George Osborne embarked on Tuesday night on a controversial trade mission to Urumqi in the far north-west of China, amid concern that he risked turning a blind eye to Beijing’s treatment of the minority Muslim Uighur population.
周二晚，英国财政大臣乔治攠斯本(George Osborne)启程前往中国西北城市乌鲁木齐进行一次具有争议的贸易访问。外界担心，他可能会对中国对待信仰伊斯兰教的少数民族维吾尔族的方式不闻不问。
Mr Osborne wants Britain to win construction contracts in Urumqi and the surrounding Xinjiang region, as Beijing builds a development corridor along a 21st-century Silk Road connecting China with Europe.
奥斯本希望，在中国政府打造连接中欧的21世纪丝绸之路开发走廊之际，英国能赢得乌鲁木齐、乃至新疆地区的一些建设合同。
The chancellor set a target of making China Britain’s biggest trading partner after the US by 2025, replacing Germany, an ambitious target that even Treasury officials admit will be a “challenge”.
奥斯本设定的目标是到2025年时让中国取代德国成为英国的第二大贸易伙伴（仅次于美国）。这是一个雄心勃勃的目标，就连英国财政部官员也承认这将是一项“挑战”。
Mr Osborne believes that building trade links to cities such as Urumqi is the key to achieving his goal. But the White House is more circumspect; one senior US official recently said Britain was involved in a “constant accommodation” of China.
奥斯本认为，建立与乌鲁木齐等城市的贸易往来是实现上述目标的关键。但美国的态度则较为谨慎；一位美国高官最近表示，英国正“不断迁就”中国。
In a further sign of Mr Osborne’s enthusiastic wooing of Beijing, he announced a 10m fund to increase the teaching of Mandarin in English schools, a programme he said would benefit 5,000 pupils by 2020.
奥斯本还宣布将设立一个1000万英镑的基金，扩大英国学校的汉语普通话教学。他表示，到2020年，该计划将令5000名英国中小学生受益。这进一步表明，奥斯本正热情洋溢地向中国示好。
“I want to give more young people the opportunity to learn a language that will help them succeed in our increasingly global economy,” Mr Osborne wrote in a Spectator magazine blog post.
奥斯本在《旁观者》(Spectator)杂志的一篇博文中写道：“我希望让更多的年轻人有机会学习一门将帮助他们在我们这个日益全球化的经济中取得成功的语言。”
However, Mr Osborne’s modest 5,000 increase pales in comparison with David Cameron’s aspiration — made after a trip to China in 2013 — to double the number of Mandarin learners to 400,000 by the end of this parliament. Some 3,710 pupils in the UK took the GCSE Chinese exam this year while 157,699 sat GCSE French and 54,037 took German.
然而，在英国首相戴维愠蕓伦(David Cameron) 2013年访华后提出的、在本届议会任期届满前将英国汉语普通话学习者的数量增加一倍至40万人的目标面前，奥斯本的5000人目标相形见绌。今年，英国有大约3710名学生参加了普通中等教育证书(GCSE)中文考试，157699名学生参加了GCSE法语考试，54037名学生参加了GCSE德语考试。
Mr Osborne has planned his China visit to maximise its effect. His itinerary on Tuesday started with a symbolic show of solidarity with China at the Shanghai stock exchange, before flying five hours north-west to Urumqi.
奥斯本的访华安排意在使这次访问实现最大效果。他周二行程的第一项，是在上海证交所(SSE)发表演讲，表示要与中国携手发展，而后飞行5个小时赶赴乌鲁木齐。
He is the first serving British minister to visit the city, which suffers from ethnic violence and does not normally feature on the agenda of visiting western dignitaries. Beijing says it is waging a fight against religious extremism, terrorism and separatism.
他是首位访问乌鲁木齐的英国在任部长。乌鲁木齐存在民族暴力冲突问题，一般不会出现在西方要人的访华行程中。中国政府表示，它正在打击宗教极端主义、恐怖主义和分裂主义。
But Kate Allen, Amnesty UK director, said: “Mr Osborne must not trade away his ability to talk out on human rights in China.” Ms Allen called on the chancellor to raise the issue of the life sentence given to Uighur academic Ilham Tohti a year ago.
然而，大赦国际(Amnesty)英国负责人凯特縠伦(Kate Allen)表示：“奥斯本决不能放弃在中国谈论人权问题的机会。”艾伦呼吁奥斯本提及维族学者伊力哈木土赫提(Ilham Tohti)一年前被判无期徒刑一事。
Chinese treatment of the Uighurs, most of whom follow a moderate branch of Sufi Islam, is becoming a sore point with Muslims overseas — particularly in Turkey, whose language is closely related to Uighur.
中国对待维族的方式正成为海外穆斯林群体的心头之痛，特别是在土耳其，土耳其语跟维吾尔语存在密切的联系。多数维族信仰伊斯兰教中温和的苏菲派(Sufi)。
Native to resource-rich Xinjiang, many Uighurs feel discriminated against in education and employment in China, while some also chafe under restrictions on Muslim religious practice. China maintains that Uighurs seeking to leave the country are trying to join extremist groups overseas.
许多维族人在资源丰富的新疆地区土生土长，他们觉得在中国，维族人在教育和就业方面受歧视，还有一些维族人对穆斯林宗教活动受到的限制感到不满。中国方面认为，寻求离开中国的维族人是在试图加入海外的极端组织。
Mr Osborne surprised his hosts by proposing the visit — the most sensitive part of his five-day trade mission to the country — himself. British journalists based in Beijing were advised by the Chinese authorities not to cover it.
奥斯本本人提出访问新疆，着实出乎中方的意料——这是他为期5天的对华贸易访问中最为敏感的一段行程。中国有关部门建议驻北京的英国记者不要报道这段行程。
But the chancellor says he wants to show Britain is interested in investing in every region of China, arguing that he hoped that the money spent on the One Belt, One Road project to revive historic trade routes would improve the situation in Xinjiang.
但奥斯本表示，他希望表明英国有意投资中国的每一个地区，并辩称他希望这些投资于“一带一路”项目以复兴历史商道的资金将会改善新疆的状况。
“I think it’s actually much better that we engage and, after all, one of the things we can bring to Xinjiang is economic development, rising prosperity and higher living standards,” he told the BBC.
他向英国广播公司(BBC)表示：“我认为我们参与进去其实要好得多，毕竟，我们能为新疆带来的一样东西就是经济发展、日益的繁荣和生活水平提高。”
Privately, British officials were more blunt. “It’s no good saying sorry, we’re not going there, and then turn up in 10 years’ time and find there’s a huge German skyscraper in the middle of Urumqi,” said one.
英国官员私下里更为直言不讳。一位官员表示：“说不好意思、我们不到那儿去了，结果十年后再去，发现在乌鲁木齐市中心矗立着一座巨大的德国摩天大楼——这有什么好？”
Mr Osborne denies his trip to Xinjiang is a sign that he endorses China’s security crackdown and says he raised human rights issues privately with his hosts during meetings in Beijing on Monday.
奥斯本否认此次新疆之旅表明他认可中国为保障社会安全而展开的打压，并表示，周一在北京与东道主会晤期间，他私下里提出了人权问题。
By visiting parts of China that do not normally feature on the diplomatic circuit, Mr Osborne also hopes to persuade Chinese investors to look beyond London and put money into his “northern powerhouse” project in the north of England.
奥斯本还希望，通过访问中国一些通常不在外国要人访华行程上的地区，可以说服中国投资者将目光投向伦敦以外的英国其他地区、并投资于他在英格兰北部的“北方经济引擎”(northern powerhouse)项目。
The Treasury announced that a group based in Xinjiang, the Hualing Industry and Trade Group, had agreed to invest money “to unlock three major property projects in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield with a gross value of 1.2bn”. The statement did not say how much money Hualing was putting into the scheme, which is led by the UK’s Scarborough Group; a Treasury official later said it was 60m.
英国财政部宣布，中国新疆华凌工贸集团(Hualing Industry and Trade Group)已同意投入资金“启动曼彻斯特、利兹和谢菲尔德的3个大型房地产项目，项目总价值为12亿英镑”。该声明并未透露华凌向该项目投入多少资金——该项目由英国斯卡伯勒集团(Scarborough Group)牵头；英国财政部一位官员后来表示，华凌投资了6000万英镑。
Some doubt whether British companies will win construction contracts in Xinjiang, a region with sensitive security issues, although Mr Osborne is keen for investment to flow both ways.
一些人怀疑英国公司能否在存在敏感安全问题的新疆赢得建筑合同，尽管奥斯本热切希望投资能有来有往。
The US administration has been critical of Chinese handling of ethnic tensions in Xinjiang. Speaking last month, Tom Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights, said China was at risk of “conflating terrorism with peaceful expression of dissent or religious belief” in Xinjiang.
美国政府一直对中国处理新疆民族紧张关系的做法持批评态度。负责民主和人权事务的美国助理国务卿汤姆氠利诺夫斯基(Tom Malinowski)上月在发表演讲时表示，在新疆，中国可能会把“恐怖主义与和平表达异见和宗教信仰混为一谈”。