The Myth of American Competitive Supremacy
美国竞争优势的神话
By Larry Romanoff, August 13, 2022
通过 拉里·罗曼诺夫，2022年8月13日
译者：珍珠
CHINESE ENGLISH RUSSIAN SWEDISH
Americans boast incessantly about their competitiveness and the miracles of their predatory capitalist system, but on examination these claims appear to be mostly thoughtless jingoism that transmutes historical accidents into religion. If we examine the record, US companies have seldom been notably competitive. There is more than abundant evidence that their efforts are mostly directed to ensure an asymmetric playing field that permitted them to avoid confronting real competition. And, in very large part, major US corporations have succeeded not because of any competitive advantage but by pressure and threats emanating from the State Department and military. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stated the truth quite accurately when he wrote, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas.”
美国人不断吹嘘自己的竞争力和掠夺性资本主义制度的奇迹，但经过审查，这些说法似乎大多是轻率的沙文主义，将历史偶然事件转化为宗教。如果我们审视一下记录，美国公司很少表现出明显的竞争力。有大量证据表明，他们的努力主要是为了确保一个不对称的竞争环境，使他们能够避免面对真正的竞争。而且，在很大程度上，美国大公司的成功不是因为任何竞争优势，而是来自国务院和军方的压力和威胁。《纽约时报》专栏作家托马斯·弗里德曼（Thomas Friedman）写道：“没有隐藏的拳头，市场的隐藏之手永远不会起作用。没有麦克唐纳·道格拉斯，麦当劳就无法繁荣。”
Xerox was once almost the only manufacturer of photocopiers in the world. Kodak was once almost the world’s only maker of cameras and photo film; Where are Xerox and Kodak today? More recently, Motorola was the leading manufacturer of mobile phones; Where is Motorola today? US-based RCA Victor was one of the largest producers of TV sets in the world. Where can you buy an RCA TV set today? Where are the great Pan Am World Airways and Continental Airlines? Where are E.F. Hutton, General Foods, RCA, DEC, Compaq? Where are American Motors, Bethlehem Steel, Polaroid cameras, and so many more? Gone, because they couldn’t deal with effective competition.
施乐曾经几乎是世界上唯一的复印机制造商。柯达曾经几乎是世界上唯一的照相机和摄影胶片制造商；施乐和柯达今天在哪里？最近，摩托罗拉是移动电话的领先制造商；摩托罗拉今天在哪里？总部位于美国的RCA Victor是世界上最大的电视机生产商之一。今天在哪里可以买到RCA电视机？伟大的泛美世界航空公司和大陆航空公司在哪里？E.F.Hutton、通用食品、RCA、DEC、康柏在哪里？美国汽车公司、伯利恒钢铁公司、宝丽来相机等等都在哪里？因为他们无法应对有效的竞争而消失。
Boeing Aircraft would be gone today if not for the extensive subsidies it receives from the US government. It’s true that Airbus receives subsidies too, but Boeing is supported by billions in US military research grants against which it can apply much of its current expenses. Not so many years ago, IBM was the only manufacturer of office and home computers. Where can you buy an IBM computer today? GE was once the largest manufacturer of electric home appliances, lights and lighting fixtures. Where is GE today? Transformed into a financial company, beaten out of all consumer markets because it couldn’t compete. IBM defenders will tell you that the company willingly abandoned the PC market to focus on mainframe computers and information services, but no company abandons a profitable market. The truth is that IBM faced manufacturers who could produce PCs for a quarter of the cost, and were forced out of the business. GE defenders would make a similar claim, but GE couldn’t compete in the vast consumer markets and was driven out too.
如果不是因为美国政府提供的大量补贴，波音飞机将在今天消失。空客确实也获得了补贴，但波音公司得到了数十亿美元的美国军事研究拨款的支持，它可以将目前的大部分费用用于资助。不到几年前，IBM是唯一的办公和家用电脑制造商。今天在哪里可以买到IBM电脑？通用电气曾经是最大的家用电器、灯具和照明设备制造商。通用电气今天在哪里？转型为一家金融公司，因无法竞争而被所有消费市场淘汰。IBM的捍卫者会告诉你，该公司愿意放弃PC市场，专注于大型机和信息服务，但没有一家公司会放弃一个有利可图的市场。事实是，IBM面对的制造商可以以四分之一的成本生产个人电脑，并被迫退出该行业。通用电气的捍卫者也会提出类似的主张，但通用电气无法在庞大的消费市场上竞争，也被赶出了市场。
The three major US auto manufacturers are in the same position. Chrysler has been bankrupt three times already, and survives today only because of Fiat having taken it over. The great General Motors went bankrupt, and was saved only by $60 billion of cash injections from the US and Canadian governments – money which will never be recovered. And in spite of that, GM would have anyway disappeared from the earth if not for its sales in China – which are now three times GM’s sales in its own country; even Americans are refusing to purchase GM’s tired and dying brands. Only Ford has been able to keep its head above water, and then only just. We could produce a list of hundreds of US companies who thought they were great until they faced some real “competition”, and then rapidly disappeared. It’s true there are business failures in every country, but other countries don’t boast about their God-given omnipotence and their world-beating competitive supremacy.
美国三大汽车制造商处于同样的地位。克莱斯勒已经破产三次了，今天之所以能够存活下来，仅仅是因为菲亚特接管了它。伟大的通用汽车公司破产了，只有美国和加拿大政府注资600亿美元才得以挽救，这笔钱永远无法收回。尽管如此，如果不是因为通用汽车在中国的销量，它无论如何都会从地球上消失，而中国的销量是通用汽车在本国销量的三倍；就连美国人也拒绝购买通用汽车那些疲惫不堪、奄奄一息的品牌。只有福特汽车能够保持它的头露出水面，然后才刚刚。我们可以列出数百家美国公司的名单，他们认为自己很伟大，直到遇到真正的“竞争”，然后迅速消失。诚然，每个国家都有商业失败，但其他国家并没有夸耀他们天赐的全能和世界一流的竞争优势。
Along similar lines, the Americans have never forgiven the Europeans and Russians for producing supersonic passenger aircraft after all US attempts failed. And they are unlikely to forgive China and Russia for the deployment of working hypersonic missiles when all domestic attempts have failed.
同样，在美国的所有尝试都失败后，美国人从未原谅欧洲和俄罗斯生产超音速客机。而且，在所有国内尝试都失败的情况下，他们不太可能原谅中国和俄罗斯部署正在使用的高超音速导弹。
And then we have the genuine mythology of Alexander Graham Bell who didn’t invent the telephone, Thomas Edison who, by his own admission, never invented anything – including the light bulb, the Wright Brothers who were never the first to have powered flight, and the great Albert Einstein who plagiarized everything he published. The list is very long.
还有亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔（Alexander Graham Bell）没有发明电话，托马斯·爱迪生（Thomas Edison）自己也承认从未发明过任何东西——包括灯泡，莱特兄弟（Wright Brothers）从来都不是第一个为飞行提供动力，伟大的阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦（Albert Einstein）剽窃了他发表的所有东西。名单很长。
Descriptions of American ingenuity and competitiveness were never accurate or valid, but mere jingoism fabricated by Bernays’ adherents to further promote the self-serving mythology of virtuous American capitalism. The truth is that the large US companies thrived on only brute force, heavily supported by their own government to limit competition both domestically and abroad. The US government and military have always existed primarily to browbeat other nations and economies into submission, to help US corporations obtain unfair trade deals, exclusive access to resources and markets, effectively colonising and subjugating much of the world. American business has seldom been able to compete when placed on an equal footing with other competitors because the US business model works only on a “take it by force” basis. Kodak, Xerox, and so many other American icons disappeared when the playing field did indeed become level.
对美国创造力和竞争力的描述从来都不准确或有效，而仅仅是伯奈斯追随者编造的沙文主义，以进一步宣扬美国良性资本主义的自私神话。事实是，美国大公司的繁荣只靠蛮力，得到了本国政府的大力支持，以限制国内外的竞争。美国政府和军队的存在主要是为了威吓其他国家和经济体屈服，帮助美国公司获得不公平的贸易协议，独占资源和市场，有效地殖民和征服世界大部分地区。在与其他竞争对手处于平等地位时，美国企业很少能够参与竞争，因为美国的商业模式只能在“强制接受”的基础上运作。柯达、施乐和其他许多美国偶像在公平竞争的环境中消失了。
We need only look at the US domestic market to see the truth of this. When Japanese and German automobiles were finally permitted into the US market on equal terms, the American auto firms mostly entered a long slide to bankruptcy – because they couldn’t compete. Almost every computer and electronic device sold in the US today is a foreign brand because Americans couldn’t compete when the playing field was level. Motorola’s crappy phones were a great success until Nokia and others entered the US market. Harley-Davidson exists only because of a 50% import tax on competing motorcycles; Ford Motors would also be in bankruptcy if not for the heavy protectionist tax on light trucks. The American mobile phone companies and ISPs would disappear into the bankruptcy courts within a year if foreign firms were permitted into the market. Cisco Systems, the grand American Internet infrastructure champion, would within three months be reduced to assembling Playstations for Sony if Huawei were given free access to the US market. The story is the same for countless American firms that were once dominant in their home market but quickly disappeared when protectionist trade tariffs and duties were eliminated and foreign products could enter the US on fair or equal terms. The dominant US firms surviving today are able to do so due mostly to rampant protectionism and oligopolies created by the US government to ensure their survival.
我们只需看看美国国内市场，就能看到这一点的真相。当日本和德国的汽车最终被允许以平等的条件进入美国市场时，美国的汽车公司大多陷入了长期的破产——因为它们无法竞争。今天在美国销售的几乎每一台电脑和电子设备都是外国品牌，因为在公平的竞争环境下，美国人无法竞争。在诺基亚和其他公司进入美国市场之前，摩托罗拉的劣质手机取得了巨大成功。哈雷戴维森的存在只是因为对竞争对手的摩托车征收50%的进口税；如果不是对轻型卡车征收高额保护主义税，福特汽车也将破产。如果允许外国公司进入市场，美国移动电话公司和ISP将在一年内消失在破产法庭。如果华为能够免费进入美国市场，美国互联网基础设施巨头思科系统（Cisco Systems）将在三个月内为索尼组装游戏机。无数美国公司的情况也是如此，这些公司曾在本国市场占据主导地位，但在取消保护主义贸易关税和关税，外国产品可以公平或平等的条件进入美国后，很快就消失了。今天幸存下来的占主导地位的美国公司之所以能够做到这一点，主要是因为美国政府为了确保它们的生存而制造了猖獗的保护主义和寡头垄断。
The same is true in foreign markets. Few American companies have been able to survive in other countries, other than the fast-food chains. Most recently, Domino’s Pizza is leaving Italy with its tail between its legs after ten years of failure, blaming the bankruptcy on COVID. But there is a long string of American failures preceding this; E-Bay and Home Depot left China in tears a few years ago. Uber’s China business was taken over by Didi, and there are many more. Those American firms that have survived, have done so primarily by purchasing domestic brands and using that distribution system to support their foreign market entries, and most of those have succeeded only due to astonishing criminality in their foreign joint ventures.
外国市场也是如此。除了快餐连锁店，很少有美国公司能够在其他国家生存。最近，多米诺比萨公司在经历了十年的失败后，将破产归咎于新冠肺炎，这家公司正在离开意大利。但在此之前，美国经历了一连串的失败；易趣和家得宝几年前含泪离开了中国。优步的中国业务被滴滴接管，还有更多。那些幸存下来的美国公司主要通过购买国内品牌并利用分销系统支持其进入国外市场来实现这一目标，而这些公司中的大多数成功只是因为其外国合资企业中惊人的犯罪行为。
And it is an axiom in the auto business that nowhere in the world can you buy an American car except in North America and China, and the China market may soon disappear in spite of what seemed an initial success.
汽车行业的一条格言是，除了北美和中国，世界上没有任何地方可以买到美国汽车。尽管中国市场最初似乎取得了成功，但它可能很快就会消失。
At one time, US banks, radio and TV companies, print publishers and others were heavily restricted from mergers and takeovers on the sound basis that society needed to be protected from the predatory nature of concentrated ownership. But for the past 50 years the elites who control the large US corporations have exerted enormous influence on the government to remove domestic restrictions on monopolies, and eventually their political influence succeeded to the point where today the entire nation has only a few media firms, auto manufacturers, pharmaceutical firms, oil companies, telecommunications firms and major banks. In each case, companies were bought, merged, swallowed or bankrupted until only a few very large survivors remained.
美国银行、广播电视公司、印刷出版公司和其他公司一度受到严格限制，无法进行合并和收购，理由是需要保护社会免受集中所有权的掠夺性影响。但在过去50年中，控制美国大公司的精英们对政府施加了巨大的影响，以取消国内对垄断的限制，最终他们的政治影响力成功地达到了今天整个国家只有少数媒体公司、汽车制造商、制药公司、石油公司、，电信公司和主要银行。在每一个案例中，公司都被收购、合并、吞并或破产，直到只有少数非常大的幸存者。
American banking corporations were once permitted to operate only within a single state, in part to sensibly ensure that local deposits were converted to local development loans rather than being siphoned off to develop other richer regions. But the powerful East-Coast bankers, heavily supported by the FED, convinced the government that all those small regional banks needed “competition” to make them “more efficient” and to bring them into the big leagues of the modern financial world. And of course, once approval was received, most of the local banks were purchased, enticed into a merger, bankrupted or forced out of business, and now a small number of banks controls most of the US economy. And, as we would expect, the new mega-banks did indeed siphon off local deposits to richer centers, thereby vastly increasing the nation’s income disparity and relieving the government of its control of regional development. All the claims about the need for, and benefits of, competition were false. The purpose of these mergers and purchases was never to foster competition but to eliminate it. Today, a few major US banks control the bulk of the nation’s business, and instead of competing with each other in some meaningful way they generally conspire together to plunder their customers. Where there is real competition consumers have choices, but what are the choices with the banks? You can leave one bank that offers poor service while cheating you to go to another bank that will offer poor service while cheating you.
美国银行公司一度只允许在一个州内经营，部分原因是为了明智地确保当地存款转化为当地发展贷款，而不是被抽走用于开发其他更富裕的地区。但在美联储的大力支持下，强大的东海岸银行家说服政府，所有这些小型地区银行都需要“竞争”，以提高它们的“效率”，并将它们纳入现代金融世界的大联盟。当然，一旦获得批准，大多数当地银行都被收购、被诱使合并、破产或被迫停业，现在少数银行控制了美国经济的大部分。而且，正如我们所预料的那样，新的大型银行确实将当地存款吸引到了更富裕的中心，从而极大地增加了国家的收入差距，减轻了政府对地区发展的控制。所有关于竞争的必要性和好处的说法都是假的。这些合并和收购的目的不是促进竞争，而是消除竞争。如今，美国几家大银行控制着美国的大部分业务，它们通常不是以某种有意义的方式相互竞争，而是合谋掠夺客户。在真正竞争的地方，消费者有选择，但银行有什么选择？你可以离开一家在欺骗你的同时提供糟糕服务的银行，去另一家在骗你的时候提供糟糕服务。
The US mobile phone system, an oligopoly, is the most expensive and dysfunctional in the world. An Internet-enabled smart phone that can be managed well in China for less than 100 yuan a month ($15.00) will cost $200 per month in the US. Until recently, SIM cards could not be removed, to prevent customers from changing suppliers; unlocking the phone to enable its use with another phone company or in another location, would lead to a $500,000 fine and a ten-year prison sentence, thereby protecting the oligopoly from competition. Like all American systems, communication was designed by and for the benefit of private enterprise, meant to hold consumers captive and milk them for every dollar they have. It was never considered as infrastructure nor designed with any thought of what was best for either the consumers or the nation.
美国的手机系统属于寡头垄断，是世界上最昂贵、功能最差的系统。在中国，一部每月售价不到100元（15美元）的互联网智能手机在美国的售价为每月200美元。直到最近，SIM卡才被移除，以防止客户更换供应商；解锁手机，使其能够在另一家电话公司或其他地点使用，将导致50万美元的罚款和10年的监禁，从而保护寡头垄断免受竞争。像所有的美国系统一样，通信是由私营企业设计的，是为了私营企业的利益，目的是束缚消费者，榨取他们的每一分钱。它从未被视为基础设施，也从未考虑过什么对消费者或国家最有利。
This pattern prevailed in banking, transportation, telecommunications, the media, the petroleum industry and others, to create a situation where these giant firms could totally dominate an industry to control not only prices and production levels, but also the rates of both future investment and technological innovation in these industry sectors. Those innovations escaping this capitalist net were soon either driven out of business or were purchased and killed. These are precisely the same arguments American companies and the US government utilise today in China to pressure China’s government to open industry sectors to US multi-nationals, claiming the benefits of competition and the need for efficiency as necessary credentials to enter the modern world. These claims are equally as much a lie in China as they were in the US.
这种模式在银行、交通、电信、媒体、石油行业和其他行业盛行，造成了这样一种局面：这些大公司可以完全主宰一个行业，不仅控制价格和生产水平，还控制这些行业未来投资和技术创新的速度。那些逃离资本主义网络的创新要么很快被赶出商业领域，要么被收购并扼杀。这些正是美国公司和美国政府今天在中国向中国政府施压，要求其向美国跨国公司开放工业部门的理由，声称竞争的好处和效率的需要是进入现代世界的必要条件。这些说法在中国和在美国一样都是谎言。
In fashion similar to their mythical inventiveness and entrepreneurship, nostalgic and misinformed Americans today pine for “the returning of pride once again to what was once the global standard of creativity, quality and style in manufactured products – the mark on all our goods saying ‘Made in the USA'”.
与他们神话般的创造力和创业精神相似，怀旧和被误导的美国人如今渴望“骄傲再次回归到制造产品的创造力、质量和风格的全球标准-我们所有产品上的标志都写着‘美国制造’”。
But this is just one more foolish American myth. The US was never a world standard of anything except weapons and maybe pornography, and even then they stole most of that from Germany and Japan. Mostly, American products, like their automobiles, have always been crappy. It is true there have been some products of acceptable quality emerging from the US, but these have always been much in the minority and the few examples used as evidence of this claim are virtually the only examples. The Americans have never been able to produce machines or tools that could match those of Germany, or shoes and clothing as fine as those of Italy, or wines and food products as good as those of Europe.
但这只是一个更愚蠢的美国神话。除了武器和色情制品，美国从来都不是任何东西的世界标准，即便如此，他们从德国和日本偷走了大部分。大多数情况下，美国的产品，比如他们的汽车，总是很糟糕。诚然，美国出现了一些质量可以接受的产品，但这些产品一直是少数，而作为这一说法证据的少数例子实际上是唯一的例子。美国人从来没有生产出能与德国相媲美的机器或工具，也没有生产出像意大利那样精致的鞋子和衣服，也没有制造出像欧洲那样好的葡萄酒和食品。
We are constantly reminded that the Americans, being so creative and innovative, spend huge amounts of money on R&D, but these claims are short on detail and therefore disguise the objectives of corporate R&D in America. Companies in most countries invest in research to produce products of higher quality and greater reliability or durability, but US firms typically have interest only in finding ways to produce more cheaply so as to enhance profitability. Large American firms focus at least 60% of their entire R&D budgets on ways to lower costs, with product quality inevitably being the loser. American investment in R&D is merely a kind of race to the bottom, with every firm competing to discover new ways to substitute substandard materials and produce a more cheaply-made product that can be sold at the same price. Many components are internal where the materials quality is not obvious to consumers, but for those which are external and subject to consumer evaluation we see superficial America at its best. Manufacturers conduct consumer tests of their R&D ‘innovations’ to determine if the public are able to detect the cheap substitutions, the goal being to degrade product quality and cost as much as possible in a way that will not be apparent to the consumer. Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute, wrote that “the US is a country interested only in finding the shortest route to the cheapest product”.
我们经常被提醒，美国人如此富有创造力和创新精神，在研发上花费了巨额资金，但这些说法缺乏细节，因此掩盖了美国企业研发的目标。大多数国家的公司投资于研究，以生产质量更高、可靠性或耐用性更高的产品，但美国公司通常只对找到更便宜的生产方式以提高盈利能力感兴趣。美国大公司将其全部研发预算的至少60%用于降低成本，产品质量不可避免地成为输家。美国在研发方面的投资只是一种向底部的竞争，每家公司都在竞相寻找新的方法来替代不合格的材料，生产出更便宜的产品，并以同样的价格出售。许多组件都是内部的，其材料质量对消费者来说并不明显，但对于那些外部的组件，我们可以看到表面的美国处于最佳状态。制造商对其研发“创新”进行消费者测试，以确定公众是否能够检测到廉价替代品，目标是以消费者看不到的方式尽可能降低产品质量和成本。经济政策研究所（Economic Policy Institute）主席劳伦斯·米谢尔（Lawrence Mishel）写道，“美国是一个只对寻找最短路径以获得最便宜产品感兴趣的国家”。
Despite all the mythical propaganda, the Americans have never placed much value on a skilled work force, and the quality of American goods has reflected this for 200 years. Neither American people nor their corporations have ever valued product quality, the people having for generations been programmed to value superficiality and appearance over substance, eventually resulting in the almost universally low quality throwaway society we see today. One of the main results of this low-class attitude is the American use of technology. Companies in Germany, Japan, China, and much of Europe, will take advantage of new technologies to produce better and higher-quality products but the Americans almost invariably use it to lower their cost of production and raise their profits. Product quality is always the loser. Even today, a German Volkswagen that requires repairs after a year is an anomaly; an American Buick that doesn’t, is a miracle.
尽管有这么多神话般的宣传，美国人从来没有重视过熟练的劳动力，200年来，美国商品的质量反映了这一点。无论是美国人还是他们的公司都从未重视过产品质量，几代人以来，人们习惯于重视表面和外观而不是实质，最终导致了我们今天所看到的几乎普遍存在的低质量的一次性社会。这种低级态度的主要结果之一是美国对技术的使用。德国、日本、中国和欧洲大部分地区的公司将利用新技术生产更好、更高质量的产品，但美国人几乎总是使用新技术来降低生产成本和提高利润。产品质量永远是输家。即使在今天，一年后需要维修的德国大众汽车也是一种反常现象；一辆美国别克没有，真是个奇迹。
The American Entrepreneurial Spirit
美国企业家精神
Americans have a bad habit of sloppiness with their vocabulary, an unthinking and simple-minded tendency to contaminate definitions by exaggerating them beyond the bounds of all good sense, mostly to fabricate grist for the propaganda mill. One such foolishness is of course the American definition of democracy which sometimes seems to include a thousand unrelated and mostly mythical items like freedom. One American acquaintance stated that a pet’s ‘right to dog food’ was ‘a human right’ and therefore included within the meaning of democracy. I sincerely doubt that one American in 50 could provide an intelligent definition of either democracy or freedom; the words simply mean whatever each person wants them to mean, the media pundits even less intelligent than the rest of the population.
美国人有一个词汇马虎的坏习惯，这是一种不假思索、头脑简单的倾向，通过超出所有合理范围的夸张来污染定义，主要是为了给宣传工厂编造谎言。其中一个愚蠢之处当然是美国对民主的定义，它有时似乎包含了一千个不相关的、大多是虚构的项目，比如自由。一位美国熟人表示，宠物的“狗食权”是一项“人权”，因此包含在民主的含义中。我真诚地怀疑每50个美国人中就有一个能为民主或自由提供一个明智的定义；这些词的意思只是每个人想表达的意思，媒体专家甚至没有其他人聪明。
We have the same problem with the use of ‘entrepreneurial’ as an adjective, the definition often expanded to include things like innovation or creativity or independence, and sometimes even ‘freedom’, and of course including the filing of new patents. But when the US military funds MIT for weapons research and obtains useful discoveries, this is hardly an example of the entrepreneurial spirit at work. An entrepreneur is someone who takes the initiative to form a new enterprise, the term being only peripherally related to innovation or the generation of ideas. Richard Branson may be entrepreneurial in designing and building a new space ship for tourists, but for each one of these we have several million who open their own pet shop.
我们在使用“创业”作为形容词时也遇到了同样的问题，这个定义经常被扩展到包括创新、创造力或独立性，有时甚至包括“自由”，当然还包括申请新专利。但当美国军方资助麻省理工学院进行武器研究并获得有用的发现时，这很难成为工作中企业家精神的典范。企业家是指主动组建新企业的人，该术语仅与创新或创意产生相关。理查德·布兰森在为游客设计和建造一艘新的太空船方面可能很有创业精神，但每一艘太空船我们都有数百万人开了自己的宠物店。
The Americans constantly flaunt companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook as examples of their entrepreneurial abilities but, like most all else, the few examples claimed are virtually the only examples that exist. And in almost every case I know of, especially with examples like Google and Facebook, there was enormous government, State Department and CIA political involvement, heavy funding, and enormous commercial pressure without which these enterprises would never have seen the light of day. Google is virtually a department of the CIA; Facebook and Twitter may not be much better. Warren Buffett and Michael Dell may be exceptions, but there are precious few of these. Apple would qualify, as would the creation of Hewlett-Packard, but America’s list is much shorter than China’s, with firms like Huawei, Wahaha, Xiaomi and 50 million others who started their own businesses. Like all the supposedly great things about America, the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit is just another utopian myth created by the propaganda machine as one more aspect of brand marketing.
美国人不断标榜微软、谷歌和Facebook等公司是他们创业能力的典范，但与其他大多数公司一样，少数几个例子几乎是唯一存在的例子。在我所知道的几乎每一个案例中，特别是在谷歌和Facebook这样的例子中，政府、国务院和中央情报局都有巨大的政治参与、巨额资金和巨大的商业压力，如果没有这些压力，这些企业将永无希望。谷歌实际上是中央情报局的一个部门；Facebook和Twitter可能不会更好。沃伦·巴菲特和迈克尔·戴尔可能是例外，但其中很少有例外。苹果公司和惠普公司都有资格获得这一资格，但美国的名单要比中国短得多，华为、娃哈哈、小米和其他5000万家公司都是自己创业的。就像所有关于美国的伟大事物一样，美国的创业精神只是宣传机器创造的另一个乌托邦神话，是品牌营销的又一个方面。
In the US, a new college graduate who has a job and isn’t already bankrupt with student loans, will take his first paycheque to a car dealership and borrow whatever he can to buy a car, and spend years paying off the debt. A new Chinese graduate will leave his full-time job at 5;00 PM and wash dishes in a Chinese restaurant until midnight, saving every penny until he can put a down payment on a house or an apartment which he will then rent out. And he will continue applying his salary from both jobs, supplemented by the rental income, until the house has enough equity for a down payment on a second property. And he continues, while he lives in a small rented flat, and after 5 or 6 years he has one house paid for, which he can then live in almost free, with another well on its way. He will continue to apply all income and rentals until the second home is also paid off, after which he can bank his entire salary and buy a new Mercedes if he wants one, or start his own restaurant, or buy a third house. Which way is better? Where is the evidence of “the entrepreneurial spirit” in the American?
在美国，一名刚毕业的大学生有了工作，还没有因为助学贷款而破产，他将带着第一张工资支票到汽车经销商那里，借他能借的任何东西买车，然后用几年的时间还清债务。一名新的中国毕业生将在5岁时离开他的全职工作；晚上八点，在一家中餐馆洗碗，直到午夜，节省每一分钱，直到他可以支付一套房子或公寓的首期款，然后再将其出租。他将继续使用两份工作的工资，并辅以租金收入，直到房子有足够的权益支付第二套房产的首付。他继续说，他住在一个租来的小公寓里，5年或6年后，他买了一套房子，然后他几乎可以免费住在里面，另一口井也在路上。他将继续申请所有收入和租金，直到第二套房子也还清为止，之后他可以将全部工资存入银行，如果他想买一辆新奔驰，或者开自己的餐厅，或者买第三套房子。哪条路更好？在美国，“企业家精神”的证据在哪里？
Nevertheless, and in keeping with the American defense of their pitiful PISA scores and educational system, the propaganda machine never tires of boasting of the breadth and depth of entrepreneurial America, of the adventurous spirit that pervades the nation, of the US being a veritable hotbed of entrepreneurs and business leaders and inventors. But of all claims of American superiority, and in spite of all the blatantly false myths about every other part of American excellence, this claim is so silly as to defy understanding of its origin. In a lifetime of travel, I have almost never met an American who dreamed of having his own business, and the same is true for Canadians, Brits, Australians and Germans. Italians yes, many; Americans, none. But in more than 25 years of constant exposure to Chinese people, and in a decade of experience within China, I am still genuinely surprised to meet a Chinese who does not dream of having his or her own business. The desire to be one’s own boss is virtually embedded in Chinese DNA and would serve as one of the defining adjectives of the Chinese people. There is nothing in the US to compare to it, and there has never been. In fact, it is China, not the US, that is flooded with entrepreneurs and the spirit to strike out on one’s own. Ningbo, a small affluent city in East China, is known primarily for its abundance of millionaires, and has an extraordinarily strong private business base, with one in four local people involved in export-related industries. Where do we find this in America?
然而，为了与美国为可怜的PISA分数和教育体系辩护的精神保持一致，这台宣传机器不厌其烦地吹嘘创业美国的广度和深度，吹嘘遍布全国的冒险精神，吹嘘美国是企业家、商业领袖和发明家的名副其实的温床。但是，在所有关于美国优越性的主张中，尽管所有关于美国卓越的其他方面都存在着明显的虚假神话，但这一主张太愚蠢了，以至于无法理解其起源。在一生的旅行中，我几乎从未遇到过一个梦想拥有自己企业的美国人，加拿大人、英国人、澳大利亚人和德国人也是如此。意大利人：是的，很多；对美国人来说，没有。但在与中国人接触超过25年的时间里，以及在中国的十年经历中，我仍然对遇到一个并不梦想拥有自己企业的中国人感到真正的惊讶。想成为自己的老板的愿望实际上已经嵌入了中国人的DNA中，并将成为中国人的定义性形容词之一。在美国，没有什么可以与之相比，而且从来没有。事实上，充满企业家和自主创业精神的是中国，而不是美国。宁波是中国东部一个富裕的小城市，主要以拥有大量百万富翁而闻名，拥有非常强大的私营企业基础，每四个人中就有一人从事与出口相关的行业。我们在美国哪里找到这个？
In the business school of the university in the small town of Yiwu, in Zhejiang Province near Shanghai, all the students – all the students – have their own businesses. They may only be Taobao online shops, but they all make money. In fact, it is part of their business-school curriculum that they at least open online shops to take advantage of Yiwu’s massive commodities markets, and learn how to buy, sell and market those goods across the nation. Many accept largish orders and market internationally – and these are kids. Some of them make $100,000 a year in this minor part-time occupation while they are still undergraduates. Many are also quite fluent in English and are taught to act as agents, purchasing advisors, negotiators and translators for foreign buyers, accumulating business skills and experience of enormous value. Where do you find this in America? Where do you find this at Harvard? The American business schools pretend that entrepreneurship entails imagining an iphone in your garage and finding an angel willing to pump $200 million into putting your show on the road. But for every one of those you can find in the US, China has 6 million of its kind, and guess who’s driving the Ferraris. And guess who spends 6 hours in front of the TV every night, still believing the sun revolves around the earth and still unable to find his country on a map of the world.
在浙江省义乌市靠近上海的小镇上的大学商学院，所有的学生都有自己的企业。他们可能只是淘宝网上商店，但他们都赚钱。事实上，他们商学院课程的一部分是至少开设网店，利用义乌庞大的商品市场，学习如何在全国范围内购买、销售和营销这些商品。许多人接受更大的订单并在国际市场上销售——这些人都是孩子。他们中的一些人还在读本科时，在这个小兼职中一年挣10万美元。许多人的英语也相当流利，并被教导担任外国买家的代理、采购顾问、谈判者和翻译，积累了具有巨大价值的商业技能和经验。你在美国哪里找到这个？你在哈佛哪里找到这个？美国商学院假装创业需要想象你的车库里有一部iphone，并找到一位愿意投入2亿美元让你的节目上路的天使。但在美国，你能找到的每一辆法拉利，中国都有600万辆，猜猜谁在开法拉利。猜猜谁每晚花6个小时看电视，仍然相信太阳绕着地球转，仍然无法在世界地图上找到自己的国家。
As well, if you read my E-book on ‘How the US Became Rich’,(1) it is heavily documented that great numbers of products which the mythological narrative now credits to American inventiveness were simply copied or stolen from other nations, often with the encouragement and financial support of the US government. Coca-Cola is one such example, but there are literally hundreds of others, including most manufacturing machinery and processes.
还有，如果你读了我的电子书《美国如何变得富有》(1)大量文献证明，神话般的叙述如今归功于美国发明的大量产品，往往是在美国政府的鼓励和财政支持下从其他国家复制或窃取的。可口可乐就是这样的一个例子，但实际上还有数百种，包括大多数制造机械和工艺。
There are a great many of these “firsts” that were never American, but where the claim has been made and the title confiscated as part of the long series of historical myths used to bolster the jingoism of American supremacy. Americans firmly believe they are exceptional in their ability “to turn the abstract into practical products for everyday people to be able to afford”. In evidence, they produce a long list of products and consumer goods that evolved from their “scientific research”, and that, according to them, is “so long and obvious as to sound like bragging”. The only flaw in this mythical narrative is that none of the claims are true. Almost no items on their “bragging list” were invented by Americans, and in the cases where US residents were the first to apply for patents, they were not Americans but virtually all by immigrants who had built on someone else’s work. Many Americans believe that IBM created the personal computer, but Germany’s Konrad Zuse built the first functional programmable computer in 1936, and Olivetti in Italy as well as scientists in Russia and Poland had working computers long before that.
这些“第一”中有很多都不是美国的，但作为一系列历史神话的一部分，这些神话被用来支持美国霸权的沙文主义，而在这些神话中，有人提出了要求，并没收了头衔。美国人坚信，他们在“将抽象化为实用产品，让普通人能够负担得起”的能力上是出类拔萃的。有证据表明，他们生产了一长串从“科学研究”演变而来的产品和消费品，根据他们的说法，这些产品和消费产品“长而明显，听起来像是在吹牛”。这种虚构叙述的唯一缺陷是，没有一个说法是真实的。他们的“吹牛清单”上几乎没有美国人发明的东西，而在美国居民最先申请专利的情况下，他们不是美国人，而是几乎所有的移民，他们都是在别人的工作基础上发展起来的。许多美国人相信IBM创造了个人计算机，但德国的康拉德·祖泽在1936年制造了第一台功能可编程计算机，意大利的奥利维蒂以及俄罗斯和波兰的科学家早在那之前就已经在使用计算机了。
And it goes much further than this. The Americans are exceptionally proficient at creating historical myths that demonstrate their supposed moral superiority in virtually every area, freely rewriting history or carefully burying crucial facts in juvenile attempts to mislead. One such myth concerns the fabled military aircraft, the P-51 Mustang which, according to the Americans, single-handedly won the war in Europe, defeated the German Luftwaffe all by itself, and “is widely considered the best piston single fighter of all time”. Of course, it is no such thing, except to the Americans themselves. For one thing, the Americans’ brief flash at the end of the conflict hardly ‘won the war’ but, more importantly, this aircraft’s original designation was the XP-78, a name almost nobody has ever heard of, and for good reason. The aircraft’s performance was underwhelming to say the least and, with its American-built Allison engines was of no more use during wartime than a lawn mower. It was the re-fitting of this aircraft with the British Rolls-Royce Merlin engine that made it useful. With the Merlin generating twice the power with less than half the fuel consumption of the US engine, the aircraft did indeed have great range and performance – as did the Spitfires and other British aircraft, but the original American version wouldn’t have made a list of the top 500. And yet nowhere in any American narrative do important facts like these appear. In these areas, as in so many others, the US is a nation based on lies.
它比这更进一步。美国人非常擅长创造历史神话，以证明他们在几乎每个领域的所谓道德优势，自由改写历史或小心地将关键事实掩埋在青少年误导的企图中。其中一个神话是关于传说中的军用飞机P-51野马，根据美国人的说法，它单枪匹马地赢得了欧洲战争，独自击败了德国空军，并且“被广泛认为是有史以来最好的单活塞战斗机”。当然，这不是这样的事情，除了美国人自己。首先，美国人在冲突结束时的短暂闪现很难“赢得战争”，但更重要的是，这架飞机的最初名称是XP-78，几乎没有人听说过这个名字，而且理由充分。至少可以说，这架飞机的性能并不令人满意，而且，由于其美国制造的艾利森发动机，在战争期间的用途并不比割草机多。正是这架飞机与英国劳斯莱斯梅林发动机的重新装配使其变得有用。梅林飞机的功率是美国发动机的两倍，耗油量不到美国发动机的一半，这架飞机确实有很好的航程和性能-就像喷火式飞机和其他英国飞机一样，但最初的美国版本不会进入500强。然而，在任何美国叙事中，都没有出现像这样的重要事实。在这些领域，就像在许多其他领域一样，美国是一个基于谎言的国家。
In related propaganda, anything developed first by another nation will not actually exist in the American mind or be recognised in the American narrative until it is subsequently copied and produced by the Americans, at which point they will assume full credit for having taken a flawed and primitive foreign concept and developed it into the only real good version. The British Harrier aircraft is one such example that comes immediately to mind, as are Italian espresso and cappuccino. On the other hand, any country creating anything similar to that existing in the US will discover its product being immediately denigrated as just a cheap copy of an infinitely-superior American invention. Americans are such a pain in the ass.
在相关的宣传中，任何首先由另一个国家开发的东西都不会真正存在于美国人的头脑中，也不会在美国人的叙述中得到认可，直到后来被美国人复制和制作，在这一点上，他们将承担全部责任，因为他们接受了一个有缺陷的原始外国概念，并将其发展为唯一真正的好版本。英国的鹞式飞机就是一个让人立即想到的例子，意大利浓咖啡和卡布奇诺也是如此。另一方面，任何创造类似于美国现有产品的国家都会发现，其产品立即被贬损为美国发明的廉价复制品。美国人真讨厌。
Creativity and Innovation
创造力和创新
The floods of new patents notwithstanding, there is no evidence that Americans are any more innovative or creative than any other nation of people. Equally, there is no evidence that Americans are any more resourceful than people from other nations, and I would argue they are rather less so. Moreover, two major conditions serve as strong contra-indications of these claims of American inventiveness.
尽管新专利大量涌现，但没有证据表明美国人比任何其他民族都更具创新性或创造性。同样，没有证据表明美国人比其他国家的人更足智多谋，我认为他们的足智多虑程度要低得多。此外，两个主要条件是这些美国发明的强烈禁忌症。
One is that most of the invention and innovation that occurred in the US was not done by “Americans”, whoever they are, but by people from other nations, a large percentage of these being Chinese. In fact, in America’s famous Silicon Valley 50% of the participants are Chinese and another 40% Indian. That wouldn’t seem to leave too much creativity or innovation for Americans. Indeed, without these foreigners, US innovation might come to a virtual standstill and Silicon Valley might have amounted to nothing. The US has for decades offered free graduate-level education and attractive research jobs to the best and brightest of other nations, which is simply colonialism in another form, effectively purchasing the brightest students from other nations then taking credit for their inventions or patents. The truth is that precious little of the inventiveness that occurred in America in the past was ever done by Americans. Even today, a recent study financed by New York mayor Bloomberg proved that 75% or more of all patents emerging from US educational institutions were obtained by foreigners, a great many of whom were Chinese. The US educational system has never fostered either inventiveness or creative thinking; what it has done, and perhaps done well, is to hire creative minds from other nations and then claim their work for itself. It has been only through plundering resources and the brightest people from other nations, that the US has progressed and become rich overall. If not for that, America today would be of no more consequence than Australia.
一是美国发生的大部分发明和创新不是由“美国人”完成的，不管他们是谁，而是由其他国家的人完成的，其中很大一部分是中国人。事实上，在美国著名的硅谷，50%的参与者是中国人，另外40%是印度人。这似乎不会给美国人留下太多的创造力或创新。事实上，如果没有这些外国人，美国的创新可能会陷入僵局，硅谷可能一事无成。几十年来，美国向其他国家中最优秀和最聪明的人提供免费的研究生教育和有吸引力的研究工作，这只是另一种形式的殖民主义，实际上是从其他国家购买最聪明的学生，然后为他们的发明或专利获得荣誉。事实是，过去在美国发生的发明创造很少是美国人创造的。即使在今天，由纽约市长布隆伯格资助的一项最新研究证明，美国教育机构的所有专利中有75%或更多是由外国人获得的，其中很多是中国人。美国的教育体系从未培养过创造性或创造性思维；它所做的，也许是做得很好的，就是从其他国家雇佣创意人才，然后为自己争取他们的工作。只有通过掠夺其他国家的资源和最聪明的人才，美国才取得了进步，总体上变得富有。如果不是这样，今天的美国将不会比澳大利亚更重要。
The second is that a surprising amount of the innovation emerging from America in recent decades did not come from lofty ideals, satisfying consumer needs, or other moral truisms, but was simply commercial fallout from military research. As noted elsewhere, MIT, one of the most prominent and praised US educational institutions, was created for the sole purpose of military research and until recently was almost 100% funded by the US military. The US may well have its share of intelligent and innovative people, but their talents have been mostly directed to war, marketing, and the marketing of war. When the Americans were flooding the people of Vietnam under a tsunami of millions of liters of napalm, they discovered the Vietnamese were cleverly avoiding their planned immolation by submerging themselves in water and extinguishing the flames. The Department of Defense quickly assembled the best and brightest Americans (at Harvard) who, innovative as always, discovered they could infuse the napalm with particles of white phosphorus that would burn a man to death even while under water. American ingenuity at its best.
第二，近几十年来，美国涌现出的惊人数量的创新并非来自崇高的理想、满足消费者需求或其他道德真理，而只是军事研究的商业后果。正如其他地方所指出的，麻省理工学院是美国最著名、最受赞誉的教育机构之一，其成立的唯一目的是军事研究，直到最近，几乎100%的资金都来自美国军方。美国很可能拥有智慧和创新的人才，但他们的才能主要用于战争、营销和战争营销。当美国人在数百万升凝固汽油弹的海啸中淹没越南人民时，他们发现越南人聪明地将自己淹没在水中并灭火，以避免他们计划的自焚。国防部迅速召集了最优秀、最聪明的美国人（哈佛大学），他们一如既往地创新，发现他们可以在凝固汽油弹中注入白磷颗粒，即使在水下也会将人烧死。美国人的聪明才智正处于最佳状态。
The US government has arranged widespread ‘public-private partnerships’ with many educational institutions for the purpose of military research, and after the military determines how to weaponise something, they then let parts into the private sector. The Internet was a military project, as was the American GPS system. Google Earth resulted from US military spy satellites; radio, computers and microwaves were military projects. The list is long. When this massive seconding of the American educational system for military use became a target of public objection, the US government did what it and its corporations always do: they moved it offshore. In late 2013 der Spiegel reported an outbreak of public condemnation when it was revealed that German universities had received tens of millions of dollars from the US for military research, and many other foreign universities are in the same position. The Americans are now attempting to utilise the best and brightest from all Western nations in their headlong rush to create military invincibility, hijacking the research departments in the world’s universities and paying scientists and researchers from all nations to make their contribution to American military superiority.
美国政府已经与许多教育机构安排了广泛的“公私伙伴关系”，以进行军事研究，在军方决定如何将某些东西武器化后，他们就将其部分投入私营部门。互联网是一项军事工程，美国的GPS系统也是如此。谷歌地球是美国军事间谍卫星的产物；无线电、计算机和微波都是军事项目。名单很长。当这种大规模借调美国教育系统用于军事用途的做法成为公众反对的目标时，美国政府做了它和它的公司一直做的事情：他们将其转移到海外。2013年末，《明镜周刊》报道称，当德国大学从美国获得数千万美元用于军事研究时，爆发了公众谴责，许多其他外国大学也处于同样的境地。美国人现在正试图利用来自所有西方国家的最优秀和最聪明的人才，一哄而起地创造军事无敌性，劫持世界大学的研究部门，并向来自所有国家的科学家和研究人员支付报酬，为美国的军事优势做出贡献。
Americans are not “inventive”. They are greedy and self-serving, interested much more in commercial domination and control than in creativity. Creativity is defined by art, not by money and, since Americans have no art, they have redefined creativity as something that produces money. And it’s even worse than this. As I’ve noted elsewhere, about two-thirds of American R&D budgets are directed exclusively to finding ways to degrade product quality and lower the cost so as to make a cheaper product and increase profits. In what way is this a reflection of “creativity”? Even worse, the US government and corporations have not only hijacked all American universities as incubators of profit but also as hotbeds of weapons research, now extending this to the research departments of universities in other Western nations. I’m sorry to say this, but of all the available fields of human endeavor that would benefit from the application of imagination, the Americans have chosen only two: the search for ways to provide less while charging more, and ways to kill more people faster and from a greater distance. This is not creativity. It is a kind of mass hysteria in a population that long ago lost its moral compass and sense of values, a people rendered powerless by a profusion of propaganda that redefined a life worth living as one of superficiality, greed and domination.
美国人没有“创造性”。他们贪婪自私，对商业统治和控制比对创造力更感兴趣。创造力是由艺术定义的，而不是金钱。由于美国人没有艺术，他们将创造力重新定义为能产生金钱的东西。比这更糟糕。正如我在其他地方所指出的，美国大约三分之二的研发预算专门用于寻找降低产品质量和降低成本的方法，以制造更便宜的产品并增加利润。这在何种程度上反映了“创造力”？更糟糕的是，美国政府和企业不仅劫持了所有美国大学，将其作为利润孵化器，还将其作为武器研究的温床，并将其扩展到其他西方国家大学的研究部门。我很抱歉这么说，但在所有可以从想象力的应用中受益的人类努力领域中，美国人只选择了两个：寻找提供更少而收费更高的方法，以及更快、更远距离杀死更多人的方法。这不是创造力。这是一种大众歇斯底里症，在一个很久以前就失去了道德指南针和价值观的民族中，一个被大量宣传重新定义了一种肤浅、贪婪和统治的生活价值的民族变得无能为力。
In late 2015, Robert McMillan wrote an article in the WSJ in which he noted that China’s supercomputing technology is growing rapidly and that China has had for years the world’s most powerful supercomputers. China’s Tianhe-2, which had for years been ranked the world’s most powerful supercomputer, could perform 34 quadrillion calculations per second. The machine in second place, the US military’s installation at its Oak Ridge National Laboratory, could perform 17 quadrillion calculations per second – exactly one-half as fast as China’s, and this in spite of spending billions of dollars to improve their capability. McMillan stated that the increasingly poor American results are not from a slowdown in the US effort but an acceleration of research in China. Only a few months later, Xinhua news reported that China’s National Supercomputer Center would soon be releasing the prototype of a supercomputer that will be 1,000 times more powerful than its original ground-breaking Tianhe-1A (which was then superseded by the Tianhe-2). A few months later, in 2016, China introduced its new supercomputing system, Sunway-TaihuLight, the world’s fastest for the seventh straight year, and using entirely Chinese-designed processors instead of US technology. This new Chinese computer is capable of 125 petaflops, or quadrillion calculations per second, more than seven times faster than America’s Oak Ridge installation, and the first computer in the world to achieve speeds beyond 100 PFlops. The supercomputer’s power is provided by a domestically developed multi-core CPU chip, which is only 25 square centimeters in size. As well, in 2015 China displaced the US as the country with the most supercomputers in the top 500, China having 167 and the US 165, with Japan third at only 29.
2015年末，罗伯特·麦克米兰（Robert McMillan）在《华尔街日报》上撰文指出，中国的超级计算技术正在迅速发展，多年来中国拥有世界上最强大的超级计算机。中国的天河二号，多年来一直被列为世界上最强大的超级计算机，每秒可以进行3400亿次计算。排在第二位的这台机器是美军在橡树岭国家实验室安装的，每秒可以进行1700亿次计算，速度正好是中国的一半，尽管花费了数十亿美元来提高它们的能力。麦克米兰表示，美国的研究结果越来越差，不是因为美国的努力放缓，而是因为中国的研究加速。仅几个月后，新华社报道称，中国国家超级计算机中心不久将发布一台超级计算机原型，其功能将是其最初开创性的天河一号a（后来被天河二号取代）的1000倍。几个月后，在2016年，中国推出了新的超级计算系统Sunway TaihuLight，连续第七年成为世界上速度最快的系统，并使用完全由中国设计的处理器，而不是美国技术。这台新的中国计算机能够每秒进行125万亿次运算，比美国橡树岭安装的计算机快7倍多，是世界上第一台速度超过100 PFlops的计算机。超级计算机的电源由国内开发的多核CPU芯片提供，该芯片只有25平方厘米。此外，2015年，中国取代美国成为500强中超级计算机最多的国家，中国拥有167台超级计算机，美国165台，日本仅为29台，位居第三。
I must say it was not only comical but instructive to follow the heavily-politicised transcript emerging from the US government on these ‘computer wars’, and so heavily parroted in the US media. For years, the Americans published – at full volume – lists of the world’s fastest computers, with their equipment always leading the pack, with calculation speed being the only appropriate measure. In that process, US government officials and the American mass media took advantage of every opportunity to denigrate the Chinese for their lack of innovation. Then one day Chinese engineers produced a supercomputer twice as fast as the Americans’ best effort, and suddenly the goalposts were moved. The measure was no longer calculation speed but the fact of using home-grown processors, so even though the Chinese machines were much faster than those of the Americans, they were using US-sourced microprocessors, so the Americans still won. The US government and media even enhanced their deprecation of China, loudly proclaiming that China would be nothing without US technology. So Chinese engineers designed their own microprocessors and produced a supercomputer five times faster than the best the Americans could manage, and suddenly the Americans have disappeared from the radar. Neither the US government nor the media appear to have any further interest in either the capability or the numbers of supercomputers, and the Americans seem to have lost interest in publishing lists of the world’s fastest computers. But on the bright side, Chinese authorities report that the NSA has launched hundreds of thousands of hacking attacks, looking for a way to steal and copy the technology for China’s new microprocessors.
我必须说，关注美国政府关于这些“计算机战争”的高度政治化的文字记录不仅滑稽，而且很有启发性，这些文字记录在美国媒体上被大量重复。多年来，美国人以全卷出版了世界上最快计算机的名单，他们的设备总是领先，计算速度是唯一合适的衡量标准。在这个过程中，美国政府官员和美国大众媒体利用一切机会诋毁中国人缺乏创新。然后有一天，中国工程师生产了一台超级计算机，速度是美国人的两倍，突然门柱被移动了。衡量的标准不再是计算速度，而是使用国产处理器，因此尽管中国机器比美国机器快得多，但他们使用的是美国制造的微处理器，因此美国仍然获胜。美国政府和媒体甚至加大了对中国的抨击力度，大声宣称没有美国的技术，中国将一无是处。因此，中国工程师设计了自己的微处理器，生产了一台超级计算机，速度是美国人的五倍，美国人突然从雷达中消失了。美国政府和媒体似乎对超级计算机的能力和数量都没有任何进一步的兴趣，美国人似乎对公布世界上最快的计算机名单失去了兴趣。但从好的方面来看，中国当局报告称，国家安全局发起了数十万次黑客攻击，试图窃取和复制中国新微处理器的技术。
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Mr. Romanoff’s (A)(B) writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
罗曼诺夫先生的(A)(B) 他的文章已被翻译成32种语言，并在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站以及100多个英语平台上发表。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一位退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职位，并拥有国际进出口业务。他曾是上海复旦大学的客座教授，向高级EMBA课程介绍国际事务案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生住在上海，目前正在写一系列十本书，通常与中国和西方有关。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新集《当中国打喷嚏》的撰稿人之一。(第二章。2–对付恶魔).
His full archive can be seen at:
他的完整文章库可在以下网址查看：
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
可通过以下方式联系他：
2186604556@qq.com
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Notes
注释
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai, 2022