Zheng Yongnian column
The Sino -US trade war has been destined to be a long -lasting tug -of -war.China and the United States basically dominate the economic globalization of decades after the 1980s.It is difficult to imagine that if Deng Xiaoping of China has not implemented a reform and opening up policy, and the United States has not undergone the Reagan Revolution, globalization will be so fast in the next decades.Because of this, the economy of China and the United States quickly developed a highly dependent relationship. This relationship was once called by some American scholars as Chimerica, and some of China call it husband and wife relationship.After the trade war, many people do not believe that the two economic capabilities with such a close relationship will be decoupled.From the perspective of experience, this close relationship is not the possibility of decoupling, but the decoustal process is destined to be long and painful.
The so -called trade war is what some scholars call the economic mutual dependence of the two countries and use their own economic advantages to combat each other's weakness.However, as the relationship between husband and wife, even if the two sides were forced to divorce for various reasons, no one would die.During the decoustal process of China and the United States, both parties will be greatly harmed in the short period of time, but the degree of damage is different to both sides. One party is relatively more and the other is relatively less.U.S. President Trump is now this kind of thinking that the United States has an advantage in the trade war, and China will suffer to the greatest extent.However, this thinking itself is problematic.If you have this thinking, use your advantages to hurt each other.If so, the diluted or even separation of relations between the two countries is not only inevitable, but also.
What are you fighting between China and the United States?From the perspective of realism, China and the United States have developed to no one can eat, and no one can eat.Since China and the United States have been exchanged, Americans have two different attitudes towards China and clear love and hate, that is, either friends or enemies.In China, one is to block or even defeat China.These two attitudes and policies are reflected by American culture. Not only are they not contradictory, but they are organically unified.
The United States is a religious civilization, and has a strong sense of mission to change this world. I hope that the world is developing as what Americans imagine.Therefore, when Americans think that China is developing in the direction of the United States, they are happy and are willing to help China. On the contrary, when the United States thinks that China's development is not what they want, they are very unhappy, evenAshamed to become angry, we must use China as the enemy, to block China, and defeat China.These two attitudes and policies are not only reflected in today's Sino -US relations, but this is the case in modern times, but it has different expression forms in different periods.
Chinese learning but not becoming the United States
The problem is that both China and the United States are civilized and represent their respective civilization.Therefore, since contacting the United States, China has also developed two attitudes and policies for the United States. One is to use the United States as a teacher, learn from the United States, and the other is to adhere to its own independence and avoid and resist digestion by the United States.China has been beaten because of backwardness. The United States is the most advanced country in the West, which determines that China must learn from the United States.Since modern times, China has not longed for the United States and is willing to learn from the United States with an open mind.
However, learning does not mean that China can become the United States.Even though there is a lot of political power before and after the May 4th Movement, objectively speaking, these forces have no hope of success.The reason is simple. China is a country -based country with its own survival and development logic.However, although China is studying from the United States, once the United States feels that Chinese students are disobedient (that is, a country that does not become the United States), the United States will punish the student.This naturally leads to a strong nationalist reaction and resistance in China.
Objectively speaking, since the reform and opening up, China has learned from the United States (other Western countries), and learned quickly, and learned a lot, so that some scholars in China and the United States said that China's development is Westernization.But it is clear that China not only does not wes westernization as the United States wants, but has become more and more China.This has also contributed to the change of the United States' attitude towards China, regarding China as the opposition and enemy of the United States.
In reality, as Deng Xiaoping said, the United States helps China will make China develop faster, but even without the help of the United States, China will develop.Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore has also said similar words, meaning that the United States cannot be blocked by China. The United States is blocked by China to slow down some of China's modernization, but it cannot prevent the rise of China.In any case, to this day, the United States has completely no ability to enclosure and curb China's development at all, and China is no longer a big country that can be easily enclosed.
Therefore, whether it is friends or enemies, China and the United States have to coexist peacefully, either the heat and peace between friends, or the cold peace between the enemy.Even friends, China and the United States will not be integrated because the two represent two different civilizations.Civilization can learn from each other, but not to replace each other.Furthermore, China is not Japan, and China cannot be integrated into its security system by the United States like Japan.Japan is integrated by the United States with special force conditions, that is, Japan is defeated.It is impossible for the United States to defeat China, whether it is a hot war or a Cold War.As far as the hot war is concerned, both countries are nuclear martial arts, and the hot war control will destroy each other.If it was the Cold War, the worst thing was to form a cold peace between the United States and the Soviet Union.Even if it evolves into the US -Soviet -style Cold War, as long as China does not follow the Soviet Union's dust, it means that it is difficult for the United States to defeat China without self -defeating itself.
Back to the reality of Sino -US relations today, the two sides seem to be more and more opposite, and their mood is getting higher and rising.However, if you leave the two sides that are almost emotional to hissing words and return to the interaction with substantial significance, people may not feel so pessimistic about the future of Sino -US relations.As far as internal development is concerned, whether it is Trump's greater or more China ’s revival of the Chinese nation, at least at the level of attention, their goals are the same. In popular Chinese, they are to let the people live (more more (more more (more more) Good day.At the same time, as the two largest countries, both parties have certain responsibility for regional or international order.The competition between the two countries is inevitable, but the competition is benign and malignant. The benign competition is needed, the basis for cooperation, and mutual benefit; the vicious competition will cause both defeats.
As far as economic competition is concerned, the United States has also experienced the stage of businessism in the early days.Today, China has gone through this stage, and needs and ability to become more open.It is easy to understand that in recent years, when trade protectionism and economic nationalism have prevailed in the West, China has been adhering to globalization, wider and deeper opening up.Furthermore, China has also moved towards the world through the construction of the Belt and Road, Asian Infrastructure Investment Banks, BRICS Banks and other mechanisms, and assume international responsibility.Although the United States has to go back a little now because of excessive expansion and internal problems, paying attention to internal affairs, I believe the United States will not completely close the door.In fact, as long as the United States is still a capitalist country, a completely closed United States is unimaginable, because the logic of capital is open.From this point of view, although the two economies of China and the United States may become two relatively independent systems, it is difficult to imagine completely decoupled.
As far as their internal development is concerned, China and the United States have their own advantages.American technology is indeed advanced than China, but China's technology development has also accumulated a stage of rapid development, and it has been the same as the United States or even surpassing the United States in some fields.More importantly, China's consumer market is not smaller than the United States.Although the ratio of the middle class in the United States is higher than that of China, the absolute scale of China's middle class has already caught up with the United States and will soon surpass the United States.The market size is a symbol of the economic forces of China and the United States.In the open state, no one lacks these two markets. Cooperation is mutual benefit, and conflict is mutual damage.
Western concerns about the potential attraction of the Chinese system
As far as the economic system is concerned, the United States is a typical free capitalist. In the past, it has created glory, but since entering the new liberal economics, in the era of knowledge economy, this economic system has also created a lot of small in the United States.The cost, including the narrowing of the middle class, the high concentration of wealth, increasing income distribution, increasingly differentiated society, and so on.If the economic system of excessive new liberalism in the United States cannot be reformed and adjusted, a deeper crisis will be inevitable.Today, the trade war method adopted by the US government must not solve such a deep internal problem.
China has formed its own economic model, that is, the mixed economic model.The West refers to China as national capitalism, but this obviously does not conform to the facts.According to China's own, private enterprises represent the May, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Nine of China, that is, private enterprises have contributed more than 50%of the country's taxes, more than 60%of the domestic GDP (GDP), and 70%.Innovation, more than 80%of urban employment and the number of enterprises with more than 90%.Although some departments of this model (mainly state -owned enterprises) are not as efficient as the United States, they also have their own advantages.State -owned enterprises are responsible for large -scale infrastructure construction, avoiding cyclical crises inherent in the capitalist economy, cope with various economic crises, standard markets, and providing public services, while other types of companies are as full of innovative capabilities as American companies.China calls its own economic system as a socialist market economy, emphasizing the balance between the government and the market.Although this model still has huge room for reform and improvement, its advantages and vitality cannot be ignored.
The same is true in politics.From modern times, many people (especially intellectuals) have longed for democratic politics and constitutional government in Western methods, but have been rejected by politicians.Of course, China's rejection of Western forms of democracy does not refuse to refuse, but because the Western system is difficult to survive and develop in China.The failure of many modern political practice in modern times has made political elites have to choose their own model.The Western model was not feasible, and the Soviet Union's model was not feasible, and finally returned to a model based on China's own civilization.After 1949, after 70 years of practice, reform, and adjustment, the mechanism of the division of labor and division of labor, namely decision -making, execution and supervision rights.Traditionally, the three -power system has existed for more than 2,000 years from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.The current three -power system is not simply returning to tradition, but innovation above tradition.
As far as the political process is concerned, although the Communist Party of China is the only ruling party, which is the one -party system in the West, this party is open and open to all social groups.The spirit is not a political party in the Western sense, but it is more similar to the traditional scholar -doctoral class, that is, the rule of the elite group.More importantly, this ruling elite group is composed of some political families (that is, traditionally aristocratic) as West, but is open to the entire society, so it is an open one -party system.On the one hand, the open one -party system avoids China's evolution into a Western -type political party, and on the other hand, it is associated with the entire society.Therefore, in China, it is difficult to have a country MDASH like the West; the two -point method of society, which is reflected in the national MDASH; the integration of society.In other words, from the country to society or from society to the country is a continuous process, not two opposing institutional entities.
From this perspective, although China will still face pressure from domestic and foreign, the structure of the basic political system will not change, and what they can do should not do not revolution, but to continue to reform and improve this system.This system can keep pace with the times, and people cannot underestimate the survivability of this system.
At the international level, although China will not output this system, this system may have a reference effect on some developing countries.Western concerns that China's political system is not because the Chinese system will replace the Western system, but because the Chinese system has potential attraction to other countries.The West had unlimited confidence in its own system, but in recent years, the governance crisis caused by the rise of populism, and even the constitutional crisis (especially in the Britain and the United States), has made the West not so confident in its own system.In this case, the West is more afraid of the possible external influence of the Chinese political system.
From this point of view, benign competition between China and the United States is not only inevitable, but also needs to be in the world.Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently said that China and the United States are the countries that are most capable of influencing world progress and peace in terms of technological, political experience and historical, so I hope that China and the United States can solve problems in cooperation methods to solve problems.EssenceThis is in place.Indeed, as the two largest countries in the world, China and the United States have a common responsibility for world peace and progress.
The author is the National University of Singapore
Professor of East Asia Research Institute
The article only represents personal point of view
