[经济学人] China: Exit the dragon

Posted on November 15, 2018 本文总阅读量次

字数统计: 3,089字 | 阅读时长: 14分

China
中国

Exit the dragon
巨龙抽身
A Chinese ban on imports of rubbish is shaking up the global junk trade
中国禁止进口垃圾正撼动全球垃圾贸易

ON THE FIRST day of 2018, a huge shock hit the global recycling industry. China, which is the world’s biggest scrap importer, stopped accepting virtually any recycled plastic and unsorted scrap paper from abroad, and severely curbed imports of cardboard. The amount of recovered material that America, the world’s biggest exporter of scrap, sent to China was 3m tonnes less than in the first half of 2018 than a year earlier, a drop of 38%. China plans to phase in bans on most other rubbish, of which it imports \$24bn-worth a year. At recycling plants across the Western world, bales of mixed paper and polymers now languish in forecourts awaiting offers.

今年伊始，全球回收行业受到了巨大的冲击。世界上最大的废料进口国——中国——停止接收几乎任何来自海外的回收塑料和未分类废纸，并严格限制进口纸板。今年上半年，世界最大的废料出口国——美国——送往中国的回收废料量同比减少了300万吨，下降了38%。中国计划逐步禁止大多数其他垃圾进口，目前这部分的年进口额达240亿美元。在西方世界各地的回收工厂里，大捆大捆的混合纸张和聚合物正在院子里苦苦等待报价。

China used to import a significant portion of the world’s scrap. Suddenly, revenues from selling mixed waste to China which waste-management companies used to cross-subsidise collection, dried up, hitting margins for American waste-management companies.

中国在过去进口了全球废料中的很大一部分。转眼之间，向中国出售混合废品的收入枯竭了，而废品管理公司正是靠这笔收入来对垃圾收集进行交叉补贴。这冲击了美国废品管理公司的利润率。

The Chinese ban removed the third leg of the “collect, sort, export” system on which the West had long relied. Improvements to automation could in time sort some of the surplus rubbish no longer sailing to China, but they have been incremental. High labour costs make hiring enough human sorters to deal with Western waste volumes prohibitively expensive. Because they, too, cannot rely on cheap labour, Western reprocessing firms need cleaner inputs than their Chinese counterparts, so shun a lot of what MRFs currently spit out. Even if they did not, their capacity is insufficient to deal with the glut. Incinerators and landfill will take some of the surplus waste. But the capacity of both is limited. Building a new incinerator costs upwards of \$200m. Landfills are being gradually regulated out of existence, with many places, including California and the European Union, mandating cuts to the volume of waste being landfilled.

中国的禁令拆掉了西方长期依赖的“收集、分类、出口”体系的第三根支柱。假以时日，自动化技术的改进可能会为一部分不再流向中国的过剩垃圾做分类，但这种改进是渐进的。由于劳动力成本高企，要雇用足够的分拣员来应对西方的废品量要付出天价。西方的再处理公司同样无法依赖廉价劳动力，因此需要比中国同行更清洁的输入，这导致它们对目前回收厂吐出的许多东西敬而远之。哪怕它们没有拒绝，其能力也不足以应对超量的供应。焚烧炉和垃圾填埋场能处理掉一些过剩的废品，但两者的容量都是有限的。建造一座新的焚烧炉成本在2亿美元以上。监管导致垃圾填埋场逐渐消失，包括加州和欧盟在内的许多地方都规定要减少垃圾填埋量。

The prohibition is not the only way in which China is affecting the scrap trade. The trade spat provoked by American tariffs on imported steel and aluminium (which exempt scrap) has already prompted trading partners to impose retaliatory levies (including on recovered metals). If the current tiffs escalate into a full-blown trade war, scrap—\$109bn of which crosses borders each year—would suffer along with many other products.

中国影响废料贸易的方式还不只是禁令。美国对进口钢铝征收关税（废金属免征）引发的贸易争端已经促使贸易伙伴展开报复性征税（包括对回收金属）。如果目前的争执升级为全面的贸易战，废料——每年共有1090亿美元跨越国界——将与许多其他产品一起遭受冲击。

The ban is likely to prove more of a long-term headache than the trade spat. It is part of a broader clampdown on polluting industries championed by China’s all-powerful president, Xi Jinping. It aims to banish “solid waste with major environmental hazards” and thus prevent “intense public reaction”. That will deprive many countries of the destination of choice for their waste. But, though it has disrupted the whole global scrap trade, many experts are already seeing a silver lining. Activists and advocates of “circularity” say that it is forcing rich countries to rethink what they do with their waste now that a chunk of it can no longer be swept away overseas. It is in that way forcing longer-term change.

比起贸易争端，这项禁令可能是更叫人长期头疼的事。中国无上权威的国家主席习近平倡导严厉打击污染行业，这项禁令是这一广泛举措的一部分。它旨在驱逐“环境危害大的固体废物”，从而避免“群众反映强烈”。这将让许多国家失去首选的废品目的地。但是，虽然它扰乱了整个全球废料贸易，许多专家已经看到了事情好的一面。“循环性”的积极分子和倡导者说，既然很大一部分废品无法再被扫到海外，这迫使富裕国家重新思考它们处理废品的方式。而这将真正推动长期变革。

Slow boat or junk?
慢船还是垃圾？

China came to dominate the global rubbish trade in much the same way it has come to dominate all areas of trade. It has an insatiable appetite for resources, including second-hand ones, to feed its booming economy. China’s \$24bn-worth of recycled-materials imports are a quarter of the total traded globally, and up from \$12bn a decade earlier. On the eve of the ban, more than half of the world’s used plastic, paper and cardboard—around 32m tonnes each year in all—sailed to China, chiefly from the rich world. Plenty of metal scrap went there too, especially copper to wire cities or manufacture electronics.

中国主宰全球垃圾贸易的过程和它主宰所有贸易领域的方式无甚两样。为支撑其蓬勃发展的经济，它对各种资源都有着难以满足的胃口，包括二手资源。中国240亿美元的回收材料进口量占全球废料贸易总额的四分之一，而十年前这个数字是120亿美元。在禁令颁布前夕，全世界超过一半的废塑料、纸张和纸板运往中国，主要来自富裕国家——每年总计约3200万吨。还有大量的废金属，特别是给城市铺设线路或制造电子产品所需的铜。

It was also helped by the nature of its trade flows. Bulky scrap shipments to Chinese ports were only affordable thanks to “backhauling”. Container vessels had crossed the Pacific laden with Chinese products for North American markets. Rather than let them sail back empty, shipping companies ferried scrap for the return leg at rock-bottom prices. Around half of all westbound trans-Pacific container traffic was rubbish for recycling.

中国贸易流通的特点也推动了垃圾进口。幸亏有了“载货返航”，将大批废品运往中国港口的成本才可以负担。集装箱船横穿太平洋，满载面向北美市场的中国产品。航运公司不是让它们空载返航，而是以最低价格在回程运送废品。所有西向的跨太平洋集装箱货运中，大约一半都是用于回收的垃圾。

Because of the ban, shipping companies, whose low margins were offset by massive volumes, now risk losing the backhaul trade. Drewry, a shipping consultancy, estimates that the ban could jeopardise 4m-5m containers sailing west across the Pacific annually. That is equivalent to 3% of worldwide container traffic. Port authorities from New York to California are rewriting their long-term strategies to take account of the disruption.

现在，垃圾禁令可能使得那些靠高周转弥补低利润的航运公司失去回程业务。航运咨询公司Drewry估计，该禁令可能会危及每年四五百万个西向的跨太平洋集装箱。这相当于全球集装箱流量的3%。从纽约到加利福尼亚的港务局正在改写长期战略以应对这一变故。

Even China is not immune from the impact. Its operation, dubbed “National Sword”, looks distinctly double-edged, striking at a thriving domestic reprocessing industry—and manufacturing more broadly. Western scrap-industry veterans express astonishment at the Chinese authorities’ willingness to sacrifice the needs of its industrial base, parts of which rely heavily on reprocessed materials. China recycled 85% of the 7m tonnes of plastic it imported in 2016 (the rest went to landfills or was incinerated). Many Chinese reprocessing firms are now fearful about the future.

即便是中国自己也不能免受影响。它这项所谓的“国门利剑”行动看起来明显是把双刃剑，挥向蓬勃发展的国内再处理行业——以及更广泛的制造业。西方废料业资深人士对中国当局宁愿牺牲其工业基地（其中一些严重依赖再加工材料）的需求表示惊讶。中国回收了2016 年进口的700万吨塑料中的85%（其余的进入垃圾填埋场或被焚烧）。如今许多中国再处理公司都对未来感到担忧。

Some also see the benefits. Liu Jianguo, an expert on waste management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, calls the ban “good news for domestic waste recycling”, for the same reason that it will help Western countries. It will force the Chinese industry to change, adapt and be less reliant on imported foreign trash (though there is a danger in the short run that some Chinese reprocessors, starved suddenly of imported inputs, could fold, resulting in the dumping or burning of even more rubbish than it does already).

有些人也看到了好处。清华大学废品管理专家刘建国称，这项禁令“对于国内垃圾回收来说是个好消息”，原因和它将给西方国家带来的改变是一样的。它将迫使中国工业改革、适应，减少对进口洋垃圾的依赖（尽管存在短期危险，因为一些国内再处理商可能会因为进口输入突然断供而破产，结果导致倾倒或焚烧的垃圾比现在更多了）。

The China ban has, however, given a boost to one group of Western entrepreneurs. In 2017 Rashad Abbasov co-founded Scrapo. It is an online marketplace that matches buyers and sellers of second-hand polymers in different countries. Since its inauguration in November, suppliers have posted offers to sell 1.5m tonnes of recovered plastic on Scrapo. It now has more than 10,000 users, 70% outside America. Just 6% are from traditional plastic-waste importers like China, Indonesia or Vietnam.

不过，中国的禁令推动了一类西方创业者。2017年，拉沙德・阿巴索夫（Rashad Abbasov）和其他人一起创立了Scrapo。这是一个在线市场，可以匹配来自不同国家的二手聚合物买家和卖家。自去年11月成立以来，供应商已在Scrapo张贴了150万吨回收塑料的销售报价。它现在拥有超过一万名用户，70% 来自美国以外。只有6％来自中国、印度尼西亚或越南等传统废塑料进口商。

Other parts of the trade are also moving online. Scrap Monster, a platform for trading recovered metal, has 50,000 registered users. MerQbiz is a digital platform to streamline the $30bn annual reused-paper market. Another forum, the Materials Marketplace, allows American manufacturers to exchange factory by-products and leftovers more easily. State-level versions exist in Ohio and Tennessee. Two years ago the project spawned an offshoot in Turkey. Another is under development in Vietnam. Advocates of “circularity” welcome such initiatives, which aim to wring the most out of available resources. The Chinese ban has done them all a favour by enabling recovered materials to flow to the highest bidder—and so the highest-value use. But it has also exposed the shortcomings of the recycling industry.

回收行业的其他部分也开始转到线上。回收金属交易平台“废品怪物”（Scrap Monster）拥有五万名注册用户。数字平台MerQbiz让每年300亿美元的再生纸市场变得更加高效。另一个名叫“材料市场”（Materials Marketplace）的论坛让美国制造商更便捷地交易工厂副产品和剩余物。俄亥俄州和田纳西州都有相应的州级版本。两年前，该项目在土耳其设立了分支机构；越南分支目前正在开发中。“循环性”的倡导者欢迎这类意在最大限度利用现有资源的举措。中国的禁令帮了它们的忙，使得回收材料能够流向出价最高的人——因此获得了价值最高的利用。但回收行业的缺陷也因此暴露无遗。

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