澳大利亞的中國“金主”（上）：礦業(yè)沖擊波

PORT HEDLAND, Australia — A lanky, dark-haired surfer, Lee Meadowcroft modeled on the runways of London, Milan and Singapore, then followed his dream of going home to Australia to sell herbal medicines. His store failed — he had chosen the wrong street, he says — and he lost almost all his savings. By then, the fashion world had found fresher faces.

澳大利亞黑德蘭港——身材瘦長、一頭黑發(fā)的沖浪玩家李·梅多克羅夫特(Lee Meadowcroft)曾作為模特在倫敦、米蘭和新加坡的伸展臺上走秀，而后他為了實現(xiàn)夢想回到祖國澳大利亞，做起草藥生意。他的店倒閉了——他說他不該選在那條街開店——他虧掉了幾乎全部的積蓄。而時尚界在那時已經(jīng)找到了更新鮮的面孔。

So like tens of thousands of other Australians, Mr. Meadowcroft went to the mines.

于是，梅多克羅夫特和數(shù)萬澳大利亞人一樣，選擇去煤礦工作。

It was late 2004. He plowed his last $4,000 into a two-week course on how to operate a crane. He found companies so desperate for workers that they would send chauffeured cars to pick up prospective welders, electricians and crane operators and deliver them to the nearest airport for their flights to mining country, here on Australia’s remote northwestern coast.

那是2004年底。他上了一個為期兩周的吊車操作培訓班，把手頭最后的4000美元交了學費。他發(fā)現(xiàn)企業(yè)對工人極度渴求，以至于會派專車去接這些未來的焊工、電工和吊車操作員，把他們送到最近的機場，然后飛往礦場所在地，其中就包括這里，偏遠的澳大利亞西北部沿海地區(qū)。

China back then was growing at a breathtaking pace and needed all the Australian rocks it could get. Mine workers like Mr. Meadowcroft kept a punishing schedule: 13 consecutive days of 12-hour shifts, a day off, then another 13 consecutive days of 12-hour shifts. Mining fueled Australia’s surging exports to China, which at their peak reached nearly $100 billion a year — a figure representing $4,300 for every man, woman and child in the country.

當時的中國正在以令人驚嘆的速度向前發(fā)展，希望得到澳大利亞的每一塊礦石。像梅多克羅夫特這樣的礦工要超負荷工作：連續(xù)工作13天，每天12小時，休息一天，然后再連續(xù)工作13天，每天12小時。礦業(yè)推動了澳大利亞向中國出口的猛增，最高時達到一年將近1000億美元——相當于全國男女老少每個人4300美元。

Resource-rich places around the world prospered thanks to China, and Mr. Meadowcroft and his fellow Port Hedland equipment jockeys were no exception. By 2011 he was earning $250,000 a year. He watched idle miners sketch circles in the dust and place cockroaches inside, at times betting more than $100 on which one crawled out first. One welder bought a Ferrari 308 sports car, quickly tired of it and sold raffle tickets for $1,000 apiece to get rid of it.

全球資源豐富的地方都借中國致富了，梅多克羅夫特和黑德蘭港的其他設備操作員也不例外。2011年他的年收入達到25萬美元。他曾見到礦工們閑暇時在地上畫個圈，把蟑螂放進去，賭哪只先爬出來，有時候賭注可達100美元以上。有一個焊工買了一輛法拉利308跑車，很快就厭倦了，于是辦了一場1000美元一張票的抽獎把車處理掉。

“Everyone just went crazy,” Mr. Meadowcroft said.

“大家都很瘋狂，”梅多克羅夫特說。

The bust came just as hard and just as fast. China’s economic slowdown left too many mines to feed too many dormant Chinese steel mills. Construction of new mines stopped. Port Hedland’s economy slumped. Mr. Meadowcroft lost his job, then lost a second job. Like thousands of others, he went back home.

崩潰的到來同樣是迅速而猛烈的。中國的經(jīng)濟放緩導致太多的礦場在向太多已經(jīng)停產的中國煉鋼廠供應礦石。新礦建設項目停工了。赫蘭德港的經(jīng)濟陷入低谷。梅多克羅夫特丟了工作，而后下一份工作也丟了。他和其他幾萬人一樣，回到了家中。

Mr. Meadowcroft’s tale could serve as yet another boom-and-bust cautionary tale of the limits of China’s rise. From Russia to Brazil, and Nigeria to Venezuela, resource-rich countries that boomed during China’s surge found their economies shaken when Chinese demand slowed.

梅多克羅夫特的經(jīng)歷，是有關中國崛起局限性的又一則盛衰寓言。從俄羅斯到巴西，從尼日利亞到委內瑞拉，隨著中國崛起而繁榮的資源大國，也因中國需求放緩而遭到經(jīng)濟打擊。

Except something unexpected has happened to Australia: It has withstood the global rout. Most mines — lower-cost compared with mines elsewhere — have stayed open. But Australia has also kept thriving, against all expectations, with a different kind of money flowing in from China.

不過在澳大利亞發(fā)生了一些意想不到的事情：它沒有被全球崩潰打倒。這里的礦場成本比別的地方低，多數(shù)礦依然在作業(yè)。而澳大利亞的這種出人意料的持續(xù)繁榮，還因為有另一種完全不一樣的資金正從中國流向這里。

Attracted by clean air, a strong education system and worries about China’s future, more Chinese are spending their money in Australia. Thousands of Chinese families have sent their children to study at costly Australian universities, and Australian food exports to China have boomed. Chinese investment in Australian real estate has increased at least tenfold since 2010; Chinese investors have purchased up to half the new apartments in downtown Melbourne and Sydney.

在清潔的空氣、優(yōu)質的教育系統(tǒng)吸引下，再加上對中國未來的擔憂，越來越多的中國人正把錢花在澳大利亞。數(shù)以萬計的中國家庭把子女送到昂貴的澳大利亞大學讀書，澳大利亞向中國的食品出口也在猛增。中國在澳大利亞的房地產投資自2010年以來增加了至少10倍;在墨爾本和悉尼市中心的新住宅單位有近一半被中國投資者買下。

That has led to some soul-searching about the role of Chinese money in the country’s political and economic life. Businesses linked to China have become sizable donors to Australian political parties, and a company said to have links to the Chinese military obtained a 99-year lease last year for a port next to a base that often houses United States Marines.

這讓一些人開始反思中國資金在這個國家的政治、經(jīng)濟生活中所扮演的角色。與中國有關聯(lián)的企業(yè)向澳大利亞的政黨做出了可觀的捐獻，一家據(jù)稱與中國軍方有關聯(lián)的公司，去年拿到了一個港口的99年期租約，而港口就在一個經(jīng)常駐扎著美國海軍陸戰(zhàn)隊的基地附近。

But for people like Mr. Meadowcroft and others in Western Australia who were cut loose by the mining slump, Chinese money is a blessing. He now lives in the Western Australia capital city of Perth and works as an apprentice plumber in new housing developments aimed at Chinese buyers. He earns just $21,000 a year, but that could double or triple when he finishes his apprenticeship.

但是對梅多克羅夫特這樣的人以及西澳大利亞州其他因礦業(yè)衰落而失去生計的人來說，中國的錢是一種賜?！，F(xiàn)在他住在西澳大利亞州首府珀斯，在一個瞄準中國買家的新住宅開發(fā)項目中做水管工學徒。他一年只能掙2.1萬美元，不過出師之后，他的收入可能翻兩三倍。

When visitors from China enter his construction site, he knows they may be the eventual buyers. “If you see a group of Chinese people,” he says, “they’re the money.”

當中國游客進入他工作的建筑工地時，他知道，他們可能是最終的買家。“如果你見到一群中國人，”他說，“那你就是見到了金主。”

The Color of Prosperity

繁榮的顏色

In Port Hedland, the color of money is pinkish red.

在黑德蘭港(Port Hedland)，錢的顏色是粉紅色的。

At the docks, the salmon-hued dust coats everything, from the yellow railings atop the cranes to the rims of the fast-moving conveyor belts that hurtle rocks toward the bellies of giant cargo vessels. When the mining boom started 50 years ago, it covered the streets, too.

碼頭上所有的東西都蒙上了鮭魚色的塵土，從起重機頂部的黃色欄桿到快速轉動的傳送帶的邊緣——傳送帶把巖石快速送入巨型貨輪的肚子里。50年前采礦業(yè)興起時，這里的街頭也蒙著這樣的塵土。

“It made all your clothes go pink,” said Julie Arif, a city council member who was still a girl when workers began digging mines in the nearby Pilbara desert and hills. “Pilbara pink, we used to call it.”

“它把你所有的衣服都變成粉色，”市議會議員朱莉·阿里夫(Julie Arif)說。當年，工人們開始在附近的皮爾巴拉沙漠和山丘上挖礦時，她還是個小女孩。“我們過去稱它為皮爾巴拉粉色。”

Back then, local leaders did not mind. “We’ll worry about our dust when it clogs the cash registers,” said the city’s mayor in the early 1970s, according to Ms. Arif, who also runs the town’s small history museum.

當時，當?shù)仡I袖也并不介意。據(jù)阿里夫講，在20世紀70年代初，該市市長曾說，“塵土把收銀機堵塞了，我們才會擔心。”阿里夫也主管該市的一座小型歷史博物館。

The pink dust comes from iron ore. And nobody sends more iron ore abroad than the state of Western Australia.

那些粉色塵土來自鐵礦石。西澳大利亞州出口海外的鐵礦石數(shù)量比澳大利亞其他任何一個州都要多。

Iron ore transformed Port Hedland. Named “Marapikurrinya” by the local Aboriginal people, it subsisted for years on wool exports and a few pearls gathered from oysters at low tide. Until the mining boom, its claim to fame was a late-1940s three-year strike by nearby ranch workers that became a pivotal moment in the assertion of Aboriginal rights in Australia.

鐵礦石改變了黑德蘭港。原住民稱這個港口為Marapikurrinya，有過去很多年時間里，它的經(jīng)濟全靠羊毛出口以及從落潮時的牡蠣中采集的少量珍珠。在礦業(yè)興起之前，它出名是因為20世紀40年代末附近的農場工人舉行了持續(xù)三年的大罷工，那成為澳大利亞原住民爭取權益的關鍵時刻。

The iron ore deposits were far from Australia’s steel industry on the country’s southern coast. But the Australian government began allowing large-scale iron ore exports in the 1960s, opening up the region to buyers from Japan and Europe.

這些鐵礦距離澳大利亞南部沿海的鋼鐵工業(yè)區(qū)路途遙遠。不過，20世紀60年代，澳大利亞政府開始允許大規(guī)模鐵礦石出口，向日本和歐洲的買家開放這個地區(qū)。

As foreign money trickled in, Port Hedland remained rough around the edges. When Cyclone Joan flattened half of Port Hedland in 1975, the state government replaced the shattered hospital with a prefabricated structure propped up on the dirt with thin, foot-high steel poles. It stayed in use for nearly 40 years before it was abandoned, and now stands vacant on its oceanfront site.

盡管外國的資金慢慢來到了黑德蘭港，但它依然很簡陋。1975年，熱帶氣旋“瓊”(Cyclone Joan)將一半黑德蘭港夷為平地，州政府用一英尺長的細鋼桿在廢墟上支起一個預制構件式建筑，替代遭到摧毀的醫(yī)院。這個醫(yī)院又使用了近40年才遭廢棄，如今海邊的這幢建筑還空置著。

For entertainment, there were the “skimpies” — stripper shows by young women who barely complied with state regulations against full nudity at the start of each evening, and were even less likely to comply as the hour grew late.

娛樂方面有skimpies——也就是年輕女子的脫衣舞表演，她們幾乎從不遵守夜晚降臨后不得全裸的州法規(guī)定，隨著夜色漸深，更是不可能遵守。

The ore is mined several hours’ drive into the desert from Port Hedland. Workers use explosives to shatter the rock at open-cut mines, then scoop it up with huge bulldozers. The ore is crushed and sorted by machines bigger than a house, then hauled to Port Hedland either by train or by enormous trucks — so-called road trains — pulling three or sometimes four trailers.

從黑德蘭港往沙漠里驅車數(shù)小時，才能到達開采鐵礦石的地方。工人們用炸藥在露天礦山上炸開巨石，然后用大型推土機把它們鏟起來。礦石粉碎后，用比房子還大的機器進行分類，然后用火車或巨型卡車(也就是所謂的公路火車，它能掛三到四個拖車)運到黑德蘭港。

During a crimson Indian Ocean sunset at Port Hedland’s Utah Point berth recently, a conveyor belt dumped iron ore into one of the seven large holds of a Chinese-owned freighter held in place by mechanical suction cups the size of minivans. A red gravel torrent rocketed downward at two tons a second, in a low, dull roar. Each hold was big enough for a capacious American home, with room to spare.

前不久，在黑德蘭港的猶他點(Utah Point)泊位，一條傳送帶在印度洋深紅色的晚霞中，把鐵礦石倒入一艘中國貨輪的七個大貨艙中。貨輪用小型面包車大小的機械吸盤固定。紅色碎石流以每秒兩噸的速度傾瀉而下，發(fā)出沉悶的轟隆聲。每個貨艙都很大，面積相當于一棟寬敞的美國家庭住房，還能留出些空間。

The crane lurched to one side, stopped disgorging iron ore, rumbled sideways to a position over a different hold, near the middle of the vessel, and resumed pouring.

起重機突然轉向一邊，停止傾瀉鐵礦石，轟隆著挪到靠近貨輪中間位置另一個貨艙的上方，繼續(xù)傾瀉。

Iron ore sometimes means dangerous work. Mr. Meadowcroft once saw a taut, inch-thick steel cable snap and sweep a man into a pile of steel pipes. Another time, he saw a 50-pound steel cable block fall on a worker, shearing off part of his face and shoulder and hurling him to the floor.

鐵礦石有時也意味著危險。有一次，梅多克羅夫特看見一根繃緊的一英寸粗的鋼索突然斷裂，把一名男子掃進一堆鋼管中。還有一次，他看見一個50磅重的鋼索滑輪砸到一個工人身上，削掉了他的部分臉和肩膀，并將他擊倒在地。

“It bounced him off the ground like a basketball,” Mr. Meadowcroft said. “There was a lot of blood.”

“滑輪把他從地上彈起來，就像籃球那樣，”梅多克羅夫特說，“現(xiàn)場流了很多血。”

But life was mostly quiet — and inexpensive. The town had eight amateur baseball teams, and many of the workers played after their shifts. Housing was affordable. Sharon Ramirez, 40, remembers that her parents had a chance in the late 1980s to buy the bungalow they were renting for $20,000, but decided not to.

不過，那時候這里的生活總的來說很平靜，生活成本也不高。該市有8支業(yè)余棒球隊，很多工人下班后就會去打棒球。房價也能承受。40歲的莎倫·拉米雷斯(Sharon Ramirez)還記得，她的父母在80年代末曾有機會以2萬美元買下他們當時租住的平房，但最后決定不買。

“We didn’t jump at it,” she said, “because it was a lot of money in those days.”

“我們沒有欣然接受那個價格，”她說，“因為在當時，那還是挺大一筆錢的。”

China Shock Wave

中國沖擊波

Everyone in Port Hedland has a story about a moment when the boom struck them.

黑德蘭港的每個人都有一個關于礦業(yè)繁榮對他們造成沖擊時刻的故事。

For Mrs. Ramirez, it was when that rental home sold to an out-of-town investor for $1 million. For Dave McGowan, it was when four of the eight baseball teams disbanded because workers were putting in 12-hour shifts instead of eight-hour shifts. For Daniel Connors, it was when a local garage, short on workers, told him that he had to make a reservation four months in advance to get the oil in his car changed.

對拉米雷斯來說，那個沖擊時刻是當她家租住的房子以100萬美元賣給一個外地投資者的時候。對戴夫·麥高恩(Dave McGowan)來說，是那8支棒球隊中有4支因為工人的輪班從8小時變成12小時而解散時。對丹尼爾·康納斯(Daniel Connors)來說，是當?shù)仄囆蘩韽S因為缺少工人而告訴他必須提前4個月預訂才能給他的汽車換機油時。

China was changing — and it changed Port Hedland.

當時中國在變化——它也改變了黑德蘭港。

Three decades of economic reform in China, plus lower trade barriers after the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, lit a fire under the economy there. Skyscrapers blossomed by the hundreds in obscure cities. The nation has built 77,000 miles of expressway, almost all of it since 1997 and two-thirds more mileage than the Interstate highway system in the United States, on which China’s network is modeled.

中國30年的經(jīng)濟改革，再加上2001年加入世界貿易組織(World Trade Organization)后貿易壁壘的減少，給中國經(jīng)濟點了一把火。連一些不出名的城市都冒出很多的摩天大樓。該國修了7.7萬英里的高速公路，幾乎全是1997年之后所建，這比美國的州際高速公路系統(tǒng)還長三分之二——中國的高速公路網(wǎng)就是以美國為樣本的。

All that construction meant China produced and consumed last year almost as much steel as the rest of the world combined.

所有這些建設意味著，中國去年生產和消耗的鋼鐵幾乎是世界上其他國家的總和。

To supply its steel mills, China needed Australia’s iron ore. Iron ore prices surged tenfold. Big companies like BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals Group rushed to build mines and add port berths as fast as possible.

為了給鋼鐵廠提供原料，中國需要澳大利亞的鐵礦石。鐵礦石的價格增長了十倍。必和必拓公司(BHP Billiton)、力拓礦業(yè)集團(Rio Tinto)和福蒂斯丘金屬集團(Fortescue Metals Group)等大公司競相修建礦場，盡可能快地增加港口泊位。