China's Economic Gains
Give Way to Hazy Future
经济前景渐趋不明
Policies and Trends
Aiding Big Growth
Set to Wind Down
政策和趋势催生的大增长可能面临转向
By ANDREW BATSON and JASON DEAN
August 25, 2008; Page A8
BEIJING -- China has just hosted the most lavish Olympic Games ever by a developing nation, the capstone to an extraordinary run of achievements.
北京刚举办了一届发展中国家所能举办的最奢华的奥运会，巨大经济成就所促成的一个顶点。
Since it began opening its economy three decades ago, the nation has lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in modern times and is poised to become the world's third-largest economy.
放开经济30年来，中国比现代以来任何国家都多地使众多人口摆脱贫困，并正成长为世界第三大经济体。
Yet maintaining that growth will challenge China's leaders.
尽管保持这样的增长对中国领导人来说将是个挑战。
Much of the extraordinary growth of recent years has come from policies and trends that will be winding down in coming decades. It stemmed from a mix of political stability and economic liberalization that enabled a largely agricultural and technologically backward country to catch up to the rest of the world in many areas.
增长的大部分得益于政策和趋势，而这些政策和趋势在未来十年将出现转向。政治的稳定和经济的相对自由的彼此结合，让一个农业人口众多技术落后的国家，在很多方面赶上了别国。 ![[dpa/Landov]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-AS105_OLYMPI_20080824213214.jpg) |
| dpa/Landov |
| Fireworks light the sky during the closing ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the National Stadium, Beijing, on Sunday night. |
Now China's population is growing older and more urban, while its industry is less isolated from the outside world. "The strategies that have helped China grow from poverty to its current levels will not yield the same dividends in the future," says Homi Kharas, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the World Bank's former chief economist for Asia. "China needs to adapt to this reality."
如今中国人口开始老龄化和城市化，产业也愈加融入全球。"那些促成中国摆脱贫困并取得当下成就的策略，在未来不会像以往那样得到同样的收益了，"布鲁金斯学会的学者、前世界银行亚洲首席经济学家Homi Kharas说。"中国要接受这个现实。"
How China fares in that effort will ripple across the world. Many in the West are anxious about competition from China -- a subject sure to feature in the closing months of the U.S. presidential election. But many smaller developed countries depend on China's continued success.
中国在这方面的努力会给世界带来多少影响。西方的很多人对来自中国的竞争感到焦虑――这也是最近几个月美国总统选举的一个话题。但很多小的发达国家对中国的持续发展存有依赖。
"Americans who worry that China might overtake the United States are worrying about the wrong thing," U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wrote in an article published last week. "Serious troubles in China's economy could threaten the stability of the U.S. and global economies."
"那些担心中国会取代美国的美国人，他们的忧虑来的不是时候，"美国财政大臣Henry Paulson在上周发表的一篇文章中说。"中国经济出现的严重问题会危及美国和全球经济的稳定。"
Three challenges especially stand out for the Chinese: The nation's changing work force, a widening in the gap between rich and poor and severely constrained supplies of energy and environmental resources.
目前中国正面临着三重挑战：全国性的劳动力转变；贫富差距的日益扩大；以及能源紧张和环境恶化。
Population 人口
The precedents aren't encouraging. Many developing countries in Latin America and the Middle East stagnated after periods of rapid growth. Economists sometimes call this the "middle-income trap" because so many countries have failed to achieve consistent growth that would deliver higher prosperity.
先前的例子并不令人欣慰。多数拉美和中东的发展中国家，在经历了一段时期的飞速发展之后，出现了停滞。经济学家有时称之为"中等收入陷阱"，因为很多国家并没有持续已有的增长势头，从而不能取得更高级别的繁荣。
In the next few years, China will cross the threshold to a majority-urban society. China's urbanization rate is about 40% to 45% now, well below levels of about 75% in most of Western Europe and Latin America, but statistics show that growth in China's urban population is already slowing. Since urban workers earn more than three times as much as rural ones, the annual migration of more than 10 million farmers into cities has boosted the economy.
未来几年，中国将跨越城市化社会的门槛。目前中国城市化比率大约为40%到45%，和大多数西欧以及拉美国家75%的水平相比仍有较大差距。然而，统计数据显示中国城市人口的增长速度已经出现了减缓。过去正因为城市工人高出农村三倍的收入差距，促使每年超过1000万的农民进入城市，从而推动了经济的高速增长。
Moreover, a smaller number of workers will have to support an increasing number of elderly. The United Nations projects that China's working-age population will account for a decreasing share of the total after 2010, and will start shrinking in absolute terms after 2015 -- the long-delayed effect of the strict family-planning policies that came in the 1970s.
此外，数量逐年减少的在职工人将养活越来越多的老龄化人口。联合国的一个项目显示，中国的适龄工作人口占总人口的比例将从2010年开始减少，而在职人口绝对数量将从2015年开始逐年减少――这是上世纪70年代开始实施的计划生育政策的长期延后效果。
The "demographic dividend" from a young and growing work force may have been responsible for a quarter of China's growth to date, says Wang Dewen, a demographer at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In the future, he and other scholars argue, China will have to grow by making more productive use of fewer resources -- working not just harder, but smarter.
年轻、不断增长的劳动力所带来的"人口红利"，可能贡献了中国经济增长数据的四分之一，中国社科院的人口学家王德文（音）说。在未来，他和其他学者争论说，中国必须更加高效率地利用更少的资源――不光要努力，还要努力得聪明。
Resources 资源
China's growth has depleted global supplies of energy and raw materials, as well as its own resources of clean air, fertile land and drinkable water. Without improvements in efficiency, China's expansion will be constrained by the finite supply of such essentials. In recent months, the nation has been plagued by shortages of gasoline and electricity, illustrating the limits to its consumption.
中国的增长减少了全球能源和原材料供应的同时，也减少了自身的资源，包括干净的空气、肥沃的土地以及可以饮用的水。离开对效率的改进，中国的发展将受到必需然而有限的资源所制约。最近几个月以来，全国都受到了燃油和电力短缺的影响，显示了消耗总有一个极限。
Some adjustments already are happening. Qiu Jiaxin, a 26-year-old school administrator in Shanghai, bought a Buick Excelle a year ago. But he hasn't touched it for the past month, since the government raised fuel prices. "Now, my car is a burden to me," Mr. Qiu says. He is taking a shuttle bus to work instead.
某种类型的调整正在发生。邱嘉欣（音）是一名26岁的学校行政人员，生活在上海，一年前买了一辆别克凯越汽车。然而自从政府调高油价以来，他已经有一个月没有碰过这辆车了。"现在车成了我的负担，"邱先生说。目前他坐班车上班。
Mr. Qiu and the rest of China's 1.3 billion people each consumed the equivalent of 1.4 tons of oil in energy last year, a relatively low figure. If each Chinese was to consume the same amount of energy as each person in the U.S. does -- the equivalent of 7.82 tons of oil -- then China alone would consume nearly as much energy as the entire world does now.
邱先生以及其余13亿中国人去年人均消耗了1.3吨原油当量的能源，这是一个相对较低的数字。假如中国人消耗能源的数量和美国人相当（人均7.8吨原油当量）的话，仅仅中国就的消耗量就要相当于目前全世界的水平。
So far, China's government is falling behind in its drive to cut the amount of energy required to produce each yuan of economic output. It managed a reduction of just 2.9% in the first half, less than last year's 3.7%. Economists say China's low state-set prices for energy need to become more market-based to create pressure to conserve.
目前为止，中国政府在减少每一元人民币产出中消耗能源成本比例的努力，成效并不明显。今年前半年，这个比例为2.9%，少于去年的3.7%。经济学家说，中国需要放松能源的价格管制，通过市场调节来缓解囤积造成的短缺压力。
Inequality 不公
Just 30 years after it began moving away from socialism, China has become one of the world's most unequal societies, based on measures of the gap between richest and poorest.
改革30年来，中国贫富差距愈来愈大，已经成为世界上最不平均的社会之一。
Initially, the widening disparity was beneficial -- forced equality under Mao Zedong prevented people from being productive. Today, it increasingly contributes to social instability, as people who lose their homes to make way for factories and others displaced by development express displeasure in sometimes violent protests.
最开始，拉开收入差距是有利的――毛时代的强制平均主义阻碍了经济的发展。今天，收入差距的恶化加剧了社会的不稳定。比如拆迁所带来的社会问题……
Addressing that will require repairing a dilapidated network of social services -- something the government says it is working on.
补偿工作依赖于修复一个破败的社会服务体系――政府称正在做类似的工作。
But the Chinese are getting bolder in challenging the state. The Communist Party will need to expand its avenues for doing so legally or risk widening battles with its citizens that could make it harder to deal with all of the challenges it faces.
"The party will need to take itself on in very difficult ways to address this issue," says Minxin Pei, a China scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Addressing inequality "will be a wedge issue among the ruling elites -- not just an issue that divides the haves and the have nots."
--Bai Lin in Shanghai contributed to this article.
