【clover】 ECO analysis by Julymay

JulymayUID: 2645085

February 1
Off they go
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Daniel Pudles


Parrot and Olivier in America. By Peter Carey. Knopf; 452 pages; $26.95. Faber and Faber; £18.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk


UNIVERSALLY（普遍的） celebrated as a classic when it was first published in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” nevertheless suffered from long years in the shadows. The centenary （一百年。July，以后别再拙劣地用a hundred years这种烂词了）of the author’s birth in 1905 went uncelebrated. No new edition of the book appeared between 1913 and 1945. The best that Tocqueville got was the occasional reference in a learned footnote（学习的足迹）.
Today Tocqueville is revered as never before. The bicentennial（200年） of his birth was the occasion for academic bacchanalias on both sides of the Atlantic. No fewer than four （不少于四本）new editions of “Democracy” have appeared in the past decade. Books on the great man pour （涌出）from the printing presses,
（这个用法很形象，学习了）ranging in quality from ponderous academic tomes 学术巨著to Hugh Brogan’s delightful biography愉快的传记.

Now we have an unexpected addition to the Tocqueville renaissance复兴，也指文艺复兴: a fictional account of his visit to the United States by a much garlanded novelist. “Parrot and Olivier” has all the quirky离奇的 qualities that we have come to expect from Peter Carey: a winding narrative, a mass of vivid historical detail, and some very lively writing.

The story of Tocqueville’s visit was an extraordinary（非常奇怪的） one in its own right. He was only 25 when he crossed the Atlantic, dispatched 派出by the French government to study America’s penal刑罚 system. But as he travelled around the new country Tocqueville became obsessed着迷 with the idea that he was witnessing the future in the making, the rise of a new democratic world. A treatise 专题著作on prisons became a meditation沉思 on the new world order.

This extraordinary tale is rendered even more extraordinary in Mr Carey’s retelling. The author tells his story through the eyes of two characters. Olivier is his version of Tocqueville—a French aristocrat贵族 haunted
焦虑不安的by the horrors of the revolution and the glories of the world it destroyed (“the fine powder on the men’s wigs假发, the lovely perfumes 香水on the ladies breasts, the extraordinary palette 色调of the ancient regime体制, such pinks and greens, gorgeous silks and satins whose colours rose and fell among the folds and melted into the candlelight”). Parrot is an itinerant 巡回的English printer who—thanks to an over-complicated plot—ends up as Olivier’s servant-cum-minder. The narrative shifts constantly between the perspectives of the travelling duo.
The leading characters are beautifully drawn. Olivier is a fastidious
过分挑剔的
prig
一本正经的人and congenital hypochondriac先天忧郁. Parrot is an English radical—he reads Tom Paine and spits 吐on the ancient regime—who is obsessed by art. Olivier is initially repulsed by America but falls in love with a saucy American woman, and hence with the country. Parrot finds a home and a business in America.

Mr Carey’s parallel storytelling provides him with more than just a way of exploring two idiosyncratic 特殊的heroes. It allows him to offer shifting perspectives on the third character in this book—America itself. Olivier moves in what boorish 粗野的，土气的Americans regard as civilised society. Parrot is at home in the artistic demimonde. The result is a gripping吸引注意力的
portrait of Jacksonian America in all its wild variety, from its model farms to its grungy 邋遢的boarding-houses, from its Fourth of July parades to its filthy streets full of copulating pigs. 排比的用法，学习了~

“Parrot and Olivier” is a wonderful tribute to Tocqueville’s great book. But it is more than that: it is also a counterblast矛盾综合. One of Tocqueville’s greatest fears was that democracy would kill great art. Everything would be reduced to the dismal level of democratic man. Parrot dismisses this fear as a phantom鬼怪. “There are no sans culottes, nor will there ever be again. There is no tyranny暴虐 in America, nor ever could be,” he says to his master. “Your bleak certainty that there can be no art in a democracy is unsupported by truth.” Which points to a wonderful paradox: the very fact that we now revere Tocqueville to the point of writing novels about him is proof that one of his guiding ideas about the evils of democracy was bunkum博取欢欣的演说，废话, if magnificent bunkum.

JulymayUID: 2645085

February 2
The US budget
Budget day
Barack Obama is caught between （困于什么什么的夹缝中~好词，学习）a rising deficit, stubborn （顽固的。用这个词来形容失业率感情色彩浓烈）unemployment and political paralysis（无能，话说这个词跟paradise怎么这么像啊，真是讽刺）
Feb 1st 2010 | NEW YORK | From The Economist online
AFP


A MEETING between Barack Obama and Republican members of the House of Representatives last week proved to be an unusually frank, if polite, affair. The president sought to put the members of the minority party on the spot before the television cameras, allowing them to voice their concerns but also asking them to offer proposals. Both sides were pleased with having a chance to make their rivals squirm难为情同：awkward embarrassed. The deficit was an area of particular focus.

The Republicans, as well as the amorphous红包词汇，无定形的 but vigorous “tea party” movement, have managed to put deficit spending on the national agenda （put sth on agenda 将什么什么提上日程）like at no time since the early 1990s when Bill Clinton came to office on a wave of anxiety about the economy. During Mr Clinton’s terms the economy boomed and deficits became surpluses盈余. During those of his successor, George Bush, the public let slip its attention on overspending. Two wars, two popular tax cuts, economic ups and downs, and an expensive drug benefit for Medicare (the health system for the elderly) that was supported by both parties, pushed public finances deep into the red.将公共财政推向红色（赤字）

As hard as Mr Obama and his advisers have tried to remind voters of the fiscal situation that he inherited, the president is now seen to “own” the economy and the tide of red ink that America faces. So as he proposes his first full-year budget on Monday February 1st, he is stressing not the goodies the budget will dole out but the programmes he is cutting and consolidating巩固. According to the White House, the new budget cuts 120 programmes, with savings expected to total $20 billion. These include combining 38 education programmes into 11, and cutting money for parks, brownfield development and other areas.


Whereas然而，尽管 the deficit has become more prominent the White House has its eyes on another concern（关注 sth）: jobs. In the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan, and then in the late 1990s under Mr Clinton, the unemployment rate and presidential popularity corresponded eerily closely. Late last week GDP figures for the fourth quarter of 2009 showed the strongest quarterly economic growth since 2003. But the president and his supporters have reacted cautiously, as economic analysts warn that the recovery remains fragile and as job figures and (closely related) consumption numbers remain weak.

Can the president get Americans back to work? On Friday he proposed a package of tax incentives 奖励for job creation: small businesses would get a $5,000 tax credit for every worker hired. In addition, those who raise pay above inflation for existing workers will get a credit on their Social Security taxes, a payroll tax that adds a good deal to the cost of every worker. Republicans dismiss this as small beer and remind the president that not just Reagan but John Kennedy pushed through economy-wide, broad-based tax cuts to stimulate the economy in a recession.
Neither party talks comfortably about the real tax-and-spend issue, entitlements. Last week the Congressional Budget Office said that the national debt is on course to （在……进程中+adj）triple in ten years. The three-year discretionary（无条件的）-spending freeze Mr Obama backed at his state-of-the-union address last week would reap only small savings next to the rising costs of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the health-insurance programme for the poor. Mr Obama wants a commission to propose a deficit-reduction plan that would have to pass Congress without amendment. This could be one way to tackle（应付） entitlements.
But Mr Obama could not get the creation of such a commission through the Senate (and thus has talked of creating one by executive order). Many Republicans want such a commission to focus only on spending cuts and not tax increases, and some Democrats fear entitlement cuts. The Republican refusal to countenance （赞同）tax increases could make them look irresponsible. But they may gamble （冒险：take a risk doing）that with control of Congress and the presidency, any political pain for deficits, joblessness and the rest will only be felt by the Democrats. The most shameless partisans on both sides glory in trying to make the other look like it will throw the elderly out in the cold if Medicare and Social Security are reformed. Making hard choices is all but impossible when political gamesmanship （竞赛时虽不光明但不违反规则的做法）is at the fore.

JulymayUID: 2645085

February 4
Space to thrive
A plan to overhaul America’s space agency is long overdue
Feb 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition
AP
IN 2004 George Bush announced a plan for America’s space agency, NASA, to return to the moon by 2020, land there, explore the surface and set up a base. The moon would then serve(被当做……，学习了) as a staging post（补给站） for a journey to Mars. It was, unfortunately, unclear how this modest proposal would be paid for and, as work began and costs spiralled（飙升，好词，抱走）, the “vision” seemed more science fiction than science.（看上去更像科幻小说而非科学。好句子，抱走
）

On February 1st, reality caught up. The back-to-the-moon programme, Constellation, with its Ares rocket (pictured), fell victim to Barack Obama’s need to find cuts. The Office of Management and Budget described it as over budget（将……描述成……）, behind schedule and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest. The office also said Constellation had sucked（拍案叫绝的拟人，吸） money from other, more scientific programmes, such as robotic space exploration and Earth observation.

Much has been made of the fact that NASA will, as a consequence of Constellation’s cancellation, have to rely on private firms to send its astronauts to the international space station once the space shuttle is withdrawn. In many ways, though, this is the least interesting aspect of what is happening, for what Mr Obama proposed is actually a radical overhaul （彻底大修）of the agency.

Success is an option

The rethink （重新考虑，有趣的词）looks at four areas: new ways of getting into space; extending the life and use of the space station; the agency’s relationship with the private sector; and its scientific mission（使命）. The first part of the plan, known as the transformative technology initiative, will cost $7.8 billion over five years. It will develop orbiting fuel depots（轨道燃料库）, rendezvous-and-docking（交会和对接） technologies, advanced life-support systems that recycle all of their materials, and better motors for spacecraft. The agency will also develop new engines, propellants（推进剂） and materials as part of a $3.1 billion heavy-lift programme, to allow it to send craft well beyond Earth, while $4.9 billion is allowed for advances in areas such as sensors（传感器）, communications and robotics.

The second part of the plan is to postpone the death of the space station from 2016 to 2020. More science will be done there (cynics might take issue with the word “more”) and there will, specifically, be research into biology, combustion（燃烧） and materials science. There will also be more emphasis（重点）
on space medicine, and the station is to get a centrifuge（离心机）. This will allow people to experience artificial gravity in space, which may be important for long-term missions to places such as Mars. Inflatable “space habitats” were mentioned, and these might be used to build extensions to the space station on the cheap. All this will please the station’s other participants—Canada, Europe and Japan—which have invested a lot in it for, as yet, little return. It will also help build a coalition （同盟）of countries that want to travel farther into the solar system.

Now Constellation is cancelled, the plan’s third part is to encourage private firms to provide transport to and from the space station. Such journeys into low Earth orbit do not need the heavy-lifting oomph that more wide-ranging missions require, so the proposal is to contract out all of this local delivery work. In fact, such a scheme（计划） already exists, and 20 cargo missions by two firms, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, are planned. The scheme will be extended to include at least two other companies, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corporation.

Under the new regime（管理体制）, companies will get fixed-price contracts instead of being paid on a “cost plus” basis. The risks and burdens （负担）of developing transport to low Earth orbit will thus fall to the private sector. According to Mike Gold of Bigelow Aerospace, a firm that hopes to build inflatable space habitats, such fiscal rectitude has been met with criticism from a surprising quarter: Republican politicians. Bill Posey, who represents Florida in Congress, described it as a “slow death （慢性死亡，构词法）of our nation’s human space-flight programme”. “If you could fuel a rocket on hypocrisy（虚伪）,” Mr Gold suggests, “we’d be on Pluto by now.”
The last part of the plan is for more science. The Earth-observation programme will receive some $2 billion to improve the forecasting of climate change and monitor the planet’s carbon cycle and its ice sheets. As part of this, NASA will replace the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a satellite that was lost a year ago, and which was supposed to identify the world’s sources, and sinks, of carbon dioxide（二氧化碳）.

There will also be a new emphasis on robotic missions, which are vastly cheaper than manned ones, and cause less angst（烦恼） if they blow up. The first robot destination will be the moon. There will also, according to Charlie Bolden, NASA’s administrator, be a mission to the sun, to study the solar wind, and one to improve the agency’s ability to detect （发觉）and catalogue interesting (but potentially dangerous) asteroids（小行星，红宝词汇） that pass near Earth.

It all, then, adds up to a radical shift—but a sensible one after years of fantasy. As Lori Garver, Mr Bolden’s deputy, put it, “the old plans lost us the moon. This gives us back the solar system.”（这一整段的论述与Issue和Argument相似，是非常实用的总分总~）

JulymayUID: 2645085

February 5
The oil industry
Beyond the black stuff
Big Oil is being forced to rethink its future
Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist online
Shutterstock




1、ON THE face of
（面临……）it the world’s big and publicly quoted oil companies should be celebrating some pleasing results this week. Royal Dutch Shell unveiled its results on Thursday February 4th, reporting that it had made $9.8 billion in 2009. Two days earlier BP boasted profits of $14 billion for the same year. Yet these billions are a disappointment compared with the bonanza（极大的数量） of previous years (Shell, for example, raked in $31.4 billion in 2008 alone) when soaring（高耸的，好词，抱走） oil prices pulled profits ever higher.


2、In the long term, however, the firms’ success depends on sustaining reserves. （维持储备） big western oil companies are trying to expand through acquisitions（收购） and investment, but the opportunities do so are becoming scarcer（稀少）. The firms are spending where they can. Exxon Mobil, the biggest listed oil company, says that exploration and capital spending hit $27.1 billion in 2009, 4% higher than in 2008. The company expects to spend $25 billion to $30 billion annually（每年，应该也是红宝词） to the same end over the next five years. BP intends to spend some $20 billion this year on investment in new projects and drilling, roughly the same level as last year.（很好的论证方法，注意连词的使用。用例子来证明自己的观点）


3、But there are limits to what money can buy. State-controlled rivals—in the Middle East, Russia and beyond—jealously （猜忌的）guard oil reserves on their home patches. Few new big fields of oil, at least those that are easy to reach and cheap to exploit, have been discovered in recent years. And where new opportunities emerge, such as in Iraq, Western oil giants are scrambling to pay big sums at auctions（拍卖） for drilling rights（开采权） in territory where the local government tightly limits their returns. Even then, competition from Chinese, Russian and other state-run oil firms can be severe. National oil companies will often pay prices that would alarm shareholders（股东） in the big listed oil companies. （这一段是上一段的补充，当然也可以被看作为是上一段的反面）


4、Thus Western firms are increasingly looking for different sorts of growth. One option is to deploy their expertise（专门知识或技能） in the hunt for oil that is harder to reach, for example deep offshore（近海）, or to go for reserves such as tar sands that are trickier（棘手）, and so much pricier, to refine（精炼）.


5、Another route（途径） is to speed up the quest for other energy reserves. France’s Total has branched out into nuclear-power generation. This week Shell announced a $12 billion joint-venture with Cosan, a Brazilian producer of ethanol （乙醇）from sugar cane. This is something of a change of tack. Exxon and Shell are both spending money on “second generation” biofuels made from algae（藻） or waste materials, but these could take years to develop. Now Shell can sell Cosan’s “first generation” wares through it global distribution network.


6、By far the biggest bet laid, however, has been on natural gas. Around 40% of Shell’s daily production is now in the form of gas. Total and BP are not far behind. （也没有比他少~）Gas is increasingly important for power generation and heating and the global market is expected to grow by half by 2030. Big oil companies are keen to expand, calculating that their skills at managing huge capital projects will be useful when building gas-liquefaction （天然气液化）plants that make the stuff readily transportable. Late last year Chevron, Shell and Exxon agreed to spend $37 billion to develop the Gorgon field off Australia, another potentially huge source of gas.（用事实来证明观点）


7、Nonetheless investors remain cautious because prices are volatile（不稳定）. Exxon’s shares fell in December when the firm bid $30 billion for XTO Energy, which gets its gas from “unconventional” shale beds. Gas prices have tumbled in the past couple of years as new projects, especially shale, came on stream （涌现）just as the global recession lessened demand. And technological improvements have made the huge reserves of gas in America, from shale beds （页岩床，原来这还是个专业词汇~）and the like, a commercial prospect（好词，抱走~在Argument里面如果作者让推荐投资什么的就可以用了~）. BP believes that these factors will keep gas prices weak for three or four years, but it could be longer. Though national oil companies have forced the Western oil giants to look farther afield for new reserves, the oil prices, unlike gas prices, are supported by the state-owned firms that make up OPEC.

JulymayUID: 2645085

February 7

Falling flat
More evidence that America is experiencing a jobless recovery
Feb 5th 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC | From The Economist online
AP
A WEEK ago, Americans were told that their economy had expanded for a second consecutive quarter, and rapidly迅速的 at that: output grew at a 5.7% annual rate. This week, they learn that a return to growth has yet to benefit the jobless. The economy lost 20,000 jobs in January, a decline driven by the loss of 75,000 jobs in the construction sector. Economists had forecast an increase in employment of around 15,000. The unemployment rate, based on household rather than establishment data, showed a slight improvement, dropping from 10% to 9.7%, but nearly 15m Americans remain（ECO让我想起很多忘记的词~）
unemployed. As Larry Summers put it in Davos last week, the American economy is experiencing “a statistical recovery and a human recession”.
Several positive trends continued in January.
（总起句）Firms added 52,000 temporary workers and increased hours, just as they did in December, suggesting growing if cautious（小心的） optimism. Employment rose in health, education and professional services, and retail employment grew by 42,000 in January after declining in December, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Manufacturing （制造业）employment also grew, by 11,000, the first increase since the beginning of recession. Analysts（分析家） point out that the adjustment of the data is tricky （复杂的）
around the holiday season, and actual underlying employment may have grown in January.
But many economists may view this release（释放） as more disappointing than the previous month's figure, despite the gain. The Labour Department published the results of its annual benchmark（基准）
revision（修订） of previous employment data. Through the 12 months to March 2009, the American economy lost 930,000 more jobs than had been previously estimated. It now appears that over 700,000 jobs were lost in each of the first three months of last year, a significantly worse performance than originally thought. Meanwhile, data for the last two months of 2009 were revised to show a larger increase in employment in November, but a larger decline in employment in December, for a net drop in employment of 5,000 jobs relative to previous reports.
And while the employment-population ratio increased slightly from December to January, and off record lows（记录低点）, the problem of the long-term unemployed continues to grow. Just over 41% of all unemployed workers, over 6.3m workers, have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.
Most troubling of all is the continued failure of economic growth to benefit the labour （劳工）market. Employment fell by over 300,000 jobs during the last three months of 2009, despite strong expansion in GDP. The first quarter （四分之一）of 2010 is unlikely to show as big an output gain（输出增益）, suggesting that the pace of improvement in employment may be slowing, even as regular job growth has yet to return. And the situation may be more dire（可怕） still; initial（最初的） jobless claims have grown in recent weeks, indicating that what momentum（动力势头，动量） there was in labour markets has been lost.
The January data will increase the pressure on the Senate to pass a jobs bill. The House of Representatives passed a measure designed to boost hiring in December, worth $154 billion, and the president outlined（概述）
a number policies to encourage employers to hire in his state-of-the-union address and budget proposal. At the centre of the package is a $33 billion tax credit（赊购）, available to firms that add employees or increase hours or wages. The policy may be just the kick firms need to take on new help. In the fourth quarter, labour productivity rose by 6.2% as businesses expanded output while maintaining lean payrolls（非农就业）. The government will hope to provide an incentive（奖励） to begin handling rising orders with new workers, who will then use their earnings to shore up consumption and the recovery as a whole.
But with the revelation that labour markets early last year were far weaker than expected and the growing indications（越来越多的迹象） that the recovery will be jobless, the country's leaders may be wishing they had done more to boost the economy sooner. The longer it takes to achieve steady job creation, the more uncertain recovery will become.

JulymayUID: 2645085

February 9


Facing up to China
Making room for a new superpower should not be confused with giving way to it
Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
AP/AFP
FOR six decades now, Taiwan has been where the simmering
酝酿 distrust between China and America most risks boiling沸腾的 over. In 1986 Deng Xiaoping called it the “one obstacle in Sino-US（中美之间） relations”. So there was something almost ritualistic仪式的 about the Chinese government’s protestations this week that it was shocked, shocked and angered by America’s decision to sell Taiwan $6 billion-worth of weaponry. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, passed in 1979, all American administrations must help arm Taiwan so that it can defend itself. And China, which has never renounced放弃 what it says is its right to “reunify” Taiwan by force, feels just as bound to protest when arms deals go through. After a squall briefly roils the waters, relations revert 回复到to their usual choppy波浪起伏的 but unthreatening passage.
With luck, this will happen again. But the squalls are increasing in number, and the world’s most important bilatera双方l relationship is getting stormy. If it goes wrong, historians will no doubt heap堆积 much of the blame on China’s aggression; but they will also measure Barack Obama on this issue, perhaps more than any other.
The China ascendancy优势，支配地位
As if to highlight强调，突出 the underlying dangers, China has this time gone further than the usual blood-and-thunder紧张激烈的 warnings and suspension of military 军事的contacts (see article). It has threatened sanctions against American firms and the withdrawal of co-operation on international issues. Those threats, if carried out, would damage China’s interests seriously, so its use of them suggests that it hopes it can persuade Mr Obama to buckle—if not on this sale then perhaps on Taiwan’s mooted 有争议的future purchases of advanced jet-fighters. But the unusual ferocity凶猛 of the Chinese regime’s response also points to three dangerous undercurrents暗流.
The first is the failure of China’s Taiwan policy. Under the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s relations with the mainland have been better than ever before. Travel, trade and tourist links have strengthened被加强. A free-trade agreement is under negotiation协商. Yet there is little sign of progress towards China’s main goal of “peaceful reunification重新统一”. Most Taiwanese want both economic co-operation and de facto independence. A similar failure haunts纠缠 policy in Tibet, where our correspondent, on a rarely permitted trip to the region, found the attempt to buy Tibetans’ loyalty through the fruits of development apparently futile 无意义(see article). As talks between China and the emissaries of the Dalai Lama ended in the usual stalemate this week, China warned Mr Obama against his planned meeting with Tibet’s exiled 流放的spiritual宗教leader.
Again, nothing new in that. There is, however, a new self-confidence these days in China’s familiar harangues 大声斥诉about anything it deems认为 sovereign. That is the second trend: China, after its successful passage through the financial crisis of late 2008, is more assertive武断的，威武的 and less tolerant of being thwarted挫败—and not just over its “internal affairs”. From its perceived position of growing economic strength, China has been throwing its weight around（向外界施压）. It played a central and largely unhelpful role at the climate-change talks in Copenhagen; it looks as if it will wreck毁坏 a big-power consensus 一致同意的over Iran’s nuclear programme; it has picked fights in territorial disputes with India, Japan and Vietnam. At gatherings of all sorts, Chinese officials now want to have their say, and expect to be heeded听取.
This suggests a dangerous third trend. As China has opened its economy since 1978, it has been frantically疯狂的，狂热的
engaged in
（be engaged in doing）catching up with the rich West. That has led to the idea, even among many Chinese, that it would gradually become more “Western”. The slump萧条期 in the West, however, has undermined that assumption. Many Chinese now feel they have little to learn from the rich world. On the contrary, a “Beijing consensus” has been gaining ground, extolling 歌颂the virtues of decisive authoritarianism over shilly-shallying 支支吾吾democratic debate. In the margins of international conferences such as the recent Davos forum, even American officials mutter despairingly about their own “dysfunctional” political system.
A swing not a seesaw跷跷板
Two dangers arise from this loss of Western self-confidence. One is of trying to placate 抚慰China. The delay in Mr Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in order to smooth his visit to China in November gave too much ground, as well as turning an issue of principle into a bargaining chip筹码. America needs to stand firmer. Beefing up the deterrent capacity of Taiwan, which China continues to threaten with hundreds of missiles, is in the interests of peace. Mr Obama should therefore proceed with the arms sales and European governments should back him. If American companies, such as Boeing, lose Chinese custom for political reasons, European firms should not be allowed to supplant them.
On the other hand the West should not be panicked into 惊慌失措unnecessary confrontation对抗. Rather than ganging up on China in an effort to “contain” it, the West would do better to get China to take up its share of the burden义务 of global governance管理. Too often China wants the power due a global giant while shrugging off 推卸the responsibilities, saying that it is still a poor country. It must be encouraged to play its part—for instance, on climate change, on Iran and by allowing its currency通货 to appreciate. As the world’s largest exporter, China’s own self-interest lies in a harmonious world order and robust trading system.
It is in the economic field that perhaps the biggest danger lies. Already the Obama administration has shown itself too ready to resort to trade sanctions制裁 against China. If China now does the same using a political pretext, while the cheapness of its currency keeps its trade surplus过多的 large, it is easy to imagine a clamour喧闹 in Congress for retaliation met by a further Chinese nationalist民族主义国家
backlash强烈反抗. That is why the administration and China’s government need to work together to pre-empt trouble.
Some see confrontation 冲突as inevitable when a rising power elbows用肘推 its way to the top table. But America and China are not just rivals对手 for global influence, they are also mutually dependent economies with everything to gain from co-operation. Nobody will prosper if disagreements become conflicts.

JulymayUID: 2645085

NATO tries the power of advertising as it prepares a big offensive进攻 in Afghanistan（阿富汗）
Feb 10th 2010 | KABUL | From The Economist print edition
AP
FOR months now US Marines in Helmand, Afghanistan’s bloodiest province, have been sporting T-shirts proclaiming their intention: “Just do Marja”. This refers to a cluster（团体） of Taliban-controlled villages close to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Marja’s lawlessness and the protection it affords to insurgents叛乱分子 and drug-traffickers has been frustrating the marines’ efforts in nearby areas. The T-shirt wearers are about to get their wish. American forces, led by the Marines, are preparing a big operation to clear the area.
Unusually, NATO北大西洋公约组织 has made no secret of its plans and for some time has been loudly publicising “Operation Mushtarak” (or “togetherness” in Pushtun). They hope this will encourage civilians to get out of harm’s way. They also hope that the mere prospect of NATO and Afghan soldiers massing on Marja will prompt insurgents to leave via通过 three unsealed未密封的 exit corridors.
Neither hope has been entirely realised. Thousands of civilians have abandoned their homes and headed for nearby cities and an overcrowded refugee camp on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah. But others say they have been prevented from leaving by the Taliban, who have been digging in, and by the improvised即兴
explosive devices with which they have been seeding the roads. Mark Sedwill, NATO’s civilian representative in Afghanistan, advised locals to stay indoors and keep their heads down.
Marja is being billed as an important test and advertisement for the counter-insurgency strategy of Stanley McChrystal, the American and NATO commander in Afghanistan. He says the follow-up work to maintain security and build a semblance外表 of basic governance will matter more than the initial最初的 fight. Mr Sedwill believes Marja residents will learn the benefits of better governance, economic opportunities and of living under legitimate法定的 authorities.
Critics say there is nothing especially new about such a strategy. Last year, similar claims about the rolling-out of a comprehensive strategy accompanied Operation Khanjar, a plan to clear areas south of Lashkar Gah. The results are mixed. Progress in the town of Nawa, on the fringe 边缘of the main, fertile富饶的，多产的 populated area (known as the “Green Zone”) is said to very promising. But the operation has also been criticised for focusing scarce几乎不
resources on thinly populated areas.
NATO says things will be different this time. For one thing there are thought to be about 100,000 people living in the area known as Marja. Much emphasis is being placed on the role of the Afghan security forces, which General McChrystal claims have a leading role in the operation.
Building bigger and better Afghan security forces capable of keeping insurgents out of areas that have been expensively cleared is crucial决定性的 not just to Marja but also to the West’s entire Afghan strategy. But the Afghan National Army (ANA) remains deeply troubled. “Attrition消耗 rates” are high, as large numbers of soldiers are killed or quit. It will struggle to meet its target of growing from around 102,400 at present to 171,600 by October 2011. The police force, long neglected by Western donors, is far worse. The EU’s political office in Kabul suggests that almost 10% of policemen were killed in action in 2008.
Also of deep concern is the ANA’s ethnic种族的 make-up. According to a diplomatic外交上的 cable written by the American ambassador last November, the low recruitment in the south of Pushtuns is crippling有严重后果的. They are the country’s largest ethnic group, whose resentment of the post-2001 political order has done much to fuel the insurgency叛乱. With Persian-speaking Tajiks and Hazaras from the north preponderant占有优势的, the risk is that ANA soldiers operating in places like Marja will be regarded by the Pushtuns who live there as almost as foreign as NATO forces.
One way around this problem is for Afghanistan to reintroduce conscription征兵, as Hamid Karzai suggested early this month at a security conference会议 in Munich. The idea met with mixed reviews. Some former army generals who served during the conscription years that ended in 1992 welcomed it. Dissenting不同意的 voices said the government was unlikely to be able compel people to fight on its behalf in areas, such as Marja, where state control is non-existent and likely to be contested for some time to come.

JulymayUID: 2645085

March 4
Homosexuality in Nigeria
Go online if you're glad to be gay
One church’s answer to rampant猖獗的
homophobia对同性恋的恐惧或憎恨
Feb 11th 2010 | LAGOS | From The Economist print edition
ONCE a fortnight, 50 or so Nigerians furtively log on 开始工作for an online Bible study class. “This is the only way we can worship做礼拜 because of the stigma耻辱的标记,” says one of them. The reason for the secrecy is that the participants, ranging from students to married men, are gay. To go to a mainstream 主流思想church in Nigeria would risk beatings or even a forced exorcism驱邪. So hundreds are turning to House of Rainbow, Nigeria’s only gay-friendly church, which is flourishing online after almost meeting a violent end two years ago. （概述，从一个实例入手引出主题：主流思想抵制同性恋）
Many Nigerians strongly disapprove of homosexuality. The dominant 占统治地位的role of religion is widely seen as the root of the country’s homophobic culture. Punishing处罚 gays is one of the few common themes that politicians can promote with equal zest没兴趣 in the mainly Christian south and the largely Muslim north. Under federal law sodomy is punishable by a 14-year jail sentence. An even more stringent严厉的 bill to ban gay-rights groups and homosexual displays of affection is also under consideration.）（法律上的限制）
It is a similar story in many other parts of Africa.总起 Uganda, influenced by evangelical 新交会的Christianity, has provoked挑起 an international outcry公开反对 over a still harsher更为严厉 bill that advocates the death penalty惩罚 in certain cases of gay sex, for instance when one partner is HIV-positive. Barack Obama recently called the bill “odious”可恶的. In Malawi two men have gone on trial for gross indecency after holding a “traditional engagement ceremony”. The judge refused bail保释 on the grounds that their release might provoke激起 mob暴徒 violence.（这是在说别的Africa国家的情况）
The founder of House of Rainbow, Rowland Jide Macaulay, a gay Nigerian pastor牧师, knows all about anti-gay intimidation胁迫. Two years after he set up his church in Lagos in 2006, the project was brought to a halt
n.
停止 Members of his congregation教堂里的会众 had been beaten and sometimes raped as they left Sunday services in order—said their assailants攻击者—to “correct their sexuality”. After receiving death threats Mr Macaulay fled to Britain, from where he now preaches via YouTube. （转回实例）
Undaunted无畏的, he is now seeking funds款项 in the West. He wants to start hairdressing and fashion courses to complement Bible study. The exclusion排斥 of gays from Nigeria’s mainstream churches can limit their educational chances. Mosques and churches often perform the duties of a state that has all but collapsed in many parts of the country. Muslim movements such as Izala build schools in the north, while Pentecostal groups have set up universities in the south. As Anthony, a 27-year-old bisexual living in Lagos, says: “In Nigeria the church is not just about a spiritual lift...they run our [social] services. If they say ‘We don’t want you’, where do you go?”（民众的看法~）

JulymayUID: 2645085

What are they afraid of?
The economy is booming(激增) and politics stable. Yet China’s leaders seem edgy不安
Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Illustration图表 by Claudio Munoz
“THE forces pulling China toward integration融合 and openness are more powerful today than ever before,” said President Bill Clinton in 1999. China then, though battered 连续猛击by the Asian financial crisis, was busy dismantling state-owned enterprises国有企业 and pushing for admission to the World Trade Organisation. Today, however, those forces look much weaker.
A spate猛涨 of recent events, from the heavy jail sentences passed on human-rights activists to an undiplomatic obduracy at the climate-change negotiations协商 in Copenhagen哥本哈根 last December, invite questions about the thinking of China’s leaders. Has their view of the outside world and dissent at home changed? Or were the forces detected by Mr Clinton and so many others after all not pulling so hard in the direction they were expecting?
The early years of what China calls its “reform and opening” after 1978 were marked by cycles of liberalisation and repression压抑. The turning-points were usually marked by political crisis: dissent on the streets, leadership struggles, or both. Now, however, the only big protest movements are repressed ones among ethnic种族的 minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang. China’s big cities are hardly roiled by political turmoil混乱. By the time Liu Xiaobo, an academic, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December, dissident debate surrounding the reform manifesto宣言 he had issued a year earlier had long subsided消减. Yet it was the heaviest-known penalty处罚 imposed on any activist for “inciting煽动 subversion颠覆” since such a crime was written into law in 1997. （政治方面的不安因素）
China has so far survived the global economic downturn with hardly any of the agitation不安（that） 省略many once feared it might cause among unemployed workers or jobless university graduates. The economy grew at a very robust-sounding 8.7% last year and is predicted by many to be on course for similar growth in 2010.
Sweeping影响广泛的 changes are due in the senior leadership in 2012 and 2013, including the replacement of President Hu Jintao and of the prime minister, Wen Jiabao. But if a struggle is brewing酝酿, signs of it are hard to spot注意到. An unusually high-profile形象 campaign against organised crime by the party chief of Chongqing municipality直辖市, Bo Xilai, has raised eyebrows. Some speculate that it is part of a bid by Mr Bo, who is a Politburo政治局 member, to whip up popular support for his promotion to the Politburo’s all-powerful Standing Committee in 2012. An online poll民意测验 by an official website chose Mr Bo as the “most inspiring voice” of 2009.
But Andrew Nathan of Columbia University in New York does not see this as a challenge to the expected shoo-in for Xi Jinping, the vice-president, as China’s next leader, despite Mr Xi’s failure last year to garner 积累the leading military post analysts thought would form part of his grooming. Li Keqiang, a deputy副手 prime minister, still looks set to take over from Mr Wen in 2013.
Against this backdrop of political stability and economic growth, the most credible interpretation of the government’s recent hard line is that the forces pushing its leaders towards greater liberalisation at home and sympathetic engagement with the West are weaker than had been hoped. Nor is there any sign that the next generation of leaders see their mission使命 differently. As Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based political analyst, puts it: “The argument in policy-making circles围绕 where reform is concerned is ‘how much more authoritarian should we be?’ not ‘how do we embark on Western-style democracy?’”
Tough though the recent sentences of activists have been, they are hardly out of keeping with the leadership’s approach to dissent in recent years. This has involved giving a bit of leeway余地（好词） to freethinking individuals, but occasionally punishing those seen as straying迷途 too far. Since late last year two activists have been jailed in an apparent attempt to deter people from organising the parents of children killed in shoddily built schools during an earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008. But another critic of the government’s handling of the parents’ grievances委屈, Ai Weiwei, remains free in Beijing and just as outspoken.
The coming months are unlikely to see much change. Despite boasting自吹自擂 of their country’s resilience适应能力，还原能力 in the face of the global economic crisis, China’s leaders still appear jittery紧张不安的. Mr Wen has forecast that 2010 will see “even greater complexity in the domestic and international situation”. China’s security chief安全最高领导人, Zhou Yongkang, in a speech published this week said the task of maintaining social stability “was still extremely onerous困难的”.
Some Chinese economists worry out loud that China’s massive stimulus刺激因素-spending might have bought the country only a temporary reprieve暂时. Bubbles, they fret, are forming in 房地产 markets, inflationary pressure is building up and reforms needed to promote sustained growth (including measures to promote urbanisation) are not being carried out fast enough. Occasionally, even the government’s worst nightmare is mooted as a possibility: stagflation不景气状况下的物价上涨. A combination of fast-rising prices and low growth might indeed be enough to send protesters抗议者 on to the streets.
Abroad, Chinese leaders are struggling to cope成功的应付 with what they feel to be an accelerated shift in the global balance of power, in China’s favour. This has resulted in what Mr Moses describes as behaviour ranging from “strutting to outright stumbling”. They reacted with oratorical雄辩的
fury狂怒 in January, when America announced a $6.4 billion arms deal with Taiwan. But while pandering迎合 to popular nationalism at home, they remain aware of China’s limitations. This week China allowed an American aircraft-carrier to pay a port call to Hong Kong, just a day before President Obama was due to defy公然反抗 grim warnings and meet the Dalai Lama in Washington.
Chinese leaders can be confident[ that the plight困境 of dissidents and the ever-louder grumbles of foreign businessmen over the barriers they face in China will not keep the world away]好长的一句话呀. From May China will be visited by a series of foreign leaders going to the World Expo in Shanghai. Among the first will be France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, much reviled by Chinese nationalists for his stance立场 on Tibet. China sees the Expo, like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as a chance to flaunt its strength. But, as Mr Clinton noted of China in 1999, “a tight grip is actually a sign of a weak hand”（紧紧的控制恰是无力的标志）.