請君別再用Thucydides's Trap誤導自己

Please Stop Misleading Yourself with the “Thucydides’s Trap”

錢宏（Archer Hong Qian）

這些年，每當中美關繫緊張，總會有人一本正經地搬出一個詞：“修昔底德陷阱（Thucydides’s Trap）”。仿佛今天世界發生的一切，不過是古希臘雅典與斯巴達故事的又一次重演。

這個概念，是美國學者Graham Allison於2012年正式提出的。大意是：一個“崛起大國”挑戰“守成大國”，雙方因戰略猜忌與安全焦慮，最終大概率走向衝突甚至戰爭。

這些年，它幾乎成了許多人解釋中美關係的“萬能鑰匙”。

第一次聽到這個概念時，我並沒有太在意。因為過去500年間，所謂“大國崛起挑戰霸權”的故事，的確反覆出現過。無論是西班牙、荷蘭、英國、德國，還是後來的蘇聯，都有某種類似的影子。

真正讓我越來越覺得不對勁的，不是這個概念本身，而是它被越來越機械、越來越不加分辨地套用於今天的中美關係。

因為只要稍微冷靜一點，人們就會發現：今天所謂“中美關係”，根本不是雅典與斯巴達，也不是一戰前的英德關係。甚至，它連“兩個正常民族國家之間的競爭”都不完全是。

問題首先在於：東大並不是現代意義上的“崛起大國”。

它更像一個帶有深厚朝貢體系慣性的“黨國型家國”；而美國也不是傳統意義上的“守成霸權”，它更接近一種依靠持續制度創新、科技創新、地方自治與社會生命自組織能力維持活力的“常態創新大國”。

所以，今天東美之間當然存在衝突，甚至可能存在危險的戰略摩擦，但這並不是傳統意義上的“大國爭霸”。

更準確地說，它是：一種“黨國結構”與“大國結構”之間的深層張力。

而這一點，恰恰是 Allison 的 Thucydides’s Trap 最容易誤導人的地方。因為它默認了一個前提：中國（網絡語境中常被戲稱為“東大”）已經完成了現代民族國家意義上的“崛起”。

但問題是，GDP增長，並不等於結構健康。

2001年加入WTO之後，東大以前所未有的速度進入全球市場。沿海城市燈火通明，高鐵縱橫，房地產騰飛，表面GDP迅速躍升世界第二。

那幾年，不只是華爾街，整個西方世界都沉浸在一種巨大幻覺中：只要財富增長，中國終究會像日韓台一樣，逐漸走向開放社會。

許多美國精英真誠地相信：只要產業鏈外包、資本流動、市場擴張持續下去，一個更自由、更開放、更融入世界秩序的中國終將出現。

於是，“經濟全球化2.0”被推向高潮。

華爾街資本大舉進入中國；中國權力結構則利用規則不對等，迅速完成財富、產業鏈與資源積累。

雙方一拍即合，又彼此提防。結果是，美國中產產業空心化；中國普通民眾則長期承受高壓內卷。

今天回頭看，人們會發現：所謂“中國崛起”，很大程度上，其實是一種“結構性失衡”條件下形成的增長幻象。

因為一個真正實現“民族復興”的國家，不可能長期同時存在：“6億人月收入不足1000元、9億人不足2000元、11億人不足3000元”的現實。

所以，今天的問題，並不是什麼“新興大國挑戰霸權”。

而是：一個長期依賴外向型經濟、權力資本勾兌與結構性失衡維持增長的體系，在全球化2.0進入盡頭之後，開始遭遇整個世界秩序的重新校準。

而美國的問題，也根本不是“害怕中國崛起”。

相反，過去二十多年，美國真正經歷的，更像是一場全球化路徑的戰略誤判。

美國並不是突然“恐懼中國”，而是越來越意識到：全球化2.0，並沒有像很多人想象的那樣，把世界帶向共同繁榮。

它反而在某種程度上，形成了一種：華爾街資本與東大權力相互借力、又彼此防範的互害結構（參看《當心，華爾街資本又在蠢蠢欲動！》，萬維讀者網 https://blog.creaders.net/user_blog_diary.php?did=NTUwNDI2；共生網  http://symbiosism.com.cn/12141.html）。

資本跨境套利；產業鏈極端外包；地方債、房地產與出口依賴不斷累積；美國製造業空心化；中國社會高壓內捲化。

最終，雙方都開始出現越來越嚴重的安全焦慮與結構失衡。

所以，今天美國的戰略調整，更像是一種糾偏（Correction），而不是傳統霸權對新興國家的“嫉妒”。

“MAGA”及“MAHA”運動的興起，本質上也是全球化2.0互害機制開始反噬美國社會之後，一種內部糾錯衝動。

因此，今天世界真正的問題，並不是如何避免“修昔底德陷阱”。

真正的問題是：一個國家，究竟有沒有能力完成自身結構性糾偏？

其實，中國歷史真正反覆出現的，從來不是“修昔底德陷阱”，而是另一種更深層的循環：“彼可取而代之”的循環。

從青年項羽那句“大丈夫當如此”，到歷代“成王敗寇”，兩千多年裡，“取代”始終比“糾偏”更容易。

於是，朝代不斷更替，但結構卻不斷重複。

從“君天下”到“黨天下”，真正難以改變的，並不是掌權者名字，而是“殖官主義”（Chinese Reproductive Officialdom，CRO）不斷自我複製的結構。

這也是為什麼，中國兩千多年歷史，往往呈現為：

一次次“推倒重來”，卻很少真正完成結構正常化。

所謂“興百姓苦，亡百姓苦”，並不只是文學感嘆，而是結構現實。

有意思的是，1957年，前南斯拉夫副總統Milovan Djilas出版The New Class時，其實已經把問題講得很清楚：

許多以“人民革命”名義建立的新政權，最後並沒有消滅特權，而是形成了新的特權階層。

他們控制組織、資源、解釋權與任命體系，並通過制度不斷自我複製。

於是：

“多數人的革命”，最終又回到了“少數人的壟斷”。

而美國立國真正偉大的地方，恰恰在於：它第一次比較成功地避免了這兩種極端。

美國國父們設計出的，不是柏拉圖式“少數人專政”，也不是盧梭式“多數人暴政”，而是一種通過聯邦制、地方自治、三權分立、司法獨立與財產權保護，持續進行權責校準的現代憲政結構。

美國當然有問題，而且問題很多。但它最大的優勢，並不只是美元、航母或科技。

而是：

它至今仍然保留着一種“可糾錯性”（self-correctability）。

哪怕這種糾錯過程常常混亂、撕裂、低效，甚至令人憤怒，但它仍然存在。

而許多“革命型政體”的根本問題，則恰恰在於：一旦完成權力集中，便越來越難和平糾錯。

因此，今天真正的問題，並不是：“如何避免修昔底德陷阱？”

而是：

在全球化3.0開始重組的過程中，一個國家究竟能否完成自身結構性正常化（normalization）？

是繼續沉迷於“大國崛起”的歷史幻覺，還是開始真正建立一種能夠長期自我糾錯、自我更新、自我平衡的文明結構？

是繼續固守“取代邏輯”，還是學會“共生邏輯”？

因為未來真正決定“入局”還是“出局”的，早已不只是GDP、軍艦與工業產能，而是它是否仍然保有持續糾偏、持續生成與持續共生的能力（參看《再論川普的阻擊型門羅主義——入局 or 出局，一念之差！》共生網 http://symbiosism.com.cn/11772.html）

2026年5月14日於溫哥華

附圖：

通過北師大課題組及中金公司、浙大共享與發展研究院等權威機構報告的深度復盤，中國14億人口的真實收入分布和生存畫像如下：

Please Stop Misleading Yourself with the “Thucydides’s Trap”

Archer Hong Qian

Over the past several years, whenever U.S.–China relations become tense, people inevitably invoke one term with solemn certainty: “Thucydides’s Trap.”

As if everything unfolding in today’s world were merely a replay of the ancient Greek conflict between Athens and Sparta.

The concept was formally introduced in 2012 by American scholar Graham Allison. In essence, it argues that when a “rising power” challenges an “established power,” strategic suspicion and security anxiety make conflict—and even war—highly probable.

Over time, it has become something of a “master key” for explaining U.S.–China relations.

When I first encountered the term, I did not think much of it. After all, throughout the past five centuries, stories of “rising powers challenging hegemonic powers” have indeed appeared repeatedly—from Spain and the Netherlands to Britain, Germany, and later the Soviet Union.

What increasingly struck me as problematic was not the concept itself, but the increasingly mechanical and indiscriminate way it has been applied to today’s U.S.–China relationship.

Because anyone willing to calm down and think carefully will eventually realize:

What we call “U.S.–China relations” today is neither Athens versus Sparta nor pre–World War I Britain versus Germany.

Indeed, it is not even entirely a competition between two “normal modern nation-states.”

The first problem lies here:

China is not, in the modern sense, a conventional “rising great power.”

Rather, it more closely resembles a “party-state civilization” deeply shaped by the historical inertia of the tributary system. Meanwhile, the United States is not merely a traditional “status quo hegemon.” It functions more like a “permanently innovative civilization-state,” sustained through continual institutional innovation, technological innovation, local self-government, and society’s capacity for self-organization.

Yes, there are certainly tensions between China and the United States today, and even dangerous strategic frictions.

But this is not a traditional struggle for imperial dominance.

More precisely, it is a profound structural tension between a “party-state structure” and a “great-power constitutional structure.”

And this is precisely where Allison’s “Thucydides’s Trap” becomes most misleading.

Because it quietly assumes a premise:

That China has already completed its rise in the sense of a modern nation-state.

But GDP growth is not the same thing as structural health.

After joining the WTO in 2001, China entered the global market at unprecedented speed. Coastal cities lit up with prosperity. High-speed railways spread across the country. Real estate boomed. On the surface, GDP rapidly rose to become the world’s second largest.

During those years, not only Wall Street, but much of the Western world fell into a massive illusion:

As wealth increased, China would eventually evolve—like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—into a more open society.

Many American elites sincerely believed that if industrial outsourcing, capital flows, and market expansion continued long enough, a freer, more open, and more globally integrated China would naturally emerge.

Thus, “Globalization 2.0” reached its peak.

Wall Street capital flooded into China, while China’s power structure exploited asymmetrical rules to accumulate wealth, industrial capacity, and strategic resources at extraordinary speed.

The two sides cooperated closely while simultaneously distrusting one another.

The result was that America’s industrial middle class was hollowed out, while ordinary Chinese citizens endured relentless internal pressure and hyper-competition.

Looking back today, one increasingly realizes that the so-called “rise of China” was, to a significant extent, a growth illusion produced under conditions of severe structural imbalance.

Because a country that has truly achieved “national rejuvenation” cannot simultaneously sustain the reality that:

hundreds of millions of people remain trapped at extremely low income levels and fragile living conditions.

Therefore, the issue today is not some simplistic story of “a rising power challenging a hegemon.”

Rather, it is this:

A system that long relied upon export dependency, power-capital collusion, and structural imbalance to sustain growth is now encountering a comprehensive recalibration of the global order as Globalization 2.0 reaches its limits.

Nor is America’s problem fundamentally about “fearing China’s rise.”

On the contrary, what the United States has really experienced over the past two decades is something closer to a strategic misjudgment regarding globalization itself.

America did not suddenly become “afraid of China.”

Rather, it gradually realized that Globalization 2.0 did not lead the world toward shared prosperity as many had imagined.

Instead, it generated a mutually destructive structure in which Wall Street capital and China’s power system simultaneously leveraged and constrained one another.

Cross-border capital arbitrage expanded. Industrial chains became dangerously over-outsourced. Debt dependence, real estate bubbles, and export reliance accumulated. America experienced industrial hollowing-out, while Chinese society became increasingly trapped in high-pressure internal exhaustion.

Eventually, both sides developed growing security anxieties and structural distortions.

This is why America’s strategic adjustment today resembles a process of correction far more than traditional hegemonic “jealousy” toward an emerging rival.

The rise of the MAGA and MAHA movements is, in essence, a domestic correction impulse emerging as the mutually destructive mechanisms of Globalization 2.0 begin to rebound against American society itself.

Thus, the real issue facing the world today is not how to “avoid the Thucydides’s Trap.”

The real question is whether a civilization possesses the capacity for structural self-correction.

In truth, the recurring pattern throughout Chinese history has never primarily been a “Thucydidean Trap.”

It has been something much deeper:

the perpetual cycle of “replacement.”

From the young Xiang Yu’s famous declaration—“He can be replaced”—to centuries of dynastic rise and fall, replacement has always been easier than correction.

Dynasties changed, but the structure persisted.

From “the emperor’s realm” to “the Party’s realm,” what repeatedly reproduces itself is not merely political leadership, but the deeper structure of what I call “Chinese Reproductive Officialdom” (CRO).

This is why Chinese history over the past two thousand years so often appears as a cycle of repeated collapse and reconstruction, yet rarely achieves genuine structural normalization.

The old saying, “The people suffer when the empire rises; the people suffer when the empire falls,” is not merely literary lamentation. It is structural reality.

Interestingly, when former Yugoslav Vice President Milovan Djilas published The New Class in 1957, he had already explained the issue with remarkable clarity.

Many regimes established in the name of “people’s revolution” did not eliminate privilege at all. Instead, they created a new privileged class.

This new class controlled organizations, resources, interpretation, and appointment systems—and continuously reproduced itself through institutional mechanisms.

Thus:

“the revolution of the majority” ultimately returned to “the monopoly of the minority.”

And this is precisely where the true greatness of America’s founding becomes historically significant.

The American Founders were perhaps the first to relatively successfully avoid both extremes.

What they designed was neither Plato’s rule by enlightened elites nor Rousseau’s tyranny of the majority.

Instead, through federalism, local self-government, separation of powers, judicial independence, and protection of property rights, they created a modern constitutional structure capable of continual calibration between power and responsibility.

America certainly has problems—many problems.

But its greatest advantage is not merely the dollar, aircraft carriers, or technological superiority.

Its greatest advantage is that it still retains a degree of self-correctability.

Even when that correction process appears chaotic, polarized, inefficient, or infuriating, it still exists.

The fundamental problem of many revolutionary regimes, by contrast, is that once power becomes concentrated, peaceful correction becomes increasingly difficult.

Therefore, the real issue today is not:

“How do we avoid the Thucydides’s Trap?”

Rather, it is this:

As Globalization 3.0 begins to reorganize the world order, can a civilization complete its own structural normalization?

Will it remain trapped in the historical illusion of “great-power rise”?

Or will it begin constructing a civilization capable of long-term self-correction, self-renewal, and structural balance?

Will it continue clinging to the logic of replacement?

Or will it learn the logic of symbiosis?

Because what ultimately determines whether a civilization remains “inside the game” or is pushed “outside the game” is no longer merely GDP, military power, or industrial capacity.

It is whether that civilization still retains the capacity for continual correction, continual regeneration, and continual symbiosis.

Vancouver
May 14, 2026