作者：马克斯·布特（max-boot）-文；涂湘-译
2023-03-13
2023.3.6
【编者按：马克斯·布特是《华盛顿邮报》（Washington Post）的专栏作家，美国外交关系委员会（Council on Foreign Relations）的高级研究员，著有《未选之路:爱德华·兰斯代尔和美国在越南的悲剧》（The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam）。】
如今，政治倾向两极分化，专家常常哀叹两党合作的衰落，我也不例外。但我们应该明白，即使两党在同一问题上达成共识，也不一定意味着他们就是正确的，相反，这或许说明他们都是错觉的牺牲品。
例如，1964年，（美国）国会通过了《东京湾决议案》（Gulf of Tonkin Resolution），授权对北越采取军事行动。当时，参议院仅二人反对，而众议院则全票通过。后来人们才意识到，该决议建立在错误的事实基础上（北越并没有对美国驱逐舰发动所谓的两次攻击，其中的一次几乎可以肯定没有发生），进而带来了灾难性的后果。美国被卷入败战的泥潭，超过58000名美国人战死。
在过去了将近四十年之后，国会在2002年凭着较小的（但仍很大）两党多数授权对伊拉克采取军事行动（众议院的表决结果是296-133票，参议院为77-23票）——美国也因此陷入了另一场灾难性冲突。
为了不被当前两党在中国构成的危险方面达成的共识冲昏头脑，我们应当牢记这段历史。上周，众议院美中战略竞争特别委员会（House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)）在其第一次听证会上，两党在中国方面的共识被展现的淋漓尽致。众议员是以365-65的投票结果成立这个委员会的。
委员会主席迈克·加拉格尔（Mike Gallagher）（R-Wis.）和少数党负责人拉贾·克里希纳穆尔蒂（Raja Krishnamoorthi）（D-Ill.）是两党“英雄所见略同”的典范。
【点击这里查看“迈克·加拉格尔谈美中关系的未来”】
实际上，克里希纳穆尔蒂坚称国会必须团结一致，因为“CCP盼着我们分崩离析，两极分化，并被偏见裹挟”。但尽管听证会得到两党的支持，它也充满了让人不安的一家之言。
四位证人——前美国国家安全委员会顾问赫伯特·雷蒙德·麦克马斯特将军（Herbert Raymond McMaster）、前副国家安全委员会副主任博明（Matthew Pottinger）、中国的异见分子童毅和商业说客斯科特·保罗（Scott Paul），都敦促美国在中国问题上采取最强硬的路线。
赫然缺席的是那些警告与中国鲁莽对抗风险极大、主张与中国政府进行对话以缓解紧张局势和指出在一些问题上（如贸易、全球变暖和朝鲜核问题）与中国合作符合美方自身利益的中美关系专家。
事实上，加拉格尔（按照众议院共和党党团的标准，他属于温和派）曾暗示，支持温和应对中国的人都上了CCP的当，他说：“CCP在华尔街、全美最大500家工业公司的高管层，以及华盛顿K街都交了朋友，这些人愿意与中国里应外合。”
康奈尔大学教授白洁曦（Jessica Chen Weiss）是倡导对中国采取更慎重的政策的著名学者之一，她对我说：“加拉格尔的所作所为导致所有质疑美国政策的人都会被轻易污蔑成中共的朋友……证人的选择让人无法相信委员会能接纳不同的观点。”
【点击这里查看白洁曦：台湾问题与零和竞争：美中关系走向何方？】
那些证明中国给美国带来的威胁证据与其说是错误的，不如说是片面的、具有误导性的。克里希纳穆尔蒂展示过一张图表，其将1973年至2015年间美国制造业的就业与美国对华贸易逆差二者并列。克里希纳穆尔蒂暗示，是与中国的贸易导致美国人丢了工作：“从前，美国制造业的就业人数大约为1880或1900万，但人数一直下降，2015年跌到了大约1240万。”
事实上，包括德国、日本、韩国、越南和墨西哥在内的许多制造业发达的国家和产业自动化的发展，都需要为美国的就业岗位的流失负责。此外，据《哈佛商业评论》（Harvard Business Review）分析，虽然“21世纪初，与中国的贸易导致美国部分地区制造业工作岗位流失……但这种趋势已经结束”。
美中贸易全国委员会（U.S.-China Business Council）指出：“2021年，美国公司向中国出口了1920亿美元的商品和服务，占美国出口的7.5%……对中出口给美国带来了超过100万个就业岗位。”同时，直到如今，廉价的中国商品推动了美国的繁荣，给美国带来了低通胀。除此之外，还有许多好处没有被提及。
正如委员会所主张的那样，在部分具有战略意义的产业方面和中国脱钩无疑是必要的，但这也将付出相当大的代价。据税务基金会（Tax Foundation）估计，特朗普对中国征收的关税将使美国国内生产总值减少557亿美元，并流失17.3万个全职工作岗位。这些数据触目惊心，但委员会的听证会对此却只字未提。
相比之下，中国的扩军和其日益强硬的外交政策对美国利益的威胁更加明显，但即使是在这些方面，委员会及其证人也忽略了一些重要的事实。人们热衷于讨论中国志在占领南海和收复台湾的行动，这无可厚非，但却没人指出，在执行外交政策方面，中国比俄罗斯更加谨慎。自2000年上台以来，弗拉基米尔·普京（Vladimir Putin）发动了好几场战争，相比之下，除了在1979年与越南短暂交战，中国并未挑起任何武装冲突。
虽然中国为了收复台湾在扩大军备，但中央情报局（CIA）局长威廉·J·伯恩斯（William J. Burns）警告说，现在中方尚未决定发动攻击，战争也并非“无法避免”。然而，委员会对中国的威胁进行了大肆渲染，丝毫不提及这一中肯的评估。
这次听证会的意义到底是什么？“我们希望能告诉同事们，告诉美国人民CCP为何构成了威胁”，加拉格尔说。我想，美国人民对此已了如指掌。目前，美国人民对中国的正面看法处于有史以来的最低水平。根据皮尤研究中心（Pew Research Center）的数据，2022年，82%的受访者对中国有负面的看法。
当务之急并不是美国民众对中国崛起缺乏关注，实际上，他们已经成为了极端情绪和危言耸听的牺牲品，二者对他们的绑架很可能将美国拖入一场不必要的核战争。人们对中国侦察气球近乎失常的反应就是力证。
许多美国人的反应好像中国不是在监视美国，而是在攻击美国。其实，两国都在利用间谍卫星监视对方。佛罗里达州联邦参议员马尔科·卢比奥（Marco Rubio）声称，北京正试图发出“信号”：美国曾经是伟大的超级大国，但正在衰落……事实上，有证据表明，侦察气球之所以出现在美国上空，只是因为强风将其吹离了航线。
中美之间的紧张局势日益恶化，对此，委员会可以为处理中国问题制定中肯、精细的方案，提供实在的服务。但委员会并没有这么做，相反，它在为两党内的危言耸听火上浇油。正如一位前国家安全委员会（National Security Council）官员所说：“委员会并没有基于有效的证据定义美国的长期利益及其与中国的关系。相反，它不过是一台中国似曾相识的宣传机器。”
Democrats and Republicans agree on China. That’s a problem.
Opinion by Max Boot
March 6, 2023
In these ultra-partisan times, pundits often bemoan the decline of bipartisanship. I’ve done so myself. But we should remember that when the two parties agree on an issue, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are right. It could mean they are falling prey to a collective delusion.
In 1964, for example, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing military action against North Vietnam. There were only two dissenting votes in the Senate and none in the House. Only later did it become clear that the factual basis of the resolution was fallacious (one of the two supposed North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. destroyers almost certainly did not occur) and that its impact was catastrophic: It would drag the United States into a losing war that left more than 58,000 Americans dead.
Nearly four decades later, in 2002, Congress authorized U.S. military action against Iraq by smaller (but still large) bipartisan majorities (296-133 in the House, 77-23 in the Senate) — setting the United States on the path to another disastrous conflict.
That history is worth keeping in mind lest we become too giddy in celebrating the current bipartisan agreement about the dangers posed by China. That consensus was on display last week in the first hearing of the newly formed House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had been created by a vote of 365-65.
Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and ranking minority-party member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) were a model of bipartisan comity.
In fact, Krishnamoorthi insisted that Congress must be united because “the CCP wants us to be fractious, partisan and prejudiced.” But while the hearing was bipartisan, it was also disturbingly one-sided.
All four of the witnesses — former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, Chinese dissident Tong Yi and business lobbyist Scott Paul — urged the hardest of hard lines against Beijing.
Utterly missing were any of the numerous experts in the China-watchers community who would have warned of the risks of reckless confrontation, advocated dialogue with Beijing to reduce tensions and pointed out that there are issues (such as trade, global warming and the North Korean nuclear program) where cooperation with China is in our own interest.
In fact, Gallagher — a moderate by the standards of the House Republican caucus — implied that those who urge a less hawkish approach are Communist dupes: “The CCP has found friends on Wall Street, in Fortune 500 C-suites and on K Street who are ready and willing to oppose efforts to push back,” he said.
Jessica Chen Weiss, a political scientist at Cornell University who is a leading advocate of a more measured policy toward China, told me: “Gallagher has set the stage for anyone who raises questions about U.S. policy to be smeared as a friend of the Chinese Communist Party. … The initial selection of witnesses gives little reason to believe that the committee will invite differing viewpoints.”
The testimony about the threat from China wasn’t so much wrong as it was one-sided and misleading. For example, Krishnamoorthi displayed a chart juxtaposing U.S. manufacturing employment against the U.S. trade deficit with China from 1973 to 2015. “It starts out at roughly 18.8 or 19 million American jobs in manufacturing, and it goes all the way down to about 12.4 million jobs in 2015,” he said, implying that all of those jobs were lost to trade with China.
In fact, lots of other countries with robust manufacturing sectors, including Germany, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Mexico, have contributed to U.S. job losses. So has automation. Moreover, an analysis in the Harvard Business Review found that while “some U.S. regions lost manufacturing jobs as a result of trade with China in the early 2000s … that trend has ended.”
Completely unmentioned were all the benefits of trade with China. The U.S.-China Business Council notes: “American companies exported $192 billion in goods and services to China in 2021, constituting 7.5 percent of U.S. exports … Exports to China support over 1 million U.S. jobs.” Meanwhile, cheap Chinese exports have fueled U.S. prosperity — and, until recently, with low inflation.
Trying to decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies, as the committee advocates, is undoubtedly necessary for some strategically important commodities, but it will come at a considerable cost. The Tax Foundation estimates that President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China will reduce U.S. gross domestic product by $55.7 billion and cost 173,000 full-time jobs. But anyone who watched the committee hearing would not have heard a peep about such sobering statistics.
Even when it came to China’s military buildup and its increasingly assertive foreign policy — where the threat to U.S. interests is clearer — the committee and its witnesses neglected to mention some important facts. There was much discussion, and appropriately so, of China’s attempts to take over the South China Sea and Taiwan. But no one pointed out that China has been much more cautious in the conduct of its foreign policy than Russia. While President Vladimir Putin has launched several wars since taking power in 2000, China hasn’t done so since its conflict with Vietnam in 1979.
And while it’s true that China is building up its military to enable an invasion of Taiwan, CIA Director William J. Burns cautions that no decision to attack has been made and that war is not “inevitable.” But that balanced assessment went unmentioned amid the committee’s relentless hyping of the Chinese threat.
What was the point of this hearing anyway? “Our goal is to communicate to our colleagues and the American people why the Chinese Communist Party is a threat,” Gallagher said. I think it’s safe to say that the American people have already received that message loud and clear. Americans’ views of China are at the lowest levels ever recorded. In 2022, 82 percent of respondents told the Pew Research Center that they have an unfavorable opinion of China.
The problem today isn’t that Americans are insufficiently concerned about the rise of China. The problem is that they are prey to hysteria and alarmism that could lead the United States into a needless nuclear war. Witness the unhinged reaction when a Chinese surveillance balloon drifted across the continental United States.
Many Americans acted as if Beijing were actually attacking us — rather than surveilling us, something that both the United States and China routinely do with their spy satellites. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) actually claimed that Beijing was trying to send a “message” that the “United States is a once-great superpower that’s … in decline.” In fact, there are indications that the balloon flew over the U.S. mainland only because strong winds blew it off course.
With U.S.-China tensions ratcheting up at a dangerous rate, the select committee could perform a real service by presenting a balanced and nuanced picture of how the United States should deal with China. But that’s not what it is doing. It is engaging in bipartisan alarmism. As one former National Security Council official told me: “This isn’t an evidence-driven exercise to identify America’s long-term interests and how China relates to them. It is a propaganda exercise that Beijing would find easily recognizable.”
Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.”
