David Goldman 中國秩序將取代美國成為世界領導者

如果中國統治世界，中國秩序將取代美國成為世界領導者

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/if-china-ran-the-world/

作者：大衛·P·戈德曼

書評  長期博弈：中國取代美國秩序的大戰略 The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order” 

伊麗莎白·庫伯勒-羅斯認為，否認是悲傷的第一階段，它是美國對中國崛起反應的特征。 拉什·多西在《長期博弈》中對中國全球戰略的描述是一股可喜的冷空氣。 他不止一次指出，中國的實力取決於其經濟規模比美國大 25%（按相對價格調整）。 它對運輸和通信技術的掌控使其能夠“鎖定與亞洲國家”以及其他國家的關係。

多西現任國家安全委員會中國事務主任。 在此之前，他在布魯金斯學會指導“中國倡議”，為拜登政府印太地區政策負責人庫爾特·坎貝爾提供建議。 多西在華盛頓的地位確保了這本書本身值得一讀的廣泛讀者。 通過對中國政府和半官方文件的廣泛研究，他提煉出了他認為是中國的“大戰略”，即用中國的設計取代美國的戰後世界秩序。

多西尋求一種替代方案，以取代“那些主張適得其反的對抗策略或妥協性大討價還價策略的人，這兩種策略分別忽視了美國國內的不利因素和中國的戰略野心。” 他認為，“這兩項努力都得到了政策辯論中廣泛反對的部分的支持，最終都源於對華盛頓影響一個強大主權國家政治的能力的一係列類似的緊張和理想主義假設。”

因此，“顛覆中國政府的努力尤其危險”，成功的可能性比“產生全麵對抗，從而將競爭從秩序競爭轉變為根本性生存競爭”更不可能成功。 在這一點上我非常同意多西的觀點。 自鄧小平經濟改革以來的四十年裏，實際人均消費增長了一個數量級，中國人民對之前的不穩定記憶猶新。

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多西對權力感興趣，而不是故作姿態。 他隻順便提到了一次中國的維吾爾人，人權問題在他的故事中扮演著次要角色。 他的主題是他所說的中國計劃“塑造二十一世紀，就像美國塑造二十世紀一樣”。 他通過美國的鏡子看到了這一點。 與“分析冷戰期間美國對蘇聯‘遏製戰略’的理論和實踐”的研究不同，本書力圖分析冷戰後中國對美國“位移戰略”的理論和實踐。 ”

他寫道，中國的長期計劃“依賴於軍事、經濟和政治基礎”。 突出的軍事組成部分是“一支能夠執行兩棲作戰、製海和遠距離藍水任務的海軍”。 關鍵的經濟要素包括基礎設施支出、“強製性經濟治國手段”以及對西方國家技術優勢的追求。 在政治領域，中國尋求“以強化其敘事的方式塑造全球信息流”。

多西最擅長學術政治學的奧秘，解析國際機構的字母湯。 他似乎認為聯合國是中國的主要目標：“北京抓住了美國的疏忽，努力將其官員安排在聯合國十五個專門機構中的四個的最高領導職位上。”

相比之下，他對技術和金融前沿的膚淺了解是這本書的主要弱點。 多西對中國的雄心可能意味著什麽的想法過於籠統，無法明確區分中國未來可能想要擁有的東西和國家存在的理由。 他正確地說，“中國秩序”將意味著“取代美國成為世界領導國家”。 在這個新的體製中，“北京將在全球治理和國際機構中發揮領導作用，以犧牲自由主義為代價推進專製規範，並分裂美國在歐洲和亞洲的聯盟。”

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這很好，但這對台灣意味著什麽？ 多西沒有解釋為什麽或以何種方式，台灣可能成為北京的宣戰理由。 他提出了一個令人信服的理由，即“華盛頓自願終止對台灣承諾的決定將令美國在該地區的盟友感到震驚”，他們會開始懷疑美國對他們的承諾。 多西暗示，中國希望從台灣得到“地緣戰略優勢”。

但北京方麵並不這麽看。 中國不是一個民族國家，而是一個擁有七種主要語言和三百種小語種的帝國，其中

大約十分之一的公民能說流利的普通話。 每個中國王朝的生存恐懼在於，一個叛亂省份將為其他省份開創先例，導致種族和地理上的分裂，就像中國悲慘的過去經常發生的那樣。 習近平在2014年亞太經合組織峰會上對奧巴馬總統說：“中國是一塊土地，也是一個人民。 有時人口增加百分之十，有時減少百分之十。 但中國的土地是神聖不可侵犯的，我們將不擇手段地保衛它。”

中國堅持對台灣擁有主權，並不是因為該島具有戰略效用，也不是因為它想壓製其民主製度，而是因為中國領土的完整是中國國家的生存問題。 改變現狀的唯一選擇是一場沒有人會贏的戰爭。 但為了維持現狀，美國既不能表現出會誘使中國吞並台灣的軟弱，也不能表現出可能讓北京認為它正在密謀將一個主權台灣國家與大陸分離的實力。

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美軍所有涉及大陸攻擊台灣的戰爭遊戲都以美國的失敗而告終。 中國正在建設10萬名準備入侵該島的海軍陸戰隊和機械化步兵、50多艘潛艇以及強大的陸對海導彈能力，這種能力可能會摧毀大多數在中國海岸附近活動的美國水麵艦艇。 正如中國官方英文報紙《環球時報》的編輯於 2021 年 7 月 28 日所寫：

美國海軍在水上力量方麵的優勢肯定會持續一段時間。 中國不僅要趕上美國，還要加強陸基導彈力量，在戰爭中能夠打擊南海的美國大型戰艦。 我們可以大規模擴充這支力量，如果美國在南海挑起軍事對抗，其所有大型艦艇都會同時成為陸基導彈的目標。

奧巴馬政府前國防部副部長米歇爾·弗盧努瓦(Michèle Flournoy)去年在《外交事務》中指出，要威懾中國，美國必須擁有“可信地威脅擊沉中國在南海的所有軍艦、潛艇和商船的能力”。 72小時內出海。” 然而，與這種力量相對應的是，中國有可靠的能力更快地消滅美國在南海及其附近的軍事設施，從而威懾美國的軍事舉措和反應。

令人懷疑的是，台灣能否通過常規手段抵禦中國的攻擊，而使用核武器將使美國城市麵臨中國報複的風險。 非軍事風險可能更有可能抑製中國：如果武力吞並台灣使中國成為全球賤民，西方將承擔切斷中國與世界經濟聯係的巨大成本。 中國的經濟將會崩潰，共產黨的權力也會隨之崩潰。

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多西意識到，中國對大戰略的理解與美國有所不同，因此他大大削弱了自己對大戰略的定義。 他承認，中國“可能缺乏擁有數萬名士兵的聯盟網絡和基地，並且回避代價高昂的幹預。 當其軍隊在印太以外地區挑戰美國仍麵臨困難時，它更有可能選擇軍民兩用設施、輪換訪問和更輕的足跡——至少目前如此。” 這讓我想起一個古老的猶太笑話：“什麽是綠色的，掛在牆上，還吹著口哨？” 答案是“鯡魚”。 但鯡魚是綠色的嗎？ 好吧，你可以把它漆成綠色。 但它掛在牆上嗎？ 嗯，你可以把它掛在牆上。 但它會吹口哨嗎？ 好吧，它不吹口哨。

盡管如此，令多西感到困擾的是，中國隻有一個海外基地（在吉布提，主要是為了反海盜行動，保護中國航運而建立的）。 畢竟，如果沒有遠征軍和其他形式的全球兵力投送，戰略就不可能宏偉。 他表示，中國擁有斯裏蘭卡和格陵蘭島的港口、在格陵蘭島建設機場以及租賃馬爾代夫的一個小島，“表明中國對全球設施的興趣與日俱增”。 他指出，自 2016 年以來，中國海軍陸戰隊的人數已從 10,000 人擴大到 30,000 人。（相比之下，美國現役海軍陸戰隊有 180,000 人。）

最後，多西承認，中國投射力量的努力仍然低調。 “中國或許能夠在印太地區以外開展行動，而無需精確複製美國複雜且成本高昂的全球足跡。” 事實上，多西對中國軍事規劃的令人信服的描述支持了這樣的結論：中國更關注其邊界而不是全球。 例如，他認為“反水麵戰是中國潛艇的首要任務，這……表明重點關注美國艦艇，尤其是航母。” 反過來

“中國海軍學說也確認了將潛艇作為拒止工具而不是護航或海上控製資產的重點。”

但所有這些都不足以構成美國冷戰立場意義上的中國“大戰略”，而這正是作者承諾揭露的。 除了中國隨時準備恐嚇台灣的軍事資產外，其“遠征”部隊在保護危機地區中國公民方麵的作用也有限，例如 2011 年在利比亞和 2015 年也門。 美國無力將軍事力量投射到遠離其直接陸地和海上邊界的地方。

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事實上，中國經常因美國退出全球力量投射而顯得措手不及。 北京對美國從阿富汗倉促撤軍表示真正的不安，阿富汗與中國和巴基斯坦的邊界都存在漏洞。 美國人離開後塔利班上台，加劇了中國發生聖戰恐怖主義的風險。

伊朗與中國的和解還帶來了另一組問題：中國從沙特阿拉伯進口的石油比任何其他國家都多，而且什葉派取代沙特君主製的野心也令人不安。 北京與維吾爾分裂主義的潛在盟友土耳其保持著親密的朋友和敵人的關係，通過賄賂和威脅相結合的方式勸阻土耳其不要支持它曾經所謂的“東突厥斯坦”。 過去十年我曾多次暗示中東可能會出現“中國治下的和平”。 然而，中國對於為這個動蕩且不可預測的地區承擔責任並沒有表現出多少興趣。

多西在總結中指出，中國全球野心的另一個方麵是其自稱的目標，即通過“對市場可能會回避的基礎科學研究進行巨額投資”來主導第四次工業革命。 他接受美國國家科學基金會的估計，即中國用於研發的支出占 GDP 的比例明顯高於美國。在最先進的技術方麵，這種差距尤其巨大：“中國的支出至少比美國多十倍。” 在量子計算領域。”

他還正確地指出，中國的工業深度使其在技術推廣方麵比美國具有巨大優勢。 《長博弈》援引中國人民大學教授金燦榮的話說，中國更有機會引領第四次工業革命，因為美國“有一個重大問題，就是其工業基礎空心化”。 如果沒有中國工廠，美國“無法將技術轉化為市場可接受的產品”。 燦榮認為，中國數量眾多的工程師、逆向工程能力以及工廠在全球技術中的中心地位是“中國在長期產業競爭中的真正優勢”。

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多西對中國金融雄心的討論不太令人信服，因為他對主題的把握不穩。 他寫道：“中國官員長期以來一直擔心美國主導的數字貨幣有可能提振美元體係，因此他們一直在爭奪先發優勢。” 對此，“美國應該認真研究，然後考慮推出一種數字貨幣，既能保留其金融優勢，又能實現（中國官員）所擔心的世界——一種補充並錨定於世界的數字貨幣。” 美元體係。”

美元儲備體係與之前的英鎊儲備體係一樣，通過將貿易支付與資本市場掛鉤，允許美國在經常賬戶上產生巨額赤字。 外國人擁有 7 萬億美元的美國國債，但更重要的是，他們在離岸賬戶中保留了 16 萬億美元的美元餘額（根據國際清算銀行的報告），主要作為國際交易的營運資金。 中國既沒有能力也沒有意願“取代”美國，這需要開放其資本市場並使其受到全球資本流動變幻莫測的影響。 因此，中國的數字貨幣電子支付並不是針對美國金融霸權的靈丹妙藥，而是一種便利，就像全球的PayPal一樣。

對美國金融霸權的真正威脅不是來自數字貨幣本身，而是來自所謂的智能物流和“物聯網”的融合。 中國正在競相引領運輸和倉儲領域的一場革命，使交易對手能夠追蹤全球生產和運輸各個階段的所有貨物，從而使全球供應鏈變得透明。 這將大大削弱銀行係統作為中介的作用，並減少貿易所需的營運資金。 中國領先的電信設備公司華為在其網站上解釋道：

通過在所有部門之間透明地共享信息並可視化物料流，

係統更好地協調人、車、貨、庫。 同時實現與外部風險數據的實時互聯，實現替代方案的預警和智能提醒。 在配送過程中，大數據和人工智能對貨物存儲計劃和最佳運輸路線進行智能計算，以提高配送效率和優化資產利用。

生產成本為幾美分的芯片將被嵌入到每一種交易產品中，並與服務器實時通信，將它們引導至自動化倉庫、無人駕駛卡車、數字控製港口，並最終到達最終用戶。 人工智能將把貨物引導至最便宜、最快的運輸方式，並讓買家找到最便宜的價格。 服務器和貨物之間的5G通信將驗證貿易中數萬億件物品的生產、運輸和存儲狀態。 國際貿易交易所需的營運資金將減少。

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正如摩根士丹利經濟學家在今年早些時候的一份報告中指出的那樣，央行數字貨幣（CBDC）將掏空銀行係統的存款基礎：

商業銀行將麵臨脫媒風險。 一旦推出 CBDC 賬戶，消費者將能夠將銀行存款轉移到那裏，但須遵守央行施加的限製。 此外，CBDC的技術基礎設施將使新的非銀行實體更容易進入支付領域並加速向數字支付的過渡。

銀行體係的存款基礎將受到侵蝕，16萬億美元的離岸美元存款將逐漸消失。 但這 16 萬億美元相當於向美國提供的無息貸款，因為銀行將收益投資於美國政府或私人債務工具。 在大數據和人工智能在物流中的應用中，美國可能會損失數十萬億美元的鑄幣稅，最初是君主通過將金條變成硬幣而賺取的溢價的術語。 16 世紀的西班牙君主國花費巨額資金開采、運輸和保護金條，以彌補其赤字。 荷蘭和英國的中央銀行以更高效的資本利用方式取代了這一係統。 智慧物流和數字金融的出現將帶來資本效率的又一次質的飛躍。

多西認為美國數字貨幣能夠解決問題的觀點是錯誤的。 困難在於，中國在部署 5G 網絡以及建設 5G 支持的製造和物流技術方麵比美國領先幾年。 此外，與第四次工業革命相關的技術可能會給中國帶來在世界大片地區一定程度的影響力，這在現有工業組織的框架內是難以想象的。 發展中國家的數十億人生活在全球經濟的邊緣，在自給自足的土地上工作，從事小商業，幾乎無法獲得信息、教育、醫療保健和社會服務。 廉價的移動寬帶正在將他們與世界市場連接起來，將他們融入華為所謂的電信、電子商務、電子金融、遠程醫療和智慧農業的“生態係統”中。 我在《你將被同化》（2020）中將其稱為世界的“中國化”。 在過去的35年裏，中國從基層瓦解了傳統社會，使6億人口城市化，它相信在未來十年內可以將數十億人融入其虛擬帝國。 問題在於技術的細節，而多西似乎不了解這些細節。

** **

那麽，美國應該做什麽呢？ 美國要求與中國供應鏈脫鉤的壓力一直沒有效果。 “中國歐盟商會發現，隻有約 11% 的會員考慮在 2020 年遷出中國，”多西寫道。 同樣，“中國美國商會會長指出，該組織的大多數成員並不打算離開中國。”

然而，《漫長的遊戲》中缺少對中美之間半導體戰爭的描述。 正如哈佛大學的格雷厄姆·艾利森 (Graham Allison) 在 2020 年 6 月 11 日發表在《國家利益》上的文章中指出的那樣，特朗普政府抵製中國收購高端半導體知識產權的行為讓人回想起富蘭克林·羅斯福 (Franklin Roosevelt) 1941 年對日本的石油抵製。 中國以大規模投資和“全國努力”來回應，以建立芯片生產的獨立性，並且在此期間似乎取得了相當大的成功。 特朗普的芯片製裁是迄今為止美國阻止中國引領第四次工業革命的最激進的嚐試，但似乎失敗了，甚至可能適得其反。 我們應該做什麽，下一步應該做什麽？

多西在這裏沉默了：“半導體”一詞沒有出現在他的索引中。 他希望美國在資源方麵投入更多資金

實施培育高新技術產業的產業政策，大力培育高水平STEM教育。 這很好，但令人失望的是，新政府負責對華政策的一位官員拒絕考慮拜登政府延續的上屆政府的政策。

多西還建議美國應該發明區域拒止武器，以實現“一種‘無人海’，任何行動者都無法成功控製第一島鏈的水域或島嶼或發起兩棲作戰。” 他補充說，我們應該幫助台灣、日本、越南、菲律賓、印度尼西亞、馬來西亞和印度也這樣做。 此外，如果中國試圖建立海外基地，美國就應該“破壞中國建立海外基地的昂貴努力”。 當然，還要對抗中國在聯合國的影響力，多西認為這很重要。

這些建議無可厚非，但卻是通用的。 多西從中國收集了大量有用的材料，並將其與西方的分析進行了比較。 這對得起這本書的價格。 但可以說，他隻見樹木不見森林：他太少關注中國政策的獨特之處，正是這些獨特之處使中國成為了如此強大的競爭對手。 在這裏尋找有關拜登政府未來對華立場線索的讀者將會感到失望。

《長期博弈：中國取代美國秩序的大戰略》編者注

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/

編者節選《長期博弈：中國取代美國秩序的大戰略》

2021 年 8 月 2 日

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/ 

作者：前布魯金斯學會研究員拉什·多西 

拉什·多西（Rush Doshi），前布魯金斯學會專家, 是布魯金斯學會中國戰略項目主任，也是布魯金斯學會外交政策研究員。 他還是耶魯大學法學院蔡保羅中國中心的研究員，也是首屆威爾遜中國研究員的成員。 他的研究重點是中國大戰略以及印太安全問題。 他目前在拜登政府任職。

這一介紹性章節總結了本書的論點。 它解釋了中美之間的競爭是關於地區和全球秩序的，概述了中國主導的秩序可能是什麽樣子，探討了大戰略為何重要以及如何研究它，並討論了關於中國是否有大戰略的不同觀點。 它認為，中國試圖通過在軍事、政治和經濟層麵實施的三個連續的“取代戰略”，將美國從地區和全球秩序中取代。 第一個戰略旨在削弱美國的地區秩序，第二個戰略旨在建立中國的地區秩序，而第三個戰略——擴張戰略——現在尋求在全球範圍內實現這兩項戰略。 引言解釋說，中國戰略的轉變受到改變其對美國實力看法的重大事件的深刻影響。

介紹
那是 1872 年，李鴻章寫作正值曆史性的劇變時期。 李是一位清朝將軍和官員，一生大部分時間致力於改革垂死的帝國，經常被拿來與同時代的奧托·馮·俾斯麥相比較。奧托·馮·俾斯麥是德國統一和國家權力的締造者，據說李一直保留著他的肖像以獲取靈感。1

與俾斯麥一樣，李克強也擁有軍事經驗，他將這些經驗轉化為相當大的影響力，包括對外交和軍事政策的影響。 他在鎮壓長達十四年的太平天國運動中發揮了重要作用，這是整個十九世紀最血腥的衝突，見證了一個千年基督教國家從清朝權力日益真空的情況下崛起，發動了一場奪去了數千萬人生命的內戰。 。 這次鎮壓叛亂的行動使李先生對西方武器和技術有了欣賞，對歐洲和日本掠奪的恐懼，對中國自強和現代化的承諾，以及至關重要的影響力和聲望，為此采取了一些行動。

在一份主張加大對中國造船業投資的備忘錄中，李鴻章寫下了幾代人重複的一句話：中國正在經曆“三千年未有之大變局”。

左：李鴻章，也羅馬化為李鴻章，1896 年。資料來源：Alice E. Neve Little，李鴻章：他的一生和時代（倫敦：Cassell & Company，1903 年）。

因此，正是在 1872 年，李在他的眾多信件中，反思了他在自己的生活中看到的突破性的地緣政治和技術變革，這些變革對清朝的生存構成了威脅。 在一份主張加大對中國造船業投資的備忘錄中，他寫下了幾代人重複的一句話：中國正在經曆“三千年未見的巨變”2。

對於許多中國民族主義者來說，這句著名的、籠統的言論提醒我們國家自己所遭受的恥辱。 李最終未能實現中國的現代化，輸給了日本，並與東京簽署了令人尷尬的《馬關條約》。 但對許多人來說，李的路線既具有先見之明，又準確無誤——中國的衰落是清朝未能正視三千多年來未曾出現過的變革性地緣政治和技術力量的結果，這些力量改變了國際力量平衡並迎來了新的發展。 在中國的“世紀恥辱”中。 這是李的一切努力都無法扭轉的趨勢。

文件照片：2019年5月14日，中國國家主席習近平在中國北京人民大會堂外出席希臘總統普羅科皮斯·帕夫洛普洛斯的歡迎儀式。路透社/Jason Lee/文件照片
如果說李克強的路線標誌著中國屈辱的頂峰，那麽習近平的路線則標誌著中國複興的契機。 如果說李克強的言論引發了悲劇，那麽習近平的言論則引發了機遇。

右：習近平，自 2013 年起擔任中華人民共和國國家主席。資料來源：路透社

現在，中國領導人習近平重新調整了李克強的路線，開啟了中國後冷戰大戰略的新階段。 2017年以來，習近平在多次重要的外交政策講話中宣稱，世界正處於“百年未有之大變局”。 如果說李克強的路線標誌著中國屈辱的頂峰，那麽習近平的路線則標誌著中國複興的契機。 如果說李克強的言論引發了悲劇，那麽習近平的言論則引發了機遇。 但兩者都抓住了一些基本問題：由於前所未有的地緣政治和技術轉變，世界秩序再次受到威脅，這需要戰略調整。

對習近平來說，這些轉變的根源在於中國不斷增長的實力以及它所認為的西方明顯的自我毀滅。 2016年6月23日，英國公投決定脫離歐盟。 然後，再多一點

三個月後，民粹主義浪潮將唐納德·特朗普推上美國總統寶座。 從對美國實力和威脅看法的變化高度敏感的中國角度來看，這兩起事件令人震驚。 北京認為，世界上最強大的民主國家正在退出它們在國外幫助建立的國際秩序，並在國內努力進行自我治理。 西方隨後在 2020 年對冠狀病毒大流行的反應，以及 2021 年極端分子襲擊美國國會大廈，都強化了一種感覺：正如習近平在這些事件發生後不久所說的那樣，“時間和勢頭都站在我們這邊”。3 領導層和外交政策精英宣稱，一個“曆史機遇期”已經出現，可以將中國的戰略重點從亞洲擴大到更廣闊的全球及其治理體係。

我們現在正處於未來發展的初期——中國不僅像許多大國那樣尋求地區影響力，而且正如埃文·奧斯諾斯所說，“它正準備塑造二十一世紀，就像美國一樣。” 塑造了第二十個。”4影響力的競爭將是一場全球性的競爭，北京有充分的理由相信，未來十年可能會決定結果。

中國的雄心是什麽？有實現這些雄心的宏偉戰略嗎？ 如果確實如此，那麽該戰略是什麽，它是由什麽形成的，以及美國應該采取什麽措施？

當我們進入這一新的激烈競爭階段時，我們缺乏關鍵基礎問題的答案。 中國的雄心是什麽？有實現這些雄心的宏偉戰略嗎？ 如果確實如此，那麽該戰略是什麽，它是由什麽形成的，以及美國應該采取什麽措施？ 這些是美國決策者應對本世紀最大的地緣政治挑戰的基本問題，尤其是因為了解對手的戰略是應對對手的第一步。 然而，隨著大國緊張局勢加劇，人們對答案尚未達成共識。

本書試圖給出一個答案。 本書的論點和結構部分受到美國大戰略冷戰研究的啟發。 5 這些著作分析了冷戰期間美國對蘇聯“遏製戰略”的理論和實踐，而本書力求 分析冷戰後中國對美“位移戰略”的理論與實踐。

為此，本書利用了中國共產黨文件的原始數據庫——回憶錄、傳記和高級官員的日常記錄——是過去幾年從台灣和香港的圖書館、書店精心收集並數字化的。 中國電子商務網站（見附錄）。 許多文件將讀者帶入中國共產黨的大門後麵，帶他們進入其高層外交政策機構和會議，並向讀者介紹負責製定和實施外交政策的廣大中國政治領導人、將軍和外交官。 中國的大戰略。 雖然沒有一份主文件包含了中國的全部大戰略，但其概要可以在大量文本中找到。 在其中，黨使用代表關鍵問題的內部共識的等級聲明來指導國家的航船，並且這些聲明可以跨時間追溯。 其中最重要的是路線，然後是方針，最後是政策等。 理解它們有時不僅需要精通中文，還需要精通“辯證統一”和“曆史唯物主義”等看似深奧而古老的意識形態概念。

簡要論證

該書認為，冷戰以來美中競爭的核心一直是地區秩序，現在是全球秩序。 它重點關注中國等新興大國在無需戰爭的情況下取代美國等老牌霸主所采用的戰略。 霸權在地區和全球秩序中的地位源於三種廣泛的“控製形式”，這些形式用於規範其他國家的行為：強製能力（強製遵守）、共識性誘因（激勵它）和合法性（正確指揮） 它）。 對於崛起中的國家來說，和平取代霸權的行動包括通常按順序實施的兩大戰略。 第一個戰略是削弱霸權對這些形式的控製的行使，特別是對新興國家的控製； 畢竟，如果任何崛起的國家仍受霸權擺布，那麽它就無法取代霸權。 第二是建立對他人的控製形式； 事實上，任何崛起國家如果不能通過脅迫性威脅、協商一致的誘導或合法性來獲得其他國家的尊重，就不可能成為霸權。 除非崛起的大國首先削弱霸權，否則建立秩序的努力很可能是徒勞的，而且很容易遭到反對。 直到一個崛起的國家成功地進行

盡管在其本土地區經曆了一定程度的削弱和建設，但它仍然太容易受到霸權國家的影響，無法自信地轉向第三種戰略，即全球擴張，即在全球層麵尋求削弱和建設，以取代霸權國家的國際領導地位。 這些在地區和全球層麵上的戰略共同為中國共產黨的民族主義精英提供了一條粗略的上升途徑，他們尋求使中國恢複其應有的地位，並扭轉西方壓倒性全球影響力的曆史偏差。

這是中國遵循的模板，在回顧中國的取代戰略時，該書認為，從一種戰略轉向下一種戰略是由塑造中國大戰略的最重要變量的急劇不連續性引發的：對美國實力的看法 和威脅。 中國的第一個流離失所戰略（1989-2008）是悄悄削弱美國對中國的影響力，特別是在亞洲，它是在天安門廣場、海灣戰爭和蘇聯解體的三重創傷導致北京大幅增強其對中國的看法之後出現的。 美國的威脅。 中國的第二個驅逐戰略（2008年至2016年）旨在為亞洲地區霸權奠定基礎，該戰略是在全球金融危機導致北京看到美國實力減弱並有勇氣采取更加自信的做法後啟動的。 現在，隨著英國脫歐、特朗普總統當選和新冠病毒大流行等“百年未有之大變局”，中國正在啟動第三項驅逐戰略，即在全球範圍內擴大削弱和建設力度，以取代美國 全球領導者。 在最後幾章中，本書利用對中國戰略的見解來製定一項不對稱的美國大戰略作為回應——該戰略借鑒了中國自己的書——並尋求在不進行美元對美元競爭的情況下挑戰中國的地區和全球野心。 船對船，或貸款對貸款。

國外秩序往往是國內秩序的反映，而中國的秩序建設相對於美國的秩序建設顯然是不自由的。

書中還闡述了如果中國能夠在2049年中華人民共和國成立一百周年之際實現“民族複興”的目標，中國的秩序會是什麽樣子。在地區層麵，中國已經占到了一半以上 亞洲GDP的一半和亞洲軍費開支的一半，這正在使該地區失去平衡並走向中國的勢力範圍。 一項完全實現的中國命令最終可能包括美國從日本和韓國撤軍、結束美國的地區聯盟、美國海軍從西太平洋有效撤軍、尊重中國的地區鄰國、與台灣統一以及通過決議 東海和南海的領土爭端。 中國的秩序可能比現在的秩序更具強製力，以主要有利於有聯係的精英的方式達成共識，甚至不惜犧牲投票公眾的利益，並且主要對那些直接獎勵的少數人來說被認為是合法的。 中國將以損害自由價值觀的方式部署這一秩序，使獨裁之風在該地區刮得更猛。 國外秩序往往是國內秩序的反映，而中國的秩序建設相對於美國的秩序建設顯然是不自由的。

在全球層麵，中國秩序將涉及抓住“百年未有之大變局”的機遇，取代美國成為世界領導國家。 這需要通過削弱支持美國全球秩序的控製形式，同時加強支持中國替代方案的控製形式，成功管理來自“偉大變革”（華盛頓不願優雅地接受衰落）帶來的主要風險。 這一秩序將跨越亞洲的“超級影響力區”以及大片發展中國家的“部分霸權”，並可能逐漸擴大到涵蓋世界工業化中心——一些中國通俗作家用毛澤東的革命指導來描述這一願景 “農村包圍城市”。 6 更有權威的消息人士對這種做法的表述不那麽籠統，認為中國的秩序將植根於中國的“一帶一路”倡議及其共同命運共同體，而前者是中國的“一帶一路”倡議及其共同命運共同體的基礎。 特別是創建強製能力、共識誘導和合法性網絡。 7

曾經僅限於亞洲的“控製權之爭”現在已經影響到全球秩序及其未來。 如果說通往霸權的道路有兩條——區域一條和全球一條——那麽中國現在正在兩條道路上追求。

習近平的講話中已經可以看出實現這一全球秩序的一些戰略。 在政治上，北京將在全球治理和國際機構中發揮領導作用，分裂西方聯盟，並在全球範圍內推行獨裁規範。

以自由主義者為代價。 從經濟上看，這將削弱支撐美國霸權的金融優勢，並奪取從人工智能到量子計算的“第四次工業革命”的製高點，美國將淪為“去工業化的、英語版的拉丁美洲共和國”。 ，專門從事大宗商品、房地產、旅遊業，也許還有跨國逃稅。”8在軍事上，中國人民解放軍（PLA）將派出一支世界級的軍隊，在世界各地設有基地，可以捍衛中國在大多數地區甚至在某些地區的利益。 新領域，如太空、兩極和深海。 這一願景的各個方麵在高層演講中顯而易見，這一事實有力地證明了中國的野心不僅限於台灣或主宰印度-太平洋地區。 曾經僅限於亞洲的“控製權之爭”現在已經影響到全球秩序及其未來。 如果說通往霸權的道路有兩條——區域一條和全球一條——那麽中國現在正在兩條道路上追求。

對中國可能出現的秩序的一瞥也許令人震驚，但這並不奇怪。 十多年前，一位富有遠見的政治家李光耀（Lee Kuan Yew）——一位建立了現代新加坡並親自認識中國最高領導人的政治家——被一位采訪者問到：“中國領導人是否認真地想要取代美國成為亞洲乃至世界第一強國？” ？” 他斬釘截鐵地回答說是。 “當然。 為什麽不？” 他開始說道，“他們通過經濟奇跡改變了一個貧窮的社會，成為現在世界第二大經濟體——步入正軌……” 。 。 成為世界第一大經濟體。” 他接著說，中國擁有“4000年悠久的文化和13億人口，擁有龐大的人才庫可供借鑒。 他們怎麽能不渴望成為亞洲第一，乃至世界第一呢？” 他指出，中國“50年前正以難以想象的速度增長，這是一場無人預料到的巨大轉變”，“每個中國人都希望有一個強大、富裕的中國，一個像美國、歐洲和日本一樣繁榮、先進、技術實力雄厚的國家”。 ”。 他以一個關鍵的見解結束了他的回答：“這種重新喚醒的命運感是一種壓倒性的力量。 。 。 。 中國希望成為中國並被接受為中國，而不是作為西方的榮譽成員。” 他指出，中國可能希望與美國“共享這個世紀”，也許是“平起平坐”，但肯定不是作為附屬國。 9

為什麽大戰略很重要
切實了解中國的意圖和戰略的必要性從未如此迫切。 中國現在提出了美國從未麵臨過的挑戰。 一個多世紀以來，美國的任何對手或對手聯盟都沒有達到美國 GDP 的 60%。 無論是第一次世界大戰期間的威廉德國、第二次世界大戰期間日本帝國和納粹德國的聯合力量，還是經濟實力鼎盛時期的蘇聯，都沒有跨過這個門檻。 10 然而，這是中國的一個裏程碑 早在 2014 年，中國就已悄然達到這一目標。如果調整商品相對價格，中國經濟規模已經比美國經濟高出 25%。11 顯然，中國是美國麵臨的最重要的競爭對手 華盛頓處理超級大國地位的方式將決定下個世紀的進程。

大戰略之所以“偉大”，不僅在於戰略目標的規模，還在於通過協調不同的“手段”來實現戰略目標。

至少在華盛頓，不太清楚的是中國是否有一個宏偉戰略以及它可能是什麽。 本書將大戰略定義為一個國家如何通過軍事、經濟和政治等多種治國手段有目的、協調和實施來實現其戰略目標的理論。 大戰略之所以“偉大”，不僅在於戰略目標的規模，還在於通過協調不同的“手段”來實現戰略目標。 這種協調是罕見的，因此大多數大國都沒有宏偉的戰略。

然而，當國家確實製定了宏偉戰略時，它們就可以重塑世界曆史。 納粹德國實行的大戰略是利用經濟手段製約鄰國，利用軍事建設來恐嚇對手，利用政治結盟來包圍對手，這使得它在國內生產總值還不到一倍的情況下，在相當長的時間內超越了大國競爭對手。 -第三是他們的。 冷戰期間，華盛頓奉行一項宏偉戰略，有時利用軍事力量遏製蘇聯的侵略，利用經濟援助削弱共產主義的影響力，利用政治製度將自由國家團結在一起——在不引發美蘇戰爭的情況下限製蘇聯的影響力。 中國如何同樣整合其治國手段來追求總體地區和全球目標，仍然是一個引起了大量猜測的領域，但很少有嚴格的研究，盡管它

造成巨大的後果。 大戰略中涉及的協調和長期規劃使國家能夠超越其實力； 因為中國已經是一個重量級國家，如果它有一個連貫的計劃，將其 14 萬億美元的經濟與其藍水海軍和在世界各地不斷上升的政治影響力相協調——而美國要麽錯過了它，要麽誤解了它——二十世紀九十年代的進程 第一世紀可能會以不利於美國及其長期以來所倡導的自由主義價值觀的方式展開。

華盛頓遲來地接受了這一現實，其結果是對其中國政策進行了一代人以來最重要的重新評估。 然而，在這次重新評估中，對於中國想要什麽以及走向何方存在廣泛分歧。 一些人認為北京有全球野心； 其他人則認為其重點主要是區域性的。 一些人聲稱它有一個協調一致的 100 年計劃； 其他人則認為這是機會主義的並且容易出錯。 一些人將北京稱為大膽的修正主義國家； 其他人則將其視為當前秩序的清醒利益相關者。 有人說北京希望美國退出亞洲；有人說北京希望美國退出亞洲。 和其他人認為，它容忍美國扮演溫和的角色。 分析人士越來越認同這樣一種觀點，即中國最近的自信是中國國家主席習近平個性的產物——這是一個錯誤的觀點，忽視了中共長期以來的共識，而中國的行為實際上植根於此。 事實上，當代辯論在與中國大戰略相關的許多基本問題上仍然存在分歧，甚至在主要共識領域也不準確，這一事實令人不安，特別是因為每個問題都具有截然不同的政策含義。

懸而未決的爭論
本書卷入了一場關於中國戰略的尚未解決的爭論，爭論分為“懷疑論者”和“相信者”。 懷疑論者尚未相信中國擁有在地區或全球範圍內取代美國的宏偉戰略； 相比之下，信徒並沒有真正嚐試說服。

懷疑論者是一個範圍廣泛、知識淵博的群體。 “中國尚未製定真正的‘大戰略’，”一位成員指出，“問題在於它是否願意這樣做。”12其他人則認為，中國的目標是“不成熟的”，北京缺乏“ 13 北京大學國際關係學院前院長王緝思教授等中國作家也屬於持懷疑態度的陣營。 他指出：“我們絞盡腦汁也想不出能夠涵蓋我們國家利益所有方麵的戰略。”14

其他懷疑論者認為，中國的目標有限，認為中國不希望在地區或全球範圍內取代美國，仍然主要關注發展和國內穩定。 一位經驗豐富的白宮官員尚未相信“習近平希望將美國趕出亞洲並摧毀美國的地區聯盟。”15其他著名學者更有力地表達了這一點：“[一個]嚴重扭曲的概念是現在所有的 -一種過於普遍的假設，即中國尋求將美國逐出亞洲並征服該地區。 事實上，沒有確鑿的證據證明中國的此類目標。”16

與這些懷疑論者相反的是信徒。 該團體相信中國擁有在地區和全球範圍內取代美國的宏偉戰略，但尚未提出說服懷疑論者的工作。 在政府內部，一些高級情報官員——包括前國家情報總監丹·科茨——公開表示，“中國從根本上尋求取代美國成為世界主導力量”，但沒有（或者可能無法）進一步闡述 ，他們也沒有暗示這一目標伴隨著具體的戰略。 17

在政府之外，隻有少數最近的著作試圖詳細闡述這一點。 最著名的是五角大樓官員邁克爾·皮爾斯伯裏 (Michael Pillsbury) 的暢銷書《一百年馬拉鬆》，盡管該書有些誇大地指出，中國自 1949 年以來就製定了一個關於全球霸權的秘密宏偉計劃，並且在關鍵地方嚴重依賴個人權威和軼事。 18 許多其他書籍 得出類似的結論，而且大多是正確的，但它們比嚴格的經驗更直觀，如果采用社會科學方法和更豐富的證據基礎，它們可能更具說服力。 19 一些關於中國大戰略的著作采取了更廣闊的視角，強調遙遠的未來 過去或未來，但因此他們對從後冷戰時代到現在的關鍵時期（即美中競爭的核心）投入的時間較少。 20最後，一些著作將更加實證的方法與謹慎而精確的論點結合起來。 中國當代大戰略. 這些作品構成了本書方法的基礎。21

這本書借鑒了許多其他人的研究成果，也希望在關鍵方麵脫穎而出。 其中包括獨特的社交

l-定義和研究大戰略的科學方法； 大量很少被引用或以前無法訪問的中文文獻； 對中國軍事、政治和經濟行為中的關鍵難題進行係統研究； 並仔細研究影響戰略調整的變量。 總而言之，希望本書能夠以獨特的方法係統而嚴謹地揭示中國的大戰略，為新興中國的爭論做出貢獻。

揭示大戰略
從競爭對手的不同行為中解讀其大戰略的挑戰並不是什麽新鮮事。 第一次世界大戰前的幾年裏，英國外交官艾爾·克羅撰寫了一份長達 20,000 字的重要《英國與法國和德國關係現狀備忘錄》，試圖解釋崛起中的德國的廣泛行為。 22 克羅 他是英德關係的敏銳觀察者，對這一主題充滿熱情和視角，這源於他自己的傳統。 克羅出生於萊比錫，在柏林和杜塞爾多夫接受教育，他有一半德國血統，說著帶有德國口音的英語，21 歲時加入英國外交部。 第一次世界大戰期間，他的英國和德國家族實際上處於交戰狀態——他的英國侄子在海上喪生，而他的德國表弟則升任德國海軍參謀長。

英國外交官艾爾·克羅（Eyre Crowe，1864-1925）。 日期未知。 作者不詳。 資料來源：維基共享資源
克羅在他的企業框架中指出，“選擇必須介於……之間。 。 。 兩個假設”——每一個假設都類似於當今懷疑論者和信徒對中國大戰略的立場。

左：英國外交官艾爾·克羅（Eyre Crowe，1864-1925 年）。 日期未知。 作者不詳。 資料來源：維基共享資源

克羅於 1907 年撰寫了他的備忘錄，試圖係統地分析德國各種截然不同、複雜且看似不協調的對外行為，以確定柏林是否有一個貫穿其中的“宏偉設計”，並向他的上級報告它的內容。 可能。 克羅在他的企業框架中指出，為了“製定並接受一種適合德國外交政策所有已確定事實的理論，“選擇必須介於……之間。 。 。 兩個假設”——每一個都類似於當今懷疑論者和信徒對中國大戰略的立場。 23

克羅的第一個假設是，德國沒有大戰略，隻有他所說的“模糊、混亂和不切實際的政治才能”。 克羅寫道，按照這種觀點，“德國可能並不真正知道她的目的是什麽，她所有的短途旅行和警報，她所有的秘密陰謀都無助於穩定地製定一個精心構思和不懈遵循的計劃”。 ”24 如今，這一論點反映了懷疑論者的觀點，他們聲稱中國的官僚政治、派係內訌、經濟優先事項和民族主義本能反應都合謀阻礙北京製定或執行總體戰略。 24

克羅的第二個假設是，德國行為的重要因素是通過一項宏偉戰略協調在一起的，“有意識地旨在首先在歐洲，最終在世界上建立德國霸權。”26克羅最終支持了一個更為謹慎的版本。 他的結論是，德國的戰略“深深植根於兩國的相對地位”，而柏林對永遠服從倫敦的前景感到不滿。26這一論點反映了中國大戰略信徒的立場。 這也類似於本書的論點：中國在地區和全球層麵上采取了各種戰略來取代美國，這些戰略從根本上來說是由其與華盛頓的相對地位驅動的。

美國官員並沒有忽視克羅備忘錄探討的問題與我們今天正在努力解決的問題驚人相似的事實。 亨利·基辛格在《論中國》中引用了這句話。 美國前駐華大使馬克斯·博卡斯 (Max Baucus) 經常向中方對話者提到這份備忘錄，以此作為詢問中國戰略的一種迂回方式。 28

克羅的備忘錄有著複雜的遺產，當代人們對他對德國的看法是否正確存在分歧。 盡管如此，克羅設定的任務在今天仍然至關重要且同樣困難，特別是因為中國是信息收集的“硬目標”。 人們可能希望通過一種基於社會科學的更嚴格和可證偽的方法來改進克羅的方法。 正如下一章詳細討論的那樣，本書認為，要確定中國大戰略的存在、內容和調整，研究者必須找到以下證據：（1）權威文本中的大戰略概念； （二）國家安全機構的大戰略能力； (3)國家行為中的大戰略行為。 如果沒有這樣的方法，任何分析都更有可能

成為“感知和誤解”中自然偏見的受害者，這種偏見經常在對其他權力的評估中反複出現。 29

章節摘要
本書認為，自冷戰結束以來，中國奉行一項宏偉戰略，首先在地區層麵，現在在全球層麵取代美國秩序。

第一章定義了大戰略和國際秩序，然後探討了崛起大國如何通過削弱、建設和擴張戰略取代霸權秩序。 它解釋了對既定霸權的力量和威脅的看法如何影響崛起大國大戰略的選擇。

《漫長的遊戲：中國取代美國秩序的大戰略》一書封麵
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第二章重點討論中國共產黨作為中國大戰略的連接性製度組織。 作為一個從晚清愛國主義浪潮中崛起的民族主義機構，共產黨現在的目標是到2049年讓中國在全球秩序中恢複應有的地位。作為一個具有集權結構、無情的不道德和列寧主義先鋒隊的列寧主義機構 該黨自視為民族主義項目的管理者，擁有協調多種治國手段的“大戰略能力”，同時追求國家利益而非地方利益。 總之，黨的民族主義取向有助於確定中國大戰略的目標，而列寧主義則為實現這些目標提供了工具。 現在，隨著中國的崛起，冷戰期間在蘇聯秩序中坐立難安的同一個政黨不太可能永遠容忍在美國秩序中扮演從屬角色。 最後，本章將黨作為一個研究主題，指出仔細審查黨的大量出版物如何能夠洞察其宏偉的戰略概念。

第一部分從第三章開始，利用中國共產黨的文本探討了冷戰後中國大戰略的鈍化階段。 它表明，在三件事件發生後，中國從將美國視為對抗蘇聯的準盟友，轉變為將其視為中國最大的威脅和“主要對手”：天安門廣場大屠殺、海灣戰爭、 和蘇聯的崩潰。 作為回應，北京在黨的“隱藏能力、等待時機”的指導方針下啟動了鈍化戰略。 這一戰略具有實用性和戰術性。 黨的領導人明確地將這一指導方針與“國際力量平衡”和“多極化”等措辭中對美國實力的看法聯係起來，他們試圖通過軍事、經濟和政治手段悄悄地、不對稱地削弱美國在亞洲的實力，每一個手段 這將在本書的後續三章中進行討論。

第四章討論了軍事層麵的鈍化。 這表明，這三重奏促使中國從日益注重控製遙遠海域的“海上控製”戰略轉向注重阻止美軍穿越、控製或幹預中國附近海域的“海上拒止”戰略。 這種轉變具有挑戰性，因此北京宣布將“在某些領域迎頭趕上”，並誓言要建造“敵人害怕的任何東西”來實現這一目標——最終推遲購買航空母艦等昂貴且脆弱的船隻，轉而投資於 更便宜的非對稱拒止武器。 北京隨後建造了世界上最大的水雷庫、世界上第一個反艦彈道導彈和世界上最大的潛艇艦隊——所有這些都是為了削弱美國的軍事實力。

第五章討論了政治層麵的鈍化。 這表明，三連擊導致中國扭轉了此前反對加入地區機構的立場。 北京擔心亞太經濟合作組織（APEC）和東南亞國家聯盟地區論壇（ARF）等多邊組織可能被華盛頓用來建立自由的地區秩序，甚至亞洲北約，因此中國加入這些組織來削弱美國的影響力。 力量。 它阻礙了製度進步，利用製度規則限製美國的行動自由，並希望參與能夠安撫警惕的鄰國，否則它們可能會加入美國領導的平衡聯盟。

第六章考慮了經濟層麵的鈍化。 報告認為，這三重打擊暴露了中國對美國市場、資本和技術的依賴——特別是華盛頓在天安門事件後實施的製裁以及威脅取消最惠國貿易地位，這可能嚴重損害中國經濟。 北京尋求的不是與美國脫鉤，而是約束美國經濟實力的自由裁量權，並努力通過“永久正常貿易關係”，利用亞太經合組織和世界貿易組織的談判，將最惠國待遇從國會審查中剔除。 ）來獲取它。

因為黨的領導人明確將鈍化與對美國實力的評估聯係起來，這意味著什麽

當這些觀念發生變化時，中國的大戰略也發生了變化。 本書的第二部分探討了中國大戰略的第二階段，其重點是建立地區秩序。 這一戰略是在鄧小平“韜光養晦”指導思想的修改下實施的，改為強調“積極辦事”。

第七章探討了黨內文本中的這一建設戰略，表明全球金融危機的衝擊導致中國認為美國正在衰弱，並鼓勵其轉向建設戰略。 它首先對中國關於“多極化”和“國際力量對比”的論述進行了徹底的審視。 然後它表明，在中國領導人胡錦濤發布的修訂後的指導方針“積極有所作為”的支持下，黨尋求為秩序奠定基礎——強製能力、協商一致和合法性。 這一戰略，就像之前的鈍化一樣，是在多種治國手段（軍事、政治和經濟）中實施的，每個手段都有一個章節。

第八章重點關注軍事層麵的建設，講述全球金融危機如何加速中國軍事戰略的轉變，從單一關注通過海上拒止削弱美國實力轉向新關注通過海上控製建立秩序。 中國現在尋求擁有控製遙遠島嶼、保衛海域、幹預鄰國以及提供公共安全物資的能力。 為了實現這些目標，中國需要一種不同的軍隊結構，但此前中國曾推遲這一結構，因為擔心它會受到美國的攻擊並令中國的鄰國感到不安。 更加自信的北京現在願意接受這些風險。 中國迅速加大對航空母艦、水麵艦艇、兩棲作戰、海軍陸戰隊和海外基地的投資。

第九章重點討論政治層麵的建設。 它展示了全球金融危機如何導致中國從專注於加入和拖延區域組織的鈍化戰略轉向涉及建立自己的機構的建設戰略。 中國牽頭成立了亞洲基礎設施投資銀行（AIIB），並將此前默默無聞的亞洲相互協作與信任措施會議（CICA）提升至製度化水平。 然後，它利用這些機構作為工具，按照它喜歡的方向塑造經濟和安全領域的區域秩序，並取得了不同程度的成功。

第10章重點討論經濟層麵的建設。 報告認為，全球金融危機幫助北京從針對美國經濟影響力的防禦性削弱戰略轉向旨在建設中國自己的強製和協商一致的經濟能力的進攻性建設戰略。 這一努力的核心是中國的“一帶一路”倡議、對鄰國大力運用經濟治國手段，以及試圖獲得更大的金融影響力。

北京利用這些削弱和建設戰略來限製美國在亞洲的影響力，並為地區霸權奠定基礎。 該戰略的相對成功是引人注目的，但北京的野心不僅限於印太地區。 當華盛頓再次被視為絆腳石時，中國的大戰略發生了變化——這一次是朝著更加全球化的方向發展。 因此，本書的第三部分重點討論中國的第三個戰略：全球擴張，旨在削弱但特別是建立全球秩序，並取代美國的領導地位。

第十一章討論中國擴張戰略的曙光。 它認為，該戰略是在另一個三連環之後出現的，這一次包括英國脫歐、唐納德·特朗普當選以及西方對冠狀病毒大流行的最初反應不佳。 在此期間，中國共產黨達成了一個矛盾的共識：它的結論是，美國在全球範圍內退卻，但同時在雙邊方麵卻開始意識到中國的挑戰。 在北京看來，“百年未有之大變局”正在發生，它們提供了到2049年取代美國成為全球領先國家的機會，而未來十年被認為是實現這一目標最關鍵的十年。

第十二章討論中國擴張戰略的“方式方法”。 這表明，在政治上，北京將尋求對全球治理和國際機構發揮領導作用，並推進獨裁規範。 在經濟上，它將削弱支撐美國霸權並搶占“第四次工業革命”製高點的金融優勢。 在軍事上，解放軍將部署一支真正的全球性中國軍隊，並在世界各地設有海外基地。

第十三章是本書的最後一章，概述了美國對中國取代美國在地區和全球秩序中的野心的回應。 它批評

那些主張采取適得其反的對抗戰略或奉行妥協性大交易的人提出這樣的說法，這兩種策略分別忽視了美國國內的不利因素和中國的戰略野心。 相反，本章主張一種不對稱競爭戰略，即不需要與中國進行美元對美元、船對船或貸款對貸款的匹配。

這種具有成本效益的方法強調否認中國在其本土地區的霸權，並借鑒中國自己的鈍化戰略的要素，重點以比北京建立霸權的成本更低的方式破壞中國在亞洲和世界範圍內的努力。 與此同時，本章認為，美國也應該追求秩序建設，對北京目前尋求削弱的美國全球秩序的基礎進行再投資。 這次討論旨在讓政策製定者相信，即使美國麵臨國內外挑戰，它仍然可以確保自身利益並抵製非自由勢力範圍的擴張——但前提是它認識到擊敗對手戰略的關鍵是 首先要了解它。

尾注
1.Harold James，《克虜伯：英國傳奇企業的曆史》（新澤西州普林斯頓：普林斯頓大學出版社，2012 年），51。
2、本備忘錄見李鴻章《籌議製造輪船未可裁撤折》，載《李文忠公全集》卷11。 19, 1872, 45. 李鴻章又名李文忠。
3.習近平[習近平]，《習近平在學習貫徹黨的十九屆五中全會精神研討會開幕式上發表重要講話》[習近平在省部級主要領導 幹部學習貫徹黨的十九屆五中全會精神專題研討班開班式上發表重要講話]，新華社，2021年1月11日。
4.埃文·奧斯諾斯，“美國與中國競爭的未來”，《紐約客》，2020 年 1 月 13 日，https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-future-of-americas- 與中國的競爭。
5. 例如，John Lewis Gaddis，《遏製戰略：冷戰期間美國國家安全政策的批判性評估》（英國牛津：牛津大學出版社，2005 年）。
6.Robert E. Kelly，“中國霸權會是什麽樣子？”，《外交官》，2014 年 2 月 10 日，https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/what-would-chinese-hegemony-look-like/； Nadège Rolland，“中國對新世界秩序的願景”（華盛頓特區：國家亞洲研究局，2020 年），https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-vision-for-a-new-world -命令/。
7.參見袁鵬，《新冠疫情與百年未有之大變局》，《新冠疫情與百年變局》，《現代國際關係》，第1期。 5（2020 年 6 月）：1-6，由國家安全部主要智庫負責人撰寫。
8.Michael Lind，“中國問題”，Tablet，2020 年 5 月 19 日，https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-strategy-trade-lind。
9.格雷厄姆·艾利森和羅伯特·布萊克威爾，“專訪：李光耀談美中關係的未來”，《大西洋月刊》，2013 年 3 月 5 日，https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/03/ 采訪李光耀談中美關係的未來/273657/。
10.Andrew F. Krepinevich，“保持平衡：美國歐亞防禦戰略”（華盛頓特區：戰略和預算評估中心，2017 年 1 月 19 日），https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/Preserving_the_Balance_% 2819Jan17%29HANDOUTS.pdf。
11.“GDP，（美元）”，世界銀行，2019 年，https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.cd。
12.Angela Stanzel、Jabin Jacob、Melanie Hart 和 Nadège Rolland，“宏偉設計：中國是否有‘宏偉戰略’”（歐洲外交關係委員會，2017 年 10 月 18 日），https://ecfr.eu/publication /grands_designs_does_china_have_a_grand_strategy/#.
13.蘇珊·謝克（Susan Shirk），“路線修正：邁向有效和可持續的中國政策”（評論，國家新聞俱樂部，華盛頓特區，2019年2月12日），https://asiasociety.org/center-us-china-relations/ 事件/針對有效和可持續的中國政策的路線修正。
14.引自羅伯特·薩特，《中國外交關係：冷戰以來的權力與政策》，第三版。 （拉納姆，醫學博士：Rowman 和 Littlefield，2012），9-10。 另見王緝思，“中國尋求大戰略：崛起的大國找到出路”，《外交》90，第 11 期。 2（2011）：68-79，https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2011-02-20/chinas-search-grand-strategy。
15.Jeffrey A. Bader，“習近平如何看待世界及其原因”（華盛頓特區：布魯金斯學會，2016），http://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ xi_jinping_worldview_bader-1.pdf。
16.Michael Swaine，“美國無力妖魔化中國”，《外交政策》，2018 年 6 月 29 日，https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/the-u-s-cant-afford-to-demonize -中國/。
17.Jamie Tarabay，“中央情報局官員：中國希望取代美國成為世界超級大國”，CNN，2018 年 7 月 21 日，https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/politics/china-cold-war- us-superpower-influence/index.html。 丹尼爾·科茨，“年度威脅評估”（證詞，2019 年 1 月 29 日），https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/2019-01-29-ATA-Opening-Statement_Final.pdf。
18.阿拉斯泰爾·伊恩·約翰斯頓，“搖搖欲墜的基礎：特朗普對華政策的‘智力架構’”，《生存》61期，第1期。 2（2019）：189-202，https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2019.1589096； 裘德·布蘭切特，“魔鬼在腳注中：讀邁克爾·皮爾斯伯裏的百年馬拉鬆”（加利福尼亞州拉霍亞：加州大學聖地亞哥分校21世紀中國項目，2018），https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/ 百年馬拉鬆.pdf。
19.喬納森·沃德，《中國的勝利願景》（華盛頓特區：阿特拉斯出版和媒體公司，2019）； 馬丁·雅克，《當中國統治世界：中央王國的崛起和西方世界的終結》（紐約：企鵝出版社，2012 年）。
20.Sulmaan Wasif Khan，《混亂所困擾：從毛澤東到習近平的中國大戰略》（馬薩諸塞州劍橋：哈佛大學出版社，2018 年）； Andrew Scobell、Edmund J. Burke、Cortez A. Cooper III、Sale Lilly、Chad J. R. Ohlandt、Eric Warner、J.D. Williams，中國的大戰略趨勢、軌跡和長期競爭（加利福尼亞州聖莫尼卡：蘭德公司，2020） ，https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html。
21.參見艾弗裏·戈德斯坦（Avery Goldstein），《迎接挑戰中國的大戰略和國際安全》（加利福尼亞州斯坦福：斯坦福大學出版社，2005 年）； Aaron L. Friedberg，《霸權之爭：中國、美國和亞洲的統治鬥爭》（紐約：W. W. Norton，2012 年）； David Shambaugh，《中國走向全球：部分權力》（英國牛津：牛津大學出版社，2013 年）； 阿什利·J·特利斯 (Ashley J. Tellis)，“追求全球影響力：中國邁向卓越的漫長征程”，《戰略亞洲 2019：中國不斷擴大的戰略野心》，編輯。 Ashley J. Tellis、Alison Szalwinski 和 Michael Wills（華盛頓特區：國家亞洲研究局，2019 年），3–46，https://www.nbr.org/publication/strategic-asia-2019-chinas-expanding -戰略野心/。
22. 欲了解全文以及英國外交部內部對此的回應，請參閱艾爾·克羅 (Eyre Crowe)，《英國與法國和德國關係現狀備忘錄》，載於《英國關於戰爭起源的文件》，1898 年 –1914 年，編輯。 G. P. Gooch 和 Harold Temperley（倫敦：國王陛下文具辦公室，1926 年），397-420。
29.Robert Jervis，《國際政治中的看法和誤解》（新澤西州普林斯頓：普林斯頓大學出版社，1976 年）。
關於作者
拉什·多西（Rush Doshi），前布魯金斯學會專家, 是布魯金斯學會中國戰略項目主任，也是布魯金斯學會外交政策研究員。 他還是耶魯大學法學院蔡保羅中國中心的研究員，也是首屆威爾遜中國研究員的成員。 他的研究重點是中國大戰略以及印太安全問題。 他目前在拜登政府任職。

Editor's Note on The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/ 

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order” 

by former Brookings Fellow Rush Doshi.  Aug. 2 2021

This introductory chapter summarizes the book’s argument. It explains that U.S.-China competition is over regional and global order, outlines what Chinese-led order might look like, explores why grand strategy matters and how to study it, and discusses competing views of whether China has a grand strategy. It argues that China has sought to displace America from regional and global order through three sequential “strategies of displacement” pursued at the military, political, and economic levels. The first of these strategies sought to blunt American order regionally, the second sought to build Chinese order regionally, and the third — a strategy of expansion — now seeks to do both globally. The introduction explains that shifts in China’s strategy are profoundly shaped by key events that change its perception of American power.

Introduction

It was 1872, and Li Hongzhang was writing at a time of historic upheaval. A Qing Dynasty general and official who dedicated much of his life to reforming a dying empire, Li was often compared to his contemporary Otto von Bismarck, the architect of German unification and national power whose portrait Li was said to keep for inspiration.1

Like Bismarck, Li had military experience that he parlayed into considerable influence, including over foreign and military policy. He had been instrumental in putting down the fourteen-year Taiping rebellion—the bloodiest conflict of the entire nineteenth century—which had seen a millenarian Christian state rise from the growing vacuum of Qing authority to launch a civil war that claimed tens of millions of lives. This campaign against the rebels provided Li with an appreciation for Western weapons and technology, a fear of European and Japanese predations, a commitment to Chinese self-strengthening and modernization—and critically—the influence and prestige to do something about it.

In a memorandum advocating for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding, [Li Hongzhang] penned a line since repeated for generations: China was experiencing “great changes not seen in three thousand years.”

Left: Li Hongzhang, also romanised as Li Hung-chang, in 1896. Source: Alice E. Neve Little, Li Hung-Chang: His Life and Times (London: Cassell & Company, 1903).

And so it was in 1872 that in one of his many correspondences, Li reflected on the groundbreaking geopolitical and technological transformations he had seen in his own life that posed an existential threat to the Qing. In a memorandum advocating for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding, he penned a line since repeated for generations: China was experiencing “great changes not seen in three thousand years.”2

That famous, sweeping statement is to many Chinese nationalists a reminder of the country’s own humiliation. Li ultimately failed to modernize China, lost a war to Japan, and signed the embarrassing Treaty of Shimonoseki with Tokyo. But to many, Li’s line was both prescient and accurate—China’s decline was the product of the Qing Dynasty’s inability to reckon with transformative geopolitical and technological forces that had not been seen for three thousand years, forces which changed the international balance of power and ushered in China’s “Century of Humiliation.” These were trends that all of Li’s striving could not reverse.

If Li’s line marks the highpoint of China’s humiliation, then Xi’s marks an occasion for its rejuvenation. If Li’s evokes tragedy, then Xi’s evokes opportunity.

Right: Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China since 2013. Source: Reuters

Now, Li’s line has been repurposed by China’s leader Xi Jinping to inaugurate a new phase in China’s post–Cold War grand strategy. Since 2017, Xi has in many of the country’s critical foreign policy addresses declared that the world is in the midst of “great changes unseen in a century” [百年未有之大變局]. If Li’s line marks the highpoint of China’s humiliation, then Xi’s marks an occasion for its rejuvenation. If Li’s evokes tragedy, then Xi’s evokes opportunity. But both capture something essential: the idea that world order is once again at stake because of unprecedented geopolitical and technological shifts, and that this requires strategic adjustment.

For Xi, the origin of these shifts is China’s growing power and what it saw as the West’s apparent self-destruction. On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Then, a little more than three months later, a populist surge catapulted Donald Trump into office as president of the United States. From China’s perspective—which is highly sensitive to changes in its perceptions of American power and threat—these two events were shocking. Beijing believed that the world’s most powerful democracies were withdrawing from the international order they had helped erect abroad and were struggling to govern themselves at home. The West’s subsequent response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and then the storming of the US Capitol by extremists in 2021, reinforced a sense that “time and momentum are on our side,” as Xi Jinping put it shortly after those events.3 China’s leadership and foreign policy elite declared that a “period of historical opportunity” [曆史機遇期] had emerged to expand the country’s strategic focus from Asia to the wider globe and its governance systems.

We are now in the early years of what comes next—a China that not only seeks regional influence as so many great powers do, but as Evan Osnos has argued, “that is preparing to shape the twenty-first century, much as the U.S. shaped the twentieth.”4 That competition for influence will be a global one, and Beijing believes with good reason that the next decade will likely determine the outcome.

What are China’s ambitions, and does it have a grand strategy to achieve them? If it does, what is that strategy, what shapes it, and what should the United States do about it?

As we enter this new stretch of acute competition, we lack answers to critical foundational questions. What are China’s ambitions, and does it have a grand strategy to achieve them? If it does, what is that strategy, what shapes it, and what should the United States do about it? These are basic questions for American policymakers grappling with this century’s greatest geopolitical challenge, not least because knowing an opponent’s strategy is the first step to countering it. And yet, as great power tensions flare, there is no consensus on the answers.

This book attempts to provide an answer. In its argument and structure, the book takes its inspiration in part from Cold War studies of US grand strategy.5 Where those works analyzed the theory and practice of US “strategies of containment” toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, this book seeks to analyze the theory and practice of China’s “strategies of displacement” toward the United States after the Cold War.

To do so, the book makes use of an original database of Chinese Communist Party documents—memoirs, biographies, and daily records of senior officials—painstakingly gathered and then digitized over the last several years from libraries, bookstores in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Chinese e-commerce sites (see Appendix). Many of the documents take readers behind the closed doors of the Chinese Communist Party, bring them into its high-level foreign policy institutions and meetings, and introduce readers to a wide cast of Chinese political leaders, generals, and diplomats charged with devising and implementing China’s grand strategy. While no one master document contains all of Chinese grand strategy, its outline can be found across a wide corpus of texts. Within them, the Party uses hierarchical statements that represent internal consensus on key issues to guide the ship of state, and these statements can be traced across time. The most important of these is the Party line (路線), then the guideline (方針), and finally the policy (政策), among other terms. Understanding them sometimes requires proficiency not only in Chinese, but also in seemingly impenetrable and archaic ideological concepts like “dialectical unities” and “historical materialism.”

Argument in Brief

The book argues that the core of US-China competition since the Cold War has been over regional and now global order. It focuses on the strategies that rising powers like China use to displace an established hegemon like the United States short of war. A hegemon’s position in regional and global order emerges from three broad “forms of control” that are used to regulate the behavior of other states: coercive capability (to force compliance), consensual inducements (to incentivize it), and legitimacy (to rightfully command it). For rising states, the act of peacefully displacing the hegemon consists of two broad strategies generally pursued in sequence. The first strategy is to blunt the hegemon’s exercise of those forms of control, particularly those extended over the rising state; after all, no rising state can displace the hegemon if it remains at the hegemon’s mercy. The second is to build forms of control over others; indeed, no rising state can become a hegemon if it cannot secure the deference of other states through coercive threats, consensual inducements, or rightful legitimacy. Unless a rising power has first blunted the hegemon, efforts to build order are likely to be futile and easily opposed. And until a rising power has successfully conducted a good degree of blunting and building in its home region, it remains too vulnerable to the hegemon’s influence to confidently turn to a third strategy, global expansion, which pursues both blunting and building at the global level to displace the hegemon from international leadership. Together, these strategies at the regional and then global levels provide a rough means of ascent for the Chinese Communist Party’s nationalist elites, who seek to restore China to its due place and roll back the historical aberration of the West’s overwhelming global influence.

This is a template China has followed, and in its review of China’s strategies of displacement, the book argues that shifts from one strategy to the next have been triggered by sharp discontinuities in the most important variable shaping Chinese grand strategy: its perception of US power and threat. China’s first strategy of displacement (1989–2008) was to quietly blunt American power over China, particularly in Asia, and it emerged after the traumatic trifecta of Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War, and the Soviet collapse led Beijing to sharply increase its perception of US threat. China’s second strategy of displacement (2008–2016) sought to build the foundation for regional hegemony in Asia, and it was launched after the Global Financial Crisis led Beijing to see US power as diminished and emboldened it to take a more confident approach. Now, with the invocation of “great changes unseen in a century” following Brexit, President Trump’s election, and the coronavirus pandemic, China is launching a third strategy of displacement, one that expands its blunting and building efforts worldwide to displace the United States as the global leader. In its final chapters, this book uses insights about China’s strategy to formulate an asymmetric US grand strategy in response—one that takes a page from China’s own book—and would seek to contest China’s regional and global ambitions without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

Order abroad is often a reflection of order at home, and China’s order-building would be distinctly illiberal relative to US order-building.

The book also illustrates what Chinese order might look like if China is able to achieve its goal of “national rejuvenation” by the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049. At the regional level, China already accounts for more than half of Asian GDP and half of all Asian military spending, which is pushing the region out of balance and toward a Chinese sphere of influence. A fully realized Chinese order might eventually involve the withdrawal of US forces from Japan and Korea, the end of American regional alliances, the effective removal of the US Navy from the Western Pacific, deference from China’s regional neighbors, unification with Taiwan, and the resolution of territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. Chinese order would likely be more coercive than the present order, consensual in ways that primarily benefit connected elites even at the expense of voting publics, and considered legitimate mostly to those few who it directly rewards. China would deploy this order in ways that damage liberal values, with authoritarian winds blowing stronger across the region. Order abroad is often a reflection of order at home, and China’s order-building would be distinctly illiberal relative to US order-building.

At the global level, Chinese order would involve seizing the opportunities of the “great changes unseen in a century” and displacing the United States as the world’s leading state. This would require successfully managing the principal risk flowing from the “great changes”—Washington’s unwillingness to gracefully accept decline—by weakening the forms of control supporting American global order while strengthening those forms of control supporting a Chinese alternative. That order would span a “zone of super-ordinate influence” in Asia as well as “partial hegemony” in swaths of the developing world that might gradually expand to encompass the world’s industrialized centers—a vision some Chinese popular writers describe using Mao’s revolutionary guidance to “surround the cities from the countryside” [農村包圍城市].6 More authoritative sources put this approach in less sweeping terms, suggesting Chinese order would be anchored in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Community of Common Destiny, with the former in particular creating networks of coercive capability, consensual inducement, and legitimacy.7

The “struggle for mastery,” once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both.

Some of the strategy to achieve this global order is already discernable in Xi’s speeches. Politically, Beijing would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, split Western alliances, and advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the “fourth industrial revolution” from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, with the United States declining into a “deindustrialized, English-speaking version of a Latin American republic, specializing in commodities, real estate, tourism, and perhaps transnational tax evasion.”8 Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would field a world-class force with bases around the world that could defend China’s interests in most regions and even in new domains like space, the poles, and the deep sea. The fact that aspects of this vision are visible in high-level speeches is strong evidence that China’s ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to dominating the Indo-Pacific. The “struggle for mastery,” once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both.

This glimpse at possible Chinese order maybe striking, but it should not be surprising. Over a decade ago, Lee Kuan Yew—the visionary politician who built modern Singapore and personally knew China’s top leaders—was asked by an interviewer, “Are Chinese leaders serious about displacing the United States as the number one power in Asia and in the world?” He answered with an emphatic yes. “Of course. Why not?” he began, “They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become now the second-largest economy in the world—on track . . . to become the world’s largest economy.” China, he continued, boasts “a culture 4,000 years old with 1.3 billion people, with a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be number one in Asia, and in time the world?” China was “growing at rates unimaginable 50 years ago, a dramatic transformation no one predicted,” he observed, and “every Chinese wants a strong and rich China, a nation as prosperous, advanced, and technologically competent as America, Europe, and Japan.” He closed his answer with a key insight: “This reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force. . . . China wants to be China and accepted as such, not as an honorary member of the West.” China might want to “share this century” with the United States, perhaps as “co-equals,” he noted, but certainly not as subordinates.9

Why Grand Strategy Matters

The need for a grounded understanding of China’s intentions and strategy has never been more urgent. China now poses a challenge unlike any the United States has ever faced. For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries has reached 60 percent of US GDP. Neither Wilhelmine Germany during the First World War, the combined might of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany during the Second World War, nor the Soviet Union at the height of its economic power ever crossed this threshold.10 And yet, this is a milestone that China itself quietly reached as early as 2014. When one adjusts for the relative price of goods, China’s economy is already 25 percent larger than the US economy.11 It is clear, then, that China is the most significant competitor that the United States has faced and that the way Washington handles its emergence to superpower status will shape the course of the next century.

What makes grand strategy “grand” is not simply the size of the strategic objectives but also the fact that disparate “means” are coordinated together to achieve it.

What is less clear, at least in Washington, is whether China has a grand strategy and what it might be. This book defines grand strategy as a state’s theory of how it can achieve its strategic objectives that is intentional, coordinated, and implemented across multiple means of statecraft—military, economic, and political. What makes grand strategy “grand” is not simply the size of the strategic objectives but also the fact that disparate “means” are coordinated together to achieve it. That kind of coordination is rare, and most great powers consequently do not have a grand strategy.

When states do have grand strategies, however, they can reshape world history. Nazi Germany wielded a grand strategy that used economic tools to constrain its neighbors, military buildups to intimidate its rivals, and political alignments to encircle its adversaries—allowing it to outperform its great power competitors for a considerable time even though its GDP was less than one-third theirs. During the Cold War, Washington pursued a grand strategy that at times used military power to deter Soviet aggression, economic aid to curtail communist influence, and political institutions to bind liberal states together—limiting Soviet influence without a US-Soviet war. How China similarly integrates its instruments of statecraft in pursuit of overarching regional and global objectives remains an area that has received abundant speculation but little rigorous study despite its enormous consequences. The coordination and long-term planning involved in grand strategy allow a state to punch above its weight; since China is already a heavyweight, if it has a coherent scheme that coordinates its $14 trillion economy with its blue-water navy and rising political influence around the world—and the United States either misses it or misunderstands it—the course of the twenty-first century may unfold in ways detrimental to the United States and the liberal values it has long championed.

Washington is belatedly coming to terms with this reality, and the result is the most consequential reassessment of its China policy in over a generation. And yet, amid this reassessment, there is wide-ranging disagreement over what China wants and where it is going. Some believe Beijing has global ambitions; others argue that its focus is largely regional. Some claim it has a coordinated 100-year plan; others that it is opportunistic and error-prone. Some label Beijing a boldly revisionist power; others see it as a sober-minded stakeholder of the current order. Some say Beijing wants the United States out of Asia; and others that it tolerates a modest US role. Where analysts increasingly agree is on the idea that China’s recent assertiveness is a product of Chinese President Xi’s personality—a mistaken notion that ignores the long-standing Party consensus in which China’s behavior is actually rooted. The fact that the contemporary debate remains divided on so many fundamental questions related to China’s grand strategy—and inaccurate even in its major areas of agreement—is troubling, especially since each question holds wildly different policy implications.

The Unsettled Debate

This book enters a largely unresolved debate over Chinese strategy divided between “skeptics” and “believers.” The skeptics have not yet been persuaded that China has a grand strategy to displace the United States regionally or globally; by contrast, the believers have not truly attempted persuasion.

The skeptics are a wide-ranging and deeply knowledgeable group. “China has yet to formulate a true ‘grand strategy,’” notes one member, “and the question is whether it wants to do so at all.”12 Others have argued that China’s goals are “inchoate” and that Beijing lacks a “well-defined” strategy.13 Chinese authors like Professor Wang Jisi, former dean of Peking University’s School of International Relations, are also in the skeptical camp. “There is no strategy that we could come up with by racking our brains that would be able to cover all the aspects of our national interests,” he notes.14

Other skeptics believe that China’s aims are limited, arguing that China does not wish to displace the United States regionally or globally and remains focused primarily on development and domestic stability. One deeply experienced White House official was not yet convinced of “Xi’s desire to throw the United States out of Asia and destroy U.S. regional alliances.”15 Other prominent scholars put the point more forcefully: “[One] hugely distorted notion is the now all-too-common assumption that China seeks to eject the United States from Asia and subjugate the region. In fact, no conclusive evidence exists of such Chinese goals.”16

In contrast to these skeptics are the believers. This group is persuaded that China has a grand strategy to displace the United States regionally and globally, but it has not put forward a work to persuade the skeptics. Within government, some top intelligence officials—including former director of national intelligence Dan Coates—have stated publicly that “the Chinese fundamentally seek to replace the United States as the leading power in the world” but have not (or perhaps could not) elaborate further, nor did they suggest that this goal was accompanied by a specific strategy.17

Outside of government, only a few recent works attempt to make the case at length. The most famous is Pentagon official Michael Pillsbury’s bestselling One Hundred Year Marathon, though it argues somewhat overstatedly that China has had a secret grand plan for global hegemony since 1949 and, in key places, relies heavily on personal authority and anecdote.18 Many other books come to similar conclusions and get much right, but they are more intuitive than rigorously empirical and could have been more persuasive with a social scientific approach and a richer evidentiary base.19 A handful of works on Chinese grand strategy take a broader perspective emphasizing the distant past or future, but they therefore dedicate less time to the critical stretch from the post–Cold War era to the present that is the locus of US-China competition.20 Finally, some works mix a more empirical approach with careful and precise arguments about China’s contemporary grand strategy. These works form the foundation for this book’s approach.21

This book, which draws on the research of so many others, also hopes to stand apart in key ways. These include a unique social-scientific approach to defining and studying grand strategy; a large trove of rarely cited or previously inaccessible Chinese texts; a systematic study of key puzzles in Chinese military, political, and economic behavior; and a close look at the variables shaping strategic adjustment. Taken together, it is hoped that the book makes a contribution to the emerging China debate with a unique method for systematically and rigorously uncovering China’s grand strategy.

Uncovering Grand Strategy

The challenge of deciphering a rival’s grand strategy from its disparate behavior is not a new one. In the years before the First World War, the British diplomat Eyre Crowe wrote an important 20,000-word “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany” that attempted to explain the wide-ranging behavior of a rising Germany.22 Crowe was a keen observer of Anglo-German relations with a passion and perspective for the subject informed by his own heritage. Born in Leipzig and educated in Berlin and Düsseldorf, Crowe was half German, spoke German-accented English, and joined the British Foreign Office at the age of twenty-one. During World War I, his British and German families were literally at war with one another—his British nephew perished at sea while his German cousin rose to become chief of the German Naval Staff.

Crowe argued in his framing of the enterprise, “the choice must lie between . . . two hypotheses”—each of which resemble the positions of today’s skeptics and believers with respect to China’s grand strategy.

Left: British diplomat Eyre Crowe (1864-1925). Date unknown. Author unknown. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Crowe, who wrote his memorandum in 1907, sought to systematically analyze the disparate, complex, and seemingly uncoordinated range of German foreign behavior, to determine whether Berlin had a “grand design” that ran through it, and to report to his superiors what it might be. In order to “formulate and accept a theory that will fit all the ascertained facts of German foreign policy,” Crowe argued in his framing of the enterprise, “the choice must lie between . . . two hypotheses”—each of which resemble the positions of today’s skeptics and believers with respect to China’s grand strategy.23

Crowe’s first hypothesis was that Germany had no grand strategy, only what he called a “vague, confused, and unpractical statesmanship.” In this view, Crowe wrote, it is possible that “Germany does not really know what she is driving at, and that all her excursions and alarums, all her underhand intrigues do not contribute to the steady working out of a well conceived and relentlessly followed system of policy.”24 Today, this argument mirrors those of skeptics who claim China’s bureaucratic politics, factional infighting, economic priorities, and nationalist knee-jerk reactions all conspire to thwart Beijing from formulating or executing an overarching strategy.24

Crowe’s second hypothesis was that important elements of German behavior were coordinated together through a grand strategy “consciously aiming at the establishment of a German hegemony, at first in Europe, and eventually in the world.”26 Crowe ultimately endorsed a more cautious version of this hypothesis, and he concluded that German strategy was “deeply rooted in the relative position of the two countries,” with Berlin dissatisfied by the prospect of remaining subordinate to London in perpetuity.26 This argument mirrors the position of believers in Chinese grand strategy. It also resembles the argument of this book: China has pursued a variety of strategies to displace the United States at the regional and global level which are fundamentally driven by its relative position with Washington.

The fact that the questions the Crowe memorandum explored have a striking similarity to those we are grappling with today has not been lost on US officials. Henry Kissinger quotes from it in On China. Max Baucus, former US ambassador to China, frequently mentioned the memo to his Chinese interlocutors as a roundabout way of inquiring about Chinese strategy.28

Crowe’s memorandum has a mixed legacy, with contemporary assessments split over whether he was right about Germany. Nevertheless, the task Crowe set remains critical and no less difficult today, particularly because China is a “hard target” for information collection. One might hope to improve on Crowe’s method with a more rigorous and falsifiable approach anchored in social science. As the next chapter discusses in detail, this book argues that to identify the existence, content, and adjustment of China’s grand strategy, researchers must find evidence of (1) grand strategic concepts in authoritative texts; (2) grand strategic capabilities in national security institutions; and (3) grand strategic conduct in state behavior. Without such an approach, any analysis is more likely to fall victim to the kinds of natural biases in “perception and misperception” that often recur in assessments of other powers.29

Chapter Summaries

This book argues that, since the end of the Cold War, China has pursued a grand strategy to displace American order first at the regional and now at the global level.

Chapter 1 defines grand strategy and international order, and then explores how rising powers displace hegemonic order through strategies of blunting, building, and expansion. It explains how perceptions of the established hegemon’s power and threat shape the selection of rising power grand strategies.

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Chapter 2 focuses on the Chinese Communist Party as the connective institutional tissue for China’s grand strategy. As a nationalist institution that emerged from the patriotic ferment of the late Qing period, the Party now seeks to restore China to its rightful place in the global hierarchy by 2049. As a Leninist institution with a centralized structure, ruthless amorality, and a Leninist vanguard seeing itself as stewarding a nationalist project, the Party possesses the “grand strategic capability” to coordinate multiple instruments of statecraft while pursuing national interests over parochial ones. Together, the Party’s nationalist orientation helps set the ends of Chinese grand strategy while Leninism provides an instrument for realizing them. Now, as China rises, the same Party that sat uneasily within Soviet order during the Cold War is unlikely to permanently tolerate a subordinate role in American order. Finally, the chapter focuses on the Party as a subject of research, noting how a careful review of the Party’s voluminous publications can provide insight into its grand strategic concepts.

Part I begins with Chapter 3, which explores the blunting phase of China’s post–Cold War grand strategy using Chinese Communist Party texts. It demonstrates that China went from seeing the United States as a quasi-ally against the Soviets to seeing it as China’s greatest threat and “main adversary” in the wake of three events: the traumatic trifecta of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Gulf War, and the Soviet Collapse. In response, Beijing launched its blunting strategy under the Party guideline of “hiding capabilities and biding time.” This strategy was instrumental and tactical. Party leaders explicitly tied the guideline to perceptions of US power captured in phrases like the “international balance of forces” and “multipolarity,” and they sought to quietly and asymmetrically weaken American power in Asia across military, economic, and political instruments, each of which is considered in the subsequent three book chapters.

Chapter 4 considers blunting at the military level. It shows that the trifecta prompted China to depart from a “sea control” strategy increasingly focused on holding distant maritime territory to a “sea denial” strategy focused on preventing the US military from traversing, controlling, or intervening in the waters near China. That shift was challenging, so Beijing declared it would “catch up in some areas and not others” and vowed to build “whatever the enemy fears” to accomplish it—ultimately delaying the acquisition of costly and vulnerable vessels like aircraft carriers and instead investing in cheaper asymmetric denial weapons. Beijing then built the world’s largest mine arsenal, the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, and the world’s largest submarine fleet—all to undermine US military power.

Chapter 5 considers blunting at the political level. It demonstrates that the trifecta led China to reverse its previous opposition to joining regional institutions. Beijing feared that multilateral organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) might be used by Washington to build a liberal regional order or even an Asian NATO, so China joined them to blunt American power. It stalled institutional progress, wielded institutional rules to constrain US freedom of maneuver, and hoped participation would reassure wary neighbors otherwise tempted to join a US-led balancing coalition.

Chapter 6 considers blunting at the economic level. It argues that the trifecta laid bare China’s dependence on the US market, capital, and technology—notably through Washington’s post-Tiananmen sanctions and its threats to revoke most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status, which could have seriously damaged China’s economy. Beijing sought not to decouple from the United States but instead to bind the discretionary use of American economic power, and it worked hard to remove MFN from congressional review through “permanent normal trading relations,” leveraging negotiations in APEC and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to obtain it.

Because Party leaders explicitly tied blunting to assessments of American power, that meant that when those perceptions changed, so too did China’s grand strategy. Part II of the book explores this second phase in Chinese grand strategy, which was focused on building regional order. The strategy took place under a modification to Deng’s guidance to “hide capabilities and bide time,” one that instead emphasized “actively accomplishing something.”

Chapter 7 explores this building strategy in Party texts, demonstrating that the shock of the Global Financial Crisis led China to see the United States as weakening and emboldened it to shift to a building strategy. It begins with a thorough review of China’s discourse on “multipolarity” and the “international balance of forces.” It then shows that the Party sought to lay the foundations for order—coercive capacity, consensual bargains, and legitimacy—under the auspices of the revised guidance “actively accomplish something” [積極有所作為] issued by Chinese leader Hu Jintao. This strategy, like blunting before it, was implemented across multiple instruments of statecraft—military, political, and economic—each of which receives a chapter.

Chapter 8 focuses on building at the military level, recounting how the Global Financial Crisis accelerated a shift in Chinese military strategy away from a singular focus on blunting American power through sea denial to a new focus on building order through sea control. China now sought the capability to hold distant islands, safeguard sea lines, intervene in neighboring countries, and provide public security goods. For these objectives, China needed a different force structure, one that it had previously postponed for fear that it would be vulnerable to the United States and unsettle China’s neighbors. These were risks a more confident Beijing was now willing to accept. China promptly stepped up investments in aircraft carriers, capable surface vessels, amphibious warfare, marines, and overseas bases.

Chapter 9 focuses on building at the political level. It shows how the Global Financial Crisis caused China to depart from a blunting strategy focused on joining and stalling regional organizations to a building strategy that involved launching its own institutions. China spearheaded the launch of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the elevation and institutionalization of the previously obscure Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). It then used these institutions, with mixed success, as instruments to shape regional order in the economic and security domains in directions it preferred.

Chapter 10 focuses on building at the economic level. It argues that the Global Financial Crisis helped Beijing depart from a defensive blunting strategy that targeted American economic leverage to an offensive building strategy designed to build China’s own coercive and consensual economic capacities. At the core of this effort were China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its robust use of economic statecraft against its neighbors, and its attempts to gain greater financial influence.

Beijing used these blunting and building strategies to constrain US influence within Asia and to build the foundations for regional hegemony. The relative success of that strategy was remarkable, but Beijing’s ambitions were not limited only to the Indo-Pacific. When Washington was again seen as stumbling, China’s grand strategy evolved—this time in a more global direction. Accordingly, Part III of this book focuses on China’s third grand strategy of displacement, global expansion, which sought to blunt but especially build global order and to displace the United States from its leadership position.

Chapter 11 discusses the dawn of China’s expansion strategy. It argues that the strategy emerged following another trifecta, this time consisting of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the West’s poor initial response to the coronavirus pandemic. In this period, the Chinese Communist Party reached a paradoxical consensus: it concluded that the United States was in retreat globally but at the same time was waking up to the China challenge bilaterally. In Beijing’s mind, “great changes unseen in a century” were underway, and they provided an opportunity to displace the United States as the leading global state by 2049, with the next decade deemed the most critical to this objective.

Chapter 12 discusses the “ways and means” of China’s strategy of expansion. It shows that politically, Beijing would seek to project leadership over global governance and international institutions and to advance autocratic norms. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the “fourth industrial revolution.” And militarily, the PLA would field a truly global Chinese military with overseas bases around the world.

Chapter 13, the book’s final chapter, outlines a US response to China’s ambitions for displacing the United States from regional and global order. It critiques those who advocate a counterproductive strategy of confrontation or an accommodationist one of grand bargains, each of which respectively discounts US domestic headwinds and China’s strategic ambitions. The chapter instead argues for an asymmetric competitive strategy, one that does not require matching China dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

This cost-effective approach emphasizes denying China hegemony in its home region and—taking a page from elements of China’s own blunting strategy—focuses on undermining Chinese efforts in Asia and worldwide in ways that are of lower cost than Beijing’s efforts to build hegemony. At the same time, this chapter argues that the United States should pursue order-building as well, reinvesting in the very same foundations of American global order that Beijing presently seeks to weaken. This discussion seeks to convince policymakers that even as the United States faces challenges at home and abroad, it can still secure its interests and resist the spread of an illiberal sphere of influence—but only if it recognizes that the key to defeating an opponent’s strategy is first to understand it.

Endnotes

1. 1.Harold James, Krupp: A History of the Legendary British Firm (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 51.

2. 2.For this memo, see Li Hongzhang [李鴻章], “Memo on Not Abandoning the Manufacture of Ships” [籌議製造輪船未可裁撤折], in The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong [李文忠公全集], vol. 19, 1872, 45. Li Hongzhang was also called Li Wenzhong.

3. 3.Xi Jinping [習近平], “Xi Jinping Delivered an Important Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Seminar on Learning and Implementing the Spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Party” [習近平在省部級主要領導幹部學習貫徹黨的十九屆五中全會精神專題研討班開班式上發表重要講話], Xinhua [新華], January 11, 2021.

4. 4.Evan Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China,” The New Yorker, January 13, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-future-of-americas-contest-with-china.

5. 5.For example, John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005).

6. 6.Robert E. Kelly, “What Would Chinese Hegemony Look Like?,” The Diplomat, February 10, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/what-would-chinese-hegemony-look-like/; Nadège Rolland, “China’s Vision for a New World Order” (Washington, DC: The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020), https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-vision-for-a-new-world-order/.

7. 7.See Yuan Peng [袁鵬], “The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Great Changes Unseen in a Century,” [新冠疫情與百年變局], Contemporary International Relations [現代國際關係], no. 5 (June 2020): 1–6, by the head of the leading Ministry of State Security think tank.

8. 8.Michael Lind, “The China Question,” Tablet, May 19, 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-strategy-trade-lind.

9. 9.Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill, “Interview: Lee Kuan Yew on the Future of U.S.-China Relations,” The Atlantic, March 5, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/03/interview-lee-kuan-yew-on-the-future-of-us-china-relations/273657/.

10. 10.Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Preserving the Balance: A U.S. Eurasia Defense Strategy” (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, January 19, 2017), https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/Preserving_the_Balance_%2819Jan17%29HANDOUTS.pdf.

11. 11.“GDP, (US$),” World Bank, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.cd.

12. 12.Angela Stanzel, Jabin Jacob, Melanie Hart, and Nadège Rolland, “Grand Designs: Does China Have a ‘Grand Strategy’” (European Council on Foreign Relations, October 18, 2017), https://ecfr.eu/publication/grands_designs_does_china_have_a_grand_strategy/#.

13. 13.Susan Shirk, “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy” (remarks, National Press Club, Washington, DC, February 12, 2019), https://asiasociety.org/center-us-china-relations/events/course-correction-toward-effective-and-sustainable-china-policy.

14. 14.Quoted in Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy since the Cold War, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 9–10. See also Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds Its Way,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 2 (2011): 68–79, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2011-02-20/chinas-search-grand-strategy.

15. 15.Jeffrey A. Bader, “How Xi Jinping Sees the World, and Why” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2016), http://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/xi_jinping_worldview_bader-1.pdf.

16. 16.Michael Swaine, “The U.S. Can’t Afford to Demonize China,” Foreign Policy, June 29, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/the-u-s-cant-afford-to-demonize-china/.

17. 17.Jamie Tarabay, “CIA Official: China Wants to Replace US as World Superpower,” CNN, July 21, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/politics/china-cold-war-us-superpower-influence/index.html. Daniel Coats, “Annual Threat Assessment,” (testimony, January 29, 2019), https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/2019-01-29-ATA-Opening-Statement_Final.pdf.

18. 18.Alastair Iain Johnston, “Shaky Foundations: The ‘Intellectual Architecture’ of Trump’s China Policy,” Survival 61, no. 2 (2019): 189–202, https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2019.1589096; Jude Blanchette, “The Devil Is in the Footnotes: On Reading Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon” (La Jolla, CA: UC San Diego 21st Century China Program, 2018), https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/The-Hundred-Year-Marathon.pdf.

19. 19.Jonathan Ward, China’s Vision of Victory (Washington, DC: Atlas Publishing and Media Company, 2019); Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (New York: Penguin, 2012).

20. 20.Sulmaan Wasif Khan, Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Andrew Scobell, Edmund J. Burke, Cortez A. Cooper III, Sale Lilly, Chad J. R. Ohlandt, Eric Warner, J.D. Williams, China’s Grand Strategy Trends, Trajectories, and Long-Term Competition (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html.

21. 21.See Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012); David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2013); Ashley J. Tellis, “Pursuing Global Reach: China’s Not So Long March toward Preeminence,” in Strategic Asia 2019: China’s Expanding Strategic Ambitions, eds. Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Wills (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2019), 3–46, https://www.nbr.org/publication/strategic-asia-2019-chinas-expanding-strategic-ambitions/.

22. 22.For the full text, as well as the responses to it within the British Foreign Office, see Eyre Crowe, “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany,” in British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914, eds. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1926), 397–420.

23. 23.Ibid., 417.

24. 24.Ibid., 415.

25. 25.Ibid., 415.

26. 26.Ibid., 414.

27. 27.Ibid., 414.

28. 28.Interview.

29. 29.Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

About the Author

Rush Doshi

Former Brookings Expert

Rush Doshi was the director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative and a fellow in Brookings Foreign Policy. He was also a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and part of the inaugural class of Wilson China fellows. His research focused on Chinese grand strategy as well as Indo-Pacific security issues. He is currently serving in the Biden administration.

If China Ran the World A Chinese order would displace the United States as the world's leader

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/if-china-ran-the-world/ 

by David P. Goldman 

book reviewed

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

 

Denial, the first stage of grief according to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, characterizes America’s responses to the rise of China. Rush Doshi’s account of China’s global strategy in The Long Game is a welcome draft of cold air. China’s strength, he notes more than once, rests on an economy 25% larger than America’s, adjusted for relative prices. Its command of transport and communications technologies allows it to “lock in its ties with Asian states” as well as others.

Doshi is now a Director for China at the National Security Council. Before that he directed the China Initiative at the Brookings Institution, where he advised Kurt Campbell, the Biden Administration’s policy chief for the Indo-Pacific region. Doshi’s standing in Washington ensures a wide audience for a book well worth reading on its own merits. From extensive study of Chinese government and semi-official documents, he has distilled what he believes to be a Chinese “grand strategy” to replace the American postwar world order with one of China’s design.

Doshi seeks an alternative to “those who advocate a counterproductive strategy of confrontation or an accommodationist one of grand bargains, each of which respectively discounts US domestic headwinds and China’s strategic ambitions.” “Both efforts,” he argues, “each backed by widely opposed parts of the policy debate, ultimately flow from a similar set of strained and idealistic assumptions about Washington’s ability to influence the politics of a powerful, sovereign country.”

As a result, “[e]fforts to subvert China’s government are particularly dangerous,” less likely to succeed than to “produce all-out confrontation that could transform the competition from one that is over order to one that is fundamentally existential.” On this I agree with Doshi emphatically. Real per-capita consumption has grown by an order of magnitude in the four decades since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, and the Chinese people have a vivid recollection of the instability that preceded them.

* * *

Doshi is interested in power rather than posturing. He mentions China’s Uyghurs only once and in passing, and the matter of human rights plays a peripheral role in his story. His theme is what he calls China’s plan “to shape the twenty-first century, much as the US shaped the twentieth.” This he views through an American mirror. Unlike studies that “analyzed the theory and practice of US ‘strategies of containment’ toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, this book seeks to analyze the theory and practice of China’s ‘strategies of displacement’ toward the United States after the Cold War.”

China’s long project, he writes, “rests on military, economic and political foundations.” The salient military component is “a navy capable of amphibious operations, sea control and distant blue-water missions.” Crucial economic elements include infrastructure spending, “coercive economic statecraft,” and the pursuit of technological superiority over Western nations. In the political realm, China seeks to “shape global information flows in ways that reinforce its narratives.”

Doshi is most at home in the arcana of academic political science, parsing the alphabet soup of international agencies. He seems to think that the United Nations is a central Chinese target: “Beijing has seized on US inattention and worked diligently to place its officials in the top leadership spots of four of fifteen UN specialized agencies.”

His superficial knowledge of the technological and financial battlefronts is, by contrast, the book’s main weakness. Doshi’s idea of what Chinese ambitions might entail is too general to allow for a clear distinction between things China might like to have in the future and matters of raison d’état. He correctly says that a “Chinese order” would entail “displacing the United States as the world’s leading state.” In this new dispensation, “Beijing would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones, and split American alliances in Europe and Asia.”

* * *

That is well and good, but what does it mean for Taiwan? Nowhere does Doshi explain why, or in what way, Taiwan is a prospective casus belli for Beijing. He makes a cogent case that “a decision by Washington to voluntarily terminate its commitment to Taiwan will startle US allies in the region,” who would come to doubt American commitments to them. Doshi implies that what China wants from Taiwan is “geostrategic advantages.”

But that is not how Beijing sees the matter. China is not a nation-state but an empire with seven major languages and 300 minor ones, where only one citizen in ten speaks fluent Mandarin. The existential fear of every Chinese dynasty is that one rebel province will set a precedent for others, leading to fracture along ethnic and geographical lines, as occurred so often in China’s tragic past. Xi Jinping told President Barack Obama at the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit: “China is a land and a people. Sometimes the population increases by ten percent, sometimes it falls by ten percent. But China’s land is sacred and inviolable and there is nothing we will not do to defend it.”

China insists on sovereignty over Taiwan not because the island has a strategic utility, nor because it wants to suppress its democratic system, but because the integrity of China’s territory is an existential question for the Chinese state. The only alternative to the status quo is a war that no one would win. But to maintain the status quo the United States must neither show the weakness that would tempt China to annex Taiwan, nor the strength that might make Beijing believe that it is plotting to sever a sovereign Taiwanese state from the mainland.

* * *

All the United States military’s war games involving a mainland assault on Taiwan have ended in American defeat. China is building toward 100,000 marines and mechanized infantry poised to invade the island, more than 50 submarines, and a formidable land-to-sea missile capability that could probably destroy most American surface ships operating close to China’s coast. As the editors of the Chinese official English-language newspaper Global Times wrote on July 28, 2021:

The US Navy’s advantage in overwater power will surely persist for some time. China must not only catch up with the US, but also strengthen its land-based missile forces that can strike large US battleships in the South China Sea in a war. We can massively expand this force so that if the US provokes a military confrontation in the South China Sea, all of its large ships there will be targeted by land-based missiles at the same time.

Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense in the Obama Administration, argued in Foreign Affairs last year that deterring China requires the U.S. to possess “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.” The clear counterpart to such a force, however, would be China’s credible capability to eliminate U.S. forces in the South China Sea and nearby military facilities even faster, thereby deterring American military initiatives and responses.

It is doubtful that Taiwan could be defended against a Chinese attack by conventional means, and the use of nuclear weapons would put American cities at risk of Chinese retaliation. The non-military risk may be more likely to inhibit China: if annexing Taiwan by force made China a global pariah, the West would absorb the enormous cost of cutting China off from the world economy. China’s economy would collapse and with it the Communist Party’s hold on power.

* * *

Doshi is aware that China understands something different from grand strategy than America does, and he whittles down his definition of it considerably. China, he concedes, “may lack alliance networks and bases with tens of thousands of soldiers and eschew costly intervention. It is more likely to opt for dual-use facilities, rotational access, and a lighter footprint—at least for now—when its military still faces difficulties in challenging the United States outside of the Indo-Pacific.” This brings to mind an old Jewish joke: “What is green, hangs on the wall, and whistles?” The answer is, “A herring.” But is a herring green? Well, you can paint it green. But does it hang on the wall? Well, you could hang it on the wall. But does it whistle? All right, it doesn’t whistle.

Still, it troubles Doshi that China has just one overseas base (in Djibouti, established mainly for anti-piracy operations to protect Chinese shipping). Strategy, after all, can’t be grand without expeditionary forces and other forms of global force projection. He offers that China’s ownership of ports in Sri Lanka and Greenland, the construction of airports in Greenland, and the lease of a small island in the Maldives “suggest a growing interest in global facilities.” He notes that China’s marine corps has expanded from 10,000 to 30,000 since 2016. (There are, by contrast, 180,000 active-duty U.S. Marines.)

At length, Doshi acknowledges that China’s efforts to project power remain muted. “China may be able to engage in operations outside the Indo-Pacific without precisely replicating America’s complex and costly global footprint.” In fact, Doshi’s cogent description of China’s military planning supports the conclusion that China is focused more on its borders than on the globe. He argues, for example, that “anti-surface warfare is the priority for China’s submarines, which…suggests a focus on US vessels—notably carriers.” In turn, “Chinese naval doctrine also confirms a focus on submarines as denial tools rather than as assets for escort or sea control.”

But none of this quite adds up to a Chinese “grand strategy” in the sense of America’s Cold War stance, which is what the author promised to expose. Apart from the military assets that China keeps at the ready to intimidate Taiwan, its “expeditionary” forces have the limited role of protecting Chinese nationals in crisis zones, as in Libya in 2011 and Yemen in 2015. Nor has China seized on opportunities created by American weakness to project military power away from its immediate land and maritime borders.

* * *

Indeed, China often appears wrong-footed by America’s retreat from global power projection. Beijing expressed genuine discomfort with America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which shares porous borders with both China and Pakistan. The Taliban’s takeover on the heels of the Americans’ departure aggravates the risk of jihadist terrorism in China.

Iran’s rapprochement with China comes with another set of problems: China imports more oil from Saudi Arabia than any other country, and views with discomfort Shiite ambitions to displace the Saudi monarchy. With Turkey, a prospective ally of Uyghur separatism, Beijing keeps its friends close and its enemies closer, using a combination of bribes and threats to dissuade Turkey from sponsoring what it used to call “East Turkestan.” I have suggested several times over the past decade that a “Pax Sinica” might emerge in the Middle East. China, however, shows scant interest in taking responsibility for a fractious and unpredictable region.

Another aspect of China’s global ambition is its self-proclaimed goal to dominate the Fourth Industrial Revolution by making “enormous investments in basic science research that the market may otherwise shun,” in Doshi’s summary. He accepts National Science Foundation estimates that China spends a significantly higher proportion of its GDP on research and development than does the U.S. The disparity is especially large in the case of most advanced technologies: “China spends at least ten times more than the United States does in quantum computing.”

He also observes rightly that China’s industrial depth gives it an enormous advantage over the United States in promotion of technology. The Long Game cites Renmin University professor Jin Canrong’s statement that China has a greater chance of leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution because the United States “has a major problem, which is the hollowing out of its industrial base.” The U.S. “cannot turn technology into a product acceptable to the market” without China’s factories. Canrong argues that China’s superior numbers of engineers, its ability to reverse-engineer, and its factories’ centrality to global technology are “China’s real advantage in long-term industrial competition.”

* * *

Doshi’s less convincing discussion of China’s financial ambitions rests on a shaky grasp of the subject matter. “Chinese officials have long worried about the potential of a US-led digital currency that would bolster the US dollar system, and so they have raced for first-mover advantage,” he writes. In response, “[t]he United States should carefully study and then consider rolling out a digital currency that preserves its financial advantages and brings about precisely the world [Chinese officials] are worried about—a digital currency that complements and is anchored to the US dollar system.”

The dollar reserve system, like the sterling reserve system before it, allows the United States to incur enormous deficits on its current account by linking payments in trade to capital markets. Foreigners own $7 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities, but, more importantly, keep $16 trillion in dollar balances in offshore accounts (as reported by the Bank for International Settlements), mainly as working capital for international transactions. China has neither the ability nor the intention to “replace” the United States, which would require opening its capital markets and making them subject to the vagaries of global capital flows. Chinese digital currency electronic payment is not, therefore, a magic bullet aimed at American financial hegemony, but a convenience, like a global PayPal.

The real threat to American financial hegemony comes not from the digital currency as such, but from the integration of so-called smart logistics and the “Internet of Things.” China is racing to lead a revolution in transport and warehousing that will allow counterparties to track all goods at every stage of production and shipment around the world, making global supply chains transparent. This will drastically reduce the banking system’s role as intermediary and shrink the working capital required for trade. Huawei, China’s premier telecom equipment company, explains on its website:

By transparently sharing information between all sections and visualizing material flows, the system better coordinates people, vehicles, goods, and warehouses. At the same time, it realizes real-time interconnections with external risk data, enabling early warnings and intelligent reminders of alternative options. In the distribution process, big data and AI make intelligent calculations on cargo storage plans and optimal transport routes to improve distribution efficiency and optimize asset use.

Chips that cost a few cents to produce will be embedded in every traded product and communicate in real time with servers that direct them to automated warehouses, driverless trucks, digitally-controlled ports, and ultimately to end users. Artificial Intelligence will direct goods to the cheapest and fastest transport and allow buyers to find the cheapest prices. 5G communications between servers and goods will verify the production, transit, and storage status of trillions of items in trade. The working capital required for transactions in international trade will shrink.

* * *

As Morgan Stanley’s economists observed in a report earlier this year, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will hollow out the deposit base of the banking system:

Commercial banks will face the risk of disintermediation. Once CBDC accounts are launched, consumers will be able to transfer their bank deposits there, subject to limits imposed by the central banks. Moreover, the technological infrastructure of CBDCs will make it easier for new non-bank entities to enter the payments space and accelerate the transition toward digital payments.

The deposit base of the banking system will erode, and the $16 trillion of offshore U.S. dollar deposits will gradually disappear. But this $16 trillion amounts to an interest-free loan to the United States, since banks invest the proceeds in U.S. government or private debt instruments. What the United States stands to lose in the application of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to logistics is tens of trillions of dollars of seigneuriage, originally a term for the premium a monarch earned by turning bullion into coins. The 16th-century Spanish monarchy spent vast sums to mine, ship, and protect the bullion that financed its deficits. Dutch and English central banking replaced this system with vastly more efficient use of capital. The advent of smart logistics and digital finance will produce another quantum leap in capital efficiency.

Doshi is wrong to believe that an American digital currency will solve the problem. The difficulty is that China is several years ahead of the United States in deploying 5G networks and building out the manufacturing and logistics technology that 5G enables. The technologies associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, moreover, may give China a degree of influence in huge swaths of the world unimaginable within the framework of existing industrial organization. Billions of people in the developing world live on the margins of the global economy, working subsistence plots, engaging in petty commerce, with little access to information, education, medical care, and social services. Cheap mobile broadband is connecting them to the world market, integrating them into what Huawei calls its “ecosystem” of telecommunications, e-commerce, e-finance, telemedicine, and smart agriculture. I called this the “Sino-forming” of the world in You Will Be Assimilated (2020). China tore out traditional society at the grass roots and urbanized 600 million people during the past 35 years, and it believes that it can integrate billions more into its virtual empire during the next decade. The devil is to be found in the details of the technology, where Doshi seems out of his depth.

* * *

What, then, should the United States do? American pressure to decouple from Chinese supply chains has been unavailing. “The European Chamber of Commerce in China found that only about 11 percent of its members were considering relocation out of China in 2020,” Doshi writes. Similarly, “the president of AmCham China noted that the majority of the group’s members are not planning on exiting China.”

Missing from The Long Game, though, is an account of the semiconductor war between America and China. As Harvard’s Graham Allison observed in a June 11, 2020, essay in the National Interest, the Trump Administration’s boycott of Chinese acquisition of high-end semiconductor intellectual property recalls Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 oil boycott against Japan. China responded with massive investment and an “all-country effort” to establish independence in chip production, and appears to have achieved a considerable degree of success in the interim. Trump’s chip sanctions, by far the most aggressive U.S. attempt to stop China from leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution, appear to have failed, perhaps even backfired. What should we have done, and what should we do next?

Here Doshi is silent: the term “semiconductor” does not appear in his index. He would like the United States to spend more on research and development, to adopt an industrial policy that fosters high-tech industries, and do more to foster high-level STEM education. That is well and good, but it is disappointing that one of the new administration’s officials responsible for China policy has declined to take account of the past administration’s policy, continued by the Biden Administration.

Doshi also proposes that the United States should invent area denial weapons to achieve “a kind of ‘No Man’s Sea’ where no actor can successfully control waters or islands or launch amphibious operations in the First Island Chain.” He adds that we should help Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India to do the same. In addition, the U.S. should “undermine China’s costly efforts to establish overseas bases” if and when China tries to build them. And, of course, counter Chinese influence at the United Nations, which Doshi thinks is important.

These recommendations are unexceptionable, but generic. Doshi has assembled a wealth of useful material from Chinese sources and collated it with Western analysis. This is worth the price of the book. But he misses the trees for the forest, so to speak: he pays too little attention to the singular aspects of Chinese policy that make the Middle Kingdom such a formidable competitor. Readers who look for clues here about the Biden Administration’s China stance going forward will be disappointed.