口译时事:中欧葡萄酒战争开打

The hardy citizens of Europe made it through the banana wars. They even survived the bra wars – against China, no less. Trade disputes capture the imagination only when they have a catchy name. The solar panels at the heart of the spat between Europe and China were never going to excite interest. But that has changed since China this week said it would probe European winemaking subsidies. The battle for the bottle, perhaps? Aux armes, Bordeaux and Burgundy!

吃苦耐劳的欧洲民众挺过了“香蕉战争”。他们甚至同样挺过了对手为中国的“胸罩战争”。只有当贸易争端拥有一个引人注目的名字的时候，才会激发人们的想象力。处于欧中贸易争端核心的太阳能面板永远不会引起人们的兴趣。但自从中国本周宣布将对欧洲葡萄酒生产补贴展开调查以来，情况就有所不同了。或许这是一场“酒瓶战争”?准备开战吧，波尔多和勃艮第!

About a fifth of the wine drunk in China last year came from the EU. Sixty per cent of that, or 227m bottles, was French. EU wine exports to China have grown more than 50 per cent a year for the past three. For a country that increasingly likes the odd glass of foreign wine, it is odd that China has taken threatening action that could sharply raise the cost of that wine.

中国人去年喝掉的葡萄酒大约五分之一来自欧盟(EU)，其中60%(合2.27亿瓶)来自法国。在过去三年里，欧盟对华葡萄酒出口的年增长率超过50%。对一个日益喜欢喝几杯外国葡萄酒的国家来说，中国采取了可能大幅提高进口葡萄酒价格的威胁性举措，有些令人费解。

But China is anything but reckless: the 2bn bottles the Chinese drank last year work out at under two per head. That makes the country a mere entry-level toper compared with the 60-plus bottles the average French person consumes, or even the eight drunk by Hong Kongers.

但中国也绝非鲁莽行事：中国人去年总共喝掉20亿瓶葡萄酒，平均下来每人不到两瓶。与人均葡萄酒消费量达60多瓶的法国相比，中国不过是一个初级酒客，甚至香港人人均还喝8瓶葡萄酒呢。

In other words, France’s one-tenth share of China’s wine market, which is expected to grow in volume by about 8 per cent a year, is more important to France than the cost of each bottle is to China’s small if growing band of oenophiles. And those wine fans have options, too. Any drop in European imports will probably only benefit its 450 domestic wine producers. Less than a third of China’s wine is imported and it is already the sixth biggest producer in the world, ahead of Australia, according to Vinexpo.

换言之，法国在中国葡萄酒市场占据10%的份额，而中国市场预计年增长率约为8%，中国发起调查对法国的影响，要大于进口葡萄酒价格的上升对中国为数不多但日益壮大的爱酒人士的影响。那些喜欢喝红酒的人也有其他选择。欧洲对华葡萄酒出口量的任何下降，都只会让中国的450家国内葡萄酒制造商受益。国际葡萄酒及烈酒展览会(Vinexpo)方面表示，中国不到三分之一的葡萄酒来自进口，如今已经是全球第六大葡萄酒生产国，领先于澳大利亚。

Pitting French viniculture against Chinese power could turn into a real fight. The French wine industry – the world’s biggest – is no slouch at promoting a sons-of-the-soil, family enterprise image. Yet the one-quarter of exported Bordeaux that headlines its wine sales to China and Hong Kong comes from big-production vineyards that can hardly be deemed artisanal.

让法国葡萄庄园与中国角力可能演变为真正的战争。法国葡萄酒产业虽然是全球最大的，但并不擅长宣传土生土长的家族企业形象。然而，新闻报道中经常提到的出口至中国内地和香港的波尔多(Bordeaux)葡萄酒中，有四分之一来自几乎不可能被视为小作坊的大型葡萄庄园。

With China’s wine imports already taxed at about 50 per cent of value, French wine fans had better stock up in case the wine wars are only just beginning.

随着中国已经对进口葡萄酒征收大约50%的关税，爱好喝法国葡萄酒的人最好多存些货，或许这场葡萄酒战争才刚刚开始。