在7月4日，我们思考我们的国家和它的未来。但在这些日子里，思考美国及其未来的世界角色，就不能不思考中国。这是本周阿斯本理念节（Aspen Ideas Festival）杀气腾腾的讨论话题。
哈佛的弗格森（Niall Ferguson）是煽动分子。他称中国和美国习惯于共生关系，并组成紧密完整的单位，他把这个单位称之为中美国（Chimerica）。
在这个单位中，中国负责制造，美国负责购买。中国负责储蓄，美国负责消费。在1995年和2005年之间，美国的储蓄率从大约5%下降到零，而中国的储蓄率从30%上升至近45%。
这种储蓄的偏移让中国人得以把大量资本投入美国及美元计价的资产。廉价的中国劳动力让美国保持低通胀。中国避免人民币对美元升值的努力让我们的货币保持坚挺，让我们得以低息借贷。
在21世纪最初几年，中美国运作得极妙。这个单位占世界GDP的四分之一，占全球增长的一半。但一方只存钱一方只花钱的婚姻无法长久维持。
摩擦正在形成，并将导致离婚、冲突和潜在灾难。弗格森认为，中国如今正和美国脱钩。中国商界领袖认为美国消费者再也不能继续狂花钱。中国人正发展一种更多地依赖内需的经济。
中国官员还意识到美国将永远无法收拾好自己的财政。理论上有计划减少联邦赤字和国家债务，但政治上没有切实可行的办法实现。贬值不可避免，中国人正努力终结美元作为世界储备货币的角色。
中国的民族主义也在上涨。互联网让中国年轻人更加民族主义。中国人在全世界收购资源，并凭此成就一个威胁美国利益的海外帝国。中国人正在打造他们的海军，这是野心扩张及全球冲突的历史先兆。
弗格森认为，可以把中国视为一战之前的威廉德国：一股成长中的、好斗的、民族主义的势力，其野心将撕破原先存在的商业关系和历史友谊。
大西洋月刊（The Atlantic）的法洛斯（James Fallows）过去三年在中国生活。他赞同弗格森关于经济基本面的部分，但似乎认为弗格森对中国心理状态的分析是空想的学院理论。当法洛斯为中国的意图辩护，弗格森反驳说：“你在中国的时间太久了。”法洛斯回答说，在中国的时间太久和在中国的时间太少之间，必有一个令人愉快的中间值。
法洛斯指出，这和所谓的“中国”或者“中国人”无关，中国官员最为反美的声明中，很多是为了缓和国内的焦虑，让进一步融合成为可能。法洛斯认为，这种融合很深，而且将更加深入。很多、很多中国领导人曾受过美国教育，钦佩美国或者至少尊重美国。如果你去西安等城市，你会发现美国和欧洲航空企业完全融入到当地的商业架构。
但是，法洛斯的主要论点是心理上的。他说，他八十年代在日本生活的时候，有时候感到日本人有种愤愤不平的态度，认为他们的成功注定要美国衰退。他说他在中国很少有这种感觉。相反，他称官员们对于融入世界感到很激动。他们的母亲缠过足。他们自己曾在文革期间犁田。如今，他们融入世界了。
法洛斯采访过的一些官员认为，美国实行的是不可持续的财政政策，到导致衰退，但他们对此有挫折感，而不是感到喜悦。法洛斯不知道未来会怎样，但他相信中国官员仍然视美国为风险最低的投资。在国内，中国不会转向民主，但个人自由会扩大。他认同中国和美国将主导21 世纪，但他描述的画面呈现出更加良性的合作。
我原本就较为赞成法洛斯的观点，参加完讨论之后仍然是这样。但弗格森有力地坚持自己的观点给我留下深刻印象。在要做什么事情方面，他们却达成共识，这令我感到震惊。这次谈话和近来的很多谈话一样，回归到美国的债务上。在美国整顿好自己的财政之前，和中国这样的国家的关系根本上是不安全的。Chinese Fireworks Display
On July Fourth, we think about our country and its future. But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.
In this unit, China did the making, and the United States did the buying. China did the saving, while the U.S. did the spending. Between 1995 and 2005, the U.S. savings rate declined from about 5 percent to zero, while the Chinese savings rate rose from 30 percent to nearly 45 percent.
This savings diversion allowed the Chinese to plow huge amounts of capital into the U.S. and dollar-denominated assets. Cheap Chinese labor kept American inflation low. Chinese efforts to keep the renminbi from appreciating against the dollar kept our currency strong and allowed us to borrow at low interest rates.
During the first few years of the 21st century, Chimerica worked great. This unit accounted for about a quarter of the world’s G.D.P. and for about half of global growth. But a marriage in which one partner does all the saving and the other partner does all the spending is not going to last.
The frictions are building and will lead to divorce, conflict and potential catastrophe. China, Ferguson argued, is now decoupling from the United States. Chinese business leaders assume that American consumers will never again go on a spending binge. The Chinese are developing an economy that relies more on internal consumption.
Chinese officials are also aware that the U.S. will never get its fiscal house in order. There may be theoretical plans to reduce the federal deficit and the national debt, but there is no politically practical way to get there. Depreciation is inevitable and the Chinese are working to end the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.
Chinese nationalism is also on the rise. The Internet has made young Chinese more nationalistic. The Chinese are acquiring resources all around the world and with them, willy-nilly, an overseas empire that threatens U.S. interests. The Chinese are building their Navy, a historic precursor to expanded ambitions and global conflict.
Think of China, Ferguson concluded, as Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany in the years before World War I: a growing, aggressive, nationalistic power whose ambitions will tear through pre-existing commercial ties and historic friendships.
James Fallows of The Atlantic has lived in China for the past three years. He agreed with parts of Ferguson’s take on the economic fundamentals, but seemed to regard Ferguson’s analysis of the Chinese psychology as airy-fairy academic theorizing. At one point, while Fallows was defending Chinese intentions, Ferguson shot back: “You’ve been in China too long.” Fallows responded that there must be a happy medium between being in China too long and being in China too little.
Fallows pointed out that there is no one thing called “China” or “the Chinese,” and that many of the most anti-American statements from Chinese officials are made to blunt domestic anxiety and make further integration possible. That integration, Fallows continued, is deep and will get deeper. Many, many Chinese leaders were educated in the U.S. and admire or at least respect it. If you go to cities like Xian, you find American and European aviation firms fully integrated into the commercial fabric there.
Fallows’s main argument, though, was psychological. When he lived in Japan in the 1980s, he said, he sometimes felt that the Japanese had a chip-on-their-shoulder attitude in which their success was bound to U.S. decline. He says he rarely got that feeling in China. Instead, he has described officials who are thrilled to be integrated in the world. Their mothers had bound feet. They themselves plowed the fields in the Cultural Revolution. Now they get to join the world.
Some of the officials interviewed by Fallows believe the U.S. is following unsustainable fiscal policies that will lead to decline, but they view this with frustration, not joy. Fallows doesn’t know what the future will hold, but he believes that Chinese officials still see the dollar as their least risky investment. Domestically, China will not turn democratic, but individual liberties will expand. He agreed that China and the U.S. will dominate the 21st century, but he painted the picture of a more benign cooperation.
I came to the debate agreeing more with Fallows and left the same way, but I was impressed by how powerfully Ferguson made his case. And I was struck by their agreement about what to do. This conversation, like many conversations these days, gets back to America’s debt. Until the U.S. gets its fiscal house in order, relations with countries like China will be fundamentally insecure.
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