Victor Hanson 美中对抗在定义全球秩序

维克多·戴维斯·汉森：美中对抗将定义全球秩序

维克多·戴维斯·汉森 2019年5月20日

https://www.hoover.org/news/victor-davis-hanson-us-china-confrontation-will-define-global-order

美国正处于与日益咄咄逼人的中国的十字路口，这可能会决定未来几十年美国的安全和国际秩序。

胡佛学者维克多·戴维斯·汉森表示，美国正处于与日益咄咄逼人的中国的十字路口，这可能会决定未来几十年美国的安全和国际秩序。

汉森是胡佛研究所的马丁和伊利·安德森高级研究员，研究军事史和古典文学。去年，汉森荣获埃德蒙·伯克奖，该奖项旨在表彰为捍卫西方文明做出重大贡献的人士。他是2019年出版的《特朗普的理由》一书和2017年出版的《第二次世界大战》一书的作者。他最近就美国对华政策接受了采访：

特朗普这些关税背后的短期和长期策略是什么？

汉森：短期来看，特朗普认为他可以承受中国互惠关税的打击，因为他的反对派民主党几十年来一直在悄悄地抨击中国的欺骗行为；其次，美国经济规模庞大且多元化，中国根本无法造成严重损害。

别忘了，美国的国土面积只有中国的三分之一，但年国内生产总值却是中国的两倍多，拥有远超中国军队的强大力量和远超中国盟友——同时，美国还拥有远超中国影响力的全球文化、远超中国先进的高等教育和技术创新体系。中国的亚洲邻国以及我们自己的欧盟盟友们暗自希望特朗普能够遏制并遏制中国的重商主义，同时公开地、形式上地谴责甚至谴责特朗普的边缘政策以及他诉诸关税和高调劝说等僵化策略的做法。

特朗普认为，从长远来看，如果目前的趋势不逆转，中国理论上可以赶上并超越美国。作为一个专制的、反民主的超级大国，中国的全球主导地位将不同于美国主导的战后秩序，而是一种中国遵循一套规则，并把一套截然不同的规则强加于其他所有人的秩序——或许有一天，它会类似于在中国国内强加于本国人民的制度。

中国现在是否比冷战时期的俄罗斯更强大？如果是，为什么？

汉森：是的。它的人口甚至比前苏联帝国还要多五倍。中国的经济规模远超美国，超过一百万中国学生和商界人士在欧美高校就读，并受中国公司派驻海外。因此，与旧苏联不同，中国在文化、经济和政治上都与西方融为一体。苏联——就像毛泽东时代的中国一样——从未租借西方港口，从未与好莱坞争夺不雅影片，从未伪装成亚洲价值观的可靠捍卫者，从未持有西方公司的大量股份，也从未积累过与西方国家的巨额贸易顺差。与中国当前的努力相比，苏联的宣传和间谍活动显得粗暴无礼。

正如特朗普政府所说，中国在贸易和知识产权方面究竟做了什么欺骗行为？美国该如何阻止这种行为？

汉森：中国不尊重专利和版权法。它仍然出口仿冒品和假冒产品。它通过大量的间谍活动窃取研发投资。它操纵货币。

它的国有企业以低于生产成本的价格出口商品，以抢占市场份额。它要求外国公司交出技术，作为在中国做生意的代价。而且，最重要的是，它假定，甚至要求，西方国家不要效仿其在国际上的流氓行径——否则后果自负。

结果形成了一个奇怪的悖论：美国和欧洲认为中国是国际商业的不法之徒，但补救措施却被认为比疾病本身更糟糕。因此，许多西方公司通过合作项目在中国赚取了巨额利润，许多学术机构依赖中国学生，许多金融机构在中国投资，以至于质疑其重商主义就会被嘲笑为古怪的民族主义者、危险的保护主义者或名副其实的种族主义者。中国是西方受害者学的敏锐学习者，总是摆出一副西方报复、种族主义或幼稚嫉妒的姿态。

补救措施？首先，我们必须放弃40年来的幻想，即中国越富裕，就会变得越西方化、越自由化；或者说中国越熟悉西方，就越欣赏和尊重西方的价值观；或者说中国内部问题太多，不可能对西方构成威胁；或者说西方在外交政策上表现出的宽宏大量

中美关系和贸易关系将受到重视，并得到相应的回报。相反，更好的范例是1930年至1941年间的日本帝国。当时，东京吸纳了亚洲盟友；派遣了25万名学生和武官前往西方学习或窃取技术和理论；迅速西化；宣称西方殖民列强和美国已经疲惫不堪，在太平洋地区没有任何合法业务；并认为其自身的威权主义是自由市场资本主义更好的合作伙伴，远胜于西方那些混乱笨拙的民主国家。

中国如今如何能够利用其实力可能略逊一筹的军事力量在全球范围内与美国对抗？

汉森：中国近期还无法称霸全球海军。其海军战略更像1939年至1941年的德国海军，后者试图在不匹敌其全球影响力的情况下，阻止拥有巨大优势的皇家海军进入战略要地。中国正在开辟一些区域，以便岸基炮台和沿海舰队能够发射密集的导弹，摧毁价值数十亿美元的美国航母。中国租赁的50多个战略要地港口，在全球紧张局势下，或许可以作为武装商船的中转站。但目前，这些港口尚不具备美国航母、潜艇舰队或远征海军陆战队的能力——因此，关键在于阻止美国扩张势力范围，而不是效仿其扩张范围。

为什么现任政府在多个不同方面和层面对抗中国时，其政策与过去不同？

汉森：特朗普认为，经济实力是全球影响力的关键。没有经济实力，军事力量就会枯萎。一个GDP年增长率达到3%、能源独立、充分就业、劳动生产率不断提高且贸易对称的国家，可以重新与中国的重商主义进行谈判，并让中国的亚洲邻国放心，他们无需姑息其侵略行为。历届政府或许都认同中国违反版权法和专利法、倾销补贴商品、盗用技术，并运营着庞大的全球间谍机构，但他们认为补救措施要么不可能，要么危险，因此本质上是通过谈判来减缓所谓的中国注定的全球霸权。特朗普愿意与中国对抗，以实现公平贸易而非自由贸易，并承受随之而来的指责，称他是某种关税战的尼安德特人。

还有其他想法吗？

汉森：我认为国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥领导的国务院是第一个公开质疑中国最终将统治世界这一观点的政府，并提出了一项战略计划来制约其贸易和政治议程。在这方面，胡佛研究所的多位学者目前正与胡佛研究员、美国国务院政策规划主任基伦·斯金纳合作，提出一些不同于美国过去正统做法的替代方案，但他们也指出，国家间关系中最危险的时期是从事实上的绥靖政策向对称政策的转变——鉴于过去的异常行为已被视为“正常”，而一个国家为重新调整关系而做出的正常努力却被斥为危险的“异常”。

维克多·戴维斯·汉森也是胡佛研究所“军事史在当代冲突中的作用”工作组主席。

Victor Davis Hanson: US-China Confrontation Will Define Global Order

Victor Davis Hanson  May 20, 2019

https://www.hoover.org/news/victor-davis-hanson-us-china-confrontation-will-define-global-order

The United States is at a crossroads with an increasingly aggressive China, which could define America’s security and the international order for decades to come.

The United States is at a crossroads with an increasingly aggressive China, which could define America’s security and the international order for decades to come, Hoover scholar Victor Davis Hanson says.
 
Hanson, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, studies military history and the classics. Last year, Hanson won the Edmund Burke Award, which honors people who have made major contributions to the defense of Western civilization. He is the author of the 2019 book The Case for Trump, and 2017's The Second World Wars. He was recently interviewed on US policy toward China:
 
What is the Trump strategy behind these tariffs, short term and long term?
 
Hanson: Short term, Trump feels that he can take the hit of reciprocal Chinese tariffs, given that quietly his opposition, the Democrats, have been raging about Chinese cheating for decades, and, second, that the US economy is so huge and diverse that China simply cannot cause serious damage. 

Remember the United States is a country one-third the size of China that produces over double China's annual gross domestic product and fields a military far more formidable with far more allies—while enjoying a far more influential global culture and a far more sophisticated system of higher education and technological innovation. China’s Asian neighbors and our own European Union allies quietly are hoping Trump can check and roll back Chinese mercantilism, while publicly and pro forma chiding or even condemning Trump's brinksmanship and his resort to fossilized strategies such as tariffs and loud jawboning.

Long term, Trump believes that if present trends are not reversed, China could in theory catch and surpass the US. And as an authoritarian, anti-democratic superpower, China's global dominance would not be analogous to the American-led postwar order, but would be one in which China follows one set of rules and imposes a quite different set on everyone else—perhaps one day similar to the system imposed on its own people within China.

Is China a more formidable rival now than Russia was during the Cold War, and if so, why?
 
Hanson: Yes. Its population is five times greater than that of even the old Soviet Empire’s. Its economy is well over twenty times larger, and over a million Chinese students and business people are in European and American universities and colleges and posted abroad with Chinese companies. So, unlike the old Soviet Union, China is integrated within the West, culturally, economically, and politically. The Soviets—like Maoist China—never leased Western ports, or battled Hollywood over   unflattering pictures, or posed as credible defenders of Asian values or owned large shares of Western companies or piled up huge trade surpluses with Western nations. Soviet propaganda and espionage were crude compared to current Chinese efforts.

What is China doing in terms of cheating on trade and intellectual property as the Trump administration says, and how can the United States stop this behavior? 

Hanson: China does not honor patents and copyright laws. It still exports knock-off and counterfeit products. It steals research and development investment through a vast array of espionage rings. It manipulates its currency.
 
Its government companies export goods at below the cost of production to grab market share. It requires foreign companies to hand over technology as a price of doing business in China. And, most importantly, it assumes, even demands, that Western nations do not emulate its own international roguery—or else. 
 
The result is a strange paradox in which the United States and Europe assume that China is an international commercial outlaw, but the remedy is deemed worse than the disease. So, many Western firms make enormous profits in China through joint projects, and so many academic institutions depend on China students, and so many financial institutions are invested in China, that to question its mercantilism is to be derided as a quaint nationalist, or a dangerous protectionist, or a veritable racist. China is an astute student of the Western science of victimology and always poses as a  target of Western vindictiveness, racism, or puerile jealousy.
 
Remedies? First, we must give up the 40-year fantasies that the richer China gets, the more Western and liberal it will become; or that the more China becomes familiar with the West, the greater its admiration and respect for Western values; or that China has so many internal problems that it cannot possibly pose a threat to the West; or that Western magnanimity in foreign policy and trade relations will be appreciated and returned in kind. Instead, the better paradigm is imperial Japan between 1930 and 1941, when Tokyo absorbed Asian allies; had sent a quarter-million students and attachés to the West to learn or steal technology and doctrine; rapidly Westernized; declared Western colonial powers and the US as tired and spent, and without any legitimate business in the Pacific; and considered its own authoritarianism a far better partner to free market capitalism than the supposedly messy and clumsy democracies of the West. 
 
How is China able now to leverage its arguably less powerful military to confront the United States globally?
 
Hanson: Global naval dominance is not in the Chinese near future. Its naval strategy is more reminiscent of the German Kriegsmarine of 1939 to 1941, which sought to deny the vastly superior Royal Navy access at strategic points without matching its global reach. China is carving out areas where shore batteries and coastal fleets can send showers of missiles to take out a multibillion-dollar American carrier. And its leasing of 50 and more strategically located ports might serve in times of global tensions as transit foci for armed merchant ships. But for now they do not have the capabilities of the American carrier or submarine fleet or expeditionary Marine forces—so the point is to deny America reach, not to emulate its extent.

Why are the current administration policies different than those in the past in confronting China on many different fronts and levels?
 
Hanson: Trump believes that economic power is the key to global influence and clout. Without it, a military wilts on the vine. A country with GDP growth at a 3 percent annual clip, energy independence, full employment, and increasing labor productivity and trade symmetry can renegotiate Chinese mercantilism and reassure China’s Asian neighbors that they need not appease its aggression. Past administrations might have agreed that China violated copyright and patent laws, dumped subsidized goods, appropriated technology, and ran a massive global espionage apparatus, but they considered remedies either impossible or dangerous and so essentially negotiated a slowing of the supposed predestined Chinese global hegemony. Trump was willing to confront China to achieve fair rather than free trade and take the ensuing heat that he was some sort of tariff-slapping Neanderthal.
 
Any other thoughts?
 
Hanson: I think Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s State Department is the first to openly question the idea that China will eventually rule the world and has offered a strategic plan to check its trade and political agendas. In this regard, a number of Hoover Institution scholars, currently working with Hoover fellow Kiron Skinner, director of policy planning at the US Department of State, are offering alternatives to orthodox American approaches of the past, with the caveat that the most dangerous era in interstate relations is the transition from de facto appeasement to symmetry—given that the abnormalities of the  past had become considered “normal,” and the quite normal efforts of a nation to recalibrate to a balanced relationship are damned as dangerously “abnormal.”
 
Victor Davis Hanson is also the chairman of the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group at the Hoover Institution.