【视点】何亚非：西方自由秩序危机，“一带一路”提供新选择？（中英双语荐读）
作者何亚非系前外交部副部长、中国人民大学重阳金融研究院高级研究员、全球治理研究中心主任，原文刊于6月6日中美聚焦。
这真是最好的时代，也是最坏的时代。随着大批发展中国家和新兴国家崛起，“先进国家”相对衰落，全球力量趋同加速，力量平衡继续对发展中国家有利。这一宏大图景提供了一个有用的多棱镜，透过它，对世界今天与明天更清醒的认识——包括全球化、全球治理和全球自由秩序的未来——在我们脑海里清晰地浮现出来。
毫无疑问，一段时间以来“自由民主世界”发生着一场危机，美国和许多欧洲国家出现了“黑天鹅事件”。这些事件给西方世界的政治生态系统带来极大破坏，削弱了曾经作为美国主导的战后世界自由秩序基石的中间派和进步力量。
对自由秩序和自由民主的挑战既来自内部也来自外部，主要是来自内部，并带来了由美国主导和定义的自由秩序能否继续存在下去等诸多疑问。
在内部挑战当中，首先是2008年金融危机以来，作为全球经济治理理念的经济新自由主义公信力丧失，这促使许多国家转而向东方特别是中国寻求新思想、新观念。
其次是“特朗普现象”及其在欧洲国家的复制版，虽然，在欧洲面对欧盟解体深渊之际法国的大选结果让人松了口气。
特朗普总统上任已经4个多月，其间，他的声明、行动以及深夜发的推特，让国内外的人们觉得，美国有可能不再担当世界自由秩序的担保人。他关于美国衰落的观点，他对规则和西方国家长期以来奉为神旨的自由民主价值观的本能蔑视，都让人无法错过和无视。那么问题来了：美国还会在这个全球化新时代继续提供全球公共产品吗？或者说，它会退回到美国传统权宜之计——孤立主义吗？这也是为什么弗兰西斯·福山在谈到和写到基于自由民主的秩序迅速消失时，会不厌其烦地一再追问：“我们还生活在自由的国际秩序之中吗？”
“一带一路”倡议既是国家发展战略，也是中国带给全球治理的创新举措，它为有关国家在平等互利基础上扩大合作提供了巨大机会。北京“一带一路”国际合作论坛的成功广受好评，证明它受到全世界的欢迎。论坛结束时与中国就“一带一路”签署谅解备忘录的国家（及地区和国际组织）增加到68个。
然而，“一带一路”也受到深深的怀疑，一些西方人士把这一倡议说成中国试图扩大其政治经济影响势力范围，要用隐秘的议程推翻现有的自由民主国际体系。
这里我们必须区分两件完全不相关的事。自由民主和西方语境定义的自由秩序的确陷入了危机，因为它们在政治上和经济上被用来，或者被滥用于将西方治理模式强加给其他国家，而不顾这些国家的国内条件，这其中就包括“华盛顿共识”和“国家保护责任”。西方国家自己的资本所有者也如影随形，尽可能多地从社会攫取利润，无视它带给部分国人尤其是非技术性工人的负面影响。法国经济学家托马斯·皮凯蒂在他著名的《21世纪资本论》中对这一丑恶现象作了非常详细的描述。
富人与穷人之间差距的扩大，冲突的加剧，都被归咎于全球化本身，而那些国家政府没有能够解决好这一突出问题的事实，被有意地忘掉了。
这是中国主动提出的“一带一路”倡议为什么如此受欢迎的另一个原因。
至少有两件事使“一带一路”成为有吸引力的建议。一是，这一国际合作新理念深深植根于中国经济增长的成功，包括作出巨大努力减少和消除贫困的国内治理的成功。过去40年中国已经成功使7亿多人脱贫。
另一个就是，中国的成功来自于走自己的发展道路这一事实，而中国共产党领导的政府为此提供了强大的制度保证。换句话说，中国并没有遵循新自由主义提出的、有时被西方国家强加的治理模式。其他发展中国家、新兴市场以及众多先进工业国家得出的结论是，虽然不能被简单复制，但中国提供了经济增长与良好全球治理的一个替代模式。“一带一路”就是实实在在的例子。
习主席在“一带一路”论坛上郑重承诺，新丝绸之路将是“具有包容性和文明融合的和平、繁荣与创新之路”。“一带一路”还可以成为应对和平赤字、治理赤字和发展赤字等严峻全球性挑战的一种方式。
很显然，“一带一路”与西方某些学者专家所说的自由秩序或自由民主衰落与否无关。如果“一带一路”对全球治理和世界秩序的未来有什么贡献的话，那就是它蕴含机会，推动国际关系的民主化，使全球化成为一个更平等也因此更持久地让各国共享利益的进程。
“Belt & Road” vs. Liberal Order
This is really the best of times and worst of times. With the rise of a large number of developing and emerging countries and relative decline of “advanced countries”, the global convergence of power is accelerating and the balance of power continues to tip in favor of the developing countries. This big picture provides a useful prism through which a clearer view of the world today and tomorrow, including the future of globalization, global governance and the global liberal order, becomes clear in our minds.
Liberal order in crisis
Without any doubt, a crisis has been raging across the “liberal democratic world” for some time with “black swan events” appearing in the U.S. and in many European nations. These have wreaked havoc with the political eco-system in the Western world, weakening the centrist and progressive forces that used to underpin the U.S.-led postwar world liberal order.
The challenges to liberal order as well as liberal democracy come from both within and outside, mostly from within, which raises many questions as to whether the U.S.-led and U.S.-defined liberal order can survive.
Among challenges from within, first and foremost is the loss of credibility of economic neo-liberalism as the governing ideology for global economic order since the 2008 financial crisis, which has made many countries turn to the East, in particular to China, for new ideas and concepts.
Next naturally are the “Trump Phenomenon” and its copycat versions in European countries, though the result of French election has given people some relief as Europe stares into the abyss of EU disintegration.
President Trump has been in office for a bit more than four months, during which his pronouncements and actions, together with his midnight tweets, are perceived both at home and abroad as risking an end to the role by the U.S. as guarantor of this liberal world order. His view of American decline and his instinctive contempt for the norms and values of liberal democracy, long held as sacrosanct by Western nations, is too blunt to miss or to ignore. Hence comes the question: Will the US continue to provide global commons in this new era of globalization or will it backpedal and go into an isolationist Mode Vivendi as has been the American tradition? That is why Francis Fukuyama repeatedly asks that “irksome” question of “do we still live in the liberal international order” as he gives talks and writes about the fast dismantling of that order based on liberal democracy.
China offers an alternative?
The Belt & Road Initiative is both a national developmental strategy and an innovative initiative by China to global governance offering huge opportunities for greater cooperation among countries concerned on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. The widely acclaimed success of the recent B&R Forum of International Cooperation in Beijing testifies to its popularity worldwide. The number of countries (and regional and international organizations) that have signed MOUs on B&R with China had increased to 68 by the closing of the forum.
Nevertheless, B&R has been viewed with deep suspicion – some in the West portrayed the initiative as China’s attempt to grow its sphere of political and economic influence, with a hidden agenda to overthrow the current international system of liberal democracy.
Here we have to distinguish between two things that are not really related. The liberal democracy and liberal order as defined in the Western narrative are indeed under siege and in crisis, because politically and economically they has been used or abused to impose a Western model of governance onto other nations regardless of their domestic conditions, including the “Washington Consensus” and “Responsibility to Protect”. It has also been followed rigidly in Western countries themselves for capital-holders to extract as much profit as possible from the society —overlooking the negative impact it has on some segments of the populations, especially those who have only unskilled labor to offer. The French economist Thomas Piketty in his famous book entitled “The 21st Century Capital” described this ugly phenomenon in great detail.
The widening gap and exacerbating conflict between the rich and the poor have been blamed on globalization per se. The fact that governments in those countries failed to address this glaring problem has been conveniently forgotten.
Here lies another reason why China’s proactive B&R proposal is so popular.
There are at least two things that make B&R an attractive proposition. One is that this idea of new international cooperation is deeply rooted in the success of China’s economic growth and its domestic governance, including the enormous efforts in poverty reduction and elimination. China was successful in lifting over 700 million people out of poverty in the last four decades.
The other is the fact that China’s success has been achieved by taking its own path of development with strong institutional guarantees from government led by the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, China has not followed the governance model of neo-liberalism offered and sometimes imposed by Western nations. Other developing countries and emerging markets, as well as many advanced industrial nations, have come to the conclusion that China offers an alternative model, though by no means to be simply copied, to economic growth and good global governance. B&R is a solid example.
President Xi solemnly promised at the B&R Forum that the new Silk Road will be “the road of peace, prosperity and innovation with inclusiveness and civilization integration”. B&R is also offered as a way to deal with the serious global challenges of peace deficit, governance deficit and development deficit.
It is quite clear that B&R has nothing whatsoever to do with the decline or non-decline of the liberal order or liberal democracy as claimed by some scholars and experts in the West. If there is anything about B&R that can contribute to the future of global governance and world order, it is the inherent opportunities of that proposal to further democratize international relations and make globalization an equal process for sharing benefits among all nations and therefore more sustainable.
中国人民大学全球治理研究中心(Global Governance Research Center，RUC)成立于2017年3月9日，是北京巨丰金控科技有限公司董事长马琳女士向中国人民大学捐赠并由中国人民大学重阳金融研究院（人大重阳）负责运营管理的教育基金项目。中国人民大学全球治理研究中心由原外交部副部长、人大重阳高级研究员何亚非领衔，前中国银行副行长、国际商会执行董事、人大重阳高级研究员张燕玲担任学术委员会主任，旨在构建高层次、高水准的全球治理思想交流平台，并向社会发布高质量的全球治理研究报告，努力践行咨政、启民、伐谋、孕才的智库使命。
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