Is the semiconductor industry headed for an almighty crash? There are reasons to believe a bust, if it comes, will be less vertiginous than the boom Oct 15th 2026|5 min read For more than four decades the semiconductor industry has been governed by two laws as dependable as any in physics. The first is that the number of transistors, the tiny switches etched onto a chip, keeps rising. The second is that every boom ends in a bust. The first, which makes chips more powerful, is in rude health. Leading processors for artificial intelligence contain more than 200bn transistors, and the industry reckons it can cram in a trillion by the end of the decade. The second is stirring unease about how long the good times will last. The industry is used to booms, but not one like this. AI has created an insatiable appetite for the chips used to train and run AI models. In the first half of 2026 semiconductor sales grew faster, year on year, than at any time since the 1980s (see chart). This month TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, reported its sixth consecutive quarter of record profits; Samsung Electronics, a South Korean chip heavyweight, reported its fourth. Yet investors are growing jittery. Despite blowout results and rosy forecasts, an index of leading semiconductor firms has fallen by over 10% since October 6th. Their fears were not helped when on October 12th Hock Tan, boss of Broadcom, a big chip designer, likened many investors in the AI trade to gamblers in a casino who “have no clue” what they are investing in. Nearly all of the industry’s expected growth hinges on chips for AI, making it a giant bet on the technology. If that bet sours—and the “supercycle”, as some have taken to calling it, comes to an end—will chipmakers suffer a bust as vertiginous as the boom? There are reasons to think not. Even as the semiconductor industry has grown, manufacturing has become far more concentrated. Most chip designers, such as Nvidia, whose graphics-processing units have powered the AI boom, do not make their own silicon. Nor do software firms such as Google and OpenAI, which have also taken to designing AI processors. Instead they rely on foundries—and one in particular. In the early 2000s some 25 firms could make the most advanced processors. Today four can, and TSMC makes nearly all of the high-end ones. Memory chips, which are also vital for AI, have gone the same way. More than 20 firms made advanced memory chips in 1990. Now only three—Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron—make almost all of them. China has produced new entrants in both processors and memory chips, but without access to the most advanced chipmaking tools, they remain behind the frontier. Consolidation has allowed a few dominant chipmakers to set the pace of expansion and dictate the terms on which they sell. They are investing heavily to capitalise on the boom. TSMC’s capital expenditure is expected to hit roughly $62bn this year, more than one and a half times as much as in 2025. Next year analysts expect it to be around $76bn. The memory-makers have also boosted their investments. Even so, their outlays are modest in comparison with the windfall from AI. As a share of revenue, TSMC’s capital spending is expected to fall from 44% in 2023 to 36% this year. Moreover, investments are being paid for from the cash that chipmakers are generating, rather than borrowing. This year TSMC’s capacity expansions will use up a little more than half of its operating cashflow, and Samsung’s barely a fifth. The debts of these chipmakers look modest next to their swelling cash piles. Manufacturers are enjoying a “very good pricing environment”, according to Bill Wiseman of McKinsey, a consultancy, and have every reason to pace their expansion to preserve it. DRAM, a type of memory used in nearly all electronics, costs about six times what it did in early 2023. TSMC has not cut the price of its three-nanometre manufacturing process, which it launched in late 2022, even though a process normally gets cheaper after a couple of years. The speed of capacity expansion has also been impeded by the fact that many new chipmaking facilities are being built in America, where construction takes “about twice as long”, according to Mr Wiseman. Consolidation has also given chipmakers more bargaining power, shifting who will bear the burden of any slowdown. Until recently, memory was sold mostly on the spot market or through short-term contracts. When demand slackened, customers were not obliged to keep buying and prices therefore collapsed. Now, with capacity scarce and only a few suppliers to choose from, buyers are signing up years in advance, and on the sellers’ terms. Nvidia has committed more than $250bn to securing supply and components until January 2029. In September Micron said that “take-or-pay” agreements, under which customers must buy the agreed volumes or pay anyway, had locked in 35% of its revenue through to 2030, with $32bn-worth of commitments, most of which involve cash deposits. Such prepayments help fund new factories. They also shift at least part of the risk of a bust onto buyers. An end to the AI boom would still bring chipmakers plenty of pain. If spending stalls, prices will drop, profits will shrink and stratospheric stock prices will come back down to earth. Customers will look to renegotiate contracts that were signed at the top of the market. The second law of the semiconductor industry still applies. This time, however, customers will share the hangover. ■ 四十多年來，半導體產業一直受制於兩條如同物理學規律般可靠的定律。第一條是：刻在晶片上的微型開關——電晶體——的數量會持續增加。第二條是：每一次繁榮最終都會以衰退告終。第一條定律讓晶片變得更加強大，目前依然蓬勃發展；用於人工智慧的頂級處理器包含超過 2,000 億個電晶體，而業界估計到了本世紀末，晶片上能塞入一兆個電晶體。至於第二條定律，則引發了大家對於榮景還能持續多久的不安。 半導體產業對榮景早已習以為常，但從未見過像這次一樣的情形。AI 對於用來訓練和運行 AI 模型的晶片產生了無窮無盡的需求。2026 年上半年，半導體的銷售額年增率創下了自 1980 年代以來的最快紀錄（見圖表）。本月，全球最大的晶片代工製造商台積電，公布了連續第六個季度創紀錄的利潤；韓國晶片巨頭三星電子則公布了連續第四個季度創紀錄的利潤。然而，投資者卻變得越來越不安。儘管業績表現亮眼、前景看好，但自 10 月 6 日以來，領先的半導體企業指數已下跌了超過 10%。大型晶片設計公司博通（Broadcom）的大老闆陳福陽（Hock Tan）在 10 月 12 日時，將許多 AI 交易的投資者比作賭場裡「完全不知道」自己在投資什麼的賭客，這讓他們的擔憂雪上加霜。 該產業幾乎所有的預期增長都取決於用於 AI 的晶片，這使其成為對該技術的一場豪賭。如果這場豪賭落空——而且正如某些人所稱的「超級週期」走向終結——晶片製造商是否會遭受與繁榮時期一樣劇烈的崩盤？我們有理由認為不會。 即使半導體產業不斷成長，製造業也變得更加集中。大多數晶片設計公司，例如以圖形處理器推動 AI 榮景的輝達（Nvidia），並不自己製造矽晶片。像 Google 和 OpenAI 這樣也開始設計 AI 處理器的軟體公司同樣不自己製造。相反地，他們依賴晶圓代工廠——尤其是其中特定的一家。在 2000 年代初期，大約有 25 家公司能夠製造最先進的處理器；如今只剩下四家，而台積電幾乎承包了所有高階晶片的製造。 對 AI 同樣至關重要的記憶體晶片，也走上了相同的道路。1990 年有超過 20 家公司生產先進記憶體晶片，現在只剩下三家——三星、SK 海力士和美光——包辦了幾乎所有的產量。中國在處理器和記憶體晶片領域都出現了新進業者，但在無法取得最先進晶片製造工具的情況下，他們依然落後於技術前線。 產業整合讓少數幾家佔據主導地位的晶片製造商能夠掌控擴產的節奏，並主導銷售條款。他們正在大量投資以利用這次的榮景。台積電今年的資本支出預計將達到約 620 億美元，是 2025 年的一倍半以上；分析師預計明年的資本支出將達到 760 億美元左右。記憶體製造商也增加了他們的投資。 即便如此，與 AI 帶來的意外之財相比，他們的支出其實相當保守。作為營業收入的比重，台積電的資本支出預計將從 2023 年的 44% 降至今年的 36%。此外，這些投資是用晶片製造商自己產生的現金來支付，而不是透過借款。今年，台積電的產能擴張將消耗其營運現金流的半數多一點，而三星則僅占五分之一左右。與這些晶片製造商日益膨脹的現金儲備相比，他們的債務顯得微不足道。 諮詢公司麥肯錫的比爾·威斯曼（Bill Wiseman）表示，製造商正享受著「非常良好的定價環境」，並且有充足的理由來控制擴展速度以維持這種環境。DRAM 是一種幾乎用於所有電子產品的記憶體，其價格大約是 2023 年初的六倍。台積電並未調降其於 2022 年底推出的 3 奈米製程價格，儘管製程通常在推出幾年後會變得便宜。威斯曼先生指出，許多新的晶片製造設施正建於美國，而那裡的施工時間「大約需要兩倍長」，這也阻礙了產能擴張的速度。 產業整合也給了晶片製造商更多的議價能力，從而改變了誰將承擔任何放緩所帶來的負擔。直到最近，記憶體主要還是在現貨市場或透過短期合約進行銷售。當需求放緩時，客戶沒有義務繼續購買，價格因此崩盤。現在，由於產能緊缺且只有少數供應商可供選擇，買家提前數年簽約，並且是按照賣方的條件簽訂。輝達已承諾出資超過 2,500 億美元，以確保到 2029 年 1 月為止的供應和零部件。美光在 9 月表示，「照價付款」（take-or-pay）協議——即客戶必須購買約定的數量，否則無論如何都得付款——已經鎖定了其到 2030 年前 35% 的收入，涉及價值 320 億美元的承諾，其中大部分包含現金押金。這類預付款有助於資助新工廠的建設，同時也將崩盤的部分風險轉嫁給了買家。 AI 榮景的終結仍會給晶片製造商帶來巨大的痛苦。如果支出停滯，價格將會下跌，利潤將會縮水，天文數字般的股價也將回到現實。客戶將尋求重新談判在市場頂峰時期簽署的合約。半導體產業的第二條定律依然適用。然而，這一次，客戶將會共同承擔這場宿醉。 ■ -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

AI often makes writing worse. (Even if it makes it better) Why is complicated. But it’s not about the damn em-dash Sep 24th 2026|4 min read Writing using artificial intelligence is everywhere. It has crept into elite newspapers (the* Wall Street Journal* ran an op-ed drafted by it) and elite publishing houses (Grasset in France finds itself defending a star author accused—falsely, he claims—of using it in a prize-winning novel). It is in the speeches of British politicians, in the homework of British students and abundantly there in LinkedIn posts (41% of longer ones, according to a study by Pangram, a detector, use it). Ask Gmail to draft a love letter to your partner and it will instantly offer up “My Dearest [Husband’s Name]…”. It is quick. It is not quite Keats. Who cares? The reactions show that people do care. AI-spotting has become a mania. Prose is being scrutinised with the attention, and jargon, once reserved for Latin literature. Arcane rhetorical terms like antithesis and epanorthosis (the “not X, but Y” construction) and tricolon (threefold things, like “veni, vidi, vici”) are bandied about by social-media users with the verve of Ciceronian scholars. Literary criticism has rarely been so hot. The em-dash, the most notorious AI “tell”, seems to be acting as—another rhetorical word—a synecdoche, the term for when writers use a part for the whole, like “wheels” for “car” or, perhaps, “em-dash” for “the intellectual obsolescence of the human race”. This, says Maryanne Wolf, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at UCLA, is not a battle over punctuation. It is a “battle for our minds”. AI is so “unprecedented”, says Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard, that we cannot tell how, or whether, it will affect the English language. Happily there is a body of evidence dating back a few years (about 1,300) on what good writing is. It is called “English literature”. The first thing that a millennium of English writing shows is that most people are terrible at it. They find it painful to do (“like a long bout of some painful illness”, as George Orwell had it) and produce words that are almost as painful to read. AI can be bad; humans are often worse. Dan Brown offered: “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” William Wordsworth offered an ode to a spade (it began “Spade!”). Lee Child offered the phrase: “It was about as distinctive as the most distinctive thing you could ever think of.” AI, by contrast, writes with the ease of the easiest thing you could ever think of. It can write a sonnet in half a second, a 1,000-word article in ten seconds, an Austen-length novel in half an hour. And though it can be bad, it often isn’t. In a recent** blind tasting** of two short stories, one human-written and one AI-written, researchers from Villanova University found that respondents rated the AI story as “higher quality and more absorbing”. Yet English literature also shows that writing is not just the act of spewing words onto a page. Writing, as writers point out, is no more merely words on the page than a smile is joy, or a tear is sorrow. Real writing is not writing at all. It is thinking; specifically it is thinking: “What do I think?” Often “you only really know what you think by writing it,” says Emma Smith, a professor of English at Oxford. For how, as a character quoted by E.M. Forster puts it, “can I tell what I think till I see what I say?” When Michael Gove, the editor of the Spectator and an ex-MP, was in the cabinet he told his underlings to “Think in ink.” To make a good argument you need to have followed its logic “step by step”—in writing. Those who use AI to write speeches are, he says, using “counterfeit currency”. But counterfeit currency is always disliked; AI writing is not. Few would object to someone using AI to contest a parking fine, fill in a tax return or for a second-language speaker to polish their English. If a company uses AI to announce a new parking policy, few care. But, says Colleen Kirk, a professor at the New York Institute of Technology, if that policy was problematic and the company apologised using AI—then “You’ve got a big problem.” You risk activating “moral disgust”. In 1970 a Japanese robotics expert, Mori Masahiro, noted that the more human a robot looks, the more** affinity **humans feel for it—until it becomes too human, whereupon affinity turns to revulsion: the *“uncanny valley”. If you shook someone’s hand in a darkened room and, unexpectedly, clasped a prosthetic hand you would, Mori wrote, “shriek*”. AI writing—bland, plasticky, human-ish—seems to sit in the “uncanny valley” of prose. It certainly makes social media shriek. So here is the AI paradox. AI prose is easier to produce and often better than human prose. Yet humans do not like it; they may** impair **their ability by using it and they often loathe its use by others. This may be ridiculous but is encouraging. As humanity destroys its intellectual dominion with its own intellect—as it is beaten back in chess, in Go, in coding—we retain one last advantage: we are human. And, for now, humans (often) prefer to read humans. So make the most of that and, as E.M. Forster also said, *“Only connect”*. And probably write personal emails yourself. Especially to your “[Dearest Husband]”. ■ 使用人工智慧來寫作無所不在。它已經悄悄溜進了頂尖報紙（《華爾街日報》刊登了一篇由它起草的專欄文章），也滲透進了頂尖出版社（法國的格拉塞出版社發現自己不得不為一位明星作家辯護，該作家被指控——但他聲稱這是誣陷——在一本獲獎小說中使用了 AI）。它出現在英國政治人物的演講稿中、英國學生的作業裡，更大量充斥於 LinkedIn 的貼文中（根據檢測工具 Pangram 的研究，較長的貼文當中有 41% 使用了 AI）。如果你要求 Gmail 給你的伴侶寫一封情書，它會立刻為你呈現出：「我最親愛的［丈夫姓名］……」。它非常快速。但它並不太像濟慈（Keats）(英國著名詩人)的詩句。 誰會在意呢？人們的反應顯示出，大家其實非常在意。尋找 AI 的痕跡（AI-spotting）已經變成了一種狂熱。人們正在用過去專門留給拉丁文學的專注力與專業術語，來嚴格審視這些散文內容。諸如「對照法」（antithesis）、「更正修正法」（epanorthosis，即『不是 X，而是 Y』的句型結構）以及「排比法」（tricolon，即三重疊句，例如『我來，我見，我征服』）等晦澀的修辭術語，被社群媒體用戶以宛如西塞羅學者般的熱情隨口引用 (西塞羅--馬庫斯·圖利烏斯·西塞羅（Marcus Tullius Cicero，西元前106年－前43年）是古羅馬共和國晚期的哲學家、政治家、律師、作家與雄辯家。他奠定古典拉丁文學風格)。文學批評很少像現在這樣紅火過。 破折號（em-dash）作為最惡名昭彰的 AI「辨識特徵」（tell），似乎正充當著——這裡又是另一個修辭學詞彙——「提喻法」（synecdoche），也就是創作者用局部來代表整體的用語，比如用「輪子」代表「汽車」，或者也許是用「破折號」代表「人類智力的過時」。加州大學洛杉磯分校（UCLA）的神經科學榮譽教授瑪莉安·沃爾夫（Maryanne Wolf）表示，這並不是一場關於標點符號的爭奪戰。這是一場「爭奪我們心智的戰鬥」。 哈佛大學教授史蒂芬·平克（Steven Pinker）表示，AI 是如此「前所未有」，以至於我們無法預測它將如何影響、或是否會影響英語這門語言。幸運的是，關於什麼是好文章，我們擁有追溯至好幾年前（大約 1,300 年）的大量證據。那被稱為「英國文學」。 上千年來的英語寫作所揭示的第一件事，就是大多數人其實都極度不擅長寫作。他們覺得寫作是一件痛苦的事（正如喬治·歐威爾所說的，『就像經歷了一場某種痛苦重病的長期發作』），而且寫出來的文字讀起來也同樣令人痛苦。AI 可以寫得很爛；但人類往往更爛。丹·布朗（Dan Brown）曾寫過這樣的句子：「他的雙眼翻白，就像一條即將發動攻擊的鯊魚。」威廉·華茲華斯（William Wordsworth）寫過一首獻給鏟子的頌歌（開頭竟是『鏟子啊！』）。李·查德（Lee Child）則寫出了這樣的短語：「這大概跟你所能想到的最特別的事物一樣特別。」 相比之下，AI 寫起文章來，簡直就像你能想到的最輕鬆的事物一樣輕鬆自如。它可以在半秒鐘內寫出一首十四行詩，在十秒鐘內寫出一篇 1,000 字的文章，在半小時內寫出一本珍·奧斯汀體量的小說。而且雖然它可能會寫得很爛，但通常並不會。在維拉諾瓦大學（Villanova University）的研究人員最近進行的一項針對兩篇短篇小說的盲測中（一篇由人類撰寫，一篇由 AI 撰寫），受訪者評定 AI 寫的小說具有「更高的品質且更吸引人」。 然而，英國文學也表明了，寫作不僅僅是把文字噴吐到頁面上的行為。正如作家們所指出的，寫作絕不僅僅是頁面上的文字，就像微笑不單純等同於喜悅、眼淚不單純等同於悲傷一樣。真正的寫作根本不是寫作本身。它是思考；具體來說，它是去思考：「我到底具體是怎麼想的？」 牛津大學的英語教授艾瑪·史密斯（Emma Smith）說，通常「你只有透過把想法寫下來，才能真正知道自己到底在想什麼。」因為正如 E.M. 佛斯特（E.M. Forster）作品中的一個角色所說的：「在我看到自己說了什麼之前，我怎麼知道自己是怎麼想的？」當《旁觀者》（Spectator）雜誌編輯兼前國會議員麥克·戈夫（Michael Gove）還在內閣時，他曾告訴他的下屬要「用墨水來思考」（Think in ink）。要提出一個好的論點，你必須在寫作中「一步一步地」遵循其邏輯。他說，那些使用 AI 來撰寫演講稿的人，使用的是「偽鈔」。 但偽鈔總是令人厭惡的；AI 寫作卻並非總是如此。很少有人會反對有人利用 AI 來申訴停車罰單、填寫報稅單，或是讓非母語人士用它來潤飾英文。如果一家公司使用 AI 來宣布一項新的停車政策，很少人在乎。但是，紐約理工學院的教授柯琳·柯克（Colleen Kirk）表示，如果這項政策出了問題，而公司使用 AI 來道歉——那麼「你就遇到大麻煩了。」你有可能會觸發人們的「道德反感」。 1970 年，日本機器人專家森政弘注意到，機器人看起來越像人類，人類對它感到的親和力就越強——直到它變得「太像」人類，親和力便會驟然轉變為反感：這就是「恐怖谷」（uncanny valley）。AI 的寫作——平淡、帶有塑膠感、似人非人——似乎正處於散文風格的「恐怖谷」之中。它確實讓社群媒體尖叫不已。 所以這就是 AI 的悖論。AI 的散文更容易產出，而且往往比人類寫的散文更好。然而，人類並不喜歡它；人們可能會因為使用它而削弱自身的思考能力，而且他們常常厭惡其他人使用它。這或許很荒謬，但卻振奮人心的。當人類用自己的智慧摧毀自己的智慧主導權時——當我們在西洋棋、圍棋、程式碼編寫上被擊敗時——我們依然保留著最後一項優勢：我們是人類。而且，至少在目前，人類（通常）更喜歡閱讀人類寫的東西。所以，好好利用這一點吧，正如 E.M. 佛斯特也曾說過的：「唯有連結」（Only connect）。而且，大概還是親自撰寫你的個人郵件吧。特別是寫給你的「［最親愛的丈夫］」。■ -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

Chinese students abroad are more liberal than at home They see faults in China’s system as well as in democracies, surveys show Oct 1st 2026|4 min read America should expect that educating China’s young people will give it “moral, intellectual and commercial influence”, wrote Edmund James, a university president, in 1906. In subsequent years, dozens of China’s brightest went to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on scholarships funded by the American government. Back then, American officials and teachers displayed a confident, missionary liberalism. They thought that educating young Chinese would help mould China in America’s image. But in recent years America has become less welcoming. The number of Chinese enrolled in American universities fell by nearly a third between 2019 and 2025, to 265,000. China, however, is feeling confident. Its leader, Xi Jinping, wants more young Americans to visit and stay for their studies. On September 24th, while at the White House, Mr Xi said he hoped 100,000 young Americans would visit China or study there in the next five years. That is a far cry from the mere 350 American students resident there in 2022, amid the covid-19 pandemic and at a low point in bilateral relations. Mr Xi says that such exchanges could create “a new generation of ambassadors” to sustain the relationship between the two powers. Visiting China “breaks down cognitive barriers”, notes Xinhua, an official news agency. But does experience of a different political environment change people’s thinking? New research by Fan Yingjie of Princeton and co-authors explores whether it does among Chinese in America. The researchers enlisted almost 1,000 Chinese freshmen for their research in 2019. Nearly 400 of them were in America and the rest—a control group—at public universities in China. Over the next four years, Ms Fan and her colleagues regularly put questions to the students to gauge their political leanings, as well as what they thought of China and its government. The work is remarkable because research that involves asking Chinese citizens in China for their views on sensitive political matters has become increasingly rare under Mr Xi’s rule. The ability to compare the answers of such a group with those of Chinese students in America gives the research unusual empirical heft. Mr Xi would surely be disappointed by the results. Ms Fan found that students’ ideological views were remarkably stable throughout their time in America—there was neither a backlash against Western liberalism nor a newfound zeal for it. Yet students (and presumably their families) who decide to study in America in the first place are much more liberal than their homebody peers (see chart 1). They are more likely to support free markets, are less socially conservative and are less nationalistic. One possible reason is that Chinese women** **tend to outnumber men in studying in the West. Fran Martin of the University of Melbourne finds that some young women go overseas because of gender bias in China’s society and job market, and so are less traditional in their outlook. Among Chinese students in America, ideological views did not change much while abroad, says Jennifer Pan of Stanford, a co-author of Ms Fan’s study. But they did update their views of how well the Communist Party is running China. Support for it started lower among those studying in America, and fell sharply during China’s draconian “zero-covid” lockdowns of 2020-22 (see chart 2). Approval for the regime, and general patriotic feeling, fell among undergraduates in China also, but more slowly. Being educated abroad, however, can highlight the West’s shortcomings. Ms Martin’s research shows that as life in China has become technologically advanced, offering many conveniences, some young Chinese studying in the West feel they are living “in a bit of a backwater”. Although most of the cohort followed by Ms. Martin moved back to China after graduation, some have since returned to Australia after experiencing the competitive pressures of China’s work culture and high youth unemployment. In the American study, the share of students planning to move home after graduation dropped from 40% in 2020 to just over 10% by 2023. As for Americans studying in China, vanishingly few stay. Study abroad may not reshape either country’s politics, or even the students themselves, but it does give some Chinese more choices. ■ 民調顯示，他們不僅看到了中國體制的缺點，也看到了民主體制的缺陷。 2026年10月1日 | 閱讀時間約 4 分鐘 美國伊利諾大學校長愛德蒙·詹姆斯（Edmund James）在 1906 年曾寫道，美國應該期待，教育中國的年輕一代將能帶來「道德、知識與商業上的影響力」。在隨後的歲月中，數十位中國最頂尖的優秀人才，憑藉著美國政府資助的獎學金赴麻省理工學院深造。當時，美國的官員與教師展現出一種自信且帶著傳教熱忱的自由主義信念。他們認為，教育中國年輕人將有助於按照美國的形象來塑造中國。然而，近年來美國卻變得不再那麼歡迎他們了。在 2019 年至 2025 年間，入讀美國大學的中國學生人數下降了近三分之一，減少至 26.5 萬人。 相反地，中國現在卻感到信心十足。中國國家領導人習近平希望有更多美國年輕人前來訪問並留學。9 月 24 日，習先生在白宮時表示，他希望在未來五年內能有 10 萬名美國年輕人訪問中國或在當地留學。這與 2022 年新冠疫情期間、以及雙邊關係陷入低谷時僅有 350 名美國留學生常駐中國的情況相比，可謂天壤之別。習先生表示，這樣的交流可以培養出「新一代的大使」，以維護這兩個大國之間的關係。官方媒體新華社也指出，前往中國訪問能夠「打破認知障礙」。但是，體驗不同的政治環境真的會改變人們的思想嗎？ 普林斯頓大學的范英傑（Fan Yingjie，音譯）及其合作著者發表的一項新研究，探討了這種現象是否會發生在赴美留學的中國學生身上。研究人員在 2019 年招募了近 1,000 名中國大一新生進行研究。其中近 400 人在美國，其餘的人——也就是對照組——則在中國的公立大學就讀。在接下來的四年裡，范女士和她的同事們定期向這些學生提問，以評估他們的政治傾向，以及他們對中國及其政府的看法。 這項研究非常難能可貴，因為在習先生的領導下，詢問中國境內中國公民對敏感政治議題看法的研究已經變得越來越罕見。而能夠將這組學生的答案與在美中國留學生的答案進行比較，更賦予了這項研究極高的實證份量。 習先生對研究結果肯定會感到失望。范女士發現，學生們的意識形態觀點在整個赴美留學期間都非常穩定——既沒有出現對西方自由主義的反彈，也沒有對它產生新的狂熱。然而，當初就決定選擇赴美留學的學生（以及他們的家庭），本身就比留在國內的同齡人要自由派得多。他們更有可能支持自由市場、在社會觀念上較不保守，而且國家主義傾向也比較低。 其中一個可能的原因是，在西方留學的中國女性數量往往多於男性。墨爾本大學的法蘭·馬丁（Fran Martin）發現，有些年輕女性選擇出國，是因為中國社會與求職市場中存在著性別偏見，因此她們在觀念上也相對沒那麼傳統。 這項研究的共同作者、史丹佛大學的潘潔（Jennifer Pan）指出，在赴美留學的中國學生當中，他們的意識形態觀點在出國期間並沒有太大的改變。然而，他們對於中國共產黨治理中國成效的看法，確實出現了變化。對該政權的支持度，在選擇赴美留學的人群中原本就比較低，而在 2020 年至 2022 年中國實施嚴厲的「清零」封控政策期間，更是急遽下降)。雖然在中國就讀的大學生對該政權的認同感以及整體愛國情緒也有所下降，但下降的速度相對較為緩慢。 不過，在國外接受教育，同時也會放大西方的缺點。馬丁女士的研究顯示，隨著中國的生活在科技上變得十分先進並提供許多便利，一些在西方留學的中國年輕人反而覺得自己生活在「有點落後的地方」。** ** 雖然馬丁女士所追蹤的這群學生中，大多數人在畢業後都搬回了中國，但在經歷了中國職場文化的激烈競爭壓力與居高不下的青年失業率之後，部分學生後來又回到了澳洲。而在關於美國的那項研究中，計畫在畢業後回國的學生比例，從 2020 年的 40% 大幅降至 2023 年的略高於 10%。至於在中國留學的美國人，留在當地的則是屈指可數。 出國留學或許無法重塑任何一個國家的政治走向，甚至無法改變學生本人，但它確實給了部分中國年輕人更多的選擇。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

The truth and the lies about Islam in Europe Islam poses no serious danger. But Islamism and the fear of Islam do   Sep 10th 2026|6 min read   PANIC ABOUT Islam in Europe is spreading. In several European countries half the population now thinks it is incompatible with Western values. On September 6th the populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 44% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, its largest state-election tally yet, warning about “Islamisation” and promising forced deportations. The same weekend in Britain hundreds of balaclava-clad thugs occupied Dover, chanting “Stop the boats” and “Christ is King”. In France Marine Le Pen's call to ban Islamic headscarves from public places is backed by 60% of voters.   The obsession has also taken root in America. The fear is less of terrorists, as it was after September 11th 2001, than of an Islamic plot to take over Europe from within. Members of the Trump administration warn of “civilisational erasure”.   This perception is harming transatlantic relations. It is also wrong. Europe faces no Islamic takeover, no mass radicalisation of Muslims and no erasure of its culture. As our reporting shows, it does not have “no-go zones”, sharia is not creeping into national law and nowhere is a demographic “great replacement” under way.   The real danger to Europe is different: of extremism fuelled by Islamism (the belief that the state should enforce Islamic principles) and by social-media-driven right-wing paranoia. The left makes this worse by denying the modest but real threats Islamism poses. So do politicians in the centre, by keeping quiet lest they attract accusations of racism. This dynamic could indeed harm Europe’s liberal democracies—not by replacing them with a caliphate, but by slowing integration and favouring policies that would do lasting harm to their freedoms.   The most extreme fears are easily debunked. Even after record migration from majority-Muslim countries, Muslims now make up just 6% of Europe’s population of well over 500m. Although new arrivals typically have more children than the native-born do, fertility rates tend to converge within two generations. That is a long way from civilisational erasure.   In fact, most Muslim immigrants want to get on in their new home, not impose on it a version of the societies they have just left. Their children tend to do better than their parents at school. In Britain 67% of Bangladeshis who sat standard tests in 2021 were enrolled in university by age 19, compared with 38% of white Britons. Many Muslims are involved in mainstream politics: witness Britain’s home secretary and London’s mayor. In important ways Muslim attitudes can resemble those of other Europeans. In polling we commissioned among British Muslims, we found little resistance to women working.   What, then, is setting so many Europeans against Islam? Plenty of Muslims hold illiberal views—we report in this issue on the killing of an openly gay imam in South Africa. In Britain, our polling finds, 52% of Muslims think homosexuality is wrong, and young Muslims (41% of under-35s) are more likely than their elders (25%) to believe violence can be justified if someone insults the prophet.   Holding socially conservative views does not in itself make people a threat—some of Europe’s defenders on the right are just as anti-gay as the Muslims they decry. But some of these attitudes should trouble liberals who have long assumed that open societies eventually make people more tolerant. And if the state is too pusillanimous to confront wrongs committed by minorities, as when gangs of Muslim men abused young girls in several English cities, it rightly causes outrage.   Just as important is the conflation of Islam, a religion, with Islamism, a political ideology. Islam isn’t a problem; Islamism can be. Unlike the jihadis of 9/11, most Islamists do not advocate violence. But many practise “entryism”—infiltrating democratic institutions to promote an illiberal agenda. Well-connected Islamist groups might lobby for sweeping hate-speech laws or against counter-extremism programmes. The main danger of entryism is local. Small, well-organised networks can capture a school, a mosque, a council or a charity and use such institutions to discourage integration and impose religious conformity on other Muslims who live nearby. Concern about these non-violent Islamists has grown among Europe’s security services. In France authorities fret about** covert entryism by the Muslim Brotherhood. An official report released last year warned that Islamism could, in time, threaten secular rules and women’s rights**. But that seems unlikely. France’s interior ministry estimated that just 139 of 2,800 Muslim places of worship were linked to the Brotherhood.   Instead, the main victims are other Muslims. Half of the 12 council wards in Blackburn, in northern England, are over 60% Muslim; two are over 80%. In such areas women can feel pressure to let sharia councils govern their family lives. Gay and liberal Muslims face intimidation. Non-conformist Muslims complain that Western authorities—scared of being seen as racist—do not extend the same protections to them as they do to non-Muslim citizens.   There is broader harm, too. Islamists stir up antisemitism, not least over Gaza. They demand curbs on free speech about their beliefs. They scare politicians, comedians, academics and journalists into self-censorship. They can bully schools, student unions, charities and councils.   What turns these local threats into a continental danger is how they are exploited. It suits Islamists to claim that any criticism of their political project is an attack on Islam itself. The populist left, including Unsubmissive France and the Greens in Britain, tends to treat questions about migration, crime or Islamism as racist.   And the populist right often whips up fear by claiming that all Muslims pose a threat and accusing the state of a “woke cover-up” and “two-tier treatment”. Few have been more vehement than Elon Musk, who has used his social-media platform to shape views of Islam around the world and to boost Europe’s anti-Muslim right, from the AfD to Tommy Robinson, a British agitator whom we feature in a three-part podcast series starting this weekend.   The populist right’s remedies are as illiberal as the Islamists they claim to be protecting Europe from. Promises of mass deportation, segregation and dress bans all terrify Muslims, inhibiting integration and driving them into the arms of extremists. Any country that enacted such policies would find that the hatred they unleashed would cause enduring damage.   That is why Europe’s mainstream politicians need to offer an alternative. Violence and threats of it should be prosecuted. But there should be no taboos for the sake of cultural sensitivity. Free speech is not the enemy of tolerance but its precondition. Entryism should be called out, as should bigotry. Governments nervous about collecting, or releasing, data leave a vacuum to be filled by speculative hyperbole.   Tackling all this will not be easy or quick, but there is hope. Europe’s Muslims are assimilating, as did earlier waves of Catholic, Jewish and Caribbean migrants in the countries where they settled. The arrival of all those previous groups sparked moral panics about whether they would ever fit in. All eventually found a place. Muslims will, too—if division and paranoia are not allowed to get in the way. ■   主旨： 歐洲對伊斯蘭的真相與謊言：伊斯蘭本身並無危險，真正的威脅來自伊斯蘭主義與群眾恐慌 日期： 2026年9月10日 【第一段：群眾恐慌與政治亂象】 針對歐洲伊斯蘭教的恐慌，正在各地迅速蔓延。 在好幾個歐洲國家，已經有一半的人口認為，伊斯蘭教與西方核心價值完全無法相容。9月6號，極右翼的「德國另類選擇黨」（AfD）在薩克森-安哈特邦的選舉中，拿下了高達 44% 的選票，創下該黨在邦選舉中的歷史新高。他們在競選中不斷警告「伊斯蘭化」的危機，並承諾要實施強制驅逐出境。 同一週末，在英國，數百名戴著巴拉克拉法頭套的暴徒佔領了多佛港，高喊著「阻止難民船」和「基督為王」的口號。而在法國，瑪琳．勒龐（Marine Le Pen）主張要在公共場所禁止佩戴伊斯蘭頭巾，這個提議獲得了高達六成選民的支持。 這種執念甚至跨越了大西洋，在美國扎根。人們現在擔心的不再是像 2001 年「911 事件」那樣的外在恐怖份子，而是害怕伊斯蘭勢力正在從內部暗中掌控歐洲。川普政府的成員甚至警告，這是一場「文明的消亡」。 【第二段：事實釐清與真正的危險】 這種觀感不僅正在傷害跨大西洋的盟友關係，而且它根本是錯的。 歐洲並沒有面臨被伊斯蘭接管的危險，沒有出現大規模的穆斯林極端化，也沒有所謂的文化消亡。正如我們的調查報導所顯示，歐洲根本沒有所謂的「治安禁區」（No-go zones），伊斯蘭教法沒有滲透進國家法律，各地更沒有發生人口結構上的「大換血」（Great Replacement）。 歐洲面臨的真正危險其實另有原因：第一，是「伊斯蘭主義」（也就是主張國家應強制施行伊斯蘭教義的政治主張）所引發的極端主義；第二，則是社群媒體所推波助瀾的右翼疑神疑鬼。 左派把情況搞得更糟，因為他們選擇無視伊斯蘭主義所帶來的溫和但實質的威脅。而中間派政客則保持沉默，深怕被扣上種族歧視的帽子。這種政治動態確實會傷害歐洲的民主體制——但並不是因為歐洲會被「哈里發國」取代，而是因為它會拖慢社會融合，並促成那些對人民自由造成永久傷害的政策。 【第三段：數據與融合現況】 那些最極端的恐慌，很容易就被事實推翻。 即使經歷了來自穆斯林占多數國家的破紀錄移民潮，穆斯林目前也僅占歐洲 5 億多總人口的 6% 左右。雖然新移民的生育率通常高於本土出生的人口，但到了第二代，生育率通常就會趨於一致。這離所謂的「文明消亡」還差得遠。 事實上，絕大多數穆斯林移民是希望在新的家園好好生活，而不是把他們剛離開的社會制度強加給新環境。他們的下一代在學校的表現，往往也比父母更好。 以英國為例，在 2021 年參加標準考試的孟加拉裔青年中，有 67% 在 19 歲前進入大學，而英國白人青年的比例僅為 38%。許多穆斯林也積極參與主流政治，英國的內政大臣和倫敦市長就是很好的例子。在許多重要觀念上，穆斯林的態度與其他歐洲人非常相似。我們在英國穆斯林群體中進行的民調就發現，他們對於女性參與工作幾乎沒有阻力。 【第四段：保守觀念與社會爭議】 那麼，到底是什麼原因讓這麼多歐洲人站到了伊斯蘭教的對立面？ 確實，許多穆斯林持有一些非自由主義的觀點——我們在本期報導中，就提及了一位南非公開性性向的伊瑪目（伊斯蘭教長）遭到殺害的慘劇。在英國，我們的民調顯示，有 52% 的穆斯林認為同性戀是不對的；而年輕的穆斯林（35 歲以下占 41%）比年長的穆斯林（占 25%）更容易認為，如果有人侮辱了先知，使用暴力是可以被接受的。 抱持社會保守觀念本身，並不代表這些人就是威脅——畢竟，許多打著保護歐洲旗號的右翼捍衛者，他們反同性戀的程度並不亞於他們所指責的穆斯林。但是，對於長期認為「開放社會最終會讓人們變得更包容」的自由主義者來說，這些態度確實令人不安。 此外，如果政府過於懦弱，不敢去面對少數族群所犯下的過錯——例如先前在英國數個城市發生的穆斯林男性幫派集體侵害年輕少女案——這必然會引發社會大眾的憤怒。 【第五段：宗教與政治意識形態的混淆】 同樣重要的是，人們常把「伊斯蘭教」這個宗教，與「伊斯蘭主義」這種政治意識形態混為一談。 伊斯蘭教本身並不是問題；但「伊斯蘭主義」可能是。 與 911 事件中的恐怖份子不同，大多數伊斯蘭主義者並不主張暴力。但許多人實行「滲入主義」（Entryism）——也就是滲透進民主體制內，去推廣非自由主義的訴求。這些人脈廣闊的伊斯蘭主義團體，可能會遊說政府制定嚴苛的反仇恨言論法，或是反對去極端化計畫。 這種「滲入主義」的主要危險在於地方層面。小型但組織嚴密的網絡可以掌控一所學校、一座清真寺、一個地方議會或慈善機構，並利用這些機構來阻礙社會融合，把宗教規範強加給住在附近的其他穆斯林。 【第六段：地方威脅與其受害者】 歐洲的安全部門對這些非暴力伊斯蘭主義者的擔憂日益加劇。在法國，官方非常擔心穆斯林兄弟會的隱蔽滲透。去年公布的一份官方報告警告，伊斯蘭主義隨著時間推移，可能會威脅到世俗法規與女性權益。 不過，要全面威脅世俗體制似乎不太可能。根據法國內政部的估算，在全法 2,800 個穆斯林禮拜場所中，只有 139 個與穆斯林兄弟會有關聯。 事實上，這種意識形態最大的受害者，往往是其他的穆斯林。 在英格蘭北部的布萊克本（Blackburn），12 個選區中有半數的穆斯林人口超過 60%，甚至有兩個選區超過 80%。在這些區域，婦女可能會感受到壓力，被迫讓伊斯蘭教法委員會來處置她們的家庭生活。同志與自由派穆斯林則面臨恐嚇。許多不願從俗的穆斯林抱怨，西方政府因為害怕被貼上種族歧視的標籤，根本沒有給予他們與非穆斯林公民同等的保護。 此外，還有更廣泛的危害。伊斯蘭主義者煽動反猶太主義（尤其是在加薩議題上）；他們要求限制對其信仰的言論自由；他們甚至威脅政客、喜劇演員、學者和記者，迫使他們進行自我審查；他們還會霸凌學校、學生會、慈善機構和地方議會。 【第七段：政治兩極化的惡性循環】 讓這些地方威脅演變成全歐洲危機的，正是這些威脅被惡意利用的方式。 對伊斯蘭主義者來說，把任何針對他們政治主張的批判，統統包裝成「對伊斯蘭教的攻擊」，最符合他們的利益。 而民粹左派（包括「不屈法國」以及英國的綠黨）則傾向於把所有關於移民、犯罪或伊斯蘭主義的質疑，一律打成種族歧視。 至於民粹右派，則藉由聲稱「所有穆斯林都是威脅」，並指控政府在進行「左傾掩蓋」和「雙重標準執法」，來不斷煽動恐懼。其中最猖狂的莫過於伊隆．馬斯克（Elon Musk），他利用自己的社群平台重塑全球對伊斯蘭教的看法，並為歐洲的反穆斯林右翼勢力推波助瀾——從德國另類選擇黨，到英國煽動者湯米．羅賓遜（Tommy Robinson，我們本週末開始的採訪播客節目中將對他進行三集特別報導）。 【第八段：右翼解方帶來的傷害與未來展望】 民粹右派提出的解決方案，其實和他們聲稱要保護歐洲免受其害的伊斯蘭主義者一樣，缺乏自由精神。大規模驅逐出境、種族隔離以及禁穿特定服飾等承諾，只會讓穆斯林感到恐懼，進而阻礙融合，甚至把他們推向極端主義者的懷抱。任何實行這些政策的國家都會發現，隨之爆發的仇恨將造成永久且不可逆的傷害。 這就是為什麼歐洲的主流政客需要提供另一種選擇。 暴力以及暴力威脅必須依法嚴懲，但絕不能為了所謂的「文化敏感性」而設立禁忌。言論自由絕不是包容的敵人，而是包容的前提。 面對「滲入主義」必須果斷揭露，面對偏見也應一視同仁地譴責。政府如果不敢收集或公開數據，只會留下真空，讓誇大不實的推測趁虛而入。 解決這些問題絕非易事，也不可能一蹴可幾，但我們依然可以看到希望。歐洲的穆斯林正在逐步融入社會，就像早年落腳於這些國家的天主教徒、猶太人和加勒比海移民一樣。當初每一個新移民群體的到來，都曾引發過「他們到底能不能融入」的集體恐慌，但最終，他們都找到了屬於自己的位置。 只要我們不讓對立與猜忌繼續蔓延，穆斯林也同樣能在這裡找到歸屬。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

China would face a “hellscape” in a war over Taiwan New tech may give America an edge Sep 15th 2026|TAIPEI AND HONOLULU|7 min read   IN AN OFFICE block on the outskirts of Taipei, Chan Hsiang-chih opens a workshop door and offers a glimpse at the future of warfare in the Taiwan Strait. Inside sit two torpedo-shaped undersea drones, prototypes for Taiwan’s navy. “That’s where the bomb goes,” he says, nodding to the rear of one. It can identify targets and drop its payload or launch a kamikaze strike, alone or in a swarm. Dr Chan started his business, AwareOcean, in 2015 to supply offshore windfarms. Now he builds the kind of low-cost autonomous weapons that Taiwan and America need for their new plan to thwart a Chinese invasion.   Dubbed “Hellscape”, the plan draws on lessons from Ukraine and Iran in using large numbers of low-tech drones, combined with artificial intelligence, to frustrate a far more powerful adversary. It envisions flooding the Taiwan Strait with relatively cheap aerial, sea-surface and underwater drones just as Chinese forces launch an attack. Assuming that China jams communication links with these weapons, they will strike Chinese ships using inertial guidance, image recognition or on-board AI that prioritises targets, evades counter-measures and co-ordinates attacks with other drones. That will not stop an invasion. But it would raise the costs and buy time and space for American warships and planes to reach Taiwan.   Whether America would actually intervene is an open question, especially since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Visiting Beijing in May, he questioned the logic of fighting so far from America and said he would use arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining-chip with Mr Xi. Sure enough, in the run-up to Mr Xi’s visit to Washington on September 24th, Mr Trump has held off approving a $14bn arms package for Taiwan that was cleared by Congress in January. Taiwanese officials worry that more concessions to China may follow to secure deals on trade and technology. And they fear that deliveries of earlier American arms packages could be delayed by shortages due to the war against Iran.   Yet American and Taiwanese military commanders are quietly forging ahead with Hellscape, a plan originally conceived when Joe Biden was president. They think China is unlikely to attack before the end of the decade, when America will have a new leader. And they believe their odds of success have improved in the light of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, even accounting for China’s growing capabilities. American strategists have long taught that an attacking force needs three times the firepower of a defender to secure victory. They now think the attacker needs an advantage of more like 20 or even 30 to one.   “Uncrewed systems are to today’s conflicts what the machine gun was in World War I and the tank in World War II: a game-changing technology that redefines the battlefield,” Raymond Greene, America’s de facto ambassador in Taipei, told a conference there on September 9th. Taiwan could easily exploit the lessons from Ukraine and Iran because of its world-leading semiconductor industry, strong manufacturing base and booming economy. It also has access to battle-tested American aerial drones (of which Taiwan bought 2,000 in August). And it is collaborating with America on sea drones and AI-enabled swarming technology, he said. The problem is not the lack of a good plan. It’s that to make it work, America needs the political will and all the drone and missile capacity it can get. Proponents of the plan are looking beyond Mr Trump, banking on bipartisan congressional support for Taiwan (which remains strong) and the island’s importance to America’s AI industry. But some fear the influence within the Republican Party of a “restrainer” camp that favours abandoning Taiwan. Others worry that Mr Trump has deepened public opposition to overseas wars and done lasting damage to relations with Asian allies, whose support they would hope to have to make Hellscape work.   America’s efforts to build more low-cost drones have borne some fruit. It reverse-engineered an Iranian aerial-strike drone in 18 months. And the Pentagon plans to buy 200,000 cheap UAVs by 2027. But progress has been slowed by testing backlogs and shortages of non-Chinese components. Hellscape needs far fewer sea drones: a single successful strike can sink or cripple a warship, as Ukraine showed in the Black Sea. Some American models designed for a war over Taiwan have been used against Iran. And American troops tested a Ukrainian kamikaze boat in the Philippines in April. Still, these are still mostly experimental systems, produced in negligible numbers, says Professor Michael Horowitz of the University of Pennsylvania, who led the Pentagon’s drone drive under the Biden administration.   He and others also warn that such drones cannot replace bigger, older and more expensive weapons. The plan is for drones to exhaust China’s missile interceptors and damage its invasion flotilla sufficiently to make it easier for American aircraft-carriers, submarines and other platforms to hit their targets. The worry is that the Iran war has diverted America’s forces from the Pacific and depleted its weapons stockpiles, especially of precision missiles and missile interceptors. Restocking America’s magazines will take years. Some worry that Mr Xi might try his luck before then, possibly as soon as 2028, when Taiwan holds its next presidential election—about 10 months before Mr Trump leaves office.   “The other thing to keep in mind”, says one former Pentagon official, “is that it would not be consistent with American policy…to put large quantities of American weapons in Taiwan that we would then come in and use.” Changing that policy would invite an unholy row with China. That is why, says the former official, “it is all the more important to sufficiently train and equip Taiwanese forces.”   Taiwan presents other challenges. Chief is its capacity to produce enough drones. Soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Taiwan launched a programme to develop a drone industry free of Chinese components. It aims to buy 208,000 locally produced aerial-attack drones and 1,320 suicide boats by 2032. Output and exports have grown in the past two years. But the plan has been delayed by squabbling over funding, which was only approved in August. The main obstacle was the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s biggest opposition party, which favours closer ties with China. Should it return to power in 2028, there could be further delays. “If a real crisis hits, the timeline would probably be compressed significantly, just like in Ukraine,” says Chen Ping-hei, a professor at Taiwan National University who works on the drone programme. But as of now “the manpower and funding is clearly insufficient.” He thinks Taiwan needs 4m UAVs and 10,000 marine drones.   There are also sceptics within Taiwan’s armed forces. They worry that investment in drones could come at the expense of bigger-ticket items, such as Patriot missiles for a new air-defence system. Some also want fighters and warships to help counter Chinese actions that fall short of an invasion, such as a blockade. (Chinese customs vessels recently began regular patrols east of Taiwan.) Others place more emphasis on striking the Chinese mainland early and preserving Taiwanese forces for a counter-attack.   China’s response raises troubling questions too. It initially mocked Hellscape, with one official military outlet branding it a “psychotic plan” and calling America a paper tiger unable to produce the necessary drone swarms. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) still enjoys an overwhelming advantage in drone numbers and production capacity. It has been testing its own unmanned systems in drills around Taiwan, while studying developments in Ukraine and the Middle East. It has also sent officers to Russia to train with Russian counterparts in drone and counter-drone operations and to gain access to relevant data from the front lines. Recently, however, there have been signs of concern within the PLA. Mr Xi’s purges have made it harder to meet his order for it to be ready to execute an invasion, if instructed, by 2027. Some Chinese military experts now suggest that Hellscape requires the PLA to update its invasion plans, and to invest more in shipborne weapons that could identify and destroy drones.   Hellscapers concede that the obstacles are daunting. But to deter conflict, its proponents say, Taiwan and America do not need to demonstrate that they could defeat China outright. They just need to convince Mr Xi that he would struggle to achieve the quick and relatively cost-free victory that he hopes for. ■   在台北郊區的一棟辦公大樓裡，詹翔智打開工作坊的大門，讓人窺見台灣海峽未來戰場的一角。房間裡擺著兩艘雪茄狀的水下無人機原型，正準備交付給台灣海峽的海軍。「炸彈就是裝在這裡，」他點頭指向其中一艘無人機的後方說道。這款無人機可以自動辨識目標、投放彈藥，或者以單機、群飛的方式發動自殺式襲擊。詹博士在 2015 年創立了「智海科技」（AwareOcean），原本是為了服務離岸風電產業；如今，他轉而製造這類低成本的自律型武器，而這正是台灣與美國為了挫敗中國入侵計畫，所急需的關鍵配備。 這項名為「地獄景觀」（Hellscape）的戰略計畫，汲取了烏克蘭與伊朗的實戰經驗，主張利用海量低成本無人機結合人工智慧，來反制實力懸殊的強大對手。它的核心構想是：一旦中國發動進攻，美台將立即在台灣海峽鋪天蓋地投放大量相對便宜的空中、水面及水下無人機。考量到中國屆時必然會進行電磁干擾、切斷訊號，這些無人機將依靠慣性導航、影像辨識，或是機載 AI 來自動排定目標優先順序、避開反制手段，並與其他無人機協同攻擊。雖然這無法完全阻止入侵，但能大幅提高敵方的犯台代價，並為美軍艦艇與戰機爭取趕赴台灣的時間與空間。 然而，美國屆時是否真的會出兵干預，目前依然是個未知數，特別是在川普重返白宮之後。川普今年五月造訪北京時，曾公開質疑為何要在遠離美國本土的地方作戰，甚至表示他會把對台軍售當作與習近平談判的籌碼。果不其然，在習近平預計於 9 月 24 日造訪華府前夕，川普扣下了美國國會早在今年一月就批准的 140 億美元對台軍售案。台灣官員非常擔心，美方為了爭取在貿易與科技領域達成協議，未來可能會對中國做出更多讓步。同時，他們也焦慮先前訂購的美國武器，會因為中東爆發對伊朗的戰爭、導致產能吃緊而延遲交付。 儘管如此，美台兩國的軍事指揮官仍默默推進著「地獄景觀」計畫——這項戰略最早是在拜登任內孕育而生的。軍方評估，中國在 2030 年以前不太可能發動攻擊，屆時美國已經迎來新一任總統；此外，借鑑烏克蘭與中東戰場的經驗，即便中國軍力不斷擴張，美台的勝算其實已經顯著提升。過去美國戰略家習慣認為，進攻方需要擁有防守方 3 倍的火力才能獲勝；但如今他們認為，進攻方恐怕需要取得 20 倍甚至 30 倍的絕對優勢才行。 美國駐台實質大使（處長）谷立言（Raymond Greene）在 9 月 9 日於台北舉辦的一場論壇上表示：「無人駕駛系統對當今衝突的重要性，就如同第一次世界大戰的機關槍、第二次世界大戰的坦克一樣，是一項徹底重塑戰場規則的革命性科技。」他指出，台灣擁有全球領先的半導體產業、雄厚的製造業基礎以及蓬勃發展的經濟，完全有能力吸收並運用烏克蘭與伊朗的教訓。此外，台灣不僅能取得經過實戰檢驗的美國空中無人機（台灣已於今年八月採購了 2,000 架），同時也在水面無人艇與 AI 蜂群技術上與美國展開合作。 問題不在於沒有好的計畫，而是要讓這項戰略奏效，美國必須展現足夠的政治意志，並備妥龐大的無人機與飛彈產能。該計畫的支持者將目光投向川普之外，寄望於美國國會長期以來跨黨派對台灣的強烈支持，以及台灣在全球 AI 產業鏈中的關鍵地位。然而，部分人士擔心共和黨內部主張孤立主義的「克制派」（Restrainers）勢力抬頭，這派聲音傾向放棄台灣；也有人憂心，川普加深了美國民眾對海外戰爭的反感，並對亞洲盟友關係造成了長期傷害，而這些盟友的支援，正是「地獄景觀」能否成功的關鍵之一。 美國在打造低成本無人機方面的努力已經取得了一些成果。美軍在 18 個月內逆向工程複製了伊朗的攻擊無人機，五角大廈更計畫在 2027 年前採購 20 萬架平價無人機。然而，由於測試流程塞車以及非中國製零組件短缺，整體進度受到了拖延。相對來說，「地獄景觀」所需的水面無人艇數量較少，因為正如烏克蘭在黑海所展現的那樣，單次成功的突襲就足以擊沉或重創一艘大型軍艦。部分針對台海衝突設計的美軍無人艇模型，目前已在打擊伊朗的行動中投入使用；美軍甚至於今年四月在菲律賓實測了一款烏克蘭的自殺式無人艇。不過，曾於拜登政府時期主持五角大廈無人機推動計畫的賓州大學教授麥可·霍羅威茨（Michael Horowitz）指出，這些目前多半仍屬於實驗性系統，量產規模小得可憐。 霍羅威茨教授與其他專家同時警告，這類無人機無法完全取代體積更大、更傳統且昂貴的重型武器。「地獄景觀」的設定，是用無人機消耗中國的防空飛彈、重創其渡海艦隊，進而為美軍航空母艦、潛艦等大型平台創造更容易打擊目標的條件。令人擔憂的是，對伊朗的戰爭分散了美軍在太平洋的兵力部署，並嚴重消耗了美國的武器庫存，特別是精準導引飛彈與防空攔截彈。補充美國的彈藥庫需要耗費數年時間，有些人開始擔心習近平可能會在此之前鋌而走險，甚至最早可能在 2028 年台灣舉行下一屆總統大選時動手——那時距離川普卸任還有大約 10 個月。 一位前五角大廈官員提醒：「另一件必須記住的事是，按照美國現行政策，我們不可能在台灣預先囤積大量美軍武器，等衝突爆發後再派美軍過去使用。」若要改變這項政策，勢必會引發與中國的大規模外交風暴。這位前官員補充道，這正是為什麼「為台灣軍隊提供足夠的訓練與裝備，會顯得如此至關重要」。 台灣自身也面臨著其他嚴峻挑戰，其中最核心的問題就是無人機的產能不足。在俄羅斯全面入侵烏克蘭後不久，台灣便啟動了一項去中國化供應鏈的無人機產業發展計畫，目標是在 2032 年前採購 20.8 萬架國產空中攻擊無人機以及 1,320 艘自殺無人艇。儘管過去兩年產量與出口量有所成長，但該計畫卻因預算爭議而一再延宕，直到今年八月預算才獲得通過。主要的阻力來自台灣最大的反對黨國民黨，該黨主張與中國建立更緊密的關係；若國民黨在 2028 年重新執政，計畫可能會面臨更多變數。參與無人機計畫的台灣大學教授陳炳輝表示：「如果真正的危機爆發，時間表大概會像烏克蘭一樣被大幅壓縮。但就目前而言，人力與資金顯然嚴重不足。」他評估，台灣實際需要高達 400 萬架無人機與 1 萬艘水面無人艇。 台灣軍方內部同樣存在質疑的聲音。部分軍官擔心，將大量資源砸在無人機上，會削弱對大型昂貴裝備的投資，例如用於新防空系統的愛國者飛彈。也有人主張應該優先購買戰鬥機與大型艦艇，以應對中國未達全面入侵標準的「灰色地帶」行動（例如中國海警船近期開始在台灣以東海域進行常態化巡邏）。另外一些人則強調，應該具備源頭打擊中國本土的能力，並在初期保存台灣戰力以備後續反攻。 中國方面的反應，同樣拋出了一連串令人不安的懸念。中方最初對「地獄景觀」嗤之以鼻，官方軍事媒體甚至痛批這是「精神病式的狂想」，並嘲諷美國是無力生產足夠無人機蜂群的「紙老虎」。中國人民解放軍在無人機數量與製造產能上，至今仍占有壓倒性優勢。解放軍不僅在台海周邊演習中持續測試自家的無人系統，也密切研究烏克蘭與中東的最新戰況；他們甚至派遣官員前往俄羅斯，與俄軍一同進行無人機及反無人機演練，藉此取得來自前線的第一手實戰數據。 然而，解放軍內部最近也開始出現焦慮的跡象。習近平發動的大規模軍方肅清行動，讓解放軍難以確保能在 2027 年前達到「具備備戰犯台能力」的要求。部分中國軍事專家現在開始建議，為了應對「地獄景觀」，解放軍必須更新其登陸作戰計畫，並在艦艇上加裝更多能夠精準辨識並摧毀無人機的武器裝備。 「地獄景觀」的推動者坦言，前面的障礙確實非常巨大。但他們強調，為了達成威懾、阻止戰爭爆發，台灣與美國並不需要證明自己能徹底擊敗中國；他們只需要讓習近平深信，他絕不可能輕易拿到他所渴望的那場「快速且低成本的勝利」。■ -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

Are you committed to your company or your team? Employees have overlapping identities at work. That’s a challenge for bosses   Sep 10th 2026|4 min read Humans are conditioned to form allegiances extremely quickly, a type of behaviour sometimes called the “minimal group effect”. In a famous series of experiments, a social psychologist called Henri Tajfel found that you can divide strangers into groups on totally arbitrary grounds—how good they are at estimating the number of dots on a chart, say, or how much they like a certain type of abstract art, or even just on the basis of a coin toss—and they will immediately start to favour members of their own group when then asked to distribute rewards. If people are prepared to start dividing the world into “us” and “them” based on whether someone likes Mondrian, it’s no surprise that they form strong identities and loyalties based on where they go to work every day. One of the small diversions of office life is watching to see how quickly joiners start using the word “we” to refer to their new employer: it’s usually instantaneous and occasionally takes place during the interview. But if you work for a large enough company, you do not belong only to the organisation. You have “nested identities”: you are also a member of a department, and of a team within that department, and perhaps of smaller groups as well. These other in-groups can really matter. A research meta-analysis by Michael Riketta of the University of Tübingen and Rolf van Dick of Goethe University finds that on average employees identify more strongly with their work group than with their organisation. That ought not to be a huge surprise. Proximity, familiarity and shared routines bind people from a specific team together. Identities at work also depend largely on which department you are in. If you are at a staff event for Widget & Sons and a colleague asks what you do, you don’t say “I work for Widget & Sons” but tell them which group you work in. Identifying with a sub-group is not necessarily bad. It makes perfect sense for organisations to divide labour up among departments. A bit of friendly competition between teams can be useful. But a strong sense of group identity can also impede co-operation across the wider organisation. It becomes natural to blame the general uselessness of other departments if things go wrong. Budget allocations are framed as victories and losses. Information may well be hoarded in silos rather than shared. A paper by Jeanine Pieternel Porck of Oklahoma State University and her co-authors finds, for example, that a strong sense of group identification is associated with reduced understanding of an organisation’s strategy. For executives, therefore, the challenge is to reconcile strong bonds within teams with a sense of commitment to the organisation as a whole. An example from outside the office helps explain how to go about this. A long long time ago, when Manchester United was a dominant football club, a group of researchers wondered whether being a fan of the team would affect someone’s willingness to help a supporter of a rival outfit. Mark Levine of Lancaster University and his co-authors ran an experiment in which self-identified fans were first reminded of their allegiance to Man Utd and later encountered a jogger who deliberately slipped and fell in front of them. The participants were more likely to offer help if the stranger was wearing a Man Utd football shirt than if they were sporting a Liverpool one or a plain top. The thought-provoking part came next. The researchers ran the same experiment with another group of United supporters, but this time the participants were primed to think of themselves as fans of the beautiful game rather than of a specific club. Now, when they saw someone appear to injure themselves, they were equally likely to offer help to anyone wearing a football shirt, their own or Liverpool’s. It’s not a watertight experiment. Nor is it a heart-warming story: whatever happens, some poor soul in a plain top is left hurt and unaided. But it is an instructive one. Employees will naturally form in-group relationships with their closest team-mates. Bosses often have to work harder to ensure that people also feel like members of the wider organisation. That might mean making efforts to bring people from different teams into contact with each other, through project-based work or social events or the physical layout of the office. It definitely means explaining to members of departments how their work contributes to the health of the overall organisation. People are quick to divide into “us and them”. “Us and us” takes a bit more thought. ■   你忠於公司，還是忠於團隊？ 員工在職場中擁有重疊的身份認同，這對管理者的領導能力是一大考驗。 2026年9月10日｜閱讀時間：4分鐘 人類天生具備極快建立陣營的傾向，這種行為有時被稱為「最小分組效應」（minimal group effect）。著名社會心理學家亨利·泰菲爾（Henri Tajfel）在一連串經典實驗中發現，即使根據完全隨機的標準將陌生人分組——例如估算圖表上點數的能力好壞、對某種抽象藝術的喜好程度，甚至只是丟硬幣——一旦要求他們分配獎勵，人們就會立刻開始偏袒自己組內的成員。 如果人們只因對方是否喜歡蒙德里安（Mondrian）的畫作，就準備好把世界劃分為「我們」與「他們」，那麼他們根據每天上班的場所建立強烈的身份認同與忠誠度，也就不足為奇了。辦公室生活的一大樂趣，就是觀察新進員工有多快開始用「我們」來稱呼新雇主：這種轉變通常是立竿見影的，有時甚至在面試過程中就已發生。 然而，如果你在一間規模夠大的公司上班，你所屬的絕不單單只有這家企業本身。你擁有「嵌套身份」（nested identities）：你同時屬於某個部門、該部門裡的某個團隊，甚至更小的群體。這些部門與小團體（內群體）影響至關重大。圖賓根大學的麥可·里凱塔（Michael Riketta）與法蘭克福大學的羅爾夫·範·迪克（Rolf van Dick）在一項後設分析中指出，平均而言，員工對自己「工作團隊」的認同感，遠強於對「公司整體」的認同感。 這其實並不令人意外。近距離的接觸、熟悉感以及共同的工作日常，緊密地將特定團隊的成員凝聚在一起。此外，職場上的身份認同很大程度上取決於你所在的部門。如果在 Widget & Sons 公司的員工活動中，有同事問你是做什麼的，你不會說「我在 Widget & Sons 上班」，而是會直接告訴對方你在哪個部門或團隊工作。 認同次級群體未必是一件壞事。企業將勞動分工落實到各部門完全符合情理，團隊之間保持適度的良性競爭也大有裨益。然而，過於強烈的群體認同感也可能阻礙跨部門的合作。一旦事情出錯，自然而然就會歸咎於其他部門「總是不給力」；預算分配演變成非贏即輸的角力；資訊也極可能被困在各自的「組織氣蜂」（silos）中無法共享。奧克拉荷馬州立大學的讓寧·皮特內爾·波克（Jeanine Pieternel Porck）及其合作者在一篇研究論文中指出，強烈的團隊認同感往往與員工對公司整體戰略理解度的降低存在相關性。 因此，對企業高層而言，挑戰在於如何將團隊內部的緊密纽帶，與對公司整體的凝聚力相調和。一個來自球場外的例子有助於說明該如何達成這一點。很久很久以前，當曼聯（Manchester United）還是英超霸主時，一組研究人員很好奇：成為某一球隊的球迷，是否會影響一個人援助宿敵球隊支持者的意願？蘭卡斯特大學的馬克·萊文（Mark Levine）及其團隊進行了一項實驗，受試者皆為自證身份的曼聯球迷。在實驗中，研究人員先提醒他們對曼聯的忠誠，隨後讓他們目擊一名跑者在面前故意滑倒。結果顯示，如果受傷的陌生人身穿曼聯球衣，受試者伸出援助之手的機率，遠高於對方身穿利物浦球衣或素色上衣的情況。 意想不到的轉折出現在下一步。研究人員對另一組曼聯球迷進行了相同的實驗，但這次，受試者事先被引導將自己定位為「足球這項運動的熱愛者」，而非「特定球會的擁護者」。這一次，當他們看到有人似是受傷時，無論對方穿的是曼聯還是利物浦的球衣，他們提供幫助的機率完全相同。（這並非一個天衣無縫的實驗，也稱不上是個溫馨的故事：無論如何，那個穿著素色上衣的無辜受害者總是得不到援助。但這確實是一個極具啟發性的實驗。） 員工自然會與最親密的團隊夥伴建立同陣營的關係；而主管們則往往需要付出更多努力，來確保大家同樣覺得自己是廣大公司的一份子。這可能意味著要透過專案合作、社交活動或辦公空間的彈性規劃，來促成不同團隊之間的互動；這也絕對意味著必須向各部門成員說明，他們的工作是如何為整個公司的健康發展做出貢獻。人們總是能輕易劃分出「我們與他們」，但要打造出「我們與我們（大家都是自己人）」，則需要投入更多的巧思。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

The pressure to have children collides with a fierce work culture Aug 24th 2026|5 min read   For those unaccustomed to truth in advertising, employers in China can be astonishingly forthright in their help-wanted notices. Huangshi, a city in Hubei, recently sought investment-promotion officers under 35 years old, specifying “men preferred”. A high-speed rail operator in Lanzhou wanted women, but only so long as they were under 25, over 160cm tall and with a “good appearance”. A Suzhou packaging firm, by contrast, stretched to the geriatric reaches of 45 in its search for a sales representative, adding that female candidates should already be married with children—in other words, please no maternity leave.   These are just a few blatant examples of discrimination that women face in the Chinese labour market. More extensive discrimination is largely out of sight. It includes pressure on women to avoid pregnancy, higher pay for male colleagues and fewer opportunities as women’s careers progress.   In the 1950s, when Mao Zedong declared that “women held up half the sky”, in narrowly economic terms China looked egalitarian. Men and women had similar jobs as well as incomes, though both were miserable—and that was if you were lucky enough to escape becoming victims of Mao’s revolution-without-end. Today women in China more than match men in educational terms: 51% of university students are female, up by 14 percentage points since 1995. The picture at work, by contrast, has grown worse. Men on average now earn roughly a third more. In 1990 nearly 80% of women aged between 15 and 64 were in the labour force, one of the highest rates anywhere in the world. Today that has slipped to under 70%, below both Japan and the European Union. China’s business leadership is overwhelmingly male. Women are even rarer at the top of politics. For a quarter-century until 2022, the Politburo, the Communist Party’s top body, boasted a woman or two. Since then there have been none.   Sexism is part of the problem. For businessmen and officials, the banqueting table is often where deals get done. But long boozy dinners (officially forbidden under Xi Jinping) can be offputting to women, or worse. A senior cadre and a property executive in Hangzhou, a wealthy east-central city, were recently accused of assaulting a young female employee after such a dinner. The incident provoked public outrage, including renewed calls to clean up the practice of banquets. A more common experience for women is less aggressive, though still demeaning. “Our bosses wouldn’t say it directly but they hope we act as decoration,” says Ms Dou, who worked in tech. Yet nothing is straightforward. Erica, a woman in her 20s in the events industry, says she has had more friction with female bosses than male ones. “We’re a patriarchal society, so when women break through and get power, they tend to be more controlling,” she says.   The more pervasive problem is less that of outright sexism and more how women’s role, or potential role, as mothers clashes with work. A “motherhood penalty” is common nearly everywhere. But in China the penalty is especially high, owing to a fierce work culture, an outdated retirement system and an intensifying state-led fertility push colliding with entrenched career patterns.   Compared with other countries at its level of development, China has generous maternity leave: mothers can get about half a year off work, on full pay. But the state covers only part of the salary on leave, with employers paying for the bulk. Five women in their 30s and 40s told Chaguan that their bosses expected to be informed should they be trying to get pregnant. “Speaking as a former manager, I myself wasn’t all that willing to hire women under 35,” said Ms Chen, who used to work in media. “What if she comes in and gets pregnant right away?” The government’s recent push for two-child families, aimed at reversing a fast-declining fertility rate, adds to employers’ concerns that married women are liable to take extended breaks from work.   The little brats After pregnancy, women face other hurdles. A common expectation that they will guide their children through school is hardly compatible with the long hours expected in many Chinese jobs. “Men the same age as me are in a better position,” says Ms Dou, in her early 40s. “There’s an assumption that they don’t have as much responsibility at home.” Job ads often state that candidates should be able to tolerate high stress, regularly work overtime and always be reachable. Such requirements do not discriminate specifically against women, but are deterrents to any parent with their hands full with young children—usually the mother.   Nor is there much runway left for a woman returning to work, perhaps in her early 40s. In white-collar jobs the official retirement age is just a few months over 55 for women and 60 for men (by 2040 these will be raised gradually to 58 and 63, respectively). Companies have less incentive to invest in mid-career women who have taken time off for children. “The job market is already biased enough against women,” says Ms Wu, a former web designer who left to have a child. “After 35 it is like frost on top of snow.” She is taking matters into her own hands, retraining as a drone pilot.   Policy tweaks would help, including making maternity and paternity leave more equal (many places give fathers 15 days, if they take any). More state funding for paid leave would ease the financial strain on companies. Men and women should also have the same (higher) retirement ages.   Yet what women are up against is less skewed policy than powerful social norms, especially the weight placed upon mothers. Until that changes, China is undermining its own potential. In educational terms, Chinese women already hold up more than half the sky today. In the world of work, they are getting just about a third of it. ■   催生壓力和狼性加班文化互相衝突 2026 年 8 月 24 日 | 閱讀時間約 5 分鐘 對不習慣徵才廣告吐露真言的人來說，中國雇主的徵才啟事有時坦率得令人吃驚。湖北黃石市近期招募 35 歲以下的招商人員，明確註明「男性優先」；蘭州一家高鐵營運商想招募女性，但要求年齡必須在 25 歲以下、身高 160 公分以上，且「形象氣質佳」；相比之下，蘇州一家包裝企業在尋找銷售代表時，將年齡門檻寬限到堪稱高齡的 45 歲，但附帶條件是女性求職者必須「已婚已育」——換句話說，請別來休產假。 這些不過是女性在中國職場遭遇歧視的冰山一角。更多且更普遍的歧視通常隱藏在螢光幕後，包括逼迫女性避免懷孕、給予男性同事更高的薪資，以及在女性職涯發展的過程中提供較少的晉升機會。 1950 年代，當毛澤東喊出「婦女能頂半邊天」時，單從經濟層面來看，中國似乎相當平權。當時男女從事的職業和收入相去不遠，儘管大家的苦日子都不好過——而這前提還是你夠幸運，沒有成為毛澤東那場「無休止革命」下的犧牲品。如今，中國女性在受教育程度上早已不輸男性：大學生中有 51% 是女性，比 1995 年增加了 14 個百分點。然而，職場上的景況卻每況愈下。平均而言，現在男性的收入比女性高出約三分之一。1990 年，15 至 64 歲的女性中有將近 80% 投入職場，名列全球最高水平之一；如今這一比例已下滑至 70% 以下，比日本和歐盟都还要低。中國企業的高層領導絕大多數是男性，而在政治頂層，女性更是鳳毛麟角。在截至 2022 年長達四分之一個世紀的時間裡，中共最高權力機構政治局至少還保有一至兩位女性席次，但自此之後，便是一片空白。 性別歧視是問題的一部分。對商人和官員來說，餐桌應酬往往是促成交易的場合。但漫長且酗酒的飯局（雖然在習近平主政下官方名義上禁止）常讓女性退避三舍，甚至引發更糟糕的後果。東部富庶城市杭州的一名資深幹部與一名地產高管，最近就被指控在一場飯局後性侵了一名年輕女員工。這起事件引發社會公憤，也再次讓大眾呼籲肅清應酬飯局的陋習。對大多數女性而言，更常見的遭遇雖不至如此具攻擊性，卻同樣令人難堪。曾從事科技業的竇小姐表示：「我們老闆不會明說，但他們希望我們充當門面花瓶。」然而，情況並非單一維度。二十多歲、從事活動企劃的 Erica 表示，相比於男主管，她與女主管之間的摩擦反而更多。「我們是一個父權社會，所以當女性打破天花板獲得權力時，她們往往會展現出更強的控制欲，」她說道。 比起赤裸裸的性別歧視，更根深蒂固的問題在於女性身為（或潛在身為）母親的角色，與工作產生了嚴重衝突。「生育懲罰」在世界各地屢見不鮮，但在中國，由於高壓激烈的加班文化、過時的退休制度，以及國家主導的催生政策與既有職涯模式產生強烈碰撞，使得這種懲罰尤為沉重。 與同等發展水平的其他國家相比，中國提供了相當優渥的產假：媽媽們可以休假約半年，且領取全薪。然而，國家僅負擔產假期間的部分薪資，大頭仍須由雇主支付。五位三四十歲的女性告訴《茶館》專欄，她們的老闆要求如果打算備孕必須提前告知。曾任職於媒體業的陳小姐說：「站在前主管的角度，我自己當時也不太願意招募 35 歲以下的女性。萬一她一進公司就懷孕怎麼辦？」政府近期為了扭轉陡降的出生率而推行「三孩政策」（註：原交稿提及 two-child，意指多胎鼓勵政策），反而進一步加劇了雇主的顧慮，擔心已婚女性隨時可能會請長假離崗。 「小淘氣們」帶來的考驗 懷孕生子過後，女性還面臨著其他關卡。社會普遍期望母親能全程輔導孩子的學業，這與中國許多工作所要求的高強度加班時間幾乎無法兼容。「和我同齡的男性處境更好，」四十歲出頭的竇小姐說，「大家會默認他們在家庭中不需要承擔那麼多責任。」徵才廣告常標榜應徵者須「抗壓能力強」、「能適應常態性加班」且「隨時保持通訊暢通」。這些要求雖然表面上並未針對女性，但對任何要照顧幼童、分身乏術的家長來說，都是極大的阻礙——而這個家長角色通常就是母親。 此外，當女性到了四十歲出頭重新回到職場時，留給她們發展的跑道也所剩無幾。白領階級的官方退休年齡，女性僅比 55 歲多幾個月，男性則為 60 歲（到 2040 年，這兩個門檻將分別逐步提高至 58 歲和 63 歲）。對於因生育而中斷職涯的中生代女性，企業投資她們的意願自然較低。「職場對女性的偏見已經夠深了，」曾任網頁設計師、為了生孩子離職的吳女士說道，「過了 35 歲更是雪上加霜。」她選擇把命運掌握在自己手中，目前正在轉行接受無人機飛行的專業培訓。 政策上的微調會有所幫助，例如讓產假與陪產假更加平等（許多地方的父親即使休假也只有 15 天）。由國家財政提供更多有薪假期的補助，也能減輕企業的財務負擔。此外，男女也應適用相同（且較高）的退休年齡。 然而，女性真正面臨的挑戰，與其說是傾斜的政策，不如說是強大的社會規範，尤其是壓在母親身上的沉重枷鎖。只要這種觀念不改變，中國就一直在削弱自身發展的潛力。單看受教育程度，如今的中國女性早已頂起了「大半邊天」；但在職場的世界裡，她們所分得的，卻僅僅只有三分之一。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

THE British government currently slaps a 5% Value Added Tax (VAT) on sanitary products. But some view the “tampon tax” as an affront to women, who have little choice but to bear the burden of the levy. The government has been prevented from reducing the rate to zero by European Union rules, which limit how much countries can lower VAT rates on some goods. But on March 17th, George Osborne rummaged around for a rabbit in his post-budget hat, and revealed progress towards a new VAT arrangement with the EU that would give him the freedom to ditch the hated tax. Mr Osborne will be glad to end the political headache; in November last year he compromised by pledging to give the £15m ($22m) raised from the tax to charity. This pleased some, though others pointed out that as some of the funds would go to domestic violence charities, this amounted to women paying to solve problems caused by men. More recently, eurosceptics grumbling about EU power have been threatening to embarass the government by supporting an amendment to a government bill that would scrap the 5% tax. Any new deal with the EU would show that the transfer of power between Britain and Brussels can run both ways. Scrapping the tax makes for more palatable politics, but leaves economic questions. Working out a rationale within the British system of VAT is a fool’s errand; products that enjoy the reduced rates are meant to be necessities, but the definition of a necessity is loose. Tampons would join things like ostrich meat and helicopters in the zero rate category, whereas toothpaste and toilet paper will face a rate of 20%. Normally economists worry about applying different rates of tax to similar products, for fear of distorting behaviour. Why should the government nudge customers towards jaffa cakes and away from chocolate-covered digestive biscuits by applying a lower rate of VAT to the former? It also wastes resources as companies battle for their product to meet the zero-rated category criteria. The justification is normally made on distributional grounds: the poor spend more of their income on zero-rated goods, so moving towards a uniform rate would hurt them more. A VAT on tampons is paid for by women rather than men, so any move to get rid of it would redistribute towards women. (Men’s razors attract the full 20% VAT rate, not 0% as some campaigners have claimed in the past.) The bigger question is whether VAT is the best way to redistribute. One vision of an ideal tax system applies a uniform rate of VAT on all final consumption, and then uses the direct tax and benefit system to do the heavy lifting when it comes to redistribution. This would minimise ugly distortions, remove any government meddling over which types of consumption are favoured over others, and focus different bits of the tax and benefit system on what they do best. But even a purist economist can see that this would be difficult politics. 廢除棉條稅政治上討喜，但經濟效益如何？ 英國政府目前對衛生用品課徵 5% 的增值稅（VAT）。但有些人認為「棉條稅」是對女性的侮辱，因為她們別無選擇，只能承受這筆稅負。此前，受限於歐盟限制各國調降特定商品增值稅稅率的規定，政府一直無法將稅率降至零。但在 3 月 17 日，喬治·歐斯本（George Osborne，時任英國財政大臣）從他預算案發布後的帽子裡變出了一隻兔子，宣布與歐盟在新的增值稅協議上取得進展，這將讓他得以自由廢除這項深惡痛絕的稅目。 2016 年 3 月 18 日｜閱讀時間 3 分鐘 英國政府目前對衛生用品課徵 5% 的增值稅（VAT）。但有些人認為「棉條稅」是對女性的侮辱，因為她們別無選擇，只能承受這筆稅負。此前，受限於歐盟限制各國調降特定商品增值稅稅率的規定，政府一直無法將稅率降至零。但在 3 月 17 日，喬治·歐斯本從他預算案發布後的帽子裡變出了一隻兔子，宣布與歐盟在新的增值稅協議上取得進展，這將讓他得以自由廢除這項深惡痛絕的稅目。 歐斯本先生會很樂意結束這個政治頭痛問題；去年 11 月，他曾做出妥協，承諾將該稅種籌集到的 1,500 萬英鎊（約 2,200 萬美元）捐給慈善機構。這讓一部分人感到滿意，但也有人指出，由於部分資金將流向防止家庭暴力的慈善機構，這無疑是讓女性付錢來解決由男性產生的問題。近來，對歐盟權力心生不滿的疑歐派人士一直威脅要支持一項政府法案修正案以廢除這項 5% 的稅率，藉此讓政府難堪。與歐盟達成的新協議將能表明，英國與布魯塞爾之間的權力轉移可以是雙向的。 廢除該稅種在政治上比較討喜，但卻留下了經濟問題。試圖在英國增值稅體系內理出合理邏輯根本是徒勞無功；享受優惠稅率的商品本應是生活必需品，但「必需品」的定義卻相當寬鬆。衛生棉條將與鴕鳥肉和直升機一同歸入零稅率類別，而牙膏和捲筒衛生紙則面臨 20% 的標準稅率。 通常情況下，經濟學者會擔心對類似商品套用不同稅率，因為這樣有可能會扭曲消費者行為。政府為什麼要對爪哇蛋糕（Jaffa cakes）課徵較低的增值稅，從而誘導消費者選擇它而非巧克力消化餅乾？當企業竭力爭取讓自家產品符合零稅率標準時，也會浪費資源。給予優惠稅率的理由通常是基於「收入分配」考量：窮人將更多收入花在零稅率商品上，因此轉向統一稅率對他們的傷害更大。衛生棉條的增值稅是由女性而非男性支付，因此任何廢除該稅種的舉動都會將財富重新分配給女性。（男士刮鬍刀適用的是 20% 的全額增值稅率，並非如過去某些倡議者所聲稱的 0%。） 更根本的問題在於，增值稅是否為進行財富重分配的最佳方式。理想稅務體系的其中一種藍圖，是對所有最終消費課徵統一的增值稅，然後利用直接稅和福利體系來承擔財富重分配的重任。這樣可以最大限度地減少扭曲現象，消除政府對特定消費偏好的干預，並讓稅務和福利體系的不同環節各司其職。然而，即便是最純粹主義的經濟學者也能看出，這在政治操作上極具難度。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

China’s mysterious new billionaires are conquering the world And refusing to talk to the press   Jul 19th 2026|Shanghai|7 min read   Early last year, when DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial-intelligence lab, was causing panic among its Western rivals, almost nothing was known about Liang Wenfeng, its founder. Mr Liang remains a mysterious figure, but at least one thing is clear. As DeepSeek closes a funding round valuing it at $71bn, its founder’s personal wealth has soared to roughly $38bn—making him far wealthier than Anthropic’s Dario Amodei or OpenAI’s Sam Altman.   Mr Liang will not be spotted on the conference circuit. He has never appeared live on Chinese TV, and there are few photos of his unpolished, wiry figure. That puts him at home among the new generation of young Chinese billionaires. The country is cranking out more of them than anywhere else bar America. According to Hurun, which tracks the riches of the world’s wealthiest people, there are at least 29 self-made billionaires aged 40 or under in China. Adding Mr Liang, who will turn 41 at some point this year, brings the total to 30. That is nine more than last year.   China’s new tycoons differ from their predecessors in striking ways. They have abandoned property speculation and boozy dinners with officials for video games and meet-ups over Japanese anime. But they are also adept at taking imaginative ideas and scaling them into global businesses faster than any before them. The history of China’s uber-rich is short. In the 1980s tycoons figured out how to wrest assets from the state. Zhang Ruimin, a member of a troupe of students who terrorised teachers and intellectuals during Mao’s era, got hold of a state-owned refrigerator business called Haier and turned it into what is now the world’s largest home-appliance maker. The opening of the property market in the 1990s minted another early group of billionaires including Xu Jiayin, founder of Evergrande, a now-collapsed property developer. In the early 2000s industrialists such as Wang Chuanfu of BYD, originally a battery maker, launched a wave of manufacturing firms as China entered the World Trade Organisation. And then in the 2010s the consumer internet produced China’s first generation of tech moguls, including Jack Ma of Alibaba, an e-commerce giant, and Pony Ma of Tencent, maker of WeChat. The founders of ByteDance, creator of TikTok, and Shein, the online fast-fashion firm, who are both now in their early 40s, built their fortunes a few years later.   China’s new generation of tycoons are charting out a different path. More than two-thirds of the young billionaires on Hurun’s rich list made their money from consumer goods or media. Seven created video games; four built tea or coffee businesses. After Mr Liang, the wealthiest is Wang Ning, founder of Pop Mart, maker of the strange-looking Labubu dolls. Only three have struck it rich with AI, including Yang Zhilin, the baby-faced 34-year-old founder of Moonshot AI, which on July 17th released a new model that is said to rival the best from America. No property mogul makes the list—perhaps unsurprisingly, given how the sector has fared in recent years.   The businesses built by China’s new billionaires are also far more global than in the past. It once took a decade or more for Chinese entrepreneurs to figure out foreign expansion. No longer. Zhang Junjie, the 33-year-old founder of Chagee, a milk-tea shop, launched his firm in 2017 and opened his first overseas shop just two years later. The company is now listed in New York and operating in nine countries.   The new tycoons’ heavy reliance on foreign markets partly reflects the slump in consumer spending at home. Around 80% of sales at Dreame, a consumer-electronics brand founded by 39-year-old Yu Hao, come from overseas. Insta360, which sells small waterproof cameras, is almost as reliant on foreign demand. Pop Mart made more than $2bn in sales outside China last year, about 40% of its total. Chagee’s sales at home have slumped, but overseas they are growing healthily.   Attitudes to work are also different among this cohort. A controversial part of Chinese business culture for the past decade or so has been the so-called “996” routine, working from 9am to 9pm six days a week. The idea was championed by Alibaba’s Mr Ma and embraced by other local tech giants. At Pinduoduo, another e-commerce platform, young white-collar staff have died from overwork on their way home from the office. China’s new entrepreneurs, by contrast, have adopted a more relaxed approach to management. Many are relatively flexible about working times. Liu Wei, the 39-year-old billionaire co-founder of miHoYo, a gaming firm, has eschewed presenteeism. He has overseen what the company calls its “happy work, steady growth” approach, which prioritises mental health (though one employee also recently died from complications related to overwork, suggesting that cultural norms are hard to shift). DeepSeek’s Mr Liang has reportedly said that the human brain can concentrate only for 6-8 hours a day, and that overwork leads to mistakes.   The willingness of workers to put in longer hours than anyone else in the world is what has built the Chinese economy over the past 30 years, huffs one private-equity investor, who recently visited an up-and-coming consumer brand and did not like what he saw. Some blame the relatively laid-back attitude of China’s young founders on cushy upbringings. Gone are the tales told by earlier tycoons of struggling for survival amid the country’s political and economic convulsions. Among China’s young billionaires, only Mr Liang and Mr Zhang of Chagee grew up poor. The three founders of miHoYo originally bonded over Japanese cartoons and formed their company as a celebration of gaming and comics. The founder of MiniMax, an AI lab, is so fond of a multi-player game called “Dota 2” that his staff refer to him as “IO”, a character from it.   To get rich is perilous   It is not all rosy for China’s young billionaires. The relationship between China’s government and its wealthiest people has deteriorated over the past few years. Older magnates once viewed themselves as part of a nation-building project. The property sector, which contributed up to a quarter of China’s GDP at its peak, was a collaborative effort between private entrepreneurs and local officials. Mr Ma was instrumental in building China’s digital economy. But the central government has now punished many prominent figures in these areas. Leverage has been sucked out of the property industry. Mr Ma’s business empire became the subject of a state crackdown in 2020 after he criticized regulators. Xi Jinping, China’s ruler, has sought to tamp down inequality under the slogan of “common prosperity”.   In 2021 Zhong Shanshan, the 71-year-old founder of Nongfu, a bottled-water company, reached a net worth of nearly $100bn. No one has since come close, including Mr. Zhong, who has seen his wealth plunge to around $39bn as the share price of his company has slumped. Mr. Ma is worth roughly a fifth as much as in 2021, and many other internet moguls have suffered similarly. Still, they have fared better than property magnates, a number of whom have been detained.   This environment has created a sense of disillusionment among China’s young billionaires. Many are eager to engage in industrial policy but are given little opportunity to do so, notes Steven Hai of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Their global ambitions also leave them exposed to souring relations between China and America. Xiao Hong, the 33-year-old founder of Manus, another AI firm, would have become a billionaire earlier this year if the Chinese government had not stopped him from selling his company to Meta, an American tech giant.   These innovators live with the sense that the businesses they have built could be derailed at any time by sudden policy changes in China or America, notes Rupert Hoogewerf of Hurun. By shunning publicity they seem to believe they can survive for longer, he says. Most young Chinese billionaires have never spoken to foreign media. (None would speak to The Economist.) Many avoid the Chinese press as well. The result is a generation of tycoons that is both China’s most global yet—and its most enigmatic. ■ 中國神秘的新億萬富豪正在征服世界，卻拒絕接受媒體採訪 2026年7月19日｜上海｜閱讀時間：7分鐘 去年年初，當中國人工智慧實驗室 DeepSeek 讓西方競爭對手陷入恐慌時，外界幾乎對它的創辦人梁文鋒一無所知。 如今，梁文鋒依然是一個相當神秘的人物，但至少有一件事已經很清楚：隨著 DeepSeek 即將完成一輪募資，公司估值達到 710億美元，其創辦人的個人財富也暴增至大約 380億美元。這讓他的身家遠遠超過 Anthropic 的 達里奧・阿莫迪（Dario Amodei），以及 OpenAI 的 山姆・奧特曼（Sam Altman）。 梁文鋒不會出現在各種商業會議或產業論壇的巡迴活動上。 他從未在中國電視節目上公開現場露面，而網路上流傳的照片也寥寥可數，能看到的通常是他那副不修邊幅、身材瘦削的模樣。 這讓他與中國新一代的年輕億萬富豪十分相似。 中國正在大量培養這一代年輕富豪，數量僅次於美國。 根據追蹤全球富豪財富的胡潤研究院（Hurun），中國至少有 29名40歲以下的白手起家億萬富豪。 如果把今年某個時候即將滿41歲的梁文鋒也算進去，總數就來到 30人，比去年多了9人。 中國的新一代企業大亨，和他們的前輩有著非常明顯的不同。 他們拋棄了房地產投機，也不再熱衷於和官員吃豪華宴席；取而代之的，是打電玩、聚在一起聊日本動漫。 但另一方面，他們也非常擅長把充滿想像力的點子，迅速擴大成為全球性的企業，而且速度可能超越過去任何一代中國企業家。 中國超級富豪的歷史其實很短 中國超級富豪的歷史其實相當短暫。 到了1980年代，一些企業家開始摸索如何從國家手中取得資產。 張瑞敏就是其中之一。 在毛澤東時代，他曾是那群恐嚇教師與知識分子的學生組織成員之一。後來，他取得了一家名為 海爾（Haier）的國營冰箱企業，並將它發展成如今全球最大的家電製造商。 1990年代，房地產市場開放，又造就了另一批早期億萬富豪，其中包括許家印，也就是如今已經倒閉的房地產開發商恆大集團創辦人。 進入2000年代初期，隨著中國加入世界貿易組織，一批製造業企業家掀起了新一波企業創業潮。 其中包括 比亞迪（BYD）的王傳福。比亞迪最初是一家電池製造商。 接著，到了2010年代，消費型網際網路產業又孕育出中國第一代科技巨頭。 其中包括電子商務巨頭阿里巴巴的馬雲，以及打造微信的騰訊創辦人馬化騰。 幾年後，字節跳動（ByteDance）和Shein的創辦人也建立起自己的龐大財富。 字節跳動打造了 TikTok，而 Shein 則是一家主打線上快時尚的企業。 如今，這兩家公司的創辦人都已經40歲出頭。 新一代富豪正在走出不同的道路 中國新一代企業大亨正在開闢一條不同的道路。 根據胡潤富豪榜，年輕億萬富豪中，有超過三分之二靠消費品或媒體產業致富。 其中有7人靠開發電子遊戲創造財富；4人則建立了茶飲或咖啡事業。 排在梁文鋒之後、身家第二高的是王寧，他是潮玩公司 泡泡瑪特（Pop Mart）的創辦人，而泡泡瑪特最知名的產品，就是外型奇特的 Labubu 娃娃。 只有3人靠人工智慧致富，其中包括34歲、長著一張娃娃臉的 楊植麟。 他是 AI 公司 Moonshot AI 的創辦人。7月17日，這家公司推出了一個新模型，據稱可以與美國最頂尖的 AI 模型抗衡。 至於房地產大亨，則一個都沒有進入這份榜單。 考慮到中國房地產業近年的表現，這或許並不令人意外。 他們從一開始就把目光放向全球 中國新一代億萬富豪所建立的企業，也比過去更加全球化。 過去，中國企業家往往需要花上10年甚至更久，才能摸索出進軍海外市場的方法。 現在已經不同了。 張俊傑今年33歲，是奶茶品牌 霸王茶姬（Chagee）的創辦人。 他在2017年創立公司，僅僅兩年後，就開設了第一家海外門市。 如今，這家公司已在紐約上市，並且已經進入9個國家。 新一代企業大亨高度依賴海外市場，部分原因其實也反映了中國國內消費支出的低迷。 以消費電子品牌 追覓（Dreame）為例。 這家公司由39歲的俞浩創立，大約 80%的銷售額來自海外市場。 銷售小型防水相機的 Insta360，對海外需求的依賴程度也幾乎一樣高。 泡泡瑪特去年在中國以外市場創造了超過 20億美元的銷售額，約占公司總營收的40%。 霸王茶姬在中國國內的銷售額已經下滑，但海外市場卻仍然保持健康成長。 他們對工作的態度也不一樣 這一代年輕富豪對工作的態度，也與前人有所不同。 過去十年左右，中國商業文化中一個極具爭議的現象，就是所謂的 「996」工作制度。 也就是每天早上9點工作到晚上9點，一週工作6天。 這種工作模式曾受到阿里巴巴馬雲的推崇，也被其他中國科技巨頭所採用。 在另一家電子商務平台拼多多，甚至曾有年輕白領因過度工作，在下班回家的路上死亡。 相比之下，中國的新一代企業家採取了更加輕鬆的管理方式。 許多人對工作時間相對彈性。 39歲的億萬富豪劉偉是遊戲公司 米哈遊（miHoYo）的共同創辦人之一。 他並不鼓勵員工只是為了「被看見」而長時間待在辦公室。 他推動公司所稱的 「快樂工作，穩定成長」理念，把心理健康放在重要位置。 不過，最近仍有一名員工因與過勞有關的併發症死亡，這也顯示，要改變根深蒂固的文化規範並不容易。 據報導，DeepSeek 的梁文鋒曾表示，人類的大腦一天只能維持大約 6到8小時的高度專注，而過度工作只會導致更多錯誤。 「正是比世界上任何人都更願意加班，才打造了中國經濟」 一名最近造訪某個新興消費品牌的私募股權投資人對此頗有微詞。 他表示，過去30年來，正是中國人願意比世界上任何其他地方的人投入更長工時，才建立起了中國經濟。 但他最近參訪一家正在崛起的消費品牌時，卻不喜歡自己看到的情況。 有些人則把中國年輕創辦人相對悠閒的工作態度，歸因於他們從小過著較為優渥的生活。 早期企業大亨經常講述的那種故事——在中國劇烈的政治與經濟動盪中努力求生——如今已經逐漸消失。 在中國年輕億萬富豪當中，只有梁文鋒以及霸王茶姬的張俊傑出身貧困。 米哈遊的3位創辦人，最初就是因為喜歡日本動漫而結識，後來更以遊戲與漫畫為共同熱情創辦了公司。 AI 實驗室 MiniMax 的創辦人則非常喜歡多人線上遊戲 《Dota 2》。 他的員工甚至以遊戲中的一個角色 「IO」來稱呼他。 致富並非沒有風險 中國年輕億萬富豪的故事，並非一切都如此美好。 過去幾年，中國政府與最富有階層之間的關係已經惡化。 早期的企業大亨曾經把自己視為國家建設計畫的一部分。 房地產業在高峰時期曾占中國 GDP 的四分之一，這個產業曾是民營企業家與地方官員共同合作的結果。 馬雲也曾在建立中國數位經濟的過程中扮演重要角色。 但如今，中國中央政府已經對這些領域中的許多知名人物採取懲罰性措施。 房地產業的槓桿資金已被大幅抽離。 2020年，馬雲批評金融監管機構之後，他所建立的商業帝國便成為政府整頓的對象。 中國領導人習近平則以「共同富裕」為口號，試圖降低社會貧富差距。 2021年，71歲的農夫山泉創辦人鍾睒睒，身家一度接近 1000億美元。 此後，再也沒有人接近這個數字，包括鍾睒睒本人。 隨著農夫山泉股價下跌，他的財富已縮水至大約 390億美元。 馬雲如今的身家，大約只有2021年時的五分之一。 許多其他網路產業巨頭也遭遇類似的財富縮水。 不過，他們的處境仍比房地產大亨好一些，因為後者當中已有不少人遭到拘留。 年輕富豪開始感到失望 這樣的環境，也讓中國年輕億萬富豪產生了一種失落感。 西交利物浦大學（Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University）的 Steven Hai 指出，許多年輕富豪其實非常希望參與中國的產業政策，但政府給他們的機會卻相當有限。 另一方面，他們的全球化野心，也讓自己暴露在中美關係惡化的風險之中。 肖弘今年33歲，是另一家 AI 公司 Manus 的創辦人。 如果不是中國政府阻止他把公司出售給美國科技巨頭 Meta，他早在今年稍早就可能成為億萬富豪。 胡潤研究院的 胡潤（Rupert Hoogewerf）指出，這些創新者始終生活在一種不安之中： 他們辛苦建立起來的企業，隨時都有可能因為中國或美國突然改變政策，而被迫偏離原本的發展軌道。 他認為，這些企業家選擇避開媒體曝光，似乎是因為他們相信，這樣可以讓自己的企業存活得更久。 大多數中國年輕億萬富豪從未接受過外國媒體採訪。 《經濟學人》也沒有一個人願意接受採訪。 許多人甚至也刻意避開中國媒體。 最終形成了一個既是中國最全球化的一代企業大亨，同時也是最神秘莫測的一代。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

The six stages of holiday-making Two weeks off, but how many days of relaxation? Aug 13th 2026|4 min read   It’s summer, in the northern hemisphere at least, which means emptier offices and fuller airports. In theory, a holiday is a time to properly relax. In practice, there are several stages to pass through before that moment arrives, and several more to experience before you are fully immersed in work again.   1.    The preparation phase. You badly need a holiday. In your final couple of days before leaving, you complete your most urgent tasks, like tidying your desk. You tell people on your team that you trust them completely and in the same breath, that they should contact you if anything comes up, no matter how trivial. As a result, they don’t feel trusted at all. You think about setting up an out-of-office message and decide not to: it’s really not a problem to check your phone occasionally. As you leave the office, you think you feel a cold coming on. 2.    The relax-like-hell phase. You spend the first few days approaching the holiday like it’s work. You spend loads of time asking AI models for places to go that are off the beaten track. In a typical morning, you drive two hours to eat breakfast at a place recommended by ChatGPT which turns out to be closed, and then visit a museum devoted to the ancient craft of curing fish.   At lunch, you drink wine and then fall asleep. You think of this period of unconsciousness as time that could have been spent relaxing. You are acutely aware of time passing, your days of freedom slipping away. You pick up a book and instead of reading it, worry that you could be enjoying your leisure in even more leisurely ways. You feel very tense for someone on holiday.   3.    The letting-go phase. Meanwhile, you check your email every so often, and intervene in things you don’t need to. You get a couple of WhatsApp messages and are asked to join a call, and feel both irritated and pleased. Can’t you do it without me? You can’t do it without me! As you triage messages, sorting them into things that have to be dealt with quickly and those that can wait, you gradually realise just how much of what goes on each week a) doesn’t require you at all and b) has no lasting value. You start to ignore most messages; if it’s important, they will find a way to contact you. You switch on your out-of-office message.   4.    The delusional phase. Finally, you start to relax. You lie in a little longer. You don’t look at your phone quite as much. You realise that back in the office the weekly sales meeting is happening right at this very minute, and you laugh out loud at the smallness of your old life. Fairly soon, you start to lose your grip on reality. You think about moving to wherever it is you are, forgetting that you are enjoying yourself because the weather is nice and you are not working. You start trying to figure out how soon you can retire. You fantasise about working outdoors, perhaps in sea-kayaking or doing something artisanal to a dry-stone wall.   5.    The motivated phase. The end of the holiday is fast approaching. You realise that sea-kayaking gives you blisters and that the things you are best equipped to do don’t involve dry-stone walls. You start to look at emails again, but only the ones that matter. You feel motivated to return. You have seen how much time is spent on unimportant things and are determined to prioritise much more ruthlessly. You have some really good ideas about how to improve the weekly sales meeting.   6.    The recidivism phase. You return to the office full of vim. You look and feel healthier than your colleagues. Then you have the same conversation 800 times. “How was your holiday?” “Wonderful.” “Where did you go?” [Insert answer.] “What did you do there?” [Insert details.] You soon realise that no one is interested in where you went and start to make up responses. “Where did you go?” “Wakanda.” “What did you do?” “We visited the vibranium mines.” “Oh, I’ve always wanted to do that.”   It’s nice to see people. It’s good to have a sense of purpose. But you quickly revert to old habits. An empty calendar feels less like ruthless prioritisation and more like a public display of redundancy; the slots soon fill up again. When emails come in, you answer them indiscriminately. Your desk becomes more cluttered. You attend the weekly sales meeting and dimly recall that you once had an idea for improving it. Colleagues come back from their own breaks and you ask how their holidays were. You are not listening to the answers. They seem so well, so energetic. You think you feel another cold coming on. You badly need a holiday. ■ 度假的六個階段 兩週假期，但真正放鬆的又有幾天？ 2026年8月13日 | 閱讀時間 4 分鐘 夏天到了——至少在北半球是如此——這意味著辦公室空了，機場卻擠滿了人。理論上，度假是一個能讓人徹底放鬆的時刻；但在現實中，在那個時刻到來之前，你必須先經歷幾個階段，而在你重新完全沉浸於工作之前，還有另外幾個階段等著你。 準備階段。 你急需放個假。在離辦公室前的最後兩天，你完成了最緊迫的工作，比如整理乾淨你的辦公桌。你告訴團隊成員你完全信任他們，但緊接著又說，如果有任何事情發生，不管多麼微不足道，都可以隨時聯繫你。結果，他們根本感覺不到自己被信任。你考慮要設定「不在辦公室」的自動回覆信件，但最後決定不設：偶爾看一眼手機真的沒什麼大不了的。當你離開辦公室時，你覺得自己好像有點感冒了。 拼命放鬆階段。 你把前幾天的假期過得像是在上班一樣。你花了大量時間詢問 AI 模型有哪些遠離喧囂的冷門景點。在一個典型的早晨，你開了兩個小時的車去吃一家 ChatGPT 推薦的早餐，結果發現它根本沒開，接著你又去參觀了一間展示古代醃魚工藝的博物館。 午餐時，你喝了葡萄酒，然後睡著了。你把這段無意識的時間視為「本可用於放鬆」的時間。你極度敏感地意識到時間的流逝，自由的日子正在悄悄溜走。你拿起一本書，但沒有閱讀，反而擔心自己本可以利用更悠閒的方式來享受閒暇時光。作為一個在度假的人，你感到非常緊張。 放手階段。 與此同時，你隔三差五地檢查郵件，干預一些你根本不需要插手的事情。你收到幾條 WhatsApp 訊息，並被邀請加入視訊會議，這讓你感到既煩躁又高興。沒有我你們就辦不成事嗎？你們還真的沒我不行！當你對訊息進行分類 triage，將它們分為「必須快速處理」和「可以等等再說」時，你逐漸意識到每週發生的事情中有多少是：a) 根本不需要你；b) 完全沒有長遠價值。你開始忽視大多數訊息；如果真的重要，他們總會找到方法聯繫你。你終於開啟了「不在辦公室」的自動回覆。 幻想階段。 終於，你開始放鬆了。你睡得稍微久了一點，看手機的次數也沒那麼頻繁了。你意識到此時此刻，辦公室裡正召開著每週銷售會議，你對自己過去那渺小的生活發出陣陣會心的冷笑。很快地，你開始脫離現實。你想著搬到你現在度假的地方生活，卻忘了你之所以開心是因為天氣很好且你不用工作。你開始嘗試計算自己多久之後可以退休。你幻想著在戶外工作，也許是划海上皮划艇，或是對著乾砌石牆做些手工藝活。 動力階段。 假期的尾聲迅速逼近。你意識到划皮划艇會讓你起水泡，而你最擅長做的事情根本與乾砌石牆無關。你重新開始看郵件，但只看那些真正重要的。你感到有一股返回工作的動力。你看到了有多少時間被浪費在不重要的事情上，並決心要更狠心地排出優先順序。對於如何改進每週銷售會議，你產生了一些非常棒的想法。 舊病復發階段。 你滿懷活力地回到辦公室。你看起來、感覺起來都比同事們更健康。然後你把同一段對話重複了 800 次。「假期過得怎麼樣？」「太棒了。」「去哪裡了？」（插入答案）「在那裡做了什麼？」（插入細節）。你很快意識到根本沒有人對你去哪裡感興趣，並開始編造回答。「你去哪裡了？」「瓦干達（Wakanda）。」「做了什麼？」「我們去參觀了汎合金（Vibranium）礦山。」「噢，我一直想去那裡。」 能見到大家真好，擁有目標感也很不錯。但你很快就重蹈覆轍。空白的行事曆看起來不再像是狠心排序優先順序的成果，反而更像是公開展示自己是個贅員；日程很快又被排滿了。當郵件寄來時，你不加篩選地一一回覆。你的辦公桌變得越來越凌亂。你參加每週銷售會議，隱約想起自己曾經有一個改進它的好主意。同事們陸續休假歸來，你問他們假期過得如何。你根本沒有在聽答案。他們看起來那麼健康、那麼精力充沛。你覺得自己好像又有點感冒了。你急需放個假。■ -- Hosting provided by SoundOn