日本溫泉小鎮(zhèn)帶給中國什么樣的警示？

Echigo Yuzawa seems to have everything going for it. Just one hour and 15 minutes from Tokyo by bullet train, the charming mountain town is famed for its onsen — or hot springs — excellent skiing and as the home of Japan’s best rice and sake.

越后湯澤(Echigoyuzawa)似乎很完美。從東京乘高速列車前往越后湯澤只需1小時(shí)15分，這座迷人的山城以溫泉、理想的滑雪場以及日本最上乘的大米和米酒而聞名。

It even acquired an aura of literary sophistication and glamour when Yasunari Kawabata became the first Japanese author to win a Nobel Prize for his 1968 novel Snow Country. Set in early 20th-century Echigo Yuzawa, it tells the story of a minor Tokyo aristocrat’s love affair with a small-town geisha.

川端康成(Yasunari Kawabata)以其1968年出版的小說《雪國》(Snow Country)榮膺諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)，成為第一位獲此殊榮的日本作家后，越后湯澤甚至染上了一種文學(xué)的況味和魅力。《雪國》以20世紀(jì)初的越后湯澤為背景，講述了東京一位小貴族與當(dāng)?shù)匾幻嚰说膼矍楣适隆?/p>

Today, the town epitomises the key challenge facing Japan’s rural economy: adverse demographics. As such it is a story whose relevance reaches well beyond the world’s third-biggest economy to countries facing similar developments.

今天，這座小鎮(zhèn)如同一個(gè)縮影，體現(xiàn)了日本鄉(xiāng)村經(jīng)濟(jì)面臨的主要挑戰(zhàn)：糟糕的人口結(jié)構(gòu)。因此，越后湯澤的故事不只關(guān)乎世界第三大經(jīng)濟(jì)體，它對面臨類似人口發(fā)展趨勢的其他國家也具有啟示意義。

In Echigo Yuzawa it begins in the town centre where many of the shopfronts are boarded up and most restaurants only open at the weekend in winter when skiers make the day trip from Tokyo.

在越后湯澤，從鎮(zhèn)中心開始就有很多店鋪歇業(yè)，大部分餐館僅在冬季的周末營業(yè)，接待從東京來此短途旅行的滑雪者。

Prices for condominiums in the surrounding valley have fallen by more than 95 per cent since the height of the bubble era in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I bought one for less than the price of a second-hand car a decade ago thinking I had made a great investment. Today some of my neighbours are paying people to take them off their hands.

相較上世紀(jì)80年代末90年代初的泡沫時(shí)代高峰期，附近山谷公寓的房價(jià)跌幅超過了95%。10年前，我用不到一輛二手車的價(jià)錢買下了一套公寓，還以為是筆不錯(cuò)的投資。如今，我的一些鄰居已經(jīng)開始倒貼錢將他們的房產(chǎn)出手。

To visit the resort hotels and condo complexes dotted throughout town is to step into a world frozen in 1989, complete with faux fondue restaurants and fluorescent fashion statements.

若要參觀遍布全鎮(zhèn)的度假酒店和公寓區(qū)，就意味著要踏入一個(gè)在1989年被封凍的世界，到處都是不正宗的干酪火鍋餐廳和光怪陸離的時(shí)尚標(biāo)語。

Estate agents estimate 75 per cent of apartments in the area are vacant. The sheer scale of the housing and construction bubble that reached its zenith nearly 30 years ago means property prices may never recover here or in other parts of rural Japan. Demand is draining away even without the oversupply as the population ages and people move into the cities.

據(jù)地產(chǎn)經(jīng)紀(jì)們估計(jì)，這里有75%的公寓都是閑置的。近30年前達(dá)到頂峰的那輪住房和建筑泡沫的規(guī)模之大，意味著此地以及日本鄉(xiāng)村其他地方的房價(jià)可能永遠(yuǎn)都不會回升了。隨著人口老齡化和向城市遷移，即使當(dāng)初并沒有供過于求，需求量也在減少。

Japan’s population shrank by 403,000 in 2017 and on current trends it will drop from 126.5m to 51m by 2115. More than a fifth of Japan’s land, an area the size of Denmark, has no readily contactable owner.

2017年，日本人口減少了40.3萬，按照目前的趨勢，到2115年，日本人口將從1.265億下降到5100萬。日本超過五分之一的土地——面積相當(dāng)于一個(gè)丹麥——將成為無主之地。

The aftermath of the bubble and the shrinking population have caused decades of stagnation. Japan’s gross domestic product growth rate has bumped along between zero and 2 per cent for most of the past 30 years as successive governments struggled to pull the economy out of deflation.

泡沫的后果和人口的減少造成了幾十年的停滯。過去30年來的大部分時(shí)間，日本國內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值的增速都徘徊在0%至2%之間，歷屆日本政府都努力要把經(jīng)濟(jì)從通縮的窘境中拉出來。

An obvious solution would be to encourage more immigration and make it easier for foreigners to snap up the empty flats and start businesses in towns like Echigo Yuzawa. Many wealthy western societies are also ageing rapidly but have dealt with this by allowing large-scale immigration. But Japan has never wavered in its opposition to foreign infiltration and that is unlikely to change soon.

一個(gè)明顯的解決辦法是鼓勵(lì)更多的移民進(jìn)入，并使外國人能更容易地購買空置的公寓，以及在越后湯澤這樣的城鎮(zhèn)營生。許多富裕的西方社會也在迅速老齡化，但已經(jīng)開始利用大規(guī)模的移民來應(yīng)對這一問題。但日本一直堅(jiān)定不移地反對外來移民，而且這種態(tài)度不太可能很快轉(zhuǎn)變。

Japan’s challenges provide a cautionary tale for other Asian economies, most importantly China. Last year, 17.23m babies were born in China, a drop of 630,000 from a year earlier despite Beijing scrapping its decades-old “one-child policy” in late 2015. The working age population increased by around 380m between 1980 and 2012, and this is probably the single biggest factor behind China’s incredible economic expansion of the past few decades.

日本面臨的挑戰(zhàn)對其它亞洲經(jīng)濟(jì)體很有警示意義，尤其是中國。去年，中國迎來了1723萬新生兒，較前一年下降了63萬，盡管中國政府在2015年末廢除了幾十年來一直推行的“獨(dú)生子女政策”。1980年至2012年間，中國的勞動適齡人口增加了約3.8億，這可能是過去幾十年中國經(jīng)濟(jì)得以驚人擴(kuò)張的最大單一因素。

While the country’s overall population is growing slowly, the number of workers has been shrinking since 2012. Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimate that by 2050 it will drop by 212m — about one-third of the current total. That is the size of the population of Brazil, the world’s fifth most populous nation.

在全國人口增長緩慢的同時(shí)，自2012年以來，中國勞動人口一直在減少。美銀美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)的分析師們預(yù)測，到2050年，中國勞動人口將減少2.12億——約為目前總數(shù)的三分之一。而這一數(shù)字相當(dāng)于世界第五人口大國巴西的人口總量。

This demographic decline will come in the wake of a housing and construction boom that puts Japan’s bubble era to shame. In just five years from 2012 until 2016, China produced nearly three times as much cement as the US did in the entire 20th century.

中國的人口下降將發(fā)生在住房和建筑熱潮之后，這波熱潮讓日本的泡沫經(jīng)濟(jì)時(shí)代都相形見絀。從2012年到2016的短短5年間，中國的水泥產(chǎn)量幾近于美國20世紀(jì)水泥總產(chǎn)量的三倍。

Much of that went into building apartment blocks in rural towns where land and property prices have been inflated by local governments that relied on land sales for much of their fiscal spending.

這其中很大一部分被用于在小城鎮(zhèn)興建住房，當(dāng)?shù)卣揽砍鍪弁恋貋碇纹浯蟛糠重?cái)政支出，從而推高了土地和住宅價(jià)格。

When you consider that most of the Chinese construction boom of the past decade was paid for with credit and that land valued at inflated prices makes up most of the collateral for those loans, then the foundations of China’s entire financial system start to look shaky.

如果考慮到過去10年中國建設(shè)熱潮的大部分資金來源于信貸，而這些貸款的大部分抵押品都是以虛高價(jià)格估值的房地產(chǎn)，那么中國整個(gè)金融體系的基礎(chǔ)就顯得不太穩(wěn)固了。

Today you can get on a sleek bullet train in Beijing and ride across the country and all you will see outside your window for most of the trip are half-built or empty apartment blocks. In a couple of decades those buildings may well serve as monuments to China’s bubble era and demographic decline just as the spooky hotels and condos of Echigo Yuzawa now testify to Japan’s.

今天，你可以從北京搭乘高鐵穿越全中國，途中透過車窗看到的多半景色都是些沒完工或空置的住宅樓。數(shù)十年后，這些建筑很可能成為中國泡沫時(shí)代及人口下降的遺跡，就像越后湯澤的幽靈旅館和公寓現(xiàn)在印證著日本當(dāng)初的泡沫時(shí)代一樣。

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