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| WASHINGTON — Tom Perriello saw it coming but could do nothing to stop it. André Kapanga too. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched helplessly as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines. | 华盛顿——汤姆·佩里罗知道会这样，但无能为力。安德烈·卡潘加也是一样。尽管发出了紧急的电子邮件、电话和个人请求，他们还是无助地看着一家得到中国政府支持的公司从美国人手中夺走了世界最大的钴矿之一的所有权。 |
| It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in Congo, which figures prominently in China’s grip on the global cobalt supply. The metal has been among several essential raw materials needed for the production of electric car batteries — and is critical to retiring the combustion engine and weaning the world off climate-changing fossil fuels. | 那是2016年，总部位于亚利桑那州的矿业巨头麦克莫兰自由港公司达成了出售该矿产的协议。该矿产位于刚果民主共和国（下称“刚果”），在中国对全球钴供应的控制中占有重要地位。这种金属是生产电动汽车电池所需的几种重要原材料之一，对于淘汰内燃机和令世界不再依赖导致气候变化的化石燃料至关重要。 |
| Perriello, a top U.S. diplomat in Africa at the time, sounded alarms in the State Department. Kapanga, then the mine’s Congolese general manager, all but begged the American ambassador in Congo to intercede. | 当时的美国驻非洲高级外交官佩里罗向国务院发出了警报。该矿的刚果总经理卡潘加几乎是在乞求美国驻刚果大使出面调解。 |
| “This is a mistake,” Kapanga recalled warning him, suggesting the Americans were squandering generations of relationship building in Congo, the source of more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt. | “这是一个错误，”卡潘加回忆他曾这样警告佩里罗，美国人正在浪费几代人在刚果建立的关系。世界上三分之二以上的钴来自这个国家。 |
| Presidents starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower had sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, including transport planes and other military equipment, to the mineral-rich nation. Richard Nixon intervened, as did the State Department under Hillary Clinton, to sustain the relationship. And Freeport-McMoRan had invested billions of its own — before it sold the mine to a Chinese company. | 从德怀特·D·艾森豪威尔开始，历任总统向这个矿藏丰富的国家提供了数亿美元的援助，包括运输机和其他军事装备。为了维持两国关系，理查德·尼克松总统以及希拉里·克林顿领导下的国务院都进行了干预。麦克莫兰自由港公司在将该矿出售给一家中国公司之前也曾投资了数十亿美元。 |
| Not only did the Chinese purchase of the mine, known as Tenke Fungurume, go through uninterrupted during the final months of the Obama administration, but four years later, during the twilight of the Trump presidency, so did the purchase of an even more impressive cobalt reserve that Freeport-McMoRan put on the market. The buyer was the same company, China Molybdenum. | 在奥巴马政府的最后几个月里，中国对这一名为腾科–丰谷鲁美的矿产的收购一直未受阻碍，而且四年后，在特朗普总统任期的尾声，中国还在持续收购麦克莫兰自由港公司挂牌出售的一家更大的钴矿。买家是同一家公司——洛阳钼业。 |
| China’s pursuit of Congo’s cobalt wealth is part of a disciplined playbook that has given it an enormous head start over the United States in the race to dominate the electrification of the auto industry. | 中国对刚果钴矿财富的收购，遵循的是一种严格的策略，正是这种策略使得中国在主导汽车行业电动化的竞争中大大领先于美国。 |
| But an investigation by The New York Times revealed a hidden history of the cobalt acquisitions in which the United States essentially surrendered the resources to China, failing to safeguard decades of diplomatic and financial investments in Congo. | 但《纽约时报》的调查揭示了一段不为人知的钴矿收购历史，在这些收购中，美国本质上是把这些资源拱手让给了中国，未能保护在刚果数十年的外交和金融投资。 |
| Perriello, who has since left government, said he learned of the plan in 2016 to sell Tenke Fungurume not long after touring the mine. The owner had a tarnished reputation for its operations in other countries. But he was convinced that American ownership was good not only for the United States but for the people of Congo. Freeport-McMoRan got largely favorable reviews on the ground, was employing thousands of Congolese and had built schools and health care clinics and provided drinking water. | 佩里罗后来离开了政府，他说，他在2016年参观了腾科–丰谷鲁美矿后不久就得知了它的出售计划。该矿的所有者因其在其他国家的经营活动而名誉受损。但他确信，美国对该矿的所有权不仅对美国有利，对刚果人民也有利。当地对麦克莫兰自由港公司的评价大体是正面的，它雇佣了数以千计的刚果人，建造了学校和医疗诊所，并提供饮用水。 |
| “What can we do?” Perriello recalled asking Linda Thomas-Greenfield — who was then an assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Africa and is now President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations — about keeping the mine under American control. Perriello said he raised the issue with the National Security Council as well. (A spokesperson for Thomas-Greenfield said she remembered the sale of the mine but not the conversation with Perriello, and several members of the NSC also said they could not recall such a conversation.) | “我们该怎么办？”佩里罗回忆，他曾要求琳达·托马斯-格林菲尔德——她当时是负责非洲事务的助理国务卿，现在是乔·拜登总统的驻联合国大使——让该矿处于美国控制之下。佩里罗说，他也向国家安全委员会提出了这个问题。（托马斯-格林菲尔德的发言人表示，她记得出售该矿的事，但不记得曾与佩里罗对话。国家安全委员会的几名成员也表示，他们不记得有过这样的对话。） |
| The only serious bidders were Chinese companies, leaving no doubt about the consequences of standing by. “They were able to move swiftly and quicker than anybody else could,” Kathleen L. Quirk, Freeport-McMoRan’s president, said in an interview. “So we got the deal done.” | 中国企业是唯一认真对待此事的竞购者，这让人们毫不怀疑袖手旁观的后果。“他们的行动比其他人都要迅速敏捷，”麦克莫兰自由港公司总裁凯瑟琳·L·奎克在接受采访时说。“所以我们达成了交易。” |
| Freeport-McMoRan had been determined to sell. The company, one of the world’s largest copper-mining outfits, had made a catastrophically bad bet on the oil and gas industry just before oil prices tanked and the world began to shift to renewable energy. With debt piling up, the company saw no option but to unload its Congo operations. | 麦克莫兰自由港公司一直想出售。该公司是世界上最大的铜矿开采企业之一，在油价暴跌、世界开始转向可再生能源之前，公司在石油和天然气行业押下了灾难性的错误赌注。随着债务堆积，公司认为别无选择，只能剥离其刚果业务。 |
| The American response, in essence, was nothing because it was a straight financial transaction. The country has no oversight of transactions by American companies abroad. | 美国的反应实际上是没有反应，因为这是一个单纯的财务交易。美国对美国公司在海外的交易没有监管。 |
| The crisis, exposing significant blind spots of U.S. leaders, was just the kind of opportunity the Chinese government excels at exploiting, according to previously unreported documents and emails and interviews with diplomats, mining executives, government officials and others in China, Congo and the United States. | 根据此前未被报道的文件和电子邮件，以及对中国、刚果和美国的外交官、矿企高管、政府官员和其他人士的采访，这场危机暴露了美国领导人的重大盲点，而这正是中国政府擅长利用的机会。 |
| Over the past year, as the clean energy transition has accelerated, the U.S. government and the private sector have moved more rapidly to recover from past mistakes, scouring the world for new cobalt supplies and deploying cobalt-free batteries in some shorter-range electric cars. | 过去一年里，随着清洁能源转型的加速，美国政府和私营部门更快地采取行动纠正过去的错误，在世界各地寻找新的钴供应，并在一些短程电动汽车中使用无钴电池。 |
| But all that falls far short of Chinese efforts to take over resources critical to a green future, including cobalt, lithium and others. | 但所有这些都远远比不上中国为夺取钴、锂等对绿色未来至关重要的资源所做的努力。 |
| Cold War Gamesmanship | 冷战的花招 |
| Nixon stood outside the White House with the first lady one morning in August 1970. President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire was about to pay a visit. | 1970年8月的一个早晨，尼克松和第一夫人站在白宫外。扎伊尔总统蒙博托·塞塞·塞科即将访问。 |
| It had been a decade since Zaire, now Congo, had secured independence from Belgium, and as the leader of a country abundant in natural resources, Mobutu found himself with considerable global clout. | 扎伊尔就是现在的刚果民主共和国，当时它从比利时独立出去已经有十年了，作为一个自然资源丰富的国家的领导人，蒙博托发现自己拥有相当大的全球影响力。 |
| Not only did he control those resources, but he had emerged as a key intermediary for the United States in its efforts to keep the Soviet Union from making inroads in Africa. | 他不仅控制了这些资源，而且在美国阻止苏联入侵非洲的行动中，他成为了一个关键的中间人。 |
| Access to minerals and metals in Congo had been a top priority for the United States since at least World War II. Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 urging him to stockpile Congolese uranium, used in the first atomic bombs. | 至少从第二次世界大战以来，获取刚果的矿产和金属一直是美国的首要任务。阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦在1939年写信给美国总统富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福，敦促他储存刚果的铀，用于制造第一批原子弹。 |
| By the mid-1960s, the CIA had set up one of its most extensive operations in the country, secretly bankrolling a small army of mercenaries and Congolese troops. The agency ran missions with the help of U.S. warplanes to suppress Soviet-backed rebels. | 到1960年代中期，美国中央情报局在刚果展开了大规模行动，秘密资助一支由雇佣兵和刚果军人组成的小型军队。该机构在美国战机的帮助下执行任务，镇压苏联支持的叛军。 |
| Mobutu, a former army sergeant who would become a corrupt dictator, saw the Americans as an ideal partner in his bid to grow the country’s mining wealth. | 蒙博托曾是一名陆军中士，后来成为一个腐败的独裁者，他把美国人视为他发展该国矿业财富的理想伙伴。 |
| With an eye to developing Tenke Fungurume, he reached out to a prominent New York diamond merchant named Maurice Tempelsman, according to a series of now declassified cables, to discuss giving him mining rights in the area. | 根据一系列现已解密的电报，为了开发腾科–丰谷鲁美，他联系了纽约著名钻石商人莫里斯·坦佩尔斯曼，讨论授予他该地区的开采权。 |
| But just before his trip to Washington in August 1970, Mobutu made a surprise announcement: He had decided to contract a Belgian company to develop the mine. Washington went into crisis mode as it tried to wrestle back the concession, and its generosity knew no bounds. | 但就在1970年8月前往华盛顿之前，蒙博托突然宣布：他决定与一家比利时公司签约开发该矿。为了夺回特许权，华盛顿进入了一掷千金的危机处理模式。 |
| “Whatever Mobutu wants, give it to him,” Herman J. Cohen, an American diplomat in Congo at the time, recalled Nixon signaling to his administration. | “蒙博托想要什么就给他什么，”时任美国驻刚果外交官的赫尔曼·J·科恩回忆尼克松向蒙博托政府发出了这样的信号。 |
| Hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid had been sent to Mobutu. Now Nixon agreed to give him several C-130 transport planes. | 当时美国已向蒙博托提供了数亿美元的援助。后来尼克松又同意再给他几架C-130运输机。 |
| The campaign reached a tipping point at a black-tie dinner for Mobutu at the White House, according to Cohen. | 科恩说，在白宫为蒙博托举行的一场正式晚宴上，这场争夺迎来了转折。 |
| After the meal, Tempelsman took Mobutu for a private boat ride on the Potomac. Word soon came that the Americans were getting the mining concession. | 宴后，坦佩尔斯曼带着蒙博托乘船在波托马克河上游览。很快传来消息，美国人得到了开采权。 |
| A ‘Grand Reopening’ | “盛大的重新开张” |
| Mark Mollison, a mining engineer from New York City, climbed into a Toyota Land Cruiser in southeastern Congo, where he had traveled to visit Tenke Fungurume. It was by then an abandoned construction site. | 来自纽约市的采矿工程师马克·莫里森在刚果东南部登上了一辆丰田陆巡，他曾前往那里参观腾科–丰谷鲁美。当时还是一个废弃的建筑工地。 |
| Mollison was amazed. He saw hilltops with bald spots where copper and cobalt poked through the surface. | 莫里森大吃一惊。他看到山顶上有一些光秃秃的地方，铜和钴从山顶表面露出来。 |
| “The ore was 10 times as rich as what we were mining in Arizona,” Mollison recalled. | “这里的矿石含量是我们在亚利桑那州开采矿山的10倍，”莫里森回忆。 |
| It was the late 1990s, and Mollison belonged to a new wave of mining executives who had arrived to pick up the pieces left by the Tempelsman group two decades earlier. | 那是1990年代后期，莫里森是新一波矿业高管的一员，他们来到这里收拾坦佩尔斯曼那群人20年前留下的残局。 |
| After spending $250 million, the group had pulled out when it ran into a series of hurdles, including anti-government rebels who shut down a railroad needed to ship the cobalt and copper to the sea. | 在花费了2.5亿美元后，他们因为遇到一系列障碍而退出，其中包括反政府叛乱分子关闭了将钴和铜运送到海港所需的铁路。 |
| Kissinger, the secretary of state, helped craft a cable to apologize to the Congolese government in January 1976, explaining that the United States “deeply regrets” the “mothballing” of the project. | 1976年1月，国务卿基辛格帮助撰写了一封电报，向刚果政府道歉，解释说美国对“封存”该项目“深表遗憾”。 |
| Interest rekindled many years later after Mobutu was overthrown. The rebel leader, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, had recently seized valuable land near Tenke and Fungurume, the two towns that gave the mine its name. | 多年后，蒙博托被推翻，人们的兴趣重新燃起。叛军领袖洛朗-德西雷·卡比拉那时候夺取了腾科和丰谷鲁美附近的宝贵土地，该矿就是以这两个城镇命名的。 |
| “Everybody thought, 'Boy, this is the grand reopening, a new awakening of Congo,'” Mollison said. | 莫里森说：“每个人都认为，‘哇，这是一场盛大的重新开张，是刚果的新觉醒。’” |
| Western mining executives and their Wall Street bankers arrived in the region. | 西方矿业高管和他们的华尔街银行家来到了这里。 |
| The investors gathered at a hotel as Kabila’s representatives secured financial commitments for mining access. A memo written by one banker summed up Kabila’s perspective: “Rules of the game: you give and I give.” | 投资者聚集在一家酒店，卡比拉的代表要得到采矿权的资金承诺。一位银行家撰写的备忘录总结了卡比拉的观点：“游戏规则：你给钱，我给矿。” |
| Lundin Group, a Canadian mining company, was so determined to seal a deal that it agreed to give the rebels $50 million. | 加拿大矿业公司伦丁集团下定决心达成协议，同意向叛军提供5000万美元。 |
| Mollison’s job, when he arrived several months later, was to evaluate if his company, now called Freeport-McMoRan, should partner with Lundin to finish what Tempelsman had started at Tenke Fungurume. Freeport-McMoRan would later publicize that undertaking as the biggest private investment ever in Congo. | 莫里森几个月后到达那里，他的工作是评估他的公司——现在已经改名叫麦克莫兰自由港——是否应该与伦丁集团合作，以完成坦佩尔斯曼在腾科–丰谷鲁美开始的工作。麦克莫兰自由港后来将这项工作宣传为刚果有史以来最大的私人投资。 |
| “What’s this place going to need?” Mollison recalled wondering. “Electric power. Lots of it. Roads. Plenty of water.” | “这个地方将需要什么？”莫里森回忆起他的思考。“电力。大量电力。道路。大量的水。” |
| Freeport-McMoRan eventually landed a controlling 57.75% stake in the mine, while Lundin got 24.75%. Congo’s state mining enterprise, Gécamines, kept 17.5%. | 麦克莫兰自由港最终获得了该矿57.75%的控股权，伦丁获得了24.75%。刚果国家矿业总公司(Gécamines)持有17.5%的股份。 |
| By the end of 2007, after yet another civil war in Congo, the project got fully underway. | 到2007年底，在刚果又一次内战之后，该项目全面展开。 |
| Freeport-McMoRan went on a building spree. It helped construct a highway so cobalt and copper could be exported to other parts of Africa. It spent $215 million to refurbish an aging hydroelectric plant. | 麦克莫兰自由港进行了一场基建狂欢。它帮助修建了一条高速公路，这样一来钴和铜便可以出口到非洲其他地区。它花费了2.15亿美元来翻新一座老化的水力发电站。 |
| “It was very impressive,” said Pierrot Kitobo Sambisaya, who worked as a metallurgist at the mine for a decade. | “这令人印象非常深刻，”在该矿担任了十年冶金师的皮埃罗·基托博·桑比萨亚说。 |
| Freeport-McMoRan had developed one of the most modern and productive cobalt and copper mines in the world. | 麦克莫兰自由港开发了世界上最现代化、产量最高的钴矿和铜矿之一。 |
| But Freeport-McMoRan made a monumental blunder. Instead of doubling down on mining, it ventured into fossil fuels, spending $20 billion in 2012 to buy two oil and gas companies. | 但他们犯了一个巨大的错误。它没有加强采矿，而是冒险进入化石燃料领域，在2012年斥资200亿美元收购了两家石油和天然气公司。 |
| When oil prices plummeted, Freeport-McMoRan found itself mired in debt. | 当油价暴跌时，麦克莫兰自由港发现自己深陷债务泥潭。 |
| “It breaks my heart to do it,” Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoRan’s CEO, told Wall Street analysts in May 2016 when he announced the company would sell Tenke Fungurume. | 公司首席执行官理查德·阿克森在2016年5月宣布将出售腾科–丰谷鲁美矿。他告诉华尔街分析师：“这件事让我心痛不已。” |
| The top bidder was China Molybdenum, which offered $2.65 billion. | 洛阳钼业以26.5亿美元成为最高出价者。 |
| The news troubled executives at the mine, including Kapanga, the general manager, who had also worked as a Congolese presidential adviser and diplomat. He phoned the American ambassador, James Swan. | 这一消息令该矿的高管感到不安，其中包括总经理卡潘加，他还曾担任刚果总统顾问和外交官。他打电话给时任美国大使詹姆斯·斯旺。 |
| “Tenke Fungurume is the jewel in the crown,” Kapanga said he told Swan, worried the United States was inexplicably letting go of its biggest private investment in Congo. Swan declined to comment when contacted by The New York Times. | 卡潘加说，他告诉斯旺，“腾科–丰谷鲁美是皇冠上的明珠，”他担心美国会莫名其妙地放弃其在刚果的最大私人投资。当《纽约时报》联系斯旺时，他拒绝置评。 |
| The focus at the time for American diplomats in Congo centered on trying to urge President Joseph Kabila out of office. He had taken over after his father was assassinated in 2001 and spent much of the next 15 years looting millions of dollars from the public treasury. | 当时，驻刚果的美国外交官关心的是促成约瑟夫·卡比拉总统的下台。他在2001年父亲被暗杀后接任，并在接下来15年的大部分时间一直在侵吞国库资产。 |
| No Lessons Learned | 没有吸取教训 |
| The sale of Tenke Fungurume closed in November 2016. It drew little attention in the United States outside the financial news media. | 腾科–丰谷鲁美矿的出售于2016年11月成交。除了财经新闻媒体的报道之外，它在美国几乎没有引起关注。 |
| Early in his administration, President Donald Trump signaled that challenging China’s efforts to dominate mineral supplies might be a major focus. His administration issued reports on cobalt and the potential for supply shortfalls, taking note of the Tenke Fungurume sale. | 唐纳德·特朗普总统在执政初期曾表示，挑战中国主导矿产供应的努力可能是一个主要关注点。他的政府发布了关于钴和供应短缺可能性的报告，并提到了腾科–丰谷鲁美矿的出售。 |
| Nonetheless, history repeated itself. | 尽管如此，历史还是重演了。 |
| Freeport-McMoRan still owned an undeveloped site that contains one of the world’s most important untapped sources of cobalt. | 麦克莫兰自由港仍然拥有一个未开发的矿区，包含世界上最重要的未开发钴资源之一。 |
| When the company indicated late last year that it intended to sell the site, known as Kisanfu, there was next to no reaction from the U.S. government. | 当该公司去年底表示打算出售名为基桑富的矿区时，美国政府几乎没有做出任何反应。 |
| “Nobody even talked about this,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, who until January served as the Commerce Department assistant secretary in charge of tracking critical mineral supplies. “It is horrible.” | “甚至没有人谈论过这件事，”1月卸任的前商务部助理部长、负责跟踪关键矿产供应的纳扎克·尼卡赫塔尔说。“这太可怕了。” |
| The sale, to China Molybdenum for $550 million, went ahead as announced, a month before Trump left office. With it, the last major U.S. investment in Congo’s cobalt and copper mines evaporated. | 洛阳钼业以5.5亿美元达成这笔交易，在特朗普卸任前一个月如期成交。至此，美国对刚果钴矿和铜矿的最后一笔主要投资也化为乌有。 |
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