A night at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in the heart of Manhattan starts at about $2,000. A night at the Waldorf Astoria in the heart of Beijing costs about $340.

位于曼哈顿核心地段的华尔道夫酒店一晚房价约2000美元起；而位于北京核心地段的华尔道夫酒店，一晚房价约合340美元。

Hotel rooms are not all that is cheap right now in China. A Big Mac from McDonald’s costs half as much in China as it does in the United States. Made-in-China goods are cheaper, too: A OnePlus 15 smartphone is $999 in the United States and $692 in China. A BYD Seal plug-in hybrid car sells for $15,500 inside China, including computer-assisted driving, and about $50,000 elsewhere.

目前在中国，价格低廉的远不止酒店客房。麦当劳巨无霸在中国的售价仅为美国的一半。中国制造的商品同样更便宜：一加15智能手机在美国售价999美元，在中国仅需692美元；比亚迪海豹插电式混合动力车（含自动驾驶辅助功能）在中国售价约合1.55万美元，在海外市场则高达5万美元左右。

Large discrepancies between prices inside and outside China point to the biggest distortion in the global economy today: the low value of China’s currency. A combination of low interest rates, slowing economic growth and government policies has kept the country’s currency so weak — undervalued by as much as a third, even some Chinese economists estimate — that prices in China look cheap by international standards.

中国境内外物价的巨大差异折射出当前全球经济最显著的扭曲现象：人民币汇率偏低。低利率、经济增长放缓及政府相关政策等多重因素叠加，导致人民币持续走弱——部分中国经济学家估计，其低估幅度可能高达三分之一，这使得按国际标准衡量，中国物价显得格外低廉。

The weakness of China’s currency, the renminbi or yuan, is not the only reason prices are low in China. A persistent decline in housing has erased much of the savings of Chinese households, leaving them reluctant to spend. Chronic overcapacity at Chinese factories after years of debt-fueled investment has left companies frantically cutting prices for the fewer customers they have left inside the country.

人民币走弱并非中国物价低廉的唯一原因。房地产市场持续低迷侵蚀了大量中国家庭的储蓄，导致居民消费意愿低迷；多年债务驱动型投资造成工业产能长期过剩，迫使企业为争夺有限的国内客户疯狂降价。

The currency remains one of the biggest — and most sensitive — issues in China’s economy. It takes about 7.1 renminbi to buy a single dollar these days. That weakness has powered China’s exports to remarkable heights. Official data released on Monday showed that China’s world surplus in exports over imports this year has already exceeded $1 trillion.

汇率仍是中国经济中最关键、也最敏感的问题之一。目前一美元可兑换约7.1元人民币，这种弱势汇率推动中国出口规模攀升至惊人水平。周一发布的官方数据显示，今年中国进出口贸易顺差已突破1万亿美元。

Chinese officials scrupulously avoid discussing the low value of the currency, which has helped create millions of jobs at Chinese export factories. But some well-connected Chinese economists are starting to say the weakness of the renminbi is way out of line with economic fundamentals.

中国官方谨慎回避人民币汇率低估问题——毕竟这一状况为中国出口工厂创造了成百上千万就业岗位。但部分背景深厚的中国经济学家开始直言，人民币当前的弱势已严重偏离经济基本面。

Before his recent retirement from China’s central bank, Sheng Songcheng was the director general of its financial surveys and statistics department. He was one of the few officials with almost unlimited access to economic data in a country that releases fairly little to the outside world.

盛松成退休前曾任中国央行调查统计司司长，在这个对外公开数据有限的国家，他是少数能接触几乎所有核心经济数据的官员之一。

Now teaching at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, Mr. Sheng gave a little-noticed talk in late November about purchasing power parity. That is the economics concept of what currency exchange rates would need to be for similar goods and services to cost the same in different countries.

盛松成如今在上海的中欧国际工商学院任教，他于11月底在一个金融会议上发表了关于购买力平价的演讲，这是一个经济学概念，指为使不同国家的同类商品和服务价格一致，货币汇率应达到的水平。这番讲话当时并未引发广泛关注。

“From the perspective of purchasing power parity, the exchange rate wouldn’t be 1 to 7 — it might be 1 to 5 or even 1 to 4,” Mr. Sheng said at a finance conference, according to a video recording of the event. “Some have calculated that if the exchange rate truly reflected purchasing power parity, one dollar would exchange for only about 3.5 yuan.”

“如果按照购买力平价的话，那就不是1比7了，很可能是1比5、1比4，”盛松成在会上表示。“有人算过说，如果真的按照购买力平价，那就是一个美元换3.5个人民币了。”

If the renminbi were to strengthen significantly past 5 to the dollar, China would pass the United States as having the world’s largest economy when measured in dollars.

若人民币大幅升值至一美元兑五元人民币以下，按美元计价，中国将超越美国成为全球第一大经济体。

China’s currency is so weak that the number of Chinese tourists flocking to Europe has halved since 2019 as they choose far less expensive trips at home instead. The average traveler spent just $125 for a trip during the country’s weeklong national holiday at the start of October, according to government data.

人民币持续走弱导致中国赴欧游客数量较2019年减半，更多人选择成本更低的国内游。政府数据显示，10月初国庆黄金周期间，中国游客人均消费仅911元。

10月中国国庆黄金周期间，北京故宫附近的游客。中国游客纷纷选择境内游，因为这比出境游便宜。

The currency’s recent weakness began with the two-month Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai in the spring of 2022. The lockdown caused a precipitous, nationwide plunge in consumer confidence, which has never recovered. Many Chinese households and companies have responded by selling their renminbi to buy dollars and other foreign assets, from houses to mines and companies. The investment exodus from the renminbi has also contributed to soaring prices for gold.

人民币近期的弱势始于2022年春季上海持续两个月的新冠疫情封锁。封城导致全国消费者信心急剧下滑，且此后从未恢复。许多中国家庭和企业因此抛售人民币，购买美元及海外房产、矿山、企业等资产。人民币资产的投资外流也推动了黄金价格飙升。

China’s central bank responded by allowing the country’s currency to fall steeply from the first days of the lockdown through the end of 2022. It has then kept the currency at roughly the same level for the past three years.

中国央行的应对举措是：自封锁初期至2022年底，允许人民币大幅贬值，此后三年基本维持在同一水平。

The renminbi had begun to recover slightly in the last several weeks. But the central bank stepped in Thursday to slow the gains, acting to prevent speculators from putting bets on a big appreciation of the renminbi.

过去几周，人民币曾出现小幅回升，但央行于周四出手干预，放缓其升值步伐，以遏制投机者对人民币大幅升值的押注。

Changes in price levels inside and outside China have accentuated the effect from China’s weak currency. While prices in China have been flat or falling for the past several years, prices have been rising elsewhere. Producer prices charged by factories and other businesses climbed 35 percent in Europe in the past five years and 26 percent in the United States.

中国境内外物价水平的变化进一步放大了人民币疲软的影响。过去几年中国物价一直持平或下跌，而全球其他地区物价却持续上涨：过去五年间，欧洲工厂及其他企业收取的生产者价格上涨35%，美国涨幅达26%。

With China’s currency not strengthening to offset these changes in prices, it has become even more appealing for companies to move production to China.

由于人民币未通过升值抵消这些物价变化，企业将生产转移至中国的吸引力愈发强劲。

The weakness of the renminbi has helped fuel a sixteenfold increase in Chinese car exports to the European Union over the past five years.

过去五年，人民币弱势推动中国对欧盟汽车出口增长了16倍。

Another former Chinese central banker, Miao Yanliang, told Bloomberg last week that “the present moment may indeed be a window of opportunity to allow for yuan appreciation.”

另一位前中国央行官员缪延亮上周告诉彭博新闻社：“当前或许确实是允许人民币升值的窗口期。”