国际大闲话:中国难成世界一流强国

Outside of world wars and market cataclysms, the relative trajectories of major powers usually trace gradual curves rather than abruptly rising or falling. After the 2008 financial crisis, however, commentators in China and to a lesser extent in the West suggested that the U.S. had hit an inflection point. China, they said, was zooming toward parity as a world power, and perhaps more.

除了世界大战和市场崩盘之外，主要大国的相对发展轨迹通常都是平缓的曲线，而非大起大落的形态。然而，2008年金融危机之后，中国的评论家以及少数西方评论员表示，美国已经到达拐点。他们说，中国正在迅速发展成为一个和美国平起平坐的世界强国，也许还不止这一点。

In recent months, for somewhat less obvious reasons including Beijing's increasing pushiness in East Asia and the country's just-completed once-a-decade leadership transition, this conversation has been shifting again, at least in the West. America's relative decline is anything but assured, many analysts have begun to proclaim, with some adding that China's rise to global pre-eminence any time soon is highly unlikely.

在最近几个月里，出于有些不太明朗的原因，包括中国政府在东亚越来越咄咄逼人的姿态以及中国刚刚完成的十年一度的领导人换届，这个话题再次发生着转变，至少在西方是如此。很多分析家开始宣称，美国的相对衰退根本没有定论，有些人还表示，中国在短期内崛起成为全球一流强国的可能性非常小。

Timothy Beardson's sprawling 'Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China's Future' joins a far-ranging group of books making the latter case. Edward Luttwak, in his 2012 book, 'The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy,' for example, argues that what he calls China's 'all-round military aggrandizement,' coupled with the country's very fast economic growth, is essentially self-canceling. If China continues along this path, with double-digit increases of military expenditures and ever more assertive behavior, the result will not be a stronger China but rather a country increasingly countered by balancing neighbors and more distant powers.

谭宝信(Timothy Beardson)洋洋洒洒的著作《蹒跚的巨人：威胁中国未来的因素》(Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China's Future)是一本论证后一种观点的图书。这样的图书有很多，比如，爱德华•勒特韦克(Edward Luttwak)在他2012年的著作《中国的崛起与战略逻辑》(The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy)中就指出，他称之为中国“全面提升军事力量”的举动，加之中国异常迅速的经济增长速度，实际上是一种自绝于人的做法。如果中国继续沿着这条路走下去，军事开支以两位数增长，行为上越加独断，其结果不会是成为一个更加强大的中国，而是会越来越受到势均力敌的邻国和远方大国的制衡。

In his recent 'China Goes Global: The Partial Power,' David Shambaugh, one of America's foremost scholars of Chinese affairs, performed perhaps the most comprehensive examination of China's strengths and weaknesses, concluding that 'the elements of China's global power are actually surprisingly weak and very uneven' and that 'China is not as important, and it is certainly not as influential, as conventional wisdom holds.'

沈大伟(David Shambaugh)是美国最著名的中国问题专家之一，他在最近出版的《中国走向全球：不完全大国》(China Goes Global: The Partial Power)中对中国的优势和劣势进行了也许是最全面的审视，得出的结论是：“中国成为全球性大国的要素实际上弱得惊人，而且非常不均衡”，“中国不像人们普遍认为的那样重要，也肯定没有那么大的影响力”。

In 'Stumbling Giant,' Mr. Beardson, a banker with long experience in East Asia, argues that a combination of terrible demographics and conservative, reform-averse leadership makes it unlikely that China will ever attain world leadership or superpower status.

作为在东亚长期生活过的银行家，谭宝信在《蹒跚的巨人》中指出，可怕的人口形势加上保守、不愿改革的领导层，使中国不太可能成为世界领袖或具备超级大国的地位。

By 2030, China will have more people over the age of 65 than the U.S. has people, and its working-age population is already beginning what will be a steep and hard-to-manage decline. When the U.S., Japan and South Korea attained levels of aging similar to China's today, Mr. Beardson writes, 'they each had a per capita GDP of around $15,000; the figure for China in 2011 was about $4,300.'

到2030年，中国65岁以上的人口数量比整个美国人口还多，中国的劳动适龄人口已经开始下降，这样的下降趋势在未来会很剧烈，而且难以控制。谭宝信写道，美国、日本和韩国当初在达到类似中国今天的老龄化水平时，“它们的人均国内生产总值(GDP)都在15,000美元左右；而中国2011年的数据大约是4,300美元”。

The actuarial implications of this are staggering. China stands to become the first aspiring global power that becomes old before it can become rich. As citizens of Japan, Northern Europe and, increasingly, the U.S. well know, it is hard for even high-income countries to meet the health and retirement burdens of the elderly.

这种情况在精算学上的结果是令人震惊的。中国将成为第一个有心成为全球性大国却又未富先老的国家。日本、北欧和越来越多的美国公民都知道，即便在高收入国家，要解决老龄人口的健康和退休金负担都很困难。

This task will be vastly more difficult, Mr. Beardson argues, for China, a country with a meager social safety net. In a couple of decades, it will have hundreds of millions of citizens with expensive chronic diseases and perhaps 150 million people in need of institutional care.

谭宝信认为，这项任务对中国这样一个社会保障体系很不完备的国家来说将会艰巨得多。在二三十年的时间内，中国将有数以亿计身患慢性疾病的公民，这些疾病的医治费用高昂，而且有大约1.5亿人需要护理机构照顾。

'China has a limited window of opportunity岸maybe twenty years岸to make its economic breakthrough. Otherwise it risks being caught in a 'middle income' trap,' Mr. Beardson writes in the introduction. Toward the end, he writes that 'China can continue to rise but the threats [it faces are] so serious and so widespread, and the domestic policy response so timid, that it is inconceivable that China will overtake the United States this century.'

谭宝信在引言中写道：“中国取得经济突破的机会窗口──大概20年──十分有限，错过机会就有可能陷入‘中等收入’陷阱。”在临近尾声的部分，谭宝信写道：“中国会继续崛起，但是[它面临的]威胁太大太广，而其国内政策反应又太过谨小慎微，很难想象中国会在本世纪超越美国。”

These are reasonable, if debatable, observations, however lacking in originality or particular insight. But most of the book is a woolly compendium of bric-a-brac gleaned from research, years of reading and plentiful surmise. Mr. Beardson's book aims to be even more comprehensive than Mr. Shambaugh's, though he brings none of the discipline of a scholar to his task. 'Stumbling Giant' has the encyclopedic feel of something from a bygone century, when isolated thinkers committed everything they had learned about the universe to a single book.

如果说这些言论尚存争议，但都还是言之成理的，不管它们是多么缺乏新意或独到的见解。不过书中的大部分内容是经过研究、多年阅读和丰富猜想而写成的纲要式文章。谭宝信的书意在写得比沈大伟的书更全面，虽然他在写作中没有加入学者的自律。《蹒跚的巨人》给人感觉像是来自过去某个年代的某种百科全书式的东西，当时的独立思想家会在一本书里写下他们所知的有关宇宙的一切知识。

Mr. Beardson holds forth on subjects as varied as land tenure, education, dynastic history and science. Sometimes the results are provocatively interesting, such as his claim that the emergence of large international concessions in cities like Shanghai and Tianjin in the late 19th century岸an aspect of what China speaks of today as a 'century of humiliation'岸'constituted the largest cultural transfer in human history,' with Western traders and industrialists providing invaluable knowhow in industry and finance. That China suffered humiliation is undeniable, but this claim is a refreshing counterpoint to the manipulatively nationalistic way in which the history of this era is taught in China.

谭宝信谈及的话题包括土地所有制、教育、断代史和科学等各个方面。有时探讨的结果具有争议性，很有意思。比如，他声称19世纪末期在上海和天津等城市出现的大片国际租界──今天中国称之为“百年耻辱”的表现之一──“是人类历史上最大规模的文化迁移”，西方的贸易商人和实业家在工业和金融领域提供了宝贵的专业知识。不可否认，中国蒙受了耻辱，但是这种说法相对中国教授这一时期历史时有意使用的民族主义方式而言，是一种让人耳目一新的对立观点。

Much more often, one is left bewildered or simply numbed. At one point, Mr. Beardson writes that China 'has never been at the center of world affairs.' For most of world history, no country was, but for centuries China, the center of gravity for much of Asia, came as close to meeting this standard as any. Sub-chapters, meanwhile, often begin with banal observations like 'There are many different views of the years from 1949 until Mao's death in 1976' and 'There is a potential in China for further major change in Party, state and nation.'

更多的时候，读者会感到困惑或者干脆感到麻木。谭宝信在书中一处写道，中国“从来没有处于世界事务的中心”。在世界历史的大部分时间里，没有任何国家成为过世界的中心，然而中国在数百年的时间里作为亚洲大部地区的中心已经接近达到这个标准了。与此同时，细分章节经常都是以类似这样的老套评论开头：“对于从1949年到毛泽东去世的1976年间的这些时间存在很多不同的看法”，“中国有可能在党、国家和民族层面发生进一步的重大变革”。

Worse, though, is the pretense of expertise in virtually everything as the author rambles from subject to subject. This has the perverse effect of robbing any particular argument of authority. 'This is not an encyclopedia of modern Chinese civilization,' Mr. Beardson writes. 'It does not celebrate all the many achievements of China in science and medicine, contemporary art, commerce, cuisine, sport or space.' Amid the huge catalog of topics glancingly touched upon, it's a wonder that he left these out.

然而更糟糕的是，作者从一个话题漫谈到另一个话题时，差不多在任何事情上都在炫耀专业知识。这样做的结果事与愿违，让任何具体的论证失去了权威性。谭宝信写道：“这不是一本关于现代中国文明的百科全书，它没有颂扬中国在科技、医学、当代艺术、商贸、烹饪、体育或空间技术方面取得的众多成就。”在泛泛而谈的大量话题里，他居然没有写到这些内容，这简直是个奇迹。