轉自：新世紀，文章內容並不代表本網立場和觀點。

特朗普、習近平

編者按：今年2月份，美國前國務院亞太事務助理國務卿坎貝爾與前副總統拜登的副國家安全顧問雷特納，在美國《外交事務》發表了一篇名為《中國重估算：北京是怎樣讓美國期望落空的》的文章。文章雖然不似特朗普政府的《國安戰略報告》般”咄咄逼人”，但其行文，同樣以美國視角審視中國的發展道路，並對此表達出”失望”。閱讀此文，也能看出目前美國對華戰略的深層邏輯。

以下是原文：

美國一直對自己決定中國路線的能力有著超乎尋常的自信。它的野心一次又一次地落空。二戰後，美國駐中國特使喬治·馬歇爾(George Marshall)希望在中國內戰中促成民族主義者與共產黨之間的和平。在朝鮮戰爭期間，杜魯門政府認為它可以阻止中國的軍隊越過鴨綠江。約翰遜政府認為，中國政府最終將限制其在越南的參与。在每一個例子中，中國的現實都顛覆了美國的期望。

隨著美國總統理查德·尼克鬆(Richard Nixon)對中國的開放，華盛頓方面做出了迄今為止最大、最樂觀的決定。尼克鬆和他的國家安全顧問亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger)都認為，中美和解將會在北京和莫斯科之間造成不和，而且隨著時間的推移，會改變中國對美國的看法。1967年秋天，尼克鬆在這本雜誌上寫道:”在中國改變之前，世界是不可能安全的。”因此，我們的目標，即我們能夠影響事件的程度，應該是引起變化。從那以後，不斷深化商業、外交和文化聯繫的設想，將改變中國的內部發展和外部行為，這一直是美國戰略的基石。即使是那些對中國的意圖持懷疑態度的美國政策圈子裡的人，也仍然相信，美國的實力和霸權能夠輕而易舉地把中國塑造成美國喜歡的樣子。

近半個世紀以來，尼克鬆邁出了走向和解的第一步，這一記錄越來越清晰地表明，美國政府再次對其塑造中國發展軌跡的力量抱有太多信心。政策辯論的各個方面都出現了錯誤：自由貿易者和金融家們預見到了中國不可避免的、日益開放的開放，他們認為北京的雄心將被國際社會的更大互動所征服，而鷹派認為中國的力量將被永久的美國主導地位所削弱。

胡蘿蔔和大棒都沒有像預測的那樣影響中國。外交和商業接觸並沒有帶來政治和經濟上的開放。美國的軍事力量和地區平衡都沒有阻止北京方面尋求取代美國的核心部分。主導系統。自由主義的國際秩序未能像預期的那樣有力地吸引或束縛中國。相反，中國一直在堅持自己的路線，在這一過程中表現出了一系列美國人的期望。

這一現實讓美國對中國的態度有了清醒的反思。這種重新評估有很多風險;當前框架的扞衛者將警告，不要破壞雙邊關係的穩定，或引發一場新的冷戰。但是，要建立一個更強大、更可持續的方法，與北京方面的關係，中國政府需要誠實地認識到，有多少基本的假設是錯誤的。在整個意識形態領域，我們美國外交政策界一直對中國的經濟、國內政治、安全、乃至全球秩序抱有很大的期望，儘管他們已經積累了證據。建立在這種期望上的政策未能以我們的意圖或希望改變中國。

市場的力量

與中國進行更大的商業互動，應該是中國經濟逐步而穩定的自由化。美國總統喬治·h·w·布希(George H. W. Bush)在1990年制定的《國家安全戰略》(National Security Strategy)稱，加強與世界的關係”對中國恢復經濟改革道路的前景至關重要”。這一觀點在幾十年前就佔主導地位。它促使美國決定在上世紀90年代給予中國最惠國貿易地位，以支持其在2001年加入世界貿易組織(World Trade Organization)，在2006年建立高級別經濟對話，並在美國總統奧巴馬(Barack Obama)的領導下談判達成一項雙邊投資協定。

美國和中國之間的商品貿易從1986年的不到80億美元激增到2016年的5780億美元，超過了30倍的增長，這是通貨膨脹的調整。然而，自本世紀初以來，中國的經濟自由化進程陷入停滯。與西方國家的預期相反，中國政府已經在其國家資本主義模式下加倍努力，儘管它已經變得更加富有。與其成為更開放的力量，持續的增長已經使中國共產黨及其國家主導的經濟模式合法化。

美國官員認為，債務、低效率和更先進的經濟的要求將需要進一步的改革。中國官員意識到他們的做法存在問題;2007年，溫家寶總理稱中國經濟”不穩定、不平衡、不協調、不可持續”。”,但中國更激烈的競爭,而不是開放的中國共產黨,要保持對經濟的控制,而是鞏固國有企業,追求產業政策(特別是2025年”中國製造”計劃),旨在促進國家科技龍頭企業在關鍵領域,包括航空航天、生物醫藥、和機器人。儘管一再做出承諾，但北京方面頂住了來自華盛頓和其他地方的壓力，要求為外國公司提供公平競爭的環境。它限制了市場准入，迫使非中國企業在合資和共享技術上簽字，同時向政府支持的國內企業提供投資和補貼。

直到最近，美國的決策者和高管們大多默許這種歧視;潛在的商業利益是如此之大，以至於他們認為用保護主義或制裁來顛覆這種關係是不明智的。相反，他們竭盡全力爭取小的、增加的讓步。但現在，曾經被視為僅僅是與中國做生意的短期挫折，似乎變得更加有害和持久。美國商會(American Chamber of Commerce)去年報告說，10家美國公司中有8家在中國的受歡迎程度低於前幾年，超過60%的公司對中國在未來3年將進一步開放市場的信心幾乎沒有或沒有信心。中國經濟開放的合作和自願性機制總體上是失敗的，包括特朗普政府剛剛啟動的全面經濟對話。

主導地位的威懾

美國的外交政策和美國的軍事力量——胡蘿蔔加大棒——應該能讓北京相信，挑戰美國是不可能的，也不是必要的。美國領導的亞洲安全秩序。正如柯林頓政府1995年的國家安全戰略所指出的那樣，華盛頓”強烈敦促中國參与地區安全機制，以安撫鄰國，減輕自身的安全關切”，這是由軍方與軍方的關係以及其他建立信任措施所支持的。這些接觸模式與美國在該地區的”對沖”增強軍事力量相結合，得到了有能力的盟友和合作夥伴的支持。這種想法的結果，將是緩和亞洲的軍事競爭，並進一步限制中國改變地區秩序的願望。北京將滿足於軍事上的自給自足，為狹隘的地區突發事件建立武裝力量，同時將其大部分資源用於國內需求。

這一邏輯並非簡單地說，中國將專註于其自我描述的國內發展的”戰略機遇”，在中國高層領導人的關注下，有大量的經濟和社會挑戰。美國的政策制定者和學者們也認為，中國從蘇聯身上得到了寶貴的教訓，那就是與美國展開一場軍備競賽的巨大代價。因此，華盛頓不僅可以阻止中國的侵略，而且還可以利用五角大樓的藝術術語——”勸阻”中國不要試圖競爭。里根和布希政府的官員Zalmay Khalilzad認為，美國的主導地位可以”讓中國領導層相信，挑戰是很難準備的，而且要進行下去是非常危險的。”此外，還不清楚中國是否會挑戰美國的主導地位，即使它想這樣做。上世紀90年代末，中國人民解放軍(PLA)被認為落後於美國軍隊及其盟友的幾十年。

在這種背景下，美國官員非常小心地避免與中國發生衝突。政治學家約瑟夫·奈(Joseph Nye)在柯林頓政府期間領導五角大樓亞洲辦事處時解釋了這種想法:”如果我們把中國當作敵人，我們就會在未來為敵人提供保障。”如果我們把中國當作朋友，我們就不能保證友誼，但至少可以保持開放的可能性。即將成為國務卿的鮑威爾在2001年1月的聽證會上告訴國會，”中國不是敵人，我們的挑戰是保持這種狀態。”

儘管中國政府開始加大對軍事力量的投入，但中國政府試圖讓華盛頓放心，這表明中國繼續堅持鄧小平提出的謹慎、溫和的外交政策路線。2005年，中國共產黨高級官員鄭必堅在這本雜誌上寫道，中國永遠不會謀求地區霸權，永遠致力於”和平崛起”。2011年，在中國領導人就是否應該換班展開激烈辯論后，國務委員戴秉國向世界保證:”和平發展是中國的戰略選擇。”從2002年開始，美國國防部一直在制定國會授權的關於中國軍力的年度報告，但美國高級官員的共識是，中國仍然是一個遙遠且可控的挑戰。

然而，這一觀點低估了中國領導人的缺乏安全感和雄心壯志。對北京來說，美國在亞洲的同盟和軍事存在對中國在台灣、朝鮮半島以及中國東海和南海的利益構成了不可接受的威脅。用北京大學教授王緝思的話來說，”中國堅信……”華盛頓將試圖阻止新興大國，特別是中國，實現他們的目標和提高他們的地位。因此，中國開始蠶食美國。美國領導的亞洲安全秩序，發展了拒絕美軍進入該地區的能力，並在華盛頓及其盟友之間製造隔閡。

最終，美國的軍事力量和美國的外交接觸都沒有阻止中國試圖建立自己的世界級軍事力量。美國在伊拉克和其他地方的高科技展示，只是加速了中國人民解放軍的現代化進程。中國國家主席習近平發起了軍事改革，將使中國軍隊更具殺傷力，更有能力將軍事力量投射到中國以外的地方。據報道，第三艘航母正在建設中，在南中國海擁有先進的新軍事設施，以及在吉布地的首個海外軍事基地，中國正走上成為軍事夥伴的道路，美國自蘇聯解體以來從未見過這種情況。中國領導人不再重複鄧小平的格言:要繁榮，中國將”韜光養晦”。中國領導人在2017年10月宣布，”中華民族已經從站起來，走向富裕，走向強大。”

規範的限制

在第二次世界大戰結束時，美國建立了一些制度和規則，幫助構建了全球政治和亞洲地區的動態。廣泛接受的規範，如商業和航海自由、和平解決爭端以及國際合作應對全球性挑戰，取代了19世紀的勢力範圍。作為這一自由主義國際秩序的主要受益者，中國政府將在該秩序的保護方面擁有相當大的利益，並將其繼續視為中國自身發展的關鍵。美國的政策旨在鼓勵中國參与進來，歡迎中國進入領導機構，並在全球治理和地區安全方面與中國合作。

隨著中國加入多邊機構，美國政策制定者希望它能學會遵守規則，並很快開始為它們的維護做出貢獻。在喬治•w•布希(George W. Bush)政府中，美國副國務卿羅伯特•佐利克(Robert Zoellick)呼籲中國政府在國際體系中成為”負責任的利益相關者”。從華盛頓的角度來看，更大的權力帶來了更大的責任，特別是因為中國從體制中獲得了如此豐厚的利益。正如奧巴馬所強調的，”我們期待中國幫助維護那些使他們成功的規則。”

在某些場合，中國似乎是在穩步、如果不平衡地承擔這一責任。在1991年加入亞太經濟合作組織,在1992年加入《不擴散核武器條約》,在2001年加入世界貿易組織,參与重大外交努力,包括六方會談和P5 + 1談判處理北韓和伊朗的核武器項目,分別。它也成為聯合國反海盜和維和行動的主要貢獻者。

然而，北京仍然受到美國其他中心因素的威脅。美國主導的秩序——並日益尋求取代它們。這一點尤其適用於美國及其合作夥伴未被邀請的侵犯國家主權的行為，無論是以經濟制裁或軍事行動的形式。例如，關於國際社會的權利或責任的自由規範，以保護人們免受侵犯人權的行為，已經輕率地進入中國的首要任務，保護其威權體制不受外國干涉。除了少數幾個明顯的例外，中國一直在忙於淡化多邊制裁，保護西方國家免受西方的指責，並與俄羅斯達成共同目標，阻止聯合國安理會授權干預行動。在蘇丹、敘利亞、委內瑞拉、辛巴威以及其他地方，一些非民主國家的政府已經從這種阻礙中獲益。

中國也開始建立自己的區域和國際機構，與美國一起在外部觀察，而不是深化對現有國家的承諾。它啟動了亞洲基礎設施投資銀行(Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank，簡稱:亞投行)、新開發銀行(以及巴西、俄羅斯、印度和南非)，最引人注目的是”一帶一路”(Belt and Road Initiative)，這是習近平宏大的建設陸地和海上路線，將中國與世界大部分地區聯繫起來的宏偉願景。這些機構和項目賦予了中國議程設置和自身的權力，同時經常偏離現有國際機構所支持的標準和價值觀。北京明確指出，與美國和歐洲國家不同，中國不要求國家接受治理改革作為接受援助的條件。

與此同時，在自己的地區，北京已著手改變安全平衡，逐步改變現狀，採取的措施規模小到足以避免引發美國的軍事反應。在世界上最重要的水道之一的南海，中國巧妙地利用海岸警衛隊的船隻、合法的戰爭和經濟脅迫來推進其主權主張。在某些情況下，它只是佔領了有爭議的領土或軍事化的人工島。儘管北京偶爾表現出克制和戰術上的謹慎，但總體上的做法表明，中國希望建立一個現代的海洋勢力範圍。

2016年夏天，中國無視《聯合國海洋法公約》(UN Convention on the Law of the Sea)的一項具有里程碑意義的裁決，認為中國在南中國海(South China Sea，中國稱南海)的主權主張是非法的。美國官員錯誤地認為，壓力、羞恥和對基於規則的海洋秩序的渴望的某種結合，會導致北京在一段時間內接受這種判斷。相反，中國斷然拒絕了。2017年7月，美國中央情報局(CIA)的一名高級分析師在美國科羅拉多州阿斯彭(Aspen)的一個安全論壇上發表講話，他總結說，這次經歷讓中國領導人認識到，他們可以無視國際法，逃脫懲罰。在經濟上對中國的依賴和對美國對亞洲承諾的日益擔憂的影響下，該地區的國家沒有像美國政策制定者預期的那樣，對中國的魄力做出反擊。

談資論金

隨著美國對華政策的假設開始變得越來越脆弱，美國的期望與中國現實之間的差距越來越大，華盛頓的注意力主要集中在其他地方。自2001年以來，打擊聖戰恐怖主義的鬥爭已經消耗了美國國家安全機構的注意力，使人們對中國在軍事、外交和商業上取得巨大進步的時間發生的變化轉移了注意力。美國總統布希最初將中國稱為”戰略競爭者”;然而，在911恐怖襲擊事件之後，他2002年的國家安全戰略宣稱:”世界大國發現自己與恐怖主義暴力和混亂的共同危險處於同一陣營。”在奧巴馬執政期間，美國曾努力”轉向”或”再平衡”，將戰略注意力轉向亞洲。但是，在奧巴馬任期結束時，預算和人員仍然集中在其他地區——例如，在中東和東南亞地區工作的國家安全委員會工作人員的數量是中東的三倍。

這種戰略上的干擾讓中國有機會發揮其優勢，這進一步受到了中國日益突出的觀點的推動，即美國(與西方更廣泛地)處於不可阻擋的迅速衰落之中。中國官員認為，美國多年來一直受到全球金融危機、阿富汗和伊拉克戰爭代價高昂以及華盛頓功能失調的困擾。中國領導人呼籲中國在本世紀中葉成為”綜合國力和國際影響力的全球領軍者”。他認為中國的發展模式是”其他國家的新選擇”。

華盛頓現在正面臨著現代史上最具活力和最強大的競爭對手。要想獲得這一挑戰，就需要放棄長期以來美國對中國的態度。特朗普政府的第一個國家安全戰略通過詢問美國戰略的過去假設，邁出了正確的一步。但唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的許多政策——狹隘地關注雙邊貿易赤字、放棄多邊貿易協議、質疑盟友的價值，以及對人權和外交政策的貶低——使華盛頓面臨著採取一種不具競爭性的對抗手段的風險;與此同時，北京在不採取對抗措施的情況下，已經設法變得越來越有競爭力。

一個更好的方法的出發點是對美國改變中國的能力的一種新的謙卑態度。既不尋求孤立和削弱它，也不試圖將其轉化為更好的東西，這應該是美國在亞洲戰略的目標。相反，華盛頓應該更多地關注自己的權力和行為，以及盟友和合作夥伴的權力和行為。基於對中國更現實的假設的政策，將更好地促進美國的利益，使雙邊關係更加可持續。實現這一目標需要付出努力，但第一步是相對簡單的:承認我們的政策沒有達到我們的期望。

——金科預慮 

微信號pku_fengke

The China Reckoning

How Beijing Defied American Expectations

By Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner

The United States has always had an outsize sense of its ability to determine China’s course. Again and again, its ambitions have come up short. After World War II, George Marshall, the U.S. special envoy to China, hoped to broker a peace between the Nationalists and Communists in the Chinese Civil War. During the Korean War, the Truman administration thought it could dissuade Mao Zedong’s troops from crossing the Yalu River. The Johnson administration believed Beijing would ultimately circumscribe its involvement in Vietnam. In each instance, Chinese realities upset American expectations.

With U.S. President Richard Nixon’s opening to China, Washington made its biggest and most optimistic bet yet. Both Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, assumed that rapprochement would drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow and, in time, alter China’s conception of its own interests as it drew closer to the United States. In the fall of 1967, Nixon wrote in this magazine, “The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change.” Ever since, the assumption that deepening commercial, diplomatic, and cultural ties would transform China’s internal development and external behavior has been a bedrock of U.S. strategy. Even those in U.S. policy circles who were skeptical of China’s intentions still shared the underlying belief that U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.

Nearly half a century since Nixon’s first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory. All sides of the policy debate erred: free traders and financiers who foresaw inevitable and increasing openness in China, integrationists who argued that Beijing’s ambitions would be tamed by greater interaction with the international community, and hawks who believed that China’s power would be abated by perpetual American primacy. 

Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. Diplomatic and commercial engagement have not brought political and economic openness. Neither U.S. military power nor regional balancing has stopped Beijing from seeking to displace core components of the U.S.-led system. And the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected. China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of American expectations in the process.

That reality warrants a clear-eyed rethinking of the United States’ approach to China. There are plenty of risks that come with such a reassessment; defenders of the current framework will warn against destabilizing the bilateral relationship or inviting a new Cold War. But building a stronger and more sustainable approach to, and relationship with, Beijing requires honesty about how many fundamental assumptions have turned out wrong. Across the ideological spectrum, we in the U.S. foreign policy community have remained deeply invested in expectations about China—about its approach to economics, domestic politics, security, and global order—even as evidence against them has accumulated. The policies built on such expectations have failed to change China in the ways we intended or hoped. 

THE POWER OF THE MARKET

Greater commercial interaction with China was supposed to bring gradual but steady liberalization of the Chinese economy. U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s 1990 National Security Strategy described enhanced ties with the world as “crucial to China’s prospects for regaining the path of economic reform.” This argument predominated for decades. It drove U.S. decisions to grant China most-favored-nation trading status in the 1990s, to support its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, to establish a high-level economic dialogue in 2006, and to negotiate a bilateral investment treaty under U.S. President Barack Obama. 

Trade in goods between the United States and China exploded from less than $8 billion in 1986 to over $578 billion in 2016: more than a 30-fold increase, adjusting for inflation. Since the early years of this century, however, China’s economic liberalization has stalled. Contrary to Western expectations, Beijing has doubled down on its state capitalist model even as it has gotten richer. Rather than becoming a force for greater openness, consistent growth has served to legitimize the Chinese Communist Party and its state-led economic model. 

U.S. officials believed that debt, inefficiency, and the demands of a more advanced economy would necessitate further reforms. And Chinese officials recognized the problems with their approach; in 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao called the Chinese economy “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” But rather than opening the country up to greater competition, the Chinese Communist Party, intent on maintaining control of the economy, is instead consolidating state-owned enterprises and pursuing industrial policies (notably its “Made in China 2025” plan) that aim to promote national technology champions in critical sectors, including aerospace, biomedicine, and robotics. And despite repeated promises, Beijing has resisted pressure from Washington and elsewhere to level the playing field for foreign companies. It has restricted market access and forced non-Chinese firms to sign on to joint ventures and share technology, while funneling investment and subsidies to state-backed domestic players.

Until recently, U.S. policymakers and executives mostly acquiesced to such discrimination; the potential commercial benefits were so large that they considered it unwise to upend the relationship with protectionism or sanctions. Instead, they fought tooth and nail for small, incremental concessions. But now, what were once seen as merely the short-term frustrations of doing business with China have come to seem more harmful and permanent. The American Chamber of Commerce reported last year that eight in ten U.S. companies felt less welcome in China than in years prior, and more than 60 percent had little or no confidence that China would open its markets further over the next three years. Cooperative and voluntary mechanisms to pry open China’s economy have by and large failed, including the Trump administration’s newly launched Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.

THE DETERRENT OF PRIMACY

A combination of U.S. diplomacy and U.S. military power—carrots and sticks—was supposed to persuade Beijing that it was neither possible nor necessary to challenge the U.S.-led security order in Asia. Washington “strongly promot[ed] China’s participation in regional security mechanisms to reassure its neighbors and assuage its own security concerns,” as the Clinton administration’s 1995 National Security Strategy put it, buttressed by military-to-military relations and other confidence-building measures. These modes of engagement were coupled with a “hedge”—enhanced U.S. military power in the region, supported by capable allies and partners. The effect, the thinking went, would be to allay military competition in Asia and further limit China’s desire to alter the regional order. Beijing would settle for military sufficiency, building armed forces for narrow regional contingencies while devoting most of its resources to domestic needs.

The logic was not simply that China would be focused on its self-described “strategic window of opportunity” for development at home, with plenty of economic and social challenges occupying the attention of China’s senior leaders. American policymakers and academics also assumed that China had learned a valuable lesson from the Soviet Union about the crippling costs of getting into an arms race with the United States. Washington could thus not only deter Chinese aggression but also—to use the Pentagon’s term of art—”dissuade” China from even trying to compete. Zalmay Khalilzad, an official in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, argued that a dominant United States could “convince the Chinese leadership that a challenge would be difficult to prepare and extremely risky to pursue.” Moreover, it was unclear whether China could challenge U.S. primacy even if it wanted to. Into the late 1990s, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was considered decades behind the United States’ military and those of its allies.  

Against this backdrop, U.S. officials took considerable care not to stumble into a confrontation with China. The political scientist Joseph Nye explained the thinking when he led the Pentagon’s Asia office during the Clinton administration: “If we treated China as an enemy, we were guaranteeing an enemy in the future. If we treated China as a friend, we could not guarantee friendship, but we could at least keep open the possibility of more benign outcomes.” Soon-to-be Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress at his confirmation hearing in January 2001, “China is not an enemy, and our challenge is to keep it that way.”  

Even as it began investing more of its newfound wealth in military power, the Chinese government sought to put Washington at ease, signaling continued adherence to the cautious, moderate foreign policy path set out by Deng. In 2005, the senior Communist Party official Zheng Bijian wrote in this magazine that China would never seek regional hegemony and remained committed to “a peaceful rise.” In 2011, after a lively debate among China’s leaders about whether it was time to shift gears, State Councilor Dai Bingguo assured the world that “peaceful development is a strategic choice China has made.” Starting in 2002, the U.S. Defense Department had been producing a congressionally mandated annual report on China’s military, but the consensus among senior U.S. officials was that China remained a distant and manageable challenge.

That view, however, underestimated just how simultaneously insecure and ambitious China’s leadership really was. For Beijing, the United States’ alliances and military presence in Asia posed unacceptable threats to China’s interests in Taiwan, on the Korean Peninsula, and in the East China and South China Seas. In the words of the Peking University professor Wang Jisi, “It is strongly believed in China that . . . Washington will attempt to prevent the emerging powers, in particular China, from achieving their goals and enhancing their stature.” So China started to chip away at the U.S.-led security order in Asia, developing the capabilities to deny the U.S. military access to the region and driving wedges between Washington and its allies.

Ultimately, neither U.S. military power nor American diplomatic engagement has dissuaded China from trying to build a world-class military of its own. High-tech displays of American power in Iraq and elsewhere only accelerated efforts to modernize the PLA. Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched military reforms that will make Chinese forces more lethal and more capable of projecting military power well beyond China’s shores. With its third aircraft carrier reportedly under construction, advanced new military installations in the South China Sea, and its first overseas military base in Djibouti, China is on the path to becoming a military peer the likes of which the United States has not seen since the Soviet Union. China’s leaders no longer repeat Deng’s dictum that, to thrive, China will “hide [its] capabilities and bide [its] time.” Xi declared in October 2017 that “the Chinese nation has gone from standing up, to becoming rich, to becoming strong.” 

THE CONSTRAINTS OF ORDER

At the end of World War II, the United States built institutions and rules that helped structure global politics and the regional dynamics in Asia. Widely accepted norms, such as the freedom of commerce and navigation, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and international cooperation on global challenges, superseded nineteenth-century spheres of influence. As a leading beneficiary of this liberal international order, the thinking went, Beijing would have a considerable stake in the order’s preservation and come to see its continuation as essential to China’s own progress. U.S. policy aimed to encourage Beijing’s involvement by welcoming China into leading institutions and working with it on global governance and regional security. 

As China joined multilateral institutions, U.S. policymakers hoped that it would learn to play by the rules and soon begin to contribute to their upkeep. In the George W. Bush administration, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick memorably called on Beijing to become “a responsible stakeholder” in the international system. From Washington’s perspective, with greater power came greater obligation, especially since China had profited so handsomely from the system. As Obama emphasized, “We expect China to help uphold the very rules that have made them successful.”  

In certain venues, China appeared to be steadily, if unevenly, taking on this responsibility. It joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization in 1991, acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992, joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and took part in major diplomatic efforts, including the six-party talks and the P5+1 negotiations to deal with nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, respectively. It also became a major contributor to UN counterpiracy and peacekeeping operations. 

Yet Beijing remained threatened by other central elements of the U.S.-led order—and has increasingly sought to displace them. That has been especially true of what it sees as uninvited violations of national sovereignty by the United States and its partners, whether in the form of economic sanctions or military action. Liberal norms regarding the international community’s right or responsibility to intervene to protect people from human rights violations, for example, have run headlong into China’s paramount priority of defending its authoritarian system from foreign interference. With a few notable exceptions, China has been busy watering down multilateral sanctions, shielding regimes from Western opprobrium, and making common cause with Russia to block the UN Security Council from authorizing interventionist actions. A number of nondemocratic governments—in Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere—have benefited from such obstruction.

China has also set out to build its own set of regional and international institutions—with the United States on the outside looking in—rather than deepening its commitment to the existing ones. It has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank (along with Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa), and, most notably, the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s grandiose vision for building land and maritime routes to connect China to much of the world. These institutions and programs have given China agenda-setting and convening power of its own, while often departing from the standards and values upheld by existing international institutions. Beijing explicitly differentiates its approach to development by noting that, unlike the United States and European powers, it does not demand that countries accept governance reforms as a condition of receiving aid. 

In its own region, meanwhile, Beijing has set out to change the security balance, incrementally altering the status quo with steps just small enough to avoid provoking a military response from the United States. In the South China Sea, one of the world’s most important waterways, China has deftly used coast guard vessels, legal warfare, and economic coercion to advance its sovereignty claims. In some cases, it has simply seized contested territory or militarized artificial islands. While Beijing has occasionally shown restraint and tactical caution, the overall approach indicates its desire to create a modern maritime sphere of influence. 

In the summer of 2016, China ignored a landmark ruling by a tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which held that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea were illegal under international law. U.S. officials wrongly assumed that some combination of pressure, shame, and its own desire for a rules-based maritime order would cause Beijing, over time, to accept the judgment. Instead, China has rejected it outright. Speaking to a security forum in Aspen, Colorado, a year after the ruling, in July 2017, a senior analyst from the CIA concluded that the experience had taught China’s leaders “that they can defy international law and get away with it.” Countries in the region, swayed by both their economic dependence on China and growing concerns about the United States’ commitment to Asia, have failed to push back against Chinese assertiveness as much as U.S. policymakers expected they would. 

TAKING STOCK

As the assumptions driving U.S. China policy have started to look increasingly tenuous, and the gap between American expectations and Chinese realities has grown, Washington has been largely focused elsewhere. Since 2001, the fight against jihadist terrorism has consumed the U.S. national security apparatus, diverting attention from the changes in Asia at exactly the time China was making enormous military, diplomatic, and commercial strides. U.S. President George W. Bush initially referred to China as a “strategic competitor”; in the wake of the September 11 attacks, however, his 2002 National Security Strategy declared, “The world’s great powers find ourselves on the same side—united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos.” During the Obama administration, there was an effort to “pivot,” or “rebalance,” strategic attention to Asia. But at the end of Obama’s time in office, budgets and personnel remained focused on other regions—there were, for example, three times as many National Security Council staffers working on the Middle East as on all of East and Southeast Asia

This strategic distraction has given China the opportunity to press its advantages, further motivated by the increasingly prominent view in China that the United States (along with the West more broadly) is in inexorable and rapid decline. Chinese officials see a United States that has been hobbled for years by the global financial crisis, its costly war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and deepening dysfunction in Washington. Xi has called on China to become “a global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence” by midcentury. He touts China’s development model as a “new option for other countries.” 

Washington now faces its most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history. Getting this challenge right will require doing away with the hopeful thinking that has long characterized the United States’ approach to China. The Trump administration’s first National Security Strategy took a step in the right direction by interrogating past assumptions in U.S. strategy. But many of Donald Trump’s policies—a narrow focus on bilateral trade deficits, the abandonment of multilateral trade deals, the questioning of the value of alliances, and the downgrading of human rights and diplomacy—have put Washington at risk of adopting an approach that is confrontational without being competitive; Beijing, meanwhile, has managed to be increasingly competitive without being confrontational.

The starting point for a better approach is a new degree of humility about the United States’ ability to change China. Neither seeking to isolate and weaken it nor trying to transform it for the better should be the lodestar of U.S. strategy in Asia. Washington should instead focus more on its own power and behavior, and the power and behavior of its allies and partners. Basing policy on a more realistic set of assumptions about China would better advance U.S. interests and put the bilateral relationship on a more sustainable footing. Getting there will take work, but the first step is relatively straightforward: acknowledging just how much our policy has fallen short of our aspirations.

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發文者：NCN 發布時間：4/27/2018 11:28:00 下午