By Eli Lake，July 8, 2020
文章称，自4月以来，特朗普政府一直在警告联邦养老基金不要投资那些投资组合中含有大型中国公司的股票指数。美国政府还收紧了出口控制规定，暂停了中国学生和政府官员的签证，并要求在美国证券交易所上市的中国公司采用更透明的会计准则。上个月，美国国务院要求第二批中国官方媒体在司法部注册为外国代理。美国政府目前正在讨论是否要效仿印度，迫使美国平台放弃中国社交媒体应用抖音（TikTok）。
文章指出，单独来看，这些行动加起来并没有多大意义。不过，这些举措合在一起，相当于一项让美中经济脱钩的重大努力，这是自1972年基辛格和尼克松访华以来，美国战略最深刻的转变。
近半个世纪以来，两国一直在经济上走向相互依赖。尽管这种趋势让中国富裕起来，但却未能驯服它。
文章指出，白宫本周（7月6日至12日）给美国铁路退休委员会主席发了一封信，敦促他从那些支持中国军队并参与新疆维吾尔族的大规模拘留和“再教育”的公司，撤出数亿美元的养老金。这封信还警告，该委员会投资中国的时机正值不确定性日益增长之际。信中说，这些担忧包括因为中国的一系列不当行为，未来可能出现制裁或抵制行动。
Between the pandemic and the protests, it was easy to miss.
But for the last several months, the U.S. has been quietly adjusting its
approach to China, going beyond President Donald Trump’s tweets and speeches.
Since April, the Trump administration has been warning
federal pension funds against investing in indexes whose portfolios include
large Chinese companies. It has tightened export-control regulations, suspended
visas for students and regime officials and pressed for more transparent
accounting standards for Chinese companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges.
Last month the State Department required a second batch of Chinese state media
to register as foreign agents with the Justice Department. And administration
officials tell me they are currently debating whether to follow India’s lead
and press U.S. platforms to drop the Chinese social media app, TikTok.
Individually, these actions don’t add up to much. Taken
together, however, they amount to a serious effort to decouple the U.S. and
Chinese economies, the most profound shift in U.S. strategy since Henry
Kissinger and Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1972.
For nearly half a century the two countries have drifted
toward economic interdependence. And while that drift enriched China, it failed
to tame it.
Covid-19 in some ways exposed the failure of this approach.
China gamed the World Health Organization, withholding data about the pandemic.
On the U.S. side, the health-care industry faced a shortage in the first weeks
of the crisis for essential medical items made in China, such as surgical
masks. Had the U.S. prepared for alternative supply chains, vital equipment
would have been more accessible.
The administration’s shift in policy has been subtle.
Beginning in 2018, it launched a campaign against Huawei, the Chinese telecom
giant that U.S. intelligence agencies believe is controlled by the People’s
Liberation Army. With mixed results, the administration pressed allies to bar
Huawei circuits and gear from their 5G networks, warning that Huawei’s
participation in the next generation of wireless communications would give
China listening posts throughout the world’s digital infrastructure.
In April, after the coronavirus was rampant in the U.S. and
worldwide, the administration began taking aim at Communist system both
rhetorically and bureaucratically.
The latest element of this campaign is a White House letter
sent this week to the chairman of the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board. It urges
him to divest the hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions it controls from
companies that support the Chinese military and participate in the mass
detention and “re-education” of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang province.
The letter provides a window into the Trump administration’s
strategy to make elements of China’s economy toxic to financial markets. It
warns that the board is investing in China “during a time of mounting
uncertainty concerning the PRC’s relations with the rest of the world.” Those
concerns, the letter says, “include the possibility of future sanctions or
boycotts” that may arise because of a host of China’s misdeeds, ranging from
the “culpable actions of the Chinese government with respect to the COVID-19
pandemic” to the “militarization of the South China Sea.” Other risks include
the suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy, the contravention of U.S. sanctions
against Iran and the human-rights abuses committed against the Uighurs.
This approach should be familiar to anyone who has followed
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Before the President Barack Obama
imposed secondary sanctions against Iranian oil and its central bank, private
groups like United Against a Nuclear Iran pressured investors to divest from
companies and banks that did business with Iran’s economy.
So far, there is no evidence that this strategy has deterred
China. In fact, Iran and China this week began negotiations for a new strategic
pact aimed in part at circumventing U.S. sanctions.
Another problem is that the president himself tends to be
capricious when it comes to his own government’s policies. As Trump’s former
national security adviser, John Bolton, wrote in his memoir, the president
sought China’s help for his re-election campaign and privately told China’s
leader that he didn’t care if China built detention camps for Uighurs. In 2018,
Trump instructed the Commerce Department to drop penalties against Chinese
telecom ZTE after it was caught circumventing U.S. sanctions.
Some worry that this policy could amount to little more than
a ploy in trade negotiations. “It may be transactional,” said Anders Corr,
publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. “This could be a tit for tat for a
better trade deal.”
That is always a risk with Trump. At the same time, the
dangers of investing in China will remain whether Trump is president or not.
Regardless of its motivations or timing, the administration’s campaign will
serve a useful purpose if it causes Western corporations to reassess their
relationship with a U.S. adversary.
