大事，便是组织古巴有序地进行政治、经济过渡，以保证在他们两兄弟逝世之后，现有执政党（共产党）仍能保持其领导地位。然而相关进展却十分艰难、速度缓慢，有的时候发展原地踏步，堪比蟹行。但就在2月24日新一届国民大会开幕之际、劳尔开始其第二任期之时，这一过渡又有了新的进展。他不仅重申了这将是他的最后一届总统任期，还向被任命为第一副主席的前高等教育部长米格尔?迪亚斯-卡内尔（Miguel Díaz- Canel）表示祝贺，称这一任命代表着―国家未来领导层格局中决定性的一步‖。
―Who’s he?‖ was how one Havana resident greeted the news. Mr Díaz-Canel may not be exactly a household name in Cuba but he has been tipped for the top for several years. He has stood in for Raúl on a couple of recent foreign visits. Aged 52, his elevation means that the Castros, both of whom are in their 80s, are at last passing the baton to a generation born after the 1959 revolution. (Fidel gave a short speech at the assembly, in a rare public appearance which could be read as giving his blessing to the new appointment.)
―这位新副总统是谁？‖听到这一消息之后，一位哈瓦那（Havana）市民不禁如此问道。准确来说，迪亚斯-卡内尔在古巴可能并没有那么家喻户晓，但最近几年来人们纷纷猜测他可能会被提拔为高层领导。最近，他代替劳尔进行了一些外事访问。米格尔?迪亚斯今年52岁，他的提升意味着，已是耄耋之年的卡斯特罗兄弟，终于将权利交接棒递给了1959年革命后出生的一代人（菲德尔很少在公共场合露面，当天却出席了会议并做了简短讲话，这可以被看作是他对米格尔?迪亚斯晋升的祝福）。
Mr Díaz-Canel is an electrical engineer who spent 15 years as a provincial party secretary before becoming a minister and, last year, vice-president of the Council of Ministers. He is unexpressive in public, but is said to be affable and accessible, with a quick wit and sharp mind. Until fairly recently he wore his hair long, another reminder of the fact that he is a child of the 1960s, not the 1930s. He is known to be a fan of the Beatles, an enthusiasm once frowned upon by the regime.
迪亚斯-卡内尔是一名电子工程师，曾担任省委书记达15年，随后成为一名部长，最后去年晋升为部长委员会副主席。他在公共场合以冷静形象示人，但是据说才思敏捷，并且与人和善。直到最近之前，他都留着一头长发，这再一次提醒我们他是20世纪60年代（而非30年代）后出生的一代人。他对披头士的热爱众所周知，尽管古巴政府曾一度不太满意这点。
Whereas Fidel liked to surround himself with young acolytes, Raúl has long shown that he values the practical experience of provincial party officials, to whom he has devolved some powers. Another rising star, Mercedes López Acea, the Havana party secretary, was promoted to the rank of vice-president as well.
尽管菲德尔喜欢身边围绕着年轻的下属，长期以来，劳尔都不掩饰自己对省委官员实践经验的重视，并将权力下放给他们。另一位政治新星——哈瓦那市党委书记梅赛德斯?洛佩斯 22
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（Mercedes López Acea）也被提升为副主席。
As higher-education minister Mr Díaz-Canel expanded a scheme under which Cubans taught students from Venezuela, Cuba’s chief benefactor. He forged close ties with Venezuela’s leaders, including Nicolás Maduro, the de facto president. With Mr Chávez seemingly dying of cancer, it is vital for Cuba’s leaders that Mr Maduro should succeed him and continue to provide subsidised oil.
身为高等教育部长，迪亚斯-卡内尔拓展了一个让委内瑞拉（古巴主要捐助国）学生在古巴接受教育的计划，他与现在实际负责总统职责的尼古拉斯?马杜罗（Nicolás Maduro）等委内瑞拉领导人保持亲密关系。现任总统查韦斯（Chávez）似乎要被癌症夺去生命，因此，马杜罗继任委内瑞拉总统并继续向古巴提供补贴石油，对于古巴领导人来说十分重要。
Raúl once praised Mr Díaz-Canel for his ―ideological firmness‖. The new man’s private views are unclear. In the 1990s he was linked to a group of communist reformers that surrounded the then foreign minister, Roberto Robaina, who openly argued for economic liberalisation in Cuba.
劳尔曾经赞扬迪亚斯-卡内尔―意志坚定‖，不过这位政坛新星的个人观点尚不明晰。上个世纪90年代，他与一个古共改革派关系密切，该组织核心人物——时任外交部长的罗伯托?罗瓦伊纳（Roberto Robaina），曾公开支持古巴经济开放。
Raúl Castro has allowed Cubans to buy cars and homes, to lease farmland and to set up small businesses. Last year he scrapped curbs on foreign travel. As a result, this month Yoani Sánchez, a blogger and opponent of the regime, has been able to visit Brazil—though she has faced protests organised by the Cuban Embassy in Brasília and members of Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party.
劳尔?卡斯特罗允许古巴人民购买汽车和住房，允许农田租借，支持小型企业发展。去年，他还放宽了国人出国旅游的种种限制。因此，政权的反对者——微博用户Yoani Sánchez本月得以到巴西旅游，尽管她曾受到古巴驻巴西利亚大使馆和巴西执政党（工党）成员所提出的抗议。
There are signs that Raúl is running out of reformist steam. His tone in his speech to the assembly seemed at times almost resigned. ―I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba‖ he stressed (Mr Díaz-Canel nodded in agreement). He announced no new economic reforms. It will be Mr Díaz-Canel’s job to get to grips with the ―issues of greater scope, complexity and depth‖ that Raúl said the government was grappling with. First among these is allowing private wholesale markets.
有迹象表明，劳尔身上的改革主义色彩越来越淡。他在大会上的发言腔调有时听上去似乎对现状听之任之。―古巴人民不是为了恢复资本主义才选我做总统。‖他强调说（迪亚斯-卡内尔点头表示同意）。他没有宣布新的经济改革措施。劳尔曾经说过政府正着力解决的―更大、更复杂、更顽固的问题‖，将会在迪亚斯-卡内尔任上得到认真对待。其中首要任务便是允许 23
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私有批发市场的发展。
Various putative dauphins were raised up by Fidel only to fall from grace, accused of corruption or of excessive ambition. One of them was Mr Robaina, sacked in 1999. He now spends his days painting and running a restaurant in Miramar, an elegant district of Havana. Mr Díaz-Canel is presumably aware of the risks involved in his elevation. But this time it looks as if the chosen successor may be the one who actually succeeds.
菲德尔培养了许多候选接班人，因为腐败问题或者野心过大，都纷纷落马，其中之一便是1999年被撤职的罗瓦伊纳（Robaina）【注】，他现在就成天画画东西、经营一家位于米拉玛（哈瓦那高端地段）的餐馆。迪亚斯-卡内尔大概对他本人升职所蕴含的风险有所了解，但这一次挑选出来的接班人可能真的就是接班人了。
【注】：
罗伯托?罗瓦伊纳?贡萨尔维斯曾是卡斯特罗跟前的红人：一个戴着眼镜、面带微笑、身着时髦的短袖套装的年轻人，当他作为古巴外交部长周游全球的时候，他迷住了世界各国首脑。
科班出身的数学教师罗瓦伊纳１９９３年被任命为古巴外交部长，时年３７岁。当时，罗瓦伊纳是卡斯特罗心腹圈内备受信赖的成员：他担任共产主义青年联盟的领导人，是古巴国务委员会委员，全国人民政权代表大会代表，还是古巴共产党政治局委员。
但是１９９９年５月罗瓦伊纳突然从政坛上消失，卡斯特罗的高级助手、当时３４岁的费利佩?佩雷斯?罗克取代了他。３年后，罗瓦伊纳被解职的原因才为人所知。
据众多的知情官员说，目前正在小范围的共产党会议上放映的一盘录像显示，２００２年５月７日，古巴共产党中央委员会指责罗瓦伊纳不诚实和不忠诚，他暗示自己可能在卡斯特罗卸任后担任古巴主席，并且接受外国领导人和商人的馈赠。
现年４６岁的罗瓦伊纳在美国有线新闻电视公司本周末播放的采访中首次公开讲述了他被解职一事———显然得到古巴共产党领导层的同意。在有线新闻电视公司的采访中，面带悔意的罗瓦伊纳证实，他最近被开除出共产党。他承认道：―我犯了政治错误和非常严重的道德错误。‖但是他强调，他没有遭到逮捕或受到任何刑事起诉。罗瓦伊纳是在被解除外交部长职务３年多后被开除出党的。
这盘录像只向中高层党员进行了播放，古巴国家媒体没有任何相关报道。据那些看过录像的人说，卡斯特罗的弟弟兼既定接班人、革命武装力量部部长劳尔?卡斯特罗批评罗瓦伊纳在古巴和西班牙关系敏感时擅自与西班牙前外交大臣阿韦尔?马图特斯进行接触。劳尔?卡斯特罗提到了显然是古巴国家安全部门窃听到的一段两名男子的电话交谈。在电话中，马图特斯告诉罗瓦伊纳，他认为罗瓦伊纳是―他心目中的人选‖，显然指的是古巴未来的领导人人选。
看过录像的人说，至于接受馈赠，据称罗瓦伊纳接受了一个意大利商人赠与他的餐厅和卧室家具。据说罗瓦伊纳还接受了墨西哥南部金塔纳罗奥州前州长、已入狱的马里奥?比利亚努埃瓦送给他的２?５万美元，作为外交部日常经费。比利亚努埃瓦因涉嫌利用职权保护一个从墨西哥加勒比海沿岸向美国贩运海洛因的贩毒集团而被捕。
译者：小本子
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[2013.03.02] A hard pounding, this 军工行业遭受重击
Europe’s defence industry
欧洲防务产业
A hard pounding, this
军工行业遭受重击
Falling defence budgets and excess capacity have put Europe’s
military-equipment makers in a bind. Consolidation is needed
随着国防预算的下滑和生产能力的过剩，欧洲军工厂商身陷困境。整合乃必经之道
Mar 2nd 2013 |From the print edition
Not really in step
步调其实并不一致
―MAYBE this is not such a bad time to have a smaller rather than a larger defence business.‖ So said Tom Enders, the boss of EADS, Europe’s biggest aerospace firm, on February 27th. He was reflecting on his failed attempt to merge EADS with Europe’s biggest defence company, BAE Systems, last year. His American rival Boeing, he pointed out, also emphasises its civil not its military work these days. ―或许对现下而言，国防业务宁小勿大并非坏事。‖欧洲宇航防务集团（下称―欧航集团‖）的掌门汤姆·恩德斯2月27日如是说。作为欧洲最大的航空航天公司，该集团曾试图与欧洲最大的防务企业——英国宇航系统公司（下称―英航系统‖）合并，但这一计划在去年无果而终。而恩德斯的这番话则正是对此事的反思。此外他还指出，美国竞争对手波音公司现在注重的也是民用产业，而非军工产业。
Maybe smaller defence businesses have some advantages. But the logic of the proposed tie-up, which would have created a $45 billion European giant, has not gone away.
Together, the two firms—one Franco-German; the other British—could have found large cost savings, especially in R&D. The deal would also have given Europe’s scattered, inefficient defence industry the shock it needed to spark a period of urgently-needed change.
或许，规模较小的防务企业确有一些优势。但上述合并计划原本可以打造一家市值450亿美元的欧洲巨头；即便现在看来，此举仍然不无道理。这两家公司一为法德合资，一为英国控股。合并之后，二者可以大幅削减成本，尤其是在研发领域。而对于分散低效的欧洲防务产业而言，此举带来的冲击正是其所需要的，可以引发一场亟需的变革。
The French and British governments were happy to back the merger. But Germany’s chancellor—to nearly everyone’s surprise—balked. Fearing that a powerful Anglo-French axis might marginalise the German bit of EADS (especially Cassidian, the group’s 25
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Bavarian-based defence and security arm), Angela Merkel used her rights under a politicised shareholding agreement to issue a stern ―nein‖.
对于这一合并，英法政府欣然支持，但几乎令所有人意外的是，德国总理却表示反对。由于担心强势的英法轴心会冷落欧航集团的德国部门（特别是位于巴伐利亚的安全防务企业凯希典公司），安吉拉·默克尔凭借一纸颇具政治色彩的股权协议赋予她的权利，对合并案强硬说―不‖。
But that does not alter the basic fact: Europe’s defence industry, which is organised largely on national lines, remains locked in a downward spiral of high costs, chronic over-capacity and declining military budgets. Neil Hampson of PwC, a consultancy, reckons Europe is paying 30-40% more than it should for military kit and missing out on exports because it cannot compete on price. Guy Anderson of IHS Jane’s, a defence-intelligence organisation, estimates that excess capacity is as high as 30% in combat aircraft, land vehicles and naval shipbuilding. Since 2008 European Union countries have cut their cash spending on
defence from €200 billion to €170 billion a year. Most middle-sized countries have cut it by 10-15% in real terms.
但这并未改变基本事实：欧洲防务产业大体上是以国家为组织形式，面对成本高企、产能长期过剩和国防预算持续下降，这一产业目前仍在泥沼中不断下滑。咨询公司普华永道的内尔·汉普森认为，欧洲的军备采购价格要比合理水平高出三四成，而由于欧洲厂商在价格上不具备竞争力，出口机遇也在不断流失。防务情报机构IHS詹氏咨询的盖伊·安德森估计，在战斗机、陆用车辆和海军舰船制造行业，欧洲的产能过剩高达30%。自2008年以来，欧盟国家在防务上每年削减的现金支出高达1700亿至2000亿欧元；扣除物价因素后，大多数中等国家的削减幅度为10%至15%。
In America, the reversal is more recent and even more dramatic. After 11 fat years starting on September 11th, 2001, the Pentagon’s gravy train has come to a shuddering halt. Around $500 billion has been earmarked for cutting over the next nine years. If the blunt instrument of sequestration were to be applied (see article) that could become $1 trillion. 美国方面的倒退来得较晚，却又更加猛烈。自2001年9·11之后，五角大楼让军火商们过了11年滋润的日子。可好日子突然间就到头了：美国已经决定将在未来5年内削减大约5千亿美元的军费，如果再遭到―财政封存‖的重击，那么这一数字可能会达1万亿美元【注1】。
The emerging-market temptation
新兴市场的诱惑
Faced with smaller defence budgets, what can Europe’s military-equipment makers do? The idea that they might be able to export their way out of trouble is unconvincing. Although arms markets in Asia, the Gulf and Latin America are growing, competition is fierce and likely to become tougher as big American contractors try to compensate for deep cuts at home. Local military-equipment makers are also emerging, particularly in Asia, and can expect preferential treatment by their own governments. Moreover, there are dangers as well as rewards in Asia. Many European firms have found themselves mired in corruption allegations, most recently AgustaWestland, an Anglo-Italian helicopter maker. Italian prosecutors say it paid bribes to secure a $750m contract in India. Finmeccanica, 26
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the firm's owner, denies it.
面对各国防务预算的削减，欧洲军火厂商可以如何应对？有人认为，它们可以借助出口摆脱困境；但这一观点难以令人信服。尽管亚洲、拉美和海湾地区的军备市场正在增长，但由于美国各大军火商也在试图弥补因本国军费大幅削减而造成的损失，市场竞争已是十分激烈，并且还有可能加剧。此外，当地的军火厂商也在兴起（尤其是在亚洲），而且还能指望本国政府的优待。何况亚洲有回报也有风险：很多欧洲公司都发现自己被腐败指控缠身。最近受到指控的是英意合资的直升机制造商——阿古斯特维斯特兰公司。据意大利检方称，该公司在印度为了赢得一份7.5亿美元的合同，有行贿之举。但该公司的东家——芬梅卡尼卡集团对此予以否认。
Having a broad geographic spread of interests should be an advantage. And of all the big military contractors, BAE has the best-balanced global portfolio. But even it does nearly half its business in America and a third in Europe. Last week it announced that revenues had fallen from ￡17.8 billion ($28.3 billion) in 2011 to ￡16.6 billion in 2012 and profits increased a little to ￡1.4 billion. According to SIPRI, a think-tank, BAE’s arms sales are down for the first time since the mid-1990s. To appease investors worried that it will fritter away its cash pile buying fashionable cyber-security businesses, it announced a ￡1 billion share buy-back programme. Back orders remain healthy because of demand from the Gulf. But the firm faces a hard pounding for years to come.
地理布局上广撒网应该是一种优势。在各大军火承包商中，英航系统的全球布局最为均衡。但即便是它，其业务也有一半在美国，三分之一在欧洲。该公司上周宣布，公司收入已从前年的178亿英镑（约合283亿美元）跌至去年的166亿英镑，同期利润小幅攀升至14亿英镑。据智囊机构―斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所‖的资料显示，自1990年代中期以来，英航系统的军火销售首次出现下滑。有投资者担心，该公司会在收购时兴的网络安全企业上浪费大量现金。为平息这种担忧，英航系统宣布了一项10亿英镑的股票回购方案。得益于海湾地区的需求，脱期定单仍然维持在良好水平。不过该公司在未来数年间面临着一场暴风骤雨。
Does Europe have room for two top guns?
欧洲可否容纳两大军火巨头？
Much of the attraction for BAE of allying itself with EADS was to participate in the latter’s booming Airbus civil-aircraft business. For EADS, the merger would have given it a bigger base in America. But that was only part of the story. Both companies saw opportunities to cut costs. Executives thought they could reduce by up to a quarter the cost of producing the Eurofighter Typhoon, a joint venture with Italy’s Finmeccanica. A cheaper Typhoon would be a formidable competitor in export markets such as India, where in 2012 it narrowly lost an order to Dassault’s Rafale worth up to $20 billion.
对英航系统而言，吸引它与欧航集团结盟的，主要是能参与后者旗下空客公司蒸蒸日上的民用飞机业务。而对欧航集团而言，二者的合并原本可以让它在美国市场拥有更大的阵地。但这只是部分理由。两家公司都看到了降低成本的机遇：高管们认为，―欧洲台风战斗机‖的制造成本可以实现高达四分之一的降幅。该机型是与意大利芬梅卡尼卡集团的合资项目，但去年在与达索公司的―阵风战斗机‖争夺印度市场时，却以微弱的劣势输掉了价值高达200亿美元的订单。如果价格更低，那么它在印度等出口市场中将有极强的竞争力。
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A prayer for BEADS
为“英欧航集团”祈祷
Both EADS and BAE insist there are no plans to revive their merger, even if they are reluctant to declare it dead. It is true, as some analysts point out, that the Social
Democrats might come into government after this September’s German election—and they supported the deal. Moreover, Mr Enders, a passionate advocate of consolidation, is on the verge of reducing the influence of the French and German governments in his firm with a new shareholders’ pact due to be signed next month. 尽管欧航集团和英航系统不愿宣布合并之事已经夭折，但二者都坚称并无计划重启合并议程。诚如一些分析人士所言，曾经支持这一合并的德国社民党的确可能在今年9月的大选之后上台。此外，新的欧航集团股东协议定于下月签署，而积极提倡整合的恩德斯很快就将借此削弱法德两国政府在公司的影响力。
But governments will still call the shots. They are not only the defence industry’s main customer, but in some cases have substantial stakes or ―golden shares‖ to veto deals. Mr Enders talks of EADS becoming a ―normal‖ company, but he will not have a free hand and he knows that a second abortive attempt at a big merger would cost him his job. His
opposite number at BAE, Ian King, could face even greater difficulties with his institutional shareholders than before. BAE’s shares have performed much worse than those of EADS since 2009 (see chart).
不过发号施令的仍将是各国政府。因为它们不仅是防务产业的主要客户，而且有时还持有可以否决交易的大股份或―黄金股‖【注2】。尽管恩德斯目前谈到欧航集团的企业―常态‖化，但他并不会拥有自行裁量的权利；而且他也明白，如果再试图进行大宗并购却又无果而终的话，自己就会丢掉饭碗。而对英航系统的掌门伊恩·金而言，他与公司机构股东的分歧则可能会进一步加剧。在股价表现方面，英航系统自2009年以来就一直被欧航集团远远抛在身后（参加文中图表）。
What about other mergers, such as the idea of bringing together BAE and Cassidian to create an Anglo-German defence giant? Scepticism is in order here, too. The Germans might object to this deal, which would leave Cassidian as the junior partner. And BAE would surely be less interested in merely bulking up in defence, despite the potential for efficiency gains.
那么其他合并怎么样呢？比如让英航系统与凯希典合并，进而打造一家英德合资的军火巨头。对于这一想法，人们也有理由表示怀疑。由于此举会令凯希典在合资公司中屈居次席，因此可能会遭到德方反对。此外，英航系统虽然有可能借此提高效率，但对于单单扩大军火生意，它的兴趣自然更小。
The last big attempt at consolidation, in the late 1990s, was a joint effort by governments and industry. It resulted in the formation of EADS, but ran out of steam. This time round, the industry is united in wanting another round of consolidation. But the best that can be hoped for from politicians is that they do not get in the way.
产业整合的最后一次大规模尝试是在1990年代后期。那是政府与企业共同努力的结果，而欧航集团便是其中的产物。但整合浪潮已经消退。这一次，尽管业界一致希望能有新一轮的 28
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整合，但对于政府方面，人们最大的希望却只能是他们不要碍手碍脚。
Unless ―BEADS‖ (as it is known) can be revived, the chances of a transformative merger in the industry look slim. Hoping something will turn up is not a good plan. So what might Europe’s defence firms do in the absence of such a merger?
除非被称作―英欧航集团‖（BEADS）的整合方案能得以重启，否则防务产业要有能让自己焕然一新的合并，希望实在渺茫。但守株待兔并非良策。那么在没有这类合并时，欧洲防务企业可以做什么呢？
The biggest defence-electronics firm is France’s Thales. Its main shareholders are the French state and Dassault Aviation (they control 53%). Thales and Safran, a jet-engine maker of which the French government owns 30%, have danced around each other for years, swapping and merging assets but without making it to the altar. Dassault, still controlled by its founding family but 46% owned by EADS, is widely seen as a one-trick pony that will not make a new manned combat aircraft on its own again. Finmeccanica (30% owned by the Italian government) is on the lookout for partners after setbacks in America. It has valuable assets in helicopters, airframes and defence electronics but a weak balance-sheet.
法国的泰雷兹集团是最大的防务电子企业，它的股份有53%属于法国政府和达索航空这两大股东。而喷气式发动机制造商赛峰集团也有30%的股份属于法国政府。这两大集团已有多年的亲密合作，其中包括资产互换和整合，只是一直没有联姻。至于达索航空，虽然它仍由创始人家族控股，但也有46%的股份为欧航集团所持；人们普遍认为它的能力单一，无法再次自行研制新的载人战机。此外，芬梅卡尼卡集团有30%的股份属于意大利政府；在美国市场受挫之后，它也正在寻找合作伙伴。该集团在直升机、飞机机身和防务电子领域有优质资产，但资产负债表较弱。
There are several ways in which the industry could consolidate. One is to rationalise its unwieldy supply chains by getting more medium-sized firms to work across national borders. Another is more horizontal integration. MBDA, a joint-venture forged in 2001 through which BAE, EADS and Finmeccanica merged their missile-making subsidiaries, is a successful precedent. A logical next step would be for BAE, DCNS (a state-owned French naval shipbuilding firm), Fincantieri (its Italian equivalent) and Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems to pool their submarine-building expertise. But governments worry about losing shipbuilding capabilities and jobs so this is a long shot. 防务产业可以通过多种方式进行整合。一种方式是让更多的中型企业跨国合作，从而令庞杂不堪的供应链合理化。另一种方式是更多的横向整合：欧洲导弹集团就是一个成功案例，这家2001年成立的合资公司整合了英航系统、欧航集团和芬梅卡尼卡的导弹制造部门。如果几大潜艇制造巨头也能整合它们的专长，那便会是顺理成章的下一步。这几家巨头包括英航系统、法国的舰艇建造局（国有海军舰艇制造商）、意大利的芬坎蒂尼公司（同上）和德国的蒂森克虏伯海事系统公司。但由于各国政府担心丧失造船能力和工作岗位，这一计划成功的可能性不大。
The most likely development is that more European defence companies will come together for specific projects—with or without the encouragement of governments. Few are more 29
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important than plans for a stealthy unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV). Three
European firms are competing self-destructively to sell ―fourth generation‖ manned fast jets (the Typhoon, the Rafale and Saab’s Gripen). America’s Lockheed Martin and its
industrial partners have sewn up the market in the West for ―fifth generation‖ fighters with the F-35. The UCAV is thus seen as a ―sixth generation‖ aircraft critical to Europe’s aerospace industry.
最有可能取得进展的，还是更多的欧洲防务企业在特定项目上展开合作（无论有无政府鼓励）。而隐形无人战机的研发计划则是重中之重。目前，三家欧洲企业都在竞相销售―第四代‖载人高速战机（其中包括―台风‖、―阵风‖和萨博公司的―鹰狮‖），这实属自杀行为。―第五代‖战机的欧美市场现已被美国的洛克希德马丁公司及其工业合作伙伴用F-35垄断。因此，无人战机便被看作是对欧洲航天航空产业至关重要的―第六代‖飞机。
Politics, again
又是政治
As usual, however, political considerations are complicating an already technically
demanding programme. France and Britain got things going in 2010 when they agreed to work together through BAE and Dassault on a medium-altitude, long-endurance
reconnaissance drone and the UCAV. That infuriated Germany and Italy, which promptly signed an agreement of their own, demanding a slice of any programme to produce Europe’s common UCAV. The risk is that industrial control will be lost if each defence ministry tries to change specifications to suit its own ―unique‖ requirements. Bungled and costly programmes to build the A400M transport plane and the NH90, a multi-role helicopter, were models of how not to do it.
然而与以往一样，政治方面的考虑让原本技术要求就高的计划变得更加复杂。2010年，英法两国展开行动，同意通过英航系统和达索公司，在无人战机和中空长航无人侦察机领域进行合作。这让德意两国大为着恼，二者很快签署了自己的协议，要从无人战机的任何泛欧研制计划中分一杯羹。风险在于，如果各国国防部都试图按自己的―独特‖要求来修改战机规格，那么产业控制就会因此丧失。此前A400M运输机和NH90多用途直升机的研制计划费用高昂、问题缠身，这些便是典型的反面教材。
Some hopes have also been invested in NATO’s ―smart defence‖ initiative as a way of making falling defence budgets go further. The aim is to get military-equipment makers to work with small groups of national customers to agree upon common requirements.
Defence planning, though, remains doggedly nationalistic. Britain and France are trying to work together by allowing observers from each country to get a sight of defence reviews in their early stages. But old habits die hard.
有人寄希望于通过北约的―灵巧防御‖提案，让削减的军费预算能行之更远。该提案旨在让军火厂商携手由各采购国组成的小组，就共同需求达成一致。可是国家主义却在防务计划中根深蒂固。目前，英美两国正试图通过允许彼此的观察员了解早期的防务评估，来实现合作。然而积习难改。
Nobody doubts what is needed: a more rational, less nationalist demand side and a supply side (ie, the equipment-makers) with the political space to work out their own solutions. 30
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The prize is to get more bangs (literally) for the buck. The collapse of the BAE and EADS merger has made that quest longer and harder than it needed to be. But there is no alternative to trying.
没人怀疑目前需要什么。那就是需求方多些理智、少些国家主义，而供应方（也即制造商）能有解决自己问题的政治空间。人们追求的是花小钱办大事。但由于英航系统和欧航集团的合并无果而终，这一追求也变得更过于漫长和艰难。但除了努力尝试，现在别无选择。
译注： 【1】奥巴马已于3月1日签署政令，正式启动2013财年的―财政封存‖，削减开支的总额约为854亿美元，其中公共开支和军费开支各占一半。
【2】―黄金股‖拥有极高的投票权，通常为政府持有，可以对并购进行否决。 译者：chengius
[2013.03.07] Timed out 是时候和《时代》说分手了
Time Warner's spin out plans
时代华纳的资产剥离方案
Timed out
挥别一个“时代”
Mar 7th 2013, 8:33 by A.E.S.
JEFF BEWKES, the boss of Time Warner, a large media conglomerate, rarely utters the word ―magazine‖. Before becoming boss of Time Warner, he oversaw its highly profitable premium television channel, HBO. His passion is TV, not text. Therefore few who know Mr Bewkes were surprised when he announced on March 7th that Time Warner would spin off Time Inc, its magazine unit, by the end of 2013.
传媒巨头时代华纳的掌门杰夫?比克斯很少会提到―杂志‖这个词。在接掌时代华纳之前，他负责的是该集团的利润大户——付费电视频道HBO。他热衷的是电视，而不是文字。所以当他在3月7日宣布，时代华纳将在年底之前剥离杂志部门时代公司时，了解他的人并没有几个感到意外。
Magazines are not where money in media is today. Time Inc, which publishes magazines such as Time, People and Entertainment Weekly, is one of America’s oldest and most iconic magazine companies, but it has become a drag on Time Warner’s bottom line. Last year revenue for Time Inc was $3.4 billion, down 7% from a year earlier and down more than 26% from 2008.
杂志并非当今媒体行业的―金矿‖。作为《时代周刊》、《人物》和《娱乐周刊》等杂志的出版 31
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商，时代公司是美国杂志行业中历史最悠久、最具标志性的企业。但在时代华纳的账簿上，它却成了一种累赘。去年，其收入为34亿美元，较之2011年下跌了7%，而较之2008年则下跌超过26%。
Time Inc has been hit by a difficult economy, ailing advertising and uninspired leadership. Laura Lang, Time Inc’s boss who formerly ran Digitas, a digital advertising agency, took over after Jack Griffin was fired. Few felt Ms Lang ever had a real vision for what Time Inc should become. She will step down when Time Inc becomes its own public company. 时代公司的苦难来自举步维艰的经济形势、每况愈下的广告业务和缺乏创见的领导层。劳拉·朗是在杰克·格里芬被解雇之后接任掌门一职的，此前她管理的是数字广告公司迪吉特斯。绝大多数人都认为，对于时代公司的未来道路，她从来就没有真正的愿景。时代公司单独上市之后，她就将卸任。 The decision to spin off Time Inc came after negotiations with Meredith, another magazine publisher, which specialises in women’s magazines, collapsed. Time Warner originally wanted to keep control of titles that had synergies with its cable properties, such as Time and Sports Illustrated, but later rethought that strategy.
剥离时代公司这一决定，是在与梅瑞狄斯公司的谈判破裂后做出的（后者是专注于女性杂志的出版商）。时代华纳原本打算继续掌控与一些与有线电视资产―珠联璧合‖的刊物，比如《时代周刊》和《体育画报》等，但后来对这一策略有了新的想法。
A deal with Meredith would have been ―an elegant solution‖, says Peter Kreisky, a media consultant and former advisor to Time Inc. Meredith had synergies with many of Time Inc’s titles. The combined companies could have consolidated some of their magazines, editorial staffs and advertising sales teams. Earlier this year Time Inc already announced it would lay off 6% of its work force.
时代公司前顾问、媒体咨询师皮特·克莱斯基认为，与梅瑞狄斯公司的交易原本会是―一个很好的解决办法‖。因为它与时代公司的许多刊物都相得益彰。两家公司合并后，还可以整合旗下部分杂志、编辑部门和销售团队。今年早些时候，时代公司已经宣布将会裁员6%。
Now Time Inc must face the world, and shareholders, alone. Time Inc has been buttressed by Time Warner’s flush TV divisions. That is not unlike what has happened at News Corporation, a rival media conglomerate that is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. In June News Corp will split into two companies and separate its publishing assets from its film and TV business. Other media companies are also looking to offload print. The Tribune Company is trying to sell its newspapers to focus on its TV assets. Divorce is hard, especially when it is spelled out in print.
现在，时代公司必须独自面对这个世界和公司股东。此前一直支持它的是时代华纳财力雄厚的电视部门。这一点很像竞争对手新闻集团的情况（后者是由鲁伯特·默多克掌控的大型传媒集团）。今年6月，新闻集团将把旗下的出版业务和影视业务分拆为两家公司。而其他的 32
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传媒企业也正打算剥离纸媒业务。比如，论坛报业集团就正试图出售旗下几家报纸，以便专注于电视业务。分手总是痛苦的，尤其是白纸黑字的分手。
译者：chengius
[2013.03.09]Net benefits 网络净收益 Free exchange
自由交流
Net benefits
网络净收益
How to quantify the gains that the internet has brought to consumers 如何量化互联网给用户带来的收益？
Mar 9th 2013 |From the print edition
WHEN her two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, Judy Mollica spent hours in a nearby medical library in south Florida, combing through journals for information about her child’s condition. Upon seeing an unfamiliar term she would stop and hunt down its meaning elsewhere in the library. It was, she says, like ―walking in the dark‖. Her daughter recovered but in 2005 was diagnosed with a different form of cancer. This time, Ms Mollica was able to stay by her side. She could read articles online, instantly look up medical and scientific terms on Wikipedia, and then follow footnotes to new sources. She could converse with her daughter’s specialists like a fellow doctor. Wikipedia, she says, not only saved her time but gave her a greater sense of control. ―You can’t put a price on that.‖
1992年茱迪?莫莉卡（Judy Mollica）两岁大的女儿被诊断出患上了癌症，她在南佛罗里达州一家离医院不远的医学图书馆中花费了大量的时间细致地查阅医学期刊了解女儿的病情。碰到一个陌生的术语时她便会停下来，接着在图书馆中四处搜寻术语的含义。她说那段时间 ―就像是在黑暗中摸索，毫无头绪。‖她女儿后来康复了，但在2005年再次被诊断出患有另一种癌症。这次，莫莉卡不用再两头奔波寻找信息，而是能够陪在她的身边。她可以在线阅读文章，能立刻在维基百科（Wikipedia）上查出医学和科学术语，而且还能根据脚注找到新的信息。她可以和主治医生交流女儿的病情，就像是医生的一位同事。莫莉卡说维基百科不仅仅为她节省了时间，还带给她一种更大的主动权。―这是无法明码标价的。‖
Measuring the economic impact of all the ways the internet has changed people’s lives is devilishly difficult because so much of it has no price. It is easier to quantify the losses Wikipedia has inflicted on encyclopedia publishers than the benefits it has generated for users like Ms Mollica. This problem is an old one in economics. GDP measures monetary transactions, not welfare. Consider someone who would pay $50 for the latest Harry Potter novel but only has to pay $20. The $30 difference represents a non-monetary benefit 33
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called ―consumer surplus‖. The amount of internet activity that actually shows up in GDP—Google’s ad sales, for example—significantly understates its contribution to welfare by excluding the consumer surplus that accrues to Google’s users. The hard question to answer is by how much.
要想测算互联网给人们生活方方面面带来的改变所产生的经济影响难于上青天，因为这些影响没有价格。相比量化维基百科给莫莉卡这样的用户带来的益处而言，它给百科全书出版商造成的损失却要更容易计算一些。在经济学领域这是一个老生常谈的问题。国民生产总值（Gross Domestic Product，简称GDP）以货币交易量为衡量标准，而非经济福利。有人愿意花50美元购买最新的哈利?波特（Harry?Potter）系列小说，但他只需付20美元就能买到。那这30美元的差额就可以算作非货币收益，经济学上称之为―消费者剩余(也称―消费者盈余‖，译者注) ‖。GDP中由互联网活动产生的那部分经济总量——例如，谷歌的广告销售额——严重低估了互联网对经济福利做出的贡献，谷歌用户不断累积的消费者剩余就未计算在内。可难题在于：这部分被低估了的贡献量究竟有多大呢？
Shane Greenstein of Northwestern University and Ryan McDevitt of the University of Rochester calculated the consumer surplus generated by the spread of broadband access (which ought to include the surplus generated by internet services, since that is why consumers pay for broadband). They did so by constructing a demand curve. Say that in 1999 a person pays $20 a month for internet access. By 2006 the spread of broadband has lowered the real price to $17. That subscriber now enjoys consumer surplus of $3 per year, even as the lower price lures more subscribers. The authors reckon that by 2006 broadband was generating $39 billion in revenue and $5 billion-$7 billion in consumer surplus a year. Based on its share of online viewing, Mr Greenstein thinks Wikipedia accounted for up to $50m of that surplus. 美国西北大学(Northwestern University)教授肖恩?格林斯坦（Shane Greenstein）和罗切斯特大学(University of Rochester)教授瑞恩?麦克德维克（Ryan McDevitt）计算了网络宽带连接的普及所带来的消费者剩余总值（这部分也应当算如互联网服务所带来的剩余，因为消费者必须先能联网才会购买宽带服务）。他们通过构建需求曲线来计算。1999年每人每月为互联网连接服务花费20美元。到了2006年，宽带的普及将网络连接费用的实际价格降到17美元。正如价格的降低吸引了更多的用户，该用户现在享有的消费者剩余为每年3美元。 他们计算出到2006年宽带每年产生390亿美元的收入和50亿至70亿美元的消费者剩余。以维基百科所占在线浏览量的份额为基础，格林斯坦教授认为维基百科在上述的消费者盈余中的份额高达5,000万美元。
Such numbers probably understate things. The authors’ calculations assume internet access meant the same thing in 2006 as it did in 1999. But the advent of new services such as Google and Facebook meant internet access in 2006 was worth much more than in 1999. So the surplus would have been bigger, too.
这些数字或许只代表了冰山的一角。他们的计算是以2006年的网络连接与1999年完全相同这一假设为前提。但是新兴网络服务的出现，比如说谷歌和脸谱，意味着2006年的网络连接比1999的具有更高的价值。因此，消费者剩余实际值同样应该会更大。
More important, consumers may not incorporate the value of free internet services when deciding what to pay for internet access. Another approach is simply to ask consumers 34
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what they would pay if they had to. In a study commissioned by IAB Europe, a web-advertising industry group, McKinsey, a consultancy, asked 3,360 consumers in six countries what they would pay for 16 internet services that are now largely financed by ads. On average, households would pay €38 ($50) a month each for services they now get free. After subtracting the costs associated with intrusive ads and forgone privacy, McKinsey reckoned free ad-supported internet services generated €32 billion of consumer surplus in America and €69 billion in Europe. E-mail accounted for 16% of the total surplus across America and Europe, search 15% and social networks 11%.
更为重要的是，在决定购买何种网络连接服务时，消费者也许没有将免费的网络内容服务计算在内。还有一个简易的办法就是问问消费者他们愿意承担多高的费用来购买网络服务。在线广告集团欧洲IAB（Interactive Advertising Bureau）委托麦卡锡（McKinsey）咨询公司开展了一项研究，来自6个国家共3,360位消费者被问道：在目前由广告收入来维系运营的16项互联网服务中，消费者愿意出多少钱来购买。家庭用户愿意为每一项他们现在免费享有的互联网服务支付月平均38欧元（合50美元）的费用。除去与侵入式广告和忽略消费者隐私所带来的成本，麦卡锡算出免费向消费者提供而且是由广告收入支持运营的互联网服务在美国创造出320亿美元的消费者剩余，而在欧洲是690亿欧元。电子邮件服务大约占美国和欧洲总消费者剩余的16%，搜索服务占15%，而社交网络服务占11%。
Another way to infer consumer surplus is from the time saved using the internet. In a paper partly funded by Google, Yan Chen, Grace YoungJoo Jeon and Yong-Mi Kim, all of the University of Michigan, asked a team of researchers to answer questions culled from web searches. The questions included teasers like: ―In making cookies, does the use of butter or margarine affect the size of the cookie?‖ On average, it took participants seven minutes to answer the questions using a search engine, and 22 minutes using the University of Michigan’s library. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, then calculated that those savings worked out to 3.75 minutes per day for the typical user. Assigning that time a value of $22 per hour (the average wage in America), he reckons search generates $500 of consumer surplus per user annually, or $65 billion-$150 billion nationally.
另一个方法是通过计算使用互联网所节省的时间来推算消费者剩余。在一篇在部分由谷歌出资赞助发表的论文中，密歇根大学研究员陈燕（Yan Chen），郑英珠（Grace YoungJoo Jeon）和金永美（Yong-Mi Kim）让一组研究员回答了一些从互联网上搜集来的问题。问题中包括一些棘手的问题，比如：―烘制饼干时，加入黄油或奶油会影响饼干的大小吗？‖参与者用搜索引擎花费了平均7分钟的时间来回答这些问题，而在密歇根大学图书馆寻找答案则花费了他们平均22分钟的时间。谷歌首席经济学家哈尔?瓦里安（Hal Varian）接着计算出搜索服务每天能够为一般用户节省3.75分钟。如果这些节省下来的时间的价值为每小时22美元（美国平均时薪），他推算搜索服务每年为每个用户创造的消费者剩余为500美元，或者说全国范围内总计650亿-1500亿美元。
Twitter: the defence
推特：逆道而行
Yet another technique is to assign a value to the leisure time spent on the web. Erik Brynjolfsson and Joo Hee Oh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology note that between 2002 and 2011, the amount of leisure time Americans spent on the internet rose 35
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from 3 to 5.8 hours per week. The authors conclude that in so far as consumers must have valued their time on the internet more than the alternatives, this increase must reflect a growing consumer surplus from the internet, which they value at $564 billion in 2011, or $2,600 per user. Had this growth in surplus been included in GDP, it would have raised economic growth since 2002 by 0.39 percentage points on average.
另一种估算方法是赋予人们花费在网络上的闲暇时间以价值。麻省理工学院（Massachusetts Institute of Technology，简称MIT）埃里克?布林约尔松（Erik Brynjolfsson）教授和何珠熙（Joo Hee Oh）教授指出2002年至2011年间，美国人每周花费在网络上的闲暇时间从3小时上升到了5.8小时。研究者据此得出结论：目前看来，消费者一定更加珍惜他们花费在互联网上的时间而非其他活动，时间的增加必定反映出由互联网带来不断增长的消费者剩余，2011年价值约5,640亿美元，即每位用户2,600美元。如果消费者剩余的增长率也算入GDP，那么自2002以来经济增长率还要再增加平均0.39个百分点。
These are impressive figures, but they also merit scepticism. Would consumers really pay $2,600 for the internet? Shouldn’t other free leisure activities, such as watching television or—heaven forbid—playing with your children, have just as much value? And in other ways the internet subtracts value: the productivity destroyed by incessant checking of Twitter, the human interactions replaced by e-mail. Ms Mollica says people in hospital waiting rooms used to develop a camaraderie rooted in their shared experiences. ―But now everyone stares into their phone because they’re texting or e-mailing.‖
数字虽令人惊叹的，却也值得人们去质疑。消费者是否真的愿意为互联网服务支付2,600美元是个问题。难道其他免费的休闲活动，比如说看电视或者——但愿是——和孩子们嬉戏不值这个价格吗？而互联网亦有减损价值的一面：无休止刷推特(Twitter)降低了工作效率，电子邮件取代了人与人之间的交流。莫莉卡说过去候诊室里的人们会在他们共同的经历中找到一种战友般的情谊。 ―可是现在，每个人都盯着自己手机的屏幕，因为他们在发短信或是电子邮件。‖
Sources
资料来源
Publications by Shane Greenstein and Ryan McDevitt: "The Global Broadband Bonus: Broadband Internet’s Impact on Seven Countries," in The Linked World: How ICT Is Transforming Societies, Cultures and Economies, published by the Conference Board, 2011. "The Broadband Bonus: Accounting for Broadband Internet's Impact on U.S. GDP," NBER Working Paper #14758, 2009. ―Measuring the Broadband Bonus in 20 OECD Countries,‖ OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 197, 2012.
Household Demand for Broadband Internet Service: Final report to the Broadband.gov Task Force Federal Communications Commission. Gregory Rosston, Scott J. Savage, Donald M. Waldman, February, 2010.
"Consumers driving the digital uptake: The economic value of online advertising-based services for consumers," study conducted by McKinsey & Co., commissioned and published by IAB Europe, September 2010.
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"A Day without a Search Engine: An Experimental Study of Online and Offline Searches," Yan Chen, Grace YoungJoo Jeon, Yong-Mi Kim, 2012.
―Valuing Consumer Goods by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet,‖ Austan Goolsbee and Peter Klenow, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), May 2006.
"The Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Goods on the Internet," Erik Brynjolfsson, and JooHee Oh, July, 2012 (draft).
"Economic Value of Google," Presentation by Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google
Economist.com/blogs/freeexchange 译者：坏娃娃
[2013.03.09] Now for the reckoning 下面，让咱们来算算总账吧 Venezuela after Chávez
查韦斯死后的委内瑞拉 Now for the reckoning
下面，让咱们来算算总账吧
After 14 years of oil-fuelled autocracy, Hugo Chávez’s successors will struggle to keep the Bolivarian revolution on the road
在委内瑞拉经受了十四年石油支持下的独裁统治之后，乌戈?查韦斯的继任者需要颇费一番周折才能继续推进玻利瓦尔革命
Mar 9th 2013 | CARACAS |From the print edition
IN THE flesh he seemed indestructible. Hugo Chávez was not especially tall, but he was built like one of the tanks he once commanded. He was possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy. He travelled incessantly, both around his vast country and abroad. Each Sunday he would host a live television show lasting up to 12 hours. He would ring up ministers in the early hours of the morning to harangue them. For 14 years, everything that happened in Venezuela passed through his hands, or so he liked to think.
想当年，乌戈?查韦斯本人看起来似乎坚不可摧【注1】。他的个子并不是很高，但身材壮硕——就像他曾经指挥的坦克那样。他好像有着用不完的精力。他不断地旅行，不但多次出访国外，广阔的委内瑞拉也到处都留下了他的足迹。每个星期天，他都会主持长达12小时的电视直播节目。每天早晨，天还蒙蒙亮的时候他就会打电话把手下的那些部长叫醒，大声训 37
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话。十四年来，委内瑞拉发生的每一件事都是由查韦斯亲手操办——或者说，他自以为如此。 Yet Mr Chávez turned out to have been as reckless with his health as with his country’s economy and its democracy. Those late nights were fuelled by dozens of cups of sweet Venezuelan coffee. When in mid-2011 he revealed that he had been operated on for cancer, the lack of detail (―a baseball-sized tumour in the pelvic region‖) suggested that the diagnosis had come late. He turned down an offer of care from a Brazilian hospital that had recently cured three Latin American presidents of cancer, preferring treatment in Cuba, where his precise condition could be kept secret. After a further two operations and chemotherapy, he declared himself cured.
然而，最终看来查韦斯还是过于鲁莽了：他没有注意到委内瑞拉的经济和民主，同样也没有注意到自己的健康。他一杯接一杯地喝着甜甜的委内瑞拉咖啡，熬过了一个又一个深夜。2011年年中，查韦斯披露自己已经因癌症而动过手术。细节方面，他并未多说——这表示确诊时为时已晚（―骨盆处发现了一个棒球大小的肿瘤‖）。一家此前曾为三位拉美总统治愈癌症的巴西医院主动提出可为查韦斯治疗，不过他谢绝了，希望在古巴接受治疗——因为在那里他的具体情况可以得到保密。又接受了两次手术和一次化疗之后，他宣布自己已经康复。
Addicted to the drugs of power and popular acclaim, he campaigned for and won yet another six-year term in an election last October. During the campaign it was clear to those not blinded by loyalty that Mr Chávez was still a sick man. After the election he dropped out of sight, before making the sombre announcement on December 8th that he was going back to Cuba for yet another operation. If the worst happened, he said, Venezuelans should vote for Nicolás Maduro, his foreign minister and appointed vice-president, as his successor. The six-hour operation did not go well: after weeks in which his family kept a bedside vigil, joined by senior officials, Mr Chávez returned home last month, to die on March 5th at the age of 58.
去年十月，沉迷于权力和民众拥戴而不能自拔的查韦斯再次参加总统竞选，又赢得了六年任期。在那次选举当中，没有被忠诚所蒙蔽的人都能看得出他仍未痊愈。选举结束之后，查韦斯就从公众视野中消失了，直到12月8日才发布了一份令人不安的公告，称自己将返回古巴再次接受手术。他表示，如果发生了最糟糕的状况，委内瑞拉人应当拥戴时任外交部长、被任命为副总统的尼古拉斯?马杜罗为继任总统。为时六小时的手术进展得并不顺利：几周以来，查韦斯的家人和一些委内瑞拉高级官员一直守护在这位总统的床头。此后查韦斯在上个月回到了故乡，并于3月5日病逝，享年58岁。
It's all over for the poster boy
“代表人物”就此谢幕【注2】
To the end, Mr Chávez’s rule was narcissistic, with country and constitution subordinated to his whim. In the tradition of the Latin American caudillo, he wanted to die with his boots on. When he was too ill to be sworn in for his new term on January 10th, his officials resolved to disregard the constitution that he himself had pushed through in 1999 and declared that the inauguration could happen at a later date.
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直到最后，查韦斯的统治都充满了孤芳自赏的色彩；无论是国家还是宪法，都唯其马首是瞻。按照拉美元首的传统，他要求在工作岗位上坚守到生命的最后一刻【注3】。今年1月10日，查韦斯的健康状况不允许他为新的总统任期宣誓就职。当时，委内瑞拉官员决定无视总统本人于1999年促成的宪法，宣布将于晚些时候举行就职典礼。
Hours before announcing his leader’s death, Mr Maduro made an aggressive speech, flanked by army commanders, in which he accused the opposition of conspiring to reverse the ―revolution‖ and ―historical enemies‖ (ie, the United States) of poisoning Mr Chávez. He expelled two American military attachés. That looked like an effort to rally the faithful for the election that will now be called.
在宣布查韦斯死讯的几个小时以前，马杜罗在几名军官的簇拥之下发表了一份措辞激进的演讲，控诉反对派密谋推翻―革命‖、谴责―有些宿敌‖（即美国）对查韦斯下毒。他还将两名美国大使馆的武官逐出了委内瑞拉。新的选举在即，马杜罗似乎想要借此收买人心。
Mr Chávez is mourned by millions of Venezuelans, for whom he was a kind of Robin Hood, shouting defiance at ―the empire‖ (the United States once again) and the ―oligarchy‖ (ie, the rich) while handing out windfall oil revenues. His opponents, many of whom saw him as a corrupt dictator, will sense deliverance. That may be premature.
成千上万的委内瑞拉人对查韦斯表示哀悼。对这些人来说，查韦斯有几分罗宾汉的风采，他曾经高呼反对―帝国‖（还是指美国）、反对―政治寡头‖（即富人群体），同时将石油收入带来的意外之财分发给民众。在查韦斯的对手当中，有很多人曾视其为腐败的独裁者；现在他既已身死，这些人想必会感到解脱。但这种感觉可能为时过早了。
A swift election may favour Mr Maduro, a former bus drivers’ leader who has been the de facto president since December. He will benefit from a sympathy vote. The sooner he has his own mandate, the less the risk that he will face rebellion, or at least passive resistance, from within the chavista camp. The opposition candidate will probably be Henrique Capriles. A moderate centrist and dogged campaigner, in last October’s vote he cut Mr Chávez’s margin of victory, from 26 percentage points in 2006 to 11 points. But demoralised by defeat, the opposition fared poorly in regional elections in December, though Mr Capriles was re-elected as governor of the state of Miranda, covering much of the capital, Caracas.
尽快进行选举将对马杜罗有利。他曾做过司机，当过地铁系统的工会领袖；自从去年十二月以来，事实上是他在代理总统职务。他将从民众的同情票中获益。目前，查氏阵营内部可能会发生针对他的叛乱（或者至少是消极抵抗）。马杜罗正式的总统任期开始得越早，这种风险也就越小。反对派候选人有可能是恩里克?卡普利莱斯。他是一位温和的中间派，屡次参加各种竞选。2006年，查韦斯曾以26个百分点赢得总统选举；而在去年十月只领先同时参选的卡普利莱斯11个百分点。然而，反对党失败之后士气受挫，在去年十二月的地区选举中表现不佳。不过卡普利莱斯已重新当选为米兰达州州长，首都加拉加斯大部分地区都在该州境内。
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The bigger question in the months ahead will be how much will survive of Mr Chávez’s ―Bolivarian revolution‖, named for Simón Bolívar, South America’s Venezuelan-born independence hero. His reluctance to surrender power despite his illness underlined just how personal his regime was. Through a mixture of unusual political talent and extraordinary good fortune, Mr Chávez managed to make himself into a world figure, perhaps the best-known Latin American after his friend and idol, Fidel Castro. His death means he will not be around to face the reckoning after 14 years of a corrupt, oil-fuelled autocracy.
在接下来的几个月里，更重要的问题在于查韦斯的―玻利瓦尔革命‖有多少能够存留下来（这场革命以生于委内瑞拉的南美独立英雄西蒙?玻利瓦尔命名）。此前，查韦斯尽管病重却仍然不愿让权，充分说明了他的政权是以个人为中心的。查韦斯有一些与众不同的政治才能，又颇受上天眷顾，从而成功地把自己塑造成了一个世界人物。在他的朋友兼偶像菲德尔?卡斯特罗之后，他或许是最为著名的拉美人。委内瑞拉在经受了十四年腐败的、石油支持下的独裁统治之后，即将受到清算；而查韦斯的去世意味着他将会缺席这场最后的审判【注4】。
Swapping baseball for revolution
放下棒球，投身革命
Had things turned out differently, Hugo Chávez might have been a professional baseball player. That was his childhood dream. A typical Venezuelan mestizo, of African, indigenous and European descent, he was born in poverty (though not in the ―mud hut‖ of the title of a hagiography) in Barinas, a remote state in the llanos, the tropical lowlands of the Orinoco basin. His father was a teacher, and his mother a teaching assistant. One of six brothers, he was largely brought up by his grandmother. He topped up the family income by selling home-made sweets in the street.
倘若命运并非如此安排，乌戈?查韦斯可能会成为一名职业棒球运动员。这是他儿时的梦想。在奥里诺科盆地的热带低地草原上，有一个地处偏远的州——巴里纳斯州，查韦斯就生于这里的一个贫困家庭（不过并不像某一本偶像化传记标题写的那样出生在―土屋‖里）。他是一个典型的委内瑞拉混血儿，同时具有非洲人、委内瑞拉本土人以及欧洲人的血统。他的父亲是一名教师，母亲则是助教。查韦斯有五个兄弟，他自己主要是由祖母抚养长大。他曾经在街头贩卖自制甜品来补贴家用。
By Mr Chávez’s own account, he entered Venezuela’s military academy because it had a good baseball team. As a young officer, he had a role in mopping up Cuban-supported guerrilla groups in the 1970s—a task that left him sympathetic to their aims. At the age of 23, he was already conspiring against the government.
根据查韦斯自己的记述，他之所以会进委内瑞拉军事学院就读，是因为该校有一支出色的棒球队。上世纪七十年代，他曾经以年轻军官的身份参与清剿古巴支持的游击队群体——不过却因此而认同了他们的理念。到了23岁的时候，查韦斯已经在密谋反抗政府了。
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In the 1980s Venezuela, previously seen as a model democracy, struggled as the price of oil, its main export, plunged and foreign debt mounted. Discontent at rising poverty, austerity and corruption exploded in three days of rioting in Caracas in 1989, and repression by the army left 400 dead. ―It was the moment we were waiting for to act,‖ Mr Chávez said later. In February 1992, a lieutenant-colonel in command of a paratroop battalion, he made his move: he led a bloody but unsuccessful coup against the elected government of Carlos Andrés Pérez. Cashiered and jailed, he was released after just two years. He claimed that Bolívar was his inspiration.
八十年代，由于主要出口产品——石油的价格跳水，外债不断攀升，此前被视作模范民主国家的委内瑞拉苦苦求存。一时之间国家愈加贫困，经济紧缩、腐败横行。1989年，民众的不满终于爆发，加拉加斯发生了为期三天的暴乱，政府军的镇压导致400人死亡。查韦斯后来谈到：―我们等待那个时机已经等了很久了。‖1992年2月，身为伞兵营中校的查韦斯采取了行动，策划了一场政变，反对当时执政的卡洛斯?安德烈斯?佩雷斯政府。政变很是血腥，却并未取得成功。查韦斯被革职并锒铛入狱，不过仅仅两年后就被释放了。他声称玻利瓦尔激励了自己【注5】。
Bolívar had long been the object of an official, quasi-religious cult in Venezuela—but a conservative one. Mr Chávez would appropriate the cult for his own ends: he was said to leave an empty chair at meetings, claiming it was occupied by the ghost of the great Liberator. His second source of inspiration was Fidel Castro. In 1994 he visited Cuba where he began a close friendship with Mr Castro, whom he saw ―as a father‖ and who became his most important counsellor. The Cuban leader, who had long viewed Venezuela’s oil wealth as the key to sustaining his own regime in his energy-short island, would find in Mr Chávez what he had been seeking for decades: a powerful, unconditional ally in a large Latin American country.
在委内瑞拉，玻利瓦尔长期以来都受到了公开的、近乎宗教似的崇拜——但这种崇拜有些保守。而查韦斯会利用这种崇拜来达到自己的目的：据说他在开会时都要放一张空椅子，声称伟大的解放者玻利瓦尔的英灵坐在这张椅子上。查韦斯还受到了菲德尔?卡斯特罗的鼓舞。1994年，他访问古巴，与卡斯特罗建立起了一种亲密的友谊。查韦斯看待卡斯特罗―如同父亲一般‖，卡斯特罗也成了他最为重要的导师。古巴是一个资源匮乏的岛国，这位领导人一直把委内瑞拉丰富的石油当作维持本国政权的关键。他认为查韦斯就是自己几十年来一直在寻找的人：一位来自拉美大国并且手握重权的绝对盟友。
Mr Chávez’s world view had a third strand, too. He was an army man through and through: his early heroes had been nationalist military dictators of the 1970s, such as Peru’s Juan Velasco Alvarado and Panama’s Omar Torrijos. As Enrique Krauze, a Mexican writer, has pointed out, from eclectic reading Mr Chávez acquired the conviction that history is made by great men. He was influenced, too, by Norberto Ceresole, an obscure Argentine fascist who advised him when he was first in government. His regime had an anti-semitic undertone. The notion, peddled by some of his foreign supporters, that Mr Chávez was a moderate radicalised only by implacable opposition both at home and in Washington, does not square with the evidence.
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查韦斯的世界观还有第三个方面。他是一名彻头彻尾的军人：他早期崇拜的是七十年代的民族主义军事独裁者，比如秘鲁的胡安?贝拉斯科?阿尔瓦拉多以及巴拿马的奥马尔?托里霍斯。墨西哥作家恩里克?克劳泽曾经指出，查韦斯博览群书，树立了―历史由伟人造就‖的信念。他还受到了诺伯托?塞里索尔的影响（这位名不见经传的阿根廷法西斯主义者在查韦斯首次执政时曾经担任过他的顾问）。查韦斯的政权有一种反犹太意味。一些国外支持者宣扬他是一位温和派；只有在面对委内瑞拉国内或是美国的顽固反对派时才会变得激进。这种说法是没有根据的。
Mr Chávez was reluctantly persuaded—probably by Mr Castro—that elections were better than force as a route to power. His promises of a clean sweep of the old order and an end to poverty and corruption won him the presidency in December 1998 with 56% of the vote. His first act was to call a Constituent Assembly, which wrote a new constitution, approved by referendum. It enshrined respect for private property, human rights and an independent judiciary. But it also expanded the powers of the presidency and the armed forces. It gave Mr Chávez a chance to appoint loyalists to the supreme court and other nominally independent institutions.
或许是卡斯特罗说服了查韦斯，让他勉强接受了这样一种观点：若想取得政权，选举比武力更为有效。1998年12月总统选举时，查韦斯承诺要彻底清除旧秩序、消灭贫困、根除腐败，这让他以56%的得票率胜选。就任总统后查韦斯做的第一件事就是召开立宪会议。会上起草了新宪法，而后由全民公投批准生效。新宪法要求尊重私有财产、尊重人权、尊重独立的司法系统。但这部宪法同样给了总统和武装部队更多权力，并让查韦斯有机会把自己的忠诚拥护者安插到最高法院和其他一些名义上的独立机构当中。
Unlike Mr Castro, Mr Chávez derived his legitimacy from the ballot box. He would win three further presidential elections. But he ruled by confrontation and decree, rather than consensus. That triggered severe political unrest. The tensions came to a head on April 11th 2002, when hundreds of thousands marched on the presidential palace to demand Mr Chávez’s resignation: 19 people died, many killed by snipers who were never identified. When the army refused his order to use force to suppress the protests, the president surrendered his office; his most senior general told the nation he had resigned. But after a conservative business leader proclaimed himself president on April 12th and declared the constitution abolished, the army switched sides again and restored Mr Chávez to power.
和卡斯特罗不同，查韦斯是通过投票箱来确立合法领导权的。他之后还赢得了三次总统选举。但他统治的方式是对抗和专制，并没有和人民达成共识。这引发了严重的政治动荡。2002年4月11日，委内瑞拉的紧张局势达到了顶点。成千上万的民众在总统官邸游行，要求查韦斯辞职。这次冲突中有19人丧生，大多是被身份不明的狙击手射杀。查韦斯命令军队用武力镇压抗议，却遭到了拒绝。之后这位总统交出了政权。委内瑞拉军队最高司令官通告全国，称查韦斯已经辞职。4月12日，一名保守派商界领袖自封为总统并宣布废除旧宪法。但此后不久军队再次易帜，查韦斯得以复位【注6】。
The elected autocracy
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选举出来的独裁政府
That was a turning point. An opposition strike later that year paralysed PDVSA, the state oil monopoly, but it failed. Through the medium of these conflicts, Mr Chávez neutralised all potential rival sources of power. He turned PDVSA and the Central Bank into vehicles for opaque, off-budget spending. He staffed the government, the bureaucracy and the armed forces according to loyalty rather than merit. He packed the courts, and gained full control of the legislature, thanks to an ill-advised opposition boycott in 2005. When a revived opposition later did well in regional and legislative elections, he stripped local government and the National Assembly of much of their powers.
此时，委内瑞拉迎来了转折点。当年晚些时候，一次反对派罢工曾经让国家石油垄断机构 PDVSA 陷入瘫痪，但罢工最后并未取得成效。查韦斯借助这种冲突阻断了所有潜在的权力竞争源头。他把 PDVSA 和中央银行变成了获取不透明的预算外开支的工具。在政府、官僚机构和武装部队中，查韦斯任人唯亲。他在各级法院安插了不少心腹，并在2005年完全控制了立法机关（这还多亏了反对派，他们当时组织了一次计划不周的抵制活动）。后来，尽管反对派卷土重来并且在地区和立法机构选举中表现出色，但地方政府和国民大会的大部分权力已经被查韦斯尽数剥夺。
Three other things had come to Mr Chávez’s rescue. The first was the spectacular rise in the world price of oil, which provided nearly all Venezuela’s export earnings. In real terms, between 2000 and 2012 Venezuela’s total oil revenues were more than two and a half times as great as those of the preceding 13 years—even though output declined after 2000 (see chart 1). The second was the advice of Mr Castro. Cuban officials drew up new social programmes, known as ―missions‖, starting with primary health care and adult education. In return for virtually free oil, Cuba provided Venezuela with thousands of doctors and sports trainers. Cuban intelligence and security agents surrounded Mr Chávez: he would never again be caught off-guard by street protests.
查韦斯之所以能够东山再起，原因有三。其一是当时全球油价飙升，委内瑞拉几乎所有出口收入都来自石油贸易。扣除物价因素之后，尽管2000年以后出口有所下降，但2000到2012年间委内瑞拉的石油总收入是此前十三年总和的2.5倍以上（见图表1）。其二就是卡斯特罗提出的建议。古巴官员为委内瑞拉起草了以初级卫生保健和成人教育为起点的新型社会方案（称为各项―计划‖）。为了换取几乎是免费的石油，古巴为委内瑞拉提供了数千名医生和体育教练员。查韦斯身边都是古巴的情报和安全人员，他再也不会被民众的街头抗议打个措手不及了。
The missions and the flood of oil money helped the president defeat a referendum in 2004 that would have removed him from office. He cowed the opposition. He harassed its media outlets: today, most free-to-air television channels spout government propaganda. The names of the 3.6m who signed the petition calling for the recall referendum were published; some were sacked from state jobs or denied passports or other official services.
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压力而辞职，但国家实行的各项计划和滚滚而来的石油收入帮他保住了总统位子。他对反对派进行了恐吓，控制了他们的媒体渠道：如今，大部分免费电视频道都在为政府大唱赞歌。当时有360万人签署请愿书要求举行全民公投，后来这份名单被曝光了。其中有些担任公职的人员被解雇了；有些人在办理护照时遭到拒签，或是无法使用其他公开服务。
The third godsend for Mr Chávez was George W. Bush. Thanks to the worldwide unpopularity of the American president, he could use his address to the UN to mock Mr Bush as ―the devil‖. He deployed his talents as a propagandist to weave a fiction to the effect that the coup attempt against him in April 2002 had been backed by the United States.
乔治?W?布什就是查韦斯的第三场及时雨。由于这位美国总统在全球都不得人心，查韦斯在联合国演讲时嘲讽他为―魔鬼‖。查韦斯运用自己的鼓吹才能编造谎言，称2002年4月反对他的政变实际上是有美国在背后支持。
In 2006 Mr Chávez won a landslide victory. At the height of his power, he declared that he was implanting ―21st-century socialism‖, though he never defined exactly what this was. He nationalised swathes of the economy, including telecommunications, electricity, cement and parts of the oil industry still in private hands.
在2006年的总统选举中，查韦斯以压倒性优势取得了胜利。在他权力的鼎盛时期，他宣称自己在灌输―21世纪社会主义‖，不过他从未对此作出明确界定。他将大批经济部门收归国有，其中包括电信、电气、水泥等行业，以及仍在私人手中的石油业的一部分。
Mr Chávez’s domination of Venezuela was never absolute. The two-party democracy of 1958-98 bequeathed a popular belief in democratic values. In 2007 he lost a referendum on constitutional changes aimed at making his revolution irreversible (though many of these measures were later brought into law by decree).
查韦斯对委内瑞拉的统治一直受到某种约束。1958到1998年间的两党民主政治让一种信仰民主价值的公众理念流传了下来。2007年，查韦斯针对修宪举行了一场全民公投，想要巩固自己的革命成果；但并未取得成功（不过此后他通过专制将很多相关措施写进了法律）。
Everything Mr Chávez did was calculated to shore up his support among a majority of Venezuelans, while ignoring or harassing the rest. His original base was those people who laboured in the informal economy, which had blossomed in the 1980s after the end of the previous oil boom. To this he added a growing army of public-sector workers: under him, the public payroll more than doubled, to 2.4m.
查韦斯所做的每一件事都是为了确保自己能获得大多数委内瑞拉人的支持，同时对反抗者却置之不理、或者加以压迫。上世纪八十年代，在石油繁荣消退之后，委内瑞拉的非正式经济得到了发展，而查韦斯最初依靠的就是非正式经济行业的劳动者。后来，他又把公有部门劳动者这支不断增长的大军纳入自己麾下。在他担任总统期间，公有部门劳动者的数量翻了一番以上，达到了240万人。
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Sent by God
天赐之君
Most of the motley collection of parties that backed the Bolivarian revolution were merged into the Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV). Mr Chávez also created two other instruments of control: a militia of around 125,000, answerable directly to him rather than the army command; and a network of community councils which took over many of the functions (and revenues) of local government. Foreign leftist academics claimed that all this added up to an empowering ―direct democracy‖, superior to the incipient welfare state set up by Latin America’s social-democratic governments. But to others, it looked like a top-down charade of participation, in which all power lay with the president.
支持玻利瓦尔革命的政党五花八门，它们大多数被合并成了委内瑞拉联合社会党（PSUV）。查韦斯还发明了另外两种控制手段：一支约有十二万五千人的民兵队伍，他们直接听命于查韦斯，而不受军队管束。另外还有一系列的社区议会，它们接手了地方政府的大部分功能（以及收入）。外国左派学者称，所有这些体制构成了一种授权式的―直接民主‖，比拉美社会民主政府建立的早期福利制度更胜一筹。但在其他人看来，这就像一种自上而下的伪装型民主，所有的权力都掌握在总统手中。
Behind the propaganda, the Bolivarian revolution was a corrupt, mismanaged affair. The economy became ever more dependent on oil and imports. State takeovers of farms cut agricultural output. Controls of prices and foreign exchange could not prevent persistent inflation and engendered shortages of staple goods. Infrastructure crumbled: most of the country has suffered frequent power cuts for years. Hospitals rotted: even many of the ―missions‖ languished. Crime soared: Caracas is one of the world’s most violent capitals. Venezuela has become a conduit for the drug trade, with the involvement of segments of the security forces.
在种种宣传鼓吹背后，玻利瓦尔革命其实是一场腐败而且管理不当的运动。经济越来越依赖石油和进口。国家接管了农场，农产品产量因此下跌。对物价和外汇的控制无法抑制顽固的通货膨胀和由此产生的支柱产品短缺。基础设施条件日益恶化：多年以来，全国大部分地区都饱受频繁断电之苦。医院也是虚有其表：即使是很多医疗―计划‖都停滞不前。犯罪行为猖獗：加拉加斯是全球暴力活动最严重的首都之一。委内瑞拉成了毒品交易的管道，甚至有些保安部队成员都参与贩毒。
Mr Chávez’s supreme political achievement was that many ordinary Venezuelans credited him with the handouts and did not blame him for the bungling. They saw him as one of them, as being on their side. His supporters, especially women, would say: ―This man was sent by God to help the poor.‖ He had llanero wit and charm, and an instinctive sense of political opportunity. He deployed these talents each Sunday on ―Aló, Presidente‖, his interminable talk show. He had the skills of a televangelist, as Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera, two Venezuelan writers, put it in a revealing biography.
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查韦斯有一项最大的政治成就，那就是很多委内瑞拉平民都因为他所派发的救济品而感恩戴德，却并不指责他的无能。他们把查韦斯当作自己人。查韦斯的支持者（特别是妇女）常说：―他是上天赐给委内瑞拉来帮助穷人的‖。查韦斯有一种草原式的智慧和魅力，可以本能地察觉到政治机遇。每个周日，委内瑞拉都会播出一档冗长的谈话节目《你好，总统》，查韦斯常常在节目里运用自己的这些天赋。两位委内瑞拉作家克里斯蒂娜?马卡诺和阿尔贝托?巴雷拉在一本发人深省的传记中写道，查韦斯拥有电视布道者的才能。
Abroad, Mr Chávez deployed Venezuela’s oil wealth to build an anti-American block he called the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (Alba). As well as Cuba, this included Bolivia and Ecuador, where far-left leaders were elected in the mid-2000s and several small client states in Central America and the Caribbean. For years he maintained a barely veiled alliance with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, allowing them to use Venezuela as a base. 在海外，查韦斯利用委内瑞拉丰富的石油资源建立了一个反美组织，他称之为美洲玻利瓦尔联盟（简称 Alba）。古巴、玻利维亚和厄瓜多尔（2005年前后这两个国家的极右领导集体当选）、以及中美洲和加勒比海地区的几个小附庸国都加入了这个联盟。多年以来，查韦斯还和哥伦比亚的 FARC 游击队维持着一种几乎不为人知的同盟关系，允许他们把委内瑞拉作为基地之一。
Argentina’s Cristina Fernández and her husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, were semi-detached friends and clients. Venezuela bought Argentine bonds. In 2007 an alert customs official in Buenos Aires opened a suitcase stuffed with $800,000 in cash that was, its Venezuelan owner later confessed, a donation to Ms Fernández’s election campaign.
阿根廷总统克里斯蒂娜?费尔南德斯和她的丈夫、前任总统内斯托尔?基什内尔既是委内瑞拉的盟友，又是该国的贸易伙伴。委内瑞拉曾购买阿根廷国债。2007年，在布宜诺斯艾利斯，有一位警惕的海关官员打开了一只塞有80万美元现金的手提箱。这只手提箱的委内瑞拉主人后来坦白，说这笔钱是送给费尔南德斯用作竞选经费的。
Alba was inimical to Brazil’s ambitions to lead South America. But Brazil’s left-wing presidents, while governing as moderate social-democrats, found it useful to indulge Mr Chávez. They appeared to see him as a means to blunt American influence in the region, while his economic mismanagement gave Brazilian business the chance to supply the goods and services that Venezuela ceased to produce.
Alba 对图谋领导南美洲的巴西曾经抱有敌意。但尽管巴西的几位左翼总统采取的是温和的社会民主党执政方式，他们却发现对查韦斯睁一只眼闭一只眼有好处。他们似乎认为查韦斯可以在南美洲抵消美国的影响。同时，查韦斯在经济方面管理不善，导致委内瑞拉国内有些产品和服务无以为继，这也给了巴西商界可乘之机。
Further afield, Mr Chávez delighted in embracing the world’s autocrats and dictators. He forged an alliance with Iran, which offered opaque ―technical co-operation‖. He agreed to buy arms worth some $15 billion, mainly from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He made friends with Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Muammar Qaddafi and Bashar Assad.
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在更远的地方，查韦斯也乐于和世界各国的独裁者打成一片。他和伊朗结成了联盟，得到了对方提供的一种不透明的―技术合作‖。他同意购买价值约150亿美元的军火，主要来自弗拉基米尔?普京当权的俄罗斯。他还和萨达姆?侯赛因、罗伯特?穆加贝、穆阿迈尔?卡扎菲以及巴沙尔?阿萨德交过朋友。
In Latin America Mr Chávez’s influence declined after 2006. Economic growth made the region’s voters less angry; and many Latin American left-wingers came to realise that chavismo was a blind alley. Though poverty fell fast in Venezuela, so it did elsewhere, as the commodity boom lifted the region (see chart 2). Some on the left had always been critical. Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican writer, dubbed Mr Chávez a ―tropical Mussolini‖. The 2008-09 world economic slowdown exposed the weaknesses of chavismo. While much of the rest of Latin America recovered quickly, Venezuela remained in recession for two years. 2006年以后，查韦斯在拉丁美洲的影响力有所减弱。经济增长相对地安抚了该地区的选民；许多拉美左翼人士认识到查韦斯主义是一条死胡同。随着商品繁荣振兴了这片地区，不仅仅是委内瑞拉，其他国家的贫穷现象也得到了很大的改善（见图表2）。有些左翼人士一直持批判态度。墨西哥作家卡洛斯?富恩特斯将查韦斯冠名为―热带地区的墨索里尼‖。2008到2009年间的全球经济衰退暴露了查韦斯主义的弱点。拉丁美洲其他大部分地区都很快得到了复苏，而委内瑞拉的经济萧条却持续了两年之久。
Subordinates without a chief
群龙无首 The Bolivarian revolution now faces its greatest test. Without doubt, chavismo will outlive its founder. Many ordinary Venezuelans will look back on his rule with fondness. But his heirs will have to grapple with some intractable problems.
玻利瓦尔革命如今面临着最大的一次考验。毫无疑问，查韦斯主义的寿命要比查韦斯本人长一些。很多委内瑞拉平民都会深挚地怀念他的统治。但查韦斯的继任将不得不努力解决一些很棘手的问题。
After a pre-election spending binge last year, the economy is slowing again. Faced with shortages of many goods, including hard currency, Mr Maduro devalued the bolívar by 32% in February. Venezuela comes towards the bottom of just about every league table for good governance or economic competitiveness. For 14 years Venezuelans have been told that their problems were caused by somebody else—the United States or ―the oligarchy‖. Getting ahead has depended on political loyalty rather than merit. The mass enrolment of millions in ―universities‖ that mainly impart propaganda have raised expectations that are almost bound to be dashed.
去年，委内瑞拉选举前花掉了大笔经费。如今，经济再次陷入衰退。面对包括硬通货在内的多种商品短缺，马杜罗在二月份宣布玻利瓦尔【注：委内瑞拉货币也称为―玻利瓦尔‖】贬值32个百分点。在政府治理和经济竞争力的各项排名表中，委内瑞拉几乎都是倒数。十四年 47
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来，委内瑞拉政府一直对人民说他们的问题是由外人引起的——美国，或者说―政治寡头‖。想要出人头地，靠的不是能力和品德，而是政治上的忠诚。数百万人纷纷涌入―大学‖就读，而―大学‖主要是为政府唱赞歌——个人的前程几乎必定会化为泡影。
Assuming the PSUV wins the election, it will be ill-equipped to grapple with these problems. None of its leaders has the authority of Mr Chávez, nor his skill at communicating with the masses. While affable, Mr Maduro is a yes-man lacking political weight, according to a former Latin American foreign minister who dealt with him. Diosdado Cabello, the Speaker of the National Assembly and an army colleague of Mr Chávez, has declared his support for Mr Maduro, but has ambitions of his own. Perhaps only the Cuban leadership can preserve unity among the chavistas. The stakes are high. Cuba’s president, Raúl Castro, knows that the loss of Venezuelan oil would plunge his country’s economy deeper into penury.
假如 PSUV 赢得选举，它将没有能力去应付这些问题。PSUV 所有的领导人都没有查韦斯那样的权威，也没有查韦斯那种和大众沟通的技巧。一位曾经和马杜罗打过交道的前拉美外长表示，虽然他平易近人，却唯唯诺诺，缺少政治分量。国民大会议长、查韦斯昔日战友迪奥斯达多?卡维略宣布支持马杜罗，但他也有自己的小算盘要打。或许只有古巴的领导阶层才能维护查氏阵营的团结。这份赌注很高。古巴总统劳尔?卡斯特罗明白，失去委内瑞拉的石油将让本国经济进一步陷入贫困。
A majority of Venezuelans may eventually come to see that Mr Chávez squandered an extraordinary opportunity for his country, to use an unprecedented oil boom to equip it with world-class infrastructure and to provide the best education and health services money can buy. But this lesson will come the hard way, and there is no guarantee that it will be learned.
查韦斯原本可以利用空前的石油繁荣为国家带来世界一流的基础设施，为人民提供最优质的教育和医疗服务，而他却白白浪费掉了这个绝佳的机会。大多数委内瑞拉人最终或许会意识到这一点。但这个教训来得太过苦涩了，而且也没有人能够保证委内瑞拉究竟会不会吸取这个教训。
译者：剑刃
[2013.03.09] Fixing the fat cats 修理肥猫
Executive pay
高管薪酬
Fixing the fat cats
修理肥猫
Switzerland votes to curb executive pay
瑞士投票通过高管薪酬限制案
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