2017年09月

2017年09月30日

何故マカオは香港程、民主主義を要求していないのか? この街はギャンブルでその将来を作った。しかし、マカオの市民はかなり、リスクを取ろうとしない。

Why Macau is less demanding of democracy than Hong Kong
Their city made its fortune from gambling, but Macau’s citizens are remarkably risk-averse
Sep 15th 2017by C.C. | HONG KONG

何故マカオは香港程、民主主義を要求していないのか?
この街はギャンブルでその将来を作った。しかし、マカオの市民はかなり、リスクを取ろうとしない。



HONG KONG and Macau have much in common. Just 60km apart across the Pearl River delta (and soon to be linked by a bridge), they were both European colonies before being returned to China. Britain handed over Hong Kong in 1997; Portugal handed over Macau two years later. Both are administered under the “one country, two systems” principle, which allows them to retain their systems of government for 50 years. Yet whereas many Hong Kongers agitate loudly and relentlessly for more democracy, the people of Macau appear less concerned. Why is this? 

Wealth may be part of the answer. Macau is the only part of China where gambling in casinos is legal. In one generation the city has become the world’s largest gambling centre, with the casino industry bringing an abundance of well-paid jobs. GDP per person in 2016 was 554,619 patacas ($73,187), among the highest in the world and 68% higher than in Hong Kong. Wages are supplemented by the government, which gives each resident 9,000 patacas every year. 

Chinese officials regard Macau as a political model for what Hong Kong should be: compliant with the Communist Party’s wishes and unequivocally patriotic. Loyalty is drilled into people by the media and in schools. A security law, known as Article 23, wielded in the name of punishing treason and secessionism, keeps citizens wary. In Hong Kong, opposition to “patriotic” education and to Article 23 forced the local government to shelve both. 

compliant:言いなりになる
unequivocally:明白に
Article 23:第23条 香港特別行政区は国に対する謀反、国家を分裂させる行為、反乱を扇動する行為、中央人民政府の転覆、国家機密窃取のいかなる行為も禁止し、外国の政治組織・団体が香港特別行政区内で政治活動を行うことを禁止し、香港特別行政区の政治組織・団体が外国の政治組織・団体と関係を持つことを禁止する法律を自ら制定しなければならない。
wielded:行使する
secessionism:分離独立
wary:警戒して
shelve:棚上げする

In August Macau’s government asked China’s army for help with clearing up the destruction left by Typhoon Hato, the strongest storm in 50 years. This entailed the first deployment of troops on the streets since the handover in 1999. Were they to be mobilised in Hong Kong, even in a humanitarian role, some people would worry. In Macau, the soldiers’ presence was cheered. The Communist Party’s sway over the territory’s politics predates the end of Portuguese rule. 

entailed:もたらす
sway:統治
predates:より先行する

In the 1960s the Cultural Revolution spilled over from the mainland, triggering pro-Communist riots in Macau. Similar unrest in Hong Kong was curbed by the British, but in Macau the party’s influence spread through civil society. By the time of the handover negotiations in the 1980s, China had already turned down two Portuguese efforts to give it back. Unlike Hong Kong, to which China promised the eventual introduction of “universal suffrage” in elections for the territory’s leadership, Macau received no such pledge. 

universal suffrage:普通選挙権
pledge:公約

While many in Macau appear content, there are still grumbles. Residents complain about the cost of buying a home, a shortage of social housing and the state of public transport and hospitals. Casinos create jobs with long, unsociable hours, and clog the city with tourist buses. Critics have been particularly vocal about the government’s response to Hato, in which ten people died and 200 were injured. Opposition parties hope that citizens will remember their anger at the ballot box on September 17th, when 150,000 locals will elect 14 members of the 33-seat Legislative Assembly. 

content:満足して
grumbles:不満
clog:詰まらせる
vocal:遠慮なくものを言う

The rest of the legislators are picked by labour unions and other government-approved interest groups, or appointed by the territory’s chief executive, Fernando Chui. In 2013 the opposition won less than a quarter of the vote, and less than two-thirds of that went to candidates calling for greater democracy. At an equivalent election in 2016 in Hong Kong, pro-democracy candidates won more than half of the directly elected seats. Hong Chui even picked six legislators who wanted to renegotiate the relationship with China. Do not expect such radical thoughts in Macau. 

マカオは香港と違って、中国政府に対して寛容だ。一人あたりのGDPが$73,187と世界で最も高いというせいもある。ベーシックインカムが年に1200ドル支給される。香港と違って、豊かであるということもある。今年の台風は50年来のものだったが、中国の軍隊に支援を仰いだ。そうしたことには市民は歓迎している。香港とは全く違う。

土曜日。今日は一日海野塾だ。ではまた明日。

swingby_blog at 20:44コメント(0) 

2017年09月28日

インドの貧富の州の格差が広がっている。 貧しい州が追いつくにはどうしたら良いのか悩んでいる。

The gap between India’s richer and poorer states is widening
Economists are baffled, arguing that the poorer states should be catching up
Aug 30th 2017 | MUMBAI

インドの貧富の州の格差が広がっている。
貧しい州が追いつくにはどうしたら良いのか悩んでいる。

baffled:悩ませる



COUNTRIES find it easier to get rich once their neighbours already are. East Asia’s growth pattern has for decades been likened to a skein of geese, from Japan at the vanguard to laggards such as Myanmar at the rear. The same pattern can often be seen within big countries: over the past decade, for example, China’s poorer provinces have grown faster than their wealthier peers. India is different. Far from converging, its states are getting ever more unequal. A recent shake-up in the tax system might even make matters worse. 

likened:たとえる
skein:群れ
geese:goose ガン
vanguard:先頭
converging:一つにまとまる

Bar a few Mumbai penthouses and Bangalore startup offices, all parts of India are relatively poor by global standards. Taken together, its 1.3bn people make up roughly the third and fourth decile of the world’s population, with an income per head (adjusted for purchasing power) of $6,600 dollars. But that average conceals a vast gap. In Kerala, a southern state, the average resident has an annual income per head of $9,300, higher than Ukraine, and not too far from the global median. With just $2,000 or so, his fellow Indian in Bihar, a landlocked state of 120m people, is closer to a citizen of Mali or Chad, in the bottom decile globally. 

Bar:を除いては
penthouses:ペントハウス〘(特に高層の)ビルの最上階にある高級マンション〙
decile:統計解析において、データの相対的位置をみるのに用いる数値のこと。度数分布で与えられた全データを十等分した点で、5番目の十分位数が中央値にあたる。デシル。
landlocked:海のない〈国場所など〉; 陸に囲まれた

The gap has been widening. In 1990, point out Praveen Chakravarty and Vivek Dehejia of the IDFC Institute, a think-tank, India’s three richest large states had incomes just 50% higher than the three poorest—roughly the same divergence as in America or the EU today, and more equal than in China. Now the trio is three times richer (see chart). 

divergence:相違
trio:3つの州 

It is true that in some rich parts of the world, income gaps between regions have in recent decades been widening. But India’s experience still puzzles economists. Poor countries benefit from technology developed in richer ones—from trains to mobile phones. Workers in less rich countries accept lower wages, so firms build new factories there. 

The catch-up process ought to be all the faster if barriers to the movement of goods or people are lower. Regions within China have been converging rapidly, partly owing to the market, as factories move production inland, where wages are cheaper, and partly to government attempts to lift poorer regions by investing heavily in their infrastructure. Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser to India’s government, earlier this year wrote that its states’ divergence is “a deep puzzle”. The brief bout of liberalisation in 1991 probably played a part, by unevenly distributing the spoils of more rapid overall growth. But that burst of inequality should have self-corrected as the forces of equalisation came into play. 

bout:一回だけの
unevenly:不公平な
spoils:成果

One theory blames this divergence on states’ isolation even in the Indian domestic market, as a result of lousy infrastructure, red tape and cultural barriers. Moving stuff from state to state can be as troublesome as exporting. Internal migration that would generate catch-up growth is stymied by cultural and linguistic barriers: poor northern states are Hindi-speaking, unlike the richer south. Cuisines differ enough for internal migrants to grumble. It is harder to have access to benefits and state subsidies outside your home state. 

lousy:お粗末な
catch-up growth:遅れを取り戻すための成長
stymied:邪魔をする
grumble:不平を言う

Mr Subramanian thinks such arguments are overdone. India may not have mass migration on the scale that transformed China, but is still sizeable, he argues, and has been rising as a share of the population even as convergence has gone into reverse. Inter-state trade is healthy, suggesting suitably porous borders. 

overdone:大げさな
sizeable:かなり大きな
reverse:逆
porous :抜け道の多い

Another theory looks at India’s development model: growth has relied more on skill-intensive sectors such as IT than on labour-intensive manufacturing. This may have stymied the forces of convergence seen elsewhere, Mr Subramanian posits. Perhaps, however low their labour costs, the poorer places lack the skills base to poach jobs from richer rivals. 

posits:(理論に基づいて)…だと仮定する, (事実として)…と断定する; …を受け入れる
poach:〈人材〉を引き抜く


pull away:引き離す

A more likely explanation is that the reasons some states lagged in the first place—mainly to do with poor governance—are still largely in place. Bihar’s low wage costs make it look attractive on paper as a place to set up a factory. But many firms seem to conclude they do not compensate for its difficulties. 

If that idea is correct, the introduction of a new goods-and-services tax (GST) on July 1st might have worsened the divergent trend. Lots of state-level levies have been replaced with a single tax. Although barriers to interstate trade have become markedly lower, states have also forgone some fiscal autonomy, such as offering tax breaks to lure in investors. That may make it harder for poor states to catch up, says Mr Chakravarty. 

divergent:離れる
forgone:差し控える

Mr Subramanian notes, however, that the forces of convergence are gaining strength. Despite falling behind on income, poorer states have been catching up on human-development measures such as infant mortality and life expectancy. Fertility rates in the northern Hindi belt are fast falling to levels already reached by, for example, Tamil Nadu, a rich southern state. India’s “demographic dividend” is largely an opportunity for its poorer states—if they can create enough jobs to grasp it. 

fall (…) behind:(移動中に)(次第に)後れる, 後れをとる(↔keep up)
Fertility:出生率
grasp:活かす

Convergence is obviously desirable in a country where the straggling states are home to some of the world’s poorest people. But it might also help avert a political peril: that rich states start wondering if being lumped with far poorer peers is in their interests. In many states regional political parties compete with the national ones that have mostly dominated the federal government and quashed any talk of separatism. The questions over the divergent fortunes of Indian’s states are puzzling. They may yet become more serious. 

straggling:落伍する
avert:防ぐ
lumped:と一緒くたにする, ひとまとめにする(together); …をひとまとめにして扱う[考える]
quashed:否定する

インドの経済格差が縮まらない。理由はいろいろあって、言語、習慣の違いだけでなく、州政府の対応が異なったり、賃金格差だけでない問題もある。今回、税制を全国統一したことも、逆に、後進の州には不利になる。中国のように、インドは人の移動が活発でない。中国よりも州が独立していることも格差が縮まらない理由かもしれない。

金曜日。今日は徳永さんとの面談。元三井物産の相原さんとの会食。ではまた明日。

swingby_blog at 20:51コメント(0) 

2017年09月27日

共産党は中国人であることは何を意味するのかを再定義し、そして中国文化を酷評している彼ら自身の歴史をごまかしている。

The Communist Party is redefining what it means to be Chinese
And is glossing over its own history of mauling Chinese culture
Aug 17th 2017 | JINAN

共産党は中国人であることは何を意味するのかを再定義し、そして中国文化を酷評している彼ら自身の歴史をごまかしている。

gloss over A:A〈事など〉を取り繕う, ごまかす
mauling:酷評する・手荒に扱う



CHILDREN sit with straight backs chanting in loud voices from the Dizi Gui, a classic Chinese text about obedience. At the end of class they bow low to an image of Confucius, hands clasped as if in prayer. A statue of the ancient sage watches over the playground, too: “Study the Dizi Gui, be a good Chinese,” reads a red banner. At the Zhengde summer camp in Jinan, in the eastern province of Shandong, children as young as five spend their day reciting verses, learning tai chi and watching cartoons with moral messages. 

Dizi Gui:『弟子規』(ていしき)は、中国の伝統的な教材
sage:賢人

Phones are banned “to prevent contamination of the mind”, says Yi Shugui, the headmaster, a former management consultant. At similar summer schools across China children learn calligraphy, traditional Chinese crafts and how to play ancient instruments. China is undergoing a cultural renaissance, much of it government-sponsored.

contamination:悪影響
cultural renaissance:文芸復興

For most of its history the Communist Party wanted to smash China’s past, not celebrate it. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s it sought to overturn the “four olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. Temples, mansions and tombstones were ravaged, along with any artefacts or people associated with the bourgeois way of life. Small wonder that Communist ideology lost its appeal. The blistering pace of change in recent decades has kindled an anxiety that China is suffering from moral decay and a concomitant yearning for a revival of ancient values. The government is harnessing those feelings, using ancient rites and customs to spread favoured values. 

smash:粉砕する
artefacts:遺物・工芸品 
lose [broaden, widen] one's appeal:魅力を失う[増す].
blistering:猛烈な
kindled:燃え立たせる
concomitant:付随する
yearning:あこがれ
harnessing:利用する
rites:儀式・しきたり

Since coming to power in 2012 Xi Jinping, the president, has intensified efforts to build what he refers to as “cultural confidence”. In an extraordinary denial of its legacy, the Communist Party has taken to presenting itself as “the faithful heir” of traditional Chinese culture. “Our civilisation has developed in an unbroken line from ancient to modern times,” Mr Xi declared in 2012. In January the government sought to codify its attempts to “preserve” traditional culture by outlining a vast array of policies that local and national officials should advance. 

cultural confidence:文化的な信頼
faithful:信頼できる
codify:体系化する

Individual elements of the policy to promote “the integration of leisure life and traditional cultural development” sound rather benign. Taken together, however, they constitute an attempt to infuse daily life with a sanitised and government-sanctioned version of Chinese culture. The intention, as in so much that Mr Xi does, is to secure the enduring power of the Communist Party. 

benign:優しい・穏やかな
infuse:満たす
sanitised:心地よくする
sanctioned:認可する
insomuch that:その結果、それで
enduring:永続的な

The agenda touches every aspect of life. The white paper calls for an emphasis on “our festivals”, so local and national holidays are being celebrated with new vigour. Some people are proposing that China should pick its own Mother’s Day, rather than copy the American date (China already has a native version of Valentine’s Day). State media are boosting the use of Chinese medicine when people fall ill, wearing Han robes when they get married, and keeping fit by practising tai chi and other ancient sports (a recent viral video lauds “Kung Fu Granny”, a 94-year-old who reckons she owes her longevity partly to such activities).

vigour:活気
keep fit:健康でいる、健康を保つ、身体を整える、体調を保つ フィットネス運動
lauds:賞賛する
Granny:おばあちゃん

The party is trying to bend popular culture to its agenda, too. On August 5th it announced plans to replace prime-time entertainment and reality TV shows that “hype” pop stars with programmes of higher “moral” content. Examples include a much-plugged quiz show about classical poetry and another in which children compete to write complicated Chinese characters. 

bend:熱意を傾ける
hype:誇大宣伝

The great call
Every part of society is being pressed into the effort. Zhengde is emblematic of a wider plan to influence Chinese youth, what the People’s Daily refers to as a “soul-casting project”, by introducing new school textbooks and degree programmes relating to ancient culture. Employers are encouraged to take their staff on study trips and provide classes on culture. Even the People’s Liberation Army has been told to seek courage from a lion-hearted hero of ancient China. 

emblematic:象徴的な
soul-casting:魂を投げ込む
degree program:学位をもたらす教科課程

So, either by directive or a desire to please officialdom, every art form is being given a Chinese twist: “King of Glory”, a popular game for mobile phones, features a famous eighth-century poet, Li Bai, albeit as an assassin, not a calling there is any evidence he pursued. A well-known Peking opera has been reinvented in jazz form to appeal to new audiences.

directive:命令
please:喜ばせる
officialdom:⦅非難して⦆〖集合的に〗(不親切で融通のきかない)役人, 官僚
twist:工夫
assassin:暗殺者
calling:使命感

There is an economic logic to such policies, since they protect some Chinese firms from foreign competition and promote new sources of consumption. Last year Mr Xi urged a group of writers and artists to “draw energy from the treasure vault of Chinese culture”. Publishers have been asked to limit imports of foreign children’s books, thereby making way for home-grown comics and picture books that promote “Chinese values”. 

treasure vault:財宝の貯蔵室

In an effort to cut poverty and create new rural jobs, all manner of crafts have been revived or invented, including creating sculptures from peach stones and yams, weaving bamboo and, in one place, making miniature souvenir coffins. In April the government expressed the intention to develop cultural industries into a “pillar” of the economy. China’s ancient heritage stands at the centre of its sales pitch to the world, too: becoming “a socialist cultural superpower” is now an official national goal. 

yams:ヤマノイモ〘塊茎を食用とするヤマノイモ属の植物の総称〙
coffins:棺
sales talk [⦅くだけて⦆chat, pitch]:⦅時にけなして⦆巧みな売り込み

By presenting himself as the defender of traditional values, Mr Xi hopes to harness the conservative forces in society. He also seeks to divert attention from the party’s own culpability in creating the supposed spiritual vacuum. Traditional values bolster the Communist Party in other ways, too. Promoting the country’s cultural heritage is a safer source of patriotism than anti-Japanese feeling, which the party had been stoking for many years and which backfired in 2012 when demonstrations against Japan turned violent. 

defender:擁護者
harness:利用する
culpability:とがめられるべきこと, 有罪性
stoking:あおる

The Communist Party has cherry-picked the version of the past that suits it—what it refers to as a “correct” reflection of the ancient values prizing hierarchy, obedience and order. Preaching to a class of 12-18-year-olds at Zhengde, Mr Yi sums up Confucius’s teachings: “Listen to your parents at home, to your teachers at school, to your boss at work and to the state and government in the country—then you will have happiness.” That epitomises Mr Xi’s vision of a “harmonious society” nicely as well. 

epitomises:要約する

Inconvenient elements of China’s ancient culture have been left safely behind. Endorsing traditional values does not include a tolerance for religion, for example, which Mr Xi sees as a potential rival for citizens’ loyalty. While he preaches that ancient values are the “soul of the nation”, he has also overseen harsh moves against Tibetan Buddhists and Chinese Muslims. Monasteries throughout China have, in effect, been turned into tourist attractions. Many Buddhist temples charge entry fees and few host regular religious services or provide prayer books. 

Endorsing:を支持する
overseen:監視する
Monasteries:僧院

Within weeks of the release of the white paper on preserving traditional culture came another edict forbidding even retired officials in Beijing from engaging in any religious activities. The Communist Party has clearly heeded one lesson from its own history: social movements, be they revolutionary, religious or democratic, may prove hard to contain. Better to control them itself. 

edict :命令
heeded:注意を払う

中国は儒学を振興している。市民の精神の拠り所をこの儒学に求めるように考えている。もちろん、その中身のすべてではなく、都合の良いところだけである。かって日本が持っていた教育勅語のようなものだ。それによって健全な精神を高揚しようとしている。かっては反日が国民の注意をそらす手段だったが、現在はこの儒学に国民の関心をもたせるようにしている。このタイトルほど政府の意図は邪悪ではない。孔子の考えはもともと修身斉家治国平天下だから、中国の制度にはあっている。

木曜日。ではまた明日。

swingby_blog at 22:33コメント(0) 

2017年09月26日

なぜJacob Zumaを大統領にしておくことは南アフリカにとってなぜ悪いのか。 正しいか間違いかの選択に直面して、ANCは間違った方を選んでいる。

Why keeping Jacob Zuma as president is bad for South Africa
Faced with a choice between right and wrong, the ANC chose wrong
Aug 10th 2017

なぜJacob Zumaを大統領にしておくことは南アフリカにとってなぜ悪いのか。
正しいか間違いかの選択に直面して、ANCは間違った方を選んでいる。

アフリカ民族会議/ANC:南アフリカ連邦でアパルトヘイトの撤廃を求めて組織された。激しい弾圧を受けながら活動を続け、1991年にアパルトヘイト撤廃と民主化を勝ち取り、1994年に議長マンデラが南アフリカ共和国大統領となった。



THE most striking thing about the vote over whether to sack Jacob Zuma was the claims his supporters did not make. During the debate, in South Africa’s parliament on August 8th, no one said: “Let’s keep Mr Zuma as our president because he has done such a splendid job of running the country.” Some MPs from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) did not mention him by name at all, so embarrassing has his record become. 

sack:クビにする
embarrassing:【政治家政党にとって】窮地に陥れるような

Instead, they accused the opposition of all manner of skulduggery and, of course, racism. The defence minister likened the motion of no confidence in Mr Zuma to a coup. The arts minister called the opposition parties that supported the motion “Mickey Mouse organisations”. Shortly after Mr Zuma narrowly survived the vote, his police minister described those who failed to back his boss as “suicide-bombers”. 

skulduggery:不正な行為
racism:人種差別
likened:なぞらえる

Mmusi Maimane, leader of the Democratic Alliance, the largest (and most liberal) opposition group, spoke with more conviction. He called Mr Zuma a “corrupt and broken president” and quoted ANC grandees, including two former presidents of South Africa, who had called either explicitly or implicitly for parliament to throw him out. He even suggested that Nelson Mandela, were he still alive, would have voted to ditch the president. Julius Malema, the leader of the other big opposition party, the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, was even more forthright in his contempt for Mr Zuma. 

conviction:確信
grandees:有力政治家
forthright:歯に衣着せぬ
contempt:軽蔑

Yet when the votes were tallied, the great survivor clung to power: the opposition fell 24 votes short of the 201 needed to remove him. His supporters celebrated by dancing and singing songs from the struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s old racist regime, which ended in 1994. There have been several previous attempts in parliament to oust Mr Zuma, but this was the most significant yet because it was the first in which MPs were allowed to vote in secret. The Constitutional Court had argued, in effect, that this was the only way ANC MPs could oppose the president without fear of reprisals. But in the end, party loyalty and Mr Zuma’s considerable powers of patronage kept him in the job. 

clung:しがみつく
reprisals:報復

Nonetheless, the vote was a stark warning for the ANC. Mr Zuma mustered only 198 MPs in his defence, a woeful result for the head of a party with 249 out of 400 seats in parliament. After accounting for absentees, it seems that a fifth of ANC MPs either abstained or voted against their president. 

stark:厳しい
mustered:集める
woeful:情けない
abstained:棄権する

It is not hard to see why. Mr Zuma faces 783 charges of corruption, which he denies; his next court hearing is next month. A report from the public protector, an ombudsman, has accused Mr Zuma and the Guptas, a family of Indian businesspeople, of orchestrating “state capture”. And the president’s son, Duduzane, may be called to answer questions before a parliamentary committee that is investigating allegations of graft at state-owned companies involving some of Mr Zuma’s key allies. 

ombudsman:苦情処理担当官(⦅英⦆Parliamentary Commissioner; ⦅男女共用⦆ombudsperson)〘政府公的機関などへの市民の苦情を中立的立場で調査処理を行う公務員〙
state capture:国を占領している

Before the vote Mr Zuma’s former minister of tourism, Derek Hanekom, spoke for many disgruntled ANC members, not to mention the country as a whole, when he complained of “massive looting and corruption”. Such is the cronyism and mismanagement of the Zuma administration that South Africa has dipped into recession, its debt has been downgraded to junk and unemployment is a whopping 28% (or 36% if one includes those who have given up looking for work). The economy contracted at an annualised rate of 0.7% in the first quarter, even as the population swells by 1.6% a year. Meanwhile, Mr Zuma’s cronies have grown staggeringly and ostentatiously rich. 

disgruntled:不満な
whopping:途方もない
cronies:縁故
staggeringly: びっくりするほどに
ostentatiously:派手に

A better life for some
Although they lost, the opposition parties hope that the vote will bind the ANC ever more closely in the eyes of voters to an unpopular president. This, they predict, will give them a better chance in national elections in 2019, especially if Mr Zuma manages to anoint his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as the next leader of the ANC (and thus in all likelihood its presidential candidate). That decision will be made at an ANC conference in December. Mr Zuma is thought to favour his former spouse in the hope that she will shield him from prosecution. The Democratic Alliance, which did well in local elections last year, thinks she would be easier to beat than someone with a different surname. 

bind:団結させる
in the eyes of:〜の目[視点]から見れば
anoint:指名する
shield:保護する

If the opposition feels any private glee that the ANC is destroying itself, it is surely tempered by sadness. Few can be happy that Africa’s oldest liberation movement and a once-proud torchbearer of democracy has fallen so low. Even fewer relish the prospect of South Africa enduring another two years under Mr Zuma. The president has ignored court orders, fired his most competent ministers, mismanaged public funds and somehow got away with it. As for the people who believed the ANC’s promise of “a better life for all”, they will have to wait. 

glee:ほくそ笑み
tempered:〈感情など〉の強さを緩和する 
relish:楽しむ
get away with A (!受け身にしない):A〈悪事〉をしても罰を受け[捕まら]ない

ズマはよっぽどひどい大統領のようだ。汚職と縁故主義でどうしようもないと言っている。ANCの議長に前妻を立候補させようとしている。そうすれば、彼女が彼をかばってくれるという意味だ。738もの告訴がある。今のままであれば、あと2年一般大衆は我慢しなければならない。

水曜日。今日は海野塾がある。ではまた明日。


swingby_blog at 20:52コメント(0) 

2017年09月25日

内燃エンジンの終焉 十分な役割を果たした。しかし世界を変えたこの機械に終わりが近づいている。

The death of the internal combustion engine
It had a good run. But the end is in sight for the machine that changed the world
Aug 12th 2017

内燃エンジンの終焉
十分な役割を果たした。しかし世界を変えたこの機械に終わりが近づいている。



“HUMAN inventiveness…has still not found a mechanical process to replace horses as the propulsion for vehicles,” lamented Le Petit Journal, a French newspaper, in December 1893. Its answer was to organise the Paris-Rouen race for horseless carriages, held the following July. The 102 entrants included vehicles powered by steam, petrol, electricity, compressed air and hydraulics. Only 21 qualified for the 126km (78-mile) race, which attracted huge crowds. The clear winner was the internal combustion engine. Over the next century it would go on to power industry and change the world.

inventiveness:独創力・発明の才
propulsion:推進力
lamented:残念がる
hydraulics:水力学
go on to:に取り掛かる

The big end 
But its days are numbered. Rapid gains in battery technology favour electric motors instead (see Briefing). In Paris in 1894 not a single electric car made it to the starting line, partly because they needed battery-replacement stations every 30km or so. Today’s electric cars, powered by lithium-ion batteries, can do much better. The Chevy Bolt has a range of 383km; Tesla fans recently drove a Model S more than 1,000km on a single charge. UBS, a bank, reckons the “total cost of ownership” of an electric car will reach parity with a petrol one next year—albeit at a loss to its manufacturer. 

numbered:もうあまり長く存続できない
reach price parity with:〜と同等の価格に達する、〔主語の〕価格が〜と同等になる
at a loss:〔金銭的に〕損をして

It optimistically predicts electric vehicles will make up 14% of global car sales by 2025, up from 1% today. Others have more modest forecasts, but are hurriedly revising them upwards as batteries get cheaper and better—the cost per kilowatt-hour has fallen from $1,000 in 2010 to $130-200 today. Regulations are tightening, too. Last month Britain joined a lengthening list of electric-only countries, saying that all new cars must be zero-emission by 2050. 

lengthening:延長する

The shift from fuel and pistons to batteries and electric motors is unlikely to take that long. The first death rattles of the internal combustion engine are already reverberating around the world—and many of the consequences will be welcome. 

rattles:ガタガタ[ガラガラ, ゴトゴト]という音
reverberating:鳴り響く

To gauge what lies ahead, think how the internal combustion engine has shaped modern life. The rich world was rebuilt for motor vehicles, with huge investments in road networks and the invention of suburbia, along with shopping malls and drive-through restaurants. Roughly 85% of American workers commute by car. Carmaking was also a generator of economic development and the expansion of the middle class, in post-war America and elsewhere. There are now about 1bn cars on the road, almost all powered by fossil fuels. Though most of them sit idle, America’s car and lorry engines can produce ten times as much energy as its power stations. The internal combustion engine is the mightiest motor in history. 

gauge:推し量る
invention:考案
suburbia:郊外
power stations:発電所

But electrification has thrown the car industry into turmoil. Its best brands are founded on their engineering heritage—especially in Germany. Compared with existing vehicles, electric cars are much simpler and have fewer parts; they are more like computers on wheels. That means they need fewer people to assemble them and fewer subsidiary systems from specialist suppliers. Carworkers at factories that do not make electric cars are worried that they could be for the chop. With less to go wrong, the market for maintenance and spare parts will shrink. While today’s carmakers grapple with their costly legacy of old factories and swollen workforces, new entrants will be unencumbered. Premium brands may be able to stand out through styling and handling, but low-margin, mass-market carmakers will have to compete chiefly on cost. 

heritage:伝統
be for the chop:⦅英くだけて⦆〈人が〉クビになりそうである
grapple:格闘する
swollen:膨れ上がった
unencumbered:じゃまされない

Assuming, of course, that people want to own cars at all. Electric propulsion, along with ride-hailing and self-driving technology, could mean that ownership is largely replaced by “transport as a service”, in which fleets of cars offer rides on demand. On the most extreme estimates, that could shrink the industry by as much as 90%. Lots of shared, self-driving electric cars would let cities replace car parks (up to 24% of the area in some places) with new housing, and let people commute from far away as they sleep—suburbanisation in reverse. 

propulsion:推進力
ride-hailing:スマホアプリによる配車サービス
fleets:すべての

Even without a shift to safe, self-driving vehicles, electric propulsion will offer enormous environmental and health benefits. Charging car batteries from central power stations is more efficient than burning fuel in separate engines. Existing electric cars reduce carbon emissions by 54% compared with petrol-powered ones, according to America’s National Resources Defence Council. That figure will rise as electric cars become more efficient and grid-generation becomes greener. Local air pollution will fall, too. The World Health Organisation says that it is the single largest environmental health risk, with outdoor air pollution contributing to 3.7m deaths a year. One study found that car emissions kill 53,000 Americans each year, against 34,000 who die in traffic accidents. 

grid-generation:スマートグリッドによる分散型発電

Autos and autocracies
And then there is oil. Roughly two-thirds of oil consumption in America is on the roads, and a fair amount of the rest uses up the by-products of refining crude oil to make petrol and diesel. The oil industry is divided about when to expect peak demand; Royal Dutch Shell says that it could be little more than a decade away. The prospect will weigh on prices long before then. Because nobody wants to be left with useless oil in the ground, there will be a dearth of new investment, especially in new, high-cost areas such as the Arctic. 

divided about:《be 〜》〜に関し対立する、〜について意見が分かれる
autocracies:独裁政治
weigh on price:価格に重点を置く
dearth:不足

By contrast, producers such as Saudi Arabia, with vast reserves that can be tapped cheaply, will be under pressure to get pumping before it is too late: the Middle East will still matter, but a lot less than it did. Although there will still be a market for natural gas, which will help generate power for all those electric cars, volatile oil prices will strain countries that depend on hydrocarbon revenues to fill the national coffers. When volumes fall, the adjustment will be fraught, particularly where the struggle for power has long been about controlling oil wealth. In countries such as Angola and Nigeria where oil has often been a curse, the diffusion of economic clout may bring immense benefits. 

fraught:不安にさせる
curse:災い
diffusion:拡散
immense:巨大な

Meanwhile, a scramble for lithium is under way. The price of lithium carbonate has risen from $4,000 a tonne in 2011 to more than $14,000. Demand for cobalt and rare-earth elements for electric motors is also soaring. Lithium is used not just to power cars: utilities want giant batteries to store energy when demand is slack and release it as it peaks. Will all this make lithium-rich Chile the new Saudi Arabia? Not exactly, because electric cars do not consume it; old lithium-ion batteries from cars can be reused in power grids, and then recycled. 

scramble:先を争う
carbonate:炭酸

The internal combustion engine has had a good run—and could still dominate shipping and aviation for decades to come. But on land electric motors will soon offer freedom and convenience more cheaply and cleanly. As the switch to electric cars reverses the trend in the rich world towards falling electricity consumption, policymakers will need to help, by ensuring that there is enough generating capacity—in spite of many countries’ broken system of regulation. They may need to be the midwives to new rules and standards for public recharging stations, and the recycling of batteries, rare-earth motors and other components in “urban mines”. And they will have to cope with the turmoil as old factory jobs disappear. 

midwives:助産師

Driverless electric cars in the 21st century are likely to improve the world in profound and unexpected ways, just as vehicles powered by internal combustion engines did in the 20th. But it will be a bumpy road. Buckle up. 

内燃エンジンがなくなっていく。それに代わって電気自動車が普及していく。自動運転技術と配車サービスが普及し、人々は車を保有しなくなる。バッテリーのコストはわずか5,6年で10分の一になった。リチウムの原料はチリが主な産地だが、石油と違って、再生ができる。サウジは凋落していく。自動車産業の業界は消滅する。彼らの従業員の保証はどうなるのかが大きか問題だ。こうした時代はすぐ目前にある。

火曜日。ではまた明日。

swingby_blog at 22:26コメント(0) 

コルビンの風船はすぐには破裂しないかもしれないと思う理由がいくつかある。

Peak Corbyn
There are reasons to think the Corbyn bubble may not burst soon
Aug 10th 2017

コルビンの風船はすぐには破裂しないかもしれないと思う理由がいくつかある。



JEREMY CORBYN may have lost the general election but his cult grows, regardless. There are Corbyn T-shirts all over the place, as well as more exotic items of clothing: David Cameron, Britain’s former prime minister, was photographed at a pop festival, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, half-embracing a female reveller who was wearing a cape with Corbyn’s name on the back, encircled by a heart. A mural of his face can be found in Islington. Siobhan Freegard, the founder of channelmum.com, reports that “Corbyn is the stand-out naming trend this year”, with 50% of parents saying they would be willing to consider naming their child after the MP for Islington North. 

cult:人気
exotic:風変わりでおもしろい
reveller:お祭り騒ぎ[どんちゃん騒ぎ]をする人
mural:壁画
stand-out:ずば抜けた[目立つ](人)
Naomi was named after a famous actress.:ナオミはさる有名女優の名前を取って名付けられた.

The great question of British politics is whether this is too much of a good thing. Is this adulation a bubble that will burst, leaving trustafarians with embarrassing bits of clothing and children with awkward names? Or is it the British equivalent of the posters and T-shirts that proliferated before Barack Obama’s first victory? There are good psephological reasons for thinking that Labour’s 40% score in June might be a high-water mark. The Conservative campaign was about as bad as you can get, a presidential effort with a nothing at its heart. Lots of people voted for Mr Corbyn precisely because they did not think he could win. They wanted to curtail Theresa May’s “Brexit means Brexit” triumphalism, not install a far-leftist in Downing Street. 

adulation:お世辞
trustafarians:⦅英俗⦆貧しい(家の出の)ふりをする裕福な若者
awkward:気まずい
names:有名人・名の通った
proliferated:急増する
psephological:選挙学の
high-water mark:絶頂
at its heart:本質的には、本来
 precisely because …:まさに…が理由で
curtail:抑制する

There are also signs that Mr Corbyn’s Teflon coating is wearing thin. On August 7th he returned from a cycling holiday in Croatia to face a barrage of questions about Venezuela. Why is a country that he once praised as a land of milk and honey turning into a giant gulag? Why had he said nothing while the regime beat and killed dissenters? Mr Corbyn eventually broke his silence only to say he condemned violence on “all sides”, seemingly oblivious to his own recent tweet that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” 

gulag:(旧ソ連の)強制労働収容所

This came on the heels of two other embarrassments. He back-pedalled on his promise to forgive all past student loans on the ground that, even in Labour’s free-spending Britain, writing off £100bn might be a bit irresponsible. And he clashed with the pro-European wing of his party when he insisted that Britain would leave the single market when it left the European Union. 

come on the heels of:〜に続いて起こる、〜の直後に起こる
irresponsible:無責任な
clashed:対立する

Further skeletons lurk in Mr Corbyn’s closet. He has spent his life forgiving people their nastiness so long as they are hostile to the Great Satan of the United States. And there are more potential fissures in his coalition. The sort of people who ooh over him at Glastonbury will start aahing if their taxes rocket. But anyone inclined to think that Britain is approaching peak Corbyn or even that, as Country Squire Magazine, a website, argues, “peak Corbyn has passed”, should consider three things. 

skeletons:残骸
lurk:潜む
nastiness:悪意
so long as:の間は
Great Satan:大魔王
fissures:亀裂
ooh:⦅くだけて⦆うわぁー[おおっ]と言う
aahing:切望する
rocket:急上昇する
peak:頂点に達する

The first is that peak Corbyn will be determined by the Conservative Party rather than the Labour Party or Venezuela’s ruling elite. The Conservatives have been in power since 2010 either as the dominant party in a coalition or in their own right. Even in the best of times, voters tire of long-serving ruling parties, blaming them for everything from bad weather to noisy roadworks. These have not been the best of times. The Tories are far more divided than Labour over Brexit—in particular, their “ultras” are more extreme—and, as the party of government, their divisions will be more damaging both to themselves and to the country. 

Second, a few fiff-faffs over communist tyrants aside, Mr Corbyn is acquitting himself quite well as party leader. He is forcing Blairites and Brownites to bend the knee with a judicious mixture of promises of promotion and threats of a beating by his praetorian guard, Momentum. In June Labour humiliated Mrs May despite the fact that most of its MPs thought Mr Corbyn was leading them to disaster. Next time they will be more behind him. 

fiff-:英語ではない Le Festival international de films de Fribourg?
faffs:おろおろする・もたつく
all that [joking, kidding] aside:それ[冗談]はさておき
acquitting himself:行動する
Blairite: ブレア派(Blairite、ブレアリット)とは、イギリスの政党、労働党の派閥。
Brownie:スコットランドや北部イングランドで伝承されている伝説上の妖精のひとつである。呼び名は地方によって全く異なるが、いずれもが民家に住み着いてその家を栄えさせるなど、日本の座敷童子に近い存在である。
praetorian guard:ローマ皇帝の護衛, 近衛兵; (一般に権力者政権などの)近衛団.
Momentum:勢い

His refusal to operate a pairing system (whereby MPs from opposing parties agree to cancel each other out by abstaining from voting) shows a good understanding of guerrilla tactics. Tory MPs will have to turn up for every vote to save the government from defeat, becoming increasingly exhausted, tired and fractious, whereas opposition MPs will be able to pick their moments. 

abstaining:棄権する
fractious:不安定な
pick up momentum:上昇の勢いがある、〔議論が〕熱を帯びる

The third reason is that a combination of economic forces, both long-term and short-term, favour Mr Corbyn. Brexit and its attendant uncertainties will further weaken Britain’s already weakening economy. That will give voters more incentive to punish the party that has “banged on” about Europe for decades and seems to be doing a dismal job of handling the divorce settlement. The hollowing out of the middle classes, as salaried workers see their jobs threatened by artificial intelligence and globalisation and their dreams of home ownership destroyed by rising property prices, is increasing the number of people who are sympathetic to Corbyn-style socialism. 

banged:延々と話し続ける
dismal:〈結果記録見込みなどが〉惨めな

London pride
The clearest signs of this can be seen in the country’s most globalised city, London, where Labour has gained 11 seats since 2010. Having lost such previously deep-blue seats as Kensington and Battersea in the latest election, the Tories could easily lose Chingford & Woodford Green, where Iain Duncan Smith’s majority fell from 8,386 to 2,438, and Uxbridge & South Ruislip, where Boris Johnson’s majority fell from 10,695 to 5,034, in the next one. 

Mr Corbyn also has perhaps the most important thing in politics on his side: the idea of “change” and “hope”. People are fed up with stagnant living standards. They are fed up with squabbling politicians. And they are fed up with the rich seeming to be held to different standards from the poor. The Tories are right to argue that this “changey-hopey” stuff is nonsense. Corbynism will make the country poorer, the infrastructure shoddier and political life more rancorous. But if they cannot go beyond criticising Mr Corbyn’s policies to offering a vision of a better future themselves, they might just as well whistle in the wind. 

fed:うんざりしている
stagnant:停滞した
squabbling:口論する
hopey changey:A euphemism for Obama's fraudulent promises of hope and change.
shoddier:見掛け倒しの
rancorous:恨み骨髄の
whistle in the wind:無駄な努力をする

コルビンが次のイギリスの首相候補としてあがっているが、果たしてうまくいくのだろうか。現在はメイに代わって、人気の絶頂だが、彼には問題がある。その第一は彼の党が支持されているよりはトーリー党にみんながうんざりしているということだ。第二に彼の党をうまくまとめることが出来るのだろうか。そうした背景の中で、彼は今、人気がある。

Brexitだけでなく、今の中産階級の没落と生活レベルの低下、政権における混乱には庶民はうんざりしている。トーリーはオバマが言ったような口だけのチェンジはもう良い。コルビンの社会主義の政策な中身をどう実行していくのか支援するべきだ。彼ら掲げることは出来るが実行できる能力はない。しっかりしたビジョンを提供しなければ、口先だけで終わってしまう。

月曜日。朝会がある。午後はBigLife21の加藤さんが来社する。夜はもと日立化成の武田さんと会食。ではまた明日。

swingby_blog at 09:24コメント(0) 
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海野 恵一
1948年1月14日生

学歴:東京大学経済学部卒業

スウィングバイ株式会社
代表取締役社長

アクセンチュア株式会社代表取締役(2001-2002)
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