America Must Prepare for the Coming Chinese Empire
美国必须为即将来临的中华帝国做好准备
The last thing American policymakers or strategists should assume is that
somehow Americans are superior to the Chinese.
美国政策制定者或战略家不该假定，美国人在某种程度上优于中国人。
原文(The National Interest)：https://tinyurl.com/y3pm8qz3
原文PDF档下载(免付费)：https://tinyurl.com/y2z8ej7l
部分翻译(观察者)：
https://www.guancha.cn/LuoBoTe-D-KaPuLan/2019_07_09_508683_s.shtml
(其余部分由po文者翻译)
Robert D. Kaplan
Before one can outline a grand strategy for the United States, one has to be
able to understand the world in which America operates. That may sound
simple, but a bane of Washington is the assumption of knowledge where little
actually exists. Big ideas and schemes are worthless unless one is aware of
the ground-level reality of several continents, and is able to fit them into
a pattern, based not on America’s own historical experience, but also on the
historical experience of others. Therefore, I seek to approach grand strategy
not from the viewpoint of Washington, but of the world； and not as a
political scientist or academic, but as a journalist with more than three
decades of experience as a reporter around the globe.
在为美国勾勒出一项宏大的战略之前，我们必须先了解美国所身处的世界。这听起来可能
很简单，但华盛顿的一个祸根就是在实际了解得很少的情况下假定我们了解了全局。除非
我们能了解几个大陆的基础现状并能够根据其他国家的历史经验（而非美国自身的历史经
验）将它们归纳成一种模式，否则伟大的思想和计画都是毫无价值的。因此，我希望从世
界的角度而不是从华盛顿的角度去理解大战略，同时，不是作为一名政治科学家或者学者
，而是作为一名拥有30多年经验的记者去研究。
After covering the Third World during the Cold War and its aftershocks which
continue to the present, I have concluded that, despite the claims of
post-colonial studies courses prevalent on university campuses, we still
inhabit (in functional terms, that is) an imperial world. Empire in some form
or another is eternal, even if European colonies of the early-modern and
modern eras are gone. Thus, the issue becomes: what are the contours of the
current imperial age that affect grand strategy for the United States? And
once those contours are delineated, what should be America’s grand strategy
in response? I will endeavor to answer both questions.
在报导了冷战时期的第三世界国家及其持续至今的余波后，我的结论是，尽管后殖民主义
研究课程在大学校园里盛行，但就实际运作而言，我们仍然生活在一个帝国主义的世界。
即使早期和现代的欧洲殖民地已经不复存在，帝国却在以某种形式永恒地存在着。因此，
问题则变成了：当前帝国时代对美国大战略的整体影响是什么？一旦这些影响的轮廓被勾
勒出来，美国的大战略应该如何应对？我将尽力回答这两个问题。
Empire, or its great power equivalent, requires the impression of permanence:
the idea, embedded in the minds of local inhabitants, that the imperial
authorities will always be there, compelling acquiescence to their rule and
influence. Wherever I traveled in Africa, the Middle East and Asia during the
Cold War, American and Soviet influence was seen as permanent； unquestioned
for all time, however arrogant and overbearing it might have been. Whatever
the facts, that was the perception. And after the Soviet Union collapsed,
American influence continued to be seen for a time as equally permanent. Make
no mistake: America, since the end of World War II, and continuing into the
second decade of the twenty-first century, was an empire in all but name.
帝国，或与之相当的强国，需要给人一种它将永远存在的印象：这种帝国当局将永远存在
的想法若根植于当地居民的心中，就会迫使他们默认这个帝国的统治和影响力。冷战期间
，无论我走到非洲、中东或亚洲的哪里，人们都认为美国和苏联的影响是永久性的。无论
它看起来多么傲慢和专横，这都是毋庸置疑的。不管事实如何，这种感觉都存在。在苏联
解体后，美国的影响力在一段时间内仍然被视为是永久性的。毫无疑问：美国自二战结束
一直到21世纪的前二十年以来，除了名称之外，实际上就是一个帝国。
That is no longer the case. European and Asian allies are now, with good
reason, questioning America’s constancy. New generations of American
leaders, to judge from university liberal arts curriculums, are no longer
being educated to take pride in their country’s past and traditions. Free
trade or some equivalent, upon which liberal maritime empires have often
rested, is being abandoned. The decline of the State Department, ongoing
since the end of the Cold War, is hollowing out a primary tool of American
power. Power is not only economic and military: it is moral. And I don’t
mean humanitarian, as necessary as humanitarianism is for the American brand.
But in this case, I mean something harder: the fidelity of our word in the
minds of allies. And that predictability is gone.
但现在情况已经不同了。欧洲和亚洲已成为盟友并有充分的理由质疑美国的稳定性。从大
学通才教育课程来看，新一代的美国领导人不再为他们国家的过去和传统感到自豪。自由
贸易等其他自由海上帝国赖以生存的基础正在被抛弃。自冷战结束以来，美国国务院，这
个美国权力的重要工具，一直在走下坡路，甚至在被逐渐掏空。权力不仅是经济和军事上
的，也是道德上的。我不是说人道主义，因为人道主义的标签对美国来说是必要的。在这
个问题上，我指的是更重要的东西：我们诺言的忠诚度在盟友心中开始变得不可预测。
Meanwhile, as one imperium-of-sorts declines, another takes its place.
与此同时，随着某种帝国的衰落，另一种“帝国”将取而代之。
China is not the challenge we face: rather, the challenge is the new Chinese
empire. It is an empire that stretches from the arable cradle of the ethnic
Han core westward across Muslim China and Central Asia to Iran； and from the
South China Sea, across the Indian Ocean, up the Suez Canal, to the eastern
Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea. It is an empire based on roads, railways,
energy pipelines and container ports whose pathways by land echo those of the
Tang and Yuan dynasties of the Middle Ages, and by sea echo the Ming dynasty
of the late Middle Ages and early-modern period. Because China is in the
process of building the greatest land-based navy in history, the heart of
this new empire will be the Indian Ocean, which is the global energy
interstate, connecting the hydrocarbon fields of the Middle East with the
middle-class conurbations of East Asia.
中国不是我们面临的挑战：相反，我们所面临的挑战是一个新的中华帝国。它从以汉族为
核心的可耕地摇篮向西延伸，横跨中国的西部和中亚，直达伊朗；从南海，穿过印度洋，
到苏伊士运河，再到东地中海和亚得里亚海。它是一个以公路、铁路、能源管道和集装箱
港口为基础的大国。其陆路路线与中世纪唐元时期的路线相呼应，海上路线则与中世纪晚
期和近代早期的明朝相呼应。由于中国正在建设历史上最大的陆基海军，这个“新帝国”
的核心将是印度洋，一个连接着中东的油气田和东亚的中产阶级城市的全球能源洲际中心
。
This new Indian Ocean empire has to be seen to be believed. A decade ago, I
spent several years visiting these Chinese ports in the making, at a time
when few in the West were paying attention. I traveled to Gwadar in the bleak
desert of Baluchistan, technically part of Pakistan but close to the Persian
Gulf. There, I saw a state-of-the-art port complex rising sheer above a
traditional village. (The Chinese are now contemplating a naval base in
nearby Jawani, which would allow them to overwatch the Strait of Hormuz.) In
Hambantota, in Sri Lanka, I witnessed hundreds of Chinese laborers literally
moving the coast itself further inland, as armies of dump trucks carried soil
away. While America’s bridges and railways languish, it is a great moment in
history to be a Chinese civil engineer. China has gone from building these
ports, to having others manage them, and then finally to managing them
themselves. It has all been part of a process that recalls the early days of
the British and Dutch East India companies in the same waters.
我们必须相信这个新的印度洋大国的存在。十年前，我花了几年时间参观这些正在建设中
的中国港口，而当时西方很少有人注意到这一点。我去了位于俾路支省荒凉沙漠中的瓜达
尔港。在那里，我看到一座最先进的港口综合设施耸立在一个传统村落之上。（中国人正
在考虑在Jawani附近建造一个海军基地，这将使他们能够覆蓋霍尔木兹海峡。）在斯里兰
卡的汉班托塔，我亲眼目睹了数百名中国劳工沿着海岸向内陆移动，以及震撼如军队般的
砂石车是如何把泥土运走的。中国已经从建设这些港口，到让别人管理它们，最后再转变
到自己管理它们。这一切的过程都让人回想起英国和荷兰东印度公司早期在同一水域的作
为。
Newspaper reports talk of some of these projects being stalled or mired in
debt. That is a traditionally capitalist way to look at it. From a mercantile
and imperialist point of view, these projects make perfect sense. In a way,
the money never really leaves China: a Chinese state bank lends the money for
a port project in a foreign country, which then employs Chinese state
workers, which utilize a Chinese logistics company, and so on.
据报导，其中一些项目已被搁置或陷入债务泥潭。这是传统的资本主义观点。但从商业和
帝国主义的角度来看，这些项目绝对是有意义的。在某种程度上，资金从未真正离开过中
国：一家中国国有银行贷款给外国的一个港口项目，然后该项目雇用中国工人，这些工人
再雇佣一家中国物流公司，以此类推。
Geography is still paramount. And because the Indian Ocean is connected to
the South China Sea through the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok straits, Chinese
domination of the South China Sea is crucial to Beijing. China is not a rogue
state, and China’s naval activities in the South China Sea make perfect
sense given its geopolitical and, yes, its imperial imperatives. The South
China Sea not only further unlocks the Indian Ocean for China, but it further
softens up Taiwan and grants the Chinese navy greater access to the wider
Pacific.
地理仍然是最重要的因素。由于印度洋通过马六甲海峡、巽他海峡和龙目海峡与南海相连
，中国对南海的控制至关重要。中国不是一个流氓国家，鉴于地缘政治以及其帝国的迫切
需要，中国在南海的海军活动完全合情合理。南海不仅进一步为中国打开了印度洋的大门
，而且进一步软化了台湾，使中国海军有更多的机会进入更广阔的太平洋。
The South China Sea represents one geographical frontier of the Greater
Indian Ocean world； the Middle East and the Horn of Africa represent the
other. The late Zbigniew Brzezinski once wisely said in conversation that
hundreds of millions of Muslims do not yearn for democracy as much as they
yearn for dignity and justice, things which are not necessarily synonymous
with elections. The Arab Spring was not about democracy: rather, it was
simply a crisis in central authority. The fact that sterile and corrupt
authoritarian systems were being rejected did not at all mean these societies
were institutionally ready for parliamentary systems: witness Libya, Yemen
and Syria. As for Iraq, it proved that beneath the carapace of tyranny lay
not the capacity for democracy but an anarchic void. The regimes of Morocco,
Jordan and Oman provide stability, legitimacy, and a measure of the justice
and dignity that Brzezinski spoke of, precisely because they are traditional
monarchies, with only the threadbare trappings of democracy. Tunisia’s
democracy is still fragile, and the further one travels away from the capital
into the western and southern reaches of the country, close to the Libyan and
Algerian borders, the more fragile it becomes.
南海代表大印度洋世界的一个地理边界；中东和非洲之角代表另一个。已故的兹比格涅夫
·布热津斯基曾在谈话中明智地表示，数以亿计的穆斯林并不像他们渴望尊严和正义那样
渴望民主，这些东西不必然是选举的同义词。阿拉伯之春不是关于民主的：相反，它只是
中央集权的一场危机。无效和腐败的独裁制度被人民拒绝的事实并不意味着这些社会在制
度面上为议会制做好准备：看看利比亚，也门和叙利亚。至于伊拉克，事实证明，在暴政
的背后，不是民主的能力，而是无政府主义的空虚。摩洛哥，约旦和阿曼的政权提供了稳
定，合法性和衡量布热津斯基所说的正义和尊严，正是因为它们是传统的君主制，只是披
上民主的破旧外衣。突尼斯的民主仍然是脆弱的，而随着越来越远离首都进入该国的西部
和南部地区，靠近利比亚和阿尔及利亚的边界，它变得越脆弱。
This is a world tailor-made for the Chinese, who do not deliver moral
lectures about the type of government a state should have but do provide an
engine for economic development. To wit, globalization is much about
container shipping: an economic activity that the Chinese have mastered. The
Chinese military base in Djibouti is the security hub in a wheel of ports
extending eastward to Gwadar in Pakistan, southward to Bagamoyo in Tanzania,
and northwestward to Piraeus in Greece, all of which, in turn, help anchor
Chinese trade and investments throughout the Middle East, East Africa and the
eastern Mediterranean. Djibouti is a virtual dictatorship, Pakistan is in
reality an army-run state, Tanzania is increasingly authoritarian and Greece
is a badly institutionalized democracy that is increasingly opening up to
China. In significant measure, between Europe and the Far East, this is the
world as it really exists in Afro-Eurasia. The Chinese empire, unburdened by
the missionary impulse long prevalent in American foreign policy, is well
suited for it.
这是一个为中国人量身定做的世界。中国人不会就一个国家应该拥有什么样的政府发表道
德说教，而是为其经济发展提供助力。也就是说，全球化在很大程度上与集装箱运输有关
：这是一项中国人已经掌握的经济活动。位于吉布提的中国军事基地是通往巴基斯坦瓜达
尔东部的港口安全中心，向东延伸至坦桑尼亚的巴加莫约，向西北延伸至希腊的比雷埃夫
斯，所有这些都有助于中国的贸易和投资。中东，东非和地中海东部。吉布提是一个虚拟
的独裁政权，巴基斯坦实际上是一个由军队管理的国家，坦桑尼亚越来越专制，希腊是一
个制度化程度很低的民主国家，越来越多地向中国开放。在很大程度上，这是一个在欧洲
和远东之间，真实存在于非洲 - 欧亚大陆的世界。中华帝国的外交政策不像美国政策那
样带有传教性质，也因此使其摆脱了沉重的负担。
More to the point, when it comes to China, we are dealing with a unique and
very formidable cultural organism. The American foreign policy elite does not
like to talk about culture since culture cannot be quantified, and in this
age of extreme personal sensitivity, what cannot be quantified or
substantiated by a footnote is potentially radioactive. But without a
discussion of culture and geography, there is simply no hope of understanding
foreign affairs. Indeed, culture is nothing less than the sum total of a
large group of people’s experience inhabiting the same geographical
landscape for hundreds or thousands of years.
更重要的是，当谈到中国时，我们面对的是一个独特而强大的文化有机体。美国的外交政
策精英不喜欢谈论文化，因为文化无法量化，在这个极端个人感知的时代，无法用一段注
解来量化或证实的东西只能具有潜在的放射性(无实际作用)。然而，若没有对文化和地理
的讨论，我们就无法真正理解外交事务。事实上，文化只不过是居住在同一地域数百年或
数千年的一大群人的经验总和。
Anyone who travels in China, or even observes it closely, realizes something
that the business community intuitively grasps better than the policy
community: the reason there is little or no separation between the public and
private domains in China is not only because the country is a dictatorship,
but because there is a greater cohesion of values and goals among Chinese
compared to those among Americans. In China, you are inside a traditional
mental value system. In that system, all areas of national activity—
commercial, cyber, military, political, technological, educational—work
fluently toward the same ends, so that computer hacking, espionage, port
building and expansion, the movement of navy and fishing fleets, and so on
all appear coordinated. And within that system, Confucianism still lends a
respect for hierarchy and authority among individual Chinese, whereas
American culture is increasingly about the dismantling of authority in favor
of devotion to the individual. Confucian societies worship old people；
Western societies worship young people. One should never forget these lines
from Solzhenitsyn: “Idolized children despise their parents, and when they
get a bit older they bully their countrymen. Tribes with an ancestor cult
have endured for centuries. No tribe would survive long with a youth cult.”
任何在中国旅行或者密切观察过中国的人都能意识到：商界比政策界更能直观地把握一些
事情。中国公共领域和私人领域之间很少或根本没有分离的原因不仅仅是因为这个国家是
独裁，而是中国人在价值观和目标上比美国人更有凝聚力。在中国，你处于传统的心理价
值体系中。在该系统中，国家活动的所有领域——商业、网络、军事、政治、技术、教育
——都能顺利地朝着同一目的，因此计算机黑客攻击，间谍活动，港口建设和扩展，海军
和捕鱼船队的运动等等，看起来都很协调。在这个体系中，儒家思想仍然尊重中国个人的
等级制度和权威，而美国文化则越来越倾向于废除权威，致力于个人。儒家社会尊重老年
人；西方社会尊重年轻人。人们永远不应该忘记索忍尼辛的这段话：“偶像化的孩子鄙视
他们的父母，当他们变老时，他们欺负他们的同胞。拥有祖先崇拜的部落已经存活了数世
纪。没有一个部落会因为青年崇拜而长期生存。
Chinese are educated in national pride； increasingly the opposite of what
goes on in our own schools and universities. And Chinese are extraordinarily
efficient, with a manic attention to detail. Individuals are certainly more
concrete than the mass. But that does not mean national traits simply do not
exist. I have flown around China on domestic airlines with greater ease and
comfort than I could ever imagine flying around America at its airports. And
that is to say nothing about China’s bullet trains.
中国人受的是民族自豪感的教育；这与我们自己的学校和大学的倾向越来越相反。中国人
非常有效率，狂热地注重细节。个人肯定比群众更具体。但这并不意味着国家特征根本就
不存在。我乘坐”国内航空”飞越中国，比起在美国机场间飞来飞去更容易和更舒适