经济学人：重返东南亚—美国回来了班杨 文 李雅婧 译

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美国的对华“包围”战略本身并不足以让中国忧心，但其对中国邻国的煽动作用值得密切留意。
    在近来纷繁的外交及军事活动中， 乔治?华盛顿号受到特别关注。美国海军USS George Washington CNV-73号核动力航母甲板面积相当于3个足球场，能装载85架飞机，乘员人数逾6200人。各方对这一特别的外交符号有着不同的解读。乔治?华盛顿号最近在越南岘港附近的南中国海域执行美越首次海军联合演习，岘港曾是美军在越南最大的驻军基地所在地。美越建交15年即越战结束35年之际，美军航母造访于此，同越南进行大规模军演，被认为是美越两国重新联盟的一大迹象。但中国观察员们有另一番解读：此轮军演也许未能达到目的，效果可能适得其反。
    美国意欲强化与中国邻国的战略联盟，以此“包围”甚至封锁中国，怨声连连的中国评论家对此颇为敏感。中国政府的态度一直十分谨慎，反应也相对迟缓。但南华早报最近透露消息称，胡Jintao主席或许将推迟访问美国，以向美方表达中方的不满情绪。去年哥本哈会议上两国发生的小口角刚刚被遗忘，新的矛盾再起。美国的“甜嘴”政客们在中国的《环球时报》上这样评论嬗变的政坛风云：“对中国来说，受刺激真是家常便饭”。
    中国的分析家对美国惯用的种种“挑衅”伎俩如数家珍，他们援引美国与越南最近展开民用核能合作谈判及美国可能允许越南在本国境内进行铀浓缩的报道。与2008年美国与印度签署的核协议一样，中国再次嗅出了美国在核不扩散问题上把持的双重标准。
    在刚刚过去的东盟地区论坛上，中国已有过类似经历。这个向来无甚期待的区域安全问题论坛今年在越南河内举办。美国国务卿希拉里?克林顿在今年的论坛上宣称南中国海关乎“美国的国家利益”。与会27国中，12个国家表示愿为化解南海海事争端另谋出路。面对美国与东南亚邻国的外交共谋甚至夹击， 尤其是越南就中越领海和跨国流域争端最近向中国释放出的不满信号，中国一概嗤之以鼻。
    访问越南之前，乔治?华盛顿号航母参与过近期同韩国进行的联合军演。为避免挑起中国的敏感神经，此次她并未造访黄海。但五角大楼发言人表示，该航母将于“近期”巡游黄海。今年3月韩国军舰天安舰沉没以来，美国与韩国的军事同盟进一步加强，这自然冷淡了中国。在国际社会的支持下，韩国和美国谴责朝鲜发射鱼雷击沉天安舰。朝鲜对此表示否认，而中国也不屑置评。
    美国海军最近在中国近海频频出动，美国高官在中国的邻国更是四下奔走。美国防部长盖茨今年7月访问印尼时表示，美国将逐步、有限度地与印尼特种部队展开安全合作。这大大迎合了印尼政府的意愿，却让人权保护者大失所望。美国副国务卿威廉?伯恩斯也在短短时间内造访了4个东南亚国家。
    这大概便是华盛顿智库卡内基国际和平基金会的包道格所称的美国“在亚洲、特别是东南亚数十年来外交和军事活动的整体爆发”的最好体现。中方将此视为新的包围战略毫不奇怪，美国也有很多人持同样观点。奥巴马上任后愿与中国保持友好关系，并乐于接受中国成为世界强国，前提是中国在全球范围承担与其大国身份相匹配的国际社会责任。但美国一连串的外交努力似乎收效甚微，奥巴马内阁的对华策略风格如今开始偏向强硬，“甜嘴”外交固然制造宜人气氛，但从现在开始，包围战略乃是上策。
    然而，这还是与美国政府的对外口径有很大差别。美国对外宣称其欲重拾“国家利益”并重塑其在东亚地区长久树立的影响力。近来，因忙于应付恐怖主义和中东战争，美国对东亚地区有所忽视。外间普遍认为随着美国在该地区的影响力日益低落，中国将成为新的领导者。这样的看法不无道理。用包道格的话讲，美国近年来的亚洲外交“并未直接指向中国，但无疑对中国有着微妙的牵制作用”。
暗流奔涌
    对于《环球时报》的撰稿人们来说，美国对亚洲的影响着实细微，事态的复杂值得深入探究。中国似乎已经开始有所体察。全球金融危机之时，信誓旦旦的外交家们趁乱活动，制造了不少不必要的麻烦。但如今，文质彬彬的外交手段重获欢心，除此之外，似乎尚未有更好的选择。
    另外也应看到，仅仅和美国顶牛是不够的。中国应采取行动抑制美国遍撒的孤立中国的“失信种子”在东南亚国家生根发芽。这需要中国具有清晰的战略远景，并在多边交流机制中与其他国家商讨其战略目标、大力宣传其战略规划。尽管一度将南海海域视作湖区管辖，中国在南海问题上对外所作的回应似乎缺乏底气；对众多东南亚沿海国家来说，中国的南海地图并未显明其在该区域的领土及领海主权。如果早先就对这些问题作出明确定义，中国或许会占据更多优势，更乐意、也更容易接纳它的邻国。

英文原文：

Banyan
They have returned
China should worry less about America’s “containment” strategy and more about why the neighbours welcome it
Aug 12th 2010
SYMBOLIC gestures come in all shapes and sizes, but few as imposing as that of the USS George Washington, a ship more than three football-pitches long, and capable of carrying 85 aircraft and more than 6,200 people. But even symbols of such massive heft can be interpreted in various ways. The George Washington has just been in the South China Sea, off the coast of Danang, once home to one of the American army’s biggest bases in Vietnam. Fifteen years after the opening of diplomatic relations, and 35 years since the end of the Vietnam war, the carrier’s visit, and the joint naval exercises that followed, were striking tokens of reconciliation. But observers in China saw a different sort of gesture: not so much a handshake with a former enemy; more a brandished fist towards a potential one, their own country.
Vituperative Chinese commentators detected an old bogey: an American attempt to “contain” China by bolstering alliances with its neighbours. China’s leaders were more restrained (or perhaps just slower off the mark). But the South China Morning Post reported that Hu Jintao, the president, was in enough of a huff about this and other slights to contemplate delaying a visit to America. Just when the ice that formed after the Sino-American climate-change tiff in Copenhagen in December seemed to have melted, a new chill has set in. “Sweet-mouthed” American politicians, lamented Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper, “stab you in the back when you are not looking.”
Chinese analysts can point to an impressive array of American “provocations” to justify their fulminations. They cited reports that America is in talks on nuclear co-operation with Vietnam, and that, in an apparent reversal for its non-proliferation efforts, the Obama administration is not insisting that Vietnam forswear enriching its own uranium. As with America’s 2008 nuclear deal with India, China scented double standards.
China also faced an unsettling experience in July, at the annual ASEAN Regional Forum organised by the Association of South-East Asian Nations. This usually soporific security talking-shop, held this year in Hanoi, saw Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, declare the South China Sea a “national interest”. When 12 of the 27 countries there spoke up for a new approach to solving their maritime disputes, China sniffed co-ordination—nay, conspiracy—especially when Vietnam swiftly stepped up its protests about Chinese activities in disputed waters.
Before her jaunt to Vietnam, the George Washington had been taking part in joint exercises with South Korean forces. Respecting Chinese sensitivities, she did not exercise in the Yellow Sea, just off China’s coast. But a Pentagon spokesman has said she will do so “in the near future”. This comes as America’s ties with South Korea have been strengthened—and China’s frayed—by the destruction of a naval vessel, the Cheonan, in March. South Korea and America, backed by an international inquiry, have blamed the sinking on a North Korean torpedo. The North has denied responsibility and China has refused to finger its awkward ally.
As the American navy has roamed China’s neighbourhood, senior officials have fanned out over Asia. In Indonesia Robert Gates, the defence secretary, upset human-rights activists and delighted the government by resuming links to Kopassus, the army’s special forces. William Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, has been to four South-East Asian countries.
It all amounts to what Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment, a Washington think-tank, has called “the most comprehensive burst of diplomatic and military activity in Asia, particularly South-East Asia, in decades” from an American administration. It is not surprising that many in China see all this as part of a new containment doctrine. Many in America do, too. By this analysis, Barack Obama took office committed to good relations with China, and ready to welcome it as a great power in return for China’s accepting the global responsibilities that go with that status. Then a series of setbacks convinced him to stand up to China with a more muscular strategy. The “sweet mouths” spout charm just the same; but containment is now the game.
That is far from how the administration presents it, however. It argues it is merely reasserting a “national interest” and traditional role in East Asia, a region neglected by an America distracted by terrorism and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Absent without leave, America helped foster an overblown perception in the region of America’s decline and China’s ascent. It is now putting that right. In Mr Paal’s phrase, America’s recent Asian diplomacy is “not aimed at China, but has implications for China”.

A container has several sides
That may be too nuanced a distinction for the Global Times’ leader-writers. But those implications are indeed worth pondering. China seems to have digested one already: that the swagger, bordering on arrogance, with which Chinese officials were throwing their weight around in the region and in the West in the depths of the financial crisis created unnecessary alarm. These days, courtesy is back in vogue.

Another implication is that rather than simply rail against America, China could do more to prevent its neighbours providing such fertile ground for the “seeds of distrust” it sows. That would demand greater clarity over China’s real strategic aims, and a willingness to discuss them in multilateral forums. On the South China Sea, for example, it is hard to know exactly what its claim is based on. Yet its ships sometimes treat the sea as a Chinese lake; its maps show a great lolling tongue of Chinese sovereignty stuck insolently out at the South-East Asian littoral states. No wonder those countries welcome American aircraft-carriers. The trouble is, of course, that if China were clearer about its aims, they might welcome them even more.
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