纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国主导全球清洁能源市场这对拜登来说是一个问题

The world’s two most powerful countries, the United States and China, are meeting this week in Washington to talk about climate change. And also their relationship issues.

世界上最强大的两个国家——美国和中国本周将在华盛顿举行会谈，讨论气候变化问题。还有它们之间的关系问题。

In an ideal world, where the clean energy transition was the top priority, they would be on friendlier terms. Maybe affordable Chinese-made electric vehicles would be widely sold in America, instead of being viewed as an economic threat. Or there would be less need to dig a lithium mine at an environmentally sensitive site in Nevada, because lithium, which is essential for batteries, could be bought worry-free from China, which controls the world’s supply.

在一个理想的世界里，清洁能源转型会是当务之急，两国会有更友好的关系。也许中国制造的便宜电动汽车将在美国广泛销售，而不是被视为经济威胁。或者，在内华达州一个环境敏感地区开采锂矿的必要性也会降低，因为作为制造电池的必要原料，美国完全可以放心地从控制着全球供应的中国购买锂。

Instead, in the not-ideal real world, the United States is balancing two competing goals. The Biden administration wants to cut planet-warming emissions by encouraging people to buy things like EVs and solar panels, but it also wants people to buy American, not Chinese. Its concern is that Chinese dominance of the global market for these essential technologies would harm the U.S. economy and national security.

但在并不理想的现实世界中，美国正在平衡两个相互矛盾的目标。拜登政府希望通过鼓励人们购买电动汽车和太阳能电池板等产品减少温室气体排放，但同时也希望人们购买美国货，而不是来自中国的产品。拜登政府担心的是，中国在这些关键技术的全球市场上占据主导地位将损害美国经济和国家安全。

Those competing goals will be at the center of talks on Wednesday and Thursday as the Biden Administration’s top climate envoy, John Podesta, meets for the first time with his counterpart from Beijing, Liu Zhenmin, in Washington.

周三和周四，拜登政府的气候特使约翰·波德斯塔将在华盛顿与中国气候变化事务特使刘振民首次会面，这些存在冲突的目标将成为会谈的中心议题。

Trade tensions are likely to loom over their meetings.

贸易紧张局势很可能笼罩着他们的会晤。

The flood of Chinese exports, particularly in solar panels and other green-energy technology, has become a real sore spot for the Biden administration as it tries to spur the same industries on American soil. Mr. Podesta has sharply criticized China for having “distorted the global market for clean energy products like solar, batteries and critical minerals.”

中国商品的大量涌入，尤其是太阳能电池板和其他绿色能源技术，已经成为拜登政府一个真正的痛处，因为它也试图在国内推动同样产业的发展。波德斯塔严厉批评中国“扭曲了太阳能、电池和关键矿产等清洁能源产品的全球市场”。

Not only that, he has set up a task force to explore how to limit imports from countries that have high carbon footprints, a practice that he called “carbon dumping.” That was considered a veiled reference to China.

不仅如此，他还成立了一个特别工作组，研究如何限制从碳足迹高的国家进口产品，他将这种做法称为“碳倾销”。这被视为在暗指中国。

It remains unclear whether the Biden administration would impose a fee on products imported from high-emissions countries. The idea has been embraced by a handful of influential Republican lawmakers as a way to protect American manufacturers from Chinese competition.

目前尚不清楚拜登政府是否会对从高排放国家进口的产品征收费用。这个思路获得了一些有影响力的共和党议员的支持，作为保护美国制造商免受中国竞争的一种方式。

China, for its part, has complained to the World Trade Organization about U.S. green subsidies. Mr. Podesta has called that complaint “beyond ironic” since the Chinese government has invested heavily in its own manufacturing sector.

中国则向世界贸易组织抱怨美国的绿色补贴。波德斯塔称这种抱怨“太讽刺了”，因为中国政府自己就向它的制造业砸下了重金。

Mr. Liu has said that, without Chinese technology, clean energy costs would rise, and that would slow down the global pivot away from the burning of fossil fuels, the main producer of the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. “We need to maintain low costs, otherwise nobody is going to be able to afford the energy transition,” he told Bloomberg recently.

刘振民表示，没有中国技术，清洁能源的成本将会上升，这将减缓全球逐步摆脱化石燃料燃烧的速度，而化石燃料是温室气体排放的主要来源，这些排放正在导致地球变暖。“我们需要保持低成本，否则没有人能够负担得起能源转型的费用，”他最近向彭博新闻社表示。

Both men are new to their current jobs, but hardly novices. Mr. Podesta was in charge of the climate-law rollout before he took on the global role, following the retirement of John F. Kerry. Mr. Liu is a longtime diplomat who served as a United Nations official before becoming President Xi Jinping’s top climate envoy.

对于气候特使的工作，两人都是新人，但他们绝非新手。接任退休的约翰·克里担任这个面向全球的职务之前，波德斯塔曾经负责气候法的实施工作。刘振民是一名资深外交官，在成为习近平的气候特使之前曾在联合国任职。

The United States isn’t alone in warning against the flood of Chinese green goods.

美国并不是唯一一个对中国的环保产品四处泛滥发出警告的国家。

The European Union is investigating whether Chinese-made electric vehicles have benefited from unfair subsidies, and Mr. Xi got an earful on a visit to Paris this week when the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said at a news conference on Monday that Europe “cannot absorb massive overproduction of Chinese industrial goods flooding its market.”

欧盟正在调查中国制造的电动汽车是否受益于不公平的补贴，习近平本周访问巴黎时听到了一堆抱怨，欧盟委员会主席冯德莱恩在周一的新闻发布会上说，欧洲“无法吸收大量过剩的中国工业产品涌入其市场”。

China dominates the production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric cars and buses, and also processes most of the minerals that go into clean energy technologies. And Chinese companies have found workarounds to trade barriers in the West, including by sending products through indirect routes that avoid tariffs on goods that come directly from China.

中国主导着太阳能电池板、风力涡轮机、电池、电动汽车和公交车的生产，同时还加工了清洁能源技术所需的大部分矿物。中国企业已经找到了解决西方贸易壁垒的办法，包括通过间接途径运送产品，以避免对直接来自中国的商品征收的关税。

That presents an acute dilemma for the Biden administration. It has staked its global reputation on an ambitious climate agenda, aiming to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. It’s also trying to build, practically from scratch, a domestic renewable energy industry.

这令拜登政府陷入了两难局面。它将其全球声誉建立在雄心勃勃的气候议程上，目标是到2030年将温室气体排放量在2005年的基础上减半。它还试图从零开始在美国国内建立可再生能源产业。

Competing with China on low-carbon manufacturing at this point is a losing battle, said Li Shuo, who heads the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington. “It is hard to see how the U.S. will build a whole solar supply chain in time to respond to climate change, or how solar products made in the U.S. could ever be cost-competitive,” he said. It is not “the fight the U.S. should pick, nor one that it can win.”

华盛顿亚洲协会政策研究所的中国气候中心负责人李硕表示，目前在低碳制造方面与中国竞争是一场必败之战。他说：“很难想像美国为了应对气候变化，将如何及时建立整个太阳能供应链，也很难想像美国制造的太阳能产品在成本上具有竞争力。”这不是“美国应该选择的战斗，也不是美国能够打赢的战斗”。

This new great power rivalry presents two risks for the United States. Shunning a rival’s factories too much can raise costs and slow down the clean energy transition. But relying too much on a rival country’s factories raises national security concerns and can jeopardize American industries and jobs.

这种新的大国竞争关系给美国带来了两种风险。过多地避开竞争对手的工厂可能会提高成本，拖累清洁能源的转型。但过分依赖竞争对手国家的工厂又会引发国家安全问题，并危及美国的产业和就业。

For instance, a flood of cheap Chinese cars would threaten the U.S. auto industry and a large, unionized and politically influential base of autoworkers. (President Biden wooed them openly by walking their picket line during a recent strike.)

例如，廉价中国汽车的涌入将威胁美国汽车行业以及庞大的、工会化的、具有强大政治影响力的汽车工人群体。（在最近的一次罢工期间，拜登来到现场，公开向他们示好。）

Beyond trade, Beijing and Washington are at odds over many things, including the status of Taiwan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and, not least, fundamental differences over the value of democracy.

除了贸易，北京和华盛顿在许多问题上存在分歧，包括台湾的状况、俄罗斯入侵乌克兰，尤其是在民主价值观上的根本分歧。

“In a world free from geopolitics, if China wanted to supply the world with cheap and plentiful clean energy inputs, from solar panels to critical minerals, it would benefit us all by enabling the fastest energy transition possible,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, who directs the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. “But in the real world, the security imperative not to be overly dependent on China is leading countries, from the United States to India, to duplicate supply chains in solar and critical minerals, which can slow down the energy transition and make it more expensive.”

“在一个不受地缘政治影响的世界里，如果中国想向世界提供廉价而丰富的清洁能源，从太阳能电池板到关键矿产，将使我们所有人都受益，因为能以最快的速度实现能源转型，”哈佛大学肯尼迪学院能源地缘政治项目负责人梅根·奥沙利文说。“但在现实世界中，安全方面的当务之急是不能过度依赖中国，这导致从美国到印度等国家正在复制从太阳能到关键矿产的供应链，这可能会减缓能源转型的速度，并抬高成本。”

The outcry against Chinese exports comes at a time when politicians in this country face a challenge that’s foreign to politicians in China: elections.

针对中国出口的抗议声浪出现之际，恰逢美国的政界人士面临着一项对中国政治人物来说陌生的挑战：选举。

In his re-election bid, Mr. Biden has highlighted his administration’s renewable energy investments. He has made it a point to visit new factories supported by government incentives, a clear effort to signal to voters his efforts to revive American manufacturing.

在连任竞选活动中，拜登强调了他的政府对可再生能源的投资。他特意参观了受政府激励措施支持的新工厂，这显然是为了向选民表明，他正在努力重振美国制造业。

Clean energy investments have surged since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. It began to unlock $370 billion in incentives to speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels, with expanded tax breaks for battery production and solar-panel manufacturing. That, along with the Chips and Science Act, which set aside $39 billion in incentives for chip producers to invest in the United States, was aimed squarely at reducing dependence on China while bolstering U.S. manufacturing.

自2022年《通胀削减法案》通过以来，清洁能源投资激增。该法案开始释放3700亿美元的激励措施，以加快美国摆脱化石燃料的转型，并扩大了电池生产和太阳能电池板制造的税收减免。该法案与《芯片和科学法案》一起，为芯片生产商在美国投资提供了390亿美元的激励措施，减少对中国的依赖，同时支持美国的制造业。

An analysis published on Tuesday by the private research group E2 found that 300 renewable energy projects had been announced since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. More than half were in Republican-controlled states.

私人研究机构E2周二发布的一份分析报告指出，自《通胀削减法案》通过以来，已宣布了300个可再生能源项目。其中一半以上在共和党控制的州。