The amygdala is a pair of neural clusters near the base of the brain that assesses danger and can help prompt a fight-or-flight response. A prolonged stress response may contribute to anxiety, which can cause people to perceive danger where there is none and obsess about worst-case scenarios.
杏仁核是靠近大脑底部的一对神经簇，负责评估危险，并有助于引发人们的“战或逃”反应。长时间的应激反应可能会导致焦虑，令人在没有危险的情况下认为有危险，总是在想着最坏的情况。
America’s collective national body is suffering from a chronic case of China anxiety. Nearly anything with the word “Chinese” in front of it now triggers a fear response in our political system, muddling our ability to properly gauge and contextualize threats. This has led the U.S. government and American politicians to pursue policies grounded in repression and exclusion, mirroring the authoritarian system that they seek to combat.
美国的国家机体患上了慢性的中国焦虑征。现在，几乎任何带有“中国”字样的东西都会在我们的政治体系中引发恐惧反应，使我们无法正确判断和理解威胁。这导致美国政府和美国政界人士奉行基于镇压和排斥的政策，与他们试图打击的专制制度如出一辙。
Congress has moved to force the sale of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media application; some states have sought restrictions on Chinese individuals or entities owning U.S. land and on Chinese researchers working in American universities; and the federal government has barred certain Chinese technology firms from competing in our markets. These measures all have a national security rationale, and it is not my intention here to weigh the merits of every one. But collectively they are yielding a United States that is fundamentally more closed — and more like China in meaningful ways.
美国国会已采取行动，强制出售中国拥有的社交媒体应用程序TikTok；一些州寻求限制拥有美国土地的中国个人或实体，以及在美国大学工作的中国研究人员；联邦政府禁止某些中国科技公司在我们的市场竞争。这些措施都有国家安全的理由，我无意在这里权衡每一项措施的必要性。但总的来说，这些措施正在使美国从根本上变得更加封闭——在一些重要的方面更像中国。
When you are constantly anxious, no threat is too small. In January, Rick Scott, a senator from Florida, introduced legislation that would ban imports of Chinese garlic, which he suggested could be a threat to U.S. national security, citing reports that it is fertilized with human sewage. In 2017, scientists at McGill University wrote there is no evidence that this is the case. Even if it was, it’s common practice to use human waste, known as “biosolids,” as fertilizer in many countries, including the United States.
当你焦虑不安的时候，一切都是威胁。今年1月，佛罗里达州参议员里克·斯科特提出了一项禁止进口中国大蒜的立法，他认为中国大蒜可能对美国国家安全构成威胁，理由是有报道称中国大蒜使用人类排泄物为肥料。2017年，麦吉尔大学的科学家的文章就显示了没有证据表明这是事实。即使是这样，在包括美国在内的许多国家，使用被称为“生物固体”的人类排泄物作为肥料也是一种常见的做法。
More recently, Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Elise Stefanik introduced legislation that would bar the Department of Defense from contracting with Tutor.com, a U.S.-based tutoring company, on the grounds that it poses a threat to national security because it was purchased by Primavera Capital Group, an investment firm based in Hong Kong. Their argument is that this could give the Chinese government backdoor access to the tutoring sessions and personal information of American military personnel who use the firm’s service.
最近，参议员汤姆·科顿和众议员埃莉斯·斯特凡尼克提出了一项法案，禁止国防部与总部位于美国的家教公司Tutor.com签订合同，理由是该公司被总部位于香港的投资公司春华资本集团收购，对国家安全构成威胁。他们的理由是，这可能会让中国政府通过后门，获得使用该公司服务的美国军事人员的辅导课程和个人信息。
The legislation does not mention that Tutor.com’s student data is housed in the United States, that it volunteered for a security review by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and that it created additional levels of data security protection in coordination with the U.S. government. The bill also does not specify how exactly the Chinese government would get access to Tutor.com’s data or what use it would actually have for information on the tutoring sessions of U.S. military personnel.
该法案没有提到Tutor.com的学生数据存放在美国，它自愿接受美国联邦外国投资委员会的安全审查，也没有提到它与美国政府协调，建立了额外的数据安全保护级别。该法案也没有具体说明中国政府将如何获取Tutor.com的数据，以及中国政府获取美国军事人员辅导课程信息的实际用途。
Last summer, several Republican lawmakers cried foul over the “Barbie” movie because a world map briefly shown in the background of one scene included a dashed line. They took this as a reference to China’s “nine-dashed line,” which Beijing uses to buttress its disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to Representative Jim Banks, this is “endangering our national security.” The map in the movie is clearly fantastical, had only eight dashes and bore no resemblance to China’s line. Even the Philippine government, which has for years been embroiled in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, dismissed the controversy and approved the movie’s domestic release.
去年夏天，几位共和党议员对电影《芭比》表示不满，因为在一个场景中，背景里短暂出现了一张世界地图，上面有一段虚线。他们认为这是指中国的“九段线”，北京用这条线来支持其在南海有争议的领土主张。众议员吉姆·班克斯表示，这“正在危害我们的国家安全”。电影中的地图显然是虚构的，虚线只有八段，与中国的边境线毫无相似之处。就连多年来一直卷入与中国在南海领土争端的菲律宾政府也没有理会这一争议，批准电影在国内上映。
Of course, the United States should actively confront President Xi Jinping of China about his repression at home and aggression abroad. As a scholar of China’s political system, I worry about how Mr. Xi has made his country even more authoritarian; about increasing human rights abuses in China, particularly those directed at the Uyghur population in Xinjiang; about Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, its threats toward Taiwan, its increasingly cozy relationship with Russia and its support for the war in Ukraine. America must remain alert to legitimate concerns about well-documented Chinese activities such as espionage and cyberattacks.
当然，美国应积极面对中国国家主席习近平在国内的镇压和在国外的进犯。作为一名研究中国政治制度的学者，我担心习近平正在使他的国家变得更加专制；我担心中国日益严重的侵犯人权行为，特别是针对新疆维吾尔人的侵犯人权行为；还有北京对香港的镇压、对台湾的威胁、与俄罗斯日益亲密的关系，以及对乌克兰战争的支持。美国必须对中国的间谍活动和网络攻击等有据可查的活动保持警惕。
But should our policymakers really be focusing on Tutor.com, Chinese garlic or “Barbie”? Or should they concentrate on the more serious threats posed by China’s authoritarian system, or the many other issues that meaningfully affect the day-to-day lives of Americans?
但我们的政策制定者真的应该关注Tutor.com、中国大蒜和《芭比》吗？还是应该集中精力应对中国专制制度带来的更严重威胁，或者是对美国人日常生活产生重大影响的诸多其他问题？
Perhaps the most worrisome effect is that China anxiety is slowly creeping toward discrimination against Chinese Americans, a new “yellow peril.” We’ve already seen how an initiative begun during the Trump administration to target Chinese espionage led to unfair scrutiny of Chinese researchers and even Asian American government employees, leading to the program being terminated in 2022. And we saw how xenophobia during the pandemic triggered threats and attacks against Asian Americans. There also have been numerous reports of law enforcement officials interrogating Chinese students and researchers traveling to and from China on the grounds that they may be agents of the Chinese state. Again, this treatment — being brought in for questioning by the police or government officials — is something foreign scholars experience in China, where it is euphemistically referred to as “being invited for tea.”
也许最令人担忧的影响是，对中国的焦虑正慢慢蔓延到对华裔美国人的歧视，这是一种新的“黄祸”。我们已经看到，特朗普政府期间开始的一项针对中国间谍活动的倡议，导致对中国研究人员甚至亚裔美国政府雇员的不公平审查，令该计划于2022年终止。我们看到疫情期间的仇外心理如何引发了对亚裔美国人的威胁和攻击。也有许多报道称，执法官员讯问来往中国的中国学生和研究人员，理由是他们可能是中国政府的特工。同样，这种待遇——被警察或政府官员带去问话——是外国学者在中国经历过的，在中国，这种待遇被委婉地称为“请喝茶”。
Last year, state legislators in Texas proposed a bill that initially sought to prevent Chinese (as well as Iranian, North Korean and Russian) citizens and entities from buying land, homes or other real estate, citing concerns about the security of the food supply. Putting aside the fact that Chinese citizens are not the Chinese government, the actual amount of American farmland owned by Chinese entities is negligible — never exceeding 1 percent of farmland in any given American state as of 2021. The bill ultimately failed, but only after substantial pushback from the Chinese American community.
去年，得克萨斯州的州议员提出了一项法案，最初试图阻止中国（以及伊朗、朝鲜和俄罗斯）公民和实体购买土地、房屋或其他房地产，理由是担心食品供应的安全。撇开中国公民不等于中国政府这一事实不谈，中国实体拥有的美国农田的实际数量可以忽略不计——截至2021年，从未超过美国任何一个州农田的1%。该法案最终失败了，但这是在美国华人社区的强烈反对之后。
This China panic, also stirred up by both liberal and conservative U.S. media, may be influencing how average people perceive their fellow Americans of Chinese heritage. Michael Cerny, a fellow China researcher, and I recently surveyed over 2,500 Americans on the question of whether Chinese Americans who were born in the United States should be allowed to serve in the U.S. intelligence community. Roughly 27 percent said Chinese Americans’ access to classified information should be more limited than for other U.S. citizens, and 14 percent said they should be allowed no access at all.
这种对中国的恐慌也被自由派和保守派的美国媒体所煽动，可能正在影响普通民众对华裔美国同胞的看法。我和另一位中国问题研究员迈克尔·塞尔尼最近对2500多名美国人进行了调查，询问在美国出生的华裔美国人是否应该被允许在美国情报机构服务。大约27%的人表示，华裔美国人获得机密信息的权限应该比其他美国公民受到更多限制，14%的人表示，他们应该完全不被允许获得机密信息。
This is overt racism, and while not the majority opinion, it is concerning that so many Americans are blurring the line between the Chinese government and people of Chinese ethnicity, mirroring the language of our politicians.
这是公然的种族主义，虽然不是大多数人的意见，但令人担忧的是，如此多的美国人正在模糊中国政府和华裔之间的界限，与我们政界人士的语言如出一辙。
China is a formidable geopolitical rival. But there is no world in which garlic, “Barbie” or a tutoring site poses meaningful threats to American national security. Labeling them as such reveals a certain lack of seriousness in our policy discourse.
中国是一个强大的地缘政治对手。但是在这个世界上，大蒜、《芭比》或家教网站都不会对美国的国家安全构成真正的威胁。给它们贴上这样的标签，表明我们的政策话语在某种程度上缺乏严肃性。
If the United States is to properly compete with China, it’s going to require healthy, balanced policymaking that protects U.S. national security without compromising core American values.
要想和中国展开真正的竞争，美国需要制定健康、平衡的政策，在不损害美国核心价值观的情况下保护美国的国家安全。
Let’s take a deep breath.
我们需要做一下深呼吸。