What does a Chinese superpower look like? Nothing like the US

超级大国中国会是什么样子?一点都不像美国

What struck Wang Wen about Antarctica, beyond the brutality of the December cold, was the scale of US operations in such an inhospitable environment and the American flag fluttering by the sign that marks the geographic South Pole. Observing the academic mission of hundreds of US scientists in a region rich in resource potential, he was determined that China must catch up.

除了12月的刺骨严寒，南极洲让王文印象深刻的是美国在如此恶劣环境下的行动规模，以及美国国旗在地理学上的南极点上飘扬。在一个潜在资源丰富的地区，他观察了数百名美国科学家的学术使命，他决心中国必须迎头赶上。

The report Wang wrote this summer for the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China in Beiing, where he’s executive dean, reflects China’s growing dilemma as it muscles its way into an international system it didn’t create.

今年夏天王文为中国人民大学崇阳金融研究所撰写的这份报告，反映出中国在艰难跻身国际体系之际日益明显的困境。

Whether China does become a superpower and whether it could sustain the costs involved are questions that will impact the world for decades. They will shape terms of trade, a changing global order, and issues of war and peace. “We don’t know,” Wang said over dinner a few floors below his institute, when asked what Chinese great power will look like. “Anything but America.”

中国是否真的能成为超级大国，是否能够承受由此带来的成本，这些问题将在未来几十年年内影响世界。它们将塑造贸易条件、不断变化的全球秩序以及战争与和平问题。“我们不知道，”当被问及中国列强将会是什么样子时，王在他的研究所下几层举办的晚宴上说。“但绝对不像美国。”

Yet to misquote Leon Trotsky, even if China isn’t interested in becoming a superpower, superpower may be interested in it. The US, too, began its journey on the world stage determined not to replicate earlier colonial empires. Today, 11 carrier groups and a network of military bases span the globe to protect its interests.

然而，即使中国无意成为超级大国，超级大国可能也会对中国感兴趣。美国也开始了在世界舞台上的征程，决心不再重蹈早期殖民帝国的覆辙。如今，美国的11个航母战斗群和军事基地网络遍布全球，以保护其利益。

China may be heading down a similar path. An aircraft carrier construction programme is under way. Its first overseas military base opened last year, in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. Spending for diplomatic service is up sharply.  “Made in China 2025” economic project aims to displace the US as the world’s technological power, while another plan calls for dominance in Artificial Intelligence by 2030.

中国可能正在走上类似的道路。一艘航空母舰建造计划正在进行中。去年中国在非洲之角的吉布提开设了第一个海外军事基地。外交方面的开支急剧上升。“中国制造2025”经济计划旨在取代美国成为世界科技强国，而另一项计划则打算到2030年要在人工智能领域占据主导地位。

The country raised defense spending from $21 billion in 1990 to $228 billion last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, more than three times Russia’s budget. The ease with which it did so—the military’s share of overall government spending actually fell—suggests China can be any kind of power it wants.

斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所的数据显示，中国将国防支出从1990年的210亿美元提高到去年的2280亿美元，是俄罗斯预算的三倍多。军队在整个政府开支中所占的份额实际上下降了，这表明中国可以成为任何它想要的力量。

Already there are signs a Chinese model for development, based on -- state-directed market economy, could gain traction against the more liberal ideals long promoted by the US and post-war institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Some countries, including Cambodia, now follow Beiing’s direction, attracted by China’s deep pockets.

已经有迹象表明，建立在国家主导市场经济基础上的中国发展模式，可能会与美国和国际货币基金组织等战后机构长期倡导的更为自由的理念背道而驰。包括柬埔寨在内的一些国家被中国的雄厚财力所吸引，现在纷纷追随北京。

Consider, too, that the average Chinese remains less wealthy than the average Mexcan at a time when the population is already starting to age. Some investors wonder about the health of big Chinese banks.

同样要考虑的是，在人口已经开始老龄化之际，普通中国人的财富水平仍低于普通墨西哥人。一些投资者对中国大型银行的健康状况表示怀疑。

It took four days to travel from Beiing to Antarctica. On the final leg, flying low over the vast icy expanse, Wang and others sucked oxygen from masks in the plane’s decompressed cabin. He is repelled by stories of colonist-era explorers like Robert Scott, who raced to plant their flags and stake territorial claims. Yet he also admires their “fearless spirit” and willingness to sacrifice.

从北京到南极洲的行程花了四天时间。在最后一段中，王和其他一些人在冰天雪地中低空飞行，通过飞机减压舱的面罩吸氧。他对罗伯特•斯科特等殖民时代探险家的故事感到反感，这些探险者竞相插上旗帜，宣示自己的领土主张。但他也钦佩他们的“无畏精神”和愿意牺牲的精神。

“Should we contemporary Chinese be ashamed?” he wrote on his return, in the Chinese language Global Times.

“我们当代中国人应该感到羞耻吗?”他在回国后用中文在《环球时报》上写道。

An ice sheet with a mean depth of 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometers) has protected Antarctica’s resources from exploration. Still, Wang’s report says that below the surface is an estimated 500 billion tons of coal, as much as 100 billion barrels of oil, and 5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Despite a 1959 treaty which freezes all territorial claims, at least for now, Wang sees a “fierce” geopolitical struggle under way.

平均深度为1.6英里(2.6公里)的冰盖保护了南极的资源不受勘探。尽管如此，王的报告说，在地表以下估计有5000亿吨煤，1000亿桶石油和5万亿立方米天然气。尽管1959年签订的条约打消了所有的领土主张，至少现在是这样，但王认为一场“激烈的”地缘政治斗争正在进行。

In practice, that would mean building infrastructure to accommodate tourists and beefing up Beiing’s research presence, the key determinant of influence in Antarctica’s multinational administration.

在具体实践中中，这将意味着建设基础设施以容纳游客，并加强北京的科研实力，这是决定南极多国政府影响力的关键因素。

The US budget request for the Office of Polar Programs in 2019 is $534 million. From 2001 to 2016, according to Wang’s report, China invested 310 million yuan ($45 million) in its Antarctic program. Beiing could easily afford the difference, but Antarctica is just one challenge China faces as it asserts its interests around the globe.

美国对2019年极地项目办公室的预算是5.34亿美元。根据王的报告，从2001年到2016年，中国在南极项目上投资了3.1亿元(4500万美元)。中国可以轻松承担这个差距，但南极只是中国在全球范围内维护自身利益所面临的挑战之一。

In January, China published its first white paper on the other pole, the Arctic, outlining its ambition for a “Polar Silk Road.” It proposes building new-design icebreaker vessels and bases, essential tools in an area with fewer barriers to territorial claims than the southern polar cap.

今年1月，中国发表了第一份关于北极的白皮书，概述了其建立“极地丝绸之路”的雄心。她提议在一个领土主张障碍比南极极冠更少的地区建造新设计的破冰船和基地，这是必要的工具。

Silk Road is another name for the Belt and Road Initiative, into which China has already sunk hundreds of billions of dollars. In Africa alone, China loaned about $86 billion between 2000 and 2014 to governments and state-owned enterprises

“丝绸之路”是“一带一路”的另一个名字，中国已经为此投入了数千亿美元。仅在非洲，中国在2000年至2014年间就向政府和国有企业提供了约860亿美元的贷款。

China has modernized its army while spending a relatively small share of annual GDP — officially as little as 1.5 per cent, or 1.9 per cent according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Either figure would see China risk criticism from the US for underspending, if it were part of the NATO alliance. Even so, a scorecard run since 1996 by the Rand Corporation, a US research institute, found that last year, for the first time, China would have air power parity with the US in any conflict over Taiwan.

中国在实现军队现代化的同时，每年在国内生产总值中所占的比例相对较小——官方数字仅为1.5%，或者根据斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所的数据算，也才1.9%。如果中国是北约盟国，这两个数字都将使中国面临美国对其指出的支出不足的批评。即便如此，美国研究机构兰德公司自1996年以来记录的一份记分卡显示，去年，在所有因台湾问题引起的冲突中，中国的空军实力首次与美国平起平坐。

The latest budget increases spending on the diplomatic service at twice the rate of the military. More than 500 Confucius Institutes now teach Chinese language and culture across the globe.

最新的预算将外交服务的开支增加到军队开支的两倍。目前，全球有500多所孔子学院在教授汉语和中国文化。

For all that, China still has few real allies and remains at best a partial superpower, according to Shambaugh. Its soft power is undercut by its militarization of the South China Sea and concerns its offshore infrastructure loans are just debt traps that will bind smaller nations to its will.

尽管如此，中国仍然没有真正的盟友，充其量也只是一个局部的超级大国。中国对南海的军事化削弱了中国的软实力，人们担心，中国的离岸基础设施贷款只是将小国束缚在中国意志下的债务陷阱。

That isn’t quite right, according to Henry Wang, founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization in Beiing. True, China doesn’t want to destroy the world order that the US shaped, as it has benefited from it. But it does want to create what he calls globalization 2.0, by adding new international structures including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

中国与全球化研究中心驻北京的创始人兼总裁亨利•王表示，这并不完全正确。诚然，中国不想破坏美国塑造的世界秩序，因为它从中受益。但它确实希望通过增加包括亚洲基础设施投资银行(简称亚投行)在内的新的国际结构，创建他所说的“全球化2.0”。

More worrying for China’s global ambitions are signs its economic engine could stall. China would, for example, be the first superpower to start getting old before it got rich. According to United Nations projections, its 1.4 billion-strong population is likely to decline and age sharply from as soon as 2023. The number of working age Chinese has already begun to shrink.

对中国的全球雄心更令人担忧的是，有迹象表明，中国的经济引擎可能会熄火。例如，中国将成为第一个在变富之前就开始老龄化的超级大国。根据联合国的预测，其14亿人口很可能会从2023年开始急剧减少和老龄化。中国的劳动年龄人口已经开始减少。

“I can’t find a single example of a superpower growing when its population was falling,” said Zhang Jian, associate professor at Peking University’s School of Government. The British Empire and the US rose to prominence when their populations were exploding.

北京大学政府学院副教授张建表示:“我找不到哪个超级大国在人口减少时实现增长的例子。”当大英帝国和美国的人口激增时，这两个国家的声望就上升了。

Nor is China as flush as commonly assumed. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, which accounts for the greater buying power of a dollar spent domestically, China has a larger gross domestic product than the US But that’s a poor measure of international buying power, where dollars are just dollars, according to Tom Orlik, chief economist at Bloomberg Economics.

中国也不像人们通常认为的那样繁荣。彭博经济首席经济学家汤姆•奥尔利克表示，经购买力平价调整后，中国的国内生产总值高于美国，但这是衡量国际购买力的一个糟糕指标，因为在国际购买力方面，美元只是美元。

“One way to measure the additional money China has to spend around the world is to look at nominal GDP in US dollar terms. In the five years before the financial crisis, that averaged close to 23 per cent annual growth,” said Orlik. “In the last five years, it’s averaged 7 per cent—including a year of zero growth in 2016.”

“衡量中国在全球额外支出的一种方法是，以美元计算名义GDP。在金融危机爆发前的5年里，年均增长率接近23%。“在过去5年里，平均增长率为7%——包括2016年的零增长。”

China’s GDP per capita is around $9,000 compared to $60,000 for the US. That could mean more room for catch-up growth, but to get there China will have to avoid the middle income trap that keeps many emerging economies stuck below a GDP per capita of around $15,000.

中国人均GDP约为9000美元，而美国为6万美元。这可能意味着中国追赶增长的空间更大，但要实现这一目标，中国将不得不避开使许多新兴经济体的人均GDP低于1.5万美元左右的中等收入陷阱。

“We’re kind of full of ourselves,” he said of the West. “We talk all this stuff about the superiority of free markets, but how did the US become an economic superpower?”

“我们有点自以为是，”他谈到西方时说。“我们谈论所有这些关于自由市场优越性的东西，但美国是如何成为一个经济超级大国的呢?”

All of this, according to Wang Wen, is to fundamentally misunderstand China by trying to fit it into western experience. He cites the doom-laden warnings of Chinese over-leverage and over-planning that have proved wrong for decades.

王文认为，所有这一切都是为了试图通过西方的经验从根本上曲解中国。他援引了中国过度杠杆化和计划过度的危言耸听的警告，这些警告几十年来都被证明是错误的。

“Our country has entered a very interesting phase that the Western social sciences can’t explain,” said Wang, singling out conventional economics as especially inept. “If you use Western theory, you cannot understand China’s foreign policy.”

“我们的国家已经进入了一个西方社会科学无法解释的非常有趣的阶段，”王说，并指出传统经济学尤其无能。“如果你用西方的理论，你就无法理解中国的外交政策。”

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来源：三泰虎    https://www.santaihu.com/45967.html       译者：Joyceliu

外文链接：https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/what-does-a-chinese-superpower-look-like-nothing-like-the-us/articleshow/65602041.cms

Deadpoo

Superpower "Made In China". We all know what that means.

超级大国“中国制造”。我们都知道这意味着什么。

SHOVAN

Over ambitious, self-centered, egoistic with no global view beyond OBOR ( which is a failure ), China must make real friends before they make more enemies.

中国过于野心勃勃、以自我为中心、自私自利，除了一带一路(这是个失败)以外，没有其他的全球视野，中国必须在树敌之前交到真正的朋友。

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