纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国经济走入死胡同对全世界都是坏消息

On separate visits to Beijing last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen bore a common message: Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is flooding global markets with cheap Chinese exports, distorting world trade and leaving American businesses and workers struggling to compete.

美国国务卿布林肯和财政部长耶伦上月分别访问北京时传达了一个共同的信息：中国制造业产能过剩，使得廉价的中国出口产品充斥全球市场，扭曲了世界贸易，使美国企业和工人在竞争中举步维艰。

Not surprisingly, China’s leaders did not like what they heard, and they didn’t budge. They can’t. Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and slowing growth. The only way that China’s leaders can see to pull themselves out of this hole is to fall back on pumping out exports.

毫不奇怪，中国领导人不喜欢这些说法，他们没有让步。他们不能让步。多年来反复无常、不负责任的政策，过度的共产党控制和未能兑现的改革承诺让中国经济走入了国内消费需求疲软和增长放缓的死胡同。为摆脱困境，中国领导人能想到的唯一办法就是重新扩大出口。

That means a number of things are likely to happen, none of them good. The tide of Chinese exports will continue, tensions with the United States and other trading partners will grow, China’s people will become increasingly unhappy with their gloomy economic prospects and anxious Communist Party leaders will respond with more repression.

这可能意味着很多事情，但是没有一件是好事。中国出口的浪潮将会继续，与美国和其他贸易伙伴的紧张关系将会加剧，中国民众将对黯淡的经济前景越来越不满，焦虑的共产党领导人将以更多的压制作为回应。

The root of the problem is the Communist Party’s excessive control of the economy, but that’s not going to change. It is baked into China’s political system and has only worsened during President Xi Jinping’s decade in power. New strategies for fixing the economy always rely on counterproductive mandates set by the government: Create new companies, build more industrial capacity. The strategy that most economists actually recommend to drive growth — freeing up the private sector and empowering Chinese consumers to spend more — would mean overhauling the way the government works, and that is unacceptable.

问题的根源在于共产党对经济的过度控制，但这不会改变。它已融入中国政治体系，而且在习近平主席执政的十年里愈演愈烈。修复经济的新战略总是依赖于政府制定的适得其反的命令：创建新公司，建设更多工业产能。大多数经济学家实际上建议的推动增长策略——放开私营部门，鼓励中国消费者增加支出——将意味着彻底改革政府的运作方式，这是不可接受的。

The party had a golden opportunity to change in 1989, when the Tiananmen Square protests revealed that the economic reforms that had begun a decade earlier had given rise to a growing private sector and a desire for new freedoms. But to liberalize government institutions in response would have undermined the party’s power. Instead, China’s leaders chose to shoot the protesters, further tighten party control and get hooked on government investment to fuel the economy.

政府曾经有过进行改革的绝好机会，1989年，天安门广场的抗议活动表明，十几年前开始的经济改革催生了不断增长的私营部门和对新自由的渴望。但如果政府机构因此而实行自由化，就会削弱党的权力。中国领导人选择枪杀抗议者，进一步加强党的控制，并依赖政府投资来推动经济发展。 

For a long time, no one minded. When economic or social threats reared their heads, like global financial crises in 1997 and 2007, Chinese authorities poured money into industry and the real estate sector to pacify the people. The investment-driven growth felt good, but it was much more than the country could digest and left China’s landscape scarred with empty cities and industrial parks, unfinished bridges to nowhere, abandoned highways and amusement parks, and airports with few flights.

很长一段时间，没有人在意。当1997年和2007年全球金融危机这样的经济或社会威胁出现时，中国当局向工业和房地产行业注入资金，安抚民众。这种由投资驱动的增长感觉很好，但它远远超出了国家的承受能力，给中国留下了空荡荡的城市和工业园区、未完工的桥梁、废弃的公路和游乐园，以及航班稀少的机场。

The investment in industrial capacity also generated an explosion in exports as China captured industries previously dominated by foreign manufacturers — mobile phones, television sets, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles. Much of the Chinese economic “miracle” was powered by American, European and Japanese companies that willingly transferred their technical know-how to their Chinese partners in exchange for what they thought would be access to a permanently growing China market. This decimated manufacturing in the West, even as China protected its own markets. But the West let it slide: The cheap products emanating from China kept U.S. inflation at bay for a generation, and the West clung to the hope that China’s economic expansion would eventually lead to a political liberalization that never came.

对工业产能的投资则带来了出口的爆炸式增长，因为中国占领了以前由外国制造商主导的行业——手机、电视机、太阳能电池板、锂离子电池和电动汽车。中国经济的“奇迹”很大程度上是由美国、欧洲和日本的公司推动的，这些公司心甘情愿地将自己的技术诀窍转让给中国合作伙伴，以换取进入一个他们认为可以永久增长的中国市场。这摧毁了西方的制造业，而中国甚至还保护了自己的市场。但西方只是听之任之：来自中国的廉价产品在一代人的时间里让美国控制住了通货膨胀，西方还抱着中国经济扩张最终会带来政治自由化的希望，而这种希望从未实现。

To raise money for the government investment binge, Beijing allowed local authorities to collateralize land — all of which is ultimately owned or controlled by the state — and borrow money against it. This was like a drug: Local governments borrowed like crazy, but with no real plan for paying the money back. Now many are so deep in debt that they have been forced to cut basic services like heating, health care for senior citizens and bus routes. Teachers aren’t being paid on time, and salaries for civil servants have been lowered in recent years. Millions of people all over China are paying mortgages on apartments that may never be finished. Start-ups are folding, and few people, it seems, can find jobs.

为了给政府的投资狂潮筹集资金，北京允许地方政府以土地为抵押——所有土地最终都归国家所有或控制——并以此为抵押借款。这就像一剂毒品：地方政府疯狂借贷，却没有真正的还债计划。现在，许多地方债台高筑，不得不削减供暖、老年人医疗保健和公交线路等基本服务。教师没有按时领到工资，公务员的工资近年来也有所下降。全中国数以百万计的人正在为可能永远不会完工的公寓支付抵押贷款。初创企业纷纷倒闭，似乎很少有人能够找到工作。

To boost employment, the party over the past couple of years has been telling local governments to push the establishment of new private businesses, with predictable consequences: In one county in northern China, a village secretary eager to comply with Beijing’s wishes reportedly asked relatives and friends to open fake companies. One villager opened three tofu shops in a week; another person applied for 20 new business licenses.

为了促进就业，中共在过去几年里一直要求地方政府推动建立新的私营企业，结果可想而知：据报道，在中国北方的一个县，一名村书记急于遵从北京的意愿，要求亲戚和朋友开设假公司。一位村民在一周内开了三家豆腐店；还有人申请了20张新的营业执照。

When mandates like that fail to create jobs, the party monkeys with the employment numbers. When monthly government data revealed last year that 21 percent of Chinese youth in urban areas were unemployed, authorities stopped publishing the figures. It resumed early this year, but with a new methodology for defining unemployment. Presto! The number dropped to 15 percent.

当这样的命令不能创造就业机会时，共产党就对就业数字做手脚。去年，当政府的月度数据显示中国城市地区21%的年轻人失业时，当局停止了公布这一数据。它在今年年初恢复了发布，但采用了新的失业定义方法。嘿！这个数字猛地下降到了15%！

But Mr. Xi’s policy options are dwindling.

但习近平的政策选择正在减少。

With the real estate market imploding, the government can no longer risk goosing the property sector. It has begun touting a revival in domestic consumption, but many Chinese are merely hunkering down and hoarding assets such as gold against an uncertain future. So the government is again falling back on manufacturing, pouring money into industrial capacity in hopes of pushing out more products to keep the economy going. With domestic demand anemic, many of those products have to be exported.

随着房地产市场的崩溃，政府不能再冒险刺激房地产行业。它开始鼓吹国内消费的复苏，但许多中国人只是做长期打算，囤积黄金等资产以应对不确定的未来。因此，中国政府再次转向制造业，向工业产能注入资金，希望推出更多产品以保持经济增长。由于国内需求疲软，其中许多产品不得不向外出口。

But the era when China was able to take over whole industries without foreign pushback is over. Many countries are now taking steps to protect their markets from Chinese-made goods. Under U.S. pressure, Mexico’s government last month reportedly decided it would not award subsidies to Chinese electric vehicle makers seeking to manufacture in Mexico for export to the U.S. market; the European Union is considering action to prevent Chinese electric vehicles from swamping its market; and the Biden administration has moved to encourage semiconductor manufacturing in the United States and limit Chinese access to chip technologies, and has promised more actions to thwart China.

但是，中国能够在没有外国阻力的情况下接管整个行业的时代，已经过去了。许多国家正在采取措施，保护本国市场免受中国制造商品的侵害。据报道，在美国的压力下，墨西哥政府上个月决定，不会向寻求在墨西哥生产并出口到美国市场的中国电动汽车制造商提供补贴；欧盟正在考虑采取行动，防止中国电动汽车淹没其市场；拜登政府已采取行动，鼓励美国半导体制造业的发展，限制中国获得芯片技术，并承诺采取更多行动挫败中国。

China won’t be able to innovate its way out of this. Its economic model still largely focuses on cheaply replicating existing technologies, not on the long-term research that results in industry-leading commercial breakthroughs. All that leaves is manufacturing in volume.

中国将无法通过创新走出困境。它的经济模式在很大程度上仍然侧重于廉价复制现有技术，而不是进行长期研究，从而带来行业领先的商业突破。剩下的只有批量生产。

China’s leaders will face rising economic pressure to lower the value of the renminbi, which will make Chinese-made goods even cheaper in U.S. dollar terms, further boosting export volume and upsetting trading partners even more. But a devaluation will also make imports of foreign products and raw materials more expensive, squeezing Chinese consumers and businesses while encouraging wealthier people to get their money out of China. The government can’t turn to economic stimulus measures to revive growth — pouring more renminbi into the economy would risk crushing the currency’s value.

中国领导人将面临越来越大的经济压力，要求人民币贬值，这将使中国制造的商品以美元计算更便宜，从而进一步增加出口量，使得贸易伙伴更加不安。但人民币贬值也会使进口外国产品和原材料变得更加昂贵，挤压中国消费者和企业的利益，同时鼓励更富有的人将资金转移到海外。政府无法依靠经济刺激措施来恢复经济增长——向经济中注入更多的人民币可能会导致人民币贬值。

All of this means that the “reform and opening” era, which has transformed China and captivated the world since it began in the late 1970s, has ended with a whimper.

所有这一切都意味着，自上世纪70年代末开始改变中国、吸引世界的“改革开放”时代，黯然结束了。

Mao Zedong once said that in an uncertain world, the Chinese must “Dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere and never seek hegemony.” That sort of siege mentality is coming back.

毛泽东曾说过，在一个不确定的世界里，中国人必须“深挖洞、广积粮、不称霸”，如今，那种被围困的心态又回来了。