纽约时报中文网 - 英文原版-英China and the US Are Talking but Their Dtente Has Limits
February 2, 2024 2 min 409 words
这篇报道揭示了中美两国在外交谈判中的表面和实质之间存在的差距。尽管双方展开对话，但他们的和解却并非没有限制。文章反映了现实中的复杂国际关系，其中经济、安全和意识形态等问题交织在一起。这种谈判的局限性凸显了双方在一些核心议题上的不同立场，使得达成真正的共识更加困难。这也提醒我们，在国际关系舞台上，虽然对话是必要的，但解决深层次分歧需要更多的努力和妥协。报道有助于我们更清晰地理解中美关系的微妙平衡，以及双方在推进合作时所面临的现实挑战。
China and the United States are back at the negotiating table. Whether they can agree on much is another matter.
In Bangkok, China’s top diplomat last week discussed North Korea and Iran with President Biden’s national security adviser. Days later, in Beijing, officials restarted long-stalled talks on curbing the flow of fentanyl to the United States. And the White House says Mr. Biden plans to speak by phone with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in the spring.
The developments point to a tentative détente struck by Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi at a summit near San Francisco in November — and both the potential and the limitations of that thaw in relations. Even as the world’s two superpowers are working to manage frictions, the diplomacy has also exposed the chasm at the heart of the tensions: how to define the relationship.
The Biden administration has maintained that the countries are strategic competitors, and that the meetings are crucial to ensuring that the rivalry does not veer into conflict. Chinese officials, however, reject that framing, seeing competition as code for containment. In the meetings, they have pushed a new catchphrase, the “San Francisco Vision,” claiming that Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden agreed at the summit to stabilize relations and put competition aside.
The divergence in rhetoric highlights the fragility of the current reset, especially in an election year when Mr. Biden will come under pressure to be tough on China, and as concerns rise over warnings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Chinese hackers were ramping up plans to infiltrate U.S. infrastructure in the event of a war.
For Mr. Biden, the talks on fentanyl in Beijing are one of the few outcomes of the San Francisco summit that he can point to as a win. China is the main source of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that kills 100,000 Americans a year. U.S. officials have long wanted China to do more to restrict exports of those chemicals, known as precursors, but Beijing stopped cooperating as ties deteriorated in recent years.