What will happen to the United States if China's technology continues to advance?

如果中国的技术继续进步，美国将会发生什么？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Roland Mckinney

I’ve worked with Chinese tech companies. Their engineers and scientists are devoted to their families, employers and country.

China has the capacity to leap frog the US in many different technologies. Take your pick, they are on it.

The chinese places a high value on a highly educated population. Engineering and scientific professionals are leading a revolution in advancing scientific innovation in China.

我曾和中国科技公司合作过。中国工程师和科学家对他们的家庭、雇主和国家都很忠诚。

中国有能力在众多技术领域超越美国。

中国高度非常重视受过高等教育的人口。工程和科学专业人员正在引领革命，推动中国的科学创新。

 In fact, many Chinese politicians are former engineers, refreshing thought isn’t it?

The motivations for innovation in the US and China are a key point in China leap frogging the US. Both countries reward success in innovation with financial incentives.

But, the Chinese have a greater sense of pride in their country and it’s future.

事实上，许多中国政要都曾是工程师，这并不常见，对吧？

美国和中国的不同创新动力是中国超越美国的关键。两国都通过财政激励来鼓励创新。

但是，中国人对他们的国家和未来有一种更强烈的自豪感。

The US is presently extremely divided politically, current leadership is seeking short term monetary goals over the advancement of scientific innovation.

China may take the lead in further technological and scientific breakthroughs in this environment.

美国目前在政治上存在严重分歧，现任领导寻求的是短期的货币目标，而非推动科学创新。

在这种环境下，中国可能会率先取得进一步的技术和科学突破。

Pat Barnett

I don’t think anything detrimental will happen to the United States as a result of China’s technological advancements. When China gets on the same playing field with the U.S., naturally they will be in direct competition with one another. China, Russia, and the U.S. have long been kee an eye on each other, and reasonably so. They’re all influential countries, and although the U.S. is certainly ahead in regard to influence and recognition, China and Russia aren’t far behind.

我认为中国的技术进步不会对美国造成任何冲击。当中国与美国在同一领域竞争时，他们会直接竞争。中国、俄罗斯和美国长期以来一直相互关注，这很正常。这几个国家都是极具影响力的大国，虽然美国在影响力和认可度方面确实领先，但中国和俄罗斯也没有落后太远。

As powerful, leading countries, they all continuously stride to outdo each other in many ways. They don’t do this for the sake of doing it, but because there’s obviously a great advantage in being more advanced than other places. It’s even better and advantageous when you’re included as one of the top 5 best countries of hundreds and hundreds of other countries that our quite stagnant in growth and development.

作为强大的领先国家，她们都不断努力，在许多方面超越对方。她们并不只是为了超越对方，而是因为她们比别人更发达。如果你能跻身世界上最顶级的5个国家之列，那肯定更好，毕竟还有几百个国家的增长和发展停滞不前。

Nevaeh Gonzalez

This is not an “if” — China’s technology is continuing to advance. Just as engineers worldwide had to learn English if they wanted to stay informed, it won’t take too long and engineers will have to learn at least some Chinese if they want to stay informed. The Chinese domestic market is so big that at some point significant technologies will only have documentation in Chinese. Outside China, you can ignore these, or you can know them. Who knows them will have an edge over the ones who don’t.

People either wake up and understand that the future is with hard and intelligent work and with global collaboration, or the country goes down the drain, slowly but surely.

这已经不是“如果”了—中国的技术不断进步。就像世界各地的工程师如果想要紧跟前沿技术就必须学习英语一样，用不了多久，工程师们就必须至少学点中文了。中国国内市场太大了，可能未来的重要技术只会有中文文档。看得懂中文的人会更有优势。

人们要么幡然醒悟，明白未来需要努力、聪明的工作和全球合作，要么就会慢慢地、但肯定地走向衰落。

You can’t withstand global phenomena with import taxes or walls. You can’t compete unless you’re smarter, more skilled, better educated and work harder — only one of these won’t give you an edge. An attitude like “I don’t need free college; I just want my old job back” is not a good recipe for staying in business. Bringing centuries-old industries back at the cost of future industries just to make some points with part of the electorate is not a good recipe either.

For a long time, the US had a big advantage over any other country, for a number of reasons. All these reasons are coming to an end, or have already. What’s left is competition. And the current attitude here is not good for wng it.

进口关税和高墙无法让你对抗全球化。除非你更聪明、更有技能、受过更好的教育、工作更努力，否则你无法赢得竞争—只满足上述之一条件也无法给你带来优势。“我不需要免费大学；我只想要回原来的工作”，这样的态度并非好事。以牺牲未来产业为代价，重新引入老旧产业，只能向部分选民表明政治态度，也不是个好办法。

长期以来，美国和其他国家比，拥有很大的优势，原因有很多。但这些原因都即将失效，或者已经失效了。目前只剩下竞争了。

Mabel Pierce

This is a simple question which we could simply answer it’s up to how the United States wants to react to China’s rise. I think if the United States wants to contain China and eventually goes to war against China, then the future would be dire for sure. After all, China is a nuclear power. China could also ramp up its nuclear development rather fast for it got a very powerful industrial base.

这是一个简单的问题，我们可以简单地回答，这取决于美国打算如何应对中国的崛起。如果美国想要遏制中国，对中国开战，那么未来肯定会很可怕，毕竟中国是一个有核国家。中国也可以快速发展核武器，因为中国拥有非常强大的工业基础。

Personally, I don’t think it’s wise for any nuclear power to go against another nuclear power because the concept of MAD exerts that nobody could come out clean in a mutually assured destruction scenario. With the advance of hypersonic and supersonic technologies, I guess each nuclear power could try to invent missiles that could carry nuclear weapon tips that could penetrate the enemy’s defensive weapon system — but your enemy could always retaliate in kind using nuclear weapons through a second strike capability. The enemy doesn’t even need to have hypersonic nuclear weapons to do a second strike retaliation because a well-hidden submarine that carries nuclear strike capability could strike a targeted city.

就我个人而言，我认为任何核国家对抗另一个核国家都是不明智的行为，在注定相互毁灭的场景中，任何一方都不能全身而退。随着高超声速和超音速技术的发展，每个核大国都可以尝试发明携带核弹头的导弹，可以穿透敌人的防御武器系统—但敌人总能利用第二次打击能力，用核武器进行反击。

Starting a war against China means Russia could also actively help China fend off the United States. After Russia enters the war, Russia’s neighbors may side with Russia and offer help to China also. The United States at this point may need help from allies. Nevertheless, some allies may think it’s too risky to get involved against China, and so they may offer help to the United States in a roundabout way. Some allies will go all in with the United States and some may not. If the United States can’t get all the help the country needs, then the situation could get rather dire. It’s difficult to strike a near-peer adversary across the Pacific because the near-peer adversary could have capabilities that disrupt the coordination effort in troop maneuvers and supply lines of the United States. For example, China and Russia could take out the United States’ satellites.

对中国发动战争意味着俄罗斯也可以积极帮助中国抵御美国。俄罗斯参战后，俄罗斯的邻国可能也会站在俄罗斯一边，向中国提供帮助。在这一点上，美国可能需要盟友的协助。

但有些盟友可能会认为加入对抗中国的阵营太过危险，可能会通过迂回的方式向美国提供帮助。一些盟友会全力支持美国，另一些可能不会。如果美国不能得到需要的帮助，那么局面可能会变得很可怕。

中国这个位于太平洋对岸的实力相当的对手很难对付，中国可能有能力破坏美国在部队演习和后勤补给方面的协调努力。例如，中国和俄罗斯有能力摧毁美国的卫星。

I think starting a war against China is not like starting a war against Iraq. Furthermore, starting a war against China is like asking for a World War III to happen. World War III will be much uglier than WWII because of nuclear weapons and other advanced weapon systems.

我认为对中国发动战争可不像对伊拉克发动战争。此外，对中国发动战争就犹如挑起第三次世界大战。但因为核武器和其他先进的武器系统，第三次世界大战会比第二次世界大战更加惨烈。

Another route the United States could take is similar to how Great Britain had taken when the United States was on the rise. This would require the United States to be patient and wait out to see how the rise of China would unfold. Meanwhile, the United States would cooperate with China in a limited way, ho that China won’t get too strong too fast — allowing the United States to have some time to strategize and take an appropriate/measured position in which the United States could gain the most during the rise of China. Basically, the United States wants to be strong militarily and economically even China finally gets too strong. This way, the United States won’t be too limited.

美国可以采取的另一个方式就类似于美国当初崛起时英国所采取的方式。这需要美国耐心等待，观察中国如何崛起。与此同时，美国会通过有限的方式与中国合作，希望中国不会太快崛起，给美国留有足够的时间来制定战略，并采取适当/慎重的立场，让美国在中国崛起期间获得最大的利益。就算中国真的崛起，美国也希望能在军事和经济上保持强势。这样，美国就不会受到太大限制。

The third route the United States could take is to start a cold war against China. This way, the United States hopes that China will fall like how the had done so in the past. To the best of my knowledge, the Soviet Union in the past did not have a mighty industrial base and her economy was quite feeble. China isn’t so like that! This means a cold war between the United States and China could be a very long one — if you try to wait this out, it could be your grandchildren who would see the result of such a cold war.

Do you know a fourth way the United States could take in the event of China Rise? Please do tell!

美国可以采取的第三种方式是对中国发动冷战。美国希望通过这种方式，迫使中国崩溃。

据我所知，当时的苏联没有强大的工业基础，经济相对薄弱，但中国可不是这样！这意味着美国和中国之间的冷战可能会很长—如果你想等，也许你的孙辈才能看到这种冷战的结果。

如果中国崛起，你觉得美国还有什么可行的第四种方式吗？请不吝赐教！

Felix Su

Nothing. The US will develop her tech and sell it. It’s just that there will be a competitor on the market. The CIA a la Snowden revelations already has plans to do industrial espionage to steal China’s IP so the US companies will be able to keep up.

The problem with US companies is that US companies C-level excutives siphon off a large amount of profit. That was ok but if a competitor shows up that doesn’t do that then you are less competitive.

The US will keep on going. People change when they need to. So the C-level executives will actually have to perform and get paid less because the money will be needed for R&D to stay competitive.

美国会没事的。美国会研发自己的技术并进行销售，只是市场上会出现竞争对手罢了。美国中央情报局和斯诺登的爆料说明为了让美国企业紧跟最新技术的动向，美国已经在开展工业间谍活动，窃取中国的知识产权的计划了。

美国企业的问题在于高管卷走了巨额利润。这本也无可厚非，但如果竞争对手不这样做，那么你的竞争力就会下降。

美国会继续前进。因为穷则思变，为了保障研发资金，保持竞争力，企业高管只能努力表现，降低薪酬。

David Kallenbach

The US will continue like it does to day but as a less progressive or advanced nation. Israel, India, Russia, China and Japan will continue to dominate the world we live in. All we can do is to propagate lies and falsehoods in the hope our citizens will not continue to fund these nations. But that might be a little too late.

We may fund the exstence of the dysfunctional British and other European Royals because our media continue to make them appear necessary.

美国会保持如今的势头，但只能降级成一个没那么进步或先进的国家了。以色列、印度、俄罗斯、中国和日本将继续主宰我们生活的世界。我们所能做的就是传播谎言，希望我们的公民不会继续资助这些国家，但可能已经有点晚了。

我们可能会资助早已形同虚设的英国和其他欧洲王室的存在，因为我们的媒体依然吹捧他们，力图证明他们存在的必要性。