While working at YouTube in an era when a wedding dance and a 7-year-old hallucinating on dental anesthesia were top viral videos, I received the news that my employer had won a Peabody Award, which honors the most powerful storytelling achievements in electronic media. The committee praised YouTube as an “ever-expanding archive-cum-bulletin board that both embodies and promotes democracy.” Instead of displaying the statuette in the lobby with our other awards, I put it on my desk. I have no idea where it went after I left the company two years later.

我在YouTube工作的那个年代，爆款视频还只是婚礼舞蹈和七岁小孩牙科麻醉后产生幻觉的片段，某天我收到消息，公司斩获了皮博迪奖——这一奖项旨在表彰电子媒体领域最具影响力的叙事成就。评审委员会称赞YouTube是“兼具档案库与公告栏功能、既体现又推动民主的平台”。我没有把奖杯和其他奖项一起摆在大厅，而是放在了自己的办公桌上。两年后我离职时，完全不知道它最终流落何方。

It’s hard to square the idealistic YouTube of the late 2000s with the one that in September paid President Trump $24.5 million to settle a meritless lawsuit over his post-Jan. 6 account suspension.

很难将2000年代末那个理想主义的YouTube与2024年9月的YouTube联系起来——后者为了结特朗普毫无依据的诉讼支付了2450万美元，该诉讼源于1月6日事件后对特朗普账号的封禁。

Big Tech once fought the good fights. In 2007 Google forced the Federal Communications Commission to impose openness conditions on some of the country’s most valuable airwaves, paving the way for the mobile ecosystem we take for granted today. Twitter filed lawsuits to be able to publicly disclose how often government agencies requested user data. In 2016 Apple refused orders to help the F.B.I. unlock an iPhone, defending user privacy even under government pressure. These actions took place under presidents of both parties but shared a common goal — they put the needs of users ahead of the interests of those in power.

曾几何时，科技巨头也为正义而战。2007年，谷歌迫使联邦通信委员会对美国最宝贵的无线电波段实施开放性条件，为我们如今习以为常的移动生态系统铺平了道路。Twitter为公开政府机构索取用户数据的频率而发起诉讼。2016年，苹果拒绝了协助联邦调查局解锁iPhone的命令，即便面临政府压力也坚决捍卫用户隐私。这些行动发生在不同党派总统执政期间，却有着共同的目标——将用户需求置于当权者利益之上。

To paraphrase the venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, the Silicon Valley of the early 2010s was a mind-set, not a location. Its leaders saw themselves as revolutionaries: fighting for everyday people, resisting entrenched authority, all while creating technology that pushed society forward. And the products matched the posture — cellphones untethered from carriers, cars that didn’t run on gas, and pocket-size credit card readers that let anyone start a business.

用风险投资家里德·霍夫曼的话来说，2010年代初的硅谷是一种心态，而不是一个地理位置。当时的硅谷领军者视自己为革命者：为普通人抗争、抵制根深蒂固的权威，同时创造推动社会进步的技术。他们的产品也与这种姿态相符——摆脱运营商束缚的手机、不依赖汽油的汽车，以及让任何人都能创业的便携信用卡读卡器。

Fifteen years later, the revolutionaries are no longer storming the gates. They’re inside the castle, polishing the silverware.

15年后，昔日的革命者不再猛攻城门，而是躲在城堡里擦拭着他们的银器。

Meta is the most egregious example. It sprinted to announce that it was dismantling its fact-checking system before Mr. Trump returned to office, then loosened its hate-speech rules in the name of “mainstream discourse.” By the end of January, Meta had reached a deal with Mr. Trump, agreeing to pay $25 million to settle his lawsuit over being suspended from Facebook and Instagram in the wake of Jan. 6. All before Mr. Trump had spent 10 days back in office.

Meta的表现最为恶劣。特朗普重返白宫前，它就火速宣布拆除事实核查系统，随后以“主流话语”为名放宽仇恨言论规则。到1月底，Meta与特朗普达成协议，同意支付2500万美元了结他因1月6日事件后Facebook和Instagram账号被封而提起的诉讼。而此时特朗普重返白宫还不到10天。

The surrender is now routine. In April, Amazon publicly quashed reports that it would display the cost of Mr. Trump’s tariffs on product pages. Apple recently caved to pressure from Attorney General Pam Bondi and pulled an app that alerted users to nearby ICE agents. This is the same Apple whose chief executive, Tim Cook, in 2017 said, “Apple would not exist without immigration,” and quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in criticizing Mr. Trump’s Muslim ban.

如今这种妥协已成常态。4月，亚马逊公开否认有关其将在产品页面显示特朗普关税成本的报道。苹果近期屈服于司法部长帕姆·邦迪的压力，下架了一款能提醒用户附近移民海关执法局探员位置的应用。同样是这家苹果公司，2017年时首席执行官蒂姆·库克曾表示，“没有移民就没有苹果，”并引用马丁·路德·金的话批评特朗普的穆斯林禁令。

What happened?

到底发生了什么？

The answer is simple, if dispiriting: For tech companies, courage doesn’t scale.

答案简单却令人沮丧：对科技公司而言，勇气无法随着规模的增长而增长。

Google, Apple and their peers now act like the self-preservation-obsessed incumbents they once disrupted. They move slower, talk safer and patrol the moat. They’ve traded risk for complacency — too afraid of offending the president, losing access or inviting a subpoena. Big Tech now serves power before it serves its users.

谷歌、苹果及其同行如今的行事作风已经成为自保至上的在位者，与它们曾经颠覆的东西如出一辙。它们行动更迟缓、言辞更谨慎，一心固守自己的优势地位。它们用自满取代了冒险精神——太过害怕冒犯总统、失去资源或招致传票。如今的科技巨头，先服务权力，再服务用户。

When faith in government and Wall Street disappeared during the financial crisis, technology was the last industry standing — its leaders’ idealism mirrored the public’s confidence in it. But over time, as they grew more dominant, they put corporate self-interest ahead of customers, and they made their products worse. Tech now looks a lot like finance: power without accountability, and profit without purpose.

金融危机期间，公众对政府和华尔街的信任崩塌，科技行业成为最后屹立的产业——其领军者的理想主义与公众对它的信心相呼应。但随着它们的主导地位日益巩固，逐渐将企业自身利益置于用户之上，产品质量也随之下降。如今的科技行业与金融业越来越像：责权失衡，逐利忘义。

It’s easy to mock Silicon Valley’s “change the world” mantra (and many have), but public faith in technology matters. It encourages investment, increases adoption of and trust in new products, and attracts top talent to the United States. To put this in terms tech executives will understand: Trust is a feature, not a bug.

硅谷“改变世界”的口号固然容易遭到嘲讽（也确实有很多人嘲讽），但公众对科技的信任至关重要。它能鼓励投资、提高新产品的接受度和信任度，还能吸引顶尖人才赴美。用科技高管能理解的话来说：信任是核心功能，而非系统缺陷。

Optimism is a necessary part of tech’s business model — by abandoning their principles, these companies are eroding the good will they depend on for growth. Americans are already much more likely to think A.I. will harm them (43 percent) than help them (24 percent). This kind of skepticism, some of which predates this administration, can have real consequences. Nearly twice as many U.S. adults trust Google and Amazon over Meta, which is why hundreds of millions of people have bought Nest and Echo devices, but how many do you know who bought the now-discontinued Facebook Portal?

乐观是科技商业模式的必要组成部分——这些公司放弃原则的行为，正在侵蚀它们赖以增长的社会善意。如今美国人认为人工智能会伤害自己的比例（43%），远高于认为人工智能会带来帮助的比例（24%）。这种怀疑情绪（其中一些在本届政府执政前就已存在）可能引发实实在在的后果。信任谷歌和亚马逊的美国成年人数量几乎是信任Meta的两倍，这也可以解释为什么数亿人购买了Nest和Echo设备，而你身边有多少人买过现已停产的Facebook Portal呢？

Cynicism is also making the industry a less desirable place to work. Even before entry-level tech jobs became more scarce, top graduates were starting to lose interest in working at Big Tech companies. The number of tech industry companies on Glassdoor’s “Best Places to Work” list decreased by 25 percent from 2023 to 2024. Tech drives U.S. economic growth — we all need a tech industry that the public believes in.

怀疑也让科技行业变得不那么令人向往。即便在入门级科技岗位变得稀缺之前，顶尖毕业生就已开始对入职科技巨头失去兴趣。2023年至2024年，Glassdoor的“最佳雇主”榜单中的科技公司数量下降了25%。科技行业是美国经济增长的驱动力——我们都需要一个能获得公众信任的科技行业。

Major changes are coming whether we like it or not — to the economy, to culture, to how we live and work. This is not the time for faith in tech to be at such lows. Adoption depends on public trust, not just in the products themselves but also in the people and principles behind them. Unfortunately, the tech industry’s leaders have become its worst spokespeople. The problem isn’t their messaging. It’s their credibility.

无论我们是否愿意，重大变革即将到来——涉及经济、文化，以及我们的生活和工作方式。此刻绝不应成为公众对科技信任度跌入谷底的时候。新技术的普及依赖公众信任，不仅是对产品本身的信任，更是对产品背后的人和原则的信任。不幸的是，科技行业的领导者们成了自己最糟糕的代言人。问题不在于他们的宣传话术，而在于他们的公信力。

For years, Silicon Valley symbolized progress. Its retreat from its core values leaves no clear heir — no other industry fights for the future in the same way. When tech is the villain instead of the hero, the future feels leaderless. And a country that stops believing its innovators can make the world better stops believing in much else, too.

多年来，硅谷一直是进步的象征。如今它背离了核心价值观，却没有留下任何明确的继承者——没有其他行业能以同样的方式为未来而战。当科技从英雄沦为反派，未来便显得群龙无首。而一个不再相信其创新者能让世界变得更好的国家，也将对其他事物丧失信心。

I still wonder where the Peabody landed after I packed up my desk at YouTube. I hope whoever inherited the statuette understands what it meant to receive it. And maybe that person will remember the old YouTube — the one that was brave enough to earn it.

我至今仍好奇，当年我在YouTube收拾办公桌时，那座皮博迪奖最终去了哪里。希望接手这座奖杯的人明白它的意义所在。或许那个人还会记得曾经的YouTube——那个曾经有勇气赢得这座奖杯的YouTube。

The Trump Organization is in talks that could bring a Trump-branded property to one of Saudi Arabia’s largest government-owned real estate developments, according to the chief executive of the Saudi company leading the development.

一家沙特阿拉伯公司的首席执行官表示，该公司负责的一个项目——沙特最大的政府所有房地产开发项目之一——正在与特朗普集团洽谈，以期在项目中引入一座特朗普品牌物业。

The negotiations are the latest example of President Trump blending governance and family business, particularly in Persian Gulf countries. Since returning to office, the president’s family and businesses have announced new ventures abroad involving billions of dollars, made hundreds of millions from cryptocurrency, and sold tickets to a private dinner hosted by Mr. Trump.

这一谈判是特朗普总统将执政与家族生意交织在一起的最新例子，尤其是在波斯湾国家。自再度上台以来，总统的家人和企业宣布了涉及数十亿美元的海外新项目，通过加密货币赚取了数亿美元，并出售特朗普举办的私人晚宴的门票。

Mr. Trump is set to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington next week.

特朗普将于下周在华盛顿接待沙特阿拉伯事实上的统治者、王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼。

The prince is overseeing a $63 billion project that is set to transform the historic Saudi town of Diriyah into a luxury destination with hotels, retail shops and office space. The Trump business has a history of lending its name to mixed-use projects touting “iconic luxury.”

王储正在监督一个630亿美元的项目，该项目将把沙特历史小镇迪里耶转变为一个拥有酒店、零售商店和办公空间的奢侈目的地。特朗普企业有借出其名称给混合用途项目的历史，这些项目标榜“标志性奢侈”。

“Nothing announced yet, but soon to be,” Jerry Inzerillo, chief executive of the Diriyah development and a longtime friend of President Trump, said in an interview. He said it was “just a matter of time” before the Trump Organization sealed a deal.

“还没有宣布，但很快就会，”迪里耶开发项目的首席执行官、特朗普总统的老朋友杰里·因泽里洛在采访中说。他说，与特朗普集团达成协议只是“时间问题”。

Saudi officials toured the Diriyah development with Mr. Trump during the president’s official state visit in May, with the goal of piquing his interest in the project, Mr. Inzerillo said.

因泽里洛说，沙特官员在总统5月正式国事访问期间，与特朗普一起参观了迪里耶开发项目，意在激发他对该项目的兴趣。

“It turned out to be a good stroke of luck and maybe a little bit clever of us to say, ‘OK, let’s appeal to him as a developer’ — and he loved it,” Mr. Inzerillo said.

“结果运气不错，我们算是动了点脑筋，就想着‘好吧，让我们以开发者的身份吸引他’——他很喜欢，”因泽里洛说。

Next week, Prince Mohammed is expected to make his first visit to the United States in seven years. He hopes to sign a mutual defense agreement with Washington and potentially advance a deal to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

王储预计在下周访美，这是七年来的第一次。他希望与华盛顿签署共同防御协议，并可能推进将美国核技术转移到沙特阿拉伯的协议。

That sets up a scenario in which Mr. Trump discusses matters of national security with a foreign leader who is also a key figure in a potential business deal with the president’s family.

因此可能出现这样一种局面，即特朗普与一位外国领导人讨论国家安全事务，而这位领导人同时也是总统家族潜在商业交易的关键人物。

Deal-making and diplomacy are increasingly intertwined for Mr. Trump and his family members. Some have engaged in business talks around the world in tandem with his statecraft, mingling profit-making ventures with political relationships.

对于特朗普及其家人来说，商业交易与外交事务越来越交织在一起。在他处理国事的同时，家人也在世界各地进行商业谈判，将盈利的商业项目与政治关系混合在一起。

Diriyah is one of several ongoing Saudi developments that are so big that officials call them “giga-projects.”

迪里耶是沙特正在推进的多个超大型开发项目之一，其规模之巨被官方称为“巨型项目”。

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the potential deal, nor did Eric Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s two sons overseeing the family business. It can be hard to separate hype from reality in international real estate discussions. Speculation doesn’t always lead to negotiations, and negotiations don’t always end in signed contracts.

特朗普集团没有回应有关潜在交易的问题，特朗普的两个儿子之一、负责家族生意的埃里克·特朗普也没有回应。国际地产的讨论往往难以将炒作与现实分开。猜测并不总是导致谈判，谈判也不总是以签署合同结束。

But Mr. Inzerillo’s comments echoed similar remarks from Dar Global, the Trump Organization’s most important foreign business partner and a key conduit to Arab governments and Gulf companies.

但因泽里洛的评论与特朗普集团最重要的外国商业伙伴达宇置地(Dar Global)的类似言论相呼应，该公司是与阿拉伯政府和海湾公司牵线搭桥的关键。

Dar Global’s chief executive, Ziad El Chaar, said last month that new Trump projects in Saudi Arabia were coming. “You will see us announcing more collaborations with the giga-projects,” he told the Middle East news site Al-Monitor.

达宇首席执行官齐亚德·埃尔·查尔上个月表示，特朗普集团在沙特的新项目即将亮相。“你们将看到我们宣布与巨型项目的更多合作，”他对中东新闻网站Al-Monitor说。

齐亚德·埃尔·查尔今年早些时候在迪拜。

Dar Global did not say whether those remarks referred to Diriyah or another yet-to-be-announced deal. All of the giga-projects are owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

达宇没有说明这些言论是否指的是迪里耶或其他尚未宣布的交易。所有巨型项目都由沙特主权财富基金拥有。

Dar did not respond to requests for comment.

达宇没有回应置评请求。

Coupled with Mr. Inzerillo’s comments, Mr. El Chaar’s remarks highlight what has been a flurry of Gulf deal-making for Mr. Trump’s family since last year.

将因泽里洛和埃尔·查尔的言论结合起来，可以看到自去年以来特朗普家族在海湾地区迅速开展了一系列交易洽谈。

In Saudi Arabia, a Trump tower is planned for Jeddah, and two projects have been announced in Riyadh. A Trump hotel and tower has moved forward in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates. And a golf course deal in Qatar has put the Trump family in business with a government-owned real estate firm there.

在沙特阿拉伯，吉达计划建造一座特朗普大厦，还有两个在利雅得的项目也已宣布。在阿拉伯联合酋长国最大城市迪拜，一座特朗普酒店和大厦已经在推进。而在卡塔尔的一个高尔夫球场交易中，特朗普家族与当地政府拥有的房地产公司展开了合作。

Mr. El Chaar and Dar guided all of those deals. “We launched with a partnership with the esteemed Trump Organization that immediately put the project on the global map,” Mr. El Chaar said last year in Oman, speaking about a Trump golf course and hotel under construction there as part of a project backed by Oman’s government.

埃尔·查尔和达宇是所有这些交易的引路人。“我们与备受尊敬的特朗普集团合作启动该项目，从而使其立即具有了全球知名度，”埃尔·查尔去年在阿曼谈及那里正在建设的一个特朗普高尔夫球场和酒店时说道，该项目是阿曼政府支持的项目的一部分。

Each venture generates licensing fees for using the Trump name. Dar paid the Trump Organization $21.9 million in license fees last year, according to his financial disclosure. Some of that money goes to the president himself.

每个项目都需要支付特朗普冠名费。根据特朗普的财务披露，达宇去年向特朗普集团支付了2190万美元的授权费。其中一些钱直接进入总统本人手中。

Licensing deals can be lucrative, particularly if a development does well. Often, a company is paid for the use of its name and is not required to invest any money in the project itself. The Trump Organization’s licensing agreements are not public, making it impossible to know the terms.

冠名授权交易可以带来丰厚利润，特别是在开发项目表现良好的情况下。通常，一家公司因使用其名称而获得报酬，并且无需在项目本身投资任何资金。特朗普集团的授权协议不公开，因此无从得知具体条款。

Dar Global, a subsidiary of the major Saudi development firm Dar Al Arkan, has close ties to the Saudi government. The firm’s sales offices in London and Riyadh feature architectural models of yet-to-be-built Trump-branded high-rises. Promotional materials feature photos of Trump family members.

达宇置地是沙特主要开发商Dar Al Arkan的子公司，与沙特政府关系密切。该公司在伦敦和利雅得的售楼处展示了尚未建造的特朗普品牌高层建筑的模型。宣传材料中摆出了特朗普家族成员的照片。

The Trump Organization swore off new foreign business deals after Mr. Trump’s 2016 election, but that pledge ended with his first term. The recent blending of business and politics has shattered American norms but is ordinary in the Gulf, where hereditary ruling families hold nearly absolute power and the phrase “conflict of interest” carries little weight.

特朗普集团在特朗普2016年当选后誓称不进行新的外国商业交易，但这一承诺随着他的第一任期结束而终止。最近商业与政治的交织打破了美国的常规，但在海湾地区却是再正常不过的事，那里的世袭统治家族拥有近乎绝对的权力，“利益冲突”的说法几乎一文不值。

In Saudi Arabia, development officials saw Mr. Trump’s state visit in May as a chance to spark his interest in Diriyah, Mr. Inzerillo said. On his first night in Riyadh, ahead of the state dinner, Mr. Trump and Prince Mohammed visited Diriyah’s renovated historical center.

因泽里洛说，在沙特阿拉伯，开发官员将特朗普的5月国事访问视为激发他对迪里耶兴趣的机会。在利雅得的第一晚，特朗普和穆罕默德王储赶在国宴之前参观了改造后的迪里耶老城。

The two leaders talked “not just as heads of state,” but as “visionaries and developers,” Mr. Inzerillo said. Mr. Trump was impressed by the number of construction cranes working on the vast site, he added.

两位领导人的谈话“不仅仅是作为国家元首”，还是两位“远见者和开发者”，因泽里洛说。他还说，特朗普对这片巨大工地上密集的塔吊群印象深刻。

Saudi officials even debated whether it would be appropriate to present architectural models at the state dinner, he said.

他说，沙特官员甚至讨论了在国宴上展示建筑模型是否合适。

“I said, ‘You’re right, you normally wouldn’t do that in a state dinner. It’s not really the normal protocol,’” Mr. Inzerillo recalled. “But that’s because you’re looking at the president of the United States as the president of the United States. You’re not looking at him as a developer.”

“我说，‘你是对的，国宴通常不会这么安排。这不太符合一般的规矩，’”因泽里洛回忆道。“但那是因为你把美国总统视为美国总统。你没有把他视为开发者。”

The models of the massive project were ultimately put on display.

这个巨型项目的模型最终还是展示了出来。

The following day, at an investment forum in Riyadh, Mr. Trump heralded what he called “an exhilarating period” in the Arabian Peninsula.

第二天，在利雅得的一个投资论坛上，特朗普盛赞阿拉伯半岛正处于一个“激动人心的时代”。

“Over the past eight years, Saudi Arabia has proved the critics totally wrong,” he said. He praised the “majestic skyscrapers” that he had seen and “some of the exhibits” Prince Mohammed had shown him, calling them a sign of “amazing genius.”

“在过去八年里，沙特阿拉伯完全证明了批评者是错误的，”他说。他盛赞自己所看到的“雄伟的摩天大楼”和穆罕默德王储向他展示的“一些展品”，称这些都是“惊人智慧”的体现。

A recruitment executive described by the London police as “one of the most prolific sex offenders” they have encountered was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 14 years on Friday for assaulting multiple women and covertly filming many more.

因性侵多名女性并秘密偷拍更多受害者，一名被伦敦警方称为他们所遇到的“最猖獗性犯罪者之一”的招聘高管于周五被判处终身监禁，最低服刑14年方可申请假释。

The executive, Xu Chao, 33, confessed in August to committing 24 sexual offenses between February 2022 and June this year, including assaulting six women after spiking their drinks to incapacitate them.

该高管名为徐超（音），33岁，今年8月承认于2022年2月至2024年6月期间犯下24项性犯罪，包括给六名女性下药使其失去行动能力后实施性侵。

He targeted victims at careers events in London for Chinese students, and admitted hiding cameras at his home and filming women in his workplace and at a London Underground station. The police say they believe the victims could number in the hundreds.

他专门在伦敦面向中国学生的职业招聘会上物色受害者，还承认在家中藏匿摄像头，并在其工作场所及伦敦地铁站偷拍女性。警方表示，受害者人数可能多达数百人。

Detective Superintendent Lewis Sanderson, who led the investigation, said Mr. Xu “preyed on unsuspecting women.”

负责此案调查的警司刘易斯·桑德森称，徐超“猎取毫无戒心的女性”。

Videos found on Mr. Xu’s phone showed that he attacked at least one woman in China before moving to Britain, the police said.

警方透露，从徐超手机中找到的视频显示，他移居英国前，在中国至少侵犯过一名女性。

Investigators said the case bore similarities to that of Zou Zhenhao, a Chinese student jailed in June for drugging and raping multiple women and filming the abuse. The two men are not known to have been linked, but the police said officers were combing through messages and search histories to examine whether they might have learned how to perpetrate their attacks online.

调查人员表示，该案与今年6月被判刑的中国留学生邹镇豪案存在相似之处——邹镇豪因下药强奸多名女性并拍摄施暴过程获刑。目前尚无证据表明两人存在关联，但警方称正梳理两人的通讯记录和搜索历史，调查他们是否通过网络习得作案方法。

Mr. Xu moved to Britain in 2016 to pursue a master’s in international law, the police said on Wednesday. After graduating from the University of Greenwich, he became the director of a recruitment company that connected international employers with Chinese students in Britain.

警方周三披露，徐超于2016年赴英攻读国际法学硕士学位。从格林尼治大学毕业后，他成为一家招聘公司的负责人，为国际雇主与在英中国留学生牵线搭桥。

“He was known to host networking events at his residence, which were presented as professional gatherings, but as we now know, were used to facilitate criminal behavior,” Detective Superintendent Sanderson told a news conference on Wednesday. He said the police believed Mr. Xu to be “one of the most prolific sex offenders of all time.”

“他以举办职业社交活动为名，将住所作为活动场地，但现在我们已经查明，这些活动实为其犯罪行为提供便利，”桑德森警司在周三的新闻发布会上表示，警方认为徐超是“有史以来最猖獗的性犯罪者之一”。

On May 31, Mr. Xu drugged and raped a female student at one event. She later became the first person to report him to the police. Under British law, victims of sexual abuse are granted lifetime anonymity.

5月31日，徐超在一场活动中下药强奸了一名女留学生，这名受害者成为首位报案人。根据英国法律，性侵受害者终身享有匿名权。

The woman regained consciousness while she was being assaulted but was physically “powerless to defend herself” because of the drugs, Detective Superintendent Sanderson said. She challenged Mr. Xu after waking up in his apartment the following day.

桑德森警司称，这名女性在遭受侵犯时恢复了意识，但因药物作用，身体“无力自卫”。次日在徐超公寓醒来后，她当即质问对方。

When he refused to show her his phone, which he had used to film the assault, she called the police and remained at his apartment until they arrived.

在徐超拒绝出示用于拍摄侵犯过程的手机后，她拨打了报警电话，并留在公寓直至警方抵达。

Mr. Xu appeared calm and handed his phone and password to the police, allowing them to gain access to thousands of “deeply disturbing” photographs and videos showing his previous attacks, voyeurism and upskirting, Detective Superintendent Sanderson said.

桑德森警司表示，徐超当时表现平静，向警方交出了手机及密码，警方由此获取了数以千计“令人极度不安”的照片和视频，内容包括他此前的侵犯行为、偷窥及裙底偷拍画面。

In a statement read out by a prosecutor, Catherine Farrelly, during the sentencing hearing on Friday, the woman who first reported Mr. Xu described how she had met him at a university employment event and was invited to his office with other students.

周五的量刑听证会上，检察官凯瑟琳·法雷利宣读了首位报案人的陈述。该女性称，她在一次大学就业活动中结识徐超，后与其他学生一同被邀请至其办公室。

“He appeared to be helping me with my career and future employment,” the woman said. “He wanted us to tell our fellow students about his company and needed us to help publicize his events. I just couldn’t understand why he would break this trust and do that to me.”

“他看似要助力我的职业发展和未来就业，”该女性说。“他希望我们向同学推荐他的公司，还需要我们帮忙宣传他的活动。我实在无法理解，他为何要违背这份信任，对我做出这样的事。”

The woman said she had not told her family about the attack because she feared being “questioned and blamed” and was struggling to complete her studies or even to eat. “I’m scared that while I sleep something like this may happen again,” she added. “How can I be sure that I’m safe?”

她表示，因担心会“受到质疑和指责”，她未将此事告知家人，如今难以完成学业，甚至连吃饭都成了问题。“我害怕睡觉时还会发生这样的事，”她补充道。“我怎么能确保自己的安全？”

The judge who sentenced Mr. Xu at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London said he was an “incredibly dangerous man” who had committed “calculated and planned” offenses that he recorded for his own enjoyment.

伦敦东南部伍尔维奇刑事法院的主审法官表示，徐超是“极度危险的人”，其犯罪行为“经过精心策划”， 并为满足个人快感而全程拍摄。

Addressing Mr. Xu directly, Judge Christopher Grout said: “You are a sexual predator who would gain the trust and confidence of women before raping and sexually abusing them. I have no doubt at all that you pose a high risk of sexual and psychological harm to any woman who is unfortunate enough to be in your company.”

法官克里斯托弗·格鲁特直接对徐超说：“你是一名性掠夺者，先获取女性的信任，再对她们实施强奸和性侵。我毫不怀疑，任何不幸与你接触的女性，都面临着极高的性伤害和心理伤害风险。”

Mr. Xu will be considered for release on parole after 14 years, the judge said, and will be subject to monitoring for the rest of his life. He will be liable for deportation to China if freed.

法官称，徐超需服刑14年后方可申请假释，且余生将受到终身监管。若获释，他有可能被遣返中国。

The police say they believe that the combination of substances Mr. Xu used to incapacitate his victims meant that they might have no memory of the assaults. They appealed to women who had memory gaps after attending one of his events or who think they may have been filmed by Mr. Xu to contact investigators.

警方表示，徐超用于使受害者丧失行为能力的混合药物可能导致受害者对袭击过程毫无记忆。警方呼吁，若有女性参加过他的活动后出现记忆空白，或怀疑自己可能被偷拍，请联系调查人员。

一张警方提供的照片显示，徐超浴室里的空气清新剂中藏有摄像头。

The police said that they were working with the authorities in China to try to find potential victims of Mr. Xu who may have traveled back to their home country after completing studies in London.

警方还称，正与中国相关部门合作，寻找可能在伦敦完成学业后回国的潜在受害者。

“We commend the bravery of the survivors who have supported the investigation,” Detective Superintendent Sanderson said. “Without receiving their initial reports, it is probable the offending would have continued and could have affected countless more women.”

“我们赞扬支持此次调查的受害者的勇气，”桑德森警司说。“若非她们率先报案，罪行可能还会持续，波及更多女性。”

Chinese state-sponsored hackers used Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology to conduct a largely automated cyberattack against a group of technology companies and government agencies, the company said on Thursday.

人工智能初创公司Anthropic上周四表示，中国政府支持的黑客利用该公司的人工智能技术对一批科技公司和政府机构发动了一次高度自动化的网络攻击。

Anthropic, an artificial intelligence start-up, claimed that the large-scale online espionage campaign in September was the first reported case of an A.I.-powered agent’s gathering information on targets with limited human input.

Anthropic称，9月发生的这次大规模网络间谍活动是首例公开报道的由人工智能驱动的代理在有限人工干预下自动收集目标信息的案例。

It released a report detailing how attackers used the company’s artificial intelligence tools to write code that directed Anthropic’s A.I. agent, Claude Code, to perform the attack. The company said human operators accounted for 10 to 20 percent of the work required to conduct the operation.

该公司发布了一份报告，详细说明攻击者如何利用其人工智能工具编写代码，指挥Anthropic的AI代理“Claude Code”执行攻击行动。该公司表示，这场行动中仅约10%至20%的操作由人类执行。

The report did not disclose how the company had become aware of the attack or how it had identified the hackers, whom Anthropic said it had assessed “with high confidence” as being a Chinese state-sponsored group. It also did not identify the 30 entities that Anthropic said the hackers had targeted.

报告未披露公司是如何获悉此次攻击以及如何锁定黑客身份的。Anthropic表示，他们“高度确信”该黑客组织系中国政府支持的网络攻击团体。报告亦未公开它所称遭到攻击的那30个实体的名称。

James Corera, the director of the cyber, technology and security program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said that although the campaign was not a fully automated attack, it demonstrated how hackers could now hand off large parts of their work to A.I. systems.

澳大利亚战略政策研究所网络、科技与安全项目负责人詹姆斯·科雷拉表示，尽管此次行动并非全自动攻击，但它展示了黑客如何将大量任务交由人工智能系统完成。

“While the balance is clearly shifting toward greater automation, human orchestration still anchors key elements,” Mr. Corera said.

“尽管趋势明显正向更高度自动化倾斜，但关键环节仍由人类统筹，”科雷拉说。

On Friday, Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said he was not familiar with Anthropic’s report, but decried “accusations made without evidence” and said China opposed hacking.

周五，中国外交部发言人林剑表示，他并不了解Anthropic的这份报告，但批评所谓“缺乏证据的无端指控”，并称中国反对黑客活动。

A.I. researchers have long warned that the latest artificial intelligence tools could be used in cyberattacks. But they have also said the same tools would be beneficial in defending against such attacks. Throughout the history of cybersecurity, new tools have typically provided novel forms of both attack and defense.

人工智能研究者长期以来一直警告，最新的AI工具可能被用于网络攻击。但同时也指出，同样的工具也有助于防御此类攻击。在网络安全历史上，新工具往往同时带来新的攻击手段和防护方式。

This is not the first time that makers of advanced A.I. systems have said attackers used their technology. Other U.S. companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, previously reported that state actors had used A.I. tools to enhance online attacks and surveillance operations.

这并非先进人工智能系统开发商首次披露技术遭攻击者滥用。微软和OpenAI等其他美国公司此前也曾报告称，一些有政府背景的网络行为体利用AI工具加强网络攻击和监控行动。

As part of its annual report on digital threats, Microsoft said this month that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea had significantly increased their use of artificial intelligence to organize cyberattacks against the United States and deceive people online.

微软在本月发布的年度数字威胁报告中表示，中国、俄罗斯、伊朗和朝鲜已显著加强利用人工智能组织针对美国的网络攻击和网络操纵活动。

In February, OpenAI said it had uncovered evidence that a Chinese security operation built an artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance tool to gather reports about anti-Chinese posts on social media in Western countries.

今年2月，OpenAI表示，他们发现有证据显示，中国安全部门建立了一个人工智能驱动的监控工具，用于收集有关西方国家社交媒体上反华言论的相关内容。

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)

（《纽约时报》已就人工智能系统相关新闻内容的版权问题起诉OpenAI和微软。OpenAI和微软均否认了这些指控。）

In August, Anthropic said that its A.I. technologies were used in sophisticated cyberattacks and that such technologies had lowered the barriers to such crimes. That month, the company said Chinese hackers had used its artificial intelligence to target telecommunications providers and government databases in Vietnam.

Anthropic在8月曾表示，其人工智能技术被用于复杂的网络攻击，并称此类技术降低了网络犯罪的门槛。当月，该公司还表示，中国黑客利用其人工智能技术攻击了越南的电信运营商和政府数据库。

The Chinese government has repeatedly criticized accusations that it engaged in or supported hacking.

中国政府多次驳斥有关其参与或支持黑客活动的指控。

In September, Anthropic announced that it was updating its terms of service to make it more difficult for people to gain access to its technology in locations where sales were already prohibited. The only country explicitly named as such a location in the announcement was China.

9月，Anthropic宣布更新其服务条款，以进一步限制在原本已禁止销售的地区获取其人工智能技术。该公司在公告中点名的唯一国家是中国。

China escalated its diplomatic feud with Japan on Sunday by sending Coast Guard ships to patrol near islands the countries both claim, and warning Chinese students in the country about what it said were risks to their safety.

周日，中国派遣海警船在中日都声称拥有主权的岛屿附近巡逻，并警告在日中国留学生注意其所称的安全风险，从而进一步升级了两国的外交争端。

The escalation came after comments this month by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan about Taiwan, a self-governed democracy that China considers part of its territory. Ms. Takaichi told the Japanese Parliament that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.

事态升级的导火索是日本首相高市早苗本月就台湾问题发表的言论。台湾是一个实行自治的民主政体，中国视其为领土的一部分。高市对日本国会表示，如果中国对台湾发动攻击，东京可能会做出军事回应。

On Friday, the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo warned its citizens against traveling to Japan because of what it described as serious safety risks. China did not provide evidence, but the warning could affect an important part of Japan’s tourism economy. Nearly seven million Chinese travelers visited the country last year, accounting for nearly one in five international tourists, according to Japan’s tourism bureau.

周五，中国驻东京大使馆以所谓严重的安全风险为由，警告国民避免前往日本。中方并未提供证据，但这可能会对日本旅游业造成重大影响。据日本观光局统计，去年近700万中国游客到访日本，占国际游客总数的近五分之一。

On Sunday, China’s Coast Guard said that some of its ships were patrolling the waters of uninhabited islands — known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan — that Japan controls but China also claims. The islands are north of Japan's westernmost islands and near Taiwan.

中国海警周日表示，派出多艘舰艇在钓鱼岛周边海域开展巡航。这些无人居住的岛屿（中方称为钓鱼岛，而日方称尖阁诸岛）目前由日本实际控制，但中国也提出主权主张。该岛群位于日本最西端诸岛以北，靠近台湾海域。

China regularly conducts what it describes as “rights enforcement patrols” in waters around the islands, but the latest patrol announcement was the first since Ms. Takaichi’s Taiwan comments.

中国经常在这些岛屿周围水域进行所谓“维权巡航”，但这是高市发表涉台言论后中国第一次发布巡航公告。

China’s Education Ministry also warned Chinese students on Sunday to “carefully plan” their study arrangements in Japan. The ministry said, without providing evidence, that there had been recent crimes against Chinese citizens and that safety risks were rising.

中国教育部周日亦提醒中国留学生“谨慎规划”赴日留学事宜。教育部在未提供证据的情况下称近期发生了多起针对中国公民的犯罪事件，安全风险正在上升。

上个月，日本首相高市早苗和中国领导人习近平在韩国庆州举行会晤。

This month’s feud ended what had been a brief diplomatic honeymoon between the two countries. Ms. Takaichi, a conservative prime minister who has been in office for less than a month, had a warm meeting with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, last month in South Korea.

本月的争端结束了两国短暂的外交蜜月期。高市早苗这位保守派首相上任不足一个月，上个月还在韩国与中国最高领导人习近平进行了友好会晤。

Relations between China and Japan have for decades been prone to flare-ups, fueled largely by atrocities the Japanese army committed in China, including the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, for which Beijing believes Tokyo has never sufficiently apologized.

数十年来，中日关系一直容易因历史问题出现紧张，主要源自日本军队在中国犯下的暴行，包括1937年的南京大屠杀，北京认为东京从未就此做出充分的道歉。

Ms. Takaichi’s Nov. 7 comments in Parliament were not a significant revision of Japan’s longstanding position of support for Taiwan. But they broke with previous Japanese policy of avoiding any explicit mention of the island in the context of “survival-threatening situations” — a classification that, under Japanese law, allows the deployment of the country’s military.

高市11月7日在国会的发言并未对日本长期以来支持台湾的立场做出重大修正，但打破了日本以往在涉及“存亡危机事态”问题上刻意回避明确提及台湾的做法。根据日本法律，此类事态认定允许日本自卫队进行军事部署。

Like the United States, its close military ally, Japan has long adopted a policy of strategic ambiguity that leaves its intentions vague regarding any future Chinese military attack on Taiwan.

与其亲密的军事盟友美国一样，日本长期采取“战略模糊”政策，对未来中国若对台湾发动军事攻击时的具体应对保持刻意含糊。

Although Ms. Takaichi later said that her comments did not constitute a change in Japanese policy, China’s Foreign Ministry demanded that she retract her remarks, and Chinese diplomats and commentators unleashed a stream of vitriol. Xue Jian, China’s consul general in Osaka, threatened on social media to cut off Ms. Takaichi’s “filthy head.” (He later deleted the post.)

尽管高市早苗后来表示其发言并不意味着日本的对台政策发生改变，但中国外交部要求其撤回言论，中国外交官及相关评论人士也随即对此进行猛烈抨击。中国驻大阪总领事薛剑甚至在社交媒体上威胁要砍下高市“肮脏的头颅”。（他后来删除了这则帖子。）

In its travel advisory on Friday, the Chinese embassy in Tokyo said that Japan’s leaders had made “blatantly provocative remarks regarding Taiwan, severely damaging the atmosphere of people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan and posing serious risks to the safety and security of Chinese citizens in Japan.”

在周五发布的旅行警告中，中国驻东京大使馆表示，日本领导人“公然发表涉台露骨挑衅言论，严重恶化中日人员交流氛围，给在日中国公民人身和生命安全带来重大风险”。

In response, Minoru Kihara, a top Japanese cabinet official, said on Saturday that Japan had urged China to take “appropriate measures,” Japanese news media outlets reported. He did not elaborate.

据日本媒体报道，日本内阁官房长官木原稔周六表示，日方已敦促中方采取“适当措施”，但他并未详细说明。

This is not the first time China has leveraged its outbound tourists and students during diplomatic and trade disputes. In April, as the trade war between the Washington and Beijing escalated, China’s culture and tourism ministry warned travelers to “fully assess the risks” of visiting the United States in light of deteriorating economic and trade relations. Separately, it warned students traveling to the United States to be careful.

中国此前也曾在外交或贸易争端中利用出境游客和留学生施加压力。今年4月，在华盛顿与北京的贸易战升级之际，中国文化和旅游部曾以中美经贸关系恶化为由，警告游客应“充分评估”赴美旅行的风险。该部门还提醒赴美留学生注意安全。

In 2020, China issued a starker advisory warning citizens against visiting Australia because of what it described as an increase of racism because of the coronavirus pandemic. The warnings were issued at a time when Australia was leading calls for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, straining relations between the two countries.

2020年，中国发布了措辞更为严厉的旅行警告，建议公民不要前往澳大利亚，理由是新冠疫情导致澳大利亚种族主义抬头。当时，澳大利亚正带头呼吁对新冠病毒的起源展开调查，导致两国关系持续紧张。

In 2017, as relations between South Korea and China deteriorated over South Korea’s decision to deploy an advanced U.S. antimissile system on its soil, China banned the sale of group tours to the country. A report by a South Korean research institute estimated that the country lost about $6.5 billion in revenue from about 3.3 million Chinese tourists over a five month period that year.

2017年，因韩国部署美国“萨德”反导系统导致中韩关系恶化，中国禁止旅行社销售赴韩团体游产品。一家韩国研究机构曾估算，韩国当年在五个月内因减少约330万中国游客损失约65亿美元旅游收入。

The battle between the Old World and the New routinely plays out on social media. On TikTok, Americans have questioned why people in France and Italy don’t drink as much water as people in the United States. Others wonder who would win a fight — 100 Brits or 100 Americans. Many Europeans satirize what they assume life in the United States is like. (“I wake up at 8 a.m. and immediately start shopping on Amazon.”)

旧大陆与新大陆的较量在社交媒体上屡见不鲜。TikTok上，美国人会疑惑为何法国人和意大利人的喝水量不如美国人，还有人好奇100个英国人和100个美国人打架谁会赢。许多欧洲人会讽刺他们眼中的美国生活（“我早上8点一睁眼立马打开亚马逊购物）。

Recently, TikTok users on both sides of the pond have started to debate the American dream, and where the concept of it stands in 2025. Here’s what to know.

最近，大西洋两岸的TikTok用户开始争论美国梦，以及这个概念在2025年的现状。以下是相关看点。

OK, give me some background.

先来说说背景

There’s a long tradition on TikTok, and on roughly every other medium, of Europeans and Americans sharing insights and criticisms of each other’s cultures, and often playfully teasing each other.

在TikTok以及几乎所有其他媒体上，欧美网友分享对彼此文化的见解与批评、时常互相打趣调侃，是一项久远的传统。

A tourist from the United States might post a video about his impressions of Parisian hospitality (or lack thereof), while a Spanish exchange student in the United States might share what surprised her about American high schools. The videos provide a glimpse into how different cultures perceive each other, stereotypes and all, and demonstrate how the reality of lived experience is often different than what’s portrayed in pop culture or in the news.

一位美国游客可能会发布视频分享对巴黎人待客之道（或缺乏待客之道）的印象，而在美国做交换生的西班牙学生或许会分享美国高中让她意外的地方。这些视频展现了不同文化间的相互认知（包括各种刻板印象），也展现出真实生活往往与流行文化或新闻报道中的样子大相径庭。

How did the American dream enter this debate?

美国梦如何卷入争论？

The litigation of the American dream ramped up last week as a result of a TikTok video posted by Janis Groß, a German content creator. His video, in which he lampooned the concept of the American dream, took off on Reddit. In the video, Mr. Groß described the reality of the American dream as “working 60 hour weeks so your boss can buy a yacht, being more afraid of a medical bill than climate change, fast food on every corner and fresh food behind a paywall, and half the country fighting over who’s dumber: Trump or the people who worship him.”

上周，德国内容创作者亚尼斯·格罗斯发布了一段TikTok视频，引发了关于美国梦的激烈争论。他在视频中嘲讽美国梦的内容在Reddit平台迅速走红。格罗斯在视频里描述，美国梦的现实是“每周工作60小时，只为老板能买游艇；比起气候变化，更怕收到医疗账单；街角全是快餐，新鲜食材却要高价买；全国一半人在争论谁更蠢：特朗普，还是那些崇拜他的人”。

The video led to heated discussions on Reddit and TikTok, where Europeans and Americans debated the validity of Mr. Groß’s claims and argued over whose lifestyle is better.

这段视频在Reddit和TikTok引发激烈讨论，欧美网友围绕格罗斯观点的正确性展开争辩，还争论起谁的生活方式更优越。

And what do American TikTok users have to say?

美国TikTok用户怎么看？

While plenty of Americans objected to Mr. Groß’s take, some clearly agreed with him. Many of the Americans turned to audio pulled from a TikTok video that was posted by a travel influencer in 2023 — long before the current debate.

虽然不少美国人反对格罗斯的看法，但也有很多人明确表示认同。许多美国网友引用了旅行博主布林·伊利斯2023年发布的TikTok视频中提取的一段音频——远早于此次争论爆发前。

“I think the new American dream is to leave,” Bryn Elise, the influencer, said at the start of that video, which received more than 75,000 likes on its own, and served as the soundtrack for numerous other videos.

“我觉得新的美国梦是逃离，”伊利斯在视频开头说道。这段视频本身获得了超过7.5万个赞，还被用作无数其他视频的背景音。

In the video, she added that the new dream was “to pack up and head to a quiet European town or a beachside village in Asia, somewhere where we aren’t being poisoned by our food, we don’t need two to three jobs to survive and where health care isn’t a luxury but the norm.”

她在视频中补充，新的美国梦是“收拾行囊，去往欧洲的宁静小镇或亚洲的海滨村落——在那里，我们不会被食物毒害，不用打两三份工才能糊口，医疗保健也不是奢侈品，而是常态”。

In an interview, Ms. Elise said she was inspired to make her video by the frustration she was seeing everywhere she looked.

伊利斯在接受采访时表示，她制作这段视频的灵感源于身边无处不在的挫败感。

“In the U.S., the old idea of the ‘American dream’ feels unattainable now,” she said. “People are overworked, struggling to make ends meet, and feeling like we can’t even get basic things like health care or quality food.”

“在美国，‘美国梦’的旧有概念如今已遥不可及。”她说。“人们过度劳累，勉强维持生计，连医疗保健、优质食物这些基本需求都难以满足。”

As a traveler, she said she routinely meets people who have moved abroad and regained balance in their lives. She added that the video was intended to be a reminder that Americans had the freedom to pack and live wherever they wish.

作为旅行者，她称自己经常遇到移居海外后重获生活平衡的人。她还说，这段视频想提醒大家，美国人拥有打包行囊，去任何想去的地方生活的自由。

She said her video most likely resonated because so many people felt stuck and the concept of changing things gave them hope.

她表示，视频之所以能引发共鸣，很可能是因为太多人感到陷入困境，而做出改变的想法给了他们希望。

“It inspired people but also struck a nerve because it’s sad that we all feel this way,” she said.

“这段视频既鼓舞了人们，也触动了大家的神经——因为我们都有这种感受，实在令人难过，”她说。

In another video that has racked up nearly 300,000 likes, the filmmaker Baron Ryan offers his own take on the new American dream, saying it is “to go to Hemingway’s Paris, say ‘goodbye to all that,’ live somewhere walkable where a busted arm won’t kill your credit score.”

另一段获得近30万个赞的视频中，电影人巴伦·瑞安分享了自己对新美国梦的理解：“去往海明威笔下的巴黎，说‘告别这一切’；住在一个适合步行的地方，摔断胳膊也不会让你的信用评分崩盘。”

So what does all this mean?

这一切意味着什么？

The theme of many of the videos, posted by Americans and others, indicates a frustration with what the United States once promised, and the belief many now have that that promise no longer exists. They also reflect a trend in which many Americans are moving abroad.

无论是美国人还是其他人发布的这些视频核心主题都体现出对美国曾经的承诺的失望，以及许多人如今认为这份承诺已不复存在。这些内容也反映出一个趋势：越来越多美国人选择移居海外。

Of course, a move abroad in the age of social media comes with its own set of culture shocks to examine — perfect fodder for another set of videos on the differences between the United States and Europe. And the content mine churns on.

当然，在社交媒体时代移居海外总会遇到新的文化冲击——而这恰好成为下一批讨论欧美差异的视频素材。内容创作的矿藏还在不断产出。

As the Trump administration tries to finalize a deal to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon intelligence report has raised concerns that China could acquire the warplane’s technology if the sales go through, according to people familiar with the assessment.

据知情人士透露，就在特朗普政府试图敲定向沙特阿拉伯出售F-35先进战斗机的协议之际，五角大楼一份情报评估报告提出了担忧：如果交易达成，中国有可能获得该战机技术。

Pentagon officials who have studied the deal have expressed fears that F-35 technology could be compromised through Chinese espionage or China’s security partnership with Saudi Arabia, said the people, who have been briefed on the issues. Those risks were outlined in a broad report compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency, a part of the Defense Department.

了解相关简报的知情人士称，研究该交易的五角大楼官员担心，F-35技术可能通过中国的间谍活动或中沙安全合作途径遭到泄露。这些风险已列入国防部下属国防情报局编制的一份综合报告中。


The Trump administration and Saudi Arabia have been trying to work out the final elements of an agreement in which U.S. weapons manufacturers would sell 48 F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia for billions of dollars. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was expected to approve the agreement, before it continued through an interagency review process, the people said.

特朗普政府与沙特方面一直在就协议的最终细节进行谈判。根据该协议，美国武器制造商将向沙特出售48架F-35战机，价值数十亿美元。这些消息人士称，国防部长彼得·赫格塞预计将批准这项协议，然后进入跨部门审查流程。

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, is expected to meet with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday. The top items on the agenda are the potential F-35 deal and a mutual defense agreement, U.S. officials said. Saudi Arabia is the biggest buyer of American weapons.

沙特实际领导人、王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼预计将于周二在白宫与特朗普总统会晤。美国官员表示，会谈的重点议题包括这笔F-35交易以及一项双边防务协议。沙特是美国武器的最大买家。

Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi defense minister, wrote on social media on Tuesday that he had recently met with Mr. Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy. “We reviewed the Saudi-US relations and explored ways to bolster our strategic cooperation,” he said.

沙特国防大臣哈立德·本·萨勒曼王子周二在社交媒体上表示，他最近会见了赫格塞特、国务卿鲁比奥及特朗普的中东特使史蒂夫·维特科夫。他说："我们回顾了沙美关系，并探讨了加强战略合作的途径。"

The Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment when asked about its report on the F-35 deal. The embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington did not reply to a request for comment.

国防情报局被问及F-35交易报告时拒绝置评。沙特驻华盛顿大使馆未回应置评请求。


“We will not get ahead of the president on conversations that are occurring ahead of time,” the White House said in a statement.

白宫在一份声明中表示：“对于尚未正式开始的会谈，我们不会提前代表总统发表看法。”

Prince Mohammed and his aides have also been prodding the United States to move forward on talks to approve helping Saudi Arabia develop a civilian nuclear program, an effort that has prompted U.S. officials to discuss whether the kingdom could use that nuclear technology to try to develop a nuclear weapon.

穆罕默德王储及其助手也在敦促美国推进关于批准协助沙特发展民用核项目的谈判，此举已引发美国官员对沙特可能利用这些核技术尝试研发核武器的讨论。


The Trump administration, like the Biden administration, has been trying to get Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. But that is unlikely to happen soon, given the high fatalities from the Israel-Hamas war and the Israeli government’s far-right policies toward Palestinians.

与拜登政府一样，特朗普政府也一直试图推动沙特与以色列实现关系正常化。但鉴于以哈战争造成的大量伤亡以及以色列政府在巴勒斯坦问题上推行极右翼政策，这一目标短期内难以实现。

In addition to the concerns over China acquiring F-35 technology, the proposed sales also raise questions about whether the U.S. government would be compromising Israel’s regional military advantage. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has F-35 jets, and it used them for airstrikes in Iran in October 2024 and June 2025.

除了对中国获取F-35技术的担忧外，拟议的军售案还引发了对美国政府是否将损害以色列在中东地区军事优势的质疑。以色列是该地区目前唯一拥有F-35战机的国家，曾于2024年10月和2025年6月使用该战机对伊朗实施空中打击。

Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, U.S. policymakers have sought to ensure that Israel maintains its “qualitative military edge” in the region. In previous administrations, there was a highly classified, monthslong interagency process to review whether proposed weapons sales in the region would be consistent with that.

自1973年阿以战争以来，美国的政策制定者始终致力于确保以色列在该地区维持“质量军事优势”。往届政府曾启动历时数月的跨部门高度机密审查程序，以评估拟议的地区武器销售是否符合这一原则。

Congress says the United States must ensure that Israel can defeat “any credible conventional military threat” while sustaining “minimal damage and casualties.”

国会明确要求，美国必须确保以色列能够击败"任何可信的常规军事威胁"，同时将“损伤和伤亡降至最低”。


In 2020, the first Trump administration agreed to sell F-35 jets to the United Arab Emirates as part of a deal to get that nation to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel in the Abraham Accords. Some U.S. officials objected to the sales because of the U.A.E.’s close partnership with China and because of concerns that Israel’s military advantage would be weakened.

2020年，第一届特朗普政府曾经同意向阿联酋出售F-35战机，作为推动该国通过《亚伯拉罕协议》与以色列实现关系正常化的一部分。但由于阿联酋与中国关系密切，而且担忧以色列的军事优势遭到削弱，部分美国官员当时反对这笔军售。

The Biden administration suspended the deal in early 2021 to review it, mainly out of fear that China could acquire the F-35 technology if the jets were in the U.A.E. The United States then gave the U.A.E. a list of demands, which included installing kill switches in the jets so that the U.S. government could render them inoperable if necessary. Emirati officials considered the demands too onerous, and the deal fizzled.

拜登政府于2021年初暂停了这项交易并进行审查，主要是担心一旦F-35部署在阿联酋，中国可能获取其技术。美国随后向阿联酋提出了一系列要求，其中包括在战机上安装紧急开关，以便在必要时由美国政府远程禁用。阿联酋官员认为这些条件过于苛刻，最终导致交易流产。

The same concerns have arisen with Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials are discussing whether to place safeguards on the F-35 technology, though it is unclear what would be enshrined in a sales agreement and what suggestions the Pentagon’s intelligence report lays out, if any.

类似的担忧如今也出现在与沙特的军售谈判中。美国官员正在讨论是否应对F-35技术设置保护措施，但尚不清楚哪些措施会否写入军售协议，或国防情报局的报告中是否已提出具体建议。

China and Saudi Arabia have some military ties. The Chinese military is helping Saudi Arabia build ballistic missiles and acquire more capable ones, as well as operate them. Democratic lawmakers described those concerns in a letter to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in June 2022, before his first trip to the kingdom.

中国与沙特存在一定军事合作。中国军方正协助沙特建造弹道导弹、获取更先进型号，并开展操作训练。民主党议员在2022年6月致拜登总统的信函中曾详述这些担忧，当时拜登正筹备其任内首次沙特之行。

The Saudis had bought short-range ballistic missiles from China for years, and they recently began purchasing more capable Chinese missiles that can travel farther. They also started to acquire the technology to create their own components, set up production facilities and conduct test launches, with the apparent goal of being able to produce their own missiles, U.S. officials said.

多年来，沙特一直从中国购买短程弹道导弹，而最近则开始采购射程更远、性能更强的导弹。美国官员表示，于此同时，沙特也开始获取制造导弹部件的技术，建立生产设施并进行试射，目标似乎是为了形成自主生产导弹的能力。

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., said in an interview that he had seen satellite images of a missile test site in Saudi Arabia that was a smaller version of a Chinese one.

位于加州蒙特雷的米德尔伯里国际研究学院军控专家杰弗里·刘易斯在接受采访时表示，他看过沙特一个导弹试验场的卫星图像，与中国的一个试验场极为相似，只是规模较小。

For Saudi Arabia, acquiring the F-35 — America’s premier fighter jet — would give its air force major advantages in stealth and would help its pilots assess a complex battle space in ways that its existing fighter fleet cannot, said Gareth Jennings, the aviation editor of Janes, the defense intelligence firm.

防务情报公司简氏的航空编辑加雷斯·詹宁斯指出，对沙特而言，获取美国顶级战斗机F-35将使其空军在隐身性能方面获得重大优势，并能以现有战机无法比拟的方式帮助飞行员掌握复杂的战场态势。

“In a nutshell, the F-35 represents the pinnacle of Western combat aviation in terms of both capabilities and prestige ‘bragging rights,’” he said.

他说：“简而言之，F-35代表了西方战机的最高水平——无论在能力上还是在声望和‘炫耀资本’上。”

The prowess of F-35s was on full display in Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June. While the Israeli military has not described in detail the aircraft’s role in that conflict, the F-35’s ability to destroy some of Iran’s air defenses enabled older Israeli jets “to operate over Iran with virtual impunity, and was likely a massive contributory factor to Israel’s success in that operation,” Mr. Jennings said.

F-35的强大性能在以色列今年6月与伊朗的那场为期12天的战争中得到了充分展现。虽然以色列军方尚未详细说明F-35在冲突中的具体作用，但詹宁斯指出，该战机摧毁了伊朗的部分防空系统，使得以色列的旧款战机“几乎可以毫无阻碍地在伊朗上空行动，这很可能是以色列在那次行动中取得成功的关键因素之一”。

Mr. Trump has boasted of his deal-making with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, especially when it comes to weapons. When the American president traveled to the kingdom in May, the White House announced it had secured $600 billion in deals with the Saudi government and companies there. The biggest package was $142 billion in arms sales. But some of the commercial projects promoted by the administration were already in the works before Mr. Trump took office.

特朗普一直以自己与石油大国沙特达成的交易引以为傲，尤其在军售领域。今年5月总统访问沙特期间，白宫宣布与沙特政府及当地企业达成了6000亿美元合作协议，其中最大的一笔是1420亿美元的军售合同。不过，白宫推动的一些商业项目实际上在特朗普上任之前就已经在筹备中。

Every Monday morning, the stirring strains of China’s national anthem stream into my Beijing apartment from the elementary school across the street. Young students in uniform stand in neat rows on a freshly turfed playground as the Chinese flag inches up a pole. Nearby streets are lined with flower pots, ginkgo trees and propaganda signs exhorting citizens to love their nation.

每周一早晨，中国国歌激昂的旋律都会从街对面的小学飘进我在北京的公寓。身着校服的小学生们在新铺了草皮的操场上排成整齐的方阵，注视着国旗缓缓升起。附近的街道两旁摆放着花盆，种着银杏树，还有号召公民热爱祖国的宣传标牌。

For much of my life that directive had felt superfluous. China’s economy boomed and we were proud of our country.

在我人生的大部分时间里，这样的号召都显得多余。中国经济腾飞，我们为祖国感到骄傲。

That pride is harder for many of us to summon today. Behind the orderliness of everyday life, a quiet desperation simmers. On social media and in private conversations, there is a common refrain: worry over joblessness, wage cuts and making ends meet.

如今，对许多人来说，这种骄傲已难以唤起。在日常生活井然有序的表象下，一股悄无声息的绝望在暗流涌动。社交媒体和私下交谈中反复出现一个主题是：对失业、降薪和生计艰难的担忧。

Chinese people today live with a strange paradox.

当今中国人正生活在一种奇怪的悖论之中。

Internationally, China looks strong. It is America’s only rival in terms of the power to shape the world. The recent meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China, in which the leaders announced a trade-war truce, has fed this narrative — one that Beijing is only too happy to promote — a resilient nation united in the face of external challenges.

在国际上，中国看似强大。它是美国在塑造世界的能力方面唯一的对手。最近特朗普总统与中国国家主席习近平的会晤——两国领导人宣布贸易战休战——进一步强化了这一叙事，而北京也乐于推动它：一个在外部挑战面前坚韧不拔、团结一致的国家。

That muscular facade is punctured here in China, where despair about dimming economic and personal prospects is pervasive. This contrast between a confident state and its weary population is captured in a phrase Chinese people are using to describe their country: “wai qiang, zhong gan,” roughly translated as “outwardly strong, inwardly brittle.”

这种强硬的外表在中国国内却被戳破，人们对经济和个人前景黯淡的绝望感无处不在。对于这种国家自信与民众疲惫之间的反差，中国人用“外强中干”这个词来概括。

Many now feel the very state policies that have made China appear strong overseas are hurting them. They see a government more concerned with building global influence and dominating export markets than in addressing the challenges of their households. A state crackdown launched several years ago on the private sector is widely blamed for undermining middle-class livelihoods, even as financial resources are channeled into industries that the government deems more strategically important, such as electric vehicles, solar power and shipbuilding. Meanwhile, the global chokehold China has secured on the supply and processing of rare earth elements has caused air and soil pollution at home.

许多人现在感到，正是那些让中国在海外显得强大的国家政策正在伤害他们自己。他们看到政府更关心建立全球影响力、主导出口市场，而非解决民生挑战。几年前针对私营部门的打压行动被普遍认为是中产生计受损的根源，同时财政资源被引导至那些政府认为更具战略意义的行业，如电动汽车、太阳能和造船业。与此同时，中国在稀土供应链和加工领域的全球垄断在国内造成了空气和土壤污染。

These days, there is a sense of bitter anger among the people at being the voiceless victims of the state’s obsession with world power and beating the United States. That sentiment is likely to grow. The latest five-year plan — the government’s blueprint of economic priorities — that was released last month makes clear it plans to double down on prioritizing national power over the common good.

如今，人们感到一种苦涩的愤怒，他们成了一个痴迷于世界大国地位和击败美国的国家的牺牲品，无从发声。这种情绪很可能还会加剧。上个月发布的最新五年计划——政府的经济优先级蓝图——明确表示，将愈发侧重国家实力而非民生福祉。

In April, as the tariff war with the United States intensified, a People’s Daily editorial argued that Beijing can resist American bullying thanks to systemic advantages such as China’s ability to centralize resources and pour them into accomplishing national goals. The backlash on the Chinese internet was swift. While the government boasts, a viral social media post pointed out, everyday struggles like finding work, putting food on the table and educating children are “fraught with difficulty.” Winning the trade war with the United States means “preparing to sacrifice some of the people,” the author wrote. Censors soon blocked the post and others like it.

今年4月，随着中美关税战升级，《人民日报》的一篇社论宣称，北京能够抵御美国霸凌，凭借的是制度优势，如集中资源实现国家目标的能力。中国互联网上的反弹迅猛。一篇热转的社交媒体帖子指出，政府在自夸时，普通人的日常挣扎——找工作、填饱肚子、教育子女——却“困难重重”。作者写道，与美国打赢贸易战意味着“准备牺牲一部分人民”。审查机构很快屏蔽了这篇帖子及类似内容。

Years ago, Chinese people would have cheered a People’s Daily editorial like that out of the reflexive nationalism that the government has instilled for decades. That patriotism is nearly drowned out today by those who vent over the problems they face.

多年前，中国人会出于政府几十年来灌输的条件反射式民族主义，为上文提到的那种《人民日报》社论欢呼。如今，这种爱国情怀几乎被反映民生困境的声音所淹没。

Youth unemployment is so high that last year the government changed its calculation methodology in a way that produced a lower number. Even the new figure remains alarmingly high. An estimated 200 million people get by in precarious careers in a gig economy. Consumers, many of whom have seen their net worth shrink in an intractable housing market crash, are cutting back on spending, trapping the economy in a deflationary spiral.

青年失业率高到去年政府修改了统计方法，以得出更低的数字。即使新数字也高得惊人。据估计，约2亿人在零工经济中勉强维持生计。消费者中许多人因房地产市场崩盘导致净资产缩水，而不得不削减开支，使经济陷入通缩漩涡。

The sense of economic insecurity is leading people to forego marriage and starting families, worsening a national decline in population. Popular frustration also is sharpening the divide between the haves and the have-nots — hardening public resentment against those who are perceived as parlaying economic or political connections into opportunity while most people face dwindling prospects. And mental health problems are believed to be rising, as evidenced by a spate of indiscriminate stabbing sprees and other violent attacks in the past couple of years.

经济不安全感正导致人们放弃结婚和生育，加剧全国人口下降的趋势。民众不满也在拉大贫富差距——当多数人面临日益黯淡的前景时，公众对那些被认为利用经济或政治关系获取机会的既得利益者愈发怨恨。心理健康问题据信也在上升，过去几年一连串无差别持刀袭击和其他暴力事件便是佐证。

It seems clear that Beijing can no longer count on knee-jerk patriotism to underwrite its increasingly assertive stance abroad. In September, when the Chinese Communist Party staged a lavish military parade to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, many people wondered aloud why that money wasn’t instead spent on addressing the difficulties of ordinary people.

北京显然无法再指望条件反射式的爱国主义为其日益强势的外交立场背书。9月，中国共产党为纪念二战结束80周年举行盛大阅兵时，许多人公开质疑为什么不把这些钱用来改善民生。

The government recently began cracking down on social media content it considered “excessively pessimistic” — a clear sign it is concerned about this public unease undercutting its agenda. But suppressing criticism instead of addressing its causes will only deepen the disconnect with the people and strain the balancing act that the state has tried to strike between its foreign policy priorities and the domestic support it craves.

政府最近开始打击社交媒体上所谓“过度悲观”的内容——这清楚表明，它担心公众的不安会削弱自己的议程。但压制批评而非解决问题根源只会加深与人民的隔阂，使国家在对外政策重点与所需国内支持之间谋求平衡的努力面临更大压力。

China has long thrived under an unspoken social contract: The Communist Party granted the people more freedom to improve their livelihoods in return for political obedience. To many Chinese, the government is no longer holding up its end of the bargain.

长久以来，中国在一种心照不宣的社会契约下取得繁荣：共产党给予人民更多改善生计的自由，以换取政治服从。对许多中国人来说，政府不再履行其契约义务。

When Mr. Xi took power in 2012, he gave China’s people hope with his oft-repeated mantra “the Chinese Dream”: a pledge of shared prosperity through national strength. That phrase has been less prominent in government messaging in recent years.

2012年习近平上台时，他以反复提及的“中国梦”——通过国家强大实现共同繁荣的承诺——给了人民希望。近年来，在政府宣传中已不再那么突出这一口号。

The state might say that’s because much of its vision has become reality. More likely, the Communist Party understands that such rhetoric now rings hollow among a population that is watching its dreams fade.

国家或许会说，那是因为其愿景已大半实现。更可能的是，共产党明白，在目睹梦想日渐黯淡的民众听来，这样的说辞已言不由衷。

Infuriated by comments about Taiwan by Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, China has unleashed a stream of vitriol, including a threat by a Chinese diplomat to cut off the leader’s “filthy head.”

被日本新任首相高市早苗的涉台言论激怒的中国发出了一连串的尖刻批评，其中包括一名中国外交官威胁要砍掉这位领导人“肮脏的头颅”。

The abuse abruptly ended a honeymoon between Ms. Takaichi, in office for less than a month, and China. She had met China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, just last month in South Korea, with the two leaders warmly shaking hands and smiling.

这番辱骂突如其来地结束了上任不到一个月的高市与中国之间的蜜月期。上月她刚在韩国与中国最高领导人习近平会晤，双方曾热情握手并微笑。

It also ended China’s turn away from so-called wolf warrior diplomacy, an aggressive, in-your-face approach to foreign relations that took shape after Mr. Xi rose to power in Beijing in 2012 but had largely faded in recent years.

这也终结了中国对所谓“战狼外交”的回避——这种咄咄逼人的好斗外交方式始于2012年习近平执掌北京政权后，近年来已基本淡出。

Relations between China and Japan have for decades been prone to intemperate feuds fueled largely by bitter Chinese memories of World War II, when the Japanese army committed multiple atrocities, including the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, crimes for which Beijing believes Tokyo has never sufficiently apologized.

几十年来，中国和日本的关系一直处于激烈的争执之中，这在很大程度上是由中国人对第二次世界大战的痛苦记忆所推动的。二战期间，日军犯下了包括1937年南京大屠杀在内的多起暴行，北京认为，东京从未为这些罪行充分道歉。

The latest eruption between the two Asian powers began on Friday with Ms. Takaichi’s response to a question in Parliament about potential “survival-threatening situations,” a classification that, under Japanese law, allows the deployment of the country’s military forces.

这两个亚洲大国之间冲突的最新爆发始于上周五，当时高市在国会回答了一个事关潜在“存亡危机事态”的问题。根据日本法律，这种情况允许该国部署军事力量。

Ms. Takaichi said that an attempt by China to blockade or seize Taiwan, which lies less than 70 miles from Japanese territory and sits astride shipping lanes vital for Japan’s economic survival, could constitute such a situation. China considers Taiwan, a self-governed democracy, part of its territory.

高市早苗说，若中国试图封锁或占领台湾可能会造成这样的局面。台湾距离日本领土不到110公里，横跨对日本经济生存至关重要的航道。中国认为自治民主的台湾是其领土的一部分。

“If it involves the use of warships and the use of force, I believe that this could constitute an existential threat, no matter how you look at it,” she told Parliament.

她告诉国会：“如果涉及出动军舰和使用武力，我认为这可能构成存亡危机事态，无论如何看待它。”

On Monday, she recalibrated slightly, saying that her comments did not constitute a change in government policy.

周一，她稍作修正，说她的言论并不构成政府政策的改变。

China’s foreign ministry, unsatisfied, demanded that she retract her remarks, complaining on Thursday that she had “remained unrepentant.” A spokesman cited “innumerable crimes” by Japan during its colonial rule of Taiwan before 1945 and what it said was its repeated use of “the so-called ‘crisis of survival’ as a pretext to launch foreign aggression.”

中国外交部对此并不满意，要求她收回自己的言论，并在周四指责说她“执迷不悟”。一名发言人列举了日本在1945年前殖民统治台湾期间犯下的“罄竹难书的罪行”，并称日本一再利用“所谓‘存亡危机’为借口发动对外侵略”。

Hu Xijin, a prominent Chinese nationalist, denounced Ms. Takaichi on social media as “an evil witch” who had “successfully ignited a new explosion of mutual hatred between Chinese and Japanese public opinion.”

中国著名民族主义者胡锡进在社交媒体上谴责高市早苗是“恶毒的巫婆”，她“成功地点燃了中日两国舆论之间新一轮的仇恨风暴”。

China’s state broadcaster, China Central Television, ran a commentary this week warning that Japanese leaders who interfere in Taiwan are “doomed to dig their own graves.”

中国中央电视台本周发表评论警告说，干涉台湾事务的日本领导人“注定自掘坟墓”。

“Those who ignite the fire will be burned by it,” the commentary added, likening Ms. Takaichi’s reference to “survival-threatening situations” to Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria in northeastern China.

“引火者必自焚，”评论还说，将高市早苗提到的“存亡危机事态”与1931年日本入侵中国东北的满洲相提并论。

Though not a significant revision of Japan’s longstanding position of support for Taiwan, Ms. Takaichi’s initial comment broke with previous policy of avoiding any explicit mention of Taiwan in the context of “survival-threatening situations.” Like the United States, a close military ally, Japan had previously stuck to a policy of strategic ambiguity that left its intentions vague with relation to any future Chinese military attack on Taiwan.

高市最初的评论并未实质性改变日本长期支持台湾的立场，但打破了之前避免在“存亡危机事态”的背景下明确提及台湾的政策惯例。此前日本与其紧密盟友美国一样，始终奉行战略模糊政策，对未来中国可能对台湾发动军事攻击的情况含糊其辞。

Even Shinzo Abe, the former Japanese prime minister who was Ms. Takaichi’s political mentor and shared hawkish views on China, had avoided detailing how Japan might respond to a crisis over Taiwan. In recent years, Japanese leaders have repeated a vague expression of solidarity: “A Taiwan crisis is Japan’s crisis.”

就连日本前首相安倍晋三也没有详细说明日本将如何应对台湾危机。安倍晋三曾是高市的政治导师，对中国持鹰派观点。近年来，日本领导人反复使用模糊的团结表述：“台湾有事就是日本有事。”

China is particularly sensitive to Japanese statements on Taiwan. Japan ruled the island from 1895 until 1945 as its colonial power and left behind an educated elite that often felt closer to Japan than China. Taiwan’s first democratically elected president, Lee Teng-hui, who spoke fluent Japanese and presided over the island’s transition to full democracy in the 1990s, was routinely denounced by Beijing as a Japanese agent.

中国对日本有关台湾的表态尤为敏感。从1895年到1945年，日本作为殖民大国统治着台湾岛，遗留下的知识精英阶层常自认与日本比与中国更亲近。台湾首位民选总统李登辉精通日语，并在1990年代主导岛内全面民主转型，屡被北京指责为日本代理人。

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political scientist in Hong Kong and the author of Facing China: The Prospect for War and Peace, described this week’s Sino-Japanese ruckus as a “clear return to wolf warrior diplomacy.” What Japan’s prime minister told Parliament, he added, “is the truth: If China attacks Taiwan, it will be impossible for Japan to stay out of the conflict. Just look at the map.”

现居香港的政治学家、《面对中国：战争与和平的前景》(Facing China: The Prospect for War and Peace)一书的作者高敬文(Jean-Pierre Cabestan)将本周的中日冲突描述为“战狼外交的明显回归”。他还说，日本首相对议会所说的“是事实：如果中国攻击台湾，日本不可能置身冲突之外。看看地图就知道了”。

In response to Ms. Takaichi’s remarks, Xue Jian, China’s consul general in Osaka, Japan, said in a post written in Japanese on the social media platform, X: “That filthy head that has come charging forward on its own accord will have to be cut off without a moment’s hesitation. Are you prepared for that?”

针对高市早苗的言论，中国驻日本大阪总领事薛剑在社交媒体平台X上用日文发帖称：“那颗自己冲上来的肮脏的头颅，必须毫不犹豫地砍掉。你准备好了吗？”

Senior political figures in both governing and opposition parties in Japan interpreted that as a death threat and demanded Mr. Xue’s expulsion.

日本执政党和反对党高层都将其解读为死亡威胁，要求将薛剑驱逐出境。

Referring to Mr. Xue’s message, the United States ambassador in Tokyo, George Glass, posted his own message. “The mask slips — again,” the ambassador wrote. “Time for Beijing to behave like the ‘good neighbor’ it talks repeatedly about — but fails repeatedly to become.”

针对薛剑的信息，美国驻东京大使乔治·格拉斯也表达了自己的态度。“面具再次掉下去了，”大使写道。“北京是时候践行它反复宣称却屡屡背弃的‘友好邻邦’承诺了。”

The Chinese diplomat in Osaka deleted his post.

这位驻大阪的中国外交官删除了薛剑的帖子。

Ms. Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, has been a vocal defender of Taiwan. She met with a representative of the island at the regional summit in South Korea, drawing criticism from Chinese officials.

作为日本首位女首相的高市一直毫不掩饰捍卫台湾的立场。她在韩国举行的地区峰会上会见了一名台湾代表，招致中国官员的批评。

A Chinese-born businessman that the United States and China say ran one of Southeast Asia’s largest scam compounds was extradited to China to face charges of money laundering and other crimes, three years after he was arrested in Thailand.

一名华裔商人在泰国被捕三年后被引渡至中国，他被美中两国指控运营东南亚的最大诈骗园区之一，将面临洗钱等多项罪名的指控。

The businessman, She Zhijiang, arrived in the Chinese city of Nanjing from Thailand on Wednesday. He would be one of the highest ranking figures linked to the scam industry to face charges in China, which launched a mass crackdown this year to rescue people trafficked to work as scammers in Southeast Asia.

该商人名为佘智江，于本周三从泰国抵达中国南京。他将是诈骗行业涉案人员中在中国受审的最高级别人物之一。中国今年发起大规模整治行动，解救那些被拐卖至东南亚从事诈骗活动的人员。

China and the United States are among several countries that have recently taken steps to combat an industry that is largely based in Southeast Asia and has stolen billions of dollars from victims around the world.

中国与美国等多个国家近期都在采取相关举措打击这一主要盘踞于东南亚的犯罪产业，该产业已从全球各地受害者手中骗取数十亿美元。

The U.S. Treasury Department says Americans have lost more than $16.6 billion to online scams, and the Justice Department on Wednesday announced a new federal task force to disrupt scam operators by seizing equipment and crypto assets.

美国财政部的数据显示，美国民众因网络诈骗的损失已超 166亿美元。司法部于本周三宣布成立一个新的联邦特别行动小组，计划通过收缴相关设备与加密货币资产来打击诈骗团伙。

The United States has imposed sanctions in recent months on several people linked to scam centers in Myanmar and Cambodia, including She Zhijiang. The U.S. authorities said in September that Mr. She was the largest shareholder of Yatai New City, a sprawling development in Shwe Kokko, a Myanmar town on the border with Thailand.

近几个月来，美国已对多名与缅甸和柬埔寨诈骗窝点有关联的人员实施制裁，佘智江便是其中之一。美国当局于9月表示，佘智江是“亚太新城”项目的最大股东，该大型项目位于缅甸与泰国边境城镇妙瓦底。

Mr. She helped to transform Shwe Kokko into a hub for internet fraud, casinos, drug trafficking and prostitution, the U.S. authorities said. Scam operators in Yatai New City tricked people from around to world into working for crime syndicates there as online scammers, they said.

美国当局称，佘智江助力妙瓦底发展为集网络诈骗、赌博、贩毒和卖淫于一体的犯罪枢纽。还称亚太新城内的诈骗团伙诱骗世界各地的人前往当地，为犯罪集团充当网络诈骗人员。

In China, the authorities issued an arrest warrant for Mr. She in 2021 on charges that included money laundering and running an online gambling ring, the Royal Thai police said in a statement. He was arrested in Bangkok in 2022 at the request of the Chinese Embassy, the Thai police said.

泰国皇家警察在一份声明中表示，中国当局早在2021年就对佘智江发出逮捕令，指控其涉嫌洗钱和经营网络赌博团伙。2022年，应中国大使馆的要求，佘智江在曼谷被警方抓获。

A lawyer for Mr. She in Thailand, Sanya Eadjongdee, said that his client denied the accusations. Mr. She’s lawyers were not allowed to see him in Thailand in the two days before his extradition, he added, and Mr. She could face torture, enforced disappearance or execution in China.

佘智江在泰国的代理律师桑亚·艾乔迪称，其当事人否认所有指控。他还补充道，引渡前的两天里，律师团队始终未能与佘智江会面，且担忧佘智江在中国可能遭遇酷刑、强制失踪甚至死刑。

Mr. She is a former Chinese national who received Cambodian citizenship in 2017, according to Mr. Sanya.

桑亚律师透露，佘智江原为中国公民，于2017年取得柬埔寨公民身份。

The final order to extradite Mr. She came on Monday from Thailand’s Court of Appeals. He had submitted a petition to the Constitutional Court arguing that the country’s Extradition Act was unconstitutional.

泰国上诉法院于本周一作出了引渡佘智江的最终裁定。此前，佘智江曾向泰国宪法法院提起申诉，主张泰国的《引渡法》违宪。

The court disagreed.

法院驳回了他的主张。

The longest government shutdown in American history appears to be coming to an end, but there are two sets of images from these last few weeks that could endure well beyond it.

美国历史上最长的政府停摆似乎即将结束，但过去几周出现的两组画面可能会久久挥之不去。

The first shows the lines snaking out of food pantries after the Trump administration chose not to use available funds to keep full food stamp benefits flowing to millions of poor Americans this month, and fought the federal rulings requiring it to make full benefits available.

第一组画面是食品救济站前蜿蜒的队伍——特朗普政府本月拒绝动用可用资金维持数千万贫困美国人的全额食品券福利，并抗拒联邦法院要求其提供全额福利的裁决。

The second, released on social media by President Trump himself, shows his gleaming new bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, renovated in gold fixtures and marble.

第二组画面由特朗普总统本人在社交媒体上发布，展示了他位于林肯卧室里重新装修的卫生间，金色五金件和大理石装饰熠熠生辉。

重新装修的林肯卫生间配备大理石墙面与金色五金件。窗外风景依旧如故。

Democrats forced the shutdown to put Republicans on defense over the rising cost of health care, then caved without securing a tangible policy victory. But the shutdown also highlighted the striking difference in the president’s treatment of the rich and the poor, practically laying out his opponents’ attacks on a gilded platter as they race to hammer the administration more broadly over America’s affordability problem. Tonight, I’ll explain how.

民主党迫使政府停摆，试图让共和党在医疗成本上涨问题上陷入守势，但最终在未取得实质性政策胜利的情况下妥协。不过，此次停摆也凸显了总统对富人和穷人截然不同的态度，几乎是将反对者的攻击论点摆在金盘上拱手托出，让反对者得以更广泛地抨击政府在美国民生负担问题上的表现。今晚，我将作出详细解析。

Sharp cuts in aid to the poor

对穷人援助的大幅削减

When the shutdown began, Trump vowed to use it to “get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want,” saying that those things would be “Democrat things.”

停摆开始时，特朗普誓言要利用这次机会“摆脱许多我们不想要的东西”，并称这些东西都是“民主党的东西”。

One of those things turned out to be federal help for the hungry, called SNAP benefits, which one in eight Americans rely on to buy groceries.

其中一项措施是联邦政府为饥饿人群提供的援助，即SNAP福利，每八名美国人中就有一人依赖该计划购买食品。

Those benefits kept flowing for the first several weeks of the shutdown. But late last month, the administration said it would not tap into a $5 billion emergency reserve to cover benefits in November, kicking off weeks of legal wrangling in which the administration fought food stamp funding at every step — including telling states to “undo” any work they had done to keep full benefits flowing this past weekend.

停摆的最初几周，这些福利仍在发放。但上月末，政府表示不会动用50亿美元的紧急储备金来支付11月的福利，引发了长达数周的法律纠纷。在这一过程中，政府在每个环节都阻挠食品券资金的发放，甚至要求各州“撤销”他们为确保上周末全额福利发放所做的工作。

My colleague Tony Romm has an important story today about how the unprecedented lapse in funding is bigger than the 43-day government shutdown, because it “seemed to erode the fundamental guarantee that the government would protect the most vulnerable families from harm.”

我的同事托尼·罗姆今天发表了一篇重要报道，指出这种前所未有的资金中断比43天的政府停摆影响更大，因为它“似乎削弱了政府保护最脆弱家庭免受伤害的基本承诺”。

The administration had already moved to take a bite out of SNAP with its signature domestic policy law, which added strict new work requirements that could effectively force 2.4 million people out of the program, either because they do not meet those requirements or didn’t produce the paperwork to prove it.

政府此前已通过其标志性的国内政策法案削减SNAP福利，新增的严格工作要求可能迫使240万人退出该计划，原因要么是他们不符合要求，要么是无法提供证明文件。

That law makes sharp cuts to Medicaid by scaling back the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of coverage for the working poor.

该法案还通过缩减《平价医疗法案》对工薪阶层的医保覆盖范围，对医疗补助进行了大幅削减。

Party time for rich donors and friends

富人和金主的派对时刻

Trump, whose administration is stocked with billionaires, has shown few reservations about cozying up to the wealthy during the government shutdown — nor about the optics of turning the White House into an opulent playground while it was going on.

特朗普政府中充斥着亿万富翁，在政府停摆期间，他毫不掩饰地与富豪们亲近，也不在意将白宫变成奢华游乐场的形象问题。

Tonight, for example, he is slated to host a private White House dinner with Wall Street executives like Jamie Dimon. He held a dinner for donors to his White House ballroom project about two weeks into the government shutdown. And then, of course, he attended a glitzy Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, where guests dressed as flappers and the theme was “A little party never killed nobody” — a line from a song in the film version of “The Great Gatsby.”

例如，今晚他计划在白宫与杰米·戴蒙等华尔街高管举行私人晚宴。停摆约两周后，他还为白宫舞厅项目的捐赠者举办了一场晚宴。当然，他还参加了马阿拉歌庄园的奢华万圣节派对，宾客们身着爵士年代风格服饰，主题是“小小派对害不死人”——这句话出自电影版《了不起的盖茨比》中的一首歌。

But after Republican candidates were flattened in last week’s off-year elections by Democrats talking about the cost of living, Trump has taken some steps, my colleague Erica Green wrote this week, that suggest he knows he needs to be a better messenger on affordability.

但在上周的中期选举中，共和党候选人因民主党聚焦生活成本问题而惨败后，我的同事埃里卡·格林本周报道称，特朗普已采取一些举措，似乎表明他意识到需要在民生负担问题上更好地传达信息。

Over the weekend, he wrote on social media that “everyone” (aside from “high income people”) would get tariff “dividend” checks of $2,000 per person — a disbursement that recalls the pandemic relief checks he mailed to Americans during his first term. Last week, he announced a plan to lower the cost of popular weight-loss drugs. He recently claimed, inaccurately, that there is “almost no inflation.”

上周末，他在社交媒体上写道，“所有人”——除了“高收入人群”——都将获得每人2000美元的关税“红利”支票——这让人想起他在第一任期向美国人发放的疫情救济金。上周，他宣布了一项降低热门减肥药物成本的计划。最近，他还不准确地声称“几乎没有通货膨胀”。

Trump is a president who rose to power by fashioning himself as a populist, and who won a second term in part by promising to lower costs. Democrats have long struggled to poke holes in this image — but they might not have expected him to poke a few himself during the shutdown.

特朗普以民粹主义者的形象上台，并在一定程度上通过承诺降低生活成本赢得了连任。民主党长期以来一直难以动摇他的这一形象——但他们可能没想到，特朗普会在政府停摆期间自己戳出几个漏洞。

When President Trump started a trade war with China during his first term, Simon Lichtenberg decided to ride it out. He owned factories making leather sofas in China since the 1990s and figured the two sides would resolve the dispute.

当特朗普总统在首个任期内与中国发动贸易战时，李曦萌(Simon Lichtenberg)决定撑过去。这位商人自上世纪90年代起就在中国开设皮沙发制造厂，他当时认为双方最终会解决争端。

He doesn’t think that anymore. Mr. Lichtenberg invested around $20 million to move his factory for American clients to Vietnam this year. Now, not even the cease-fire Mr. Trump has reached with China has changed his outlook that deep-seated animosity between the countries has altered the economics of his business.

他现在不再这么认为了。他今年投入约2000万美元，将面向美国市场的工厂迁往越南。如今，即便特朗普与中国达成贸易战休战协议，也未能改变他的判断——两国间根深蒂固的敌意已经改变了其生意的经济逻辑。

China’s scale and abundant labor turned it into a factory juggernaut for decades, placing it firmly at the heart of the global economy. But Mr. Trump is tearing down the system that allowed manufacturers to seek out the most efficient supply chains. At the same time, China has doubled down on making itself less reliant on the U.S. economy.

几十年来，中国凭借规模效应和充足的劳动力，成为全球制造业的巨头，稳居全球经济核心地位。但特朗普正在摧毁允许制造商寻求最高效供应链的既有体系。与此同时，中国也在全力减少对美国经济的依赖。

Mr. Trump’s latest deal to cut some new tariffs placed on China has not reversed those trends. It has underscored the volatility of the U.S.-China relationship.

特朗普最新达成的削减对华新关税的协议并未扭转这些趋势，反而凸显了中美关系的脆弱多变。

So executives like Mr. Lichtenberg are opting out of China for their U.S. business, motivated by a fear of getting caught on the wrong side of what they expect to be an even more unpredictable bilateral relationship. Where it once seemed like having a factory outside China was a fallback, it is starting to look like an economic imperative.

因此，像李曦萌这样的企业家正选择将面向美国市场的业务从中国撤离。他们担心自己卷入一个更加不可预测的双边关系。曾几何时，在中国境外设厂只是备用方案，而现在，这正变成一种经济上的必然选择。

特雷通集团越南工厂的一名工人。该公司老板说：“没人再相信中美之间的关系会稳定。”撤离中国的企业已转向越南等周边国家——那些地方劳动力便宜，机械设备与原材料运输便利。特雷通集团今年投入约2000万美元，将面向美国市场的家具工厂迁往越南。

“Nobody trusts that there is stability between China and the U.S.,” Mr. Lichtenberg said. “It’s like they say: A burned child is scared of fire.” He said his company, Trayton Group, which makes Danish-style modular sofas and reclining chairs, has lost millions of dollars this year because of Mr. Trump’s abrupt and steep new tariffs.

“没人再相信中美之间的关系会稳定，”李曦萌说。“就像俗话说的：一朝被蛇咬，十年怕井绳。”他说，他的公司——生产丹麦风格组合沙发与躺椅的特雷通集团今年因特朗普突然大幅加征关税，已经损失了数百万美元。

For many sectors that long ago outsourced to China, moving factories back to the United States is not possible. Costs are too high, and there’s a shortage of workers. Companies that quit China have already gone to neighboring countries like Vietnam, where labor is cheap and it is easy to move machinery and raw materials.

对于许多早已将生产线迁至中国的行业而言，把工厂迁回美国已无可能。本土成本过高且劳动力短缺，撤离中国的企业已转向越南等周边国家——那些地方劳动力便宜，机械设备与原材料运输便利。

After meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, in South Korea last month, Mr. Trump agreed to halve a 20 percent fentanyl-related tariff and extend an existing pause on reciprocal tariffs, leaving the average tariff rate on Chinese goods at 47.6 percent, according to one estimate. Smaller businesses that have not been able to find factories outside China have cheered the news. But for many others that have already started moving out of China, the truce has had little impact on future strategy and planning.

上个月，特朗普在韩国与中国最高领导人习近平会晤后，同意将芬太尼纷争导致的20%关税减半，并延长现有关税互征的暂停期。根据一项估算，这使得中国商品的平均关税率维持在47.6%。无法在中国以外找到工厂的小企业对此消息表示欢迎。但对许多已经开始撤离中国的公司来说，这场停火对它们的未来战略和规划几乎没有影响。

“The agreement doesn’t change the calculus that, over the long term, because of the U.S.-China competitive relationship, it’s just going to present a lot more risk for companies to be manufacturing and sourcing things in China,” said Adam Sitkoff, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi, Vietnam.

“这项协议并没有改变这样的基本判断：从长期来看，鉴于中美竞争关系，在中国生产和采购产品对企业来说将带来更大的风险，”越南河内的美国商会执行董事亚当·西特考夫说。

特雷通集团在越南的工厂。包含中国原材料或投资的产品将如何被特朗普政府最终定性仍是不确定的问题。特雷通集团在上海郊外新建的工厂几乎空置，这里的生产原本面向美国市场。特雷通集团在越南的工厂。中国正在丧失美国工厂的地位。

China is already losing its title as the factory floor for Americans. Some of the world’s best-known companies, including Nike, Apple and Intel, have moved quickly this year to scale down what they make in China for the U.S. market. The country is no longer the sneaker capital for Americans. That designation now belongs to Vietnam.

中国正在丧失美国工厂的地位。包括耐克、苹果和英特尔在内的全球知名企业今年均加速缩减了在中国为美国市场生产的业务。这个国家已不再是美国人的运动鞋制造霸主，这个头衔如今属于越南。

The trend is also showing up in data from the U.S. Census Bureau, even for products that have received tariff exemptions, such as laptops and smartphones. The United States now gets most of its smartphones and laptops from India and Vietnam, according to the latest numbers.

美国人口普查局的数据同样印证这一趋势——即便笔记本电脑和智能手机等获关税豁免的产品也不例外。根据最新数据，美国当前大部分智能手机和笔记本电脑都来自印度与越南。

While the business world is coalescing around the idea that China is no longer the best option for making the things sold to Americans, it’s not yet clear which countries will be the best alternatives.

尽管商界逐渐形成共识：中国不再是为美国市场制造商品的最佳选择，但目前尚不清楚哪些国家将成为最理想的替代者。

But Mr. Trump’s trade policy remains in flux, including how he will respond if the Supreme Court nullifies the legal underpinning for many of his tariffs. For manufacturers in China sorting future plans, uncertainty hangs over how Mr. Trump will ultimately define products that contain raw materials or investment from China. Will products made in factories in Vietnam that have close ties to China be considered Vietnamese or Chinese?

但特朗普的贸易政策仍充满变数，包括最高法院若否决其多项关税的法律依据，他将作何反应。对于正在规划未来的中国制造商而言，其产品若含中国原材料或投资，将如何被特朗普政府最终定性，仍是不确定的问题。那些与中国存在紧密联系的越南工厂生产的产品，究竟会被视为越南制造还是中国制造？

“In Trump’s first term, he made everybody run away from China and a lot of business shifted to Vietnam,” said Gabriele Natale, the managing director of Man Wah USA, which makes furniture for retailers like Walmart and Costco. The company decided to move to Vietnam in 2019 and spent hundreds of millions of dollars building up a 5.8-million-square-foot factory near Ho Chi Minh City. Everything it sells in North America now comes from that factory.

“在特朗普首个任期内，他迫使所有人逃离中国，大量业务转向越南，”为沃尔玛、开市客等零售商生产家具的敏华美国总裁加布里埃·纳塔莱表示。该公司于2019年决定迁往越南，耗资数亿美元在胡志明市附近兴建了54万平方米的工厂。如今，它在北美销售的所有产品都来自那家工厂。

“In his second term, Mr. Trump is hitting everything everywhere,” Mr. Natale said. “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

“到了第二任期，特朗普对所有地方、所有行业都下手了，”纳塔莱说，“你可以逃，但你躲不掉。”

His company now has 15 production facilities around the world, including in Mexico and Eastern Europe.

他所在的公司目前在全球拥有15家生产基地，包括墨西哥和东欧。

American retailers are increasingly demanding that their suppliers reduce exposure to China.

美国零售商正不断要求供应商减少对中国的依赖。

Fleming International, which makes candles in Vietnam, was asked by its biggest American customers to move as much production as possible to the United States. It will soon start making vanilla-, elderberry- and pumpkin-scented candles from a new factory in Heber Springs, Ark. — at double or triple the cost in Vietnam.

在越南生产蜡烛的弗莱明国际公司应其最大美国客户要求，正将尽可能多的产能转移至美国。该公司很快将在阿肯色州希伯斯普林斯的新工厂开始生产香草、接骨木莓和南瓜香味的蜡烛——成本是越南的两至三倍。

特朗普的贸易政策仍充满变数，包括如果最高法院否决其多项关税的法律依据他将作何反应。特雷通集团在越南的工厂。曾几何时，在中国境外设厂只是备用方案，现在则正变成一种经济上的必然选择。工人正在特雷通集团越南工厂的食堂里吃午餐。

“As far as geopolitics, we feel like it’s a long-term strategy,” said Lowell Newman, a senior adviser for Fleming. “We’re not expecting overnight success.”

“从地缘政治的角度来看，我们认为这是一项长期战略，”弗莱明的高级顾问洛威尔·纽曼说，“我们并不指望立竿见影的成效。”

New tariffs could change the calculus once more for the company, which is also opening a facility in El Salvador in a few months. Mr. Trump’s willingness to wield tariffs haphazardly, sometimes as punishment for perceived grievances, has made it hard to make business decisions.

新一轮关税可能再次改变该公司的战略考量。它在萨尔瓦多的新工厂将于数月后投产。特朗普随意动用关税手段的倾向（有时仅为宣泄不满）使企业难以做出商业决策。

“Just tell us the duties,” Mr. Newman said. “Don’t get mad and pick up your marbles in the fight like a child playing.”

“只要告诉我们税率是多少就行，”纽曼说。“别像个玩耍时生气的小孩那样，一不高兴就不玩了。”

He’s not alone in experiencing whiplash. Mr. Lichtenberg is still recovering from the last shock on Oct. 10, a few weeks before the latest U.S.-China trade truce.

遭受这种政策震荡的并非只有他。李曦萌仍未从10月10日的那场震荡中恢复，那是在最近一轮美中贸易战休战几周前。

From his home in Shanghai, Mr. Lichtenberg had just finished up a midnight call with his American clients when, checking the news before bed, he saw that Mr. Trump was ranting on social media about Mr. Xi. He turned off the lights anticipating a fresh crisis in the morning.

他在上海家中刚与美国客户完成午夜通话，睡前查阅新闻时恰见特朗普在社交媒体怒斥中国领导人。熄灯时他已预见次日清晨必将迎来新一轮危机。

When he woke up, Mr. Trump had set a new tariff of 100 percent on China. Mr. Lichtenberg thought back to six months earlier when Mr. Trump announced a 125 percent rate, which the president later clarified would be even higher at 145 percent.

待他醒来时，特朗普已宣布对中国征收100%的新关税。李曦萌回想起半年前特朗普宣布125%关税的场景，后来他又补充说税率还会更高——达到145%。

特雷通集团嘉兴工厂内的家具框架。这家工厂现在几乎空空荡荡。

The difference was that in April, Mr. Lichtenberg had 350 containers ready to ship from China to the United States. This time, he had only several dozen.

不同的是，在4月份时，李曦萌有350个集装箱准备从中国运往美国；而这一次，他只有几十个。

Now, about half of his overall production comes out of his new factory in an industrial park in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam. A dozen other factories and suppliers have also moved there from China.

如今，他大约一半的产量来自越南南部胡志明市一个工业园区内的新厂。另有十余家工厂及供应商也已从中国迁至该地。

Back in China, a newly built factory Mr. Lichtenberg had used for his American customers on the outskirts of Shanghai sits mostly vacant. Rows of blue and yellow metal shelves are empty. A new robot that can assemble the wood frames for his couches stands still. Around 500 Chinese workers who once filled the factory lines are gone, after being laid off this year.

在中国，李曦萌为美国市场在上海郊外新建的工厂如今几乎空置。成排的蓝色和黄色金属货架空荡荡的，一台可以组装沙发木架的新机器人静止不动。约500名曾忙碌在生产线上的中国工人，在今年遭解雇后已尽数离去。

“The idea was that it would be full by next year,” Mr. Lichtenberg said as he walked through the dark, quiet and cavernous factory.

“原本预计明年这里就会满负荷运转，”李曦萌走在昏暗、寂静、空旷的厂房中说道。

“It’s more empty than ever.”

“现在比以往任何时候都要空。”

“原本预计明年这里就会满负荷运转，”李曦萌谈起这家中国工厂。“现在比以往任何时候都要空。”

House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.

众议院民主党人周三公布了一批杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的电子邮件，其中爱泼斯坦写道，特朗普总统曾与他的一名受害者“在我家待了几个小时”，此外还有其他信息显示，这位已定罪的性犯罪者认为特朗普对他的性侵行为知情程度远超特朗普公开承认的范围。

Mr. Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. He has said that he and Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, were once friendly but had a falling out.

特朗普坚决否认自己参与或知晓爱泼斯坦的性交易网络。他表示，自己与这位声名狼藉、2019年在联邦监狱自杀身亡的金融家曾是朋友，但后来闹翻了。

But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents received by their panel, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure.

但众议院监督委员会的民主党人表示，这些从委员会收到的数以千计页文件中筛选出的邮件对两人关系提出了新的疑问。其中一封邮件中，爱泼斯坦直言特朗普“知道那些女孩”——调查人员后来发现，其中许多女孩都是未成年人。另一封邮件中，在特朗普成为全国性政治人物之际，爱泼斯坦在思考如何回应媒体关于两人关系的提问。

Committee Republicans on Wednesday released the rest of the newly obtained material, condemning Democrats for choosing three that referenced Mr. Trump. They also identified the unnamed victim mentioned in two of the emails as Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April and had said that she had not witnessed Mr. Trump participating in the sexual abuse of minors at Mr. Epstein’s home.

众议院监督委员会的共和党人周三公布了其余新获取的材料，谴责民主党人刻意挑选了三封提及特朗普的邮件。他们还确认，两封邮件中提到的未具名受害者是弗吉尼亚·朱弗雷——这位于4月自杀身亡的女性曾表示自己从未目睹特朗普在爱泼斯坦家中，参与对未成年人的性侵。

In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, cited Ms. Giuffre’s past remarks about Mr. Trump, denouncing “selectively released emails” she said were meant to “smear” the president.

白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特在声明中引用了朱弗雷过往关于特朗普的言论，谴责这些“选择性公布的邮件”，意在“抹黑”总统。

“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” Ms. Leavitt said. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

“事实是，几十年前，特朗普总统就因爱泼斯坦对包括朱弗雷在内的女性员工行为不端，将他赶出了自己的俱乐部，”莱维特说，“这些说法不过是别有用心的企图，目的是转移人们对特朗普总统历史性成就的关注。任何有常识的美国人都能看穿这个骗局，这显然是对政府重启运作的干扰手段。”

The messages are certain to inflame the debate on Capitol Hill over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, and top officials’ decision to backtrack on a promise to fully release all of its investigative material in the case. That issue, which has split Republicans and alienated some of Mr. Trump’s right-wing supporters, had faded to the background as the government shutdown dragged on.

这些邮件肯定会加剧国会山关于特朗普政府处理爱泼斯坦相关文件的争议，同时也会令人们质疑高层官员违背了全面公开该案所有调查材料的承诺。这一问题曾导致共和党内部分裂，令特朗普的一些右翼支持者离心，但随着政府停摆持续，该问题已逐渐淡出公众视野。

But the House returned on Wednesday to clear legislation to end the shutdown, and attention quickly turned back to the Epstein matter. A bipartisan bid to bring up a measure demanding that the Justice Department release all of its investigative material in the case gathered enough supporters to force a vote within weeks, one that Mr. Trump was lobbying furiously to head off.

不过，众议院周三复会并通过了结束停摆的法案，注意力迅速转回爱泼斯坦事件。一项两党联合提案要求司法部公布该案所有调查材料，该提案已获得足够支持，将在数周内进行投票，特朗普正全力游说阻止此次投票。

“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.

“这些最新的邮件和通信文件让人严重质疑白宫还在隐瞒哪些东西，以及爱泼斯坦与总统的关系是何种性质，”众议院监督委员会民主党领袖、加利福尼亚州众议员罗伯特·加西亚在声明中说。

The emails were turned over to the committee in response to a set of subpoenas Democrats effectively forced Republicans to issue for files related to Mr. Epstein. So far, the Justice Department has provided the panel with little that was not already public. Democrats and a few Republicans have been pressing for a far broader set of disclosures from the administration’s Epstein investigation, a move that Mr. Trump and G.O.P. leaders in Congress vehemently oppose.

这些邮件是民主党人成功迫使共和党人就爱泼斯坦文件事宜发出传票后移交委员会的。到目前为止，司法部向委员会提供的材料几乎都是已公开的内容。民主党人和少数共和党人一直敦促政府更广泛地公开爱泼斯坦案的调查结果，但遭特朗普和国会共和党领袖强烈反对。

The three separate email exchanges released on Wednesday were all from after Mr. Epstein’s 2008 plea deal in Florida on state charges of soliciting prostitution, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges. They came years after Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein had a reported falling out in the early 2000s. One was addressed to Mr. Epstein’s longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, while two were with the author Michael Wolff.

周三公布的三封各不相干的邮件往来都发生在2008年爱泼斯坦在佛罗里达州就召嫖的州级指控达成认罪协议之后，协议中联邦检察官同意不再追究相关指控。邮件发送时间距离特朗普与爱泼斯坦据称在21世纪初闹翻已有数年。其中一封是发给爱泼斯坦长期密友吉斯莱恩·马克斯韦尔，另外两封是与作家迈克尔·沃尔夫的通信。

加利福尼亚州民主党众议员罗伯特·加西亚表示：“这些最新的邮件和通信文件让人严重质疑白宫还在隐瞒哪些东西，以及爱泼斯坦与总统的关系是何种性质。”

In one email from April 2011, Mr. Epstein told Ms. Maxwell, who was later convicted on charges related to facilitating his crimes, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that an unnamed victim “spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

2011年4月的一封邮件中，爱泼斯坦对后来因协助其犯罪而被定罪的马克斯韦尔说：“我想让你明白，那条没叫的狗就是特朗普。”他还补充说，一名未具名受害者“和他在我家待了几小时，却从未被提及过”。

“I have been thinking about that,” Ms. Maxwell wrote back.

“我一直在想这件事，”马克斯韦尔回信说。

In an email from January 2019, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolff of Mr. Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” House Democrats, citing an unnamed whistle-blower, said this week that Ms. Maxwell was preparing to formally ask Mr. Trump to commute her federal prison sentence.

2019年1月的一封邮件中，爱泼斯坦在写给沃尔夫时提到特朗普：“他当然知道那些女孩的事，因为他让吉斯莱恩别再这么做了。”众议院民主党人援引一名匿名举报人的话称，马克斯韦尔正准备正式请求特朗普为她的联邦监狱刑期减刑。

The emails were provided to the Oversight Committee along with a larger tranche of documents from Mr. Epstein’s estate that the panel requested as part of its investigation into Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

这些邮件与爱泼斯坦遗产中的一大批文件一起提交给了监督委员会——该委员会在调查爱泼斯坦和马克斯韦尔时要求提供这些文件。马克斯韦尔因性交易指控被判20年监禁，目前正在服刑。

The committee’s staff redacted victims’ names and any identifying information from the emails.

委员会工作人员对邮件中的受害者姓名和所有身份信息做了涂黑。

Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused Democrats of politicizing the investigation.

众议院监督委员会的共和党人指责民主党人将调查政治化。

“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click bait that is not grounded in the facts,” a committee spokeswoman said. “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials.”

“民主党人继续随意挑选文件，制造没有事实依据的标题党内容，”委员会发言人说，“爱泼斯坦遗产管理方于周四提交了超过2万页文件，但民主党人再次故意隐瞒提及民主党官员的记录。”

They sought to play down Mr. Epstein’s assertion that Mr. Trump had spent extensive time with one of the victims by publicly naming Ms. Giuffre, whose name was redacted in the emails. Ms. Giuffre had said that Ms. Maxwell recruited her into Mr. Epstein’s sex ring while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, as a teenager.

他们试图淡化爱泼斯坦关于特朗普与一名受害者长时间共处的说法，公开了邮件中被涂黑姓名的朱弗雷的身份。朱弗雷曾表示，自己十几岁在特朗普位于棕榈滩的私人俱乐部兼住所马阿拉歌庄园工作时，被马克斯韦尔招募进入爱泼斯坦的性交易网络。

“I never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Giuffre added. “I’ve heard he has been, but I haven’t seen him myself so I don’t know.”

“我从未见过或目睹唐纳德·特朗普参与那些行为，但他去过杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的家吗？”朱弗雷补充说，“我听说他去过，但我自己没见过，所以不确定。”

Mr. Trump has called Mr. Epstein a “creep” and has insisted he never engaged in any wrongdoing with him or Ms. Maxwell. He has condemned the continued questions about his handling of the case as a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

特朗普称爱泼斯坦是“怪人”，并坚称自己从未参与过他或马克斯韦尔的任何不当行为。他将外界对其处理该案的持续质疑斥为民主党制造的“骗局”。

Last summer, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Epstein had “hired” away spa attendants at Mar-a-Lago. He said that he had kicked Mr. Epstein out of his club, and that he believed one of the women was Ms. Giuffre.

去年夏天，特朗普表示，爱泼斯坦曾从马阿拉歌庄园“挖走”水疗中心服务员。他说自己将爱泼斯坦赶出了俱乐部，且认为其中一名女性就是朱弗雷。

At the time Mr. Epstein emailed Ms. Maxwell in 2011 calling Mr. Trump the “dog that didn’t bark,” Mr. Trump was a reality television star and New York tabloid celebrity who was years away from becoming president.

2011年爱泼斯坦给马克斯韦尔发邮件称特朗普是“没叫的狗”时，特朗普还是真人秀明星和纽约小报名人，数年后才会成为总统。

Mr. Epstein’s email from 2019, which claims Mr. Trump “knew about the girls” and asked Ms. Maxwell “to stop,” was sent to Mr. Wolff, who had recently written a tell-all book about the president.

爱泼斯坦2019年那封声称特朗普“知道那些女孩”并“要求马克斯韦尔停止”的邮件，是发给沃尔夫的，沃尔夫当时刚写了一本关于特朗普总统的揭秘书籍。

Mr. Epstein was months away from the arrest and federal charges that would send him to prison, but he was the focus of significant attention after The Miami Herald had published a series of articles drawing renewed attention to the secret agreement he had signed in 2008.

当时，爱泼斯坦距离被捕和面临联邦指控还有几个月时间，而《迈阿密先驱报》发表了一系列文章，重新引发了人们对他2008年签署的秘密协议的关注，令他成为公众关注的焦点。

In his email, Mr. Epstein mentioned a victim of his sex-trafficking operation. He also mentioned Mar-a-Lago, then disputed that Mr. Trump had ever asked him to resign from the club. “Never a member ever,” Mr. Epstein wrote.

爱泼斯坦在邮件中提到了他性交易网络的一名受害者，还提到了马阿拉歌庄园，随后否认特朗普曾要求他退出该俱乐部。“从来都不是会员，”爱泼斯坦写道。

Mr. Wolff was also involved in a third email exchange, which began on Dec. 15, 2015, the night of a debate in the Republican presidential primary. Mr. Wolff emailed Mr. Epstein and warned him that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

沃尔夫还参与了第三份邮件往来，始于2015年12月15日——共和党总统初选辩论当晚。沃尔夫给爱泼斯坦发邮件警告他，CNN“计划今晚在辩论中或之后的记者围堵采访中，就特朗普与你的关系向他提问”。

Mr. Epstein wrote back, “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”

爱泼斯坦回信说：“如果我们能为他设计一个回应，你觉得应该怎么说？”

Mr. Wolff advised inaction, suggesting that Mr. Trump might try to deny a close association with Mr. Epstein. “I think you should let him hang himself,” he wrote of Mr. Trump. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency” that could be used to “hang him” later or “save him, generating a debt.”

沃尔夫建议什么也不做，认为特朗普可能试图否认与爱泼斯坦关系密切。“我觉得你应该任他自己给自己挖坑，”他在谈到特朗普时写道，“如果他说自己从没坐过你的飞机，也没去过你家，那这会给你带来宝贵的公关和政治资本，”日后既可以用这些资本来“扳倒他”，也可以“救他一命，让他欠你个人情”。

Mr. Trump never received a question about the matter in that debate, according to a transcript. It was unclear if he was asked about it separately.

根据辩论记录，特朗普在那场辩论中从未被问及相关问题。但无法确定他是否曾在其他场合被单独问及此事。

Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, is known as an inveterate workhorse. She often skips social gatherings and has openly rejected the idea of work-life balance.

日本新首相高市早苗是出了名的工作狂。她经常缺席社交聚会，还公开否定工作与生活平衡的理念。

But even by Ms. Takaichi’s standards, it was surprising when she emerged from her Tokyo residence shortly after 3 a.m. on a recent day to convene a meeting with aides ahead of an appearance before Parliament.

但即便以高市早苗的标准来看，近日那次凌晨3点刚过就走出东京住所，召集幕僚开会为国会质询做准备的举动，仍令人感到意外。

Ms. Takaichi has drawn criticism for holding the meeting, which took place on Friday and has become known in the Japanese news media as the “3 a.m. study session.” The issue is especially sensitive in Japan, where there have been high-profile cases in recent years of karoshi, or “death from overwork.”

这场周五举行的会议被日本媒体称为“凌晨3点研习会”，它招致外界的批评。该问题在日本尤为敏感——近年来，日本发生过多起备受关注的“过劳死”案例。

Some argue that the meeting, which involved several aides and lasted about three hours, would feed into unhealthy extremes. Others said that Ms. Takaichi was placing unnecessary burdens on her staff.

有人认为，这场多名幕僚参与、持续约三小时的会议会助长不健康的极端工作风气。也有人表示，高市早苗给下属施加了不必要的负担。

Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister who leads the main opposition party, called Ms. Takaichi’s decision to hold the meeting “crazy.” When he was Japan’s leader from 2011 to 2012, he would start work around 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.

日本主要反对党领袖、前首相野田佳彦称高市早苗召开此次会议的决定“荒唐”。他在2011年至2012年担任日本首相期间，通常于早上6点或7点开始工作。

“It’s fine for her to work, but she should not be getting other people involved,” he said in an interview. “Everyone is in bed at that time of day. It’s a very sad attitude for the top leader of the country to show.”

“她自己工作无妨，但不该把别人也牵扯进来，”他在接受采访时说。“那个时间大家都在睡觉，国家最高领导人表现出这种态度，实在可悲。”

Ms. Takaichi, who took office last month as Japan’s prime minister — the first woman to serve in that role — has sought to clarify the circumstances of the meeting. She has said that her fax machine at home was jammed (faxes are still a mainstay of communication in Japan). She decided to go to the prime minister’s residence — she has not yet moved in — so that she could review briefing materials there ahead of a 9 a.m. budget meeting at the Diet, Japan’s Parliament.

上月就职的高市早苗是日本首位女性首相，她试图澄清会议的相关情况。她表示，自己家中的传真机出了故障（传真在日本仍是主要沟通方式之一），于是决定前往首相官邸（她尚未正式入住）审阅简报材料，以便为上午9点在日本国会举行的预算会议做准备。

Ms. Takaichi, speaking to Parliament on Friday, acknowledged that her early-morning preparation had “caused inconvenience” to her staff. But she said it was necessary to meet so early to rewrite drafts of answers for lawmakers on a variety of issues.

高市早苗周五在国会承认，自己凌晨的准备工作“给工作人员带来了不便”，但她表示，为修改针对各类议题的议员质询答复草稿，这么早开会是必要的。

Ms. Takaichi’s supporters have defended her. Some in her party, the Liberal Democratic Party, have blamed opposition lawmakers for submitting questions too late.

高市早苗的支持者则为她辩护。她所属的自民党曾有部分人士指责反对党议员提交质询问题时间过晚。

“Even a workaholic like Prime Minister Takaichi wouldn’t want to be at work at 3 a.m.,” Midori Matsushima, an L.D.P. lawmaker, wrote on X.

“就算是高市首相这样的工作狂，也不会想凌晨3点工作，”自民党议员松岛绿在X平台上写道。

高市早苗周五在国会发言时承认，她清晨的准备工作给工作人员“造成了不便”。

Some business leaders also have spoken in support of Ms. Takaichi, saying they do not understand the fuss over her work habits.

一些商界领袖也发声支持高市早苗，声称不理解为何外界对她的工作习惯小题大做。

Kenji Koshio, chief executive of Shindenki, a small electronics company in the city of Kobe, wrote on his blog that troops, police officers, firefighters and medical workers were expected to work around the clock. Why not Japan’s prime minister?

神户市小型电子企业Shindenki的社长越生健二（音）在博客中写道，军人、警察、消防员和医护人员都需要24小时待命，日本首相为何不可？

Responding to the uproar over the meeting, he wrote: “Why don’t you just stop being so lame and be grateful to the people who are working hard for the people of Japan?”

针对会议引发的轩然大波，他写道：“别这么无聊了，对为日本民众努力工作的人心怀感激不好吗？”

The controversy comes as Japan considers relaxing the upper limits on overtime, an idea that Ms. Takaichi recently endorsed. The current limit of 45 hours of overtime per month was put in place in 2019 after the death of Matsuri Takahashi, an employee of Dentsu, the advertising giant, who died by suicide in 2016 after clocking more than 100 hours of overtime per month.

此次争议发生之际，日本正考虑放宽加班上限，这项提议近日获得了高市早苗的支持。目前每月45小时的加班上限于2019年设立，起因是广告巨头电通的员工高桥茉莉2016年因每月加班超100小时而自杀身亡。

Ms. Takaichi has supported allowing people to work more overtime, saying it is an important source of income. But she has also said that it should not come at the expense of the well-being of Japan’s workers.

高市早苗支持允许民众增加加班时间，称这是重要的收入来源，但她也表示，不应以牺牲日本劳动者的健康为代价。

“I do not approve of overtime that leads to death from overwork,” Ms. Takaichi said at another appearance in Parliament this month. “I am concerned that a reduction in overtime pay will lead to people damaging their health by taking on unfamiliar side jobs in order to earn a living.”

“我不赞成会导致过劳死的加班，”高市早苗本月在国会另一次发言中表示。“我担心加班工资减少后，人们为了谋生会从事不熟悉的副业，进而损害健康。”

Since entering politics in the 1990s, Ms. Takaichi has made her work ethic a part of her identity. She promised during her recent campaign to scrap her work-life balance upon taking office, saying she would “work and work and work and work.”

自上世纪90年代步入政坛以来，高市早苗就将敬业作为个人标签。在近期的竞选活动中，她承诺上任后会摒弃工作与生活的平衡，称自己会“工作、工作、工作、再工作”。

Her comments were criticized by relatives of people who have died from overwork in Japan, who said she has set a bad example.

她的这番言论遭到了日本过劳死者家属的批评，他们表示高市早苗树立了坏榜样。

Since being named prime minister only about three weeks ago, Ms. Takaichi has had an unusually packed schedule. She recently hosted a visit to Japan by President Trump, and she attended meetings in Malaysia and South Korea.

自约三周前被任命为首相以来，高市早苗始终保持着异常紧凑的行程。她近期接待了来访的特朗普总统，还出席了在马来西亚和韩国举行的会议。

Shigeaki Koga, a former economic official, said in an interview that he could sympathize with Ms. Takaichi’s frenetic first few weeks in office. But he said she should stick to her predecessors’ practice of holding meetings only after 7 a.m. or 8 a.m.

前经济官员古贺茂明在接受采访时表示，他能理解高市早苗上任初期几周的忙碌，但他认为她应该沿用前任的做法，将会议时间安排在早上7点或8点之后。

“Three o’clock in the morning is way too early,” he said, “no matter what.”

“凌晨3点实在太早了，”他强调，“无论出于什么原因。”

Mr. Koga noted that it was probably impossible for any modern leader to get adequate rest, but he said it was important not to place burdens on staff.

古贺茂明指出，现代领导人或许很难获得充足的休息，但重要的是不要给工作人员增添负担。

“The prime minister can’t relax,” he said. “But the best thing is to work hard in secret.”

“首相确实无法放松，”他说。“但最好的方式是默默努力。”

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

去年2月 ，巴拉克·奥巴马在加州与硅谷的各位顶尖名人共进晚餐。按照这次晚宴的规矩，每位客人都得向总统提一个问题。

在中国，林丽娜（音）是PCH International的一个项目经理。该公司和苹果签有合同。"有很多工作机会，"她说。“特别是在深圳。”

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

然而，轮到苹果公司的史蒂芬·P·乔布斯(Steven P. Jobs)说话的时候，奥巴马总统却用自己的问题打断了他：要在美国生产iPhone的话，需要满足什么样的条件呢？

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

没多久之前，苹果公司还吹嘘自己的产品都是“美国制造”。今天，美国制造的苹果产品已经少之又少。苹果公司去年售出了7000万部iPhone、3000万台iPad和5900万台其他产品，这些产品几乎都是在海外制造的。

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

干嘛不把这些工作拿回来做呢？奥巴马先生问道。

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

乔布斯先生的回答毫不含糊。按照另一位在座嘉宾的说法，乔布斯的回答是：“这些工作是不会回来的。”

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

总统的问题触及了苹果公司的一个核心信念。苹果的做法不光是因为外国工人比较便宜。更重要的是，苹果公司管理层认为，外国工厂的巨大规模，以及外国工人的灵活性、勤勉精神和工业技能，全都远远地超过了美国同侪。这样一来，对于大多数的苹果产品来说，“美国制造”已经不再是一个可行的选择。

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

苹果公司已经成为全球最知名、最受人崇敬、最多人仿效的企业之一，原因之一就是它毫不手软地实施着高水平的全球运作。去年，苹果公司员工创造的人均利润超过了40万美元，令高盛(Goldman Sachs)、埃克森美孚(Exxon Mobil)和谷歌(Google)相形见绌。

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

然而，让奥巴马先生、各位经济学家和各位决策人士着恼的是，说到为美国创造工作机会的问题，苹果公司跟它的许多高科技同行一样，远不像其他一些鼎盛时期的著名公司那么热心。

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.

苹果公司在美国有四万三千名雇员，并有两万名海外雇员。20世纪50年代的通用汽车公司(General Motors)雇用了超过40万美国工人，20世纪80年代的通用电气(General Electric)也拥有数十万美国员工，与之相比，苹果公司的员工数目只是一个零头。为苹果的外包商打工的人却要比这多得多：苹果员工之外，另有70万人在设计、制造和组装iPad、iPhone和其他苹果产品。不过，这些人的工作地点几乎都不在美国。恰恰相反，他们的雇主是亚洲、欧洲和其他地方的外国公司，几乎所有的电子产品设计商都要靠他们服务的厂家来制造产品。

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

直到去年还在担任白宫经济顾问的杰瑞德·伯恩斯坦(Jared Bernstein)说，“今天的美国很难创造出适合中产阶级的工作机会，苹果公司的做法就可以说明原因何在。如果说苹果公司代表着资本主义巅峰状态的话，我们就该担惊受怕了。”

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

苹果管理层宣称，走向海外是他们在目前阶段的惟一选择。按照一位前苹果管理人员的讲述，离iPhone预定上架日期只有数周的时候，苹果公司靠一家中国工厂帮忙才完成了生产计划。原因在于苹果公司临时改变了iPhone屏幕的设计，不得不对装配线进行全面调整。将近午夜的时候，新的屏幕才陆续运抵装配工厂。

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

根据这位管理人员的说法，厂里的一名工头立刻叫醒了公司宿舍里的八千名工人，给每名工人发了一包饼干和一杯茶，吩咐他们前往车间。不到半个钟头，往倾斜放置的手机外壳上安装玻璃屏幕的12小时工作班次宣告开始。不到96个小时，那家工厂就已经在以日产一万多台的速度生产iPhone了。

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

这位管理人员说，“那家工厂的速度和灵活性令人咋舌，没有哪家美国工厂能跟它相提并论。”

Similar stories could be told about almost any electronics company — and outsourcing has also become common in hundreds of industries, including accounting, legal services, banking, auto manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

几乎所有的电子公司都讲得出类似的故事，“外包”也已经成为数百个行业的通行做法，会计、法律服务、银行、汽车制造和制药行业都是如此。

But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What’s more, the company’s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.

苹果公司虽然远远算不上个例，但却为我们提供了一个窗口，我们可以从中窥见，一些杰出公司的成功表现为什么没有衍生大量的国内工作机会。除此之外，这家公司的种种决策还引出了一个更为深广的问题，在全球经济与国内经济日益融合的今天，美国企业对美国国民负有什么样的责任。

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

直至去年9月还是美国劳工部首席经济学家的贝特西·史蒂文森(Betsey Stevenson)说，“美国公司曾经觉得自己有责任支持美国工人，即便这并不是财务上的最佳选择。这样的观念已然不复存在，利润和效率压倒了慷慨的情操。”

Companies and other economists say that notion is naïve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.

各家公司以及其他一些经济学家纷纷表示，前述观念实属天真幼稚。公司高管们指出，美国人虽然居于世界上教育程度最高的工人之列，但美国的培训工作已经跟不上形势，再也不能为各家工厂提供足够数量的中等技术工人了。

To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers — including G.M. and others — that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged.

各家公司辩称，要想兴旺发达，他们就只能把工作转移到那些利润足以维持不断创新的地方。如其不然，假以时日，美国的工作机会还有进一步减少的风险。例证便是包括通用在内的众多美国制造业巨头，它们曾经豪气干云，后来却纷纷缩水，因为市场上出现了一些身手灵活的竞争者。

Apple was provided with extensive summaries of The New York Times’s reporting for this article, but the company, which has a reputation for secrecy, declined to comment.

《纽约时报》向苹果公司提供了本篇报道的详细纲要，然而，以行事隐秘著称的苹果公司拒绝就此发表评论。

This article is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors — many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs — as well as economists, manufacturing experts, international trade specialists, technology analysts, academic researchers, employees at Apple’s suppliers, competitors and corporate partners, and government officials.

本篇报道基于大量访谈，采访对象包括近40名离职或现职苹果员工及外包商，其中多人都要求隐去姓名，怕的是丢掉工作。此外，报道的采访对象还包括一些经济学家、制造业专家、国际贸易专家、技术分析家、学术研究人员、苹果供应商员工、竞争对手、合作伙伴以及政府官员。

Privately, Apple executives say the world is now such a changed place that it is a mistake to measure a company’s contribution simply by tallying its employees — though they note that Apple employs more workers in the United States than ever before.

苹果公司的一些管理人员私下表示，鉴于世界形势已经急剧改变，仅以员工数目来衡量企业贡献是一种错误的做法。他们同时指出，苹果在美国的工人数目比以往任何时候都要多。

They say Apple’s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job.

他们说，苹果的成功给创业者带来了商机，并在手机运营商以及苹果产品承运人之类的企业里催生了更多的工作机会，由此推动了美国经济。他们还说，说到底，消除失业并不是他们的事情。

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

苹果公司的一位现职管理人员说，“我们在100多个国家销售iPhone，并没有义务解决美国的问题。我们只有一个义务，那就是推出最好的产品。”

‘I Want a Glass Screen’

“我想要玻璃屏幕”

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

2007年，离iPhone预定的上架时间还有一个月出头，乔布斯先生把一小群僚属召进了一间办公室。几个星期以来，他兜里一直都揣着一部iPhone样机。

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

据一名与会者回忆，乔布斯先生气冲冲地举起了样机，调整着样机的角度，好让大家都看到塑料屏幕上的几十条微小划痕。这之后，他把自己的钥匙从牛仔裤兜里掏了出来。

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”

他告诉与会者，人们都会把手机揣在兜里，还会把钥匙装进去。“我不愿意出售会有划痕的产品，”他疾言厉色地说。这一来，惟一的办法便是代之以不会产生划痕的玻璃。“我想要玻璃屏幕，这件事情必须在六周之内办好。”

After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.

与会的一名管理人员走出房间，订了一张去深圳的机票。既然乔布斯先生提出了“办好”的要求，那就只能到深圳去。

For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit?

两年多的时间里，苹果公司一直在开发这个代号为“紫色2”(Purple 2)的项目，同样的一些问题在项目的每个阶段反复浮现：怎样才能彻底颠覆原有的“手机”概念？怎样才能设计出一款质量最上乘——比如说，带有不会划花的屏幕——的手机，同时确保公司能以足够低廉的成本迅速推出数以百万计的产品、由此赚取丰厚的利润呢？

The answers, almost every time, were found outside the United States. Though components differ between versions, all iPhones contain hundreds of parts, an estimated 90 percent of which are manufactured abroad. Advanced semiconductors have come from Germany and Taiwan, memory from Korea and Japan, display panels and circuitry from Korea and Taiwan, chipsets from Europe and rare metals from Africa and Asia. And all of it is put together in China.

几乎是在每一次讨论当中，问题的答案都出现在美国之外。iPhone的组件虽然因型号而异，所有的iPhone却都包含着数百个零件，在海外生产的零件估计占总数的90%。高科技半导体来自德国和台湾，内存来自韩国和日本，显示屏和电路板来自韩国和台湾，芯片组来自欧洲，稀有金属来自非洲和亚洲，组装的地点则是中国。

In its early days, Apple usually didn’t look beyond its own backyard for manufacturing solutions. A few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, for instance, Mr. Jobs bragged that it was “a machine that is made in America.” In 1990, while Mr. Jobs was running NeXT, which was eventually bought by Apple, the executive told a reporter that “I’m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.” As late as 2002, top Apple executives occasionally drove two hours northeast of their headquarters to visit the company’s iMac plant in Elk Grove, Calif.

创业之初，苹果公司通常只会在自家后院里寻找代工厂。举例来说，该公司于1983年推出了个人台式电脑Macintosh，数年之后，乔布斯先生曾经吹嘘它是“真正美国制造的机器”。1990年，乔布斯先生还在打理后来被苹果收购的NeXT公司。当时他曾经告诉一名记者，“我为我们的电脑自豪，同样为我们的工厂自豪。”迟至2002年，苹果公司的高层都还会时不时地开车往总部的东北方向走上两个小时的车，到加州的埃克格鲁夫(Elk Grove)去视察公司的iMac工厂。

But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple’s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs’s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.

然而，进入2004年的时候，苹果公司已经把大部分的生产工作转到了国外。主导这一决策的人是苹果公司的运营专家蒂莫西·D·库克(Timothy D. Cook)。去年8月，乔布斯先生去世六周之前，他接替乔布斯先生当上了苹果的首席执行官。2004年的时候，大多数美国电子公司已然转向海外，正在挣扎求生的苹果公司由是认为，自己必须用上所有的有利条件。

In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

亚洲之所以诱人，部分原因是那里的半熟练工人比较便宜。不过，吸引苹果公司的并不是这一点。对于高科技公司来说，支出的大头是零件采购和管理来自数百个公司的组件及服务供应链，与之相较，人力成本可谓微不足道。

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

一名苹果公司前高管说，按照库克先生的看法，聚焦亚洲的决策“可以归结为两个原因”。亚洲的工厂“扩大或缩小规模的速度比较快”，与此同时，“亚洲的供应链也比美国强”。这名前高管说，由此而来的结果就是“在这一阶段，我们没法跟别人竞争”。

The impact of such advantages became obvious as soon as Mr. Jobs demanded glass screens in 2007.

2007年，乔布斯先生提出关于玻璃屏幕的要求之后，上述条件的优越性立刻变得一目了然。

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

多年以来，手机生产商一直不愿意使用玻璃屏幕，因为它需要精确的切割和打磨，达到标准的难度非常之大。苹果公司已经选定美国的康宁公司(Corning Inc.)来生产大块的强化玻璃板。然而，要想把玻璃板切成数以百万计的iPhone屏幕，那就得找到一家空闲的切割工厂、数百块实验用的玻璃板以及一大帮中级技师。光是准备工作就得消耗一大笔资金。

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

就在这时，一家中国工厂跑来投标，要求承揽这项工作。

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

苹果的考察小组赶到那家中国工厂的时候，厂主们已经开始兴建新厂房了。一名前苹果公司管理人员回忆，厂长的解释是，“这是在提前做准备，免得你们的订单让我们措手不及”。此前中国政府已经承诺为许多产业提供成本补贴，那家玻璃切割工厂也从中分了一杯羹。他们有一间装满玻璃样品的仓库，可以向苹果公司提供免费样品。厂主们还答应提供技师，几乎不需要费用。他们已经建起了厂内宿舍，员工可以24小时随叫随到。

The Chinese plant got the job.

那家中国工厂拿到了订单。

“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”

另一名前苹果高管说，“整条供应链如今都在中国。需要1000个橡胶垫圈吗？隔壁就有这样的工厂。需要100万个螺丝钉吗？厂子就在一个街区之外。需要对螺丝钉做一点小小的改动吗？三个小时就可以办到。”

In Foxconn City

走进“富士康城”

An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.

距那家玻璃厂8小时车程的地方是一大片俗称“富士康城”(Foxconn City)的建筑，iPhone的装配线就在那里。在苹果管理层看来，富士康城进一步证明了一个事实：中国有能力提供比美国同行更好的工人，勤勉的态度也超过美国。

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.

原因在于，美国根本找不出像富士康城这样的东西。

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said.

这片厂区有23万员工，其中许多人都是每周工作6天，一天的工作时间经常会达到12小时。超过四分之一的富士康员工住在公司的宿舍里，许多工人的日薪都不到17美元。一名苹果管理人员曾经在换班的时候进入工厂，他的轿车卡在了川流的员工之中。“这样的规模真是难以想象，”他说。

Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.

富士康雇了将近300名保安来引导步行的人流，免得工人堵在门口的狭窄区域。厂区的主食堂平均每天消耗3吨猪肉和13吨大米。厂房虽然一尘不染，附近的茶馆里却弥漫着烟雾和臭烘烘的烟草味道。

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

富士康科技公司(Foxconn Technology)在亚洲、东欧、墨西哥和巴西拥有数十家工厂，组装的电子消费品估计占世界总量的40%，客户都是亚马逊(Amazon)、戴尔(Dell)、惠普(Hewlett-Packard)、摩托罗拉(Motorola)、任天堂(Nintendo)、诺基亚(Nokia)、三星(Samsung)和索尼(Sony)之类的公司。

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

詹妮弗·瑞格尼(Jennifer Rigoni)担任苹果公司全球供需经理至2010年，但却拒绝谈论自己的工作细节。她说，“他们可以在一夜之间雇来三千人。哪家美国工厂能在一夜之间雇来三千人、说服他们住进宿舍呢？”

In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple’s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone’s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.

2007年中期，做了一个月的实验之后，苹果公司的技师最终拿出了一个完善的办法，可以把强化玻璃板切割成适合iPhone的屏幕。据一名前苹果公司管理人员所说，夜深人静的时候，运送第一批玻璃屏幕的卡车才抵达富士康城。各位工头立刻叫醒了数千名工人，工人手忙脚乱地穿上制服——男制服是黑白衬衫，女制服则是红色——迅速排成队伍，开始手工组装手机。不到三个月，苹果公司就卖出了100万部iPhone。那之后，富士康又组装了超过2亿部iPhone。

Foxconn, in statements, declined to speak about specific clients.

富士康在声明当中拒绝对具体的客户发表意见。

“Any worker recruited by our firm is covered by a clear contract outlining terms and conditions and by Chinese government law that protects their rights,” the company wrote. Foxconn “takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our more than one million employees a safe and positive environment.”

该公司在书面声明当中宣称，“本公司招募的所有员工都签有列明各种条款及工作条件的合同，受到中国劳动法的保护。”富士康“认真履行对员工的责任，努力为百万有余的员工提供安全有益的工作环境”。

The company disputed some details of the former Apple executive’s account, and wrote that a midnight shift, such as the one described, was impossible “because we have strict regulations regarding the working hours of our employees based on their designated shifts, and every employee has computerized timecards that would bar them from working at any facility at a time outside of their approved shift.” The company said that all shifts began at either 7 a.m. or 7 p.m., and that employees receive at least 12 hours’ notice of any schedule changes.

富士康对那名前苹果管理人员讲述的一些细节提出了异议，并在书面声明当中指出，所谓的午夜班根本不可能存在，“因为我们为不同班次员工的工作时间制定了严格的规章，所有的员工都有电子计时卡，根本不可能在规定班次之外的时间进厂工作。”公司还说，所有班次要么是从早上7点开始，要么就是从晚上7 点开始，如果有所变更，公司会提前至少12个小时通知员工。

Foxconn employees, in interviews, have challenged those assertions.

接受采访的时候，富士康的员工对公司的说法提出了质疑。

Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.

对苹果公司来说，另一个至关重要的有利条件是中国可以提供大量技师，数目令美国望尘莫及。按照苹果管理层之前的估计，生产iPhone最终要用到20万名装配线工人，需要大约8700名工业技师来承担监督和指导的职责。苹果公司的分析师预计，要想在美国找到这么多的合格技师，所需时间将会长达9个月。

In China, it took 15 days.

到了中国，这件事情只花了15天的时间。

Companies like Apple “say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,” said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand,” Mr. Schmidt said.

麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)副教务长马丁·施密特(Martin Schmidt)说，苹果之类的公司“宣称，在美国建厂的难点在于寻找技术工人”。这些公司还说，具体说来，他们需要的技师应该受过超过高中生的教育，但又不是非得拥有学士学位。管理人员们坚称，这种层次的技师在美国非常难找。施密特先生说，“这样的工作相当不错，美国却找不出足够的人来填补这些空缺。”

Some aspects of the iPhone are uniquely American. The device’s software, for instance, and its innovative marketing campaigns were largely created in the United States. Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea.

iPhone具有一些美国独有的特色，软件就是其中一例，与此同时，它新颖的营销手段也基本上源自美国。不久之前，苹果公司在北卡罗莱纳建立了一个耗资5亿美元的数据中心。用于iPhone 4和4S的关键性半导体由韩国的三星公司提供，产地则是位于德克萨斯州奥斯丁(Austin)的一家工厂。

But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple’s North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.

但是，以上这些设施并不能提供大量的工作机会。举例来说，苹果的北卡罗莱纳中心只有100名全职员工。据估计，三星的奥斯丁工厂也只有2400名工人。

“If you scale up from selling one million phones to 30 million phones, you don’t really need more programmers,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, who oversaw product development and marketing for Apple until he left in 1990. “All these new companies — Facebook, Google, Twitter — benefit from this. They grow, but they don’t really need to hire much.”

让-路易斯·卡西(Jean-Louis Gassée)曾经负责苹果公司的产品开发和营销，于1990年去职。他说，“即便手机销量从100万部增加到了3000万部，你也用不着更多的程序员。包括Facebook、谷歌和推特(Twitter)在内，所有的新公司都尝到了这种甜头。他们不断成长，但却不需要雇用太多的人。”

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.

在美国生产iPhone会增加多少成本，相关的数字很难估算。不过，按照多位学者和制造业分析师的估计，由于人力成本对高科技制造业来说微不足道，支付美国标准的薪金会让每部iPhone的成本增加至多65美元。鉴于苹果公司从每部手机收获的利润往往可以达到数百美元，从理论上说，即便在美国生产手机，苹果公司依然可以得到相当不错的收益。

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.

然而，这样的分析从很多方面来说都没有什么意义，原因在于，在美国生产手机的条件远不只是雇用美国人那么简单，还意味着要对美国乃至全球经济进行调整。苹果管理层认为，美国就是没有那么多符合公司需要的工人，也没有速度够快、灵活性够大的工厂。康宁公司之类的苹果合作方也宣称，他们必须走向海外。

Manufacturing glass for the iPhone revived a Corning factory in Kentucky, and today, much of the glass in iPhones is still made there. After the iPhone became a success, Corning received a flood of orders from other companies hoping to imitate Apple’s designs. Its strengthened glass sales have grown to more than $700 million a year, and it has hired or continued employing about 1,000 Americans to support the emerging market.

苹果公司的玻璃订单让康宁公司设在肯塔基州的一家工厂获得了新生，时至今日，用于iPhone的大部分玻璃仍然产于此地。iPhone大获成功之后，康宁公司从急欲模仿苹果设计的各家公司那里接到了一大堆订单。它的强化玻璃年销售额增长到了7亿美元以上。为了满足新起的市场需求，公司雇用了或说是保留了大约1千名美国员工。

But as that market has expanded, the bulk of Corning’s strengthened glass manufacturing has occurred at plants in Japan and Taiwan.

不过，随着市场的扩张，康宁公司已经把大部分的强化玻璃生产任务转到了位于日本和台湾的工厂。

“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”

康宁公司副主席兼首席财务官詹姆斯·B·弗罗斯(James B. Flaws)说，“我们的客户来自台湾、韩国、日本和中国大陆。我们固然可以在美国生产玻璃，然后再用船运过去，航程却长达35天。我们也可以改用空运，可空运的费用是海运的10倍。既然如此，我们就把玻璃厂开在了那些组装厂的隔壁，那些组装厂都在国外。”

Corning was founded in America 161 years ago and its headquarters are still in upstate New York. Theoretically, the company could manufacture all its glass domestically. But it would “require a total overhaul in how the industry is structured,” Mr. Flaws said. “The consumer electronics business has become an Asian business. As an American, I worry about that, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Asia has become what the U.S. was for the last 40 years.”

161年前，康宁公司在美国诞生，时至今日，它的总部依然位于纽约州北部。理论上说，公司可以把所有的玻璃生产任务放在国内。但是，弗罗斯先生说，这就“需要对整个行业的结构来一次全面调整。电子消费品行业已经变成了亚洲的独门生意。身为美国人，我对这种状况感到担心，可我没办法阻止这样的势头。亚洲已经取代了美国在过去40年当中的地位。”

Middle-Class Jobs Fade

中产阶级工作萎缩

The first time Eric Saragoza stepped into Apple’s manufacturing plant in Elk Grove, Calif., he felt as if he were entering an engineering wonderland.

第一次踏进加州埃克格鲁夫那家苹果工厂的时候，埃里克·萨拉戈萨(Eric Saragoza)恍然觉得，自己走进了一处工程技术的仙境。

It was 1995, and the facility near Sacramento employed more than 1,500 workers. It was a kaleidoscope of robotic arms, conveyor belts ferrying circuit boards and, eventually, candy-colored iMacs in various stages of assembly. Mr. Saragoza, an engineer, quickly moved up the plant’s ranks and joined an elite diagnostic team. His salary climbed to $50,000. He and his wife had three children. They bought a home with a pool.

当时是1995年，这家邻近萨克拉门托(Sacramento)的工厂雇用了超过1500名工人。厂房里面就像是一个万花筒，有各式各样的机械手，有承载着各种电路板的传送带，最后还有处于各个装配流程的花花绿绿的苹果电脑。身为技师的萨拉戈萨先生在厂里的地位迅速攀升，很快就进入了负责诊断产品问题的精英团队，薪水也增加到了5万美元。他和妻子生了三个孩子，还买了一幢带游泳池的房子。

“It felt like, finally, school was paying off,” he said. “I knew the world needed people who can build things.”

他说，“当时的感觉就是，我的学总算是没有白上。我早就知道，这个世界需要会做东西的人。”

At the same time, however, the electronics industry was changing, and Apple — with products that were declining in popularity — was struggling to remake itself. One focus was improving manufacturing. A few years after Mr. Saragoza started his job, his bosses explained how the California plant stacked up against overseas factories: the cost, excluding the materials, of building a $1,500 computer in Elk Grove was $22 a machine. In Singapore, it was $6. In Taiwan, $4.85. Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task.

与此同时，电子产业却起了变化。由于产品销势每况愈下，苹果公司正在奋力进行自我改造。萨拉戈萨先生入职几年之后，他的老板谈起了加州工厂相对于海外工厂的劣势：刨去原材料不算，在埃克格鲁夫生产一台售价1500美元的电脑需要22美元的成本，在新加坡生产的成本是6美元，台湾则是4.85美元。造成差距的主要原因并不是工资，而是仓储之类的成本，以及工人完成活计的速度。

“We were told we would have to do 12-hour days, and come in on Saturdays,” Mr. Saragoza said. “I had a family. I wanted to see my kids play soccer.”

萨拉戈萨先生说，“老板告诉我们，我们必须每天工作12个小时，星期六也得上班。可我是个有家有口的人，还想看我的孩子们踢足球呢。”

Modernization has always caused some kinds of jobs to change or disappear. As the American economy transitioned from agriculture to manufacturing and then to other industries, farmers became steelworkers, and then salesmen and middle managers. These shifts have carried many economic benefits, and in general, with each progression, even unskilled workers received better wages and greater chances at upward mobility.

现代化的进程总是会让一些工作变化或者消失。美国经济先是从农业转型为制造业，然后又转入其他产业，在此期间，农夫变成了钢铁工人，跟着又变成了推销员或者中层管理人员。这样的转变带来了许多经济效益，总体说来，即便是没有技术的工人也可以通过每一次的转变获得更高的工资，获得更大的上升机会。

But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.

然而，经济学家们指出，过去20年当中，某种更为根本的东西发生了改变。中等收入的工作开始消失。今天的新工作过多地集中于餐馆职员、接线员、医院护理人员和临时杂工之类的服务性岗位，这些岗位提供不了多少升入中产阶级的机会。对于没有大学学位的美国人来说，情况尤其如此。

Even Mr. Saragoza, with his college degree, was vulnerable to these trends. First, some of Elk Grove’s routine tasks were sent overseas. Mr. Saragoza didn’t mind. Then the robotics that made Apple a futuristic playground allowed executives to replace workers with machines. Some diagnostic engineering went to Singapore. Middle managers who oversaw the plant’s inventory were laid off because, suddenly, a few people with Internet connections were all that were needed.

即便是拥有大学学位的萨拉戈萨先生也抵挡不住这样的势头。刚开始，公司把埃克格鲁夫工厂的一些日常工作交到了海外，萨拉戈萨先生没有在意。接下来，人工智能设备把苹果公司变成了一个未来主义风格的游乐场，也给公司管理层提供了用机器取代工人的机会。公司把一部分的问题诊断工作交给了新加坡。管理工厂库存的中层纷纷下岗，原因在于，公司突然发现，有那么几个连着网的人就够用了。

Mr. Saragoza was too expensive for an unskilled position. He was also insufficiently credentialed for upper management. He was called into a small office in 2002 after a night shift, laid off and then escorted from the plant. He taught high school for a while, and then tried a return to technology. But Apple, which had helped anoint the region as “Silicon Valley North,” had by then converted much of the Elk Grove plant into an AppleCare call center, where new employees often earn $12 an hour.

萨拉戈萨先生身价太高，没法安排不需要技术的工作。与此同时，他又不具备担任高层管理人员的资质。2002年的一次夜班之后，上头把他叫进一间小办公室，辞退了他，然后就让人送他出厂。他教了一阵高中，跟着又尝试重返科技行业。然而，到那个时候，曾经帮助该地区赢得“北方硅谷”美名的苹果公司已经把埃克格鲁夫工厂的大部分改造成了一个售后服务电话中心，新员工的时薪通常只有12美元。

There were employment prospects in Silicon Valley, but none of them panned out. “What they really want are 30-year-olds without children,” said Mr. Saragoza, who today is 48, and whose family now includes five of his own.

硅谷倒是有工作机会，只可惜都没有变成现实。萨拉戈萨先生现年48岁，家里已经有了5个孩子。他说，“他们真正想要的是30来岁、没有孩子的人。”

After a few months of looking for work, he started feeling desperate. Even teaching jobs had dried up. So he took a position with an electronics temp agency that had been hired by Apple to check returned iPhones and iPads before they were sent back to customers. Every day, Mr. Saragoza would drive to the building where he had once worked as an engineer, and for $10 an hour with no benefits, wipe thousands of glass screens and test audio ports by plugging in headphones.

找了几个月工作之后，他产生了绝望的感觉。就连教书的工作也已经无处寻觅了。于是乎，他在一家电子行业临时工介绍所找了个工作，苹果公司雇那家介绍所来检修退回的iPhone和iPad，然后再把机器还给顾客。萨拉戈萨先生每天都要开车去他曾经担任技师的那座大楼，在那里擦洗数以千计的玻璃屏幕、插入耳机以测试音频接口，时薪10美元，没有福利。

Paydays for Apple

苹果公司的发财日子

As Apple’s overseas operations and sales have expanded, its top employees have thrived. Last fiscal year, Apple’s revenue topped $108 billion, a sum larger than the combined state budgets of Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Since 2005, when the company’s stock split, share prices have risen from about $45 to more than $427.

苹果公司的海外业务及销量膨胀之际，公司高层也大发其财。上一个财政年度，苹果公司的收入高达1080亿美元，超过密歇根、新泽西和马萨诸塞三州预算的总和。2005年拆分股份之后，苹果的股价已经从45美元左右涨到了427美元以上。

Some of that wealth has gone to shareholders. Apple is among the most widely held stocks, and the rising share price has benefited millions of individual investors, 401(k)’s and pension plans. The bounty has also enriched Apple workers. Last fiscal year, in addition to their salaries, Apple’s employees and directors received stock worth $2 billion and exercised or vested stock and options worth an added $1.4 billion.

一部分的财富落到了股东手里。苹果股票是股东最分散的股票之一，高涨的股价让数百万个人投资者、401(k)基金和养老基金从中受益，也让苹果的工人发财致富。上一个财政年度，除了工资之外，苹果的员工和经理还得到了总值超过20亿美元的股票，兑现或生效的股票及期权总值也达到了14亿美元。

The biggest rewards, however, have often gone to Apple’s top employees. Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief, last year received stock grants — which vest over a 10-year period — that, at today’s share price, would be worth $427 million, and his salary was raised to $1.4 million. In 2010, Mr. Cook’s compensation package was valued at $59 million, according to Apple’s security filings.

不过，最大的受益者通常都是苹果公司的高层管理人员。去年，苹果首席执行官库克先生获得了将在10年之内逐步生效的大量赠与股，按现在的股价计算，这些股票的价值是4.27亿美元。除此之外，他的薪水也涨到了140万美元。苹果公司的证券披露材料显示，2010年，库克先生的薪酬包总值为5900万美元。

A person close to Apple argued that the compensation received by Apple’s employees was fair, in part because the company had brought so much value to the nation and world. As the company has grown, it has expanded its domestic work force, including manufacturing jobs. Last year, Apple’s American work force grew by 8,000 people.

一名与苹果公司关联紧密的人士宣称，苹果员工的薪酬是合理的，部分是因为苹果公司为美国乃至全世界创造了如此庞大的价值。随着业务的发展，公司已经扩大了国内员工的规模，包括从事制造业的员工。去年，苹果公司在美国的雇员增加了八千人。

While other companies have sent call centers abroad, Apple has kept its centers in the United States. One source estimated that sales of Apple’s products have caused other companies to hire tens of thousands of Americans. FedEx and United Parcel Service, for instance, both say they have created American jobs because of the volume of Apple’s shipments, though neither would provide specific figures without permission from Apple, which the company declined to provide.

其他公司纷纷将电话中心迁往海外，苹果公司却把自己的电话中心留在了美国。某消息来源估计，苹果产品的销售已经促使其他公司雇用了数以万计的美国人。举例来说，联邦快递(FedEx)和UPS宣称，由于苹果产品带来的巨大运输量，他们都为美国人提供了更多的工作机会。不过，两家公司都不愿意提供具体的数字，说是需要得到苹果公司的许可，与此同时，苹果公司拒绝提供这样的许可。

“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive said. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”

苹果公司的一名现职管理人员说，“我们雇用中国工人的做法无可指责，因为美国已经不能提供我们需要的人才了。”

What’s more, Apple sources say the company has created plenty of good American jobs inside its retail stores and among entrepreneurs selling iPhone and iPad applications.

除此之外，苹果方面的消息来源说，公司已经为美国人创造了大量的好工作，有的岗位是在苹果的零售店里，还有的是在销售iPhone和iPad应用软件的商家那里。

After two months of testing iPads, Mr. Saragoza quit. The pay was so low that he was better off, he figured, spending those hours applying for other jobs. On a recent October evening, while Mr. Saragoza sat at his MacBook and submitted another round of résumés online, halfway around the world a woman arrived at her office. The worker, Lina Lin, is a project manager in Shenzhen, China, at PCH International, which contracts with Apple and other electronics companies to coordinate production of accessories, like the cases that protect the iPad’s glass screens. She is not an Apple employee. But Mrs. Lin is integral to Apple’s ability to deliver its products.

做了两个月iPad测试工作之后，萨拉戈萨先生辞了职。按他的盘算，与其忍受这么低的薪水，还不如把时间用来寻找别的工作。不久之前的一个十月夜晚，萨拉戈萨先生坐在自己的苹果笔记本跟前，又在网上发了一轮简历。与此同时，半个地球之外，一位女士走进了自己的办公室。这位女士名叫林丽娜（音译），是PCH国际公司深圳分公司的项目经理，该公司与苹果等电子公司签有合约，负责协调配件生产，比如iPad玻璃屏幕的保护套。林女士不是苹果雇员，但却为苹果的生产能力发挥着不可或缺的作用。

Mrs. Lin earns a bit less than what Mr. Saragoza was paid by Apple. She speaks fluent English, learned from watching television and in a Chinese university. She and her husband put a quarter of their salaries in the bank every month. They live in a 1,080-square-foot apartment, which they share with their in-laws and son.

林女士的工资略少于萨拉戈萨先生受雇于苹果时的工资。通过看电视和中国一所大学的教育，她学会了一口流利的英语。每个月，她和丈夫都会把四分之一的工资存入银行。夫妻俩住在一套108平方米的公寓里，同住的还有儿子和姻亲。

“There are lots of jobs,” Mrs. Lin said. “Especially in Shenzhen.”

“工作机会多得很，”林女士说，“尤其是在深圳。”

Innovation’s Losers

创新浪潮的输家

Toward the end of Mr. Obama’s dinner last year with Mr. Jobs and other Silicon Valley executives, as everyone stood to leave, a crowd of photo seekers formed around the president. A slightly smaller scrum gathered around Mr. Jobs. Rumors had spread that his illness had worsened, and some hoped for a photograph with him, perhaps for the last time.

去年，奥巴马先生与乔布斯先生及其他硅谷高管的那场晚宴临近尾声的时候，所有人都起身准备离开。一群想要合影的人围在了总统身边，乔布斯先生身边也围起了一群规模略小的人。关于他病情恶化的流言已经传开，有些人希望跟他合个影，没准儿是最后一次了呢。

Eventually, the orbits of the men overlapped. “I’m not worried about the country’s long-term future,” Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama, according to one observer. “This country is insanely great. What I’m worried about is that we don’t talk enough about solutions.”

到最后，两个人走到了一起。按照一名旁观者的叙述，乔布斯先生对奥巴马先生说，“我并不为国家的长远前途担心。这个国家棒极了。我只是担心，我们关于解决方案的探讨不够彻底。”

At dinner, for instance, the executives had suggested that the government should reform visa programs to help companies hire foreign engineers. Some had urged the president to give companies a “tax holiday” so they could bring back overseas profits which, they argued, would be used to create work. Mr. Jobs even suggested it might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple’s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.

举例来说，晚宴过程之中，各位高管曾经建议政府修改签证政策，为各家公司雇请外国技师打开方便之门。有些人敦促总统给各家公司一个“税负假期”，好让他们把海外利润转回国内，同时还说，他们会用这些利润来创造工作机会。乔布斯先生甚至提出，如果政府愿意协助培训美国技师的话，有朝一日，苹果兴许会把一部分高技能制造业务迁回美国。

Economists debate the usefulness of those and other efforts, and note that a struggling economy is sometimes transformed by unexpected developments. The last time analysts wrung their hands about prolonged American unemployment, for instance, in the early 1980s, the Internet hardly existed. Few at the time would have guessed that a degree in graphic design was rapidly becoming a smart bet, while studying telephone repair a dead end.

经济学家们就以上及其他一些措施的效用争论不休，同时指出，有些时候，意料之外的发展会为步履艰难的经济带来转机。举例来说，分析师们上一次为美国失业率高居不下而揪心的情形出现在20世纪80年代早期，那个时候，互联网几乎还不存在。当时很少有人能够想到，平面设计学位会迅速成为一个精明的赌注，与此同时，电话修理却会变成一个没有前途的专业。

What remains unknown, however, is whether the United States will be able to leverage tomorrow’s innovations into millions of jobs.

不过，美国能不能把未来的技术革新变成千百万个工作机会，眼下还是个未知之数。

In the last decade, technological leaps in solar and wind energy, semiconductor fabrication and display technologies have created thousands of jobs. But while many of those industries started in America, much of the employment has occurred abroad. Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple’s growth and profit margins, they won’t survive.

过去10年当中，太阳能、风能、半导体制造以及显示技术方面的技术飞跃已经带来了数以千计的工作机会。这类产业有许多都是发源于美国，由此而来的大部分工作机会却落到了国外。各家公司纷纷关闭在美国的大型设施，为的是在中国重新开张。公司管理层的说辞是，他们这么做，是为了跟苹果争夺投资者。要是增长速度和利润率赶不上苹果的话，他们就无法生存。

“New middle-class jobs will eventually emerge,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. “But will someone in his 40s have the skills for them? Or will he be bypassed for a new graduate and never find his way back into the middle class?”

哈佛大学的经济学家劳伦斯·凯茨(Lawrence Katz)说，“新的中产阶级工作机会终将出现。可是，那些40多岁的人具备赢得机会的技能吗？他们会不会被刚刚毕业的大学生抢在头里、再也无法回到中产阶级的行列呢？”

The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay.

来自多个产业的管理人员纷纷表示，乔布斯先生之类的商人加快了创新的速度。在以前，通用公司要等长达五年的时间才会对车型进行大幅度修改。反观苹果公司，它在4年之内就推出了5款iPhone，手机的速度和内存都翻了倍，针对部分用户的售价却有所降低。

Before Mr. Obama and Mr. Jobs said goodbye, the Apple executive pulled an iPhone from his pocket to show off a new application — a driving game — with incredibly detailed graphics. The device reflected the soft glow of the room’s lights. The other executives, whose combined worth exceeded $69 billion, jostled for position to glance over his shoulder. The game, everyone agreed, was wonderful.

跟奥巴马先生道别之前，乔布斯先生从兜里掏出了一部iPhone，为的是炫耀一款影像效果无比精细的应用软件——一款驾驶游戏。手机反射着房间里的柔和光线，身价总和超过690亿美元的其他高管争先恐后地隔着他的肩膀观赏游戏画面。所有的人众口一词，这款游戏妙不可言。

There wasn’t even a tiny scratch on the screen.

手机屏幕之上，不见丝毫划痕。

On New Year’s Day, Jonathan Rinderknecht purportedly asked ChatGPT: “Are you at fault if a fire is lift because of your cigarettes,” misspelling the word “lit.” “Yes,” ChatGPT replied. Ten months later, he is now being accused of having started a small blaze that authorities say reignited a week later to start the devastating Palisades fire.

元旦那天，乔纳森·林德克内希特据称问了ChatGPT这样一个问题：“如果因为你的香烟引起了火灾，这算是你的错吗？”ChatGPT回答说：“是的。”10个月后，他现在被指控纵火——当局称他引发了一场小火，火在一周后复燃，最终酿成帕利塞兹特大火。

Mr. Rinderknecht, who has pleaded not guilty, had previously told the chatbot how “amazing” it had felt to burn a Bible months prior, according to a federal complaint, and had also asked it to create a “dystopian” painting of a crowd of poor people fleeing a forest fire while a crowd of rich people mocked them behind a gate.

根据联邦起诉书，此前林德克内希特曾向聊天机器人透露数月前焚烧圣经带来的“奇妙”感受，还要求其创作一幅“反乌托邦”画作：描绘一群穷人逃离森林大火时，一群富人隔门嘲讽的场景。目前被告已作无罪抗辩。

For federal authorities, these interactions with artificial intelligence indicated Mr. Rinderknecht’s pyrotechnic state of mind and motive and intent to start the fire. Along with GPS data that they say puts him at the scene of the initial blaze, it was enough to arrest and charge him with several counts, including destruction of property by means of fire.

联邦当局认为，这些与人工智能的互动印证了林德克内希特的纵火心理、动机与意图。结合将其定位在初始火源现场的GPS数据，足以将其逮捕并提出多项指控，包括纵火破坏财产。

This disturbing development is a warning for our legal system. As people increasingly turn to A.I. chat tools as confidants, therapists and advisers, we urgently need a new form of legal protection that would safeguard most private communications between people and A.I. chatbots. I call it A.I. interaction privilege.

这一令人不安的进展为司法体系敲响警钟。随着越来越多的人将AI聊天工具视为知己、心理治疗师和顾问，我们亟需建立新型法律保护机制，守护人机对话的隐私屏障。我称其为“AI交互特权”。

All legal privileges rest on the idea that certain relationships — lawyer and client, doctor and patient, priest and penitent — serve a social good that depends on candor. Without assurance of privacy, people self-censor and society loses the benefits of honesty. Courts have historically been reluctant to create new privileges, except where “confidentiality has to be absolutely essential to the functioning of the relationship,” Greg Mitchell, a University of Virginia law professor, told me. Many users’ engagements with A.I. now reach this threshold.

所有法律特权都基于同一理念：律师与客户、医生与患者、神父与忏悔者等特定关系，依赖坦诚交流才能促进整个社会的福祉。若无隐私保障，人们便会自我审查，而社会也将失去诚实带来的益处。弗吉尼亚大学法学教授格雷格·米切尔告诉我，法院历来不愿创设新特权，除非“保密性成为维系该关系的绝对必要条件”。如今，众多用户与AI的交互已达到了这一门槛。

People speak increasingly freely to A.I. systems, not as diaries but as partners in conversation. That’s because these systems hold conversations that are often indistinguishable from human dialogue. The machine seemingly listens, reasons and provides responses — in some cases not just reflecting but shaping how users think and feel. A.I. systems can draw users out, just as a good lawyer or therapist does. Many people turn to A.I. precisely because they lack a safe and affordable human outlet for taboo or vulnerable thoughts.

人们越来越自然地与人工智能系统交谈，不再把它用作日记，而是视其为对话伙伴。因为这些系统进行的对话已与人类交流无异。机器似乎在倾听、推理、回应——在某些情况下，它不仅反映用户的思想和情感，甚至对其加以塑造。人工智能系统能像优秀的律师或心理治疗师一样引导人们表达自己。许多人之所以求助于人工智能，正是因为他们缺乏一个安全且负担得起的人类对象来倾诉禁忌或脆弱的想法。

This is arguably by design. Just last month the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, announced that the next iteration of its ChatGPT platform would “relax” some restrictions on users and allow them to make their ChatGPT “respond in a very humanlike way.”

这在某种程度上可以说是设计使然。就在上个月，OpenAI首席执行官萨姆·奥尔特曼宣布，其ChatGPT平台的下一代版本将“放宽”部分用户限制，允许用户让自己的ChatGPT“以高度人性化的方式回应”。

Allowing the government to access such unfiltered exchanges and treat them as legal confessions would have a massive chilling effect. If every private thought experiment can later be weaponized in court, users of A.I. will censor themselves, undermining some of the most valuable uses of these systems. It will destroy the candid relationship that makes A.I. useful for mental health and legal and financial problem-solving, turning a potentially powerful tool for self-discovery and self-representation into a potential legal liability.

让政府获取这些未经筛选的交流内容并将其视为法律供词，将产生巨大的寒蝉效应。如果每个私密的思想实验日后都可能成为法庭上的武器，AI用户必将自我审查，从而削弱这些系统一些最具价值的功能。这将摧毁人工智能在心理健康、法律和财务问题的解决过程中所依赖的那种坦诚关系，把这种本可成为自我探索与自我表达的强大工具变成潜在的法律风险。

At present, most digital interactions fall under the Third-Party Doctrine, which holds that information voluntarily disclosed to other parties — or stored on a company’s servers — carries “no legitimate expectation of privacy.” This doctrine allows government access to much online behavior (such as Google search histories) without a warrant.

目前，大多数数字互动都属于“第三方原则”的范畴。该原则认为，任何自愿向第三方披露的信息——或存储在企业服务器上的数据——都“不具备合法的隐私期待”。这使政府能够在无需搜查令的情况下获取大量线上行为记录（例如谷歌搜索历史）。

But are A.I. conversations “voluntary disclosures” in this sense? Since many users approach these systems not as search engines but as private counselors, the legal standard should evolve to reflect that expectation of discretion. A.I. companies already hold more intimate data than any therapist or lawyer ever could. Yet they have no clear legal duty to protect it.

但AI对话是否属于此种意义上的"自愿披露"？既然众多用户将这些系统视为私人顾问而非搜索引擎，法律标准就应当与时俱进，以反映这种保密期待。AI企业掌握的私人数据量，已超越任何心理治疗师或律师所能触及的私密范畴，至今却未承担明确的法律保护责任。

A.I. interaction privilege should mirror existing legal privileges in three respects. First, communications with the A.I. for the purpose of seeking counsel or emotional processing should be protected from forced disclosure in court. Users could designate protected sessions through app settings or claim privilege during legal discovery if the context of the conversation supports it. Second, this privilege must incorporate the so-called duty to warn principle, which obliges therapists to report imminent threats of harm. If an A.I. service reasonably believes a user poses an immediate danger to self or others or has already caused harm, disclosure should be not just permitted, but obligated. And third, there must be an exception for crime and fraud. If A.I. is used to plan or execute a crime, it should be discoverable under judicial oversight.

“AI交互特权”应在三个方面借鉴现有的法律特权。首先，为寻求咨询或情绪疏导而与人工智能进行的交流，应受到保护，免于在法庭上被强制披露。用户可以通过应用程序的设置来指定受保护的会话，或在法律取证阶段主张特权，只要对话的上下文支持这一主张。其次，该特权必须纳入所谓的“警示义务”原则，即AI服务合理判定认为当事人对自己或他人构成迫在眉睫的威胁或者已造成实际伤害时，有义务报告。第三，必须为犯罪和欺诈行为设立例外。若AI被用于策划或实施犯罪，相关对话记录应在司法监督下作为证据调取。

Under this logic, Mr. Rinderknecht’s case reveals both the need and the limits of such protection. His cigarette query, functionally equivalent to an internet search, would not merit privilege. But under A.I. interaction privilege, his confession about Bible burning should be protected. It was neither a plan for a crime nor an imminent threat.

按照这种逻辑，林德克内希特的案件同时揭示了这种保护的必要性与局限性。他关于香烟引发火灾的提问，本质上等同于一次互联网搜索，不应享有特权保护；但根据“AI交互特权”，他关于焚烧《圣经》的坦白则应受到保护——那既不是犯罪计划，也不是迫在眉睫的威胁。

Creating a new privilege follows the law’s pattern of adapting to new forms of trust. The psychotherapist-patient privilege itself was only formally recognized in 1996, when the Supreme Court acknowledged the therapeutic value of confidentiality. The same logic applies to A.I. now: The social benefit of candid interaction outweighs the cost of occasional lost evidence.

建立一种新的特权符合法律不断适应新型信任关系的演进模式。心理治疗师与病人之间的保密特权本身直到1996年才被正式承认，当时美国最高法院认定保密对心理治疗具有重要价值。同样的逻辑如今也适用于AI：坦诚交互带来的社会效益，远超过偶尔失去某些证据的代价。

To leave these conversations legally unprotected is to invite a regime where citizens must fear that their digital introspection could someday be used against them. Private thought — whether spoken to a lawyer, a therapist or a machine — must remain free from the fear of state intrusion.

若放任这些人机对话处于法律真空，将导致公民终日担忧数字化自省可能某天成为呈堂证供。无论是与律师、治疗师，还是与机器的私密交流——都必须享有免于恐惧国家窥探的自由。

China’s nuclear forces are expanding quickly. Yet behind that rise, the top leader Xi Jinping’s sweeping purge of generals and military leaders has exposed deep-seated corruption and raised questions about the country’s ability to manage its growing arsenal.

中国的核力量正在迅速扩张。然而，在这股上升势头背后，最高领导人习近平对将领和军事领导人的大规模清洗暴露了根深蒂固的腐败问题，并令人们质疑中国能否有效管理日益扩大的核武库。

The uncertainty adds to concerns about a new era of volatility in global nuclear politics, as President Trump has called for renewed U.S. testing and as Washington is also pushing through major changes in its military.

这种不确定性加剧了人们对全球核政治动荡新时代的担忧，如今特朗普总统已呼吁美国重新进行核试验，华盛顿也在推动其军队的重大改革。

President Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired or sidelined at least two dozen generals and admirals over the past nine months, actions that are without precedent in recent decades, and have come with little explanation. The shake-up has raised fears of growing political interference in a military that has long prided itself on being apolitical.

在华盛顿，特朗普总统的国防部长皮特·海格赛斯在过去九个月里撤换或边缘化了至少20多名陆军和海军上将，而且几乎没有任何解释，这样的行动在近几十年来是没有前例的。这些人事变动引发了人们的担忧——长期以来一直以不涉及政治而自豪的军方受到越来越多的政治干预。

9月在弗吉尼亚州匡蒂科，国防部长皮特·黑格塞斯在台下听特朗普的演讲。

In Beijing, Mr. Xi’s purges in the People’s Liberation Army cut far deeper. He has carried out a cleanup that has shaken the Rocket Force, the branch that oversees China’s nuclear forces and is a crucial part of Mr. Xi’s ambition to build a “world-class military” by 2049. Top commanders have disappeared. Others have been jailed. And defense contractors have been stripped of their party titles and detained for investigation.

在北京，习近平在解放军内部的清洗行动更为深入。他主导的整肃震动了火箭军——这个掌管中国核力量的军种，也是习近平实现2049年建成“世界一流军队”目标的关键支柱。一些高级将领消失。有的被判入狱。国防承包商被开除党籍、被拘留接受调查。

While Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth’s motivations in reshaping the U.S. military are not entirely clear, Mr. Xi’s purges stem from a lesson he has drawn from history: that the Communist Party survives only when the army obeys one leader without question.

特朗普和海格赛斯重塑美军的动机尚不完全明确，但习近平的清洗行动源于他从历史中汲取的教训：只有军队绝对服从一位领导者，共产党才能生存下去。

Early in his rule, Mr. Xi warned that the Soviet Union collapsed because the party lost control of its military and no “real man” had stepped forward, noted Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at American University who has studied Chinese leaders’ relations with the military.

美利坚大学副教授唐志学(Joseph Torigian)指出，习近平执政初期曾发出警告：苏联解体源于共产党失去对军队的控制，且“竟无一人是男儿”，没有人挺身而出。唐志学长期研究中国领导人与军队的关系。

His military purges likely reflect his obsession with preparing for worst-case scenarios at home and abroad, whether it is protests over economic problems or political suppression, or needing to fight the United States in a war over Taiwan, the democratically governed island Beijing claims as its territory.

他的军队清洗很可能反映出他对国内外最坏局面的执着准备——无论是经济问题引发的抗议、政治镇压需求，还是为争夺台湾而与美国开战的可能。北京声称这个实行民主治理的岛屿是其领土。

“So what’s the biggest threat to building a military that can defeat competitors within the elite, people in the streets, and the Americans in a war?” Mr. Torigian wrote in an email. “Corruption is the ‘key link.’”

“那么，要建立一支能够击败精英阶层的对手、街头民众和战争中美国人的军队，最大的威胁是什么呢？”唐志学在电子邮件中写道。“腐败是‘关键环节’。”

Mr. Xi thinks materialism and corruption are a direct threat to the military’s ability to defeat enemies, Mr. Torigian said. “In Xi’s mind, it makes members of the military vulnerable to Western infiltration, whether literally in terms of becoming an agent, or because Western values lead to a desire to ‘nationalize’ the military and split it from party control.”

唐志学指出，习近平认为物质主义和腐败直接威胁着军队战胜敌人的能力。“在习近平看来，这使军人容易受到西方渗透——无论是字面意义上的成为间谍，还是因西方价值观引发‘军队国家化’诉求而脱离党的控制。”

In a commentary on Tuesday, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army wrote: “For our military, the fight against corruption is a major political struggle that it cannot afford to lose, and must not lose. It concerns the long-term stability of the party and the country, and it concerns ensuring the socialist red state never changes color.”

在发表于周二的一篇评论中，《解放军报》写道：“对我军来说，反腐败斗争是一场输不起也决不能输的重大政治斗争，关系党和国家长治久安，关系社会主义红色江山永不变色。”

That also highlights a major difference between the functions of the militaries in both countries: In China, the military is built to defend the ruling party, primarily; in the United States, it is meant to defend the entire nation and to stand apart from politics.

这也凸显了两国军队职能的重大区别：在中国，军队是为保卫执政党而建立的；在美国，军队是为了保卫整个国家，并需与政治保持距离。

The ousters in China reveal serious dysfunction in the military and muddy confidence in its war readiness. It also suggests that the People’s Liberation Army, or P.L.A., may be one of the few organizations that Mr. Xi, arguably China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has failed to bring under his control.

中国军队的清洗行动暴露了军队内部严重的功能失调，并使人对其战备状态产生疑虑。这也表明，中国人民解放军可能是习近平——这位堪称毛泽东以来中国最有权势的领导人——未能掌控的少数组织之一。

“Corruption has been a very real problem for the P.L.A., and it is, in fact, corrosive for the military, which is why Xi is serious about uprooting it,” said Jonathan Czin, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who previously worked at the C.I.A. analyzing Chinese politics.

布鲁金斯学会研究员秦江南(Jonathan Czin)指出：“腐败问题在解放军中确实存在，且正在腐蚀军队，这正是习近平决心根除腐败的原因。”秦江南曾任职于中央情报局，负责分析中国政治事务。

9月，中国举行阅兵式，展示其日益增强的实力。中国人民解放军肩负着保卫和维护中国共产党的使命。

When Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, the Chinese military was plagued with an image problem as a hotbed of corruption. Senior commanders funded lavish lifestyles through bribery and embezzlement. Promotions were commonly up for sale. And military license plates were sold to civilians as they gave their owners near impunity on China’s roads.

2012年习近平开始执政时，中国军队深陷腐败温床的形象危机。高级指挥官通过受贿贪污维持奢靡生活，军衔晋升普遍存在买卖现象，军用车牌更被转售平民——这些车牌让车主可以享受几乎不受道路执法约束的特殊待遇。

Mr. Xi vowed to professionalize the P.L.A. and ensure that it answered to him as head of the party; he quickly removed rival factions led by commanders that were loyal to past leaders. A decade later, the house cleaning has only intensified, even ensnaring senior leaders who were handpicked by Mr. Xi. That includes Gen. He Weidong, who was third in China’s military hierarchy when he was expelled from the party on Oct. 17, accused of corruption and abuse of power.

习近平誓言要使解放军专业化，并确保军队听命于身为党的最高领导人的他；他迅速清除了由效忠前任领导人的指挥官领导的派系。十年后，这场内部整顿愈演愈烈，甚至牵连到习近平亲自提拔的高层将领。其中包括何卫东上将——这位曾位居中国军方第三把交椅的将领于10月17日被指控贪腐和滥用职权，遭开除党籍。

Other expelled generals included Adm. Miao Hua, who oversaw political discipline in the military and was placed under investigation last year. Another was Gen. Lin Xiangyang, who was in charge of the Eastern Theater Command, which is central to any war over Taiwan.

其他被开除的将领还包括负责军队政治纪律的苗华上将，他于去年接受调查。另一位是林向阳上将，他负责东部战区司令部，该战区是任何针对台湾的战争的核心。

Perhaps most troubling for Mr. Xi are the signs of corruption in the rocket force, which controls nearly all of China’s nuclear missiles and had been considered one of the crown jewels of the Chinese military. Since 2023, the branch has been rocked by a series of purges of senior commanders over corruption that have raised questions about its effectiveness. A Pentagon report last year said fraud in the rocket force led to problems involving the construction of underground missile silos.

对习近平而言，火箭军腐败迹象或许最令人忧心。该军种掌控中国几乎所有核导弹，被视为中国军队“皇冠上的明珠”。自2023年以来，火箭军一直受到一系列高级指挥官腐败整肃的震动，这引发了对其作战效能的质疑。五角大楼去年的一份报告称，火箭军的贪腐行为导致了涉及地下导弹发射井建设的问题。

新型DF-5C战略核导弹于9月在北京天安门广场的阅兵式上首次亮相。

Analysts say the branch is ripe for corruption because it maintains one of the largest budgets in the Chinese military. Unlike warplanes and tanks, missiles are also rarely tested, increasing the difficulty in detecting malfeasance.

分析人士表示，火箭军极易滋生腐败，因为它掌握着中国军队中数一数二的预算。与战机和坦克不同，导弹也很少进行测试，这增加了发现渎职行为的难度。

Some analysts say corruption in the rocket force may also be fueled by skepticism that China will ever go to war. Were there a greater sense of urgency, they argue, there would probably be less chance that defense contractors would cut corners and military leaders would line their pockets.

 一些分析人士说，火箭军的腐败也可能是源于对中国是否会走向战争的怀疑。他们认为，如果有更强烈的紧迫感，国防承包商偷工减料和军方领导人中饱私囊的可能性可能就会降低。

At the same time, China’s military modernization has been advancing apace. A military parade in Beijing earlier this year showed off some of the country’s latest drones, unmanned submarines and hypersonic missiles. Also displayed were the latest ICBMs, a reminder of China’s nuclear weapons buildup that could see the country nearly double its arsenal by 2030.

与此同时，中国的军事现代化建设也在快速推进。今年早些时候在北京举行的阅兵式上，展示了中国一些最新的无人机、无人潜航器和高超音速导弹。同时亮相的还有最新的洲际弹道导弹，展现了中国的核武器建设，到2030年，中国的核武库可能会增加近一倍。

一架中国军用无人作战飞行器亮相9月的阅兵式。

Even though both the American and Chinese militaries are undergoing high-level leadership changes, they each still have deep benches of senior officers to draw from, said Mr. Czin of Brookings.

布鲁金斯学会的秦江南说，尽管中美两国军队都在经历高层领导的更迭，但两国均拥有深厚的军官储备。

The question, though, is whether their leaders’ preoccupations are eroding focus on core missions: China’s drive to take Taiwan, and America’s effort to deter it.

但问题是，两国领导层目前的关注焦点是否会削弱对中国夺取台湾的努力，以及美国对其遏制努力这一核心任务的重视。

Mr. Xi regards the United States as the chief obstacle in realizing his goal of unifying Taiwan with China. American intelligence officials have said that Mr. Xi has ordered that the Chinese military be capable of seizing the self-governed island by 2027, which will be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the P.L.A.

习近平将美国视为实现台湾统一目标的主要障碍。美国情报官员透露，习近平已下令，要求中国军队在2027年——即解放军建军百年之际——具备夺取该自治岛屿的能力。

The rocket force plays prominently in those plans. China has developed anti-ship missiles, known as “carrier killers,” aimed at blocking U.S. aircraft carrier groups from the battle zone in a conflict over Taiwan. It has also built hypersonic missiles designed to strike U.S. bases across the Pacific, including in Guam, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan.

火箭军在这些计划中占有重要地位。中国研发了被称为“航母杀手”的反舰导弹，以求在台湾冲突中阻断美军航母编队进入战场。同时还建造了可打击关岛、菲律宾、韩国和日本等太平洋沿岸美军基地的高超音速导弹。

A bipartisan, congressionally appointed commission warned last year that China was surpassing the United States in military advantage in the Western Pacific because of two decades of focused investment. “Without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor,” the Commission on the National Defense Strategy said.

一个由国会任命的两党委员会去年警告说，由于20年来的集中投资，中国在西太平洋正对美国建立军事优势。“如果美国不做出重大改变，力量平衡将继续向有利于中国的方向倾斜，”国防战略委员会表示。

For China, however, countering the U.S. military is the “first, second and third priority,” Mr. Czin said.

而对于中国来说，对抗美军是“第一、第二和第三优先事项”，秦江南说。

The election of Sanae Takaichi was a milestone moment. The last time a woman led Japan was in 1771, when Empress Go-Sakuramachi sat on the imperial throne.

高市早苗的当选是一个里程碑时刻。日本上一次由女性领导还是1771年，当时在位的是后樱町天皇。

Takaichi’s election means there are now two women who lead their nations in the G7. She joins Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy. Their predecessors include three British prime ministers — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss — Angela Merkel of Germany, Kim Campbell of Canada and Edith Cresson of France.

高市早苗的当选意味着七国集团如今已有两位女性国家领导人。她与意大利总理乔治娅·梅洛尼并肩而立。在她们之前还有三位英国首相——玛格丽特·撒切尔、特蕾莎·梅和利兹·特拉斯，以及德国的安格拉·默克尔、加拿大的金·坎贝尔和法国的伊迪丝·克勒松。

Notice anything about that group?

注意到这个群体的共同点了吗？

With the exception of Cresson, a Socialist who was in power for just under a year, all other female G7 leaders have come from the right.

除了执政不到一年的社会党人克勒松，其他所有七国集团女性领导人都来自右翼。

An exclusive club

一个专属俱乐部

The primary thing women leaders around the world have in common is that there have been very few of them.

全球女性领导人最核心的共同点是：数量极少。

The small numbers, and the fact that these women were elected by different countries at different times, make it hard to deduce patterns. Each person’s rise necessarily involved singular circumstances.

由于人数稀少，且这些女性在不同国家、不同时期当选，难以总结出规律。每个人的崛起都离不开独特的背景环境。

The politics of the women are different too: The center-right Angela Merkel who welcomed migrants into Germany is a very different politician from a Takaichi or a Meloni, both of whom have pushed immigration restrictions.

这些女性的政治立场也各不相同：主张接纳移民的中右翼人士默克尔与推动移民限制的高市早苗和梅洛尼截然不同。

And not all women leaders come from the right. Looking beyond the G7, you can readily find examples of left-leaning heads of government, such as President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico and the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen.

并非所有女性领导人都来自右翼。放眼七国集团之外，不难找到左翼政府首脑的例子，比如墨西哥总统克劳迪娅·谢恩鲍姆和丹麦首相梅特·弗雷泽里克森。

Still, in that group of industrialized nations, the failure of liberal parties to produce female leaders who win is something of a puzzle. In the United States, the two women who have come closest to the presidency were both Democrats, but they lost. In the United Kingdom, Labour has never even chosen a female leader.

尽管如此，在G7这个工业化国家集团中，自由派政党始终未能推出赢得选举的女性领导人，这多少有些令人困惑。在美国，两位最接近总统职位的女性都是民主党人，却均以失利告终。在英国，工党从未选出过女性领袖。

This may strike some as counterintuitive. Typically, it’s the left that has explicitly championed women in politics, often through the use of instruments like gender quotas, which now exist in roughly half the countries in the world. Much of the right finds these kinds of measures distasteful; Meloni, for her part, opposes them.

这可能有些反直觉。通常情况下，是左翼明确倡导女性参政，往往通过性别配额等机制实现——如今全球约半数国家都设有此类配额。而右翼大多对这类措施表示反感，梅洛尼本人就明确反对。

Takaichi has talked about the loneliness of being a woman in Japanese politics. But she’s also embraced positions that critics say hold women back. She’s opposed changing a law that requires married couples to share a surname, and has backed efforts to preserve the male lineage of Japan’s imperial family.

高市早苗曾谈及日本政坛女性的孤独感，但她同时支持的某些立场在批评者看来反而阻碍女性发展。她反对修改要求夫妻同姓的法律，还支持保留日本皇室的男系继承制度。

Iron maiden, iron ladies

铁娘子

The experts I spoke to suggested a few different dynamics might be interacting with one another.

我采访的专家提出，可能有几个不同的因素在相互作用。

The push for women in politics, largely from left-leaning parties, can be contagious, both within countries and even across borders, said Pippa Norris, a professor of comparative politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

哈佛大学肯尼迪学院比较政治学教授皮帕·诺里斯表示，主要由左翼政党推动的女性参政浪潮具有传染性——不仅在国家内部，甚至跨越国界。

And the more women in politics, the more likely it is that women break into leadership, regardless of what party they belong to.

政坛中的女性越多，女性跻身领导层的可能性就越大，无论她们属于哪个政党。

Germany’s Social Democrats instituted gender quotas in 1988, which put pressure on the conservatives to include more women on their electoral lists. One of the women who was elected to the Bundestag in the next election was a young Angela Merkel.

德国社民党于1988年推行性别配额制，这给保守党带来压力，促使其在选举名单中纳入更多女性。在随后的选举中当选联邦议院议员的就包括年轻的安格拉·默克尔。

And a close look at each woman’s individual rise to power does reveal some patterns, said Silvana Koch-Mehrin, the founder of a network of current and former women political leaders.

一个研究现任及前任女性政治领导人的网络的创始人西尔瓦娜·科赫-梅林表示，仔细观察每位女性的个人崛起之路，确实能发现一些规律。

Many of the early women leaders came to power as outsiders in a moment of political crisis. Thatcher rose in the 1970s when Britain was in economic and political turmoil. Merkel won her party’s leadership after a corruption scandal in the early 2000s. May became leader in the messy aftermath of the Brexit vote.

许多早期女性领导人都是在政治危机中以局外人身份掌权的。撒切尔在20世纪70年代英国陷入经济和政治动荡时崛起；默克尔在21世纪初的腐败丑闻后赢得党内领导权；特蕾莎·梅则在脱欧公投后的混乱局面中成为领袖。

Today, political crisis has become the norm.

如今，政治危机已成为常态。

That is both fueling the rise of the hard-line right and lending credibility to leaders who can sell themselves as being different from those who came before. And women vying for roles that were previously held almost exclusively by men are inherently outsiders.

这既助长了强硬右翼的崛起，又为那些能标榜自己与前任不同的领导人提供可信度。而角逐那些此前几乎由男性垄断职位的女性本质上就是局外人。

Meloni was elected after a decade of post-Berlusconi, testosterone-fueled turmoil that saw Italy churn through six prime ministers. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far right is the most popular force in a country that has seen four governments in less than a year. In Japan, Takaichi, an Iron Maiden fan and amateur drummer who beat out four men to become leader of the L.D.P., takes the helm of a party that has been losing support, in a country that has been dealing with stubborn economic stagnation.

梅洛尼的当选发生在后贝卢斯科尼时代充斥男性荷尔蒙的十年混乱之后——这期间意大利换了六位总理。在法国，玛丽娜·勒庞领导的极右翼势力成为最受欢迎的政治力量，而该国在不到一年内就换了四届政府。在日本，铁娘子乐队歌迷、业余鼓手高市早苗击败四位男性当选自民党领袖，接手了这个支持率下滑的政党，日本本身也正面临顽固的经济停滞。

The rise of women on the right is intriguing. It may also be short-lived. The steady growth of the number of women in parliaments in recent decades that has helped right-wing women to power has now stalled. On the other hand, France, where Le Pen continues to outpoll her rivals, is slated to hold its next presidential election in 2027.

右翼女性的崛起颇具看点，但也可能是短暂的。近几十年来，议会女性人数的稳步增长是助力右翼女性掌权的因素，如今这一增长已陷入停滞。另一方面，法国定于2027年举行下一次总统大选，而勒庞的支持率持续领先对手。

The United States and China called off a fight over commercial shipping on Monday, but the truce could weaken Washington’s efforts to curb China’s rise as a maritime power.

周一，美中两国叫停了一场围绕商业航运的争端，但这一休战可能削弱美国遏制中国崛起为海事强国的努力。

President Trump had recently started imposing fees on Chinese commercial ships when they docked in American ports. The policy was designed to limit the use of Chinese vessels for transporting goods to the United States.

特朗普总统原本近来开始对停靠美国港口的中国商用船舶收费，这项政策旨在限制使用中国船舶向美国运输货物。

China retaliated with similar levies on American vessels. But the countries agreed to suspend the fees for a year as part of their recent trade pact. They announced on Monday that fee collection had stopped.

中国随即采取报复措施，对美国船舶征收类似费用。但两国在最新达成的贸易协议中同意暂停征收该费用一年。周一，双方宣布已停止收费。

The decision to halt the fees showed that Mr. Trump’s efforts to revive American shipyards, which produce almost no large commercial vessels, face obstacles. He has promised a maritime action plan, due last week, to support shipyards and train up mariners.

暂停收费的决定表明，特朗普重振美国造船业的努力面临阻碍——美国造船厂几乎不生产大型商用船舶。他曾承诺推出一项海事行动计划，原本应于上周公布，旨在支持造船厂并培养船员。

China made 60 percent of the world’s large vessels in 2024, up from 44 percent five years earlier, according to BRS Shipbrokers. China has produced over 700 large commercial vessels this year and the United States just one, according to BRS.

据船舶经纪公司BRS数据，2024年中国建造了全球60%的大型船舶，较五年前的44%大幅提升。今年中国已制造了700多艘大型商用船舶，而美国仅制造了一艘。

China’s shipyards, benefiting from significant government support, have in recent years overtaken those of South Korea and Japan, two big shipbuilding nations.

得益于政府的大力支持，中国造船厂近年来已超越韩国和日本这两大造船强国。

The United States imposed fees not just on Chinese shipping companies, which had been expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in levies, but also on large vessels made in China. Many of the largest shipping companies that transport goods to the United States — like France’s CMA CGM — own vessels made in China.

美国的收费不仅针对中国航运公司（这些公司原本预计要支付数亿美元费用），还涵盖中国制造的大型船舶。许多向美国运输货物的大型航运公司——比如法国达飞海运集团——都拥有中国制造的船舶。

The U.S. fees stemmed from a trade investigation that began under the Biden administration, and they had bipartisan support. Their supporters criticized the Trump administration for putting them on hold.

美国的这项收费源于拜登政府时期启动的一项贸易调查，且获得了两党支持。赞同收费者批评特朗普政府的叫停决定。

“We want to blunt China’s dominance of this industry,” said Michael Roberts, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning research organization. “So it’s a disappointment in that respect.”

“我们希望遏制中国在该行业的主导地位，”右翼研究机构哈德逊研究所高级研究员迈克尔·罗伯茨表示，“从这个角度来看，当前结果令人失望。”

Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in a statement that China’s unfair policies had undercut American shipbuilding workers. “Instead of holding China accountable, the president folded, leaving American workers behind,” she added.

威斯康星州民主党参议员塔米·鲍德温在声明中称，中国的不公平政策损害了美国造船工人的利益。“总统没有让中国承担责任，反而妥协退让，抛弃了美国工人，”她还说。

The White House did not respond when asked why it had halted the fees, and whether it had given up too much.

当被问及为何暂停收费、是否让步过多时，白宫未予回应。

Asked when Mr. Trump’s maritime action plan might appear, Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said the president had established an “Office of Shipbuilding” and to “stay tuned!”

被问及特朗普的海事行动计划何时出台时，白宫发言人安娜·凯利表示，总统已成立“造船办公室”，并请“持续关注”。

Supporters of the fees hoped that they would deter shipping companies from buying the Chinese vessels and thus push ship orders to South Korea, Japan and, eventually, the United States.

收费政策的支持者原本希望，这些费用能阻止航运公司购买中国船舶，从而将船舶订单转向韩国、日本，最终流向美国。

The ultimate fate of the fees is not clear. The Office of the United States Trade Representative, the agency that formulated the policy, said on Sunday that it would negotiate with China over the issues raised in the investigation that had led to the fees.

这些费用的最终命运尚不明朗。制定该政策的美国贸易代表办公室周日表示，将与中国就引发收费调查的相关问题进行磋商。

“While taking these actions, the United States will continue its domestic efforts and its discussions with key allies and partners on revitalizing American shipbuilding,” the office said in a news release.

“在采取这些行动的同时，美国将继续推进国内相关努力，并与主要盟友和伙伴探讨重振美国造船业的事宜。”该办公室在新闻稿中称。

A bill in Congress aimed at improving American commercial shipbuilding — called the SHIPS for America Act — intended to use the fees on Chinese ships to subsidize the creation of a new fleet of American cargo vessels.

国会旨在改善美国商用造船业的法案——《美国船舶法案》——计划将对中国船舶征收的费用用于补贴新建美国货船船队。

Asked where the money to finance the fleet would come from if the fee revenue did not exist, Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana and a co-sponsor of the bill, said the legislation envisioned other ways to raise money.

当被问及如果没有收费收入，船队资金将从何而来时，该法案的共同发起人、印第安纳州共和党参议员托德·扬表示，法案规划了其他筹资渠道。

“Regardless of whether this suspension moves forward, the SHIPS Act is critical to rebuilding America’s commercial shipping industry and vital to our national security,” Mr. Young said in a statement.

“无论此次暂停收费是否推进，《美国船舶法案》对重建美国商用航运业至关重要，对我们的国家安全也不可或缺。”扬在声明中说。

American ships can cost as much as four times those made in Asia, and, as a result, there is little demand for them. The shipping companies that buy large American vessels do so essentially because they have to. The companies transport goods from one American port to another, voyages that, under U.S. law, must be done by American-made ships crewed by Americans.

美国船舶的成本可能高达亚洲制造的四倍，因此几乎没有市场需求。购买美国大型船舶的航运公司本质上是出于强制要求——根据美国法律，在美港口之间运输货物的船舶必须是美国制造且由美国船员驾驶。

But there are signs that Mr. Trump’s shipbuilding push is gaining some traction.

但有迹象表明，特朗普推动造船业发展的努力正在产生一定成效。

Companies from South Korea say they intend to make ships in the United States and invest in American shipyards. Hanwha, a South Korean conglomerate, has said it wants to expand the shipyard in Philadelphia that it bought last year.

韩国企业表示有意在美国造船并投资美国造船厂。韩国韩华集团称，计划扩大去年收购的费城造船厂规模。

When retaliating against the American shipping fees, China said it had put five American subsidiaries of Hanwha on its sanctions list, accusing them of “supporting and assisting” the United States in its moves in the shipbuilding industry.

中国在报复美国航运收费时，将韩华集团的五家美国子公司列入制裁名单，指控它们“支持和协助”美国在造船业的相关举措。

On Monday, China said it was suspending the sanctions on the Hanwha entities for a year.

周一，中国宣布暂停对韩华相关实体的制裁，为期一年。

“We are aware of China’s Ministry of Commerce’s announcement, and we will continue to work to deliver for our maritime customers around the world,” James Hewitt, a spokesman for Hanwha Global Defense, said in a statement.

“我们已知悉中国商务部的公告，将继续努力为全球海事客户提供服务，”韩华全球防务发言人詹姆斯·休伊特在声明中说。

The phone call came around 5 a.m. to Zhu Rikun, the organizer of a new Chinese independent film festival in New York City. It was his father in China, his voice sounding strange. He asked if Mr. Zhu was up to anything bad, Mr. Zhu recalled, and urged him not to do anything that would hurt China.

电话是凌晨5点左右打给朱日坤的，他是纽约一个新成立的中国独立电影节的组织者。电话另一端是他身在中国的父亲，声音听起来很奇怪。朱日坤回忆说，父亲问朱日坤是否做了什么不好的事情，并敦促他不要做任何伤害祖国的事情。

In the following days, Mr. Zhu received more vague messages. They were from the directors whose films he was preparing to screen at the festival, people scheduled to moderate discussions and one volunteer. All told him they wanted to withdraw.

接下来的几天里，更多模糊的信息接踵而至。信息来自原定参展的导演、预定主持讨论的嘉宾以及一名志愿者。所有人都告诉他，他们想退出。

Most declined to give Mr. Zhu an explanation or cited personal reasons. But a few confided that they or their relatives had been told by the Chinese police to pull out, he said.

大多数人要么拒绝给出缘由，要么声称出于个人原因。但他说，一些人透露，他们或他们的亲属受到了中国警方的劝退压力。

Two days before the festival was supposed to open last Saturday, Mr. Zhu decided to cancel it.

电影节原定于上周六开幕，朱日坤在此前两天决定取消。

“I am not making this decision out of fear or submission,” he wrote on the festival’s website. “But I hope this announcement of the cancellation of IndieChina Film Festival will make certain unknown forces stop harassing all the directors, guests, former staff, volunteers and my friends and family.”

“我并非处于害怕或者屈服而作出这个决定；但是我希望IndieChina电影节停止的声明能让某些不明势力停止继续骚扰所有跟电影节有关的导演、嘉宾、前工作人员、志愿者，包括我的朋友和家人，”他在电影节的网站上写道。 

The apparent official intimidation elicited by the festival — which by Mr. Zhu’s own description was small, low-profile and likely to have limited impact within China — shows how far the Chinese government is willing to go to suppress critical voices, even thousands of miles away. Some of the participants have lived overseas for years, said Mr. Zhu, a filmmaker who moved from China to New York in 2014. Even foreign citizens or people not of Chinese heritage were not spared, with some being pressured by their employers, Mr. Zhu said.

按照朱日坤本人的说法，这个电影节规模小、低调且在中国国内影响有限，但对它的施压暴露了中国政府压制异见声音的意愿有多么强烈，哪怕这些声音远在千里之外。2014年从中国搬到纽约的电影制作人朱日坤说，一些参与者已经在海外生活多年。他表示，即便是外国公民或没有中国血统的人也不能幸免，有些人受到雇主的压力。

Several of the films touched on topics the Chinese government is sensitive about, such as the coronavirus pandemic or the one-child policy. But others, Mr. Zhu said, could have been shown in mainstream cinemas in China.

其中几部电影触及了中国政府敏感的话题，比如新冠疫情或独生子女政策。但朱日坤说，其他一些电影本来都是可以在中国主流影院上映的。

“I never thought about hiding this, like it was an underground event. If we were in China, I’d probably do that,” he said in an interview. But “that this would become so hard even in New York was totally beyond my expectations.”

“我从没想过要隐瞒这件事，好像这是一个地下事件。如果我们在中国，我可能会这么做，”他在接受采访时说。但“即使在纽约，这件事也会变得这么难，这完全出乎我的意料”。

The space for independent films has been largely erased in China, as Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, has sought to enforce strict ideological purity. The small independent festivals that were established in the 2000s, showing films not submitted to state censors for approval — and therefore not allowed to screen commercially — were shut down years ago. Directors who made films critical of the government have been imprisoned or fined.

随着习近平推行严格的思想纯洁性政策，中国独立电影的生存空间已被大幅压缩。2000年代创办的那些小型独立电影节早已被取缔——这些电影节展映的影片未经国家审查机构批准，因此无法在商业影院放映。拍摄批评政府影片的导演则面临监禁或罚款。

Some Chinese have sought refuge overseas. A year after the Beijing Independent Film Festival (of which Mr. Zhu was a co-founder) was shut down, some films were screened in New York. Chinese living abroad have set up Chinese-language bookstores, and organized comedy shows and pop-up salons to discuss culture and current affairs in Tokyo, London and Chiang Mai, Thailand.

一些中国人流亡海外。北京独立影展（朱日坤曾是联合创始人）被停办一年后，部分影片得以在纽约放映。旅居海外的中国人在东京、伦敦和泰国清迈开设中文书店，组织喜剧表演和快闪沙龙，讨论文化和时事。

But increasingly, government repression has followed. In July, the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok successfully pressured a museum there to partially censor an exhibition that the Chinese authorities said advocated independence for Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. A documentary about waters disputed between China and the Philippines was pulled from a film festival in Manila earlier this year, with the Filipina director citing “external factors.”

但政府的打压却日益接踵而至。今年7月，中国驻曼谷大使馆成功施压当地一家美术馆，要求其对某展览进行部分审查——中方当局称该展览鼓吹新疆、西藏和香港独立。今年早些时候，一部关于中菲海域争议的纪录片在马尼拉的一个电影节上被撤下，菲律宾导演称原因是“外部因素”。

Mr. Zhu, who started planning the New York festival earlier this year, had advertised it on Chinese social media and knew that the authorities might take notice. But he thought that the worst that could happen was that he alone might encounter problems visiting China, he said.

朱日坤今年早些时候开始策划这次纽约的电影节，他在中国的社交媒体上做了宣传，知道当局可能会注意到。但他说，他认为最坏的情况是他本人回到中国可能会遇到麻烦。

He received around 200 submissions from filmmakers based all around the world and selected 31. He collected about $1,000 in online donations, but mostly funded the event himself. He had expected around 60 to 70 attendees at each screening.

他收到了来自世界各地电影人的200多部作品，并从中选择了31部。他在网上募集了大约1000美元的捐款，但大部分资金都是他自己出的。他原本预计每场放映会有约60至70名观众到场。

But about a week before the opening, even as some festival guests were already starting to arrive in New York, the Chinese authorities were mobilizing.

但是，大约在开幕式前一周，甚至在一些嘉宾已经开始抵达纽约时，中国当局开始行动。

Four Chinese police officers visited a filmmaker who lives in China and who had been set to participate in Mr. Zhu’s festival. The filmmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that the authorities were unhappy with Mr. Zhu and that the festival was an act of smearing China from abroad.

四名中国警察拜访了一位住在中国的电影制作人，他原本打算参加朱日坤的电影节。由于担心遭到报复，这位电影制作人要求匿名。他说，当局对朱日坤不满，认为该电影节是一种在境外抹黑中国的行为。

The filmmaker agreed to withdraw from the festival. The person also stopped working on their current project, describing the pressure as suffocating.

这位电影制作人同意退出电影节，并停止了他们目前的项目，称这种压力令人窒息。

The scale of the intimidation around the world shows the government’s expanding surveillance power, said Maya Wang, the associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s incredibly chilling for anyone who has some remote connection to China.”

人权观察组织亚洲部副主任王松莲指出，全球范围内的恐吓规模彰显了政府日益扩张的监控能力。“对于任何与中国有些许联系的人来说，这都极度令人不寒而栗。”

In a written response to questions about the festival, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that it wasn’t familiar with the specific circumstances, but that Human Rights Watch had “long been prejudiced against China.”

中国外交部在书面答复有关该电影节的质询时表示，对具体情况不了解，但是人权观察组织“长期以来对中国抱有偏见”。

Mr. Zhu said he didn’t know whether he’d try to organize another festival. It was too late to cancel the event space he’d booked in Brooklyn.

朱日坤表示尚不确定是否会再次尝试组织电影节。他预订的布鲁克林活动场地已无法取消。

“I’ll just go there and watch movies myself,” he said.

“我打算自己去那里看电影，”他说。