峰会背景：两大强权的对峙与地缘政治新格局
纽约时报的《每日》节目，我是瑞秋·亚伯姆斯。此次，美国总统特朗普将近十年来首次与中国国家主席习近平在北京会晤。此次会晤的背景是，特朗普仍在努力摆脱与伊朗的战争泥潭，同时还要应对中国这个在技术到贸易等所有领域对美国主导地位构成最大威胁的国家。今天，我的同事大卫·桑格将解析此次会晤可能取得的成果，以及更关键的——那些不可能取得的成果。现在是5月13日，星期三。
嘿，你们能听到我吗？ 大卫，我们能听到你。你现在在哪里？ 很好，很好，很好。我……我在北京的酒店。我刚和几位华盛顿办公室的同事抵达，我们都在为总统的第二个任期内首次访华做准备。他将于周三晚抵达，次日早上与习近平会晤，周五离开，然后就直接返回。
好的。那么，你既然身在北京，能否为我们描绘一下场景，大卫？这次特朗普总统与习近平主席的会晤有何意义？ well, as initially conceived, Rachel, this was going to be the first of a series of meetings this year in an effort by the president to have something of a rough rom after many, many years of tension. The last time the president was here was 2017, and it was a very different situation. The president was treated with all the pageantry that the Chinese do very well.
President Xi, I want to thank you for that incredible welcoming ceremony. He had just been elected president to the surprise of China and the world and perhaps himself. Today I discussed with President Xi the chronic imbalance in our relationship as it pertains to trade. He was just beginning to think about how China correlated with his economic policies and his defense policies. The United States is committed to protecting the intellectual property of our companies and providing a level playing"
field >> and was going to focus on China's rise as a major power.
In the coming months and years, I look forward to building an even stronger relationship between our two countries, China and the United States of America. But this time he arrives under the cloud of the Iran conflict. You'll remember he was supposed to come here in April and put it off and did so I think fairly convinced that by miday Iran would have already capitulated and now instead he shows up with Iran resisting with other world leaders like Chancellor Mertz of Germany contending that Iran has humiliated the United States and with the Chinese themselves a bit mystified about why the US was having such a hard time opening up a body of waters such as the Strait of Hormuz or defeating a kind of second or third rate power in their mind like Iran. And of course all summits are about optics and while I'm sure there will be all the pomp and ceremony that goes with these, the fact of the matter is he comes into this summit looking a bit weakened.
桑格的抵达为我们带来了北京的现场视角，他解释了这次会晤的初衷，以及与2017年总统首次访华时截然不同的国际环境。与2017年的盛大欢迎和初期的战略探索不同，此次总统抵达时，笼罩着伊朗冲突的阴影，这使得他在此次峰会中的姿态显得有些被动。
经济博弈：贸易、关税与“低垂的果实”
I understand that Donald Trump is walking into these meetings much weaker than in 2017, but as for the meeting itself, what do we know, if anything, about what they're actually going to be discussing? Well, we don't know a huge amount right now, but the obvious in any summit that involves President Trump is that you begin with the trade and economic relationships. And there there's almost always a series of big purchases by China to be announced. and potential business deals and memorandums of understanding, some of which will come to fruition and some of which will not. But these are all sort of the lowhanging fruit of the relationship. I mean, this is what Donald Trump would do in any big summit meeting. And in some ways, those may be the easier of the issues to resolve, which isn't to say that any of them are easy.
Well, can we dive into that a little bit more? Like when you say lowhanging fruit trade business, what are we talking about exactly? Well, Rachel, this is Donald Trump and his idea of a summit is to emerge with a bunch of business deals, even if they don't fundamentally change the nature of the relationship. And he set this one up just that way. And so you'll hear a lot about the three Bs, beef, beans, and Boeing.
Why beans, beef, and Boeing? Well, these are three big distinctly American exports. The Chinese have always bought American soybeans, although they think they're overpriced. They've long been dependent on Boeing, although now they're building some very good aircraft of their own. And beef, well, they're trying to start up their own beef industry as well, but they're still buying some specialty American beef. These are always the lowhanging fruit of these summits because China needs to buy some of this anyway and the president wants to be able to go out and describe something that is an immediate deliverable for the American people.
Right? The president doesn't need to fly halfway across the world to negotiate something that China was just going to buy anyway. I'm sure that you will hear many announcements and the president will declare that these were the biggest purchases ever, but they are fundamentally commodities and that's where the two countries do business most easily.
But you know, one thing that I did not hear you discuss in your discussion of the 3Bs, David, was a pretty big T that we've been talking about on the show a lot, and that is tariffs. Where does that fit into all of this? Well, obviously tariffs are a huge issue for the Chinese. China's been a big target of Trump's tariff regime, and I'm sure that it will dominate a lot of the discussion. But the fact of the matter is the Chinese were able to get President Trump to back down some last year when in retaliation, they cut off rare earths and magnets and so forth to the US to demonstrate that they too have a bit of leverage here. And then came the Supreme Court decision which forced the US to pay back some of the tariffs that have already been collected. And now a trade court decision is going after President Trump's ability to impose a 10% tariff on every country. So I think that Xi Jinping probably feels like he's already won half his argument before he starts. Now there are some tariffs on specific Chinese products that certainly are a big concern to them. And here the biggest example is Chinese cars. You know the Chinese during the president's first term exported about a million cars a year. This past year they've exported around the world 7 million except to the United States where they were barred particularly by Joe Biden who put a 100% tariff on Chinese cars and that's a big source of complaint on the part of the Chinese.
Okay. So, China is going to want to push to get these cars into the US. Do we expect a deal? No. uh we do not because I think everybody recognizes that China's car production capacity is posing a considerable threat to the American car makers just as Japan did decades ago. But I think what's worth remembering here, Rachel, is these are the immediate trade tensions that take place between countries all the time with our adversaries, with our allies. But what's frustrating sometimes around these summit meetings is that we all know there are much more fundamental divides between the two countries. divides that go to the heart of the question of who will be the dominant economic power, the dominant military power, the dominant technological power for the next number of decades. And it's not clear whether any of those core issues in the relationship will come up at least in direct form.
桑格指出，特朗普政府的策略是以“低垂的果实”为重点，例如宣布大型商业交易，如牛肉、豆类（大豆）和波音飞机的采购。这些被视为双方都容易达成一致的领域。然而，关税问题则是贸易关系中的一个关键症结。特朗普政府的关税政策，以及中国对此采取的报复措施，例如限制稀土和磁铁的出口，都加剧了紧张局势。尽管面临最高法院和贸易法院的裁决，特朗普仍试图对中国商品施加关税，尤其是在中国汽车问题上，这已成为中国方面抱怨的焦点。尽管中国汽车在美国市场的准入受到限制，但中国已大幅增加了全球汽车出口量，这凸显了其在全球汽车产业中的崛起。
地缘政治分歧：全球主导权的争夺
We'll be right back. So, David, talk to us about those fundamental divides that are both at the heart of the battle for dominance between these two countries and also potentially unlikely to come up in the meeting this week. Well, Rachel, it's no secret that for the past 10 years, the US and China have been engaged in what sometimes looks like a bit of a death struggle, right? Xi Jinping has made no secret of the fact that by 2049, he wants China to be the number one military, economic, political, and perhaps even cultural power in the world. and the question of how the United States is going to deal with the rise of essentially a peer competitor, the only country that can deal with us across the board in those areas is the fundamental question. Mhm.
And you're seeing in summits like this that this plays out in arguments about all kinds of specific issues. But the overall question is how do you deal with a country that's trying to displace you as the world's number one power?
What are some of those issues? David, walk us through those. We'll start with nuclear weapons. China had under Mao and for many decades after a minimum nuclear deterrent. It kept 100 200 nuclear weapons just enough to deter others from striking it. But when she came in, he almost immediately began a huge buildup that the United States didn't really become fully aware of until years later. And today it has about 600 nuclear weapons. But the Pentagon estimates that China will have about a thousand nuclear weapons by 2030 and will match the US and Russia by about 2035. And why is this critical? Because just a few months ago, as we've discussed on the daily before, the last remaining arms control treaty between Russia and the United States expired. And President Trump, I think rightly said it doesn't make sense to negotiate a new one unless China's part of that agreement. And the Chinese so far have said outright they have no interest in arms control or even discussing it until they have an arsenal the size of ours that they wouldn't put themselves in that kind of disadvantageous negotiating position. So President Trump said to us in January in our lengthy interview with him that he plans to bring up nuclear arms control issues with President Xi. I don't think it's going to get very far. The Chinese just aren't ready to discuss it. What they are ready to discuss is Taiwan and Taiwan's right to exist.
And what specifically about Taiwan do you anticipate coming up in this meeting? Well, Xiinping would like to do anything he can to show that the United States is becoming more open to the thought that China over time would take over Taiwan. He doesn't expect an invitation for them to do so. What he's looking for are some small wording changes that might make the Taiwanese more doubtful that the US would come to their aid.
Wording changes like Well, the simplest one that is described most often is that American officials usually say that they would not support Taiwan declaring its own independence. But what the Chinese want to do is move that word to oppose. Sounds like a small change. In fact, it's got big diplomatic significance to it because opposes means that we would take a specific view that the only real China is the people's republic and that we would oppose any effort to go challenge that.
Right? The words themselves might seem like not that big of a deal, but in effect they are a huge deal diplomatically,
right? And we just don't know how this is going to turn out. One of his aids told reporters in a uh briefing over the weekend that he expected no change in the American position, but that's only true if the president doesn't freelance. And of course, we know he is bound to freelance,
which I can imagine is exactly what China's hoping for. Yes. But what's really interesting is that Taiwan is one of the few topics that when you uh raise it with President Trump, he refuses to get fully engaged.
It seems like there are a couple reasons why you might think that Taiwan would be higher up on the president's priority list, so to speak. Like one thing we haven't mentioned yet, of course, is the technology, the chips that are related to AI that Taiwan is a big producer of. For that alone, you'd think that perhaps the president would be very keen to discuss Taiwan.
Well, he recognizes that the United States needs the output of Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation, the world's most advanced semiconductor maker. Its facilities are overwhelmingly in Taiwan. and of course the AI chips that are at the core of the artificial intelligence revolution. Now, this could play both ways. You could imagine Xi Jinping saying, you know, I know how to deal with Donald Trump. I just guarantee him that he's getting his chips if he just doesn't care about the rest of the island.
桑格深入分析了中美之间在地缘政治上的根本性分歧，指出中国的长期战略目标是在2049年成为全球头号强国，这构成了美国作为一个“同行竞争者”所必须应对的挑战。这种宏观层面的竞争体现在诸多具体议题上，如核武器的扩充。中国正以前所未有的速度增加其核武库，远超其过去的最低核威慑水平，并预计在不久的将来与美俄持平。这使得特朗普政府在推动新的军备控制协议时面临难题，因为中国拒绝参与，除非其核武库规模相当。
在台湾问题上，中国领导层渴望塑造美国对中国最终收复台湾的默许态度。尽管中国不期望公开的“邀请”，但他们寻求通过微妙的措辞调整，例如将美国官员通常使用的“不支持台湾独立”改为“反对”，来动摇台湾及其盟友对美国协防的信心。这种外交辞令上的细微变化，实则蕴含着巨大的战略意义，表明美国可能承认“只有一个中国”，即中华人民共和国。尽管有消息称美国官员预计立场不会改变，但特朗普总统“自由发挥”的倾向，为事态增添了不确定性。值得注意的是，台湾问题似乎并非特朗普的优先事项，尽管其在全球半导体和AI芯片生产中的关键角色（尤其以Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation为代表）应引起高度关注。
科技前沿：AI竞赛与战略不确定性
I think for myself and probably for a lot of other people, AI perhaps more than many of these other issues on the table feels really front of mind. This technology, it feels like it is racing out in front of our security, maybe even our understanding of it. And so are we imagining that we will see any kind of real action on this front from these two leaders at the meeting this week? Well, usually we found that these discussions between world leaders are pretty limited and pretty superficial. During the Biden administration, it took months to negotiate a simple line or two between the US and China in which the two countries agreed never to allow their nuclear weapons to be directed by artificial intelligence programs. So, seemed like a pretty basic thing. let's keep human beings running our nukes. But the idea was to build on that and try to get some common understandings about not letting artificial intelligence make life and death decisions when it comes to autonomous weapons. And so there's sort of an understanding that we need a new form of arms control, but that everything that we did in the nuclear age doesn't apply very well in the AI age because it's not as if these are specific weapons that you can easily inspect or count or keep control of. So these would largely be codes of conduct and very hard to enforce. And it'll be interesting to see if the two leaders even touch on this topic or are even willing to send their aids off to discuss it.
Obviously, both the US and China are in this race to win the AI battle. And maybe because of that, they don't want to do anything that would restrict their growth. But David, doesn't it feel like they each have at least some kind of vested interest in putting some kind of guard rails around the other one? You would think that it would be pretty obvious to both countries that they do need guardrails. But you'll remember that the Trump administration came into power saying one country is going to win this race and it's going to be whichever country allows industry to do its thing unfettered. We're not going to bog down the industry with a lot of rules early on. That attitude has changed just in recent weeks. And what's changed it has been the arrival of mythos. This anthropic version of its main artificial intelligence products which it declined to release to the public because it is so effective at conducting offensive cyber attacks. It can search out and find almost instantly vulnerabilities in the code of utility grids or other infrastructure. and then order up an attack. Now, this can also be useful for defending that infrastructure. The Chinese are worried about mythos themselves, but presumably they are working on very similar kinds of large language models and it's probably only six months, eight months, maybe a year away before they have a mythos of their own. That should deeply worry the administration. And I think one of the concerns that many American China experts have right now is that the top officials of the Trump administration have been so distracted by what's happened in the Middle East that they're coming into this a bit illprepared.
Well, let's talk about that. How does the war in Iran fit into all of this? This is not the conditions for the summit that President Trump envisioned when he put off this meeting by about six weeks. He assumed that by that time the war would be over, the Iranians would have capitulated and the straight of Hormuz would be open. None of those three things are the case. So, are you saying that you think the war is likely to maybe take up more oxygen than some of the other super pressing topics that you've described to us like nuclear weapons, AI, etc.? I think we're going to see or maybe hear about secondhand a lot of conversation surrounding the reopening of the strait and the ending of this conflict. The Chinese clearly want to get the strait opened without having to go intervene themselves and they probably don't have the power to intervene very much. They get about 30% or more of their oil and gas moving through the straight of Hormuz. So the Chinese have a huge economic interest in getting this resolved, especially because their own economy wasn't doing so wonderfully before the war in Iran. And this increase in energy prices is killing a lot of Chinese enterprises. But for the Chinese, it's a little more complicated than just that. President Trump will undoubtedly ask them to stop supplying targeting data and technology to the Iranians. Technology the Iranians need for their missiles, for their interceptors, and for generally pursuing the war. The United States also wants China to use its influence with Iran since it is such a big purchaser of Iranian goods to get the Iranians to open up the straight. And it'll be really interesting to see whether President Xi, who is very cautious but has a strong interest in seeing the war end, might actually quietly intervene on the US's behalf with Iran.
You know, David, you said at the beginning of this conversation that these summits are often about a demonstration of strength back home and that at this summit in particular, it does not seem like there's going to be much headway made on some of the thorniest and most urgent issues of our time. So, I wonder what you think will feel like a win to both of these men at the end of the day. Well, I guess the question is what feels like a win and what they can sell as a win. For President Trump, I think it's pretty clear he always wants to emerge from these with a bunch of business deals and announce that that was indeed his goal out here as dealmaker and chief. But as we've discussed, that doesn't get at some of the fundamental questions, including whether the Chinese, after Iran, view the United States as not quite as invincible as perhaps some leaders thought they may be. For President Xi, it's something of a longer game. He isn't particularly interested in the individual deals that come out. If they help grease the wheels of diplomacy, that's fine. But President Xi may want to demonstrate that he in fact is running the more stable power right now. That it is not invading other countries or following the law of the jungle as he said the other day in a veiled swipe at President Trump. and that over time the world will depend on Chinese power, Chinese capital to rebuild and to establish new trading relationships around the world. I think that's his long-term plan and I think he may doubt whether the United States has a long-term plan of its own.
David, thank you so much for making the time and hope you have an easy trip.
Thank you, Rachel. It'll be interesting.
在人工智能（AI）领域，双方的竞争日益激烈。AI技术正以前所未有的速度发展，甚至可能超越人类的安全认知和理解能力。虽然Anthropic公司推出的Mythos模型因其在网络攻击方面的强大能力而备受关注，并引起了美国政府的担忧，但中国也在积极研发类似的大型语言模型。这种AI军备竞赛可能导致双方在制定AI相关的军备控制协议时持谨慎态度，因为AI武器化（如自主武器）的特性使得传统的核军备控制模式难以适用。关于AI方向盘、核武器控制，以及AI芯片（如Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation的产品）的供应，是潜在的讨论点，但这些议题的进展预计会非常有限。
伊朗冲突的持续不仅影响了峰会的日程安排，也为此次会晤增添了新的变数。特朗普总统最初推迟此次会晤，是基于其认为伊朗将很快投降的预期，但事实并非如此。伊朗的抵抗以及其他国际领导人的立场，使得美国在中东的处境更加复杂。中国作为伊朗重要的贸易伙伴，在中东局势中扮演着微妙的角色。美国希望中国停止向伊朗供应用于导弹和拦截器的技术，并利用其影响力促使伊朗开放霍尔木兹海峡。中国在此问题上的立场，以及是否会“悄悄干预”以缓和局势，将是此次会晤的一个看点。
对于此次峰会，特朗普总统的目标可能在于达成具体的商业协议，以向国内展示其作为“交易撮合者”的成就。然而，这些协议可能无法触及两国间更深层次的结构性问题，也可能无法改变中国对美国实力的认知。相比之下，习近平主席则着眼于更长远的战略布局，旨在展示中国的稳定性和全球影响力，并对美国缺乏长远规划表示疑虑。
新闻简报
We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Dr. Dr. Marty McCary, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, resigned on Tuesday after weeks of pressure and rumors that President Trump was planning to fire him. Dr. McCary ultimately left over concerns about the administration's decision to authorize fruit flavored ecigarettes, which he opposed, according to people familiar with the matter. and Cash Patel, the FBI director, sparred with Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland at a budget hearing over his conduct, including whether he ordered polygraphs of FBI employees to find leakers and a report that claimed that he drank excessively in a way that affected his work. Patel, who has denied the report about excessive drinking and sued the publication, accused Van Holland of drinking with Kilmar Orbgo Garcia, an immigrant who the Trump administration mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Shannon Lynn, Adrien Hurst, and Anna Foley. It was edited by Devon Taylor with help from Paige Cowitt and contains music by Chelsea Daniel and Marian Lozano. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.
此次峰会为特朗普和习近平两位领导人提供了一个展示各自战略愿景的平台。特朗普可能寻求达成可公开的商业协议，而习近平则侧重于确立中国的长期稳定性和全球领导力。
在会议的最后，节目简要提及了美国国内的几条重要新闻：美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）局长马蒂·麦考瑞因对水果味电子烟的授权分歧而辞职。此外，联邦调查局（FBI）局长卡什·帕特尔在参议院听证会上，就其行为和相关报道与参议员克里斯·范·霍伦发生争执。