中国经济增长放缓，急坏了拉美国家

Slowdown in China Bruises Economy in Latin America

中国经济增长放缓，急坏了拉美国家

SANTIAGO, Chile — Few people are as intensely worried about the slowing Chinese economy as Latin Americans.

智利圣地亚哥——对于中国经济放缓，很少有人比拉丁美洲人更加忧心忡忡。

China not only buys nearly 40 percent of Chile’s copper, but its once-insatiable demand helped push copper prices from $1 to $4 a pound.

中国不仅购买了智利近40%的铜，而且曾经有段时间，它对铜的需求仿佛无穷无尽，帮助把铜价从每磅1美元推高到了4美元。

Meanwhile, Beijing plowed billions into Peruvian mines and fisheries and spent billions more buying soybeans from Argentina and Brazil. And it propped up the Venezuelan government to the tune of $50 billion in loans, to be paid in shipments of oil.

与此同时，北京在秘鲁的矿山和渔场撒下了数以十亿计的美元，而且又花了另外数十亿的美元来购买阿根廷和巴西的大豆。它还力撑委内瑞拉政府，为其提供了500亿美元的贷款，让其用石油偿还。

China’s voracious hunger for Latin America’s raw materials fueled the region’s most prosperous decade since the 1970s. It filled government coffers and helped halve the region’s poverty rate.

中国对拉丁美洲原材料的巨大需求，帮助该地区经历了上世纪70年代以来最为繁荣的10年。拉美国家的国库因此而充实，该地区的贫困率也减少了一半。

That era is over. For policy makers gathered here last week for the International Monetary Fund’s conference on challenges to Latin America’s prosperity, there seemed to be no more clear and present danger than China’s slowdown.

但那个时代已经结束了。上周，国际货币基金组织(IMF)召开会议，讨论拉丁美洲的经济繁荣所面临的挑战，与会者是该地区的政策制定者。在他们看来，最明确、最紧迫的危险，就是中国经济增长的放缓。

“The commodity boom allowed governments and companies to avoid hard choices,” Andrés Velasco, Chile’s finance minister from 2006 to 2010, told me. “For goodness’ sake even Argentina grew by 5 to 6 percent per year for almost a decade.”

“由于大宗商品市场的繁荣，政府和企业无需做出艰难的选择，”安德烈斯·贝拉斯科(Andrés Velasco)对我说，“天啊，就连阿根廷的经济，都在将近10年的时间里每年增长了5%到6%。”贝拉斯科曾在2006至2010年担任智利财政部长。

Copper is back under $3. As commodity prices continue to swoon, driven in large part by China’s weaker demand, the going will get much tougher.

铜价回调到3美元以下。中国的需求减少，在很大程度上导致了大宗商品的价格持续走低，而接下来的形势会更加艰难。

That’s especially true in the major oil exporters, clobbered by a collapse of oil prices driven by a combination of faltering global demand and increased supplies from the United States and elsewhere.

对于主要的石油出口国而言，情况尤为严重。这是因为全球市场的石油需求不旺，加之美国和其他地方的石油供应增加，导致了油价崩盘。

Venezuela, notably, is in free fall. The I.M.F. expects the Venezuelan economy to contract both this year and next. And it has been forced to limit its promised oil shipments to China, in effect defaulting on its Chinese debt.

值得注意的是，委内瑞拉经济急剧恶化。据IMF预计，今明两年，委内瑞拉经济都会出现负增长。它不得不违背承诺，限制输送到中国的石油，这实际上是对中国的债务违约。

But the commodity decline isn’t sparing many. “Growth in Latin America should move back to pre-commodity boom rates,” said Alejandro Werner, who leads the Western hemisphere division at the I.M.F. Indeed, the fund expects the region to grow barely 1.3 percent in 2014, a third of its pace just three years ago.

但没有多少国家能摆脱大宗商品价格走低的影响。“拉丁美洲的增长率，应该回归到大宗商品繁荣之前的水平，”IMF西半球部门负责人亚历杭德罗·维尔纳(Alejandro Werner)说。确实如此，IMF预计该地区2014年的增长率只能达到1.3%，只有三年前的三分之一。

The bust underlines how Latin American economies have failed to overcome the existential weakness that has plagued them throughout history: a dependence on raw materials that has shackled the region’s development to an incessant sequence of booms and busts.

这样的不景气状况，突显了拉丁美洲经济未能克服一直以来的弱点：对出口原材料的依赖束缚了该地区的发展，使之陷入繁荣和衰退不断交替的怪圈。

From Brazil and Argentina in the southern tip of the region to Mexico in the north, officials across Latin America fretted for years that China undermined their decadeslong efforts to build the manufacturing industries that, they hoped, would provide a ticket into the developed world.

从南部的巴西和阿根廷，到北部的墨西哥，拉美各国的官员多年来感到焦虑不安，因为他们花了十多年时间努力发展制造业，希望以此跻身发达国家的行列，但中国却破坏了这番努力。

Not only did China’s cheap labor outcompete Latin American industry and draw the lion’s share of global manufacturing investment. Its appetite for Latin America’s minerals, oil and agricultural products raised the value of currencies around the region, making their manufactured goods even less competitive.

不仅因为中国的廉价劳动力击败了拉美工业，吸引了全球制造业投资中的很大一部分，而且中国对拉美矿产、石油和农产品的巨大胃口，也提高了拉美国家货币的汇率，进一步削弱了拉美制造业产品的竞争力。

Manufacturing’s share in Latin America’s economic output has declined steadily for more than a decade, ever since China inserted itself aggressively into the global economy by entering the World Trade Organization.

自从中国加入世贸组织(WTO)，大举进军全球经济以来，这十多年的时间里，制造业在拉美地区经济产出中所占的份额节节下滑。

At the same time, the share of raw materials in Latin America’s exports, which had fallen to a low of 27 percent in the late 1990s, from about 52 percent in the early 1980s, surged back to more than 50 percent on the eve of the global financial crisis.

与此同时，拉美原材料出口的占比，本来已经从上世纪80年代初的大约52%，下降到了90年代末27%的低点，结果到全球金融危机爆发前夕，又提升到了50%以上。

China’s footprint on Latin America is contributing to what the Harvard development expert Dani Rodrik would call its “premature de-industrialization,” shutting off the standard path of economic development followed by pretty much everybody since the industrial revolution.

用哈佛大学(Harvard)发展专家达尼·罗德里克(Dani Rodrik)的话说，中国对拉美的影响是“过早去工业化”，阻断了它发展经济的常规路径。自工业革命以来，几乎每个国家都遵循了这样的常规路径。

Mr. Velasco, 54, recalled when a 23-year-old student in Antofagasta asked him what the Chilean government would do with the nation’s copper riches. By the time the student was his age, Mr. Velasco responded, Chile would have no more copper.

现年54岁的贝拉斯科谈到，安托法加斯塔一名23岁的学生曾经问他，智利政府打算怎么利用该国丰富的铜资源。贝拉斯科回答，当这名学生到了自己这把年纪时，智利的铜资源就已经开采光了。

“The question,” he said, “isn’t what should we do with copper but what will we do without it.”

“现在的问题，”他说，“不是我们应该怎么利用铜资源，而是如果没有铜，我们该怎么办。”

China’s diplomats emphasize that it is a developing country, not an advanced, “imperialist” power like the United States or the European colonial powers who ruled for centuries and served as the first foreign exploiters of Latin America’s mineral wealth. To many in Latin America, the difference hardly seems relevant.

中国的外交官强调，它是一个发展中的国家，而不是发达国家。像美国和欧洲殖民列强那种发达的“帝国主义”国家，在拉美统治了几百年，是最早攫取拉美矿产财富的外来势力。但对于很多拉美人而言，这种差别似乎并不重要。

Take San Juan de Marcona, a remote village on the edge of the Pacific Ocean in the Nazca region of Peru. Built in the 1950s to house workers at the vast open-top American-owned iron mine, the town no longer houses managers from the United States. In the 1970s, General Juan Velasco Alvarado, then Peru’s military dictator, booted them out.

举例来说，圣胡安马尔科纳(San Juan de Marcona)是太平洋边上的一个偏远村镇，位于秘鲁的纳斯卡地区。该镇建于上世纪50年代，居民是在露天铁矿工作的矿工。这片广阔的铁矿原本属于美国公司，但现在该镇已经不再有来自美国的经理，因为在上世纪70年代，秘鲁的军事独裁者胡安·贝拉斯科·阿尔瓦拉多(Juan Velasco Alvarado)把他们赶走了。

Today, Marcona’s managers come from China’s Shougang, which bought it from the Peruvian government in the 1990s.

如今，马尔科纳的管理者来自中国首钢。上世纪90年代，首钢从秘鲁政府手中把这里买了下来。

“A growing China was very important to bring Peru along in the last 10 years,” said Cynthia Sanborn, who leads the Research Center at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima.

“中国的经济增长非常重要，它带动了秘鲁过去10年的发展，”辛西娅·桑伯恩(Cynthia Sanborn)说。她是利马太平洋大学(Universidad del Pacífico)研究中心的负责人。

North of Marcona, Chinalco built a town to relocate 5,000 inhabitants of Morococha, where it will blast open a new copper mine. This year, China’s MMG, Guoxin International Investment and Citic Metal bought the Las Bambas copper mine from the Anglo-Swiss conglomerate Glencore.

中铝公司准备炸掉莫罗科查(Morococha)，开辟一座新铜矿。于是在马尔科纳以北修建了一座小镇，打算将莫罗科查的5000名居民搬迁过来。今年，中国的五矿资源、国新国际投资有限公司和中信金属，还从英国瑞士合资的企业集团嘉能可(Glencore)手中收购了拉斯邦巴斯铜矿。

Chinese companies are interested not only in raw materials but also in vast public works to transport the raw materials, including rail links across Brazil and a proposed $50 billion, 171-mile canal across Nicaragua.

中国企业感兴趣的不仅是原材料，还有用来运输原材料的大型公共工程，其中包括连接巴西各地的铁路线，以及拟建的一条横贯尼加拉瓜的运河，它总长171英里(约合275公里)，预计耗资500亿美元。

In 2010, Chinese lending to Latin America roughly equaled that of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the U.S. Eximbank combined. (It has since slowed.) Carmen Reinhardt of Harvard forecasts that China could become Latin America’s main source of financing.

2010年，中国对拉丁美洲的贷款大约相当于世界银行(World Bank)、美洲开发银行(Inter-American Development Bank)和美国进出口银行(U.S. Eximbank)的总和(之后有所下降)。哈佛大学的卡门·莱因哈特(Carmen Reinhart)预测，中国有可能成为拉美地区的主要融资来源。

Perhaps Latin America should just count its blessings. “The concerns of dependency are there, but if China weren’t there, Peru would be seeking other markets for its minerals,” Professor Sanborn told me.

或许，拉丁美洲应该多想想好的一面。“人们对依赖中国感到担忧，但如果没有中国，秘鲁就要为自己的矿产资源寻求其他市场，”桑伯恩教授告诉我。

Mr. Werner of the I.M.F. argues that the case for deindustrialization is overblown. “From a medium-term perspective, China is a plus, plus, plus for Latin America,” he said.

IMF的维尔纳认为，“去工业化”的问题被夸大了。“从中期来看，中国对拉丁美洲有非常、非常大的帮助，”他说。

In agriculture, for instance, exports to China are leading to lots of innovation and efficiency improvements. Demand for Brazil and Argentina’s soy — a principal source of animal feed — is unlikely to wane as the Chinese become richer and eat more meat.

例如，在农业方面，向中国出口产品催生了大量创新，促进了效率的提高。而且巴西和阿根廷大豆的需求应该不会减少，因为随着中国人变得更加富裕，他们也会消耗更多肉类，大豆是动物饲料的主要来源。

“Don’t bet against nature,” Mr. Werner urged policy makers in the region. “Play to your comparative advantage.”

“不要逆势而为，”维尔纳劝告该地区政策制定者。“要发挥自己的比较优势。”

In some bits of the region, however, China has inspired a nostalgic reinterpretation of its economic history and a re-examination of the policy choices of its past.

但是，在拉美地区的某些地方，中国促使人们以怀旧的心态，对本地的经济史加以重新解释，并让人们反省以往的政策选择。

Remember “Dependency Theory”?

还记得“依附理论”吗?

The doctrine, which spread across Latin America from the 1950s through the 1970s, proposed that the region, or any developing country for that matter, could never advance simply by selling natural resources to the rich North, using the money to import the North’s industrial goods. Import substitution, behind a wall of trade barriers, was the path to prosperity.

上世纪50年代至70年代，该理论在拉丁美洲相当流行。它认为，拉美地区，或任何一个发展中国家，仅仅通过出售自然资源给富裕的北美，并用这些钱来进口北美工业品的方式，都不可能走向发达。用本国产品替代进口品，用贸易壁垒保护自己，才是走向繁荣的路径。

The theory fell into disrepute during Latin America’s “lost decade” of the 1980s – blamed by a new crop of market-oriented, United States-trained leaders in the 1990s for turning the region into an uncompetitive backwater.

在上世纪80年代拉美“失去的10年”期间，这个理论变得声名扫地——90年代，受过美国教育、以市场为导向的新一代领导人指责，这一理论让拉美变成了一潭没有竞争力的死水。

Courtesy of China, it’s back, fine-tuned to adapt to a more integrated global economy.

由于中国的原因，这个理论卷土重来，人们对它进行了微调，以适应更加一体化的全球经济。

“We’re not calling for more protectionism, but to substitute imports within competitive open economies,” said Alicia Bárcena, who leads the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. “We must think of creating regional production chains to serve regional markets.”

“我们呼吁的不是推出更多保护主义措施，而是通过具有竞争力的开放型经济体系，来替代进口，”联合国拉丁美洲和加勒比经济委员会(Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean)负责人艾丽西亚·巴尔塞纳(Alicia Bárcena)说。“我们必须考虑建立区域生产链，来满足区域市场。”

Ms. Bárcena suggests that while China should still be invited to participate in Latin America’s development, this should happen on different terms: “You want our commodities? O.K. But also invest in solar panels here,” she proposed.

巴尔塞纳指出，虽然拉丁美洲仍然应该邀请中国参与当地的发展，但前提条件应该有所改变：“你想要我们的大宗商品?行。但你同时也需要在这里投资太阳能组件，”她建议道。

Yet for all the hopes in Latin America that a new kind of deal can be had, the symbiotic relationship between the largest importer of commodities and one of the biggest commodity-exporting regions of the world is unlikely to change in any substantial way.

尽管拉丁美洲想要达成一种新型交易，但是，一方是全球最大的大宗商品进口国，另一方是世界领先的大宗商品出口地区，它们之间的共生关系不大可能有任何实质性的改变。

“Without this complementarity, the Chinese don’t have much to go on,” said Matt Ferchen, who runs the China and the Developing World program at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. “It’s working out quite well for China.”

“如果去掉这种互补性，中国也就没有多少兴趣了，”在北京的清华-卡内基全球政策中心(Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy)负责“中国与发展中国家”课题的陈懋修(Matt Ferchen)表示。“对于中国来说，这种关系非常有益。”

And the symbiosis could survive for a long time. As Huang Haizhou, the managing director of China’s International Capital Corporation, told the nervous Latin Americans at the I.M.F.'s conference here, despite any slowdown in growth, China’s long-term demand for commodities remained voracious.

这样的共生关系可能会长期存在。在这次IMF会议上，中国国际金融有限公司的董事总经理黄海洲对不安的拉丁美洲听众说，不管中国经济出现了何种放缓，它对大宗商品的长期需求依然十分旺盛。

China’s income per person is still only about one-third that of Chile. Every year for the next 30 years, it plans to move 1.3 percent of its population from the countryside to cities. That will require a lot of construction.

中国的人均收入仍然只有智利的大约三分之一。它计划在未来30年里，每年让其1.3%的人口实现城镇化。这需要进行大量的基础设施建设。