是真是假 盘点特朗普的涉中国言论

If there is one thing Donald Trump seems sure about, it is that the United States is getting a raw deal from China.

如果有一件事在唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)看来似乎确定无疑的话，那就是美国从中国得到了不公平的待遇。

To people who spend time studying the United States’ economic relationship with China, Mr. Trump’s accounting of its dysfunctions contains both legitimate, accurate complaints and elements that completely misstate how things work between the world’s largest and second-largest economies.

对那些花时间来研究美国与中国的经济关系的人来说，特朗普对关系失调的描述，既包括合理又确切的抱怨，也有对世界上最大和第二大经济体之间的运作方式完全错误的说法。

“They’re killing us,” Mr. Trump has said in many debates, rallies and television appearances. He has threatened to put a 45 percent tax on Chinese imports “if they don’t behave.”

“他们正在置我们于死地，”特朗普在辩论会、集会以及在电视上露面时多次这样说。他曾扬言要对中国进口征收45%的关税，“如果他们不好好做的话。”

If you take Mr. Trump’s comments at face value, as president he would try to renegotiate a complex set of ties that has pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of dire poverty, made a wide range of goods available to American consumers at more affordable prices and contributed to the decline of American manufacturing.

如果你把特朗普的言论当真的话，要是当上总统，他将试图对一整套复杂的关系进行重新谈判。这些关系让数亿中国人摆脱了赤贫，让美国消费者以更实惠的价格得到了一系列的商品，也造成了美国制造业的衰落。

Here is a reality check on Mr. Trump’s arguments. (It’s also a way to understand the economic relationship between the countries.)

下面是对特朗普的观点在现实上的核查。（也是了解这两国之间的经济关系的一个办法。）

“We have very unfair trade with China. We’re going to have a trade deficit of $505 billion this year with China.” — Mr. Trump

“我们与中国的贸易非常不公平。我们与中国的贸易逆差今年将达到5050亿美元。”——特朗普

America’s trade deficit with China was $338 billion last year, and there’s no reason to think it would swing by as much as Mr. Trump suggests in 2016 — but what’s $167 billion among codependent trading partners? (Mr. Trump seems to be conflating the China number with the $505 billion total American trade deficit in 2014, which was first reported to be that much.)

美国对中国的贸易逆差去年是3380亿美元，没有理由认为2016年的逆差会发生像特朗普所说的那样大的变化，但是在相互依存的贸易伙伴之间，1670亿美元是什么呢？（特朗普似乎把美国与中国的贸易逆差，与美国2014年的总贸易逆差混为一谈了，5050亿美元是最初报道的总逆差。）

The central point, that the United States imports a lot more from China than it exports, is correct. To put it a bit differently, from 1999 to 2015 annual imports from China rose by $416 billion. In the same span, American exports to China rose by $145 billion.

美国从中国的进口大大高于出口这个核心点是正确的。用比较不同的视角来看，2015年美国从中国的进口比1999年的增长了4160亿美元。在同一时期，美国对中国的出口增长1450亿美元。

That said, many economists would argue that a trade balance shouldn’t be viewed as a simple scorecard in which the country with the trade deficit is the loser and the one with the surplus the winner.

尽管如此，许多经济学家认为，贸易平衡不应该是一个简单的记分卡，贸易有逆差的国家是输家，而贸易有顺差的国家是赢家。

So the question isn’t whether there is a persistent, large trade deficit between the United States and China, but why. And that leads to another arm of Mr. Trump’s argument, and one of the stronger ones.

所以，问题不在于美国与中国之间是否存在着持久的巨大贸易逆差，而在于为什么是这样。这就引出了特朗普论点的另一个部分，两个国家谁更强。

“I have many friends, great manufacturers, they want to go into China. They can’t. China won’t let them.” — Mr. Trump

“我有很多朋友，他们是出色的制造商，他们想进入中国市场。他们进不去。中国不让他们进。”——特朗普

It’s not that American multinational companies — heavy industry, technology or finance — can’t do business in China. Rather, their executives complain of Chinese government restrictions that they see as arbitrary, unpredictable and highly favorable to domestic companies — so much so that in practice they are either shut out or can’t make money in China.

这并不是说美国的重工业、技术或金融行业的跨国公司无法在中国做生意。而是这些公司的高管们抱怨中国政府的各种限制，他们认为这些限制很任意且变化莫测，而且对国内企业高度有利，以至于实际情况是，企业要么无法进入，要么进入了也无法在中国赚钱。

Doing business in China typically requires a partnership with a Chinese company, and that often means sharing crucial intellectual property that can enable the partner to become a competitor down the road. The rules of engagement can change capriciously, especially for American and European companies, rendering major investments worthless.

在中国开展业务通常需要与中国企业建立合作关系，这往往意味着要与中方共享关键的知识产权，这会让合作伙伴成为日后的竞争对手。与中国打交道的规则可以被任意改变，特别是对美国和欧洲的公司，让大笔投资变得分文不值。

American business interests have a long list of complaints: that the Chinese government uses its enforcement of antimonopoly rules to favor its domestic businesses; that the government subsidizes exports through tax rebates and other practices; that automakers can set up factories within China only as part of joint ventures and face stiff tariffs in trying to sell cars made in the United States.

美国的商业利益有一个长长的抱怨清单：中国政府用反垄断执法来帮助国内商家；政府用退税及其他做法补贴出口；汽车生产商只能作为合资企业的一部分在中国国内建工厂，并在试图出售美国制造的汽车上面临高额的关税。

The United States government has pushed China on these “market access” issues for years. But the situation seems to be growing worse, at least in the opinion of American executives. The American Chamber of Commerce in China regularly surveys its members about business conditions, and this year 57 percent of executives surveyed named “inconsistent regulatory interpretation and unclear laws” as a top problem, up from 37 percent in 2012.

美国政府多年来一直在推动中国解决这些“市场准入”问题。但情况似乎越来越糟糕，至少在美国高管的眼里。中国美国商会(American Chamber of Commerce in China)定期向其成员调查中国的商务环境状况，商会表示，今年，57%的受访高管把“监管解释不一致、法律不清楚”作为首要问题，高于2012年的37%。

This may reflect a faltering Chinese economy that is leading the government there to be more concerned than usual about protecting domestic companies.

这可能反映的是，中国经济状况不佳导致政府比以往更加关注保护国内企业。

“They are the single greatest currency manipulator that’s ever been on this planet.” — Mr. Trump

“他们是这个星球上有史以来最大的一个货币操纵国。”——特朗普

Mr. Trump’s complaint about China’s devaluation of its currency has a long, bipartisan tradition. It is also out of date.

对于中国贬值其货币，特朗普的抱怨代表了有着悠久传统的两党均秉持的立场。但这也是一个过时的看法。

It is true that China intervenes in currency markets to influence the price of its renminbi against the dollar. And it is true that a decade ago, both the American government and independent economists tended to think that the interventions served to depress the currency, in the Chinese government’s deliberate effort to make its exports more price competitive.

的确，中国对外汇市场的干预影响了人民币对美元的价格。十年之前，无论是美国政府还是独立的经济学家，也都确实倾向于认为，中国的干预措施压低了本币价值，中国政府刻意采取这类做法，目的是提升出口产品的价格竞争力。

But a lot has changed in the last decade. The renminbi was allowed to rise sharply from roughly 2006 to 2015, and is up 23 percent from a decade ago.

不过在过去十年中，情况已经有了很大的不同。大约从2006年到2015年，在政府的许可下，人民币出现了大幅升值，现在比十年前升值了23%。

And since last summer, China has let the currency drop some, but that appears to be an example not of manipulation, but of letting the price of the currency fall closer to the rate that reflects China’s fundamentals given the country’s slowing economy. The International Monetary Fund has argued that the renminbi, also known as the yuan, is no longer undervalued.

自去年夏天以来，中国让人民币进行了一些贬值，但这似乎不属于操纵，而是因为该国经济正在放缓，要让币值跌到更能反映中国基本面的水平。国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)指出，人民币的估值已经不再过低。

“At least in 2006, 2007 or 2008, the yuan was undervalued — now it’s probably not,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and chief economist of China Beige Book, an information service.

“至少是在2006、2007或2008年，人民币被低估了——但现在很可能并没有，”美国企业研究所(American Enterprise Institute)的常驻学者、资讯服务“中国褐皮书”(China Beige Book)的首席经济学家史剑道(Derek Scissors)说。

Indeed, the Chinese government has been trying to restrict capital from flowing out of the country to stop the renminbi from falling any further. It would seem that the Chinese government and Mr. Trump are, for the moment at least, on the same side.

事实上，中国政府正在试图遏制资本流出国门，避免人民币进一步贬值。这似乎是中国政府和特朗普的一个共通之处，至少目前如此。

“What will happen if they don’t behave, we will put on a tax of some amount, and it could be a large amount, and we will start building those factories and those plants. Instead of in China, we’ll build them here.” — Mr. Trump

“如果他们举止不端，那我们可以加些税，税率可以非常高，这样我们就会开始修建工厂。不是在中国建，就在美国建。”——特朗普

Mr. Trump’s broader argument is that a generation of unfair economic relations with China (and also Mexico, Japan and others) is a primary cause of the troubles of American workers.

特朗普的更宽泛的说法是，美国这二三十年来与中国（以及墨西哥、日本等国）之间不公平的经贸关系，是美国劳动者陷入困境的主要原因。

Mainstream economists are more sympathetic to this view now than they were even a few years ago. Traditional trade theory holds that the losers from global trade — factory workers who lose their jobs when that factory moves overseas — are more than compensated by other opportunities created by a more efficient economy.

即便是与几年前相比，主流经济学家现在也更加青睐这一观点。传统贸易理论认为，全球贸易的受害者——工厂向海外转移时失业的员工——获得了足够多的弥补，因为更有效的经济创造了其他机会。

New scholarship suggests that the pain from globalization in certain geographic locations may be longer-lasting. One study found that Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs.

新的学术观念认为，在某些地理区域，全球化造成的伤痛可能会更加持久。一项研究的结论是，在1999年至2011年间，因中国进口而失去的美国就业岗位最多可达240万。

That said, it’s easy to assign too much of the blame for the collapse of manufacturing employment to China or trade more broadly. Hundreds of millions of workers across the globe — many of whom were in dire poverty a generation ago — have become integrated into the world economy. That’s a lot of competition, all in a short span, for American factory workers.

尽管如此，人们也把容易把制造业的就业低迷过多地归咎于中国或更宽泛的贸易往来。在世界各地，有数以亿计的劳动者——其中很多在二三十年前还处在赤贫状态——融入了全球经济。这对美国工厂工人是一个巨大的竞争，而且是在一段不长的时间里出现的。

At the same time, factory technology has advanced so that a company can make more stuff with fewer workers. The number of manufacturing workers in the United States has been declining as a share of all jobs nearly continuously since 1943, and the total number of manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979; China’s trade with the United States didn’t really take off until the 1990s.

与此同时，技术进步也让企业可以依靠更少员工生产出更多的产品。自从1943年以来，美国制造业从业人员在全部就业岗位中的占比就一直在下滑。制造业就业总人数在1979年达到了峰值；而中美贸易直到90年代才真正开始激增。

In other words, trade has been an important economic force over the last few decades, and the deepening of the United States’ ties with China is one of the most important developments in global economics of the last generation. But to look at China as the sole force affecting the ups and downs of American workers misses the mark.

换句话说，在过去几十年中，贸易确实是一股重要的经济力量，而美中关系的深化是过去二三十年来全球经济中最重大的进展之一。不过，把中国视为美国工人命运起伏的唯一影响因素，这样的看法并不中肯。