Officials in Washington and Beijing don’t agree on much these days, but there is one thing on which they see eye to eye: the contest between their two countries will enter a decisive phase in the 2020s. This will be the decade of living dangerously. No matter what strategies the two sides pursue or what events unfold, the tension between the United States and China will grow, and competition will intensify; it is inevitable. War, however, is not. It remains possible for the two countries to put in place guardrails that would prevent a catastrophe: a joint framework for what I call “ managed strategic competition” would reduce the risk of competition escalating into open conflict.
The Chinese Communist Party is increasingly confident that by the decade’s end, China’s economy will finally surpass that of the United States as the world’s largest in terms of GDP at market exchange rates. Western elites may dismiss the significance of that milestone; the CCP’s Politburo does not. For China, size always matters. Taking the number one slot will turbocharge Beijing’s confidence, assertiveness, and leverage in its dealings with Washington, and it will make China’s central bank more likely to float the yuan, open its capital account, and challenge the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency. Meanwhile, China continues to advance on other fronts, as well. A new policy plan, announced last fall, aims to allow China to dominate in all new technology domains, including artificial intelligence, by 2035. And Beijing now intends to complete its military modernization program by 2027 (seven years ahead of the previous schedule), with the main goal of giving China a decisive edge in all conceivable scenarios for a conflict with the United States over Taiwan. A victory in such a conflict would allow President Xi Jinping to carry out a forced reunification with Taiwan before leaving power—an achievement that would put him on the same level within the CCP pantheon as Mao Zedong. Washington must decide how to respond to Beijing’s assertive agenda—and quickly. If it were to opt for economic decoupling and open confrontation, every country in the world would be forced to take sides, and the risk of escalation would only grow. Among policymakers and experts, there is understandable skepticism as to whether Washington and Beijing can avoid such an outcome. Many doubt that U.S. and Chinese leaders can find their way to a framework to manage their diplomatic relations, military operations, and activities in cyberspace within agreed parameters that would maximize stability, avoid accidental escalation, and make room for both competitive and collaborative forces in the relationship. The two countries need to consider something akin to the procedures and mechanisms that the United States and the Soviet Union put in place to govern their relations after the Cuban missile crisis—but in this case, without first going through the near-death experience of a barely avoided war. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Managed strategic competition would involve establishing certain hard limits on each country’s security policies and conduct but would allow for full and open competition in the diplomatic, economic, and ideological realms. It would also make it possible for Washington and Beijing to cooperate in certain areas, through bilateral arrangements and also multilateral forums. Although such a framework would be difficult to construct, doing so is still possible—and the alternatives are likely to be catastrophic. BEIJING'S LONG VIEW In the United States, few have paid much attention to the domestic political and economic drivers of Chinese grand strategy, the content of that strategy, or the ways in which China has been operationalizing it in recent decades. The conversation in Washington has been all about what the United States ought to do, without much reflection on whether any given course of action might result in real changes to China’s strategic course. A prime example of this type of foreign policy myopia was an address that then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered last July, in which he effectively called for the overthrow of the CCP. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change,” he declared, including by “empower[ ing] the Chinese people.” The only thing that could lead the Chinese people to rise up against the party-state, however, is their own frustration with the CCP’s poor performance on addressing unemployment, its radical mismanagement of a natural disaster (such as a pandemic), or its massive extension of what is already intense political repression. Outside encouragement of such discontent, especially from the United States, is unlikely to help and quite likely to hinder any change. Besides, U.S. allies would never support such an approach; regime change has not exactly been a winning strategy in recent decades. Finally, bombastic statements such as Pompeo’s are utterly counterproductive, because they strengthen Xi’s hand at home, allowing him to point to the threat of foreign subversion to justify ever-tighter domestic security measures, thereby making it easier for him to rally disgruntled CCP elites in solidarity against an external threat. That last factor is particularly important for Xi, because one of his main goals is to remain in power until 2035, by which time he will be 82, the age at which Mao passed away. Xi’s determination to do so is reflected in the party’s abolition of term limits, its recent announcement of an economic plan that extends all the way to 2035, and the fact that Xi has not even hinted at who might succeed him even though only two years remain in his official term. Xi experienced some difficulty in the early part of 2020, owing to a slowing economy and the COVID-19 pandemic, whose Chinese origins put the CCP on the defensive. But by the year’s end, official Chinese media were hailing him as the party’s new “great navigator and helmsman,” who had prevailed in a heroic “people’s war” against the novel coronavirus. Indeed, Xi’s standing has been aided greatly by the shambolic management of the pandemic in the United States and a number of other Western countries, which the CCP has highlighted as evidence of the inherent superiority of the Chinese authoritarian system. And just in case any ambitious party officials harbor thoughts about an alternative candidate to lead the party after Xi’s term is supposed to end in 2022, Xi recently launched a major purge—a “rectification campaign,” as the CCP calls it—of members deemed insufficiently loyal. Meanwhile, Xi has carried out a massive crackdown on China’s Uighur minority in the region of Xinjiang; launched campaigns of repression in Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet; and stifled dissent among intellectuals, lawyers, artists, and religious organizations across China. Xi has come to believe that China should no longer fear any sanctions that the United States might impose on his country, or on individual Chinese officials, in response to violations of human rights. In his view, China’s economy is now strong enough to weather such sanctions, and the party can protect officials from any fallout, as well. Furthermore, unilateral U.S. sanctions are unlikely to be adopted by other countries, for fear of Chinese retaliation. Nonetheless, the CCP remains sensitive to the damage that can be done to China’s global brand by continuing revelations about its treatment of minorities. That is why Beijing has become more active in international forums, including the UN Human Rights Council, where it has rallied support for its campaign to push back against long-established universal norms on human rights, while also regularly attacking the United States for its own alleged abuses of those very norms. Xi is also intent on achieving Chinese self-sufficiency to head off any effort by Washington to decouple the United States’ economy from that of China or to use U.S. control of the global financial system to block China’s rise. This push lies at the heart of what Xi describes as China’s “dual circulation economy”: its shift away from export dependency and toward domestic consumption as the long-term driver of economic growth and its plan to rely on the gravitational pull of the world’s biggest consumer market to attract foreign investors and suppliers to China on Beijing’s terms. Xi also recently announced a new strategy for technology R & D and manufacturing to reduce China’s dependence on imports of certain core technologies, such as semiconductors. Beijing has concluded that the United States would never fight a war it could not win. The trouble with this approach is that it prioritizes party control and state-owned enterprises over China’s hard-working, innovative, and entrepreneurial private sector, which has been primarily responsible for the country’s remarkable economic success over the last two decades. In order to deal with a perceived external economic threat from Washington and an internal political threat from private entrepreneurs whose long-term influence threatens the power of the CCP, Xi faces a dilemma familiar to all authoritarian regimes: how to tighten central political control without extinguishing business confidence and dynamism. Xi faces a similar dilemma when it comes to what is perhaps his paramount goal: securing control over Taiwan. Xi appears to have concluded that China and Taiwan are now further away from peaceful reunification than at any time in the past 70 years. This is probably correct. But China often ignores its own role in widening the gulf. Many of those who believed that China would gradually liberalize its political system as it opened up its economic system and became more connected with the rest of the world also hoped that that process would eventually allow Taiwan to become more comfortable with some form of reunification. Instead, China has become more authoritarian under Xi, and the promise of reunification under a “one country, two systems” formula has evaporated as the Taiwanese look to Hong Kong, where China has imposed a harsh new national security law, arrested opposition politicians, and restricted media freedom. With peaceful reunification off the table, Xi’s strategy now is clear: to vastly increase the level of military power that China can exert in the Taiwan Strait, to the extent that the United States would become unwilling to fight a battle that Washington itself judged it would probably lose. Without U.S. backing, Xi believes, Taiwan would either capitulate or fight on its own and lose. This approach, however, radically underestimates three factors: the difficulty of occupying an island that is the size of the Netherlands, has the terrain of Norway, and boasts a well-armed population of 25 million; the irreparable damage to China’s international political legitimacy that would arise from such a brutal use of military force; and the deep unpredictability of U.S. domestic politics, which would determine the nature of the U.S. response if and when such a crisis arose. Beijing, in projecting its own deep strategic realism onto Washington, has concluded that the United States would never fight a war it could not win, because to do so would be terminal for the future of American power, prestige, and global standing. What China does not include in this calculus is the reverse possibility: that the failure to fight for a fellow democracy that the United States has supported for the entire postwar period would also be catastrophic for Washington, particularly in terms of the perception of U.S. allies in Asia, who might conclude that the American security guarantees they have long relied on are worthless—and then seek their own arrangements with China. As for China’s maritime and territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas, Xi will not concede an inch. Beijing will continue to sustain pressure on its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea, actively contesting freedom-of-navigation operations, probing for any weakening of individual or collective resolve—but stopping short of a provocation that might trigger a direct military confrontation with Washington, because at this stage, China is not fully confident it would win. In the meantime, Beijing will seek to cast itself in as reasonable a light as possible in its ongoing negotiations with Southeast Asian claimant states on the joint use of energy resources and fisheries in the South China Sea. Here, as elsewhere, China will fully deploy its economic leverage in the hope of securing the region’s neutrality in the event of a military incident or crisis involving the United States or its allies. In the East China Sea, China will continue to increase its military pressure on Japan around the disputed Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands, but as in Southeast Asia, here too Beijing is unlikely to risk an armed conflict, particularly given the unequivocal nature of the U.S. security guarantee to Japan. Any risk, however small, of China losing such a conflict would be politically unsustainable in Beijing and have massive domestic political consequences for Xi. AMERICA THROUGH XI'S EYES Underneath all these strategic choices lies Xi’s belief, reflected in official Chinese pronouncements and CCP literature, that the United States is experiencing a steady, irreversible structural decline. This belief is now grounded in a considerable body of evidence. A divided U.S. government failed to craft a national strategy for long-term investment in infrastructure, education, and basic scientific and technological research. The Trump administration damaged U.S. alliances, abandoned trade liberalization, withdrew the United States from its leadership of the postwar international order, and crippled U.S. diplomatic capacity. The Republican Party has been hijacked by the far right, and the American political class and electorate are so deeply polarized that it will prove difficult for any president to win support for a long-term bipartisan strategy on China. Washington, Xi believes, is highly unlikely to recover its credibility and confidence as a regional and global leader. And he is betting that as the next decade progresses, other world leaders will come to share this view and begin to adjust their strategic postures accordingly, gradually shifting from balancing with Washington against Beijing, to hedging between the two powers, to bandwagoning with China. But China worries about the possibility of Washington lashing out at Beijing in the years before U.S. power finally dissipates. Xi’s concern is not just a potential military conflict but also any rapid and radical economic decoupling. Moreover, the CCP’s diplomatic establishment fears that the Biden administration, realizing that the United States will soon be unable to match Chinese power on its own, might form an effective coalition of countries across the democratic capitalist world with the express aim of counterbalancing China collectively. In particular, CCP leaders fear that President Joe Biden’s proposal to hold a summit of the world’s major democracies represents a first step on that path, which is why China acted rapidly to secure new trade and investment agreements in Asia and Europe before the new administration came into office. Washington, Xi believes, is unlikely to recover its credibility and confidence as a global leader. Mindful of this combination of near-term risks and China’s long-term strengths, Xi’s general diplomatic strategy toward the Biden administration will be to de-escalate immediate tensions, stabilize the bilateral relationship as early as possible, and do everything possible to prevent security crises. To this end, Beijing will look to fully reopen the lines of high-level military communication with Washington that were largely cut off during the Trump administration. Xi might seek to convene a regular, high- level political dialogue, as well, although Washington will not be interested in reestablishing the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which served as the main channel between the two countries until its collapse amid the trade war of 2018–19. Finally, Beijing may moderate its military activity in the immediate period ahead in areas where the People’s Liberation Army rubs up directly against U.S. forces, particularly in the South China Sea and around Taiwan—assuming that the Biden administration discontinues the high-level political visits to Taipei that became a defining feature of the final year of the Trump administration. For Beijing, however, these are changes in tactics, not in strategy. As Xi tries to ratchet down tensions in the near term, he will have to decide whether to continue pursuing his hard-line strategy against Australia, Canada, and India, which are friends or allies of the United States. This has involved a combination of a deep diplomatic freeze and economic coercion—and, in the case of India, direct military confrontation. Xi will wait for any clear signal from Washington that part of the price for stabilizing the U.S.-Chinese relationship would be an end to such coercive measures against U.S. partners. If no such signal is forthcoming—there was none under President Donald Trump—then Beijing will resume business as usual. Meanwhile, Xi will seek to work with Biden on climate change. Xi understands this is in China’s interests because of the country’s increasing vulnerability to extreme weather events. He also realizes that Biden has an opportunity to gain international prestige if Beijing cooperates with Washington on climate change, given the weight of Biden’s own climate commitments, and he knows that Biden will want to be able to demonstrate that his engagement with Beijing led to reductions in Chinese carbon emissions. As China sees it, these factors will deliver Xi some leverage in his overall dealings with Biden. And Xi hopes that greater collaboration on climate will help stabilize the U.S.-Chinese relationship more generally. Adjustments in Chinese policy along these lines, however, are still likely to be tactical rather than strategic. Indeed, there has been remarkable continuity in Chinese strategy toward the United States since Xi came to power in 2013, and Beijing has been surprised by the relatively limited degree to which Washington has pushed back, at least until recently. Xi, driven by a sense of Marxist-Leninist determinism, also believes that history is on his side. As Mao was before him, Xi has become a formidable strategic competitor for the United States. UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT On balance, the Chinese leadership would have preferred to have seen the reelection of Trump in last year’s U.S. presidential election. That is not to say that Xi saw strategic value in every element of Trump’s foreign policy; he didn’t. The CCP found the Trump administration’s trade war humiliating, its moves toward decoupling worrying, its criticism of China’s human rights record insulting, and its formal declaration of China as a “ strategic competitor” sobering. But most in the CCP’s foreign policy establishment view the recent shift in U.S. sentiment toward China as structural—an inevitable byproduct of the changing balance of power between the two countries. In fact, a number have been quietly relieved that open strategic competition has replaced the pretense of bilateral cooperation. With Washington having removed the mask, this thinking goes, China could now move more rapidly—and, in some cases, openly—toward realizing its strategic goals, while also claiming to be the aggrieved party in the face of U.S. belligerence. But by far the greatest gift that Trump delivered to Beijing was the sheer havoc his presidency unleashed within the United States and between Washington and its allies. China was able to exploit the many cracks that developed between liberal democracies as they tried to navigate Trump’s protectionism, climate change denialism, nationalism, and contempt for all forms of multilateralism. During the Trump years, Beijing benefited not because of what it offered the world but because of what Washington ceased to offer. The result was that China achieved victories such as the massive Asia-Pacific free-trade deal known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which will enmesh the Chinese and European economies to a far greater degree than Washington would like. China is wary of the Biden administration’s ability to help the United States recover from those self-inflicted wounds. Beijing has seen Washington bounce back from political, economic, and security disasters before. Nonetheless, the CCP remains confident that the inherently divisive nature of U.S. politics will make it impossible for the new administration to solidify support for any coherent China strategy it might devise.
Chinese Coast Guard vessels passing Philippine fishing boats in the South China Sea, April 2017 Erik De Castro / Reuters Biden intends to prove Beijing wrong in its assessment that the United States is now in irreversible decline. He will seek to use his extensive experience on Capitol Hill to forge a domestic economic strategy to rebuild the foundations of U.S. power in the post-pandemic world. He is also likely to continue to strengthen the capabilities of the U.S. military and to do what it takes to sustain American global technological leadership. He has assembled a team of economic, foreign policy, and national security advisers who are experienced professionals and well versed in China—in stark contrast to their predecessors, who, with a couple of midranking exceptions, had little grasp of China and even less grasp of how to make Washington work. Biden’s advisers also understand that in order to restore U.S. power abroad, they must rebuild the U.S. economy at home in ways that will reduce the country’s staggering inequality and increase economic opportunities for all Americans. Doing so will help Biden maintain the political leverage he ’ll need to craft a durable China strategy with bipartisan support—no mean feat when opportunistic opponents such as Pompeo will have ample incentive to disparage any plan he puts forward as little more than appeasement. To lend his strategy credibility, Biden will have to make sure the U.S. military stays several steps ahead of China’s increasingly sophisticated array of military capabilities. This task will be made more difficult by intense budgetary constraints, as well as pressure from some factions within the Democratic Party to reduce military spending in order to boost social welfare programs. For Biden’s strategy to be seen as credible in Beijing, his administration will need to hold the line on the aggregate defense budget and cover increased expenses in the Indo-Pacific region by redirecting military resources away from less pressing theaters, such as Europe. As China becomes richer and stronger, the United States’ largest and closest allies will become ever more crucial to Washington. For the first time in many decades, the United States will soon require the combined heft of its allies to maintain an overall balance of power against an adversary. China will keep trying to peel countries away from the United States—such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom—using a combination of economic carrots and sticks. To prevent China from succeeding, the Biden administration needs to commit itself to fully opening the U.S. economy to its major strategic partners. The United States prides itself on having one of the most open economies in the world. But even before Trump’s pivot to protectionism, that was not the case. Washington has long burdened even its closest allies with formidable tariff and nontariff barriers to trade, investment, capital, technology, and talent. If the United States wishes to remain the center of what until recently was called “the free world,” then it must create a seamless economy across the national boundaries of its major Asian, European, and North American partners and allies. To do so, Biden must overcome the protectionist impulses that Trump exploited and build support for new trade agreements anchored in open markets. To allay the fears of a skeptical electorate, he will need to show Americans that such agreements will ultimately lead to lower prices, better wages, more opportunities for U.S. industry, and stronger environmental protections and assure them that the gains won from trade liberalization can help pay for major domestic improvements in education, childcare, and health care. The Biden administration will also strive to restore the United States’ leadership in multilateral institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Most of the world will welcome this after four years of watching the Trump administration sabotage much of the machinery of the postwar international order. But the damage will not be repaired overnight. The most pressing priorities are fixing the World Trade Organization’s broken dispute- resolution process, rejoining the Paris agreement on climate change, increasing the capitalization of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (to provide credible alternatives to China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and its Belt and Road Initiative), and restoring U.S. funding for critical UN agencies. Such institutions have not only been instruments of U.S. soft power since Washington helped create them after the last world war; their operations also materially affect American hard power in areas such as nuclear proliferation and arms control. Unless Washington steps up to the plate, the institutions of the international system will increasingly become Chinese satrapies, driven by Chinese finance, influence, and personnel. MANAGED STRATEGIC COMPETITION The deeply conflicting nature of U.S. and Chinese strategic objectives and the profoundly competitive nature of the relationship may make conflict, and even war, seem inevitable—even if neither country wants that outcome. China will seek to achieve global economic dominance and regional military superiority over the United States without provoking direct conflict with Washington and its allies. Once it achieves superiority, China will then incrementally change its behavior toward other states, especially when their policies conflict with China’s ever-changing definition of its core national interests. On top of this, China has already sought to gradually make the multilateral system more obliging of its national interests and values. But a gradual, peaceful transition to an international order that accommodates Chinese leadership now seems far less likely to occur than it did just a few years ago. For all the eccentricities and flaws of the Trump administration, its decision to declare China a strategic competitor, formally end the doctrine of strategic engagement, and launch a trade war with Beijing succeeded in making clear that Washington was willing to put up a significant fight. And the Biden administration’s plan to rebuild the fundamentals of national U.S. power at home, rebuild U.S. alliances abroad, and reject a simplistic return to earlier forms of strategic engagement with China signals that the contest will continue, albeit tempered by cooperation in a number of defined areas. The question for both Washington and Beijing, then, is whether they can conduct this high level of strategic competition within agreed-on parameters that would reduce the risk of a crisis, conflict, and war. In theory, this is possible; in practice, however, the near-complete erosion of trust between the two has radically increased the degree of difficulty. Indeed, many in the U.S. national security community believe that the CCP has never had any compunction about lying or hiding its true intentions in order to deceive its adversaries. In this view, Chinese diplomacy aims to tie opponents’ hands and buy time for Beijing’s military, security, and intelligence machinery to achieve superiority and establish new facts on the ground. To win broad support from U.S. foreign policy elites, therefore, any concept of managed strategic competition will need to include a stipulation by both parties to base any new rules of the road on a reciprocal practice of “trust but verify.” The idea of managed strategic competition is anchored in a deeply realist view of the global order. It accepts that states will continue to seek security by building a balance of power in their favor, while recognizing that in doing so they are likely to create security dilemmas for other states whose fundamental interests may be disadvantaged by their actions. The trick in this case is to reduce the risk to both sides as the competition between them unfolds by jointly crafting a limited number of rules of the road that will help prevent war. The rules will enable each side to compete vigorously across all policy and regional domains. But if either side breaches the rules, then all bets are off, and it’s back to all the hazardous uncertainties of the law of the jungle. Washington, Xi believes, is unlikely to recover its credibility and confidence as a global leader. The first step to building such a framework would be to identify a few immediate steps that each side must take in order for a substantive dialogue to proceed and a limited number of hard limits that both sides (and U.S. allies) must respect. Both sides must abstain, for example, from cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure. Washington must return to strictly adhering to the “one China” policy, especially by ending the Trump administration’s provocative and unnecessary high-level visits to Taipei. For its part, Beijing must dial back its recent pattern of provocative military exercises, deployments, and maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait. In the South China Sea, Beijing must not reclaim or militarize any more islands and must commit to respecting freedom of navigation and aircraft movement without challenge; for its part, the United States and its allies could then (and only then) reduce the number of operations they carry out in the sea. Similarly, China and Japan could cut back their military deployments in the East China Sea by mutual agreement over time. If both sides could agree on those stipulations, each would have to accept that the other will still try to maximize its advantages while stopping short of breaching the limits. Washington and Beijing would continue to compete for strategic and economic influence across the various regions of the world. They would keep seeking reciprocal access to each other’s markets and would still take retaliatory measures when such access was denied. They would still compete in foreign investment markets, technology markets, capital markets, and currency markets. And they would likely carry out a global contest for hearts and minds, with Washington stressing the importance of democracy, open economies, and human rights and Beijing highlighting its approach to authoritarian capitalism and what it calls “ the China development model.” Even amid escalating competition, however, there will be some room for cooperation in a number of critical areas. This occurred even between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. It should certainly be possible now between the United States and China, when the stakes are not nearly as high. Aside from collaborating on climate change, the two countries could conduct bilateral nuclear arms control negotiations, including on mutual ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and work toward an agreement on acceptable military applications of artificial intelligence. They could cooperate on North Korean nuclear disarmament and on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. They could undertake a series of confidence-building measures across the Indo- Pacific region, such as coordinated disaster-response and humanitarian missions. They could work together to improve global financial stability, especially by agreeing to reschedule the debts of developing countries hit hard by the pandemic. And they could jointly build a better system for distributing COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world.
Human rights activists in Hong Kong protest in support of Xinjiang's Uighur community, December 2019 Lucy Nicholson / Reuters That list is far from exhaustive. But the strategic rationale for all the items is the same: it is better for both countries to operate within a joint framework of managed competition than to have no rules at all. The framework would need to be negotiated between a designated and trusted high-level representative of Biden and a Chinese counterpart close to Xi; only a direct, high-level channel of that sort could lead to confidential understandings on the hard limits to be respected by both sides. These two people would also become the points of contact when violations occurred, as they are bound to from time to time, and the ones to police the consequences of any such violations. Over time, a minimum level of strategic trust might emerge. And maybe both sides would also discover that the benefits of continued collaboration on common planetary challenges, such as climate change, might begin to affect the other, more competitive and even conflictual areas of the relationship. There will be many who will criticize this approach as naive. Their responsibility, however, is to come up with something better. Both the United States and China are currently in search of a formula to manage their relationship for the dangerous decade ahead. The hard truth is that no relationship can ever be managed unless there is a basic agreement between the parties on the terms of that management. GAME ON What would be the measures of success should the United States and China agree on such a joint strategic framework? One sign of success would be if by 2030 they have avoided a military crisis or conflict across the Taiwan Strait or a debilitating cyberattack. A convention banning various forms of robotic warfare would be a clear victory, as would the United States and China acting immediately together, and with the World Health Organization, to combat the next pandemic. Perhaps the most important sign of success, however, would be a situation in which both countries competed in an open and vigorous campaign for global support for the ideas, values, and problem-solving approaches that their respective systems offer—with the outcome still to be determined. Success, of course, has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. But the most demonstrable example of a failed approach to managed strategic competition would be over Taiwan. If Xi were to calculate that he could call Washington’s bluff by unilaterally breaking out of whatever agreement had been privately reached with Washington, the world would find itself in a world of pain. In one fell swoop, such a crisis would rewrite the future of the global order. A few days before Biden’s inauguration, Chen Yixin, the secretary-general of the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, stated that “the rise of the East and the decline of the West has become [a global] trend and changes of the international landscape are in our favor.” Chen is a close confidant of Xi and a central figure in China’s normally cautious national security apparatus, and so the hubris in his statement is notable. In reality, there is a long way to go in this race. China has multiple domestic vulnerabilities that are rarely noted in the media. The United States, on the other hand, always has its weaknesses on full public display —but has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity for reinvention and restoration. Managed strategic competition would highlight the strengths and test the weaknesses of both great powers—and may the best system win.
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】 : 前藩王Rudd给白等皇帝的折子上说： : As Mao was before him, Xi has become a formidable strategic competitor for : the United States.
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】 : 僵君们看看。他站在习大大的视角，逐条分析习大大的策略，十分客观靠谱。白等看完 : 和卡马拉在下室瑟瑟发抖。 : https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-05/kevin- rudd- : usa-chinese-confrontation-short-of-war : Officials in Washington and Beijing don’t agree on much these days, but : there is one thing on which they see eye to eye: the contest between their : two countries will enter a decisive phase in the 2020s. This will be the : decade of living dangerously. No matter what strategies the two sides pursue : or what events unfold, the tension between the United States and China will : grow, and competition will intensify; it is inevitable. War, however, is : ...................
好文。不过这一段有疑问。 “What China does not include in this calculus is the reverse possibility: that the failure to fight for a fellow democracy that the United States has supported for the entire postwar period would also be catastrophic for Washington, particularly in terms of the perception of U.S. allies in Asia, who might conclude that the American security guarantees they have long relied on are worthless—and then seek their own arrangements with China. ”说的好像美国在克里米亚和南奥塞梯都出过兵似的。
僵君们看看。他站在习大大的视角，逐条分析习大大的策略，十分客观靠谱。白等看完和卡马拉在下室瑟瑟发抖。
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-05/kevin-rudd-usa-chinese-confrontation-short-of-war
Officials in Washington and Beijing don’t agree on much these days, but
there is one thing on which they see eye to eye: the contest between their
two countries will enter a decisive phase in the 2020s. This will be the
decade of living dangerously. No matter what strategies the two sides pursue or what events unfold, the tension between the United States and China will grow, and competition will intensify; it is inevitable. War, however, is
not. It remains possible for the two countries to put in place guardrails
that would prevent a catastrophe: a joint framework for what I call “
managed strategic competition” would reduce the risk of competition
escalating into open conflict.
The Chinese Communist Party is increasingly confident that by the decade’s end, China’s economy will finally surpass that of the United States as the world’s largest in terms of GDP at market exchange rates. Western elites
may dismiss the significance of that milestone; the CCP’s Politburo does
not. For China, size always matters. Taking the number one slot will
turbocharge Beijing’s confidence, assertiveness, and leverage in its
dealings with Washington, and it will make China’s central bank more likely to float the yuan, open its capital account, and challenge the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency. Meanwhile, China continues to advance
on other fronts, as well. A new policy plan, announced last fall, aims to
allow China to dominate in all new technology domains, including artificial intelligence, by 2035. And Beijing now intends to complete its military
modernization program by 2027 (seven years ahead of the previous schedule), with the main goal of giving China a decisive edge in all conceivable
scenarios for a conflict with the United States over Taiwan. A victory in
such a conflict would allow President Xi Jinping to carry out a forced
reunification with Taiwan before leaving power—an achievement that would
put him on the same level within the CCP pantheon as Mao Zedong.
Washington must decide how to respond to Beijing’s assertive agenda—and
quickly. If it were to opt for economic decoupling and open confrontation,
every country in the world would be forced to take sides, and the risk of
escalation would only grow. Among policymakers and experts, there is
understandable skepticism as to whether Washington and Beijing can avoid
such an outcome. Many doubt that U.S. and Chinese leaders can find their way to a framework to manage their diplomatic relations, military operations,
and activities in cyberspace within agreed parameters that would maximize
stability, avoid accidental escalation, and make room for both competitive
and collaborative forces in the relationship. The two countries need to
consider something akin to the procedures and mechanisms that the United
States and the Soviet Union put in place to govern their relations after the Cuban missile crisis—but in this case, without first going through the
near-death experience of a barely avoided war.
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Managed strategic competition would involve establishing certain hard limits on each country’s security policies and conduct but would allow for full
and open competition in the diplomatic, economic, and ideological realms. It would also make it possible for Washington and Beijing to cooperate in
certain areas, through bilateral arrangements and also multilateral forums. Although such a framework would be difficult to construct, doing so is still possible—and the alternatives are likely to be catastrophic.
BEIJING'S LONG VIEW
In the United States, few have paid much attention to the domestic political and economic drivers of Chinese grand strategy, the content of that
strategy, or the ways in which China has been operationalizing it in recent decades. The conversation in Washington has been all about what the United
States ought to do, without much reflection on whether any given course of
action might result in real changes to China’s strategic course. A prime
example of this type of foreign policy myopia was an address that then
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered last July, in which he effectively called for the overthrow of the CCP. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change,” he declared, including by “empower[
ing] the Chinese people.”
The only thing that could lead the Chinese people to rise up against the
party-state, however, is their own frustration with the CCP’s poor
performance on addressing unemployment, its radical mismanagement of a
natural disaster (such as a pandemic), or its massive extension of what is
already intense political repression. Outside encouragement of such
discontent, especially from the United States, is unlikely to help and quite likely to hinder any change. Besides, U.S. allies would never support such an approach; regime change has not exactly been a winning strategy in recent decades. Finally, bombastic statements such as Pompeo’s are utterly
counterproductive, because they strengthen Xi’s hand at home, allowing him to point to the threat of foreign subversion to justify ever-tighter
domestic security measures, thereby making it easier for him to rally
disgruntled CCP elites in solidarity against an external threat.
That last factor is particularly important for Xi, because one of his main
goals is to remain in power until 2035, by which time he will be 82, the age at which Mao passed away. Xi’s determination to do so is reflected in the party’s abolition of term limits, its recent announcement of an economic
plan that extends all the way to 2035, and the fact that Xi has not even
hinted at who might succeed him even though only two years remain in his
official term. Xi experienced some difficulty in the early part of 2020,
owing to a slowing economy and the COVID-19 pandemic, whose Chinese origins put the CCP on the defensive. But by the year’s end, official Chinese media were hailing him as the party’s new “great navigator and helmsman,” who had prevailed in a heroic “people’s war” against the novel coronavirus.
Indeed, Xi’s standing has been aided greatly by the shambolic management of the pandemic in the United States and a number of other Western countries, which the CCP has highlighted as evidence of the inherent superiority of the Chinese authoritarian system. And just in case any ambitious party
officials harbor thoughts about an alternative candidate to lead the party
after Xi’s term is supposed to end in 2022, Xi recently launched a major
purge—a “rectification campaign,” as the CCP calls it—of members deemed insufficiently loyal.
Meanwhile, Xi has carried out a massive crackdown on China’s Uighur
minority in the region of Xinjiang; launched campaigns of repression in Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet; and stifled dissent among intellectuals,
lawyers, artists, and religious organizations across China. Xi has come to
believe that China should no longer fear any sanctions that the United
States might impose on his country, or on individual Chinese officials, in
response to violations of human rights. In his view, China’s economy is now strong enough to weather such sanctions, and the party can protect
officials from any fallout, as well. Furthermore, unilateral U.S. sanctions are unlikely to be adopted by other countries, for fear of Chinese
retaliation. Nonetheless, the CCP remains sensitive to the damage that can
be done to China’s global brand by continuing revelations about its
treatment of minorities. That is why Beijing has become more active in
international forums, including the UN Human Rights Council, where it has
rallied support for its campaign to push back against long-established
universal norms on human rights, while also regularly attacking the United
States for its own alleged abuses of those very norms.
Xi is also intent on achieving Chinese self-sufficiency to head off any
effort by Washington to decouple the United States’ economy from that of
China or to use U.S. control of the global financial system to block China’s rise. This push lies at the heart of what Xi describes as China’s “dual circulation economy”: its shift away from export dependency and toward
domestic consumption as the long-term driver of economic growth and its plan to rely on the gravitational pull of the world’s biggest consumer market
to attract foreign investors and suppliers to China on Beijing’s terms. Xi also recently announced a new strategy for technology R & D and
manufacturing to reduce China’s dependence on imports of certain core
technologies, such as semiconductors.
Beijing has concluded that the United States would never fight a war it
could not win.
The trouble with this approach is that it prioritizes party control and
state-owned enterprises over China’s hard-working, innovative, and
entrepreneurial private sector, which has been primarily responsible for the country’s remarkable economic success over the last two decades. In order to deal with a perceived external economic threat from Washington and an
internal political threat from private entrepreneurs whose long-term
influence threatens the power of the CCP, Xi faces a dilemma familiar to all authoritarian regimes: how to tighten central political control without
extinguishing business confidence and dynamism.
Xi faces a similar dilemma when it comes to what is perhaps his paramount
goal: securing control over Taiwan. Xi appears to have concluded that China and Taiwan are now further away from peaceful reunification than at any time in the past 70 years. This is probably correct. But China often ignores its own role in widening the gulf. Many of those who believed that China would gradually liberalize its political system as it opened up its economic
system and became more connected with the rest of the world also hoped that that process would eventually allow Taiwan to become more comfortable with
some form of reunification. Instead, China has become more authoritarian
under Xi, and the promise of reunification under a “one country, two
systems” formula has evaporated as the Taiwanese look to Hong Kong, where
China has imposed a harsh new national security law, arrested opposition
politicians, and restricted media freedom.
With peaceful reunification off the table, Xi’s strategy now is clear: to
vastly increase the level of military power that China can exert in the
Taiwan Strait, to the extent that the United States would become unwilling
to fight a battle that Washington itself judged it would probably lose.
Without U.S. backing, Xi believes, Taiwan would either capitulate or fight
on its own and lose. This approach, however, radically underestimates three factors: the difficulty of occupying an island that is the size of the
Netherlands, has the terrain of Norway, and boasts a well-armed population
of 25 million; the irreparable damage to China’s international political
legitimacy that would arise from such a brutal use of military force; and
the deep unpredictability of U.S. domestic politics, which would determine
the nature of the U.S. response if and when such a crisis arose. Beijing, in projecting its own deep strategic realism onto Washington, has concluded
that the United States would never fight a war it could not win, because to do so would be terminal for the future of American power, prestige, and
global standing. What China does not include in this calculus is the reverse possibility: that the failure to fight for a fellow democracy that the
United States has supported for the entire postwar period would also be
catastrophic for Washington, particularly in terms of the perception of U.S. allies in Asia, who might conclude that the American security guarantees
they have long relied on are worthless—and then seek their own arrangements with China.
As for China’s maritime and territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas, Xi will not concede an inch. Beijing will continue to sustain
pressure on its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea, actively
contesting freedom-of-navigation operations, probing for any weakening of
individual or collective resolve—but stopping short of a provocation that
might trigger a direct military confrontation with Washington, because at
this stage, China is not fully confident it would win. In the meantime,
Beijing will seek to cast itself in as reasonable a light as possible in its ongoing negotiations with Southeast Asian claimant states on the joint use of energy resources and fisheries in the South China Sea. Here, as elsewhere, China will fully deploy its economic leverage in the hope of securing the region’s neutrality in the event of a military incident or crisis involving the United States or its allies. In the East China Sea, China will continue to increase its military pressure on Japan around the disputed Diaoyu/
Senkaku Islands, but as in Southeast Asia, here too Beijing is unlikely to
risk an armed conflict, particularly given the unequivocal nature of the U.S. security guarantee to Japan. Any risk, however small, of China losing such a conflict would be politically unsustainable in Beijing and have massive
domestic political consequences for Xi.
AMERICA THROUGH XI'S EYES
Underneath all these strategic choices lies Xi’s belief, reflected in
official Chinese pronouncements and CCP literature, that the United States
is experiencing a steady, irreversible structural decline. This belief is
now grounded in a considerable body of evidence. A divided U.S. government
failed to craft a national strategy for long-term investment in
infrastructure, education, and basic scientific and technological research. The Trump administration damaged U.S. alliances, abandoned trade
liberalization, withdrew the United States from its leadership of the
postwar international order, and crippled U.S. diplomatic capacity. The
Republican Party has been hijacked by the far right, and the American
political class and electorate are so deeply polarized that it will prove
difficult for any president to win support for a long-term bipartisan
strategy on China. Washington, Xi believes, is highly unlikely to recover
its credibility and confidence as a regional and global leader. And he is
betting that as the next decade progresses, other world leaders will come to share this view and begin to adjust their strategic postures accordingly,
gradually shifting from balancing with Washington against Beijing, to
hedging between the two powers, to bandwagoning with China.
But China worries about the possibility of Washington lashing out at Beijing in the years before U.S. power finally dissipates. Xi’s concern is not
just a potential military conflict but also any rapid and radical economic
decoupling. Moreover, the CCP’s diplomatic establishment fears that the
Biden administration, realizing that the United States will soon be unable
to match Chinese power on its own, might form an effective coalition of
countries across the democratic capitalist world with the express aim of
counterbalancing China collectively. In particular, CCP leaders fear that
President Joe Biden’s proposal to hold a summit of the world’s major
democracies represents a first step on that path, which is why China acted
rapidly to secure new trade and investment agreements in Asia and Europe
before the new administration came into office.
Washington, Xi believes, is unlikely to recover its credibility and
confidence as a global leader.
Mindful of this combination of near-term risks and China’s long-term
strengths, Xi’s general diplomatic strategy toward the Biden administration will be to de-escalate immediate tensions, stabilize the bilateral
relationship as early as possible, and do everything possible to prevent
security crises. To this end, Beijing will look to fully reopen the lines of high-level military communication with Washington that were largely cut off during the Trump administration. Xi might seek to convene a regular, high-
level political dialogue, as well, although Washington will not be
interested in reestablishing the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which served as the main channel between the two countries until its
collapse amid the trade war of 2018–19. Finally, Beijing may moderate its
military activity in the immediate period ahead in areas where the People’s Liberation Army rubs up directly against U.S. forces, particularly in the
South China Sea and around Taiwan—assuming that the Biden administration
discontinues the high-level political visits to Taipei that became a
defining feature of the final year of the Trump administration. For Beijing, however, these are changes in tactics, not in strategy.
As Xi tries to ratchet down tensions in the near term, he will have to
decide whether to continue pursuing his hard-line strategy against Australia, Canada, and India, which are friends or allies of the United States. This has involved a combination of a deep diplomatic freeze and economic coercion—and, in the case of India, direct military confrontation. Xi will wait for any clear signal from Washington that part of the price for stabilizing the U.S.-Chinese relationship would be an end to such coercive measures against U.S. partners. If no such signal is forthcoming—there was none under
President Donald Trump—then Beijing will resume business as usual.
Meanwhile, Xi will seek to work with Biden on climate change. Xi understands this is in China’s interests because of the country’s increasing
vulnerability to extreme weather events. He also realizes that Biden has an opportunity to gain international prestige if Beijing cooperates with
Washington on climate change, given the weight of Biden’s own climate
commitments, and he knows that Biden will want to be able to demonstrate
that his engagement with Beijing led to reductions in Chinese carbon
emissions. As China sees it, these factors will deliver Xi some leverage in his overall dealings with Biden. And Xi hopes that greater collaboration on climate will help stabilize the U.S.-Chinese relationship more generally.
Adjustments in Chinese policy along these lines, however, are still likely
to be tactical rather than strategic. Indeed, there has been remarkable
continuity in Chinese strategy toward the United States since Xi came to
power in 2013, and Beijing has been surprised by the relatively limited
degree to which Washington has pushed back, at least until recently. Xi,
driven by a sense of Marxist-Leninist determinism, also believes that
history is on his side. As Mao was before him, Xi has become a formidable
strategic competitor for the United States.
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
On balance, the Chinese leadership would have preferred to have seen the
reelection of Trump in last year’s U.S. presidential election. That is not to say that Xi saw strategic value in every element of Trump’s foreign
policy; he didn’t. The CCP found the Trump administration’s trade war
humiliating, its moves toward decoupling worrying, its criticism of China’s human rights record insulting, and its formal declaration of China as a “
strategic competitor” sobering. But most in the CCP’s foreign policy
establishment view the recent shift in U.S. sentiment toward China as
structural—an inevitable byproduct of the changing balance of power between the two countries. In fact, a number have been quietly relieved that open
strategic competition has replaced the pretense of bilateral cooperation.
With Washington having removed the mask, this thinking goes, China could now move more rapidly—and, in some cases, openly—toward realizing its
strategic goals, while also claiming to be the aggrieved party in the face
of U.S. belligerence.
But by far the greatest gift that Trump delivered to Beijing was the sheer
havoc his presidency unleashed within the United States and between
Washington and its allies. China was able to exploit the many cracks that
developed between liberal democracies as they tried to navigate Trump’s
protectionism, climate change denialism, nationalism, and contempt for all
forms of multilateralism. During the Trump years, Beijing benefited not
because of what it offered the world but because of what Washington ceased
to offer. The result was that China achieved victories such as the massive
Asia-Pacific free-trade deal known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership and the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which
will enmesh the Chinese and European economies to a far greater degree than Washington would like.
China is wary of the Biden administration’s ability to help the United
States recover from those self-inflicted wounds. Beijing has seen Washington bounce back from political, economic, and security disasters before.
Nonetheless, the CCP remains confident that the inherently divisive nature
of U.S. politics will make it impossible for the new administration to
solidify support for any coherent China strategy it might devise.
Chinese Coast Guard vessels passing Philippine fishing boats in the South
China Sea, April 2017
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Biden intends to prove Beijing wrong in its assessment that the United
States is now in irreversible decline. He will seek to use his extensive
experience on Capitol Hill to forge a domestic economic strategy to rebuild the foundations of U.S. power in the post-pandemic world. He is also likely to continue to strengthen the capabilities of the U.S. military and to do
what it takes to sustain American global technological leadership. He has
assembled a team of economic, foreign policy, and national security advisers who are experienced professionals and well versed in China—in stark
contrast to their predecessors, who, with a couple of midranking exceptions, had little grasp of China and even less grasp of how to make Washington
work. Biden’s advisers also understand that in order to restore U.S. power abroad, they must rebuild the U.S. economy at home in ways that will reduce the country’s staggering inequality and increase economic opportunities for all Americans. Doing so will help Biden maintain the political leverage he
’ll need to craft a durable China strategy with bipartisan support—no mean feat when opportunistic opponents such as Pompeo will have ample incentive to disparage any plan he puts forward as little more than appeasement.
To lend his strategy credibility, Biden will have to make sure the U.S.
military stays several steps ahead of China’s increasingly sophisticated
array of military capabilities. This task will be made more difficult by
intense budgetary constraints, as well as pressure from some factions within the Democratic Party to reduce military spending in order to boost social
welfare programs. For Biden’s strategy to be seen as credible in Beijing,
his administration will need to hold the line on the aggregate defense
budget and cover increased expenses in the Indo-Pacific region by
redirecting military resources away from less pressing theaters, such as
Europe.
As China becomes richer and stronger, the United States’ largest and
closest allies will become ever more crucial to Washington. For the first
time in many decades, the United States will soon require the combined heft of its allies to maintain an overall balance of power against an adversary. China will keep trying to peel countries away from the United States—such
as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United
Kingdom—using a combination of economic carrots and sticks. To prevent
China from succeeding, the Biden administration needs to commit itself to
fully opening the U.S. economy to its major strategic partners. The United
States prides itself on having one of the most open economies in the world. But even before Trump’s pivot to protectionism, that was not the case.
Washington has long burdened even its closest allies with formidable tariff and nontariff barriers to trade, investment, capital, technology, and talent. If the United States wishes to remain the center of what until recently
was called “the free world,” then it must create a seamless economy across the national boundaries of its major Asian, European, and North American
partners and allies. To do so, Biden must overcome the protectionist
impulses that Trump exploited and build support for new trade agreements
anchored in open markets. To allay the fears of a skeptical electorate, he
will need to show Americans that such agreements will ultimately lead to
lower prices, better wages, more opportunities for U.S. industry, and
stronger environmental protections and assure them that the gains won from
trade liberalization can help pay for major domestic improvements in
education, childcare, and health care.
The Biden administration will also strive to restore the United States’
leadership in multilateral institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Most of the
world will welcome this after four years of watching the Trump
administration sabotage much of the machinery of the postwar international
order. But the damage will not be repaired overnight. The most pressing
priorities are fixing the World Trade Organization’s broken dispute-
resolution process, rejoining the Paris agreement on climate change,
increasing the capitalization of both the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (to provide credible alternatives to China’s Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank and its Belt and Road Initiative), and
restoring U.S. funding for critical UN agencies. Such institutions have not only been instruments of U.S. soft power since Washington helped create them after the last world war; their operations also materially affect American hard power in areas such as nuclear proliferation and arms control. Unless
Washington steps up to the plate, the institutions of the international
system will increasingly become Chinese satrapies, driven by Chinese finance, influence, and personnel.
MANAGED STRATEGIC COMPETITION
The deeply conflicting nature of U.S. and Chinese strategic objectives and
the profoundly competitive nature of the relationship may make conflict, and even war, seem inevitable—even if neither country wants that outcome.
China will seek to achieve global economic dominance and regional military
superiority over the United States without provoking direct conflict with
Washington and its allies. Once it achieves superiority, China will then
incrementally change its behavior toward other states, especially when their policies conflict with China’s ever-changing definition of its core
national interests. On top of this, China has already sought to gradually
make the multilateral system more obliging of its national interests and
values.
But a gradual, peaceful transition to an international order that
accommodates Chinese leadership now seems far less likely to occur than it
did just a few years ago. For all the eccentricities and flaws of the Trump administration, its decision to declare China a strategic competitor,
formally end the doctrine of strategic engagement, and launch a trade war
with Beijing succeeded in making clear that Washington was willing to put up a significant fight. And the Biden administration’s plan to rebuild the
fundamentals of national U.S. power at home, rebuild U.S. alliances abroad, and reject a simplistic return to earlier forms of strategic engagement with China signals that the contest will continue, albeit tempered by
cooperation in a number of defined areas.
The question for both Washington and Beijing, then, is whether they can
conduct this high level of strategic competition within agreed-on parameters that would reduce the risk of a crisis, conflict, and war. In theory, this is possible; in practice, however, the near-complete erosion of trust
between the two has radically increased the degree of difficulty. Indeed,
many in the U.S. national security community believe that the CCP has never had any compunction about lying or hiding its true intentions in order to
deceive its adversaries. In this view, Chinese diplomacy aims to tie
opponents’ hands and buy time for Beijing’s military, security, and
intelligence machinery to achieve superiority and establish new facts on the ground. To win broad support from U.S. foreign policy elites, therefore,
any concept of managed strategic competition will need to include a
stipulation by both parties to base any new rules of the road on a
reciprocal practice of “trust but verify.”
The idea of managed strategic competition is anchored in a deeply realist
view of the global order. It accepts that states will continue to seek
security by building a balance of power in their favor, while recognizing
that in doing so they are likely to create security dilemmas for other
states whose fundamental interests may be disadvantaged by their actions.
The trick in this case is to reduce the risk to both sides as the
competition between them unfolds by jointly crafting a limited number of
rules of the road that will help prevent war. The rules will enable each
side to compete vigorously across all policy and regional domains. But if
either side breaches the rules, then all bets are off, and it’s back to all the hazardous uncertainties of the law of the jungle.
Washington, Xi believes, is unlikely to recover its credibility and
confidence as a global leader.
The first step to building such a framework would be to identify a few
immediate steps that each side must take in order for a substantive dialogue to proceed and a limited number of hard limits that both sides (and U.S.
allies) must respect. Both sides must abstain, for example, from
cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure. Washington must return to
strictly adhering to the “one China” policy, especially by ending the
Trump administration’s provocative and unnecessary high-level visits to
Taipei. For its part, Beijing must dial back its recent pattern of
provocative military exercises, deployments, and maneuvers in the Taiwan
Strait. In the South China Sea, Beijing must not reclaim or militarize any
more islands and must commit to respecting freedom of navigation and
aircraft movement without challenge; for its part, the United States and its allies could then (and only then) reduce the number of operations they
carry out in the sea. Similarly, China and Japan could cut back their
military deployments in the East China Sea by mutual agreement over time.
If both sides could agree on those stipulations, each would have to accept
that the other will still try to maximize its advantages while stopping
short of breaching the limits. Washington and Beijing would continue to
compete for strategic and economic influence across the various regions of
the world. They would keep seeking reciprocal access to each other’s
markets and would still take retaliatory measures when such access was
denied. They would still compete in foreign investment markets, technology
markets, capital markets, and currency markets. And they would likely carry out a global contest for hearts and minds, with Washington stressing the
importance of democracy, open economies, and human rights and Beijing
highlighting its approach to authoritarian capitalism and what it calls “
the China development model.”
Even amid escalating competition, however, there will be some room for
cooperation in a number of critical areas. This occurred even between the
United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. It should certainly be possible now between the United States and China, when the
stakes are not nearly as high. Aside from collaborating on climate change,
the two countries could conduct bilateral nuclear arms control negotiations, including on mutual ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty, and work toward an agreement on acceptable military applications of artificial intelligence. They could cooperate on North Korean nuclear
disarmament and on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. They
could undertake a series of confidence-building measures across the Indo-
Pacific region, such as coordinated disaster-response and humanitarian
missions. They could work together to improve global financial stability,
especially by agreeing to reschedule the debts of developing countries hit
hard by the pandemic. And they could jointly build a better system for
distributing COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world.
Human rights activists in Hong Kong protest in support of Xinjiang's Uighur community, December 2019
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
That list is far from exhaustive. But the strategic rationale for all the
items is the same: it is better for both countries to operate within a joint framework of managed competition than to have no rules at all. The
framework would need to be negotiated between a designated and trusted high-level representative of Biden and a Chinese counterpart close to Xi; only a direct, high-level channel of that sort could lead to confidential
understandings on the hard limits to be respected by both sides. These two
people would also become the points of contact when violations occurred, as they are bound to from time to time, and the ones to police the consequences of any such violations. Over time, a minimum level of strategic trust might emerge. And maybe both sides would also discover that the benefits of
continued collaboration on common planetary challenges, such as climate
change, might begin to affect the other, more competitive and even
conflictual areas of the relationship.
There will be many who will criticize this approach as naive. Their
responsibility, however, is to come up with something better. Both the
United States and China are currently in search of a formula to manage their relationship for the dangerous decade ahead. The hard truth is that no
relationship can ever be managed unless there is a basic agreement between
the parties on the terms of that management.
GAME ON
What would be the measures of success should the United States and China
agree on such a joint strategic framework? One sign of success would be if
by 2030 they have avoided a military crisis or conflict across the Taiwan
Strait or a debilitating cyberattack. A convention banning various forms of robotic warfare would be a clear victory, as would the United States and
China acting immediately together, and with the World Health Organization,
to combat the next pandemic. Perhaps the most important sign of success,
however, would be a situation in which both countries competed in an open
and vigorous campaign for global support for the ideas, values, and problem-solving approaches that their respective systems offer—with the outcome
still to be determined.
Success, of course, has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. But
the most demonstrable example of a failed approach to managed strategic
competition would be over Taiwan. If Xi were to calculate that he could call Washington’s bluff by unilaterally breaking out of whatever agreement had been privately reached with Washington, the world would find itself in a
world of pain. In one fell swoop, such a crisis would rewrite the future of the global order.
A few days before Biden’s inauguration, Chen Yixin, the secretary-general
of the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, stated that “the rise of the East and the decline of the West has become [a global] trend and changes of the international landscape are in our favor.” Chen is a
close confidant of Xi and a central figure in China’s normally cautious
national security apparatus, and so the hubris in his statement is notable. In reality, there is a long way to go in this race. China has multiple
domestic vulnerabilities that are rarely noted in the media. The United
States, on the other hand, always has its weaknesses on full public display
—but has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity for reinvention and
restoration. Managed strategic competition would highlight the strengths and test the weaknesses of both great powers—and may the best system win.
Kevin Rudd对习大大的理解，远超版上僵君。
这么好的文老酱小酱都不看？
没什么可看的，把香港都可以弄的离心离德，把同文同种的台湾搞成敌人，把台湾的中国人政权拱手让给倭人，这都不是一个正常人能做到的。
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 这么好的文老酱小酱都不看？
你要区分wishful thinking 和realism
【 在 wosnb (Walk with the Earth Mother.) 的大作中提到: 】
: 没什么可看的，把香港都可以弄的离心离德，把同文同种的台湾搞成敌人，把台湾的中
: 国人政权拱手让给倭人，这都不是一个正常人能做到的。
你把文章粘贴出来
大家没帐号，看不了
陆克文是少有的知华派。
一次在他给西点的亚洲关系讲座上，有个cadet问他关于华为系统监控以及偷5G技术，
他回答说首先美国自己没有5G，华为怎么偷，其次你用的爱疯，你能肯定不监控？会后那个cadet正好到厕所在我边上撒尿，我看到他的鸡鸡很尖，很粉红。
我还有陆克文的私人email和签名的回忆录。
贴出来了。
我也没账号，手机上能全文看，不知道什么原理。
【 在 wadaxiwa (另请高明) 的大作中提到: 】
: 你把文章粘贴出来
: 大家没帐号，看不了
香港问题，是大陆过分妥协已经大陆经济发展的结果。前者导致在香港的境外势力肆意乱港，后者导致香港的经济重要性降低。
台湾问题，是民进党的选择，大陆还真没有太多办法。比如，台湾当局就是一直使用武汉肺炎的称呼。因为中国军力的发展，美国不得不使用台湾做为棋子，挑衅挑拨两岸关系。
【 在 wosnb(Walk with the Earth Mother.) 的大作中提到: 】
: 没什么可看的，把香港都可以弄的离心离德，把同文同种的台湾搞成敌人，把台湾的中
: 国人政权拱手让给倭人，这都不是一个正常人能做到的。
香港问题，是大陆过分妥协已经大陆经济发展的结果。前者导致在香港的境外势力肆意乱港，后者导致香港的经济重要性降低。
台湾问题，是民进党的选择，大陆还真没有太多办法。比如，台湾当局就是一直使用武汉肺炎的称呼。因为中国军力的发展，美国不得不使用台湾做为棋子，挑衅挑拨两岸关系。
【 在 wosnb(Walk with the Earth Mother.) 的大作中提到: 】
: 没什么可看的，把香港都可以弄的离心离德，把同文同种的台湾搞成敌人，把台湾的中
: 国人政权拱手让给倭人，这都不是一个正常人能做到的。
诸将来买提是放松的
不是来耗费脑细胞的
不妨简单总结一下他说啥了
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 这么好的文老酱小酱都不看？
香港问题是老胡不折腾的结果
台巴子也怪老共？LOL，确实要怪，不争气没早点丢几个蛋蛋给台巴子尝尝
我虽然没有看到鸡鸡，但是你回复了我，我也算沾了陆克文签名的仙气。
【 在 quovadis (My shit is your gourmet) 的大作中提到: 】
: 陆克文是少有的知华派。
: 一次在他给西点的亚洲关系讲座上，有个cadet问他关于华为系统监控以及偷5G技术，
: 他回答说首先美国自己没有5G，华为怎么偷，其次你用的爱疯，你能肯定不监控？会后
: 那个cadet正好到厕所在我边上撒尿，我看到他的鸡鸡很尖，很粉红。
: 我还有陆克文的私人email和签名的回忆录。
别扯香港了，就单纯关闭人人字幕组，国内都已经骂翻了，各种删帖删号，很多有名望的人都已经不再公开的在任何地方，包括在网络上发言。
【 在 aaddoo (nothing) 的大作中提到: 】
: 香港问题，是大陆过分妥协已经大陆经济发展的结果。前者导致在香港的境外势力肆意
: 乱港，后者导致香港的经济重要性降低。
: 台湾问题，是民进党的选择，大陆还真没有太多办法。比如，台湾当局就是一直使用武
: 汉肺炎的称呼。因为中国军力的发展，美国不得不使用台湾做为棋子，挑衅挑拨两岸关
: 系。
:
: 没什么可看的，把香港都可以弄的离心离德，把同文同种的台湾搞成敌人，把台
: 湾的中
:
: 国人政权拱手让给倭人，这都不是一个正常人能做到的。
:
真长。
不错。
中美分析都很靠谱。是现实主义者的清醒认识。
对白等期望很高，对美国的内部政治分裂，债务高企，维持霸权的成本难以承受，建立联盟需要让利等种种挑战也看得很清楚。看他能不能deliver了。
鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。长远来看，习大要当秦皇汉武，在pantheon万神殿上与列祖列宗并列。
美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲剧。
【 在 biye (早点找到工作吧) 的大作中提到: 】
: 诸将来买提是放松的
: 不是来耗费脑细胞的
: 不妨简单总结一下他说啥了
陆克文算是５眼的老将还是小将，估计内心矛盾左右摇摆
台湾如果发生战争，美国不介入，霸权就彻底结束了。美国可能会搏一下。
除非中国实力已经到了美国介入也必然失败的地步。就是霸权无论如何也没实力保持了，就认命了。
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。
: 美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
: 鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲
: 剧。
能把wish和reality 分清的人。就像我也不喜欢老虎吃人，但是我不会否认老虎会吃人的事实。
【 在 yanzhengman (无所谓我是谁) 的大作中提到: 】
: 陆克文算是５眼的老将还是小将，估计内心矛盾左右摇摆
哈哈，陆克文没什么仙气。他被踢出澳洲政坛后流放到哈佛做仿学，新冠后才回澳洲。在哈佛做放学收入很低。其实澳洲政客都惨巴巴的，做过总理还在波斯顿坐地铁，来回飞经济舱。
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我虽然没有看到鸡鸡，但是你回复了我，我也算沾了陆克文签名的仙气。
如果美国是理性的，是否介入的决定基于美国失败的概率。
但是Rudd暗示美国政坛现在极度不稳，可能在99%失败的情况下还要发疯一搏。
【 在 StMicheal (archangel) 的大作中提到: 】
: 台湾如果发生战争，美国不介入，霸权就彻底结束了。美国可能会搏一下。
: 除非中国实力已经到了美国介入也必然失败的地步。就是霸权无论如何也没实力保持了
: ，就认命了。
新阅读者可以免费看三篇
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 贴出来了。
: 我也没账号，手机上能全文看，不知道什么原理。
哈哈，原来他是访学，比我们千老级别还低。
【 在 quovadis (My shit is your gourmet) 的大作中提到: 】
: 哈哈，陆克文没什么仙气。他被踢出澳洲政坛后流放到哈佛做仿学，新冠后才回澳洲。
: 在哈佛做放学收入很低。其实澳洲政客都惨巴巴的，做过总理还在波斯顿坐地铁，来回
: 飞经济舱。
陈词滥调，屁股还是在美国一边
错都是鳖的，我帝是chosen one
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。长远来看，习大
: 要当秦皇汉武，在pantheon万神殿上与列祖列宗并列。
: 美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
: 鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲
: 剧。
西大想当汉武
陆克文的观点是他能当的成吗？
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。长远来看，习大
: 要当秦皇汉武，在pantheon万神殿上与列祖列宗并列。
: 美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
: 鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲
: 剧。
陆克文的性取向如何，有掰弯的可能性吗
【 在 quovadis (My shit is your gourmet) 的大作中提到: 】
: 哈哈，陆克文没什么仙气。他被踢出澳洲政坛后流放到哈佛做仿学，新冠后才回澳洲。
: 在哈佛做放学收入很低。其实澳洲政客都惨巴巴的，做过总理还在波斯顿坐地铁，来回
: 飞经济舱。
哦，推荐一个网站archive.is，可以看各种paywall的文章
【 在 wadaxiwa (另请高明) 的大作中提到: 】
: 新阅读者可以免费看三篇
eww直接绕过付费墙
【 在 wadaxiwa (另请高明) 的大作中提到: 】
: 新阅读者可以免费看三篇
太长了，不能用100字总结一下，完全忽视掉。美国政客现在就像不学无术的学生，作
业做不出说老师不行，学校不行，学校气氛不好，等等。反正还是不做作业，而且自己也没责任。
陆克文算是知华派。
在西方的矮子当中算是将军。
他最后一段话体现了他思维的局限性。也可能是必须这么写以取悦于读者。
中美体制不是谁赢谁输的问题。而是要生存的问题。
先要解决生存问题，输赢不重要。这是西方认识问题的片面之处。
从认识深度来说，西方不如中国。普世思想害死人。非要赢者通吃，违背多样性的自然规律。
的确不错！
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 这么好的文老酱小酱都不看？
前藩王Rudd给白等皇帝的折子上说：
As Mao was before him, Xi has become a formidable strategic competitor for
the United States.
【 在 biye (早点找到工作吧) 的大作中提到: 】
: 西大想当汉武
: 陆克文的观点是他能当的成吗？
他不得不这么写。
面向西方读者，能这样委婉表达已经很不容易了。
但最后结尾不应该上升到哪个制度取胜的角度。
应该文化多样性。
【 在 pinfish (小刺鱼) 的大作中提到: 】
: 陈词滥调，屁股还是在美国一边
: 错都是鳖的，我帝是chosen one
总结就是：
鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。长远来看，习大要当秦皇汉武，在pantheon万神殿上与列祖列宗并列。
美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲剧。
【 在 lsheng (lsheng) 的大作中提到: 】
: 太长了，不能用100字总结一下，完全忽视掉。美国政客现在就像不学无术的学生，作
: 业做不出说老师不行，学校不行，学校气氛不好，等等。反正还是不做作业，而且自己
: 也没责任。
要深刻理解Judeo-Christian一神教文化的本质。
【 在 wadaxiwa (另请高明) 的大作中提到: 】
: 他不得不这么写。
: 面向西方读者，能这样委婉表达已经很不容易了。
: 但最后结尾不应该上升到哪个制度取胜的角度。
: 应该文化多样性。
圆的熊猫脸，5短身材大肚子。这种长相在澳洲属于53锁南。他是昆士兰的红脖子出生
，一路读书出道的，和所南很像。所以走到了澳洲人民和政府的对立面，成为澳洲老将。
【 在 yanzhengman (无所谓我是谁) 的大作中提到: 】
: 陆克文的性取向如何，有掰弯的可能性吗
把事情归结成包子的个人意志就更是搞笑了
白等能活着摆平疫情就算牛逼总统了
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 总结就是：
: 鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。长远来看，习大
: 要当秦皇汉武，在pantheon万神殿上与列祖列宗并列。
: 美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
: 鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲
: 剧。
个人看法：
当初希特勒也是带英的competitor
但最终不是第三帝国取代带英的地位
那么多人讨论休斯底德陷阱
没人提一下战争结束后没多久雅典和斯巴达都完了
都被另一个帝国统治了？
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 前藩王Rudd给白等皇帝的折子上说：
: As Mao was before him, Xi has become a formidable strategic competitor for
: the United States.
那就搏起好了，99%加速LOL
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 如果美国是理性的，是否介入的决定基于美国失败的概率。
: 但是Rudd暗示美国政坛现在极度不稳，可能在99%失败的情况下还要发疯一搏。
中帝美帝同归于尽，呆湾南波湾一桶地球，这个剧本怎么样？
【 在 biye (早点找到工作吧) 的大作中提到: 】
: 个人看法：
: 当初希特勒也是带英的competitor
: 但最终不是第三帝国取代带英的地位
: 那么多人讨论休斯底德陷阱
: 没人提一下战争结束后没多久雅典和斯巴达都完了
: 都被另一个帝国统治了？
而且关于美帝那段也错的离谱
我帝确实看起来越来越不是理性国家，妙处是非理性的背后是一群只会往自己兜里捞的政客，其实就是仗着以前的底子硬bluffing，对弱鸡和小弟都是瞎鸡巴收割
克里米亚怎么样了？我帝现在连花生米都舍不得援助
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 总结就是：
: 鳖相信历史大势在鳖一边，所以未来几年会在战术上向白等略微妥协。长远来看，习大
: 要当秦皇汉武，在pantheon万神殿上与列祖列宗并列。
: 美国要逆天改命，白等必须做一系列比罗斯福还猛的大政策。
: 鳖认为美国是理性国家、美国不会在台湾问题上发疯，这可能是鳖的误判，可能导致悲
: 剧。
我始终认为
如果真是chosen one，就必须完成chosen one的使命
过去我帝把欧洲四分五裂的各民族凝聚成一个相对统一的白人群体
今天只有能凝聚黄白黑各种族，才有资格继续做chosen one
而且这个使命是我鳖不能完成的
中国注定是东亚黄人的国家，没人能改变
【 在 pinfish (小刺鱼) 的大作中提到: 】
: 陈词滥调，屁股还是在美国一边
: 错都是鳖的，我帝是chosen one
第三次世界大（冷）战，德法要学习一战和二战的美国，开始假装中立，等战局明朗了再下山摘桃子。
如果鳖和美国同归于尽，对鳖来说是可接受的结局，大不了回到1950重新开始，对美国来说就完了。因为美国的目的，是维持“全球”的霸权，而鳖的目的仅仅是地区霸权。
鳖只要不亡国灭种，就算退回1950，还是比日韩越印都厉害。
美国全球霸权没有了，那可是直接退回1860.
【 在 biye (早点找到工作吧) 的大作中提到: 】
: 个人看法：
: 当初希特勒也是带英的competitor
: 但最终不是第三帝国取代带英的地位
: 那么多人讨论休斯底德陷阱
: 没人提一下战争结束后没多久雅典和斯巴达都完了
: 都被另一个帝国统治了？
陆克文这文章水平，如果说他是“知华派”，那五眼真是没人了。基本都是老生常谈，完全对中国不了解，也不想了解。
中美大战，两败俱伤，
俄国崛起，一统全球。
【 在 biye (早点找到工作吧) 的大作中提到: 】
: 个人看法：
: 当初希特勒也是带英的competitor
: 但最终不是第三帝国取代带英的地位
: 那么多人讨论休斯底德陷阱
: 没人提一下战争结束后没多久雅典和斯巴达都完了
: 都被另一个帝国统治了？
哪有什么CHOSEN ONE
黄种人当然可以统领世界各族，只要有心，有道。
【 在 biye (早点找到工作吧) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我始终认为
: 如果真是chosen one，就必须完成chosen one的使命
: 过去我帝把欧洲四分五裂的各民族凝聚成一个相对统一的白人群体
: 今天只有能凝聚黄白黑各种族，才有资格继续做chosen one
: 而且这个使命是我鳖不能完成的
: 中国注定是东亚黄人的国家，没人能改变
稍微改一下可行
呆完整体不可能，呆完出的某个人，可行
科西嘉和奥地利都费拉不堪，但可以出皇帝和元首这样的猛人
【 在 pinfish (小刺鱼) 的大作中提到: 】
: 中帝美帝同归于尽，呆湾南波湾一桶地球，这个剧本怎么样？
统领各族，就要成为各族交流的平台
过去的中国，大唐是东亚和东部中亚的大帝国
所以河朔，即今天河北，满是胡人
现在的中国，帝魔两都是全国人民的平台
自然外地人都往这两个城市跑，土著再不高兴也没办法
现在的世界，美帝要当世界的灯塔，自然就得欢迎世界人民得移民
将来的中国，我鳖要统领各族
那广东的黑人，浙江的阿拉伯人，得比现在多百倍千倍不止
我是不希望这样的。
所以我希望让美国继续当灯塔，让中国继续当中国
【 在 yanzhengman (无所谓我是谁) 的大作中提到: 】
: 哪有什么CHOSEN ONE
: 黄种人当然可以统领世界各族，只要有心，有道。
说了一堆，还是老生常谈。大篇幅说中国如何激进要搞事，否认了美国自身实力迅速下降的事实，也忽视导致衰落的根源恰恰是美国甚至西方制度，分配问题。把中美的冲突归因于全是中国的错，多多少少还是西方中心那一套。
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 僵君们看看。他站在习大大的视角，逐条分析习大大的策略，十分客观靠谱。白等看完
: 和卡马拉在下室瑟瑟发抖。
: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-05/kevin-
rudd-
: usa-chinese-confrontation-short-of-war
: Officials in Washington and Beijing don’t agree on much these days, but
: there is one thing on which they see eye to eye: the contest between their
: two countries will enter a decisive phase in the 2020s. This will be the
: decade of living dangerously. No matter what strategies the two sides
pursue
: or what events unfold, the tension between the United States and China
will
: grow, and competition will intensify; it is inevitable. War, however, is : ...................
没这种可能，俄太冷，人口少，几乎没有工业，经济靠出口能源、矿产原材料
【 在 Carwash (for+free) 的大作中提到: 】
: 中美大战，两败俱伤，
: 俄国崛起，一统全球。
俄国一统全球不可能，还有欧洲在那儿制衡。没了美国，俄国人干不过德国人。
【 在 Carwash (for+free) 的大作中提到: 】
: 中美大战，两败俱伤，
: 俄国崛起，一统全球。
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 这么好的文老酱小酱都不看？
跳着看完了，写的不错。
如何说服美国民众将是拜登最大的困难。
你说的很对，邓shopping的港台绥靖政策确实不是正常人能想出来的人
现在只不过拨乱反正开个头而已
【 在 wosnb (Walk with the Earth Mother.) 的大作中提到: 】
: 没什么可看的，把香港都可以弄的离心离德，把同文同种的台湾搞成敌人，把台湾的中
: 国人政权拱手让给倭人，这都不是一个正常人能做到的。
: 【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: : 这么好的文老酱小酱都不看？
美国民众？人家自己过得好好的为啥和土鳖交恶，为了你这样的地下室狗粮拿有机牛奶秀优越吗。
【 在 Shotgun1984 (喷子) 的大作中提到: 】
: 跳着看完了，写的不错。
: 如何说服美国民众将是拜登最大的困难。
三家性奴－－小破熊，丫快要揭不开锅了。
要不然，它的橡胶女友和好几个马甲怎么天天出洞抢狗粮？！
【 在 sundevil072 (sundevil) 的大作中提到: 】
: 美国民众？人家自己过得好好的为啥和土鳖交恶，为了你这样的地下室狗粮拿有机牛奶
: 秀优越吗。
【 在 Shotgun1984 (喷子) 的大作中提到: 】
陆克文是典型的当面呵呵笑，背后mmp的白人。当初wikileaks就把他给捅出来了，不知道为什么很多人认为他友华知华。
https://www.reuters.com/article/idCNCHINA-3451920101206
好像每个月可以看四篇儿免费的。
【 在 SandersTrump (TrumpSanders) 的大作中提到: 】
: 贴出来了。
: 我也没账号，手机上能全文看，不知道什么原理。
在西方智囊里算少有的realist，不靠意淫活着。
友华肯定是不指望的。
【 在 zhuoqun (chaos) 的大作中提到: 】
: 陆克文是典型的当面呵呵笑，背后mmp的白人。当初wikileaks就把他给捅出来了，不知
: 道为什么很多人认为他友华知华。
: https://www.reuters.com/article/idCNCHINA-3451920101206
好文。不过这一段有疑问。
“What China does not include in this calculus is the reverse possibility:
that the failure to fight for a fellow democracy that the United States has supported for the entire postwar period would also be catastrophic for
Washington, particularly in terms of the perception of U.S. allies in Asia, who might conclude that the American security guarantees they have long
relied on are worthless—and then seek their own arrangements with China. ”说的好像美国在克里米亚和南奥塞梯都出过兵似的。