[2023-01-09] 经济学人 - 避免动态清零的清算
![]() ![]() Like Chairman Mao, Xi Jinping seems to believe that China’s rise trumps individual suffering
像毛主席一样，习近平似乎相信中国的崛起胜过个人的苦难
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ACROSS CHINA, families are enduring avoidable misery and heartbreak, as loved ones succumb to a deadly—and predictable—wave of covid-19 infections for which their rulers failed to prepare. Some overseas analysts talk of a turning-point. They wonder if today’s policy disarray, which follows on the heels of anti-lockdown protests in late 2022, signals a crisis of legitimacy for President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.
在中国各地，家庭正在忍受本可以避免的痛苦和心碎，因为亲人死于致命且可预测的武汉肺炎感染浪潮，而他们的统治者却没有为此做好准备。 一些海外分析人士谈到了一个转折点。 他们想知道，继 2022 年底的反封锁抗议活动之后，今天的政策混乱是否预示着习近平主席和共产党的合法性危机。
This is a grim moment for China’s people. For all the claims that infections have peaked in big cities like Beijing, there will, tragically, be more deaths when the virus finds older folk now sheltering at home, or living in rural villages. A shameful number of those deaths will be preventable. Yet it is possible that Mr Xi will pay no visible price for pandemic horrors on his watch.
这对中国人民来说是一个严峻的时刻。 尽管声称感染已在北京等大城市达到顶峰，但不幸的是，当病毒发现现在躲在家里或住在农村的老年人时，将会有更多人死亡。 可耻的死亡人数是可以避免的。 然而，习近平可能不会为任期内的疫情恐怖事件付出明显的代价。
Many outsiders were taken aback by the Chinese public’s broad tolerance of zero-covid controls, notably in the first two years of the pandemic. Even the months-long lockdown of nearly 25m people in Shanghai, in the spring of 2022, was shrugged off by many other Chinese. Zero-covid was, in essence, a giant utilitarian experiment. In a huge country with a weak health system, its harsh, often arbitrary controls did save lives. Most of the time, in most of China, life was relatively normal. The suffering of unfortunates living in closed cities or hauled off to quarantine camps was not much discussed or (owing to censors) widely known.
许多局外人对中国公众对动态清零控制的广泛容忍感到吃惊，尤其是在疫情的头两年。 甚至在 2022 年春天，上海将近 2500 万人进行了长达数月的封锁，也被许多其他中国人不屑一顾。 动态清零本质上是一个巨大的功利主义实验。 在一个卫生系统薄弱的大国，其严厉的、往往是武断的控制确实挽救了生命。 大多数时候，在中国的大部分地区，生活都是相对正常的。 生活在封闭城市或被拖到隔离营地的不幸者的痛苦没有被过多讨论或（由于审查）广为人知。
The best explanation for zero-covid’s unplanned end involves a similar weighing of numbers. A dangerously broad cross-section of the public grew sick of controls that no longer worked, as the virulence of the Omicron variant disrupted life and wrecked the economy in too many places, and oases of normality shrank. Protests offered proof of this exhaustion. But in truth authorities were losing control of covid before demonstrators hit the streets.
对动态清零以毫无规划的结束的最好解释涉及类似的数字权衡。 随着 Omicron 变体的毒力扰乱了生活并破坏了太多地方的经济，正常生活越来越难，广大公众群体开始厌倦不再有效的控制。 抗议活动证明了这种疲惫。 但事实上，在示威者走上街头之前，当局就已经失去了对武汉肺炎的控制。
The party’s information monopoly helps it conceal how it wasted 2022, failing to raise vaccination rates or prepare hospitals. No opposition or free press exists to challenge the National Health Commission’s sudden claim, in the People’s Daily of January 3rd, that the country has 12.8 intensive-care beds per 100,000 people, though the same commission said in November that there were fewer than four such beds per 100,000. China calls two homegrown covid shots “full vaccination”; most Chinese do not know that a World Health Organisation boss last month called that dose “just not adequate”, especially for the over-60s.
该党的信息垄断有助于掩盖它如何浪费了 2022 年，未能提高疫苗接种率或为医院做好准备。 1 月 3 日的《人民日报》上，国家卫健委突然声称中国每 10 万人拥有 12.8 张重症监护病床，但没有任何反对意见或新闻自由来质疑这一说法，尽管该委员会在 11 月表示，这样的床位还不到 4 张。 每 100,000 人床位。 中国称两种本土疫苗为“全面疫苗接种”； 大多数中国人不知道世界卫生组织的一位负责人上个月称该剂量“只是不够”，尤其是对 60 岁以上的人而言。
Nationalism continues to generate bad policy. On January 3rd China’s foreign ministry rejected an offer by the European Union to donate advanced vaccines, tweaked to tackle Omicron. A spokesperson snapped that Chinese vaccine supplies are “ample”. A day earlier, China’s embassy in Paris challenged the notion that imported mRNA vaccines are more effective than China’s shots (though they are and would save lives if used). Rehashing an antivaxxer talking-point, the embassy scorned Pfizer’s boss for catching covid, twice, after receiving his own company’s vaccines. Actually, nobody claims that mRNA shots prevent mild infections.
民族主义继续产生糟糕的政策。 1 月 3 日，中国外交部拒绝了欧盟提出的捐赠先进疫苗的提议，该疫苗经过调整以应对 Omicron。 一位发言人厉声说，中国的疫苗供应“充足”。 一天前，中国驻巴黎大使馆质疑进口 mRNA 疫苗比中国疫苗更有效的观点（尽管它们确实有效，而且如果使用的话会挽救生命）。 大使馆重新讨论了一个反对疫苗接种者的话题，嘲笑辉瑞公司的老板在接受了自己公司的疫苗后两次感染了武汉肺炎。 实际上，没有人声称 mRNA 注射可以预防轻度感染。
The party has worked to portray outsiders seeking transparency as hostile and ill intentioned. While verifying reports of covid deaths far in excess of official statistics, an Economist colleague was scolded this week by a worker near a Beijing crematorium. With sincere anger, the man called death a private matter and, using a stock propaganda phrase, told the foreigner to “go report something involving positive energy”.
该党一直努力将寻求透明度的局外人描绘成充满敌意和恶意的人。 本周，《经济学人》的一位同事在核实远远超过官方统计数据的武汉肺炎死亡人数报告时，在北京一家火葬场附近遭到一名工作人员的责骂。 男子发自内心的愤怒，称死亡是一件私事，并用一句老生常谈的宣传语告诉外国人“去报道一些正能量的事情”。
Public opinion is not monolithic. Online, cheerleading state-media reports about heroic doctors and nurses co-exist with widespread public cynicism about official pandemic statistics, for instance, and incredulity when many pharmacies and clinics recently ran out of even basic fever-reducing medicines.
舆论不是铁板一块。 例如，官方媒体在网上对英雄医生和护士的啦啦队报道与公众对官方疫情统计数据的普遍愤世嫉俗以及对许多药店和诊所最近甚至连基本退烧药都告罄的怀疑并存。
Still, most urban Chinese under 40 have known life only in a country growing more prosperous and stronger, and that is a unifying experience. The party is tireless in harnessing such pride. Some months ago, the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, an invaluable propaganda-studies centre, spotted a revealing official commentary defending zero-covid. Reposted online by leading party media, it revived a long-forgotten argument advanced by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1953. Impatient with party elders fretting about high taxes levied on peasants to pay for China’s intervention in the Korean war, Mao dismissed the xiao renzheng, or small benevolence, of worrying about immediate concerns like taxes, next to the da renzheng, or great benevolence, of giving the masses a motherland that stood up to American imperialists. The commentary called the sacrifices of zero-covid an example of great benevolence in the people’s long-term interests.
尽管如此，大多数 40 岁以下的城市中国人只知道在一个日益繁荣和强大的国家生活，这是一种统一的经历。 该党不懈地利用这种自豪感。 几个月前，香港大学的中国媒体项目，一个非常有价值的宣传研究中心，发现了一篇为动态清零辩护的揭露性官方评论。 党的主要媒体在网上转载，它重新唤起了毛泽东主席在 1953 年提出的一个被遗忘已久的论点。党内元老们对中国干预朝鲜战争而向农民征收高额税款感到不耐烦，毛泽东驳回了小任正，或 小仁，即担心税收等紧迫问题，仅次于大仁政，或大仁，即为人民群众提供一个可以抵抗美帝国主义的祖国。 评论称，动态清零的牺牲是为人民长远利益着想的大仁典范。
An autocrat’s definition of benevolence
独裁者对仁的定义
Mr Xi appears to subscribe to the same logic. In a year-end televised address, he nodded to “tough challenges” ahead in a new phase of covid-management, before pivoting to the glories of living in a rising China, hailing everything from the Beijing Winter Olympics of 2022 to the launching of new spacecraft and warships. He then praised early Communist Party revolutionaries for enduring hardships, and noted that one of his favourite phrases is: “Just as polishing makes jade finer, adversity makes one stronger.”
习近平似乎也认同同样的逻辑。 在年底的电视讲话中，他对武汉肺炎管理新阶段的“严峻挑战”点头致意，然后转向生活在崛起的中国的荣耀，欢呼从 2022 年北京冬奥会到 新的宇宙飞船和军舰。 然后，他赞扬了早期共产党革命者的吃苦耐劳，并指出他最喜欢的一句话是：“磨砺使玉更精，磨难使人更坚强。”
Mr Xi’s insouciance about suffering in a great cause is chilling, for the same logic might be used to justify any autocrat’s cruellest whim. It is also a bet that China’s national rise, his core claim to legitimacy, will continue. Expect the party to trumpet that the country is swiftly returning to economic growth as covid controls vanish, and to censor and demonise all those exposing its blunders. Already officials offer hollow boasts about new covid policies that “put the people first and put life first”, while busily hiding needless deaths. Mr Xi may yet face hard-to-see costs when it comes to public trust in his rule. But if the party retains absolute power after memories of covid fade, that is a bargain it will take. ■
习近平在伟大事业中对苦难的漠不关心令人不寒而栗，因为同样的逻辑可能被用来为任何独裁者最残忍的心血来潮辩护。 这也是在押注中国的民族崛起，即他对合法性的核心主张，将继续下去。 预计该党会大肆宣扬该国正在迅速恢复经济增长，因为 covid 控制消失，并审查和妖魔化所有揭露其错误的人。 官员们已经在空洞地吹嘘“以人民为本，生命至上”的新政策，同时忙于掩盖不必要的死亡。 就公众对其统治的信任度而言，习近平可能仍会面临难以想象的代价。 但是，如果该党在对武汉肺炎的记忆消退后仍保留绝对权力，那将是一笔交易。 ■标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。
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