美国对中国的新态度正在改变两国关系 [美国媒体]

America’s new attitude towards China is changing the countries’ relationship

美国对中国的新态度正在改变两国关系

WANG JIANQIN, in a thick red jerkin worn over her working clothes, does not look like an agent of superpower reprisal. The 60-year-old farmer rears 4,000 pigs in a brick-walled compound in Shunyi district, some 45km from Beijing. About a fifth of the food that she uses to fatten them up is soyabean meal, something China has come to import in vast quantities from the American Midwest.

王建清在工作服的外面罩了一件厚厚的红色大衣，看起来完全不像是大国贸易报复行为的代理人。这位60岁的农民在距离北京45公里的顺义区的一个四周砖砌的院落里饲养了4000头猪。她用来给猪增肥的食物中约有五分之一是大豆，这些大豆是中国从美国中西部地区大量进口的。

Over the past 30 years, as the demand for pork in China has outstripped that in any other country, Ms Wang and her peers have done very nicely out of that American soya. And in America farmers have done well out of Ms Wang. Chinese money helped them pay for lots of cheap, Chinese-made goods at Walmart—as well as for the genetically modified seeds and other high-tech inputs stuffed with American know-how that make them so productive.

在过去三十年里，中国对猪肉的需求已经超过了其他任何国家，而借助美国的大豆，王女士和她的同行们在养猪业里做得很好。美国的农民从王女士那里获得了丰厚的回报。中国的资金帮助他们从沃尔玛里购买了大量的廉价的中国制造的商品，也帮助他们购买了转基因种子和其他富含美国技术的高科技产品正是这些产品使得他们的工作变得如此高效。

But this year their earnings will be a good bit down. In April President Donald Trump accused China of stealing intellectual property, coercing American firms into technology transfers and other unfair trade practices. Mr Trump spent a dizzying spring and summer announcing punitive tariffs, expanding their scope and amping up their severity. There are now tariffs of between 10% and 25% on $250bn of imports. Mr Trump has growled his willingness to go up to 25% on all of those goods and start in on the remaining $267bn if he does not get his way.

但是今年他们的收入将会下降不少。今年四月，美国总统特朗普指责中国窃取其知识产权，强迫美国公司进行技术转让，同时进行不公平贸易行为。特兰股在春夏两季接连宣布施加惩罚性关税，扩大了征收范围，加大了征收力度。目前，特朗普政府对价值2500亿美元的进口商品征收10%到25%的关税。特朗普叫嚣道，如果他不能如愿以偿，他将在剩下的价值267亿美元的商品征收25%的关税。

When China punched back, announcing tariffs on up to $60bn of American imports, it included a 25% tariff on soyabeans to hurt farm states that had voted for Mr Trump, such as Iowa. Despite China’s president, Xi Jinping, having fond memories of the time he spent in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1985, the fact that the state is both second among America’s soyabean producers and disproportionately influential in American politics makes it a prime target. Ms Wang was weaponised. As the price of soya has shot up, she says, some of her peers have switched to other feed, and she is thinking of following suit. The Chinese Feed Industry Association has proposed new standards for pigfeed that cut the soyabean content to just 11-13%—a change that could reduce annual consumption by 10m tonnes.

当中国宣布对美国进口商品征收高达600亿美元的关税时，其中就包括对美国大豆征收25%的关税，此举损害了爱荷华州等曾投票支持特朗普的农业州的利益。尽管中国对于她1985年在美国爱荷华州的马斯卡廷的时光有着美好的回忆，但是该州既是美国第二大大豆生产州也对美国政治有着相当大的影响力，使得它称为关税报复的主要目标。王女士就成了中国施加报复关税的武器。她表示，随着大豆价格的飙升，她的一些同行转而选择其他饲料，她也正在考虑效仿他们。中国饲料工业协会退出了猪饲料新标准，将大豆含量降低到11%到13%，这一变化每年可减少1000万吨大豆消耗。

China wants to do a deal. But America may want more than it is willing to give, because its concerns are wider than trade. Mr Trump sees himself leading a fight against “globalism”, by which he means any order that binds American sovereignty, or fails to put American workers first. As he put it to the UN General Assembly in September, “We reject the ideology of globalism and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.” And his great patriotic fight is with China. “When I came,” he said in August, “we were heading in a certain direction that was going to allow China to be bigger than us in a very short period of time. That’s not going to happen any more.”

中国想要与美国达成一项协议。但是美国想要的可能比中国愿意给的要多，因为美国关注的远非贸易这一领域。特朗普认为自己是在领导一场反抗“全球主义”的斗争，他指的是任何约束美国主权或没有把美国工人摆在首位的秩序。正如他去年九月在联合国大会上所说，“我们拒绝全球主义的意识形态，信奉爱国主义。”他最伟大的爱国斗争是与中国展开的。他在8月份说道，“当我来的时候，我们正朝着一个特定的方向前进，这个方向将允许中国在很短的时间内超越美国。但这种情况不会再发生。”

A broadly based interdependence ties Beijing’s pigs to Iowa’s fields, interweaves supply chains and distribution networks across the Pacific and has seen copious Chinese investment in America. That had, until recently, led observers in both China and America to think attitudes like Mr Trump’s could be nothing but bluster. Though relations might be testy from time to time, the economic logic which favoured getting along was simply too strong to ignore. But American unease about China’s growing technological heft, increasing authoritarianism and military strength is now overriding that logic.

北京的生猪和爱荷华州的农场有着广泛的相互依存的关系，其中交织着横跨太平洋的供应链和分销网络，而中国也在美国进行了大量的投资。直到最近，中美两国的观察人士才开始认为，特朗普这样的态度不过是虚张声势。尽管两国关系时不时地出现问题，但是支持两国和睦相处的经济逻辑太过强大，不容忽视。但是美国对于中国日益增长的技术实力、独裁主义和军事实力的不安如今已经压垮了这一经济逻辑。

America is undergoing a deep shift in its thinking about China on right and left alike. There is a new consensus that China has a deliberate strategy to push America back and impose its will abroad, and that there needs to be a strong American response. The coalition takes in conventional free-traders in the White House as well as the zero-summists in Team Trump and the national-security hawks in Congress. Pentagon chiefs and the bosses of spy agencies have framed China as the greatest threat to America’s security, requiring a “whole of government” response. In civil society, the coalition includes religious conservatives, human-rights advocates, labour unions and old-school protectionists.

美国对于中国是左（左代表激进）是右（右代表保守）的看法正在发生深刻的转变。现在有一个新的共识即中国有意取代美国，将自己的意志强加于其他国家，这需要美国做出强有力的回应。这个联盟接纳了白宫中的传统自由贸易主义者、特朗普团队中的零和主义者以及国会中的国家安全鹰派。五角大楼和美间谍机构的官员们将中国视为对美国安全的最大威胁，需要“整体政府”的回应。在民间，该联盟吸收了宗教保守主义者、人权活动人士、工会和传统贸易保护主义者。

On October 4th Vice-President Mike Pence hammered the new attitude home in a de facto declaration of cold war. As well as decrying China’s internal repression and its surveillance state, he inveighed against its attempts to hack and bamboozle America: it was employing “political, economic and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States.” One example: a supplement in the Des Moines Register, Iowa’s newspaper of record, which China paid for in an attempt to turn Ms Wang’s American suppliers against the administration’s trade policies.

10月4日，美国副总统迈克·彭斯在一场实际上的冷战宣言中抨击了新态度。除了谴责中国对其民众的内部镇压和监控之外，彭斯还猛烈抨击了中国非法侵入和迷惑美国的企图：中国正在借助“政治、经济和军事手段以及政治宣传手段，提升在美国的影响力，为本国谋利。”例如，中国出资购买了爱荷华州记录报纸《得梅因纪事报》的增刊，试图让王女士的美国大豆供应商反对当局的贸易政策。

Given Russia’s blatant attempts to interfere in the election that brought Mr Trump to power, one could be forgiven for rolling one’s eyes at this stressing of the mote, as opposed to the beam. But Mr Pence levelled charge after charge, hinting, without supplying evidence, at darker interference. He deplored the China-friendly programmes supplied to dozens of American outlets by Chinese state radio. He accused China of exerting pressure on American universities by threatening to deny visas to researchers, and bribing and bullying Hollywood into portraying it in a positive light.

鉴于俄罗斯明目张胆地干预美国大选，将特朗普推上权力宝座，对于中国的小打小闹完全可以睁一只眼闭一只眼。但是彭斯一次又一次地无理指责、暗示中国对美国进行了更严重的干涉。他谴责了中国广电向数十家美国媒体提供的对中国友好的节目。他控告中国以拒绝研究人员赴中国的签证为要挟，并威逼利诱好莱坞人士，迫使他们为中国说好话。

The vice-president accused the Communist Party of obtaining “American intellectual property—the foundation of our economic leadership—by any means necessary”. It would feed this into its “Made in China 2025” plans to dominate advanced industries such as robotics, biotechnology and artificial intelligence. He decried its intimidation of Taiwan, which China believes to be a rogue province, and its broad military ambitions. China, he said, “wants nothing less than to push the United States from the western Pacific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies.” This would not stand. The Trump administration, Mr Pence said, “has now pledged to fight back hard on all fronts—and win.”

这位副总统还指责中国“以任何必要的手段”获取“美国的知识产权——使美国经济处于领先地位的基础。”中国将窃取来的知识产权纳入其“中国制造2025”计划使中国在机器人学、生物技术和人工智能等先进行业处于领先地位。他谴责中国对其认为是流氓省份的台湾的恐吓及其巨大的军事野心。他表示，中国只想把美国挤出西太平洋，并试图阻止美国援助盟友。”中国的企图是站不住脚的。彭斯表示，特朗普政府“发誓在各各方面进行了反击并取得了胜利。”

This is not just a war of tariffs and words. In early October Xu Yanjun, a functionary of China’s foreign-intelligence agency, was lured to Belgium and then extradited to America on charges of stealing trade secrets from American aerospace companies. It is the first time a Chinese national has been extradited to America for such spying. A few days before that, in what a spokesman for America’s Pacific fleet called “a series of increasingly aggressive manoeuvres”, a Chinese destroyer came within 40 metres of an American guided-missile destroyer, the USS Decatur, which was on “freedom of navigation operations” within waters China stakes a claim to on the basis of a couple of disputed reefs nearby. Warships acting like dodgems feels like an escalation.

这不仅仅是一场关税和言语的战争。十月初，中国外国情报机构工作人员许艳军被引诱到比利时，随后以窃取美国航空航天公司商业机密的罪名被引渡到美国。这是中国公民第一次因这种间谍行为被引渡到美国。此前一些天，中国驱逐舰靠近美国导弹驱逐舰迪凯特号40米内，美国太平洋舰队称该行为是“一系列越来越咄咄逼人的操作”，此前美国军舰正在中国宣称主权的争议岛礁附近进行“自由航行”。像开碰碰车一样驾驶军舰，似乎是为了扩大事态。

In an ocean of mistrust, it is worth recalling what still holds. The two countries’ bilateral trading relationship remains the world’s biggest, despite the trade war. The Chinese diaspora and 350,000 Chinese students in American colleges and universities mean there are a great many personal ties between them. China co-operated in harsh sanctions aimed at getting North Korea to restrain its nuclear programme. Some progress has been made in cracking down on the flow of Chinese opioids to America. And it is not as if the two countries are fighting proxy wars in third countries. This is not—yet—a cold war like the previous one.

在一片互相猜忌的氛围中，我们要回忆那些还存在的美好事物。抛开贸易战不谈，中美两国间的双边贸易关系仍是世界上最大的。在美华人和35万在美国高线求学中国学生都证明了两国之间仍存在大量的民间交流。中国配合美国对朝鲜施加严厉制裁迫使其停止核项目。双方在打击中国毒品流入美国方面取得了一些进展。而且，两国并没有在第三国打代理人战争。这并不是上一次的那场冷战。

But genuine, if sometimes wary, engagement has been replaced by frank talk of strategic competition and deepening mistrust underlined by big tariffs. As Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia now running the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think-tank, puts it, the ballast that once kept the relationship on an even keel has been jettisoned. What went wrong?

但是，诚恳（有时是谨慎的）的接触已经被战略竞争的坦率言论所取代，而巨额关税也加剧了互相间的不信任。澳大利亚前总理凯文·拉德如今正管理着智 库亚洲社会政策研究所，正如他所言，曾经保持两国关系稳定的压舱石已被抛弃。到底哪里出了问题？

The original ballast, the steadying factor which allowed Richard Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s, was a shared strategic mistrust of the Soviet Union. America’s underpinning of East Asia’s security gave China the confidence to begin its opening up to the world in the late 1970s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a shared dislike of it was no longer much of a basis for a relationship—especially as the overtly pro-American tone of students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had made the party afraid that America was bent on toppling communism there, too. But gradually, over the 1990s, the two sides found a new way to steady their relationship: trade.

中美两国对前苏联的战略性互不信任是理查德·尼克松上世纪七十年代向中国敞开怀抱的初始稳定因素。美国对东亚安全的支持使得中国在上世纪七十年代末有信心实施改革开放。苏联解体后，两国对苏联的共同厌恶无法再成为两国关系的基础但是到了二十世纪九十年代，中美双方逐渐找到了稳定双方关系的新方法即贸易。

The era of closest alignment was the early 2000s, after America helped China become a member of the World Trade Organization. China had been building up its armed forces since the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, when a show of naval force by President Bill Clinton brought Chinese missile tests designed to intimidate the Taiwanese to an abrupt halt. But China was not in a position to mount a serious regional challenge to America—where concern about its rapid rise was tempered by an assumption among political and business elites that the rapid expansion of its middle class would bring some measure of liberalization. It was not just Westerners who imagined that an authoritarian China might liberalize internally and become a “responsible stakeholder”, in the phrase an American diplomat, Robert Zoellick, used in 2005. Many Chinese argued the case, too.

本世纪初，随着美国帮助中国成为世贸组织成员国后，双方关系进入了最亲密的时期。自1996年台海危机爆发以来，中国一直在大力建设本国军队，当时美国总统比尔·克林顿展示了美国的海军力量，旨在恐吓台湾的中国导弹试验戛然而止。但是中国还无力对美国造成严重的挑战，在美国对于中国迅速崛起的忧虑被政界和商界精英中流传的一种设想（即中国中产阶级的迅速扩大会给中国带来一定程度的自由）所缓和。用美国外交官罗伯特·左立客在2005年的话说，不仅是西方人猜测独裁的中国会从内部自由化，成为一个“负责任的利益相关方”，中国也在争论这个问题。

There were incidents that raised tensions, such as the forced landing of an American spy plane on Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter in 2001. But neither side saw an attractive alternative to getting along.

而一些事件加剧两国间的紧张状态，比如，2001年一家美国侦察机与中国战斗机发生碰撞后被迫降落在海南机场。但是双方没有找到一个能令各自满意的相处方案。

Then two things changed. The global financial crisis narrowed America’s economic lead. After the collapse of its export markets threw some 20m Chinese out of work in just a few months, the government responded with a massive stimulus, rolling out high-speed rail, motorways, sewage-treatment plants, housing projects and more. Chinese GDP bounced back; America’s growth remained well below par for years, seemingly justifying a certain technocratic cockiness, as well as a degree of Schadenfreude. In 2006, measured in current dollars, America’s economy was five times bigger than China’s. In 2017 it was just 60% bigger.

然后两件事情出现了变化。全球经济危机缩小了美国的经济优势。在美国出口市场崩盘之后的短短几个月内，约200万中国丢了饭碗，中国政府随即推出大量刺激计划，建设高速铁路，高速公路、污水处理厂、住房项目等项目。中国的国内生产总值迅速恢复；美国经济增长几年来一直低于平均水平，这似乎证明了某个技术官僚的自大及某种程度上的幸灾乐祸。2006年，以现在的美元价值计算，美国的经济规模是中国的五倍。而2017年，这个数字只增长了60%。

American concern over those changes has been exacerbated by a generational shift in its bureaucracy. Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank, points out that the public servants who knew China as a poor country and saw the fruits of it opening in the 1990s are retiring. Whether they be the kindly folk who administer development aid or hard-boiled China-hands at the Pentagon or CIA, the younger officials now running China policy have known only a wealthy, powerful nation breaking promises of reform. In 2014 many also saw their own sensitive data, sometimes including information about love lives, drinking habits and finances gathered for security clearances, stolen by Chinese cyber-thieves from the Office of Personnel Management. “That makes the risks personal,” says Mr Paal.

美国对这些变化的担忧因其机构的代际更替而加剧。华盛顿一家智库卡内基国际和平基金会的道格拉斯·鲍尔指出，那些知道中国侧鞥是个贫穷的国家并见证了其开放成果的那代公务员正在逐渐退休。无论是管理发展援助的良人还是五角大楼或是中情局里铁面无私的中国通，如今掌管中国政策的这代年轻官员只知道中国是一个富裕、强大的国家，违背了其开放做出的承诺。2014年许多美国人发现自己的一些敏感数据，包括爱情生活、饮食习惯和为安全调查而收集的财务数据等信息被中国人事管理局的网络窃贼们盗取了。鲍尔表示，“这使得风险影响到了个人。”

Such malfeasance continues. On October 9th CrowdStrike, an American computer-security company, published a report into intrusion attempts it had monitored, identifying China as the most prolific source of nation-state attacks on American computer networks in the first half of 2018. The firm cited evidence of China-based hackers attacking firms in biotech, aerospace, mining, pharmaceuticals, professional services and transport. Foreign diplomats and Western businessmen say that Chinese intruders frequently target sensitive commercial data held within servers in China and even Western home countries. The agreement between Mr Xi and Barack Obama in 2015 that China would refrain from state-sponsored intrusions to steal commercial intellectual property is clearly in poor shape. Controls on Chinese investment in American tech businesses are tightening up.

这样的不法行为仍在发生。10月9日，美国计算机安全公司云反击（CrowdStrike）发布了一份关于其监控的非法入侵企图的报告，该报告称，中国是2018年上半年对美国计算机网络发起攻击最多的国家。该公司列举了中国黑客攻击生物技术、航空航天、采矿、制药、专业性劳务和运输公司的证据。外国外交官和西方的商人表示中国入侵者们经常以中国甚至是西方国家服务器中的敏感商业数据为目标。2015年奥巴马总统和中国达成的协议——即中国将避免国家资助的窃取商业知识产权的入侵行为——如今很糟糕。中国对美国科技企业投资的控制正在收紧。


The Chinese government’s response is to declare its support for cyber-security and the protection of intellectual property, though American firms which have had their technology snaffled say that Chinese courts make no pretence of upholding the same law for all. On October 15th the state news agency, Xinhua, published a commentary calling America “a cyber-predator that has a notorious record of violating other countries’ interests and rights.” The country’s ulterior motive was “fearmongering” against China, it said, citing the “eye-popping” revelations made by Edward Snowden, a former American cyber-spy turned leaker who revealed how America’s National Security Agency used hacking techniques and hidden vulnerabilities in high-tech kit to eavesdrop on America’s foes—including China—as well as its friends. Xinhua also accused America of “slandering” Chinese high-tech enterprises such as Huawei, a telecoms giant, in order to “stir up Sinophobia in other countries so as to browbeat or hoodwink，them into blocking Chinese competitors and saving the market for US companies.”

中国政府的回应是为了声明其对空间安全和保护知识产权的支持，然而那些被窃取了技术的美国公司表示，中国法院并没有对所有人适用同一部法律。10月15日，中国国家新闻机构新华社发表评论文章称，美国是“一个有着侵犯他国权益的不良记录的网络掠夺者。”该评论文章称，美国的叵测居心是散布关于中国的谣言，其援引了前美国网络间谍、泄密者爱德华·斯诺登的“令人瞠目”的爆料，他揭露了美国国家安全局如何利用黑客技术以及高科技设备中的漏洞窃听美国的敌人（包括中国在内）以及美国的朋友。新华社也指责美国“诽谤”中国高科技企业比如通讯巨头华为公司，目的是在其他国家煽动反华情绪，恫吓或蒙蔽他们封锁中国竞争者，保护美国公司的市场。”

China is also becoming a new source of competition on the high seas, its warships increasingly active from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, where China has established its first overseas base, to the East China Sea, where America is treaty-bound to protect disputed islands controlled by Japan. Last April China’s largest-ever naval exercise saw scores of ships in the Taiwan Strait. China has also been picking away at the dwindling number of states that maintain official relations with Taiwan.

中国也正在成为美国在公海上的新竞争对手，从非洲之角吉布提（中国在此建立首个海外基地）到中国东海（美国受条约限制在此保护日本控制的争议岛屿）中国军舰越来越活跃。去年四月，中国进行了有史以来最大规模的海军演习，在台湾海峡展示了大量军舰。中国一直在截胡与台湾保持正式外交关系的国家，这一数目在不断减少。

China’s military spending has not changed much as a share of GDP; but when your GDP is as large as China’s, and growing as fast, you can afford to buy a lot of arms. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, notes that since 2014 China has launched naval vessels “with a total tonnage greater than the tonnages of the entire French, German, Indian, Italian, South Korean, Spanish or Taiwanese navies”. What is more, the increasing number of its ships may well understate the rate at which China is improving its ability to sink enemy vessels. China’s anti-ship missiles, launched at sea, in the air or from the ground, are more plentiful and more advanced than America’s, and some boast longer ranges, too; the same goes for some of its other munitions. That, according to Eric Sayers, who until recently was a consultant at America’s Indo-Pacific Command, is what America’s planners need to worry about.

中国的军费开支在GDP中的比重没有发生太大的变化；但是当一国的GDP的规模和增长速度都和中国一样的话，该国就可以购买大量武器。智库国际战略研究所指出，自2014年开始，中国建造的军舰“总吨位已经超过了法国、德国、印度、意大利、南朝鲜。西班牙或台湾的军舰总吨位。”而且，越来越多的军舰很可能让人低估了中国正在提高其击沉敌舰的能力的速度。中国的空击海基陆基反舰导弹比美国的反舰导弹数量更多、性能更先进，其中一些导弹射程也更远；而其他的一些武器装备情况也是如此。埃里克·赛耶斯（Eric Sayers）直到最近仍然担任美国印太司令部顾问，他表示，这才是美国政策制定者应当担心的事情。

A growing array of satellites and sensors, including some on disputed islets, can funnel panoptic targeting data to this wide array of missiles, making it dangerous for hulking American aircraft-carriers to station themselves near flash points. “In any air war we do great in the first couple of days,” says Christopher Johnson, formerly the CIA’s senior China analyst. “Then we have to move everything back to Japan, and we can’t generate sufficient sorties from that point for deep strike on the mainland.” If America cannot destroy missile sites on the mainland it risks incurring severe losses in any fights near Chinese shores.

中国部署的越来越多的卫星和传感器，包括部署在争议岛屿的相关设备可以将目标的全景数据传送给广泛部署的导弹阵地，这使的美国在闪点附近的庞大航母部署行动面临危险。前中情局高级中国分析员表示，“在任何一场空战中，起初几天里我们都表现得很出色，随后我们必须全部撤到日本，我们无法生产足够的战斗机对大陆进行纵深打击。”如果美国不能摧毁大陆的导弹阵地，那么美国有可能在中国海岸附近的任何战斗中遭受重大损失。

America does have one thing that its rival does not: friends. Many of these, including India, Japan and Taiwan, are glad to see it dispensing with old niceties and calling China a strategic competitor. America, India and Japan hold annual exercises that grow more ambitious by the year, flying aircraft off one another’s decks and sharing tips on how to hunt unfriendly submarines. An intelligence-sharing agreement between America and India, which Indian leaders had kept on ice for years, was signed in September, paving the way for more advanced weaponry to flow to India’s armed forces. America and Australia have both sounded out Papua New Guinea on the prospect of new bases in the southern Pacific. The “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, in which America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand freely share the fruits of their eavesdropping, has been energised by joint efforts to track China’s interference in foreign countries.

但美国确实有一个对手所没有的东西就是盟友。包括印度、日本和台湾在内的许多美国盟友都乐意看到美国摒弃与它们的前嫌，称中国为战略竞争者。美国、印度和日本举行年度军事演习，并且规模逐年扩大，驾驶飞机从参与国军舰的甲板上飞过，并分享猎杀不友好潜艇的技巧。被印度政府领导人雪藏多年的美印情报共享协议与今年9月签订，为向印度输送更先进的武器铺平道路。美国和澳大利亚都就在南太平洋巴布亚新几内亚建立新基地的前景对其进行了试探。美国、英国、加拿大、澳大利亚和新西兰共享窃听成果的“五眼”情报联盟在追踪中国对外国进行干预的共同行动中重获新生。

In fractious times, it is good to talk. Yet lines of communication between America and China are shutting down just as they are most needed. A high-level diplomatic and security dialogue between the defence ministers of America and China, hailed as a “pillar” of the relationship when it was launched last year, was abruptly junked by China last month, after its armed forces fell foul of American sanctions on buying Russian arms. China has also curtailed or cancelled several other military contacts between the countries—not that these have ever been extensive or especially fruitful. A lower profile Military Maritime Consultative Arrangement, in which each side swaps complaints about encounters like that in August, continues to function. Were that to now be abandoned, alarm bells should really start ringing.

在一个易怒的时代，能够交谈是件好事。然而中美之间的交流通道正在关闭，而这却是他们最需要的。去年启动的中美国防部长间的高级别外交和安全对话被誉为中美关系的“支柱”，却在去年其武装部队购买俄罗斯武器违反了美国制裁后突然被中国废弃。中国还缩减或取消了两国间的几次军事交流——除了那些已趋广泛或是特别富有成果的交流。一个更低调的军事海事协商协议继续发挥作用，在此协议下双方交换了对8月份发生的对抗的意见。如果现在放弃了该协议，那就真的应该敲响警钟了。

Tensions between the two powers have risen before—but only when there has been a crisis, as in the Taiwan Strait in 1996 or on Hainan in 2001. What is alarming is the degree to which they have heightened without any such flashpoint. Now that the relationship’s ballast has been largely jettisoned, future squalls will be even scarier.

两国之间的紧张关系也曾升级过——但只在出现危机时才会升级，比如1996年的台海危机或2001年的海南撞机时间。令人担忧的是，在没有此类闪点的情况下，两国之间的紧张关系会上升到何种程度。如今两国关系的压舱石已经被抛弃，未来的风暴会更加可怕。