美国相信自己天赋异禀。这可以追溯到1630年，当时马萨诸塞湾殖民地的创始人之一、英国清教徒律师温斯洛普(John Winthrop)在一场题为“基督教慈善典范”的布道中向他的殖民地同胞发表演讲。他直接引用了耶稣的登山宝训告诉他们，他们的新家园将成为“山巅之城”，受到全世界瞩目。
这种自豪感与美国的无敌实力相伴而行，让美国成为自封的“救世主”，俯视众国。最近的例子是美国副总统彭斯(Mike Pence) 10月4日在华盛顿哈德逊研究所(Hudson Institute)就特朗普政府的对华政策发表的演讲。
彭斯附和特朗普的说法，声称美国“在过去25年重建了中国”，然后指责中国“以史无前例的努力影响美国公众舆论和2018年大选”。这一说法令中国人震惊。
第一个说法听起来—反引彭斯自己的话说—更像是对中国人民过去40年集体努力的“大规模盗窃”。此外，需要指出的是，如果美国取消对华高科技产品出口禁令，美国对华3750亿美元的贸易逆差将会大幅减少。
至于他对中国干预美国选举的指责，就在彭斯发表演讲的两天前，国土安全部部长尼尔森(Kirstjen Nielson)表示，没有迹象表明中国试图黑进美国的中期选举。
彭斯有一点是对的，即美国对“中国的自由将以各种形式扩展”的希望落空了。 以20国集团(G20)为代表的新经济体的崛起和全球工业化程度最高的经济体集团——七国集团(G7)的衰落告诉我们，各国可以通过其他途径实现发展和繁荣，而不是非得遵循西方民主模式。
像海地这样的“民主”国家，在1994年华盛顿的“维护民主行动”的军事干预下建立起来，迄今仍然是西半球最贫穷的国家。而就在不久前，全世界都震惊地听到特朗普将其形容为一个“屎坑”国家。
观察中国怎样进一步融入国际体系，而美国一步步退出自己主导创建的体系，这很有趣。当北京在倡导多边主义和自由贸易的时候，华盛顿则大言不惭地鼓吹单边主义和保护主义。
如果说英国脱欧让欧洲付出了不小的代价，那么美国退出国际体系及其毫不掩饰地蔑视联合国，其后果要严重得多。就士气和信誉而言，美国已经跌落山巅。
关于特朗普决定终止伊朗核协议并对欧洲征收贸易关税，欧洲理事会主席图斯克(Donald Tusk)只能表示:“有这样的朋友，谁还需要敌人?”
西方不需要担心一个崛起又开放的中国。中国的崛起是和平的，继续和平崛起符合中国自身利益。
作为国际社会负责任的一员，中国正在以多种方式向前迈进。在过去的十年中，中国军队在海外维和、打击海盗和减灾方面的力度大幅增加，承担了更多国际义务。 仅2017年一年，就有60多万中国人出国留学。在未来的岁月里，“一带一路”倡议将把中国与世界各国更加紧密地联系在一起。
因此，美国的怀疑在很大程度上是没有根据的。即便彭斯的演讲是面对美国国内受众而不是中国，它也进一步激怒了中国。美国国防战略将中国和俄罗斯列为该国的两个战略竞争对手，已经让中国感到恼火。问题是:彭斯的演讲是美国在新冷战中的立场宣言吗?
与冷战时期的苏联不同，没有证据表明中国试图向其他国家输出其意识形态或社会制度，或与其他国家结盟以形成一个集团。
不结盟政策赋予中国道德制高点。如果中国在几十年前还是世界上最不发达国家之一的时候，都能坚持不结盟立场，那么现在已经是世界第二大经济体了，为什么反倒要放弃这一立场呢?
美国拉拢盟友与合作伙伴与中国“一决胜负”的可能性微乎其微。退一万步说，它的所有盟友与合作伙伴都与中国有着深厚的经济关系。
在今年（2018年）于新加坡举行的香格里拉对话会(Shangri-La Dialogue)上，印度总理莫迪(Narendra Modi)避免提及Quad，即美国、印度、日本和澳大利亚组成的四国机制，人们普遍认为这是为了制衡中国在印太地区的存在。相反，莫迪形容印太是一个“自然区域”，并赞扬了印度“与中国的多层次关系”。
中美关系的未来很可能是一种“竞合”，一种合作与竞争的混合关系。问题是如何确保合作压倒竞争,或者在最坏的情况下,竞争不会演变成冲突。
这对美国来说并不容易。人们普遍预计，中国将在未来20年内超越美国，成为全球最大经济体。对大多数美国人来说，这将是他们第一次看到一个不再是世界第一的美国。这真是一个翻天覆地的变化。
如果说无知是傲慢之父，那么“山巅之城”之说，更像是傲慢膨胀成为偏见。须知，美国和其他国家一样，不过是国际社会的一员而已。当它承认这一点时，这是它从山巅走向平原的开始，山下的天气肯定没有山上那么阴冷。
Pride before a fall: time for arrogant US to realise it’s just another member of the international community
The US believes it is exceptional. This dates back to 1630 when English Puritan lawyer John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, addressed his fellow colonists in a sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity”. Quoting directly from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he told them that their new community would be “as a city upon a hill”, watched by the world.
Such pride goes in tandem with the unrivalled strength of the United States. It makes the US a self-styled saviour looking down upon others. The latest example is American Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech, at the Washington-based Hudson Institute on October 4, on the Trump administration’s policy towards China.
Chinese jaws dropped when Pence – echoing US President Donald Trump – claimed that the US “rebuilt China over the last 25 years”, then accused China of initiating “an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion and the 2018 elections”.
The first statement sounded like – to use Pence’s own words – a “wholesale theft” of the collective efforts of the Chinese people in the past four decades. Moreover, it should be pointed out that the US$375 billion trade deficit in China’s favour could be much reduced if the US had lifted its ban on hi-tech exports to China.
As for his accusation of election meddling, just two days before Pence’s speech, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson had said there was no sign China was trying to hack the US midterm vote.
Pence is right on one point: America’s hope that “freedom in China would expand in all forms” has gone unfulfilled. The rise of new economies represented by the rise of the G20 and the decline of the G7, a grouping of the world’s most industrialised economies, tells us that countries can develop and prosper through ways other than by following the Western democracy model.
And a “democracy” like Haiti, created through military intervention by Washington’s “Operation Uphold Democracy” in 1994, remains the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Not too long ago, the world was stunned to hear Trump described it as a “s***hole” country.
It is interesting to note how China is being further integrated into the international system while the US is withdrawing from the very system it led in creating. While Beijing now calls for multilateralism and free trade, Washington proudly proclaims its unilateralism and protectionism.
If Brexit is costing Europe in no small way, then America’s withdrawal from the international system and its undisguised contempt for the United Nations are far more consequential. In terms of morale and credibility, the US has fallen off the hill.
On Trump’s decision to end the Iran nuclear deal and impose trade tariffs on Europe, president of the European Council Donald Tusk put it this way: “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”
The West does not need to fear a rising but open China. China’s rise is peaceful, and it is in China’s own interests to continue to rise peacefully.
As a responsible member of the global community, China is stepping up in more ways than one. Over the past decade, the Chinese military has drastically increased its efforts in peacekeeping, counter- piracy and disaster relief overseas to shoulder more international obligations. And in 2017 alone, more than 600,000 Chinese studied abroad.
In the years to come, China’s Belt and Road Initiative will tie it up even more closely with the rest of the world.
Thus, US suspicions are largely unfounded. Even if Pence’s speech was aimed at a domestic audience, rather than at China, it further aggravated the Chinese, who were already rankled by the US national defence strategy that named China and Russia as the country’s two strategic competitors. The question is: is Pence’s speech a manifesto of America’s stance in a new cold war?
Unlike the Soviet Union during the cold war, there is no evidence that China is trying to export its ideology or social system to other countries or aligning itself with others to form a bloc.
Non-alliance gives China the moral high ground. If China could maintain its stance of non-alignment decades ago when it was one of the least developed countries in the world, why should it give in now when it is the second-largest economy in the world?
And it is highly unlikely that the US could gather its allies and partners together for a showdown with China. All of its allies and partners have deep economic relations with China, to say the least.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi avoided mentioning the “Quad”, the grouping of the US, India, Japan and Australia that is widely perceived to be a counterbalance against China’s presence in the Indo-Pacific. Instead, he described the Indo-Pacific as a “natural region” and lauded India’s “multi-layer relations with China”.
The future of China-US relations is most probably a kind of “corpetition”, a mix of cooperation and competition. The question is how to make sure cooperation prevails over competition, or, in the worst- case scenario, competition doesn’t spill over into conflict.
This won’t be easy for the US. China is widely expected to overtake it within the next two decades to become the world’s largest economy. For most Americans, this will be the first time that they will see an America that is no longer “first” in the world. This is a sea change.
If ignorance is the father of arrogance, then “a city upon a hill” looks more like pride inflated into prejudice. After all, the US is no more than a member of the international community, like the rest of us. When it admits that, it is the start of its walk down the hill towards the plain, where the weather is certainly less chilly there than on a hill.
（翻译：中国论坛 董思 审校：中国论坛 韩桦、国佳）
