When the British ambassador George Macartney went to Beijing in 1793 with gifts of clocks, cannons, swords, woollen blankets and other British wares in the hope of creating the conditions for a reversal of Britain’s persistent trade deficit with China, Emperor Qianlong was unimpressed. “Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders,” he famously pronounced. “There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.”
1793年，英国特使马戛尔尼带着钟表、火炮、刀剑、毛毯等英国商品来到北京，希望能扭转英国对华持续存在的贸易逆差，但乾隆皇帝并不买账。他留下了那句著名的论断：“天朝物产丰盈，无所不有，原不藉外夷货物以通有无。”
When Donald Trump went to Beijing last month he didn’t have to bend the knee, at least literally, to Chinese president Xi Jinping, as Macartney had to Qianlong. But the American president’s visit had echoes of that 1793 mission. Trump was the importunate barbarian, Xi the aloof possessor of all the advantages. Trump was effusive in his praise of Xi, who reciprocated in stiffly formal terms.
上个月特朗普访华时，至少从字面上看，他不必像马戛尔尼觐见乾隆那样行跪拜礼。但美国总统的这次访问让人联想到1793年的那次使团。特朗普成了那个急不可耐的「蛮夷」，而习近平则是高高在上、占据一切优势的拥有者。特朗普对习近平赞不绝口，而习近平则以僵硬刻板的措辞予以回应。
For the United States, the export pay-off was desultory: just the usual Chinese purchases of soy bean for its pigs and Boeing jets for its airlines. Hard questions about tariffs, semiconductors and rare elements were passed to new bilateral trade and investment boards. Xi offered no help with Iran.
对美国而言，出口方面的回报寥寥无几：无非是中国照常购买大豆喂猪、购买波音飞机供航空公司使用。有关关税、半导体和稀土等棘手问题被移交给了新的双边贸易和投资工作组。习近平在伊朗问题上也未提供任何帮助。
In return for these meagre results, Trump bowed to China on two fronts. One was to concede equal status in world affairs, at least in the economic sphere. The other was to cross a bipartisan line on Taiwan, to some alarm in both Taipei and Washington.
作为对这些微薄成果的回报，特朗普在两个层面上向中国低头。一是承认中国在世界事务中的平等地位，至少在经济领域如此。二是他在台湾问题上跨越了美国两党共识的界限，令台北和华盛顿方面感到些许警觉。
In the first case, Trump agreed to Xi’s concept of a “constructive relationship of strategic stability.” Xi expressed the hope this would “transcend the so-called Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations.” (The reference was to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who recorded Sparta’s fatal effort to thwart the rise of Athens.)
在第一种情况下，特朗普同意了习近平提出的「建设性战略稳定关系」概念。习近平表示希望这能「超越所谓的修昔底德陷阱，开创大国关系新模式」。（此处指涉古希腊历史学家修昔底德，他记录了斯巴达阻挠雅典崛起最终导致灾难性后果的历史。）
If Trump understood and agreed, he seems to have willingly committed America to accepting that China is here to stay as a great power and abandoned any hope of squashing its strategic ambitions. The concession builds on the G2 (Group of Two) concept Trump and his team took away from their meeting with Xi in South Korea last October, a concept that alarmed America’s China hawks and some US allies as an implicit retreat from US “primacy” in the Western Pacific. Not only are many Americans unsettled but the Chinese and their neighbours in Asian are trying to deconstruct Xi’s words and Trump’s response.
如果特朗普理解并同意了这一概念，他似乎已自愿将美国绑定在承认中国作为大国将长期存在的立场上，并放弃了遏制其战略野心的任何希望。这一让步建立在特朗普及其团队去年10月在韩国与习近平会晤后得出的「G2（两国集团）」概念之上，这一概念令美国对华强硬派和一些美国盟友感到不安，因为这被视为美国在西太平洋「主导地位」的隐性撤退。不仅许多美国人感到不安，中国及其亚洲邻国也在试图解构习近平的言辞和特朗普的回应。
so the 'constructive relationship' is just a polite way of saying 'we agree not to tax each other's trade barriers'. classic statecraft. lol
所以这‘建设性关系’不过是‘我们同意不互相加关税壁垒’的文雅说法。典型的国家政治。笑死。