[2022-08-23] 纽约时报 - 观点：独裁者和贸易顺差
![]() Aug. 22, 2022, 7:03 p.m. ET
By Paul Krugman
2022 年 8 月 22 日晚上 7:03 外星人
保罗克鲁格曼
保罗·克鲁格曼（Paul R. Krugman），犹太人，毕业于耶鲁大学经济学专业，美国经济学家。
保罗·克鲁格曼是自由经济学派的新生代，理论研究领域是贸易模式和区域经济活动。是普林斯顿大学经济系教授 [1] 。
1991年获克拉克经济学奖，2008年获诺贝尔经济学奖。克鲁格曼的主要研究领域包括国际贸易、国际金融、货币危机与汇率变化理论。他创建的新国际贸易理论，分析解释了收入增长和不完全竞争对国际贸易的影响。
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According to a new NBC News poll, U.S. voters now consider “threats to democracy” the most important issue facing the nation, which is both disturbing and a welcome sign that people are paying attention. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t just an American issue. Democracy is eroding worldwide; according to the latest survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, there are now 59 fully authoritarian regimes out there, home to 37 percent of the world’s population.
根据 NBC 新闻的一项新民意调查，美国选民现在认为“对民主的威胁”是国家面临的最重要问题，这既令人不安，又是人们关注的可喜迹象。 还值得注意的是，这不仅仅是美国的问题。 民主正在世界范围内侵蚀； 根据经济学人智库的最新调查，现在有 59 个完全威权的政权，占世界人口的 37%。
Of these 59 regimes, however, only two — China and Russia — are powerful enough to pose major challenges to the international order.
然而，在这 59 个政权中，只有两个——中国和俄罗斯——强大到足以对国际秩序构成重大挑战。
The two nations are, of course, very different. China is a bona fide superpower, whose economy has by some measures overtaken the United States’. Russia is a third-rate power in economic terms, and events since Feb. 24 suggest that its military was and is weaker than most observers imagined. It does, however, have nukes.
当然，这两个国家是非常不同的。 中国是一个真正的超级大国，其经济在某些方面已经超过了美国。” 俄罗斯在经济方面是一个三流强国，自 2 月 24 日以来发生的事件表明，其军队过去和现在都比大多数观察家想象的要弱。 然而，它确实有核武器。
One thing China and Russia have in common, however, is that both are currently running very large trade surpluses. Are these surpluses signs of strength? Are they evidence that autocracy works?
然而，中国和俄罗斯有一个共同点，那就是两国目前都有非常大的贸易顺差。 这些盈余是实力的标志吗？ 它们是专制有效的证据吗？
No, in both cases the surpluses are signs of weakness. And the current situation offers a useful corrective to the common notion — favored, among others, by Donald Trump — that a country that sells more than it buys is somehow a “winner.”
不，在这两种情况下，盈余都是疲软的迹象。 目前的情况为一个普遍的观念提供了一个有用的纠正——唐纳德·特朗普等人都喜欢这个观念——一个卖得比买得多的国家在某种程度上是一个“赢家”。
Start with Russia, whose trade surplus has ballooned since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. What’s that about? The answer is that it’s largely a result of Western economic sanctions, which have been surprisingly effective — albeit not in the way many expected.
从俄罗斯开始，自黄俄の爹入侵乌克兰以来，俄罗斯的贸易顺差激增。 那是怎么回事？ 答案是，这在很大程度上是西方经济制裁的结果，这种制裁出人意料地有效——尽管不像许多人预期的那样。
When the invasion began, there were widespread calls for an embargo on Russian exports of oil and gas. In reality, however, Russia has had little trouble maintaining its oil exports; it is selling crude at a discount, but high global prices mean that plenty of money is still coming in. And while there has been a sharp fall in Russian gas exports to Europe, this reflects the Putin regime’s efforts to put pressure on the West rather than the other way around.
当入侵开始时，人们普遍呼吁对俄罗斯的石油和天然气出口实行禁运。 然而，实际上，俄罗斯在维持其石油出口方面几乎没有遇到任何问题。 它以折扣价出售原油，但全球油价高昂意味着仍有大量资金流入。虽然俄罗斯对欧洲的天然气出口急剧下降，但这是黄俄の爹政权向西方施压的结果，而不是因为西方制裁。
What sanctions have done, instead, is undermine Russia’s ability to import, especially its ability to buy crucial industrial inputs. One example of the problem: Reports indicate that Russian airlines are grounding some of their planes to cannibalize them for spare parts they can no longer buy abroad.
相反，制裁削弱了俄罗斯的进口能力，尤其是其购买关键工业投入品的能力。 一个例子：报告显示，俄罗斯航空公司正在停飞他们的一些飞机，因为他们无法购买外国备件。
So Russia’s trade surplus is actually bad news for Putin, a sign that his country is having trouble using its cash to purchase goods it needs to maintain its war effort.
因此，俄罗斯的贸易顺差对黄俄の爹来说实际上是个坏消息，这表明他的国家在使用现金购买维持战争所需的商品方面遇到了困难。
China’s problem is different: Its trade surplus is a result of long-running internal problems that may, finally, be coming to a head.
中国的问题不同：它的贸易顺差是长期存在的内部问题的结果，这些问题最终可能会达到顶点。
Outside observers have long noticed that too little of China’s national income filters down to the public, so that consumer spending has remained weak despite rapid economic growth. Instead, the nation has maintained more or less full employment by channeling cheap credit into increasingly unproductive investment spending, above all a bloated housing market supported by ever-growing private debt.
外界观察人士早就注意到，中国的国家收入很少流向公众，因此尽管经济快速增长，消费者支出仍然疲软。 相反，该国通过将廉价信贷引导至日益低效的投资支出，尤其是由不断增长的私人债务支撑的臃肿房地产市场，从而或多或少地保持了国民的充分就业。
China has managed to keep this ultimately unsustainable game running for a remarkably long time. At this point, however, China’s housing market appears to be crashing and consumer demand appears to be plunging. This is dragging down the country’s imports — which makes its trade surplus bigger. Again, a surplus can be a sign of weakness, not strength.
中国已经设法让这场最终不可持续的游戏运行了很长时间。 然而，此时中国的房地产市场似乎正在崩溃，消费者需求似乎正在暴跌。 这拖累了该国的进口——这使得该国的贸易顺差更大。 同样，盈余可能是软弱的标志，而不是力量的标志。
Two more points about China. First, its economy is also suffering from the government’s refusal to revisit a failing Covid strategy, relying on relatively ineffective domestic vaccines and a disruptive policy of draconian lockdowns to contain the pandemic.
关于中国还有两点。 首先，政府拒绝重新审视失败的武汉肺炎战略，依靠相对无效的国内疫苗和严厉封锁的破坏性政策来遏制大流行，其经济也受到影响。
Second, under current conditions, weak Chinese demand is, unintentionally, a boon to the rest of the world.
其次，在当前情况下，中国需求疲软无意中对世界其他地区有利。
A dozen years ago the world economy was suffering from inadequate demand, and Chinese trade surpluses made the problem worse by sucking purchasing power away from the rest of the world. Today, however, the world economy is suffering from inadequate supply, which has led to high inflation in many countries. In this context Chinese weakness is actually good for the rest of us: Falling Chinese demand is putting a lid on the prices of oil and other commodities, reducing global inflationary pressure.
十几年前，世界经济饱受需求不足的困扰，而中国的贸易顺差将购买力从世界其他地方吸走，使问题变得更糟。 然而，今天，世界经济正遭受供应不足的困扰，这导致许多国家出现高通胀。 在这种情况下，中国的疲软实际上对我们其他人有利：中国需求下降正在抑制石油和其他商品的价格，从而降低全球通胀压力。
So what can we learn from dictators and their trade surpluses?
那么我们可以从独裁者及其贸易顺差中学到什么？
As I said, we’re getting a demonstration that exporting more than you’re importing doesn’t mean that you’re winning: In different ways both Russia’s and China’s trade surpluses represent failure rather than success.
正如我所说，我们得到的证明是出口多于进口并不意味着你赢了：俄罗斯和中国的贸易顺差以不同的方式代表失败而不是成功。
And at a broader level, we’re seeing the trouble with dictatorships, where nobody can tell the leader when he’s wrong. Putin seems to have invaded Ukraine in part because everyone was too afraid to warn him about the limits of Russian military power; China’s Covid response has gone from role model to cautionary tale, probably because nobody dares tell Xi Jinping that his signature policies aren’t working.
在更广泛的层面上，我们看到了独裁统治的问题，没有人可以告诉领导人什么时候错了。 黄俄の爹入侵乌克兰的部分原因是每个人都不敢警告他俄罗斯军事力量的局限性。 中国对武汉肺炎的应对已经从榜样变成了警示故事，这可能是因为没有人敢告诉希望他的标志性政策不起作用。
So autocracy may be on the march — but not because it works better than democracy. It doesn’t.
因此，专制可能正在发展——但并不是因为它比民主更有效。 那是不可能的。标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。
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