纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英被取消的总理记者会中国改革时代的最后痕迹
March 6, 2024 7 min 1289 words
这篇报道深刻反映了中国政府取消总理记者会的举措，标志着中国改革时代一个重要制度的结束。30多年来，总理记者会是公众了解国家状况的唯一窗口，而此次取消被视为中国领导层对严峻经济形势的回应，以及对国际沟通开放度下降的象征。报道中指出，习近平的个人权力愈发集中，取消记者会将中国变得更加孤立和不透明，对经济不利。 文章分析了过去总理记者会的历史，强调了其对公众政治参与的重要性。取消记者会不仅让中国更像封闭的邻国朝鲜，也是改革时代最后的痕迹消失。在报道中，提到了一些历任总理的记者会时刻，突显了这一机制曾是了解中国内外政策和领导层思维的重要窗口。 文章还探讨了取消记者会可能的原因，包括当前经济挑战以及现任总理李强自我保护的可能动机。最后，指出取消记者会加重了中国的孤立，减少了对外透明度，对中国经济形势构成负面影响。整体而言，这篇报道在深入分析中突显了对中国政治制度和经济前景的担忧。
For more than 30 years, the Chinese premier’s annual news conference was the only time that a top leader took questions from journalists about the state of the country. It was the only occasion for members of the public to size up for themselves China’s No. 2 official. It was the only moment when some Chinese might feel a faint sense of political participation in a country without elections.
30多年来，中国总理的年度记者会是最高领导人就国家状况回答记者提问的唯一机会。它也是公众仔细打量中国二号人物的唯一机会。在一个没有选举的国家，这可能是一些中国人感受政治参与的唯一时刻。
On Monday, China announced that the premier’s news conference, marking the end of the country’s annual rubber-stamp legislature, will no longer be held. With that move, an important institution of China’s reform era was no more.
周一，中国宣布，年度橡皮图章立法会议结束后将不再举行总理记者会。藉此，中国改革时代的一项重要制度不复存在。
“Welcome to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” a commenter wrote on the social media platform Weibo, reflecting the sentiment that China increasingly resembles its dictatorial, hermitic neighbor. The search term “news conference” was censored on Weibo, and very few comments remained by Monday evening Beijing time.
“欢迎来到朝鲜民主主义人民共和国，”有人在社交媒体平台微博上发表评论说，从这番话暗示中国越来越像那个独裁、封闭的邻国。在微博上搜索“记者会”，不会有任何结果，截至北京时间周一晚间，仅剩下极少量的评论。
Although increasingly scripted, the premier’s news conference at the National People’s Congress was watched by the Chinese public and the world’s political and business elite for signs of economic policy shifts and, occasionally, high-level power plays taking place beneath the surface.
全国人大会议上的总理记者会虽然越来越照本宣科，但仍受到中国公众和世界政商精英的关注，他们希望从中找到经济政策变化的迹象，偶尔还希望能看到幕后的高层权力博弈的蛛丝马迹。
“As stage-managed as it was, it was a window to see how official China works and how official China explains itself to the Chinese people and to the wider world,” said Charles Hutzler, a former colleague of mine who attended 24 premier pressers since 1988 as a journalist for the Voice of America, The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.
“虽然经过了精心安排，但记者会是一个窗口，让人一窥中国官方的工作机制，以及它是如何向中国人民和广大世界解释自己的，”我的前同事韩村乐(Charles Hutzler)说道。自1988年以来，他作为美国之音、美联社和《华尔街日报》的记者参加了24场总理记者会。
The decision to do away with the news conference reflects the dire economic conditions China is facing and the leadership’s growing tendency to put the country into a black box. And there is the obvious takeaway: Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, is the only one in charge of a country of 1.4 billion people.
取消记者会的决定反映出中国面临着严峻的经济形势，以及领导层越来越倾向于将国家置于一个黑匣子中。还有一个显而易见的结论是：在这个有14亿人口的国家，中国最高领导人习近平是唯一的掌权者。
The demise of the news conference also erased the last vestiges of the reform era.
记者会的取消也抹去了改革时代最后的痕迹。
In the 1990s and 2000s, China had two major television events every year: the annual TV gala of the Lunar New Year and the annual news conference with the premier. (Think of the Super Bowl and the Oscars in the United States, and even more so because China had few TV channels and the internet was new.)
在上世纪90年代和本世纪的前10年，每年中国都有两个重大电视事件：一年一度的春晚和一年一度的总理记者会。（想想美国的超级碗和奥斯卡颁奖典礼，但由于当时中国的电视频道不多，加上互联网尚属新生事物，它们的影响力更大)
The first memorable political TV moment for many Chinese was in November 1987. The departing premier, Zhao Ziyang, mingled with foreign correspondents at a reception at the end of the Communist Party Congress. Chatty and smiling, he answered questions: Was there a power struggle within the party between the reformers and the conservatives? Was there freedom in China? Where was his dapper double-breasted suit made? Mr. Zhao, who was elected the party general secretary at the congress, even let on: “Personally speaking, I believe that I’m more suitable for the position of premier. But they all wanted me to be the general secretary.”
对许多中国人来说，第一个难忘的政治电视时刻是在1987年11月。在人大会结束后，当时即将离任的总理赵紫阳在记者招待会上与外国记者热烈互动。他侃侃而谈，面带微笑，回答了许多问题：党内改革派和保守派之间是否存在权力斗争？中国有自由吗？他那件挺括的双排扣西装是在哪里做的？在人大会上当选为中共中央总书记的赵紫阳甚至透露：“就个人来说，我认为我做总理更合适。但大家一定要我做总书记。”
Such a public statement by a Chinese official would be unthinkable today.
今天，中国官员发表这样的公开言论是不可想象的。
Mr. Zhao was later sacked for opposing the bloody crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989. He died while under house arrest. The transcript and the video of the reception show that he dodged the questions, except for the one about his suit. (The suit came from a tailoring house in Beijing called Hongdu, or Red Capital.)
The news conference with the premier was institutionalized in 1993 but didn’t become a must-watch TV event until Zhu Rongji, a sharp-tongued and good-humored premier, took the stage in 1998. Expressing his determination to be a good premier, he declared, “No matter if it’s a minefield or a bottomless abyss ahead, I will forge ahead without hesitation.”
1993年，总理记者会成为一项正式制度，但直到1998年，言辞犀利、幽默风趣的总理朱镕基上台后，它才真正成为大家必看的电视节目。他在表达自己成为一名优秀总理的决心时宣称：“不管前面是地雷阵还是万丈深渊，我都将勇往直前，义无反顾，鞠躬尽瘁，死而后已。”
That event was so popular that two people involved in it shot to national fame: a female journalist from a Hong Kong television station who asked a question, and a female staff member from the foreign ministry who interpreted for him in English.
那次发布会大受欢迎，有两个人因此一举成名：一个是提问的记者，她来自香港一家电视台，再就是为朱镕基做英语同传的外交部翻译。
Mr. Zhu’s successor, Wen Jiabao, didn’t make big news at his news conferences until his last one, in 2012. Then, he talked about China’s need for political reform — about the last time a top Chinese leader mentioned it — and foreshadowed the downfall of Bo Xilai, a political rival of Mr. Xi.
Li Keqiang, who served as premier under Mr. Xi for a decade and was sidelined by his domineering boss for much of the time, scored a point for transparency in 2020 when he said some 600 million Chinese, or 43 percent of the population, earned a monthly income of about only $140. His comments poked a hole in Mr. Xi’s claim that China was beating poverty. When Mr. Li died unexpectedly last October, many Chinese went online to thank him for speaking the truth.
For the most part, the premiers used the venue to take questions from the international media and to talk about economic and foreign policies. According to a 2013 article in a state-backed publication, at the first news conferences held by Mr. Zhu, Mr. Wen and Mr. Li each took nearly half the questions from foreign media outlets.
在大多数情况下，总理会利用这一场合接受国际媒体的提问，并谈论经济和外交政策。一份国家支持的刊物2013年的一篇文章称，在朱镕基、温家宝和李克强举行的首场记者会上，他们各自回答了近一半来自外国媒体的提问。
The premier’s news conferences, attended each year by as many as 700 journalists, were originally meant to provide interview opportunities for foreign media, allowing them to better understand China, the article said.
文章称，总理的记者会每年都有多达700名记者参加，其初衷是为外国媒体提供采访机会，让他们更好地了解中国。
Under Mr. Xi, the Chinese government has expelled and harassed foreign journalists, raided offices of multinational companies and gotten into disputes with big trading partners. Shutting down the news conference will make China more isolated and less transparent to the outside world. That doesn’t bode well for the economy.
在习近平的领导下，中国政府驱逐和威吓外国记者，突击搜查跨国公司的中国办事处，并与重要贸易伙伴发生争端。取消记者会将使中国更加孤立，对外部世界的透明度降低。这对经济来说可不是什么好兆头。
A possible reason for the cancellation is that China faces its most serious economic challenges in decades. But the country has gone through tough periods before, including the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and the global financial crisis in 2008. Premiers then didn’t have problems communicating the country’s policies with the public and the world.
取消的一个可能原因是中国面临着几十年来最严峻的经济挑战。但中国也曾经历过艰难时期，包括20世纪90年代末的亚洲金融危机和2008年的全球金融危机。当时的总理们并没有回避向公众和世界传达国家政策。
At issue is how much China, under the leadership of Mr. Xi, values open communication. Media and internet censorship is the heaviest it has been in decades.
问题在于，在习近平的领导下，中国还有多重视开放交流。现在对媒体和互联网的审查是几十年来最为严格的。
Many China watchers speculated that the death of the news conference could be an attempt at self-preservation by the current premier, Li Qiang. Mr. Li was Mr. Xi’s chief of staff in the eastern Zhejiang Province in the 2000s and owes his position to Mr. Xi.
许多中国观察家猜测，记者会制度的中断可能是现任总理李强自我保护的一种尝试。李强曾在2000年代担任习近平在浙江省的幕僚长，也是在习的提拔下得到现在的总理之位。
Since taking office last March, Mr. Li has minimized the stature and influence of his role. He flew chartered flights instead of the equivalent of Air Force One, which he is entitled to, making Mr. Xi the only one enjoying the status. He reduced the frequency of the meetings of China’s cabinet, which the premier presides over, from weekly to a couple of times a month. His portraits don’t appear on the website of the cabinet. Nor were they on the major news portals on Tuesday when he delivered the government work report, an annual rite for the premier. As usual, Mr. Xi’s headlines and portraits dominated those sites.
自去年3月上任以来，李强一直在尽量降低自己的地位和影响力。他乘坐包机，而不是他有权使用的领导人专机，这让习近平成为唯一享受这一待遇的人。他降低了总理主持的国务院会议召开频次，不再每周召开。他的肖像没有出现在国务院的网站上。周二，当他发表政府工作报告时，他的肖像也没有出现在各大新闻门户网站上，发表这份报告是总理每年的例行公事。和往常一样，关于习近平的头条新闻和他的肖像占据了这些网站的主要位置。
Mr. Li canceled his news conference, a commentator wrote on X, probably not because he lacks eloquence. “It was probably because Li Qiang felt that he would become the focus of the media at the press conference, overshadowing the brilliance of the General Secretary,” the commentator wrote, referring to Mr. Xi. “He hopes to forever remain as the shadow of the General Secretary.”
有人在X上评论道，李强取消记者会可能不是因为他缺乏口才。“大概是因为李强觉得，这个发布会上他成了媒体上的主角，掩盖了总书记的光辉，”此人写道，其中“总书记”指的是习近平。“他希望永远当总书记的影子。”