China announced on Monday that its trade surplus reached almost $1 trillion last year as its exports swamped the globe, while the country’s own businesses and households spent cautiously on imports.

中国周一公布了去年的进出口总值。由于向世界各地的出口剧增，而国内企业和家庭在进口产品消费上谨慎支出，中国的贸易顺差去年达到了逾7万亿元。

When adjusted for inflation, China’s trade surplus last year far exceeded any in the world in the past century, even those of export powerhouses like Germany, Japan or the United States. Chinese factories are dominating global manufacturing on a scale not experienced by any country since the United States after World War II.

根据通货膨胀的情况做出调整后，中国去年的贸易顺差远超包括德国、日本或美国等出口大国在内的任何国家在过去一个世纪里达到过的水平。自从美国在第二次世界大战后一度主导全球制造业以来，中国的工厂正在以任何国家未曾有过的规模占据全球制造业的主导地位。

The outpouring of goods from Chinese factories has drawn criticism from an ever-lengthening list of China’s trade partners. Industrialized and developing countries alike have erected tariffs, attempting to slow the tide. In many instances, China has retaliated in kind, bringing the world closer to a trade war that could further destabilize the global economy.

来自中国工厂的商品大量涌入全球市场，已在越来越多的中国贸易伙伴那里引发批评。工业化国家和发展中国家都在加征关税，试图减慢中国商品涌入的速度。中国已在许多情况下采取了反制措施，让世界与一场可能会进一步破坏全球经济稳定的贸易战越来越近。

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who will take office next week, has threatened to escalate already aggressive American trade policies aimed at China.

候任总统特朗普下周就将上任，他威胁要升级本已富于攻击性的美国对华贸易政策。

On Monday, China’s General Administration of Customs said that the country exported $3.58 trillion worth of goods and services last year, while importing $2.59 trillion. The resulting surplus of $990 billion broke China’s previous record, which was $838 billion in 2022.

中国海关总署周一公布了去年的进出口总值，中国去年的出口货物达到25.45万亿元，进口18.39万亿元。由此产生的贸易顺差为7.06万亿元，打破了之前的记录，即2022年的5.86万亿元。

Strong exports in December, including some that may have been rushed to the United States before Mr. Trump can take office and start raising tariffs, propelled China to a new single-month record surplus of $104.8 billion.

12月的强劲出口，包括一些可能是赶在特朗普上台并开始提高关税前匆忙向美国出口的商品，导致中国的单月贸易顺差创下历史新高，达到7529.1亿元。

While China ran a deficit in oil and other natural resources, its trade surplus in manufactured goods represented 10 percent of China’s economy. By comparison, U.S. reliance on trade surpluses in manufactured goods peaked at 6 percent of American output early in World War I, when factories in Europe had mostly stopped exporting and shifted to wartime production.

虽然中国在石油和其他自然资源的进口上存在贸易逆差，但制成品贸易顺差已占中国经济总产值的10%。与之相比，美国对制成品贸易顺差的依赖在第一次世界大战初期达到峰值，当占美国生产总值的6%，当时，欧洲的工厂大都转向了战时生产，不再制造商品。

Many countries seek trade surpluses in manufactured goods because factories create jobs and are important for national security. A trade surplus is the amount by which exports exceed imports.

许多国家谋求制成品贸易顺差，因为工厂可以创造就业机会，而且对国家安全也很重要。贸易顺差指的是出口总值超出进口总值的金额。

China’s exports of everything from cars to solar panels have been an economic bonanza for the country. Exports have created millions of jobs not just for factory workers, whose inflation-adjusted wages have about doubled in the past decade but also for high-earning engineers, designers and research scientists.

中国出口从汽车到太阳能电池板等各种商品，为本国带来巨大经济利益。出口不仅为工厂的工人创造了数百万个就业岗位，也为高收入的工程师、设计师，以及从事研究的科学家创造了就业机会。在通胀调整基础上，中国工人的工资在过去十年增长了近一倍。

At the same time, China’s imports of factory goods have slowed sharply. The country has pursued national self-reliance over the last two decades, most notably through its Made in China 2025 policy, for which Beijing pledged $300 billion to promote advanced manufacturing.

与此同时，中国已大幅放缓了工业品的进口。过去20年来，中国一直在推行自力更生的国策，最引人注目的是通过《中国制造2025》战略，政府承诺为推动先进制造业发展投入2万亿元。

China has gone from importing cars to becoming the world’s largest car exporter, surpassing Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Germany. A Chinese, state-owned enterprise has started making single-aisle commercial jetliners, in an attempt to replace Airbus and Boeing jets someday. Chinese companies produce almost all of the world’s solar panels.

中国已从汽车进口国发展为世界上最大的汽车出口国，超过了日本、韩国、墨西哥以及德国。为了有朝一日取代空客和波音飞机，中国的一家国有企业已开始制造单通道商用喷气式客机。中国公司生产了世界上几乎所有的太阳能电池板。

中国苏州太阳能电池板生产线上的工人。中国工厂正以其他国家未曾有过的规模主导全球制造业，只有美国在第二次世界大战后做到过这种规模。

China’s exports are booming as its domestic economy is suffering. The trade surplus has offset some of the harm from a housing market crash that has scarred businesses and consumers. Millions of construction workers have lost their jobs, while China’s middle class has lost much of its savings. This has left many families reluctant to spend on either imports or domestic goods and services.

随着国内经济停滞不前，中国正在大力发展出口经济。贸易顺差已部分抵消了房地产市场崩溃给企业和消费者造成的损失。房地产市场崩溃已导致数百万建筑工人失业，让中国中产阶级的资产大幅缩水。这使得许多家庭不愿花钱购买进口商品或国产商品和服务。

Overbuilding of China’s factories has started hurting many Chinese companies, which face falling prices, heavy losses and even loan defaults.

中国工厂的过度建设已开始给许多中国公司造成损害，它们正面临价格下跌、巨额亏损甚至贷款违约的问题。

The backlash to China’s trade imbalance has come from industrialized and developing countries alike. Governments are worried about factory closings and job losses in manufacturing sectors that cannot compete with low prices from China.

工业化国家和发展中国家都已对它们的对华贸易不平衡做出强烈反应。各国政府担心本国制造业由于无法与中国的低价竞争，将面临工厂倒闭、工人失业的问题。

The European Union and the United States raised tariffs last year on cars from China. But some of the broadest barriers to China’s exports have been put up by less affluent countries with middle-income manufacturing sectors, like Brazil, Turkey, India and Indonesia. They have been on the cusp of industrialization but fear that could slip away.

去年，欧盟和美国提高了对中国汽车的关税。但对中国出口设置了一些最广泛壁垒的国家是依赖制造业的中等收入国家，比如巴西、土耳其、印度，以及印度尼西亚。这些国家正在走向工业化，但担心机会可能会消失。

The volume of China’s exports has been rising more than 12 percent a year. The dollar value of its exports has been growing at half that pace, as prices plunged because Chinese companies were producing even more goods than foreign buyers were ready to purchase.

中国的货物出口总量每年以逾12%的速度增长，但以美元计算的货物出口总额的增长速度只有6%，原因是中国企业生产的商品数量远高于外国买家准备购买的数量，导致商品价格暴跌。

The Biden administration, picking up from Mr. Trump’s first term, has led what has become bipartisan criticism that Beijing is using its control of China’s state-owned banks to invest excessively in factory capacity. The banks’ net lending to industry was $83 billion in 2019, before the pandemic. That increased to $670 billion by 2023, although the pace slowed somewhat in the first nine months of last year.

拜登政府沿袭了特朗普第一次担任总统时的做法，批评中国政府通过对国有银行的控制对工厂过度投资，导致产能过剩，这种批评已成为美国的两党共识。在新冠病毒大流行前的2019年，中国的银行全年增加了5912亿元的工业贷款。到2023年时，这个数字已增长到4.82万亿元，尽管去年前九个月的工业贷款增长速度有所放缓。

“China is making a major mistake in producing two to three times domestic demand in a number of areas, whether it’s steel or robotics or electric vehicles, lithium batteries, solar panels, and then exporting the excess all around the world,” said R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China.

“中国正在犯一个重大错误，在无论是钢铁、机器人、电动汽车、锂电池，还是太阳能电池板等不少领域生产两到三倍于国内需求的产品，然后将过剩产品出口到世界各地，”美国驻华大使尼古拉斯·伯恩斯说。

At a news briefing on Monday, Wang Lingjun, vice minister of the customs administration, rejected such criticisms. “It is essentially protectionism to counter China’s development,” he said.

中国海关总署副署长王令浚在周一的新闻发布会上驳斥了这种批评。“这本质上是保护主义，旨在遏制中国的发展，”他说。

China has not run a trade deficit since 1993. Its 2024 trade surplus dwarfs earlier records when adjusted for inflation. Japan’s surplus, for example, peaked in 1993 at $96 billion. That works out to $185 billion in today’s dollars, or less than a fifth of China’s surplus last year.

中国自1993年以来就未见贸易逆差。根据通货膨胀的情况作调整后，中国2024年的贸易顺差使得以前的记录相形见绌。例如，日本的贸易顺差在1993年达到960亿美元的峰值，按今天的价格计算相当于1850亿美元，不到中国去年近1万亿美元贸易顺差的五分之一。

Germany ran enormous trade surpluses in the years following Europe’s financial crisis a decade ago. But its surplus peaked in 2017 at a sum equal to $326 billion in today’s money.

在欧洲十年前发生金融危机之后的几年里，德国曾有过巨大的贸易顺差。德国的贸易顺差在2017年达到顶峰时，按今天的价格计算相当于3260亿美元。

Japan’s and Germany’s trade surpluses each topped out at about 1 percent of the rest of the world’s economic output. China’s trade surpluses are twice as big by that measure, said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

日本和德国的贸易顺差最高时各约占全世界经济产出的1%左右。美国外交关系委员会的高级研究员布拉德·布拉德·塞策说，按这个标准衡量，中国的贸易顺差是它们的两倍。

“Since 2021, China has pivoted back toward exports in a big way — and its export growth is increasingly coming at the expense of other manufacturing-heavy economies around the world,” he said.

“中国已从2021年起大走回头路，转向靠出口提升经济，其出口增长越来越多地以牺牲世界其他主要依赖制造业的经济体为代价，”他说。

The United States ran persistent trade surpluses from 1870 to 1970, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Most were relatively small, in today’s dollars.

圣路易斯联邦储备银行的研究人员表示，美国在从1870年至 1970年的那段时间里一直保持着贸易顺差。按今天的美元计算，这些贸易顺差都相对地小。

After World War II, with much of Europe and East Asia in ruins, American factories shifted from tanks and rifles to cars and washing machines. The U.S. postwar trade surplus peaked at $12 billion in 1947, which works out to about $130 billion in today’s dollars. But because the rest of the world’s output was severely depressed that year, the American trade surplus equaled about 4 percent of the global economy. That is a level China has not yet reached.

第二次世界大战后，欧洲和东亚的大部分地区严重受损，美国的工厂从生产坦克和步枪，转向生产汽车和洗衣机。美国“二战”后的贸易顺差在1947年达到120亿美元的峰值，以今天的美元计算约为1300亿美元。但由于世界其他地区那年的经济产出严重低迷，美国当时的贸易顺差约占全球经济的4%。中国的贸易顺差尚未达到这一水平。

连云港的一家生产毛绒泰迪熊的出口玩具厂，图为生产线上的工人。

The widening of China’s trade surplus accounted for up to half the entire country’s economic growth last year. Investment in new factories for exports represented much of the rest of the growth. In a report scheduled for Friday, China’s government is expected to say that the country’s economy expanded about 5 percent last year.

中国扩大的贸易顺差最多贡献了去年一半的国内经济增长。为出口建设新工厂的投资贡献了其余经济增长的大部分。预计中国政府将在本周五发布的报告中称国内经济去年增长了约5%。

China now produces about a third of the world’s manufactured goods, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. That is more than the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Britain combined.

据联合国工业发展组织的数据，中国目前生产约三分之一的全球制成品，超过美国、日本、德国、韩国以及英国的总和。

China has built up its exports through huge investments in education, factories and infrastructure, while maintaining fairly high tariffs and other barriers to imports. Universities churn out more graduates in engineering and related subjects each year than the combined total of graduates in all majors from American colleges and universities.

中国通过大量投资教育、工厂以及基础设施来增加出口，同时对进口保持着相当高的关税和其他壁垒。中国大学每年的工程学和相关专业的应届毕业生人数高于美国大学所有专业的毕业生人数总和。

The question is whether China can maintain its lead if other countries raise tariffs. Yet many importers find that China remains the most competitive place to buy goods.

问题是，如果其他国家提高关税的话，中国还能否保持出口领先地位。不过许多进口商发现，中国仍是最有竞争力的商品采购地。

Eric Poses, the owner and chief executive of All Things Equal, a Miami Beach firm that invents and distributes board games and electronic tabletop games, uses suppliers in Shanghai. Printing board games costs twice as much in the United States, while the United States does not even manufacture many electronics needed for the tabletop games.

埃里克·波塞斯是All Things Equal公司的拥有者和首席执行官。这家总部设在迈阿密海滩的公司发明和销售桌游和电子化桌游，其供应商在上海。在美国印刷桌面游戏的成本是中国的两倍，而美国根本就不生产电子化桌游所需的许多电子产品。

“I wish I could do it here in a cost effective manner, but it’s just not possible,” he said.

“我倒是希望能在这里找到有成本效益的供应商，但这根本不可能，”他说。