Climbing the ranks of the Communist Party while working in a coastal province, Xi Jinping — the man now leading China’s push to overtake the United States — kept a poem on his desk that helps explain why he has fought back fiercely against President Trump in their trade war.

曾经在沿海省份任职、尚处于党内升迁阶段的习近平——如今他正领导中国奋力赶超美国——在自己的办公桌上一直放着一首诗。对于他为何在与特朗普总统的贸易战中表现得如此强硬，这首诗或许能提供一些解释。

The poem, a patriotic ode to the sanctity of national interest, was written by Lin Zexu, an imperial commissioner from Fujian, the same coastal province, who oversaw China’s foreign commerce in the early 19th century. He is celebrated today in Chinese textbooks and speeches by Mr. Xi as a national hero for standing up to Britain, the superpower of the day, in a confrontation over trade.

这首歌颂国家利益神圣不可侵犯的爱国诗篇出自林则徐之手。林则徐是福建人（福建也就是习近平仕途早期任职的省份），19世纪初曾任钦差大臣，主管中国的对外贸易。如今在中国的教科书和习近平的讲话中，林则徐被尊为民族英雄，因为在当年的中英贸易冲突中，他挺身抗击了当时的超级大国英国。

That confrontation, triggered by Lin’s efforts to halt opium smuggling, ended in disaster for China — a crushing military defeat that gave Britain control of Hong Kong and, in China’s telling, started a “century of humiliation,” a shameful stain whose removal President Xi has set as one of his most important goals since becoming China’s leader in 2012.

那场冲突起于林则徐查禁鸦片走私，最终却以中国的惨痛失利告终——军事上的惨败导致香港被出让给英国，那场失败也在中国叙事中被视为“百年国耻”的开端。自2012年成为国家领导人以来，习近平将洗刷这段屈辱作为最重要的历史使命之一。

排队等候进入福州林则徐纪念馆的游客。林则徐基金会办公室墙上挂的照片，该办公室位于林则徐故居内。

Past shame looms large as Mr. Xi prepares for a meeting on Thursday in South Korea with President Trump, highlighting a gulf between the two leaders that stretches wider than their turbulent tiffs over tariffs, rare earth minerals and soybeans.

当习近平准备周四与特朗普总统在韩国会晤之际，这段挥之不去的历史羞辱再度赫然耸现，凸显出两位领导人之间的巨大认知差异——这种差异比双方在关税、稀土矿产和大豆方面的纷争更为深远。

President Trump “sees China as the winner of the international modern order, but Xi Jinping sees China as its victim,” said Julia Lovell, the author of The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of Modern China, adding that these contrasting views can lead to “profound instability” in these talks.

特朗普“将中国视为现代国际秩序的受益者，而中国领导人则视中国为受害者”，《鸦片战争：毒品、梦想与现代中国的缔造》(The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of Modern China)一书作者朱莉娅·洛威尔说。她还指出，这种认知差异可能导致会谈出现“深刻的不稳定”。

“I don’t know how much of a student of history Trump is, but it is very important that he understand the emotional importance of this history in China,” said Ms. Lovell, a China scholar at the University of London’s Birbeck College. “This history is shaping China’s actions and strategies in the here and now.”

这位伦敦大学伯贝克学院的中国研究学者强调：“虽不确定特朗普对历史了解多少，但他必须理解这段历史在中国情感层面的重要性。这段历史正在塑造中国当下的行动与战略。”

For Mr. Xi, Lin’s legacy carries a dual message: China must never bow to foreign pressure, but it also must never again negotiate from a position of weakness. Lin’s defiant stand failed because Qing China lagged far behind the West in military and economic power. Mr. Xi’s strategy of pushing back against Mr. Trump suggests he believes China has finally accumulated the strength to succeed where Lin could not.

对于习近平来说，林则徐的精神遗产传递着两层讯息：中国绝不能向外来压力低头，但也绝不能再以积贫积弱之姿参与国际博弈。林则徐的抗争之所以失败，是因为晚清在军事与经济实力上远远落后于西方。习近平如今对特朗普采取的强硬反击策略表明，他相信中国已积蓄起林则徐当年所欠缺的实力，可以将他的未竞事业向前推进。

陈列在林则徐纪念馆内的鸦片烟具。在林则徐纪念馆拍照留念的游客。

Celebrating China’s resurgent power last month with a massive military parade in Beijing, he said from the rostrum of Tiananmen Gate that his country had “put an end to China’s national humiliation of suffering successive defeats at the hands of foreign aggressors in modern times.”

上个月，为庆祝中国的复兴，习近平在北京举行了盛大的阅兵式。他在天安门城楼上向世界宣告，中国“洗刷了近代以来中国抗击外来侵略屡战屡败的民族耻辱”。

Beijing has also bristled at what it sees as efforts by American leaders, including Mr. Trump, to cast China in the role of 19th-century Western opium traders with accusations that it is aggravating America’s drug problem by exporting chemicals used in the manufacture of fentanyl. Mr. Trump said last week that this would be his “first question” for Mr. Xi when they meet. China accuses Washington of using the drug problem to “blackmail” China.

北京方面也对特朗普等美国领导人将中国比作19世纪西方鸦片贩子的说法感到愤怒。美国指责中国出口用于制造芬太尼的化学原料，加剧了美国的毒品问题。特朗普上周表示，这将是他与习近平会面时要提出的“首要议题”。而中国则反驳称，华盛顿是在借毒品问题“讹诈”中国。

The 19th-century showdown between China and the West began, much as today’s did, with mounting Western anger over a huge Chinese trade surplus. The country exported large quantities of tea, rhubarb, porcelain, silk and other goods but imported little in return.

19世纪中西方冲突的最终对决与今日的情形颇为相似——都始于西方国家对巨额对华贸易逆差的不满。当时，中国大量出口茶叶、大黄、瓷器、丝绸等商品，而从西方的进口寥寥无几。

Britain turned to opium to narrow the gap, with Western merchants selling growing quantities of the drug to China despite an official ban on the narcotic declared in 1729.

为扭转贸易失衡，英国转向鸦片贸易——尽管清廷早在1729年就已明令禁烟，西方商人仍不断向中国大量贩运鸦片。

Commissioner Lin arrived in the southern port of Guangzhou, then known as Canton, in 1839, with orders from the emperor in Beijing to stop the opium trade and restore Qing dynasty finances, which had been upended by the outflow of silver to pay for drugs.

1839年，钦差大臣林则徐奉北京朝廷之命前往南方港口广州查禁鸦片贸易，挽救因白银外流被掏空的清朝财政。

Lin’s determination to resist British power made him a heroic figure of resistance to Western bullying for generations of modern Chinese leaders since the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911.

自1911年清朝灭亡以来，几代中国领导人都因其抗击英国的决心将林则徐视为反抗西方霸权的英雄象征。

He is best known in China for confiscating and then destroying foreign opium worth hundreds of millions of dollars at current prices in trenches dug on the bank of the Pearl River at Humen near Guangzhou. Foreigners who witnessed the destruction, Lin informed the emperor, “feel heartily ashamed.”

他在中国最为人熟知的事迹是在广州附近虎门的珠江岸边挖掘壕沟、收缴并销毁了当时外国商人输入的鸦片——按现今价值计算，这些鸦片价值数亿美元。林则徐在奏报皇帝时写道，那些亲眼目睹销毁鸦片的外国人“咸知震詟”。

China’s public security minister, Wang Xiaohong, who has been at the center of arguments with Washington over fentanyl, this week visited Humen and a museum there celebrating Lin’s anti-drug actions in the 19th century. The minister, vowing to carry out “a victorious people’s war on drugs in the new era,” said all Chinese need to “uphold and carry forward the spirit of Lin Zexu.”

近期因芬太尼争议与美方激烈交锋的中国公安部部长王小洪本周专程走访虎门及林则徐禁烟纪念馆。他誓言要打好“禁毒人民战争”，强调全体国人需“要传承弘扬林则徐精神”。

林则徐纪念馆内的蜡像。林则徐纪念馆内的景观模型再现了当年在珠江销毁鸦片的场景。

Mr. Xi has embraced the Qing official’s example with particular vigor, presiding during his 17 years in Fujian over the renovation of sites connected to Lin, including the house where he was born and his family’s memorial hall.

习近平尤为推崇这位清朝官员，在福建主政17年间，他亲自推动修复了多处与林则徐有关的遗迹，包括其故居及家族祠堂。

The hall is now a sprawling exhibition complex highlighting Western perfidy, Lin’s righteous defiance and what a carved stone in a leafy courtyard describes as “China’s incessant struggle against foreign aggression.” In keeping with Mr. Xi’s view that China needs to be open to the West but on its own terms, the exhibits also praise Lin for promoting Western science and technology as a way to strengthen China.

如今，这座祠堂已被扩建为一个大型展览馆，着力展现西方的背信弃义、林则徐的正义抗争，以及绿树成荫的庭院里一块石碑描述的“中华民族反抗外来侵略的不息斗争”。与习近平所主张的中国需要自主开放理念相呼应，展陈也着重褒扬林则徐提倡学习西方科学技术以强国的远见。

Lin’s birthplace in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian, has become the Bethlehem of modern Chinese nationalism, the small room in which he is said to have been born the centerpiece of a state-sponsored heritage trail feting his unyielding patriotic spirit.

林则徐的出生地——福建省会福州——如今已成为现代中国民族主义的“圣地”。据称他出生的小房间如今是国家主导的爱国主义纪念线路的核心景点，用以歌颂他不屈的爱国精神。

“I am so proud of my ancestor,” said Lin Yanyi, a seventh-generation descendant who works for the Lin Zexu Foundation, which manages the birthplace. She said he had never spurned “good things from the West” but always put China’s interests first.

“我为我的祖先感到无比自豪。”林燕颐说道——她是林则徐的第七代后人，现就职于负责管理林则徐故居的林则徐基金会。她表示，林则徐从未排斥“西方的好事物”，但始终将中国利益置于首位。

林则徐的后人——林燕怡（音，站立者）与林则徐基金会名誉会长林祝光站在一座林则徐伏案读书的雕像旁。这个经过重建的房间据称是林则徐出生的地方，它毗邻其父任教的书院。

Mao Linli, a Fuzhou historian and adviser to the foundation, said that the lesson from Lin’s showdown with Britain is clear: Never bend to foreign pressure or concede the moral high ground.

福州的历史学家、该基金会顾问茅林立说，林则徐抗英给后人留下的启示十分明确：绝不向外国压力低头，也绝不放弃道义高地。

He said that were he alive today, Lin, who served in Guangzhou from 1839 to 1841, would never accept American demands. “He always stood on the side of right,” Mr. Mao said. “America started this fight, not China. America should stop it.”

他补充道，如果林则徐——这位1839年至1841年在广州任职的官员——今天还活着，绝不会接受美国的要求。“他永远站在正义的一边，”茅林立说。“挑起这场争端的是美国，不是中国。美国应该停止这种行为。”

Presaging China’s current efforts to get Mr. Trump to relent on tariffs by tightly restricting exports of rare earth minerals crucial to modern manufacturing, Lin sought to exert pressure on Britain and other nations involved in the illegal opium trade by threatening to halt Chinese exports he thought were indispensable to the West.

正如当前中国通过严格限制现代制造业命脉——稀土矿产的出口、迫使特朗普在关税问题上让步的策略，林则徐也曾试图以类似方式施压。他威胁要停止出口他认为对西方国家至关重要的中国商品，以打击参与非法鸦片贸易的英国及其他国家。

The thinking in China, according to “The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes,” a classic book on the conflict based on Lin’s diaries and letters, was “that Britons would die of constipation without rhubarb and tea from China” and would quickly fold.

据依托书信写就的经典著作《中国人眼中的鸦片战争》(The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes)记载，当时清廷的研判是“若无中国大黄和茶叶，英国人必将便秘而亡”，料定对方很快就会屈服。

In a letter he drafted to Queen Victoria in 1839, Lin urged the British monarch to halt the opium trade, noting that the drug was also illegal in Britain. He warned that China could cut off exports of “things which your foreign countries could not exist a single day without.”

1839年，林则徐在致维多利亚女王的信稿中敦促英国君主停止鸦片贸易，指出该毒品在英国亦属违禁。他警告称，中国大可切断“贵国若不得此，则无以为命”的物产出口。

Smugglers handed over more than 1,000 tons of opium but demanded compensation and balked at what they viewed as intrusive Chinese restrictions on legitimate commerce. They lobbied London to send gunboats.

走私商贩虽上交了逾千吨鸦片，却索求赔偿，并抗拒中方对合法贸易所设之规，视其为过度干涉。他们遂游说伦敦派遣炮舰。

Lin destroyed the confiscated drugs by mixing them with salt and lime near Guangzhou at Humen. He refused to pay compensation for the destroyed drugs.

在广州附近的虎门，林则徐以盐卤石灰拌和之法销毁所缴鸦片，坚决拒绝支付毁烟赔偿。

Far less dependent on Chinese rhubarb and far stronger militarily than Lin believed, Britain sent gunboats to the coast of China to attack Guangzhou and other Chinese port cities.

然而，英国远没有像林则徐想象的那样依赖中国的大黄，军事实力也远超其认知。于是英国派出炮舰前往中国沿海，攻袭广州等中国沿海港埠。

Yet China’s official recounting of this chapter of the Opium War focuses on praising Lin for his integrity and not on whether he overplayed China’s weak hand in negotiations with Britain, as some historians have suggested.

尽管如此，中国官方对这一段鸦片战争历史的叙述重点仍放在赞颂林则徐的正直品格上，而不是像一些历史学家所指出的那样，他是否在与英国谈判时高估了中国的实力。

At a Lin Zexu-themed restaurant in the center of Fuzhou, Wang Yike, the 9-year-old son of the owner, serenaded lunchtime diners last week with patriotic verses celebrating the destruction of British opium in 1839 as an act that “lifted the righteousness of our nation.”

不久前，在福州一家以林则徐为主题的餐厅内，店主9岁的儿子王义柯（音）为午市食客吟诵爱国诗篇，赞颂1839年销毁英国鸦片乃“扬我民族正气”之举。

The boy, wearing the red scarf of China’s Young Pioneers, a communist youth group, chanted one of the commissioner’s best-known lines — from the poem Mr. Xi kept on his desk: “If it benefits the nation, I will live and die for it.”

系着少先队红领巾的男孩朗声诵读这位钦差大臣最广为人知的诗句之一，也就是曾置于习近平案头的那句：“苟利国家生死以，岂因祸福避趋之。”

一家以林则徐为主题的餐厅老板之子王义柯（音）向食客吟诵林则徐的爱国诗篇。