苏伊士运河堵塞事件：过度全球化敲响的警钟？
In Suez Canal, Stuck Ship Is a Warning About Excessive Globalization
PETER S. GOODMAN
2021年3月29日
LONDON — The world got another warning this week about the perils of its heavy reliance on global supply chains. As a single ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, shutting down traffic in both directions, international commerce confronted a monumental traffic jam with potentially grave consequences.
伦敦——本周，世界又收到了一个关于严重依赖全球供应链的风险警告。由于一艘船在苏伊士运河搁浅，导致双向交通中断，严重的交通堵塞让国际贸易面临可能十分严峻的后果。
The troubled craft is not just any vessel. The Ever Given is one of the world’s largest container ships, with space for 20,000 metal boxes carrying goods across the sea. And the Suez Canal is not just any waterway. It is a vital channel linking the factories of Asia to the affluent customers of Europe, as well as a major conduit for oil.
陷入麻烦的船并非普通船只。“长赐号”(Ever Given)是全世界最大的集装箱船之一，其空间足以容纳2万个金属海运货柜。苏伊士运河也并非普通水道。它是连接亚洲工厂和欧洲富有客商的重要渠道，也是石油运输的主要通道。
The fact that one mishap could sow fresh chaos from Los Angeles to Rotterdam to Shanghai underscored the extent to which modern commerce has come to revolve around truly global supply chains.
从洛杉矶到鹿特丹再到上海，一起事故就可能在这些地方制造新的混乱，这一事实也凸显了现代商业对真正全球化的供应链的依赖有多深。
In recent decades, management experts and consulting firms have championed so-called just-in-time manufacturing to limit costs and boost profits. Rather than waste money stockpiling extra goods in warehouses, companies can depend on the magic of the internet and the global shipping industry to summon what they need as they need it.
近几十年来，管理专家和咨询公司一直在倡导所谓的及时生产，以控制成本、提高利润。企业可以依靠互联网和全球航运业的魔力，在需要时即可唤来所需的东西，而不必浪费资金在仓库里囤积额外货物。
The embrace of this idea has delivered no less than a revolution to major industries — automotive and medical device manufacturing, retailing, pharmaceuticals and more. It has also yielded a bonanza for corporate executives and other shareholders: Money not spent filling warehouses with unneeded auto parts is, at least in part, money that can be given to shareholders in the form of dividends.
拥抱这一理念，给汽车与医疗设备制造业、零售业、制药业等主要产业带来了一场革命，也为企业高管和其他股东带来了丰厚回报：靠不再往仓库里堆积不必要的汽车零件而省下来的钱，至少有一部分可以以股息的形式发放给股东。
Yet, as in everything in life, overdoing a good thing can bring danger.
然而，就像生活中的任何事一样，好事做过头也会带来危险。
An excessive reliance on just-in-time manufacturing helps explain how medical staff from Indiana to Italy found themselves attending to Covid-19 patients during the first wave of the pandemic without adequate protective gear like masks and gowns.
过分依赖及时生产，也能解释为什么在第一波疫情期间，从印第安纳州到意大利的医护人员在救治新冠病人时都得不到足够的防护装备，比如口罩和防护服。
Health care systems — many under the control of profit-making companies answerable to shareholders — assumed that they could depend on the web and the global shipping industry to deliver what they needed in real time. That proved a deadly miscalculation.
许多地方的医疗系统都处于需要对股东负责的营利企业的控制之下，它们以为自己可以依靠网络和全球航运业实时获取所需物品。事实证明这是个致命的误判。
The same dependence explains how Amazon failed to provide adequate stocks of masks and gloves to its warehouse workers in the United States in the first months of the pandemic.
同样的依赖也解释了为什么在疫情暴发的前几个月，亚马逊(Amazon)未能向美国的仓库工人配备足够的口罩和手套。
“We’ve placed purchase orders for millions of face masks we want to give to our employees and contractors who cannot work from home, but very few of those orders have been filled,” Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, declared in a letter to all employees last March. “Masks remain in short supply globally.”
去年3月，亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)在一封致全体员工的信中宣布：“我们已经订购了数百万个口罩，希望能发放给我们不能在家工作的员工和承包商，但这些订单中只有很少一部分实现了供货，口罩仍处于全球短缺状态。”
Some experts have warned for years that short-term shareholder interests have eclipsed prudent management in prompting companies to skimp on stockpiling goods.
多年来，一些专家都在警告称，鼓励企业靠削减库存节约成本，等于将短期股东的利益置于审慎管理的原则之上。
“As we become more interdependent, we are even more subject to the fragilities that arise, and they are always unpredictable,” said Ian Goldin, a professor of globalization at Oxford University. “No one could predict a ship going aground in the middle of the canal, just like no one predicted where the pandemic would come from. Just like we can’t predict the next cyberattack, or the next financial crisis, but we know it’s going to happen.”
“随着我们变得更相互依赖，我们也更容易受到随之出现的脆弱性的影响，而这种脆弱性总是不可预测的，”牛津大学研究全球化的教授伊恩·戈尔丁(Ian Goldin)说。“没人能预测一艘船会在运河中间搁浅，就像没人能预测疫情会从哪里来一样。就像我们无法预测下一次网络攻击，或者下一次金融危机，但我们知道它一定会发生。”
The disaster of the moment, in which engineers work to extract an enormous vessel from the Suez Canal, has left more than 100 vessels stuck at either end awaiting clear passage. Some are carrying oil — a reason that energy prices rose on Wednesday, though they pulled back on Thursday. Some are carrying electronics, and clothing, and exercise equipment.
眼下，工程师们正努力把这艘巨轮从苏伊士运河里拖出来，这场灾难已导致两个方向各有上百艘船被困，等待着通行。有些船装载着石油——这也是周三能源价格上涨的原因之一（不过在周四有所回落）。有些船载有电子产品、服装和健身器材。
None of them are getting where they are supposed to until the waylaid ship is freed. Each day the stalemate continues holds up goods worth $9.6 billion, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
在拦路船只被解救前，所有这些船都到不了它们的目的地。根据彭博社(Bloomberg)的分析，堵塞期间每天被困的货物价96亿美元。
Ever since its deployment in the 1950s, the shipping container has itself revolutionized global trade. As a standard-size receptacle that can be quickly plunked onto rail lines and trucks, it has sharply reduced the time needed to move goods from one place to another.
自上世纪50年代投入使用以来，集装箱已经彻底改变了全球贸易。作为一种标准尺寸的容器，它可以被快速安装到铁路线和卡车上，大大缩短了货物从一地运到另一地的时间。
Exponential increases in how many containers may be piled atop a single ship have effectively shrunk the globe further. Capacity has increased 1,500 percent over the last half-century, and has nearly doubled over the last decade alone, according to Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty, a shipping insurance company.
单船装载的集装箱数量呈指数级增长，实际上已经使地球进一步缩小。根据航运保险公司安联全球企业及特殊风险有限公司(Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty)的数据，航运运力在过去半个世纪里增长了150%，仅在过去十年里就几乎翻了一番。
These advances in trade have yielded sophisticated and highly efficient forms of specialization, with auto factories in the north of England relying on parts from across Europe and Asia. The rise of the container ship has expanded the availability of consumer goods and lowered prices.
这些贸易上的进步催生了复杂高效的专业化形式，英格兰北部的汽车工厂开始依赖来自欧洲和亚洲的零部件。集装箱货船的崛起扩大了消费品的供应范围，降低了价格。
But these same advances have yielded vulnerabilities, and the disruption at the Suez Canal — the passageway for roughly one-tenth of the world’s trade — has intensified the strains on the shipping industry, which has been overwhelmed by the pandemic and its reordering of world trade.
但同样的进步也带来了脆弱，作为占世界贸易总量约十分之一的通道，苏伊士运河受到的扰乱加剧了货运业的压力，该行业已经在疫情以及被疫情重塑的世界贸易秩序中不堪重负。
As Americans have contended with lockdowns, they have ordered vast quantities of factory goods from Asia: exercise bikes to compensate for the closure of gyms; printers and computer monitors to turn bedrooms into offices; baking equipment and toys to entertain children cooped up at home.
美国人在竭力应对疫情封锁的同时，还从亚洲订购了大量工厂货物：用来弥补健身房关门影响的健身自行车；将卧室变成办公室的打印机和电脑显示器；让困在家中的孩子们开心的烘焙设备和玩具。
The surge of orders has exhausted the supply of containers at ports in China. The cost of shipping a container from Asia to North America has more than doubled since November. And at ports from Los Angeles to Seattle, the unloading of those containers has been slowed as dockworkers and truck drivers have been struck by Covid-19 or forced to stay home to attend to children who are out of school.
订单的激增已经耗尽了中国港口的集装箱供应。自去年11月以来，从亚洲到北美的集装箱运费翻了一倍多。从洛杉矶到西雅图，由于码头工人和卡车司机感染新冠，或是被迫待在家中照顾停学的儿童，港口集装箱的卸货速度也已经放缓。
Delays in unloading spell delays in loading the next shipment. Agricultural exporters in the American Midwest have struggled to secure containers to send soybeans and grains to food processors and animal feed suppliers in Southeast Asia.
卸货延迟意味着下一批货的装载也会延迟。美国中西部的农产品出口商一直在努力寻找集装箱，将大豆和谷物运往东南亚的食品加工厂商和动物饲料供应商。
This situation has held for four months, while showing few signs of easing. Retailers in North America have been frantically restocking depleted inventories, putting a strain on shipping companies in what is normally the slack season on trans-Pacific routes.
这种情况已经持续了四个月，几乎看不到缓解迹象。北美零售商一直在疯狂补充耗尽的库存，给航运公司带来了压力，通常而言，这是跨太平洋航线上的淡季。
The blockage of the Suez Canal effectively sidelines more containers. The question is how long this lasts.
苏伊士运河的堵塞等于导致更多集装箱无法发挥作用。问题是这种情况还会持续多久。
Two weeks could strand as much as one-fourth of the supply of containers that would normally be in European ports, estimated Christian Roeloffs, chief executive officer of xChange, a shipping consultant in Hamburg, Germany.
克里斯蒂安·罗洛夫斯(Christian Roeloffs)是德国汉堡的航运咨询公司xChange的首席执行官，他估计，堵塞两周可能导致欧洲港口应有的集装箱供应量减少四分之一。
“Considering the current container shortage, it just increases the turnaround time for the ships,” Mr. Roeloffs said.
“考虑到目前集装箱短缺的情况，这只会增加船舶的周转时间，”罗洛夫斯说。
Three-fourths of all container ships traveling from Asia to Europe arrived late in February, according to Sea-Intelligence, a research company in Copenhagen. Even a few days of disruption in the Suez could exacerbate that situation.
根据位于哥本哈根的研究公司Sea-Intelligence的分析，从亚洲运抵欧洲的集装箱船中，有四分之三是在2月末到达的。即使苏伊士运河的混乱只持续几天，也可能使情况恶化。
If the Suez remains clogged for more than a few days, the stakes would rise drastically. Ships now stuck in the canal will find it difficult to turn around and pursue other routes given the narrowness of the channel.
如果苏伊士运河的堵塞超过几天时间，风险将大大增加。现在被困在运河里的船将会发现，由于海峡狭窄，它们很难调转方向，走别的路线。
Those now en route to the Suez may opt to head south and navigate around Africa, adding weeks to their journeys and burning additional fuel — a cost ultimately borne by consumers.
正在前往苏伊士运河的船可能会选择向南航行，绕过非洲，这将导致它们航程增加数周，消耗额外的燃料——这一成本最终将由消费者承担。
Whenever ships again move through the canal, they are likely to arrive at busy ports all at once, forcing many to wait before they can unload — an additional delay.
不管被困的船何时能再次通过运河，它们可能会同时抵达繁忙的港口，这将迫使许多船在卸货前干等，又是一次额外的延误。
“This could make a really bad crisis even worse,” said Alan Murphy, the founder of Sea-Intelligence.
“这可能会使一场非常严重的危机变得更糟，”Sea-Intelligence的创始人阿兰·墨菲(Alan Murphy)说。
