李亦非VS姚非拉：名还是利，追求还是被追求 －－ http://www.superlee.com.cn/?p=51

《反垄断法》的第一次出击，商务部的一纸判决，将汇源的跨国婚姻击成碎片。当事人朱新礼虽然早有了心理准备，但也难免早早地开始憧憬婚后地自由生活。如今，一切都要重归原点，心中真是有苦说不出。关于可口可乐收购汇源案，舆论大致是有点两极分化的。在网络上，我们看到大多数，或者说绝大多数的声音是反对并购的。而在以平面媒体为首的传统媒体中，更多的是乐见其成，至少不会无缘无故地反对。如果说传统媒体依然由社会精英把守着地话，那么互联网在最近几年俨然成为了草根社会地舆论阵地。这毫无疑问是一件好事。民意有了更多舆论表达的途径，使得社会的声音有了更加趋向于多元化的可能。但是，网络，作为媒体的一种形式，我们不必过于夸大了其所能够扮演的角色和所承担的责任。其次，网络上层出不穷的被人称作是“网络暴民”式的言论，也反映出我们这个社会离公民社会，要走的路还很长。

说到互联网，最近的一个大事件就是《魔兽争霸》代理权的易主。我不玩网络游戏，但是我一开始就觉得这场争夺对于九城来说，是凶多吉少的。据说，魔兽的收入占到九城整个收入的90％之多，因而其重要性对于整个公司来说是不言而喻的。可是根据某种普遍的理论说，你越是不想发生的事情，最后往往就会发生。或者用最简单的道理来叙述，那就是永远不要把鸡蛋全都放在一个篮子里。持有绝对议价能力的暴雪，深谙两个争夺者的心理，他自然可以把代理权三年给九城，三年给网易，过了三年再交给九城，然后价格就可以翻了又翻。说到底，自主知识产权才是王道。但是我们也不要遗忘了第九城市，这家由CEO陈晓薇领航的舰队是否有什么招术力挽狂澜，我们不妨拭目以待。

最近还有一件事也吸引了众多财经媒体的注意。那就是谷歌推出了一款新产品——谷歌音乐。它自然有许多吸引人的众多理由：单谷歌这个名字甚至就足够了，音乐搜索也是竞争对手百度的重要利器，以及声称“从不作恶”的谷歌如何来解决音乐版权的问题，这款产品的前景到底如何。还有一件有趣的事是：谷歌音乐的版权合作网站——巨鲸网，是由姚明参与投资的，其创始人和董事长就是曾经的“姚之队”Leader章明基。曾经有人戏称，姚明是中国向美国出口的所有单件商品中最贵的一件。那么我说姚明成功登陆NBA也是过去几年中最成功的营销事件之一恐怕没有人会反对。登陆NBA，姚明不是第一个，也不会最后一个。但是能够如此成功——迅速成为NBA顶级明星的，恐怕是独一无二的。当年王治郅同志领先一步进入NBA，几年后最终回归CBA，其中自然有两人性格，背景，时机，能力的差异。但是章明基所领导的营销团队在姚明背后暗中发力无疑是一个重要因素。所以基本上，我们说每一个成功的球星背后都一个成功的营销团队。这样，我们更有兴趣来看看章明基如何来创造一个明星级的音乐网站。

好了有点扯远了，我们再回来看看谷歌音乐产品本身。在外观上，它秉持了谷歌一贯的简约风格。巨鲸提供了强大的正版曲库，你可以任意试听，还能免费下载。唱片商得到的好处是，与谷歌分享网站上的广告收入。这些特性看起来都合情合理，但是不足以令人WOW。好了，还有一项有趣的功能叫做挑歌：你可以在右侧设置歌曲的节奏/声调/音色/年代/歌手/流派/语言等特性，左侧则会有动画效果展示你搜到的歌曲。这个有趣的功能令人激动的地方在于：某种“邂逅”的感觉。我是说，当你的朋友向你推荐某首歌曲，告诉你很好听时，往往你会觉得不过如此，因为你的预期往往被踢得很高。而餐厅里的某首背景音乐，路边唱片店的一首歌曲或者电视节目的插曲往往更能打动我们。因为你对他们几乎没有预期，当你邂逅它时，才会因为其某种特质被彻底打动。好了，google现在就提供了我们这样一种，可能性，使得你在茫茫曲库中，可以遵循某种可控的方式去邂逅动听的乐曲。我找到的包括张雨生的《一天到晚游泳的鱼》，优客李林《哭砂》，谢安琪《海阔天空》。至于谷歌音乐是否能够成为一款杀手级别的产品——扭转其在中国市场的颓势？在时间告诉我们答案之前，我们尽可以多听听歌。

Not as easy as it looks
Apr 23rd 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

A character-forming development

FOR better or worse, Mao Zedong usually came out on top, whether facing Japanese invaders, nationalist warlords or Communist Party rivals. But for all his success in overturning traditional values and institutions, the founder of modern China came up short in his desire to convert written Chinese from its character-based system to an alphabet. Intellectuals resisted fiercely, some out of the belief that China’s writing system was superior to any other, and unified a land of many dialects far better than a phonetic system, others on simple sentimental grounds.

不论是说好或者坏，Mao Zedong常常都是最后的胜者，无论是在面对日本侵略者，民族主义的军阀抑或是共产党的对手。但是这位新中国的创立者在推翻旧有政府和价值的众多成就之外，却有一件事没有成功，就是将中文字从象形字体改革为音形。不少知识分子对此强烈反对，其中一些人认为中文的书写方式优于其它任何方式，它比发音方式更能够统一众多的方言，另外一些反对人士则仅仅是出于感情上的理由。

Many claimed it could not be done, despite the examples of Korea, which managed the trick in the 15th century, and Vietnam which, like China, has a tonal language with many homonyms but switched successfully to an alphabetic system. In the end Mao settled on a halfway step: cutting the number of strokes in some Chinese characters (from 18 to four in the case of feng, which means “abundant”, and is shown above). This set China apart from Hong Kong, Taiwan and most overseas communities. Many purists thought simplifying characters as appalling as eliminating them.

许多人声称这种改革是不可能完成的，尽管韩国是一个例外，在15世纪她就完成了这样的改革。越南和中国类似，她的音形语言中有许多的同音异义字，不过最后成功地转变为了以字母为基础的语言体系。最终，Mao选择了一种折中的方式：那就是减少一些中文字的比划数。（例如对“丰”这个字来说，从18个比划减到4划）这一点将中国大陆同香港、台湾和大部分的海外华人社区区分了开来。许多追求语言纯正主义者
认为，简化汉字同消灭它一样后果严重。

That fierce debate is now being rekindled with the government’s announcement of plans to issue later this year a new list of character modifications, aimed mainly at correcting certain “oversimplifications” undertaken in the past. Some characters will have more strokes added and thus be brought closer to their earlier, more complicated forms. But officials insist the move does not mark the start of a campaign to scrap simplified characters. China, they say, need not move back toward the traditional forms, nor further along the path of simplification. It simply needs to “standardise” things.

这类激烈的论辩，因为政府宣称将在今年晚些时候公布一个新的汉字修改计划而重新燃起，这个计划主要将修正那些过去进行了“过度简化”的汉字。一些汉字将会增加一些笔划，因此会和以前的繁体字更加相像。不过政府官员坚持说，这个行动并不意味着将会废除简体汉字。他们说，中国将不会朝着过去而后退，但也不会继续推进汉字简化的道路。汉字所需要的仅仅就是“标准化”。

This will disappoint Pan Qinglin, a member of the consultative committee that advises China’s government. In March he submitted a proposal to the government calling for a return within ten years to the greater expressiveness and “artistic quality” of the traditional script. Others, however, will be pleased, including the internet commentator who recently compared reviving traditional characters to “asking women to revive the practice of foot-binding”.

这个行动将会使Pan Qinglin失望，他是中国的政治协商委员会成员。今年三月份他向政府提交了一份议案，希望汉字能够在未来十年中，回到更加具有表现力和“艺术特点”的繁体字。而其他人则将会乐见其成，其中包括一些网络评论员，他们最近将恢复繁体字拿来同“让妇女接受缠足”做比较。

Other arguments focus less on deep issues of cultural identity than on practical concerns, such as how hard the new forms will be to learn, how much it will cost to convert signs, replace textbooks and adapt software, and whether the government will pay for the changes. Mao famously argued that “revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture”. It might, however, be reforming orthography.
其它的一些争论则并非关注一些诸如文化统一性的深层问题，而是聚焦于实际的担忧，例如新的字体学起来有多难，为此而更换标识、课本和电脑软件将会耗费多少成本，以及政府是否将会为这些变化而买单。Mao有一句名言说：“革命不是请客吃饭，也不是写小说和画图”。这也许说的一点也不错，就像改革汉字书写这件事。

Intellectual property in China 知识产权在中国  思想的斗争
Battle of ideas
Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition
Chinese companies are enforcing patents against foreign firms

FOR over a decade Schneider Electric of France has bombarded a Chinese firm, Chint Group, with lawsuits accusing it of copying its technology. But the tables turned on April 15th when the two companies settled an infringement case—with the French firm forking over $23m to Chint. The rich settlement against a foreign firm is a landmark. It serves as a reminder that Chinese companies are just as eager to defend patents as Western firms, and that China’s intellectual-property regime has been tightened in recent years.

在最近的十年中，法国施耐德公司一直对一家中国公司正泰集团提起法律诉讼，指控其拷贝了自己的专利技术。不过4月15日的针对这2家公司的侵权纠纷以判决法国公司向正泰支付超过2300万美元的赔偿而应人瞩目。对一家外国的赔偿判决金额如此之高，使其成为了一个里程碑。这个事件提醒人们，中国公司如今和西方公司一样渴望保护专利权，同时中国的知识产权保护体系也在最近几年严厉起来。

Long the workshop of the world, China wants to be the brains as well. The country’s patent office leads the world in patent
applications, more than 800,000 of which were filed in 2008. Most are for “petty” patents: middling technology that undergoes minimal review and receives only a 10-year term. Such patents are usually derided by research-intensive Western firms—but Schneider was stung by one that had been issued to Chint. And Chinese firms are increasingly filing “invention” patents that are rigorously scrutinised and receive 20 years of protection, as in the West (see chart). This year Chinese companies are poised to surpass foreign ones in receiving invention patents in China.
长期以来作为世界工厂的中国，也希望能够成为世界的创新基地。中国商务部专利局在2008年就收到了超过80万分专利申请，位列全球之冠。其中大部分的申请是“小型”的专利：就是那些接受最小程度审核，受10年保护的中等技术。这类专利常常受到研究能力雄厚的西方国家所嘲笑，但是施耐德正是在一项正泰注册的类似专利上栽了跟头。中国公司正加紧进行“创造类”的专利申请，这类专利和在西方一样，受到严格的审核，并有20年的保护期。今年，中国公司获得的创造类专利保护在数量上将会超过外国公司。

With the rush for patents has come an increase in disputes. Since 2006 more patent lawsuits have been filed in China than anywhere else, even litigious America. Most pit domestic firms against each other, but in recent years foreigners have found themselves on the receiving end too. In December Samsung, a South Korean conglomerate, was ordered to pay compensation to Holley, a Chinese telecoms firm. The recent victories and lucrative awards will open the floodgates to more suits, predicts Tony Chen of Jones Day, a law firm.
随着专利申请的加速，专利纠纷的数量也开始增多。2006年以来，中国发生的专利权诉讼案件比任何其它国家包括好诉讼的美国都要多。其中大部分是本土公司之间的纠纷，但是近年来，外国公司也发现自己越来越多地坐到了被告席上。去年12月，韩国三星集团被判决向一家中国电信公司华立支付赔偿。Jones Day律所的Tony Chen预测，进来的胜诉案例以及巨额的赔偿将会导致更多的诉讼。

Intellectual property is relatively new to China. Patents date back to Venice in the 15th century, but Communist China did not allow them until 1985. Since 2006 it has pursued a deliberate policy of gathering as many patents as possible and developing home-grown technologies—not least because Chinese companies pay around $2 billion a year in licensing and royalties to American firms alone, according to America’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
只是产权对中国来说相对还是一个新鲜事物。专利权的但是可以追溯到15世纪的威尼斯，但是中国直到1985年才承认这一点。2006年开始，经过深思熟虑之后，中国开始推行支持专利申请和研发国家自有技术的政策，这不仅仅是因为根据美国统计局的数据，每年中国公司支付给美国的专利和版权使用费超过了20亿美元。

Chinese firms are also increasingly seeking patents abroad, a sign that they plan to protect their technology when exporting it to rich countries. They won 90 patents in America in 1999 but last year they received 1,225. That is still relatively few—IBM, an American technology giant, receives around 3,000 a year—but it is increasing quickly. Because it takes three to five years to issue a patent, the number issued to Chinese firms is expected to soar soon. The quality of patents issued in China is also improving. Revisions to the patent law that take effect in October strengthen the requirement for a patent’s novelty, bringing it up to global standards. Stronger patents are easier to enforce, opening the door to more lawsuits.
中国公司也开始更多地在国外申请专利保护，这表明了他们计划在向发达国家出口时也能保护自己的技术。1999年中国公司在美国进行了90项专利保护申请，但是去年达到了1225项。这个数字相对来说也是微乎其微的，美国的科技巨头IBM一年就要进行3000项专利申请，不过这个数字也在快速增长。因为一项专利申请一般需要3-5年，所以这个数字预计将很快会出现飞跃。中国公司申请的专利质量也在提高。10月份生效的专利法修正案加强了对于专利创造性的要求，使其同国际标准持平。严格的专利更加容易得到执行，也打开了同学法律诉讼的大门。

All these trends are important because countries that create intellectual property eventually enforce it as well, explains Dominique Guellec of the OECD. America, it is worth remembering, was the great copyright and patent infringer when it was a developing country in the 18th century.
经合组织的Dominique Guellec解释说，所有的这些趋势都是十分重要的，因为当一个国家创造了知识产权，最终她也将会对其进行保护。值得记住的是，18世纪，当美国还是一个发展中国家时，她就曾经是一个侵犯版权和专利最严重的国家。

Vietnam and China 越南和中国
Bauxite bashers

Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

The government chooses economic growth over xenophobia and greenery
政府选择了经济增长而非排外主义和温室问题
IN A one-party state where people are routinely jailed for criticising government policy, it is rare for all but the most brave or foolhardy to speak out. But a government plan to allow a Chinese company to start mining some of the massive reserves of bauxite lying beneath Vietnam’s verdant Central Highlands has provoked an unprecedented backlash from an unlikely assortment of critics. They include a nonagenarian war-hero, Vo Nguyen Giap, a dissident monk, Thich Quang Do, and a slew of leading scientists and environmental campaigners.
在一个人民常常因为会批评政府而被关进监狱的一党国家，毫无保留地表达自己的观点无疑是一个最勇敢、又或者是有勇无谋的行为。但是当越南政府计划允许一家中国公司开采位于越南中央高地下储量丰富的铝土矿时，这一举动引发了始料未及的激烈反对，这些反对来自于一群互相毫无关联的批评人士。其中包括一位90多岁的战争英雄Vo Nguyen Giap，一位持不同政见的和尚Thich Quang Do和一批知名的科学家与环保活动者。

Vietnam is blessed with the world’s third-largest reserves of bauxite, the raw material for aluminium, and the communist
government is keen to reap the benefits. Under a plan that the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, has called “a major policy of the party and the state”, the government is seeking to attract $15 billion or more of investment to develop bauxite mining and aluminium refining projects by 2025. It has already signed a contract with a subsidiary of Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese mining group, to build one mine and agreed with Alcoa, an American aluminium giant, to carry out a feasibility study for another.
越南被认为是世界上铝土矿储量第三大的国家，铝土矿是提炼铝的原材料，越南的共产党政府非常希望能够因此而获利。在被越南总理Nguyen Tan Dung称作是“党和国家最重要的一项政策”的计划中，政府希望在2025年前吸引超过150亿美元的投资以开发铝土采掘和提炼项目。政府已经同中国国有的中铝集团下属分支签订了协议建设一个矿井，同时还将和美国的铝业巨头美铝公司一起对另一个矿区进行可行性研究。

Critics say the arrival of large-scale bauxite mining in a region that currently grows coffee and other crops could cause irreparable damage to the environment and displace the ethnic-minority groups who inhabit the Central Highlands. Bauxite is usually extracted through open-cast mines, which leave vast scars on the landscape. The process by which it is refined also produces a toxic “red sludge”, which can cause serious pollution if it washes into streams and rivers.
批评人士认为，这些大型铝土矿开采项目的建设将会对这个现在种植咖啡和其它作物的地区造成不可修复的环境危害，同时还将迫使一些居住在中央高地的少数民族被迫离开。一般来说，铝土矿是在露天的矿井中进行采掘的，这将对当地的风景造成巨大的损害。而对其进行提炼的过程将会产生一种有毒的“红色泥土”，如果它进入附近的河流也将造成严重的环境污染。

As if that were not enough, the involvement of a Chinese company in such a controversial project has rekindled latent anti-Chinese sentiment in Vietnam, which was colonised by its larger neighbour for 1,000 years and fought a short but bloody war against it in 1979. Thich Quang Do, the leader of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church, claims that Vietnam is “under threat of invasion” because “whole villages of Chinese workers have mushroomed on the plateau, and 10,000 Chinese settlers are expected in the coming year.” His comments have been echoed by Vietnam’s enthusiastic army of bloggers, and an antibauxite-
mining group set up on Facebook, a popular social-networking website, has attracted nearly 700 members. Chinese bloggers are not, it seems, the only ones to resort to inflamed xenophobia. And though much of the opposition is no doubt driven by that feeling, there are also genuine concerns about the lousy environmental records of many Chinese mining companies.
如果这些还不够，那么中国公司参与到这项充满争议的项目中，则更加使得越南社会中潜藏的反华情绪有所复燃。这个越南最大的邻国对其进行了超过1000年的殖民统治，并在1979年两国之间发生了一场短暂但是血腥的战争。Thich Quang Do是被政府认定为非法的统一佛教会首领，他声称越南正在受到“侵略的威胁”，因为“一整村的中国工人在高地上迅速壮大，而未来一年将预计有超过1万名中国定居者。”他的观点受到了越南群情激愤的博客的支持，在Facebook上一个反对铝土计划的群组中有超过700名成员。由此看来，中国的博客并非是唯一表现出排外情绪的人。尽管大部分的反对声音毫无疑问来自于这种情绪，也有不少人的担忧来自于许多中国采矿公司在破坏环境方面的恶略历史。

Whatever the motive, however, the Vietnamese government is nervous about public criticism of China. It recently banned a bi-weekly newspaper called Du lich (Tourism) for three months for running a series of articles about territorial disputes between the two countries. The explanation is that China is Vietnam’s biggest trading partner. Vietnam also runs a massive trade deficit with its neighbour and has been pushing China’s government to invest more in the country to offset the deficit. With foreign direct investment 40% lower in the first quarter of 2009 than it was a year before—and most rich nations short of cash—Vietnam needs Chinese money now more than ever.
无论这些动机究竟是什么，越南政府在面对民众批评中国的声音时难免紧张。最近政府将一家名为Du lich (旅游)的双周报纸关闭了三个月，原因是该报纸刊登了一系列关于两国领土争端的文章。中国是越南最大贸易伙伴，越南对于中国也有巨大的贸易逆差，所以政府正大力推进中国政府能够加大投资额以补偿逆差。2009年第一季度越南的外资直接投资额较去年同期下降了40%，同时发达国家手中又缺少现金，没有比其它任何时候越南更加需要中国的资金了。

Much to the chagrin of the anti-China lobby, Mr Dung, the prime minister, spent a week this month touring China, trying to drum up investment and pledging to make it easier for Chinese companies to operate in his country. Following a meeting with China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, Mr Dung said that the two countries would strive to expand bilateral trade from $20 billion in 2008 to $25 billion by 2010 and try to tackle the trade imbalance.
作为很大程度上对于反华情绪的懊悔，越南总理Dung本月在中国进行了一周的访问，期望能够招揽来投资，并且承诺说将使中国公司在越南开厂更加便利。在同中国总理温家宝的会谈中，Dung说希望两国能够将双边贸易额从2008年的200亿美元在2010年前提升至250亿美元，并将努力解决贸易不平衡的问题。

Hoang Trung Hai, a deputy prime minister, recently told a conference of scientists concerned about environmental damage that Vietnam will not pursue the bauxite mining plan “at any cost”. But the reality is that in straitened economic times, beggars cannot be choosers.
越南副总理Hoang Trung Hai近期在一个讨论环境危害问题的科学家会议上表示，越南不会以“任何代价”作为牺牲来追求铝土开发计划。但事实是，在这样一个艰难的经济时期，乞讨者不可能有太多的选择。