After meeting with China’s top diplomat in Malaysia last summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio uttered a line that made few waves at the time but would later help pave the way for an abrupt change.

去年夏天在马来西亚会见中国最高外交官后，国务卿鲁比奥说了一句话，当时未引起太大动静，但这句话后来为突如其来的政策转变铺平了道路。

The United States and China, Mr. Rubio said, had an “opportunity here to achieve some strategic stability” and find areas of cooperation. He used the phrase again in February while talking about China in the Caribbean, also to little notice.

鲁比奥表示，美中两国“在此有机会实现某种战略稳定”，并找到合作领域。今年2月在加勒比地区谈论中国问题时，他又一次使用了这个说法，同样未引起多少关注。

Chinese officials picked up on Mr. Rubio’s remarks and suggested to their U.S. counterparts even rosier language to describe ties between the two nations, according to two people with knowledge of the previously unreported diplomacy.

据两名知情人士透露，中方官员注意到了鲁比奥的言论，并向美方对口官员提出了用更积极的措辞来描述两国关系的建议。这一外交动向此前未曾被报道过。

The new phrase — “constructive strategic stability” — was rolled out by both governments during President Trump’s meeting in Beijing last month with the leader of China, Xi Jinping.

特朗普总统上月在北京与中国领导人习近平会晤期间，两国政府共同正式推出了一个新表述——“建设性战略稳定关系”。

Although the language sounds stiff and somewhat vague, such diplomatic terms serve as important guideposts. The new catchphrase signals to agencies in both nations, and to other powers, that the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies and most powerful militaries — are looking to work together or limit hostilities, notably on trade and Taiwan.

尽管这一表述听来生硬、略显模糊，但此类外交术语往往具有重要的指向意义。这个新口号向两国政府机构及其他大国传递出一个信号：美中两国——世界最大的两个经济体和最强军事力量——正寻求合作或控制对抗，尤其是在贸易和台湾问题上。

Mr. Trump’s new policy with Beijing has stirred questions and anxieties across Asia, from Taipei to Delhi to Manila, sending officials in the region scrambling to recalibrate their own approaches to the United States and China.

特朗普对华政策的新走向在亚洲各地引发了疑虑与不安，从台北到新德里，再到马尼拉，各国官员纷纷忙于重新校准本国对美国和中国的策略。

The signals from the Americans became sharper over a series of official visits to Asia in recent weeks: Mr. Trump and his top aides to Beijing; Mr. Rubio to India; and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to Singapore.

过去几周，随着一系列高层访问——特朗普及其高级幕僚访问北京、鲁比奥访问印度、国防部长海格塞斯访问新加坡，美方发出的信号变得更加明确。

At an annual military forum, Mr. Hegseth said there was “rightful alarm” in Asia about China’s military buildup and activities, but he also declared, “We respect their ambitions.” He did not mention Taiwan, making him the first defense secretary in more than a decade not to do so at the forum.

在一个年度军事论坛上，海格塞思表示，亚洲各国对于中国的军事扩张和军事行动产生了“合理的担忧”，但他同时也宣称：“我们尊重他们的抱负。”他没有提及台湾问题，这使他成为十多年来首位在该论坛上未谈及台湾的美国国防部长。

今年早些时候，国防部长海格塞斯（左）在新加坡举行的一个论坛上与韩国国防部长官安圭伯（右）及日本防卫大臣小泉进次郎交谈。

After his meetings in China, Mr. Trump effusively praised Mr. Xi, calling him a towering leader out of “central casting.” But more important, Mr. Trump said he was holding “in abeyance” arms sales to Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” with China, and that the United States and China were forming a “G2” of equal superpowers. “It’s the two great countries,” he told Fox News.

在结束访华行程后，特朗普对习近平大加赞赏，称他是那种教科书般的强势领导人。但更为重要的是，特朗普表示他正将对台军售“暂时搁置”，以此作为与中国谈判的“筹码”，并称美中两国正在形成一个由平起平坐的超级大国构成的“G2”。“这是两个伟大的国家，”他在接受福克斯新闻采访时说。

Current and former officials in the United States and Asia say the message is clear: Mr. Trump intends to accommodate China, and other countries should fall in line.

美国及亚洲地区的现任和前任官员表示，特朗普传递的信息很明确：他打算与中国协调相处，其他国家也应顺势而为。

The new policy is a sharp departure from Mr. Trump’s aggressive approach during his first term. It comes after China’s retaliation during a trade war last year forced Mr. Trump to retreat.

这一新政策与特朗普第一任期内的对华强硬路线大相径庭。这是在去年贸易战中中国的反制迫使特朗普收手之后出现的转变。

“For now at least, the perspective of the Chinese government is that their relationship with the Trump administration is better than they had ever expected,” said Yun Sun, a China scholar at the Stimson Center, a foreign policy research group.

“至少就目前而言，中国政府的看法是，他们与特朗普政府的关系比此前预想的要好得多，”外交政策研究机构史汀生中心研究中国问题的学者孙韵表示。

“They see Trump as an opportunity to cultivate a positive view of China,” said Ms. Sun, who was in Beijing during the summit. “They think maybe they can use the next two and a half years to show people that China isn’t as bad as everyone thinks it is.” She added that Chinese officials are especially keen to sway opinions in foreign policy and national security circles in Washington.

“他们把特朗普视为一个塑造中国正面形象的机会，”峰会期间人在北京的孙韵说。“他们认为，也许可以利用未来两年半的时间向外界证明，中国并不像很多人想象的那么糟糕。”她还补充说，中国官员尤其希望影响华盛顿外交政策和国家安全圈子的看法。

The White House insists that the new “constructive relationship of strategic stability” is linked to “fairness and reciprocity.” In a sign that some competition will continue, the Pentagon on Monday added several large Chinese technology companies and an electric carmaker to a list of enterprises linked to China’s military, an effort to limit their global trade.

白宫坚称，新的“建设性战略稳定关系”与“公平和互惠”挂钩。作为某种竞争仍将持续的信号，五角大楼周一将数家中国大型科技公司和一家电动汽车制造商列入与中国军方有关联的企业名单，试图限制它们的全球贸易活动。

But China has not adopted the Trump administration’s framing of the new phrase. The Chinese government has stressed that the language prioritizes cooperation. “It should be constant stability where differences are manageable, and the relationship should not be like a roller coaster,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement.

但中国并未完全接受特朗普政府对这一新表述的解读。中国政府指出，这一措辞首先强调的是合作。中国驻华盛顿大使馆在声明中表示：“应该是分歧可控的常态稳定，不能像过山车一样起伏不定。”

上个月，习近平在北京欢迎特朗普总统。特朗普表示，访华期间两人“非常深入地”讨论了台湾问题和对台军售问题。

Mr. Xi has been even bolder. In a speech during the summit, he told Mr. Trump that “great changes unseen in a century are accelerating” — a phrase he has used before to describe the decline of American power. Mr. Xi also urged Mr. Trump to try to avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” the theory that a rising power and an established power are likely to go to war.

习近平的表态则更加大胆。在峰会期间的一次讲话中，他告诉特朗普，“世界百年未有之大变局正在加速演进”——这是他过去用来描述美国实力衰落的一种说法。习近平还敦促特朗普避免落入“修昔底德陷阱”，即新兴强国与既有强国容易走向战争的理论。

Mr. Trump has acknowledged Mr. Xi’s assertion of superpower equality. In a social media post, he wrote that Mr. Xi had “very elegantly” mentioned U.S. decline, but argued that was a reference to the Biden era.

特朗普承认了习近平关于超级大国平等地位的说法。他在社交媒体上写道，习近平“非常巧妙地”提到了美国的衰落，但他辩称，那指的是拜登执政时期。

China has been pressing the United States to formally recognize it as a peer power for years. Mr. Xi tried to get President Barack Obama to officially state that the two nations had “a new type of great power relations.” Mr. Obama resisted.

多年来，中国一直在推动美国正式承认其对等大国地位。习近平曾试图说服奥巴马总统正式确认两国之间已经形成了“新型大国关系”，但遭到奥巴马的拒绝。

But Mr. Trump has given China an opening.

特朗普却给了中国一个机会。

“It seems the president now only sees China as an economic competitor and is trying to come to a modus vivendi with China,” said Shivshankar Menon, a former foreign secretary of India and ambassador to China, using a term that refers to a peaceful coexistence. “It doesn’t seem like this U.S. administration is interested in the broader geostrategic issues in Asia.”

“（特朗普）总统现在似乎只将中国视为经济竞争对手，并正试图与中国达成一种可行的共存安排，”印度前外交秘书、前驻华大使希夫山卡·梅农表示。“本届美国政府似乎对亚洲更广泛的地缘战略问题不感兴趣。”

The most obvious — and to many, most concerning — shift by Mr. Trump has come on Taiwan. Early this year, to avoid angering Beijing before the summit, the White House ordered the State Department not to move forward with a large package of weapons for Taiwan that Congress had already approved, The New York Times reported.

特朗普最明显——在许多人看来也是最令人担忧——的转变是在台湾问题上。据《纽约时报》报道，今年早些时候，为避免在峰会前激怒北京，白宫下令国务院暂停推进国会已批准的一项对台大型军售计划。

Mr. Xi repeatedly warned Mr. Trump about such sales after the administration announced an $11 billion package in December.

去年12月，美国政府宣布了这项价值110亿美元的对台军售方案后，习近平曾多次就此向特朗普发出警告。

The Trump administration’s new stance appears to violate a longstanding U.S.-Taiwan diplomatic agreement called the “Six Assurances” and the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. Lawmakers from both parties questioned Mr. Rubio last week about Taiwan, but he insisted the policy had not changed.

特朗普政府的新立场似乎违背了美台之间长期遵循的“六项保证”及1979年的《台湾关系法》。来自两党的议员上周就台湾问题对鲁比奥进行了质询，但他坚称政策并未改变。

“We’re not withholding,” he said of the frozen $14 billion arms package. “It’s just under review.”

谈到被冻结的140亿美元军售案时，他说：“我们并非扣下，只是仍在审议中。”

Perhaps just as worrying for the Taiwanese government and its supporters is Mr. Trump’s language on Taiwan.

对台湾政府及其支持者而言，或许同样令人忧虑的是特朗普在台湾问题上的表述。

英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋上个月在北京出席活动。特朗普此前决定，允许英伟达向中国企业销售高性能芯片。

He has long considered China to be much more important than Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island that the Chinese Communist Party aims to absorb, and around which the Chinese military is conducting aggressive air and sea activities. After his Beijing bromance with Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump appeared to blame Taiwan for helping set the stage for potential war.

长期以来，他一直认为中国远比台湾重要。台湾是一个民主自治的岛屿，是中共力图并吞的目标，中国军方在台湾周边开展了越来越强势的海空军事活动。在与习近平上演北京兄弟情之后，特朗普似乎将潜在战争风险的形成部分归咎于台湾。

“I’m not looking to have somebody go independent, and you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,” he said. “I’m not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down.”

“我不希望有人走向独立，而且要知道，我们得跑9500英里去打一场战争，”他说。“我不想看到这种情况。我希望他们都冷静下来。我希望中国冷静下来。”

Mr. Trump said that he and Mr. Xi had discussed Taiwan and arms sales to the island “in great detail.”

特朗普表示，他与习近平“非常深入地”讨论了台湾问题和对台军售问题。

“Based on the sum total of what President Trump has said to the media, it seems like he has absorbed a great deal of Xi Jinping’s thinking on Taiwan,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, the managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund. “People are anxious.”

“从特朗普总统对媒体所说的整体内容来看，他似乎已经很大程度上接受了习近平在台湾问题上的看法，”德国马歇尔基金会印太项目执行主任葛来仪(Bonnie S. Glaser)表示。“人们对此感到担忧。”

In another significant act, Mr. Trump recently decided to allow Nvidia, the American technology company, to sell powerful chips to Chinese companies. That move has drawn some criticism from lawmakers and former officials of both parties who had endorsed the Biden administration’s export controls on advanced chips.

另一项意义重大的举措是，特朗普最近期决定允许美国科技公司英伟达向中国企业出售高性能芯片。此举引发了两党部分议员和前官员的批评，他们此前曾支持拜登政府对先进芯片实施出口管制。

China has not immediately approved the imports. But in recent weeks, Chinese executives have sensed a potential easing by Beijing and sought ways to buy the chips, Ms. Sun said. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, hitched a ride on Air Force One to fly to China with Mr. Trump when the plane stopped to refuel in Alaska.

中国尚未立即批准相关进口。但孙韵表示，最近几周，中国企业高管已经察觉到北京方面可能正在放松态度，并开始寻求购买这些芯片的途径。英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋在“空军一号”于阿拉斯加停靠加油时登机，与特朗普一同飞往中国。

Officials across Asia are trying to discern where their nations fit into Mr. Trump’s strategic shift. Mr. Rubio’s trip to Delhi after the Beijing summit was aimed at reassuring Indian leaders after a tumultuous year and a half of policies and statements by Mr. Trump that have been widely perceived as against India.

亚洲各国官员都在试图判断，在特朗普战略转向之后，自己的国家将处于什么位置。北京峰会结束后，鲁比奥前往新德里访问，安抚印度领导人——此前一年半间，特朗普的一系列政策和言论被广泛认为对印度不友好。

But little of substance came from the trip, which included tourism and a gala hosted by the U.S. Embassy alongside a meeting with the top diplomats from Australia, India and Japan, the other members of a group known as the Quad.

但这次访问几乎没有取得什么实质成果，鲁比奥的行程包括观光活动、美国驻印使馆举办的招待会，以及与澳大利亚、印度和日本三国外长的会面——这三个国家与美国共同组成了“四方安全对话”机制。

上个月在新德里举行的会晤中，从左至右依次为：澳大利亚外长黄英贤、印度外长苏杰生、日本外务大臣茂木敏充以及美国国务卿鲁比奥。

Some officials and analysts see Mr. Trump’s warming toward Beijing as leading to an inevitable move away from shared goals with India and other Asian countries.

一些官员和分析人士认为，特朗普对北京态度转暖，意味着美国势必会逐渐偏离与印度及其他亚洲国家共同追求的战略目标。

“The strategic convergence on China was the glue that held U.S.-India policy together,” said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Now there’s an absence of that.”

卡内基国际和平基金会南亚项目主任米兰·瓦什纳夫表示：“对华战略共识曾是维系美印政策的粘合剂，现在这种共识已经不存在了。”  

At the forum in Singapore, some analysts said Mr. Hegseth’s speech sidestepped the region’s main concerns and failed to address how the United States planned to recover from the war that it and Israel started with Iran, which has depleted stockpiles of U.S. weapons and compelled the American military to move resources out of Asia.

一些分析人士认为，在新加坡举行的论坛上，海格塞思的讲话回避了该地区最关心的问题，也未能说明美国计划如何从与以色列共同对伊朗发动的战争中恢复过来。这场战争已经消耗了大量美国武器库存，并迫使美军将部分资源从亚洲调往其他地区。

Some American officials and analysts argue that the United States is not backing away from Asia. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is creating a new logistics and refueling hub on the Pacific island of Palau. Training exercises across the region led by the United States have been growing.

部分美国官员和分析人士认为，美国并未从亚洲收缩。美国印太司令部正在太平洋岛国帕劳新建一处后勤和加油枢纽，美国主导的地区联合军事演习规模也在持续扩大。

Exercise Balikatan, the annual joint military drills between the Philippines and the United States, brought together 17,000 troops from seven countries in April and May. During the exercise, Japanese combat troops were active in the Philippines for the first time since World War II, and the United States tested the Typhon missile system, widely seen as a deterrent against Chinese forces.

菲美年度联合军演“肩并肩”于今年4月至5月举行，共有来自七个国家的1.7万名军人参加。演习期间，日本作战部队自第二次世界大战结束以来首次在菲律宾开展军事活动，美国则测试了“堤丰”导弹系统，该系统被广泛视为针对中国军队的一种威慑力量。

“This was being done as a clear show of force, a demonstration that the United States and its allies could defend against a P.L.A. amphibious assault,” Matt Turpin, a White House national security official in the first Trump administration, wrote afterward, referring to the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China. “I feel confident that the Trump administration is taking the military threat from the P.R.C. seriously.”

“此次演习是一次明确的武力展示，旨在表明美国及其盟友有能力抵御中国人民解放军的两栖登陆，”特朗普第一任期内的白宫国家安全官员马特·特平事后撰文写道。“我有信心，特朗普政府正在认真对待来自中国的军事威胁。”