IN “GUANZI”, a text from the seventh century BC, a statesman thought to be called Guan Zhong lays out the “eight views” needed to assess a country’s status. “Tour its mountains and lakes,” he says, “observe its agriculture, and calculate its production of six types of livestock. Then, it will be apparent whether a country is wealthy or destitute.” These days, Chinese scholars employ different methods, but their aim is the same: to assess the balance of power in a hostile world.

在公元前七世纪的《管子》一书中,一位叫做管仲的政治家提出了评估一个国家实力所需的“八观”。 “游其山湖,”他说,“观其农业,计算其六种牲畜的产量。 这样一个国家是富裕还是贫穷就会一目了然。(原文:行其山泽,观其桑麻,计其六畜之产,而贫富之国可知也。)” 如今,中国学者采用不同的方法,但他们的目标是相同的:评估这个敌对世界中的力量平衡。

Measuring power matters because you do not want to fight a war unless you are confident of winning. As the military strategist Sun Tzu explained a century after Guan Zhong: “He who knows himself and knows others shall be victorious in every battle…he who knows neither shall be defeated in every battle.”

衡量实力很重要,因为你不想打一场没有把握的战争。正如在管仲之后一百年,又一位军事家孙子所解释的:“知己知彼,百战不殆;不知己而知彼,一胜一负;不知己,也不知彼,每战必殆。”

If the theory is simple, actually measuring power is fraught with arbitrary judgments and subjectivity. But that has not stopped Chinese scholars from trying to compute what has come to be known as Comprehensive National Power, or CNP.

虽然这个理论很简单,但实际上衡量实力却充满了主观判断和随意性。但这并没有阻止中国学者尝试计算综合国力(Comprehensive National Power, CNP)。

In the 1980s Chinese scholars started by looking at the power equations drawn up in the West, but found them wanting. A formula devised by Ray Cline, a CIA analyst, was dismissed for being too narrow in scope and too subjective. Deng Xiaoping, China’s reformist leader, had stated: “In measuring a country’s national power, one must look at it comprehensively and from all sides.” To cater to these demands, Chinese experts started to design their own models.

20世纪80年代,中国学者开始研究西方制定的权力平衡理论,但发现它们存在不足。CIA 分析员 Ray Cline设计的公式因适用范围太窄且过于主观而被否决。中国改革开放总设计师曾说:“在衡量一个国家的综合国力时,必须全面地从各个角度来看。” 为了满足这些要求,中国专家开始设计自己的模型。

They ran into some problems. One is that the more complete the range of variables, the harder it is to allocate weights to them. In a paper from 2002, Hu Angang and Men Honghua, then of Tsinghua University, listed eight categories of resources, taking in everything from farmland to computers. CNP is calculated as a weighted average of these resources as a share of the world’s total. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has a similar model, but uses different indicators and weightings. Who is right? Some indexes rely for their weightings on polls of experts, but that’s just a sophisticated version of the conventional wisdom.

他们遇到了一些问题。其中一个问题是,变量范围越是完整详细,分配权重就越是困难。在2002年的一篇论文中,当时就职于清华大学的Hu Angang和Men Honghua列出了八类资源,包括从农田到计算机等所有内容。这些资源占全球总量的加权平均值即为CNP。中国社会科学院有一个类似的模型,但使用不同的指标和权重。谁是正确的?一些指数依赖于专家调查来确定其权重,但那只不过是传统智慧的复杂版本。

Another problem is that the calculation of CNP produces a single number, but the components that make it up are not interchangeable. In theory CNP could predict that a widely admired country which defends its world-class dance troupes with a gunboat and a couple of tanks will be able to hold its own against a Philistine horde that spends all its money on weapons.

另一个问题是CNP的计算产生一个单一的数字结果,但组成它的要素之间是不可互换的。 理论上,CNP 可以预测,一个具有崇高声望的国家仅凭一艘炮艇和几辆坦克,就能保卫其世界顶级舞蹈团,抵御将所有资金花在武器上的野蛮民族的入侵。

What’s more, effective power depends on the context. A country’s cultural exports can convey soft power, but they are of little use in a war. David Baldwin of Princeton University writes that assessing power without a context is like discussing what makes up a good hand without specifying the card game.

此外,有效实力取决于讨论背景。一个国家的文化出口可以传达软实力,但在战争中它们几乎没有用处。普林斯顿大学的David Baldwin写道,在没有上下文的情况下评估实力,就像讨论一把好牌而不指定纸牌游戏一样。

You might think all those complications would be enough to knock CNP on the head. Instead, it has spurred researchers to come up with their own, improved versions. The Economist has counted 69 of them. Drawing inspiration from an article by Michael Beckley of Tufts University, we zoom in on the three essential ingredients of national power: economic heft, productive efficiency and military might.

您可能认为所有这些复杂情况足以让 CNP 头疼。 相反,它促使研究人员提出自己的改良版本。 《经济学人》统计了其中的 69 个。我们从Tufts大学的迈克尔·贝克利(Michael Beckley)发表的一篇文章中汲取灵感,聚焦于国家实力的三个关键要素:经济实力、生产效率和军事实力。

A country cannot be powerful if its economy is inefficient. In the 19th century China lost two opium wars to Britain, despite having a GDP twice the size. On the other hand, neither can a country be powerful if its economy is efficient but small. Luxembourg has not won many wars. And countries cannot fight without a decent army. In the Song dynasty the deadly Mongol cavalry outmatched even the finest Chinese infantry.

如果一个国家的经济效率低下,它就不可能强大。 19 世纪,中国在两次鸦片战争中输给了英国,尽管中国的 GDP 是英国的两倍。 另一方面,如果一个国家的经济效率高但规模小,那么它也不会强大。 卢森堡赢得的战争不多。 没有像样的军队,国家就无法战斗。 在宋朝,致命的蒙古骑兵甚至胜过最优秀的中国步兵。

Our hard-power index therefore uses GDP per person to stand for efficiency, military expenditure for might, and non-military GDP for economic heft. These are multiplied, so that countries suffer for their deficiency in any one of them. In the extreme, if any element is zero, then a country’s power is zero, too.

因此,我们的硬实力指数使用人均 GDP 代表效率,军费开支代表军事实力,非军事 GDP 代表经济实力。 它们是乘法关系,因此各个国家将因其中任何一项的不足而受损。 在极端情况下,如果其中任何一项为零,那么这个国家的实力也为零。

Of course, old weapon stocks and nuclear arms also convey might. And GDP does not always translate into economic heft or efficiency. But, at least in the current era, our proxies seem reasonable enough.

当然,旧武器库存和核武器也传达了威力。 GDP 也并不总能转化为经济实力或效率。 但是,至少在当今时代,我们的指标似乎是足够合理的。

By our measure, China has been gaining on America, but the latter is still comfortably on top. Sun Tzu would predict peace for a good few years yet.

按照我们的衡量方式,中国一直在追赶美国,但后者仍遥遥领先。 孙子会预言仍有几年的和平时光。

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