经济学人|The Battle for Digital Supr

How to engage and how not to

DESIGNED by Apple in California. Assembled in China”. For the past decade the words embossed on the back of iPhones have served as shorthand for the technological bargain between the world’s two biggest economies: America supplies the brains and China the brawn.

“此苹果产品设计于加利福尼亚州，制造于中国。”在过去几十年里，在iPhone手机背面刻着的这几个字是一个很精确的标志，意味着世界上两大经济体——美国提供的“大脑”（创新）与中国发达的“肌肉”（生产力）之间的科技交易。

Not any more. China’s world-class tech giants, Alibaba and Tencent, have market values of around $500bn, rivalling Facebook’s. China has the largest online-payments market. Its equipment is being exported across the world. It has the fastest supercomputer. It is building the world’s most lavish quantum-computing research centre. Its forthcoming satellite-navigation system will compete with America’s GPS by 2020.

现在却不是这样了，中国世界级的科技巨头——阿里巴巴，腾讯拥有着接近500千万美元的市场价值，可以与Facebook（脸书）媲美。中国拥有世界上最大的线上支付市场。中国的设备正在全世界疯狂出口。中国拥有世界上最快的超级电脑。中国正在建设世界上规模最宏伟的量子计算机研究中心。中国即将提供的卫星定位系统可以在2020年和美国的GPS抗衡。

America is rattled. An investigation is under way that is expected to conclude that China’s theft of intellectual property has cost American companies around $1trn; stinging tariffs may follow. Earlier this year Congress introduced a bill to stop the government doing business with two Chinese telecoms firms, Huawei and ZTE. Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent, has warned that China will over- take America in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2025.

美国现在慌乱了，一个正在进行的调查显示中国对知识产权的盗窃行为导致了美国公司接近1万亿美元，同样也刺激了关税。今年年初，美国国会通过了一项法案，禁止政府与中国的两个电信公司进行交易——华为与中兴。阿法狗的前主席，谷歌的前辈Eric曾提出警告，中国将在2025年在人工智能领域超越美国。

This week President Donald Trump abruptly blocked a $142bn hostile takeover of Qualcomm, an American chipmaker, by Broadcom, a Singapore-domiciled rival, citing national- security fears over Chinese leadership in 5G, a new wireless technology. As so often, Mr Trump has identified a genuine challenge, but is bungling the response. China’s technological rise requires a strategic answer, not a knee-jerk one.

这周特朗普总统突然阻断了一个充满的敌意的收购：Qualcumm——一个美国芯片公司被Broadcom公司全资收购。这是一个争取新加坡注册权的竞争。特朗普认为中国的5G新无线科技对美国造成了国家安全问题。像通常一样，特朗普总统意识到了一个精妙的困难，却给出了一个挫劣的答复。中国的科技崛起需要一个策略性的回应，而不是一个不经思考的回答。

The motherboard of all wars

To understand what America’s strategy should be, first define the problem. It is entirely natural for a continent-sized, rapidly growing economy with a culture of scientific inquiry to enjoy a technological renaissance. Already, China has one of the biggest clusters of AI scientists. It has over 800m internet users, more than any other country, which means more data on which to hone its new AI. The technological advances this brings will benefit countless people, Americans among them. For the United States to seek to keep China down merely to preserve its place in the pecking order by, say, further balkanising the internet, is a recipe for a poorer, discordant—and possibly warlike—world.

要想知道美国应该制定什么样的战略，就要先知道问题是什么。对于一个大陆板块一样大的、飞速发展的、拥有系统性决策的经济体来说，要求进行科技创新是很正常的。中国已经拥有世界上最大的其中一个AI科技区，他们拥有8亿网民，比世界上任何一个国家都多，意味着对于AI研究有更多的数据帮助。科技进步将受益于无数人，也包括美国人。美国试图通过进一步分化互联网来抑制中国的地位，这是个失败的、不和谐的、甚至类似于战争的方法。

Yet it is one thing for a country to dominate televisions and toys, another the core information technologies. They are the basis for the manufacture, networking and destructive power of advanced weapons systems. More generally, they are often subject to extreme network effects, in which one winner establishes an unassailable position in each market. This means that a country may be squeezed out of vital technologies by foreign rivals pumped up by state support. In the case of China, those rivals answer to an oppressive authoritarian regime that increasingly holds itself up as an alternative to liberal democracy—particularly in its part of Asia. China insists that it wants a win-win world. America has no choice but to see Chinese technology as a means to an unwelcome end.

然而对于国家来说，在电视与玩具产业里占主导地位是一回事，在核心信息科技领域里是另一回事。它们是工厂生产、互联网的基础，对于先进的武器系统来说它们具有破坏性的力量。更普遍的是，它们经常要受到极端的网络影响，在此影响下，赢家可以在每个市场里都拥有不可摧毁的地位。这意味着一个国家可能会在其他国家支持性的竞争中不得不开发出高端技术。在中国这个案例中，这些竞争导致了一个压迫性的独裁主义的出现，并且拥护自己为自由民主制度的另一个选择——尤其是在亚洲。中国坚持强调他们想要一个双赢局面。美国没有任何选择，只能眼睁睁看着中国科技逐渐带领着世界走向一个他们不喜欢的结局。

The question is how to respond. The most important part of the answer is to remember the reasons for America’s success in the 1950s and 1960s. Government programmes, intended to surpass the Soviet Union in space and weapons systems, galvanised investment in education, research and engineering across a broad range of technologies. This ultimately gave rise to Silicon Valley, where it was infused by a spirit of free inquiry, vigorous competition and a healthy capitalist incentive to make money. It was supercharged by an immigration system that welcomed promising minds from every corner of the planet. Sixty years after the Sputnik moment, America needs the same combination of public investment and private enterprise in pursuit of a national project.

问题是要如何处理现在的情势。处理问题的关键是要铭记美国在1950-1960期间成功的原因。为了在航空和武器系统领域超越苏联，政府项目刺激了在教育、研究、工程方面十分广泛的技术投资。最终诞生了硅谷，这里因为自由调查、激烈的竞争、有钱可赚的资本主义而聚集了无数人。同时欢迎全世界各地具有前景的高端人才的移民系统给它添了不少彩。在人造卫星诞生60年后的今天，美国需要用同样的方法，对于外界投资和私人企业给予支持，建设一个国家级项目。

Why use a scalpel when a hammer will do?

The other part of the answer is to update national-security safeguards for the realities of China’s potential digital threats. The remit of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a multi-agency body charged with screening deals that affect national security, should be expanded so that minority investments in AI, say, can be scrutinised as well as outright acquisitions. Worries about a supplier of critical components do not have to result in outright bans. Britain found a creative way to mitigate some of its China-related security concerns, by using an evaluation centre with the power to dig right down into every detail of the hardware and software of the systems that Huawei supplies for the telephone network.

另一个解决问题的方式是提升对于中国潜在的数字化威胁的国家安全保障。美国外国投资委员会是一个拥有多个部门、对可能影响国家安全的交易进行监督的协会，他们应该扩展规模，这样就可以对于AI领域的少数投资以及收购进行监督和彻底调查。使用“彻底禁止”来解决对于关键用品供应商的担忧是没必要的。英国找到了一个很创新性的方式来缓解一些与中国相关的安全担忧，通过一个检测中心去检测每一个华为手机提供的硬件与软件系统最细微的细节。

Set against these standards, Mr Trump falls short on every count. The Broadcom decision suggests that valid suspicion of Chinese technology is blurring into out-and-out protectionism. Broadcom is not even Chinese; the justification for blocking the deal was that it was likely to invest less in R&D than Qualcomm, letting China seize a lead in setting standards.

根据这些标准来看，特朗普的决定每次都不尽人意。Broadcom公司的决定显示了对于中国技术的有效怀疑正在逐渐变成彻底的保护主义。Broadcom甚至都不是中国的公司；阻止这项交易的原因是它可能在研究开发领域的投资比Qualcomm少一些，让中国在制定标准方面占据领先地位。

Mr Trump has reportedly already rejected one plan for tariffs on China to compensate for forced technology transfer but only because the amounts were too small. Were America to impose duties on Chinese consumer electronics, for example, it would harm its own prosperity without doing anything for national security. An aggressively anti-China tack has the obvious risk of a trade tit-for-tat that would leave the world’s two largest economies both worse off and also more insecure.

据报道，特朗普已经拒绝了一个有关中国补贴强制性技术转让的关税计划，仅仅是因为数量太少了。美国对于中国电子消费品强制加税的行为会伤害自己的利益，并且对国家安全没有任何影响。这个激烈的反中国计划具有明显的以牙还牙的贸易危险，可能会使世界最大的两个经济体两败俱伤，并且更不安全。

Mr Trump’s approach is defined only by what he can do to stifle China, not by what he can do to improve America’s prospects. His record on that score is abysmal. America’s federal- government spending on R&D was 0.6% of GDP in 2015, a third of what it was in 1964. Yet the president’s budget proposal for 2019 includes a 42.3% cut in non-defense discretionary spending by 2028, which is where funding for scientific research sits. He has made it harder for skilled immigrants to get visas to enter America. He and some of his party treat scientific evidence with contempt—specifically the science which warns of the looming threat of climate change. America is right to worry about Chinese tech. But for America to turn its back on the things that made it great is no answer.

特朗普的方式仅仅局限于他能做什么来抑制中国，而不是他能做什么来使美国更强大。在这一项得分里，他的成绩简直糟透了。2015年美国联邦政府在研究开发领域的花销为GDP的0.6%，是1964年的三分之一。然而总统在2019年的预算包括到2028年减少42.3%的非国防自由支配支出，然而这是科学研究支出部分。他使高端人才移民更难得到美国签证。他和他的一些党羽对待科学现象嗤之以鼻——尤其是对于环境改变威胁的科学证据。美国应该担忧中国的技术。但是对于美国要力挽狂澜“变得更强大”是没有解决方案的。

原文链接：https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21738883-americas-technological-hegemony-under-threat-china-battle-digital-supremacy

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