拉赫曼：直面亚洲崛起，西方如何调整心态？
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受访者拉赫曼系英国《金融时报》首席外交事务评论员，本文刊于7月17日CGTN微信公众号。
视频时长约7分钟，以下为采访全文：
王冠：好的。在你的书《东方化：亚洲世纪的战争与和平》中，你谈到接下来一个世纪将是亚洲世纪。在西方媒体中，评论员和学者们纷纷抛出自己的观点，他们认为这可能是一件坏事。那么如果我们处于亚洲世纪，世界开始东方化，我们是否也能看见一些积极的进展？
吉迪恩•拉赫曼：当然可以。东方化是指亚洲国家的财富迅速增加，人们有巨大的机会过上从未有过的美好生活。
我的一个朋友说，他经历了中国从相对贫穷到成为中产阶级社会（至少大城市如此）的这一时期。他说，当他首次访问欧洲时，他觉得可能在他去世时，中国才能达到欧洲的生活水平。事实上，10年后就达到了。在10年时间里，亚洲国家已经实现了他在英国留学时看到的生活水平。这是一件了不起的事情，人们可以有这样的发展机会，而且这种机会不仅限于中国人享有。正如我所说的那样，西方公司未来最大的市场可能是中国和亚洲列国，因此财富在某种程度上将由亚洲各国共享。
我认为这也带来了一些挑战，比如说我们刚才谈到的地缘政治挑战。而管理这些挑战确实是我们这个时代的核心政治问题。我不认为我们能够凭运气做到这一点。我认为，当世界从超级大国主导过渡到崛起大国与之博弈，每个国家都要经历非常艰难的调整。比我更杰出的学者们已经写了这方面的文章，就比如格雷厄•埃里森这样的人。这种转变过去曾导致战争。因此，当出现挑战国时，全球局势肯定会比较紧张。此外还有环境问题。如果世界各国都步入中产阶级社会，那么能源和食物消费必定大幅增加。这显然会给地球带来压力，我们都明白这一点，我们也都在呼吁，世界各国必须共同管理这些问题。然而知易行难，意识到问题与真正去解决问题是两码事。
王冠：吉迪恩先生，你曾经说过，中美博弈未来更多的是关于全球经济影响力的博弈。美国的混乱就是中国的机会。你认为这场经济博弈将会如何演绎？
吉迪恩•拉赫曼：这将会体现在多重维度上。但我认为，如果纯粹只看贸易，对于许多国家而言，中国现在是比美国更加重要的贸易伙伴，在亚洲地区尤其如此，我认为这对美国来说是个问题。然而，在其他方面，美国则更强大。比如，美国拥有某些关键技术。我们已经看到了这一点，例如，例如在半导体领域的禁令等，美国在这些行业处于领先地位，并有时将其作为武器，比如实施半导体出口禁令。
然而，我认为中国可以通过努力在这些领域赶上美国。我记得一位美国产业领袖对我说，实施这些禁令挺不明智，因为这相当于告诉中国，你那里存在弱点，那么中国会去想办法补足短板。
我认为最大的博弈会围绕美元在全球金融体系中的地位而展开，目前世界上没有任何国家试图挑战美元的地位，中国未曾尝试过。美元是全球储备货币，这给了美国巨大的权力来实施金融制裁。在美国有很多人担心，他们正在过度使用这种武器，随着时间的推移，人们会感到厌倦，并选择采用替代货币，比如欧元或人民币，也有可能是像比特币这样的虚拟货币。但就目前而言，美元作为全球货币之锚的地位还没有遇到真正的挑战。这确实赋予了美国巨大的经济权力，尽管从某些方面来看，中国已经是世界上最大的经济体，也是世界上最大的制造国和出口国。
以下为英文版
Wang Guan: In 2016, you wrote the book “Easternisation: War and Peace in the Asian Century,” where you argue that 500 years of Western domination of global politics is now coming to an end, and as a result of the rise of new powers in Asia. How do you think Western elites, policy makers in London, Brussels, Washington, should come to terms with this reality?Gideon Rachman: I think that the reality of the rise of Asian economic powers is something that's not going to change. How they should come to terms with slightly depends on how it plays out because it's a number of things. I think the most important single thing is the rise of China, it’s the single biggest economy. It's five times the size of India, for example, but it's also true that it's not just a story about China. It is a story about India, the other country of over one billion people, about Southeast Asia, and so on.I think that what is happening is that having seen this as primarily an economic opportunity, and therefore, something that was basically good news for the West -- larger markets, cheaper goods, all of that -- they're coming to terms with the political realities behind that, which is that richer countries in Asia are also going to be more powerful countries with their own views of how the world should run.And the debate now has begun. As I was saying, that the previous answer about do we accept that, but also taking a more differentiated view of Asia, because I don't think that there is a single Asian bloc that sees the world in one way. Obviously, Tokyo sees things differently from Beijing. Delhi sees things differently from Islamabad, and so on. I think that the Western countries are having to take a more sophisticated view of Asian politics, decide how much they want to get involved in internal disputes.Wang Guan: Alright. In your book “Easternisation,” you talk about this coming century being the Asian century. In the Western media, the commentators, pundits give us enough opinions of their own, saying that, suggesting that it could be a bad thing. Are there good aspects? If and when we're in a century of Asia, where there's an Easternisation of the world?Gideon Rachman: Yes of course there are. And one of the aspects of Easternisation is a rapid rise in wealth in Asia and huge opportunities for people to live a better life that they might not have had before. A friend of mine who said that he's lived through this period where China's gone from relative poverty to being essentially middle-class society in the big cities at least, and saying that he felt that when he first visited Europe, that the living standards he saw there, that may be by the end of his life, China would be the same. He said, in fact, it happened in 10 years’ time. Within 10 years, the living standards that he had seen as a student in the UK were there in Asia. And that is an amazing thing, that people can have that opportunity, and not just for Chinese people, because as we were suggesting, the biggest market for Western companies in the future is likely to be China or Asia more broadly, and so the wealth is shared to some extent. I think it also creates some challenges, the geopolitical ones we've talked about. And managing that is really the central political problem of our era. I'm not totally confident we'll do it incidentally. I think that it's a very hard adjustment for everybody, to go from a period of one superpower dominance to a challenger power. Scholars who are much more distinguished than me have written about it, people like Graham Allison, that has resulted in war in the past. So that's difficult as a challenge. And then there's also the environmental issues. A world in which the whole world is middle class is a much higher consumer of energy, food. And that clearly creates strains on the planet, which we can all see. And we can all say we have to manage these together, but seeing the problem, saying we should manage together and actually doing it are different.Wang Guan: Gideon, you said once that a large part of America's emerging struggle with China will be a battle for economic influence around the world. America's disarray is China's opportunity. How do you see this economic battle evolve, going forward?Gideon Rachman: It's very, very multifaceted. But I think that clearly, if you look at pure trade, China now is a more important trading partner for many more countries than the United States, and particularly in Asia. I think that is problematic for the United States. However, there are other aspects to it where the U.S. is stronger. There are certain key technologies. We've seen this, for example, with semiconductor bans and so on, where the United States is ahead and has used that as a weapon at times, for example, by imposing semiconductor export bans. However, I think those are things that China can with some effort probably match America on. I remember a leading American industrial saying to me, these bans are kind of stupid, because they're just telling China, you have a weakness there, you have a weakness there, and China will go ahead and fix those things.I think the biggest struggle really though, and the one where nobody in the world, China included, yet has a response, is the role of the dollar in the global financial system. It is the world's global reserve currency. And that gives America enormous power to impose financial sanctions. There are many in America who worry that they're overusing that weapon, and that over time, people will get fed up and develop alternatives, which may be the euro or the RMB for the internationalization, or maybe a kind of currency like bitcoin or something else. But for the moment, there isn't really a challenger to the dollar as the safe haven currency. And that does give America enormous economic power, even though by some measures, China is already the world's largest economy. And it's certainly the world's largest manufacturer and exporter.
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