Since President Trump began his second term in January, no high-level officials from the United States have met with their counterparts in China, even as the world’s two largest economies have taken turns imposing steep tariffs on each other.

自特朗普总统在1月开始第二个任期以来，尽管世界上最大的两个经济体轮番对彼此征收高额关税，但美中两国没有举行过任何高级别官员会晤。

In the absence of official meetings, Senator Steve Daines of Montana has cast himself as a go-between. Mr. Daines met with Vice Premier He Lifeng, who oversees many economic issues for China, on Saturday and was set to meet Premier Li Qiang, the country’s second-highest official, on Sunday.

在没有正式会晤的情况下，蒙大拿州参议员史蒂夫·戴恩斯扮演了中间人的角色。上周六，戴恩斯与负责中国许多经济事务的国务院副总理何立峰会面，并于周日与中国第二号官员李强总理会晤。

In an interview with The New York Times on Saturday after the meeting with Mr. He, Mr. Daines, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he urged China to take effective action to halt the export of chemical precursors for fentanyl.

戴恩斯周六在与何立峰会面后接受《纽约时报》采访时表示，他敦促中国采取有效行动，制止芬太尼化学前体的出口。戴恩斯是参议院外交关系委员会的共和党成员。

“I met with President Trump a few days before I came over, and he was pleased that I was coming to communicate his ‘America First’ message and, importantly, to make sure that Chinese leaders knew the seriousness of the fentanyl issue, and the role that China can play in stopping the shipment of precursors to the Mexican cartels,” Mr. Daines said.

“在我来这里的几天前，我与特朗普总统见了面，他很高兴我来传达他的‘美国优先’信息，更重要的是，要确保中国领导人知道芬太尼问题的严重性，以及中国在阻止向墨西哥贩毒集团运送前体方面可以发挥的作用，”戴恩斯说。

Chinese officials have said that the fentanyl crisis is rooted in an American failure to curb demand for the drug, and that Beijing has taken effective measures to limit shipments of fentanyl and its chemical precursors. China’s cabinet issued a report earlier this month on its fentanyl measures, and Mr. Daines said this was being studied by American officials.

中国官员表示，芬太尼危机的根源在于美国未能遏制对这种毒品的需求，中国政府已采取有效措施限制芬太尼及其化学前体的运输。中国国务院本月早些时候发布了一份关于芬太尼措施的报告，戴恩斯称美国官员正在研究这份报告。

Mr. Daines said he was trying to lay the groundwork for a meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader. “This visit is the first step to arrange and set up the next step, which will be a very important meeting between President Xi and President Trump — when that occurs, I don’t know, where it occurs, I don’t know.”

戴恩斯表示，他正在为特朗普总统与中国最高领导人习近平的会晤奠定基础。“此行是为安排和筹备下一步做准备，这将是习近平主席与特朗普总统之间一次非常重要的会晤——何时发生，我不知道，在哪里发生，我也不知道。”

The White House has not named Mr. Daines as acting on its behalf. But Mr. Daines is one of Mr. Trump’s top allies in Congress. He was the first member of the Republican leadership in the Senate to endorse Mr. Trump in 2023 for a second term at a time when many Republican senators were leery of seeing Mr. Trump return to the White House.

白宫并未指派戴恩斯代表其行事。但他是特朗普在国会的主要盟友之一。2023年许多共和党参议员对特朗普重返白宫持谨慎态度时，戴恩斯是第一个为他的竞选背书的参议院共和党领导人物。

“Given Senator Daines’s relationship to Donald Trump, China certainly wants to learn from him about Trump’s China policy intentions — whether he still wants to make a deal with China, and if so, what the deal would look like,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

复旦大学国际问题研究院院长吴心伯表示：“鉴于戴恩斯参议员与特朗普的关系，中国肯定希望从他那里了解特朗普的中国政策意图——他是否仍然希望与中国达成协议，如果是的话，协议会是什么样的。”

China also wants Senator Daines to “bring a message to Donald Trump that China wants to sit down to talk with the U.S. side and to avoid further escalation of the tensions,” Mr. Wu said.

吴心伯表示，中方还希望戴恩斯参议员“向唐纳德·特朗普传达一个信息，即中方希望与美方坐下来谈判，避免紧张局势进一步升级”。

Mr. Trump has imposed 20 percent tariffs on goods from China and threatened more. China wants to head off further tariffs.

特朗普已对来自中国的商品征收20%的关税，并威胁征收更多关税。中国希望避免进一步加征关税。

“There’s a window of opportunity before early April for China and the U.S. to engage each other, and Senator Daines’s visit could play a pivotal role,” Mr. Wu said.

“在4月初之前，中美之间有一个相互接触的机会窗口，戴恩斯参议员的访问可能会起到关键作用，”吴心伯说。

Mr. Daines said that he was not focusing on tariffs with China, because the Office of the United States Trade Representative has not yet finished a policy review.

戴恩斯称，他没有把重点放在与中国的关税问题上，因为美国贸易代表办公室尚未完成政策审查。

Mr. Trump has said he plans to meet with Mr. Xi, without specifying details. China has said nothing publicly about a meeting. But the contacts between working-level administration officials that typically precede such a meeting have been absent so far during Mr. Trump’s second term.

特朗普曾表示他打算与习近平会晤，但没有具体说明细节。中国方面则未公开提及任何会晤。然而，在特朗普第二个任期内，通常在此类会晤前会进行的工作层级政府官员之间的接触至今尚未发生。

Mr. Xi makes all important decisions in China, particularly on foreign policy. That makes summits with American presidents particularly important in setting the trajectory of bilateral relations. The two leaders met in 2017 when Mr. Xi went to Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, and Mr. Trump went to China.

中国所有的重要决策都由习近平做出，尤其是在外交政策方面。这使得与美国总统的峰会在确定双边关系走向时尤为重要。两位领导人曾于2017年会晤，当时习近平访问了佛罗里达州的马阿拉歌庄园，而特朗普也在当年访问了中国。

The lack of engagement with Washington until now has led some in Beijing to begin to doubt whether Mr. Trump is sincere in his expressed desire to meet Mr. Xi, said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

华盛顿史汀生中心中国项目主任孙韵表示，至今仍缺少与华盛顿的接触，让北京的一些人开始怀疑特朗普是否真心希望与习近平会面。

“They see him changing his position rapidly on a number of issues,” Ms. Sun said. “That translates into an almost fatalism for the Chinese, that they should aim to prepare for the worst case scenario, that’s their conclusion.”

“他们看到他在许多问题上的立场说变就变，”孙韵说。“这对中国人来说意味着几乎只能听天由命，他们应该为最坏的情况做好准备，这就是他们的结论。”

Mr. Daines said he also expressed concern about China’s barriers to imports, beyond just tariffs, during his visit to Beijing. He declined to provide any specifics. But Montana politicians have long argued that China’s intermittent halts on imports of beef from the state are unfair trade barriers, and not the result of any actual concerns about mad cow disease, as Beijing contends.

戴恩斯表示，他还表达了对中国除关税之外的进口壁垒的关切。他拒绝提供具体细节。但蒙大拿州的政界人士长期以来一直认为，中国间歇性地停止从该州进口牛肉是不公平的贸易壁垒，而不是像中国政府所辩称的那样，是出于对疯牛病的实际担忧。

Mr. Daines lived for six years in southern China in the 1990s as a project manager for Procter & Gamble, the American consumer products giant.

上世纪90年代，戴恩斯曾作为美国消费品巨头宝洁公司的项目经理在中国南方生活过六年。

This weekend’s trip is Mr. Daines’s sixth to China since his election to the Senate in 2014, making him one of the few members of Congress who have continued traveling to the country even as relations have deteriorated.

本周末的行程是戴恩斯自2014年当选参议员以来的第六次中国之行，这使他成为在美中关系恶化的情况下仍坚持前往中国的少数国会议员之一。