BRET STEPHENS2026年5月13日When President Trump visits Beijing this week, he should have the satisfaction of knowing that time, in the long run, is on America’s side. Unfortunately, that’s also the problem.当特朗普总统本周访问北京时，他理应感到欣慰，因为从长远来看，时间站在美国这一边。不幸的是，这恰恰也是问题所在。That’s the opposite of a conventional wisdom that holds that the United States is a fumbling status quo power, akin to Britain in the waning years of its empire, squandering its strength in sideshow wars (South Africa then; Iran now) while failing to grapple with its principal strategic and economic competitor (Germany then; China now). It’s this same conventional wisdom that has been telling us that, any year now, China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy.这与一种普遍观点背道而驰——该观点认为，美国是一个步履蹒跚、维持现状的大国，类似于大英帝国衰落时期的样子，在次要战争（当时是南非，现在是伊朗）中虚耗国力，却未能应对主要的战略和经济竞争对手（当时是德国，现在是中国）。正是这种传统观念一直在告诉我们，中国随时都会超越美国，成为世界第一大经济体。But China’s economy most likely will never overtake America’s, just as past would-be contenders — whether they were the Soviet Union, Japan or the European Union — all fell short. Why? Because history shows that the most productive national assets are political freedom and open markets — the freer, more open and more competitive, the better.但中国的经济极有可能永远不会超过美国，就像过去那些潜在的竞争者——无论是苏联、日本还是欧盟——最终都未能如愿。为什么？因为历史表明，最高效的国家资产是政治自由和开放市场——越自由、越开放、越具竞争性，就越好。That’s a point that often gets lost with those who think that good economics means a wise industrial policy, one that steers government revenues into technologies of “the future.” Hence China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has ordered heavy investment in robotics, electric cars, lithium-ion batteries and military kit, just as Germany’s leaders at the beginning of this century made a titanic push into renewable energy — only to see it founder long before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine exposed Berlin’s backdoor dependence on cheap Russian gas.那些认为良好的经济就意味着英明的产业政策，也就是由政府将财政收入引向“未来”技术的人，往往会忽略这一点。因此，中国最高领导人习近平下令在机器人、电动汽车、锂离子电池和军事装备领域进行大规模投资，正如本世纪初德国领导人对可再生能源的大力推动——结果在普京入侵乌克兰暴露出柏林对廉价俄罗斯天然气的隐蔽依赖之前，这一努力就早已陷入失败。Outside of emergencies, particularly war, such an approach rarely works out well. Technologies of the future often turn out to be anything but. (Remember ethanol-fueled cars as environmental godsends?) Taxpayer funds steered toward so-called national champion industries frequently lead to sloppy practices as corporate leaders become more attuned to political demands — like keeping money-losing factories open — than to tough-minded management. And corruption tends to become endemic whenever the lines between business and government become hopelessly blurred.除了紧急状态（尤其是战争）之外，这种方法很少取得良好效果。所谓“未来的技术”往往被证明名不副实。（还记得曾被视为环保救星的乙醇燃料汽车吗？）当纳税人的资金被导向所谓的国家冠军产业时，企业领导者往往更关注政治需求——比如维持亏损工厂的运营——而非严谨的管理，这常导致管理松懈。而一旦商业与政府之间的界限变得难以区分，腐败往往就会成为痼疾。The United States periodically suffers from some of this, not least under the current administration. China’s problems are orders of magnitude worse.美国周期性地遭受其中一些问题的困扰，在现任政府领导下尤为如此。但中国的问题要严重得多。As of last year, state-owned or “mixed-ownership” enterprises account for about 60 percent of China’s largest companies. The bursting of China’s real-estate bubble — creating the eerie phenomenon of “ghost cities” — has depleted the savings of millions of ordinary Chinese and helped cause a municipal financing crisis. And China’s corporate sector is increasingly being “zombified” as companies become dependent on cheap credit to cover their losses: “Business debt has doubled since 2019, while revenues are only 30 percent higher,” reports Fortune.截至去年，国有制或“混合所有制”企业约占中国最大企业的60%。中国房地产泡沫的破裂催生了“鬼城”这一诡异现象，耗尽了数以百万计普通中国人的积蓄，并引发了地方财政危机。而中国的企业部门正日益“僵尸化”，因为公司正日益依赖廉价信贷来弥补亏损：据《财富》杂志报道，“自2019年以来，企业债务翻了一番，而收入仅增长了30%。”This economic house of cards rests, if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, on a foundation of sand: an aging and declining work force, net emigration, widespread youth unemployment, plummeting foreign direct investment, an arbitrary rule of law that terrifies business leaders, repeated purges of the military that project far more paranoia than confidence and a truculent foreign policy that does little more than alarm and alienate China’s neighbors.请恕我混用隐喻，这座经济纸牌屋是建立在沙子的地基之上：劳动力老龄化且规模萎缩、人口净流出、广泛的青年失业、外商直接投资骤减、让商界领袖胆战心惊的随意执法、暴露出猜疑而非自信的反复军队清洗，以及除了引发邻国惊恐和疏远之外别无他用的强硬外交政策。Great powers should have a combination of hard and soft power — the power to compel and the power to attract, in Joseph Nye’s famous formulation. What today’s China has is brittle power: power with too much hardness and not enough capacity to bend or adapt. Sooner or later, it is destined to shatter.根据约瑟夫·奈著名的表述，大国应该兼具硬实力和软实力——也就是强制力和吸引力。而今天的中国拥有的是一种 “脆实力”：这种力量硬度有余，但缺乏弯曲或适应的能力。迟早，它注定会破碎。That, however, is what makes today’s China so scary. Rising nations, which is what China was under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, have the luxury of being able to bide their time. Declining nations don’t. It tends to make them more inclined to gamble with their future. It’s why Putin invaded Ukraine after he realized the country was moving inexorably into the West’s orbit. It’s also why Xi will be powerfully tempted to seize Taiwan by invasion or blockade despite the enormous risks it poses not only to the world’s economy but also to his own.然而，这正是当今中国如此令人恐惧的原因。正在崛起中的国家——邓小平和江泽民时期的中国正是如此——有余裕可以静待时机。衰落的国家则没有。这往往使它们更倾向于拿未来进行豪赌。正因如此，普京在意识到乌克兰正不可避免地进入西方轨道后，决定入侵乌克兰。同样因为如此，习近平会感受到强烈的诱惑，渴望通过入侵或封锁来夺取台湾，尽管此举不仅对世界经济，而且对他自身也构成巨大风险。What would a wise American policy look like in the face of this kind of challenge? In a sentence, it would be dovish on the terms of trade and hawkish on the defense of our allies.面对这种挑战，明智的美国政策应该是怎样的？简而言之，就是在贸易条款方面采取鸽派立场，在保卫盟友方面采取鹰派立场。That’s roughly the opposite of what the administration’s rhetoric and policies have been thus far: a constantly threatened trade war along with decidedly mixed signals on whether the U.S. will continue to supply Taiwan with arms or come to its defense in the event of a conflict. If Trump uses his summit to barter away a pledged $11 billion arms sale to the island in exchange for a variety of diplomatic or economic promises from Beijing — whether the subject is the Strait of Hormuz or the supply of rare earths — you’ll know the summit has been a fiasco.这与本届政府目前的言论和政策几乎相反：政府一方面不断威胁要发动贸易战，另一方面，在是否继续向台湾提供武器、以及冲突发生时是否提供防御的问题上，释放出明显矛盾的信号。如果特朗普利用这次峰会，将承诺的110亿美元对台军售作为筹码，去换取北京在外交或经济上的各种承诺——无论是霍尔木兹海峡还是稀土供应——那么你就会知道，这次峰会是一场彻底的惨败。Certain readers will be tempted to remark that, when it comes to repression or corruption, Trump is every bit the match of Xi. If that were true, this column couldn’t be published. What is true, as Bill Clinton put it in his first Inaugural Address, is that “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America” — which goes for this administration. Nothing similar can be said about China’s Communist Party. That is what makes it dangerous to us now and an even greater danger to itself later.某些读者可能会忍不住指出，在压迫或腐败方面，特朗普与习近平不相上下。如果真是那样，本篇专栏文章就根本无法发表。正如比尔·克林顿在他的第一次就职演说中所说，事实是：“美国的所有问题，都能用美国的优点来纠正”——这同样适用于本届政府。但对于中国共产党，却无法得出类似的结论。正因如此，它在当下对我们构成危险，而在未来却会对自身构成更大的危险。图片来源：Print Collector/Getty Images；Zoonar GmbH/AlamyBret Stephens是时报观点版面专栏作者，写作领域包括外交政策、美国国内政策以及文化议题。 欢迎在Facebook上关注他。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。