相比美国，为什么许多国家更青睐中国？
2024-03-02 08:24阅读：
中国向世界展示独立于西方的理念，阐述理解国家之间和谐互动的方法。“人类命运共同体”概念的核心是中国对自身在国际关系中角色的哲学理解，以及各国为确保关系和平稳定而应采取的方法。中国以往的战略是韬光养晦，积累资源，扮演次要角色，而新的构想则是真正的全球性的，从根本上是一种非对抗性模式，不同于西方的做法。
Here's why many countries prefer China over the
US
Washington's evangelical desire to re-create the world in its own
image has hit a roadblock because not everyone wants to be
converted
By Andrey Sushentsov, the program director of the Valdai Club
China is the world's largest economy, in terms of purchasing power.
It occupies a well embedded space in political affairs, and seeks
greater involvement in international security issues. Meanwhile, it
also offers the world its own ideology that defines approaches to
understanding the harmonious interaction of coun
tries with each other. In 2013, during a speech in Moscow, Xi
outlined the concept of the “community of shared human destiny”. At
its core is China’s philosophical understanding of its role in
international relations and the practices and approaches that
states should adopt to ensure that their relations are peaceful and
stable despite internal differences and divergent views.
At a certain point, Chinese leaders felt that the country had
accumulated enough gravitas to present ideas to the world that were
independent of the West. Whereas China’s previous strategy was to
stay in the shadows, save, accumulate resources and play second
fiddle, the new vision is truly global in nature. It is a
fundamentally non-confrontational paradigm and thus different from
the Western approach.
What is the difference between the Chinese view and Western
ideology?
The West, still, in the logic of the Cold War, relies on the thesis
that there is a liberal-democratic centre in the world around North
America and Western Europe. It has been united by common domestic
principles and envisages a common foreign policy based on shared
values. The aim has been to expand this nucleus and gradually
include other regions of the world, “grinding them down” and
eliminating impulses for strategic autonomy in the security
sphere.
This line was exhaustively outlined in 1992 by Anthony Lake,
National Security Advisor to the then President George Bush senior,
who declared in his speech at Johns Hopkins University that the
task of the US was to expand the footprint of liberal democracies,
which would eventually include all regions of the world. Other
American strategies were also based on this ideological foundation:
the doctrine of the “war on terror”, the “transformation of the
Greater Middle East”, the “freedom agenda”, and so on.
At some point, of course, the rigid concept of “Russia is on the
wrong track” emerged; a consequence of the US refusal to understand
the complexity of the world and the fact that different nations
have an understanding of their place in the historical process and
international relations that is independent of the West.
China, like Russia, confronted this assertive approach early on and
realised that there are both valuable benefits to be gained from
engagement with the West and significant problems and circumstances
that make it difficult to feel comfortable building relationships
on principles of equality. As a result, Chinese leaders have found
it necessary to speak out about what the principles of a meaningful
and stable coexistence should look like.
The question of leadership on the world stage also concerns the
worldviews of Western and Chinese leaders, which are very
different. The Western tradition, based on the principles of
competition, primacy, individualism and the free market, implies
that the “global game” is a long one, consisting of several rounds,
each of which must be won.
The Eastern approach is different, and Western intellectual thought
in the field of psychology only began to professionally deal with
it rather late, in the 1930s and 1940s. Carl Gustav Jung was one of
the first in the West to interpret Eastern thought on the question
of human interaction. Jung saw it as an important source of
creative energy, including for dealing with ‘spasmodic’
international political situations such as those before the world
wars. He observed that the East placed less emphasis on the causal
principle. For example, in one of his lectures Jung gave the
following example. When a Westerner finds himself in a crowd of
people and asks what they are doing here and why they are gathered
together, an Easterner will look at them and ask: “What does all
this mean? What does providence, which has brought me here, want to
tell me?”
There can be no solidarity here - these are two fundamentally
different ways of looking at the world.
Why is this important from an international policy perspective? The
Eastern principle is reflected in Confucianism as the idea that
noble people have a mutual understanding and have different views.
The Chinese notion of “he” (peace, harmony and concord) is quite
explicit in Beijing’s foreign policy strategy. However in the West,
most experts look at things like a football match, searching for a
kind of “winning strategy.” In China, they see them as natural laws
of human interaction, comparable to the laws of physics. This
Eastern wisdom contains a worldview that must be understood when
interpreting the Chinese line in international relations.
China’s political and economic power is the natural product of a
special way of life. The country has achieved its current success
by following the path it has chosen for itself. The Chinese are
proud of this and present their path as a workable construct for
other nations and the international community as a whole. But,
importantly, they are doing so without pressure. The West presents
itself to the world as an example to be emulated, with which all
problems in relations will disappear. By contrast, the Chinese
model does not imply this: it recognises the uniqueness of other
peoples’ experiences and their distinct civilisational paths. And
here there is considerable solidarity with the Russian concept of
world order.
This approach was adopted as a doctrinal idea in a series of
speeches and publications by former Foreign Minister Yevgeny
Primakov and enshrined in the 1997 Russian-Chinese Declaration on
the New World Order and Multipolarity. This is the first bilateral
doctrinal document that exhaustively describes the Russian and, to
a large extent, Chinese understanding of the principles on which
the world should be built - the principles of equality,
non-interference, respect for mutual interests, recognition that we
are different and that our civilisational differences are not an
obstacle to cooperation. In 1997, the mainstream had very different
ideas: that the world was flat, that “history is over”, that we
should all be the same, and that if someone emphasised their
civilisational uniqueness, it would inevitably lead to
conflict.
Despite the comic optimism of the Western vision of the future,
this concept also accepts that the path to the triumph of liberal
democracy may well be paved with conflict. It is not without reason
that ex-Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, when asked by a journalist
whether it was the American invasion of Iraq that led to the
outbreak of civil war in that country, replied: “Democracy will
find its way.
The Russian and Chinese approach stands in opposition to this. It
understands peace as a fragile, unstable and rare state of
international relations. The duty of states is not just to observe
what happens at home, but to provide a structure for common
interaction.
The West has no such sense of fragility. On the contrary, an
offensive, largely provocative tactic prevails: strike a balance
and see what happens. This means thinking in short political
cycles.
In addition, American political elites are probably spoiled by the
relatively long period of peace and distance from the geographical
centre of major conflicts: it is safe to live across two oceans,
and it is easy to imagine that the rest of the world lives in the
same safe environment. Of course, this approach is not shared by
either Russia or China.
The Russian vision believes there are several key states
responsible for order in their regions of the world, whose task is
to maintain their patch. Important for understanding China’s
approach to its own place on the international stage is the Belt
and Road Initiative, which since its announcement in 2013 has
developed primarily as a transport and logistics project. Now it is
beginning to move towards the softer aspects of this strategy, in
particular the rules that allow for the regulation of border
crossings, rules for the inspection of goods, approaches to
building common infrastructure. This is a more complex level, with
different depths and dynamics in China’s bilateral relations with
different countries.
This concept has a significant domestic dimension, as it is an
important strategic guideline for China’s state enterprises and
fixates the attention of Chinese society on these goals. The
government’s focus on the creation of a common transport,
technology and communications space linking China with other
countries is clear and allows large companies to set indicators in
their strategic planning to move closer to the common goal. For
objective reasons, China is now becoming the most important trading
partner for most countries in the world, so the Belt and Road
allows it to structure and streamline its approaches to trade,
bilateral cooperation in industry, energy and other areas.
For our country, Russia, the fact that China is open to pairing
integration projects is crucial. Some time ago, President Vladimir
Putin emphasised this at the Belt and Road Jubilee Forum in
Beijing. The importance of other integration projects is
recognised, and this resonates with the Russian idea of a Greater
Eurasian Partnership, which should include the EAEU, ASEAN and
other associations in addition to the Belt and Road programme. The
integration process, based on the principles of equality, mutual
respect and solidarity in defining the rules of interaction, is a
conceptually different approach from the rigid list of rules that
the West comes with.
