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China and the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’
中国与“囚徒困境”
BY RICHARD J. SHINDER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 01/02/22 1:00 PM ET
作者：RICHARD J. SHINDER，意见撰稿人 - 美国东部时间 22 年 1 月 2 日下午 1：00
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/587797-china-and-the-prisoners-dilemma/
Following years of denial, and in the face of overwhelming evidence, a grudging bipartisan consensus is emerging that China represents more than simply good-faith strategic competition to the United States. Having been welcomed — almost as if by acclimation — to join the international rules-based order after decades of self-imposed geopolitical and economic isolation, China’s position is now firmly established among the community of nations. That it seeks to disrupt the club of which it is a member presents political leaders with unprecedented challenges.
经过多年的否认，面对压倒性的证据，两党正在形成一个勉强的共识，即中国代表的不仅仅是对美国的善意战略竞争。在几十年的自我强加的地缘政治和经济孤立之后，中国受到欢迎——几乎就像是适应了——加入基于规则的国际秩序，现在在国际社会中的地位已经牢固确立。它试图破坏它所在的俱乐部，这给政治领导人带来了前所未有的挑战。
After decades of “hiding its strength and biding its time,” in Deng Xiaoping’s roughly translated phrase, in the 2010s China slowly began exerting its growing strategic leverage on the global stage. Initially it did so through domestic development and international trade; more recently, it has added diplomacy, foreign aid and an accelerated military buildup to the mix. The China the world was so eager to have accede to a significant role within a stable multilateral framework now looks to refashion — or make obsolete — that order for its own benefit. China desires not so much to displace America atop a web of interconnected postwar institutions and relationships, but to duplicate and replace those bodies traditionally led by America, leaving an outmoded order to wither.
用邓小平粗略翻译过来的话来说，几十年来“隐身夺力，择时而降”之后，中国在2010年代慢慢开始在全球舞台上发挥其日益增长的战略影响力。最初，它通过国内发展和国际贸易来实现这一点;最近，它又增加了外交、 对外援助 和加速 军事建设 。世界如此渴望在稳定的多边框架中发挥重要作用的中国，现在为了自己的利益而寻求重塑——或使这一秩序过时。中国并不是想在战后相互关联的机构和关系的网络上取代美国，而是复制和取代那些传统上由美国领导的机构，让过时的秩序枯萎。
China’s rise within and subsequent challenge to this global postwar framework stands in contrast to the Cold War contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the USSR stood apart from the “First World” economically. The communist world competed with the West through a “war of ideas,” as well as diplomatically and occasionally militarily through proxies, but largely absented itself from economic congress with the Atlantic alliance and its market-oriented allies. China, a notionally socialist nation, set upon a course in the 1980s to fully integrate itself with the world’s market economies and, roughly 40 years on, arguably has succeeded beyond its post-Mao imagination.
中国在这个全球战后框架中的崛起和随后的挑战与美国和苏联之间的冷战竞争形成鲜明对比，因为苏联在经济上与“第一世界”不同。共产主义世界通过“思想之战”与西方竞争，并在外交上和偶尔通过代理人进行军事竞争，但基本上没有参加与大西洋联盟及其市场导向盟友的经济会议。中国是一个名义上的社会主义国家，在1980年代开始全面融入世界市场经济，大约40年过去了，可以说已经取得了超出后毛时代想象的成功。
Now fully ensconced as an essential hub of global economic commerce, China has taken various actions outside of accepted norms, and has done so with increasing velocity and amplitude. It has snuffed out democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong; become increasingly bellicose with respect to Taiwan; extended its suppression of domestic entrepreneurial activity in favor of state-owned enterprises, impeded foreign direct investment (FDI) and frustrated overseas share listings; and used myriad commercial linkages with the West as another weapon in its foreign policy arsenal.
现在，中国已经完全 成为全球经济贸易的重要枢纽 ，它采取了各种超出公认规范的行动，而且行动的速度和幅度越来越快。它扼杀了香港的 民主和公民权利，对台湾的好战态度日益增强 ，扩大了对国内创业活动的打压，有利于国有企业， 阻 挠外国直接投资（FDI），挫败海外股票上市，并与西方的无数商业联系作为其外交政策武器库中的另一种武器。
Its treatment of foreign executives doing business in China — with cases such as that of Richard O’Halloran, an Irish aviation executive held in Shanghai for the sins of his Chinese employer — highlights its unrestrained, mercantilist approach to global commerce. It is unafraid to marshal diplomatic, media and other resources in service of its ambitions; that Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan felt the need to apologize for a joke for fear of offending China and being locked out of its market is one instance of China’s efforts to modify established norms of international commercial and diplomatic relations.
它对待在中国做生意的外国高管——比如 爱尔兰航空高管理查德·奥哈洛兰（Richard O'Halloran）因中国雇主的罪行而被关押在上海的案件——凸显了它对全球贸易的无拘无束、重商主义的态度。它不怕动用外交、媒体和其他资源来服务于它的雄心壮志; 摩根大通（JP Morgan）的杰米·戴蒙（Jamie Dimon）因为害怕冒犯中国并被拒之门外，觉得有必要 为一个笑话道 歉，这是中国努力改变国际商业和外交关系既定规范的一个例子。
Such acts are not merely the reflexive nationalistic impulses of an emerging power, but cohere as an aggressive, comprehensive and coordinated strategy to reorder the international stage. The Belt and Road Initiative — with investments in global infrastructure designed to create “debt traps” — echoes the gunboat diplomacy of yesteryear. China engages in corporate espionage and has little respect for intellectual property rights. Its Confucius Institutes promote Chinese national interests. China’s investment in advanced technology, expansion of its surveillance state, and development of cutting-edge military weapons work in tandem to extend the reach of its hard and soft power — more deeply within its borders, and broadly around the world.
这些行为不仅仅是一个新兴大国的反射性民族主义冲动，而是作为一种积极、全面和协调的战略来重新安排国际舞台。“一带一路”倡议—— 对全球基础设施的投资旨在制造“债务陷阱”——与过去的炮舰外交相呼应。中国从事企业间谍活动，对 知识产权几乎不尊重。它的 孔子学院 促进中国的国家利益。中国对先进技术的投资、扩大其 监控国家和 开发尖端军事武器 ，共同扩大了其硬实力和软实力的范围——更深入地延伸到其境内，并广泛地扩展到全世界。
With a revisionist and increasingly hostile power inside the tent of a rules-based global regime, America finds itself faced with a classic “prisoner’s dilemma,” which derives from game theory. It is used to demonstrate how two rational actors, each behaving in their own self-interest, might not cooperate even when it makes sense for them to do so.
在一个基于规则的全球政权的帐篷里，随着修正主义和日益敌对的力量，美国发现自己面临着一个源自博弈论的经典“囚徒困境”。它被用来展示两个理性的行为者，每个行为者都为了自己的利益，即使他们这样做是有意义的，也可能不合作。
America’s current relationship with China can be viewed through the lens of the prisoner’s dilemma. In its simplest formulation, two parties fare well when cooperating and poorly when at odds, but can craft a superior outcome if they “rat”— or, in the case of international relations, cheat or engage in outre behavior — while the other party stays true or continues to play by the rules.
美国目前与中国的关系可以通过囚徒困境的视角来看待。用最简单的表述来说，两方在合作时表现良好，在出现分歧时表现不佳，但如果他们“老鼠”——或者，在国际关系的情况下，欺骗或从事过分的行为——而另一方保持真实或继续按规则行事，则可以创造出更好的结果。
The analytical framework of the prisoner’s dilemma is particularly well-suited to today’s U.S.-China dynamic, in that it returns a higher expected value from transgressive behavior: The decision to be taken by the counter-party cannot be known in advance — resulting in each party acting badly. Accordingly, decisions about future cooperation or betrayal — or, in great-power relations, rule adherence or norm-breaking — cannot be inferred about one’s counter-party because of a lack of trust and understanding between the parties.
囚徒困境的分析框架特别适合当今的美中动态，因为它从违规行为中返回更高的预期值：对方做出的决定无法提前知道——导致各方都表现不佳。因此，由于各方之间缺乏信任和理解，因此不能推断出关于未来合作或背叛的决定——或者在大国关系中，遵守规则或打破规范的决定。
This seems an accurate depiction of our world in 2021: a strident and assertive China matched against an erstwhile American hyperpower of uncertain resolve. That Chinese society possesses its own poorly understood and largely unacknowledged civil and demographic weaknesses, while American military prowess remains unmatched notwithstanding its own domestic challenges, further complicates the calculus.
这似乎是对 2021 年世界的准确写照：一个强硬而自信的中国与一个决心不确定的昔日美国超级大国相抗衡。中国社会自身的公民和人口弱点鲜为人知，而且在很大程度上未被承认，而美国的军事实力尽管面临国内挑战，但其军事实力仍然无与伦比，这让计算进一步复杂化。
The prospect of a more dangerous and less prosperous world as a result of such mutual distrust metastasizing into economic, diplomatic and, potentially, military conflict should focus the attention of U.S. policymakers on how best to create the conditions for bilateral cooperation — or, failing that, constructive engagement. As the prisoner’s dilemma framework suggests, enhanced visibility into a counter-party’s motivations and objectives offers clues into potential actions and reactions, and allows for better-informed decisions.
由于这种相互不信任，世界可能会变得更加危险和不那么繁荣，并演变成经济、外交和潜在的军事冲突，这应该让美国决策者把注意力集中在如何最好地为双边合作创造条件上——或者，如果做不到这一点，就应该为建设性接触创造条件。正如囚徒困境框架所暗示的那样，提高对交易对手动机和目标的可见性为潜在行动和反应提供了线索，并允许做出更明智的决策。
Time will tell whether this geopolitical moment will prove to have been past “the point of no return,” with China and the United States on an unavoidable collision course. Nevertheless, every effort should be made to see if the two countries can find the optimal game theory outcome by which both — and the wider world — can “win,” ideally with each nation’s participation in an agreed and durable geopolitical framework. Even if the hour is late, this effort would produce insights essential to crafting rational policy responses to potentially hostile acts.
时间会证明，这个地缘政治时刻是否已经越过了“不归路”，中美两国将不可避免地发生冲突。尽管如此，我们应该尽一切努力看看两国是否能够找到最佳的博弈论结果，从而让双方——以及更广泛的世界——都能“获胜”，理想情况下，每个国家都参与到一个商定的、持久的地缘政治框架中。即使时间晚了，这种努力也会产生洞察力，这对于制定针对潜在敌对行为的理性政策反应至关重要。
Nobody knows for certain how close the U.S. and the Soviet Union came to nuclear midnight during the Cold War. If there is one lesson we should have learned from that experience, it’s that one’s own willful ignorance — and the blinded decisions made as a result — can be as dangerous as any external adversary.
没有人确切知道美国和苏联在冷战期间有多接近核能午夜。如果说我们应该从那次经历中吸取一个教训，那就是自己的故意无知——以及由此做出的盲目决定——可能与任何外部对手一样危险。
Richard J. Shinder is the founder of Theatine Partners, a financial consultancy, and a frequent lecturer, speaker and panelist on business and financial topics. He has written extensively on economic, financial, geopolitical, cultural and corporate governance-related issues.
理查德 J. Shinder 是金融咨询公司 Theatine Partners 的创始人，经常就商业和金融主题发表演讲、演讲和小组成员。他在经济、金融、地缘政治、文化和公司治理相关问题上撰写了大量文章。
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Ideological Competition With China Is Inevitable—Like It or Not
与中国的意识形态竞争 是不可避免的——不管你喜不喜欢
Beijing recognizes promoting human rights and democracy is an ideological challenge. So should Washington.
北京认识到促进人权和民主是一项意识形态挑战。华盛顿也应该如此。
By Nathan Levine, a China advisor at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
作者 ：Nathan Levine，亚洲协会政策研究所（Asia Society Policy Institute）中国顾问。
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/06/china-us-liberalism-democracy-authoritarianism-ideology-competition-cold-war/
AUGUST 6, 2021, 10:58 AM
八月 6， 2021， 10：58 上午
As rancorous U.S.-China talks in late July demonstrated, tensions between the two superpowers have continued to escalate. Beijing has declared the relationship “is now in a stalemate and faces serious difficulties.” U.S. President Joe Biden has increasingly characterized strategic competition with China as part of a broader conflict between democracies and autocracies in the 21st century. This has prompted dissenters in Washington and around the world to decry the prospect of the two countries slipping into an ideological competition reminiscent of the Cold War.
正如 7 月下旬充满敌意的美中会谈 所表明的那样，这两个超级大国之间的紧张局势持续升级。北京宣布，中美关系“目前陷入僵局，面临严重困难”。美国总统乔·拜登（Joe Biden）越来越多地 将与中国的战略竞争描述 为21世纪民主国家与专制国家之间更广泛冲突的一部分。这促使华盛顿和世界各地的异见人士谴责两国 陷入一场让人想起冷战的意识形态 竞争的前景。
Such warnings tend to come from two main camps. Political progressives warn defining the standoff as a Cold War-style ideological contest will divide the world, distract from efforts to address social issues at home, and make it harder to fight climate change. Realist-leaning foreign-policy thinkers, on the other hand, believe framing the U.S.-China relationship in ideological terms is extraneous to the core issues of great-power competition and could also alienate important U.S. allies and partners.
这样的警告往往来自两个主要阵营。政治进步人士警告说，将僵局定义为冷战式的意识形态竞赛将 分裂世界，分散解决 国内社会问题的 注意力，并使应对 气候变化变得更加困难。另一方面， 倾向于现实主义的外交政策思想家认为 ，用意识形态术语来构建美中关系与大国竞争的核心问题无关，也可能疏远美国的重要盟友和伙伴。
Despite this, however, neither group tends to seriously suggest the United States stop standing up for human rights and liberal democratic governance around the world. It is now a rare item of bipartisan agreement in Washington and with voters more broadly—perhaps, in part, because China has served to highlight the issue and such an argument would find little traction. But this position creates a contradiction: Advocacy of these values itself represents an ideology—one fundamentally at odds with the worldview adhered to in Beijing. For that reason, the truth is ideological competition with China is inevitable.
然而，尽管如此，这两个团体都倾向于认真建议美国停止在世界各地的人权和自由民主治理。现在，在华盛顿和更广泛的选民中，两党达成一致是罕见 的——也许，部分原因是中国一直在强调这个问题，而这样的论点不会得到什么牵引。 但这种立场产生了一个矛盾：倡导这些价值观本身就代表着一种意识形态——一种与北京所坚持的世界观根本相悖的意识形态。因此，事实是与中国的意识形态竞争是不可避免的。
Progressives and realists opposed to ideological competition with China but unwilling to call for an end to promoting liberal values suffer from two basic misunderstandings: one about China and one about the United States. The first is not understanding the foundational Marxist-Leninist worldview of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Beijing sees the universal values promoted by liberalism as a mortal threat to its continued existence, a conclusion it reached after witnessing the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—which called for democratic reforms, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press—and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. In this view, liberalism and the CCP cannot coexist within China, and liberalism’s conception of its values as universal makes active ideological warfare a necessity for Beijing.
反对与中国进行意识形态竞争但不愿呼吁结束促进自由主义价值观的进步人士和现实主义者，存在两个基本的误解：一个是关于中国的，一个是关于美国的。首先是不理解中国共产党 （CCP） 的基本马克思列宁主义世界观。北京将自由主义所倡导的普世价值视为对其持续存在的致命威胁，这是在目睹 1989 年天安门广场抗议活动（呼吁民主改革、言论自由和新闻自由）和两年后苏联解体后得出的结论。按照这种观点，自由主义和中共不能在中国共存，而自由主义将其价值观视为普世的概念使得积极的意识形态战争成为北京的必要条件。
The CCP expressed this view most directly in an April 2013 document—the “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” better known as Document 9—which warned of seven “perils” subverting the party’s grip on power. Among these threats were notions that “the West’s values are the prevailing norm for all human civilization” and “Western freedom, democracy, and human rights are universal and eternal” and apply “to all humanity.”
中共在 2013 年 4 月的一份文件——《关于意识形态领域现状的公报》（更广为人知的是 9 号文件）中最直接地表达了这一观点，该文件警告了颠覆中共对权力的控制存在七种“危险”。这些威胁包括“西方的价值观是所有人类文明的普遍准则”和“西方的自由、民主和人权是普遍的和永恒的”，适用于“全人类”的观念。
Chinese President Xi Jinping has consistently reinforced this viewpoint in his public remarks. As early as July 2013, he was warning the party that “currently, struggles in the ideological field are extraordinarily fierce” and “although [they] are invisible, they are a matter of life and death.” In fact, he said, “Western hostile forces are speeding up their ‘Peaceful Evolution’ and ‘Color Revolution’ in China” as a strategy of “Westernizing and splitting up China overtly and covertly.” In the same vein, by January 2014, Xi was speaking of a “treacherous international situation” and “an intensifying contest of two ideologies,” with the United States desperate to use liberal ideas to undermine the CCP regime and stop China’s rise. Xi’s conviction that China is at the receiving end of an ideological war only intensified after U.S.-China relations further derailed following the growth of widespread disillusionment in Washington after decades of strategic “engagement” with Beijing and the subsequent start of the U.S.-China trade war in 2018.
中国国家主席习近平在他的公开讲话中一直强化这一观点。早在2013年7月，他就警告 党内“当前意识形态领域的斗争异常激烈”和“虽然看不见，但却是生死攸关的问题”。他说，事实上，“西方敌对势力正在加快在中国的'和平演变'和'颜色革命'”，以此作为“明目张胆地和秘密地西化和分裂中国”的战略。同样，到2014年1月，习谈 到了“险恶的国际局势”和“两种意识形态的激烈竞争”，美国不顾一切地利用自由主义思想来破坏中共政权并阻止中国的崛起。习认为中国正处于意识形态战争的接收方，在与北京进行了数十年的战略“接触”以及随后的 2018 年美中贸易战开始后，华盛顿普遍的幻灭情绪加剧，美中关系进一步脱轨后，这种信念只会加剧。
Beijing therefore already saw itself engaged in long-running ideological competition with Western liberalism—as championed by the United States—long before Western critics discovered the issue. It is a mistake to think China can ever be convinced otherwise as long as the West continues to promote liberal values.
因此，早在西方批评者发现这个问题之前，北京就已经看到自己与美国所倡导的西方自由主义进行了长期的意识形态竞争。认为只要西方继续推广自由主义价值观，就可以说服中国，这是错误的。
The second misunderstanding is a failure to recognize the CCP is right about at least one thing: Liberalism, with its ideas about human rights and democratic norms, is indeed an ideology—something many Americans seem to have forgotten. After the defeat of liberalism’s main 20th-century ideological rivals, fascism and Soviet communism, it became habitual to see universalized Western liberal democracy as “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution … and as the final form of human government,” as Francis Fukuyama argued in his 1989 essay, “The End of History?” In other words, Western conventional wisdom came to see liberalism as exactly what China’s Document 9 claimed: “the prevailing norm for all human civilization.”
第二个误解是没有认识到中共至少在一件事上是正确的：自由主义及其关于人权和民主规范的理念确实是一种意识形态——许多美国人似乎已经忘记了这一点。在击败自由主义的 20 世纪主要意识形态对手法西斯主义和苏联共产主义之后，人们习惯于将普遍化的西方自由民主视为“人类意识形态演变的终点......以及作为人类政府的最终形式“，正如弗朗西斯·福山 （Francis Fukuyama） 在他 1989 年的文章《历史的终结》中所指出的那样。换句话说，西方传统智慧开始将自由主义视为中国的 9 号文件所声称的：“所有人类文明的普遍规范”。
Those advocating against fighting a U.S.-Chinese ideological contest fail to recognize that promoting human rights and democracy is, in fact, advancing an ideology. That doesn’t mean Washington shouldn’t do it anyway—but it should at least be aware this isn’t advocating a neutral position.
那些主张反对进行美中意识形态较量的人没有认识到，促进人权和民主实际上是在推进一种意识形态。这并不意味着华盛顿无论如何都不应该这样做——但它至少应该意识到这并不是在倡导中立立场。
Given the United States is highly unlikely to ever give up promoting democracy’s superiority and the universality of human rights, and the CCP already considers itself locked in an ideological contest with the West, ideological competition will be an inevitable part of the broader U.S.-China strategic contest, whether anyone welcomes this fact or not.
鉴于美国极不可能放弃促进民主的优越性和人权的普遍性，而中共已经认为自己陷入了与西方的意识形态竞争中，意识形态竞争将成为更广泛的美中战略竞争的必然组成部分，无论是否有人欢迎这一事实。
The right question, instead, is how to manage this element of ideological conflict within a broader strategic framework that can establish guardrails around U.S.-Chinese strategic competition and thereby prevent open clashes. That could mean explicitly refraining from making regime change in China a strategic objective of U.S. policy as the Trump administration occasionally openly elided. It could mean carefully balancing the degree to which U.S. human rights criticisms of China translate from rhetoric into sanctions and other punitive measures or any number of other policy options that could be part of a more productive conversation. But first, those in the West who are wary of a prolonged Cold War-style confrontation must recognize some level of ideological competition with China is inescapable.
相反，正确的问题是如何在更广泛的战略框架内 管理这一意识形态冲突元素，从而为美中战略竞争建立护栏，从而防止公开冲突。 这可能意味着明确避免将中国政权更迭作为 美国政策的战略目标，因为特朗普政府偶尔会公开回避。这可能意味着要谨慎平衡美国对中国的人权批评在多大程度上从口头上转化为制裁和其他惩罚性措施，或任何其他可能成为更有成效对话一部分的政策选择。但首先，那些对长期冷战式对抗持谨慎态度的西方人必须认识到，与中国进行某种程度的意识形态竞争是不可避免的。