查斯·弗里曼大使：中美分裂
https://peacediplomacy.org/2021/09/10/ipd-remarks-ambassador-chas-freeman-sino-american-split/
作者：查斯·弗里曼 2021 年 9 月 10 日
弗里曼大使是一位职业外交官（已退休），曾于 1993-94 年间担任负责国际安全事务的助理国防部长。 弗里曼曾担任美国驻曼谷（1984-1986）和北京（1981-1984）大使馆副团长和临时代办。 1979年至1981年，他担任美国国务院中国事务主任。 1972年已故总统尼克松开创性访华期间，他担任首席美国翻译。
以下是查斯·弗里曼大使在和平与外交研究所主办的一对一讨论中的开场白。 此次对话由IPD顾问姜文然博士主持，大使就华盛顿努力维持其全球秩序愿景中美中竞争中的错误假设发表了看法。
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美国宪政民主的侵蚀似乎是多种因素悲剧性结合的结果，其中包括：
当代美国政治中令人发指的唯利是图、诡计多端和厚颜无耻。
最近出现了一个主要是世袭的美国富豪和受过教育的精英阶层。
随着机会平等和社会流动性明显从美国社会消失，那些美国梦最底层的人的幻想破灭了。
精英们对未受过教育的人和新旧美国“下层阶级”的其他成员的观点表现出居高临下和漠不关心。
社交媒体和利基媒体寡头垄断的兴起，其商业计划依赖于共同偏见社区的创建和维护。
这种媒体培育的社会微观世界是由基于共同不满、“另类事实”、阴谋论和其他政治相关亲和力的共同错觉所定义的。
该组织通过社交媒体组织了日益暴力的抗议活动，抗议者包括心怀不满的白人民族主义者、社会和警察偏见的黑人受害者、最近从中产阶级中降级的人以及其他边缘化的美国人。
利用专家系统通过“不公正划分选区”以及操纵选民的人工智能和“大数据”来巩固政治特权。
精英们在一些问题上坚持自命不凡的政治正确性标准，而那些更传统和不幸的人则认为这些问题既不宽容，又在道德上令人反感。
对政治正确性的反应和那些致力于消失的现状的人的抗议。
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美国和中国不再有任何关系。 抛开外交不谈，这两个大国一边谩骂，一边摆出军事姿态，准备战争，唯一确定的结果就是台湾的毁灭。但美国和中国之间的竞争主要不是军事或意识形态的。这是关于相对国力和表现。中国似乎比美国更关注这一现实。
冷战早已结束, 美国的单极时代已经过去，美国治下的和平已不复存在。随着它的消亡，美国世界观的两个变化为美中（以及美俄）关系陷入敌对对抗提供了地缘政治背景。第一个是华盛顿的安全官员声称可以通过提及“大国竞争”来理解世界并组织美国的外交政策。第二个是智库自由干涉主义者声称，掠夺性威权主义对民主的攻击已成为历史和世界事务的中心动力。 拜登政府接受了这两个论点。它将它们呈现为坚定的信念，而不是假设。它们共同催生了美国的新目标，即由美国及其冷战盟友精心设计和领导的21世纪“受规则约束的秩序”，这不可能获得国际关注。
“大国竞争”是国际关系核心特征的观念最好被理解为美国军国主义的升华。这是一个军工联合体的幻想。“大国竞争”这一概念通过将国家之间的互动比作战场上的互动，为无限制的国防开支提供了理由。它将外交政策简化为大国之间的零和博弈，同时否认中等和较小国家在塑造世界秩序或决定自身命运方面的代理权。将“大国竞争”作为世界事务的核心特征，表达了对冷战时期全球封建主义的怀念，当时较小的国家必然陷入相互竞争的霸主之间，被迫服从外国议程。毫不奇怪，这个前提在国外并没有受到太多欢迎。
“大国竞争”这一概念通过将国家之间的互动比作战场上的互动，为无限制的国防开支提供了理由。它将外交政策简化为大国之间的零和博弈，同时否认中等和较小国家在塑造世界秩序或决定自身命运方面的代理权。
现在也很清楚，“大国竞争”并不是能够治愈后美国治下全球和地区混乱的辩证法，正在出现的是一个国家之间多维互动的世界，其中几乎所有国家更多地是出于对自治的渴望，而不是与美国或其指定的大国竞争对手结盟。当被要求选择一个超级大国作为赞助人时，中等和较小的国家几乎总是对冲并坚持追求自己认为的利益。
基于对过去霸权的怀念和对当代软弱的误解的外交政策注定会失败。它们是一种幻觉，阻碍了世界新变化的地缘政治的成功航行，使那些采用它们的人感到沮丧，并使那些适用它们的人烦恼。它们不是重申美国全球领导地位的基础。
至于所谓民主受到“威权主义”攻击的说法，这是好的政治，但却是政治扭曲的分析。 它出于多种原因吸引美国人。 它似乎将美国民主规范的恶化完全归咎于外国人，从而免除了美国人对其自身政治文化日益颓废的任何责任。它体现了一个未明说的预设，即民主是人类默认的政治制度，只有当坚持假定的“威权主义”意识形态的反对者否认民主时，民主才不存在。
但早在政客们准备冒被其他在民意调查中获得更多支持的政客取代的风险之前，就已经存在由军阀、国王、独裁者和其他强人领导的社会了，仍然有。
民主并不因其决策的智慧而受到赞扬。它被尊为社会和政治压迫的解毒剂，在法治的调节下，可以实现其他制度无法比拟的个人自治水平和有序的继承过程。 民主规范似乎需要许多代人才能在人类社会中建立起来。20世纪和21世纪提供了许多例子，说明这些规范可以如何迅速而彻底地被抛弃。
世界上的强人几乎都是权力狂的自恋者，他们除了害怕被推翻之外没有任何共同点。 他们很高兴获得外国支持，但在国外寻找并找不到他们的个人崇拜或本国独特的民族主义的市场。尽管嘴上说得很高调，但美国一直像中国、俄罗斯和其他大国一样愿意向独裁政府出售武器和内部安全设备，而且事实上，在这些市场上，美国的销量超过了所有其他国家。
为俄罗斯制造持续的恶意，为中国制造掠夺性的意识形态愿望，符合美国国内的政治目的。它将原本令人困惑的国际政治重新纳入了激发第二次世界大战和冷战的摩尼教框架中。美国人过去常常批评中国对其他国家是否民主和是否致力于法治漠不关心。现在，我们发现很容易扭转路线，将一场基于价值观的十字军运动归因于中国，这与我们的十字军运动相当，但又相反。但没有证据表明习近平和他领导的9200万共产党员正在试图消除中国境外的民主。他们对可疑的本土和外国企图抹黑他们、颠覆他们的政治经济成就并推翻他们权力的行为采取防御措施。
关于美国人或其他国家应该生活在什么样的政治制度上，中国和美国正在进行殊死的争论，这一论点经不起哪怕最起码的审查。 民主可能在各地发挥作用，但没有外国独裁者联盟或“独裁意识形态”试图抹杀民主。中美之间的实际竞争不是政治理想之间的竞争，而是两国运用财富和权力、维护国内安宁以及激发其他国家和人民效仿的能力之间的竞争。这是一场双方都不会“获胜”的竞赛。向中国抛出政治上方便但错误的理论不会改变这一点。
关于美国人或其他国家应该生活在什么样的政治制度上，中国和美国正在进行殊死的争论，这一论点经不起哪怕最起码的审查。 民主可能在各地发挥作用，但没有外国独裁者联盟或“独裁意识形态”试图抹杀民主。
讽刺的是，美国在《经济学人》年度全球“民主指数”中刚刚跌至第 25 位，现在被归类为“有缺陷”且可能失败的民主国家。 这令人沮丧。 美国人更愿意指责俄罗斯和其他外国恶棍，而不是审视我们衰落的内部原因，这是可以理解的。 但讽刺的是，拜登政府竟然选择这个时刻“为民主挺身而出”，并宣称全球范围内存在着民主与“威权主义”之间的斗争。 国外很少有人这样看待事情。
美国宪法将决策权几乎全部授予国会中的人民代表，但美国总统和选民基本上放弃了立法部门。 总统越来越多地通过法令进行统治，并获得了比任何国王都更大的权力，可以对其他国家发动战争并屠杀国外的假定敌人。
美国宪政民主的侵蚀似乎是多种因素悲剧性结合的结果，其中包括：
- 当代美国政治中令人发指的唯利是图、诡计多端和厚颜无耻。
- 最近出现了一个主要是世袭的美国富豪和受过教育的精英阶层。
- 随着机会平等和社会流动性明显从美国社会消失，那些美国梦最底层的人的幻想破灭了。
- 精英们对未受过教育的人和新旧美国“下层阶级”的其他成员的观点表现出居高临下和漠不关心。
- 社交媒体和利基媒体寡头垄断的兴起，其商业计划依赖于共同偏见社区的创建和维护。
- 这种媒体培育的社会微观世界是由基于共同不满、“另类事实”、阴谋论和其他政治相关亲和力的共同错觉所定义的。
- 该组织通过社交媒体组织了日益暴力的抗议活动，抗议者包括心怀不满的白人民族主义者、社会和警察偏见的黑人受害者、最近从中产阶级中降级的人以及其他边缘化的美国人。
- 利用专家系统通过“不公正划分选区”以及操纵选民的人工智能和“大数据”来巩固政治特权。
- 精英们在一些问题上坚持自命不凡的政治正确性标准，而那些更传统和不幸的人则认为这些问题既不宽容，又在道德上令人反感。
- 对政治正确性的反应和那些致力于消失的现状的人的抗议。
其中一些因素显然使美国比以前更容易受到外国对其内政的干预，但它们无一例外地源于国内，而不是外国。 它们只能由美国人来解决。 把俄罗斯或中国当作替罪羊并不能解决问题。
世界理所当然地不相信美国突然提出的论点，即推动历史的辩证法是民主与专制之间的矛盾。 那些以其民主传统而自豪的社会尤其致力于容忍国内外的政治多样性。 没有人将推翻非民主政权视为生存的当务之急，也不相信民主国家拥有宣布、强加和执行其偏好的制度以取代国际法和共识的神圣权利。
对世界上的许多人来说，今年六月在康沃尔召开的“七国集团”会议及其对定义不明确的“受规则约束的秩序”的神圣性的谈论，看起来就像是一个由已过时的帝国主义者组成的俱乐部召开的会议，决心重新获得他们与帝国一起失去的规则制定中的主导地位。 七国集团成员占世界人口的11%、按购买力平价计算的GDP的30%和累积财富的62%。 七国集团没有提出任何理由支持其成员国重新管理全球秩序，但似乎声称这是一种主权权利。 但“非西方”——即非欧洲-大西洋——社会构成了全球的绝大多数，并且不再准备被视为附庸。 当他们摆脱贫困时，几乎所有人都把注意力集中在摆脱西方帝国主义和殖民主义过去屈辱的创伤上。
七国集团没有提出任何理由支持其成员国重新管理全球秩序，但似乎声称这是一种主权权利。 但“非西方”——即非欧洲-大西洋——社会构成了全球的绝大多数，并且不再准备被视为附庸。
如今，后殖民应激障碍已成为每个受帝国主义影响地区外交政策的主要推动力，其中包括东欧和中欧，俄罗斯主导的苏联对这些地区实施了羞辱。 它在印度教民族主义和大汉沙文主义中发挥着巨大的作用。 后殖民宿醉是 1979 年伊朗伊斯兰革命和 2011 年阿拉伯起义等现象的主要解释。
欧洲殖民主义使非洲与其殖民者又爱又恨，而现在这些殖民者正通过非法移民而回归家园。 拉丁美洲仍然对“北方巨人”对玻利维亚、古巴和委内瑞拉等地的持续干预感到不满，尽管该地区的许多人向北寻求更好的生活。 东南亚人民也饱受欧美日帝国主义压迫的伤痕。 美国和欧洲以外的世界大多数国家都将以色列在巴勒斯坦正在进行的种族清洗和定居点活动视为种族主义殖民主义的最后一搏。 伊斯兰主义者将其视为“西方”，并将其视为通过恐怖主义进行报复的理由。
全球政治的有效分歧显然不是民主与专制之间的分歧，而是前殖民者与被殖民者之间的分歧。 长期以来通过工业化致富的主要西方国家与现在正在努力实现工业化的国家之间的差异也成为了这一推动力。 富人可以保护他们的人民免受流行病等现象的影响。 欠发达国家和穷人只能受苦和死亡。
气候变化也是如此。 最早实现工业化的国家能够忽视污染和温室气体排放。 他们现在不愿意让那些着手开发的人也这样做。 穷国要求对其前殖民统治者两个世纪以来累积的气候退化给予补偿，但这些要求却被置若罔闻。 发展中国家无法预防或补救气温和海洋上升、洪水和干旱、饥荒和瘟疫带来的灾难性影响，这将给其居民带来难以忍受的未来。 结果将是混乱扩大。
出于所有这些原因，对于世界上大多数人来说，拜登政府现在提出的重新制定“受规则约束的秩序”的论点听起来很空洞。 它呼吁其他国家尊重大国竞争并与想象中的独裁掠夺者作斗争，但没有什么吸引力。 为了与中国或其他崛起和复兴的大国竞争塑造未来世界，美国需要提出与当前现实相关的案例。 目前，中国似乎比美国更能适应这些现实。
对于世界上大多数人来说，拜登政府现在提出的重新制定“受规则约束的秩序”的论点听起来很空洞。 它呼吁其他国家尊重大国竞争并与想象中的独裁掠夺者作斗争，但没有什么吸引力。
这确实是不幸的。 世界上有许多问题，如果没有最强大国家的领导就无法解决，而在美国推卸领导责任的同时，中国仍然专注于自身的重建、复兴、技术进步和自利性的经济扩张。 北京几乎没有表现出领导其他国家的意愿，而且迄今为止也没有表现出这样做的能力。 美国不希望中国取代其全球领导地位。 在大多数情况下，世界也没有。 但是，如果美国以及中国、印度、日本和其他大国之间没有至少某种程度的与中国的妥协和合作，美国和中国都无法对人类目前面临的全球性挑战做出有效的反应。
中国现在似乎过于自信，而美国则陷入自我怀疑。 如果像《箴言》中所说的那样，“骄傲在毁灭之前出现，傲慢的精神在失败之前出现”，那么中国似乎已经成熟了。 与此同时，美国的社交媒体和小众媒体将美国人分割成幻灭且互不信任的子社区，这些子社区对美国的过去和未来抱有不相容的愿景，甚至彼此之间也不再有话可说。 由于缺乏团结，美国在政治上似乎四分五裂、心不在焉，除了必须反对中国之外，在很多事情上都无法达成一致。
目前，中国和美国都不太容忍模棱两可、细微差别或偏离普遍预设或偏见的情况。 两国政府都热衷于保护领导人免受批评，并对外国谴责或本土非传统思想做出恶劣反应。 因此，在应该识别并纠正错误很长时间之后，两者都容易继续犯错误。
唯我论和相互蔑视的结合导致北京和华盛顿不再互相倾听。 中国和美国公民现在几乎所有的信息都是通过数字过滤器以经过媒体认证和旨在强化既定叙事的有针对性的判断的形式获得的。 两国公民都没有得到许多事实来反驳这种判断。 每个国家都发现很难对涉及国家利益的趋势和事件得出自己的结论。
在中国，信息流受到政府控制，对国内事务平淡但乐观，对外交事务自以为是的民族主义，并计划在政治上团结人民。 在美国，它是企业控制的、不和谐的、对国内和外交事务偏执的，并且是为了促进政治观点以及商品和服务的营销而量身定制的。 这两个系统都将客观性视为古怪且具有潜在颠覆性，并沉迷于哗众取宠的传播，但美国的“媒体世界”中有更高比例的东西，专家们用技术术语恰当地描述了“奇怪的狗屎”。
在很大程度上，为了安抚国内的民族主义民众，中国和美国似乎都决定效仿罗马皇帝卡里古拉的外交政策。 他的座右铭是 ODERINT DUM METUANT——“只要他们还害怕我们，就让他们恨我们吧。” 这就是前国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥的外交理念。 今天的中国似乎也是如此。 美国“交朋友、影响别人”，或者中国表现得“可信、可爱、值得尊敬”，就这么多了！
中国执政的共产党现在似乎认为，其意识形态的辉煌成就了中国惊人的经济和技术成功。 但它的主要贡献是抛开意识形态，开放中国市场，接受外国公司及其技术的竞争，用市场经济和产业政策取代中央计划，为企业家、地方和国有企业扫清道路，削减浪费性的国防开支，并鼓励中国家庭储蓄进行生产性再投资。 通过放弃对经济的微观管理，党解放了经济。 随后，中国人民开始了自19世纪美国以来从未有过的激烈经济竞争。 这刺激了生产率的快速增长并压低了价格，同时丰富了普通中国人的生活，使他们成为世界三分之一制成品的生产者。
这些确实是令人惊叹的成就。 但刺激他们的是明智地撤回国家控制，而不是维护国家控制。 现在控制似乎又重新开始了。 这就提出了这样一种可能性：正如中国历史上曾经发生过的那样，不断增长的繁荣可能会成为专横的国家官僚机构的傲慢和腐败的牺牲品。 如果发生这种情况，谁有勇气告诉中国政治世界的主人，重新实行保姆国家可能会引发而不是防止动乱，并通过打击庞大且不断增长的中产阶级自我实现的愿望来逆转中国的经济进步？
中国通过接受意识形态上令人难以接受的现实而一跃走向繁荣。 现在，许多人认为北京似乎正在推翻先前被经验驳斥的意识形态议程的裁决。 又回到政治挂帅了吗？ 实事求是——“实事求是”或者以实践为真理的唯一标准——“实践是真理的唯一标准”变成了什么？ 中国难道不需要这样的原则和进一步的改革开放——“改革开放”——才能迈向下一阶段的财富和威望吗？
当然，中国现在拥有高度竞争、自给自足的经济。 中国的发展可能会放缓，但很可能会持续足够长的时间，让不再痴迷于管制的新一代重新发现促进中国恢复财富和权力的开放心态。
可悲的是，无论中国是否动摇，美国目前与之竞争的条件都非常糟糕。 当代美国民主的弱点及其灾难性地无法动员人们对这一流行病采取有效应对措施就说明了这一点。 但美国现在在军事以外的几乎所有与竞争相关的领域都被中国击败了（而且这也越来越不确定）。
- 中国经济的大多数部门都是由多家竞争性企业提供服务，而美国经济现在的常态是寡头垄断、垄断或垄断。
- 在中国，企业仍然将利润投资于扩大工业产能。 在金融化、股东资本主义如今占主导地位的美国，利润越来越多地流向股票回购、兼并和收购。
- 中国工业生产已占全球工业生产的 30% 以上，而美国仅略高于 16%。
- 中国是世界第一大贸易国，也是世界四分之三国家的最大经济伙伴。
- 中国现在与美国争夺外国直接投资的最大接受国。
- 中国的储蓄和投资能力大约是美国的2.5倍，而且中国政府有剩余资本可以出口。 美国已经变得依赖外国购买约 40% 的债务来维持现有的政府运作，更不用说启动新计划了。
- 中国在世界创新者的行列中迅速崛起，而美国虽然仍然强大，但正在缓慢下降。
- 中国学校学生的数学和科学排名世界第一，而美国学生分别排名第37位和第18位。
- 目前中国科学家、技术人员、工程师和数学家的数量是美国的八倍，如果不发生任何变化，到本十年末，这一数字将是美国的十五倍。
- 中国占本世纪全球研发支出增长总量的三分之一，而美国则占五分之一。 中国和美国各自约占全球研发支出的四分之一，但中国在 2019 年超过了美国，现在在基础研究上的支出比美国多得多，而美国的大部分研发都是由企业资助的增量产品开发。
- 在中国，政府支出体现的是战略计算； 在美国，它反映了既得利益者对国会游说的载体。
- 中国的交通和通信基础设施是世界上最新、最高效的，而美国道路、桥梁、铁路、航空和海港的延期维护费用超过2.5万亿美元。 （国会现在正为五年内每年为基础设施额外拨款约 1100 亿美元而沾沾自喜——远远低于所需的数额。）
- 中国现在将其GDP的不到2%分配给军事，而美国则为3.4%至5.25%。 （如果中国是北约成员国，美国就会指责它在国防上的开支太少。）中国可以大幅增加国防开支和生产，而美国却不能。
美国最大的比较优势是其专业化和高杀伤力的军队。 这使得美国人在政治上方便用军事术语来描绘美国与中国的较量。中国正在表明它可以与美国匹敌并提出任何要求。但军事姿态是徒劳的。中美之间因备受误解的台湾问题而爆发的战争 — — 最有可能的宣战理由 — — 将使台湾成为一片废墟，并可能使中国和美国的家园都遭到毁灭。如果他们不彻底摧毁对方，那么双方都会从任何战争中输掉。 他们会疯狂地互相开战。我们必须尽我们所能确保他们不会这样做。
美国最大的比较优势是其专业化和高杀伤力的军队，这使得美国人在政治上方便用军事术语来描绘美国与中国的较量。中国正在表明它可以与美国匹敌并达到与美国一样的水平，因此，军事威慑是徒劳的。
中美之争不在于哪一方能够在军事上胜过对方，或者在军事上胜过对方。 它关系到国家实力和表现的根本来源。 这些目前都不利于美国。
美国增加国防开支或将武装力量转向东亚不会增强美国相对于中国的竞争力。 要应对这一挑战，就需要对美国的未来进行一定程度的投资，如果不结束美国的狂妄自大、否认和自满，这种投资水平是不可想象的，这些投资削弱了财政责任，将财富转移给富豪，吸引最优秀和最聪明的人进入金融领域而不是真正的工程领域，使竞争市场窒息，工业萎缩，教育和卫生等部门制度化的低效率和回扣，挤压中产阶级，并削弱政府应对危机的能力s。 没有什么比这更有效的了。
这就是为什么作为一个美国人，当我说虽然中国不会从中美分裂中获益，但美国似乎可能会从中受损时，我感到很难过。
Ambassador Chas Freeman: The Sino-American Split
https://peacediplomacy.org/2021/09/10/ipd-remarks-ambassador-chas-freeman-sino-american-split/
BY: Chas Freeman SEPT 10, 2021
Transcript
The United States and China are no longer on speaking terms. Having put diplomacy aside, these two great powers are engaged in diatribe accompanied by military posturing and preparations for a war in which the only certain outcome is the devastation of Taiwan. But the contest between America and China is not primarily military or ideological. It is about relative national strength and performance. China seems more focused on this reality than the United States.
The Cold War is long over. America’s unipolar moment has passed, and the Pax Americana is no more. With its demise, two changes in the American worldview have provided the geopolitical context for the descent of US-China (and US-Russia) relations into adversarial antagonism. The first was the assertion by Washington securocrats that the world could be understood, and U.S. foreign policy organized, by reference to “great power rivalry.” The second is the claim by think-tank liberal interventionists that an attack on democracy by predatory authoritarianism has become the central dynamic of history and world affairs. The Biden administration has embraced both theses. It presents them as firm convictions, not hypotheses. Together, they have given birth to the new American objective of a 21st century “rules-bound order” crafted and led by the United States and its Cold War allies. This has no prospect of gaining international traction.
The notion that “great power rivalry” is the core feature of international relations is best understood as a distillation of American militarism. It is a fantasy of the military-industrial complex. “Great power rivalry” is a concept that provides a rationale for unbounded defense spending by analogizing interactions among nations to those on a battlefield. It reduces foreign policy to zero-sum games between great powers, while denying agency to middle-ranking and smaller powers in shaping the world order or determining their own destinies. Positing “great power rivalry” as the central feature of world affairs is an expression of nostalgia for the global feudalism of the Cold War when lesser nations were necessarily caught between competing overlords and forced to defer to alien agendas. Not surprisingly, this premise has not found much welcome abroad.
It is also now clear that “great power rivalry” is not the dialectic that will cure the entropy of post-Pax Americana global and regional disorder. What is emerging is a world of multidimensional interactions between countries in which almost all are driven more by their desire for autonomy than for alignment with the United States or its appointed great power rivals. Asked to choose a superpower as patron, middle-ranking and smaller powers almost invariably hedge and persist in pursuing their own interests as they see them.
Foreign policies based on wistful remembrance of past supremacy and the misperception of contemporary infirmities are doomed to fail. They are hallucinations that preclude successful navigation of the world’s newly fluid geopolitics, frustrate those who adopt them, and vex those to whom they are applied. They are not a basis on which to reaffirm U.S. global leadership.
As for the claim that democracy is under attack by “authoritarianism,” this is good politics but politically warped analysis. It appeals to Americans for many reasons. It appears to explain the deterioration of democratic norms in the United States as entirely the fault of foreigners and to thereby absolve Americans of any responsibility for the increasing decadence of their own political culture. It embodies an unstated presupposition that democracy is the default political system of humankind, absent only when denied to a people by opponents who adhere to a putative ideology of “authoritarianism.”
But long before there were politicians prepared to risk displacement from power by other politicians with more support at the polls, there were societies led by warlords, kings, dictators, and other strongmen. There still are.
Democracy is not celebrated for the wisdom of its decision-making. It is revered as an antidote to social and political repression that, when tempered by the rule of law, enables levels of individual self-governance and orderly succession processes that no other system can match. Democratic norms appear to require many generations to establish themselves in human societies. The 20th and 21st centuries provide many examples of how quickly and thoroughly these norms can be discarded.
The world’s strongmen are almost all power-mad narcissists who have nothing in common other than the fear of being overthrown. They are happy to receive foreign support but seek and find no market abroad for their personality cults or their countries’ idiosyncratic nationalisms. Lofty talk notwithstanding, the United States has been just as willing as China, Russia, and other great powers to sell weapons and internal security equipment to authoritarian governments and has, in fact, outsold all others in such markets.
Inventing persistent malevolence for Russia and predatory ideological aspirations for China serves domestic U.S. political purposes. It puts otherwise confusing international politics back into the sort of Manichean framework that animated World War II and the Cold War. Americans used to criticize China for its well-documented indifference to whether other countries were or were not democratic and devoted to the rule of law. Now, we have found it convenient to reverse course and attribute to China a values-based crusade equivalent to and opposed to our own. But there is no evidence that Xi Jinping and the 92 million Communist Party members he leads are trying to erase democracy beyond China’s borders. They are on the defensive against suspected homegrown and foreign efforts to discredit them, subvert their political economic achievements, and topple them from power.
The thesis that China and America are engaged in mortal contention over what political system Americans or others should live under does not survive even minimal scrutiny. Democracy may be doing itself in here and there, but there is no league of foreign autocrats or “authoritarian ideology” seeking to obliterate it. The operative contest between China and America is not between competing political ideals but between the two countries’ abilities to exercise wealth and power, maintain domestic tranquility, and inspire emulation by other states and peoples. It is a contest that neither side will “win.” Flinging politically convenient but erroneous theories at China will not change this.
Ironically, the United States has just fallen to number 25 on the Economist’s annual worldwide “Democracy Index,” and is now categorized as a “flawed” and possibly failing democracy. This is disheartening. It is understandable that Americans prefer blaming Russia and other foreign miscreants to examining the internal causes of our decadence. But it is ironic that the Biden administration should choose this moment to “stand up for democracy” and proclaim the existence of a global struggle between democracy and “authoritarianism.” Few abroad see things at all this way.
The American constitution assigned authority for policymaking almost entirely to the people’s representatives in Congress, but the U.S. president and the electorate have largely given up on the legislative branch. The president increasingly rules by decree and has acquired greater power than any king to make war on other nations and slaughter presumed enemies abroad.
The erosion of constitutional democracy in the United States appears to be the result of a tragic combination of many factors, including
- The outrageous venality, chicanery, and effrontery of contemporary American politics.
- The recent emergence of a largely hereditary American plutocracy and educated elite.
- The disillusionment of those farthest down with the American dream, as equality of opportunity and social mobility visibly disappear from American society.
- Elite condescension and indifference to the views of the uneducated and other members of the new and old American “underclasses.”
- The rise of social and niche media oligopolies with business plans dependent upon the creation and maintenance of communities of shared preconceptions.
- The nurture by such media of social microcosms defined by shared delusions based on common grievances, “alternative facts,” the embrace of conspiracy theories, and other politically relevant affinities.
- The organization through social media of increasingly violent protests by disgruntled white nationalists, black victims of social and police prejudice, those recently demoted from the middle class, and other marginalized Americans.
- The exploitation of expert systems to entrench political privilege through “gerrymandering” and artificial intelligence and “big data” that manipulate the electorate.
- Elite insistence on pretentious standards of political correctness on issues that the more traditional and less fortunate find both intolerant and morally offensive.
- Reactions to political correctness and protests by those devoted to the vanishing status quo.
A few of these factors clearly make the United States more vulnerable to foreign intervention in its internal affairs than before, but they are, without exception, domestic, not foreign, in origin. They can only be fixed by Americans. Scapegoating Russia or China won’t do a thing to remedy them.
The world is rightly disbelieving of the sudden American argument that the dialectic driving history is the contradiction between democracy and autocracy. Those societies proudest of their democratic traditions are notably committed to the tolerance of political diversity both at home and abroad. None sees the overthrow of undemocratic regimes as an existential imperative or believes in the divine right of democracies to proclaim, impose, and enforce their preferred dispensations as a replacement for international law and consensus.
To much of the world, the gathering of the “G7” in Cornwall this June and its talk of the sanctity of an ill-defined “rules-bound order” looked like the convening of a club of superannuated imperialists determined to regain the dominant role in rulemaking they lost along with their empires. The members of the G7 account for 11 percent of the world population, 30 percent of its GDP at purchasing power parity, and 62 percent of its accumulated wealth. The G7 made no case for its members’ renewed stewardship of global order but appeared to claim it as a sort of droit du seigneur. But “non-Western” – meaning non-Euro-Atlantic – societies constitute a very large global majority and are no longer prepared to be treated as vassals. As they rise from poverty, almost all are focused on escape from the trauma of past humiliation by Western imperialism and colonialism.
Post-colonial stress disorder is today a major driver of foreign policy in every region touched by imperialism, including Eastern and Central Europe, where the humiliation was done by the Russian-dominated Soviet Union. It plays an outsized role in Hindu nationalism and Great Han chauvinism. Post-colonial hangover is a major explanation for phenomena like the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the Arab uprisings of 2011.
European colonialism has locked Africa into a love-hate relationship with its colonizers that is now coming home to roost through illegal migration. Latin America continues to resent ongoing interventions by “the Colossus of the North” in places like Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela, even as many from the region look north for a better life. Southeast Asians, too, bear the scars of having been subjugated by European, American, and Japanese imperialism. Most of the world outside the United States and Europe sees the ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing and settlement activity in Palestine as the last gasp of racist colonialism. Islamists identify “the West” with it and see it as justification for reprisal through terrorism.
The operative division in global politics is manifestly not that between democracy and autocracy but that between former colonizers and the colonized. This is joined as a driving force by the differences between those mainly Western nations who long ago became wealthy through industrialization and those now striving to do the same. The wealthy can protect their populations from phenomena like pandemics. The less developed and poor are left to suffer and die.
The same is true of climate change. The earliest countries to industrialize were able to ignore pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. They now prefer not to allow those embarking on development to do the same. Demands from poor countries that they be compensated for two centuries of accumulated degradation of the climate by their former colonial masters fall on deaf ears. The inability of developing countries to forestall or remediate the catastrophic impact of rising temperatures and seas, flooding and drought, or famine and pestilence promises to create an unbearable future for their inhabitants. The result will be widening chaos.
For all these reasons, to most of the world the arguments that the Biden administration is now making for a reformulated “rules-bound order” ring hollow. Its appeals to other nations for deference to great power rivalry and combat with imaginary authoritarian predators have little appeal. To compete with China or other rising and resurgent powers in shaping the world of the future, America needs to make a case that is relevant to current realities. At present, China seems better aligned with these realities than the United States.
This is truly unfortunate. The world has many problems that cannot be addressed without leadership by its greatest powers, and, as America shirks the burdens of leadership, China remains focused on its own reconstitution, rejuvenation, technological advancement, and self-interested economic outreach. Beijing shows little willingness to lead other nations and has so far demonstrated no competence to do so. America doesn’t want China to replace its global leadership. Neither, for the most part, does the world. But, without at least some degree of accommodation and cooperation with China by the United States and between China, India, Japan, and other great powers, neither the United States nor China will be able to mount an effective response to the planetwide challenges now facing humanity.
China now seems overconfident, while the United States is mired in self-doubt. If, as the Book of Proverbs puts it, “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” China looks like it’s ripe for one or the other. Meanwhile, social and niche media in the United States have sliced, diced, and sorted Americans into disillusioned and mutually distrustful sub-communities that harbor incompatible visions of the American past and future and are no longer even on speaking terms with each other. Lacking unity, America seems politically splintered, scatterbrained, and unable to agree on much of anything except that China must be opposed.
Neither China nor America currently has much tolerance for ambiguity, nuance, or deviance from popular presuppositions or prejudices. Both have administrations that are obsessed with protecting leaders from criticism and that react badly to foreign censure or to homegrown unconventional ideas. Both are therefore prone to persist in error long after they should have been identified and corrected it.
A combination of solipsism and mutual disdain assures that Beijing and Washington no longer listen to each other. Both Chinese and American citizens now receive almost all information through digital filters in the form of media-certified and targeted judgments designed to reinforce established narratives. Neither citizenry is presented with many facts to contradict such judgments. Each finds it difficult to draw its own conclusions about trends and events touching national interests.
In China, the information flow is government-controlled, anodyne but upbeat about domestic matters, self-righteously nationalistic about foreign affairs, and calculated to unify the people politically. In America, it is corporate controlled, discordant, bigoted about both domestic and foreign affairs, and tailored to facilitate the marketing of political opinions as well as goods and services. Both systems treat objectivity as quaint and potentially subversive and indulge in the propagation of claptrap, but the “mediaverse” in America has a much higher percentage of stuff that experts aptly describe with the technical term, “weird shit.”
In large measure to placate nationalistic domestic audiences, both China and America appear to have decided to emulate the foreign policy of the Roman emperor, Caligula. His motto was ODERINT DUM METUANT – “let them hate us, as long as they fear us.” This was former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s idea of diplomacy. It appears to be that of today’s China as well. So much for America “making friends and influencing people” or China presenting itself as “credible, lovable, and respectable!”
China’s ruling Communist Party seems now to imagine that the brilliance of its ideology is responsible for China’s astonishing economic and technological success. But its major contributions were to set aside its ideology, open the Chinese market to competition from foreign companies and their technologies, replace central planning with market economics and industrial policies, get out of the way of entrepreneurs, localities, and state-owned enterprises, curtail wasteful defense expenditures, and encourage the productive reinvestment of Chinese household savings. By stepping aside from micromanagement of the economy, the Party liberated it. The Chinese people then launched themselves into a level of dog-eat-dog economic competition not seen since 19th century America. This spurred rapid productivity growth and deflated prices while enriching the lives of ordinary Chinese and enabling them to become the producers of one-third of the world’s manufactures.
These were truly amazing achievements. But they were stimulated by judicious withdrawals of state control, rather than assertions of it. Now the controls seem to be going back on. This raises the possibility that, as has happened before in China’s history, rising prosperity could fall victim to the arrogance and corruption of a domineering state bureaucracy. If this happens, who will have the courage to tell the masters of the Chinese political universe that the reimposition of the nanny state risks triggering rather than precluding unrest [乱] and reversing China’s economic advance by blighting the aspirations for self-fulfillment of its enormous and growing middle class?
China leapt into prosperity by embracing ideologically unpalatable realities. Now many see Beijing appearing to reverse verdicts on ideological agendas previously refuted by experience. Are we back to 政治挂帅 — politics in command? What became of 实事求是 –“seek truth from facts” or 以实践为真理的唯一标准 – “practice is the sole criterion of truth”? Doesn’t China need such principles along with further 改革开放 – “reform and opening” – to advance to the next stage of wealth and prestige?
Of course, China now has a highly competitive, self-sustaining economy. China’s development may slow, but it is most likely to continue long enough for a new generation less obsessed with the need for regimentation to rediscover the open-mindedness that catalyzed China’s return to wealth and power.
Sadly, whether China falters or not, the United States is presently in remarkably poor condition to compete with it. The infirmities of contemporary American democracy and its catastrophic inability to mobilize an effective response to the pandemic are telling. But the United States is now overmatched by China or about to be in just about every realm relevant to competition other than the military (and that too is increasingly uncertain).
- Most sectors of the Chinese economy are served by multiple competitive enterprises whereas in the U.S. economy the norm is now oligopoly, monopoly, or monopsony.
- In China, companies still invest their profits in expanded industrial capacity. In the United States, where financialized, shareholder capitalism now dominates, profits increasingly flow into stock buybacks, mergers, and acquisitions.
- China already accounts for over 30 percent of global industrial production vs. America’s slightly more than 16 percent.
- China is the world’s largest trading nation and the top economic partner of three-fourths of the world’s countries.
- China now vies with the United States as the largest recipient of foreign direct investment.
- China has about 2.5 times the savings and investment capacity of the United States and its government has surplus capital to export. America has become dependent on foreign purchases of around 40 percent of its debt just to run existing government operations, let alone launch new programs.
- China is rapidly rising in the ranks of the world’s innovators while the United States, though still formidable, is slowly declining.
- Students in China’s schools rank 1st in the world in math and science, while American students rank 37th and 18th respectively.
- There are now eight times as many scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians in China as there are in the United States and if nothing changes, at the end of this decade, there will be fifteen times as many.
- China has provided one-third of the total global growth in research and development expenditures in this century vs. America’s one-fifth. China and the U.S. each account for about one-fourth of worldwide spending on R&D, but China passed the U.S. in 2019 and now spends much more on basic research than the United States, where most R&D is business-funded incremental product development.
- In China, government spending reflects strategic calculation; in America it reflects the vector of vested interests’ lobbying of Congress.
- Chinese transportation and communications infrastructure is the world’s newest and most efficient, while deferred maintenance on America’s roads, bridges, railroads, and air and sea ports is over $2.5 trillion. (The Congress is now crowing over having just allocated about $110 billion annually over five years to additional funding for infrastructure – far, far short of what is required.)
- China now allocates less than 2 percent of its GDP to the military vs. America’s 3.4 – 5.25 percent. (If China were a NATO member, the United States would be berating it for spending much too little on defense.) China can surge defense expenditures and production whereas the United States cannot.
The greatest comparative advantage of the United States has come to be its professional and highly lethal military. This makes it politically convenient for Americans to portray the contest the United States has launched with China in military terms. China is showing that it can match and raise anything the United States does. But military posturing is an exercise in futility. Sino-American war over the much-misunderstood Taiwan issue – the most probable casus belli – would leave Taiwan in ruins and could leave both the Chinese and American homelands devastated. Both would lose from any war if they did not destroy each other outright. They would be mad to go to war with each other. We must do what we can to ensure that they do not.
The Sino-American contest is not about which side can out-posture or out-arm the other militarily. It is about the underlying sources of national strength and performance. These do not currently favor the United States.
American competitiveness vis-à-vis China will not be enhanced by more American defense spending or the pivoting of U.S. armed forces to East Asia. Meeting the challenge will require a level of investment in the future of the United States that is unimaginable without an end to the American hubris, denial, and complacency that have gutted fiscal responsibility, diverted wealth to the plutocracy, attracted the best and brightest to financial rather than real engineering, suffocated competitive markets, atrophied industry, institutionalized inefficiency and rake-offs in sectors like education and health, squeezed the middle class, and decimated the capacity of the government to respond to crises. Nothing less will do.
And that is why it distresses me as an American to say that, while China will not gain from the Sino-American split, the United States seems likely to lose from it.
Chas Freeman
