这是知乎上刷到的一段视频，一位美国议员或者精英人士在参议院（Senate）上发表了一段对于中国崛起，以及对于美国就这种不平衡的担忧进行抨击。可以说这又是一种中国威胁论的版本，但这篇英语演讲稿中有很多可以吸收和学习的地方。我花了40多分钟一字一句地打出来：）又花了1个多小时粗浅地研究了一下。边听边学也有一番乐趣，最下面附有视频链接。
I promise you and then if this continues, in 10 or 15 years you won’t be watching the US stock market, you’ll be watching the Chinese markets, and they will be determining whether our companies survive, it’ll be us, it’ll be us on the outside looking in, and then Americans are going to wonder why do we no longer invent great things, why do we now have to do whatever China wants in the world in order to get the medicines we need to cure my mom or my dad’s Alzheimer‘s, and the answer will be because when they were displacing us, your policymakers were too busy arguing with each other and playing dumb, ridiculous games on a regular basis. Meanwhile, China was focused like a laser, with a plan, and they executed on it, this is not a game, I can think of no more significant issue from the perspective of history than what is happening now. And do not misunderstand me, I do not come here to say that I want to be unnecessarily aggressive with China or that I want there to be a confrontation.
China is going to be a rich and a powerful country, and we have no problem with that, we can’t have any problem with that. But there has to be a balance, it can not be a China that is rich and powerful and an America that is weak and not prosperous, because those imbalances are what create wars, those imbalances are what create misery, those imbalances are what destabilized the planet, that can be. We need to recalibrate this relationship, it needs to be rebalanced on the trade side, it needs to be protective on our national security side, it needs to be equalized, and if it is, China can still be very successful, they’re going to invent things, they’re going to create jobs, they’re going to become more prosperous and that is fine, we’ve been doing that for 100 years, every person in this gallery, every person here in the well of the Senate on the floor, everyone you know has products on them: a phone, a belt, made in another country, the issues is not that other countries make things and we don’t, it’s not about us dominating everything, it’s about balance, and this is not balanced, this is headed to a dramatic imbalance. And imbalance used to be they made cheap things and sent it back to us so we have lower prices, that’s what’s happened for the last 30 years, they made cheaper T-shirts, they assemble the phones cheaper and they shipped it back to the United States, leading to lower prices, that’s not the imbalance I’m talking about.
The imbalance we’re headed to is: they control state-of-the-art, artificial intelligence, they control the state-of-the-art quantum computing, which means that nothing can be encrypted anymore, which means there are no such things as secure calls left. The President of the United States one day will not be able to talk to his national security officials anywhere in the world without the Chinese hearing it, cause no matter what encryption you put in, they’ll break it with a quantum computer, that’s the imbalance I’m talking about; The imbalance I’m talking about is one day, we’ll have a dispute with China on something on national security somewhere in the world, and they will threaten to cut off our supply of bio medicines, in essence threatened the lives of Americans not getting medicine unless we cave to their desires, that’s the imbalance I’m talking about; The imbalance I’m talking about is when where they dominate aerospace, where they are the nation that controls satellites and satellite communication, they are the nation that controls 5G, we’re headed towards autonomous vehicles, autonomous vehicles will depend on 5G technology, and China will dominate the world in 5G and we will depend on it, so we’re gonna to build a fleet of autonomous trucks and autonomous cars, and none of them will work if the Chinese decide to shut it down, because they dominate at that field, that’s the imbalance I’m talking about.
And if this all sounds fantastic apocalyptic, look it up, research it, and I promise you, you will not find a single person versed on this topic that would disagree with what I’m saying, this is the threat that we face, and we are not facing it squarely, so I would advise those who cover this issue to stop covering this as a political issue. There are some things so important to this country, that I don’t care what the politics of it are and most of my colleagues don’t either, because these are definitional things that will define the 21st century. I would advise is not to cover this as a purely economic issue, because there is alert the way to grow the trade gap in the short term, we can sell them a lot more of the things, China’s willing to buy anyway, they don’t intend to lead the world in those things, in exchange for them dominating us in the long run. Get rid of the short-term thinking and start thinking our competitor has a 50, 120 and five-year plans, and we don’t even know what we’re gonna be talking about next week.
It is time to wake up to this threat, because we have two ways forward, there can be a balanced relationship between two great powers, leading to a world that is stable and secure and prosperity, or we can have an imbalance world, in which a rising power in China does so at the expense, at the direct expense of a falling status poor power in the United States and that instability will lead to conflict, and a way of life for Americans that we will find unacceptable, and then it will be too late and then we will have to explain, maybe to our children and most certainly to our grandchildren why the America we grew up in led the world and all the great innovations and all the great ideas and provided prosperity to millions of people here and around the world, and the America they get to grow up in is a second-tier power while China…
- Alzheimer：老年痴呆症；阿兹海默症
- too busy arguing with each other and playing dumb, ridiculous games on a regular basis
正忙于定期上演着装聋做哑的荒诞游戏 - on a regular basis：常规基础；定期；本于诚信原则
- I can think of no more significant issue from the perspective of history than what is happening now.
我实在不能从历史上找出更重大的问题来，和现在所发生的事情也一样。 - no more … than = 和……一样不 (否定两者，＝neither … nor)
[例] You are no more careful than he is. 你和他一样不仔细。 - we have no problem with that, we can’t have any problem with that.
我们对此毫无疑问，也无法回避这样的事实。 - state-of-the-art ：adj. 应用最先进技术（或方法）的；最先进的
- cave to their desires：屈服于他们的要求
- a fleet of：一队，一群
- fantastic apocalyptic：虚幻的末日论
- verse on this topic：精通这个话题
- trade gap：贸易逆差；（贸易顺差：trade surplus）
- second-tier：二级，二线，二流
演讲的原文可以查看下面链接：