Second term US presidents traditionally seek solace on the global stage. Barack Obama is no exception. Following last week’s drubbing in the US midterm elections, he lands in China tomorrow for a summit with Xi Jinping. He is unlikely to find Beijing more pliable than Washington DC. As time goes on, it becomes ever harder to separate his domestic weakness from his global standing. Even the tone is spreading. “US society has grown tired of [Obama’s] banality,” China’s semi-official Global Times said last week.
传统而言，美国总统会在他们的第二个任期从全球舞台寻求慰藉。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)也不例外。继上周在美国中期选举中落败之后，奥巴马本周一抵达中国，他将与习近平会晤。他不太可能发现北京比华盛顿更好说话。随着时间的推移，奥巴马在国内的弱势和他在全球的地位越来越息息相关。甚至现在都已在流传着这样的论调。中国半官方的《环球时报》(Global Times)上周表示：美国社会厌倦的是他的“平庸”。
Mr Xi is too polite to put it like that. Yet there is no mistaking which of the two is on the way up. In his first year in office, Mr Obama offered Beijing a “G2” partnership to tackle the world’s big problems. China spurned him. Mr Obama then unveiled his “pivot to Asia”. China saw it as US containment and reacted accordingly. Its defence spending today is almost double in real terms what it was when Mr Obama first visited China in 2009. Over the same period, the US military budget has barely kept pace with inflation.
习近平出于礼貌不可能这么说话。但这两人哪一个正在崛起是显而易见的。奥巴马在其首个任期向北京提出建立“两国集团”(G2)合作关系来解决全球的重大问题，中国拒绝了。随后奥巴马推出了他的“重返亚洲”(pivot to Asia)战略。中国将此视为美国的遏制战略，并相应采取了行动。按实际价值计算，中国当前的国防支出几乎是2009年奥巴马访华时的两倍。而在同期，美国的军事预算增长只不过与通胀同步。