Results below targets? Blame China. It is a one-size-fits-all excuse: from fried chicken to cars, companies are pinning their woes on the slowdown in the Middle Kingdom. It is probably true, though the place is so big and opaque, who will ever really know?

业绩达不到目标？怪中国。这是一个普遍适用的借口：从炸鸡到汽车，许多行业的公司都把自身困境归因于“中央王国”经济增长放缓。这很可能是实情，不过，中国那么大、那么不透明，谁能真正弄清情况呢？

On Thursday, Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC joined the list. It reported its first year on year decline in quarterly earnings in three years. Its fourth-quarter revenues, it says, will post their first decline in four years. Finally, it cut its investment budget for this year by 30 per cent, to $8bn. One of the principal causes? China’s slowdown, which comes on top of sluggish smartphone growth globally.

周四，台湾半导体生产商台积电(TSMC)加入了这一行列。该公司报告称，其季度盈利出现了3年来的首次同比下滑。该公司还预计第四季度营收将出现4年来的首次下降。最终，台积电把今年的投资预算削减了30%，至80亿美元。原因是什么？除了全球智能手机销售增长乏力，中国经济放缓也是一个主要原因。

Cycles are hard to predict but semiconductor demand appears to be taking a hard turn down. This week Intel, too, said it would cut investment. Inventories have been building at semiconductor companies. PC sales have been moribund for some time; analyst Gartner expects a 4 per cent shipment decline for 2015. And just as demand has softened, the world’s largest volume smartphone producer, Samsung, has been making more chips internally — bad timing for everyone else in the industry.

周期是很难预测的，但半导体需求似乎正步入大幅下降轨道。本周，英特尔(Intel)也表示将减少投资。半导体生产商的库存不断积压。个人电脑(PC)销售一段时间以来表现低迷；研究机构高德纳(Gartner)预计，2015年PC发货量将减少4%。就在需求减弱之际，全球产量最高的智能手机厂商三星(Sumsung)却一直在扩大内部的芯片产量，这对该行业的其余公司来说可不是什么好消息。

TSMC is lucky to have support from strong Apple orders which, analysts surmise, are making up for reduced demand elsewhere. Yet Apple is a fickle customer, playing TSMC off against Samsung on pricing, and the latter has lately been winning the race for technology leadership. Apple’s power helps to explain why TSMC’s gross profit margin fell 2 percentage points from the year before, to 48 per cent.

幸运的是，来自苹果(Apple)的大量订单为台积电提供了支持。分析师推测，苹果订单弥补了其他地区的需求减少。不过，苹果是一个反复无常的客户，挑起了台积电与三星在定价方面的争斗，后者近来在争夺科技领导地位的竞赛中不断获胜。苹果强大的力量，解释了台积电的毛利润率为何比去年同期下降两个百分点、降至48%。

Cycles are temporary and TSMC is good at riding them out. Over the past decade return on equity has fallen below 20 per cent only once. Its balance sheet, with a net cash position, is very strong.

周期是暂时性的，台积电总能安稳地度过艰难时期。过去10年里，其股本回报率仅有一次降至20%以下。由于保持着净现金，台积电的资产负债表非常稳健。

But China may present a structural problem, too. It wants to beef up its domestic technology capabilities. So far, it is not going well; national chip champion SMIC lags behind in technology and a recent Tsinghua bid for Micron was rebuffed. But China is not going to quit the chip business easily — and the blame game has only just begun.

但中国或许会给台积电带来一个结构性难题。中国希望发展国内科技产业。到目前为止，这一方面的进展不太顺利；大陆芯片领军企业中芯国际(SMIC)在技术上落后于人，不久前紫光科技试图收购美光科技(Micron)却被拒绝。但中国不会轻易放弃芯片业——“找借口”的游戏才刚刚开始。