“We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government,” Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017. “But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation.”特朗普先生在2017年9月对联合国大会表示：“我们不希望不同国家分享相同的文化，传统，甚至政府制度。”但我们确实希望所有国家都坚持这两项核心主权义务：尊重本国人民的利益和所有其他主权国家的权利。“
Mr. Trump mentioned sovereignty 21 times in that speech. Why? Everyone knew America was a sovereign state, one of nearly 200 in the world. The idea of sovereignty has been firmly established for more than three centuries. Mr. Trump’s defense of it seemed unnecessary.特朗普先生在那次演讲中提到了21次主权。为什么？每个人都知道美国是一个主权国家，是世界上近200个国家之一。三个多世纪以来，主权的概念已经牢固确立。特朗普先生对此的辩护似乎没有必要。
Yet for more than a decade, President Xi has been dropping audacious hints that China is the world’s only sovereign state. As a result, I have come to believe that Mr. Trump’s defense of sovereignty is essential to maintaining international peace and stability.然而十多年来，习主席一直在大胆地暗示中国是世界上唯一的主权国家。结果，我开始相信特朗普先生捍卫主权对维护国际和平与稳定至关重要。
The world is full of “experts” who will tell you China and the U.S. are locked in a contest for dominance. Technically, that’s true. The idea that the two nations are struggling for control, however, falsely implies that America is jealously guarding its position atop the international system. That’s Beijing’s narrative. Chinese leaders disparage the U.S. by implying it is in terminal decline and accusing it of attempting to prevent China’s legitimate rise.世界上到处都是“专家”，他们会告诉你中国和美国都在争夺主导地位。从技术上讲，这是真的。然而，两国正在努力控制的想法错误地暗示美国正在嫉妒地保护其在国际体系上的地位。这是北京的叙述。中国领导人贬低美国，暗示它处于终极衰落状态，并指责它试图阻止中国的合法崛起。
“Tianxia is a long Chinese political tradition of practice and ideal that is being revitalized and re-energized in today’s People’s Republic,” Fei-Ling Wang, author of “The China Order: Centralia, World Empire and the Nature of Chinese Power,” told me last week. “The Chinese dream of tianxia, or the China Order, assumes a hierarchical world empire system.” “天下是一个长期的中国政治传统和理想，在今天的人民共和国正在振兴和重新焕发活力，”王飞玲，“中国秩序：中央，世界帝国和中国大国的本质”一书的作者。上周告诉我。“天下的中国梦，或中国秩序，假设一个等级的世界帝国体系。”
Mr. Wang is almost certainly referring to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which established the current international order by recognizing states as sovereign. When he says “transcended,” he hints that Mr. Xi aspires to a world without sovereign states—in other words, a unified world ruled by the Chinese.
As the Hudson Institute’s Charles Horner told me by email last week, many world leaders are nationalistic, but Mr. Xi is the only one whose “officially propounded nationalism takes the form of a global imperial vision.” That is consistent with his lawless behavior: treating neighbors as vassals, taking territory, closing off the global commons and intimidating leaders around the world.
“Tianxia,” Fei-Ling Wang notes, “inevitably and even necessarily makes the People’s Republic view and treat its neighbors and eventually all other states as essentially nonequals and lesser entities, to be influenced, controlled and subjugated with force, money, favor, ruse and fear.”
China is not, as some believe, a “trivial state” that seeks nothing more than to preserve its regime and defend its territory. With Mr. Xi pursuing tianxia ambitions, the world could use more of Mr. Trump’s defense of sovereignty, and even a little more “America First.” These concepts are not, as I once thought, unnecessarily provocative. They are a necessary defense of the centuries-old international order against an existential threat.
Mr. Chang is author of “The Coming Collapse of China.”
