周四，美国总统特朗普发布了针对中国企业的两项行政命令，第二项行政命令宣称将“禁止与微信及其附属机构相关的任何交易”，命令颁布一小时后，游戏玩家们都吓坏了！
President Trump’s two executive orders targeting Chinese companies went public just after 6 p.m. Pacific on Thursday.
周四，美国总统特朗普发布了针对中国企业的两项行政命令。
The first went after TikTok, to no one’s surprise. The video app had been the subject of intensifying rhetoric from the Trump administration for weeks. The order declared that all U.S. entities would be banned from doing business with parent company ByteDance starting in 45 days — a deadline that may serve mostly to put a shot clock on Microsoft’s negotiations to buy TikTok.
不出所料的是，第一项命令依旧是针对TikTok的。近几周以来，TikTok一直是特朗普政府管控的焦点。行政命令宣称所有美国实体在45天后都将被禁止与TikTok的母公司字节跳动开展业务。设定这一期限的主要作用可能是让微软及时完成收购TikTok的协商工作。
The second order was a curveball. In a tangle of commas, it prohibited “any transaction that is related to WeChat,” a messaging app ubiquitous in China and used by more than a billion people around the world, with Tencent Holdings, WeChat’s parent company, “or any subsidiary of that entity.”
By 7 p.m., the gamers were freaking out.
第二项行政命令则有些出人意料，宣称将“禁止与微信及其附属机构相关的任何交易”。微信是腾讯公司旗下的一款被广泛使用即时通信工具，在全球有超过10亿的用户。命令颁布后的一小时，游戏玩家们都吓坏了。
Trump, tweeted Noah J. Nelson, “basically just declared war on gamers as a whole. I’m sure that will work out nicely for him.”
沉浸式平台No Proscenium 的创始人Noah J. Nelson发推特称，“特朗普基本上是在向全体游戏玩家宣战，对特朗普而言，（这项命令）肯定效果不错”
In addition to WeChat, Tencent either owns or holds stakes in the largest video game companies in America. Los Angeles’ Riot Games, creator of “League of Legends,” is a fully owned subsidiary of Tencent, and the company owns 40% of Epic Games, which makes the wildly popular “Fortnite.” It also holds 5% stakes in gaming giants Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft, and ownership or investment stakes in a number of other game studios.
除了微信，腾讯还拥有或持有一系列美国最大游戏公司的股份。洛杉矶的拳头游戏（Riot Game），也就是游戏《英雄联盟》的研发公司，目前是腾讯的全资子公司。同时腾讯还持有著名游戏制作团队Epic Games 40%的股份，后者研发出了目前最流行的游戏之一《堡垒之夜》。除此之外，腾讯还持有游戏巨头动视暴雪和育碧5%的股份，以及许多游戏工作室的所有权和股份。
The bulk of the executive order focused on WeChat, laying out a case that the messaging app is a threat to national security.
“Like TikTok, WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users,” the order reads. “This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
The order also says that WeChat tracks Chinese nationals visiting the United States, and censors messages and content that the Chinese government deems politically sensitive, as has been reported by NPR and researchers at the University of Toronto.
美国之所以颁布针对微信的行政命令，主要是因为即时通信工具可能会对国家安全构成威胁。“和TikTok一样，微信会自动从用户处搜集大量的信息，”特朗普颁布的行政命令指出。“中方有权接触app收集的信息，这可能对美国人的个人和财产信息造成威胁。” 指令还指出，美国国家公共电台（NPR）的报道和多伦多大学的研究者表示，微信会追踪访问美国的中国公民，并且对政治敏感信息进行审查。
But the fuzzy phrasing seemed to leave the door open to banning business with any of Tencent’s video game companies. Even though TikTok had been dominating the headlines for weeks, Tencent quickly became a trending topic on Twitter, with panicked gamers predicting a mass uprising in response. The company said it was “reviewing the executive order to get a full understanding.”
但是指令中模糊的措辞又隐含着这样一种可能性，即美国可以禁止任何实体与腾讯的游戏公司开展业务。即使TikTok已经占据新闻头条数周之久，消息一出，腾讯还是迅速成为了推特的热点。有不安的游戏玩家甚至预测：作为对这一指令的反击，可能会出现大规模的抗议。腾讯公司表示，它目前“正在审阅行政命令的潜在后果以便全面理解其对本集团的影响”。
A little after 8 p.m., White House officials offered some reassurance, clarifying that the order was meant to focus only on transactions specifically related to WeChat.
指令颁布的两小时过后，白宫官员做出表态，称这项行政指令只针对与微信有关的交易。
But administration officials have not gone into further detail since, and legal experts say that the ambiguous language — and the provision that the secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, has the power to define the transactions in question in the next 45 days — still leaves room for the government to go after the game studios.
但是此后，政府官员再也没有对此事进行详尽说明。相关法律专家表示，指令中模棱两可的语言意味着美国商务部部长威尔伯·罗斯（Wilbur Ross）有权力在接下来的45天对指令中所涉及的“交易”进行定义，游戏工作室仍有可能会受到这一指令的影响。
“The language is atrocious,” said Bryan Sullivan, partner at Los Angeles law firm Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae, and is ambiguous enough that it could be applied to anybody who transacts business with any company related to Tencent if the secretary of Commerce decided to cast that wide of a net. “I’m sure that the administration would say it’s not meant to do that, but looking at the language of it, there’s definitely a legal argument that it could apply.”
洛杉矶Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae律师事务所合伙人布莱恩·沙利文（Bryan Sullivan）表示“这种表述十分糟糕且含糊不清”，按照这样的说法，商务部部长可以禁止任何与腾讯相关的商业交易。“我觉得政府肯定不会说自己有这个意思，但是就这份指令的措辞上来说，在法律上是有这种可能性的。”
Although a company is typically considered a subsidiary when a parent company holds more than 50% ownership, Sullivan noted that the executive order did not provide a concrete definition, so it could be used to pursue even the companies that Tencent has invested in, such as Snap, Spotify, Universal Music Group and the various video game studios.
大多数情况下，在某公司拥有另一家公司超过50%的股权时，这一公司就被视作另一家公司的母公司。但是Sullivan指出，这次颁布的行政命令并没有提供具体的定义，所以它的效力甚至可以溯及到腾讯所投资的公司，比如Snap，Spotify，环球音乐集团和各类游戏工作室。
“Do I think the secretary of Commerce is going to go to that level?” Sullivan said. “Probably not, but under this executive order he has the power to do that.”
“商务部部长会做到这个地步吗？”Sullivan说，“可能不会，但是在目前的行政指令之下，他的确有权这样做。”
Steven Blickensderfer, a tech and video game-focused attorney with Carlton Fields who also hosts a game-focused legal podcast, said the announcement caught him off guard.
关注科技和游戏的律师Steven Blickensderfer和主持一档游戏相关法律播客的Carlton Fields说，这一消息让他感到措手不及。
“I was as surprised as everyone else at how broadly worded it was, in terms of what you could interpret it to cover,” he said.
“我和所有人一样，对这份指令所使用语言的宽泛程度和可以基于此所做的阐释而感到惊讶。”
Disentangling the Chinese and U.S. gaming markets, the world’s two largest, would be massively difficult, Blickensderfer added.
Blickensderfer补充说，要想使中国和美国这两个世界上最大的游戏市场脱钩是十分困难的。
“Gaming is so closely tied with China,” he said. “This brought the trade war to the gaming industry and made it very real — even though this might be a false alarm, who’s to say that there won’t be another one right behind it?”
“游戏产业与中国的关联非常紧密，“ Blickensderfer说，“这项指令等于是把贸易战带到了游戏领域，即使这一次贸易战并不一定会在游戏领域打响，但谁知道会不会马上就会有另一场到来？”
The confusion around the executive order targeting WeChat doesn’t end with its ambiguous language. The premise underlying both the TikTok and WeChat orders, according to some business and cybersecurity policy analysts, is based more on rhetoric than the specifics of how those apps function.
这项关于微信的行政指令使人困惑，就像它的语言一样。根据一些商业和网络安全政策分析家的说法，在这次针对TikTok和微信的行政命令中，更多是言语上的讨论，而非这些应用程序具体如何运作。
“At a high level, there are real cybersecurity, data privacy and information manipulation questions to ask about WeChat and Chinese apps in general,” said Justin Sherman, a fellow with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. “This is not about that — this has been an intensely politically driven process.”
“从总体上讲，微信和中国的应用程序在网络安全，数据隐私和信息操纵等方面确实有一些可疑之处，”大西洋理事会网络治国计划研究员贾斯汀·谢尔曼（Justin Sherman）说，“但这次不一样，这次行政命令的颁布是一个政治驱动的过程。”
Tencent’s ownership of American game studios has also given rise to genuine political and security concerns. Last year, Activision Blizzard stripped a professional video game player of his championship title after he spoke out in support of Hong Kong protesters, which many saw as a sop to its growing Chinese user base and Tencent’s investment stake. And a Times investigation found that a number of companies, including Riot Games, created time-tracking surveillance tools for Chinese players in response to a Chinese government initiative to reduce the time spent by children on video games.
腾讯对美国游戏工作室的所有权也引起了政治和安全方面的担忧。去年，在职业游戏玩家表示了对香港示威者的支持后，动视暴雪剥夺了其冠军头衔。许多人认为动视暴雪的这一举动是因为不断增长的中国用户和来自腾讯的投资。一项《泰晤士报》的调查发现包括Riot Games在内的许多公司为中国玩家创建了游戏时间追踪工具，以响应中国政府减少儿童电子游戏时间的倡议。
Whatever the real security issues, Sherman said, a surprise executive order is a poor substitute for well-informed policy. If TikTok, WeChat or other Tencent companies’ data policies were a concern, Sherman said, federal lawmakers could “pass a strong federal privacy law so that no company can go collect absurd amounts of information about users” or “completely swing elections with microtargeted advertising.”
谢尔曼说，不论真正的安全问题是什么，特朗普这种出人意料的行政指令是无法代替健全而清晰的政策的。如果Tiktok、微信和腾讯其他公司的数据政策令人担心，联邦立法可以“通过强有力的联邦隐私法以使任何公司都不能大量收集用户的信息”或者“通过精准投放广告来左右选举。”
“Even if you like the ban on TikTok or WeChat,” Sherman said, “you should still care about the process by which these decisions are made.”
“即使你支持禁掉TikTok和微信，”谢尔曼说，“你仍然应该关心做出这些决定的过程。”
And the Trump administration’s unusual approach to regulating TikTok and WeChat, let alone the rest of Tencent’s holdings, could have ripple effects far beyond the Washington-Beijing relationship.
特朗普政府采取了不同寻常的方式来监管TikTok和微信，更不用说腾讯的其他控股公司了。这一举动所产生的连锁反应可能会远远超出中美关系的范畴。
“We need to be careful here from a diplomacy standpoint,” said Theresa Payton, former White House chief information officer and now chief executive of Fortalice Solutions, a cybersecurity consulting firm. “What we don’t want to do is actually create a chilling effect. The rest of the world is watching,” and might reach the conclusion that simply operating in the U.S. presents the risk that their business might be shut down or forced to sell on a tight deadline whenever they come under scrutiny.
白宫前首席信息官，现网络咨询公司Fortalice Solutions的CEO 特蕾莎·佩顿（Theresa Payton）说：“从外交的角度来看，我们需要谨慎。我们不想造成寒蝉效应，世界上的其他国家和地区也在密切的关注着这件事。”特朗普这一行政命令的颁布可能会让其他国家认为；只要在美国做生意，他们就可能会面临着巨大的风险。一旦他们被美国政府审查，就要在紧迫的期限内关闭或强制出售他们的业务。
“Forty-five days to hammer out a deal and make the regulator sitting at the table happy in the best of times is hard. I can’t even imagine,” Payton added. Microsoft is exploring buying TikTok, but no mention has been made of forcing a sale of WeChat or other Tencent properties to an American company, since the company had barely entered the discussion before the executive orders were published Thursday.
“45天内就要敲定一笔交易并且让监管机构满意是十分困难的，我甚至都无法想象，”佩顿补充道。微软正在寻求收购TikTok，但是目前还没有说要强迫将微信或者腾讯其他业务出售给美国公司。在这次行政命令公布之前，腾讯公司都不在讨论范畴之内。
Without knowing how the secretary of Commerce will define the terms of the executive order, it remains impossible to predict whether Tencent’s holdings beyond WeChat will be affected — perhaps because the drafters of the executive order hadn’t even thought through the implications of what they were writing, one business analyst said.
在不知道商务部部长将如何定义行政命令的具体含义之前，仍然无法预测在微信之外，腾讯的其他控股公司会不会受到影响。一位商业分析师表示，行政命令的起草者可能都没有考虑过他们写的东西意味着什么。
“It is possible that the tiny part of the American government that’s obsessing on this issue doesn’t even know” that Riot Games and other gaming and technology companies are owned by Tencent, said Mike Vorhaus, a video game industry consultant. “I expect there to be a lot of lawsuits.”
电子游戏行业顾问迈克·沃豪斯（Mike Vorhaus）表示：“对这个问题十分迷恋的一小部分美国政府人员可能都不知道Riot Games和一些游戏科技公司实际上归腾讯所有。“我预测未来可能会有很多法律诉讼。”（本文由西迪斯重庆翻译公司整理）
