中国是如何失去美国的 - 纽约时报中文网

When future historians look back on 2022, they will have a lot to choose from when they ask the question: What was the most important thing that happened that year? Was it Brexit, Chexit, Ruxit or Trumpit?

当未来的历史学家回顾2022年的时候，关于这个问题，他们会有很多选择：这一年发生的最重要的事情是什么？是英国脱钩、中国脱钩、俄国脱钩还是特朗普脱钩？

Was it the meltdown of the world’s sixth -largest economy, Britain, fueled in part by its reckless 2020 exit from the European Union? Was it the demented attempt by Vladimir Putin to wipe Ukraine off the map, which has decoupled Russia from the West — what I call Ruxit — creating havoc with worldwide energy and food markets? Was it the near-total infection of the G.O.P. with Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen — Trumpit — which is eroding our democracy’s most cherished asset: our ability to peacefully and legitimately transfer power?

是世界第六大经济体 英国的崩溃吗，其部分原因在于英国在2020年不计后果地退出欧盟？是普京想把乌克兰从地图上抹去的疯狂尝试，让俄罗斯与西方脱钩（我称之为Ruxit），给全球能源和粮食市场造成了严重破坏吗？是特朗普关于2020年大选被窃取的弥天大谎——特朗普脱钩(Trumpit)——几乎完全感染了共和党，侵蚀了我们民主最宝贵的资产：我们和平、合法转移权力的能力吗？

Or was it China’s drive under President Xi Jinping for Chexit — an end to four decades of steady integration of China’s economy with the West, an end symbolized by the abbreviation popularized by my colleague in Beijing Keith Bradsher to describe where Western multinationals today think about putting their next factory: “A.B.C. — Anywhere But China.”

抑或是中国在习近平主席领导下推动的中国脱钩 (Chexit)——结束四十年来中国经济与西方的稳定融合，这个结束的标志是我在北京的同事基思·布拉德舍普及起来 的一个缩写，用来描述今天西方跨国公司考虑把他们的下一个工厂放在哪里。“ABC——除了中国，哪里都行(Anywhere But China)。”

It’s a tough call. And just listing them all together only tells you what a hinge of history 2022 has become. But my vote goes to Chexit.

这是一个艰难的决定。把它们列在一起只能告诉你，2022年的历史已经成了一个多么重要的转折点。但我的票会投给中国脱钩。

We’ve had four decades of U.S.-China economic integration that hugely benefited American consumers. It led to new export opportunities for some Americans and unemployment for others, depending on the industry they were in. It helped raise hundreds of millions of Chinese out of extreme poverty. It tamped down inflation and worked to prevent any great power wars.

40年来，美中经济一体化极大地造福了美国消费者。它给一些美国人带来了新的出口机会，也给另一些人带来了失业，具体取决于他们所在的行业。它帮助数亿 中国人摆脱了极度贫困。它抑制了通货膨胀，并努力防止任何大国战争的发生。

On the whole, we will miss that era now that it’s gone, because our world will be less prosperous, less integrated and less geopolitically stable.

总的来说，我们会怀念那个已经逝去的时代，因为我们的世界将变得不那么繁荣，不那么一体化，地缘政治也不那么稳定。

中国广东省的一个货运港口。 Jade Gao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As The New Yorker’s China expert, Evan Osnos, pointed out in October: “In 2012, 40 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of China; today, more than 80 percent do, according to the Pew Research Center.”

正如《纽约客》中国问题专家欧逸文(Evan Osnos)在10月份指出 的那样：“2012年，40%的美国人对中国持负面看法；而如今，根据皮尤研究中心的数据，这一比例超过了80%。”

If China had a democratic government, someone there right now would surely be demanding to know, “How did we lose America?”

如果中国有一个民主政府，现在政府里肯定会有人会要求知道，“我们是怎么失去美国的？”

America is not blameless in the erosion of this relationship. Since World War II, we had never had a geopolitical rival that was our near-peer both economically and militarily*.* We’ve never been comfortable with Beijing’s rising challenge, especially because China was not propelled by oil but by its savings, hard work and homework — i.e., a willingness to sacrifice to achieve national greatness, with a strong emphasis on education and science. That used to be us.

在美中关系的恶化中，美国并非无可指责。自第二次世界大战以来，我们从来没有遇到过在经济和军事上都与我们不相上下的地缘政治对手。来自北京的挑战日渐加剧，对此我们从来都是不自在的，特别是因为中国的动力不是石油，而是它的储蓄、辛勤努力和家庭作业——也就是说，愿意付出牺牲，以此实现国家的伟大，并强调教育和科学。我们曾经就是这样。

But much more of this is on China. To appreciate how badly China has lost America, you could start with this question to Beijing: “How is it that you had the biggest, most powerful lobby in Washington — and it didn’t cost you a penny — and yet you blew it?”

但中国的责任要大得多。要了解中国在这方面表现有多差，你可以先问北京这样一个问题：“你在华盛顿拥有最大、最有势力的游说团体——而且不花你一分钱——可你为什么搞砸了？”

I’m referring to the U.S.-China Business Council and the United States of America-China Chamber of Commerce. These powerful business groups, representing America’s biggest multinationals, energetically lobbied for nearly four decades that more trade with China, and investment in and from China, was a win-win. So did the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

我指的是美中贸易全国委员会和中美总商会。这些强大的商务组织代表着美国最大的跨国公司，他们在近40年的时间里积极游说，希望与中国进行更多的贸易，以及加大在中国的投资和来自中国的投资，这是双赢的。中国欧盟商会也是如此。

Today, these lobbies have gone mostly quiet.

What happened? It was the culmination of four trends.

The first started in 2003, shortly after China was admitted into the World Trade Organization (thanks to America), when the leading advocate for market reforms in China — Prime Minister Zhu Rongji — stepped down. Zhu wanted U.S. companies to be in China because he believed that Chinese companies had to compete with the best at home to compete effectively in the world.

第一个趋势始于2003年，在中国加入世界贸易组织（多亏了美国）之后不久，当时中国市场改革的主要倡导者——朱镕基总理下台了。朱镕基希望美国公司进入中国，因为他相信中国公司必须在国内与最好的公司竞争，才能在世界范围内有效竞争。

But Zhu was opposed by China’s many inland provinces, which were dominated by state-owned Chinese industries that had no interest or ability to compete globally the way China’s coastal provinces could. And they became increasingly influential.

但他遭到中国许多内陆省份的反对，这些省份由国有企业主导，没有兴趣也没有能力像沿海省份那样参与全球竞争。而且它们的影响力越来越大。

When China joined the W.T.O. and won immense tariff-free or reduced-tariff access to Western markets, it promised to sign on to a W.T.O. side agreement on government procurements that would have limited China’s ability to discriminate against foreign suppliers when making huge government purchases. But China never signed it. Instead, it kept steering its tremendous state buying power to its state-owned industries — and continued subsidizing them as well.

当中国加入世贸组织并获得进入西方市场的巨大免关税或低关税待遇时，它承诺会签署一项有关政府采购的世贸组织附属协议，该协议将限制中国在进行巨额政府采购时歧视外国供应商的能力。但中国从未签署该协议。相反，中国继续将其巨大的国家购买力导向国有工业，并继续补贴它们。

Way too many Chinese industries just copied or stole intellectual property from Western companies that had built factories in China. The Chinese industries then used their protected domestic market to gain scale — and then they competed against those very same Western companies at home and abroad — AND got subsidized by Beijing.

太多的中国产业只是复制或窃取在中国建厂的西方公司的知识产权。然后中国的产业利用他们受保护的国内市场扩大规模，然后在国内外与同样的西方公司竞争，并得到北京的补贴。

As I explained in a 2018 column : Even when the U.S. protested to the W.T.O. — as happened when China unfairly kept U.S. credit-card companies out, then lost the arbitration case at the W.T.O. — China still slow-walked making good on a 17-year-old promise to open up to them. By then, Chinese companies, like UnionPay, so dominated China’s credit-card market that U.S. companies, like Visa, were left with crumbs. Any wonder that E.U. exports to China today are only slightly larger than those to Switzerland?

正如我在2018年的一篇专栏文章 中所解释的那样：即使美国向世贸组织提出抗议——比如中国不公平地将美国信用卡公司拒之门外，然后在世贸组织的仲裁案件中败诉——中国仍然只是在慢吞吞地履行17年前许下的开放承诺。那是银联等中国公司已经在中国的信用卡市场占据主导地位，而Visa等美国公司只剩下残羹剩饭。有谁想过为什么如今欧盟对中国的出口 仅略高于对瑞士的出口？

2019年，世界贸易组织和其他经济官员在北京举行的国际会议上。 Florence Lo/Reuters

Which is why many U.S. and European companies went from looking the other way at China’s market manipulations, because they were still making money there, to complaining to their governments — but asking them not to complain to Beijing for fear of retaliation — to looking today to expand their supply chains to anywhere but China. Even Apple is now diversifying production to rely more on Vietnam and India.

正因如此，许多美国和欧洲的公司一开始对中国的市场操纵睁只眼闭只眼，因为他们仍然在那里赚钱；后来又向他们的政府抱怨——但要求他们不要向北京抱怨，因为担心报复；到今天，他们寻求将供应链扩展到中国以外的任何地方。就连苹果 现在也在实现生产多元化，更多地依赖越南和印度。

“The U.S. business community loved China — there were always tensions, but there used to be a sense of opportunity and partnership. For China to turn the business community sour on China took hard work, but China did it,” Jim McGregor, who lived in China for 30 years as a business consultant and wrote three books on the subject, told me.

“美国商界喜欢中国，虽然关系总是紧张，但曾经有一种找到机遇和伙伴关系的感觉。对中国来说，要让商界对中国产生反感，可是需要付出很大努力的，但中国做到了，”在中国生活了30年的商业顾问麦健陆告诉我，他就这个主题写了三本书 。

No wonder a U.S. business executive who had long worked in China remarked to me after Trump started his trade war with Beijing that Trump was not the American president America deserved, but he was the American president China deserved. Someone had to call the game from our side.

怪不得在特朗普与北京开始贸易战后，一位长期在中国工作的美国企业高管对我说 ，特朗普不是美国值得拥有的美国总统，但他是中国值得拥有的美国总统。我们这边总得有个人来做这件事。

Now President Xi has done the same from his side. As Joerg Wuttke, president of the E.U. Chamber of Commerce in China, put it in an interview , Xi’s election to an unprecedented third term on a platform emphasizing Marxism and ideology over markets and pragmatism “shows me that the opening up of the Chinese economy is not going to continue. … We have to assume that China is setting itself apart from other countries and will build a counter-model to the liberal, market-oriented model of the West.”

现在习近平主席这边也做了同样的事情。正如中国欧盟商会主席约尔格·伍特克在接受采访 时所说，习近平得到前所未有的第三任期，靠的是强调马克思主义和意识形态而不是市场和实用主义的纲领，“对我来说这表明，中国经济的开放将不会持续下去。……我们不得不假设中国正在将自己与其他国家区分开来，并将建立一个与西方自由的、以市场为导向的模式相对立的模式。”

The second trend dates back to the aftermath of Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership sought to dampen the democratic aspirations of China’s youth with a fire hose of hyper-nationalism. My colleague in Beijing Vivian Wang recently interviewed the political writer Wang Xiaodong, long considered the standard-bearer of Chinese nationalism, who once said that “China’s forward march is unstoppable.” However, Wang Xiaodong told The Times that under Xi, the Chinese nationalism movement, spurred on by other influencers on social media, had gone too far: “I’ve been called nationalism’s godfather. I created them. But I never told them to be this crazy.”

第二个趋势可以追溯到1989年天安门事件之后，当时中共领导层试图用超民族主义的高压水枪来压制中国青年的民主愿望。我在北京的同事王月眉最近采访 了长期以来被视为中国民族主义旗手的政治作家王小东，他曾说过“中国前进的步伐不可阻挡”。然而，王小东告诉《纽约时报》，在习近平领导下，中国民族主义运动在社交媒体上其他有影响力的人推动下走得太远了：“我被称为是中国民族主义的旗手，民族主义的教父，我是他们的祖师爷，是我造就他们。但是我真的从来没有教过他们这个样子。”

I got a taste of this in 2018 when I was in China talking with business and government figures. When I raised China’s unfair trade practices, the pushback sounded like this: “You realize that you Americans are too late? We’re too big to be pushed around anymore. You should have done this a decade ago.” I responded that that kind of hubris gets countries in trouble.

2018年在中国与企业和政府人士交谈时，我体会到了这一点。当我提出中国的不公平贸易行为时，回击的声音是这样的：“你没意识到，你们美国人来不及了？我们大到不能再被呼来唤去。你应该十年前就意识到这一点。”我回答说，这种傲慢是会让国家遇到麻烦的。

Which leads to a third trend: a much more aggressive Chinese foreign policy that is trying to assert dominance across the whole South China Sea, frightening China’s key neighbors, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India and Taiwan.

这导致了第三个趋势：中国采取更加激进的外交政策，试图在整个南海确立主导地位，吓坏了中国的主要邻国日本、韩国、越南、印度和台湾。

上海一名进行新冠病毒检测的医务工作者。 Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

中国在南海永暑礁建造的人工岛上的机场。 Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

But the last trend may be the most off-putting: Instead of importing effective Western-made vaccines to keep the pandemic at bay, China is relying on a “zero Covid” policy that uses lockdowns of whole cities as well as all the new tools of a surveillance state: drones, facial recognition, ubiquitous closed-circuit television cameras, cellphone tracking and even tracking of restaurant patrons, who must present a QR code to be scanned and recorded.

但最后一个趋势可能是最令人不舒服的：中国没有进口有效的西方制造的疫苗来遏制大流行，而是依赖于“清零”政策，将整个城市封锁，并利用监控国家拥有的所有新工具：无人机、面部识别、无处不在的闭路监视镜头、手机跟踪甚至跟踪餐厅的食客——他们必须出示二维码，被扫描和记录。

It feels like a Xi strategy for preventing both Covid and freedom from breaking out.

这像是习近平在防止新冠暴发的同时防止自由暴发的战略。

What Xi fails to grasp is that all of the most advanced technologies of the 21st century — like semiconductors and mRNA vaccines — require big, complex global supply chains, because no country can be the best at each one of their increasingly sophisticated components. But such supply chains require a huge amount of collaboration and trust among partners, and that is exactly what Xi has squandered in the last decade.

习近平未能掌握的是21世纪所有最先进的技术——如半导体和mRNA疫苗——都需要庞大而复杂的全球供应链，因为没有一个国家可以在每一个日益复杂的组件上都做到最好。但这样的供应链需要合作伙伴之间的大量合作和信任，而这正是习近平在过去十年中挥霍殆尽的东西。

Xi’s belief that China can be the best at everything alone is like believing that China’s basketball team can always defeat the world’s all-star basketball team.

习近平相信中国可以在任何事情上都做到最好，那就像是相信中国篮球队总能击败世界全明星篮球队。

But also color me worried. I confess, I don’t like to use the term “China.” I much prefer “one-sixth of humanity who speak Chinese.” It captures the true scale of what we are dealing with. I want to see the Chinese people thrive; it’s good for the world. But they’re going down the wrong track today. And when one-sixth of humanity makes a wrong turn in our still very connected world — China, for instance, still holds almost $1 trillion of U.S. Treasury debt — everyone will feel their pain.

但我也担心。我承认，我不喜欢用“中国”这个词。我更愿意说“全世界人口六分之一的说汉语的人”。这样才能看到这个问题的实际规模。我想看到中国人蓬勃发展；这对世界有益。但他们今天走错了路。当六分之一的人类在我们仍然紧密相连的世界中犯错时——例如，中国仍然持有近1万亿美元的美国国债——每个人都会感到他们的痛苦。