【原文标题】E-Commerce Is Getting Chinese to Loosen Their Purse Strings
【译文标题】电子商务让中国人松开钱袋
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/technology/internet/24online.html?_r=1
【译者】满仓
BEIJING — For all the talk that the Chinese are spending too little, business is booming for the country’s online retailers, heralding the emergence of young, affluent consumers who will reshape the global economy over the next decade.
尽管各方论调都指向中国人消费偏少，但是这个国家的网上零售业务却呈现蓬勃发展的趋势，预示着年轻、富裕的消费者们的出现，在未来十年中将重新划分世界经济的格局。
Xue Yong is the sort of Chinese shopper long dreamed of by international stores and brands. The 30-year-old software engineer has money to burn and a desire to stay on top of the latest fashions. “My wife and I spend at least two hours a week surfing online for stuff to buy, and we hardly ever log off empty-handed,” Mr. Xue said. “It’s a way for us to relax at home after a busy day at work.”
薛勇（音译）就是这一类人，他对国际商品和品牌有不懈的追求。这位30岁的软件工程师有足够的钱用来消费，他渴望永远处于时尚最前沿。薛先生说：“我的妻子和我每周最少在网上闲逛两个小时，搜索各种各样喜欢的东西，我们几乎从未空手而归。这是我们在一天繁忙工作之后的放松方式。”
China’s sky-high savings rate, the flip side of debt-fueled spending in the United States, is one of the economic imbalances that underlay the global financial crisis.
中国高不可及的储蓄比率和美国负债消费的生活方式，是造就全球金融危机的的经济不平衡因素之一。
American consumers, facing job insecurity and tighter credit, have effectively been forced to increase savings to 5 percent of their incomes from nearly zero before the crisis. But, despite U.S. calls for exporting nations to spend more, there is no easy way to get Chinese consumers to cut their 30 percent savings rate.
美国的消费者在面对朝不保夕的工作和紧缩的信用时，已经不得不把金融危机前几乎为零的储蓄率提高到收入5％的储蓄率。然而，尽管美国一直在呼吁出口型国家要更多地消费，让中国的消费者降低30％的储蓄率却不是件容易的事。
Slowly, though, change is afoot.
但是，事情慢慢地有了转机。
“The structural rise of the Chinese consumer will create a shift in China’s growth model as well as the global consumption landscape,” Dong Tao, a Credit Suisse economist in Hong Kong, said in a recent report. “We project that China will overtake the United States as the largest consumer market by 2020.”
香港的瑞士信贷经济学家陶东（音译）说：“中国消费者整体结构的提升将会改变中国的成长模式，同样也会改变全球消费模式。我们预测中国在2020年将会取代美国，成为世界上最大的消费市场。”
The fundamental drivers of consumption growth will be urbanization, as rural citizens benefit from rising incomes, and demographic trends, with younger Chinese both wealthier and inclined to spend much more money than their parents, Mr. Tao said.
陶先生说，消费提升最基本的驱动因素是城市化。农村居民受益于收入增长，人口统计趋势的变化，以及年轻的中国人比他们的父母更加富裕、更加愿意花钱。
Contours of the new global consumption order are clearly visible in a surge of Internet shopping in China.
随着中国出现了一股跨国购物的热潮，新的全球消费模式逐渐变得清晰起来。
Chinese e-commerce sales in the second quarter rose 91.9 percent from the level a year earlier to 56.36 billion yuan, or $8.26 billion, according to iResearch, an online marketing research firm. That dramatically outpaced the 15 percent increase in China’s retail sales over the same period.
根据一家在线营销研究公司iResearch的数据，中国电子商务销售额比一年前上升了91.9％，达到563.6亿元人民币，82.6亿美元。这大大超过了同期中国零售业销售额15％的增长比率。
Taobao, China’s biggest online auction site, has 145 million registered members, or about 43 percent of the country’s total Internet users. Known as China’s eBay, Taobao expects its 2009 revenues, derived largely from advertising, to more than double from a total last year of 300 million to 400 million yuan.
中国最大的在线拍卖网站淘宝，有1.45亿注册用户，是这个国家所有网络用户的43％。作为中国的eBay，淘宝期望2009年的收入（大部分来自广告）能够达到去年3到4亿元人民币的两倍。
Online commerce not only exemplifies China’s rising consumption, but also provides a springboard for shoppers to vault over hurdles that have held them back.
电子商务不但提高了中国的消费水平，还让消费者可以跨越那些曾经阻碍他们前进的障碍物。
Despite vast investment in infrastructure, China remains woefully short of roads and railways away from the coast. Retailers struggle to set up distribution networks deep in the country’s interior, putting hundreds of millions of potential shoppers beyond their reach. E-commerce helps to bridge the divide.
尽管中国在基础建设方面投入了大量的资金，但是从沿海城市通往内陆的公路和铁路依然极端不足。零售商们努力在中国的内地铺设销售网络，但是依然无法满足上亿人口的消费需求。电子商务则填补了这道鸿沟。
Twenty-seven percent more people in poorer cities say they might buy online than those in wealthier cities, even though Internet penetration in the former is lower, according to a survey by the consultants McKinsey & Company.
麦肯锡咨询公司的调查显示，贫困城市愿意在网络上购物的人数比率要比富裕城市高出27％，尽管前者的网络覆盖率比后者要低。
For retailers, the message is clear: Get online.
对于零售商来说，现实传达的信息很明确：上网去。
The Japanese casual-clothing chain Uniqlo introduced a Chinese portal on Taobao in April and sold 4.1 million yuan worth of merchandise in its first 11 days.
日本的休闲服装品牌Uniqlo在4月份在淘宝上开设了一个面对中国的销售窗口，在营业的前11天，卖出了价值410元人民币的商品。
“We expect online sales to further expand in the coming years,” said Han Bing, a marketing executive at Uniqlo China. “It is really a vast market with great growth potential and we cannot ignore it.”
Uniqlo中国的市场管理人员韩冰（音译）说：“我们希望在来年，在线销售额可以继续增加。这真是一个巨大的市场，有无限的潜在空间，我们不能忽视它。”
The rise of e-commerce also snugly fits the Chinese government’s economic strategy of promoting domestic consumption and reducing reliance on exports. Beijing has been struggling to build up public services from education to health care in the hope of giving people reason to spend more and save less.
电子商务的兴起同样贴心地迎合了中国政府刺激内地消费和避免过分依赖出口的经济策略。北京花费了巨大的精力来提高从教育到医疗的公共服务水平，期望这可以让人们有理由更多地消费，更少地储蓄。
“Online retailing is developing so fast in China that it is quietly changing spending habits, making an especially profound impact on Chinese youth,” said Wang Liang, director of Shanghai Liutong Economics Institute, a government research institution.
一家政府研究机构，上海流通经济学院的主任王亮（音译）说：“中国的在线销售发展得如此之快，它逐渐影响了人们的消费模式，对中国年轻一代人有深远的影响。”
In fact, too much has been made of China’s under-consumption, economists at Morgan Stanley argued in a research note last week. If the focus is confined to internationally traded goods, then China’s incremental contribution to global consumption actually began to top that of the United States in 2007, they calculated.
摩根斯坦利的经济学家们在上星期发布的一份研究报告中说，实际上，中国消费不足的现象已经改善了很多。根据他们的计算，如果仅考虑国际贸易的商品，中国的全球消费金额在2007年就已经超过了美国。
Increasing consumption in China will lift its demand for imports in the coming decade, particularly if the yuan is allowed to appreciate, but analysts believe domestic firms are best placed to expand market share and take advantage of it.
中国逐渐增长的消费在未来十年将需要更多的进口商品，特别是如果政府允许人民币升值的情况下。但是，分析人士认为，这是本土企业扩张市场份额、占得先机的最好机会。
So it should become increasingly common to hear stories like those of Zhang Xiang, 30, an underwear maker, and Zhu Yangjie, 34, a curtain salesmen.
这样一来，我们就会越来越多地听到类似30岁的张祥（音译）和34岁的朱洋节（音译）的故事。他们一个是内衣制造商、一个是窗帘销售商。
Both were exporters until the financial crisis struck. In the past year, they have reoriented themselves to the domestic market via the Internet and both report far fatter profit margins.
在经济危机之前，他们两人都是出口商。在去年，他们调整了销售方向，通过互联网瞄准内地市场。现在他们的利润率比以前提高了很多。
“E-commerce is an opportunity for us to go inland,” Mr. Zhang said. “This is really a big market.” Mr. Zhu agreed. “I will never go back to my original business model, even if global demand recovers.”
张先生说：“电子商务是我们切入内地市场的机会。”朱先生说：“这真是一个巨大的市场。我不会在回到以前的经营模式了，即使全球经济复苏我也不会。”
翻译交流见#6
楼主有个笔误，是410万元，不是410元的商品。
我一开始想，11天才卖了410元，还high什么high啊。一看原文，果然漏了一个字。 |
狗仔卡
发表于 2009-9-26 14:08
提升卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
发表于 2009-9-26 20:41
楼主
