华尔街日报 | 特朗普即将重返白宫，美中现有对话渠道前景黯淡

U.S.’s Channels With China Have Gone Dark With Trump’s Return


在特朗普的第一个任期内，他的团队对于中国政府青睐的正式沟通机制几乎没什么耐心。


近几年里，拜登政府与中国政府重启了对话。

过去一年半里，美国财政部高级官员几乎每隔一个月就会与中国财政部相应官员会晤。即将上任的特朗普(Donald Trump)团队是否会保持这种对话渠道目前尚不清楚。
For the past year and a half, senior Treasury officials have met with their Chinese counterparts almost once every other month. Whether an incoming Trump team will keep such channels of dialogue going is now up in the air. 
   
现任总统拜登(Joe Biden)和候任总统特朗普都主张对华采取强硬立场，但在如何与中国互动方面，两人的策略截然不同。
President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump both advocate a tough stance on China, but have substantially different strategies on how to interact with Beijing. 
   
在特朗普于2017年初上任之前，两国政府之间有90多个官方沟通渠道。特朗普和他的团队上任后对这种正式沟通几乎没有耐心，认为中国领导人借此把美国拖入无休止的讨论，而这些讨论基本没有对那些被认为损害美国工人和企业利益的政策带来任何有意义的改变。到特朗普第一个任期结束时，此类渠道已几乎减少至零。
Before Trump took office in early 2017, the two governments had over 90 official channels of communication. He and his team had little patience for such formalized communication, seeing them as a way for China’s leaders to suck the U.S. into endless discussions that yielded little meaningful change in policies seen as harmful to American workers and businesses. By the end of Trump’s first term, such channels had dwindled to virtually zero. 
   
近年来，随着中美关系因地缘政治竞争变得紧张，且新冠疫情加剧了这种局面，拜登政府寻求重置两国关系，与习近平政府重启了对话，建立了20多个涵盖从经济金融事务到安全和气候变化等议题的高级别渠道。
The Biden administration, in an effort to reset relations strained by the countries’ geopolitical rivalry and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, has re-established dialogue with Xi Jinping’s government in recent years, with some two dozen high-level channels covering topics from economic and financial matters to security and climate change.
美国财政部负责国际事务的副部长尚博(Jay Shambaugh)表示，此类对话使华盛顿方面能够就中国工业产能过剩等美国深为关切的问题向北京方面施压，尽管拜登政府今年已对涌向全球市场的中国钢铁、电动汽车和其他产品加征了关税。尚博已与中国政府举行了七轮经济会谈。
Jay Shambaugh, Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs who has held seven rounds of economic talks with Beijing, said such dialogues have enabled Washington to press Beijing on issues of deep concern to the U.S., such as China’s industrial overcapacity, even as the administration this year has raised tariffs on Chinese steel, electric vehicles and other products that have flooded world markets.
 
尚博在接受采访时表示：“我们进行对话并不意味着我们不会继续采取防御行动。”
“Just because we’re talking doesn’t mean we don’t continue to take defensive actions,” Shambaugh said in an interview.


美国财政部负责国际事务的副部长尚博

中美一些外交政策分析人士预计，即将上任的特朗普政府不会维持拜登团队建立的这些对话机制。政治风险咨询公司欧亚集团(Eurasia Group)的创始人兼总裁布雷默(Ian Bremmer)在最近给客户的一份报告中写道：“很难想象目前这种近乎战略性和经济性的对话会继续下去。”
A number of foreign-policy analysts in both the U.S. and China don’t expect the coming Trump administration to keep the meetings the Biden team established going. “It’s hard to imagine the continuation of the present near-strategic and economic dialogue,” Ian Bremmer, founder and president of political-risk consulting firm Eurasia, wrote in a recent note to clients.
 
特朗普过渡团队发言人莱维特(Karoline Leavitt)在一份声明中表示，中国正“严重削弱我们的制造业”，并列举了中国其他一些被视为损害美国利益的行为。她表示：“美国人民选择了总统特朗普来对付中国，对中国商品加征关税，并让美国再次强大起来。他会做到的。”
In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, said China is “crippling our manufacturing industry” and listed a number of other Chinese actions seen as hurting U.S. interests. She said, “The American people elected President Trump to stand up to China, enforce tariffs on Chinese goods, and make America strong again. He will deliver.”
中国政府认为对话始终符合自身利益，并青睐定期对话机制带来的可预测性。
Beijing sees dialogue as always in its interest and prefers the predictability offered by a recurring mechanism.
去年，美国财政部长耶伦(Janet Yellen)和中国国务院副总理何立峰宣布了两个经济和金融对话渠道，议题包括两国的宏观经济政策、中国对俄罗斯的经济支持，以及旨在减少人口和毒品贩运的联合反洗钱努力。何立峰是可以直通习的人。
Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her counterpart, China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng, who has a direct line to Xi, announced two channels for economic and financial dialogue, with topics including macroeconomic policies in both countries, China’s economic support of Russia, and joint anti-money-laundering efforts aimed at reducing human and drug trafficking.
 
近几个月来，美国财政部官员利用上述对话继续强调耶伦今年4月访华期间发出的警告。耶伦当时警告称，中国庞大制造业的产出已变得过大，世界无法消化。
In recent months, Treasury officials have used the dialogue to build on Yellen’s warnings during her April visit to China that output by China’s enormous manufacturing machine has gotten too large for the world to absorb. 


中国国务院副总理何立峰和美国财政部长耶伦在4月举行的一次会议上。

尽管国内需求大幅减少，中国仍在加大制造业产能，将其过剩产品输往海外，这促使中国的许多贸易伙伴提高关税和实施其他贸易壁垒以阻挡廉价的中国商品。
Beijing has ramped up manufacturing capacity even as domestic demand plummets, sending its excess overseas and prompting many of China’s trading partners to raise tariffs and other trade barriers to fend off cheap Chinese goods.
尚博表示，他的团队已利用这些对话向中国高级官员解释了中国的政策造成的巨大溢出效应。他说，美国财政部官员认为，减少过剩产能和提振国内需求符合中国自身利益。
Shambaugh said his team has used the talks to explain to senior Chinese officials the “large spillover as a result of your policies.” He said Treasury officials have argued that it is in China’s own interest to reduce excess capacity and to boost demand at home.
尚博表示：“我们认为他们做得还不够。”但他同时指出，北京方面最近已将消费列为一项经济优先事项。
“We don’t think they’re moving far enough,” Shambaugh said, while noting that Beijing recently listed consumption as an economic priority.
尚博表示，美国财政部团队还利用对话就中国企业支持俄罗斯的问题表达了严重关切。
Shambaugh said the Treasury team has also used dialogue to express significant concerns over Chinese firms’ support of Russia. 
今年，美国已经在起草制裁措施，威胁要将一些中资银行排除在全球金融体系之外。美国官员希望，这些威胁将阻止北京方面对俄罗斯军事生产的商业支持。
The U.S. this year has been drafting sanctions that threaten to cut some Chinese banks off from the global financial system—threats officials hope will stop Beijing’s commercial support of Russia’s military production. 


中国一家工厂内，一名工人正在检查高端纱线的生产线。尽管国内需求急剧下降，但中国仍在扩大产能。

“中国的相应官员认识到，金融交易处理将是该国金融机构面临非常严重制裁风险的一个领域，” 尚博表示：“我们仍然有很多关切，我们继续利用对话渠道来推动这方面的工作。”
“Our Chinese counterparts recognize that processing of financial transactions would be an area of very serious sanctions risks for their financial institutions,” Shambaugh said. “We still have lots of concerns and we’ve continued to use the channel for dialogue to push on that.”
他表示，他希望即将上任的美国政府能够继续保持这种形式的沟通，“以便在保护美国企业和工人免受中国政策的影响方面取得进展，我们认为这些政策已经对美国造成冲击。”
He said he is hopeful the incoming administration will continue this form of contact “to make progress on defending U.S. firms and workers from Chinese policies that we think have spillover to the U.S.”
领导财政部与北京方面金融对话的财政部高级官员布伦特·奈曼(Brent Neiman)表示，这一渠道使美联储和联邦存款保险公司(Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.)等多个机构的专家能够就一些问题进行“深入探讨”，比如如果两国中一家重要银行陷入困境，如何保护全球金融稳定。
Brent Neiman, the senior Treasury official who leads the department’s financial dialogue with Beijing, said the channel has enabled experts from several agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to conduct “deep dives” on issues such as how to protect global financial stability if an important bank were to get into trouble in either country.
 
在特朗普重返白宫之前，中国官员已多次试图接触特朗普的核心圈子，但均以失败告终。
Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, Chinese officials have repeatedly tried and failed to get access to Trump’s inner circle. 
由于北京方面和特朗普团队之间几乎没有任何幕后沟通，中国领导层正试图弄清楚，特朗普2.0是打算利用关税作为与中国政府谈判达成贸易协议的一种筹码，还是想让美国经济进一步远离中国经济。
With virtually no backchanneling between Beijing and the Trump team, the Chinese leadership is trying to figure out whether Trump 2.0 intends to use tariffs as a way to negotiate a trade deal with Beijing, or to move the U.S. economy further away from China’s.
 
在与华盛顿打交道时，北京方面几乎没有打破常规的经验，也不愿这样做。中国官员喜欢坚持既定方式，以最大限度地降低领导层的政治风险。
Beijing has little experience with or appetite for thinking outside the box when it comes to interacting with Washington. Chinese officials like to stick to established protocol to minimize political risks for the leadership.
例如，尽管特朗普最近打破先例，邀请习近平下个月出席他的就职典礼，但这位中国领导人并不打算出席，而一些观察人士表示，如果习近平接受特朗普的邀请，可能有助于缓解双边紧张关系。
While Trump recently broke with precedent by inviting Xi to his inauguration next month, for instance, the Chinese leader isn’t planning to attend even though some observers say his acceptance of the invitation could help ease bilateral tensions. 
一位知情人士说，特朗普团队中有人已向中方暗示，他们希望直接与习近平的高级助手，尤其是中央办公厅主任蔡奇，进行互动，而不是通过正式的外交渠道。这样的提议严重偏离既定的沟通方式，北京方面还没有准备好接受。
One person familiar with the matter said people from the Trump team have indicated to the Chinese side that they would like to interact directly with Xi’s top aides—particularly Cai Qi, the leader’s chief of staff—as opposed to going through the formal diplomatic channels. Such a proposition is a sharp departure from established ways of interacting, and one Beijing isn’t ready to accept.
 
“他们难道不知道中国是怎么运作的吗？”这位知情人士说。
“Don’t they know how China works?” the person said.