1、Uncle Sam vs the DragonDANIEL W. DREZNER20 FEBRUARY 2010HTTP:/WWW.SPECTATOR.CO.UK/ESSAYS/ALL/5780913/UNCLE-SAM-VS-THE-DRAGON.THTML The growing rift between the United States and China has chilling similarities to Americas old rivalry with the Soviet Union, says Daniel W. DreznerWhen Barack Obama bur
2、st into the room to disrupt Chinas meeting with its fellow climate change sceptics at the Copen-hagen summit, it was clear that something was not right in the relationship between the two countries. The American president had made his way past reporters, with a face like thunder, and shouted at his
3、Chinese counterpart, Mr Premier, are you ready for me? Wen Jiabao was not; and according to numerous press reports, Mr Obama was berated by a mid-ranking Chinese official for his rudeness. It was obvious to all present that the relative amicability that had defined Sino-American relations for most o
4、f last year was over.Just a few months earlier, they seemed to be getting along famously. Hillary Clinton had been sent to China to thank them for buying so much American debt and to ask them to buy some more. White House staff were working well with their Beijing counterparts, and even military-to-
5、military contacts had been rekindled. Pundits in Washington began to debate the prospect of a new G-2 alliance with Beijing to solve matters of global import. Sino-American relations seemed to be on the mend.It didnt last long. The relationship has worsened and with ominous implications. For example
6、, after Google announced its intention to withdraw from China after cyber-attacks on its Gmail service, Mrs Clinton gave a speech on internet freedom and alluded to Chinas efforts to censor the web. China reacted vehemently, accusing the US of seeking to perpetuate its information hegemony. When Was
7、hington sought an additional round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Irans nuclear programme, China acted as the brake. A fortnight ago, the Obama administration announced a $6.4 billion arms sale to Chinas diplomatic nemesis, Taiwan. China responded by threatening to impose sanct
8、ions on US firms such as Boeing. Their reaction was no less strong when American officials announced that Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, another of Beijings enemies. To these diplomatic set-tos, one can add tariff disputes over tyres, chicken, steel and other products. The Obama administration ini
9、tially toned down its rhetoric about Chinese currency manipulation but it has changed course in recent weeks. Returning economic fire, Peoples Liberation Army officials suggested using Chinas vast dollar holdings as a foreign-policy lever. Major General Luo Yuan told a Chinese magazine, We could san
10、ction them using economic means, such as dumping some US government bonds. This is a financial version of the nuclear button. In response to the Taiwan arms sale, the state-controlled Peoples Daily newspaper accused the US of having a Cold War mentality. Soberingly, a recent poll claimed that 55 per
11、 cent of Chinese agreed that a cold war will break out between the US and China.An alarming prediction but how accurate is it? Is the new Sino-American frostiness really a reboot of the Cold War? There are, alas, striking similarities. During the Cold War, for instance, America persistently exaggera
12、ted the military, economic and ideological strength of the Soviet Union. With an astronomically high investment rate, the Soviets achieved impressive but misleading economic growth. In the mid-1970s, the infamous Team B exercise by the CIA produced a vastly exaggerated analysis of Russias military p
13、ower. From Kennedys missile gap to Reagans window of vulnerability, American leaders overestimated the USSRs military capabilities. Today, the Great Recession has led many Americans to overstate Chinas power. Thomas Friedman, an influential newspaper columnist, has advanced the idea that the so-call
14、ed Washington Consensus of free markets and globalisation may be supplanted by a Beijing Consensus model a Confucian-Communist-Capitalist hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state. These notions are by no means confined to political theorists: the public are guilty, too. An opinion poll in Dece
15、mber last year found that 44 per cent of Americans believe that China is the worlds leading economic power; just 27 per cent name the United States.The Middle Kingdom is certainly growing faster than the Grand Old Republic, but by any conventional measure economic output, military capabilities, scie
16、ntific and technological capacity the United States is the most powerful country in the world. And its not a close-run thing. But during the Cold War, the Soviet Union projected great strength while masking fundamental weaknesses. It was the worlds largest country, possessed a bounty of natural reso
17、urces, was armed with nuclear weapons and had great strategic depth. Compared with the United States, though, it had tremendous disadvantages: it was a much poorer country with a weaker navy, and beyond the major cities it was bedevilled by poor infrastructure. The Russian elite was ever-conscious o
18、f the simmering ethnic tensions that plagued many of the outlying Soviet republics.The array of potential adversaries on Soviet borders including many with territorial disputes was impressive. External criticism of its human rights record was an attack on the communist regimes legitimacy. The Soviet
19、 leadership sometimes compensated for these weaknesses with bravado and bluster on the global stage. All of which seems eerily similar to the new froideur between Washington and Beijing. The fundamentals of Chinas economy are stronger than those of the old Soviet Union. It has the worlds largest pop
20、ulation, a rapidly expanding middle class and a frightening amount of US bonds but again, in comparison with America, its weaknesses are legion. The one-child policy has created a rapidly ageing population and, in common with the old Soviet leaders, the Beijing elite is painfully aware of simmering
21、ethnic tensions on its own border regions.Beijing faces periodic riots in Xinjiang and Tibet, daily worker unrest, unruly provincial leaders, and mounting ecological catastrophes. It has three enduring rivals (Japan, India and Vietnam) as neighbours. Its allies North Korea and Myanmar are sources of
22、 international embarrassment. And for all the fuss about Chinese cyber-attacks, internet experts agree that the United States possesses more online offensive capabilities than any other country in the world. Even more than the old Soviet Union, China is both a great power and an extremely poor count
23、ry.Such historical parallels bode ill for what will probably be the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century. But other similarities offer the hope of stability. Just as with the Cold War, rhetoric does not always translate into policy. China and the US have genuine conflicts of int
24、erest over climate change, human rights and Taiwan. Those clashes will not just disappear. At the same time, however, most examples of bad behaviour are matters of style rather than substance. It is convenient that Chinese threats to dump dollars always seem to emanate from officials who have no inf
25、luence whatsoever over Chinas foreign economic policy. Similarly, exhortations for the United States to get tough on China usually come from Congress or newspaper comment pages not from the Obama administration. For all her grandstanding, Hillary Clinton actually tap-danced around the China-Google i
26、mbroglio in her speech on internet freedom; and the US Department of Defenses newly released Quadrennial Defense Review paid less attention to China than the last one did in 2006.The novelty of the current situation is a key source of the bluster. Chinese officials are justly proud of their newfound
27、 economic strength and wary of the responsibilities that come with it. Other countries expect Beijing to act as a responsible great power but the Chinese elite view themselves as too poor to oblige. At the same time, American officials are out of practice in dealing with independent forces of nation
28、al power.For two decades the United States has been the sole undisputed global superpower. As a result, it is used to having all decisions of consequence go through Washington, and the current generation of thinkers and policy-makers are unprepared for the idea of other countries taking the lead. En
29、couragingly, neither country has prospered in the recent past from bellicosity. Over the last decade, the Bush administration discovered that a with us or against us strategy yielded very little in terms of concrete achievement. Chinas bouts of belligerence have accomplished precisely nothing in rel
30、ation to Taiwan and Tibet. The countrys indifference to human rights has alienated the European Union, and its persistent policy of undervaluing its currency has blemished its image across the Pacific Rim. The leaders of both countries already recognise the greatest similarity between the Sino-Ameri
31、can relationship and the Cold War: the possibility of mutually assured destruction. During the Soviet-US stand-off, it was the prospect of nuclear Armageddon that haunted statesmen and citizens alike. Today, the tension between America and China concerns what Obamas adviser Larry Summers called the
32、balance of financial terror. China is now the worlds largest exporter, and the United States is their second-largest export market. Beijings economic policies since the start of the credit crunch suggest that they are pinning their recovery hopes on more export-driven growth. Meanwhile, the Obama ad
33、ministrations budget projections show that the United States will need to rely on foreign-debt servicing (i.e. huge investments from China) for some time. In a global economy still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, the worlds largest exporter and largest consumer market cant afford a s
34、erious rupture in their relationship.In the Cold War, moments of brinksmanship caused both countries to back away from the precipice. It is possible that, as tensions between China and America mount, nervous chauvinism in the form of economic nationalism, bureaucratic rivalries or Congressional stup
35、idity might trigger a cascade of misguided actions and cause a damaging conflict. We can hope that politicians in Beijing and Washington will learn the right lessons from history. But we can expect plenty more tension as Uncle Sam and the Dragon settle down together.Daniel W. Drezner is professor of
36、 international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University注：John Pomfret 是个 China hand，有中国情结。本文在告诫美国别把中国看得太厉害了。回想美国很久前的 Yellow peril, 到近代的 red scare, Japan bashing 等，我们是不是也要冷静点思考。Theres a new Red Scare. But is China really so scary?By Steven Mufson and John PomfretSunday
37、, February 28, 2010; B01 http:/ the American economy struggling and the political system in gridlock, there is one thing everyone in Washington seems to agree on: The Chinese do it better. Cyberspace? China has an army of hackers ready to read your most intimate e-mails and spy on corporations and s
38、uper-secret government agencies. (Just ask Google.) Education? China is churning out engineers almost as fast as its making toys. Military prowess? China is catching up, so quickly that it is about to deploy an anti-ship ballistic missile that could make life on a U.S. aircraft carrier a perilous af
39、fair. The economy? China has gone from cheap-clothing-maker to Americas banker. Governance? At least they can build a high-speed train. And energy? Look out, Red China is going green! This new Red Scare says a lot about Americas collective psyche at this moment. A nation with a per capita income of
40、$6,546 - ensconced above Ukraine and below Namibia, according to the International Monetary Fund - is putting the fear of God, or Mao, into our hearts. Heres our commander in chief, President Obama, talking about clean energy this month: “Countries like China are moving even faster. . . . Im not goi
41、ng to settle for a situation where the United States comes in second place or third place or fourth place in what will be the most important economic engine in the future.“ And the nations pundit in chief, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, even sees some virtue in the Chinese Communist Partys m
42、onopoly on political power: “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.“ In the past, when Washington worried about China, it was mainly in terms of a military threat: Would we
43、 go to war? Would China replace the Soviet Union as our rival in a post-Cold War world? Or we fretted about it as a global workshop: China would suck manufacturing jobs out of our economy with a cheap currency and cheaper labor. But today, the threat China poses - real or imagined - has flooded into
44、 every arena in which our two nations can possibly compete. And its not just in Washington. Asked in a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month whether this century would be more of an “American century“ or more of a “Chinese century,“ many Americans across the country chose China. Respondents divid
45、ed evenly between the United States and China on who would dominate the global economy and tilted toward Beijing on who would most influence world affairs overall. “We have completely lost perspective on what constitutes reality in China today,“ said Elizabeth Economy, the director for Asia studies
46、at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is a lot that is incredible about Chinas economic story, but there is as much that is not working well on both the political and economic fronts. We need to understand the nuances of this story - on Chinas innovation, renewables, economic growth, etc. - to
47、 ensure that all the hype from Beijing, and from our own media and politicians, doesnt lead us to skew our own policy.“ Having lived in China during the past two decades, we have witnessed and chronicled its remarkable economic and social transformation. But the notion that China poses an imminent t
48、hreat to all aspects of American life reveals more about us than it does about China and its capabilities. The enthusiasm with which our politicians and pundits manufacture Chinese straw men points more to unease at home than to success inside the Great Wall. This is not to say that China isnt doing
49、 many things right or that we couldnt learn a thing or two from our Chinese friends. But in large part, politicians, activists and commentators push the new Red Scare to advance particular agendas in Washington. If you want to promote clean energy and get the government to invest in this sector, what better way to frame the issue than as a contest against the Chinese and call it the “new Sputnik“
