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GUANGZHOU, China — The global economic downturn, and efforts to reverse it, will probably make China an even stronger economic competitor( ) than it was before the crisis.
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中国广州—全球经济下滑,并努力扭转这种局面,将可能使中国比在经济危机发生之前于其它经济竞争者相比变得更强大。 |
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China, the world’s third-largest economy behind the United States and Japan, had already become more assertive; now it is exploiting its unusual position as a country with piles of cash and a strong banking system, at a time when many countries have neither, to acquire( ) natural( ) resources and make new friends.
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中国, 排名美国、日本之后的世界第三大经济体, 正在变得更加自信镇定. 现在它正在利用它拥有大量的现金和强健的银行系统的特别地位,—在很多国家二者具无的时候—获得更多的自然资源和交友。 |
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Last week, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, even reminded Washington that as one of the United States’ biggest creditors, China expects Washington to safeguard its investment.
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上周,中国总理温家宝,甚至提醒华盛顿,做为美国最大的债权人,中方希望美国保障其投资。 |
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China’s leaders are turning economic crisis to competitive( ) advantage, said economic analysts.
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中国领导人们正在把经济危机转化为竞争优势。 |
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The country is using its nearly $600 billion economic stimulus( ) package to make its companies better able to compete in markets at home and abroad( ), to retrain( ) migrant( ) workers on an immense scale and to rapidly expand subsidies for research and development. Construction has already begun on new highways and rail lines that are likely to permanently reduce transportation( ) costs.
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中国利用其近六千万美元刺激经济方案,使它的公司能够更好地在在国内和国外市场中竞争,大规模地对劳工进行再培训,迅速扩大补贴规模用于研究和发展。新公路和铁路的建设已经开始,这样可能永久地降低运输成本。 |
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And while American leaders struggle to revive lending — in the latest effort with a $15 billion program to help small businesses — Chinese banks lent more in the last three months than in the preceding 12 months.
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当美国领导人正在努力恢复贷款-最新的努力显示有150亿美元的计划以帮助小企业之时,中国银行在最近三个月的贷款额比在此之前的12个月还要多。 |
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“The recent tweaks to the stimulus package indicate a sharper focus on the long-term competitiveness of Chinese industry,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a former China division chief at the International monetary( ) Fund. “Higher expenditures on education and research and development, along with amounts already committed to infrastructure investment, will boost the economy’s productivity.”
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“最近调整的刺激经济计划表明,中国企业表示更加注重的长期竞争力” Eswar南普拉萨德(国际货币基金组织前中国区主管)讲到,“更多的教育、研究与发展上的支出,以及致力于基础设施的投资,将提高经济的生产力。 ” |
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The international economic slowdown is also doing some things that Chinese authorities had tried and failed to do for four years: slow inflation( ), reverse what had been an ever-growing dependence on exports and pop a real estate( ) bubble before it could grow even bigger.
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国际经济不景气帮助中国政府达成过去4年来试图但未能实现的事情: 低通货膨胀, 逆转一直以来对出口的依赖的增长,在房地产泡沫更大以前刺破它。 |
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The recession( ) in most of the large economies in the world is inflicting real pain here — causing a record plunge( ) in Chinese exports, putting 20 million migrant workers out of their jobs and raising the potential( ) for increased and sustained social unrest. But as President Hu Jintao told the National People’s Congress last week, “Challenge and opportunity( ) always come together — under certain conditions, one could be transformed into the other.”
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全球大多数主要经济体的衰退正在造成中国的真正痛苦——造成了创纪录的出口大幅下降;使得二千万移民劳工失去工作; 增加了和持续的社会动乱的可能性。但是,正如上周在全国人大国家主席胡锦涛说的“挑战与机遇永远同时来临,在一定条件下,相互可以转化” |
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To that end, Chinese companies are shopping for foreign businesses to acquire. The commerce ministry is leading a delegation of corporate executives to Europe this week for the ministry’s first mergers and acquisitions trip; the executives are looking at companies in the automotive, textiles, food, energy, machinery( ), electronics and environmental protection sectors.
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为此目标, 中国公司们正在光顾和兼并国外的公司。本周,商务部正率领一个企业高管们组成的 代表团到欧洲;这是该部首次并购之旅。高管们光顾的企业涵盖汽车,纺织,食品,能源,机械,电子和环保领域。 |
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The government initiatives coincide with some immediate( ) benefits of the slowdown for China. For instance, air freight and ocean shipping costs have plunged by as much as two-thirds since last summer as demand has fallen.
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对中国而言,政府的主动出击正好与经济衰退的一些直接益处像吻合。必然,由于需求下降,空运和海运的费用自去年夏天以来已经下跌了多达三分之二。主动配合政府的一些直接好处是放缓我国。举例来说,由于需求下降,空运和海运的费用自去年夏天以来已经下跌了多达三分之二。 |
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Blue-collar wages, which had doubled in four years in some coastal cities, have fallen for many workers this winter, reviving China’s advantage in labor costs.
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在一些沿海城市,蓝领的工资在四年里增加了一倍。今年冬天,很多工人的工资已经减少,这重现了中国劳动力成本的优势。 |
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Unemployment has pushed down the piece rates that factories pay for each garment sewn or toy assembled. overtime( ) has practically disappeared.
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失业让工厂的每件衣服的缝制和玩具的拼装单位成本都下降了。 |
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Lao Shu-jen, a migrant worker from Jiangxi province who works at a blue jeans factory here, said that he earned $350 a month late last year but would be lucky to earn $220 a month this spring.
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Lao Shu-jen, 一个在某牛仔裤工厂工作的江西省流动工人,说去年年底时他可以挣到350美元/月,今年春天如果能挣到220美元/月就很幸运了。 |
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“There are a lot of blue jeans” piling up in the back of the factory with no sign of buyers, he said.
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“有大堆的蓝色牛仔裤”堆放在厂房后面,没有迹象会有买家,他说。 |
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College graduates and highly qualified middle managers, in acutely short supply a year ago, are now widely available because of layoffs. They are likely to stay that way as universities expand — although white-collar unemployment could pose a threat of social unrest: limited job opportunities for students contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago.
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大学毕业生和高素质的中层管理人员,一年前供不应求,因为裁员,现在到处都是。因为高校的扩招,他们很可能将保持(没有工作的)现状——尽管白领失业可能威胁社会动荡。
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Today some jobs are still available. Four days after a shoe factory closed here for lack of orders, laying off several hundred workers, there were four ads on the factory’s front gate from other shoe factories seeking to hire skilled workers.
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今天,还是有一些工作机会可以找到。一个制鞋厂因为缺乏订单而关闭,使得几百名工人下岗。四天后,该厂的正门上有四个广告,其他鞋厂正门寻求雇用熟练工人。 |
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Unskilled laborers face the greatest difficulty finding jobs. But with subsidies from Beijing, provincial( ) governments have embarked on large-scale vocational( ) training programs of the sort that the United States has discussed but not actually tried.
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无技术的劳工面临巨大的找工作的困难。但由于来自北京的补贴,省级政府已经着手开展大规模的职业培训计划, 那种美国一直在讨论但没有实施。 |
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Guangdong province alone, here in southeastern China, is quadrupling its vocational training program this year to teach four million workers engaged in three-month or six-month programs.
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在中国东南的广东省,今年把职业培训计划翻了两番,将对4百万劳工提供3-6个月的培训。 |
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The main comparable program in the United States, under the workforce( ) Investment Act, has been training fewer than 250,000 a year, although President Obama’s stimulus program provides funding that could more than double the number of American workers in training programs.
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美国与此相类似的计划,根据劳力投资法案,一年培训的人数少于25万人,尽管总统奥巴马的刺激计划提供资金,可以增加一倍的美国工人的培训计划。 |
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The Guangdong training programs are half in the classroom and half in the factory, usually the business that plans to employ the trainees. By increasing productivity, training programs can hold down corporate labor costs per unit of production for years to come.
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广东的培训计划是一半在课堂进行,一半在工厂进行,通常是那些有计划招募培训生的工厂。通过提高生产率,培训计划可以让企业的劳工成本在未来多年内保持低位。 |
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China’s huge training programs may also help preserve( ) social stability by keeping the unemployed off the streets, although Chinese officials deny that is their intention( ).
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中国庞大的培训计划,使得维持失业人员 不上街(示威),也有助于维护社会稳定,但中国官员否认这是他们的意图。 |
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Multinationals are cutting back less in China than elsewhere — and some are even expanding.
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跨国公司们在中国的裁员要少比其他地方—有的甚至在扩大。 |
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Intel is shutting down semiconductor production lines sooner than previously planned at older, smaller operations in malaysia( ) and the Philippines as it opens a large, new factory in Chengdu in western China.
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英特尔比以前的计划提早关闭了较老,较小的、在马来西亚和菲律宾的半导体生产线,同时它开张了一个大而新的工厂在中国西部地区的成都市。 |
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IMI Plc., the big British manufacturer( ) that manufactures items as diverse as power plant valves and brewery equipment, has just announced an accelerated shift of operations to China, India and the Czech Republic, after cutting its global work force by 10 percent since December.
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IMI公司,英国的大制造商,生产从电厂用的阀门和酿造设备等各种物件,在去年十二月将其全球员工数量减少10%之后,刚刚宣布的加快迁移到中国,印度和捷克共和国的行动。 |
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And Hon Hai, the 600,000-employee Taiwanese company that is one of the world’s largest contract manufacturers of products like the Apple iPhone and Nintendo Wii game console( ), has just increased employment by nearly 5 percent in China even as it cuts overall employment by 3 to 5 percent.
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Hon Hai——一家有60万名员工的台湾公司,是世界上最大的合同制造商,其产品包括苹果iPhone手机和任天堂Wii游戏机——虽然它削减整体将裁员3%-5%,但新近在中国新增5%的人数。 |
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Yet China’s economy still has weaknesses. Little is being done to shift the economy away from a heavy reliance on capital spending and toward greater consumption. The social safety net of pensions, health care and education barely exists, so Chinese families save heavily.
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但中国经济仍然有弱项。在把经济高度依赖于资金投入转化为更多消费方面做得很少。社会保障网络,比如,退休金,医保,教育等方面,都几乎不存在,因此中国的家庭都大量储蓄。 |
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And strict government policies on labor and the environment, imposed a year ago when China felt more confident of its economic strength, are prompting low-tech industries like toy manufacturing to move to other, less stringent countries.
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政府执行严格的劳动力和环境政策,——一年前开始实行时,中国对自己的经济实力更具信心——正在把低技术含量的行业,比如玩具制造业,推向其他的限制较少的国家。 |
| Top labor officials insisted during the National People’s Congress that they would resist suggestions from some Chinese executives that the new standards be relaxed. |
在全国人民代表大会上,劳动部高级官员坚持,他们将抵制一些中国企业高官提出的放松新标准实施的建议。 |