By laying out U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining chip with China, President Trump has handed a gift to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in his efforts to undermine the Taiwanese government.

特朗普总统将美国对台军售作为与中国谈判的筹码，这无疑给试图削弱台湾政府的中国领导人习近平送上了一份大礼。

On Monday, China’s state media used Mr. Trump’s comments to send a message at home and to Taiwan: that the United States cannot be relied on to defend Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.

周一，中国官方媒体利用特朗普的言论向国内和台湾传达了一个信息：不能指望美国来保卫台湾——这个北京声称为其领土的岛屿民主政体。

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan, a frequent target of Beijing’s vitriol, and his Democratic Progressive Party can no longer rely on “unconditional indulgence” from the United States, said the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper, citing a Chinese researcher.

中国报纸《环球时报》援引一位中国研究人员的话称，经常遭到北京方面猛烈抨击的台湾总统赖清德及其民进党，已不能再指望美国的“无底线纵容”。

“Security cannot be bought with military purchases; if you become a pawn, you will only be squeezed dry,” said Col. Jiang Bin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense, on Monday, referring to Taiwan.

“军购买不来安全；甘当‘棋子’只会被榨干吃净，”中国国防部发言人蒋斌大校周一在谈到台湾时表示。

The American president’s comments had been released over the weekend, after Mr. Trump left a summit with Mr. Xi in Beijing on Friday. He said he was keeping on hold a decision about a package of weapons to Taiwan worth around $14 billion, and described it as a “very good negotiating chip” that could be used with Beijing.

特朗普上周五结束了在北京与习近平的峰会，周末他发表了相关言论。他表示，他将暂缓一项价值约140亿美元的对台武器一揽子计划的决定，并称其为一个可用于同北京周旋的“非常好的谈判筹码”。

“I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China,” he said in an interview with Fox News. It was not immediately clear what Mr. Trump wanted China to do in return.

“我暂时搁置了这个决定，这取决于中国，”他在接受福克斯新闻采访时表示。目前尚不清楚特朗普希望中国做出什么回报。

Pressure on Iran?

向伊朗施压？

The United States went into the summit hoping to persuade China to do more to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump later said he had discussed Iran with Mr. Xi but the details of their discussions have not emerged.

参加此次峰会时，美国希望说服中国采取更多措施，促使伊朗重新开放霍尔木兹海峡。特朗普后来表示，他与习近平讨论了伊朗问题，但讨论的细节尚未披露。

China has pushed Iran to negotiate with the United States, and has called for the Strait of Hormuz to be open.

中国一直敦促伊朗与美国谈判，并呼吁保持霍尔木兹海峡的开放。

本月德黑兰的一块广告牌，描绘着霍尔木兹海峡。

But Beijing has strong strategic reasons to avoid siding explicitly with the United States and Israel against Iran, its partner in the Middle East, in a war it has repeatedly said should not have happened.

但北京有强有力的战略理由避免明确与美国和以色列站在一边反对自己在中东的伙伴伊朗，北京曾多次表示这场战争本不应该发生。

Even if China were willing to use its influence over Tehran, it would not want it to be seen as an explicit quid pro quo for U.S. concessions on Taiwan, said ​​Bao Chengke, a researcher of Shanghai Cross-Strait Research Association, an organization in Shanghai.

上海海峡两岸研究会研究员包承柯表示，即使中国愿意利用其对德黑兰的影响力，也不希望这被视为是换取美国在台湾问题上做出让步的明确交换条件。

“He tends to act like a businessman, understanding issues through the lens of deal-making,” Mr. Bao said of Mr. Trump. “But tying the two issues so tightly together really isn’t feasible.”

“他比较偏向是企业家，他用更多交易的方式在理解这些问题，”包承柯在谈到特朗普时说。“但把两者关系衔接得这么紧的话，真不是可以衔接的。”

More Purchases of U.S. Goods?

购买更多美国商品？

If Mr. Trump were to suspend the $14 billion package, or scale back the number and sophistication of the weapons, China could respond in a few ways, said Xin Qiang, the director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at Fudan University.

复旦大学台湾研究中心主任信强表示，如果特朗普暂停这140亿美元的一揽子计划，或者缩减武器的数量和先进程度，中国可能会以几种方式做出回应。

For instance, China could buy more American farm produce and Boeing planes, Professor Xin said.

信强表示，例如，中国可以购买更多美国农产品和波音飞机。

President Trump and Boeing have already said that China had agreed to order 200 of the company’s planes. The Trump administration also said on Sunday that China had agreed to “purchase at least $17 billion per year of U.S. agricultural products” in 2026, 2027 and 2028, though the amount this year would be prorated.

特朗普总统和波音公司已经表示，中国同意订购200架该公司的飞机。特朗普政府周日还表示，中国已同意在2026、2027和2028年“每年购买至少170亿美元的美国农产品”，不过今年的金额将按比例折算。

Beijing’s official position is that Taiwan is a domestic issue and any continued U.S. arms sales to the island are unacceptable. But it can be pragmatic, too, Mr. Xin said.

北京的官方立场是，台湾问题属于中国内政，美国任何持续对台军售行为都不可接受。但信强表示，中国也可以很务实。

“China has never wanted to treat arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the United States,” he said. “But realistically, any issue can in essence become a bargaining chip in the course of international relations or great power competition.”

“中国一直不希望把对台军售这问题把它当作一个筹码来跟美国来谈，”他说。“但是我觉得实事求是的讲，在国际关系或者大国博弈过程中，本质上而言任何一个议题都是一个筹码。”

A Messaging Win for Beijing

北京在宣传上的胜利

In some ways, Beijing has already benefited from Mr. Trump’s gambit.

在某些方面，北京已经从特朗普的策略中获益。

Mr. Trump’s remarks suggested he had partly absorbed China’s depiction of Mr. Lai as a dangerous separatist seeking to lead the United States to war. (Mr. Lai and his government say Taiwan is in reality already independent, and that it is Beijing that is the aggressor.)

特朗普的言论表明，他已部分接受了中国对赖清德的描绘——一个试图将美国卷入战争的危险分裂分子。（赖清德及其政府表示，台湾实际上已经独立，北京才是侵略者。）

Mr. Trump also questioned whether the United States could successfully come to Taiwan’s defense in a war. “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent and, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,” he said.

特朗普还对美国能否在一场战争中成功保卫台湾表示质疑。“我不想看到有人独立，然后，你知道的，我们还得跑到9500英里之外去打仗，”他说。

台湾总统赖清德（右）去年在台湾东部某军事基地视察一架美国制造的战斗机。

Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who studies Chinese leadership politics, said: “I think Xi Jinping believes he succeeded in one respect in this summit — that is, in educating Trump on Taiwan.”

研究中国领导层政治的克莱蒙特·麦肯纳学院教授裴敏欣表示：“我认为习近平相信他在此次峰会的某一方面取得了成功——那就是在台湾问题上教育了特朗普。”

“In the view of Chinese people, Trump’s comments on the Taiwan issue are a massive breakthrough,” said Wang Wen, a former Chinese journalist in Beijing who is now a professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

“在中国人看来，特朗普对台湾问题的表态是巨大的突破，”王文说，他曾是驻北京的一名中国记者，现任北京人民大学教授。

Beijing can gain some advantage simply if Mr. Trump puts off any approval for long enough, some analysts said.

一些分析人士说，只要特朗普把批准军售的时间推迟得足够长，北京就能获得一些优势。

“The question is whether the pending $14 billion sale is delayed for weeks, months, or longer,” said Craig Singleton, the China Program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “A prolonged hold, especially one shaped by Beijing’s objections, would raise much more serious concerns about the reliability of U.S. deterrence.”

“问题在于，这项悬而未决的140亿美元军售会被推迟几周、几个月，还是更长的时间，”华盛顿保卫民主基金会中国项目高级主任克雷格·辛格尔顿说。“长时间的搁置，特别是因北京的反对而造成的搁置，将引发人们对美国威慑力可靠性的更严重担忧。”

Trouble for Taiwan?

台湾的麻烦？

Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Nationalist Party, which supports closer ties with China, has seized on this moment to argue that President Lai has pushed the island into a dangerous bind — distrusted by Beijing, unable to rely on Washington.

台湾的主要反对党——支持与中国建立更紧密关系的国民党——抓住了这个时机，称赖清德总统已将台湾推入了一个危险的困境：既不被北京信任，也无法指望华盛顿。

“I believe the Trump-Xi summit represents a turning point for Taiwan,” Su Chi, a former senior official who had worked under Nationalist Party administrations, said at a forum in Taipei. “Our big brother, America, I’m sorry, he has too many problems right now and simply cannot take care of us here.”

曾在国民党政府担任高级官员的苏起在台北的一个论坛上表示：“川习会我认为是台湾的一个转折点。美国老大哥，对不起，他现在有很多事情，他根本顾不到这里。”

Mr. Lai and his officials have argued that Mr. Trump’s comments do not shift relations. They have pointed to parts of Mr. Trump’s comments, including that “nothing’s changed” on policy toward Taiwan. They have also pointed to comments from Trump administration officials, including Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, that policy on Taiwan is unchanged.

赖清德及其官员则称，特朗普的言论并没有改变双方关系。他们指出了特朗普评论中的某些部分，包括在对台政策上“没有任何改变”。他们还援引包括美国贸易代表贾米森·格里尔在内的特朗普政府官员的表态，他们称对台政策没有改变。

“I don’t think the Taiwanese public needs to worry,” Chen Ming-chi, a Taiwanese deputy minister of foreign affairs, told reporters. “I believe the United States security commitments to us and our bilateral economic and trade relations are being maintained just as before.”

“我想台湾民众本来就不需要担心，”台湾外交部次长陈明祺对记者说。“美方对于我们的安全承诺，对于我们双边的这个经贸的关系，我想都还是保持跟以前一样。”

There were no heavy suitcases aboard the borrowed jet that secretly carried President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan toward Africa. Instead, to save fuel for a secret, 15,000-mile journey to get around restricted airspace, his entourage brought only carry-on bags.

秘密搭载台湾总统赖清德前往非洲的借用专机上没有沉重的行李箱。为了节省燃油，飞过这段绕行受限空域的2.4万公里秘密旅程，他的随行人员只带了随身行李。

The stripped-back, high-stakes mission, revealed by Taiwanese officials who had been on the flight, and who showed documents to back up their account of what happened, was aimed at outmaneuvering Beijing’s latest attempts to isolate Taiwan.

乘坐该航班的台湾官员透露了这项精简的高风险的任务，并展示了支持其说法的文件。此行旨在挫败北京最近试图孤立台湾的企图。

China had been gloating earlier after it dealt an embarrassing blow to the president of Beijing’s rival, Taiwan, and his government’s efforts to preserve the island’s standing on the global stage.

中国此前一直沾沾自喜，因为它令台湾这个北京竞争对手的总统及其政府维护台湾国际地位的努力遭遇了一次难堪的挫败。

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan had been invited by the tiny southern African kingdom of Eswatini to attend celebrations in April marking King Mswati III’s 40 years on the throne. Eswatini is the only African country that still maintains official diplomatic relations with Taiwan and not China.

台湾总统赖清德应南部非洲小国斯威士兰的邀请，原定于4月出席庆祝国王姆斯瓦蒂三世登基40周年的庆典。斯威士兰是目前唯一与台湾而非中国保持正式外交关系的非洲国家。

Mr. Lai was forced to call off the trip after three other countries rescinded permits for him to fly through their airspace to reach Eswatini. The three nations did so apparently because of pressure from Beijing, which says Taiwan is its territory and has no rightful place in diplomacy.

在其他三个国家撤销了允许他飞越其领空前往斯威士兰的许可后，赖清德被迫取消了这次行程。这三个国家显然是因为受到北京的压力，北京称台湾是其领土，在外交上没有合法地位。

Then, in a twist, Mr. Lai announced in early May: “I’ve arrived.”

随后发生了反转，赖清德在5月初宣布：“我到了。”

He had reached Eswatini on a covert flight across the Indian Ocean that appeared to have caught Beijing by surprise. The Chinese government likened Mr. Lai’s actions to a rat running across a street. Mr. Lai celebrated his trip as a plucky victory against China’s campaign to marginalize Taiwan.

他乘坐一架穿越印度洋的秘密航班抵达斯威士兰，这似乎让北京措手不及。中国政府将赖清德的行为比作过街老鼠。赖清德则将此次行程颂为对抗中国边缘化台湾运动的英勇胜利。

台湾总统府提供的照片显示，赖清德于5月在斯威士兰的一处会议厅会见了斯威士兰国王姆斯瓦蒂三世。

This account of Mr. Lai’s covert journey to Africa and back draws on interviews with two officials who had accompanied him on the trip. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security and diplomatic details and to share related documents, such as the flight permits that were revoked.

这份关于赖清德此次秘密往返非洲的报道取材于对两名随行官员的采访。这些官员在要求匿名的情况下讨论了敏感的安全和外交细节，并分享了相关文件，例如被撤销的飞行许可。

The entourage traveled a total of 15,815 miles on a borrowed plane, flying nearly as far from any airport as safety rules usually allowed, all to slip through and around the airspaces of unwelcoming countries, the officials said.

官员们表示，代表团乘坐一架借来的飞机，总共飞行了25451公里，飞行路线几乎达到了安全规定通常允许距离机场的极限，这一切都是为了悄悄穿过和绕开那些不欢迎他们的国家领空。

The high-altitude cat-and-mouse game between China and Mr. Lai reflects the new, more intense phase of Beijing’s campaign to erase Taiwan’s leaders from the global map. That campaign is reflected in the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s agenda in his summit with President Trump in Beijing. Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that mishandling Chinese concerns on Taiwan could push relations between Beijing and Washington into an “extremely dangerous" place.

中国与赖清德之间这场高空猫鼠游戏反映出，北京将台湾领导人从全球版图上抹去这一行动已经进入了更激烈的新阶段。这一行动也体现在中国领导人习近平在北京与特朗普总统的峰会议程中。习近平告诉特朗普，如果处理不好中国在台湾问题上的关切，可能会将北京和华盛顿之间的关系推向“十分危险”的境地。

For years, China has used its economic clout to try to compel governments, companies and organizations to treat Taiwan as China’s territory. But this was the first time that it has tried to sever the Taiwanese leader’s access to international flight paths, the Taiwanese officials said.

多年来，中国一直利用其经济影响力试图迫使各国政府、公司和组织将台湾视为中国领土。但台湾官员说，这还是中国首次试图切断台湾领导人进入国际航线的通道。

“This is another front in the ever escalating ‘lawfare’ and other pressure campaigns on Taiwan,” said Julian Ku, a professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, referring to the deployment of laws and rules to try to pressure adversaries. “This tactic shows that Beijing is not going to back down from seeking out new legal mechanisms to harass and delegitimize Lai.”

霍夫斯特拉大学莫里斯·A·迪恩法学院教授古举伦(Julian Ku)表示：“这是针对台湾不断升级的‘法律战’和其他施压运动的另一条战线。”他指的是利用法律和规则来试图向对手施压的做法。“这种策略表明，北京不会放弃寻找新的法律机制来骚扰赖清德，并使其丧失合法性。”

Even as Mr. Lai joined in celebrations with the king, his advisers were wrestling with their next challenge: How to get him safely home now that the Chinese government was alerted to his arrival in the country.

就在赖清德与国王一起参加庆祝活动时，他的顾问们正在努力应对下一个挑战：既然中国政府已经警觉到他抵达该国，该如何让他安全回家。

A Routine Visit, Thwarted

一次被阻挠的例行访问

Mr. Lai had originally planned to leave for Eswatini on April 22 for the celebrations and talks on strengthening ties between the two sides.

赖清德原计划于4月22日启程前往斯威士兰参加庆典，并就加强双边关系进行会谈。

Eswatini, formerly called Swaziland, is one of just a dozen states in the world with official ties with Taiwan. In the past decade, China has used its growing influence to nearly halve the number of countries that recognize Taiwan, giving Eswatini outsize importance in the island’s diplomacy.

斯威士兰（Eswatini，旧称Swaziland）是世界上仅有的十几个与台湾保持官方关系的国家之一。过去十年里，中国利用其日益增长的影响力使承认台湾的国家数量几乎减半，这让斯威士兰在台湾外交中具有非同寻常的重要性。

Mr. Lai’s visit would “demonstrate Taiwan’s determination and commitment to engaging with the world,” his office had said when it first announced his trip.

赖清德办公室在首次宣布他的行程时曾表示，他的访问将“彰显台湾走向世界的决心与承诺”。

When Taiwanese presidents visited Eswatini before, obtaining permits to fly through other countries’ airspace to get there was routine. International airspace is governed as a mosaic of national jurisdictions, where countries hold the power to grant or deny passage, though permission to fly through is rarely denied.

以前台湾总统访问斯威士兰时，获得飞越他国领空以抵达该国的许可是常规。国际空域被划分为由不同国家管辖的拼图，各国拥有批准或拒绝通行的权力，尽管过境许可很少被拒绝。

Taiwan had obtained overflight permits from 16 countries for Mr. Lai’s trip, according to Mr. Lai’s security officials, who showed them to The New York Times.

赖清德的安全官员向《纽约时报》展示了相关文件，称台湾为赖清德的行程获得了16个国家的飞越许可。

But before Mr. Lai was due to fly to Eswatini, word began to reach his office that the Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar, which together control a bloc of airspace out into the Indian Ocean, were suggesting that Mr. Lai reconsider his plans.

但在赖清德原定飞往斯威士兰之前，他的办公室开始收到消息，称共同控制着延伸至印度洋上一大片空域的塞舌尔、毛里求斯和马达加斯加建议赖清德重新考虑他的计划。

Then on April 17, the countries notified Taiwan that they were rescinding their permits.

随后，4月17日，这些国家通知台湾他们正在撤销许可。

台湾总统府提供的照片显示，姆斯瓦蒂三世国王为赖清德举行了隆重的军事欢迎仪式。

After failing to persuade the three countries to reverse their decisions, Mr. Lai’s office convened a news conference to announce his trip was off. They described it as a “postponement.” But there seemed no easy way for Mr. Lai to make the trip.

在未能说服这三个国家收回成命后，赖清德办公室召开新闻发布会宣布他的行程取消。他们将其描述为“推迟”。但对赖清德来说，似乎没有简单的方法可以成行。

Mauritius and Madagascar did not respond to requests for comment on their decisions. The Seychelles referred to an earlier statement defending its decision as in line with its “one-China policy” and “non-recognition of Taiwan as a State.”

毛里求斯和马达加斯加没有回应就其决定置评的请求。塞舌尔提到了早前的一份声明，为自己的决定辩护，称其符合该国的“一个中国政策”和“不承认台湾是一个国家”的立场。

Taiwanese officials had no doubt that Beijing had brought about their U-turn.

台湾官员毫不怀疑是北京迫使这些国家彻底改变了立场。

“The actual reason is the strong pressure exerted by the Chinese authorities, including economic coercion,” Pan Men-an, a senior aide to Mr. Lai, told reporters at the news briefing announcing that the trip had to be called off.

“真正的原因是，中国当局施加了巨大压力，包括经济胁迫，”赖清德的高级助手潘孟安在宣布行程不得不取消的新闻发布会上对记者说。

The Chinese foreign ministry praised Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar as acting in line with the “one-China principle.” That is China’s view that Taiwan is a part of its territory, and the Communist Party-led government in Beijing is the sole legitimate authority over that one country.

中国外交部赞扬塞舌尔、毛里求斯和马达加斯加的行动符合“一个中国原则”。这是北京所持的立场，即台湾是中国领土的一部分，而北京以共产党为领导的政府是中国唯一的合法代表。

This was an embarrassing setback for Mr. Lai, who is not given to making compromises and acutely sensitive about asserting Taiwan’s separate status. Last year, Mr. Lai was forced to abandon a planned trip to Latin America after the Trump administration denied his request to stop over in New York.

这对向来不愿妥协、对维护台湾独立地位极为敏感的赖清德而言，是一次尴尬的挫败。去年，在特朗普政府拒绝了他在纽约过境的请求后，赖清德被迫放弃了原定的拉丁美洲之行。

But his team had a plan.

但他的团队有了一个计划。

A Stealth Mission on a Royal Jet

王室专机的秘密任务

Mr. Lai’s team did not have much time. They needed to find a plane and a route to Eswatini that could get around the airspace over the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar, and then also bring Mr. Lai safely home.

赖清德的团队时间不多了。他们要找到一架飞机以及一条飞往斯威士兰的航线，既能绕开塞舌尔、毛里求斯和马达加斯加的领空，又能将赖清德安全带回家。

They approached Eswatini’s government about borrowing the king’s royal jet, which had originally belonged to a Taiwanese airline. The Airbus A340 plane had four engines, meaning that it could skirt around blocked airspace if needed by flying deep across the Indian Ocean, far from any airport. Such a maneuver would ordinarily be forbidden to the two-engine passenger aircraft that Taiwan usually charters for presidential trips abroad.

他们联系了斯威士兰政府，要求借用国王的王室专机，这架专机原本属于一家台湾航空公司。这架空客A340飞机拥有四个引擎，这意味着如有必要，它可以深入印度洋上空飞行，远离任何机场，从而绕过受封锁的空域。而台湾通常为总统出访包租的双引擎客机通常被禁止进行此类飞行。

The deputy prime minister of Eswatini, Thulisile Dladla, visited Taiwan on the royal jet. Her visit was described as aimed at bolstering relations.

斯威士兰副首相图利西莱·德拉德拉乘坐这架王室专机访问了台湾。她的访问被描述为旨在加强双边关系。

In the early hours of May 2, the royal jet flew back to Eswatini. Mr. Lai was on it.

5月2日凌晨，这架王室专机飞回了斯威士兰。赖清德就在机上。

His trip was a secret to almost everyone in Taiwan, including inside Mr. Lai’s government, the officials said. He was accompanied by about two dozen Taiwanese officials.

官员们说，他的行程对台湾几乎所有人来说都是秘密，包括赖清德政府内部人员。随行的有大约20余名台湾官员。

Mr. Lai’s staff and technicians had prepared the plane for an unusually long journey. To reduce the plane’s weight and save fuel, the passengers were allowed only carry-on baggage. But meals during the flight of over 14 hours remained “standard business class,” including fried chicken and rice porridge, said one official.

赖清德的工作人员和技术人员为这次异常漫长的旅程做好了飞机准备工作。为了减轻飞机重量和节省燃油，乘客只被允许携带随身行李。但一位官员表示，在超过14小时的飞行中，餐食仍保持“标准商务舱”水平，包括炸鸡和米粥。

Security advisers used satellite phones to report to Taipei every two hours. The plane flew through the airspace of Madagascar and Mauritius; neither country appeared to be aware of who was onboard the plane, according to the Taiwanese officials.

安全顾问使用卫星电话每两小时向台北汇报一次。飞机飞越了马达加斯加和毛里求斯的领空；据台湾官员称，这两个国家似乎都不知道飞机上载有何人。

They timed their arrival in Eswatini for the morning, so that Mr. Lai could go straight into his diplomatic activities. King Mswati III made sure that the events included repeat performances of anniversary celebrations that Mr. Lai had missed, including a fireworks display.

他们特意将抵达斯威士兰的时间安排在上午，以便赖清德能够直接参加外交活动。国王姆斯瓦蒂三世确保活动中包含了赖清德错过的周年庆典的重演环节，包括烟花表演。

斯威士兰副首相图利西莱·德拉德拉（右）陪同赖清德返回台湾，两人于5月5日前往桃园国际机场参加新闻发布会。

Mr. Lai’s flight back to Taiwan was even longer. To avoid any trouble, the royal plane flew around the air zones of Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar, tracing an arc southeast across the Indian Ocean. If the plane had been fully loaded, the length of the journey may have brought fuel levels uncomfortably low. But there was more than enough.

赖清德飞回台湾的航程甚至更长。为了避免任何麻烦，王室专机绕开了塞舌尔、毛里求斯和马达加斯加的空域，在印度洋上向东南划出一条弧线。如果飞机满载，如此漫长的航程可能会导致燃油储备降至令人不安的低水平。但当时的燃油还绰绰有余。

In line with the security protocol for presidential flights, four Taiwanese military jets flew up to escort Mr. Lai’s plane as it approached Taiwan. But no threats emerged, and Mr. Lai landed safely at Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei.

按照总统航班的安全方案，在赖清德的飞机接近台湾时，四架台湾军用喷气式战斗机升空护航。但并未出现任何威胁，赖清德安全降落在台北附近的桃园国际机场。

The political reaction from Beijing was unusually intense. Chinese officials deeply dislike Mr. Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party, which rejects Beijing’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan. The Chinese foreign ministry described Mr. Lai’s trip as a “farcical ‘illegal exit’.”

北京的政治反应异常激烈。中国官员极度反感赖清德及其所属的民进党，该党拒绝接受北京对台湾的主权主张。中国外交部将赖清德的行程描述为“外窜闹剧”。

There was a vague agreement that China would purchase Boeing jets and more American soybeans. There was discussion about Iran and opening the Strait of Hormuz, and a nod to other issues, like cracking down on chemicals used to make fentanyl.

双方达成了一项模糊的协议，中国将购买波音飞机以及更多的美国大豆。伊朗问题和开放霍尔木兹海峡也在讨论之列，此外还顺带提及了其他议题，比如打击芬太尼前体化学品。

But President Trump departed Beijing on Friday with almost nothing concrete to show for his two-day summit with President Xi Jinping of China. After months of buildup and a delay necessitated by Mr. Trump’s difficulty in extricating the United States from the war with Iran, the summit ended with no major public progress on the Middle East, trade, Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence or any of the other myriad issues that are sources of friction between the world’s two superpowers.

然而，特朗普总统在周五离开北京时，他与中国领导人的两天峰会几乎未能拿出任何实质成果。此次峰会经过数月的酝酿，并因特朗普难以让美国从与伊朗的战争中抽身而被迫推迟，最终在涉及中东、贸易、台湾、核扩散、人工智能以及世界两个超级大国之间引发摩擦的众多其他议题上，未能取得重大公开进展。

Instead, Mr. Trump seemed intent on a different kind of diplomacy, forging a personal bond with a Chinese leader who appeared far more focused on advancing his own nation’s strategic agenda.

相反，特朗普似乎更醉心于另一种外交——与这位中国领导人建立私人情谊，而习近平显然更专注于推进本国的战略议程。

Mr. Trump toasted Mr. Xi as “my friend” at their banquet in Beijing on Thursday and said he had “become really a friend” when they sat down before the cameras on Friday.

特朗普周四在北京的宴会上举杯称习近平是“我的朋友”，并在周五两人面对镜头坐下时表示，他又说两人已“真的成了朋友”。

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, asked at a briefing during the summit whether Mr. Xi considered Mr. Trump a friend, responded with boilerplate: “the two sides exchanged views on major issues.”

峰会期间，有记者在记者会上问中国外交部发言人，中国领导人是否视特朗普为朋友，发言人以官方套话回应：“双方就重大议题交换了意见。”

Mr. Trump has hailed the summit in Beijing as a major success, highlighting the personal bond he says he has built with China’s longtime leader. But the feeling is not necessarily mutual, as evidenced by Mr. Xi’s more measured tone and the lack of clarity about any major agreements.

特朗普将此次北京峰会誉为重大成功，并强调他与中国的这位长期领导人建立了私人情谊。但这种感觉未必是相互的，习近平更为谨慎的措辞以及双方在重大协议上的模糊状态都说明了这一点。

Orville Schell, vice president of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, called the summit “quite insubstantial and aspirational.”

纽约亚洲协会美中关系中心副主任夏伟(Orville Schell)表示，此次峰会“相当空洞，流于愿景”。

“We have Trump dreaming out loud,” he said.

“特朗普这是在公开畅想，”他说。

The mismatch shows the risks in Mr. Trump’s personality-driven foreign policy, his bet that he can solve the world’s problems and defend American interests by his charm and force of will. In Mr. Xi, the U.S. president faced a counterpart this week well versed in Mr. Trump’s desire for praise and pomp, and with an apparent strategy for how to exploit it.

这种落差暴露了特朗普人格魅力驱动型外交的风险，他押注于凭借个人魅力和意志力来解决世界的问题，维护美国利益。而他面对的习近平则显然非常熟悉特朗普对赞美和盛大场面的偏好，并显然有一套如何加以利用的策略。

The result, analysts said, was a summit that illustrated the growing confidence of China on the world stage alongside a strategically muddled U.S. foreign policy under Mr. Trump.

分析人士表示，此次峰会的结果折射出中国在国际舞台上与日俱增的自信，以及特朗普领导下战略混乱的美国外交。

The summit might yet come to be seen as the start of a shift toward a more stable relationship between the United States and China. But few of even the limited accomplishments that Mr. Trump spoke about were confirmed by China, while Mr. Xi set the tone with an assertive posture over Taiwan.

这场峰会未来或许仍可能被视为美中关系走向更稳定阶段的开端。但即便是特朗普提到的那些有限成果，也几乎没有得到中方确认；与此同时，习近平则以在台湾问题上的强硬姿态主导了整体基调。

Experts say there is no question that personal chemistry between leaders is crucial, especially when authoritarian, centralized countries like China are involved.

专家指出，领导人之间的私人默契至关重要，这一点毋庸置疑，尤其是在涉及像中国这样权力高度集中的威权国家尤为如此。

Susan L. Shirk, a senior State Department Asia specialist in the 1990s, said President Bill Clinton worked hard to establish a rapport with Jiang Zemin, the Chinese leader at the time; he would keep his eyes on Mr. Jiang even during the translation of his remarks, Ms. Shirk recalled.

上世纪90年代曾任国务院亚洲事务高级官员的谢淑丽(Susan L. Shirk)回忆，克林顿总统曾竭力与时任中国领导人江泽民建立私人默契；即便在译员翻译的时候，克林顿也一直注视着江泽民。

But Mr. Trump’s lavishing of praise on Mr. Xi was different, Ms. Shirk said, especially in contrast to the Chinese leader’s more restrained language. At times it was “embarrassing,” she said, like when Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview during the summit that Mr. Xi was “tall, very tall,” and then veered into ethnic stereotyping: “especially for this country, because they tend to be a little bit shorter.”

但谢淑丽表示，特朗普对中国领导人的溢美之词却有所不同，尤其是与中国领导人更为克制的言辞相比。她说，有时甚至到了“令人尴尬”的地步，例如特朗普在峰会期间接受福克斯新闻主持人肖恩·汉尼提采访时，称中国领导人“个子很高，非常高”，然后又发表了带有族裔刻板印象的言论：“尤其是对这个国家的人来说，因为他们往往个子矮一点。”

“He was flattering him excessively and it was clearly not working,” said Ms. Shirk, a professor at the University of California, San Diego. “The lack of preparation created this kind of void of substance in the meeting, and the Chinese stepped into that void.”

“他奉承得过了头，而且显然没有取得效果，”现在加州大学圣地亚哥分校当教授的谢淑丽说。"准备不足在会谈中造成了这种实质内容的空洞，而中国人则填补了这种空洞。"

Mr. Trump has already discovered that the power of his personality has limits in foreign policy. In his first term, he failed to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons despite asserting that he and Kim Jong-un, the country’s leader, “fell in love.” In his second term, he has failed to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite a dozen phone calls with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and their summit in Alaska.

特朗普其实早已发现，他的个人魅力在外交政策中的作用是有限的。在第一任期中，尽管他声称自己与朝鲜领导人金正恩“坠入爱河”，但仍未能让朝鲜放弃核武器。在第二任期中，尽管他与俄罗斯总统普京通了十几次电话，并在阿拉斯加举行峰会，但依旧未能停止俄罗斯对乌克兰的入侵。

Still, asked to name the summit’s most important achievement for the United States, Mr. Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier: “I think the most important thing is relationship. It’s all about relationship.”

不过，当被问及此次峰会对美国而言最重要的成果是什么时，特朗普对福克斯新闻主持人布雷特·拜尔表示：“我认为最重要的是关系。一切都在于关系。”

“It sounds like something that doesn’t mean anything, but it’s everything,” Mr. Trump said.

“这听起来好像毫无意义，但其实它意味着一切，”特朗普说。

China, too, hailed the personal aspect of the visit. Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said after the summit that “head-of-state diplomacy is the ‘guiding star’” of “the most important and complex bilateral relationship in the world.” He said Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi spent nearly nine hours together and had been able “to achieve overall stability after experiencing ups and downs.”

中方也高度评价了这次访问中领导人个人层面的意义。中国外长王毅在峰会后表示，“中美关系是世界上最重要、最复杂的双边关系，元首外交是两国关系的‘定盘星’。”他说，特朗普与习近平共处近九小时，并且能够“推动中美关系历经跌宕起伏实现了总体稳定”。

But China entered the meeting with a broader agenda, while deflating U.S. claims of success. Mr. Xi warned Mr. Trump about the threat of a clash over Taiwan, even as Mr. Trump said nothing about the island democracy until after Air Force One took off from Beijing. Mr. Wang also suggested that the achievements Mr. Trump had trumpeted — for example, China buying as many as 750 “big beautiful” Boeing jets — were not a done deal. On Saturday, China said it would acquire some aircraft, but stopped short of confirming a specific purchase of Boeing planes.

但中国是带着更广泛的议程进入此次会谈的，同时也在淡化美国所谓的“成功”。习近平警告特朗普台湾问题可能引发冲突，而特朗普直到“空军一号”离开北京后才首次谈及台湾。王毅也暗示，特朗普此前大肆宣传的成果——例如中国购买多达750架“又大又漂亮的”波音飞机——并非板上钉钉。周六，中国表示将采购部分飞机，但并未确认具体的采购数量。

“The working teams of both sides are still discussing the relevant details and will finalize the results as soon as possible,” Mr. Wang said, referring to the economic talks between the United States and China.

“双方工作团队仍在就有关细节进行磋商，将尽快锁定成果，”王毅在谈及美中经济对话时表示。

The disjointed dynamic stood in contrast to Mr. Xi’s relationship with the leader he does call a friend: Mr. Putin. Their summits have featured much warmer displays than the pomp in Beijing this week, including the time they made pancakes and drank vodka in 2018. Their meetings often include joint statements, including the one in 2022, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that their countries’ friendship had “no limits.”

这种脱节的互动与习近平和那位他真正称为“朋友”的领导人——普京——之间的关系形成了鲜明对比。习近平与普京的峰会所展现出的亲密程度远超本周北京的盛大场面。2018年，两人甚至曾一起摊煎饼、喝伏特加。他们的会晤往往还会发表联合声明，包括2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰前夕那份著名声明，其中称两国友谊“没有上限”。

Mr. Putin will visit China next week, the Kremlin said on Saturday. The announcement was a reminder that Mr. Xi still looks to Russia as a crucial geopolitical partner and helps enable Russia’s war with trade and technology — a relationship that many in Washington see as a threat to American security.

克里姆林宫周六表示，普京将于下周访问中国。这一消息提醒人们，习近平仍将俄罗斯视为关键地缘政治伙伴，并通过贸易与技术帮助俄罗斯维持战争——这种关系在华盛顿许多人眼中是对美国安全的威胁。

Mr. Trump could see Mr. Xi again at a gathering of Asia and Pacific region leaders in Shenzhen, China, in November and at the Group of 20 summit that Mr. Trump will host at his Doral golf resort near Miami in December. Mr. Trump also said Mr. Xi would visit the United States on Sept. 24, a sign that the high-level diplomacy that Mr. Trump has kicked off with China may only be beginning.

特朗普可能于11月在深圳举行的亚太地区领导人峰会上，以及12月在迈阿密附近他拥有的多拉高尔夫度假村主办的二十国集团峰会上再次与习近平会面。特朗普还表示，习近平将于9月24日访问美国，这表明特朗普开启的对华高层外交可能才刚刚开始。

Whether all the meetings will yield benefits for the United States is yet to be seen, analysts said, though few dispute that any U.S. president needs to build a relationship with his Chinese counterpart. Mr. Schell, the Asia Society expert, cautioned that Mr. Xi had little track record of making concessions to the United States.

分析人士表示，这些会晤最终是否会给美国带来实际利益仍有待观察，但几乎没人否认，美国总统必须与中国领导人建立关系。亚洲协会的专家夏伟则提醒说，习近平过去几乎没有向美国作出让步的先例。

If concrete agreements do “come as a result of the bonhomie of this summit, I think we might be able to call it something of an inflection point,” Mr. Schell said. “That has not yet happened.”

如果实质性协议“真的因这次峰会的友好气氛而达成，我认为或许可以称之为一个转折点”，夏伟说。“但这种情况目前还没有发生。”

Before he shook hands with President Xi Jinping of China in Beijing this past week, Marco Rubio was an official enemy of the Chinese state.

就在上周在北京与中国国家主席习近平握手之前，马可·鲁比奥还是中国官方眼中的敌人。

As a senator representing Florida, Mr. Rubio was among Mr. Xi’s harshest critics in Washington. He accused the Chinese leader of “crimes against humanity” and of plotting to weaken the United States. Fed up, Mr. Xi’s government placed sanctions on Mr. Rubio in 2020 and banned him from entering the country.

作为代表佛罗里达州的参议员，鲁比奥曾是华盛顿最严厉的习近平批评者之一。他指责这位中国领导人犯下“反人类罪”，并谋划削弱美国。忍无可忍之下，习近平政府于2020年对他实施制裁，并禁止他入境。

So Mr. Rubio, now President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, posed a sticky problem ahead of Mr. Trump’s first visit to China in his second term. But China creatively fudged the issue, allowing Mr. Rubio to accompany his boss and even meet the Chinese leader.

这样一来，在特朗普第二任期首次访华前，如今身为特朗普政府国务卿兼国家安全顾问的鲁比奥成了一个棘手的问题。但中方创造性地模糊处理了这一问题，允许鲁比奥随上司出访，甚至与中方领导人会面。

As Mr. Xi worked his way down a line of U.S. officials outside the Great Hall of the People, Mr. Rubio greeted him cordially without a smile. But Mr. Rubio later appeared delighted by the grandeur of a government he denounced less than 18 months ago as “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.”

当习近平在人民大会堂外走过一排美国官员时，鲁比奥礼貌地与他打招呼，但没有笑容。不过，鲁比奥后来似乎对这个政府的恢宏气势感到愉悦，尽管不到18个月前，他还谴责其为“我国有史以来最强大、最危险的同级别对手”。

Inside the hall, as he stood with fellow U.S. officials at a long wooden table awaiting the start of their meeting with Chinese counterparts, Mr. Rubio seemed to marvel at the grand building, smiling as he repeatedly gestured toward its high ceiling.

在会堂内，当他与其他美国官员站在一张长木桌旁等待与中国官员会晤开始时，鲁比奥似乎对这座宏伟建筑感到惊叹，他微笑着反复指向高耸的天花板。

Mr. Rubio, who entered the Trump administration with a reputation as a leading China hawk, has become more accommodating toward Beijing. He has talked about looking for areas of cooperation, in contrast to his years of emphasizing the party’s human rights abuses.

鲁比奥以“对华鹰派”代表人物身份进入特朗普政府，如今对北京的态度已变得更加温和。他开始谈论寻找合作领域，这与他多年来强调中共人权侵犯的做法形成对比。

The difference, he told NBC News, is that he has a different job. “I’m the chief diplomat of the country, and I execute on the president’s foreign policy,” he said.

他在接受NBC News采访时表示，区别在于他的职位不同了。“我是这个国家的首席外交官，我执行的是总统的外交政策，”他说。

And the American president, an admirer of Mr. Xi, has said the two nations must build strong relations.

而美国总统——习近平的一名仰慕者——表示，两国必须建立牢固的关系。

Mr. Trump’s effusiveness over China was evident throughout his two-day trip. On Friday, at tea with Mr. Xi, he raved: “This has been an incredible visit.”

特朗普对中国的热情在为期两天的访问中显露无遗。周五与习近平喝茶时，他称赞道：“这是一次令人难以置信的访问。”

“I think a lot of good has come of it,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great, for both countries.”

“我认为这次访问取得了很多成果，”特朗普说。“我们达成了一些非常棒的贸易协议，对两国都非常好。”

As for Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump rolled out his usual praise: “He’s a man I respect greatly. We’ve become really friendly.”

至于习近平，特朗普一如既往地给予赞扬：“他是我非常尊重的人。我们已经变得非常友好。”

Mr. Rubio had a more sober take on China policy. He said in the NBC interview that the United States would need to rebuild industrial manufacturing, and that “the Chinese are not going to like it, because they want to dominate those industries, but that’s what’s good for the American people.” He argued the United States should not be selling some advanced semiconductor chips to China. He also insisted that the U.S. government would not accept “any forced change in the status quo” to Taiwan, the de facto independent island that the party aims to control.

鲁比奥对中国政策的态度则更为冷静。他在NBC的采访中表示，美国需要重建工业制造业，“中国人不会喜欢这一点，因为他们想主导这些产业，但这对美国人民有利。”他主张美国不应向中国出售某些先进半导体芯片。他还坚称，美国政府不会接受台湾“现状的任何强迫性改变”——台湾是事实上的独立岛屿，而中共旨在控制它。

Under Mr. Rubio, the State Department has continued to carry out aggressive actions against China. That includes imposing sanctions on Chinese companies for various activities around the world. And the agency’s office commonly known as “China House” continues to try to help craft China policy that challenges the party.

在鲁比奥领导下，国务院继续对中国采取强硬行动，包括因全球各地的各种活动对多家中国公司实施制裁。俗称为“中国屋”(China House)的国务院下属机构中国事务办公室继续致力于制定挑战中共的中国政策。

But in his public remarks, Mr. Rubio has been keen to underscore the potential for cooperation with China, in alignment with Mr. Trump’s views.

但在公开讲话中，鲁比奥一直强调与中国合作的潜力，这与特朗普的观点一致。

“Areas where we can find mutual cooperation, I think we can,” Mr. Rubio said. “There’s probably virtually no problem in the world that we can’t solve if we work together on it.” As for tensions in the relationship, he said: “There’s always going to be irritants.”

“我认为，我们能够找到可以实现互利合作的地方，”鲁比奥说。“如果我们共同努力，世界上几乎没有什么问题是无法解决的。”至于双边关系中的紧张点，他表示：“总会存在一些摩擦。”

On Taiwan, the State Department announced an $11 billion weapons sale package for the island last December, a move that frustrated China. But in the run-up to the summit, the department has not moved forward with a $13 billion arms package that Congress approved. U.S. lawmakers have called on the administration to announce the sales.

在台湾问题上，国务院去年12月宣布了一项价值110亿美元的对台武器销售方案，此举令中国感到不满。但在峰会前夕，该部门并未推进国会已批准的130亿美元军售案。美国议员已敦促政府宣布这笔交易。

Asked whether Mr. Rubio had become more conciliatory toward China since his Senate days, the State Department sent a statement listing several ways the Trump administration had tried to assert strength in the relationship. “Under President Trump’s leadership, U.S.-China relations have been refocused on what matters most: rebuilding the safety, security and prosperity of Americans,” it said.

当被问及鲁比奥自参议员时期以来对华态度是否有所缓和时，国务院发来一份声明，列举了特朗普政府为在双边关系中展现强势而采取的若干措施。声明称：“在特朗普总统领导下，美中关系已重新聚焦于最重要的事务：重建美国人的安全、保障与繁荣。”

Soon after becoming a senator in 2011, Mr. Rubio emerged as a prominent critic of China’s government. He complained bitterly about the country’s economic and trade practices, as well as its record on human rights and democracy. He cast the nation as a fast-growing menace to U.S. national security.

2011年刚成为参议员不久，鲁比奥就成为中国政府的主要批评者。他强烈抨击中国的经济和贸易做法，以及其人权和民主记录。他称这个国家对美国国家安全构成的威胁与日俱增。

As he embarked on a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Rubio delivered an August 2015 speech condemning President Barack Obama for what he called a failed policy of appeasing China.

竞选2016年共和党总统提名期间，鲁比奥于2015年8月发表演讲，谴责时任总统贝拉克·奥巴马对中国采取他所谓的绥靖失败政策。

当奥巴马总统计划在华盛顿接待习近平时，鲁比奥曾主张，美国总统不应为这位威权领导人“铺开红地毯”。

“We can no longer succumb to the illusion that more dialogue with China’s current rulers will narrow the gap in values and interests that separates us,” he said, vowing that as president he would challenge Beijing on economic, security and political matters. Mr. Rubio even hinted at a desire for regime change. “Freedom for the people of China must be our goal,” he said, calling it the “moral duty” of the United States.

“我们不能再沉迷于这样的幻想，即与中国的现任统治者进行更多对话就能缩小我们之间在价值观和利益上的差距，”他说，并发誓如果当选总统，将在经济、安全和政治问题上挑战北京。鲁比奥甚至暗示希望政权更迭。“中国人民的自由必须是我们的目标，”他说，并称这是美国的“道义责任”。

With Mr. Obama scheduled at the time to host Mr. Xi in Washington the following month, Mr. Rubio argued that the U.S. president should not “roll out the red carpet” for the autocratic leader.

当时奥巴马计划下个月在华盛顿接待习近平，鲁比奥认为美国总统不应为这位专制领导人“铺开红地毯”。

“This is an opportunity to speak bluntly to this authoritarian ruler, not to treat him to a state dinner,” he said.

“这是向这个威权统治者直言不讳的机会，而不是请他参加国宴，”他说。

On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio dined at a state banquet in Beijing, and they are expected to host Mr. Xi when he makes a reciprocal visit to Washington around late September.

周四，特朗普和鲁比奥在北京出席了国宴，他们预计将在习近平于9月底前后对华盛顿进行回访时接待他。

Although Mr. Rubio delivered that speech more than 10 years ago, his track record throughout his time in the Senate was consistent with its principles.

尽管鲁比奥那次演讲已是十多年前的事，但他在参议院任职期间的记录始终与演讲中的原则一致。

When mass anti-party demonstrations erupted in Hong Kong in 2019, Mr. Rubio championed the protesters.

2019年香港爆发大规模反中共示威时，鲁比奥支持抗议者。

That June, Mr. Rubio sponsored legislation to impose sanctions against Chinese officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses in Hong Kong, which Congress overwhelmingly approved. Mr. Trump threatened to veto the measure, complaining that it could endanger trade talks with Mr. Xi. But he ultimately signed the bill.

当年6月，鲁比奥提出法案，对被认为应对香港人权侵犯负责的中国官员实施制裁，国会以压倒性优势通过。特朗普曾威胁否决该法案，抱怨这可能危及与习近平的贸易谈判。但他最终签署了该法案。

Mr. Rubio was also a leading champion of Taiwan, sponsoring bills to fast-track U.S. arms sales to the island and to grow ties with it. Vigilant about any hint of softened U.S. support for the island, Mr. Rubio grilled a senior State Department official at a Senate hearing in 2018 about why the Taiwanese flag, which China calls illegitimate, had vanished from an obscure page on the department’s website.

鲁比奥还是台湾的主要支持者，他提出法案加快美国对台军售并加强与台湾的联系。他对任何美国软化对台支持的迹象都保持警惕，2018年在参议院听证会上质询国务院高级官员，为什么台湾旗帜（被中国视为非法）从国务院网站一个不起眼的页面上消失。

Mr. Rubio was a leading congressional critic of Beijing for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims. He branded the Chinese government’s widely documented policies of forced labor and “re-education” in the region of Xinjiang as “horrific” and “crimes against humanity and genocide.”

鲁比奥是国会中批评北京迫害维吾尔穆斯林的主要人物。他将中国政府在新疆地区广泛记录在案的强迫劳动和“再教育”政策称为“可怕的”“反人类罪和种族灭绝”。

In June 2020, Mr. Rubio led the passage of legislation that called on the U.S. government to impose sanctions against Chinese officials tied to those policies. The Trump administration followed through.

2020年6月，鲁比奥主导通过立法，要求美国政府对中国与这些政策有关的官员实施制裁。特朗普政府随后落实了制裁。

An enraged Beijing retaliated with the sanctions against Mr. Rubio and other China hawks. Later that summer, the Chinese government imposed additional sanctions on them to retaliate against U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong officials.

愤怒的北京对鲁比奥和其他中国鹰派实施报复性制裁。同年夏末，中国政府对他们追加制裁，以报复美国对香港官员的制裁。

But less than a half-year into his time as secretary of state, Mr. Rubio began stressing the need to cooperate with China. Mr. Trump was seeking a partnership with Mr. Xi following a failed salvo of tariffs on Chinese exports.

但在担任国务卿不到半年后，鲁比奥开始强调与中国合作的必要性。当时特朗普在对中国出口商品征收关税的行动失败后，正寻求与习近平建立伙伴关系。

After a meeting in July 2025 in Malaysia with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, Mr. Rubio said the two men saw an “opportunity here to achieve some strategic stability and identify areas where we can cooperate together on and build better communications and working trust.”

2025年7月在马来西亚与中国外交部长王毅会晤后，鲁比奥表示双方看到了“实现一定战略稳定、找到合作领域、建立更好沟通和工作信任的机会”。

Since then, State Department summaries of their occasional talks have included the same type of language.

此后，国务院对他们偶尔会谈的总结一直包含类似表述。

As planning for the summit ramped up this year, the Chinese sanctions hung over Mr. Rubio, dubbed both 卢比奥 and 鲁比奥 (“lubiao”) by the state news agency for at least a decade. But then Beijing came up with a simple solution: Chinese officials said the sanctions had been imposed on Senator Rubio, not Trump aide Rubio.

今年峰会筹备工作加紧进行时，中国对鲁比奥的制裁仍悬而未决——中国官方媒体至少十年来一直用卢比奥和鲁比奥称呼他。但北京随后提出了一个简单的解决办法：中方官员称，制裁针对的是参议员鲁比奥，而非特朗普政府的鲁比奥。

“The sanctions are aimed at Mr. Rubio’s actions and rhetoric on China when he served as a U.S. senator,” Liu Pengyu, the Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington, said in a statement to The New York Times on Thursday when asked about the dilemma. He did not answer a question about whether China had dropped the sanctions.

中国驻华盛顿大使馆发言人刘鹏宇周四在接受《纽约时报》询问时表示：“制裁针对的是鲁比奥先生担任美国参议员期间涉华的言行。”他没有回答中方是否已取消对他的制裁。

For Chinese Americans, the news this week might have seemed disorienting.

对于华裔美国人来说，本周的新闻可能让人感到有些无所适从。

There was the largely make-nice tone of the summit in Beijing between President Trump and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, which ended on Friday.

周五结束的北京峰会上，特朗普总统与中国领导人习近平的会晤基调总体上是友好的。

But in the days leading up to the summit, two criminal cases in the United States reflected how the countries’ competitive and often tense geopolitical relationship has made life more difficult for many people of Chinese origin living in the United States.

但在峰会召开的前几天，美国的两起刑事案件反映出，两国竞争激烈且时常紧张的地缘政治关系使得许多生活在美国的华裔民众日子更加艰难。

On Monday, federal prosecutors announced that Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, a suburb outside Los Angeles, would plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Prosecutors said that Ms. Wang published propaganda on a purported news site under direction from Chinese officials. She has resigned. Ms. Wang’s lawyers emphasized in a statement that the actions took place before Ms. Wang ran for public office.

上周一，联邦检察官宣布，洛杉矶郊区阿卡迪亚市市长王爱琳将承认充当中国政府非法代理人的罪名。检察官表示，王爱琳在中国官员的指示下，通过一个所谓的新闻网站发布政治宣传。她已经辞职。王爱琳的律师在声明中强调，这些行为发生在王爱琳竞选公职之前。

And on Wednesday, Lu Jianwang, a Chinese American community leader in New York, was convicted of illegally working as a foreign agent. He had been accused of running a secret police station in Manhattan that reported on political dissidents at the direction of the Chinese government.

周三，纽约的美国华人社区领袖卢建旺（音）被判非法充当外国代理人罪名成立。他被指控在中国政府的指示下，在曼哈顿运营一个秘密警务站，负责监视和报告政治异见人士的情况。

John Carman, Mr. Lu’s lawyer, had said that his work was limited to helping immigrants renew their Chinese driver’s licenses. The laws, he said, “are written in such a fashion that they capture both those intending to do good deeds and bad.”

卢建旺的律师约翰·卡曼表示，卢建旺的工作仅限于帮助移民更新中国驾照。他说，这些法律“措辞就是这样的，既能惩处打算做坏事的人，也会牵连打算做好事的人。”

Over the years, there have been similar cases of China’s political meddling, and analysts have said there is a pattern in which Beijing recruits Chinese immigrants to infiltrate governments or to silence Chinese dissidents living abroad and other critics of the government.

这些年来，美国发生了数起类似的中国政治干涉案件。分析人士表示，北京有一种模式：招募华人移民来渗透政府，或者让居住在国外的中国异见人士以及其他政府批评者噤声。

Intelligence officials have said that as China’s sway in Washington diminishes, the government is increasingly seeking to influence local governments, which are not as savvy at detecting such efforts.

情报官员表示，随着中国在华盛顿的影响力减弱，中国政府正越来越多地寻求影响地方政府，而地方政府并不能那么敏锐地识破此类行动。

The intermittent drip of such incidents has fueled broader suspicions about Chinese Americans as spies and perpetual foreigners, echoing earlier periods of American history when they were subject to exclusion, racism and discrimination.

此类事件的间歇性发生加剧了外界对华裔美国人的广泛怀疑，认为他们是间谍和“永远的外国人”， 这让人联想到美国历史上早些时期，华裔美国人曾遭受排斥、种族主义和歧视。

In a podcast last month, two Republican state delegates in Maryland accused a Chinese-born Democratic colleague, Chao Wu, of being a spy for China and mocked his accent.

在上个月的一档播客中，马里兰州的两名共和党州众议员指责他们生于中国的民主党同僚伍超是中国间谍，并嘲笑了他的口音。

The delegates, Mark Fisher and Brian Chisholm, criticized Dr. Wu for introducing a bill last year that would have required developers of generative artificial intelligence systems to disclose information about the data used to train their models.

这两位众议员马克·费舍尔和布莱恩·奇泽姆批评伍超博士去年提出的一项法案，该法案要求生成式人工智能系统的开发者披露用于训练其模型的数据信息。

Jason Buckel, the leader of the Republican minority in the Maryland House, said in a statement that he had “no reason to believe” that Mr. Wu was “somehow affiliated with the Chinese government as an American citizen and elected official.”

马里兰州众议院共和党少数党领袖杰森·巴克尔在一份声明中表示，他“没有理由相信”伍超“作为一名美国公民和民选官员，会以某种方式与中国政府有牵连”。

In a text message, Mr. Wu attributed the comments to “McCarthyism, xenophobia, racism.”

在一条短信中，伍超将这些言论归咎于“麦卡锡主义、仇外心理和种族主义”。

During the pandemic, Mr. Trump was also accused of racism and xenophobia when he referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”

在大流行期间，特朗普将新冠病毒称为“中国病毒”和“功夫流感”，他也被批评具有种族主义和仇外心理。

There are around 5.5 million people of Chinese descent in the United States. While some can trace their roots in America back five generations, to the earliest transcontinental railroad workers, many more are first- or second-generation immigrants who have familial or professional ties to China.

美国大约有550万华裔人口。虽然有些人在美国的根基可以追溯到五代人以前，也就是最早的横贯大陆铁路华工，但更多的是第一代或第二代移民，他们与中国有着家庭或职业上的联系。

Views on China vary widely within the diaspora in the United States. A survey published by Pew in 2023 found that less than half of Chinese Americans saw China in a positive light.

在美国的华人群体中，对中国的看法差异很大。皮尤研究中心在2023年发布的一项调查发现，只有不到一半的华裔美国人对中国持正面看法。

But Beijing’s recruitment within the diaspora has left some Chinese Americans feeling increasingly as if there is a target on their backs, as their personal ties to China are twisted and turned against them. Some lawmakers and civil rights advocates say fears of Chinese espionage have resulted in the blocking of some Chinese Americans from government jobs and the racial profiling of ethnically Chinese scientists and researchers at universities.

但是，北京在侨民中的招募活动让一些华裔美国人越来越觉得他们好像成了靶子，因为他们与中国的个人联系遭到了曲解，并且用来针对他们。一些立法者和民权倡导者表示，对中国间谍活动的担忧导致一些华裔美国人被拒之门外，无法获得政府职位，同时大学里也对华裔科学家和研究人员进行种族侧写。

One in five American adults believe that Chinese Americans pose a threat, according to a recent survey by the Asian American Foundation.

亚裔美国人基金会最近的一项调查显示，五分之一的美国成年人认为华裔美国人构成了威胁。

The scrutiny may be most harshly felt in the San Gabriel Valley, which encompasses Arcadia, where Ms. Wang was mayor. The valley has one of the largest populations of ethnically Chinese people in the United States, and some Chinese American elected officials said that since Ms. Wang’s plea agreement was announced, they have sensed more suspicion and wariness.

圣盖博谷地区对这种审视的感受或许最为强烈，该地区包括王爱琳曾担任市长的阿卡迪亚市。圣盖博谷拥有美国最庞大的华裔人口群体之一，一些华裔美国民选官员表示，自从王爱琳的认罪协议宣布以来，他们感觉到了更多的怀疑和戒备。

Thomas Wong, a Chinese American and a City Council member in the nearby town of Monterey Park, said, “Incidents like what happened with Eileen are continuing to provide opportunities for racism, xenophobia and anti-Chinese sentiment to grow.”

邻近城镇蒙特利公园市的华裔美国人、市议会议员黄泰平表示：“像爱琳遭遇的那类事件正不断为种族主义、排外心理和反华情绪的滋生提供温床。”

President Trump has described a potential multibillion-dollar weapons sale to Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” with China, raising new doubts about the pace and scale of American military support for the island democracy.

特朗普总统将一笔潜在的对台数十亿美元军售称为与中国的“谈判筹码”，令外界对美国向这一民主岛屿提供军事支持的速度和规模产生了新的疑虑。

Taiwan’s government has been waiting for months for Mr. Trump to sign off on a $14 billion package of missiles, anti-drone equipment and air-defense systems intended to fortify the island against Beijing’s military threats.

台湾政府数月来一直在等待特朗普批准一项价值140亿美元的军售方案，其中包括导弹、反无人机装备和防空系统，旨在强化台湾抵御北京军事威胁的能力。

Mr. Trump himself had pressured Taiwan to spend more on its own defense. Now he is using the very arms his administration had pushed the island to buy as leverage with China, the United States’ main adversary.

特朗普本人此前一直向台湾施压，要求它增加自身防务支出。现在，他却将自己政府力推台湾购买的武器用作与美国的主要对手中国谈判时的筹码。

Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One after leaving China on Friday that he had discussed the weapons package with China’s president, Xi Jinping, during their summit this past week in Beijing. He was asked in an interview with Fox News whether he would approve the Taiwan deal.

特朗普周五离开中国后在“空军一号”上告诉记者，他在于北京举行的峰会期间，曾与中国国家主席习近平讨论了这批武器计划。接受福克斯新闻采访时，他被问及是否会批准这项对台军售协议。

“No, I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China,” he said in the interview, which was recorded in Beijing but aired after he left. “It depends.”

“不，我暂时把这件事搁置起来，这取决于中国，”他在采访中说。采访是在北京录制的，但在他离开后才播出。“要看情况。”

“It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly,” he said. “It’s a lot of weapons.”

“坦率地说，这对我们来讲是一个非常好的谈判筹码，”他说。“这可是大批武器。”

He did not go into details about what he wanted in return, but Mr. Trump has pushed China to make major purchases of American airplanes, ethanol, soybeans, beef and sorghum.

他没有详细说明自己想要什么回报，但特朗普此前一直在推动中国大量采购美国的飞机、乙醇、大豆、牛肉和高粱。

His comments appear to undermine the assurances to Taiwan from some in his own administration that U.S. support for the island is steadfast and nonnegotiable. Before the summit, a bipartisan group of senators had urged against letting support for Taiwan become a bargaining chip with China.

他的言论似乎削弱了其政府内部一些官员此前向台湾作出的保证——即美国对台湾的支持是坚定且不可谈判的。峰会前，一个由两党参议员组成的团体曾敦促，不要让对台湾的支持变成与中国做交易的筹码。

“It looks increasingly likely that Trump will indefinitely withhold the $14 billion arms package to Taiwan, in the hopes that Beijing will give him what he wants on the economic front,” said Amanda Hsiao, a China director at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm.

“特朗普无限期扣押这个140亿美元对台军售计划的可能性越来越大，他希望以此换取北京在经济层面给予他想要的东西，”咨询公司欧亚集团中国事务主任萧嫣然说。

Raising the Pressure on China

加大对中国的施压

By saying his approval of the arms deal “depends on China,” Mr. Trump seemed to be suggesting that the ball now lay in its court. There was no immediate comment from Beijing on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

特朗普表示是否批准这笔军售“取决于中国”，这似乎暗示球现在踢到了北京那边。北京方面尚未立即对特朗普的言论作出回应。

On the first day of their talks in Beijing, Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that the “Taiwan issue is the most critical issue in China-U.S. relations.” If the matter was mishandled, Mr. Xi warned, that could put “the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation.”

在北京会谈的第一天，习近平告诉特朗普，“台湾问题是中美关系中最重要的问题”。他警告，如果这个问题处理不当，可能“将整个中美关系推向十分危险的境地”。

Mr. Trump also seemed keen to show that he listened intently to Mr. Xi’s views, saying in the interview that after a long talk with the Chinese leader, “I think I know more about Taiwan right now than I know about almost any country.”

特朗普似乎也急于表现出自己认真听取了习近平的观点。他在采访中说，在与这位中国领导人长谈之后，“我想我现在对台湾的了解比对其他任何国家都多”。

But he also later raised the possibility that he might call Taiwan’s president, a step sure to enrage Beijing.

但他随后又提出可能致电台湾总统——此举势必激怒北京。

“I have to speak to the person that right now is — you know who he is — that’s running Taiwan,” he said, in a possible reference to the island’s president, Lai Ching-te.

“我必须和现在掌管台湾的那个人谈谈，你们都知道他是谁，”他说。这番话似乎是在指台湾总统赖清德。

Should Mr. Trump do so, he would be the first sitting American president known to have spoken to a Taiwanese leader since at least 1979, when the United States severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan as part of its recognition of the People’s Republic of China. China objects vehemently to any contact between senior U.S. and Taiwanese officials.

如果特朗普真的这样做，他将成为自1979年以来首位已知与台湾领导人通话的在任美国总统。1979年，美国与台湾断绝外交关系，转而承认中华人民共和国。中国一直强烈反对美台高层官员之间的任何接触。

Mr. Trump’s gambit could backfire, either by angering Beijing if he approves the arms sales, or by possibly prompting American lawmakers to step up pressure on him to increase support for Taiwan.

特朗普的这一策略可能适得其反：如果他批准军售，北京可能被激怒；而如果他继续拖延，也可能促使美国国会议员加大对他的压力，要求增加对台湾的支持。

If Mr. Xi wants to punish the Trump administration over Taiwan, analysts have said, China could hold back on orders of farm goods, or ramp up restrictions on exports of rare earths that are essential to many technology components. But Mr. Xi also agreed to make a state visit to the United States this year, and could use the prospect of more talks — and more deals — to influence Mr. Trump.

分析人士表示，如果中国领导人想要在台湾问题上惩罚特朗普政府，中国可以拖延农产品订单，或者加强对稀土出口的限制，稀土对许多科技零部件至关重要。但习近平也已同意今年对美国进行国事访问，他可以利用更多会谈和更多交易的前景为诱饵，来影响特朗普的决策。

A Blow to the Taiwan President’s Agenda

对台湾总统议程的打击

台湾总统赖清德（右）去年在台东某空军基地视察时，参观一架F-16战斗机驾驶舱。台湾政府数月来一直在等待特朗普批准一项价值140亿美元的军售方案。

Mr. Trump’s comments are likely to be seen as a setback for Mr. Lai of Taiwan, who had pushed strenuously for more military spending and purchases of American weapons.

特朗普的言论很可能被视为对台湾总统赖清德的打击，赖清德一直大力推动增加军事开支和购买美国武器。

When Taiwanese lawmakers finally voted for $25 billion in special funding to pay for the two weapons packages from the United States, lawmakers from Mr. Lai’s own party abstained from the vote because it left out spending for domestically made drones and other weapons.

此前，当台湾立法机构终于通过250亿美元特别预算，用于两笔美国武器采购方案时，赖清德自己党内的立法机构成员投了弃权票，因为该拨款未包含用于购买台湾自产无人机和其他武器的开支。

Taiwan’s government tried to quickly smooth over any tensions, saying that they have been assured multiple times by American officials that U.S. policy remains unchanged.

台湾政府随后迅速试图淡化紧张气氛，称美国官员已多次向其保证，美国政策并未改变。

“Our country is grateful for President Trump’s continued support for security in the Taiwan Strait since his first term,” Mr. Lai’s office said in a statement about Mr. Trump’s latest remarks. Countries near China “were cooperating with the United States to actively strengthen their defenses; Taiwan cannot and will not be an exception.”

台湾总统府发言人在关于特朗普最新言论的声明中表示：“我国感谢川普总统自第一任期以来，对台海安全的持续支持。”声明还称，中国周边国家“与美方合作，积极强化防卫，台湾不能也不会例外”。

Mr. Trump’s remarks would also “provide cheap ammunition” for Mr. Lai’s detractors in Taiwan, who say he is too beholden to Washington, said William Yang, a senior analyst in Taiwan for the International Crisis Group, which monitors and tries to help resolve conflicts.

国际危机组织在台湾的高级分析师杨皓炜表示，特朗普的言论还将为赖清德在台湾的批评者提供“现成的弹药”，这些人认为赖清德过于听命于华盛顿。国际危机组织是一家致力于监测和协助化解冲突的机构。

Some politicians from Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Nationalist Party, which favors stronger ties with China, quickly came out to say that Mr. Trump’s comments showed Mr. Lai had been gullible.

台湾主要反对党国民党的一些政治人物迅速发声，称特朗普的言论表明赖清德太天真。国民党主张加强与中国的联系。

Under Mr. Lai, Taiwan has sought to build a more nimble, mobile military with missiles and air-defense technology that can counter China’s expanding military, in large part by buying U.S. weapons. Mr. Trump already approved one $11 billion package last year, a move that Beijing responded to with military exercises near the island.

赖清德上台后，台湾一直试图打造一支更灵活、更机动的军队，通过导弹和防空系统来应对中国不断扩张的军力，这在很大程度上有赖于购买美国武器。特朗普去年已经批准了一项110亿美元军售方案，北京随后在台湾附近举行军事演习作为回应。

As for the $14 billion package, Mr. Trump would only say that he would “make a determination over the next fairly short period of time.”

至于这项140亿美元的军售计划，特朗普仅表示将“在不久的将来作出决定”。

In his interview with Fox, Mr. Trump also revived his longstanding accusation that Taiwan had gained its world-leading know-how in semiconductor production in underhanded ways, and therefore owes the United States. He also emphasized its vulnerability to attack from China, with the United States many thousands of miles away.

在接受福克斯新闻采访时，特朗普还重提了他长期以来的说法，指控台湾以不光彩的手段获得了世界领先的半导体生产技术，因此欠美国的。他还强调了台湾面对中国攻击的脆弱处境，以及美国远在数千英里之外的地理现实。

“They stole our chip industry,” Mr. Trump said of Taiwan. “Taiwan would be very smart to cool it a little bit. China would be very smart to cool it a little bit.”

“他们偷走了我们的芯片产业，”特朗普谈到台湾时说。“台湾稍微冷静一点会是很明智的事情，中国稍微冷静一点也会是非常明智的事情。”

Does Trump Believe Beijing?

特朗普相信北京的说法吗？

去年在台北举行的军事演习中展示的“爱国者”导弹系统。

Perhaps more worrisome for Taiwan’s government is that Mr. Trump’s account of his conversations with Mr. Xi suggested that he took onboard China’s argument that Taiwan bore a big part of the blame for the tensions. China has cast Mr. Lai and his officials as dangerous separatists who are trying to drag the United States into a bruising war.

特朗普对与习近平谈话内容的描述显示，他似乎接受了中国关于台湾应对紧张局势负有很大责任的说法。对于台湾政府来说，这也许更令人担忧。中国一直把赖清德及其手下描绘成危险的分裂主义者，认为他们正试图把美国拖入一场惨烈战争。

“Well, it’s a risky thing when you go independent, you know,” he said. “They’re going independent because they want to get into a war, and they want to, they figure they have the United States behind them.”

“嗯，搞独立是件很冒险的事，你知道的，”他说。“他们之所以要搞独立，是因为他们想卷入一场战争，而且他们想这么做，他们觉得背后有美国撑腰。”

“I’d like to see it stay the way it is,” he said, apparently referring to Taiwan’s so-called status quo, in which the island is functionally separate but not pursuing formal independence.

“我希望维持现状，”他说。这里显然是指台湾所谓的“现状”——即该岛事实上与中国分离，但并不寻取正式独立。

Taiwan, which has asserted that China is the aggressor, has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. Most Taiwanese see themselves and their island democracy as distinct from China, and they have no desire to be brought under Beijing. Mr. Lai and his party reject Beijing’s claims over Taiwan and say the island is already in effect independent.

台湾从未被中国共产党统治过，台湾一直坚持中国才是挑衅一方。大多数台湾人视自身和该岛的民主政体为有别于中国的存在，他们不希望被纳入北京统治之下。赖清德及其所在政党拒绝北京对台湾的主权主张，并表示台湾事实上已经独立。

Mr. Trump’s comments “suggest that Xi’s presentation on Taiwan, which all but certainly framed Taiwan as the source of cross-strait tensions and a nonexistent Taiwanese push for independence as the key risk that needs to be managed, had an effect on Trump,” said David Sacks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China.

外交关系协会研究中国问题的学者石可为(David Sacks)表示，特朗普的言论“表明，习近平关于台湾问题的表述——即把台湾描绘成台海紧张局势的根源，并把子虚乌有的所谓台湾推动独立视为必须管控的核心风险——显然对特朗普产生了影响”。

Without criticizing Mr. Trump, Mr. Lai’s office said in a statement that “China’s escalating military threat is the sole destabilizing factor within the Indo-Pacific region, including the Taiwan Strait.”

台湾总统府在声明中未点名批评特朗普，但表示“中国持续升高的军事威胁，才是包括台海在内印太地区唯一的不安全因素”。

“The whole world is watching our meeting,” Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, said as he welcomed President Trump to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

“我们会面，现在可以说是举世瞩目，”中国领导人习近平在北京人民大会堂欢迎特朗普总统时说。

That wasn’t an overstatement.

这并非夸大其词。

Cameras from different countries were trained on the leaders of the world’s largest economies, allowing pundits to pick apart the diplomatic meaning of their words and gestures. Those cameras offered a rare opportunity for Chinese people, too: seeing Mr. Xi up close and from angles not usually presented by state media.

来自不同国家的摄像机将镜头对准了这两个世界最大经济体的领导人，让评论人士得以仔细剖析他们言辞和手势背后的外交含义。这些镜头也为中国民众提供了一个罕见的机会，得以近距离观察习近平，从国家媒体通常不会呈现的角度去审视他。

And some found the visuals an occasion for comedy.

而一些人发现这些画面成了提供笑料的契机。

On China’s censored internet, political humor and honest online discussion are dangerous. Talking about Mr. Xi is the top taboo. The danger is grave within the country, and even Chinese people living abroad fear for their families back home. So to comment on the summit, Chinese speakers flocked to Threads, X and other open platforms that are banned in China, some scaling the Great Firewall with a VPN.

在受审查的中国互联网上，政治幽默和诚实的网络讨论是危险的。谈论习近平更是头号禁忌。在国内，这种危险极为严重，甚至居住在海外的华人也为国内的家人担忧。因此，为了评论这次峰会，中文用户涌向Threads、X等在中国被禁的开放平台，一些人使用VPN翻越网络防火墙。

The many jokes and ironic comments posted offered a window both into how the more liberal-minded Chinese public views Mr. Xi and his leadership style, and into how political opinion survives when it has nowhere else to go. When criticizing leadership directly can lead to jail, jokes become more than jokes. They are, as some people commented, equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, an act of trying to find humor in absurdity and cruelty. (These humorous takes remain anonymous, even when posted on platforms outside the Great Firewall, and the users can be difficult to track down.)

网上发布的许多笑话和讽刺性评论提供了一个窗口，既展示了思想更开明的中国公众如何看待习近平及其领导风格，也揭示了政治观点无处表达时将会如何存续。当直接批评领导人可能导致入狱时，笑话便不再只是笑话而已。正如一些人评论的那样，它们一半是搞笑，一半是心酸，是在荒诞和残酷中寻找幽默的行为。（这些幽默的表达都是以匿名进行，即使是发布在防火墙以外的平台上也是如此，用户则往往难以追踪。）

Mr. Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, is on the front page of the official People’s Daily nearly every day. He dominates the prime-time television news. And yet he remains a mysterious figure even to his own people. Unlike Mr. Trump, who posts constantly on social media and regularly takes questions and even unscheduled phone calls from the press, Mr. Xi is always choreographed. He reads from a script and strikes the same pose in every photograph with world leaders.

作为自毛泽东以来最有权势的中国领导人，习近平几乎每天都出现在官方《人民日报》的头版，主导着黄金时段的电视新闻。然而，甚至对本国人民来说，他仍然是个神秘的人物。特朗普经常在社交媒体上发帖，定期回答记者提问，甚至接听媒体的临时电话采访；与他不同，习近平的一举一动总是经过精心编排。他照本宣科，在与世界各国领导人的每一张合影中都摆出相同的姿势。

外国媒体出席此次峰会为中国人民提供了一个难得的机会，得以从国家媒体通常不会呈现的角度了解习近平。

During the summit, some social media users mocked this predictability, commenting that Mr. Xi appeared to be exactly the same height as Mr. Trump — and nearly every visiting world leader he has appeared with in photos. As a 32-year-old tutor in southern Fujian Province put it on Threads, “I’d be much more interested in seeing Yao Ming meet Xi Jinping,” referring to the former N.B.A. player who is 7 foot 6 inches tall, “just because they’d be the same height, too.” He asked not to be named for fear of government retribution.

峰会期间，一些社交媒体用户嘲笑这种墨守成规，评论说，习近平的身高似乎与特朗普完全一样——而且与所有来访的世界领导人合影时，他和对方的身高都是一样的。福建省南部一位32岁的辅导老师在Threads上写道：“我更想看姚明和习近平见面，”他指的是身高2.29米的前NBA球员，“因为他们俩也会一样高。”他因担心政府报复而要求匿名。

The stodgy, ritualized language Mr. Xi used in his remarks during the summit — “great changes unseen in a century,” “the chaotic international landscape” and “the world has once again come to a new crossroads” — prompted a different kind of derision. These were not abstract phrases to many young Chinese, but rather words drilled into them for college exams under the required curriculum known as Introduction to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

习近平在峰会讲话中使用的那种枯燥、仪式化的语言——“百年变局加速演进”、“国际局势变乱交织”和“世界又走到新的十字路口”——引发了另一种嘲讽。对许多中国年轻人来说，这些并不是抽象的词语，是在必修课《习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想概论》中灌输给他们的词汇，是他们必须通过的大学考试。

Some people joked that, having listened to Mr. Xi’s speech, Mr. Trump could now appreciate what it was like to sit through Xi Jinping Thought classes in college.

一些人开玩笑说，听了习近平的讲话后，特朗普现在大概能体会到在大学里上习近平思想课是什么感觉了。

When some Chinese social media users suggested that boredom was driving Elon Musk, one of the business leaders who accompanied Mr. Trump, to post nonstop on his social media site, X, one Thread account noted dryly that he must be experiencing “Xi Jinping Thought classes level of boredom.”

一些中国社交媒体用户表示，陪同特朗普的商业领袖之一埃隆·马斯克在其社交媒体网站X上不停发帖，大概是因为无聊，一个Threads账号冷冷地指出，他肯定正在体会着“习近平思想课级别的无聊”。

Another element of the summit was instantly, uncomfortably familiar to many Chinese people watching the welcome ceremony. As Mr. Trump walked the red carpet, he seemed charmed by the dozens of children who greeted him waving flowers and Chinese and American flags and chanting welcome slogans while jumping up and down. “I think I was particularly impressed by those children!” Mr. Trump told Mr. Xi. “They were happy. They were beautiful. … Those children were amazing. They represent so much.”

峰会的另一个环节会让许多观看欢迎仪式的中国民众瞬间感到一种令人不适的熟悉感。当特朗普走在红毯上时，他似乎被几十个向他致意的孩子们迷住了，他们挥舞着鲜花和中美两国国旗，蹦跳着高呼欢迎口号。“我想那些孩子给我留下了特别深刻的印象！”特朗普对习近平说。“他们很快乐。他们很漂亮……那些孩子太棒了。他们代表了太多东西。”

But for many accounts commenting on the ceremony, those children represent something else completely: the forced conformity demanded by ruthless authoritarians. Social media users paired the video of the children with footage of North Koreans cheering for their leader, Kim Jong-un.

但对于许多评论这场仪式的账号来说，这些孩子代表着完全不同的东西——无情的威权主义者要求下的被迫顺从。社交媒体用户将孩子们的视频与朝鲜人欢呼迎接其领导人金正恩的画面并排放在一起。

Some accounts said those children looked like something from China during the Mao era, when China was more isolated. During that period, the few visiting international dignitaries were welcomed by children jumping up and down. They were there for the Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk throughout the 1970s, and for President Ronald Reagan, who visited in 1984. But by the time President Bill Clinton visited Beijing in 1998, the visual message was different. He gave a speech and took questions from college students at Peking University. To many Chinese, that felt like progress. Thursday’s ceremony felt like a reversal. Even the children’s clothes, some social media users commented, felt old-fashioned.

一些账号称，这些孩子看起来像是来自毛泽东时代的中国，那时的中国更加封闭。在那个时期，为数不多的来访国际政要都会受到蹦蹦跳跳的孩子们的欢迎。整个20世纪70年代，柬埔寨领导人西哈努克都被他们这样迎接；1984年，他们也这样欢迎来访的里根总统。但到了1998年克林顿总统访问北京时，视觉呈现的信息已经大不相同——克林顿在北京大学发表演讲，并回答了大学生的提问。对许多中国人来说，那感觉像是一种进步。而周四的仪式感觉像是在倒退。一些社交媒体用户评论说，甚至孩子们的衣服也让人觉得老气。

The welcome ceremony, wrote a user on X posting under the name Fearless James, a 47-year-old small-business owner in California, exposed a familiar political aesthetic that enthusiasm must be orchestrated and emotions rehearsed. He asked not to be named because he still visits his family in China and worries about government retribution.

加州一位47岁的小企业主在X上以“Fearless James”为名发帖写道，这场欢迎仪式暴露了一种熟悉的政治美学：热情必须经过精心编排，情感必须经过排练。由于他仍然会回中国探亲，并担心遭到政府的报复，他要求不透露自己的真实姓名。

“Is China moving backward?” he asked. “A society that is truly confident doesn’t need children chanting slogans to prove its enthusiasm. A country that is genuinely open doesn’t need to repackage diplomatic events as collective performances.”

“中国在倒退吗？”他问道。“一个真正自信的社会不需要孩子们高呼口号来证明热情。一个真正开放的国家不需要把外交活动重新包装成集体表演。”

In 2024, Donald J. Trump said China was “killing us as a country.” Last year, he complained that President Xi Jinping of China was “very tough, and extremely hard to make a deal with.” His tariffs on China reached 145 percent at one point.

2024年，特朗普曾表示，中国“正在毁灭我们这个国家”。去年，他又抱怨中国国家主席习近平“非常强硬，很难和他达成协议”。他对中国加征的关税一度高达145%。

The whiplash that followed culminated in the pageantry in Beijing this week.

随后出现的剧烈反转在本周北京隆重的欢迎仪式中达到了顶峰。

As Air Force One took off from the Chinese capital on Friday, it remained unclear what deals, if any, President Trump had clinched with Mr. Xi. But the two-day summit in Beijing underscored how far he has shifted the foundations of American policy toward China in the wake of his humbling retreat from last year’s trade war. He has thrown aside the adversarial approach of his first years in office, the Biden administration and the beginning of his own second term.

当“空军一号”周五从中国首都起飞时，外界仍不清楚特朗普总统究竟与习近平达成了哪些协议（如果有的话）。但此次为期两天的北京峰会凸显出，在去年贸易战受挫退让之后，特朗普对美国对华政策的基础做出了多么重大的调整。他已经抛弃了自己第一任期、拜登政府以及其第二任期初期所秉持的对抗路线。

What’s more, he has largely waved aside the warnings outlined in the Pentagon’s annual, unclassified accounting of China’s capabilities and intentions, which lays out a plan to push the United States out of the Western Pacific, engulf Taiwan, claim more territory in the South China Sea and escalate cyberattacks on the United States. He acknowledges that these threats are real. He has just reversed his view of how to deal with them.

更重要的是，他在很大程度上置五角大楼年度非涉密报告的警示于不顾——该报告系统梳理了中国的军事能力与战略意图，包括将美国逐出西太平洋、吞并台湾、在南中国海攫取更多领土，并升级对美国的网络攻击等具体图谋。他承认这些威胁确实存在，但彻底转变了应对它们的思路。

In Beijing, Mr. Trump clapped for Chinese children waving American flags, toasted the “special relationship” between the American and Chinese people, called Mr. Xi a “great leader” and exclaimed that the garden where he walked with Mr. Xi held “the most beautiful roses anyone’s ever seen.” When Mr. Trump introduced the Chinese leader to the 17 or so American executives who came to Beijing, he said they had joined him “to pay respects to you, China.”

在北京，特朗普为挥舞美国国旗的中国儿童鼓掌，举杯庆祝美中人民之间“非常特殊的关系”，称习近平是“一位伟大的领导人”，并感叹他与习近平散步的那座园林中盛开着“全世界最美的月季”。在向中国领导人介绍随行的约17位美国企业高管时，特朗普说，这些人来到北京是为了“向你、向中国致敬”。

Mr. Trump said nothing in public in Beijing about Taiwan, even as Mr. Xi sharply warned that disagreement over the self-governing democracy could lead to a “clash.” Mr. Trump boasted of big Chinese purchases of Boeing airplanes and soybeans, though details were slim — just his own accounting of his wins, conveyed to reporters on Air Force One soon after liftoff from Beijing. Mr. Xi’s government did not confirm the purchases.

特朗普在北京没有就台湾问题发表任何公开言论，尽管习近平严厉警告，对这个自治民主政体的分歧可能导致“冲突”。特朗普宣称中国将大量采购波音飞机和大豆，但细节寥寥——这些只是他在“空军一号”从北京起飞后不久向记者们讲述的成果。习近平政府对这些采购并未予以证实。

周四，北京，拍摄特朗普总统车队的民众。

And Mr. Trump insisted that Beijing and Washington were on the same page on Iran, even as the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday reiterated its position that his war “should not have happened in the first place.”

特朗普还坚称北京与华盛顿在伊朗问题上立场一致，尽管中国外交部周五再度重申，他发动的这场战争“本不该发生”。

Taken together, the picture of a deferential American president and a confident Chinese leader reflected Mr. Xi’s success, despite his country’s bleak economic picture, in derailing the hawkish approach to China that Mr. Trump adopted at the start of his second term.

综合这一切，一位恭敬的美国总统与一位自信的中国领导人形成的画面反映了习近平的成功——尽管中国经济形势黯淡，他成功扭转了特朗普在第二任期开始时采取的对华强硬路线。

The tone the two men set, in what could be the first of four meetings this year, was one in which they would work to defuse years of built-up tension — some of which Mr. Trump built up himself — even as the Iran war has created a new potential flashpoint.

两人为这次会晤定下的基调（这可能是他们今年四次会晤中的第一次）更倾向于缓和多年积累的紧张关系——其中部分是特朗普自己造成的，尽管伊朗战争已经制造了新的潜在爆点。

John Delury, a historian of East Asia, said that even though the summit had produced few tangible outcomes in terms of economic deals or political agreements, it had the potential to affect the geopolitical mood, both in China and the United States. Mr. Trump’s friendly statements toward Mr. Xi and the Chinese people were being amplified in China’s state-controlled media, sending the message that “we’re getting along better with the Americans,” said Mr. Delury.

东亚史专家鲁乐汉(John Delury)表示，尽管此次峰会在经济协议或政治共识方面鲜有实质性成果，但它有可能影响中美两国的地缘政治情绪。鲁乐汉说，特朗普对习近平和中国人民的友好表态正在被中国官方媒体放大，传递出“我们与美国人的关系改善了”的信息。

And in the United States, Mr. Trump was telling voters who previously heard him describe China as a sinister, destructive force that it was a country America should do business with. The Washington narrative about “decoupling” — the idea that the United States should unwind its economic ties to China — seemed part of a bygone era.

在美国国内，特朗普正在告诉那些曾听他将中国描绘成阴险破坏力量的选民：中国其实是一个美国应该与之做生意的国家。华盛顿关于“脱钩”的叙事——即美国应切断与中国的经济联系——似乎正在成为过去式。

“You don’t pack Air Force One with your biggest business leaders when you’re decoupling,” said Mr. Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society. “Trump is sending that message to his people — to some extent the whole country — that we can get along with China even though we’re still going to compete.”

“如果你正在脱钩，就不会在‘空军一号’上装那么多商界大佬，”亚洲协会高级研究员鲁乐汉说。“特朗普在向他的人民——在某种程度上是向整个国家——传递一个信息：我们可以与中国相处，尽管竞争仍将继续。”

But there are dangers in that approach, in the view of some former American officials who have served in Beijing. R. Nicholas Burns, the ambassador to China during the Biden administration, said that it was understandable that Mr. Trump wanted to be polite to Mr. Xi, but that the American president’s gushing approach “weakens Trump and the U.S.”

但一些曾在北京任职的前美国官员认为，这种做法存在风险。拜登政府时期的美国驻华大使尼古拉斯·伯恩斯表示，特朗普对习近平保持礼貌是可以理解的，但这位美国总统过于热络的姿态“削弱了特朗普和美国的立场”。

“Xi did not hesitate to warn Trump over Taiwan,” Mr. Burns said. “Trump should not hesitate to be frank about our concerns, too.”

“习近平毫不犹豫地在台湾问题上警告了特朗普，”伯恩斯说。“特朗普也不应该犹豫，同样坦率地表达我们的关切。"

The summit produced little clarity about the policy details of the new relationship that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi were shaping. Da Wei, the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the United States did not appear to have “put enough energy” into the visit.

关于特朗普和习近平正在塑造的这种新关系的政策细节，此次峰会几乎没有带来任何清晰的答案。清华大学国际安全与战略研究中心主任达巍表示，美国对这次访问似乎没有“投入足够的精力”。

“The U.S. side looked a little passive,” Mr. Da said, asserting that Mr. Trump had said little of substance on the trip. “The Chinese side prepared very well.”

“美方看起来有些被动，”达巍说，他认为特朗普此行几乎没有谈及什么实质内容。“中方准备得非常充分。”

The United States went into the summit hoping to convince China to do more to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stabilize global energy markets, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on the flight to Beijing this week. And China had hopes that Mr. Trump might nudge American policy on Taiwan in Beijing’s favor.

美国国务卿鲁比奥本周在飞往北京的途中表示，美国希望借此次峰会说服中国在推动伊朗重新开放霍尔木兹海峡、稳定全球能源市场方面发挥更大作用。中国则希望特朗普可以在台湾问题上让美国的政策向北京倾斜。

国宴上的特朗普。他对习近平和中国民众的友好表态正在被中国官方媒体放大。

There was no evidence that China had changed its position on Iran, even though Mr. Trump asserted that he and Mr. Xi “feel very similar” about it. On Air Force One, Mr. Trump did not name a single way in which Mr. Xi had agreed to change the situation on the ground — or whether it had agreed to stop giving Iran access to satellite imagery that helps it target U.S. forces and Gulf states.

但没有证据表明中国改变了在伊朗问题上的立场，尽管特朗普声称他与习近平“感觉非常相似”。在“空军一号”上，特朗普并未具体说明习近平同意改变实际局势的任何一种具体方式，也未说明中国是否同意停止向伊朗提供卫星图像，支持其针对美国及海湾国家目标的行动。

China’s foreign ministry said that Middle East “shipping channels should be reopened as soon as possible,” but it did not indicate it would put more pressure on Iran, which relies on China as the main buyer of its oil.

中国外交部表示，“应尽快重开”中东航道，但并未表示将向伊朗施加更多压力。伊朗依赖中国作为其石油的主要买家。

Mr. Trump did not comment on Taiwan until reporters asked him about it on the flight from Beijing, at which point he offered little reassurance to those hoping for a robust American defense of Taiwan’s democracy.

在从北京起飞的飞机上，直到媒体问起，特朗普才就台湾问题作出回应，而即便在那时，他也几乎没有让那些希望美国坚决捍卫台湾民主的人感到安心。

He suggested that he might reconsider a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan that has been awaiting his final approval. When a reporter noted that President Ronald Reagan had assured Taiwan, more than 40 years ago, that no president would consult Chinese leaders on the size or nature of such arms packages, he dismissed the whole notion, saying that was a long time ago.

他表示，可能会重新考虑一项价值140亿美元的对台军售方案，该方案一直在等待他的最终批准。当记者指出，40多年前的里根总统曾向台湾保证，美国总统不会就军售规模或性质征求中国领导人的意见时，他对这一说法不以为意，认为那已经是很久以前的事了。

“I’ll be making a decision” about arms sales, Mr. Trump said, suggesting he would announce something soon.

“我会做出决定”，特朗普在谈到对台军售时说道，并表示很快会宣布相关决定。

He said Mr. Xi had asked whether the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked it, and that he had not given the Chinese leader a response. “I said, ‘I don’t talk about those things,’” Mr. Trump said.

他说习近平曾问起，如果中国攻打台湾，美国是否会出手，而他当时没有给这位中国领导人答复。“我说，‘我不谈这些事情，’”特朗普说。

Mr. Xi accompanied Mr. Trump at all his public events across Beijing on Thursday and Friday. It was an extraordinary time commitment by the Chinese leader, according to Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. Mr. Trump told reporters on his plane that the secretive residential compound Mr. Xi showed him on Friday was “amazing” and marveled that he had gotten to see it.

周四和周五，习近平全程陪同特朗普出席了在北京的所有公开活动。华盛顿史汀生中心中国项目主任孙韵表示，这对中国领导人而言是一项非同寻常的时间投入。特朗普在专机上告诉记者，习近平周五带他参观的那处神秘宅邸令他“惊叹不已”，并感慨自己有幸得以一窥其中。

Chinese officials “realize that this current moment of positivity is a very Trump-specific phenomenon that may not be sustainable,” Ms. Sun said.

中国官员“意识到，眼下这种积极的氛围是一种与特朗普本人高度绑定的现象，未必能够持久”，孙韵说。

天安门广场，摄于周五。

Analysts in Beijing said they recognized that U.S. policy could turn on a dime, and Mr. Xi signaled that he was tailoring his foreign policy to Mr. Trump specifically.

北京的分析人士认为，他们清楚美国的政策可能随时转向，而习近平释放出的信号表明，他正在专门针对特朗普调整自己的外交政策。

Mr. Xi presented Mr. Trump with a new concept for the U.S.-Chinese relationship called “constructive strategic stability,” according to Chinese state media, but specified a time frame that coincided with the end of Mr. Trump’s term: “the next three years and beyond.” And as he met with Mr. Trump on Friday at the residential compound, Zhongnanhai, Mr. Xi compared his “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” to Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, according to a Chinese government statement.

据中国官方媒体称，习近平向特朗普提出了一个关于美中关系的新概念，称为“建设性战略稳定”，并设定了一个与特朗普任期结束相吻合的时间框架：“未来三年乃至更长时间”。在周五于中南海与特朗普会晤时，习近平还将自己的“中华民族伟大复兴”与特朗普的“让美国再次伟大”进行了类比。

A question looming over all the camaraderie was how long the upbeat tone would last. Early in Mr. Trump’s first term, a similarly convivial Beijing summit in 2017 was followed by a hawkish turn against China.

萦绕在这种友好气氛之上的是一个悬而未决的问题：这种积极基调究竟能持续多久。在特朗普首个任期初期，2017年同样宾主尽欢的北京峰会过后，美国对华态度就转向了强硬。

But analysts in both China and the United States said Mr. Trump’s attitude to Beijing was different now. For one thing, he has seen China’s ability to retaliate against the United States, as it did by throttling rare earth exports last year, forcing Mr. Trump to back down in his trade war.

但中美两国的分析人士都表示，特朗普现在对北京的态度今非昔比。一方面，他已亲眼见识了中国的反制能力——去年通过限制稀土出口，中国迫使特朗普在贸易战中作出让步。

“Everyone has a learning curve,” said Sun Chenghao, a specialist in U.S.-China relations at Tsinghua University. Now, he said, “Mr. Trump knows how to deal with China.”

“谁都有一个学习曲线，”清华大学中美关系专家孙成昊说。他表，现在“特朗普已经知道如何跟中国打交道了”。

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has spent the last year standing up to President Trump. He met triple-digit tariff with triple-digit tariff and restricted rare earth exports, forcing the Trump administration to back down. Both sides suffered, and so did the global economy.

中国领导人习近平在过去一年中与特朗普总统针锋相对。他以三位数关税回击三位数关税，并限制稀土出口，迫使特朗普政府做出让步。双方都付出了代价，全球经济也深受其害。

But having made his point, and established China as America’s peer, Mr. Xi is now pivoting from retaliation to conciliation. At a summit in Beijing this week that he billed as historic, Mr. Xi offered Washington a choice: Accept China as an equal power with red lines that must not be crossed or continue in a cycle of conflict that risks a global “Thucydides Trap” of superpower collision.

但在表明立场、确立中国作为美国对等大国的地位后，习近平现在正从报复转向和解。在本周北京举行的他称为具有历史意义的峰会上，习近平让华盛顿做出选择：是接受中国作为拥有不可逾越红线的平等大国，还是继续一个可能导致全球落入“修昔底德陷阱”的超级大国冲突循环。

He has given this new blueprint a new, if somewhat stilted, name: “constructive strategic stability.”

他为这一新蓝图起了一个略显拗口的新名字：“建设性战略稳定”。

He trotted out the term throughout the summit, a visit designed to show Mr. Trump what friendship could look like between the two countries, with pageantry in the cavernous rooms of the Great Hall of the People, a private tour of the Temple of Heaven and talks inside Zhongnanhai, the secretive walled compound of the Chinese leadership.

他在整个峰会期间反复使用这个词，此次访问旨在向特朗普展示两国之间友谊可能的样子：在人民大会堂宽敞大厅举行的盛大仪式、参观天坛的私人导览，以及在中南海——壁垒森严的中国领导人园区——内进行的会谈。

In some ways, the Trump administration was already playing by China’s rules on this visit. The American president was largely deferential to Mr. Xi. Mr. Trump lavished him with praise and refrained from pushing back when the Chinese leader issued a warning to the United States about treading carefully on the subject of Taiwan, the self-governed island claimed by Beijing.

在某些方面，特朗普政府此次访问已经是在按照中国的规则行事。美国总统在很大程度上对习近平持顺从态度。特朗普对他大加赞扬，当中国领导人就台湾问题警告美国要谨慎行事时，特朗普也没有反驳。台湾是北京声称拥有主权但实行自治的岛屿。

Redefining the terms of engagement

重新定义接触原则

Mr. Xi spoke in lofty, abstract terms about what exactly constructive strategic stability entailed. He spoke of “cooperation” being a “mainstay”; “competition within proper limits”; “manageable differences” and “expectable peace.”

习近平以宏大而抽象的措辞阐述了“建设性战略稳定”究竟意味着什么。他谈到“合作为主”；“竞争有度”；“分歧可控”和“和平可期”。

What that boils down to, said Xin Qiang, a U.S.-China expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, is the acknowledgment that competition is part of the relationship.

复旦大学中美问题专家信强表示，这归根结底是承认竞争是两国关系的一部分。

Despite that, the two countries can hold out hope that there are more reasons to cooperate than there are to clash. The summit underscored some of the ways in which they could potentially work together, such as combating the flow of fentanyl to the United States, setting ground rules for artificial intelligence and resolving the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz.

尽管如此，两国仍可寄希望于合作的理由多于冲突的理由。此次峰会凸显了双方可能合作的若干领域，例如打击芬太尼流入美国、为人工智能制定基本规则，以及解决霍尔木兹海峡的僵局。

Is Washington on board with this?

华盛顿是否接受这一理念？

China’s official summary of the meeting said Mr. Trump agreed to Mr. Xi’s new definition of the relationship. Though the White House made no mention of it in its own summary, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested in an interview with NBC on Friday that the Trump administration had endorsed the concept.

中国官方对此次会晤的总结称，特朗普同意习近平对两国关系的新定义。虽然白宫自己的总结中并未提及，但美国国务卿马可·鲁比奥周五在接受NBC采访时表示，特朗普政府已认可这一理念。

“One of the things the Chinese emphasize, which we agree, is strategic stability in our relationship, a constructive relationship, but also one that establishes strategic stability so that we don’t have misunderstandings that could lead to broader conflict,” Mr. Rubio said.

“中国人强调的一点是我们也同意的，那就是我们关系中的战略稳定，一种建设性的关系，同时也建立战略稳定，以避免可能导致更大冲突的误解，”鲁比奥说。

此次访问旨在向特朗普展示两国可以建立怎样的友谊。

Just a few years ago, Beijing was vehemently opposed to a policy of the Biden administration called “managed competition” that has echoes of what Mr. Xi is proposing now. It entailed accepting that the two sides were rivals, but also imposing guardrails to prevent the relationship from veering into conflict. Beijing rejected that framework as a bid to contain China.

就在几年前，北京还强烈反对拜登政府提出的“可控竞争”政策，该政策与习近平现在提出的理念有相似之处。它承认双方是竞争对手，但同时设置护栏以防止关系滑向冲突。北京当时拒绝这一框架，认为这是遏制中国的企图。

Why Mr. Xi is comfortable with the idea today could have much to do with the growing parity in power between China and the United States. Beijing feels as though it can no longer be pushed around by Washington after fighting the Trump administration to a draw during last year’s trade war by threatening to throttle global supplies of critical minerals needed to make modern technologies.

习近平如今愿意接受这一理念，可能与中美两国权力日益接近对等有很大关系。在去年贸易战中，北京通过威胁扼杀全球关键矿产供应（这些矿产是制造现代技术所必需的）与特朗普政府战成平手，此后北京觉得华盛顿再也无法随意摆布自己。

Why Xi is ready to talk

习近平为何愿意对话

At the same time, confrontation with the United States does China no favors. Its economy has been stagnant for years because of a property crisis, and it cannot afford any disruptions to global trade, its chief engine of growth.

与此同时，与美国对抗对中国毫无益处。由于房地产危机，中国经济多年来一直停滞不前，无法承受全球贸易的任何中断，而全球贸易是中国经济增长的主要引擎。

Mr. Xi is signaling that he wants to lock in the current stalemate so that the Trump administration will not interfere with his greater vision for China’s future: a country brimming with technological and industrial might poised to overtake a declining United States as the premier global power.

习近平正在发出信号，他希望锁定目前的僵持局面，以便特朗普政府不会干扰他对中国未来的更大愿景：一个拥有强大技术和工业实力的国家准备超越日益衰落的美国，成为全球首要大国。

“For China, this phrase is about buying time and playing for advantage as Beijing tries to wait out the Trump administration,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown professor who was senior Asia director on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.

“对中方而言，这个表述是为了争取时间并在等待特朗普政府任期结束的过程中占据优势，”乔治城大学教授、曾在贝拉克·奥巴马政府担任国家安全委员会亚洲事务高级主任的麦艾文(Evan Medeiros)说。

“China wants to manage what they see as gradual U.S. decline in the hopes of both expediting it but also making it as non-disruptive as possible,” he added.

“中国希望管理他们所看到的美国逐渐衰落的过程，既希望加速这一过程，又希望让它尽可能不具破坏性，”他补充说。

China is playing the long game

中国着眼于长线

The United States is no stranger to China’s attempts to frame the two countries’ relationship to its advantage.

美国对中国试图以有利于自己的方式定义两国关系并不陌生。

Mr. Xi tried to sell Mr. Obama on what he called “a new model of great power relations” in 2013 that called on the United States to respect what China considers its core interests such as its claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

2013年，习近平曾试图向奥巴马推销他所谓的“新型大国关系”，要求美国尊重中国认为的核心利益，例如对台湾和南海的主权主张。

The Obama administration ultimately refused to endorse the concept, recognizing that it required ceding power in Asia and leaving allies and partners vulnerable.

奥巴马政府最终拒绝认可这一概念，认为它要求美国在亚洲让渡权力，并置盟友和伙伴于险境。

2015年，中国国家主席习近平与美国总统奥巴马会面。

“This is a classic Chinese move which they try to get the United States to agree to a framework as a way to bind Washington and set the terms of the bilateral relationship going forward,” Mr. Medeiros said of Mr. Xi’s latest attempt.

“这是典型的中国做法，他们试图让美国同意一个框架，以此来约束华盛顿并设定未来双边关系的条款，”麦艾文在谈到习近平最新尝试时说。

“These phrases are geopolitical quick sand,” he added. “Once you step in you cannot get out, and the more you try, the deeper you get pulled in by China.”

“这些表述是地缘政治的流沙，”他补充道。“一旦踏入就无法脱身，你越挣扎，就会被中国拉得越深。”

How China will use this reset

中国将如何利用这一重置

This is a reframing of the relationship, but on Beijing’s terms, said Shen Dingli, an international relations scholar in Shanghai.

上海国际关系学者沈丁立表示，这是在按照北京的条件重新定义两国关系。

China, for example, could later claim that the Trump administration had violated the tenets of constructive strategic stability by continuing to sell more arms to Taiwan.

例如，中国以后可能会声称，特朗普政府继续向台湾出售更多武器违反了建设性战略稳定的原则。

“What China wants is for the China-U.S. relationship to be good and stable, but with the condition that China says, ‘I am the one providing the path and I am the one pointing the way,” Mr. Shen said.

“中国想要的是中美关系良好且稳定，但前提条件是中国说，‘我才是提供路径的人，我才是指明方向的人，’”他说。

Other Chinese analysts say a new framework is necessary to dampen the influence of China hawks in Congress, who threaten to derail the détente. There is also a fear that Mr. Trump could change his position on China after the 2026 midterm elections.

还有一些中国分析人士表示，需要一个新框架来削弱国会中对华鹰派的影响力，他们威胁要破坏当前的缓和局面。同时也担心特朗普在2026年中期选举后可能改变对华立场。

“The worry is always there. It’s something he’s quite known for,” said Dr. Xin of Fudan University.

“这种担忧始终存在。这是他出了名的特点，”复旦大学的信强说。

For President Trump, the first day of his visit to Beijing was all about the personal relationship between him and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.

对特朗普总统而言，他访问北京的第一天完全围绕着他与中国领导人习近平之间的个人关系展开。

“You’re a great leader,” he told his host, whom he has often said he admires for his “powerful” control over a nation of 1.4 billion people. “I say it to everybody.”

“您是一位伟大的领导人，”他对东道主说道。他经常表示，自己钦佩习近平对14亿人口国家的“强有力”控制。“我对每个人都这么说。”

Mr. Xi, unsurprisingly, spent little time Thursday on flattery. Once the 21-gun salute and precision-marching by units of the People’s Liberation Army were finished, the disciplined Chinese leader plunged right away into setting boundaries for the two countries’ relations. The red line was Taiwan, he said, making it abundantly clear that Mr. Trump’s effort at rapprochement could crash on takeoff if he interferes with China’s long-term effort to take control of the self-governing island.

不出意外，周四习近平几乎没花时间在恭维上。在21响礼炮和中国人民解放军部队精准的仪仗表演结束后，这位沉稳自律的中国领导人立即切入正题，为两国关系设定边界。他明确表示，台湾是红线，并清楚地警告：如果特朗普干涉中国长期以来控制这个自治岛屿的努力，那么他试图改善中美关系的努力很可能胎死腹中。

“The U.S. must handle the Taiwan issue with utmost caution,” he said according to a readout from Xinhua, China’s official news agency. The warning came just minutes into his public remarks in the Great Hall of the People, the center of power for the People’s Republic starting just a decade into Mao’s revolution. For Mr. Xi, it was all about setting boundaries, from the start.

根据中国官方通讯社新华社发布的通报，习近平说：“美方务必慎之又慎处理台湾问题。”这一警告是在人民大会堂——毛泽东革命仅十年后建起的中华人民共和国权力中心——的公开讲话最初几分钟里发出的。对习近平而言，从一开始就设定边界至关重要。

The moment seemed to capture the new equilibrium between the two adversaries. Mr. Xi arrived highly scripted, leaving no doubt that for all of China’s problems — deflation, depopulation, the bursting of the real estate bubble — the moment when China acts as a peer superpower had arrived.

这一刻似乎捕捉到了两个对手之间的一种新的均势状态。习近平的行程经过精心设计，毫不怀疑地表明：尽管中国面临通缩、人口减少、房地产泡沫破裂等诸多问题，但中国作为平等超级大国的时刻已经到来。

At every turn, at least as he began his two-day trip to China, Mr. Trump sounded conciliatory, the exact opposite of his portrayals of China in public appearances back home, where during his presidential campaigns he has talked about the country as a job-stealer and national security threat. Mr. Xi, while smiling and welcoming to Mr. Trump, was quietly more confrontational — especially on Taiwan, where he delivered an unequivocal warning.

至少在特朗普为期两天的访华之行伊始，他处处流露出和解的姿态，这与他回国公开场合中对中国的描述完全相反——在总统竞选期间，他一直将中国描述为抢走就业机会的国家安全威胁。习近平虽然面带微笑、欢迎特朗普，但私下里却更为强硬——尤其是在台湾问题上，他发出了明确无误的警告。

The gap spoke directly to the new level of confidence and authority Mr. Xi has adapted in his public speech, despite his challenges with the domestic economy, as he watches the United States plunge into conflict with Iran, another Middle East confrontation with no easy exit.

这种差异直接反映出习近平在公开讲话中展现出的新的自信与权威，尽管中国国内经济面临挑战，但他也看到美国正陷入与伊朗的冲突——另一场中东对抗，且没有容易的退出路径。

周四，特朗普与习近平在北京天坛。

The Chinese president designed the day meticulously, down to a visit to the Temple of Heaven, the Ming dynasty complex not far from the Forbidden City. As Mr. Trump sat in the 13th-century wonder, he got a history lesson from the Chinese leader, tailored to echo the modern era.

这位中国领导人精心设计了这一天的行程，包括参观天坛——一座离紫禁城不远的明代建筑群。特朗普坐在这座13世纪瑰奇建筑中，听了一堂中国领导人的历史课，这堂课被特意调整，以呼应当代现实。

At his toast at a televised State Banquet on Thursday night, Mr. Trump came with a lesson of his own, describing links between China and the United States that went back to the Empress of China, the ship that took a 14-month journey in 1783 to open trade and bring the first American diplomats to what was then known as Canton, now called Guangzhou.

在周四晚上播出的国宴祝酒环节，特朗普带来了他自己的历史课。他描述了中美两国之间的联系，可以追溯到“中国皇后号”商船——这艘船在1783年花了14个月航行以开辟贸易，并将首批美国外交官带到当时的Canton（今天的广州）。

“We’ve gotten along when there were difficulties, we worked it out,” Mr. Trump said. But even then he cast relations in personal terms, making clear that the huge divisions between the two countries had to be solved by two strong leaders.

“我们在遇到困难时都能相处融洽，我们会解决它，”特朗普说。但即便如此，他仍将两国关系归结为个人层面，明确表示两国之间的巨大分歧必须由两位强有力的领导人来解决。

“I would call you, and you would call me whenever we had a problem, people don’t know, whenever we had a problem,” he said. “We worked that out very quickly, and we’re going to have a fantastic future together.”

“只要有问题，我会给你打电话，你也会给我打电话——人们不知道这一点——只要有问题，”他说。“我们会很快解决它，我们将共同拥有一个美好的未来。”

For his part, Mr. Xi returned to his mantra: to keep from turning competition into conflict, the two nations must keep from falling into the “Thucydides Trap.”

习近平则重申了他的核心理念：为了防止竞争演变为冲突，两国必须避免陷入“修昔底德陷阱”。

(The trap, popularized by the Harvard professor Graham Allison in his book “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap,” comes when a rising power challenges a status-quo power, often leading to war. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that rise engendered in Sparta,” the ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote, “that made war inevitable”.)

（这一概念因哈佛大学教授格雷厄姆·艾利森的著作《注定一战——中美能避免修昔底德陷阱吗？》而流传开来，指崛起大国挑战守成大国时常导致战争。古希腊历史学家修昔底德写道：“正是雅典的崛起及其在斯巴达引发的恐惧，使得战争不可避免。”）

Mr. Xi proposed a familiar solution: ban talk of competition between the No. 1 and No. 2 economic superpowers — a regular staple of the Biden White House — and focus on “stability,’’ a governing characteristic rarely associated with Mr. Trump.

习近平提出了一个熟悉的解决方案：禁止谈论世界第一和第二大经济体之间的竞争（这是拜登白宫的常规话题），而是专注于“稳定”——一个很少与特朗普联系在一起的治理特征。

“The common interests between China and the United State outweigh our differences,” Mr. Xi said, according to state media. “Stability in China-U.S. relations is a boon to the world.”

根据官方媒体报道，习近平表示：“中美之间的共同利益大于分歧，中美各自成功是彼此的机遇，中美关系稳定是世界的利好。”

周四，特朗普总统出席在北京举行的国宴。

But unlike Mr. Trump, he explored the alternative scenario.

但与特朗普不同，他探讨了另一种可能的情景。

“If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation,” he said, a clear reference to Taiwan, according to the readout.

根据官方媒体的通报，他在明确谈及台湾问题时说，“处理不好，两国就会碰撞甚至冲突，将整个中美关系推向十分危险的境地。”

If much of this sounds familiar, it was. Mr. Xi has go-to homilies, part of his philosopher-king approach to ruling over China. And in this summit he invented one new one: He said he agreed with Mr. Trump on “a new vision of building a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability.”

如果这一切听起来很熟悉，那是因为确实如此。习近平有自己惯用的说教，这是他以“哲人圣君”方式统治中国的一部分。在这次峰会上，他还发明了一个新的说法：他表示同意特朗普关于“构建‘中美建设性战略稳定关系’”的想法。

As Rush Doshi, a China scholar at Georgetown University noted, that sounded like an effort “to lock in a ‘truce’ favorable to them, and they want to do so beyond Trump, with this post-trade war détente setting the base line.”

正如乔治城大学中国问题学者杜如松(Rush Doshi)所指出的，这听起来像是努力“锁定一个对他们有利的‘休战’协议，他们希望将其延续到特朗普之后，以这场贸易战后的缓和作为基准线。”

Future disputes over China’s excess manufacturing capacity or rebuilding American military capability in the Indo-Pacific could be declared “a violation of this frame,” he wrote on X.

杜如松在X平台上写道，未来关于中国制造产能过剩或美国在印太地区重建军事能力的争端，都可能被宣布为“违反这一框架”。

The contrast with Mr. Trump’s style — where summits are first and foremost for instant “deals,” usually ones he can boast will provide jobs or sales — is often jarring. Mr. Trump, for example, brought a group of business executives, whose presence he said was intended to show “respect” for China while seeking market access.

这与特朗普的风格形成了鲜明对比——对他而言，峰会首先是为了即时达成“交易”，通常是他可以吹嘘能带来就业或销售的交易。例如，特朗普带了一群企业高管，他说他们的出席是为了展示对中国的“尊重”，同时寻求市场准入。

It had a familiar ring to it, the days when Bill Clinton and George W. Bush brought business leaders to explore the promise of the Chinese market, often for the first time. But Mr. Trump’s delegation came with decades of experience, much of it bitter. Some of them were survivors of the battles over intellectual property theft and sharp restrictions intended to favor local Chinese industry.

这让人想起比尔·克林顿和小布什时代，他们曾带领商界领袖探索中国市场的潜力，通常是首次尝试。但特朗普的代表团拥有数十年的经验，其中很多是苦涩的。他们中的一些人是知识产权盗窃斗争的幸存者，也经历过旨在偏袒中国本土产业的严格限制。

埃隆·马斯克周三抵达北京。

Mr. Xi did not bring an equivalent group. There were no executives from BYD, the huge Chinese carmaker trying to figure out how to do business in the United States, or DeepSeek, the innovative artificial intelligence firm at the heart of the battle with A.I. firms in the United States.

习近平没有带对等的团体。无论试图在美国开展业务的大型中国车企比亚迪，还是与美国AI公司竞争前沿的创新人工智能企业深度求索，都没有高管在场。

There were other discordant notes, heard just beneath the noise of the clinking glasses and optimistic toasts. In contrast to the Chinese readout, the American account, released by the White House, talked about cracking down on fentanyl precursors, a long-running issue with China, and buying American agricultural goods. It did not mention Taiwan, or China’s restrictions on rare earths, or its rapid nuclear weapons buildup.

在酒杯碰撞和乐观的祝酒辞中，还能听到其他不和谐的音符。与中方报道不同，白宫发布的美方版本谈到了打击芬太尼前体（这是中美长期存在的问题）以及购买美国农产品。它没有提到台湾、中国对稀土的限制，或中国快速的核武器建设。

The White House also described the United States and China as aligned on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and keep it free of Iranian tolls. All that was true, but ignored the deeper complication: despite American entreaties, China is unlikely to deploy whatever influence it has with the Iranians for free. What the price might be is unclear.

白宫还描述称，美国和中国在需要重新开放霍尔木兹海峡并使其免受伊朗通行费影响的问题上立场一致。这些都是事实，但忽略了更深层的复杂性：尽管美国提出请求，中国不太可能无偿动用其对伊朗的影响力。代价可能是什么，目前尚不清楚。

The real test of how these two men debate their differences might come on Friday morning, when Mr. Trump is scheduled for much smaller meetings with Mr. Xi. It is the kind of session he likes best: leader to leader. And once he leaves Chinese airspace, he seems likely to present his preferred version of those talks.

这两位领导人如何辩论分歧的真正考验可能将在周五上午到来——届时特朗普将与习近平举行规模更小的会晤。这是他最喜欢的那种形式：领导人对领导人。而一旦他离开中国领空，他似乎很可能以自己偏好的版本来呈现这些会谈内容。

The Chinese government will likely be more circumspect.

中国政府则很可能更为谨慎。

Even for everyday people in China, President Trump’s influence looms large.

即便对于中国的普通民众而言，特朗普总统的影响力也无处不在。

A steel trader in the southern city of Fuzhou said his business had been depressed by the trade war. A taxi driver in northern China complained that the increase in global gas prices amid the war in Iran meant he had to pay more at the pump.

在南方城市福州，一位做钢材生意的商人表示，贸易战令他生意惨淡。在中国北方，一位出租车司机抱怨，由于伊朗战争导致全球油价上涨，他加油的成本也随之增加。

At a shopping mall in Beijing, Sunny Sun, a woman who was invested in stocks, said she was watching her portfolio, wary of the impact of announcements from the president’s summit with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.

在北京的一家购物中心里，股民孙晴（音）表示，她正密切关注自己的投资组合，会留意特朗普与中国领导人习近平峰会晤后发布的声明会带来怎样的影响。

“There’s definitely some uncertainty in the market sentiment, because Trump is the kind of person who says one thing today and another tomorrow when he gets back to the United States,” Ms. Sun said. “His words can actually stir up things globally.”

孙女士说：“这个情绪上来看应该还是会有一点，大家就是不确定性，因为老特属于那种今天他在这儿说，明天可能回到美国又说别的了，这个东西都不好说。他的话其实可以搅动全球的一些东西。”

‘Like Stand-Up Comedy’

“像是在听脱口秀一样”

Some residents were surprised to hear that Mr. Trump was visiting China, but all knew who he was. They cited his attempted assassination, his business record, his refusal to wear face masks during the pandemic, his campaign against Iran, and, of course, his tariffs.

一些民众听说特朗普来访感到意外，但没有人不知道他是谁。他们提到了他遭遇暗杀未遂、他的商业履历、疫情期间拒绝戴口罩、对伊朗的行动，当然还有他的关税。

北京的米莉·朱（音）。

“He’s a rather interesting person,” said Milly Zhu, a 34-year-old who works in film and TV promotion and was walking in a shopping mall in Beijing. “Some of his words and actions, for example regarding China, seem like stand-up comedy to people in China,” she said.

在北京一家购物中心逛街的米莉·朱（音）说，“我觉得他是一个比较有趣的人。”34岁的朱小姐从事影视宣发工作。“他的一些言行，比如说他对于中国，就像他说的很多一些东西，在我们国内人看来像是在听脱口秀一样，”她说。

“Our President Xi might be considered, in comparison to Trump, more serious,” she added.

她还说：“我们的习主席，就相对于川普而言，他就更会严肃一些。”

Often, their views were negative. Yang Saixiang, a 47-year old worker at a nail salon in a shopping mall in Fuzhou, said the Iran war had worsened her views and that many Chinese people disliked Mr. Trump.

他们的看法往往是负面的。47岁的杨赛香（音）在福州一家购物中心的美甲店工作，她说，伊朗战争让她对特朗普的印象更差了，许多中国人都不喜欢他。

“He’s not friendly to China,” she said. She said tariffs and the U.S.-China trade war had dampened earnings for her customers, and she questioned why the United States could not simply change presidents. “I think at his age, he doesn’t need to be president anymore,” she said.

她说：“原因有很多，我是比如说，对我们中国不友好之类的。”她表示，关税和中美贸易战影响了她顾客的收入，她质疑美国为什么不能换个总统。“我觉得他到了这种年龄，我觉得他没必要做总统了，”她说。

‘He’s Quite Brutal’

“挺残暴的”

Peng Shuiming, an 18-year-old hairdresser who sat outside the Fuzhou mall playing games on his phone, said the war with Iran had further soured his opinion on the United States, which was already poor.

18岁的理发师彭帅明（音）坐在福州那家购物中心外玩手游，他说伊朗战争让他对美国原本就不好的印象变得更加差了。

“My impression of him isn’t very good; he’s quite brutal,” he said of Mr. Trump.

“对他的印象不是太好，挺残暴的，”他谈到特朗普时说。

彭帅明（音），本周摄于福州。

Mr. Peng said he was indifferent to Mr. Trump’s visit, and that whether China needed the United States was a “matter of choice. I feel China is quite powerful,” he said.

他还表示，对于特朗普的来访，他并不在意，而且中国是否需要美国，“我感觉可要可不要，感觉中国挺强大的”，他说。

Zhang Lei, a 40-year-old taxi driver in Jinan, Shandong Province, argued that China was already wealthy, with little need for foreign goods, and that it should be more assertive.

山东济南40岁的出租车司机张磊（音）认为，中国已经很富裕了，对外国商品需求不大，应该更加强硬。

“The fact that he’s taking the initiative to visit China means that China can control him, right?” he said of Mr. Trump. “It means that this trade war isn’t just unsuccessful for China, it means that the U.S. is also struggling.”

在谈到特朗普时，他说：“他只要主动上中国来访华，那说明他，就说是中国可以拿捏他，是吧？说明这个贸易战不光中国不行，说明美国也不行，垮得也挺厉害的。”

‘Better to Avoid Tariff Wars’

“不要做关税战”

Some of the negative views of the United States appeared to be based on misinformation circulated on social media. One woman cited a report that beggars in the United States eat human flesh, while Mr. Peng mentioned that his view on the United States had worsened after seeing a report during the pandemic about the United States dumping bodies in the sea.

一些对美国的负面看法似乎来自社交媒体上流传的不实信息。一位女性提到她看到一则报道称，美国的乞丐吃人肉；彭帅明也说，他在疫情期间看到美国“把尸体扔进海里”的报道，这让他对美国的印象变得更糟了。

Others seemed to blame Mr. Trump and the trade war for broader weakness in the Chinese economy, some of which was likely linked to the current real estate downturn, or other reasons.

也有人似乎将中国经济的整体疲软归咎于特朗普和贸易战，尽管这其中很大一部分可能与当前的房地产低迷或其他原因有关。

Chen Gang, a 42-year-old steel trader in Fuzhou, said tense relations between the United States and China were hurting his business. He sells steel to the construction industry, but the sector is shrinking.

42岁的陈刚（音）在福州做钢材生意，他说中美关系紧张正在损害他的生意。他向建筑行业供货，但这个行业正在萎缩。

“It would be better to avoid tariff wars and just cooperate amicably, without all this back and forth,” he said.

他说：“当然说，你这样子不要做关税战那种，合作愉快一点就更好了，不要搞来搞去。”

Mr. Chen said that Chinese leaders should be “polite and courteous” to Mr. Trump — at least on the surface. “People say nice things on the surface, but what they really mean behind the scenes is another matter. That’s how it is in business,” he said.

陈刚说，中国领导人对特朗普应该“都是和和气气的”——即使是在表面上。“现在表面说的好，背后都不一定是什么样子，都一样。做生意的都这样，”他说。

‘We Want to Get Along Well With the United States’

“和美国好好相处”

Many expressed hope that the meetings between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would set the United States and China on a more stable path. Almost all characterized China as inherently peaceful.

许多人希望特朗普与习近平的会晤能够让美中关系走向更稳定的轨道。几乎所有人都认为中国本质上是爱好和平的。

“We don’t want war, we want peace,” Ms. Zhu said. “We want to get along well with the United States, and we want to develop our economy. Only peace can create a better economy.”

“所以我今天的所有的概念就是不希望战争，希望和平，”米莉·朱说，“和美国好好相处，我们好好发展经济，因为我们就真的只有和平才能创造出更好的经济体。”

济南的沈建民（音）。

In Jinan, the northern Chinese city, Shen Jianmin, a 74-year-old retiree and former farmer who was relaxing in a public plaza on Wednesday, said that Mr. Trump tended to stir up trouble for no reason. But he said the visit was a positive development.

周三，在中国北方城市济南，曾是农民的74岁退休老人沈建民（音）在一处公共广场上休息。他说，特朗普往往无缘无故地制造麻烦。但他认为这次访问是积极的。

“It’s good that the U.S. is coming to China, right?” he said. “The friendship between the two countries is good.”

“美国上这边来中国，也是挺好的是吧？”他说。“两国友谊，我感觉挺好吧。”

“Everyone wants a good life; which ordinary person wants to fight? When you’re constantly at war, it’s the ordinary people who suffer,” he added.

“都想过好日子，老百姓谁愿意打仗？你整天打起来以后，还是老百姓吃苦，”他补充道。

The word from the White House went out to senior U.S. officials months before President Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday: Avoid unnecessary confrontations with China, large or small, that could interfere with Mr. Trump’s effort at rapprochement with America’s largest military, economic and technological competitor.

在特朗普总统周三抵达北京的几个月前，白宫向美国高级官员传达了指示：避免与中国发生任何不必要的对抗，无论规模大小，以免干扰特朗普与这个美国最大的军事、经济和技术竞争对手改善关系的努力。

It did not work out that way.

但事与愿违。

Over the past few weeks, the Treasury Department has put new sanctions on Chinese firms it said provided targeting data to Iran that enabled strikes on bases across the Middle East that did billions of dollars in damage to American facilities. The White House has accused China of stealing artificial intelligence models from U.S. tech companies. And just this week, federal prosecutors said they had charged a California mayor with illegally working for Beijing.

过去几周里，美国财政部对一些中国企业实施了新的制裁，称这些企业向伊朗提供了目标数据，使伊朗得以对中东各地的基地发动袭击，对美国设施造成了数十亿美元的损失。白宫指责中国从美国科技公司窃取人工智能模型。就在本周，联邦检察官表示，他们已起诉加州的一名市长非法为北京工作。

There have been actions against midsize oil importers in China for secretly buying up Iranian oil. The only big step that the administration delayed was final approval of a $13 billion military aid package for Taiwan, which the White House designed but will not fulfill until Mr. Trump is back. That leaves President Xi Jinping time to voice his objections.

政府还针对中国秘密购买伊朗石油的中型石油进口商采取了行动。政府唯一推迟的重大举措是对一项价值130亿美元的对台军事援助计划的最终批准，该计划由白宫主导设计，但在特朗普回国之前不会落实。这给中国国家主席习近平留出了表达反对意见的时间。

It is not clear why there has been such a sudden deluge of China measures, other than the fact that the Trump administration has been in office for nearly a year and a half. That is enough time for the China hawks appointed by Mr. Trump, and there are plenty, to gather evidence and build a case. Sometimes, that means forcing the president to see the evidence of Chinese-led actions designed to undermine the United States or its allies, even if his first instinct is to explain what a “good relationship” he has with Mr. Xi and seemingly suggest that all might be forgiven.

目前尚不清楚为什么突然涌现出那么多针对中国的措施，唯一可以解释的是特朗普政府上任已近一年半这个事实。这段时间足以让特朗普任命的众多对华鹰派人士收集证据并建立案件。有时，这意味着迫使总统看清由中国主导的、旨在削弱美国或其盟友行动的证据，即使他的第一直觉是解释他与习近平有着多么“良好的关系”，并且似乎表示一切都可以被原谅。

Indeed, Mr. Trump struck a largely conciliatory tone Thursday, telling Mr. Xi that he is “a great leader” and that “it is an honor to be your friend.” For his part, Mr. Xi warned Mr. Trump that “conflicts” between the two superpowers could occur over the issue of Taiwan.

事实上，特朗普在周四主要采用和解的基调，称习近平是“伟大的领导人”，还说“很荣幸能成为你的朋友”。习近平则警告特朗普，两个超级大国之间可能会围绕台湾问题发生“冲突”。

尽管习近平警告中美之间可能出现“冲突”，特朗普周四仍采取了和解的姿态。

Some experts said it was unlikely that the Trump administration was trying to gain leverage over China during the talks this week with its flurry of tough actions, as many of them amounted to little more than accusations that Beijing readily denies. Instead, senior officials may be seizing a perceived opportunity to highlight tensions with China over Iran, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence — and remind the president that Beijing, in addition to posing the biggest geopolitical threat to the United States, has not decided to start playing nice.

一些专家表示，特朗普政府不太可能试图通过这一连串强硬行动在本周的谈判中获得筹码，因为其中许多行动不过是北京轻易就否认的指控。相反，高级官员们可能是在抓住一个他们眼中的机会，以便凸显在伊朗、网络安全和人工智能问题上与中国的紧张关系——并提醒总统，北京不仅对美国构成最大的地缘政治威胁，而且并未决定开始展现出友善姿态。

Chinese companies, for example, have been discussing arms sales with Iran, plotting to send the weapons through other countries to mask the origins of the military aid, The New York Times reported this week.

例如，《纽约时报》本周报道称，中国企业一直在与伊朗讨论武器销售事宜，密谋通过其他国家运送武器，以掩盖军事援助的来源。

But the Iran war is just the latest irritant for U.S. national security officials. Chinese hackers continue to breach U.S. government and corporate systems with little consequence. The F.B.I. recently identified what it believed were Chinese hackers inside a database it maintains on its domestic surveillance orders. That discovery was especially alarming because Beijing appeared to be building on its past success of infiltrating the bureau’s internal networks by doing so again.

但伊朗战争只是令美国国家安全官员头疼的最新困扰。中国黑客持续入侵美国政府和企业系统，几乎没有承担什么后果。美国联邦调查局最近在其维护的一个关于该局国内监控命令的数据库中，发现了据信是中国黑客的踪迹。这一发现尤其令人担忧，因为北京似乎是在过去成功渗透该局内部网络的基础上，再次故伎重演。

“I see this as the hawkish officials pushing on areas where they think the door is the most open right ahead of the summit,” said Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a former China adviser at the Commerce Department during the Biden administration. In many ways, Mr. Trump himself may be as much the intended audience as the Chinese, she said. “These are all areas where the president himself has placed a high degree of priority.”

“我认为，这是鹰派官员在峰会即将召开之际针对他们认为最有可能取得突破的领域施加压力，”斯坦福大学胡佛研究所高级研究员、曾在拜登政府商务部担任中国事务顾问的易明(Elizabeth Economy)说。她表示，在许多方面，和中国人一样，特朗普本人可能也是这些行动想要影响的对象。“这些都是总统本人高度重视的领域。”

In late April, amid rapidly rising fears in both Washington and Silicon Valley about the threats posed by advanced artificial intelligence breakthroughs, the White House published a memo written by Michael Kratsios, the science and technology adviser to the president, accusing China of “exploiting American expertise and innovation” by stealing proprietary A.I. technology to build its own models.

4月下旬，在华盛顿和硅谷对先进人工智能突破所带来的威胁日益担忧之际，白宫发布了由总统科技顾问迈克尔·克拉齐奥斯撰写的一份备忘录，指责中国通过窃取专有的人工智能技术来建立自己的模型，从而“利用美国的专业知识和创新”。

“Foreign entities principally based in China are engaged in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill frontier A.I. systems,” Mr. Kratsios wrote. Distillation is the term used to describe training smaller A.I. models off larger, more expensive ones to achieve similar capabilities.

“主要位于中国的外国实体正在进行蓄意的、工业规模的运动，对前沿人工智能系统进行蒸馏，”克拉齐奥斯写道。“蒸馏”是一个术语，用于描述利用更大、更昂贵的模型来训练较小的人工智能模型，从而实现类似的能力。

英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋是此次随特朗普出访的科技公司高管之一。

Also last month, a U.S. cybersecurity bulletin issued with security agencies in Britain, Japan and other allied countries highlighted evolving tactics from Chinese state-sponsored hackers who rely on vast networks of compromised devices to engage in cyberespionage and target vulnerable critical infrastructure systems. The alert came after a prolonged stretch during which Chinese cyberthreats were seldom highlighted by U.S. agencies, even as China’s hackers once again breached a sensitive internal network at the F.B.I. that stores information about the bureau’s surveillance targets.

同样在上个月，美国与英国、日本及其他盟国的安全机构联合发布的一份网络安全公告强调，受中国国家支持的黑客正采用不断演变的策略，依靠庞大的受感染设备网络从事网络间谍活动，并针对存在漏洞的关键基础设施系统。此次警告发布之前，美国机构在很长一段时间内很少强调来自中国的网络威胁，尽管在此期间中国黑客曾再次入侵联邦调查局一个存储其监控目标信息的敏感内部网络。

In yet another example from late March, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order to ban the import of new consumer routers manufactured overseas, citing cybersecurity risks, though it exempted existing routers. Some of the best-selling routers in the United States are built in China, including those produced by TP-Link, the largest producer of U.S. consumer and small-business routers. Actions against TP-Link, which was established in China but has a business unit in California responsible for international operations, had long been discussed among U.S. officials in multiple agencies but had been on pause for many months until the F.C.C. order came down.

还有一个例子是，3月下旬，联邦通信委员会以网络安全风险为由发布命令，禁止进口在海外制造的新型家用路由器，尽管现有路由器获得了豁免。美国市场上部分最畅销的路由器是在中国制造的，包括美国家用和小型企业路由器的最大生产者TP-Link的产品。TP-Link在中国成立，但在加州设有一个负责国际业务的业务部门，针对该公司的行动早已在美国多个机构的官员中讨论多时，但搁置了数月之久，直到联邦通信委员会的命令下达。

And just Friday, the State Department issued sanctions against several Chinese companies for providing satellite imagery to Iran that it said aided Tehran’s attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East.

就在上周五，国务院对几家中国公司实施了制裁，原因是它们向伊朗提供卫星图像，称此举助长了德黑兰针对中东地区美军的袭击。

Then on Monday, federal prosecutors announced they had charged Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, Calif., with acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. An unsealed plea deal said Ms. Wang would plead guilty to the charge.

随后在周一，联邦检察官宣布起诉加利福尼亚州阿卡迪亚市市长王艾琳，指控她充当中国政府的非法代理人。一份解封的认罪协议显示，王艾琳将对该指控认罪。

“This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions,” Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. The timing of charges, just days before the summit, may have been coincidental, but was hard to ignore.

加州中区第一助理联邦检察官比尔·埃塞利在声明中表示：“这份认罪协议是我们决心捍卫祖国、抵御中国企图腐蚀我国体制的最新成功。”起诉的时间刚好在峰会前几天，这也许是巧合，但很难让人忽视。

The surge in action around China followed months of U.S. officials in the Trump administration downplaying the rivalry, so much so that the National Defense Strategy published in January offered a softer tone about seeking “respectful relations with China.”

围绕中国采取的行动激增之前，特朗普政府官员数月来一直淡化中美竞争关系，甚至在1月份发布的《国防战略》中声称寻求“与中国保持相互尊重的关系”，呈现出一种更为温和的基调。

The guidance from the White House in the run-up to the trip to avoid unnecessary confrontations, which was described by Trump administration officials, represents standard advice ahead of a high-stakes presidential visit.

特朗普政府官员称，白宫的出访前避免不必要对抗的指导意见是总统在进行事关重大的出访之前的标准建议。

But to read through the Pentagon’s reports on China is to get a picture of the pace of the Chinese naval and nuclear buildups and the relentless pressure on both the Philippines and Taiwan. It lists simulated blockade actions against Taiwan — something that may look more attractive to the Chinese government now that the United States is blockading shipments in and out of Iran. And it describes an unyielding effort to pursue artificial intelligence and “achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors.”

但是，通读五角大楼关于中国的报告，就能了解到中国海军和核力量建设的步伐，以及中国对菲律宾和台湾不断施加的压力。这份报告列举了针对台湾的模拟封锁行动——鉴于美国目前正在封锁进出伊朗的货物，这种做法现在对中国政府可能显得更具吸引力。报告还描述了中国在追求人工智能和“实现半导体自给自足”方面不屈不挠的努力。

Mr. Trump did not mention the sanctions on Thursday, at least in public. But those sanctions — and mirrored efforts by China against the United States and its companies — may do more to define the relationship over the next few years than pronouncements of impending partnerships that are likely to be cited by Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi.

特朗普在周四没有提及这些制裁，至少在公开场合没有。但这些制裁以及中国针对美国及其公司采取的对等反制行动，或许比特朗普和习近平可能宣称的关于即将建立伙伴关系的声明，更能定义未来几年的两国关系。

President Trump came to Beijing wanting to focus on trade and investment. His host, President Xi Jinping of China, quickly showed that he would not let his own priorities be sidelined, above all Taiwan.

特朗普总统来到北京，本希望将重点放在贸易和投资上。但东道主、中国国家主席习近平很快表明，他不会让自己的优先事项被边缘化，尤其是台湾问题。

At the start of a two-day summit Thursday morning, Mr. Xi spoke loftily about cooperation. But after journalists were sent out of the room and the real discussions began, he laid down a warning about Taiwan, the island-democracy that Beijing claims as its own territory.

在周四上午为期两天的峰会伊始，习近平高调谈论了合作。但在记者被请出会议室、真正的讨论开始后，他就台湾这座北京声称是其领土的民主岛屿发出了警告。

With pointed rhetoric and military exercises, China has made clear that it could one day try to take the island by force. Taiwan relies on political and military support from the United States to deter that threat, and Mr. Trump is weighing whether to approve a weapons sale to Taiwan worth about $14 billion, after signing off on an $11 billion deal last year.

通过尖锐的言辞和军事演习，中国已明确表示有朝一日可能会试图以武力夺取该岛。台湾依靠美国的政治和军事支持来遏制这一威胁。在去年批准了一项价值110亿美元的协议后，特朗普目前正权衡是否批准一项价值约140亿美元的对台军售。

In a few words, Mr. Xi signaled on Thursday that U.S. support for Taiwan, including the weapons sales, could remain a sore point in relations.

周四，习近平用简短的话语发出信号：美国对台湾的支持——包括武器销售——可能仍将是两国关系中的敏感点。

“The Taiwan issue is the most critical issue in China-U.S. relations,” Mr. Xi said, according to an official summary of his remarks to Mr. Trump issued by Xinhua, China’s state news agency. If Chinese concerns over Taiwan were “handled well,” he added, relations between Beijing and Washington could remain stable.

根据中国官方通讯社新华社发布的习近平对特朗普发言的官方摘要，习近平表示：“台湾问题是中美关系中最重要的问题。”他还说，如果中国在台湾问题上的关切被“处理好了”，北京与华盛顿之间的关系就能保持稳定。

“If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation,” Mr. Xi said. “The U.S. must exercise the utmost caution in handling the Taiwan issue.”

“处理不好，两国就会碰撞甚至冲突，将整个中美关系推向十分危险的境地，”习近平说。“美方务必慎之又慎处理台湾问题。”

The Chinese summary of Mr. Xi’s remarks did not say whether he or his officials had directly raised U.S. military sales to Taiwan with Mr. Trump. A White House summary of the talks did not mention Taiwan at all.

中方关于习近平讲话的摘要并未说明他本人或他的官员是否直接向特朗普提出了美国对台军售的问题。而白宫关于此次会谈的摘要完全没有提及台湾。

But Mr. Xi’s remarks — presented in clear, direct language early in the summit, and highlighted by official Chinese news outlets — appeared to be one of his blunter warnings so far in an effort to wear down Mr. Trump’s willingness to support Taiwan.

但是，习近平的这番言论——在峰会初期以清晰直接的语言提出，并被中国官方新闻机构重点报道——似乎是他迄今为止发出的较为直白的警告之一，旨在削弱特朗普支持台湾的意愿。

“Xi’s warnings about Taiwan make clear that commercial calm depends on Washington handling Taiwan with caution,” said Craig Singleton, the China Program Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

华盛顿保卫民主基金会中国项目高级主任克雷格·辛格尔顿表示：“习近平关于台湾的警告清楚地表明，商业关系的平稳取决于华盛顿能否谨慎处理台湾问题。”

Mr. Xi’s remarks were “consistent with Beijing’s longstanding position,” Mr. Singleton said. “But the setting matters,” he added. “Xi put Taiwan at the center of a summit Trump wants to define around deals and personal diplomacy.”

习近平的言论“与北京的长期立场相一致，”辛格尔顿说。“但场合很重要，”他补充道。“习近平则将台湾置于峰会的中心，而特朗普希望峰会围绕交易和个人外交来进行。”

Mr. Xi hopes to at least slow any decision by Mr. Trump to sign off on the $14 billion weapons sale. Last week, Taiwan’s legislature approved $25 billion in special funding to pay for the missiles and other weapons from the United States, and members of Congress have urged Mr. Trump to go ahead with the deal.

习近平希望至少能推迟特朗普关于批准这笔140亿美元军售的决定。上周，台湾立法机构批准了250亿美元的特别预算，用于购买美国的导弹和其他武器，美国国会议员们也一直敦促特朗普推进这笔交易。

But the Trump administration has held off on approving the sale to avoid upsetting Mr. Xi ahead of this week’s summit, U.S. officials said earlier this year. Mr. Xi already warned Mr. Trump in a February phone call that he should handle arms sales to the Taiwan with “extreme caution.”

但美国官员今年早些时候曾表示，特朗普政府已暂缓批准这笔军售，以免在本周峰会前激怒习近平。习近平在今年2月的一次电话交谈中就曾警告过特朗普，在处理对台军售问题上应“务必慎重”。

“Xi hopes to create a strong impression in Trump that from Beijing’s perspective, Taiwan is the issue that would make or break U.S.-China relations,” said William Yang, a senior analyst in Taiwan for the International Crisis Group, which monitors and tries to resolve conflicts. “I think he will be waiting to see if Trump will personally take his warning on board and decide to further delay the $14 billion package.”

“习近平希望给特朗普留下强烈的印象——从北京的角度来看，台湾问题是决定中美关系成败的关键，”致力于监测并努力解决冲突的国际危机组织驻台湾高级分析师杨皓暐表示。“我认为，他将拭目以待，看看特朗普个人是否会听取他的警告，并且做出决定，进一步推迟这个140亿美元的军售方案。”

Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. As the United States normalized relations with China, Congress also passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which committed the United States to providing enough arms and military capabilities to Taiwan for the island to defend itself. This law states that the quality and quantity of these arms would be based on the U.S. assessment of Taiwan’s needs.

1979年，华盛顿将其外交承认对象从台北转为北京。在美国与中国实现关系正常化的同时，美国国会还通过了《与台湾关系法》，该法案承诺美国将向台湾提供足够的武器和军事能力，供该岛进行自卫。该法律规定，这些武器的质量和数量将基于美国对台湾需求的评估。

Taiwan considers the weapons sales essential for ensuring its defense against a potential Chinese invasion. Since 1979, Taiwan has received tens of billions of dollars’ worth of American arms, including F-16 fighter jets, missiles, warships, tanks, air defense systems and artillery units. Some of that arsenal is aging.

台湾认为，这些武器销售对于抵御潜在的中国入侵至关重要。自1979年以来，台湾获得了价值数百亿美元的美国武器，包括F-16战斗机、导弹、军舰、坦克、防空系统和火炮部队。其中部分武器装备正在老化。

After Mr. Xi’s warning on Thursday, officials in Taiwan quickly responded that Beijing has been the source of tensions across the strait. In private, Taiwanese politicians have expressed hope that members of Mr. Trump’s team who have long supported their island would make sure that the new arms sales are not delayed.

在周四习近平发出警告后，台湾官员迅速回应称，北京才是海峡两岸紧张局势的根源。在私下场合，台湾政界人士表示，希望特朗普团队中长期支持台湾的成员能确保新的军售不会被推迟。

“China’s military threats are the sole cause” for instability in the Taiwan Strait and the region,” Michelle Lee, a spokeswoman for the Taiwanese government, said at a news conference when asked about Mr. Xi’s comments. She said that Taiwan had maintained close contact with Washington throughout the summit preparations.

当被问及对习近平言论的看法时，台湾行政院发言人李慧芝在新闻发布会上说：“中国的军事威胁才是对台海及印太地区唯一的不安全因素。”她表示，在整个峰会筹备过程中，台湾与华盛顿保持着密切的联系。

“We are deeply grateful for the longstanding support the United States has provided to our country,” she said.

“非常感谢美国长期以来在各个层面对我国的支持，”她说。

They shook hands. They took a long walk. One man touched the other’s arm, then he did it again. They later shook hands some more.

他们握了手，一起走了很长一段路。一个人轻触了对方的手臂，随后又触了一次。之后，他们又握了几次手。

For two leaders at odds on many fronts — Taiwan, trade, rare earth resources, among others — Thursday’s meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, suggested they wanted the rivalry to be more friendly than not.

特朗普总统与中国国家主席习近平在台湾、贸易、稀土资源等诸多问题上存在分歧，但他们周四会晤时所呈现出的姿态表明，双方都希望这场竞争能够更倾向于友好，而非对抗。

The body language stood in stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s harsh criticism of China at home, and to many of his meetings with longtime U.S. allies. The scene was far from tense or combative, as it was when Mr. Trump hosted Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. Gone was the gruff distance that Mr. Trump kept from Germany’s former chancellor or NATO leaders.

这一肢体语言与特朗普在美国国内对中国的严厉批评，以及他与美国长期盟友的多次会晤形成了鲜明对比。整个场面远非紧张或对立，不像特朗普在椭圆形办公室接待乌克兰总统时那样。特朗普对德国前总理或北约领导人表现出的粗鲁距离感也消失了。

两国领导人参观北京天坛。 Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski

Nor did it include one of Mr. Trump’s inscrutable handshakes, as when he kept Japan’s prime minister in his vise for 19 very long seconds.

President Trump’s visit to Beijing has been cast by Chinese state media and commentators as a major diplomatic victory for China and a sign of its growing parity with the United States as a global power.

中国官方媒体和评论人士将特朗普总统对北京的访问描述为中国的一次重大外交胜利，标志着中国作为全球大国与美国日益接近对等地位。

Major state-run news organizations have touted the visit, which includes two days of talks between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, as an opportunity for the United States to accept the “right way” for the two countries to coexist — understood to mean that the Trump administration should refrain from confronting Beijing.

主要官方新闻机构大力宣传此次访问——其中包括特朗普与中国最高领导人习近平进行为期两天的会谈——称其为美国接受两国“正确相处之道”的机会，所谓“正确相处之道”被理解为特朗普政府应避免对抗北京。

“Most difficulties in bilateral relations have largely stemmed from the fact that some people in the United States cling to the mistaken logic that one side out-competes or thrives at the expense of the other,” an editorial in the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party tabloid, said on Wednesday.

中共小报《环球时报》周三发表社论称：“中美关系遇到的困难，基本上都是因为美方一些人陷入‘你输我赢’‘你兴我衰’的错误逻辑。”

Media and online commentary in China is tightly controlled. Dissenting views are often quickly scrubbed from social media. But interpreting what messages are permitted offers a window into the party’s priorities and how it wants to present itself to both a domestic and global audience.

中国媒体和网络评论受到严格控制。不同意见往往很快被从社交媒体上清除。但解读哪些信息被允许发布，可以让人一窥中共的优先议程以及它希望向国内外观众展示的形象。

When the Global Times says, “economic and trade ties should continue to serve as the ballast and driving force of China-U.S. relations,” for example, it points to Beijing’s continued anxieties about its struggling economy, said Manoj Kewalramani, the head of Indo-Pacific studies at the Takshashila Institution in Bangalore, India, who monitors Chinese media.

例如，当《环球时报》说“经贸应该继续成为中美关系的压舱石和推进器”时，这反映出北京对其艰难经济的持续焦虑，印度班加罗尔塔克沙什拉研究所印太研究负责人、长期监测中国媒体的马诺吉·凯瓦拉马尼表示。

Other coverage of the summit suggests a mixture of both triumphalism and caution. State media has not criticized Mr. Trump by name, reflecting Beijing’s reluctance to antagonize the American president so that it can preserve its uneasy truce with Washington following a blistering trade war last year.

峰会的其他报道显示出一种胜利主义与谨慎并存的混合态度。官方媒体并未点名批评特朗普，这反映出北京不愿激怒美国总统，以便在去年激烈的贸易战之后维持与华盛顿的不稳定休战状态。

民众试图在北京一睹特朗普车队的风采。

China’s ability to survive that fight has been one of the running themes in recent days. It was highlighted by an editorial published on Wednesday by the People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece, titled, “China-U.S. relations cannot return to past, but can move toward better future.”

中国在那一场斗争中的生存能力是近来反复出现的主题之一。周三中共官方喉舌《人民日报》发表题为《中美关系回不到过去，但能够有一个更好的未来》的社论，就突出了这一点。

The piece made no mention of how Beijing’s threats to throttle global supplies of critical minerals required for modern technologies forced the Trump administration to back down in a matter of months. Instead, it stressed China’s “resilience” and noted how dialogue between the two countries now takes place “on a more equitable basis.”

该文没有提及北京威胁切断全球关键矿产供应（这些矿产对现代技术至关重要）、迫使特朗普政府在几个月内让步的内容。相反，它强调中国的“韧性”，并指出两国对话如今在“更平等”的基础上进行。

Some nationalistic voices have been more vocal about what they see as a weakened Trump administration, mired in a war in Iran that shows no signs of ending and sinking approval numbers at home.

一些民族主义声音则更直白地表示，他们认为特朗普政府已被削弱，正深陷于一场看不到尽头的伊朗战争，且国内支持率不断下滑。

“At this particular moment, I think Donald Trump needs China far more than China needs Donald Trump,” Zhang Weiwei, the director of the China Institute at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in an interview with the state-owned Beijing Review. “He has so many problems to solve.”

复旦大学中国研究院院长张维为在接受官方英文刊物《北京周报》采访时表示：“在当前这个特定时刻，我认为唐纳德·特朗普需要中国远胜于中国需要唐纳德·特朗普。他有太多问题要解决。”

Analysts say Mr. Trump is desperate to go home saying he cut a deal to sell Boeing airplanes, beef and soybeans to China.

分析人士称，特朗普急于回国宣称自己与中国达成协议，得以向中国出售波音飞机、牛肉和大豆。

“If China can deliver hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods to the United States in a trade agreement, it would significantly boost Trump’s chances in the midterm elections,” wrote Qiu Zhenhai, a popular commentator and an international relations expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

香港科技大学国际关系专家、知名评论员邱震海写道：“如果中国能在贸易协议中向美国提供数千亿美元的商品，这将显著提升特朗普在中期选举中的胜算。”

Already on Thursday, Beijing said it would allow hundreds of American slaughterhouses to resume beef shipments to China.

北京已在周四宣布，将允许数百家美国加工厂恢复向中国出口牛肉。

In return, Mr. Qiu wrote, China can ask for the United States to re-evaluate its position on Taiwan, the self-governed island that Beijing claims as its territory.

邱震海写道，作为回报，中国可以要求美国重新评估其在台湾问题上的立场——北京声称对这个自治岛屿拥有主权。

The fact that Mr. Trump was so eager to visit China despite all his other distractions underscores Beijing’s leverage, said D&C Think Tank, a Beijing-based research firm.

北京一家研究机构民智国际研究院表示，尽管面临诸多其他干扰，特朗普仍如此急于访华，这一事实凸显了北京掌握的杠杆。

The firm declared in an online post on Wednesday that the “Sino-U.S. rivalry has moved beyond the stage of unilateral pressure and entered a stage of two-way dynamic balance.”

该机构周三在网络帖文中宣称，“中美竞争已超越单方面施压阶段，进入双向动态平衡阶段。”

It continued to recommended that Beijing pressure the United States to work out a long-term truce so that China can continue to develop its economy and gather its strength without Washington’s interference.

文章接着建议北京向美国施压，以达成长期休战，从而让中国能够在不受华盛顿干扰的情况下继续发展经济、积蓄力量。

Perhaps one of the most consistent themes in Chinese coverage of Mr. Trump’s visit has been the emphasis on the importance of “head-of-state diplomacy.” The People’s Daily said it played “an irreplaceable strategic guiding role.”

中国媒体对特朗普访问最一贯的主题之一或许就是强调“元首外交”的重要性。《人民日报》称其发挥了“不可替代的战略引领作用”。

The attention paid to national leaders burnishes Mr. Xi’s importance as the country’s top decision maker. But it is also a call for Mr. Trump to “reign in other branches of government” in the United States, said Mr. Kewalramani, the expert on Chinese media.

对国家领导人的重视进一步凸显了习近平作为国家最高决策者的地位。但正如中国媒体专家凯瓦拉马尼所说，这也是在呼吁特朗普“约束美国政府其他部门”。

“He must ensure that Congress does not take steps that China perceives are inimical to the broader relationship,” he said. “It’s mirror-imaging from Beijing.”

“他必须确保国会不要采取中国认为有损两国整体关系的举措，”他说，“这是北京的镜像思维。”

Thursday’s meeting in Beijing between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, took place mostly behind closed doors. Still, the first day of the summit between the leaders of the two most powerful countries produced some revelatory moments about each of the men, their leadership styles and their motivations as they navigate the world’s most significant geopolitical rivalry.

周四，特朗普总统与中国领导人习近平在北京的会晤大部分是闭门进行的。尽管如此，这两位世界上最强大国家的领导人在峰会首日仍带来了一些颇具启示性的时刻，揭示了他们各自的性格、领导风格以及在应对全球最重要地缘政治竞争时的动机。

Here are some moments that stood out during the summit, which took place at the Great Hall of the People:

以下是峰会期间一些值得关注的时刻，会晤地点位于人民大会堂：

A Grand Welcome

盛大的欢迎仪式

Mr. Xi welcomed the American president with a grand parade, featuring both the Chinese military and a crowd of cheering children, some holding bouquets and American flags. At one point, Mr. Trump stopped to applaud the children.

习近平以盛大的阅兵式欢迎美国总统，现场有中国军队和一群欢呼的儿童，其中一些孩子手持花束和美国国旗。特朗普一度停下来为孩子们鼓掌。

“That was an honor like few I’ve ever seen before,” Mr. Trump said. “And I think I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy. They were beautiful. The military is obvious. It couldn’t be better. But those children were amazing.”

“这是我以前很少见过的荣誉，”特朗普说。“我特别被那些孩子打动。他们很开心，很漂亮。军队当然了，不可能比这更好了。但那些孩子真是太棒了。”

A Clash of Styles

风格的碰撞

The opening remarks of each president revealed much about their personal styles. Mr. Xi adopted an almost philosophical tone about the role of great nations on the global stage and Mr. Trump employed his signature style of flattery and exaggeration.

两位领导人的开场白充分展现了他们各自的个人风格。习近平以近乎哲学的语气谈论大国在全球舞台上的角色，而特朗普则使用了自己标志性的奉承和夸张风格。

Speaking in Chinese, Mr. Xi cautioned against the “Thucydides Trap” — a concept rooted in the ancient rivalry between Athens and Sparta, which suggests that an established world power tends to be threatened by a rising one, leading to a clash. Mr. Xi urged Mr. Trump and the United States to avoid the mind-set that led the ancient Greek city-states to war.

习近平用中文讲话，警告要避免“修昔底德陷阱”——这一概念源于古希腊雅典与斯巴达之间的竞争，意指一个守成大国往往会受到新兴大国的威胁，最终导致冲突。他敦促特朗普和美国避免那种曾导致古希腊城邦走向战争的思维定式。

“As the once-in-a-century transformation accelerates and the international landscape undergoes change and turmoil, the world has reached a new crossroads,” Mr. Xi said. “Can China and the United States overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and establish a new paradigm for relations between great powers?”

“当前百年变局加速演进，国际形势变乱交织，”习近平说。“中美两国能不能跨越‘修昔底德陷阱’，开创大国关系新范式？”

For his turn, Mr. Trump boasted of the long relationship he has had with Mr. Xi, and the ease with which he persuaded top business executives to join the visit.

轮到特朗普发言时，他夸耀了自己与习近平的长期关系，以及他如何可以轻松说服顶级商界领袖随行。

“There are those that say this is maybe the biggest summit ever,” Mr. Trump said. “They can never remember anything like it.”

“有人说这可能是有史以来最重要的峰会，”特朗普说。“他们从来没见过这样的场面。”

The Taiwan Ultimatum

台湾问题最后通牒

Many observers closely watched how the two leaders would approach the issue of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory.

许多观察人士密切关注两位领导人将如何处理台湾问题，北京方面声称台湾是中国领土的一部分。

Mr. Xi made clear that if the United States sided too heavily with Taiwan, it could bring Beijing and Washington into conflict.

习近平明确表示，如果美国过度支持台湾，将可能把北京和华盛顿推入冲突。

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, released a readout of the meeting, which included Mr. Xi’s warning to Mr. Trump on the matter: “Handled well, the two countries can maintain stability. If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation,” he said.

中国官方通讯社新华社发布的会晤纪要中包含了习近平对特朗普的警告：“处理好了，两国关系就能保持总体稳定。处理不好，两国就会碰撞甚至冲突，将整个中美关系推向十分危险的境地。”

Afterward, Mr. Trump was mum when asked by reporters about Taiwan.

之后，当记者问及台湾问题时，特朗普保持沉默。

In Search of Deals

寻求达成协议

Accompanying Mr. Trump to Beijing were some of America’s richest business leaders, including Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.

陪同特朗普前往北京的包括美国一些最富有的商界领袖，如苹果的蒂姆·库克、特斯拉的埃隆·马斯克和英伟达的黄仁勋。

Mr. Trump claimed 30 business leaders would join him on the trip, but only 14 were with him at the Great Hall.

特朗普声称将有30位商界领袖随行，但实际出现在人民大会堂的只有14人。

“We asked the top 30 in the world,” Mr. Trump told the Chinese leader. “Every single one of them said yes, and I didn’t want the second or the third in the company. I wanted only the top. And they’re here today to pay respects to you, to China, and they look forward to trade and good business. It’s going to be totally reciprocal on our behalf.”

“我们邀请了全球排名前30位的企业领袖，”特朗普对习近平说。“他们每一个人都答应了，我不要公司里的二把手或三把手，我只要最大的那个。他们今天来到这里向你、向中国致敬，他们期待贸易和良好的商业往来。我们这边将完全做到对等互惠。”

The Trump Organization

特朗普家族企业

One business leader who was at the Great Hall, and shook hands with Mr. Xi, was Eric Trump, the president’s son. Eric Trump is running the family business while his father is in the White House.

出席人民大会堂活动并与习近平握手的商界领袖之一是特朗普的儿子埃里克·特朗普。埃里克在父亲入主白宫期间负责管理家族企业。

His presence could raise questions about potential blurred lines between the government and the Trump family’s business interests. The Trump Organization said Eric Trump would be traveling to China only to support his father, and would not pursue business while there.

他的出现可能会引发关于政府与特朗普家族商业利益界限模糊的质疑。特朗普组织表示，埃里克此次前往中国只是为了支持父亲，不会从事任何商业活动。

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said that “Eric is deeply proud of his father and the accomplishments of this term, and is attending in a personal capacity as a supportive son. He does not have business ventures in China nor plans on doing business in China.”

特朗普组织的一位发言人在声明中表示：“埃里克为他的父亲以及本届任期的成就深感自豪，他是以支持父亲的个人身份出席的。他在中国没有商业项目，也没有在中国开展业务的计划。”

When Richard M. Nixon went to Beijing in 1972, it was a gamble. He was betting that a diplomatic opening with the Communist government, and downgrading relations with Taiwan, which claimed to be the rightful ruler of China, would serve American interests.

1972年，理查德·尼克松访问北京是一场豪赌。他押注与共产党政府开启外交接触、降级与自称为中国合法统治者台湾的关系是符合美国利益的。

Successive visits to China by American presidents have built on that idea. And for their part, Chinese leaders have viewed the summits as a way to defuse tensions, convey their core interests and offer hope of stronger ties in coming years.

此后美国总统历次访华都是建立在这一理念之上。中国领导人则将峰会视为缓和紧张局势、传达自身核心利益以及展望未来几年加强双边关系的一种方式。

The visits are in a continuum of alternating dark and bright periods in relations, from the gloom after the massacre around Tiananmen Square to the electricity as China entered the World Trade Organization and became an engine in the global economy.

这些访问贯穿于美中关系明暗交替的历程，从天安门广场周边大屠杀后的阴霾到中国加入世界贸易组织并成为全球经济引擎时的蓬勃活力。

All the while, American presidents hoped that integration through trade would lead to political change in Beijing one day.

一直以来，美国总统们都希望通过贸易融合最终促使北京发生政治变革。

As China’s power grew, and the nation became more confident — some argue arrogant — in its dealings with the United States, the dynamics of the summits changed. Many Chinese officials and analysts now regard the United States as a nation in terminal decline.

随着中国实力的增长，以及在与美国打交道时变得更加自信——有人认为是傲慢，峰会的态势发生了变化。如今，许多中国官员和分析人士将美国视为一个走向末期衰落的国家。

Before his arrival in Beijing on Wednesday, President Trump posted online that he planned to ask Xi Jinping, “a Leader of extraordinary distinction,” to “open up” China — language that echoes the way American presidents have framed relations with China for half a century.

在周三抵达北京之前，特朗普总统在网上发帖称，他计划要求“非凡卓越的领导人” 习近平“开放”中国。这一措辞呼应了半个世纪以来美国总统对中美关系的表述方式。

1972

1972年

Richard M. Nixon

理查德·尼克松

1972年，尼克松在宴会上向中国总理周恩来敬酒。

Nixon to China is one of the seminal overseas trips by a U.S. president in the post-World War II era.

尼克松访华是二战后美国总统最重要的海外出访之一。

It came in 1972 after Henry Kissinger, the president’s national security adviser, made a secret trip to Beijing the previous year to feel out the possibilities for a diplomatic opening with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the premier. The United States had not had formal relations with the People’s Republic since Mao established it in 1949, and instead had embraced the anti-Communist Kuomintang government on the island of Taiwan as the legitimate ruling power of China.

此次访问发生在1972年，此前一年，总统的国家安全顾问亨利·基辛格秘密访问北京，试探与毛泽东及总理周恩来开启外交关系的可能性。自毛泽东于1949年建立中华人民共和国以来，美国与该政权一直没有建立正式关系，而是承认台湾岛上的反共国民党政府为中国的合法统治政权。

But an important shift had occurred in geopolitics to spur Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger’s efforts. The Soviet Union and China had grown apart, and it was this split that prompted the Nixon administration to reach out.Nixon’s visit produced memorable moments, including his walk on the Great Wall (“You would have to conclude that this is a great wall and that it had to be built by a great people,” he said) and the arrival later of a pair of pandas at the National Zoo in Washington was an enduring symbol of the international bond.

但地缘政治发生的一项重大转变促成尼克松和基辛格展开努力。苏联和中国已经分道扬镳，正是这一分裂促使尼克松政府伸出了橄榄枝。尼克松的访问留下了许多令人难忘的时刻，包括他在长城上的漫步（他说：“你不得不得出这样的结论：这是一座伟大的长城，它必定是由一个伟大的民族建造的”），而随后两只大熊猫抵达华盛顿国家动物园，成了两国纽带的持久象征。

1975

1975年

Gerald R. Ford

杰拉尔德·福特

1975年，福特总统与中国副总理邓小平在北京共进晚餐。

President Gerald Ford made a five-day visit to China in December 1975, 10 months before the death of Mao Zedong. China was in the final stage of the Cultural Revolution, the decade-long period resulting from a campaign by Mao to hold onto power that devastated the country’s social, economic and political foundations.

杰拉尔德·福特总统于1975年12月对中国进行了为期五天的访问，这距离毛泽东去世还有10个月。当时中国正处于文化大革命的最后阶段。这场由毛泽东发起以巩固权力的运动持续十年，严重破坏了国家的社会、经济和政治根基。

The Communist Party was still committed to the path of diplomatic rapprochement with the United States when Mr. Ford visited, and the talks paved the way for normal relations that President Jimmy Carter would establish in 1979. (Mr. Carter did not visit China during his presidency, nor did President Joseph R. Biden Jr.)

福特访华时，共产党仍致力于与美国实现外交和解，这些谈判为吉米·卡特总统于1979年建立两国正常外交关系铺平了道路。（卡特在任期内未曾访问中国，拜登总统在任期间也没有。）

1984

1984年

Ronald Reagan

罗纳德·里根

When the ardent Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan set foot in China in 1984, he did not talk of a need to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party or to undermine its policies, language that embodied his policy toward the Soviet Union.

当坚定的冷战斗士罗纳德·里根于1984年踏上中国土地时，他并没有像针对苏联那样，谈论推翻中国共产党或削弱其政策的必要性。

Mr. Reagan visited Beijing as a practical statesman, nudging forward discussions about trade, which would later become the centerpiece of U.S.-China relations.

里根以务实政治家的身份访问北京，推动了关于贸易的讨论，而贸易随后成为了美中关系的核心。

Mr. Reagan told reporters after his visit that he had been heartened by “the injection of a free market spirit” into the Chinese economy, The New York Times reported.

据《纽约时报》报道，里根在访问后告诉记者，中国经济中“注入的自由市场精神”让他深受鼓舞。

1989

1989年

George H.W. Bush

老布什

1989年2月，老布什总统在天安门广场。几个月后，中国军队在同一地点枪杀了数百乃至数千名抗议者。

When President George H.W. Bush touched down in Beijing in February 1989, he was returning to a country he had become fond of. His familiarity with China was rooted in his post from 1974 to 1975 as the chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, meaning he was the de facto ambassador in a period before formal diplomatic relations were established.

老布什总统于1989年2月抵达北京，重返了一个他深感亲切的国家。他对中国的了解源于他在1974年至1975年期间担任美国驻北京联络处主任的经历，这意味着在两国正式外交关系建立之前，他是事实上的美国驻华大使。

U.S.-China ties had growing momentum in the months leading up to that visit, but the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre would complicate relations later in 1989.

在这次访问前的几个月里，美中关系发展势头良好，但天安门广场的抗议活动和后来的大屠杀使1989年后期的两国关系变得复杂。

An episode during Mr. Bush’s visit foretold the quake to come. Ambassador Winston Lord and the U.S. Embassy gave Chinese officials a list of people the U.S. government wanted invited to the state dinner. They included Fang Lizhi, a well-known astrophysicist and political dissenter.

布什访问期间的一个插曲预示了即将到来的震荡。大使温斯顿·洛德和美国大使馆向中国官员提供了一份美方希望邀请参加国宴的人员名单，其中包括著名天体物理学家和政治异见人士方励之。

Shortly before the banquet, the Chinese government crossed Mr. Fang off the list. American officials objected.

就在晚宴开始前不久，中国政府将方励之从名单中划掉。美国官员对此表示反对。

Later that year, when the Chinese military killed hundreds or thousands of protesters around Tiananmen Square on June 3 and June 4, Mr. Fang fled to the U.S. Embassy with his wife, Li Shuxian, and hid there for 13 months.

同年6月3日和6月4日，当中国军队在天安门广场周边杀害了数百乃至数千名抗议者时，方励之与妻子李淑娴逃进美国大使馆，并在那里躲藏了13个月。

“This turned out to be a dinner party that turned out to be a revolution,” Mr. Lord said.

“这场晚宴最终变成了一场革命，”洛德说。

1998

1998年

Bill Clinton

比尔·克林顿

President Bill Clinton’s visit to China occurred in a heady decade for the United States following the fall of the Soviet Union, when America — and its system of politics and economics — appeared to be unchallenged in the world.

比尔·克林顿总统对中国的访问发生在苏联解体后美国意气风发的十年，当时美国及其政治和经济体制在全世界上似乎无人能敌。

This was the “end of history,” as Francis Fukuyama, the political scientist, wrote. To U.S. officials, China appeared to be embracing the inevitable direction of the world order.

正如政治学家弗朗西斯·福山所写，这是“历史的终结”。在美国官员看来，中国似乎正在接受世界秩序的必然走向。

If engagement was the goal, China’s leader Jiang Zemin projected the right energy for it. He tried to speak English in a few public settings, and even recited lines from the Gettysburg Address.

如果“接触”是目标，中国领导人江泽民展现出了恰如其分的热情。他在一些公开场合尝试用英语发言，甚至背诵了《葛底斯堡演说》中的段落。

During Mr. Clinton’s visit, Mr. Jiang made a surprise announcement — that their news conference would be televised live.

在克林顿访问期间，江泽民做出了一个令人意外的决定——他们的联合新闻发布会将进行电视直播。

“That was the most extraordinary interaction I’ve witnessed between Chinese and American leaders,” said Orville Schell, a China analyst who has written about leadership summits for decades. “There’s Clinton bantering with Jiang, and they were clearly enjoying each other’s company.”

“那是我见过的中美领导人之间最非同寻常的互动，”数十年来一直撰写关于领导人峰会文章的中国问题分析人士夏伟(Orville Schell)说。“克林顿和江泽民互相调侃，两人显然相处愉快”。

Mr. Schell recalled the moment in an interview as he was flying to Beijing on Tuesday to report on Mr. Trump’s visit. “You could see these people were open for business,” he added.

周二，夏伟在飞往北京报道特朗普访问的航班上接受采访时回忆起那一幕，他说：“你能看出，这些人已经准备好开始合作了。” 

2001, 2002, 2005, 2008

2001、2002、2005、2008年

George W. Bush

小布什

George W. Bush was in the stands in Beijing for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics, a highly symbolic moment interpreted by many as a “coming out” party for China on the world stage.

小布什坐在北京奥运会开幕式的看台上观看2008年夏季奥运会，这次奥运会是一个极具象征意义的时刻，被许多人解读为中国在世界舞台上的“亮相”派对。

It was his fourth visit in the era of high globalization, when China’s economy was surging after its entry into the World Trade Organization.

这是他在全球化浪潮高涨时期第四次访问中国，加入世界贸易组织后，当时中国的经济正蓬勃发展。

But that visit came on the eve of the global financial crisis. That, combined with the Iraq war, resulted in a growing belief on the part of Chinese officials, including Hu Jintao, the party secretary and president, that the United States and its allies had lost their way. In their eyes, China’s ascent seemed unstoppable, and by contrast the systems of the Western nations appeared decadent and hollowed out.

但那次访问恰逢全球金融危机前夕。金融危机加上伊拉克战争的影响令包括总书记兼国家主席胡锦涛在内的中国官员日益认为，美国及其盟友已经迷失了方向。在他们看来，中国的崛起似乎势不可挡，相比之下，西方国家的体制显得腐朽空洞。

“Now it’s common for people to focus on 2008 as the turning point,” said John Delury, a historian of East Asia. “The Chinese had a sense of confidence then that was seen by the Americans as hubris.”

“现在人们普遍将2008年视为转折点，”东亚历史学家鲁乐汉(John Delury)说。“中国人当时拥有一股自信，而美国人则将其视为狂妄”。

2009, 2014, 2016

2009、2014、2016年

Barack Obama

贝拉克·奥巴马

2016年，奥巴马总统在任内最后一次访华期间与习近平主席握手。

Mr. Obama’s first visit, in 2009, came in the shadow of the global financial crisis that rippled out from the failures of U.S. financial institutions. While Mr. Obama was trying to dig his country out of its plight, China’s economy basically continued surging.

奥巴马2009年首次访问中国，当时正值全球金融危机爆发之际，这场危机源于美国金融机构的倒闭。当奥巴马试图带领美国走出困境时，中国的经济基本保持了强劲增长势头。

In talks in Beijing, Mr. Obama raised the planned Copenhagen climate summit and his plans to avert Iran’s nuclear ambitions through trying to forge a diplomatic agreement.

在北京举行的会谈中，奥巴马提出了计划中的哥本哈根气候峰会，以及他试图通过外交协议来阻止伊朗核野心的计划。

“We sought to find a new balance between the arenas of competition and cooperation, as the world needed and wanted to contribute more to global public goods,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown professor who was senior Asia director on Mr. Obama’s National Security Council. “China was not just reluctant, but it wanted to get compensated for everything it did, much to our eternal frustration.”

“我们曾试图在竞争与合作之间寻找一种新的平衡，因为世界需要、也希望中国在全球公共产品方面作出更多贡献，”曾在奥巴马政府国家安全委员会担任亚洲事务高级主任、现任乔治城大学教授的埃文·梅代罗斯说，“但中国不仅态度消极，而且几乎做任何事都希望获得回报，令我们始终极为沮丧。”

Mr. Obama visited Beijing again in 2014 for an economic summit of Asian nations but met Xi Jinping for bilateral talks and a state dinner. By then, relations had evolved for the worse. China had become much more aggressive in its military activities in the surrounding seas, angering other Asian nations, and was engaging in cyberespionage regularly against the United States and other powers.

奥巴马于2014年再次访问北京，出席亚洲国家的经济峰会，与习近平进行了双边会谈，并出席国宴。那时两国关系已经趋于恶化。中国在周边海域的军事活动变得愈发咄咄逼人，激怒了其他亚洲国家，中国还经常对美国和其他大国进行网络间谍活动。

On his final visit, in 2016, Mr. Obama’s jet landed in Hangzhou, but he had to exit from the rear of the aircraft after Chinese workers failed to wheel a staircase to the front of the plane. Though the cause could have been a technical malfunction, many observers interpreted this a snub by China and an emblem of the country’s growing assertiveness.

2016年奥巴马最后一次访问中国时，他的专机降落在杭州，但因中国工作人员未能将舷梯推到机头，他不得不从飞机后部下机。虽然原因可能是技术故障，但许多观察家将其解读为中国对他的冷遇，也是中国日益咄咄逼人的象征。

2017

2017年

Donald J. Trump

唐纳德·特朗普

2017年，特朗普总统在首个任期内访问北京期间对习近平说：“你是一位非常特别的人。”

Mr. Trump criticized China, and particularly its trade practices, on the campaign trail in 2016. At the same time, progressive politicians were also talking more forcefully about the ills of globalization. Mr. Trump’s trip took place against that backdrop: a desire to place limits on globalization and to reorient certain U.S. industries away from China.

2016年竞选期间，特朗普曾多次批评中国，尤其是其贸易行为。与此同时，进步派政治人士也也更有力地指出了全球化的弊端。特朗普的访问正是在这种背景下进行：人们渴望限制全球化，并将某些美国产业从中国转移出去。

Mr. Trump was effusive in his praise of Mr. Xi, telling the Chinese leader “you’re a very special man.” The two first couples walked together through an empty Forbidden City, and the leaders announced a handful of trade and investment deals.

特朗普对习近平大加赞赏，告诉这位中国领导人，“你是一个非常特别的人。”两对第一夫妇一起在空旷的故宫里漫步，两国领导人宣布了少数几项贸易和投资协议。

But Mr. Trump harbored other designs. Soon after the trip, in January 2018, he started a trade war with China. That consumed most of his presidency, along with the pandemic, which many experts say originated in China.

但特朗普另有盘算。访华后不久，他于2018年1月对中国发动了贸易战。这场贸易战与新冠疫情（许多专家认为其源头在中国）占据了他总统任期的大部分时间。

Relations with China became more combative, though Mr. Trump eschewed talk of democracy and human rights, which pleased Chinese leaders. That was a shift from decades of American policy toward China, one that Mr. Trump would make even more overt in his second administration.

尽管特朗普避而不谈民主和人权问题——这令中国领导人感到满意，但美中关系变得更具对抗性。这标志着美国对华政策数十年来发生了转变，特朗普第二任期内这种转变更为显著。

More than halfway through his third term as China’s leader, Xi Jinping still remains one of the most opaque figures in global politics, his views on rivals and partners inferred from the tightly controlled choreography of his public appearances.

作为中国领导人的第三个任期已过半， 习近平依然是全球政坛最不透明的人物之一，他对竞争对手和合作伙伴的看法只能从精心编排的公开露面中窥见一二。

But in private meetings with foreign leaders, captured in the accounts of those who were there, along with the occasional hot mic, a sharper portrait emerges. It is of a leader who has no close rivals for power in China, who does not hesitate to lecture less powerful leaders, and who carries himself as a philosopher king in the mold of ancient Chinese rulers.

但在与外国领导人的私下会面中——经由在场者的陈述，偶或借助未关的麦克风，一幅更为清晰的形象浮现出来。他在中国没有任何势均力敌的对手，会毫不客气地教训那些实力较弱的领导人，并摆出中国古代哲人圣君的姿态。

And by at least one account, Mr. Xi formed his verdict of President Trump nearly a decade ago — a judgment likely to have shaped his approach to global affairs ever since, including how he handles Mr. Trump this week in Beijing.

至少有一种说法认为，习近平在近十年前就已对特朗普形成了自己的判断，这一判断很可能影响了他此后对全球事务的处理方式，包括本周在北京如何跟特朗普打交道。

It was late 2016, and Mr. Trump had just stunned the world weeks earlier by winning the U.S. presidential election. Mr. Xi was meeting President Obama for the final time at a summit in Lima, Peru, and he had questions.

那是2016年底，特朗普在几周前刚刚出人意料地赢得了美国总统大选。在秘鲁利马的一次峰会上，习近平与即将卸任的奥巴马总统进行了最后一次会晤，他向奥巴马提出了疑问。

Mr. Xi seemed baffled as to how American voters could choose someone so unconventional, according to Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration who attended the meeting.

据参加那次会议的奥巴马政府副国家安全顾问本·罗兹回忆，习近平似乎对美国选民为什么会选择一位如此不传统的候选人感到困惑。

Mr. Obama tried to explain to Mr. Xi that Mr. Trump’s rise was a sign of economic frustration in the United States, in part over the loss of manufacturing jobs to China and the theft of intellectual property. Mr. Xi, in Mr. Rhodes’s telling, was displeased with the explanation.

奥巴马试图向他解释，特朗普的崛起是美国人对经济状况不满的表现，部分原因正是制造业就业岗位流向中国，以及知识产权遭到窃取。在罗兹的叙述中，习近平对这番解释有些不快。

He put down his pen, folded his arms and said: “If an immature leader throws the world into chaos, then the world will know who to blame.”

他放下手中的笔，抱起双臂，说道：“如果一个不成熟的领导人把世界搞乱了，那全世界都知道该怪谁。”

Now, as he heads into a summit with Mr. Trump in Beijing, Mr. Xi will want to present China as a stable and strong global power, analysts say, while being conciliatory enough to preserve a fragile trade truce with Mr. Trump.

如今，在即将与特朗普在北京举行峰会之际，分析人士表示，习近平一方面希望展现中国作为稳定而强大的全球大国，同时又不失和解姿态，以维持与特朗普达成的脆弱的贸易休战。

“I expect that Xi will show Trump respect but not flatter him,” said Susan Shirk, the author of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.”

“我预计习近平会对特朗普表现出尊重，但不会去奉承他，”《过度扩张——中国如何偏离和平崛起》(Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise)一书作者谢淑丽(Susan Shirk)说。

“The contrast with Trump’s unilateral and disruptive actions will be implicit, not explicit,” she added.

“与特朗普的单边主义和破坏性行为的对比将是含蓄的，不会那么直白，”她补充道。

The Lecturer: How Xi Treats Middle Powers

说教者：习近平如何对待中等强国

If Mr. Xi treats Washington with cautious restraint, he is less likely to hold back with middle powers like Canada and Britain.

若说习近平对待华盛顿尚有几分审慎克制，那么在面对加拿大、英国这样的中等强国时，他便没有那么留情面了。

• In 2022, Mr. Xi confronted then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada at the end of a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia and accused him of leaking details of the previous day’s talks between them to the media. The tense exchange between the two men, who were standing close to each other and speaking through translators, was captured by a news cameraman.

• 2022年，在印度尼西亚举行的二十国集团峰会结束时，习近平当面质问时任加拿大总理贾斯汀·特鲁多，指责他向媒体泄露了前一天两人会谈的细节。当时两人站得很近，通过翻译交谈，这段剑拔弩张的对话被一名媒体摄影师捕捉下来。

• “That was not appropriate,” Mr. Xi said, smiling tightly. “And that’s not how the conversation was conducted,” he continued, shaking his head. He said sincerity and respect were needed for talks to be productive, and in an implicit warning, added: “Otherwise, the outcome will be hard to say.” Mr. Trudeau tried to argue that he had done nothing wrong by Canadian standards and offered to agree to disagree. Mr. Xi then cut him off and said, “Let’s create the conditions first,” before shaking Mr. Trudeau’s hand and walking off.

“这不合适啊，”习近平紧抿着嘴，笑着说。“而且我们也不是那样进行的，” 他一边摇头，一边继续说道。他表示，谈话需要诚心和互相尊重的态度才能有效，并以带有警告意味的话语补充道：“否则结果很难说。”特鲁多试图辩称，按加拿大的标准他并无不当，并提出“各自保留意见”。随后习近平打断他说：“我们先创造条件。”然后与特鲁多握手离开。

• With Canada’s current leader, Prime Minister Mark Carney, Mr. Xi attempted to set the rules of how they should engage, saying he did not want to be criticized in public.

• 在与加拿大现任总理马克·卡尼的会面中，习近平试图设定双方互动的规则，表示他不希望受到公开批评。

• Mr. Carney said Mr. Xi told him in a recent meeting in South Korea, their first since the Canadian leader took office, to raise any issues with him in private. “He chose to spend the first 10-plus minutes discussing how he wanted the personal interaction to be,” Mr. Carney said at a Lowy Institute event in Sydney in March.

卡尼表示，习近平在不久前于韩国举行的一次会晤中告诉他（那是卡尼就任总理后两人的首次会晤），有什么问题可以私下向他提出。“他选择在开场的十多分钟时间里讨论他希望建立怎样的个人互动模式，”卡尼今年3月在悉尼洛伊研究所的一场活动上说。

• Mr. Carney summarized Mr. Xi’s message as: “No surprises. If you really care about something, be clear,” he said. He added: “I mean, he didn’t say it this way, but I interpret it. Don’t lecture me in public. Bring issues to me directly.”

卡尼总结习近平的意思是：“不要突如其来。如果你真的在意某件事，就说清楚，”他说。他又接着说道：“我的意思是，他不是这么直接说的，这是我得到的意思——不要公开对我说教，有问题直接来找我沟通。”

• While Mr. Xi may not want to be lectured, he has no problem venting to others. When Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain met with Mr. Xi in Beijing in January, the British leader brought up Chinese-Japanese relations, which are at their lowest point in years.

• 习近平或许不愿被人说教，但他并不介意向别人宣泄不满。今年1月，英国首相基尔·斯塔默在北京与习近平举行会晤，这位英国领导人提到了中日关系——目前两国关系正处于多年来的最低点。

• Mr. Xi, who had been calm throughout the meeting, grew agitated and told Mr. Starmer that the tensions were entirely Japan’s fault, according to two people familiar with the interaction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Beijing has waged a pressure campaign against Tokyo after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan told her Parliament that Japan could respond militarily if China attacked Taiwan.

据两位要求匿名的知情人士透露，在整个会谈过程中始终保持平静的习近平变得激动起来，他告诉斯塔默，紧张局势完全是日本的错。此前，日本首相高市早苗在国会表态称，如果中国攻击台湾，日本可能予以军事回应，北京随即对东京发起了施压行动。

The Philosopher: How He Engages the Powerful

哲人：他与强国领导人的互动之道

The Chinese Communist Party seeks legitimacy by casting itself as custodian of China’s thousands-year-old civilization. Mr. Xi reinforces that tradition by carrying himself like one of China’s ancient philosopher kings whose duties included applying Confucian values to governance and statecraft.

中国共产党将自身定位为中国数千年文明的守护者，以此寻求执政合法性。习近平则摆出中国古代哲人圣君的姿态——他们以儒家价值观治国理政，以此强化了这一传统。

“In Chinese political culture, the top leader is not supposed to care about day-to-day mundane things,” said Zoe Liu, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They are the ‘son of heaven’ and are supposed to be engaged in philosophical matters.”

“在中国的政治文化中，最高领导人不应操心日常琐事，”外交关系委员会高级研究员刘宗媛说。“他们是‘天子’，应当关注哲学层面的事务。”

That not only amplifies a leader’s importance, but also emphasizes the greatness of Chinese culture to Western leaders hoping to change Beijing’s behavior.

这不仅强化了领导人的权威，也向那些希望改变中国行为的西方领导人彰显了中国文化的伟大。

• That was quickly apparent to President Obama during a state visit to Beijing in 2014. After a long private dinner with Mr. Xi in the walled leadership compound known as Zhongnanhai, Mr. Obama’s aides were expecting to hear that the two leaders had spoken about contentious issues like the South China Sea.

• 2014年奥巴马总统对中国进行国事访问时，这一点迅速得到了印证。在中南海与习近平进行了漫长的私人晚宴后，奥巴马的幕僚们原本以为两位领导人会谈论南中国海等争议性议题。

• “In fact, they had this kind of lengthy discussion about whether there is compatibility between individualist societies and collectivist Confucian societies,” said Mr. Rhodes, the former Obama adviser.

“但实际上，他们进行了一场关于个人主义社会与集体主义儒家社会之间是否具有兼容性的长谈，”奥巴马的前顾问本·罗兹说。

2014年，奥巴马总统与习近平在于北京举行的一次区域峰会上。

• That same elevated register shapes how Mr. Xi talks about political systems. President Biden has recounted being told by Mr. Xi that democracies “cannot be sustained in the 21st century” because they require national consensus. “It’s hard to get consensus, therefore they can’t keep up with an autocracy, one-man rule,” Mr. Biden said he was told.

• 这种高屋建瓴的谈话方式也塑造了习近平谈论政治制度的方式。拜登总统曾回忆说，习近平告诉他，民主制度“在21世纪无法持续下去”，因为它需要达成全国共识。“达成共识很难，因此民主制度赶不上威权体制、一人统治，”拜登说他听到习近平这样讲。

• Mr. Xi’s sense of imperial grandeur was caught twice on a hot mic with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. In 2023, as he was bidding farewell to the Russian leader in Moscow, Mr. Xi could be heard saying, “Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together.”

• 习近平身上的那种帝王气度曾两次在与俄罗斯总统普京会面时被开着的麦克风捕捉到。2023年，在莫斯科与普京道别之际，习近平说了这样一句话：“这也真是百年变局之一部分，我们共同来推动。”

• Two years later at a military parade in Beijing, Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin were heard on camera discussing immortality and advances in biotechnology.

• 两年后，在北京的一场阅兵式上，习近平与普京的对话又被镜头收录——两人谈起了长生不老与生物技术的最新进展。

• “It could be that in this century humans might be able to live to 150 years old,” Mr. Xi is heard saying.

“本世纪呢，可能可以活到150岁，”习近平说道。

President Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday night, stepping off Air Force One to a red-carpet welcome featuring an honor guard and flag-waving students. He is in China for a summit with its top leader, Xi Jinping, that could determine the next stage in the relationship between the world’s two superpowers.

特朗普总统于周三晚抵达北京，走下“空军一号”时受到红毯欢迎，有仪仗队和挥舞两国国旗的学生迎接。他此次访华是为了与中国最高领导人习近平举行峰会，这可能决定世界上两个超级大国关系在下一个阶段的发展。

The two leaders are expected to discuss contentious issues like trade, the war in Iran and the self-governed island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory. When they last met, in South Korea in October, they agreed to pause their trade war, in which the United States imposed triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods, and China threatened to throttle the global supply of minerals crucial to advanced manufacturing. The Beijing talks could determine whether that uneasy détente holds.

两位领导人预计将讨论贸易、伊朗战争以及北京声称拥有主权的自治岛屿台湾等有争议的问题。他们上次会面是10月在韩国，当时双方同意暂停贸易战——在这场贸易战中，美国对中国商品征收了三位数关税，中国则威胁限制全球先进制造业关键矿产的供应。北京会谈可能决定这种不稳定的缓和是否能维持。

Mr. Trump will be in China for two days of meetings. He is being accompanied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among other senior officials. High-profile executives are also traveling with the president, including Elon Musk and Tim Cook of Apple.

特朗普将在中国进行为期两天的会晤。陪同他的有国务卿马可·鲁比奥、财政部长斯科特·贝森特、国防部长皮特·海格塞斯以及其他高级官员。随同总统出行的还有一些重要企业高管，包括埃隆·马斯克和苹果公司的蒂姆·库克。

Thursday

周四

Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

When President Trump imposed 145 percent tariffs on China a year ago, Chinese state media urged the public to revisit a nearly 90-year-old essay by Mao Zedong. The Beijing Daily declared that the text was essential to understanding China’s responses to the “chaotic” attacks of the United States and why China will ultimately achieve a “final victory” against its geopolitical rival.

当特朗普总统一年前对中国征收145%关税时，中国官方媒体敦促公众重读毛泽东近90年前的一篇文章。《北京日报》宣称，这篇文章对于理解中国如何应对美国的“混乱”攻击、为何中国最终将对这个地缘政治对手取得“最终胜利”至关重要。

This required reading was Mao’s “On Protracted War,” a 1938 tract laying out his strategy for defeating the Japanese forces that had invaded China. At its core, it is a meditation on how China can come from behind in a life-or-death contest against a stronger adversary.

这篇必读文章是毛泽东发表于1938年的《论持久战》，阐述了他击败侵华日军的战略。其核心思想是中国如何在生死攸关的竞争中以弱胜强、后来居上。

President Xi Jinping has praised the strategic foresight, discipline and patience espoused by Mao in the essay, which has emerged as a guiding framework for how China aims to face the United States. He has pointed specifically to Mao’s description of a dynamic, long-term struggle unfolding in three phases: A weaker China initially plays dogged defense, followed by a period of stalemate between equally matched forces, eventually culminating in a powerful, victorious Chinese counteroffensive.

习近平主席多次赞扬毛泽东在这篇文章中阐述的战略远见、纪律性和耐心，它已经成为中国应对美国时所遵循的指导框架。他特别提到毛泽东描述的动态长期斗争分为三个阶段：较弱的中国最初采取顽强的防御，随后进入势均力敌的相持阶段，最终迎来强大的中国反攻并取得胜利。

China’s leaders are through with playing defense and have shifted into Phase 2 of Mao’s theory.

中国领导人已经结束防御阶段，转入了毛泽东理论的第二阶段——相持阶段。

The country is far stronger than it once was, in manufacturing, technology, military power and diplomatic influence. Despite a slowing economy and persistent tensions with the United States and its allies, it has become more resilient in the face of pressure from Washington. Mr. Xi easily outplayed Mr. Trump in last year’s trade confrontation, hitting back against U.S. tariffs with Chinese export controls on the critical minerals required for modern technologies, which forced Mr. Trump to step back.

中国如今比过去强大得多，在制造业、技术、军事力量和外交影响力上均有显著提升。尽管经济增速放缓，且与美国及其盟友存在持续紧张关系，但面对华盛顿的压力，中国已变得更具韧性。在去年的贸易对抗中，习近平轻松胜过特朗普，通过对现代技术必需的关键矿产实施出口管制，反击了美国的关税政策，迫使特朗普做出让步。

Mr. Xi will provide a lavish welcome for Mr. Trump in Beijing on Thursday, but the Chinese leader almost certainly views the visit — and the broader current state of the relationship — not as a time for accommodation and lasting reconciliation, but as a temporary lull in a longer test of wills.

习近平将于周四在北京为特朗普举行盛大欢迎仪式，但这位中国领导人几乎肯定将此次访问——以及当前更广泛的双边关系状态——视为一场漫长的意志较量中的暂时平静，而非达成妥协与持久和解的时刻。

Mr. Xi’s main goal in this new period of strategic stalemate is buying time to increase China’s strength relative to that of the United States, while seeking to extract concessions from Mr. Trump when he can, including limiting U.S. tariffs and export controls, and halting Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan. Major concessions during Mr. Trump’s visit seem unlikely. Nonetheless, the U.S. president arrives with a weakened hand. The costly war with Iran, which forced Mr. Trump to delay his Beijing trip for several weeks and has battered his approval ratings at home, will no doubt make him eager to spin the visit as a win, giving Mr. Xi leverage.

在这个新的战略相持阶段，习近平的主要目标是争取时间，提升中国相对于美国的实力，同时在可能的情况下从特朗普那里获取让步，包括限制美国关税和出口管制，并停止华盛顿对台湾的军售。在特朗普此次访问期间达成重大让步似乎不太可能。尽管如此，这位美国总统前来时手中没有太强的牌。与伊朗的代价高昂的战争迫使特朗普将北京之行推迟数周，并重创其国内支持率，这无疑会让他急于将此次访问描绘成一次胜利，从而给习近平提供了杠杆。

In these ways, Mr. Xi has the American president right where he wants him.

在这些方面，习近平已将这位美国总统置于他想要的位置上。

The enduring resonance of “On Protracted War” in China today reflects Mao’s dictum of “making the past serve the present.” Decades-old historical and ideological references remain central to how the Communist Party legitimates its political, economic and strategic goals and mobilizes the country to achieve them.

《论持久战》在当今中国的持久回响体现了毛泽东“古为今用”的格言。数十年前的历史和意识形态引用依然是中共为其政治、经济和战略目标提供合法性，并动员全国实现这些目标的核心方式。

Mr. Xi appears to see the competition with the United States through the same prism of long-term struggle that Mao developed to guide Chinese strategy almost a century ago. He and other top officials have invoked the essay as a guide for responding to economic and strategic challenges. Prominent Chinese academics who channel party views repeatedly refer to the tract in framing the rivalry with America, and spectacular commemorations in Beijing last September to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II included copious references to Mao’s text.

习近平似乎通过毛泽东近一个世纪前为指导中国战略而提出的长期斗争视角来看待中美竞争。他和其他高层官员都援引这篇文章作为应对经济和战略挑战的指导原则。传达党的观点的知名中国学者在对中美对抗的阐述中反复提及此文。去年9月北京为纪念二战结束80周年举行的盛大纪念活动，也大量引用了毛泽东的这篇文章。

Mr. Trump, by contrast, is focused on optics and quick wins. He wants China to commit to purchasing more American products and to strike new commercial deals with U.S. companies, and has gushed about the grand pageantry prepared for him by China during his last visit, in 2017. Yet he seems, at best, uninterested in the topics that matter most to the security of the United States and its allies, such as China’s pressure on Taiwan, its aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea and cyberattacks on American targets that the United States attributes to China-based actors. The United States has powerful leverage it can use against China, from access to advanced semiconductors to the dollar’s global dominance, but Mr. Trump today appears less inclined to wield it.

相比之下，特朗普专注于表面形象和速胜。他希望中国承诺购买更多美国产品，并与美国公司达成新的商业协议，还津津乐道2017年上次访华时中国为他准备的盛大场面。然而，他似乎对最关乎美国及其盟友安全的核心议题兴趣寥寥，例如中国对台湾的施压、在南海的强势领土主张，以及美国认定由中国行为体实施的网络攻击。美国拥有强大杠杆——从先进半导体准入到美元的全球主导地位，但如今的特朗普似乎不太愿意动用这些杠杆。

Mr. Trump’s shortsightedness plays directly into Mr. Xi’s larger aims. The Chinese leader believes the U.S.-led international order is coming to an end and that what follows is up for grabs. For the first time, he may now see a path toward achieving key goals such as disrupting U.S. alliances in Asia, and weakening American support for Taiwan as well as Washington’s ability to impede China’s rise through technology export restrictions and economic sanctions.

特朗普的短视直接服务于习近平的更大目标。这位中国领导人相信，美国主导的国际秩序正在走向终结，之后的世界格局尚待争夺。他现在可能首次看到一条实现关键目标的路径，例如破坏美国在亚洲的联盟、削弱美国对台湾的支持，以及削弱华盛顿通过技术出口限制和经济制裁阻碍中国崛起的能力。

Having moved past playing defense and into a stalemate, Mr. Xi is now steadily working toward the day when China is strong enough to mount a counteroffensive to attain those goals. In March, the government approved a new five-year plan to ramp up China’s already considerable industrial, technological and military capabilities.

结束防御阶段并进入相持阶段后，习近平正稳步推进各项工作，等待中国强大到足以发起反攻以实现这些目标的那一天。今年3月，政府批准了新的五年规划，旨在进一步提升中国已相当可观的工业、技术和军事能力。

China is strengthening ties with Russia and across Southeast Asia, Latin America and the global south, relationships that can help Beijing counterbalance the United States, while taking advantage of Mr. Trump’s alienation of U.S. allies. In recent months, Mr. Xi has hosted the leaders of Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany in Beijing, timing their visits ahead of Mr. Trump’s to underscore U.S. isolation. And countries around the world are turning to China, with its dominant position in green technology, to increase their energy security amid the Iran war’s disruptions.

中国正在加强与俄罗斯以及东南亚、拉丁美洲和全球南方的关系，这些关系能够帮助北京制衡美国，同时利用特朗普疏远美国盟友的机会。最近几个月，习近平在北京接待了加拿大、英国和德国领导人，将他们的访问安排在特朗普之前，以凸显美国的孤立。而世界各国正转向拥有绿色技术主导地位的中国，以在伊朗战争造成的动荡中提升能源安全。

By contrast, Mr. Trump’s war of choice with Iran is wasting money and matériel that would be better marshaled for long-term competition with China, and his administration is undermining other sources of American strength with actions such as gutting U.S. funding for science and technology.

相比之下，特朗普主动对伊朗发起的战争正在浪费本应用于与中国长期竞争的金钱和物资，而他的政府正在通过削减美国科技研发经费等行动，削弱美国的其他实力来源。

China faces significant domestic challenges — an aging population, high household debt levels and weak consumer spending. Yet its leaders seem to believe that it is the United States — not China — that is weaker than it appears. As Chen Yixin, China’s minister of state security, wrote in December: America’s “democracy is mutating, its economy decaying and its society fracturing at an accelerated pace.” Globally, he added, U.S. “credibility is rapidly going bankrupt, its hegemony is crumbling, and its myth is collapsing.”

中国面临着重大国内挑战——人口老龄化、高家庭债务水平和疲弱的消费支出。然而，其领导人似乎认为，相对虚弱的一方是美国而非中国。正如中国国家安全部部长陈一新12月撰文指出：美国的“民主异变、经济衰变、社会裂变”。并且，在全球范围内，美国的“信用破产、霸权破败、神话破灭”。

Americans may dismiss such rhetoric as propaganda. But we must reckon with the prospect that many countries agree that China is winning. Mr. Xi is bringing Mr. Trump to Beijing for a visit intended to confirm that to the world.

美国人大可不屑地视此类言论为宣传。但我们必须正视这样一种可能性：许多国家也认为中国正在取胜。习近平邀请特朗普访华，正是为了向世界确认这一点。