The Rise of Made-in-China Diplomacy
中国制造外交的兴起
While political leaders trade threats, the pandemic has made Americans even more reliant on China’s manufacturers.
当政治领导人互相威胁的时候，这种流行病使得美国人更加依赖中国的制造商。
作者: 彼得 · 赫斯勒
March 8, 2021 2021年3月8日
After the U.S. government issued stimulus checks, “the next day we saw an increase in sales,” a Chinese businessman said. 一位中国商人说，在美国政府发布刺激计划支票后，“第二天我们看到销售额有所增长。”Photograph by Guligo Jia for The New Yorker 摄影: Guligo Jia/纽约客
On Amazon.com, if you search for running shoes, drop the price point to around thirty dollars, and scroll past the initial pages, you’ll eventually encounter brands that you’ve never heard of. Some seem to follow an alphabetic theme—Zocavia, Zocania, Zonkim—while others are pure etymological puzzles: Biacolum, Qansi, NYZNIA. Study the product images, and pieces of the puzzle start to connect. The Qansi Men’s Sneakers Mesh Ultra Lightweight Breathable Athletic Running Walking Gym Shoes look exactly the same as the Biacolum Men’s Running Shoes Non Slip Gym Tennis Shoes Slip Resistant Air Knitted Sneakers Walking Workout Sport Shoes, which in turn appear to be identical to the Zocavia Men’s Running Shoes Ultra Lightweight Tennis Gym Shoes Slip On Mesh Fitness Slip Resistant Walking Workout Shoes. The language of these listings could be described as Amazonglish: awkward but basically intelligible, redundant but highly searchable. Often, a product description has just enough linguistic accuracy to sail past a computer’s grammar check. Zocavia: “Ultra lightweight material leaves few weight on your feet.” Zocania: “Your feet can breathe easy in the latest iteration of fabric upper.”
在亚马逊网站上，如果你搜索跑鞋，把价格降到30美元左右，滚动浏览最初的页面，你最终会遇到你从未听说过的品牌。有些似乎是按字母顺序排列的——佐卡维亚、 Zocania、 zonkim ——而有些则是纯粹的词源谜题: Biacolum、 Qansi、 NYZNIA。研究产品图片，拼图的各个部分开始连接起来。Qansi 男士运动鞋网格超轻透气运动跑步健身鞋看起来和 Biacolum 男士跑步鞋防滑运动鞋网球鞋防滑空气针织运动鞋步行运动鞋完全一样，这反过来看起来和 Zocavia 男士跑步鞋超轻网球运动鞋防滑网球运动鞋防滑运动鞋完全一样。这些列表的语言可以被描述为亚马逊式英语: 笨拙但基本上可以理解，冗余但高度可搜索。通常，一个产品描述的语言准确度足以通过计算机的语法检查。索卡维亚: “超轻质材料让你的双脚几乎没有重量。”佐卡尼亚: “你的脚可以轻松地呼吸在最新款式的面料上。”
One word that almost never appears in Amazonglish is “China.” Marketplace Pulse, which analyzes e-commerce, has said that nearly half of Amazon’s top sellers—those with more than a million dollars in annual sales in the U.S.—are in China. An Amazon spokesperson recently described this as inaccurate, although he declined to disclose the number of Chinese sellers, saying only that the majority of third-party venders on the U.S. site are based in America. On product pages, Chinese sellers rarely advertise their location, and the Zocavias and Zocanias don’t mention where they are manufactured. For more information, it helps to head over to the Web site of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, whose registrations are full of useful details. (“The wording ‘Biacolum’ has no meaning in a foreign language.”) On the trademark site, Zocavia and Zocania, which sound a little like tennis-playing twins from Serbia, are in fact registered to the same person in Guanting Village, Danling County, Sichuan Province. These brands, along with Zonkim, Biacolum, NYZNIA, and dozens of others, are under the purview of a company called Kimzon Network Technology. The Kimzon headquarters are on the sixteenth floor of an office building in the city of Chengdu, where, in the pandemic spring of 2020, the owner told me that he was reconsidering his approach to the American market.
有一个词几乎从未出现在亚马逊式英语中，那就是“中国”电子商务分析公司 Marketplace Pulse 表示，亚马逊近一半的最畅销产品——那些在美国年销售额超过100万美元的产品——在中国。亚马逊的一位发言人最近形容这种说法是不准确的，不过他拒绝透露中国卖家的数量，只是说美国网站上的大多数第三方卖家都在美国。在产品页面上，中国卖家很少宣传他们的地理位置，Zocavias 和 Zocanias 也没有提到他们在哪里生产。要了解更多信息，可以访问美国专利商标局的网站，该局的注册信息非常有用。(“‘ Biacolum’这个词在外语中没有任何意义。”)在这个商标网站上，听起来有点像塞尔维亚打网球的双胞胎的 Zocavia 和 Zocania，实际上是在四川省丹棱县官厅村注册的同一个人。这些品牌，连同 Zonkim、 Biacolum、 NYZNIA 以及其他几十个品牌，都隶属于一家名为 Kimzon Network Technology 的公司。总部位于成都市一座办公楼的十六层，在2020年春季的大流行期间，老板告诉我他正在重新考虑进入美国市场的方式。
It was April 26th, and Li Dewei wore a black Bluetooth headset, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, black trousers, and black sneakers that had not been made in any of his three factories. Li, who owned the company with a partner, was only in his mid-thirties, but he had the serious demeanor of an older man. Chengdu, like all Chinese cities, had already brought the pandemic under control, and Li told me that a week earlier he had stopped requiring masks in the workplace. But he had just started coping with the economic fallout of the virus. The previous month, Li had laid off fifty workers—a third of his Chengdu staff.
那是4月26日，李德伟戴着黑色蓝牙耳机，穿着黑色长袖 t 恤，黑色裤子，黑色运动鞋，这些东西都不是他的三家工厂生产的。与一位合伙人共同拥有这家公司的李年仅三十五六岁，但他的举止却像一位老人一样严肃。像所有中国城市一样，成都已经控制住了疫情，李告诉我，一周前他已经停止在工作场所需要口罩。但他刚刚开始应对病毒带来的经济影响。上个月，李解雇了五十名员工---- 占成都员工总数的三分之一。
Li said that things would have been worse if not for the stimulus checks sent out by the Trump Administration under the cares Act. Because Li sold directly to Amazon customers, he could track sales closely. “We check the statistics every day,” he said. “After the American government started issuing the money, the next day we saw an increase in sales.” By the time I visited, two weeks into the stimulus program, Kimzon’s American sales had almost doubled, although they were still slightly lower than usual. “We don’t know whether the current consumption with the U.S. government aid is a short-term trend,” Li said.
李说，如果没有特朗普政府根据关心法案发放的刺激支票，情况可能会更糟。因为李直接面向亚马逊的客户销售，他可以密切跟踪销售情况。“我们每天都检查统计数据,”他说。“在美国政府开始发放贷款后，第二天我们就看到了销售额的增长。”到我访问时，也就是刺激计划实施两周后，金松的美国销售额几乎翻了一番，尽管仍然比平时略低。“我们不知道目前在美国政府援助下的消费是否是一个短期趋势,”李说。
Not long before, Li had had a series of discussions with his partner and some other export entrepreneurs. They had determined that June, 2020, would be a critical month. “If by June the virus is totally under control in the U.S. and the E.U., then we can rebound to the normal level,” Li told me. But the entrepreneurs had all concluded that it was unlikely that the U.S. and other Western countries would handle the pandemic well. Li was also concerned about the ongoing political conflict between China and the U.S.
不久前，李与他的合作伙伴和其他一些出口企业家进行了一系列讨论。他们已经确定，2020年6月将是一个关键的月份。“如果到6月，病毒在美国和欧盟完全得到控制，那么我们就可以恢复到正常水平,”李告诉我。但是企业家们都得出结论，美国和其他西方国家不太可能很好地应对这场流行病。李还对中美之间持续不断的政治冲突表示担忧。
In a typical year, seventy per cent of Kimzon’s sales were in the United States, with another twenty per cent in Europe and ten per cent in Japan. Kimzon sold nothing in the Chinese market. For Li and his partner, the solution seemed obvious: reduce American exposure by selling Zocavia, Zocania, and the other brands to Chinese consumers. “Many things in China are not being badly affected by the pandemic, like logistics,” Li explained. His staff had already redesigned some shoes and was preparing a domestic marketing campaign; the goal was to have as much as a third of their business in China within a year. Li expected that after three months he would know whether the plan might succeed.
在一个典型的年份里，Kimzon 百分之七十的销售额在美国，另外百分之二十在欧洲，百分之十在日本。金宗在中国市场上什么也没卖出去。对于李和他的合作伙伴来说，解决方案似乎显而易见: 通过向中国消费者出售佐卡维亚、 Zocania 和其他品牌来减少美国的曝光度。“中国的很多事情都没有受到大流行的严重影响，比如物流,”李解释说。他的员工已经重新设计了一些鞋子，并准备在国内开展营销活动; 目标是在一年内将三分之一的业务拓展到中国。李预计，三个月后，他就会知道这个计划是否会成功。
In August of 2019, I had moved with my family to Chengdu, where I teach journalism and English at Sichuan University. It was the second time I had arrived in the region during a period of troubled U.S.-China relations. In 1995, the two countries had entered a tense phase after the U.S. State Department granted a visa to Lee Teng-hui, the President of Taiwan, who had been invited to give a speech at Cornell, his alma mater. The Chinese government responded furiously, conducting a series of missile tests in waters near Taiwan. In March, 1996, the U.S. sent ships to join two aircraft carriers in the region—the greatest show of American military strength in Asia since the Vietnam War.
2019年8月，我和家人搬到了成都，在四川大学教授新闻学和英语。这是我第二次在美中关系陷入困境的时候来到这个地区。1995年，在美国国务院向台湾总统李登辉(Lee Teng-hui)发放签证之后，两国关系进入了紧张阶段。李登辉应邀在他的母校康奈尔大学(Cornell)发表演讲。中国政府做出了愤怒的回应，在台湾附近海域进行了一系列导弹试验。1996年3月，美国派遣军舰加入该地区的两艘航空母舰，这是自越南战争以来美国在亚洲最大的军事实力展示。
“How do you like the standing throne?” “你觉得这个站立的宝座怎么样?”
Cartoon by Joe Dator 卡通作者: Joe Dator
That summer, I arrived in Chengdu as a Peace Corps volunteer. Along with another young American, Adam Meier, I was assigned to teach at a college in a remote part of Sichuan. Bill Clinton was running for reëlection, and he was frequently attacked by the Chinese state-controlled media. Years later, one of my students wrote a letter in which she described her feelings at the time: “Not long after you became my teacher, I read a piece of news comment that said [if] Mr. Clinton took presidency, one of the reasons was that he would take stronger measure on China. Those days, I hated to see you and Mr. Meier.”
那年夏天，我作为和平队志愿者来到了成都。我和另一个年轻的美国人亚当 · 迈耶一起被分配到四川边远地区的一所大学任教。比尔 · 克林顿正在竞选连任，他经常受到中国官方媒体的攻击。几年后，我的一个学生写了一封信，描述了她当时的感受: “在你成为我的老师后不久，我看到一条新闻评论说，如果克林顿先生当选总统，原因之一就是他会对中国采取更强硬的措施。那些日子，我讨厌见到你和迈尔先生。”
But any such opinions were kept quiet. In Sichuan, people generally took a pragmatic approach to politics, and the college accepted the risk of American teachers as part of Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening” policy. Most students came from poor rural families, but they had tested well enough to major in English. Along with language classes, they took mandatory political courses with throwback titles like Marxism-Leninism and Building Chinese Socialism. Yet even a glance outside the classroom showed how quickly Chinese socialism was being dismantled. During my second year, the government stopped providing graduates with guaranteed jobs, and the local housing market was privatized, a process that was happening across the country. Some of my most ambitious students left for provinces like Guangdong and Zhejiang, where the export economy was starting to boom.
但任何这样的意见都保持沉默。在四川，人们普遍对政治采取务实的态度，学院接受了美国教师的风险作为邓小平“改革开放”政策的一部分。大多数学生来自贫穷的农村家庭，但他们的测试结果足够好，主修英语。除了语言课之外，他们还必须参加一些老掉牙的政治课程，比如马克思列宁主义和建设中国社会主义。然而，即使只是在教室外瞥一眼，也能看出中国的社会主义正在以多么快的速度被瓦解。在我任职的第二年，政府停止为毕业生提供有保障的工作，当地的房地产市场被私有化，这一过程正在全国范围内发生。我的一些最有抱负的学生离开了广东和浙江这样的省份，那里的出口经济开始繁荣。
Bill Clinton turned out to be better for China than anybody would have predicted. In his second term, Congress granted China permanent trading privileges, and Clinton began the process of negotiating for China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, which happened in 2001. Throughout successive Administrations, the U.S. mostly followed a strategy of engagement with China. Even President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy, which was intended to counter China’s growing influence in the region, seemed to have little real effect.
事实证明，比尔•克林顿(Bill Clinton)对中国的好处超出了任何人的预期。在他的第二个任期内，国会给予中国永久的贸易特权，克林顿开始了中国加入世界贸易组织的谈判进程，这个进程发生在2001年。在连续几届政府中，美国大多采取与中国接触的战略。甚至连奥巴马总统的“转向亚洲”政策——旨在对抗中国在该地区日益增长的影响力——似乎也收效甚微。
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER 来自《纽约客》的视频
A Daughter and Her Mother Reconnect Over Chinese Dumplings 女儿和母亲重温中国饺子
When I returned to Chengdu, the material benefits of the reform era could be seen everywhere: an extensive subway system, a brand-new Sichuan University campus, a high-rise business district where Kimzon and other companies were situated. In my classroom, I felt the change at the most visceral level. My students laughed when I showed class pictures from 1996—at five feet nine inches, I had towered over my students. Now, because of rising living standards, it seemed that I was shorter than most of the boys I taught. Last year, a study in The Lancet reported that, out of two hundred countries, China has seen the largest increase in boys’ height, and the third largest in girls’, since 1985. The average Chinese nineteen-year-old male is now more than three and a half inches taller.
当我回到成都时，改革时代带来的物质利益随处可见: 庞大的地铁系统、崭新的四川大学校园、 Kimzon 和其它公司所在的高层商业区。在我的课堂上，我感受到了发自肺腑的变化。当我展示1996年的班级照片时，我的学生们都笑了，我的身高超过了我的学生们。现在，由于生活水平的提高，我似乎比我教过的大多数男孩都矮。去年，《柳叶刀》杂志的一项研究报告说，在200个国家中，中国的男孩身高增幅最大，女孩身高增幅第三，自1985年以来。现在，中国19岁的男性平均身高超过3.5英寸。
Almost all of my students came from urban middle-class families. The majority were enrolled in a program that sent them to the University of Pittsburgh for their final year or two, joining the nearly four hundred thousand Chinese who study in the U.S. every year. But, at Sichuan University, even students bound for America still took political courses with throwback names: Basic Principles of Marxism, Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Next to the building where I taught, a recently completed structure had a gleaming four-story glass façade and a row of enormous golden characters that read “Marxism Institute.” The building reminded me of my students: bigger, stronger, better dressed. The institute had been designed with a large parking garage in the basement, because nowadays a lot of Chinese Marxists buy cars.
我的几乎所有学生都来自城市中产阶级家庭。他们中的大多数人都参加了一个项目，这个项目把他们送到匹兹堡大学进行最后一两年的学习，加入到每年在美国学习的近40万中国人的行列。但是，在四川大学，即使是前往美国的学生也在学习一些名字倒退的政治课程: 马克思主义基本原理、毛泽东思想概论和中国特色社会主义。在我教书的大楼旁边，是一座刚刚完工的建筑，四层玻璃幕墙熠熠生辉，一排巨大的金字招牌上写着“马克思主义研究所”这座建筑让我想起了我的学生们: 更大，更强壮，穿着更好。这个研究所在地下室设计了一个大停车场，因为现在很多中国马克思主义者都买汽车。
The Communist Party’s control was even more powerful than I remembered, and relations with the United States were even worse. Before Donald Trump took office, a consensus had already been building in Washington that the Chinese had benefitted too much from the bilateral relationship. Trump Administration officials frequently advocated “decoupling”—separating from China in economic and technological realms. In the spring of 2018, Trump started imposing high tariffs on Chinese products, and China countered with measures of its own. Exchange programs also came under pressure, in part as a response to a brutal Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang and the suppression of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. During my first year at Sichuan University, Trump abruptly ended the China Peace Corps program, along with all Fulbright exchanges with China and Hong Kong.
共产党的控制比我记忆中更加强大，与美国的关系更加恶化。在唐纳德 · 特朗普(Donald Trump)上台之前，华盛顿已经形成了一种共识，即中国从双边关系中获益过多。特朗普政府官员经常提倡“脱钩”ーー在经济和技术领域脱离中国。2018年春，特朗普开始对中国产品征收高额关税，中国采取了自己的措施予以反击。交流项目也受到了压力，部分原因是中国政府对新疆的残酷镇压，以及对香港亲民主活动人士的镇压。我在四川大学的第一年，特朗普突然中止了中国和平队项目，以及富布赖特与中国和香港的所有交流。
In Chengdu, most people seemed to respond as they always had. Li Dewei told me that he had no strong opinions about American politics, and that, after tariffs were imposed on his shoes, he simply raised his Amazon prices by fifteen per cent. “The tariff is paid by the customer,” he said.
在成都，大多数人的反应似乎和往常一样。李德伟告诉我，他对美国政治没有强烈的意见，在他的鞋子被征收关税后，他只是把亚马逊的价格提高了百分之十五。“关税由客户支付,”他表示。
In my department, all instructors helped out at a writing center, where students could make appointments for tutoring sessions. Before I arrived, there had been a plan to purchase scheduling software from an American company. But the deal fell through, and an administrator told us in meetings that he believed the reason to be fallout from the trade war. So the department found a U.K. company, Fresha, that provides software for salons, spas, and massage parlors. Whenever I received notice of a tutorial, the student was described as a “customer,” and promotional e-mails pitched me on added features like special settings for “Mani-Pedi or Couples Massage.” In April, the massage e-mails suddenly got a lot more urgent: “The covid-19 crisis has triggered a tsunami of Salons and Spas switching to Fresha from their current expensive scheduling solutions.”
在我的部门，所有的老师都在一个写作中心帮忙，学生可以在那里预约辅导时间。在我到达之前，有一个从一家美国公司购买日程安排软件的计划。但是这笔交易最终失败了，一位行政官员在会议上告诉我们，他认为原因是贸易战带来的后果。因此，该部门找到了一家英国公司，Fresha，为美容院、水疗中心和按摩院提供软件。每当我收到一个教程的通知，这个学生就被描述成一个“顾客”，促销电子邮件就会向我推荐增加的功能，比如“ Mani-Pedi 或 Couples Massage”的特殊设置今年4月，按摩电子邮件突然变得更加紧急: “2019冠状病毒疾病危机引发了沙龙和温泉的海啸，它们从目前昂贵的日程安排解决方案转向了 Fresha。”
On May 14th, I met Li Dewei for dinner, and he told me that Kimzon was struggling with the shift to the domestic market. “Sales aren’t good yet,” he said. He thought that style might be an issue, so Kimzon was producing shoes with white soles instead of black, believing that these would appeal to Chinese consumers.
5月14日，我和李德伟共进晚餐，他告诉我金宗正在努力转向国内市场。“目前销售情况还不好,”他表示。他认为这种风格可能是个问题，所以金宗生产的鞋子是白底而不是黑底，他认为这样会吸引中国消费者。
In March, when the pandemic first began to have an impact in America, Kimzon had reduced its production to five hundred pairs a day. But now it was up to two thousand, close to normal. Although Li had laid off people in design and marketing, he never downsized assembly-line workers. He told me that the top priority was to protect the supply chain.
今年3月，当疫情首次开始在美国产生影响时，Kimzon 已经将其产量减少到每天500双。但是现在已经升到了2000，接近正常水平。尽管李在设计和营销领域裁员，但他从未裁减过流水线工人。他告诉我，当务之急是保护供应链。
Despite all of Li’s business on Amazon, he had never visited the U.S. His background was modest: his parents had grown up in farming families, and their educations ended with primary school. Both of them found assembly-line work at a blanket factory, and eventually they started their own small blanket workshop. They spent much of their disposable income on educating Li and his two siblings. Li excelled in high school, and he was admitted to Sichuan University. After graduating, he went to work for a family friend who ran a shoe factory in Fujian Province, where Li learned the trade.
尽管李在亚马逊做生意，但他从未去过美国。他的背景很朴素: 他的父母在农民家庭长大，他们的教育在小学就结束了。他们两人都在一家毛毯厂找到了流水线工作，最后开办了自己的小毛毯车间。他们把可支配收入的大部分时间花在教育李和他的兄弟姐妹上。李成绩优异，被四川大学录取。毕业后，他去为一个家族朋友工作，这个朋友在福建经营一家鞋厂，李在那里学会了这门手艺。
We always communicated in Mandarin, but Li read English well. He used a virtual private network to skirt the Chinese firewall and access sites like Google Trends, in order to research the American market. “It would help to go to America, but from the Internet we can learn a lot,” he said. “America is a free place—so much information is open. That’s different from China.” Li had developed some long-distance ideas about American characteristics, and he expressed them diplomatically. “Of course, you have more experience, but my thinking is that Americans don’t save much,” he told me once, after describing the way that sales increased in response to the stimulus payments. “Whenever they have money, they’ll spend it.”
我们总是用普通话交流，但李老师英语读得很好。为了研究美国市场，他使用了一个虚拟专用网络来绕过中国的防火墙和访问像谷歌趋势这样的网站。他说: “去美国会有帮助，但是从互联网上我们可以学到很多东西。”。“美国是一个自由的地方ーー有太多的信息是开放的。这与中国不同。”李对美国人的特点有一些远距离的看法，他用外交的方式表达出来。“当然，你们有更多的经验，但我的想法是，美国人没有太多的储蓄,”他曾经这样告诉我，在描述了销售额随着刺激资金的增加而增长的方式之后。“只要他们有钱，他们就会花掉。”
Masks for sale at Yiwu’s wholesale market, home to some hundred thousand merchants. 义乌批发市场出售的面具，这里有大约十万商人Photograph by Guligo Jia for The New Yorker 摄影: Guligo Jia/纽约客
The Chinese government had botched its initial response to the coronavirus, which first began to spread in Wuhan, a city about seven hundred miles east of Chengdu. After covering up details about the virus, and detaining and punishing early whistle-blowers, the government eventually instituted effective policies aimed at eliminating the spread of infection. But relatively little direct economic support was given to citizens. During the first financial quarter of 2020, the Chinese economy shrank by nearly seven per cent, the first time the government had reported a contraction since the Mao Zedong era. Nevertheless, the government didn’t issue across-the-board stimulus payments. “If the Chinese government did that, people would just put it in the bank,” Li told me.
中国政府最初对这种冠状病毒的反应是拙劣的，它首先在成都以东大约700英里的武汉开始传播。在隐瞒病毒的细节，拘留和惩罚举报人之后，政府最终制定了有效的政策，旨在消除感染的传播。但是给予公民的直接经济支持相对较少。在2020年的第一个财政季度，中国经济萎缩了近7% ，这是自毛泽东时代以来中国政府首次报告经济出现萎缩。尽管如此，政府并没有发放全面的经济刺激支出。“如果中国政府这么做，人们只会把钱存进银行,”李告诉我。
In fact, many Americans had done the same. Scott R. Baker, an economist at Northwestern University, told me recently that the cares Act prompted spending patterns that were unlike what resulted from stimulus programs in 2001 and 2008. “The big difference was less spending on durables,” Baker said. “People weren’t buying new cars and refrigerators.” He continued, “It seems that a majority of checks were saved.”
事实上，许多美国人也这样做了。西北大学的经济学家 Scott r. Baker 最近告诉我，关心法案促进了支出模式，这与2001年和2008年的刺激计划不同。“最大的区别是在耐用品上的支出减少了,”贝克说。“人们不再购买新车和冰箱。”他接着说，“看来大部分支票都存了下来。”
Along with four other economists, Baker had analyzed high-frequency bank-transaction data for more than thirty thousand consumers. They concluded that the 2020 stimulus was less effective than previous programs, in part because of the unique nature of the pandemic, which had caused consumers to be wary of visiting a car dealership or having appliances delivered by strangers. “If you can send out a thousand-dollar check and it prompts the purchase of a car, that has a big effect,” Baker said. “Versus the purchase of thirty-dollar shoes from overseas—that’s not doing a lot for the economy.”
贝克和其他四位经济学家一起分析了超过三万名消费者的高频银行交易数据。他们的结论是，2020年的刺激计划不如以前的计划有效，部分原因是由于流行病的独特性，导致消费者对拜访汽车经销商或让陌生人送电器产生警惕。贝克说: “如果你能寄出一张一千美元的支票，并且它提示你购买一辆汽车，这将会产生很大的影响。”。“相比之下，从海外购买30美元的鞋子对经济影响不大。”
I had described Li Dewei’s post-stimulus sales. “I’m not surprised that he sees that surge so clearly,” Baker said. “We see that the majority of spending that does happen goes out in the first week or so after receiving the check.” He noted that, while most Americans seemed to have saved their stimulus checks, people with less money in their bank accounts were more likely to spend. These consumers tended to buy food, nondurables, and other inexpensive items—often, the kinds of products manufactured by Chinese entrepreneurs like Li Dewei.
我描述过李德伟在刺激计划之后的销售情况。“他能如此清楚地看到这种增长，我并不感到惊讶,”贝克说。“我们看到，确实发生的大部分支出在收到支票后的第一周左右就出去了。”他指出，尽管大多数美国人似乎已经把他们的经济刺激支票存起来了，但是银行账户里存款较少的人更有可能花钱。这些消费者倾向于购买食品、非耐用品和其他廉价商品ーー通常是像李德伟这样的中国企业家制造的产品。
In Chengdu, Li and his staff combed through Amazon reviews every day. He described them as a kind of jiaoliu—an exchange or conversation. Early in the pandemic, many American consumers complained about shipping delays, and, on May 6th, a buyer rated one of Li’s products with a single star: “They were late. Then they were stolen off my porch. I would like a refund immediately.” Li eventually contracted with a more expensive shipping service, and he made other adjustments. When a number of customers complained about a narrow toe box in the Zocania brand of shoes, Li had changes made at the factory.
在成都，李和他的员工每天都会梳理亚马逊的评论。他把它们形容为一种叫做交流的方式ーー一种交流或谈话。在大流行早期，许多美国消费者抱怨运输延误，5月6日，一位买家给李的一款产品打了一颗星: “他们迟到了。然后他们从我的门廊被偷走了。我要求立即退款。”李最终与一家更昂贵的航运公司签订了合同，并做了其他调整。当一些客户抱怨 zokania 品牌的鞋子有一个窄脚趾盒时，李在工厂做了一些改变。
Part of the Amazon jiaoliu was a glimpse of pandemic life for lower-income Americans. Reviews rarely mentioned exercise or sporting activities; it seemed more likely for customers to buy Li’s shoes to wear at jobs that required them to stand. On May 16th, a customer gave one star, on account of the “non-slip” tread: “I’m a cook at dennys and I almost busted my face just from water on our kitchen floor! Super scary!” Others referred to jobs that had vanished. June 14th, five stars: “I got them for work but just found out my work won’t be opening back up but I still like them.” As the summer wore on, other points of stress emerged. July 13th, five stars: “Bottom tread doesn’t last very long. I was only chased by the police twice while wearing these and they’re down to half the tread life!” August 1st, one star: “Bought two pairs, didn’t return because of the whole pandemic thing (was honestly afraid to get them in mail *nervous chuckle*).”
亚马逊交流的一部分是对低收入美国人大流行生活的一瞥。评论很少提到运动或体育活动; 似乎顾客更有可能购买李的鞋穿在工作要求他们站立。5月16日，一位顾客给了一颗星，因为“防滑”的鞋底: “我是丹尼斯的厨师，我的脸差点被厨房地板上的水打破了!”！超级恐怖!”其他人则提到了消失的工作岗位。6月14日，五颗星: “我得到它们是为了工作，但刚刚发现我的工作不会重新开始，但我仍然喜欢它们。”随着夏天的慢慢过去，其他的压力点也出现了。7月13日，五星级: “底部的脚印不会持续很久。我穿着这个只被警察追了两次，而且只剩下一半的寿命了!”8月1日，一颗星: “买了两双，因为流行病的事情没有回来(真的很害怕收到邮件 * 紧张地咯咯笑 *)。”
Periodically, Li and his staff tinkered with product photos or Amazonglish descriptions. (“The soft insole fits well and protect your ankle, tongues and feet from hurt.”) Li followed the American news closely, and he always seemed to know the current number of coronavirus cases. “Two million six hundred and fifty thousand,” he told me on July 2nd, when I asked about the situation. “Every day it goes up another thirty to forty thousand. These are not optimistic numbers.” But, even as the pandemic worsened across the Pacific, Li kept an eye out for other opportunities. In June, after Li’s research on Google Trends gave him a new idea, he hired an American lawyer to register yet another application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Like the others, the new brand name was a puzzle: Pemily12.
李和他的员工定期修改产品照片或亚马逊式英语的描述。(“柔软的鞋垫非常合脚，可以保护你的脚踝、舌头和脚免受伤害。”)李密切关注着美国的新闻，他似乎总是知道目前冠状病毒病例的数量。“265万,”7月2日，当我问及情况时，他告诉我。“每天都在增加三十到四万。这些数字并不乐观。”但是，即使疫情在整个太平洋地区恶化，李仍然密切关注其他机会。今年6月，李对谷歌趋势的研究给了他一个新的想法，他聘请了一名美国律师在美国专利商标局注册了另一份申请。和其他品牌一样，这个新品牌也是个谜: Pemily12。
In late January last year, the U.S. Embassy and five consulates in China, including the one in Chengdu, decided to evacuate non-essential American staff, along with all spouses and children. Many other embassies and foreign companies across China made similar decisions. My wife, Leslie, and I opted to stay, along with our twin daughters, who attend a local public school. Our decision had nothing to do with an estimation of which country was likely to handle the disease better. We simply didn’t grasp the seriousness of the pandemic, and the Chengdu lockdown, which lasted for about a month and a half, struck us as overkill. In a city of more than sixteen million, there were only a hundred and forty-three symptomatic cases reported by the end of February. Afterward, there weren’t any recorded instances of community spread for the rest of the spring. There didn’t seem to be a real risk of catching the disease, so we saw no reason to leave.
去年一月下旬，美国驻华大使馆和包括成都在内的五个领事馆决定撤离非必要的美国工作人员以及所有的配偶和孩子。中国各地的许多其他大使馆和外国公司也做出了类似的决定。我的妻子莱斯利和我选择留下来，还有我们的双胞胎女儿，她们在当地的一所公立学校上学。我们的决定与估计哪个国家可能更好地处理这种疾病无关。我们根本没有意识到疫情的严重性，成都持续了大约一个半月的封锁给我们留下了过度杀伤的印象。在一个超过一千六百万人口的城市，到二月底只有一百四十三例报告有症状的病例。之后，在接下来的春天里，没有任何社区传播的记录。似乎没有感染这种疾病的真正风险，所以我们没有理由离开。
At the end of March, the Chinese government banned the entry of almost all foreign-passport holders, even if they had valid work visas. Officials believed that as long as they could quarantine the relatively few Chinese nationals who returned, and maintain testing and contact-tracing across the country, daily life could proceed with few restrictions. By early May, our daughters’ third-grade section of fifty-four kids was back in the classroom, and within a couple of weeks they stopped wearing masks. That month, when I took a domestic flight for the first time since the lockdown, there wasn’t an empty seat on the plane.
3月底，中国政府禁止几乎所有持有外国护照的人入境，即使他们有有效的工作签证。官员们认为，只要他们能隔离回国的相对较少的中国公民，并在全国范围内进行检测和追踪接触者，日常生活就可以很少受到限制。到了五月初，我们女儿五十四个孩子的三年级班级又回到了教室，几个星期后她们就不戴口罩了。那个月，当我自封锁以来第一次乘坐国内航班时，飞机上没有空座位。
Initially, I had assumed that in China we would undergo the pandemic first, and then the rest of the world would follow, step by step: outbreak, lockdown, recovery. But now it became clear how much our experiences had diverged, and Chengdu’s month-and-a-half lockdown began to seem shorter in my memory. I hadn’t missed a single barbershop haircut, and all of our favorite restaurants had reopened completely. The only reason we ever used videoconferencing was to communicate with family and friends in the U.S., mostly out of solidarity. In early May, some old college friends arranged a Zoom meeting, talking about their American lockdown experiences. Afterward, I closed my computer and biked across town to a night club to do some reporting. The club was packed; out of dozens of people on the dance floor, only one woman wore a mask.
起初，我以为在中国我们会首先经历这场大流行，然后世界其他地方会跟随，一步一步: 爆发，封锁，恢复。但现在，我们的经历有多么不同，这一点变得清晰起来。在我的记忆中，成都一个半月的封锁似乎变得越来越短。我从来没有错过理发店的理发，我们最喜欢的所有餐馆都完全重新开张了。我们使用视频会议的唯一原因是为了与美国的家人和朋友交流，大部分是出于团结。五月初，一些大学老朋友安排了一次 Zoom 会议，谈论他们在美国的封锁经历。之后，我关上电脑，骑自行车穿过城市到一家夜总会做一些报道。俱乐部里挤满了人，舞池里几十个人，只有一个女人戴着面具。
By the second financial quarter, the Chinese economy was growing again. In July, exports rose 7.2 per cent compared with the same month a year earlier, and I made a long trip across Zhejiang Province, one of the centers of foreign trade. Most entrepreneurs I met there said the same thing: they were surprised by how quickly sales were bouncing back. They also indicated that they had never suffered much from the effects of the U.S. trade war. A couple of small-scale exporters told me that they underreported the value of goods, in order to avoid tariffs, but others said that this practice was too risky for large businesses. In general, they passed at least some of the cost on to American customers, and the Chinese government had a long-standing policy of tax rebates for exporters.
到了第二个财政季度，中国经济再次增长。今年7月，中国出口同比增长7.2% 。我还长途跋涉，穿越了浙江省这个外贸中心之一。我在那里遇到的大多数企业家都说了同样的话: 他们对销售额恢复得如此之快感到惊讶。他们还表示，他们从未遭受过美国贸易战的影响。一些小规模出口商告诉我，他们为了避免关税而低报商品价值，但其他人说，这种做法对大型企业来说风险太大。总的来说，他们至少将部分成本转嫁给了美国消费者，而且中国政府长期实行出口退税政策。
Entrepreneurs mentioned other ways to avoid negative attention. In Yuhuan, a city near the coast, I met a woman who managed foreign trade for a company that manufactured precision parts for automobiles. She said that U.S. clients had her sign contracts that prevented her from listing their names on her company’s Web site.“We can’t say publicly that we do business with this American company,” she said. “They don’t want people to know they’re getting this part from China.”
企业家提到了其他避免负面关注的方法。在沿海城市玉环，我遇到了一位女士，她为一家生产汽车精密零部件的公司管理外贸业务。她说，美国客户让她签了合同，这使她无法在公司网站上列出他们的名字。“我们不能公开说我们和这家美国公司有生意往来,”她说。“他们不想让人们知道他们是从中国得到这个零件的。”
“Yes, I do need help. Could you show me where the chocolate chips are and tell me everything’s going to be O.K.?” “是的，我确实需要帮助。你能告诉我巧克力片在哪里，告诉我一切都会好起来的吗?”
Cartoon by Drew Panckeri 漫画作者: Drew Panckeri
She no longer travelled abroad for trade fairs or meetings, but the lack of direct contact wasn’t much of a problem. Even in Yiwu, the site of China’s largest wholesale market, people had adjusted quickly. Usually, the city is home to around ten thousand foreigners, along with many more who arrive on short buying trips, and neighborhoods cater to various nationalities and regions. But now these places felt abandoned; on one street, I walked past ten Indian restaurants that were closed.
她不再出国参加贸易展览会或会议，但缺乏直接联系不是什么大问题。即使在中国最大的批发市场所在地义乌，人们也很快适应了。通常，这座城市是大约一万名外国人的家园，还有更多的外国人来到这里进行短期购物旅行，而且这座城市的社区也迎合了不同国籍和地区的人们。但是现在这些地方感觉被遗弃了; 在一条街上，我走过了十家关门的印度餐馆。
Nearby, on a block of shipping agents that specialized in Russian and Central Asian trade, only one was open. The boss, Mao Yuankui, told me that the pandemic had shifted everybody’s working hours. “They’re closed in the morning, because it’s too early in Russia,” he said. “We’re mostly on the phone and WeChat nowadays. Customers aren’t coming to the stores.”
不远处，在一大批专门从事俄罗斯和中亚贸易的船运代理商中，只有一家开门营业。老板毛元奎告诉我，疫情已经改变了每个人的工作时间。“他们早上关门，因为在俄罗斯还太早,”他说。“我们现在大部分时间都在打电话和微信。顾客不会来商店了。”
Mao shipped cargo to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. In a normal year, he relied on planes for urgent orders, but flight schedules had been slashed. In the years before the pandemic, China’s Belt and Road Initiative had invested in the longest freight rail line in the world, which runs for more than eight thousand miles, from Yiwu to Madrid, passing through Central Asia. Mao said that now he was using trains to move a lot of cargo. During the pandemic, shipping rates rose, and traffic was unbalanced: for every three shipping containers that left China, only one returned, because export sectors in other countries had been decimated. Even before the pandemic, China had produced ninety-six per cent of the world’s shipping containers, and now that industry was also in overdrive. Mao told me to come back late at night, to see how the neighborhood functioned. When I returned, the cargo shops were lit up. Inside, agents were busy on phones and computers, all of them working on Central Asian time.
毛向乌兹别克斯坦、哈萨克斯坦和俄罗斯运送货物。在正常年份，他依靠飞机处理紧急订单，但航班时刻表被大幅削减。在疫情爆发前的几年里，中国一带一路倡议组织投资建设了世界上最长的货运铁路线，从义乌到马德里，途经中亚，全长超过8000英里。毛说，现在他用火车运输大量货物。在流感大流行期间，船运费率上升，交通不平衡: 每三个集装箱离开中国，只有一个返回，因为其他国家的出口部门已经大幅减少。即使在疫情爆发之前，中国已经生产了世界上96% 的集装箱，而现在这个行业也处于超速运转状态。毛让我晚上回来看看周围的环境。当我回来的时候，货运商店灯火通明。在里面，特工们忙于打电话和使用电脑，他们都是按照中亚时间工作。
Children had taken over the hallways of Yiwu’s wholesale market. The sprawling structure has nearly ten times the square footage of the Pentagon and is home to some hundred thousand merchants. In past years, I had visited when the market was busy with foreign traders; now it was so empty that many Chinese sellers had brought their children for the summer vacation. Packs of kids rode bikes and scooters down the empty corridors, and they had set up badminton nets and basketball hoops.
孩子们占据了义乌批发市场的走廊。这个庞大的建筑占地面积几乎是五角大楼的十倍，并且拥有大约十万商人。在过去的几年里，我曾经去过一个外国商人很多的市场，现在市场空空如也，许多中国商人带着他们的孩子去度暑假。一群群的孩子在空荡荡的走廊里骑着自行车和踏板车，他们还架起了羽毛球网和篮球圈。
Most merchants there specialize in a single product sold in bulk. Nothing was more depressing than the hallways dedicated to luggage dealers—lines of glum-faced people sitting next to roller bags that weren’t rolling anywhere. Folks who sold tourist trinkets were also out of luck. But business was booming for dealers who stocked L.E.D. curing lamps, for customers who did their nails at home, and it was also a good year to sell plastic pump heads for hand-sanitizer bottles. Bicycle dealers couldn’t keep product in stock, and a woman with punching bags told me that her sales had doubled. A place called Henry Sport, which specialized in yoga mats, had back orders through September. On the second floor, merchants selling inflatable back-yard pools were also doing great.
那里的大多数商人专门经营成批出售的单一产品。没有什么比行李经销商专用的走廊更令人沮丧的了——一排排愁眉苦脸的人坐在没有滚动的行李包旁边。卖旅游饰品的人也不走运。但对于那些为在家做指甲的顾客提供 l.e.d. 固化灯的经销商来说，生意却蒸蒸日上。而且，销售用于洗手液瓶子的塑料泵头也是一个好年景。自行车经销商没有存货，一个拿着沙袋的女人告诉我，她的销售量翻了一番。有一个叫亨利体育的地方，专门生产瑜伽垫，到九月份还有订单。在二楼，卖充气后院游泳池的商人们也生意兴隆。
The Yiwu market niches were so specific, and the pandemic’s effects so unusual, that even products with ostensibly logical connections had different prospects. Near the inflatable-pool dealers, other stalls featured swim caps and goggles, but their sales had plummeted. One dealer explained that in fact goggles have almost nothing to do with back-yard pools. “That’s something people do at home,” she said, gesturing at the pools. Then she pointed at her own products: “They use goggles when they go out. And people aren’t going out now.”
义乌市场如此特殊，疫情的影响如此不同寻常，以至于即使是表面上符合逻辑的产品也有着不同的前景。在充气泳池经销商附近，其他摊位摆放着泳帽和护目镜，但是他们的销售量直线下降。一位经销商解释说，事实上，护目镜与后院的游泳池几乎没有任何关系。“这是人们在家里做的事情,”她指着游泳池说。然后她指着自己的产品说: “他们出门的时候戴着护目镜。现在人们都不出门了。”
A large section of the second floor was newly dedicated to P.P.E. dealers. Many of them had been manufacturing toys or jewelry before the pandemic; they said that with such small products it was relatively easy to retool assembly lines and retrain workers. A woman named Shi Gaolian had a factory that had manufactured bracelets until February, when she abruptly changed the product line; now she exported between two million and three million surgical masks every month. Like most people in the market, Shi wasn’t wearing a mask herself. She didn’t worry that P.P.E. might turn out to be a short-term business. “At the least, it will take two years for the world to manage this,” she said. “After that, I’ll find something else to manufacture.”
二楼的一大部分是专门给 p.p.e 经销商的。他们中的许多人在疫情爆发前就开始制造玩具或珠宝; 他们说，这样的小型产品相对容易改装流水线和重新培训工人。一位名叫史高莲的女士有一家工厂，直到今年2月份，她突然改变了生产线，生产手镯; 现在她每月出口200万到300万个外科手术口罩。和市场上的大多数人一样，史女士自己也没有戴面具。她并不担心 p.p.e 会变成一个短期的生意。她表示: “至少，世界需要两年时间来应对这种局面。”。“在那之后，我会找别的东西来制造。”
On the same floor, merchants were preparing for the upcoming American election. Baseball-cap stalls had maga stock, and flag manufacturers were receiving orders for Trump and Biden banners. I talked with a middle-aged dealer named Li Jiang, who first went into business in 1995, producing the inexpensive red scarves worn by Young Pioneers, the Communist Party’s primary-school organization. In 1997, Hong Kong returned to Chinese control, and the wave of patriotism led to new demand for national flags, so Li expanded his assembly line. Four years after that were the attacks of 9/11, and Li started manufacturing the Stars and Stripes. That was his entry into the international market, and, ever since, his business has been shaped largely by what happens abroad. On the day I visited, he had just sold a few thousand Trump flags—from the Young Pioneers to maga in the span of a quarter century. “If people want it, we make it,” Li said. On his desk, a small gay-pride flag sat next to one featuring the face of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
在同一层楼上，商人们正在为即将到来的美国大选做准备。棒球帽摊位上有玛加的股票，旗帜制造商正在接受特朗普和拜登旗帜的订单。我采访了一位名叫李江的中年商人，他于1995年开始经商，生产共产党小学组织“少先队”(Young Pioneers)所佩戴的廉价红围巾。1997年，香港回归中国，爱国主义浪潮引发了对国旗的新需求，因此李扩大了他的装配线。四年后是9/11恐怖袭击，李开始制造美国国家女子足球队。这就是他进入国际市场的原因，从那以后，他的生意在很大程度上受到了国外发生的事情的影响。在我访问的那天，他刚刚卖掉了几千面特朗普旗帜，从少先队到杂志，时间跨度有25年。“如果人们想要它，我们就制造它,”李说。在他的办公桌上，一面小小的同性恋骄傲旗紧挨着一面印有巴基斯坦创始人穆罕默德·阿里·真纳的旗帜。
After leaving Yiwu, I stopped at a large flag factory called Johnin, in the city of Shaoxing. A young manager named Jin Gang gave me a tour. On the assembly line, dozens of women sat at sewing machines, stitching flags that read “North Dakota for Trump,” “Keep America Great,” “Trump 2020,” and “Trump 2024.” Since the start of the pandemic, everything seemed to happen first in China, and now I wondered if Johnin knew something that I didn’t.
离开义乌后，我在绍兴一家名为 Johnin 的大型旗帜工厂停留。一位名叫金刚的年轻经理带我参观了一下。在装配线上，几十名妇女坐在缝纫机旁，缝制着写有“特朗普北达科他州”、“保持美国伟大”、“特朗普2020”和“特朗普2024”的旗帜自从疫情爆发以来，中国似乎每件事都是先发生的，现在我怀疑约翰是否知道一些我不知道的事情。
“That’s what they asked for,” Jin said, when I inquired about the 2024 banners. “I guess they have this idea that he will be President again.”
当我询问2024年的横幅时，金说，“这是他们要求的。”。“我猜他们一定认为他会再次当选总统。”
Jin was coy about his customers, though he said that the orders didn’t come directly from Trump’s companies or the Republican Party. During the 2016 campaign, Johnin sold between two million and three million Trump flags, at roughly a dollar each. Now, with the election less than four months away, Trump products represented about seventy per cent of Johnin’s business. There were some orders for Biden flags, but not many.
金对自己的客户含糊其辞，不过他表示，这些订单并非直接来自特朗普的公司或共和党。在2016年竞选期间，约翰林卖出了200万至300万面特朗普旗帜，每面大约1美元。现在，距离大选还有不到四个月的时间，特朗普的产品在约翰的业务中约占七十% 。有一些拜登旗的订单，但不是很多。
In general, the pandemic had been bad for Johnin, because flag-waving events like European soccer tournaments were cancelled. But there were scattered moments of high demand. In June, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Johnin received a spike in orders of blue-line police flags. Shortly after that, there was a sudden interest in the state flag of Mississippi. “Many customers were telling us, ‘We need Mississippi flags,’ ” Jin said. “We made forty thousand. It happened really fast, and then it was finished.” He continued, “I think the people who bought those flags were Black.”
总的来说，这场流行病对约翰恩来说很糟糕，因为像欧洲足球锦标赛这样的挥旗活动被取消了。但也有零星的高需求时刻。年月，在乔治 · 弗洛伊德死后，约翰因收到了大量蓝线警察旗的订单。不久之后，人们突然对密西西比州州旗产生了浓厚的兴趣。“许多客户告诉我们，‘我们需要密西西比州的旗帜,”’金说。“我们赚了四万。一切发生得太快了，然后就结束了。”他接着说，“我认为买这些旗子的人是黑人。”
Flags and banners for sale at Yiwu’s wholesale market. 义乌批发市场出售旗帜横幅Photograph by Guligo Jia for The New Yorker 摄影: Guligo Jia/纽约客
Jin had read that Mississippi has many Black residents. He was accustomed to manufacturing flags for both sides of foreign elections, sports matches, and other events, so it seemed logical: police supporters had their blue-line flags, while Blacks had Mississippi flags. In Mandarin, it took me a while to explain a counterintuitive fact about democracy: the state with the highest percentage of Black residents might also be the last one to get rid of a Confederate symbol.
金读到密西西比州有许多黑人居民。他习惯于为外国选举、体育比赛和其他活动的双方制造国旗，所以这似乎是合乎逻辑的: 警方支持者有他们的蓝线国旗，而黑人有密西西比州的国旗。用普通话说，我花了一段时间来解释关于民主的一个违反直觉的事实: 黑人居民比例最高的州可能也是最后一个摆脱联盟标志的州。
Jin disliked Trump, but he wasn’t worried about November. “After the election, we’ll make flags for somebody,” he said. “Americans always want flags.” He showed me how the factory double-stitched seams. “A lot of other companies don’t do that,” he said. Cut-rate manufacturers also tried to save on fabric for Trump flags, which have a standard size of ninety centimetres by a hundred and fifty centimetres. Jin said that, if you measure some of the cheap ones, you’ll find that everything has been shaved down by about two per cent: eighty-eight centimetres by a hundred and forty-six. In the most literal way imaginable, Chinese manufacturers were working the margins on Trump.
金不喜欢特朗普，但他并不担心11月。他说: “选举结束后，我们会为某人做国旗。”。“美国人总是想要国旗。”他向我展示了工厂的双缝接缝技术。“许多其它公司不这样做,”他表示。特朗普旗帜的标准尺寸是九十厘米乘150厘米。金说，如果你测量一些便宜的，你会发现所有的东西都减少了2% : 88厘米减少了146厘米。用可以想象的最直白的方式，中国制造商正在利用特朗普的优势。
At the beginning of July, Li Dewei told me that he and his partner had abandoned their plan to sell in the Chinese market. “The investment is too high,” Li said. “And domestic competition is too fierce.”
7月初，李德伟告诉我，他和他的合作伙伴放弃了在中国市场销售的计划。“投资额太高了,”李表示。“国内竞争过于激烈。”
He had also concluded that U.S.-China tensions were unlikely to have any impact on Kimzon’s business. Trump Administration officials often blamed China for its early handling of the pandemic, but there didn’t seem to be any consumer backlash. In the span of three months, Li’s ideas about risk had completely reversed: now he believed that the poor handling of the pandemic in the U.S. was likely to benefit his sales. “A lot of businesses are closed,” Li explained. “People are afraid of going to shops, because of infections, so they want to buy online.” Even the Amazon reviews of his shoes told him which way the wind was blowing. May 14th, five stars: “I purchased them to wear during the day at work delivering packages for a big online order company that rhymes with am-a-John. So far so good on 10-hour shifts.”
他还得出结论，美中紧张关系不太可能对金宗的业务产生任何影响。特朗普政府官员经常指责中国过早地应对了疫情，但似乎并没有出现任何消费者的反弹。在三个月的时间里，李关于风险的想法完全颠倒了: 现在他相信美国对流感大流行的糟糕处理可能会有利于他的销售。“许多企业关门了,”李解释说。“由于感染，人们害怕去商店，所以他们想在网上购物。”甚至亚马逊上对他鞋子的评论也告诉了他风向。5月14日，五星级: “我买它们是为了白天上班的时候穿着，为一家大型网上订购公司送包裹，这家公司的名字和 am-a-John 押韵。到目前为止，10小时轮班制还不错。”
According to an Amazon spokesperson, the company has hired more than four hundred thousand frontline employees worldwide since the start of the pandemic. In Shanghai, I met a young Chinese woman who worked in advertising for the company, and her division had doubled its staff in the past year. She asked me not to use her name, because Amazon hadn’t given her permission to talk. She had returned to China after living abroad, and she often had to explain the Chinese mind-set to Amazon co-workers in Seattle. She said that American entrepreneurs tend to be obsessed with branding. “You want to have a great brand-name story to convince your customers,” she said. “In China, it’s the opposite. They sell things first. And then they think about brand.”
据一位亚马逊发言人称，自疫情爆发以来，该公司在全球范围内已经雇佣了超过40万名一线员工。在上海，我遇到了一位在该公司从事广告业务的年轻中国女性，她所在的部门去年将员工人数增加了一倍。她要求我不要用她的名字，因为亚马逊没有允许她说话。她在国外生活之后回到了中国，她经常不得不向在西雅图的亚马逊同事解释中国人的心态。她说，美国企业家往往痴迷于品牌。“你希望有一个伟大的品牌故事来说服你的客户,”她说。“在中国，情况恰恰相反。他们先卖东西。然后他们会考虑品牌。”
Zack Franklin, an American consultant who has worked for years with Amazon sellers in Shenzhen, told me that Chinese online entrepreneurs had figured out a different way to scale up their businesses. In addition to expanding product lines or exploring new markets, they simply sold the same thing in the same place under different names.
扎克 · 富兰克林，一位在深圳亚马逊卖家工作多年的美国顾问，告诉我中国的网络企业家已经找到了一种不同的方式来扩大他们的业务。除了扩大生产线或者开拓新市场，他们只是在同一个地方以不同的名字销售同样的东西。
“You want to take up as much space on the shelf as possible,” Franklin said. “Just get a different label.” He continued, “You are making money through this illusion of choice.” He explained that in order to get access to a brand registry it’s necessary to apply for a trademark, so Chinese applicants were flooding the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
富兰克林说: “你应该尽可能多地占用架子上的空间。”。“换个标签就行了。”他继续说，“你通过这种选择的错觉来赚钱。”他解释说，为了获得品牌注册，必须申请商标，所以中国申请者涌向美国专利和商标局。
Li Dewei had registered about seventy brands, and some of his applications had been handled by a law firm called Ni, Wang & Massand, in Dallas. Hao Ni, one of the firm’s founders, told me that it represents Chinese clients in eighty to a hundred brand applications every month. Ni said that Chinese choose odd brand names because those applications tend to be approved faster by the trademark office, which might reject a name that’s too close to an established brand. “We’ve so far never had a conflict with a Chinese company,” Ni said.
李德伟注册了大约七十个品牌，其中一些申请是由达拉斯一家名为 Ni，Wang & Massand 的律师事务所处理的。公司的创始人之一郝妮告诉我，它每个月代表中国客户申请八十到100个品牌。倪说，中国人之所以选择奇怪的品牌名称，是因为这些申请往往会更快地得到商标局的批准，商标局可能会拒绝接受一个与已有品牌过于接近的名称。倪表示: “迄今为止，我们从未与中国公司发生过冲突。”。
Ni had handled the application for Li Dewei’s most recent brand, Pemily12. On July 2nd, Li showed me the new Web site he was setting up. This time, he hoped to bypass Amazon and sell directly to consumers. But the product names still used Amazonglish: Pet Dog Toy Dog Leakage Food Toy Ball. There was also an introduction to the brand:
倪处理了李德伟最新品牌 Pemily12的申请。7月2日，李向我展示了他正在建立的新网站。这一次，他希望绕过亚马逊，直接面向消费者销售。但是产品名称仍然使用 Amazonglish: 宠物狗玩具狗泄漏食物玩具球。该品牌还有一个介绍:
Why is Pemily?
This is a combination of pet family
Why is it 12?
12 = 12 month = 1 year = forever
Why is Pemily12?
pemily12 means we will always be a family
为什么是帕米莉？这是一个宠物家庭的组合为什么是12？12 = 12个月 = 1年 = 永恒为什么是 Pemily12？Pemily12意味着我们永远是一家人
Earlier in the pandemic, Li had noticed on Google Trends that a lot of Americans were searching for products connected to the word “pet.” “Pet clothes,” he said. “Pet toy. Pet health.” A friend in Shenzhen manufactured pet accessories, and he was expanding the product line and partnering with Li on the Web site. They believed that clothes for pets were particularly promising. I asked Li if it had been stressful to make so many major decisions in recent months, but he shrugged it off—as far as he was concerned, he was simply reacting to the situation. “The market decides for us,” he said. “It’s not us deciding.”
在流感大流行的早些时候，李在谷歌趋势上注意到，许多美国人正在搜索与“宠物”相关的产品“宠物的衣服,”他说。「宠物玩具。宠物健康。”深圳的一个朋友制造宠物配件，他正在扩大生产线，并与李在网站上合作。他们认为给宠物穿的衣服特别有前途。我问李，最近几个月做出这么多重大决定是否让他感到压力很大，但他耸耸肩表示不在乎ーー在他看来，他只是对这种情况做出了反应。“市场为我们做决定,”他表示。“这不是我们能决定的。”
American shoe orders were still increasing, and now Kimzon was shipping three thousand pairs every day. “The U.S. government has been sending out more money recently,” Li said.
美国的鞋订单仍在增加，现在 Kimzon 每天都要运送三千双鞋子。“美国政府最近一直在提供更多的资金,”李说。
“I was told to bring myself, and my ‘overpriced chicken salad’ with me.” “有人告诉我要带上自己和我的‘价格过高的鸡肉沙拉’。”
Cartoon by E. S. Glenn 卡通作者: e. s. 格伦
I told Li that he was mistaken—there hadn’t yet been a second stimulus program. But he swore that government money was reaching consumers: he could see it in sales, and other entrepreneurs had mentioned the same thing. The following day, I received an e-mail from the young woman who was living in our family’s house in rural Colorado. She sent me a list of things that had appeared in our mailbox, including a cares Act debit card labelled “Economic Impact.” It was in the amount of thirty-four hundred dollars.
我告诉李，他搞错了ーー当时还没有出台第二套刺激计划。但是他发誓说政府的钱正在到达消费者手中: 他可以从销售中看出来，其他的企业家也提到了同样的事情。第二天，我收到了一封来自一位年轻女士的电子邮件，她住在科罗拉多州乡下我们家的房子里。她给我发了一个邮箱里出现的东西的清单，其中包括一张 caresact 的借记卡，上面写着“经济影响”金额是三千四百美元。
I learned that during the past couple of weeks the government had been sending debit cards to people who had been missed in April, often because their bank information wasn’t on file. I had wondered why we hadn’t received a stimulus check, but I was too distracted by life in China to look into it. Now I realized that Zocavia and Zocania could have kept me updated on the U.S. government’s payment schedule.
我了解到，在过去的几个星期里，政府一直在给那些在四月份被遗漏的人发借记卡，通常是因为他们的银行信息没有记录在案。我一直想知道为什么我们没有收到经济刺激计划的支票，但是我被中国的生活分散了太多的注意力，所以没有去调查。现在我意识到，Zocavia 和 Zocania 本可以让我及时了解美国政府的支付计划。
Near the end of July, my daughters’ only American friend still in Chengdu left. Most other Americans had been evacuated in January or February, and as time passed the isolation grew harder for the few families who stayed. In a normal summer, we would have visited Colorado, but now, if we left China, we couldn’t reënter.
七月底，我女儿唯一一个还在成都的美国朋友走了。大多数其他美国人在一月或二月被疏散，随着时间的推移，留下来的少数家庭越来越孤立。在一个正常的夏天，我们会去科罗拉多州，但是现在，如果我们离开中国，我们就不能再去了。
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I hadn’t returned to the U.S. for two years, and now we seemed likely to repeat that experience. But, in the nineteen-nineties, Sichuan still felt remote, and even American commerce seemed a world away; I never saw a McDonald’s during those two years. By 2020, there were more than seventy thousand American companies doing business in China. Meanwhile, the Chinese were producing much of the P.P.E. and many other goods that were bought by Americans during a time of crisis. Almost any event in the U.S.—a protest, a lockdown, a stimulus program—had an immediate economic ripple effect somewhere in the People’s Republic. Decoupling had been envisaged as an economic process, but the market links were stronger than ever: in 2020, U.S.-China trade increased by nearly nine per cent. The separation was happening almost entirely at the human level.
作为一名和平队志愿者，我已经有两年没有回到美国了，现在我们似乎有可能重复那段经历。但是，在二十世纪九十年代，四川仍然感到遥远，甚至美国的商业似乎是另一个世界; 在那两年里，我从未见过麦当劳。到2020年，有超过7万家美国公司在中国做生意。与此同时，中国生产了大量的 p.p.e 和其他许多商品，这些商品在危机时期被美国人购买。在 U.S.ーa 的抗议活动中，几乎所有的事件，比如封锁、刺激计划，都在中华人民共和国的某个地方立即产生了经济涟漪效应。脱钩被设想为一个经济过程，但市场联系比以往任何时候都更加紧密: 2020年，美中贸易增长了近9% 。这种分离几乎完全发生在人的层面上。
On July 24th, the Chinese government announced that it was closing the U.S. consulate in Chengdu and expelling all remaining American staff. The Chinese were retaliating for the recent actions of the Trump Administration, which had shut down the Chinese consulate in Houston, citing espionage. A State Department official told me that, while there was no question that the Chinese had been spying in Houston, the American response could have been less self-defeating. “We have ways of dealing with this stuff, to get the message across without being so absolute,” he said. He believed that in a normal situation the Americans would have expelled some individual Chinese diplomats, rather than closing the entire consulate.
7月24日，中国政府宣布关闭驻成都的美国领事馆，并驱逐所有剩余的美国工作人员。中国是在报复特朗普政府最近以间谍罪为由关闭中国驻休斯顿领事馆的行动。一位国务院官员告诉我，尽管毫无疑问，中国人一直在休斯顿从事间谍活动，但美国的反应本可以不那么弄巧成拙。他说: “我们有办法处理这些问题，在不那么绝对的情况下传达信息。”。他认为，在正常情况下，美国会驱逐一些中国外交官，而不是关闭整个领事馆。
He said that, earlier in the year, White House officials had proposed an even more radical move. “There were people in the Trump Administration who suggested shutting down all of our consulates in China,” he said, “with the idea that it would give us free rein to kick the Chinese out of their consulates.” A similar strategy had been applied to the press. In March, the Trump Administration sharply limited the number of Chinese who were allowed to work in America for state-run news organizations. The Chinese foreign ministry countered by expelling almost all Americans who worked for the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. By the end of the year, there were only about thirty American journalists left in China.
他说，今年早些时候，白宫官员提出了一项更为激进的举措。“特朗普政府有人建议关闭我们在中国的所有领事馆,”他说，“他们的想法是，这会让我们自由地把中国人踢出领事馆。”新闻界也采取了类似的策略。今年3月，特朗普政府严格限制了获准在美国为官方新闻机构工作的中国人数量。中国外交部以驱逐几乎所有为《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》和《华尔街日报》工作的美国人的方式予以反击。到年底，只有大约三十名美国记者留在中国。
In Chengdu, after the announcement was made about the consulate, I biked over to the site a couple of times a day. The area was heavily policed, but by the second day large numbers of civilians started to appear, in order to take selfies in front of the building. I overheard one woman tell her companions to hurry up with their photos so that they could make it to Dujiangyan, a tourist site outside the city. They told me that they were on vacation from Wenzhou, and they had added the consulate to the day’s itinerary.
在成都，在领事馆的消息宣布之后，我每天骑自行车去那个地方几次。该地区被严密监视，但到第二天，大量平民开始出现，以便在大楼前自拍。我无意中听到一位女士告诉她的同伴们赶快拍照，这样他们就可以去都江堰，一个城外的旅游景点。他们告诉我他们是从温州来度假的，而且他们已经把领事馆列入了当天的行程。
Inside the compound, the Americans were executing what’s known as a “destruction plan.” Along with some hurried packing, they were also shredding documents and smashing computers and telecommunications equipment. The Chinese had given them exactly seventy-two hours, the same amount of time that the Americans had allowed in Houston. The exchange had the ritualized air of a sporting event: each side had one home game and one away game, and everybody collected whatever he could for propaganda. In Houston, U.S. security agents tailed Chinese consular staff on visits to the Home Depot, where they purchased barrels in which to burn documents. American television news carried images of smoke plumes rising from the consulate’s courtyard.
在院子里，美国人正在执行所谓的“销毁计划”在匆忙打包的同时，他们还在粉碎文件，捣毁电脑和通讯设备。中国人给了他们整整72个小时，与美国人在休斯顿给的时间相同。这种交流有一种体育赛事的仪式化气氛: 双方各有一场主场比赛和一场客场比赛，每个人都尽可能地收集各自的资料进行宣传。在休斯顿，美国安全部门跟踪中国领事馆工作人员到家得宝，在那里他们购买了用来烧毁文件的桶。美国电视新闻播放了领事馆院子里升起的烟柱的画面。
In Chengdu, the consulate’s highest building was six stories. When it opened, in 1994, it was the tallest structure in the neighborhood, and rice fields bordered the consulate walls. By the time I first visited, in 1996, the city had already started to grow around the compound. Two decades later, buildings of twenty or more stories loom on three sides. It was an architectural version of my classroom experience: relatively speaking, the Americans were getting shorter.
在成都，领事馆的最高建筑是六层楼。当它在1994年开放时，它是附近最高的建筑，领事馆的墙边是稻田。1996年我第一次来到这里的时候，这个城市已经开始在这个院落周围发展起来了。20年后，二十层或更高层的建筑从三面隐约可见。这是我课堂经历的一个建筑学版本: 相对而言，美国人变得越来越矮。
The high-rises had always presented a security risk, and now the Chinese government arranged cameras on the upper floors, in order to live-stream any activity in the consulate’s courtyard. “They were clearly set up to get a shot of us burning documents,” the State Department official told me. “They wanted that picture.”
这些高层建筑一直带有安全隐患，现在中国政府在高层安装了摄像头，以便对领事馆院子里的任何活动进行直播。这位国务院官员告诉我: “他们显然是为了拍摄我们焚烧文件的镜头而设计的。”。“他们想要那张照片。”
Somebody in the consulate had the idea to commission a local print shop to make a couple of banners, one of which said “Ganxie Chengdu”—“Thank you, Chengdu.” They figured that this would send a more dignified message to viewers, but they knew that any staffers would be followed, like the barrel boys at the Home Depot. The order was made by a private citizen, but, shortly after the banners were supposed to be ready, more than a dozen security officers took her into custody. When she was finally released, after seven hours and an extensive interrogation, the banners were nowhere to be found.
领事馆的某个人想到了在当地开一家印刷店，制作两条横幅，其中一条写着“干谢成都”——“谢谢你，成都”他们认为这会给观众传递一个更有尊严的信息，但是他们知道任何工作人员都会被跟踪，就像家得宝的油桶男孩一样。这个命令是由一个普通公民下达的，但是，在横幅应该准备就绪后不久，十几名安全人员将她拘留。经过七个小时的严密审讯后，她终于被释放，但那些横幅却不见踪影。
In the end, the Americans finished their destruction before the clock ran out. Shortly after dawn on the third day, the last diplomats in the U.S. consulate unlocked the front door, turned around, and left through the back, driving off in unmarked vehicles. The Chinese seemed to miss that shot, which wasn’t featured on state-run media. Nobody ever saw the banner, either.
最后，美国人在时间到之前完成了他们的毁灭。第三天黎明后不久，美国领事馆的最后一批外交官打开前门，转身从后门离开，驾驶着没有标志的车辆离开。中国人似乎没有拍到这张照片，官方媒体并没有对此进行报道。也没人看过那条横幅。
“But you’ll never meet anyone if you don’t put yourself out there.” “但如果你不走出去，你将永远不会遇到任何人。”
Cartoon by Sofia Warren 作者: Sofia Warren
On September 25th, Li Dewei told me that sales were still strong. This was true for many businesses in China: in the third financial quarter, the nation’s economy grew by nearly five per cent. In recent months, Li had hired a few new employees, but he didn’t plan to return to his pre-pandemic staff numbers. As far as he was concerned, this was a good opportunity to improve efficiency. At the age of thirty-four, Li was the oldest person in his office.
9月25日，李德伟告诉我销售依然强劲。对于中国的许多企业来说，情况都是如此: 在第三个财政季度，中国经济增长了近5% 。最近几个月，李已经雇佣了一些新员工，但他不打算回到大流行前的员工数量。就他而言，这是一个提高效率的好机会。三十四岁的李是他办公室里年纪最大的人。
Every day, the Pemily12 Web site was receiving four hundred unique visitors, and daily sales were in the thousands of U.S. dollars. Li believed the business’s potential for growth was excellent, given all the pandemic pets in America. As usual, he was diplomatic, but he told me that he was disappointed by the way the virus had been handled in the U.S. He compared it with India, where the numbers were also bad. “India doesn’t have the ability to handle this,” Li said. “But America has the ability. America didn’t have to do it like this.”
每天，Pemily12网站都有400个独立访问者，每天的销售额高达数千美元。李认为，考虑到美国流行病肆虐的宠物，这项业务的增长潜力是非常巨大的。像往常一样，他很有外交手腕，但他告诉我，他对美国处理病毒的方式感到失望。他将其与印度进行了比较，印度的数据也很糟糕。“印度没有能力处理这个问题,”李说。“但美国有能力。美国没有必要这样做。”
He believed that Trump would win the election, which was the opinion of most Chinese I knew. In early November, Jin Gang, the flag-maker in Shaoxing, told me that a flood of recent Trump orders had convinced him that the Republican would be victorious. At Sichuan University, I polled my students, and fifty-four per cent thought that Trump would win.
他相信特朗普会赢得大选，这是我认识的大多数中国人的观点。去年11月初，绍兴的国旗制造商金刚告诉我，特朗普最近接到的大量订单让他确信，共和党将取得胜利。在四川大学，我对我的学生进行了民意测验，54% 的人认为特朗普会赢。
A number of students followed the election coverage on Fox News. In a detail that is unlikely to appear in any of the station’s promotional materials, the Communist Party didn’t bother to block Fox’s Web site, unlike those of CNN, the Times, and other American sources. In class, my students and I discussed what they were seeing on Fox, and I introduced them to Lauren Boebert, who was campaigning in Colorado to represent me and my family in Congress. All November, a student in the front row of my journalism class wore a “Trump: Keep America Great” baseball cap. He referred to the President as Chuan Jianguo, an ironic Chinese nickname that pairs the Trump surname with a Communist-era patriotic moniker—essentially, Make-China-Great-Again Trump.
许多学生关注福克斯新闻的选举报道。不像 CNN、《纽约时报》和其他美国消息来源那样，共产党没有费心封锁福克斯的网站，这个细节不太可能出现在电视台的任何宣传材料中。在课堂上，我和我的学生们讨论了他们在福克斯电视台上看到的东西，我把他们介绍给劳伦 · 博伊伯特，她当时正在科罗拉多州竞选国会议员，代表我和我的家人。整个11月，坐在我新闻课前排的一名学生都戴着一顶“特朗普: 让美国保持伟大”的棒球帽。他称总统为“川建国”，这是一个颇具讽刺意味的中文绰号，将特朗普的姓与共产党时代的爱国主义绰号——本质上就是“让中国再次伟大”的特朗普配对。
Most students said they were personally interested in the outcome of the election. “Yes, because it is related to China and my future life, to study in the USA,” one engineer wrote, in an assignment. “Also, now the politicians are not as polite as in the past. I want to see how crazily the failed candidate’s party will do.”
大多数学生说他们个人对选举结果很感兴趣。“是的，因为这关系到中国和我未来的生活，去美国学习,”一位工程师在一份作业中写道。“此外，现在的政客们不像过去那样彬彬有礼了。我想看看失败的候选人所在的政党会有多疯狂。”
Others had already abandoned plans for overseas study. In some cases, their parents made the decision, out of concern about diplomatic tensions, the pandemic, and Black Lives Matter protests, which the Chinese media often portrayed as violent. Even with Joe Biden’s victory, it seemed unlikely that the U.S.-China relationship would change quickly. People I spoke with in the State Department were hopeful that at least some academic and cultural exchanges might be reëstablished, but even this would take time.
其他人已经放弃了出国留学的计划。在某些情况下，他们的父母做出这个决定，是出于对外交紧张局势、大流行病和黑人生命至关重要的抗议活动的担忧，中国媒体经常将这些活动描述为暴力活动。即使乔•拜登(Joe Biden)获胜，美中关系似乎也不太可能迅速改变。与我交谈过的国务院官员都希望，至少可以重新建立一些学术和文化交流，但即使这样也需要时间。
Meanwhile, the inequality in information was obvious to anybody who had stayed in China. All educated Chinese had studied at least some English, and they could access American culture through Hollywood movies, television shows, and other sources. Many export entrepreneurs, like Li Dewei, used virtual private networks—the Chinese government deliberately allowed such holes in the firewall in part because they were important for business. When I visited Yiwu, my entire hotel was wired through a V.P.N., so that buyers could access Google, Facebook, and other open-society resources. But, for Americans, China was essentially closed. Once the U.S. started losing the small core of diplomats, journalists, and businesspeople who were based in China, the already limited knowledge of the country was bound to be diminished.
与此同时，信息不平等对于任何留在中国的人来说都是显而易见的。所有受过教育的中国人都至少学过一些英语，他们可以通过好莱坞电影、电视节目和其他资源了解美国文化。许多出口企业家，比如李德伟，都使用虚拟专用网络ーー中国政府故意允许防火墙存在这样的漏洞，部分原因是这些漏洞对企业很重要。当我访问义乌时，我的整个酒店都通过 vpn 连接起来，这样买家就可以访问谷歌、 Facebook 和其他开放社会的资源。但是，对于美国人来说，中国基本上是封闭的。一旦美国开始失去在中国的外交官、记者和商人这一小部分核心，对这个国家本已有限的了解就必然会减少。
From the perspective of the Chinese government, there seemed little incentive to reopen. China was the only major economy that had grown in 2020, and domestic support for the pandemic policies had become stronger as the year went on. Officials were clearly emboldened; in the fall, the crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong ramped up. Any serious investigations into the early mistakes in Wuhan were censored, and seven journalists and commentators who had reported on the crisis were either in detention or missing. The government had approved for emergency use four vaccines developed by Chinese companies, but there hadn’t yet been a push for mass vaccinations—probably, officials were waiting to see how the situation developed overseas. They could afford to be patient, because there was very little virus spreading in China. When I talked to friends and family in the U.S., people always mentioned the vaccines, but the topic rarely came up in Chinese conversation.
从中国政府的角度来看，似乎没有重新开放的动力。中国是2020年唯一实现增长的主要经济体，随着时间的推移，国内对流感大流行政策的支持也变得更加强大。官员们显然受到了鼓舞，秋天，新疆和香港的打击更加严厉。对武汉早期失误的任何严肃调查都受到审查，报道此次危机的7名记者和评论员要么被拘留，要么失踪。政府已经批准了中国公司开发的四种疫苗的紧急使用，但还没有推动大规模疫苗接种ーー可能官员们正在等待海外情况的发展。他们可以耐心等待，因为中国几乎没有病毒传播。当我与美国的朋友和家人交谈时，人们总是提到疫苗，但在中国人的谈话中很少提到这个话题。
Increasingly, our version of 2020 felt like an alternate reality. I had spent an intense year teaching, travelling, and conducting face-to-face interviews, but there had never been a moment when I considered the possibility of contracting the virus. In August, after reporting for a week and a half in Wuhan, I had flown to Hangzhou, where, the following day, I attended a lecture in an auditorium packed with unmasked people. Afterward, I was one of twenty or more who exchanged handshakes—the old-fashioned kind, where you touch your face afterward—with Jack Ma, who had long been known as the richest man in China. Almost nothing had changed in the ways people interacted, and I never heard a Chinese person mention “pandemic fatigue.” Of the thirty million university students who attended in-class sessions during the fall, I could find only two reported infections.
渐渐地，我们的2020年版本感觉像是另一个现实。我花了一整年的时间紧张地教书、旅行和进行面对面的采访，但我从来没有考虑过感染病毒的可能性。8月份，在武汉做了一个半星期的报道后，我飞到了杭州。第二天，我在一个挤满了不戴面具的人的礼堂里听了一个讲座。之后，我和二十个或更多的人握了手---- 老式的握手，在握手之后，你会抚摸自己的脸---- 马，长期以来，他一直被认为是中国最富有的人。人们之间的互动方式几乎没有任何改变，我也从未听中国人提到“大流行性疲劳”在今年秋天参加课堂讨论的三千万名大学生中，我只发现两例报告感染病例。
In many ways, the Chinese system and society were uniquely well suited to handle the pandemic, while the opposite was true of the U.S. For a number of Chinese, the contrast seemed to reflect a permanent change in the world order, but more thoughtful individuals worried about overconfidence. “The pandemic is a very exceptional situation,” Gary Liu, an economist and the founder of the National Affairs Financial Review Institute, a private think tank in Shanghai, told me. “You can’t make a long-term conclusion based on an exceptional situation.” He feared that the pandemic could vindicate certain authoritarian structures.
在许多方面，中国的体制和社会都非常适合应对这场疫情，而美国的情况恰恰相反。对于一些中国人来说，这种对比似乎反映了世界秩序的永久性改变，但是更有思想的人担心自己过于自信。经济学家、上海私人智库——国家事务金融评论研究所(National Affairs Financial Review Institute)创始人刘(Gary Liu)告诉我: “疫情是一个非常特殊的情况。”。“你不能仅凭一个特殊情况就下一个长期的结论。”他担心这种流行病可能会证明某些专制结构是正确的。
My last journalism class of the term was on New Year’s Eve. I asked the students a question: For you, was 2020 a good year or a bad year?
我这学期的最后一节新闻课是在新年前夕。我问学生们一个问题: 对你们来说，2020年是好年还是坏年？
Earlier in December, the university had restricted all students to campus, because Chengdu had experienced its first outbreak since February. As the weather grew colder, there were scattered infections across the country. In most instances, the spread started with Chinese citizens who had quarantined after returning from abroad. Chengdu’s outbreak was believed to have begun after an elderly person handled contaminated garbage near a quarantine facility. The first case was reported on December 7th, and, in the following five days, the city tested more than two million residents. Despite having had only a hundred and forty-three non-imported symptomatic cases up to that point, Chengdu had a hundred and forty-one testing locations—a ratio of almost one testing facility for every symptomatic infection. In December, thirteen new symptomatic cases of community spread were reported, and there were targeted lockdowns, but most of Chengdu remained unaffected. In the middle of the outbreak, the city opened five new subway lines.
去年12月早些时候，由于成都经历了自今年2月以来的第一次疫情，该大学已经限制所有学生进入校园。随着天气越来越冷，全国各地都出现了零星的感染病例。在大多数情况下，传播始于从国外回国后被隔离的中国公民。据信，成都的疫情是在一位老人处理了隔离设施附近被污染的垃圾后爆发的。第一个病例是在12月7日报道的，在接下来的五天里，该市检测了200多万居民。尽管迄今为止只有143例非输入性症状病例，但成都有141个检测点ーー几乎每一个症状性感染都有一个检测设施。在12月，十三个新的有症状的社区传播病例被报道，有针对性的封锁，但大部分成都仍然未受影响。在疫情爆发期间，该市开通了五条新的地铁线路。
Almost seventy per cent of my students said that it had been a good year. The same was true for many others. Li Dewei told me that Zocavia, Zocania, and the other shoe brands had enjoyed their best holiday sales ever, and the year’s total revenues had increased by about fifteen per cent compared with 2019. For Pemily12, Li believed that the future might involve pet beauty products. “It will be just like beauty products for people,” he said, when we met in early 2021. He showed me an online image of false eyelashes for dogs. “We haven’t started this yet,” he said. “But we can see that other people are making this product. Maybe in two or three years it will be a big market.”
几乎百分之七十的学生说这是一个好年景。对其他许多人来说也是如此。李德伟告诉我，佐卡维亚、 Zocania 和其他鞋类品牌的假日销售达到了有史以来最好的水平，今年的总收入比2019年增长了约十五% 。对于 Pemily12，李认为未来可能会涉及宠物美容产品。当我们在2021年初见面时，他说: “这就像人们使用的美容产品一样。”。他给我看了一张网上狗用假睫毛的图片。“我们还没有开始这项工作,”他说。“但我们可以看到，其他人正在生产这种产品。也许在两三年内，这将是一个巨大的市场。”
After the Capitol was stormed, on January 6th, Jin Gang, in Shaoxing, reported a spike in orders for Trump flags. He sent me pictures on WeChat of the new designs that were being manufactured by the Johnin assembly lines: “Trump 2024: The Revenge Tour,” “Trump 2024: Take America Back,” and “Trump 2024: Save America Again!”
在国会大厦遭到攻击之后，1月6日，绍兴的金刚报告说，特朗普旗帜的订单激增。他在微信上给我发了照片，上面是约翰的装配线正在生产的新设计: “特朗普2024: 复仇之旅”、“特朗普2024: 带美国回去”和“特朗普2024: 再次拯救美国!”
Every Monday, my daughters wore red Young Pioneer scarves to school, as was required of all students. Sometimes they complained about not being able to visit Colorado, and they missed our cat, which was being cared for by our tenant. But increasingly that life felt far away. One afternoon, the twins found an abandoned kitten on the banks of the Fu River, and they took him in and named him Ulysses. That was the best way to cope—one reality here, one reality there. Certain family photographs hung in both our homes, and some pieces of ikea furniture were also duplicated. In Colorado, our black Honda CR-V was parked in the barn; now we bought another black Honda CR-V for Chengdu. Our Chinese CR-V had been manufactured in Wuhan. Even there, it had been a good year for assembly lines; Honda reported that, in 2020, its automobile sales in China increased by five per cent over the previous year. We called it our covid car. On campus, I parked in the basement of the Marxism Institute. ♦
每个星期一，我的女儿们都戴着红色的少先队围巾去上学，这是所有学生都必须戴的。有时他们抱怨不能去科罗拉多州，他们想念我们的猫，那只猫正由我们的房客照顾。但渐渐地，那种生活感觉越来越遥远。一天下午，双胞胎在抚河岸边发现了一只被遗弃的小猫，他们收养了它，给它取名为尤利西斯。这是最好的应对方式ーー这里一个现实，那里一个现实。一些家庭照片挂在我们的家里，一些宜家家具也被复制了。在科罗拉多州，我们的黑色本田 CR-V 停在车库里，现在我们又为成都买了一辆黑色本田 CR-V。我们的中国 CR-V 是在武汉生产的。即使在中国，对于组装线来说，今年也是不错的一年。本田报告称，2020年，其在华汽车销量同比增长5% 。我们称之为我们的无人驾驶汽车。在校园里，我把车停在马克思主义研究所的地下室里。谢谢
Published in the print edition of the 发表在《经济学人》印刷版 March 15, 2021 2021年3月15日, issue ，发行, with the headline “Manufacturing Diplomacy.” ，标题为“制造业外交”
Peter Hessler 彼得 · 赫斯勒 joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2000. His most recent book is “ 2000年加入《纽约客》 ，担任特约撰稿人The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution 埋葬: 埃及革命的考古学.” 。」
