是的，预测已经出来了。 2016 （或 2030？），经济预言家说，中国在经济上将超越美国。在他们的背后，是五角大楼和华盛顿其他地方的所有人，他们暗自担心，如果不采取任何措施遏制中国，中国将在几十年内成为太平洋地区的主宰者，成为亚洲的霸主，也许在本世纪晚些时候，中国将成为太平洋地区的霸主。 ——借用一句——地球的“唯一超级大国”。

人们相信，即将发生的事情的最初迹象已经出现，包括中国一直在建设自己的军队，并开始推动其邻国在太平洋能源丰富地区建造一系列基本上无人居住的岛屿，更不用说最近对一个大型的、人口稠密的地方的更非正式的宣称， 非常军事化 该地区的岛屿 — 冲绳岛。据信，像以前的全球超级大国一样，中国也计划将太平洋变成自己的“湖泊”，甚至可能建立军事和其他基地（“一串珍珠”）穿过印度洋一直到达非洲。

这是一个很棒的故事，但别着急！正如那位四处奔走的记者 亚洲时报 和 TomDispatch定期 佩佩·埃斯科瓦尔（Pepe Escobar）在今天生动地陷入中国的动荡水域中指出，该国面临着潜在的令人震惊的问题。毕竟，矛盾——用一个经典的马克思主义词汇来说——比比皆是：共产党领导着资本主义革命，其统治精英的稳定性首先依赖于更大的经济增长。然而，这不是十九世纪。中国正处于一个危险的星球上。它采取的每一项经济举措都可能产生长期的负面影响。据我们所知，可能有 没有二十世纪的超级大国 地球上有，如果有，也不一定指望中国。

正如埃斯科瓦尔所解释的那样，为了刺激惊人的增长水平以维持国家和党的生存，中国领导层正在着手一种 强制城市化 可能没有历史先例的计划。它肯定会破坏农村的稳定，同时还会有更多的农民涌入城市。在这里很少有人承认这一点（尽管中国领导层很清楚这一点），但中国有一个 独特，近两千年之久 记录 大规模农民起义（通常带有宗教色彩）席卷乡村并颠覆既定统治。最后一个是毛泽东的农民革命，建立了现在的中华人民共和国。

中国爆发大规模抗议 在上升。环境条件是 惨重。让中国经济步履蹒跚，谁知道你会看到什么。无论华盛顿的恐惧和军事化幻想如何，这都不是扩张帝国权力的公式，更不是地球下一个主人的公式。 汤姆·恩格尔哈特

孙子，古代著作家 孙子兵法在奥巴马总统和习近平主席在加利福尼亚州的恩爱之后，他肯定在他的天堂坟墓里举办了一场米酒派对。 “了解你的敌人”似乎是这次会议的主题。北京非常清楚华盛顿在过去 15 年里通过 秘密国家安全局 定制接入运营办公室（缩写为 TAO）。然而，习近平却高兴地允许奥巴马就黑客攻击和网络盗窃问题发表武断，就好像中国是唯一一个站在这样的舞台上的人。

爱德华·斯诺登 (Edward Snowden) 在完美的时机登场， 间谍 他从夏威夷来，自20月XNUMX日以来一直躲在香港。并直接切入邪恶的面无表情，无需评论 采取 中国共产党官方新闻机构新华社对奥巴马的黑客大军进行了报道。随着美国“棱镜”等“月暗面”监视项目突然成为全球关注的焦点，长期对华盛顿指控黑客入侵美国企业和军事网站感到愤怒的中国人表现得足够有礼貌。他们甚至懒得提及 Prism 是 只是另一个节点 五角大楼 2020 年联合愿景中的“全方位统治”梦想。

通过揭露“棱镜”（以及其他相关监控项目）的存在，斯诺登为北京提供了坚持网络监控动机的烤鸭宴。尤其是在斯诺登之后，几天后，他加倍努力，揭露了习近平当然已经知道的事情——国家安全局多年来一直在 无情地黑客攻击 香港和中国大陆的计算机网络。

但最近中国宴会名片上的终极鱼翅汤是 一个社论 在共产党控制下 环球时报。它承认，“斯诺登是一张中国从未想到的‘牌’”，并补充说，“中国既不擅长也不习惯打这张牌。”它的建议是：利用最近的泄密事件“作为与美国谈判的证据”。它还警告称，“如果中国中央政府和香港特别行政区政府选择派出[斯诺登]，公众舆论将转而反对他们”。后退。”

随着一系列网络活动——从网络经济盗窃和间谍活动到未来国家批准的网络攻击的可能性——在暗处展开，很难扭转习近平主席所建议的阳光明媚的“新型大国关系”美国和中国在最近的峰会上。

这是（国家）经济，愚蠢的

正在展开的斯诺登网络传奇实际上淹没了奥巴马政府进一步了解习近平雄心勃勃的计划的兴趣。 重新配置 中国经济——以及如何为美国企业分得未来的经济蛋糕。这些计划的关键是惊人的投资 $ 6.4 万亿 中国的领导力 驾驶 到2020年，经济进一步“城市化”。

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这将是龙在重新配置的发展模式中的份额 强调 heightened productivity, moving the country up the international manufacturing quality ladder and digital pecking order, and encouraging ever more domestic consumption by an ever-expanding middle class. This will be joined to a massive ongoing investment in scientific and technological research. China has adopted the U.S. model of public-private sector academic integration with the aim of producing dual-use technologies and so boosting not only the military but also the civilian economy.

北京最终可能会将高达 30% 的预算用于国防相关研发。 这无疑是该国最近飞速发展的信息技术、微电子、电信、核能、生物技术和航空航天工业的一个关键载体。 至关重要的是，由于市场女神的恩惠，这一切都没有发生。

中国的步伐仍然疯狂——从 建设 of supercomputers and an 创新爆炸 to massive urban development. This would include, for example, the development of the southwestern hinterland city of Chongqin into arguably the biggest urban conglomeration in the world, with an estimated population of more than 33 million and still growing. A typical savory side story in the China boom of recent years would be the way that energy-gobbling country “won” the war in Iraq. The “纽约时报” 最近有报道称，这是 现在购买 伊拉克石油产量的近 50%。 （如果这还不能击中迪克·切尼的心，那还有什么呢？）

梦见什么？

18年2012月，习近平在中共十八大上被确认为总书记后，就开始编织“中国梦“（中国梦）供公众消费。将他的新游戏计划视为 洛伊奥比森 song with Chinese characteristics. It boils down to what Xi has termed “fulfilling the great renaissance of the Chinese race.” And the dreaming isn’t supposed to stop until the 20th Party Congress convenes in 2022, if then.

价值 6.4 万亿美元的问题是，任何涉及中国和美国统治精英的梦想竞争是否能够在地球“唯一超级大国”和亚洲新兴大国之间产生“双赢”关系。 可以肯定的是，为了增加这个梦想对明显冷漠甚至敌对的邻国的吸引力，中国外交官必须展开一场轰动一时的软实力魅力攻势。

习近平的两位前任除了模糊的“和谐社会”概念（胡锦涛）或深奥的“三个代表重要思想”（江泽民）之外想不出更好的办法，因为腐败在中国精英阶层、国家的统治者中猖獗。经济开始放缓，环境状况急剧恶化。

Xi’s dream comes with a roadmap for what a powerful future China would be like. In the shorthand language of the moment, it goes like this: strong China (economically, politically, diplomatically, scientifically, militarily), civilized China (equity and fairness, rich culture, high morals), harmonious China (among social classes), and finally beautiful China (healthy environment, low pollution).

当前的圣杯是“两个一百”，即在100年中国共产党诞辰100周年之际实现“小康社会”，即习近平退休前一年；到2021年中华人民共和国成立2049周年，建成“富强民主文明和谐的社会主义现代化国家”。

Wang Yiming, senior economist at the National Development and Reform Commission, has asserted that China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will reach 90 trillion yuan ($14.6 trillion) by 2020, when annual per capita GDP will, theoretically at least, hit the psychologically groundbreaking level of $10,000. By 2050, according to him, the country’s GDP could reach 350 trillion yuan ($56.6 trillion), and annual per capita GDP could pass the 260,000 yuan ($42,000) mark.

这些预测中蕴藏着对不懈的城市化进程所带来的经济动力的强烈信念——目标是到 70 年将中国 2030% 的人口（即惊人的 XNUMX 亿人）居住在城市。

Chinese academics are already enthusing about Xi’s dreamscape. For Xin Ming from the Central Party School (CPS) — an establishment pillar — what’s being promised is “a sufficient level of democracy, well-developed rule of law, sacrosanct human rights, and the free and full development of every citizen.”

Don’t confuse “democracy,” however, with the Western multiparty system or imagine this having anything to do with political “westernization.” Renmin University political scientist Wang Yiwei typically describes it as “the Sinocization of Marxism… opening up the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

向模范城市公民（又名农民工）致敬

当然，真正的问题不在于中国共产党的支持者和狂热分子能够如何甜蜜地实现习近平的梦想，而在于面对日益复杂和令人焦虑的现实时，这些计划将如何实施。

Just take a stroll through Hong Kong’s mega-malls like the IFC or Harbour City and you don’t need to be Li Chunling, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to observe that China’s middle class is definitely dreaming about achieving one kind of westernization — living the full consumer life of their (now embattled) American middle-class counterparts.

The real question remains: On a planet at the edge and in a country with plenty of looming problems, how can such a dream possibly be sustainable?

A number of Chinese academics are, in fact, worrying about what an emphasis on building up the country’s urban environment at a breakneck pace might actually mean. Peking University economist Li Yining, a mentor of Premier Li Keqiang, has, for instance, pointed out that when “everyone swarmed like bees” to invest in urban projects, the result was a near bubble-bursting financial crisis. “The biggest risk for China is in the financial sector. If growth comes without efficiency, how can debt be repaid after a boom in credit supply?” he asks.

中央农村工作领导小组组长陈锡文更倾向于强调核心城镇化的明显弊病：能源、资源和水资源供应可能枯竭，大量以前种植农作物的土地被占用，环境污染严重，以及严重的交通拥堵。

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习近平的梦想提出的最紧迫的问题之一是如何才能将数百万农民工转变为城市公民，而这往往是 原来意味着 居住在怪物城市边缘棚户区的农民工。仅2011年一年，就有惊人的253亿工人离开农村前往大城市。农村人均收入是城市的三倍 一次性 年收入仍然仅为 21,800 元人民币，略高于 3,500 美元（提醒人们，“中国中产阶级”仍然是一个有限的现实）。

A 2012 report by the National Population and Family Planning Commission revealed that 25.8% of the population is “self-employed,” which is a fancy way of describing the degraded state of migrant workers in a booming informal economy. Three-quarters of them are employed by private or family-owned businesses in an off-the-books fashion. Fewer than 40% of business owners sign labor contracts. In turn, only 51% of all migrant workers sign fixed-term labor contracts, and only 24% have medical insurance.

作为工作公民，理论上，他们应该能够获得当地的医疗保健。但许多地方政府否认了这些说法，因为他们 户口 — household registrations — are from other cities. In this way, slums swell everywhere and urban “citizens” drown in debt and misery. In the meantime, top urban management in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chongqin is working to eliminate such slums in order to clear the way for the wildest kinds of financial speculation and real estate madness. Something, of course, will have to give.

When former World Bank chief economist Justin Lin Yifu warned that China should avoid “over-urbanization,” he nailed it. On the ground, President Xi’s big dream looks suspiciously like a formula for meltdown. If too many migrants flood the big cities and the country fails to upgrade productivity, China will be stuck in the 可怕的中等收入陷阱.

然而，如果它以如此崩溃的方式成功，它只能通过进一步破坏国家环境来实现，其长期后果难以计算，但可能具有毁灭性。

我们不想要历史虚无主义

梦想家习近平可能只是一位隐藏着旧派观点的现代主义公关策略大师。例如，香港政治分析家林和立 (Willy Lam) 确信 “在意识形态上习近平是毛主义者”，他希望保持“对党和军队的严格控制”。

Consider the political landscape. Xi must act as the ideological guide for 80 million Communist Party members. The first thing he did after becoming general secretary was to launch an “inspection tour” of the major southern city of Shenzhen, which in the early 1980s was made China’s initial “special economic zone.” In this, he was emulating China’s first “capitalist roader,” the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s landmark 1992 turbo-reform tour of the same area. It was undoubtedly his way of promising to lead the next capitalist surge in the country.

然而，中国学术界和互联网上一场引人入胜的辩论现在围绕着习近平推动恢复原共产党领导人毛泽东的权威和合法性展开。总统声称，否则，除了“历史虚无主义”之外，将一无所有。习近平以苏联作为他不该走的路的例子。也就是说，他发出的信号是，无论他做什么，都不会成为中国版的苏联最后一位领导人米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫，也暗示他不会失去对中国军队的控制。

Xi is indeed meticulous in his interactions with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), always stressing “the dream of a strong China” and “the dream of a strong military.” At the same time, his attitude perfectly embodies the Communist Party’s grand narrative about its own grandness. Only the Party, they claim, is capable of ensuring that living standards continue to improve and the country’s ever-widening inequality gap is kept in check. Only it can ensure a stable, unified country and a “happy,” “harmonious” society. Only it can guarantee the continuing “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” defend “core interests” (especially what it refers to as “territorial sovereignty”), and ensure China, kicked around by other great powers in much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, global respect.

一个亲华的西方愤世嫉俗者会认为这只是一种更复杂的方式，就像中国人那样强调笔的力量（笔杆子）和枪管（强干子）是中华人民共和国的两大支柱。

所有这一切基本上都是解放军大校刘明福在他最近重新出版的 2010 年书中勾勒出来的： 中国梦：后美国时代的大国思维与战略姿态. On one thing Liu and Xi (along with all China’s recent leaders and PLA commanders) agree: China is “back as the most powerful nation where it’s been for a thousand years before the ‘century of humiliation.’” The bottom line: when the problems start, Xi’s dream will feed on nationalism. And nationalism — that ultimate social glue — will be the essential precondition for any reforms to come.

In April, one month after the National People’s Congress, Xi repeated that his dream would be fulfilled by 2050, while the Party’s propaganda chief Liu Yunshan ordered that the dream be written into all school textbooks. But repeating something hardly makes it so.

习近平的父亲、前副总理习仲勋是一个思维跳出框框的人。在很多方面，习近平显然也在尝试做同样的事情，他已经承诺解决从大规模腐败（“老虎和苍蝇同时打”）到政府诈骗等一切问题。 （忘记豪华的宴会吧；从现在开始，它应该只是“四菜一汤”。）

But one thing is certain: Xi won’t even make a gesture towards changing the essential model. He’ll basically only 拧 它。

南海的恐惧和厌恶

每个人都想知道习近平的梦想将如何转化为外交政策。三个月前，中国国家主席在接受新兴金砖国家（巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国和南非）记者采访时强调，“中国梦也将为世界带来机遇”。

魅力攻势：在习近平的新世界里，“和平发展”永远在场，“中国威胁”永远不在场。用北京的话来说， 被称为 “全方位外交”，并体现在习近平和李克强总理上任头几个月不间断的全球旅行中。

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Still, as with the dream at home, so abroad. Facts on the ground — or more specifically in the waters of the 中国南海 — once again threaten to turn Xi’s dream into a future nightmare. Nationalism has unsurprisingly proven a crucial factor and there’s been nothing dreamy about the continuing 索赔冲突 到该地区各个能源丰富的岛屿和水域。

Warships have recently been maneuvering as China faces off against, among other countries, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. This unsettling development has played well in Washington as the Obama administration announced a “pivot” to or “rebalancing” in Asia and a new strategy that visibly involves playing China’s neighbors off against the Middle Kingdom in what could only be considered a twenty-first century 遏制政策.

From Washington’s point of view, there have, however, been more ominous aspects to China’s new moves in the world. In bilateral trade with Japan, Russia, Iran, India, and Brazil, China has been working to bypass the U.S. dollar. Similarly, China and Britain have established a currency swap line, linking the yuan to the pound, and France plans to do the same thing with regard to the euro in an attempt to turn Paris into a major offshore trading hub for the yuan.

习近平首次出国就选择莫斯科也并非偶然。对于中国领导层来说，没有比这更重要的经济和战略关系了。正如莫斯科不会接受北约无限东扩，北京也不会接受美国在太平洋的轴心战略，而莫斯科也会支持它。

我最近在新加坡，国防部长查克·哈格尔 (Chuck Hagel) 掉在 at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense and security forum, to sell the new U.S. focus on creating what would essentially be an anti-Chinese alliance in South and Southeast Asia, as well as the Pacific. Major General Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA, was there as well listening attentively to Hagel, ready to outline a Chinese counter-strategy that would highlight Beijing’s respect for international law, its interest in turbo-charging trade with Southeast Asia, but most of all its unwillingness to yield on any of the escalating territorial disputes in the region. As he said, “The reason China constantly patrols the South China Sea and East Sea is because China considers this to be sovereign territory.”

In this way, the dream and nationalism are proving uncomfortable bedfellows abroad as well as at home. Beijing sees the U.S. pivot as a not-so-veiled declaration of the coming of a new Cold War in the Asia-Pacific region, and a dangerous add-on to the Pentagon’s 空海一体战概念，以军事化的方式实现中国作为（假定的）地球上下一个崛起大国的太平洋野心。

At the Shangri-La, Hagel did call for “a positive and constructive relationship with China” as an “essential part of America’s rebalance to Asia.” That’s where the new U.S.-driven Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — essentially the economic arm of the pivot — would fit in. China’s Ministry of Commerce is reportedly even 研究 成为其中一部分的可能性。

然而，复兴的北京不可能接受美国对该地区不受限制的经济控制，也不能保证 TPP 将成为亚太地区的主导贸易组织。毕竟，凭借其经济实力，中国已经领先于世界其他国家。 区域全面经济伙伴关系 其中包括东南亚国家联盟 (ASEAN) 的全部 10 个成员国以及澳大利亚、印度、日本、新西兰和韩国。

XNUMX月，国务卿约翰·克里在访问北京后在东京中途停留期间开始编织自己的“太平洋梦”。 然而，北京仍将对华盛顿的梦想保持警惕，因为中国领导层不可避免地将任何涉及亚洲各地行动的梦想等同于希望维持美国在该地区的永久主导地位，从而阻碍中国的崛起。

然而，民族主义在南中国海有争议、能源丰富的岛屿上发挥作用， 概念 that China wants to rule even the Asian world, no less the world, is nonsense. At the same time, the roadmap promoted at the recent Obama-Xi summit remains at best a fragile dream, especially given the American pivot and Edward Snowden’s recent revelations about the way Washington has been hacking Chinese computer systems. Perhaps the question in the region is simply whose dream will vanish first when faced with economic and military realities.

At least theoretically, a strategic adjustment by both sides could ensure that the dream of cooperation, of Chimerica, might prove less them chimerical. That, however, would imply that Washington was capable of acknowledging “core” Chinese national interests — on this Xi’s dream is explicit indeed. Whatever the confusions and difficulties the Chinese leadership faces, Beijing seems to understand the realities behind Washington’s strategic intentions. One wonders whether the reverse applies.