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Thirteen years ago, Andrew W. Marshall, the most influential Pentagon strategist, endorsed the Asia 2025 report in which the scenario of SinoAmerican synergy was not even considered:
“A stable and powerful China will be constantly challenging the status quo in East Asia. An unstable and relatively weak China could be dangerous because its leaders might try to bolster their power with foreign military adventurism.”
The tragic terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, modified the orientation of America’s foreign policy for a decade, but as Washington exits from Iraq and prepares to withdraw from the Afghan quagmire, Marshall’s assessment on China has resurfaced and provided the fundamental rationale for President Barack Obama’s grand “pivot to Asia.”
Power shift
If Marshall’s reasoning was taken seriously by the vast majority of U.S. analysts when the Chinese GDP represented only 10 percent of the American domestic product, it certainly has a new resonance now that the Chinese economy has become half of the American economy.
However, by assuming that the main challenges to the national security of the United States come from external factors and not from domestic inadequacies, the American“return to Asia” might illustrate what American scholar Andrew J. Bacevich calls“the new American militarism,” but does not necessarily serve the long-term interest of the Western world. A diversion from what really matters, the solidity of the internal conditions, is a regrettable corollary of this policy.
“It is not alone by the rapidity, or extent of conquest, that we should estimate the greatness of Rome,” wrote Edward Gibbon in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “but the firm edifice of Roman power was raised and preserved by the wisdom of ages... The general principle of government was wise, simple and beneficent.”
The global financial crisis caused by Wall Street’s hubris and a national credit addiction has accelerated Beijing’s relative rise, and a decade before China’s economy is expected to surpass the U.S. GDP, the most recent survey of the Pew Global Attitudes Project concludes that China is already perceived as the world’s leading economy.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based institute, the views about the economic balance of power have indeed shifted dramatically in the past four years: In 2008, before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, 45 percent of the respondents named the United States as the world’s economic superpower, while 22 percent mentioned China; currently, 36 percent refer to the United States but 42 percent believe that China is number one.
Despite pervasive China-bashing, gross misrepresentation of Chinese society and the gap between the American and the Chinese instruments of soft power, it is remarkable to observe that in global public perception the United States does not lead the world any more, at least in the field of economic affairs.
More generally, China demonstrates a unique ability to navigate a world of paradoxes where multipolarity is concomitant with interdependence. In this unprecedented environment, the relevance of the American spectacular “return to Asia” can be questioned, but this doctrine certainly underlines the striking contrast between a polarizing American outlook in which Beijing is framed as a power to contain and a 21st century China which operates beyond an East-West exclusive opposition.
U.S. miscalculation
Before U.S. President Harry Truman orchestrated the containment of the Soviet Union, George Kennan famously wrote in his 1946“long telegram” that Stalinist Moscow “still lives in antagonistic capitalist encirclement with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence.” If the American “pivot to Asia” hypothesizes that Beijing could opt for an antagonistic posture, it miscalculates Beijing’s intentions, since the core and the utmost subtlety of Beijing’s global strategy is precisely to remain non-confrontational.
Moreover, China’s socioeconomic progress should not be seen as a threatening development to be circumscribed while it is synonymous with stability and prosperity. The Chinese reemergence does not weaken U.S. Asian allies, but rather offers them additional sources of growth.
Last year, while Sino-Japanese trade reached$343 billion, the China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) commercial exchanges increased to $363 billion. China’s economic ties are on the rise with Central Asia and its trade with Russia and India will approach $100 billion each by 2015.
The uncertainties in the global economy and the persisting turbulence in the euro zone have pushed Northeast Asia toward collective rebalancing and diversification. This significant redefinition of commercial and financial flows was not a planned scheme targeting any adversary, but simply a reaction to the West’s economic deficiencies.
China, Japan and South Korea have agreed to promote the use of their foreign exchange reserves to invest in each other’s government bonds. The three countries accounting for 70 percent of Asian GDP are also moving toward the establishment of a trilateral free trade area (FTA). Beijing and Seoul have already announced the launch of FTA talks, which are expected to be completed before the end of 2014. China and Japan have started direct trading of their currencies in a policy which boosts trade ties between Asia’s two biggest economies.
The new Northeast Asian dynamics also re-design the Southeast Asian landscape. Along with the 10 ASEAN members, China, Japan and South Korea agreed on the occasion of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank to expand a regional liquidity safety net by doubling the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization agreement to $240 billion.
The highly indebted United States—more than 100 percent of its GDP and on track to add three times more debt than the euro zone over the next 5 years—chooses to create conditions for the bipolarization of the AsiaPacific region 20 years after the end of the Cold War. But instead of a “pivot to Asia,”the United States should have conceived a refocus on the American economy, the real long-term threat to American national security, and beyond, a rethinking with European leaders of Atlantic relations.
Chinese centrality
Fundamentally, while contemporary China has learned to coexist with the West and continues to use it as a catalyst for the renewal of its ancient civilization, the West has not yet fully accepted the reality of a sui generis Chinese modernity which marks the limit of its global expansion.
While the West clings to the notion that“either you are like us or you are against us,”Chinese traditional wisdom has prepared the Middle Kingdom to avoid such a dualistic mindset.
In a Chinese context, management, governance, and more generally, the vision of international relations are deeply influenced by the “Tao of Centrality,” a philosophy and a practice whose aim is to balance the opposites and to mediate between contradictory forces. The intelligence of centrality presupposes contrary forces, but as it targets equilibrium and harmony, it transcends the logic of exclusive opposition. The grandeur of the “Tao of Centrality” would not be in a victory of the East against the West but in their mutual nourishment.
In a global village where the absolute domination of one power over the others has become impossible, and where interdependence has considerably increased the price of tensions, the “Tao of Centrality” is a source of powerful effectiveness.
French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is often quoted with a statement that he probably never uttered and which has become a misleading cliché: “When China awakes, the world will shake.” However, China is neither a revolutionary force nor a power intoxicated by some Nietzschean will to shape a new global order.
As, in the unambiguous words of U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in early June, “All of the U.S. military services are focused on implementing the president’s guidance to make the Asia-Pacific a top priority,” China concentrates on its domestic transformation and, gradually, peacefully, regains centrality.
Although the counterproductive “pivot to Asia” complicates Sino-Western relations, it is not too late for the West to apprehend the Chinese renaissance with wisdom. It would not only contribute to its revitalization, but it would also take the global system into an unprecedented era of cooperation and prosperity.
“A stable and powerful China will be constantly challenging the status quo in East Asia. An unstable and relatively weak China could be dangerous because its leaders might try to bolster their power with foreign military adventurism.”
The tragic terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, modified the orientation of America’s foreign policy for a decade, but as Washington exits from Iraq and prepares to withdraw from the Afghan quagmire, Marshall’s assessment on China has resurfaced and provided the fundamental rationale for President Barack Obama’s grand “pivot to Asia.”
Power shift
If Marshall’s reasoning was taken seriously by the vast majority of U.S. analysts when the Chinese GDP represented only 10 percent of the American domestic product, it certainly has a new resonance now that the Chinese economy has become half of the American economy.
However, by assuming that the main challenges to the national security of the United States come from external factors and not from domestic inadequacies, the American“return to Asia” might illustrate what American scholar Andrew J. Bacevich calls“the new American militarism,” but does not necessarily serve the long-term interest of the Western world. A diversion from what really matters, the solidity of the internal conditions, is a regrettable corollary of this policy.
“It is not alone by the rapidity, or extent of conquest, that we should estimate the greatness of Rome,” wrote Edward Gibbon in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “but the firm edifice of Roman power was raised and preserved by the wisdom of ages... The general principle of government was wise, simple and beneficent.”
The global financial crisis caused by Wall Street’s hubris and a national credit addiction has accelerated Beijing’s relative rise, and a decade before China’s economy is expected to surpass the U.S. GDP, the most recent survey of the Pew Global Attitudes Project concludes that China is already perceived as the world’s leading economy.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based institute, the views about the economic balance of power have indeed shifted dramatically in the past four years: In 2008, before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, 45 percent of the respondents named the United States as the world’s economic superpower, while 22 percent mentioned China; currently, 36 percent refer to the United States but 42 percent believe that China is number one.
Despite pervasive China-bashing, gross misrepresentation of Chinese society and the gap between the American and the Chinese instruments of soft power, it is remarkable to observe that in global public perception the United States does not lead the world any more, at least in the field of economic affairs.
More generally, China demonstrates a unique ability to navigate a world of paradoxes where multipolarity is concomitant with interdependence. In this unprecedented environment, the relevance of the American spectacular “return to Asia” can be questioned, but this doctrine certainly underlines the striking contrast between a polarizing American outlook in which Beijing is framed as a power to contain and a 21st century China which operates beyond an East-West exclusive opposition.
U.S. miscalculation
Before U.S. President Harry Truman orchestrated the containment of the Soviet Union, George Kennan famously wrote in his 1946“long telegram” that Stalinist Moscow “still lives in antagonistic capitalist encirclement with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence.” If the American “pivot to Asia” hypothesizes that Beijing could opt for an antagonistic posture, it miscalculates Beijing’s intentions, since the core and the utmost subtlety of Beijing’s global strategy is precisely to remain non-confrontational.
Moreover, China’s socioeconomic progress should not be seen as a threatening development to be circumscribed while it is synonymous with stability and prosperity. The Chinese reemergence does not weaken U.S. Asian allies, but rather offers them additional sources of growth.
Last year, while Sino-Japanese trade reached$343 billion, the China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) commercial exchanges increased to $363 billion. China’s economic ties are on the rise with Central Asia and its trade with Russia and India will approach $100 billion each by 2015.
The uncertainties in the global economy and the persisting turbulence in the euro zone have pushed Northeast Asia toward collective rebalancing and diversification. This significant redefinition of commercial and financial flows was not a planned scheme targeting any adversary, but simply a reaction to the West’s economic deficiencies.
China, Japan and South Korea have agreed to promote the use of their foreign exchange reserves to invest in each other’s government bonds. The three countries accounting for 70 percent of Asian GDP are also moving toward the establishment of a trilateral free trade area (FTA). Beijing and Seoul have already announced the launch of FTA talks, which are expected to be completed before the end of 2014. China and Japan have started direct trading of their currencies in a policy which boosts trade ties between Asia’s two biggest economies.
The new Northeast Asian dynamics also re-design the Southeast Asian landscape. Along with the 10 ASEAN members, China, Japan and South Korea agreed on the occasion of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank to expand a regional liquidity safety net by doubling the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization agreement to $240 billion.
The highly indebted United States—more than 100 percent of its GDP and on track to add three times more debt than the euro zone over the next 5 years—chooses to create conditions for the bipolarization of the AsiaPacific region 20 years after the end of the Cold War. But instead of a “pivot to Asia,”the United States should have conceived a refocus on the American economy, the real long-term threat to American national security, and beyond, a rethinking with European leaders of Atlantic relations.
Chinese centrality
Fundamentally, while contemporary China has learned to coexist with the West and continues to use it as a catalyst for the renewal of its ancient civilization, the West has not yet fully accepted the reality of a sui generis Chinese modernity which marks the limit of its global expansion.
While the West clings to the notion that“either you are like us or you are against us,”Chinese traditional wisdom has prepared the Middle Kingdom to avoid such a dualistic mindset.
In a Chinese context, management, governance, and more generally, the vision of international relations are deeply influenced by the “Tao of Centrality,” a philosophy and a practice whose aim is to balance the opposites and to mediate between contradictory forces. The intelligence of centrality presupposes contrary forces, but as it targets equilibrium and harmony, it transcends the logic of exclusive opposition. The grandeur of the “Tao of Centrality” would not be in a victory of the East against the West but in their mutual nourishment.
In a global village where the absolute domination of one power over the others has become impossible, and where interdependence has considerably increased the price of tensions, the “Tao of Centrality” is a source of powerful effectiveness.
French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is often quoted with a statement that he probably never uttered and which has become a misleading cliché: “When China awakes, the world will shake.” However, China is neither a revolutionary force nor a power intoxicated by some Nietzschean will to shape a new global order.
As, in the unambiguous words of U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in early June, “All of the U.S. military services are focused on implementing the president’s guidance to make the Asia-Pacific a top priority,” China concentrates on its domestic transformation and, gradually, peacefully, regains centrality.
Although the counterproductive “pivot to Asia” complicates Sino-Western relations, it is not too late for the West to apprehend the Chinese renaissance with wisdom. It would not only contribute to its revitalization, but it would also take the global system into an unprecedented era of cooperation and prosperity.