中国怎么就威胁美国了？_风闻

美国《哈泼斯杂志》2月号刊登复旦大学中国研究院春秋高级研究员马凯硕文章《什么中国威胁？》

文：Kishore Mahbubani

译：周顺子

用不了15年，中国就能超越美国成为世界上最大的经济体。随着超越时刻的临近，**华盛顿政界早已达成一个共识：**中国必将成为美国人民利益和福祉的头等威胁。约瑟夫·邓福德（Joseph Dunford）上将，这位美国参谋长联席会议主席曾表示：“差不多到2025年，中国将极有可能成为我国最大的威胁”。《2018年美国国防战略报告》声称，中国和俄罗斯这两个“修正主义”势力正在致力于“塑造一个与其国内威权主义模式相一致的全球秩序，并将干涉、控制他国的经济、外交和国土安全政策”。联邦调查局局长克里斯托弗·雷（Christopher Wray）也曾说过，“中国威胁不单单是美国政府需要面对的问题，它还是整个美国社会需要面对的问题……我认为全社会都应该有所行动”。中国威胁论在美国甚嚣尘上，以至于当特朗普在2018年1月发动对华贸易战时，连许多素来以立场温和著称的民主党人都对他表达了支持，比如民主党参议员查克·舒默（Chuck Schumer）。

  美国如此坐卧不安是出于两方面的忧虑。首先是经济层面：美方称，中国通过不正当贸易行为损害了美国的经济利益，比如要求美国企业转让技术、侵犯美国企业的知识版权、设置非关税贸易壁垒提高市场准入门槛等等。其次是政治层面：经济的腾飞并没有在中国催生出符合西方自由民主标准的改革，这出乎很多西方国家（尤其是美国）的意料。更有甚者，在和其他国家打交道的时候，中国正变得越来越坚定地以自己的意志行事。

纵观此类言论，可见美国官员早已认定中国威胁迫在眉睫，自然也就难怪格雷厄姆·艾利森（Graham Allison）会提出“修昔底德陷阱”这一概念，认为美中一战已无可避免。然而，中国并不具备能够威胁或入侵美国的军事力量，中国从没有尝试过去干涉美国内政，中国更未作出过任何试图摧毁美国经济的行为。所以，请冷静想想吧，尽管中国威胁论在美国甚嚣尘上，美国仍有可能找到办法与中国和平共处，即便中国在未来10年内成为世界第一大经济体和地缘政治上举足轻重的力量。一种相对平和的对华策略未必就不能做到利好美国的同时还能对中国起到抑制作用。

美国必须重新审视长期以来对中国政治制度的固执看法。自苏联解体以来，美国政客们始终坚信中国共产党会像苏联共产党一样走向灭亡，他们认为这只是个时间问题。无论是左派还是右派，整个美国政界或多或少都相信福山在1992年提出的著名论断：“历史的发展只有一条道路。我们见证的不仅仅是冷战的结束，我们还见证了历史本身的终结：人类意识形态的发展已经走到了终点，西方自由民主作为社会治理的终极形式是放诸四海而皆准的”。

2000年3月，正因为相信经济自由一定能够催生政治自由，比尔·克林顿才选择支持中国加入世界贸易组织，他认为这样一定能够给中国人民带来更多的开放和自由。他的继任者小布什也这样认为，并在2002年的《国家安全战略报告》中写道：“随着时间的推移，中国终将发现，社会自由和政治自由是振兴国家的唯一途径”。希拉里·克林顿则更加直接，她认为中国是在“逆势而为，抗拒历史潮流，螳臂当车，终将溃败，中国人只不过是在尽可能地推迟最终结果的到来”。

是时候让美国政客们反思一下他们的刚愎自用了，他们曾过于自信地给中国开出他们自己的“药方”。就算没有任何帝国像今天的美国一样拥有强大如斯的经济、政治和军事实力，美国建国至今也不过250年。相比之下，中国历史要久远得多。过去的数千年历史让中国人民深谙一个道理，孱弱又分裂的政府会让自己吃尽苦头，正如1842年鸦片战争后的那近一个世纪，中国承受着外敌侵略、经年内战、饥荒和诸多疾苦。然而，自1978年以来，中国已有8亿人摆脱贫困，这个国家还形成了世界上规模最大的中产阶级群体。正如格雷厄姆·艾利森在《中国日报》上所写的那样，“毋庸置疑，近40年来中国奇迹一般的飞速发展为其人民创造了过去4000年历史都无法比拟的福祉”。而这一切都发生在中共执政之后。中国人不会没有注意到，就在同一时期，俄罗斯人均预期寿命在前苏联解体后大幅缩短，婴儿死亡率上升，居民收入一落千丈。

在很多美国人看来，美中之间的政治博弈是民主与专制之间的对抗，一方让人民能够自由选择政府、享有言论自由和宗教信仰自由，而另一方则在剥夺这些自由。然而，对于立场中立的观察人士来说，美中两者之间仅仅存在财阀政治（plutocracy）与贤能政治（meritocracy）之间的差别：美国的重大公共政策最终多有利于富人，而中国的重大公共决策则由根据能力和政绩选出的党内精英制定，最终成功地减少了贫困现象。一个事实是不容否认的，在过去30年里，美国劳动者们的收入中位数几乎陷于停滞：在1979年到2013年之间，小时工资中位数仅上涨6%，平均到每年增幅连0.2%都不到。

我并非认为中国当今的政治体制已经完美到无需任何改变。即使是在中国国内，也有很多人在呼吁改革。中国的政治体制理应随着社会和经济状况而发展进步。实际上，伴随着改革开放，中国早已日新月异，日渐开放。1980年我第一次去中国的时候，任何中国的普通居民都不能以游客身份出国旅行。而去年，中国出境游人数为1.34亿。同时，数百万年轻的中国精英学子赴美留学，得以享受美国大学里的学术自由，然而在2017年，有80%的中国留学生在美国大学毕业后仍旧选择回国工作。

中国始终在避免无谓的战争和冲突。美国的地理环境得天独厚，两个邻居加拿大和墨西哥都温和无害。而中国则不同，中国与周边不少国家之间都存在着紧张关系，比如印度、日本、韩国和越南。自1988年中越两国之间发生短暂的海上冲突之后，中国在五个联合国安理会常任理事国中是唯一一个在过去30年里从未对他国进行过军事打击的国家。反观美国，即便是在以和平立场著称的奥巴马担任总统时期，美国也曾在一年内对7个国家投下了26000枚炸弹。显而易见，中国更懂得战略克制的艺术。

但是，仍然有很多人认为，中国已经徘徊在发动战争的边缘了。理查德·麦克格雷（Richard McGregor）的著作《亚洲审判日》（Asia’s Reckoning）聚焦二战后美中日三国的战略外交关系，详实地记录了2012年以来中日之间的紧张时刻。2012年9月，日本首相野田佳彦声称将“钓鱼岛”国有化，此后中日两国的军舰一度在海上危险对峙。尽管很多经验丰富的观察家预测中日两国可能将于2014年时发生军事冲突，但实际上后来什么也没有发生。

还有不少人认为南中国海海域很有可能发生军事冲突。全球每年五分之一的海运都要经过这一地区，在部分海域主权被质疑的情况下，中国人在部分岛礁和浅滩上修建军事设施。然而，同西方分析人士的结论相反，虽****然在政治方面中国对待南海地区的态度更加强硬，但军事上并没有变得更加激进。像马来西亚、菲律宾和越南这些小国家已经在南中国海海域占领了一些中国曾宣誓主权的岛屿，中国完全可以轻而易举地将他们赶走，但中国并没这样做。

在看那些有关“中国侵略”的陈词滥调时，不要忘了这一点，美国已经错过很多可以缓和这一地区紧张局势的好机会。前美国驻华大使芮效俭（J.Stapleton Roy）曾提到，在2015年9月25日举行的美中峰会上，中国领导人曾就南中国海问题向美方提出了一些建议，包括认可东盟十国提出的一些声明，不仅如此，他还表示尽管中国在南沙群岛的部分礁石和浅滩上进行了大规模填海作业，但中国无意在有争议的南沙群岛“搞军事化”。然而，奥巴马政府对中国的合理建议无动于衷，甚至还加大了在南中国海的巡逻力度。作为回应，中国加快了在这些人造岛礁上的防御工事和基础设施建设的步伐。

发动贸易战和发动真正的战争一样，需要在外交层面上慎之又慎，尤其当美中两国之间存在着千丝万缕经济联系的时候。特朗普和他的首席贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗（Peter Navarro）、贸易代表罗伯特·莱特希泽（Robert Lighthizer）坚持认为是其他国家不遵守贸易平等原则的恶劣行径导致了美国的对外贸易逆差。事实上，没有任何一位德高望重的主流经济学家同意这种论调。著名经济学家马丁·费尔德斯坦（Martin Feldstein），这位美国前总统里根的经济顾问委员会主席直言不讳：美国在全球的贸易逆差是由国内消费总量超出其国内生产而引起的，因此，对低廉的中国商品征收关税并不能解决这个结构性问题，只会使美国普通百姓负担不起许多生活必需品。

特朗普对中国的贸易战为他赢得了民意，美国社会上的主流声音均支持他的决定。事到如今，其实中国方面也难辞其咎。长期以来，中国一直对美方日益增长的抱怨视而不见，哪怕美国领导人摆出数据来证明中国的许多经济政策不符合公平贸易原则。乔治·马格努斯（George Magnus）在《红旗》（Red Flags）一书中指出，美国曾强烈反对中国坚持的那些歧视性政策，它们借故惩罚外国企业以利好本地公司。但是，他建议美国通过诸如美中全面经济对话等方式，在非政治敏感的商业领域和服务生产领域开辟市场准入的途径。

马格努斯建议美中两国通过现有的一些机构进行对话，这种选择远比特朗普式的贸易战更加明智。如果特朗普只针对中国那些不符合贸易公平原则的经济政策进行抨击和谴责，他的行为将得到全世界的支持，而世界贸易组织也为此提供了许多途径。甚至可以预见的是，中国极有可能在私下里承认这些问题并做出让步，修正不当的经济政策。然而，特朗普如今的所作所为不禁让中国和其它国家怀疑，其真正目的不是消灭不公平的贸易行为，而是另有所图，他的目的是阻挠或破坏中国成为全球科技领军者的雄心抱负。正如马丁·费尔德斯坦（Martin Feldstein）所言，美国当然有权利维护自己的知识产权，防止他国盗窃美国的科技技术。但是，美国不应以此为借口，试图破坏中国的国家工业计划——“中国制造2025”，阻挠中国发展自己的电动汽车、机器人和人工智能等技术，跻身世界制造强国之列。

费尔德斯坦和马格努斯都认为，要维持美国自身在航空航天和机器人等高科技产业中的霸主地位，政府应选择加大投资高等教育和科技研发，而不是追着其他国家大涨关税。简而言之，美国同样需要制定自己的长期经济发展战略来应对中国的长期经济发展战略。无论从政策层面还是从理论层面来看，中国领导人对于国家经济和民生的未来发展均更有远见。“中国制造2025”计划以及“一带一路”倡议中的基建项目，尤其是高铁建设等，都展示了中国正在努力成为新兴制造业一流大国的抱负。与此同时，中国领导人开始强调未来绝不能再以制造不平等和牺牲环境等社会问题为代价片面追求经济增长。2017年，习近平宣布，中国社会的主要矛盾已经转化为“人民日益增长的美好生活需求与不平衡不充分发展之间的矛盾”。马格努斯以此预测，中国政府未来的执政重点将转移到“改善环境、遏制污染、缩小贫富差距和地区发展不平衡、加强社会安全网络建设”等方面。尽管中国的经济发展必将面临一些严峻挑战，但至少中国领导人已经开始想办法解决这些问题，而美国是时候也这样做了。

然而要制定长期战略，美国首先需要想明白自身经济发展理念中自相矛盾的地方。大多数纸上谈兵的美国经济学家认为政府引导产业发展的办法根本行不通，他们支持自由市场主导的资本主义。但是，如果美国对这种推断成竹在胸，特朗普的主要贸易谈判代表莱特希泽何必对努力提高自身技术实力的北京喊打喊杀？他应该作壁上观，反正北京的“中国制造2025”最终会像苏联的经济计划一样失败。但是，如果莱特希泽也认为“中国制造2025”计划能够成功，那么他应该建议美国政府重塑其意识形态，向中国学习，制定一个长期的、综合性的经济发展战略，以此来抗衡中国。就算像德国这样领跑全球的传统工业强国也已经制定了此类战略——“工业4.0”。德国的计划不像中国的计划那样力图让政府力量的触角面面俱到，但仍然强调国家将扮演重要角色，正如战略与国际研究中心的斯科特·肯尼迪（Scott Kennedy）所介绍的那样，德国政府将制定整体发展框架，利用金融和财政工具，大力支持制造业创新中心的建设。为什么美国就不能也这样制定出自己的计划呢？

具有讽刺意味的是，如果美国最终决定要制定一项长期经济发展战略，那么其最好的合作伙伴大概就是中国了。手握3万亿美元的外汇储备，中国会很乐意加大在美国的投资。亚当·博森（Adam Posen）是遐迩著闻的彼得森国际经济研究所所长，他早就指出特朗普针对中国和世界其他国家的贸易战争已经导致美国2008年接受的外国投资接近于零。美国早就应该考虑响应中国提出的“一带一路”倡议——这项由中国在2013年发起的计划旨在通过大规模投资基础设施建设来加强亚洲、欧洲和非洲三个大洲的区域经济合作。“一带一路”倡议的参与国们必然会非常欢迎美国的加入，以借此来“平衡”中国的影响力。美国将有很多可以从中获利的机会。波音和通用电气这两家美国巨头企业都曾在中国挣得盆满钵满，中国航空市场的爆炸式增长给他们带来了海量订单。同样的，卡特彼勒（Caterpillar）和贝克特尔(Bechtel)等公司也可以在“一带一路”计划里的基础设施建设项目中寻找商机。可惜，美国对国家资本主义意识形态的偏见不仅断送了自己与中国长期合作共赢的机会，也葬送了美国亟需的工业发展长期战略。

随着中国的崛起，美国必须在两个方面做出抉择。第一，美国是否要维持如今的对华政策，即一方面加强两国双边关系，同时又对中国行削弱之实？在经济方面，除特朗普执意发动对华贸易战外，美国长期以来的主流政策仍将中国视为合作伙伴；但在政治领域，尤其是军事领域，美国始终将中国视为心腹大患。第二，美国能否像中国那样，制定一个长期有效的对外战略？这听上去好像没什么难度。但是，美国能否像中国那样做到严格遵守和贯彻自己的战略计划呢？如果决定将中国作为第一战略目标，美国能否果断地放弃针对伊斯兰世界的徒劳战争和对俄罗斯毫无必要的抹黑中伤？

作为世界第一经济强国，美国的国防预算全球第一是情有可原的。但如果它的经济实力落到世界第二位呢？届时美国是否还需要维持全球第一的国防预算？如果美国拒绝放弃军事扩张，那才是正中中国下怀。苏联的解体给中国人上了一课，军费开支不应高于经济增长。如果美国继续为了无谓的军事扩张烧钱，那反而正符合中国的长远利益。

如果美国最终愿意改变对华态度，那它或许有可能发现一种既能够遏制中国发展又能够扩大自身利益的战略。克林顿2003年在耶鲁大学的演讲中提出过一种思路：遏制下一个超级大国崛起的唯一方式就是制定限制其发展的多边规则和多边合作机制。比如，虽然中国宣称拥有南中国海内众多岛礁的领土主权，但《联合国海洋法公约》使中国不能将整个南中国海视为自己的内海。当世界贸易组织判定中国有违反条约的行为，中国也不得不遵从世界贸易组织的判决。国际上的诸多规则和机制已经对中国形成制约。更加幸运的是，中国始终支持以美国为核心建立起的全球多边框架，无论是国际货币基金组织、世界银行、联合国还是世界贸易组织。在国际维和方面，中国派出的维和人员数量比另外四个常任理事国加起来还要多。实际上，基于诸多的多边合作平台和框架，美中之间可以拥有很多合作空间和合作机会。

但是，要抓住这些机遇，**美国领导人必须接受一个无法否认的事实：**中国和印度回归国际舞台已经无可避免。这个事实有什么不能接受的？从公元1世纪到1820年之间，中国和印度始终是世界上最大的两个经济体。从几千年人类历史的角度来看，近两百年西方世界对全球商业活动的统治才是对常态的偏离。根据普华永道做出的预测，2050年或者更早，中国和印度就能拿回他们世界第一和第二的位置。

中国和印度的领导人们明白，我们生活的地球村并不大，国家之间只有彼此依存，才能共同面对全人类的威胁和挑战，比如全球变暖。当特朗普执意退出“巴黎气候协定”，中国和印度原本也可以跟着退出，但他们没有。尽管中印两国的政治体制有些差异，但他们都决定做有担当、负责任的世界公民。观察中国对待全球多边规则的态度，足以帮助我们判断中国是否会对美国、对世界构成威胁。如果中国愿意被诸多的全球多边规则和多边伙伴关系所约束，那么就算它不是一个符合西方民主自由标准的国家，也不会是一个对全球和平稳定的威胁。这或许是一个更好的可以替代“中国威胁论”的方案和思路，也是美国未来应该考虑和努力的方向。

What China Threat?

Within about fifteen years, China’s economy will surpass America’s and become the largest in the world. As this moment approaches, meanwhile, a consensus has formed in Washington that China poses a significant threat to American interests and well-­being. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), has said that “China probably poses the greatest threat to our nation by about 2025.” The summary of America’s 2018 National Defense Strategy claims that China and Russia are “revisionist powers” seeking to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has said, “One of the things we’re trying to do is view the China threat as not just a whole-­of-­government threat, but a whole-­of-­society threat . . . and I think it’s going to take a whole-­of-­society response by us.” So widespread is this notion that when Donald Trump launched his trade war against China, in January 2018, he received support even from moderate figures such as Democratic senator Chuck Schumer.

Two main currents are driving these concerns. One is economic: that China has undermined the US economy by pursuing unfair trade practices, demanding technology transfers, stealing intellectual property, and imposing non-­tariff barriers that impede access to Chinese markets. The other current is political: that China’s successful economic development has not been accompanied by the liberal democratic reform Western governments, and particularly the United States, had expected; and that China has become too aggressive in its dealing with other nations.

Reading about the imminent threat American officials believe China poses, it is not hard to see why Graham Allison, in his book Destined for War, reaches the depressing conclusion that armed conflict between the two countries is more likely than not. Yet since China is not mounting a military force to threaten or invade the United States, not trying to intervene in America’s domestic politics, and not engaged in a deliberate campaign to destroy the American economy, we must consider that, in spite of the increasing clamor about the threat China poses to the United States, it is still possible for America to find a way to deal peaceably with a China that will become the number one economic, and possibly geopolitical, power within a decade—and to do so in a way that advances its own interests, even as it constrains China’s.

America must first reconsider a long-­held belief about China’s political system. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, American policymakers have been convinced that it would only be a matter of time before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) followed the Soviet Communist Party into the political grave. Politicians and policymakers on both ends of the political spectrum accepted, implicitly or explicitly, the famous thesis of Francis Fukuyama that there was only one historical road to follow.

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

When Bill Clinton explained in March 2000 why he supported China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, he stressed that political liberation would inevitably flow from economic liberalization, concluding that “if you believe in a future of greater openness and freedom for the people of China, you ought to be for this agreement.” His successor, George W. Bush, shared the same conviction. In his 2002 National Security Strategy, he wrote, “In time, China will find that social and political freedom is the only source of that national greatness.” Hillary Clinton was more explicit. According to her, by persisting with Communist Party rule, the Chinese “are trying to stop history, which is a fool’s errand. They cannot do it. But they’re going to hold it off as long as possible.”

It is worth considering the conviction of American policymakers that they could so confidently dispense political prescriptions to China. No other empire, of course, has accumulated as much economic, political, and military power as the United States has. Yet, it has still been less than 250 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed, in 1776. China, by contrast, is considerably older, and the Chinese people have learned from several thousand years of history that they suffer most when the central government is weak and divided, as it was for almost a century after the Opium War of 1842, when the country was ravaged by foreign invasions, civil wars, famines, and much else besides. Since 1978, however, China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and created the largest middle class in the world. As Graham Allison wrote in an op-­ed for China Daily, an En­glish-­language newspaper owned by the Chinese government, “it could be argued that 40 years of miracle growth have created a greater increase in human well-­being for more individuals than occurred in the previous more than 4,000 years of China’s history.” All this has happened while the CCP has been in power. And the Chinese did not fail to notice that the collapse of the Soviet Communist party led to a decline in Russian life expectancy, increase in infant mortality, and plummeting incomes.

In American eyes, the contest between America’s and China’s political systems is one between a democracy, where the people freely choose their government and enjoy freedom of speech and of religion, and an autocracy, where the people have no such freedoms. To neutral observers, however, it could just as easily be seen as a choice between a plutocracy in the United States, where major public policy decisions end up favoring the rich over the masses, and a meritocracy in China, where major public policy decisions made by officials chosen by Party elites on the basis of ability and performance have resulted in such a striking alleviation of poverty. One fact cannot be denied. In the past thirty years, the median income of the American worker has not improved: between 1979 and 2013, median hourly wages rose just 6 percent—less than 0.2 percent per year.

This doesn’t mean that the Chinese political system should remain in its current form forever. Human rights violations—such as the detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs—remain a major concern. Within China today, there are many voices calling for reforms. Among them is the prominent liberal scholar Xu Jilin. And in Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique, David Ownby has produced an excellent En­glish translation of eight essays Xu has written over the past decade. Xu lodges his sharpest criticisms against his fellow Chinese scholars, and especially against what he sees as their excessive focus on the nation-­state and insistence on China’s essential cultural and historical difference from Western political models. He argues that this overemphasis on particularism in fact marks a departure from traditional Chinese culture, which, as exemplified by its historical tianxia model of foreign relations, was a universal and open system. Criticizing the blanket rejection by “extreme nationalists” among his Chinese academic peers of “anything created by Westerners,” Xu argues instead that China has historically succeeded because it was open. However, not even a liberal like Xu would call for China to replicate the American political system. Instead, he argues that China should “employ her own cultural traditions,” through promoting a “new tianxia”: on the domestic front, “Han people and the various national minorities will enjoy mutual equality in legal and status terms, and the cultural uniqueness and pluralism of the different nationalities will be respected and protected,” while its relations with other countries “will be defined by the principles of respect for each other’s sovereign independence, equality in their treatment of each other, and peaceful coexistence.”

China’s political system will have to evolve with its social and economic conditions. And, in many respects, it has evolved significantly, becoming much more open than it once was. When I first went to China, in 1980, for instance, no Chinese were allowed to travel overseas as private tourists. Last year, roughly 134 million traveled overseas. And roughly 134 million Chinese returned home freely. Similarly, millions of the best young Chinese minds have experienced the academic freedom of American universities. Yet, in 2017, eight in ten Chinese students chose to return home. Though the question remains: If things have been going well, why is Xi imposing tighter political discipline on Communist Party members and removing term limits? His predecessor, Hu Jintao, delivered spectacular economic growth. But this period was also marked by a spike in corruption and party factionalism led by Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party secretary who tried to challenge Xi’s rise to power, and Zhou Yongkang, the powerful domestic security chief under Xi’s predecessor. Xi believed these trends would delegitimize the CCP and end China’s successful rejuvenation. Against these dire challenges, he saw no realistic alternative to reimposing strong central leadership. Despite doing this (or, because he did this), Xi remains hugely popular.

Many in the West have been alarmed by the enormous power Xi has accumulated, taking it as a harbinger of armed conflict. Xi’s accumulation of power, however, has not fundamentally changed China’s long-­term geopolitical strategy. The Chinese have, for instance, avoided unnecessary wars. Unlike the United States, which is blessed with two nonthreatening neighbors in Canada and Mexico, China has difficult relations with a number of strong, nationalistic neighbors, including India, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. Quite remarkably, of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom), China is the only one among them that has not fired a single military shot across its border in thirty years, since a brief naval battle between China and Vietnam in 1988. By contrast, even during the relatively peaceful Obama Administration, the American military dropped twenty-six thousand bombs on seven countries in a single year. Evidently, the Chinese understand well the art of strategic restraint.

There have, of course, been moments when China seemed close to war. Richard McGregor’s book, Asia’s Reckoning, which focuses on the strategic relationship between the United States, China, and Japan since the postwar period, vividly documents the precarious moments between China and Japan since 2012. After Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda “nationalized” the disputed Senkaku Islands in September 2012, Chinese and Japanese naval vessels came perilously close to each other. Yet while many seasoned observers predicted a military clash between the two countries in 2014, none came to pass.

Much has been made of the possibility of conflict in the South China Sea, through which roughly one fifth of all global shipping passes each year, and where the Chinese have converted isolated reefs and shoals into military installations as part of larger, contested claims to sovereignty over portions of the waters. But contrary to Western analyses, China, while undeniably more politically assertive in the region, has not become more aggressive militarily. The smaller, rival claimants to sovereignty in the South China Sea, including Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, control a number of islands in the waters. China could easily dislodge them. It has not done so.

When considering the familiar narrative of Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, it must be remembered that the United States itself has missed opportunities to defuse tensions there. A former US ambassador to China, J. Stapleton Roy, told me that in a joint press conference with President Obama on September 25, 2015, Xi Jinping not only proposed an approach to the South China Sea that included the endorsement of declarations supported by all ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but, more significantly, added that China had no intention of militarizing the Spratly Islands, where it had engaged in massive reclamation work on the reefs and shoals it occupied. Yet the Obama Administration made no effort to pursue China’s reasonable proposal. Instead, the US Navy stepped up its patrols. In response, China increased the pace of its construction of defensive installations on the islands.

Just as careful diplomacy is required in military matters, it is also integral to America’s economic relations with China. Virtually no well-­known mainstream economist agrees with Trump, or his top trade adviser Peter Navarro and trade representative Robert Lighthizer, that America’s trade deficits are the result of unfair practices by other countries. Martin Feldstein, the former chairman of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, has pointed out that America’s global trade deficit is due to the fact that its consumption outweighs its domestic production. Imposing tariffs on low-­cost Chinese goods will not rectify this structural feature, but will serve only to make many essential goods less affordable to ordinary Americans.

Trump’s trade war against China has nevertheless won him broad mainstream support. This is a result of a major mistake that China has made. It has ignored growing perceptions and complaints, including by leading American figures, that China has been fundamentally unfair in many of its economic policies. “The US has a strong case” against China in “alleg[ing] that China persists with discriminatory policies that favour local companies and penalise foreign firms,” as George Magnus notes in Red Flags, recommending that the United States engage China in a dialogue to encourage the latter to open up “market access in non-­politically sensitive commercial and service-­producing sectors” through avenues such as the US–China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.

Magnus’s suggestion of dialogue through existing institutions is a far wiser route for America to take than Trump’s trade war. If the Trump Administration were to focus its economic campaign against China on the areas of these unfair practices, it would generate a great deal of global support for this campaign. Indeed, the WTO provides many avenues to do so. Conceivably, China may also privately acknowledge mistakes made in these areas and alter its policies. However, there is a growing perception in China and beyond that the real goal of the Trump Administration is not just to eliminate these unfair trade practices but to undermine or thwart China’s long-­term plan to become a technological leader in its own right. Although the United States has the right to implement policies to prevent the theft of its technology, as Martin Feldstein has indicated, this should not be conflated with its efforts to thwart China’s long-­term, state-­led industrial plan, Made in China 2025, designed to make China a global competitor in advanced manufacturing, focusing on industries like electric cars, advanced robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Both Feldstein and Magnus agree that in order to maintain supremacy in high-­tech industries like aerospace and robotics, the US government, rather than pursuing tariffs, should invest in areas such as higher education and research and development. In short, America needs to develop its own long-­term economic strategy to match that of China. In both policy and rhetoric, it is clear to see that China’s leadership has a vision for its economy and people. Plans like Made in China 2025 and the infrastructure projects undertaken in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), such as the construction of high-speed railways, demonstrate China’s efforts to become a global competitor in new, advanced industries. At the same time, China’s leaders have emphasized that the country can no longer pursue GDP growth at the expense of social costs such as inequality and environmental pollution. This Xi made clear when he declared in 2017 that the principal contradiction facing Chinese society is now “between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-­growing needs for a better life.” As Magnus sums it up, this means a shift in focus to “improving the environment and pollution, lowering income and regional inequality, and strengthening the social safety net.” Although, as Magnus writes, China’s economy faces several important challenges, China’s leaders have, at the very least, taken steps to address them. It is time for the United States to do the same.

However, to work out a long-­term strategy, America needs to resolve a fundamental contradiction in its economic assumptions. Most sophisticated American economists believe that government-­led industrial policies do not work, arguing instead for free-market capitalism. If this American belief is correct, Trump’s main trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, should not oppose China’s 2025 government-­led plan to upgrade its technological capabilities. Lighthizer should sit back and allow this Chinese industrial initiative to fail, as the Soviet Union’s economic plans did.

However, if Lighthizer believes that the 2025 plan could succeed, he should consider the possibility that America should revisit its ideological assumptions and, like China, formulate a long-­term comprehensive economic strategy to match the Chinese plan. Even Germany, arguably the world’s leading industrial power, has such a strategy, called Industry 4.0. It’s obviously less intrusive than the Chinese version of industrial policy, which, as Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has described, involves the state playing “a significant role . . . in providing an overall framework, utilizing financial and fiscal tools, and supporting the creation of manufacturing innovation centers.” Why can’t the United States formulate a plan to match?

Ironically, the best country that the United States could work with in formulating such a long-­term economic strategy might well be China. China is keen to deploy its $3 trillion reserves to invest more in the United States. Adam Posen, the head of the influential Peterson Institute for International Economics, has already noted that Trump’s trade war with China and the rest of the world has led net foreign investment in the United States to fall to nearly zero in 2018. America should also consider participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese governmental program launched in 2013 to strengthen regional economic cooperation in Asia, Europe, and Africa through massive investments in infrastructure. The countries currently participating in BRI would welcome US participation, as it would help balance China’s influence. In short, there are many economic opportunities America could take advantage of. Just as Boeing and GE, two major American corporations, have benefited from the explosion in the Chinese aviation market, firms like Caterpillar and Bechtel could benefit from the massive construction undertaken in the BRI region. Unfortunately, America’s ideological aversion to state-­led economic initiatives will prevent both mutually beneficial long-­term economic cooperation with China and needed industrial strategies in the United States.

As China rises, America faces two stark choices. First, should it continue with its current mixed bag of policies toward China, with some seeking to enhance bilateral relations and others effectively undermining them? On the economic front, with the exception of Trump’s latest trade war with China, American policies have consistently treated China as a partner, while America’s political and especially military policies have most often treated China as an adversary. Second, can the United States match China and develop an equally effective long-­term strategic plan to manage the latter’s rise? The simple answer is yes. However, if China is to be America’s number-one strategic priority, as it should be, the obvious question is whether America can be as strategically disciplined as China and give up its futile wars in the Islamic world and its unnecessary vilification of Russia.

It was rational for the United States to have the world’s largest defense budget when its economy dwarfed every other in the world. Would it be rational for the world’s number-­two economy to have the world’s largest defense budget? And if America refuses to give this up, isn’t it a strategic gift to China? China learned one major lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Economic growth must come before military expenditure. Hence, it would actually serve China’s long-­term interests for the United States to burn money away on unnecessary military expenses.

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If America finally changes its strategic thinking about China, it will also discover that it is possible to develop a strategy that will both constrain China and advance US interests. Bill Clinton provided the wisdom for this strategy in a speech at Yale University in 2003, when he said, in short, that the only way to manage the next superpower is to create multilateral rules and partnerships that would tie it down. For example, though China lays claim to reefs and shoals in the South China Sea, the UN Law of the Sea Convention has prevented it from declaring the entire South China Sea an internal Chinese lake. China has also been obliged to implement WTO judgments that have gone against it. International rules do have bite. Fortunately, under Xi Jinping, China is still in favor of strengthening the global multilateral architecture the United States created, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the WTO. China has contributed more UN peacekeepers than the four other Permanent Members of the UN Security Council combined. Hence, there is a window of opportunity for cooperation between America and China in multilateral forums.

To seize the opportunity, American policymakers have to accept the undeniable reality that the return of China (and India) is unstoppable. Why not? From the year 1 to 1820, China and India had the world’s two largest economies. The past two hundred years of Western domination of global commerce have been an aberration. As PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted, China and India will resume their number one and two position by 2050 or earlier.

The leaders of both China and India understand that we now live in a small, interdependent global village, threatened by many new challenges, including global warming. Both China and India could have walked away from the Paris Agreement after Trump did so. Both chose not to. Despite their very different political systems, both have decided that they can be responsible global citizens. Perhaps this may be the best route to find out if China will emerge as a threat to the United States and the world. If it agrees to be constrained by multiple global rules and partnerships, China could very well remain a different polity—­that is, not a liberal democracy—­and still not be a threatening one. This is the alternative scenario that the “China threat” industry in the United States should consider and work toward.

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