By almost every metric, the Chinese carmaker BYD looks unstoppable.

从几乎所有指标来看，中国汽车制造商比亚迪都势不可挡。

After a decade of struggling to establish itself in the automobile industry, BYD has surpassed Tesla to become the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. The company’s sales are rapidly expanding in Europe and Latin America, and new and potentially lucrative markets like Canada could soon open to it.

在汽车行业艰难打拼十多年以站稳脚跟后，比亚迪如今已超越特斯拉，成为全球最大的电动汽车生产商。该公司在欧洲和拉丁美洲的销量迅速扩张，加拿大等新兴且利润潜力巨大的市场也可能很快向其敞开大门。

But investors are cooling on BYD’s ascent from a little-known battery maker to the top of the automotive world’s fast-growing segment. The company’s stock has fallen roughly 40 percent from its peak last May, making it among the hardest-hit names in a broader sell-off in Chinese E.V. stocks that accelerated last week after companies reported weak sales numbers for January.

比亚迪从一家默默无闻的电池厂商一路攀升至汽车行业这一高速增长赛道的顶端，投资者对它的热情却在降温。该公司股价较去年5月的高点已下跌约40%，成为此轮中国电动汽车股票全面抛售潮中受冲击最严重的公司之一。上周多家企业公布1月销量疲软数据后，抛售势头进一步加剧。

Intense competition is crushing profit margins, government subsidies are vanishing, and faster production cycles mean that no company can hold a lead for long.

激烈的竞争正在挤压利润空间，政府补贴逐步消失，而更快的生产周期意味着没有哪家企业能长期保持领先。

BYD is emblematic of how Chinese electric vehicle companies are becoming victims of their own success. The domestic market, fueled partly by government subsidies, has grown rapidly, but Chinese companies are “maxing out the number of people for whom it makes sense” to buy one, said John Paul MacDuffie, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

比亚迪的处境象征了中国电动汽车企业如何成为自身成功的受害者。宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院教授约翰·保罗·麦克杜菲表示，在政府补贴推动下，中国国内市场快速扩张，但中国企业已经“把有合理需求的人群开发到了极限”。

Sales are concentrated in major cities where charging infrastructure is more developed, while owning an electric vehicle simply isn’t practical in much of the rest of the country. Now, BYD and other carmakers must convert one-time buyers into repeat customers, building the kind of long-term brand relationships that more established automakers have relied on.

电动汽车销量主要集中在充电基础设施更完善的大城市，而在国内其他大部分地区，拥有电动汽车并不现实。如今，比亚迪和其他车企必须把一次性买家转化为复购客户，建立起成熟车企所依赖的长期品牌黏性。

“BYD has grown so fast that they’re running out of new domestic customers,” Mr. MacDuffie said.

“比亚迪增长太快，国内新增客户即将枯竭，”麦克杜菲说。

The challenges of China’s E.V. market started to surface last month. After growing 28 percent last year, BYD’s electric vehicle deliveries in January fell about 33 percent from a year earlier. Overall sales of new electric vehicles fell nearly 20 percent, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

中国电动汽车市场的挑战在上个月开始显现。在去年增长28%之后，比亚迪1月电动汽车交付量同比下降约33%。据中国汽车工业协会数据，全国新能源汽车整体销量下降近20%。

BYD did not respond to a request for comment. The company attributed the decline to weak domestic demand, according to a statement posted on WeChat.

比亚迪未回应置评请求。该公司在微信发布的一份声明中将销量下滑归因于国内需求疲软。

The slowing growth coincides with a reduction in Chinese government subsidies. For years, Beijing waived its 10 percent tax on new car purchases. But this year, it reimposed the tax at half the original rate. The full tax is expected to return after 2027.

增长放缓与中国政府补贴收紧同步出现。多年来，中国政府对新车购置免征10%的购置税，但今年恢复征收原税率一半的税额，全额购置税预计将在2027年后恢复。

Another factor is the constant influx of new competition. In 2025, nearly 400 electric vehicle models were for sale in China, more than double the number in 2019, according to JATO, an automotive market research firm. More than 100 of those were released in the past two years.

另一个因素是新竞争者不断涌入。汽车市场研究机构JATO数据显示，2025年中国市场在售电动汽车车型近400款，较2019年翻了一倍多，其中逾百款是过去两年推出的。

Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, said the industry was entering a wartime period. The number of car companies will have to shrink from hundreds to just a handful for the industry to be sustainable in the long run, he said.

华盛顿智库战略与国际问题研究中心高级顾问斯科特·肯尼迪表示，该行业正进入一种战争状态。他称，要实现行业长期可持续发展，车企数量必须从数百家缩减到寥寥数家。

中国宁波的一家吉利工厂。中国汽车制造商建造大型工厂，接连推出新车型，寄望于最终能用规模弥补利润萎缩的缺口。

Fierce competition among carmakers has pushed prices into a downward spiral known in China as “involution,” in which companies keep cutting costs and adding features just to survive, even when it hurts everyone’s bottom line. Carmakers built huge factories and rolled out one new model after another, betting that volume would eventually make up for shrinking profits.

车企间的激烈竞争将价格推入下行螺旋，也就是中国所说的“内卷”：企业为求生存不断削减成本、增加配置，即便这会损害所有人的利润。车企们建造巨型工厂，一款接一款推出新车型，指望最终能用规模弥补利润萎缩的缺口。

The country is building a new kind of automotive industry, said Tu Le, a transportation and technology analyst — one that looks less like Detroit and more like Silicon Valley.

交通与科技分析师涂乐表示，中国正在打造一种全新的汽车产业——它更像硅谷，而不是底特律。

Automotive cycles now resemble those of consumer electronics, with new models and feature changes released every year. While Ford Motor’s F-series truck has been the best-selling vehicle in America for the past 40 years, the top spot in China over the past few years has been held by either BYD, Geely or Tesla. When preferences change that fast, factories built for boom times don’t scale back as quickly, leaving excess capacity.

汽车迭代周期如今已接近消费电子产品，每年都会推出新车型和新功能。福特F系列皮卡过去40年蝉联美国最畅销车型，中国市场近几年的销量冠军则在比亚迪、吉利、特斯拉之间轮换。消费偏好变化如此之快，为繁荣时期建造的工厂难以快速收缩，进而造成产能过剩。

Mike Smitka, an automotive industry expert and emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University, estimated that 40 percent of China’s automotive production capacity was unused.

华盛顿与李大学荣休教授、汽车行业专家迈克·斯密特卡估计，中国汽车产能中有40%处于闲置状态。

Those idle factories have further contributed to a glut of new models. Companies can commission existing factories to build their cars instead of establishing their own plants. Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, sells numerous electric vehicles, but it does not produce the cars itself.

这些闲置工厂进一步加剧了新车型的泛滥。企业可以委托现有工厂代工生产，而不必自建厂房。中国电信巨头华为销售多款电动汽车，但自身并不造车。

But even under strain, Chinese carmakers pose a threat to American automakers, which are doubling down on gas-powered trucks and sport utility vehicles rather than continuing to spend on electric vehicles. Ford and Stellantis each recorded multibillion-dollar losses after scaling back their electric vehicle plans this year. And even Tesla ceded its early advantage in electric vehicles to BYD last year.

即便身处压力之下，中国车企仍对美国车企构成威胁。美国车企正加大对燃油皮卡和SUV的投入，而非继续在电动汽车上投入资金。福特、斯特兰蒂斯今年缩减电动车计划后均录得数十亿美元亏损。就连特斯拉去年也失去了在电动车领域的先发优势，被比亚迪超越。

So far, 100 percent tariffs have kept Chinese electric vehicles out of the United States.

迄今为止，100%的关税将中国电动汽车挡在了美国市场之外。

But Mr. Le said it was only a matter of time. The rest of the world has already started the shift to electric, but “the U.S. just hasn’t gotten that memo yet.”

但涂乐表示，这只是时间问题。世界其他地区已经开始向电动化转型，而“美国对此仍然充耳不闻”。

The San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic has accused three Chinese companies of improperly harvesting large amounts of data from its A.I. technologies in an effort to accelerate the development of their own systems.

旧金山人工智能初创企业Anthropic指控三家中国公司通过不当手段大量抓取其人工智能技术数据，以加速自研系统开发。

Anthropic said in a blog post on Monday that DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax — three prominent Chinese start-ups — had used about 24,000 fraudulent accounts to generate over 16 million conversations with its Claude chatbot that could be used to teach skills to their own chatbots.

Anthropic周一在一篇博客文章中表示，中国三家知名初创企业深度求索、月之暗面和稀宇科技利用约2.4万个虚假账号，与Anthropic的Claude聊天机器人产生了超过1600万次对话，这些数据可用于训练三家公司自己的聊天机器人。

Using data from one A.I. system to train another — a process called distillation — is common in A.I. work. But Anthropic’s terms of service forbid anyone to surreptitiously harvest data for distillation and do not allow its technologies to be used in China.

利用一个人工智能系统的数据训练另一个系统的过程被称为知识蒸馏，在人工智能领域较为常见。但Anthropic的服务条款禁止任何人以秘密方式抓取数据用于蒸馏，同时不允许其技术在中国境内使用。

OpenAI, Anthropic’s primary rival, has also accused Chinese companies of lifting large amounts of data from its chatbot, ChatGPT, for similar proposes.

Anthropic的主要竞争对手OpenAI也指控中国公司从其聊天机器人ChatGPT中大量提取数据用于类似目的。

In a memo sent to the House Select Committee on China last week, OpenAI said DeepSeek and other Chinese start-ups were using new and “obfuscated” distillation methods as part of their “ongoing efforts to free-ride” on technologies developed by OpenAI and other U.S. companies.

在上周致美国国会众议院中国问题特设委员会的一份备忘录中，OpenAI称，深度求索等中国初创企业正采用新型的“混淆式”蒸馏手段，“持续搭便车”使用OpenAI及其他美国公司开发的技术。

Like OpenAI, Anthropic said the practice was a national security risk, adding that it could allow China to build A.I. technologies to create bioweapons or tools for mass surveillance. The start-up has guardrails on its technologies designed to prevent them from being used in those ways, but the guardrails can be stripped away during distillation.

与OpenAI一样，Anthropic称此类行为构成国家安全风险，并表示这可能让中国得以开发用于制造生物武器或大规模监控工具的人工智能技术。Anthropic已为其技术设置安全防护机制，防止被用于此类用途，但这些防护措施在蒸馏过程中可能被剥离。

Anthropic called on government officials and other A.I. companies to help prevent Chinese companies from distilling American models.

Anthropic呼吁政府官员及其他人工智能企业共同阻止中国公司对美国模型进行蒸馏。

“These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication,” Anthropic said in its post. “The window to act is narrow, and the threat extends beyond any single company or region. Addressing it will require rapid, coordinated action among industry players, policymakers and the global A.I. community.”

“此类行动正变得愈发激烈且手段更趋复杂，”Anthropic在文章中表示，“可供采取行动的时间窗口正迅速缩小，且威胁已超出单一企业或地区范围。应对这一问题，需要行业参与者、政策制定者及全球人工智能界迅速采取协同行动。”

DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

深度求索、月之暗面、稀宇科技三家公司暂未回应置评请求。

Anthropic published its post amid a tussle with the Defense Department over the Pentagon’s use of its technologies. The Pentagon has approved Anthropic’s technologies for use with classified tasks, but it is threatening to sever ties with the start-up because Anthropic does not want its technologies used in situations involving autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.

此文发布之际，Anthropic正与美国国防部就五角大楼对其技术的使用陷入争执。五角大楼已批准将Anthropic的技术用于涉密任务，但因该初创公司不希望其技术被应用于自主武器或国内监控领域，五角大楼威胁要终止双方的合作关系。

Last year, DeepSeek spooked Silicon Valley tech companies and sent the U.S. financial markets into a tailspin after releasing A.I. technologies that matched the performance of anything else on the market.

去年，深度求索推出了性能与全球市场同类产品相当的人工智能技术，令硅谷科技企业震惊，并引发美国金融市场剧烈震荡。

Until then, the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley had been that the most powerful systems could not be built without billions of dollars in specialized computer chips. But DeepSeek said it had created its technologies using far fewer resources.

在此之前，硅谷的普遍观点是：没有数十亿美元的专用计算机芯片，就无法打造出最强大的人工智能系统。但深度求索表示，打造其技术所耗费的资源远少于此。

Like U.S. companies, DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax build their A.I. technologies using computer code and data corralled from across the internet. A.I. companies across the globe lean heavily on a practice called open sourcing, which means they freely share the code that underpins their technologies and reuse code shared by others. They see this is as way of accelerating technological development.

与美国企业一样，深度求索、月之暗面、稀宇科技均通过从互联网搜集的计算机代码和数据构建人工智能技术。全球人工智能企业都高度依赖开源模式——即免费共享支撑其技术的代码，并复用他人分享的代码。它们认为这是加速技术发展的一种途径。

A.I. companies also need enormous amounts of online data to train their A.I. systems. The leading systems learn their skills by analyzing just about all of the text on the internet.

人工智能企业还需要海量网络数据来训练系统。顶尖人工智能系统通过分析互联网上几乎所有文本习得相关能力。

Distillation is often used to train new systems. This is often allowed by open source technologies. But if a company takes data from proprietary technology, the practice may be legally problematic.

知识蒸馏常被用于训练新系统，开源技术通常允许这一做法。但如果一家公司从专有技术中提取数据，则可能涉嫌违法。

Anthropic, which is now valued at $380 billion, is facing multiple lawsuits accusing it of illegally using copyrighted internet data to train its systems. In September as part of a landmark legal settlement, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers after a judge ruled it had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books. It was the largest payout in the history of U.S. copyright cases.

目前估值达3800亿美元的Anthropic正面临多起诉讼，它被控非法使用受版权保护的网络数据训练系统。去年9月，在一桩具有里程碑意义的法律和解中，法官裁定Anthropic非法下载并存储数以百万计受版权保护的书籍，该公司同意向一批作者和出版商支付15亿美元赔偿金。这是美国版权案史上金额最高的赔偿。

OpenAI and other A.I. companies face similar suits, including a lawsuit brought by The New York Times against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft. That suit contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information. Both OpenAI and Microsoft deny the claims.

OpenAI及其他人工智能企业也面临类似诉讼，其中包括《纽约时报》对OpenAI及其合作伙伴微软提起的诉讼。该诉讼称，《纽约时报》数以百万计的文章被用于训练自动聊天机器人，而这些机器人如今已成为一个与时报构成竞争关系的可靠信息来源。OpenAI和微软均否认相关指控。

President Trump’s summit with President Xi Jinping in China this April is expected to be a grandiose affair, although friction over trade, Taiwan and technology could upset the bonhomie.

特朗普总统今年4月在中国与习近平主席举行的峰会预计将是一场盛大的活动，尽管围绕贸易、台湾和科技问题的摩擦可能会破坏友好氛围。

Mr. Trump is scheduled to travel to China on March 31 for a three-day trip, a White House official confirmed on Friday. The Chinese government, which tends to hold off from revealing plans for major visits, has not confirmed the dates, but Mr. Trump already appears exuberant about his trip.

白宫官员周五证实，特朗普预计于3月31日前往中国，展开为期三天的访问。中国政府通常不会提前公布重大访问安排，目前尚未证实相关日期，但特朗普似乎已对这次行程充满兴奋。

“I have a very good relationship with President Xi. I’m going to be going to China in April,” Mr. Trump said last week. “That’s going to be a wild one.”

“我和习近平主席关系非常好。我将在4月去中国，”特朗普上周说，“那将是一趟非常精彩的行程。”

He said his latest summit with Mr. Xi should “put on the biggest display you’ve ever had in the history of China.” Mr. Trump also noted the ceremonial troops he saw during his last visit to Beijing in 2017, saying, “I never saw so many soldiers all the same height.”

他表示，他与习近平的最新一次峰会将“展现中国历史上最盛大的场面”。特朗普还提到他2017年上次访问北京时看到的仪仗队，说：“我从来没见过这么多身高一模一样的士兵。”

For China, a grandiose reception for Mr. Trump will convey a message to the world, especially to its Asian neighbors, said Julian Gewirtz, a former senior director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

曾在拜登政府担任国家安全委员会中国与台湾事务高级主任的朱利安·格维茨表示，对中国而言，为特朗普举行盛大的接待仪式将向世界——尤其是向其亚洲邻国——传递一个信号。

“Xi is sending a global signal that he has successfully managed the U.S. through a year of resistance” to Mr. Trump’s trade war, said Mr. Gewirtz, who is now a senior research scholar at Columbia University. China would want Mr. Trump’s presence to show “that even the most powerful country in the world has decided that the risks outweigh the benefits of standing up to China,” Mr. Gewirtz said.

“习近平正在向全球发出信号，在应对特朗普的贸易战中，他通过一年的抵制成功拿捏了美国，”现任哥伦比亚大学高级研究学者的格维茨说。他表示，中国希望借助特朗普的到访展示，“即便是世界上最强大的国家也已经认定，与中国对抗的风险大于收益。”

The White House has not released details about precisely when and where Mr. Trump will hold talks with Mr. Xi.

白宫尚未公布特朗普与习近平举行会谈的具体时间和地点等细节。

The United States and China have many points of contention that could ruffle, or at worst derail, the summit. And Mr. Trump’s bargaining power over Mr. Xi ahead of their meeting may be partly clipped by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that declared parts of his tariffs illegal.

美国与中国之间存在诸多争议点，这些分歧可能会给峰会蒙上阴影，甚至在最坏情况下导致峰会受挫。而在会晤前，特朗普在与习近平博弈中的谈判筹码可能会因美国最高法院裁定其部分关税非法而受到一定削弱。

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a large part of the tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed on many countries, including China. The White House has said that it would keep the tariffs going under new legal justifications, and Mr. Trump has already announced a new 15 percent import tax.

上周，最高法院推翻了特朗普对包括中国在内的许多国家征收的大部分关税。白宫表示，将以新的法律依据继续维持这些关税，而特朗普已宣布征收新的15%进口税。

Even so, the legal setback for Mr. Trump may bolster Mr. Xi’s confidence that he has gained more of the initiative in his country’s rivalry with the United States, said Chinese and American analysts.

即便如此，中国和美国的分析人士认为，这一法律挫折可能仍会增强习近平的信心，让他相信自己在与美国的竞争中已获得更多主动权。

“I think this will put China in a more advantageous position in the forthcoming trade talks with the U.S., and China can also push the U.S. on other fronts,” said Prof. Wu Xinbo, the director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

“我认为这将使中国在即将到来的中美贸易谈判中处于更有利的位置，而且中国也可以在其他领域向美国施压，”上海复旦大学美国研究中心主任吴心伯教授说。

Mr. Trump will go to China focused on securing business and investment agreements, his previous statements suggest. The Trump administration has also pressed Mr. Xi to stop restricting sales of rare earths as a lever against other countries, a step that Beijing used last year to retaliate against U.S. export controls and tariffs.

从特朗普此前的表态来看，他此行将着力争取商业和投资协议。特朗普政府还敦促习近平停止限制稀土销售，以此作为对他国施压的杠杆；去年，北京正是以此反制美国的出口管制和关税措施。

中国广州的一家服装作坊，摄于去年7月。

“China had already turned the tables on the U.S. with its effective use last year of rare earth restrictions to force the U.S. to have reduced tariffs and limit its export controls,” said Scott Kennedy, a researcher on the Chinese economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“中国去年通过有效利用稀土出口限制，已经在与美国的博弈中实现了反转，迫使美国降低关税并收紧其出口管制，”华盛顿战略与国际问题研究中心中国经济研究员甘思德(Scott Kennedy)表示。

Mr. Xi’s main hope from the summit may be less specific: an extended period of stability in dealings with the United States. Much of China’s economy is in poor shape, despite a record trade surplus. Mr. Xi has also overseen purges and investigations in the Chinese military. Late last year, these brought down Zhang Youxia, the most senior general of the People’s Liberation Army, or P.L.A., who was accused of corruption and disloyalty.

习近平对此次峰会的主要期望或许并不那么具体，他希望中美关系能够长期保持稳定。尽管贸易顺差创下纪录，中国经济的整体状况仍然不佳。习近平还主持了对中国军队的清洗和调查。去年年底，中国人民解放军最高将领张又侠因涉嫌腐败和不忠而落马。

“At a broad level, I think Xi wants time and stability in relations,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor at Georgetown University who worked as director for China in the National Security Council under President Obama.

“从总体上看，我认为习近平希望在双边关系中获得时间和稳定，”曾在奥巴马总统任内担任国家安全委员会中国事务主任的现乔治城大学教授麦艾文(Evan S. Medeiros)说。

Mr. Xi “needs time to make the economy more resilient and put it in a long term pathway to growth,” said Professor Medeiros. “He needs time to sort out the P.L.A. And he thinks time with Trump in office will help him diplomatically.”

习近平“需要时间来增强经济韧性，并使其走上长期增长的道路”，麦艾文教授说。“他需要时间来整顿解放军。而且他认为，特朗普执政期间将有助于中国在外交领域取得进展。”

Mr. Xi will also probably seek concessions from Mr. Trump on restrictions of Chinese purchases of technology, as well as on Chinese investments into the United States, said Professor Wu, the researcher in Shanghai.

复旦大学学者吴心伯表示，习近平也可能寻求特朗普在限制对华技术出口及中国对美投资方面作出让步。

Mr. Xi’s greatest goal may be to persuade Mr. Trump to dilute U.S. support — rhetorical, diplomatic and military — for Taiwan, the island-democracy that has for decades rejected Beijing’s claims of sovereignty.

习近平最大的目标或许是说服特朗普削弱美国对台湾在言辞、外交和军事上的支持。台湾这个岛屿民主政体几十年来一直拒绝北京的主权主张。

China’s leaders hope that, for a start, Mr. Trump will state that the United States opposes Taiwan seeking independence, said Prof. Xin Qiang, the director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at Fudan University. If Mr. Trump makes such a statement, that could suggest that he sees Taiwan as troublesome. Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, has said the island is already in reality independent, while implicitly ruling out declaring formal independence.

复旦大学台湾研究中心主任信强教授说，中国领导人希望，首先特朗普能表态称美国反对台湾寻求独立。如果特朗普作出这样的表态，可能意味着他将台湾视为一个麻烦。台湾总统赖清德表示，台湾实际上已经独立，但同时又含蓄地排除了正式宣布独立的可能。

2023年，台湾军队在台湾八里进行演习。

Chinese officials probably see little chance of Mr. Trump making a drastic shift in U.S. policy on Taiwan, but hope to work on him over the coming year, when the two leaders will have two or three more opportunities to meet, said Professor Xin.

信强说，中国官员大概认为特朗普不太可能在对台政策上作出重大改变，但希望在未来一年里对他施加影响，期间中美领导人还将有两到三次会面机会。

If, on the other hand, Mr. Trump approves a new package of arms sales to Taiwan, following U.S. approval of $11 billion in weapons sales in December, that could send relations into another downward spin and even derail the summit, Professor Xin said.

信强还表示，特朗普在去年12月批准110亿美元对台军售之后，如果再次批准新的对台军售方案，可能会令两国关系再度恶化，甚至破坏这次峰会。

“The arbitrariness and uncertainty of President Trump’s decision-making make it very hard to predict,” Professor Xin said of what may happen over talks about Taiwan. “But I have always believed that he will not make concessions on major strategic areas.”

“因为特朗普总统决策的随意性和不确定性是很难预测的，”信强在谈到关于台湾问题的谈判前景时说。“但是我始终相信他不会在一些重大的、战略性的地方作出让步。”

Mr. Xi could also retaliate if Mr. Trump moves to replace the tariffs outlawed by the Supreme Court with similar tariffs under new legal justifications.

如果特朗普采取行动，用具有新法律依据的类似关税来取代被最高法院否决的关税，习近平也可能采取报复措施。

China’s exports to the United States have come under a range of tariffs, and the United States mostly treats these separate duties as stackable, so they can add up on top of each other. The Supreme Court’s decision stripped back some layers of this stack, including a 10 percent general tariff as well as a 10 percent tariff that Mr. Trump put on China for failing to prevent fentanyl and its precursor chemicals from flowing to the United States.

中国对美国的出口商品一直被征收多种关税，而美国通常将这些不同的关税视为可叠加的，因此它们可以层层加码。最高法院的裁决取消了部分叠加关税，其中包括10%的一般关税，以及特朗普因中国未能阻止芬太尼及其前体化学品流入美国而对中国加征的10%关税。

If Mr. Trump revives the outlawed tariffs under new legal justifications, China could cut orders of farm produce from the United States, said Professor Wu, the scholar in Shanghai.

上海的吴心伯教授说，如果特朗普以新的法律依据重新实施被否决的关税，中国可能会减少从美国订购农产品。

When Xi Jinping rang in the new year from Beijing, he called on China to remember the legacy of Yan’an, the rural stronghold where Mao Zedong transformed revolutionary guerrilla fighters into a disciplined force under his command that would go on to take the country.

习近平在北京迎接新年的到来时，呼吁中国铭记延安精神。当年在这个农村根据地，毛泽东将革命游击队战士锻造成一支纪律严明、听他指挥的部队，最终夺取了全国政权。

It may have been a hint of what was to come. Yan’an was also where Mao Zedong launched his party’s first major “rectification,” a campaign of political terror that eliminated rivals and cemented his absolute authority over the party. Three weeks after Mr. Xi’s speech, China effectively purged the military’s top commander Gen. Zhang Youxia, who had once been seen as a confidant of Mr. Xi’s.

这或许预示了接下来会发生的事情。延安也是毛泽东发起中共党内第一次大规模“整风”之地——这场政治恐怖运动消灭了党内对手，巩固了毛泽东在党内的绝对权威。习近平讲话三周后，中国对军队最高指挥官、曾被视为习近平亲信的张又侠上将进行了实质上的清洗。

Like Mao, Mr. Xi is pursuing a kind of spiritual renewal of the party and the military he commands, what he calls constant “self revolution.” And like Mao, that has taken the form of constant purging of enemies, associates and now, those in his inner circle, too. It is a new level of ruthlessness for a man who has already concentrated power in himself to a degree not seen since Mao.

与毛泽东相似，习近平正推动对他统领的党与军队进行一种精神层面的革新，他称之为不断的“自我革命”。与毛泽东一样，他也采取了不断清除敌人和盟友的形式，现在又开始清除核心圈子的成员。对于这位已将权力集中到毛泽东时代以来前所未有程度的领导人而言，这显现出更甚以往的残酷性。

Over the past three years, Mr. Xi has essentially ousted five of the six generals in China’s top military body, the Central Military Commission, which controls China’s armed forces. Only two members are left: Mr. Xi himself and a vice chairman who has overseen Mr. Xi’s purges.

过去三年间，习近平已基本将中央军委六位将军中的五位逐出这个掌控中国军队的最高军事决策机构。现仅剩两名委员：习近平本人及负责清洗行动的副主席。

“It is quite astonishing,” said Yue Gang, a retired colonel of the People’s Liberation Army.

中国人民解放军退役上校岳刚说：“这个确实比较震惊。”

中国军队最高指挥官张又侠上将（中）曾被视为习近平的亲信，但他在今年早些时候遭到调查。

In the weeks after, Chinese officials have offered little explanation as they sought to project normalcy. Mr. Xi hosted foreign leaders in Beijing and convened a meeting with party officials on policy work. On Wednesday, he met with military units by video conference and conveyed his greetings for the Lunar New Year. Acknowledging that the past year had been “very unusual and very extraordinary,” Mr. Xi sought to show that the rank-and-file were loyal to him, saying that the troops were still “completely reliable and trustworthy.”

在随后的几周里，中国官方几乎没有作出解释，同时努力营造一种一切如常的氛围。习近平在北京接待了外国领导人，并召集党内官员召开政策工作会议。周三，他通过视频会议与军队官兵会面，并致以新春问候。习近平承认过去的一年“很不寻常、很不平凡”，他试图表明基层官兵对他的忠诚，称部队仍然“完全过得硬、信得过”。

Online discussion has been restricted as social media platforms filter search results and comments related to General Zhang.

社交媒体平台过滤与张又侠有关的搜索结果和评论，网上讨论受到限制。

The few official editorials released on the subject hark back to the campaign of ideological cleansing first modeled at Yan’an and suggest that at the heart of the ouster is Mr. Xi’s control over the military, a powerful empire within the party.

为数不多的官方社论回溯了在延安时期开创的思想整风运动，并暗示此次清洗的核心关乎习近平对军队这个党内强大帝国的控制权。

A front-page editorial in the People’s Liberation Army Daily characterized the investigation as a necessary hygiene, a process of “uprooting sick trees” and “removing hidden cancer” so that the military would be “reforged and reformed.” Another editorial in the same paper described Mr. Xi’s leadership as the “the source of strength, direction, and future” for the military.

《解放军报》头版社论将此次整肃比作必要的清洁工程，称其是“肃流毒”“清积弊”的过程，旨在使军队得到“重塑”。该报另一篇社论则将习近平的领导力描述为军队的“力量所在、方向所在、未来所在”。

身着红军制服的游客在延安革命纪念馆毛泽东雕像旁合影。

“Mr. Xi believes he needs to build a foundation of absolute ideological unity and personal loyalty for future battles,” wrote John Garnaut, a founder of Garnaut Global, a geopolitical risk advisory firm. He noted that the language used by the party showed that Mr. Xi was drawing on Maoist and Stalinist playbooks absorbed in his youth as the son of a revolutionary fighter.

地缘政治风险咨询公司Garnaut Global创始人高安西(John Garnaut)指出：“习近平认为他需要为未来的战斗建立绝对的思想统一和个人忠诚的基础。”他指出，中共使用的措辞表明，习近平正借鉴他青年时期作为革命者之子所吸收的毛泽东主义和斯大林主义理论。

Over his 13 years in power, Mr. Xi has often cited Yan’an, the Communist Party’s main revolutionary base until 1948, as inspiration for his own culling of cadres as well as a way to signal his own supreme authority in the party in the tradition of Mao. After Mr. Xi secured a third term as head of the party, breaking with precedent, he visited the city with his top officials.

在他掌权的13年里，习近平屡屡提及延安——直到1948年，这里一直是中共的主要革命根据地——把它作为自己整肃干部的灵感来源，并以此延续毛泽东传统，彰显自己在党内至高无上的权威。在打破惯例实现党内第三次连任后，他率领高层官员重访延安。

He and General Zhang also made the pilgrimage to Yan’an in 2024 for a meeting, heavy with symbolism, on “political work” in the Chinese military. Mr. Xi exhorted the senior military officers, which included three other senior generals that he would later also purge, to remember their original revolutionary mission.

2024年，他与张又侠再次前往延安，举行关于中国军队“政治工作”的会议，这次会议带有浓厚的象征意义。习近平敦促军方高层（其中包括后来也被他清除的另外三名高级将领），要牢记初心使命。

Visiting the former residences of revolutionary leaders like Mao and Zhou Enlai on that trip, he declared the importance of the party’s “absolute leadership over the military.”

那次访问中，他参观了毛泽东和周恩来等革命领袖的故居，宣布了党“对军队的绝对领导”的重要性。

“For Xi Jinping, he sees that legacy and that kind of campaign as one of the party’s greatest treasures. He wants to go back to history and use those methods,” said Joseph Torigian, a historian of the Chinese Communist Party at American University in Washington. “He thinks he can do it right.”

“对习近平来说，这种政治遗产和这种运动是党的最大财富之一。他想回到历史经验，并运用这些手段，”华盛顿美利坚大学中共党史专家唐志学(Joseph Torigian)说。“他认为自己可以正确运用。”

Securing control over the People’s Liberation Army has been the key challenge of every leader since Mao, who immortalized its importance by declaring that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Colonel Yue argued that Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, struggled to manage the military and had been outmaneuvered by two vice chairmen of the commission.

自毛泽东时代以来，确保对人民解放军的掌控始终是历任领导人的核心挑战，毛泽东曾宣称“枪杆子里面出政权”，将这一原则的重要性永载史册。岳刚认为，习近平的前任胡锦涛在掌控军队方面力不从心，曾被军委的两位副主席架空。

根据中国官方媒体发布的照片，习近平于2024年与张又侠一同前往延安视察，其间他强调了党对军队“绝对领导”的重要性。

“We’ve had this lesson before,” Colonel Yue said, who argued that General Zhang may have tried and failed to weaken Mr. Xi’s hold over the military. The “smooth” takedown of General Zhang, he said, shows how “impossible it is to shake the leadership of Xi Jinping.”

“因为这个前面有教训，”岳刚说，他认为张又侠可能曾试图削弱习近平对军队的控制，但没有成功。他说，张又侠被“平稳地顺利地”拿下，表明动摇习近平的领导地位“是不可能的”。

“The attempt to undermine the power didn’t succeed. Instead, it resulted in a disastrous outcome,” he said.

“你这个架空也没有得逞，反而可以说碰到头破血流，”他说。

Since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012 he has overseen an intense campaign to clean up the military, where corruption had been on the rise since market reforms in the 1980s and as military spending soared. He sees absolute loyalty as vital to one of his key goals of building a 21st-century, combat-ready force capable of defending China’s interests — like its claim over Taiwan.

自2012年上台以来，习近平主导了对军队的严厉整肃。自20世纪80年代市场化改革以来，随着军费开支激增，军队腐败现象一直呈上升趋势。习近平认为绝对忠诚对于实现他的核心目标至关重要——打造一支具备21世纪作战能力的军队，以捍卫中国利益，例如对台湾的主权主张。

And as Beijing competes more directly with the United States, ensuring the military’s loyalty in times of crisis and possible conflict is even more important.

随着北京与美国的竞争日益直接，在危机甚至可能发生冲突的情况下确保军队的忠诚显得尤为重要。

“The party must always command the gun, never the other way around,” said the Chinese military expert Song Zhongping.

 “要让党指挥枪，不是枪指挥党，”中国军事专家宋忠平说。

When Mr. Xi talks about the spirit of Yan’an, he glosses over details of the purging of thousands of party members at Yan’an through psychologically brutal sessions of self-criticism that led some to suicide. Mr. Xi uses some of those methods of political indoctrination, including mandating study sessions of his personalized doctrine, Xi Jinping Thought, and encouraging the reporting of one’s peers or superiors for violating Mr. Xi’s edicts, according to Wen-Hsuan Tsai, a scholar of elite Chinese politics at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

当习近平谈及延安精神时，他刻意回避了延安运动中以残酷的自我批评对数千名党员进行整肃的细节，那些带有强烈心理压迫的整肃甚至导致一些人自杀。台湾中央研究院政治所研究中国高层政治的学者蔡文轩指出，习近平沿用了部分政治灌输手段，包括强制学习他个人的理论“习近平思想”，并鼓励举报违反习近平指令的同僚或上级。

“It turns the whole party into a trial of mutual reporting, so no one can be trusted — not your parents, not your superiors, no one,” Dr. Tsai said.

蔡文轩说：“把整个党内变成一种相互举报的试炼，所以就没有人可以相信，就是你的父母、你的长官、你的谁，你都不能相信。”

“His type of regime needs constant enemies and purges to maintain fear,” he said.

“他还是要不断地找敌人来做清洗，因为（只有这样）这个政权才可以让大家恐惧，”他说。

自毛泽东以来，确保对军队的控制权始终是中华人民共和国历任领导人的关键挑战。

Mr. Xi’s rectification campaign, while not as bloody or extreme as Mao’s, extends across the party apparatus, targeting graft as well as perceived disloyalty. Last year, 983,000 officials were punished for violating party rules, the highest number on record, according to data released by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party’s internal anti-corruption body.

习近平的整风运动虽然不像毛泽东时期那样血腥或极端，却遍及整个党政体系，既打击贪腐，也针对被认为不忠诚的人。根据党内反腐机构中央纪委公布的数据，去年有98.3万名官员因违反党纪受到惩处，创下历史最高纪录。

The sudden removal of senior officials with no explanation has become a hallmark of Mr. Xi’s rule, inspiring uncertainty and fear among Chinese officials in what analysts say is either a sign of his increasing paranoia or a tactic to keep the leader’s enemies, as well as his allies, guessing.

在没有任何解释的情况下突然撤换高级官员，这已成为习近平执政的一个标志，在中国官场引发了不确定性和恐惧。分析人士称，这可能是习近平越来越偏执的表现，也可能是一种让敌人和盟友都猜不透的策略。

Rather than quietly retire General Zhang at the next leadership transition, in 2027, Mr. Xi chose to publicly and loudly disown him.

习近平没有让张又侠在2027年下一次领导层交接时悄然退休，而是选择公开、高调地与他断绝关系。

“This purge manifests a position of strength,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “Xi can move his finger and remove the most powerful leader of the Chinese military.”

“这次清洗体现了一种强势姿态，”华盛顿史汀生中心中国项目主任孙韵说。“习近平动动手指，就能撤换中国军方最有权势的领导人”。

For many spouses, smartphone use is a point of tension. But for David Duda and Hong Liang, a couple in New Haven, Conn., the technology is so essential that they own eight external battery packs. If their phones die, so does their ability to communicate.

对于很多夫妻而言，使用智能手机是引发矛盾的导火索。但对于康涅狄格州纽黑文市的戴维·杜达与梁红（音）夫妇来说，这项技术却至关重要——他们足足备了八个外接移动电源。一旦手机没电，他们就彻底无法交流。

Mr. Duda, 62, speaks English, and Ms. Liang, 57, speaks Mandarin. They rely on a free smartphone app from Microsoft, called Translator, to render a text translation of what they say — like movie subtitles but for daily life.

62岁的杜达只说英语，57岁的梁红只讲普通话。他们依靠微软公司一款名为“翻译”的免费手机应用将彼此的话语转换成文字翻译，就像电影字幕，却是应用于实时的生活中。

Though they have been married for three years, they walked down the street on a recent December afternoon with their arms linked like newlyweds. This was out of necessity as much as affection: One of them chatted and navigated while the other’s eyes were locked on the phone, reading translated remarks.

去年12月的一个下午，尽管已经结婚三年，两人仍挽着胳膊走在街上，宛如新婚夫妇。这既是出于爱意，也是出于必要：一人说话、引路，另一人则紧盯手机阅读译文。

When Mr. Duda told a joke, he held his chortle for a few seconds until Ms. Liang was able to read it.

杜达讲笑话时，总会忍住笑等上几秒，直到梁红看完翻译。

Communicating this way requires close attention. Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang can’t half-listen to each other or walk away while talking. There are no shouted conversations from the shower. When they want to really connect, they spend hours on the couch or lying in bed, going back and forth until they feel sure they understand what the other has said.

这种交流方式需要全神贯注。杜达和梁红不能心不在焉地听对方说话，也不能边说话边走开；没法淋浴时大声交谈。想要真正交流时，他们会在沙发上或床上，一聊就是几个小时，反复确认彼此完全理解对方的意思。

“The translator makes you have to be more in the moment because you’ve got to be reading it and listening,” Mr. Duda said. “You have to pay attention more, which obviously is a good thing when you’re relating to your spouse.”

“翻译工具会让你更关注当下，因为你既要阅读又要倾听，”杜达说。“你必须更专注，这对夫妻相处来说显然是好事。”

“He pays attention to all the details and takes good care of me. He really knows and sees what I need,” Ms. Liang said in Mandarin, as translated by a human interpreter. (Machine translation: He is very attentive. He thought about anything for me, so I was impressed by a lot of his details.)

“没有人这么细心地观察过我，或者是为我考虑过任何事情，所以他的很多细节方面打动了我，”梁红用中文说道，人类口译员这样翻译。（机器翻译版本则是：他替我想得很周全，许多细节都令我感动。）

Automated translation has advanced enough in recent years that it is being used by people whose attraction transcends fluency, like Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang, as well as travelers to foreign lands and companies hoping to appeal to new markets and audiences.

近年来，自动翻译技术已足够先进，开始被杜达、梁红这样这样超越语言障碍的恋人使用，也服务于海外旅行者，以及希望开拓新市场、吸引新受众的企业。

I used Apple AirPods, which have real-time language translation, as well as Microsoft Translator to interview Ms. Liang. I was able to follow much of what she said, though the delay made the conversation challenging. And there were key misunderstandings, which I learned about only when I later asked a professional interpreter to review our conversation.

采访梁红时，我使用了支持实时语言翻译的苹果AirPods和微软翻译软件。尽管延迟让对话变得困难，但我仍能大致听懂她的话。不过对话中出现了几处关键误解，直到后来我请专业译员回看对话内容才发现。

“It’s wonderful that people are able to communicate with a much wider range of people than they could before,” said Lera Boroditsky, a professor of cognitive science at University of California, San Diego. “Those translations are going to be imperfect,” she said, “but having access is better than not having access.”

“人们现在能和比以往更广泛的人群交流，这是件了不起的事情，”加州大学圣迭戈分校认知科学教授莱拉·博罗迪茨基说。“这些翻译并不完美，但是有接触总比完全无法交流要好。”

The idea of a universal translator has long existed in science fiction — how else could the crew of the Enterprise on “Star Trek” talk to alien species? The real-world versions on offer from Microsoft and other companies can assist with 100 or so of the 7,000 languages spoken globally, seemingly realizing the dream of a world where billions of people can understand each other. Or at least muddle through.

万能翻译工具的构想早已存在于科幻作品中——不然《星际迷航》里企业号的船员要怎么和外星物种交流？微软等公司推出的现实版翻译工具能覆盖全球7000种语言中的约100种，似乎实现了令数十亿人相互理解的梦想，至少能令人们彼此勉强沟通。

A more intimate relationship sustained with apps seems less fathomable. “A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short,” wrote the French author André Maurois. Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang’s conversation started at an opportune time, when technological tools existed to facilitate it, and they had developed the patience to use them.

靠手机应用维系一段亲密关系，听起来更加令人难以置信。法国作家安德烈·莫鲁瓦曾写道：“幸福的婚姻是场总嫌太短的漫长对话。”杜达和梁红的交谈，恰逢技术工具足以支撑交流的时代，而他们也拥有使用这些工具的耐心。

“It’s kind of fun for us,” Mr. Duda said. “If people weren’t in love, it would be much more frustrating.”

“对我们来说这还挺有趣的，”杜达说。“如果不是在恋人之间，那就会让人沮丧得多。”

Love in Translation

 翻译里的爱情

Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang met in Xian, China, in the fall of 2019.

杜达和梁红于2019年秋天在中国西安相识。

Mr. Duda’s brother was going there on a work trip, and he tagged along to see the region’s famous Terracotta soldiers and Buddhist temples. His brother’s business partner suggested that her friend, Ms. Liang, drive Mr. Duda around. By the end of the week, Mr. Duda was smitten.

当时杜达的兄弟要去西安出差，他便一同前往，想去看看当地著名的兵马俑和佛教寺庙。他兄弟的生意伙伴提议，让她的朋友梁红开车带杜达四处逛逛。一周行程结束时，杜达已对梁红倾心。

“She is the most joyous, happy person you’ll ever meet,” he said. Mr. Duda thought that there was chemistry between them, and tried to kiss Ms. Liang goodbye before his departure. Surprised, she turned her cheek.

“她是世上最开朗快乐的人，”杜达说。他觉得两人之间有化学反应。临别前，他试图吻别梁红。她猝不及防，侧过脸去。

But she was interested, and so, after Mr. Duda returned to New Haven, where he owns a bookstore, they stayed in touch via WeChat, a Chinese messaging app. They communicated by text in English, with Ms. Liang copying and pasting the messages to an English-Chinese translator.

但她其实对杜达颇有好感。因此，当杜达回到纽黑文经营他在当地的书店后，两人通过中国即时通讯应用微信保持联系。他们用英文打字聊天，梁红则把消息复制粘贴到英汉翻译工具里翻译。

A couple of months after they met, the world shut down because of Covid. Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang, both divorced with adult children, found themselves isolated. They started messaging each other daily, talking about their personal histories, their failed marriages, their families. With pandemic restrictions forcing retailers to close, Mr. Duda’s work turned to preparing books for online shipment, and he started working at night, which meant he was awake at the same time as Ms. Liang.

相识数月后，新冠疫情让世界停摆。当时杜达和梁红都是离异人士，子女均已成年，两人都陷入了隔离状态。他们开始每天发消息，聊各自的人生经历、失败的婚姻，还有他们的家人。疫情管控迫使零售商关门，杜达的工作转为整理书籍用于线上发货，他开始在夜间工作，这让他的作息和梁红刚好同步。

“We spent the next two years on our phones getting to know each other better,” Mr. Duda said.

“接下来的两年，我们天天靠手机互相了解，”杜达说。

杜达与梁红对翻译技术的依赖程度极高，为此他们备着八个外接移动电源。

In September 2022, when China relaxed pandemic travel restrictions, Ms. Liang booked a one-way flight to the United States. She was nervous: Was everything Mr. Duda had said what she understood it to be?

2022年9月，中国放宽疫情旅行限制，梁红订了一张单程机票飞往美国。她心中很忐忑：杜达说的一切，真的和她理解的一样吗？

Mr. Duda met Ms. Liang at the airport holding a sign that said, in Chinese characters, “Love of my life.”

杜达在机场接她，手里举着一块牌子，上面用汉字写着：“我生命中的挚爱”。

“I was deeply touched, because at the airport in front of so many people, he did something that touched my heart,” Ms. Liang recalled. (Machine translation: “I think this is a very, very romantic thing, and in front of so many people at the airport.”)

“我觉得这是一个非常非常浪漫的事情，而且是在机场当着那么多人的面，”梁红回忆。（机器翻译：我觉得这是非常非常浪漫的事，在机场那么多人面前。）

‘You were going to die?’

 “你快要死了？”

Automated language translation has been a goal of computer scientists since at least the 1950s, when Georgetown University researchers designed a system that could translate a couple of hundred Russian words into English. A meaningful translation, however, requires more than a word-for-word swap. Grammar and structure vary between languages, and words can have different meanings depending on context, not to mention the problem of idioms like “it’s a piece of cake” that cannot be translated literally.

至少从20世纪50年代起，自动语言翻译就已是计算机科学家的目标——当时乔治城大学的研究人员设计出一套系统，能将几百个俄语单词翻译成英语。但是有意义的翻译远不止逐字替换。不同语言的语法和结构千差万别，单词含义随语境变化，更不用说“it’s a piece of cake”（小菜一碟）这类无法直译的习语。

These gnarly challenges appealed to machine learning researchers: Could computers ingest language and learn to decipher it?

这些棘手的难题吸引了机器学习研究者：计算机能否吸收语言，并学会解读它？

In the early 2000s, Google and Microsoft developed web-based translation services using statistical approach, but the major breakthrough came a decade later. In a paper, Google researchers described a new technique for processing enormous data sets, which ushered in a new era of artificial intelligence, including chatbots like ChatGPT. This technique is fundamentally about language processing, and the paper was about how well it worked at translating English into French and German.

21世纪初，谷歌和微软利用预测性软件开发了网页翻译服务，但重大突破出现在十年后。谷歌研究人员在一篇论文中介绍了一种处理海量数据集的新技术，开启了人工智能的新时代，催生出ChatGPT等聊天机器人。这项技术的核心是语言处理，论文还展示了它在英译法、英译德方面的出色表现。

Since then, automated systems have improved and can translate text with impressive accuracy. But using A.I. to translate words people speak aloud works less well.

从那以后，自动翻译系统不断进步，文本翻译的准确率已相当可观。但用AI翻译人们的口语，效果仍然略逊一筹。

Communicating on WeChat, Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang had sometimes managed to forget they spoke different languages. In person, communication proved more challenging.

在微信上聊天时，杜达和梁红有时甚至会忘记两人说不同的语言。可面对面交流时，难度却大了不少。

First they tried a hand-held translator that cost $600. They also tried earbuds that would speak translations into their ears. But these devices had to be connected to Wi-Fi, and any background noise made them useless. In the end, they settled on speaking into the Microsoft Translator app that made text translations of what they said. They haven’t tried asking a generative A.I. chatbot to translate for them, though the makers of ChatGPT and Claude have cited translation as a popular use for their products.

起初，他们试过一台600美元的手持翻译机，又试过可将译文传入耳中的耳机。但这些设备必须连接Wi-Fi，背景里稍有噪音就彻底失灵。最终，他们选择用微软翻译，对着手机说话就能生成文字翻译。他们还没试过用生成式AI聊天机器人翻译，尽管ChatGPT和Claude的开发者都将翻译列为产品的热门应用场景。

The transcript of their married life is now held by a giant corporation, but Mr. Duda said it didn’t trouble him. He even granted Microsoft permission to review his audio clips to improve the technology.

杜达和梁红婚姻生活的对话记录如今由一家巨头公司持有，但杜达表示自己并不介意。他甚至授权微软调阅他的语音片段，以改进技术。

Translator could use improvement. I asked Wallace Chen, a professor of Chinese-English translation and interpretation at Middlebury College, to review my conversation with the couple. For simple exchanges, the A.I. did OK, he said. But it faltered on longer ones.

但“翻译”这款应用程序确实有待改进。我请明德学院的中英翻译与口译教授陈瑞清审阅了我与这对夫妇的交谈。他说，面对简短交流，人工智能表现尚可，但在处理较长的句子时，它就开始力不从心了。

For example, while describing how Mr. Duda greeted her at the airport, Ms. Liang said that she got Covid shortly after her arrival and felt so awful she thought she was dying.

比如梁红描述杜达去机场接机的情景时提到，自己抵美后不久便感染新冠，病得厉害，甚至以为自己快要死了。

But those were not the words I saw on the screen. The app’s translation had her saying that she got a “new crown” and thought she was going to die. Confused, I asked if she meant that his gesture of carrying the loving sign was so romantic she could die.

但我当时在屏幕上看到的并不是这些。应用程序的翻译是她得到了一个“新皇冠”，并认为自己快要死了。我当时一头雾水，还问她是不是想说他举着爱心牌迎接她的举动浪漫得要死。

“No, no, no,” she said. And she repeated herself, but we still didn’t get it.

“不是不是不是，”她连声否认。她又重复了一遍，但我们仍如坠五里雾中。

A month later, watching video of the exchange, Dr. Chen explained: The app had translated the Chinese term for Covid-19 — novel corona — as “new crown.” Mr. Duda had stayed next to her throughout her illness, she said, and his attentiveness had deepened her feelings for him, which is why she had brought it up.

一个月后，陈瑞清在回看这段对话视频时道出原委：这款应用将中文的“新冠”直译成英文的“new crown”（新皇冠）。梁红说，患病期间杜达始终相伴在侧，那份体贴令她情意愈笃——这正是她提及此事的缘由。

There were other communication failures. When Ms. Liang’s answers ran long, the speech-to-text transcription would fail to keep up with her, missing words or entire sentences. It was like a phone call where the sound cuts out and results in gibberish.

沟通失败的情况还不止于此。梁红作答稍长时，语音转文字功能就跟不上了，会漏遗漏字词乃至整句话。这就像通话信号中断，最后出来的全是莫名其妙的话。

Chris Wendt, a former group program manager at Microsoft who worked on Translator for two decades, said, “The person speaking needs to verify what they said.”

曾在微软参与“翻译”开发二十余载的前项目经理克里斯·温特表示：“讲话者必须确认自己的发言已被准确识别。”

This means looking at the app while you’re talking, not at the person you’re talking to, to make sure it accurately captures your words.

这意味着你在说话时得盯着这款应用程序，以确保它准确记录了你的话，而不是盯着你的交流对象。

This was news to the couple. “Why didn’t they tell us that two years ago?” Mr. Duda said.

这对夫妇闻之愕然。“两年前他们怎么不告诉我们？”杜达叹道。

Rendering speech into text is challenging even without translating to another language: Microphone quality, ambient noise or people talking over each other can all interfere with accurate speech recognition, said Philipp Koehn, a pioneer in machine translation who teaches at Johns Hopkins University.

即便不涉及语言翻译，将语音转化为文字也极具挑战性。约翰斯·霍普金斯大学机器翻译领域的先驱菲利普·科恩指出，麦克风的音质、环境噪音或多人同时说话都会干扰语音识别的准确性。

And spoken language is more varied than written text. There are accents and dialects, meaningful hesitations that can’t be conveyed, emotion and tone that is lost. People talk fast, or ramble, or trail off on a half-formed thought.

口语比书面语更为庞杂多样。它包含口音、方言、还有意味深长、无法传达的停顿，以及易于流失的情感和语调。人们说话时可能语速飞快，或者东拉西扯，或思绪未竟便渐无声息。

家中墙上贴着一张英语字母发音表，用来帮助梁红练习英文字母的发音。

Dr. Chen, the professor and interpreter from Middlebury, said automated translators should be used with caution “in situations where every word matters.”

明德学院教授、译员陈瑞清提醒，在“每个字都很重要”的场合，使用自动翻译务须审慎。

Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang know the translator often gets their meaning wrong. They have an expression for when it happens: bù bù hǎo, pronounced “boo boo how,” a play on a Chinese phrase that means “not good.” When it happens, they try again, or use body language, or pull up a photo on the internet for illustration. Words sometimes fail them, as they do us all.

杜达和梁红深知翻译工具经常误解他们的意思。每当这种情况发生时，他们会就会说“bù bù hǎo”，这是在玩中文“不好”的谐音梗。遇到这种翻译翻车的时候，他们会再次尝试，或者使用肢体语言，又或者在网上找张图片来示意。文字有时会让他们感到词不达意，正如我们所有人都会遇到的那样。

Big Ambitions

宏愿

Microsoft declined to answer questions, but I asked Mr. Wendt, the former program manager, what his team had in mind when they created Translator. Did they imagine it could sustain a marriage?

微软婉拒采访，但我询问了前项目经理温特，他的团队在开发“翻译”时初衷是什么。他们是否想过，有朝一日它能支撑一段婚姻？

“That was the intent,” he said. “We thought it was possible.”

“那正是我们的本意，”他说。“我们相信这是可能的。”

He and his co-workers had big ambitions; they thought they could connect the world by breaking down language barriers. In 2014, Microsoft demonstrated its ability to do simultaneous translation with a Skype call between two schoolgirls, one in Seattle and one in Mexico City. The faces of the girls — and their classmates — lit up with amazement as a computer-generated voice spoke their words in Spanish or English.

他与同事们怀抱宏愿：他们认为可以通过打破语言障碍来连接世界。2014年，微软通过两名女学生（分别在西雅图和墨西哥城）之间的Skype通话展示了同步翻译能力。当电脑生成的声音将她们的话语转化为西班牙语或英语时，女孩们和她们同学的脸上都绽放出惊奇的笑容。

Since then, translation has become a $31 billion industry, according to the market intelligence firm Slator. In the last year, social media platforms including YouTube and Instagram have released tools for creators to automatically translate and dub their videos into other languages. Amazon is testing “A.I.-aided dubbing” of foreign-language movies into English and Spanish and allowing authors to translate their self-published books on Kindle using A.I. Reddit has translated all the content on its site into 30 different languages. Many video call services offer real-time translation to paying users.

据市场情报公司Slator称，自那时起，翻译已发展成为一个价值310亿美元的产业。去年，包括YouTube和Instagram在内的社交媒体平台都发布了工具，供创作者自动翻译其视频并进行配音。亚马逊正在测试用“AI辅助配音”将外语电影转为英语和西班牙语对白，并允许作者在Kindle上利用AI翻译自出版书籍。Reddit已将其网站上的所有内容翻译成了30种不同的语言。许多视频通话服务也向付费用户提供实时翻译功能。

Mr. Wendt compared A.I. translation to GPS, which powers mobile navigation apps.

温特将AI翻译比作驱动手机导航应用程序的GPS。

“When you have GPS, you’re not afraid of getting lost,” said Mr. Wendt, who uses the Translator app when he travels. “It enables you to go into situations you would not normally go into.”

“有了GPS，你就不再害怕迷路，”温特说道。他在旅行时也会使用“翻译”应用，“它能让你勇敢地进入那些通常不敢涉足的境地。”

Within two months of Ms. Liang’s arrival, Mr. Duda knew he wanted her to stay. During Thanksgiving dinner with his extended family, he got down on one knee and attempted to propose in Chinese.

梁红抵美不到两个月，杜达就认定自己想让她留下来。感恩节家宴上，他单膝跪地，尝试用中文向她求婚。

Ms. Liang did not understand his words, but the meaning of the kneeling was clear. They married a month later.

梁红没听懂他的话，但跪下的意思再明白不过。一个月后，他们结为夫妻。

Their lives are not so different from those of other couples: They eat out, go biking, take beach walks and watch shows with Chinese subtitles. (They liked “Ted Lasso.”) But in one way, they might be unusual: In three years of marriage, they have not had a fight. A heated marital spat is often fueled by a rapid exchange of barbs that would be difficult through Translator.

他们的生活与寻常夫妻并无二致：外出用餐、骑车兜风、海边漫步、看带中文字幕的剧集（《足球教练》是他们的心头好）。但有一点或许与众不同：结婚三载，他们从未吵过架。夫妻间的激烈争执往往在双方的唇枪舌剑中火上浇油，而通过“翻译”应用程序，这太难了。

“Maybe the best way to have a lasting marriage is to speak different languages,” Mr. Duda joked.

“或许，长久婚姻的秘诀就是说不同的语言，”杜达打趣道。

That both Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang were older and divorced when they met has helped their communication, they said. They have experienced how a marriage can go wrong and better understand the workings of a happy one. And they are attentive to body language. Ms. Liang said that Mr. Duda’s facial expressions and gestures tell her more about his emotions than Translator does.

他们表示，两人相遇时都已较为年长且有过离异经历，这反而有助于沟通。他们都经历过婚姻如何触礁，因此更懂得幸福婚姻的经营之道。同时，他们对肢体语言格外留意。梁红说，比起“翻译”应用程序，杜达的面部表情和动作更能让她读懂他的情绪。

“These translation apps struggle with a lot of things like metaphors, sense of humor, tone register, cultural references,” said Per Urlaub, a professor and the director of global languages at M.I.T. But, he added, the apps “are meaningful and functional” for Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang.

“这些翻译应用程序在隐喻、幽默感、语气分寸、文化典故等诸多方面都表现得不尽如人意，”麻省理工学院全球语言项目主任、教授珀·乌尔劳布指出。但他也表示，对杜达和梁红而言，这类应用“是有意义且实用的”。

“Technology is making intimacy possible under conditions where it otherwise would not exist,” he said. “In this case, I feel that the proof is in the pudding.”

“技术让原本不可能的亲密关系成为可能，”他说。“从这个案例看，我觉得事实胜于雄辩。”

‘Love Actually’ … but Actually

《真爱至上》……但现实中……

Anyone who has seen “Love Actually” has an expectation of how this story should have gone: When a couple in that rom-com have chemistry and a language barrier, they both hit the books to become fluent.

但凡看过《真爱至上》的人，大约都会为这类故事预设一个走向：那部浪漫喜剧里的男女主角产生了化学反应但存在语言障碍，于是双双埋头苦学，终至精通对方语言。

Mr. Duda is trying to learn basic Mandarin from children’s books and apps like Duolingo. Ms. Liang, who works as a masseuse and acupuncturist, took an English class when she first arrived in New Haven, and also uses language learning apps. But they estimate that they know only 200 words in the other’s language. Mr. Duda said he felt too old to become fluent in a new language.

杜达也在尝试靠儿童绘本和多邻国之类的应用学习基础的汉语普通话。梁红从事按摩针灸工作，初到纽黑文时上过英语课，也用语言学习应用程序。但据他们估算，两人掌握对方语言的词汇量仅约200个。杜达说，自己这把年纪，怕是没法流利掌握一门新语言了。

Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang say their infatuation for each other makes it work. When the passion fades, the struggle of using translation apps might drive them crazy, Mr. Duda conceded.

杜达与梁红说，对彼此的热恋让这段关系得以维系。杜达也承认，待激情褪去，使用翻译软件的种种不便恐怕会令人抓狂。

Ms. Liang’s eyes were locked on her phone, closely reading the translation of what Mr. Duda was saying. Then she looked up and chimed in.

梁红的双眼紧盯着手机，仔细读着杜达那句被译成中文的话。随即她抬起头，接过话头。

“In fact, this is basically the same as what the Chinese say,” she said, according to my AirPods. “We say that two people are together because they don’t know each other. We want to explore each other’s secrets.”

“其实这跟中国人说的差不多，”我的AirPods里传来了翻译后的声音。“我们说两个人在一起是因为彼此不了解。我们想要探索对方的秘密。”

Once she really gets to know him, she said, she might not be as interested. She watched him following along on the phone, waiting until he finished reading that part to laugh.

她说，一旦真正读懂了他，或许便没那么多好奇了。她看着杜达低头凑近手机，等他读完那句译文才笑出声。

President Trump’s seizure of Venezuela’s oil and his on-again, off-again vows to acquire Greenland, by force if necessary, have underscored the new threat that Washington poses to nations’ sovereignty.

特朗普总统夺取委内瑞拉石油资源，还时断时续地宣称要吞并格陵兰岛，必要时不惜动用武力，他的种种言行凸显了华盛顿对各国主权构成的新威胁。

The land and resource grabs have alarmed even once-close allies, compelling them to consider other, less obvious risks. The most pointed stems from American dominance over the global financial networks and technology systems that undergird nearly every purchase or exchange of information made by citizens, businesses and governments.

这种对土地和资源的掠夺甚至让昔日关系密切的盟友也警觉起来，迫使他们开始考虑其他尚不醒目的风险。其中最尖锐的担忧源自美国对全球金融网络和技术系统的主导地位——而这些系统支撑着公民、企业和各国政府几乎所有购买行为或信息交换。

Allies are concerned for their financial independence and the security of confidential national data.

盟友们担心自身的金融独立以及国家机密数据的安全。

The risks may be harder to visualize than crashing through a nation’s border and carting off its valuable crude. But they have revived efforts, particularly in Europe, to strengthen control over these critical, though unseen, sources of autonomy and power.

这些风险或许不像冲破国界、掠走其宝贵的原油那样直观可见，却促使相关国家（尤其是欧洲）重新加强管控这些虽然无形却关乎自主与权力的关键要素。

European leaders have stepped up their push to reduce reliance on big American tech firms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft for cloud computing, and on financial services titans like Mastercard and Visa for payment systems.

欧洲领导人已加紧行动，力求在云计算领域减少对亚马逊、谷歌、微软等美国科技巨头的依赖，在支付系统层面降低对万事达卡、维萨等金融服务巨擘的依附。

The move to secure what are being labeled monetary sovereignty and digital sovereignty is part of a broader effort to reduce Europe’s dependence on American weapons, trade, technology and more.

这场围绕所谓“货币主权”和“数字主权”的保障行动是欧洲力图摆脱对美国武器、贸易、技术等领域依赖这一更宏大努力的一部分。

At a summit in Belgium this week, President Emmanuel Macron of France warned that the reliance makes the continent more vulnerable to economic and political coercion from the White House, and he urged other European leaders to seize “the Greenland moment” to do something about it.

本周在比利时举行的峰会上，法国总统马克龙警告说，这种依赖使欧洲大陆更容易受到白宫的经济和政治胁迫。他敦促其他欧洲领导人抓住“格陵兰时刻”，以此为契机采取行动。

Economists and bankers have also been urging lawmakers to approve the creation of a digital euro — the online version of cash — to lessen dependence on American financial service companies and networks.

经济学家和银行家也一直在敦促立法者批准创建“数字欧元”——即现金的线上版本——以减少对美国金融服务公司和支付网络的依赖。

法国总统马克龙在比利时的一场峰会上就欧洲的技术依赖发出警告。

“Trump was elected and everyone started getting very, very scared,” said Dan Davies, formerly an economist at the Bank of England. Europeans woke up to Mr. Trump’s willingness to use their needs to squeeze Europe and realized “now this is obviously a national security issue.”

“特朗普当选后，所有人都变得非常、非常担忧，”曾担任英格兰银行经济学家的丹·戴维斯表示。欧洲人猛然意识到，特朗普不惜利用欧洲的需求来压榨欧洲，并惊觉“这显然已是个国家安全议题”。

Nearly two-thirds of the transactions in countries that use the euro, the second-most commonly used currency in global trade, were handled by Mastercard or Visa in 2025, according to the European Central Bank. And at least 13 European nations, including Austria, Spain and Ireland, have no nationally controlled option for in-store or online digital payments.

据欧洲中央银行数据，2025年，在欧元区（欧元为全球贸易第二大货币）的交易中，近三分之二经由万事达或维萨处理。而包括奥地利、西班牙、爱尔兰在内的至少13个欧洲国家在实体店或线上支付领域均无可独立掌控的本国方案。

The issue gained urgency as leaders began to consider that powerful tools that Washington once reserved for adversaries like Russia and Iran could be turned on them.

随着各国领导人开始意识到华盛顿曾用来对付俄罗斯和伊朗等对手的强大工具也可能被用在他们身上，这一议题的紧迫性骤增。

The risk is rising that Europe could “lose control over the most fundamental element in our economy: our money,” 70 prominent economists and other experts wrote in a letter to the European Parliament last month.

上个月，70位知名经济学家和来自其他领域的专家在致欧洲议会的一封信中写道，欧洲面临的风险正在上升，它可能会“失去对我们经济中最根本要素——我们的货币——的控制”。

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, has pointed to Mr. Trump’s decision to impose sanctions on judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court for investigating whether Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. Mr. Trump’s action effectively cut off their access to digital and financial services, including credit cards.

欧洲央行行长克里斯蒂娜·拉加德指出，特朗普曾因国际刑事法院调查以色列是否在加沙犯下战争罪而对相关法官和检察官实施制裁。特朗普的举措实际上切断了他们的数字及金融服务渠道，包括信用卡的使用。

And because the executive order barred U.S. companies from providing services to those listed, the chief prosecutor’s email account provided by Microsoft was turned off.

而且，由于该行政命令禁止美国公司向被列入名单的人提供服务，国际刑事法院首席检察官由微软提供的电子邮箱账户亦遭停用。

欧洲央行行长拉加德警告，美国的制裁正威胁欧洲的金融主权。

The move set off shudders among government and security officials throughout Europe as an illustration of Mr. Trump’s quickness to leverage America’s financial and tech dominance to punish opponents even in allied countries.

这一举动在整个欧洲的政府和安全官员中引发震动，因为它清楚地展示了特朗普多么迅速地利用美国在金融和科技领域的主导地位去惩罚对手——即便这些对手来自盟友国家。

“That gives you one very specific example of how we are not effectively sovereign in our own garden,” Ms. Lagarde said in an interview with The Financial Times.

“这正是一个非常具体的例子，说明我们在自家院子里都谈不上真正的主权，”拉加德在接受《金融时报》采访时表示。

The Trump administration’s embrace of stablecoins and cryptocurrencies has only ratcheted up concerns in the European Union about control of the euro.

特朗普政府对稳定币和加密货币的支持也进一步加剧了欧盟对欧元控制权的担忧。

Worries about the integrity of sensitive and private information, too, are rising.

与此同时，对敏感与私人信息安全性的忧虑也在上升。

Legislation passed by Congress in recent years, including changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and a law known as the CLOUD Act, gives the U.S. government additional powers to spy on foreigners’ communications without a warrant and to force American companies to hand over data from anywhere around the globe.

近年美国国会通过的多项立法——包括《外国情报监视法》修订案及《澄清境外合法使用数据法》（简称云法案）——赋予美国政府更大的权力，可以在没有搜查令的情况下监控外国人的通信，并强制美国公司交出全球任何地方的数据。

Mr. Trump has also threatened the 27-member European Union with tariffs if it tries to regulate or tax American tech firms.

特朗普还威胁称，若欧盟试图对美国科技公司施以监管或征税，将对这一拥有27个成员国的集团加征关税。

The risk of “exposing our scientific exchanges, sensitive data and strategic innovations to non-European actors” prompted the French government to order all state workers to stop using the American-owned video platform Zoom and switch to a homegrown alternative, Visio.

“将我们的科学交流、敏感数据及战略创新暴露于非欧盟行为体”的风险促使法国政府下令所有公职人员停止使用美国拥有的视频平台Zoom，改用本土替代方案Visio。

Municipalities in Germany, Denmark and France have also been shifting from American-owned systems to European or other alternatives.

德国、丹麦及法国等国的市政当局亦陆续弃用美国拥有的系统，转向欧洲或其他地区的替代方案。

今年1月，丹麦哥本哈根民众走上街头，抗议特朗普总统对格陵兰岛的威胁。

But there can be glitches. The Netherlands had hired Solvinity, a Dutch cloud company, to operate its national digital identity system. But in November, the firm announced an agreement to be acquired by the American multinational Kyndryl.

但这种转型过程中也会出现问题。荷兰曾聘请一家荷兰云计算公司Solvinity运营其国家数字身份系统。但在去年11月，这家公司宣布已达成协议，将被美国的跨国企业Kyndryl收购。

European leaders have vowed to spend billions to build cloud computing infrastructure and develop artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

欧洲领导人已承诺投入数十亿欧元，用于建设云计算基础设施，并发展人工智能和量子计算。

Reducing dependence on American tech or financial services firms is easier said than done.

然而，减少对美国科技或金融服务公司的依赖说起来容易，做起来却很难。

The banking industry in Europe, which is developing private payment alternatives, has opposed a digital euro, and so have far-right political parties, citing concerns about privacy and economic centralization.

欧洲银行业正在开发私营支付替代方案，却始终反对推出数字欧元；一些极右翼政党也持反对态度，理由是担心隐私问题和经济权力过度集中。

As for digital technologies, at least 80 percent of Europe’s are imported, according to a recent report by European Digital SME Alliance, a trade group. In 2013, Europe controlled about 22 percent of the global market for information and communications technology. By 2022, it was only about 11 percent.

至于数字技术，根据行业组织欧洲数字中小企业联盟最近发布的报告，欧洲至少80%的数字技术依赖进口。2013年，欧洲曾占全球信息与通信技术市场约22%的份额；到2022年，这一比例已降至11%左右。

Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged.

记者与研究人员将在未来数月里深挖爱泼斯坦相关文件，寻找更多犯罪行为或新的阴谋论线索。但有一个真相已经浮出水面。

In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex.

这些文件以毫不留情的细节揭露了一群不受问责的精英阶层曾经隐秘的活动，他们有钱有势，大多来自商界、政界、学术界和娱乐圈。文件讲述了一个令人发指的罪犯如何被他所属的统治阶层庇护纵容，只因为他能为这些人提供金钱、人脉、奢华晚宴、私人飞机、隐秘岛屿，在某些情况下，还有性服务。

That story of impunity is all the more outrageous now in the midst of rising populist anger and ever-growing inequality. The Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends occurred over two decades that saw the decline of America’s manufacturing sector and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which millions of Americans lost their homes.

如今，在民粹主义情绪高涨、不平等日益加剧的背景下，这种逍遥法外的故事显得愈发令人愤慨。杰弗里·爱泼斯坦及其圈子的卡里古拉式荒诞放纵的行径持续了20多年。而这期间，美国制造业衰落，次贷危机爆发，数以百万计的美国人失去了家园。

If Mr. Epstein’s goal was to build a wall of protection around his abuse by surrounding himself with the well connected, he failed in the end. But both before and after he was first prosecuted for abusing girls, his correspondence described a network of people whose high-flying lives belied the struggles of ordinary Americans. And at the center of that network was a sexual predator seemingly on top of the world.

如果爱泼斯坦的目的是靠结交权贵为自己的性侵行为筑起保护墙，他最终还是失败了。但无论在他首次因性侵少女被起诉之前还是之后，他的往来通信都描绘出一个权贵网络，这群人纸醉金迷的生活与普通美国人的挣扎形成鲜明反差。而在这个网络中心的，是一个看似站在世界之巅的性掠夺者。

“We’ve heard so much about the Epstein scandal over the past several years,” said Nicole Hemmer, a history professor at Vanderbilt University who writes frequently about political culture. “And yet people do seem shocked by the scope of elite complicity in his world. It’s a level of corruption that the public is now getting a full view of.”

“过去几年我们已经听过太多关于爱泼斯坦丑闻的消息，”经常撰写政治文化相关文章的范德堡大学历史学教授妮可·亨默说。“但人们似乎依然对精英阶层在他的世界里共谋的程度感到震惊。公众现在终于完整看到了这种腐败的程度。”

In 2002, Mr. Epstein hosted former President Bill Clinton and the actor Kevin Spacey on a tour of African countries aboard his private jet.

2002年，爱泼斯坦曾邀请前总统克林顿和演员凯文·史派西搭乘他的私人飞机前往非洲多国访问。

His talent for entertaining attracted interest from one of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk, who emailed Mr. Epstein in 2012 to ask, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” (Mr. Musk has said on social media that he “had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island.”)

他擅长款待客人的能力吸引了世界顶级首富埃隆·马斯克的注意。马斯克在2012年给爱泼斯坦发邮件问道：“你岛上最疯狂的派对是哪天/哪夜？”（马斯克曾在社交媒体表示，他“与爱泼斯坦往来极少，并多次拒绝了其登岛邀请”。）

He dispensed favors to, and rubbed elbows with, Woody Allen; Noam Chomsky, the linguist and intellectual; Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel in the Clinton investigation; Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House counsel and currently the general counsel of Goldman Sachs; Stephen K. Bannon, one of President Trump’s top political allies; Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru; the film producer Barry Josephson; Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard and former Treasury secretary; Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway; and a cavalcade of financial titans.

他向以下人士提供便利并密切往来：伍迪·艾伦；语言学家与学者诺姆·乔姆斯基；负责调查克林顿案的独立检察官肯尼斯·斯塔尔；前奥巴马白宫法律顾问、现高盛总法律顾问凯瑟琳·鲁姆勒；特朗普总统最重要的政治盟友之一史蒂芬·班农；新时代灵性导师迪帕克·乔布拉；电影制片人巴里·约瑟夫森；前哈佛大学校长、前财政部长劳伦斯·萨默斯；前英国安德鲁王子；前约克公爵夫人莎拉·弗格森；挪威王储妃梅特-玛丽特，以及一众金融巨头。

史蒂芬·班农是与爱泼斯坦有往来的权势人物之一，这些人皆拥有广泛的人脉关系。

James E. Staley, who recently stepped down as the chief executive of Barclay’s in the wake of allegations involving his ties to Mr. Epstein, emailed Mr. Epstein in 2014 to suggest that upper-caste Americans like themselves were unlikely to ever face a populist uprising like the protests taking place in Brazil at the time.

近期因与爱泼斯坦关联的指控辞去巴克莱银行首席执行官一职的詹姆斯·斯塔利在2014年给爱泼斯坦发邮件称，像他们这样的美国上层精英，几乎不可能遭遇当时巴西那样的民粹主义抗议浪潮。

Pointing to Super Bowl ads that year, Mr. Staley wrote: “Its all about hip blacks in hip cars with white women. The group that should be in the streets, has been bought off. By Jay-Z.”

斯塔利在提到当年的超级碗广告时写道：“全都是时髦黑人开着豪车载着白人女性。本该上街抗议的那群人已经被收买了。收买者正是Jay-Z。”

詹姆斯·斯塔利在卷入与爱泼斯坦有关的指控后，辞去了巴克莱银行首席执行官的职务。

The shocking nature of some of the revelations, combined with the prominence and status of those in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, has done nothing to quiet the conspiracy theories that his behavior spawned and that both the right and the left have sought to weaponize for political advantage. If anything, the raft of new details has spiraled into feverish new speculation with little or no factual basis.

部分爆料的骇人性质，加上爱泼斯坦圈子里人物的显赫地位非但没有平息由此滋生的阴谋论，反而让左右两派都试图将其用作武器，以谋取政治利益。新披露的大量细节反而催生出更多近乎狂热、几乎毫无事实依据的猜测。

In 2014, Mr. Epstein received an email from an associate whose name has been redacted that said in full, “Thank you for a fun night … your littlest girl was a little naughty.” In another email, Mr. Epstein instructed a recipient whose name is also redacted to buy several sex toys, adding: “I want you to talk as nasty, vulgar, imaginative as you can … It will free your mind. Its like a mental sneeze.”

2014年，爱泼斯坦收到一封联系人（姓名被涂黑）的邮件，全文只有一句：“谢谢你带来的愉快夜晚……你最小的那个女孩有点调皮。”在另一封邮件中，爱泼斯坦指示另一位同样被涂黑的收件人购买多件性玩具，并补充道：“我要你说最下流、最粗俗、最放浪形骸的话……这会解放你的思想。就像一次精神上的喷嚏。”

Mr. Epstein wrote to another undisclosed recipient in 2009, who was identified on Wednesday in a House hearing as Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a powerful Emirati businessman: “where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video.”

2009年，爱泼斯坦写信给另一位未公开身份的收件人——此人在周三的一场国会听证会上被确认为阿联酋权势商人苏丹·艾哈迈德·本·苏莱姆：“你在哪？还好吗，我喜欢那段酷刑视频。”

Lacking context, such messages are subject to speculation about their meaning and provide fresh opportunities for those intent on drawing attention to themselves and their views.

由于缺乏上下文，这类信息很容易被随意解读，亦为那些渴望博取眼球之人提供了新素材。

An assistant to Mr. Epstein wrote to him in 2011: “I ordered sweet young coconuts from Thailand for you and they just arrived … just so you don’t have to drink juices from old hairy things.”

爱泼斯坦的一名助手在2011年写信给他：“我为你从泰国订了清甜的嫩椰子，刚到货……这样你就不用喝那些老毛玩意儿榨的汁了。”

Underscoring how even the apparently mundane can be stretched into the potentially conspiratorial, frequent references to pizza have given fresh life to the discredited 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which prominent Democrats were said to be torturing and raping children in the basement of a Washington restaurant. That the places and characters in Pizzagate are almost entirely different from the ones appearing in the Epstein files has not stopped some from insisting that there is a connection.

就连看似平淡的内容也能被歪曲成潜在阴谋，例如文件中频繁出现的“披萨”一词，让2016年已被证伪的“披萨门”阴谋论死灰复燃——该论调称，知名民主党人在华盛顿一家餐厅的地下室虐待、强奸儿童。尽管披萨门涉及的地点和人物与爱泼斯坦文件几乎完全不同，仍有人坚称两者存在关联。

Ms. Hemmer, the Vanderbilt professor, said that the shadowy nature of Mr. Epstein’s life, coupled with the Trump administration’s haphazard production of the documents, was “bound to beef up a ton of conspiracy theories.”

范德堡大学的亨默教授表示，爱泼斯坦的生平本就扑朔迷离，再加上特朗普政府杂乱无章地公布文件，“注定会催生大量阴谋论”。

Newly released video logs of the prison wing where Mr. Epstein was found dead, for example, suggest that a human figure not previously accounted for in the records was moving in the general direction of Mr. Epstein’s cell late that evening.

例如，爱泼斯坦被发现死亡的监狱区域最新公布的监控记录显示，当晚深夜，有一个此前未被记录的人影朝爱泼斯坦牢房的方向移动。

This has led some internet sleuths to conclude that Mr. Epstein, whose death in federal custody in 2019 was ruled a suicide, might have been killed. Others have speculated that he might not be dead at all, given that Mr. Epstein testified in a deposition in 2017 that he had a barbed-wire tattoo on his left biceps, but no such tattoo is visible in the recently released photo of his body.

这让一些网络侦探得出结论：2019年在联邦羁押期间死亡并被裁定为自杀的爱泼斯坦可能是他杀。还有人猜测他根本没死，理由是爱泼斯坦在2017年的一份证词中称自己左臂二头肌有一道铁丝网纹身，但在最新公布的遗体照片中却看不到这处纹身。

Representative Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who worked with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican congresswoman, and Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, to pass legislation compelling the release of the documents, dismissed the conspiracy theories.

加州民主党众议员罗·卡纳曾与前共和党众议员玛乔丽·泰勒·格林、肯塔基州共和党众议员托马斯·马西共同推动法案，强制公开相关文件。他对这些阴谋论嗤之以鼻。

But, he said in an interview, “we must ask ourselves how we have produced an elite that is so immature, reckless and arrogant.”

但他在采访中说：“我们必须扪心自问，我们为何会造就出如此幼稚、鲁莽且傲慢的精英阶层。”

While Mr. Epstein’s remarkable web of connections suggests to some that he was a puppet master calling the shots for a cabal of elites, that same web offers at least some proof to the contrary. Mr. Epstein counted presidents and cabinet members as his friends, but his influence on American policymaking was negligible.

尽管爱泼斯坦惊人的人脉网络让一些人认为他是操控精英小团体的幕后黑手，但这个网络本身至少也提供了部分反证。爱泼斯坦把总统和内阁成员当作朋友，但他对美国政策制定的影响微乎其微。

His chums in the media were not newspaper publishers and TV network chief executives but those farther down the food chain, including the author Michael Wolff and a New York Times financial reporter, Landon Thomas Jr., who left the paper after admitting that he had solicited money from Mr. Epstein for a personal charity.

他在媒体界的朋友并非报业大亨或电视网高管，而是食物链更底层的人物，包括作家迈克尔·沃尔夫，以及前《纽约时报》财经记者小兰登·托马斯——后者承认曾为一个个人慈善机构向爱泼斯坦募款后离开了报社。

Notably absent from his coterie were any federal prosecutors, judges or law enforcement figures who could have allowed him to escape justice.

值得注意的是，爱泼斯坦的圈子里没有任何能让他逃脱法律制裁的联邦检察官、法官或执法人员。

In the end, Mr. Epstein was arrested, charged with serious sex crimes and died in prison while awaiting trial. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell also remains incarcerated.

最终，爱泼斯坦被捕，被控严重性侵犯罪，并在候审期间死于狱中。他的同伙吉斯莱恩·马克斯韦尔目前仍在服刑。

The Japanese authorities said on Friday that they had seized a Chinese fishing boat sailing in waters off the coast of Nagasaki and detained its captain, adding to rising tensions between the two countries.

日本当局周五表示，在长崎附近海域扣押一艘中国渔船并将船长拘留，此举进一步加剧了两国间本已紧张的关系。

The Japanese fisheries agency said in a statement that officials had ordered the Chinese vessel, a trawler equipped with nets, to stop for an inspection around noon on Thursday after discovering it had entered Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea. The vessel “refused to comply and fled,” according to the agency. The authorities then seized the boat, which had a crew of 11 including the 47-year-old captain, who was detained.

日本水产厅在声明中称，官员于周四中午左右发现这艘配备渔网的中国拖网渔船进入东海的日本专属经济区后，下令其停船接受检查，但该船“拒不服从并逃离”。随后当局扣押了这艘载有11名船员（包括47岁船长）的渔船，船长已被拘留。

The episode, which took place off the coast of Nagasaki, near Japan’s Goto Islands, was the first time since 2022 that Japan had seized a Chinese fishing boat.

这起事件发生在五岛列岛附近的长崎县海域，是日本自2022年以来首次扣押中国渔船。

It seemed likely to further damage relations between Japan and China, which have sharply deteriorated in recent months.

此举恐将进一步冲击近几个月来急剧恶化的中日关系。

In November, Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, told the Japanese Parliament that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could incite a military response from Tokyo. China, which considers Taiwan, a self-governed democracy, part of its territory, responded by unleashing a wave of political and economic reprisals against Japan. China also discouraged its citizens from traveling to Japan — a serious blow to Tokyo, given that the Chinese represent more than a fifth of tourists to Japan.

去年11月，日本首相高市早苗在国会表示，假如中国对台湾发动攻击，东京可能会做出军事回应。中国视自治的民主政体台湾为自己领土的一部分，随即对日本实施了一系列政治和经济报复措施，还劝阻中国公民赴日旅游——考虑到中国游客占日本游客总数的五分之一以上，这对东京而言是沉重打击。

The Chinese retributions have started to hurt Japan’s economy, and Ms. Takaichi had seemed eager to avoid a major escalation, despite her reputation as a China hawk. She won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections on Sunday, an outcome that has alarmed Chinese officials and commentators.

中国的报复行动已开始损害日本经济。尽管高市早苗素有对华鹰派之称，但她似乎迫切希望避免局势大幅升级。她在上周日的国会选举中以压倒性优势获胜，这一结果令中国官员和评论人士感到担忧。

The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

中国外交部未立即回应置评请求。

The boat seized on Thursday, called the Qiong Dong Yu 11998, is being treated as evidence and will be moved to the port of Nagasaki, the Japanese authorities said. Immigration officials will determine the fate of the vessel’s 10 crew members, the authorities said.

日本当局称，周四被扣押的“琼东渔11998”号渔船已被当作证据，将被移至长崎港。移民官员将决定船上10名船员的处置方案。

The East China Sea has often played host to disputes between China and Japan. In 2010, a diplomatic showdown erupted when Japan arrested the captain of a Chinese trawler. The boat had collided with Japanese patrol vessels near uninhabited islands therein the East China Sea.

东海一直是中日争端的多发地。2010年，东海无人岛附近一艘中国拖网渔船与日本巡逻艇发生碰撞，日本逮捕船长，引发外交对峙。

Japan had insisted that the captain would be prosecuted, but it eventually relented in the face of pressure from China. His release handed a significant victory to Chinese leaders, who had ratcheted up pressure on Japan with verbal threats and economic sanctions.

当时日本坚称将起诉船长，但在中国的压力下最终妥协。船长获释对中国领导人而言是重大胜利，此前他们通过口头威胁和经济制裁向日本不断施加压力。