主题：【讨论】建立在古代战略上的新中国 -- 仰望未来的天空

[FLY]

我头一次到中国是在1983年，当时中国像是刚刚摆脱古代的日子。在大城市之外的许多当地酒店里，我要睡在宽大的草垫上（其实是相当舒适的）。在那些日子里，中国并不整洁—房间里的水杯内有很多肮脏的手指印。北京灰暗而多沙尘，连上海也是一个灰色的不动人的城市。

闲来无事的时候，我会坐在草垫上读孙子兵法。这位生活在公元前三四世纪的伟大中国军事家与那些信奉全面捣毁敌人的城市和民众的西方军事家非常不同，他思虑慎重缜密，常用欺骗、心理战以及非暴力的“作战”办法。

他认为“上兵伐谋”，“不战而屈人之兵，善之善者也。”

在过去几个月，我们的金融世界陷入崩溃，金融危机给我们社会和心里安宁带来诸多威胁，我也许变得有点疯狂，但对我而言，在眼下，孙子告诉我们很多道理。中国毫无疑问在崛起—但中国崛起的方式正是这位古代战略家所建议的方式，对于这个中央王国而言，这种办法是非常自然的。

毕竟，美国几乎归中国所有了。与西方经济体的萎靡相反，中国仍然以6%至8%的年增长率增长。中国的银行体系价值数万亿美元，而且如今有超过一亿信用卡在中国使用。甚至在G20峰会之前，北京就警告美国以负责任的政策适当地照顾中国持有的一万亿美元美国债券，并提出以新全球货币取代美元的可能性。

中国内部的一些元素正准备对西方发起全面的意识形态攻击。最为突出的就是中国新书《中国不高兴》。作者们认为中国对西方世界过于恭顺，而西方世界则总是不公平地、敌意地对待中国，这些作者们吸引了中国民族主义新听众。但鉴于中国的殖民主义历史以及美国的金融动荡，最为惊人的事情在于，这种新的民族主义似乎并非中国应对西方崩溃的原则性反应。看看古老而值得信赖的孙子吧。

尽管中国仍然坚持共产主义和反西方，但该国领导人忠实地执行孙子的格言。

他们没有打算攻击西方；他们甚至没有打算攻击台湾，虽然他们宣称台湾是中国不可分割的一部分，但他们没有采取西方的野蛮方式。相反，他们谨慎地、缓慢地、逐渐地“取胜”。他们会瞄准西方（特别是美国）脆弱的“重心”—不是西方军事，而是西方的傲慢以及浪费的金融体系。因此他们逐渐收购我们，正如孙子所说的那样，逐步解除敌人的武装，并活得比那些敌人长久。

中国大陆和台湾就是具有启迪意义的例子。多年来，人人都以为大陆会公然打台湾。大陆确实竖起对准台湾的导弹并威胁网络战争。然而如今看来，大陆似乎更可能和平地甚至愉快地吸收台湾。

当然，这不是说北京不会使用暴力。但是，在面对西方特别是美国时，中国的回应可能是孙子思想的续篇。

这似乎令人欣喜，但美国应该仔细思考是否要开香槟庆祝，这瓶香槟可能已归中国所有了。（作者 Georgie Anne Geyer）

注：译文为摘译，英文原文如下：

NEW CHINA BUILT ON ANCIENT STRATEGIES

WASHINGTON -- In 1983, a long quarter-century ago, I made my first trip to China and found a country barely emerging from ancient days. Outside of the major cities, I slept, rather comfortably actually, on bulky straw mattresses in many local hotels. China was not clean at all in those days -- we wondered how they could possibly get so many dirty fingerprints INSIDE the water glasses in our rooms.

Beijing itself should have been called DRAB, Inc. It was gray and sandy without the relief of contrasting colors because the sand poured seemingly without surcease into the city from the deserts that surround it. Even old Shanghai, now ablaze with lights, melodrama and international intrigue, was a gray, unimposing city then.

After dinner, when there was little to do, particularly in many of the smaller towns, I would sit on my straw mattresses and read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military strategist of the third and fourth centuries B.C. In sharp contrast to the strategists of the West, who believed in the all-out destruction of the enemy's cities and people, the discreet and thoughtful Sun Tzu urged extensive use of deception, of psychological war and of nonviolent methods of "warfare."

"What is of extreme importance in war," he wrote, "is to attack the enemy's strategy." And above all, "To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

Now, perhaps I have grown a little crazy (or crazier?) in these last few months as our financial world has collapsed -- and with that collapse have come so many threats to our social and psychological well-being -- but it seems to me that Sun Tzu has a lot to say to us today. China is unquestionably rising -- but China is rising in exactly the way that the ancient strategist advised and in the manner that was always so natural to the Middle Kingdom.

China, after all, literally owns the United States. In contrast to the dreary droopiness of Western economies, China is still growing at 6 to 8 percent a year. China's banking system is valued at several trillion dollars, and more than 100 million credit cards are now in use in China. Even before the G-20 gathering, Beijing was warning the U.S. to take proper care of its $1 trillion in Treasury holdings through responsible policy, and putting forward the possibility of a new global currency to replace the dollar as the world standard.

Some elements within China are up and ready for an all-out ideological assault on the West, nowhere more prominently than in a new Chinese book, really a collection of scholarly essays, the provocative "Unhappy China." The authors argue that China has been too deferential to a Western world that has been hostile and unfair to it, and they have gained quite a new audience for Chinese nationalism. But the most amazing thing, given China's colonialist history and American financial sloppiness, is the fact that this new nationalism does not seem to be the principle reaction in the country to the Western meltdown. Look instead to that old and trusted sage Sun Tzu.

While the new China, which began in the late 1980s with the quasi-capitalist measures inspired by Singapore's brilliant founder Lee Kwan Yew and carried through by the pragmatic Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, remained stubbornly communist and anti-West, the country's leadership was dutifully carrying through Sun Tzu's complex and gradually revelatory dictums.

They were not going to attack the West (God forbid!); they were not even going to attack Taiwan, even though they claimed it as an integral historic part of China -- oh no, nothing so Western barbarian! To the contrary, they were going to discreetly, slowly, gradually "win." They would target the West's -- and particularly America's -- vulnerable "center of gravity," which was not its military but its arrogant and wasteful financial system. And so they gradually bought us up, just as Sun Tzu advised those centuries ago, to steadily disarm and outlast the enemies of China.

Take the revealing example of the Mainland and Taiwan. For years, everyone thought that China would overtly attack Taiwan. Indeed, it set up missiles along the coast facing the island and threatened cyber warfare. But today, it appears far more likely that Mainland China will simply absorb Taiwan peacefully, and perhaps even happily.

After a prominent delegation of the conservative American Foreign Policy Council went to China this winter, the council's Ilan Berman wrote in the official report of China's attitude toward the ultimate inevitability of reunification:

"There appears to be good reason for Beijing's optimism. Since mid-2008, China-Taiwan relations have improved markedly. ... Fully a quarter of all Taiwanese are now estimated to have visited the Mainland, and tourism from Taiwan is increasing at a rate of roughly 30 percent a year. ... These warming ties are viewed by Chinese officials as part of a lengthy and ongoing process. ... Based on these developments, Chinese officials now say that movement toward reunification is 'unstoppable.'"

None of this means, of course, that Beijing will not, or could not, or would not respond violently outside of its borders, just as it does against protesters within; we already have the cases of the takeover of Tibet and the destruction of Uyghur nationalism in Xinjiang province. But when it comes to the United States in particular and to the West in general, China's response is likely to be a continuation of the Sun Tzu ideas.

This may seem like cause for rejoicing, but the U.S. should think carefully about uncorking the champagne. More than likely, the Chinese already own the bottle.