Anger Over China’s Bureaucracy
大陸作風官僚 民眾怨聲載道
By Dan Levin

BEIJING – China’s bureaucracy has long been a bewildering maze of “relevant departments,” official red-ink seals and stone-faced functionaries.
長期以來，中國的官僚體系始終是一座令人手足無措的迷宮，由「有關部門」、紅色的關防和面無表情的公務員組成。

Supplicants ricochet from one government office to another, sometimes across the country, in their quest for the permits needed to get through daily life.
辦理日常生活所需的許可證時，低聲下氣的申請人在政府機構間東奔西跑，有時候甚至得穿越全國。

To get a license plate for a new car, for example, a resident of Beijing must win a pass in a lottery in which the odds of success are less than 1 percent. Women often obtain permits allowing them to give birth after they wed, but they usually expire after two years. Unmarried women are ineligible for them. Just starting a new job and registering for public benefits can mean amassing a small mountain of documents.
例如，買車得先有車牌，北京居民必須參加抽籤（譯註：大陸用語為「搖號」），中籤率不到1%。女性結婚後通常能夠獲得准生證，但有效期往往只有兩年。未婚女性沒有資格申請准生證。哪怕只是開始新工作並登記公共福利，可能也得備齊堆積如山的文件。

As its ranks grow, China’s middle class – wired, ambitious and worldly – is increasingly unwilling to tolerate such obstacles, the vestiges of a capricious Mao-era bureaucracy that still holds sway .
中國中產階級的規模越來越大，他們會上網、有抱負，見多識廣，越來越不願意忍受這樣的障礙。這是反覆無常的毛澤東時期官僚體系的遺緒，依然影響人民生活。

For many educated city dwellers, it is this system, more than censorship and propaganda, that serves as a grinding reminder of the Communist Party’s dominion over their lives.
對於許多受過教育的城市居民來說，這套繁文縟節比新聞強制審查和宣傳伎倆，更讓他們記得生活仍受共產黨宰制的不堪。

“The government isn’t there to make our lives easier,” said Daisy Li, a media producer who has applied nine times for a passport for her daughter, whose father is Scottish. “They’ve set up all those rules so the people are easier to control.”
「政府的存在不是為了讓我們生活得更方便。制定這些規定是為了更方便控制民眾。」說這話的是媒體製作人黛西．李，她為女兒申請過九次出入境許可證，女兒的父親是蘇格蘭人。

Analysts say such frustrations feed public discontent at a time when the party is trying to bolster its appeal by combating corruption and vowing to ease the constraints on small businesses. President Xi Jinping motto for cutting through bureaucracy in government is: “Deal with it instantly.”
分析家指出，在共產黨試圖通過肅貪、矢言減少對小企業的限制以增強號召力之際，這種挫折感對民怨是火上加油。習近平精簡政府繁文縟節的口號是：「馬上就辦」。

Keeping the middle class happy, China’s leaders have come to realize, is vital for the party’s long-term survival. Concerns about potential social unrest starting within the urban elite are not far-fetched.
中國領導人逐漸意識到，讓中產階級開心，攸關共產黨的長期生存。擔憂社會動盪可能從城市精英階層開始，並非無的放矢。

Aware of the public’s mounting exasperation, the government has gradually eased some restrictions. Yet, like recent changes to the country’s one-child policy, they come with additional reams of paperwork. One well-traveled joke suggests that approval for a second child takes so long to obtain that couples should begin applying before they conceive – or else the baby might arrive first.
察覺民怨日增，政府逐漸放鬆某些限制。但就像中國最近對一胎化政策的調整，伴隨法令鬆綁而來的是額外的大量文書作業。一個廣為流傳的笑話稱，申請生第二胎需要的時間太長了，夫婦雙方應該在懷孕前就開始申請，不然孩子可能會比准生證先到來。

Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College in California, described the nation’s bureaucracy as a time-tested mechanism for control that functions as “an unmovable layer insulating the top leader from popular pressure.”
加州克萊蒙特麥肯納學院的中國政治專家裴敏欣說，中國的官僚體系是一種經過時間考驗的控制機制，在「最高領導人與公眾壓力之間，充當著不動如山的隔離層」。

“In China, after you go through the red tape, you often don’t get an outcome or an explanation,” he said. “The system is designed to allow bureaucrats to do nothing and get away with it,” he said.
「在中國，走完繁文縟節後，你往往也得不到一個結果或解釋，」他說。「制度的設計使官僚能夠什麼都不做，並且還能免責。」

The head-spinning tangle of regulations infuriates many ordinary Chinese. At the heart of their ire is the hukou, or family registration, an onerous system akin to an internal passport that often tethers services like public education, subsidized health care and pensions to the birthplace of a Chinese citizen’s parents – even if he or she never lived there.
紛紜雜沓，令人頭暈目眩的規章讓中國一般民眾惱火，其中最令他們惱火的是戶口制度，它類似境內護照系統，時常將中國公民獲得公共教育、醫療補助、退休金，與其父母的出生地掛鉤，即使當事人未曾在那裡生活過。

Created in the 1950s and designed to restrict the flow of rural villagers into large cities, the hukou system has become widely detested in recent years. Hundreds of millions of migrants have flocked to work in China’s booming metropolises, and critics say the system makes them second-class citizens and subjects them to widespread discrimination in schooling, housing and employment.
建立於1950年代的戶口制度旨在限制農村人口湧入大城市。近年來，戶口制度廣受惡評。數億人口遷居中國繁榮的大都市工作，批評者說戶口制度讓這批人淪為二等公民，在教育、住房和就業方面廣受歧視。

One recent afternoon, Li Ying, 39, sat in a fluorescent-lit Beijing government office, waiting for her number to be called so she could apply for a temporary residence permit that would allow her 6-year-old son to enroll in school.
最近的某個午後，39歲的李穎（音譯）坐在北京一家政府機構日光燈照明的辦公室裡，等著叫號，以申請一個暫住證，好讓她6歲的兒子入學。

Although Ms. Li moved to Beijing with her parents as a child in 1981, her hukou is registered in a distant town, meaning her son will be shut out of the city’s public schools without the permit.
儘管李穎從1981年還是兒童時就隨父母遷居北京，她的戶口卻在一個遙遠的小鎮。這意味著如果得不到許可，她的兒子就進不了公立學校。

Among the 14 required documents, Ms. Li must provide her hukou certificate, proof of residence, a diploma, a job contract, a marriage license, her husband’s identity card, his hukou, a certificate proving that she has only one child and a company document detailing her work performance and tax payments.
在14種必備的文件中，李穎需要提供的東西包括，她的戶籍證明、居住證明、學歷、勞動契約、結婚證、她丈夫的身份證、他的戶口、證明她只有一個孩子的證件、公司出具證明她工作表現和納稅記錄的文件。

“What a headache,” she said. “Red tape is good for the government but not for us Chinese people.”
「真是傷腦筋。」她說：「繁文縟節有利於政府，卻不利於中國老百姓。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/asia/chinas-growing-middle-class-chafes-against-red-tape.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20150316/c16bureaucracy/zh-hant/

2015-03-31聯合報/G5版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 張佑生譯 原文參見紐時週報八版左