接上文：

《经济学人》精读58：Lessons from China’s rust belt （part 1）

The national interest

All of which makes the question of how to revive the region more than a parochial one. It is, says Andrew Batson of Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm, “a proxy debate about the future of China: should there be more interventionist industrial policy or more free-market solutions?”

Controversy flared last August with the publication of a 500-page report on Jilin, commissioned by the province from a well-known Chinese economist, Justin Yifu Lin, who was the World Bank’s chief economist in 2008-12. Mr Lin argued that Jilin is a bit like a poor developing country, and that it should take the path followed by successful emerging economies elsewhere. He said that would require investment in agriculture, pharmaceuticals and industries such as textiles, home appliances and electronics. Mr Lin noted that this is what China’s southern provinces had done, and such industries there were now being displaced by high-tech firms. He said this was giving Jilin (and the north-east generally) a chance to grab them.

flare: to become suddenly excited, angry, or active

去年八月一份500页的报告发布了，是前世界银行首席经济学家林毅夫写的，说吉林像一个发展中国家，应该发展农业，医药业，和纺织业等，就像中国南方部分省份以前那样

His proposal was received politely in official circles, and by a storm of criticism everywhere else. Zhao Gang of the government’s main planning agency said Mr Lin had shown that “it’s not a problem to develop textiles or technology in Jilin.” But Guo Qiang of the Central Party School in Beijing replied that scholars who advise governments are “most unreliable” when they suggest which industries to develop. Sun Jianbo, the founder of China Vision Capital, a fund-management company, was even more to the point. “The north-east’s problem,” he wrote, “is not industrial structure but institutions and culture.”

Mr Sun argues that it is wrong to regard the north-east as a poor developing area. He says it is a moderately rich stagnant one. Lacking cheap labour, it cannot compete with, say, Bangladesh in attracting low-cost industries. More important, he argues, the north-east has a lethal combination of corruption and political meddling which makes it hard to attract investment of any kind. Investors shy away, he says, “because business scams, government interference and constantly changing policies are universal in the north-east.”

很多人不同意林毅夫的建议，有个Sun jianbo直接挑明说，东北的问题不是产业结构问题，是制度和文化的问题！东北的腐败和政治干预使投资者望而却步...

Corruption is indeed rife. It can cost 300,000-500,000 yuan ($47,500-79,000) to buy a job as a nurse at a state hospital in Harbin. That is roughly eight years’ salary, but the bribe is judged worthwhile because a state pension is secure and the job comes with opportunities for kickbacks. In 2016, 45 deputies from Liaoning to the Nationa lPeople’s Congress (China’s parliament) and 523 members of the province’s own assembly were thrown out for bribery. The prime minister, Li Keqiang, complains that entrepreneurs need 200 stamps or licences to start a business in the north-east, a huge number. Xu Long, a trader in Harbin, sums it up: “Elsewhere the crooks steal baby chicks but fatten them up before killing them. In the north-east they kill the chicks right away and then wonder why no one has enough to eat.”

Political interference produces arbitrary, even disastrous decisions. Take Dandong, on the border with North Korea. The town is best known as a place to watch for sanctions-busting by the regime in Pyongyang. But it enjoys another distinction, as China’s largest private port. In 2005 the municipal government sold most of its stake in the facility. The new owners began cautiously expanding it. The city fathers,however, soon threw caution to the wind. Ignoring the fact that they no longer owned the port, they announced in 2011 that “the whole city” would support its development. They showered the owners with tax breaks and cheap land.

rife: very common and often bad or unpleasant

kickback: an amount of money that is given to someone in return for providing help in a secret and dishonest business deal

There followed a period of breakneck growth in spending on the project, financed by easy money from government-owned banks. Investment by the private firm quadrupled in 2011-15 compared with the previous four years. But the debt ballooned as the port’s main business(shipments of coal and steel) collapsed. With new loans drying up, the company ran out of cash and defaulted on two repayments. Some staff have not received wages for more than a year. “Private”, in this case, did not mean efficient, or even independent.

The massive increase in the central government’s investment in the region has given local officials more economic influence. A car company in Liaoning, called Brilliance Auto, shows what can happen. In 2002 the provincial government took over what was then a thriving concern. It pushed out the founder, cancelled plans to open a new plant near Shanghai and forced the company to buy steel from a steelmaker it itself owns.Three-quarters of Brilliance’s revenue comes from domestic sales of sedan cars.But its models have lost money since 2002. The sedan division is mired in debt,a remarkable feat in China’s booming car market.

breakneck: very fast, dangerously fast

Local governments in the north-east mollycoddle their industrial champions by giving them preference in procurement contracts. But their protectionism has not helped. The Paulson Institute’s Mr Song has looked at sales within China of 36 types of industrial products from Liaoning. He finds that their market share has fallen in 30 of them since 2000, most by between a third and two-thirds. In the late 1990s exports from the province were growing at roughly the national rate. Since then, they have been growing only two-thirds as fast. There has been a decisive shift away from openness and trade towards local autarky.

There are a few bright spots. JD.com, one of China’s largest delivery companies, is investing 20bn yuan in Harbin, and has put its data-analytics division there. But the broader lessons of the north-east are sobering. It is a place where political connections are more important than efficiency, where local governments have wasted vast quantities of money, and investment-led growth has encouraged local protectionism. At the national level, Mr Xi is making politics paramount, protecting SOEs and keeping government investment high. The moral of the north-east’s woes is that these policies do not help to sustain economic prowess.

mollycoddle: to treat someone with more kindness and attention than is appropriate, to treat someone too nicely or gently

paramount: very important: of highest rank or importance

prowess: great ability or skill

总结：好像也没有什么好的办法让东北的经济再次腾飞，其根源在于文化和制度不适合经济发展

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Results

Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L

Mean Sentence Length: 16.02

Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.20

Word Count: 977

这篇文章的最后部分蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 是经济学人里最简单的了，适合大一大二的学生看，而且这篇是关于中国的，内容比较熟悉！

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