[2008.11.15] 中国小规模骚乱：出租车司机的呼声

Low-level unrest in China
中国小规模骚乱[1]

For hire
出租司机的呼声

Nov 13th 2008 | SANYA, HAINAN ISLAND
From The Economist print edition

Grumpy taxi-drivers; a tough winter
隆冬到来时,的哥意难平

IN A recent article China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, gave warning of social turbulence if the economy failed to grow at a “relatively fast” speed. In the tropical resort city of Sanya a strike by hundreds of taxi drivers is a low-level instance of the kind of turbulence he has in mind. Violence has flared and tempers are running high.中国总理温家宝在最近的一篇文章 [2] 里发出了警告：如果不能保证相对较快的经济增长速度，将会引发社会的动荡。因此，他将数百名出租车司机在热带度假胜地三亚的罢工事件视为此类小规模社会动荡的一个实例。此时的三亚，暴力活动不断升级，激愤情绪持续高涨.

China has weathered patches of growth well below recent double-digit rates before without major upheaval-notably after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. But the spread of mobile telephones and internet access has made it much easier for the disgruntled to organise. The strike in Sanya, which began on November 10th, broke out a few days after a similar one in the south-western city of Chongqing, 1,200km (750 miles) away. Around the same time as Sanya’s protest began, a smaller taxi strike was also reported in Gansu province in the north-west.

尽管20世纪90年代末亚洲金融危机之时，中国经济的增长速度虽未及如今的两位数之多，但是国家也没有出现严重的社会动荡。随着手机和互联网的普及，那些心怀不满的人因此可以更加容易的组织起来。三亚罢工事件始于11月10日，而距三亚1200公里（750英里）的西南部城市重庆，在数日前也发生了类似事件。并且在三亚的抗议活动刚开始时,又有报道称在西北部的甘肃省也发生了规模较小的罢工。

Both in Chongqing and in Sanya, taxi-drivers attacked cars that refused to join the strike. The official press said drivers in Chongqing damaged at least 20 vehicles, including three police cars. In Sanya it reported that 15 cars were attacked, resulting in the arrests of more than 20 people. Since the strike began in Sanya taxi-drivers have been gathering outside the city-government headquarters. By November 11th their numbers had swollen to about 300, according to the state-owned news agency Xinhua. “The government is completely corrupt,” says one of the protesters.
在重庆和三亚两地,出租车司机砸毁了拒绝参加罢工的司机的出租车.据官方数据统计,重庆司机砸毁至少20辆车,其中包括3 辆警车.根据三亚的报道,有15辆遭袭,20余人因此而被捕.自从三亚罢工发生以来,参与罢工的出租车司机们就一直聚集在市政府外面.据中国国家新闻机构新华社报道,截止11月11日,抗议人数已攀升到300人左右.”政府真是腐败透顶”,一位抗议者这样说到.

The taxi strikes share a common theme: what drivers say are excessive fees demanded from them by their companies, as well as the failure of local governments to stop unlicensed cabs, which are undermining their business. Taxi-drivers are a powerful constituency in China, since many middle-class city-dwellers depend on them, and they can mobilise quickly and paralyse traffic.
上述出租车司机罢工事件的起因都指向一个共同的问题:正如出租车司机所说的,出租车公司收取的租赁费过高（”份钱”过高）,同时当地政府也未能有效地查处无照黑车,而这些黑车一直都在对他们的生意造成不良影响. 应城市中产阶级的需求，中国的出租司机队伍日益庞大。他们既为我们提供了舒适便捷的出行方式，也成为了城市交通拥堵的隐忧。

To assuage them, Chongqing’s Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai, a Politburo member, held a meeting with strikers. Even more unusually, he allowed live coverage of the event, though by then most drivers had returned to work. In Sanya the acting mayor apologised to the drivers, but the strike dragged on into November 13th. The drivers in Gansu agreed to end their strike after the authorities promised to crack down on unlicensed taxis.
为了安抚罢工的人群,重庆市委书记、政治局委员薄熙来与举行了与罢工者交流的座谈会.更不同往常的是,他允许对座谈会进行现场直播,尽管那时大部分的出租车司机已经返回工作了.三亚代理市长向出租车司机们表示了歉意,但是罢工的势头仍然延续到了11月13日.甘肃的出租车司机答应在政府承诺查办无证黑车后才停止罢工.

Officials in Guangdong province in the south, hit by falling demand for China’s exports, are also trying to prevent the spread of unrest by meeting protesters’ demands. In Dongguan, a big manufacturing centre, the authorities agreed last month to pay the salaries owed thousands of workers made jobless when a toy factory closed. In eastern Jiangsu province, officials have held talks with workers in the city of Jiangyan after they blocked roads and besieged government offices to protest about job insecurity at their diesel-engine factory. The coming months could be troubled.

中国南部的广东省因出口额下降而蒙受重大损失,政府也想方设法地满足抗议者的要求从而控制动乱的蔓延.在制造业中心城市东莞,当局于上月同意发放由于一家玩具厂倒闭而拖欠的数千名失业工人的工资.在东部江苏省,政府方面已经与抗议的姜堰市工人展开了交涉,这些抗议者封住了大路,并市政厅外围守了好几天,他们抗议是因为在柴油厂的工作得不到保障.诸如此类的混乱在接下来的几个月可能会上演得更加激烈.

[1]译者认为low-level unrest是“低收入人群的骚乱”

[2]指的是温家宝11月2日在<求是>上发表的:<关于深入贯彻落实科学发展观的若干重大问题>。原文为:”必须清醒地看到，没有一定的经济增长速度，就业、财政收入、社会发展都会出现困难，民生问题难以改善，影响社会稳定的因素就会增多。”

译者：Wordy_Camel  http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=15379&extra=page%3D1