纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英刘建超或接任中国外交部长战狼将成过去式

Faced with declining foreign investment at home, China has sought to soften its image in the United States and Europe and make nice with some of its neighbors. One Communist Party official has played an unusually prominent role in the shift in tone.

在境内外国投资不断减少的情况下，中国已经在寻求软化自己在美国和欧洲的形象，并改善与一些邻国的关系。在这个转变过程中，一名中国共产党官员发挥着不同寻常的重要作用。

In New York, he told an audience of scholars and businesspeople that China did not seek to rewrite the United States-led global order. In Paris, he said that China’s modernization would benefit Europe and the world. In Beijing, he told the ambassador of India, a regional rival, that China hoped relations would “return to a healthy and stable” track.

在纽约，他告诉台下的学者和商人，中国不寻求改写由美国领导的全球秩序。在巴黎，他说中国的现代化有益于欧洲和世界。在北京，他告诉印度这个敌对国家的驻华大使，中国希望两国关系“重回健康稳定发展轨道”。

The official, Liu Jianchao, heads the Communist Party’s diplomatic arm, a body that promotes the party’s ideology and influence abroad. His recent engagements suggest to analysts, however, that he has been auditioning for the role of China’s next foreign minister.

这位官员是刘建超，中共对外联络部的领导人，该部门主要在海外宣传该党意识形态和提升其影响力。然而，分析人士认为，他近期的活动表明，他正在竞争中国下一任外交部长的职位。

For Beijing, appointing a new foreign minister, potentially as soon as in March during a legislative meeting, would help steady the country’s diplomatic apparatus after a dramatic shake-up last year.

对北京来说，在去年中国外交机关经历重大人员变动后，任命一名新外交部长可能有助于稳定局面。该任命最早可能在3月的一场立法会议期间下达。

In July, the party abruptly ousted Qin Gang, then the foreign minister, amid speculation that he had been in a romantic relationship that potentially compromised national security. Mr. Qin’s predecessor, Wang Yi, was reappointed to the post; Mr. Wang is also the director of the party’s commission on foreign affairs, a position usually held by a different person than the foreign minister.

去年7月，中共突然将时任外交部长秦刚解职，外界猜测他存在一段可能危及国家安全的浪漫关系。秦刚的前任王毅受命再次出任该职。他同时兼任中央外事工作委员会办公室主任，这一职务通常与外交部长由不同的人担任。

Mr. Liu’s appointment would signal a departure from the abrasive “wolf warrior” diplomacy that has come to symbolize China’s assertive posture under China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, at least in tone, if not in substance.

任命刘建超可能意味着中共不再沿袭刺耳的“战狼”外交，也就是成为最高领导人习近平领导下中国强硬姿态象征的那种外交政策——至少在语调上是如此，如果不是有实际行动的话。

A fluent speaker of English who studied briefly at Oxford University, Mr. Liu has a knack for defending Beijing’s most ardent positions, like its claims to the self-governing island of Taiwan, without being acerbic. Mr. Liu is considered a trusted party loyalist, having burnished his reputation by helping lead a controversial campaign called Operation Fox Hunt to bring back corrupt businesspeople and officials from abroad.

曾在牛津大学短暂学习的刘建超讲一口流利的英语，善于在不使用尖刻语言的情况下捍卫北京最为坚持的立场，例如对自治岛屿台湾的主权主张。刘建超对党的忠诚得到了认可，曾领导具有争议的“猎狐行动”，在海外追捕逃亡的腐败商人和官员，并因此声名大噪。

Many who have met with Mr. Liu say he is more informal and engaging than other Chinese officials, seemingly comfortable going off script.

许多曾见过刘建超的人说与其他中国官员相比，他相对没那么拘谨，更有魅力，似乎较为愿意自由发挥。

“Liu is an experienced diplomat who brings the relaxed confidence of a senior party cadre to his dialogues, something that is missing from most Chinese foreign ministry officials who cautiously recite the party line,” said Danny Russel, a vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. assistant secretary of state who spoke with Mr. Liu at a meeting organized by the Asia Society, a research group, in New York.

“刘建超是名经验丰富的外交官，言谈中带着一种松弛的自信，这在小心翼翼重复党的立场的大多数中国外交部官员中是罕见的，”亚洲协会政策研究所副所长、前美国助理国务卿丹尼·拉塞尔说。他曾在研究机构亚洲协会于纽约举办的会议中与刘建超有过对话。

At another event in New York, Mr. Liu downplayed the severity of China’s economic slowdown, defended Beijing’s ties to Moscow and cast his country as a peaceful nation that had no interest in changing the current international order, nor in creating a new one.

在纽约的另一场活动中，刘建超淡化了中国经济放缓的严重程度，为北京与莫斯科的关系进行辩护，并且将他的国家树立为一个和平国家，对改变目前的国际秩序和打造新国际秩序均无兴趣。

“We are one of the builders of the current world order and have benefited from it,” he said at the talk, hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

“我们是目前世界秩序的打造者之一，也从中受益，”他在这场讲话上说。

The remark understates China’s position, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. China supports only some aspects of the global order, such as its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, but it opposes other aspects it views as a challenge, such as the U.S.-led NATO.

华盛顿史汀生中心中国项目负责人孙韵称，这番话没有充分描述中国的立场。中国仅支持世界秩序的一些方面，比如该国在联合国安理会的常任理事国身份，但中国反对其他在其看来是挑战的方面，例如由美国领导的北约。

Still, Ms. Sun said, it was important that a senior Chinese official chose to highlight Beijing’s intentions about the global order because it “aims to bring down the tempo and the temperature” of its relationship with Washington.

但孙韵表示，一名中国高级官员选择强调了北京在全球秩序上的意图，因为它“旨在放慢”与华盛顿关系的“节奏，并给它降降温”，这本身是很重要的。

Mr. Liu rose through the ranks of the foreign ministry, first as a translator and then a spokesman, gaining prominence by working with the foreign media during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After that, he served as ambassador to the Philippines and to Indonesia.

刘建超是在外交部内一路晋升上来的，一开始担任翻译员，后来担任发言人，通过2008年北京奥运会时与外国媒体打交道崭露头角。在那之后，他先后担任了驻菲律宾和印尼大使。

In 2015, Mr. Liu took on the job of hunting fugitives abroad as a vice minister for the feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party’s secretive and powerful internal anti-corruption agency.

2015年，刘建超担任秘密的、掌握重权的内部反腐机构国家预防腐败局副局长，承担起了抓捕海外逃犯的工作。

In that role, Mr. Liu showed off his negotiation skills, recovering large sums of absconded money and netting high-profile fugitives such as Lai Changxing, a Chinese businessman and billionaire who fled to Canada to avoid charges that he ran a smuggling ring. Mr. Lai was convicted and now is serving a sentence of life imprisonment. Human rights groups have described the Fox Hunt campaign as a form of transnational repression.

在该职位上，刘建超展现出谈判技巧，追回大笔被转至国外的资金，让赖昌星这样知名的逃犯落网。中国商人、亿万富翁赖昌星此前为了躲避对其领导走私集团的控罪而逃至加拿大。赖昌星被判罪名成立，目前正在服无期徒刑。人权组织曾将“猎狐行动”描述为一种跨国镇压。

Mr. Liu bolstered his party credentials again in 2017 when he was named the top anti-corruption official in the coastal province of Zhejiang, where Mr. Xi once served as party leader. He was appointed deputy director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, a high-level party office that was formed in 2018 as Mr. Xi has sought to give the party even more control over China’s international relations strategy.

2017年，刘建超再次加强了他在党内的威信，被任命为浙江省纪委书记，习近平曾在该省担任省委书记。他被任命为中央外事工作委员会办公室副主任，这个中共高级别部门于2018年成立，当时习近平在寻求让党对国际关系策略拥有更多控制权。

In Mr. Xi’s decade in power, he has pushed to expand the party’s grip over the country’s vast government bureaucracy and Chinese society. “East, west, south, north, and center, the party leads everything,” Mr. Xi said at a party conclave in 2017.

习近平在他掌权的十年里推动扩大了党对中国庞大政府官僚机构和中国社会的控制。“东西南北中，党是领导一切的，”习近平在2017年的一场产生中共领导层的大会上说道。

That shift was underscored again when Mr. Liu was named to his current position in 2022 as head of the International Liaison Department. Traditionally, the department was charged with maintaining close ties with Communist parties in other countries like North Korea and Vietnam. It left regular state-to-state diplomacy to the foreign ministry.

2022年刘建超就任现在的职位中央对外联络部部长时，这一转变再次被凸显了出来。以前，该部门主要负责保持与在其他国家（例如朝鲜和越南）的共产党保持密切联系，将国与国之间的外交留给外交部。

Mr. Liu has broken those norms by meeting with foreign ministers across the world — giving the party access to diplomatic back channels that are rarely publicized. While in the United States in January, Mr. Liu met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in a rare meeting between the serving head of the International Liaison Department and a secretary of state.

刘建超则打破了这一常规，与世界各地的外交部长会面——这让中共能接触到一些极少公开的幕后外交渠道。1月在美国时，刘建超与国务卿安东尼·J·布林肯会面，而中联部负责人与美国国务卿会面是很罕见的。

China and the United States stabilized relations in November following a summit between Mr. Xi and President Biden outside San Francisco. But tensions could reignite over a number of disputes that remain unresolved — including the status of Taiwan and restrictions on technology exports to China.

去年11月，习近平与拜登在旧金山市郊举行峰会后，中国与美国关系稳定了下来。但两国关系可能围绕着一系列仍未得到解决的争端再次紧张，相关争端包括台湾的地位以及对中国的技术出口限制。

In Britain, Mr. Liu signaled China’s resolve to protect its interests firmly. At a panel in Britain last summer, Mr. Liu was asked about “wolf warrior” diplomacy. He responded in his typically amiable way, explaining that China wanted to make friends all over the world. But he cautioned, “When China is under pressure and China’s policies are under pressure, we do demonstrate a fighting spirit.”

在英国，刘建超就中国坚定保护本国利益的决心发出信号。去年夏天在英国的一场座谈会上，刘建超被问及关于“战狼”外交的问题。他以一贯的亲切口吻做出了回答，解释中国想在全世界交朋友。但他也告诫称，“当中国在压力之下，当中国的政策在压力之下时，我们确实会展现出一种斗争的精神。”