In basketball and other sports, “garbage time” refers to the lackluster period near the end of a game when one team is so far ahead that a comeback is impossible. Teams sub out their best players, and the contest limps toward its inevitable conclusion.

在篮球和其他体育运动中，“垃圾时间”指的是比赛接近尾声时乏善可陈的时段，一支球队遥遥领先，翻盘不可能发生。球队把最好的球员换下，比赛无力地走向不可避免的结局。

In China, where the internet is heavily censored, a handful of writers have repurposed “garbage time” to indirectly describe the country’s perceived decline. This summer, as the youth unemployment rate soared above 17 percent, the term became a popular shorthand on Chinese social media for describing a sense of hopelessness around the ailing economy.

在互联网受到严格审查的中国，一些作者重新利用“垃圾时间”这个词，间接描述这个国家在人们眼中的衰落。今年夏天，随着青年失业率飙升至17%以上，“垃圾时间”在中国社交媒体上成为一个流行的略语，用来形容对疲弱经济的绝望感。

Commentaries about garbage times of history, some written under pseudonyms, began appearing last year in blog posts and as opinion essays on respected Chinese news sites. They examined past regimes and dynasties and were broadly understood to be thinly veiled critiques of China’s political and economic system. They landed as discussion of the economy — even misplaced praise for the ruling Communist Party’s economic policies — was getting more sensitive.

去年，一些关于历史垃圾时间的评论开始出现在博客文章和中国知名新闻网站的观点文章中，其中一些是用笔名发表的。它们审视过去的政权和王朝，被广泛理解为对中国政治和经济制度的隐晦批评。它们出现时，有关经济的讨论——甚至是对执政共产党经济政策的错误赞美——正变得越来越敏感。

6月，江苏淮安的一个招聘会。今年夏天，中国的青年失业率飙升至17%以上。

The commentaries didn’t go unnoticed.

这些评论并没有为人所忽视。

Some were taken down, and state-affiliated academics and news outlets lined up to say that garbage time was a fake concept that misrepresented political and economic theories. Beijing Daily, the city’s main official Communist Party newspaper, said in an editorial that readers should not “spiral into self-pity just because of a few words of incitement with ulterior motives.”

一些文章被撤下，隶属于政府的学者和新闻媒体纷纷表示垃圾时间是一个错误的概念，歪曲了政治和经济理论。北京的党报《北京日报》在社论中说，读者不应该“为几句别有用心的鼓吹煽动，就陷入自怨自艾”。

Here’s what the fuss was about.

下面我们来看看这场风波到底是怎么回事。

|7| The writers see earlier garbage time in China and beyond.

一些作者在中国和其他地方看到了更早的垃圾时间。

The commentaries argued that rulers throughout history have fallen into garbage time by centralizing power, rejecting free trade or losing public trust. Some even suggested that any societies that were not capitalist democracies were doomed to fail.

有评论表示，历史上各个时期都有统治者由于集权、拒绝自由贸易或失去公众信任而陷入垃圾时间。有些人甚至认为，任何不是资本主义民主国家的社会都注定要失败。

Some examined other state-controlled economies. One from November said that the Soviet Union had been in garbage time for its entire existence. The article, which cited the writings of an Austrian philosopher who championed free markets and argued against socialism, argued that the U.S.S.R.’s planned economy and undemocratic government made its collapse inevitable.

一些人考察了其他国家控制的经济体。11月的一篇文章说，苏联自存在以来一直处于垃圾时间。文章引用了一位倡导自由市场、反对社会主义的奥地利哲学家的言论，认为苏联的计划经济和不民主的政府使其崩溃不可避免。

Others looked at Chinese history. One opinion essay from February argued that Zhu Yuanzhang, who served as the Ming dynasty’s first emperor in the 14th century, plunged the entire 276-year regime into garbage time by monopolizing power, introducing isolationist trade policies and imposing harsh laws. The piece contrasted that failure with the flourishing of Britain’s economy during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, attributing the success to colonialism and free-trade policies.

也有人着眼于中国历史。2月的一篇评论文章认为，14世纪明朝的第一位皇帝朱元璋垄断权力、推行孤立主义贸易政策和严刑峻法，使整个276年的政权陷入了垃圾时间。文章将这种失败与18世纪和19世纪工业革命期间英国经济的繁荣进行了对比，将英国的成功归因于殖民主义和自由贸易政策。

A December blog post about the Qing, China’s last dynasty, argued that its garbage time began in 1901, a decade before its downfall. The trouble started when the public lost faith in its leaders once the reigning empress, Cixi, fled after foreign troops suppressed a peasant uprising she had backed, the author wrote.

去年12月，一篇关于中国最后一个王朝清朝的公众号文章认为，清朝的“垃圾时间”始于1901年，也就是清朝灭亡之前10年。这位作者写道，在位的慈禧太后在外国军队镇压了她支持的农民起义后出逃，公众对领导人失去了信心，问题就开始了。

Although the Qing had previously suffered defeats, this was the first to be felt widely by the public, the blog post said. As a result, it shattered the widespread perception that the dynasty was still on the rise.

这篇博文说，虽然清政府以前也遭受过失败，但这是第一次被公众广泛感受到的失败。结果，它打破了人们普遍认为这个王朝仍在崛起的看法。

The garbage time pieces implicitly challenged the government.

关于垃圾时间的作品暗含着对政府的质疑。

Even though the commentaries didn’t mention modern China or the Communist Party, experts say they implicitly challenged the country’s authoritarian governance and state-controlled economy. In that sense, they were part of a Chinese literary tradition of intellectuals avoiding censorship by criticizing rulers through historical allegories.

尽管这些评论没有提到现代中国或共产党，但专家们说，它们含蓄地挑战了中国的威权治理和国家控制的经济。从这个意义上说，它们是中国文学传统的一部分，知识分子通过历史寓言来批评统治者，以避免审查。

“The real argument, the key, is actually about the legitimacy of the party,” said Xiao Qiang, a researcher on internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley, who tracked some of the discussion around and censorship of garbage time commentaries.

“真正的论点、问题的关键实际上是关于中共的合法性，”加州大学伯克利分校研究互联网自由的研究员萧强表示，他追踪了围绕垃圾时间的一些讨论和审查。

The concept of garbage time, and the idea that societies will inevitably collapse without economic concepts like free trade, contradicts the Marxist idea of historical inevitability that the Chinese government promotes, said Isabella Jackson, an assistant professor of Chinese history at Trinity College Dublin. That narrative argues that through class struggle all societies will eventually transition from capitalism to socialism to communism.

都柏林圣三一学院研究中国历史的助理教授伊莎贝拉·杰克逊说，垃圾时间的概念以及社会在没有自由贸易等经济概念的情况下将不可避免地崩溃的观点，与中国政府倡导的马克思主义的历史必然性观点相矛盾。马克思主义认为，通过阶级斗争，所有社会最终都将从资本主义过渡到社会主义，再过渡到共产主义。

7 月，中国最高领导人习近平在北京举行的中国共产党政策会议上的画面。

The commentaries seem to be aimed more at making a particular argument than accurately portraying history, Professor Jackson added. Dismissing the whole Ming dynasty as garbage time is an oversimplification of a court that flourished during its peak, she said. Among other things, literature thrived, and Ming mariners undertook seven massive trade and diplomatic expeditions to regions like East Africa and the Persian Gulf.

杰克逊还说，这些评论似乎更多是为了提出一个特定的论点，而不是准确地描绘历史。她说，将整个明朝视为垃圾时间，是对一个在鼎盛时期曾极为繁荣的朝代的过度简化。别的不提，明朝的文学蓬勃发展，航海家曾七次前往东非和波斯湾等地区进行大规模贸易和外交探险。

Still, she said, “You can see the point that a lot of things that were celebrated didn’t really benefit ordinary people.”

不过，她说，“你可以看到，很多被歌颂的事情并没有真正惠及普通人。”

Chinese officialdom called the term malicious.

中国官方称这个词是恶意的。

The phrase’s online popularity appears to have peaked in July, shortly before top officials gathered for a meeting to set the direction of China’s economy. Many economists had called for a shift from investment-led growth toward consumer spending, but the meeting ended with few signs of a fundamental policy rethink.

这个词在网上的流行程度似乎在7月达到了顶峰，当时中国高层官员即将召开会议，确定中国经济发展方向。许多经济学家曾呼吁中国经济增长从投资拉动型转向消费支出型，但会议结束时，几乎没有迹象表明中国将对基本政策进行反思。

As the state media tried to get the Chinese public excited about the meeting, some outlets and commentators accused those who used “garbage time” of sowing pessimism and idealizing Western values. Ming Jinwei, a former journalist at the state news agency Xinhua, said the concept had been coined by a small group of “petty bourgeois intellectuals.”

当官方媒体试图让中国公众对这次会议感到兴奋时，一些媒体和评论员指责那些使用“垃圾时间”的人播下悲观情绪，将西方价值观理想化。前新华社记者明金维说，这个概念是由一小群“小资产阶级知识分子”创造出来的。

Academics chimed in. In a commencement speech, Qiao Liu, a dean at Peking University, warned students not to fall into “narrative traps” like garbage time that can be used to distort facts, influence people’s behavior and have negative consequences for the economy.

学者们也加入进来。在毕业典礼上的演讲中，北京大学光华管理学院院长刘俏告诫学生们不要陷入“叙事陷阱”，比如垃圾时间，这些陷阱可以用来扭曲事实，影响人们的行为，并对经济产生负面影响。

7月，在北京的餐厅就餐。许多经济学家呼吁转向消费支出。

Wang Wen, the dean of financial studies at Renmin University in Beijing, wrote on a state-affiliated economics site that the concept was more malicious than the “lying flat” trend in which Chinese young people advocate a restful life over one defined by hustling. He said that garbage time arguments encouraged inaction and “completely denied China’s growth.”

北京人民大学重阳金融研究院院长王文在一个政府下属的经济网站上写道，这个概念比“躺平”的趋势更恶毒。在“躺平”风潮中，中国年轻人提倡安逸而不是忙碌的生活。他说，垃圾时间的论点鼓励不作为，“完全否定当下中国的发展状况。”

Mr. Wang acknowledged that the phrase’s popularity reflected broader anxieties and showed the need for urgent changes that would bolster the economy and ease people’s concerns.

王文承认，这个词的流行反映了更广泛的焦虑，表明需要进行紧急的变革，提振经济，缓解人们的担忧。

If they could feel their lives improving, he wrote, “The harmful effects of these counterfeit, false concepts will be neutralized.”

他写道，如果人们能够感觉到自己的生活得到改善，“自然而然那些假冒伪劣概念的毒害性就会无所遁形”。