China's weakening economy in two indicators

LInk (click) : China's weakening economy in two indicators

China's weakening economy in two Indicators : Planet Money

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SYLVIE DOUGLIS, BYLINE: This is PLANET MONEY from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF COIN SPINNING)

 

DARIAN WOODS, HOST: 

2023 was meant to be the year for China's economy. After years of heavy COVID restrictions, the Chinese government was loosening up. There was this theory that over a billion Chinese people would all of a sudden get out of quarantine and start to spend like drunken sailors.

 

+ loosen up : (운동하기 전에) 몸(근육)을 풀어주다, 긴장을 풀다

+ drunken sailor : (비유적 표현) 술취한 선원 -> 어떤 그룹이나 조직이 통제력을 잃은 상태. 혼돈과 무질서한 상황

 

ROBERT SMITH, HOST: Or like Americans - that's even worse, right?

 

WOODS: Right.

 

SMITH: Buying dishwashers, home renovations, fancy meals out, Amazon - you name it, Americans will buy it.

 

+ you name it : 뭐든지, 말만해, 그밖에 뭐든지

 

WOODS: And this theory is called revenge spending - buying things just because you couldn't for a long time.

 

SMITH: But it's been hard to see evidence of revenge spending in the official statistics in China. China's economy seems to be pretty weak these days, if anything - higher unemployment, house sales plummeting.

 

+ if anything : 그러기는 커녕, 오히려, 어느 편인가 하면 -> (공통적으로 부정문 뒤에서 그 반대가 사실임을 들어냄)

+ plummet : 곤두박질치다, 급락하다

 

WOODS: But you know what? The economy is more than just a collection of official statistics. It's also real people with real stories.

 

SMITH: Well, there is an economic report we release here in the United States that is all about anecdotes.

 

+ anecdote [ ˈa-nik-ˌdōt] : 일화, 개인적인 진술

 

WOODS: You're talking about the Beige Book.

 

+ Beige Book : 미 연방제도이사회(FRB)가 연간 8차례 발표하는 미국경제동향 종합보고서

 

SMITH: Yeah. I never miss a chance to bring up the Beige Book. And no one says that we can't do a little of that beige magic looking at the Chinese economy, too.

 

WOODS: Wait, Robert, are we doing this?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

SMITH: It's the Beigie Awards, China Edition.

 

WOODS: That's right. Hello, and welcome to PLANET MONEY. I'm Darian Woods.

 

SMITH: I'm Robert Smith.

 

WOODS: The Beigies are our made-up awards show honoring some of the softer data that illustrates trends in the economy. It's named after a report the Federal Reserve puts out, which is called the Beige Book, and it's one of our favorite segments on PLANET MONEY's daily podcast, The Indicator. And since the Chinese government has put a pause on releasing some of its economic data, the Beige approach - looking at anecdotal and unofficial numbers - can help us understand what's happening in the second-largest economy on Earth. So today on the show, we are bringing the Beigies to PLANET MONEY. We're talking to people on the ground in China about their flagging economy, and we're going to dive in for a closer look at one of the most alarming indicators in China - the skyrocketing urban youth unemployment rate.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

+ soft data : 기업, 소비자 심리 서베이 같은 지표, 금융시장, 노동시장의 데이터를 의미함

<-> hard data : GDP를 구성하는 민간소비, 정부소비, 투자와 같이 국가기관이 집계, 발표하는 데이터

 

+ made-up : 화장을 한, 지어낸, 가짜의

+ put out : (불, 담배 등을) 끄다, 꺼내 두다, 폐를 끼치다, (사람들이 읽거나 보고 들을 수 있게끔) 정보를 전달하다

+ anecdotal : 입증되지 않은, 일화적인

+ flag : 깃발, 표시를 하다, 지치다, 약해지다, 시들해지다

+ sktrocket : 급등하다

 

SMITH: Welcome, everyone, to a very special edition of the Beigie Awards - this time for China.

 

WOODS: And when we were looking for anecdotes to help us understand China's economy right now, we couldn't help but think of our very own Emily Feng. And we decided to give her a runner-up award. And yes, it's a little bit of self-dealing, but we want to hear from her. Emily is an international correspondent for NPR covering China.

 

+ runner up : 2위, (1위 외의) 입상자

+ correspondent : 기자(통신원), 특파원

 

SMITH: One reason the Chinese economy seems to be limping along without revenge spending is that international tourism is down. Emily noticed that there just aren't that many international tourists out and about seeing the Great Wall and such - that is, people from outside of China flying into the country to spend money.

 

+ limp : 기운이 없는, 축 처진, 흐물흐물한, 흐느적거리는, 다리를 절다, (손상이 생겨) 느릿느릿 나아가다

 

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Yeah, they've dropped off a cliff. Friends of mine who normally would be going back and forth just don't really want to go to China anymore.

 

+ drop off a cliff : dramatically fall from a high point

 

WOODS: And do you have any numbers that also show this?

 

FENG: So the number that jumped out to me the most is that travel to China through travel agencies - people not traveling independently, but booking their tours through a recognized company - that subset of numbers alone shows that only 52,000 people went to mainland China in the first quarter of this year. That's compared to 3.7 million people who traveled to China this way in the first quarter of 2019, before the pandemic hit. So you've seen a 99% drop in people going to China through tour agencies.

 

+ subset : 부분 집합

 

WOODS: Ninety-nine percent drop - that's - wow, that's incredible.

 

FENG: I mean, part of it, I think, is just the difficulty, still, of getting to China. But a lot of it is the political circumstances. It's people being really nervous about going. And a lot of people were traveling for work, honestly. And new regulations and policies that have come out in the last four years have made people very wary of investing more in the country or sending their foreign employees there.

 

+ wary [ˈwer-ē  웨어리 발음 주의] : 경계하는, 조심하는

 

SMITH: So this includes fear that the government can, at any time, force cities to quarantine for weeks on end and also from geopolitical tensions that have restricted business partnerships and collaborations.

 

+ on end : 세로로, (어떤 기간 동안) 계속

+ geopolitical : 지정학, 지정학의

 

WOODS: Well, thank you, Emily. That is really quite a shocking story of how tourism is really faltering in China at the moment.

 

+ falter : 불안정해지다, 흔들리다, (자신이 없어 목소리가) 흔들리다(더듬거리다)

 

FENG: Thanks for having me, and thanks for the award.

 

WOODS: No problem.

 

SMITH: Turning now to the winner of the very first honorary Beigie in China, and we give it to an organization that goes by the name of...

(SOUNDBITE OF PAPERS SHUFFLING)

 

+ honorary : 명예의, 명예직의, 명예 회원의

 

SMITH: ...The China Beige Book.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

WOODS: Another fan of the Beige Book and China. We love to hear this. And accepting the award now on behalf of China Beige Book is Shehzad Qazi.

 

SMITH: Congratulations, Shehzad.

 

SHEHZAD QAZI: Thank you very much. It's an absolute honor to be selected for this award here today by you all. Thank you.

 

SMITH: So we should explain to the audience what the China Beige Book is because it is not a U.S. government publication. It's not a book, but it's a company?

 

+ publication : 출판, 발행, 출판물

 

QAZI: That's exactly right. You know, we are a private company that conducts large-scale data collection inside the Chinese economy. And the whole idea is that the Chinese economy is a black box. And we wanted to go in there and collect as much data as possible to understand what was truly happening on the ground.

 

+ on the ground : 현장(현지)에서

 

WOODS: A passage that particularly struck us from the July China Beige Book report was this. Robert's going to read it.

 

+ passage : 통로, 복도, (책의) 구절

 

SMITH: Quote - "two-sided household spending on goods and experiences fizzled out in July. Some, quote, 'revenge-spending industries' continue to see strength as travel and chain restaurant sales jumped dramatically, but other

retailing weakened, with auto sales decelerating most."

 

+ fizzle out : 흐지부지되다

+ decelerate : 속도를 줄이다

 

QAZI: One of the things that we've now seen played out is that where Chinese consumers have been willing to spend on travel, on hotels, on dining out - that sort of thing - their spending on other big-ticket items like cars and luxury goods and so on and so forth has been inconsistent. So you're not getting that powerful revenge-spending story play out the way, about seven, eight months ago, most people would have told you would happen.

 

+ and so on and so forth : 기타 등등

 

SMITH: Well, it seems that a mistake that a lot of people make is that the Chinese consumer is just like the U.S. consumer. But U.S. consumers spend a lot on themselves and their family compared to the Chinese consumer - just overall, right?

 

QAZI: That's exactly right. Not only are, culturally, Chinese consumers much more conservative in their spending habits and spending patterns, but the fact is, in China, you've seen no household-focused stimulus take place whatsoever. So that, in itself, was one of the biggest roadblocks or hurdles, I think, in this whole revenge-spending thesis, which got largely unnoticed for some reason.

 

+ whatsoever : 전혀 ~ 없는 (부정문에서 부정적인 구문을 강조해주는 역할)

+ stimulus : 자극제, 자극

+ roadblock : 바리게이드, 장애물(방해물)

 

WOODS: Well, congratulations again, Shehzad - well-deserved.

 

QAZI: Thank you so much. Absolutely an honor to be picked by you for this award, and thank you very much again.

 

SMITH: You know, Darian, and one big difference between the U.S. and Chinese consumers - Chinese people are big savers. The savings rate in China is just under 50%. You look at that rate in the United States, it's under 20%.

 

WOODS: So far, we've had anecdotes about fewer tourists traveling to China. We've seen an unwillingness to spend money on cars and other big-ticket items. Now, let's get one more story from China and this time from a hip restaurant in Beijing. We called up the owner, Nathan (ph).

 

+ anecdote : 일화, 개인적인 진술

 

NATHAN: Hey, yeah, this is Nathan. How are you?

 

SMITH: Nathan asked that we just use his first name. He thought talking frankly to Western journalists could be risky, and we agreed. Nathan's restaurant features fusion food - fancy Chinese with sort of a Western twist - and a lot of natural wine on the menu. And he's used to customers paying the equivalent of 100 or even $200 on wine alone.

 

+ equivalent : 동등한, 대응하는 것, 등가물 (형용사 / 명사 둘다 가능)

 

WOODS: He says 2023 has been a real contrast to the years before.

 

NATHAN: Before, for the weekend - Friday, Saturday - we easily could sell 30 bottles of wine easily or more. But now, like, on the best day, we're selling maybe 20 bottle. So if we sell 20 wine, we celebrate.

 

WOODS: Twenty bottles of wine is down a third. It's not good at all.

 

+ is down a third : 1/3이나 줄었다.

 

SMITH: That said, Nathan says he looks around, and he doesn't see a calamity for all the restaurants in his region.

 

NATHAN: You know, pho noodle restaurant or traditional kind of Chinese restaurants did do really well. But for my type of restaurant, it really affected a lot because people, like, you know, really worry about their future, I think.

 

WOODS: Nathan's seeing cheap restaurants with lots of diners, but he says there's been a real pullback on spending on luxuries, like the natural wine that he sells. Still, he's sticking in there.

 

+ diner : (특히 식당에서) 식사하는 손님, (보통 음식 값이 싼) 작은 식당

+ pullback : 철수, 하락

+ pull back : 후퇴하다(물러나다), (하려단 일을)취소하다 = withdraw

+ stick in there : 포기하지 않다, 버티다

 

NATHAN: I'm kind of a person who has a passion for good food and for good, natural wine, and I don't think I'm going to sell a crappy wine just for meet a major customer need. And that's not what I have the passion for.

 

+ crappy : 쓰레기 같은, 형편없는

 

SMITH: Nathan is a culinary hero. He's going to persist.

 

+ culinary : 요리(음식)의

 

WOODS: Yeah. Sticking to his guns - that's what we support.

And while that is it for the Beigie prizes, we still have one more China story to share - the big, worrying indicator that China's paused publishing, and that's youth unemployment. After the break, Indicator co-host Wailin Wong and I will bring you that tale. 

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

+ stick to : 굳게 지키다, 고수하다

 

WOODS: In Beijing, about six months ago, A Ze quit her job, and she didn't tell her parents.

 

+ quit - quitted(quit) - quitted(quit) 

 

A ZE: (Through interpreter) So I had to go out on time at 8 o'clock every morning and then appear downstairs in our house.

 

WAILIN WONG, HOST: 

Wearing her work clothes and a face full of makeup each morning, A Ze pretended to walk to her old bus stop, and then she would keep walking. She'd get breakfast at KFC or McDonalds. Then, around 10, she'd go to a cafe, like the one we met her in. And it's here where she would usually take out her pencils and start drawing.

 

ZE: (Through interpreter) Drawing is the best way to pass the time, in my opinion, because you'll spend most of the time drawing without even knowing it.

 

+ pass the time : 시간을 때우다

 

WOODS: A Ze always wanted to be a cartoonist growing up. She couldn't quite get that job out of college, but she worked instead as a content editor for an entertainment news publication. And initially, she loved it.

 

ZE: (Through interpreter) My job was so great. I was very happy every day and felt amazing when I produced good content. When I looked at the results of our output, I thought to myself, well done. It's worth all the effort.

 

WONG: Well, it didn't last. A Ze found herself hopping from job to job and ended up in a job that didn't give her a lot of joy.

 

ZE: (Through interpreter) There was pressure from various targets, which made my boss quite stressed, and he passed that stress onto us. Our work life was like being on a horror cruise every day.

 

WOODS: So earlier this year, she quit. Now, A Ze is one of tens of millions of young Chinese people who don't have jobs and aren't in school. In June, the urban youth unemployment rate hit 21%, and that's way up from pre-pandemic times. It's 1 in 5 16- to 24-year-olds who have looked for a job over the last few months but don't have one.

 

WONG: And the numbers are so disconcerting that, a few weeks ago, the Chinese government put a pause on publishing them, citing the need for a review.

 

+ disconcert : 불안하게(당황스럽게) 만들다 (=disturb)

 

WOODS: And A Ze's story illustrates part of what is keeping that rate so high. When she was deciding whether or not to take on a new job offer, A Ze reflected on work life in general in China at any workplace. In China, there's a schedule called 9-9-6, and that means starting the day at 9 a.m., finishing at 9 p.m., six days a week. And although this is technically illegal, very long hours are still common in China.

 

+ reflect on : 반성하다, 되돌아보다

 

WONG: And A Ze was no exception. She'd had to take a lot of overtime. It was just too much for her. And so she told her parents she was still working and meanwhile worked on her hobbies instead. She grew plants, made necklaces, painted.

 

ZE: (Through interpreter) I'd start a new hobby every time I've become unemployed. I'd see if I can find something I really like and if it's possible to make that become my work.

 

WOODS: And you might be thinking, how can she afford this? Well, A Ze doesn't have to pay rent or a mortgage, which is perhaps more common for young people in urban China than you might think.

 

+ mortgage [ ˈmȯr-gij ] : 대출(금), 융자(금), 저당 잡히다
(ex : He had to mortgage his house to pay his legal costs)

 

NANCY QIAN: They're almost certainly going to be an only child on both sides of their family.

 

WOODS: Nancy Qian is a professor of economics at Northwestern University. She points to China's one-child policy - this brutal enforcement of long-term contraception, sterilizations and huge fines for having more than one kid. The policy was in place in China from 1980 to 2016, which means that most people A Ze's age are only children.

 

+ enforcement : (법률 따위를 강압적으로) 시행

+ contraception [ˌkän-trə-ˈsep-shən ] : 피임

+ sterilization [ˌster-ə-lə-ˈzā-shən 스(강조)테얼 라이 (강조)제이션] : 불임케함 (불임), 불모로 만듦, 살균, 멸균

+ in place : (법률, 정책, 행정 구조 등이) 시행되고 있는 상태

 

QIAN: And they'll have grandparents who are from the city. So what this means is that they're  going to be inheriting a lot of real estate from their grandparents - not to mention, you know, maybe savings that their parents have been accumulating over time.

 

WONG: Nancy was born in Shanghai in the late '70s and, as a kid, moved to the U.S. with her family. But she goes back often and has younger cousins who have struggled with China's changing economy. As China's growth has slowed, entry-level jobs in law, finance, tech and government have dried up. White-collar jobs are incredibly competitive.

 

+ dry up : 바싹 마르다, (공급이) 줄어들다(고갈되다), (무슨 말을 해야 할지 몰라서) 갑자기 말을 멈추다.

 

QIAN: It's the high-paying, high-skill jobs that have been shrinking in numbers, and these are what the current cohorts of college graduate students have been trained for, what they're expecting, what they wanted. They're not there.

 

+ shrink - shrank [ˈshraŋk] - shrunk [ˈshrəŋk] : 과거, 과거분사 기억하기

+ in numbers : 수적으로 
(본문에서는 '수적으로 줄어들고있다')

+ cohort : 집단

 

WOODS: And young people with degrees who can't get these jobs are often in this what you might call luxurious position of having other options. That's fine for them, but not for the wider economy.

 

QIAN: There are a lot of vacant jobs. In fact, the Chinese economy is having a hard time filling jobs in factories.

 

+ vacant [ˈvā-kənt] : 베이 강조 발음 주의 

 

WONG: So a lot of young people like A Ze end up not working at all. That said, Nancy says they are likely to face a lot of emotional pressure to find a job.

 

QIAN: They have their parents and their grandparents saying, you're being spoiled. Like, why are you not more successful? We've given you everything, right? What's wrong with you? Let us tell you how we made it, how poor we were. Even people with college educations, at different points in time, were probably shoveling manure on a farm.

 

+ shovel : 삽질하다

+ manure [mə-ˈnu̇r] : 거름, 거름을 주다(뿌리다)

 

WOODS: And that's why A Ze kept the truth from her family. The China that her parents grew up in was just so different to hers.

 

QIAN: I mean, China grew at 10% per year for almost two decades. But for some urban areas, we were growing, like, at 20- to 30% per year.

 

WONG: And to illustrate what that kind of turbocharged growth looks like, Nancy used the example of where she was as a young kid - in the French Concession district of Shanghai.

 

+ concession : 양보(양해), 인정, 할인

+ concede : 인정하다, (특히 마지못해) 내주다(허락하다)

 

QIAN: I lived in an extended family with around 10 people in three rooms - probably around 300 square feet. We had a flush toilet, so we were considered really rich.

 

+ flush toilet : 수세식 (구세식과 다른 현대식)

 

WOODS: Wow. That was the marker of relative wealth at the time.

 

+ marker : 마커(보드마커 펜), 표시(표지)

 

QIAN: Yeah, I felt really special.

(LAUGHTER)

 

QIAN: People living in those neighborhoods now - they're living in skyscrapers surrounded by Louis Vuitton and Prada stores. There are Lamborghini car dealers left and right. I'm emphasizing this because the places that had the highest expectations about the future - they're being hit with unemployment.

 

WOODS: It's kind of a whiplash feeling.

 

+ whiplash [ ˈ(h)wip-ˌlash ] : 채찍질

 

QIAN: Yeah. And so I think that makes us concerned about the social ramifications.

 

+ ramification [ˌra-mə-fə-ˈkā-shən] : 파문, 영향 (어떤 행동, 결정에 따라 생기는, 예상 밖의 결과나 영향 따위)

 

WOODS: Nancy says these young people are both spoiled - in her words - and also miserable at the same time. There's this huge gulf between expectations and what kind of jobs are available.

 

+ gulf : (사고, 생활 방식 등의 큰) 격차

 

QIAN: It's not a great idea, just as a society, to have young people feeling hopeless, you know, with no direction, in a funk. That's never good. Usually, that translates into drugs and all sorts of social issues.

 

+ in a funk : 우울한, 무력한

(ex : I'm in a funk : 멘붕에 빠졌다)

 

WONG: In China, it's translating into a potentially huge problem for the economy. Tens of millions of young people out of the labor force might have serious long-term consequences.

 

QIAN: The best evidence we have, which is from the U.K., suggests that one lost year of employment in your early 20s, right out of college, results to 13- to 21% lower productivity and wages 20 years later.

 

WOODS: Wow - 20 years later?

 

QIAN: Yeah. When you graduate and you work, you're learning not just hard skills, like how to use a particular machine or - you know, in tech, like programming, right? So those are, like, hard skills. You're also learning soft skills, like showing up to work, how to communicate to people who are your superiors and people who are your peers and people who you are managing. If you're doing well, how do you let that be known without being seen as a showoff and a jerk?

 

+ showoff : 과시적인 사람, 자랑쟁이

+ jerk : 얼간이

 

WOODS: How to brag quietly.

 

+ brag : 자랑하다 (= show off)

+ quietly : 조용히, 차분하게, 얌전하게

 

QIAN: That's right. And if you don't learn those things when you're young, there is a sense that it's hard to catch up on those things later. There is a real concern that not working - those lost years of work right out of college can have serious negative impact on your lifetime productivity later on, which is going to impact the aggregate productivity of the economy as a whole.

 

+ There is a sense (that) : 어떤 의미에선 ~ 하다

+ catch up on : 따라잡다, 만회하다

+ aggregate [ˈa-gri-gət  겟 발음 주의] : 합계, 총액, 종합하다

 

WONG: A Ze has a different view.

 

ZE: (Through interpreter) Work is one of the only things that you can choose by yourself. And if you can't find your footing at work, then you don't have much meaning.

 

+ footing : 기반(발판, 토대)

 

WONG: A Ze eventually got tired of all the questioning from her parents and lying to them, so she decided to confess. While her mother was watching TV, A Ze said she hadn't been working.

 

ZE: (Through interpreter) They said, that's OK. They very calmly accepted it, so I think they already knew.

 

WOODS: It was a bit of an anticlimax.

 

+ anticlimax : 실망스러운 결말, 용두사미

 

WONG: You know, I have to say, the fact that they didn't get really mad about it and accepted it - I think that's generational progress.

 

WOODS: The generations might be starting to understand one another.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

WOODS: These original Indicator episodes were produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Robert Rodriguez. They were fact-checked by Cooper Katz McKim and Sierra Juarez. They were edited by Paddy Hirsch and Kate Concannon. I'm Darian Woods. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)