Sarah Paine — How Russia sabotaged China's rise

章节 01：大陆帝国的生存法则与中俄关系的起点

📝 本节摘要：

本章为全篇访谈奠定了理论基石。主讲人Sarah Paine首先明确了“俄罗斯”这一概念的历史连续性，指出无论是沙皇时代、苏维埃时期还是现代俄罗斯，其地缘政治本质从未改变。

随后，她提出了核心理论框架——“大陆帝国”（Continental Empire）的生存法则。她指出，中俄两国历史上都遵循这一残酷逻辑：为了生存，必须避免两线作战，且绝不允许边境存在强权。为了达成这一目标，它们倾向于通过“先动荡、后吞并”的策略处理邻国，在边境制造缓冲区。这一逻辑不仅解释了历史上中俄周边的动荡，也直接映射了普京当下的战略行为。

[原文] [Speaker A]: People are worried about whether there's going to be an enduring relationship with China and Russia. If you look at this picture, the relations look more glacial than cordial and the little one's hauling on the arm of the big one. One wonders about that. It turns out my expertise is on Russo-Chinese relations. That's what I studied in graduate school. My dissertation was a history of their border from the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century until Outer Mongolia was snatched from the Chinese sphere of influence

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: 人们很担心中国和俄罗斯之间是否会形成一种持久的关系。如果你看这张照片，两国的关系看起来更像是冷若冰霜而非亲密无间，而且那个小个子正拽着大个子的胳膊。人们对此感到疑惑。事实证明，我的专长正是俄中关系。这是我在研究生阶段研究的课题。我的博士论文写的正是从19世纪中叶鸦片战争开始，直到外蒙古被从中国的势力范围中夺走这段时期的两国边界史。

[原文] [Speaker A]: and parked in the Russian sphere in the 1920s. So it's fun to talk about this particular topic. Before I get going, I'm going to do some terminology. I'm going to use the word Russia to refer to the czarist, Soviet, and modern periods, the same way that you use France to describe its many monarchies and many republics. The Bolsheviks thought they were special, so they came up with special words for special people: Soviet, Soviet Union. But it turns out they were temporary and Russia is the enduring thing. So that's it on terminology.

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: 并于1920年代被划入俄罗斯势力范围的那段历史。所以谈论这个特定话题很有趣。在开始之前，我要先说明一下术语。我将用“俄罗斯”一词来指代沙皇时期、苏联时期和现代时期，就像你们用“法国”来描述它历经的多个君主制和共和制时期一样。布尔什维克认为自己很特别，所以他们为特别的人发明了特别的词：苏维埃、苏联。但事实证明，他们只是暂时的，而俄罗斯才是那个恒久的存在。术语方面就是这样。

[原文] [Speaker A]: Before I speculate on what the future is going to look like, our only database that we have is whatever happened from this second backwards, what people call history. It's just whatever is in the past. That's it, that's our database. So I'm going to look at when Russia was strong and China was weak, from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, then the reversal of the power balance, and then in the recent period when China has been strong and Russia weak. China and Russia discovered each other late in their histories.

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: 在我推测未来会是什么样子之前，我们拥有的唯一数据库就是从这一秒倒推回去发生的所有事情，也就是人们所说的历史。它只是过去发生的一切。就是这样，这就是我们的数据库。所以我将审视俄罗斯强而中国弱的时期，即从19世纪中叶到20世纪中叶，然后是权力平衡的逆转，接着是近期中国强而俄罗斯弱的时期。中国和俄罗斯在各自的历史长河中很晚才发现彼此。

[原文] [Speaker A]: It was the early part of their last dynasties when the Russians were after fur, very lucrative in those days. That brings them out to the Pacific. But their relations are only episodic until we get to the mid-19th century, which is where my story's going to begin. So in the 18th century, China was strong, Russia was weak. But that doesn't last very long. Both empires followed the rules for continental empire. If you want to survive in a continental world— that's what both of them historically

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: 那是在它们末代王朝的早期，当时俄国人追逐的是毛皮，那在当时是非常暴利的行当。这把他们带到了太平洋。但在19世纪中叶之前，也就是我的故事即将开始的地方，他们的关系只是断断续续的。所以在18世纪，中国强，俄罗斯弱。但这并没有持续很久。两个帝国都遵循大陆帝国的法则。如果你想在一个大陆世界中生存——这正是它们两者在历史上的形态——

[原文] [Speaker A]: have been—you don't want to have two-front wars because you have multiple neighbors. Any one of them can come in at any time. If they gang up on you, that's trouble. So you take on one at a time. Also you don't want any great powers on the borders. This is the fundamental problem with their relationship. Today's friend can be tomorrow's foe. That is truly problematic. So what do you do to solve that problem? Well, you take on your neighbors sequentially. You set them up to fail. You destabilize the rising, ingest the failing, and you set up buffer zones in between.

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: ——你不会想要陷入两线作战，因为你有多个邻国。任何一个邻国都可能随时打进来。如果他们联合起来对付你，那就麻烦了。所以你要一次对付一个。此外，你不希望边境上有任何大国。这是它们关系中的根本问题。今日的朋友可能是明日的敌人。这确实是个大问题。那么你如何解决这个问题呢？好吧，你按顺序对付你的邻居。你给他们下套让他们失败。你动摇崛起的，吞并失败的，并在中间建立缓冲区。

[原文] [Speaker A]: You wait for the opportune moment to pounce and absorb. That is Vladimir Putin's game. But if you play this game, you're surrounding yourself with failing states, because you're either busy destabilizing them or ingesting them. So the curious might ask, are Russia and China unlucky with all the very dysfunctional places that surround them, or are they complicit? Also, there are no enduring alliances in this world because the neighbors figure it out that the hegemonic power offers nothing but trouble in the long term.

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: 你等待最佳时机猛扑上去并将其吸收。这就是弗拉基米尔·普京的游戏。但如果你玩这个游戏，你的周围就会被失败国家所包围，因为你要么忙着破坏它们，要么忙着吞并它们。所以好奇的人可能会问，俄罗斯和中国被所有这些极其功能失调的地方包围是运气不好，还是它们本身就是共犯？此外，在这个世界上没有持久的联盟，因为邻国们最终会明白，这个霸权国家从长远来看除了麻烦什么都给不了。

[原文] [Speaker A]: There's also no counsel on when to stop expanding. So both Russia and China are known for overextending, overdoing it. That may help explain some of their periodic implosions over their long and bloody histories. Very high mortality rates. Before you dismiss this paradigm, you've seen it operating in real time in Syria and Ukraine. There are people who do this. It also explains why all those ancient ruins are ruins. This sort of warfare is ruinous. But anyway, it lies at the basis of many

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: 而且也没人建议何时停止扩张。所以俄罗斯和中国都以过度扩张、做得过火而闻名。这或许有助于解释它们漫长而血腥的历史中出现的一些周期性崩溃。死亡率非常高。在你否定这个范式之前，你已经在叙利亚和乌克兰实时看到它的运作了。确实有人这么做。这也解释了为什么那些古代遗迹变成了废墟。这种战争是毁灭性的。无论如何，这是欧亚大陆许多——

[原文] [Speaker A]: of the great civilizations of Eurasia. This is how they did things. I'm going to start my story in the mid-19th century, when the Chinese were beset by a whole series of rebellions that just about wrecked them. The Russians take advantage of all of this. Remember the second rule of continental empires? No great power neighbors. The Russians repeatedly derail the rise of China by scripting the Chinese to do things that are remarkably detrimental to Chinese interests, but pretty good for Russian interests.

[译文] [Sarah Paine]: ——伟大文明的基础。这就是它们行事的方式。我的故事将从19世纪中叶讲起，当时中国正被一系列几乎将其摧毁的叛乱所困扰。俄国人利用了这一切。还记得大陆帝国的第二条法则吗？没有大国邻居。俄国人反复破坏中国的崛起，通过给中国人写剧本（设局），诱导中国人去做那些对中国利益极其有害，但对俄罗斯利益相当有利的事情。