经济学人-The Economist-学习资料

1、MAY 25TH31ST 2019 The end of May Climate change and war Trump, China and the tech panic How to use trees to find gold The great jobs boom World-Leading Cyber AI The Economist May 25th 20195 Contents continues overleaf1 Contents The world this week 10A round-up of political and business news Leaders 15Work The great jobs boom 16Britain s prime minister The end of the road 16Tech and the trade war Circuit breaker 17Climate of fear Global warming and war 18India s election Modi wins again Letters 2

2、0On antibiotics, capital gains, China, America s civil war, unicorns, ties Briefi ng 24Labour markets Working it Britain 27May s bitter end 28Political ads on Facebook 29British Steel v Jamie s spaghetti 29Paedophile-hunters and the police 32Asian cricketers 33What s in a Lloyd s “Name”? 34Bagehot Betting on Boris Europe 35The EU votes 36Emmanuel Macron s party in trouble 37Protests in Prague 37The battle for Bremen 38Steve Bannon s troubled monastery 39Charlemagne The perils of hugging populist

3、s United States 40Police technology 41Voters and the economy 42Protecting wetlands 42Pinched lobstermen 43Locking up toddlers 43 Trump s fi nancial records 44Lexington Kamala Harris s fl aws The Americas 45Guns in Latin America 46Bello Argentina s Cristina question Middle East its cash-rich balance-sheet could survive the shock, but its shares would slump. Hundreds of smaller suppliers with rickety fi nances could go bust. The ripple eff ect would hurt America s allies in Asia, because they host

4、 factories that supply China s tech-manufacturing hubs and are home to companies that operate in China. In October 2017, for example, components for smartphones accounted for over 16% of exports in Malaysia and Singapore and over 33% in Taiwan. Two Taiwanese giants, tsmc (which makes chips) and Foxconn (which assembles devices), straddle the fault line of the tech cold war, having production and customers in both America and China. The same is true of South Korea s champion, Sam- sung. America s

5、 allies face an impossible test of loyalty. Consumers will suff er, too. Until now, the cost of the trade war has been masked, because tariff s are paid by producers who absorb their cost or pass it on stealthily to consumers. Now the bill could become visible. Huawei has sold 300m handsets out- side China in the past fi ve years. Their buyers may soon fi nd that their phones no longer work properly. And just imagine if Ameri- cans were suddenly unable to buy Chinese-made iPhones. The cost of a

6、rupture means that both sides are likely to back down. Yet the battle will hasten the race to develop an indige- nous capacity to supply every vital technology in Chinaand in every aspiring power, including India. America s hold over the digital economy lets it enforce its will. But by unleashing its power so clumsily, it will hasten the end of its own dominance.7 D id climatechange cause the war in Syria? Or the genocide in Darfur? Obviously, that is not the whole story. Suppose Syr- ia s despo

7、t, Bashar al-Assad, or Sudan s former tyrant, Omar al- Bashir, were to fi nd themselves on trial in The Hague and tried to blame their country s carnage on global warming. Such a risible defence would fl op. No confl ict occurs without leaders to give or- ders and soldiers to pull triggers. No atrocities are committed unless human beings choose to commit them. Nonetheless, future-gazers are right to warn that global warming has made some wars more likely than they would otherwise have been, and

8、will make others more so in the future. It is nev- er possible to pinpoint a specifi c war and say that it would not have happened in the absence of climate change, just as it is impossible to say that a particular fl ood or typhoon was caused by it. Rather, climate change is causing environ- mental upheaval that destabilises regions and raises the risk of bloodshed (see International section). Some worry that the Arctic will be a fl ashpoint. As the ice cap shrinks, nato and Russia bolster thei

9、r military presence there. China is building a nuclear-powered icebreaker. At the Arctic Council on May 6th Mike Pompeo, America s secretary of state, downplayed climate change but waxed indignant about Russia s “aggressive behaviour” in reopening military bases in the re- gion. If the North-West Passage opens to shipping or enough valuable minerals are found beneath Arctic waters, expect a tus- sle between great powers for polar pre-eminence. But none of that is likely to lead to war. Nuclear-armed states are wisely wary of provoking each other too much. The bigger danger of climate-induced confl ict lies farther south, in hotter, drier zones, and involves mostly civil wars in poor countries, not international ones. Some things are clear. Accumulating green- house gases in the atmosphere are increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme droughts and fl oods in some regions. Seasonal rains and monsoons are becoming more vari- able and less predictable. As on

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