面对中国崛起，西方应学会“放下愤怒”
2024-06-12 16:26阅读：
在伊丽莎白·库布勒-罗斯的著作《论死亡与临终》中，她描述了一个人得知自己即将死去后会经历的几个阶段。她将适应现实的这五个阶段称为“悲伤的五个阶段”：否认、愤怒、讨价还价、抑郁和接受。
这可以描述西方很多人对快速变化的世界秩序及西方中心地位的消亡所持的态度。这一秩序被认为是该由西方来支配的天然秩序，它维持了约250年。在冷战结束时，美国的全球支配地位似乎已经彻底实现。弗朗西斯·福山曾称，我们已经走到“历史的终结”。“9·11”事件发生后，世界宣布：“我们都是美国人。”美国和西方的长期支配地位似乎确定无疑。
然后，情况开始逆转。首先是美国非法入侵伊拉克，接着是在阿富汗陷于长达20年的“泥潭”。美国国内政治水平从乔治·W·布什在任时的低点，跌至更低点——特朗普与拜登。
美国不仅开始失去军事和经济支配地位，更重要的是失去了道德权威。尽管美国继续把自己说成是领导一个仁慈的“基于规则的国际秩序”的“杰出国家”，但越来越多的事实表明这是虚伪的空话。在美国可耻的默许和支持下，最近在加沙发生的事件正式完成了这一进程。
如果没有中国的崛起，西方原本很有可能挺过这一切。在经历了近200年的停滞、包括在西方手中遭受的“百年耻辱”之后，中国迅速确立了自己在世界上的地位。中国拥有一种充满活力、干劲和自信的文明。在过去40年里，中国从一个落后的边缘经济体转变为按购买力平价计算的全球头号经济体。
面对衰落，西方似乎陷入了库布勒-罗斯所说的前两个阶段，那就是否认和愤怒。因此，西方媒体在所有问题上都选择性地引用西方的观点。此外，它们还一再拒绝接受现实。因此，总有人告诉我们，年增长率超过5%的中国经济“即将崩溃”。
当人们认识到现实的时候，它通常伴随着强烈的震惊和愤怒反应。
这个愤怒阶段是最危险的。正如修昔底德陷阱提醒我们的那样：守成大国会愤怒地攻击新兴大国，这非常危险！
面对这样的情况，希望我们能挺到第三阶段——讨价还价。虽然在库布勒-罗斯的理论中，这被视为消极的，但在国际地缘政治中，这是积极的，是对现实的承认，是放下愤怒，是做好准备开展外交活动并承认差异，谈判并找到共同利益。
Western decline: Denial and anger at China's
vitality
By John Queripel
In her work, ‘On Death and Dying’ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote of
the stages one goes through on being told one is dying. She called
these ‘Five Stages of Grief,’ of adjusting to reality: denial,
anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Such is descriptive of the attitude of much of the West to the
rapidly changing world order, the dying of its preeminence. That
order, wherein it was held to be the natural order for the West to
dominate, held for around 250 years, sufficient to make it easy to
forget that this has not some natural order of things through
history. For most of the past 2,000 years wealth and power actually
lay in the East, primarily with China and India.
Western dominance began with the first Portuguese caravels crossing
world oceans establishing a mercantile economic order in which
wealth flowed back to the home ports. Portuguese colonial power was
followed by the Spanish, Dutch, French and most powerfully the
English. Having grown in a time when half the globe was coloured
red that is my lived experience. The prowess of England in
conquering the world was profound. A nation with just 11 million in
1820 was able to hold sway, directly or indirectly, over China and
India, having populations respectively of 390 million and 210
million.
Of course that power was transferred from England to its Anglo
offspring the United States following WWII. So dominant was the US
following that conflict, which drained Europe of its strength, with
a population of just 6% of the global aggregate it possessed some
40% of global wealth.
Essentially the world was run as a US corporation, except for those
nations behind the ‘Iron Curtain.’ When those nations began to
implode from the late 1980s global dominance of the US seemed
complete. Francis Fukuyama trumpeted that with US unipolar
dominance, we had reached ‘the end of history.’
Many of us found it hard to disagree. US hegemony seemed complete.
A decade later came 9/11 and the world announced itself as, ‘we are
all American.’ Long term US and Western ascendency seemed
guaranteed.
Then it started to go bottom up. First, the illegal invasion of
Iraq, followed by a 20 year ‘quagmire’ in Afghanistan. Domestically
U.S. politics sunk from a low of George W. Bush, to something even
lower, the open philander Donald J. Trump versus ‘give me a war’
Joe Biden.
It has not only been military and economic ascendency being lost,
but more importantly, moral authority. Though the US continues to
speak of itself as ‘the exceptional nation’ leading a benevolent
‘rules based international order,’ such is increasingly being shown
to be nought but hypocritical cant. Recent events in Gaza, with the
criminal US acquiesce and support, has merely completed the
process. Alone, left to defend the US and its standing in the
world, are an increasingly smaller number of Western nations,
themselves losing moral suasion by their so acting.
It may well have been possible for the West to weather all this,
but for the rise of another, China, rapidly asserting its position
in the world after a 200 year hiatus, including, ‘a century of
humiliation,’ at the hands of the West. China presents as a
civilisation bristling with vitality, energy and confidence. Its
citizens have seen their incomes multiply 40-fold in the past 40
years as their economy has been transformed from one backward and
marginal, to one on Purchasing Power Parity terms being the global
leader.
Faced with its decline the West seems caught between Kübler-Ross’
first two stages; denial and anger.
Thus, Western media on every world issue selectively quotes western
opinion as though that were the only opinion of import, reporting
often becoming an echo-chamber, both of reinforcement and denial.
While this may be conscious choice, it also is a result of learned
habit, an unconscious conditioning, as automatic response to
events.
Denial also takes another form as repetitive rejection of reality.
Thus we are repeatedly told, the Chinese economy, growing at >5%
p.a., is about to implode. Objective analysis is lost as facts (in
this case the growth rates of different economies) are bracketed as
not existing, nor permitted to get in the way of the accepted,
hoped for, projection.
Where there is recognition of the reality, it usually comes as
harsh shock, anger often the reaction. Reality is then met by those
not ‘us’ being ‘othered,’ presented as threat.
This stage of anger is the most dangerous, anger having at its
root, irrationality. As the Thucydides Trap reminds us, there is
great danger in an established power, under threat, lashing out in
anger at that ascending. The current climate of US politics makes
that a real possibility. Given the clock of the atomic scientists
now at 90 seconds to midnight, awful visions of the apocalypse are
conjured.
In face of such, hopefully we survive to reach the third stage,
bargaining. Though in the Kübler-Ross schema that is viewed as
negative, in international geo-politics it is a positive, an
acknowledgement of reality, the laying aside of anger, with a
preparedness, using clear headed analysis, to enter into diplomacy,
to ‘unother’ the other, recognising differences, negotiate and find
common interest.
