Enjoy Rendering!: Сборник текстов для перевода и реферирования. Батурина С.А. - 27 стр.

panies' working capital. The Chinese, unlike the Russians, are not en-                              Science and the Nazis
riching money launderers and tax havens. A large if unquantifiable
amount of capital returns to China, as foreign investment eligible for            Bullying by numbers
                                                                                  Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact (By John Cornwall)
tax breaks.
                                                                                  Mathematicians Under the Nazis
       Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution notes another reason
for the outflows: a huge increase in trade credit extended to foreign              John Cornwell’s account of the dilemmas faced by scientists and
(mainly South-East Asian) buyers of Chinese goods. Chinese firms            mathematicians after the rise of Hitler begins before the first world
have not traditionally got involved in export finance. That changed         war, when German science was at its peak. German speakers had won
when Asian turmoil threatened a collapse in Chinese exports. In the         more than half of the Nobel prizes in science, while extensive collabo-
end, exports reportedly grew by 0,5 % in 1998. That good performance        ration with industry led to profitable development of soaps, fertilisers,
is explained, says Mr Lardy, by the extension of trade credits and by       pharmaceuticals, dyes and other products. The war had opened a period
cooking of the books by government statisticians.                           of difficulty for the scientific community, but in the late 1925 German
       It will be months before statistics are published for this year's    science began to recover its prestige. This was destroyed by the rise of
capital account, just possibly, outflows may be lessening. Trade credits    National Socialism.
might be being paid back; the government's anti-smuggling campaign                 After Hitler came to power in 1933, Jewish scientists were dis-
may succeed. Fewer smuggled imports means less hard currency                missed en masse from their jobs. Hitler cared little for the damage this
stashed offshore.                                                           would cause German science. "If science cannot do without Jews, then
       But Mr Lardy argues against ending the capital-outflow scare.        we will have to do without science for a few years," he told Max
Trade credit may continue to be extended; and the level of eventual         Planck, a physicist. Indeed, half of Germany's theoretical physicists lost
defaults remains unclear. Capital outflows could thus remain high. The      their jobs, to the immense benefit of Britain and America, which
future for capital inflows, particularly FDI, is also uncertain. FDI may    gained a generation of talented minds.
not yet have dropped sharply, but this is mostly money committed be-               Some scientists supported the Nazis or used the dismissals for
fore foreigners took a grimmer view of China's economic future.             personal advantage. Empty positions were filled by junior colleagues,
       Meanwhile, huge current-account surpluses cannot be expected         usually without protest or delay. But could scientists opposed to Nazi
to offset capital outflows for ever. The export recovery taking place       policies retain their integrity and continue to work in Germany? Many
this year is weaker than September's 20 % year-on-year growth sug-          scientists chose to stay, and hoped to preserve German science for bet-
gests. That growth came on a very low base last year. The statisticians     ter times. Among them was Max von Laue, another physicist, who had
may not have to fiddle this year, but exports are unlikely to grow by       spoken bravely on Einstein's behalf in the early 1935 (and who is said
more than 5 % in 1999 as a whole: hardly stellar, given the recovery in     to have developed a habit of carrying large parcels under each arm, to
the rest of the region. With imports surging, the current-account surplus   avoid having to give the Nazi salute).
could tumble by nearly half. An export sector in difficulties and declin-          Other cases are more debatable. Mr Cornwell devotes several
ing foreign investment: it is no longer unthinkable that China's perenni-   chapters to Werner Heisenberg, whose wartime conversations with
ally growing foreign reserves, currently $152 billion, might shrink.        Niels Bohr have been famously dramatised in Michael Frayn's recent
And that concern about the yuan could rise.                                 play, "Copenhagen". Despite ample opportunity to leave, Heisenberg
                                                                            chose to remain in Germany and ran the German atomic-bomb pro-
                                                                            gramme. He made a poor director, and some have suggested that he in
                                                                            effect sabotaged the programme. Mr Cornwell sees no evidence for

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