纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国是如何在太阳能领域称霸世界的

China unleashed the full might of its solar energy industry last year. It installed more solar panels than the United States has in its history. It cut the wholesale price of panels it sells by nearly half. And its exports of fully assembled solar panels climbed 38 percent while its exports of key components almost doubled.

去年，中国的太阳能产业大爆发，一年安装的太阳能电池板就比美国有史以来的总和还要多。它还把电池板的批发价降低了近一半。中国出口的完全组装好的太阳能电池板增长了38%，关键零部件的出口量几乎翻了一番。

Get ready for an even bigger display of China’s solar energy dominance.

准备迎接中国太阳能主导地位更大的展示吧。

While the United States and Europe are trying to revive renewable energy production and help companies fend off bankruptcy, China is racing far ahead.

在美国和欧洲正在努力恢复可再生能源生产，帮助企业避免破产的时候，中国已经遥遥领先。

At the annual session of China’s legislature this week, Premier Li Qiang, the country’s second-highest official after Xi Jinping, announced that the country would accelerate the construction of solar panel farms as well as wind and hydroelectric projects.

在本周举行的全国人民代表大会年度会议上，位置仅次于习近平的中国二号官员国务院总理李强宣布，中国将加快光伏发电厂以及风电和水电项目的建设。

With China’s economy stumbling, the ramped-up spending on renewable energy, mainly solar, is a cornerstone of a big bet on emerging technologies. China’s leaders say that a “new trio” of industries — solar panels, electric cars and lithium batteries — has replaced an “old trio” of clothing, furniture and appliances.

中国的经济已陷入困境，增加对可再生能源（主要是太阳能）的投资是中国对新兴技术下大赌注的一个重要部分。中国领导人说，太阳能电池、电动汽车、锂电池为代表的“新三样”已取代了服装、家具、家电为代表的“老三样”。

The goal is to help offset a steep slump in China’s housing construction sector. China hopes to harness emerging industries like solar power, which Mr. Xi likes to describe as “new productive forces,” to re-energize an economy that has slowed for more than a decade.

发展“新三样”产业的目标是帮助抵消中国房地产行业的急剧下滑。中国希望利用太阳能等新兴产业（习近平喜欢将其称为“新生产力”）来提振增长速度已经放缓了十多年的经济。

The emphasis on solar power is the latest installment in a two-decade program to make China less dependent on energy imports.

对太阳能的重视是中国为减少对能源进口的依赖而实施的一项长达二十年计划的最新举措。

China’s solar exports have already drawn urgent responses. In the United States, the Biden administration has introduced subsidies that cover much of the cost of making solar panels and part of the much higher cost of installing them.

中国的光伏产品出口已引起了外界的紧迫反应。拜登政府推出了补贴计划，覆盖了太阳能电池板生产成本的大部分，以及更高的安装成本的一部分。

The alarm in Europe is particularly great. Officials are bitter that a dozen years ago, China subsidized its factories to make solar panels while European governments offered subsidies to buy panels made anywhere. That led to an explosion of consumer purchases from China that hurt Europe’s solar industry.

欧洲尤其感到警惕。让官员们愤愤不平的是，十几年前，中国曾为生产太阳能电池板的工厂提供补贴，而欧洲政府却曾为消费者购买任何地方生产的电池板提供补贴。这导致了消费者购买的中国产品激增，损害了欧洲的太阳能行业。

A wave of bankruptcies swept the European industry, leaving the continent largely dependent on Chinese products.

破产浪潮席卷了欧洲的太阳能行业，让欧洲大陆在很大程度上依赖中国产品。

“We have not forgotten how China’s unfair trade practices affected our solar industry — many young businesses were pushed out by heavily subsidized Chinese competitors,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in her State of the Union address last September.

“我们没有忘记中国的不公平贸易行为如何影响了我们的太阳能行业——许多年轻的企业被得到大量补贴的中国竞争对手挤出了市场，”欧盟委员会主席冯德莱恩去年9月在她的“盟情咨文”演讲中说。

The remnants of Europe’s solar industry are now fading away. Norwegian Crystals, an important European producer of raw materials for solar panels, filed for bankruptcy last summer. Meyer Burger, a Swiss company, announced on Feb. 23 that it would halt production in the first half of March at its factory in Freiburg, Germany, and would try to raise money to complete factories in Colorado and Arizona.

欧洲太阳能产业残存的企业目前正在消失。欧洲重要的太阳能电池板原材料生产商Norwegian Crystals已在去年夏天申请破产。瑞士公司Meyer Burger今年2月23日宣布，将于3月中旬前停止在德国弗莱堡工厂的生产，并会努力筹集资金，以完成在美国科罗拉多州和亚利桑那州的工厂建设。

The company’s U.S. projects could tap renewable energy manufacturing subsidies provided by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

这家公司在美国的项目能利用拜登总统的《通货膨胀削减法案》对可再生能源生产提供的补贴。

China’s cost advantage is formidable. A research unit of the European Commission calculated in a report in January that Chinese companies could make solar panels for 16 to 18.9 cents per watt of generating capacity. By contrast, it cost European companies 24.3 to 30 cents per watt, and American companies about 28 cents.

中国的成本优势难以对付。欧盟委员会的一个研究机构在今年1月的一份报告中给出的计算是，中国企业能以每瓦发电量16至18.9美分的成本生产太阳能电池板。相比之下，欧洲公司的每瓦成本为24.3至30美分，美国公司的约为28美分。

The difference partly reflects lower wages in China. Chinese cities have also provided land for solar panel factories at a fraction of market prices. State-owned banks have lent heavily at low interest rates even though solar companies have lost money and some went bankrupt. And Chinese companies have figured out how to build and equip factories inexpensively.

这些差异部分反映了中国的低工资。中国的城市还以比市场价格低得多的租金为太阳能电池板工厂提供土地。国有银行一直在以低利率向太阳能企业发放大量贷款，尽管有些公司亏损，有些已经破产。而中国公司也已找到了办法，以低成本建工厂并为其提供生产设备。

Low electricity prices in China make a big difference.

中国的低电价起了很大作用。

Manufacturing the main raw material for solar panels, polysilicon, requires huge amounts of energy. Solar panels typically must generate electricity for at least seven months to recoup the electricity that was needed to make them.

生产太阳能电池板的主要原材料多晶硅需要大量的电能。太阳能电池板通常需要发至少七个月的电才能弥补制造电池板所需的电能。

Coal provides two-thirds of China’s electricity at low cost. But Chinese companies are reducing costs further by installing solar farms in the deserts of western China, where public land is essentially free. Companies then use the electricity from those farms to make more polysilicon.

中国电力的三分之二来自煤炭，煤电的成本低。但中国企业正在通过在中国西部的沙漠中安装光伏发电厂来进一步降低电力成本，沙漠中的国有土地基本上是免费的。然后，公司用光伏发电产生的电力来生产更多的多晶硅。

By contrast, Europe has costly electricity, particularly after it stopped buying natural gas from Russia during the Ukraine war. Land used in Europe for solar farms is expensive. In the Southwestern United States, environmental concerns have slowed the installation of solar farms, while zoning issues have blocked permits for the transmission of renewable energy.

相比之下，欧洲的电力成本昂贵，尤其是俄乌战争爆发导致欧洲不再从俄罗斯购买天然气之后。欧洲用于建光伏发电厂的土地的价格昂贵。在美国西南部，有关环境的担忧放缓了光伏发电厂的建设速度，土地已划定他用的问题阻碍了可再生能源输电线的建设许可。

China’s coal consumption has made it the world’s largest annual contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. But the country’s pioneering role in making solar panels less expensive has slowed the increase in emissions.

中国的煤炭消耗使其成为世界上每年排放温室气体最多的国家。但中国在降低太阳能电池板成本上的先锋作用已放慢了温室气体排放量的增长。

“If the Chinese manufacturers had not brought down the cost of panels by more than 95 percent, we could not see so many installations across the world,” said Kevin Tu, a Beijing energy expert and nonresident fellow with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

“如果中国的制造商未曾把电池板的成本降低95%以上的话，我们不会在世界各地看到这么多的太阳能安装，”哥伦比亚大学全球能源政策中心驻北京研究员涂建军说。

Annual solar panel installations have nearly quadrupled worldwide since 2018.

自2018年以来，全球的太阳能电池板年安装量几乎翻了两番。

Some of the new solar farms generating electricity for polysilicon production are in two provinces in southwestern China, Qinghai and Yunnan. But much of the polysilicon is made in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. The United States bans imports made with materials or components manufactured by forced labor in Xinjiang, where China has repressed predominantly Muslim minorities like the Uyghurs.

一些为多晶硅生产发电的新光伏发电厂位于中国西部的两个省份：青海和云南。但多晶硅主要在中国西北部的新疆地区生产。美国禁止进口用新疆的强迫劳动生产的材料或零部件制成的产品，中国在新疆压制维吾尔族等穆斯林少数民族。

That has led the United States to block some shipments of solar panels from China, while the European Union has been considering similar action.

这已导致美国阻止了一些来自中国的太阳能电池板进入美国，而欧盟也一直在考虑采取类似的行动。

Chinese companies increasingly do the initial, high-value stages of solar panel manufacturing in China, and then ship the components to overseas factories for final assembly. This allows the shipments to avoid trade barriers, like tariffs imposed on many Chinese imports by President Donald J. Trump. Several of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturers are building final assembly plants in the United States to tap subsidies offered as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

中国企业越来越多地在中国进行太阳能电池板制造的初始高价值阶段，然后将组件运到海外的工厂进行最终组装。这使得产品能避免贸易壁垒，例如特朗普总统对许多中国进口产品征收的关税。中国的几家最大太阳能电池板制造商正在美国建最终组装厂，以利用《通货膨胀削减法案》提供的补贴。

The law includes extensive subsidies to revive the American solar panel industry, which almost completely collapsed a decade ago in the face of low-cost imports from China. But building an industry that can stand on its own will be difficult.

这项法律包括为重振美国太阳能电池板行业提供大量补贴，十年前，美国的太阳能电池板行业在来自中国的低成本进口产品面前几乎全部崩溃。但建立起一个能自立的产业将是困难的。

China produces practically all of the world’s equipment for making solar panels, and almost all of the supply of every component of solar panels, from wafers to special glass.

中国生产世界上几乎所有用于制造太阳能电池板的设备，供应几乎所有太阳能电池板所需的组件，从晶片到特种玻璃。

“There is know-how to it, and it’s all in China,” said Ocean Yuan, the chief executive of Grape Solar, a company in Eugene, Ore., that works with Chinese solar companies that are setting up assembly operations in the United States.

“这方面的专业技术都在中国，”俄勒冈州尤金市Grape Solar公司的首席执行官袁海洋说，该公司与正在美国开展组装业务的中国太阳能公司有合作。

That know-how used to be in the United States. As recently as 2010, Chinese producers of solar panels relied mainly on imported equipment, and faced long and costly delays if anything broke down.

那些专业技术曾经在美国。近在2010年，中国的太阳能电池板生产商们还主要依赖进口设备，一旦设备出现故障，生产会面临长时间且代价高昂的延误。

“It took days or weeks to get replacement parts and engineers,” said Frank Haugwitz, a longtime solar energy consultant specializing in the Chinese industry.

“需要几天或几周的时间才能替换零件和请到工程师，”在太阳能行业长期从事咨询工作的弗兰克·豪格维茨说，他专门研究中国的太阳能行业。

In 2010, Applied Materials, a Silicon Valley company, built two extensive labs in Xi’an, the city in western China famous for terra-cotta warriors. Each lab was the size of two football fields. They were intended to do final testing for assembly lines with robots that could churn out solar panels with practically no human labor.

2010年，硅谷的应用材料公司在中国西部以兵马俑闻名的城市西安建了两个规模很大的实验室。每个实验室都有两个足球场那么大。实验室的目的是对机器人装配线进行最终测试，如果成功，就能在几乎不需要人工的情况下大量生产太阳能电池板。

But within several years, Chinese companies had figured out how to do it themselves. Applied Materials considerably cut back its production of solar panel tooling and focused on making similar equipment that makes semiconductors.

但中国公司在几年的时间里就搞清楚了自己如何制造生产设备。应用材料公司大幅削减了太阳能电池板模具的产量，将注意力集中到用来制造半导体的类似设备上。

Today anyone who tries to make solar panels outside China faces potential delays in installing or fixing equipment.

如今，任何试图在中国境外生产太阳能电池板的人都面临着安装或维修设备方面的潜在延误。

While Europe is mulling whether to follow the United States’ example with its own subsidies and import restrictions on solar products, Mr. Haugwitz said, “It will remain a challenge for Europeans to compete.”

虽然欧洲正在考虑是否效仿美国的做法，对太阳能产品实行补贴和进口限制，但豪格维茨说，“对欧洲人来说，与中国竞争仍是个挑战。”