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中国对于美国很危险

(2023-06-05 00:15:50) 下一个

对于美国来说，中国到底有多危险？

SPENCER BOKAT-LINDELL  2023年2月20日
 
本月早些时候，一个中国间谍气球在美国领空被发现并击落，美国国务卿安东尼·布林肯随后决定推迟美国最高外交官自2018年以来的首次中国之行，这成为两个大国关系恶化的漫长故事中的最新篇章。
这个故事的真正开始是在五年前，当时特朗普政府发起了一场到拜登任内仍然在持续的贸易战。今年5月，拜登总统承诺，如果中国对台湾发动攻击，美国将保卫台湾，这是对长期政策的惊人背离（尽管时断时续），前众议院议长南希·佩洛西今年夏天对台湾的访问突显了这一点。上个月，美国空军一名高级将领发布了一份备忘录，预测2025年将爆发战争，并呼吁做好准备，“以便威慑中国，并在必要时击败中国。”
为什么华盛顿认为中国是美国国家安全的最大威胁？这些担忧是有根据的吗？为了避免两个拥有核武器的国家之间发生潜在的灾难性军事冲突，应该做些什么？以下是人们的看法。
中国到底有多危险？
 
中国的威权主义政府给予其公民很少的公民自由，以及更加少的政治权利，并通过无所不及的一党统治、广泛的审查制度、对公民社会的压制、习近平主席领导下日益复杂的监视和宣传系统，以及被美国定性为种族灭绝的大规模宗教人士和少数民族拘禁来行使其控制。
 
当然，世界上还有其他威权主义政府；美国甚至与其中一些国家结盟。但对美国官员来说，除了其规模之外，中国之所以成为一种独特的威胁，在于它的军事现代化，以及用美国国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀的话来说，中国“为适应其威权偏好而重塑印太地区和国际体系所采取的日益高压的行动”。
• 近年来，北京对世界上最重要的水道之一南海提出了广泛的主权要求，这些要求被普遍视为非法。
• 中国还在台湾附近举行了更激进的军事演习。台湾是1949年成立的一个繁荣的民主政体，距离中国大陆海岸仅160公里，北京认为台湾是一个非法分离的省份。
自20世纪70年代以来，美国通过“一个中国”和“战略模糊”政策达成了微妙的外交平衡，前者不承认台湾是一个主权国家，后者向台湾出售武器但不提供任何安全保证。台湾主导着对电子设备功能至关重要的微芯片生产。美国商务部长吉娜·雷蒙多去年警告称，如果中国的入侵限制了这些芯片的供应，将导致“严重而直接的衰退”以及“我们无法保护自己”。
 
作为世界第二大经济体，中国还通过贸易、被指称的知识产权盗窃和对发展中国家的投资施加影响，批评人士称后者是一种新形式的殖民主义。随着中国市场力量的增长，“美国的机构和企业越来越沉默，以避免激怒中国政府，”时报的杰曼·洛佩斯写道。
但是，尽管存在这些担忧，许多人还是拒绝接受中国对美国构成生存威胁的说法。在最基本的层面上，“中国既没有摧毁美国的破坏性能力，也没有摧毁美国的地缘政治动机，”克莱蒙特·麦肯纳学院政府学教授裴敏欣于2021年在彭博社上发表文章称。他还说，即使最近有所扩张，中国的核武库仍然比美国小得多，而且中国军队在技术先进性和经验方面仍然落后。
在昆西国家事务研究所高级研究员史文(Michael Swaine)看来，中国政府对输出其治理体系也没有表现出多少兴趣。他在2021年的《外交政策》上发表文章指出：“即使有，也几乎完全是针对发展中国家，而不是像美国这样的工业民主国家。”此外，中国的经济发展模式“以其目前的形式，几乎可以肯定是不可持续的，这是由于中国的人口老龄化、广泛的腐败、严重的收入不平等、不完善的社会保障网络，以及推动全球创新需要信息自由流动这一事实”。
在康奈尔大学中国与亚太研究教授白洁曦(Jessica Chen Weiss)看来，与中国展开零和博弈的逻辑在华盛顿的两党成员中已经变得如此普遍，以至于有可能损害美国自身的利益。去年，她在《外交事务》杂志上写道：“如果个人觉得为了保护自己和职业发展，有必要比别人表现得更强硬，就会产生群体思维。”
对于这种群体思维的批评者来说，对气球事件的反应是威胁膨胀的又一个例子。“美国人利用各种技术收集中国和其他国家的情报：卫星、电话窃听、电脑入侵，甚至还有老式的人力资源，”《外交政策》专栏作家艾玛·阿什福德写道。“似乎华盛顿把整个事情搞得太过火了。”
美国和中国能在不发生冲突的情况下竞争吗？
 
即使是那些把对抗中国崛起作为国家首要任务的人，也不是特别热衷于发动战争，因为这几乎肯定会付出巨大的代价：
• 根据战略与国际研究中心最近进行的模拟，在入侵台湾引发的冲突中，美国及其盟友将损失数万名军人，台湾经济也将遭受重创。
• 兰德公司的研究显示，在一定程度上，由于美国和中国经济是高度相互依赖的，一场持续一年的战争就会导致美国GDP下降5%至10%，中国的GDP下降25%至30%，对全球经济产生严重影响。
• 冲突还可能危及美国和中国这两个世界上最大的温室气体排放国之间在气候变化方面的合作，正如佩洛西对台湾的访问所暂时造成的那样。
如何才能最好地避免战争，人们意见不一。在台湾问题上，台湾的研究教授陈玉洁等人认为，威慑中国需要志同道合的民主国家展示更多的支持，“包括与台湾签署双边经济协议，允许台湾加入地区贸易组织，以减少台湾在经济上对中国大陆的过度依赖，支持台湾参与国际组织，以及更多像佩洛西访问这样的姿态。”《纽约时报》专栏作家布雷特·史蒂芬斯认为，拜登也应该发表正式声明，结束美国的战略模糊政策。
但也有人认为这是一种挑衅，会适得其反，因为北京已经假设美国会在冲突中支持台湾。“这会暗示我们的政策是确保台湾独立，这样一来会削弱互信，”专注于中国的研究公司龙洲经讯的创始合伙人葛艺豪(Arthur Kroeber)去年11月对《外交事务》表示。“可能会煽动台湾为走向独立而采取更激进的行动，这将增加而不是降低武装冲突的可能性。”
 
在其他问题上，人们对于如何缓和紧张局势有更多共识。例如，增加对该地区民主国家的军事援助得到了相对广泛的支持。“专注于向美国盟友提供防御性武器的积极拒止战略，以及在该地区低调地、更灵活地部署美国的力量，将提高中国军事行动的成本，同时又不会加剧中国自身的不安全感，”中国历史学家文哲凯(Jake Werner)和昆西研究所的高级研究员威廉·哈顿写道。
去年，国会通过了两党立法，推出520亿美元的补贴和税收抵免以鼓励国内芯片生产，这项产业政策可以通过对冲供应链薄弱环节来帮助降低台湾争端对国家安全的影响。正如奥巴马政府财政部长的顾问史蒂文·拉特纳上个月在时报上所写，“甚至许多自由市场保守派似乎也认识到，不受约束的资本主义会导致不完美的结果。”
拜登还可以通过降低对中国进口商品的关税来降低美中竞争的温度，《纽约时报》编委会去年形容关税是“特朗普政府逼迫中国做出经济让步的失败策略”。编委会认为，美国不应试图改变中国，而应专注于加强与中国邻国的关系，因为“最近的历史告诉我们，美国在不进行单边行动时能更有效地推进和捍卫自己的利益。”
目前是不安的和平
无论如何平息气球事件，这都凸显了美中关系已经变得多么紧张，下一场争端有多么容易演变成冲突。“正如我们在气球事件上看到的那样——有人预见到会有这样一场气球迷你危机吗？——有无穷无尽的可能组合，”为时报报道中国的储百亮(Chris Buckely)本周表示。
它还揭示了两个大国现在的沟通有多么欠缺：在气球被击落后不久，五角大楼表示，国防部长奥斯汀通过一条特殊的危机热线联系了中国国防部长，后者拒绝接听他的电话。
 
如果这种冷淡的气氛持续下去，“当关乎世界命运的时刻到来时，一场新的古巴导弹危机并不是不可想象的，”迈克尔·舒曼在《大西洋》上写道。“然后这两个对手可能会发现他们避免灾难所需的沟通渠道不起作用，他们的敌对态度太根深蒂固，无法找到解决方案。”
Spencer Bokat-Lindell是时报观点版面的编辑。欢迎在Twitter上关他：@bokatlindell。翻译：纽约时报中文网
 
U.S.-China Relations Keep Getting Worse. Do They Have To?
 
 

This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Wednesdays.

The detection and downing of a Chinese spy balloon in American airspace earlier this month, and the attendant decision by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone the first trip to China by America’s top diplomat since 2018, was just the latest episode in a longer story of deteriorating relations between the world’s two great powers.

That story began in earnest five years ago, when the Trump administration ignited a trade war that the Biden administration has continued to wage. It took another turn in May when President Biden pledged to defend Taiwan if China attacked it, a striking (if halting) departure from longstanding policy, which was underscored by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island over the summer. And last month, a top Air Force general issued a memo predicting a war in 2025 and calling for preparations “to deter, and if required, defeat China.”

Why does Washington believe that China is the top threat to U.S. national security? Are those fears founded, and what should be done to avoid a potentially disastrous military conflict between two nuclear-armed countries? Here’s what people are saying.

China’s authoritarian government affords its citizens few civil liberties and even fewer political rights, and exercises its control through sprawling one-party rule, widespread censorship, repression of civil society, systems of surveillance and propaganda that have grown increasingly sophisticated under President Xi Jinping, and the mass detention of religious and ethnic minorities, which the United States has deemed a genocide.

There are, of course, other authoritarian governments in the world; the United States is even allied with some of them. But to U.S. officials, what makes China a unique threat — beyond its size — is the modernization of its military and, in the words of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, its “increasingly coercive actions to reshape the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to fit its authoritarian preferences”:

Since the 1970s, the United States has struck a delicate diplomatic balance through the “one China” policy, under which it does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation, and through “strategic ambiguity,” selling arms to Taiwan without making any security guarantees. Taiwan dominates the production of microchips, which are critical to the functioning of electronic devices. A Chinese invasion that constrained the supply of those chips would lead to “a deep and immediate recession” and “an inability to protect ourselves,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned last year.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China also exerts influence through trade, alleged theft of intellectual property and investment in developing countries that critics have called a new form of colonialism. And as China’s market power has grown, “U.S. institutions and businesses are increasingly silencing themselves to avoid angering the Chinese government,” German Lopez of The Times has written.

But for all these concerns, many reject the notion that China poses an existential threat to the United States. At the most basic level, “China has neither the destructive capability nor the geopolitical motivation to destroy the U.S.,” Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, argued in Bloomberg in 2021. Even with a recent expansion, China’s nuclear arsenal remains much smaller than America’s, he added, and its military still lags in technological sophistication and experience.

In the view of Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Beijing also has shown little interest in exporting its governance system. “Where it does, it is almost entirely directed at developing countries, not industrial democracies such as the United States,” he argued in Foreign Policy in 2021. Moreover, its economic development model “is almost certainly not sustainable in its present form, given China’s aging population, extensive corruption, very large levels of income inequality, inadequate social safety net, and the fact that free information flows are required to drive global innovation.”

To Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia-Pacific studies at Cornell University, the logic of zero-sum competition with China has become so pervasive in Washington among members of both parties that it risks undermining America’s own interests. “When individuals feel the need to out-hawk one another to protect themselves and advance professionally,” she wrote in Foreign Affairs last year, “the result is groupthink.”

And for detractors of such groupthink, the reaction to the balloon incident is yet another instance of threat inflation. “Americans use all kinds of technology to gather intelligence on China and other states: satellites, phone tapping, computer intrusions, and even good old-fashioned human sources,” writes Emma Ashford, a columnist at Foreign Policy. “It just seems as if Washington blew this whole thing way out of proportion.”

Even those who hold countering China’s rise as a top national priority aren’t particularly keen to start a war, as it would almost certainly exact tremendous costs:

  • In a conflict over an invasion of Taiwan, the United States and its allies would lose tens of thousands of service members and Taiwan’s economy would be devastated, according to recent simulations conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

  • In part because the U.S. and Chinese economies are deeply interdependent, a war lasting just one year would cause America’s G.D.P. to fall by 5 percent to 10 percent and China’s by 25 percent to 30 percent, with severe effects for the global economy, according to a RAND Corporation study.

  • Conflict could also imperil cooperation on climate change between the United States and China, the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters, as Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan temporarily did.

Opinions differ on how war might be best avoided. Regarding Taiwan, there are some, like Yu-Jie Chen, a research professor in Taiwan, who contend that deterring China requires more demonstrations of support from like-minded democracies, “including signing bilateral economic agreements with Taiwan, allowing it to join regional trade organizations to diminish Taiwan’s economic overreliance on China, supporting Taiwan’s participation in international organizations and more gestures like Ms. Pelosi’s visit.” The Times columnist Bret Stephens has argued that Biden should also end the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity in a formal statement.

Yet others think that would be a counterproductive provocation, as Beijing already assumes that the United States would support Taiwan in a conflict. “It would erode assurance by implying our policy is to guarantee Taiwan independence,” Arthur Kroeber, a founding partner at the China-focused research firm GaveKal Dragonomics, told Foreign Affairs in November. “And it could incite Taiwan to make more aggressive moves toward independence, which would increase, not lower, the chances of armed conflict.”

On other matters, there is more consensus about how to ease tensions. There is relatively broad support, for example, for increasing military aid to democracies in the region. “An active denial strategy that focuses on supplying defensive weapons to U.S. allies and a lower-profile, more agile deployment of U.S. forces in the region would raise the costs of Chinese military action without exacerbating China’s own sense of insecurity,” write Jake Werner, a China historian, and William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute.

Last year, Congress passed bipartisan legislation allocating $52 billion in subsidies and tax credits to encourage domestic chip production, an industrial policy that could help lower the national security stakes of the Taiwan dispute by hedging against supply chain vulnerabilities. As Steven Rattner, a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, wrote in The Times last month, “even many free-market conservatives seem to recognize that unfettered capitalism can lead to imperfect results.”

 

Biden could also turn down the temperature of the U.S.-China rivalry by rolling back tariffs on Chinese imports, which the Times editorial board described last year as “the Trump administration’s failed gambit of bullying China into making economic concessions.” Instead of trying to change China, the board argued, the United States should focus on strengthening ties with China’s neighbors, as “recent history teaches that the United States is more effective in advancing and defending its interests when it does not act unilaterally.”

However the balloon affair blows over, it has highlighted how strained U.S.-China relations have become and how easily another dispute could curdle into conflict. “As we see with balloons — who predicted a balloon mini-crisis? — the possible permutations are endless,” Chris Buckley, who covers China for The Times, said this week.

It has also revealed how little the two powers now communicate: Shortly after the balloon was shot down, the Pentagon said that Secretary Austin reached out through a special crisis line to his Chinese counterpart, who declined to answer his call.

Should this frosty dynamic persist, “a new type of Cuban-missile-crisis moment, when the fate of the world hangs in the balance, is not inconceivable,” Michael Schuman writes in The Atlantic. “Then the two adversaries may find that the channels of communication they’d need to avert disaster aren’t working, and their inimical attitudes are too entrenched to find a solution.”

Do you have a point of view we missed? Email us at debatable@nytimes.com. Please note your name, age and location in your response, which may be included in the next newsletter.

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