What a difference a year makes.

一年之隔，天翻地覆。

Last January, as Donald Trump stormed back into the White House, spoiling for a trade war and backed by an army of credentialed China hawks, it seemed a pretty safe bet that his return would mean an escalation of America’s great power rivalry with Beijing, what foreign-policy people had long since taken to calling, loosely, the New Cold War.

去年1月，川普強勢重返白宮，蓄勢打響貿易戰，身後還有一眾自身對華強硬派撐腰。彼時，外界幾乎篤定，他的回歸必將讓美國與中國這兩個大國的對抗再度升級——這場對抗，早已被外交政策人士籠統地稱作「新冷戰」。

In 2026, the country is in a remarkably different place geopolitically. China may loom in the background, but in the foreground we’ve had an unlawful military operation in Venezuela, an explicit play to take over Greenland and bully Europe, and threats against hostile governments in Cuba and Iran. A year of hostility toward Canada has driven that country into China’s arms — our brotherly neighbor and most loyal ally breaking formation with us and striking an electric vehicle trade deal that looks like such a departure, it’s been described as “making China great again.”

而2026年，美國的地緣政治處境已然天差地別。中國或許仍隱於幕後，但台前的美國，一邊在委內瑞拉開展非法軍事行動，一邊公然企圖接管格陵蘭島、威逼歐洲，還對古巴、伊朗等敵對國家發出威脅。對加拿大長達一年的敵對態度更是將這個鄰國推向了中國的懷抱——這位曾與我們情同手足、最忠誠的盟友竟與美國分道揚鑣，還與中國簽署了堪稱「讓中國再次偉大」的電動汽車貿易協定。

Some of these actions may be motivated by great power rivalry. In others, perhaps, history is intervening and scrambling grand plans, and in still others we may be seeing the consequences of sheer diplomatic incompetence and shortsighted bluster. But another possibility is in the mix, too: that we are entering a new phase of a new cold war, one in which other global priorities have displaced a bipartisan Beltway obsession after more than a decade of steadily escalating conflict with the world’s other leading power.

這些舉動，有些或許是出於大國對抗的考量；有些，或許是歷史的介入打亂了宏偉規劃；還有些，可能只是純粹的外交失能與短視的虛張聲勢所致。但另一種可能性也同樣存在：我們正步入新冷戰的全新階段，在與世界另一大國長達十餘年的對抗持續升級後，其他全球優先事項已取代華盛頓兩黨對這一對抗的執念。

After first making an aggressive show on tariffs, the Trump administration has quickly retreated from the trade war, such that tariffs on China are now lower than those the U.S. imposed, for some reason, on India. The administration has also loosened artificial intelligence chip export restrictions that were imposed, nominally, on national security grounds. The National Security Strategy that inspired all the talk of a “Donroe Doctrine” relegated China to a secondary priority, devoting much more time to the homeland, the border and the culture wars of Western Europe.

川普政府起初強硬祭出關稅大棒，卻很快從貿易戰中退縮，以至於如今美國對中國的關稅竟低於美國莫名加徵給印度的關稅。政府還放寬了此前以國家安全為名設立的人工智慧晶片出口限制。那份曾讓「唐羅主義」成為熱議話題的《國家安全戰略》報告將中國降為次要議題，反而更多聚焦本土安全、邊境問題以及西歐的文化戰爭。

If you’d like, you can divine a China logic behind the operation in Venezuela and the pursuit of Greenland. But when asked whether America’s unilateral action meant that China should feel empowered to move on Taiwan, Trump said casually that it was up to President Xi Jinping to decide. He struck a similar note when asked about the decision to open Canada to Chinese electric vehicles by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who this week delivered a stemwinder of a speech at Davos declaring the American-led rules-based liberal order — which he acknowledged was always partly a self-serving fiction — was dead. The speech earned a standing ovation. And when asked about Carney’s deal with Xi, Trump said it was a “good thing” that America’s nearest ally had instead made a deal with our longtime adversary. In fact, Trump added, “that’s what he should be doing.”

若你願意，可以從委內瑞拉軍事行動和爭奪格陵蘭島的行為中找尋背後針對中國的邏輯。但當被問及美國的單邊行動是否會賦權中國採取行動解決台灣問題時，川普卻輕描淡寫地表示，這取決於習近平主席的決定。加拿大總理卡尼本週在達佛斯發表了慷慨激昂的演講，宣稱由美國主導、基於規則的自由國際秩序已然崩塌——他也坦言，這一秩序向來部分帶有自利的虛假色彩——演講贏得了全場起立鼓掌，當被問及卡尼批准中國電動汽車進入加拿大市場的決定時，川普也持類似論調。當被問及卡尼與習近平的協議時，川普稱，美國最親密的盟友轉與長期對手達成協議是「好事」，還說：「這正是他該做的。」

Is this détente? Time will tell, but for now at least it marks a cool-down. And the story is bigger than our capricious president and his eternal desire to mesmerize us with surprise shows of smash-and-grab power. Over the last year, among foreign policy thinkers well outside of Trump’s orbit, there has been what the China commentators Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo identified as a “vibe shift,” with an intuitive rivalry with the world’s other great power giving way to a complicated tangle of attitudes held together by simple awe. For a long time, American thinking about China was driven by hawks who insisted that the rival must be defeated, however defeat was defined. That perspective is still common; in fact, just last week, the China scholar Leland Miller, who recently served on Congress’s U.S.-China commission, described the possibility that the Chinese would cure cancer as a “nightmare scenario.” But what had been a broad consensus has fractured, with many more policy wonks beginning to ask instead whether we might ever catch up, and contemplating the possibility that, while the future is enormously uncertain, the answer may well be no.

這算是和解嗎？答案尚待時間檢驗，但至少目前它標誌著局勢降溫。而這一轉變的背後，遠不止我們這位反覆無常的總統，以及他總想用巧取豪奪的強權戲碼博取關注的執念。過去一年，在川普陣營之外的外交政策研究者中，出現了中國問題評論員金玉米(Jeremy Goldkorn)與郭怡廣(Kaiser Kuo)所言的「氛圍轉向」：昔日對另一個世界大國的本能對抗，正讓位於一種由純粹敬畏維繫的複雜心態糾葛。長期以來，美國的對華認知被強硬派主導，他們堅稱必須擊敗這個對手，無論「擊敗」的定義為何。如今這一觀點仍十分普遍，事實上，就在上週，剛在美國國會美中經濟與安全審查委員會任職的中國問題學者利蘭·米勒甚至將中國可能攻克癌症的前景形容為「噩夢場景」。但曾經的廣泛共識已然破裂，越來越多的政策專家開始反思：我們是否還有機會迎頭趕上？他們也開始正視一種可能性——儘管未來充滿未知，但答案很可能是否定的。

You may already know the broad outlines on green tech: China is now installing roughly two-thirds of the world’s new wind and solar capacity each year, manufacturing inputs to the green transition at such scale and driving down the cost of such components so quickly that the developing world is now rushing to buy them at breathtaking speed. China manufactures 60 percent of the world’s wind turbines and in 2024 installed nearly 20 times as much wind power as the world’s second largest installer; it commands more than 70 percent of global production for E.V.s; and, despite relatively good news in the battery sector for the United States, China produces approximately 90 percent of that global market, too. If you measure the progress of civilization by its electricity production, then China is racing well ahead of the rest of the world.

你或許早已了解綠色科技領域的整體態勢：如今中國每年新增的風電、光伏裝機容量約佔全球總量的三分之二；它對綠色轉型所需的製造投入規模如此之大，且相關組件成本下降如此之快，使得發展中國家正以驚人的速度爭相採購。中國的風力發電機產量佔全球60%，2024年風電裝機量接近全球第二的20倍；電動汽車全球產能佔比超70%；即便美國在電池領域傳來相對積極的消息，中國仍佔據著全球約90%的電池市場份額。若以發電量衡量人類文明的發展進程，那麼中國正遙遙領先於世界其他地區。

American hawks, eying the future of warfare, often complain about the disparity in drone manufacturing, with China producing about 70 percent of the world’s commercial drones and, according to American defense analysts, superior military versions as well. (The Times’s recent editorial series Overmatched is a very good showcase of these anxieties.) The gap in robotics is another sore spot, with China installing almost nine times as many robots as the United States did in 2024. China has much less military experience than America does, as critics of American military adventuring like to point out. But just last year the United States failed to achieve real victory against the Houthis (though the defeat was often downplayed), and periodically, we hear about military planning exercises, which suggest that the Pentagon cannot find a way, even in a war game, to prevail in a conflict over Taiwan.

著眼於未來戰爭形態的美國強硬派常對美中無人機製造的差距表示憂慮——中國的商用無人機產量佔全球約70%，美國防務分析人士稱，中國的軍用無人機性能也更勝一籌（《紐約時報》近期推出的《實力懸殊》系列社論，便充分展現了這種焦慮。）機器人領域的差距同樣是痛點，2024年中國的工業機器人裝機量幾乎是美國的九倍。正如批評美國軍事冒險主義的人士所言，中國的軍事經驗遠不如美國豐富。但就在去年，美國對胡塞武裝的軍事行動未能取得真正勝利（儘管這場失利常被輕描淡寫）；而我們時常聽聞，五角大廈的兵棋推演顯示，即便是在模擬場景中，美軍也找不到在台海衝突中取勝的辦法。

Every China watcher has a favorite talking point. A year ago you heard economic patriots emphasizing the American advantage in A.I., but China seems to have effortlessly almost eliminated it: Last fall, Jensen Huang of the American chip powerhouse Nvidia said that China was poised to win the A.I. race, before softening his official position. Chinese companies ran nearly one third of all clinical trials in 2024, up from 5 percent just a decade ago, and the total value of drugs licensed globally from China has grown 15-fold in just the last five years.

每位中國問題觀察家都有自己熱衷的觀點。一年前，經濟愛國者還在強調美國在人工智慧領域的優勢，但如今中國似乎已輕鬆抹平了差距：去年秋天，美國晶片巨頭英偉達的黃仁勛曾直言，中國註定會贏得人工智慧競賽，隨後才淡化了自己的正式表態。2024年，中國企業開展的臨床試驗佔全球總量的近三分之一，而十年前這一比例僅為5%；過去五年，中國藥企向全球授權的藥品總價值增長了15倍。

There are those who fret over China’s massive research and R&D spending, and its new appeal for international researchers and its rapidly growing share of top scientific publications. A certain kind of hardware geek likes to highlight the Chinese advantage in shipbuilding: By tonnage, more commercial vessels were built by China’s state-owned Shipbuilding Corporation in 2024 than the United States has managed to construct in total in the 80 years since the end of World War II.

有人為中國巨額的研發投入、對國際科研人才的全新吸引力，以及在頂級科學期刊發表論文佔比的快速提升而憂心。不少硬件極客則格外關注中國在造船領域的優勢：按噸位計算，2024年中國國有船舶集團建造的商用船舶總量已超過美國自二戰結束80年來建造的總和。

And then there is the country’s astonishing pace of urbanization, with the number of people in Chinese cities more than doubling — from 450 million to over 900 million — just since 2000. If you worry over our housing crisis, and especially if you blame the slowdown in American construction for it, you may be startled to hear that more than two-thirds of all Chinese housing has been built since the turn of the millennium — and that more than 90 percent of Chinese own their own homes.

此外，中國的城市化進程也堪稱驚人：2000年至今，中國城鎮人口從4.5億激增至9億以上，翻了一倍多。如果你為美國的住房危機感到焦慮，尤其將其歸咎於美國建築行業發展放緩，那麼聽到下面的數據或許會深感震驚：中國超三分之二的住房都是2000年之後建成的，且中國的住房自有率超90%。

Maybe the built environment offers the most obvious contrast: all those high-speed rail lines, miles-long bridges and elevated roadways snaking through skyscraper cities. And a kind of latent China envy has animated much of the liberal reform movement known as “abundance.” The law professor David Schleicher has been a central figure in the academic wing of that intellectual coalition; when he was asked what kinds of infrastructure projects might excite enough American popular enthusiasm to justify federal exemptions from the country’s restrictive regulatory and bureaucratic culture, he answered, “Think of whatever China’s doing, and then imagine it on an American scale: a giant new subway system, a new big highway, a big transmission system, big pipelines.”

或許建成環境提供了最鮮明的對比：那些高鐵線路、綿延數公里的大橋、高架道路在摩天大樓林立的城市中蜿蜒穿行。而某種潛藏的羨慕中國的情緒也推動了名為「豐裕派」的自由派改革運動。法學教授戴維·施萊歇爾是這場思潮的學術陣營核心人物，當被問及哪些基建項目能喚起美國民眾足夠的熱情，讓聯邦政府得到正當理由去突破嚴苛的監管與官僚體系文化時，他答道：「想想中國在做的任何事，然後想像將其搬到美國的規模：大型新地鐵系統、大型高速公路、大型輸電網路、大型管道。」

The economic historian Adam Tooze likes to talk about the coming of a second China shock, an inverse of the first, this time with Westerners begging to be integrated into Chinese supply chains. But we may already be living through a different kind of shock, a decade long, in which American wonks and policymakers hardly know what sense to make of a rival power rising so suddenly. And seeming to humiliate the American imperium along the way.

經濟史學家亞當·圖茲經常談及第二次中國衝擊的到來——與第一次衝擊形成鮮明反差，這一次是西方迫切希望融入中國的供應鏈。但我們或許正經歷著另一種衝擊：長達十年的迷茫期，美國政策制定者們對崛起如此迅猛的競爭對手束手無策，更目睹其在崛起過程中不斷羞辱美國霸權。

In certain ways, this shock blinds us to the shortcomings of any “Chinese century” thesis. And however futuristic the cityscapes of the Pearl River Delta look, those shortcomings are many. Ironically, the American vibe shift on China is that it has taken hold just as the Chinese future has begun to look more uncertain, too.

在某些方面，這場衝擊也讓我們忽視了「中國世紀」論調的種種缺陷。即便珠江三角洲的城市天際線看似充滿未來感，中國發展背後的問題也數不勝數。頗具諷刺意味的是，就在美國對華心態發生轉變之際，中國的未來也開始充滿變數。

In the big picture, China’s population is already shrinking, with recently released data showing truly shocking declines in the birthrate and some longer-term projections suggesting that by the end of the century it may not even be much larger than that of America. As the economics commentator Noah Smith suggested in response, China may have already peaked — not just for population but for “the robots, the electric cars, the bullet trains, the air taxis, the buildings covered in LEDs, the bubble tea chains and the fast fashion and the pay-with-your-face apps and Xi Jinping’s stupid book in every office.”

從宏觀角度來看，中國人口已呈萎縮態勢，近期公布的數據顯示，生育率降幅觸目驚心，一些長期預測甚至指出，本世紀末中國人口規模甚至可能僅略高於美國。經濟評論員諾亞·史密斯就此聲稱，中國或許已經迎來了發展峰值——不僅是在人口方面，更體現在「機器人、電動汽車、高鐵、空中計程車、滿是LED屏的建築、珍珠奶茶連鎖店、快時尚、刷臉支付應用，以及每個辦公室都擺著習近平那本愚蠢書籍」的繁榮景象上。

The Chinese economy may still be growing faster than the American one, and though nominal U.S. gross domestic product is higher, certain adjustments can make China’s economy rate out as larger. But China is growing much more slowly than it used to, even according to official data, with less official estimates looking considerably bleaker, and many structural problems obvious to observers both domestic and foreign. Progress in high-tech industries has not produced windfall profits but something like the opposite, with competition producing bankruptcies alongside innovation and shrinking margins even for surviving firms. The youth unemployment rate is terrifically high, and young Chinese adults do not seem to be ecstatic future-forward hustlers, exactly. Instead, they���re exhibiting the same Gen Z patterns familiar in the United States and across Western Europe: exhaustion, nostalgia, frustration and despair.

中國經濟增速或許仍高於美國，儘管美國的名義國內生產總值更高，但經特定口徑調整後，中國經濟總量可能更大。但即便是根據官方數據，中國的增速也遠不如從前，不那麼官方的預估則更為慘淡，諸多結構性問題對國內外觀察者而言都顯而易見。高科技產業的發展並未帶來暴利，反而呈現相反態勢：市場競爭在催生創新的同時，也引發了企業破產潮，即便是存活下來的企業，利潤空間也在不斷萎縮。中國的青年失業率居高不下，中國年輕一代似乎並非充滿激情的未來開拓者，反而呈現出與美國及西歐Z世代相似的狀態：身心俱疲、沉溺懷舊、滿心沮喪、陷入絕望。

And there are some intuitive explanations for the spectacular scale of Chinese infrastructure buildout that do not credit some unique Chinese advantage, cultural or otherwise. About 15 years ago China reached roughly the per capita G.D.P. threshold that the United States hit in the 1960s, during the buildout of the interstate highway system, when American know-how and state capacity made its imperious engineering the envy of the world.

對於中國基建的大規模落地，其實有一些直觀的解釋，無需歸因於中國在文化或其他方面的獨特優勢。大約15年前，中國的人均國內生產總值達到了美國上世紀60年代的水平——那個時候，美國正大力建設州際高速公路系統，美國的技術實力與國家治理能力，令其宏偉的工程建設成為世界艷羨的對象。

I don’t pretend to know how it will all shake out, on the global stage or even in the halls of Washington think tanks. But after a decade of steady intensification, America’s story of its rivalry with China has taken a turn, with Beltway hysteria giving way to something more subdued, uncertain, even insecure.

我不敢妄言全球舞台乃至華盛頓智庫內部的局勢將如何演變。但經過十年的持續升溫，美國關於中美競爭的敘事已悄然轉向，華盛頓曾有的歇斯底里正被一種更為克制、充滿不確定性甚至不安的情緒取代。

Two decades ago, many Americans assumed that the Beijing model could not sustain a challenge to American hegemony without collapsing under its internal contradictions and shortcomings. One decade ago, China hawks began to fret that much more needed to be done to box out the rising power. And though it still isn’t consensus and there is still plenty of competitive hysteria, over the last year we’ve begun to hear many more wondering whether the race has already been lost.

20年前，許多美國人認為，北京模式的內在矛盾與缺陷終將使其崩塌，無法對美國霸權構成持久挑戰。10年前，對華強硬派開始憂心，美國需要採取更多行動，遏制這個崛起的大國。儘管如今尚未形成共識，競爭帶來的歇斯底里仍大量存在，但過去一年，越來越多聲音開始質疑這場競賽是否早就是敗局已定。

This shift is pretty disorienting for a country as cocky as this one, as Kuo wrote recently in the Ideas Letter, in an essay he called “The Great Reckoning.” “We have witnessed not merely the rise of another great power, but a fundamental challenge to assumptions long embedded in Western thought — about development, political systems, and civilizational achievement itself,” he wrote. “We simply haven’t yet found the intellectual courage to face it.”

正如郭怡廣近期在《思想通訊》(Ideas Letter)中的一篇題為《大反思》(The Great Rechoning)的文章中所言，對於美國這樣一個向來自負的國家而言，這一轉變令人困惑。他寫道：「我們見證的，不僅是另一個大國的崛起，更是對西方思想中根深蒂固的假設——關於發展、政治制度乃至文明成就本身——的根本性挑戰，」他寫道。「我們只是尚未擁有直面這一現實的思想勇氣。」

Or perhaps we are just now beginning to — some growing fatalistic, others envisioning a world defined less by imperial rivalry than by balance, others by lashing out against old allies and former adversaries in a desperate performance of strength against those we remain confident we can intimidate and overwhelm.

或許，我們如今才剛剛開始直面這一現實——有人愈發陷入宿命論，有人憧憬一個不再由霸權對抗主導、而是趨於平衡的世界，還有人通過向老牌盟友與昔日對手發難，在那些我們仍確信能夠威懾壓倒的對象面前，上演絕望的強權表演。