Is China dynamic or dysfunctional?

Ryan Hass and Jon Czin are joined by Evan Osnos, a Brookings nonresident senior fellow, to look at China from the ground up.

瑞安·哈斯 (Ryan Hass) 和乔恩·钦 (Jon Czin) 与布鲁金斯学会非常驻高级研究员埃文·奥斯诺斯 (Evan Osnos) 一起从头开始审视中国。

What do people really want and how has that changed over the past decade?

人们真正想要什么？过去十年发生了怎样的变化？

And how are they living through a period today of slower growth, tighter control, and rapid technological change?

他们如何度过今天这个增长放缓、控制更严格、技术日新月异的时期？

On this show, we spend most of our time on Beijing’s decisions, its leadership, its economy, its military, and today we wanted to do something a little bit different and look at China from the ground up.

在这个节目中，我们大部分时间都花在北京的决策、领导力、经济、军事上，今天我们想做一些不同的事情，从头开始审视中国。

What do the people want?

人民想要什么？

What do they believe?

他们相信什么？

And how are they living through a period of slower growth, tighter control, and rapid technological change?

他们如何度过一段增长放缓、控制收紧和技术快速变革的时期？

He lived for eight years in Beijing.

他在北京生活了八年。

He has chronicled the evolution of China from Age of Ambition to Age of Malaise , to the most recent article, “The Future Made in China.” And we’re going to dig into all this.

他记录了中国从雄心勃勃的时代到萎靡不振的时代的演变，以及最近的文章《中国制造的未来》。我们将深入研究这一切。

But before doing so, welcome to the show, Evan.

但在此之前，欢迎来到节目，埃文。

But my involvement with Brookings goes back a very long way to my arrival in Washington now, 13 years ago, and it’s great to be joining you.

但我对布鲁金斯学会的参与可以追溯到 13 年前我抵达华盛顿的很久以前，很高兴加入你们。

And what he was teaching when I encountered him was revolutionary politics.

当我遇到他时，他正在教授的是革命政治。

And so I studied everything that he taught to undergrads.

所以我学习了他教给本科生的所有内容。

But he got me started.

但他让我开始了。

I started studying Chinese at that point, and carried on through college, studied a bit after college.

我从那时起开始学习中文，并在大学继续学习，大学毕业后又学习了一些。

Then I went off to the Middle East as a newspaper reporter, but I always wanted to go back to China as a reporter.

后来我去了中东当一名报社记者，但我一直想回到中国当一名记者。

And so when I had the first opportunity, I kind of wheedled my way into a newspaper job in China in 2005.

因此，当我有第一个机会时，我在 2005 年勉强进入了中国一家报社的工作。

And then after I’d been there for a few years, The New Yorker came calling, and I started working for The New Yorker in China in 2008, and that was now 18 years ago.

然后我在那里工作了几年后，《纽约客》打来电话，我从 2008 年开始为《纽约客》在中国工作，那已经是 18 年前的事了。

And I lived there until 2013 and came here.

我在那里住到 2013 年才来到这里。

And now I kind of go back and forth periodically, not as often as I’d like.

现在我会定期来回，但不像我想要的那么频繁。

I don’t think any reporter is going and getting as much depth as we would like.

我认为没有哪个记者会像我们希望的那样深入报道。

But we do what we can.

但我们会尽力而为。

And it was about trying to understand two kinds of ambition.

这是关于试图理解两种野心。

One was the individual ambition, the almost volcanic pressure provided by people across the country in large numbers operating sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, sometimes in the form of companies, sometimes as political partisans, and sometimes as artists trying to manifest their place in the country and their effect on history.

一是个人野心，全国各地大批民众有时单独行动，有时以团体形式行动，有时以公司形式行动，有时作为政治党派，有时作为艺术家，试图展现自己在国家中的地位及其对历史的影响，所带来的近乎火山般的压力。

And it was then in in confrontation with the ambitions of the nation, which were bound up, of course, in the Communist Party’s notion of governance, which was as a one-party authoritarian state.

当时它正面临着国家的野心，而国家的野心当然与共产党的治理理念有关，即一党独裁国家。

So it was really that, that collision, that tension, which to my mind was a big question mark about which of these would come to prevail.

所以，这确实是那种冲突、那种紧张，在我看来，这是一个很大的问号，不知道哪一种会占上风。

And I think there was a feeling that that clearly the era of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao and all of the things that came along with that were ending, but it wasn’t at all clear what was arriving.

我认为有一种感觉，显然胡锦涛和温家宝的时代以及随之而来的所有事情正在结束，但根本不清楚即将到来的是什么。

It was a kind of strange interregnum.

这是一种奇怪的空位期。

But I will tell you that the end of Age of Ambition is a a note of frustration, not my own, but I was voicing what I was hearing from the people I’d been following for many years in China.

但我要告诉你，《野心时代》的结束是一种挫败感，不是我自己的，但我表达的是我从多年来我在中国关注的人们那里听到的声音。

So, you know, I was following businesspeople and dissidents and people who quite deliberately were occupying very different places in the Chinese political cosmos.

所以，你知道，我关注的是商人、持不同政见者和那些故意在中国政治世界中占据截然不同位置的人。

But everybody was feeling as if the opportunity to define your own path was becoming more limited.

但每个人都感觉定义自己道路的机会变得越来越有限。

That was, for me at least, the note that it ended on, and I think has then become, in some ways it was a a preamble to the world that we’re inhabiting now.

至少对我来说，这就是它的结尾，我认为在某种程度上它已经成为我们现在所居住的世界的序言。

So I’m curious, like, you talked about the vibe at the time and what would you have prognosticated at that time about how, you know, how this contradiction was going to to play out, especially in light of what you’ve written subsequently?

所以我很好奇，你谈到了当时的氛围，以及你当时对这种矛盾将如何发展有何预测，特别是考虑到你随后所写的内容？

That became, I think, what we now look back on as a profoundly wrong assessment of the nature of technology and open society.

我认为，我们现在回想起来，这就是对技术和开放社会本质的极其错误的评估。

But I was, at that time, I think still still shaped in my understanding of the role of the internet in China—and we were just talking about the internet back then; AI was way over the horizon—but the internet had felt at the time as if it was this, this source of energy pushing outward against the constraints and against the ambitions of the state.

但我认为当时我对互联网在中国的作用的理解仍然成型——当时我们只是在谈论互联网；人工智能远远超出了地平线，但当时的互联网给人的感觉似乎就是这样，这种能量的来源向外推动，对抗国家的限制和野心。

And that was something that I think turned out, of course, to be profoundly wrong in what the internet would mean for the nature of Chinese governance, because ultimately technology became a powerful instrument on behalf of the state.

当然，我认为这对于互联网对中国治理本质的意义来说是完全错误的，因为最终技术成为代表国家的强大工具。

And in fact has, as we’ve seen over the years, the way that it allows individuals to express themselves is counterchecked and ultimately overwhelmed by the ability of the state to use technology to prevent those individual voices from threatening its rule.

事实上，正如我们多年来所看到的那样，个人表达自己的方式受到了反制，并最终被国家利用技术阻止个人声音威胁其统治的能力所压倒。

And then in people’s private lives, I’d written in Age of Ambition about things like even the choice of who you were going to marry, which had become this new field of of kind of personal self-definition that had been hard to do under the more repressive political eras.

然后在人们的私生活方面，我在《野心时代》中写过一些事情，甚至包括选择要嫁给谁，这已经成为个人自我定义的新领域，而这在更压抑的政治时代很难做到。

And I think what has come to the fore over the last decade has been the realization that actually the Party is moving more aggressively into those private spheres of life.

我认为过去十年中人们意识到，实际上党正在更积极地进入这些私人生活领域。

So it’s become really clear when it comes to things like how many children are you going to have?

因此，当涉及到诸如您要生几个孩子之类的事情时，事情就变得非常清楚了。

Of course, the one-child policy was—there was the sunset of that policy now replaced by sort of active encouragement of trying to get people to get married and settle down and have kids.

当然，独生子女政策已经被废除，现在取而代之的是积极鼓励人们结婚、安定下来并生孩子。

And the interviews I was having with people in China, particularly young women, was that they felt that this was contravening their understanding of an unspoken compact with the state, which is we will not challenge you politically if you allow us that personal sphere.

我对中国人，特别是年轻女性的采访表明，她们认为这违反了她们对与国家的不言而喻的契约的理解，即如果你允许我们拥有私人空间，我们就不会在政治上挑战你。

That violation in their minds, that sort of insult, I think, was what was the foundation of the Age of Malaise as I came to see it.

我认为，他们心中的这种侵犯、那种侮辱就是我所看到的“不安时代”的基础。

But but the other thing was that I was writing about this in the wake of COVID, and very specifically when I was in Shanghai, for instance—shanghai had been subject, as people will recall, to very stringent zero-COVID.

但另一件事是，我是在新冠疫情爆发后写这篇文章的，特别是当我在上海的时候——正如人们所记得的那样，上海一直受到非常严格的零新冠疫情影响。

It was perhaps in, in its way almost the, the harshest demonstration of what that could feel like in a big city.

就其方式而言，这或许是大城市中最严酷的感受。

And I think for a lot of people, it had been a breach for them that being ordered to stay in their homes for two months after having imagined that they had sort of burst the the surly bonds of ordinary obedience to the state, that they had achieved such personal success that they could go outside of these kinds of things.

我认为对于很多人来说，在他们想象自己已经打破了对国家的普通服从的乖戾束缚，他们已经取得了如此大的个人成功，可以摆脱这些事情之后，却被命令在家里呆两个月，这对他们来说是一种违反。

Suddenly they realized actually, no, they were subject to that too.

突然他们意识到，实际上，不，他们也受到了影响。

So that was the other piece of it.

这就是另一部分。

And then the the the last bit I would say, is that malaise is actually quite an uncertain concept.

最后我要说的是，不适实际上是一个相当不确定的概念。

We had an age of malaise in our own country in the late 1970s.

20 世纪 70 年代末，我们的国家经历了一段萎靡不振的时期。

I invoke that in the story.

我在故事中引用了这一点。

And when we had the age of malaise, it was kind of, was that the end of the American idea, or was it something else?

当我们进入萎靡不振的时代时，这就是美国理念的终结，还是其他原因？

And I make the point in the story that basically the Soviets and the Americans were were both going through a period in which it wasn’t clear which experiment was gonna work.

我在故事中指出，基本上苏联人和美国人都正在经历一个不清楚哪个实验会起作用的时期。

The Americans then burst through in the 1980s and reinvented ourselves.

美国人在 20 世纪 80 年代爆发并重塑了自己。

The Soviets did not.

苏联人没有。

And so I I ended that piece in a, in a, to my mind at least, a sense of uncertainty about whether China could climb out of its malaise or not and what it would take to do so.

因此，我以一种不确定感结束了这篇文章，至少在我看来，中国是否能够摆脱困境，以及需要采取什么措施才能摆脱困境。

And now when you travel throughout China, you know, four years later, it feels pretty normal.

现在，当你在中国各地旅行时，你知道，四年后，感觉很正常。

Are you surprised at all by how how quickly things have sort of reverted back to a more sort of normal flow of life and and pattern of behavior?

您是否对事情如此快地恢复到更正常的生活流程和行为模式感到惊讶？

Or is that superficial?

或者说这只是表面现象？

Are we missing something deeper, more structural?

我们是否缺少一些更深层次、更具结构性的东西？

In China, I think China has, um, a long history of effective amnesia, meaning people are quite skilled at closing the door on something painful that has happened and then saying, “Okay, I don’t forget, but I put one foot in front of the other.”

在中国，我认为中国有着悠久的有效失忆症历史，这意味着人们非常擅长对已经发生的痛苦事情关上大门，然后说：“好吧，我没有忘记，但我把一只脚放在了另一只脚前面。”

What I find when I have these conversations now with people who were in Shanghai in that period, either if I have these conversations in China or abroad, It is not forgotten.

当我现在与当时在上海的人进行这些对话时，我发现无论是在中国还是在国外进行这些对话，我都不会忘记。

It is very present.

它非常存在。

It is a scar.

这是一个疤痕。

And it’s the kind of event that I think may turn out to be, as we go through the sort of the years to come, an ingredient in the political evolution of China that is easy to underappreciate now, but may turn out to be more significant.

我认为，随着我们经历未来几年，这种事件可能会成为中国政治演变的一个组成部分，现在很容易被低估，但可能会变得更加重要。

Because I do think, just to underline this idea that I I gestured to before, which is that for people who had succeeded in China, who felt like, “I’ve, I learned the rules of the game and I played your game.” And then all of a sudden they found, “Well, wait a second, if my child or I test positive for COVID, we might be separated in a moment without any ability to interfere.

因为我确实认为，只是为了强调我之前表示过的这个想法，即对于那些在中国取得成功的人来说，他们会觉得，“我，我学会了游戏规则，我玩了你的游戏。”然后他们突然发现，“好吧，等一下，如果我的孩子或我的新冠病毒检测呈阳性，我们可能会立即分开，没有任何能力干预。

There’s nobody you can call.

没有人可以打电话。

There’s no favor you can call in.”

没有什么可以请你帮忙的。”

And so that was a, I think, that was a resetting of the mental balances.

我认为这是心理平衡的重置。

But another part of it, too, was about economic growth.

但它的另一部分也与经济增长有关。

And my concern was that for a lot of Western commentators, like, we treated this almost like like a Lockean kind of contract, right?

我担心的是，对于很多西方评论员来说，我们几乎将其视为洛克式合同，对吗？

Like, you sign here and you have your commitments.

就像，您在这里签名并做出承诺。

But I think what we’ve seen in the in the last few years play out is that this was all kind of implicit, and you could, the party could break that contract and persist, right, and actually grow in power and strength.

但我认为我们在过去几年中看到的情况是，这一切都是隐含的，你可以，政党可以打破合同并坚持下去，对吧，实际上会增强权力和实力。

So I’m just curious to hear, hear your thoughts about that, you know, about how the Party has evolved and tried to cope with these challenges in those subsequent years.

所以我很好奇，想听听你对此的想法，你知道，关于党在接下来的几年里如何发展并试图应对这些挑战的想法。

But I I think the idea that it was a simple bargain that would say, “You deliver 10% growth a year and we’ll keep you in power,” it was always more complex than that.

但我认为，这是一个简单的讨价还价的想法，“你每年实现 10% 的增长，我们会让你继续掌权”，但它总是比这更复杂。

And I I think that, you know, in the same way that that China is trying to define its its relationship with its public in new ways, we are too.

我认为，你知道，就像中国试图以新的方式定义其与公众的关系一样，我们也是如此。

I mean, I I’m constantly aware, in a way that I really wasn’t when I was living in China.

我的意思是，我一直都在意识到这一点，而我在中国生活时却并没有意识到这一点。

I I almost put the United States out of my mind because it was not the matter at hand.

我几乎把美国抛在了脑后，因为这不是眼前的事情。

And now I I am trying, in my own small ways on the page, to try to put these two national stories into some relationship with each other because, like it or not, they are related, meaning how China looks in the world is related to how America looks and vice versa.

现在我正在尝试，以我自己在页面上的小方式，试图将这两个国家的故事相互联系起来，因为，无论你喜欢与否，它们都是相关的，这意味着中国在世界上的形象与美国的形象相关，反之亦然。

With the benefit of several years now of of being able to watch and observe China, has your thinking on this question evolved at all?

经过几年的观察和观察，您对这个问题的思考是否有所改变？

But then you also have cases like Manus, which was an AI company, as people will recall, which was sold to Meta.

但也有像 Manus 这样的案例，人们会记得，这是一家人工智能公司，后来被卖给了 Meta。

But when the founders of the company tried to leave and then eventually go to the United States, then they realized they weren’t allowed to leave and that they had, in effect, become nationalized as assets.

但当公司创始人试图离开并最终前往美国时，他们意识到他们不被允许离开，而且他们实际上已经作为资产被国有化了。

Individuals, essentially, they were too important.

从本质上讲，个人太重要了。

You know, there’s going to be a whole technical conversation about the rules around that transaction, their departure, and so on.

你知道，将会有一个关于该交易的规则、他们的离开等等的完整的技术对话。

But the the effect was clear, which is that it remains unclear to me if China can strike the balance between dynamism and control that it is seeking.

但其影响是显而易见的，即我仍不清楚中国能否在其所寻求的活力和控制之间取得平衡。

And the analogy that recurs in my mind , goes back to the early period of the reform era when Deng Xiaoping and his cohort talked about a birdcage economy, which was, after all, a a system that had enough oxygen to let the bird grow and thrive, but not enough space that the bird could fly away.

而我脑海中反复出现的类比，可以追溯到改革开放初期，邓小平一伙人讲的鸟笼经济，毕竟是一个有足够氧气让鸟生长、繁衍生息，但没有足够空间让鸟飞走的系统。

And maintaining that very fragile arrangement, that birdcage economy was never guaranteed and to my mind is still very much up in the air.

维持这种非常脆弱的安排，鸟笼经济从未得到保证，在我看来仍然悬而未决。

Over the longer term, I think it’s a question mark, is whether or not a ambitious, bright, leading thinker that has the world at his footsteps or her footsteps will choose to put themselves in that birdcage to start the next company that will transform the world or to do it somewhere else.

从长远来看，我认为这是一个问号，一个雄心勃勃、聪明、领先的思想家，让世界跟随他或她的脚步，是否会选择把自己放在鸟笼里，创办下一家将改变世界的公司，或者在其他地方做这件事。

And I think just to tie together a few of the themes we’ve just been talking about, in some ways the barrier, the the outer bounds of this birdcage economy concept become clear in the bodily moments, literally the physical moments when a person is told they cannot physically leave the country no matter how successful they are economically, or in the Shanghai COVID example, when you’re told you bodily cannot be control of where you want to be and and why.

我认为，将我们刚才讨论的几个主题联系起来，在某种程度上，这种鸟笼经济概念的障碍和外部界限在身体时刻变得清晰，字面意思是，当一个人被告知，无论他们在经济上多么成功，他们都不能亲自离开这个国家，或者在上海新冠病毒的例子中，当你被告知你的身体无法控制你想去哪里、为什么去的时候。

And I always found that to be very interesting.

我一直觉得这很有趣。

It’s like where the technology meets the fragility of the flesh, and that is ultimately where these governance questions become clearest to us.

就像技术与肉体的脆弱性相遇一样，这最终是我们对这些治理问题变得最清楚的地方。

So you have this this dynamism and this dysfunction playing out at the same time, and I think that’s a big part of China’s story right now, especially when you look at the at the kind of illustrative example you just gave of China’s technology sector.

因此，这种活力和这种功能失调同时出现，我认为这是中国目前故事的一个重要组成部分，特别是当你看看你刚刚给出的中国科技行业的说明性例子时。

Right?

正确的？

So I mean, there’s so much angst and anxiety in the conversation about this in Washington and in Silicon Valley, of course.

所以我的意思是，当然，在华盛顿和硅谷有关此问题的对话中有很多焦虑和焦虑。

Like, how do you see what’s happening in China, especially how the governance intersects with the technological space.

比如，您如何看待中国正在发生的事情，特别是治理与技术空间的交叉。

Right?

正确的？

Like, how are they managing this potentially transformative moment?

比如，他们如何应对这个潜在的变革时刻？

And I asked a a friend who, who works on these issues, I said, “How do you make sense of this?” And he said, “Look, they coexist just as they coexist in the United States.” And I I took that to heart, meaning that we are right now in this country contending with the reality that you have extraordinary technological dynamism.

我问一位研究这些问题的朋友，我说：“你如何理解这一点？”他说，“看，他们共存，就像他们在美国共存一样。”我把这一点牢记在心，这意味着我们现在在这个国家正在与拥有非凡技术活力的现实作斗争。

If you’re sitting in Silicon Valley, you feel as if yesterday is a mile away.

如果你坐在硅谷，你会感觉昨天就在咫尺之遥。

And then at the same time, you can step out into the rest of the country and have this overwhelming sense of, in some cases, stagnation being the dominant impulse, being frozen in place.

与此同时，你可以走进这个国家的其他地方，并有一种压倒性的感觉，在某些情况下，停滞是主导冲动，被冻结在原地。

So you have to be able to put these two facts into one juxtaposition.

所以你必须能够将这两个事实并置在一起。

And I I have to tell you, just this is one of those moments where I feel very fortunate that The New Yorker exists and that, for reasons beyond me , it permits me to keep writing for them, that you can write a 10,000-word story that has both of these phenomena at play.

我必须告诉你，正是在这个时刻，我感到非常幸运，因为《纽约客》的存在，而且，出于我之外的原因，它允许我继续为他们写作，你可以写一个 10,000 字的故事，同时兼顾这两种现象。

So you’re writing about the property crash and the, and the fertility crisis, and the fact that people feel this, to use Xu Zhiyuan great expression, the writer Xu Zhiyuan described it as a “profoundly confused era” because of AI, because of the geopolitical situation, and because of the downturn.

所以你写的是房地产崩盘和生育危机，人们感受到了这一点，用徐知远的精彩表述来说，作家徐知远将其描述为一个“极度混乱的时代”，因为人工智能，因为地缘政治局势，因为经济低迷。

And at the same time take stock of a technological transformation—there’s really no other word for it—that I think is important to underline in print.

同时评估技术变革——确实没有其他词可以形容——我认为在印刷品中强调这一点很重要。

Because unless you’re working in the world that we are in, the specifics and the scale of China’s technological investment at a time when America’s politics are chaotic is easy for the American public to either underappreciate or overlook.

因为除非你在我们所处的世界工作，否则在美国政治混乱之际，美国公众很容易低估或忽视中国技术投资的细节和规模。

And so part of this project was to say, while we are disinvesting, for instance, in research and development, when the CDC is described on the front page of The New York Times as “zombified” because of the cuts and the undermining of its functioning, , China is proceeding with a kind of ruthless efficiency.

因此，这个项目的一部分是说，当我们减少研发投资时，当《纽约时报》头版将疾病预防控制中心描述为“僵尸化”，因为其职能被削减和破坏时，中国正在以一种无情的效率进行着。

And you can read that one of two ways, either as an encouraging development or as a deeply discouraging development, depending on which values you hope to see expressed worldwide.

你可以用两种方式来解读这一点，要么是令人鼓舞的发展，要么是令人深感沮丧的发展，这取决于你希望看到全世界表达哪种价值观。

The piece that you wrote and the, what you’re just describing challenges both of those narratives.

你写的这篇文章和你刚刚描述的内容挑战了这两种叙述。

You obviously wrote this piece with an awareness of the zeitgeist, the mood, the discussion that’s taking place in the United States.

显然，你在写这篇文章时意识到了美国正在发生的时代精神、情绪和讨论。

How did you want your piece to be interpreted and understood against that American backdrop?

您希望您的作品在美国背景下如何被解读和理解？

And I think especially now where these two contradictory portraits are inaccurate alone and required to coexist.

我认为，尤其是现在，这两种相互矛盾的描述单独存在是不准确的，需要共存。

So I mean, to be more specific about it, I said, Okay, I want to go and understand what the technology feels like.

所以我的意思是，更具体地说，我说，好吧，我想去了解这项技术的感觉。

And so in order to get into places like technology companies, you do as one does, and you, you know, get in touch with companies or venture capitalists, and eventually they will get you in the room with these companies.

因此，为了进入科技公司这样的地方，你就得像人们一样，与公司或风险投资家取得联系，最终他们会让你进入这些公司的房间。

And then you have to immediately situate it in the context of how much is hype and propaganda and how much is real.

然后你必须立即将其置于炒作和宣传的程度以及真实程度之间。

So I would have these moments where I would say, Okay, state media is promoting the fact that there are robots everywhere.

所以有时候我会说，好吧，官方媒体正在宣传机器人无处不在的事实。

So how are people actually experiencing robots?

那么人们如何实际体验机器人呢？

So one fact can be true, which is there are nine industrial robots installed deployed by China for every one that is deployed by the United States.

因此，有一个事实是正确的，即中国部署的工业机器人数量相当于美国部署的工业机器人数量的九倍。

And if you’re somebody interested in America’s industrial future, you should take heed of that fact.

如果您对美国工业的未来感兴趣，您应该注意这一事实。

But it is also true that if you go into, as I did in the story, a convenience store that is staffed by a humanoid robot, very much a propagandistic exercise, and you order a hot dog, the hot dog unfortunately fell into what might be described as the uncanny valley between the machine and the customer.

但事实上，如果你像我在故事中所做的那样，走进一家配备人形机器人的便利店（这在很大程度上是一种宣传活动），并且你点了一个热狗，那么热狗不幸地陷入了机器和顾客之间所谓的恐怖谷。

And, you know, you have to be able to kind of have those two experiences in order to be able to convey it.

而且，你知道，你必须能够拥有这两种经历才能传达它。

And I think there’s sometimes in the conversation in Washington a tendency to be dismissive of this, right?

我认为在华盛顿的谈话中有时会倾向于对此不屑一顾，对吗？

Like, it’s not real, it’s not formidable, or they’ve just, they’ve just cheated and they’ve mimicked, right, and there’s not a real …

就像，这不是真实的，它并不强大，或者他们只是，他们只是作弊，他们模仿了，对吧，而且没有真正的……

there’s not a there there when it comes to the technological dynamism.

当谈到技术活力时，那里不存在。

And what I worry about a lot is that we underestimate that despite the dysfunction, right, and the system’s proclivity to propagandize, like, there is a real really formidable country that we’re up against.

我非常担心的是，我们低估了尽管存在功能障碍，对吧，以及系统的宣传倾向，但我们面对的是一个真正强大的国家。

Right?

正确的？

And I think the framing that you had about that moment of the 1970s, I think that’s an apt analog for right now.

我认为 20 世纪 70 年代那一刻的框架对于现在来说是一个恰当的类比。

Right?

正确的？

Like this is, both countries are in this period of dynamism, but also deep dysfunction I think on both sides.

就像这样，两国都处于这个充满活力的时期，但我认为双方也都存在严重的功能障碍。

And the real trillion-dollar question is who’s able to reinvent themselves?

真正价值数万亿美元的问题是谁能够重塑自我？

Right?

正确的？

And who is using this time and space and their resources wisely to to do that.

谁正在明智地利用这些时间、空间和资源来做到这一点。

And the question now is, is it in fact capable of throwing off the dysfunction, throwing off of the disaffection, which is profound, or not?

现在的问题是，它实际上是否能够摆脱功能障碍，摆脱深刻的不满？

And is that possible in our country?

这在我们国家可能吗？

So I very much see these as parallel questions.

所以我非常认为这些是平行的问题。

I will also just to get to, to what you I think raised that’s so important, Jon, is, and I hear this both in Washington and in Silicon Valley, is China used as a tool of rhetorical exploration.

我还要谈谈，我认为你提出的非常重要的问题，乔恩，我在华盛顿和硅谷都听到了这一点，即中国是否被用作修辞探索的工具。

So they’ll say, “Well, it’s either, you know, China is just copying and cloning, it’s nothing to worry about,” or, “Yes, but we can’t do any regulation on American technology because China.” And that frustrates me enormously, because neither one of those portraits is helping us make smart decisions.

所以他们会说，“好吧，要么，你知道，中国只是复制和克隆，没什么可担心的，”或者，“是的，但我们不能因为中国而对美国技术进行任何监管。”这让我非常沮丧，因为这些肖像都不能帮助我们做出明智的决定。

And I think we’re getting to the point now, I think there’s a little bit more of an, of a an informed conversation coming into view, partly through the work of people like Kyle Chan at Brookings, who have really helped us understand what is going on with Chinese technology development, where is their strength and weakness, what is the state policy structure that’s coming into view.

我认为我们现在已经到了重点，我认为更多的是一场知情的对话即将到来，部分是通过像布鲁金斯学会的凯尔·陈（Kyle Chan）这样的人的工作，他们确实帮助我们了解了中国技术发展的现状，他们的优势和劣势在哪里，正在考虑的国家政策结构是什么。

And and it is forcing the United States, though I don’t think nearly intelligently enough yet, to have a conversation about the possibilities for an AI conversation between these two powers that I don’t see as happening anytime soon, but I also don’t see it as optional.

尽管我认为还不够聪明，但它正在迫使美国就这两个大国之间进行人工智能对话的可能性进行对话，我认为这种对话不会很快发生，但我也不认为这是可选的。

Look, I, I think, you know, we are, all of us, I think the three of us have sort of come of age in a time when it’s become increasingly clear that the great big questions of the world, and I know it seems tired to say climate, but it is still one of the things that we have to talk about as two countries, pandemic prevention, and AI.

听着，我，我想，你知道，我们，我们所有人，我认为我们三个人已经成熟了，世界上的重大问题变得越来越清晰，我知道说气候似乎很累，但这仍然是我们作为两个国家必须谈论的事情之一，流行病预防和人工智能。

If we don’t talk about them with the gravity with which we talked about nuclear weapons, I don’t think we’re coming at them with anywhere near to an adequate solution.

如果我们不像谈论核武器那样严肃地谈论它们，我认为我们就无法找到一个足够的解决方案。

I want to turn the the mirror back to the United States in one second, but before we do so, one last question on your reporting in China, which is part of what separates your reporting in just sort of its eloquence and its insight from just about everything else out there is your ability to embed human voices into the conversation.

我想马上把镜子转回美国，但在我们这样做之前，最后一个问题是关于你在中国的报道，这也是你的报道在雄辩和洞察力方面与其他一切报道的不同之处的一部分，那就是你将人类声音融入对话的能力。

You finished your last piece by reflecting upon a conversation with a fortune teller in Beijing.

你通过反思与北京算命先生的对话完成了你的最后一篇文章。

Bring us, bring us behind the curtains on this.

带我们来，带我们到幕后。

How did you end up talking to a fortune teller?

你最后是怎么和算命先生交谈的？

What what what’s the story there?

那里有什么故事？

And I said, “I need to kind of…” I’d been hearing about young people in China going to fortune tellers, which I thought was such a revealing instinct, that they were living at the age of, you know, the greatest powers of forecasting, but what they really wanted was to go and have somebody examine their birth date and examine their hand and come up with a vision of the future.

我说，“我需要……”我一直听说中国的年轻人去找算命先生，我认为这是一种很有启发性的本能，他们生活在，你知道，最有预测能力的年龄，但他们真正想要的是去让人检查他们的出生日期，检查他们的手，并提出对未来的愿景。

And so I happen to know the old fortune teller district because I lived in Beijing there for a long time.

所以我碰巧知道老算命区，因为我在那里住了很长时间。

And so I, you know, I I I scanned a bike, as one does, of course, revealing my location to authorities, and then biked across town.

所以我，你知道，我扫描了一辆自行车，当然，就像人们所做的那样，向当局透露我的位置，然后骑自行车穿过城镇。

And so I I go across town to the fortune teller district, and sat down with somebody, and honestly, the the experience was fascinating because what I realized was that we are asking of a fortune teller in that moment what we ask of an AI model.

所以我穿过城镇来到算命先生区，和某人坐下来，说实话，这种经历很有趣，因为我意识到我们在那一刻向算命先生询问我们对人工智能模型的要求。

I mean, I I’d asked him something simple like, you know, “What does the future hold for my kids?” And and I could see him kind of scanning my face and giving me the answer I wanted to hear, which of course is what ChatGPT does.

我的意思是，我问了他一些简单的问题，比如“我的孩子们的未来会怎样？”我可以看到他扫描我的脸并给出我想听到的答案，这当然就是 ChatGPT 所做的。

He did everything except say, “Brilliant question.”

他什么都做了，除了说：“问得好。”