The Great Recession left Harvard University in a financial crisis. Its endowment had plummeted by nearly 30 percent, or more than $10 billion, in 2009.

经济大衰退使哈佛大学陷入财政危机。2009年，该校收到的捐赠锐减逾100亿美元，降幅近30%。

To help recover, Harvard’s leaders found part of the answer in China. Already, American business was pouring in, as Washington and Beijing encouraged — if at times warily — a policy of engagement as the best way to build bridges between the two countries.

为了摆脱困境，哈佛领导层在中国找到了部分答案。随着华盛顿和北京鼓励——尽管有时很谨慎——将接触政策作为两国之间架起桥梁的最佳方式，美国企业纷纷涌入中国。

China promised enormous academic and economic opportunities, and Harvard had something wealthy and well-connected Chinese craved: prestige and access to influential networks for themselves and their children.

中国有着巨大的学术和经济前景，而哈佛掌握着有钱有势的中国人所渴望的东西：声望，以及他们自己和子女进入有影响力的交际圈的机会。

Between 2010 and 2025, Harvard attracted $560 million in gifts and contracts from China and Hong Kong, the most of any American university, partly from private donors and foundations, as well as a small amount through contracts with government entities like universities.

在2010年至2025年期间，哈佛大学从中国大陆和香港吸引了5.6亿美元的捐赠和合同，是所有美国大学中最多的，部分来自私人捐赠者和基金会，还有一小部分来自大学等政府实体的合同。

“The confluence of new, enormous property wealth and especially favorable relationships” — with China’s leadership and scholars — “have happily converged,” wrote Harvard Magazine, a university-affiliated publication, almost breathless in describing the optimism in Sino-American relations at the time.

“新的、巨大的财富和特别有利的关系”——与中国领导人和学者的关系——“令人欣喜地汇聚在一起”，哈佛大学的附属刊物《哈佛杂志》在描述当时中美关系的乐观情绪时，显得无比兴奋。

Now Harvard’s ties with China are coming back to haunt the university. Those connections were forged when Harvard was more financially vulnerable and when much of the foreign policy establishment believed that higher education could play a part in pushing America’s democratic ideals to China and the rest of the world.

现在，与中国的关系成了这所大学的烦心事。这些联系是在哈佛经济状况较差的时候建立起来的，当时很多外交政策机构认为，高等教育可以在向中国和世界其他地方推广美国的民主理想方面发挥作用。

But American foreign policy has turned sharply hawkish against China, and even though Harvard has steadily reduced its ties there, the Trump administration has made the relationship another line of attack in its broader effort to bring the university to heel. The administration has stripped away billions of dollars in federal research funding and is trying to revoke its right to host international students and also end its nonprofit tax status.

但是，美国的外交政策对中国的态度已经急剧转向鹰派，尽管哈佛一直在稳步减少与中国的关系，但特朗普政府在更广泛的迫使哈佛就势的努力中，还是把它与中国的关系作为又一个攻击的角度。政府已经剥夺了该校数十亿美元的联邦研究经费，试图取消它收录国际学生的权利，并结束它的非营利税收地位。

President Trump has portrayed Harvard’s ties to China as a national security risk. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for an investigation into the university’s ties with a Chinese company whose leader had been subject to American sanctions over its treatment of workers, which could lead to criminal charges.

特朗普总统将哈佛大学与中国的关系描述为国家安全风险。美国国务卿鲁比奥呼吁对该大学与一家中国公司的关系进行调查，该公司的领导人因对待工人的方式受到了美国政府的制裁，可能导致刑事指控。

Alan M. Garber, the university’s president, has described the administration’s overall assault on the school as a power grab “unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how it operates.”

哈佛大学校长艾伦·加伯称，政府对学校的全面攻击是一种“脱离法律的夺权行为，目的是控制哈佛的教学和学习，并支配它的运作方式”。

Ruling in a lawsuit that Harvard filed over the administration’s efforts to block its enrollment of international students, a federal judge in Boston, Allison D. Burroughs, called the Trump administration’s actions “misplaced efforts to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints, seemingly because they are in some instances, opposed to this administration’s own views.”

波士顿联邦法官艾莉森·巴勒斯在哈佛就政府阻止其招收国际学生的行为提起的诉讼中称，特朗普政府的行为是“控制一所知名学术机构、压制不同观点的错误行动，似乎是因为这些观点在某些情况下与本届政府相左”。

Harvard is not the only American university with a presence in China. New York University operates a degree-granting campus in Shanghai. Duke has a campus in Kunshan. And Kean University, in New Jersey, has a campus in Wenzhou.

哈佛大学并不是唯一在中国开展业务的美国大学。纽约大学在上海设有一个授予学位的校区。杜克大学在昆山有一个校区。新泽西州的肯恩大学在温州也有一个校区。

International students comprise a quarter of Harvard’s enrollment — with 6 percent of students coming from China — but, overall, the relationship has waned. Harvard officials point out that the Chinese donations are a relatively small percentage of the more than $9.6 billion the school raised from 173 countries in a global capital fund-raising campaign after the recession.

国际学生占哈佛学生总数的四分之一，全校6%的学生来自中国，但总的来说，这种关系已经减弱。哈佛官员指出，在经济衰退后，哈佛从173个国家筹集了96亿美元的资金，而中国的捐款在其中的占比相对较小。

Since 2020, Chinese money flowing into Harvard has fallen by more than half, to $30 million in 2024 from a high of $78 million in 2020. Harvard has moved a summer language program out of Beijing to Taipei in Taiwan. Its hub for Harvard events in Shanghai, which opened in 2010 with great fanfare, has shrunk to a quarter of its previous footprint.

自2020年以来，流入哈佛的中国资金减少了一半以上，从2020年7800万美元的高点降至2024年的3000万美元。哈佛大学将一个夏季语言课程从北京搬到了台湾台北。在上海的哈佛活动中心曾于2010年大张旗鼓地开业，现在已经缩小到以前的四分之一。

Michael J. Green, director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, said many research universities developed China connections before paring them down as the political climate changed.

在乔治·W·布什政府任国家安全委员会亚洲事务主任的迈克尔·格林说，许多研究型大学发展了与中国的联系，但随着政治气候的变化，它们又减少了这种联系。

“But probably not to the satisfaction of the Trump administration,” he said, “which is motivated by more than just national security concerns in its war with Harvard.”

“但可能不会让特朗普政府满意，”他说。“在与哈佛的战争中，特朗普政府的动机不仅仅是国家安全问题。”

A Mutually Beneficial Relationship

互利关系

Harvard enrolled its first Chinese students in 1880. By 1908, Chinese students had formed their own club. For many families in China today, Harvard, or Hafo, as it is called there, has become a symbol of success, so much so that it has inspired copycats.

哈佛大学于1880年招收了第一批中国学生。到1908年，中国学生成立了自己的俱乐部。对于今天中国的许多家庭来说，哈佛已成为成功的象征，以至于激发了各种抄袭仿造行为。

William C. Kirby, a Harvard professor and former director of the university’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, found 375 attempts in China to register the name as a trademark — an S.U.V., a child-care center, a fast-food restaurant and even a company that offers to take college exams for students.

哈佛大学教授、费正清中国研究中心前主任柯伟林(William C. Kirby)发现，在中国有375家公司试图将这个名字注册为商标——一款越野车、一家托儿中心、一家快餐店，甚至还有一家为学生提供大学考试服务的公司。

“When we went to register our center in Shanghai in 2008, I was told by the general counsel that we couldn’t use the name Harvard — a Harvard University already existed there,” said Dr. Kirby, author of “Empires of Ideas,” a 2022 book on universities.

“2008年，当我们去上海注册我们的中心时，总法律顾问告诉我，我们不能使用哈佛的名字——那里已经有哈佛大学了，”柯伟林说，他曾在2022年出版一本关于大学的书《顶尖大学的条件》(Empires of Ideas)。

In 2015, Drew Faust, then the Harvard president, met in Beijing with President Xi Jinping of China, whose daughter had recently received her Harvard degree. After it began its fund-raising push there, Harvard brought in donations from executives of major real estate companies.

2015年，时任哈佛大学校长德鲁·福斯特在北京与中国国家主席习近平举行会面，当时习近平的女儿刚刚获得哈佛大学学位。哈佛在当地开始筹款后，吸引了大型房地产公司高管的捐款。

2015年，时任哈佛大学校长的德鲁·福斯特在北京与中国国家主席习近平会面。

Some had close connections to the Chinese Communist Party, often a prerequisite for success for Chinese businesses. They included Wang Jianlin, the head of Dalian Wanda Group, who had been a longtime Communist Party member; Hui Ka Yan, the founder of China Evergrande, who rubbed shoulders with officials in the highest levels of government; and Xiao Jianhua, the founder of China’s Tomorrow Group, who served as a de facto banker to China’s Communist Party elite.

一些人与中国共产党关系密切，这通常是中国企业成功的先决条件。其中包括多年前就已加入中国共产党的大连万达集团董事长王健林；还有与政府最高层的官员有往来的恒大创始人许家印；以及中国明天集团的创始人肖建华，他实际上是中共权贵的银行家。

An American foundation controlled by Ronnie and Gerald Chan, American citizens who made billions in Hong Kong real estate, also donated. It gave $350 million, at the time Harvard’s largest gift ever.

在香港房地产行业赚了数十亿美元的美国公民陈启宗和陈乐宗控制的一家美国基金会也进行了捐赠。捐赠额为3.5亿美元，是当时哈佛有史以来最大的一笔捐款。

Orville Schell, a Harvard alumnus who directs the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, said that China was then regarded as a new landscape of potential big donors.

哈佛大学校友、亚洲协会美中关系中心主任夏伟(Orville Schell)说，当时中国被视为有望产生大捐赠者的地方。

“Everybody made a China play,” Mr. Schell said.

“大家都在中国有动作，”夏伟说。

In 2002, Harvard’s Kennedy School began the program known as China’s Leaders in Development, which continued until 2016, training Chinese government officials, some who went on to high-ranking roles in the Chinese Communist Party. The school emphasized what Harvard called “values of freedom, democracy and human rights” in hopes of exposing a new generation of leaders to democratic values.

2002年，哈佛大学肯尼迪学院启动了名为“中国发展领袖”的项目，这个持续到2016年的项目培训了中国政府官员，其中一些人后来在中国共产党担任了高级职务。该学院强调哈佛所说的“自由、民主和人权的价值观”，希望让新一代领导人接触到民主价值观。

“No one thought that was craven,” Mr. Schell said. “The idea was that, if we interact more, things will change more, and maybe China will slowly vacate its old Leninist past.”

“没人认为这是软弱行为，”夏伟说。“我们的想法是，如果我们互动更多，事情就会发生更大的变化，也许中国会慢慢摆脱列宁主义的过去。”

In retrospect, he said, it is clear that strategy failed.

他说，现在回想起来，很明显，这一战略失败了。

In a statement, the Kennedy School said it ended ties with China years ago, including the program for training Chinese civil servants.

肯尼迪学院在一份声明中说，该院多年前就结束了与中国的关系，包括培训中国公务员的项目。

“As the Chinese government became more internally repressive and externally assertive,” a spokesman for the Kennedy School said, “the school has discontinued those relationships.”

肯尼迪学院的一位发言人说：“随着中国政府对内变得更加压抑，对外变得更加自信，学校已经终止了这些关系。”

Perry Link, a Harvard alumnus and China scholar, said that American universities had sought to exchange academic ideas but also to raise money and attract wealthy and well-connected students.

哈佛毕业的中国问题学者林培瑞(Perry Link)说，美国大学不仅寻求学术思想的交流，同时也寻求资金，吸引有钱有势的学生。

And China welcomed the arrangements, he added.

他还说，这种安排是中国所乐见的。

“The Communist Party’s interest has been to catch up with the West in science in order to be as strong and wealthy as the West,” said Dr. Link, who was barred by China after assisting a Chinese dissident’s escape from the country.

“中国共产党的兴趣一直是在科学领域赶上西方，以便和西方一样强大和富有，”林培瑞说，他曾因协助一名中国异见者逃离中国而被中国禁止入境。

A Deepening Distrust

日益加深的不信任

As the U.S.-China relationship deteriorated, some politicians, mostly Republicans, expressed concern about Chinese influence in academia — and pointed out vulnerabilities with Harvard’s ties. In 2020, President Trump began an investigation into whether Harvard had properly disclosed its Chinese donors.

随着美中关系的恶化，一些政界人士，主要是共和党人，对中国在学术界的影响力表示担忧——并指出了哈佛与中国关系构成的薄弱环节。2020年，特朗普总统开始调查哈佛大学是否正确披露了其中国捐赠者的信息。

Harvard’s full list of Chinese donors and contracts is not public, but the university has said that its contracts primarily involve executive education programs and the sale and licensing of academic publications and materials produced by Harvard’s two presses.

哈佛大学没有公布中国捐赠者和合同的完整清单，但该大学表示，其合同主要涉及高管教育项目，以及哈佛两家出版社出版的学术出版物和材料的销售和许可。

As a result of the 2020 investigation, Harvard made additional disclosures and the Biden administration closed the investigation. The Trump administration opened a new investigation this year.

由于2020年的调查，哈佛大学披露了更多信息，拜登政府结束了调查。特朗普政府今年启动了一项新的调查。

Then in May, House Republicans sent a letter to the university demanding documents related to a large Chinese state-owned agricultural enterprise called Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or XPCC, which is subject to American sanctions for its treatment of Uyghur workers.

然后，在5月，众议院共和党人致函哈佛大学，要求提供与中国大型国有农业企业新疆生产建设兵团有关的文件，该企业因对待维吾尔工人的方式而受到美国的制裁。

位于波士顿的哈佛大学陈曾熙公共卫生学院在中国举行的会议受到了共和党人的批评。

The Department of Homeland Security followed with a letter claiming Harvard “hosted and trained” representatives of the company at conferences in China sponsored by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health — named for the Chan family. Mr. Rubio followed with the call for a sanctions investigation.

国土安全部随后致信称，哈佛大学“接待并培训”了新疆生产建设兵团的代表，参加由哈佛大学陈曾熙公共卫生学院在中国主办的会议。鲁比奥随后呼吁进行制裁调查。

A Harvard spokesman declined to comment.

哈佛大学的发言人拒绝置评。

Several administrations in Washington have raised concerns about academic collaborations and accused China of trying to steal scientific secrets. In the past year, both Georgia Tech and the University of California, Berkeley, announced that they are severing ties.

华盛顿的几届政府对学术合作表示担忧，并指责中国试图窃取科学机密。在过去的一年里，佐治亚理工学院和加州大学伯克利分校都宣布他们正在与中国切断联系。

In 2023, a Harvard scientist was convicted of lying about a deal with China to establish a research laboratory there. (No evidence emerged suggesting that Harvard was aware of the arrangement.) The researcher, Charles M. Lieber, the former chairman of the university’s chemistry department, served a brief prison sentence. He is now on the faculty of Tsinghua University.

2023年，一名哈佛科学家被判在与中国建立研究实验室的交易问题上撒谎。（没有证据表明哈佛知道这一安排。）这位研究人员名叫查尔斯·利伯，是哈佛大学化学系的前主任，他被判了短期监禁，现在清华大学任教。

At times, critics have accused Harvard of currying favor with actors in an increasingly authoritarian state. A survey published in 2020 by the Ash Center at the Kennedy School drew criticism from Mike Pompeo, secretary of state in the first Trump administration, after the Chinese government touted it as evidence that 90 percent of citizens were satisfied with their central government.

有时，批评人士指责哈佛大学讨好这个日益威权的国家里的行为者。肯尼迪学院阿什中心在2020年发布的一项调查遭到了特朗普第一届政府的国务卿迈克·庞皮欧的批评，因为中国政府将该报告作为90%的公民对中央政府满意的证据来宣传。

A spokesman for Harvard’s Kennedy School said that, contrary to the Chinese government’s messaging, the study found that Chinese residents held nuanced views about their government.

哈佛大学肯尼迪学院的一位发言人说，与中国政府传达的信息相反，这项研究发现，中国居民对他们的政府持有微妙的看法。

An author of the study, Tony Saich, a Harvard professor of international affairs, is on the board of AMC Entertainment. The company had been controlled by Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate that sold its controlling interest. Dr. Saich’s compensation from AMC last year was more than $300,000, according to the company’s report.

这项研究的作者之一，哈佛大学国际事务教授托尼·赛奇，是AMC娱乐公司的董事会成员。该公司曾由万达集团控制，但这家中国企业集团已经出售了其控股权。AMC的报告显示，赛奇去年从AMC获得的薪酬超过30万美元。

Dr. Saich said he became familiar with Wanda Group as a result of his appointment to the AMC board in 2012, adding that he learned about the donation after the fact.

赛奇表示，由于2012年被任命为AMC董事会成员，他开始熟悉万达集团，并补充说，他是在事后得知这笔捐赠的。

中国房地产开发商王健林成为了哈佛大学的主要捐赠人。

Wanda is controlled by Mr. Wang, who was once viewed as the richest man in China and whose American acquisitions once raised concern on Capitol Hill. In 2015, Dr. Faust met with Mr. Wang in Beijing, according to an announcement on the company’s website. The university subsequently announced a gift of $3.75 million from Mr. Wang to create a global institute focused on climate change.

万达由曾被视为中国首富的王健林控制，他在美国的收购一度引起国会的担忧。根据该公司网站上的公告，2015年，福斯特在北京与王健林见了面。哈佛大学随后宣布，王健林捐赠了375万美元，用于创建一个专注于气候变化的全球研究所。

Over time, Mr. Wang donated more money. In 2015, The New York Times disclosed his company’s ties to relatives of Xi Jinping, whom he would later defend in a presentation at Harvard.

随着时间的推移，王健林捐了更多的钱。2015年，《纽约时报》披露了他的公司与习近平亲属的关系，他后来在哈佛大学的一次演讲中为习近平辩护。

His business and influence, like those of several Chinese donors, has declined, however.

然而，他的生意和影响力，像其他几位中国捐赠者一样，已经下降。

Evergrande, whose founder, Hui Ka Yan, was a donor, filed for bankruptcy. The company reneged on its most recent pledge to Harvard, paying only a portion of a $115 million Covid research project.

另一名哈佛捐赠者许家印创办的恒大已经申请破产。该公司违背了最近对哈佛大学的承诺，只支付了1.15亿美元新冠病毒研究项目的一部分。

Mr. Xiao, the founder of China’s Tomorrow Group, fell out of favor with China’s leadership and is serving a 13-year jail term for financial fraud.

明天集团创始人肖建华失去了中国领导层的青睐，因金融欺诈被判处13年监禁，目前正在服刑。

In the fallout from President Trump’s attacks on Harvard, the Chan School of Public Health, which receives close to 46 percent of its budget in federal grants and contracts, and the Kennedy School have announced budget cuts.

在特朗普总统攻击哈佛的影响下，陈曾熙公共卫生学院和肯尼迪学院宣布削减预算。该公共卫生学院近46%的预算来自联邦拨款和合同。

Citing “unprecedented new headwinds,” the Kennedy School’s dean said last week that it would be forced to lay off employees.

肯尼迪学院院长上周表示，由于“前所未有的新阻力”，学院将被迫裁员。