China Is Ready for a World of Disorder 中国已经准备好迎接一个混乱的世界

America Is Not 而美国没有

BY MARK LEONARD 马克·莱昂纳德（MARK LEONARD）

**July/August 2023 2023年7月/8月**Published on June 20, 2023 2023年6月20日发布

In March, at the end of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood at the door of the Kremlin to bid his friend farewell. Xi told his Russian counterpart, “Right now, there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Putin, smiling, responded, “I agree.” 三月份，在中国国家主席习近平访问莫斯科结束时，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京站在克里姆林宫门口向他的朋友告别。习近平告诉俄罗斯总统：“现在，有一些变化，这种变化我们已经有100年没有见过了，而我们正是一起推动这些变化的人。”普京微笑着回答：“我同意。”

The tone was informal, but this was hardly an impromptu exchange: “Changes unseen in a century” has become one of Xi’s favorite slogans since he coined it in December 2017. Although it might seem generic, it neatly encapsulates the contemporary Chinese way of thinking about the emerging global order—or, rather, disorder. As China’s power has grown, Western policymakers and analysts have tried to determine what kind of world China wants and what kind of global order Beijing aims to build with its power. But it is becoming clear that rather than trying to comprehensively revise the existing order or replace it with something else, Chinese strategists have set about making the best of the world as it is—or as it soon will be. 语气虽然不正式，但这绝非一次即兴的交流：“百年未有之大变局”自2017年12月习近平首次提出以来，已成为他最喜欢的口号之一。尽管这个口号可能看似普通，但它巧妙地概括了当代中国人对新兴全球秩序（或者说混乱）的思考方式。随着中国的实力增长，西方决策者和分析师一直试图确定中国希望建立何种世界，以及北京打算如何利用自身实力构建全球秩序。然而，越来越明显的是，中国战略家们并非试图全面修订现有秩序或用其他东西取而代之，而是着手充分利用现有世界秩序，或者说即将到来的秩序。

While most Western leaders and policymakers try to preserve the existing rules-based international order, perhaps updating key features and incorporating additional actors, Chinese strategists increasingly define their goal as survival in a world without order. The Chinese leadership, from Xi on down, believes that the global architecture that was erected in the aftermath of World War II is becoming irrelevant and that attempts to preserve it are futile. Instead of seeking to save the system, Beijing is preparing for its failure. 尽管大多数西方领导人和决策者试图保护现有的基于规则的国际秩序，或许更新关键特征并纳入更多参与者，但中国战略家越来越将他们的目标定义为在一个没有秩序的世界中生存。中国领导层，从习近平到下层，相信二战后建立起来的全球架构正在变得无关紧要，而试图保护它的努力是徒劳的。北京方面并不寻求拯救这个体系，而是为其失败做准备。

Although China and the United States agree that the post–Cold War order is over, they are betting on very different successors. In Washington, the return of great-power competition is thought to require revamping the alliances and institutions at the heart of the post–World War II order that helped the United States win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This updated global order is meant to incorporate much of the world, leaving China and several of its most important partners—including Iran, North Korea, and Russia—isolated on the outside. 尽管中国和美国都认为后冷战时代的秩序已经结束，但他们对于接班人的选择却存在着很大的差异。在华盛顿，人们认为大国竞争的回归需要重塑二战后的联盟和机构，这些联盟和机构帮助美国在冷战中战胜了苏联。这个更新的全球秩序旨在纳入世界的大部分地区，将中国和其一些最重要的伙伴，包括伊朗、朝鲜和俄罗斯，孤立在外。

But Beijing is confident that Washington’s efforts will prove futile. In the eyes of Chinese strategists, other countries’ search for sovereignty and identity is incompatible with the formation of Cold War–style blocs and will instead result in a more fragmented, multipolar world in which China can take its place as a great power. 但是北京对华盛顿的努力深信不疑。在中国战略家眼中，其他国家对主权和身份的追求与冷战时期的阵营形成是不相容的，相反，这将导致一个更加分散、多极化的世界，中国可以在其中作为一个大国发挥作用。

Ultimately, Beijing’s understanding may well be more accurate than Washington’s and more closely attuned to the aspirations of the world’s most populous countries. The U.S. strategy won’t work if it amounts to little more than a futile quest to update a vanishing order, driven by a nostalgic desire for the symmetry and stability of a bygone era. China, by contrast, is readying itself for a world defined by disorder, asymmetry, and fragmentation—a world that, in many ways, has already arrived. 最终，北京的理解可能比华盛顿更准确，更符合世界上人口最多的国家的愿望。如果美国的战略只是一种徒劳的追求，试图更新一个正在消失的秩序，出于对过去时代对称和稳定的怀旧之情，那么这种战略是行不通的。相比之下，中国正在为一个由混乱、不对称和分裂定义的世界做准备，而这个世界在很多方面已经到来了。

SURVIVOR: BEIJING 幸存者：北京

The very different responses of China and the United States to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed the divergence in Beijing’s and Washington’s thinking. In Washington, the dominant view is that Russia’s actions are a challenge to the rules-based order, which must be strengthened in response. In Beijing, the dominant opinion is that the conflict shows the world is entering a period of disorder, which countries will need to take steps to withstand. 中国和美国对俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的截然不同反应揭示了北京和华盛顿思维的分歧。在华盛顿，主流观点认为俄罗斯的行动挑战了基于规则的秩序，必须采取措施加强应对。而在北京，主导意见是这场冲突显示出世界正在进入一个无序时期，各国需要采取措施来抵御。

The Chinese perspective is shared by many countries, especially in the global South, where Western claims to be upholding a rules-based order lack credibility. It is not simply that many governments had no say in creating these rules and therefore see them as illegitimate. The problem is deeper: these countries also believe that the West has applied its norms selectively and revised them frequently to suit its own interests or, as the United States did when it invaded Iraq in 2003, simply ignored them. For many outside the West, the talk of a rules-based order has long been a fig leaf for Western power. It is only natural, these critics maintain, that now that Western power is declining, this order should be revised to empower other countries. 中国的观点得到了许多国家的共鸣，尤其是在全球南方，西方声称维护基于规则的秩序的说法缺乏可信度。问题不仅仅在于许多政府在制定这些规则时没有发言权，因此认为这些规则是非法的。问题更深层次：这些国家还认为西方选择性地应用其规范，并经常修改以适应自身利益，或者像美国在2003年入侵伊拉克时那样，干脆无视这些规则。对于许多西方以外的国家来说，基于规则的秩序长期以来一直是西方权力的掩饰。这些批评者坚持认为，现在西方的权力正在衰落，修订这一秩序以赋予其他国家权力是理所当然的。

Hence Xi’s claim that “changes unseen in a century” are coming to pass. This observation is one of the guiding principles of “Xi Jinping Thought,” which has become China’s official ideology. Xi sees these changes as part of an irreversible trend toward multipolarity as the East rises and the West declines, accelerated by technology and demographic shifts. Xi’s core insight is that the world is increasingly defined by disorder rather than order, a situation that in his view harks back to the nineteenth century, another era characterized by global instability and existential threats to China. In the decades after China’s defeat by Western powers in the First Opium War in 1839, Chinese thinkers, including the diplomat Li Hongzhang—sometimes referred to as “China’s Bismarck”—wrote of “great changes unseen in over 3,000 years.” These thinkers observed with concern the technological and geopolitical superiority of their foreign adversaries, which inaugurated what China now considers to be a century of humiliation. Today, Xi sees the roles as reversed. It is the West that now finds itself on the wrong side of fateful changes and China that has the chance to emerge as a strong and stable power. 因此，习近平声称“百年未有之大变局”正在发生。这一观察是“习近平思想”的指导原则之一，已成为中国的官方意识形态。习近平认为，这些变化是东方崛起和西方衰落的不可逆转趋势的一部分，而技术和人口变动加速了这一趋势。习近平的核心洞察力在于，世界越来越被无序而不是秩序所定义，这种情况在他看来回溯到19世纪，那是另一个以全球不稳定和对中国构成存在威胁的时代。在1839年中国在第一次鸦片战争中被西方列强击败之后的几十年里，包括外交家李鸿章在内的中国思想家曾写道“三千年未有之大变局”。这些思想家担心地观察到外国对手在技术和地缘政治上的优势，这开启了中国现在认为是一百年的屈辱。如今，习近平认为角色已经颠倒。 现在是西方发现自己站在了命运性变革的错误一边，而中国有机会成为一个强大而稳定的力量。

Other ideas with roots in the nineteenth century have also experienced a renaissance in contemporary China, among them social Darwinism, which applied Charles Darwin’s concept of “the survival of the fittest” to human societies and international relations. In 2021, for instance, the Research Center for a Holistic View of National Security, a government-backed body linked to the Chinese security ministry, published National Security in the Rise and Fall of Great Powers, edited by the economist Yuncheng Zhang. The book, part of a series explaining the new national security law, claims that the state is like a biological organism that must evolve or die—and that China’s challenge is to survive. And this line of thinking has taken hold. One Chinese academic told me that geopolitics today is a “struggle for survival” between fragile and inward-looking superpowers—a far cry from the expansive and transformative visions of the Cold War superpowers. Xi has adopted this framework, and Chinese government statements are full of references to “struggle,” an idea that is found in communist rhetoric but also in social Darwinist writings. 其他19世纪根源的观念在当代中国也经历了复兴，其中包括社会达尔文主义，它将查尔斯·达尔文的“适者生存”概念应用于人类社会和国际关系。例如，在2021年，与中国安全部有关的政府支持机构——全面国家安全观研究中心出版了由经济学家张云成编辑的《大国崛起与衰落中的国家安全》。这本书是解释新国家安全法的系列著作之一，它声称国家就像一个生物有机体，必须进化或灭亡，而中国的挑战就是生存下去。这种思维方式已经深入人心。一位中国学者告诉我，当今地缘政治是脆弱而内向的超级大国之间的“生存斗争”，与冷战超级大国的广阔和变革性愿景相去甚远。习近平已经采纳了这一框架，中国政府的声明中充满了对“斗争”的引用，这个概念不仅存在于共产主义的言辞中，也存在于社会达尔文主义的著作中。

This notion of survival in a dangerous world necessitates the development of what Xi describes as “a holistic approach to national security.” In contrast to the traditional concept of “military security,” which was limited to countering threats from land, air, sea, and space, the holistic approach to security aims to counter all challenges, whether technical, cultural, or biological. In an age of sanctions, economic decoupling, and cyberthreats, Xi believes that everything can be weaponized. As a result, security cannot be guaranteed by alliances or multilateral institutions. Countries must therefore do all that they can to safeguard their own people. To that end, in 2021, the Chinese government backed the creation of a new research center dedicated to this holistic approach, tasking it with considering all aspects of China’s security strategy. Under Xi, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly conceived of as a shield against chaos. 这种在危险世界中生存的观念需要发展习近平所描述的“国家安全的整体性方法”。与传统的“军事安全”概念相比，该整体性安全方法旨在应对各种挑战，无论是技术、文化还是生物方面的。在制裁、经济脱钩和网络威胁的时代，习近平认为一切都可以被武器化。因此，安全不能仅仅依靠联盟或多边机构来保证。各国必须尽其所能保护自己的人民。为此，中国政府在2021年支持成立了一个致力于这种整体性方法的新研究中心，并交给它考虑中国安全战略的各个方面。在习近平的领导下，中国共产党（CCP）越来越被看作是对抗混乱的盾牌。

CLASHING VISIONS 冲突的愿景

Chinese leaders see the United States as the principal threat to their survival and have developed a hypothesis to explain their adversary’s actions. Beijing believes that Washington is responding to domestic polarization and its loss of global power by ramping up its competition with China. U.S. leaders, according to this thinking, have decided that it is only a matter of time before China becomes more powerful than the United States, which is why Washington is trying to pit Beijing against the entire democratic world. Chinese intellectuals, therefore, speak of a U.S. shift from engagement and partial containment to “total competition,” spanning politics, economics, security, ideology, and global influence. 中国领导人认为美国是对其生存的主要威胁，并提出了一种假设来解释对手的行动。北京认为，华盛顿正在对中国加大竞争，是对国内两极分化和全球实力下降的回应。根据这种思维，美国领导人已经决定，中国比美国更强大只是时间问题，这就是为什么华盛顿试图将北京与整个民主世界对立起来。因此，中国知识分子谈到美国从接触和部分遏制转向“全面竞争”，涵盖政治、经济、安全、意识形态和全球影响力。

Chinese strategists have watched the United States try to use the war in Ukraine to cement the divide between democracies and autocracies. Washington has rallied its partners in the G-7 and NATO, invited East Asian allies to join the NATO meeting in Madrid, and forged new security partnerships, including AUKUS, a trilateral pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), which aligns Australia, India, and Japan with the United States. Beijing is particularly concerned that Washington’s engagement in Ukraine will lead it to be more assertive on Taiwan. One scholar said he feared that Washington is gradually trading its “one China” policy—under which the United States agrees to regard the People’s Republic of China as the only legal government of Taiwan and the mainland—for a new approach that one Chinese interlocutor called “one China and one Taiwan.” This new kind of institutionalization of ties between the United States and its partners, implicitly or explicitly aimed at containing Beijing, is seen in China as a new U.S. attempt at alliance building that brings Atlantic and European partners into the Indo-Pacific. It is, Chinese analysts believe, yet another instance of the United States’ mistaken belief that the world is once more dividing itself into blocs. 中国的战略家们一直在关注美国试图利用乌克兰战争来巩固民主国家和专制国家之间的分裂。华盛顿已经在G-7和北约中集结了其伙伴，邀请东亚盟友参加马德里的北约会议，并建立了新的安全伙伴关系，包括澳英美三方协议（AUKUS）和四方安全对话（Quad），后者将澳大利亚、印度和日本与美国对齐。北京特别担心华盛顿在乌克兰的参与将使其在台湾问题上更加强硬。一位学者表示，他担心华盛顿正在逐渐放弃其“一个中国”政策，即美国同意将中华人民共和国视为台湾和大陆唯一的合法政府，转而采取一种被中国对话者称为“一个中国和一个台湾”的新方法。中国将这种美国与其伙伴之间的新型制度化联系视为美国试图建立联盟的新尝试，将大西洋和欧洲伙伴引入印太地区，这旨在遏制北京。 中国分析师认为，这是美国再次错误地认为世界正在重新分裂成阵营的又一个例子。

With only North Korea as a formal ally, China cannot win a battle of alliances. Instead, it has sought to make a virtue of its relative isolation and tap into a growing global trend toward nonalignment among middle powers and emerging economies. Although Western governments take pride in the fact that 141 countries have supported UN resolutions condemning the war in Ukraine, Chinese foreign policy thinkers, including the international relations professor and media commentator Chu Shulong, argue that the number of countries enforcing sanctions against Russia is a better indication of the power of the West. By that metric, he calculates that the Western bloc contains only 33 countries, with 167 countries refusing to join in the attempt to isolate Russia. Many of these states have bad memories of the Cold War, a period when their sovereignty was squeezed by competing superpowers. As one prominent Chinese foreign policy strategist explained to me, “The United States isn’t declining, but it is only good at talking to Western countries. The big difference between now and the Cold War is that [then] the West was very effective at mobilizing developing countries against [the Soviet Union] in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Africa.” 中国只有朝鲜作为正式盟友，无法在联盟战争中取胜。相反，中国试图将其相对孤立的优势发挥到极致，并借助中等实力国家和新兴经济体在全球趋势中不结盟。尽管西方政府以141个国家支持联合国决议谴责乌克兰战争为荣，但包括国际关系教授和媒体评论员褚树龙在内的中国外交政策思想家认为，对俄罗斯实施制裁的国家数量更能反映西方的实力。根据这一标准，他计算出西方集团只包含33个国家，而有167个国家拒绝加入孤立俄罗斯的行动。这些国家中许多人对冷战时期有着糟糕的记忆，当时他们的主权受到竞争超级大国的压迫。正如一位中国著名外交政策战略家对我解释的那样：“美国并没有衰落，但它只擅长与西方国家交流。” 现在和冷战时期的一个重大区别是，当时西方在中东、北非、东南亚和非洲地区非常有效地动员发展中国家对抗苏联。请将文本翻译成简体中文： “Translate the text to Simplified Chinese.”

To capitalize on waning U.S. influence in these regions, China has sought to demonstrate its support for countries in the global South. In contrast to Washington, which Beijing sees as bullying countries into picking sides, China’s outreach to the developing world has prioritized investments in infrastructure. It has done so through international initiatives, some of which are already partially developed. These include the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, which invest billions of dollars of state and private-sector money in other countries’ infrastructure and development. Others are new, including the Global Security Initiative, which Xi launched in 2022 to challenge U.S. dominance. Beijing is also working to expand the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security, defense, and economic group that brings together major players in Eurasia, including India, Pakistan, and Russia and is in the process of admitting Iran. 为了利用美国在这些地区的影响力减弱，中国一直试图展示对南方国家的支持。与北京认为美国欺凌国家选择立场不同，中国对发展中国家的外交重点是在基础设施投资上。中国通过一些国际倡议来实现这一目标，其中一些倡议已经部分实施。这些倡议包括“一带一路”倡议和全球发展倡议，它们在其他国家的基础设施和发展上投资了数十亿美元的国家和私营部门资金。还有一些是新的，包括习近平于2022年发起的全球安全倡议，旨在挑战美国的主导地位。北京还致力于扩大上海合作组织，这是一个安全、防务和经济组织，汇集了欧亚大陆的重要成员，包括印度、巴基斯坦和俄罗斯，并正在接纳伊朗。

STUCK IN THE PAST? 被困在过去了吗？

China is confident that the United States is mistaken in its assumption that a new cold war has broken out. Accordingly, it is seeking to move beyond Cold War–style divides. As Wang Honggang, a senior official at a think tank affiliated with China’s Ministry of State Security, put it, the world is moving away from “a center-periphery structure for the global economy and security and towards a period of polycentric competition and co-operation.” Wang and like-minded scholars do not deny that China is also trying to become a center of its own, but they argue that because the world is emerging from a period of Western hegemony, the establishment of a new Chinese center will actually lead to a greater pluralism of ideas rather than a Chinese world order. Many Chinese thinkers link this belief with the promise of a future of “multiple modernity.” This attempt to create an alternative theory of modernity, in contrast to the post–Cold War formulation of liberal democracy and free markets as the epitome of modern development, is at the core of Xi’s Global Civilization Initiative. This high-profile project is intended to signal that unlike the United States and European countries, which lecture others on subjects such as climate change and LGBTQ rights, China respects the sovereignty and civilization of other powers. 中国对美国认为新的冷战已经爆发的观点表示不同意，并对此充满信心。因此，中国正在寻求超越冷战时期的分裂。正如中国国家安全部附属智库的高级官员王洪刚所说，世界正在从“全球经济和安全的中心-边缘结构”转向“多中心竞争与合作的时期”。王洪刚和志同道合的学者们并不否认中国也在努力成为一个中心，但他们认为，由于世界正在走出西方霸权的时期，建立一个新的中国中心实际上将导致更多的思想多元化，而不是一个中国的世界秩序。许多中国思想家将这种信念与“多元现代性”的未来前景联系在一起。这种试图创造一种与后冷战时期的自由民主和自由市场作为现代发展典范的观点相对立的现代性替代理论，是习近平的全球文明倡议的核心所在。 这个备受关注的项目旨在表明，与美国和欧洲国家不同，它们在气候变化和LGBTQ权益等问题上对他国进行说教，中国尊重其他大国的主权和文明。

For many decades, China’s engagement with the world was largely economic. Today, China’s diplomacy goes well beyond matters of trade and development. One of the most dramatic and instructive examples of this shift is China’s growing role in the Middle East and North Africa. This region was formerly dominated by the United States, but as Washington has stepped back, Beijing has moved in. In March, China pulled off a major diplomatic coup by brokering a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Whereas Chinese involvement in the region was once limited to its status as a consumer of hydrocarbons and an economic partner, Beijing is now a peacemaker busily engaged in building diplomatic and even military relationships with key players. Some Chinese scholars regard the Middle East today as “a laboratory for a post-American world.” In other words, they believe that the region is what the entire world will look like in the next few decades: a place where, as the United States declines, other global powers, such as China, India, and Russia, compete for influence, and middle powers, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, flex their muscles. 多年来，中国与世界的接触主要是经济方面的。如今，中国的外交事务已经远远超出了贸易和发展的范畴。其中一个最引人注目且具有教育意义的例子就是中国在中东和北非地区日益增长的角色。这个地区曾经由美国主导，但随着华盛顿的退缩，北京迅速介入。今年三月，中国成功地通过斡旋，促成了伊朗和沙特阿拉伯之间的停火。中国在该地区的参与曾经仅限于作为石油消费国和经济伙伴的身份，但如今，北京成为了一个忙于建立与关键角色的外交甚至军事关系的和平缔造者。一些中国学者认为，中东如今是“后美国世界的实验室”。换句话说，他们认为在未来几十年里，整个世界将会变成中东的样子：在美国衰落的同时，中国、印度、俄罗斯等全球大国将会竞争影响力，而伊朗、沙特阿拉伯、土耳其等中等国家则会展示自己的实力。

Many in the West doubt China’s ability to achieve this goal, mostly because Beijing has struggled to win over potential collaborators. In East Asia, South Korea is moving closer to the United States; in Southeast Asia, the Philippines is developing closer relations with Washington to protect itself from Beijing; and there has been an anti-Chinese backlash in many African countries, where complaints about Beijing’s colonial behavior are rife. Although some countries, including Saudi Arabia, want to strengthen their ties with China, they are motivated at least in part by a desire for the United States to reengage with them. But these examples should not mask the broader trend: Beijing is becoming more active and steadily more ambitious. 许多西方人对中国实现这一目标的能力表示怀疑，主要是因为北京方面在争取潜在合作伙伴方面遇到了困难。在东亚地区，韩国正在与美国走得更近；在东南亚地区，菲律宾正在与华盛顿建立更紧密的关系，以保护自己免受北京的威胁；而在许多非洲国家，对北京的殖民行为的抱怨也引发了反华情绪。尽管包括沙特阿拉伯在内的一些国家希望加强与中国的关系，但他们至少部分出于希望与美国重新接触的愿望。但这些例子不应掩盖更广泛的趋势：北京正在变得更加积极，并且越来越有野心。

SPARE WHEELS AND BODY LOCKS 备用轮胎和车身锁

Economic competition between China and the United States is also increasing. Many Chinese thinkers predicted that the election of U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020 would lead to improved relations with Beijing, but they have been disappointed: the Biden administration has been much more aggressive toward China than they expected. One senior Chinese economist likened Biden’s pressure campaign against the Chinese technology sector, which includes sanctions on Chinese technology companies and chip-making firms, to U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions against Iran. Many Chinese commentators have argued that Biden’s desire to freeze Beijing’s technological development to preserve the United States’ edge is no different than Trump’s efforts to stop Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons. A consensus has formed in Beijing that Washington’s goal is not to make China play by the rules; it is to stop China from growing. 中国和美国之间的经济竞争也在加剧。许多中国思想家预测，2020年美国总统乔·拜登的当选将会改善与北京的关系，但他们感到失望：拜登政府对中国的态度比他们预期的要强硬得多。一位中国高级经济学家将拜登对中国科技行业施加的压力行动，包括对中国科技公司和芯片制造企业实施制裁，比作美国总统唐纳德·特朗普对伊朗的行动。许多中国评论员认为，拜登希望冻结北京的技术发展以保持美国的优势，与特朗普阻止德黑兰发展核武器的努力没有什么不同。在北京形成了一种共识，即华盛顿的目标不是让中国遵守规则，而是阻止中国的发展。

This is incorrect: both Washington and the European Union have made it clear that they do not intend to shut China out of the global economy. Nor do they want to fully decouple their economies from China’s. Instead, they seek to ensure that their businesses do not share sensitive technologies with Beijing and to reduce their reliance on Chinese imports in critical sectors, including telecommunications, infrastructure, and raw materials. Thus, Western governments increasingly talk of “reshoring” and “friend shoring” production in such sectors or at least diversifying supply chains by encouraging companies to base production in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, and Thailand. 这是错误的：华盛顿和欧盟都明确表示，他们并不打算将中国排除在全球经济之外。他们也不希望完全与中国经济脱钩。相反，他们希望确保他们的企业不与北京分享敏感技术，并减少对中国进口的依赖，尤其是在电信、基础设施和原材料等关键领域。因此，西方政府越来越多地谈论在这些领域进行“回流”和“友好生产”，或者至少通过鼓励企业将生产基地设在孟加拉国、印度、马来西亚和泰国等国家来实现供应链的多样化。

Xi’s response has been what he calls “dual circulation.” Instead of thinking about China as having a single economy linked to the world through trade and investment, Beijing has pioneered the idea of a bifurcated economy. One-half of the economy—driven by domestic demand, capital, and ideas—is about “internal circulation,” making China more self-reliant in terms of consumption, technology, and regulations. The other half—“external circulation”—is about China’s selective contacts with the rest of the world. Simultaneously, even as it decreases its dependence on others, Beijing wants to boost the dependence of other players on China so that it can use these links to increase its power and exert pressure. These ideas have the potential to reshape the global economy. 习近平的回应是他所称的“双循环”。北京方面提出了一个分割的经济概念，不再将中国视为通过贸易和投资与世界相连的单一经济体。经济的一半，即“内循环”，由国内需求、资本和创意驱动，旨在使中国在消费、技术和法规方面更加自给自足。另一半则是“外循环”，涉及中国与世界其他地区的有选择性接触。尽管减少对他国的依赖，北京仍希望增加其他国家对中国的依赖，以利用这些联系增强自身实力并施加压力。这些理念有可能重塑全球经济。

The influential Chinese economist Yu Yongding has explained the notion of dual circulation with two new concepts: “the spare wheel” and “the body lock.” Following the “spare wheel” concept, China should have ready alternatives if it loses access to natural resources, components, and critical technologies. This idea has come in response to the increasing use of Western sanctions, which Beijing has watched with concern. The Chinese government is now working to shield itself from any attempts to cut it off in case of a conflict by making enormous investments in critical technologies, including artificial intelligence and semiconductors. But Beijing is also attempting to exploit the new reality to reduce the global economy’s reliance on Western economic demand and the U.S.-led financial system. At home, the CCP is promoting a shift from export-led growth to growth driven by domestic demand; elsewhere, it is promoting the yuan as an alternative to the dollar. Accordingly, the Russians are increasing their yuan reserve holdings, and Moscow no longer uses the dollar when trading with China. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has recently agreed to use national currencies, rather than just the dollar, for trade among its member states. Although these developments are limited, Chinese leaders are hopeful that the weaponization of the U.S. financial system and the massive sanctions against Russia will lead to further disorder and increase other countries’ willingness to hedge against the dollar’s dominance. 中国有影响力的经济学家于永定解释了“双循环”概念，并引入了“备胎”和“身体锁”两个新概念。根据“备胎”概念，中国应该准备好替代方案，以应对失去自然资源、零部件和关键技术的情况。这个想法是对西方制裁的回应，北京方面对此表示关注。中国政府目前正在努力保护自己，以防止在冲突发生时被切断供应，其中包括对人工智能和半导体等关键技术进行巨额投资。但北京方面也试图利用这个新的现实，减少全球经济对西方经济需求和美国主导的金融体系的依赖。在国内，中国共产党正在推动从出口驱动型增长转向内需驱动型增长；在其他地方，中国正在推动人民币作为美元的替代品。因此，俄罗斯正在增加其人民币储备，莫斯科在与中国进行贸易时不再使用美元。 最近，上海合作组织已经同意在成员国之间的贸易中使用国家货币，而不仅仅是美元。尽管这些发展还有限，但中国领导人对美国金融体系的武器化以及对俄罗斯的大规模制裁抱有希望，认为这将导致进一步的混乱，并增加其他国家对抗美元主导地位的意愿。

The “body lock” is a wrestling metaphor. It means that Beijing should make Western companies reliant on China, thereby making decoupling more difficult. That is why it is working to bind as many countries as possible to Chinese systems, norms, and standards. In the past, the West struggled to make China accept its rules. Now, China is determined to make others bow to its norms, and it has invested heavily in boosting its voice in various international standard-setting bodies. Beijing is also using its Global Development and Belt and Road Initiatives to export its model of subsidized state capitalism and Chinese standards to as many countries as possible. Whereas China’s objective was once integration into the global market, the collapse of the post–Cold War international order and the return of nineteenth-century-style disorder have altered the CCP’s approach. “身体锁”是摔跤的隐喻。它意味着北京应该让西方公司依赖中国，从而使分离变得更加困难。这就是为什么北京正在努力将尽可能多的国家绑定到中国的体系、规范和标准上。过去，西方曾经努力让中国接受它的规则。现在，中国决心让其他国家屈服于它的规范，并在各种国际标准制定机构中大力增强自己的发言权。北京还利用其全球发展和一带一路倡议，将其补贴型国家资本主义模式和中国标准出口到尽可能多的国家。中国的目标曾经是融入全球市场，但后冷战国际秩序的崩溃和19世纪式的混乱回归改变了中国共产党的做法。

Xi has therefore invested heavily in self-reliance. But as many Chinese intellectuals point out, the changes in Chinese attitudes toward globalization have been driven as much by domestic economic challenges as by tensions with the United States. In the past, China’s large, young, and cheap labor force was the principal driver of the country’s growth. Now, its population is aging rapidly, and it needs a new economic model, one built on boosting consumption. As the economist George Magnus points out, however, doing so requires raising wages and pursuing structural reforms that would upset China’s delicate societal power balance. Rekindling population growth, for instance, would require substantial upgrades to the country’s underdeveloped social security system, which in turn would need to be paid for with unpopular tax increases. Promoting innovation would require a reduction of the role of the state in the economy, which runs counter to Xi’s instincts. Such changes are hard to imagine in the current circumstances. 习近平因此大力投资于自力更生。但正如许多中国知识分子所指出的那样，中国对全球化态度的变化既受到国内经济挑战的推动，也受到与美国的紧张关系的影响。过去，中国庞大、年轻和廉价的劳动力是该国经济增长的主要推动力。现在，中国人口正在迅速老龄化，需要一个新的经济模式，一个建立在促进消费上的模式。正如经济学家乔治·马格努斯所指出的那样，然而，这样做需要提高工资并进行结构性改革，这将打破中国社会权力平衡的微妙关系。例如，重新振兴人口增长将需要对该国不发达的社会保障体系进行大规模升级，而这又需要通过不受欢迎的税收增加来支付。促进创新将需要减少国家在经济中的角色，这与习近平的本能相悖。在当前情况下，很难想象出这样的变化。

A WORLD DIVIDED? 世界分裂了吗？

Between 1945 and 1989, decolonization and the division between the Western powers and the Soviet bloc defined the world. Empires dissolved into dozens of states, often as the result of small wars. But although decolonization transformed the map, the more powerful force was the ideological competition of the Cold War. After winning their independence, most countries quickly aligned themselves with either the democratic bloc or the communist bloc. Even those countries that did not want to choose sides nevertheless defined their identity in reference to the Cold War, forming a “nonaligned movement.” 1945年至1989年间，殖民地解放和西方大国与苏联集团之间的分裂定义了世界格局。帝国解体成为数十个国家，往往是小规模战争的结果。然而，尽管殖民地解放改变了地图，更强大的力量是冷战的意识形态竞争。在赢得独立后，大多数国家迅速与民主阵营或共产主义阵营结盟。即使那些不想选边站的国家，也会以冷战为参照，来定义自己的身份，形成“不结盟运动”。

Both trends are in evidence today, and the United States believes that this history is repeating itself as policymakers try to revive the strategy that succeeded against the Soviet Union. It is, therefore, dividing the world and mobilizing its allies. Beijing disagrees, and it is pursuing policies suited to its bet that the world is entering an era in which self-determination and multialignment will trump ideological conflict. 如今，这两种趋势都很明显，美国认为历史正在重演，决策者们试图复兴对抗苏联成功的战略。因此，它正在分裂世界并动员其盟友。北京持不同意见，并正在追求适应其对世界进入一个以自决和多元对齐为主导的时代的赌注的政策。

Beijing’s judgment is more likely to be accurate because the current era differs from the Cold War era in three fundamental ways. First, today’s ideologies are much weaker. After 1945, both the United States and the Soviet Union offered optimistic and compelling visions of the future that appealed to elites and workers worldwide. Contemporary China has no such message, and the traditional U.S. vision of liberal democracy has been greatly diminished by the Iraq war, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the presidency of Donald Trump, all of which made the United States seem less successful, less generous, and less reliable. Moreover, rather than offering starkly different and opposing ideologies, China and the United States increasingly resemble each other on matters from industrial policy and trade to technology and foreign policy. Without ideological messages capable of creating international coalitions, Cold War–style blocs cannot form. 北京的判断更有可能准确，因为当前时代与冷战时代在三个基本方面存在差异。首先，今天的意识形态要弱得多。1945年之后，美国和苏联都提供了对未来充满乐观和引人注目的愿景，吸引了全球的精英和工人阶级。当代中国没有这样的信息，而传统的美国自由民主愿景则因伊拉克战争、2008年全球金融危机和唐纳德·特朗普的总统任期而大大减弱，这些事件使得美国看起来更不成功、更不慷慨和更不可靠。此外，中国和美国在工业政策、贸易、技术和外交政策等方面越来越相似，而不是提供截然不同和对立的意识形态。没有能够创建国际联盟的意识形态信息，冷战式的阵营无法形成。

Second, Beijing and Washington do not enjoy the same global dominance that the Soviet Union and the United States did after 1945. In 1950, the United States and its major allies (NATO countries, Australia, and Japan) and the communist world (the Soviet Union, China, and the Eastern bloc) together accounted for 88 percent of global GDP. But today, these groups of countries combined account for only 57 percent of global GDP. Whereas nonaligned countries’ defense expenditures were negligible as late as the 1960s (about one percent of the global total), they are now at 15 percent and growing fast. 其次，北京和华盛顿并没有像苏联和美国在1945年之后那样享有全球主导地位。在1950年，美国及其主要盟友（北约国家、澳大利亚和日本）以及共产主义世界（苏联、中国和东方集团）共同占据全球GDP的88％。但是今天，这些国家组合仅占全球GDP的57％。而非对齐国家的国防开支在20世纪60年代晚期仍然微不足道（全球总额的约1％），但现在已经达到15％并且快速增长。

Third, today’s world is extremely interdependent. At the beginning of the Cold War, there were very few economic links between the West and the countries behind the Iron Curtain. The situation today could not be more different. Whereas trade between the United States and the Soviet Union remained at around one percent of both countries’ total trade in the 1970s and 1980s, trade with China today makes up almost 16 percent of both the United States’ and the EU’s total trade balance. This interdependence prohibits the formation of the stable alignment of blocs that characterized the Cold War. What is more likely is a permanent state of tension and shifting allegiances. 第三，当今世界极度相互依赖。在冷战初期，西方国家与铁幕背后的国家之间几乎没有经济联系。而今天的情况则截然不同。相较于上世纪七八十年代，美国与苏联之间的贸易仅占两国总贸易的约1%，而如今与中国的贸易占美国和欧盟总贸易的近16%。这种相互依赖性阻止了冷战时期特征的稳定阵营的形成。更有可能的是一种永久的紧张状态和不断变换的盟友关系。

China’s leaders have made an audacious strategic bet by preparing for a fragmented world. The CCP believes the world is moving toward a post-Western order not because the West has disintegrated but because the consolidation of the West has alienated many other countries. In this moment of change, it may be that China’s stated willingness to allow other countries to flex their muscles may make Beijing a more attractive partner than Washington, with its demands for ever-closer alignment. If the world truly is entering a phase of disorder, China could be best placed to prosper. 中国的领导人正在为一个分裂的世界做出大胆的战略赌注。中国共产党认为，世界正在向后西方秩序迈进，不是因为西方已经解体，而是因为西方的巩固使许多其他国家感到疏远。在这个变革的时刻，中国表态愿意让其他国家发挥自己的实力，可能会使北京成为比华盛顿更具吸引力的合作伙伴，因为后者要求更紧密的对齐。如果世界真的进入了无序的阶段，中国可能是最有可能蓬勃发展的国家。