地球运动旺旺英语
Lesson 3
Beijing Rising
(Excerpts)
China’s emergence as an economic heavyweight after more than a decade of fast growth makes it likely to supplant Japan as the West’s main trade worry in Asia
135端口
By Frank Gibney Jr.
中国开放的经济
中国在崛起
经过十多年的迅速发展，中国一跃成为一个举足轻重的经济强国，这使它有可能取代日本而成为西方国家在亚洲地区的贸易的主要忧患
If there is a road to China’s future, Highway 204 out of Shanghai is it. Along its two dusty lanes, local tr
ucks and bus jockey with Cadillacs driven by financiers from Taiwan and Hong Kong investors. Migrant workers crowd the narrow shoulders. Factories line the highway, producing sneakers, toys, plastics, clothes, aircraft components and medical equipment. Eventually industry gives way to ricefields, which is being dug up to build still more factories. Cranes turn overhead as dump trucks and cement mixers no onto the road. Outside the town of Jiading, one tractor-trailer leaves Asia’s largest container plant every three minutes, carrying goods bound for the Shanghai docks. The traffic on Highway 204 is so thick that the trip from Shanghai to Zhangjiagang –only 115 kilometers away –takes five hours.
如果有通往中国未来之路的话，那便是始自上海的204国道。在这尘土飞扬的双车道上，当地的卡车、公交车与港台投资者的金融家所开的卡迪拉克竞相向前进。外来打工者使狭窄的路肩显得拥挤不堪。公路两测，鞋厂、玩具厂、塑料厂、服装厂、飞机部件厂与医疗设备厂鳞次栉比。结果，大片稻田被工业区占用，用于建立更多的工厂。吊车在头顶转动，翻斗车与混凝土搅拌机在路上小心谨慎地行使。在嘉定镇外面，每三分钟就有一辆牵引拖车驶出亚洲最大的集装箱厂，向上海码头运货。204国道上的交通如此拥挤。以致于从上海到张家港这仅仅115公里的路程就需要5个小时。
Zhangjiagang is a commercial hub of Jiangsu, the fastest-growing province in China. China has the most dynamic economic in the world today. Its boom radiates from Guangdong, its richest province,
均隆驱风油but it has spread as far west as Xinjiang, where foreign investors are arching for oil and other natural resources. It is creeping inland, from Jiangsu to the cities of Congqing and Wuhan, where businessmen from Hong Kong and Taiwan are starting to spend billions of dollars to build factories. And it has penetrated the northeast, where the city of Shenyang, long a moribund center of state industry, is bustling with new private business, from trading companies to prostitution. Back in Beijing, officials at China’s state council, or cabinet, are giddy with excitement –and exhaustion. “We don’t have people, we don’t have time,” says one. “Things are moving too fast.”
张家港是中国发展
最快的省份江苏的一个商业活动中心。目前，中国是世界上经济最有活力的国家。中国经济的繁荣始自最富裕的省份广东，但向西已蔓延到遥远的新疆，外国投资者正在这一自治区探寻石油与其它自然资源。经济繁荣目前正向中国内地蔓延，从江苏蔓延到重庆、武汉，在这两个城市，港台商人准备花几十亿美元来兴建工厂。经济繁荣也涉及东北地区，该地区的沈阳市长期以来是个死气沉沉的国有企业中心，而今随着从贸易公司到卖淫业等新兴私人企业的兴办而活跃起来。回头再看北京，中国国务院——或内阁——的一些官员们由于兴奋与筋疲力尽已力不可支。“我们没有人力，也没有时间，”其中一位官员说。“一切都发展得太快啦。”
幼儿教师观
爱新疆After a slowdown through 1990, China’s economic bounced back mightily, reaching a recent peak of 13 per cent growth last year. Now, some Western experts are predicting that China could become the world’s dominant economy early in the 21st century. Many economists believe a standard estimate of China’s per capita gross national product ($ 370) is already two to three times too low. And former World Bank chief economist Larry Summers recently argued that China could surpass both Japan and the United States to become the world’s largest economy by 2020.狐假虎威的寓意
中国经济经历了1990年的增长减缓之后，出现了强有力的反弹，去年的增长率达到近几年的最高点13%。目前，一些西方专家预言，中国在21世纪初期可能成为世界经济的主导者。许多经济学家认为，对中国人均国民生产总值的权威估计（370亿美元）太低了，实际上应该比这一数字再高出2-3倍。世界银行的前任首席经济专家拉里。萨默斯最近提出，到2020年，中国能够超出日本与美国而成为世界上最大的经济强国。
A farfetched prediction? The new American administration doesn’t think so. Bill Clinton has appointed China hands to top Asia posts at the State and Treasury departments. When critics called the appointments a slight to Japan, the leading Pacific economic power, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman explained the administration’s reasoning: by early in the next century, he said, China may replace Japan in importance to the U.S. as an economic partner. Japan recognizes
the ri of China. As a warning shot in an intensifying rivalry, Tokyo last week put punitive import tariffs on Chine steel.
这一预言牵强吗？新一任美国政府不这样认为。比尔。克林顿已任命华人担任国务院和财政部中负责亚洲事物的部门的要职。当一些批评家指出，这种做法是对太平洋地区经济强国日本的轻视时，美国财政部副部长罗杰。奥尔特曼解释了美国政府这样做的理由。他说，到下世纪初期，中国将取代日本
而成为美国的重要经济合作伙伴。日本也意识到了中国的崛起。在不断增强的竞争中为了警告中国，日本政府上星期对中国的钢材实行了惩罚性的进口关税。
China is reaping the rewards of reforms first launched by deng Xiaoping in 1979. Foreign investment is now welcome. Special Economic Zones are booming. The opening of curities and real-estate markets have created new opportunities. Growing ties between China’s traders and their partners in Taiwan and Hong Kong are creating an unofficial but formidable “greater China” trade bloc. Expansion has transformed places like Jiangsu province, where GDP grew 26 per cent last year. Six years ago Zhangjiagang was part of another town and did not even have its own name. Now it’s China’s venth largest port and a tumultuous construction zone of half-built office buildings and hotels.
1979年由邓小平发起的改革给中国带来了收获。国外投资受到欢迎。经济特区的经济在迅速发展。证券市场与房地产市场的开辟创造了许多新机遇。中国大陆贸易商与其港台合作伙伴间的关系不断加强，创造了一个非官方却是强大的“大中华”贸易集团。经济增长使江苏等一些省份发生了很大变化，江苏省的全民生产总值去年增长了26%。六年前，张家港只是另一小镇的一部分，甚至还没有它自己的名字。如今它已是中国第七大港口城市，许多办公大楼与宾馆都在繁忙的建设之中。
Clearly, China’s economy is a work in progress, nowhere near realizing the potential of its billion-plus population. Its gross domestic product last year was, according to the official measure, $ 420 billion –no more than that of southern California. China remains primarily a nation of farmers, and the transition to an industrial free market is much like the traffic on Highway 204 – unpredictable. Few state-owned firms have been sold, and most are laggard behemoths. Growth is driven by new joint ventures, collectives and private business, which now account for more than 50 per cent of China’s industrial production.
显然，中国的经济正处于发展之中，远没有发挥出其十亿多人口的巨大潜力。据官方统计，去年中国的国内生产总值达四千二百亿美元——只相当于南加利福尼亚的国内生产总值。中国主要还是个农业国，它向工业化自由市场过渡的前景还很难预测，正如204国道上的交通一样。只有极少数国有企业实现了私有化，大部分还是设备落后的庞然大物。中国经济的增长主要靠那些新组建的合资企业、集
南怀仁
体企业与私有企业，这些企业的产值占中国工业总产量的50%以上。
For China’s newly-rising enterpris, profits are up throughout the region – thanks largely to low wages. Last year the BeiBei company in Zhangjiagang cleared $ 14 million on
exports of 10 million pairs of shoes to U.S. department stores. At the BeiBei plant, women huddle over a conveyor belt in frigid temperatures, gluing rubber sneakers together. Typically, Chine workers in a plant like this make about 34 cents an hour, compared with $ 3.50 for Korean workers, according to South Korean estimates. That gives China a huge competitive advantage. Just two years ago South Korean manufactures were flourishing on contracts from western athletic footwear giants like Nike, Reebok and Adidas. Since then much of the business has shifted to China, dealing a hard blow to the South Korean shoe industry. This is a blow to Seoul, but it also reflects the fact that South Korea is moving to a high-tech, high-wage economy ----leaving China behind.
中国新兴企业利润的增长主要依赖于低工资。去年，张家港的贝贝公司向美国百货商场出口1000万双鞋，就赚取了1400万美元。在贝贝公司的工厂内，女工们冒着严寒挤在传送带旁，在粘制软底橡胶鞋。典型的是，中国的工人在这样的工厂里工作每小时只能挣34美分左右，据韩国估价，韩国工人干这样的工作每小时要挣3。5美元。这使中国具有巨大的竞争优势。就在两年前，南韩的生产厂家由于
与耐克、锐步、阿迪达斯等西方名牌运动鞋生产厂家有合同，还获利颇丰。此后，这些生意的大部分转到了中国，给南韩的鞋业造成了严重打击。这对韩国是一个打击，但也反映了另一种事实——南韩正朝着高技术、高工资经济方向发展，因而超出了中国。手势简笔画
China is now reaching for the next rung on the economic ladder. Last fall Beijing agreed to open its markets to more U.S. goods, including everything from Polaroid film to automobiles. In return, Washington would support China’s membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Membership in this club, which includes all the world’s leading economies, could provide a huge boost for a low-wage export economy. Already though, China’s commercial strength is starting to worry competitors. Last year China’s trade surplus surged, buoyed by exports of toys, textiles and consumer electronics. Its trade surplus with the United States hit a record $ 18 billion. Only Japan’s was larger. With the U.S. Congress due to consider the renewal of China’s most-favored nation trade status in June, officials in Beijing fear the trade imbalance could surpass human rights as a source of U.S. opposition to preferred status for China. “The trade surplus itlf will be the No.1 problem this year,” says one Chine official. “After Japan, we’ll be first in line for retaliation.”
中国的经济也正在迈向新的台阶。去年秋天，中国政府同意向更多的美国货物开放市场，包括从宝丽来胶片到轿车等货物。作为回报，美国将支持中国重新成为“关税及贸易总协定”成员国。
这一组织的成员包括世界上所有的经济大国，成为其成员国可以大大促进低工资出口经济发展。尽管如此，中国的商贸易实力仍不免使其竞争对手担忧。去年，中国的贸易盈余由于玩具、纺织品与电子产品的出口而迅速增长。它对美国的贸易顺差创下了180亿美元的记录，仅次于日本。美国议会将在六月份定期讨论延长给中国的贸易最惠国待遇问题，鉴于此，中国一些政府官员担心，贸易不平衡会比人权问题更可能成为美国反对给中国以贸易最惠国待遇的借口。“贸易盈余问题本身将是本年度的头等问题，”中国的一位官员说，“我们将是继日本之后第一个遭报复的国家。”
At the same time, America has an increasingly large stake in good relations with China. In 1992 American companies led a rush of foreign investors who signed more than $ 30 billion worth of contracts in China. (That is 30 times more the 1987 record for annual foreign investment in South Korea.) In Shanghai, Tianjin and other urban centers, China is trying --- with considerable success --- to attract high-technology firms that will modernize its economy. Mcdonnell Douglas has built 35 MD – 80 ries aircraft in Shanghai – and has contracted to build 40 more. General Motors and Ford are rushing to establish a beachhead there. Throughout China, foreign firms are building plants for copiers, computers and industrial machinery.
同时，对美国来说，与中国保持友好关系也变得越来越重要。1992年，外国投资商与中国签订了价值300亿美元的合同，美国公司在这一投资热中处于领先地位。（这是外国投资商1987年在南韩创记录
的年投资额的30倍以上。）中国在上海、天津与其他中心城市努力吸引高科技公司的投资以实现其经济现代化，并都取得很大成功。麦克唐纳。道格拉斯飞机制造公司在上海已建造了35架MD-80型飞机，并且准备再造40架。美国通用汽车公司与美国福特汽车公司也争相在上海建立自己的据点。外国公司正在全中国建立复印机厂、电脑厂与工业机械设备厂。
Even more striking, China’s entrepreneurs are starting to hunt for portunities abroad. In the last year Capital Steel, a state-owned conglomerate with 205,000 employees, purchad steel operations in the United States and announced plans to build miconductor chips in cooperation with NEC of Japan. In December Capital outbid a Japane-Mexican-Chilean consortium to buy Peru’s leading iron-and-steel complex, Hierroperu. The $ 312 million purcha makes Capital the cond largest foreign investor in Peru. Other state-affiliated companies, including CITIC and China Resources, Inc., are branching out from Hong Kong to establish overas posts as varied as diamond-trading operations in Sri Lanka and brokerage rvices in New York.
