最新书评: 中美之争的真正价值
There is a tendency to view China's policies as part of a long-term strategic design, first for restoring its historic centrality in Asia and ultimately for displacing the U.S. as the world's top power. But as Geoff Dyer observes in his stellar book, 'The Contest of the Century,' the likelier explanation is more banal: Given its rapid economic growth, China is adopting a more expansive vision of its national interests and modernizing its military to match that vision. The challenge is to distinguish between those policies of Beijing that any other rising power would develop and those that could fundamentally alter the postwar global order.
中国的政策往往被视为其长期战略构想的一部分，首先是恢复历史上它在亚洲的中心地位，最后是取代美国成为世界头号大国。然而，依照杰夫・戴尔(Geoff Dyer)在其杰作《世纪之争》(The Contest of the Century)中的评述，较合理的解释要更俗套一些：鉴于其经济飞速发展，中国确定了更广阔的国家利益愿景，并推动军队的现代化以匹配这一愿景。困难在于要将北京那些其他任何崛起强国都会制定的政策与那些会从根本上改变战后世界秩序的政策区分开来。Chinese leaders insist that they will avoid the mistakes that Germany and Japan made in the first half of the 20th century: As Communist Party foreign-policy adviser Zheng Bijian wrote in a 2005 Foreign Affairs magazine article, Beijing would achieve a 'peaceful rise' by transcending 'ideological differences to strive for peace, development, and cooperation with all countries of the world.' Today that optimism seems misplaced. The more China attempts to push the U.S. back into the Pacific Ocean and resolve its territorial disputes, the more it stimulates the formation of a countervailing coalition in the Asia-Pacific.
中国领导人坚称，他们会避免德国和日本在20世纪前半叶犯下的错误。如中共政府外交政策智囊郑必坚2005年在《外交政策》(Foreign Affairs)杂志一篇文章中所言，北京会超越“意识形态上的分歧，争取和平、发展以及与世界各国的合作”，以此实现“和平崛起”。如今，这一乐观态度似乎并不合时宜。中国越是试图推动美国重返太平洋地区、越是试图解决其领土争端，就越会促成亚太地区对抗性力量的形成。Mr. Dyer, a journalist for the Financial Times, cites three recent events that have shaped China's current strategic predicament. In May 2009, the regime resurrected its 'nine-dash line'-a self-declared maritime border that encompasses some 80% of the South China Sea-in a communiqué to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Then, in 2010, China stood on the sidelines after North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors. And when in the same year Tokyo detained the captain of a Chinese trawler that had collided with two Japanese military vessels in Japanese-controlled waters, Beijing imposed an embargo on the export of rare earths to Japan.
戴尔为《金融时报》(Financial Times)的记者，他引述了造成中国当下战略困境的最近三起事件。2009年5月，在一份提交给联合国秘书长潘基文(Ban Ki-moon)的公报中，中国政府重新采用了“九段线”――这一自行宣告的海域边界线囊括了南海约80%的海域。接下来在2010年，在朝鲜用鱼雷击沉一艘韩国军舰、导致46名船员丧生后，中国又采取了袖手旁观的态度。同一年，在东京方面扣留在日控海域与两艘日本巡逻船相撞的中国拖网渔船的船长后，北京方面实施了禁止向日本出口稀土的禁令。
As Mr. Dyer shows, China's embattled position within the region also stems from immutable factors. It can't change its history as a regional hegemon, which continues to alarm its neighbors. It can't change its size-though former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was remiss to declare at a 2010 regional forum that 'China is a big country, and other countries are small countries, and that is just a fact.' And it can't change its location: Mr. Dyer notes that it is encircled by 'successful and ambitious states who also believe this is their time.'
如戴尔所阐明的那样，中国在该地区四面受困的处境也源自一些不可改变的因素。它无法改变其地区霸主的历史，而且这一点还继续警示着它的邻居们。它也无法改变它的规模――中国前外交部长杨洁篪在2010年的一个区域论坛上曾不小心地宣称“中国是大国，其他国家是小国，这是事实”。此外，中国也无法改变它的地理位置：戴尔指出它被“同样认为这是属于它们的时代的雄心勃勃的繁荣强国”所包围。Complicating matters is that numerous voices now shape China's foreign policy. Its leaders confront 'powerful vested interests within the party-state,' the author writes, as well as 'an officer class that has its own hawkish take on global affairs' and the 'nationalist views of a rising middle class.' There are marked divisions within these factions, and, because of the opaque nature of party decision-making, Beijing's conduct can appear malign and conspiratorial even when it isn't.
让事情更复杂的是，现在对中国外交政策有影响力的意见有许许多多。戴尔写道，它的领导人要面对“这个党治国家内强大的既得利益集团”，以及“一个在国际事务上持有自己的强硬立场的军官阶层”。这些派系之间存在明显的分化，另外也由于党内决策的不透明性，北京的举动会显得邪恶和诡秘，即便事实并非如此。Momentum also undermines China's regional charm offensives. After three and a half decades of torrid growth, it has the world's second largest economy and is the largest trading country. Progress of such rapidity and scale is an invitation to scrutiny. China's leaders are acutely aware, moreover, that their legitimacy depends in large part on continuing to improve their citizens' livelihoods. The frenetic pace at which China is securing vital commodities around the world reflects this anxiety. As environmental degradation worsens, resource shortages grow and demographics deteriorate, China will become more dependent on outsiders to sustain its growth. Where its leaders discern vulnerability, however, many others see a Chinese dragon trying to buy the world.
发展势头也削弱了中国的区域魅力攻势。在经历35年左右的狂热发展后，它成为了全球第二大经济体，同时也是全球最大贸易国。如此迅速和大规模的发展自然会招致审视的眼光。而且中国的领导人敏锐地意识到，他们的正统地位在很大程度上有赖于继续改善国民的生计。中国在全球各地获取重要大宗商品的疯狂速度反映了这种焦虑感。由于环境恶化加剧，资源缺口扩大且人口状况恶化，中国将变得更依赖外界来维持其发展。然而，在其领导人察觉出弱点的同时，许多人看到的却是企图买下世界的一条中国龙。But China's myriad challenges don't guarantee U.S. victory in the contest referred to by Mr. Dyer's title. According to an 'iron rule' that he says governs the region's geopolitics, Washington will lose if it tries to enlist China's neighbors in an effort to contain its rise. Instead, the U.S. must establish 'a convincing long-term economic agenda' that binds the American economy to that of the Far East. Thus stagnation in negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he writes, 'would be an enormous setback to the U.S.'s efforts to demonstrate that it has more to offer Asia than just its navy.' But demonstrating staying power carries a significant risk of its own: If China's neighbors conclude that the U.S. will protect them no matter what contingency arises, they may opt to free-ride on U.S. security guarantees rather than develop their own capabilities.
尽管如此，中国面临的无数挑战并不保证美国就能在戴尔著作标题所指的竞争中获胜。根据戴尔指出的支配该地区地缘政治的一条“铁律”，如果华盛顿方面试图借力中国的邻国来抑制它的崛起，则必将失败。反之，美国必须制定将美国经济与远东地区的经济绑定在一起的“令人信服的长期经济议程”。他还写道，因此关于跨太平洋伙伴关系的谈判的僵局“对美国想证明它除了海军之外还能为亚洲提供更多的行动会是个巨大的阻碍”。另外，展示持久力本身也具有重大风险：如果中国的邻居们推断无论发生什么意外事件美国都会保护它们，它们或许会坐享美国的安全保证，而不去提高它们自己的能力。Mr. Dyer is optimistic that the U.S. will 'win': that is, 'retain its role at the center of international affairs.' But he doesn't subscribe to unwarranted zero-sum logic. Given that China wasn't too long ago an isolated, impoverished backwater, vulnerable to predation from without and collapse from within, becoming the second most important pillar of the international system would scarcely constitute a 'loss.'
戴尔对美国能“获胜”，即“保留其在国际事务中心的角色”很乐观。不过，他并不认同毫无理据的零和逻辑。鉴于中国在不久前还是一个受孤立的贫穷落后的国家、易于遭到外部掠夺并容易从内部分崩离析，成为国际体系的第二大支柱肯定算不上“失败”。The real prize in U.S.-China competition would be the 'new model of great-power relations' that President Obama and President Xi have proposed. One hopes that historians of a century hence will commend the two countries for inaugurating a new era of international relations, one in which a pre-eminent power and its principal challenger were able to both compete and collaborate in service of the global interest.
美国与中国之争的真正价值在于奥巴马总统(Obama)与习近平主席提出的“新型大国关系”。希望这两个国家能因开创一个大国关系的新时代而赢得今后一个世纪的历史学家的称颂。在这样一个时代中，一个实力超群的强国与其主要挑战者均能在竞争与合作中服务于全球利益。
