A grand summit in Beijing is a natural time to assess the state of the U.S.-China competition, the dynamics of great power conflict, the balance of forces in this new Cold — or maybe just Cool? — War.

北京举行的盛大峰会正是审视中美竞争态势、大国冲突动态以及这场新冷战——或者只是“凉战”？——力量平衡的恰当时机。

It’s also a good time to revisit my own predictions. Six years ago, in the early days of the coronavirus, I argued that rather than a “Chinese century” we might be looking at a “Chinese decade,” a window when China’s power would hit a peak and the American position would be maximally endangered — but with a more favorable balance awaiting the United States in the later part of the century, if we could get through the Chinese maximum unscathed.

这也是重新审视我个人预测的好时机。六年前，在新冠疫情暴发初期，我曾提出，我们或将迎来的与其说是“中国世纪”，不如说可能是“中国十年”：在这个窗口期，中国国力将达巅峰，美国地位面临最大威胁；但只要我们能安然度过中国实力的鼎盛期，本世纪后半段的力量对比将对美国更为有利。

One part of that analysis was simply wrong. I was writing at a moment when the American response to the pandemic seemed much more shambolic than Beijing’s efficient containment strategy, and I assumed that there could be a kind of Covid dividend for China from that difference. In hindsight, America’s stumbling approach actually proved more effective than China’s in the long run, because the People’s Republic eventually found itself in a permanent-lockdown trap that yielded all kinds of social and economic damage.

我的分析中，有一部分显然错了。我写那篇文章时，美国应对疫情的举措看似比北京高效的防控措施混乱得多，我因此认为，这种差异会为中国带来某种新冠红利。事后看来，美国磕磕绊绊的应对方式从长远看实则比中国更有效，因为中华人民共和国最终陷入了长期封控的陷阱，造成了各类社会与经济创伤。

But in other ways, the 2020s have proceeded somewhat as I expected. The American imperium has been hard pressed on every front, and our leadership — slumping and senescent in the last presidency, obnoxious and bullying in this one — has gifted China a reputation for relative stability, notwithstanding Xi Jinping’s own aggressive and repressive moves.

但在其他方面，2020年代的局势发展大致如我所料。美国帝国在各条战线均承受巨大压力；我们的领导力——上届政府萎靡衰老，本届政府蛮横霸道——反而让中国赢得了相对稳定的声誉，尽管习近平本人亦采取了咄咄逼人和镇压性的举措。

There is a lot of talk about rebuilding American manufacturing, and the Trump era has seen a partial decoupling of the United States and China, a clear shift away from the “Chimerica” model that defined the 2010s. But the decoupling is taking place in the shadow of a profound Chinese industrial advantage and continuing Chinese scientific and technological success. We can debate what it means that China lags just behind Silicon Valley in the artificial intelligence race (that’s the topic of this week’s episode of my podcast, “Interesting Times”), but our edge in frontier models doesn’t feel like a definite hard-power advantage as long as China is radically outpacing us in building machine tools, robots, ships and drones.

当下，关于重建美国制造业的讨论层出不穷，特朗普时代也见证了美中部分脱钩，这明显背离了定义2010年代的“中美一体”模式。然而，脱钩进程始终笼罩在中国显著的工业优势与持续的科技成就阴影之下。中国在人工智能领域紧随硅谷之后意味着什么，对此我们各持意见（这是我的播客Interesting Times的本周话题）；但只要中国在机床、机器人、船舶与无人机制造领域远超我们，我们在前沿模型上的优势就难言是绝对的硬实力优势。

Six months ago, I was telling myself an optimistic story about the national security balance, where the United States maintained an edge in battlefield experience — with our support for Ukraine against Russia and our interventions in Iran and Venezuela serving as a testing ground for new weapons and A.I.-enabled tactics. But watching the American military stockpile collapse under the pressure of a regional war against Iran this year should make everyone skeptical that our advantages are adequate for a sustained conflict in East Asia. Fighting Iran to a stalemate seems like the kind of thing that happens just before you fight the Chinese and lose.

六个月前，我曾为自己描绘了一幅关于国家安全平衡的乐观图景：美国在战场经验上保持着优势——支持乌克兰对抗俄罗斯以及在伊朗和委内瑞拉的干预行动都成为测试新武器和人工智能战术的试验场。但今年，在与伊朗的地区战争压力下，美国军事储备捉襟见肘，这会让所有人怀疑：我们的优势是否足以支撑东亚的长期冲突？与伊朗的战争陷入僵局似乎正是与中国交战并败北之前会发生的那种事。

So the world of the 2020s does seem to have gone China’s way in very important respects. To the extent that comparisons to the actual Cold War are relevant, China is a more powerful material competitor than the Soviet Union ever managed to become, and our so-far-unsuccessful Iranian gamble has left the American hard-power position looking as parlous as it’s ever been.

因此，2020年代的世界在诸多关键领域确实朝着有利于中国的方向发展。若要与真实的冷战相比，中国的物质实力远超当年的苏联；我们在伊朗问题上迄今无果的豪赌也让美国的硬实力陷入史上罕见的岌岌可危境地。

But what about the world of the 2040s or 2060s? Six years ago I wrote that China’s growth rate might be slowing, making it less likely to achieve either the living standards of its East Asian neighbors or eclipse the United States as the world’s largest economy. Since then, the Chinese attempt to lock in a broad economic sphere of influence through its Belt and Road Initiative has hit repeated setbacks. And as it turned out, 2021 was the point of greatest nominal-G.D.P. convergence with the United States, and since then America has grown faster while China has struggled with its Covid hangover and various internal problems — raising the possibility that there will never be a moment when the Chinese economy is the biggest in the world.

但2040或2060年代又会如何？六年前我曾写道，中国的经济增长率可能正在放缓，使其既难以企及东亚邻国的生活水平，也难以超越美国成为全球第一大经济体。此后，中国试图通过“一带一路”倡议构建广泛经济影响力，却屡遭挫折。事实证明，2021年是中国名义GDP与美国差距最小的一年，随后美国增速加快，中国则受疫情后遗症与各类内部问题困扰——这使得中国经济更有可能永远无法成为世界第一。

Or maybe we should call it a likelihood rather than a possibility, since it’s incredibly difficult to generate high rates of growth under conditions of rapid population aging — and the other great trend of the last six years is that China’s demographic situation now looks much, much worse.

或许不是“可能无法成为世界第一”，而是“大概率无法成为世界第一”：在人口快速老龄化的背景下，维持高增长极其困难。而过去六年的另一大趋势是，中国的人口形势如今看起来要糟糕得多。

The end of the one-child policy in 2016 was supposed to boost birthrates. Instead the Chinese fertility rate has been crashing, hitting an average of 1.0 births per a woman’s lifetime in 2025, half the replacement level; it was the country’s fourth consecutive year of population decline. The grim social trends that attract justified attention in the United States — the alienation of the sexes from each other, a loss of interest in marriage and family — seem to have advanced much more rapidly in China. A new paper on attitudes among Chinese young people finds that 32 percent of those aged 18 to 24 reported “no desire for children,” up from 5 percent in 2012.

2016年独生子女政策终结本应提振生育率，结果却是中国的生育率持续暴跌：2025年，女性终身平均生育子女数仅为1.0，仅为人口更替水平的一半；这已是中国连续第四年人口负增长。在美国引发广泛关注的严峻社会趋势——两性关系疏离、对婚姻和家庭的兴趣减退——在中国似乎发展得更为迅速。一项关于中国年轻人态度的新研究显示，18至24岁群体中，32%明确表示不想要孩子，2012年这一比例仅为5%。

These patterns make a striking counterpoint to the evidence of increasing Chinese confidence, even arrogance and hubris, about the inevitability of American decline. Just how confident can Chinese people really be in their culture’s future if the rising generation is so disinclined to reproduce? Just how confident should China’s leaders be that they can outlast the United States if their population could be cut in half over the next few generations? How much power, hard or soft — and China’s global cultural influence remains notably limited — can a rapidly aging civilization expect to project?

这些趋势与中国日益高涨的自信——甚至自负与狂妄——形成鲜明对比：不少人坚信美国必然衰落。若年轻一代如此不愿生育，中国人对自身文化的未来究竟能有多大信心？若未来几代中国人口可能减半，中国领导人又怎能确信自己能比美国更长久地存续下去？一个快速老龄化的文明又能指望投射多少硬实力与软实力？何况中国的全球文化影响力至今仍相当有限。

At the very least, any scenario where Chinese power doesn’t ebb has to involve radical technological disruption. As in, a world where robots and A.I. take over an extraordinary share of economic and creative labor. Or a world where radical health improvement makes population aging far less economically significant. Or a world where technology revolutionizes human reproduction, making it possible for authoritarian states to engineer repopulation, like the World State with its hatcheries in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

至少，任何中国实力不会衰退的可能场景都必然伴随着颠覆性的技术变革：比如一个机器人与人工智能接管绝大部分经济与创意劳动的世界；或是一个医疗技术飞跃，大幅削弱老龄化对经济冲击的世界；又或者是一个技术彻底革新人类生殖方式的世界，让威权国家能像奥尔德斯·赫胥黎的《美丽新世界》中拥有孵化场的“世界国”那样进行人口工程。

In any of these scenarios, a potential Chinese age in human history will look like no era or imperium we’ve ever seen before. Whereas if you imagine a future that remains at least somewhat normal, somewhat human, it still seems reasonable to short the Chinese century and bet that Beijing’s power is peaking now or soon.

无论在哪种场景里，人类历史中可能的“中国时代”都将呈现出前所未有的面貌，与我们以往所见的任何时代或帝国都截然不同。反之，若设想一个至少在某种程度上仍保持着正常、多少具备人性的未来，那么看空“中国世纪”、押注北京的实力正在或即将达到顶峰，似乎仍是合理的。

Then the great question becomes whether Xi Jinping sees the world this way. To the extent that we believe in the narrative of Chinese confidence, a comfortable expectation in the Middle Kingdom that America’s problems are part of a long arc of Western decline, we should be hopeful that we can pass through this moment without a deadly confrontation.

那么，关键问题在于习近平是否以这种方式看待世界。若我们相信中国从自信角度出发的叙事——在这个中央王国，人们普遍认为美国的问题是西方长期衰落趋势的一部分——那么我们有理由期待，我们能够平安度过这一时刻，避免发生致命的对抗。

Chinese hubris, in this sense, might be the best guarantor of world peace, ensuring that Beijing will wait and wait to test its power against ours, wait and wait to claim Taiwan … and find, in waiting, that its best chance has passed it by.

从这个意义上说，中国的自负或许是世界和平的最大保障：它会确保北京一再推迟与我们较量实力的时机，暂不统一台湾……在等待中，发现最佳时机已经错过。

But presumably Xi and his circle can see all the trends that I’ve just described. And if they don’t have perfect confidence in technological revolution, if they aren’t self-deceived about the prospects for American collapse, then I would expect them to have a plan for potential confrontation very, very soon.

但可以想见，习近平及其核心圈子同样能看清我刚才描述的所有趋势。若他们对技术革命并非绝对自信，对美国崩溃的前景没有自欺欺人，那么我预计，他们很快——非常、非常快——就会针对潜在的对抗制定出计划。