India is quietly grabbing from China more manufacturing of Apple’s iPhones and other electronics gear.
印度正在悄然从中国那里拿走更多苹果iPhones等电子设备的生产。

It is happening in South Indian industrial areas on muddy plots that were once farmland.
这一切发生在在南印度泥泞土地上的工业区，那里曾经是农田。

In Sriperumbudur, people call Apple “the customer,” not daring to say the name of a company that prizes its secrets.
在斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔，人们称苹果公司为“顾客”，不敢说出这家注重保密公司的名称。

But some things are too big to hide. Two gigantic dormitory complexes are springing up from the earth. Once finished, each will be a tight block of 13 buildings with 24 rooms per floor around an L-shaped hallway. Every one of those pink-painted rooms will have beds for six workers, all women. The two blocks will house 18,720 workers apiece.
但某些事大到藏不住。两个巨大的宿舍楼群正拔地而起。一旦竣工，每一个楼群都将是一个紧凑的街区，由13幢楼组成，每层有24个房间，围绕着一个L形走廊。房间漆成粉红色，每个房间有六张床，供六名女工居住。两个楼区各自能够容纳18720名工人。

It’s a ready-made scene from Shenzhen or Zhengzhou, the Chinese cities famous for their iPhone production prowess. And it’s no wonder.
这活脱脱是一幅来自深圳或郑州的场景，这两个中国城市因其生产iPhone的水准而闻名。这样的场景不足为奇。

Sriperumbudur, in the state of Tamil Nadu, is the home of the expanding Indian fortress of Foxconn, the Taiwanese-based company that has long played the largest role in producing iPhones. And as recently as 2019, about 99 percent of them were made in China.
斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔位于泰米尔纳德邦，是富士康在印度不断扩张的大本营。富士康这家总部位于台湾的公司长期以来一直在iPhone生产中发挥着最大作用。直到2019年，约99%的iPhone都是在中国生产的。

India, as part of a national manufacturing drive, is chipping away at that dominance, when many companies are looking to spread their work to countries other than China. An estimated 13 percent of the world’s iPhones were assembled in India last year, and about three-quarters of those were made in Tamil Nadu. By next year, the volume produced in India is expected to double.
随着许多公司都寻求将业务发展至中国以外的国家，作为国家制造业发展的一部分，印度正在日渐蚕食中国在生产iPhone方面的主导地位。去年，据估计，全球约有13%的iPhone是在印度组装的，其中约有四分之三是在泰米尔纳德邦生产。到了明年，预计印度的产量还将翻倍。

But despite almost 10 years of a “Make in India” initiative promoted by the country’s powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, manufacturing as a share of the economy has stalled out. At about 16 percent, it is a shade lower than when Mr. Modi took office in 2014, and far lower than that of China, or of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea when those Asian tigers took off.
尽管权力巨大的印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪推动“印度制造”计划已近10年，制造业在印度经济中所占份额仍然停滞不前，约为16%，略低于莫迪在2014年上台的数据，远低于中国或日本、台湾和韩国这些亚洲四小龙经济腾飞时的水平。

India desperately needs more skilled jobs, and factory work creates them like nothing else. Last year, India overtook China to become the world’s most populous country, and its working-age population is speeding ahead. But turning that demographic bulge into an actual advantage means making India’s workers more productive. Half of them still depend on small farming.
印度急需更多技术工作岗位，而工厂工作最能创造这样的机会。去年，印度超过中国，成为世界上人口最多的国家，而该国的劳动力人口正在加速增长。但将这一人口激增转化为实际优势，就意味着要让印度的工人更加高效。他们当中半数人仍然依赖小规模农业生产。

Tamil Nadu might point the way forward. The state of 72 million people is now succeeding in ways that have eluded India as a whole. The national government started subsidizing electronics manufacturing across the country in 2021, setting off a gold rush in places like Noida, next to New Delhi.
泰米尔纳德邦可能为前路指明了方向。这个有7200万人口的邦如今正在以印度整体未能实现的方式取得成功。2021年，印度政府开始为全国电子制造业进行补贴，在新德里附近的诺伊达等地引发了一阵“淘金热”。

But for Tamil Nadu, that incentive is not an essential lure. T.R.B. Rajaa, Tamil Nadu’s minister of industries, can rattle off the state’s inbuilt advantages: schools, transport, engineering graduates.
但对泰米尔纳德邦来说，这一激励并非必不可少的诱惑。泰米尔纳德邦工业部长T.R.B.拉贾说起该邦的天然优势总是滔滔不绝：学校、交通、工科毕业生。

“We never compare our growth with other Indian states,” he said. “We chart ourselves to the growth of Scandinavian countries and how we can beat that.”
“我们从不会把我们的发展和印度其他邦做比较，”他说。“我们对比的是斯堪的纳维亚国家的经济增长，看看我们怎么才能超过他们。”

Mr. Rajaa and other boosters of Tamil Nadu are proud of the human capital their state has built up, and especially of its women. Many of them work in formal jobs, while few women in other states do: 43 percent of all Indian female factory employees work in Tamil Nadu, which is home to 5 percent of the national population.
对于泰米尔纳德邦累积的人力资本，尤其是女性人力资本，拉贾和该邦的其他支持者都感到十分自豪。这些女性中许多人从事正式工作，其他邦的女性很少如此：印度工厂女工中的43%在泰米尔纳德邦工作，而该邦人口只占全国的5%。

Parts of Tamil Nadu are already working as industrial champions. A long belt of car and car-part manufacturers stretches down the coast from its capital, Chennai. In the western Coimbatore valley, factories specialize in die-casting and pump manufacturing. There is a knitwear cluster in Tiruppur, and the country’s biggest maker of matchsticks is in Sivakasi.
泰米尔纳德邦的一些地区已经成为工业重镇。一条狭长的汽车和汽车零部件制造商地带从首府金奈一直延伸至海岸线。在西部的哥印拜陀市山谷里，有专门从事压铸和泵制造的工厂。蒂鲁布尔市有一个针织品生产集群，西瓦卡西是全国最大的火柴制造商。

It is striking that India is plunging into such high-end goods as the iPhone. India has never become internationally competitive making things like T-shirts or sneakers, getting its clock cleaned by smaller and formerly less developed countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam.
惊人的是，印度正在大力发展iPhone等高端商品的生产。在制造T恤或球鞋等方面，印度从不具备国际竞争力，往往败给孟加拉国和越南等此前不太发达的小国。

This is not the first time this century that India was expected to move up the ranks of high-value electronics manufacturing. Nor the first time that Tamil Nadu seemed like the best launchpad for it. In 2006, Finland’s Nokia, then a cellphone colossus, built a big factory at the center of Sriperumbudur’s government-planned industrial estate. It was supposed to make millions of phones a year, for India and the rest of the world. The smartphone, and the global financial crisis in 2009, knocked down those dreams.
本世纪以来，外界已不是第一次预期印度将在高附加值电子产品制造方面提高地位，泰米尔纳德邦也不是第一次被视为这方面的最佳启动地。2006年，当时还是手机巨头的芬兰诺基亚在斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔政府规划的工业园区中心建造了一家大型工厂。它当时本应每年为印度和世界各地生产数以百万计的手机。但智能手机和2009年全球金融危机让这些美梦破灭了。

But the roots never died. Sriperumbudur was initially attractive because of its experience in auto manufacturing. Hyundai had set up shop in 1996, soon after India opened up its economy to more foreign investment and Tamil Nadu formed its first state development agency. Glassmaking and basic electrical goods followed. After a lull, the old Nokia site was built over by Salcomp, a local company that makes high-end power chargers, now for companies like Apple. The plants of a dozen other known and rumored Apple suppliers have sprouted around it, along with Samsung, Dell and most other big multinational electronics companies.
但当时的基础仍在。斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔最初之所以具备吸引力是因为它在汽车方面的制造经验。1996年，当印度对更多外国投资开放、泰米尔纳德邦成立首个邦发展机构不久后，现代汽车就在当地设立了工厂。紧随其后而来的是玻璃制造和基本电器。经过一段时间的沉寂之后，曾经的诺基亚厂址由赛尔康重建，这是一家生产高端充电器的公司，如今为苹果这样的公司进行生产。与三星、戴尔和其他许多大型跨国电器公司一道，还有十几个已知或据说为苹果供应商的工厂也在周边纷纷拔地而起。

On Friday, India’s Republic Day, Young Liu, the chief executive of Foxconn, was in New Delhi to be awarded the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third-highest civilian honor. “Let’s do our part,” he said, “for manufacturing in India and for the betterment of society.”
在周五的印度共和国日上，富士康董事长刘扬伟在新德里被授予该国第三级平民荣誉的莲花装勋章。“让我们为印度制造业和社会进步尽一份力，”他说。

A flourishing network of small, medium and large businesses contributes to Tamil Nadu’s success. One of them is Sancraft Industries in Sriperumbudur, a company with about $5 million in revenue that makes molded plastic parts for a handful of companies that feed the iPhone machine.
一个由大中小型企业构成的繁荣网络也是泰米尔纳德邦成功的原因之一。其中一个企业是斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔的Sancraft Industries。这家公司的收益约为500万美元，为几家向iPhone机器提供原料的公司生产模塑塑料部件。

A company founder, Amit Gupta, said that Nokia had “brought the ecosystem here” and that its Finnish engineers had done a lot to usher in global standards. His experience working with an early client, Schneider Electric, a French company, taught him how to integrate his operations with more recent arrivals from South Korea, Taiwan and China.
该公司的创始人阿米特·古普塔表示，诺基亚将“生态系统带到了这里”，并说诺基亚的芬兰工程师们在引入国际标准方面做了很多。他与公司早期客户法国施耐德电气的合作经历，让他学会了如何将自己的业务与近期来到这里的韩国、台湾和中国公司整合起来。

As host to an international supply chain, Tamil Nadu has drawn restaurants and grocery stores catering to Western and East Asian tastes. “It’s like a small version of China here,” said Mr. Gupta, who worked in Shenzhen 15 years ago.
作为国际供应链的所在地，泰米尔纳德邦吸引了迎合西方和东亚口味的餐馆和杂货店。“这里就像是缩小版的中国一样，”15年前曾在深圳工作过的古普塔说。

In India and abroad, there is no shortage of excitement about the prospect of India’s supplanting China in at least some part of global supply chains. By last year, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, was showing up in India with his palms pressed in namaste and a vermilion mark on his forehead, inaugurating the country’s first Apple stores.
在印度和国外，对于印度在全球供应链至少某些方面取代中国的前景，人们都有着不少兴奋之情。去年，苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克出现在印度，出席该国首个苹果专卖店的开幕仪式，他双手合十行礼，额头点着红点。

All told, more than 130 Fortune 500 companies are doing business in Tamil Nadu.
在财富500强公司中，共有超过130家在泰米尔纳德邦开展业务。

The electronics campuses in Sriperumbur look remarkably alike. Gardened grounds and parking lots filled with dozens of white buses separate low-slung assembly plants. The buses shuttle thousands of workers to and from their homes, in villages 30 to 60 miles away.
斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔的那些电子园区看起来非常相似，都有着花园式的场地，以及带有数十辆白色大巴的停车场，将低矮的组装工厂各自隔开。这些大巴从工厂到48公里至96公里外的村庄往返，接送数以千计的工人通勤。

Inside one Apple supplier, blue-smocked workers in surgical masks walked past banks of white-aluminum-cladded machinery on paths marked by yellow arrows stuck on the floor. Low ceilings, long clear sightlines and placards exhorting good behavior in English and Tamil completed the effect.
在一家苹果供应商内部，穿着工作服、戴着外科口罩的工人走在地上粘贴有黄色箭头的通道上，路过由白色铝合金包裹的机器。低矮的天花板、能清楚看到远处的视野，以及用英语和泰米尔语制作的守则标语牌都营造出良好的效果。

There are more to come. Corning, the American glassmaker, is setting up a factory that could produce iPhone’s Gorilla Glass screens, and Vietnam’s VinFast Auto has announced a $2 billion facility to make electric vehicles.
未来还不止这些。美国玻璃制造商康宁正在建立一家工厂，能够生产iPhone的大猩猩玻璃屏幕，越南的VinFast Auto已宣布将投资20亿美元，建造一家生产电动汽车的工厂。

Mr. Rajaa, the state industry minister, isn’t stopping at $1,000 smartphones, either. He and other officials in Tamil Nadu are trying to attract more businesses making cheaper things, too, in greater volume. If the rest of the country could follow Tamil Nadu, India might be able to produce enough of the less-skilled jobs its young and growing population needs.
该邦工业部长拉贾也并不满足于止步1000美元的智能手机。他和其他泰米尔纳德邦的官员正在试图吸引更多大量生产廉价商品的业务。如果该国其他地方能效仿泰米尔纳德邦，印度也许能提供足够多的较低技能工作，而这正是该国年轻、不断增长的人口所需要的。

Mr. Rajaa spent the first week of January regaling foreign investors with plans that included a budding new industrial cluster, focused on non-leather footwear. About 140 miles south of Sriperumbudur, Nikes, Adidases and Crocs are just starting to roll off the lines in Perambalur.
在1月的第一周，拉贾都在向外国投资者介绍一些计划，包括一个刚刚开始发展的新工业集群，主要生产非皮革鞋履。在斯里佩鲁姆布杜尔以南约225公里处，耐克、阿迪达斯和卡骆驰都刚刚开始在贝伦伯卢尔进行大量流水线生产。

Alex Travelli是《纽约时报》驻新德里的记者，报道印度和南亚其他地区的商业和经济事务。他此前曾担任《经济学人》的编辑和记者。

翻译：纽约时报中文网