Back in the early stages of the financial crisis, wags joked that our trade with China had turned out to be fair and balanced after all: They sold us poison toys and tainted seafood; we sold them fraudulent securities.

　　在這場(chǎng)金融危機(jī)的早期，愛(ài)說(shuō)笑的人打趣道，事實(shí)證明，中美兩國(guó)的貿(mào)易是一筆公平均衡的買賣：中國(guó)向美國(guó)出售有毒玩具和變質(zhì)海鮮；美國(guó)將欺詐性的證券賣給中國(guó)。

　　But these days, both sides of that deal are breaking down. On one side, the world's appetite for Chiinese goods has fallen off sharply. China's exports have plunged in recent months and are now down 26 percent from a year ago. On the other side, the Chinese are evidently getting anxious about those secutities.

　　但從目前的態(tài)勢(shì)看，買賣雙方越來(lái)越無(wú)力維持這樣的交易。一方面，世界對(duì)中國(guó)產(chǎn)品的胃口大減。中國(guó)的出口在近幾個(gè)月遭受重創(chuàng)，目前的出口額比一年前下降了26%。另一方面，中國(guó)人手頭的美國(guó)證券顯然令他們憂心忡忡。

　　But China still seens to have unrealistic expectations. And that's a problem for all of us.

　　但是，中國(guó)似乎依然抱有某些不切合實(shí)際的期望。這是我們所有人都要面對(duì)的一個(gè)問(wèn)題。

　　The big news last week was a speech by Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of China's central bank, calling for a new "super-sovereign reserve currency."

　　近期的一大新聞是，中國(guó)央行行長(zhǎng)周小川在一次演講中，呼吁創(chuàng)建一種全新的“超主權(quán)儲(chǔ)備貨幣”。

　　The paranoid wing of the Republican Party promptly warned of a dastardly plot to make America give up the dollar. But Mr. Zhou's speech was actually an admission of weakness. In effect, he was saying that China had driven itself into a dollar trap, and that it can neither get itself out not change the policies that put it in that trap in the first place.

　　共和黨內(nèi)部的偏執(zhí)狂旋即警告說(shuō)，這是中國(guó)企圖讓美國(guó)放棄美元的陰謀。但是，周小川的演講其實(shí)間接承認(rèn)了中國(guó)目前的不利處境。實(shí)際上，他的演講表明中國(guó)已經(jīng)深陷自掘的美元陷阱，無(wú)力自拔，它也無(wú)法改變那些當(dāng)初讓其深陷這一陷阱的各種政策。

　　Some background: In the early years of this decade, China began running large trade surpluses and also began attracting substantial inflows of foreign capital. If China had had a floating exchange rate -- like, say, Canada -- this would have led to a rise in the value of its currency, which, in turn, would have slowed the growth of China's exports.

　　讓我們了解一下相關(guān)背景。在這十年的早期，中國(guó)的對(duì)外貿(mào)易開(kāi)始出現(xiàn)大額盈余，與此同時(shí)，外國(guó)資本也開(kāi)始大量涌入。假若中國(guó)同加拿大這樣的國(guó)家一樣，實(shí)行的是浮動(dòng)匯率制度，那么，上述局面就會(huì)導(dǎo)致人民幣幣值上升，這反過(guò)來(lái)會(huì)放緩中國(guó)出口的增長(zhǎng)速度。

　　But China chose instead to keep the value of the yuan in terms of the dollar more or less fixed. To do this, it had to buy up dollars as they became flooding in. As the years went by, those trade surpluses just keep growing - and so did China's board of foreign assets.

　　但恰恰相反，中國(guó)決意讓人民幣對(duì)美元匯率基本保持穩(wěn)定。為了做到這一點(diǎn)，中國(guó)必須將大量涌入的美元全部買下。這樣，年復(fù)一年，中國(guó)的貿(mào)易順差不停地增長(zhǎng)，隨同其一起增長(zhǎng)的還包括它累計(jì)的外國(guó)資產(chǎn)。

　　Now the joke about fraudulent securities was actually unfair. Aside from a late, ill-considered plunge into equities (at the very top of the market), the Chinese mainly accumulated very safe assets, with U.S. Treasury bulls -- T-bills, for short -- making up a large part of the total. But while T-bills are as safe from default as anything on the planet, they yield a very low rate of return.

　　如今嘲諷中國(guó)購(gòu)買了欺詐性的證券，其實(shí)是不公平的。除了在后期，當(dāng)股市處于高位時(shí)，考慮欠妥地購(gòu)買了一批有價(jià)證券之外，中國(guó)人主要積聚的是一些非常安全的資產(chǎn)：美國(guó)短期國(guó)債(簡(jiǎn)稱T-bills)占據(jù)其中相當(dāng)一部分份額。但盡管T-bills是這個(gè)星球上最不可能違約的證券，它的收益率卻低得離譜。

　　Was there a deep strategy befind this vast accumulation of low-yielding assets? Probably not. China acquired its $2 trillion stash -- turning the People's Republic into the T-bills Republic -- the same way Britain acquired its empire: in a fit of absence of mind.

　　在大規(guī)模積累低收益資產(chǎn)的背后，是否存在某種深層次的戰(zhàn)略意圖？或許沒(méi)有。中國(guó)的外匯儲(chǔ)備已達(dá)兩萬(wàn)億美元之巨，中華人民共和國(guó)已經(jīng)變成了T-bills共和國(guó)，但如同大英帝國(guó)的建立一樣，這完全是一種無(wú)意識(shí)的舉動(dòng)。

　　And just the other day, it seems, China's leaders woke up and realized that they had a problem.

　　就在前不久，中國(guó)的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人似乎幡然醒悟，意識(shí)到這一問(wèn)題的嚴(yán)重性。

　　The low yield doesn't seem to bother them much, even now. But they are, apparently, worried about the fact that around 70 percent of those assets are dollar-denominated, so any future fall in the dollar would mean a big capital loss for China. Hence Mr. Zhou's proposal to move to a new reserve currency along the lines of the S.D.R.'s, or special drawing rights, in which the International Monetary Fund leeps its accounts.

　　即使現(xiàn)在，他們似乎并不太憂心低收益的問(wèn)題。中國(guó) 領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人明顯擔(dān)心的是，這些資產(chǎn)約有70%是以美元計(jì)價(jià) 的，因此，美元幣值在未來(lái)出現(xiàn)的任何下跌都意味著 中國(guó)將蒙受巨大的資本損失。于是，周小川提議，以 由國(guó)際貨幣基金組織記賬的特別提款權(quán)（簡(jiǎn)稱SDR） 為基礎(chǔ)，轉(zhuǎn)入一種全新的儲(chǔ)備貨幣。

　　But there's both less and more here than meets the eye. S.D.R.'s aren't real money. They're accounting units whose value is set by a basket of dollars, euros, Japanese yen and British pounds. And there's nothing to keep China from diversifying its reserves away from the dollar, indeed from holding a reserve basket matching the composition of the S.D.R.'s -- nothing, that is, except for the fact that China now owns so many dollars that it can't sell them off without driving the dollar down and triggering the very capital loss its leaders fear.

　　但事情要比人們看到的表象更為復(fù)雜。SDR并不是真正的貨幣，而是由美元、歐元、日元和英鎊等一攬子貨幣確定其價(jià)值的記賬單位。沒(méi)有什么能夠阻止中國(guó)多元化它的外匯儲(chǔ)備，實(shí)際上，也沒(méi)有什么能夠阻止中國(guó)持有與SDR組合相同的一攬子儲(chǔ)備貨幣。但是，鑒于中國(guó)目前擁有的美元數(shù)量如此之巨，它拋售美元的舉動(dòng)，勢(shì)必會(huì)導(dǎo)致美元貶值，造成巨額資本損失——而這正是中國(guó)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人所擔(dān)心的。

　　So what Mr. Zhou's proposal actually amounts to is a plea that someone rescue China from the consequences of its own investment mistakes. That's not going to happen.

　　因此，周小川行長(zhǎng)的建議其實(shí)是一種懇求：希望有人將中國(guó)從自己投資失誤造成的惡果中拯救出來(lái)。這是不可能的事情。

　　And the call for some magical solution to the problems of China's excess of dollars suggests something else: that China's leaders haven't come to grips with the fact that the rules of the game have changed in a fundamental way.

　　呼吁用某種神奇的辦法解決中國(guó)美元過(guò)多的問(wèn)題，反映出了另一個(gè)事實(shí)：中國(guó)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人還沒(méi)有意識(shí)到游戲規(guī)則已經(jīng)發(fā)生了根本性的改變。

　　Two years ago, we lived in a world in which China could save much more than it invested and dispose od the excess savings in America. That world is gone.

　　在兩年之前的那個(gè)世界中，中國(guó)的儲(chǔ)蓄可以遠(yuǎn)大于投資，可以將多余的儲(chǔ)蓄放在美國(guó)。但這樣的世界已經(jīng)一去不復(fù)返了。

　　Yet the day after his new-reserve-currency speech, Mr. Zhou gave another speech in ehich he seemed to assert that China's extremely high savings rate is immutable, a result of Confucianism, which values "anti-extravagance." Meanwhile, "it is not the right time" for the United States to save more. In ohter words, let's go on as we were.

　　然而，在發(fā)布新儲(chǔ)備貨幣言論的第二天，周小川在另一個(gè)演講中聲稱，中國(guó)極高的儲(chǔ)蓄率是受儒家“反對(duì)鋪張浪費(fèi)”思想影響的結(jié)果，是不可改變的。同時(shí)，目前并不是美國(guó)增加儲(chǔ)蓄的“恰當(dāng)時(shí)機(jī)” 。換言之，美國(guó)人還是像過(guò)去那樣生活吧。

　　That's also not going to happen.

　　這也是不可能的事情。

　　The bottom line is that China hasn't yet faced up to the wrenching changes that will be needed to deal with this global crisis. The same could, of course, be said of the Japanese, the Europeans -- and us.

　　歸根結(jié)底，中國(guó)還不能正視解決這場(chǎng)全球危機(jī)所需的痛苦改變。當(dāng)然，這種說(shuō)法也適用于日本人、歐洲人，以及美國(guó)人。

　　And that failure to face up to new realities is the main reason that, despite some glimmers of good news -- the G-20 summit accomplished more than I though it would -- this crisis probably still has years to run.

　　盡管有好消息傳來(lái)（G20峰會(huì)所取得的成果比我預(yù)想的要多一些），但因?yàn)槲覀儧](méi)有勇敢地面對(duì)新的現(xiàn)實(shí)，這場(chǎng)危機(jī)可能還要持續(xù)數(shù)年時(shí)間。