"要是今日俾斯麦在北京，他一定会说，这是中国的噩梦。"中国人民大学国际关系领域的学者时殷弘谈到中国和亚洲其它地区的关系时表示，"他总是说，如果你有五个邻居，你至少要和其中的三个打好交道。我们却不是这样。"
近几个月内，亚洲看到了随着中国实力和影响力扩大可能会出现的"外交雷区"。未解决的领土争端升温，一场可能的军备竞赛初露端倪，而地区内两大势力中国和美国之间的战略竞争开始搅动——这是20国集团（G20，包括发达和新兴国家）领导人上周首尔峰会的主要背景之一。
各方焦虑的根源是，人们担心，近期取代日本成为世界第二大经济体的自信的中国，意图利用其经济实力来扩大政治和军事影响力。中国大规模经济刺激计划帮助亚洲相对轻松地走出全球金融危机，中国持久的经济活力也对亚洲其它国家大有裨益。然而，近期的种种紧张局势发人警醒：中国的崛起可能在政治上变得更难以适应。
"我担心我们可能面临一段更加不稳定的时期，"新加坡国际事务学院(SIIA)院长戴尚志(Simon Tay)表示。
邓小平在主政时期说过一句有名的话，他告诫同僚们要"善于守拙，绝不当头"。他认为，中国要发展经济，就必须化解与近邻间的旧怨。这与一个世纪前的奥托•冯•俾斯麦(Otto von Bismarck)所见略同。1997年亚洲经济危机过后的10年内，中国领导人完全遵循这一信条。在"双赢"、"和平崛起"等口号下，中国了结了多宗边界争端，签署了各种贷款、援助和贸易协议，总体上竭力不让自己显得对别国构成威胁。
然而，过去一年里出现了一些新迹象，说明中国正在亚洲开始摒弃温和友善的政策。最显著的例子发生在南中国海——中国大陆、越南、马来西亚、台湾、菲律宾和文莱等均宣称拥有南沙群岛和西沙群岛的部分或全部主权。
越来越多的征兆表明，中国在主张主权方面正表现得更加强势。今年6月，美国国务卿希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)的一番话使不断升温的紧张局势成为焦点，当时她在亚洲一个地区会议上提出，美国可以出面调停南海的争端。亚洲若干国家的政府对此表示支持，但据与会官员表示，中国外交部长杨洁篪愤怒地回应说，这项提议是"对中国的攻击"，他告诉那些支持美国介入的国家："中国是大国，其它国家是小国，这就是事实。"
今年9月，中国和日本发生了一起激烈的外交争端：一艘中国渔船的船长在东海上另一个有争议的海岛附近水域被日本海上保安厅扣留，理由是他指挥自己的渔船撞击日方巡视船。日本企业一度声称，中方在阻止稀土发运——稀土广泛应用于制造业，中国在该市场占据主导地位。日本大报《朝日新闻》的主编船桥洋一(Yoichi Funabashi)形容，北京是在采取"外交震慑"策略。
围绕各海岛的争端以前就曾多次升温，但这次之所以在亚洲引发严重焦虑情绪，原因之一是中国正大力发展海军，这支海军可能开始对美国在亚洲海域的主导地位构成挑战。
中国海军过去主要着重于为可能爆发的台海战争做准备，但经过这些年的大力投资后，中国海军如今的使命已扩大到保护中国在海外的经济利益以及规模庞大的海上贸易。东海舰队副司令员张华臣少将今年接受新华社采访时表示："随着中国海军战略的变化，中国海军正从沿海防御转向远洋防御。"
中国拥有一支庞大且仍在壮大的核潜艇舰队，并在海南岛建设了一个地下海军基地，可以更快捷地进入南海。美国官员表示，中国还试验了可打击离中国海岸1000英里远的航空母舰的远程弹道导弹。虽然尚不清楚这种技术是否有效，但它是中国扩大海军影响力、使其远远超出所谓"第一岛链"（从印尼到日本，包含东海有争议的岛群）的计划的一部分。
美国对外关系委员会(Council on Foreign Relations)中国问题专家易明(Elizabeth Economy)认为，军事扩张是中国全面战略的一部分，其目的是要形成更积极的对外政策，其中包括让人民币发挥更大的国际作用，以及投入巨资把国有媒体公司转变为可媲美CNN或BBC的国际新闻机构。
与其置身事外、只求别摊上新义务，中国希望开始使局面朝向有利于自己的方向发展。她表示："如今中国高层有更强烈的意愿去改写游戏规则。"
在其他观察家看来，中国展现出更加自信的姿态，与其说是出自领导层的决定，不如说是迫于底层的压力：时常表现出强烈民族主义情绪的公众舆论；军方某些人士的意见；海外利益不断扩大的国有企业；以及正为两年后的领导层交接做准备的政界人士。
中国社会科学院的年轻学者王俊生表示，特别是在年轻人中间，"一种健康的大国心态"正在萌生，这正影响着政策制定者。
针对中国的新姿态，亚洲其它地区的反应之一是加大购买军备的力度，如越南向俄罗斯订购了价值24亿美元的潜艇和战斗机。
但是，对中国的焦虑日增，也给了美国在亚洲重新发挥作用的机会，此前10年里，美国忙于应对恐怖主义、伊拉克和阿富汗，无暇他顾。除了提议斡旋南海纠纷以外，美国还和韩国举行了联合海军演习——今年韩国一艘军舰沉没，韩方认定是朝鲜所为，但中国拒不谴责朝鲜，让韩国感到愤慨。今年夏季，美国和越南也举行了联合海军演习——在美军撤离西贡35年后。
的确，美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)和国务卿希拉里两位上周都在亚洲穿梭访问，意在强调华盛顿对该地区的新义务。"中国正受到挑战，"澳大利亚国防学院(Australian Defence Force Academy)东南亚问题专家卡尔•塞耶(Carl Thayer)表示，"中国原以为对自己有利的一些战略趋势，现在正开始受挫。"
不过，亚洲既有许多人担心中国新展现出来的自信姿态，也有不少人担心美国会做得过火，那将给中国的强硬派壮胆，这些人已经在敦促北京方面采取更强硬的立场。
新加坡的戴尚志表示："美国的危险是以对抗姿态重返亚洲。假设你是中国的一名战略思想家，就算你不是患有妄想狂的阴谋理论家，也会认为美国正试图鼓动亚洲对抗中国。"中国对美方的某些言论相当不快。近期希拉里告诫柬埔寨不要过分依赖中国时，一位中国官员诘问道："你能想象中国政府跟墨西哥说不要过分依赖美国吗？"
不过，这一系列事态未必会迅速升级，演变为亚洲全面的地缘政治冲突。的确，近几周美国和中国都试图对引起亚洲惊慌的紧张局势进行降温处理。
胡锦涛宣布将于明年1月访美，中美军事交流在中断数月后已经恢复。最近在越南举行的地区会议上，中日再起争执，但中国总理温家宝也谈到要把南海打造成和平、合作之海，让人们生出这样的希望：各方可能会谈判达成一份具有法律约束力的南海行为准则。
"中国似乎已经意识到了自己行动的代价，目前正采取措施修补形象，比如与美国重启军事往来，"麻省理工学院(MIT)中国安全问题专家傅泰林(Taylor Fravel)表示，"即使这些措施只是战术转变，也真切地突显出中国仍然必须在意整个地区的情绪。"
与此同时，美国推迟了和韩国的另一次联合海军演习，在G20峰会召开前夕，奥巴马政府再次拒绝将中国列为"汇率操纵国"。
紧张局势也进一步突显出亚洲制度建设的必要性。亚洲有着各式各样的论坛，包括东盟(Asean)和亚太经合组织(APEC)等，这些论坛有时无法清晰界定自身使命，但它们在适应中国不断壮大的实力方面有望发挥重要作用。
即使是对中国近期举动心存警惕的国家，也正寻求增进与北京的关系。比如说，越南除了和美国海军举行联合演习外，也和中国一起举行了军演。亚洲国家希望利用美国及其军事实力，作为与不断壮大的中国抗衡的一道屏障，但并不指望美国取代拥有世界上最具活力的经济的中国。
最重要的是，他们希望避免不得不在这"两只强大的纹章兽(heraldic beasts)"（借用俾斯麦的话）之间进行选择的局面。假如紧张局势升级到那种地步，那么亚洲真的将迎来一段动荡不安的时期。
译者/杨远
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035570
If Bismarck were in Beijing today, he would say this was our nightmare," says Shi Yinhong, an international relations scholar at Renmin University in Beijing, about China's relations with the rest of Asia. "His advice was always that if you have five neighbours, you need to be on good terms with at least three. That is not our case."
For the past few months, Asia has had a sneak preview of the sort of diplomatic minefields that could lie ahead as China's influence and power expand. Unresolved territorial disputes have flared up, a possible arms race has started to take shape and there have been the stirrings of a real strategic rivalry between the two main powers in the region, China and the US – which will be one main backdrop when leaders of the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations meet in Seoul today.
At the root of the anxieties is the worry that a self-confident China, which recently overtook Japan as the second-largest economy in the world, wants to translate its economic power into greater political and military influence. Beijing's massive stimulus plan helped Asia to ride out the global financial crisis with relative ease and its sustained economic dynamism is of big benefit to other countries in the region. But the recent tensions serve as a warning that the rise of China could become harder to accommodate politically.
"I fear we could be about to enter a much more rocky period," says Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.
When Deng Xiaoping led China, he famously urged his colleagues to "keep a cool head and maintain a low profile" because he believed – as Otto von Bismarck did in Germany a century before – that economic expansion required his country to lay to rest old antagonisms in its immediate neighbourhood. For the decade that followed the Asian economic crisis in 1997, China's leaders did just that. Behind slogans such as "win-win" and "peaceful rise", they settled land border disputes, signed loan, aid and trade deals and generally did all they could to seem unthreatening.
The past year, however, has brought signs that China is shunning that softly-softly approach in Asia. The most obvious example is in the South China Sea – where the Spratly and Paracel islands are claimed in part or in full by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Brunei.
Amid increasing warnings that China is pushing its claims more aggressively, the simmering tensions came to the fore in June when Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, told a regional gathering that the US could act as a mediator in the South China Sea – a move that was supported by a handful of other Asian governments. According to officials present at the meeting, Yang Jiechi, China's foreign minister, responded angrily that the proposal was an "attack on China" and told the nations that supported the US intervention: "China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact."
In September, Beijing became embroiled in a furious diplomatic dispute with Tokyo after the Japanese coastguard arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat for ramming its vessels in the waters off another group of disputed islands in the East China Sea. At one stage, Japanese companies reported that shipments of rare earths – metals that are used in many aspects of manufacturing and which China dominates – had been blocked. Yoichi Funabashi, editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's main dailies, described Beijing's tactics as a campaign of "diplomatic shock and awe".
Disputes over the various islands have flared up many times before. But one reason why the recent disagreements have caused so much anxiety in Asia is that they come as China is beginning to put in place a navy that could start to challenge US dominance in the region's seas.
China's navy used to focus mainly on preparing for war over Taiwan. After years of large investments, however, its remit is now broadening to include the protection of Chinese economic interests overseas and its vast seaborne trade. "With our naval strategy changing now, we are going from coastal defence to far sea defence,'' Rear Admiral Zhang Huachen, deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet, told Xinhua news agency this year.
China has a large and growing fleet of nuclear submarines and has opened an underground naval base in Hainan island off the south coast, allowing quicker access to the South China Sea. According to US officials, China has also tested long-range ballistic missiles that could be used against aircraft carriers stationed 1,000 miles from the Chinese coast. Although it is not yet clear whether the technology will be effective, it is part of a plan to extend Chinese naval influence well beyond what is called "the first island chain", stretching from Indonesia to Japan and encompassing the disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Elizabeth Economy, a China specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think-tank, argues that the military expansion is part of a broader strategy to forge a more activist foreign policy – which also includes, for instance, proposals for the renminbi to play a larger international role and huge investments in turning domestic state media companies into international news operations that can rival CNN or the BBC.
Rather than being a passive observer of events that avoids being drawn into new commitments, China wants to start shaping events to its own ends. "There is a much stronger desire from the top now to try and remake the rules of the game," she says.
F or other observers, the more assertive stance is less a decision by the leadership and more a reflection of pressures from below – from public opinion that can be at times strongly nationalistic, from elements within the Chinese military, from state-owned companies that have growing interests overseas and from politicians looking to position themselves for the next leadership transition in two years' time.
Wang Junsheng, a young academic at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that especially among younger people, the start of "a healthy great power mentality" is influencing policymakers.
One response within the rest of Asia has been to ramp up arms purchases. Vietnam, for instance, has ordered $2.4bn of submarines and fighter aircraft from Russia.
But the growing anxiety about China also provides an opportunity for the US to reassert itself in Asian diplomacy after a decade when Washington was preoccupied by terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan. As well as offering to mediate in the South China Sea disputes, the US has held naval exercises with the South Korean government, which was angered by China's refusal to criticise what it believes was North Korea's role in the sinking of a South Korean warship this year. The US navy also held a joint drill with Vietnam over the summer – 35 years after US troops withdrew from Saigon.
Indeed, both Barack Obama, US president, and Mrs Clinton have been travelling in Asia this week on trips designed to emphasise Washington's new-found commitment to the region. "China is being challenged," says Carl Thayer, an expert on south-east Asia at the Australian Defence Force Academy. "Some of the strategic trends that China thought were going its way are starting to be confounded."
But just as many in Asia are concerned about the new signs of Chinese assertiveness, some also fear that the US will overplay its hand and embolden the very hardline voices in China who are already pushing for Beijing to take a tougher stand.
"The US is in danger of re-engaging in Asia on acrimonious terms," says Mr Tay in Singapore. "If you are a strategic thinker in China, you do not need to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to think that the US is trying to bandwagon Asia against China." Some of the US statements have not gone down well in Beijing. After Mrs Clinton warned Cambodia last week not to become too dependent on China, one Chinese official remarked: "Can you imagine if the Chinese government told Mexico not to be too dependent on the US?"
Y et it is not inevitable that this series of events will quickly spiral into a broader geopolitical clash in Asia. Indeed, in the past few weeks there have been signs of the US and China trying to ratchet down the sort of tensions that have alarmed the region.
President Hu Jintao has announced he will visit the US in January and discussions between the two countries' militaries have resumed after a hiatus of several months. At the regional meeting in Vietnam last weekend, where Beijing and Tokyo sparred again, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao also talked about creating a "sea of peace and co-operation" in the South China Sea – prompting hopes that a legally binding code of conduct for the sea can be negotiated.
"China appears to have recognised the costs of its actions and is taking steps to repair its image, such as restarting military-to-military ties with the US," says Taylor Fravel, a China expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Even if these steps represent only tactical shifts, they do underscore how China must continue to be sensitive to regional sentiments."
The US, meanwhile, has postponed another naval drill with South Korea and the Obama administration has again declined to label China as a "currency manipulator" ahead of the G20 summit.
The tensions have also given new relevance to institution-building in the region. Asia has an alphabet soup of different forums, including Asean and Apec, that have sometimes struggled to define a clear purpose but could play an important role in accommodating China's increasing power.
Even governments wary of China's recent moves are also looking to strengthen ties with Beijing. As well as conducting drills with the US navy, Vietnam has, for example, also held military exercises with the Chinese. Asian countries hope to use the US and its military power as a hedge against a growing China, but not as an alternative to a country that has the most dynamic economy in the world.
Most of all, they want to avoid having to choose between, to borrow Bismarck's words, those "two powerful heraldic beasts". If tensions ascended that far, Asia would indeed be in for a time of much tumult.
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