纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国经济遇到了大麻烦

In 2023, the U.S. economy vastly outperformed expectations. A widely predicted recession never happened. Many economists (though not me) argued that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment; instead, we’ve experienced immaculate disinflation, rapidly falling inflation at no visible cost.

2023年，美国经济的表现远远超出预期。人们普遍预测的经济衰退并未发生。许多经济学家（虽然不是我）认为，要降低通胀，需要多年的高失业率；相反，我们经历了无懈可击的通货紧缩，通胀率迅速下降，却没有付出明显的代价。

But the story has been very different in the world’s biggest economy (or second biggest — it depends on the measure). Some analysts expected the Chinese economy to boom after it lifted the draconian “zero Covid” measures it had adopted to contain the pandemic. Instead, China has underperformed by just about every economic indicator other than official G.D.P., which supposedly grew by 5.2 percent.

但世界最大经济体（或第二大经济体——取决于衡量标准）的情况却大不相同。一些分析人士预计，在取消为遏制疫情而采取的严厉“清零”措施后，中国经济将出现繁荣。然而，中国几乎所有经济指标都表现不佳，除了官方公布的GDP增长了5.2%外。

But there’s widespread skepticism about that number. Democratic nations like the United States rarely politicize their economic statistics — although ask me again if Donald Trump returns to office — but authoritarian regimes often do.

但人们对这个数字普遍持怀疑态度。像美国这样的民主国家很少将其经济统计数据政治化——不过特朗普若重新执政，我的答案恐怕就不好说了——但专制政权经常这样做。

And in other ways, the Chinese economy seems to be stumbling. Even the official statistics say that China is experiencing Japan-style deflation and high youth unemployment. It’s not a full-blown crisis, at least not yet, but there’s reason to believe that China is entering an era of stagnation and disappointment.

在其他方面，中国经济似乎步履蹒跚。即使是官方统计数据也显示，中国正在经历日本式的通货紧缩和高青年失业率。这不是一场全面的危机，至少现在还不是，但有理由相信，中国正在进入一个停滞和失望的时代。

Why is China’s economy, which only a few years ago seemed headed for world domination, in trouble?

几年前似乎还将要称霸世界的中国经济为什么陷入了困境？

Part of the answer is bad leadership. President Xi Jinping is starting to look like a poor economic manager, whose propensity for arbitrary interventions — which is something autocrats tend to do — has stifled private initiative.

部分原因在于领导不力。习近平主席开始变得像是一个糟糕的经济管理者，其任意干预的倾向——这是专制者惯做的事情——扼杀了民营部门的积极性。

But China would be in trouble even if Xi were a better leader than he is.

但即使习近平是更好的领导人，中国也会陷入困境。

It has been clear for a long time that China’s economic model was becoming unsustainable. As Stewart Paterson notes, consumer spending is very low as a percentage of G.D.P., probably for multiple reasons. These include financial repression — paying low interest on savings and making cheap loans to favored borrowers — that holds down household income and diverts it to government-controlled investment, a weak social safety net that causes families to accumulate savings to deal with possible emergencies, and more.

长期以来，中国的经济模式显然已经变得不可持续。正如斯图尔特·帕特森所指出的，消费支出占GDP的比例非常低，这可能有多种原因。其中包括金融抑制——对储蓄支付低利息，并向受青睐的借款人发放低息贷款——这压低了家庭收入，并将其转移到政府控制的投资中；薄弱的社会保障网络导致家庭积累储蓄，以应对可能出现的紧急情况，等等。

With consumers buying so little, at least relative to the Chinese economy’s productive capacity, how can the nation generate enough demand to keep that capacity in use? The main answer, as Michael Pettis points out, has been to promote extremely high rates of investment, more than 40 percent of G.D.P. The trouble is that it’s hard to invest that much money without running into severely diminishing returns.

消费者购买力如此之低的情况下——至少相对于中国经济的生产能力而言是这样——中国如何能够产生足够的需求来维持产能的使用？正如迈克尔·佩蒂斯指出的，主要的方法是促进极高的投资率，超过GDP的40%。问题是，投资这么多钱，很难不发生回报严重递减的情况。

True, very high rates of investment may be sustainable if, like China in the early 2000s, you have a rapidly growing work force and high productivity growth as you catch up with Western economies. But China’s working-age population peaked around 2010 and has been declining ever since. While China has shown impressive technological capacity in some areas, its overall productivity also appears to be stagnating.

诚然，如果像本世纪初的中国那样，在追赶西方经济体的过程中拥有快速增长的劳动力和高生产率增长，那么很高的投资率可能是可持续的。但中国的劳动年龄人口在2010年左右达到顶峰，此后一直在下降。虽然中国在某些领域显示出令人印象深刻的技术能力，但其整体生产力似乎也在停滞不前。

This, in short, isn’t a nation that can productively invest 40 percent of G.D.P. Something has to give.

简而言之，这不是一个能够将GDP的40%用于生产性投资的国家。

Now, these problems have been fairly obvious for at least a decade. Why are they only becoming acute now? Well, international economists are fond of citing Dornbusch’s Law: “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” What happened in China’s case was that the government was able to mask the problem of inadequate consumer spending for a number of years by promoting a gigantic real estate bubble. In fact, China’s real estate sector became insanely large by international standards.

这些问题至少在十年前就已经相当明显了。为什么到现在才变得尖锐起来？国际经济学家喜欢引用多恩布什定律：“危机酝酿的时间比你想得要长得多，而它发生的速度又比你的预想快得多。”中国的情况是，政府通过推动巨大的房地产泡沫，多年来掩盖了消费支出不足的问题。事实上，以国际标准衡量，中国的房地产业规模已经大得离谱。

But bubbles eventually burst.

但泡沫最终会破裂。

To outside observers, what China must do seems straightforward: end financial repression and allow more of the economy’s income to flow through to households, and strengthen the social safety net so that consumers don’t feel the need to hoard cash. And as it does this it can ramp down its unsustainable investment spending.

在外界观察人士看来，中国必须做的事情似乎很简单：结束金融抑制，允许更多的经济收入流向家庭，并加强社会保障网络，让消费者觉得没有囤积现金的必要。这样，中国就可以减少不可持续的投资支出。

But there are powerful players, especially state-owned enterprises, that benefit from financial repression. And when it comes to strengthening the safety net, the leader of this supposedly communist regime sounds a bit like the governor of Mississippi, denouncing “welfarism” that creates “lazy people.”

但也有一些强大势力从金融抑制中获益，尤其是国有企业。当谈到加强社会安全网的时候，这位被视为共产主义政权的领导人听起来有点像密西西比州州长，他谴责创造“懒人”的“福利主义”。

So how worried should we be about China? In some ways, China’s current economy is reminiscent of Japan after its bubble of the 1980s burst. However, Japan ended up managing its downshifting well. It avoided mass unemployment, it never lost social and political cohesion, and real G.D.P. per working-age adult actually rose 50 percent over the next three decades, not far short of growth in the United States.

那么，我们应该对中国有多担心呢？在某些方面，中国当前的经济让人想起上世纪80年代泡沫破灭后的日本。然而，日本最终很好地控制了经济减速。它避免了大规模失业，从未失去社会和政治凝聚力，在接下来的30年里，每个工作年龄的成年人的实际GDP实际上增长了50%，与美国的增长率相差不远。

My great concern is that China may not respond nearly as well. How cohesive will China be in the face of economic trouble? Will it try to prop up its economy with an export surge that will run headlong into Western efforts to promote green technologies? Scariest of all, will it try to distract from domestic difficulties by engaging in military adventurism?

我非常担心的是，中国的应对可能不会那么好。面对经济困境，中国的凝聚力如何？中国是否会试图通过出口激增来支撑其经济，从而与西方推动绿色技术的努力背道而驰？最可怕的是，它是否会试图通过军事冒险主义来转移人们对国内困难的注意力？

So let’s not gloat about China’s economic stumble, which may become everyone’s problem.

因此，我们不要对中国的经济下滑幸灾乐祸，这可能会成为所有人的问题。