中国是新殖民者吗？| 来自纳米比亚的长篇报告（中）| 纽约时报

The exact number of Chinese living in Namibia remains the subject of contentious debate. No definitive data exist, and the constant ebb and flow of contract workers muddies the picture. 

到底有多少人住在纳米比亚一直以来都有争议。没有确定的数据，合同工有来有走，谁也说不清楚。

Last fall, Namibia’s home-affairs ministry raised alarms when it claimed that 100,000 Chinese nationals live in Namibia — a figure that would be equivalent to 4 percent of the population. 

去年秋天，内政部提出警告，称住在纳米比亚的中国人达到10万，这相当于国家人口的4%。

More conservative estimates run between 10,000 and 20,000. It is clear, however, that in Namibia and all across the developing world, the older generation of long-term immigrants is being eclipsed by China’s new diaspora: younger, more educated workers going abroad to get experience — and make a small fortune — before returning to China. “We were among the first ones here,” Rose Shen says, “but now there are Chinese everywhere.”

更保守的估计称，中国人在1万到2万之间。但很清楚的是，在纳米比亚和所有发展中世界，老一代的长期移民正被中国新移民取代，后者更年轻，受教育程度更好，他们出国经历一番，赚点小钱，然后回到中国。“我们是第一批来这里的，”罗斯·沈说。“但现在到处都是中国人。”

Sean Hao, a young telecommunications engineer in Windhoek, is part of that diaspora. Raised in a cave dwelling in central China’s Shaanxi province, he wasn’t expected to venture far beyond his village’s orchard of jujube trees.

温得和克年轻的电信工程师肖恩·郝是新移民。在中国的中部陕西省长大，他没曾想自己会走出村里的枣树园子。

But Hao was accepted by a university, a first for his family, and worked after graduation installing networks for a Chinese telecom giant. Renting a room for just $15 a month helped him squirrel away most of his $500 monthly salary, but his savings were hardly enough to buy the apartment he would need to marry. 

但郝上了大学，他是家里的头一个，毕业后为一家中国电信巨头安装网络。他租了月租仅15美元的一间屋子，把每月500美元的工资基本基本都攒下来，可积蓄还是不够买房结婚。

In a country where young men far outnumber women — a legacy of the government’s restrictive family-planning policy — an apartment is seen as a prerequisite for attracting a wife and avoiding the fate of a “bare branch” (an unmarried person). 

在一个年轻男子数量远超过女子的国家，买房被视作能娶媳妇、不打光棍的前提条件，这是政府严格执行计划生育政策的遗产。

But real estate seemed an impossible aspiration for a young man who grew up in a cave.

可对于在窑洞里长大的一个年轻男子来说，房产看起来是个遥不可及的梦想。

When a headhunter told Hao about a job in Africa that would pay more than $6,000 a month, Hao figured it was a swindle. “I thought this must be a case of human trafficking,” he remembers, laughing. 

猎头对郝说在非洲工作每月6000美元，郝算了算，算得上一笔横财。“我当时想着那肯定是人贩子，”他笑着回忆说。

The offer was real, but the job was in Nigeria, which he thought was unsafe. So Hao instead signed a contract to work on building the telecom system in Angola for more than $5,000 a month, more than 10 times his previous salary.

待遇是真的，但工作地点在尼日利亚，他觉得那里不安全。后来郝签了一份在安哥拉安装通信系统的合同，每月5000美元，比此前的工资高十倍。

After a year in Africa, Hao put a down payment on an apartment in Xi’an, a city in central China, and persuaded his girlfriend’s parents that he was financially secure enough to marry their daughter. Hao and his wife soon had a baby girl, but his job in Africa meant that he saw her for only one month out of her first 15. “She didn’t even recognize me,” he said. 

在非洲工作一年后，郝在西安交了购房首付，他让女朋友的父母相信，自己娶得起他们女儿。郝和妻子很快生了个女孩儿，但在非洲工作意味着女儿15岁前，只能和女儿相处一个月。“她都不认得我了。”

His wife and daughter joined him in his new posting in Namibia, but they lasted one lonely year before going home, leaving Hao stuck between his longing to be with his family in China and the opportunity to make money in Namibia.

妻子和女儿去纳米比亚的新岗位探亲，可孤独地生活了一年后，还是回了家，只剩下郝一个人纠结于回家与家人团聚，还是继续在纳米比亚赚钱。

On a warm Saturday night in late March, Hao joined a dozen Chinese colleagues under the thatched roofs of Joe’s Beerhouse in Windhoek. Two of the men were headed back to China after finishing their short-term contracts, and the group was sending them off by knocking back pints of German-style lager. 

3月底一个天气暖和的周六，郝和十几个中国同事来到温得和克“乔家酒坊”的茅棚里。两个工友结束了短期合同后要回中国了，送行的方式是灌下几品脱的德国淡啤。

By the time I arrived at the bar, three men had already passed out, their heads planted on the table, and a few others were listing badly. Hao, the designated driver, had barely sipped any beer at all. 

我来到酒吧时，三个人已经不省人事，头栽到桌子上，其他几个也东倒西歪。只有负责开车的郝几乎没沾酒。

Celebrating his colleagues’ return to the motherland had put him in a contemplative mood. “I’d like to go home, too,” he said, “but there are no jobs in China that could pay me even close to what I’m making now.”

欢送同事回到祖国让他平添几分忧愁。“我也想回家，”他说。“但在中国找不到能赚现在这么多钱的工作。”

In the hardscrabble hills of Sichuan Province, the parents of the uranium miner Dylan Teng still work as farmers, growing rice and maize in a hillside hamlet where most families share the same surname. 

在贫困的四川山区，铀矿工人迪兰·滕的父母仍是农民，在山脚下的小村庄里种大米和玉米，村里人都姓滕。

Their village, called Tengjiayan (or Teng Family Rock), had only a primary school, so Teng left to study in nearby Guang’an, the birthplace of Deng Xiaoping, and then went on to college in China’s northeast. It was a long road that was about to grow longer. “I never thought I’d go abroad,” he says, “so I didn’t even try in my English classes.”

他们村叫滕家岩，只有一所小学，滕去附近的广安读中学，那里是邓小平出生的地方，后来又去中国东北读大学。他注定越走越远。“我从没想过自己会出国，”他说。“所以英语压根也没好好学。”

In Teng’s first job after graduation — at the Beijing-based Uranium Resources Company, a C.G.N. subsidiary — he learned about the company’s mining interests in Kazakhstan, Australia and Namibia. The rural kid knew nothing about these foreign lands. 

滕毕业后的第一份工作是位于北京的铀矿资源公司，那是中广核的一家子公司。他知道公司在哈萨克斯坦、澳大利亚和纳米比亚有矿产投资，可这个来自农村的孩子对外域一无所知。

But soon he was flying off to the most distant of the three to work in one of China’s largest and most strategic mines. And one where C.G.N. was fully in control.

但不久后，他飞往三个地方里最遥远的一个，为中国最大、最具战略性的矿产之一工作，矿产由中广核完全控股。

As a load-and-haul engineer at the Husab mine, Teng helps choreograph 26 gargantuan trucks whose wheels stand twice as tall as he does. So far, the trucks have hauled more than 100 million metric tons of rock out of Husab’s open pits. 

腾是哈萨博铀矿的装运工程师，他协助指挥26辆大型卡车运矿，轮子比他高一倍。迄今为止，卡车已从哈萨博露天矿坑运走超过1亿公吨岩石了。

As production increases this year, far more will be needed to process the 15 million pounds of uranium oxide that the mine aims to produce annually. “The pressure is always on to stockpile enough so the processing plant never runs out of rock,” Teng says.

今年要增产，这需要更多矿石以实现提炼1500万磅氧化铀的年产目标。“压力永远是库存，不能让提炼厂没有石头用。”滕说。

To feed its hungry economy, China has worked frantically to secure enough resources to keep the juggernaut going. Besides oil and gas, which are a primary focus of its investments abroad, China’s state-owned companies have gobbled up mines around the world: copper in Peru, nickel in Papua New Guinea, iron ore in Australia. In Africa, Chinese mining investments have increased 25-fold in just 10 years, from stakes in a handful of mines in 2006 to more than 120 in 2015.

中国经济需求量大，于是疯狂地寻找足够的资源，保证这个庞然大物的运行。石油和天然气是中国海外投资的重头，除此之外，中国国有公司还在全世界吃矿：秘鲁铜矿、巴布亚新几内亚镍矿、澳大利亚的铁矿。在非洲，中国矿业投资10年间就增加了25倍，2006年只持有不多的几个矿，2015年超过120个。

As its economy has slowed recently and commodity prices have plunged, China has sharply reduced some of its imports, causing a few boom areas, like Western Australia, to go bust. Chinese mines in Zambia (copper) and South Africa (iron ore) have been forced to close. 

随着近来经济放缓，商品价格跳水，中国大幅削减进口，这导致一些繁荣地区转向萧条，例如西澳大利亚。中国在赞比亚的铜矿和南非的铁矿被迫关闭。

It might seem something of a miracle, then, that Husab runs at all. With uranium prices at less than half their level before the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima (and less than a quarter of what they were in 2007), Namibia’s two other active uranium operations have stopped digging up rock and process only already-stockpiled material.

哈萨博竟然还能运行，这看起来有点虚无缥缈，当时铀价不足2011年福岛核泄漏前的一半，不足2007年的四分之一，纳米比亚其他两个开采出来的铀矿都停止了作业，只提炼库存的矿石。

But Husab forges ahead, hiring many of the hundreds of workers laid off at those other mines. As one Namibian engineer who landed a job there after spending six months unemployed told me, “Husab was my salvation.”

可哈萨博一直在进行，还雇佣了数千名其他矿区的下岗工人。一个失业了六个月的纳米比亚工程师得到工作后对我说：“哈萨博真是我的大救星。”

There is a simple reason that C.G.N. can afford to ramp up production at Husab: It is selling most of the uranium to itself, the Chinese state, so price is almost irrelevant. (Low prices, in fact, have enabled China both to stockpile uranium cheaply and to buy part of a struggling Namibian uranium mine, Langer-Heinrich.)

中广核不怕增产的原因很简单，多数铀自产自销，卖给国家，价格基本无所谓。事实上，价格便宜倒让中国廉价囤积铀，并买下部分纳米比亚铀矿兰杰·海茵里希。

An even bigger reason is China’s ambition both to reduce its carbon emissions and to become a world leader in nuclear power.

更大的理由是中国有雄心在降低碳排放的同时，成为世界核电领导者。

Nearly 88 percent of China’s energy now comes from fossil fuels, only 1 percent from nuclear power. (Solar, wind and hydropower account for the remaining 11 percent.) To reach its clean-energy goals — and shed the ignominious title of world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases — China has put nuclear power back on an almost impossibly fast track. 

中国近88%的能源来自化石能源，只有1%来自核电。（光伏、风电和水力发电占余下的11%。）为实现清洁能源目标，摘掉世界最大温室气体制造者的帽子，中国让核电回到令人难以置信的快车道。

The country now has 37 nuclear reactors, with another 20 under construction, and it aims to have 110 reactors by 2030. (Beyond that, the goal is to become an exporter of nuclear-reactor technology. China has already built six reactors overseas, and last month, Swakop Uranium, a C.G.N. subsidiary, submitted a proposal to construct a reactor in Namibia.)

中国目前有37个核反应堆，在建的还有20个，到2030年旨在建110个。（不止如此，其目标是成为核反应堆技术的出口商。中国已在海外建造了6个核反应堆，上个月，中广核的子公司斯瓦科普河铀矿提交了意向书，要在纳米比亚建造一个核反应堆。）

This rate of growth, six new plants each year, would catapult China past the United States as the world’s top nuclear power, but it also raises concerns. In January, an American consultant to C.G.N. pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to illegally recruit United States nuclear engineers to help accelerate the design and manufacture of C.G.N. reactor components. 

以这种增长速度，每年建6个新电厂，中国将迅速超过美国成为世界头号核电大国，但这也引发担忧。1月，中广核的一个美国顾问认罪，表示自己策划非法雇佣美国核电专家，旨在加速中广核反应堆组件的设计和制造。

Critics at home and abroad also question whether China’s safety standards can keep pace with the new reactors. One Chinese physicist, He Zuoxiu, even told The Guardian that the plan is “insane.”

国内外的批评者也质疑中国的安全标准是否与新反应堆同步。中国物理学家何祚庥甚至对《卫报》称，计划“很疯狂”。

C.G.N. did not allow me to visit the mine or interview its managers, claiming that they were too busy increasing production. To get a glimpse of the vast complex, I drove down a dusty back road to the highland plain where the Welwitschia mirabilis grow, near Husab’s back gate. 

中广核不允许我探访矿场或采访其经理，说他们忙着增产。为了一探究竟，看一看这个巨大的工程，我开车沿着尘土飞扬的小路，来到长着千岁叶的高地，哈萨博的后门附近。

Before construction began at Husab in 2013, the company transplanted four rare Welwitschia specimens that would have been destroyed in the blasts — a symbolic gesture in a country that reveres the ancient plant. 

2013年建设开始前，公司移栽了四种珍惜的千岁叶品种，否则它们会在爆炸中遭到毁灭，在一个尊崇古老植物的国家。这是一种象征性举动。

Since then, C.G.N. has seemed eager to dispel the uncaring reputation that Chinese state-owned companies have earned: It has made donations to drought victims, offered scholarships to local engineering students and, in a first for a Chinese company in Namibia, even invited a local labor union to set up shop at the mine site.

自此以后，中广核热心消除中国国有公司无所顾忌的名声：它捐赠干旱受难者，为当地工程专业学生提供奖学金，甚至邀请当地工会在矿场设店，这是纳米比亚的中国公司头一次这么做。

Independent unions are essentially illegal in China. And the Metal and Allied Namibian Workers Union had waged a campaign against Chinese state-owned companies, accusing some of paying Namibian workers only one-third of the minimum wage and others of using armies of Chinese workers for unskilled jobs that by law should go to Namibians.

独立的工会在中国基本是非法的。金属和联合纳米比亚工人联盟曾反对中国国有公司，指责有的公司支付给纳米比亚工人的薪水只有最低工资的三分之一，还有的使用大批中国工人做无技术劳动，而按法律，这些工作应由纳米比亚人来做。

So when C.G.N. invited the union’s secretary general, Justina Jonas, to China for the mine’s inaugural event, she was skeptical. “The Chinese will promise you heaven,” she told me, “but the implementation can be hell.” 

因此，当中广核邀请工会总干事贾斯蒂娜·乔纳斯去中国参加铀矿开幕典礼时，她很犹豫。“中国把许诺吹上天，”她告诉我们。“可但实施得却像地狱。”

Jonas threatened not to go to China if Husab didn’t sign a project labor agreement protecting workers’ wages, hours and safety. Just days before the trip, C.G.N. signed the agreement, a first for a Chinese company.

乔纳斯威胁说不去中国，除非哈萨博签订劳动合同，保护工人工资、执行固定工时，并保证工作安全。行程前几天，中广核签订了合同，这也是第一家这么做的中国公司。

For all its public outreach, Husab still operates in a self-contained Chinese universe. Chinese managers often schedule key meetings for the weekend, when it’s convenient for them to review and plan — but also when Namibian colleagues are not present, according to local employees. 

尽管做了各种公众宣传，哈萨博的运行仍然是自我封闭的中国天地。当地雇员称，中国经理经常在周末安排重要会议，方便他们审议和规划，可那时纳米比亚同事并不在场。

Local workers marvel at how, when a non-Chinese part breaks down, Chinese engineers will sometimes send the specs home so Chinese companies can reverse-engineer replacement parts at a fraction of the cost. 

一个非中国制造的零件坏了，中国工程师有时会把规范发回国内，中国公司能逆向设计出替换零件，成本很低，当地工人都想不明白这是如何办到的。

This looks different from a Chinese perspective: Just as the mine offers young engineers an opportunity to hone their expertise in vital new jobs, it also gives Chinese companies a chance to show that they can make high-quality vehicles and equipment — at a third of the cost of top foreign brands. 

从中国人的视角看，事情就有所不同了：铀矿给年轻的工程师提供了在重要岗位磨炼技能的机会，同时还让中国公司有机会展示他们可以用外国品牌三分之一的成本生产高性能的机械设备。

Husab still makes companies go through testing and bidding, but as one worker put it: “We have to help and support our brother companies. It’s all part of the ‘going out’ policy.”

哈萨博依然让各公司测试和出价，但正如一个工人所言：“我们要帮助和支持我们的兄弟公司。这都属于‘走出去’战略的一部分。”

Mining is hardly China’s only interest in Namibia. The land is too arid to sustain the kinds of vast agricultural projects underway in Mozambique and Brazil. But China’s state-owned construction companies are burning up their excess capacity building Namibian highways and ports, a Chinese embassy compound and a new military academy in Okahandja. Military relations are close, too. 

采矿并非中国在纳米比亚的唯一利益所在。这里土地太过干旱，很难承载在莫桑比克和巴西进行的大型农业项目。但中国的国有建筑公司正在建造纳米比亚的公路和港口、一个中国大使馆工程和奥卡汉贾一所新的军事学院，消化其过剩的生产能力。

China trains Namibian officers — an echo of its 1960s assistance to Swapo — and supplies weapons. In April, the United States intervened to stop Namibia from paying $12 million to Poly Technologies, a subsidiary of a Chinese company on the American sanctions list for selling banned weapons to Iran, Syria and North Korea. It was a reminder that the United States is still in the background, warily watching China’s incursion into Africa.

中国还训练纳米比亚军官，就像六十年代援助西南非人民机构一样，并提供武器。4月，美国干预叫停了纳米比亚向保利科技支付1200万美元，后者是美国制裁名单上的一家中国公司的子公司，被控向伊朗、叙利亚和朝鲜出售禁运武器。这说明背后还是有美国的身影，它谨慎地盯着中国侵入非洲。

Husab is a tangible, direct investment, but most Chinese projects in Namibia and around the world are financed by soft loans that carry risks. 

哈萨博是实实在在的直接投资，但中国在纳米比亚和全世界多数项目都是通过有风险的软贷款融资的。

Last year, China established a new $60 billion fund to finance infrastructure projects in Africa, mostly with Chinese lending. The easy money is alluring, and the projects can be essential. But most of the loans stipulate that a Chinese state-owned company must take the lead. 

去年，中国在非洲新建了600亿美元的基金为基础设施项目融资，主要来自中国贷款。钱多的让人心动，工程也很重要。可多数贷款明确规定必须由中国国有公司牵头。

Countries like Namibia are left holding the debt. Schlettwein, the finance minister, told me, “I don’t think those are real investments, but opportunities latched onto by Chinese enterprises without really adding value to the Namibian economy.”

像纳米比亚这样的国家要承担债务。财政部长施莱特魏因对我说，“我不认为这是真正的投资，中国企业紧抓不放的机会对纳米比亚经济没什么价值。”

Such criticism irritates Chinese business owners and diplomats, who point out that Chinese companies have invested more than $5 billion in Namibia and now employ more than 6,000 Namibians. 

类似批评惹恼了中国商人和外交官，后者指出，中国公司在纳米比亚投资超过50亿美元，现在雇佣了超过6000名纳米比亚人。

“We’re here to do business on an equal footing with the locals,” says Xia Lili, the former diplomat who is deputy general manager of Jack Huang’s Sun Investment Group and secretary general of the Namibia-China Loving Heart Organization. 

“我们在这里做生意，和当地人平等相处，”曾经的外交官夏丽丽说。她是杰克·黄的太阳投资集团的副总经理和纳米比亚-中国爱心机构秘书长。

“We bring in money to establish mines and factories. Who benefits? The Namibians. Did the Western powers ever do this? Not nearly as much. So this talk of new colonialism is untrue.”

“我们找钱开矿建厂，谁得利？纳米比亚人。西方列强做过这些吗？几乎没有。这种新殖民主义的说法都是不真实的。”

Namibia, though, is starting to push back. Last year the government pulled out of a $570 million loan agreement with a state-owned Chinese company to expand the Windhoek airport. 

可纳米比亚开始后撤了。去年政府撤销了与中国国有公司达成的一项扩建温得和克机场的价值5.7亿贷款合同。

Then in September, as sluggish growth and other foreign loans pushed Namibia’s debt to over 40 percent of its G.D.P., the government suspended all new loan tenders. Schlettwein says the freeze was a prudent act of belt-tightening, not a move specifically targeting China. 

纳米比亚经济不振，外债推高至纳米比亚GDP的40%，当年9月，政府叫停了所有新贷款。施莱特魏因说，冻结是明智的行为，勒紧裤腰带，并非专门针对中国。

Nevertheless, he says: “It sends out a signal that Namibian interests are not to be trampled on indiscriminately. It sends a signal that our relationship must mature.”

可他说：“这发出一个信号，纳米比亚的利益不容任何人践踏。这发出一个信号，我们的关系必须成熟起来。”

未完待续

观世界，学英文

《英文联播》新闻精读课程

精选、精读、精听、精译、精讲

两日一学 | 半年有成

5月6日—11月3日

入圈不分先后

课时存量开放

100次精讲+学习笔记+互动交流

原价  300元

现价  150元

回复“小密圈”试听

下载“小密圈”，扫描二维码

准备开始学习之旅