【英语中国】谁是中国的榜样？

Is China like the US in 1890? Or is it more like Japan in 1980? If the parallel with America is right, China is likely to be the dominant power of the next century. If the Japanese comparison is more accurate, then the Chinese challenge to American hegemony could prove ephemeral.

The current mood in the US certainly feels like an exaggerated version of the “declinism” that set in towards the end of the 1980s, when the US was transfixed by the rise of Japan. A recent Pew opinion survey showed that a majority of Americans now believe that the Chinese economy is larger than that of the US. This is plain wrong. At the time the poll was taken, the Chinese economy was around half the size of America's.

It was this kind of scare that took hold in the late 1980s. Japanese investors provoked angst by buying the Rockefeller Centre in New York – and it was Japan that was the world's largest creditor nation.

The book that captured the declinist spirit of the late 1980s was The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, written by Paul Kennedy, a Yale historian, who introduced readers to the notion of “imperial over-stretch”. His argument was that America was staggering under the burden of its global commitments and was now in relative decline – following the path of the British, Napoleonic and Spanish empires.

Prof Kennedy's book caused a sensation when it was published in 1988. But just a year later, the Berlin Wall fell and the Japanese stock market bubble went pop. By the mid-1990s the “Kennedy thesis” was itself in relative decline, displaced by sexier new theories about the US as the “sole superpower” and the “clash of civilisations”.

Now America's financial and military troubles – coupled with the rise of China – raise the question of whether Prof Kennedy was right, after all. Perhaps America's post cold-war dominance was just a blip before the resumption of relative decline.

Re-reading the book, more than 20 years after its publication, it seems strikingly prescient in some ways – and strikingly wrong in others. The argument that America's share of the global economy will inevitably decline – and that this will have knock-on effects on global politics – still looks spot on. But Prof Kennedy was also bedazzled by the rise of Japan, arguing that it was “likely to expand faster than the other major powers in the future” and would be “much more powerful” economically by the early 21st century.

I am not dredging up these old comments to make fun of Prof Kennedy. The point is simply that facts and conventional wisdom can change very fast. At the moment, China's rise looks just as unstoppable as Japan's did in the late 1980s. But there are plenty of analysts who see Japanese-style bubbles inflating in the Chinese economy. Perhaps the Chinese bubble will also go pop, leaving those who have predicted a “Chinese century” scratching their heads in embarrassment and surprise.

In fact in some ways, China is a less plausible rival to the US than Japan was in the late 1980s. Japan is a wealthy, homogenous, developed nation with a stable political system. China is, in many respects, just what its leaders always insist it is – a developing nation.

Although some western intellectuals have lauded China's ability to plan for the long term, the country's political system is inherently unstable. The actions of China's government often suggest that its leadership remains very nervous about its power and legitimacy. China's angry insistence on the unity of the nation also betrays deep anxiety about separatist challenges in Tibet and Xinjiang.

But in other, more important ways, China is a much more serious challenger to American hegemony than Japan ever was. The most obvious point is demographic. America's population is more than twice that of Japan; it is less than a quarter of China's. Japan was (and is) also a democracy, an American ally and the base for some 50,000 US troops. China is, by contrast, a geopolitical rival. If China keeps growing fast then inevitably its economy will, at some point, become larger than that of the US – and that process will certainly change the global balance of power.

So the big question remains: how much longer can the Chinese economy keep booming? Here the differences between the China of today and the Japan of the 1980s are more striking than the similarities. Because China is much poorer than Japan was back then, and has a much larger population, it probably still has tremendous scope for internal development and rapid economic growth.

China is spending a lot on infrastructure, but it needs to – many of its villages, for example, still lack paved roads. Even if the country experiences disruptions, burst bubbles and occasional recessions along the way, its strengths are such that we should expect it to make ground on the other great powers. China, in fact, may be like Japan – but more like Japan in the 1960s than in 1988.

If China has another 20 years of rapid growth in it, then the likelihood is that it will indeed take the title of “the world's largest economy” some time in the 2020s. America probably achieved this status in the late 19th century. It took half a century and two wars for raw American economic power to translate into geopolitical dominance. I'm not sure whether that is a comforting thought, or not.

当今的中国更像是1890年的美国，还是1980年的日本？如果更像是美国，那么中国将有可能成为下个世纪占主导地位的强国。如果比作日本更准确一些，那么中国对美国霸权地位的挑战可能不过是昙花一现。

当下美国民众的心境无疑像是夸张版的“衰落主义”——该理论盛行于上世纪80年代末，当时，日本的崛起令美国惊慌失措。美国调查机构皮尤(Pew)最近进行的民调显示，目前大部分美国人都认为，中国的经济规模比美国大。这真是大错特错。进行民调之际，中国经济的规模仅相当于美国的一半左右。

上世纪80年代末，这种恐慌也曾大行其道。因买下了纽约的洛克菲勒中心(Rockefeller Center)，日本投资者让美国人忧心忡忡——当时，日本是全球最大的债权国。

耶鲁大学(Yale)历史学家保罗•肯尼迪(Paul Kennedy)的《大国的兴衰》(The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers)一书抓住了衰落主义的精神实质。他在书中提出了“帝国过度扩张”这一概念。他的论点是：由于不堪全球承诺的重负，美国正步大英帝国、拿破仑及西班牙帝国的后尘，走向相对的衰落。

该书1988年一经出版，就引起了极大的轰动。但时隔仅一年，柏林墙倒了，日本的股市泡沫也突然破灭。到90年代中期，“肯尼迪命题”本身已相对衰落，被美国成为“唯一的超级大国”以及“文化冲突”等更有吸引力的新理论所取代。

眼下，美国在财政和军事方面的问题，加之中国的崛起，让人对肯尼迪教授的观点究竟是否正确产生了疑问。或许美国在后冷战时代的主导地位，不过是再次走向相对衰落之前的回光返照。

在出版20多年后重读该书，会发现它在某些方面有着惊人的先见之明，而在某些方面又错得离谱。该书称，美国在全球经济中所占的比重将不可避免地下降，由此会对全球政治产生连锁效应——这话现在听上去仍完全正确。但肯尼迪教授还是为日本的崛起所迷惑，宣称该国“今后的扩张速度可能比其它主要大国都快”，此外，到21世纪初，日本经济将“远为强大”。

我并非故意翻出这些老话来取笑肯尼迪教授。我只是想说明，现实和传统智慧可能瞬息万变。眼下， 与80年代末的日本一样，中国的崛起看上去势不可挡。但也有许多分析人士认为，中国经济中正在滋生日本式的泡沫。或许中国的泡沫也会突然破灭，让那些预言世界将迎来“中国世纪”的人大跌眼镜，难堪不已。

实际上，从某些方面讲，中国对美国的威胁还不及80年代末的日本。日本是一个富裕的同质型发达国家，政治体制稳定。而中国在许多方面就像其领导人一再强调的那样，是一个发展中国家。

尽管一些西方知识分子称颂中国的长期规划能力，但中国政治体制具有先天的不稳定性。中国政府的举动常常表明，其领导层对于自己的权力与合法性仍非常敏感。中国在坚持民族团结问题上的愤怒态度，也流露出它对于西藏和新疆分裂势力的挑战深感焦虑。

但在其它更重要的方面，中国对美国霸权地位的挑战，要强于任何时期的日本。最明显的一点体现在人口结构方面。美国人口是日本的两倍以上；却不足中国的四分之一。日本当时同样是（现在也是）一个民主国家，是美国的同盟国，那里驻扎着约5万名美军。相比之下，中国则是一个地缘政治对手。如果中国经济保持快速增长的势头，其规模终有一天会超过美国，而这一进程无疑会改变全球的实力平衡。

因此，关键问题仍然是：中国经济还能迅猛发展多久？在这方面，今天的中国与80年代的日本之间，差异要比相似之处更为显著。由于中国远比当时的日本贫穷，人口基数要大得多，中国仍可能有相当大的内部发展和经济快速增长的空间。

中国在基础设施建设方面开支巨大，但这很有必要——例如，许多村庄仍未通路。即使在前进道路上，中国遇到停顿、泡沫破灭，偶尔还会陷入衰退，我们仍应该相信，它有实力赶超其它强国。实际上，中国可能比较像日本——但更像是上世纪60年代、而非1988年的日本。

如果中国的迅速增长还能维持20年，那么它的确有可能在本世纪20年代的某个时候，夺得“全球最大经济体”的头衔。美国大概是在19世纪末获得的这一地位。接着花了半个世纪和两次世界大战，将原始的经济实力转化为地缘政治上的主导地位。我也无法确定，这样的想法会不会让人感到宽慰。

译者/陈云飞