2020-10-26 10:22:42
SEOUL, South Korea — First China’s leader, Xi Jinping, visited the national military museum in Beijing and hailed the country’s “victory in the war to resist American aggression and aid Korea.” Then he wrote a public letter to veterans in a retirement home in Sichuan.
韩国首尔——中国领导人习近平先是参观了北京的中国人民革命军事博物馆，赞扬中国“抗美援朝战争的胜利”，然后又给四川一家养老院的老兵们写了一封公开信。
On Friday, culminating a weeklong commemoration of the Korean War, he delivered a pugnacious and at times visceral homage to those who sacrificed against the country’s enemies, the United States foremost of them all.
为时一周的抗美援朝战争纪念活动周五达到了顶峰，习近平发表了一篇好斗的讲话，夹杂着对那些为打败中国的敌人——尤其是美国——做出牺牲的人们表达发自内心的敬意。
“The Chinese people don’t go looking for trouble, but nor do they fear it,” Mr. Xi said before hundreds of party officials, military officers and aged veterans in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. “Confronted with any hardships or dangers, the calves of their legs will not shake, and their backs will not bend.”
“中国人民不惹事也不怕事，在任何困难和风险面前，腿肚子不会抖，腰杆子不会弯，”习近平在北京人民大会堂面对数百名党政官员、军方官员和退伍老兵们说。
For Mr. Xi and the country’s propagandists, the anniversary of China’s entry into the Korean War 70 years ago this week could hardly have come at a more opportune time. The country, in their telling, is once again facing an unprovoked assault by a superpower determined to thwart China’s rise. This time the United States, under President Trump, has targeted China’s trade policy, its technological advances and its territorial ambitions.
对习近平和该国的宣传者来说，中国在70年前的这周出兵朝鲜战争的周年纪念来得正是时候。照他们的说法，中国正再次面临一个决心阻挠中国崛起的超级大国的无端攻击。这次，美国在特朗普总统的领导下，把目标对准了中国的贸易政策、科技进步和领土野心。
The anniversary unfolded with a barrage of commemorative events, exhibitions, television documentaries and feature films. They all conveyed the same message: The Chinese people have stood up to the United States before and, regardless of the costs, they will again.
为纪念出兵70周年，政府推出了接二连三的纪念活动和展览，还上映了电视纪录片和故事片。它们传达的是同一个信息：中国人民以前曾勇敢地抵抗美国，将来也会不惜一切代价抵抗美国。
Another Chinese leader, in a different era, might have moderated the rhetoric before the United States election to avoid alienating the American political and business establishment. Not Mr. Xi.
换上另一个时代的另一位中国领导人，他可能会在美国大选之前使用更缓和的语言，以避免疏远美国政界和商界的建制派。习近平不这么做。
“Seventy years ago, imperialist invaders brought the flames of war burning to the doorway of the new China,” he said on Friday. “The Chinese people have a deep understanding that in responding to invaders, one must speak to them in a language that they understand.”
“70年前，帝国主义侵略者将战火烧到了新中国的家门口，”习近平上周五说。“中国人民深知，对待侵略者，就得用他们听得懂的语言同他们对话。”
The events commemorating the war — long known as the “forgotten war” in the United States — have followed a series of military drills and an outburst of propaganda. Together they have signaled a hardening resolve against the United States and further raised tensions inflamed by the coronavirus pandemic and President Trump’s continuing derision of China.
在纪念朝鲜战争（在美国长期以来被称为“被遗忘的战争”）的活动之前，中国搞了一系列军事演习和大规模宣传。这些加在一起是在向美国发出更加强硬的信号，同时进一步加剧了因新冠病大流行和特朗普总统继续嘲讽中国而不断升级的紧张局势。
Popular opinion in both countries has soured as a result, creating animosity that is not likely to ease soon, regardless of the outcome of the American election, which is now less than two weeks away.
结果是两国的民意都在恶化，随之而来的敌意在短期内不太可能出现缓解，无论美国大选的结果如何。现在距离大选只有不到两周的时间。
“Seventy years ago, China was poor and weak,” Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said in an interview, echoing the theme of Mr. Xi’s speech on Friday. “Facing the United States as a superpower, China fought. Is there anything China dare not do now?”
“在70年前中国贫弱，面对美国一个超级大国，中国都打了，”北京人民大学国际关系学院副教授成晓河在采访中说，这与习近平上周五讲话的主题相呼应。“现在的话还有什么不敢的吗？”
History in China has long been repurposed to fit political needs, leaving little room for a frank reckoning with the past. In the last two decades, some Chinese historians quietly challenged the heroic official narrative of Mao’s decision to thrust the country into the Korean War, fought from 1950 to 1953. But that story has long been a pillar of the founding mythology of the People’s Republic of China, and Mr. Xi relived its highlights in his remarks.
中国的历史长期以来一直被用来适应政治需要，几乎没有给诚实地评判过去留下空间。在过去的20年里，一些中国历史学家悄悄地挑战毛泽东决定让中国参加朝鲜战争的官方版英雄叙事。朝鲜战争1950年开始，1953年停战。但这个叙事一直是中华人民共和国建国神话的支柱之一，习近平在讲话中重温了这个叙事的要点。
Coming barely a year after the country’s founding, the war was a searing and painful test. When it broke out, China remained at war with the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek that had retreated to Taiwan, and also faced armed resistance to its invasion of Tibet.
抗美援朝战争发生在新中国成立刚一年的时候，对中国是一场剧烈而痛苦的考验。战争爆发时，共产党的军队仍在与已撤退到台湾的蒋介石国民党军队作战，同时在入侵西藏时面临着武装抵抗。
Chinese forces crossed the Yalu River to aid the retreating North Korean army on Oct. 19, 1950; six days later, they fought their first battle with the allied troops fighting under a United Nations mandate. According to China’s official account, which Mr. Xi cited on Friday, 197,000 Chinese died in the war, though historians broadly agree that the actual toll was much higher.
1950年10月19日，中国军队为帮助被击败的朝鲜军队，渡过了鸭绿江；六天后，他们与联合国决议授权派遣的多国部队打了第一仗。按照中国官方的说法，19.7万中国人在这场战争中死亡，习近平在上周五的讲话中引用了这个数据，但历史学家普遍认为，实际的死亡人数高得多。
Commemorations of the war have ebbed and flowed in intensity over the decades for reasons having little to do with the war itself.
几十年来，纪念朝鲜战争活动的热度时涨时落，原因通常与战争本身没有多少关系。
Guan Ling, a commentator with Duowei News, the Chinese-language site based in New York, has chronicled how major anniversaries have reflected the country’s respective leaders and geopolitical circumstances.
设在纽约的中文网站《多维新闻》的评论员关岭按时间次序梳理了各个时期的中国领导人对抗美援朝重大纪念日的处理如何反映了当时的地缘政治环境。
Mao Zedong played down the 20th anniversary in 1970 as he sought a normalization of relations with the United States, whereas Jiang Zemin in 2000 emphasized the 50th, which occurred in the wake of the American bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Serbia during the Kosovo war the year before.
毛泽东淡化了1970年的抗美援朝20周年纪念，当时他正在寻求与美国关系正常化。江泽民曾在2000年高调出席抗美援朝50周年纪念，此前一年，美国曾在科索沃战争期间轰炸了中国驻塞尔维亚大使馆。
John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul and author of a forthcoming book on the Korean War, said that Mr. Xi had delivered a similar speech as vice president 10 years ago, although in substance and tone it was less combative.
在首尔延世大学(Yonsei University)从事中国问题研究的教授鲁乐汉(John Delury)即将出版一本关于朝鲜战争的新作，他说，习近平曾在十年前发表过类似的讲话，他那时是国家副主席，尽管那篇讲话在内容和语气上不这么好斗。
“There’s a different resonance now,” Mr. Delury said. “He’s hitting the stand-up-to-America theme pretty hard now. It’s getting intense.”
“现在有一种不同的共鸣，”鲁乐汉说。“他现在大力强调敢于面对美国的主题。这种共鸣正在变得越来越强烈。”
Mr. Xi also appeared to have a domestic audience in mind. He and the rest of the party leadership are scheduled to gather next week in a closed-door assembly to discuss China’s priorities for the next five years. He used Friday’s speech to restate his case for the primacy of the Communist Party leadership, with himself at the core.
习近平的话似乎也是讲给国内的人听的。他和中共领导层其他人已定于下周召开闭门会议，讨论中国未来五年的首要任务。他利用周五的讲话重申了以他本人为核心的中共领导地位的重要性。
It is a theme he has often invoked amid the pandemic, which, despite early missteps, his government has managed to bring under control domestically. Even the sight of a cadre of hundreds in a crowded hall — all wearing masks — was a striking contrast to bans on gatherings in many countries.
这是他在新冠大流行期间经常强调的一个主题，尽管出现了早期的一些失误，但习近平的政府已成功地在国内控制住了疫情。好几百人聚集在人民大会堂里的场景，尽管所有的人都戴着口罩，也与许多国家禁止集会的规定形成一个鲜明对比。
Mr. Xi’s speech had a strikingly hawkish tone, describing at one point the sacrifices of soldiers who had used their bodies as shields against a far superior force. “They smashed the myth that the American military was invincible,” he said.
习近平的讲话语气非常强硬。他提到了在比自身力量强大得多的军队面前，用自己的身体抵御敌人做出牺牲的士兵。他们“打破了美军不可战胜的神话”，他说。
Since coming to power in 2012, Mr. Xi has reorganized the Chinese military, trying to create a modern, multipronged fighting force, a model that he said the Korean War first taught the People’s Liberation Army.
自2012年上台以来，习近平对中国军队进行了重组，目的是打造一个现代化的、多管齐下的战斗力量。他说，朝鲜战争让中国人民解放军首次学到了这种力量的必要。
For most in China, the war has become a distant memory. Its remaining veterans are gradually dying off, and Chinese society today is unimaginably transformed from the impoverished China of the 1950s. The country has not experienced war now since 1979, when it invaded Vietnam and was routed.
对大多数中国人来说，朝鲜战争已成为一个遥远的记忆。仍活着的老兵人数越来越少，今天的中国社会已与20世纪50年代的贫困国家有天壤之别。中国自从1979年入侵越南被打败以来，一直没有打过仗。
Lest the idea of war become an abstraction, the party’s propaganda apparatus has churned out dozens of programs. A six-part documentary aired each night this week on state television. The nightly news casts have featured not only Mr. Xi’s appearances, as always, but also profiles of soldiers who fought and died.
为了避免让战争变成一个抽象概念，共产党的宣传机器炮制了几十个节目。国家电视台在上周连续每个晚上播出了一部六集纪录片。晚间新闻不只是一如既往地报道习近平的活动，也介绍了在朝鲜战争中阵亡的士兵。
Film studios have responded to government directives and produced a series of feature films, including an animated movie, called “Salute to Heroes,” that is aimed at younger audiences.
电影公司响应政府的指示，制作了一系列故事片，包括面向年轻观众的名为《向英雄致敬》的动画片。
Also having its opening on Friday was a blockbuster about the war starring Wu Jing, the lead actor in the “Wolf Warrior” action film franchise that has given a name to Chinese diplomacy of late. The film depicts Chinese soldiers keeping a vital river crossing open against relentless American bombardment. Its title in English: “The Sacrifice.”
上周五上映的还有一部以朝鲜战争为题材的大片，由吴京主演，他是《战狼》系列动作电影的主演，这部电影已让最近的中国外交有了一个新名称。大片的名字是《金刚川》，讲述的是中国士兵在美国的狂轰滥炸下，保持一条重要河流上的桥梁畅通的故事。
Near the end, an American pilot marvels at the tenacity of the soldiers below. He radios back to his commanders that their attacks have failed. “There’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
在影片接近尾声的时候，一名美国飞行员对地面上的士兵的顽强大为赞叹。他用无线电告诉指挥官他们的攻击失败了。“我们无法阻止他们。”
Steven Lee Myers自韩国首尔、储百亮自澳大利亚细腻报道。Claire Fu和Amber Wang自北京对本文有研究贡献。
Steven Lee Myers是《纽约时报》北京分社社长。他自1989年加入时报，曾在莫斯科、巴格达和华盛顿多地进行报道。他著有《新沙皇：弗拉基米尔·普京的崛起和统治》(“The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin”)一书。欢迎在Twitter和Facebook上关注他。
储百亮(Chris Buckley)是《纽约时报》首席中国记者。他成长于澳大利亚悉尼，在过去30年中的大部分时间内居住在中国。在2012年加入《纽约时报》之前，他是路透社的一名记者。欢迎在Twitter上关注他 @ChuBailiang。
翻译：纽约时报中文网
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