【clover】ECO analysis by happy牧羊

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

[size=0.9em]Google and China
Searching questionsGoogle defies China's censors and risks being blocked. Its woes send a chilling message[size=0.7em]Mar 22nd 2010 | From
The Economist
online

[size=0.8em]AFTER a couple of months of talks with the Chinese authorities, Google announced on Monday March 22nd that it had
stopped censoring search results
on its China portal, Google.cn, and was automatically redirecting its users to
Google.com.hk, an uncensored portal in Hong Kong. The company said it would try to maintain an advertising-sales operation in China, and would continue research and development work there. However, it acknowledged that the Chinese authorities might block access to its site, in effect putting it out of business. Google's decision follows several attempts to hack its e-mail system, ever stronger censorship of its searches, legal complaints tied to its digitisation of books, and—always a worrying sign in China—growing vitriol in the state-controlled press.
[size=0.8em]If Google, which first raised the prospect of withdrawal in January, seems to have hesitated on the way towards the exit, there are 400m reasons why. That is the number of people in China, the government reckons, who use the internet. Increasingly, they are choosing it over other media, notably television, as a source of entertainment, information and opinion, say Max Magni and Yuval Atsmon of McKinsey, a consultancy. Over the past decade revenues from digital advertising have grown exponentially, admittedly from a tiny base, and the trend, predicts Mr Atsmon, will continue for some time.
[size=0.8em]
[size=0.8em]Foreign companies operating in China have been quick to see this potential but largely unable to grasp it. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all explicitly blocked. EBay faltered because of its own managerial errors, but also because of delayed approval for PayPal, its online payment system, which this week announced a partnership with a Chinese rival. Yahoo! caused a stir by allowing the Chinese authorities to probe its users’ e-mails in a hunt for political dissidents—something it has since pledged not to do.

[size=0.8em]There are now domestic Chinese equivalents of all these sites—Baidu for Google, Taobao for eBay, Renren for Facebook, QQ for instant messaging, games and social networking—and they are doing well (see chart). The vast traffic they attract brings huge potential revenues and lots of useful data that could help them shape the internet in future, rather than merely following Western models, says Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consultancy.
[size=0.8em]To the extent that Western firms have seized on the growth of the internet in China, it has often been as a marketing tool. McKinsey cites two examples: Nestlé has promoted coffee in a tea-drinking country with clever online ads about the joy of a coffee break, and Nokia has run music promotions and competitions, accessed via its handsets, in conjunction with video sites.
[size=0.8em]Outright revenues from the internet may become even harder to capture in years to come as China takes further steps to control access. Content providers like Google have always needed to obtain local licences, and have thus been required to have a Chinese subsidiary or partner. As awkward as this has been, new rules expand these impediments, requiring the licensing of domain names and, potentially, foreign sites as well.
[size=0.8em]Google’s possible departure from the Chinese market sends a chilling message to companies that remain. Advertisers and workers can both see that they will be better off with entities the Chinese government favours, which means domestic firms. A withdrawal would also cast a new light on Google itself. It is often perceived to be successful because of advanced technology, but, as China shows, it thrives only to the extent that local laws permit it to link to content and distribute it without interference. Alter the legal environment and the commercial results are quite different.

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

AW结束有一段时间了

但是最近的笔试复习有点吃力

恢复我的每日eco

耶！哦！

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

第一篇来一个讲健康的[size=1.4em]大苹果 看着不错哦 ╭(╯3╰)╮
The best books
The Economist's health-care correspondent on his reading list

[size=0.7em]Mar 30th 2010 | From The Economist online

[size=0.8em]VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN's portfolio now includes health care, biotechnology and innovation. Prior to this he was the paper's environment and energy correspondent. He is the author of two books: “ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future” (co-authored with Iain Carson, a colleague at The Economist) and “Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution will Transform an Industry, Change our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet”.

[size=0.8em]What is the best book you've read about America's health-care system?

[size=0.8em]“The Innovator's Prescription” by Clayton Christensen (profiled here in “The Economist Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus”). The godfather of disruptive innovation, a theory that describes the way unexpected technological breakthroughs force corporations to radically rethink themselves and explains what is wrong with America's grotesquely distorted health system. When medical devices are needlessly gold-plated镀金 and services inefficient but overpriced, he argues, it means that cheap and cheerful alternatives can bubble up气泡冒出来 to challenge the incumbents 在职人员. This was how the scrappy零碎的 片段的 personal computer challenged and ultimately overturned centralised approaches to computing估算 估计 计算. Keep your eyes open for留心 注意 frugal engineers and seditious煽动性的 business models from India and other emerging markets. (See this April 2009 business story for examples.)
[size=0.8em]
[size=0.8em]What was the last book you used to help with a story?
[size=0.8em]
[size=0.8em]“Change by Design” by Tim Brown. The boss of Ideo, a celebrated design consultancy (which can be credited with Apple's mouse, among other innovations), argues that many of the world's problems can be tackled 解决 处理 对付 应付 阻拦 by using “design thinking”. As I wrote in the story (see article): “By design thinking, Mr Brown means the open-minded, no-holds-barred approach that designers bring to their work, rather than the narrow, technical view of innovation traditionally taught at many business and engineering schools.”

Business leaders are listening, but it's not clear whether this is because design thinking is a breakthrough, or because bosses think the current crisis in capitalism can't be solved by the usual management gurus and consultancies.

[size=0.8em]What was the last book you read for fun?
[size=0.8em]“Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. Loved the telling of the tale, except the bit at the end where the voice of God reveals it's all a sham. “Better story”, my foot.

[size=0.8em]What is next on your reading list?

[size=0.8em]“The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves”, a forthcoming book by Matt Ridley (a former science correspondent for
The Economist). It looks like an updated and more technologically heavy version of “It’s Getting Better All the Time”, Julian Simon's classic. A libertarian意识自由论 thinker, Simon argued that the prevailing eco-pessimism and doom-saying about the world running out of resources was wrong. Drawing on the work of the great hero of free markets,Friedrich Hayek, he argued that the advance of technology and the interplay相互作用 of scarcity, price signals, innovation and substitutions would solve those seemingly intractable任性的 棘手的 problems, as it has done throughout human history.
  

刚看一半就发现此文章纯图书推荐文 囧~  
好词
好句
好搭配

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

[size=0.9em]A life of Pearl Buck 赛珍珠
The good woman of China
[size=0.7em]Apr 8th 2010 | From
The Economist
print edition
[size=0.8em]The first American woman to win the Nobel prize in literature and the world that made her ？

[size=0.81em]Mao wasn’t a fan

[size=0.8em]Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth.（赛珍珠反映中国苦难的长篇小说《大地》三部曲荣获诺贝尔文学奖）

[size=0.8em]FOR a novelist whose plots were full of clichés, Pearl Buck led an unusual life. Buck’s fiction, exemplified by her bestselling 1930s trilogy三部曲, “The Good Earth”, was suffused with sympathy for the underdogs of an impoverished China. But at one point she “came close”, according to her biographer, Hilary Spurling, to sharing a conventional missionary view of the Chinese as “a menacing, faceless horde, morally obnoxious and numerically overwhelming”.
[size=0.8em]Buck herself was far from conventional. Her missionary parents viewed fiction as “inherently coarse, trashy and time-wasting”, says Ms Spurling. Many of Buck’s fellow foreigners in pre-Communist China, where she grew up, kept the Chinese at a distance. Yet Buck, who lived in China for nearly half her life, churnedout books, including a few non-fiction works, at the rate of one or two a year for four decades. In 1938 she became the first of only two American women to win the Nobel prize in literature. Buck relished the company of the Chinese, (when in China “I was Chinese, I spoke Chinese and behaved as a Chinese”, she wrote)—even though many Chinese disliked her work as exposing too much of China’s darker aspects, and wrote disapprovingly of it. Under Mao Zedong her work was banned.

[size=0.8em]Ms Spurling’s account of Buck’s “rootless and fractured existence” provides a fascinating dissection of the tortured relationships between a man of God, the hapless wife sucked into supporting his mission and their increasingly sceptical daughter, Pearl, who, in 1933, publicly turned her back on her late father’s church. It is also just as revealing about the no less tortured relationship between the West and China in the early part of the last century. Ms Spurling quotes Helen Foster Snow, the wife of another famous American chronicler of China in those turbulent days, as saying that Buck was the first to “humanise the Chinese and make them comprehensible”. The gulf that “The Good Earth” helped to bridge is much narrower today, but it still threatens the Sino-American relationship.

[size=0.8em]Buck’s early life was overshadowed by the menace of mutual contempt between foreigners and Chinese and its occasional eruption into violence. Around the time of the anti-foreign Boxer uprising of 1900, her father never went out without a stick to beat the dogs loosed on him by the Chinese wherever he went. In 1927, as Chiang Kai-shek led his nationalist army north to subdue the warlords who had divided China, ordinary Chinese took advantage of mayhem in Nanjing, where Buck was then living, to pillage foreign property. The attackers were, says Ms Spurling, “consumed by resentment and rage as much as greed”.
[size=0.8em]Buck’s sympathy with China’s downtrodden peasants, exemplified by Wang Lung in “The Good Earth” (who eventually prospers), did not translate into lasting affection for her American husband, John Lossing Buck, whose country ways she appears to have disdained. She married again, this time to her much more dashing publisher, Richard Walsh. Buck ended her days in Vermont, often sitting in the window of a shop selling her works “as the town’s sole tourist attraction”. She died, lonely and withdrawn, in 1973 at the age of 80. For years she had wanted to go back to China, but the Communists would not let her. Zhou Enlai, the leader who helped reopen China to the West in the 1970s, personally signed the memo banning her.

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

[size=0.9em]Green.view
Not so thrilled by the hunt
Europe’s ban on imported seal fur is under fire
[size=0.7em]Apr 13th 2010 | From
The Economist
online
[size=0.8em]IN NUNAVUT, the largest, coldest and most sparsely populated of Canada’s federal territories, spring means there are seals to eat. For those Nunavummiuts who have tired of traditional seal recipes, this marks an excellent opportunity to try some of the recipes recently compiled by Ake Granström of the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management: herb-stuffed seal schnitzel, perhaps, or seal Wellington with Madeira sauce. But enterprising Arctic gourmands should only try the second of those if they already have some Madeira to hand, as it may be hard to buy. In early March,Nunavut’s legislators voted to remove EU-made beer, wine and spirits from government-run liquor stores.
[size=0.8em]Last July the European Parliament voted to ban the importation of seal products. The EU reckons the hunt is cruel; the locals in Nunavut, and hunters elsewhere in Canada, disagree, and have some evidence to back this up. They also point out that the EU is somewhat two-faced in its attitudes to seals, as fishermen in Britain, Sweden, and Finland are free to kill seals as a way of protecting fish stocks. A few years ago the EU was actually encouraging people to make better use of the seals killed this way through a programme called Seal: Our Common Resource, which cost Europeans £262,000 between 2000 and 2007. Some of that money paid for Mr Granström’s cookbook.

Canada and Norway believe that the European ban breaks international trade rules, and have both lodged complaints with the World Trade Organisation. The WTO process involves an initial consultation phase between the countries involved, which is supposed to last 60 days. Given that the complaint was lodged in November, an announcement is now overdue. Either the countries agree on a solution through such consultation, or Canada and Norway must bring the issue to the WTO and ask it to establish a panel to make a ruling.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, around which the WTO is built, provides various exemptions under which countries may restrain trade. Article XX would allow imports of seal products to be banned if the trade were damaging the seal population. But this isn’t the case. The seal population in Canada is healthy – enough so that the Canadians are increasing the numbers they cull. The EU might try to argue that the ban is necessary to "protect public morals", which is possible under article XX. This is the exemption that allows countries to tax alcohol differently according to its alcohol content, or even ban the importation of alcohol entirely into a dry country. But this exemption doesn’t seem to fit that well either and because it is rife with the danger of protectionist abuse, attempts to invoke it get scrutinised carefully.
Ultimately a key issue is whether or not the hunt is, in fact, cruel. The Canadians insist that although it looks horrible it is a well-regulated wild-animal hunt, and the strength with which they hold this belief may influence the chain of events at the WTO. Confidence that the seal hunt can be shown to be reasonably humane might lead Canada to push for a definitive ruling to that effect from a WTO panel, rather than settle for a diplomatic fudge achieved through consultation.

The Canadian government clearly takes the issue seriously. It might even become a stumbling block in negotiations toward a free-trade agreement between Canada and the EU. The International Fund for Animal Welfare, a conservation charity, has criticised Canada’s zeal, complaining that the government it is spending more money defending the seal hunters than the industry actually earns. The Canadian government, for its part, feels duty bound to protect the interests of a number of its poorer citizens against lobbying from special interest groups a long way away.

The evidence that the EU takes the issue seriously is harder to find. The ban appears to be a cheap way to be seen to be doing something to protect animals, thus appeasing the animal welfare lobby, by attacking a group of people who cannot fight back. Anti-sealing activists view the trade ban as a monumental victory for animal rights, having had the Canadian hunters in their sights for years. Relatively few Europeans agree with animal-rights activists that any killing of animals is bad. But most people do not eat or wear seals, are squeamish about killing cuddly doe-eyed mammals, and do not worry about the inconsistency of such a ban being enforced by a group of nations which kills it own seals for the expediency of fishermen, and kills tens of millions of farmed foxes and minks for their pelts every year.

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

[size=0.9em]Iceland's volcanic eruption
Ash-flow火山灰 problems
A volcano in Iceland grounds flights and threatens Europe's fragile airlines


DRAMATIC sunsets, a flame with red and gold, across northern Europe will have offered little compensation to airline passengers suffering the consequences of the extensive cloud of ash belching （大量）喷出 吐出 from an Icelandic volcano. Terminals empty of passengers and grounded aircraft attested to the power of nature to disrupt the travel plans of millions as many of Europe’s busiest airports were forced to close for business on Thursday April 15th.

The travel chaos is set to continue for several days, even if the volcano stops erupting or the wind changes direction and blows the cloud away from Europe’s crowded air space. The risk to planes comes from tiny particles of silicate that reduce visibility for pilots 飞行员 and, worse, could knock out 击落 打掉 击倒 摧毁 打破a jet engine. In recent years several instances have been reported of engines cutting out after flying through volcanic clouds, though thankfully幸亏，高兴地，感激地 pilots have then been able to restart them at lower altitudes away from the hazardous危险的 有害的 ash.

Britain’s authorities said that most of the country’s airspace领空 would be closed for a second day and at least until at least 1am on Saturday. By Friday Charles De Gaulle in Paris, and many smaller French airports; most of Germany’s big airports, including Frankfurt, the base for Germany’s Lufthansa; Schiphol in Amsterdam; and many smaller hubs 枢纽 in Belgium比利时, Ireland and Scandinavia had closed for business. As the cloud drifted east towards Russia the Polish authorities started to close airspace there too. Eurocontrol 欧洲空管局, which oversees air traffic in Europe, expects around 11,000 flights to take off in the region today where usually there would be some 28,000. Around a third of the morning flights on transatlantic大西洋两岸的 routes into Europe, one the world’s busiest, arrived at their destinations.

Even if the Icelandic volcano’s eruption stopped tomorrow, thousands of flights in and out of Europe and millions of passengers will be disrupted. And it may take many days to get schedules back to normal, as grounded planes and crew机组 are redirected to the right parts of the world. The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation亚洲太平洋航空中心, an Australian airline consultancy, reckons 估计 that around 6m passengers will be affected if, as seems possible, the disruption goes on for a third day.

The fear not just for Europe’s airlines but for the continent as a whole is that the effects could last for days or even weeks. Europe’s airlines have struggled through a nasty recession that led to deep losses but until Eyjafjallajökull intervened things seemed to be improving. In February passenger numbers for European airlines were 4.3% up over the year before according to IATA（The Air Transport Association 国际航空运输协会）, the airline’s industry body. And in March IATA halved 等分 its forecast for airlines losses for the year to $2.8 billion. Yet recovery in the vital transatlantic business market and shrinking short-haul短途 travel continues to put a strain on 使紧张airline finances. Losing over $200m a day to volcanic disruption will not help.

For all the signs of recovery the situation has worrying echo of the damage wrought to America’s struggling airlines in the wake of》。。。过后 the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001. The suspension of all flights in American airspace for several days in the wake of the terror attacks forced a $15 billion government bail-out for domestic carriers. Even with this help US Airways and United Airlines were forced to file for bankruptcy in 2002. A prolonged disruption of flights in and out of northern Europe could threaten the tentative economic recovery in the region if business travellers and tourists stop arriving.

Another more immediate worry for northern Europe is the health risk that volcanic ash might bring. While the ash cloud floats miles above the earth it poses only a risk to jet engines. But reports suggest that it may have started to settle on the ground in Scotland. More could follow further south. The World Health Organisation recommends staying inside 宅在家 if ash starts raining down from the sky. The agency admits that the exact health worries are unclear but reckons that inhaled particles might cause respiratory problems. Moreover volcanoes spewing ash into the atmosphere can have effects on the climate too. A far larger eruption in Iceland in 1783 threw sulphur dioxide and other gases and dust into the air creating a persistent haze that blocked out sunlight.

Airlines have weathered the effects of recessions, terror attacks, wars and diseases such as SARS in the past and most will eventually get over a few days lost to volcanic activity. But a prolonged eruption could have more unpleasant effects not just for air travellers but for everyone in the region.

happy牧羊UID: 2662770

Kim Jong Il goes to China
Slow train from Pyongyang
North Korea's leader visits China, hoping for more goodies（goody好处 诱人的东西 ）



THE timing could hardly have been more conspicuous. After weeks of speculation, early on Monday May 3rd Kim Jong Il, the not-so-endearing Dear Leader of North Korea, arrived in China by armoured train装甲列车 (he prefers not to fly) 丫估计是怕死~. The trip, his first in more than four years, comes at a time of high tension on the Korean peninsula朝鲜半岛. The sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in disputed waters有争议海域 in March is widely suspected to have been the result of a North Korean attack. After laying to rest埋葬 the 46 sailors who perished, in a solemn ceremony隆重的仪式 on April 29th, South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak李明博, wasted no time in flying to meet his Chinese counterpart the following day on the sidelines of the Shanghai World Expo.he It must be galling for Mr Kim to trundle along behind him.

It is little surprise that both Koreas are courting China. As North Korea’s staunchest ally, China is probably the only country that can rein in the worst of its troublemaking. China is also the host of the stalled six-party talks that are aimed at ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

North Korea has been stalling those negotiations by setting preconditions—such as the lifting of sanctions and the signing of a peace treaty—that America will not abide. It has become an old routine. The North holds out for further sweeteners, only to skitter away once the survival of its repressive regime is assured. Reflecting back on the seven years of six-way talking, one South Korean diplomat describes North Korea as having been spoiled by South Korean and Chinese indulgence.

Spoiled it may be, but North Korea is indulged no longer. South Korean benevolence ended in 2008 with the election of Mr Lee, who favours a hardline policy. The UN Security Council tightened its sanctions after North Korea conducted its second nuclear test last May, which has left the regime increasingly isolated and strapped for cash. North Korea's economic woes have worsened dramatically following a botched redenomination of its currency on November 30th and the interception of some of its remunerative arms shipments. Even humanitarian aid is drying up, according to the World Food Programme. North Korea’s renewed efforts to lure foreign investment to the “special city” of Rajin-Sonbong—and the frequent tantrums in which it demands that the South resume sending tourists to its resort at Mount Kumgang—speak volumes about its strained finances.

The depletion of sympathy from abroad has left North Korea more dependent on China than ever before. Analysts believe that North Korea relies on China for 90% of its energy imports and 80% of its consumer goods. With the Dear Leader paying a call to Beijing, undoubtedly to extract yet more economic and diplomatic support, the time is ripe to（时机不成熟） exert some leverage.

Yet China’s priorities are not clear. It has imposed sanctions on North Korea twice in the past, but only in response to red-handed rule-breaking, and even then its punishments were watered-down经过删减的 有水分的 .When it comes to the Korean peninsula, China appears to rank stability even more highly than getting rid of nukes. While the South is preoccupied with finding the culprit罪犯 嫌疑犯 that sank its ship, America needs to convince China that nuclear weapons in the hands of its unruly neighbour are incompatible with long-term stability.