US tensions with China are fraying long-cultivated academic ties. Will the chill hurt US interests? 美中之间的紧张关系正在磨损长期培养的学术联系。这种冷漠会对美国利益造成损害吗？
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the 1980s, Fu Xiangdong was a young Chinese virology student who came to the United States to study biochemistry.
华盛顿（美联社） — 在20世纪80年代，傅向东是一位年轻的中国病毒学学生，他来到美国学习生物化学。
More than three decades later, he had a prestigious professorship in California and was conducting promising research on Parkinson’s disease.
三十多年后，他在加利福尼亚州担任了一份声望很高的教授职位，并在帕金森病的研究方面取得了令人期待的进展。
But now Fu is doing his research at a Chinese university. His American career was derailed as U.S.-China relations unraveled, putting his collaborations with a Chinese university under scrutiny. He ended up resigning.
但现在傅向东正在一所中国大学进行研究。随着中美关系的解体，他在美国的职业生涯受到了挫折，使得他与一所中国大学的合作受到了审查。最终他辞职了。
Fu’s story mirrors the rise and fall of U.S.-China academic engagement.
傅向东的故事反映了中美学术交往的兴衰。
Beginning in 1978, such cooperation expanded for decades, largely insulated from the fluctuations in relations between the two countries.
从1978年开始，这种合作在数十年间不断扩大，主要是与中美关系的波动相隔离的。
Today, it’s in decline, with Washington viewing Beijing as a strategic rival and there are growing fears about Chinese spying.
如今，中美合作在衰退，华盛顿将北京视为战略对手，人们对中国间谍活动的担忧日益增长。
The number of Chinese students in the United States is down, and U.S.-Chinese research collaboration is shrinking.
在美国的中国留学生数量减少，中美研究合作也在减少。
Academics are shying away from potential China projects over fears that seemingly minor missteps could end their careers.
由于担心似乎微小的错误可能会终结他们的职业生涯，学者们正回避潜在的中国项目。
This decline isn’t hurting just students and researchers. Analysts say it will undercut American competitiveness and weaken global efforts to address health issues.
这种下降不仅仅伤害了学生和研究人员。分析人士表示，这将削弱美国的竞争力，破坏全球应对健康问题的努力。
Previous collaborations have led to significant advances, including in influenza surveillance and vaccine development.
先前的合作已经取得了重大进展，包括流感监测和疫苗研发。
“That’s been really harmful to U.S. science,” said Deborah Seligsohn, a former U.S. diplomat in Beijing and now a political scientist at Villanova University.
“这对美国的科学真的造成了很大的伤害，”前驻北京的美国外交官、现任维拉诺瓦大学政治科学家黛博拉·塞利格松说道。
For some, given the heightened U.S.-China tensions, the prospect for scientific advances needs to take a back seat to security concerns.
对于一些人来说，考虑到中美紧张关系的升级，科学进步的前景需要让位于安全问题。
In their view, such cooperation aids China by giving it access to sensitive commercial, defense and technological information.
在他们看来，这种合作通过使中国获得对敏感商业、国防和技术信息的访问，有助于中国。
They also fear the Chinese government is using its presence in American universities to monitor and harass dissidents.
他们还担心中国政府利用其存在于美国大学的机构来监视和骚扰持不同政见者。
Those concerns were at the core of the China Initiative, a program begun in 2018 by the Justice Department under the Trump administration to uncover acts of economic espionage. 这些担忧是中国倡议的核心，该倡议是特朗普政府下的美国司法部于2018年启动的一个计划，旨在揭露经济间谍行为。
While it failed to catch any spies, the effort did have an impact on researchers in American schools. 尽管没有抓到任何间谍，但这一努力确实对美国学者产生了影响。
Under the initiative, Gang Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was charged in 2021 with hiding links with the Chinese government. Prosecutors eventually dropped all charges, but Chen lost his research group. He said his family went through a hard time and has yet to recover. 在这一倡议下，麻省理工学院机械工程系教授陈刚于2021年被指控隐瞒与中国政府的联系。检察官最终撤销了所有指控，但陈刚失去了他的研究小组。他表示，他的家庭经历了一段困难时期，至今还未恢复。
Chen said investigations and wrongful prosecutions like his “are pushing out talents.” 陈刚表示，像他这样的调查和错误的起诉“正在赶走人才”。
“That’s going to hurt U.S. scientific enterprise, hurt U.S. competitiveness,” he said. 他说：“这将伤害美国的科学事业，削弱美国的竞争力。”
The Biden administration ended the China Initiative in 2022, but there are other efforts targeting scholars with Chinese connections.
拜登政府在2022年终结了中国倡议，但还有其他旨在打击与中国有关的学者的努力。
In Florida, a state law aimed at curbing influences from foreign countries has raised concerns that students from China could effectively be banned from labs at the state’s public universities.
在佛罗里达，一项旨在限制外国影响的州法律引发了担忧，认为来自中国的学生实际上可能会被州立大学的实验室禁止入内。
This month, a group of Republican senators expressed concerns about Beijing’s influence on American campuses through student groups and urged the Justice Department to determine whether such groups should be registered as foreign agents.
本月，一群共和党参议员对北京通过学生团体对美国校园的影响表示担忧，并敦促司法部确定是否应将这类团体登记为外国代理人。
Miles Yu, director of the China Center at Hudson Institute, said Beijing has exploited U.S. higher education and research institutes to modernize its economy and military.
哈德逊研究所中国中心主任余茂春表示，北京已经利用美国高等教育和研究机构推动其经济和军事现代化。
“For some time, out of cultural, self-interest reasons, many people have double loyalty, erroneously thinking it’s OK to serve the interests of both the U.S. and China,” Yu said.
余茂春说：“有一段时间，出于文化和自身利益的原因，许多人存在双重忠诚，错误地认为为美国和中国的利益服务都是可以的。”
The U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement — the first major pact between the two countries, signed in 1979 — was set to lapse this year.
中美科技合作协议是两国之间的第一份重要协议，于1979年签署，原定于今年到期。
In August, Congress extended the agreement by six months, but its future also hangs in the balance.
8月，国会将协议延长了六个月，但其未来也岌岌可危。
If there is a new agreement, it should take into account new advances in science and technology, Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, said recently.
如果有新协议，它应该考虑到科技的新进展，美国驻华大使尼古拉斯·伯恩斯最近表示。
There were only 700 American students studying in China, Burns said, compared with nearly 300,000 Chinese students in the U.S., which is down from a peak of about 372,000 in 2019-2020.
伯恩斯表示，在中国只有700名美国学生，而在美国的中国留学生则近300,000人，较2019-2020年的峰值约372,000人有所下降。
By October, nearly all Confucius Institutes, a Beijing-backed Chinese language and culture program, had closed on American university campuses.
截至10月，几乎所有由北京支持的孔子学院，即中文与文化项目，在美国大学校园内关闭。它们的数量从2019年的大约100所减少到现在的不到五所，根据美国政府问责办公室的数据。
The National Institute of Health in 2018 began an investigation into foreign ties by asking dozens of American institutions to look into whether their faculty members might have violated policies regarding the use of federal money, usually in cases involving partnerships with Chinese institutions.
2018年，美国国家卫生研究院开始对外国联系进行调查，要求数十家美国机构调查他们的教职员工是否违反了关于使用联邦资金的政策，通常涉及与中国机构合作的情况。
In the case of Fu, then a professor at the University of California, San Diego, his links with Wuhan University were the focus of the NIH investigation.
在傅向东的案例中，当时是加利福尼亚大学圣地亚哥分校的教授，他与武汉大学的联系是国家卫生研究院调查的焦点。
Fu insisted that federal money was never used toward work there, according to the local news outlet La Jolla Light, but the university ruled against him.
据当地新闻媒体La Jolla Light报道，傅向东坚称联邦资金从未用于那里的工作，但大学对他的裁定是不利的。
In a China Initiative case, Charles Lieber, a former chair of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, was found guilty in December 2021 of lying to the federal government about his affiliations with a Chinese university and a Chinese government talent-recruitment program.
在中国倡议的一起案件中，哈佛大学化学与化学生物学系前主任查尔斯·利伯于2021年12月因向联邦政府谎报与中国大学和中国政府人才招聘计划的关系而被判有罪。
Chen, the MIT professor, said once-encouraged collaborations suddenly became problematic. Disclosure rules had been unclear, and in many cases such collaborations had been commended, he said.
麻省理工学院的陈教授表示，曾经受到鼓励的合作突然变得问题重重。他说，披露规则并不明确，而且在许多情况下，这种合作还曾受到赞誉。
“Very few people in the general public understand that most U.S. universities, including MIT, don’t take on any secret research projects on campus,” Chen said. “We aim to publish our research findings.
” 陈教授说：“一般公众中很少有人了解到，包括麻省理工学院在内的大多数美国大学在校园内并不从事任何秘密研究项目。我们的目标是发表我们的研究成果。”
The investigations have had negative effects on university campuses. “People are so fearful that, if you check the wrong box, you could be accused of lying to the government,” Chen said.
调查对大学校园产生了负面影响。“人们非常害怕，如果你勾选了错误的选项，可能会被指控向政府撒谎，”陈说道。
In June, an academic study published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal said the China Initiative likely has caused widespread fear and anxiety among scientists of Chinese descent.
在六月份，一项发表在经过同行评议的《国家科学院院刊》上的学术研究称，中国计划很可能在华裔科学家中引起了广泛的恐惧和焦虑。
The study, which surveyed 1,304 scientists of Chinese descent employed by American universities, showed many considered leaving the U.S. or no longer applying for federal grants, the researchers wrote.
这项研究调查了1304名在美国大学工作的华裔科学家，结果显示很多人考虑离开美国，或不再申请联邦拨款，研究人员写道。
An analysis of research papers in the PubMed database showed that, as of 2021, U.S. scientists still co-wrote more papers with scientists from China than from any other country, but those with a history of collaborating with China experienced a decline in research productivity after 2019, soon after the NIH investigation started.
对PubMed数据库中研究论文的分析显示，截至2021年，美国科学家仍然与中国科学家合写的论文数量多于与任何其他国家的科学家合写的论文数量，但那些有与中国合作历史的科学家在2019年NIH调查开始后经历了研究生产力下降。
The study, to be published in the PNAS journal by the year’s end, found the impact of U.S.-based scholars in collaboration with China, as measured by citations, fell by 10%.
这项研究将于年底发表在《国家科学院院刊》上，发现与中国合作的美国学者的影响，以引用次数为衡量标准，下降了10%。
“It has a chilling effect on science” said Ruixue Jia, the study’s leading researcher, of the NIH investigation. “While researchers tried to finish existing cooperative projects, they were unwilling to start new ones, and the results could become worse. Both countries have been hurt.”
该研究的主要研究人员贾瑞雪表示：“这对科学产生了寒蝉效应。”她指的是NIH的调查。“尽管研究人员试图完成现有的合作项目，他们不愿意启动新项目，结果可能会变得更糟。两国都受到了伤害。”
Three months after Fu resigned from the California school, his name appeared on the website of Westlake University, a private research university in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. At Westlake, Fu leads a lab to tackle issues in RNA biology and regenerative medicine.
福辞去加州学校职务三个月后，他的名字出现在中国杭州的私立研究型大学西湖大学的网站上。在西湖大学，福领导一家实验室致力于解决RNA生物学和再生医学的问题。
In August, Fu was joined by Guan Kunliang, a fellow scientist in San Diego, who also was investigated. Guan was banned from applying for NIH grants for two years. Guan didn’t lose his job, but his lab had shrunk. Now, he’s rebuilding a molecular cell biology lab at Westlake.
八月份，福又被在圣地亚哥的同行科学家关昆亮加入，关昆亮也受到了调查。关昆亮被禁止在两年内申请NIH的拨款。关昆亮没有失业，但他的实验室规模缩小。现在，他正在西湖大学重建一个分子细胞生物学实验室。
Li Chenjian, a former vice provost of Peking University, said the talent loss to China is a complicated question and the worry might be overblown because the U.S. remains the go-to place for the world’s best brains and has an excess of talent.
北京大学前副校长李晨建表示，向中国流失人才是一个复杂的问题，而担忧可能夸大了，因为美国仍然是全球最优秀大脑的首选地，并且拥有过剩的人才。
More than 87% of Chinese students who received their doctorates in the U.S. had planned to stay in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015, according to the National Science Foundation. The percentage fell to 73.9 in 2021 but rose to 76.7 in 2022, above the average of 74.3% for all foreign students who had earned research doctorate degrees in the U.S.
根据国家科学基金会的数据，2005年至2015年间，在美国获得博士学位的中国学生中，超过87%计划留在美国。这一比例在2021年下降到73.9%，但在2022年上升到76.7%，高于所有在美国获得研究博士学位的外国学生的平均水平74.3%。
Rao Yi, a prominent neurobiologist who returned to China from the U.S. in 2007, said American policies related to the China Initiative were “morally wrong.”
饶毅，一位著名的神经生物学家，于2007年从美国回到中国，他表示，与中国计划相关的美国政策“在道德上是错误的”。
“We will see how long it will take for the U.S. government and its morally upright scientists to correct such mistakes and come around to see the bigger picture of human development, beyond petty-mindedness and shortsightedness,” he said. “Throughout history, it is always the morally corrupt governments which advocate the blocking of scientific communication and persecution of scientists.
他说：“我们将看到美国政府及其在道德上正直的科学家需要多长时间来纠正这样的错误，并看到人类发展的更大格局，超越狭隘和短视。” “在历史上，总是在道德上腐败的政府倡导阻止科学交流和迫害科学家。
