俄羅斯和中國都暴露了威權政權的弱點
湯馬斯椰簳蔑툲022年4月19日
專欄作者
China and Russia Are Giving Authoritarianism a Bad Name
Pool photo by Sergei Ilnitsky
The last decade looked like a good one for authoritarian regimes and a challen
ging one for democratic ones. Cybertools, drones, facial recognition technolog
y and social networks seemed to make efficient authoritarians even more effici
ent and democracies increasingly ungovernable.
過去的十年對於威權政權來說似乎是美好的十年，對於民主政權來說卻是充滿挑戰的十年
。網路工具、無人機、面部識別技術和社交網路似乎讓有效率的威權主義者更有效率，讓
民主國家越來越難以治理。
The West lost self-confidence — and both Russian and Chinese leaders rubbed i
t in, putting out the word that these chaotic democratic systems were a spent
force.
西方失去了自信——俄羅斯和中國領導人更是火上澆油，說這些混亂的民主制度是一種強
弩之末。
And then a totally unexpected thing happened: Russia and China each overreache
d.
然後發生了一件完全出乎意料的事情：俄羅斯和中國都不自量力了。
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and, to his surprise, invited an indirect war w
ith NATO and the West. China insisted that it was smart enough to have its own
local solution to a pandemic, leaving millions of Chinese underprotected or u
nprotected and, in effect, inviting a war with one of Mother Nature’s most co
ntagious viruses — the Omicron mutation of SARS-CoV-2. It’s now led China to
lock down all of Shanghai and parts of 44 other cities — some 370 million pe
ople.
普丁入侵烏克蘭，令他驚訝的是，這帶來了與北約和西方的間接戰爭。中國堅持認為使用
本地解決方案來應對大流行是足夠明智的，卻使數百萬中國人受保護不足或得不到保護，
實際上引發了與新冠病毒奧密克戎變異株——大自然最具傳染性的病毒之一——的戰爭。
現在，它導致中國封鎖了整個上海和其他44個城市的部分地區，人口合計約3.7億。
In short, both Moscow and Beijing find themselves suddenly contending with muc
h more powerful and relentless forces and systems than they ever anticipated.
And the battles are exposing — to the whole world and to their own people —
the weaknesses of their own systems. So much so that the world now has to worr
y about instability in both countries.
簡而言之，莫斯科和北京都突然發現自己要與比預期中更強大、更無情的力量和系統抗衡
。戰鬥正在向全世界和它們的人民暴露它們自身系統的弱點。暴露如此之多，以至於世界
現在不得不擔心兩國會發生動盪局勢。
Russia is a key supplier of wheat, fertilizer, oil and natural gas for the wor
ld. And China is the origin of, or a crucial link in, thousands of global manu
facturing supply chains. If Russia is locked out and China is locked down for
a prolonged period, every corner of the planet will be affected. And that is n
o longer a remote possibility.
俄羅斯是世界小麥、化肥、石油和天然氣的主要供應國。中國是數千條全球製造業供應鏈
的源頭或關鍵環節。如果俄羅斯被孤立，中國被長期封鎖，地球的每一個角落都會受到影
響。這種可能性不再遙遠。
Let’s start with Putin. He lulled himself into thinking that because his army
had smashed a bunch of ragtag military opponents in Syria, Georgia, Crimea an
d Chechnya, it could quickly devour a country of 44 million people — Ukraine
— that over the last decade had been moving to join the West and was tacitly
being armed and trained by NATO.
先說普丁。他自欺欺人地認為，只因他的軍隊在敘利亞、喬治亞、克里米亞和車臣粉碎了
一群魚腩對手，它就可以迅速吞噬一個有4400萬人口的烏克蘭。但在過去十年裡，烏克蘭
一直努力加入西方並悄悄接受北約的武器和訓練。
It’s been a military and economic debacle for Russia so far. But just as impo
rtant, it has exposed precisely how much Putin’s “system” is built on both
lying upward — everyone telling superiors what they want to hear, all the way
up to Putin — and drilling downward, tapping Russia’s natural resources, en
riching a few Russians, rather than unleashing the country’s human resources
and empowering the many.
到目前為止，這對俄羅斯來說是一場軍事和經濟崩潰。但同樣重要的是，它準確地暴露了
普丁的「體系」是如何建立在向上說謊——每個人都對上級說他們想聽的，層層向上，直
到普丁——和向下剝削——利用俄羅斯的自然資源，讓少數俄羅斯人富裕起來，而不是發
揮該國的人力資源並賦予大多數人權力。
Putin’s Russia is basically built on oil, lies and corruption, and that is no
t a resilient system.
普丁的俄羅斯基本上是建立在石油、謊言和腐敗之上的，這不是一個穩健的體系。
You could see it right from the eve of the war when Putin conducted a national
ly televised meeting of his top national security advisers, and none other tha
n Sergei Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, appeared
confused over which lie Putin wanted to be told.
在戰爭的前夕，你就可以看到，當時普丁與他的高級國家安全顧問舉行了一次全國電視轉
播會議，除了俄羅斯外國情報局局長謝爾蓋楝ソp什金以外，似乎沒人對那些謊言表現出
困惑，那些話都是普丁希望聽到的。
Putin said the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk should be al
lowed to become independent states, and then he polled these advisers for conf
irmation. But Naryshkin seemed to think Putin wanted to be told that the two p
rovinces should be annexed to Russia. As Naryshkin stammered over the wrong an
swer, Putin, without a hint of irony, twice snapped at him to “speak directly
” — as if that were possible anymore in Putin’s Russia. Only after Naryshki
n gave Putin the lie he obviously wanted to be told did Putin snarl, “You can
sit down now.”
普丁表示，烏克蘭東部的頓涅茨克和盧甘斯克州應該被允許成為獨立的國家，然後他對這
些顧問進行了意見調查以獲得確認。但納雷什金似乎認為普丁想聽他們說，這兩個州應該
被俄羅斯吞併。當納雷什金因錯誤的答案而結結巴巴時，普丁沒有一絲諷刺的意味，兩次
讓他「直說」——說得好像在普丁的俄羅斯還存在這種可能似的。只有在納雷什金向普丁
說了他顯然想聽到的謊言之後，普丁才厲聲說：「你現在可以坐下了。」
How many Russian military officers watching that humiliation were ready to tel
l Putin the truth about Ukraine once the war started going badly? When the Rus
sian military was up against foes in Georgia, Syria, Crimea and Chechnya, Russ
ia could just indiscriminately bomb its way out of any problem. But now that P
utin’s military has found itself in a war with Ukraine’s highly motivated ar
my and its homegrown weapons industry, backed with some of NATO’s best precis
ion weapons and training, the rot has really started to show. Russia’s tank a
nd logistic forces were mauled into multiple junkyards of burning hulks in wes
tern Ukraine.
在看到這樣的羞辱之後，有多少俄羅斯軍官會在戰場出現頹勢後去跟普丁說實話？在與喬
治亞、敘利亞、克里米亞和車臣作戰時，俄軍可以用狂轟濫炸解決一切問題。但現在普丁
的軍隊發現，他們面對的是一支士氣高昂的軍隊，有自己的兵器工業，還擁有最精良的北
約精確武器和訓練，敗象正在漸漸顯露。俄羅斯的坦克和後勤力量在烏克蘭西部被敲打成
了一堆堆燃燒著的廢銅爛鐵。
And it is impossible to exaggerate how incompetent the Russian Navy had to be
to allow the command warship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva missile
cruiser, to be so badly damaged, reportedly by two Ukrainian-made anti-ship cr
uise missiles, called Neptunes, that the Moskva sank into the sea off Ukraine
last week — the biggest loss of a naval ship in battle in 40 years.
俄羅斯海軍居然能讓他們的黑海艦隊指揮艦「莫斯科號」導彈巡洋艦受到嚴重損傷——據
報導是被烏克蘭製造的兩枚名為「海王星」的反艦巡航導彈擊中，這艘艦艇上週在烏克蘭
附近海域沉沒——這是40年來一艘海軍艦艇遭遇的最嚴重損失，這種無能的程度怎麼說都
不為過。
For the Russian flagship in charge of coordinating all of the air defenses for
the flotilla, and itself carrying 64 S-300F Rif air defense missiles, to be t
aken out by enemy anti-ship missiles had to have been the result of a cascade
of systems failures in detection and response to an attack.
作為負責協調這支小型艦隊的防空力量的旗艦，「莫斯科號」攜帶有64枚「S-300F暗礁」
防空導彈，這樣一艘船被敵軍的反艦導彈擊毀，只有在攻擊探測和反應上存在一連串的系
統失靈才會這樣。
Moreover, Neptune missiles are not necessarily “ship killers.” They were mor
e likely designed to be “mission killers” — to disable the radar and electr
onics of sophisticated destroyers like the Moskva — not specifically sink the
m.
此外，「海王星」導彈都談不上是「艦船殺手」。這種導彈更多的是作為「任務殺手」來
使用——讓「莫斯科號」這種裝備精良的驅逐艦喪失雷達和電子能力——而不是直接把船
擊沉。
So I pity the commander who had to tell Putin that Russia’s meanest, monstrou
s warship in the Black Sea, rumored to have been his favorite, had been sunk b
y a Ukrainian missile fired in war for the first time.
那位據說深得普丁器重的指揮官，現在要去告訴他，俄羅斯在黑海最兇悍、最龐大的戰艦
，被烏克蘭的一種首次在戰場上使用的導彈擊沉了，我還是挺同情這位指揮官的。
China is a much more serious country than Russia: It is not built on oil, lies
and corruption (though it has plenty of the latter), but on the hard work and
manufacturing talents of its people, directed by a top-down, iron-fisted but
eager-to-learn-from-abroad Chinese Communist Party. At least, eager in the pas
t to learn, but less so lately.
中國是個比俄羅斯正經得多的國家：它不是靠著石油、謊言和腐敗（儘管也不少）建起來
的，而是靠人民的勤奮和製造上的天賦，它的領導者中國共產黨採用自上而下的鐵拳統治
，但同時也樂於向外國學習。至少過去是這樣，最近幾年學習熱情有所減退。
China’s economic success, and the sense of pride it has generated, seems to h
ave lulled its leadership into thinking it could basically go it alone against
a pandemic. By producing its own vaccines, rather than importing better ones
from the West, and by repurposing its highly efficient system of authoritarian
surveillance and control to curb travel, do mass testing and quarantine any i
ndividuals or neighborhoods where Covid-19 appeared, China bet on a “zero Cov
id” policy. If it could get through the pandemic with fewer deaths and a more
open economy, it would be another signal to the to the world — a big signal
— that Chinese communism was superior to American democracy.
中國的經濟成功以及這種成功所帶來的自豪感似乎讓領導層錯誤地認為，它可以獨力應對
一場大流行。他們生產自己的疫苗而不是從西方進口更好的疫苗；利用高效率的威權主義
監視和控制系統在發現新冠疫情的地方制約人的出行，進行大規模檢測，並對個人或街區
進行隔離，從而把賭注壓在「清零」政策上。如果它能在保證更少的死亡和更開放的經濟
的情況下挺過一場大流行，那將是向世界發出的又一個信號——一個重大信號——中國共
產主義要優於美國民主。
But Beijing, while scoffing at the West, became shockingly negligent about vac
cinating its own elderly. That did not matter as much when China was able to s
tem the spread of earlier variants of the coronavirus with tight population co
ntrols. But now it matters, because China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines ap
pear not nearly as effective against Omicron as the mRNA vaccines made in the
West, although they still are effective at reducing hospitalization and death.
In China today, more than 130 million people “aged 60 and above are either u
nvaccinated or have received fewer than three doses,” putting them “in great
er danger of developing severe Covid symptoms or dying if they contract the vi
rus,” The Financial Times recently reported, citing a University of Hong Kong
study.
但在嘲笑西方的同時，中國在國內老年人疫苗接種的問題上卻出現了令人震驚的疏忽。當
中國還能通過嚴格的人口管制來阻止新冠病毒早期變異株的傳播時，這種疏忽後果並不嚴
重。但現在卻要緊起來，因為中國的國藥和科興疫苗哪怕仍能有效減少住院和死亡，但針
對奧密克戎變異株的效果似乎遠不如西方的mRNA疫苗。英國《金融時報》最近援引香港大
學的一份研究報導稱，在如今的中國，超過1.3億的「60歲及以上人群要麼未接種疫苗，
要麼接種疫苗不到三針」，這導致他們「如果感染病毒，發展成新冠重症或死亡的風險變
得更高」。
This has led Beijing to opt for that total lockdown of Shanghai, which has bee
n so poorly managed that residents have reportedly had to scramble for food.
這也讓中國選擇全面封鎖上海，其封鎖措施如此失當，以至於有報導稱居民都不得不爭搶
食品。
Dr. David L. Katz, a U.S. public health and preventive medicine expert who wro
te one of the most prescient early guest essays in this newspaper about managi
ng Covid at the onset, explained to me that the problem with having the kind o
f draconian lockdown policy that China maintained is that you are guaranteeing
that your population develops little native immunity from having acquired and
survived the virus. So, Katz said, if the virus mutates globally, as it did w
ith Omicron, and you have “a less than effective vaccine, virtually no natura
l immunity in the population, and millions of elderly unvaccinated, you’re in
a bad place and there is no easy way out.”
美國公共衛生和預防醫學專家戴維微歲肵鰴掑h曾在本報發表最具先見之明的早期客座評
論之一，介紹了如何在疫情暴發之初妥善控制傳播。他向我解釋稱，中國堅持這種嚴格封
鎖政策的問題在於，其人口必然難以產生群體免疫，因為他們沒有感染病毒，並從中康復
。因此，凱茲說，如果病毒像奧密克戎那樣在全球範圍內發生變異，而你的「疫苗效果不
佳，人口幾乎沒有天然免疫力，又有數以百萬計的老年人沒打疫苗，那麼你的處境就會非
常糟糕，而且沒有輕鬆的出路」。
You can’t fool around with or propagandize away Mother Nature; she’s mercile
ss.
The moral of this story? High-coercion authoritarian systems are low-informati
on systems — so they often drive blind more than they realize. And even when
the truth filters up, or reality in the form of a more powerful foe or Mother
Nature slams them in the face so hard it can’t be ignored, their leaders find
it hard to change course because their claims to the right to be presidents-f
or-life rest on their claims to infallibility. And that is why Russia and Chin
a are both now struggling.
本文的寓意何在？高壓威權系統都是低信息量的系統——因此它們往往比自己意識到的更
盲目。即便真相濾出水面，或是現實變成了更強勁的對手，大自然狠狠打在他們臉上以至
於無法忽視，它們的領導人都很難改變方向，因為這些人聲稱，他們之所以有權做終身領
袖，靠得就是他們的永遠正確。這就是俄羅斯和中國如今都陷入困境的原因。
I am worried sick about our own democratic system. But as long as we can still
vote out incompetent leaders and maintain information ecosystems that will ex
pose systemic lying and defy censorship, we can adapt in an age of rapid chang
e — and that is the single most important competitive advantage a country can
have today.
我的確對我們的民主制度深感憂慮。但只要我們還能把不稱職的領導人選下去，並維護好
能夠揭露系統性謊言且凌駕於審查之上的信息生態系統，我們就可以適應這個瞬息萬變的
時代——而這正是一個國家今天所能擁有的最重要的競爭優勢。
湯馬斯微椰簳蔑툨Thomas L. Friedman)是外交事務方面的專欄作者。他1981年加入時報
，曾三次獲得普立茲獎。他著有七本書，包括贏得國家圖書獎的《從貝魯特到耶路撒冷》
(From Beirut to Jerusalem)。歡迎在Twitter和Facebook上關注他。
翻譯：紐約時報中文網
點擊查看本文英文版。
https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20220419/china-russia-putin/zh-hant/dual/
俄羅斯和中國，當今的最高領導人都想當終身的皇帝，所以採取極端的高壓統治，連「起
來！不願做奴隸的人們」的中國國歌歌詞都可以被封鎖，二國底層人民的聲音真的發不出
來！！