On the outskirts of Chongqing, western China’s largest city, sits a huge symbol of the country’s glut of car factories. It’s a complex of gray buildings, nearly a square mile in size. The thousands of employees who used to work there have moved on. Its crimson loading docks are closed.

在中国西部最大城市重庆的郊区，坐落着中国汽车制造厂过剩的巨大象征。这是一个灰色建筑群，面积近250公顷。曾经在那里工作的数千名员工已经离开。深红色的装卸码头已经关闭。

The facility, a former assembly plant and engine factory, had been a joint venture of a Chinese company and Hyundai, the South Korean giant. The complex opened in 2017 with robots and other equipment to make gasoline-powered cars. Hyundai sold the campus late last year for a fraction of the $1.1 billion it took to build and equip it. Unmown grass at the site has already grown knee high.

这家工厂的前身是装配厂和发动机厂，曾经是一家中国企业和韩国汽车巨头现代汽车的合资企业。该工厂于2017年投产，配备了生产汽油动力汽车的机器人和其他设备。去年年底，现代出售了该园区，价格仅相当于11亿美元建设和装备成本的一小部分。园区内的荒草已经齐膝。

“It was all highly automated, but now, it is desolate,” said Zhou Zhehui, 24, who works for a rival Chinese automaker, Chang’an, and whose apartment looks down on the former Hyundai complex.

“当时全部自动化程度很高，现在荒凉了，”24岁的周哲辉（音）说。他在竞争对手中国汽车制造商长安汽车工作，从他的公寓可以俯瞰昔日的现代工厂。

China has more than 100 factories with the capacity to build close to 40 million internal combustion engine cars a year. That is roughly twice as many as people in China want to buy, and sales of these cars are dropping fast as electric vehicles become more popular.

中国的100多家工厂每年能生产近4000万辆内燃机汽车。这大约是中国人想购买数量的两倍，随着电动汽车越来越受欢迎，内燃机汽车的销量正在迅速下降。

Last month, for the first time, sales of battery-electric and plug-in gasoline-electric hybrid cars together surpassed those of gasoline-powered cars in China’s 35 largest cities.

上个月，在中国35个最大城市中，电池电动汽车和插电式油电混合动力汽车的总销量首次超过了汽油动力汽车。

Dozens of gasoline-powered vehicle factories are barely running or have already been mothballed.

数十家以汽油为动力的汽车工厂要么勉强运转，要么已经停产。

该工厂于去年年底被现代汽车出售，目前尚无新的租户。

The country’s auto industry is near the start of an E.V. transition that is expected to last years and eventually claim many of those factories. How China manages that long change will influence its future economic growth, since the auto sector is so big and could transform its work force.

中国的汽车工业即将开始向电动汽车转型，预计这一转型将持续数年，最终会让许多这样的工厂倒闭。中国如何应对这一长期的变革，将会影响其未来的经济增长，因为汽车行业如此庞大，可能会改变其劳动力结构。

The stakes are great for the rest of the world, too.

对世界其他地区来说同样事关重大。

China, the world’s largest car market, became the largest exporter last year, having passed Japan and Germany. China’s auto sales abroad are exploding.

作为全球最大的汽车市场，中国去年超过日本和德国，成为全球最大的汽车出口国。中国汽车在海外的销量呈爆炸式增长。

Three-quarters of China’s exported cars are gasoline-powered models that the domestic market no longer needs, said Bill Russo, an electric car consultant in Shanghai. Those exports threaten to flatten producers elsewhere.

上海的电动汽车顾问罗威(Bill Russo)表示，中国出口的汽车中，有四分之三是国内市场不再需要的汽油动力车型。这些出口威胁到其他地区的生产商。

At the same time, China’s electric vehicle companies are still investing heavily in new factories. BYD and other automakers are expected to introduce more electric models at the opening of the Beijing auto show on Thursday.

与此同时，中国的电动汽车公司仍在大力投资兴建新工厂。预计比亚迪和其他汽车制造商将在周四的北京车展开幕式上推出更多电动车型。

Electric car sales in China are still growing. But the pace of growth has halved since last summer, as consumer spending has faltered in China because of a housing market crisis.

中国的电动汽车销量仍在增长。但自去年夏天以来，随着中国消费者支出因房地产市场危机而下滑，增速已减半。

“There is a slowdown trend, especially for pure electric vehicles,” said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association.

全国乘用车市场信息联席会秘书长崔东树表示：“有放缓趋势，纯电动车尤其有放缓趋势。”

位于中国宁波的极氪电动汽车工厂。与生产汽油动力汽车相比，组装电动汽车所需的工人要少得多。

China also has overcapacity in electric vehicle manufacturing, although less than for gasoline-powered cars. Price cutting for electric vehicles is common. Li Auto, a fast-growing Chinese manufacturer, reduced its prices on Monday. Tesla did the same a day earlier. BYD, the industry leader in China, made cuts in February. Volkswagen and General Motors have also lowered E.V. prices in China this year.

中国在电动汽车制造方面也存在产能过剩，尽管程度低于汽油动力汽车。电动汽车降价很常见。中国快速增长的汽车制造商理想汽车周一下调了价格。特斯拉一天前也做了同样的事情。中国汽车行业的领军企业比亚迪今年2月降价。大众和通用汽车今年也在中国市场降低了电动汽车的价格。

Automakers with factories close to China’s coast are exporting gasoline-powered cars. But many of the endangered factories are in cities deep inside the country, like Chongqing, where high transport costs to the coast make it too expensive to export.

在沿海地区有工厂的汽车制造商正在出口汽油动力汽车。但许多濒临倒闭的工厂都在内陆城市，比如重庆，从那里到海边的运输成本很高，出口不划算。

Almost all of China’s electric cars are assembled at newly built factories, which qualify for subsidies from municipal governments and state-directed banks. It’s cheaper for automakers to build new factories than to convert existing ones. The result has been enormous overcapacity.

中国几乎所有的电动汽车都是在新建的工厂组装，这些工厂有资格获得地方政府和国有银行的补贴。对汽车制造商来说，建造新工厂比改造现有工厂要便宜。其结果是产能严重过剩。

“The Chinese auto industry is experiencing a revolution,” said John Zeng, the director of Asia forecasting at GlobalData Automotive. “The old internal combustion capacity is dying.”

“中国汽车行业正在经历一场革命，”GlobalData Automotive的亚洲预测主管约翰·曾（音）说。“旧的内燃机产能正在消亡。”

Sales of gasoline-powered cars plummeted to 17.7 million last year from 28.3 million in 2017, the year that Hyundai opened its Chongqing complex. That drop is equivalent to the entire European Union car market last year, or all of the United States’ annual car and light truck production.

去年，汽油动力汽车的销量从2017年的2830万辆骤降至1770万辆，而现代汽车那家重庆工厂正是在2017年投产的。这一降幅相当于去年整个欧盟汽车市场的产量，或者美国小汽车和轻型卡车的年产量。

Hyundai’s sales in China have plunged 69 percent since 2017. The company put the factory up for sale last summer, but no other automaker wanted it. Hyundai ended up selling the land, the buildings and much of the equipment back to a municipal development company in Chongqing for just $224 million, or 20 cents on the dollar.

自2017年以来，现代汽车在中国的销量下降了69%。去年夏天，该公司将这家工厂挂牌出售，但没有其他汽车制造商想要。最终，现代以2.24亿美元的价格，将土地、建筑和大部分设备卖给了重庆的一家市政开发公司，相当于成本的20%。

在已关闭的重庆工厂园区附近的工厂宿舍楼。

The municipal company said this year, while seeking insurance on the site, that it did not have a new tenant.

市政公司今年在为该地块投保时表示，它没有找到新的租户。

Other multinational automakers have reduced output in China. Ford Motor has three factories in Chongqing that have been running at a tiny fraction of their capacity for the past five years.

其他跨国汽车制造商也减少了在中国的产量。福特汽车在重庆有三家工厂，过去五年，这些工厂的产能只是过去的一个零头。

Hyundai is one of the very few automakers, mostly foreign, that have halted production entirely at some locations, although the company still has three factories in China.

现代汽车是少数几家在部分地区完全停产的汽车制造商之一，这些停产厂家大部分是外国企业。不过现代汽车在中国仍有三家工厂。

“There doesn’t seem to be a concerted effort to shut down excess capacity, but more of a shift from foreign owned to Chinese owned,” said Michael Dunne, a former president of General Motors Indonesia.

通用汽车印尼公司前总裁迈克尔·邓恩表示：“似乎没有一个一致的行动去关闭过剩产能，更多的是从外资转向中资。”

The longstanding benchmark is that car factories should run at 80 percent of capacity, or more, to be efficient and make money. But with new electric car factories opening and few older factories closing, capacity utilization across the entire industry fell to 65 percent in the first three months of this year from 75 percent last year and 80 percent or more before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

长期以来的基准是，汽车工厂要以产能的80%或更高的水平运行才能实现高效和盈利。但根据中国国家统计局的数据，随着新电动汽车工厂的落成和少数老旧工厂的关闭，今年前三个月，整个行业的产能利用率从去年的75%和新冠疫情前的80%或更高降至65%。

Without a big burst of exports last year, the industry would have operated even further below full capacity.

如果没有去年的出口大爆发，该行业将进一步在低于满负荷的状态下运行。

Chinese manufacturers, many of them partly or entirely owned by city governments, have been reluctant to reduce output and cut jobs. Chang’an, a state-owned carmaker, has a factory just a 20-minute walk down pink-bougainvillea-lined lanes from the former Hyundai complex. The factory’s many acres of parking were completely full of unsold cars on Sunday.

中国制造商一直不愿减产和裁员，其中许多制造商部分或全部由市政府拥有。长安汽车是一家国有汽车制造商，从原现代汽车工业园区出发，沿着开满粉红色三角梅的小巷，步行20分钟即可到达。周日，这家工厂占地好几亩的停车场停满了未售出的汽车。

重庆长安工厂新生产的汽车。

Cities that are particularly dependent on gasoline-powered car production, like Chongqing, face a jobs dilemma. Assembling electric vehicles requires considerably fewer workers than making gasoline-powered cars, because E.V.s have much fewer components.

像重庆这样特别依赖汽油动力汽车生产的城市面临着就业困境。与制造汽油动力汽车相比，组装电动汽车所需的工人要少得多，因为电动汽车的零部件要少得多。

Workers with strong technical backgrounds, particularly in robotics, can easily and quickly find jobs if they’re laid off, autoworkers in Chongqing said in interviews. But semiskilled workers — including those who are older and have not taken training courses to develop their abilities — are now finding it more difficult to obtain work.

重庆的汽车工人在接受采访时说，拥有深厚技术背景、特别是拥有机器人技术背景的工人，如果被解雇，可以很容易、很快地找到工作。但是，半熟练工——包括那些年龄较大、没有参加过培训课程以提高能力的工人——现在更难找到工作。

Mr. Zhou said that when he applied for his job at Chang’an, “it was a fierce competition.”

周哲辉说他申请长安的工作时“竞争激烈”。

Still, it is extremely hard to find unemployed former Hyundai workers in Chongqing these days, even in the neighborhood of the former factory.

不过，如今在重庆，即使是在原工厂附近，也很难找到失业的前现代员工。

Most factory workers in China are migrants who grew up in rural areas and have few connections to the communities where gasoline-powered cars have been built. So they can easily move to other cities or industries when they lose jobs.

在中国，大多数工厂工人都是在农村长大的外来务工人员，与生产汽油动力汽车的社区几乎没有联系。因此，当他们失去工作时，可以很容易地转移到其他城市或行业。

Yet a tinge of gloom hangs over the car industry in Chongqing, as demand slows and less skilled workers have fewer opportunities to earn overtime pay. Hyundai’s signage is still visible in many places at its former factory, but a large shadow on the front gate shows where an optimistic slogan used to hang: “New Thinking, New Possibilities.”

然而，随着需求放缓，技术水平较低的工人获得加班费的机会减少，重庆的汽车业笼罩着一层阴霾。在原工厂的许多地方，仍然可以看到现代汽车的标志，但大门上的一片巨大的阴影显示那里曾经挂着一句乐观的口号：“New Thinking, New Possibilities”（新思维，新可能）。