In December 2022, China’s government abruptly ditched its strict Covid-19 pandemic controls after thousands of citizens protested against the social and economic pain they were causing. It was a complete surprise: Despite closely tracking the situation from afar, I and many other China watchers had failed to anticipate this sudden and major shift in government policy which deeply affected life in China and the country’s openness to the rest of the world.

2022年12月，中国政府突然放弃了严格的新冠疫情防控措施，在此之前，数千民众走上街头抗议这些措施给社会和经济带来的痛苦。这完全出乎我和许多中国观察者的意料：尽管我们一直从远处密切跟踪中国的情况，但都没有预料到政府政策会突然出现这种重大改变，这些政策深深地影响着中国人民的生活，以及中国对世界其他地区的开放程度。

Anticipating what China’s government will do has gotten even more difficult since then, as relations with the United States have deteriorated and as Beijing treats information that was once readily available like state secrets. This means that significant decisions on U.S. policy are being made based on diminishing insight into China’s internal dynamics, raising the risk of miscalculations.

那之后，随着中美关系恶化，中国政府将曾经可以轻易得到的信息视为国家机密，对中国政府的行动进行预测已变得更加困难。这意味着，美国正在把对华政策的重大决定建立在对中国内部动态越来越少的了解之上，这增加了误判的风险。

It’s a dangerous time to be flying blind. Misinterpreting China’s technological capabilities could endanger America’s competitive edge. Misreading Chinese domestic social pressures leaves us unprepared for major policy changes such as the sudden end of the Covid restrictions, and miscalculating Beijing’s intentions on Taiwan could inadvertently lead to a major global conflict.

现在是信息不足的危险时候。对中国技术能力的误解会危害美国的竞争优势。对中国国内社会压力的误读让我们在应对重大的政策变化（如突然结束新冠疫情限制措施）上缺乏准备，对中国政府台湾意图的误判可能会无意中引发一场重大的全球冲突。

For Western scholars of China, the era before the pandemic now feels like a distant golden age. Despite always tight Chinese information controls and opaque policymaking, academics could still visit the country, navigate archives, cultivate relationships with their Chinese counterparts and pursue research. The resulting academic findings were good for America: For decades, U.S. government agencies regularly called on scholars — and still do — to provide briefings and testimony and to mine their research for insights that were vital to informing American policy decisions.

对于研究中国的西方学者来说，新冠疫情之前的时代现在给人的感觉似乎是一个遥远的黄金时代。尽管中国对信息的控制一直很严，政府决策一直缺乏透明，但学者们以前仍能去中国访问，查阅档案，与中国同行建立联系，与他们一起做研究。由此产生的学术成果曾对美国有好处：几十年来，美国政府机构一直定期（现在依然如此）邀请学者去做情况介绍，在听证会上作证，从他们的研究中挖掘对美国的政策决策至关重要的见解。

Then came the pandemic. China sealed itself off from the world, slamming the door on academic fieldwork in the country by foreign scholars as well as in-person exchanges with Chinese officials and other contacts. The Covid restrictions were finally lifted, but the landscape for scholars had been transformed: There were fewer commercial flights to China, new restrictions on access to archives and interview subjects, heightened difficulties researching sensitive topics such as the pandemic and the slowing Chinese economy, and a generally more closed-off environment.

后来暴发了新冠病毒大流行。中国将自己与世界隔绝起来，对外国学者去中国进行学术实地研究、与中国官员和其他关系进行面对面的交流关闭了国门。虽然政府已解除了防控新冠疫情的限制措施，但学者们面临的研究环境已发生了变化：飞往中国的商业航班减少，政府对查阅档案、与受访者交谈进行了新的限制，研究新冠疫情和中国经济放缓等敏感问题的难度加大，中国的总体环境已变得更封闭。

Beijing’s jealous guarding and systematic manipulation of sensitive data, which has only increased under Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, compounds the challenge. The Chinese government hasn’t published a white paper on its defense strategy — which used to be issued every two or three years — since 2019, has restricted a range of key data including information that might offer clues into how many Chinese lives were taken by the pandemic, and in 2023 began restricting international access to a critical database of Chinese academic papers, statistics and other information.

在习近平领导下，中国政府对敏感数据的小心防范和系统性操纵有增无减，加剧了这一挑战。自2019年以来，中国政府一直没有发布其国防战略白皮书（过去每两三年发布一次），中国限制了一系列关键数据，包括可能提供线索了解中国有多少人死于疫情的信息，中国还于2023年开始限制国际访问一个中国学术论文、统计数据和其他信息的关键数据库。

Unlike during the Cold War, when the United States preserved scholarly exchanges with Moscow, academic and other engagement with China has fallen out of favor owing to geopolitical and national security concerns. The Fulbright academic exchange program in China, which sent thousands of American and Chinese students between the two countries over a span of decades until President Trump suspended it in his first term, remains inactive, and American universities are scaling back partnerships with China. Only around 1,100 American college students are studying in China these days, compared to 15,000 a decade ago. The resulting information fog forces China scholars in the West to rely on remote analysis and open sources, such as official Chinese media and social media, the very methods that proved inadequate in anticipating the change in Covid policy in late 2022.

冷战期间，美国仍与莫斯科保持学术交流，与当时不同，由于地缘政治和国家安全方面的考虑，如今与中国的学术和其他接触已不再受青睐。几十年来，富布赖特学术交流项目在中美两国之间输送了数以千计的学生，直到特朗普总统在他的第一个任期内暂停了该项目。该项目目前仍处于非活动状态。美国大学正在缩减与中国的合作伙伴关系。如今只有大约1100名美国大学生在中国留学，然而十年前有1.5万人。由此产生的信息迷雾迫使西方的中国学者依赖远程分析和公开资源，如中国官方媒体和社交媒体，这些方法在预测2022年底新冠政策变化时已被证明是不够的。

Under this climate, researchers are forced to cite one another’s work heavily, which adds little new insight. Some are retreating to historical topics for which archival materials remain available. The frustrating shortage of information can lead to sharp disputes among scholars, as when a recent report by the RAND Corporation triggered heavy criticism from other China experts for concluding that the Chinese military was not yet ready to wage war. Some researchers are simply avoiding sensitive topics due to the limited data available on them or out of concern that they could be denied future access to China if their findings are unflattering to the Chinese government. When I submitted a grant proposal last year for research in China, one of the project’s reviewers, citing safety concerns, suggested I redirect my study to Hong Kong instead — a throwback to the Cold War, when China watchers had to piece together an inadequate understanding of the country from the relative safety of Hong Kong.

在这种氛围下，研究人员被迫大量引用彼此的研究成果，这几乎没有增加新的见解。有些人退回到档案材料仍然可用的历史课题。令人沮丧的信息短缺可能会导致学者之间的激烈争论，比如兰德公司最近的一份报告得出结论，认为中国军队尚未准备好发动战争，它引发了其他中国问题专家的严厉批评。一些研究人员回避敏感话题，只是因为可获得的数据有限，或者担心如果他们的研究结果不利于中国政府，将来与中国的接触可能会被拒绝。去年，我提交了一份在中国进行研究的拨款申请时，项目审查人之一以安全问题为由，建议我将研究地点改到香港——这就像是回到冷战时期，当时中国问题观察人士不得不在相对安全的香港拼凑出对中国的不充分了解。

Leaders in Washington should recognize that in-depth scholarly understanding of China is a strategic necessity for the United States, arguably rivaling even military preparation or intelligence gathering in importance. Yet our window on China is clouding up. Miscalculations are inevitable: Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden made the sweeping declaration that China’s economic strength “will never surpass us. Period.” Two weeks later, the unexpected revelation of the Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence breakthrough shattered assumptions about U.S. technological supremacy and caused a global rout in tech stocks. Yet the Trump administration is further obscuring America’s view of China: Its suspension of foreign aid threatens the work of nonprofits that track a wide range of developments in China including business trends, human rights and social unrest, as well as Chinese cybersecurity threats and other potentially malicious activities overseas.

华盛顿的领导人应该认识到，对中国的深入学术了解对美国来说是一项战略需要，其重要性甚至可以同军事准备或情报收集相媲美。然而，我们观察中国的窗口正在变得阴云密布。误判是不可避免的：就在卸任前，拜登总统大张旗鼓地宣称，中国的经济实力“永远不会超过我们”。两周后，中国初创公司深度求索出人意料地带来了人工智能方面的突破，打破了人们对美国科技优势的假设，并引发了全球科技股的暴跌。然而，特朗普政府正在进一步模糊美国对中国的看法：它暂停对外援助的做法威胁到非营利组织的工作，这些组织追踪中国的各种发展，包括商业趋势、人权和社会动荡，以及中国的网络安全威胁和其他潜在的海外恶意活动。

There are important steps the United States can take. Besides preserving the information sources that already exist, it should launch major new China-focused research initiatives. One good example already exists in the Soviet Interview Project, a cooperative effort between U.S. academia and government that interviewed Soviet émigrés in the early 1980s and added to our understanding of life in the Soviet Union at the time. Similar information could be gleaned from the record numbers of Chinese immigrants entering the United States in recent years and made accessible to all scholars. China researchers also need to develop new ways of working with the often patchy information at their disposal, such as through artificial intelligence tools, an effort that would require concerted support from research foundations and, ideally, government funding.

美国可以采取一些重要的步骤。除了保留现有的信息来源外，它还应该发起新的、以中国为重点的重大研究计划。苏联访谈项目就是一个很好的例子，该项目是美国学术界和政府之间的一项合作努力，在20世纪80年代初对苏联移民进行了访谈，加深了我们对当时苏联生活的了解。类似的信息也可以从近年来进入美国的创纪录中国移民中收集，并提供给所有学者。中国问题研究人员还需要开发新的方法，来处理他们掌握的往往零散的信息，比如通过人工智能工具，这一努力需要研究基金会的一致支持，最好获得政府资助。

It is also more imperative than ever for the United States to rebuild American interest in China studies and the institutional bridges on which it depends. At minimum, this must include a resumption of the Fulbright program in China and similar initiatives while securing robust Chinese government commitments to protect authorized academic research and the scholars carrying it out.

美国也比以往任何时候都更有必要重建美国对中国研究的兴趣，以及其所依赖的机构桥梁。至少，这必须包括在中国恢复富布赖特项目和类似的计划，同时确保中国政府作出强有力的承诺，保护得到授权的学术研究和从事这些研究的学者。

But Washington should go even further by seeking a wider diplomatic agreement on cultural, educational and technical exchanges similar to one that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union and which was widely credited with building the mutual trust that helped hasten the Cold War’s end. China already has signaled interest in more academic exchange: Mr. Xi pledged in late 2023 to host 50,000 American students over the ensuing five years, but safety concerns and the tense climate have so far limited the U.S. response.

但华盛顿应该更进一步，寻求在文化、教育和技术交流方面达成更广泛的外交协议，类似于美苏之间存在过的那种协议，这些协议被广泛认为有助于建立互信，从而加速了冷战的结束。中国已经表示有兴趣进行更多的学术交流：习近平于2023年底承诺在接下来的五年内接待5万名美国学生，但到目前为止，安全顾虑和紧张的气氛限制了美国的回应。

In “The Art of War,” the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu famously counseled that if you know your enemy and yourself, you’ll be victorious in 100 battles. That ancient wisdom has never been more relevant for the United States than it is today.

在《孙子兵法》中，中国军事家孙子提出了“知己知彼，百战不殆”的著名论断。对于今天的美国来说，这一古老智慧比以往任何时候都更加具有现实意义。