纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英暴雨致中国北方农田被淹各地蔬菜价格飞涨

After weeks of drought, farmers in the typically arid agricultural belt in northern China were ill prepared for the torrential rain that inundated fields earlier this summer and decimated their crops of eggplant, cucumbers and cabbage.

持续数周的旱情之后，中国北方通常干旱的农产区的农民对今夏早些时候的暴雨毫无防备，农田被淹没，茄子、黄瓜和卷心菜等农作物几近绝收。

Farmers in the city of Shijiazhuang, 180 miles from Beijing, showed in a video posted to social media in late August how days of downpours and an overflowing reservoir had turned soil into sludge unfit for growing plants. Across the country, a shift in weather patterns has caught people off guard, with floods arriving two months earlier than usual in the south and then extending to northern and eastern provinces that are more accustomed to summer drought.

在距北京290公里的石家庄，农民在8月下旬把一段视频发到了社交媒体上，视频中可以看到，连日暴雨加上水库溢水，将土地变成不适宜种植的烂泥田。全国各地天气模式的变化让人措手不及，洪水比往常早了两个月来到南方，然后蔓延到夏季往往干旱的北方和东部省份。

The prices of many vegetables nationwide rocketed, some by up to 40 percent, reaching their highest level in five years and hitting the pocketbooks of consumers who already face hard spending choices as China’s economy has slowed.

全国各地许多蔬菜品种的价格飞涨，有些涨幅达到了40%，为五年来的最高水平，令消费者大呼吃不消，由于中国经济的放缓，他们本来已经捉襟见肘。

The extreme weather is a challenge not only for China’s people: The country’s leaders attach great importance to ensuring they can feed its 1.4 billion-person population, seen as necessary for ensuring social stability. They also want people to spend more on consumer goods to boost the sluggish broader economy, rather than paying higher prices for staples such as food.

极端天气不仅对中国人民来说是挑战：中国领导人十分重视14亿人口的粮食供应问题，将其视为维护社会稳定的必要条件。中国领导人还想让人民增加消费品支出，以提振低迷的整体经济，而不是在食物等必不可少的支出上花更多的钱。

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, held an emergency meeting of his cabinet in late July to discuss the flooding and its toll on the people. He had a clear message, state media reported: Keep agricultural losses to a minimum and ensure food security. Other senior leaders, including the premier Li Qiang, who is more often photographed in factories and halls of power, made rare visits to shelters and inspected flood-control projects, calling on local officials to step up.

中国领导人习近平已在7月下旬紧急召开政治局常务委员会会议，部署防洪救灾工作。据官方媒体的报道，习近平传达了一个明确信息：最大程度减少农业损失，保障国家粮食安全。其他高级领导人也呼吁地方官员加大工作力度，包括更多出现在视察工厂和政府机关新闻中的总理李强，也罕见地出现在视察救灾和防洪设施的报道中。

While climate change is upending food supply chains everywhere, it is a particularly sensitive issue in China, where famines have historically led to unrest, and leaders have long made food security a policy priority. The latest flooding is a reminder of how even the ruling Communist Party struggles to tame the unpredictable weather gods.

气候变化正在颠覆世界各地的粮食供应链，这个问题在中国尤其敏感，历史上，中国曾因饥荒引发动乱，因此国家领导人长期以来把粮食安全作为一个政策重点。最近的洪水提醒人们，即使是执政的中共也难以驯服不可预测的天气。

The stakes are high: China is already the world’s largest food importer and needs to feed almost one-sixth of the world’s population with less than one-tenth of the world’s arable land, which has shrunk and degraded with heavy fertilizer use and pollution. The ranks of farmers have thinned out, with generations of people moving into towns and cities in pursuit of better wages.

这件事干系重大：中国已是世界上最大的粮食进口国，需要用不到世界十分之一的可耕地来养活近世界六分之一的人口，而由于大量使用化肥和环境污染，中国可耕地的面积已缩小、并正在退化。务农人口也已减少，一代又一代的农民为了追求更高的工资正在向城镇迁移。

Add extreme weather to the list of challenges. More rivers flooded this year than any other since records in China began in 1998, the Ministry of Water Resources said in August. The country this year also recorded its hottest July since at least 1961.

极端天气已经成为又一项挑战。据中国水利部截止7月底的数据，今年江河发生的洪水数量是自1998年有资料统计记录以来最多的。此外今年还录得至少是自1961年以来最热的7月。

Weather phenomena are expected to become more frequent. While China has made huge investments in updating dams and putting in place warning systems for impending weather events, that money has mostly gone into areas where such events are predictable. Officials now need to be more nimble to keep pace with weather changes in other areas.

这种天气现象预计将变得更加频繁。虽然中国在水坝现代化以及为即将发生的天气事件建立预警系统方面已投入了巨额资金，但大多投到了这类事件较可预测的地区。官员们现在需要更机敏地行动，这样才能跟得上其它地区天气变化的步伐。

“Climate change is another motivating factor for China to focus on food security,” said Darin Friedrichs, the agriculture market research director at Sitonia Consulting. “A common idea in state media and official speeches is the idea that, given its size, China cannot rely on other countries to feed it through imports.”

“气候变化是中国关注粮食安全的另一个动机，”锡索尼亚咨询公司的农业市场研究主管达林·弗里德里斯说。“官媒报道和官员讲话中一个常见的看法是，由于人口太多，中国不能依赖从其它国家进口来满足粮食需求。”

China suffered more than $10 billion in losses from natural disasters in July, some 90 percent of which was caused by heavy rain and floods, the Ministry of Emergency Management reported, while nearly six million acres of crops were damaged.

据中国应急管理部的自然灾害情况报告，今年7月的自然灾害给全国各地造成了285.9亿元的直接经济损失，其中约90%是暴雨和洪水造成的，农作物受灾面积约2420千公顷。

Consumers in China’s north and east last month complained in videos posted online by influencers about the price of eggplant, string beans and cucumbers. “It’s so expensive — who can even afford to eat them?” asked one buyer in Yan’an, Shaanxi Province.

在视频博主上个月发布的视频中，中国北部和东部地区的消费者抱怨了茄子、豆角、黄瓜的价格。“太贵了——谁吃得起？”陕西省延安市的一名买家问道。

The country has been struggling with slower economic growth since the pandemic and has at times seen a broad decline in prices, known as deflation. But when food prices rise, consumers have less money to spend on other items.

自新冠疫情暴发以来，中国已在应对经济增长放缓上面临困难，有时还出现了价格普遍下跌的情况，即所谓的通货紧缩。但当食品价格上涨时，消费者花在其他商品上的钱会减少。

“If food prices keep going up for an extended period of time, then it hurts household spending power” in an already sluggish economy, Zongyuan Zoe Liu, the Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a phone interview.

在经济已经低迷的情况下，“如果食品价格长时间持续上涨，家庭的消费能力将受到损害”，美国外交关系委员会研究中国问题的莫里斯·格林伯格高级研究员刘宗媛在接受电话采访时说。

Prices of some vegetables are historically volatile and have already fallen from record highs. Dr. Liu said she expects them to come down more after the rainy season.

有些蔬菜的价格历史上波动较大，而且已从最高价位回落下来。刘宗媛说，她估计雨季过后，价格会进一步回落。

But in the longer term, experts say, China’s leaders face more significant challenges. Not long after Mr. Xi came into power in 2012, he warned that the country should not grow complacent over its stable level of grain reserves, saying food security was “a red line that would trigger terrible consequences were it ever to be compromised.”

但专家们说，从长期来看，中国领导人面临着更为严峻的挑战。习近平在2012年上台后不久就警告说，中国要有稳定的粮食储备，在这个问题上不能掉以轻心。“耕地是粮食生产的命根子，”他还说，要“牢牢守住耕地保护红线”。

Ensuring food supplies has become part of Mr. Xi’s political brand. He has declared in numerous speeches the importance of revitalizing rural areas to build a stable base for agriculture. In earlier years, he pushed for a “clean plate campaign” to eliminate “shocking and distressing” squandering of food.

确保粮食供应已成为习近平政治特色的一部分。他已在多次讲话中强调振兴农村、为农业发展打下稳定基础的重要性。为了消除“触目惊心、令人痛心”的餐饮浪费现象，他在上台早期推出了“光盘行动”。

The distribution of water is historically uneven in the country, leaving the south prone to floods and the north vulnerable to drought in the heat of summer. The government invested heavily in nearly 8,000 water conservancy projects across the country, including diverting excess water from large rivers in the south to the northern part of the country.

中国历来就有水资源分布不均的问题。在夏季的高温期，南方易遭受洪水，北方易遭受旱灾。政府已对全国近8000个水利项目投入巨额资金，其中包括把南方大河多余的水引到北方的“南水北调”工程。

“The government is — reasonably — directing its investments in flood control infrastructure toward areas where floods have occurred historically,” said Even Pay, an agriculture analyst at Trivium China, a policy research consultancy. “But the problem is that as a result of climate change, those patterns are changing. That means the best infrastructure may be slightly in the wrong place, and some places that are experiencing serious floods now or likely to in the future are underinvested.”

“政府正在把防洪基础设施投资导向历史上经常发生洪水的地区，这是合理的，”从事政策研究的策纬咨询公司农业分析师裴西霞(Even Pay)说。“但问题是，由于气候变化，洪水发生的模式正在改变。这意味着，最好的基础设施也许建在了略微错误的地方，而一些正在经历、或未来可能遭受严重洪灾的地方存在投资不足的问题。”

Flood control in cities has sometimes come at the expense of rural residents. Last summer, nearly a million residents of the northern province of Hebei and villages neighboring Beijing had to evacuate after their towns were flooded when officials opened the floodgates to low-lying land surrounding the capital.

城市的防洪有时要牺牲农村居民的利益。去年夏天，官员们为了保护首都，打开闸门向首都附近的低洼地带泄洪，导致河北省北部和北京周边的村庄被淹，村里近百万居民被迫撤离。

For local officials, however, it is often impossible to protect both the larger urban population and those living outside. Officials will face more strategic choices about where floodwater is discharged as floods become more frequent in coming years, experts said.

但对地方官员来说，保护城市更多的人口与保护住在城外的人口往往是不可兼得的事情。专家们说，随着洪水在未来几年变得更加频繁，官员们将在向哪里排洪的问题上面临更多的战略选择。

In July, China’s financial ministry allocated $76.5 million to support disaster relief, with the bulk going into flood relief in provinces along the grain belt and in the south.

今年7月，中国已下达了5.46亿元农业生产防灾救灾财政拨款，其中大部分拨给了粮食生产省份和南方省份的抗洪救灾工作。

Teams of experts were dispatched to drain fields and teach farmers how to clean leaves of sludge. Farmers whose harvests have been ruined were given emergency relief seeds of hardier crops. But that might not be enough, according to Ms. Pay, the policy analyst.

政府已派专家组去指导田间排水工作，教农民如何清除叶子上的污泥。收成已被毁掉的农民得到了耐寒作物的紧急救援种子。但政策分析师裴西霞说，这可能还不够。

“Depending on where you are geographically by late August, in many regions of the country, there isn’t going to be enough time to grow a new crop before fall harvest,” she said. “And, in those cases, officials are looking at bailouts for the farmers that have been hit the hardest.”

“由于中国许多地方的地理位置不同，有些地方8月底播种新作物，秋收之前也许来不及成熟，”她说。“这些地方的官员们正在考虑为受灾最严重的农民提供救助的问题。”