【文章标题】：The end of an era for China’s economy 【文章标题】：中国经济一个时代的终结
【文章正文】： Photo by World Economic Forum via 图片：世界经济论坛，通过
Wikimedia Commons 维基共享资源
Zhu Rongji has passed away at the age of 97. He was not the only architect of the economic reforms that have made China a modern powerhouse — Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, and others were all important — but Zhu was perhaps the most skilled, versatile, and far-sighted. He presided over China’s greatest era of reform and opening up — 1991 to 2003 — and handled both macroeconomic and microeconomic policy with a skill that perhaps no other Chinese leader has ever matched. 朱镕基逝世，享年97岁。他并非推动中国成为现代强国的经济改革的唯一设计者——邓小平、周恩来、陈云等人都很重要——但朱镕基或许是最娴熟、最多面、最有远见的。他主持了中国最伟大的改革开放时期——1991年至2003年——并以或许任何其他中国领导人都无法比拟的技巧处理宏观经济和微观经济政策。
In many ways, Zhu was the man who really made China a capitalist country. The privatization of state-owned enterprises had begun earlier, but Zhu continued and accelerated it. He was the main champion of China’s successful drive to join the WTO, which supercharged China’s export industries and led to a massive wave of foreign investment; he also engaged in a deregulation program to lure foreign businesses to manufacture things in China. 从许多方面来说，朱镕基是真正让中国成为资本主义国家的人。国有企业私有化在此前已经开始，但朱镕基继续并加速了这一进程。他是中国成功加入世界贸易组织的主要推动者，这一进程极大地促进了中国的出口产业，并带来了大规模的外国投资；他还推行了一项放松管制计划，以吸引外国企业在中国设厂制造。
When the Asian financial crisis of 1997 led to a wave of bad loans, Zhu bailed out the banks, and growth quickly resumed. And Zhu also devised the most important tax reform in China’s modern history, transferring large amounts of local government revenue to the central government, while simultaneously letting local governments do things like borrow more money and sell more leases on land to fund their own activities. 当1997年亚洲金融危机引发一波不良贷款时，朱镕基对银行进行了救助，经济增长迅速恢复。朱镕基还设计了现代中国历史上最重要的税收改革，将大量地方财政收入转移到中央政府，同时允许地方政府借更多钱、出售更多土地使用权来为自身活动筹资。
There is no question in my mind that Zhu ought to be remembered as one of history’s great heroes. When he entered office, East Asia had 1.22 billion people living on less than $3 a day (in 2021 dollars) — more than half the world’s total. By the time Xi Jinping became China’s top leader, that number was one-sixth of what it had been: 在我看来，毫无疑问，朱镕基应当被铭记为历史上最伟大的英雄之一。他上任时，东亚有12.2亿人每天生活费不足3美元（按2021年美元计算）——占世界总数的一半以上。到习近平成为中国最高领导人时，这一数字已降至原来的六分之一：
Source: OWID 来源：OWID
This is the biggest and fastest decrease in absolute poverty that the human race has ever seen. Zhu didn’t do it alone, of course, but the economic model he devised was so effective at generating rapid growth that he deserves more credit than perhaps any individual other than Deng Xiaoping. The list of people who have done more to decrease aggregate human suffering is short indeed. 这是人类历史上绝对贫困规模最大、速度最快的下降。当然，这不是朱镕基一人之功，但他设计的经济模式在实现快速增长方面如此有效，以至于他比除邓小平以外的任何个人都更值得赞誉。为减少人类总体苦难做出更大贡献的人，名单确实很短。
China is no longer the growth powerhouse it was in those earlier years. According to official statistics, over the last 15 years, China’s growth rate has fallen to 5% — less than half of what it was in Zhu’s time: 中国已不再是早年那样的增长引擎。根据官方统计数据，过去15年，中国的增长率已降至5%——不到朱镕基时代的一半：
Source: World Bank 来源：世界银行
Some independent estimates put the growth rate much lower — maybe 2-3%. China is going through a difficult economic time right now, and its leaders have a tradition of “smoothing” official numbers by understating growth during booms and overstating it during busts. 一些独立估计认为增长率要低得多——可能在2%到3%之间。中国目前正经历一段艰难的经济时期，其领导人有一个传统，即“平滑”官方数据：在经济繁荣时低估增长，在经济萧条时高估增长。
Some amount of slowdown is to be expected. China is a much richer country than it was when Zhu left office — maybe five times richer. When Zhu ended his historic tenure in 2003, China was about as rich as Tanzania or Zambia is now. Today, it’s closer to Argentina or the Dominican Republic. A country can’t keep growing at supercharged rates forever; eventually, technological catch-up and capital deepening run their course, and a country is forced to grow based more on innovation and improved efficiency. 一定程度的放缓是意料之中的。中国比朱镕基离任时富裕得多——可能富裕了五倍。2003年朱镕基结束其历史性任期时，中国的富裕程度大约相当于今天的坦桑尼亚或赞比亚。如今，它更接近阿根廷或多米尼加共和国。一个国家不可能永远以超高速增长；最终，技术追赶和资本深化会走到尽头，一个国家只能更多依靠创新和效率提升来实现增长。
To be fair, Xi Jinping has taken some serious steps toward making that transition. His government has designed a “new national system” of research and development that tries to coordinate the entire supply chain of innovation, all the way from government-funded research labs to private companies putting products on the shelves. He has unleashed the most expensive and extensive system of industrial subsidies in world history, promoting essentially every advanced manufacturing industry in existence, as well as AI. These policies may be unorthodox, but their goal is the right one — they’re aimed at pushing China past middle-income status by replacing catch-up growth with frontier innovation. 平心而论，习近平为推进这一转型采取了一些严肃措施。他的政府设计了一套“新型举国体制”的研发体系，试图协调整个创新供应链，从政府资助的研究实验室一直到将产品上架销售的私营企业。他启动了世界历史上最昂贵、最广泛的产业补贴体系，推动了几乎所有现有先进制造业以及人工智能的发展。这些政策可能并非正统，但目标是对的——它们旨在通过以前沿创新取代追赶式增长，推动中国跨越中等收入阶段。
Whether Xi’s policies have been effective at this goal is less clear. There’s actually a big debate over whether Chinese total factor productivity — a measure of overall economic efficiency — grew in the 2010s. The Penn World Tables, which had until recently shown a severe slowdown in TFP growth, recently changed their assumptions and now report very healthy annualized growth of over 2% throughout the 2010s. Other sources, such as the Conference Board and Brandt et al. (2022), still think there was a slowdown, and peg the rate at around 1%. But everyone agrees that China’s TFP growth has been slowing over time, and that Xi’s “industrial policy for everything” hasn’t managed to re-accelerate it so far. 习近平的政策在这一目标上是否有效，则不太明确。实际上，对于中国全要素生产率（衡量整体经济效率的指标）在2010年代是否增长，存在很大争议。宾大世界表（Penn World Tables）此前一直显示全要素生产率增长严重放缓，但最近改变了假设，现在报告称2010年代年化增长率超过2%，非常健康。其他来源，如世界大企业联合会和Brandt等人（2022）的研究，仍认为存在放缓，并将增长率定在1%左右。但所有人都同意，中国的全要素生产率增长一直在放缓，而习近平的“一切产业政策”迄今未能使其重新加速。
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In fact, a lot of people are noting that China now appears to have a “two-speed” or “k-shaped” economy — split between a high-tech manufacturing sector that’s increasingly the envy of the world, and a broader economy that’s still mired in the aftermath of the country’s epic real estate bust. 事实上，许多人注意到，中国现在似乎呈现出“双速”或“K型”经济——一方面是日益令世界羡慕的高科技制造业，另一方面是仍深陷史诗级房地产泡沫破裂后果的整体经济。
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