2025年2月14日
It’s probably the case that children have already died as a result of Donald Trump’s war on U.S.A.I.D. If the freeze on foreign aid and mass furlough by fiat goes forward, many certainly will.
很可能已经有孩子因为特朗普对美国国际开发署开战而死。如果冻结外国援助和大规模强制休假令继续下去,可以肯定会有很多孩子死去。
But the agency is not just a faucet of humanitarian money, distributing $40 billion in global aid, supporting soup kitchens and lead abatement and vaccination programs and saving millions of lives. It has also always been one face of American empire. Established during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence, the agency has funded health and development, but it has also supported business-friendly politics and what are often called democratic reforms to draw more of the world’s poor countries into the sphere of American influence.
这个机构在全球范围内分发了价值400亿美元的援助,支持施食处、减铅和疫苗接种项目,拯救了数以百万计的生命,但它不仅仅是人道主义资金的一个水龙头。它也一直是美利坚帝国的门面。该机构成立于冷战期间,目的是对抗苏联的影响,它为卫生和发展提供资金,但也支持有利于商业的政治,以及通常被称为民主改革的举措,吸引世界上更多的贫穷国家进入美国的影响范围。
And so the sprint to “delete” U.S.A.I.D. on grounds of waste and ideological bias also sent its own bigger message: that soft power, properly understood, is not really power at all, only a shackle restricting the exercise of the harder and more old-fashioned kind.
因此,以浪费和意识形态偏见为理由“删除”开发署的突击行动也是在发出一种更大的讯息:如果正确理解软实力,就会认识到它根本不是真正的实力,只是一种枷锁,在限制对更强硬、更传统的实力的施展。
During his last time in office, Trump was pictured with a hurricane map marked up with black Sharpie ink so that the potential path of the storm matched his own ignorant projection. This time, he’s marking up some notional maps of American empire, which he says he would like to see stretching north through Canada and Greenland, south through the “Gulf of America” to the Panama Canal and across to the decimated rubble of the Gaza Strip, which he has taken to calling the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
特朗普在上次执政期间有一张照片,是他拿着一张显示飓风的地图,上面用黑色记号笔标记了飓风的可能路径,与他自己的无知推断相吻合。这一次,他是在标注一些美利坚帝国的假想地图,他说他希望看到这个帝国向北延伸,覆盖加拿大和格陵兰岛,向南穿过“美国湾”,到达巴拿马运河,最终远及被夷为平地的加沙地带,他称那里为“中东的里维埃拉”。
It’s not clear, of course, that any of this will (or even could) happen — Francis Fukuyama described the Gaza plan as a “nonstarter” in an essay announcing both “the new American imperialism” and a return to the world of the 19th century. But each declaration of imperial desire is that mercurial kind of Trumpist speech act, in which a given utterance can be both meaningless and full of portent at the same time, self-disavowing even as it also demonstrates the president’s world-shaping power. Foreign leaders including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Rasmussen have warned that Trump’s acquisitiveness is deadly serious. And whatever comes of Trump’s retrograde dreams of manifest destiny, the implicit challenge to the legacy geopolitical order is just as striking: If we want these things and these places, who is going to stop us?
当然,目前还不清楚这些是否会发生(甚至是否可能发生)——弗朗西斯·福山在一篇宣告“新美帝国主义”和19世纪世界回归的文章中称加沙计划“毫无希望”。但每一次对帝国欲望的宣示,都是那种反复无常的特朗普式演讲行为,其中的某一句话既可能毫无意义,又可能充满预兆;既自我否定,又展示总统塑造世界的力量。加拿大总理特鲁多和丹麦外交部长拉尔斯·拉斯穆森等外国领导人警告称,特朗普的占有欲是非常认真的。无论特朗普关于美国昭昭天命的倒退梦想会带来什么结果,它所隐含着的对传统地缘政治秩序的挑战同样引人注目:如果我们想要这些东西和这些地方,谁能阻止我们?
Among Trump’s Day 1 executive orders were withdrawals from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, which led some to describe the new president’s emergent foreign policy as a kind of strategic retreat, even an effort to “unwind” or “reorient” American power abroad, as Ryan Grim put it. But another first-day order designated Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups, and as he assumed office, the new secretary of defense affirmed that when it came to military action in Mexico, “all options will be on the table.” The national security adviser has suggested the United States must recoup the money it has sent to Ukraine by plundering the country’s natural resources, and the president has threatened harsh tariffs on Denmark over Greenland, too. In addition to China, the first round of Trump tariffs targeted allies, with longstanding trade deals in place renegotiated not that long ago by Trump himself — and although the tariffs were withdrawn quickly in response to trivial concessions, you couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t safe to assume any existing arrangement would last for very long, with Trump likely to stress-test many aspects of the world order, country by country.
特朗普上任第一天的行政命令包括退出巴黎气候协议和世界卫生组织,这让一些人把新总统正在成形的外交政策描述为一种战略撤退,甚至像瑞安·格里姆所说的那样,是在“放松”或“重新定位”美国在海外的影响力。但新总统第一天的另一项命令将墨西哥贩毒集团列为恐怖组织,而新任国防部长在就职时表示,当涉及到对墨西哥的军事行动时,“所有选项都在考虑范围内。”国家安全顾问表示,美国必须通过掠夺乌克兰的自然资源来收回它向该国输送的资金,总统还威胁要就格陵兰岛问题对丹麦征收高额关税。除了中国,特朗普的第一轮关税还针对盟友,美国和这些盟友之间有着存在多年的贸易协议,不久前还由特朗普本人进行过重新谈判——尽管这些关税因回应微不足道的让步而迅速撤销了,但你不禁会觉得,不能假设任何现有安排都会持续很长时间,特朗普可能会对世界秩序的许多方面进行压力测试,一个国家接着一个国家地来。
The new secretary of state began his stint as America’s top diplomat by effectively disavowing diplomacy, at least as we’ve known it for decades. “The postwar global order is not just obsolete,” Marco Rubio declared in his January Senate committee hearing. “It is now a weapon being used against us.” Last week, Rubio announced that the United States wouldn’t be attending the G20 in Johannesburg, explaining that “my job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.”
新任国务卿在开始他作为美国最高外交官的任期时,实际上就已经在否定外交——至少是几十年来我们所熟知的那种外交。“战后的全球秩序不仅仅是过时了,”鲁比奥1月份在参议院委员会听证会上宣称。“它现在是一种用来对付我们的武器。”上周,鲁比奥宣布,美国不会参加在约翰内斯堡举行的20国集团峰会,并解释说,“我的工作是促进美国的国家利益,而不是浪费纳税人的钱或纵容反美主义。”
In Trump world, Rubio counts as an unusually clear spokesman, and these two statements together form a lucid if bracing declaration of intent: that a system built over decades largely by and for American power is now being discarded largely for inhibiting or even acting against American power. The country has long been a bully on the world stage, but one which at least pretended to play nice, even as its full command over the globe has seemed recently to shrink. “Hegemony was going to end sooner or later, and now the U.S. is basically choosing to end it on its own terms,” the French observer Arnaud Bertrand wrote. “It is the post-American world order — brought to you by America itself.”
在特朗普的世界里,鲁比奥算得上是一位异常明确的发言人,他的两句话合在一起,清晰表达了一种意图:几十年来,一个主要由美国力量建立、为美国力量而建立的体系,现在正在被抛弃,主要是因为它抑制甚至反对美国力量。长期以来,美国一直是世界舞台上的恶霸,但它至少装出一副友善的样子,即使它对全球的全面控制最近似乎有所缩小。“霸权迟早会结束,而现在美国基本上是在选择以自己的方式结束霸权,”法国观察家阿尔诺·贝特朗写道。“这就是后美国时代的世界秩序——由美国亲手呈现给你。”
What comes next? New paradigms rarely arise fully formed. But if we spent the last four years watching Joe Biden’s ineffectual attempt to revive some rickety version of the moralistic postwar order, it is supremely clear what Donald Trump would like to replace that pretense with: the principle that global chaos opens up opportunity for great powers long hemmed in by convention and deference. You’ve probably heard of the madman approach to diplomacy; this is the mad world approach.
接下来会发生什么?新范式出现时很少是完全成型的。但是,如果我们在过去四年里看到了拜登徒劳地试图恢复某种摇摇欲摇的战后道德秩序,那么已经极为明确的是,特朗普想抛弃这种伪装,代之以一个原则:全球混乱可以为长期被惯例和敬畏所束缚的大国提供机遇。你可能听说过“狂人外交”;现在这就是“疯狂世界外交”。
Over the last decade, as China dropped its show of geopolitical obeisance and began to perform similar games of dominance — telling the 10 nations of the ASEAN regional alliance, for instance, China is a big country, and you are small countries, and that is a fact — it inspired a new foreign-policy term: wolf-warrior diplomacy. This scandalized the foreign policy institutionalists of the West, including Biden, who in juggling not just China but Russia and Israel dedicated much of the second half of his presidency to a nostalgic diplomatic restoration project. The MAGA riposte is, Let’s not be naïve and let’s not be suckers: We are all wolves on the world stage, and the game begins when we show our teeth.
在过去十年里,随着中国不再表现出地缘政治上的顺从,开始上演类似的争权游戏——例如,告诉东盟地区联盟的10个国家,中国是一个大国,而你们是小国,这是事实——由此激发了一个新的外交政策术语:战狼外交。这让包括拜登在内的西方外交政策建制派感到震惊,拜登不仅要应付中国,还要应付俄罗斯和以色列,在他总统任期的后半段,他把大部分时间都花在了一个怀旧的外交修复工程上。“让美国恢复伟大荣光”运动的反驳是,我们不要太天真,我们不要做傻瓜:在世界舞台上,我们都是狼,当我们露出牙齿,游戏就开始了。
When Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire just before Inauguration Day, it seemed to many like a credit to Trump, whose emissaries had, on one exceptional Sabbath, apparently bullied Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting a deal that had been available for many months — and perhaps a sign that those who voted for the once and future president imagining he was the candidate of peace were not entirely deluded. But just a few weeks later, it seems clear that he regards demolition and mass displacement of millions as a straightforward matter of eminent domain. The ultimate acquisition of Gaza would be a simple “real estate transaction,” he said last week, and it wouldn’t even be Israel but the United States presiding over the closing. “We’re going to take it, we’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it,” he said on Tuesday — “Mar-a-Gaza,” some have called it.
当以色列和哈马斯在总统就职日之前同意停火时,在很多人看来,这是特朗普的一个荣誉,在一个非凡的安息日,他的特使显然胁迫内塔尼亚胡接受了一项已经存在了好几个月的协议——也许这表明,那些投票给这位曾经和未来的总统、以为他是追求和平的候选人的人,并非完全被蒙蔽。但是,仅仅几周后,很明显,数百万人的家园被毁和大规模流离失所在他眼里就是个单纯的土地征用问题。他上周表示,加沙的最终收购将是一项简单的“房地产交易”,甚至不会由以色列来主持,而是由美国主持。“我们要拿下它,我们要持有它,我们要珍惜它,”周二,他说——已经有人管那个地方叫“马阿加沙”。
None of this was exactly unforeseen. The American-led international order has long been criticized as a cover story for the exercise of U.S. power, especially on the left, with critics on the right more likely to see it as an anti-nationalist plot to bring about global government. And though the United States remains a central global power, we are now well past what was once called the unipolar moment and perhaps nearly as far from the time when Madeleine Albright or Barack Obama could refer to the country as the world’s “indispensable nation.” (“Hegemonic decline is a done deal,” the historian Adam Tooze remarked recently. “It’s over.”)
这一切都是意料中的事。长期以来,美国领导的国际秩序一直被批评为美国行使权力的幌子,尤其是左翼更是如此看待;而右翼的批评者更有可能将这种秩序视为一个反民族主义阴谋,目的是建立一个全球政府。尽管美国仍然是全球的核心力量,但我们现在已经远非那个曾经被称为单极世界的时代,或许也不再是马德琳·奥尔布赖特或奥巴马称世界“离不开”美国的时代。(“霸权衰落已成定局,”历史学家亚当·图泽最近说。“没戏唱了。”)
And yet Trump’s second term “marks a symbolic end to global neoliberalism,” the economist Branko Milanovic wrote last month, a sharper break than his first term — in part, Milanovic later added, because in the meantime so many impulses that once seemed outlandish (on China, on trade, on industrial policy) had quietly hardened into elite conventional wisdom.
然而,特朗普的第二个任期“标志着全球新自由主义的象征性终结”,经济学家布兰科·米兰诺维奇上月写道,这个终结比他的第一个任期更加彻底——米兰诺维奇后来补充道,部分原因是在此期间,许多曾经看似古怪的冲动(关于中国、贸易和产业政策)已经悄悄地固化为精英们的普遍认知。
The difference is also marked abroad, with far fewer global leaders falling into alignment against Trump — even if a few seem to enjoy mixing it up with him personally — and acknowledging that the basic terms of engagement have changed. The office of the Russian foreign minister has publicly applauded the assault on U.S.A.I.D., as has Viktor Orban of Hungary’s political director. China seems happy to watch America detonate large parts of its infrastructure of global power. In Europe, the European Commission’s Josep Borrell got into trouble a few years ago when he described the continent as an orderly and peaceful “garden,” surrounded by the “jungle” of the rest of the world. Now the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is striking a very similar tone — calling it a “hotheaded world” and an “era of hypercompetitive and hypertransactional geopolitics.”
这种差异在国外也很明显,全球领导人中很少有人想要联合反对特朗普——有些领导人似乎还很喜欢和他本人打交道——他们承认基本的交往规则已经发生了变化。俄罗斯外交部长办公室公开赞扬了对美国国际开发署的袭击,匈牙利领袖欧尔班·维克托也表示了赞赏。中国似乎乐于看到美国引爆其全球实力的大部分基础设施。在欧洲,欧盟委员会的何塞普·博雷尔几年前将欧洲大陆描述为一个有序而和平的“花园”,被世界其他地区的“丛林”所包围,他因这番言论陷入了麻烦。现在,欧盟委员会主席乌苏拉·冯德莱恩也开始了类似的论调,她说这是一个“头脑发热的世界”,是一个“极具竞争性和交易性的地缘政治时代”。
In other words: It’s a jungle out there.
换言之:外面是一片丛林。
2025年2月14日
Rows of white concrete buildings near the Pearl River in southern China house one of the world’s fastest-growing industries: Gritty workshops are churning out inexpensive clothing that is exported straight to homes and small businesses around the world. No tariffs are paid, and no customs inspections are conducted.
在中国南部的珠江沿岸,一排排白色的混凝土建筑里,孕育着世界上发展最为迅速的行业之一:简陋的作坊大量生产着廉价服装,这些服装直接出口到世界各地的家庭和小企业。无需缴纳关税,也无需接受海关检查。
The laborers who make these goods earn as little as $5 an hour, including overtime, for workdays that can last 10 hours or more. They pay $130 a month to sleep on bunk beds in tiny rooms above factories packed with sewing machines and mounds of cloth.
生产这些商品的工人时薪低至不到40元人民币,加班也是这个标准,而每天的工作时长可能长达10小时甚至更久。他们每月要支付1000元,才能在堆满缝纫机和成垛布料的工厂楼上的小房间里得到一个上下铺床位。
“It’s hard work,” said Wu Hua, who sews pants, seven days a week, at a factory in Guangzhou, a vast metropolis that straddles the Pearl River.
“太辛苦,”吴华(音)说道。他在横跨珠江的大都市广州的一家工厂里缝制裤子,一周工作七天。
E-commerce giants have forged close links from international markets to workers like Mr. Wu, shaking retailing and economies around the globe.
电商巨头们在国际市场和像吴华这样的工人之间建立了紧密的联系,这震动了全球的零售业和经济。
The number of duty-free shipments to the United States has risen more than tenfold since 2016, to four million parcels per day last year. Similar shipments to the European Union have climbed even faster, reaching 12 million parcels a day last year. Duty-free shipments to developing countries like Thailand and South Africa have also surged.
自2016年以来,运往美国的免税包裹数量增长了十倍多,去年达到了每天400万件。运往欧盟的类似包裹增长得更快,去年达到了每天1200万件。运往泰国和南非等发展中国家的免税包裹数量也大幅激增。
Now a global backlash is underway. President Trump ordered a halt on Feb. 4 to the duty-free entry, without inspection, of parcels with goods worth up to $800. Mr. Trump temporarily suspended his order to give officials time to devise a plan for dealing with the mounds of parcels that immediately started piling up at airports for inspection.
如今,一场全球性的抵制行动正在展开。特朗普总统在2月4日下令停止价值800美元(约合人民币5800元)以下商品的包裹免税免检入境。特朗普暂时中止了他的这一命令,以便让官员们有时间制定一个计划,来处理那些立即开始堆积在机场等待检查的大量包裹。
在依赖免税制度的快时尚出口业务中心广州市的一家服装厂。
时薪最低仅5美元的工人在广州工厂车间楼上的高低床宿舍就寝。
广州的两名女子在面向工人出租房间。
Since taking office less than a month ago, Mr. Trump has launched a fusillade of trade actions, including an order on Thursday for his advisers to come up with new tariff levels that take into account a range of trade barriers. But a lasting halt on duty-free shipments could be one of the most far-reaching move. These shipments have skirted until now not only his new tariffs, including a 10 percent tax on all goods from China, but also many other tariffs that have accumulated over the years.
上任还不到一个月,特朗普就发起了一连串的贸易行动,包括周四下令让他的顾问们制定新的关税水平,要考虑到一系列的贸易壁垒,其中包括周四实施的新关税,以应对其他国家对美国商品加征的更高关税。但永久停止免税包裹入境可能是影响最为深远的举措。到目前为止,这些包裹不仅避开了他新征收的关税,包括对所有中国商品征收的10%的关税,还避开了多年来累积的许多其他关税。
The U.S. action on so-called de minimis shipments — low-value parcels that customs services don’t bother inspecting or calculating tariffs on — was one of many. Last summer, South Africa imposed 45 percent tariffs on even the smallest imports of clothing. Thailand ended its exemption of low-value imported parcels from sales taxes, although it continues to allow tariff-free entry of parcels up to 1,500 Thai baht ($44). And the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, proposed this month to end the 27-nation bloc’s duty-free treatment of packages worth up to 150 euros ($156).
美国针对所谓的“小额豁免”——即海关部门不愿费力去检查或计算关税的低价值包裹——采取的行动只是众多行动之一。去年夏天,南非甚至对最小额的服装进口也征收了45%的关税。泰国取消了对低价值进口包裹的销售税豁免,不过仍允许价值不超过1500泰铢(约合人民币325元)的包裹免关税入境。而欧盟的执行机构欧盟委员会本月提议取消欧盟27个成员国对价值150欧元(约合人民币1142元)以下包裹的免税待遇。
Countries have cited different reasons for their restrictions. Mr. Trump contended that by skirting customs inspections, the duty-free parcels had become a conduit for fentanyl and related materials to enter the United States. The European Commission cited a need to ensure product safety in imports, stop counterfeit goods and prevent unfair competition. South Africa and Thailand acted to protect local shop owners.
各国对其采取的限制措施给出了不同的理由。特朗普声称,免税包裹通过绕过海关检查,成了芬太尼及相关物质进入美国的渠道。欧盟委员会则表示,有必要确保进口产品的安全,阻止假冒伪劣商品,并防止不公平竞争。南非和泰国采取行动是为了保护本地商户。
“We have a duty to ensure that goods entering our market are safe and that all traders respect consumers’ rights,” said Michael McGrath, a European commissioner.
“我们有责任确保进入我们市场的商品是安全的,并且所有商家都尊重消费者的权益,”欧盟委员迈克尔·麦格拉思说道。
在广州一家工厂,成堆的希音包裹等待发货。
希音和其中国电商竞争对手Temu的相当一部分供应链以这座城市为枢纽。
世界各地电子商务的兴起推高了对中国发货的低价商品的需求。
This corner of southern China near Hong Kong has been a hub of low-cost manufacturing for export since the 1980s, especially apparel. But the rise of e-commerce sellers around the world has created ever-growing demand of such shipments.
自上世纪80年代以来,中国南部靠近香港的这个地区一直是低成本制造业产品出口的中心,尤其是服装制造业。但随着全球电商卖家的兴起,对这类货物的运输需求与日俱增。
Guangzhou has emerged as the global hub of de minimis shipments. Across many square miles of the city, fast fashion garments are made in concrete buildings with sewing shops, and sometimes living quarters above them.
广州已成为全球“小额豁免”货物枢纽。在这座城市的大片区域里,快速时尚服装在有着缝纫车间的混凝土建筑里生产,有时这些建筑的楼上就是生活区。
Shein and Temu, competing Chinese e-commerce giants that together hold at least a third of the de minimis industry, coordinate much of their supply chains from large offices in Guangzhou. Amazon has introduced its own de minimis business, Haul, for shipments from China.
中国的电商巨头希音(Shein)和拼多多旗下的Temu相互竞争,加起来至少占据了“小额豁免”行业的三分之一,它们在广州的大型办公室里协调着大部分供应链。亚马逊也推出了从中国发货的“小额豁免”业务Haul。
China’s de minimis industry is not confined to Guangzhou. Nor is it limited to the industry’s mainstay, clothing.
中国的“小额豁免”行业并不局限于广州,也不局限于该行业的主要产品——服装。
Yiwu, a city 600 miles northeast of Guangzhou with a vast wholesale market, has become another hub. It coordinates de minimis exports of toys, hats and other small items from towns scattered across the Yangtze River delta.
广州东北方向960公里之外的义乌拥有大型批发市场,已成为另一个中心。它协调着长江三角洲地区各个城镇的玩具、帽子和其他小商品的“小额豁免”货物出口业务。
Shein, in particular, has presented itself as a new business concept, connecting far-flung customers with factories ready to cut and sew almost anything. Collaborating with 5,000 workshops and small factories across China, Shein’s approach almost completely eliminates the need for store inventory, or even for stores and retail staff.
尤其是希音,它将自己打造成了一种新的商业模式,把遥远的客户与那些几乎可以裁剪和缝制任何东西的工厂联系起来。希音与中国各地的5000家作坊和小工厂合作,这种模式几乎完全消除了对店铺库存的需求,甚至对店铺和零售员工的需求也大大减少。
“At Shein, we have reimagined the supply chain by empowering thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, giving them full insight into what our customers want and need,” the company says on its website.
“在希音,我们通过赋能数千家中小企业重新构想了供应链,让他们充分了解我们的客户想要什么、需要什么,”该公司在其网站上这样说道。
But workshop owners in Guangzhou complain that Shein is too demanding.
但广州的作坊主们抱怨说,希音的要求太苛刻了。
Li Zhi’s workshop produced garments for a Shein contractor four years ago, but the arrangement lasted only a year. “Shein demands high quality but offers low prices,” she said while sorting lace fabric on a table.
李志(音译)的作坊四年前为希音的一个承包商生产服装,但这种合作只持续了一年。“希音质量要求高,开价低,”她一边在桌子上整理蕾丝面料一边说道。
She now sells instead to wholesalers for China’s domestic market, who offer her higher prices. But business remains difficult, she said, as a shortage of blue-collar workers has sent the going rate for a day’s labor to almost $70, from $48 four years ago.
她现在转而把产品卖给中国国内市场的批发商,这些批发商给她的价格更高。但她说生意依然难做,因为蓝领工人的短缺使得日薪从四年前的约350元人民币涨到了约500元。
In China today, almost two-thirds of 18-year-olds enroll in a college or university, up from 10 percent in 2000. That has left few young Chinese willing to do factory work.
如今在中国,18岁的年轻人中几乎有三分之二会进入大学就读,而在2000年这一比例仅为10%。这使得愿意进工厂工作的中国年轻人越来越少。
“Business is deteriorating every year,” Ms. Li said. “There are fewer and fewer workers now — mostly those born in the ’70s and ’80s.”
“(生意)一年不如一年,”李志说,“因为现在工人越来越少,基本就是70、80后,90后很少了,这个要吃苦的。”
广州服装作坊老板对希音的严苛要求表达了不满。“希音质量要求高,开价低,”其中一位老板说。
像这样在劳动市场招工的工厂主正面临劳动力短缺的问题。
中国东莞的服装批发市场。
If Mr. Trump permanently ends the de minimis rule, imported apparel that is now duty-free would be subject to basic tariffs of 3 to 30 percent, plus a 7.5 percent tariff imposed during his first term, plus a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China that the president imposed on Feb. 4. On top of that, there would be customs processing fees of $5 to $20 per parcel.
如果特朗普永久终止“小额豁免”规定,现在免税的进口服装将需要缴纳3%至30%的基本关税,再加上他第一任期内征收的7.5%的关税,以及总统在2月4日对所有来自中国的进口商品征收的10%的关税。除此之外,每个包裹还将有5到20美元(约合人民币36至145元)的海关处理费。
Shein said its suppliers paid their workers twice as much as local minimum wages. Temu said nearly 60 percent of its sales in the United States were now from American warehouses with shipments that go through customs, with tariffs paid.
希音表示,其供应商支付给工人的工资是当地最低工资的两倍。Temu表示,目前其在美国近60%的销售额来自美国的仓库,这些货物是经过海关并已缴纳关税的。
The competitive advantages of the de minimis export industry in China go beyond avoiding tariffs and skirting customs inspections. More than 90 percent of China’s cotton is grown in Xinjiang, a region in China’s far northwest. Many Western governments have begun restricting or banning imports with any content from Xinjiang after mass arrests there by China’s security agencies and evidence of forced labor among the region’s predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, particularly the Uyghurs.
中国的“小额豁免”出口行业的竞争优势不仅仅在于避免关税和绕过海关检查。中国90%以上的棉花产自遥远的西北部地区新疆。在中国安全机构在新疆大规模逮捕人员,以及有证据表明该地区以穆斯林为主的少数民族(尤其是维吾尔族)存在强迫劳动的情况后,许多西方国家政府已开始限制或禁止进口任何含有新疆成分的产品。
Households and small businesses that buy de minimis parcels from China bear legal responsibility for making sure their parcels have no cotton or other content from Xinjiang. But regulators in the West have been reluctant to bring charges.
从中国购买“小额豁免”包裹的家庭和小企业有确保包裹不含新疆棉花或其他成分的法律义务。但西方监管机构一直不愿提出指控。
广州一处服装工业园的招工广告牌。
站在工人身后的恽从平说,他在广州的这家服装作坊依赖出口业务。
作坊主在广州制衣区的路边接单。
Big retailers, by contrast, generally comply with Xinjiang-related legislation when they import large shipping containers of clothing for their stores.
相比之下,大型零售商在为其店铺进口成货柜的服装时,通常会遵守与新疆相关的法规。
Workshop owners in Guangzhou said they did not know where their fabric suppliers obtained their cotton.
广州的作坊主们表示,他们不知道自己的面料供应商从哪里采购棉花。
Yun Congping, a Guangzhou sewing shop owner who supplies the Thai market, said he and other merchants needed exports.
为泰国市场供货的广州缝纫店老板恽从平(音)说,他和其他商家需要出口业务。
“If we don’t accept the deals” to supply low-priced exports, he said, “there’s nothing else to do.”
只能接受这些低价的出口供货生意,“不做就没事做,”他说。
2025年2月14日
President Trump on Thursday set in motion a plan for new tariffs on other countries globally, an ambitious move that could shatter the rules of global trading and is likely to set off furious negotiations.
特朗普总统周四启动了一项对全球其他国家征收新关税的计划,这一雄心勃勃的举动可能打破全球贸易规则,并引发激烈谈判。
The president directed his advisers to come up with new tariff levels that take into account a range of trade barriers and other economic approaches adopted by America’s trading partners. That includes not only the tariffs that other countries charge the United States, but also the taxes they charge on foreign products, the subsidies they give their industries, their exchange rates, and other behaviors the president deems unfair.
总统指示顾问们,在考虑美国贸易伙伴采取的一系列贸易壁垒和其他经济措施的基础上提出新的关税水平。这不仅包括其他国家对美国征收的关税,还包括他们对外国产品的征税、对本国产业的补贴、汇率,以及总统认为不公平的其他行为。
The president has said the step was necessary to even out America’s “unfair” relationships and stop other countries from taking advantage of the United States on trade. But he made clear that his ultimate goal was to force companies to bring their manufacturing back to the United States.
特朗普表示,有必要采取这一措施来平衡美国与其他国家的“不公平”关系,并阻止其他国家在贸易上利用美国。但他明确表示,他的最终目标是迫使企业将制造业迁回美国。
“If you build your product in the United States, there are no tariffs,” he said during remarks in the Oval Office.
“如果你在美国生产产品,就没有关税,”他在椭圆形办公室发表讲话时说。
Howard Lutnick, the president’s nominee for commerce secretary, said the measures could be ready as soon as April 2. He will oversee the plan along with Jamieson Greer, Mr. Trump’s pick for trade representative, and other advisers.
总统提名的商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克表示,这些措施最早可于4月2日就绪。他将与特朗普提名的贸易代表贾米森·格里尔和其他顾问一起负责该计划。
The decision to rework the tariffs that America charges on imported goods would represent a dramatic overhaul of the global trading system. For decades, the United States has set its tariff levels through negotiations at international trade bodies like the World Trade Organization.
重新制定美国进口商品关税的决定将代表着对全球贸易体系的一次重大改革。几十年来,美国一直通过世界贸易组织等国际贸易机构的谈判来设定关税水平。
Setting new levies — likely to be higher than what the United States charges today — would effectively scrap that system in favor of one determined solely by U.S. officials and based on their own criteria.
设定新的关税标准——很可能比美国目前征收的关税更高——将从实际上废除这一体系,变为完全由美国官员根据自己的标准决定新关税。
Timothy Brightbill, a lawyer at Wiley Rein, said a move toward a reciprocity-based tariff system would be “a fundamental change to U.S. trade policy, and among the biggest in more than 75 years — since the creation of the current multilateral trading system,” in 1947.
威利律师事务所的律师蒂莫西·布莱特比尔表示,转向对等为基础的关税体系将是“美国贸易政策的根本改变,也是自1947年、当前多边贸易体系建立以来75年来最大的改变之一”。
Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said Mr. Trump’s tariffs would violate W.T.O. rules in two ways. Applying different tariff rates to different countries would violate a commitment by W.T.O. members not to discriminate against one another. And if the United States raises its tariff rates beyond the maximum rate it has negotiated with other members, that would break trading rules, too.
彼得森国际经济研究所的高级研究员查德·鲍恩表示,特朗普的关税将在两个方面违反世贸组织的规则。对不同的国家征收不同的关税将违反世贸组织成员之间不相互歧视的承诺。如果美国提高关税税率,超过与其他成员国谈判达成的最高水平,那也会违反贸易规则。
“A decision to unilaterally increase U.S. import tariffs, product by product, country by country, would be President Trump’s biggest blow yet to the rules-based trading system,” Mr. Bown said.
鲍恩说,“单方面决定逐个产品、逐个国家提高美国进口关税,这个决定将是特朗普总统迄今对基于规则的贸易体系的最大打击。”
The action seems likely to kick off intense negotiations with governments whose economies depend on exports to the United States. It could also elicit trade wars on multiple fronts if other countries choose to increase their own tariffs in retaliation.
这一行动似乎可能引发那些经济依赖对美出口的国家与美国展开激烈谈判。如果其他国家选择提高自己的关税作为报复,也可能引发多方面的贸易战。
A White House official, who did not have permission to speak for attribution, said in a call with reporters on Thursday that other countries would be given the opportunity to negotiate on the levies they will face.
一名未获得发言授权的白宫官员周四在接受记者电话采访时表示,其他国家将有机会就它们面临的关税进行谈判。
Nearly every country would be affected, but the move could have particularly significant consequences for India, Japan and the European Union. Mr. Trump and his staff members have repeatedly pointed to Europe’s value-added tax as an additional injustice on top of tariffs.
几乎每个国家都会受到影响,但此举对印度、日本和欧盟的影响可能尤为重大。特朗普及其工作人员一再指出,欧洲的增值税是关税之外的又一个不公正之处。
The European Union requires a standard value-added tax rate on most goods and services, and while the rates vary by country, they average about 22 percent across European nations. The tax is applied at each stage in a supply chain, and the cost is usually borne by the end consumer.
欧盟要求对大多数商品和服务征收标准增值税,虽然各国税率不同,但欧洲各国的平均税率约为22%。该税收适用于供应链的每个阶段,成本通常由最终消费者承担。
The United States is an outlier among advanced economies in not levying a value-added tax on products like cars.
在发达经济体当中,美国是不向汽车等产品征收增值税的异类。
Mr. Trump’s proposal represents a significant reversal in a decades-long push in trade policy toward lowering international barriers. While past presidents have often negotiated with foreign countries over tariffs, those agreements have typically led to lower levies, not higher ones. No president has taken Mr. Trump’s approach of raising U.S. tariffs to match other countries’ rates.
特朗普的提议代表了几十年来推动降低国际壁垒这一贸易政策的重大逆转。虽然过去的总统经常与外国就关税问题进行谈判,但这些协议通常会降低关税,而不是提高关税。没有哪位总统采取特朗普提高美国关税以赶上其他国家税率的做法。
The reciprocal tariff plan is the latest move by Mr. Trump to punish allies and adversaries alike with an extraordinary array of trade actions. On Monday, the president signed a proclamation imposing 25 percent tariffs on all foreign steel and aluminum. Mr. Trump said his advisers would also meet over the next four weeks to discuss measures on cars, pharmaceuticals, chips and other goods.
对等关税计划是特朗普以一系列非同寻常的贸易行动惩罚盟友和对手的最新举措。周一,他签署了一项公告,对所有外国钢铝加征25%的关税。特朗普表示,他的顾问们还将在未来四周举行会议,讨论对汽车、药品、芯片和其他商品采取的措施。
Mr. Trump did acknowledge that his reciprocal tariff plan could result in prices going up. That’s because consumers tend to pay higher prices when goods are taxed at a higher rate. But the president said that any increase would be short-lived and that his plan would result in more jobs. “Prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down.”
特朗普承认,他的对等关税计划可能会导致价格上涨。这是因为当商品被征收的税率较高时,消费者往往要支付更高的价格。但总统表示,这种情况将是短暂的,他的计划将带来更多的就业机会。“短期内物价可能会上涨,但今后物价也会下跌。”
In the long term, he said, it’s going to “make our country a fortune.”
他说,从长远来看,这将“为我们的国家带来巨大财富”。
In the past weeks, Mr. Trump’s almost-daily tariff threats have rocked diplomatic and economic relationships. The United States imposed an additional 10 percent tariff on all products from China last week, and came within hours of putting sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico that would have brought U.S. tariff rates to a level not seen since the 1940s.
过去几周,特朗普几乎每天都发出关税威胁,动摇了外交和经济关系。上周,美国对来自中国的所有产品加征10%的关税,差一点就对加拿大和墨西哥征收全面关税,这将使美国的关税税率达到自上世纪40年代以来的最高水平。
The president had criticized Canada and Mexico over drug and migrant crossings into the United States, but agreed to put off the tariffs for 30 days after the countries offered him some concessions.
总统曾就毒品和移民越境进入美国的问题批评加拿大和墨西哥,但在这两个国家向他做出一些让步后,他同意将关税推迟30天。
Reciprocal tariffs will likely broaden Mr. Trump’s trade fight to even more countries. It remains to be seen whether the president uses the strategy to drastically raise U.S. barriers to imports, or as a lever to extract concessions from countries that end up opening foreign markets.
对等关税可能会将特朗普的贸易战扩大到更多的国家。总统是利用这一战略大幅提高美国的进口壁垒,还是将其作为一种杠杆,迫使其他国家最终开放市场、做出让步,这还有待观察。
When asked which legal authority would be used to impose tariffs, the White House official said the president could draw on several, depending on the action and country, including Section 232, which relates to national security; Section 301, which relates to unfair trading; and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
当被问及将使用哪些法律权力来征收关税时,这位白宫官员表示,总统可以根据行动和国家情况,使用几种法律权力,包括涉及国家安全的232条款,涉及不公平贸易的301条款,以及《国际紧急经济权力法》。
The official said that Mr. Trump was not ruling out a further “universal” tariff later to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, but that for now the president had chosen to pursue reciprocal treatment. The United States has set its tariff rates for imports lower than that of some trading partners, because for decades U.S. officials were convinced of the benefits of freer trade. They believed lower tariffs would allow the United States to import cheap products for U.S. consumers and raw materials for its factories, fueling the American economy.
该官员表示,特朗普不排除以后进一步征收“普遍”关税,以减少美国的贸易逆差,但目前总统选择了寻求对等待遇。美国设定的进口关税税率低于一些贸易伙伴,因为几十年来,美国官员一直相信自由贸易的好处。他们认为,降低关税将使美国能够为消费者进口廉价产品,为工厂进口原材料,从而推动美国经济。
Mr. Trump’s views differ. He argues that equaling out American tariff rates is essential to restoring U.S. manufacturing, and that higher tariffs will reduce the trade deficit. Some economists disagree, arguing that movements in currency could offset any effects on the trade deficit.
特朗普的观点则不同。他认为,美国对外国征收同等的关税对恢复美国制造业至关重要,而且提高关税将减少贸易逆差。一些经济学家不同意这种说法,他们认为汇率变动可以抵消对贸易逆差的任何影响。
Economists and historians also say that the varying tariffs that countries put on one another’s products are not evidence of discrimination. Rather, they reflect the priorities that each government had when it agreed to maximum tariff rates in negotiations with other members of the World Trade Organization.
经济学家和历史学家还表示,各国对彼此产品征收不同的关税并不是歧视的证据。实际上,它们反映了各国政府在与世界贸易组织其他成员国谈判并同意最高关税税率时的优先事项。
Raising tariffs above the rate the United States has agreed to at the W.T.O. would violate the trade group’s commitments, and other members of the W.T.O. could challenge that action. But the panel at the W.T.O. in charge of resolving such disputes was effectively neutered in the first Trump administration when the United States refused to appoint any more members to it. The Biden administration continued that policy.
将关税提高到美国在世贸组织同意的水平之上将违反该组织的承诺,世贸组织的其他成员国可能会对这一行动提出挑战。但在特朗普第一届政府期间,世贸组织负责解决此类争端的小组实际上相当于被阉割了,因为美国拒绝任命更多成员加入该小组。拜登政府延续了这一政策。
2025年2月14日
Not so long ago, Taiwan basked in seemingly boundless, bipartisan support in Washington, where the island has long been regarded as a valiant democratic partner against China.
不久前,台湾曾在华盛顿享有两党似乎无止境的支持,长期以来,它被视为对抗中国的英勇民主伙伴。
Now, a few weeks into President Donald J. Trump’s second term, Taiwan is adjusting to a shift in its relationship with the United States, its primary backer — one that does not focus on shared democratic ideals, and that is more uncertain and transactional. Mr. Trump has accused Taiwan of spending far too little on its own security and of gaining an unfair dominance in making semiconductors.
现在,特朗普的第二个总统任期还没过几周,台湾已经在适应与主要支持者美国的关系变化,这种改变意味着双方的关系不再以共同的民主理想为焦点,而且变得更加不确定和具有交易性。特朗普已指责台湾对自身安全投入的太少,并在半导体制造业占有不公平的主导地位。
Taiwanese officials and businesspeople have been trying to assure the new administration of their commitment to cooperation. They have traveled to Washington for meetings, bearing charts detailing their military outlays, and attended inauguration events filled with the MAGA faithful. They have floated new deals that Taiwanese companies could broker with American businesses in gas and other fields, and tried to explain the value of Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing to American interests.
台湾的官员和商人们一直在试图使美国的新政府确信他们致力于合作。他们前往华盛顿与美方会晤,带着详细说明军事开支情况的图表,还派官员出席挤满“让美国恢复伟大荣光”支持者的就职典礼活动。他们提出了供台湾公司与美国企业在天然气和其他领域进行协商的新交易,并试图解释台湾的半导体制造对美国利益的价值。
Underlying their efforts is an anxiety over what Mr. Trump may do, for instance, to press Taiwanese companies to move advanced semiconductor production to the United States. Mr. Trump has said he might soon impose tariffs on semiconductors. Taiwanese officials have been preparing to help Taiwanese businesses soften the blow of any such move.
这些努力的背后是对特朗普可能采取行动的焦虑,比如向台湾企业施压,要求把高端的半导体生产搬到美国。特朗普已表示,他可能很快会对半导体征收关税。台湾的官员们一直在做准备,帮助台湾企业减轻此类行动带来的冲击。
台南的台湾半导体制造公司大楼。台积电是全球最先进的芯片制造商。
“I think Taiwan just convinced itself that they had good relations with the U.S. and they had lots of friends in Congress, and they would be able to weather the storm,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, the managing director of German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, who often speaks with Taiwanese politicians. “When Trump made those comments, I think it was a wake up call for people in Taiwan that they really didn’t know what was coming next.”
“我觉得台湾刚说服了自己,他们与美国关系良好,在国会有很多朋友,他们能够渡过难关,”美国的德国马歇尔基金会印太项目主任葛来仪(Bonnie S. Glaser)说,她经常与台湾政界人士交谈。“特朗普发表这些言论时,我觉得这给台湾人民敲响了警钟,他们真的不知道接下来会发生什么。”
Governments around the world are trying to adjust to Mr. Trump’s combative approach. But the stakes for Taipei are especially high. The island depends on the United States for nearly all its major weapons. It sends nearly a quarter of its exports directly to the United States, and Washington is crucial in giving Taiwan political support against Beijing, which claims that Taiwan is its territory and must accept unification — by force, if deemed necessary.
虽然世界各国的政府都在努力适应特朗普的好斗方式,但对台北的政府来说利害关系尤其重大。台湾几乎所有主要武器都依赖美国。台湾近四分之一的出口产品直接销往美国,美国政府在台湾对抗中国政府方面给予政治支持起着至关重要的作用。中国政府宣称对台湾拥有主权,台湾必须接受与大陆统一,必要时将使用武力。
Taiwanese officials and policy advisers said the island would quickly roll out measures to help its businesses hurt by any new U.S. tariffs. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive and provisional nature of the plans, and declined to give details. Some officials have publicly hinted at the preparations. “We’re preparing for a range of scenarios,” the minister of economic affairs, Kuo Jyh-Huei, told reporters when asked about Mr. Trump’s threatened tariffs. “If we showed our hand now, that would not work to the benefit of everyone.”
台湾的官员和政策顾问表示,政府将迅速采取措施,帮助受美国新关税影响的台湾企业。由于这些计划很敏感,而且是暂定的,他们要求不具名,并拒绝透露细节。一些官员已对这些准备工作有公开的暗示。“各种情況我们都有准备,”在被问及有关特朗普威胁征收关税的问题时,台湾经济部部长郭智辉对记者说。“若现在掀了底牌,就无法为大家谋福利。”
Even if Mr. Trump holds off on the tariffs, Taiwan faces more pressure from his administration on other issues. They include the island’s big trade surplus with the United States, which climbed to a record $74 billion last year according to U.S. data, and its military spending and preparations, which many in Washington see as lacking, even though billions of dollars worth of orders of American military equipment are stuck in a backlog. The United States is committed by law to help Taiwan defend itself, and leaves open the possibility of intervening militarily if China tried to conquer the island.
即使特朗普推迟征收关税,台湾在其他问题上也面临来自特朗普政府的更大压力。其中包括台湾对美国的巨额贸易顺差(据美国的数据,台美贸易顺差去年攀升到了创纪录的740亿美元),以及台湾的军事开支和军事准备问题,美国政府中有许多人认为台湾的军事开支和军事准备不足,尽管台湾订购的数十亿美元的美国军事装备因订单积压尚未交货。美国的法律要求其承诺协防台湾,如果中国试图用武力征服台湾的话,存在美国进行军事干预的可能性。
台湾事实上的驻美国大使俞大㵢去年在美国国会山。
“There’s a basic mismatch. We’ve been thinking that America and Taiwan are in a strong partnership, but America under Trump thinks Taiwan doesn’t do enough,” said Jason Hsu, a former Taiwanese lawmaker and technology investor who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “Sooner or later, the Taiwan government will need to show up in town with a package ready to offer Trump.”
“有一种基本的错配。我们一直认为美国和台湾的伙伴关系很牢固,但特朗普领导下的美国认为台湾做得不够,”曾任台湾立法委员的科技投资人许毓仁说,他现在是哈德逊研究所的高级研究员。“台湾政府迟早需要准备好一揽子计划来美国提交给特朗普。”
Publicly, the Taiwanese government is projecting calm confidence about relations with Washington. But Taiwanese officials’ efforts to build bridges into Mr. Trump’s inner circle during trips to Washington last month and in December, have yielded little so far, said three American officials familiar with their attempts, who described the interactions as limited.
在公开场合,台湾政府对其与华盛顿的关系表现出一种镇定且充满信心的姿态。然而,据三名知情的美国官员透露,台湾官员上个月和去年12月前往华盛顿期间,试图与特朗普的核心圈子建立联系,但到目前为止收效甚微,他们形容这些互动很有限。
Taiwan sent two economic officials to Washington this week to “better explain ourselves to Mr. Trump’s circle,” Mr. Kuo, the economic affairs minister, told reporters before their departure. Taiwan also hopes to buy more liquefied natural gas from Alaska, he has said.
台湾本周派了两名经济官员前往华盛顿,以便“向特朗普团队做比较深入的解释沟通”,台湾经济部部长郭智辉在官员出行前对记者说。他表示,台湾还希望从阿拉斯加购买更多的液化天然气。
“Taiwan is preparing some presents for Trump,” said Jeremy Chih-Cheng Chang, the chief executive officer of the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology in Taipei. “They have already indicated some, as you have seen in news reports — like buying liquefied natural gas — but there are sure to be others.”
“台湾正在为特朗普准备一些礼物,”位于台北的科技、民主与社会研究中心的执行长张智程说。“他们已经做出了一些表示,正如大家在新闻中看到的那样,比如购买液化天然气,但肯定还会有其他的东西。”
In January, executives from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — TSMC, the world’s most advanced chip maker — held talks with Mr. Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said several people familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity.
几名不愿公开姓名的知情人士透露,今年1月,全球最先进的芯片制造商台湾积体电路制造公司(简称“台积电”)的高管与特朗普提名的商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克举行了会谈。
In December, Taiwanese officials visiting Washington showed officials and Republican politicians a presentation designed to demonstrate that Taiwan has been rapidly increasing military preparations, according to people familiar with those discussions. They met with Michael Waltz, then a Florida congressman known for being hawkish on matters of national security, according to one of the people.
据知情人士称,去年12月,台湾官员访问华盛顿时向美国政府官员和共和党政客们做了一个报告,介绍台湾一直在迅速加强军事准备方面的情况。据了解有关讨论的人士透露,台湾官员与迈克尔·沃尔兹举行了会晤,他当时是佛罗里达州的联邦众议员,以在国家安全问题上持强硬态度闻名。
Taiwanese officials remain hopeful that they will find robust supporters in two men who were deeply critical of China in Congress: Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and Mr. Waltz, now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. But some former officials who strongly supported Taiwan in Mr. Trump’s first term have not been brought into his new administration, including Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state.
台湾官员仍然抱有希望能在两个在国会工作时曾强烈批评中国的人身上找到坚定的支持,一个是国务卿马可·鲁比奥,一个是现任特朗普国家安全顾问的沃尔兹。但一些在特朗普的第一个任期里强烈支持台湾的前官员没有进入他的新政府,其中包括前国务卿迈克·庞皮欧。
特朗普总统与国务卿马可·鲁比奥在椭圆形办公室,摄于周二。
“It’s very telling that some hard-line hawks on Taiwan have been left out," said Christopher K. Johnson, the president of China Strategies Group, a consulting firm, and a former U.S. government intelligence officer. “It looks like Taiwan bet on some of the wrong horses.”
“一些在台湾问题上属于强硬鹰派的人士被排除在外,这很说明问题,”咨询公司中国战略集团的总裁克里斯托弗·约翰逊说,他曾在美国政府担任情报官员。“看起来好像台湾的一些赌注押错了。”
Half a dozen or so officials poised to take senior positions in the Pentagon have rejected the G.O.P.’s tradition of backing an expansive foreign reach, in favor of limiting U.S. military commitments abroad. They represent an ascendant foreign policy doctrine in a party that in recent years has chafed at committing more military support to Ukraine, and pushed NATO allies to spend more on their militaries.
大约六名即将上任美国国防部高级职位的官员已摈弃了共和党支持美国扩大海外影响力的传统,转向赞成对美国军队的海外承诺进行限制。他们代表了共和党中一个日益受欢迎的对外政策信条,持这种信条的人近年来一直对向乌克兰提供更多军事支持感到不满,并敦促北约盟国增加军费开支。
In an opinion essay published last May, Mr. Trump’s nominee to serve as the Pentagon’s under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, warned that Taiwan should not assume that it was indispensable to the United States. “America has a strong interest in defending Taiwan, but Americans could survive without it,” he wrote. He and other Pentagon officials have suggested that Taiwan should increase its military spending to at least 5 percent of its economic output, or about twice what it currently is spending.
特朗普提名的国防部负责政策的副部长埃尔布里奇·科尔比曾在去年5月发表的一篇观点文章中警告,台湾不应认为自己对美国来说必不可少。“虽然保卫台湾对美国来说有极大的利益,但美国人不是没有它不行,”他写道。他和其他的国防部官员暗示,台湾应该将军费开支增加到其经济产出的至少5%,也就是目前军费开支的两倍左右。
The Taiwanese government has said it is committed to expanded military spending, though many Taiwanese experts and officials, privately, question the 5 percent target. President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan also faces a legislature controlled by opposition lawmakers who have accused his government of wasteful spending and reined in parts of this year’s defense budget.
虽然台湾政府已表示它致力于扩大军费开支,但许多台湾的专家和官员们私下里对5%的预期目标表示质疑。台湾总统赖清德也面临一个由反对派议员控制的立法院,他们指责他的政府浪费开支,并砍掉了今年的部分国防预算。
At the same time, Taiwan has its own frustrations with the United States, including the big backlog of undelivered orders of arms and military equipment to the island.
与此同时,台湾对美国也有自己的不满,包括大量未交付的武器和军事装备订单。
“I do sense a soreness of being told to spend more when they haven’t received what they’ve already paid for,” said Steve Yates, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, referring to Taiwan. “The U.S. has to fix its defense manufacturing supply chain before it can reasonably put pressure on others to do and buy more.”
“我确实觉得被要求增加军费支出对他们来说是件伤心事,因为他们还没有收到已经花钱购买的东西,”传统基金会的高级研究员史蒂夫·耶茨在谈到台湾时说。“美国在合理地向其他地方施压,让人家做更多事情、买更多东西之前,需要先把自己的国防制造供应链搞好。”
2025年2月13日
President Trump said on Wednesday that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, characterizing it as the beginning of a negotiation to end the war in Ukraine.
周三,特朗普总统表示自己与俄罗斯总统普京进行了“富有成效的长时间电话通话”,并称这是结束乌克兰战争谈判的开始。
It was the first confirmed conversation between the two men during Mr. Trump’s second term, coming as Mr. Trump has made clear to advisers that finding a U.S.-backed end to a war that Russia began is a priority for his administration.
这是特朗普第二任期内两人之间首次得到确认的通话,此前特朗普已向顾问们明确表示,在美国的支持下结束这场由俄罗斯挑起的战争是其政府的首要任务。
“We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post. “But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.” (An estimated several hundred thousand deaths have occurred in the conflict, not millions.)
“我们都谈到了各自国家的优势,以及我们有一天可以在合作中获得的巨大利益,”特朗普在社交媒体上写道。“但首先,正如我们双方都同意的那样,我们希望制止数百万人在俄乌战争中丧生。”(据估计,这场冲突造成数以十万计的人数死亡,而不是数以百万计的人数。)
For Mr. Putin, the call was a major milestone, signifying the collapse of Western efforts to isolate him diplomatically after he invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago. Ever since Mr. Trump’s re-election in November, the Russian president has heaped praise on Mr. Trump, underlining the Kremlin’s hope that the new American leader could reshape Moscow’s relationship with Washington and back away from supporting Ukraine.
对普京来说,这次通话是一个重要的里程碑,标志着西方在近三年前他入侵乌克兰后在外交上孤立他的努力已经失败。特朗普去年11月再次当选以来,这位俄罗斯总统一直对特朗普大加赞赏,这凸显出克里姆林宫希望这位新的美国领导人能够重塑莫斯科与华盛顿的关系,不再支持乌克兰。
The conversation between the two presidents came a day after Russia agreed to release an imprisoned American teacher in exchange for the United States returning a convicted cybercriminal to Russia.
在两国总统进行对话的前一天,俄罗斯同意释放一名被监禁的美国教师,以换取美国将一名被定罪的网络罪犯送回俄罗斯。
Mr. Trump, for whom fear of a nuclear war dates back decades, has long sought a better relationship with Russia. At a summit with Mr. Putin in Helsinki, Finland, in his first term, Mr. Trump accepted Mr. Putin’s statement that Russia did not interfere in the election he had won, a view that contradicted the assessment of U.S. intelligence officials.
特朗普对核战争的恐惧可以追溯到几十年前,长期以来,他一直在寻求与俄罗斯建立更好的关系。在他第一任期内与普京在芬兰赫尔辛基的峰会上,特朗普接受了普京的说法,即俄罗斯没有干预他赢得的选举,这一观点与美国情报官员的评估相矛盾。
Mr. Trump campaigned last year on a pledge to settle the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” a hyperbolic description of his own deal-making skills that nonetheless underscored how important achieving a peace agreement was to him.
特朗普去年竞选时承诺在“24小时”内解决乌克兰战争,这是对他自己交易能力的夸张描述,但也凸显了达成和平协议对他的重要性。
His announcement of a plan to work with Russia on a cease-fire comes amid fears in Ukraine that Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump would forge a close relationship that would push Ukraine to the sidelines in any peace talks.
在他宣布计划与俄罗斯合作实现停火时,乌克兰担心普京和特朗普会建立密切关系,从而使得乌克兰被排除在任何和平谈判之外。
After speaking to Mr. Trump on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine emphasized that he would be part of the process, writing on social media that he and the U.S. president were “charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. As President Trump said, ‘Let’s get it done.’”
乌克兰总统泽连斯基在周三与特朗普通话后强调,他将参与这一进程,他在社交媒体上写道,他和美国总统正在“规划我们下一步的行动,以阻止俄罗斯的侵略,确保持久、可靠的和平”。正如特朗普总统所说,‘咱们把这件事办成。’”
Mr. Trump said his conversation with Mr. Zelensky “went very well.”
特朗普表示,他与泽连斯基的谈话“非常顺利”。
“He, like President Putin, wants to make PEACE,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post, adding that an initial meeting would be held on Friday in Munich, with a delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“他和普京总统一样,希望实现和平,”特朗普在帖子中写道。他还表示,双方将于周五在慕尼黑举行首次会晤,届时由副总统JD·万斯和国务卿马尔科·鲁比奥率领的代表团将会出席。
Mr. Trump did not elaborate on how Mr. Zelensky would factor into the discussions that he and Mr. Putin were setting in motion. Mr. Trump has long been skeptical of Ukraine and has never warmed to Mr. Zelensky.
特朗普没有详细说明泽连斯基将如何参与他和普京正在启动的讨论。特朗普长期以来一直对乌克兰持怀疑态度,从未对泽连斯基表现出好感。
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that Mr. Putin’s call with Mr. Trump lasted almost an hour and a half.
克里姆林宫发言人德米特里·佩斯科夫告诉记者,普京与特朗普的通话持续了近一个半小时。
He said that the two men agreed to hold a personal meeting and that Mr. Putin invited Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, something that Mr. Trump also alluded to in his social media post. Mr. Putin agreed with Mr. Trump that “the time has come for our countries to work together,” Mr. Peskov said.
他说,两人同意举行私人会晤,普京邀请特朗普访问莫斯科,特朗普在社交媒体帖子中也提到了这件事。普京同意特朗普的看法,即“现在是我们两国合作的时候了”,佩斯科夫说。
On Ukraine, Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump of “the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict,” Mr. Peskov said. That was a sign that the Russian president would not accept a simple cease-fire in Ukraine and would seek broader concessions from Ukraine and the West before he stopped fighting.
佩斯科夫说,在乌克兰问题上,普京告诉特朗普,“需要消除冲突的根源。”这表明,俄罗斯总统不会接受在乌克兰的简单停火,停止战斗之前他会寻求乌克兰和西方做出更广泛的让步。
The Ukrainians appear to be facing an effort in which they have little leverage. The call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump came on the same day that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, said that it was an “unrealistic” objective for Ukraine to restore its borders as they were before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Mr. Hegseth added that the United States did not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of a realistic peace plan.
乌克兰人似乎正面临着一场他们几乎没有筹码的努力。普京和特朗普通电话的同一天,美国国防部长皮特·海格塞斯在布鲁塞尔的北约总部发表讲话称,让乌克兰恢复到2014年俄罗斯吞并克里米亚之前的边界是“不现实的”目标。海格塞斯还表示,美国不支持将乌克兰加入北约的愿望作为现实和平计划的一部分。
Mr. Hegseth also suggested that Europe needed to assume a greater role in its own defense, echoing a point that Mr. Trump has made for many years.
海格塞斯还表示,欧洲需要在自身防务中发挥更大的作用,这与特朗普多年来一直提出的观点相应。
Mr. Trump echoed his defense secretary later on Wednesday, telling reporters that “it’s unlikely” that Ukraine would return to its pre-2014 borders. “They took a lot of land and they fought for that land,” he said. The president then added that he thought that “some of it will come back.”
周三晚些时候,特朗普呼应了他的防长的看法,对记者表示,乌克兰“不太可能”回到2014年之前的边界。他说:“他们夺取了很多土地,为这些土地而战。”总统接着说,他认为“其中一些土地会回来”。
But Mr. Trump also said that he intended to continue sending financial support to Ukraine, adding that he wanted it “secured.” “If we didn’t do that, Putin would say he won,” Mr. Trump said, in the clearest indication he has given that he recognizes that the aid is leverage in acquiring a deal.
但特朗普也表示,他打算继续向乌克兰提供财政支持,并补充说,他希望这种支持是“有保障的”。“如果我们不这样做,普京会说他赢了,”特朗普说,这是他给出的最明确的信号,表明他承认援助是达成协议的筹码。
Mr. Trump said he did not believe that Mr. Hegseth’s comment’s undermined negotiations with Russia. “I’m backing Ukraine,” Mr. Trump said from the White House.
特朗普表示,他不认为海格塞斯的言论破坏了与俄罗斯的谈判。“我支持乌克兰,”特朗普在白宫说。
After his call on Wednesday with Mr. Trump, Mr. Zelensky wrote on social media that they discussed a plan that would secure continued U.S. support in exchange for access to Ukrainian natural resources and the “preparation of a new document on security, economic cooperation, and resource partnership.”
周三与特朗普通话后,泽连斯基在社交媒体上写道,他们讨论了一项计划,该计划将确保美国继续提供支持,以换取乌克兰的自然资源,并“准备一份关于安全、经济合作和资源伙伴关系的新文件”。
The United Nations said on Wednesday that it welcomed any efforts leading to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
周三,联合国表示,欢迎任何促成俄罗斯和乌克兰和谈的努力。
“We would appreciate any efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine that would involve the Russian and Ukrainian sides, so obviously if both of them are willing to be involved in the process, that would be a welcome development,” said Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman.
联合国发言人法尔汉·哈克说:“我们将对俄罗斯和乌克兰双方为解决乌克兰战争所做的任何努力表示赞赏,因此,很明显,如果双方都愿意参与这一进程,那将是一个值得欢迎的进展。”
Mr. Trump wrote in his social media post that the U.S. negotiating team would include Mr. Rubio; John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director; Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz; and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. Mr. Witkoff was in Moscow this week and retrieved the American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who was imprisoned for more than three years in Russia.
特朗普在社交媒体上写道,美国谈判团队将包括鲁比奥、中情局局长约翰·拉特克利夫、特朗普的国家安全顾问迈克尔·瓦尔兹,以及他的中东特使史蒂夫·维特科夫。本周,维特科夫在莫斯科救出了被俄罗斯监禁三年多的美国教师马克·福格尔。
Mr. Trump did not mention Keith Kellogg, the retired general he had named as his envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Kellogg has generally taken a more aggressive posture toward Russia than some of Mr. Trump’s informal advisers, and he recently suggested that Mr. Trump could increase sanctions against Russia to force it toward a peace deal.
特朗普没有提到被他任命为俄罗斯和乌克兰特使的退役将军基思·凯洛格。凯洛格对俄罗斯的态度总体上比特朗普的一些非正式顾问更为咄咄逼人,前不久,他还建议特朗普可以加大对俄罗斯的制裁,迫使其达成和平协议。
When asked why Mr. Kellogg was not named as part of the negotiating team, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Wednesday that he remained “a critical part of this team and this effort” and that he was still “very much” a part of the administration.
周三,当被问及凯洛格为何没有被提名为谈判小组的成员时,白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特告诉记者,凯洛格仍然是“这个团队和这项努力的关键一员”,他仍然是政府“不折不扣”的一部分。
Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to say whether he had spoken to Mr. Putin before Wednesday, although several people who would know of such a call in the U.S. government were not aware of one, according to people briefed on the president’s conversations.
特朗普一再拒绝透露周三之前他是否曾与普京通过电话,不过根据听取了总统谈话简报的人士透露,美国政府中理应知晓此类通话的人并不知道有过这样的通话。
Mr. Trump has often made admiring remarks about the Russian president, whom he called a “genius” after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But in the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term, he was more critical, saying Mr. Putin should not have invaded.
特朗普经常对俄罗斯总统发表赞赏的言论,他在2022年俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰后称普京为“天才”。但在特朗普第二任期的第一周,他的批评更加严厉,称普京不应该入侵乌克兰。
“He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office hours after he was inaugurated last month. “Russia is bigger, they have more soldiers to lose, but that’s no way to run a country.”
“他不可能很满意,他的处境不怎么好,”上个月,特朗普就职几个小时后在椭圆形办公室对记者说。“俄罗斯更大,他们能承受更多士兵的损失,但这不是治理国家的办法。”
2025年2月13日
Last month, U.S. financial markets tumbled after a Chinese start-up called DeepSeek said it had built one of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence systems using far fewer computer chips than many experts thought possible.
上个月,一家名为“深度求索”(DeepSeek)的中国初创公司表示,它用比许多专家认为的最低限度要少得多的芯片,打造出世界上最强大的人工智能系统之一,随后美国金融市场出现暴跌。
A.I. companies typically train their chatbots using supercomputers packed with 16,000 specialized chips or more. But DeepSeek said it needed only about 2,000.
人工智能公司通常使用装有1.6万枚或更多专用芯片的超级计算机来训练聊天机器人。但深度求索表示,该公司只用了大约2000枚芯片。
As DeepSeek engineers detailed in a research paper published just after Christmas, the start-up used several technological tricks to significantly reduce the cost of building its system. Its engineers needed only about $6 million in raw computing power, roughly one-tenth of what Meta spent in building its latest A.I. technology.
正如深度求索工程师在圣诞节甫一过后发表的一篇研究论文中详细说明的那样,这家初创公司使用了一些技术手段,显著降低了系统构建成本。它的工程师只需要约600万美元的纯算力,大约是Meta在构建其最新人工智能技术时所花费的十分之一。
What exactly did DeepSeek do? Here is a guide.
深度求索到底做了什么?这里是一些介绍。
How are A.I. technologies built?
AI技术是如何构建的?
The leading A.I. technologies are based on what scientists call neural networks, mathematical systems that learn their skills by analyzing enormous amounts of data.
领先的人工智能技术基于科学家所说的神经网络,即通过分析大量数据来学习技能的数学系统。
The most powerful systems spend months analyzing just about all the English text on the internet as well as many images, sounds and other multimedia. That requires enormous amounts of computing power.
最强大的系统需要花费数月时间分析互联网上几乎所有的英文文本,以及许多图像、声音和其他多媒体内容。这需要庞大的运算能力。
About 15 years ago, A.I. researchers realized that specialized computer chips called graphics processing units, or GPUs, were an effective way of doing this kind of data analysis. Companies like the Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia originally designed these chips to render graphics for computer video games. But GPUs also had a knack for running the math that powered neural networks.
大约15年前,人工智能的研究者意识到,一种被称为图形处理单元(GPU)的专用计算机芯片是进行这种数据分析的有效方式。像硅谷芯片制造商英伟达这样的公司最初设计这些芯片是为了在电脑游戏中渲染图形。但GPU也擅长运行推动神经网络的数学运算。
As companies packed more GPUs into their computer data centers, their A.I. systems could analyze more data.
随着各家公司将更多的GPU集成到计算机数据中心,它们的人工智能系统可以分析更多的数据。
But the best GPUs cost around $40,000, and they need huge amounts of electricity. Sending the data between chips can use more electrical power than running the chips themselves.
但最先进的GPU每块售价在4万美元上下,而且需要大量的电力。在芯片之间传输数据比运行芯片本身更耗电。
How was DeepSeek able to reduce costs?
深度求索是如何把成本降下来的?
It did many things. Most notably, it embraced a method called “mixture of experts.”
它做了很多工作。其中最值得注意的是,它采用了一种所谓的“混合专家”法。
Companies usually created a single neural network that learned all the patterns in all the data on the internet. This was expensive, because it required enormous amounts of data to travel between GPU chips.
公司通常会创建一个单一的神经网络,学习互联网上所有数据的所有模式。这样做的成本很高,因为它需要大量的数据在GPU芯片之间传输。
If one chip was learning how to write a poem and another was learning how to write a computer program, they still needed to talk to each other, just in case there was some overlap between poetry and programming.
如果一枚芯片正在学习如何写一首诗,而另一枚芯片正在学习如何编写计算机程序,它们还是需要相互交流,以防诗歌和编程之间出现某种重叠。
With the mixture of experts method, researchers tried to solve this problem by splitting the system into many neural networks: one for poetry, one for computer programming, one for biology, one for physics and so on. There might be 100 of these smaller “expert” systems. Each expert could concentrate on its particular field.
研究人员尝试通过混合专家法来解决这个问题,他们将系统拆分成许多神经网络:一个用于诗歌,一个用于计算机编程,一个用于生物学,一个用于物理学,等等。这样较小的专家系统可能多达100个。每个专家都可以专注在特定领域。
Many companies have struggled with this method, but DeepSeek was able to do it well. Its trick was to pair those smaller “expert” systems with a “generalist” system.
许多公司在尝试这种方法时并不顺利,但深度求索能够很好地做到这一点。它的诀窍是将那些较小的“专家”系统与一个“通才”系统配对。
The experts still needed to trade some information with one another, and the generalist — which had a decent but not detailed understanding of each subject — could help coordinate interactions between the experts.
专家系统仍然需要相互交换一些信息,而通才系统可以帮助协调专家系统之间的互动。通才系统对每个主题都有不错的理解,但比较粗略。
It is a bit like an editor’s overseeing a newsroom filled with specialist reporters.
这有点像一个主编负责一个全是专业记者的新闻编辑室。
And that is more efficient?
这样做的效率更高吗?
Much more. But that is not the only thing DeepSeek did. It also mastered a simple trick involving decimals that anyone who remembers his or her elementary school math class can understand.
高很多。但深度求索做的不仅仅是这些。它还掌握了一个涉及小数的简单技巧,只要你还记得小学数学,就能理解。
There is math involved in this?
这里涉及数学?
Remember your math teacher explaining the concept of pi. Pi, also denoted as π, is a number that never ends: 3.14159265358979 …
还记得你的数学老师讲过的π吗?圆周率,也就是π,是一个无限数字:3.14159265358979……
You can use π to do useful calculations, like determining the circumference of a circle. When you do those calculations, you shorten π to just a few decimals: 3.14. If you use this simpler number, you get a pretty good estimation of a circle’s circumference.
你可以用π来做一些有用的计算,比如确定圆的周长。当你做这些计算时,你会把π缩短到仅几位小数:3.14。使用这个更简单的数字,你就能很好地估算出一个圆的周长。
DeepSeek did something similar — but on a much larger scale — in training its A.I. technology.
深度求索在训练它的人工智能技术时做了类似的事情,不过规模要大得多。
The math that allows a neural network to identify patterns in text is really just multiplication — lots and lots and lots of multiplication. We’re talking months of multiplication across thousands of computer chips.
让神经网络识别文本模式的数学实际上只是乘法——很多很多很多的乘法。我们说的是数千枚计算机芯片进行持续数月的乘法运算。
Typically, chips multiply numbers that fit into 16 bits of memory. But DeepSeek squeezed each number into only 8 bits of memory — half the space. In essence, it lopped several decimals from each number.
通常,芯片会将能放入16位存储器的数字相乘。但深度求索将每个数字压缩到只有八位的存储器中,节省了一半的空间。实际上就是在每个数字中删掉了几位小数。
This meant that each calculation was less accurate. But that didn’t matter. The calculations were accurate enough to produce a really powerful neural network.
这意味着每次计算的准确性都会降低。但这并不重要。这些计算准确度足以产生一个非常强大的神经网络。
That’s it?
就这么简单?
Well, they added another trick.
这个嘛,他们另外还有一招。
After squeezing each number into 8 bits of memory, DeepSeek took a different route when multiplying those numbers together. When determining the answer to each multiplication problem — making a key calculation that would help decide how the neural network would operate — it stretched the answer across 32 bits of memory. In other words, it kept many more decimals. It made the answer more precise.
在将每个数字塞进八位存储器后,深度求索在将这些数字相乘时采取了不同的方法。在确定每个乘法问题的答案时——进行有助于决定神经网络将如何运作的关键计算——它将答案扩展到32位存储器中。换句话说,这样就保留了更多的小数,使得答案更为精确。
So any high school student could have done this?
所以高中生都能做到这一点吗?
Well, no. The DeepSeek engineers showed in their paper that they were also very good at writing the very complicated computer code that tells GPUs what to do. They knew how to squeeze even more efficiency out of these chips.
当然不是。深度求索的工程师在论文中表明,他们也非常擅长编写非常复杂的计算机代码,告诉GPU该做什么。他们知道如何从这些芯片中榨取更高的效率。
Few people have that kind of skill. But serious A.I. labs have the talented engineers needed to match what DeepSeek has done.
具备这种技能的人不多。但一个人工智能实验室只要有心成事,就能找到与深度求索所做的事情相匹配的优秀工程师。
Then why didn’t they do this already?
那为什么他们没有早些做到这一点呢?
Some A.I. labs may be using at least some of the same tricks already. Companies like OpenAI do not always reveal what they are doing behind closed doors.
一些人工智能实验室可能已经在使用相同的技巧了,至少是其中的一部分。像OpenAI这样的公司并不总是透露他们在幕后所做的事情。
But others were clearly surprised by DeepSeek’s work. Doing what the start-up did is not easy. The experimentation needed to find a breakthrough like this involves millions of dollars — if not billions — in electrical power.
但显然还是有人对深度求索的工作感到惊讶。要做到这家初创公司所做的事情,并不简单。找到这样的突破点所需的实验,需要用到数百万甚至数十亿美元的电力。
In other words, it requires enormous amounts of risk.
换句话说,需要冒巨大的风险。
“You have to put a lot of money on the line to try new things — and often, they fail,” said Tim Dettmers, a researcher at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle who specializes in building efficient A.I. systems and previously worked as an A.I. researcher at Meta.
西雅图艾伦人工智能研究所的研究员蒂姆·德特默斯说,“你必须投入大量资金来尝试新事物——而且它们往往会以失败告终。”德特默斯从事构建高效人工智能系统的探究,之前曾在Meta担任人工智能研究员。
“That is why we don’t see much innovation: People are afraid to lose many millions just to try something that doesn’t work,” he added.
“这就是为什么我们看到的创新没有那么多的原因:人们害怕大量投入都打了水漂,”他补充道。
Many pundits pointed out that DeepSeek’s $6 million covered only what the start-up spent when training the final version of the system. In their paper, the DeepSeek engineers said they had spent additional funds on research and experimentation before the final training run. But the same is true of any cutting-edge A.I. project.
许多专家指出,深度求索的600万美元只涵盖了这家初创公司在训练系统最终版本时的费用。深度求索的工程师在论文中表示,他们在最终的训练运行之前,还在研究和实验上花费了额外的资金。但任何尖端人工智能项目都是如此。
DeepSeek experimented, and it paid off. Now, because the Chinese start-up has shared its methods with other A.I. researchers, its technological tricks are poised to significantly reduce the cost of building A.I.
深度求索进行了尝试,并取得了成功。现在,由于这家中国初创公司已经与其他人工智能研究人员分享了方法,它所采用的技术手段有望显著降低构建人工智能的成本。
2025年2月13日
Linda Sun, a former aide to two New York governors, faces new allegations related to charges that she used her position to benefit the Chinese government, according to a superseding indictment against Ms. Sun and her husband unsealed Tuesday.
根据周二公布的针对孙雯及其丈夫的起诉书,曾任纽约州两任州长助手的孙雯面临新的指控,涉及利用职务之便为中国政府谋利。
Ms. Sun, who served as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s deputy chief of staff and in lower-level positions in the administration of her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, is accused of bribery and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to the indictment, unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. While the indictment does not include new criminal charges against Ms. Sun, prosecutors charged her husband, Chris Hu, with three new counts of money laundering.
孙雯曾担任州长凯西·霍格尔的副幕僚长,并在前一任州长安德鲁·库莫的政府中担任较低级别的职位。根据布鲁克林联邦地区法院公布的起诉书,她被指控行贿,以及违反《外国代理人登记法》。起诉书不包括对孙雯新的刑事指控,但检察官对她的丈夫胡骁提出了三项新的洗钱指控。
Both defendants pleaded not guilty during a hearing Tuesday before Judge Brian M. Cogan, who suggested he would hold another hearing in two months to set a trial date.
在周二的听证会上,两名被告均向法官布莱恩·科根表示不认罪,科根提出,他将在两个月后再举行一次听证会,以确定审判日期。
A lawyer for Ms. Sun, Jarrod L. Schaeffer, said that the new indictment did not “remedy critical errors already identified in the prior indictment.” Seth DuCharme, a lawyer for Mr. Hu, said that the new charges were not a surprise and that they didn’t “add much” to the case.
孙雯的律师贾罗德·谢弗表示,新的起诉书并没有“纠正之前起诉书中已经发现的重大错误”。胡骁的律师赛斯·杜夏姆称,新的指控并不令人意外,它们并没有给案件“带来什么影响”。
In September, federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York charged Mr. Hu with money laundering and Ms. Sun with 10 criminal counts, including money laundering, visa fraud and failing to register as a foreign agent. Prosecutors accused Ms. Sun of discreetly acting as an agent for Beijing, using her government position to benefit the Chinese Communist Party.
去年9月,纽约东区的联邦检察官指控胡骁洗钱,指控孙雯犯有10项刑事罪名,包括洗钱、签证欺诈和未注册为外国代理人。检察官指控孙雯秘密充当北京的代理人,利用政府职位为中共谋利。
According to prosecutors, Ms. Sun accepted lavish gifts — including repeated shipments of salted ducks — in exchange for removing references to Taiwan from New York State communications, blocking Taiwanese officials from the governor’s office and stopping those officials from meeting with state leaders.
检方称,孙雯接受了大量厚礼,包括多次送上门的盐水鸭,作为交换,她从纽约州政府的通讯中删除了有关台湾的内容,阻止台湾官员进入州长办公室,并阻止这些官员与州领导会面。
Ms. Sun also used her role to ensure that Ms. Hochul did not publicly discuss the plight of the Uyghurs, a primarily Muslim ethnic group in China that has faced persecution from the Communist Party, prosecutors said.
检察官称,孙雯还利用自己的角色确保霍格尔不公开讨论维吾尔人的困境。维吾尔人是中国一个以穆斯林为主的民族,面临着共产党的迫害。
Justice Department officials, particularly prosecutors in the Eastern District, have cracked down in recent years on Beijing’s clandestine efforts to influence U.S. policy and suppress dissidents. In August, Shujun Wang, a Queens man, was convicted of spying on Chinese dissidents. In December, a man pleaded guilty to running a secret police outpost in Manhattan on behalf of the Chinese government.
近年来,司法部官员,特别是东区的检察官,一直在打击北京影响美国政策和镇压异见人士的秘密活动。去年8月,皇后区男子王书军因监视中国异见人士被判有罪。去年12月,一名男子认罪,承认代表中国政府在曼哈顿经营一个秘密警务站。
Pam Bondi, President Trump’s newly confirmed attorney general, issued a memo last week calling on prosecutors to tamp down their enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which has been used to target Chinese influence-peddling. Prosecutors in recent years have used the law to charge people, including Ms. Sun and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, with secretly working on behalf of foreign governments.
特朗普总统新任命的司法部长帕姆·邦迪上周发布了一份备忘录,呼吁检察官减轻对《外国代理人登记法》的执行力度,该法案已被用来打击中国的政治影响力。近年来,检察官利用这项法律指控孙雯和特朗普的前国家安全顾问迈克尔·弗林等人秘密为外国政府工作。
2025年2月13日
The leaders of the world’s two rival superpowers have plenty to talk about. But so far, it seems, they can’t agree on when they should speak, or even whether they already have.
世界上两个相互竞争的超级大国的领导人之间有很多事情要谈。但似乎迄今为止,他们对应该在什么时候交谈,甚至对他们是否已经交谈都没有达成一致。
Over the last 10 days or so, President Trump has sent conflicting messages about talking to China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. Mr. Trump said on Feb. 3 that they would have a call within “24 hours,” then reversed himself, saying he was in “no rush” to talk. More recently, when asked whether the two had spoken since he took office, Mr. Trump said that they had.
在过去的大约十天时间里,美国总统特朗普关于与中国最高领导人习近平通话的问题发出了相互矛盾的信息。特朗普曾在今年2月3日说,他们两人将在未来“24个小时内”通话,后来又改口说他“不急于”通话。当在更近的时候被问及在他上任后两人是否已通过话时,特朗普称他们已经通过话。
By contrast, Mr. Xi has said nothing about talking to Mr. Trump. And on Tuesday, China’s foreign ministry suggested that no such call had taken place since Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, apparently contradicting Mr. Trump’s claim, which he made during an interview with the Fox News host Bret Baier that aired this week.
相比之下,习近平没有表示与特朗普通过话。中国外交部周二暗示,自从特朗普重返白宫以来还没有进行过这种通话,这显然与特朗普的说法相矛盾,特朗普是在接受福克斯新闻主持人布雷特·拜尔采访时做出上述表述的,采访已在本周播出。
Mr. Xi, it seems, is in no rush to engage, stalling progress on a number of thorny issues in the nations’ competition for global power. (Both sides say the leaders did speak on Jan. 17, before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.) Even as Mr. Trump has imposed tariffs aimed directly and indirectly at China, Mr. Xi has played it cool, preferring to be seen hosting foreign dignitaries at the opening of the Asian Winter Games in the icy northeastern Chinese city of Harbin.
习近平似乎并不急于与美国接触,这使得两国在全球影响力竞争中一些棘手问题的处理陷入停滞。(双方都已表示,两国领导人的确在1月17日通过话,那是在特朗普的就职典礼之前。)在特朗普征收直接或间接针对中国的关税的时候,习近平一直泰然自若,他选择的露面场合是在寒冷的东北城市哈尔滨举行的亚洲冬季运动会的开幕式上为外国政要做东。
The disconnect reflects, in part, how Mr. Xi is trying to show Mr. Trump and the Chinese people that he will not be intimidated by tariffs, analysts say. Mr. Xi does not want to be confused with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada or President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, both of whom quickly negotiated with Mr. Trump after he threatened to slap 25 percent tariffs on their nations’ exports to the United States.
分析人士称,这种差异在一定程度上反映的是,习近平正在试图向特朗普和中国人民表明,他不会被关税吓倒。习近平不想让人们把他与加拿大总理贾斯汀·特鲁多或墨西哥总统克劳迪娅·辛鲍姆相提并论,在特朗普威胁要对他们的国家出口美国的产品征收25%的关税后,那两名领导人都迅速与特朗普进行了谈判。
Those leaders “caved to Trump and Trump claimed victory,” said Zhiqun Zhu, an expert in Chinese foreign policy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. “Xi will not let that happen. It would reflect very, very badly on him domestically. I think the strategy is to wait and see what Trump can offer before taking a call.”
那两名领导人“向特朗普屈服了,特朗普宣布胜利了”,宾夕法尼亚州巴克内尔大学的中国外交政策专家朱志群说。“习近平不会让这种情况发生。那会让他在国内留下非常糟糕的印象。我觉得中国的策略是耐心等待,在通话前看看特朗普能拿出些什么东西来。”
Mr. Zhu said Mr. Xi could also be irked by a joint statement that Mr. Trump and Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, released after their meeting in Washington last week, which addressed Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing.
朱志群称,习近平也可能被特朗普和日本首相石破茂上周在华盛顿会晤后发表的联合声明激怒了,该声明提到了台湾,中国政府声称对自治的台湾拥有主权。
美国总统特朗普上周五在白宫展示他题字送给日本首相石破茂的照片。两人在联合声明中提到了台湾,这可能激怒了中国。
Mr. Trump and Mr. Ishiba said they opposed any changes to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait made not only by force, but by coercion. The mention of coercion, believed to be a first, refers to China’s use of nonmilitary means to pressure Taiwan, such as cyberattacks and trade restrictions.
特朗普和石破茂表示,他们反对任何改变台湾海峡现状的做法,不只是使用武力,也包括使用胁迫。胁迫的说法据认是第一次出现,指的是中国使用非军事手段向台湾施压,例如网络攻击和贸易限制。
To strike any kind of deal with Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump will almost certainly be pressed to soften Washington’s stance on Taiwan. That could include a pledge to reduce American arms sales to the island, or a statement that the United States “opposes” formal independence for Taiwan (currently, it says it “does not support” that).
要想与习近平达成任何协议的话,特朗普将几乎肯定会面临压力,需要软化美国政府在台湾问题上的立场。这可能包括承诺减少美国对台湾的武器销售,或发表声明称美国“反对”台湾正式独立(美国目前的说法是“不支持”台湾独立)。
It is unclear whether the Trump administration would even consider such concessions, which could be widely viewed as a blow to Taiwan’s security.
不清楚特朗普政府是否甚至会考虑做出这种让步,那会被广泛视为对台湾安全的打击。
The administration may also be reluctant to yield on another major demand by Mr. Xi: loosening U.S. restrictions on exports of technology to China, such as the advanced semiconductors needed to power artificial intelligence, a key battleground between the world’s top two economic powers.
美国政府可能也不愿意在习近平的另一个主要要求上让步:放松美国对华出口技术(例如进行人工智能计算所需的高端半导体)的限制,人工智能是世界两个经济大国竞争的一个关键战场。
As for Mr. Trump, he wants China to reduce its trade surplus with the United States and do more to crack down on undocumented immigration, as well as the sale of chemicals used to make fentanyl. He has called for China to approve a sale of TikTok so that an American company can buy half of the video-sharing platform, and he has suggested that Beijing help his administration end the war in Ukraine.
至于特朗普,他想让中国减少对美国的贸易顺差,加大打击非法移民、打击把用于制造芬太尼的化学品卖到美国的力度。他要求中国批准出售TikTok,让一家美国公司能购买该视频共享平台的一半股份,他还提出让中国政府帮助他的政府结束俄乌战争。
2017年,特朗普夫妇与习近平夫妇一起在北京观看了一场京剧表演。
Chinese analysts said that any promise from Mr. Trump would have to be viewed skeptically. Relations between the two countries seemed stable when Mr. Trump visited Beijing in November 2017 and praised Mr. Xi, saying he did not blame China for its trade deficit with the United States. Two months later, he launched his trade war with China.
中国的分析人士称,特朗普的任何承诺都会被中国人以怀疑的态度看待。特朗普2017年11月访问北京时,两国关系似乎很稳定,他称赞了习近平,还说他不把美国的对华贸易逆差归咎于中国。两个月后,他对中国发动了贸易战。
Mr. Trump has “said some nice words,” said Xin Qiang, a U.S.-China expert at Fudan University in Shanghai. “But what’s important is how he translates them into action. His actions are the opposite.”
特朗普“说了一些好话”,上海复旦大学中美问题专家信强说。“但重要的是他如何将这些话转化为行动。他的行动与他的言论相反。”
Other analysts said the apparent lack of a call, so far, could be more easily explained.
其他分析人士称,双方到目前为止似乎尚未通话的原因也许有更简单的解释。
Chinese leaders typically do not meet or speak with their foreign counterparts until their subordinates “work out all the thorny issues” for an agreement or a joint statement, said John Gong, a professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
在下属“解决了所有的棘手问题”,以便达成协议或发表联合声明之前,中国领导人通常不会与外国领导人会晤或交谈,北京对外经济贸易大学经济学教授龚炯说。
Mr. Trump, however, operates more like a business executive, looking to negotiate with world leaders on the fly, as he did during his first presidential term with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.
但特朗普的运作方式更像一名企业高管,他希望能像自己第一个任期内与朝鲜领导人金正恩谈判那样,随时与世界各国的领导人谈判。
“Trump is a little bit delusional in the sense that he thinks in his own way, the Western way, that somehow he can do a sales pitch and convince Xi” to do what he wants, Mr. Gong said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
“从某种意义上看,特朗普有点妄想,他认为用他自己的方式、西方的方式,就能以某种推销行话说服习近平”照他的意愿行事,龚炯说。“这根本不会发生。”
2025年2月12日
Three weeks into this administration, hardly a day seems to go by that does not produce a norm-busting moment at the White House. But the scene that played out in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon was among the wildest yet.
本届政府执政三周以来,白宫几乎每天都会出现打破常规的时刻。但周二下午在椭圆形办公室上演的一幕,却是迄今为止最疯狂的场景之一。
President Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk while Elon Musk stood at his side and attempted to explain, for the first time in public since Inauguration Day, what it is he came to Washington to do.
特朗普总统坐在坚毅桌后面,埃隆·马斯克站在他身边,自就职日以来首次公开解释他来华盛顿到底是要做什么。
For weeks, he and his Dorito-dusted minions have burrowed deep inside the federal government, tearing the thing apart from within by sending workers packing and shutting down programs and entire agencies, testing if not exceeding the bounds of the law and the Constitution in the process.
几周以来,马斯克和玉米片不离手的下属们深入联邦政府内部,解雇员工、关闭项目乃至整个机构,从内部把政府搞得四分五裂,在此过程中不断试探甚至可能超出了法律和宪法的界限。
So far, the only explanations to be had about what they are doing or where they are going next have come in the form of brief or sometimes trolling messages on the social media platform Mr. Musk owns or in opaque statements from administration officials.
到目前为止,关于他们在做什么或下一步要怎样,仅有的一些解释都来自马斯克拥有的社交媒体平台上简短或时而带有煽动性的信息,抑或政府官员的不透明声明。
Dressed all in black, with a dark MAGA hat on his head and his young son fidgeting by his side or on his shoulders, Mr. Musk, seeming quite jolly about finding himself at the very pinnacle of power, sought on Tuesday to justify pushing tens of thousands of federal employees out the door by casting them as a collection of unelected and unaccountable managers of a wasteful and corrupt bureaucracy.
马斯克一身黑衣,头上戴着一顶深色的MAGA帽子,年幼的儿子时而在他身边,时而在他肩头,不安分地动来动去。置身权力顶峰,马克斯似乎非常高兴。周二,他试图为自己驱逐数万名联邦雇员的行为辩护,称他们不经选举产生、不负责任,管理着浪费腐败的官僚机构。
Workers overseeing contracts were mysteriously getting rich, he asserted without any backing details or evidence. Social Security was paying benefits to 150-year-olds. Taxpayers were being gouged.
他在没有任何细节或证据支持的情况下断言,监督合同的工作人员正在神秘地发财。社会保障向150岁的老人支付福利。纳税人被欺骗了。
Mr. Trump crossed his arms and listened while the mogul he’d turned loose told what he’d discovered.
特朗普交叉着双臂,听着这位被他放出去放手做事的大亨讲述自己的发现。
“If the bureaucracy is in charge,” said Mr. Musk, “then what meaning does democracy actually have?”
“如果官僚机构说了算,”马斯克说,“那么民主到底还有什么意义?”
He told tales of a “racket” being perpetrated by an army of bureaucrats, some “corrupt,” others merely “incompetent.” He talked about sketchy payments he’d found and “a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building,” and generally gave the impression that he had turned over a rock to find all sorts of old, rotten things squirming beneath it.
他讲述了一群官僚的“勾当”,其中一些是“腐败”,另一些只是“无能”。他谈到他发现的可疑付款,以及“大量空白支票从大楼里飞出来”,给人的总体感觉是,他翻开一块石头,发现下面蠕动着各种陈旧、腐烂的东西。
“The fraudsters complain the loudest,” he said about the outrage he has created, as Mr. Trump nodded appreciatively.
“骗子的抱怨声是最大的,”他在谈到自己引发的愤怒时说,特朗普在一边满意地点了点头。
Mr. Musk asserted that he had the right to meddle because “the people voted for major government reform” and “that’s what the people are going to get.”
马斯克声称,他有权干预,因为“人民投票要求重大的政府改革”,“这就是人民将会得到的”。
The world’s richest man waved off any suggestion that he stands to benefit from the dismantling of the regulatory agencies leading investigations and lawsuits against his companies. His mandate to audit the Pentagon’s spending is not a conflict of interest even though he has billions of dollars in military contracts, he maintained, because he always provides the best value to the government, and anyway, those contracts are not with him but with his companies.
这位世界首富否认了他将从拆解针对其公司的调查和诉讼的监管机构中获益的说法。他坚称,尽管自己手头拥有数十亿美元的军事合同,但他审计五角大楼开支的任务并不存在利益冲突,因为他总是为政府提供最大价值,而且,无论如何,这些合同不是与他个人签订的,而是与他的公司签订的。
He called himself “maximally transparent,” even though this was his first time taking questions from the news media since his slash-and-burn campaign commenced and the White House is not releasing his financial disclosure statement.
他称自己“最大程度的透明”,尽管这是他自激进的竞选活动开始以来,第一次接受新闻媒体的提问,白宫也没有公布他的财务披露声明。
But also in the air was this fact: Mr. Trump has generally healthy job approval numbers, suggesting that many Americans are so far supportive or at least open-minded about what Mr. Musk has been empowered to do. Taxpayers have always typically had strong suspicions about how their money is used — a reality Mr. Trump made sure to mention. “The public gets it,” he emphasized at one point.
但还有一个事实也在流传:特朗普的工作支持率总体上不错,这表明到目前为止,许多美国人对马斯克被授权所做的事情持支持态度,或者至少持开放态度。纳税人通常对他们的钱被如何被使用抱有强烈怀疑——特朗普肯定会提到这一点。“公众明白这一点,”他一度强调。
Occasionally, the president would chime in to echo Mr. Musk about the corruption of various unnamed bureaucrats or to otherwise offer vague pronouncements supporting his theory of the case. But for roughly half an hour, he did something highly unusual for Donald J. Trump: He largely ceded the floor.
偶尔,总统也会插话,附和马斯克对各种未公开姓名的官员腐败的看法,或者发表一些模糊的声明,支持马斯克的观点。但在大约半个小时的时间里,他做了一件对自己来说极不寻常的事情:他基本上放弃了发言。
It was an interesting moment for the president to summon his buddy into the Oval Office before the cameras.
总统把他的朋友叫进椭圆形办公室面对镜头,这是一个有趣的时刻。
Just four days earlier, Mr. Trump was asked whether he had any reaction to a new cover of Time magazine depicting Mr. Musk sitting behind the Resolute Desk. “No,” Mr. Trump had answered, before cracking: “Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that.” (Unlikely, considering the magazine put him on the cover of its “Person of the Year” issue in December, copies of which are displayed on a rack hanging on the wall of the press office down the hall.)
就在四天前,特朗普被问起,他对《时代》杂志新一期封面上,马斯克坐在坚毅桌后面的画面有何感想。“没有什么想法,”特朗普回答说,然后突然问道:“《时代》杂志还在吗?我都不知道。”(这不太可能,因为《时代》杂志去年12月把他放在“年度人物”特刊封面上,大厅尽头新闻办公室墙上的架子上就摆着几本。)
Now a revised version of the cover had been willed into existence, with Mr. Trump firmly planted in the chair and Mr. Musk playing the supporting role at his side.
现在,一个修订版的封面诞生了,特朗普稳坐在椅子上,马斯克在他身边扮演配角。
Mr. Trump tolerated the presence of Mr. Musk’s (mostly well behaved) toddler and laughed at Mr. Musk’s jokes. They presented a unified front and cast themselves as two white knights taking on a whole city of time servers. Mr. Musk pretty much admitted that he was taking the same approach to the government as he does to his companies — cut first, ask questions later. “We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes,” he said, “but we will also fix the mistakes very quickly.”
特朗普容忍马斯克蹒跚学步的幼子在场(他基本上表现乖巧),并对马斯克的笑话报以笑声。他们呈现出统一战线,把自己塑造成两个白衣骑士,要挑战大群混日子的官僚。马斯克几乎承认,他对待政府的方式和对待自己的公司是一样的——先裁员,再提问。“我们行动很快,所以我们会犯错误,”他说,“但我们也会很快纠正错误。”
He said that his team had restarted funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development for H.I.V. prevention plans, for example. And at one point he acknowledged that some of the eye-popping claims made about government spending were not quite right, such as an assertion that the government spent $50 million on condoms for people living in Gaza.
例如,他说他的团队已经重新启动了美国国际开发署为预防艾滋病毒计划提供的资金。他还一度承认,有关政府开支的一些惊人说法并不完全正确,比如政府花了5000万美元为加沙地带的人购买避孕套。
“Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect,” he said, “and should be corrected.”
“嗯,首先,我说的一些事情可能是错的,”他说,“应该加以纠正。”
And, apparently, still repeated if modified. Mr. Trump listened closely as Mr. Musk then suggested that the United States should not be spending as much as it does on family planning around the world, saying, “I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere.” He added, “That’s really an enormous amount of condoms, if you think about it.”
而且,很显然,就算经过修正,也依然会被重复。特朗普仔细听着,马斯克接着暗示,美国不应该在世界各地的计划生育方面花费那么多,他说,“我不确定我们是否应该把价值5000万美元的避孕套送到任何地方。”他补充说,“仔细想想,这可真是海量的避孕套啊。”
Mr. Trump began to laugh.
特朗普大笑起来。
2025年2月12日
President Donald Trump has been in office less than a month, and Elon Musk’s vast business empire is already benefiting — or is now in a decidedly better position to benefit.
特朗普总统上任不到一个月,埃隆·马斯克庞大的商业帝国已经开始受益——或者说,目前处于一个明显更有利的位置。
Trump and Musk, the world’s richest man, who has been given enormous power by the president, have been dismantling federal agencies across the government. Trump has fired top officials and pushed out career employees. Many of them were leading investigations, enforcement matters or lawsuits pending against Musk’s companies.
世界首富马斯克被总统赋予了巨大的权力,他和特朗普正在拆解政府多个联邦机构。特朗普解雇了多名高层官员,并赶走一些职业政府雇员。他们中的许多人原本正在领导针对马斯克公司的调查、执法事宜或未决诉讼。
Musk has also reaped the benefit of resignations by Biden-era regulators that flipped control of major regulatory agencies, leaving more sympathetic Republican appointees overseeing those lawsuits.
马斯克还从拜登时期监管机构人员的辞职中获益,这些辞职导致了主要监管机构的控制权发生变化,使得更多倾向于支持他的共和党任命人员接管了这些诉讼的监督工作。
At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.
根据《纽约时报》的审阅,至少有11个受到这些举措影响的联邦机构,对马斯克的六家公司进行了超过32项持续调查,未决诉讼或执法行动。
The inquiries include the Federal Aviation Administration’s fines of Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, for safety violations and a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit pressing Musk to pay the federal government perhaps as much as $150 million, accusing him of having violated federal securities law.
这些调查包括美国联邦航空管理局(FAA)对马斯克的火箭公司太空探索技术(SpaceX)的安全违规罚款,以及美国证券交易委员会(SEC)指控他违反联邦证券法,要求马斯克向联邦政府支付可能高达1.5亿美元的费用。
On its own, the National Labor Relations Board, an independent watchdog agency for workers’ rights, has 24 investigations into Musk’s companies.
工人权利监督的独立机构国家劳工关系委员会(NLRB)单独对马斯克的公司进行了24项调查。
Since January, Trump has fired three officials at that agency, including a board member, effectively stalling the board’s ability to rule on cases. Until Trump nominates new members, cases that need a ruling by the board cannot move forward.
自1月以来,特朗普已经解雇了该机构的三名官员,包括一名董事会成员,基本上阻止了该委员会对案件进行裁决的能力。在特朗普提名新成员之前,需要该委员会裁决的案件都无法向前推进。
Over at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a public database shows hundreds of complaints about the electric car company Tesla, mostly concerning debt collection or loan problems. The agency has now effectively been put out of commission, at least temporarily, by the Trump administration, which has ordered its staff to put a hold on all investigations. The bureau also is an agency that would have regulated Musk’s new efforts to bring a payments service to the social media platform X, which he owns.
在消费者金融保护局,一个公共数据库显示了数以百计针对电动汽车公司特斯拉的投诉,大多涉及债务催收或贷款问题。该机构现在实际上已被特朗普政府暂时关停,特朗普政府已命令其工作人员暂停所有调查。该局本应监管马斯克将支付服务引入他旗下社交媒体平台X的新计划。
Musk has numerous contracts that are overseen by multiple government agencies — including space, media, financial securities and highway safety. He and his team now also have an extraordinary position created by Trump that allows him to review the spending and staffing of every department in the executive branch through his cost-cutting initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency.
马斯克拥有许多由多个政府机构监管的合同,包括太空、媒体、金融证券和公路安全等领域。他和他的团队现在还拥有特朗普为其创造的一个特殊职位,使他能够通过名为政府效率部的削减开支计划,审查行政部门每个分部的开支和人员配置。
None of the investigations or lawsuits involving Musk and his companies, at least so far, have formally been dropped since the start of the new administration. The Times also found no evidence that Musk directly ordered that an investigation into one of his companies be shut down or stalled.
自新一届政府上任以来,至少到目前为止,涉及马斯克及其公司的任何调查或诉讼都没有正式被撤销。《纽约时报》也没有找到任何证据,表明马斯克直接下令停止或拖延对其任何一家公司的调查。
But the upheaval at federal agencies represents one of the first tests of a wide range of conflicts of interest Musk has brought to the White House, including 100 contracts with 17 federal agencies.
但联邦机构的动荡代表着马斯克带到白宫的各种利益冲突的首批考验之一,其中包括与17个联邦机构签订的100个合同。
Musk controls six companies, including Tesla, which is publicly traded. He is the founder of SpaceX; the artificial intelligence startup xAI; the Boring Co., a tunneling venture; and Neuralink, which is developing brain computer implants. All of those are private. He also owns X, formerly Twitter.
马斯克控制着六家公司,其中包括公开上市的特斯拉。他是以下公司的创始人:SpaceX、人工智能初创公司xAI、隧道建设公司The Boring Co、以及开发脑机接口的Neuralink。这些公司都是私营的。他还拥有X,其前身是Twitter。
Musk’s companies secured $13 billion in contracts over the past five years, making SpaceX, which collects most of that money, one of the biggest government contractors.
在过去五年中,马斯克的公司获得了130亿美元的合同,SpaceX收取了其中大部分资金,这使得它成为最大的政府承包商之一。
Musk has had a long and contentious relationship with regulators of his companies. He has called the SEC “bastards,” and SpaceX has sued the NLRB, arguing it’s “unconstitutional” after the agency had alleged that his company had mistreated and illegally fired some workers.
马斯克与监管其公司的机构有着长期且充满争议的关系。他曾称美国证券交易委员会为“混蛋”,SpaceX则起诉了美国国家劳动关系委员会,在该机构指控其公司不当对待和非法解雇部分员工后,称其行为“违宪”。
Democrats in Congress, and outside lawyers who specialize in government contracting and ethics, have questioned Musk’s position, saying that they cannot identify a time in American history when a corporate executive with so many regulatory matters, as well as billions of dollars in federal contracts, has had such power over government operations.
国会中的民主党人以及专门研究政府合同和伦理规范的外部律师质疑了马斯克的立场,他们表示,在美国历史上,从未有过马斯克这样一位面临如此多监管问题,以及数十亿美元联邦合同的公司高管,对政府运营拥有如此大的权力。
Trump recently said Musk is “not gaining anything” in the role. White House officials stated that it is up to Musk to police his own actions.
特朗普最近表示,马斯克在这个职位上“并没有获得任何好处”。白宫官员表示,是否监管自己的行为是马斯克自己的责任。
Musk, his companies and a spokesperson for the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment. However, Musk has defended his involvement in Pentagon contracting and said he was confident he did not have conflicts because employees at SpaceX submit the bids, not him personally.
马斯克、他的公司以及政府效率部的发言人没有回应置评请求。然而,马斯克为自己参与五角大楼合同做出了辩护,并表示他相信自己没有利益冲突,因为是SpaceX的员工提交投标,而不是他本人。
SpaceX, Tesla and Safety
SpaceX、特斯拉和安全问题
SpaceX’s launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket in July 2023 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was historic: The company was putting a 10-ton satellite, the largest ever sent into what is called geostationary orbit, 22,000 miles above Earth.
2023年7月,SpaceX在佛罗里达州肯尼迪航天中心发射了其猎鹰重型火箭,这次发射具有历史意义:该公司将一颗10吨重的卫星送入所谓的静止轨道,这是有史以来最大的一颗卫星,距离地球35400公里。
Meanwhile, a conflict between SpaceX and the FAA had been playing out. The agency had told SpaceX as the countdown to the launch was underway that a new facility SpaceX had built to fill the rocket engines with fuel had not yet passed all the required safety checks.
与此同时,SpaceX与联邦航空管理局之间的冲突也在持续。该机构在发射倒计时开始时告知SpaceX,该公司为火箭发动机加注燃料而建造的新设施尚未通过所有必要的安全检查。
SpaceX went ahead anyway. The FAA proposed a $283,009 fine.
尽管如此,SpaceX还是继续进行了发射。航空管理局提出了一笔283009美元的罚款。
That move, along with a second proposed fine from the FAA, infuriated Musk. Musk later demanded the resignation of the agency’s head, Michael Whitaker.
这一举动以及航空管理局提出的第二笔罚款激怒了马斯克。马斯克随后要求该机构负责人迈克尔·惠特克辞职。
Musk got his wish when Whitaker, a lawyer with decades of experience in the aviation industry, resigned on the last day of the Biden administration.
马斯克如愿以偿,惠特克——一位拥有几十年航空业经验的律师——在拜登政府最后一天辞职。
With Trump back in the White House, Musk’s allies saw an opening to revoke the proposed FAA fines and force the agency, which is charged under law with ensuring that rocket launches do not endanger the public or cause undue harm to the environment, to speed up its SpaceX approvals.
随着特朗普重返白宫,马斯克的盟友看到了撤销航空管理局拟议罚款的机会,并迫使该机构加快对SpaceX批准。根据法律,该机构负责确保火箭发射不会危及公众,或对环境造成不应有的损害。
Shifts at the SEC
证券交易委员会的转变
Changes in leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which sued Musk in January shortly before Trump returned to the White House, will almost certainly result in an outcome more beneficial for Musk.
在特朗普重返白宫前不久,证券交易委员会在1月起诉了马斯克,该机构领导层的变化几乎肯定会导致对马斯克更有利的结果。
The SEC determined that Musk underpaid by at least $150 million for the Twitter stock he purchased in 2022 before moving to formally take over the company because he illegally failed to file a disclosure on time that he had already purchased 5% of the company. If that notice had been filed, the stock would almost certainly have risen in value and cost him more to acquire, the agency said.
证券交易委员会认定,马斯克在正式接管Twitter公司之前,于2022年购买该公司股票时,至少少支付了1.5亿美元,因为他非法未按时提交披露文件,未说明他已购买了该公司5%的股份。该机构称,如果当时提交了该通知,股票价值几乎肯定会上涨,导致他收购成本增加。
For months, Musk repeatedly rebuffed efforts by agency investigators to interview him, agreeing only a few months before the end of the Biden administration to answer questions in person, delaying the investigation.
几个月来,马斯克一再拒绝监管机构调查人员的面谈请求,直到拜登政府任期即将结束前几个月,他才同意亲自回答问题,从而延迟了调查。
The agency is overseen by a five-member commission, which must sign off on litigation and settlements. The two Republicans objected to the planned lawsuit, but they were in the minority at the time.
该机构由一个五人委员会监管,必须由他们批准诉讼以及和解方案。其中的两位共和党成员反对计划中的诉讼,但当时他们是少数派。
Now, with the departures of two Democrats, Republicans have a majority, and two lawyers who have participated in the deliberations said they expect that the matter will be settled with a modest fine.
现在,随着两名民主党人成员的离开,共和党人占据了多数席位,两名参与审议的律师表示,他们预计此事将通过轻度罚款得到解决。
Workers’ Rights
工人权利
At two federal watchdog agencies for workers, the actions by Trump have a clear effect on Musk’s business empire as well as countless other companies that have matters before them.
在两家联邦工人监管机构,特朗普的行动对马斯克的商业帝国以及无数其他面临问题的公司产生了明显的影响。
The firings at the agencies, the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, mean neither has a quorum on its board to decide cases.
国家劳工关系委员会和平等就业机会委员会这两个机构的人员解雇意味着两个机构都没有足够的法定人数来裁决案件。
One of the many NLRB investigations involves Musk’s companies’ sweeping job cuts in 2022 at X.
国家劳工关系委员会的众多调查之一涉及马斯克公司在X的2022年大规模裁员。
Twitter employees at the time banded together to talk about what was going on at work, on Slack software and on the messaging app Signal. Twitter tried to get ahold of the communications and even surveilled some employees.
当时,Twitter员工聚集在Slack软件和即时通讯应用Signal上讨论正在发生的事情。Twitter试图获得这些通信内容,甚至监视一些员工。
The matter is being reviewed by NLRB staff, but the board’s current construct could trouble its path forward or prevent a decision against X from being enforced.
国家劳工关系委员会的工作人员正在审查此事,但该委员会目前的结构可能会阻碍其推进,或阻止对X的裁决得到执行。
In 2023, the EEOC separately sued Tesla, alleging widespread and “ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees” and retaliation.
2023年,平等就业机会委员会单独起诉特斯拉,指控其“对黑人员工进行广泛和持续的种族骚扰”,以及报复行为。
While the case is moving forward, Trump is expected to appoint new commissioners, representing a shift in the agency’s approach to workers’ rights and a potential dismissal of the matter.
随着案件的进展,预计特朗普将任命新的专员,这代表着该机构对工人权利的处理方式发生转变,并可能会驳回此案。
A spokesperson for the EEOC said the agency would not comment on current litigation.
平等就业机会委员会的发言人称,该机构不会对正在进行的诉讼发表评论。
Fired Watchdogs
被解雇的“看门狗”
In his first week, Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general, who are charged with investigating waste and corruption within their own agencies.
在上任的第一周,特朗普解雇了至少17名监察长,他们负责调查自己机构内的浪费和腐败。
The mass firing — a move that may have violated federal law — may benefit Musk.
大规模解雇——这一举动可能违反了联邦法律——可能对马斯克有利。
Among the dismissed inspectors general was Phyllis Fong at the Agriculture Department.
农业部的菲利斯·方是被解职的监察长之一。
Her agency had opened an investigation in 2022 into Musk’s brain implant startup, Neuralink, and the inquiry was in progress as of late last year.
她的机构在2022年对马斯克的脑机接口初创公司Neuralink展开了调查,截至去年年底,调查仍在进行中。
In December, Musk posted a letter from his lawyer on X that claimed that the SEC had also reopened an investigation into Neuralink.
去年12月,马斯克在X上贴出了一封他的律师的信,声称证券交易委员会也重新开始了对Neuralink的调查。
Both investigations arose after a nonprofit, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, discovered through a public records lawsuit in 2021 that Neuralink had allegedly mistreated dozens of test monkeys, Ryan Merkley, the nonprofit’s director of research advocacy, said in an interview.
2021年,非营利组织负责任医学医师委员会通过公共记录诉讼,发现Neuralink涉嫌虐待数十只试验猴子,这两项调查都是在这一发现之后开始的,该组织研究倡导主任瑞安·默克雷在接受采访时说。
Musk has denied the mistreatment of monkeys at Neuralink, and the company was not cited after a USDA review.
马斯克否认Neuralink虐待猴子,在美国农业部进行审查后,该公司没有被传唤。
The USDA inspector general’s office didn’t return requests for comment.
美国农业部监察长办公室没有回复置评请求。
2025年1月17日
The economic scars of China’s real estate crash are evident at the country’s many street markets for construction materials. Proprietors of once-bustling shops that sell everything from lighting fixtures and doors to toilet bowls are aching for customers.
在众多街头建材市场,中国房地产崩盘造成的经济伤痕清晰可见。那些经销从照明灯具、门窗到马桶的商铺曾经热闹非凡,如今店主们正苦苦寻找顾客。
At the same time, China’s exports have climbed sharply. Companies are shipping cars, smartphones and many other products to foreign markets that they can no longer sell at home. Private-sector companies are investing heavily in new factories and equipment to expand production for export.
与此同时,中国的出口大幅攀升。各家公司正将汽车、智能手机和许多其他产品运往国外市场,这些产品在国内已经供大于求。私营企业大量投资新工厂和设备,扩大出口生产。
On Friday, the National Bureau of Statistics said that China’s economy grew 5 percent last year, as surging exports and strong investment in factories and industrial equipment mostly offset a lingering slump in construction.
周五,中国国家统计局称,由于出口激增、工厂和工业设备投资强劲,大部分抵消了建筑业持续低迷的影响,去年中国经济增长了5%。
The government had set a target of “about 5 percent” nearly a year ago.
将近一年前,政府设定的目标是“约5%”。
While the official figures often draw skepticism, government economists insist that the economy has regained its footing. “China’s economy is really recovering amid the ups and downs,” said Yang Ping, a director of economic research at the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s main economic planning agency.
尽管官方数据经常招致怀疑,但政府经济学家坚持认为经济已重新站稳脚跟。中国主要经济规划机构国家发展和改革委员会的经济研究主管杨萍表示:“中国经济确实已经在跌宕起伏中复苏。”
The real engine of the economy now lies in an ever-widening trade surplus, which reached almost $1 trillion last year. In December, the surplus, $104.8 billion, was the largest any country had reported for a single month.
目前,经济的真正动力在于不断扩大的贸易顺差,去年贸易顺差达逾7万亿元。去年12月的顺差超过7529亿元,是任何国家单月报告的最大顺差。
如果把去年中国出口的电动汽车和混合动力汽车首尾相连,可以从北京排到罗马。
China exported enough electric and plug-in hybrid cars last year to form a line across Asia and Europe from Beijing to Rome, Lyu Daliang, director of statistics and analysis at China’s General Administration of Customs, said during a news briefing on Monday. He did not mention that automakers also exported more than twice as many gasoline-powered cars, for which demand in China has halved since 2017 as consumers switched to electric models.
中国海关总署统计分析司司长吕大良在周一的新闻发布会上表示,如果把中国去年出口的电动汽车和插电式混合动力汽车首尾相连,可以横跨亚欧大陆、从北京达到罗马。他没有提及汽车制造商出口的汽油动力汽车数量是电动车的两倍多,自2017年以来,随着消费者转向电动车型,中国对汽油动力汽车的需求已经减少了一半。
Exports are strong partly because China’s vast population can no longer afford to buy many of the goods churned out by the country’s factories. Dozens of real estate developers have failed, vaporizing jobs and wealth. The surviving developers are struggling to finish projects and barely taking on new apartment buildings.
出口强劲的部分原因是,中国庞大的人口再也无力购买本国工厂生产的许多商品。数十家房地产开发商倒闭,工作机会和财富蒸发。幸存的开发商正努力完成项目,几乎没有承接新的公寓楼。
The middle class has lost much of its savings with a plunge in the value of homes, by far the main asset of most households. The result has been weak consumer spending that is only now starting to bottom out. Corporate profits have been eroding for the past three years.
房产是大多数家庭的主要资产,但由于房产价值暴跌,中产阶级失去了大部分积蓄。这导致消费支出疲软,现在才开始触底反弹。过去三年来,企业利润一直在减少。
The Chinese government has pursued several strategies in recent months to stabilize the economy. Government workers have been given raises. Local governments have been allowed to issue more bonds, to offset their recent declines in revenues from the sale of state land to developers.
近几个月来,中国政府采取了多项战略来稳定经济。政府工作人员获得了加薪。地方政府获准发行更多债券,以抵消向开发商出售国有土地这部分收入的减少。
The national government has encouraged the building of roads and other infrastructure projects to try to address the loss of construction jobs at real estate developers. But Beijing has had trouble finding local governments with enough money to fund these tasks.
中国政府鼓励修建道路和其他基础设施项目,试图解决房地产开发商建筑工作岗位流失的问题。但北京很难找到有足够资金的地方政府来资助这些任务。
To reignite consumer spending, the Ministry of Commerce has pursued an extensive so-called cash for clunkers program. Together, the national and local governments offer subsidies to households that trade in old gas-guzzling cars for electric vehicles and old household appliances for new, more energy-efficient models.
为了重振消费,商务部推行了一项广泛的所谓“以旧换新”计划。国家和地方政府共同向以电动汽车替代高油耗旧汽车、以更节能的新型家用电器替代旧家电的家庭提供补贴。
The program had a slow start last spring. The initial subsidies were as little as a tenth of the purchase price of the replacement car or appliance. But sales strengthened considerably through the autumn after the government doubled the financial incentives in August.
该项目去年春天起步时进展缓慢。最初的补贴仅为更换汽车或电器购买价格的十分之一。但在8月政府将财政激励措施增加一倍后,整个秋季的销售量显著增加。
中国政府试图通过推动基础设施项目来抵消建筑业就业岗位的减少,但地方政府往往缺乏执行这些项目的资金。
China’s car sales set a world record in November, then broke that record in December, when 3.1 million passenger cars were sold. Battery-electric and plug-in hybrid gasoline-electric cars made up half the market.
中国汽车销量在11月创下世界纪录,12月又打破了这一纪录,共售出310万辆乘用车。电池电动汽车和插电式混合动力汽油电动汽车占据了市场的一半。
Some academic economists question whether the cash for clunkers program is prompting households to redirect their spending to new cars and appliances, and away from meals and other consumption. If consumers are shifting how they spend money without increasing overall spending, the effects on the economy will be modest.
一些学术界的经济学家质疑“以旧换新”计划是否促使家在新车和电器方面消费,而不是在餐饮和其他方面。如果消费者在不增加总体支出的情况下仅仅改变消费方式,那么对经济的影响将是有限的。
Government economists insist that the program is increasing overall spending. This month, they widened the range of appliances that are eligible.
政府经济学家坚持认为,该计划正在增加整体支出。本月,他们扩大了符合条件的商品范围。
“With these new policies, we can stimulate people’s consumer demand — it is not just a redirection,” Ms. Yang said at a news briefing on Wednesday.
杨萍在周三的新闻发布会上表示:“有了这个新政策以后,它实际上就是能够激发人们的消费诉求,而不是一个简单的替代。”
The government has pressured universities, banks and other institutions in mainland China and Hong Kong to make sure that their economists do not question the accuracy of government statistics. Economists who have done so have had their social media accounts blocked and have sometimes lost their jobs and been barred from working in the financial sector.
政府向中国大陆和香港的大学、银行和其他机构施压,要求它们的经济学家不得质疑政府统计数据的准确性。质疑政府统计数据准确性的经济学家会被封掉社交媒体账户,有时还会丢掉工作,并被禁止在金融部门工作。
Questions nonetheless persist about the true health of the economy. Gao Shanwen, chief economist of SDIC Securities, a Chinese brokerage, became the latest to raise doubts about the economy’s actual growth rate during a panel in Washington last month.
尽管如此,人们对中国经济的真实健康状况仍然心存疑虑。上个月在华盛顿举行的一次小组讨论会上,中国券商国家开发投资集团的首席经济学家高善文成为最新一位对经济实际增长率表示怀疑的人。
“My own speculation is that in the past two to three years, the real number on average might be around 2 percent,” he said, while adding that in the coming years, “we know, and I think, the official number will always be around 5 percent.”
他说:“我自己的猜测是过去两到三年实际增长率平均可能在2%左右,”他还说,在未来几年里,“不过我们知道官方数字将始终在5%左右。”
Mr. Gao has disappeared from public view since then. SDIC Securities did not answer questions about Mr. Gao’s remarks, and Mr. Gao could not be reached for comment. Mr. Gao’s license as an investment adviser in Hong Kong, which had been active since 2012, lapsed at the end of December.
此后,高善文从公众视野中消失了。国投证券没有回答有关他言论的问题,也无法联系到他本人置评。高善文自2012年持有的香港投资顾问执照已于去年12月底失效。
最近一个周日,在中国山东省济南,一个建筑材料市场空空荡荡。
Hou Weitang is on the front line of the economic slowdown. Mr. Hou is a wholesaler at a construction materials market in Jinan in eastern China’s Shandong Province. He has worked at the market for 20 years. It was almost deserted on a recent weekend.
侯伟堂(音)身处经济放缓的第一线。他是中国山东省济南市一家建材市场的批发商。在这个市场已经工作了20年。最近的一个周末,这里几乎无人问津。
Mr. Hou said that business just kept getting worse. Like many entrepreneurs, he now focuses on cutting costs instead of spending or investing.
他说,生意越来越差。和许多营业者一样,他现在把重点放在削减成本上,而不是支出或投资。
“We have to reduce expenses, reduce materials prices, engage in price wars and try to sell more,” Mr. Hou said. “All my costs are being cut — only this way can we keep the doors open steadily; otherwise, we won’t be able to cover expenses.”
“现在就缩减开支,降低所有成本,材料价格再往下拉,打价格战,多卖点。我所有的成本往下降,我们消费的成本也在降,只能通过这种方式才能稳定开门,不然不够费用,”他说。
2025年2月12日
A little over a year ago, a group of researchers at Sheffield Hallam University in England published a report documenting a Chinese clothing company’s potential ties to forced labor. Members of the British Parliament cited the report ahead of a November debate that criticized China for “slavery and forced labor from another era.”
一年多前,英国谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学的一组研究人员发表了一份报告,记录了一家中国服装公司与强迫劳动可能存在关联。英国议会议员在去年11月的一场辩论前引用了这份报告,批评中国实行“仿佛来自于另一个时代的奴隶制和强迫劳动”。
But Smart Shirts, which is a subsidiary of the manufacturer and makes clothing for major labels, filed a defamation lawsuit. And in December, a British judge delivered a ruling: The case would move forward, which could result in the university’s paying damages.
但该服装公司的子公司、为各大品牌生产服装的盛泰智造提起了诽谤诉讼。12月,英国一名法官做出了裁决:该案将继续审理,这可能导致谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学被判支付赔偿金。
The preliminary finding in the case against the university is the latest in a series of legal challenges roiling the think tanks and universities that research human rights abuses and security violations by Chinese companies. To stop the unfavorable reports, which have led to political debate and in some cases export restrictions, the companies are firing back with defamation accusations.
针对研究中国公司侵犯人权和安全问题的智库和大学出现了一系列法律挑战,该初步裁决是最新一例。为了阻止不利报道,一些公司以诽谤指控进行反击。这些报道引发了政治争论,有时甚至导致出口限制。
Chinese companies have sued or sent threatening legal letters to researchers in the United States, Europe and Australia close to a dozen times in recent years in an attempt to quash negative information, with half of those coming in the past two years. The unusual tactic borrows from a playbook used by corporations and celebrities to discourage damaging news coverage in the media.
近年来,中国公司向美国、欧洲和澳大利亚的研究人员提出诉讼或发出威胁性律师函,试图压制负面信息的情况已有十宗左右,其中一半是在过去两年内发生的。这种不寻常的策略借鉴了企业和名人用来阻止媒体报道负面新闻的伎俩。
The budding legal tactic by Chinese firms could silence critics who shed light on problematic business practices inside one of the most powerful countries in the world, researchers warn. The legal action is having a chilling affect on their work, they say, and in many cases straining the finances of their organizations.
研究人员警告,中国公司正在越来越多采用的法律策略,可能会让那些揭露这个世界上最强大国家之一内部问题重重的商业行为的批评者噤声。他们表示,法律行动对他们的工作产生了寒蝉效应,在许多情况下给他们的组织带来了财务压力。
The problem has become so pronounced, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party held a hearing on the issue in September.
这一问题变得愈发突出,美国众议院中共问题特别委员会于9月就此举行了听证会。
The researchers in these cases “are faced with a choice: Be silent and back down against the C.C.P.’s pressure campaign or continue to tell the truth and face the tremendous reputational and financial costs of these lawsuits alone,” the committee’s chair, Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said at the hearing.
该委员会主席、密歇根州共和党众议员约翰·莫勒纳尔在听证会上表示,卷入诉讼的研究人员“要么保持沉默,在中国共产党的施压行动下退缩;要么继续讲出真相,独自承担这些诉讼带来的巨大声誉和财务成本”。
He added, “The Chinese Communist Party uses the American legal system to silence those who might expose them in America.”
他还表示:“中国共产党利用美国的法律体系让那些可能在美国揭露他们的人噤声。”
新华社发布的一张宣传图片显示,2020年新冠疫情期间,华大基因的一间充气检测实验室。
The battle between Chinese companies and critical researchers has escalated as tensions have mounted between the United States and China over trade, technology and territory.
随着美中在贸易、技术和领土问题上的紧张关系加剧,中国企业与批判性研究人员之间的斗争也不断升级。
Washington has taken steps to limit China’s access to resources like chips needed for artificial intelligence, and in recent days the Trump administration imposed a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports. Beijing countered with measures including limits on the export of rare earth minerals and an antimonopoly investigation into Google.
华盛顿已采取措施限制中国获取人工智能所需的芯片等资源,最近几天,特朗普政府对所有中国进口产品加征了10%的关税。北京则采取了反击措施,包括限制稀土矿物出口、对谷歌进行反垄断调查等。
Over the past decade, researchers — relying primarily on publicly available records and photographs and videos — have documented problematic business practices in China. Those reports have helped show how products made for American and European companies benefited from an epidemic of forced labor by minority ethnic Uyghurs in China. Researchers have also shed light on potential security flaws, raising national security concerns, as well as problematic connections between companies and the government.
过去十年,研究人员主要依靠公开的记录、照片和视频记录了中国存在问题的商业行为。这些报告有助于揭示为美国和欧洲公司生产的产品如何受益于中国少数民族维吾尔族中广泛存在的强迫劳动。研究人员还揭示了潜在的安全漏洞,引发了国家安全担忧,以及企业与政府之间存在争议的关系。
Now, Chinese corporations are increasingly hiring Western lawyers to combat those types of reports over allegations of defamation.
如今,越来越多的中国企业雇佣西方法律团队,以诽谤为由来对抗此类报告。
One of the first examples occurred in 2019 when Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, threatened to sue the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an Australian think tank. ASPI had released a report containing allegations that servers provided by Huawei to a coalition of African nations were sending data to Shanghai.
最早的案例之一发生在2019年,当时中国电信巨头华为威胁起诉澳大利亚战略政策研究所(ASPI),这是一家澳大利亚智库。ASPI此前发布了一份报告,指控华为为一个非洲国家联盟提供的服务器将数据发送到上海。
China’s embassy in 2020 gave the Australian government a list of 14 complaints that it wanted addressed to improve relations between the countries. Grievances included Australia’s funding of ASPI, something Huawei had lobbied to stop after its report. (As of 2024, the Australian government continued to fund the organization, according to the group’s latest disclosures.)
2020年,中国驻澳大利亚大使馆向澳大利亚政府提出了一份包含14项投诉的清单,希望解决这些问题以改善两国关系。这些包括澳大利亚对ASPI的资助,华为在报告发布后曾游说停止这一资助。(根据该机构最新的披露,截至2024年,澳大利亚政府仍在继续对其进行资助。)
Huawei and China’s embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
华为和中国驻澳大利亚大使馆未回应置评请求。
ASPI remains a target of Chinese company threats over its research into topics including the use of forced labor. The think tank’s legal costs, including staff time on Chinese-related legal matters, have risen from zero in 2018 to 219,000 Australian dollars, nearly 2 percent of its 12.5-million-dollar annual budget.
ASPI仍然是中国公司针对其研究课题(包括强迫劳动的使用等问题)进行威胁的目标。该智库的法律费用,包括处理与中国相关的法律事务上花费的时间成本,已从2018年的零元增至21.9万澳元,几乎占其1250万澳元年预算的2%。
“It’s mountains of legal letters, hassling, going around saying, ‘We’re going to sue,’” said Danielle Cave, a director at ASPI. “It’s quite stressful, and it’s designed to distract you.”
“大量的法律信件,骚扰,不停到处宣称‘我们要起诉你,’”ASPI主任丹妮尔·凯夫说。“这非常有压力,而且目的就是让你分心。”
“这非常有压力,而且目的就是让你分心,”ASPI主任丹妮尔·凯夫说,这家智库因其研究报告成为了中国公司威胁的对象。
More recently, companies have issued similar threats to researchers in the United States and Britain.
最近,一些公司也对美国和英国的研究人员发出了类似的威胁。
Eric Sayers, who focuses on U.S.-Chinese technology policy at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, received a letter in September from lawyers demanding that he take down an opinion article he co-wrote about a Chinese drone company, Autel Robotics. The article, which was published by Defense News, a trade publication, said Chinese-made drones posed a national security risk because they could map American infrastructure.
埃里克·塞尔斯是美国企业研究所专注于美中技术政策的研究员,他曾在9月收到律师函,要求他撤下他与人共同撰写的一篇关于中国无人机公司奥特尔机器人的评论文章。这篇文章在行业刊物《国防新闻》上发表,称中国制造的无人机构成国家安全风险,因为它们可以绘制美国基础设施地图。
Autel’s representatives called the article “defamatory and damaging” and threatened to sue if it wasn’t removed, although they eventually dropped the matter.
奥特尔公司的代表称该文章“诽谤且有害”,并威胁如果不撤下将提起诉讼,尽管他们最终放弃了此事。
Mr. Sayers posted the letter on X as a warning to other researchers. He wrote that it was what Chinese government “lawfare inside our democracy looks like.”
塞尔斯将这封信发布在X平台上,作为对其他研究人员的提醒。他写道,这就是中国政府“在我们的民主制度内部进行的法律战”。
In May, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University published a report by Anna Puglisi, a researcher who had recently departed. The report said the Chinese government was most likely involved in funding the growth of BGI, a Chinese biotechnology company.
在五月份,乔治城大学的安全与新兴技术中心发布了一份由最近离职的研究员安娜·普吉利西撰写的报告。报告指出,中国政府很可能参与资助中国生物技术公司华大基因的发展。
In a June letter, BGI accused Ms. Puglisi of making defamatory claims and demanded that she retract the report.
去年6月,华大基因在一封信中指控普吉利西做出了诽谤性陈述,并要求她撤回报告。
“We remain disappointed by Ms. Puglisi’s report, especially the numerous mistakes therein,” BGI said in a statement to The New York Times.
华大基因在一份声明中对《纽约时报》表示:“我们对普吉利西女士的报告感到失望,尤其是因为其中有许多错误。”
Ms. Puglisi went public with her experience during testimony before the House committee in September.
普吉利西在9月向众议院委员会作证时公开了她的经历。
“Speaking out today may put me in further jeopardy,” Ms. Puglisi told the committee, “but I feel that if we begin to self-censor ourselves because of the actions of an authoritarian regime, we become more like them and less like an open democracy.”
她对委员会表示:“今天发声可能会让我面临更大的风险,但我觉得,如果我们因为一个独裁政权的行为而开始自我审查,我们就会变得更像他们,而不像一个开放的民主社会。”
After Ms. Puglisi testified, Dewey Murdick, the executive director of her former think tank at Georgetown, said the organization stood behind her research.
在普吉利西作证后,她曾效力的乔治城大学的智库的执行董事杜威·穆尔迪克表示,该组织支持她的研究。
“We conducted a careful review and found no evidence to contradict the report’s findings or conclusions,” he said in a post on LinkedIn. BGI has not taken legal action against Ms. Puglisi.
他在LinkedIn上的一篇帖子中表示:“我们进行了仔细的审查,未发现任何证据反驳报告的发现或结论。”华大基因没有对普吉利西采取法律行动。
In England, Sheffield Hallam University researchers contacted Smart Shirts in November 2023 as they prepared the report tying its parent company to forced-labor practices, according to legal documents. After some back-and-forth, during which the company denied the allegations, the university published the report in December.
根据法律文件,2023年11月,谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学的研究人员曾联系过盛泰智造,他们当时正在准备一份将其母公司与强迫劳动行为联系起来的报告。经过一番来回沟通,在该公司否认这些指控后,谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学于12月发布了该报告。
In a complaint filed with the British High Court that month, Smart Shirts said the report was false and jeopardized its business making shirts for brands like Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren and Burberry. Smart Shirts said it believed that the allegations “have spread via the grapevine effect” among its customers.
盛泰智造在同月向英国高等法院提起的诉状中表示,该报告是虚假的,并且危及了其为Hugo Boss、Ralph Lauren和Burberry等品牌生产衬衫的业务。盛泰智造表示,它认为这些指控通过“口耳相传效应”在其客户中传播开来。
British defamation laws are more favorable to plaintiffs than the laws in the United States are, making Britain a popular place for individuals to sue news outlets and others over things that they write.
英国的诽谤法比美国的法律更有利于原告,这使得英国成为个人因内容而起诉新闻机构和其他人的热门地点。
The university declined to comment.
谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学拒绝发表评论。
In a statement to The Times, Smart Shirts said it welcomed supply chain research, but was disappointed that Sheffield Hallam had published the report without first allowing the company to correct inaccuracies.
在给《纽约时报》的声明中,盛泰智造表示欢迎供应链研究,但对谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学在未先允许公司纠正不准确之处的情况下发布报告表示失望。
“Our suit is aimed at addressing the material damage to our business arising from their misleading report,” the company said. “It is not aimed at suppressing the important work of researchers in general.”
“我们的诉讼旨在解决因他们的误导性报告对公司业务造成的实质性损害,”该公司表示。“我们的诉讼并非旨在从整体上压制研究人员的重要工作。”
2025年2月12日
The new king of the Chinese box office is an adorably ugly, demonic child fighting off monsters.
中国的票房新王者是一个长得丑得可爱,有着恶魔气息的打怪小孩。
In less than two weeks since its release, “Ne Zha 2,” an animated film based loosely on Chinese mythology and a famous 16th century novel, has become the highest-grossing movie ever in China, with more than $1 billion in ticket sales. It is also the first film not made by a Hollywood studio to cross that mark.
上映还不到两周,动画电影《哪吒2》票房已突破90亿元,创下中国影史票房纪录。它大致取材于中国神话和一部16世纪的著名小说。它也是第一部达到这一里程碑的非好莱坞电影。
The blockbuster delivered a rare dose of good news for the Chinese film industry, which is struggling with anemic ticket sales and a slumping economy. The few films that break through the malaise are no longer Hollywood titles, but domestic features teeming with patriotic messaging or rooted in traditional Chinese culture or folklore.
这部大片为中国电影业带来了一点难得的好消息,该行业正在票房不佳和经济低迷中苦苦挣扎。少数几部票房表现突出的电影不再是好莱坞大片,而是传递大量爱国主义信息或植根于中国传统文化或民间传说的国产电影。
“Ne Zha 2” is a sequel to what had been the highest-grossing animated film in China. In the 2019 original, Nezha is born as the reincarnation of a demon with supernatural powers, but destined to live only three years. He fights back against his fate and saves his village.
《哪吒2》是中国票房最高的动画电影的续集。在于2019年上映的前作里,哪吒是一个拥有超自然力量的魔丸转世,但注定只能在世上活三年。他反抗命运并拯救了自己的村庄。
In the sequel, Nezha revisits a similar theme. He challenges the political order and authority governing gods and demons, fighting the Dragon King of the Four Seas and other creatures.
续集重温了类似的主题。他挑战统治神仙和妖怪的政治秩序和权威,与四海龙王和其他神话生物战斗。
“ ‘Ne Zha 2’ is the rare movie that hits all the marks,” said Raymond Zhou, an independent Chinese film critic. “It targets all demographics, and has successfully won over all of them.”
“《哪吒2》是一部罕见的取得全面成功的电影,”中国的独立电影评论家周黎明说。“它把所有的人作为目标观众,并成功赢得了所有人的心。”
The movie has pulled in $1.2 billion in ticket sales since its release on Jan. 29, at the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, according to Maoyan, a Chinese entertainment data provider. Its haul is already more than double the highest-grossing movie of 2024. The film, distributed by CMC Pictures, will be released in North America on Friday.
据中国娱乐数据提供商猫眼,这部电影自1月29日的农历新年假期开始时上映以来,票房收入已达到90.1亿元,这已经是2024年票房最高的电影的两倍多。这部由华人影业发行的电影将于周五在北美上映。
上海一家电影院,影迷们与动画电影《哪吒2》中的角色合影。
Chinese state media and Communist Party officials celebrated the movie’s success, portraying it as a recognition of China’s cultural influence.
中国的官方媒体和中共官员们都在庆祝这部电影的成功,将其描述为人们对中国文化影响力的认可。
“Chinese culture is constantly moving forward in inheritance and innovation and showing its unique charm,” wrote the Global Times, a Communist Party tabloid.
“(这部电影的成功是)中国文化在传承与创新中不断前行、展现独特魅力的有力见证,”中共小报《环球时报》写道。
China Daily, a state-run newspaper, said in an opinion essay that “Ne Zha 2” symbolizes the country’s “growing cultural confidence.” It called it evidence that China’s entertainment industry is telling its own stories instead of relying on Western studios to make movies based on Chinese folklore, citing “Mulan” from Walt Disney Studios as an example.
官方英文报纸《中国日报》在一篇评论文章中说,《哪吒2》是中国“日益增强的文化自信”的象征。文章称影片证明了中国娱乐业正在讲述自己的故事,而不是靠西方电影公司来制作基于中国民间传说的电影,比如迪士尼公司出品的《花木兰》。
“ ‘Ne Zha 2’ reclaims the storytelling mantle, proving that no one can narrate China’s myths better than China itself,” the essay stated.
“《哪吒2》重新承担起讲故事的重任,证明了没有人比中国自己更能讲述中国的神话了,”文章指出。
Traditional Chinese culture has also inspired breakthroughs in other forms of entertainment. In video games, Black Myth: Wukong, based on a classic 16th century Chinese novel called “Journey to the West,” was an instant hit when it came out last year.
中国传统文化也激发了其他娱乐形式的突破。在电子游戏领域,改编自16世纪的中国经典小说《西游记》的《黑神话:悟空》游戏去年甫一推出即大获成功。
Until “Ne Zha 2,” the top-grossing Chinese films tapped into the country’s deepening nationalistic fervor. The previous No. 1, “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” is a 2021 film about a group of Chinese volunteers who defeated American soldiers during the Korean War. Close behind was “Wolf Warrior 2,” a 2017 action film in which a Chinese former special forces soldier takes on an American villain.
在《哪吒2》之前,中国票房最高的电影都是利用中国日益高涨的民族主义激情的片子。之前票房最高的电影是2021年上映的《长津湖》,该片讲述的是中国人民志愿军在朝鲜战争期间打败美国军队的故事。紧随其后的是《战狼2》,这部2017年上映的动作片讲述了一名曾在中国特种部队服役的人与美国反派较量的故事。
It’s been a tough stretch overall for Chinese films, however. Box office sales fell 23 percent last year, according to the China Film Administration, a government regulator.
但整体来说,中国电影的日子过得十分艰难。据政府监管机构中国电影局的数据,去年的票房收入同比下跌了23%。
The industry has gotten a boost from China’s broader efforts to stimulate consumer spending and reinvigorate a sluggish economy. The government added an extra day to the more than weeklong New Year holiday, giving moviegoers more time to go to the theater. In addition, there were discounts, subsidies and other incentives for movie tickets.
中国政府已为刺激消费支出、重振低迷的经济采取了更广泛措施,电影行业也受到了这些措施的推动。往年的春节假期通常是一周,今年政府让人们多放了一天假,让电影观众有更多时间去影院看电影。此外还有影票折扣、补贴和其他激励措施。
But Mr. Zhou, the film critic, said the incentives did not explain the success of “Ne Zha 2.” He credited the franchise’s popularity to its spin on classic tales and characters, resonating with younger audiences.
然而,影评人周黎明表示,这些激励措施不能解释《哪吒2》的成功。他认为该系列电影之所以受欢迎,是因为它改编自经典传说和人物,引起了年轻观众的共鸣。
As the world’s second-largest movie market, after the United States, Chinese audiences were once a dependable source of ticket sales for Hollywood blockbusters.
中国是仅次于美国的世界第二大电影市场,中国观众曾是好莱坞大片票房的可靠来源。
That is no longer the case. Last year, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” was the only U.S. movie in the top 10 of China’s box office, ranking ninth. In 2023, no American film cracked the top 10.
现在已不再是这样。去年,《哥斯拉大战金刚2:帝国崛起》在中国票房排名第九,是排名前十的电影中唯一的一部美国大片。2023年,没有一部美国电影进入前十。
Hu Xijin, a former editor in chief of the Global Times, said China’s decision to open up to Hollywood films in the 1990s helped advance the country’s movie industry, but China can now stand on its own.
《环球时报》的前总编辑胡锡进表示,中国在20世纪90年代做出决定,向好莱坞电影开放市场,推动了本国电影业的发展,现在中国的电影行业能靠自己的力量发展了。
“This is the best Chinese animation I have ever seen,” Mr. Hu wrote on Weibo, a social media platform. “The era when Chinese people looked up to Hollywood cartoons like ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and marveled at them is over.”
“这是我看过的中国最棒的动画片,”胡锡进在社交媒体平台微博上写道。“中国人仰望《功夫熊猫》那些好莱坞动画片并啧啧称奇的时代结束了。”
2025年2月11日
WASHINGTON — There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.
华盛顿——关于宪法危机并没有一个普遍接受的定义,但法律学者对于它的一些特征是有共识的。它通常是总统对法律和司法裁决蔑视的产物。宪法危机并不是非黑即白:它是一种渐进的过程,而不是非此即彼。它可能是累积性的,一旦开始,可能会变得一发不可收拾。
It can also be obvious, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
加州大学伯克利分校法学院院长欧文·切默林斯基说,宪法危机也可能是显而易见的。
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” he said Friday. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
“我们现在正处于一场宪法危机之中,”他上周五说道。“在特朗普担任总统的头18天里,出现了这么多的违宪和非法行为。我们从来没有见过这样的事情。”
He ticked off examples of what he called President Donald Trump’s lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views.
他列举了他所称的特朗普总统无视法律的例子:取消出生公民权,冻结联邦支出,关闭一个机构,罢免其他机构的领导人,解雇受公务员保护的政府雇员,并威胁要根据政治观点驱逐人们。
That is a partial list, Chemerinsky said, and it grows by the day. “Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis,” he said.
切默林斯基表示,这还只是一部分,而且这个清单每天都在扩大。“系统性的违宪和非法行为会引发宪法危机,”他说。
The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power. But the volume and speed of those actions may overwhelm and thus thwart sober and measured judicial consideration.
几位法律学者表示,当前形势的显著特征是混乱的活动泛滥,这些活动共同构成了一种全新的、激进的总统权力概念。然而,这些行动的数量和速度可能会使司法系统应接不暇,从而阻碍其进行冷静和审慎的考虑。
It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of Trump’s actions to reach the Supreme Court. So far he has not openly flouted lower court rulings temporarily halting some of his initiatives, and it remains to be seen whether he would defy a ruling against him by the justices.
对特朗普的行动挑战要到达最高法院需要一些时间,尽管可能只要几周。到目前为止,他还没有公开藐视下级法院暂时停止他的部分举措的裁决,他是否会无视大法官对他不利的裁决仍有待观察。
“It’s an open question whether the administration will be as contemptuous of courts as it has been of Congress and the Constitution,” said Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “At least so far, it hasn’t been.”
“政府是否会像蔑视国会和宪法一样蔑视法院,这仍是一个悬而未决的问题,”宾夕法尼亚大学法学教授凯特·肖说。“至少到目前为止,还没有。”
That could change. On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance struck a confrontational tone on social media. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.
这种情况可能会改变。上周日,副总统JD·万斯在社交媒体上采取了对抗的语气。“法官无权控制行政机关的合法权力,”他写道。
副总统JD·万斯周日在社交媒体上写道:“不允许法官控制行政部门的合法权力。”他的语气充满了对抗情绪。
Shaw said a clash with the courts would only add to a crisis that is already underway. “A number of the new administration’s executive orders and other executive actions are in clear violation of laws enacted by Congress,” she said.
肖说,与法院的冲突只会加剧已经开始的危机。她说:“新政府的一些行政命令和其他行政行动明显违反了国会制定的法律。
“The administration’s early moves,” she added, “also seem designed to demonstrate maximum contempt for core constitutional values — the separation of powers, the freedom of speech, equal justice under law.”
她还说,“政府的早期举措似乎也是为了最大程度地展现出蔑视宪法核心价值——三权分立、言论自由和法律面前人人平等。”
Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford University, added that a crisis need not arise from clashes between the branches of the federal government.
斯坦福大学法学教授帕梅拉·卡兰补充说,危机不一定是由联邦政府各部门之间的冲突引起的。
“It’s a constitutional crisis when the president of the United States doesn’t care what the Constitution says regardless whether Congress or the courts resist a particular unconstitutional action,” she said. “Up until now, while presidents might engage in particular acts that were unconstitutional, I never had the sense that there was a president for whom the Constitution was essentially meaningless.”
“当美国总统无视宪法的规定,不管国会或法院是否抵制某项违宪行为,这就是一场宪法危机,”她说。“到目前为止,虽然总统可能会采取某些违宪行为,但我从未感觉到有哪位总统会对宪法本质上是漠视的。”
The courts, in any event, may not be inclined or equipped to push back. So much is happening, and so fast, that even eventual final rulings from the Supreme Court rejecting Trump’s arguments could come too late. After the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are disassembled, say, no court decision can re-create them.
无论如何,法院可能并不倾向于反击,或不具备反击的能力。现在发生的事情太多、太快,即使最高法院最终做出最终裁决,驳回特朗普的主张,也可能为时已晚。例如,如果美国国际开发署或消费者金融保护局被解散,任何法院判决都无法重新创建它们。
In many cases, of course, the Supreme Court’s six-member conservative majority may be receptive to Trump’s arguments. Its decision in July granting him substantial immunity from prosecution embraced an expansive vision of the presidency that can only have emboldened him.
当然,在许多情况下,最高法院占多数的六名保守派大法官可能会支持特朗普的主张。最高法院7月的判决赋予了特朗普实质性的起诉豁免权,这一裁决采纳了对总统权力的广泛解释,只会让他更加大胆。
Members of that majority are, for instance, likely to embrace the president’s position that he is free to fire leaders of independent agencies.
例如,占多数的保守派法官可能会接受总统认为自己可以自由解雇独立机构领导人的立场。
The court may nonetheless issue an early, splashy ruling against Trump to send a signal about its power and independence. Striking down Trump’s order directing officials to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants would seem to be a good candidate, as it is at odds with the conventional understanding of the Constitution and the court’s precedents.
尽管如此,最高法院仍有可能尽早做出引人瞩目的裁决,反对特朗普的主张,以表明最高法院的权力和独立性。驳回特朗普指示官员拒绝给予移民子女出生公民权的命令似乎是一个合适的选择,因为这一命令与对宪法的传统理解和司法先例相悖。
Such a decision would have an added benefit: It would be hard to disobey. From its earliest days, the Supreme Court has been wary of issuing rulings that might be ignored.
这样的裁决还有一个好处:很难被违抗。自从成立初期,最高法院一直对发布可能被无视的裁决持谨慎态度。
“I’m reminded of Marbury v. Madison, when the government did not even bother to show up before the Supreme Court to defend its position — strongly suggesting it would flout any court order against it,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
“我想起了马伯里诉麦迪逊案,当时政府甚至懒得到最高法院为自己的立场辩护——这强烈表明它将藐视任何反对它的法院命令,”弗吉尼亚大学法学教授阿曼达·弗罗斯特说。
Even as the court ruled that the administration of Thomas Jefferson had acted unlawfully, she said, “the court carefully crafted its opinion in that case to avoid a ruling requiring executive branch compliance.”
她说,即使法院裁定托马斯·杰斐逊政府的行为不合法,“法院在该案中也精心撰写了意见书,以避免做出要求行政部门遵从的裁决。”
Much has changed since that 1803 decision, and the Supreme Court’s stature and authority have grown. “Nonetheless,” Frost said, “the Supreme Court may find it hard to defend the laws Congress enacted against executive usurpation when the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to do the same.”
自1803年的判决以来,情况发生了很大变化,最高法院的地位和权威也在不断提高。“尽管如此,”弗罗斯特说,“当共和党控制的国会拒绝采取行动时,最高法院可能会发现,很难捍卫国会为防止行政部门越权行为而制定的法律。”
Karlan said she worried that the justices would rule for Trump for fear that he would ignore decisions rejecting his positions. “The idea that courts should preserve the illusion of power by abdicating their responsibilities would just make the constitutional crisis even worse,” she said.
卡兰说,她担心大法官们会因为担心特朗普会无视驳回其主张的裁决,从而做出有利于他的裁决。“法院通过放弃自己的职责来维护权力的假象,这种想法只会让宪法危机变得更加严重,”她说。
Trump has already disregarded one Supreme Court decision, its ruling last month upholding a federal law, passed by lopsided bipartisan majorities, requiring TikTok to be sold or banned. Trump instead ordered the Justice Department not to enforce the law for 75 days, citing as authority for the move his “unique constitutional responsibility for the national security of the United States.”
特朗普已经无视了最高法院的一项裁决,该裁决于上个月支持了一项由两党压倒性多数通过的法律,要求TikTok必须出售,否则将会被禁。特朗普命令司法部在75天内不得执行这项法律,并以他“对美国国家安全负有独特的宪法责任”作为依据。
1957年,德怀特·D·艾森豪威尔总统向阿肯色州小石城派遣了101空降师,以执行1954年最高法院禁止公立学校种族隔离的布朗诉教育委员会案裁决。
Defiance of Supreme Court decisions is not unheard-of. Southern states, for instance, for years refused to follow Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that banned segregation in public schools, engaging in what came to be known as “massive resistance.”
藐视最高法院的裁决并非闻所未闻。例如,在1954年布朗诉教育委员会案判决后,南方各州多年拒绝遵守该裁决,该判决禁止在公立学校实行种族隔离。这些州采取了后来被称为“大规模抵制”的行动。
Even before this weekend, Vance has said that Trump should ignore the Supreme Court. In a 2021 interview, he said Trump should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.”
甚至在本周末之前,万斯就表示特朗普应该无视最高法院。在2021年的一次采访中,他表示特朗普应该“解雇所有中层官僚,解雇行政机构的所有公务员”,并且“用我们的人取而代之”。
He added: “When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
他还说:“当法院阻止你时,要像安德鲁·杰克逊那样,站在整个国家面前说,‘大法官已经做出了裁决。现在让他自己来执行吧。’”
Chief Justice John Roberts took note of such threats in his year-end report in December.
首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨在12月的年终报告中注意到了这种威胁。
“Every administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.”
“每届政府都会在司法系统中遭遇挫败——有时是在对行政或立法权力或其他重要议题有重大影响的案件中,”他写道。“尽管如此,在过去几十年里,无论裁决是否受欢迎,最高法院的判决都得到了遵守,这使国家避免了困扰20世纪50年代和60年代的那种对峙局面。”
“Within the past few years, however,” the chief justice went on, “elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
大法官继续写道:“然而,在过去几年里,来自不同政治派别的民选官员都提出了公然无视联邦法院裁决的威胁。这些危险的提议,即使只是偶尔出现,也都必须予以坚决反对。”
That view has many supporters, though some use caveats. “It would be an extremely grave matter for a president to defy an actual (unstayed, in-effect) order of a federal court in a case that is indisputably in the court’s jurisdiction,” Ed Whelan, a conservative legal commentator, wrote on social media.
这种观点有很多支持者,尽管一些人附加了条件。“在一个无可争议属于联邦法院管辖的案件中,总统违抗联邦法院的实际(未被延期、有效的)命令将是一件极其严重的事情,”保守派法律评论人士埃德·惠兰在社交媒体上写道。
But considering discrete clashes may be relying on an outdated paradigm.
然而,仅仅关注个别冲突可能是在依赖一种过时的范式。
大法官小约翰·罗伯茨在年终报告中警告了无视最高法院裁决的危险。
“One way to look at the administration’s assault on legal barriers is that it is seeking to establish ‘test cases’ to litigate and win favorable Supreme Court decisions,” Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith wrote in their Executive Functions newsletter. “But the typical test case is a carefully developed, discrete challenge to statutory or judge-made law with some good faith basis.”
“看待政府攻击这些法律障碍的一种方式是,它正在试图建立‘测试案件’,从而赢得最高法院的有利裁决,”鲍勃·鲍尔和杰克·戈德史密斯在他们的“行政职能”简报中写道。“但典型的测试案件是对成文法或判例法的谨慎构建、独立的挑战,且通常基于某种善意的基础。”
Goldsmith is a law professor at Harvard University and a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration. Bauer was White House counsel for President Barack Obama. They are students of Article II of the Constitution, which sets out the powers of the president.
戈德史密斯是哈佛大学法学教授,曾任小布什政府司法部官员。鲍尔是奥巴马总统的白宫顾问。他们是宪法第二条的研究者,该条款规定了总统的权力。
Trump’s executive orders have some features suggesting that they mean to test legal theories in the Supreme Court, they wrote. “But in the aggregate,” they added, “they seem more like pieces of a program, in the form of law defiance, for a mini-constitutional convention to ‘amend’ Article II across a broad front.”
他们写道,特朗普的行政命令有一些特点,表明其意在最高法院检验法律理论。他们还说,“但总体看来,它们更像是一个计划的组成部分,以违抗法律的形式,试图通过一个小型宪法会议,在广泛范围内‘修正’宪法第二条。”
2025年2月11日
SEATTLE — On a recent Friday afternoon, Jensen Huang, CEO of the chipmaker Nvidia, slipped into the White House to meet President Donald Trump for the first time. There was no fanfare, and he left without a single public photo taken of the two.
西雅图——最近一个周五的下午,芯片制造商英伟达的首席执行官黄仁勋悄然进入白宫,与特朗普总统首次会面。没有大张旗鼓的宣传,他离开时,两人也没有公开合影。
Two weeks earlier, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had a lengthy lunch with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. They dined with little fuss and also barely made the news.
两周前,微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉与特朗普在佛罗里达州的马阿拉歌庄园共进了长时间的午餐。他们的用餐没有引起太多关注,也几乎没有成为新闻。
Neither executive joined his big tech contemporaries who stood ramrod behind Trump at his inauguration. Instead, the two were on entirely different continents: Nadella was traveling to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, while Huang was wrapping up a visit to see suppliers and employees in Taiwan and China.
在特朗普的就职典礼上,这两位高管没有像其他大型科技公司高管那样,笔直地站在他身后。实际上,他们两人当时身处完全不同的大陆:纳德拉正在前往瑞士达沃斯参加世界经济论坛,而黄仁勋正结束在台湾和中国对供应商和员工的拜访。
The absence at the inauguration of the chief executives of two of the world’s most valuable companies was perhaps the most visual sign that some companies were trying a lower-key approach as Trump returned to Washington, even as some peers took to flamboyant displays of courtship.
全球最有价值的两家公司的首席执行官缺席就职典礼,这或许是最直观的迹象,表明在特朗普返回华盛顿后,一些公司正试图采取低调的做法,即使一些同行采取浮夸的方式示好。
For companies like Microsoft and Nvidia, which unlike many of their peers haven’t angered Trump, “it is almost business as usual,” said S. Somasegar, a former Microsoft executive now at Madrona Venture Group who speaks regularly with Nadella.
不同于许多科技公司,微软和英伟达并没有激怒特朗普,对它们这样的公司来说,“几乎是一切照旧,”微软前高管、现任职于马德罗纳创业集团的索马塞加说,他经常与纳德拉交谈。
While Microsoft and Nvidia share a quieter approach to Trump, their footprints in Washington are the polar opposite. Microsoft, on the cusp of its 50th anniversary and schooled by its antitrust fight more than two decades ago, is arguably tech’s savviest player on policy issues, with a strong lobbying arm and executives who have nurtured contacts in both political parties.
虽然微软和英伟达与特朗普打交道的方式都比较低调,但它们在华盛顿的足迹却截然相反。微软即将迎来成立50周年,在二十多年前的反垄断斗争中积累了丰富的经验,可以说是科技界在政策问题上最精明的参与者,拥有强大的游说力量,以及在两党都有人脉关系的高管。
Nvidia, on the other hand, is a rookie in Washington. Its profile has grown rapidly in the last few years, thanks to its overwhelming control of the specialized chips that other tech companies need to build big artificial intelligence systems.
而英伟达则是华盛顿的新秀。在过去几年里,它的知名度迅速提升,这得益于它对专用芯片的强大控制,这些芯片是其他科技公司用来构建大型人工智能系统所必需的。
The stakes for both companies are high. The new administration has to finalize rules about the sale of Nvidia chips and building Microsoft data centers overseas. Microsoft also has an array of other concerns, including cybersecurity, the regulation of AI systems and the electricity demands to power data centers. After a breakthrough development by the startup DeepSeek, Nvidia also faces a risk that the administration could further curtail sales of its chips to China.
这两家公司都与新政府利益攸关。新政府必须敲定有关英伟达芯片销售和微软在海外建设数据中心的规定。微软还面临一系列其他问题,包括网络安全、人工智能系统的监管以及数据中心的电力需求。在初创公司DeepSeek取得突破性进展后,英伟达还面临政府可能进一步限制其芯片对华销售的风险。
“Everyone has to come to the table, and they will do it in different ways, because as the saying goes, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” said Kevin Madden, a senior partner at Penta Group, a global strategy firm, and a former senior strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
“每个人都必须参与进来,他们会以不同的方式这样做,因为俗话说得好,如果你不坐在桌前,你就在菜单上,”全球战略公司Penta Group高级合伙人、米特·罗姆尼2012年总统竞选活动前高级策略师凯文·马登说。
Their quieter strategies were on display around the inauguration. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, attended a reception for Cabinet members hosted by Vice President JD Vance. A week later, Smith and Nadella went to a black-tie dinner that was hosted by the Alfalfa Club and attended by Cabinet nominees Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon and Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota and Nadella’s old mentor at Microsoft. Nvidia’s vice president of external affairs, Ned Finkle, and some of Nvidia’s policy staff members also attended inauguration celebrations.
他们的低调战略在就职典礼前后展现出来。微软主席布拉德·史密斯出席了副总统JD·万斯为内阁成员举办的招待会。一周后,史密斯和纳德拉参加了苜蓿草俱乐部举办的正式晚宴,出席的还有内阁提名人霍华德·卢特尼克、琳达·麦克马洪和北达科他州前州长、纳德拉在微软的昔日导师道格·伯格姆。英伟达负责对外事务的副总裁内德·芬克尔和该公司的一些政策工作人员也出席了就职庆祝活动。
Like other tech companies, Microsoft donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, but it did so after its peers. It gave $500,000 to the inaugural fund for the first Trump administration, as well as the Joe Biden inauguration in 2021. (Nvidia did not donate to the inaugural fund.)
与其他科技公司一样,微软也向特朗普的就职基金捐赠了100万美元,但它是在其他公司之后捐赠的。微软向特朗普首届政府的就职基金以及2021年乔·拜登的就职基金捐赠了50万美元。(英伟达没有向就职基金捐款。)
When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, had dinner during a much-anticipated trip to Mar-a-Lago in mid-December, Instagram posts documenting it made the gossip pages.
12月中旬,亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝索斯和未婚妻劳伦·桑切斯在备受瞩目的马阿拉歌庄园之旅期间共进晚餐,Instagram上的帖子记录了这一过程,并登上了八卦版面。
Microsoft leaders met with Trump’s staff, Cabinet appointees and technology advisers in advance of Nadella. When they arrived at Mar-a-Lago, they knew Trump’s priorities and concerns.
在纳德拉与特朗普会面之前,微软高管已与特朗普的幕僚、内阁任命人员和技术顾问有过会面。当纳德拉等高管抵达马阿拉歌时,他们已经事先了解了特朗普的优先事项和关注点。
They spoke about security and investing in infrastructure, and when Trump expressed concern about the safety of nuclear power — which is gaining popularity as a supplier of electricity for data centers — Nadella, Smith and Elon Musk, who joined the lunch, tried to assuage his fears, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.
据一位知情人士透露,他们谈到了安全和投资基础设施的问题,特朗普对核电的安全性表示担忧——作为数据中心的电力供应来源,核电越来越受欢迎——纳德拉、史密斯和参加午餐会的埃隆·马斯克试图打消他的顾虑。
Nvidia’s Huang skipped Mar-a-Lago and waited nearly two weeks after the inauguration to visit the administration.
黄仁勋没有前往马阿拉歌,而是在就职典礼结束近两周后才拜访白宫。
By the time he arrived in Washington this month, it had become clear that the Trump administration could be a threat to Nvidia’s business.
当他本月抵达华盛顿时,已经很明显,特朗普政府可能对英伟达的业务构成威胁。
Lutnick, a wealthy donor to Trump who had been chosen to lead the Commerce Department, told Congress during his nomination hearing days earlier that he thought the American tech companies, including Nvidia, “need to stop helping” China.
鲁特尼克是特朗普的一位富有捐赠者,被任命为商务部部长,几天前他在提名听证会上对国会说,他认为包括英伟达在内的美国科技公司“需要停止帮助”中国。
“If they’re going to compete with us, let them compete, but stop using our tools to compete with us,” he said.
“如果他们要和我们竞争,那就让他们来,但别再利用我们的工具和我们竞争,”他说。
The comments shattered Nvidia’s hopes that Trump might usher in a lighter regulatory environment than his predecessor.
这番话打破了英伟达对特朗普可能带来比前任更宽松监管环境的希望。
Under Biden, the United States curbed the sale of Nvidia chips to China and capped the sales of its AI chips to more than 100 other countries. The expansion and enforcement of those rules fall to the Trump administration.
拜登执政期间,美国限制向中国出售英伟达芯片,并对英伟达人工智能芯片向其他100多个国家的销售设置了上限。这些规则的扩大和执行将由特朗普政府实行。
During Huang’s afternoon meeting with Trump, their first ever, Huang talked about AI policy and semiconductors. But afterward, Trump told reporters that he couldn’t say whether he would ban more of Nvidia’s chip sales to China. He added that while “it was a good meeting,” the administration still planned to put tariffs on chips made overseas, which would cut into Nvidia’s profits because its chips are made in Taiwan.
在那天下午黄仁勋与特朗普的首次会面中,黄仁勋谈到了人工智能政策和半导体。但事后,特朗普告诉记者,他不能确定是否会禁止更多英伟达芯片销往中国。他还说,虽然“这是一次很好的会面”,但政府仍计划对海外制造的芯片征收关税,这将削减英伟达的利润,因为其芯片是在台湾制造的。
In the face of White House pressure, Nvidia has been beefing up its Washington presence. Last Monday, the company, which opened its first office there last year, brought on board a Republican government affairs executive, Stewart Barber, who previously worked as an adviser to Ivanka Trump, said two people familiar with Nvidia’s office who asked for anonymity to discuss personnel.
面对白宫的压力,英伟达一直在加强其在华盛顿的影响力。上周一,据两位熟悉英伟达办公室、要求匿名讨论人事问题的人士透露,该公司聘请了共和党政府事务执行官斯图尔特·巴伯,他此前曾担任伊万卡·特朗普的顾问。英伟达去年在华盛顿开设了第一个办公室。
The company has applied to become a member of the Information Technology Industry Council, a policy group that represents most of the leading tech companies. It has also hired American Global Strategies, a geopolitical advisory group led by Robert C. O’Brien, who served as White House national security adviser for two years under Trump.
该公司已申请成为信息技术产业委员会的成员,这是一个代表大多数领先科技公司的政策团体。公司还聘请了美国全球战略公司,这是一个由罗伯特·奥布莱恩领导的地缘政治咨询集团,奥布莱恩曾在特朗普执政时期担任过两年的白宫国家安全顾问。
Nvidia’s belated expansion in Washington can also be attributed to a recognition that its newfound prominence demanded it become more engaged. In a little over a year, Nvidia’s market value has ballooned by $2 trillion, making it one of the world’s three most valuable public companies, with Microsoft and Apple.
英伟达在华盛顿开展迟来的扩大影响力行动也是因为它认识到,该公司新获得的显著地位要求它更多地参与。在一年多一点的时间里,英伟达的市值猛增了2万亿美元,使其成为与微软和苹果并列的全球三大最有价值上市公司之一。
2025年2月11日
In August 1895, a young cook named Wong Kim Ark was about to disembark from the S.S. Coptic, after a long journey home to San Francisco from China, when U.S. customs officials denied him re-entry.
1895年8月,一位名叫黄金德的年轻厨师从中国长途跋涉回到旧金山,正准备从“科普特”号轮船下船时,美国海关官员拒绝他再次入境。
He was not a U.S. citizen, they said. Never mind that Mr. Wong had been born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, not far from the port where he was now being held. The 14th Amendment’s provision for automatic citizenship for all people born on U.S. soil did not apply to him, officials later argued, because he and his parents were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. at the time he was born.
他们说,他不是美国公民。就算黄金德出生在旧金山的唐人街,离他现在被扣留的港口不远。官员们后来辩称,宪法第14修正案中关于所有在美国领土上出生的人自动获得公民身份的规定不适用于他,因为他和他的父母在他出生时并不“受美国管辖”。
Rather than back down, Mr. Wong took his case to the courts — and won.
黄金德没有退缩,而是告上法庭,并取得了胜利。
In Mr. Wong’s case, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional guarantee of automatic citizenship for nearly all children born in the United States, a right that has deep roots in common law. Since that 1898 ruling, that expansive understanding of birthright citizenship has been the law of the land.
在黄金德案中,最高法院确认了宪法对几乎所有在美国出生的儿童自动获得公民身份的保障,这一权利在普通法中有着深厚的根基。自1898年的这一裁决以来,这种对出生公民权的广泛理解一直是国家的法律。
Now, the Trump administration wants to roll back the Wong Kim Ark ruling — and birthright citizenship more broadly — as it moves to crack down on immigration.
现在,随着特朗普政府加强对移民的打击,他们想撤回黄金德案的裁决,以及更广泛的出生公民权。
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order declaring that the government would stop treating U.S.-born children of parents who are undocumented or are in the country temporarily as U.S. citizens.
特朗普总统重新上任的第一天就签署了一项行政命令,宣布政府将不再把无证件者或临时入境者在美国出生的子女视为公民。
The order prompted a flurry of lawsuits, mostly from Democratic attorneys general and civil rights groups. Last week, the order was indefinitely blocked. One federal judge called it “blatantly unconstitutional.” The Justice Department has already appealed one of the injunctions.
该命令引发了一系列诉讼,其中大部分来自民主党检察长和民权组织。上周,该命令被无限期阻止。一名联邦法官称其“公然违宪”。司法部已对其中一项禁令提出上诉。
The Trump administration is pushing forward a reinterpretation of the 1898 decision, drawing on ideas from a small group of legal scholars like John Eastman, a lawyer known for drafting a plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election.
特朗普政府正在推动对1898年判决的重新解释,并借鉴了一小部分法律学者的观点,其中包括约翰·伊斯曼,这位律师因起草了一项阻止国会认证2020年总统选举结果的计划闻名。
美国总统特朗普于1月20日签署了一项行政命令,规定无证件者或临时访客在美国所生子女出生时将不再被视为美国公民。
It is not clear that the Supreme Court, even with its conservative majority, would be inclined to take up such a case. Still, the recent moves may lay the groundwork for a protracted legal battle that critics of birthright citizenship hope will chip away at the longstanding precedent.
目前尚不清楚的是,即使最高法院的保守派占多数,它是否会倾向于受理此类案件。不过,最近的举动可能会为一场旷日持久的法律战奠定基础,出生公民权的批评者希望这场法律战能削弱长期以来的先例。
The Wong Kim Ark case “is settled law, or at least it’s as settled anything possibly could be,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on immigration and citizenship law. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t get unsettled.”
黄金德案“是已经确定的法律,或者至少可以说,它是被广泛认可的法律原则”,弗吉尼亚大学法学教授、移民和公民身份法专家阿曼达·弗罗斯特说。“但这并不意味着它不会被颠覆。”
Mr. Wong’s case arose during a similar moment of heightened national anxiety around immigration.
黄金德案也是发生举国上下对移民问题高度焦虑的类似时刻。
His parents were part of a wave of Chinese laborers who flocked to the United States starting in the mid-1800s in search of economic opportunities. Mr. Wong’s father ran a grocery store in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood, and in an apartment above that store, his son Kim Ark was born in 1870.
黄金德的父母是19世纪中期开始涌入美国寻找经济机会的中国劳工潮的一部分。他的父亲在旧金山唐人街附近经营一家杂货店,黄金德于1870年出生在杂货店楼上的一间公寓里。
The growing numbers of Chinese workers on the West Coast soon gave rise to economic competition and virulent racism. Vigilante mobs regularly terrorized and at times even lynched these immigrants, who were often portrayed as unassimilable, inferior and disease-ridden.
西海岸华工数量不断增加,很快引发了经济竞争和恶毒的种族主义。治安暴民经常恐吓这些移民,有时甚至对他们处以私刑,他们经常被描绘成不可同化、低劣和携带疾病的人。
Federal laws reflected that bias as well, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred most Chinese people from entering the country and banned them all from becoming naturalized citizens.
联邦法律也反映了这种偏见,比如1882年的《排华法案》,该法案禁止大多数中国人进入美国,并禁止他们成为入籍公民。
Around that time, Mr. Wong’s parents went back to China, taking their son with them. Lured by the promise of higher wages, though, Mr. Wong soon returned to the United States.
大约在那个时候,黄金德的父母带着儿子回到了中国。不过,在更高工资的诱惑下,黄金德很快回到美国。
He was able to do so, despite the Chinese Exclusion Act, because lawmakers had adopted the 14th Amendment in 1868, two years before his birth. It states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
尽管有《排华法案》,他还是能够这样做,因为立法者在1868年,也就是他出生的两年前通过了第14修正案。它指出,“所有在合众国出生或归化合众国并受其管辖的人,都是合众国的和他们居住州的公民。”
The amendment overruled the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that African people who were enslaved in the U.S., and their descendants, were not American citizens.
该修正案推翻了1857年德雷德·斯科特的判决,该判决宣布在美国被奴役的非洲人及其后代不是美国公民。
For Mr. Wong and his supporters, the amendment’s broad language — especially the phrase “all persons” — meant that U.S.-born people like Mr. Wong were citizens, despite the Chinese exclusion laws. And the first few times he traveled, he was able to re-enter the United States by proving that he was born in San Francisco.
对于黄金德和他的支持者来说,修正案的宽泛措辞——尤其是“所有人”这个词——意味着黄金德这样在美国出生的人是公民,尽管有排华法案。在最初的几次旅行中,他能够通过证明自己出生在旧金山而重新进入美国。
黄金德出生在旧金山的唐人街。150多年来,这里一直吸引着中国移民。
But the government, seeking to close what they saw as a loophole, set out to find a test case, and landed on Mr. Wong.
但政府为了弥补他们认为的漏洞,开始寻找一个试验案例,最终选中了黄金德。
The government’s lawyers seized on another phrase in the amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — to argue that because Mr. Wong’s parents were citizens of China at the time of his birth, they were subject to the jurisdiction of the emperor of China, making their son the subject of a foreign power as well.
政府的律师抓住了修正案中的另一个词语——“受其管辖”——辩称黄金德的父母在他出生时是中国公民,他们受中国皇帝的管辖,因而他们的儿子也受外国政权的管辖。
The lawyers for Mr. Wong cited congressional debates to argue that the amendment’s authors intended for birthright citizenship to apply broadly. The exceptions made under the jurisdiction clause were very few: the children of foreign diplomats; hostile foreign forces occupying U.S. territory; and initially, some Native Americans (Congress extended citizenship to all Native Americans in 1924.)
黄金德的律师援引国会辩论来辩称,修正案的起草者意在让出生公民权得到广泛适用。根据管辖权条款作出的例外情况非常少,包括外国外交官的子女;占领美国领土的敌对外国军队;最初还包括一些印第安人(国会在1924年将公民身份扩大到所有印第安人)。
Mr. Wong’s lawyers also had an important political insight: If Mr. Wong lost his case, the U.S.-born children of white European immigrants would also be denied citizenship.
黄金德的律师还有一个重要的见解:如果黄金德败诉,那么欧洲白人移民在美国出生的子女也将被剥夺公民身份。
It was unclear how the Supreme Court would decide the case. Two years before, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the court had endorsed the “separate but equal” doctrine, giving legal backing to the Jim Crow laws that segregated and disenfranchised Black Americans in the South for decades. The court had also upheld several Chinese exclusion laws.
最高法院将如何裁决此案在当时是悬而未决的。此案两年前,在普莱西诉弗格森案中,最高法院支持了“隔离但平等”的原则,为几十年来在南方隔离黑人、剥夺其公民权的《吉姆·克劳法》提供了法律支持。法院还支持了几项排华法案。
After more than a year, the court, in a 6-2 vote, sided with Mr. Wong. In the decision, Justice Horace Gray explained that the 14th Amendment’s reference to “all persons” were words that were “restricted only by place and jurisdiction, and not by color and race.”
一年多以后,法院以6比2的投票结果支持黄金德。在判决书中,大法官霍勒斯·格雷解释说,第14修正案中提到的“所有人”是“只受地点和司法管辖的限制,而不受肤色和种族的限制”。
Since that ruling, birthright citizenship has generally been not just accepted, but also lauded as a symbol of the country’s commitment to a fundamental American value: that all people born in the United States are equal at birth, regardless of their race, religion, or the immigration status of their parents.
自那项裁决以来,出生公民权不仅被普遍接受,而且还被称赞为象征着美国对一项基本美国价值观的承诺:所有在美国出生的人,无论种族、宗教或父母的移民身份如何,都是生来平等的。
Still, there has been some dissent, especially lately, as the country has struggled with an influx of migrants.
尽管如此,尤其是近年来,随着这个国家面临移民潮的涌入,也出现了一些不同的声音。
The Trump administration’s lawyers have argued in recent court filings that birthright citizenship should extend to the children of noncitizens only if the parents are lawfully domiciled in the U.S., as Mr. Wong’s parents were at the time of his birth.
特朗普政府的律师在最近提交给法庭的文件中主张,只有当父母在美国合法居住时,非公民的子女才能获得出生公民权,正如黄金德出生时的父母状况。
大量移民涌入美国边境引发了出生公民权是否应继续包括非公民父母在美国所生子女的不同观点。
The lawyers have also said that undocumented immigrants and people on temporary visas, like tourists and students, retain political allegiances to foreign governments and are thus “subject” to their “jurisdiction,” making their U.S.-born children ineligible for automatic U.S. citizenship.
律师还称,无证移民和持临时签证的人,如游客和学生,仍然在政治上效忠外国政府,因此“受到”外国政府的“管辖”,这使得他们在美国出生的孩子没有资格自动获得美国公民身份。
Rogers M. Smith, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, is among the small group of legal scholars who have argued for a narrower interpretation of the 1898 ruling. “The decision did not discuss the children of unauthorized aliens,” he said. “It’s ambiguous.”
宾夕法尼亚大学政治学荣休教授罗杰斯·史密斯是主张对1898年裁决进行狭义解释的少数法律学者之一。“这项决定没有讨论非法移民的子女,”他说。“这是模棱两可的。”
Mr. Smith said that personally, he was in favor of automatic birthright citizenship, including for the children of undocumented immigrants. And like most legal scholars, he believes that the president — Mr. Trump in this case — does not have the authority to use an executive order to decide questions under the 14th Amendment.
史密斯说,就个人而言,他支持自动出生公民权,包括无证移民的子女。和大多数法律学者一样,他认为,根据第14修正案,总统——在本案中是特朗普——无权使用行政命令来决定问题。
Most legal scholars think it is unlikely that the current Supreme Court would want to reinterpret a precedent that dates back more than a century.
大多数法律学者认为,目前的最高法院不太可能想要重新解释一个多世纪以前的先例。
The constitutionality of birthright citizenship has not been a particularly ideological issue. Among those who have argued in favor of an expansive understanding of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause are John Yoo, a noted conservative law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
出生公民权的合宪性并不是一个特别具有意识形态的问题。加州大学伯克利分校著名的保守派法学教授柳约翰(John Yoo)是支持对第14修正案公民身份条款进行宽泛理解的人之一。
There are signs, though, that the ground may be shifting.
不过,有迹象表明,形势可能正在发生变化。
Judge James C. Ho, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and has been mentioned as a candidate for the Supreme Court, once argued forcefully in favor of automatic citizenship for nearly all U.S.-born children. But in an interview last fall, Judge Ho seemed to back away from that broad interpretation, invoking another argument that the Trump administration has cited in its recent legal filings.
曾被提名为最高法院大法官候选人的美国第五巡回上诉法院法官何俊宇(James C. Ho)曾大力主张,几乎所有在美国出生的儿童都应自动获得公民身份。但在去年秋天的一次采访中,何俊宇似乎放弃了这种宽泛的解释,他援引了特朗普政府在最近的法律文件中引用的另一个论点。
“Birthright citizenship obviously doesn’t apply in case of war or invasion,” he told an interviewer. “No one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship.”
“出生公民权显然不适用于战争或侵略的情况,”他告诉采访者。“据我所知,从来没有人认为入侵的外国人的子女有权获得出生公民权。”
Some scholars see something more nefarious. Erika Lee, a professor of history at Harvard University, said President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship needed to be seen in the broader context of his efforts to curb immigration, much as the Wong Kim Ark case came out of a period of intense anti-Chinese sentiment.
一些学者看到了更险恶的意图。哈佛大学历史学教授埃里卡·李说,特朗普总统关于出生公民权的行政命令需要放在他遏制移民努力的更大背景下看待,就像黄金德案是在强烈反华情绪时期出现的一样。
“That is, I think, a very clear parallel between then and now,” she said.
她说:“我认为,这是当时和现在非常明显的相似之处。”
Until recently, the Wong Kim Ark case was so rarely discussed publicly that even Mr. Wong’s descendants knew little about their history-making forefather. Now, the renewed debate over the decision could lead to a redefinition of what it means to be an American, and who gets to be one.
直到前不久,黄金德案还很少被公开讨论,就连黄金德的后代对他们这位创造历史的祖先也知之甚少。现在,关于这一决定的重新辩论可能导致对“美国人”身份的重新定义,以及谁有资格成为美国人。
As for Mr. Wong, after his victory in court, he — like many Chinese Americans — continued to face lengthy interrogations from federal immigration officials to prove that he was a citizen.
至于黄金德,在法庭上获胜后,他和许多华裔美国人一样,继续面临联邦移民官员的长时间盘问,以证明他是美国公民。
Eventually, he moved to China.
最后,他回到了中国。
2025年2月11日
President Trump’s promise to impose 25 percent tariffs on Monday on all U.S. imports of steel and aluminum would primarily target American allies, but at their heart they strike at his longtime nemesis: China.
特朗普总统承诺本周一开始对所有进口到美国的钢和铝征收25%的关税,这一举措主要针对美国的盟友,但其核心直指特朗普长期的对手:中国。
The top five suppliers of steel to the American market in January were Canada, followed by Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Germany. Canada has also led in aluminum exports to the United States, while the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China are far behind.
今年1月美国市场上的前五大钢材供应国依次是加拿大、巴西、墨西哥、韩国和德国。加拿大向美国出口的铝材也居美国进口总量的榜首,而阿联酋、俄罗斯、中国向美国出口的铝材远少于加拿大。
China does not export a lot of steel or aluminum directly to the United States. A succession of presidents and Commerce Department rulings have already imposed many tariffs on steel from China. Tariffs have also gone up lately on Chinese aluminum. Just last September, President Joseph R. Biden raised existing tariffs on many Chinese steel and aluminum products by up to 25 percent.
中国直接向美国出口的钢材或铝材并不多。多届美国总统和商务部的裁决已对来自中国的钢材加征了不少关税。对中国铝材征收的关税最近也有所上调。仅在去年9月,拜登总统就将对中国的许多钢和铝产品的现有关税上调了25%。
But China dominates the global steel and aluminum industry. Its vast, modern mills make as much or more of both metals each year as the rest of the world combined. Most of it is used within China’s borders, to build everything from high-rises and ships to washing machines and cars.
但中国主导着全球的钢、铝行业。中国庞大的现代化冶炼厂每年生产的这两种金属材料与世界其他国家生产的总和相当,甚至更多。中国生产的钢材大部分在国内使用,用于建设从高层建筑和轮船、到洗衣机和汽车等各种东西上。
Yet lately, China’s steel and aluminum exports are on the rise because its economy is struggling, sapping domestic demand. Many of these low-cost exports have gone to American allies like Canada and Mexico, which in turn export significant shares of their own more expensive output to the United States. Other Chinese metal exports have gone to developing countries like Vietnam, which now buys enormous quantities of semi-processed steel from China, finishes it and then re-exports it as Vietnamese steel to buyers around the globe.
但中国的钢材和铝材出口最近出现上升,因为该国的经济面临困难,使得国内需求下降。许多这些低价出口产品流向了美国的盟友,比如加拿大和墨西哥,而这些国家随后又将本国相当一部分造价更高的产品出口到美国。中国的其他钢材和铝材出口销往越南等发展中国家,越南目前从中国购买大量的半成品钢,在国内进行加工后,将其作为越南钢再次出口到全球各地。
China’s rising exports have upset producers and labor unions in the United States.
中国钢材和铝材出口不断增长,已经令美国的生产商和工会感到不安。
“China’s overcapacity is swamping world markets and severely injuring U.S. producers and workers,” said Michael Wessel, the longtime trade adviser to the United Steelworkers of America.
“中国的产能过剩正在给全球市场造成冲击,严重损害了美国的生产商和工人的利益,”美国钢铁工人联合会的长期贸易顾问迈克尔·韦塞尔说。
China’s foreign ministry had little to say specifically about the planned steel and aluminum tariffs at its daily briefing on Monday. “Let me stress that protectionism leads nowhere. Trade and tariff wars have no winners,” said Guo Jiakun, a ministry spokesman.
中国外交部在周一的例行记者会上对美国打算提高钢材和铝材关税的问题几乎没有任何具体评论。“我要强调的是,搞保护主义没有出路,贸易战、关税战没有赢家,”外交部发言人郭嘉昆说。
The planned tariffs come a week after President Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China. Last week, China announced that it would impose retaliatory tariffs, set to take effect on Monday, on liquefied natural gas, coal, farm machinery and other products from the United States.
在征收这些新关税的一周前,特朗普已对所有来自中国的进口产品加征了10%关税。中国上周已宣布反制措施,从本周一起对来自美国的液化天然气、煤炭、农业机械,以及其他产品征收报复性关税。
China’s steel glut arose from an extraordinary boom in steel mill construction that started during the early 1990s and lasted for about 15 years, said Nick Tolerico, a senior steel trade official throughout the Reagan administration who then became the president of U.S. operations for ThyssenKrupp Steel of Germany. He is now a consultant advising investment firms and companies that buy a lot of steel.
中国的钢铁供应过剩,原因是中国从20世纪90年代初开始的炼钢厂建设热潮一直持续了约15年,尼克·托勒里科说,他曾在整个里根政府期间担任高级钢铁贸易官员,后来担任过德国蒂森克虏伯钢铁公司的美国业务总裁。他现在为投资公司和购买大量钢铁的公司提供咨询服务。
Not seen since the 1940s has any country commanded the world’s steel industry on China’s scale today. The United States made half the world’s steel then, but its share has fallen since then to less than 5 percent.
自20世纪40年代以来,还从来没有一个国家以当今中国的规模主导世界钢铁行业。虽然美国曾在20世纪40年代生产了全球一半的钢铁,但此后其份额已降到5%以下。
For years, China’s construction industry used immense quantities of steel. A building boom produced abundant housing for the country’s 1.4 billion people and enough empty apartments for another 300 million people.
多年来,中国的建筑业消耗了大量的钢材。这场建筑热潮除了为中国的14亿人口提供了充足的住房外,也制造了足够另外3亿人居住的空置公寓。
The overhang of empty apartments has now propelled a housing market crash and an abrupt stall in construction. Desperate to avoid shutting down, China’s mills have responded with a surge in steel exports to countries all over the world. They have accepted lower and lower prices for their steel over the last several years, triggering a global erosion in prices.
空置公寓的积压现在已导致了房地产市场崩溃,建筑业突然停滞。为避免关闭,中国的炼钢厂采取了向世界各国大量出口钢材的做法。它们在过去几年里接受了越来越低的价格,导致了全球性的价格下跌。
The falling prices have hurt the American steel industry, a politically powerful constituency in key electoral regions. The United Steelworkers of America is headquartered in Pittsburgh, at the core of the industry’s longtime base in Pennsylvania, which has proved central to recent presidential elections. U.S. Steel, an emblem of America’s formerly outsize role in steel production, is also in Pennsylvania.
钢价下跌已给美国的钢铁行业造成伤害,该行业在几个关键选区具有很大的政治影响力。美国钢铁工人联合会总部所在的匹兹堡位于该行业的长期大本营宾夕法尼亚州的核心地带,而宾夕法尼亚州在最近的总统大选中被证明起了重要作用。美国钢铁公司也在宾夕法尼亚州,该公司是美国曾在钢铁生产上起过重要作用的象征。
The steel trade backlash against China is not confined to the United States. Brazil, Canada, Indonesia and Turkey have all raised tariffs sharply in the past year on steel from China.
对中国钢材出口增加的反弹不仅来自美国。巴西、加拿大、印度尼西亚和土耳其在过去一年里都大幅提高了对中国钢材的关税。
During his first term, President Trump imposed supplemental 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum imports from all over the world. He then exempted big steel-producing countries like South Korea, Australia and Brazil from the tariffs in exchange for their imposing quotas for how many tons of steel they would ship each year to the United States. But he left the tariffs in place for China.
特朗普在第一次担任总统期间曾对来自世界各地的钢材进口征收了25%的附加关税,对来自世界各地的铝材进口征收了 10%的附加关税。后来,他免除了对韩国、澳大利亚、巴西等钢材生产大国的附加关税,作为交换,这些国家对它们每年向美国出口的钢材吨数进行了额度限制。但特朗普保留了对中国钢材的关税。
The trade protections helped the American steel industry, which over the past six years has increased its capacity by about one-fifth, building modern steel mills. Older, less-efficient mills have started to run at less than full production.
贸易保护主义曾为美国钢铁行业提供了帮助,美国钢铁行业在过去六年里将产能提高了约20%,建设了现代化的炼钢厂。较老、效率更低的炼钢厂已开始以低于满负荷生产的能力运行。
By the last week of January, steel mills in the United States were operating at 74.4 percent of capacity, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, a Washington-based industry group.
据总部位于华盛顿的行业组织美国钢铁协会,截至今年1月的最后一周,美国炼钢厂的产能利用率为74.4%。
2025年2月10日
To many Chinese, DeepSeek’s success is a victory for China’s education system, proof that it equals that of the United States or has even surpassed it.
在许多中国人看来,DeepSeek的成功是中国教育系统的胜利,证明后者已经与美国的教育系统不相上下,甚至已经超越了美国。
The core team of developers and scientists behind DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up that has jolted the A.I. world, all attended university in China, according to the company’s founder. That’s a contrast with many Chinese tech companies, which have often sought talent educated abroad.
DeepSeek是一家震惊人工智能界的中国初创公司,该公司创始人称,其背后的核心开发人员和科学家团队都曾就读于中国的大学。这与许多中国科技公司的做法形成了鲜明对比,它们通常都会寻求在国外接受教育的人才。
As Chinese commenters online basked in Americans’ shocked reactions, some pointed to the high number of science Ph.D.s that China produces annually. “DeepSeek’s success proves that our education is awesome,” read one blog post’s headline.
中国网民对美国人的震惊反应津津乐道,一些人指出,中国每年都培养出大量科学博士。一篇博文的标题写道:“DeepSeek的成功,证明了我们教育绝对牛”。
Acclaim has even poured in from overseas. Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging platform Telegram, said last month that fierce competition in Chinese schools had fueled the country’s successes in artificial intelligence. “If the U.S. doesn’t reform its education system, it risks ceding tech leadership to China,” he wrote online.
来自海外的赞誉也纷至沓来。通讯平台Telegram的创始人帕维尔·杜罗夫上个月表示,中国学校的激烈竞争助长了中国在人工智能领域的成功。他在网上写道:“如果美国不改革教育体系,就有可能把科技领导权拱手让给中国。”
The reality is more complicated. Yes, China has invested heavily in education, especially in science and technology, which has helped nurture a significant pool of talent, key to its ambition of becoming a world leader in A.I. by 2023.
现实情况要复杂得多。是的,中国在教育,特别是科技领域投入了大量资金,这有助于培养大量人才,这对中国到2023年成为人工智能领域世界领导者这一雄心至关重要。
But outside of the classroom, those graduates must also contend with obstacles that include a grinding corporate culture and the political whims of the ruling Communist Party. Under its current top leader, Xi Jinping, the party has emphasized control, rather than economic growth, and has been willing to crack down on tech firms it deems too influential.
但在课堂之外,这些毕业生还必须面对各种障碍,其中包括严苛的企业文化和执政党共产党不可预测的政策。在现任最高领导人习近平的领导下,共产党强调的是控制而非经济增长,并不惜打击其认为影响力过大的科技公司。
DeepSeek has managed to evade many of those pressures, in part because it kept a low profile and its founder declared his commitment to intellectual exploration, rather than quick profits. It remains to be seen, though, how long it can continue doing so.
DeepSeek之所以能够躲过这些压力,部分原因是它保持了低调,其创始人宣布致力于知识探索,而不是急功近利。但它还能这样坚持多久有待观察。
“There are many young, energetic and talented researchers and engineers inside China. I don’t think there’s a big gap in terms of education between China and the U.S. in that perspective, especially in A.I.,” said Yiran Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. “But the constraint is really from other parts.”
“中国有很多年轻、有活力、有才华的研究人员和工程师。我认为从这个角度来说,中美之间的教育差距并不大,尤其是在人工智能方面,”杜克大学电气与计算机工程系教授陈怡然说。“制约因素其实来自其他方面。”
For many in China, the strength of its education system is closely tied to the nation’s global status. The government has invested heavily in higher education, and the number of university graduates each year, once minuscule, has grown more than 14-fold in the past two decades. Several Chinese universities now rank among the world’s best. Still, for decades, China’s best and brightest students have gone abroad, and many have stayed there.
对许多中国人来说,教育系统的实力与国家的全球地位息息相关。中国政府在高等教育上投入了巨资,每年的大学毕业生人数曾经非常少,但在过去20年里增长了14倍多。中国多所大学现在已跻身世界一流行列。尽管如此,几十年来,中国最优秀、最聪明的学生都去了国外,而且很多都留在了那里。
By some metrics, that is starting to change.
从某些指标来看,这种情况正在开始改变。
2023年,中国顶尖学府之一清华大学的毕业生。过去20年来,中国大学毕业生人数急剧增长。
China produced more than four times as many STEM graduates in 2020 as the United States. Specifically in A.I., it has added more than 2,300 undergraduate programs since 2018, according to research by MacroPolo, a Chicago-based research group that studies China.
2020年,中国培养的STEM毕业生人数是美国的四倍多。根据芝加哥研究中国的智库MacroPolo的研究,自2018年以来,中国在人工智能领域增加了2300多个本科专业。
By 2022, nearly half of the world’s top A.I. researchers came from Chinese undergraduate institutions, as opposed to about 18 percent from American ones, MacroPolo found. And while the majority of those top researchers still work in the United States, a growing number are working in China.
MacroPolo发现,到2022年,全球近一半的顶尖人工智能研究人员来自中国的本科院校,而来自美国本科院校的研究人员仅占约18%。虽然这些顶尖研究人员大部分仍在美国工作,但越来越多的人在中国工作。
“You’re churning out all this talent over the last few years. They’ve got to go somewhere,” said Damien Ma, MacroPolo’s founder.
“过去几年培养出了这么多人才。他们得有地方去,”MacroPolo的创始人马旸说。
Washington has also made it harder for Chinese students in certain fields, including A.I., to obtain visas to the United States, citing national security concerns.
华盛顿还以国家安全为由,加大了包括人工智能在内的某些领域的中国学生获得美国签证的难度。
“If they’re not going to go abroad, they’re going to start some company” or work for a Chinese one, Mr. Ma said.
“如果他们无法出国,他们就会创办一些公司”,或者为中国公司工作,马旸说。
Some have criticized China’s educational system as overly exam-oriented and stifling to creativity and innovation. The expansion of China’s A.I. education has been uneven, and not every program is producing top-tier talent, Mr. Ma acknowledged. But China’s top schools, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, are world-class; many of DeepSeek’s employees studied there.
有人批评中国的教育体系过于侧重应试,扼杀了创造力和创新力。马旸承认,中国人工智能教育的发展并不平衡,并非每个项目都能培养出一流人才。但中国的顶尖学校,如清华大学和北京大学,都是世界一流的,DeepSeek的许多员工都曾在那里学习。
The Chinese government has also helped foster more robust ties between academia and enterprises than in the West, said Marina Zhang, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who studies Chinese innovation. It has poured money into research projects and encouraged academics to contribute to national A.I. initiatives.
悉尼科技大学研究中国创新教授的教授玛丽娜·张(音)表示,与西方国家相比,中国政府促进了学术界与企业之间更紧密的联系。它向研究项目投入大量资金,并鼓励学术界为国家人工智能计划做出贡献。
Yet government involvement is also one of the biggest potential threats to Chinese innovation.
然而,政府参与也是中国创新面临的最大潜在威胁之一。
Beijing has blessed the A.I. sector — for now. But in 2020, after deciding that it had too little control over major companies like Alibaba, it launched a sweeping, yearslong crackdown on the Chinese tech industry. (DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, pivoted to A.I. from his previous focus on speculative trading, in part because of a separate government crackdown there.)
目前,北京对人工智能行业暂且给予厚待。但在2020年,中国政府认为自己对阿里巴巴等大公司的控制力太弱,对中国科技行业发起了为期数年的全面打压。(DeepSeek的创始人梁文锋从之前专注投机性交易转向人工智能,部分原因是中国政府另一项对投机性交易领域的打击行动。)
The resulting layoffs at tech companies, combined with the uncertainty of the sector’s future, helped diminish the appeal of a sector that once attracted many of China’s top students. Record numbers of young people have opted instead to compete for civil service jobs, which are low-paying but stable.
随之而来的科技公司裁员以及该行业未来的不确定性令这个曾经吸引许多中国顶尖学生的行业不再具备从前的吸引力。相反,数量创纪录的年轻人选择去竞争工资低但较为稳定的公务员工作。
A.I. has been somewhat shielded from the brain drain so far, in part because of its political imprimatur, said Yanbo Wang, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies China’s tech entrepreneurship. He added that he expected more successful Chinese A.I. start-ups to emerge soon, driven by young people. But it is impossible to say what China’s A.I. landscape would have looked like if Beijing had been more tolerant toward big tech companies in recent years, he added.
香港大学研究中国科技创业的教授王彦波(音)说,到目前为止,人工智能行业在某种程度上没有受到人才流失的影响,部分原因是它得到了政治上的认可。他预计,在年轻人的推动下,中国很快会出现更多成功的人工智能初创企业。但他还说,如果北京近年来对大型科技公司更宽松一点的话,不知道中国的人工智能格局会发展成什么样子。
“China’s long-term A.I. competitiveness hinges not only on its STEM education system, but also on its handling of private investors, entrepreneurs and for-profit companies,” he added.
“中国长期的人工智能竞争力不仅取决于它的STEM教育体系,还取决于它对私人投资者、企业家和营利性公司的处理方式。”
去年,上海人工智能大会上的中国展台。
Even within private companies, employees often must contend with a focus on quick results. That has led to a widely accepted stereotype, including within China, that Chinese engineers are better at improving on other people’s innovations than at coming up with their own.
即使在民营企业,雇员也常常必须应付急功近利的要求。这导致了一种即便在中国也被广泛接受的刻板印象——中国工程师更擅长改进别人的创新,而不是提出自己的创新。
Mr. Liang, DeepSeek’s founder, has lamented as much, noting last year that “top talents in China are underestimated. Because there’s so little hard-core innovation happening at the societal level, they don’t have the opportunity to be recognized.”
DeepSeek的创始人梁文锋也对此表示遗憾,“顶尖人才在中国是被低估的。因为整个社会层面的硬核创新太少了,使得他们没有机会被识别出来,”他在去年指出。
DeepSeek’s success may hinge as much on how it differed from other Chinese tech companies as on how it shared their strengths. It was financed by the profits from its parent hedge fund. And Mr. Liang has described hiring humanities graduates in addition to computer scientists, in the spirit of fostering a freewheeling intellectual atmosphere.
DeepSeek的成功可能既取决于它与其他中国科技公司的不同之处,也取决于与这些公司共同的优势。它的资金来自其母公司对冲基金的利润。梁文锋还表示,公司除了计算机科学家外,还会雇用人文学科学生,营造一种自由的知识氛围。
Since DeepSeek’s breakout success, some voices have urged more Chinese firms to emulate its model. An online commentary from the Communist Party committee of Zhejiang Province, where DeepSeek has its headquarters, declared the need to “trust in young talent” and give leading companies “greater control over innovation resources.”
自从DeepSeek取得突破性成功以来,一些声音敦促更多中国公司效仿其模式。DeepSeek总部所在的浙江省党委在网上发表评论称,需要“相信年轻人才”,并给予领先企业“更多创新资源调配权”。
But the best way for China to capitalize on its well-educated, ambitious A.I. work force may be for the government to get out of the way.
但对中国来说,要想利用其受过良好教育、雄心勃勃的人工智能人才,最好的方式可能是政府不要插手。
“Innovation requires as little intervention and management as possible,” Mr. Liang said in another interview. “Innovation often comes by itself, not as something deliberately planned, let alone taught.”
“创新需要尽可能少的干预和管理,”梁文锋在另一次采访中表示。“创新往往都是自己产生的,不是刻意安排的,更不是教出来的。”
2025年2月10日
Gyalo Thondup, the eldest brother of the Dalai Lama and a political operator in Tibet and the greater region, has died, the Dalai Lama’s office confirmed in a statement. He died on Sunday in Kalimpong in West Bengal, India, according to Tibetan media. He was 97.
达赖喇嘛办公室在声明中证实,达赖喇嘛的兄长、大藏区政治人士嘉乐顿珠已经去世。据藏人媒体报道,他于周日在印度西孟加拉邦的噶伦蓬去世,享年97岁。
“He was a good man who did his best for the Tibetan cause,” the Dalai Lama said in the statement. “I pray that he will take a good rebirth as a Tibetan again and that he will be able to serve the Tibetan administration that is a combination of spirituality and politics once more,” he said, referring to the Buddhist belief in the cycle of rebirth.
“善哉,我的兄长嘉乐顿珠,为利藏民,尽心尽力,”达赖喇嘛在声明中表示,“愿其功德令兄长早日投身善趣,成为藏族,继续利益西藏政教。”他指的是佛教对轮回重生的信仰。
A prominent figure in Tibetan society and politics, Mr. Thondup has been called the second-most influential person in the small Himalayan territory, eclipsed only by his brother, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and head of Tibetan Buddhism.
作为西藏社会和政治的杰出人物,嘉乐顿珠被称为西藏影响力第二大的人物,仅次于他的弟弟、第十四世达赖喇嘛和藏传佛教领袖丹增嘉措。
Together, the brothers defined a political era in Tibet, the increasingly isolated territory nestled in the Himalayas that has long battled Chinese influence and control. While the Dalai Lama has often been more public-facing, courting worldwide attention and accolades, Mr. Thondup was seen as a reserved, geopolitical operator who was more comfortable away from the spotlight.
兄弟俩共同定义了一个西藏的政治时代,这个日益孤立的地区位于喜马拉雅山脉,长期以来一直在与中国的影响力和控制作斗争。抛头露面、吸引全世界关注和赞誉的往往是达赖喇嘛,而嘉乐顿珠被视为一个低调的地缘政治操盘手,更愿意避开媒体和公众的关注。
For decades, Mr. Thondup advocated for paths to allow his brother — exiled since 1959 — to return to the territory. He kept the company of international leaders, hoping to leverage various stakeholders in the service of Tibetan independence.
几十年来,嘉乐顿珠谋求各种途径让自1959年以来流亡海外的弟弟返回西藏。他与国际社会的领导人打交道,希望借助各种利益相关者的力量来推动西藏的独立。
One of six children born to farmers in the Chinese town of Takster, Mr. Thondup served as a lifelong adviser and advocate for his younger brother. Sent abroad to study, he was the only one of his siblings not destined for religious life.
嘉乐顿珠出生于中国当采镇(今青海红崖村,译注)的一个农民家里,家里有六个孩子。他一生都是弟弟的顾问和支持者。他被送到国外学习,是兄弟姐妹中唯一一个没有接受宗教生活训练的人。
Freed from spiritual obligations, Mr. Thondup spent his life working for Tibetan autonomy, sometimes more aggressively than others.
在不受精神义务约束的情况下,嘉乐顿珠一生都致力于争取西藏的自治,有时表现得比其他人更为激进。
Mr. Thondup settled in India in 1952 and was an early mediator when the Dalai Lama fled there after the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. Mr. Thondup would later call his brother’s safe passage to India one of his greatest achievements.
嘉乐顿珠于1952年定居印度,达赖喇嘛在1959年反抗中国统治的起义失败后逃往印度时,他是早期的调解人。嘉乐顿珠后来声称,弟弟安全抵达印度是他最大的成就之一。
Mr. Thondup would go on to cultivate some of the first official Tibetan contacts with Indian and American authorities in the 1950s and 1960s, asking for their support. In the 1950s, he aided the C.I.A. in an ill-fated attempt to arm Tibetan separatists against the Communist Chinese government.
在20世纪50年代和60年代,嘉乐顿珠代表西藏与印度和美国当局建立了一些最早的官方联系,寻求他们的支持。在50年代,他协助中情局武装西藏的分离主义者,对抗共产党政府,但行动以失败告终。
达赖喇嘛(右三)与家人在印度,摄于1956年。从左到右依次为达赖喇嘛的母亲、姐姐、长兄土登晋美诺布、兄长嘉乐顿珠、弟弟、达赖喇嘛、妹妹和最小的弟弟。
Mr. Thondup periodically met with Chinese leaders in efforts to ease Chinese influence over Tibet. Even as talks broke down in recent years, he urged Tibetans to stay engaged.
嘉乐顿珠定期与中国领导人会面,谋求减轻中国对西藏的影响。即使在近年来谈判破裂的情况下,他仍然敦促藏人继续保持接触。
“It’s essential for Tibetan people not to lose hope in pleading for our rights to the Chinese government,” Mr. Thondup said at a news conference in 2008. He published an autobiography in 2015, “The Noodlemaker of Kalimpong,” about his life of activism and the Tibetan struggle against Chinese rule.
“对西藏人民来说,在向中国政府争取我们的权利时,不要失去希望,这是至关重要的,”嘉乐顿珠在2008年的一次新闻发布会上说。他在2015年出版了自传《噶伦堡的制面师》(The Noodlemaker of Kalimpong),讲述了他的奋斗历程,以及西藏反抗中国统治的斗争。
The Dalai Lama led a prayer service on Sunday for his brother, his office said.
达赖喇嘛的办公室表示,达赖喇嘛周日主持了为哥哥举行的悼念法会。
After the service, as the recitation concluded, the Dalai Lama rose from his seat, saluted a photo of his late brother and returned to his living space, the statement from his office said.
达赖喇嘛办公室的声明称,仪式过后,随着念诵的结束,达赖喇嘛从座位上站起来,向已故兄长的照片行礼,然后回到自己的住所。
2025年2月10日
Tom Stoppard wrote in “The Real Thing,” his enticing play about infidelity: “To marry one actress is unfortunate. To marry two is simply asking for it.”
汤姆·斯托帕德在他那部关于不忠的动人话剧《真东西》中写道:“娶一个女演员是不幸的。娶两个简直是自讨苦吃。”
Here’s a political corollary: To elect one Emperor of Chaos is unfortunate. To let two run the government is simply asking for it.
这里有一个政治上的类比:选出一个制造混乱的皇帝是不幸的。让两个这样的人管理政府则是自讨苦吃。
Presidents Trump and Musk have merged their cult followings, attention addictions, conspiratorial mind-sets, disinformation artistry, disdain for the Constitution, talent for apocalyptic marketing and jumping-from-thing-to-thing styles.
特朗普总统和马斯克将他们的狂热追随者、对关注的上瘾、阴谋论心态、造谣艺术、对宪法的蔑视、世界末日式营销的天赋,以及朝三暮四的行事风格融为了一体。
With a pitiless and mindless velocity, they are running roughshod over the government — and the globe.
他们以冷酷无情、毫无理智的速度,肆意践踏着政府乃至整个世界。
Queasy D.C. denizens are waiting anxiously to see if judges can save the country from the scofflaws running it.
惴惴不安的华府人士正焦急地等待,想看看法官们是否能拯救这个国家,使其免于这些肆意践踏法律的当权者的破坏。
The two unchecked and unbalanced billionaires are entwined in a heady and earth-shattering relationship.
这两位不受约束、不受制衡的亿万富翁纠缠在一起,展开了一段失去理智、惊天动地的关系。
“I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” Musk posted on X on Friday.
马斯克周五在X上发帖说:“我对@realDonaldTrump(特朗普的个人帐号)的爱是一个直男对另一个男人最高的爱。”
He may simply be offering affection to ward off any jealousy Trump felt when he saw Time’s new cover illustration: Musk in the Oval behind the Resolute Desk.
他可能只是在表达爱意,以消除特朗普看到《时代》周刊新封面时的嫉妒之情,图中的马斯克坐在总统办公桌后。
Elon Musk is brainy but he’s not your usual presidential brain trust.
埃隆·马斯克很聪明,但他不是常规的总统智囊。
Although everyone in Washington, including some in Trump’s inner circle, expect the two pathological narcissists to barrel into each other, they both seem to be getting what they want from the relationship.
尽管华盛顿的每个人,包括特朗普核心圈子中的一些人,都预期这两个病态的自恋狂会发生正面冲突,但他们似乎都从这段关系中得到了自己想要的东西。
Trump loves to be admired by the elites, and he adores money. Musk has gotten the keys to the American kingdom so he can attack “the woke mind virus,” which Musk says “killed” his “son,” who transitioned as a teenager. Both men are driven by revenge to smash up the government.
特朗普喜欢被精英们崇拜,他也喜欢钱。马斯克已经拿到了美国王国的钥匙,这样他就可以攻击“觉醒思维的病毒”,他表示,这个病毒“杀死”了他的在十几岁时就选择变性的“儿子”。两个人都在复仇的驱使下试图摧毁政府。
The president and the tech lord even have progeny, little Elons: the lost boys of DOGE, a gang of Gen-Zers in jeans with backpacks and bags of Doritos bursting into federal agencies to gut them and force bureaucrats to justify their existence.
总统和这位科技大佬甚至还有徒子徒孙,也就是那些小埃隆:政府效率部(DOGE)的迷失男孩,一帮穿着牛仔裤、背着背包、带着一袋袋多力多滋玉米片的Z世代们冲进联邦机构,大搞破坏,迫使官僚们为自己存在的价值做出辩护。
Their backgrounds and work are shrouded in secrecy, even as they access the government’s most sensitive information.
他们的背景和工作都笼罩在神秘的面纱下,尽管他们接触的是政府最敏感的信息。
“Muskrats,” as the bureaucrats they call “dinosaurs” named them, are rifling the government’s computers. A 19-year-old with the internet pseudonym “Big Balls” lost an earlier internship for leaking company secrets; a 25-year-old was ousted over racist posts. He wrote on X, “I was racist before it was cool,” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” and “Normalize Indian hate.” Even though he is married to an Indian American, Vice President JD Vance rescued the “kid,” as he called him, and helped him get his job back.
这些“麝鼠”正在翻阅政府的电脑,这是被他们称为“恐龙”的官僚给他们起的外号。一个网名为“大球”的19岁年轻人因为泄露公司机密而失去了早前的实习机会;一个25岁的年轻人因为种族主义帖子而被解雇。他在X上写道:“我在种族主义流行之前就是种族主义者”、‘你就是给钱,我也不会和其他种族的人结婚’、“让对印度人的仇恨正常化”。尽管副总统JD·万斯的妻子是印度裔美国人,但他还是救了这个他口中的“孩子”,并帮他找回了工作。
It’s not that we don’t need to rein in spending, including what is spent on risibly P.C. programs. But the disdain for Congress and the rule of law, and the glee at erasing so many jobs and programs, as if there is no human cost, is reprehensible. We are, after all, only carbon-based beings.
我们并不是不需要控制开支,包括花在荒谬的政治正确项目上的开支。但是,对国会和法治的蔑视,以及对大量工作岗位和项目被取消感到窃喜,仿佛这不需要任何人付出任何代价,是应该受到谴责的。毕竟,我们只是碳基生物。
The lost boys of DOGE fit in well with the “Mean Girls” attitude of Trump’s Washington. On Friday, the DOGE X account posted before-and-after pictures of the U.S. Agency for International Development entrance; they had stripped it of all identification. Their post even trolled Kamala Harris, using her viral phrase: “Unburdened by what has been.”
DOGE迷失男孩们与特朗普华盛顿的“刻薄女孩”态度不谋而合。周五,DOGE的X账号发了美国国际开发署入口处的前后对比照片;他们剥去了所有标识。他们甚至在帖子中嘲讽贺锦丽,使用了她的流行语:“放下过去的负担”。
The Silicon Valley digerati don’t care about the old world in Washington, D.C., churning out meddlesome regulations, laws and taxes. They are cocky about creating a new world, shaped by a new species, A.I.
硅谷的数字精英们并不关心华盛顿特区的那个旧世界,那里的官僚们不断推出烦人的法规、法律和税收,他们对创造一个由人工智能这一新物种塑造的新世界自信无比。
Donald and Elon are emotional time bombs, lashing out in the crudest and cruelest ways. Trump’s amoral, puerile, wrecking-ball style is now squared by Musk’s.
特朗普和马斯克都是情绪的定时炸弹,以最原始、最肆意的方式发泄情绪。特朗普那种不考虑道德、幼稚、不顾后果的风格现在与马斯克的风格相得益彰。
It’s rich that the world’s richest man is rooting around trying to wipe out vast numbers of government workers, saying, “Sorry, you can’t have your $85,000 a year job and your health insurance.”
这位世界首富竟然四处奔走,试图砍掉大量政府工作人员,对他们说“对不起,你不能拥有年薪8.5万美元的工作和医疗保险”,这可真是讽刺。
“They don’t care if the government delivers food or comes in and rescues your town from a flood or teaches poor kids in the inner city because they don’t have to live through any of those things themselves,” said the Trump biographer Tim O’Brien. “They’re rich and powerful, so they’re insulated from consequences of their actions.”
“他们不在乎政府是否会送食物,是否会在洪水中拯救你的小镇,是否会为城市贫困区的穷孩子提供教育,因为他们自己不需要经历这些事情,”特朗普传记的作者蒂姆·奥布莱恩说。“他们有钱有势,所以他们的行为不受后果影响。”
Trump cares about being popular and Musk doesn’t. So their relationship will probably remain strong until Elon cuts so many benefits from the Trump faithful that they tell Trump they no longer love him.
特朗普在乎是否受欢迎,而马斯克不在乎。因此,他们的关系可能会一直很牢固,直到马斯克削减太多特朗普忠实拥护者的好处,以至于他们告诉特朗普,他们不再爱他了。
And the bromance may not end with a bang. It could very well end with a bot.
这段兄弟情可能不会以一场爆炸性的冲突结束。它很可能以一个机器人结束。
When Trump turns 80, as a birthday present, Elon and the lost boys could create an A.I.-fueled Trump bot, a real-time video head trained on his news conferences and everything he has ever tweeted.
当特朗普年满80岁时,作为生日礼物,埃隆和迷失男孩们可以创造一个人工智能驱动的特朗普机器人,一个实时视频头,用他的新闻发布会,以及他发布过的所有推文来做训练。
Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality, slyly says that Trump would be “an unusually easy person to plausibly fake.”
虚拟现实之父贾伦·拉尼尔微妙地说,特朗普将是“一个异常容易被伪造得像那么回事的人”。
“Gradually it’ll be normalized,” Lanier told me. “People will get used to it more and more, and then it’ll actually start to be treated as the president. If you look at it on your phone or your computer, it would look just like him. The underlying software could be presented as a hologram onstage. It might even run in the next election. And they’ll go to the Supreme Court and say, ‘We know that the president can only have two terms, but this isn’t really the president. This is the Trump bot and A.I.s are people, too.’ Essentially allowing a continuation of the same administration into a third term.”
“逐渐地,这将被正常化,”拉尼尔对我说。“人们会越来越习惯,然后就会开始真正把它当作总统。如果你在手机或电脑上看它,就会觉得它和总统一模一样。底层软件可以作为全息图在舞台上展示。它甚至可以参加下届大选。他们会对最高法院说,‘我们知道总统只能连任两届,但这不是真正的总统。这是特朗普机器人,人工智能也是人。’从本质上来说,让同一个政府延续到第三个任期。”
All Hail President Trump Bot, engineered by Elon Musk.
向埃隆·马斯克打造的特朗普总统机器人致敬。