“气氛变了”，美媒：美国对中国多了敬畏

当地时间1月21日，美国《纽约时报》刊发文章指出，美国政府近来频频对盟友和弱小国家施压、霸凌，背后真正的动因，是试图掩盖自身正在发生的深刻变化。

这篇文章由《纽约时报》专栏作家大卫·华莱士-威尔斯（David Wallace-Wells）撰写。文章开篇回顾了过去一年美国战略取向的剧烈转向。他提到，2025年特朗普重返白宫、并集结一批对华鹰派人物时，外界普遍认为，美国将全力推进对华强硬路线，开启所谓的“新冷战”。

Last January, as US President Donald Trump stormed back into the White House, spoiling for a trade war and backed by an army of credentialed China hawks, it seemed a pretty safe bet that his return would mean an escalation of America's great power rivalry with Beijing, what foreign-policy people had long since taken to calling, loosely, the New Cold War.

然而，一年之后的现实却出人意料。美国政府的注意力并未集中在中国身上，而是忙于在拉美和中东频频挑衅：非法入侵委内瑞拉，威胁对古巴和伊朗动武，甚至宣称要吞并丹麦的格陵兰岛，并不断向欧洲盟友施压。与此同时，美国还对加拿大持续释放敌意，反而将这个原本最亲密的盟友之一，“推到了中国的怀抱”。

In 2026, the country is in a remarkably different place geopolitically. ... we've had an unlawful military operation in Venezuela, an explicit play to take over Greenland and bully Europe, and threats against hostile governments in Cuba and Iran. A year of hostility toward Canada has driven that country into China's arms.

华莱士-威尔斯指出，特朗普本人对这种变化并不在意。他不仅叫停了对华贸易博弈，还放松了部分芯片限制，甚至公开表示，加拿大与中国达成合作“是件好事”，并称加拿大总理卡尼“本就该这么做”。在他推动的“新门罗主义”框架下，对付中国反而退居次要位置。

这位专栏作家认为，尽管美国对华战略是否真正缓和仍需时间检验，但局势降温已十分明显。更深层的原因在于，美国对中国的认知正经历一场“氛围转变（vibe shift）”——曾经习惯于在全球寻找对手、制造对抗的心态，正在被一种更加复杂的态度所取代，而这种态度的核心，或许是一种敬畏。

“长期以来，美国对华政策由鹰派主导，他们坚信必须击败中国，无论‘击败’究竟意味着什么，”华莱士-威尔斯写道，“但这种曾经的广泛共识已经瓦解，越来越多政策专家开始反问：我们真的有可能在这场竞争中胜出吗？”

Over the last year, among foreign policy thinkers well outside of Trump's orbit, there has been what the China commentators Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo identified as a "vibe shift", with an intuitive rivalry with the world's other great power giving way to a complicated tangle of attitudes held together by simple awe. For a long time, American thinking about China was driven by hawks who insisted that the rival must be defeated, however defeat was defined.

But what had been a broad consensus has fractured, with many more policy wonks beginning to ask instead whether we might ever catch up, and contemplating the possibility that, while the future is enormously uncertain, the answer may well be no.

文章随后列举了近两年来中国在多个领域取得的、已被美国媒体反复提及的成就：新能源和绿色科技的快速发展、在全球市场占据主导地位的无人机产业、装机规模数倍于美国的机器人产业，以及在人工智能和芯片领域迅速缩小差距的突破——此外，还包括进步速度不亚于AI的中国制药科技。

华莱士-威尔斯还特别提到中国强大的造船能力和“令人震撼”的城市化进程，尤其是纵横交错的高铁网络、绵延数里的跨海大桥，以及穿梭于摩天大楼之间的高架路网。他指出，这些基础设施建设，已在美国社会内部引发一种难以掩饰的“羡慕中国的情绪”。

他举例称，当康奈尔大学法学院教授戴维·施莱谢尔被问及，哪些基建项目最有可能激发美国公众热情、并推动美国突破其繁琐监管和官僚体系时，施莱谢尔的回答直截了当：“看看中国在做什么，然后想象把这些项目搬到美国。”

The law professor David Schleicher has been a central figure in the academic wing of that intellectual coalition; when he was asked what kinds of infrastructure projects might excite enough American popular enthusiasm to justify federal exemptions from the country's restrictive regulatory and bureaucratic culture, he answered, "Think of whatever China's doing, and then imagine it on an American scale: a giant new subway system, a new big highway, a big transmission system, big pipelines."

正是这种现实，让美国鹰派感到愈发焦虑。华莱士-威尔斯指出，他们对中国巨额研发投入、不断增强的国际科研人才吸引力，以及在全球顶级学术期刊中迅速上升的论文占比感到不安。

“二十年前，许多美国人相信，中国若试图挑战美国霸权，终将因自身问题而失败；十年前，鹰派开始警告必须采取更多行动遏制这个崛起的大国，”他写道，“但在过去一年里，越来越多的人开始扪心自问：这场竞赛，我们是不是早就败局已定？”

Two decades ago, many Americans assumed that the Beijing model could not sustain a challenge to American hegemony without collapsing. One decade ago, China hawks began to fret that much more needed to be done to box out the rising power. And though it still isn't consensus and there is still plenty of competitive hysteria, over the last year we've begun to hear many more wondering whether the race has already been lost.

文章最后指出，在经历了十多年不断升级的对抗后，美国对华竞争的叙事正在发生转向。曾经横跨两党的歇斯底里，正逐渐被一种更为克制、迷茫甚至不安的情绪所取代。华莱士-威尔斯认为，这种转变，“对一向自视甚高的美国而言，无疑是一场巨大的认知冲击”。

他还引用华裔媒体人郭怡广在《大清算：西方应该从中国学到什么》一文中的观点指出，美国正在经历的，不只是另一个大国的崛起，更是对长期根植于西方思想体系中的诸多假设——关于发展模式、政治制度乃至文明优越性的假设——的根本挑战。

This shift is pretty disorienting for a country as cocky as this one, as Kuo wrote recently in the Ideas Letter, in an essay he called "The Great Reckoning". "We have witnessed not merely the rise of another great power, but a fundamental challenge to assumptions long embedded in Western thought — about development, political systems, and civilizational achievement itself", he wrote. "We simply haven't yet found the intellectual courage to face it."

华莱士-威尔斯认为，美国内部已有一部分人开始正视并接受这一现实，比如承认世界格局正走向多极平衡，而不再围绕单一霸权展开。

“但也有人在绝望中向昔日盟友和宿敌频频发难，试图以强硬姿态证明自身力量，去欺凌那些他们仍自认为能够威慑和压制的对象，”他写道。

Or perhaps we are just now beginning to — some growing fatalistic, others envisioning a world defined less by imperial rivalry than by balance, others by lashing out against old allies and former adversaries in a desperate performance of strength against those we remain confident we can intimidate and overwhelm.

值得注意的是，就在这篇文章刊发的次日，《纽约时报》另一位负责报道达沃斯世界经济论坛的记者，也发表文章，对比了美国和中国在达沃斯所获得的不同反响与期待。

其中写道：中国正在坚持一套特朗普政府已然抛弃的经济理念——通过多边机制推动发展目标，坚信全球贸易具备创造财富的能力，并清醒地认识到，没有任何一个国家可以凭借一己之力实现“独善其身”的发展。

来源：纽约时报 环球时报

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