中国寻求平衡战略而非全球主导
2023-03-11 18:32阅读：
过去10年间，一种传统观点开始重新主导美国的外交政策机构。无论是被称为“百年马拉松”，还是相对温和的三十年“持久战”；无论是被描述成一场“最后的斗争”，还是“中国式改造世界计划”，结论都是中国正在或长期以来力求取代美国，成为国际秩序中的头号强国，并夺回作为“天下”统治者的地位。
但真的是这样吗？中国真的在谋求全球统治地位吗？答案是否定的。如果我们仔细查看中国现有的战略，映入眼帘的是一个清晰且远没有那么不好的战略模式：平衡。
意识形态平衡
冷战初期，新中国发现自身陷入由美苏两个超级大国战略竞争所造成的两极格局。在这个时期，对新中国政权的主要威胁来自美国。由于几十年的内战和外国入侵，中国相对贫弱，无法抵御一个在意识形态上持敌对态度的美国。由于这些因素，中国转向唯一既能保护它又能帮助它发展经济的超级大国：在意识形态上兼容的苏联。
地缘政治平衡
冷战后期，随着威胁的来源发生变化，中国的大战略也随之变化。与日俱增的意识形态分歧，使昔日的保护者和援助者苏联变成比美国更紧迫的威胁。由于在经济发展和军事实力上仍相对较弱，中国转向唯一的另一个超级大国，并在地缘政治上支持美国以应对苏联。由此产生的大战略仍然是平衡战略，但是在制衡中国所说的“社会帝国主义”苏联。
在单极世界下的平衡
随着冷战结束，地缘政治格局又发生变化，导致中国的平衡战略也出现新变化。在这一时期的威胁来源中，美国赫然耸现，但组织一个制衡联盟的可能性微乎其微。由此产生“在单极内寻求平衡”的战略，这是一种对冲战略：中国选择融入美国主导的世界秩序，收获经济利益并增加国家财富和实力，同时警惕美国将自由主义政治规范强加给中国。
大国平衡 大约从2008年起，中国发展为无可争议的大国，再加上世界从单极向多极过渡，以及威胁来源
发生变化（形式是美国加强“遏制”中国），这些因素导致中国的传统平衡大战略出现新变体。其中包括三个方面：首先，在东亚地区建立中国影响力；其次，在经济或地缘政治上对中国至关重要的其他地区制衡美国；最后，在全球治理领域制衡美国。
这看起来是否像是“百年马拉松”的巅峰？我想这一定程度上是旁观者的观点。笔者的看法与此不同——这或多或少只是一种战略平衡实践的最新变体，这种实践始于新中国成立，并且此后一直随着地缘政治环境变化而不断演变。这是否对美国形成战略挑战？是的。但这是否是生死存亡竞争中“最后的斗争”？绝对不是。
China seeks strategic balance not global
domination
Andrew Latham
Over the last decade or so, a new conventional wisdom has come to
dominate the U.S. foreign policy establishment — that China has a
grand strategy to displace the U.S. as the world’s preeminent power
or hegemon. Whether framed as a “hundred year marathon” or a more
modest three-decade “long game“; whether characterized as a “final
struggle” or a sinister “plan to Sino-form the world,” the upshot
of this new common sense is that Beijing is, and long has been,
committed to displacing the United States as the apex power in the
international order and taking its rightful place as ruler of all
under heaven.
But is this actually the case? Is China really committed to
achieving global domination? Has Beijing really embarked upon a
final struggle to assert the Chinese Communist Party’s mastery of
the globe?
Fortunately, the answer is no.
While it is of course possible to parse supposedly secret and
never-before-translated-into-English official documents and find
all sorts of lurid statements that would seem to support the
“long-march” thesis, if we look at China’s existing grand strategy,
a clear, and far less ominous, pattern comes into view:
balancing.
Balancing, of course, is a strategy used by states to manage power
relations between themselves and other states or groups of states.
It involves using the instruments of hard, soft and sharp power to
maintain a stable distribution of power — that is, a distribution
of power in which more powerful states have neither the ability nor
incentive to threaten or dominate the balancing one.
So how has China employed balancing strategies in the past? And how
has it adapted its grand strategy of balancing to the challenges of
the present? Four brief snapshots tell us all we need to
know.
Ideological Balancing. During the early Cold War, the newly formed
People’s Republic of China (PRC) found itself caught up in an
emerging bipolar order defined by strategic competition between two
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. During this
era (1950-1972), the principal source of threat to the new regime
was the United States. And as a result of decades of civil war and
foreign invasion, China was relatively poor and weak, a non-nuclear
power unable to defend itself against an ideologically hostile
United States.
As a result of these factors, China sought to balance against the
United States by turning to the only superpower capable of both
defending it and helping it develop economically: the ideologically
compatible Soviet Union. The result was a grand strategy of
defensive balancing against Washington under Moscow’s
tutelage.
Geopolitical Balancing. Later in the Cold War (1972-1990), as the
balance of threat shifted, China’s grand strategy evolved. Still
caught in a bipolar field of geopolitical forces, growing
ideological differences transformed its erstwhile patron and
benefactor, the Soviet Union, into a more pressing threat than the
United States. Still relatively weak in terms of both economic
development and military power, Beijing turned to the only other
superpower partner available and aligned itself geopolitically with
the United States against the Soviet Union. The resulting grand
strategy remained one of balancing, but now it was balancing
against what Beijing called the “socialist-imperialist hegemon” —
the Soviet Union.
Balancing within Unipolarity. As the Cold War ended, the
correlation of geopolitical forces shifted once again, giving rise
to a new variation on China’s grand strategy of balancing. Most
importantly, during the post-Cold War era (1990-2008), bipolarity
gave way to unipolarity. The United States emerged from its “long
twilight struggle” with the now-defunct Soviet Union as the sole
superpower dominating a global order largely organized along (neo)
liberal lines.
At the same time, Beijing adopted economic reforms that both
encouraged it to integrate into that liberal international order
and, over time, dramatically increased its national power. And the
balance of threat during this era was one in which the United
States loomed large, but against which there was little prospect of
organizing a balancing coalition. This resulted in a grand strategy
of “balancing within unipolarity” — a hedging strategy in which
China chose to integrate itself into the U.S.-dominated liberal
order, reaping the benefits of economic liberalization and
increasing its national wealth and power, while keeping a wary eye
on Washington’s efforts to impose liberal political norms on
China.
In the security space, this strategy translated into a concerted
effort to balance against the latent American threat by attempting
to blunt Washington’s efforts to dominate the western Pacific
security order and by beginning to build alternative economic and
security institutions (like the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) in and beyond that
region.
Great Power Balancing. Since about 2008, China’s rise to the rank
of undisputed great power, coupled with the transition from
unipolarity to multipolarity and the shifting balance of threat (in
the form of intensifying U.S. efforts to “contain” China) has
produced a new variant of China’s traditional grand strategy of
balancing. This new variant has three elements.
First, it involves creating a Chinese sphere of influence in East
Asia. China is seeking to establish itself as the dominant power in
its geopolitical neighborhood, including Southeast Asia, the South
and East China Seas and Central Asia.
Second, it involves balancing the United States in parts of the
world that are economically or geopolitically important to China,
including the Persian Gulf, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the
Arctic. In all these regions, China is working to establish itself
as an important player and to blunt what it perceives to be U.S.
efforts to maintain its dominant role in those regions.
And finally, the new variant of China’s balancing strategy (can we
call it “balancing with Chinese characteristics”?) involves
balancing the United States in the space of global governance. This
entails Chinese efforts to play a more assertive role in
established international organizations and to establish new
organizations that it can control and that constitute a
counterbalance to established, U.S. dominated, institutions.
Does this look like the culmination of a 100-year marathon to
Sino-form the planet? Well, I guess that’s partly in the eye of the
beholder. But to this observer, it looks like something very
different — nothing more or less than the latest variation on a
practice of strategic balancing that began with the founding of the
PRC and has continued to evolve as geopolitical conditions have
evolved ever since.
Strategically challenging for Washington? Yes. The final struggle
in an existential competition between the forces of good and evil?
Definitely not.
