纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英突然之间中国间谍似乎遍布欧洲

One of the men, a young Briton known for his hawkish views on China, worked as an aide to a prominent member of the British Parliament. Another, a German citizen of Chinese descent, was an assistant to a member of the European Parliament representing Germany’s far right.

在这两名男子中，一个是年轻的英国人，以对华态度强硬闻名，曾担任一位著名英国议会议员的助手。另一人则是华裔德国公民，曾为代表德国极右翼派的欧洲议会议员担任助理。

While from different countries and seemingly divergent backgrounds and outlooks, both men became ensnared this week in accusations of espionage on behalf of China — and a widening pushback in Europe against malign Chinese influence in politics and commerce.

尽管这两名男子来自不同的国家，有着看似不同的背景和观点，但随着欧洲扩大抵制中国在政治和商业领域有害影响的范围，他们上周都陷入了为中国从事间谍活动的指控。

In all, six people in three separate cases have been charged this week in Europe with spying for China: two in Britain and four in Germany.

欧洲上周在三起不同案件中分别指控六人为中国从事间谍活动：其中两人在英国，四人在德国。

On Friday, as the two Britons made an initial court appearance in London, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, met in Beijing with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in the latest effort by the two rivals to keep communications open even as disputes escalate over trade, national security and geopolitical frictions.

上周五，两名被起诉的英国人在伦敦第一次出庭时，美国国务卿布林肯在北京与中国领导人习近平进行了会面。这是在围绕贸易、国家安全和地缘政治摩擦的争端不断升级之际，两个竞争对手为保持交流渠道畅通所做的最新努力。

The espionage cases in Britain and Germany, the first of their kind in two countries that once cultivated warm relations with Beijing, served as eye-catching exclamation points in Europe’s long, often anguished breakup with China.

在曾经设法与中国保持友好关系的英国和德国，这两起间谍案是首例此类案件，它们是欧中关系漫长而时常痛苦的破裂过程中引人注目的惊叹号。

Shortly after British and German officials announced that six of their citizens had been charged with espionage, the Dutch and Polish authorities on Wednesday raided the offices of a Chinese security equipment supplier as part of a crackdown by the European Union on what it sees as unfair trading practices.

英国和德国官员宣布了对六名公民从事间谍活动的指控后不久，荷兰和波兰当局上周三突击搜查了一家中国安全设备供应商在这两个国家的办事处，这是欧盟打击被其视为不公平贸易做法的一部分。

It was the first time that the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, had used a new anti-foreign subsidy law to order a raid on a Chinese company.

这是欧盟的执行机构欧盟委员会首次使用一项新的反外国补贴法下令对中国企业进行突击搜查。

In early April, Sweden expelled a Chinese journalist who had been a resident of the country for two decades, saying the reporter posed a threat to national security.

今年4月初，瑞典驱逐了一名有该国居住许可、已在那里住了20年的中国记者，当局称该记者对瑞典国家安全构成威胁。

After years of regular tiffs over trade followed by reconciliation, Europe “has lost patience with China,” said Ivana Karaskova, a Czech researcher at the Association for International Affairs, an independent research group in Prague, who until last month served as an adviser to the European Commission on China.

多年来，欧中不时在贸易问题上出现争执然后和解，现在欧洲“已对中国失去了耐心”，总部设在布拉格的独立研究机构——国际事务协会的捷克研究员伊万娜·卡拉斯科娃说。直到上个月前，她一直是欧盟中国委员会的顾问。

China still has steadfast friends in the European Union, notably Hungary, she added, in “the multidimensional chess game” between the world’s two largest economies after the United States. But Europe, Ms. Karaskova said, has moved from a position of “total denial” in some quarters over the danger posed by Chinese espionage and influence operations to “take a less naïve view, and wants to defend European interests vis-à-vis China.”

在仅次于美国的世界两大经济体之间的“多维棋局”中，中国在欧盟仍然有坚定的朋友，尤其是匈牙利，卡拉斯科娃还说。但欧洲的立场已在转变，她说，欧洲的某些地方以前曾对中国的间谍活动和影响力行动构成的危险采取“完全否认”的态度，但现在“采取了不再那么天真的观点，要在中国面前捍卫欧洲利益”。

Accusations this week that China was using spies to burrow into and influence the democratic process in Germany and Britain caused particular alarm, as they suggested a push to expand beyond already well-known, business-related subterfuge into covert political meddling, something previously seen as a largely Russian specialty.

上周关于中国为渗透和影响德国和英国的民主程序正在使用间谍的指控已引起了格外的警惕，因为这些指控表明，中国正在把已为人熟知的与商业相关的秘密手段扩大到隐蔽的政治干预范围，这种做法以前曾被视为主要是俄罗斯的专长。

But, according to China experts, those accusations and the flurry of charges this week indicated not so much that Beijing was ramping up espionage but that European countries had stepped up their response.

但研究中国的专家们说，那些指控和上周的一连串诉讼并非表明中国政府正在加强间谍活动，而是欧洲国家加大了回应中国间谍活动的力度。

“Countries have been forced to get real,” said Martin Thorley, a British China expert and author of “All That Glistens,” a forthcoming book detailing how what London trumpeted a decade ago as a “golden era” of Sino-British friendship during the premiership of David Cameron made it easy for China to suborn politicians and businesspeople. The “golden era" has been widely mocked as a “golden error.”

“各国已被迫面对现实，”英国的中国问题专家马丁·索利说，他的书《闪闪发光的时代》(All That Glistens)即将出版，该书详细描述了十年前，英国政府在戴维·卡梅伦担任首相期间鼓吹的中英友谊“黄金时代”如何让中国买通英国政客和商人变得容易。那个“黄金时代”已被广泛地嘲笑为“金牌错误”。

Mr. Cameron, who is now Britain’s foreign secretary, has in recent months become an outspoken critic of China. “A lot of the facts changed,” he said during a visit to Washington in December, declaring that China had become “an epoch-defining challenge.”

卡梅伦现任英国外交大臣，他在最近几个月里变成了直言不讳的中国批评者。“很多事实已经改变，”他在去年12月访问华盛顿时说，并宣称中国已成为“一个划时代的挑战”。

His change of heart mirrors a wider shift across much of Europe in attitudes to a rising superpower that long counted on European countries, particularly Germany, to push back against what it denounces as “anti-China hype” emanating from Washington.

卡梅伦看法的改变反映了欧洲大部分地区对一个正在崛起的超级大国的态度变化。中国长期以来一直指望欧洲国家，尤其是德国，来抵制其所谓华盛顿发起的“反华炒作”。

Germany’s security service has been warning publicly about the risk of trusting China since 2022, when, shortly after Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the head of its domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, told Parliament, “Russia is the storm, China is climate change.”

而德国安全部门自2022年以来一直在公开警告信任中国的风险。德国国内情报机构负责人托马斯·哈尔登旺在俄罗斯对乌克兰发动全面入侵后不久对议会说，“俄罗斯是风暴，中国是气候变化。”

The agency, known by its German acronym, BfV, said in an unusual public warning last summer, “In recent years, China’s state and party leadership has significantly stepped up its efforts to obtain high-quality political information and to influence decision-making processes abroad.”

这个德语缩写为BfV的机构去年夏天在一次不同寻常的公开警告中说：“近年来，中国政府和政党的领导层已显著加大了获取高质量政治信息和影响国外决策过程的力度。”

Germany’s political leadership, however, has until this week been far more equivocal. Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently made a state visit to China, Germany’s biggest trading partner, to discuss trade and market access.

但德国政治领导层的态度直到上周前都表现得更为含糊。德国总理肖尔茨最近对中国进行了国事访问，与德国最大的贸易伙伴讨论了贸易和市场准入问题。

But Germany’s interior minister this week gave a blunt assessment of China’s activities. “​​We are aware of the considerable danger posed by Chinese espionage to business, industry and science,” the minister, Nancy Faeser, said. “We are looking very closely at these risks and threats and have issued clear warnings and raised awareness so that protective measures are increased everywhere.”

但德国内政部长上周对中国的间谍活动给了一个直率的评估。“我们意识到中国间谍活动对我国商业、工业和科学构成了相当大的危险，”内政部长南希·费泽说。“我们正在密切关注这些风险和威胁，并发布了明确的警告，提高人们的意识，以增强各地的保护措施。”

China’s foreign ministry responded by dismissing the accusations as a groundless “slander and smear against China,” demanding that Germany “stop malicious hype” and “halt anti-China political dramas.”

中国外交部对这些指责做出了回应，称这些指控是毫无根据的“针对中方的污蔑抹黑”，要求德国“停止恶意炒作，停止反华政治闹剧”。

Mareike Ohlberg, a China expert and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, said that “for a long time China was spared big public warnings.” Now, she said, the German authorities are “more willing to call things out, or no longer have the patience not to call things out.”

柏林的德国马歇尔基金会研究员、中国问题专家马晓月(Mareike Ohlberg)说，“长期以来，人们在大的公开警告中一直避免提中国。”她说，现在德国当局“变得更愿意点名了，不再有耐心去不点名地批评”。

Three of the four people arrested in Germany this week, a husband and wife and one other man, appear to have been involved in economic espionage using a company called Innovative Dragon to pass on sensitive information about German marine propulsion systems — of great value to a superpower interested in building up its navy. They also used the company to buy a high-powered, dual-use laser, which they exported to China without permission.

上周在德国被捕的四人中，有三人（一对夫妇和另一名男子）似乎参与了经济间谍活动，他们用一家名为Innovative Dragon的公司把关于德国船舶推进系统的敏感信息交给中国，这些信息对一个意在加强海军建设的超级大国有重要价值。他们还以该公司的名义购买了高功率军民两用激光器，并在没有获得出口许可的情况下将其出口到中国。

The fourth person, in what prosecutors called “an especially severe case,” was Jian Guo, a Chinese-German man who has been accused of working for China’s Ministry of State Security. His regular job was as an assistant to Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament for the far-right party Alternative for Germany — a rising political force friendly to China and Russia — and its top candidate for elections in June.

第四人是德国华裔男子郭建（音），在这起检察官称为“特别严重的案件”中，他被指控为中国国家安全部工作。他的固定工作是为马克西米利安·克拉担任助理，克拉是在欧洲议会代表极右翼政党德国另类选择党的议员，是该党为今年6月的选举推出的头号候选人，而该党是对中国和俄罗斯友好的冉冉上升的政治力量。

Since then, the public prosecutor in Dresden has begun a “pre-investigation” into how much Mr. Krah knew of his employee’s ties to China. On Wednesday, his party decided to keep supporting Mr. Krah’s bid for re-election to the European Parliament but disinvited him from campaign stops.

德累斯顿检察官在郭建被捕后已就克拉对雇员与中国关系的了解程度展开“预调查”。上周三，克拉所在的政党决定继续支持他争取连任欧洲议会议员，但取消了他参加其他竞选活动的邀请。

When Mr. Xi travels to Europe next month, he will skip Germany and Britain and instead visit Hungary and Serbia, China’s last two staunch allies on the continent, and France.

习近平下个月访问欧洲时将绕开德国和英国，去访问中国在欧洲大陆最后的两个坚定盟友匈牙利和塞尔维亚，以及法国。

Mr. Thorley, the British author, said the spying cases had sounded the alarm over Chinese activities but were only a small part of efforts by China to gain influence and information. More important than traditional espionage, he said, is China’s use of a “latent network” of people who do not work directly for the Ministry of State Security but who, for commercial and other reasons, are vulnerable to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and its myriad offshoots.

英国学者索利表示，虽然这些间谍案件已对中国的活动敲响了警钟，但它们只是中国为获得影响力和信息所做努力的一小部分。他说，比传统间谍活动更重要的是，中国使用一个“潜在网络”，这个网络的人并不直接为国家安全部工作，但由于商业和其他原因，他们容易受到来自中共及其他各种分支机构的压力。

“This has been bad for a while and has been left far too long,” he said.

“这种糟糕的情况已有一段时间，而对其不管不顾的时间也太长了，”他说。

The two men accused in London of espionage for China, Christopher Cash, 29, and Christopher Berry, 32, were arrested in March last year but released on bail and were not named publicly until they were charged this week.

两名在伦敦被指控为中国从事间谍活动的男子是现年29岁的克里斯托弗·卡什和现年32岁的克里斯托弗·贝里，他们是去年3月被抓的，并已获保释，但他们的姓名是本周宣布指控时才公开的。

Mr. Cash was a parliamentary researcher with links to the governing Conservative Party and a former director of the China Research Group, a body that often takes a hard-line view on China and hosts podcasts with critics of Chinese interference.

卡什是英国议会的一名研究员，与执政的保守党有关系，他也是中国研究小组的前主任，该组织经常持对中国强硬的立场，其博客邀请批评中国干预的人发表看法。

His former colleagues include Alicia Kearns, a member of the governing Conservative Party who heads Parliament’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee, and her predecessor in that role, Tom Tugendhat, who is now the security minister.

卡什的前同事包括执政党保守党成员艾丽西亚·卡恩斯，她是议会颇具影响力的外交事务委员会的主席，还包括卡恩斯的前任、现任安全事务国务大臣汤姆·图根哈特。

In a statement this week, London’s Metropolitan Police said Mr. Cash and Mr. Berry were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act and had provided information “intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy.” It added, “The foreign state to which the above charges relate is China.”

伦敦大都会警察局在上周的声明中表示，卡什和贝里被指控违反了《官员保密法》，提供了“旨在直接或间接对敌方有用”的信息。声明还说，“与上述指控有关的外国是中国。”

“It took a hell of a long time to wake up, but we finally see some movement,” said Peter Humphrey, a British citizen whom China accused of illegally obtaining personal information while doing due-diligence work for the pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline, and who spent two years in a Shanghai jail with his wife.

“我们花了太长的时间才清醒过来，终于看到了一些行动，”韩飞龙(Peter Humphrey)说，他是英国公民，曾在为制药公司葛兰素史克开展尽职调查工作时被中国指控非法获取个人信息。他和妻子在上海的监狱里被关了两年。

He was in jail suffering from cancer when Mr. Cameron visited the city in 2013 with a delegation of British businesspeople. “It was sickening,” recalled Mr. Humphrey, an external research fellow at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. “Nobody in the higher levels of the British government,” he said, “wanted to hear a bad word about China because of business interests.”

卡梅伦2013年带着一个英国商人代表团访问上海时，韩飞龙正关在监狱里，当时已患有癌症。韩飞龙现在是哈佛大学费正清中国研究中心的外部研究员，他回忆说，“因为商业利益，英国政府高层没人愿意听到有关中国的坏话。令人作呕。”