观点致拜登和习近平：中美“离异“不是一个选项A Message for the Aging Men Steering U.S.-China Relations
《NYtime》JACOB DREYER2023年11月16日
A couple of weeks ago, a young crowd in Shanghai came out in force to celebrate Halloween. The street where I live filled with revelers dressed in a range of elaborate costumes — as the white-clad enforcers of China’s Covid lockdowns, as Chinese courtesans or simply as a watermelon. Halloween allows us to dress up as something that we can’t otherwise be. It’s a strong impulse right now in China, which remains stuck in a postpandemic malaise marked by job shortages, a trend of disillusioned 20-somethings dropping out of the work force and society and a general yearning for a different way to be.
几周前，上海的一群年轻人上街庆祝万圣节。我的住处所在的那条街挤满了精心装扮的狂欢者——他们穿成一身白衣的中国新冠防疫人员，中国的名妓，或者干脆就是一个大西瓜。万圣节让我们穿成我们成不了的样子。此刻的中国有这样的一股强烈冲动，在疫情之后的萧条中，就业机会匮乏，出现了一股20来岁的年轻人经历幻灭后脱离劳动力市场和社会的潮流，社会总体上有一种换一个活法的渴望。
These young people in China are much like their American counterparts. Many feel they are living in a world that worked well for their parents but isn’t working as well for them. Young people in America view China as less of a threat to the United States than their parents do and worry more about things that affect all of us. This includes climate change, which cannot be adequately addressed without cooperation between China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
中国的这些年轻人和他们在美国的同辈有很多相似之处。很多人觉得，这个世界对他们的父母来说挺不错，但对他们就没那么好了。美国的年轻人不像父母那么担心中国对美国的威胁，我们更关心那些会影响我们的事情。这其中包括气候变化，如果没有中美这两个世界最大温室气体排放国的合作，这个问题是不可能得到充分应对的。
Yet as the aging leaders of China and the United States meet on Wednesday in San Francisco, there is the usual talk of unavoidable rivalry, intractable disputes on trade, technology and Taiwan and low expectations for the meeting. It is as if conflict between the two countries were something preordained, like an asteroid moving across a fixed path in the sky. But neither the United States nor China is a static entity; both are rapidly changing.
然而，当中美两国的老迈领导人周三在旧金山会面时，人们在谈论的仍然是无法避免的敌对、棘手的贸易纠纷、技术和台湾，以及不要对此次会面抱太多期待。仿佛两国的冲突是命中注定，就像小行星沿着固定的轨迹掠过天空。然而无论美国还是中国都不是一个静态的实体，两者都在发生着迅速的变化。
America and its hawkish politicians must stop viewing China’s Communist-led system as some immutable, monolithic foe to be vanquished; intergenerational transformation in China is well underway. When I first moved to China in 2008 at age 21, most Americans still harbored clichéd images of China, of a faraway land where the masses clogged streets on their bicycles or toiled away manufacturing the world’s goods. Some of those old tropes are rooted in reality. China’s older generations were, in fact, builder generations like the Americans of the 1950s, laying down rules, roads and lines on the map en route to turning China into the world’s factory. By China’s own admission, it is still modernizing.
美国及其鹰派政治人物需要改变对中国的看法，不应一口咬定这个共产党领导的体系是某种不可变的、铁板一块的仇敌，必须迎头痛击。2008年21岁的我移居中国时，大多数美国人还怀着对中国的刻板印象，在遥远的地方有这么一片土地，人们要么在拥挤的街道上骑着自行车，要么闷着头为世界生产商品。其中有些老旧的说法是源于现实的。中国的老一代的确跟上世纪50年代的美国人一样，是建造者的一代，他们制定了将中国变成世界工厂的规则、道路和轮廓。中国自己都承认，它的现代化尚未完成。
But the sons and daughters of those builders are growing up in a world very different from their parents’. They inherited the basic structure — of a nation that is rising once again, ready to make its mark on the world — but they will inevitably want to fill in how it looks and feels and will challenge older mores in the process. There is widespread and growing discussion, for instance, of how to make Chinese society more equitable, green, urban and scientific. China is undergoing a profound transition to a high-tech, highly educated, prosperous and powerful nation that its builder generation could only imagine.
然而这些建造者的儿女所在的世界，跟他们的父母辈有天壤之别。他们继承了基本的架构——一个再度崛起的国家，准备在世界舞台上一展身手——但同时他们不可避免地也希望影响这个国家的样貌和感觉，因此会对老一代发起挑战。比如现在有一些广泛的、日渐热烈的讨论，关注的是如何让中国社会更公平、绿色、都市化和科学化。中国正在进行一场深刻的转型，要成为一个只能停留在建造者一代想象中的高科技、高教育水平的富强国家。
Live in China for a while, and you realize that it’s not collapsing any time soon, despite what hawks in the United States might hope. Despite China’s unsteady transition away from low-cost labor and manufacturing toward innovation and consumption, its economy is still growing, albeit more slowly than in the past. Even as China builds coal plants, it has become a global renewables superpower, an exporter of electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines. Its tendency to be friendly with governments with which America is not, such as Russia, Iran and North Korea, means that American diplomats increasingly ask Beijing to use its leverage, including in the current Middle East turmoil. And in frontier technologies like artificial intelligence, experts agree that a discussion without China amounts to the West talking to itself.
在中国生活一段时间你就会明白，无论美国那些鹰派人物如何心心念念，它一时半会是不会崩溃的。中国从廉价劳动力和制造业向创新和消费的转变过程并非顺风顺水，但经济还在增长，即便比以前慢了不少。尽管还在建造煤电厂，中国已经成为一个全球可再生能源超级大国、电动汽车、太阳能板和风力涡轮机出口国。它倾向于跟那些和美国不友好的国家保持友好关系，比如俄罗斯、伊朗和朝鲜，这意味着美国外交官要越来越多地向北京寻求帮助，包括目前在中东的动荡局势。在人工智能等前沿技术领域，专家们也认为，如果不能让中国加入谈话，西方就是在自说自话。
China is perhaps the greatest rival America has faced. As the U.S. ambassador Nicholas Burns put it, China “is infinitely stronger than the Soviet Union ever was,” thanks to its economic, scientific and technological power, its capacity for innovation and its global ambition. But rather than a foe, we should see in China — and its many strengths — a powerful potential partner to work with in solving the world’s biggest problems. Investing huge amounts of American money and effort in a struggle for global supremacy does not always lead to the desired outcomes: America supposedly won the Cold War, outlasting the Soviet Union, but did that result in a democratic Russia, friendly to U.S. interests?
中国可能是美国遇到的最强大的对手。正如美国驻华大使尼古拉斯·伯恩斯所说，凭借它的经济、科学和技术实力，它的创新力和放眼全球的抱负，中国“远比苏联强大许多”。但是，我们不应与其为敌，而应该看到中国——及其种种优势——作为一个共同解决世界难题的强大合作伙伴的潜力。将大量金钱和精力投入到一场争夺世界霸权的斗争中，不一定能带来想要的效果：美国被认为是冷战的胜利者，看到了苏联的覆灭，但结果我们得到了一个符合美国利益的、民主的俄罗斯了吗？
China’s strength is not always easy to digest for Americans, who are used to being No. 1. It’s troubling to see the rise of a society of comparable power, operating under a value system that seems so different from America’s. Yet America retains enduring strengths that China envies: the U.S. dollar, the dynamism of American science, its cultural, military and diplomatic clout and the resilience of its economy. This means that U.S. leaders can afford to continue reaching out to China, to look past differences over those rules and boundaries laid down decades ago, to resist posturing for their electorates back home and to start working together on things that matter to young people in both countries. Those things include economic stability, job creation, healthy competition instead of decoupling, scientific collaboration and, above all, climate change.
对于习惯了世界第一的美国人来说，中国的实力并不总是容易接受。看到一个实力相当的社会崛起，并且在一种与美国截然不同的价值体系下运作，这令人不安。然而，美国仍保持着令中国羡慕的持久优势：美元、美国科学的活力、美国文化、军事和外交的影响力，以及美国经济的适应能力。这意味着美国领导人有能力继续主动与中国接触，超越对几十年前制定的规则和边界的分歧，不再装腔作势糊弄自己的选民，而是共同努力，解决对两国的年轻人来说重要的问题。这些问题包括经济稳定、创造就业、有益的竞争而非脱钩、科学合作，以及最重要的事——气候变化。
Each moment that we spend mired in distrust makes the world a little bit hotter. Raised under the threat of climate change, younger generations in both countries intuitively understand that we need new, transformative approaches and that yelling at each other solves nothing. Californians, plagued by wildfires, know that there are more immediate threats to their way of life than China. Shanghai’s people, living in a river delta, could see their home washed away in a few decades. The resources that Beijing and Washington expend on an unwinnable geopolitical standoff could be far better used in our energy transition or bringing better lives to people in the developing world.
我们在不信任中度过的每一刻都会让世界变得更热一点。两国的年轻一代在气候变化的威胁下长大，他们直观地认识到，我们需要新的、具有变革意义的方法，相互谩骂解决不了任何问题。饱受山火困扰的加州人知道，他们的生活方式面临着比中国更直接的威胁。居住在长江三角洲地区的上海人可能目睹家园在几十年内被冲走。北京和华盛顿在一场谁也无法取胜的地缘政治对峙上耗费资源，而这些资源本可以更好地用于我们的能源转型，或者为发展中国家的人民带来更好的生活。
My wife, who is Chinese, and I have a son who recently celebrated his first birthday. He has a little sister on the way. My mother-in-law is looking forward to visiting my home state, Virginia — it will be her first trip outside China — during Chinese New Year in February. Our families are blending together, facing the future. Our countries can do the same. As Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said during a visit to China last month, “Divorce is not an option.”
我的妻子是中国人，我有最近刚过一岁生日的儿子。他还有个即将出世的妹妹。我的岳母期待着在2月份的中国新年期间访问我的家乡弗吉尼亚州——那将是她第一次出国旅行。我们的家庭融合在一起，面向未来。我们的国家也可以这样做。正如加州州长加文·纽森上个月访问中国时所说，“离异不是一个选项。”
So it’s encouraging that Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden — 70 and 80 years old and members of the Cold War generation — are meeting for the first time in a year. But it’s what we do afterward that matters. Nobody lives forever. The disputes of today are fleeting, but their consequences for families like mine will last.
因此，习近平和拜登——他们都是冷战一代，一个70多岁，一个80多岁——在这一年内的首次会面是令人鼓舞的。但重要的是我们之后要做什么。没有人能够长生不老。今天的争端转瞬即逝，却会对我家这样的家庭留下持久的影响。
Jacob Dreyer是一名作家和编辑，在过去15年的大部分时间里居住在上海。

翻译：纽约时报中文网