前助理国务卿拉塞尔： 唯有美在竞赛中胜出 美中关系才能稳定
来自 / 联合早报
7/11/2021
美国前助理国务卿拉塞尔认为，只有美国在美中竞赛中胜出，美中关系才能保持稳定。
拉塞尔（Daniel Russel）在奥巴马时期曾担任美国东亚和太平洋事务助理国务卿，目前在亚洲协会政策研究院任职，《日经亚洲评论》前天（7月10日）发布对他的专访。
拉塞尔认为，中美关系的本质正在发生变化，过去只要两国在军事和经济实力上存在巨大差距，中美关系就相当稳定，但现在中国经济取得更大成就，军事和技术能力也更强。“如今的中国已近乎是一个匹敌美国的大国，这从未出现过。”
拉塞尔表示，他并不认同美中不可能合作、与中国接触会以失败告终的观点，但他也不认为，美中能回到过去那段美国支持中国发展、努力避免摩擦与对抗的“美好时光”。
拉塞尔认为，中国领导人已开始相信，中国和美国一样强大，中国变得越来越强大，美国则走向衰弱。
中国领导层在挑战全球规范与美国领导地位时，态度更加强硬，动作更大胆、公开，也更意识形态化。
他说，只要中国认为美国正走向衰落，并从塑造和领导国际事务和制定规则等方面的传统角色中退缩，中国就更有直接挑战美国的动力。
拉塞尔也强调，寻求中国政权更迭是“不切实际也不明智的”，将会跟试图在中东实现政权更迭一样，以“灾难性失败”收场。
他说：“美国没有推翻中国政府的力量，经验告诉我们，即使我们成功了，后果将是非常危险且不可预测的。”
拉塞尔建议，美国与其采取削弱中国的战略，不如选择加强自身与盟友的实力。
拉塞尔认为，当中国领导层看到更多证据表明，美国展现韧性并进行自我更新与重塑，以及民主地区整体实力在增强时，中国领导层就会更愿意做出让步，他们的动作也将更谨慎、更具灵活性。
美国前助理国务卿 Daniel Russel：美国实力远超中国，关系才稳定…
(观察者网) 刘程辉
7/10/2021
“只有让中国看到美国的民主实力正在增长而非衰退，中国才可能更加谨慎或是妥协。”前美国助理国务卿丹尼尔·罗素（Daniel Russel）日前接受日媒采访时称，只有在美国实力远超中国之时，两国关系才能保持稳定。但如今的中国即将成为一个匹敌美国的大国，美国的“好日子”已经过去了。
在罗素看来，中国愈发“强硬”的原因是认为美国正在“衰落”，美国为此需要展示出更强的“韧性”和实力。同时，他也反对“削弱和孤立”中国，认为美国鹰派对华进行“政权更迭”的想法“极其危险”。
《日本经济新闻》10日刊发了这篇专访罗素报道。期间，罗素回溯了中美关系过去和现在的改变，针对美国对华政策提出了自己的看法，还谈及了中国、美国与俄罗斯的“三角关系”。
在评论美国政府过去数十年的对华政策时，罗素表示，随着中国的实力接近美国，中美关系已经不再像从前那样，“美国支持中国发展，努力避免摩擦对抗的好时光”已经过去了。
罗素回顾说，在克林顿政府时期，美国认为一个稳定和繁荣的中国符合美国及其盟友的利益，因此美国政府推动对华接触，试图让中国融入美国主导下的国际体系，并希望以此塑造中国的行为。在那个时候，没有人认为孤立遏制中国、破坏中国的稳定是更好的做法，“这将是一场灾难”。
尽管罗素认为现在一些否定对华接触战略的说法站不住脚，但也坦承情况的确变了，中美很难回到过去。他提到了以下两点因素：
“首先在过去，只要两国在军事和经济实力上存在巨大差距，中美关系就相当稳定。可是现在中国在经济上取得了更大成就，军事技术能力也更强。如今的中国即将成为一个匹敌美国的大国，这种现象从来没有出现过。”
至于第二点原因，罗素将其归结于近年来“中国更加公开地挑战全球规则，以及美国的领导地位”。
罗素声称，中国开始相信自己和美国一样强大，当他们越变越强时，美国正在衰落。伴随着这种看法，中国的行为变得“危险和令人不安”。他认为，只要中国还认为美国的实力正在下降，就会有动力发出更加直接的挑战。
罗素再度指出，只有在美国实力远超中国之时，两国关系才能保持稳定。尽管他反对削弱中国的战略，认为这种做法“既不明智也不可行”，但美国的确需要展示自己的力量。
在这方面，美国需要加强与盟友的关系；展示自己的韧性，进行自我革新和重塑，推动民主社会整体实力的增长。罗素称，中国领导人尊重力量而轻视软弱，美国只有这样做才能让中国有所妥协，或在行为上更加谨慎。
访谈中，日媒还提到了一些美国鹰派政客的说法，即美国应对中国进行“政权更迭”。不过罗素驳斥了这种说法。他提到，美国在伊拉克、利比亚等地区的经历已经证明，这种做法导致了“灾难性的失败”，不仅没有成功，还给所在国和美国带来了巨大的问题。
罗素坦承，这样做的后果也是“极其危险和不可预测的”，美国“没有能力”对中国实施“政权更迭”，这种想法“既不明智也不现实”。
值得一提的是，在中美关系之外，罗素还对中美俄三国关系提出了看法。
在他看来，如今的三国关系不同于上世纪的中美苏关系，那时候中苏实际上是“敌手”，但现在俄罗斯成为了“一个相对弱小的大国”，专注于给西方国家“制造麻烦”，中俄之间合作关系相当密切；上世纪美苏之间也没有经济等领域的相互依赖，竞争方式更为直接，但中国却很好地融入了全球多边体系，中国和西方国家经济技术一体化程度前所未有。
丹尼尔·罗素（Daniel Russel）现任美国亚洲协会政策研究所副会长，拥有丰富的亚洲事务工作经验。他曾于2013年至2017年担任主管东亚和太平洋事务的助理国务卿，是奥巴马政府“亚太再平衡”战略的重要人物。他主张美国努力加强联盟。深化与多边组织的接触，扩大与亚太地区新兴大国的合作。
当地时间6日，罗素还与拜登政府印太事务协调员坎贝尔（Kurt Campbell）一同出席了美国智库亚洲协会（Asia Society）的线上活动。当时坎贝尔也提出了与罗素相似的论调，他声称与上世纪90年代相比，中国如今的外交政策变得愈加“强硬”，中国同时应对多项国际纠纷的举动是“一个重大转变”。坎贝尔还说，中美两国能够和平共存，但这对当代及后代而言是一个“无比巨大的挑战”。
US must outcompete China for a stable relationship: Daniel Russel
Beijing’s aggression comes from perception that America is declining, former official says
TSUYOSHI NAGASAWA, Nikkei staff writer
7/10/2021
WASHINGTON — The secret visit of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Beijing on July 9-11, 1971, kicked off an American policy of engagement with China. Fifty years later, with China on track to overtake the U.S. economy as early as 2028, bilateral relations are at a crossroad.
In an interview with Nikkei, Daniel Russel, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs during the Obama administration, said the nature of the relationship is changing, and it would be wrong to assume that Washington would return to the “good old days,” supporting China’s growth while making an effort to avoid friction and confrontation.
But Russel, now vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, also stressed that aiming for regime change in Beijing is unrealistic and unwise, and would be in line with the “catastrophic” failures of attempted regime changes in the Middle East.
Edited excerpts from the interview follow:
Q: Since Kissinger began an engagement policy with China in the 1970s, the U.S.-China relationship has been relatively stable. The U.S. has invited China into the international system. Looking back, how do you evaluate the pros and cons of this policy?
A: If we took a step back and looked broadly at the historical record, we see that the United States deliberately chose a policy of engaging China and supporting its development, first back in 1972 under President Richard Nixon, where this was part of the strategy for containment of the Soviet Union, but then again in the ’90s, when Bill Clinton was president, after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was a second policy of engaging China that led up to the entry of China into the WTO.
From the Clinton era on, America’s policy toward China was based on the view that a stable China, a prospering China, would serve the best interests of the United States, in part because a weak China, or an insecure China, would likely pose a lot of risks to U.S. interests and to our allies.
I’ve never heard a persuasive argument that it would have been better to do something different than engagement, at those junctures. The United States made a common-sense decision, to try to engage China and to shape its behavior, to integrate China and to give it a stake in the international system, that the United States had largely designed.
And, while people hoped for political liberalization, I don’t think that political liberalization was the reason that the U.S. government and other governments took this approach, because what was the alternative?
Who is going to argue that an effort to isolate China and to contain China, or to destabilize China would have been a better strategy? It would have been a recipe for disaster.
Today, there is a kind of new conventional wisdom that is based on the view that cooperation with China is impossible, that engagement with China is a failure.
If you look at the historical record, that’s just not defensible, that’s not true.
But that doesn’t mean that we can go back to the “good old days” where we tried to support China’s growth, where we made an effort to avoid friction and confrontation.
There are two reasons for this.
In the past, as long as there was a large disparity, a gap, in military power and economic power between the two countries, the relationship was reasonably stable. But China has become much more economically successful and much more militarily and technologically capable. China is now close to being a peer power to the United States, which it never was.
Secondly, in the Xi Jinping era — which now is about almost nine years — China’s leadership has become more assertive, more ideological, and more brazen, more overt, in challenging global norms and challenging U.S. leadership. We’ve seen bullying behavior intensify by China.
Q: What were negotiations with China like in the years of President Barack Obama?
A: We had two very different experiences with the Chinese. On the South China Sea, Obama had very direct, very blunt, discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping repeatedly, from 2013 and the Sunnylands meeting on, each time more forcefully warned Xi that China’s island building, its reclamation, its activities, were creating risk, and that the United States had a responsibility to the defense of the Philippines and more broadly had a strong commitment to freedom of navigation, and could not accept efforts by China to claim the so-called nine-dashed line, or to develop outposts in international waters, and that this was damaging the U.S.-China relationship.
Finally, in the meeting in 2015, Xi made an assurance, and he made a public assurance as well, that China would not militarize the outposts that it built.
But, in that case, China did not ultimately honor that commitment, and the problematic behavior continued. And it had a very damaging effect on U.S. relations with China.
The issue of cyber theft, and particularly the Chinese government’s sponsorship of cyber-enabled theft of American intellectual property from companies, that was a different experience, because for years Obama raised this issue with Xi and warned of consequences, and told Xi that, although China was denying it, the United States knew that China was conducting these attacks, and that they couldn’t hide from us.
And finally, the Chinese saw evidence that the United States was preparing to take very severe action in retaliation for this, and the Chinese leadership recognized that they were reaching a dangerous, critical point, and so they sent to Washington the top security official in China, Meng Jianzhu, who came with instructions: don’t come home without an agreement.
And he stayed in Washington for several days. He met with the U.S. government team. And you may remember that the U.S. and China issued a four-point agreement. In that agreement, China essentially acknowledged that this cyber theft had occurred, committed to end it, and made some public commitments that they did implement, they did honor.
For several years after that, the U.S. agencies that were monitoring cyberattacks formed a judgment that China had, in fact, scaled back significantly the attacks that at least the government, the state, was supporting.
Q: Based on those lessons, how should the U.S. approach China?
A: My judgment is that Chinese behavior has become much more troubling and dangerous as Chinese leaders have begun to believe that they are as strong as the United States, that they are getting stronger and the U.S. is getting weaker.
I don’t think that it is wise or feasible to pursue a strategy of weakening China. Instead, it is necessary and wise to pursue a strategy of strengthening the United States and its allies because, as I pointed out before, when the power differential between the United States and China was wider, the relationship was very stable.
As long as the Chinese perception is that the United States is weak, is on the decline, is withdrawing from its traditional role in shaping and often leading international affairs, in rules-setting and so on, and has abandoned the sort of moral high ground that gave the United States so much soft power over the decades, China is incentivized to challenge more directly.
If and when the Chinese leaders see more evidence that the United States is demonstrating resilience, is renewing and reinventing itself, that the overall strength of the democratic communities is growing, not shrinking, the Chinese leaders will be much more open to compromise. They will be much more flexible, much more careful, in their behavior.
Chinese leaders are Leninists and Leninists respect strength and have contempt for weakness.
If the United States, over the course of this year, shows, for example, extraordinary ability to stop the spread of COVID-19, an extraordinary ability to develop vaccines that have 96% to 97% effective rates, demonstrates the ability to manufacture billions of doses and make them available to countries around the world, whereas China, despite its very strict and draconian controls, now continues to battle emerging cases of the delta variant, and the Chinese vaccine, Sinovac, which they have distributed around the world, is now revealed to be far less effective in preventing COVID than advertised, that’s a way in which the United States is already demonstrating its strength.
It is already outcompeting. We’re not hurting China. We’re not blocking China. But we are outperforming China.
Q: You talked about the leadership of Xi Jinping himself. How is he different from former presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin before him?
A: Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were not democrats; they had no interest in sharing power. But they were also pragmatists, and they were continuing the tradition of Deng Xiaoping, the tradition of “hiding and biding,” the tradition of opening and reform.
Xi Jinping represents a more nationalist and a more ideological strain of Leninism. In the Chinese communist system, he is clearly representing those who believe that more control is the right answer, and that political liberalization is a recipe for disaster that China cannot afford.
Q: China hawks in the U.S. have argued that the biggest problem is the Chinese Communist Party and thus the U.S. should seek regime change.
A: Number one, the people who are advocating regime change are the very people that have experimented with regime change in Iraq, in Libya, and other parts of the world. And, in every case, it has been a catastrophic failure. It’s not only that it didn’t succeed; it’s that it created immense problems in the country and immense problems in the United States.
The United States does not have the power to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party, and we know from experience that, even if we were successful, the consequences are unpredictable and immensely dangerous.
We can certainly hope for a change and an improvement. There’s much that we can do to bolster civil society within China, and much we can do to help strengthen institutions other than the Chinese Communist Party, in China.
There is a lot of pressure that can be applied externally on the Chinese leadership to limit their behavior. But the notion of the United States reaching in and changing the government in China is unrealistic and unwise.
Q: Is there a similarity between the current situation and the 1970s, in the sense that the Biden administration is now seeking a stable and predictable relationship with Russia so as to focus more on China and try to drive a wedge between China and Russia?
A: The big difference in the 1970s was that Moscow and Beijing were in an intense rivalry and were virtual enemies. Another difference was that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a very significant Cold War, in which we had very little economic or other mutual dependencies and were largely separated into independent blocs, and we were competing around the world for influence, in a very direct way.
Today, Russia is a relatively weak power that is largely focused on making problems, making mischief for the U.S. and for the West.
And the relationship between Moscow and Beijing is very cooperative, very collaborative. And unlike the Soviet Union, China is well integrated into the global system, the multilateral system, and the degree of economic and technological integration between China, the United States, and the rest of the West, is unimaginably large.
So, I think, in those respects, we’re in a very, very different world. And, while it is problematic for the United States when China and Russia cooperate in causing problems for us and our friends, and while there would be some virtue and value in trying to provide incentives for Moscow to moderate its behavior and to refrain from that kind of mischief-making, I don’t think there is any prospect for a kind of fundamental alteration of the triangular relationship, the way that Kissinger and Nixon changed it in 1972.
China beating US by being more like America
Cultivating human capital will be essential if the US rather than China is to be the base of the next industrial revolution
By BRANDON J WEICHERT
4/25/2021
The United States transitioned from an agrarian backwater into an industrialized superstate in a rapid timeframe. One of the most decisive men in America’s industrialization was Samuel Slater.
As a young man, Slater worked in Britain’s advanced textile mills. He chafed under Britain’s rigid class system, believing he was being held back. So he moved to Rhode Island.
Once in America, Slater built the country’s first factory based entirely on that which he had learned from working in England’s textile mills – violating a British law that forbade its citizens from proliferating advanced British textile production to other countries.
Samuel Slater is still revered in the United States as the “Father of the American Factory System.” In Britain, if he is remembered at all, he is known by the epithet of “Slater the Traitor.”
After all, Samuel Slater engaged in what might today be referred to as “industrial espionage.” Without Slater, the United States would likely not have risen to become the industrial challenger to British imperial might that it did in the 19th century. Even if America had evolved to challenge British power without Slater’s help, it is likely the process would have taken longer than it actually did.
Many British leaders at the time likely dismissed Slater’s actions as little more than a nuisance. The Americans had not achieved anything unique. They were merely imitating their far more innovative cousins in Britain.
As the works of Oded Shenkar have proved, however, if given enough time, annoying imitators can become dynamic innovators. The British learned this lesson the hard way. America today appears intent on learning a similar hard truth … this time from China.
By the mid-20th century, the latent industrial power of the United States had been unleashed as the European empires, and eventually the British-led world order, collapsed under their own weight. America had built out its own industrial base and was waiting in the geopolitical wings to replace British power – which, of course, it did.
Few today think of Britain as anything more than a middle power in the US-dominated world order. This came about only because of the careful industrial and manipulative trade practices of American statesmen throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th century employed against British power.
The People’s Republic of China, like the United States of yesteryear with the British Empire, enjoys a strong trading relationship with the dominant power of the day. China has also free-ridden on the security guarantees of the dominant power, the United States.
The Americans are exhausting themselves while China grows stronger. Like the US in the previous century, inevitably, China will displace the dominant power through simple attrition in the non-military realm.
Many Americans reading this might be shocked to learn that China is not just the land of sweatshops and cheap knockoffs – any more than the United States of previous centuries was only the home of chattel slavery and King Cotton. China, like America, is a dynamic nation of economic activity and technological progress.
While the Chinese do imitate their innovative American competitors, China does this not because the country is incapable of innovating on its own. It’s just easier to imitate effective ideas produced by America, lowering China’s research and development costs. Plus, China’s industrial capacity allows the country to produce more goods than America – just as America had done to Britain
Once China quickly acquires advanced technology, capabilities, and capital from the West, Chinese firms then spin off those imitations and begin innovating. This is why China is challenging the West in quantum computing technology, biotech, space technologies, nanotechnology, 5G, artificial intelligence, and an assortment of other advanced technologies that constitute the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Why reinvent the wheel when you can focus on making cheaper cars and better roads?
Since China opened itself up to the United States in the 1970s, American versions of Samuel Slater have flocked to China, taking with them the innovations, industries, and job offerings that would have gone to Americans had Washington never embraced Beijing.
America must simply make itself more attractive than China is to talent and capital. It must create a regulatory and tax system that is more competitive than China’s. Then Washington must seriously invest in federal R&D programs as well as dynamic infrastructure to support those programs.
As one chief executive of a Fortune 500 company told me in 2018, “If we don’t do business in China, our competitors will.”
Meanwhile, Americans must look at effective education as a national-security imperative. If we are living in a global, knowledge-based economy, then it stands to reason Americans will need greater knowledge to thrive. Therefore, cultivating human capital will be essential if America rather than China is to be the base of the next industrial revolution.
Besides, smart bombs are useless without smart people.
These are all things that the United States understood in centuries past. America bested the British Empire and replaced it as the world hegemon using these strategies. When the Soviet Union challenged America’s dominance, the US replicated the successful strategies it had used against Britain’s empire.
Self-reliance and individual innovativeness coupled with public- and private-sector cooperation catapulted the Americans ahead of their rivals. It’s why Samuel Slater fled to the nascent United States rather than staying in England.
America is losing the great competition for the 21st century because it has suffered historical amnesia. Its leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as its corporate tycoons and its people must recover the lost memory – before China cements its position as the world’s hegemon.
The greatest tragedy of all is that America has all of the tools it needs to succeed. All it needs to do is be more like it used to be in the past. To do that, competent and inspiring leadership is required. And that may prove to be the most destructive thing for America in the competition to win the 21st century.
Source: https://asiatimes.com/2021/04/china-beating-us-by-being-more-like-america/
Feb 18, 2021
Aug 4, 2020