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This is our fourth article from Issue 26, which arrives with print subscribers this week.
这是我们第 26 期的第四篇文章，印刷版订阅者将于本周收到。
Imagine if Y Combinator owned and ran San Francisco.
想象一下，如果 Y Combinator 拥有并经营旧金山。
Too much traffic?
流量太大？
That’s bad for business.
这对生意不利。
Highway 101 would be triple- or quadruple-deckered, and the metropolitan area might have a dozen subway lines, more like Madrid’s or Osaka’s networks than the BART as it stands.
101 号高速公路将是三层或四层，大都市区可能有十几条地铁线路，更像马德里或大阪的网络，而不是现有的 BART。
Heritage buildings?
文物建筑？
They’re nice, but this is a tech town.
他们很好，但这是一个科技小镇。
Skyscrapers would fill the entire peninsula.
摩天大楼将布满整个半岛。
Instead of wealth taxes on billionaires, the city might even cut taxes to encourage more founders and companies to move there.
该市甚至可能减税，以鼓励更多创始人和公司搬到那里，而不是向亿万富翁征收财富税。
This is only a slight caricature of how city government works in China.
这只是对中国市政府运作方式的一个小小的讽刺。
Provincial cities like Hefei and Hangzhou have become world-leading centers of commerce in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, solar panels, batteries, and AI, steered by mayors whose career incentives are similar to those of partners in a venture capital firm, getting promoted if their portfolio grows and fired if it fails.
合肥和杭州等省级城市已成为电动汽车、消费电子产品、太阳能电池板、电池和人工智能领域世界领先的商业中心，市长的职业激励类似于风险投资公司合伙人，如果投资组合增长就得到晋升，如果投资失败就被解雇。
The cities they run function as vertically integrated conglomerates that benefit not just from the success of their local champions, but also from the broader growth generated by masses of companies in their slipstream.
他们经营的城市作为垂直整合的企业集团，不仅受益于当地龙头企业的成功，还受益于大量公司在其滑流中带来的更广泛的增长。
In the West, China’s success is often attributed to the central government’s willingness to pick winners and direct its economy from above.
在西方，中国的成功常常归因于中央政府愿意挑选赢家并自上而下指导经济。
Many Westerners have concluded that a similar top-down approach is needed in their countries to create champions that can compete with China’s.
许多西方人得出的结论是，他们的国家需要采取类似的自上而下的方法来打造能够与中国竞争的冠军企业。
But Beijing’s role is more akin to being a rulemaker in a great tournament.
但北京的角色更像是一场伟大赛事的规则制定者。
Subnational governments – provinces, cities, towns, villages – are responsible for around 85 percent of public expenditure, according to the IMF, the lion’s share of which is spent at city level.[ref 1]
根据国际货币基金组织的数据，地方各级政府（省、市、镇、村）负责约 85% 的公共支出，其中大部分支出在城市一级。[参考 1]
The heavy state involvement correctly perceived by observers belongs not to Beijing but to those local governments, of which China has thousands, and which compete with one another for investment and prestige.
观察家们正确地认为，国家的大力参与并不属于北京，而是属于那些地方政府，中国有数千个地方政府，它们之间为了投资和声望而相互竞争。
These local growth machines and the competition between them are what drives China’s stunning economic success, and what the Western world must embrace to keep up.
这些本土增长机器以及它们之间的竞争推动了中国惊人的经济成功，也是西方世界必须拥抱的。
For the initial decades after China’s economic opening in the 1980s, ‘Made in China’ meant cheap goods mass-produced for Western businesses.
在 20 世纪 80 年代中国经济开放后的最初几十年里，“中国制造”意味着为西方企业大量生产的廉价商品。
Today, Chinese companies lead the world in high-tech manufacturing, and many of them are household names in the West.
如今，中国企业在高科技制造领域处于世界领先地位，其中许多企业在西方家喻户晓。
Huawei is arguably the world’s most advanced telecoms company; BYD is the largest electric automaker; and DJI makes over 90 percent of consumer drones.
华为可以说是世界上最先进的电信公司；比亚迪是最大的电动汽车制造商；超过 90% 的消费级无人机由 DJI 制造。
Less familiar but no less important are companies like Geely, an auto giant which began in the 1980s as a refrigerator parts manufacturer and now owns Volvo, Lotus, Polestar and a stake in Aston Martin; and Vivo, now India’s biggest smartphone supplier.
不太为人所知但同样重要的公司还有像吉利这样的汽车巨头，该公司成立于 20 世纪 80 年代，最初是一家冰箱零部件制造商，现在拥有沃尔沃、路特斯、Polestar 以及阿斯顿·马丁的股份；以及目前印度最大的智能手机供应商 Vivo。
What all have in common is that Beijing played no role in their creation.
所有这些的共同点是，北京在它们的创造过程中没有发挥任何作用。
They were private companies encouraged by local governments.
它们是地方政府鼓励的私营企业。
Huawei, BYD, and DJI emerged from Shenzhen’s Special Economic Zone, where municipal bureaucrats could write local regulations without regard for national rules.
华为、比亚迪和大疆诞生于深圳经济特区，那里的市政府官员可以在不考虑国家规定的情况下制定地方法规。
Geely was quietly supported by Zhejiang province at a time when only state-designated automakers were meant to build cars.
当只有国家指定的汽车制造商才能生产汽车时，吉利却得到了浙江省的悄悄支持。
Vivo spun off from a company founded in Dongguan, after Zhongshan, the neighboring city, wouldn’t give the company leaders equity.
由于邻近城市中山市不给这家公司领导人股权，vivo 从一家在东莞成立的公司分拆出来。
Some sectors, such as batteries, electronics, and most recently electric vehicles, have received special support from Beijing as strategic industries.
电池、电子产品以及最近的电动汽车等一些行业作为战略产业得到了北京的特别支持。
Companies in these areas benefited from subsidies, tax rebates, and in the case of electric cars, sales tax exemptions.
这些地区的公司受益于补贴、退税，对于电动汽车来说，还可以享受销售税豁免。
But though the state was happy to lend its support to certain sectors, it was agnostic as to which specific firms and regions rose to dominance by means of that support.
但是，尽管国家很乐意为某些行业提供支持，但对于哪些特定公司和地区通过这种支持上升到主导地位却是不可知的。
Beijing set a prize, and local bureaucrats competed to win it.
北京设立了一个奖项，地方官僚竞相争夺。
Hefei, the capital of Anhui province in inland Eastern China, is the most famous illustration of this process in action.
合肥是中国东部内陆地区安徽省的省会，是这一过程最著名的例证。
In 2008, the municipal government invested $500 million in the electronic display company BOE Technology to build a new-generation LCD production line, bringing China to the cutting edge of panel production for the first time.
2008年，市政府投资5亿美元向电子显示公司京东方科技建设新一代液晶显示屏生产线，使中国首次走在面板生产的最前沿。
At the time, Hefei was an unremarkable city with no display industry, and BOE was only the world’s ninth-largest manufacturer of LCD displays.
当时，合肥是一座不起眼的城市，没有显示产业，京东方也只是全球第九大液晶显示器制造商。
The city provided the necessary land, utility connections, and cheap capital (investing almost a tenth of its total revenue that year) to set up a subsidiary company with BOE, in which it had an 81 percent stake.
该市提供了必要的土地、公用设施连接和廉价资本（投资几乎占当年总收入的十分之一），与京东方建立了一家子公司，并持有该公司 81% 的股份。
The bet paid off.
赌注得到了回报。
BOE is now the world’s largest display panel manufacturer and makes about a quarter of smartphone screens worldwide.
京东方目前是全球最大的显示面板制造商，生产全球约四分之一的智能手机屏幕。
The city reinvested the returns from its investment in other venture capital–like bets, which have won big surprisingly often.
该市将其投资回报再投资于其他类似风险投资的赌注，这些赌注经常令人惊讶地大获全胜。
Hefei’s investment in carmaker NIO, which the city backed in 2020 in exchange for a 24 percent stake, paid off with an internal rate of return exceeding 30 percent.
2020年，合肥市以24%的股份对蔚来汽车进行了投资，最终获得了超过30%的内部收益率。
CXMT (Changxin Memory Technologies), 24 percent of which is directly or indirectly owned by the city of Hefei, runs just behind Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron with 7 percent of the global market for DRAM chips, the short-term memory used in smartphones, PCs, and data centers.
长鑫存储（长鑫存储科技）由合肥市直接或间接持有 24% 的股份，紧随三星、SK 海力士和美光之后，占据全球 DRAM 芯片（智能手机、个人电脑和数据中心使用的短期存储器）市场 7% 的份额。
Over the decade to 2023, the city had invested roughly $25 billion of public funds, generating reported earnings of nearly $9 billion.
截至 2023 年的十年间，该市已投资约 250 亿美元的公共资金，报告收入近 90 亿美元。
Other cities have followed the venture capital model to bring in similar growth in jobs and tax revenues.
其他城市也效仿风险投资模式，带来了类似的就业和税收增长。
The city of Wuhu imported a secondhand Ford engine line from Britain, lured engineers away from state behemoth FAW (First Automotive Works), and copied a Volkswagen design to build a local carmaker.
芜湖市从英国进口了二手福特发动机系列，吸引了国有巨头一汽（第一汽车厂）的工程师，并复制了大众汽车的设计来建立一家当地汽车制造商。
That makeshift venture eventually grew into Chery, today one of the country’s leading carmakers and supplier of Britain’s bestselling car in March 2026, the Jaecoo 7.
这家临时企业最终发展成为奇瑞公司，如今已成为英国领先的汽车制造商之一，也是 2026 年 3 月英国最畅销汽车 Jaecoo 7 的供应商。
As well as having seen growth in jobs, exports, and tax revenues, the city of Wuhu retains a 21 percent stake in Chery, worth around $3.7 billion.
除了就业、出口和税收收入的增长外，芜湖市还保留了奇瑞 21% 的股份，价值约 37 亿美元。
Ningde, a relatively modest city in Fujian province in the southeast, is the founding site of CATL, now the world’s biggest battery producer.
宁德是福建省东南部一个相对朴素的城市，是当今全球最大的电池生产商宁德时代的创始人所在地。
The city’s leaders made a strategic wager from its founding in 2011, committing land, infrastructure, tax support, administrative coordination, and supplier attraction efforts to help the still-young battery company to scale.
该市领导人从 2011 年成立之初就下了战略赌注，承诺在土地、基础设施、税收支持、行政协调和供应商吸引方面做出努力，以帮助这家年轻的电池公司扩大规模。
CATL’s bases in Ningde now have capacity to produce 330 gigawatt hours of batteries per year – equivalent to almost half the global demand for electric vehicle batteries in 2023.
目前，宁德时代宁德基地的电池年产能为330吉瓦时，相当于2023年全球电动汽车电池需求量的近一半。
China’s mayors and provincial governors turn their cities into venture capital portfolios because of the system of incentives in which they operate.
中国的市长和省长将他们的城市变成了风险投资组合，因为他们所处的激励制度。
[ref 2] Each cadre (the party members and other officials who run the Chinese state) is scored by their superiors in a secret file built up over the course of their career.
[参考资料 2] 每个干部（管理中国国家的党员和其他官员）都会由其上级在其职业生涯中建立的秘密档案中进行评分。
Prefecture-level party secretaries evaluate county chiefs, who in turn evaluate their juniors heading up townships, who evaluate village leaders, down to the lowest party member.
地级党委书记评价县长，县长评价乡镇的下属，村领导评价村干部，直至最基层的党员。
Promotions – not just for politicians, but across the civil service – are based in large part on scoring the economic performance of the province or city that a cadre is responsible for.
晋升 — — 不仅针对政治家，而且针对整个公务员系统 — — 在很大程度上取决于对干部负责的省或市的经济表现的评分。
For example, the Shaoxing Municipal Party Committee’s 2008 assessment for city leaders featured 100 base points, of which 54 were awarded for economic development , including growth in GDP per capita, local revenue, industrial investment, and exports.
例如，绍兴市委2008年对城市领导人的考核有100个基点，其中54个基点奖励在经济发展方面，包括人均GDP增长、地方财政收入、工业投资和出口等。
Across China in the 2000s, officials who presided over growth 3.3 percentage points higher than their predecessors were 40 to 50 percent more likely to be promoted.
在2000年代的中国各地，领导经济增长比前任高3.3个百分点的官员晋升的可能性高出40%至50%。
Whereas success leads to promotion, failure can mean early retirement, demotion, or disciplinary action.
成功会导致晋升，失败则可能意味着提前退休、降职或纪律处分。
To further incentivize bureaucrats, promotions are governed by strict, albeit not explicit, age ceilings .
为了进一步激励官僚，晋升受到严格但不明确的年龄上限的限制。
A cadre must make the jump from county officialdom to prefecture level by their mid-forties, must take the next jump to provincial or ministerial level by their mid-fifties, and is unlikely ever to reach the Politburo if they have not done so by their sixties.
干部在四十岁左右必须从县级官员跳到地级，在五十岁左右必须再跳到省部级，如果在六十岁之前不这样做，就不可能进入政治局。
Missing an age window means being locked into a lower tier for the rest of their lives.
错过年龄窗口意味着余生都被锁定在较低的阶层。
What makes these incentives work is the fact that, unlike in many Western systems, provincial governments get to keep much of the money they generate.
这些激励措施发挥作用的原因是，与许多西方体系不同，省级政府可以保留其产生的大部分资金。
After 1980, when China’s economy first started to open up, provinces retained roughly 75 of every 100 marginal yuan they raised.
1980年以后，当中国经济刚刚开始开放时，各省每筹集到的100元边际资金中大约保留了75元。
Many provincial governments negotiated deals in which they agreed in advance how much income they would owe to Beijing over the next five years or more, meaning that every yuan they subsequently did or didn’t raise went onto their own balance sheet.
许多省级政府在谈判中事先约定了在未来五年或更长时间内向北京支付多少收入，这意味着他们随后筹集或未筹集的每一元人民币都进入了自己的资产负债表。
By 1990, the average marginal retention rate was nearly 90 percent .
到1990年，平均边际保留率接近90%。
Local government incentives were sharpened even more after 1994 , when a package of reforms cut the share of VAT that provinces and cities kept, leaving them with a hunger for revenue, but often allowed them to keep 100 percent of the upside from state-owned enterprises, and the ability to sell land-use rights, almost all of whose revenues they could keep.[ref 3]
1994 年之后，地方政府的激励措施更加强烈，当时一系列改革措施削减了各省市保留的增值税份额，使他们对收入充满渴望，但往往允许他们保留国有企业 100% 的收益，并有能力出售土地使用权，几乎所有收入都可以保留。[参考 3]
The way these incentives play out is illustrated in the career of Li Qiang, today China’s second most powerful man.
这些激励措施发挥作用的方式可以从当今中国第二号人物李强的职业生涯中得到体现。
Li started at the bottom: he was born in 1959 to an unremarkable family in Rui’an, an ancient but small city in Zhejiang province, and worked factory clerk jobs before joining the local branch of the Communist Party in 1983.
李从底层做起：1959年出生于浙江省瑞安市一个古老的小城市的一个不起眼的家庭，在1983年加入当地共产党之前，他曾做过工厂文员的工作。
Over the following twenty years he pursued a career in local politics, holding a string of provincial posts.
在接下来的二十年里，他从事地方政治事业，担任过一系列省级职务。
In 2002, he was made party secretary of Wenzhou, a larger city in the same province.
2002年，他被任命为温州市委书记。
Even under communism, Wenzhou had been seen as an outpost of entrepreneurship and private business within Zhejiang.
即使在共产主义时期，温州也被视为浙江境内创业和私营企业的前哨基地。
Li’s strategy was to encourage more private companies to start up, bring private capital into infrastructure, and release bottlenecks on land and labor.
李克强的策略是鼓励更多私营企业创业，将民间资本引入基础设施领域，缓解土地和劳动力瓶颈。
Wenzhou’s GDP grew 14.8 percent during his first year in charge.
在他执掌的第一年，温州的GDP增长了14.8%。
After a second year of rapid growth, this time 14.1 percent, he was appointed chief of staff to the provincial party secretary, Xi Jinping.
经过第二年的快速增长（这次增长了 14.1%）后，他被任命为省委书记习近平的幕僚长。
When Xi took over in Beijing in 2013, Li was promoted to the provincial governorship himself.
2013年习近平在北京上任后，李克强亲自升任省长。
Li described his strategy as getting the government out of the way to ‘allow the market to play its decisive role, further stimulating the entrepreneurial and innovative drive of the masses’.
李克强将他的策略描述为让政府“让市场发挥决定性作用，进一步激发群众创业创新动力”。
Zhejiang must replace the ‘restless hand’ of government intervention with the ‘invisible hand’ of market competition, he said.
他说，浙江必须用市场竞争的“看不见的手”取代政府干预的“不安的手”。
In practice this meant scrapping 8,000 of the province’s legal powers, including over 700 approval requirements.
实际上，这意味着取消该省 8,000 项法定权力，其中包括 700 多项审批要求。
After success in Zhejiang, Li was put in charge of Jiangsu, before being brought to Shanghai itself.
在浙江取得成功后，李被任命负责江苏，然后被带到上海。
In Shanghai, he once again focused on freeing up private capital.
在上海，他再次把重点放在解放民间资本上。
He set up a new stock market, STAR, which became one of China’s main exchanges within a year of launching.
他建立了一个新的股票市场科创板，该市场在推出一年内就成为中国的主要交易所之一。
He presided over an expansion of Shanghai’s free trade zone.
他主持了上海自由贸易区的扩建。
And he announced a raft of reforms to increase the ease of doing business as in Wenzhou, focused on reducing permit requirements.
他还宣布了一系列改革措施，以提高营商便利度，就像在温州一样，重点是减少许可证要求。
In 2022, after climbing the ranks for 39 years, Li was elevated to the Party’s top decision-making body, the seven-person Politburo Standing Committee.
2022年，在晋升39年后，李克强被提升为党的最高决策机构——由七人组成的政治局常务委员会。
As the second-ranking committee member, he was now junior only to his former boss, Xi Jinping.
作为二号委员，他的地位仅次于他的前任老板习近平。
The entire Chinese bureaucracy is staffed this way, from the smallest village to the country’s capital itself.
从最小的村庄到国家首都，整个中国的官僚机构都是这样配置的。
Being a local government bureaucrat is a very different proposition in China than it is in the West.
在中国担任地方政府官僚是一个与西方截然不同的主张。
China’s public servants are more like company directors than administrators, making investments to increase their division’s financial performance and improve their professional prospects.
中国的公务员更像是公司董事，而不是管理者，他们进行投资是为了提高部门的财务绩效并改善他们的职业前景。
Competition is the driving force of Chinese industrial success.
竞争是中国工业成功的动力。
Instead of a single body making decisions for the entire country and passing them down, there are hundreds.
不是由一个机构为整个国家做出决策并将其传递下去，而是有数百个机构。
When a strategy is proven to work, the country doubles down on it.
当一项战略被证明有效时，该国就会加倍努力。
In this, it is similar to American capitalism, with its hedge funds, investment banks, and venture capitalists, each a competitive central planner, portioning out capital for a sliver of the United States economy.
在这一点上，它与美国资本主义类似，其中的对冲基金、投资银行和风险资本家都是竞争性的中央计划者，为美国经济的一小部分分配资本。
But China takes it further.
但中国走得更远。
In American capitalism, each individual ‘player’ represents their own interests, but nobody represents the interests of the game as a whole, which often makes coordination problems hard to solve.
在美国资本主义中，每个“参与者”代表自己的利益，但没有人代表整个游戏的利益，这往往导致协调问题难以解决。
China’s competitive municipal socialism works because of local governments’ role as, effectively, landowners.
中国竞争性的城市社会主义之所以能够发挥作用，是因为地方政府实际上扮演着土地所有者的角色。
Because they capture the spillovers of growth through rising land values and tax receipts, local governments create public goods that benefit all the companies in their area.
由于地方政府通过提高土地价值和税收收入来捕捉增长的溢出效应，因此创造了有利于其所在地区所有公司的公共产品。
Local governments in the West have many of the tools that China’s cities have, but they lack the same incentives.
西方地方政府拥有中国城市所拥有的许多工具，但他们缺乏同样的激励措施。
Its cities suffer from fragmented political governance, like the San Francisco Bay Area, which is governed by 101 different municipal governments, or from rules that cap or redistribute their property tax revenues.
它的城市面临着分散的政治治理，例如旧金山湾区，该地区由 101 个不同的市政府管辖，或者受到限制或重新分配其财产税收入的规则的影响。
Many Western cities have become dysfunctional even when they host economic clusters that rival those in China.
许多西方城市即使拥有与中国的经济集群相媲美的经济集群，也已经变得功能失调。
In contrast, China’s governments retain a large share of the money they raise and are led by cadres whose careers depend on growth.
相比之下，中国政府保留了其筹集的大部分资金，并由职业生涯依赖于增长的干部领导。
They have both the tools and the incentives to build their economic clusters up as much as they can.
他们拥有尽可能建立经济集群的工具和动力。
Sometimes this means directly luring in anchor firms which attract other companies to the area through tax rebates, specific infrastructure offers, and cheap bank loans.
有时，这意味着直接吸引主力企业，通过退税、特定基础设施优惠和廉价银行贷款吸引其他公司来到该地区。
To bring Tesla to Shanghai, the municipal government under Li Qiang offered $289 million in grants, arranged for $2.2 billion in low-interest loans from Chinese banks, a ten-point cut in the corporate income tax rate from 2019 to 2023, and a 50 percent discount on the 86 hectares of land beneath the factory.
为了将特斯拉带到上海，李强领导下的市政府提供了2.89亿美元的补助，从中国的银行安排了22亿美元的低息贷款，从2019年到2023年将企业所得税税率降低了10个百分点，并对工厂下方的86公顷土地给予了50%的折扣。
The support was so lavish that one Chinese minister reportedly complained that ‘Shanghai leaders were unbelievable – giving away the entire investment without Tesla having to spend a penny.’
这种支持如此慷慨，据报道，一位中国部长抱怨说，“上海领导人令人难以置信——特斯拉没有花一分钱就捐出了全部投资。”
Li promised speed along with capital.
李承诺速度和资金。
Elon Musk thought the factory would take two years to build; Li promised to do it in one.
埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 认为工厂需要两年时间才能建成；李答应一气呵成。
Tesla set up a Shanghai-based subsidiary in May 2018, signed a deal with the city in July, contracted for the land it needed in October, began construction in January 2019, and started producing cars in December that year.
特斯拉于2018年5月在上海设立子公司，7月与上海签署协议，10月承包所需土地，2019年1月开始建设，当年12月开始生产汽车。
Even by Musk’s standards, Shanghai’s processes were lightning fast.
即使按照马斯克的标准，上海的流程也快如闪电。
Retooling an existing factory in Fremont, California, took Tesla almost twice as long, and building a new Berlin gigafactory took almost three times as long.
改造加州弗里蒙特现有工厂的时间几乎是特斯拉的两倍，而建造一座新的柏林超级工厂则花费了几乎三倍的时间。
Musk himself credited the Shanghai government as essential for that speed.
马斯克本人认为上海政府对这一速度至关重要。
Sometimes, as in Hefei, support even means making direct investments that help anchor companies to grow as well as providing equity returns directly to the city’s coffers.
有时，就像在合肥一样，支持甚至意味着进行直接投资，帮助锚定企业发展，并直接向市政府提供股权回报。
Chinese provinces and cities make heavy use of cash subsidies, which total 2 percent of Chinese GDP according to the IMF, compared to around 0.3 percent in the United States and 0.5 percent in the European Union.
中国各省市大量使用现金补贴，根据国际货币基金组织的数据，现金补贴占中国 GDP 的 2%，而美国和欧盟的这一比例约为 0.3% 和 0.5%。
These direct inducements and investments are an important part of the puzzle.
这些直接的诱因和投资是这个难题的重要组成部分。
But these investments would not pay off if cities were not prepared to capitalize on them.
但如果城市不准备利用这些投资，这些投资就不会获得回报。
Chinese cities are.
中国的城市都是。
They zone masses of land for industry, rent it out at a cut price to build the larger cluster around the anchor firms, then fund the discount by selling land to developers who lease it to the workers and entrepreneurs attracted in.
他们将大量土地划为工业用地，以低价出租，以在主力企业周围建立更大的集群，然后通过将土地出售给开发商来筹集折扣资金，开发商将其出租给吸引进来的工人和企业家。
Kunshan, a small city near Shanghai, was a poor place – known as the ‘little sixth’ for being the least developed of the six subdivisions in its region – when, without permission from Beijing, its leaders secretly started an industrial zone in the mid-1980s.
昆山是上海附近的一个小城市，当时是一个贫穷的地方，因其是该地区六个行政区中最不发达的地区而被称为“小六”，当时昆山的领导人在未经北京许可的情况下，于 20 世纪 80 年代中期秘密建立了一个工业区。
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Kunshan’s officials courted Taiwanese electronics firms with almost comic enthusiasm, building a Taiwanese school, encouraging Taiwanese restaurants, broadcasting forty Taiwanese TV channels, and offering industrial land at throwaway prices.
在整个 90 年代和 2000 年代，昆山官员以近乎滑稽的热情向台湾电子公司示好，建立了一所台湾学校，鼓励台湾餐馆，播放 40 个台湾电视频道，并以一次性价格提供工业用地。
When Beijing objected to Taiwanese schoolbooks, Kunshan officials lobbied the central government for a compromise and resolved the standoff by blacking out sensitive symbols like the Taiwanese flag.
当北京反对台湾教科书时，昆山官员游说中央政府达成妥协，并通过涂黑台湾国旗等敏感符号解决了僵局。
Nantz and Foxconn were among the first Taiwanese companies to arrive, making boring but foundational parts like electrical connectors and printed circuit boards.
Nantz 和富士康是最早到达的台湾公司之一，生产电气连接器和印刷电路板等无聊但基础的零件。
Acer Peripherals joined in 1994, opening bases in the nearby city of Suzhou to make keyboards and monitors and bringing 14 major suppliers with it.
宏碁外围设备公司 (Acer Peripherals) 于 1994 年加入，在附近的苏州市开设了生产键盘和显示器的基地，并带来了 14 家主要供应商。
Thousands of technicians, including Taiwanese expats, circulated between firms in the rapidly growing electronic components industries, forming the largest community of molding technicians in China, and training many more.
包括台湾侨民在内的数千名技术人员在快速发展的电子元件行业的公司之间流动，形成了中国最大的成型技术人员社区，并培训了更多的技术人员。
By the late 2000s, Kunshan made half of all laptops in the world.
到 2000 年代末，昆山生产了全球一半的笔记本电脑。
This cluster building has been replicated across China, creating cities that concentrate a disproportionate share of global output for specific goods.
这种集群建设已在中国各地复制，创建的城市集中了全球特定商品产出的不成比例的份额。
Zheng’an, in Guizhou province, produces roughly one in seven guitars worldwide.
贵州省正安县生产全球大约七分之一的吉他。
Shaodong, in Hunan, makes 70 percent of the world’s disposable cigarette lighters .
湖南邵东生产全球 70% 的一次性打火机。
Danyang, in Jiangsu, hosts 1,600 companies that manufacture half the world’s spectacle lenses .
江苏丹阳拥有 1,600 家公司，生产全球一半的眼镜镜片。
In a remarkable range of specialized manufacturing sectors, both light and heavy, a Chinese hub holds a world-dominant position.
在众多的专业制造领域，无论是轻型还是重型，中国的枢纽都占据着世界主导地位。
Almost three quarters of Chinese productivity growth in manufacturing from 1998 to 2007 came from new entrants to the market, rather than the growth of existing businesses.
1998年至2007年，中国制造业生产力增长的近四分之三来自于市场新进入者，而不是现有企业的增长。
By the end of 2023, China was home to 4.1 million different manufacturing enterprises – almost twenty times as many as the United States – and 96 percent were private, together employing around 105 million people, about eight times as many as the United States.
到 2023 年底，中国拥有 410 万家不同的制造企业，几乎是美国的 20 倍，其中 96% 是私营企业，总共雇用了约 1.05 亿人，大约是美国的八倍。
Clusters allow upstarts to improve products through rapid iteration and low lead times across almost every conceivable industry, and this is the single biggest reason why China is absorbing so many, from simple to advanced.
集群使得新兴企业能够通过快速迭代和短交货时间来改进产品，几乎覆盖所有可以想象的行业，这也是中国吸收如此多从简单到先进的产品的最大原因。
Bambu Lab brought its first 3D printer to market in 22 months and reached $1.5 billion in revenue and 37 percent of the global market for affordable 3D printers within five years.
Bambu Lab 在 22 个月内将其首款 3D 打印机推向市场，并在五年内实现了 15 亿美元的收入和全球经济型 3D 打印机市场 37% 的份额。
Hesai, a Shanghai-based LiDAR maker, entered the market when the technology was still ultra-expensive, with a robotaxi sensor suite costing more than many entire cars.
总部位于上海的激光雷达制造商禾赛进入市场时，该技术仍然非常昂贵，其机器人出租车传感器套件的成本比许多整辆车的成本还要高。
A decade later, it has become the world’s largest LiDAR supplier, with more than 1.6 million units shipped in 2025 alone.
十年后，它已成为全球最大的激光雷达供应商，仅 2025 年出货量就超过 160 万台。
(The most prominent American contender, Luminar, filed for bankruptcy in December 2025.)
（美国最著名的竞争者 Luminar 于 2025 年 12 月申请破产。）
The incentive and ability to form economic clusters may be the single most important factor that explains why China’s cities have succeeded over the past three decades while America’s superstar cities have stagnated.
形成经济集群的动力和能力可能是解释为什么中国城市在过去三十年取得成功而美国超级明星城市却停滞不前的最重要因素。
China’s local growth machines need a tremendous amount of fuel in the form of investment capital.
中国本土的增长机器需要大量投资资本作为燃料。
Beijing provides this fuel by generating a giant pile of domestic savings.
北京通过产生大量国内储蓄来提供这种燃料。
By preventing ordinary Chinese people from moving more than $50,000 abroad each year and limiting the range of investment opportunities that could be an alternative home for their savings, the government ensures that the country collectively saves an enormous amount of money in domestic banks.
通过阻止普通中国人每年向国外转移超过 5 万美元，并限制可作为其储蓄替代家园的投资机会的范围，政府确保国家在国内银行集体储蓄大量资金。
Chinese households held 165 trillion yuan ($24 trillion) in bank deposits in September 2025, equal to 122 percent of the country’s GDP.
截至 2025 年 9 月，中国家庭持有 165 万亿元人民币（24 万亿美元）的银行存款，相当于中国 GDP 的 122%。
At the same time, the interest rates that banks pay to depositors are capped, giving banks a huge supply of artificially cheap capital, which they lend out at a small margin.
与此同时，银行支付给储户的利率受到限制，为银行提供了大量人为廉价的资本，并以微薄的利润放贷。
As of early 2025, a typical current-account deposit rate in a Chinese bank is 0.15 percent .
截至 2025 年初，中国银行的典型活期账户存款利率为 0.15%。
Real interest rates, adjusted for consumer inflation, have been negative in almost half of the years since 1999.
自 1999 年以来，根据消费者通胀调整后的实际利率在近一半的时间里一直为负。
The net effect of these policies is an immense forced transfer of wealth from hundreds of millions of savers to Chinese companies.
这些政策的最终效果是财富被迫从数亿储户转移到中国企业。
As a result, these firms are highly indebted: corporate debt peaked at 142 percent of GDP in 2016 and is still around 138 percent today.
结果，这些企业负债累累：企业债务在 2016 年达到 GDP 的 142% 的峰值，如今仍约为 138%。
But their financial expenses, including debt interest payments, account for under 1 percent of industrial firms’ turnover.
但它们的财务费用（包括债务利息支付）占工业企业营业额的不到 1%。
In the United States, by contrast, non-financial corporate debt is roughly half that level, at 72 percent of GDP , but interest payments amounted to about 5.3 percent of sales in 2024.
相比之下，在美国，非金融企业债务约为该水平的一半，占 GDP 的 72%，但 2024 年利息支付约占销售额的 5.3%。
An unfortunate side effect of this approach is that entrepreneurs may be backed to attempt extremely unlikely, borderline harebrained, schemes.
这种方法的一个不幸的副作用是，企业家可能会被支持尝试极其不可能、近乎轻率的计划。
One Chinese carmaker, a spinoff from a real estate developer, was briefly worth more than Ford despite never producing a car.
一家从房地产开发商分拆出来的中国汽车制造商尽管从未生产过汽车，但其市值曾一度超过福特。
The wider Chinese car industry is enormously overcrowded: the Shanghai-based Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute estimates that the Chinese auto industry had a capacity to build 55.5 million vehicles a year in 2024, but utilized only half of that.
更广泛的中国汽车行业已经严重拥挤：总部位于上海的盖世汽车研究院估计，到2024年，中国汽车行业的年产能为5550万辆，但利用率仅为一半。
Western plants typically utilize 80 percent of their capacity, or above.[ref 4] Even mighty BYD’s profit margin has fallen to a meager 4 percent.
西方工厂通常会利用 80% 或以上的产能。[参考 4] 即使是强大的比亚迪，其利润率也已降至区区 4%。
This overexuberance is visible in Chinese macroeconomic data.
这种过度繁荣在中国宏观经济数据中显而易见。
The capital efficiency ratio measures how much output a country gets out of the capital stock it has invested – how many dollars of GDP a country can buy with a dollar of investment.
资本效率比率衡量一个国家从其投资的资本存量中获得多少产出——一个国家用一美元的投资可以购买多少美元的GDP。
The United States gets almost twice as much economic output out of every dollar it invests as China does, precisely the opposite of what we would expect from a developed country with a mature economy versus a rapidly growing country playing catch up.
美国每投资一美元所获得的经济产出几乎是中国的两倍，这与我们对经济成熟的发达国家与快速增长的追赶国家的预期恰恰相反。
Beijing’s second job, after ensuring the availability of cheap capital, is to rein in the overexuberance it has set off.
在确保廉价资本的供应之后，北京的第二项工作是遏制其引发的过度繁荣。
Local governments piled into steel and coal production in the 2000s and 2010s.
地方政府在 2000 年代和 2010 年代大量投入钢铁和煤炭生产。
After crude steel output surged from 419 million tons in 2006 to 804 million in 2015, the central government launched a drive to cut overproduction, shuttering businesses surviving on debt rollovers, banning net new capacity, enforcing a ban on cheap and dirty induction furnaces, and giving local governments targets to push their excess production down.
粗钢产量从2006年的4.19亿吨飙升至2015年的8.04亿吨后，中央政府启动了化解过剩产能的行动，关闭靠债务展期生存的企业，禁止净新增产能，禁止使用廉价和污染严重的感应炉，并为地方政府制定了降低过剩产能的目标。
Coal went through a similar centrally driven cleanup, as did property.
煤炭和房地产也经历了类似的集中驱动的清理工作。
The central government’s third job is policing the tournament and stopping local governments from going too far in pursuit of their own growth at the expense of the wider economy.
中央政府的第三项工作是监管赛事，并阻止地方政府以牺牲整体经济为代价来追求自身增长。
China’s huge single market would be undermined if provinces or cities put barriers on flows of land, labor, and capital, fragmenting a billion-person market into 34 smaller ones.
如果各省市对土地、劳动力和资本流动设置障碍，将十亿人口的市场分割成34个较小的市场，中国庞大的单一市场就会受到损害。
In the late 2010s, when Beijing began a crackdown on this tendency, some local authorities had been attempting to block goods from entering their borders, or rewritten public procurement specifications to exclude out-of-province bidders.
2010年代末，当北京开始打击这种趋势时，一些地方当局一直试图阻止货物进入其边境，或重写公共采购规范以排除省外投标人。
Such behavior continues to be policed by the Chinese state.
这种行为继续受到中国政府的监管。
On 1st July 2025, Xi Jinping convened the highest-level economic body of the CCP, and devoted it to building a unified national market.
2025年7月1日，习近平召开中共最高经济机构会议，致力于建设全国统一市场。
His speech framed the task as a precondition for ‘gaining the initiative in international competition’.
他的讲话将这项任务视为“赢得国际竞争主动权”的前提。
Energy policy since 2022 has reversed decades of local control: by 2027, most provinces are required to operate a real-time electricity market rather than pre-agreed fixed rates, allowing for more efficient use of energy on a national scale.
2022年以来的能源政策扭转了数十年来的地方控制：到2027年，大多数省份都需要运营实时电力市场，而不是预先商定的固定电价，从而在全国范围内更有效地利用能源。
Like all powerful incentive systems, the Chinese municipal tournament generates some perverse outcomes.
与所有强大的激励制度一样，中国的市政锦标赛也产生了一些不正常的结果。
Until 2013, when the scorecard was updated in favor of harder-to-fake measures of activity, the pressure to produce a high GDP figure was so intense that officials routinely fudged the numbers.
直到 2013 年，记分卡更新为更难以造假的经济活动衡量标准之前，产生高 GDP 数据的压力如此之大，以至于官员们经常捏造数字。
One study found that mayors still young enough to be promoted reported growth 3.4 percentage points higher than mayors just past the age cutoff, but that this higher measured growth was not reflected by other indicators like lights at night, electricity use, business entry, or productivity.
一项研究发现，仍然年轻、可以晋升的市长报告的增长率比刚过年龄界限的市长高出 3.4 个百分点，但这种较高的测量增长率并没有反映在夜间灯光、用电量、企业进入或生产率等其他指标中。
The power of local officials has sometimes bred corruption : businesses give gifts and favors to officials in exchange for contracts and land deals.
地方官员的权力有时会滋生腐败：企业向官员赠送礼物和好处，以换取合同和土地交易。
But the direction of incentives means that these have largely been payments that greased deals and accelerated projects, rather than negative-sum corruption that simply drains an economy.
但激励措施的方向意味着这些主要是促进交易和加速项目的付款，而不是只会耗尽经济的负和腐败。
And like America in the twentieth century, the central government has increasingly cracked down on corruption as China becomes richer and more developed.
就像二十世纪的美国一样，随着中国变得更加富裕和发达，中央政府越来越严厉地打击腐败。
Many Western analysts play up China’s uniqueness.
许多西方分析人士都强调中国的独特性。
But China today looks a lot like the America of the 1950s and 1960s, when it too was on a rapid upward trajectory powered by local growth machines .
但今天的中国看起来很像 20 世纪 50 年代和 1960 年代的美国，当时它也在当地增长机器的推动下走上了快速上升的轨道。
American metropolises of that era were dependent on returns from land development, in their case from the property taxes that supplied 87 percent of local tax income, rather than land sale or leases.
那个时代的美国大都市依赖于土地开发的回报，即来自占地方税收收入 87% 的财产税，而不是土地出售或租赁。
Only about a quarter of local government funds were grants from state or (via the state) federal governments, meaning that some 70 percent of revenues were raised locally, implying a high level of local control comparable to China’s today.
只有大约四分之一的地方政府资金来自州或（通过州）联邦政府的拨款，这意味着大约 70% 的收入是在当地筹集的，这意味着地方控制水平与今天的中国相当。
America had its own Li Qiangs: Richard J Daley expanded Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to maintain his city’s place as a center of American transportation in the aviation age; Robert Moses and Fiorello LaGuardia bulldozed through historic parts of New York against vigorous opposition to build new roads across New York City; William Hartsfield transformed Atlanta’s airport into the nation’s busiest by 1957, setting the city up to become a center of American logistics and corporate capitalism.
美国有自己的李强：理查德·J·戴利扩建了芝加哥奥黑尔机场，以维持这座城市作为航空时代美国交通中心的地位；罗伯特·摩西（Robert Moses）和菲奥雷洛·拉瓜迪亚（Fiorello LaGuardia）不顾强烈反对在纽约市修建新道路，用推土机推平了纽约历史悠久的地区；到 1957 年，威廉·哈茨菲尔德 (William Hartsfield) 将亚特兰大机场转变为全美最繁忙的机场，使这座城市成为美国物流和企业资本主义的中心。
These leaders controlled local government bodies like New York’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority or California’s redevelopment agencies, which were funded by tolls and increased property values.
这些领导人控制着纽约三区大桥和隧道管理局或加利福尼亚州重建机构等地方政府机构，这些机构的资金来源是通行费和增加的财产价值。
Mayors could capture the spillovers to nearby businesses and reinvest some of them in sanitation, civic amenities, patronage, and more growth, which together won them reelection.
市长们可以利用对附近企业的溢出效应，并将其中一些资金重新投资于卫生设施、市政设施、赞助和更多增长，这些共同为他们赢得了连任。
They fought for growth because it was in their best interests to do so.
他们为增长而奋斗，因为这样做符合他们的最大利益。
The results were remarkable.
结果是显着的。
America laid 310,000 miles of new local roads between 1950 and 1970, alongside 31,000 miles of new interstate highways.
1950 年至 1970 年间，美国新铺设了 310,000 英里的地方道路，以及 31,000 英里的新州际高速公路。
Electricity generation increased sixfold between 1945 and 1975.
1945 年至 1975 年间，发电量增加了六倍。
The number of fully plumbed homes doubled .
配有管道的房屋数量增加了一倍。
The share of homes without flushing toilets dropped from 24 to 4 percent.
没有冲水厕所的家庭比例从 24% 下降到 4%。
The country’s housing stock doubled from 39 million to 80 million between 1940 and 1975, with the country building three times as many homes per capita in 1972 as it did in 2025.
1940 年至 1975 年间，该国的住房存量从 3900 万套翻了一番，达到 8000 万套，1972 年的人均住房建造量是 2025 年的三倍。
As in China today, the federal government fed the machines through mortgage insurance, urban renewal subsidies, the Federal Highway Act, and massive defense and research spending.
就像今天的中国一样，联邦政府通过抵押贷款保险、城市更新补贴、联邦公路法案以及大量的国防和研究支出来为机器提供资金。
It provided the framework on which American capitalism is based: secure property rights, interventions to stop fraud and corruption, strong capital markets, and a robust defense of interstate commerce.
它提供了美国资本主义的基础框架：安全的财产权、制止欺诈和腐败的干预措施、强大的资本市场以及对州际贸易的强有力的保护。
Similar growth machines powered the city corporation of Manchester, England, when it built a 36-mile canal in the late nineteenth century to turn the inland city into Britain’s third-busiest port, the community of Madrid when it added 126 miles to its metro in 12 years between 1995 and 2007, and Munich when it built its S-Bahn to create a 434-kilometer fast metro network within six years in time to host the 1972 Olympics.
类似的增长机器为英国曼彻斯特城市公司提供了动力，该公司在 19 世纪末建造了一条 36 英里的运河，将这座内陆城市变成了英国第三繁忙的港口；马德里社区在 1995 年至 2007 年间的 12 年内将其地铁里程增加了 126 英里；慕尼黑为举办 1972 年奥运会而建造了 S-Bahn，在六年内创建了一个 434 公里的快速地铁网络。奥运会。
What makes China unique is how widespread these local growth machines still are.
中国的独特之处在于这些本土增长机器仍然广泛存在。
Just as in the postwar United States, city leaders are personally incentivized to grow, and city budgets directly benefit when they capture the upside through selling leases or through their stakes in businesses.
就像战后的美国一样，城市领导人个人受到经济增长的激励，当他们通过出售租赁或持有企业股份获得收益时，城市预算将直接受益。
Like modern-day Fiorello LaGuardias, mayors in China can be overexuberant, but they are rarely timid.
就像现代的菲奥雷洛·拉瓜迪亚斯（Fiorello LaGuardias）一样，中国的市长可能会过度兴奋，但他们很少胆怯。
By Western standards, China’s government is interventionist.
按照西方标准，中国政府是干预主义政府。
But this interventionism is directed by a system of competition far more ruthless than in the modern-day United States, let alone Europe.
但这种干预主义是由比现代美国更加残酷的竞争体系引导的，更不用说欧洲了。
Towns, villages, cities, rural districts, provinces, their leaders themselves, bureaucrats at every position, and yes, millions of private capitalist businesses, compete to win promotion or profits.
城镇、村庄、城市、农村地区、省份、他们的领导人本身、各个职位的官僚，当然还有数以百万计的私人资本主义企业，都在争夺晋升或利润。
There are still some urban growth machines in the West, like Houston and Nashville, that still function the way cities like San Francisco and Chicago once did.
西方仍然有一些城市增长机器，如休斯顿和纳什维尔，仍然像旧金山和芝加哥等城市曾经那样运作。
But most of its other growth machines have broken down at the very same time that China has built up dozens of new ones.
但就在中国建造了数十台新增长机器的同时，大多数其他增长机器也出现了故障。
The lesson from China’s economic miracle is not that the West needs a new economic model.
中国经济奇迹的教训并不是西方需要新的经济模式。
It needs its old one.
它需要它的旧的。
Robin Rivaton is a tech founder and author of Why China Will Run the 21st Century.
罗宾·里瓦顿 (Robin Rivaton) 是一位科技创始人，也是《为什么中国将主宰 21 世纪》一书的作者。
Illustration by Micha Huigen.
米莎·惠根绘制的插图。
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