纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国掀起消费降级潮价格战内卷中的经济低迷
October 12, 2023 6 min 1275 words
这篇报道突显了中国消费者中出现的降级消费潮，其中不断升级的价格战表明经济状况低迷。在咖啡店之间的激烈价格竞争中，新创立的品牌Cotti Coffee已迅速扩张，但这反映出了中国消费者在面对房地产危机和出口下滑等压力时，开始紧缩支出、增加储蓄的趋势。 对中国领导层来说，这种节俭趋势带来了担忧，因为他们希望鼓励人们增加消费以刺激经济增长。然而，尽管政策制定者试图依靠国内消费来取代基础设施支出和房地产投资的经济模式，但中国消费者的信心已经受到影响，支出开始减缓。 这一趋势反映了中国消费者的实际经济困境，以及他们对未来的担忧。中国人普遍削减了开支，更多地关注价格，选择便宜的产品，甚至放弃了昂贵的国际品牌。他们更加谨慎地进行消费，因为他们感到经济增长不确定，所以希望储备一些资金以备不时之需。 这一现象对于中国的企业和经济格局产生了深远影响。一些公司正在寻找机会，提供更便宜的产品和服务，以满足新的降级消费趋势。此外，降级消费潮也可能对中国的消费模式和政策制定产生重要影响，迫使政府寻求更可持续的经济增长途径。随着经济形势的不确定性继续存在，中国领导层需要思考如何平衡刺激消费与维持经济的稳定。
To understand today’s penny-pinching Chinese consumers, behold the vicious price war playing out among the country’s coffee store giants.
想知道如今的中国消费者是如何精打细算的，不妨看看该国咖啡店巨头之间愈演愈烈的价格战。
Luckin Coffee, a popular Chinese chain, rose to prominence and opened 10,800 stores by successfully undercutting Starbucks’s prices. But now, Cotti Coffee, an upstart rival started by the same two people who founded Luckin, is undercutting Luckin’s prices.
瑞幸咖啡是一家人气颇高的中国连锁品牌，以价格优势打败星巴克而声名鹊起，目前它已开设了10800家门店。但现在，瑞幸的两位创始人新创立的品牌库迪咖啡正在与瑞幸展开降价竞争。
Cotti has opened stores near Luckin shops, and it is charging — in some cases — 1 yuan, or 15 cents, less than its rival for the same drink. Earlier this year, Cotti began a campaign to lower latte prices to 9.9 yuan, or $1.38, prompting Luckin to match and pledge to maintain that price for two years. Cotti then cut latte prices again to 8.8 yuan.
库迪将门店开在瑞幸门店附近，出售比瑞幸价格更低的同款饮料——有时就少了一块钱。今年早些时候，库迪推出了将拿铁价格降至9.9元一杯的促销活动，迫使瑞幸跟进降价并承诺两年内不涨价。随后，库迪将拿铁价格近一步降到8.8元一杯。
The low-price strategy is working. In less than a year since its founding, Cotti has opened more than 5,800 stores, which sell an average of more than 400 cups of coffee a day per store, the company said.
低价营销的效果很好。库迪表示，在创立不到一年的时间里，该公司已经开设了5800多家门店，每家店平均每天卖出400多杯咖啡。
“We don’t want to see consumers hesitating over price when they want coffee,” Li Yingbo, chief strategy officer of Cotti Coffee, said in a statement.
“我们不希望看到消费者想喝咖啡的时候，因为价格而思前想后，”库迪咖啡首席策略官李颖波曾经这样表示。
The jostling over coffee prices captures an emerging trend among Chinese consumers who are spending less and saving more to counteract the impact of a slumping economy plagued by a real estate sector in crisis and falling exports. Last month, the hashtag “downgraded spending” was one of the trending topics on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.
咖啡价格战反映了中国消费者中的一股新趋势，为了应对由房地产行业危机和出口下降所导致的经济低迷，他们正在减少支出、增加储蓄。上个月，“消费降级”成为中国社交媒体平台微博上的热搜话题。
The shift to thrift is a worrying sign for China’s leaders, who need people to spend more. To stimulate growth, policymakers are banking on an increase in domestic consumption as an alternative to the boom-or-bust cycle of infrastructure spending and real estate investment that has left local governments and developers awash in debt.
对需要民众增加消费的中国领导层来说，这种节俭趋势是一个令人担忧的信号。为了刺激经济增长，政策制定者寄希望于国内消费增长，以此来替代基础设施支出和房地产投资，后两者的兴衰周期已让地方政府和开发商债台高筑。
“Chinese people actually don’t have a lot of money in their pockets, so the policy of relying on people’s consumption to promote China’s economy hasn’t been successful,” said He-Ling Shi, an associate economics professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “With people cutting back on spending, it’s even less likely to succeed.”
“中国人口袋里的钱其实并不多，所以依靠民众消费推动中国经济的政策没有取得成效，”位于澳大利亚墨尔本的莫纳什大学的经济学副教授史鹤凌表示。“随着民众削减开支，成功的可能性就更小了。”
For consumers like Chen Xixi, 33, a college administrator in China’s central Hubei Province, there is reason to be cautious. She is reducing her spending after her husband’s income from his job in the finance industry was cut by two-thirds after the pandemic and China’s regulatory crackdown.
对于像33岁的陈曦曦（音）这样的消费者来说，保持谨慎是有理由的。陈曦曦是中部省份湖北一所大学的行政管理人员，由于疫情和监管部门的打压，她从事金融业的丈夫收入减少了三分之二，因此她正在减少支出。
Instead of buying coffee at Starbucks, Ms. Chen said, she chooses between Luckin and Cotti based on “whichever is cheaper.” She used to use an expensive Japanese skin toner, but she switched to a Chinese brand that is 90 percent cheaper. She also stopped shopping at Victoria’s Secret for bras and underwear, choosing a no-name brand that costs $3 each.
陈曦曦说她不再购买星巴克的咖啡，而是根据“谁便宜我就喝谁”的原则在瑞幸和库迪之间做出选择。她以前总使用昂贵的日本爽肤水，但现在改用价格便宜了90%的中国品牌。她也不再去“维多利亚的秘密”购买胸罩和内衣，而是选择每件售价约20元的不知名品牌。
“The economic momentum has clearly petered out,” Ms. Chen said. “I don’t know what I want to save money for, but I just feel that having some money would make me feel more secure.”
“今年的经济形势还是很明显差了下来的，”陈曦曦说。“我也不知道我存钱要干什么，但是我总觉得有一些钱应该会比较有安全感。”
Starbucks said revenue at stores open more than a year in China rose 46 percent in the most recent quarter, although the average purchase amount fell 1 percent. In an August conference call with investors, Belinda Wong, the head of Starbucks in China, said it planned to remain disciplined with discounting. Luckin also had a big jump in revenue in the spring, up 88 percent from a year earlier, but the sales growth at existing stores slowed.
星巴克表示，开业一年以上的中国门店在最近一个季度的营收增长了46%，但平均客单价下降了1%。星巴克中国区负责人王静瑛在8月的投资者会议上表示，该公司将对折扣保持战略定力。瑞幸在今年春季的营收也迎来大幅上升，比去年同期增长了88%，但现有门店的销售增幅出现放缓。
When China did away with its “zero-Covid” restrictions in December, there was anticipation that the economy would rebound from pent-up demand. But confidence began to wane from a deepening real estate crisis and a steady stream of disappointing economic indicators. Consumer spending started to slow.
当中国去年12月取消“新冠清零”限制措施时，人们曾预期该国经济将从被压抑的需求中反弹。但随着房地产危机恶化以及经济指标持续令人失望，人们的信心开始减弱。消费者支出开始放缓。
From January to May, retail sales grew 9.3 percent from a year earlier. But growth slowed substantially starting in June and has not rebounded to previous levels.
今年1月到5月，全国商品零售额同比增长9.3%。但这一增幅从6月开始大幅放缓，至今仍未反弹至之前的水平。
In a conference call with investment analysts in August, Meituan, a food delivery firm in China, warned that the growth in takeout orders was expected to wane in the third quarter, partly because of lower demand from price-sensitive consumers, according to local media reports.
据国内媒体报道，外卖公司美团在8月与投资分析师举行的电话会议上发出预警，预计三季度的外卖订单的增长将放缓，部分原因是价格敏感型消费者的需求下降。
Even when pockets of spending picked up from pandemic lows, they remained far from pre-Covid levels.
即便居民消费相比疫情期间的低点有所回升，但仍远低于疫情前的水平。
During this year’s Dragon Boat Festival in June, a busy travel period, domestic tourists spent an average of $49 per person. It was 8 percent higher than last year but still 14 percent lower than in 2019, according to statistics released by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
根据中国文化和旅游部发布的数据，在6月的端午节出游旺季，国内游客人均消费约352元，比去年增长8%，但相较2019年仍低了14%。
It’s hard to get an accurate gauge of Chinese consumer confidence because Beijing responded to weak results by halting the public release of survey data this spring, discontinuing a series that it started 33 years ago.
如今已经很难评估中国消费者的信心，因为中国在今年春天停止发布这个从33年前开始从无间断的调查数据，这是北京当局应对疲软经济数据的办法。
Faced with an uncertain outlook, Chinese people are saving more. Household bank deposits increased by $1.6 trillion in the first half of this year, the biggest jump in a decade, according to data released by China’s central bank in July. The savings surge is especially notable because China’s banks lowered interest rates on deposits in early June, hoping to encourage consumers to spend or invest more.
Some Chinese businesses see an opportunity in the new frugal ways of consumers.
一些中国企业在新的降级消费潮中看到了机遇。
Pinduoduo, a discount shopping website, said revenue grew 63 percent in the first half of 2023 from a year earlier. The company’s growth rate is surpassing that of Alibaba and JD.com, China’s two-biggest e-commerce companies.
折扣购物网站拼多多称，该公司2023年上半年营收同比增长了63%，其增长率正在超越阿里巴巴和京东这两家中国最大的电商企业。
Colin Huang, founder of Pinduoduo and its American shopping site, Temu, saw his net worth increase to $31 billion in 2023 from $19 billion last year, according to the Hurun Global Rich List, China’s version of Forbes’s list of the richest people. The company’s U.S.-listed share price has increased nearly 60 percent in the last year.
在胡润全球富豪榜上，拼多多及其美版购物网站Temu的创始人黄峥的净资产从去年的1450亿增至2023年的2100亿元。该公司的美股股价在去年上涨了60%。
Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, a Chinese tea chain known for its iced coffee and bubble tea drinks that sell for less than $1, has opened 18,300 stores in the last three years to raise its total to more than 20,000, according to Canyan Data, a Chinese food industry data provider. Mixue’s founders saw a fourfold increase in net worth last year.
中国食品行业数据统计商Canyan Data的数据显示，以售价低于一美元的冰咖啡和珍珠奶茶为招牌产品的中国茶饮连锁品牌蜜雪冰城在过去三年开设了18300家门店，门店总数超过了2万家。蜜雪冰城创始人的净资产在去年增长了四倍。
This competition has forced Heytea, a Chinese beverage chain known for expensive milk teas, to slash its prices by up to one-third last year and lower all its prices to below 30 yuan, or $4.20. Last year it also declared that it “would never raise prices” no matter what its rivals did.
价格战迫使喜茶在去年降价三成，所有饮料价格都不再超过30元。喜茶是以昂贵奶茶闻名的中国饮料连锁品牌。喜茶去年还宣布，无论竞争对手做什么，他们都承诺在年内“绝不涨价”。
Wang Chao, 29, had to drastically pare back his spending because he is living off unemployment benefits after losing his job in May.
29岁的王超（音）在今年5月失业后只能靠失业救济金度日，因此不得不大幅削减开支。
He said he shopped mainly on discount sites like Pinduoduo instead of Alibaba’s Taobao, which usually has better quality but more expensive items. He noted that he bought fruit on Pinduoduo because it was cheaper, although he said the quality was not great.
他说自己主要在拼多多等折扣网站上购物，不再使用通常质量更好但价格更贵的淘宝。他说，在拼多多上买水果是因为更便宜，就是品质不太好。
Mr. Wang is having a hard time finding a new job in the logistics industry because many companies have gone out of business. He’s part of a large pool of unemployed people competing for the same few jobs.
由于大量企业倒闭，王超很难在物流行业找到新工作。他是中国失业大军的一员，他们都在竞争为数不多的工作机会。
After losing his income, he started cutting back to “avoid running short,” he said. “All I can do is reduce my consumption in order to survive.”
失去收入来源后，王超省吃俭用以便“细水长流”。他说，“为了维持生活就只能降低一下自己的消费。”