佛山市的洋公务员 Young expats bring expertise to Chinese local government

Four local government employees jump into their minibus, beaming from ear to ear. They have just had a chance meeting with the Communist party secretary of Foshan, a prosperous city of 7m in China’s Guangdong province.

四名佛山市公务员满面春风地钻进面包车，他们刚刚有幸与佛山市委书记进行了一次会面。佛山市位于中国的广东省，是一座拥有700万人口的繁华都市。

Many Chinese officials long for an to salute the local party boss, in whose hands rests the fate of their entire career. What is different about these four is that they are foreigners.

在中国，许多官员都渴望能有机会与本地市委书记说上话，坐在这个位置的人手里掌握着他们日后整个职业生涯的命运。但这四名官员有些不同——他们都是外国人。

“That was the highlight of the month,” Abbey Heffer, a 23-year-old politics graduate from Exeter University in the UK, says to colleagues Nicolas Santo from Uruguay, Giovanni Lovisetti from Italy and Maria Acastenco from Mexico. They are part of an unusual experiment designed to boost foreign investment in Foshan and help transform it from workmanlike manufacturing hub into an innovative industrial metropolis.

23岁的阿比欠弗(Abbey Heffer)对其他三位同事说：“这是本月最重要的时刻。”赫弗是英国埃克塞特大学(Exeter University)的政治学研究生，其他三人分别是来自乌拉圭的尼古拉斯儠塨(Nicolas Santo)，来自意大利的乔瓦尼洛维塞提(Giovanni Lovisetti)以及来自墨西哥的玛丽亚騠慎斯滕科(Maria Acastenco)。他们参与了一项不寻常的实验，实验目的是促进外国对佛山的投资，并帮助这座城市从熟练的制造业中心转变成创新型工业大都市。

Youthful, clever and ambitious, they and American colleague Yahya Yuksel have been hired as consultants by the Foshan Investment Promotion Agency, part of the city’s commerce bureau.

这四个聪明、志向远大的年轻人，加上他们的美国同事叶海亚踠克塞尔(Yahya Yuksel)，都被佛山市投资促进局聘为国际投资推广专员。佛山市投资促进局为佛山市商务局下属单位。

While Communist China has a long history of recruiting foreign experts to advise state-owned companies and teach at universities, Foshan is one of the first local governments to recruit younger expats and implant them into its bureaucratic machinery. “When we attend conferences and hand out our business cards, people still don’t believe we work for the government,” says Ms Acastenco, a 26-year-old international relations graduate, back at the FIPA’s low-rise, city centre office.

虽然新中国在国有企业聘用外国专家顾问，大学聘用外籍教师方面有着悠久历史，但佛山是第一批招募年轻的外籍人士，将他们安排到自己的官僚体系中的地方政府之一。佛山市投资促进局的办公楼位于市中心，是一栋低层建筑。在这里，亚卡斯滕科说：“当我们在会议上分发自己的名片时，大家仍不相信我们为政府工作。”她今年26岁，毕业于国际关系专业。

Cities such as Foshan, Dongguan and Shenzhen — all in Guangdong — were the driving force of the low-cost manufacturing revolution after the Chinese economy began to open up in the 1980s. But slowing growth, rising wages and the renewed government focus on innovation are pushing cities to attract more high-tech investors and cut their reliance on making cheap widgets. “We have to make Foshan more transparent and open to outside cultures. In the past we were just a place to make things but now we want to be a nice place to live too,” says Liu Xiaoming, deputy director-general of the commerce bureau.

中国经济于上世纪八十年代开始对外开放，佛山、东莞和深圳等城市（都位于广东）从此成了低成本制造业革命的动力。但中国经济增长放缓、薪资上涨，加上政府对创新的再度关注，推动这些城市去吸引更多高科技投资者，同时降低它们对制造廉价产品的依赖。佛山市商务局副局长刘晓明表示：“我们必须让佛山对外来文化更加透明、更加开放。过去我们这儿只是制造东西的地方，如今我们还要把佛山转变成适宜居住的地方。”

Guangdong has long been a cradle of policy experimentation in China, 1,200 miles from the central government in Beijing and with a history of internat trade links and private enterprise.

广东长期以来都是中国进行政策实验的摇篮，这里距离北京的中央政府有1200英里，并且在国际贸易往来和民营企业方面有着长久的历史。

The lightbulb moment for Foshan’s local government came, fittingly, from an executive of the German lighting manufacturer Osram, who suggested hiring advisers from overseas to smooth communications with foreign investors.

佛山市政府聘用外国顾问的灵感来自德国照明制造商欧司朗(Osram)的一位高管，他建议当地政府聘请海外顾问，从而能顺利的与外商沟通。

First on board was Mr Santo, 28, who joined in 2013 after studying law at Harvard and Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. “I saw an advert in the China Daily newspaper and wasn’t sure if it was real so I called up right away to check,” says Mr Santo, a smart dresser with a well-trimmed beard.

第一个入职的是28岁的尼古拉斯儠塨，他于2013年入职，此前他曾在哈佛(Harvard)和北京著名高校清华大学(Tsinghua University)学习法律。桑托衣着时髦，胡须修剪得很整齐，他说：“我在《中国日报》(China Daily)上看到一则广告，不知道是真是假，于是马上打电话来确认。”

In Uruguay his claim to fame was that as a youth he played football in the same team as Luis Suárez, the brilliant but temperamental Barcelona striker. In China, he has been feted as the face of a new generation of foreigners helping to build a better nation, and even given his own column in the China Daily.

尼古拉斯在乌拉圭也小有名气，青少年时期他曾与巴萨(Barcelona)前锋路易斯苏亚雷斯(Luis Suárez)同队踢球——苏亚雷斯是一名杰出的球员，但容易激动。到了中国以后，尼古拉斯一直被誉为帮助把中国建设成更好国家的新一代外国人的代言人，他甚至还在《中国日报》上有自己的专栏。