From a nondescript seventh-floor office at 135 Bonham Strand near Hong Kong’s financial district, at least four companies are operating with a shadowy mission: facilitating the illicit trade of Western technology to Russia.

文咸东街135商业中心是离香港金融区不远的一栋办公大楼，在七楼一间不起眼的办公室，至少有四家公司经营着神秘的业务：促进将西方技术运到俄罗斯的非法交易。

Shell companies at that address have acquired millions of restricted chips and sensors for military technology companies in Russia, many of which have been placed under sanctions by the U.S. government, according to an examination by The New York Times.

据《纽约时报》的一项调查，使用该地址的空壳公司为美国政府制裁名单上的许多俄罗斯军事技术公司购买了数百万个受限制的芯片和传感器。

The companies have names like Olax Finance and Rikkon Holding. Their office, with a faded 704 number on the door, appears unoccupied. No one answered during a visit last month. An ad for air-conditioning hung in the crack of the door.

这些空壳公司的名字包括Olax Finance和Rikkon Holding。它们办公室的门上有褪了色的号码704，但里面似乎无人。记者上个月登门造访时，无人应答门铃，只看到门缝里插着一张空调广告。

Rikkon Holding和Olax Finance在文咸东街135商业中心的房门。记者今年6月登门造访时，无人应答门铃。

Yet the companies are a crucial link in a chain connecting U.S. research laboratories to Chinese factories, Russian arms makers and the battlefields of Ukraine — and a sign that the U.S. government and tech giants cannot control where their technology goes.

但这些公司是把美国的研究实验室、中国的工厂、俄罗斯的武器制造商、乌克兰的战场连接起来的链条中至关重要的一环，也是美国政府和科技巨头无法控制其技术流向的体现。

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, nearly $4 billion of restricted chips have poured into Russia from more than 6,000 companies, including those at Hong Kong’s 135 Bonham Strand, according to a Times analysis of Russian customs data, corporate records, domain registrations and sanctions data. The analysis examined nearly 800,000 shipments of restricted electronic goods into Russia since mid-2021.

据时报对俄罗斯海关数据、公司记录、域名注册和制裁数据的分析，自从2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰以来，已有近40亿美元的受限制芯片通过6000多家公司流入了俄罗斯，其中就包括地址在香港文咸东街135商业中心的公司。这项分析审查了2021年年中运起到俄罗斯的近80万批受限制电子产品。

Even as the West sought to cut off access to semiconductors through trade restrictions, Russia established such a robust parallel supply chain that it imported almost the same number of critical chips in the last three months of 2023 that it did in the same period in 2021, according to the analysis of Russian customs data. The reliance on China for many of these chips also deepened, with transactions that were historically settled in U.S. dollars now increasingly executed in Renminbi, according to the analysis.

对俄罗斯海关数据的分析显示，就在西方寻求通过贸易限制切断其半导体供应同时，俄罗斯建立了一条如此强大的平行供应链，以至于该国在2023年最后三个月进口的关键芯片数量几乎与2021年同期持平。在获取这些芯片方面，俄罗斯已加深了对中国的依赖，分析显示，过去以美元结算的交易现在正越来越多地以人民币结算。

注：数据为美国商务部指定的1级受限芯片每月运往俄罗斯的价值。

The ability of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to flout Western trade restrictions has been one of the failings of the U.S.-led response to the war in Ukraine. Rather than become economically isolated, Russia has emerged from more than two years of conflict emboldened in its attacks against Ukraine.

俄罗斯总统普京可以如此公然蔑视西方贸易限制是美国领导的应对俄乌战争措施的失败之一。俄罗斯非但没有陷入经济孤立，反而在两年多的冲突后得以变本加厉地攻击乌克兰。

Russia’s technology imports begin with U.S. chipmakers selling their products to international distributors. The chip companies are not legally required to track where their goods go from there. Russia has then turned to the international distributors — which are in Hong Kong, China, Turkey, India, Serbia and Singapore, according to The Times’s analysis — to maintain a steady supply of tech.

俄罗斯的技术进口始于美国芯片制造商将产品出售给国际分销商。没有法律要求芯片公司追踪产品在分销商经手之后的流向。这让俄罗斯转向国际分销商来维持稳定的技术供应，据时报的分析，这些分销商位于香港、中国、土耳其、印度、塞尔维亚，以及新加坡。

Some of the middlemen companies are part of longtime networks of offshore firms owned by Russian businessmen. At 135 Bonham Strand, four shell companies are owned by oligarchs linked to Russia’s military industrial base, according to The Times’s analysis.

一些中间商公司是俄罗斯商人长期拥有的离岸公司网络的一部分。时报的分析显示，文咸东街135商业中心的四家空壳公司由与俄罗斯军工基地有联系的寡头所有。

The speed with which the shell companies have sprung into action has overwhelmed Western regulators. As soon as one supplier is ferreted out, new ones sprout in its place, sometimes with the same owner. Some of the companies operate in the United States’ backyard, including one Russia-linked firm fronted — apparently unwittingly — by a Latvian-Canadian retiree in a two-story house in a Toronto suburb.

这些空壳公司行动的速度之快让西方的监管机构疲于应付。一旦一家供应商被查，新供应商们马上取而代之，有时甚至新公司还是原来的所有人。其中一些公司在美国的后院运营，比如一家与俄罗斯有关的公司地址是一名拉脱维亚裔加拿大退休人员在多伦多郊区的一栋两层楼房，但此人显然对自己的地址被冒用不知情。

A Commerce Department spokeswoman did not directly address how Russia had flouted trade restrictions and said U.S. export controls meant that “Russia is increasingly unable to meet its heightened wartime demand in the face of shrinking supply and is paying more for what it does get.” A Treasury Department spokeswoman said the agency had expanded its efforts to penalize those trading with Russia and supporting its war efforts.

美国商务部发言人回答置评请求时没有直接答复俄罗斯是如何无视贸易限制的，而是说美国的出口管制意味着“面对供应减少的问题，俄罗斯越来越无法满足战争需求的增长，并且为获取的东西支付更高的价钱”。美国财政部发言人表示，已加大力度惩罚那些与俄罗斯做交易、支持其战争行动的人。

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to requests for comment.

俄罗斯外交部没有回复记者的置评请求。

China plays an essential role. As the world’s leading assembler of electronics, it imports huge numbers of Western components and turns them into consumer electronics. Chinese firms can easily channel those supplies to Russia, industry experts said.

中国在这方面起着至关重要的作用。中国是世界领先的电子产品组装国，从西方进口大量零部件，然后组装出消费类电子产品。业内专家表示，中国公司能轻易将这些零部件运往俄罗斯。

In a statement, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it didn’t provide weapons or equipment to any party in the war in Ukraine. “What the United States should do is reflect on its responsibility for the Ukraine crisis rather than shirking responsibility to China,” the ministry said.

中国外交部在一份声明中说，中国没有向俄乌战争的任何一方提供武器或装备。“美国应该做的是反思自己对乌克兰危机的责任，而不是把责任推给中国，”外交部说。

With limited domestic manufacturing capacity, the United States has little option but to continue sending chips into China for manufacturing, packaging and assembly.

由于本国的制造能力有限，美国别无选择，只能继续将芯片运往中国进行制造、封装和组装。

“The tide has shifted,” said Elina Ribakova, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. “We have lost control of chip production.”

“情况已经变了，”华盛顿智库彼得森国际经济研究所的经济学家埃琳娜·里巴科娃说。“我们已失去了对芯片生产的控制。”

Western Chips in Russian Missiles

俄罗斯导弹中的西方芯片

今年7月8日，一枚俄罗斯导弹击中基辅奥赫马迪特儿童医院后，救援人员和志愿者们清理废墟，寻找幸存者。

On July 8, a Russian missile tore into a children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing two and injuring 10, including seven children.

7月8日，一枚俄罗斯导弹击中了基辅一家儿童医院，造成两人死亡，10人受伤，其中包括七名儿童。

The Kh-101 long-range cruise missile fired into Kyiv was laden with electronics from American chipmakers that had been restricted by trade controls, according to Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention.

据乌克兰国家反腐局的说法，这枚打到基辅的Kh-101远程巡航导弹上有很多来自美国芯片制造商的电子产品，它们都是受贸易制裁限制的设备。

One important chip in the Russian missiles was the Field Programmable Gate Array, or F.P.G.A., made by U.S. companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. The chip is used in fire alarms, internet modems, missiles and drones to process data at lightning speed and is banned for sale to Russia.

俄罗斯导弹中的一个重要芯片是现场可编程逻辑门阵列(FPGA)，由AMD和英特尔等美国企业制造。这种芯片用于火灾报警器、互联网调制解调器、导弹和无人机，它们能以闪电般的速度处理数据，被禁止出售给俄罗斯。

Since the war began, Russia has imported more than $390 million in F.P.G.A.s, according to Russian customs data. The shipments are just one sliver of the Kremlin’s efforts to sidestep sanctions and maintain supplies of critical technology.

据俄罗斯海关的数据，自俄乌战争开始以来，俄罗斯已进口了价值超过3.9亿美元的FPGA。这些进货只是克里姆林宫规避制裁、维持关键技术供应努力的一小部分。

The Kremlin has long understood its reliance on Western technology to be a vulnerability. In 2020, Russia tried to kick-start domestic chip production with a plan to bolster electronics manufacturing over the next decade. Those efforts largely failed.

克里姆林宫早就明白，依赖西方技术是该国的一个弱点。俄罗斯曾在2020年提出一项计划，试图启动国内的芯片生产，并在未来十年加强国内的电子制造业。这些努力基本上失败了。

Instead, Russia cultivated relationships with large U.S. semiconductor manufacturers, importing chips from companies such as Intel and electronics distributors like DigiKey. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, those ties were upended. The U.S. government swiftly announced sweeping restrictions to hamper Russia’s ability to acquire crucial technologies.

俄罗斯转而开始与美国的大型半导体制造商发展关系，从英特尔等公司以及DigiKey等电子产品分销商进口芯片。俄罗斯2022年2月入侵乌克兰后，这些关系被断绝。美国政府为阻碍俄罗斯获取关键技术的能力，很快宣布了范围广泛的制裁措施。

“Russia’s access to cutting-edge U.S. and partner country technology will halt,” Thea D. Rozman Kendler, an assistant secretary of commerce, said at the time.

“俄罗斯获取美国和伙伴国尖端技术的渠道将被切断，”商务部助理部长西娅·肯德勒当时这样说。

Western companies soon exited Russia. Their products did not.

西方公司很快就从俄罗斯撤出。它们的产品却没有随之离开。

Russia speedily reoriented supply chains, seeking out friendly countries and ports willing to service its ships. Transshipment hubs popped up in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on companies and individuals in those countries.

俄罗斯对供应链迅速做出了调整，寻找愿意为其船只提供服务的友好国家和港口。转运中心在土耳其、阿联酋和摩洛哥迅速建立。美国政府已对这些国家的公司和个人实施了制裁。

China emerged as the dominant chip supplier to Russia. According to the Semiconductor Industry Alliance, 29 percent of all semiconductors pass through China.

中国成为俄罗斯的主要芯片供应国。根据半导体产业联盟的数据，中国经手了全球29%的芯片。

2022年，乌克兰军方在战场上收集的一枚俄罗斯导弹内发现的电路板上有德州仪器公司的芯片。

Texas Instruments, which makes chips found in the Shahed and Lancet drones — two of Russia’s deadliest military-grade drones — has a chip assembly and testing factory in the central Chinese city of Chengdu. Micron Technology, another U.S. chipmaker, fabricates chips in Xi’an. F.P.G.A.s flow in huge numbers to Chinese manufacturers, which put them in products that are sold globally.

见证者无人机和柳叶刀无人机是俄罗斯最致命的两款军用无人机，它们用的是德州仪器生产的芯片，而这家公司在中国成都有一家芯片封装测试厂。另一家美国芯片制造商美光科技在西安制造芯片。FPGA大量流向中国制造商，由这些制造商把它们装进销往全球的产品中。

In emailed responses, AMD, Texas Instruments, Micron and Intel said they opposed the use of their technology by Russia and that they complied with U.S. export controls.

在电子邮件回复中，AMD、德州仪器、美光和英特尔表示，它们反对俄罗斯使用其技术，而且遵守了美国的出口管制规定。

“In the first few weeks of the war, there really was something of an expectation that these were going to be crushing measures,” Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said of the sanctions. But “we underestimated the difficulty of the U.S. to actually enforce in a market like that.”

“在战争的最初几周，人们确实期望这些措施会成为杀手锏，”新美国安全中心的高级研究员艾米丽·基尔克里斯在谈到相关制裁时说。但“我们低估了美国在这样一个市场中实际执行制裁的难度”。

The Russians of 135 Bonham Strand

文咸东街135号的俄罗斯人

香港上环文咸街135号。时报追查到那里的一些公司由俄罗斯商人所有。

In 2008, Alexey Chichenev, a Russian businessman, took control of a company called Saril Overseas based in Hong Kong.

2008年，俄罗斯商人阿列克谢·奇切涅夫控制了一家名为Saril Overseas的香港公司。

It was one entity in a growing portfolio of shell companies at 135 Bonham Strand, led by Mr. Chichenev, a Russian expatriate in Hong Kong, and his partner, Mikhail Vinogradov.

在香港的俄罗斯侨民奇切涅夫及其生意伙伴米哈伊尔·维诺格拉多夫领导下，文咸东街135号出现了越来越多的空壳公司，Saril Overseas只是其中之一。

Over the next decade, the pair began managing nearly a dozen shell companies with names like Syssoft and Toren Limited, which worked in international property development and trade, according to news releases and the companies’ websites. One Bonham Strand firm, Olax Finance, said it had helped finance a water purification project with Costner Industries Venezuela, a company owned by the actor Kevin Costner. Mr. Costner’s publicist did not respond to requests for comment.

根据新闻稿和两家公司的网站，接下来的十年里，两人开始管理十来家空壳公司，比如Syssoft和Toren Limited，这些公司从事国际房地产开发和贸易。位于文咸东街135号的一家名为Olax Finance的公司表示，它与美国演员凯文·科斯特纳拥有的公司Costner Industries Venezuela合作，为一个净水项目提供了资金。科斯特纳的公关人员没有回复记者的置评请求。

The firms at 135 Bonham Strand used byzantine offshore ownership structures that intersected with holding companies in the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus, according to corporate registration documents. Shares of the companies were transferred like baseball cards between Russian businessmen with addresses in places like Vienna, Tel Aviv and Paris, according to Hong Kong corporate registration records.

根据公司注册文件，文咸东街135号的俄罗斯空壳公司使用了复杂的离岸所有权结构，与英属维尔京群岛和塞浦路斯的控股公司交织在一起。依据香港的企业注册记录，这些公司的股份就像棒球卡一样在维也纳、特拉维夫和巴黎等地的俄罗斯商人之间转让。

香港文咸街135号七层的公司名录。

Two companies at 135 Bonham Strand, Rikkon and Midicon, were owned separately by Andrey Kozitsyn and Igor Kudryashkin, the former directors of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, an industrial conglomerate in Russia, according to public records. The Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company has ties to Mr. Putin, weapons manufacturing and Russian organized crime, according to the Treasury Department and publicly available documents.

根据公开记录，位于文咸东街135号的两家公司Rikkon和Midicon分别由安德烈·科齐岑和伊戈尔·库德里亚什金所有，他们是俄罗斯工业集团乌拉尔矿业和冶金公司的前董事。根据美国财政部和公开文件，乌拉尔矿业和冶金公司与普京、武器制造和俄罗斯有组织犯罪之间存在联系。

The Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether Mr. Kozitsyn and Mr. Kudryashkin are still affiliated with the company, and they could not be reached.

乌拉尔矿业和冶金公司没有回应置评请求。尚不清楚科齐岑和库德里亚什金是否仍与该公司有关联，而且无法与他们取得联系。

In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mr. Kozitsyn and Mr. Kudryashkin transferred ownership of Rikkon and Midicon to Mr. Chichenev and Mr. Vinogradov. By 2022, Mr. Chichenev and Mr. Vinogradov controlled at least 11 companies at 135 Bonham Strand, according to Hong Kong’s corporate registry.

2014年，在俄罗斯吞并克里米亚后，科齐岑和库德里亚什金将Rikkon和Midicon的所有权转让给了奇切涅夫和维诺格拉多夫。根据香港的公司注册处数据，到2022年，奇切涅夫和维诺格拉多夫在文咸东街135号至少控制了11家公司。

Only two of those companies, Kvantek and Superchip, sold chips to Russia before the war in Ukraine. But as restrictions and sanctions set in, more jumped into action, according to The Times’s analysis of Russian customs data.

其中只有两家——Kvantek和Superchip——在乌克兰战争之前就在向俄罗斯出售芯片。随着限制和制裁的实施，根据时报对俄罗斯海关数据的分析，更多公司开始加入进来。

注：数据为美国商务部指定的1级受限芯片的发货量。为便于查看，货值低于10万美元的出货进行了放大。

Saril Overseas, for one, had no record of exports to Russia until six months after the war began. Its first shipment, in July 2022, was a batch of F.P.G.A.s valued at $95,000 and made by AMD.

Saril Overseas原本没有向俄罗斯出口的记录，直到战争进行到第六个月才开始。2022年7月，它向俄罗斯出口的第一批货物是AMD生产的FPGA，价值9.5万美元。

Saril Overseas later expanded its trade to several Russian companies. By this year, it had sold nearly $9 million of restricted semiconductors, according to the analysis of Russian customs data.

后来，Saril Overseas公司扩大了与几家俄罗斯公司的贸易规模。根据对俄罗斯海关数据的分析，到今年为止，它已经销售了近900万美元的受限制半导体。

At least one of the shell companies, Kvantek, has since shut down its website and appears to have ceased operations, according to The Times’s analysis.

根据《纽约时报》的分析，至少有一家空壳公司Kvantek已经关闭了网站，并且似乎已经停止运营。

In an interview at the door of his Hong Kong apartment, Mr. Chichenev said he did not know who was behind the companies and had forgotten how they were transferred to his name. “You see, it is a friend of my friend in Moscow, so they asked me to help them,” he said.

奇切涅夫在香港寓所门口接受采访时表示，他不知道这些公司的幕后老板是谁，也忘记了它们是如何转移到自己名下的。“你看，这是我在莫斯科的朋友的朋友，所以他们让我帮助他们，”他说。

Mr. Chichenev said he was contacted because he lived in Hong Kong, working as the director of a separate company. He said he was not a tech expert and simply helped get chips from the United States and Taiwan to China.

奇切涅夫说，他们之所以联系到他，是因为他住在香港，是另外一家公司的董事。他表示，自己并非科技专家，只是帮忙把芯片从美国和台湾卖到中国。

“It was out of my control,” he said. “I just made payments to the U.S. or Taiwan.”

“这超出了我的控制范围，”他说。“我只是向美国或台湾付款而已。”

His 135 Bonham Strand companies were being shut down, he added. “At the moment, I just enjoy life,” he said. “But before, yes, we had several companies, but now everything is closed.”

他还说，正在关掉他在文咸东街135号的公司。“目前，我只想享受生活，”他说。“但以前，是的，我们有几家公司，但现在全都关了。”

Mr. Vinogradov did not respond to emailed questions. Colin Cohen, a lawyer based in Hong Kong whose firm, Boase Cohen & Collins, is listed as the secretary on many 135 Bonham Strand companies, declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

维诺格拉多夫没有回复通过电子邮件发送的问题。香港律师科林·科恩的律所Boase Cohen & Collins被列为文咸东街135号那些公司的秘书，他以替客户保密为由拒绝置评。

One beneficiary of the continued tech flows was Staut, a Russian military electronics supplier. In July 2023, the Treasury Department imposed restrictions on Staut to cut it off from U.S. technology.

技术持续流动的受益者之一是俄罗斯军事电子产品供应商Staut。2023年7月，美国财政部对其实施限制，切断它与美国技术的联系。

That posed a problem for the 135 Bonham Strand companies, which had sold over $21 million in restricted chips to Staut. Yet within months, several Bonham Strand firms had shifted their shipments from Staut to two new companies, Chipdevice and Leningrad Microwaves.

这给文咸东街135号的那些公司带来了麻烦，它们已向Staut销售了超过2100万美元的受限芯片。但几个月内，多家位于文咸东街135号的公司已将货物从Staut转移到了Chipdevice和Leningrad Microwaves这两家公司。

While appearing independent on paper, Chipdevice and Leningrad Microwaves shared ownership with Staut and another Russian military electronics supplier, Fregat, according to Russian corporate records and domain registrations. Chipdevice and Leningrad Microwaves have received over $17 million in restricted chips since the war began.

根据俄罗斯的公司记录和域名注册信息，虽然Chipdevice和Leningrad Microwaves在名义上是独立的，但它们与Staut和另一家俄罗斯军用电子供应商Fregat共享所有权。自战争开始以来，Chipdevice和Leningrad Microwaves已经收到了超过1700万美元的限制芯片。

By late last year, the United States had placed Chipdevice and Fregat under sanctions. Leningrad Microwaves remains unaffected. Last month, the Treasury Department also designated Mr. Chichenev and several of the 135 Bonham Strand firms for economic sanctions. It has not take action against Mr. Vinogradov.

到去年年底，美国已将ChipDevice和Fregat列入制裁名单。Leningrad Microwaves仍未受到影响。上个月，财政部还将奇切涅夫和文咸东街135号那些公司中的几家列为经济制裁对象。它还没有对维诺格拉多夫采取行动。

Still, the U.S. government remains at least a step behind. Since the war started, the Office of Foreign Asset Control, an agency in the Treasury Department that administers the U.S. sanctions program, has designated at least 4,234 Russian individuals and companies for economic restrictions, according to OpenSanctions, a sanctions data provider.

尽管如此，美国政府仍然至少落后一步。根据制裁数据提供商OpenSanctions的数据，自战争开始以来，美国财政部负责管理美国制裁项目的机构外国资产控制办公室已指定对至少4234名俄罗斯个人和公司实施经济限制。

A Retiree’s Suburban Home

退休人士的郊区住宅

On the porch of his house in a leafy Toronto suburb, Edward Poberezkin, a 67-year-old Latvian-Canadian retiree, recently recounted his connection to a company that had shipped restricted technology to Russia.

在绿树成荫的多伦多郊区，67岁的拉脱维亚裔加拿大退休人士爱德华·波贝雷兹金最近站在自家门前，讲述了他与一家向俄罗斯运送受限技术的公司的关系。

A decade ago, Mr. Poberezkin said, a businessman from Russia paid him a nominal fee to register as an “agent for service” for Alburton Enterprises, a company based in the British Virgin Islands. The registration made Mr. Poberezkin and his home the designated addressee and address for official documents for Alburton’s Canadian headquarters.

波贝雷茨金说，10年前，一名俄罗斯商人向他支付了一笔象征性的费用，让他注册成为总部设在英属维尔京群岛的阿尔伯顿企业公司的“服务代理”。那之后，波贝雷茨金和他的住宅成为了阿尔伯顿公司加拿大总部官方文件的指定收件人和地址。

When a Times reporter visited with questions about Alburton this month, Mr. Poberezkin said he was “very surprised.” The company has shipped more than $9 million in restricted technology to Russia since early 2022, according to The Times’s analysis of Russian customs data.

时报记者本月带着有关阿尔伯顿的问题来访时，波贝雷茨金说他“非常意外”。根据时报对俄罗斯海关数据的分析，自2022年初以来，该公司已向俄罗斯运送了价值900多万美元的受限技术。

Mr. Poberezkin, who is Alburton’s only publicly listed director, said he had not heard from the company or received any mail related to it in nine years.

波贝雷茨金是阿尔伯顿唯一公开身份的董事，他说，九年来，他从未听到过该公司的任何消息，也没有收到过与其有关的任何邮件。

“I do not have any contact with the Russian government,” he said, adding that he did not know how his name or address were being used and did not know Alburton’s work. He said he intended to remove himself as the company’s Canadian representative.

他说，“我和俄罗斯政府没有任何联系，”他还说他不知道自己的姓名或地址是如何被使用的，也不了解阿尔伯顿的业务。他表示打算不再担任该公司的加拿大代表。

While Mr. Poberezkin’s story couldn’t be independently verified, it was characteristic of Russian efforts to pull in businesspeople — some of whom may be unwitting and who often have a background linked to Russia — to sidestep sanctions, experts said. That Russia-related businesses dared to do it in a major city of a U.S. ally illustrated how unabashed their evasions could be.

专家们表示，虽然波贝雷茨金的说法无法得到独立核实，但利用商人规避制裁是俄罗斯行动的一个特点——其中一些商人可能是不知情的，他们往往有与俄罗斯有关的背景。与俄罗斯有关的企业敢于在美国盟国的一个大城市里这样做，说明了他们的规避行为是多么明目张胆。

A Canada Border Services Agency spokesman said it could not provide details about Alburton’s operations.

加拿大边境服务局发言人表示，该局无法提供有关阿尔伯顿公司活动的详细情况。

Alburton has other international links. In 2019, it shipped thousands of pounds of electrical cables to Russia through Levitus Trading, a company in the British Virgin Islands, according to the analysis of Russian customs data. Levitus was once the sole owner of Olax, a company now owned by Mr. Chichenev at a familiar address: 135 Bonham Strand in Hong Kong.

阿尔伯顿还有其他国际关系。根据对俄罗斯海关数据的分析，2019年，该公司通过英属维尔京群岛的Levitus Trading公司向俄罗斯运送了数千磅电缆。Levitus曾经是Olax公司的唯一所有者，而这家公司现在的所有人是奇切涅夫，注册地址很熟悉：香港文咸街135号。

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this month, start-up founder Qu Dongqi showed off a video he had recently posted online. It displayed an old photograph of a woman with two toddlers. Then the photo sprang to life as the woman lifted the toddlers up in her arms and they laughed with surprise.

本月在上海举行的世界人工智能大会上，创业公司创始人曲东奇（音）展示了他最近发布在网上的一段视频，上面是一个女人和两个蹒跚学步的孩子的老照片。然后，照片仿佛有了生命，女人把孩子们抱在怀里，孩子们惊喜地笑了。

The video was created by A.I. technology from the Chinese internet company Kuaishou. The technology was reminiscent of a video generator, called Sora, that the American start-up OpenAI unveiled this year. But unlike Sora, it was available to the general public.

该视频是由中国互联网公司快手的人工智能技术制作的。这项技术让人想起美国初创公司OpenAI今年推出的一款名为Sora的视频生成器。但与Sora不同的是，快手的技术面向公众开放。

“My American friends still can’t use Sora,” Mr. Qu said. “But we already have better solutions here.”

“我的美国朋友仍然用不上Sora，”曲东奇说。“但我们已经有了更好的解决方案。”

While the United States has had a head start on A.I. development, China is catching up. In recent weeks, several Chinese companies have unveiled A.I. technologies that rival the leading American systems. And these technologies are already in the hands of consumers, businesses and independent software developers across the globe.

虽然美国在人工智能发展方面领先一步，但中国正在迎头赶上。最近几周，几家中国公司推出了与美国领先系统相媲美的人工智能技术，而且已经可以供全球消费者、企业和独立软件开发者取用。

While many American companies are worried that A.I. technologies could accelerate the spread of disinformation or cause other serious harm, Chinese companies are more willing to release their technologies to consumers or even share the underlying software code with other businesses and software developers. This kind of sharing of computer code, called open source, allows others to more quickly build and distribute their own products using the same technologies.

许多美国公司担心人工智能技术可能会加速虚假信息的传播或造成其他严重伤害，但中国公司更愿意向消费者发布他们的技术，甚至与其他企业和软件开发商共享底层软件代码。这种计算机代码的共享被称为开源，让其他人可以使用相同的技术，更快地构建和发布他们自己的产品。

Open source has been a cornerstone of the development of computer software, the internet and, now, artificial intelligence. The idea is that technology advances faster when its computer code is freely available for anyone to examine, use and improve upon.

开源一直是计算机软件、互联网以及现在的人工智能发展的基石。其理念是，如果计算机代码可供任何人免费查看、使用和改进，技术就会进步得更快。

China’s efforts could have enormous implications as A.I. technology continues to develop in the years to come. The technology could increase the productivity of workers, fuel future innovations and power a new wave of military technologies, including autonomous weapons.

随着人工智能技术在未来几年继续发展，中国的努力可能会产生巨大影响。这项技术可以提高工人的生产力，推动未来的创新，并可以驱动包括自主武器在内的新一波军事技术。

When OpenAI kicked off the A.I. boom in late 2022 with the release of the online chatbot ChatGPT, China struggled to compete with technologies emerging from American companies like OpenAI and Google. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.) But China’s progress is now accelerating.

2022年底，OpenAI推出在线聊天机器人ChatGPT，开启了人工智能热潮，当时中国很难与OpenAI和谷歌等美国公司推出的技术竞争。（《纽约时报》已起诉OpenAI及其合作伙伴微软，称其侵犯了与人工智能系统相关的新闻内容的版权。）但中国的进步正在加速。

Kuaishou released its video generator, Kling, in China more than a month ago and to users worldwide on Wednesday. Just before Kling’s arrival, 01.AI, a start-up co-founded by Kai-Fu Lee, an investor and technologist who helped build Chinese offices for both Google and Microsoft, released chatbot technology that scored nearly as well as the leading American technologies on common benchmark tests that rate the performance of the world’s chatbots.

一个多月前，快手在中国发布了视频生成器可灵，并于周三向全球用户开放。就在可灵发布之前，由曾经帮助谷歌和微软创建中国公司的投资者和技术专家李开复参与创立的初创公司零一万物发布了聊天机器人技术，在评估全球聊天机器人性能的通用基准测试中，该技术的得分几乎与美国领先技术相当。

New technology from the Chinese tech giant Alibaba has also leaped to the top of a leaderboard that rates open-source A.I. systems. “We have disproved the commonplace belief that China doesn’t have the talent or the technology to compete with the U.S.,” Dr. Lee said. “That belief is simply wrong.”

中国科技巨头阿里巴巴的新技术也跃居开源人工智能系统排行榜榜首。“我们推翻了中国不具备与美国竞争的人才或技术这一普遍看法，”李开复说。“这种想法是完全错误的。”

In interviews, a dozen technologists and researchers at Chinese tech companies said open-source technologies were a key reason that China’s A.I. development has advanced so quickly. They saw open-source A.I. as an opportunity for the country to take a lead.

在接受采访时，中国科技公司的十几名技术专家和研究人员表示，开源技术是中国人工智能发展如此迅速的一个关键原因。他们认为，开源人工智能是中国取得领先地位的机会。

But that will not be easy. The United States remains at the forefront of A.I. research. And U.S. officials have resolved to keep it that way.

但这并不容易。美国仍处于人工智能研究的前沿。美国官员决心保持这种状态。

The White House has instituted a trade embargo designed to prevent Chinese companies from using the most powerful versions of computer chips that are essential to building artificial intelligence. A group of lawmakers has introduced a bill that would make it easier for the White House to control the export of A.I. software built in the United States. Others are trying to limit the progress of open-source technologies that have helped fuel the rise of similar systems in China.

白宫已实施了贸易禁运，旨在阻止中国企业使用对构建人工智能至关重要的最强大计算机芯片。一群立法者提出了一项法案，使白宫更容易控制美国制造的人工智能软件的出口。还有一些人试图限制那些有助于类似系统在中国兴起的开源技术。

The top American companies are also exploring new technologies that aim to eclipse the powers of today’s chatbots and video generators.

美国顶级公司也在探索新技术，旨在超越当今聊天机器人和视频生成器的能力。

“Chinese companies are good at replicating and improving what the U.S. already has,” said Yiran Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. “They are not as good at inventing something completely new that will bypass the U.S. in five to 10 years.”

“中国公司擅长复制和改进美国已有的东西，”杜克大学电气和计算机工程教授陈怡然说。“他们不擅长发明在五到10年内越过美国的某种全新的东西。”

But many in China’s tech industry believe that open-source technology could help them grow despite those constraints. And if U.S. regulators stifle the progress of American open-source projects (as some lawmakers are discussing) China could gain a significant edge. If the best open-source technologies come from China, U.S. developers could end up building their systems atop Chinese technologies.

但中国科技行业的许多人认为，尽管存在这些限制，开源技术仍能帮助他们发展。如果美国监管机构扼杀美国开源项目的发展（就像一些立法者正在讨论的那样），中国可能会获得显著的优势。如果最好的开源技术来自中国，美国开发者最终可能会在中国技术的基础上构建他们的系统。

人工智能公司抱抱脸的首席执行官克莱蒙德·德朗格（右）表示，开源技术可以帮助中国在人工智能领域取得进展。

“Open-source A.I. is the foundation of A.I. development,” said Clément Delangue, chief executive of Hugging Face, a company that houses many of the world’s open-source A.I. projects. The U.S. built its leadership in A.I. through collaboration between companies and researchers, he said, “and it looks like China could do the same thing.”

“开源人工智能是人工智能发展的基础，”抱抱脸公司(Hugging Face)首席执行官克莱蒙德·德朗格说，世界上许多开源人工智能项目在使用这家公司的平台。他说，美国通过企业和研究人员之间的合作，建立了人工智能领域的领导地位，“看起来中国也可以做同样的事情。”

While anyone with a computer can change open-source software code, it takes a lot of data, skill and computing power to fundamentally alter an A.I. system. When it comes to A.I., open source typically means that a system’s building blocks serve as a foundation that allows others to build something new, said Fu Hongyu, the director of A.I. governance at Alibaba’s research institute, AliResearch.

虽然任何拥有电脑的人都可以修改开源软件代码，但要从根本上改变一个人工智能系统，需要大量的数据、技能和算力。阿里巴巴旗下研究机构阿里研究院的人工智能管理负责人傅宏宇说，就人工智能而言，开源通常意味着一个系统的构建模块可以作为基础，让其他人可以构建新的东西。

As in other countries, in China there is an intense debate over whether the latest technological advances should be made accessible to anyone or kept as closely held company secrets. Some, like Robin Li, the chief executive of Baidu, one of the few companies in China building its own A.I. technology entirely from scratch, think the technology is most profitable and secure in the hands of a limited few.

与其他国家一样，在中国，关于最新的技术进步究竟应该向所有人开放，还是作为严格保密的公司机密，一直存在着激烈的争论。百度是中国少数几家完全从零开始开发自己的人工智能技术的公司之一，其首席执行官李彦宏以及其他一些人认为，人工智能技术掌握在少数人手中才是最有利可图的，也是最安全的。

A.I. systems require enormous resources: talent, data and computing power. Beijing has made it clear that the benefits accruing from such investments should be shared. The Chinese government has poured money into A.I. projects and subsidized resources like computing centers.

人工智能系统需要大量资源：人才、数据和算力。中国政府已明确表示，应分享此类投资带来的利益。中国政府向人工智能项目投入了大量资金，并对计算中心等资源进行了补贴。

But Chinese tech companies face a major constraint on the development of their A.I. systems: compliance with Beijing’s strict censorship regime, which extends to generative A.I. technologies.

但中国科技公司在开发人工智能系统方面面临着一个重大限制：遵守北京严格的审查制度，这种制度也延伸到生成式人工智能技术。

Kuaishou’s new video generator Kling appears to have been trained to follow the rules. Text prompts with any mention of China’s president, Xi Jinping, or controversial topics like feminism and the country’s real estate crisis yielded error messages. An image prompt of this year’s National People’s Congress yielded a video of the delegates shifting in their seats.

快手的新视频生成器可灵似乎已经接受了遵守规则的训练。任何提及中国国家主席习近平，或女权主义以及中国房地产危机等争议性话题的文字提示都会产生错误信息。输入今年全国人民代表大会的图片提示，最终生成了代表们在座位上移动的视频。

Kuaishou did not respond to questions about what steps the company took to prevent Kling from creating harmful, fake or politically sensitive content.

对于该公司采取了哪些措施来防止可灵制作有害、虚假或政治敏感内容的问题，快手没有做出回应。

By making their most advanced A.I. technologies freely available, China’s tech giants are demonstrating their willingness to contribute to the country’s overall technological advancement as Beijing has established that the power and profit of the tech industry should be channeled toward the goal of self sufficiency.

通过免费提供最先进的人工智能技术，中国的科技巨头们表明他们愿意为国家的整体技术进步做出贡献，因为北京已经确定，科技产业的力量和利润应该用于实现自给自足的目标。

The concern for some in China is that the country will struggle to amass the computing chips it needs to build increasingly powerful technologies. But that has not yet prevented Chinese companies from building powerful new technologies that can compete with U.S. systems.

一些中国人担心，中国将难以积累构建日益强大的技术所需的计算芯片。但这并没有阻止中国公司开发出与美国系统竞争的强大新技术，。

At the end of last year, Dr. Lee’s company, 01.AI, was ridiculed on social media when someone discovered that the company had built its A.I. system using open-source technology originally built by Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram. Some saw it as a symbol of China’s dependence on American ingenuity.

去年年底，李开复的公司零一万物在社交媒体遭到嘲讽，当时有人发现该公司使用最初由Facebook和Instagram的所有者Meta开发的开源技术构建人工智能系统。一些人认为这是中国依赖美国聪明才智的象征。

Six months later, 01.AI unveiled a new version of its technology. It now sits near the top of the leaderboard that ranks the world’s best technologies. Around the same time, a team from Stanford University in California unveiled Llama 3-V, claiming it outperformed other leading models. But a Chinese researcher soon noticed that the model was based on an open-source system originally built in China.

6个月后，零一万物推出了一款新技术。如今，它在世界最佳技术排行榜上名列前茅。大约在同一时间，加州斯坦福大学的一个团队发布了Llama 3-V，声称它的性能优于其他领先模型。但一位中国研究人员很快注意到，该模型是基于最初在中国建立的开源系统。

It was the reverse of the controversy surrounding 01.AI last year: Rather than Chinese developers building atop U.S. technology, U.S. developers built atop Chinese technology.

这与去年围绕零一万物的争议正好相反：不是中国开发者在美国技术的基础上开发，而是美国开发者在中国技术的基础上开发。

If regulators limit open-source projects in the United States and Chinese open-source technologies become the gold standard, Mr. Delangue said, this kind of thing could become the norm.

德朗格说，如果监管机构限制美国的开源项目，而中国的开源技术成为黄金标准，这类事情可能会成为常态。

“If the trend continues, it becomes more and more of a challenge for the U.S.,” he said.

“如果这种趋势继续下去，对美国来说，这将成为越来越大的挑战，”他说。

It’s always a good idea to pay attention to Nancy Pelosi and to judge where things are going by which direction she’s nudging them in, but that was especially true over the past few weeks. When she started sending President Biden signals that he should reconsider his candidacy, I felt almost certain that he’d eventually do so, because she was both giving other Democrats permission to break ranks with him and letting him and his allies know the extent and inevitability of the rebellion.

关注南希·佩洛西，并且根据她推动的方向来判断事态走向，这一向是一个好主意，但在过去几周尤其如此。当她开始向拜登总统发出信号，让他重新考虑自己的候选资格时，我几乎可以肯定拜登最终会这样做，因为她不仅许可其他民主党人与他分道扬镳，而且让他和他的盟友知道这种反对的程度和必然性。

And I realized that Vice President Kamala Harris wouldn’t face any competition for the Democratic nomination when Pelosi endorsed her. That was the sign.

当佩洛西为副总统贺锦丽背书时，我意识到，后者在民主党提名中不会面临任何竞争。这是在示意。

In other words, Pelosi, a woman who so ably foiled Donald Trump when he was president and she was House speaker, helped make it possible — and then confirmed — that another woman, Harris, would lead the charge to foil him from becoming president again.

换句话说，佩洛西，一个在特朗普担任总统时以众议院议长身份干练地挫败了他的女人，使得另一个女人贺锦丽有可能成为领导，阻止特朗普再次成为总统——然后她落实了这件事。

It’s a veritable Hollywood movie. Women are scripting what will happen to Trump, who has treated women with such cruelty and contempt.

这是一部名副其实的好莱坞电影。女人们正在构思特朗普的下场，他曾如此残忍和轻蔑地对待女性。

They still don’t enjoy full equality with men in America, but we sure have been leaning on them lately to save American democracy. The appallingly stymied attempts to hold Trump responsible for his crimes have rested largely on the efforts of women, a few of whom did vanquish him in court, as my Times Opinion colleague Jessica Bennett noted in an essay in April. She did a roll call of his pursuers: “Letitia James. Fani Willis. E. Jean Carroll, and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan. And, of course, Stormy Daniels. The five women who are living rent-free in Mr. Trump’s mind these days.”

在美国，女性仍然没有享受到与男性完全平等的待遇，但我们最近确实一直在依靠她们来拯救美国的民主。正如我在时报观点的同事杰西卡·贝内特在4月的一篇文章中指出的那样，让特朗普为自己的罪行负责的努力在很大程度上依赖于女性的努力，其中一些人确实在法庭上击败了他。她逐一列出了那些咬住他不放的人：“莱蒂西娅·詹姆斯。范妮·威利斯。E·简·卡罗尔和她的律师罗伯塔·卡普兰。当然，还有飓风丹尼尔斯。这五位如今不用交房租就可以安住在特朗普脑海里的女人。”

I’d add “crazy Nancy Pelosi” — Trump is still regularly calling her that, unable to purge her from his thoughts — to the list. (Jessica wrote about Pelosi in an essay this week.) Also former Representative Liz Cheney: Nobody on the House panel investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, was more forceful or impassioned than she was in exposing Trump’s actions and inaction on that day. She, too, squats somewhere in Trump’s gray matter, so much so that he recently amplified social media posts that accused her of treason and urged that she be subjected to a televised military tribunal.

我想在这个名单里加上“疯狂的南希·佩洛西”——特朗普仍然经常这样称呼她，怎么也不能把她从脑海里清除出去。（杰西卡在本周的一篇文章中提到了佩洛西。）还有前众议员莉兹·切尼：在调查2021年1月6日事件的众议院小组中，没有人比她更有力、更慷慨激昂地揭露了特朗普当天的作为和不作为。她潜伏在特朗普的大脑灰质中的某处，以至于他最近放大了社交媒体上指责她叛国的帖子，敦促她接受有电视转播的军事法庭审判。

Jessica made her “rent-free” observation on the eve of Trump’s trial in Manhattan for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged dalliance with Daniels, and that proceeding has been so completely overtaken and overshadowed by subsequent events that it might as well have happened in the Ice Age. Fresher developments include Biden’s cataclysmic debate performance, many Democrats’ demands that he end his campaign and their despair when he resisted, talking about all he’d accomplished and how nobody was a more potent foe for Trump.

杰西卡发表那篇关于“不用交房租”的文章时，特朗普正因伪造商业记录以掩盖涉嫌与丹尼尔斯的风流事在曼哈顿等待审判，而这一过程已经完全被随后发生的事件压倒和掩盖，仿佛那是冰河时期的事。最新的事态包括拜登在辩论中的灾难性表现，许多民主党人要求他结束竞选活动，然而他拒绝了，还大谈他所取得的成就，以及没有谁比他更善于对付特朗普，这令他们感到绝望。

Who do you suppose was tasked with taking on that male vanity? Women! Jill Biden was exhorted to make everything right. Or it was Valerie Biden’s job. Or Pelosi’s. Hunter Biden was reportedly hunkered down with Dad, but did anyone demand that he tame the paterfamilias? Not that I heard or read. Women were given the heaping measure of responsibility, though they often get only a soupçon of credit.

你觉得是谁承担了应对男人虚荣心的任务？女人！人们劝吉尔·拜登来解决这个难题。或者，这项工作要由瓦莱丽·拜登来做。要由佩洛西来做。据报道，亨特·拜登一直和父亲在一起，但是有人要求他说服“老爷子”吗？我没有听说过，也没有读到过。女人承担了大量的责任，尽管她们往往分不到什么功劳。

I do sense progress. When people discussed who might be a stronger Democratic nominee than Biden and the names of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo rightly came up, few dissenters questioned their electability on the ground that they’re women.

我确实感觉到了进步。当人们讨论谁有可能是比拜登更有实力的民主党候选人时，密歇根州州长格雷琴·惠特默和商务部长吉娜·雷蒙多的名字恰当地被提了出来，几乎没有反对者因为她们是女性而质疑她们参选的可能性。

And Harris’s doubters on the Democratic side don’t focus on her gender. Some Democrats don’t want her to pick another woman as a running mate — they worry that such a ticket might be a milestone too far — but they’re not afraid that a woman on top is a mistake in the battle against Trump.

民主党对贺锦丽的怀疑并不集中在她的性别方面。一些民主党人不希望她选择另一位女性作为竞选伙伴——他们担心这样的组合可能过于激进，要追求另一个里程碑——但他们并不担心在与特朗普的战斗中，由女性掌权是一个错误。

Maybe, just maybe, it’s exactly the way to go. Women’s reproductive rights are in the foreground of this presidential election, Harris is practiced and eloquent in her defense of them, and that could widen a gender gap in a way that works to Democrats’ advantage. Women voters could be the barricade between Trump and that first-day dictatorship.

也许，只是也许，这才是正确的道路。女性的生育权利是本届总统选举的重要议题，哈里斯在捍卫这一权利方面经验丰富，言辞雄辩，这可能会以一种对民主党有利的方式扩大性别差距。女性选民可能成为特朗普和他的“第一日独裁”之间的障碍。

Also, as my Times colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote recently, and as I discussed with two prominent Democrats in a conversation published on Wednesday, women opponents bring out the ugliest in Trump. Harris will quickly take up residence with Pelosi, Cheney and the gang.

此外，正如我在《纽约时报》的同事玛吉·哈伯曼和乔纳森·斯旺最近所写的，以及我在周三发表的一篇与两位知名民主党人的对话中所讨论的那样，女性对手会让特朗普暴露出最丑陋的一面。贺锦丽很快就会和佩洛西、切尼她们一样，住进他的脑子。

And Trump will have to build an annex, maybe to his frontal or occipital lobe, to accommodate the sorority.

特朗普得盖一座附属建筑，才能装得下这个姐妹会，可能是在他的额叶或是枕叶里。

Russia and China flew strategic bombers in a joint patrol exercise near Alaska, the first time they had conducted air drills together in that area, a pointed signal to Washington of their deepening military ties.

俄罗斯和中国派出战略轰炸机在阿拉斯加附近进行联合巡逻演习，这是两国首次在该地区共同进行空中演练，此举向华盛顿发出了一个明确信号，表明两国军事关系正在不断深化。

Two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Chinese Xian H-6 planes flew over the waters of the Chukchi and Bering seas, with Russian fighter jets guiding them, the Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday in a statement. The joint flight lasted longer than five hours, the ministry added. It took place on Wednesday.

俄罗斯国防部周四发表声明称，两架俄罗斯图-95轰炸机和两架中国轰-6轰炸机在俄罗斯战斗机的引导下飞越了楚科奇海和白令海水域。国防部还称，这次联合飞行持续了五个多小时。飞行发生在周三。

“During the flight, Russian and Chinese crews worked through issues of cooperation at all stages of the air patrol in a new area of joint operations,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. The ministry said the drill was “not directed against third countries.”

俄罗斯国防部表示，“在飞行过程中，俄罗斯和中国机组人员演练了在一个新的联合行动领域进行空中巡逻时，各个阶段的相互协作问题。”它强调，此次演习“不针对第三国”。

The exercise prompted the United States and Canada to scramble their fighter jets to carry out what is known as an “intercept” in military parlance, or when a country flies its jets alongside foreign aircraft as a show of defense.

这次演习促使美国和加拿大紧急出动战斗机，执行军事术语中所谓的“拦截”，即一个国家出动战机伴飞，以示防御。

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a Pentagon news conference that the aircraft were “closely monitored” and “didn’t enter our airspace. I think the closest point of approach was about 200 miles off of our coast.”

美国国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀在五角大楼的新闻发布会上表示，这些飞机受到“密切监视”，“没有进入我们的领空，我认为最接近的距离是在我们的海岸大约200英里处（约合321公里）。”

The joint air drills near Alaska, involving bombers capable of delivering nuclear missiles, come as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia deepens his military’s ties with China, in part as a signal to the West that he will not remain isolated over his invasion of Ukraine. In addition to other joint drills and sales of Russian arms to China, Mr. Putin has grown to rely on a flow of dual-use goods from China to sustain his war effort.

阿拉斯加附近的联合空中演习出动了包括可投射核导弹的轰炸机，眼下，俄罗斯总统普京正在深化与中国的军事关系，演习在一定程度上是向西方发出信号，表明他不会因为入侵乌克兰而孤立无援。除了与中国进行其他联合军演和出售武器外，普京还越来越依赖从中国进口军民两用物资来维持他的战争行动。

Though Moscow and Beijing carried out their first joint patrol of strategic bombers in 2019, military exercises have increased in frequency since then. They are designed in part to send a message of defiance to Washington and its allies, but also to give the two militaries practice in operating together, should they one day need to fight jointly in a war.

尽管莫斯科和北京在2019年首次进行了战略轰炸机联合巡逻，但此后军演频率已经有所增加。这些演习的部分目的是向华盛顿及其盟友发出挑衅的信息，但同时也是为了向两国军队提供训练机会，以便有朝一日需要联合作战时能有效协同。

For Russia, the display of Chinese support is part of a broader effort to end American dominance on the world stage and respond to Washington’s regular schedule of exercises with its own allies.

对俄罗斯来说，展示中国的支持是其更广泛努力的一部分，目的是结束美国在世界舞台上的主导地位，同时也是回应华盛顿与其盟友定期举行的演习。

“It’s still in the signaling stage,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said of Russia’s actions. “And the signaling is, ‘Hey, U.S., we are not alone. We are having a partner that has a huge nuclear arsenal.’”

“它仍处于发出信号的阶段，”卡内基俄罗斯欧亚中心主任亚历山大·加布耶夫谈到俄罗斯的行动时说。“这个信号就是，‘嘿，美国，我们并不孤单。我们的合作伙伴拥有庞大的核武库。’”

The Chinese and Russian bombers didn’t cross into American or Canadian airspace during Wednesday’s joint patrol, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, a joint military operation between the United States and Canada that defends the continent’s airspace.

北美防空司令部表示，在周三的联合巡逻中，中俄轰炸机没有进入美加领空。该司令部是美国和加拿大之间的一个联合军事机构，负责保卫北美大陆的领空。

NORAD said the Russian and Chinese aircraft were not seen as a threat.

北美防空司令部表示，俄罗斯和中国的飞机未被视为威胁。

The Russian and Chinese bombers were flying in an area known as the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. It is just outside U.S. airspace around the Alaskan coast, where the United States and Canada require the identification of aircraft for national security reasons.

俄中轰炸机当时在阿拉斯加防空识别区飞行，该区域位于阿拉斯加海岸附近的美国领空之外。出于国家安全考虑，美加要求对进入该区域的飞机进行识别。

The U.S. and Canadian militaries have intercepted six to seven Russian war planes a year on average since 2007 within the zone, NORAD said in a statement last year. But the area is far afield for Chinese war planes.

北美防空司令部去年在声明中表示，自2007年以来，美加军队平均每年在该区域拦截六到七架俄罗斯战机。但对于中国战机来说，该区域距离遥远。

The first joint bomber patrol between Russia and China in 2019 took place between South Korea and Japan. Moscow and Beijing have conducted seven more since then, Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for China’s Defense Ministry, said, according to The Associated Press.

2019年俄中首次进行联合轰炸机巡逻是在韩国和日本之间的位置进行的。据美联社报道，中国国防部发言人张晓刚称，自那以后，莫斯科和北京又举行了七次巡逻。

The last such patrol took place in Asia in December.

上一次此类巡逻于去年12月在亚洲进行。

China’s central bank on Thursday cut a key interest rate, in Beijing’s second move this week to try to offset a weakening economy and a housing market crisis.

中国央行周四下调了一个关键利率，这是中国政府本周第二次采取行动，试图弥补经济疲软和房地产市场危机的影响。

The unexpected action came as stock markets fell sharply across most of Asia, in an echo of Wall Street’s sharp drop the day before. Market indexes fell roughly 1 to 3 percent in Australia, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

中国采取这次意外行动时，亚洲的大多数股市正随着一天前的华尔街股指骤降而大幅下跌。澳大利亚、日本、韩国和香港的股指下跌幅度在1%至3%之间。

But share prices were down by less in Shanghai and Shenzhen. That could reflect a favorable response by investors to the central bank’s rate move, or a sign of intervention by the Chinese government, which plays an extensive role in the country’s stock markets.

但上海和深圳的股指下跌幅度较小。这可能反映了投资者对央行利率调整的积极响应，也可能是中国政府干预的迹象，中国政府在国内股市起着广泛的作用。

As markets opened in China on Thursday, the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, reduced its interest rate for one-year loans to commercial banks to 2.3 percent, from 2.5 percent. It was the biggest cut to that rate since a similar reduction in April 2020, when the Chinese economy was struggling because of a nearly national lockdown in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

中国股市周四开盘时，中国人民银行将商业银行一年期贷款利率从2.5%下调到2.3%。这是自2020年4月的一次类似下调以来最大的降息幅度，那次是在新冠病毒暴发初期，由于全国各地几乎都处于封控状态，国内经济陷入了困境。

The central bank surprised markets because it normally reviews the one-year loan rate only on the 15th of each month. It kept the rate steady on July 15, and also left it unchanged on Monday when it adjusted other rates.

这次降息令市场感到意外，因为央行一般是在每月15日评估一年期贷款利率。央行没有在7月15日那天调整一年期贷款利率，本周一调整其他利率时，也没有调整这个利率。

The People’s Bank of China said in a statement only that Thursday’s rate cut was intended to “maintain reasonable and sufficient liquidity in the banking system at the end of the month.”

中国人民银行在一份声明中称，周四降息的目的是“为维护月末银行体系流动性合理充裕”。

The one-year rate is important as a guide to commercial banks on the interest rates that they use for loans to corporate customers and also to the financing units of local governments. Beijing blocks local governments from borrowing directly from banks, but has allowed them to set up financial units that do so.

一年期贷款利率对商业银行向企业客户贷款，以及向地方政府的融资部门贷款的利率具有重要指导意义。虽然中央政府禁止地方政府直接从银行借款，但允许它们设立的金融机构从银行借款。

Many of these financial units are now deep in debt, and the local governments that control them have been cutting the salaries of teachers and other civil servants to conserve cash.

这些金融机构中许多现在负债累累，控制这些金融机构的地方政府为了节省现金，一直在降低教师和其他公务员的工资。

The reduction in the one-year interest rate followed moves by the central bank on Monday to lower other rates that it controls. The actions came after a conclave of the Communist Party’s leadership on economic policy last week that did not produce the broad course correction that many economists have recommended.

降低一年期贷款利率之前，央行已在周一下调了其控制的其他利率。这些降息行动是在中共上周召开“三中全会”讨论经济政策之后采取的，“三中全会”没有像许多经济学家建议的那样对经济做出广泛调整。

The party reaffirmed its commitment to pursuing economic self-reliance through further investment in industry, while saying less about consumer spending.

中共重申了致力于经济自力更生，将进一步投资工业，但没有太多地提消费支出问题。

Top Chinese economists defended the party’s plan at a government-organized news briefing in Beijing on Thursday afternoon. Liu Xiaoguang, an economic development specialist at Renmin University in Beijing, pointed out that the plan calls for more assistance to families for child-rearing and elder care.

中国的主要经济学家在周四下午北京举行的交流会上为中共的政策做了辩护。人民大学经济发展专家刘晓光指出，三中全会的《决定》要求为家庭在育儿和养老方面提供更多帮助。

“We will have huge potential to unleash in those two industries,” he said.

“我们在这两个行业将释放巨大潜能，”他说。

By reducing rates now, instead of waiting for a possible cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve this autumn, China runs the risk of prompting more companies and households to move money out of the country as they seek to earn more interest elsewhere. That could cause China’s currency, the renminbi, to weaken further against the dollar.

中国现在就降息，而不是等美联储可能在今年秋天降息后再这样做，存在促使更多的企业和家庭为寻求在其他地方挣更多利息而将资金转移到国外的风险，并可能会导致人民币兑美元进一步贬值。

Lower rates might also prompt a revival of speculative borrowing schemes that were a problem for Beijing several years ago.

更低的利率还可能推动投机性借贷体系的复苏，那是中国政府几年前曾面临的一个问题。

But Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist who specializes in China’s monetary policy, said that such concerns appeared to be secondary right now. “Supporting growth is taking precedence over other objectives, such as limiting financial risks or preventing currency depreciation,” he said.

但康奈尔大学专门研究中国货币政策的经济学家埃斯瓦尔·普拉萨德说，这种担忧目前似乎是次要的。“支持增长正在凌驾于其他目标之上，比如限制金融风险或防止货币贬值，”他说。

There is a glorious folly to the Paris Olympics, the first in the city since 1924, as if France in its perennial revolutionary ardor took a century to ponder something unimaginable, the transformation of a great city into a stadium.

自1924年以来首次在巴黎举行的奥运会散发着一股令人赞叹的傻气，仿佛这个永远洋溢着革命热情的国家花了一个世纪的时间来思考一件不可想象的事情——把一座伟大的城市变成一座体育场。

The heart of Paris has fallen silent in preparation for the opening ceremony on Friday, when a flotilla will usher thousands of athletes down the Seine, under the low-slung bridges where lovers like to linger. Not since the Covid-19 pandemic has the city been so still, or so constrained.

为了迎接周五的开幕式，巴黎市中心已陷入一片寂静。届时，一支船队将载着数千名运动员沿塞纳河顺流而下，从一座座低矮的桥下穿过，那些桥是恋人们喜欢驻足的地方。自新冠疫情以来，这座城市从未如此静谧，也从未如此拘束。

From the Pont d’Austerlitz in the east to the Pont Mirabeau in the west, roads are closed, newly built stands for spectators line the riverbanks, fences enclose sidewalks and residents need police-issued QR codes to reach their homes. The golden cherubs, nymphs and winged horses of the Pont Alexandre III gaze out on metal bleachers and posses of police.

从东边的奥斯特利茨桥到西边的米拉波桥，道路封闭，河岸两旁新建了看台，人行道围上了栅栏，居民需要警方发放的二维码才能回到家里。亚历山大三世桥上的金色小天使、仙女和飞马凝视着远处的金属露天看台和成群的警察。

The Olympic project is almost unthinkable in its audacity, and a major security headache, but then the Eiffel Tower would never have risen above Paris in 1889 if the many naysayers had prevailed. As it went up for the Paris World Fair, Guy de Maupassant called the tower a “giant hideous skeleton” that had driven him out of Paris.

这个奥运项目之大胆几乎难以想象，同时它也是一个让人头痛的重大安全问题，然而，要是都依着那些唱反调的人，埃菲尔铁塔也就不会在1889年拔地而起了。当年为了世博会而建起的铁塔迫使莫泊桑离开了巴黎，他称之为一座“巨大、丑陋的骨架”。

Now, between its first and second floors, five giant Olympic rings — in blue, yellow, black, green and red — adorn the tower. They glow at night over the Champ de Mars park, where the beach volleyball competition will be held. Nearby flows the Seine, beautified at a cost of about $1.5 billion and clean enough, it is said, for several Olympic events, including two 10-kilometer swims and the triathlon.

现在，在铁塔的一层和二层之间，装饰着巨大的奥林匹克五环——分别是蓝色、黄色、黑色、绿色和红色。夜晚，它们在战神广场公园的上方发着光，沙滩排球比赛将在这座公园举行。附近就是耗资约15亿美元治理的塞纳河，据说水质已经足够干净，可用于举办几个奥运项目，包括两项10公里游泳比赛和铁人三项。

Swimming in the Seine was banned 101 years ago. All things come to an end. These Games, at a cost of about $4.75 billion, were conceived to be transformative in a lasting, environmentally conscious way. “We wanted a dash of revolution, something the French would look back at with pride,” Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympics committee, told me.

塞纳河101年前就已经禁止游泳。但万事皆有终。这次耗资约47.5亿美元的奥运会希望以持久、环保的方式带来变革。“我们想来一点革命，让法国人在以后回顾时感到自豪，”巴黎奥组委主席托尼·埃斯坦盖告诉我。

塞纳河上的观光船，周五，运动员们将乘船前往开幕式场地。凡尔赛宫将举办马术比赛。奥运会马拉松比赛的起点是市政厅，1944年戴高乐将军在这里发表了他最令人难忘的演讲之一。

Paris has seen its share of upheaval over the centuries. To walk its streets is to be accompanied by history and to be ambushed from time to time, even after many years, by some previously unnoticed inflection of beauty.

几个世纪以来，巴黎经历了许多动荡。漫步街头，历史扑面而来，即使时隔多年，也会不时被一些以前从未注意过的美的变化所吸引。

To be a “flâneur,” poorly translatable as a wanderer, is a particularly Parisian state, capturing the random meandering of the observer who is entranced by the city and its people. “America is my country and Paris is my hometown,” said Gertrude Stein, the novelist and art collector.

作为一名flâneur——这个词只能大致翻译为“闲逛的人”，是一种特别巴黎的状态，捕捉到了外来旁观者的信马由缰，他们被这座城市和这里的人所吸引。小说家和艺术收藏家格特鲁德·斯泰因说过：“美国是我的祖国，巴黎是我的故乡。”

Wonderment is a common condition here. The way the light falls — on a golden dome, or through the leaves of the plane trees, or on the limestone walls of a handsome boulevard, or across the shimmering water of the Seine at dusk — stops visitors in their tracks. The City of Light is also the city of etched shadows ever redrawing its lines.

在这里，心生惊叹是一种常态。光线或落在金色的穹顶上，或透过梧桐叶，或落在漂亮的林荫道边的石灰岩墙壁上，或落在黄昏时波光粼粼的塞纳河面，这都会让游客驻足。这座光之城，也同样是一座轮廓不断被重新描绘的阴影之城。

In summer, crowds of young people gather on the river bank. They drink wine and beer. They play music. Sightseeing boats glide past, carrying tourists who wave and are waved at. The sensual conviviality that has made “Paris” and “romance” inseparable words is palpable.

夏天，许许多多的年轻人聚集在河边，喝着葡萄酒和啤酒，播放音乐。观光船驶过，载着挥手致意的游客，也有人冲他们挥手。让“巴黎”和“浪漫”这两个词密不可分的感官欢愉显而易见。

Among the revelers there is generally a reader or two holding a book, isolating earbuds in place, lost in solitary musing. Paris is a city where books are prized and authors celebrated in prominent posters and other ads that in the United States would be reserved for Hollywood movies.

在狂欢的人群中，往往会有一两个捧着书在读的人，他们戴着耳机，沉浸在孤独的沉思中。巴黎是一座崇尚书籍的城市，在这里，人们会用醒目的海报和其他广告形式来赞美书籍的作者，而在美国，这样的待遇是留给好莱坞电影的。

It is also a city of formality and refuge. Quiet spaces abut architectural grandeur. You are never far from magnificence, perhaps most extravagantly illustrated by Napoleon’s tomb at the Hôtel des Invalides, but never far, either, from an unsuspected covered arcade, like the Passage Verdeau, that snakes from a Grand Boulevard into an intimate world. Hidden enclaves like the little St. Vincent Cemetery in Montmartre are part of the ever renewed mystery of the city.

它也是一座讲究礼节和避世的城市。安静的空间与宏伟的建筑毗连。壮丽宏伟永远在你目力所及之处，荣军院里的拿破仑墓就是最为奢华的例证；同样，附近总有一条不起眼的拱廊街，比如韦尔多街，它从一条林荫道蜿蜒进入一个隐秘的世界。像蒙马特的小圣文森特公墓这样别有洞天的所在，是这座城市不断焕新的神秘面纱的一部分。

上周在塞纳河游泳的人们。运动员将乘船沿塞纳河顺流而下，前往开幕式场地。大皇宫将成为跆拳道和击剑比赛场地。马拉松和公路自行车赛会途经卢浮宫。

Even in the approaches to the Grand Palais, built just off the Avenue des Champs-Élysées for the Paris World Fair of 1900, gravel paths lead through secluded greenery. The immense palace, with its classical stone facade and vaulted roof of iron, steel and glass, will host the taekwondo and fencing events. It seems a suitable setting for the saber.

在香榭丽舍大道旁边，一条条砾石小径穿过幽静的绿地，通往巴黎大皇宫，这座宏伟建筑是为了1900年巴黎世博会而建。这座有古典风格石材外立面、钢铁和玻璃拱顶的庞大宫殿将是跆拳道和击剑比赛的场地。剑术似乎确实跟这里很搭。

A little farther down, at the Place de la Concorde, athletes in three-a-side basketball, break dancing (known in the Olympics as break) and BMX freestyle (motocross stunt riders) will compete for gold medals. Guests at the adjacent Crillon Hotel, the ne plus ultra of Paris luxury, may not be amused.

再往前走，在协和广场，三人篮球、霹雳舞和自由式小轮车选手将角逐金牌。临近的瑰丽酒店是巴黎奢华的典范，里面的住客对赛事大概不会有什么兴趣。

Of course, central Paris is not all of Paris. Much of the Games will take place in Seine-Saint-Denis, a densely populated neighborhood north of the city blighted by poverty, crime and the faltering integration of mainly North African immigrants, deprived of decent schools and opportunity.

当然，巴黎市中心并非巴黎的全部。奥运会的大部分比赛将在塞纳-圣但尼举行，那是位于巴黎北部一个人口稠密的地段，因贫困、犯罪以及北非裔为主的移民迟迟无法融入而陷于挣扎，没有像样的学校和机会。

It is also a vibrant melting pot and a testament to France’s growing diversity. The Olympic Village will be housed there, and a new 5,000-seat Aquatics Center. A clean river and a revitalized Seine-Saint-Denis integrated into a “Grand Paris” are two of the core aspirations of the Games.

但这里也是一个充满活力的熔炉，见证了法国日益增强的多元化。奥林匹克村将设在这里，此外还有新建的5000人水上运动中心。清澈的塞纳河和经过活化的塞纳-圣但尼融入“大巴黎”是本届奥运会的两大核心愿望。

They are noble ambitions, but in France seeing is believing. Clashes over immigration policy in places like Seine-Saint-Denis have been one of the factors poisoning French politics of late, leaving the country deadlocked and with no more than a caretaker government as the Games begin.

这些都是崇高的愿望，但在法国，还是要眼见为实。像塞纳-圣但尼这样的地方，围绕移民政策的冲突是近年来毒化法国政治的重要因素之一，导致国家陷入僵局，在奥运会开始时只有一个看守政府。

Of course, malaise is nothing new in France; in fact, it’s a French word for a long-term national condition.

当然，malaise（萎靡）在法国也不是什么新鲜事。事实上，这个法文词形容的就是一种长期的国家状况。

I see this newly birthed stadium city through many-layered memory. There are places you come to at an impressionable age that will not leave you. Almost a half-century ago, I lived as a student in a tiny apartment at the bottom of the Rue Mouffetard on the Left Bank. I was studying French and giving English lessons three times a week in a high school in a southern suburb famous principally for its prison.

透过多层次的记忆，我看到了这座新生的体育场城市。有些地方如果你趁着年轻还有可塑性的时候来过，就一辈子也不会忘记。大约半个世纪前，我还是个学生，住在左岸穆浮塔街街尽头的一间小公寓里。我在南郊的一所高中一边学习法语，一边每周教授三堂英语课，那一带主要以一座监狱闻名。

荣军院将成为射箭比赛的背景以及马拉松比赛的重点。夏天，塞纳河畔聚集着成群结队的年轻人。在协和广场，运动员们将参加三人篮球和其他项目的比赛。

I would return in the early evening and wander around the Mouffetard market — the mackerel glistening on their bed of ice, the serried ranks of eggplant, the raucous invitations to buy the last of the silvery sardines for a song. Acrid smoke from Gauloise cigarettes swirled in the wintry air. My single window on the city offered inexhaustible distraction.

我总是在傍晚时分回到穆浮达街市场，在那里闲逛——鲭鱼在冰床上闪闪发光，茄子密密匝匝地排成排，小贩大声嚷嚷着，说只要唱首歌就可以把最后一点银亮的沙丁鱼买走，寒冷的空气中飘散着高卢牌(Gauloise)香烟的刺鼻味道。我那唯一的一扇俯瞰城市的窗，没完没了地吸引着我的注意力。

The smoke has gone, largely, from Paris and there are fewer bracing glasses of sauvignon blanc being served midmorning. English has made a devastating assault on French, with “le sharing” and “le bashing” among my recent least favorites.

香烟已经基本离开了巴黎，也很少有店家会在上午出售令人心旷神怡的长相思。英语对法语发起了毁灭性的攻击，“le sharing”（分享）和“le bashing”（猛击）是我最近最不喜欢的词。

Yet the unique texture of Paris endures — that web of zinc roofs and dormer windows and chimney pots and black-grilled balconies and peeling off-white shutters and cobblestone streets and gravel pathways and flat-topped pollarded trees and inviting bistros with names like Chez Ginette that make it easy for movie directors like Wes Anderson to long to be French, or even imagine they are.

然而，巴黎独特的质感依然存在——锌铁皮屋顶、老虎窗、烟囱、黑色栏杆围起来的阳台、斑驳的白色百叶窗、鹅卵石街道、碎石小径、顶部剪平的树木，以及像“Chez Ginette”（吉内特餐厅）这样的诱人小酒馆，这一切会令韦斯·安德森这样的导演很容易渴望成为法国人，或者甚至想象自己就是法国人。

Food still occupies a central place in Paris. Lunch remains an honored ritual, despite the encroachment of fast food. The advice of A.J. Liebling, the New Yorker writer and gourmand of Paris, remains useful: “Each day brings only two opportunities for fieldwork, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol.”

在巴黎，美食仍然占据着中心地位。尽管受到快餐的侵蚀，午餐仍然是一种尊贵的仪式。《纽约客》撰稿人、巴黎美食家A·J·利布林的建议仍然有用：“每天只有两次实地考察的机会，不要把它们浪费在减少胆固醇摄入上。”

Nothing is more Parisian than the hill of Montmartre, topped by the white-domed Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, besieged by tourists taking as many selfies as photographs of the splendid panorama beneath them. Here the likes of Picasso and Modigliani lived, and here cyclists will climb repeatedly during the road cycling Olympic event.

没有哪个地方比蒙马特山更有巴黎风情，山顶是白色圆顶的圣心大教堂，游客络绎不绝，有人自拍，有人拍摄山下的壮丽景色。毕加索和莫迪里阿尼这样的人曾在这里生活，在奥林匹克公路自行车赛期间，自行车手们也将一次又一次向山顶冲击。

The Rue Lepic winds down the hill. At one of its curves stands Au Virage Lepic, or the Lepic Bend, a small restaurant with tables set close together.

利比克街从山上蜿蜒而下。在它的一个转弯处，有一家小餐馆，名叫Au Virage Lepic，也就是“利比克弯道”的意思，餐桌摆放得很近。

“What we need from the Olympics is gaiety!” said Maria Leite, the owner of the restaurant, who complained that business was way down as tourists shied away from the Olympics and accompanying restrictions.

“我们需要的是奥运会带来的欢乐！”这家餐馆的老板玛丽亚·莱特说。她抱怨说，由于游客避开奥运会和相关限制，餐馆生意大不如前。

Michel Thiriet, 78, a habitué of the restaurant, was lunching alone on steak tartare. I asked him if he was enthused by the Olympics. No, he said, echoing the sentiment of many Parisians who have fled what they see as the life-complicating takeover of their city. For Mr. Thiriet, it was all a form of “megalomania.”

今年78岁的米歇尔·蒂里埃正在独自享用鞑靼牛肉，他是这家餐厅的常客。我问他是否对奥运会充满热情。他说，不。这与许多逃离这座城市的巴黎人不谋而合，在他们看来，奥运对他们的生活造成了极大的影响。对蒂里耶来说，奥运会完全是一种“自大狂”。

没有什么地方比蒙马特山更具巴黎风情了。奥运自行车手们将在这里一次又一次向山顶发起冲击。

亚历山大三世桥，位于铁人三项、马拉松游泳和公路自行车赛道上。

He told me he was a retired movie cameraman. And what, I wondered, does he do now? “I am awaiting death with tranquillity,” he said. Fierce realism is another characteristic of a city that has seen it all.

他告诉我，他是个退休的电影摄影师。我想知道他现在在做什么？“我在平静地等待死亡，”他说。在这座经历过一切的城市，强烈的现实主义是它的另一个特点。

A poll last week by IFOP, a market-research group, found that 36 percent of French people were indifferent to the Games and 27 percent anxious about them. That may well change once it all begins. The Olympics will usher an expected 11.3 million visitors through the history of France, to the Palace of Versailles for equestrian events amid the urns and statuary and formal symmetry of the Gardens, where French royals once disported themselves before being decapitated in the Revolution of 1789.

市场研究机构IFOP上周进行的一项民意调查发现，36%的法国人对奥运会漠不关心，27%的人对奥运会感到焦虑。一旦奥运开始，这种情况很可能会改变。预计奥运会将带领1130万游客穿越法国的历史，前往凡尔赛宫，在摆着花盆、雕像的对称园林中观看马术比赛，这里曾是法国王公贵族消遣的地方，直到他们在1789年法国大革命中被杀头。

At the Hôtel de Ville, or City Hall, more elaborate than many a royal palace, the Olympic marathon will begin. It was here on Aug. 25, 1944, in a Paris just liberated from the Nazis, that Gen. Charles de Gaulle made one of his most memorable speeches. “Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris freed!” he said, before attributing the liberation to “the only France, the true France, the eternal France.”

奥运会马拉松比赛的起点设在比许多皇宫还要精致的市政厅。1944年8月25日，巴黎刚刚从纳粹手中解放出来，戴高乐将军就是在市政厅发表了他最令人难忘的演讲之一。“巴黎！巴黎愤怒了！巴黎破碎了！巴黎成了烈士！但是巴黎自由了！”他说，然后，他把解放归功于“唯一的法国、真正的法国、永恒的法国”。

Nearby, on the Île de la Cité, stands the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, its spire now replaced after the fire of 2019, but still encased in scaffolding as its restoration nears completion. Beyond it, at the east end of the island, is the Memorial to the Martyrs of Deportation, among them the 75,000 Jews killed in Nazi camps by the other France, that of the collaborationist Vichy regime, against which de Gaulle fought and of which he said nothing in his speech.

附近的西岱岛上矗立着巴黎圣母院大教堂，它的尖顶在2019年的大火后已被替换，虽然修复工作接近完成，它却仍被脚手架围着。再往前，在岛的东端，是驱逐出境烈士纪念碑，这里的烈士包括75000名犹太人，他们在纳粹集中营被通敌的维希政权建立的另一个法国杀害，戴高乐曾与这个政权作战，但在他的演讲中没有提及。

In some ways the very survival of Paris, marked at different times by religious wars, revolutionary terror and murderous hatred, is a miracle. In the small garden under the Pont Neuf, there is a plaque that commemorates the thousands of Protestants “assassinated because of their religion” in the city in August 1572. I never fail to stop there when I can.

巴黎在不同时期经历了宗教战争、革命恐怖和杀戮仇恨，从某种程度上说，它的幸存本身就是一个奇迹。在新桥下的小花园里有一块牌子，纪念1572年8月在巴黎“因宗教信仰而被暗杀”的数以千计的新教徒。只要有机会，我总会在那里驻足停留。

From beneath the willows at the western edge of the Île de la Cité, which points its prow down the river, the city stretches away past the Louvre toward the faintly silhouetted hills of the suburb of St. Cloud. Many have asked, as many of the Olympic athletes no doubt will as they sail toward the Eiffel Tower and Trocadéro: What is this magical harmony of Paris?

西岱岛如同行驶在塞纳河的大船，最西端就是它的船头，来到这里，站在柳树下眺望，城市经过卢浮宫，一直延伸到圣克劳德郊区隐约的群山。许多人——无疑包括那些乘船驶向埃菲尔铁塔和特罗卡德罗的奥运选手——会思忖：巴黎这种神奇的和谐究竟是什么？

It is grace and it is calm and it is consolation for the weary, but perhaps in the end it cannot be pinpointed, and that is of the nature of magic. “Fluctuat nec mergitur,” says the city’s motto. “She is rocked by the waves but does not sink.” With luck, the Olympics will raise Paris still higher and, in a world marked by wars, offer reconciliation and peace.

它是优雅，是平静，是对疲惫的安慰，但也许最终还是无法确定，这就是神奇的本质。这座城市的座右铭是“Fluctuat nec mergitur”——她经历波浪，但永不沉没。如果运气好的话，奥运的浪潮将把巴黎举得更高，并且为这个充满战争的世界带来和解与和平。

President Biden just signed a bill that could ban President Biden from using TikTok. But Mr. Biden plans to keep using TikTok until Mr. Biden’s new law forces Mr. Biden off it.

拜登总统刚刚签署了一项可能禁止他自己使用TikTok的法案。但拜登准备继续使用TikTok，直到他的一项新法律迫使他停下为止。

His political team in Wilmington, Del., after all, considers TikTok a vital tool to reach young voters who could be crucial to his chances of winning re-election this fall. The problem is that his national security team in Washington considers the Chinese-owned social media site a threat to America that should be banned if it is not sold.

毕竟，他在特拉华州威尔明顿的政治团队认为TikTok是接触年轻选民的重要工具，而这些选民对他今年秋天赢得连任至关重要。但问题是，他在华盛顿的国家安全团队认为，这个中国企业拥有的社交媒体网站是对美国的威胁，如果不出售，就应该禁止。

Reconciling those two imperatives left Mr. Biden’s government and campaign advisers laboring on Wednesday to explain the competing rationales. But it is not the only time that Campaign Joe and Foreign Policy Joe have been at odds in recent months. Campaign Joe tells stories on the trail that Foreign Policy Joe’s staff then has to clean up — or try to ignore as best as possible. Campaign Joe prefers blunt talk. Foreign Policy Joe has to worry about diplomacy.

为了协调这两项要务，拜登的政府和竞选顾问们周三不得不费尽心思解释它们背后相互矛盾的理由。但这并不是近几个月来“竞选乔”(Campaign Joe)和“外交政策乔”(Foreign Policy Joe)唯一的冲突。竞选乔在竞选活动中讲的故事，外交政策乔的幕僚们都得善后，或者尽量忽略不谈。竞选乔喜欢直言不讳。外交政策乔则需要担心外交问题。

The disconnect is hardly unprecedented in an election year. Every president seeking a second term finds himself juggling two different jobs with two different priorities at the same time: running the country and running for office. A candidate is focused on firing up supporters and tearing down the other side. A commander in chief has to worry about what might be best for the nation even if it is not necessarily best for his electoral chances.

在大选之年，这种脱节并非没有先例。每一位谋求连任的总统都会发现自己在同时兼顾两份不同的工作，有两个不同的优先事项：治理国家和竞选公职。候选人的工作重点是激发支持者的热情，打击对手。总司令则要考虑什么对国家最有利，即使这不一定对他的获选机会最有利。

Still, the disparity between Wilmington and Washington has been on display lately. When former President Donald J. Trump hosted Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate and club, Mr. Biden’s Delaware-based campaign assailed Mr. Orban as “a dictator.” The White House, however, refused to use that term for a NATO ally.

不过，威尔明顿和华盛顿之间的差异最近还是显露出来了。前总统特朗普在自己位于佛罗里达州的庄园和俱乐部马阿拉歌宴请匈牙利总理欧尔班·维克托时，拜登所在的特拉华州竞选团队抨击欧尔班是“独裁者”。然而，白宫拒绝对一位北约盟友使用这个称谓。

Just last week, Mr. Biden told two campaign audiences that after being shot down during World War II, his uncle might have been eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea. Unsurprisingly, that rather peeved the island nation’s leaders at a time when the president has been courting them as part of his Indo-Pacific strategy.

就在上周，拜登告诉两位竞选听众，他的叔叔在二战期间被击落后，可能在巴布亚新几内亚被食人族吃掉了。不出所料，在总统将巴布亚新几内亚作为其印度洋-太平洋战略的一部分而向其示好之际，拜登的这番话激怒了这个岛国的领导人。

“Like most effective incumbent presidents, President Biden can navigate doing two things at once: being commander in chief, and barnstorming the battlegrounds, taking his popular and historic agenda to the voters who will decide this election,” Kevin Munoz, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “It’s a stark contrast to Trump, who couldn’t manage the day job when he was in office and can’t seem to wake up to the fact that he’s running on a deeply toxic agenda that will lose him the election again this November.”

“与大多数高效的现任总统一样，拜登总统可以同时胜任两件事：一是担任总司令，二是在战场上大显身手，将他广受欢迎的历史性议程带给将决定此次选举的选民，”拜登总统的竞选发言人凯文·穆诺兹在一份声明中说。“这与特朗普形成了鲜明对比，他在任时无法处理好日常工作，而且似乎无法清醒地认识到他所推行的议程极具毒性，这将使他在今年11月的选举中再次失利。”

Problematic offhand remarks have long been a challenge for Mr. Biden, who once called himself “a gaffe machine.” Campaigns result in more opportunities to go off script than speaking off a teleprompter in the East Room, so the White House cleanup squad invariably has a surge in business at this point in the electoral cycle.

曾自称“口误机器”的拜登常常随口说出有问题的话，这对他一直是个挑战。竞选活动中脱稿讲话的机会比在东厅使用提词器发言时的机会更多，因此在选举周期的这个节点上，白宫善后小组的工作量总会激增。

It was at a campaign fund-raiser last year that Mr. Biden referred to President Xi Jinping of China as “a dictator” — just a day after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had met with Mr. Xi in Beijing in an effort to smooth over friction in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. When Mr. Biden was later asked at a news conference if he would still call Mr. Xi a dictator, he said, “Well, look — he is,” and Mr. Blinken, sitting nearby, appeared to wince.

就在美国国务卿安东尼·布林肯去年在北京与习近平主席会面以缓和中美关系摩擦的前一天，拜登在一次竞选筹款活动上称习近平为“独裁者”。当拜登后来在一次新闻发布会上被问及他是否仍然会称习近平为独裁者时，他说：“你看，他就是独裁者。”坐在旁边的布林肯似乎有些脸色不佳。

去年，美国国务卿布林肯在听拜登总统发表演讲。当拜登把中国国家主席习近平称为独裁者时，布林肯显得有些难堪。

Not that anyone in Washington would privately dispute that Mr. Xi is a dictator. But as a matter of timing, saying it out loud complicated Mr. Blinken’s diplomacy. As it happens, Mr. Blinken seems to have remarkable timing when it comes to these things. Where was the secretary on Wednesday when Mr. Biden signed the TikTok legislation? He had just landed in Beijing for more talks with Chinese leaders.

并不是说在华盛顿有人会私下质疑称习近平为独裁者的说法。但由于时机问题，大声说出来使布林肯的外交活动变得更复杂化。碰巧的是，布林肯在处理这些事情时似乎很会把握时机。周三拜登签署TikTok法案时，布林肯在哪里？当时他刚刚抵达北京，准备与中国领导人进行更多会谈。

Mr. Orban is another leader widely considered a dictator in Washington. But because he leads a treaty ally of the United States, official criticism of his policies cracking down on democracy is usually more measured.

欧尔班是另一位在华盛顿被普遍视为独裁者的领导人。但由于他领导的国家是美国的条约盟友，因此官方对他破坏民主政策的批评往往更为谨慎。

Not so when Mr. Orban met with Mr. Trump last month. “Donald Trump is kicking off the general election” by welcoming rogues like “Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban,” the Biden campaign said in an emailed statement. Mr. Biden himself, at a later campaign stop, did not go quite that far but referred to Mr. Orban as someone “looking for dictatorship.”

欧尔班上月与特朗普会面时，情况并非如此。拜登的竞选团队在一份电子邮件声明中表示，借由欢迎像“匈牙利独裁者欧尔班·维克托”这样的流氓，唐纳德·特朗普“为大选拉开了序幕”。拜登本人在后来的一次竞选活动中则没有那么直接，但他也称欧尔班是一个“寻求独裁”的人。

The statements prompted outrage in Budapest, where Mr. Orban’s government summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest. “We are not obliged to tolerate such lies from anyone, even if that person happens to be the president of the United States of America,” Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto complained at a news conference.

这些言辞在布达佩斯引发了愤怒，欧尔班政府召见美国大使提出抗议。“我们没有义务容忍任何人的这种谎言，即使那个人恰好是美利坚合众国总统，”匈牙利外长西雅尔多·彼得在新闻发布会上抱怨道。

That left Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, in the awkward position of declining to say whether Mr. Orban is a dictator. “I’m not going to speak on behalf of the Biden campaign,” he told reporters at a briefing. “You should direct those questions to the campaign.” He did express “our deep concerns about Hungary’s assault on democratic institutions.”

这让总统国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文处于一个尴尬的位置上，他拒绝评论欧尔班是否是独裁者。“我不会代表拜登的竞选团队发言，”他在一次简报会上告诉记者。“你应该直接去问竞选团队的人。”不过他表示，“我们对匈牙利对民主体制的打压深表关切。”

Heather A. Conley, the president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a research group that promotes democracy, noted that Mr. Orban had injected himself into America’s politics, attending the Conservative Political Action Conference and declaring after his Mar-a-Lago visit that it would be “better for Hungary” if Mr. Trump returned to power.

德国马歇尔基金会是美国的一个促进民主的研究机构，该基金会主席希瑟·康利指出，欧尔班让自己过于介入到了美国政治中，他参加了保守派政治行动会议，在到访马阿拉歌庄园后宣称，如果特朗普再次当选，“对匈牙利会更好”。

“Tragically, Hungary has become both a foreign policy and a campaign issue,” she said. Still, she added, calling Mr. Orban a dictator has concrete foreign policy implications. “Should a NATO member, head of state, government be declared a ‘dictator,’ the country would be placed in a special penalty box until the dictatorship is over,” she said, recalling the military junta that took over Greece from 1967 to 1974.

她说：“可悲的是，匈牙利已经成为一个外交政策和竞选议题。”不过，她补充说，称欧尔班是独裁者会对外交政策产生实实在在的影响。“如果一个北约成员国、国家元首或政府首脑被宣布为‘独裁者’，那么这个国家将被置于受罚席上，直到独裁统治结束，”她说道，并忆及1967年至1974年间接管希腊的军政府。

Last week’s presidential cannibal storytelling provoked a backlash of its own. Mr. Biden was talking about his uncle’s death in World War II. “He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” he said at one stop.

上周拜登总统关于食人族的说法引发了强烈反响。他谈到自己的叔叔在第二次世界大战中丧生。“他是在新几内亚被击落的，他们始终没能找到他的遗体，因为在新几内亚的那个地方曾经有很多的食人族，”他在一个竞选造势活动上说。

Never mind that the story does not even appear to be true. According to Pentagon records, his uncle, Second Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan, was a passenger on a military plane that crashed in the Pacific off the northern coast of what was then the territory of New Guinea on May 14, 1944, after its engines failed. Mr. Finnegan and two crew members disappeared and were presumed dead, but the report does not indicate that the plane was shot down, much less that anyone encountered cannibals.

不过这个故事似乎根本不是真的。根据五角大楼的记录，在1944年5月14日，他的叔叔安布罗斯·芬尼根少尉搭乘的一架军用飞机因发动机故障在当时的新几内亚北部海岸附近的太平洋海域坠毁。芬尼根和两名机组成员失踪并被认定为死亡，但报告并没有指出飞机是被击落的，更没有说有人遇到了食人族。

The president’s comments did not go over well in Papua New Guinea, with whom Mr. Biden has been trying to strengthen relations as part of his effort to counter Chinese aggression in the region. “President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Prime Minister James Marape said.

拜登总统这番话在巴布亚新几内亚的反响可不太好，为了对抗中国在该地区的挑衅之举，他一直在努力加强与该国关系。“拜登总统的言论可能是口误；不管怎样，我的国家不应该被贴上这样的标签，”总理詹姆斯·马拉佩说。

Gordon Peake, an expert in the region at the United States Institute of Peace, said the flap was a reminder that comments could have unintended consequences. “Papua New Guinea and the wider Pacific, traditionally a bit of a diplomatic backwater for the major powers, is now something of a seller’s market as competition ramps up,” he said. “So words are mattering now more than ever.”

美国和平研究所研究该地区的专家戈登·佩亚克表示，这场风波提醒人们，说话不注意可能带来意想不到的后果。“巴布亚新几内亚和更广泛的太平洋地区传统上是大国外交不会重视的区域，现在随着竞争加剧，有点像是卖方市场，”他说。“因此，注意言辞现在比以往任何时候都重要。”

The new TikTok law was part of a $95 billion foreign aid measure to provide arms to Ukraine and Israel for their ongoing wars and to bolster Taiwan against possible Chinese aggression. Under the law, TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has to sell within 270 days, or about nine months, or shut down operations in the United States because of concerns over sensitive privacy information and propaganda. The president can extend that deadline to a year.

新的TikTok法令是950亿美元对外援助法案的一部分，旨在为乌克兰和以色列正在进行的战争提供武器，并帮助台湾抵御中国可能发动的入侵。根据这项法令，TikTok的中国所有者字节跳动必须在270天（约九个月）内出售TikTok，否则出于对敏感的隐私信息和宣传的担忧，它将在美国被禁。总统可以将这一期限延长至一年。

在拜登总统签署成为法律后，TikTok遭禁的可能性会赶走年轻选民。

That means that Mr. Biden’s campaign can continue to use TikTok through the November election. Mr. Sullivan, the national security adviser, declined to say whether the campaign should leave the platform in the meantime. “I’m going to let campaigns decide for themselves what they’re going to do,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

这意味着拜登的竞选团队可以在11月大选前继续使用TikTok。国家安全顾问沙利文不愿表示竞选团队是否应该在此期间离开该平台。“我会让竞选团队自行决定，”他在周三告诉记者。

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, emphasized that TikTok did not necessarily face a ban if it could find a buyer. “We want to see a divestment,” she said. “We want to see it being sold, and we do not seek a ban.”

白宫新闻秘书卡里娜·让-皮埃尔强调，如果能找到买家，TikTok不一定会被禁。“我们希望看到拆分，”她说。“我们希望看到它被出售，我们不寻求禁令。”

She added that the White House was not urging anyone to leave the platform in the interim. “We’re not saying that we do not want Americans to use TikTok,” she said. “We want to make sure it’s done in a way that we protect our national security and we protect Americans.”

她还表示，在此期间，白宫并没有敦促任何人离开这个平台。“并不是说我们不想让美国人用TikTok，”她说。“而是希望确保用一种可以保护国家安全和美国人的方式来使用它。”

But in fact, the Biden administration has told some Americans not to use TikTok, or at least limited how they use it. Last year, it banned federal employees from having TikTok on their government devices, a rule that applied to federal contractors and any personal devices used for federal work.

但事实上，拜登政府已经告诉一些美国人不要使用TikTok，或者至少限制他们使用的方式。去年，拜登政府禁止联邦雇员在政府设备上使用TikTok，这一规定适用于联邦承包商以及任何用于联邦工作的个人设备。

The bill that Mr. Biden signed on Wednesday exemplified the conflict between foreign policy and electoral considerations. Not only did he risk alienating millions of young people who use TikTok, but the measure also included billions of dollars in arms for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, even though his support for Israel has cost him support among young progressives outraged by the civilian casualty toll.

拜登周三签署的法案体现了外交政策与选举考量之间的冲突。他不仅冒下疏远数以百万计使用TikTok的年轻人的风险，而且该法案还包括为以色列在加沙打击哈马斯的战争提供数十亿美元的武器，尽管他对以色列的支持让他失去了年轻进步人士的支持，他们对平民的伤亡数字感到愤怒。

In his comments on signing the bill, Mr. Biden emphasized that it included money for humanitarian relief in Gaza. But he made no mention of TikTok.

在签署该法案时，拜登强调它包括向加沙提供人道主义援助的资金。但他没有提到TikTok。

About three hours later, his campaign posted its latest video on TikTok attacking Mr. Trump.

大约三个小时后，他的竞选团队在TikTok上发布了攻击特朗普的新视频。

President Biden told the American public in an Oval Office address on Wednesday that he had abandoned his re-election campaign because there is “a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices — yes, younger voices.”

拜登总统星期三在椭圆形办公室的讲话中对美国公众说他已经放弃连任竞选，因为“现在的时间和地点属于新的声音，新鲜的声音——是的，更年轻的声音。”

His words, lasting 11 minutes in all, were the first extensive ones from Mr. Biden since his decision to step aside, and expanded on his initial announcement, delivered in a post on social media on Sunday, that he was dropping out of the race. His tone was wistful and his speech was an early farewell.

拜登的讲话总共持续了11分钟，是他决定退选以来首次发表长篇讲话，其内容是对周日社交媒体上发表的退选公告的补充。他的语气充满伤感，这段讲话是他的提前告别。

“It’s been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years,’’ he said

他说：“为这个国家服务50多年是我一生的荣幸。”

Sitting behind the Resolute Desk and surrounded by photos of his family, Mr. Biden ticked through the accomplishments of his term, ranging from the choice of the first Black woman to be a Supreme Court justice to pulling the country out of a paralyzing pandemic. He expressed gratitude to the American people for allowing a “kid with a stutter” from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pa., to reach the pinnacle of American politics.

拜登坐在坚毅桌后面，周围环绕着家人的照片，他回顾了自己任期内取得的成就，从选择第一位黑人女性担任最高法院大法官到带领国家摆脱了一场令举国瘫痪的大流行。他对美国人民表示感谢，称他们允许宾夕法尼亚州斯克兰顿一个出身平凡的“口吃孩子”登上美国政治的顶峰。

Just beyond the camera, dozens of aides and several members of his family, including Jill Biden, the first lady, watched as Mr. Biden said he would walk away from the office they had worked to help him reach for decades.

镜头之外，数十名助手，以及包括第一夫人吉尔·拜登在内的几名家庭成员看着拜登，他说他将离开这些人几十年来一直努力帮助他到达的职位。

“I revere this office,” he said, “but I love my country more.”

“我崇敬这个职位，”他说，“但我更爱我的国家。”

Ultimately, Mr. Biden said, he concluded that “the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.” The president praised Vice President Kamala Harris — “she’s experienced, she’s tough, she’s capable” — but warned, as he has for years, that Americans faced a choice between preserving democracy and allowing it to backslide.

拜登说，他最终得出的结论是，“前进的最佳途径是把火炬传递给新一代。”总统赞扬了副总统贺锦丽——“她经验丰富、作风顽强、能力出众”—— 但是，他警告说，正如他这些年所说的那样，美国人要在维护民主和任其倒退之间做出选择。

“History is in your hands,” Mr. Biden said. “The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. We just have to keep faith, keep the faith, and remember who we are.”

“历史掌握在你们手中，”拜登说。“权力掌握在你的手中。美国的理想掌握在你们手中。我们只需要保持信念，坚守信仰，记住我们是谁。”

此前感染新冠的拜登总统在特拉华州的海滨别墅度过了本周的前几天，于周二返回华盛顿。

Mr. Biden, who spent the first part of the week recovering from Covid at his beach house in Delaware, spoke with a rasp and slight slur in his voice, speaking sometimes haltingly as he promised that he would defend his legacy and do what he could to help Ms. Harris win the election against former President Donald J. Trump. He stared straight ahead into the camera and seldom blinked.

拜登在特拉华州的海滨别墅度过了本周的前几天，正从新冠病情中恢复，他声音沙哑，谈吐略显含混，不时有些磕绊，他承诺捍卫自己的政治遗产，尽自己所能帮助贺锦丽赢得大选，击败前总统特朗普。他目不转睛地盯着镜头，很少眨眼。

“Over the next six months I will be focused on doing my job as president,” Mr. Biden said. “That means I will continue to lower costs for hard-working families, grow our economy. I will keep defending our personal freedoms and civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose.”

“在接下来六个月里，我将专注于履行总统的职责，”拜登说。“这意味着我将继续为辛勤工作的家庭降低成本，发展我们的经济。我将继续捍卫我们的个人自由和公民权利，从投票权到选择权。”

This speech was the fourth Oval Office address of Mr. Biden’s presidency and the second just this month. Ten days ago, Mr. Biden urged Americans to lower the political temperature after a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, wounding the former president and killing one of his supporters.

这是拜登总统任内的第四次椭圆形办公室演讲，也是本月的第二次。十天前，拜登敦促美国人降低政治温度，此前一名枪手在宾夕法尼亚州的特朗普集会上开枪，打伤了这位前总统，杀死了他的一名支持者。

Other than saying it was time to pass the torch to someone young, Mr. Biden offered no other reason for his decision to step down. He did not mention the three-week pressure campaign from his own party to get him out of the race after his faltering and at times incoherent debate performance with Mr. Trump in June 27.

除了表示现在是时候把火炬交给年轻人，拜登没有给出决定退选的其他原因。他没有提到6月27日，他在与特朗普的辩论中表现不佳，有时语无伦次之后，他的政党进行了为期三周的施压活动，迫使他退出竞选。

Mr. Biden and his advisers, aides said, still believed that he had a path to victory, but that he had been unable to flip the focus from his debate showing back onto the policies espoused by Mr. Trump. His decision to turn the race over to Ms. Harris ultimately overrode some of his private concerns about her ability to be able to win in a general election.

助手们说，拜登和他的顾问们仍然相信他有获胜的希望，但他一直无法将焦点从他在辩论中的表现转移到特朗普所支持的政策上。拜登最终打消了他对贺锦丽能否在大选中获胜的一些个人顾虑，做出了把竞选交给她的决定。

The drafting of his Wednesday address began on Sunday after Mr. Biden made the decision to drop out. Mike Donilon, one of the president’s senior aides, helped Mr. Biden fashion the remarks. Jon Meacham, the presidential historian, contributed to the speech, as well as Vinay Reddy, a White House speechwriter.

决定退出竞选后，拜登从周日开始起草周三的演讲稿。总统的高级助手之一迈克·多尼伦提供协助。总统历史学家乔恩·米查姆和白宫讲稿撰写者维奈·雷迪为讲稿做出了贡献。

拜登在决定放弃竞选连任后，于周日开始起草周三的讲话。

Mr. Biden now has six months to bolster a legacy that he is proud of but that gained little traction among Democratic voters, who had long registered their concerns in polls about his age and ability to do the job. Over the last three-and-a-half years, Mr. Biden worked to repair frayed relations with American allies in the West, passed a raft of landmark legislation and helped lead the country out of a crippling pandemic.

拜登现在有六个月的时间来巩固他引以为傲的政治遗产，但这些遗产在民主党选民中几乎没有什么吸引力，他们长期以来一直在民意调查中对他的年龄和胜任这项工作的能力表示担忧。过去三年半里，拜登努力修复美国与西方盟友的紧张关系，通过了一系列具有里程碑意义的立法，并帮助美国摆脱了一场严重的大流行。

But Mr. Biden, a former senator who spent 36 years priding himself in his ability to find compromise on legislation, now has little hope to deliver on unfulfilled promises he has made on issues ranging from women’s rights to voting protections.

但是，拜登在从女性权利到投票保护等方面做出的承诺基本已经没有兑现的可能。在36年的参议员生涯里，他一直以自己能够在立法问题上找到妥协方案而自豪。

In recent days, Ms. Harris has blazed onto the campaign trail, surfing a wave of hope and enthusiasm from Democratic voters that was absent during much of Mr. Biden’s presidency. Though Mr. Biden has promised to campaign vigorously for the vice president, his schedule for next week remains relatively clear, beyond a trip to Austin on Monday to speak at the presidential library of President Lyndon B. Johnson — the last Democratic president who decided not to seek re-election.

最近几天，贺锦丽开始了风风火火的竞选活动，在民主党选民当中掀起了希望和热情的浪潮，而在拜登担任总统期间的大部分时间里，这样的浪潮是不存在的。尽管承诺将为副总统大力助选，拜登下周的日程安排仍然相对较少，主要是周一前往奥斯汀，在林登·约翰逊总统图书馆发表演讲——约翰逊是上一位决定不寻求连任的民主党总统。

Mr. Biden is also facing heightened pressure from Republicans — including Mr. Trump’s new running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio — who argue that he must resign if he does not think he would be able to serve a second term.

拜登还面临着来自共和党人的更大压力——包括特朗普的新竞选伙伴、俄亥俄州参议员J·D·万斯——他们认为，如果拜登认为自己无法胜任第二个任期，他就必须辞职。

In a press briefing on Wednesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Biden would not resign and, in fact, still believes that he would be able to fulfill his duties four years into a second term.

在周三的新闻发布会上，白宫新闻秘书卡琳·让-皮埃尔表示，拜登不会辞职，事实上，他仍然相信自己能够在第二个任期的四年内履行职责。

He did not say any of that in the Oval Office. Instead, he said repeatedly that he had put the good of the country before his political aspirations.

他在椭圆形办公室并没有说这样的话，只是一再表示他把国家的利益置于自己的政治抱负之上。

“Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” Mr. Biden said. “That includes personal ambition.”

“没有什么能够阻挡我们拯救民主，”拜登说。“包括个人的抱负。”

In the video, the Chinese graduate student stared straight into the camera as she spoke. She wore a mask, but in a bold move, made clear who she was by holding up her identification card. Then she issued an explosive accusation: A prominent professor at a top Chinese university had been sexually harassing her for two years.

在视频中，这名中国博士研究生说话时直视镜头。她戴着口罩，但大胆地举起身份证，表明了自己的身份。然后，她做出了爆炸性的指控：中国一所顶尖大学的一位知名教授对她进行了持续两年的性骚扰。

Shortly after the woman posted the video on her Chinese social media pages on Sunday, it drew millions of views and set off an online outcry against the professor she named, Wang Guiyuan, then the vice-dean and Communist Party head of Renmin University’s School of Liberal Arts in Beijing.

周日，这名女子将视频发布在她的中国社交媒体页面上，不久后，该视频就吸引了数以百万计的观看量，并在网上引发了对她所提到的教授王贵元的强烈抗议。王贵元曾任中国人民大学文学院的副院长和党委书记。

The next day, Renmin University fired Mr. Wang, saying that officials had investigated the student’s allegations and found that they were true.

人民大学第二天便解雇了王贵元，称官方对这名学生的指控进行了调查，并发现相关指控属实。

The swift response by the university reflected the growing pressure that Chinese academic institutions have come under to curb sexual harassment on campus. In recent years, several schools have been accused of not doing enough to protect their students from tutors and professors who preyed on them.

学校的迅速反应反映出中国学术机构在遏制校园性骚扰方面面临的压力越来越大。近年来，一些学校被指责没有采取足够措施保护学生免受导师和教授的骚扰。

At the same time, in denouncing the professor, the university and commentaries in state media that followed studiously avoided describing his conduct as sexual harassment. Instead, they depicted it as a moral failing, using language that feminist activists and scholars say points to a strategy of deflection that turns the attention away from victims.

与此同时，在谴责这名教授时，该校和随后的官方媒体评论刻意避免将他的行为描述为性骚扰，而是将其描述为道德上的缺陷，在女权主义活动人士和学者看来，他们使用的措辞是一种转移注意力的策略，将外界的关注从受害者身上转移开。

“If they have to avoid saying ‘sexual harassment,’ it’s very hard to imagine that they take sexual violence seriously,” said Feng Yuan, an academic and the founder of an anti-domestic violence help line in Beijing.

“如果他们得避免说‘性骚扰’，很难想象他们会认真对待性暴力，”北京一家反家庭暴力求助热线创始人、学者冯媛说。

In her video, the graduate student, who identified herself as Wang Di, said that Mr. Wang, her doctoral supervisor, had demanded in 2022 to have sex with her, then abused her physically and verbally after she refused.

这位自述名为王迪的博士研究生在她的视频中说，她的博士导师王贵元于2022年要求与她发生性关系，在她拒绝后，对她进行了身体和言语虐待。

“Because I rejected him, he retaliated over the past two years, threatening that I would not graduate,” she said in the hourlong video. She included audio clips of what she described as recordings of his attempts to force himself on her. She also said she had text messages that backed up her claims.

“因我拒绝，他在其后两年多时间里对我进行打击报复，并威胁我不能毕业，”她在长达一小时的视频中说道。她还在视频中提供了音频片段，她表示这些音频是王贵元试图逼迫她发生关系的录音。她还表示保存了能支持其指控的信息往来。

Renmin University responded by saying it had verified the student’s allegations and dismissed the professor, whom it identified only by his last name, Wang. In a statement, the school said the professor had “seriously breached the party discipline, school rules and the professional ethics of teachers.”

人民大学回应称，已核实该学生的指控，并已开除该教授，该校只提及他的姓氏为王。学校在一份声明中表示，该教授“严重违反党纪校规和教师职业道德”。

Mr. Wang, the professor, did not reply to an email seeking comment. Ms. Wang, the student, also did not respond to a request for comment.

王贵元没有回复寻求置评的电子邮件。学生王迪也没有回应置评请求。

周一，中国人民大学的主校区。该学校称已证实了学生的指控。

The university also said he had been expelled by the Communist Party, and the local police department said it was investigating the situation. An online commentary about the case in the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, hailed the quick action, saying: “Black sheep cannot remain in the herd and the reputation of top schools cannot be destroyed.”

该校还表示，王贵元已被开除党籍，当地警方表示正在调查此事。共产党喉舌《人民日报》对此事的网络评论称赞了相关行动的迅速程度，称：“害群之马不能留在羊群中，名校的声誉不能被摧毁。”

Feminist activists said that school administrators were often more concerned about protecting the reputation of the school than the rights of the victim. Schools in China have long encouraged students to keep quiet about such allegations. In this case, the activists said, administrators may have had little choice but to take action, given the evidence that the student had collected and the widespread scrutiny on the school.

女权活动人士表示，学校管理者往往更关心保护学校的声誉，而不是受害者的权利。长期以来，中国的学校一直让学生对此类指控保持沉默。活动人士表示，在这种情况下，考虑到学生收集的证据和对学校的广泛关注，校方管理人员可能别无选择，只好采取行动。

The Chinese authorities have tried to avoid addressing the harm that had been done to the victim, said Lu Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist activist. “It is not a question of rights, it is not a question of safety, but a problem of violating morality and the politics of the party-state,” she said. This was to avoid being seen as encouraging students to seek legal redress, she said.

中国著名女权活动人士吕频表示，中国当局一直试图避免处理受害者所遭受的伤害。“说成这不是权利问题，也不是安全问题，而是违反道德和党国政治的问题。”她表示，这是为了避免被视为在鼓励学生寻求法律索赔。

The avoidance of the term “sexual harassment” has been a feature in past cases as well. In 2023, Southwest University in Chongqing fired a professor after a doctoral student said he had pressured her into having sex with him. In the university’s announcement, it described the teacher as having had an “improper sexual relationship” with a student, a term that scholars like Ms. Feng say is problematic because it implicates the victim as well.

避免使用“性骚扰”一词也是过往案例的一个特点。2023年，重庆的西南大学解雇了一名教授，因为一名博士生称该教授强迫她与他发生性关系。在学校的声明中，学校称该老师与一名学生发生了“不正当关系”，冯媛等学者认为，这个词有问题，因为它暗示受害者也与此事有关。

Even though sexual harassment by university teachers of students is officially described as a breach of professional ethics, the tendency within academia was to downplay the issue, said Lao Dongyan, a law professor from Tsinghua University, in a post on Weibo.

清华大学法学教授劳东燕在微博上发帖称，尽管大学教师对学生的性骚扰被官方描述为违反职业道德，但学术界倾向于淡化这一问题。

Yet “the environment around me seems to collectively assume it a trivial matter, or even an inevitable love affair for the men,” she wrote in the post, which has been liked nine million times.

然而“周围的环境似乎都默认这是小事，甚至将此种现象当作男性不可避免的风流韵事，”她在这篇帖子中写道，该帖子已被点赞900万次。

That Ms. Wang had to resort to going public with her complaint at the cost of her privacy reflected how weak reporting mechanisms on campus can be, Ms. Lu said.

吕频说，王迪不得不以牺牲隐私为代价公开投诉，这反映出校园举报机制的薄弱。

After the university’s response, Ms. Wang posted a statement online saying she was satisfied by the school’s response and appreciative of its concern for her well-being. Her original video was no longer available, though it was not immediately clear who took it down.

在学校做出回应后，王迪在网上发布了一份声明，称她对学校的回应感到满意，并感谢学校对她身心健康的关心。她的原始视频已无法观看，但目前尚不清楚是哪一方将其删除。

Ukraine’s top diplomat met with China’s foreign minister on Wednesday in talks that signaled Kyiv’s increased willingness to pursue a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia and to have China play a more central role in the effort.

周三，乌克兰外长与中国外长举行了会谈，这表明基辅方面寻求外交途径解决战争的意愿有所增强，并愿意让中国在这一努力中发挥更重要的作用。

“I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,” Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement after a meeting with Wang Yi, the Chinese official, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “China’s role as a global force for peace is important.”

“我相信，乌克兰的公正和平符合中国的战略利益，”德米特罗·库列巴在中国南方城市广州与王毅会晤后发表声明说。“中国作为全球和平力量发挥着重要的作用。”

Mr. Kuleba made clear that Ukraine attached conditions to such negotiations, saying it would only engage Russia when Moscow was “ready to negotiate in good faith.” He added: “No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side.”

库列巴明确表示，乌克兰对此类谈判附加了条件，称只有在莫斯科“准备真诚谈判”的情况下，乌克兰才会与俄罗斯接触。他还说：“目前没有观察到俄罗斯做好了这样的准备。”

Mr. Kuleba is visiting China for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His trip comes as Ukraine is slowly losing ground in the war and faces growing uncertainty about the level of support it will have from the West. Moscow and Kyiv briefly held peace talks in the spring of 2022 but they quickly broke down over critical issues.

这是自2022年2月俄罗斯入侵乌克兰以来库列巴首次访华。此行正值乌克兰在战争中逐渐失去优势，西方对乌支持程度的不确定性与日俱增。莫斯科和基辅在2022年春天短暂举行了和平谈判，但很快就在关键问题上破裂。

For China, hosting Mr. Kuleba reflects the country’s ambition to play a bigger role in global security challenges as a counterweight to the United States. It also serves to rebut Western criticism of Beijing’s close alignment with Russia.

对中国来说，接待库列巴反映出它希望在全球安全挑战中发挥更大作用，以此制衡美国的雄心。这也有助于反驳西方对北京与俄罗斯结盟的批评。

Mr. Wang said China was committed to finding a political solution to the crisis, adding that while the timing was not yet right, Moscow and Kyiv had “sent signals of their willingness to negotiate to varying degrees,” according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.

根据中国外交部的新闻通稿，王毅表示，中国致力于推动危机政治解决，并表示，虽然时机还不成熟，但莫斯科和基辅已经在“不同程度发出愿意谈判的信号”。

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters Mr. Kuleba’s reported openness to negotiations with Russia was “in unison with our position” and added that Russia has never refused talks.

克里姆林宫发言人德米特里·佩斯科夫告诉记者，报道中库列巴对与俄罗斯谈判持开放态度“与我们的立场一致”，并称俄罗斯从未拒绝过谈判。

Ukrainian and Western officials reject the idea that Russia is open to good-faith peace talks. They describe the Kremlin’s frequent messages about negotiations as a propaganda ruse designed to obfuscate the Kremlin’s determination to force Ukraine to capitulate.

乌克兰和西方官员拒绝接受俄罗斯愿意进行真诚和平谈判的说法。他们认为，克里姆林宫频繁发出的谈判信息是一种宣传策略，目的是混淆克里姆林宫迫使乌克兰投降的决心。

President Vladimir V. Putin’s cease-fire conditions — that Ukraine gives up four frontline regions that Russia partly controls, and that Kyiv pledges to never join the NATO military alliance — are a nonstarter for Ukraine, leaving little to no room for negotiations. Ukraine, for its part, wants to regain full control of its territory and to join NATO, which is anathema to Moscow.

普京总统提出的停火条件——乌克兰放弃俄罗斯部分控制的四个前线地区，基辅承诺永远不会加入北约军事联盟——对乌克兰来说是无法接受的，几乎没有谈判的余地。乌克兰方面则希望重新获得对其领土的完全控制，并加入北约，而这正是莫斯科深恶痛绝的。

泽连斯基总统上个月在瑞士举行的和平峰会上。中国曾试图在莫斯科和基辅之间进行调解，但很快遭到欧洲领导人的拒绝。

China’s previous attempt to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, with a 12-point plan it put forward in 2023, was quickly dismissed by European leaders. Beijing had since eschewed a public role in the war, declining to participate in a Ukrainian-held peace summit in Switzerland last month because Russia was not invited.

中国此前曾试图在俄乌之间进行调解，并于2023年提出了12点计划，但很快就被欧洲领导人驳回。自那以后，北京一直避免在这场战争中扮演公开角色。上个月，北京拒绝参加乌克兰在瑞士举行的和平峰会，因为俄罗斯没有受到邀请。

The summit eventually failed to rally support from regional powers such as India and Saudi Arabia. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently said Ukraine aimed to hold a second peace summit later this year, ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, and that Russia should participate.

那次峰会最终未能获得印度和沙特阿拉伯等地区大国的支持。乌克兰总统泽连斯基最近表示，乌克兰计划今年晚些时候，在11月美国总统大选之前举行第二次和平峰会，俄罗斯应该参加。

Beijing now may be calculating that the time is right to step in, partly based on a belief that Ukraine may be more realistic about how the war might end, said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a foreign affairs think tank in Washington.

华盛顿外交事务智库史汀生中心中国项目主任孙韵表示，北京现在可能认为介入的时机已经成熟，部分原因是相信乌克兰可能对战争将如何结束有了更加现实的看法。

“The Chinese wanted to play the role of a peacemaker and they weren’t able to before because the timing was not mature, in that Ukraine still believed that it could prevail in winning the war on its own terms,” Ms. Sun said.

“中国人想扮演和和平缔造者的角色，但他们之前没能做到，因为时机还不成熟，当时乌克兰仍然相信可以按照自己的方式赢得战争，”孙韵说。

In Kyiv, there has been a growing understanding that peace talks without China’s participation “will not be meaningful,” said Nataliya Butyrska, an expert on Ukrainian-Asian relations at the Kyiv-based New Europe Center, a foreign policy think tank.

位于基辅的外交政策智库新欧洲中心的乌克兰—亚洲关系专家娜塔莉亚·布蒂尔斯卡说，在基辅，人们日益认识到，没有中国参与的和平谈判“将没有意义”。

“China is a country that can push Russia to engage in peace talks,” Ms. Butyrska said, adding that Mr. Kuleba’s visit partly aimed to secure Beijing’s participation in the second peace summit.

“中国是一个可以推动俄罗斯参与和平谈判的国家，”布蒂尔斯卡说。她还表示，库列巴访华在一定程度上是为了确保北京参加第二次和平峰会。

Ukraine wants to speed up peace talks partly because of the prospect of a Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election this autumn, she said. Mr. Trump’s vow to end the war quickly has raised fears in Kyiv that he would push for a peace deal that would allow Russia to keep the territory it occupies today and leave it in a position to attack Ukraine again.

她指出，乌克兰希望加快和平谈判，部分原因是特朗普有望在今年秋天的美国总统大选中获胜。特朗普誓言要迅速结束战争，这让基辅担心他会推动一项和平协议，允许俄罗斯保留目前占领的领土，并使其有能力再次攻击乌克兰。

The Ukrainian army is also on the back foot along a frontline stretching more than 600 miles, as Russian troops creep forward and capture towns. Although the vast majority of the population is adamantly opposed to Russia’s maximalist peace terms, there has been growing acceptance of the need for peace talks.

乌克兰军队在将近1000公里的前线处境被动，俄罗斯军队正在缓慢前进并占领城镇。尽管绝大多数人坚决反对俄罗斯提出的极端和平条件，但越来越多的人接受了和平谈判的必要性。

China is in a unique position to mediate because its top leader, Xi Jinping, has a good relationship with Mr. Putin. The two have met dozens of times as presidents of their countries. Beijing also has economic leverage over Moscow, said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research group.

由于中国最高领导人习近平与普京关系良好，中国在调停方面处于独特位置。两人以各自国家最高元首的身份进行了数十次会晤。研究机构卡内基俄罗斯欧亚中心主任亚历山大·加布耶夫说，北京也对莫斯科还有经济影响力。

“In theory they can use that leverage to push Russia,” Mr. Gabuev said.

加布耶夫说，“理论上，他们可以利用这种影响力来推动俄罗斯。”

On Sunday, almost immediately after prominent Democrats started endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president, attacks from the political right started pouring in. Will Chamberlain, a conservative lawyer who worked on Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, posted on X that Harris “shouldn’t be President” because she doesn’t have biological children; “becoming a step-parent to older teenagers doesn’t count,” he wrote, adding that “The concerns of parents and families will always be abstract to her” because she doesn’t have “skin in the game, a stake in the future, and the lived experience of raising children.”

周日，几乎是在重要的民主党人开始表态支持副总统贺锦丽成为该党总统候选人的同时，政治右翼的攻击就源源而来。曾在罗恩·德桑蒂斯的总统竞选团队工作的保守派律师威尔·张伯伦在X上发帖称，贺锦丽“不应该当总统”，因为她没有亲生孩子；“给十几岁的孩子当继母不算数，”他写道，还说，“父母和家庭的担忧对她来说永远是抽象的”，因为她“没有亲身体验，在将来没有利害关系，也没有养育孩子的生活经历”。

First, let’s note the obvious: If elected, Harris wouldn’t be the first American president with no biological children. There were five others: George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk and James Buchanan. (Warren Harding had a child out of wedlock and publicly denied paternity; that he was the father was confirmed by DNA testing almost a century later.)

首先，让我们指出一个显而易见的事实：如果当选总统，贺锦丽将不是第一位没有亲生孩子的美国总统。之前还有五位：乔治·华盛顿、詹姆斯·麦迪逊、安德鲁·杰克逊、詹姆斯·波尔克，以及詹姆斯·布坎南。（沃伦·哈定有一个私生女，但一直公开否认自己是父亲；他的父亲身份是近一个世纪后通过DNA检测核实的。）

But more to the point, if you think that the concerns of parents and families will always be “abstract” to someone who doesn’t have children, you’re telling on yourself. It’s not simply that, by all accounts, Harris has a close, loving relationship with her stepkids. It’s that it’s possible for people who have basic empathy to understand the needs, aspirations and concerns of fellow citizens who aren’t exactly like them — and to commit to their well-being.

但更为重要的是，如果你认为父母和家庭的担忧对没有孩子的人来说永远是“抽象的”，这其实暴露了你的无知。这不仅是因为据所有已知情况，贺锦丽与她的继子女有着充满爱意的亲密关系。这是因为，具有基本同理心的人完全有可能理解与他们不尽相同的同胞的需求、愿望和担忧，能致力于他们的福祉。

It actually should be a requirement for presidential candidates to have compassion for people they’ll never meet. And it strikes me as anti-American to argue that a politician is any less invested in families or our country’s future because of his or her own parental status. It should go without saying, but: Having children doesn’t necessarily make you a better person.

实际上，应该要求总统候选人对他们永远不会遇到的人有同情心。而且我觉得，认为一名政客因自身为人父母的状况而对家庭或我们国家的未来投入减少，那是违背美国人价值的论点。这本无须多言，但有孩子并不一定让你成为一个更好的人。

This argument is also appallingly dismissive to so many adults who dote on the children in their lives and devote time, money and care to helping them grow, regardless of whether they are related by blood. It’s even more hurtful to people who really want to have children but are unable to.

这个论调也极其轻视那些关心生活中的孩子的成年人，他们愿意投入时间、金钱和精力来帮助孩子成长，无论这些孩子和自己是否有血缘关系。对那些真想要孩子但无法生育的人来说，这种说法甚至更伤人。

This is, also, not a new tactic for the right. As a way of clinging to the tag line that the G.O.P. is the pro-family party — despite working, during the Biden years, to defeat federal legislation that included paid family leave and affordable high-quality child care — some Republicans are content to paint the Democratic Party as the party of “childless cat ladies.”

对右翼来说，这也不是什么新招数。为了抱住共和党是亲家庭政党的口号不放，一些共和党人乐于将民主党描绘成“没孩子却养猫的老太婆政党”，尽管在拜登执政的几年里，他们努力阻挠了有关带薪家务假和价格合理的高质量幼儿园的联邦立法。

When JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, was running for Senate in 2021, he told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson:

共和党的副总统候选人J·D·万斯2021年竞选参议员时曾对福克斯新闻的塔克·卡尔森这样说：

We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it’s just a basic fact, if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, A.O.C. — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?

我们实际上，这个国家实际上，是被民主党人、被我们的企业寡头、被一群没孩子却养猫的老太婆管着，她们自己活得很可怜，对自己的选择感到痛苦，所以她们也不想让这个国家的其他人活得舒服。这是个基本事实，看看贺锦丽、皮特·布蒂吉格、AOC（亚历山德里娅·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯的昵称——译注）吧，民主党的整个未来都由这些没孩子的人控制着。实在难以理解，为什么要把我们的国家交给这些与其没有直接利害关系的人来管？

Vance has taken his feud with the childless even further than that, floating the idea in 2021 — apparently earnestly — of giving children votes that would be controlled by their parents, something that would have the effect of giving parents a greater say in our democracy than people without kids. (Vance has also spoken out against divorce and people who “shift spouses like they change their underwear,” but that criticism seems not to apply to his thrice-married running mate.)

万斯在他对无子女者的仇怨上甚至走得更远，他曾在2021年提出一个想法，而且这个想法显然是认真的：赋予孩子投票权，把他们的选票交给他们的父母控制，这等于是让有孩子的父母比没有孩子的人对我们的民主有更大的发言权。（万斯也曾公开反对离婚，批评过“换配偶就像换内衣那样勤”的人，但这些批评似乎没有用于他结过三次婚的竞选伙伴。）

Buttigieg has become a father since Vance and his fellow conservatives began this line of attack. But these critiques are part of the right-wing obsession with the traditional nuclear family. As the former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy put it: “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”

自万斯和他的保守派同僚们开始这种攻击以来，布蒂吉格已经当了父亲。但这些批评是右翼对传统核心家庭痴迷的一部分。正如曾竞选共和党总统候选人的维韦克·拉马斯瓦米所说：“核心家庭是人类已知的最伟大的治理形式。”

Instead of using Harris’s biography as a way to dismiss her family-friendly bona fides, we should be looking at her record. By that measure, Harris could be one of the most pro-family candidates we’ve had in recent memory. She was the public face of Democrats’ efforts in 2022 to promote the expanded child tax credits that families received as part of the American Rescue Plan, and in his endorsement of Harris, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado praised her commitment to this policy and her “dedication to our country’s security and our children’s prosperity.”

不应该用贺锦丽的个人经历来否定她对家庭友好的善意，而是应该看看她在这个问题上的记录。按照这个标准，贺锦丽很可能是我们最近记忆中最支持家庭的候选人之一。她是民主党2022年推动扩大子女税收抵免努力的公众形象，这些抵免是疫情期间推出的《美国救援方案》的一部分，科罗拉多州的参议员迈克尔·贝内特表态支持贺锦丽为总统候选人时称赞了她对这项政策的承诺，以及她“对我们国家的安全和我们儿童的繁荣所做的奉献”。

By contrast, when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked a question about child care in the presidential debate last month, Donald Trump responded with a word salad about firing a bunch of people, draining the swamp and how President Biden is terrible.

相比之下，美国有线电视新闻网的杰克·塔珀在上月的大选辩论中问有关照看孩子的问题时，特朗普答非所问，说了一堆他要解雇很多人、要抽干沼泽，以及拜登总统有多糟的不相干的话。

Elder care often gets left out of discussions about caregiving in this country, though many people without children are spending a great deal of resources caring for older family members. This will only become a more important issue in the next decade, as by 2030, an estimated 73 million Americans will be seniors. In April, Vice President Harris announced two rules that help support older Americans and their caregivers, including a minimum staffing rule at nursing homes that receive federal funding and a wage requirement for home care workers.

这个国家有关照看的讨论经常忽略照看老年人的问题，尽管许多没有孩子的人正在为照顾老年家庭成员花费大量资源。这个问题只会在未来十年变得更重要，因为到2030年时，估计有7300万美国人将步入老年。今年4月，副总统贺锦丽宣布了两项帮助支持美国老年人及其照看者的新规，包括为接受联邦资助的养老院制定了最低人员配备的规则，为到老年人家里照顾他们的工人制定了最低工资要求。

When Vice President Harris spoke at a child-care center in 2021, she looked out at the crowd and referred to the kids in attendance as “our babies.” They’re our babies, she said, because “I was raised to understand that the children of the community are the children of the community.”

贺锦丽副总统2021年在一家托儿所发表讲话时，她在一大群听众面前把托儿所的孩子称为“我们的孩子”。她说，他们是我们的孩子，因为“我在长大的过程中就明白，一个社区的孩子也是全社会的孩子。”

I want a future for my own children in which everybody looks out for the babies of the whole community and aren’t distrusting of people who live their lives differently, whether by circumstance or by choice.

我想让自己的孩子生活在这样一种未来：所有人都关照全社会的孩子，不去怀疑那些无论是由于命运还是出于选择而采用不同方式生活的人。

China, the world’s biggest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases for most of the past two decades, is seemingly on the verge of bending its emissions curve from years of steep growth into a flat plateau.

在过去20年的大部分时间里，中国是世界上最大的温室气体排放国，如今它的排放曲线似乎即将从多年的急剧增长转向平稳。

The implications for climate change could scarcely be greater. Since China’s emissions surpassed those of the United States in 2006, China’s global share has grown to almost a third — a huge number, even with population differences taken into account.

这对气候变化有着无比重大的意义。自2006年超过美国以来，中国的排放量在全球的占比已经增长到近三分之一——即使考虑到人口差异，这也是一个巨大的数字。

A recent spate of data from China’s government, as well as reports by energy analysts, have provided positive signs that while China’s emissions may not decrease significantly, they also may not grow. China’s president, Xi Jinping, had pledged to reach that turning point by 2030.

中国政府最近公布的一系列数据以及能源分析师的报告都提供了积极的迹象，表明虽然中国的排放量可能不会大幅减少，但可能也不会继续增长。中国国家主席习近平承诺到2030年实现碳达峰。

“The important thing to understand is that when China’s emissions stop growing, it likely follows that the world’s stop growing, too,” said Dave Jones, global insight director at Ember, an energy think tank.

能源智库Ember的全球洞察总监戴夫·琼斯表示：“需要理解的重要一点是，当中国的排放量停止增长时，全球排放量很可能也会随之停止增长。”

The biggest factor in the shift is changes to how China produces its electricity. In short, renewable sources are replacing coal, the most polluting fossil fuel.

这种转变的最大促成因素是中国电力生产方式的变化。简而言之，可再生能源正在取代煤炭，后者污染最严重的化石燃料。

Last year alone, China installed more solar panels than the United States has in its entire history, and connected most of them to its electricity grid.

仅去年一年，中国安装的太阳能电池板数量就超过了美国历史上的总和，而且其中大部分都接入了电网。

Almost two-thirds of big wind and solar plants under construction globally are in China, according to a report last week from Global Energy Monitor. That is more than eight times the wind and solar capacity being planned in the United States.

根据全球能源监测上周的一份报告，全球近三分之二在建的大型风能和太阳能发电厂位于中国。这是美国计划中的风能和太阳能装机容量的八倍多。

And in May, China generated 53 percent of its electricity from coal, its lowest share since its government began publishing energy data decades ago, while nearly all the rest of it came from non-fossil-fuel sources. “This indicated that China may have peaked” its emissions, said Belinda Schäpe, a China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

今年5月，中国的煤炭发电占比降至53%，这是自政府数十年前开始发布能源数据以来的最低水平，其余则几乎全部来自非化石燃料。“这表明中国的排放可能已经达峰，”能源与清洁空气研究中心的中国分析师贝琳达·沙佩说。

However, some observers caution that “peak” was perhaps the wrong word to describe the current trend in China.

不过，一些观察人士警告，“达峰”可能并不适合用于描述中国当前的趋势。

“We’ve been talking about whether there’s been a peak for almost a decade,” said Li Shuo, the director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Peaking assumes persistent emissions decline after it is passed. That’s not an assumption we can or should make.”

“近十年来，我们一直在讨论是否已经达峰，”亚洲协会政策研究所中国气候中心主任李硕说。“达峰的前提是，排放量在达到峰值后会持续下降。这不是我们能够或应该做出的假设。”

Mr. Li said it was more likely that China’s emissions would plateau. And he cautioned that while growth in renewable energy was responsible for replacing coal in electricity generation, other factors — such as China’s recent real estate crisis and sluggish post-pandemic economy — have led to less consumption of energy overall, which might skew the data downward, but only temporarily.

李硕表示，中国的排放量更有可能趋于平稳。他提醒说，虽然可再生能源的增长确实取代了煤炭发电，但其他因素——如中国最近的房地产危机和疫情后的经济低迷——也导致了整体能源消耗的减少，这可能会使数据向下偏移，但只是暂时性的。

“If you look at China’s emissions profile of the past two decades, one particular source was hugely significant: real estate and construction, whose supply chain made up about a third of all emissions,” he said. “That’s cooling off.”

“如果你看看中国过去20年的排放情况，你会发现有一个特别重要的来源：房地产和建筑业，这两个行业的供应链约占总排放量的三分之一，”他说。“这正在降温。”

More reliable signs have come from recent policy shifts, he said. In particular, a new ban on permits for steel factories that would use coal to fire their blast furnaces could have far-reaching effects. A huge push toward electric-vehicle production has also dampened demand for oil.

他说，更可靠的迹象来自于最近的政策转变。特别是，对新增煤炭冶炼钢厂发放许可证的禁令可能产生深远影响。同时，向电动汽车生产的重大推动也降低了对石油的需求。

But, ultimately, China’s emissions trajectory will come down to how quickly renewables can displace coal from its electricity mix. While coal’s share has fallen, China is still investing in it as a power source.

但是，中国的排放轨迹最终将取决于可再生能源在电力结构中取代煤炭的速度。虽然煤炭所占的比例有所下降，但中国仍在将其作为一种电力来源进行投资。

China alone accounted for two-thirds of the world’s newly operating coal plants last year. In 2023, new coal-plant construction hit an eight-year high in China. If China were to build all the others it has proposed, it would add the equivalent of one-third of its current operating fleet. Today, China accounts for around 60 percent of the world’s coal use.

去年，仅中国就占了全球新建燃煤电厂的三分之二。2023年，中国新的燃煤电厂建设达到了8年来的最高水平。如果中国的燃煤电厂计划全部建成的话，将增加相当于其现有运营燃煤电厂三分之一的规模。目前，中国的煤炭消耗量约占全球的60%。

Some of China’s coal build-out is meant to provide a fallback option for when wind and solar generation dips. But China is also investing heavily in pumped-storage hydropower. Pumped hydro is a way to store energy by pumping water uphill to a reservoir during times of low demand for electricity, then releasing it later to generate extra electricity if demand surges.

中国的部分燃煤电厂建设项目是为了在风能和太阳能发电量下降时提供备用选择。但中国也在大力投资抽水蓄能水电。抽水蓄能是一种储存能源的方式，在电力需求较低的时候，将水抽往上游的水库，然后在需求激增时放水产生额外的电力。

Those systems could help reduce the demand for coal power during peak times.

这些系统有助于减少高峰时段对煤电的需求。

Oil and gas are also used in Chinese industry as power sources. But Mr. Li cautioned that while both China’s domestic production of petrochemicals was growing as well as its imports of them, the deciding factor in China’s emissions trajectory will be coal’s decline.

石油和天然气在中国工业中也被用作能源。但李硕警告，尽管中国国内石化产品的产量和进口量都在增长，但在中国的排放轨迹中，决定性因素将是煤炭的减少。

In the coming months, China’s government is expected to unveil new commitments to reduce emissions ahead of November’s United Nations-sponsored climate summit, COP 29, in Azerbaijan.

未来几个月，中国政府有望在11月于阿塞拜疆举行的联合国气候峰会前公布新的减排承诺。

“Diplomatic attention is fixated on the question: Has China peaked or not,” said Mr. Li. “You could imagine that if the answer is yes, so far ahead of schedule, it might give China more reason to be even more ambitious with its reduction targets.”

“外交注意力集中在一个问题上：中国是否已经达峰，”李硕说。“你可以想象，如果答案是肯定的，那么提早到了这个程度可能会让中国有更多理由去制定更具雄心的减排目标。”

Kamala Harris is a highly memeable presidential candidate. She dances in a loose and enthusiastic manner. She has an idiosyncratic speaking style. She laughs easily, including at herself. This has not always worked in her favor.

卡玛拉·哈里斯是个很容易被做成米姆的总统候选人。她的舞蹈松弛而热情。她的演讲风格特立独行。她很爱笑，包括笑自己。这并不总是对她有利。

When Harris said, in a May 2023 speech, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?,” a Republican YouTube channel snipped the clip from its context and tossed it to commentators, who used it to compare Harris to a daffy talk show host or to joke that she sounded high. Videos of Harris dancing at campaign events were labeled “cringe.” The stickiest anti-Kamala meme of the 2020 election — that the former prosecutor Harris “is a cop” — united leftists, Black Twitter and Republican trolls in an internet-wide project of framing Harris as either a reactionary or a hypocrite.

哈里斯在2023年5月的一次演讲中说：“你以为你是从椰子树上掉下来的吗？”YouTube上的一个共和党频道把这段视频从语境中截取出来，扔给评论者，他们用这段视频把哈里斯比作一个呆傻的脱口秀主持人，或者开玩笑说她好像是嗑了药。哈里斯在竞选活动中跳舞的视频被贴上了“尬舞”的标签。2020年大选中最引人观看的反卡玛拉米姆——前检察官哈里斯“是个条子”——让左派人士、黑人Twitter用户和共和党喷子走到了一起，在整个互联网范围内将哈里斯诬为反动分子或伪君子。

Now these images have been reversed. Since President Biden bowed out of the race and threw his support to Harris, the familiar old Kamala memes have risen again. It’s their interpretation that has changed.

现在这些形象被反转了。自从拜登总统退出竞选，转而支持哈里斯以来，熟悉的卡玛拉老梗再次兴起。但是解读发生了变化。

In the hands of her online fans, Harris’s word salad has been replated as hypnotic internet speak. Her confounding coconut tree quote — “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” she went on to say — now circulates as a symbol of the giddy high produced by her dizzy rise in a destabilized campaign. Her dance moves have been set to Charli XCX songs and filtered through Charli’s lime-green “Brat”-era branding, bathing Harris in her chill hot-mess pop star glow. Even “Kamala Harris is a cop” has been reclaimed, with an exaggerated wink, by supporters eager to fashion it into a winning general-election pitch.

在她的网络粉丝手中，哈里斯那些不知所云的话经过重新包装，变成了令人迷醉互联网话语。她那句令人困惑的椰子树名言——在那句话之后，她接着说：“你存在于你所处的环境和你之前的环境之中”——现在被当做她在一场动荡的竞选中因为过于快速的崛起而头晕目眩的象征，并且流传开来。她的舞蹈动作被配上了Charli XCX的歌曲，并且配上了《Brat》时期Charli标志性的灰绿色滤镜，让哈里斯沐浴在时尚酷炫的流行歌星光晕之下。甚至“卡玛拉·哈里斯是条子”这句话也被支持者重新拾起，配上夸张的眨眼动作，他们希望把它塑造成赢得大选的宣传口号。

The measure of a candidate’s charisma used to be, “Would you have a beer with her?” Now it’s more like, “Are you willing to spend your evening editing a fancam-style video that sets her idiosyncrasies to pop music so effectively that they produce a pleasant narcotic effect?”

过去，衡量候选人魅力的标准是：“你愿意和她一起喝杯啤酒吗？”现在则更像是，“你愿意花一个晚上的时间，为她剪辑一个粉丝角度的视频，将她的特质与流行音乐有效地结合起来，产生一种令人愉悦的麻醉效果吗？”

All of it feels like a fun house mirror to the online energy that vibrates around the other party’s presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. The Trump fandom stands ready and willing to spin any potential weakness, up to and including a felony conviction, into a triumphant meme. The MAGA stan proves his loyalty and ingenuity by processing even the gravest concerns into pro-Trump grist, thus maximizing his satisfaction at triggering the left. It once seemed as if the Democratic Party could never produce a candidate who could inspire an internet response quite that powerful and strange. Now, improbably, it has.

这一切像是一面哈哈镜，映照出围绕着另一方总统候选人特朗普的网络能量。特朗普的粉丝们随时准备，并且愿意把他任何潜在的弱点，包括重罪定罪，变成一个和胜利有关的米姆。“恢复美国伟大荣光”的支持者将最严重的担忧转化为支持特朗普的素材，从而最大限度地提高了自己在刺激左翼时的满足感，也证明了自己的忠诚和聪明才智。曾几何时，民主党似乎永远不可能推出一个能在互联网上激起如此强烈而奇怪反应的候选人。现在，不可思议的是，它做到了。

The mantra of Harris’s online converts — “I’m coconut pilled” — riffs on the symbology of “The Matrix” to signal that their perspective has undergone a reality-altering shift, one with enough chaotic power to upend the presidential race. Part of Harris’s viral energy feels generated by the topsy-turvy motion of the campaign itself. The pent-up excitement at Biden’s decision not to seek a second term, after months of mounting concerns, accrues to her. It helps that the Harris memes booted up shortly after Biden’s disastrous debate. It makes it feel as if the internet manifested her candidacy. Her boosters are now tipsy with their collective power.

哈里斯的网上皈依者的口头禅——“我吃了椰子丸”——借用了《黑客帝国》的符号，表明他们的观点已经发生了足以改变现实的转变，这种转变具有能够颠覆总统竞选的混乱力量。哈里斯的病毒式传播能量部分来自于竞选活动本身的颠覆性。几个月来，人们的担忧不断加剧，拜登决定不再寻求连任，这种被压抑的兴奋情绪在她身上得到了释放。在拜登灾难性的辩论后不久，哈里斯的米姆就出现了，这有所帮助。这让人感觉好像互联网在彰显她的候选资格。她的支持者们现在正沉醉于自己的集体力量。

The undercurrent to many of the anti-Kamala memes was the accusation that she occasionally appeared smugly unintelligible. One viral supercut, which showed Harris passionately delivering the catchphrase “what can be, unburdened by what has been” over and over again, was circulated by the Republican National Committee before it was reclaimed by Harris supporters. The mild incoherence of her phrasing only makes it more interesting as a hook on TikTok, where fans chop up and remix a candidate’s speech like D.J.s working a goofy soundboard. Now, in a bizarre reversal, right-wing influencers are trying to imbue Harris’s nonsense with meaning. One has floated the theory on X that the “unburdened” line is “a Marxist and Luciferian incantation, and that’s easily seen.”

许多反卡玛拉的表情包中暗涌着对她的指责，觉得她有时会显得自鸣得意、难以理解。在一个广为传播的超级剪辑中，哈里斯热情地、一遍又一遍地说着“可以成为什么，摆脱过去的负担”这句名言，在哈里斯的支持者重新使用这句话之前，这个视频被共和党全国委员会在网上传播。在TikTok上，粉丝们把候选人的演讲剁碎、重新混音，就像DJ们在摆弄恶搞音效包，而她略显颠三倒四的措辞只会成为更有趣的素材。现在，出现了奇怪的逆转，右翼网红正试图给哈里斯没有意义的话注入意义。有人在X上提出了这样一种理论——“摆脱过去的负担”那句话是“马克思主义和路西法的咒语，这很容易看出来。”

The redemption of the “unburdened” meme is also a reaction to the legitimately concerning gibberish generated by the elder statesmen in the race over the past few months. Harris now presides over a post-coherence landscape, one where her occasionally meandering phrasing feels refreshingly low stakes. It’s a quirk, not an existential threat to American democracy. The “unburdened” supercut shows a candidate who can memorize a line and capably deliver it on command — not something that could be said of Joe Biden, in the end.

对“摆脱过去的负担”米姆的重新利用也是在回应过去几个月的竞选中，人们对两位年老政治人士那些胡言乱语的合理担忧。哈里斯如今掌管着一个不再需要“看得懂”的世界，她那些偶尔不着边际的措辞感觉风险比较低，让人耳目一新。她的不着边际只是一种怪癖，而不是对美国民主的致命威胁。“摆脱负担”的超级剪辑显示了一个候选人不仅能够记住一句名言，并能够得心应手地把它表达出来——这是乔·拜登始终没能做到的。

Biden always fared poorly on TikTok, the platform that he hoped to ban from American phones even as his campaign dutifully opened an account. The use of a warmed-over “Dark Brandon” meme as Biden’s avatar — where he’s styled as a secret mastermind, lasers shooting from his eyes — failed to capture the audience’s imagination. Instead it was captivated by videos of Biden seemingly wandering, stumbling and freezing during numerous presidential appearances.

在TikTok——也就是他想在美国禁止的那个平台——他的表现始终乏善可陈，尽管他的竞选团队尽职尽责地为他开设了一个帐号。用翻版“黑暗布兰登”的米姆作为拜登的化身——他被设计成一个秘密策划者，眼睛里射出激光——未能吸引观者。相反，吸引他们的是拜登在多次亮相时显得徘徊不定、步履蹒跚和僵住的视频。

The campaign sought to dismiss these depictions as the distortions of a disinformation machine and flooded the app with its own videos. In many of them, anonymous youthful Biden surrogates made concerned faces and soliloquized talking points. The campaign seemed to think that it could fix its TikTok problem by posting lots of TikToks, but TikTok’s fixation on his possible cognitive decline was an early signal of a deeper issue — one that Biden, and many of his supporters, only seriously acknowledged after it was showcased on live television during the first presidential debate.

拜登竞选团队试图将这些视频斥为虚假信息机器的扭曲，并在该应用上大量发布了自己的视频。在许多这样的视频中，匿名的年轻拜登代理人摆出关切的表情，用独白的方式说出要点。竞选团队似乎认为，他们可以通过发布大量的TikTok来解决TikTok的问题，但TikTok上对他可能出现的认知能力下降的关注是一个更深层次问题的早期信号——拜登和他的许多支持者直到在第一场总统辩论的电视直播中看到这个问题显示出来，才正式承认了它的存在。

Shortly after Biden stepped down on Sunday, James Medlock, a pseudonymous social democratic Twitter power user, reposted a leftist meme of Harris that first circulated in 2019. In the image, Harris is Photoshopped into a police uniform and superimposed in front of the thin blue line flag. She is made to laugh and handcuff a Black child.

拜登周日宣布退出竞选后不久，使用假名的社会民主党Twitter重要用户詹姆斯·梅德洛克转发了一张2019年首次流传的、来自左翼的哈里斯米姆。在图片中，哈里斯被PS成身穿警察制服，身后叠加了代表警察的细蓝线旗帜。她被改成了大笑的样子，正给一个黑人小孩戴上手铐。

“Remember,” Medlock wrote on X, “now we pivot to not mentioning Kamala’s sterling left wing voting record and her cool Marxist dad, and instead loudly say she’s a cop who will lock up all the criminals. It’s time to win this election.” Another user Photoshopped a picture of Donald Trump in the child’s place. Then someone Photoshopped Charli XCX in instead.

“记住，”梅德洛克在X上写道，“现在我们不再提卡玛拉出色的左翼投票记录和她那酷酷的马克思主义老爸，现在要大声说，她是一个会把所有罪犯都关起来的警察。现在是时候赢得这次选举了。”另一位用户用Photoshop将特朗普的照片放在了孩子的位置上。然后有人用Photoshop将Charli XCX换了上去。

When internet users make Kamala Harris appear to arrest Charli XCX, or splice her coconut tree line into a Taylor Swift track, it’s not clear how firmly their tongues are in their cheeks, or where their sincere politics lie. But their sincerity is not required. With Harris, a meme alliance has emerged between the Democratic Party’s irony-pilled leftists and its #resistance-core centrists, and now this ragtag crew has come together to try to lift her into the White House. For very online members of the left who view Harris as insufficiently radical, the playfulness of her memes is protective. The ironic distance stands in for their own political distance from their new favorite candidate.

当互联网用户把卡玛拉·哈里斯塑造成逮捕Charli XCX的形象，或者为她的椰子树那句话配上泰勒·斯威夫特的歌曲时，我们并不清楚他们有多真诚，也不清楚他们真正的政治立场是什么。但是没有人需要他们的真诚。在哈里斯身上，民主党张口就是讽刺的左派和它相信#抵抗核心(#resistance-core)的中间派之间形成了一个米姆联盟，现在这群散漫的人聚集在一起，试图把她抬进白宫。对于那些认为哈里斯不够激进的左翼网络成员来说，这些俏皮的米姆起到了保护作用。这种具有讽刺意味的距离代表了他们自己与这位新宠候选人之间的政治距离。

On the internet, the project of electing an establishment Democrat like Harris can feel almost subversive. Or at the very least, mildly entertaining.

在互联网上，让哈里斯这样的民主党建制派当选总统几乎可以说是颠覆性的。或者至少，有点娱乐性。

History has its eye on us. President Biden’s decision to end his campaign was as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime. It should also be a call to action to the rest of us to continue his fight for the soul of our nation. The next 15 weeks will be like nothing this country has ever experienced politically, but have no doubt: This is a race Democrats can and must win.

历史正注视着我们。拜登总统决定结束竞选活动，这是我一生中看到的最为纯粹的爱国主义行为。这也应该是对我们其余人的行动号召，让我们继续为国家的灵魂而战。接下来的15周将是这个国家在政治上从未经历过的，但毫无疑问：这是一场民主党能够而且必须赢得的竞选。

Mr. Biden has done a hard and rare thing. Serving as president was a lifelong dream. And when he finally got there, he was exceptionally good at it. To give that up, to accept that finishing the job meant passing the baton, took real moral clarity. The country mattered more. As one who shared that dream and has had to make peace with letting it go, I know this wasn’t easy. But it was the right thing to do.

拜登做了一件艰难而罕见的事。当总统曾是他毕生的梦想。当他最终成为总统时，他表现得异常出色。放弃这个位置，接受完成这项工作就意味着交出接力棒，这需要具备真正的道德明晰。国家是更重要的。作为一个有着同样的梦想，并且不得不接受放弃这歌梦想的人，我知道这并不容易。但这是正确的选择。

Elections are about the future. That’s why I am excited about Vice President Kamala Harris. She represents a fresh start for American politics. She can offer a hopeful, unifying vision. She is talented, experienced and ready to be president. And I know she can defeat Donald Trump.

选举关乎未来。这就是为什么卡玛拉·哈里斯副总统令我兴奋。她代表着美国政治的新开始。她可以带来一个充满希望、团结一致的愿景。她才华横溢，经验丰富，已经做好了成为总统的准备。我知道她能打败唐纳德·特朗普。

There is now an even sharper, clearer choice in this election. On one side is a convicted criminal who cares only about himself and is trying to turn back the clock on our rights and our country. On the other is a savvy former prosecutor and successful vice president who embodies our faith that America’s best days are still ahead. It’s old grievances versus new solutions.

在这次选举中，现在有了一个更鲜明、更清晰的对比。一边是一个只关心自己、想让我们的权利和国家倒退的罪犯。另一边是一位精明的前检察官和成功的副总统，她体现了我们的信念——最好的美国还在前方。这是旧的不满与新的解决方案之间的较量。

Ms. Harris’s record and character will be distorted and disparaged by a flood of disinformation and the kind of ugly prejudice we’re already hearing from MAGA mouthpieces. She and the campaign will have to cut through the noise, and all of us as voters must be thoughtful about what we read, believe and share.

大量的虚假信息，乃至我们已经从“恢复美国伟大荣光”的喉舌那里听到的丑陋偏见会扭曲和贬低哈里斯的履历和品格。她和她的竞选团队必须穿透这些喧嚣，我们所有的选民都必须仔细思考我们所读到、相信和分享的内容。

I know a thing or two about how hard it can be for strong women candidates to fight through the sexism and double standards of American politics. I’ve been called a witch, a “nasty woman” and much worse. I was even burned in effigy. As a candidate, I sometimes shied away from talking about making history. I wasn’t sure voters were ready for that. And I wasn’t running to break a barrier; I was running because I thought I was the most qualified to do the job. While it still pains me that I couldn’t break that highest, hardest glass ceiling, I’m proud that my two presidential campaigns made it seem normal to have a woman at the top of the ticket.

对于强大的女性候选人来说，在美国政治的性别歧视和双重标准之下抗争是多么困难，这一点我很清楚。我曾被称为女巫，“阴毒女人，”甚至更糟。甚至有人烧毁我的肖像。作为候选人，我有时会对创造历史避而不谈。我不确定选民们是否准备好了。我参选不是为了打破障碍；我参选是因为我认为我是最有资格做这份工作的人。虽然我仍然为无法打破最高、最硬的玻璃天花板而感到痛苦，但让我感到自豪的是，我的两次总统竞选让女性成为总统候选人显得很正常。

Ms. Harris will face unique additional challenges as the first Black and South Asian woman to be at the top of a major party’s ticket. That’s real, but we shouldn’t be afraid. It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible. After all, I won the national popular vote by nearly three million in 2016, and it’s not so long ago that Americans overwhelmingly elected our first Black president. As we saw in the 2022 midterms, abortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before. With Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave.

作为首位获得主要政党最高提名的黑人和南亚裔女性，哈里斯将面临独特的额外挑战。这是现实，但我们不应该害怕。认为不可能取得进步是一个陷阱。毕竟，我在2016年以近300万的优势赢得了全国普选，而且，就在不久之前，美国人以压倒性多数选出了我们的第一位黑人总统。正如我们在2022年中期选举中看到的那样，堕胎禁令和对民主的攻击前所未有地激发了女性选民。在哈里斯的领导下，这场运动可能会成为一股不可阻挡的浪潮。

Time is short to organize the campaign on her behalf, but the Labour Party in Britain and a broad left-wing coalition in France recently won big victories with even less time. Ms. Harris will have to reach out to voters who have been skeptical of Democrats and mobilize young voters who need convincing. But she can run on a strong record and ambitious plans to further reduce costs for families, enact common-sense gun safety laws and restore and protect our rights and freedoms.

只有很短的时间来为她组织竞选活动，但英国工党和法国一个广泛的左翼联盟前不久在更短的时间内赢得了重大胜利。哈里斯必须触及那些对民主党持怀疑态度的选民，并动员那些需要说服的年轻选民。但她可以凭借优秀的履历和雄心勃勃的计划来竞选，进一步降低家庭的成本，制定符合常理的枪支安全法律，恢复和保护我们的权利和自由。

She has a great story to tell about the accomplishments of this administration. Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris led America’s comeback after Mr. Trump bungled the pandemic and left our economy in free fall. Under their leadership, the United States has created more than 15 million jobs, and unemployment is near a 50-year low.

关于这届政府的成就，她有一个好故事可讲。在特朗普搞砸防疫、让我们的经济直线下降之后，拜登和哈里斯领导了美国的复兴。在他们的领导下，美国创造了1500多万个就业机会，失业率接近50年来的最低水平。

When inflation spiked around the globe, many economists said the only way to tame it would be a painful recession with major job losses. But Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris kept Americans working as inflation fell back toward normal levels and real incomes for working people rose.

当全球通胀飙升时，许多经济学家说，遏制通胀的唯一办法是陷入一场痛苦的衰退，造成大量失业。但拜登和哈里斯让美国人在通胀回落至正常水平、工薪阶层实际收入上升的情况下继续工作。

When many thought bipartisanship was dead, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass major legislation on infrastructure and clean energy, microchips and national security. From drug prices to student debt, they’ve delivered results that have made our country stronger and people’s lives better.

在许多人认为两党合作已经死亡的时候，拜登和哈里斯把共和党人和民主党人团结在一起，通过了有关基础设施、清洁能源、微芯片和国家安全的重大立法。从药品价格到学生贷款，他们所取得的成果使我们的国家更加强大，人民的生活更加美好。

Ms. Harris is chronically underestimated, as are so many women in politics, but she is well prepared for this moment. As a prosecutor and attorney general in California, she took on drug traffickers, polluters and predatory lenders. As a U.S. senator, she rigorously questioned squirming Trump administration officials and nominees and was inspiring to watch. As vice president, Ms. Harris has sat with the president in the Situation Room, helping make the hardest decisions a leader can make. And when the extremist Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she became the administration’s most passionate and effective advocate for restoring women’s reproductive rights.

和许多政界女性一样，哈里斯长期遭到低估，但她为这一刻做好了充分的准备。在担任加州检察官和司法部长期间，她对付过毒贩、制造污染和进行掠夺性放贷的人。作为一名美国参议员，她的严厉质问让特朗普政府的官员和提名人如坐针毡，那是一幅令人鼓舞的画面。作为副总统，哈里斯曾在战情室与总统坐在一起，帮助总统做出一个领导人所面对的最艰难的决定。当极端主义的最高法院推翻罗诉韦德案时，她成为政府中最热情、最有效的恢复女性生育权倡导者。

I look forward to hearing her prosecute a compelling case against Mr. Trump, who failed as a president the first time and is running on a dangerous agenda. A second Trump term would be much worse than the first. Mr. Trump’s plans are more extreme, he is more unhinged, and the guardrails that constrained some of his worst instincts are gone.

我期待着听到她对特朗普提起令人信服的诉讼，特朗普第一次当总统就失败了，现在又带着危险的议程再次竞选。特朗普的第二个任期将比第一个糟糕得多。他的计划变得更加极端，他变得更加疯狂，制约他的一些最坏本能的护栏已经不复存在。

Ms. Harris can explain to the American people that inflation would surge again under Mr. Trump, thanks to his proposed across-the-board tariffs, sweeping tax cuts for the rich and mass deportations. The policies outlined by Mr. Trump’s allies in Project 2025, from further restricting abortion rights to dismantling the Department of Education, are a recipe for a weaker, poorer, more divided America.

哈里斯可以向美国人民解释，由于特朗普提出的全面关税、对富人的全面减税和大规模驱逐移民，通胀将会再次飙升。特朗普的盟友在“2025计划”中概述的政策，从进一步限制堕胎权到解散教育部，都是让美国变得更弱、更穷、更分裂的方案。

The vice president’s law enforcement experience gives her the credibility to rebut Mr. Trump’s lies about crime and immigration. The facts are on her side: After spiking under Mr. Trump, the murder rate is plummeting under the Biden-Harris administration. Illegal border crossings are also dropping fast and are now the lowest they’ve been since 2020, thanks in part to Mr. Biden’s recent executive order. We’d be making even more progress if Mr. Trump hadn’t killed a bipartisan immigration compromise in Congress this year for his own selfish political purposes.

副总统的执法经历赋予了她驳斥特朗普有关犯罪和移民谎言的权威。事实站在她这边：谋杀率在特朗普执政期间飙升后，在拜登-哈里斯执政期间急速下跌。非法越境人数也在迅速下降，目前是自2020年以来的最低水平，这在一定程度上要归功于拜登最近的行政命令。如果不是特朗普出于自私的政治目的，今年在国会扼杀了两党达成的移民妥协方案，我们本可以取得更大的进展。

As a friend and supporter of Mr. Biden, I find this a bittersweet moment. He is a wise and decent man who served our country well. We have lost our standard-bearer, and we will miss his steady leadership, deep empathy and fighting spirit. Yet we have gained much as well: a new champion, an invigorated campaign and a renewed sense of purpose.

作为拜登的朋友和支持者，我觉得这是一个悲喜交集的时刻。他是一个睿智、正派的人，很好地服务了我们的国家。我们失去了我们的旗手，我们将怀念他稳健的领导、深刻的同情心和战斗精神。然而，我们也收获了很多：一位新的斗士，一场充满活力的竞选活动，以及一种重新树立的使命感。

The time for hand-wringing is over. Now it’s time to organize, mobilize and win.

踌躇不安的时间已经过去。现在是组织、动员和取胜的时候。

Fatah and Hamas signed a joint statement in Beijing on Tuesday in a grand show of unity, with the leaders of the rival Palestinian factions standing beside China’s foreign minister for a photo opportunity in an ornate hall.

法塔赫和哈马斯周二在北京签署联合宣言，大力展示团结。这两个巴勒斯坦敌对派别的领导人还与中国外交部长在一个华丽的大厅里合影。

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, declared that “historic moments” were underway. Mahmoud al-Aloul, the deputy leader of Fatah, showered praise on China for standing beside the Palestinian people.

哈马斯高级官员穆萨·阿布·马尔祖克宣称“历史性时刻”正在到来。法塔赫副主席马哈茂德·阿鲁勒对中国与巴勒斯坦人民站在一起大加赞赏。

Their joint statement supports the formation of a temporary government for Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank that all parties agree upon. But for many Palestinians, without concrete steps to make that plan a reality, the gathering in the Chinese capital was little more than a performance — and one they had seen before.

他们在联合宣言中支持组建一个各方都同意的临时政府，以管理加沙和以色列占领的西岸。但在许多巴勒斯坦人眼里，没有将这个计划变为现实的具体步骤意味着，在中国首都的这次聚会只不过是一场表演，而且是他们以前看过的表演。

“What happened in China isn’t significant,” said Jehad Harb, an analyst of Palestinian affairs. “There aren’t any indications that Hamas and Fatah intend to end the split between them.”

“发生在中国的事情不重要，”巴勒斯坦事务分析师杰哈德·哈布说。“没有任何迹象表明，哈马斯和法塔赫有结束他们之间分裂的打算。”

Hamas and Fatah have been deeply divided for years, each trying to present itself as the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people and wary that the other will undermine its power. In 2007, the parties engaged in a civil war in which Hamas forcibly took over Gaza from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which retains limited autonomy over parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

哈马斯与法塔赫之间的严重分歧由来已久，双方都试图将自己展示为巴勒斯坦人民的合法领导者，同时担心对方会削弱自己的权力。双方曾在2007年爆发内战，结果是哈马斯强行从法塔赫主导的巴勒斯坦权力机构手中接管了加沙，而在以色列占领的约旦河西岸，巴勒斯坦权力机构仍对部分地区保留着有限的自治权。

Multiple past attempts to broker unity between the rival parties have resulted in joint statements and agreements, but all of those efforts have failed.

过去有过多次让这两个敌对方团结起来的尝试，也发表过联合声明和协议，但都以失败告终。

“These statements aren’t worth the ink needed to write them,” said Abd Al-Rahman Basem al-Masri, 25, a resident of Deir al Balah in central Gaza. “We’ve seen these things before and we’ve lost hope in them.”

“这些纸上宣言不如写它们花去的墨汁值钱，”现年25岁的阿布德·拉赫曼·巴塞姆·马里斯说，他是加沙中部代尔巴拉赫的居民。“我们以前看到过这些东西，我们对它们不抱希望。”

The joint statement on Tuesday, which was also signed by other smaller Palestinian factions, said the new government should begin working on uniting Palestinian institutions in the West Bank and Gaza, reconstructing Gaza and preparing for national elections, though it does not lay out a clear timeline.

其他较小巴勒斯坦派别也在周二的联合宣言上签了名。宣言说，新的临时政府应该开始工作，将约旦河西岸和加沙地带的巴勒斯坦机构团结起来，重建加沙，为举行全国选举做准备，但宣言并没有给出明确的时间表。

Mohammad Shtayyeh, a senior Fatah official and the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said he thought the statement was “serious,” but he emphasized that more discussions were required to advance reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

法塔赫高级官员、巴勒斯坦权力机构前总理穆罕默德·什塔耶说，他认为这份宣言是“严肃的”，但他强调说，推进哈马斯与法塔赫的和解需要更多的讨论。

“There’s no alternative to Palestinian unity,” he said in an interview. “What has happened in China is stating the obvious.”

“巴勒斯坦除了团结别无选择，”他在接受采访时说。“已在中国发生的事情只是陈述显而易见的事实。”

“It’s a matter of principles,” he said, adding that “a lot of talks and details” were needed for implementation.

他说“这事关原则”，并补充道，付诸实施需要“大量的谈判和细节”。

Palestinian experts have said cooperation between Hamas and Fatah was critical to discussions about a postwar future in Gaza. If they can form a government of independent figures without formal ties to Hamas, it could make it easier for much of the Western world to participate in rebuilding the territory. The United States, Britain and other nations consider Hamas a terrorist group.

研究巴勒斯坦问题的专家们说，哈马斯与法塔赫的合作对讨论加沙战后的未来至关重要。如果他们能成立一个由与哈马斯没有正式关系的独立人士组建的政府，会让西方世界的大多数国家更容易地参与加沙的重建。美国、英国及其他国家都将哈马斯视为恐怖组织。

The statement does not address a key sticking point: security control over Gaza. Fatah has demanded that all weapons be under the authority of one unified security force and government, while Hamas has said it will not dismantle its military wing, the Qassam Brigades.Mr. Shtayyeh, who stepped down as prime minister in March, acknowledged frustration among Palestinians, describing the division between Hamas and Fatah as a “black chapter in the history of Palestine.”

联合宣言没有提的一个关键问题是：对加沙的安全控制。法塔赫要求由一个统一的安全部队和政府管辖所有的武器，但哈马斯则表示不会解散其军事部门卡桑旅。今年3月卸任总理的什塔耶承认，有些巴勒斯坦人对哈马斯和法塔赫的分歧感到沮丧，称这种分歧是“巴勒斯坦历史上的一个黑暗篇章”。

“Palestinians on the street are very angry and disappointed that these talks have been ongoing for 17 years now,” he said. “The general public wants results, they don’t want papers. They want practical steps in the right direction.”

“这些谈判已经进行了17年，巴勒斯坦的普通人对此感到非常愤怒和失望，”他说。“公众想看到结果，他们不想看书面声明。他们想看到朝正确方向迈出的实际步伐。”

For China, meanwhile, bringing Hamas and Fatah together represented an opportunity to promote its image as a peace broker and an important player in the Middle East. The declaration on Tuesday followed Beijing’s success in negotiating a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran last year. It also comes as China has deepened its financial ties in the region in areas like technology and artificial intelligence.

与此同时，对于中国来说，将哈马斯和法塔赫带到一起，为中国提供了一个提升其作为和平斡旋者和中东重要参与者形象的机会。周二的联合宣言签署之前，北京去年曾成功地促成了沙特阿拉伯与伊朗恢复外交关系的谈判。中国也在科技和人工智能等领域深化了与中东地区的金融关系。

Official Chinese state media hailed the meeting, saying it was “bringing precious hope to the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

中国官方媒体对各派的这次对话表示欢迎，称其“为饱受苦难的巴勒斯坦人民带来了宝贵希望”。

The Palestinian factions attended the meeting mostly to placate China, Mr. Harb said, noting that they want to be in the good graces of a world power.

哈布说，巴勒斯坦各派参加此次会议主要是为了安抚中国，他指出，各派都想得到这个世界强国的欢心。

The images of China as a key international actor were not just for an overseas audience.

中国作为国际主要参与者的形象不只是展示给海外观众看的。

“The Chinese government does put significant weight on symbolic interactions, and certainly they are trying to lay out a tableau for everyone to look at domestically to say, ‘Yes, the Chinese government is important and is a force for good in the world,” said William J. Hurst, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Cambridge.

“中国政府的确非常重视象征性的互动，当然，他们正试图将一个画面展示给国内的所有人，让他们说，‘是的，中国政府很重要，是世界上的一股向善的力量’，”剑桥大学中国政治学教授贺斌(William J. Hurst)说。

In the eight years since Hillary Clinton failed to win the American presidency, the work force for the first time grew to include more college-educated women than college-educated men. The #MeToo movement exposed sexual harassment and toppled powerful men. The Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.

希拉里·克林顿未能赢得美国总统大选后的八年里，在职人口中受过大学教育的女性人数首次超过了受过大学教育的男性。#我也是(#MeToo)运动揭露了性骚扰，推翻了有权势的男性。最高法院推翻了联邦堕胎权。

Will any — or all — of it make a difference for Vice President Kamala Harris?

这其中的任何一点，或者全部，对副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯会有什么影响吗？

Ms. Harris seems almost certain to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee after President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election. As such, she faces, fairly or not, some of the same electability questions that Mrs. Clinton confronted in a nation that, unlike many of its peers around the globe, has yet to pick a woman as its leader.

在拜登总统决定不再寻求连任之后，哈里斯似乎几乎肯定会成为民主党的总统候选人。因此，无论公平与否，她都和克林顿一样要面对是否具备获胜潜力的问题。不同于全球许多其他国家，美国尚未选择过一位女性成为其领导人。

A presidential contest pitting Ms. Harris against former President Donald J. Trump would represent a rematch of sorts: Mr. Trump would again have to run against a woman who held a top administration position and served in the Senate. He defeated Mrs. Clinton in 2016 in spite of her winning the popular vote by a wide margin.

哈里斯与前总统唐纳德·特朗普的总统竞选将是某种意义上的复赛：特朗普将不得不再次与一位曾担任政府要职并在参议院任职的女性竞选。尽管克林顿以较大优势赢得了普选，但还是在2016年被特朗普击败。

But the dynamics would be unquestionably different. Ms. Harris has neither the political legacy nor the baggage of Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump, having served a turbulent term in office, is now a known quantity. Ms. Harris is Black and of South Asian descent.

但这一次的形势无疑有很大不同。哈里斯既没有克林顿的政治遗产，也没有她的包袱。经过麻烦不断的四年任期，人们对特朗普已经知根知底。还有，哈里斯是黑人和南亚裔。

And the country is not the same as it was eight long years ago.

这个国家也与八年前不可同日而语。

“Women are angrier, and that could be motivating,” said Karen Crowley, 64, an independent voter and retired nurse in Concord, N.H., who would not vote for Mr. Trump, did not feel like she could support Mr. Biden and now planned to back Ms. Harris.

“女性现在更愤怒，这会给人更多动力，”64岁的独立选民卡伦·克劳利说，这位新罕布什尔州康科德市的退休护士不会投票给特朗普，但她觉得自己无法支持拜登，现在则打算支持哈里斯。

Among the motivations Ms. Crowley cited were the demise of Roe v. Wade and comments and actions by Mr. Trump that many women see as sexist and misogynistic. “A woman president might be more possible now,” she said.

克劳利提到的动力包括“罗诉韦德”案被推翻，以及特朗普的一些在众多女性看来属于性别歧视和厌女的言论和行为。她说：“现在更有可能出现一位女总统。”

2016年希拉里·克林顿（右）与唐纳德·特朗普的第二次总统竞选辩论。尽管以较大优势赢得普选，克林顿还是输给了特朗普。

But for female voters and activists eager to break that elusive glass ceiling, there was also fear that sexism would remain difficult for Ms. Harris to overcome.

但是，对于渴望打破难以逾越的“玻璃天花板”的女性选民和活动人士来说，她们担心哈里斯仍然难以克服性别歧视。

“It’s a patriarchy out there,” Ms. Crowley said. “She’s smart and she’s a prosecutor, but there are a lot of old white men who will want to stop her. The only thing wrong with her is that she’s a woman.”

“这是一个男权社会，”克劳利说。“她很聪明，她是一名检察官，但有很多老白男会想要阻止她。她唯一的错就是她是个女人。”

Discussing the gender of a politician can feel reductive and regressive, especially when it does not seem as relevant in other countries. The United Kingdom has had three female prime ministers. Mexico elected its first female president this year.

讨论政治人物的性别可能会让人觉得是一种简化和倒退，尤其是考虑到这个问题在其他国家似乎并不那么不得了。英国曾有过三位女首相。墨西哥今年选出了首位女总统。

Yet when a woman runs for office in the United States, many voters still mention her gender unprompted in interviews, identifying it as a concern — often not for themselves, they say, but for the wider electorate.

然而，当一名女性在美国竞选公职时，许多选民在接受采访时仍然会不经意地提到她的性别，认为这是一个令人关切的问题——他们往往说，不是自己关心，而是广大选民会关心。

Julia Blake, 80, of La Jolla, Calif., said she had spent a lot of time arguing with her book club friends about whether a woman could be elected president. One after the next — professional women, with doctorates and master’s degrees — they said they thought the answer was no. Ms. Blake was indignant with them.

80岁的加利福尼亚州拉霍亚人朱莉娅·布莱克说，她花了很多时间与读书俱乐部的朋友们争论女性能否当选总统的问题。一个又一个拥有博士和硕士学位的职业女性说，她们认为答案是否定的。布莱克对她们表示愤慨。

“I said, ‘If women think a woman can’t win, and they repeat that year after year, we will never get a female president,’” said Ms. Blake, who supported Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and also donated to Ms. Harris during the Democratic primary in 2020. “I don’t think they’re giving women enough credit.”

“我说，‘如果女性都认为一个女人不可能获胜，而且她们年复一年地重复这种想法，那么我们就永远不会有女总统，’”布莱克说，她支持了明尼苏达州参议员艾米·克洛布查尔，并曾在2020年民主党初选期间向哈里斯捐款。“我认为他们没有给予女性足够的认可。”

To be sure, party affiliation, not gender, remains most important for many voters. “I would not vote for her,” said Naomi Villalba, 74, a Republican from Dallas who supports Mr. Trump but thinks Ms. Harris a better choice for Democrats than Mr. Biden.

对许多选民来说，最重要的无疑还是党派归属，而不是性别。“我不会投给她，”74岁的达拉斯共和党人奈奥米·维拉尔巴说，她支持特朗普，但也认为民主党选择哈里斯要比拜登强。

周一，哈里斯来到特拉华州威尔明顿的竞选总部。

Mr. Biden won 55 percent of the female vote in 2020, compared with Mrs. Clinton’s 54 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. Mr. Trump’s support among women grew slightly to 44 percent in 2020, up from 39 percent in 2016.

据皮尤中心的数据，拜登在2020年拿到了55%的女性选票，希拉里·克林顿在2016年拿到54%。2020年特朗普在女性中的支持率达到44%，比2016年的39%略有提升。

The prospect of having Ms. Harris atop the Democratic ticket energized some voters looking to elect a female president. But it also resurfaced old fears about the fact that Mr. Trump had lost to a man (Mr. Biden) but defeated a woman (Mrs. Clinton).

哈里斯获得民主党提名的可能性让一些渴望选出女性总统的选民兴奋不已。但同时也勾起了可怕的回忆，特朗普毕竟是输给了一个男人（拜登），但打败了一个女人（希拉里·克林顿）。

If ultimately not successful, Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy did change the idea of what was possible, said Christina Wolbrecht, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame who studies women’s voting patterns. Ms. Klobuchar and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts were taken seriously as candidates during the 2020 election, as was Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who challenged Mr. Trump this year.

研究女性投票规律的圣母大学政治学家克里斯蒂娜·沃尔布莱希特说，希拉里·克林顿的竞选虽然以失败告终，但的确改变了人们对何为可能的看法。克罗布查和纽约州参议员陆天娜(Kirsten Gillibrand)、马萨诸塞州参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦都是2020年选举的有力竞争者，此外还有今年对特朗普发起了挑战的前南卡罗来纳州州长妮基·黑利。

“That suggests to me that post-Hillary Clinton, people are increasingly comfortable with the idea of a woman president,” Dr. Wolbrecht said.

“在我看来，这表明在后希拉里·克林顿的世界里，人们越来越能接受女性当总统这个想法了，”沃尔布莱希特博士说。

Forty-two percent of women felt it was at least somewhat important to elect a woman as president in their lifetime, according to a Pew Research Center report last year. In the poll, 39 percent of respondents, both male and female, said a female president would be better at working out compromises and 37 percent said a woman would be better at maintaining a respectful tone in politics. (More than half said that gender did not matter on those measures.)

据皮尤研究中心去年的一份报告，有42%的女性至少在一定程度上认为，在她们有生之年见到女性当选总统会是一件大事。在这项民调中，39%的男女受访人认为女性总统会更擅长找到折中的方案，37%认为女性更善于维持一个相互尊重的政治环境。（超过一半的人说，这些跟性别没有关系。）

Ms. Harris appears to have a special bond with Black women in particular, who comprise a key part of the Democratic base and have been especially enthusiastic in their past support for her.

哈里斯和黑人女性之间似乎存在一种特殊的纽带，这个群体是民主党票仓的关键组成部分，一直对她表现出格外热情的支持。

伊丽莎白·沃伦参议员是参与竞逐2020年民主党总统提名人的女性之一。

Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson, director for the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said that much had changed for women since 2016. Concerns over Mr. Trump’s positions on issues like abortion transformed from remote possibility to concrete reality after he took office, she said.

马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校女性政治和公共政策中心主任劳莉·尼希安-杰弗逊说，对女性而言，很多事情在2016之后已经不同了。她说，在特朗普上台后，对他在堕胎之类问题的立场的担忧已经从微弱的可能性转变为真切的现实。

“When he was elected, we were disappointed, we were upset — there were marches, demonstrations, all kinds of things — and we had a good idea what was going to happen,” Dr. Nsiah-Jefferson said. “But now we know what happened.”

“他当选的时候，我们很失望，我们很不安——游行、示威等等纷纷出现——当时我们对接下来会发生什么是有点概念的，”尼西亚·杰弗逊博士说。“而现在我们都知道已经发生了什么。”

Mr. Trump has already signaled that he considers his gender worth highlighting: At one point during the Republican National Convention last week, he walked out to “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” by James Brown.

特朗普已经暗示过，他认为他的性别是值得专门拿出来说一说的：上周的共和党全国大会上，他在亮相时播放了詹姆斯·布朗的《这是个男人的男人的男人的世界》。

But Dr. Nsiah-Jefferson thinks that Ms. Harris will also lean in to the fact that she is a woman. “She’s going to talk about the way in which politics and policy impacts on women,” she said.

然而尼西亚-杰弗逊博士认为，哈里斯也会去强调她是一名女性的事实。“她会谈及政治和政策对女性产生怎样的影响，”她说。

Some voters would like to lose the gender talk altogether.

一些选民认为应该完全摒弃性别讨论。

“We have to take the emphasis off the gender identification stuff and put it on the person themselves and their own abilities,” said Marilyn McDole of Oregon, Wis., who attended a weekend re-election rally in Stoughton, Wis., for Senator Tammy Baldwin. “Because that’s so stigmatizing and damaging to women. That’s not fair.”

“我们一定不要死盯着性别身份那些东西，把重点放到人本身以及他们的能力上，”威斯康辛州俄亥俄市的玛丽莲·麦克道尔说，她参加了塔米·鲍德温参议员周末在威州斯塔夫顿的连任竞选集会。“因为那是对女性的严重污名化和伤害。那太不公平了。”

Ms. Harris, Ms. McDole added, has “got experience up the wazoo.”

哈里斯“经验非常丰富”，麦克道尔还说。

Several Democratic voters, however, said that a female nominee would help amplify perhaps the party’s strongest issue: abortion access.

不过有许多民主党选民表示，提名女性有助于放大也许是本党最具优势的问题：堕胎服务的获取。

Katy Sorenson, 69, a former commissioner in Miami-Dade County, Fla., said the overturning of Roe had been a “galvanizing phenomenon.” “It’s not just abortion; it’s problem pregnancies that have so many women concerned about what they’re going to do, and can they get the health care they need,” she said.

69岁的前佛罗里达州迈阿密-戴德县委员凯蒂·索伦森说，推翻罗案“把大家吓得一激灵”。“不只是堕胎。许多女人担心的是那些有问题的怀孕该怎么办，她们能否得到所需的医疗照护，”她说。

2022年罗诉韦德案被推翻后，堕胎权支持者在最高法院外抗议。

In Raleigh, N.C., Mary Lucas, 36, said that Ms. Harris gave her new motivation to campaign. “My immediate reaction is, ‘How do I get involved?’” Ms. Lucas said.

在北卡罗来纳州罗利，36岁的玛丽·卢卡斯说让她重新有了参与竞选的动力。“我的第一反应是，‘我怎么参与其中，’”卢卡斯说。

Women also pointed to societal shifts that might make Ms. Harris’s run different. Dr. Liz Bradt, 64, a retired veterinarian and the chairwoman of the Salem Democratic City Committee in Salem, Mass., said younger people seemed less likely to make judgments based on rigid definitions of male and female.

还有女性指出，社会的转变可能会影响哈里斯的竞选。64岁的退休兽医、马萨诸塞州塞勒姆市塞勒姆民主党城市委员会主席莉兹·布拉特博士说，年轻人在做判断的时候不会那么严格按照对男性和女性的刻板定义。

“Where my generation is like, ‘Male or female, where’s the check box?’ I think the younger generation is more accepting of different genders,” Dr. Bradt said. “That will make a difference.”

“我这代人会说，‘男性还是女性，在哪里画勾？’我觉得年轻一代对不同性别更包容，”布拉特博士说。“这是会产生影响的。”

Still, Dr. Bradt, who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire, expects a tough road ahead for Ms. Harris. “It’s going to be hard to see what she has to go through,” she said. “I fear for her, like I feared for Hillary.”

然而，曾在新罕布什尔州参加希拉里·克林顿的竞选工作的布拉特博士预计，哈里斯接下来的路不会太好走。“她有很多东西要克服，场面会很难看的，”她说。“我担心她，就像我曾经担心希拉里一样。”

Though Mrs. Clinton won the most votes in 2016, some voters said they found her off-putting. Among them was Dr. Maria E. Laurencio, 73, a retired anesthesiologist in Coral Gables, Fla., who was a lifelong Republican until she pinched her nose and voted for Mrs. Clinton.

希拉里·克林顿在2016年赢得了最多的票数，但一些选民还是认为她令人生厌。这其中就包括了73岁的玛丽亚·E·劳伦西奥博士，这位佛罗里达州科勒尔盖布尔斯的退休麻醉师投了一辈子的共和党，但还是捏着鼻子投给了克林顿。

“Women were not sympathetic to Hillary because a lot of them said she stood by the president,” Dr. Laurencio said about former President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs. “Hillary tended to be a little arrogant and not so likable, even though she was so prepared.”

“女人对希拉里缺乏好感，因为很多人说，她选择了站在总统的一边，”劳伦西奥博士提到了前总统比尔·克林顿的婚外情。“希拉里常常显得有些傲慢，不招人喜欢，尽管她做了很多准备。”

2016年大选前夜，希拉里·克林顿在费城的一场竞选集会上。

In 2020, Dr. Laurencio changed her registration to vote for Mr. Biden. Now, she intends to support Ms. Harris. “For me, anything that prevents Mr. Trump from getting to the presidency again, I will go along with,” she said.

2020年，劳伦西奥博士为了投给拜登更改了自己的党派。现在她倾向于支持哈里斯。“对我来说，只要能阻止特朗普先生再次当上总统，让我做什么都行，”她说。

And more women are now veterans of political campaigns.

如今有更多的女性已经是政治竞选工作的老手。

Luisa Wakeman, 57, a flight attendant in suburban Cobb County, Ga., said women like her were relatively new to politics when they campaigned against Mr. Trump in 2016. Now, their informal and largely female-led networks in the area have matured into durable, battle-tested electoral machines.

57岁的路易莎·威克曼是乔治亚州柯布县郊区的一名空乘，她说，2016年参加与特朗普对抗的竞选工作时，像她这样的女性相对来说还是政界的新人。如今她们在本地有一个大多由女性领导的非正式网络，已经形成一台台持久耐用、身经百战的选举机器。

“I think like many people, I’m feeling invigorated,” she said.

“我想我和很多人一样，感到充满活力，”她说。

And she said she was impressed by Ms. Harris’s qualifications. “It’s not just because she’s a woman,” she said, “but I’m excited that she will make history.”

她说哈里斯的资历给她留下深刻印象。“这不只是因为她是个女人，”她说，“但想到她将创造历史，我还是很兴奋。”

Kenges Rakishev, one of the richest men in Kazakhstan, stepped off a private jet at a Soviet-era airport and hopped into the lead car of a convoy of sport utility vehicles. The cars tore down a two-lane road, zipping past the snow-covered steppe in eastern Kazakhstan at 90 miles per hour.

肯吉斯·拉基舍夫是哈萨克斯坦最富有的人之一，他从停在一个苏联时代机场的私人飞机上走下，跳上一个运动型多功能车队的领头车。车队在一条双车道公路上以每小时145公里的速度疾驰，从哈萨克斯坦东部白雪覆盖的高原上呼啸而过。

Riding shotgun, Mr. Rakishev gestured toward the vast emptiness.

拉基舍夫坐在副驾驶座位上，指着车外一望无际的旷野。

“Nothing, right?” he said with a chuckle. “But it’s a unique opportunity.”

“什么都没有，对吧？”他笑着说道。“但这里有一个难得的机会。”

That opportunity is in nickel, a key mineral used in electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies. Kazakhstan, a mineral-rich country in Central Asia, has a lot of nickel, and Mr. Rakishev is investing tens of millions of dollars to extract it.

这个机会就是镍矿，一种用于电动汽车和其他清洁能源技术的关键矿物。哈萨克斯坦是一个矿产资源丰富的中亚国家，拥有大量的镍，拉基舍夫为开采镍投资了数千万美元。

全球对关键矿产的寻求将投资者带到了这个国家严酷的地区。

Mr. Rakishev, 44, is always chasing the next big investment. In February, he was the driving force behind the public offering of a Canadian maker of plant-based instant noodles on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Before that, it was blockchain technology. And before that, it was an Israeli photo-sharing app, called Mobli, that tried to become the next Instagram.

44岁的拉基舍夫总是在追逐下一个重大投资。今年2月，一家加拿大植物基方便面制造商在纳斯达克证券交易所公开上市，他是背后的主要推手。那之前，他投资过区块链技术。再之前，他投资了想成为下一个Instagram的名为Mobli的以色列图片分享应用。

He has connections to Kazakhstan’s ruling elite that are apparent in his energy investments and his purchase of a bank seized by the government. His close ties with a former prime minister of Kazakhstan brought him into the orbit of Hunter Biden, the American president’s son whose business dealings became the focus of an impeachment inquiry by House Republicans.

他拥有与哈萨克斯坦统治精英的人脉关系，这从他对能源的投资以及收购一家被政府查封的银行上可见一斑。他与哈萨克斯坦前总理的密切关系让他进入了美国总统的儿子亨特·拜登的圈子，后者的商业交易已成为美国众议院共和党为弹劾总统展开调查的焦点。

But Mr. Rakishev’s next big investment is much closer to home.

但拉基舍夫的下一笔大投资离家更近。

哈萨克斯坦商人肯格斯·拉基舍夫正在为开采本国的镍矿投入巨资。

The world’s transition to renewable energy, including electric cars, requires huge amounts of nickel, copper, lithium and other so-called critical minerals. Kazakhstan has many of them, and China, the biggest producer of electric vehicles and batteries, is right next door and eager to buy.

世界向可再生能源（包括电动汽车）转型，需要大量的镍、铜、锂和其他所谓的关键矿物。哈萨克斯坦拥有许多这些矿物，而世界最大的电动汽车和电池生产国中国就在隔壁，非常想买这些矿物。

“Everything is going to China,” Mr. Rakishev said.

“全都运到中国去，”拉基舍夫说。

A former Soviet Republic, Kazakhstan borders Russia to the north and China to the east and retains close trade ties to Russia. But China is a much larger customer for Kazakhstan’s critical minerals, using them to feed the insatiable needs of its factories churning out electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. Kazakhstan said that it was also courting buyers from the West and that it did not play favorites when it came to investors in mining.

哈萨克斯坦曾是个苏联加盟共和国，北部与俄罗斯接壤，东部与中国接壤，与俄罗斯保持着密切的贸易关系。但对哈萨克斯坦的关键矿产而言，中国是更大的客户，中国需要这些矿产来满足国内生产电动汽车、电池和太阳能电池板工厂的旺盛需求。哈萨克斯坦表示，它也在吸引西方买家，而且在该国的矿产投资问题上不偏好任何一方。

“If somebody is doing geological exploration, I don’t care what flag they carry,” said Kanat Sharlapayev, Kazakhstan’s minister of industry and construction and a former Citigroup executive in Kazakhstan and the Middle East.

“如果有人来这里进行地质勘探，我不在乎他们携带哪个国家的国旗，”哈萨克斯坦工业和建设部长卡纳特·沙拉帕耶夫说，他曾在花旗集团担任哈萨克斯坦和中东部门的高管。

Mr. Sharlapayev spoke from his office in Astana, the capital city, in a massive building known as the “House of Ministries.” He had just returned from Canada, where he had attended an international mining conference.

沙拉帕耶夫是在该国首都阿斯塔纳的办公室里发表上述言论的，他的办公室位于一栋被称为“部长大楼”的宏伟建筑里。他刚从加拿大返回，在那里参加了一个全球矿业会议。

In recent years, Kazakhstan has signed pacts with the European Union and Britain to cooperate on critical minerals. The United States held initial discussions with Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries this year. On his trip, Mr. Sharlapayev stopped in Washington to meet with officials at a U.S. foreign development agency.

近年来，哈萨克斯坦与欧盟和英国签署了合作重要矿产的协议。今年，美国与哈萨克斯坦及其他中亚国家进行了初步讨论。在此次出访期间，沙拉帕耶夫曾在华盛顿停留，与美国一家对外发展机构的官员会面。

哈萨克斯坦首都阿斯塔纳的总统府。

Kazakhstan is a longtime oil exporter, and Mr. Sharlapayev said years of working closely with American oil companies was proof that Astana was open to Western investment.

哈萨克斯坦长期以来一直是石油出口国，沙拉帕耶夫表示，多年来与美国石油公司的密切合作证明阿斯塔纳对西方投资持开放态度。

But after a short pause, he added, “Geography cannot be ignored, of course.”

但他略作停顿后补充道：“当然，地理位置是不容忽视的。”

China’s Europe Link

中国与欧洲的连接

It’s not just critical minerals that China wants from Kazakhstan. Beijing has invested billions of dollars, much of it as part of its Belt and Road foreign policy initiative, into upgrading Kazakhstan’s railways and other infrastructure to establish easier trade routes to Europe, an essential trading partner of China.

中国想从哈萨克斯坦获得的不仅仅是关键矿产。北京已投资数十亿美元——其中大部分是“一带一路”外交政策倡议的一部分——用于升级哈萨克斯坦的铁路和其他基础设施，以建立通往中国重要贸易伙伴欧洲的便捷贸易路线。

China’s economic influence is now apparent across the country. In Almaty, Kazakhstan’s wealthiest city, new car dealerships for Chinese electric vehicle brands are popping up.

中国的经济影响力如今已遍布哈萨克斯坦全境。在最富裕的城市阿拉木图，中国电动汽车品牌的新车经销店接连涌现。

一条从中国运来集装箱的货运铁路在霍尔果斯穿越哈萨克斯坦边境。

On the Chinese-Kazakh border, the two countries built the Khorgos Gateway, the world’s biggest port used exclusively for handling cargo containers carried by trains. On Kazakhstan’s western border along the Caspian Sea, China invested in a container hub in the port city of Aktau.

在中哈边境，两国共建了霍尔果斯门户，这是世界上专门用于处理火车运输集装箱的最大陆港。在哈萨克斯坦里海沿岸的西部边境，中国在港口城市阿克套投资了一个集装箱枢纽。

This is now a railway alternative for sending goods from China to Europe in half the time it takes for sea cargo to travel from Shanghai to Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

现在，这一铁路运送方案已成为将货物从中国运往欧洲的替代路线，比起从上海到荷兰鹿特丹的海运时间，铁路耗时仅为一半。

During a visit to Kazakhstan this month, Xi Jinping, China’s leader, said the two countries had agreed to double their bilateral trade “as soon as possible” by cultivating growth and cooperation in areas such as important minerals.

中国国家主席习近平本月访问哈萨克斯坦时表示，两国已同意通过促进重要矿产等领域的增长与合作，“尽快”使双边贸易额翻番。

“We are a natural, organic partner to China,” said Nurlan Zhakupov, the chief executive of Samruk-Kazyna JSC, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund. “We are very safe economically and politically.”

“我们是中国天生的、自然的合作伙伴，”哈萨克斯坦主权财富基金——“萨姆鲁克—卡泽纳”国家福利基金首席执行官努尔兰·扎库波夫说。“我们在经济和政治上都非常安全。”

For all the economic ties and expressions of friendship, there is a well of anti-Chinese sentiment and mistrust among some Kazakhs — especially among those outside the political class or the business elite.

尽管有各种经济联系和友谊的表达，但在一些哈萨克斯坦人当中存在着相当程度的反华情绪和不信任感，尤其是政治阶层和商业精英之外的人群。

China’s detention of Uyghurs and members of other largely Muslim groups, including ethnic Kazakhs, in camps in Xinjiang has added to the misgivings. Roughly two-thirds of Kazakhstan’s population is Muslim.

中国在新疆拘禁维吾尔人和其他以穆斯林为主群体的成员，包括哈萨克族人，这加剧了人们的担忧。哈萨克斯坦大约三分之二的人口是穆斯林。

‘The New Oil’

“新石油”

In three decades as an independent country after the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has built an economy that is reliant on its natural resources. Through its state-owned mining firms, Kazakhstan is a leading supplier not only of oil and uranium but also of chromium, gold and copper.

在苏联解体后的30年里，哈萨克斯坦作为独立的国家建立了一个依赖自然资源的经济体系。通过国有矿业公司，哈萨克斯坦成为一个主要供应国，不只是石油和铀，还包括铬、金和铜。

For years, global miners stayed away from investing because it seemed risky. Kazakhstan was viewed as promising, but bogged down by bureaucracy, a lack of transparency and corruption. And eventually, new mining opportunities dried up.

多年来，全球矿商一直避免投资这里，因为看起来风险很大。哈萨克斯坦被认为前景广阔，却因官僚主义、缺乏透明度和腐败而停滞不前。最终，新的采矿机会枯竭了。

Kazakhstan recognized it had a problem and rewrote its mining rules in 2018, using the investment-friendly regulations of Australia, a mining juggernaut, as a model.

哈萨克斯坦意识到自己存在问题，在2018年以矿业巨头澳大利亚的投资友好型法规为范本，重新制定了采矿规则。

一名矿工在哈萨克斯坦中部城市卡拉干达附近的铜矿工作。

Still, foreign investors did not come pouring in.

不过，外国投资者并没有大量涌入。

First, Covid-19 struck. Then violent protests erupted in Kazakhstan, pitting loyalists of the longtime ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, against the government of the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The unrest was quelled with the help of Russian forces. Mr. Tokayev became the country’s undisputed leader and pledged to increase business privatization, combat corruption and limit the role of monopolies and oligopolies.

先是新冠疫情来袭。随后，哈萨克斯坦爆发了暴力抗议活动，长期统治者努尔苏丹·纳扎尔巴耶夫的支持者与现任总统卡西姆-乔马特·托卡耶夫的政府发生了冲突。骚乱在俄罗斯军队的帮助下被平息了。托卡耶夫成为该国无可争议的领导人，他承诺加强企业私有化，打击腐败，限制垄断和寡头垄断的作用。

In a national address last year, Mr. Tokayev said he wanted to prioritize the development of rare and rare-earth metals, which he called the “new oil.”

在去年的一次全国讲话中，托卡耶夫表示，他希望优先发展稀有和稀土金属，他称之为“新石油”。

One of the prospectors lured to the country was Alex Walker, a 40-year-old Australian entrepreneur who relocated to Kazakhstan after a mining project of his in Sweden had failed. Looking for a new place to explore for valuable minerals, he ruled out Canada and Australia, which were already heavily mined. Africa was too complex to operate in. But Kazakhstan had potential.

40岁的澳大利亚企业家亚历克斯·沃克是被吸引到哈萨克斯坦的探矿者之一，他在瑞典的一个采矿项目失败后搬到了哈萨克斯坦。在寻找新的矿产地时，他排除了加拿大和澳大利亚，因为这两个国家的矿产已经被大量开采。非洲太复杂，无法在那里运作。但哈萨克斯坦很有潜力。

“It looked like a place where you could really get things done,” he said.

“这像是一个可以真正有所作为的地方，”他说。

Mr. Walker secured exploration licenses in partnership with Tau-ken Samruk JSC, the country’s national mining company, and moved his family to Kazakhstan in 2021. But in January 2022, days before he was preparing to list his company on the London Stock Exchange, the protests, now known as “Bloody January,” broke out. More than 200 people died, and thousands were arrested.

他与哈萨克斯坦的国家矿业公司Tau-ken Samruk JSC合作，获得了勘探许可证，并于2021年举家迁往哈萨克斯坦。但在2022年1月，就在他准备将自己的公司在伦敦证券交易所上市的几天前，如今被称为“血腥一月”的抗议活动爆发了。200多人死亡，数以千计的人被捕。

“The timing was horrible,” Mr. Walker said. “We were trying to present this as a very safe jurisdiction.”

“时机太糟糕了，”沃克说。“当时我们正试图把这里描绘成一个非常安全的司法管辖区。”

Despite the upheaval, no investors bailed on the stock offering. Mr. Walker said his decision to search for critical minerals in Kazakhstan had proved to be the right move. BHP Group, the world’s largest mining company, selected his company’s copper exploration project for a grant among hundreds of applicants.

尽管发生了剧变，但没有投资者退出该公司的股票发行。沃克说，事实证明，他在哈萨克斯坦寻找关键矿产的决定是正确的。全球最大的矿业公司必和必拓集团从数百个资助申请当中，选中了沃克公司的铜矿勘探项目。

Western interest in mining Kazakhstan is picking up momentum like a “snowball rolling down a hill,” said Kaisar Kozhamuratov, a partner at Aurora Minerals Group, a mining advisory company in Astana.

阿斯塔纳的矿业咨询公司奥若拉矿业集团的合伙人凯萨·科扎穆拉托夫说，西方对哈萨克斯坦矿业的兴趣像“雪球滚下山”一样不断增大。

So far this year, the number of exploration licenses in Kazakhstan is on a pace to nearly double the average annual amount issued over the previous six years.

今年到目前为止，哈萨克斯坦的勘探许可证数量几乎是过去六年平均每年发放数量的两倍。

‘A Pure Businessman’

“纯粹的商人”

Mr. Rakishev, the investor in nickel mining in eastern Kazakhstan, is not backed by a multinational mining giant, but he casts a long shadow in the country.

在哈萨克斯坦东部投资镍矿的拉基舍夫并没有得到跨国矿业巨头的支持，但他在这个国家有强大的影响力。

His company, the Fincraft Group, has holdings in oil and gas operations and a handful of technology start-ups. It recently sold its stake in a bank that Mr. Rakishev had bought from the state a decade earlier. Mr. Rakishev also owns a private school and a cosmetics company that he started with his wife, Aselle Tasmagambetova, an ecologist, a philanthropist and the daughter of Imangali Tasmagambetov, a former prime minister.

他的公司Fincraft集团持有石油和天然气业务以及一些科技初创企业的股份。该集团最近出售了十年前拉基舍夫从政府手中收购的一家银行的股份。拉基舍夫还拥有一所私立学校和一家化妆品公司，是他与妻子阿塞尔·塔斯马甘别托娃共同创办的。后者是生态学家和慈善家，她的父亲是前总理伊曼加利·塔斯马甘别托夫。

Mr. Rakishev seems to know every prominent Kazakh in the country. He and his wife started a charity program with Vyacheslav Kim, Kazakhstan’s richest person, doling out grants to entrepreneurs. The former middleweight boxing world champion Gennadiy Golovkin, a national hero better known as GGG, is a friend and texting buddy. Mr. Zhakupov, the chief executive of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, is a former classmate.

拉基舍夫似乎认识这个国家的每一位哈萨克名人。他和妻子与哈萨克斯坦首富维亚切斯拉夫·金共同启动了一个慈善项目，向创业者发放经费。前中量级拳击世界冠军、绰号GGG的民族英雄根纳迪·戈洛夫金是他的朋友，两人经常互发短信。该国主权财富基金的首席执行官扎库波夫是他的老同学。

背景中的拉基舍夫在一家生态研究公司的实验室里，这家公司是他的妻子阿塞尔·塔斯马甘贝托娃今年3月在哈萨克斯坦阿拉木图建立的。

But these close relationships can create complications. In 2015, Mr. Rakishev accompanied Karim Massimov, Kazakhstan’s prime minister at the time, on a visit to the United States. During that trip, the two men attended a group dinner at an Italian restaurant in Washington with Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president, and his son Hunter.

但是这些亲密关系也会造成复杂的局面。2015年，拉基舍夫陪同哈萨克斯坦时任总理卡里姆·马西莫夫访问美国。在那次旅行中，两人与时任副总统拜登及其儿子亨特一起在华盛顿一家意大利餐厅共进晚餐。

That dinner — and a business relationship with a company affiliated with Hunter Biden — put Mr. Rakishev on the radar of the impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

那次晚餐——以及他与亨特·拜登旗下一家公司的业务关系——让拉基舍夫卷入了对拜登总统的弹劾调查。

The investigation found that Mr. Rakishev had wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company affiliated with the president’s son, in April 2014. The money was transferred to a car dealership to buy a vehicle for Hunter Biden, according to testimony by Devon Archer, Mr. Biden’s former business partner.

调查发现，拉基舍夫于2014年4月向总统儿子的附属公司罗斯蒙特·塞内卡·渤海电汇了14.23万美元。据拜登的前商业伙伴德文·阿彻的证词，这笔钱被转移到一家汽车经销商那里，用于为亨特·拜登买车。

In closed-door testimony with a House oversight committee, Mr. Archer said Mr. Rakishev was “a prominent businessman” from a “prominent family,” according to a transcript.

据一份文字记录显示，阿彻在众议院监督委员会的闭门听证会上说，拉基舍夫是一位来自“显赫家庭”的“杰出商人”。

In an interview, Mr. Rakishev said that he had met Mr. Archer in Kazakhstan and that they had become friends. He was planning to do business with Mr. Archer’s firm, Rosemont Seneca, in mining and real estate. He said he had bought a car for the new venture’s U.S. office. It was not supposed to be for Hunter Biden, whom he said he had met on several occasions. His understanding was that he, too, would drive the car when he visited.

拉基舍夫在接受采访时说，他在哈萨克斯坦见过阿彻，并成为了朋友。他计划与阿彻的公司罗斯蒙特·塞内卡在采矿和房地产方面合作。他说，他为新合资公司的美国办事处买了一辆车。这车不是买给亨特·拜登的，他说自己曾在多个场合见过拜登。据他所知，他自己来访时也会开这辆车。

2023年拜登总统和他的儿子亨特·拜登。

“I don’t have any business relationship with Hunter. I didn’t ask him for any favors,” Mr. Rakishvev said. He said he had attended the dinner with the elder Mr. Biden as part of Kazakhstan’s “official delegation,” but had not spoken with him. A representative for Hunter Biden did not respond to requests for comment.

“我和亨特没有任何业务关系。我没有向他寻求任何帮助，”拉基舍夫说。他说，他作为哈萨克斯坦“官方代表团”的一员参加了与老拜登的晚宴，但没有同他交谈。亨特·拜登的代表没有回应置评请求。

Despite his political connections and his wealth — an estimated $435 million, according to Forbes — Mr. Rakishvev said it was incorrect to call him an oligarch. In his mind, an oligarch is a businessperson with the power to change the government.

尽管拉基舍夫拥有政治关系和财富——据福布斯估计，他的财富达到4.35亿美元——但他说，称他为寡头是不正确的。在他看来，寡头是有能力改变政府的商人。

“I am a pure businessman,” he said.

“我是一个纯粹的商人，”他说。

Mr. Rakishev’s company, Kaznickel, is producing nickel and cobalt in the Abay region of eastern Kazakhstan. The project resembles a modest farming outpost, nothing like the open-pit sites used to extract nickel in countries like Indonesia. In fields blanketed with fresh snow, boreholes stick out of the ground every few feet. Kaznickel injects a chemical solution into the ground through the openings. The nickel dissolves in the solution, which is then pumped to the surface and processed in a metal storehouse next to the site.

拉基舍夫的公司哈萨镍在哈萨克斯坦东部的阿拜地区生产镍和钴。该项目看上去就是个普普通通的农场，完全不像印尼等国开采镍矿的露天矿场。在覆盖着刚下的雪的田野里，每隔几米就有钻孔从地面伸出来。哈萨镍公司通过这些开口，向地下注入一种化学溶液。镍溶解在溶液中，然后被泵送到地面，在现场旁边的金属仓库进行处理。

采自哈萨克斯坦东部一个矿床的氢氧化镍，这种物质被广泛用于生产电动汽车电池。

Kazakhstan has used a similar approach for decades to mine almost half of the world’s uranium. Its use for nickel is more novel.

几十年来，哈萨克斯坦一直采用类似的方法开采世界上近一半的铀矿。用来采镍矿则是新近才有的

The Kaznickel project was started five years ago as a pilot. Mining requires a lot of patience and foresight — a lesson that, Mr. Rakishvev said, other countries would be wise to heed.

哈萨镍项目是五年前作为试点启动的。采矿需要大量的耐心和远见——拉基舍夫说，这应该是值得其它国家学习的地方。

The West, he said, is lagging behind when it comes to critical minerals. China started to secure supplies of lithium, cobalt and graphite decades ago.

他说，在关键矿产方面，西方落后了。几十年前，中国就开始确保锂、钴和石墨的供应。

“You need to have patience like China,” he said. “They think strategically.”

“你需要像中国一样有耐心，”他说。“他们有战略思维。”

From the beginning of President Biden’s ill-fated re-election bid, Democrats struggled to frame the race as a choice between two radically different visions, rather than a referendum on Mr. Biden’s age and abilities.

从拜登总统命运多舛的连任竞选开始，民主党人就努力将这场竞选描述为在两种截然不同的愿景之间做出选择，而不是对拜登的年龄和能力的公投。

But now that he has dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris is cruising toward the Democratic nomination, her party sees fresh opportunities to turn the public’s attention back to the vulnerabilities of former President Donald J. Trump on key issues for voters, including abortion rights, fundamental democratic principles and questions of economic fairness.

但现在他已经退出，副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯正在向民主党提名稳步迈进，她的政党看到了新的机会，可以将公众的注意力转回前总统特朗普在选民关心的关键问题上易受攻击之处，包括堕胎权、基本民主原则和经济公平问题。

Democrats hope that Ms. Harris — a history-making former prosecutor who is nearly two decades younger than Mr. Trump — can draw a sharp new set of contrasts and tap into arguments that were out of reach for Mr. Biden, 81, starting with the issue of age but extending into matters of policy and personality.

哈里斯是一名创造历史的前检察官，比特朗普年轻近20岁，民主党人希望她能形成一系列鲜明的新对比，触及到不能用在81岁的拜登身上的论点，从年龄问题开始，延伸到政策和个性问题。

That is especially clear on abortion rights. Mr. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has long been uncomfortable discussing the issue, or even saying the word “abortion.” Ms. Harris, by contrast, speaks easily and openly about reproductive health and has held campaign events alongside women sharing their stories of miscarriages, abortions and challenges with fertility.

这一点在堕胎权方面尤为明显。拜登是虔诚的天主教徒，长期以来一直不愿讨论这个问题，甚至不愿提及“堕胎”这个词。相比之下，哈里斯轻松而公开地谈论生殖健康，并在竞选活动中与女性们分享流产、堕胎和生育挑战的故事。

Republicans, for their part, plan to argue that Ms. Harris still owns the unpopular parts of Mr. Biden’s record, saying that she is also weak on issues like inflation and immigration. Polling has shown Mr. Trump with significant advantages on many of the most important issues for voters, other than abortion rights.

共和党人打算提出，哈里斯仍然代表着拜登的执政记录上不受欢迎的部分，称她在通胀和移民等问题上也很表现不佳。民调显示，除了堕胎权之外，特朗普在许多选民认为最重要的问题上都拥有显著优势。

But in interviews, Democrats were eager to make the race about character and experience, noting Ms. Harris’s law enforcement background and Mr. Trump’s litany of legal problems.

但在接受采访时，民主党人急于将这场竞选与性格和经验联系起来，并指出哈里斯的执法背景和特朗普一连串的法律问题。

“She is a former prosecutor and he is a convicted felon,” said Marcia L. Fudge, a former housing secretary in the Biden administration who said she had spoken with Ms. Harris on Sunday. “If there ever was a huge choice, this is it.”

“她是一名前检察官，而他是一名被定罪的重罪犯，”曾在拜登政府担任住房部长的马西娅·福吉说道，她表示在周日与哈里斯进行过交谈。“如果有什么选择事关重大，那就是这个。”

Mr. Biden’s miserable debate performance late last month stole the spotlight from Mr. Trump’s 34-count felony conviction in Manhattan. Many Democrats had hoped Mr. Trump’s criminal status could be used to their advantage, but that line of attack was put on hold as Mr. Biden tried to quell the Democratic revolt against his candidacy.

拜登上月底在辩论中的糟糕表现令人们不再关注特朗普在曼哈顿被判34项重罪的事。许多民主党人曾希望利用特朗普的罪犯身份来获得优势，但随着拜登试图平息党内对他候选人资格的反对，这一攻击路线被暂时搁置。

Democrats are now moving to renew it, casting Ms. Harris as the “rule of law” candidate and hammering home the fact that the twice-impeached Mr. Trump sought to overturn the results of a free election.

民主党人现在正在重新启动这个线索，将哈里斯塑造成“法治”候选人，并强调两次被弹劾的特朗普试图推翻自由选举的结果。

“What is particularly important, especially in this case, is her history as a prosecutor — someone who has stood for law and order,” said Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat who served as a co-chair of Mr. Biden’s campaign. Mr. Trump, she added, is “a convicted criminal, who not just violates the law, but believes very firmly that the law does not apply to him and his supporters.”

“尤其重要的是，尤其是在这种情况下，她作为检察官的经历——她是法律和秩序的维护者，”曾担任拜登竞选团队联合主席的得克萨斯州民主党众议员维罗妮卡·埃斯科瓦尔说。她还表示，特朗普是“一名被定罪的罪犯，他不仅违反了法律，而且坚信法律不适用于他和他的支持者”。

Before being elected to the Senate in 2016, Ms. Harris served as the district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California. She sometimes struggled to discuss her history in law enforcement and matters of criminal justice during her 2020 presidential campaign, when many Democrats were pushing to rein in the powers of the police.

2016年当选参议员之前，哈里斯曾担任旧金山地区检察官和加利福尼亚州总检察长。在2020年总统竞选期间，许多民主党人都在推动控制警察的权力，这令她有时难以谈论自己在执法和刑事司法方面的经历。

2012年，哈里斯担任加州司法部长。民主党人认为，她的执法背景将有助于与特朗普竞争。

But she relishes bringing up those roles on the campaign trail now, and her allies say she will try to wield them against Mr. Trump as she makes the case that he is unfit to return to the White House.

但她现在乐于在竞选活动中提起这些角色，她的盟友表示，她会试图利用这些角色来对付特朗普，证明特朗普不适合重返白宫。

“As many of you know, I am a former prosecutor, so I say: Let’s look at the facts, shall we?” Ms. Harris said to roars from a crowd in North Carolina last week before dissecting the policy differences between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.

“你们很多人都知道，我曾是一名检察官，所以我说：让我们看看事实，好吗？”哈里斯上周在北卡罗来纳州对着欢呼的人群说，然后剖析了拜登和特朗普之间的政策差异。

Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said the vice president would press her “contrast” with Mr. Trump.

哈里斯竞选团队的发言人阿马尔·穆萨表示，副总统将强调她与特朗普之间的“对比”。

“Vice President Kamala Harris has held criminals accountable her entire career — and Donald Trump will be no different,” Mr. Moussa said in a statement. “Vice President Harris has dedicated her career to making life better for working people — while Trump only cares about himself.”

“副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯整个职业生涯都在追究罪犯的责任，唐纳德·特朗普也不会例外，”穆萨在声明中说。“副总统哈里斯致力于改善劳动人民的生活，而特朗普只关心自己。”

In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, tried to undermine Ms. Harris’s credentials by accusing her of embracing “pro-criminal, soft-on-crime policies.”

在一份声明中，特朗普的发言人史蒂文·张试图削弱哈里斯的资历，指责她奉行“包庇罪犯、对犯罪心慈手软的政策”。

While worries about public safety have been galvanizing in some elections, no issue has energized Ms. Harris, or Democratic voters, more than abortion rights. The issue has fueled a spate of Democratic victories in recent years, and helped Ms. Harris recover her political footing after a shaky start to her term as vice president. Ms. Harris says she has appeared at nearly 100 events on reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision two years ago.

虽然对公共安全的担忧在一些选举中引起了人们的关注，但没有什么问题比堕胎权更能让哈里斯或民主党选民振奋。近年来，这个问题推动了民主党的一系列胜利，并帮助哈里斯在副总统任期的不稳定开局后恢复了自己的政治地位。哈里斯说，自从最高法院两年前推翻了具有里程碑意义的罗伊诉韦德案判决以来，她参加了近100场有关生育权利的活动。

“This election will be won on abortion rights and there is no one better to make the case to voters,” said Jessica Mackler, the president of Emily’s List, which supports Democratic female candidates who back abortion rights. The group has fiercely defended Ms. Harris and has used polls to test messaging about her political strengths and weaknesses.

“艾米丽名单”的主席杰西卡·麦克勒说：“这次选举将依靠堕胎权利取得胜利，没有人比她更能向选民说明这一点。”该组织为支持堕胎权利的民主党女性候选人提供支持，它坚定地为哈里斯辩护，并利用民意调查来测试关于她政治优势和劣势的信息。

Its research, Ms. Mackler said, found that highlighting Ms. Harris’s work on abortion rights “will turn out the voters we need to win in November — young voters, women and voters of color.”

麦克勒说，该组织的研究发现，突出哈里斯在堕胎权利方面的工作，“将吸引我们在11月获胜所需的选民——年轻选民、女性选民和有色人种选民。”

Abortion access was top of mind on Sunday as Ms. Harris and her staff made the case to other Democrats that they should back her, according to a list of talking points used to outline those conversations that was reviewed by The New York Times.

据《纽约时报》看到的一份谈话要点，周日，当哈里斯和她的工作人员寻求其他民主党人的支持时，堕胎权被放在最重要的位置。

Ms. Harris is the party’s “leading messenger” on abortion rights, according to the document, and will make certain that Mr. Trump’s role in overturning Roe “is front and center in this election.”

该文件称，哈里斯是民主党在堕胎权利问题上的“主要发言人”，她将确保特朗普在推翻罗伊案中的角色“在此次选举中处于前沿和中心位置”。

When talking to voters about the issue, Ms. Harris often strives to make it personal. recounting how she was motivated to become a prosecutor after learning in high school that her best friend was being molested by her stepfather. This year, she became the highest-ranking federal official to visit an abortion clinic. She has slammed abortion restrictions in red states as “Trump abortion bans.”

在与选民谈论这个问题时，哈里斯往往努力使其变得更加个人化。她讲述自己在高中时得知她最好的朋友被继父猥亵后决心成为一名检察官。今年，她成为访问堕胎诊所的最高级别的联邦官员。她抨击红州的堕胎限制是“特朗普堕胎禁令”。

“We believe in freedom,” Ms. Harris said last week at an event in Michigan. “Freedom from the government telling us what to do about matters of heart and home. We believe in the right of people to make basic decisions like when and if they will start a family.”

“我们信仰自由，”哈里斯上周在密歇根州的一次活动上说。“不需要政府来告诉我们如何处理内心和家庭事务。我们相信人们有权做出基本的决定，比如何时以及是否要组建家庭。”

Her messaging on abortion has been far clearer than that of Mr. Biden, who supports abortion rights but struggled to articulate his position at the debate last month.

她在堕胎问题上传达的信息比拜登清晰得多。拜登支持堕胎权利，但在上个月的辩论中难以阐明自己的立场。

哈里斯曾在几次以堕胎权为主题的竞选活动中担任主角，图为今年早些时候在亚利桑那州图森市举行的一次活动。

Republicans, for their part, are hoping to blur any policy differences between Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden.

共和党人则希望模糊哈里斯和拜登之间的政策差异。

Ms. Harris’s “dismal record is one of complete failure and utter incompetence,” Mr. Cheung said. “Her policies are Biden’s policies, and vice versa.”

哈里斯的“糟糕记录是完全的失败和彻底的无能”，史蒂文·张说。“她的政策就是拜登的政策，反之亦然。”

Even before Mr. Biden dropped out, the Trump campaign had a plan to attack Ms. Harris if she became the nominee: tie her to the most unpopular parts of the president’s record.

早在拜登退出之前，特朗普的竞选团队就针对哈里斯制定了计划，如果她成为候选人，就把她与总统的执政记录上最不受欢迎的部分联系起来，以此攻击她。

At the Republican National Convention last week, speaker after speaker misleadingly referred to Ms. Harris as the Biden administration’s “border czar.” They argued that the large numbers of undocumented migrants crossing into the United States were her fault. Polls have shown that voters give Mr. Biden low marks for his handling of the border crisis, although Democrats have criticized Mr. Trump for persuading Republican lawmakers to walk away from a bipartisan immigration deal.

在上周的共和党全国代表大会上，一个接一个的发言人误导性地将哈里斯称为拜登政府的“边境沙皇”。他们声称，大量非法移民进入美国是她的错。民意调查显示，选民对拜登处理边境危机的评价较低，尽管民主党人批评特朗普说服共和党议员放弃了一项两党移民协议。

Inflation has also bedeviled Mr. Biden. Although cost increases have slowed and the causes of inflation are complex, Republicans have squarely blamed the president and his policies for rising prices. Voters say they are unhappy with Mr. Biden’s stewardship of the economy, and negative views of inflation have helped sap his support from Black and Hispanic voters, both crucial parts of the Democratic coalition. As Mr. Biden’s partner in government, Ms. Harris will have to overcome that glum mood.

通货膨胀也困扰着拜登。尽管成本增长已经放缓，通货膨胀的原因也很复杂，共和党人还是直接将物价上涨完全归咎于总统及其政策。选民们表示，他们对拜登在经济方面的管理不满意，对通货膨胀的负面看法削弱了他在黑人和西班牙裔选民中的支持率，这两个群体都是民主党联盟的关键组成部分。作为拜登在政府中的合作伙伴，哈里斯必须克服这种消极情绪。

“I’d take the next three weeks and hang the Biden White House’s failures on her,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist based in Iowa. “Most people think the country is going in the wrong direction. They need to place her right in the middle of that.”

“我会利用接下来的三周时间，把拜登白宫的失败归咎于她，”艾奥瓦州的共和党策略师戴维·科切尔说。“大多数人认为这个国家正朝着错误的方向前进。他们需要把她放在这个问题的正中间。”

Republicans wasted no time starting their attacks. On Monday, the Trump campaign said in an email that “Kamala Harris is Joe Biden 2.0.”

共和党人立即发起了攻击。周一，特朗普竞选团队在一封电子邮件中表示，“卡玛拉·哈里斯就是乔·拜登2.0。”

And less than an hour after Mr. Biden dropped out, the leading pro-Trump super PAC posted an ad on X saying Ms. Harris had “covered up” the president’s “mental decline” and was responsible for his “failed record.”

在拜登退出后不到一个小时，支持特朗普的主要超级政治行动委员会在X上发布了一则广告，称哈里斯“掩盖”了总统的“精神衰退”，并对他的“失败表现”负有责任。

“Look what she got done,” the ad’s female narrator says. “A border invasion. Runaway inflation. The American dream, dead.”

“看看她都做了什么，”广告中的女声旁白说。“边境入侵。失控的通货膨胀。美国梦破灭了。”

But Ms. Harris’s supporters were working to turn the tables on Mr. Trump at every turn.

但哈里斯的支持者正竭尽全力对特朗普发起全面反击。

Erin Wilson, the vice president’s White House deputy chief of staff, said in a call on Sunday with the group Win With Black Women that Ms. Harris would use her skills as a prosecutor to lace into Mr. Trump, who at 78 is only three years younger than Mr. Biden, and use his age against him.

周日，副总统的白宫副幕僚长艾琳·威尔逊在与“与黑人女性共赢”组织的电话会议上表示，哈里斯将利用她作为检察官的技能来反击特朗普，并利用他的年龄来攻击他。现年78岁的特朗普只比拜登小三岁。

Left unsaid: That argument had been impossible for Democrats to make with Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket.

她没有说出来的是：民主党人不可能在拜登领导的情况下提出年龄方面的论点。

As President Biden greeted the leaders of his 31 allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization a week ago, he described in vivid terms how he thought history would treat his first term in office.

拜登总统一周前欢迎出席北大西洋公约组织峰会的31名盟国领导人时，用清晰的语言描述了他对历史将如何看待其第一个任期的想法。

He was the American president who had restored and then expanded NATO, the world’s biggest military alliance, saving it from his predecessor’s threats to withdraw from it. He organized the West to push back against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and in so doing deterred Moscow from direct attacks on European nations beyond Ukraine’s borders. And he became the architect of a new American plan to contain China, though he never calls it that: cutting off sophisticated technology to Beijing while pouring billions of federal dollars into producing advanced chips at home.

他是复原并扩大了北约的美国总统，拯救了这个世界最大的军事联盟，而他的前任曾威胁退出。他组织了西方国家一起对抗俄罗斯总统普京，从而阻止了俄罗斯向乌克兰边界以外的欧洲国家直接发动袭击。他成了美国遏制中国新方案的设计者，尽管他从未用过遏制一词，他切断了中国获得尖端技术的渠道，同时为在美国国内生产先进芯片投入了数十亿美元的联邦资金。

But Mr. Biden’s defense of his record came too late, after the shocking debate performance that led to his withdrawal from the race on Sunday. And now it will fall to a different nominee — likely but not certainly Vice President Kamala Harris — to defend that record from a radically different interpretation of the past four years promoted by former President Donald J. Trump.

但拜登对自己政绩的捍卫来得太晚。他在第一次大选辩论中令人震惊的表现导致了他周日宣布退出竞选。他的政绩现在将由另一名候选人——有可能但不一定是副总统卡马拉·哈里斯——来捍卫。而前总统特朗普已在对过去四年兜售一种截然不同的看法。

In his acceptance speech in Milwaukee on Thursday night, Mr. Trump insisted he had turned over to Mr. Biden a world at peace in January 2021, and that today “our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III.” It was a disingenuous argument at best. There was a low-level war bubbling in Ukraine throughout Mr. Trump’s term; he simply chose to pay little attention.

上周四晚，特朗普在密尔沃基接受提名后发表演讲时坚称，他2021年1月交给拜登的是一个和平的世界，而今天“我们的地球正处于第三次世界大战的边缘”。这充其量只是一种虚伪的说法。在特朗普的整个任期内，乌克兰一直潜涌着初级战火；他只是选择不理睬而已。

Elections are rarely fought on foreign policy records, except when the nation is at war. And while Mr. Biden’s recounting of events hews far closer to the historical record than Mr. Trump’s does, the Democratic nominee will have to explain how she or he will manage a world that is clearly far more dangerous today than four years ago. Whoever is elected in November will inherit confrontations with America’s nuclear rivals China and Russia, cold wars that are one mistake away from turning hot.

除非国家处于战争状态，竞选的主题很少围绕着外交政策记录进行。虽然拜登对时事的叙述比特朗普的更接近历史，但民主党候选人将需要阐明，他或她将如何管理一个与四年前相比明显危险得多的世界。无论谁在今年11月当选，下任总统都将接手与美国的核心对手中国和俄罗斯的对抗，冷战变成热战只是犯一个错误的问题。

More than any election in decades, this one will be marked by starkly different approaches to an era of simultaneous confrontations: the re-emerging arms race with Beijing and Moscow; deterring attacks on Taiwan and the eastern edge of the Atlantic alliance; Israel’s war against Hamas, which still threatens to set the Middle East aflame. Any one of those could easily explode on the watch of the next president.

与几十年来的任何一次大选相比，这次选举的特点将是以截然不同的方式应对一个多种对抗同时存在的时代。美国面临的问题包括：重新出现的与中国和俄罗斯的军备竞赛；遏制对台湾的攻击以及在大西洋联盟东部边缘发生战火；以色列与哈马斯的战争，这场战争仍有将中东点燃的危险。这些问题中的任何一个都有可能在下任总统任内爆发。

“We are seeing territorial conflict between the great powers again,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, where Mr. Biden’s top foreign policy and national security aides made the case for Mr. Biden’s legacy — and for a second term that they suspected, but could not say, was slipping away. As in the period between World War I and World War II, Ms. Rice added, there has been the return of “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: populism, nativism, isolationism and protectionism.”

“我们正在看到大国之间再次发生领土冲突，”前国务卿康多莉扎·赖斯上周四在科罗拉多州的阿斯彭安全论坛上说。当时，拜登的外交政策和国家安全高级助理们在论坛上为拜登的政治遗产做了论证，也提出了拜登应获得第二个任期的理由——虽然他们怀疑但无法断言连任的可能性或许正在消逝。就像第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战之间的时期一样，赖斯补充说，“末日四骑士已经重返：民粹主义、排外主义、孤立主义和保护主义。”

Mr. Biden’s time in office was spent fighting the first three items on Dr. Rice’s list. Surprisingly, as his presidency moved into its last two years, he came to embrace the fourth, closing off American markets to Chinese electric vehicles and embracing an industrial policy that closely resembled Beijing’s own.

拜登在任内与赖斯列出的前三个问题进行了斗争。令人意外的是，随着总统任期进入后两年，他令人惊讶地开始接受保护主义，对中国电动汽车关闭了美国市场，采取了与中国非常相似的产业政策。

But it is Mr. Biden’s decision to step in and support Ukraine, with over $100 billion in aid and military equipment, that seems certain to define his presidency — and become a centerpiece of the debates that will dominate the 106 days until the election.

但拜登决定对乌克兰施以援手，向该国提供超过1000亿美元的援助和军事装备的做法似乎肯定会成他总统任期的标志，而且将在大选日到来前的106天里成为辩论的焦点。

He was under no obligation to do so. Ukraine was not a member of the Atlantic alliance. There was no treaty requirement that he come to the country’s defense, of the kind the United States has with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

他没有那样做的义务。乌克兰不是北约成员国。没有（美国与日本、韩国、菲律宾签订的那种）条约要求他为该国提供保护。

Instead, the decision was born of Mr. Biden’s Cold War roots. By his own account, Mr. Biden was convinced that if he did not stop Russia in Ukraine, Mr. Putin would keep going, on a mission to dismantle the liberal democratic order that had been constructed, defended, and ultimately expanded over Mr. Biden’s political lifetime.

驱使拜登做出决定的是他和冷战的渊源。拜登自己承认，他深信，如果不阻止俄罗斯对乌克兰的入侵，普京会继续推进他破坏自由民主秩序的使命，而建立、捍卫以及最终扩大这一秩序的努力与拜登的政治生涯同步。

Mr. Biden regarded himself as one of the last defenders of that order, and he was convinced that if Mr. Trump had been president at the time, he would have welcomed the invasion rather than rally the West against it.

拜登将自己视为这一秩序的最后捍卫者之一。他深信，如果特朗普在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰时担任总统的话，会对入侵表示欢迎，而不是团结西方抵御入侵。

“The day after Putin invaded Ukraine, here’s what he said,” Mr. Biden said last week, warming up to a campaign line for a race he still thought he could win. “It was ‘genius.’ It was ‘wonderful.’ Some of you forgot that, but that’s exactly what he said.” It was the kind of muscular defense of his signature foreign policy decision that Mr. Biden’s supporters would have liked to see in the debate.

拜登上周为他仍认为自己能赢得的大选准备竞选辞令时说，“普京入侵乌克兰的第二天，他（特朗普）说了这样的话：‘天才’。‘精彩’。虽然你们中有些人已经忘记，但那正是他说的。”这种为自己的标志性外交政策决定所做的强有力辩护才是拜登的支持者们本想在大选辩论中听到的。

Mr. Trump’s view of the war could not be more starkly different. The former president’s first impeachment was over the question of whether he had suspended arms to Ukraine because its leaders were not giving him political dirt on Mr. Biden. And in choosing JD Vance as his running mate, he selected the leading critic of American involvement in Ukraine, a man who has argued that the United States should cut off arms and intelligence to Kyiv and focus on China.

特朗普对俄乌战争的看法截然不同。这位前总统第一次被弹劾就是围绕他是否因为乌克兰领导人没有向他提供可用在拜登身上的政治丑闻而暂停向乌克兰提供武器。他选择J·D·万斯为竞选搭档等于挑了一名带头批评美国介入俄乌战争的人，万斯认为美国应该停止向基辅提供武器和情报，把重点放在中国。

That sets up the Democratic nominee to play the role that Republicans once did: that of the hawks, warning that if America abandons the Ukrainian people, it will endanger all of Europe and could ultimately encourage China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to move on Taiwan.

这将让民主党候选人扮演共和党人曾扮演的鹰派角色，警告如果美国抛弃乌克兰人民，那将危及整个欧洲，并可能最终鼓励中国领导人习近平对台湾采取行动。

It is Mr. Biden’s strategy in the Indo-Pacific region that perhaps marks one of his boldest foreign policy initiatives — but also one of the most fragile. He nursed along a rapprochement of the leaders of Japan and South Korea to overcome centuries of enmity and join forces in countering China’s expansionism.

在印太地区，拜登的战略也许是他最大胆的外交政策举措之一，但也是最脆弱的。他耐心促成了日本和韩国领导人的和解，克服几百年的敌意，联手对抗中国的扩张主义。

Since a summit at Camp David last year, the three allies have conducted more than 60 trilateral meetings and military drills, a pace designed to solidify and, in a way, “future-proof” the relationship. He brought the Philippines into the mix as well, and he negotiated the construction of submarines by Australia.

自去年的戴维营峰会以来，美日韩三盟友已举行了60多次三边会议和军事演习，这种节奏是为巩固三边关系并在某种程度上“为未来保驾护航”而设计的。拜登也将菲律宾纳入了亚太盟友行列，还谈成了让澳大利亚建造潜艇的协议。

It all adds up to the seeds of a nascent Atlantic alliance for the Pacific. Mr. Trump has already voiced his doubts, declaring in a recently published interview that he was not certain he would defend Taiwan, because it had stolen America’s semiconductor industry.

这一切都是为在太平洋地区萌生类似北约的联盟播下的种子。特朗普已对这一努力表示怀疑，他在最近发表的采访中宣称，他不能肯定会保卫台湾，因为台湾盗走了美国的半导体产业。

The result is that Mr. Biden is the preferred candidate among those allies, more popular abroad than at home. “Biden’s approach has made it feel like we can have a more normal and predictable relationship with the U.S.,” said Yujin Yaguchi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tokyo.

结果，拜登在这些盟友中成为最受欢迎的候选人，他在国外的受欢迎程度高于在国内。“拜登的做法给人的感觉是，我们能与美国建立更正常、更可预测的关系，”东京大学研究美国问题的教授矢口祐人说。

Under Mr. Biden, the United States expanded joint military drills with South Korea while bringing it deeper into the folds of American-led global supply chains, with top South Korean conglomerates building new factories in the United States to produce cars, batteries and computer chips. In recent months, the United States has begun replacing China as South Korea’s biggest export market, for the first time in two decades.

在拜登领导下，美国扩大了与韩国的联合军事演习，同时也将韩国更深地带入了美国主导的全球供应链，韩国的大型企业集团正在美国建厂，生产汽车、电池和计算机芯片。近几个月来，美国已开始取代中国成为韩国最大的出口市场，这是20年来的第一次。

But it all has a sense of fragility about it; the partnerships in Asia have little of the muscle memory of the NATO alliance. And Mr. Biden has made no serious attempt at a diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea, as his halfhearted calls for “dialogue without preconditions” found no audience in Pyongyang. He will leave office with no progress to report on countering North Korea’s expanding nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

然而，这一切都显得脆弱不堪；美国在亚洲的伙伴关系缺乏北约联盟的那种肌肉记忆。拜登也没有认真尝试在朝鲜问题上取得外交突破，他呼吁“无先决条件的对话”，但并不热心，平壤对此也不感兴趣。他将在离任时交不出在对付朝鲜不断扩大的核计划和弹道导弹计划上取得进展的报告。

During his term, North Korea has rapidly expanded its weapons programs, using Washington’s intensifying strategic competition with Russia and China to its advantage. It has conducted more missile tests during Mr. Biden’s four years in the White House than under any other American leader, while Moscow and Beijing vetoed American attempts to impose new sanctions on the country at the U.N. Security Council. Last month, Russia and North Korea further closed their ranks against Washington by signing a mutual-defense treaty.

在他任职期间，朝鲜充分利用了美国与俄中日益激烈的战略竞争，迅速扩大了本国的武器项目。拜登在白宫的四年里，朝鲜进行导弹测试的次数比其他美国领导人执政期间的都多，与此同时，莫斯科和北京在联合国安理会上多次否决美国对朝鲜实施新制裁的尝试。上个月，俄朝签署了共同防御条约，进一步加强了与华盛顿的对抗。

“After Trump’s cost- and benefit-oriented and arm-twisting foreign policy, Biden respected and restored the alliance,” said Park Won-gon, a political scientist at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “But he leaves North Korea as homework for his successor.”

“在特朗普的以成本和收益为导向，以及胁迫性的外交政策之后，拜登尊重并恢复了联盟，”首尔梨花女子大学的政治学家朴元坤（音）说。“不过，他把朝鲜问题留给了继任者。”

The same could be said of Iran, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Friday was just a few weeks away from “breakout,” obtaining the fuel necessary for a nuclear weapon. (The weapon itself would take months, maybe more than a year, to develop.)

在伊朗问题上也可以这样说。国务卿布林肯上周五表示，伊朗只需几周时间就能取得“突破”，即获得核武器所需的燃料。（伊朗搞出核武器本身将需要数月甚至一年以上的时间。）

And Mr. Biden leaves one more legacy: a deepening partnership between China and Russia, potentially the most serious threat to the United States. Mr. Biden only acknowledged last week, for the first time, that he was trying to interfere in that geopolitical combination. The next American president may well become consumed by it.

拜登还留下了另一个遗留问题，那就是中俄之间不断加深的伙伴关系，这可能是对美国最严重的威胁。拜登上周才首次承认，他正试图干涉这一地缘政治联盟。下任美国总统的精力很可能会耗在这个问题上。

Four years ago, Jack Ma was the embodiment of China’s spectacular economic rise. Already the country’s wealthiest and most famous businessman, he was poised to become one of the richest in the world.

四年前，马云曾是中国经济壮观崛起的化身。他那时已是中国最富有、最著名的商人，而且已经准备好成为世界上最富有的人之一。

The expected initial public offering of Mr. Ma’s fintech company, Ant Group, was projected to surpass the record-shattering launch of his e-commerce giant, Alibaba. Soon, it was thought, he would be lionized like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — a paragon of Western-style business in China.

马云的金融科技公司蚂蚁集团当时即将首次公开发行股票，预计上市将打破他的电商巨头阿里巴巴首次公开募股时创下的纪录。人们曾认为，他很快就会在中国像比尔·盖茨和史蒂夫·乔布斯那样，被推崇为西方商业模式在中国的典范。

At the same time, another wealthy Chinese businessman was awaiting a very different fate. Xiao Jianhua was languishing in detention on bribery and corruption charges — a larger-than-life target of a government crackdown on graft. Mr. Xiao had amassed a fortune manipulating markets and cultivating close ties to relatives of top Chinese officials, and he was about to be made an example.

与此同时，另一名富裕的中国商人正面临截然不同的命运。肖建华因受贿和腐败的指控已被拘禁，他是政府反腐败行动惹人注目的目标。他曾通过操纵股市、与中国高官的亲属建立密切关系积累了大量财富。政府要用惩罚他来儆戒他人。

And yet behind the scenes, these bookends of China’s catch-as-catch-can capitalism — its most celebrated and its most notorious billionaires — were linked through investments worth at least $1 billion, an investigation by The New York Times and The Wire China found.

这两名亿万富翁一个最为著名，另一个最臭名昭著，但都是不择手段的中国式资本主义的代表人物。而《纽约时报》和《连线中国》(The Wire China)的调查发现，背后至少有10亿美元的投资将他们联系在一起。

A review of more than 2,000 confidential documents shows that Mr. Xiao’s now dismantled company Tomorrow Group secretly secured lucrative shares in an array of Mr. Ma’s companies over a period of five years. These business associations were never disclosed, and a former senior executive at Tomorrow Group said, “As far as we know, Jack Ma was unaware” of them.

记者通过查阅2000多份保密文件发现，肖建华的（现已解体的）明天控股集团曾在五年内获得了马云旗下多家公司的丰厚股份。这些商业联系从未披露过，“明天系”的一名前高管说，“据我们所知，马云对此不知情。”

The deals offer a close-up view of China’s signature brand of capitalism, where well-connected entrepreneurs and those who raise money for them are better off, at least in some cases, not interacting with one another. In almost any other robust economy, the proprietor of a major business would want to develop a relationship with an investor who raised $1 billion, and the investor would want to influence how the money was used.

这些交易让人得以从近距离了解中国特色的资本主义。在中国，人脉广泛的企业家和为他们筹集资金的人最好不要互动，至少在某些情况下是如此。在几乎所有其他强健经济体中，大型企业的所有者都会想与为其企业筹集了10亿美元资金的投资者发展关系，而投资者也会想影响所投资金的使用方式。

Not in the China of Mr. Xiao and Mr. Ma.

在肖建华和马云所在的中国不是这样。

The documents do not show that Mr. Ma knew about the Xiao investments, and speaking through a lawyer for Alibaba, Mr. Ma said he “never had any business relationship with Mr. Xiao.” The lawyer for Alibaba, in a statement, also said, “As far as Alibaba and its affiliates know, the connections you claim to exist do not have any basis in fact.”

这些文件并未显示马云知道肖建华的投资，马云通过阿里巴巴的一名律师表示，他“从未与肖建华有任何商业关系”。阿里巴巴的律师在一份声明中还说，“就阿里巴巴及其附属机构所知，你们声称存在的联系没有任何事实依据。”

But in one instance involving an Alibaba affiliate, the investigation found, Mr. Ma’s friend and business partner, Huang Youlong, entered into the investment on behalf of Mr. Xiao’s companies. In another deal involving a Hong Kong brokerage firm named in part after Mr. Ma, Mr. Huang and other Xiao associates were the biggest shareholders.

但调查发现，在一笔涉及一家阿里巴巴附属机构的投资中，马云的朋友和商业伙伴黄有龙是代表肖建华公司的参股人。在另一笔涉及一家香港券商（该公司部分以马云的名字命名）的交易中，黄有龙和其他与肖建华有关系的人是公司的最大股东。

As late as 2020, even as Mr. Xiao sat in detention and Ant was preparing its I.P.O., companies and people in Mr. Xiao’s network held Ant shares with an estimated value of more than $300 million, the investigation found. In a surprise last-minute move, Chinese regulators halted the offering and launched investigations into both Alibaba and Ant, which to this day remains privately held.

调查发现，直到2020年，也就是肖建华被拘留、蚂蚁集团准备上市前，肖建华网络中的公司和人曾持有估值超过3亿美元的蚂蚁集团股份。中国监管机构在最后一刻出人意料地叫停了蚂蚁集团的首次公开募股，并对阿里巴巴和蚂蚁集团展开调查，蚂蚁集团至今仍为私人控股。

The documents reveal the inner workings of the Xiao network, which he controlled through proxy shareholders that granted him anonymity and made the transactions difficult to decipher. They were concealed behind offshore entities and tracked on spreadsheets by Mr. Xiao’s staff. The Times and The Wire China were able to confirm transaction details through an examination of corporate filings and interviews, and two former employees of Tomorrow Group confirmed the authenticity of the documents.

这些文件揭示了肖建华网络的内部运作方式，肖建华通过代理股东控制这个网络，让他能匿名行事，让人难以了解交易的各方。交易方隐藏在海外实体背后，肖建华的员工用电子表格将它们联系起来。时报和《连线中国》通过查阅公司提交的文件和采访有关人员证实了这些交易的细节，“明天系”的两名前雇员证实了这些文件的真实性。

Mr. Xiao’s specialty was helping influential officials and their relatives transfer wealth abroad and buy and sell assets; in at least one case, he did so for one of President Xi Jinping’s sisters. At his trial, the Chinese authorities suggested his holdings, which stretched from banking and insurance to rare metals, coal and real estate, were so vast that they threatened the country’s financial stability.

肖建华的专长是帮助有支配权的官员及其亲属将财产转移到海外和进行资产交易；他的这些交易中至少有一笔是为国家主席习近平的一个姐姐做的。肖建华的资产涉及银行、保险、稀有金属、煤炭和房地产等行业，中国当局在审判他的案件时暗示，他的资产规模已庞大到威胁中国金融稳定的程度。

The documents also tell a story at times sharply at odds with the public narrative about Mr. Ma, who publicly derided the cronyism that pervades Chinese companies. That Mr. Xiao was able to benefit from Mr. Ma’s world, even as some of New York’s most prestigious law firms conducted due diligence on the deals, was shocking — and telling — to scholars of China’s economy.

这些文件讲述的故事与关于马云的公开叙事有很大的不同。马云曾多次在公开场合嘲笑中国公司中普遍存在的裙带关系。尽管纽约的一些最负盛名的律师事务所对这些交易进行了尽职调查，但肖建华仍能从马云的世界获益，这一事实对研究中国经济的学者来说既令人震惊，也很说明问题。

“Finding them connected this way,” said Meg Rithmire, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied Mr. Xiao’s financial network, “shows that the Chinese system is so murky that everyone gets caught in the same web.”

“发现他们以这种方式联系在一起，”哈佛商学院教授、一直关注肖建华金融网络的任美格(Meg Rithmire)说。“表明中国的体系非常阴暗，以至于每个人都陷入了同一张网中。”

Mr. Xiao is now serving a 13-year sentence, and Mr. Ma has all but retreated from public life, having no formal role in the companies he founded. Both men — one defrocked, the other locked away — are among the highest-profile targets in Mr. Xi’s dramatic consolidation of power since he became China’s top leader over a decade ago.

肖建华已被判处13年有期徒刑，目前正在服刑。马云也已几乎完全退出公众视野，不再在他创立的公司中有任何正式职务。两人一个不再是红人，另一个失去了自由，他们都是习近平打击目标中最引人注目的对象。习近平十多年前出任中国最高领导人以来，已为巩固权力采取了惊人做法。

Mr. Ma’s clashes with the government have been well documented, including his running afoul of Mr. Xi for criticizing the push for stronger financial oversight of his companies. But until now, nothing has been publicly known about the investments linked to Mr. Xiao.

马云与政府失和的事情已广为人知，比如他曾批评政府加强对他的公司的金融监管，触犯了习近平。但此前与肖建华有关的投资尚未公开披露过。

The Times obtained the documents in 2018, more than a year after Mr. Xiao was abducted in Hong Kong and spirited into mainland China, and they have been used in various reporting efforts. In parts English and Chinese, they include brokerage and bank statements, contracts, corporate registration filings and spreadsheets mostly from the company’s Hong Kong operations.

时报在2018年获得了这些文件，那是在肖建华从香港被秘密绑架到中国内地一年多后。以前的报道用过这些文件。它们有英文有中文，包括经纪公司和银行的对账单、合同，公司注册提交的文件和电子表格，主要与“明天系”在香港的业务有关。

The source of the material, who once worked for Tomorrow Group, wanted to expose how Mr. Xiao secretly controlled and manipulated companies and how financial regulators in Hong Kong and China failed to stop him, the source said. Because Tomorrow Group was also under government investigation, it is possible that Chinese authorities have access to the same information, the source said. Mr. Xiao was praised for his cooperation at his sentencing.

提供这些材料的人曾在“明天系”工作。对方表示，提供材料是因为想揭露肖建华如何秘密控制和操纵这些公司的，以及香港和中国的金融监管部门在阻止他的做法上是如何失败的。对方称，中国当局手中可能有相同的文件，因为“明天系“也在接受政府调查。法院在宣判时对肖建华的立功表现进行了肯定。

The Times revisited the documents last year and shared them with The Wire China. Their joint investigation found that the investment connection between Mr. Ma, 59, and Mr. Xiao, 52, had begun several years before the 2017 abduction.

去年，时报重新查阅了这些文件，并与《连线中国》进行了分享。双方的联合调查发现，现年59岁的马云与现年52岁的肖建华之间的投资关系始于后者2017年被绑架的几年前。

Mr. Xiao, who is in prison in Shanghai, could not be reached for comment. The former senior executive at Tomorrow Group confirmed that the company was behind the investments. “At the time, Alibaba and Jack Ma were so successful,” the former executive said. “Everyone wanted to invest with them. They had the magic touch.”

肖建华目前在上海的监狱服刑，记者无法联系到他置评。“明天系”的前高管证实这些投资的背后正是该公司。“当时，阿里巴巴和马云都非常成功，”这名前高管说。“所有的人都想投资他们。他们有魔力。”

‘Clandestine and Dispersed’

“秘密而分散”

As China’s economy boomed in recent decades, many well-connected families earned billions of dollars by leveraging their clout over highly regulated industries.

随着中国经济近几十年来蓬勃发展，许多人脉广泛的家庭利用他们在高度监管行业的影响力赚了数十亿美元的财富。

Leading the charge were the so-called princelings — the relatives of top Communist Party officials — who controlled the intersection of state influence and private wealth. Their behind-the-scenes efforts could save or wreck deals, and they did so without worrying about being unmasked by the Chinese media or facing consequences on Election Day.

带头这样做的是所谓的太子党，也就是中共高级官员的亲属，他们控制着国家影响和私人财富的交汇处。他们的幕后努力可以挽救或破坏交易，而且不必担心遭中国媒体曝光或在选举时面临后果。

Mr. Xiao was their longtime concierge.

肖建华曾是他们长期的看门人。

From the time he was a 17-year-old student leader at Peking University, Mr. Xiao began to develop ties to the country’s power structure. With a coterie of female bodyguards, at least two foreign passports and more than 100 offshore companies, he amassed riches through state-dominated industries rife with cronyism: banking, insurance and brokerages.

自从17岁在北京大学当学生领袖时起，肖建华就开始与国家权力结构建立联系。他通过充斥着裙带关系的国家主导行业——银行、保险和经纪公司——积累了大量财富，拥有一群女保镖、至少两本外国护照，以及100多家离岸公司。

Mr. Ma was not part of this system. In the late 1980s, he took a job as an English teacher making $14 a month, and when he founded Alibaba a decade later, he followed the Silicon Valley playbook, acquiring funds from savvy global investors like Goldman Sachs and Japan’s SoftBank.

马云不是这个体系内的人。他曾在20世纪80年代末当英语教师，每月工资不到100元。十年后创立阿里巴巴时，他以硅谷为指南，从高盛和日本软银等精明的全球投资者那里获得了资金。

For Mr. Ma, Chinese officials were to be respected and obeyed but otherwise avoided. “I do everything they tell me,” he told an audience at Stanford University in September 2011. “But do business? Sorry.”

在马云看来，对中国官员应该敬而远之。“他们叫我怎么做，我就怎么做，”他曾在2011年9月对一群斯坦福大学的听众说。“但在做生意上？对不起。”

上海街上的小贩收钱用的蚂蚁集团移动支付系统支付宝的二维码。

The Chinese authorities began paying more attention to Alibaba as its success took off. Mr. Ma has said he was pressured to transfer Alipay, a mobile payment system now controlled by Ant Group, to a Chinese company. Mr. Ma also moved to increase Chinese ownership in Alibaba, which at the time had more than 70 percent of its shares held by foreign investors.

随着阿里巴巴在生意上取得成功，中国当局开始更关注这家公司。马云表示曾面临将支付宝转让给一家中国公司的压力，支付宝是个移动支付系统，现由蚂蚁集团控制。马云还采取行动增加了阿里巴巴股份中由中国人持有的比例，当时阿里巴巴70%以上的股份由外国投资者持有。

It was around this time that Mr. Ma and Mr. Xiao’s parallel universes first converged.

差不多是在那个时候，马云和肖建华的平行宇宙首次出现了交汇。

The same month that Mr. Ma spoke at Stanford, Chinese investors began increasing their foothold in Alibaba. The select group included Mr. Ma’s friends as well as an obscure British Virgin Islands shell company called Financial Giant, which invested $25 million, the documents show.

马云在斯坦福大学发表演讲的同一个月，中国投资者开始增加他们对阿里巴巴的持股。这些投资者中有马云的朋友，还有一家鲜为人知的英属维尔京群岛空壳公司，据文件显示，这家公司叫Financial Giant，对阿里巴巴投了2500万美元。

On paper, Financial Giant’s owner was an unknown 24-year-old woman whose family hailed from a small city near the Russian border. Two Swiss banks — UBS and J. Safra Sarasin — lent her legitimacy by opening brokerage accounts for her company.

从公司文件看，Financial Giant的所有者是一名没人听说过的24岁女子，她家位于中国和俄罗斯边境附近的一个小城市。两家瑞士银行——瑞银和J. Safra Sarasin——为她的公司开设了经纪账户，从而为其合法性提供了支持。

瑞士嘉盛银行的记录显示，肖建华的一名代理人出售了阿里巴巴股份。

The woman, Zhao Binbin, could not be reached for comment. She had something else going for her, the Tomorrow Group documents show: She belonged to a family that acted as proxies for Mr. Xiao, and she was holding the Alibaba shares on his behalf.

记者无法联系到这个名叫赵彬彬（音）的女子置评。“明天系”的文件显示，还有其他与她有关系的事情：她来自一个为肖建华担任代理人的家族，她的阿里巴巴股份是为肖建华代持的。

One of her relatives, a piano teacher, was listed as the top official of a Xiao company that in 2013 bought assets from one of Mr. Xi’s sisters. The same relative was married to a Xiao employee who in 2014 bought a $62 million Van Gogh painting at a Sotheby’s auction.

她的一个亲戚是钢琴教师，被列为肖建华一家公司的高管，该公司于2013年从习近平的一个姐姐那里收购了资产。这位亲戚的妻子是肖建华公司的一名员工，于2014年在苏富比拍卖会上以6200万美元的价格购买了一幅梵高的画作。

“When Boss Xiao was building Tomorrow Group, there was a saying: ‘clandestine and dispersed,’” said the former Xiao employee who provided the documents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the former employee still works in the industry.

“肖老板打造明天集团的时候，有一句话是‘秘密而分散’，”提供文件的肖建华前员工说。由于这位前员工仍在业内工作，所以要求不透露姓名。

“Xiao’s name and Tomorrow’s name will not appear,” the former employee said.

“肖建华的名字和明天的名字不会出现，”这位前雇员说。

Playing the Princelings Game

太子党游戏

It is unclear how or why Mr. Ma and Mr. Xiao first became acquainted. They met in Beijing in 2013, at a club affiliated with a major Chinese bank, one person close to Mr. Xiao said. An undated photo surfaced on a Chinese social media site in 2018 showing them toasting each other at a restaurant with kimono-clad servers.

目前尚不清楚马云和肖建华最初结识的方式和原因。一位与肖建华关系密切的人士说，他们是2013年在北京一家属于中国某大银行的会所认识的。2018年，中国一家社交媒体网站上出现了一张未注明日期的照片，显示两人在一家餐厅里互相敬酒，身边的服务员穿着和服。

The “why” behind the Xiao investments may have more to do with China’s inescapable world of princelings than any pressing business imperative. As relatives of China’s political elite looked to benefit from the country’s growing economy, Mr. Xiao made a career of connecting them with promising ventures — and often concealing those connections behind shell companies, proxy investors and other smoke screens.

肖建华投资背后的“原因”可能更多与中国不可避免的太子党世界有关，而不是任何紧迫的商业需求。中国政治精英的亲属希望从国家不断增长的经济中获益时，肖建华帮他们和前景看好的企业牵线搭桥，并且经常将这些联系隐藏在空壳公司、代理投资者和其他烟幕之后。

In 2010, Mr. Ma co-founded an investment firm, Yunfeng Capital, and investors got early access to his companies. One of Mr. Xiao’s proxies, the young woman from near the Russian border, was among them, acquiring her Alibaba shares through Yunfeng around 2011, the investigation found.

2010年，马云与他人联合创立了一家投资公司云锋基金，投资者可以提前得到投资他的公司的机会。调查发现，肖建华的代理人之一、来自俄罗斯边境附近的那名年轻女子就是其中一名投资者，她在2011年左右通过云锋基金获得了阿里巴巴的股份。

By the following year, in anticipation of Alibaba’s I.P.O., Mr. Ma was looking to pare down foreign ownership in the company — particularly Yahoo’s huge stake — and brought in a new corps of Chinese investors. A $7.6 billion deal to buy back about half of Yahoo’s holdings was financed in large part by Chinese banks and investment firms led by princelings, including Boyu Capital, which was founded by the Harvard-educated grandson of a former Chinese president, Jiang Zemin.

马云预计阿里巴巴会在接下来的一年里进行首次公开募股，他希望减少外资对公司的所有权——尤其是雅虎的巨额股份——并引入一批新的中国投资者。中国银行和太子党领导的投资公司为回购雅虎持有的约一半股份提供了76亿美元的资金，其中包括博裕资本，其创始人是前中国国家主席江泽民的孙子，曾在哈佛大学读书。

By 2014, Mr. Ma had become a money-making machine for the country’s political elite. Chinese firms owned or overseen by relatives of six current or former Politburo members had invested in Alibaba and its affiliates, according to company records.

到2014年，马云已经成为这个国家政治精英的赚钱机器。根据公司记录，六名现任或前任政治局委员的亲属拥有或监管的中国公司投资了阿里巴巴及其关联公司。

In a statement on behalf of the companies, Alibaba described the investors as “reputable state-owned firms or well-regarded private investment firms,” adding that it had “never solicited investments from any investor on account of their ‘political connections.’”

在代表这些公司发表的一份声明中，阿里巴巴称这些投资者是“声誉良好的国有企业或备受推崇的私人投资公司”，并称，阿里巴巴“从未因为任何投资者的‘政治关系’而向他们征求投资”。

The most lucrative event was Alibaba’s I.P.O. on Sept. 19, 2014, when the e-commerce giant’s market value shot past that of its biggest rival, Amazon. Mr. Xiao’s $25 million investment, made through his proxy, soared to $160 million that day.

2014年9月19日阿里巴巴的IPO是有史以来最赚钱的一次募股，当时这家电子商务巨头的市值超过了其最大竞争对手亚马逊。肖建华通过代理人投资的2500万美元当天飙升至1.6亿美元。

2014年9月，阿里巴巴在纽交所进行IPO期间，马云的两位商业伙伴虞锋和黄有龙在纽约证券交易所外合影。

It was a heady day for Mr. Ma at the New York Stock Exchange, which was decked out in Alibaba orange. Beaming before the cameras, he posed with friends and colleagues, including a stocky man who appeared fleetingly in a video produced by Alibaba documenting the I.P.O.

马云在纽约证券交易所度过了激动人心的一天。在镜头前，他笑容满面地与朋友和同事合影，其中一名矮胖男子在阿里巴巴制作的一段记录这次IPO的视频中短暂出现。

The man was Huang Youlong, a businessman married to one of China’s most famous actresses. He was also Mr. Xiao’s ticket to even bigger stakes in Mr. Ma’s companies, The Times and The Wire China found.

这名男子名叫黄有龙，是一位商人，他的妻子是中国最著名的女演员之一。时报和《连线中国》发现，他也是肖建华获得马云公司更多利益的敲门砖。

The Movie Star’s Husband

电影明星的丈夫

Mr. Huang, 47, stands out from the rest of Mr. Ma’s high-achieving friends: He didn’t look the part, and he lived a bit of a charmed life.

47岁的黄有龙在马云其他成就不凡的朋友当中显得与众不同：他看起来并不适合他的角色，而且他过着一种神秘的生活。

He became a citizen of Singapore and went into business there with an American who was later jailed in the United States for illegally exporting aviation equipment to Iran. He became a business partner of a Chinese casino magnate who is now reportedly a fugitive. And in 2008, he married Zhao Wei, a famous Chinese actress who would eventually fall from favor and be mysteriously erased, film credits and all, from the Chinese internet.

他入了新加坡籍，在那里与一名美国人一起做生意，后者后来因非法向伊朗出口航空设备而在美国入狱。他成了一名中国赌场大亨的商业伙伴，据报道，这名大亨目前在逃。2008年，他与中国著名女演员赵薇结婚，赵薇最终名声扫地，她的名字神秘地从电影演职人员名单上消失，甚至一度在中国互联网上彻底消失。

黄有龙与妻子、电影明星赵薇。这对夫妇用肖建华一家公司的资金投资了马云的电影业务。

By 2014, Mr. Ma and Mr. Huang had become close. In a sign of friendship, Mr. Ma joined Mr. Huang that year at his father’s 80th birthday party and even sang at the celebration, Chinese media reported.

到2014年，马云和黄有龙已经走得很近。据中国媒体报道，当年马云和黄有龙一起参加了黄父的80岁寿宴，甚至还在庆祝活动上唱歌，可见两人关系的不一般。

When it came to his own businesses, Mr. Ma was joined by Mr. Huang in blockbuster deals, the Tomorrow Group documents show, in which Mr. Huang both acted as a proxy for Mr. Xiao and sought to profit for himself.

明天集团的文件显示，在马云自己的企业中，黄有龙和马云一起参与了一些重大交易，在这些交易中，黄有龙既是肖建华的代理人，也为自己谋取利益。

In 2014, Alibaba bought ChinaVision, a film and television production company, and renamed it Alibaba Pictures. But the purchase immediately ran into problems when accounting irregularities were discovered in the former company’s books.

2014年，阿里巴巴收购了影视制作公司文化中国，将其更名为阿里影业。但是，前公司的账目被发现存在会计违规，这笔收购立刻遇到了问题。

Trading in Alibaba Pictures stock was temporarily suspended, and two days before it resumed, Mr. Huang and his wife paid about $400 million to acquire a 9 percent stake from ChinaVision’s former chairman. The widely publicized investment boosted confidence in the new company, in part because Ms. Zhao was a bankable movie star at the time.

阿里巴巴影业的股票被暂时停牌，在复牌两天前，黄有龙和妻子花了大约4亿美元，从文化中国前董事长手中收购了9%的股份。这一被广泛宣传的投资增强了人们对新公司的信心，部分原因是，赵薇当时是一位有票房号召力的电影明星。

But the couple paid for it with money from one of Mr. Xiao’s companies, the documents show, a fact not publicly known and not included in disclosures to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

但文件显示，这对夫妇用肖建华一家公司的钱支付了这笔费用，这一事实没有公开，也没有包括在向港交所披露的信息中。

The documents reveal that the Xiao company financed 60 percent of the purchase and privately lent Mr. Huang $125 million at 8 percent interest to pay for the majority of the couple’s 40 percent stake. Mr. Huang also received a $75 million loan from Credit Suisse to help pay for the shares. While the loan was in Mr. Huang’s name, Mr. Xiao’s team handled payments and correspondence with the bank, the documents show.

文件显示，肖建华的公司为收购提供了60%的资金，并以8%的利息私下借给黄有龙1.25亿美元，以买下这对夫妇持有的40%股份的大部分。黄有龙还从瑞士信贷获得了7500万美元贷款，帮助支付这些股份。文件显示，虽然贷款是以黄有龙的名义，但肖建华的团队负责处理付款和与银行的往来。

Mr. Huang did not respond to emails or questions sent to his Hong Kong office. In a statement, Alibaba said it was “not involved in the transaction, and had no knowledge about Mr. Huang and Ms. Zhao’s investment activities,” though it acknowledged it had consented to the transaction.

黄有龙没有回复发往他香港办公室的电子邮件或问题。阿里巴巴在声明中表示公司“没有参与这笔交易，对黄先生和赵女士的投资活动也不知情”，但承认公司同意了这笔交易。

The investment quickly paid off. In April 2015, shares in Alibaba Pictures soared as Alibaba said it was considering injecting some of its own entertainment assets into the company. Days later, Mr. Huang sold some of his holdings, netting a $75 million profit, or a return of 144 percent in four months. A near-identical amount was paid to Mr. Xiao’s company, the documents show.

这笔投资很快就得到了回报。2015年4月，阿里影业的股价飙升，因为阿里巴巴表示正在考虑将自己的一些娱乐资产注入该公司。几天后，黄有龙卖掉了他持有的部分股票，获得了7500万美元的利润，四个月的回报率达到144%。文件显示，肖建华的公司也获得了几乎相同的金额。

‘Jack’s Eyes and Ears’

马云的耳目

By the time Mr. Huang cashed out those holdings in Alibaba Pictures, Mr. Ma’s investment firm had already set its sights on a new business: Reorient Group, a Hong Kong brokerage run by a business partner of Erik Prince, the American security contractor.

在黄有龙套现所持阿里影业股份时，马云的投资公司已经把目光投向了一项新业务：瑞东集团，这是一家香港经纪公司，由美国安保承包商埃里克·普林斯的业务伙伴经营。

Taking over Reorient would give Mr. Ma and David Yu, a friend and Shanghai financier who was his partner on the deal, a foothold in Hong Kong’s financial sector. They would rename the company Yunfeng Financial after the firm they founded earlier, Yunfeng Capital.

收购瑞东将使马云和他的朋友、上海金融家、交易合作伙伴虞锋在香港金融业站稳脚跟。他们将公司更名为云锋金融，取自两人早些时候创立的公司云锋基金。

“This is a strategic investment for us,” Mr. Yu said at the time.

“这对我们来说是一项战略投资，”虞锋当时说。

Mr. Ma owns 40 percent of Yunfeng Capital and remains closely associated with it. (The “Yun” in Yunfeng is Mr. Ma’s given name in Chinese.) He took the stage in Beijing when they debuted the company in 2010 and Yunfeng Capital later joined Alibaba on at least a half-dozen deals.

马云拥有云锋基金40%的股份，并与该公司保持密切联系。（云锋中的“云”是指马云）。2010年在北京，云锋基金首次亮相时，马云登台致辞，随后云锋基金与阿里巴巴一起参与了至少六七宗交易。

The Reorient purchase is the clearest evidence that Mr. Xiao was a crucial shareholder in one of Mr. Ma’s companies. Through four offshore companies and a fifth firm owned by Mr. Huang, Mr. Xiao controlled roughly one-third of the company’s shares by the end of 2015, making his network the largest shareholder — even larger than Mr. Ma.

对瑞东的收购格外清楚地证明，肖建华是马云旗下一家公司的重要股东。到2015年底，通过四家离岸公司和黄有龙拥有的第五家公司，肖建华控制了瑞东大约三分之一的股份，使他的网络成为最大股东，甚至比马云还大。

The deal took weeks to negotiate, and both Mr. Huang and his wife were a regular presence in the talks, recalled one former senior Reorient executive who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deal. Mr. Huang acted as “Jack’s eyes and ears,” the executive said.

一名无权公开谈论这笔交易的前瑞东高管回忆说，这笔交易的谈判花了数周时间，黄有龙和他的妻子都经常出现在谈判中。这位高管说，黄有龙充当了“马云的耳目”。

数据显示肖建华通过黄有龙秘密持有的瑞东集团的股份。

The purchase followed a familiar playbook from Alibaba Pictures and other deals. Reorient’s top executives sold a controlling stake to Mr. Ma and his fellow investors, issuing them new shares at a steep discount, according to a regulatory filing. When news broke that a firm co-founded by Mr. Ma had made the investment, Reorient’s shares soared more than 150 percent.

此次收购延续了阿里巴巴影业和其他交易的熟悉套路。一份监管文件显示，瑞东的高管向马云和其他投资者出售了控股权，并以极低的折扣向他们发行了新股。当马云参与创办的公司进行了投资的消息传出后，瑞东的股价飙升了150%以上。

In a statement, Yunfeng played down Mr. Ma’s role in the firm, saying he “is not involved in the decision-making or operation.” But the former senior executive at Tomorrow Group said Mr. Ma was the main attraction. “When we had a chance to invest in his companies,” the executive said, “we often did this through Huang Youlong or Yunfeng Capital.”

在一份声明中，云锋淡化了马云在公司中的作用，称他“不参与决策或运营”。但那位明天集团的前高管说，马云是公司最大的吸引力。“当我们有机会投资他的公司时，”这位高管说，“我们经常通过黄有龙或云锋基金进行投资。”

Mr. Xiao’s network paid a premium to become the biggest shareholder, the documents show, offering a glimpse into the shadow world of Hong Kong finance, where side agreements often spell out ownership of shell companies.

文件显示，肖建华的网络为成为最大股东还额外支付了一笔费用，这让人们得以一窥香港金融业的隐秘世界，那里经常通过补充协议来说明空壳公司的持有者身份。

A contract between Mr. Huang and a company controlled by Mr. Xiao showed that they had to pay a $190 million premium to an unspecified beneficiary, effectively doubling the price of their investment.

黄有龙与肖建华控制的一家公司签订的一份合同显示，他们必须向一名未指明的受益人支付1.9亿美元的额外费用，这实际上使他们的投资价格翻了一番。

On paper, Mr. Huang retained a 10 percent stake himself, but a spreadsheet shows that even that holding was obtained with loans from Mr. Xiao’s company.

纸面上，黄有龙自己保留了10%的股份，但一份电子表格显示，就连这10%的股份也是从肖建华的公司贷款获得的。

At the time, the filing with regulators said nothing about Mr. Xiao, who, the documents show, actually invested alongside Mr. Ma in Reorient through three separate companies. Two of them were owned by stand-ins for Mr. Xiao, including a 27-year-old woman from the Inner Mongolian city where Tomorrow Group once operated.

当时，向监管机构提交的文件没有提到肖建华，文件显示，他实际上通过三家不同的公司与马云一起投资了瑞东。其中两家公司由肖建华的代持人拥有，其中包括一位27岁的女性，此人来自内蒙古的一座城市，明天集团曾经在那里有运营项目。

In separate statements, Mr. Ma, Yunfeng and Johnson Ko, the chairman of Reorient at the time, said they had no knowledge of the Xiao connection. “Reorient conducted thorough know-your-clients due diligence,” Mr. Ko said.

在各自的声明中，马云、云锋金融和时任瑞东董事会主席的高振顺表示，他们对于肖建华参与其中毫不知情。“瑞东对客户进行了彻底的尽职调查，”高振顺说。

Weeks after the deal was finalized, the ex-wife of Mr. Ma’s business partner, Mr. Yu, benefited enormously from Mr. Xiao’s continued interest in Yunfeng Financial. Two offshore entities controlled by Mr. Xiao paid $235 million to buy an additional stake in the company from the ex-wife.

交易敲定数周后，马云的商业伙伴虞锋的前妻从肖建华对云锋金融的持续兴趣中获得了可观的利益，肖建华控制的两家离岸实体支付了2.35亿美元，从虞锋前妻手中购买了该公司的更多股份。

She netted a windfall of more than $190 million, public records show. In its statement, Yunfeng Capital described her as “an independent investor.”

公开记录显示，她从中获利超过1.9亿美元。在声明中，云锋资本称她为“独立投资者”。

A Campaign Against Graft

反腐运动

In 2017, the dragnet of Mr. Xi’s corruption crackdown finally closed in on Mr. Xiao.

2017年，习近平的反腐之网终于将肖建华锁定。

Years earlier, in his first speech to the Politburo as Communist Party chief, Mr. Xi made clear that the party was facing an existential crisis after six decades of rule.

数年前，习近平在担任中共中央总书记后首次向政治局发表的讲话中明确表示，在执政60年后，中共正面临生存危机。

“A mass of facts tells us that if corruption becomes increasingly serious, it will inevitably doom the party and the state,” Mr. Xi said in November 2012.

“大量事实告诉我们，腐败问题越演越烈，最终必然会亡党亡国！”习近平在2012年11月说表示。

Before the year was out, government officials were being rounded up in an ever-widening campaign against graft, which also took down some of Mr. Xi’s most powerful political rivals.

在这一年结束之前，许多政府官员在不断扩大的反腐运动中被捕，这场运动也拿下了习近平一些最强大的政治对手。

In March 2013, Mr. Xi became president, and that same year his relatives shed hundreds of millions of dollars in insider investments. In a statement to The Times in 2014, a spokeswoman for Mr. Xiao confirmed that the president’s sister and brother-in-law had finalized the sale of their 50 percent stake in a Beijing investment company they had set up in partnership with a state-owned bank. Their stake was sold to a company founded by Mr. Xiao.

2013年3月，习近平成为国家主席，同年他的亲属抛售了数亿美元的内部投资。2014年，肖建华的一位发言人在给《纽约时报》中的声明中证实，习近平的姐姐和姐夫已确定出售他们在一家北京投资公司中持有的50%的股份，这家公司是他们与一家国有银行合作成立的。他们的股份卖给肖建华创办的一家公司。

The crackdown initially focused mainly on government and party officials and their relatives, not business leaders, but soon virtually no one was off limits. Mr. Xiao’s turn came under cover of night in January 2017, when he disappeared from his apartment at the Hong Kong Four Seasons Hotel.

这场反腐运动最初主要针对党政官员及其亲属，而非商业领袖，但很快几乎无人能够幸免。2017年1月的一个夜晚，肖建华在其香港四季酒店的住所失踪。

Video footage captured by security cameras showed he was taken away in a wheelchair, his head covered, accompanied by about a half-dozen unidentified men pushing a large suitcase. It is believed he was then transported by boat from Hong Kong, eluding border controls, to police custody in mainland China.

监控画面显示，他蒙着头、坐在轮椅上被带走，同行的还有大约六七名身份不明的男子，推着一个大行李箱。据信，他随后坐船离开香港，绕过了边境管制，后来被内地警方关押。

In the days that followed, Mr. Xiao’s relatives and associates scrambled to unload some of their holdings, including more than $60 million held in a Yunfeng Capital fund, the Tomorrow Group documents show. The company that bought the stake was run by a business associate of Mr. Huang’s, Chinese corporate records show.

明天集团的文件显示，在接下来的几天里，肖建华的亲戚和同事争先恐后地抛售了他们持有的一些股份，包括云峰金融的逾6000万美元资产。中国的公司记录显示，购买这些股份的公司由黄有龙的一个商业伙伴经营。

Mr. Xiao’s role as concierge to the Communist Party elite had come to an end. But his financial ties to Mr. Ma had not — just as Ant Group, the e-payments and personal lending company, had become Mr. Ma’s latest darling.

肖建华作为中共权贵看门人的角色结束了。但他与马云的财务关系却没有——此时电子支付和个人贷款公司蚂蚁集团正成为马云的新宠。

The Final Undoing

最终的崩溃

By 2018, Ant had more than 700 million active users, and the company was barreling its way toward an I.P.O.

到2018年，蚂蚁金服的活跃用户已超过7亿，公司正朝着上市的方向快速迈进。

Mr. Ma followed the old playbook in preparing for the offering, corralling a group of powerful political elites as investors, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021.

《华尔街日报》在2021年曾报道，马云在筹备IPO时遵循了老套路，找来了一群背景强大的政治精英作为投资者。

Mr. Xiao was secreted away in detention. But members of his network controlled about a tenth of a percentage point of Ant’s shares, according to data from WireScreen, a sister company of The Wire China that compiles Chinese corporate ownership data. Even that small fraction would be worth about $307 million if the I.P.O., as had been expected, valued the company at more than $313 billion.

肖建华遭秘密关押，但根据《连线中国》的姊妹公司WireScreen掌握的数据，他名下公司控制了蚂蚁金服大约0.1%的股份，蚂蚁金服的估值超过3130亿美元，如果IPO如外界预期的那样进行，即使这一小部分股份的价值也将达到3.07亿美元。

One Xiao employee, the corporate records show, was the single largest investor in a fund full of Mr. Ma’s friends and their relatives, including the mother of Ms. Zhao, the movie star. The fund was managed by Yunfeng Capital and was one of the largest holders of Ant shares.

公司记录显示，肖建华的一名员工是某基金的最大单一投资者，该基金由马云的朋友及其亲属组成，其中包括电影明星赵薇的母亲。该基金由云锋金融管理，是蚂蚁金服的最大股东之一。

Yunfeng and Ant said in statements that they were not aware of any connection between their investors and Mr. Xiao.

云峰金融和蚂蚁集团在声明中表示，他们并不知道投资者与肖建华之间存在任何关联。

By the end of 2019, as the Chinese authorities were unwinding Mr. Xiao’s network of companies, they saw concerning parallels in Ant’s ownership structure, according to Angela Huyue Zhang, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong who recently wrote a book about China’s regulation of technology companies.

香港大学法学教授张湖月最近写了一本关于中国的科技公司监管的书，她表示，到2019年底，随着中国的有关部门对肖建华的公司网络进行清理，他们看到了蚂蚁金服的所有权结构存在一些相似之处。

Like Mr. Xiao’s Tomorrow Group, Ant was dominated by a single person. And there were troublesome ripple effects of Mr. Xiao’s downfall. A bank he had controlled, Baoshang, filed for bankruptcy in 2020.

与肖建华的明天集团一样，蚂蚁金服也是由一个人主导。肖建华的垮台也带来了麻烦的连锁反应。他控制的包商银行于2020年申请破产。

一名男子走过包商银行的街头广告， 肖建华控制的该银行于2020年申请破产。

China’s central bank would need to intervene, Professor Zhang said, “if something bad happens to Ant like what happened to Baoshang.”

张湖月说，“如果蚂蚁金服发生像包商银行那样的灾难”，中国央行就需要干预了。

The authorities had drafted new rules that would rein in private financial systems, and Mr. Ma made their decision to intervene in Ant easier to justify during a speech in Shanghai.

政府有关部门已经起草了控制私人金融体系的新规则，马云在上海的一次演讲，进一步证明了他们干预蚂蚁金服的必要性。

Mr. Ma took aim at China’s state-dominated banking system, arguing that it constrained innovation and growth through a “pawnshop mentality” by lending only to those who posted collateral. He roasted financial regulators for being obsessed with minimizing risk.

马云将矛头对准了由国家主导的银行体系，认为该体系通过“当铺思维”限制了创新和增长，因为它只向提供抵押品的人贷款。他抨击金融监管机构一味追求风险最小化。

That was in October 2020. By early November, the Chinese government called off Ant’s I.P.O., the opening salvo in its assault on big tech. On social media, one post derided Mr. Ma’s remarks as “the most expensive speech in history.”

那是在2020年10月。到11月初，中国政府叫停了蚂蚁金服的首次公开募股，这是对大型科技企业发起攻击的开端。在社交媒体上，有一条帖子嘲笑马云的言论是“历史上最昂贵的演讲”。

Since then, Mr. Ma and his companies have been routed. Alibaba’s stock is down about 75 percent from its peak. Mr. Ma’s voting power in Ant has been mostly stripped away. A turnaround strategy announced by Alibaba last year has languished. Plans to publicly list some of its assets have been put on ice.

从那以后，马云和他的公司遭遇了重大打击。阿里巴巴的股价从最高点下跌了约75%。马云在蚂蚁金服的投票权已几乎被剥夺。阿里巴巴去年宣布的一项转型战略未能取得进展。部分资产上市的计划已被搁置。

Some of Mr. Ma’s friends haven’t fared any better. Mr. Huang was sued in Hong Kong for millions in unpaid debts. His wife, Ms. Zhao, has not appeared in a movie since 2019, though some references to her on the Chinese internet have been restored. Mr. Ma, in his statement, said he had not been in contact with either of them “for many years.”

马云一些朋友的情况也好不到哪里去。黄有龙因拖欠数千万美元债务在香港遭到起诉。他的妻子赵薇自2019年以来就没有在大银幕上露过面，尽管她的名字已经可以在中国的互联网上出现。马云在声明中说，他已经“多年”没有与他们中的任何一人有过联系。