纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国重振经济为何这么难

In 2004, as China’s economy was emerging as a global force, a group of researchers started conducting nationwide surveys asking Chinese people if they were better off financially than they were five years earlier.

2004年，随着中国经济逐渐成为一股全球力量，一组研究人员开始在全国范围内进行调查，询问中国人的财务状况是否比五年前更好。

The percentage who felt wealthier climbed when surveyed five years later and again in 2014, when it reached a high of 77 percent.

在五年后的调查中，认为自己更富有的比例有所上升，2014年再次攀升，达到77%的高点。

Last year, when respondents were asked the same question, that figure dropped to 39 percent.

去年，当受访者被问及同样的问题时，这一数字降至39%。

The results of that survey, titled “Getting Ahead in Today’s China: From Optimism to Pessimism,” speak to a new reality. China’s economy is confronting a crisis unlike any it has experienced since it opened its economy to the world more than four decades ago. The post-Covid rebound that was supposed to bring the economy roaring back to life was more like a whimper.

这项名为“在今日中国领先一步：从乐观到悲观”的调查反映了一个新的现实。中国经济正面临着对外开放经济40多年以来从未经历过的危机。新冠疫情后的反弹本应使经济恢复生机，但看起来更像是雷声大雨点小。

A few years ago, Beijing resolved to ween its economy from its dependence on an overheated real estate market, a sector that had underpinned the savings of families as well as China’s banking sector and local government finances. Now, the property sector is in crisis. Developers collapsed, leaving behind huge debts, a trail of failed investments, unsold apartments and lost jobs.

几年前，中国政府决心让经济摆脱对过热房地产市场的依赖。房地产市场支撑着中国家庭的储蓄、中国银行业和地方政府的财政。现在，该行业陷入了危机。开发商倒闭了，留下了巨额债务、一系列投资失败、未售出的公寓和工作岗位的流失。

Chinese consumers, already prone to saving heavily, have become even more frugal. Businesses that endured the crippling impact of draconian Covid measures have cut salaries and scaled back hiring. Millions of college graduates joining the job market are facing long odds and poor prospects. And China’s population has shrunk two years in a row. In a country where the majority of people had only known the economy to grow rapidly and living conditions to improve, confidence is eroding.

本已经倾向于大量储蓄的中国消费者变得更加节俭。忍受了严厉抗疫措施严重影响的企业削减了工资，缩减了招聘规模。数以百万计的大学毕业生进入就业市场，却面临着重重困难和暗淡前景。中国的人口已经连续两年减少。在一个大多数人只知道经济会快速增长、生活条件会改善的国家，信心正在削弱。

Sherry Yang opened her business in 2006 making store signs, billboards and posters in Sichuan Province in southwestern China. Within a few years, local firms were placing so many orders that Ms. Yang had 16 employees and her printing machines were running around the clock.

2006年，雪莉·杨（音）在中国西南部的四川省开始做生意，制作商店招牌、广告牌和海报。几年之内，当地公司下了很多订单，雪莉·杨有了16名员工，印刷机昼夜不停地运转。

But the business has never fully recovered after Covid, she said. This summer, already sluggish demand worsened; sales in July fell 70 percent from a year earlier. Ms. Yang said it felt like every industry was struggling and no one was spending.

但她说，新冠疫情之后，该业务始终没有完全恢复。今年夏天，本已低迷的需求进一步恶化；7月的销售额比去年同期下降了70%。雪莉·杨说，感觉每个行业都在挣扎，没有人在花钱。

Ms. Yang is down to six employees, many of whom spend the day scrolling their phones because there isn’t enough work.

雪莉·杨现在只剩下六名员工，其中许多人整天都在刷手机，因为没有足够的工作。

“This has been the most difficult year since our opening,” she said.

“这就是开业以来最难的一年，”她说。

Consumer spending, which Chinese authorities have identified as an important driver of growth, remains weak across the economy.

被中国当局视为经济增长重要推动力的消费支出在整个经济中依然疲弱。

Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce firm, said sales in its domestic online shopping business fell 1 percent in the spring. China’s summer movie box office sales have dropped by almost half over last year, according to Maoyan, an entertainment data provider. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast in August that Chinese consumers would cut back on buying pork and shift to cheaper beef, because of economic pressures.

中国最大的电子商务公司阿里巴巴表示，其国内在线购物业务的销售额在春季下降了1%。根据娱乐数据提供商猫眼的数据，中国夏季电影票房比去年下降了近一半。美国农业部今年8月预测，由于经济压力，中国消费者将减少购买猪肉，转而购买更便宜的牛肉。

A number of foreign firms that once rushed into China to catch a rising tide are now retrenching. Last month, the beauty retailer Sephora, an arm of the French luxury group LVMH, announced that it was cutting jobs because of “the challenging market.” IBM is shutting its two research and development centers in China.

一些外资企业曾经急于进入中国，以赶上中国经济上升的浪潮，现在它们都在缩减开支。上个月，法国奢侈品集团路威酩轩旗下的化妆品零售商丝芙兰宣布，由于“市场充满挑战”，该公司正在裁员。IBM将关闭在中国的两个研发中心。

And policymakers trying to respond are hindered because they cannot rely on a principal fix that worked in the past. For years, local governments borrowed money for splashy development projects that kept people working and the construction sector booming — even if there wasn’t an actual need for that much infrastructure.

政策制定者试图做出回应时也受到阻碍，因为他们不能依赖于过去行之有效的主要解决方案。多年来，地方政府借钱进行大肆开发的项目使人们继续工作，建筑业蓬勃发展——尽管实际并不需要那么多基础设施。

But the debt from that borrowing, often funneled through opaque funding channels, has ballooned to more than $7 trillion. With investors already jittery about China’s financial system, the days of lavish borrowing for vanity infrastructure are unlikely to return anytime soon.

这些借款通常是通过不透明的融资渠道，债务已激增至7万亿美元以上。由于投资者已对中国的金融体系感到不安，为并无实际需求的基础设施大举借贷的日子不太可能很快重现。

The Chinese government has signaled its alarm by restricting access to data about the markets and economy. Last year, it suspended releasing youth unemployment figures when the number reached record highs. It started distributing the information again this year, with a new methodology that lowered the figures.

中国政府已经通过限制获取有关市场和经济的数据发出了警告。去年，当青年失业人数达到历史新高时，它暂停发布青年失业数据。今年，它重新开始发布这些信息，采用了一种新的方法，降低了数据。

To quell discussion of a major economic crisis, officials have warned some economists not to draw public comparisons between China’s problems and the collapse of Japan’s debt-fueled property bubble in the 1980s, which weighed on its economy for decades.

为了平息关于重大经济危机的讨论，官员们警告一些经济学家不要公开将中国的问题与上世纪80年代由债务推动的日本房地产泡沫破裂相提并论。日本房地产泡沫破裂拖累了日本经济数十年。

China’s debt is difficult to ignore, however.

然而，中国的债务问题很难被忽视。

While the housing sector’s collapse has caused much collateral damage, the risk of insolvency is minimized by China’s tightly controlled financial system. The danger is that the government could have fewer fiscal resources to deploy to keep things from unraveling.

尽管房地产行业的崩溃造成了很大的附带损害，但由于中国严格控制的金融体系，破产的风险被降到最低。危险在于，政府可用于防止事态恶化的财政资源可能会减少。

“The consequences for this fiscal crisis is less growth,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at the investment bank Natixis.

“这场财政危机的后果是增长放缓，”投资银行法国外贸银行亚太地区首席经济学家艾丽西亚·加西亚-埃雷罗说。

The economic uncertainty has left Chinese savers and foreign investors alike scrambling for safe places to park their money. Real estate prices continue to plunge, and Chinese stocks are underperforming compared with those in just about every other major country, including the United States, Japan and India.

经济的不确定性使得中国储户和外国投资者都在争先恐后地寻找安全的投资场所。房地产价格继续下跌，与包括美国、日本和印度在内的几乎所有其他主要国家相比，中国股市的表现都不够好。

Foreign funds have turned into net sellers of Chinese equities in 2024, which would be the first annual outflow since the data became available a decade earlier. Shares of around 180 Chinese companies have been removed from a critical stock market index since the start of the year, reducing the presence of Chinese firms in global benchmarks.

外国基金在2024年成为中国股票的净卖家，这将是自十年前有数据以来首次出现年度资金外流。自今年年初以来，约有180家中国公司的股票从一个重要的股票市场指数中被剔除，减少了中国公司在全球基准中的存在。

Investors have retreated to the safety of China’s bond market, driving up prices and pushing down yields. But even that comes with a potential risk. Yields collapsed so drastically that the country’s central bank is now concerned that it might leave banks vulnerable if interest rates rise in the future.

投资者纷纷退回到安全的中国债券市场，推高了价格，压低了收益率。但即便如此，也有潜在的风险。收益率大幅下跌，以至于中国央行现在担心，如果未来利率上升，银行可能会受到冲击。

Chinese investors have also piled into gold, helping drive prices to record highs.

中国投资者还大举买入黄金，推动金价创下历史新高。

China has forecast that its economy will grow about 5 percent this year, a faster rate than most major economies, although that may now be in doubt. A record-setting surge in exports, flooding the world with electric vehicles, batteries and household appliances, is fueling China’s economic growth. But the resulting glut of supply is also undermining the profitability of the high-tech manufacturing industries that China had hoped would soften the blow of its painful shift from real-estate-led growth, while drawing a backlash from a growing number of major trading partners.

中国曾预测其经济今年将增长5%左右，比大多数主要经济体的增速都要快，尽管这一预测现在可能存在疑问。创纪录的出口激增以及向世界倾销电动汽车、电池和家用电器推动了中国的经济增长，但由此导致的供应过剩也削弱了高科技制造业的盈利能力，中国曾希望高科技制造业能够减轻其从房地产主导的增长模式转型带来的痛苦打击。此外，这也招致越来越多主要贸易伙伴的反对。

For its part, China has downplayed economic concerns. In an April opinion article in state media, Jin Ruiting, director of the Institute of International Economics at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, said Western media and politicians continued to “make a fuss about China’s short-term economic fluctuations,” while “unilaterally exaggerating the problems and challenges of the Chinese economy.”

中国方面则淡化了对经济的担忧。今年4月，中国宏观经济研究院对外经济研究所室主任金瑞庭在官方媒体发表的一篇评论文章中表示，西方媒体和政客继续“拿中国经济短期波动数据大做文章”，同时“片面夸大中国经济存在的问题挑战”。

But fundamental problems remain.

但根本问题依然存在。

For a vast number of young people, there are not enough jobs. In July, China’s unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds jumped above 17 percent, from 13 percent in June.

对于大量的年轻人来说，没有足够的工作。7月，中国16至24岁年轻人的失业率从6月份的13%跃升至17%以上。

Winnie Chen graduated this summer with an auditing degree in Nanchang, a southeastern Chinese city. She took the civil service exam in March but didn’t land a job, competing against hundreds of applicants for every available position.

今年夏天，学习审计专业的温妮·陈（音）在中国东南部城市南昌毕业。她在3月参加了公务员考试但失败了，每个职位都需要与数百名申请者竞争。

She started looking for private-sector jobs. Ms. Chen messaged 1,229 companies on a job-seeking app and applied for 119 jobs in accounting, e-commerce, social media and other industries. After dozens of interviews, she said, she scored a few job offers — but all came with “absurd” conditions.

她开始寻找私营部门的工作。温妮·陈通过一个求职应用给1229家公司发了信息，申请了会计、电子商务、社交媒体等行业的119个职位。她说，经过几十次面试，她得到了一些工作机会，但条件都很“离谱”。

One job had a starting salary of $380 a month, which she considered too low to live on. Another company offered her a position, but said she would have to work on public holidays and not get any days off in return. She was offered a position she was told was for a makeup artist, but declined after learning she would actually have to work in a nightclub.

其中一份工作的起薪是每月约2700元，她认为这太低了，无法维持生活。另一家公司为她提供了一份工作，但表示她必须在公共假期工作，并且不能调休。她还得到了一个化妆师的职位，但在得知自己实际上要在夜总会上班后拒绝了。

“It feels like there are too many college graduates now, too many people but too few jobs,” Ms. Chen said, noting that many of her classmates were jobless. “The economy is in a bad state.”

温妮·陈说：“感觉就是现在毕业的大学生太多了，人太多了但是工作太少了，”她说她很多同学都没有工作。“经济不景气。”