I just spent a week in Beijing and Shanghai, meeting with Chinese officials, economists and entrepreneurs, and let me get right to the point: While we were sleeping China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything.

我刚在北京和上海待了一周时间，与中国官员、经济学家和企业家见面。我就直说了吧：在我们睡觉的时候，中国已在高技术制造业的所有方面都取得了巨大的飞跃。

If no one has told Donald Trump, then I will: His nickname on Chinese social media today is “Chuan Jianguo” — meaning “Trump the (Chinese) Nation Builder” — because of how his relentless China bashing and tariffs during his first term as president lit a fire under Beijing to double down on its efforts to gain global supremacy in electric cars, robots and rare materials, and to become as independent of America’s markets and tools as possible.

如果还没有人跟特朗普提过，那么我要告诉他：他如今在中国社交媒体上的绰号是“川建国”——意思是“特朗普是（中国）的国家建设者”——因为在第一次担任总统期间，他不停地批评中国、对中国商品加征关税，这种做法已激发了中国政府的热情，让他们为争取电动汽车、机器人、稀有材料等领域的全球主导地位加倍努力，同时尽可能不依靠美国的市场和工具。

“China had its Sputnik moment — his name was Donald Trump,” Jim McGregor, a business consultant who lived in China for 30 years, told me. “He woke them up to the fact that they needed an all-hands-on-deck effort to take their indigenous scientific, innovative and advanced manufacturing skills to a new level.”

“中国有了自己的‘斯普特尼克时刻’(Sputnik moment)——他的名字是唐纳德·特朗普，”曾在中国生活了30年的商业顾问麦健陆(Jim McGregor)告诉我。“特朗普唤醒了他们，让他们认识到这个事实：要将本土的科学、创新、先进制造技术提升到一个新水平，需要全国上下总动员。”

The China that Trump will encounter is a much more formidable export engine. Its advanced manufacturing muscles have exploded in size, sophistication and quantity in the last eight years, even while consumption by its people remains puny.

特朗普将要面对的中国是一个更难以对付的出口引擎。中国先进制造业的规模、复杂程度和数量在过去八年里迅猛增长，尽管中国人民的消费体量仍微不足道。

If I were drawing a picture of China’s economy today as a person, it would have an awesome manufacturing upper body — like Popeye, still eating spinach — with consuming legs resembling thin little sticks.

如果要我把今天的中国经济画成一个人来描述的话，这个人会有一个令人惊叹的强大高端制造业上身——像仍坚持吃菠菜的大力水手那样，但作为消费的腿细得像柴火棍儿。

China’s export machine is so strong now that only very high tariffs might really slow it down, and China’s response to very high tariffs could be to start cutting off American industries from crucial supplies that are now available almost nowhere else. That kind of supply-chain warfare is not what anyone, anywhere needs.

中国的出口机器现在如此强大，只有非常高的关税也许才真能放慢中国的出口，而中国对非常高关税的回应可能是，开始切断美国工业现在几乎无法从别的地方获得的关键供应。这种供应链战争不是任何人、任何地方想看到的。

The Chinese experts I spoke with during my trip two weeks ago would like to avoid that battle. The Chinese still need the U.S. market for their exports. But they will not be pushovers. Both Beijing and Washington will be much better off with a bargain — one that imposes a gradual increase in U.S. tariffs, while both of us do what we needed to do long ago.

我两周前访问中国时，与我交谈的中国专家们希望避免这场战争。中国人的出口仍需要美国市场，但他们不会听从摆布。如果北京和华盛顿能在美国逐步提高关税上达成协议的话，双方都将受益，让双方得到做他们早就该做的事情的时间。

What is that? I call it the “Elon Musk-Taylor Swift paradigm.” America would use higher tariffs on China to buy time to lift up more Elon Musks — more homegrown manufacturers who can make big stuff so we can export more to the world and import less. And China would use the time to let in more Taylor Swifts — more opportunities for its youth to spend money on entertainment and consumer goods made abroad, but also to make more goods and offer more services — particularly in health care — that its own people want to buy.

他们早就该做的事情是什么？我称之为“埃隆·马斯克-泰勒·斯威夫特范式”。美国将用对中国征收更高关税赢得的时间来帮助更多的埃隆·马斯克脱颖而出，让更多的本土制造商在美国制造大件产品，这样我们就能向世界出口更多的东西，减少进口。而中国将用这段时间让更多的泰勒·斯威夫特进入中国，让年轻人有更多机会花钱购买国外制造的娱乐和消费品，同时也生产更多中国人民想购买的商品，为他们提供更多的服务——尤其是在医疗保健方面。

But if we don’t use this time to respond to China the way we did to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, with our own comprehensive scientific, innovative and industrial push, we will be toast.

但如果我们不利用这段时间全面提高自己的科学、创新和工业水平，作为对中国的回应，就像我们在苏联1957年发射了世界上第一颗人造卫星“斯普特尼克”后那样，那我们就会完蛋。

You have to go to China to see it, but because a U.S. congressional delegation, led by Senator Chuck Schumer in October 2023, was the first official visit by U.S. lawmakers since 2019 — and because many U.S. companies that moved their American staffs out of China for Covid never returned them — a lot of people in Washington have missed the country’s staggering manufacturing growth.

需要去中国走一趟才有所体会，但由于参议员查克·舒默2023年10月率领的国会代表团是美国立法者自2019年以来的首次官方访华，加上许多在新冠病毒大流行期间将美国员工撤出中国的美国公司从未让这些员工返回，很多美国人错过了看到中国制造业惊人增长的机会。

Here’s what Noah Smith, who writes about manufacturing, posted the other day, using data from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization:

下面是关注制造业的撰稿人诺亚·史密斯前不久发布在网上的，他使用的数据来自联合国工业发展组织：

In 2000, “the United States and its allies in Asia, Europe and Latin America accounted for the overwhelming majority of global industrial production, with China at just 6 percent even after two decades of rapid growth.” By 2030, Smith wrote, the U.N. agency predicts “China will account for 45 percent of all global manufacturing, single-handedly matching or outmatching the U.S. and all of its allies.

2000年，“全球工业生产总量的绝大部分来自美国及其亚洲、欧洲和拉丁美洲的盟友，来自中国的只占6%，尽管中国已经历了20年的快速发展”。史密斯写道，联合国工业发展组织预测，到2030年时，“中国将占全球制造业的45%，将与美国及其所有盟友的相当或超过后者。

“This is a level of manufacturing dominance by a single country seen only twice before in world history — by the U.K. at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and by the U.S. just after World War II.” Smith wrote, “It means that in an extended war of production, there is no guarantee that the entire world united could defeat China alone.”

“一个国家独占制造业鳌头以前在世界历史上只发生过两次——工业革命开始时的英国，以及二战刚结束后的美国。”史密斯写道，“这意味着，在一场大范围的生产战争中，全世界的国家团结起来也无法保证能打败中国一个国家。”

Let me offer a few examples of the scale of what we’re talking about: In 2019, as Trump was finishing his last term, net lending by Chinese banks to domestic industries was $83 billion. Last year it swelled to $670 billion, according to the People’s Bank of China. That is not a typo.

让我用几个例子来说明我们正在谈论的规模：在特朗普的上一个总统任期接近尾声的2019年，中国的银行提供给国内工业的贷款全年增加了5912亿元。据中国人民银行的数据，这个数字去年飙升至4.82万亿元。是的，你没有看错。

When I visited China in 2019, before Covid, Xiaomi and Huawei were only Chinese smartphone companies. When I returned a few weeks ago, both were now also electric car companies — each leveraging its battery technologies to make really cool electric cars.

我2019年访问中国是在新冠疫情暴发之前，那时，小米和华为只是两家生产智能手机的中国公司。几周前我再次去中国时，这两家公司已经成了电动汽车公司，它们都在利用自己电池技术的优势来制造非常酷的电动汽车。

Xiaomi’s SU7, which is manufactured in a formerly abandoned plant that used to make gasoline-fueled cars — was the talk of the Beijing car show last April. Meanwhile, BYD, the famed Chinese battery company, which already had a car-making subsidiary, doubled down on automobiles. I rode all over Shanghai in super-comfortable BYD electric cars operated by Didi, China’s Uber. BYD now offers a subcompact E.V., the Seagull, that starts at less than $10,000.

小米的SU7是今年4月北京车展上的热门话题，这款车是在一个曾经生产汽油动力车的废弃工厂制造的。与此同时，在以制造电池闻名时就已涉足汽车制造的比亚迪现在更是加倍投入汽车领域。我在上海出行乘坐的都是滴滴运营的超舒适的比亚迪电动车。比亚迪现已推出了一款超小型电动汽车海鸥，起价折合美元不到1万。

In an effort to export its large inventory of cars, China has begun construction of a fleet of 170 ships capable of carrying several thousand automobiles at a time across the ocean. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s shipyards were delivering only four such vessels a year. That is also not a typo.

为了将大量的汽车库存出口，中国已开始建造一支由170艘船组成的船队，这种船一次能运载数千辆汽车横跨大洋。在新冠疫情暴发之前，世界各地的造船厂每年只交付四艘这种船。是的，你没有看错。

Because China has essentially a national electric grid, it has installed charging stations all over the country, which is why more than half of new car sales in China are of E.V.s. Apple talked for 15 years about making an electric car. Has anyone driven an Apple car?

由于中国的电网基本上归国家所有，它能在全国各地安装电动汽车充电桩，这就是为什么中国新车销量的一半以上是电动汽车。苹果公司谈论制造电动汽车已经15年了。有人开过苹果汽车吗？

I took the bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai. The trip is roughly the distance between New York City and Chicago. Only it takes just 4.5 hours because the train goes over 200 miles per hour and there’s almost 100 of them going back and forth each day. The ride is so smooth, if you put a dime on the ledge next to your window — half on the ledge and half off — it will be there exactly as you left it from the beginning of the trip to the end. Try that on the Acela between New York City and Washington and the dime will be on the floor in two seconds after the train starts wobbling out of the station.

我从北京去上海坐的是高铁。这两个城市的距离与纽约和芝加哥之间的距离大致相当。但只需4个半小时就到了，因为列车时速超过每小时350公里，而且每天有近100趟列车往返于北京和上海之间。列车行驶得非常平稳，如果把一枚硬币放在列车窗台边上——硬币的一半在窗台上，一半在窗台外——硬币会在整个旅途中原地不动。在纽约和华盛顿之间的阿塞拉列车上试试这样做，你会发现，硬币会在列车摇摇晃晃地驶出车站后的两秒钟内掉到地上。

In case you missed the story, while I was in Beijing, General Motors took a write-down of more than $5 billion on the value of its once cutting-edge factory that at one time was a major player in the Chinese car market. Sales at G.M.’s China joint venture, SAIC-GM, “slumped 59 percent in the first 11 months of this year, to 370,989 units, while local new-energy vehicle champion BYD sold more than 10 times that number in the same period,” Reuters reported.

也许你错过了这个消息：我在北京时，通用汽车对其曾经在中国汽车市场占据重要地位的尖端工厂的价值进行了逾50亿美元的减记。据路透社报道，通用在中国的合资企业上汽通用汽车公司“今年前11个月的销量下跌了59%，降至370989辆，而本土新能源汽车冠军企业比亚迪的同期销量是该数字的10倍以上”。

But don’t worry, folks, help is on the way. Trump has vowed to make America great again by doubling down on drill-baby-drill gas guzzlers and ending U.S. government subsidies for Americans who purchase electric cars.

但大家别担心，救助马上就来。特朗普已誓言要让美国恢复伟大荣光，他将开足马力采油，加倍努力生产高油耗车，并停止为购买电动汽车的美国人提供政府补贴。

So, what do you think is going to happen? The rest of the world will gradually transition to Chinese-made self-driving E.V.s, “and America will become the new Cuba — the place where you visit to see old gas-guzzling cars that you drive yourself,” as Keith Bradsher, the Times Beijing bureau chief and an auto industry specialist, mused to me.

所以，你认为将来会发生什么？世界其他地方将逐渐过渡到使用中国制造的自动驾驶电动车，“而美国将成为新的古巴——你慕名去那里观赏那些需要人来驾驶的老式油车，”正如时报北京分社社长、擅长报道汽车行业的基思·布拉德舍对我说的那样。

If that happens, one day we’ll wake up and China will own the global electric vehicle market. And since fully autonomous driving technology only really works with E.V.s, that means China will own the future — the self-driving-cars market as well.

如果这会发生的话，我们某天从梦中醒来时会发现，中国将拥有全球电动汽车市场。而且，因为完全自动驾驶技术只适用于电动汽车，那意味着中国也将拥有未来的自动驾驶汽车市场。

Here’s another way the China that Trump will face in 2025 looks a lot different from his last go-round. If Trump were even to tell China, “Hey, I’ll let you off the hook on tariffs, if you build more factories in America,” that would definitely help reduce our trade deficit with Beijing, but it might not be such a vote-getter for Republicans. Because here is what China would say: “Sure, how many factories would you like? Forty? Fifty? But there’s one thing. The assembly lines will all be staffed by robots, and we can even operate them remotely.”

这是特朗普2025年将面对的中国与他上次当总统时面对的中国有很大不同的另一个方面。就算特朗普对中国说“嘿，如果你在美国建更多工厂，我会在关税问题上放你一马”，虽然这肯定会有助于减少美中贸易逆差，但对共和党人来说，也许不是赢得选票的好办法。因为中国会这样说：“没问题，你们想要多少工厂？40个？50个？但顺便说一下。这些装配线将全部使用机器人，我们甚至能远程操作它们。”

I learned a new term on this visit: “dark factory.” A retired Chinese official mentioned to me in passing over dinner that she wanted to buy a new high-tech bed and decided to go see the offerings at the factory. When she arrived, though, she found it was a “dark factory” — so the lights were turned on just for her. It wasn’t dark because it was out of business, she told me. It was dark because it was so fully roboticized that the company doesn’t waste electricity keeping the lights on for any humans — except for the engineers who come to clean or adjust the machines once a day.

我这次去中国学了个新词：“黑灯工厂”。一名和我一起吃晚饭的退休中国官员随口提到，她想买一张新的高科技床，于是决定去工厂看看有哪些产品。但当她来到工厂时发现，那是一家 “黑灯工厂”，灯是专门为她开的。她告诉我，工厂不开灯不是因为它停业了。而是因为工厂已经完全自动化，除了每天来清洁或调校机器的工程师外，公司没必要为任何人开灯浪费电。

As an article in the state-run China Daily explained: “From steel plates and mobile phones to household motors and rocket ignition device parts, more business lines in China are using artificial intelligence to power their production and have introduced ‘dark factories’ with their 24-hour uninterrupted and unattended production capabilities. Dark factories, also called smart factories, are entirely run by programmed robots with no need for lighting.”

正如官媒《中国日报》在一篇文章中解释的那样：“从钢板厂到手机厂，从家用电机到火箭点火装置零件，越来越多的中国企业在向智能化生产迈进，引进了24小时不间断、无人值守进行生产的‘黑灯工厂’模式。‘黑灯工厂’，也叫智能工厂，因车间内的机器可以自动运作、不需要灯光照明而得名。”

You remember the old joke? “The modern factory will be just a man and a dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the machines and the man will be there to feed the dog.” That is not a joke in China.

还记得那个老笑话吗？“现代工厂将只雇一个人和一条狗。狗负责防止人触碰机器，而人是负责喂狗的。”这在中国不是笑话。

More Americans might get a better feel for what is going on there if they simply went and ordered room service at their hotel. I love this account from a German travel vlogger from his Shanghai hotel experience, recounted recently by Global Times: “‘OK, so the phone is ringing. That means the robot is here,’ he said at the beginning of the video. When he opened the door, he saw a robot standing there waiting for him. When he pressed the ‘open’ button on the machine, the lid on the top opened to reveal the food he had ordered inside. He took out the package and hit ‘finished’ to close the compartment and watched the robot return to the elevator.”

访问中国的时候，也许只是住酒店时使用客房服务，更多美国人就能对中国正在发生的事情有更好的了解。我很喜欢看一名德国旅行视频博主在一家上海酒店的经历，《环球时报》英文版最近对其作了报道：“‘对，电话铃响了。这意味着机器人到了，’他在视频开头时说。他把门打后看到一个机器人站在外面等他。他按下机器上的‘打开’按钮，机器上面的一个盖子开了，露出了里面他下单的食物。他取出食物，按下‘完成’键，把盖子关上，看着机器人返回电梯。”

No tip required.

还不需要给小费。

But there is another reason for China’s headlong rush to robotization: demographic necessity. In America, strong trade unions and a growing population make robots the natural enemy of working people, because of how they supplant blue-collar labor. China’s population collapse and its heavy restrictions on trade unions make introducing more and more robots to factory floors both economically essential and politically easier (but China, too, will most likely face a backlash from its blue-collar workers).

但中国急于实现机器人化还有另一个原因：人口结构变化的必要。美国有强大的工会和增长的人口，这让机器人成为劳动者的天敌，因为机器人会取代蓝领劳动力。而中国的人口已出现缩减，而且中国严格限制工会，这使得在工厂车间使用越来越多机器人既有经济必要，也在政治上更容易（但中国也很可能面临蓝领工人的强烈反对）。

In the last seven years alone, the number of babies born in China fell from 18 million to nine million. The latest projection is that China’s current population of 1.4 billion will decline by 100 million by 2050 and possibly by 700 million by the end of the century. To preserve its own standard of living and be able to take care of all its old people, with a steadily shrinking working population, China will drive the robotization of everything for itself — and the rest of the world.

仅在过去七年，中国的新生儿数量已从1800万下降到900万。最新的预测是，中国目前的14亿人口到2050年时将减少1亿，到本世纪末时可能减少7亿。在劳动人口持续减少的情况下，为了保持生活水平，有能力照顾所有的老人，中国将出于自身需求、也为世界其他国家推动所有方面的机器人化。

In his first term, Trump — and Biden, too — was right to impose tariffs on China as long as it didn’t give us reciprocal access. China has consistently violated World Trade Organization trade rules to avoid giving reciprocal access to its major trading partners, and it has greatly subsidized its companies. I have complained about this for years. China has historically bought $1 from America for every $4 America bought from China; much of that is soybeans and other agricultural products.

特朗普第一次担任总统（以及拜登担任总统）期间，对中国征收关税是正确做法，因为中国没有给予我们对等的市场准入。中国一直违反世界贸易组织的规则，不给予其主要贸易伙伴对等的市场准入，并为国内企业提供大量补贴。多年来我一直在批评这个问题。历史上，中国向美国每出口一美元的商品，美国就从中国购买四美元的商品，而且中国的进口以大豆和其他农产品为主。

But here’s what’s scary: We no longer make that many things China wants to buy. It can do almost everything at least cheaper and often better.

但可怕的原因在这里：我们不再生产那么多中国想买的东西。中国几乎能以更低的成本、通常更好的质量生产几乎所有东西。

Eric Chen is the founder of Kingwills, a Chinese materials science company that competes with, among others, DuPont. He explained to me that what young Chinese entrepreneurs like himself learned from the Chinese internet giants like Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba was “rapid innovation and improvement.” His foreign competitors, said Chen, upgrade their products much more slowly and, when they do, can take five or six years to build a new factory.

陈博屹是中国材料科学公司青昀的创始人，该公司的竞争对手包括杜邦。他向我解释说，像他这样的中国年轻企业家从腾讯、字节跳动和阿里巴巴等中国互联网巨头那里学会了如何“快速创新和改进”。陈博屹说，他的外国竞争对手们在产品升级上速度慢得多，当它们升级产品时，新工厂也需要五六年时间才能建成。

“We upgrade some products every 30 days. We can produce a new production line in six months. We learned from Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. You are really good” at taking products “from zero to 1. We are good at going from 2 to 100."

“我们每30天就对一些产品进行升级。我们能在六个月里建成一条新生产线。我们向埃隆·马斯克和史蒂夫·乔布斯学习。美国人非常擅长将产品‘从0变1’，我们则擅长‘从2变100’。”

This is possible because the steady buildup of manufacturing capacity in China means that virtually anything you need today — from a tiny part to a rare earth chemical — can be sourced domestically. No other country in the world has such a complete homegrown ecosystem, Chen explained, so any idea you come up with, “you can do all the sourcing from here. We have a three-year target to have zero labor for production and storage using a combination of robots and A.I.” Then “we can sit in China and control production outside of China. Then we can put factories closer to the customer.”

之所以能够实现这一点是因为，中国制造能力的稳步提升意味着如今几乎任何你需要的东西——从微小的零件到稀土产品——都可以在国内采购。陈博屹解释说，世界上没有其他国家拥有如此完整的本土制造业生态系统，所以你想出来的任何想法，“都能在这里完成所有的采购。我们有一个目标，在三年内通过机器人和人工智能的组合，实现生产和库存的零劳动力。”然后，“我们就能坐在中国遥控中国以外的生产。这将让我们能把工厂建在离客户更近的地方。”

He added one warning, though: “Probably in the future the competition for the U.S. is not China, but A.I. It is coming for both of us.”

但他也有一个警告：“未来美国的竞争对手可能不是中国，而是人工智能。人工智能正在向我们双方逼近。”

Foreign business executives operating in China will tell you that you used to have to be there to have access to its giant market of consumers. You still have to be there, they say, but today it’s also in order to have access to China’s expanding market of innovators. Get ready for more “designed in China,” not just “made in China.”

在中国经营的外国企业高管会告诉你，过去你必须身在中国才能进入中国庞大的消费者市场。他们表示，如今你仍然需要在那里，但这样做也是为了进入中国不断扩大的创新者市场。准备迎接更多的“中国设计”，而不仅仅是“中国制造”吧。

We fool ourselves if we believe that China’s growing strength in advanced manufacturing is only from unfair trade practices. It is also because it has lots and lots of people still burning to work, as they say, “9-9-6” — that is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week to make a better life, and because Beijing has invested in world-class infrastructure, and because it deliberately suppresses consumer spending and because it has a seemingly endless supply of students majoring in engineering — and not so many in sports management, sociology and gender studies.

如果我们认为中国先进制造业实力的增长只是源于不公平的贸易做法，那我们就是在自欺欺人。这种增长的原因也包括中国仍有大量满怀干劲工作的人，如他们的“996”工作制所描述的那样：早上9点上班，晚上9点下班，每周工作六天，为了追求更好地生活。还有其他原因：中国政府投资了世界一流的基础设施，它故意抑制消费支出，它有看似无穷无尽的读工程专业的大学生，而没有多少读体育管理、社会学、性别研究专业的大学生。

“The Chinese treat education like we treat sports,” said Han Shen Lin, who teaches at N.Y.U. Shanghai.

“中国人对待教育与我们对待体育的方式类似，”在纽约大学上海分校任教的林汉升说。

So, China’s going to bury us? That is not at all inevitable.

那么，中国将埋葬我们吗？这完全不是不可避免的。

I left as impressed with China’s weaknesses as much as with its strengths. I don’t want to see instability in China. It’s important to the world that China continues to be able to give its 1.4 billion people a better life — but it cannot be at the expense of everyone else.

我离开中国时对其弱点的印象与对其优势的印象一样深刻。我不想看到中国出现不稳定。中国能继续让其14亿人民过上更好的生活对世界来说很重要，但这不能以牺牲所有其他国家人民的利益为代价。

And it is clear to me from being there that, in the relative absence of foreign visitors, a lot of Chinese have grown out of touch with how China is perceived in the world. As a senior White House official said to me, China “freaked out” the rest of the world when it began its “Made in China 2025” agenda — a state-led and -funded industrial policy that aimed to make China the dominant producer in every aspect of advanced manufacturing, from aerospace to material science to machine tools. And it’s not only freaking out more developed manufacturers, like the United States and Germany, but also developing countries like Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia, as they see China dominating overseas and yet still constricting its domestic consumption.

我能从这次访问中清楚地看出，由于外国游客人数相对减少，许多中国人已不再了解世界如何看待中国。正如一名白宫高级官员对我所说，中国启动《中国制造2025》后，世界上的其他国家“惊慌失措”。该议程是一项由国家主导和资助的产业政策，旨在让中国成为从航空航天到材料科学，再到机床等先进制造业等所有方面的主要生产国。这不仅吓坏了美国和德国等更发达的制造业国家，也吓坏了巴西、菲律宾和印度尼西亚等发展中国家，因为它们看到中国在海外市场占据主导地位，同时限制国内消费。

China has billions and billions of dollars in domestic savings that could stimulate its economy, but people will spend those savings only if they have confidence in their government and faith in the future. But the government’s bad performance at the end of Covid shook that confidence, and the lack of transparency about China’s future direction has kept savers cautious.

中国有多达上百万亿的储蓄，这些钱可以用来刺激经济，但只是在对政府有信心、对未来有信心的情况下，人们才会把储蓄花掉。但中国政府结束新冠疫情的糟糕做法动摇了人们的信心，而且中国未来的发展方向缺乏透明度让手中有钱的人对花钱持谨慎态度。

Their reluctance to spend is compounded by youth unemployment stuck over 17 percent, as well as by seeing some cities so starved for cash that raiding parties of tax collectors are sent to track down tax evaders in other provinces. In addition, the persistent housing crisis, born of immense overbuilding, has left many Chinese feeling house-poor. It also doesn’t help confidence to read that China’s third consecutive serving or former defense minister is being investigated for alleged corruption in the People’s Liberation Army.

年轻人失业率一直在17%以上、一些地方政府财政捉襟见肘以至于派税务人员到其他省份去追查逃税者——这些都加剧了中国人不愿花钱的心态。此外，过度建设导致的房地产危机持续让许多中国人感到“有房无钱”。中国连续三位前任或现任国防部长因涉嫌解放军中的腐败而被调查的消息也进一步损害了人们的信心。

Most important, the government’s prioritizing of Communist Party ideology and state-owned industries is driving some of China’s most talented private-sector innovators to quietly move their money, families or themselves to Japan, Dubai and Singapore. That is not a good trend for China.

最大的问题是，政府将中共意识形态和国有企业放在首位，这已促使中国一些最有才华的私营部门创新者悄悄地将资金、家庭或他们本人转移到日本、迪拜和新加坡。这对中国来说不是一个好趋势。

My free advice to my friends in China is that an economy this unbalanced is not sustainable. It will eventually generate a global trade alliance against them. The world will not let China make everything and only import soybeans and potatoes. China needs more nurses to provide good health care at home — and fewer engineers to design more cars for abroad. Its youth need more outlets for creative expression — without having to worry that a song lyric they write could land them in prison. I talked to too many people who feel choked or don’t dare speak their minds. They see the crackdown in Hong Kong. It was not like this 15 years ago. There is a reason so many educated young Chinese now yearn to go abroad.

我给我的中国朋友提供的免费忠告是，这种不平衡的经济不可持续。这种经济最终会产生一个针对中国的全球贸易联盟。世界不会让中国制造一切，只进口大豆和土豆。中国需要更多的护士为国内人民提供更好的医疗服务，而不是更多的工程师为国外设计更多的汽车。中国的年轻人需要更多表达他们创意的渠道，而不必担心他们写的歌词会让他们身陷囹圄。我和太多说话小心翼翼或不敢说出自己想法的人交谈过。他们看到了香港的镇压。15年前的情况不是这样。这么多受过教育的中国年轻人现在渴望出国是有原因的。

As for my neighbors in America, I have a confession. I caught a virus in China that I never imagined I’d get: “Elon Musk appreciation.”

对我的美国同胞们，我要坦白一件事。我在中国感染了一个病毒，我以前从不认为我会感染这个病毒：“欣赏埃隆·马斯克。”

I’d become so disgusted with the way Musk had been using his X megaphone to bully defenseless people and fawn over Donald Trump that I just wanted that Elon Musk to shut up and go away. But there is another Elon Musk. The genius engineer-entrepreneur who can make stuff, big stuff — electric cars, reusable rockets and satellite internet systems — as well as anyone in China can, and often better.

我对马斯克用他的X扩音器欺负不能自卫的人、向特朗普献殷勤的做法如此之厌恶，以至于我只想那个马斯克闭嘴走开。但还有另一个马斯克。那是一个能制造东西的天才工程师兼企业家，能用和任何中国人一样好、而且往往更好的方式制造电动汽车、可重复使用的火箭，以及卫星互联网系统等大东西。

Elon Musk at his best, though, is the one American manufacturer the Chinese fear and respect. It is crazy to me that Trump is wasting Musk on the project of shrinking the U.S. bureaucracy — under the acronym DOGE, for the informal “Department of Government Efficiency” — when he should be leading another DOGE, a government office for enabling more Americans to “Do Good Engineering.”

处于最佳状态的马斯克是中国人害怕和尊重的美国制造商。但特朗普却想把马斯克的时间浪费在缩减美国官僚机构上，在我看来真是不理智。他不该领导缩写为DOGE的非正式的“政府效率部”，而是应该领导另一个DOGE项目，一个让更多美国人“做好工程”(Do Good Engineering)的政府办公室。

In sum, America needs to tighten up, but China needs to loosen up. Which is why my hat is off to Secretary of State Antony Blinken for showing China the way forward. On April 26, as Blinken was en route to the airport after a visit that included a meeting with China’s president, Xi Jinping, Reuters reported, he popped into the LiPi record store in the Chinese capital’s arts district.

总而言之，美国需要加紧工作，但中国需要宽松自由。这就是为什么我要向国务卿安东尼·布林肯致敬的原因：他为中国指明了前进方向。据路透社报道，今年4月26日，布林肯与中国国家主席习近平举行了会晤后，在前往机场途中绕道前往位于中国首都艺术区的“莱蒎”唱片店。

Blinken bought two records — one was an album by the classic Chinese rocker Dou Wei. The other was Taylor Swift’s 2022 record “Midnights.” Swift’s “Lover” album in 2019 had more than one million combined streams, downloads and sales in China within a week of its release — a record for an international artist, the Reuters story noted.

布林肯买了两张唱片，一张是中国经典摇滚歌手窦唯的专辑。另一张是泰勒·斯威夫特2022年推出的专辑《午夜》。路透社的报道指出，斯威夫特2019年推出的专辑《情人》(Lover)发行后一周内在中国流媒体播放、下载和销售的总量超过100万次，这对一名国际艺人来说是创纪录的数字。

The demand from Chinese consumers is there. I’d say it’s time for China’s leaders to let their people have more of the supply. It would be good for both our countries.

中国消费者有这个需求。我想对中国领导人说，是时候为你们的人民提供更多这种供应了。这对我们两个国家都有好处。