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【简介】这篇政策简报可以视为去年那篇名为《欧中关系实力审核》的政策报告的一个续篇，虽然篇幅较小一些。
【认领】本文采用联合翻译，全文分为14部分（见下边的索引），有意认领者可认领自己感兴趣的部分进行翻译；已认领的部分将在索引里标明。
【奖励】除常规奖励外，每部分翻译额外奖励500-1500金条（初步确定），视该部分篇幅和翻译质量而定
【来源】http://ecfr.eu/content/entry/a_global_china_policy/
原文PDF文档：http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/A-global-China-policy.pdf
【作者】FRABÇOIS GODEMENT
【索引】
1. SUMMARY --------------------------------------- 概要【vivicat已翻】【MiaT一校】
2. Introduction ------------------------------------ 引论【Rok-Viv已翻】【波默默妞一校】
3. A new China? ---------------------------------- 一个全新的中国？【千年明月已翻】【rlsrls08一校】
4. China’s increasing leverage ------------------ 中国手中的筹码越来越多【千年明月已翻】【波默默妞一校】
5. China and the international system --------- 中国与国际体系【MiaT已翻】【rlsrls08一校】
6. New opportunities ------------------------------ 新机遇【rlsrls08已翻】【红山茶一校】
7. A European strategy --------------------------- 欧洲的策略【囧囧人已翻】【HgHg一校】
8. Trade and investment policy ----------------- 贸易与投资政策【rhapsody已翻】【rlsrls08一校】
9. Industry and technology ---------------------- 工业与技术【千年明月已翻】【HgHg一校】
10. Climate change ------------------------------- 气候变化问题【忧心已翻】
11. Nuclear proliferation and Iran --------------- 核扩散与伊朗问题【忧心已翻】【rlsrls08一校】
12. Human rights ---------------------------------- 人权问题【忧心已翻】【HgHg一校】
13. Conclusion ------------------------------------- 结论【hellenal已翻】【HgHg一校】
14. How to improve the EU’s internal coherence -- 如何改善欧盟内部的协调一致【红山茶已翻】
【原文】
SUMMARY [1]
China now affects every global issue from trade and the economy to climate change and nuclear proliferation, as well as every region from Africa to the Middle East. Europe therefore needs to reframe its China policy in global terms. Instead of thinking of their relationship with China in bilateral terms, EU member states need to take into account China’s impact across all of the issues in European foreign policy and in relations with all other countries and regions. Europe needs to co-ordinate its own policy more effectively, preferably at EU level, and to co-operate with other countries to increase its limited leverage over China. In short, Europe needs a global China policy. At the same time, many of the key decisions in China’s foreign policy are now taken by domestic actors who are largely unknown to foreigners. Europe needs to identify and engage with these actors.
In the past, EU member states have struggled to co-ordinate even their own policy toward China, let alone co-operate with other countries. But although China now feels more powerful than ever, especially after the global economic crisis, greater tension between China and both its neighbours and the US offers new opportunities for Europe to form new coalitions and to increase its leverage over China. Europe should also reach out to the new actors in the Chinese system with whom it may share interests. To make this global China policy work, however, Europe will need to focus on a limited number of priorities. In particular, the EU should focus its relationship with China on five issues: trade and investment policy; industry and technology; climate change; nuclear proliferation and Iran; and human rights.
Introduction [2]
China feels more powerful than ever. Chinese foreign policy experts saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 not as a one-off crisis but as a structural change in the global distribution of power. Since then, China has become assertive across a range of foreign policy issues. China has repeatedly snubbed Europeans in response to their support for the Dalai Lama and Tibet. At the same time, it has become even less apologetic about its own human rights violations. China has deepened economic ties with North Korea and put minimal pressure on Pyongyang after it crossed the nuclear threshold and even after it torpedoed a South Korean navy vessel in May. China has also slowed down progress on international efforts to impose new sanctions on Iran while beneftting from a burgeoning economic relationship with Tehran. Finally, at the Copenhagen climate conference– a wake-up call for many in the West in general and in Europe in particular – China used tough tactics to achieve its objective of preventing an agreement on a binding commitment for developing countries (although, in this case, it may have overplayed its hand). In short, China has frustrated hopes for increased global responsibility sharing while pursuing its own economic and strategic interests through international institutions and stalling when such institutions challenge its own positions.
These developments vindicate the fndings of ECFR’s Power Audit of EU-China relations, published in April 2009, which argued that Europe’s approach toward China was failing. The report argued that Europe’s policy of “unconditional engagement” with China was based on an assumption that, as China integrated into the global economic system, it would slowly but inexorably converge with European values and interests. But, we argued, rather than becoming a “responsible stakeholder” as the West hoped, China was taking advantage of the policy of “unconditional engagement” to take the benefts of the international system while resisting international requests in key areas. In doing so, it was having the effect of “hollowing out” the international system.
In the report, we also argued that divisions between EU member states have weakened Europe collectively and each member state individually when they have faced diffculties in their bilateral relations with China. We showed how Europe was divided along two fault lines within Europe: frstly, a divide between free traders and protectionists; and, secondly, a divide between those who were more interested in applying political conditionality and those who were more accommodationist. Since the publication of the report, these divisions have led to a series of further embarrassing failures by member states. For example, China has successively isolated the governments of Denmark, France and Germany because of their support for the Dalai Lama. Conversely, China did not reward the UK for moving to recognise China’s sovereignty over Tibet in 2008. Instead, China made a point of ignoring repeated pleas by the UK government and executed Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen who was mentally ill, in December 2009.
The lack of European unity is compounded by the inconsistencies that exist between different dialogues and agreements in different sectors at the EU level, and between trade and economic policy on the one hand and foreign policy and governance issues on the other. To make matters even worse, the EU has often changed its positions on China (including at EU-China summits) and has thus struggled to use even the limited leverage it has. China, meanwhile, has been consistent in demanding that the EU lift the arms embargo imposed in 1989, grant China market economy status, and limit contacts with Taiwanese and Tibetan leaders. In the report, we recommended moving from unconditional engagement to a policy that we called “reciprocal engagement” – in other words, a shift from a foreign policy predicated on an assumption of shared values and naturally converging interests to a relationship in which bargaining and trade-offs would become the norm.
This policy brief, which is intended to launch ECFR’s China programme, explains in more detail what the key elements of such an approach should be. It argues that Europe needs to reframe its China policy in global terms. Instead of thinking of its relationship with China in bilateral and traditional foreign policy terms, Europe needs to take into account China’s impact across a range of policy issues and in relations with all other countries and regions. The brief argues that Europe needs to co-ordinate its own policy more effectively and to co-operate with other countries to increase its limited leverage over China. Finally, it shows how Europe might begin to develop such a global China policy in fve priority areas: trade and investment policy; industry and technology; climate change; nuclear proliferation and Iran; and human rights.
A new China? [3]
China has undoubtedly become economically more powerful in the last 12 months, at least in the short term. Its sound budgetary situation at the beginning of the global economic crisis enabled it to launch a stimulus-and-loan package, which, at around two trillion dollars including bank loans, is on a par with the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing or the European Central Bank’s provision of bank liquidity. Thanks to its competitive costs, China’s exports have suffered less than those of its competitors: its exports of goods and services decreased by 10.6 percent while global exports without China decreased by 16 percent. There is no doubt that China’s policies since late 2008 have created a giant infrastructure, lending and real-estate bubble in the domestic economy. But China’s currency reserves and near-zero interest rates for the US dollar mean that even when this bubble bursts it is likely to create an international defationary effect rather than a catastrophe for China’s economy. China has increased the uses of its reserves for direct investment abroad, has taken a share of new currency swap agreements (as yet untested) in Asia, but remains far more cautious than is generally believed in undertaking new fnancial responsibilities.
As China has become economically more powerful, we are seeing a newly assertive approach in a range of spheres: economic, diplomatic, military, and that of human rights. Although China regularly reaffrms the importance it attaches to Europe, the process of moving toward a partnership and co-operation agreement between the EU and China has stalled. Even the new US administration, which made an unprecedented attempt to engage with China and accommodate its strategic interests and requirements, has been increasingly frustrated by China’s reluctance to co-operate on issues of importance to the US such as North Korea and Iran. Meanwhile, China is steadily expanding its relationships with developing countries, including Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Turkmenistan. Its share of direct investment abroad is rapidly involving major commodity producers, especially in western Africa, and its state frms are also fnancing infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail in Saudi Arabia. China has also become more loudly protective of its sovereignty. It has always been sensitive about US arms sales to Taiwan, but now openly threatens to sanction US frms involved in arms sales in the same way that it previously threatened European companies. China has also raised its own military profile without, however, co-operating with the West or accommodating its close neighbours – for example, India, Japan and Taiwan – on strategic issues. China has had double-digit growth in military expenditure for all but one of the past 30 years. This means that although military parity with the United States is a long way off, China may be able to put pressure on other countries. In January 2010, China succeeded in the diffcult feat of intercepting a ballistic missile during its fnal atmospheric re-entry phase – the latest development in an unbroken and accelerating trend toward military modernisation. It now challenges US ships that enter its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) while its own ships enter its neighbours’ EEZs. It is also becoming increasingly ready to assert its jurisdiction over the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and has expanded military bases along the border with India. (It is worth remembering, however, that China has only used signifcant force abroad twice in the last 60 years – during the short war with India in 1962 and the equally short campaign against Vietnam in 1979.)
China has also become more open in rejecting western human rights standards and is, on occasion, now even willing to show disregard for its own law. For example, in January 2010, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman responded to a question about the whereabouts of a well-known dissident, Gao Zhisheng, who had been missing for almost a year, by saying that “he is where he should be”. (After briefy reappearing under police control after more than a year, Mr.Gao disappeared again.) This disregard represents a signifcant change and may create splits within China’s political elite and in public opinion. China has also become more aggressive toward foreign critics. For example, in 2009 it boycotted the Danish government, which for decades had pursued a dual strategy of positive co-operation on the one hand and criticism of China over human rights and its treatment of the Dalai Lama on the other.
As a result of these events, there has been a shift in expert analysis and media opinion in Europe – and, in fact, throughout the West – on relations with China. In a remarkably short space of time, complacency has been replaced to a large extent by anxiety. Even business seems less sanguine about the Chinese market. Google’s threat to leave China unless the security of its users is ensured suggests companies are no longer prepared to do business in China at any price. Accusations about unfair competition, dumping and monetary manipulation have also been getting louder. In fact, fuelled by indignation, many analysts are now calling for the West to take a more confrontational stance toward China. However, these calls for a strategic challenge are as unrealistic as the earlier consensus on unconditional engagement. The West and China are simply too interdependent for us to replace blind engagement with blind confrontation.
Moreover, the dramatic shift in perceptions of China refects a change of mood among the West’s opinion leaders rather than a sudden aggressive turn in Chinese policy. In fact, there appear to be several trends occurring simultaneously in China. For example, there were some signs of a more moderate trend in Chinese policy recently. Chinese offcials met again with the Dalai Lama’s representatives in Beijing. After an acute phase of political repression, governance is also improving in Xinjiang. Several semi-offcial spokesmen have also recently suggested that China may make further key concessions on global issues, for example by re-evaluating the currency and co-operating with the US on sanctions against Iran. But these developments were followed by signs of Chinese intransigence. For example, China has reaffrmed the monetary peg to the dollar despite calls for revaluation, and there is even a possibility that the renminbi will be pushed lower.
These apparently contradictory developments suggest that there are genuine differences within the Chinese political elite. In particular, there are signs of a high-level debate between exponents of a more nationalist policy and advocates of international co-operation. Chinese foreign policy appears to be in flux, influenced by several factors including the transition to a new leadership in 2012. However, the state of relations among top leaders has never been as well protected from outside scrutiny since the founding years of the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese diplomats to whom the West has access tend to explain, mitigate or deny. Meanwhile, many of the key decisions in China’s foreign policy are now taken by domestic actors within the army, major state companies and the party who are largely unknown to foreigners. Understanding these new actors and their interests is a prerequisite for an effective foreign policy toward China.
China’s increasing leverage [4]
Alongside the changes that have taken place within China, its position in the world has also shifted as a result of global shifts. China is currently reaping the benefits of several converging factors: a long period of favourable demography and steady macro-economic policies; its classification as a developing country when it is actually the world’s first trading nation and second-largest economy; and its skilful and pragmatic diplomacy, which has combined lip service to global integration and international institutions with lavish care for bilateral relations. The strategy of divide-and-rule is far from new. In fact, China has played foreigners off against each other at least since the Qing emperor Qianlong fought the last Mongol empire. Similarly, the nationalist Chiang Kai-shek advocated pushing back the West by “playing barbarian against barbarian”. Republican China led – and in 1942 fnally won – a struggle to end all Western extra-territorial privileges. In fact, whether it was strong or weak and whether it had allies or was strategically isolated, China has consistently had a hyper-realist strategic culture. What has changed is simply that its leverage has kept increasing.
In the past, when China had less leverage than it does now, it made several long-term international concessions. It signed arms-control agreements between 1992 and 1998 and took steps to join the World Trade Organization between 1999 and 2001. During the same period, China also formed a new security concept that highlighted mutual trust and shared interests. Within three years, from 1996 to 1998, it also established partnerships with all of its key partners, including a “long-term and stable constructive partnership” with the EU that was agreed in April 1998. China also considered confidence-building measures with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997 and proceeded to build up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with a frst meeting in 1996.
These steps toward integration into the international system prompted optimism that China as a joiner and learner would soon become a contributor and eventually a “responsible stakeholder”. But as China’s leverage has increased during the last decade, it has become more and more reluctant to sign new agreements that would have integrated it further into the international system. What was thought in the late 1990s to be a foor for further Chinese engagement in several key areas has, in fact, turned out to be a ceiling. A particularly good example is climate change policy, in which China has consistently rejected legally binding agreements since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. In that sense, its attitude at the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009 should have been no surprise.
China’s forward-looking diplomacy has become increasingly focused on sub-regional or even bilateral rather than multilateral agreements. China’s relations with South-East Asia are the best illustration of this. In 2001 – the year it joined the WTO – China offered an innovative free trade pact to ASEAN. In 2002, it signed a (non-binding) declaration of conduct with ASEAN states to resolve peacefully maritime issues. In 2003, it signed the (also non-binding) ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Co-operation, which commits signatories to the peaceful resolution of disputes. These days, however, China holds only bilateral negotiations to deal with the delimitation of maritime borders in the South China Sea. China abides by the terms of treaties it has already signed, but it is no longer willing to undertake new legal commitments.
China has taken the same approach to negotiations about nuclear proliferation issues. It took part in four-party talks on North Korea in New York between 1997 and 2000, and set up the six-party talks in 2003, but it has never gone beyond its limited role as a facilitator, let alone put pressure on North Korea. China has also made it clear that it is unwilling to contemplate any binding commitment to international sanctions, apart from narrowly defned sanctions against targeted individuals. As a result, resolutions 1718 and 1874 on North Korea and resolutions 1737 and 1803 on Iran have been far less effective than they could have been. There is little evidence that China will change its approach. The most one can realistically hope for is negative consent at the UN in cases in which China does not think its own “core interests” are at stake. For example, China made it clear to the US as early as October 2002 that it would not veto the use of force against Iraq.
China and the international system [5]
China’s strategy should not be seen as a revisionist challenge to the international system and its rules. In fact, China often acts as an upholder of existing international law and sovereignty. At the same time, however, it builds negative coalitions to restrain any new international norm-building. Furthermore, it builds these coalitions on the basis of tactics rather than principle. For example, in October 2009, China and India signed a climate pact to defect any pressure on the two countries to set legally binding emissions targets. One month later, China unilaterally announced its own target on emission reductions, leaving a surprised India without its own face-saving proposal. China appeared to be making a contribution to action on climate change while it had, in fact, with India’s help, already blocked any binding agreement.
China has become very skilful at building these coalitions. It lobbies and entices partners; rewards those who co-operate and threatens those who do not; forms coalitions around issues such as sovereignty and trade; and occasionally brushes off, intimidates or isolates reticent partners. It claims in public that it is acting on principle, but in reality these principles are largely a formal and quasi-ritual form of public diplomacy. China always presents what in reality is offensive as defensive and castigates opponents as either troublemakers or consensus- or rule-breakers. As a result, China’s partners are often reluctant even to admit publicly that they have fallen out with China. For example, the US envoy to China defended the success of President Obama’s visit to China in November 2009, even after it became clear that it was a failure, and has recently accused his own administration of “trampling on China’s core interests”. Similarly, the EU presented the EU-China summit in Nanjing in December 2009 as a success even though it had not achieved any tangible result. Such is China’s skill that to have a public row with it becomes a sign of one’s own failure.
China is, of course, not the only scheming actor in the international system. Neither does it exhibit openly hegemonic tendencies – except of course in its (growing) neighbourhood where its “core interests” seem to be expanding. Indifference, passivity, abstention and defensive behaviour remain the preferred tools of China’s international action, albeit based on greater knowledge from better diplomats and analysts than at any previous time in its history. Nevertheless, China is ready to form alliances with states that seek to limit the reach of the international system in any given area. It has co-operated with India and to a lesser extent the US to prevent binding international agreements on climate change, with Russia to scupper international sanctions against countries such as Iran, and with emerging or developing countries to protect national sovereignty on issues that range from trade to human rights.
In the short term, China is likely to continue to block new international commitments and expand its influence on the margins of the international system. Other traditionally internationalist states meet the costs of maintaining peace, of insuring the financial system and of preserving the environment, while China derives the beneft. For example, carbon trading has become a cash machine for Chinese companies. Similarly, NATO forces protect the Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan. China has also so far limited its participation in anti-piracy efforts to helping its own citizens. The stability of the international fnancial system may well become another case of widely diverging contributions. China’s external capital fows largely go through offshore markets, a persistent anomaly which is a bigger issue when these fows become huge. In the frst quarter of 2010, while observers were hoping for the decline of China’s foreign-trade surplus, a total infow of 95 billion dollars came more from inward capital flows than from the current account surplus: in effect, a non-convertible currency is serving as a magnet for capital.In the longer term, however, we seem to be moving toward a completely scaled-down model of the international system based on nation states and a system of rules that functions merely as a way to prevent interference between them. At best, this is a norm-free order, in which only infringements on sovereignty justify international involvement. At worst, it could be a world defned by anarchy.While Chinese military spending is rising quickly, the Chinese contribution to actual enforcement of the international order is minimal, and it is therefore unlikely to replace the US in enforcing the UN system. Therefore, as Europeans and Americans debate their different values, they would do well to take notice that China is tempted by a normless foreign policy – the 21st century equivalent of what the historian Akira Iriye has termed the “ideal-less” foreign policy of Japan in the 1920s.For this reason, China is becoming a huge test for EU foreign policy, which has been predicated on the principle of global norms and values. China’s policy choices no longer affect only its neighbourhood but every issue from trade and the global economy to climate change and nuclear proliferation, as well as every region from Africa to the Middle East. EU member states therefore need to take into account China’s impact across a range of policy issues and in relations with other countries and regions. Therefore, instead of thinking of its relationship with China in bilateral terms, Europe thus needs to reframe its policy on China in global terms. In other words, Europe needs a global China policy.New opportunities [6]Given China’s instrumental approach to the international system and its increasing leverage, the challenge is to identify what China needs that it cannot provide on its own. Firstly, despite its instrumental approach to multilateral institutions, China needs the international system itself. International monetary standards, the trading system, security and access to resources are all essential to China’s development. One could also argue that, in the longer term, international agreements to control climate change and preserve water resources will also be important to China. Secondly, China needs tangible assets such as raw materials including oil, technology, access to markets, and security at home and abroad, including security for China’s fnancial assets. It is particularly vulnerable in Africa, where its assets are growing at a spectacular rate but it has little leverage in terms of hard security. Thirdly, China may have intangible needs such as international recognition. Just as the tributary system was once a key source of the Chinese celestial bureaucracy’s self-esteem, so today’s regime relies to some extent on international recognition as a sign of legitimacy to its own people.Europe’s basic problem is that it lacks leverage over China. It is neither part of China’s neighbourhood nor does it have the strategic leverage of the US. Europe does have two specifc levers: China wants to be granted market status and it wants the EU to lift its arms embargo. However, Europe should think carefully before making these two concessions, both of which, after all, can be made only once. Moreover, they could have wider repercussions – for example, lifting the arms embargo without tangible progress on human rights might demonstrate to China and the rest of the world that the EU was willing to compromise on its values for a price or in the face of intransigence. But, in any case, however these two levers are used, they will not be enough on their own. Europe must therefore think about how it can increase its limited leverage over China.Although China appears to be more powerful than ever after the global economic crisis, the new situation in which China fnds itself does in fact make it vulnerable in several respects. Firstly, there is greater tension between China and the US. China’s blunt response to the Obama administration’s unprecedented offer of strategic co-operation – symbolised by the treatment of President Obama at Copenhagen – makes a G2 duopoly less likely, at least for the time being. This could create an opportunity for greater transatlantic co-operation on policy toward China (although the US could also decide that reaching an understanding with China takes precedence over consultation with its allies). At the moment, the main barrier to this kind of transatlantic co-operation is not the US but Europe’s own inability to act decisively, as ECFR showed in its power audit of EU-US relations.Secondly, China’s relationship with its neighbours is also becoming more strained. China increasingly drives the agenda in the region by pressing issues or by letting them persist. Whether with India, Japan or Taiwan, the ball is now in Beijing’s court – a major reversal from the Cold War era when China faced a range of diffcult partners in its own neighbourhood. But this also means that China is coming under increasing pressure to use its new strategic freedom and to start signalling what its long-term options are. Otherwise, it risks creating a new coalition of countries anxious or frustrated by the opacity of Chinese intentions. China’s systematic assertion of its sovereignty and its “core interests” looks very different to its partners now that it has become a rich and far-reaching state than it did when it was weak.This situation may create new opportunities for Europe. After the ratifcation of the Lisbon Treaty and the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU is in some ways in a stronger position than it was two years ago. China’s difficulties with the US and with its allies may increase Europe’s own direct leverage with China, which cannot afford confict on too many fronts. At the same time, the strained relations between the US and China creates opportunities for discreet co-ordination of policy with Washington. Even for the US, the exertion of purely bilateral pressure on China – especially on multiple issues – has become harder. There may also be some scope for greater co-operation with Europe’s allies in Asia – for example, by extending free-trade partnerships and by developing strategic relationships with countries such as India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.The key to a global China policy is therefore to work with other countries to assemble coalitions to increase Europe’s leverage over China. A good illustration of how this might work is recent international co-operation to put pressure on China to disengage from Iran. China’s shift was prompted not so much by anything the US or Europe did but by the actions of other countries, in particular Russia’s change of policy on sanctions and the growing involvement in the negotiations of the Gulf States – especially Saudi Arabia, on which China is already heavily dependent for energy imports and will be to an even greater degree in the future. In other words, Europe’s best chance of getting China to move may often be through others. |
Brief, global, Policy, 对外关系, 欧洲, Brief, global, Policy, 对外关系, 欧洲, Brief, global, Policy, 对外关系, 欧洲
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发表于 2010-6-22 00:25
发表于 2010-6-22 15:57
没有谁比总编更适合接这种提纲挈领的部分了
