China’s Fight To Secure the People’s Livelihood

中国保障民生之战

By William Jones

作者：威廉•琼斯（William Jones）

[William Jones is a Washington policy analyst, the former White House correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review and a Non-resident Fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies]

[威廉•琼斯，华盛顿政策分析师，《行政情报评论》（Executive Intelligence Review）前白宫记者，中国人民大学重阳金融研究院非常驻研究员]

It is now eight years since President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, which effectively changed the course of world history. For the previous four decades, the London-New York financial system had left a large part of the world in dire straits. The “workings of the market” since the 1970s had, until that point, resulted in a deterioration of the conditions of life in Africa, Asia and Latin America far greater than these countries had experienced in the immediate post-war period when colonialism had - at least formally - been abandoned.

自习近平主席于2013年提出“一带一路”倡议以来，如今已过去了八年时间，这一倡议有效地改变了世界历史的进程。在之前的四十年里，伦敦-纽约金融体系让世界上很大一部分地区陷入极度困难的境地。自上世纪七十年代以来的“市场运作”导致非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲人民生活条件大幅恶化，其程度远远超过这些国家在二战后初期、当殖民主义（至少在形式上）被推翻之时所经历的情况。

There were a variety of reasons for this. Nixon’s taking the dollar off the gold standard led to the creation of new and highly speculative financial markets, such as the Eurodollar market, and investment in infrastructure began to take a back seat to short term speculative investments which gave a greater profit in a short period of time. Secondly, by the middle of the 1970s, major financial interests, eager to curb the hunger for infrastructure by the developing countries, began to back a Malthusian “green movement” which received the telling label of the “Zero Growth Movement”. While environmental pollution and the expanded use of nuclear energy became the target of this contrived “movement,” the basic philosophical stance consisted in the firm belief that human beings have caused the problem by their “parasitic behavior” and therefore the economic production and consumption by human beings must be curtailed, including limiting population growth. In this perverted twist, “Zero Growth” then dovetailed into Zero Population Growth.

这种情况的背后有着各种各样的原因。首先是尼克松取消了美元的金本位制，这导致一批新的具有高度投机性的金融市场的出现，如欧洲美元市场，基础设施投资开始让位于短期投机性投资，因为后者能在短期内获得更大的利润。其次，到上世纪七十年代中期，由于主要金融利益集团急于遏制发展中国家对基础设施的渴求，开始支持马尔萨斯主义式的“绿色运动”，该运动随后被贴上了“零增长运动”的标签，直截了当地揭露了金融利益集团的真实目的。虽然这场人为的“运动”也将环境污染和核能的扩大使用列为其目标，但其基本哲学立场是坚信是人类对地球的“寄生行为”造成了这一问题，因此要想解决问题就必须削减人类的经济生产并限制消费，包括限制人口增长。在这一出人意料的转折中，“零增长”随后与“人口零增长”运动衔接在一起。

And while many young people were emotionally involved in this movement, it was heavily financed by some of the major international corporations and their think tanks. High-level establishment organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Club of Rome were bank-rolling this operation, and the World Bank and the IMF were following its dictates. Most governments and even the United Nations were convinced that they must implement the dictates of the Zero-Growth agenda. Prince Philip and the British Royal House were prime supporters of this ideology.

虽然其中也有许多年轻人凭借一腔热情参与了这场运动，但它最主要的资金来源是一些大的跨国公司及其智囊团。洛克菲勒基金会、福特基金会、罗马俱乐部等一些大型基金会都为其提供了资助，世界银行和国际货币基金组织也唯其马首是瞻。大多数国家政府甚至联合国都深信，“零增长”议程的规定必须得到执行。菲利普亲王和英国王室是这种意识形态的主要支持者。

The purpose behind all of this was to fend off the calls by the developing sector for infrastructural development. But there was opposition to this policy, particularly from the developing countries. When U.S. economist and statesman, Lyndon LaRouche, made a public proposal in 1975 for the creation of an International Development Bank (IDB), a bank which would be solely geared toward infrastructural investment in the developing sector, it was quickly embraced by leading developing countries.

这背后的真实目的是为了削弱发展中国家对基础设施投资的呼吁。但这个政策遭到反对，特别是来自发展中国家的反对。1975年，美国经济学家、政治家林登•拉鲁什（Lyndon LaRouche）公开提议成立一个国际开发银行（International Development Bank），该银行将完全面向发展中国家，为其提供基础设施投资。这项提议很快得到了主要发展中国家的支持。

      In August 1976 the Non-Aligned Movement issued a call for the creation of a New World Economic Order, reflecting the ideas of LaRouche as expressed in his IDB proposal, with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike endorsing the establishment of a new and just world economic order. Foreign Minister Frederick Wills of Guyana, addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York later that year, and called for the establishment of a new international economic order through the creation of an international development bank and a debt moratorium for the developing world.

1976年8月，不结盟运动发表声明，呼吁建立一个“世界经济新秩序”（New World Economic Order），这与拉鲁什在其国际开发银行提议中所表达的想法不谋而合，斯里兰卡总理西里马沃•班达拉奈克发声赞同建立一个新的公正的世界经济秩序。圭亚那外交部长弗雷德里克•威尔斯当年晚些时候在联合国大会上发言，呼吁国际社会通过成立国际开发银行和暂停发展中国家的债务，来建立一个新的国际经济秩序。

These countries, however, were still not powerful enough to take on the international financial and banking interests, which were supported by the political and economic might of most of the developed nations in the West. So the London-New York speculative bubble continued to expand unabated from one crisis to another, in 1987, in 1997 with the Asian financial crisis, and in 2008 with the major world financial crisis, which has never been entirely overcome to this day.

然而，这些国家并没有足够的实力来引起国际金融和银行的兴趣，这些金融集团和银行的背后是来自西方大多数发达国家的政治和经济力量的支持。因此，伦敦-纽约的投机泡沫在一场又一场危机中持续不停地扩张，从1987年金融危机，到1997年的亚洲金融危机，再到2008年的世界性金融危机，后者的影响甚至直到今天仍然存在。

China Becomes a Major Player in Shaping Economic Policy

中国成为制定经济政策的主要参与者

The People’s Republic of China, which for many years lay outside this system, was not as heavily affected by the Asia crisis in 1997. Therefore, China was able to play a key role in preventing the crisis from leading to a more serious breakdown of the world economy. Even with the “reform and opening up” China has never been fully subordinate to the dictates of the international banks as most other developing countries have been.

中华人民共和国多年来一直置身于这一体系之外，因此在1997年亚洲金融危机中并没有受到严重影响。此次危机最终未发展成更严重的世界经济危机，中国在其中发挥了关键性的作用。即使坚持“改革开放”政策，中国也从未像大多数其他发展中国家那样完全服从国际银行的命令。

Therefore as the Chinese economy began to take off after China achieved WTO membership in 2000, it maintained its own considerable independent financing capability. This allowed President Xi Jinping in 2013 to lay the basis for what has become the biggest development program in the world, the Belt and Road Initiative. Far greater than the earlier U.S. Marshall Plan, which was concentrated primarily on rebuilding the shattered economies of Europe, with only a modicum of assistance to the developing world, the BRI created a tremendous wave of optimism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Countries which had seen their economy steadily worsen under the restrictions of the neoliberal model now received a lease on life and a possibility for returning to the path of development. The creation of the AIIB, which was to focus exclusively on infrastructure and the BRICS Development Bank, realized the intention of the earlier proposal by Lyndon LaRouche of an international development bank. Now even the old “development banks” like the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank, which had long since abandoned major credits for large infrastructure, were now forced to get back in that game.

中国2000年加入世界贸易组织，之后中国经济开始腾飞，但由于上述原因，中国保持了相当强大的独立融资能力。这使得习近平主席拥有足够的资本在2013年为如今已成为全球规模最大的发展项目——“一带一路”倡议奠定下基础。[许1] 美国在二战结束后曾推出马歇尔计划，但主要致力于重建欧洲支离破碎的经济，只向发展中国家仅提供了少量援助，与马歇尔计划相比，“一带一路”倡议不仅规模远超前者[许2] ，更是将其主要援助对象定位为发展中国家，这让非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲看到了巨大的希望。那些由于受限于新自由主义模式而致使经济不断恶化的国家现在重新获得了给本国经济续命的机会，也看到了重返发展道路的可能性。亚洲基础设施投资银行的创立实现了林登•拉鲁什早前提出的关于成立国际开发银行的构想。由于亚投行完全专注于基础设施建设项目和金砖国家开发银行，现在，即使是那些早已放弃为大型基础设施提供信贷服务的老牌“开发银行”，包括世界银行和亚洲开发银行，现在也被迫重返这个游戏场。

The initial response of the Western countries to the BRI was generally positive. The European nations saw an opportunity for a tremendous boost in East-West trade. Even the United States began to investigate the possibilities of working together with the BRI. But as the Chinese economy continued to grow, while the U.S. economy, which had for decades out-sourced its industrial production to utilize the cheap labor abroad, continued to languish, anger began to grow over China’s success and over the newly-won prestige China received from the beneficence of the Belt and Road Initiative. But U.S. opposition alone would not be effective in curtailing the BRI. Other countries had to be brought on board in order to sabotage such an undertaking.

西方国家对“一带一路”倡议的初步反应总体上是积极的。欧洲国家看到了东西方贸易实现大幅增长的机会。就连美国也开始研究与“一带一路”合作的可能性。但另一个现实——一方面，中国经济持续增长，另一方面，数十年来一直将工业生产外包以利用海外廉价劳动力的美国经济持续性萎靡不振，导致美国开始对中国的成功以及中国从“一带一路”倡议中获得的好处和前所未有的声望感到愤怒。但仅凭美国的反对并不能有效削弱“一带一路”倡议。要想破坏这样大规模的一项事业，必须让其他国家也加入进来。

Out of this grew the Biden Administration’s concoction of a phony “democracy” vs. “autocracy” conflict. China and Russia were labeled the “autocrats,” in spite of the fact that both have their own particular form of democracy, and any country they could get to follow the U.S. lead were then labeled “democracies.” But the real objective was to revive the old alliance of “Western” nations under the leadership of the United States and Britain, which had produced such illustrious results such as the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, and the catastrophe in Afghanistan.

由此，拜登政府炮制了一场虚假的“民主”与“专制”的冲突。中国和俄罗斯被贴上了“独裁者”的标签，尽管这两个国家都有自己独特的民主形式，而其他任何他们能够说服跟随美国领导的国家都被贴上了“民主国家”的标签。但拜登政府真正的目标是恢复受美国和英国领导的“西方”国家的旧联盟，这种联盟曾取得过越南战争、伊拉克战争和阿富汗灾难等“辉煌成就”。

China was never quite satisfied to accept the traditional world of “geopolitics.” President Xi Jinping was insistent that the countries of the world must work together to combat common threats to mankind and to work toward a world no longer divided into camps or ideologies, but united in a community of shared interest. China was also particularly concerned about the conditions in the developing world, which had been largely neglected by the developed countries in the West. The onset of the Covid epidemic brought home the importance of this issue most dramatically, and would have been an ideal opportunity to rally the world around a global campaign to overcome the pandemic. Unfortunately, the false divisions that had been created, led to even greater differences in fighting the epidemic, with tragic consequences world wide.

中国永远不会满足于接受传统的“地缘政治”世界。习近平主席坚持认为，世界各国必须携手共进，秉持务实合作的精神面对人类共同面临的威胁，让世界不再由于阵营或意识形态而陷入分裂，而是为着共同的利益团结在一个人类共同体当中。中国还特别关注发展中世界的状况，而西方发达国家则在很大程度上忽视了这些国家的状况。新冠肺炎疫情的爆发让世人最直截了当地看到了这一事实。这场疫情这原本是一个十分理想的机会，国际社会原本可以借此机会团结在一场全球运动中，共同应对这场波及全球的大流行病。遗憾的是，中西方之间的分裂导致双方在疫情防治方面产生了更大的分歧，其后果波及到了整个世界。

China, which was the first country to be seriously affected by the Covid, reacted swiftly and decisively to the outbreak, bringing it under control in record time. Other countries, including the Western “democracies,” refusing to follow the rigorous anti-epidemic measures implemented so successively by China, tried to do the opposite and had a more difficult time in dealing with the Covid and even today they are still facing a serious outbreak. China was also the first country to get their vaccines out to a broad spectrum of countries and particularly, to those developing countries that had no means of producing vaccines on their own. This only infuriated even more the policy circles in the West who felt that they, not China, should be leading the world in protecting the world from the pandemic. Under President Trump, the whole pandemic became the target of geopolitical maneuvering, including blaming the virus on China’s Communist Party.

中国是第一个受到新冠病毒严重影响的国家，但该国对疫情反应迅速而果断，在创纪录的时间内遏止了疫情的进一步蔓延。但包括西方“民主国家”在内的其他国家却拒绝遵循在中国取得极大成功的严格的抗疫措施，并试图反其道而行之，结果他们在应对疫情方面经历了极其困难的一个时期，即使在今天，他们也仍然面临着疫情再次爆发的极大风险。中国也是第一个向一众域外国家，特别是那些无法自行生产疫苗的发展中国家提供疫苗的国家。但这种做法只会更加激怒西方的政策界，他们认为，应当由他们，而不是中国，来领导世界和保护世界免受大流行病的影响。在特朗普总统的领导下，疫情成了据以操纵地缘政治的工具，其中包括将病毒的爆发归咎于中国共产党。

This has largely been continued by the Biden Administration, which is eager to reassert “U.S. leadership” in a much-changed world. The U.S. would like to push back the growth of China in order to avoid the development of a multi-polar world. And this attempt is aggravating the spread of Covid and putting up new obstacles to reviving the world economy. It pursued further, it could well lead to military conflict between nuclear powers.

拜登政府在很大程度上延续了这一政策，他们渴望在这个今非昔比的世界里重申“美国领导力”。美国想要阻止中国的发展，以避免世界出现多极的局面。而这一尝试正在加剧新冠疫情的传播，并为世界经济的复苏设置了新的障碍。当前的情势如果持续下去，很可能会导致核大国之间的军事冲突。[许3] 

The basic issue is the bankruptcy of the present world financial system and the failure of the Western countries to leave the sinking Titanic and create a system of global governance that benefits all the world’s people. China’s own system of development has been a result of its particular history over the last 100 years. For centuries, a great country, China had unfortunately neglected to implement the achievements of contemporary science in the 19th century, and therefore become subject to foreign control and brutal subjugation for over a century. Through the efforts of the Communist Party, which had been formed in the light of the successful Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, a fight to rejuvenate was launched. Allied initially with the Guomindang of Dr. Sun Yatsen in raising the banner of national revolution, and conducting an independent resistance to Japan, after Chiang Kai-shek attempted to wipe them off the face of the earth, the Communist Party achieved victory in World War II and in the subsequent civil war, forming the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

根本问题还在于当前世界金融体系的破产，以及西方国家未能离开正在沉没的泰坦尼克号，并创建一个能够惠及全世界人民的全球治理体系。中国自己的发展体系是其过去一百年特殊历史的结果。在此前的数个世纪里，中国作为一个伟大的国家，曾令人遗憾地忽视了世界在十九世纪所取得的科学成就，并因此受到外国的残酷征服与控制，先后长达一个世纪之久。受1917年布尔什维克革命胜利所启发，中国共产党成立了，在其艰苦卓绝的努力下，中国开始踏上一条伟大的复兴之路。最初，共产党曾与孙中山先生领导的国民党结盟，高举民族革命的旗帜，并独立开展抗日斗争，在蒋介石将其从地球上抹去的企图失败后，中国共产党取得了第二次世界大战和随后的内战的胜利，并于1949年成立了中华人民共和国。[许4] 

Working on Behalf of the People

为人民工作

In spite of the general opposition of the Western powers, they succeeded in creating a powerful nation, even when their Soviet allies had abandoned them. And with the “reform and opening up,” the CPC has transformed the nation into the main engine of the world economy. Characteristic for the Chinese system, headed by the Communist Party, and with the backing of the other political parties, is a clear orientation on creating a prosperous future for all Chinese citizens.

尽管遭受到西方列强的普遍反对，尽管苏联盟友也抛弃了他们，中国共产党还是成功地建立了一个强大的国家。随着“改革开放”政策的实施，中国共产党成功地将中国打造为世界经济的主要引擎。以共产党为核心、其他政党为后盾的中国特色社会主义，是中国公民据以创造繁荣未来的制度性保障，也是中国最明确的发展方向。

No other country, including the United States, has exerted such efforts, much less succeeded, in eliminating absolute poverty in their country, and in the case of China this meant over 800 million people who have been lifted out of poverty. It is a tribute to the Chinese people, to the Communist Party which spearheaded the effort, and to the system of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which had permitted such an effort. This the Western “democracies” led by the United States have a hard time in accepting.

包括美国在内的任何其他国家都没有在消除国内绝对贫困这一事业上做出过此等程度的努力，更不用说取得了成功，就中国而言，这意味着有8亿多人摆脱了贫困。这是对中国人民的敬意，对领导这一努力的共产党的敬意，对让这一努力取得成功的中国特色社会主义制度的敬意。但是，以美国为首的西方“民主国家”很难接受这一点。

It’s also clear that the benefits endowed on neighboring countries by the BRI is also a result of that systemic orientation on the “people’s welfare” characteristic of the CPC. Those countries which have suffered under the virtual dictatorship of the system of neoliberal economics can learn lessons from China’s development. And China is willing to share these lessons. But the Western nations, led by the United States, do not want those lessons learned if this will interfere in any way with the policies mandated by the international financial and banking interests, who today, under the guise of a “green agenda,” are again asking countries to limit their demands for development for the sake of arbitrary “carbon quotas.” “Stakeholder capitalism” which some of our green “reformers” are touting as an alternative to “shareholder capitalism” simply means letting our workers and farmers take personal responsibility for maintaining the value of the bankrupt capital markets. Bring in your tired, your poor, your hungry to take part in this wonderful financial bubble, and let them share the pain as the bubble collapses. “Stakeholder capitalism” is the last resort of a dying system.

“一带一路”倡议给周边国家带来的好处，也是中国共产党秉持“为人民谋福利”这一系统性价值取向的结果。那些在实质上遭受了新自由主义经济体系独裁的国家可以从中国的发展中吸取教训。中国愿意分享这些经验教训。但是，以美国为首的西方国家不希望其他国家学到这些经验教训——如果这会以任何一种方式影响到受国际金融和银行利益集团操纵所制定的政策的话。如今，他们在“绿色议程”的幌子下，再次要求各国为了以极其武断的方式制订的“碳配额”而限制其发展要求。我们的一些绿色“改革者”将“利益相关者资本主义” 吹捧为“股东资本主义”的一项替代方案，但这只意味着我们的工人和农民需要以个人责任去承担为维护破产的资本市场价值而付出的代价。带着你的疲惫，你的贫穷，你的饥饿来参与这个美妙的金融泡沫，让他们分享泡沫崩溃时的痛苦。“利益相关者资本主义”只是一个垂死体系的最后挣扎。

China wants to change the system, to create a new, just international economic order, the watchword of Fred Wills in his speech to the UN in 1976. But the bankers and the financial elites want no part of it if it means their right to exploit must be curtailed. And the actions of the United States and whatever allies they can bring on board to undermine the growing international influence of the Chinese example can only lead to conflict and more misery for the world. The extensive internal turmoil now evidence in every conceivable member of Biden’s purported “alliance of democracies” clearly shows that that system has failed. It will either be changed to the benefit of all humanity or it will lead to a new depression and global conflict. The only “debt trap” that humanity faces today is the overwhelming speculative debt accumulated in the London-New York controlled international financial system, and that debt is demanding its “pound of flesh” from the bulk of humanity.

1976年弗雷德•威尔斯（Fred Wills）在联合国的演讲中说，中国希望改变这个体系，建立一个新的、公正的国际经济秩序。但如果这意味着银行家和金融精英的剥削权利必须受到限制的话，他们将没兴趣参与其中。美国及其所能召集到的某些盟友不遗余力地破坏中国作为一个榜样日益增长的国际影响力，这些行动只会给世界带来冲突和更多痛苦。在拜登所谓的“民主联盟”中，每一个能想到的成员其内部都出现了一定规模的动荡，这清楚地表明，这个体系已经失败。它要么为了全人类的利益而做出改变，要么将导致新的萧条和全球冲突。人类今天面临的唯一“债务陷阱”是在被伦敦-纽约控制的国际金融体系内所积累的压倒性投机性债务，而这种债务正在向大多数人类索取它的“一磅肉”。

Finding Common Ground

寻找共同点

Can this crisis be resolved? Can we avoid an inevitable division of the world into two ‘systems” that will most assuredly lead to military conflict? The key to this lies in creating a working relationship between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China.

这场危机能否化解？我们能否避免世界被不可避免地分裂成两个“体系”（而这种分裂将极其肯定地导致军事冲突）？这其中的关键在于在美利坚合众国和中华人民共和国之间建立起一种工作关系。

Many have rightly said that the U.S. and China must find specific areas in which they can cooperate. That is certainly correct. But, more fundamentally, they must find a unifying principle around which they can cooperate. China has its own system of democracy, focused on the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. This is a system in which the grass roots have the possibility of influencing decisions on the highest level. The amount of back-and-forth between the peoples’ representatives in these organs and the people they represent is possibly more intense than you will find between our congressmen and their constituents – except, of course, during election campaigns. The development of China’s “whole-process democracy” also seems to have garnered much stronger popular support for China’s leaders than you find for leaders in any of the Western democracies today. The fundamental criteria, however, of whether a particular system of democracy works or not lies in the results it can achieve for the benefit of the people. In the Chinese system with the Communist Party at the core, working for the good of the people is the fundamental law of the land and it has been considerably strengthened under the chairmanship of Xi Jinping

许多人正确无比地说，美国和中国必须找到双方能够开展合作的一些具体的领域。这当然是正确的。但是，更根本的是，他们必须找到一个统一的原则，并围绕这个原则进行合作。中国有自己以全国人民代表大会和中国人民政治协商会议为核心的民主制度。这是一个最基层的群众有可能影响到最高层决策的系统。这些机构中的人民代表和他们所代表的人民之间的沟通往来可能比我们的国会议员和他们的选民之间的沟通往来更为紧密——当然，除了在竞选期间。中国“全过程民主”的发展似乎也为中国领导人赢得了比今天任何西方民主国家领导人更加庞大的公众支持。但是，衡量一种民主制度是否有效的根本标准，在于它是否能为人民谋利益。在以共产党为核心的中国制度中，为人民谋利益是国家的根本法则，在习近平的领导下，这一法则的地位得到了极大的加强。

      The United States, with its own unique history, has its own system of democracy, designed by the founders of our nation. And while it has not seemed to work so well in recent years, historically it has proven its resilience in resolving problems that may crop up. In the United States, as well, there is also a mandate, clarified in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, that government has the duty to “promote the general welfare.” This is often forgotten in the to-and-fro of political debates, the ideological bantering, and the polemical bickering that seem increasingly to characterize our institutions of government. If the U.S. politicians would once again orient their work around “the general welfare,”rather than engaging in mindless “China-bashing” and irresponsible “sabre-rattling”, they would soon find that more can be accomplished for their people by cooperating with China than by criticizing it. If the two countries, with their different systems and different traditions could focus on this common commitment that both are sworn to uphold, that is, promoting the people’s livelihood, and, indeed, begin to view this principle as encompassing all of mankind, we might find the basis for a unity of principle, which could then serve as a guide to cooperation in many other areas: in infrastructure investment, in epidemic control, in scientific research, and, yes, in space exploration.

美国有自己独特的历史，拥有由我们的建国之父们设计的民主制度。虽然近年来它的工作状态似乎不太良好，但从历史上看，事实已经证明了这套制度在应对各种可能出现的问题上的韧性。在美国，政府也有一项任务，美国宪法的序言对其进行了精确的描述，即政府有义务“促进普遍福利”。这一点在各种政治辩论、意识形态玩笑以及种种论战与争吵中经常被遗忘，另一方面，这些空耍嘴皮子的唇枪舌剑似乎已日渐成为我们政府和体制最突出的特色。如果美国政客们能够再一次将自身的工作定位在“促进普遍福利”上，而不是整日无脑地“抨击中国”和不负责任地进行“武力恫吓”，他们很快就会发现，与中国合作比批评中国能为美国人民带来更多的好处。如果拥有不同制度和不同传统的两个国家能够专注于双方都宣誓拥护的“致力于改善人民的生活”这个共同的承诺，并实际上开始将其视为适用于全人类的共同原则，那么我们可能会找到和解的基础，并以此为指南，在基础设施投资、流行病控制、科学研究以及，没错，在空间探索等许多其他领域开展合作。

The world can no longer be put into a box in which the developed nations of the West “set the rules.” That system is over, and it was never really satisfactory to the majority of the world. China has become the real engine of world economic growth and has a legitimate right to take its place as a major world power. And its success in overcoming poverty and creating, in a relatively short period of time, a prosperous nation makes its views deserving of a hearing in the world forum. Russia also remains a major nuclear power, with a war time capability as powerful as the one once possessed by the Soviet Union and has recovered economically from its “encounter” with Western free market liberalism. And, when all is said and done, when India begins to overcome the serious Covid outbreak, it also will demand its right to have a say in world politics, and she may have a very different view than that of her former colonial master, Great Britain, or of the United States. The U.S. and the Western “alliance” will have to find common ground with these countries with their different system and different cultures – and that should be based on the shared interest of their peoples for a good life. If they cannot make that shift to a multipolar world, there will be an inevitable conflict in which all countries will suffer. Yet it is my contention – and my hope – that in the end, reason, and not power politics, will win the day.

世界不能再被放进一个仅由西方发达国家“制定规则”的盒子里。这种体系已经结束，而且它也从来没有真正让世界大多数人满意。中国已经成为世界经济增长的真正引擎，并有合法的权利得到其作为世界大国的地位。中国在摆脱贫困和在相对较短的时间内建立一个繁荣的国家这两项事业上均取得了巨大成功，这让中国的观点值得在世界论坛上被全世界听取。俄罗斯仍然是一个主要的核大国，其战时能力与苏联曾经拥有的能力一样强大，在与基于自由市场的西方自由主义的“遭遇”战中，俄罗斯没有落败，并且经济实力也得到了恢复。而且，除了中俄两国，当印度开始摆脱新冠疫情危机，它也将要求获得在世界政治舞台上的发言权，它可能与自己的前殖民主人英国或美国持有非常不同的观点。在和这些有着不同制度和不同文化的国家打交道时，美国和西方“联盟”必须找到双方的共同点——而这应该基于人民总是向往美好生活这一共同原则。如果美西方不能适应向多极世界的转变，世界就会不可避免地陷入冲突之中，所有国家都将在冲突中遭受苦难。不过，我认为，同时我也希望——最终，是理智而不是强权政治将赢得未来。