今年2月以来，美国国内围绕所谓“中国间谍气球”问题的炒作和鼓噪几近疯狂，令
人匪夷所思。继特朗普政府将中国认定为“战略竞争对手”后，拜登政府更加强调
与中国之间的“大国竞争”，一些鹰派势力则更是鼓吹“借鉴冷战做法”遏制中国
的崛起。尽管拜登总统多次表示美国无意寻求对华“新冷战”，但其在经济和科技
领域的对华政策却越来越具有冷战色彩。这一切未免让人担心我们是否正在悄无声
息地滑入一场新冷战。

笔者认为，无论从那个角度而言，人类都不需要一场新冷战。

第一，冷战历史早已证明，冷战并不意味着没有战争，因为冷战之中有热战。无论
是以“和平方式”进行的冷战对抗，还是发生在冷战期间血肉相搏的热战，人类社
会都已为之付出了巨大代价。以美国为例，根据《今日美国》报道，在上世纪50年
代的朝鲜战争中，美军死亡人数高达36574人，花费约3898.1亿美元。在长达17年的
越南战争中，美军阵亡人数更是高达58220人，花费约8436.3亿美元。这些打着“自
由”名义的残酷战争成了一代人的可怕梦魇。虽然美苏在冷战期间并未发生直接对
抗，但双方都不遗余力地支持世界各地的代理人战争。而且，双方还分别制造了数
万枚核武器，足以使人类生存的地球毁灭数十次。所谓“基于相互确保摧毁”的核
威慑平衡不过是以整个人类作为人质的大国对抗，1962年的古巴导弹危机更是把人
类推到了核战争与毁灭的边缘。因此，别有用心地美化冷战，无视当年冷战的惨痛
代价和后果，不仅是危险的，更是对历史的误读和对民众的误导。

第二，有关美国和西方赢得冷战的叙述，只不过是自我标榜和自我美化的结果，不
能成为一场新冷战的历史镜鉴或逻辑起点。长期以来，尽管历史学家们对苏联解体
的原因争论不休，但谁都无法否认，苏联社会经济在长期畸形发展过程中所积累的
内部问题积重难返，加之一系列决策失误，最终导致了这一庞大帝国的自我解体。
比如，苏联在经济发展过程中过于强调重工业，造成经济结构严重失衡。苏联国内
政治改革同样举步维艰，作为执政党的苏共失去了自我革新能力，高层腐化堕落、
严重脱离群众，尤其是到后期，叶利钦和戈尔巴乔夫之间的争权夺利更是加速了苏
联的瓦解。在对外政策方面，苏联后期变得日益穷兵黩武，大国沙文主义盛行，不
仅大张旗鼓地与美国开展军备竞赛，还草率发动阿富汗战争，这场战争最终成为压
垮苏联帝国的巨大包袱。显然，以上这些并非美国冷战政策带来的后果，而更多是
苏联自身发展和决策中的问题。乌克兰裔美国历史学家沙希利•浦洛基在《大国的
崩溃》一书中指出，在苏联行将解体之前，布殊总统一直努力“反对苏联解体”。
直到戈尔巴乔夫辞职后，美国政客们为了“摘桃子”，才开始将其宣布为美国对苏
政策的胜利。显然，西方通过其冷战战略而赢得冷战胜利的叙事并不是真实的历史。
同样，鼓吹美国将会重新赢得冷战的说辞也未免自欺欺人。

第三，以“新冷战”方式与中国开展“大国竞争”的做法无异于刻舟求剑。首先，
中国的发展模式完全不同于苏联，它是一种开放的、有活力的经济增长。中国通过
开放性市场经济与互利合作激发了巨大的增长活力，不仅获得了全球大多数国家的
认同，而且与之建立了深厚的经济相互依赖关系。过去40年里，中国共产党也展现
了巨大的开放性、灵活性以及惊人的自我创新能力。其次，中美关系不同于当年互
相隔离的美苏关系。截至2019年，中美双向投资累计接近2500亿美元，2022年中美
货物贸易总额更是达到6906亿美元。这些合作都是当年美苏两国在东西方铁幕之下
难以想像的。新冠疫情爆发之前，2018年中美两国人员往来515万人次，在美各类留
学人员42.5万人，中国是美国第一大国际学生来源国。最后，中国在外交上并未自
我定位为“反美”国家。除了长期坚持对台湾回归的诉求外，中国一直奉行不干涉
别国内政的外交，小心翼翼地避免卷入任何军事冲突或代理人战争。对华新冷战不
仅会让美国企业错失中国的巨大市场和发展机遇，更会迫使中国做出更多现实主义
的反应，为美国制造一个不必要的对手。

第四，随着新科技革命和世界经济一体化的高速发展，当年美苏冷战时期的国际环
境已经发生了根本性变化。首先，在新媒体与信息技术日新月异的条件下，西方国
家在冷战期间为了意识形态对抗所构建的信息铁幕已然失效。无论西方媒体如何对
中国进行歪曲和诋毁，都无法抹杀近年来中国的巨大发展成就。更重要的是，中国
通过市场改革、开放合作、互利共赢等非殖民化发展路径获得的巨大成就，具有天
然的国际吸引力和道义正当性，西方媒体对中国发展成就的诋毁很可能伤及自身，
削弱其在发展中世界的感召力。其次，由于过去40年来中国与世界各国之间已形成
相互依赖，越来越多的国家拒绝在中美之间“选边站”，甚至连美国自身也无法真
正与中国经济“脱钩”。最后，当今国际社会面临着一系列全球性挑战，如气候变
化、恐怖主义、核扩散、网络安全、跨国犯罪等。在这个日益狭小的地球村中，离
开了有效的国际合作，任何一个主权国家都无法单独应对这些全球性挑战。

鼓吹“新冷战”者不仅对历史无知，而且缺乏对未来的想像力。在面对中国崛起这
一超出西方历史经验的现象时，它们表现出了空前的认知偏见和战略贫困。无论
“新冷战”还是“旧冷战”，其本质仍是世界大国之间的对抗。这样的对抗往往不
会在短期内一蹴而就，更不可能只局限在某些领域。在人类社会已经进入核时代和
智能武器的时代，谁又能保证这样的对抗不会升级失控并导致人类的彻底毁灭呢？
简言之，为了人类的福祉和明天，我们不需要一场新的冷战。

No New Cold War, Please
March 02 , 2023
Since early February, the hype and hysteria surrounding the so-called Chinese 
spy balloon in the United States has been frenzied and near hysterical, 
which is unbelievable. Following the Trump administration's identification 
of China as a “strategic competitor,” the Biden administration has placed 
greater emphasis on great power competition with China. Some radical hawks 
even advocate taking a page out of the Cold War playbook to contain China's 
rise.Although U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that America 
doesn't seek a new cold war with China, his policies toward China in the 
economic and scientific fields are increasingly cold war-tinged. This raises 
the question of whether we are slipping silently into a new cold war after 
all. 

In my view, we do not need a new cold war from any perspective.

First, the history of the last Cold War proves that the term does not mean 
no war. After all, there were hot wars during the Cold War. Whether the 
war was a cold confrontation fought in peacetime or a hot war fought in 
blood, human society paid a huge price. In the case of the United States, 
for example, according to a report in USA Today, the Korean War in the 1950s 
cost the U.S. military 36,574 lives and about $390 billion. In the 17-year-long 
Vietnam War, 58,220 U.S. troops were killed, at a cost of $844 billion. 
These brutal wars, fought in the name of so-called freedom, became a horrific 
nightmare for the Cold War generation.Although there was no direct confrontation 
between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, both 
sides spared no effort to support proxy wars around the world. Moreover, 
each side built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, which was enough to 
destroy the planet dozens of times. The balance of nuclear deterrence based 
on mutually assured destruction (MAD) was nothing more than a confrontation 
between great powers with the entire human race held hostage. The Cuban 
missile crisis in1962 brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war and
annihilation. Therefore, to glorify the Cold War with ulterior motives and
ignore its tragic costs and consequences is not only dangerous but also a
misinterpretation of history and misleading to the public.

Second, the narrative that the United States and the West won the Cold War 
is the result of a self-aggrandizing and self-glorifying exercise. It must 
not be the historical mirror or logical starting point for a new cold war. 
Although historians have long debated the causes of the collapse of the Soviet 
Union, no one can deny that the accumulation of internal problems during 
its long and perverse socioeconomic development combined with a series of 
poor decisions and eventually led to the self-destruction of this vast empire.
For example, the Soviet Union placed too much emphasis on heavy industry 
in its economic development, resulting in a serious structural imbalance. 
Political reforms in the Soviet Union also struggled, with the ruling party 
losing its ability to reinvent itself and the top echelons becoming corrupt 
and severely disconnected from the masses. The collapse of the Soviet Union 
was also accelerated by the struggle for power between Boris Yeltsin and 
Mikhail Gorbachev in the later years. In its foreign policy, the Soviet 
Union became increasingly militaristic and chauvinistic, not only engaging 
in an arms race with the United States but also hastily invading Afghanistan 
in 1979, which became a huge burden that eventually crushed the empire.Clearly,
 these problems were not so much a consequence of U.S. Cold War policy but 
more the result of internal decision-making. In his book “The Last Empire: 
The Final Days of the Soviet Union,” the Ukrainian-American historian Serhii 
Plokhy notes that U.S. President George H.W. Bush worked against the collapse 
of the Soviet Union until it was literally on the brink. It was only after 
Gorbachev's resignation that U.S. politicians began to declare the collapse 
to be a victory of U.S. policy. This is mere “picking the peach.” Thus, 
the narrative that the West won the Cold War through smart strategy is simply 
not true. Similarly, the rhetoric that the U.S. will win a new cold war is 
fanciful, or at least overly optimistic.

Third, the new cold war approach to great power competition with China is 
something like the ancient Chinese fable of the man who marked his boat 
so he could return later to find the sword he had dropped into the water. 
The old markers have moved.China's development model is completely different 
from that of the Soviet Union: It is one of openness and dynamic economic 
growth. China's growth has been fueled by an open market economy and mutually 
beneficial cooperation, which has not only been recognized by most countries 
around the world but has also created deep economic interdependence. Over 
the past 40 years, the Communist Party of China has demonstrated tremendous 
openness and flexibility, as well as an amazing capacity for self-innovation.In 
addition, Sino-U.S. relations are different from the U.S.-Soviet relations 
that isolated the two from each other back then. As of 2019, two-way investment 
between China and the U.S. has come to nearly $250 billion, and the total 
trade in goods between China and the United States is expected to reach $690.6 
billion in 2022. This sort of cooperation was unimaginable between the U.S. 
and Soviet Union back then, when the Iron Curtain was in place.Before the 
outbreak of the pandemic, in 2018, 5.15 million people traveled between 
China and the U.S., and 425,000 Chinese students of all types were studying 
in the U.S., making China the No. 1 source of international students. Finally,
 China has not positioned itself diplomatically as “anti-American.” Apart 
from its long-standing demand for the reunification of Taiwan, it has always 
pursued a diplomacy characterized by non-interference in international society,
 carefully avoiding any involvement in military conflicts or proxy wars.A 
new cold war with China would not only cause American companies to miss 
out on China's huge market opportunities but would also force China to react 
with more realism and become an adversary of the United States. This is 
unnecessary.

Fourth, because of the rapid development of the technological revolution 
and economic globalization, the international environment during the U.S.-Soviet
Cold War has undergone fundamental changes.With the emergence of social 
media and information technology, the iron curtain of information constructed 
by Western countries during the Cold War as part of an ideological confrontation 
has become ineffective. No matter how much some Western media distort and 
denigrate China, they cannot erase the tremendous development strides of 
China in recent years. More important, China's tremendous achievements, 
made through market reforms, openness, cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win 
development, have a natural international appeal and moral legitimacy. The 
Western media's denigration of China's development achievements is likely 
only to further weaken its credibility in the developing world.Moreover, 
because of the deep interdependence that has emerged between China and the 
rest of the world over the past 40 years, more countries are refusing to 
choose sides. Even the U.S. cannot truly decouple itself from China.Last 
but not least, the international community today faces a range of global 
challenges ─ climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, cybersecurity,
 transborder crimes and much more. In a global village that seems to be 
getting smaller, no single sovereign state can address all these challenges 
alone without effective international cooperation.

Advocates of a new cold war are not only ignorant of history but also lack 
imagination for the future. They show unprecedented cognitive bias and strategic
poverty when confronted with the rise of China, a phenomenon that is beyond 
Western historical experience. Whether it is the old Cold War or a new cold 
war, the essence is still a confrontation between great powers, one that 
doesn't start and finish overnight. Nor can it be confined to certain areas.At 
a time when human society has entered the era of nuclear and intelligent 
weapons, who can guarantee that such a confrontation will not escalate out 
of control and lead to the destruction of humanity? In a word, we do not 
need a new cold war, for the well-being of humanity today ─ or for tomorrow.

本文源于"中美聚焦“