[編譯] 川普的"中國靈感"有個虛構朋友

[kwei (光影)]

Trump's “China Muse” Has an Imaginary Friend
川普的“中國靈感”有個虛構朋友

原文：The Chronicle Review (高等教育紀事報)
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191015-navarro
(學術網路可直接閱讀，非學術網路註冊免費帳號後可閱讀)

By Tom Bartlett

Ron Vara has strong opinions. He thinks you’ve “got to be nuts to eat
Chinese food.” He doles out little scraps of wisdom, like “Don’t play
checkers in a chess world.” Vara is a military veteran and Harvard-trained
economist who made seven figures in the stock market by investing in
companies that do well during international crises. His contrarian savvy
earned him an ominous-sounding nickname: Dark Prince of Disaster.

榮恩‧瓦拉（Ron Vara）有著強烈的觀點。他認為你“一定是瘋了才會吃中國菜。”他賣
弄一些小聰明，例如“不要在象棋世界裡玩跳棋。”瓦拉是軍人，哈佛出身的經濟學家，
靠著在國際金融危機期間投資績優股，獲利七位數。他的逆勢操作為他贏得了一個不祥的
綽號：“災難的黑暗王子”。

Vara makes frequent cameos in the books of Peter Navarro, a White House
adviser who is often referred to as Trump’s “China muse.” Before joining
the White House, Navarro was a professor of economics and public policy at
the University of California at Irvine and the author of books like Death by
China: Confronting the Dragon — A Global Call to Action and The Coming China
Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won (FT Press). He’s
since become one of Trump’s most dogged defenders, telling CNN recently that
“I am never disappointed in my president.”

瓦拉在白宮顧問彼得‧納瓦羅（Peter Navarro）的書中經常客串演出。納瓦羅被稱為川
普的“中國靈感”。在加入白宮之前，納瓦羅曾是加州大學爾灣分校經濟學和公共政策教
授。 他是《致命中國：中共赤龍對人類社會的危害》和《即將到來的對中戰爭：在何處
戰鬥以及如何獲勝》等書的作者。他一直是川普最頑強的捍衛者之一，他最近對CNN表示
：“我從未對總統感到失望。”

Trump seems to have faith in Navarro, too. The Wall Street Journal reported
in August that when the president decided to impose tariffs on China, the
only adviser in favor of the plan was Navarro.

川普似乎也對納瓦羅有信心。 《華爾街日報》 8月份報導說，當總統決定對中國征收關
稅時，唯一支持該計劃的顧問是納瓦羅。

China scholars and fellow economists tend to be less enthused. Navarro doesn’
t have a background in Chinese studies, doesn’t speak the language, and
reportedly made his first trip to the country only last year. Justin Wolfers,
a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan,
once wrote that Navarro “stands so far outside the mainstream that he
endorses few of the key tenets of the profession.”

中國學者和經濟學家對納瓦羅則不那麼熱情。納瓦羅沒有中國研究的背景，不會說華語，
據報導，納瓦羅去年才首次訪問中國。密歇根大學公共政策和經濟學教授賈斯汀‧沃爾弗
斯（Justin Wolfers）曾寫道，納瓦羅離主流很遠，遠到他並不認可該專業領域的核心
信條。

Tessa Morris-Suzuki views Navarro’s rhetoric on China with alarm. An
emeritus professor of Japanese and Korean history at the Australian National
University, she has been working on an essay examining the heated language
that Navarro employs, noting its similarity to talk of a "yellow peril" at
the turn of the 20th century.

泰莎‧莫里斯鈴木（Tessa Morris-Suzuki）震驚地察看了納瓦羅對中國的言論。她是澳
大利亞國立大學日本與韓國史的名譽教授，她撰寫一篇文章，研究納瓦羅所用的激烈言詞
，並指出該言論與20世紀初時的“黃禍論”相似。

In her research, she kept running across a name she didn't recognize: Ron
Vara. Navarro has quoted Vara a dozen or so times in six books, usually as an
epigraph before a chapter. In Death by China, published in 2011, Vara offers
this sweeping assessment of the country’s roughly 1.4 billion people: “Only
the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a
lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel.”

在研究中，她不斷遇到一個不認識的名字：榮恩‧瓦拉。納瓦羅在六本書中引用瓦拉的話
十多次，通常作為章節前的引言。在2011年出版的《致命中國》中，瓦拉如此評價14億中
國人：“只有中國人才能將真皮沙發變成酸浴，將嬰兒床變成致命武器，將手機電池變成
穿心彈片。”

So who is Ron Vara? He didn’t seem to exist except in the work of Peter
Navarro. The most information Morris-Suzuki could find came from Navarro’s
2001 book, If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks (McGraw-Hill). In that
book, which lays out Navarro’s plan for how to profit by paying attention to
bad news, the reader learns that Vara was a “struggling doctoral student in
economics” at Harvard in the mid-1980s, slogging away on a thesis about
utilities regulation.

那麼榮恩‧瓦拉究竟是誰？除納瓦羅的作品外，他似乎並不存在。莫里斯鈴木從納瓦羅
2001年的書《如果巴西下雨，買進星巴克》中找到了最多的信息。在那本書中，納瓦羅闡
述了如何通過注意壞消息來獲利的計劃，讀者了解到瓦拉是1980年代中期在哈佛大學的“
經濟學博士生” 。

Morris-Suzuki, now in full detective mode, sent emails to some colleagues at
Harvard, but no one could turn up any record of Vara.

莫里斯鈴木進入了全偵探模式，向哈佛的一些同事發送了電子郵件，但沒人能提供有關瓦
拉的任何記錄。

While Ron Vara appears not to have attended Harvard in the 1980s, Navarro
did. He was a doctoral student in economics who published research on, as it
happens, utilities regulation. Not all of Vara’s biography lines up with
Navarro’s (Ron Vara, for example, was a military reservist during the first
Gulf War, back when Navarro was a 40-something economics professor), but
there was enough overlap to arouse suspicion.

榮恩‧瓦拉在1980年代似乎沒有在哈佛就學，但納瓦羅當時在那兒。納瓦羅是經濟學的博
士生，他發表了有關公用事業監管的研究。瓦拉的生平並非都與納瓦羅的生平一致（例如
，瓦拉是第一次海灣戰爭期間的後備役軍人，而當時納瓦羅是一位40多歲的經濟學教授）
，但重疊之處足以引起人們的懷疑。

And there was another tip-off: “Ron Vara” is an anagram of “Navarro.”

另外還有一個提示：將“Navarro”的字母重組就得到“Ron Vara”。

I called the co-author of Death by China, Greg Autry, to find out what he
knew about the mysterious Ron Vara. Autry was a student of Navarro’s at
Irvine and is now an assistant professor of clinical entrepreneurship at the
University of Southern California. He was playfully cagey at first but
eventually came clean. “You’re not going to find Ron Vara,” he said. He
described Vara as one of a “number of Easter eggs” in the book meant to
lighten the tone. “We do try to have a little bit of fun,” he said. “If
anybody wants to not enjoy that, they’re welcome to.”

我打電話給《致命中國》合著者格雷格‧奧特里（Greg Autry），以發掘他對神秘的榮恩
‧瓦拉的了解。奧特里是納瓦羅在加州大學爾灣分校的學生，現在是南加州大學
clinical entrepreneurship學的助理教授。起初他說話吞吞吐吐，但最終說出真相。 “
你是找不到榮恩‧瓦拉的，”他說。他將瓦拉描述為書中刻意製造亮點的“諸多彩蛋”之
一。他說：“我們的確試著從中獲得一些樂趣。”“如果有人不想享受這一點樂趣，隨他
們便。”

Those who know Navarro well, Autry says, were fully aware that Ron Vara was a
phony source who often popped up in his books. He said Vara was Navarro’s “
alter ego,” an “everyman character” who dispenses cutesy business
aphorisms as well as dire warnings about Chinese food.

奧特里說，那些對納瓦羅非常了解的人完全能意識到，榮恩‧瓦拉是一個經常出現在他書
中的冒牌消息人士。他說，瓦拉是納瓦羅的“另一個自我”，是一個“路人角色”，他說
出俏皮的商業格言以及對中國食物的嚴厲警告。

Another of Navarro’s co-authors, however, was unaware of Ron Vara’s
fictional status. Vara is quoted in Seeds of Destruction: Why the Path to
Economic Ruin Runs Through Washington, and How to Reclaim American Prosperity
(FT Press, 2010), written by Navarro and Glenn Hubbard, a professor of
finance and economics at Columbia University and dean emeritus of the
business school. Asked via email whether he knew that Navarro had inserted a
fictional character, and whether doing so was OK with him, Hubbard replied “
No and no.”

但是，納瓦羅的另一位合著者卻沒有意識到榮恩‧瓦拉的虛構身份。瓦拉在《毀滅的種子
》書中被引用，該書由納瓦羅和哥倫比亞大學商學院名譽院長，金融與經濟學教授格倫‧
哈伯德 (Glenn Hubbard) 合寫。通過電子郵件詢問他是否知道納瓦羅插入了虛構人物，
並且對納瓦羅這樣做是否認可，哈伯德回答：“不，不。”

What does Peter Navarro have to say about his imaginary friend? I emailed the
White House press office and received a phone call from Navarro. While he
declined to speak on the record, he did send a statement in which he called
Ron Vara a “whimsical device and pen name I’ve used throughout the years
for opinions and purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact.”

納瓦羅對他的虛構朋友有什麼要說的？我給白宮新聞辦公室發了電子郵件，並接到了納瓦
羅打來的電話。儘管他拒絕正式訪談 (speak on the record)，但他確實發表了一份聲明
，稱榮恩‧瓦拉是“我多年來使用的異想天開的一種手法和筆名，用於表達觀點，以及用
於純粹娛樂，而不是事實的出處。”

He compared the Ron Vara character to “Alfred Hitchcock appearing briefly in
cameo in his movies" and wrote that it's "refreshing that somebody finally
figured out an inside joke that has been hiding in plain sight for years."

他將榮恩‧瓦拉的角色相比於“希區考克在他自己電影中的短暫客串”，並寫道這是
“有人終於理解了一個隱藏好幾年的圈內人笑話”。

The inside joke doesn't strike Morris-Suzuki as particularly funny. Maybe,
she said, Vara began as a whimsical device — though even that’s
questionable in books that purport to be nonfiction. But “once he started to
be used as a source of fear and loathing about China, and of messages which
readers are likely to believe about the dangers of various Chinese products,
the joke wore very thin,” she said. She was left  “wondering whether there
might be other invented sources in Navarro's work.”

這個圈內人笑話對莫里斯鈴木來說並不好笑。她說，瓦拉最初也許只是一個異想天開的手
法，儘管這個手法用在非小說類的書中都是很成問題的。然而，“一旦他開始被當作恐懼
和厭惡中國的消息來源，使讀者相信各種中國產品的危害，這種笑話就變得令人不舒服”
。她還“想知道納瓦羅的作品中是否還有其它無中生有的消息人士。”

Morris-Suzuki hasn’t stumbled on any more such sources, though she did
notice that another quote — “Import from China. Save money. Lose your life”
 — is credited to Leslie LeBon, about whom the book tells us nothing except
her name. A Google search reveals that LeBon is an architect who also is
Navarro’s wife.

莫里斯鈴木並沒有發現更多虛構的消息人士，儘管她確實注意到引用自一個名叫Leslie
LeBon的人的一句話 ：“從中國進口，錢省了，命沒了”。書中沒有告訴我們任何有關
這個人的事。谷歌搜索顯示LeBon是一位建築師，同時也是納瓦羅的妻子。

While it seems that no one picked up on Ron Vara before Morris-Suzuki did,
this isn’t the first time Navarro's books have come in for criticism.
Writing in The National Review in 2017, Kevin D. Williamson pointed to
uncredited anecdotes that veer close to plagiarism. He also noted a general “
sloppiness with sources,” such as citing a 25-year-old report from the RAND
Corporation on China’s involvement with Iran as if it were up-to-date.

儘管莫里斯鈴木最早指出榮恩‧瓦拉這個冒牌貨，但這並不是納瓦羅的書第一次受到批
評。凱文‧威廉姆生在2017年The National Review上的文章就指出納瓦羅近乎抄襲的事
跡[註1]。凱文還指出納瓦羅一般對引用消息的態度草率，例如引用蘭德公司25年前的報
告來當作中國與伊朗關係的最新報告。

[註1] The National Review 文章： https://tinyurl.com/yy34fght

Still, whatever their faults and fictions, the ideas in Navarro’s books
appear to be driving economic policy with the United States’s largest
trading partner. And the professor continues to have one very important fan.
When Navarro was brought into the administration, in 2016, Trump praised him
in a statement, saying that he had read one of the professor’s books on
China and was “impressed by the clarity of his arguments and thoroughness of
his research.”

無論有多少錯誤和虛假，納瓦羅書中的思想正推動美國制訂經濟政策對付其最大貿易夥伴
。納瓦羅教授仍然有一位非常重要的粉絲。納瓦羅於2016年上任時，川普在一份聲明中稱
讚納瓦羅，稱他讀過納瓦羅教授關於中國的一本書，“對他論據的清晰和研究的徹底印象
深刻”。

--
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※ 文章網址: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/IA/M.1573010960.A.9A6.html
推 sdhpipt: 哈哈哈 這個真有趣
推 os2CV: 他們活在夢中，並在現實世界裡努力把夢搬過來。
→ skyhawkptt: 對岸早有雷鋒!師夷之長技以制夷!以其人之道，還治其人
→ kwei: 這樣的學術人還能在白宮當高官，反映出的是美國政治的腐化。
→ skyhawkptt: 兵不厭詐!虛實難分!這不是對岸最愛玩老美的那套
→ skyhawkptt: 對岸玩的好叫實踐體現東方智慧精髓，反之則是西方
→ skyhawkptt: 政治的腐化!雙重標準令人費解，以為美國是吃素的繼續
→ skyhawkptt: 扮豬吃老虎後果堪虞....
→ hellwize: 雖然看起來很扯 不過好像不太意外
※ 編輯: kwei (129.110.242.26 美國), 11/07/2019 09:42:44
噓 cangming: 政府反中叫腐敗 人民反中叫民粹XDD
→ cangming: 到底是多愛習近平啊
→ skyhawkptt: 還有選擇性遺忘的千人計畫!留學生在國內求學被對岸騙
→ skyhawkptt: 到國外留學大規模作業代寫/考試作弊/偷搶學術研究欺騙
→ skyhawkptt: 國外學術界...到底誰的政治比較腐化？？？