中国官方为大规模裁员做舆论准备
China’s annual parliamentary session convenes this week amid a sombre mood that recalls the late 1990s: an era of economic ructions, rising debt, currency jitters and talk of mass lay-offs.
中国将在本周举行年度人大会议。当前的黯淡情绪令人回想起上世纪90年代末期：那是一个经济动荡、债务上升、汇率波动和大规模裁员成为讨论话题的时代。
Zhu Rongji, the economic tsar who helped steer the economy through that transformative period, was bold. On his watch 30m were laid off, hundReds of state-owned enterprises privatised and thousands more consigned to history.
当年驾驭中国经济渡过那个转型期的总理朱镕基十分果敢。在他主管经济期间，3000万人下岗，数以百计的国有企业私有化，还有数千家国企成为历史。
The National People’s Congress, which kicks off this weekend, will see whether China’s leaders are up to the task this time. Premier Li Keqiang has prepared the ground: overcapacity has become the mantra in recent months and in the past few days the Communist party has openly started to discuss lay-offs, up to 6m by some estimates.
本周末开幕的全国人大会议将表明中国领导人这一次能否担当重任。现任总理李克强已经作了铺垫：产能过剩在近几个月成为经常挂在嘴边的话题，近日共产党开始公开讨论裁员，有人估计下岗人数可能高达600万。
“Li Keqiang is certainly trying to invoke those times because that was the last time there was a serious reform of state-owned enterprises but now we are such a different cycle,” said Fraser Howie, a China financial markets expert and co-author of Red Capitalism. “Taking such tough action now with all the other issues in China is much, much harder.”
“李克强肯定是在试图让人回想起那个时代，因为那是上一次对国企推行认真的改革，但现在我们处于一个如此不同的周期，”研究中国金融市场的专家、曾与人合著《红色资本主义》(Red Capitalism)的侯伟(Fraser Howie)表示。“在中国存在种种其他问题的情况下采取这样的严厉行动，难度大得多。”
Fifteen years later, China has come full circle. The SOEs that survived the purge of the 1990s were consolidated and flooded with investment. More than a decade of accelerated economic growth followed, but the same problems have resurfaced as the economy slows.
15年后的今天，中国已经转了整整一圈。在90年代的洗牌中幸存的国有企业进行了整合，获得了大量投资。此后迎来了持续10多年的加速经济增长，但随着经济放缓，相同的问题再度浮现。
In a sign lay-offs are no longer completely taboo, Beijing recently tweaked the way it measures unemployment. The official figure has been allowed to creep towards 5 per cent after decades of barely budging from 4 per cent.
突显裁员不再是绝对禁忌的一个迹象是，北京方面最近微调了其衡量失业率的方式。官方失业率在数十年徘徊于4%的水平后，已被允许向5%渐渐攀升。
Surveys indicate that real unemployment reached well over 20 per cent in many Chinese cities in the late 1990s.
调查显示，90年代末中国许多城市的实际失业率达到远高于20%的水平。
“In addressing overcapacity we need to be particularly concerned about unemployment,” Zhu Guangyao, vice-minister of finance, said this week. The cornerstone of Mr Li’s solution is a Rmb100bn ($15.2bn) fund to address job losses to be disbursed over two years. It will first target the steel and coal sectors, the most labour-intensive among the heavy industrial sectors.
“在解决产能过剩方面，我们需要特别关注失业问题，”财政部副部长朱光耀本周表示。李克强的解决方案的基石是一只1000亿元人民币（合152亿美元）的基金，它将在两年期间发放到位，帮助下岗工人。该基金将首先面向钢铁和煤炭行业，它们是劳动力最密集的两个重工业部门。
This time the labour ministry estimates 1.8m workers could lose jobs, while other estimates go as high as 6m. Steel lobbyists say up to 400,000 jobs could be lost, while just one state-owned coal producer, Longmay, said last autumn it would let 100,000 workers go.
据中国人力资源和社会保障部估计，这一次将有180万工人下岗，而其他机构估计的下岗人数最高达到600万。钢铁业游说团体表示，可能失去多达40万工作岗位，同时只有一家国有煤炭生产企业——龙煤(Longmay)在去年秋天表示，它将让10万工人下岗。
Open discussion of lay-offs seems a deliberate strategy to evoke the late 1990s as a signal both to officials and common people that this government is as determined to address China’s problems as Mr Zhu’s. But in those days, economic restructuring was accompanied by China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation, which opened vast new markets. But now, China is the world’s biggest trader, and a tentative US recovery and weak Europe are buying less.
围绕裁员的公开讨论似乎是一个深思熟虑的战略，目的是唤起人们对90年代末的记忆，从而向官员和普通人都发出信号：本届政府在应对中国的问题方面与当年的朱镕基一样坚定。然而，当年中国在经济重组的同时加入世界贸易组织(WTO)，从而开辟了广阔的新市场。而现在，中国已经是世界最大贸易国家，而复苏不稳的美国和疲弱的欧洲减少了进口。
Talk of lay-offs may simply allow local governments to formalise the status of workers who have in effect been unemployed for months, with pay in arrears as mines and mills halt production.
有关裁员的谈论可能只是让地方政府正式确定实际上已经下岗好几个月的工人们的地位；随着矿山和钢厂停产，这些工人的工资被拖欠。
China’s much more diversified economy leaves some of them with more options, although the new jobs are unlikely to be in the most depressed regions. “The lay-off problem this time will not be as severe because society has more capacity to soak up the SOE lay-offs,” says Hu Xingdou, an economist at Beijing Institute of Technology who tracks labour issues.
当今的中国经济多元化程度高得多，这使其中一些下岗工人面临较多选择，尽管新的就业机会不太可能在最低迷的地区出现。“这一次裁员问题不至于那么严重，因为社会有更多能力来吸收国企下岗工人，”北京理工大学经济学家、追踪劳工问题的胡星斗表示。
“The growth of the services industry will make up for the job losses.”
“服务业的增长将弥补这些失业。”
The period from 1998 to 2001 saw mass worker demonstrations that forced China finally to implement a rudimentary social safety net, but corruption and the sorry state of many SOEs meant many former state workers lack adequate health coverage or pensions. The problem was particularly acute in the north-eastern rust belt, which is again one of the regions hardest hit in the current slowdown.
1998年至2001年期间，大规模工人示威迫使中国终于实施一个基本的社会安全网，但腐败和许多国企所处的糟糕状态意味着，许多原国企职工得不到足够的医保或养老金。这个问题在东北“锈带”尤为严重，在当前的经济放缓中，东北再度成为重灾区之一。
According to one steel industry insider privy to plans for the fund, Beijing will offer subsidies to SOEs willing to close some of their inefficient production lines. For all the brave talk of job losses and capacity cuts, it is not clear it is truly prepared to let companies fail.
根据一位了解前述基金相关计划的钢铁业内人士透露，北京方面将向愿意关闭一些低效率生产线的国有企业提供补贴。尽管有很多关于裁员和削减产能的果敢言论，尚不清楚北京是否真正准备让企业倒闭。
