文章注释
There is an overarching force in China with tentacles reaching deep into almost everybody’s life. That force is not the Communist party, whose influence in people’s day-to-day affairs — though all too real — has waned and can appear almost invisible to those who do not seek to buck the system.
在中国，有一股影响广泛的力量，其触角几乎深入到每个人的生活。这股力量不是共产党，后者对人们日常生活的影响已经减弱——尽管这种影响是实实在在的——而且那些并不试图反抗当前制度的人几乎可以对之视而不见。
The more disruptive force to be reckoned with these days is epitomised by the three large internet groups: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, collectively known as BAT, which have turned much of China upside down in just a few short years. Take the example of Ant Financial. Last week, it completed fundraising that values the company at $45bn to $50bn. It operates Alipay, an online payments system that claims to handle nearly $800bn in e-transactions a year, three times more than PayPal, its US equivalent.
如今，更具颠覆性且不容忽视的力量主要以三家大型互联网集团为代表，即百度(Baidu)、阿里巴巴(Alibaba)与腾讯(Tencent)，合称BAT（编者注：中国这三家大型互联网集团名称的英文首字母缩写是BAT，在英文中是“蝙蝠”的意思）。这三家公司在短短几年内已经使中国的许多方面发生了翻天覆地的变化。以阿里巴巴旗下的蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)为例。上周，该公司完成了一轮募资，令其估值达到450亿美元至500亿美元。蚂蚁金服运营的在线支付系统——支付宝(Alipay)，号称每年处理近8000亿美元的电子交易，是其美国同行PayPal的三倍。
That system, an essential part of China’s financial and retail architecture, and one familiar to almost every Chinese urbanite, is no brainchild of the Communist party. Instead it was the creation of Jack Ma, the former English teacher who founded Alibaba. Mr Ma established the system a decade ago as the backbone for Taobao, his consumer-to-consumer business. The name literally means “digging for treasure”, something that Mr Ma, one of China’s richest people, has clearly found.
作为中国金融和零售体系中的重要组成部分，以及一个几乎所有中国城市居民都熟悉的在线支付系统，支付宝并不是中共的发明。其创始人是创办阿里巴巴的前英语教师马云(Jack Ma)。马云10年前创立了这一支付系统，作为其消费者对消费者(C2C)电子商务网站淘宝(Taobao)的支柱。“淘宝”的字面意思是“挖掘财富”，而作为中国顶级富豪之一的马云显然已经找到了自己的宝藏。
Alibaba handles 80 per cent of China’s ecommerce, according to iResearch, a Beijing-based consultancy. That is a monopolistic position that even the Communist party, with its 87m members out of a population of 1.3bn, can only dream about.
根据北京咨询公司艾瑞咨询(iResearch)的数据，阿里巴巴处理的电子商务交易占中国的80%。这样的垄断地位，即使是在13亿人口中拥有8700万党员的中共都只能望尘莫及。
True, the Communist party still regulates where people live (in the city or the countryside), what they publish (though less what they say) and how many children they have (though the one-child policy is fast fading).
不错，中共依然管控着人们居于何处（在城市还是农村）、发表什么样的作品（虽然对他们所说的话没管那么严）以及生育几个孩子（尽管独生子女政策正在快速瓦解）。
China’s internet companies, on the other hand, hold ever greater sway on how people shop, invest, travel, entertain themselves and interact socially.
而另一方面，在人们购物、投资、旅游、娱乐以及社交方面，中国的互联网公司发挥着越来越大的影响力。
The BAT companies, which dominate search, ecommerce and gaming/social media, together with other upstarts, such as Xiaomi, a five-year-old company that has pioneered the $50 smartphone, are upending how people live.
分别在搜索、电子商务以及游戏/社交媒体领域占主导地位的BAT三巨头，连同其他快速成长的公司——如成立5年、率先开发出50美元智能手机的小米(Xiaomi)——正在颠覆人们的生活方式。
When we think of the Chinese internet, we tend to think of the overweening influence of the state through censorship. Yet the internet is also a liberating force that is unleashing entrepreneurial energy, bringing market forces to bear in diverse corners of the economy and expanding the role of the private sector at the expense of entrenched state enterprises. In China’s nominally controlled economy, the private sector long ago outstripped the state as the engine of growth. According to Edward Tse, a management consultant and author of China’s Disruptors , this has resulted in the “emergence of a new group of entrepreneurial business leaders?.?.?.?most operating with little direct government influence or support, and all transforming their industries”. Privately run businesses, he estimates, account for three-quarters of national output. By 2013, China had about 12m privately held and 42m family run businesses against 2.3m state-owned companies.
当我们想到中国互联网时，我们往往想到国家通过审查制度施加的巨大影响。然而，互联网也是一种解放力量，它正在释放创业活力，让市场力量进入经济的各个角落，扩大私营部门的作用，同时削弱根深蒂固的国有企业。在中国的所谓受管控的经济中，私营部门早就超越了国营部门成为经济增长的引擎。管理咨询顾问、《中国的商业颠覆者》(China’s Disruptors)一书作者谢祖墀(Edward Tse)认为，这导致了“一批新的、有创业家精神的商业领袖的出现……他们大都在几乎没有政府直接干预或支持的条件下运营，都使自己所在的行业发生了巨大变化”。他估计，民营企业占到了国民产出的四分之三。2013年，中国拥有约1200万家民营企业及4200万家庭经营企业，而国企只有230万家。
At the forefront are technology companies in general and internet companies in particular. As elsewhere, in China the online and offline worlds are colliding.
处于最前沿的通常是科技公司，尤其是互联网公司。和其他地方一样，中国的线上和线下世界也在发生激烈碰撞。
Taxi apps such as Didi Dache, backed by Alibaba and Tencent, have brought market forces to bear where prices were previously set by the state. They are threatening lucrative local taxi monopolies, provoking crackdowns and protests by drivers in several cities.
由阿里巴巴和腾讯支持的滴滴打车(Didi Dache)等叫车应用将市场力量引入了此前由政府定价的领域。它们威胁到了地方出租车行业丰厚的垄断利润，引发了多个城市出租车司机的抗议活动以及当局的打压。
In finance, where deposit rates are state regulated, the BAT companies and others are offering savings and investment products with much better rates. Yue Bao (“leftover treasure”), a money-market fund distributed by Alibaba over Alipay, has accumulated assets of nearly Rmb600bn in less than two years. Beijing, which wants gradually to liberalise banking, is allowing this crop of private companies to catalyse change.
在存款利率受国家管控的金融领域，BAT三巨头及其他公司以更高的回报率提供储蓄和投资产品。由阿里巴巴通过支付宝分销的货币市场基金“余额宝”（意思为剩余的财富），在不到两年的时间里就积累了近6000亿元人民币的资产。中国政府希望逐步开放银行业，它正在让这批民营企业促成这样的改革。
In important respects, though, even the fiercest of China’s internet pioneers do not operate in a free market. For a start, they conduct their business behind the Great Firewall, a politically motivated barrier that has protected them from the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook. In practice, the BAT companies are so close to the government they often behave like quasi-state-owned enterprises anyway, even to the extent that they help form regulation. The government’s ecommerce strategy, announced in March by Li Keqiang, the premier, was originally conceived by Pony Ma, chairman of Tencent.
不过，在一些重要方面，即使是中国互联网先驱中最强悍的企业也并未在一个自由市场中运营。首先，它们在长城防火墙(GreatFirewall)背后经营业务，后者是一个为政治目的设置的屏障，但保护了中国企业免受来自谷歌(Google)、Twitter以及Facebook等企业的竞争。实际上，BAT三巨头与政府的关系如此密切，以至于它们经常表现得像“准国企”，甚至到了帮助形成规章的程度。中国总理李克强今年3月宣布的政府的电子商务战略，最初是由腾讯董事局主席马化腾(Pony Ma)构思出来的。
Authorities are not always sure how to regulate these powerful new companies. When the State Administration for Industry and Commerce criticised Alibaba for the prevalence of counterfeit goods sold on its websites, Jack Ma’s company threw its weight around, forcing the government regulator to retreat.
中国当局并不总是确信该如何管控这些强大的新型公司。当国家工商行政管理总局因淘宝网上假货泛滥而批评阿里巴巴时，该公司却利用自身的实力，迫使政府监管机构让步。
If the authorities really want to fight commercial disruption, however, they have the tools to do so. In 2014, for example, the central bank suspended “virtual” credit cards issued by Alibaba and Tencent, blocking their path into online credit.
然而，如果当局真的想打击“商业颠覆行为”，它们自有办法。例如，2014年，中国央行暂停了阿里巴巴和腾讯发行的“虚拟”信用卡，堵住了它们进入在线信用业务的道路。
One must assume that, if push came to shove, the authorities could cripple even the biggest private company. Yet so embedded are the likes of Alibaba and Baidu in people’s lives that even the mighty Communist party might have cause to pause.
一定会有人猜测，如果到了迫不得已的地步，中国当局可以让哪怕是最大的民营企业也经营不下去。然而，阿里巴巴、百度之类的公司如此密切地融入了人们的生活，即便是强大的中共也不会贸然这样做。
中国互联网的“权力游戏”
更新于2015年06月29日
来源于原版英语
There is an overarching force in China with tentacles reaching deep into almost everybody’s life. That force is not the Communist party, whose influence in people’s day-to-day affairs — though all too real — has waned and can appear almost invisible to those who do not seek to buck the system.
在中国，有一股影响广泛的力量，其触角几乎深入到每个人的生活。这股力量不是共产党，后者对人们日常生活的影响已经减弱——尽管这种影响是实实在在的——而且那些并不试图反抗当前制度的人几乎可以对之视而不见。
The more disruptive force to be reckoned with these days is epitomised by the three large internet groups: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, collectively known as BAT, which have turned much of China upside down in just a few short years. Take the example of Ant Financial. Last week, it completed fundraising that values the company at $45bn to $50bn. It operates Alipay, an online payments system that claims to handle nearly $800bn in e-transactions a year, three times more than PayPal, its US equivalent.
如今，更具颠覆性且不容忽视的力量主要以三家大型互联网集团为代表，即百度(Baidu)、阿里巴巴(Alibaba)与腾讯(Tencent)，合称BAT（编者注：中国这三家大型互联网集团名称的英文首字母缩写是BAT，在英文中是“蝙蝠”的意思）。这三家公司在短短几年内已经使中国的许多方面发生了翻天覆地的变化。以阿里巴巴旗下的蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)为例。上周，该公司完成了一轮募资，令其估值达到450亿美元至500亿美元。蚂蚁金服运营的在线支付系统——支付宝(Alipay)，号称每年处理近8000亿美元的电子交易，是其美国同行PayPal的三倍。
That system, an essential part of China’s financial and retail architecture, and one familiar to almost every Chinese urbanite, is no brainchild of the Communist party. Instead it was the creation of Jack Ma, the former English teacher who founded Alibaba. Mr Ma established the system a decade ago as the backbone for Taobao, his consumer-to-consumer business. The name literally means “digging for treasure”, something that Mr Ma, one of China’s richest people, has clearly found.
作为中国金融和零售体系中的重要组成部分，以及一个几乎所有中国城市居民都熟悉的在线支付系统，支付宝并不是中共的发明。其创始人是创办阿里巴巴的前英语教师马云(Jack Ma)。马云10年前创立了这一支付系统，作为其消费者对消费者(C2C)电子商务网站淘宝(Taobao)的支柱。“淘宝”的字面意思是“挖掘财富”，而作为中国顶级富豪之一的马云显然已经找到了自己的宝藏。
Alibaba handles 80 per cent of China’s ecommerce, according to iResearch, a Beijing-based consultancy. That is a monopolistic position that even the Communist party, with its 87m members out of a population of 1.3bn, can only dream about.
根据北京咨询公司艾瑞咨询(iResearch)的数据，阿里巴巴处理的电子商务交易占中国的80%。这样的垄断地位，即使是在13亿人口中拥有8700万党员的中共都只能望尘莫及。
True, the Communist party still regulates where people live (in the city or the countryside), what they publish (though less what they say) and how many children they have (though the one-child policy is fast fading).
不错，中共依然管控着人们居于何处（在城市还是农村）、发表什么样的作品（虽然对他们所说的话没管那么严）以及生育几个孩子（尽管独生子女政策正在快速瓦解）。
China’s internet companies, on the other hand, hold ever greater sway on how people shop, invest, travel, entertain themselves and interact socially.
而另一方面，在人们购物、投资、旅游、娱乐以及社交方面，中国的互联网公司发挥着越来越大的影响力。
The BAT companies, which dominate search, ecommerce and gaming/social media, together with other upstarts, such as Xiaomi, a five-year-old company that has pioneered the $50 smartphone, are upending how people live.
分别在搜索、电子商务以及游戏/社交媒体领域占主导地位的BAT三巨头，连同其他快速成长的公司——如成立5年、率先开发出50美元智能手机的小米(Xiaomi)——正在颠覆人们的生活方式。
When we think of the Chinese internet, we tend to think of the overweening influence of the state through censorship. Yet the internet is also a liberating force that is unleashing entrepreneurial energy, bringing market forces to bear in diverse corners of the economy and expanding the role of the private sector at the expense of entrenched state enterprises. In China’s nominally controlled economy, the private sector long ago outstripped the state as the engine of growth. According to Edward Tse, a management consultant and author of China’s Disruptors , this has resulted in the “emergence of a new group of entrepreneurial business leaders?.?.?.?most operating with little direct government influence or support, and all transforming their industries”. Privately run businesses, he estimates, account for three-quarters of national output. By 2013, China had about 12m privately held and 42m family run businesses against 2.3m state-owned companies.
当我们想到中国互联网时，我们往往想到国家通过审查制度施加的巨大影响。然而，互联网也是一种解放力量，它正在释放创业活力，让市场力量进入经济的各个角落，扩大私营部门的作用，同时削弱根深蒂固的国有企业。在中国的所谓受管控的经济中，私营部门早就超越了国营部门成为经济增长的引擎。管理咨询顾问、《中国的商业颠覆者》(China’s Disruptors)一书作者谢祖墀(Edward Tse)认为，这导致了“一批新的、有创业家精神的商业领袖的出现……他们大都在几乎没有政府直接干预或支持的条件下运营，都使自己所在的行业发生了巨大变化”。他估计，民营企业占到了国民产出的四分之三。2013年，中国拥有约1200万家民营企业及4200万家庭经营企业，而国企只有230万家。
At the forefront are technology companies in general and internet companies in particular. As elsewhere, in China the online and offline worlds are colliding.
处于最前沿的通常是科技公司，尤其是互联网公司。和其他地方一样，中国的线上和线下世界也在发生激烈碰撞。
Taxi apps such as Didi Dache, backed by Alibaba and Tencent, have brought market forces to bear where prices were previously set by the state. They are threatening lucrative local taxi monopolies, provoking crackdowns and protests by drivers in several cities.
由阿里巴巴和腾讯支持的滴滴打车(Didi Dache)等叫车应用将市场力量引入了此前由政府定价的领域。它们威胁到了地方出租车行业丰厚的垄断利润，引发了多个城市出租车司机的抗议活动以及当局的打压。
In finance, where deposit rates are state regulated, the BAT companies and others are offering savings and investment products with much better rates. Yue Bao (“leftover treasure”), a money-market fund distributed by Alibaba over Alipay, has accumulated assets of nearly Rmb600bn in less than two years. Beijing, which wants gradually to liberalise banking, is allowing this crop of private companies to catalyse change.
在存款利率受国家管控的金融领域，BAT三巨头及其他公司以更高的回报率提供储蓄和投资产品。由阿里巴巴通过支付宝分销的货币市场基金“余额宝”（意思为剩余的财富），在不到两年的时间里就积累了近6000亿元人民币的资产。中国政府希望逐步开放银行业，它正在让这批民营企业促成这样的改革。
In important respects, though, even the fiercest of China’s internet pioneers do not operate in a free market. For a start, they conduct their business behind the Great Firewall, a politically motivated barrier that has protected them from the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook. In practice, the BAT companies are so close to the government they often behave like quasi-state-owned enterprises anyway, even to the extent that they help form regulation. The government’s ecommerce strategy, announced in March by Li Keqiang, the premier, was originally conceived by Pony Ma, chairman of Tencent.
不过，在一些重要方面，即使是中国互联网先驱中最强悍的企业也并未在一个自由市场中运营。首先，它们在长城防火墙(GreatFirewall)背后经营业务，后者是一个为政治目的设置的屏障，但保护了中国企业免受来自谷歌(Google)、Twitter以及Facebook等企业的竞争。实际上，BAT三巨头与政府的关系如此密切，以至于它们经常表现得像“准国企”，甚至到了帮助形成规章的程度。中国总理李克强今年3月宣布的政府的电子商务战略，最初是由腾讯董事局主席马化腾(Pony Ma)构思出来的。
Authorities are not always sure how to regulate these powerful new companies. When the State Administration for Industry and Commerce criticised Alibaba for the prevalence of counterfeit goods sold on its websites, Jack Ma’s company threw its weight around, forcing the government regulator to retreat.
中国当局并不总是确信该如何管控这些强大的新型公司。当国家工商行政管理总局因淘宝网上假货泛滥而批评阿里巴巴时，该公司却利用自身的实力，迫使政府监管机构让步。
If the authorities really want to fight commercial disruption, however, they have the tools to do so. In 2014, for example, the central bank suspended “virtual” credit cards issued by Alibaba and Tencent, blocking their path into online credit.
然而，如果当局真的想打击“商业颠覆行为”，它们自有办法。例如，2014年，中国央行暂停了阿里巴巴和腾讯发行的“虚拟”信用卡，堵住了它们进入在线信用业务的道路。
One must assume that, if push came to shove, the authorities could cripple even the biggest private company. Yet so embedded are the likes of Alibaba and Baidu in people’s lives that even the mighty Communist party might have cause to pause.
一定会有人猜测，如果到了迫不得已的地步，中国当局可以让哪怕是最大的民营企业也经营不下去。然而，阿里巴巴、百度之类的公司如此密切地融入了人们的生活，即便是强大的中共也不会贸然这样做。
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