Buried in China’s latest government budget were some numbers that add up to an alarming trend. Tax revenue is dropping.

在中国最新的政府预算中，隐藏着一些数字，综合起来显示出一种惊人的趋势。税收收入正在下降。

The decline means that China’s national government has less money to address the country’s serious economic challenges, including a housing market crash and the near bankruptcy of hundreds of local governments.

下降意味着中国国家政府用于应对国家严重经济挑战的资金减少，这些挑战包括房地产市场崩溃和数百个地方政府濒临破产。

Weak tax revenue also puts China’s leaders in a box as they square off with President Trump, who has imposed 20 percent tariffs on goods from China and threatened more to come. Beijing has less spare cash to help the export industries that are driving economic growth but could be hurt by tariffs.

税收收入疲软也让中国领导人在与特朗普总统对峙时处于不利地位。特朗普已对来自中国的商品征收了20%的关税，并威胁要征收更多关税。中国政府手上用于帮助出口行业的备用资金减少了，该行业有助于推动经济增长，但可能受到关税的冲击。

The drop in tax collections leaves China’s leaders in an unfamiliar position. Until the last several years, China enjoyed robust revenue, which it used to invest in infrastructure, a rapid military buildup and extensive industrial subsidies. Even as economic growth has slowed gradually over the past 12 years, taking a dent out of consumer spending, tax revenue held fairly steady until recently.

税收的减少使中国领导人处于一个陌生的境地。直到最近几年，中国还享有丰厚的收入，用于投资基础设施、快速军事建设和广泛的工业补贴。尽管在过去的12年里，经济增长逐渐放缓，消费者支出受到影响，但税收收入一直相当稳定，直到前不久。

Tax revenue fell further last year than ever before. And the only two previous declines in recent decades were under special circumstances: In 2020, China imposed an essentially nationwide pandemic lockdown for a couple of months, and in 2022, Shanghai endured a two-month lockdown.

去年，税收收入降幅比以往任何时候都要大。近几十年来，仅有的两次下降都是在特殊情况下发生的：2020年，中国在全国范围内实施了几个月的疫情封锁，2022年，上海经历了两个月的封锁。

China’s declining tax revenue now has several causes. A big one is deflation — a broad decline in prices. Companies and now the Chinese government find themselves with less money to make monthly payments on their debts.

 目前，中国税收收入下降有几个原因。一个大问题是通货紧缩——物价普遍下跌。企业和中国政府现在发现，他们每月用来偿还债务的钱越来越少了。

在多年为基础设施建设、军事发展和工业补贴提供资金后，税收收入的下降使中国领导人处于一个不同寻常的境地。

Since September, Chinese officials have promised several times that they were on the cusp of doing what practically every foreign and Chinese economist recommends: spending more money to help the country’s beleaguered consumers with such measures as higher pensions, better medical benefits, more unemployment insurance or restaurant vouchers. But again and again, including on Sunday, they have laid out ambitious programs without providing more than a smidgen of extra spending.

 自去年9月以来，中国官员多次承诺，他们即将采取几乎所有中外经济学家都建议的措施：花更多的钱来帮助陷入困境的中国消费者，比如提高养老金、改善医疗福利、增加失业保险或提供餐饮代金券。但一次又一次，包括周日这一次在内，他们制定了雄心勃勃的计划，却没有提供一点点额外支出。

The usual explanation for the frugality lies in longstanding opposition from Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, who warned in a speech in 2021 that China “must not aim too high or go overboard with social security, and steer clear of the idleness-breeding trap of welfarism.”

对于这种节制，通常的解释是中国最高领导人习近平长期以来反对支出，他在2021年的一次讲话中警告说，中国在社会保障方面“不能提过高的目标，搞过头的保障，坚决防止落入‘福利主义’养懒汉的陷阱”。

But China’s 2025 budget, which the Ministry of Finance released on March 5, suggests a different explanation: The national government may not have the money. Despite record borrowing, it would be hard-pressed to find the money needed to stimulate consumption.

但中国财政部3月5日公布的2025年预算给出了另一种解释：中央政府可能没有钱。尽管借贷达到了创纪录的水平，但要找到刺激消费所需的资金将非常困难。

Overall tax revenue fell 3.4 percent last year. That might not look like a lot. But it is a sizable divergence from the overall economy, which according to official statistics grew 5 percent before being adjusted for deflation.

 去年，税收总额下降了3.4%。这看起来可能不是很多。但这与整体经济存在很大差异，根据官方统计，在扣除通缩因素之前，中国经济增长了5%。

Falling tax revenue means that China’s budget deficits are widening not because of extra government spending to help the economy, but because there is less money coming into the till. The problem has been worsening for years at local governments, which have plummeting revenues from selling state land, and has spread to the national government.

税收收入的下降意味着中国的预算赤字正在扩大，这并不是因为政府为帮助经济而增加了开支，而是因为进入金库的钱减少了。地方政府出售国有土地的收入急剧下降，导致这一问题几年来日益严重，并已蔓延至国家政府。

企业、家庭和中国政府现在都在努力偿还债务。

Fitch Ratings calculates that overall revenue for the national and local governments — including taxes and land sales — totaled 29 percent of the economy’s output as recently as 2018. But this year’s budget indicates that overall revenue will be just 21.1 percent of the economy in 2025.

据惠誉评级计算，截至2018年，国家和地方政府的总收入（包括税收和土地销售）总计占经济产出的29%。但今年的预算显示，到2025年，总收入将仅占经济总量的21.1%。

Roughly half of the decline comes from plummeting revenue from land sales, a well-documented problem related to the housing-market crash, but the rest comes from weakness in tax revenue, a new problem.

大约一半的下降来自土地销售收入的急剧下降，这个已有详尽报道的问题与房地产市场崩溃有关。但其余的下降来自税收收入的疲软，这是一个新问题。

That adds up to a huge sum of money. If overall revenue had kept up with the economy over the past seven years, the Chinese government would have another $1.5 trillion to spend in 2025.

这些问题加起来意味着失去一大笔钱。如果过去七年的整体收入与经济增长保持同步，那么到2025年，中国政府的可支配资金应该比现在多出1.5万亿美元。

China announced this month that it would allow its official target for the budget deficit to increase to 4 percent this year, after trying to keep it near 3 percent ever since the global financial crisis in 2009. But analysts say the true deficit is already much larger, because China is quietly counting a lot of long-term borrowing as though it were tax revenue.

中国本月宣布，今年将允许其官方预算赤字目标增加到4%，自2009年全球金融危机以来，中国一直试图将其保持在接近3%的水平。但分析人士说，真正的赤字已经大得多了，因为中国正在悄悄地把大量长期借款当作税收收入来计算。

Comparing spending only with actual revenue, without the borrowing, the Finance Ministry’s budget shows a deficit equal to almost 9 percent of the economy. In 2018, it was only 3.2 percent.

仅将支出与实际收入（不包括借款）相比较，财政部的预算赤字几乎相当于经济总量的9%。2018年，这一比例仅为3.2%。

“Deficits are quite high and debt is rising quite quickly, so they are fiscally challenged,” said Jeremy Zook, a director of Asia and Pacific sovereign ratings at Fitch.

“赤字相当高，债务增长相当快，因此他们面临财政挑战，”惠誉亚太主权评级主管杰里米·祖克表示。

The biggest taxes in China are value-added taxes, a kind of sales tax that the government collects on practically every transaction, from rent to refrigerators. Last year, revenue from value-added taxes fell short of expectations by 7.9 percent.

中国最大的税种是增值税，这是一种销售税，政府对从租金到冰箱的几乎每一笔交易都征收。去年，增值税收入比预期低7.9%。

The word “deflation” is prohibited in official Chinese documents, so the ministry came up with a euphemistic explanation: “This decrease was mainly due to the fact that the producer prices were lower than expected.”

“通货紧缩”一词在中国官方文件中是禁止使用的，因此，财政部给出了一个委婉的解释：这一下降的原因“主要是工业生产者出厂价格低于预期”。

Producer prices, essentially wholesale prices calculated as goods leave factories and farms, fell 2.3 percent in China last year.

生产者价格即商品离开工厂和农场时计算的批发价格，去年，中国的生产者价格下降了2.3%。

Revenue from value-added taxes began weakening in 2018. That was when the government cut these taxes sharply for exporters to help them offset the impact of tariffs imposed by President Trump in his first term.

2018年，增值税收入开始减少。当时，政府大幅削减了出口商的这部分税收，以帮助他们抵消特朗普总统在第一个任期内征收关税的影响。

The cost of that tax break has soared since then as China’s exports have surged, producing a trade surplus of almost $1 trillion last year even as the rest of the economy stagnated.

从那以后，随着中国出口激增，这一减税的代价急剧增加，去年中国的贸易顺差达到了近7万亿元，而其他经济领域却停滞不前。

Another problem lies in falling salaries and rising layoffs, especially during the second half of last year. Income taxes collected from individuals were 7.5 percent below expectations last year, the Finance Ministry said in its budget.

另一个问题是工资下降和裁员增加，特别是在去年下半年。财政部在预算中表示，去年征收的个人所得税比预期低7.5%。

China’s own steep tariffs on imports are another large source of revenue. But having lost much of their savings in the housing market crash, China’s consumers have cut back on purchases of imports like handbags and perfume, while prices have fallen for many imported goods. So revenue from customs duties was 9.2 percent below forecasts last year, the Finance Ministry said.

中国对进口商品征收的高额关税是另一大收入来源。但由于在房地产市场崩盘中损失了大部分积蓄，中国消费者减少了购买手袋和香水等进口商品，而许多进口商品的价格也有所下降。因此，财政部表示，去年的关税收入比预期低9.2%。

This year’s financial picture could be even worse than the budget anticipates. The Finance Ministry’s budget repeated many of the same optimistic assumptions about tax revenue and overall economic performance that it made last year.

今年的财政状况可能比预算预期的还要糟糕。财政部的预算重复了去年对税收收入和整体经济表现做出的许多乐观假设。

Governments in the West derive considerable revenue from taxes on investment gains, inheritances and real estate. But China has no taxes on investment gains or inheritances and almost none on real estate.

西方国家政府从对投资收益、遗产和房地产征税中获得可观的收入。但中国对投资收益或遗产不征税，对房地产也几乎不征税。

The general lack of real estate taxes lies at the root of a separate problem: China’s local governments are also running out of money. Until recently, they derived up to 80 percent of their revenues from selling land to property developers.

房地产税的普遍缺失是另一个问题的根源：中国的地方政府也面临缺钱的困境。直到前不久，它们高达80%的收入来自向房地产开发商出售土地。

But those sales have plummeted since the housing crash began in 2021, which has gutted demand for new apartments and bankrupted many developers.

但自2021年房地产市场开始崩盘以来，这些销售大幅下降，导致对新公寓的需求锐减，许多开发商破产。

Local governments are responsible for most pensions, medical benefits and other social spending in China. The national government has been selling extra bonds to raise money for bailing out the weakest local governments, many of which are behind on their debts. The national government has called for local governments to step up social spending but, short on cash itself, has offered scant new financial assistance.

在中国，地方政府承担了大部分养老金、医疗福利和其他社会支出。中央政府一直在出售额外债券，筹集资金救助最弱的地方政府，其中许多地方政府拖欠债务。中央政府呼吁地方政府加大社会支出，但由于自身资金短缺，提供的新财政援助很少。

And new taxes are not likely forthcoming, according to Jia Kang, a retired research director at the Finance Ministry and still one of China’s most influential voices on tax policy. He said in an interview that public opposition to inheritance taxes is strong, while taxes on investment gains or real estate would hurt stocks or the housing market.

据财政部退休研究主任、中国在税收政策方面最有影响力的人士之一贾康称，新税不太可能出台。他在接受采访时表示，公众强烈反对遗产税，而对投资收益或房地产征税会损害股市或房地产市场。

One factor not causing China’s tax challenges is fraud or tax evasion, Mr. Jia said. The procedures for checking on payments have become very detailed, he said. “It is difficult to cheat in this system.”

贾康说，欺诈或逃税并非造成中国税收挑战的因素。他说，检查付款的程序已经变得非常详细。“在这个系统里很难作弊。”