Back in the early stages of the financial crisis, wags joked that our trade with China had turned out to be fair and balanced after all: They sold us poison toys and tainted seafood; we sold them fraudulent securities.

　　在这场金融危机的早期，爱说笑的人打趣道，事实证明，中美两国的贸易是一笔公平均衡的买卖：中国向美国出售有毒玩具和变质海鲜；美国将欺诈性的证券卖给中国。

　　But these days, both sides of that deal are breaking down. On one side, the world's appetite for Chiinese goods has fallen off sharply. China's exports have plunged in recent months and are now down 26 percent from a year ago. On the other side, the Chinese are evidently getting anxious about those secutities.

　　但从目前的态势看，买卖双方越来越无力维持这样的交易。一方面，世界对中国产品的胃口大减。中国的出口在近几个月遭受重创，目前的出口额比一年前下降了26%。另一方面，中国人手头的美国证券显然令他们忧心忡忡。

　　But China still seens to have unrealistic expectations. And that's a problem for all of us.

　　但是，中国似乎依然抱有某些不切合实际的期望。这是我们所有人都要面对的一个问题。

　　The big news last week was a speech by Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of China's central bank, calling for a new "super-sovereign reserve currency."

　　近期的一大新闻是，中国央行行长周小川在一次演讲中，呼吁创建一种全新的“超主权储备货币”。

　　The paranoid wing of the Republican Party promptly warned of a dastardly plot to make America give up the dollar. But Mr. Zhou's speech was actually an admission of weakness. In effect, he was saying that China had driven itself into a dollar trap, and that it can neither get itself out not change the policies that put it in that trap in the first place.

　　共和党内部的偏执狂旋即警告说，这是中国企图让美国放弃美元的阴谋。但是，周小川的演讲其实间接承认了中国目前的不利处境。实际上，他的演讲表明中国已经深陷自掘的美元陷阱，无力自拔，它也无法改变那些当初让其深陷这一陷阱的各种政策。

　　Some background: In the early years of this decade, China began running large trade surpluses and also began attracting substantial inflows of foreign capital. If China had had a floating exchange rate -- like, say, Canada -- this would have led to a rise in the value of its currency, which, in turn, would have slowed the growth of China's exports.

　　让我们了解一下相关背景。在这十年的早期，中国的对外贸易开始出现大额盈余，与此同时，外国资本也开始大量涌入。假若中国同加拿大这样的国家一样，实行的是浮动汇率制度，那么，上述局面就会导致人民币币值上升，这反过来会放缓中国出口的增长速度。

　　But China chose instead to keep the value of the yuan in terms of the dollar more or less fixed. To do this, it had to buy up dollars as they became flooding in. As the years went by, those trade surpluses just keep growing - and so did China's board of foreign assets.

　　但恰恰相反，中国决意让人民币对美元汇率基本保持稳定。为了做到这一点，中国必须将大量涌入的美元全部买下。这样，年复一年，中国的贸易顺差不停地增长，随同其一起增长的还包括它累计的外国资产。

　　Now the joke about fraudulent securities was actually unfair. Aside from a late, ill-considered plunge into equities (at the very top of the market), the Chinese mainly accumulated very safe assets, with U.S. Treasury bulls -- T-bills, for short -- making up a large part of the total. But while T-bills are as safe from default as anything on the planet, they yield a very low rate of return.

　　如今嘲讽中国购买了欺诈性的证券，其实是不公平的。除了在后期，当股市处于高位时，考虑欠妥地购买了一批有价证券之外，中国人主要积聚的是一些非常安全的资产：美国短期国债(简称T-bills)占据其中相当一部分份额。但尽管T-bills是这个星球上最不可能违约的证券，它的收益率却低得离谱。

　　Was there a deep strategy befind this vast accumulation of low-yielding assets? Probably not. China acquired its $2 trillion stash -- turning the People's Republic into the T-bills Republic -- the same way Britain acquired its empire: in a fit of absence of mind.

　　在大规模积累低收益资产的背后，是否存在某种深层次的战略意图？或许没有。中国的外汇储备已达两万亿美元之巨，中华人民共和国已经变成了T-bills共和国，但如同大英帝国的建立一样，这完全是一种无意识的举动。

　　And just the other day, it seems, China's leaders woke up and realized that they had a problem.

　　就在前不久，中国的领导人似乎幡然醒悟，意识到这一问题的严重性。

　　The low yield doesn't seem to bother them much, even now. But they are, apparently, worried about the fact that around 70 percent of those assets are dollar-denominated, so any future fall in the dollar would mean a big capital loss for China. Hence Mr. Zhou's proposal to move to a new reserve currency along the lines of the S.D.R.'s, or special drawing rights, in which the International Monetary Fund leeps its accounts.

　　即使现在，他们似乎并不太忧心低收益的问题。中国 领导人明显担心的是，这些资产约有70%是以美元计价 的，因此，美元币值在未来出现的任何下跌都意味着 中国将蒙受巨大的资本损失。于是，周小川提议，以 由国际货币基金组织记账的特别提款权（简称SDR） 为基础，转入一种全新的储备货币。

　　But there's both less and more here than meets the eye. S.D.R.'s aren't real money. They're accounting units whose value is set by a basket of dollars, euros, Japanese yen and British pounds. And there's nothing to keep China from diversifying its reserves away from the dollar, indeed from holding a reserve basket matching the composition of the S.D.R.'s -- nothing, that is, except for the fact that China now owns so many dollars that it can't sell them off without driving the dollar down and triggering the very capital loss its leaders fear.

　　但事情要比人们看到的表象更为复杂。SDR并不是真正的货币，而是由美元、欧元、日元和英镑等一揽子货币确定其价值的记账单位。没有什么能够阻止中国多元化它的外汇储备，实际上，也没有什么能够阻止中国持有与SDR组合相同的一揽子储备货币。但是，鉴于中国目前拥有的美元数量如此之巨，它抛售美元的举动，势必会导致美元贬值，造成巨额资本损失——而这正是中国领导人所担心的。

　　So what Mr. Zhou's proposal actually amounts to is a plea that someone rescue China from the consequences of its own investment mistakes. That's not going to happen.

　　因此，周小川行长的建议其实是一种恳求：希望有人将中国从自己投资失误造成的恶果中拯救出来。这是不可能的事情。

　　And the call for some magical solution to the problems of China's excess of dollars suggests something else: that China's leaders haven't come to grips with the fact that the rules of the game have changed in a fundamental way.

　　呼吁用某种神奇的办法解决中国美元过多的问题，反映出了另一个事实：中国领导人还没有意识到游戏规则已经发生了根本性的改变。

　　Two years ago, we lived in a world in which China could save much more than it invested and dispose od the excess savings in America. That world is gone.

　　在两年之前的那个世界中，中国的储蓄可以远大于投资，可以将多余的储蓄放在美国。但这样的世界已经一去不复返了。

　　Yet the day after his new-reserve-currency speech, Mr. Zhou gave another speech in ehich he seemed to assert that China's extremely high savings rate is immutable, a result of Confucianism, which values "anti-extravagance." Meanwhile, "it is not the right time" for the United States to save more. In ohter words, let's go on as we were.

　　然而，在发布新储备货币言论的第二天，周小川在另一个演讲中声称，中国极高的储蓄率是受儒家“反对铺张浪费”思想影响的结果，是不可改变的。同时，目前并不是美国增加储蓄的“恰当时机” 。换言之，美国人还是像过去那样生活吧。

　　That's also not going to happen.

　　这也是不可能的事情。

　　The bottom line is that China hasn't yet faced up to the wrenching changes that will be needed to deal with this global crisis. The same could, of course, be said of the Japanese, the Europeans -- and us.

　　归根结底，中国还不能正视解决这场全球危机所需的痛苦改变。当然，这种说法也适用于日本人、欧洲人，以及美国人。

　　And that failure to face up to new realities is the main reason that, despite some glimmers of good news -- the G-20 summit accomplished more than I though it would -- this crisis probably still has years to run.

　　尽管有好消息传来（G20峰会所取得的成果比我预想的要多一些），但因为我们没有勇敢地面对新的现实，这场危机可能还要持续数年时间。