林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

美大選潛流上浮

accessed May 27, 2020

在希拉蕊2016輸給川普的搖擺州， 美民主黨最可能的總統候選人拜登目前民調已贏過川普。

■包括：賓州、密西根、威斯抗辛。

■傳統的共和黨票倉亞歴桑那已變色。

■親共和黨的福斯新聞上週民調，川普以40%落後拜登的48%。

■在下竊認為是川普大剋星的華倫參議員可能成為拜登的副總統候選人。

拜登氣勢漸升

accessed May 29, 2020

拜登氣勢漸升。

他令人聯想起1932在大蕭條時打敗胡佛的小羅斯福。原因如下：

■他現在主攻“拯救美國的政策”，以前只會不斷批評川普。

■他現在會妥協融和民主黨左翼的領袖。華倫、桑德斯等都參加他不同的政策籌劃小組。以前民主黨山頭林立，毫不團結。

■他多年的行政經驗現在顯得更可貴，因為有川普的即興式領導作比較。後者帶來目前的高失業率（超過20%1932是24%）和不斷攀升的疫情死亡人數（已超過10萬，川普曾說不會）。

《經濟學人》2020.5.23p.23

林中斌試摘譯2029.5.29

How China Ups Its Game in One Region

中國如何在一個地區提升競爭力

accessed April 24, 2020

-- Mexico may see as many as 700,000 cases of Covid-19, while the country has a mere 5,500 ventilators. Even though this will without a doubt have an impact on the United States,..., it’s Beijing, not Washington, that is fast-tracking hundreds of ventilators to help the country meet its vulnerability.

墨西哥可能將會有多達700,000例新冠肺炎病例，而該國僅有5500台人工呼吸器。儘管這無疑會對美國產生衝擊，但是，卻是北京而不是華盛頓追加數百台呼吸器給墨西哥，以幫助該國補足其脆弱的公衛系統。

-- China is stepping in to fill a void left by President Trump, who has alienated longtime partners and undermined the country’s standing in Latin America and the Caribbean

中國正在介入以填補川普留下的空白，川普疏遠了長期合作夥伴，破壞了美國在拉丁美洲和加勒比海地區的地位。

-- Following the Great Recession of 2008, China, which financed a global stimulus representing 7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, buoyed Latin American economies by devouring commodities like oil, timber and metallic minerals.

2008年經濟大蕭條之後，為全球經濟刺激提供資金的中國占該國國內生產總值的7％，大量買入了石油，木材和金屬礦產等商品，從而提振了拉丁美洲經濟。

-- the U.S. Customs and Border Protection provoked the ire of several Caribbean nations when it blocked the export of personal protective equipment and ventilators purchased from U.S. vendors; Haiti, on the other hand, avoided U.S. suppliers altogether and instead negotiated the purchase of $18 million in medical equipment from China.

美國海關及邊境保護局阻止了美國供應商出口個人防護設備和呼吸器，這激怒了幾個加勒比海國家。另一方面，海地完全繞過了美國供應商，而是與中國談判，購買1800萬美元的醫療設備。

-- On April 13, the foreign minister of Argentina applauded China upon receiving a large shipment of much-needed masks, gloves and protective suits.

4月13日，阿根廷外交大臣在收到大批急需的口罩，手套和防護服後，大力讚許中國。

-- In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, who has railed against Chinese designs on South America and whose son infuriated the Chinese government when he blamed China for the pandemic, has now downplayed the divisive rhetoric in a gambit to secure a greater share of China’s soybean and meat import market

在巴西，總統賈爾·博爾森羅，其曾抨擊中國在南美洲的投資項目，其子亦曾指責中國造成現在的肺炎大流行。然而，他們現在已策略式地淡化了這種修辭，以確保更大的中國大豆進口份額和肉類進口市場。

‘Gracias China!!!’

While the U.S. leadership in Latin America is being called into question, Beijing is positioning itself to carry the mantle.

「感謝中國！」

當美國在拉丁美洲的領導地位受到質疑時，北京正在調整自己的位置。

By Paul Angelo and Rebecca Bill Chavez

The authors are foreign affairs experts.

April 21, 2020 New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/…/opi…/china-latin-america-ovid.html accessed April 23, 2020

http://iht.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

“Gracias China!!!,” Marcelo Ebrard, the foreign minister of Mexico, posted on Twitter on April 1, along with a photo of the plane that carried 100,000 masks, 50,000 test kits and five ventilators donated from China. Mexico may see as many as 700,000 cases of Covid-19, while the country has a mere 5,500 ventilators. Even though this will without a doubt have an impact on the United States, which shares a 2,000-mile border and robust trade with Mexico, it’s Beijing, not Washington, that is fast-tracking hundreds of ventilators to help the country meet its vulnerability.

In another era, Mr. Ebrard would have expressed gratitude to his neighbor to the north and highlighted the enduring partnership with the United States. But now China is stepping in to fill a void left by President Trump, who has alienated longtime partners and undermined the country’s standing in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This is not the first time that China has lent a helping hand to the region. Following the Great Recession of 2008, China, which financed a global stimulus representing 7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, buoyed Latin American economies by devouring commodities like oil, timber and metallic minerals.

China is now the second-largest trading partner in the region, and it has surpassed the United States to become the top trading partner of major economies, including Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. Since 2017, 19 nations in the region have signed on to the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative, a multibillion-dollar network of investment and infrastructure projects. The influx of financing and development assistance has afforded access to critical financing for cash-strapped and heavily indebted governments, which have faced growing public demand for paved roads, modern public transport and improved services.

In addition, some 41 Confucius Institutes have cropped up across Latin America over the past decade, encouraging trans-Pacific cultural ties among students and professors. And since 2016, Beijing has funded the training of hundreds of journalists annually in professional exchanges and internships that bring Latin Americans to China.

The country’s turn toward medical diplomacy amid the Covid-19 pandemic is a natural outgrowth of this budding relationship and a win for a region that has for too long invested far too little in its health infrastructure. As the countries of this hemisphere contend with the mounting public health crisis, the relative silence of the United States is deafening.

Last week the Trump administration halted funding to the World Health Organization and made good on promised budget cuts to the Pan-American Health Organization, a multilateral public health agency designed to prevent and contain communicable disease outbreaks in the Americas.

Likewise, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection provoked the ire of several Caribbean nations when it blocked the export of personal protective equipment and ventilators purchased from U.S. vendors; Haiti, on the other hand, avoided U.S. suppliers altogether and instead negotiated the purchase of $18 million in medical equipment from China. Meanwhile, the USNS Comfort, a U.S. Navy hospital ship and enduring symbol of solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean, was enlisted to bring relief to New York City’s taxed hospitals yet sits mostly empty on Manhattan’s Pier 90, overwhelmed by red tape instead of patients.

As the United States turns inward to respond to its own coronavirus crisis, it leaves desperate and increasingly unstable nations in our own hemisphere scrambling to secure medical and humanitarian assistance from elsewhere.

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In places like Venezuela and Honduras, millions of citizens have fled political instability and violence in recent years, only to find that the Trump administration has all but closed its borders to asylum seekers. The country’s protectionist turn has also seen tariffs imposed on longstanding trade partners in the hemisphere. From Santiago, Chile, to Mexico City and everywhere in between, America’s leadership is being called into question and China is positioning itself to carry the mantle.

Despite mishandling the initial outbreak of the coronavirus, China has sought to redeem its image and to curry favor by helping governments across the world flatten their coronavirus infection curves. Compared with the United States, China has a timing advantage in flooding the globe with pandemic assistance, as the early outbreak in Wuhan and China’s draconian response have permitted the country to restart industries and international commerce.

China’s carefully designed messaging has enhanced its strategic advantage. On April 13, the foreign minister of Argentina applauded China upon receiving a large shipment of much-needed masks, gloves and protective suits. The delivery boxes were emblazoned with the Chinese and Argentine flags and a quote in Spanish about brotherhood from the beloved Argentine poem “El Gaucho Martín Fierro” by José Hernández.

In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, who has railed against Chinese designs on South America and whose son infuriated the Chinese government when he blamed China for the pandemic, has now downplayed the divisive rhetoric in a gambit to secure a greater share of China’s soybean and meat import market. Brazilian beef exports to China have already doubled from 2019 to compensate for a disruption in China’s domestic meat supply chains and pending prohibitions on wild animal meat sales in China.

During one of his daily coronavirus briefings early this month, President Trump made the tone-deaf announcement that the United States is increasing military assets in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific to support the counternarcotics mission. Against a backdrop of great-power competition coupled with a brewing humanitarian crisis, instead of sending Navy destroyers and Coast Guard cutters, the United States should surge humanitarian assistance to our neighbors in the Americas.

If not, the spread of Covid-19 promises to exacerbate human suffering and trigger an even greater migration crisis while leaving the hemisphere more open to Chinese cooperation and ever more wary of American partnership.

Paul Angelo is a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Rebecca Bill Chavez was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs under President Barack Obama and is a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue.

中國後疫情的經濟迅速恢復

accessed April 16, 2020

中國後疫情的經濟迅速恢復

(補充：2020.4.16傍晚請教Q先進。他說:迅速恢復生產的是中國的國營企業。民營企業尚未)

（補充2：2020.4.17清晨Enders Zhang 表示大型民企已恢復，中小民企因國外訂單未到，尚未恢復生產）

倫敦經濟學人2020.4.11報導：

■各國公司"採購經理指數"PMI（本月與上月活動量相比的指數）

中國從2月中40%躍升至三月中50%。

美、英、德、墨西哥、馬來西亞皆跌至48%以下。(p.16)

■4月1日中國大都市時髦飯店已人滿。（p.14)

■大多數工廠生產已80%恢復，有些已100%恢復。(p.15)

■4月1日富士康向投資人回報：它向蘋果提供今年秋季推出5G iPhone的工作已完成。

註：採購經理指數PMI依據的商業活動指標包括：新訂單、產量、雇員、供應商配送、庫存、價格、積壓訂單、新出口訂單、進口等。感謝 James Chen, 郭中翰賜教

Surviving War in the Pacific: the U.S. Air Force is taking unconventional steps to win the great power competition

Defense News Feb 10, 2020 pp.1,24,25

accessed April 11, 2020

美國空軍戰機將分散的停駐在亞太盟國基地及民用機場，以防“勢力接近的對手”（中俄）使用最近改良的飛彈、戰機、超音速武器攻擊。此做法美空軍稱之為 "Agile Combat Employment"。

□在下淺見：北京在亞太的大戰略是“不戰而主東亞”。勿忘前蘇聯是從內部崩解的。

■停駐基地如：關島、Kadena, Futenma (普天間),Tianan, Sapan, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.

■未來美國空軍軍力建軍部署的原則是：lighter, leaner, more dispersed.

■美軍主動防衛的武器如non-kinetic interceptors, electronic warfare, and directed-energy weapons.

台灣防疫已成 "黃金標準"

accessed March 17, 2020

台灣防疫已成 "黃金標準"

紐西蘭總理宣佈向台灣學習

■2020.3.15 "We are going to follow pretty closely the Taiwan Model" Jacinda Arden, Prime Minister of New Zealand

■2020.3.6 "Taiwan Sets Gold Standard on Epidemic Response to Keep Infection Rates Low". Telegraph

■2020.3.3 "Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan

Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing" JAMA

為何樂觀？

accessed March 24, 2020

今天年輕朋友例行性的來家中幫忙，問我：為什麼外面都好悲觀，你總是樂觀？

疫情催生人類開集體覺醒

accessed March 24, 2020

This covid-19 pandemic may just well be the first collective wake-up of mankind toward the spiritual "New Age" first suggested by the great Swedish scientist and a pluralistic-Christian theoligian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

這次疫情可能是人類開始集體覺醒的第一次功課。

沈一鳴墨寶

accessed March 31, 2020

前一計劃結束。準備推進下一計劃。

整理案頭堆文。見此墨寶（應為2018年底）。

分享兼悼念。

林中斌 2020.3.31

西方媒體正面報導中國 內控疫情外馳援他國

accessed March 23, 2020

旺報批評對岸官方

accessed March 23, 2020

被認為反映對岸官方觀點旺報於2020.3.13/3.15/3.22已三次批評官方。

3/22：批評廣東省、上海市。

3/15：批評武漢中心醫院黨委。

3/13：批評全國網絡審查的負責官方。

芬蘭模式 兩岸關係的新思考

accessed March 18, 2020

■內人5天前提醒我：「芬蘭模式 兩岸關係的新思考」提到二戰後兩位芬蘭總統巴錫基維Paasikivi凱特寧/吉科寧Kekkonen。

■兩位的照片及睿智的對前蘇聯外交三年前已出現於《撥雲見日》頁296/297。

林中斌謹誌 2020.3.18

陽明山公園

accessed March 15, 2020

2020.3.15

罕遇麗日清涼天，

百看山景不嫌厭。

美軍將撤離阿富汗

accessed Mar 6, 2020

--- 2018.11.16 〈美軍將撤離阿富汗〉《聯合報》

--- 2020.3.1 〈美國與神學士簽協議 美軍將撤離

阿富汗〉《自由時報》

--- 2020.3.1 〈美國與神學士簽歷史協議〉《聯合報》

鴨子吃蟥蟲可行？不可行？

accessed March 6, 2020

鴨子吃蟥蟲可行？不可行？

---兩種說法各呈論據。

--即使一方勝出，無法改變更大的圖像：

北京對台工作嚴重失誤。反中情緒強烈。

台大昆蟲系博士Kevin Liu說：

兩種內容都沒錯，但講鴨子治蝗災的是錯的。

會造成蝗災的蝗蟲，平常是散居型(左邊)，鳥會去吃他；但是族群密度很高的時候，會變成遷移型(右邊)，並變成蝗災，而這時體內有毒，鳥不會吃。

所以 鴨子只能用在，當地蝗蟲"有點多"的時候。

國際網紅挺中國抗疫

《亞洲周刊》2020年3月2日

accessed March 2, 2020

〈國際網紅挺中國抗疫〉《亞洲周刊》2020年3月2日

-- 2009美國爆發H1N1豬流感，全球6千萬人受感染，死亡284,000多人。美國花6個月才宣布全國進入緊急狀態。沒有國家警告其公民立即離開美國。

-- 以上情況與今日某些國家對中國新冠病毒反應成強烈對比。

-- 這是定居中國的義大利作家/演員/鋼琴家Mario Cavalo

馬意駿2月5日發表英文文章的論點。

-- 在下淺見：此論點一方面點出人們裁判不同國家標準的不一致，另一方面此論點提醒北京與眾為敵是否明智。

秦濤，《英雄亂世》

accessed March 8, 2020

秦濤，《英雄亂世》

--「忍」的重要。

-- 這是作者根據三國志而非三國演義所寫的通俗化版本。

看不見 諸葛亮草船借箭，只見周瑜在赤壁之戰的雍容大度和勇猛睿智

債務陷阱的真相

accessed Feb 11, 2020

美國副總統彭斯2018年11月警告亞太國家：「勿接受外國債務，那會消弱你的主權。」

--- 澳洲智庫學者對中國的「債務陷阱」外交有更細膩的研究。他們說，中國並不有意的設下陷阱。只有東加一國目前欠中國的債超過它外債的50%。其他國家對中國的債務都屬於 concessonal loans， 利息低，還債期長。這和中國對先進國家的債務安排成強烈對比。

來源： Special Report "China's Belt and Road" Economist February 8, 2020 p.8

The Subtle Muckrakers of the Coronavirus Epidemic

accessed Feb 11, 2020

The Subtle Muckrakers of the Coronavirus Epidemic

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/opinion/coronavirus-china-news-journalism.html

-- 美國喬治亞州立大學教授 Maria Repnikova 是研究中國媒體和政府關係的學者。著有專書Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism

-- 關於中國冠狀病毒疫情爆發，她看了大量的中國報刊(財經、財星、新京報、中國青年報、三聯周刊、人物、等)，她觀察詳細。簡化的重點如下：

-- 在危機時，中央政府在某種程度以內故意讓媒體暴露(地方的)失誤。同時中央政府也部分靠媒體的打聽收集資料。

-- 在政策制定上，中央與地方銜結有縫隙。此種縫隙讓地方政府掩飾它的失誤。

-- 一項縫隙的實例：武漢政府管不著武漢外的媒體報導武漢的事務。

-- 媒體藉由悲劇報導無言的指責政府。

-- 一項財星報導引述專家間接指責武漢政府。

-- 媒體指責地方政府比較安全。

-- 中央政府試圖在 「政治控制」與「有限透明」兩者之間做平衡。

-- 專權政治 也是創意之母。

-- 在今日中國冠狀病毒事件中顯露出一黨專政與民眾之間存在某種社會契約。

林中斌試摘譯 2020.2.11

敬請賜正

如此巧合！

accessed Feb 13, 2020

https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/world-51474569

如此巧合！

What a coincidence with the February 7, 2020 publication of“孔子隐(棄)台、駐日、返中”！

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2973880629310000&id=100000642779020

Courtesy Joe Lin