纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英农民工曾推动中国经济崛起现在他们已失去退路

When Zhang left his village in northeastern China a decade ago to work as a welder in a big city, jobs were plentiful. He earned about $50 a day and managed to save most of it.

十年前，当张先生离开西北农村到大城市做电焊工的时候，工作机会有很多。他每天能赚三四百元，还能设法把大部分都存起来。

But this year he has yet to find a welding job. After he moved to the southern metropolis Guangzhou in March, his only paycheck, roughly $820 for 40 days, came from selling weight-loss products on a social media app. He had to respond to customer inquiries at all hours. Now he’s not working at all and has run out of his savings. He pays $55 a month in rent for a tiny studio apartment but pinches every other penny. The morning we talked, he said he’d had a bowl of instant noodles, one of two meals he eats a day.

但今年，他还没找到任何电焊工作。3月，他搬到南方大都市广州后，唯一的收入来自他在一个社交媒体应用程序上销售减肥产品，40天大概挣了6400元。他必须随时回复客户的咨询。现在他完全找不到工作，也花光了所有积蓄。他住在月租约400元的狭小单间里，但依然要省吃俭用。我们谈话的那天早上，他说他吃了一碗泡面，每天就吃两餐。

Things wouldn’t be much better back in his village. Mr. Zhang’s family grows corn on a tiny patch of land, generating about $200 a year. His grandparents, both 74, still farm; each gets a pension of less than $15 a month. His father is a migrant worker in Beijing. His mother, unemployed, is looking for a job.

村里的情况也好不了多少。张先生的家人在一小块地上种玉米，每年收入约1400元。他的祖父母都74岁了，仍然在务农，每人每月领取的养老金不到110元。他的父亲在北京做农民工，母亲失业了，目前正在找工作。

At 28, Mr. Zhang, who asked that I use only his surname, is not married and does not plan to have children. “I don’t dare to think too far ahead,” he said. “I just want to earn some money to keep myself alive.” He said he would go home soon if he could not find work.

28岁的张先生要求仅具姓氏，他尚未结婚，也不打算要孩子。“太远就不敢想，”他说。“眼前就是挣点钱嘛。”他说如果找不到工作，他很快就会回老家。

Migrant workers were for years the secret weapon of China’s economic rise. They left their villages for the big cities to earn a living and send money home, even if it meant that they had to work long hours, lived in cramped dormitories and rarely saw their loved ones.

多年来，农民工一直是中国经济崛起的秘密武器。他们离开农村前往大城市谋生，把赚到的钱寄回家，即使这意味着他们必须长时间劳作，住在拥挤的宿舍，也很少能见到亲人。

They built China’s skyscrapers, highways and high-speed railways, even though some senior officials called them “low-end population.” Their cheap wages helped China become the world’s biggest manufacturer and make the country’s megacities hum.

他们建造了中国的摩天大楼、高速公路和高速铁路，但一些高级官员称他们为“低端人口”。他们低廉的工资帮助中国成为世界上最大的制造国，并让这个国家的特大城市充满活力喧嚣。

Now that times are tough and jobs harder to find, China’s roughly 300 million migrant workers, with flimsy social benefits, have little to fall back on. They don’t enjoy the same health insurance, unemployment and retirement benefits as city-born people, as threadbare as their safety net is. Once migrant workers pass their prime working age, they are expected to go back to their home villages so they won’t become burdens to the cities.

如今形势艰难，工作愈发难找，中国社会福利极其薄弱的约3亿农民工几乎失去了退路。他们享受不到和城镇人口相同的医保、失业和退休福利，哪怕后者的社会保障网也已满是漏洞。一旦过了劳动的黄金年龄，农民工就得返回家乡，不能成为城市的负担。

Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable groups in China’s economic downturn because real estate and infrastructure construction jobs are harder to find. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, conceded in a speech in 2020, “When the economy experiences fluctuations, the first group to be affected are the migrant workers.”

因为房地产和基础设施建设的工作更少了，农民工是中国经济低迷时期最脆弱的群体之一。中国最高领导人习近平在2020年的讲话中承认，“经济一有波动，首当其冲受影响的是农民工。”

He said more than 20 million migrant workers, unable to find work, had returned to their villages during the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, he said, nearly 30 million migrant workers had to stay home, and out of the reach of jobs, because of the pandemic.

他说在2008年金融危机期间，有2000多万找不到工作的农民工返乡。而在2020年，有近3000万农民工因为疫情被迫留乡，也没办法工作。

It’s hard to gauge how today’s troubles are affecting migrant workers. The national unemployment rate, as calculated by the National Bureau of Statistics, accounts only for urban unemployment, which stands at just above 5 percent and is believed to be underestimated. The average monthly income of migrant workers was $630 in 2022, or less than half the income of those working for the government. And that data is flawed because it includes only months when a worker has a job.

很难衡量当今的困境给农民工带来了怎样的影响。国家统计局公布的全国失业率略高于5%，但这仅代表了城镇失业率，而且也被认为是少计的结果。2022年，农民工的月均收入为4615元，还不到公务员的一半。而且这些数据也不完善，因为只包含了农民工能打工的月份。

Mr. Xi said in his speech that the mass return of migrant workers in 2008 and 2020 had not caused any social problems because they “have land and houses back in their home villages so they can return to cultivate the land, have food to eat, and work on something.”

习近平在讲话中宣称，2008年和2020年农民工的大规模返乡没有带来任何社会问题，是因为他们“在老家还有块地、有栋房，回去有地种、有饭吃、有事干”。

But the prospect of moving back to the villages is often bleak and even scary, especially for younger migrant workers who have spent their adult lives in the cities. They can see what awaits them. Their parents and grandparents may need to work until they physically cannot anymore and hesitate to seek medical care. They usually do not have unemployment benefits, and they cannot rely on their families, as some urban youths do, because their parents’ and grandparents’ pensions are “only enough to buy salt,” as another migrant worker, Hunter Ge, told me.

但尤其是对那些曾在城市长大成人的年轻农民工而言，回到农村的前景往往是黯淡甚至令人恐惧的。他们都能看到未来的样子。他们的父母和祖辈可能要劳作到身体无法再支撑的那天，生了病也不愿就医。他们通常没有失业金，也不能像一些城市年轻人那样可以依靠家庭，因为他们父母和祖辈的养老金“就能买个盐”，另一位农民工亨特·葛（音）这样告诉我。

“For Chinese, especially in the countryside, there’s no such thing called retirement,” he said. His grandfather is 90 and cleans pig manure for a farm every day in the central province of Henan.

“中国人没有退休，特别是在农村，”他说。他的祖父已经90岁了，每天还在河南的一处农场清理猪粪。

Mr. Ge left his village at age 17 and started working on construction sites and in factories. He had benefits during the six years he worked at Foxconn, a contract manufacturer for Apple. But when he was out of work this year, he could not get any unemployment benefits, which is not uncommon as local governments are deeply in debt. Now 34, he still works 10-hour shifts at another Apple contract manufacturer and lives in a dormitory.

葛先生17岁离开农村到工地和工厂打工。在苹果代工厂富士康工作的六年间他享受到了红利。但今年失业后，他拿不到任何失业金，由于地方政府负债累累，这种情况并不罕见。34岁的他如今在另一家苹果代工厂工作，每天轮班10小时，住在工厂宿舍里。

The morning we spoke he had just gotten off a shift that started at 7:30 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. He had worked for two weeks without a day off because of the demand for Apple’s newest iPhone.

我们谈话的那天早上，他刚刚结束从晚7点半到早7点的夜班。由于苹果最新款iPhone的需求巨大，他已经连续工作两周，没有一天休息。

He feels he cannot go home to his village and do nothing while his parents and grandfather are still working. “It’s just not appropriate,” he said.

他觉得在父母和祖父仍在劳作的情况下，自己不能回到村里无所事事。“ 确实不合适，”他说。

Most of those I spoke to asked for anonymity for fear of retribution from the government. No doubt, they are better off and more conscious about their rights than other migrant workers. If anything, most people from the countryside are more reserved about their conditions than the young people I interviewed.

我采访的大多数农民工都要求匿名，因为担心遭到政府报复。毫无疑问，他们的日子比其他农民工要好些，也更关注自身的权利。至少在谈论自身处境的时候，大多数农村人是比我采访的年轻人态度更保守的。

“My ideal country is one where the people live in peace and prosperity, where there is food safety, freedom of speech, justice, a media that can expose injustices, a five-day, eight-hour workweek for workers,” said Mr. Zhang, the unemployed welder. “If these can be achieved, I will support whoever is in power, regardless of their party or how long they govern.”

“我的理想国家是百姓安居乐业，食品安全，身心言论自由，司法公正，媒体能揭露不公，对劳动者能给予五天八小时工作制，”失业的电焊工张先生说。“如果能做到这些，无论是哪个人执政，哪个党派执政，执政多久，我都支持。”

The other reality facing migrant workers is that returning to their villages to earn money farming is not an option, as Mr. Xi said it was. There is not enough land waiting for them. They are referred to as “surplus rural labor forces” in China’s official and academic discourse for a reason.

农民工面临的另一个现实是，和习近平说的不一样，回乡务农赚钱的路是走不通的。可供他们耕种的土地不够多。他们在中国官方和学术论述中被称为“农村剩余劳动力”是有原因的。

“Only people who couldn’t find jobs would do farming,” said Guan, a migrant worker in the northwestern province of Gansu, “because income from farming is too low.”

“就是那些打不了工的人去种，”西北省份甘肃的农民工关先生说，“因为收入太低了。”

Mr. Guan, 30, worked as a real estate agent in Shenzhen for five years before moving back to his home village at the end of 2019. Now he operates excavator machines. He lives on construction sites in temporary houses made of sheet metal, works 10 hours a day and is paid only for days he worked, about $50 a day with no benefits.

30岁的关先生在深圳做了五年房产中介，2019年底回到老家，目前在工地开挖掘机。他住在工地用铁皮搭建的临时房屋里，每天工作10小时，工资按天数计算，每天三四百元，没有任何福利。

He wants to make as much money as possible while he is young. He also knows, based on his many WeChat message groups for projects he has worked on, that the number of construction projects is dwindling, and that some workers are not getting paid. Retirement, he feels, may never come.

他想趁着还年轻尽量多赚点钱。根据他加入的许多工地微信群里的消息，他也知道工程量正在减少，一些工人还被拖欠了工资。他觉得自己可能永远没办法退休。

“To be honest, deep down I feel lost,” he said. “All I can say is that for the time being, I’ll save as much money as possible. As for what the future holds, it’s really hard to say. I might not even live to see that age.”

“其实说心里话，整个人是迷茫的，”他说。“只能说是暂时自己先存钱，至于以后怎样真的不好说。可能都活不到那个年纪。”