中国取代美国的秘密，白邦瑞《百年马拉松》序章：（美国人的）痴心妄想（全译） [美国媒体]

INTRODUCTION：WISHFUL THINKING

序言：痴心妄想

At noon on November 30, 2012, beneath a clear late-autumn sky, Wayne Clough, the white-bearded, affable secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, appeared before a collection of cameras and microphones. As he spoke, a cold wind blew across the National Mall. The audience stood bundled in their overcoats as a representative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held aloft a mysterious gold medal. The Smithsonian’s honored guest that day was the famed Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang, who had been feted the night before at a tony gala inside the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art—an event cohosted by my wife, Susan. Some four hundred guests, among them House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Princess Michael of Kent, and the seventy-four-year-old widow of the shah of Iran, clinked glasses to celebrate the Chinese-American relationship and to catch a glimpse of Cai, who had won international acclaim for his awe-inspiring fireworks display during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cai was known to celebrate Chinese symbols with performance art, and had once used lighted fires to extend the Great Wall by ten kilometers so it could be better seen from space. Our evening gala raised more than $1 million for the Smithsonian and made the social pages of various newspapers and magazines.

2012年11月30日正午，明净的晚秋天空下，韦恩·克拉夫，一个留着白胡子的、谦和的史密森学会的秘书【注：史密森学会（Smithsonian Institution）是唯一由美国政府资助、半官方性质的博物馆机构。由英国科学家詹姆斯·史密森（James Smithson）遗赠捐款，根据美国国会法令于1846年创建于美国首都华盛顿。学会下设14所博物馆和l所国立动物园。】，出现在了一堆摄像机和麦克风前。当他发言的时候，一阵冷风吹过华盛顿国家广场。可当国务卿希拉里·克林顿的助理高举起那块魅力金色奖章【注：美国国家艺术奖章】的时候，现场的观众全都裹紧他们的外套站了起来。那天，史密森学会的尊贵客人是着名的中国艺术家蔡国强，前一天晚上，他被邀请出席了在史密森国立博物馆的亚洲艺术馆——萨克勒美术馆举行的联欢会。我的妻子苏珊是联合举办人之一。大约四百名宾客出席了这次联欢会，众议院少数党（民主党）领袖南希·佩洛西、肯特郡麦克王妃、以及74岁的伊朗国王的遗孀也在其中。大家举杯庆祝中美关系的同时，也为一睹蔡之风采。在08年北京奥运会开幕式上，蔡国庆那令人惊叹的烟火表演，已经为他赢得了国际声誉。他以用现代表演艺术来展现中国符号而为人所知，他曾经用燃烧的火焰将长城延长一万米，这样长城就更容易从太空中被发现。我们的晚会为史密森学会筹集到了100多万美元，而且占据了各大报纸还有杂志的社会版面。

The following day, as Cai was introduced, he was dressed in a Western-style suit, gray overcoat, and orange-red scarf. A trim, handsome man with graying hair, he looked out upon the Mall and the subject of his latest piece of performance art, a four-story-tall Christmas tree decorated with two thousand explosive devices.

第二天，当蔡国强出现时，他穿着一身西式套装，灰色的大衣搭配着橘红色的围巾。头发稍微做了修剪，这个英俊的男人有着一头灰白的头发。他望向广场【注：华盛顿国家广场】和他最新的表演艺术主题——一棵四层楼高的圣诞树，上面装饰有二千个爆炸装置。

As Cai twisted a handheld trigger, his audience watched the tree explode before their eyes, with thick black smoke emerging from the branches. Cai twisted the trigger again, and the tree exploded a second time, then a third. The five-minute display sent pine needles across the vast lawn in all directions and dense black smoke—symbolizing China’s invention of gunpowder—billowing up the façade of the Smithsonian’s iconic red sandstone castle.2 It would take two months to clean up the debris and residue left by the explosion.

当蔡国强扭动一个手持触发器，他的观众们看到了圣诞树在他们眼前爆炸，浓浓的黑烟从树枝间滚滚冒出。蔡国强再一次扭动开关，圣诞树第二次爆炸，接着是第三次。这五分钟的展示把松针送到了四面八方的大草坪上，浓密的黑烟——象征着中国的火药发明——在史密森尼博物馆标志性的红色砂岩城堡中升起。这次爆炸留下来的碎片和残留物清理起来可能需要2个月的时间。

I don’t know if any of the guests contemplated why they were watching a Chinese artist blow up a symbol of the Christian faith in the middle of the nation’s capital less than a month before Christmas. In that moment, I’m not sure that even I appreciated the subversion of the gesture; I clapped along with the rest of the audience. Perhaps sensing the potential controversy, a museum spokesman told the Washington Post, “The work itself is not necessarily about Christmas.”3 Indeed, the museum labeled Cai’s performance simply, “Explosive Event,” which, if one thinks about it, is not much more descriptive than what Cai called it on his own website: “Black Christmas Tree.”

我不知道是否有客人在想：他们为什么要看一个中国艺术家在圣诞节前的一个月炸掉一个象征基督教信仰的东西，而且是在首都中心。那时，我甚至不确定我是否欣赏这种颠覆性的姿态。但我和其他观众一起鼓了掌。也许是察觉到了潜在的争议，一个博物馆发言人告诉《华盛顿邮报》：“这次表演本身不一定是关于圣诞节的。”事实上，博物馆把蔡的表演简单地称为“爆炸事件”，如果有人斟酌一下这个说辞，就会发现它并不比蔡教授在自己网站上所说的“黑色圣诞树”那样引人遐想。

Secretary Clinton’s aide waved the gold medal for the press corps to see, as Cai smiled modestly. He had just been given the State Department’s Medal of Arts, the first of its kind, which was presented to the artist by Clinton herself, along with $250,000, courtesy of the American taxpayer. The medal was awarded, she said, for the artist’s “contributions to the advancement of understanding and diplomacy.”5 Cai seemed to agree with the sentiment: “All artists are like diplomats,” he said. “Sometimes art can do things that politics cannot.”

当国务卿克林顿的助理挥动着手里的金色奖章向记者团展示的时候，蔡谦逊地笑了笑。他刚刚被授予美国国家艺术奖章，这还是希拉里·克林顿第一次向艺术家颁发此类奖章。奖章之外，还有美国纳税人“贡献”的25万美元的奖金。“这次奖章的颁发”她说到：“是为了这个艺术家为增近理解和促进两国外交交流所做出的贡献”。蔡似乎认同这个观点：“所有的艺术家都像外交官”他说，“有时候，艺术可以做一些政治不能做的事。”

I was a little suspicious and mentioned Cai the next day during a secret meeting with a senior Chinese government defector. He was incredulous at the award and explosion. We scoured the Internet. I wanted to investigate Cai and his works of art a little more closely. I didn’t bother reading the English articles proclaiming Cai’s genius, but rather what the Chinese were saying on various Mandarin-language websites about one of their most acclaimed citizens.

我有些怀疑。第二天，我在和一个中国高级叛逃者的秘密会面中提到了蔡。他对蔡的获奖和表演都感到难以置信。我们搜索了互联网，因为我想对蔡和他的艺术作品进行更深入的调查。可是，我没有读到有关介绍蔡国强才华的英文文章，相反，在各式各样的中国网站上，中国人称蔡是他们最欣赏钦佩的中国人之一。

Cai, it turned out, has quite a large following inside China. He was and remains arguably the most popular artist in the country, with the notable exception of Ai Weiwei. Many of Cai’s fans were nationalists, and applauded him for blowing up Western symbols before a Western audience. China’s nationalists called themselves ying pai, meaning “hawks” or “eagles.” Many of these ying pai are generals and admirals and government hard-liners. Few Americans have ever met them. They are the Chinese officials and authors I know the best because since 1973 the U.S. government has instructed me to work with them. Some of my colleagues wrongly dismiss the ying pai as nuts. To me, they represent the real voice of China.

事实证明，蔡在中国国内有相当大的一批追随者，可以说是这个国家最受欢迎的艺术家，与之形成鲜明对比的是艾未未。许多蔡的粉丝都是民族主义者，他们赞赏他在西方观众面前摧毁西方象征的行为。中国的民族主义者称呼自己为“ying pai”,意思是“鹰派人士”或者“老鹰”。许多这些“ying pai”是将军、海军将领和政府强硬派。很少有美国人见过他们。他们是中国官员和作家，我非常了解他们，因为自1973以来，我就受美国政府指派和他们一起工作。我的一些同僚错误的将“ying pai”视为疯子，但对于我来说，他们代表着真实的中国声音。

Cai and the hawks appear to be very supportive of the narrative of the decline of the United States and the rise of a strong China. (By coincidence, his given name, Guo Qiang, means “strong country” in Mandarin.) Cai’s earlier exhibits featured variations on this theme. For instance, while American soldiers were coming under nearly constant assault by IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq, the artist simulated a car bomb explosion to ask “his viewers to appreciate some kind of redeeming beauty in terrorist attacks and warfare.”8 The artist raised eyebrows when he said that the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, was a “spectacle” for the world audience, as if it were—in some twisted sense—a work of art. Shortly after the attacks, an Oxford University professor reported that Cai Guo Qiang proclaimed that his favorite book9 was Unrestricted Warfare: War and Strategy in the Globalization Era, a work of military analysis in which two Chinese colonels recommended that Beijing “use asymmetrical warfare, including terrorism, to attack the United States.”10 Even now, Chinese bloggers were enjoying the spectacle of their hero destroying a symbol of the Christian faith only a stone’s throw from the U.S. Capitol. The joke, it appeared, was very much on us.

蔡和鹰派似乎都非常支持美国衰落、中国崛起的论调。（巧合的是，他的名字，Guo Qiang，中文的意思就是“国家强大”。）蔡的早期作品也以这种主题为特色。例如，当美国士兵在阿富汗和伊拉克不断受到简易爆炸装置袭击的时候，这位艺术家模拟了一次汽车炸弹爆炸，要求“他的观众欣赏恐怖袭击和战争中的某种救赎之美。”当他说起2001年9月11日的恐怖袭击时，他皱起了眉头，对世界观众来说是一场“奇观”，就好像它是某种扭曲的艺术作品。袭击事件后不久，牛津大学的一位教授报告说，蔡国强宣称他最喜欢的书是《超限战——对全球化时代战争与战法的想定》【注：作者乔良、王湘穗。1999年出版。】，在这本军事着作里，两位中国上校建议北京“使用不对称战争，包括恐怖主义来袭击美国。”。而现在，中国的网民正沉浸于他们的英雄做出的创举中，他摧毁了一个距离国会大厦仅一箭之遥的象征着基督教信仰的东西。这个笑话，它发生了，就在我们身上。

Only later did I learn that the U.S. officials responsible for the payment to Cai had not known about his background or his dubious artistic strategy. I couldn’t help but feel that my wife and I had also been caught unawares—happy barbarians gleefully ignorant of the deeply subversive performance taking place before us. This wasn’t much different from U.S. policy toward China as a whole. Chinese leaders have persuaded many in the West to believe that China’s rise will be peaceful and will not come at others’ expense, even while they adhere to a strategy that fundamentally rejects this.

直到后来，我才知道负责邀请蔡的美国官员并不知道他的背景和他那令人生疑的艺术策划。我不由自主的想，我和我的妻子也被蒙在鼓里了——看！一群傻乐的野蛮人兴高采烈，对于他们眼前发生的极具颠覆性的表演一无所知。这与美国对中国的整体策略并无太大不同。中国领导人已经说服了许多西方国家，使他们相信，中国的崛起将是和平的，不会以牺牲他国利益为代价的，即使他们实际使用的战略，与这一说法根本不同。

We Americans still don’t see China the way it sees us—a condition that has persisted for decades. Why else would the Smithsonian Institution and the State Department pay a famous Chinese artist $250,000 to blow up a Christmas tree on the National Mall? The answer lies, at least in part, in an ancient proverb that says, “Cross the sea in full view” or, in more practical terms, “Hide in plain sight.” It is one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, an essay from ancient Chinese folklore.11 All of these stratagems are designed to defeat a more powerful opponent by using the opponent’s own strength against him, without his knowing he is even in a contest. Perhaps unwittingly, Cai alluded to this idea in remarks he delivered later to an audience at the State Department. “Everyone,” he said, “has their little tricks.”

我们美国人始终没有像中国了解美国那样的了解中国——这种情况已经持续了几十年。为什么史密森学会和美国国务院会向一位着名的中国艺术家支付25万美元让他在国家广场上炸毁一棵圣诞树呢？答案就是，至少在某种程度上，一个古老的谚语中说的:“瞒天过海”，或者，用更直接的术语来说，“隐藏于众目睽睽之中”。这是中国古代民间传说三十六计中的一计。所有这些谋略都是为了打败一个更强大的对手，即借用对手的力量来打败他，而对手还浑然不觉。也许是无意中，蔡后来向国务院的听众发表讲话时，提到了这个观念。“每个人，”他说，“都有他们的小伎俩。”

It is generally understood among those of us calling ourselves China experts that our life’s work is devoted to reducing misunderstandings between the United States and China. We have our work cut out for us. Americans have been wrong about China again and again, sometimes with profound consequences. In 1950, the Chinese leadership believed that it had given a clear warning to the United States that its troops should not come too close to the Chinese border during the Korean War, or China would be forced to respond in kind. No one in Washington got that message, and in November of that year Chinese troops surged across the Yalu River into North Korea, engaging U.S. troops in numerous battles before the war was halted by an armistice in 1953, after more than thirty thousand American soldiers had died. The United States also misunderstood China’s relationship with the Soviet Union, the reasons for its overtures to the Nixon administration in the 1970s, its intentions regarding student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989, its decision to treat an accidental U.S. bombing of a Chinese embassy in 1999 as an act that Chinese leaders equated with the atrocities of Hitler, and more.

通常而言，我们称呼自己为中国专家，我们一生的工作就是致力于减少中美之间的误解。有大量的工作需要我们去做。美国在有关中国的问题上错了一次又一次，有时这些错误会产生深远的影响。在1950年,中国领导人认为他们已经给了美国一个明确的警告，在朝鲜战争期间，美军不应该太接近中国边境，否则中国或将被迫作出相应的反应。但是在华盛顿，没有人得到过这个消息。那一年的十一月，中国军队跨过鸭绿江，涌进北朝鲜，同美军进行了无数次的战斗。在1953年签订停战协议前，美国已经死了三万多名士兵。美国也误解了中国与苏联的关系,这么说是因为：尼克松政府在1970年代（因误解而采取）的主动友好姿态，1989年（双方）有关天安门广场示威学生意图（的不同理解），以及1999年美国意外轰炸中国大使馆的行为,被中国领导人视为希特勒似的暴行，还有更多。

Many of us who study China have been taught to view the country as a helpless victim of Western imperialists—a notion that China’s leaders not only believe, but also actively encourage. When I was studying for my PhD at Columbia University in 1967, my political science professors emphasized how the West and Japan had mistreated China, with the implication that my generation needed somehow to atone for this. Many of our textbooks contained similar arguments.

我们许多研究中国的人被告知这样一个观点：这个国家是西方帝国主义的一个无助的受害者——这一观点中国的领导者不但自己相信，而且还积极推广。1967年，当我在哥伦比亚大学攻读我的博士学位时，我的政治学教授强调西方和日本曾经如何虐待过中国,并暗示我们这一代需要以某种方式来为此赎罪。我们许多的教科书中也含有类似的论点。

This perspective—the desire to help China at all costs, the almost willful blindness to any actions that undercut our views of Chinese goodwill and victimhood—has colored the U.S. government’s approach to dealing with China. It has affected the advice that China experts offer to U.S. presidents and other leaders.

从这一角度，我们不惜一切代价的想要帮助中国，有关中国的友好和受害者角色，任何想要削弱我们这种观点的积极行动，我们都故意的视而不见。这已经干扰了美国政府应对中国的方式，也影响了中国问题专家向美国总统和其他领导人提供的报告或建议。

It even has influenced our translations. One of the first things a student of the Chinese language learns is its essential ambiguity. There is no alphabet, and Chinese words aren’t formed by letters. Rather, words are formed by combining smaller words. The word for size combines the character for large with the character for small. The word for length combines the words for short and long. Chinese use dictionaries to organize thousands of characters, which must be filed under approximately two hundred so-called radicals or families, all sorted according to relatedness. Under each category of relatedness, the dozens of characters are again sorted in order of the total number of strokes required to write a character, from a minimum of one to a maximum of seventeen strokes.

它甚至影响到了我们的翻译。对于汉语学习者来说，要学的第一件事就是这门语言必不可少的歧义。汉语没有字母表，它的单词不是由字母构成的。相反，它的单词是由更小的词组成的。如中文描述尺寸的词（大小）是由“大”这个单词和“小”这个单词组合起来的，中文描述长度的词（长短）是由单词“长”和“短”组合起来的。中国人使用字典将上千个汉字编排起来，这些汉字必须被归类到大约二百个所谓的部首或家族中，所有这些都是按关联关系分类的。在每一类关联词中，数十个汉字按它所需笔画的总数依次排序，从最小的一个到最多十七个笔画。

Adding to this complexity are the tones and pitches that delineate words. The effect of tones is to give a single word four possible meanings. A classic example is ma. In the first tone, ma means mother. The second tone is a rising tone, so ma then means numb. The third tone for ma means horse, and the fourth tone for ma, which falls sharply, means to scold. The Chinese must talk loudly to make the tonal differences audible. Another ambiguity is how few sounds the Chinese language uses for syllables. The English language uses ten thousand different syllables, but Chinese has only four hundred. Thus, many words sound the same. Puns and misunderstandings abound.

单词的读音和声调给这门语言增加了复杂性。而声调的影响是一个单词可能有四种意思。一个典型的例子是“ma”。在第一声，ma的意思是妈妈。在第二声，ma的意思又变成了麻木的。第三声的ma，意思是马。而第四声的ma，陡转急下，意思是责骂。中国人必须大声说话，以使音调的差异能被听见。另一个造成歧义的原因是汉语使用的音节是那么的少。英语使用一万个不同的音节，而汉语只有四百个音节。因此，许多单词发音相同。双关语和误解比比皆是。

The language’s very complexity is like a secret code. A foreigner has to make important decisions about how to translate Chinese concepts, which can inherently lead to misunderstandings.13 I had to decide how to translate unusual, elliptical Chinese phrases that were used by Deng Xiaoping in 1983 to a Senate delegation in Beijing, then ambiguous comments in 1987 by Zhu Rongji in Washington, then again in 2002 to decipher what Hu Jintao meant to convey during his visit to the Pentagon. My colleagues often share our translation decisions with each other. Unfortunately, the vast majority of so-called China experts in the United States do not speak Chinese beyond a few words—enough to feign competence in the presence of those who do not speak the language fluently. This fact makes it easier for the supposed China “experts” to interpret Chinese messages subjectively in ways that conform to their own beliefs. What we all must do better is to look not just at speeches but also at the context of those speeches, and we need to look for larger hidden meanings. For well over a half century, Americans have failed to do this. Until recently, the sometimes vaguely phrased expressions of the Chinese hawks were obscure references to ancient history, so their input to Chinese strategy was hidden from most foreigners.

汉语这种语言的复杂性就像是一个秘密代码。一个外国人在决定如何翻译中国概念时，必须要做出审慎地选择，否则将不可避免的导致误解。我不得不决定如何翻译邓小平在1983年北京人大会议上使用的不寻常的、隐晦的中国成语，接下来是1987年朱镕基在华盛顿模棱两可的谈话，此外，如何解读2012年胡锦涛访问五角大楼时想要传达的内涵。我的同事们经常互相分享我们的翻译结果，不幸的是，绝大多数在美国的所谓中国专家除了一些单词外都不会说中文，他们的中文水平并不能支撑他们在那些说的还不够流利的人的面前装模作样。这一事实使得那些所谓的“中国专家”更容易主观的，以符合自己价值认知的角度去解读中国信息。我们必须做的更好，不仅仅是看中国人的演讲，还要看演讲的内容，我们还要寻找那里面更大的隐含意义。半个多世纪以来，美国人都没有做到这一点。直到最近，中国鹰派有时会运用含糊不清的修辞通过引用古代历史的方式来掩盖自己，所以他们对中国战略的投入，对大多数外国人来说是很隐蔽的。

Ever since President Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1971, U.S. policy toward the People’s Republic has largely been governed by those seeking “constructive engagement” with China to aid its rise. This policy has remained in effect, with only marginal changes, for decades, across eight U.S. presidential administrations. Democratic and Republican presidents have had different foreign policy visions, but all agreed on the importance of engaging with China and facilitating its rise. The constructive engagement crowd, populated by prominent academics, diplomats, and former presidents, has held significant sway over policymakers and journalists covering China. I should know—I was a member of this group for many decades. In fact, I was among the first people to provide intelligence to the White House favoring an overture to China, in 1969. For decades, I played a sometimes prominent role in urging administrations of both parties to provide China with technological and military assistance. I largely accepted the assumptions shared by America’s top diplomats and scholars, which were inculcated repeatedly in American strategic discussions, commentary, and media analysis. We believed that American aid to a fragile China whose leaders thought like us would help China become a democratic and peaceful power without ambitions of regional or even global dominance. We underestimated the influence of China’s hawks.

自从1971年尼克松总统对中国开放以来，美国对中华人民共和国的政策很大程度上是由那些寻求与中国“建设性接触”的人来控制的，这帮助了中国崛起。而且这项政策一直有效，几十年来，虽说历经八个美国总统，这项政策也只有微小的变化。民主党和共和党的总统有着不同的外交政策愿景，但他们都同意与中国接触并促进其崛起的重要性。由着名学者、外交官和前总统组成的“建设性接触”群体，对涉及中国的政策制定者和新闻记者具有重大影响。我当然知道，因为几十年来，我一直是这个组织的成员。事实上，我是第一批向白宫提供情报的人员之一，并在1969年赞成对中国的主动接触。几十年来，我在敦促两党政府为中国提供技术和军事援助方面发挥了重要作用。我很大程度上接受了美国顶级外交官和学者们对中国的假设，这些假设被反复灌输在美国的战略讨论、评论和媒体分析中。我们相信，美国对于一个脆弱的、其领导人和我们理念一致的中国的援助，将使中国成为一个民主和和平的力量，而不是谋求地区乃至全球统治地位的霸权。然而，我们都低估了中国鹰派的影响。

Every one of the assumptions behind that belief was wrong—dangerously so. The error of those assumptions is becoming clearer by the day, by what China does and, equally important, by what China does not do.

在“中国将成为一个民主和和平力量”的信念背后，每一个假设都是错误的，也是危险的。看看中国做了什么，同样重要的，看看中国不做什么，就知道这些假设的错误在今天变得越来越清晰。

FALSE ASSUMPTION #1: ENGAGEMENT BRINGS COMPLETE COOPERATION

错误的假设一：接触带来合作

For four decades now, my colleagues and I believed that “engagement” with the Chinese would induce China to cooperate with the West on a wide range of policy problems. It hasn’t. Trade and technology were supposed to lead to a convergence of Chinese and Western views on questions of regional and global order. They haven’t. In short, China has failed to meet nearly all of our rosy expectations.

40年来，我和我的同事们相信，与中国的“接触”将促使中国在一系列政策问题上与西方合作。但是没有。贸易往来和技术交流也被认为将使中国和西方在地区和全球秩序上的看法趋同。但是也没有。简而言之，中国几乎让我们所有的乐观期待都落空了。

From thwarting reconstruction efforts and economic development in war-ravaged Afghanistan to offering lifelines to embattled anti-Western governments in Sudan and North Korea, China has opposed the actions and goals of the U.S. government. Indeed, China is building its own relationships with America’s allies and enemies that contradict any peaceful or productive intentions of Beijing.

从阻挠饱经战火的阿富汗的重建努力和经济发展，到为反西方的苏丹和北朝鲜提供生命线，中国一直都在反对美国政府的行动和目标。事实上，中国正在与美国的盟友甚至是敌人建立起他们自己的关系，这与北京提出的任何和平理念或是发展理念都相抵触。

Take, for example, weapons of mass destruction. No security threat poses a greater danger to the United States and our allies than their proliferation. But China has been less than helpful—to put it mildly—in checking the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.

举个例子说，大规模杀伤性武器。对于美国和我们的盟友来说，它们的扩散比任何安全威胁都危险。但是，中国并不乐意遏制朝鲜和伊朗的核野心。

In the aftermath of 9/11, some commentators expressed the belief that America and China would henceforth be united by the threat of terrorism, much as they had once been drawn together by the specter of the Soviet Union. These high hopes of cooperating to confront the “common danger” of terrorism, as President George W. Bush described it in his January 2002 State of the Union address, by speaking of “erasing old rivalries,”16 did not change China’s attitude. Sino-American collaboration on this issue has turned out to be quite limited in scope and significance.

在9·11事件之后，一些评论家表达了这样的信念：美国和中国今后将会因为恐怖主义的威胁而团结在一起，就像他们曾经面对苏联恶魔而走到了一起一样。正如乔治·W·布什总统在2002年1月的国情咨文中所描述的那样，通过“消除旧的对抗”来联合应对恐怖主义的“共同威胁”，但是美国的这些期望并没有改变中国的态度。中美在这个问题上的合作无论是广度还是深度上都相当有限。

FALSE ASSUMPTION #2: CHINA IS ON THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY

错误的假设二：中国正在走向民主

China has certainly changed in the past thirty years, but its political system has not evolved in the ways that we advocates of engagement had hoped and predicted. A growing minority of China experts is beginning to appreciate this. Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University has observed that instead of being on the verge of extinction the Chinese Communist Party may survive for decades.17 The author James Mann, who has reported on China for more than thirty years, points out that what he terms the “soothing scenario,” which predicts that China will somehow evolve smoothly into a liberal democracy, could prove to be a fantasy. Twenty or thirty years from now, he warns, China will likely be far richer and stronger than it is today, yet it may still be ruled by a Communist dictatorship that remains “hostile to dissent and organized political opposition,” supportive of other oppressive regimes around the world, and sharply at odds with the United States.18 A 2009 assessment by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a leading center-left think tank, describes as “anachronistic” the belief that contact with the European Union will cause China to “liberalize its economy, improve the rule of law and democratize its politics.”19 Rather than the emergence of an American-style free market economy, scholars are increasingly noting the emergence of a system termed “authoritarian capitalism.”20 Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, writing in Journal of Democracy, calls the transformation “authoritarian resilience.”

中国在过去的30年里确实发生了变化，但是它的政治体制并没有以我们所期待和预测的方式进行演化。越来越多的中国专家开始意识到这一点。普林斯顿大学的亚伦·弗里德伯格（Aaron Friedberg）观察到，中国共产党还会继续存在数十年，而不是处于灭亡的边缘。作者詹姆斯·曼（James Mann）曾报道了中国三十多年，他指出，他所说的：预计中国将以某种方式顺利走向自由民主的“欣慰场景”，可能只是一个幻想。他警告说：未来二三十年，中国很可能比现在更富有、更强大，但它依旧由共产党独裁统治，仍然“不允许异议和反对派”并且支持世界上的其他压迫政权，而与美国产生重大分歧。欧洲对外关系委员会的一个左翼智库在2009年发布的一份评估报告称，这种认为与欧盟的接触将导致中国“经济自由化、法治改善和政治民主化”的观点是“不合时宜的”。学者们越来越关注一种被称为“专制资本主义”体系的出现，而不是美国式的自由市场经济。哥伦比亚大学的安德鲁·内森（Andrew Nathan）在《民主杂志》上撰文称这种转变为“独裁的复苏”。

Nonetheless, the idea that the seeds of democracy have been sown at the village level became the conventional wisdom among many China watchers in America. With patience but no pressure from the United States, the argument went, local elections in Chinese cities and towns would eventually be followed by regional and national elections.

尽管如此，认为民主的种子已经播撒到了中国乡村的观念还是成了美国许多中国观察家的普遍认知。他们认为只要有耐心，就算没有美国的压力，随着矛盾的持续，中国城、镇一级的地方选举最终会推动区域乃至国家选举的产生。

Like many working in the U.S. government, I had heard the democracy story for decades. I read about it in countless books and articles. I believed in it. I wanted to believe in it.

和许多在美国政府工作的人一样，这个民主故事我已经听了几十年了。我在无数的书本和文章里读到过它。我相信它。我想要相信它。

My faith was first shaken in 1997, when I was among those encouraged to visit China to witness the emergence of “democratic” elections in a village near the industrial town of Dongguan. While visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections actually worked. The unwritten rules of the game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed no public assemblies, no television ads, and no campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy implemented by the Communist Party, nor were they free to criticize their opponents on any issue. There would be no American-style debates over taxes or spending or the country’s future. The only thing a candidate could do was to compare his personal qualities to those of his opponent. Violations of these rules were treated as crimes.

我的信念第一次动摇是在1997年。那时我受邀访华，在工业重镇东莞附近的一个村庄里，我见证了一次“民主”选举的产生。在访问期间，我有机会用普通话与候选人交谈，看看选举是如何运作的。而那些不成文的游戏规则很快就浮出水面：候选人不允许公开集会，没有电视广告，也没有竞选海报。他们不允许批评共产党的任何政策，也不能自由地在任何问题上批评他们的对手。在税收、支出或国家未来上，不会有美国式的辩论。候选人唯一能做的就是把自己的个人素质和对手的素质进行比较。违反这些规定则被视为犯罪。

One candidate I spoke to asked me if this was how democratic elections worked in the West. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. China’s hawks had already done away with true elections.

我访问过的一个候选人问我，是不是西方的民主选举也是这样运行的。我没有勇气告诉他真相。中国的鹰派已经废除了真正的选举。

FALSE ASSUMPTION #3: CHINA, THE FRAGILE FLOWER

错误的假设三：中国：脆弱的花朵

In 1996, I was part of a U.S. delegation to China that included Robert Ellsworth, the top foreign policy adviser to the Republican presidential nominee, Robert Dole. Shrewdly playing to the possibility that Dole might win the presidential election and tap Ellsworth as secretary of state, the Chinese offered us what appeared to be an unprecedented look at their country’s inner workings and problems. Some of our escorts were military officers who called themselves ying pai.

1996年，我是美国访华代表团的人员之一，代表团里还有共和党总统候选人罗伯特·多尔（Robert Dole）的首席外交政策顾问罗伯特·埃尔斯沃斯（Robert Ellsworth）。出于对多尔有可能会赢得总统选举并提拔埃尔斯沃斯担任国务卿的精明盘算，中国人为我们提供了一次前所未有的审视他们国家内部运作及问题的机会。我们的一些陪同人员就是自称“ying pai”的军官。

In what appeared to be a forthright exchange of views with Chinese scholars, we were told that China was in serious economic and political peril—and that the potential for collapse loomed large. These distinguished scholars pointed to China’s serious environmental problems, restless ethnic minorities, and incompetent and corrupt government leaders—as well as to those leaders’ inability to carry out necessary reforms. Considering the well-known secretiveness of the Chinese Politburo, I was astonished by these scholars’ candor and startled by their predictions, which only underscored my support for efforts to provide U.S. aid to a supposedly fragile China.

在与中国学者的直接交流中，我们被告知，中国正处于严重的经济和政治风险之中，崩溃的可能性极大。这些杰出的学者指出了中国严重的环境问题，不安分的少数民族，以及无能腐败的政府领导人，此外，还有这些领导人无力进行必要的改革。考虑到中国政治局众所周知的隐秘性，我对这些学者的坦率感到惊讶，对他们的预测深感震动，这只说明了我支持向一个貌似脆弱的中国努力提供美国援助的举动。

I later learned that the Chinese were escorting other groups of American academics, business leaders, and policy experts on these purportedly “exclusive” visits, where they too received an identical message about China’s coming decline. Many of them then repeated these “revelations” in articles, books, and commentaries back in the United States. For example, a study published by the influential RAND Corporation listed ten factors that would cause China’s slowdown or even collapse in the imminent future.22 This trend would continue to characterize the China debate for years afterward. The title of an article published in Commentary magazine in 2003 referred to China’s “sickness,”23 and a best-selling book published in 2001 referred to China’s “coming collapse.”24 Many expressed the worrisome view that if the United States pressed China too hard to have elections, to free dissidents, to extend the rule of law, and to treat ethnic minorities fairly, then this pressure would lead to the collapse of the Chinese state—causing chaos throughout Asia.

直到后来，我了解到，中国人一直都会陪同其他的美国学者、商界领袖和政策专家等进行这些所谓的“高级”访问，他们也从那里收到了同样的关于中国即将衰落的信息。接着，当他们回到美国，他们中的许多人就会在文章、书籍还有评论中重复这些“启示”。例如，有影响力的兰德公司发表的一项研究报告列出了未来中国经济放缓甚至崩溃的十大因素。如此描述中国的论调将一直持续到多年之后。2003年发表在评论杂志上的一篇文章，其标题里提到了中国的“病症”，2001年出版的一本畅销书也提到了中国的“崩溃”。许多人表达出这样一种令人担忧的观点，即如果美国对中国过分施压，要求中国进行选举、释放异见人士、扩大法治、公平对待少数民族，那么这种压力将导致中国崩溃，并在整个亚洲地区引发混乱。

For decades, we have seen such arguments in op-ed pieces, news stories, and books that have dominated our national discourse about China. Yet the hard fact is that China’s already robust GDP is predicted to continue to grow by at least 7 or 8 percent, thereby surpassing that of the United States by 2018 at the earliest, according to economists from the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the United Nations.25 Unfortunately, China policy experts like me were so wedded to the idea of the “coming collapse of China”26 that few of us believed these forecasts. While we worried about China’s woes, its economy more than doubled.

几十年来，我们在专栏文章、新闻报道和书籍中都看到了这样的论点，这些论点主导了我们国家对中国的论述。然而，无情的事实是，依据国际货币基金组织的经济学家，经济合作与发展组织以及联合国的预测：中国强劲的GDP仍将持续增长至少7%～8%,从而最早到2018年超过美国。不幸的是，像我一样的中国政策专家们对“中国崩溃论”是如此执着，以至于几乎没有人相信这些预测。当我们还在担心中国的困境时，中国的经济却增长了一倍多。

FALSE ASSUMPTION #4: CHINA WANTS TO BE—AND IS—JUST LIKE US

错误的假设四：中国想要和我们一样

In our hubris, Americans love to believe that the aspiration of every other country is to be just like the United States. In recent years, this has governed our approach to Iraq and Afghanistan. We cling to the same mentality with China.

美国人总是狂妄自大，我们总是认为其他国家的愿望就是想像美国一样。近年来，它使我们在伊拉克和阿富汗问题上处处受制。我们对中国也抱着同样的心态。

In the 1940s, an effort was funded by the U.S. government to understand the Chinese mind-set. This culminated in several studies, including one in which 150 Chinese emigrants in New York’s Chinatown were shown Rorschach inkblot cards. The researchers, who included the scholars Nathan Leites, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, also analyzed the themes of popular Chinese books and films. One conclusion that emerged was that the Chinese did not view strategy the same way Americans did. Whereas Americans tended to favor direct action, those of Chinese ethnic origin were found to favor the indirect over the direct, ambiguity and deception over clarity and transparency. Another conclusion was that Chinese literature and writings on strategy prized deception.

20世纪40年代，美国政府资助了一个旨在了解中国人思维定势的工作。这个工作中的几项研究效果突出，其中包括给在纽约唐人街的150中国移民进行罗夏墨迹测验【由瑞士精神科医生、精神病学家罗夏(Hermann Rorschach)创立，利用墨渍图版进行测验，是非常着名的人格测验。】。研究人员，包括内森·莱特（Nathan Leites）、露丝本尼迪克特（Ruth Benedict）和玛格丽特·米德（Margaret Mead），还分析了流行的中文书籍和电影主题。得出的一个结论是，中国人和美国人看待战略的方式不一样。美国人倾向于直接采取行动，而中华民族则倾向于不清晰、不透明的间接、模糊和欺诈的方式。另一个结论是，中国的文学作品和战略着作中总是赞扬诈术的使用。

Two decades later, Nathan Leites, who was renowned for his psychoanalytical cultural studies, observed:

20年后，内森·莱特（Nathan Leites）以他的精神分析法文化研究而出名，他观察到:

Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military doctrines. Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward inducing the enemy to act inexpediently and less toward protecting the integrity of one’s own plans. In other cultures, particularly Western, deception is used primarily with the intention of ensuring that one’s own forces can realize their maximum striking potential … the prent payoff of deception for the Chinese is that one does not have to use one’s own forces.… Chinese tend to shroud their means in secrecy and not publicize the day-to-day activities of those in power; for surprise and deception are assumed to be vital.

从孙子到毛泽东，中国的战略着作比许多的军事学说更强调欺诈。中国的诈术运用主要是为了诱导敌人轻率地采取行动，而不是保护自己计划的完整性。在其他文化，特别是西方文化中，战略欺诈主要是为了确保自己的力量能够发挥最大的潜能……对中国人来说，战略欺诈追求的普遍结果是，不需要再动用自己的力量。……中国人倾向于保守秘密，而且不公开当权者的日常活动，因为出其不意和欺诈至关重要。

Chinese literature often highlights the role of deception, and the need for the “sage”—that is, the wise statesman—to penetrate the deception around him to find the hidden signals in reality. There is an emphasis in many classic Chinese stories of heroes using cunning to manipulate others. The heroes of many popular novels, films, and television programs are those who prove adept at concealing their motives, misleading enemies, and veiling their true intentions until the end. Those artists considered the most skilled convey deceptive signs that require a reader’s effort and intelligence to decipher and understand before the plot reaches a conclusion.

中国文学经常强调欺诈的作用，“圣人”——也就是，睿智的政治家，需要洞悉身边的诈局和圈套，并从中找到隐藏着的真正的信息。许多经典的中国故事都具备这一特点：英雄们利用奸诈来巧妙的控制他人。许多流行小说、电影、电视剧中的英雄都是那些善于隐藏自己的动机，误导敌人，并且把他们的真实意图掩盖到最后的人。那些非常有技巧的创作者们会传达出一些具有欺骗性的情节，在故事发展到最后之前，都需要读者根据自己的聪明才智来解读和领悟这些情节。

The results of the original 1940s study—the idea that an ethno-national group viewed the world differently—proved controversial and politically incorrect, and they were never published. The sole existing copy rests quietly in the Library of Congress.30 It would not be until 2000 that I learned from Chinese generals that the study’s conclusions were essentially correct. The Chinese value highly the importance of deception stratagems. They are proud of their cultural uniqueness. Two hawkish generals formed a “Chinese Strategic Culture Promotion Society” to broadcast this view. Their national media influence has risen since I first met them twenty years ago. My colleagues mistakenly ignored them until some of their recommendations recently became Chinese policy.

上世纪40年代一项独立的研究表明：不同民族看待世界的不同观点会引发争议和政治误判，但是他们从来没有发表过。这项研究唯一现存的副本如今还静静的躺在国会图书馆里。直到2000年，我才从中国将领身上领悟到，这项研究的结论基本正确。中国人高度重视欺诈策略的重要性。他们为自己的文化独特性而自豪。两名鹰派将领组成了一个“中国战略文化促进会”【注：2011年成立。邓万通为会长，罗援为副会长。】来传播这一观点。自从二十年前我第一次见到他们以来，他们对国家媒体的影响力不断上升，我的同事们错误地忽略了他们，直到他们的一些建议最近变成为中国的政策。

FALSE ASSUMPTION #5: CHINA’S HAWKS ARE WEAK

错误的假设五：中国的鹰派是弱势的

In the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration, I was tasked by the Department of Defense and the CIA to conduct an unprecedented examination of China’s capacity to deceive the United States and its actions to date along those lines. Relying on intelligence assets, unpublished documents, interviews with Chinese dissidents and scholars, and Chinese writings that I read in the original Mandarin script, I began to see the secrets that the Chinese had been hiding—in plain sight—from people like me.

上世纪90年代末，克林顿执政时期，我受国防部和中央情报局的委派，对中国忽悠美国的能力及其迄今为止的行动进行了一次前所未有的调查。依靠情报内容、未发表的文件、对中国异议者和学者的采访，以及我以原文读到的中文作品，我开始看到了中国人隐藏起来的秘密——尤其是——对像我一样的人。

As I assembled clues contradicting the conventional narrative about China that I had always believed, I starting connecting the pieces of an alternative narrative of roughly the past four decades. Over time, I discovered proposals by Chinese hawks (ying pai) to the Chinese leadership to mislead and manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and military, technological, and economic assistance. I learned that these hawks had been advising Chinese leaders, beginning with Mao Zedong, to avenge a century of humiliation and aspired to replace the United States as the economic, military, and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Revolution). This plan became known as “the Hundred-Year Marathon.” It is a plan that has been implemented by the Communist Party leadership from the beginning of its relationship with the United States. The goal is to avenge or “wipe clean” (xi xue) past foreign humiliations. Then China will set up a world order that will be fair to China, a world without American global supremacy, and revise the U.S.-dominated economic and geopolitical world order founded at Bretton Woods and San Francisco at the end of World War II. The hawks assess that China can only succeed in this project through deception, or at least by denial of any frightening plans.

当我收集的线索与我一直相信的中国传统叙事相矛盾的时候，我开始将过去40年中这些不同寻常的碎片联系起来。随着时间的推移，我发现了中国鹰派（ying pai）向中国领导层提出的建议：误导和操纵美国决策者，以获取情报以及军事、技术和经济援助。我了解到，这些鹰派人物从毛泽东开始就一直建议中国领导人，为一个世纪的屈辱复仇，并寻求在2049年(共产主义革命胜利100周年)取代美国成为世界经济、军事和政治领袖。这个计划被称为“百年马拉松”。这是一项中共领导层从与美国接触开始就已经实施的计划。计划的目的就是复仇或“擦干净”（xi xue）（洗雪）过去的对外屈辱。接着，中国将建立一个对中国公平的世界秩序，一个没有美国霸权的世界，并改变二战以来，由美国主导的，建立在布雷顿森林体系和旧金山体系之上的世界经济和地缘政治秩序。鹰派人士认为，中国只有通过忽悠才能取得这一计划的成功，或者就算不成功，他们至少也能否认进行过这样令人恐惧的计划。

When I presented my findings on the Chinese hawks’ recommendations about China’s ambitions and deception strategy, many U.S. intelligence analysts and officials greeted them initially with disbelief. They had not seen the evidence I found. (Thankfully, George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, was not among them, and in 2001 he awarded me the Exceptional Performance Award for this work.) I can understand my colleagues’ skepticism. The Chinese government had long portrayed itself as a backward nation in need of assistance for its “peaceful rise.” The Chinese have denied any desire to exercise global leadership—or to clash with the United States. Indeed, written into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China is language that prohibits the nation from becoming a hegemon.31 Chinese leaders routinely reassure other nations that “China will never become a hegemon.”32 In other words, China will be the most powerful nation, but not dominate anyone or try to change anything. We don’t have a copy of the plan. Indeed, the Chinese say there is no plan. They merely want to restore China to its former global position of three hundred years ago, when it commanded roughly a third of the world economy. That apparently means becoming at least twice as strong as the United States by 2049, the hawks say.

可当我的研究成果：就中国的野心和忽悠策略提出应对中国鹰派的建议，出来的时候，许多美国的情报分析员和官员却对它们表示了怀疑。他们没有看到我发现的证据。(庆幸的是，中央情报局局长乔治·特尼特（George Tenet）不在其中，2001年，他因为这项工作授予了我杰出贡献奖。)我能理解我的同事们的怀疑。长期以来，中国政府一直把自己描绘成一个需要帮助的“和平崛起”的落后国家。中国否认自己有任何想要行使全球领导权的企图或是有与美国发生冲突的愿望。确实，反对霸权主义这样的语言写进了中华人民共和国的宪法【《宪法》序言：坚持反对帝国主义、霸权主义、殖民主义】。中国的领导人也例行公事般的向其他国家保证，“中国绝不称霸”。换句话说，中国将是世界上最强大的国家，但是中国既不想主宰任何人，也不想改变任何事情。我们没有这个计划的副本。事实上，中国人说根本没有这样的计划。他们只是想让中国恢复到300年前的全球地位，那时中国大约占据世界经济总量的三分之一。鹰派人士说到，这显然意味着，到2049年，中国至少要是美国的两倍。

These notions of the more peaceful and less nationalist China have been confirmed by ideological allies in the West who populate academia, think tanks, financial institutions, and government. Advancing the notion of a China that is more interested in economic growth than global dominion serves to advance their self-interest, whether it be a private equity fund manager making investments in Chinese companies or a think tank scholar whose funding, access, and ability to facilitate studies and conferences with her Chinese counterparts depends on advancing the rosy scenario. This predominant school of thought among our foreign policy experts, economists, and businessmen is well meaning and not without evidence. There exist in China moderates and those who genuinely seek cooperation with the United States. Indeed, Chinese government officials usually echo those views and are eager to promote them as the authentic voice of China.

这些看起来更加和平、更少民族主义的中国观念已经被西方意识形态的盟友：如学术界、智库、金融机构及政府部门的人士所接纳。无论是一个私募股权基金的经理在中国做投资，还是一个智库学者获得政府拨款、访学、研究、和中国同行做交流都取决于美好场景的不断推进，取决于一个中国观念的提升，那就是：中国致力于国内的发展，对经济增长更感兴趣，而不是全球统治。这一主流思想存在于我们的外交政策专家、经济学家和商界人士中，它很有意思，而且并非没有根据。温和派还有那些真正想要和美国合作的人在中国确实存在。甚至，中国的政府官员们也经常附和他们的观点，并想将他们作为真实的中国声音来宣传。

But the more benign view of China held by those derisively called “panda huggers”—a term I wore as a badge of honor for decades—also requires suppressing reams of countervailing evidence and dismissing the many hard-line nationalist voices within China, from the highest levels of politics and military institutions to the conventional wisdom of the masses, as “fringe” and “marginal.” They are hard-liners labeled as “out of touch” and as relics of a past that has been obliterated by globalization and information technology.

对中国更友善的是被嘲讽为“熊猫派”的人，几十年来，我一直把这个称号当做荣誉勋章，成为“熊猫派”还需要压制大量的（美国对华）反补贴证据，并将中国国内从最高政治军事机关到普通民众中的许多强硬的民族主义声音视为“少数”和“边缘的”。他们是“脱离现实”的强硬分子，是已经被全球化和信息技术抛弃的历史遗迹。

Dismissing Chinese nationalism as out of the mainstream is what most Western experts on China have done for decades. The bias of wishful thinking has created a blind spot to what is likely to emerge as America’s thorniest national security challenge in the next twenty-five years. There are moderates and hard-liners in China, doves and hawks, who are locked in a fierce debate over the shape of China’s future within the halls of government in Beijing and in frequent conferences. But increasingly, the more hard-line and nationalist worldview is winning out and indeed has far more influence in the inner circle of China’s new president, Xi Jinping. The hawks’ government-sponsored newspaper Global Times has become the second or third most popular source of news, and its editor, Hu Xijin, makes clear how China’s hawks see the moderate doves: they are “the cancer cells that will lead to the demise of China.”

数十年来，大多数的西方中国问题专家忽视中国的民族主义，认为它们不是主流。这种一厢情愿的看法极有可能给未来二十五年美国最头痛的国家安全问题带来盲点。中国既有温和派也有强硬派，既有鸽派也有鹰派，他们在北京的政府大厅里频繁地举行会议，激烈的辩论着中国未来的走向。但是，更为强硬的、民族主义的观点正越来越多的占据上风，甚至对中国新任国家主席习近平的核心圈子有着更大的影响力。鹰派的政府报纸《环球时报》已经成为中国排名第二或第三的最受欢迎的新闻来源，它的总编辑胡锡进明确表达了中国的鹰派是如何看待温和的鸽派的：他们是“将导致中国灭亡的癌细胞”。

For the past three decades, as a China expert who has worked in the Congress and in the executive branch for every administration since Richard Nixon’s, I have arguably had more access to China’s military and intelligence establishment than any other Westerner. Representatives from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of State Security have opened the doors to their most secretive institutions and given me documents and writings that no other Westerner has read. The hard-liners among them saw me as a useful tool to promote their views, even if I caused discomfort among those in Beijing and Washington who were invested in the image of a peaceful, docile China. In 1998 and 2000, I published two academic books called Chinese Views of Future Warfare35 and China Debates the Future Security Environment,36 which translated many of the documents I had collected on my visits to Beijing or that had been given to me by Chinese military leaders and defectors. I included documents from both sides of the internal Chinese debate about the nation’s role in the world, what I called the “orthodox” (hard-line) and “revisionist” (moderate) perspectives at the time. The generals and foreign policy experts I quoted in my two books expressed gratitude that their views had been translated accurately and were receiving some attention, at least among a small clique of national security experts in Washington, and proceeded to grant me more access in the years following.

在过去的三十年间，作为一名中国专家，我从理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）时期就开始在国会和行政部门工作。可以说，我比任何西方人都更能接触到中国的军事和情报机构。解放军和国家安全部的代表打开了他们最神秘机构的大门，为我提供了其他西方人从未读过的资料和文字。他们其中的强硬派视我为一个宣传他们观点的有用工具，尽管我让那些位于北京和华盛顿的传播“和平、温良中国”的人感到了不舒服。在1998年和2000年，我出版了两本学术着作：《中国人看未来战争》和《中国对未来安全形势的思考》，这两本书中翻译了许多文件，既有我在北京访问期间搜集到的，也有中国军方的领导以及中国的叛逃者透露给我的。我集合了中国内部讨论中国在世界中的角色的双方观点，那时我称这两种观点为“正统观点”（强硬的）和“修正主义观点”（温和的）。我在两本书中引述的将军和外交政策专家们，对我表示了感谢，因为他们的观点得到了准确的翻译，并收到了一些关注，至少在华盛顿的一个国家安全专家的小圈子里，接下来的几年，我被继续给予更多的访问权限。

After decades of studying China closely, I am convinced that these hard-line views are not fringe, but are very much in the mainstream of Chinese geostrategic thought. They are the unvarnished views of senior policymakers who represent hundreds of millions who want to see China rise to global preeminence. Dating back to the beginnings of the Cultural Revolution, there is indisputably also a long line of liberal thinkers who seek integration within the global free market and evolution toward a more democratic system of governance. Just as America has its camps of hawks and doves, its so-called neoconservatives, interventionists, realists, and isolationists, Chinese elites are divided. The difference, of course, is that those debates rarely occur in view of the Chinese public and the Western press. There is no Congress of elected representatives or truly open forums to discuss such matters.

经过几十年对中国的深入研究，我认为这些强硬观点不是边缘的，而是在中国地缘政治思想中非常主流的。它们反映了中国高层决策者的朴质愿望，这些人代表着亿亿万万想要看到中国崛起为全球领先地位的中国民众。毫无疑问，文革之初，中国也有一大批的自由主义思想家，他们寻求融入全球自由市场，并向更加民主的治理体系进行演进。但就像美国有鹰派和鸽派，有所谓的新保守派、干涉主义者、现实主义者和孤立主义者一样，中国的精英们也有分歧。不同之处在于，中国的这些辩论很少出现在中国公众和西方媒体面前。中国没有选举出来的国会代表，也没有真正开放的空间来讨论这些问题。

The challenge for Western policymakers, intelligence analysts, and scholars in the coming decade is to penetrate the cloak of secrecy in which these debates occur and to determine the level of influence these different camps have. Until now, it has largely been taken for granted among Western policy and business elites that China seeks a peaceful rise and will gradually evolve to more resemble America. The explosive growth in China of consumer brands such as Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Apple serves only to reinforce this view. Only recently have there been disturbing signs that a more militaristic China may be ascendant, which has caused some to question the wishful thinking that has prevailed for more than forty years.

未来10年，西方决策者、情报分析员和学者面临的挑战就是要深入了解这些辩论的秘密，并确定这些不同阵营的影响力水平。到目前为止，西方的政策和商业精英们理所当然的认为：中国寻求和平崛起，并会逐渐发展得更像美国。星巴克、麦当劳和苹果等消费品牌在中国的爆炸式增长，只是强化了这一观点。直到最近才有一些令人不安的迹象表明，一个军国主义的中国可能正在崛起，这使得一些人开始质疑这个盛行四十多年的一厢情愿的想法。

What is indisputable, even for those who continue to advocate for closer ties between the United States and China, is that not only has China’s rise happened right under our noses, but also the United States, and the West more broadly, have helped the Chinese accomplish their goals from the beginning. One key source of such assistance was the World Bank. Meeting with Chairman Deng Xiaoping in 1983, World Bank executives secretly agreed that a team of economists would study China intensively and, looking ahead twenty years, recommended how China could catch up to the United States.39 But this wasn’t the only means of assistance. For decades, the U.S. government has freely handed over sensitive information, technology, military know-how, intelligence, and expert advice to the Chinese. Indeed, so much has been provided for so long that Congress complained in 2005 that there is no full accounting. And what we haven’t given the Chinese, they’ve stolen.

即使对于那些继续主张中美关系应该更加密切的人来说，不争的事实是，中国的崛起不仅就发生在我们眼皮底下，而且美国或者更广泛的说西方世界，从一开始就已在帮助中国人完成他们的目标。这种帮助的一个主要来源是世界银行。在1983年与邓小平主席会面时，世界银行的高管们秘密地同意，经济学家团队将深入研究中国，并通过展望未来20年，教中国如何赶上美国。但这并不是唯一的援助方式。几十年来，美国政府一直无偿地将敏感信息、技术、军事知识、情报和专家意见等交给中国。事实上，这么长的时间、提供这么多的援助，以致国会在2005年抱怨根本没办法完全统计这些援助。而那些我们没有给中国人的，中国却已经偷走了。

The strength of the Hundred-Year Marathon, however, is that it operates through stealth. To borrow from the movie Fight Club, the first rule of the Marathon is that you do not talk about the Marathon. Indeed, there is almost certainly no single master plan locked away in a vault in Beijing that outlines the Marathon in detail. The Marathon is so well known to China’s leaders that there is no need to risk exposure by writing it down. But the Chinese are beginning to talk about the notion more openly—perhaps because they realize it may already be too late for America to keep pace.

然而，百年马拉松的优势在于它是通过秘密行动进行的。借用电影《搏击俱乐部》的说法，马拉松的第一规则就是不谈马拉松。几乎可以肯定的说，没有什么单独大计划锁在北京的某个地下室里，计划里还详细描述了百年马拉松的细节。中国领导人对百年马拉松计划了如指掌，根本没有必要冒着暴露的风险写下来。不过，也许是意识到美国要采取行动已经太迟，中国人开始越来越公开的地谈论这个话题。

I observed a shift in Chinese attitudes during three visits to the country in 2012, 2013, and 2014. As was my usual custom, I met with scholars at the country’s major think tanks, whom I’d come to know well over decades. I directly asked them about a “Chinese-led world order”—a term that only a few years earlier they would have dismissed, or at least would not have dared to say aloud. However, this time many said openly that the new order, or rejuvenation, is coming, even faster than anticipated. When the U.S. economy was battered during the global financial crisis of 2008, the Chinese believed America’s long-anticipated and unrecoverable decline was beginning.

在2012年、2013年和2014年三次到中国访问期间，我观察到中国态度的一个转变。和往常一样，我见了这个国家主要智库中的一些学者，这些人我已经认识了几十年。我直接问他们“中国领导的世界秩序”——这个词在几年前，他们会反驳，或者至少不敢大声说出来。然而，这一次，许多人公开表示，新秩序或复兴即将到来，甚至比预期的还要快。当美国经济在2008年全球金融危机中遭受重创时，中国人相信美国早就预料到的、不可挽回的衰退开始了。

I was told—by the same people who had long assured me of China’s interest in only a modest leadership role within an emerging multipolar world—that the Communist Party is realizing its long-term goal of restoring China to its “proper” place in the world. In effect, they were telling me that they had deceived me and the American government. With perhaps a hint of understated pride, they were revealing the most systematic, significant, and dangerous intelligence failure in American history. And because we have no idea the Marathon is even under way, America is losing.

曾经就是这同一批人，长期以来对我保证道：中国只会在一个新兴的多极世界中发挥有限的领导作用，而共产党的长期目标是将中国恢复到世界上“适当”的位置。如今，他们告诉我，他们欺骗了我和美国政府。也许是对自己低调的自豪感的一点暗示，他们揭露出了美国历史上最系统、最重要、最危险的情报失误。美国正在输掉比赛，因为我们不知道马拉松竞赛还在进行中。