It’s not an easy time to be an American multinational company that sells to or buys from China. As the governments of the United States and China butt heads, they’re pressuring companies to take sides.

在这个时候当一家向中国销售或从中国采购的美国跨国公司可不容易。随着美中两国政府针锋相对，它们也在逼迫企业选边站。

Look at Ford. In January, the heads of two congressional committees asked the Biden administration to investigate four Chinese companies that they said were involved in Ford’s planned battery factory in Michigan. The committee chairs claimed that the companies had ties to the Chinese military, the Communist Party, the North Korean government and human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.

看看福特。今年1月，美国国会两个委员会的负责人要求拜登政府调查四家中国公司，他们称这些公司参与了福特在密歇根州建电池厂的计划。这两名委员会主席声称，那四家公司与中国军方、中共、朝鲜政府，以及中国在新疆地区侵犯人权的行为有关。

Or look at Apple. As this newspaper has reported, “For years, Apple has bowed to Beijing’s demands that it block an array of apps, including newspapers, VPNs and encrypted messaging services.” Apple “also built a data center in the country to house Chinese citizens’ iCloud information, which includes personal contacts, photos and email,” The Times wrote.

或者看看苹果。如本报报道，“多年来，苹果一直屈服于北京方面的要求，屏蔽了一系列应用程序，包括报纸、VPN和加密消息服务。”苹果“还在中国建了一个数据中心，用于存储中国公民的iCloud信息，包括个人通讯录、照片和电子邮件，”时报的报道写道。

The two companies — which once saw business with China as a major bright spot — are repeatedly forced to scramble to explain. Ford, for example, told Reuters it follows U.S. government regulations “across our business.” Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook talks up the company’s Americanness: “I know that a company like Apple could only come from America — and we are as committed as ever to giving back to our great country,” he said in Arizona in 2022.

这两家美国公司都曾把在中国开展业务视为一大亮点，现在却多次被迫艰难地做出解释。例如，福特对路透社说，“我们的所有业务”都遵守美国政府的法规。苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克大谈公司的美国特色：“我知道像苹果这样的公司只能来自美国，而且我们一如既往地致力于回报我们伟大的国家，”2022年，他在亚利桑那州说。

An analysis released Monday by Strategy Risks, a 12-person business intelligence company focused on relations with China, lists Ford first and Apple third in a ranking of exposure to China among the 250 biggest publicly traded firms in the United States. (Second on the list is Carrier Global, the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning company.) Other analysts might rank the companies lower. You could make a case that Tesla, ranked fourth by Strategy Risks, is more exposed than Ford, Carrier or Apple. But the publication of the list nonetheless invites a look at the China strategies of two of America’s most famous companies.

由12人组成的专门研究企业与中国关系的商业情报公司“战略风险”周一发布的分析称，在市值排名前250的美国上市公司中，福特在面对中国的风险方面排名第一，苹果排第三。（排第二的是供暖、通风和空调公司开利全球。）其他分析师可能会把这些公司排在更靠后的位置。可以论证被“战略风险”排在第四的特斯拉比福特、开利或苹果面临的风险要高。不过，这份排名的公布还是令人们审视美国两家最著名公司的中国战略。

The question that bedevils American C.E.O.s is how close to get to Chinese frenemies: companies that can be both friends as partners and enemies as competitors. The Chinese market is lucrative, but American companies that have entered it have given the Chinese valuable intellectual property — sometimes willingly, sometimes not.

困扰美国首席执行官的问题是，如何把握与中国公司的“亦敌亦友”关系：这些公司既可以是合作的朋友，也可以是竞争的敌人。中国市场利润丰厚，但进入中国市场的美国公司已将宝贵的知识产权交给了中国——有时是自愿的，有时不是。

As Chinese companies have caught up and in some cases surpassed American companies in technology, the new question for the American ones is whether to attempt to fight their way back to the forefront, at great cost, or cede the market to the Chinese and become their customers.

随着中国公司在技术方面迎头赶上，并在某些情况下超过美国公司，美国公司面临的新问题是，是付出巨大代价、试图重新返回领先地位，还是将市场拱手让给中国公司，成为它们的客户。

That’s the dilemma these days for Jim Farley, who has been the chief executive of Ford since 2020. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Farley returned from a China trip in May amazed by Chinese companies’ progress in electric vehicles, telling a fellow Ford board member that “this is an existential threat.”

这就是自2020年以来一直担任福特首席执行官的吉姆·法利这些日子里面临的两难选择。《华尔街日报》9月报道，法利今年5月从中国访问回来后，对中国公司在电动汽车领域的进展感到惊讶，他对福特董事会的一名同事说，“这是个生存威胁。”

Ford has predicted it will lose around $5 billion on its electric vehicle operations in 2024. That’s in spite of high tariffs that block Chinese E.V.’s from the American market. In August Ford announced it was pulling the plug on an all-electric, three-row sport utility vehicle and delaying the rollout of a large electric pickup truck by about 18 months, to 2027.

福特预计，其电动汽车业务将在2024年亏损约50亿美元。这还是在高额关税阻止了中国电动汽车进入美国市场的情况下。福特今年8月宣布，公司停止了一款全电动三排座运动型多用途车的生产，并将电动大型皮卡车的推出时间推迟18个月至2027年。

Farley is steering a middle course with regard to China. Ford is taking subsidies from the U.S. government to make batteries in Michigan. But it’s licensing technology for them from China’s C.A.T.L., the world’s largest maker of E.V. batteries. That amounts to an acknowledgment of Chinese technological leadership, coupled with a commitment to in-house manufacturing.

法利在中国问题上正在采取中间路线。福特正在接受美国政府的补贴，在密歇根州生产电池。但它也在从中国最大的电动汽车电池制造商宁德时代获得电池技术许可。这等于承认了中国在技术上的领先地位，同时也致力于国内制造。

Farley’s latest tactic for keeping up with Chinese competition is setting up a new operation in the Los Angeles area to design electric vehicles that will be entirely new from the pavement up, built around those new batteries.

为了跟上中国竞争者的步伐，法利的最新策略是在洛杉矶地区建立一个设计彻底全新电动汽车的新机构，这些汽车将以新电池为基础。

It might work, or it might not. Some Wall Street analysts are skeptical. “Focus on your core,” John Murphy, a Bank of America analyst, said in a talk in June. He said Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, should focus on selling gasoline-powered trucks in North America, which remain highly profitable, while “ultimately investing in autonomous connected and electric vehicles over time.” (Ford says its Chinese operations have turned profitable.)

这也许能成功，也许不成功。一些华尔街分析师对此持怀疑态度。“专注于你的核心业务，”美国银行的分析师约翰·墨菲在今年6月的一次讲话中说。他说，福特、通用汽车和克莱斯勒母公司斯特兰蒂斯应该专注于在北美销售汽油驱动的卡车，这些车仍利润丰厚，同时“随着时间推移，最终投资自动驾驶的联网和电动汽车”。（福特称其中国业务已实现盈利。）

Apple, though still widely admired in China, is losing market share in smartphones and encountering political headwinds. While Apple has tried to remain in the good graces of the government, Chinese agencies and government-backed firms have banned their employees from bringing iPhones and other foreign devices to work. Jon Stewart’s show on Apple’s streaming service ended last year partly because potential show topics related to China and artificial intelligence were causing concern among Apple executives, The Times reported.

尽管苹果在中国仍广受推崇，但它正在失去中国智能手机市场的份额，并遇到了政治阻力。虽然苹果一直试图博得政府的欢心，中国政府部门和得到政府支持的公司已禁止员工在工作时使用iPhone和其他外国设备。据时报报道，乔恩·斯图尔特去年停止了在苹果流媒体服务上的节目，部分原因是节目中可能有涉及中国和人工智能的话题，在苹果高管们中引起不安。

Apple has made moves to reduce its reliance on Chinese sources for parts but has made little progress. Nikkei Asia reported in April that Apple increased its use of parts from China-headquartered suppliers and Chinese manufacturing sites in 2023, while using fewer suppliers from Taiwan, the United States, Japan and South Korea. Apple said in March that it was expanding a research center in Shanghai and opening a new lab in Shenzhen, the tech hub near Hong Kong.

苹果已采取措施，降低在零部件方面对中国承包商的依赖，但进展缓慢。据《日经亚洲》今年4月的报道，苹果曾在2023年增加了来自总部设在中国的供应商和中国制造点的零部件使用，同时减少来自台湾、美国、日本和韩国供应商的零部件使用。苹果今年3月表示，正在扩建上海的一个研究中心，并在香港附近的科技中心深圳开设一个新实验室。

“Everyone has the same dilemma” of fearing over-dependence on China but also worrying about becoming uncompetitive if they pull out, James Andrew Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. “People are hedging their bets.”

“每个企业都面临着同样的两难选择”，既担心过度依赖中国，又担心如果退出将失去竞争力，战略与国际研究中心的高级副总裁詹姆斯·安德鲁·刘易斯对我说。“大家都在两面下注以对冲风险。”

“It would take Apple a decade to get out of China” even if it wanted to, Jeff Fieldhack, a research director for Counterpoint Research, told me. “It’s not just the building of devices. It’s the huge ecosystem of components.”

即使苹果想那样做，“摆脱中国也将需要十年时间，”Counterpoint Research的研究主管杰夫·菲尔德哈克对我说。“这不只是制造设备的问题。这涉及到一个庞大的零部件生态系统。”

An Apple spokesman declined to discuss the company’s exposure to China. The company says it designs all its products in California and has more than 90,000 employees in the United States, versus about 16,000 in “Greater China,” which for Apple includes Taiwan.

苹果发言人拒绝讨论公司面对中国的风险。该公司表示，苹果的所有产品都在加州设计，在美国有9万多名员工，相比之下，公司在“大中华区”（这是苹果将台湾包括进来的说法）的员工人数约为1.6万。

If tensions between China and the United States continue to ratchet up, the pressure on companies that straddle the two markets will only intensify. There is no easy way out.

如果中美之间的紧张局势继续加剧的话，同时在这两个市场做生意的公司面临的压力只会增加。没有简单的出路。