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.

　　在這場金融危機的早期，愛說笑的人打趣道，事實證明，中美兩國的貿(mào)易是一筆公平均衡的買賣：中國向美國出售有毒玩具和變質(zhì)海鮮；美國將欺詐性的證券賣給中國。

　　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)勢看，買賣雙方越來越無力維持這樣的交易。一方面，世界對中國產(chǎn)品的胃口大減。中國的出口在近幾個月遭受重創(chuàng)，目前的出口額比一年前下降了26%。另一方面，中國人手頭的美國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，中國似乎依然抱有某些不切合實際的期望。這是我們所有人都要面對的一個問題。

　　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，中國央行行長周小川在一次演講中，呼吁創(chuàng)建一種全新的“超主權(quán)儲備貨幣”。

　　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，這是中國企圖讓美國放棄美元的陰謀。但是，周小川的演講其實間接承認(rèn)了中國目前的不利處境。實際上，他的演講表明中國已經(jīng)深陷自掘的美元陷阱，無力自拔，它也無法改變那些當(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，中國的對外貿(mào)易開始出現(xiàn)大額盈余，與此同時，外國資本也開始大量涌入。假若中國同加拿大這樣的國家一樣，實行的是浮動匯率制度，那么，上述局面就會導(dǎo)致人民幣幣值上升，這反過來會放緩中國出口的增長速度。

　　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，中國決意讓人民幣對美元匯率基本保持穩(wěn)定。為了做到這一點，中國必須將大量涌入的美元全部買下。這樣，年復(fù)一年，中國的貿(mào)易順差不停地增長，隨同其一起增長的還包括它累計的外國資產(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.

　　如今嘲諷中國購買了欺詐性的證券，其實是不公平的。除了在后期，當(dāng)股市處于高位時，考慮欠妥地購買了一批有價證券之外，中國人主要積聚的是一些非常安全的資產(chǎn)：美國短期國債(簡稱T-bills)占據(jù)其中相當(dāng)一部分份額。但盡管T-bills是這個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？或許沒有。中國的外匯儲備已達(dá)兩萬億美元之巨，中華人民共和國已經(jīng)變成了T-bills共和國，但如同大英帝國的建立一樣，這完全是一種無意識的舉動。

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

　　就在前不久，中國的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人似乎幡然醒悟，意識到這一問題的嚴(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題。中國 領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人明顯擔(dān)心的是，這些資產(chǎn)約有70%是以美元計價 的，因此，美元幣值在未來出現(xiàn)的任何下跌都意味著 中國將蒙受巨大的資本損失。于是，周小川提議，以 由國際貨幣基金組織記賬的特別提款權(quán)（簡稱SDR） 為基礎(chǔ)，轉(zhuǎn)入一種全新的儲備貨幣。

　　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值的記賬單位。沒有什么能夠阻止中國多元化它的外匯儲備，實際上，也沒有什么能夠阻止中國持有與SDR組合相同的一攬子儲備貨幣。但是，鑒于中國目前擁有的美元數(shù)量如此之巨，它拋售美元的舉動，勢必會導(dǎo)致美元貶值，造成巨額資本損失——而這正是中國領(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，周小川行長的建議其實是一種懇求：希望有人將中國從自己投資失誤造成的惡果中拯救出來。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美元過多的問題，反映出了另一個事實：中國領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人還沒有意識到游戲規(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.

　　在兩年之前的那個世界中，中國的儲蓄可以遠(yuǎn)大于投資，可以將多余的儲蓄放在美國。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)布新儲備貨幣言論的第二天，周小川在另一個演講中聲稱，中國極高的儲蓄率是受儒家“反對鋪張浪費”思想影響的結(jié)果，是不可改變的。同時，目前并不是美國增加儲蓄的“恰當(dāng)時機” 。換言之，美國人還是像過去那樣生活吧。

　　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，中國還不能正視解決這場全球危機所需的痛苦改變。當(dāng)然，這種說法也適用于日本人、歐洲人，以及美國人。

　　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（G20峰會所取得的成果比我預(yù)想的要多一些），但因為我們沒有勇敢地面對新的現(xiàn)實，這場危機可能還要持續(xù)數(shù)年時間。