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发帖数: 21 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: ToyotaYaris (丰田雅力士), 信区: Military
标 题: 中国按兵不动 在静静等待美国出局
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Tue Oct 23 15:14:05 2018, 美东)
《美国保守派》杂志10月22日文章，原题：中国在静待我们出局吗？
美国近几十年的外交政策总是优先考虑以军事干涉推进自己的海外利益。特朗普当
选后承诺让美国远离卷入外国战争的传统。若美国专注国内问题，采取克制的建设性而
非破坏性外交政策，就可能给中国崛起之路增加更多障碍。但中国人没必要担心。现在
美军仍常驻阿富汗、叙利亚，与伊朗的冲突逼近，谈及干预委内瑞拉……美国继续处于
长期战时态势。
这对北京是好消息。中国的外交政策与美国大相径庭。中国没采取保守、短视、忽
略后果的做法，其战略审慎而高瞻远瞩。北京决策者和专家的思考和规划跨越几十年而
非几个月。眼下，那些规划的着重点是建设而非（像美国那样）轰炸。这并非是说中国
不顾自身利益，而是考虑将尽可能多的国家拉入其经济网络，巩固大国地位。北京放眼
长远，而华盛顿将资源和全球政治资本消耗在打不赢的战争上。美国热衷对外干涉是自
毁长城，而中国将是主要受益者。
自1979年以来，中国再没打过外国战争。中国领导人似乎奉行古代军事哲学家孙子
的忠告，“夫兵久而国利者，未之有也”。中国把绝大部分资源用于国内发展，在39年
里取得连最大胆乐观的专家都觉得不可思议的成就。中国如今的基础设施堪比许多西方
国家。相比之下，过去20年华盛顿的首要投资是反恐战争。据估算，“9·11”事件后
，战争已耗掉美国4.6万亿美元，其国内基础设施很多却已破破烂烂。
中国人不惜重金修建基础设施，在国防支出上却很有分寸。除了在势力范围的兵力
投送，其他都被列为次要。中国人没必要派一架价值1.1亿美元的飞机绕半个地球去轰
炸一些武装人员，就像美国在没完没了的战争中常做的。但这并不等于在也门、阿根廷
等遥远地方就不能感受到中国的经济和政治影响力。在许多地方，中国人宣示权利，就
是希望静待美国出局。
也门一名外交人员告诉笔者，“中国人想的与美国人大不一样。他们很有耐心。其
外交政策的首要目标是不要树敌太多。”他说，中国外交官在也门首都外出或到其他地
方，从不带保镖。反观美国，其外交官很少离开使馆，出门有装甲车队和保镖陪伴。这
位外交官认为，中国的“第二目标是学习。中国大使馆的人对也门一些地方比我还了解
。在学习基础上，他们着眼于第三目标，就是把各国拉入中国的经济（轨道）”。
中国人正忙于现代化自己的国家，他们似乎乐于等待，让一些外交问题自行消失，
即便这会历时一两代人。有时候，不做反而效果更好。美国则相反：无论共和党还是民
主党政府都实行昂贵、保守的对外军事政策，同时放任很多国内问题不管。
中国的外交政策根植于现实主义、自我保护和对影响力及权力的渴望。他们在世界
各地修建铁路、管道、道路、工厂、学校和医院。这统统是美国人曾擅长的。中国人研
究、学习美国的经验。相比之下，美国决策者几乎不注意过去的经验教训。相反，其外
交政策变得越来越短视，漫无目标。中国人正按兵不动，尽其所能避免冲突，对内努力
解决问题，投资于基建和民生，对外广交盟友，静待美国继续过度扩张，不断变弱，最
终自我消耗、一蹶不振。▲ | n********t
发帖数: 21 | 2 Is China Waiting Us Out?
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-china-waiting-us-out/
While the U.S. bombs, Xi Jinping is building—one power play at a time.
By MICHAEL HORTON • October 22, 2018
Michael Hogue
The one constant in recent U.S. foreign policy—regardless of which party
occupies the White House or controls Congress—is that it prioritizes
military intervention, both covert and overt, to advance its interests
overseas. While President Barack Obama vowed to move the U.S. away from its
“perpetual wartime footing,” by the end of his presidency he had overseen
the bombing of seven countries and had greatly expanded the drone war. In
his last full year in office, the U.S. military dropped 26,171 bombs—an
average of 71 bombs per day.
Candidate Trump railed against the invasion of Iraq during his campaign, at
one point blaming George W. Bush directly and saying, “we should have never
been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.” As president-elect,
Trump continued to promise a very different foreign policy, one that would
“stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we
shouldn’t be involved with.”
The election of Donald Trump gave the international community pause: Trump
appeared unpredictable, eschewed tradition, and flouted convention. He might
well have followed through on his promise to move the U.S. away from its
long embrace of forever war. China’s government in particular must have
worried about such a move. If the U.S. focused on its internal problems and
instead pursued a restrained foreign policy that was constructive rather
than destructive, it might pose more of an impediment to China’s rise to
global power status.
But the Chinese need not have worried. With a continued troop presence in
Afghanistan and Syria, a looming conflict with Iran, and even talk of an
intervention in Venezuela, Trump is keeping the U.S. on its perpetual
wartime footing.
This is good news for Beijing, whose own foreign policy could not be more
different. Rather than embracing a reactive and short-sighted approach that
all too often ignores second- and third-order consequences, the Chinese
strategy appears cautious and long-ranging. Its policymakers and technocrats
think and plan in terms of decades, not months. And those plans, for now,
are focused more on building than bombing.
This is not to say that China’s foreign policy is altruistic—it is
certainly not. It is designed to cement China’s role as a great power by
ensnaring as many countries as possible in its economic web. China is
playing the long game while Washington expends resources and global
political capital on wars it cannot win. America’s devotion to intervention
is sowing the seeds of its own demise and China will be the chief
beneficiary.
China has not engaged in a foreign war since it invaded Vietnam in 1979, a
war which lasted less than a month and in which the Chinese overreached and
underperformed, suffering an estimated tens of thousands of casualties in 27
days. After heavy fighting against the battle-hardened Vietnamese, Chinese
forces withdrew, cut their losses, and declared victory (as did the
Vietnamese). Their leaders appeared to be acting on the advice of the 6th
century BC philosopher and general Sun Tzu, who wrote in The Art of War, “
there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.”
♦♦♦
Since then, the Chinese have pursued a more cautious foreign policy and
focused the lion’s share of their resources on internal development. As a
result of this relentless effort, they have accomplished in 39 years what
even the most daring and optimistic China expert would have thought
impossible. The government has lifted 800 million of its citizens out of
poverty and has set the country on a trajectory that, if maintained, will
see its economy overtake the U.S. in terms of GDP by 2032. If purchasing
power parity is taken into account, China has already surpassed America as
the world’s largest economy.
Backstopped by its trade surplus and foreign currency reserves, China has
been on a building spree for decades. The country has invested massively in
its infrastructure and while billions have been lost to waste and corruption
, the investments will pay dividends for decades to come. New cities, ports,
pipelines, airports, roads, and 18,000 kilometers of high-speed rail lines
mean that China’s infrastructure now rivals that of many Western nations—
especially the U.S. Moreover, Beijing’s investment in research and
development alone topped $279 billion in 2017. By 2020, China is expected to
overtake the U.S. with regard to gross expenditure in this space.
By contrast, Washington’s chief investment in the last two decades has been
the war on terror, which has greatly contributed to its ballooning national
debt. Since 9/11, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
at Brown University estimates that America’s wars have cost the country $4
.6 trillion, not including an additional trillion for meeting military
veterans’ medical and disability requirements through 2056. Nor does that
total take into account the trillions of dollars in interest payments—much
of which will be paid to Chinese creditors—that will be required to service
the debt.
Meanwhile, domestic infrastructure is crumbling, sometimes literally, rating
a D+ according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which
estimates that the U.S. will need to invest $4.5 trillion in its failing
infrastructure by 2027. President Trump, like his predecessor, promised big
spending on infrastructure, which he called “third world” during his
campaign. However, his 10-year, $1.5 trillion plan is riddled with flaws and
has little support in Congress.
While the Chinese have lavished money on infrastructure projects, they have
been relatively abstemious with defense spending. The estimated Chinese
defense budget has increased from $10 billion in 1997 to upwards of $228
billion today, but that still pales in comparison to Washington’s 2018
defense budget of $716 billion.
While modernizing its military is critical for Beijing, it has taken a
measured approach to defense spending. Power projection beyond what it
regards as its sphere of influence, largely the South and East China Seas,
has ranked as a low priority. This is evidenced by where it is spending
money. It has an antiquated aircraft carrier purchased from Ukraine, one
indigenously built carrier undergoing sea trials, and two more under
construction.
But it is no match for the U.S. Navy—at least outside of its coastal waters
. China knows this, and as a consequence has built what it deems to be
unsinkable, low-cost, permanent aircraft carriers in the South China Sea in
the form of artificial islands. Since 2013, China has created 3,200 acres of
new land on and around the reefs that make up the disputed Spratly Islands.
The artificial islands on which China has built military installations
allow it to project power in the South China Sea but not beyond.
So far China has shown limited interest in developing and funding bases
abroad. While it is thought to have plans for bases in Pakistan and other
nations that lie along the Indian Ocean, China’s only operational military
outpost is in Djibouti. At present, the Chinese have no need to send a $110
million dollar jet halfway around the world to bomb a few men with
Kalashnikovs as the U.S. so often does in its forever war. But that does not
mean their economic and political influence isn’t being felt in places as
far flung as Yemen and Argentina. In these and in many more countries, the
Chinese are staking claims and, in essence, hoping to wait the U.S. out.
A senior aide to Yemen’s former minister of foreign affairs, Abu Bakr al-
Qirbi, told this author just before Yemen descended into war in 2015 (that
the U.S. is deeply involved in), “the Chinese think so differently than
Americans. They’re patient. Their first foreign policy objective is to not
make too many enemies.”
He pointed out that the Chinese diplomats traveled around Yemen’s capital
and throughout the country without bodyguards. Conversely, U.S. diplomats
rarely left the American embassy, and when they did, it was only in a convoy
of armored vehicles with Yemeni and American bodyguards in tow.
The diplomat went on to argue that China’s “second objective is to learn.
They have people in their embassy who know more about what is going on in
parts of this country than I do. Only after learning, do they act on their
third objective which is to tie countries into their economy: resources and
access in exchange for their imports and aid.” He added, “it’s their
patience, their superior understanding of time, that will allow the Chinese
to replace the U.S. as the world’s superpower.”
While the Chinese have been in a hurry to rebuild and modernize their
country, they seem content to wait out foreign policy problems even if it
takes a generation or two. One can see how this approach worked with Hong
Kong and may in time ensure an upper hand with Taiwan. Sometimes doing
nothing equates to doing more. In America it’s the opposite: both
Republican and Democratic administrations have let present domestic problems
fester while pursuing expensive, reactionary military policies abroad.
In contrast to Washington’s military-first approach, China’s signature
foreign policy project today is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a
critical component of its decades-long effort to restore its global power
status. The BRI, which is well underway, is an attempt to spread China’s
influence through investment projects in upwards of 68 counties along the
old Silk Road connecting Europe to Asia by land and by sea via the “21st
Century Maritime Silk Road” component.
Projects in these countries involve infrastructure, power, education,
railways, highways, shipping, mining, and more. China has already spent an
estimated $300 billion and plans to invest $1 trillion more over the coming
decade to realize this dream, which, according to The Economist, is “to
make Eurasia (dominated by China) an economic and trading area to rival the
transatlantic one (dominated by America).”
The first freight train from China arrived in Spain in December 2014, and in
January 2017 a freight train from China made the journey to London in 18
days. The Chinese also plan to introduce high-speed rail links that will
connect Asia with Europe. In January, President Xi Xinping announced the
Polar Silk Road, which would utilize new shipping lanes in the Arctic Circle.
All of these projects are designed to open markets for China, which ties
back into the “Made in China 2025” plan. Announced in May 2015, it is
designed to upgrade China’s manufacturing sector by making it more
efficient, quality-focused, and innovation-driven. The plan identified 10
key sectors—including information technology, new energy equipment, and
pharmaceuticals—where China hopes to compete with the most advanced nations
. Most critically, the plan aims to reduce Chinese dependence on imported
components for its manufacturing sector.
The Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on China—while
arguably long overdue—will reaffirm the importance and strategic necessity
of both the BRI and the Made in China 2025 plan since they aim to reduce
China’s dependence on the U.S. as a market and a source for imported
components. China’s government will undoubtedly continue to try to
negotiate a new trade deal with the U.S., but at the same time redouble
their efforts to carve out their own global sphere of influence
♦♦♦
Right now the biggest threat to that success is internal. Endemic corruption
, insufficient rule of law, environmental destruction, a looming demographic
shift, and ever-increasing economic inequality are all serious issues. In a
country of 1.4 billion people, any one of those problems, much less all of
them combined, could scuttle China’s rise. Its leadership, most especially
Xi, appears to comprehend the gravity of these issues.
In a three-hour, 25-minute report delivered in a speech to the Chinese
Communist Party’s 19th National Congress in October 2017, Xi projected a “
great power” ambition, but acknowledged that grave challenges lay ahead.
Significantly, most of his speech focused on domestic policy and needed
reforms, including tighter regulations on the economy, increased government
surveillance, and greater ideological control.
The leadership fears disorder and a restive population far more than any
external threat—and for good reason. China’s domestic conflicts have been
among the costliest in human history. The Taiping Rebellion alone, which
lasted from 1850 to 1864, left an estimated 20 to 70 million Chinese dead.
To this end, China’s leadership is cracking down on political dissidents
and is using the latest technology to track, monitor, rank, and influence
its 1.4 billion people. A key component of this is its rapidly developing
social credit system, which uses hundreds of millions of cameras and
overlapping and, as yet, unintegrated systems that draw on “big data” to
assess citizens’ behavior and assign a score to each. The scores are meant
to reflect how “trustworthy” a person is. Points, depending on which
system is being used, are deducted from the score for breaking the law,
failing to repay a debt, “inappropriate” online behavior, and an ever-
growing list of minor and major offenses.
A low score can cost a person access to planes and high-speed trains, or
prevent him from receiving a job promotion or bank loan. A high score can
lead to public recognition and preferential treatment like priority check-in
at airports. The government is betting that such a system will tap into the
same emotional triggers that drive hundreds of millions of people worldwide
to obsess over Facebook likes, follower counts, and other forms of social
media approval.
This is emblematic of the country’s tech-heavy approach to controlling,
channeling, and managing dissent. However, Xi’s government has adopted
harsher and more conventional measures for China’s minority Uyghur Muslims,
interning hundreds of thousands of them in “reeducation” camps in
response to protests and a small number of terrorist attacks by Uyghur
separatists, according to recent reports. China views its ethnically diverse
far west as its soft underbelly, an area ripe for foreign meddling.
Xi’s government is also pushing back against what many China watchers hoped
was going to be a slow but steady move toward liberalization. Xi and those
around him have taken to heart the words of influential late prime minister
of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, who said if China were to adopt a Western-style
democracy it would collapse. Lee, whose advice was sought after by heads of
state from around the world, including U.S. presidents, asked in an
interview, “Where are the students of Tiananmen now? They are irrelevant.
The Chinese people want a revived China.”
The Chinese National People’s Congress broke with tradition in March 2018
and voted to remove presidential term limits from China’s constitution. The
change means that Xi could be president for life. This move dovetails with
the October 2017 inclusion of Xi’s political thought into the Chinese
Communist Party’s constitution, a move that places him in the pantheon
alongside Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
This new heavy-handed approach to domestic policy is engineered to
concentrate power and to maintain internal stability while delivering a
revived China. But it remains to be seen whether these neo-authoritarian
tactics will work, or result in diminished support from the citizenry.
Nothing matters more to China’s government than continued economic growth.
Without that, the hundreds of millions of Chinese who still aspire to China
’s middle class—already the largest in the world—could well become
restive.
♦♦♦
The United States is blessed with many advantages: an open democratic
society, the rule of law, abundant natural resources, a culture that has
welcomed immigrants and spawned innovation, and the protection of two vast
oceans. By contrast, China shares its borders with more countries—many of
them unstable—than any other, is dependent on imported oil, and remains—at
least on some levels—a closed society.
Yet the Chinese already rival the U.S. as a global power in parts of the
world and may well overtake it as an economic power in the coming years.
While China’s rise may yet be upended by internal problems, it is unlikely
that it will jeopardize its ascent by pursuing the kind of interventionist
foreign policy that the U.S. has pursued for much of the last 50 years.
China’s foreign policy, as demonstrated by the BRI, is rooted in realism,
self-preservation, and a desire for influence and power. They are building
railroads, pipelines, roads, factories, schools, and hospitals around the
world. These are all things that the U.S. used to excel at. One need only
remember the transformative Marshall Plan that rebuilt much of Western
Europe, an investment that continues to pay dividends for the U.S. According
to one analyst with access to China’s senior policymakers, the Chinese
have conducted exhaustive studies of the Marshall Plan to understand how the
U.S. used it to secure its own hegemonic empire following World War II.
In contrast, U.S. policymakers seem to pay little attention to the lessons
of the past. The failed invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan
should be foremost in their minds. Instead, a Trumpian foreign policy looks
increasingly short-sighted, scattershot, and reflective of the status quo.
Even if the U.S. lurches to the left in the coming election cycles, the
Chinese have little to fear. Interventionism is likely to remain the default
response of U.S. policymakers, regardless of which party occupies the White
House. And, it may just be its Achilles heel.
As the world’s oldest continuous civilization, the Chinese can and do draw
from a rich corpus of writings on strategy. Among these is the 6th century
BC Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Lao-Tzu, which articulates
a strategy that enables the weak to defeat the strong. A key component of
this nuanced understanding is letting your enemy defeat himself, of using
his own power against him. The Tao Te Ching describes this paradoxical
understanding: “should you want to contain something you must deliberately
let it expand.”
So the Chinese will bide their time, do what they can to avoid conflict,
grapple with their internal problems, invest in their infrastructure and
citizens, build external alliances, and wait for the U.S., through continued
overreach, to weaken and—finally—exhaust itself.
Michael Horton is a foreign policy analyst who has written for numerous
publications, including Intelligence Review, West Point CTC Sentinel, The
Economist, The National Interest, and The Christian Science Monitor. | k*******g
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