In its rivalry with the United States, China has racked up a series of wins in recent weeks.

在与美国的竞争中，中国在最近几周取得了一系列胜利。

The Trump administration has softened its criticism of China’s Communist Party in a strategy document. It has reopened a channel for high-end chip sales that Washington once treated as untouchable. And President Trump has held his tongue as a key U.S. ally in Asia faces Chinese intimidation for backing Taiwan.

特朗普政府在一份战略文件中软化了对中国共产党的批评。它重新开放了曾被华盛顿视为禁区的高端芯片销售渠道。并且，当美国的一个亚洲关键盟友因支持台湾而面临中国恐吓时，特朗普总统保持了沉默。

For Beijing, the shifts in Washington’s approach suggest that Mr. Trump has less of an appetite for confronting China over ideology, technology and diplomacy. Some commentators in China have hailed these developments as irrefutable signs of American decline and Chinese ascendancy.

对于北京来说，华盛顿的这些立场转变表明，特朗普不再那么热衷于在意识形态、技术和外交方面与中国对抗。中国一些评论员称这些进展无可辩驳地体现了美国的衰落和中国的崛起。

Mr. Trump’s decision on Monday to allow some advanced chips to be sold to China, the prominent Chinese technology executive Zhou Hongyi said on social media, showed how China’s unstoppable technological rise had “pushed the United States against a wall.”

中国知名科技高管周鸿祎在社交媒体上表示，特朗普周一允许向中国出售一些先进芯片的决定表明，中国不可阻挡的技术崛起已将“美国逼到墙角”。

The Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, pointed to the White House’s new national security strategy, which focuses more on the Western Hemisphere than China, as “evidence of the U.S. acknowledging its relative decline in power.” Washington has realized “it cannot afford the costs of prolonged confrontation” with China, the nationalist blog Jiuwanli similarly concluded.

共产党报纸《环球时报》指出，新的白宫国家安全战略将更多重点放在西半球而非中国，是“美国承认其相对实力下降的证据”。民族主义博客“九万里”也得出类似结论：在对华问题上，华盛顿已经意识到“难以承受长期全面对抗产生的巨大代价”。

And Mr. Trump has remained publicly silent as China has mounted a pressure campaign against Japan, a U.S. ally, over that country’s support for Taiwan. Beijing has summoned Japanese diplomats, canceled flights, curbed tourism and stepped up military flights near Japanese airspace, including with Russia, to highlight its displeasure.

而当中国针对美国的盟友日本、就其支持台湾的言论发起施压行动时，特朗普在公开场合一直保持沉默。北京召见了日本外交官、取消航班、限制旅游，并增加了靠近日本领空的军事飞行，包括与俄罗斯的联合行动，以表达其不满。

上月，中国保安人员在驻华日本大使馆门口执勤。关于中国就日本支持台湾问题对日施加的压力，特朗普始终保持公开沉默。

This is Mr. Trump’s more transactional diplomacy in action, according to Chinese analysts. In this less hawkish, more pragmatic approach, China is seen not as a threat to U.S. supremacy that must be contained, but as a major nation to be negotiated with.

根据中国分析人士的说法，这是特朗普更注重交易的外交在起作用。在这种不那么鹰派、更加务实的思维下，中国不再被视为必须遏制的美国霸权威胁，而是一个必须与之谈判的重要国家。

That shift was laid out plainly in Mr. Trump’s national security strategy, released last week. It recast the U.S.-China rivalry as chiefly an economic contest and not a struggle over security or political systems. The strategy’s stated priority: establishing a “mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.”

这种转变在上周发布的特朗普国家安全战略中被明确阐述。它将中美竞争重新定义为主要是一场经济竞赛，而非安全或政治制度之争。该战略的既定优先事项是：建立“与北京互利的经济关系”。

And unlike previous presidents, Mr. Trump showed no interest in the longstanding American project of promoting democracy in China. For the first time in more than 30 years, the national security strategy did not criticize China’s authoritarian rule or press Beijing to uphold human rights — sentiments echoed by presidents from George H.W. Bush to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and even to Mr. Trump himself in 2017, during his first term.

而且，与前几任总统不同，特朗普对美国长期以来在中国推行民主的项目不感兴趣。这是30多年来，国家安全战略首次没有批评中国的威权统治或敦促北京维护人权——这一立场曾被从老布什到小拜登的历任总统所坚持，甚至特朗普本人在2017年首个任期时也曾表达过相同观点。

The strategy showed that “China’s push to make the international system friendlier to autocracy is no longer on our list of priorities,” said Caroline Costello, assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, who analyzed previous national security strategies released since 1986, when Congress began requiring U.S. presidents to submit their foreign policy visions.

大西洋理事会全球中国中心助理主任卡罗琳·科斯特洛表示，该战略表明“中国推动国际体系对威权更友好的做法已不再是我们的优先事项”，她分析了1986年国会开始要求美国总统提交外交政策愿景后以来历届总统的国家安全战略。

Xin Qiang, a U.S.-China expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that the strategy showed that the Trump administration had finally realized that “trying to change China by playing the ideological card is neither possible nor feasible.”

复旦大学中美问题专家信强表示，该战略表明特朗普政府终于意识到，“试图通过打意识形态牌来改变中国既不可能，也不可行。”

“At least since Trump took office in his second term, he hasn’t shown a strong ideological drive in his China policy. It’s what we call ‘profit-driven,’” he said, adding that this was good for China.

“至少特朗普在他第二个任期上任以来，他的对华政策没有表现出强烈的意识形态驱动。这就是我们所说的‘利益驱动’，”他说，并补充说这对中国是好事。

Mr. Trump’s transactional bent may help explain why his administration reversed export controls on critical artificial intelligence technology that can help China economically and militarily. It granted Nvidia, the American chip maker, permission to begin selling its second-most-powerful semiconductor to China. The U.S. government would receive 25 percent of all the revenues from the sales, Mr. Trump said in a social media post, a trade that critics said prioritizes short-term economic gain over long-term American security interests.

特朗普的交易倾向可能有助于解释为什么他的政府撤销了可能对中国经济和军事发展有帮助的关键人工智能技术的出口管制。它批准美国芯片制造商英伟达开始向中国出售其性能排名第二的半导体。特朗普在社交媒体帖子中表示，美国政府将从所有销售收入中得到25%的提成，批评人士称这种交易将短期经济收益置于美国长期安全利益之上。

英伟达总裁兼首席执行官黄仁勋于10月在华盛顿出席会议。特朗普政府已批准英伟达向中国销售其性能第二强大的半导体产品。

The latest moves by the Trump administration, in some ways, extend the conciliatory posture Mr. Trump struck at his summit with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in October. That meeting resulted in the United States walking back tariffs after China flexed its leverage by withholding exports of rare earths, critical minerals needed for almost all modern manufacturing, and soybean purchases.

在某些方面，特朗普政府的最新举措延续了他去年10月与中国领导人习近平会晤时所采取的和解姿态。那次会晤的结果是，在中国通过限制出口稀土——几乎所有现代制造业所需的关键矿物——以及大豆采购来发挥影响力之后，美国撤回了关税。

The two leaders spoke again last month, after which Mr. Trump said he had accepted an invitation from Mr. Xi to visit Beijing in April.

两位领导人于上个月再次通话，此后特朗普表示，他已接受了习近平的访华邀请，访问定于明年4月。

David Sacks, a fellow in Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr. Trump was clearly thinking about that Beijing meeting when the White House released its national security strategy. “I think he likely wants to have maximum negotiating space in that meeting, and perhaps more pointed language on China he might view as constraining that space,” he said.

美国对外关系委员会亚洲研究员戴维·萨克斯表示，白宫发布国家安全战略时，特朗普显然已经把北京会晤纳入考量。他说：“我认为他可能希望在那次会晤中拥有最大的谈判空间，而他可能认为更具针对性的对华措辞会限制这种空间。”

For Beijing, the shift from containment to competition amounts to a strategic victory. It validates China’s argument that countries should not interfere in the matters of other states or impinge on their development, and that there is no such thing as universal human rights that all countries should protect.

对于北京来说，从遏制到竞争的转变相当于一次战略胜利。它证实了中国的论点，即国家不应干涉他国内政或阻碍其发展，并且不存在所有国家都应保护的普世人权。

It also gives Mr. Xi more room to be aggressive in the region. China has repeatedly criticized Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, for saying that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could incite a military response from Tokyo. China escalated its campaign on Japan on Tuesday, by sending Chinese fighter jets and bombers alongside two nuclear-capable Russian bombers near Japanese islands.

这也给了习近平在该地区采取更激进行动的空间。中国一再批评日本首相高市早苗，因为她表示中国若对台湾发起攻击，可能引发东京的军事反应。周二，中国加大了对日本的行动力度，派遣战斗机和轰炸机，与两架具备核打击能力的俄罗斯轰炸机一同靠近日本岛屿。

When Japan’s defense minister complained that the show of force by China on Tuesday had been a threat to his country’s national security, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry shrugged off the criticism, describing the exercises as a “demonstration of the determination and capability” of his country and Russia to deal with regional security challenges. (On Wednesday, Japan and the United States conducted a joint military exercise over the Sea of Japan to demonstrate the strength of their countries’ alliance, Japan said.)

当日本防卫大臣抱怨周二的武力展示对其国家安全构成威胁时，中国国防部发言人对此不屑一顾，称这些演习是“展示”中国和俄罗斯应对地区安全挑战的“决心与能力”。（日本表示，日本和美国周三在日本海举行了联合军事演习，以展示两国联盟的力量。）

日本防卫省公布的照片显示，日美两国周三在日本海上空举行联合飞行演习。日本表示，此次演习旨在展示两国同盟的实力。

Chinese analysts say Mr. Trump’s more pragmatic approach to China should herald a more stable and predictable chapter in the relationship. In response to Mr. Trump’s national security strategy, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that Beijing also wanted “mutually beneficial economic relations” and hoped the United States would continue working with China to “shrink the list of issues” between the two countries.

中国分析人士表示，特朗普对中国采取的更务实方法预示着两国关系将进入一个更稳定和可预测的阶段。本周，中国外交部对特朗普的国家安全战略回应称，北京也希望建立“互利的经济关系”，并希望美国继续与中国合作，“压缩问题清单。”

But others point out that any let up in U.S. pressure on China is only temporary. Meng Weizhan, a social sciences researcher at Fudan University, wrote in an article for the Qianhai Institute for International Affairs in Shenzhen that the Trump administration was still targeting China, just less overtly.

但也有人指出，美国对中国的任何缓解压力的举措都只是暂时的。复旦大学社会科学高等研究院的社会科学研究员孟维瞻博士在为深圳前海国际事务研究院撰写的一篇文章中写道，特朗普政府仍在针对中国，只是不那么公开。

“It’s possible that over the next three years, Trump’s policy toward China will not be excessively aggressive or hard-line,” Dr. Meng wrote. “After he leaves office, you might even think his presidency ‘wasn’t all that bad’ for China.”

“或许未来三年特朗普在对华政策上不会表现得过于激烈强硬，”孟维瞻写道。“甚至等他卸任后回头看，你会觉得他当政时期对中国‘并不算太坏’。”

But, according to Dr. Meng, Mr. Trump might even be taking inspiration from the dictum made famous by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: “Hide your strength and bide your time.” By focusing on regrouping and rebuilding America’s economic and technological edge, the United States will be able to better compete with China in the future.

但是，在他看来，特朗普甚至可能在借鉴中国领导人邓小平著名的格言“韬光养晦”。通过专注于重组和重建美国的经济和技术优势，美国将能够在未来更好地与中国竞争。

“The underlying essence of the United States’ strategy toward China has not changed: to maintain its own dominant position, and to prevent and contain China’s rise,” he wrote.

“美国对华战略的底色是不变的，那就是维持自身优势地位、防范和遏制中国崛起，”他写道。