走出去智庫觀察
近期，新加坡總理李顯龍就中美關系、中國疫苗和新加坡外交政策等議題，接受英國廣播公司（BBC）采訪。李顯龍表示，中美之間的沖突將比五年前更易發生，但不太可能爆發軍事沖突，而新加坡無法承受在兩國之間“站隊”。
走出去智庫（CGGT）觀察到，李顯龍是在美日印澳“四方安全對話”（Quad）之後做出 “不站隊” 的表態。此前人們普遍認爲“四方安全對話”劍指中國，但會後發布的公報沒有一句提到中國，對此外媒分析稱，這反映出美日印澳在對華問題的意見並不一致。
新加坡爲何表示不在中美之間“站隊”？今天，走出去智庫（CGGT）刊發李顯龍訪談的主要內容（附英文訪談），供關注亞洲局勢的讀者參考。
要 點
CGGT，CHINA GOING GLOBAL THINKTANK
1、就在拜登當選總統之前，歐盟與中國達成了投資協議。因此，我不認爲我們是唯一面對兩難局面的國家。
2、如果中美雙方謹慎行事，軍事沖突是可以避免的。
3、中國現在的地位跟過去不同，它必須重新平衡與世界各國的關系。其他國家在早期對它的應諾，如今也須要重新調整，而這對一個國家來說是難以接受的現實。
正 文
CGGT，CHINA GOING GLOBAL THINKTANK
英國廣播公司 (BBC): 過去幾年，中美關系明顯惡化。未來你會選擇哪一方？
李顯龍總理: 我希望不會有須要選邊站的一天。我們不可能選擇任何一方，因爲我們與美國和中國在經濟及其他領域都有非常緊密和廣泛的合作，許多其他國家也是如此。我不認爲只有新加坡處于進退兩難的局面，這是許多國家面對的共同問題。這也是爲什麽我們希望並鼓勵這兩個大國在認定對方是一個必須消滅或壓制的競爭對手之前，做出審慎周密的思考。
BBC: 但保持中立實際嗎？拜登主政後，已要求對供應鏈進行審核，聲稱要與志同道合的國家合作。這聽起來像是美國已做出了決定。難道你不想在別無選擇之前，先做決定嗎？
李顯龍：這樣的緊張局勢是不可避免的。歐洲國家同樣感到壓力。但就在拜登當選總統之前，歐盟與中國達成了投資協議。因此，我不認爲我們是唯一面對兩難局面的國家。
BBC: 你希望拜登總統在與中國和亞洲打交道時，采取什麽樣的策略？
李顯龍：我不需要給他任何建議，但首先，我們指望一位能在國內獲得良好支持的美國總統；其次，要對全球局勢及美國扮演的角色有相當的認識，相信多邊主義和國際貿易，以及做好准備發揮美國自身的作用，維護這個讓美國獲益良多的體系。
BBC: 你認爲，中美會在什麽情況下發生真正的軍事沖突？
李顯龍: 如果有任何意外的話，它可能發生得比你想象的要早。但如果中美雙方謹慎行事，軍事沖突是可以避免的。冷戰期間多次險些發生沖突，但這種情況持續了將近40年，我們幸運地避過了一場核災難。
BBC：基于你對這兩個國家的了解，你認爲現在發生這種情況的可能性有多大？
李顯龍：現在比五年前更有可能發生這種情況，但我認爲中美發生軍事沖突的可能性目前還不高。不過，局勢變得非常緊張，因而提高兩國發生軍事沖突的風險，我認爲是相當可能的，因爲兩國政府都以國內利益爲首要考量。它們國內的情況如何？它們要如何維持這種情況？中美的對外關系都以各自人民的利益爲中心，它們要如何應對人民的需要？因此，外部邏輯推動雙方合作並不容易實現，因爲內在邏輯可能迫使它們采取強硬態度，使兩國陷入僵局及引發沖突。這些都是會輕易發生的事。
BBC：你如何看待這兩個超級大國在本區域的共存關系？
李顯龍：它們必須共存。它們會在本區域面對競爭、緊張局勢及南中國海等問題。但它們是兩個都很強大的國家，任何一方都不可能把另一方剔除，也不可能自己倒下。中國與蘇聯不同，當時蘇聯的經濟根本支撐不下去，很多都是虛幻的。最終，裏根（Ronald Reagan）提出了“星球大戰計劃”（Strategic Defense Initiative）並極力推動這項軍事戰略。這足以拖垮蘇聯，但戈爾巴喬夫（Gorbachev）帶領國家走向不同的方向。
但中國經濟並沒有這個問題。它具有強大的韌性、活力和潛力。中國人民積極進取，不斷進步。如果有必要，他們可以靠自己的力量生存下去。但無論如何，他們都會不斷前進，他們不會就此放棄。另一方面，美國也不會倒下。雖然美國目前面對很嚴重的政治分裂和問題，但它充滿活力，對全球人民極具吸引力。它曾經從種種困難中複原。因此，我認爲除非這兩大勢力決定共存，否則它們將經曆一段艱難時期，我們也不可幸免。
BBC：你認爲美國須要接受自己不再是世界第一大國嗎？
李顯龍：美國仍是世界第一，但第二大國緊追其後，而這是美國難以接受的事實。
BBC：你如何看待中國政治的發展方向？
李顯龍：我們無法評斷促使中國做出決策的國內壓力。但我認爲，中國在國際上采取的立場，爲它贏得了一些朋友，但也難免與主要勢力及許多其他國家形成了緊張關系。如果你留意一些調查報告，例如定期追蹤世界各國對中國看法的美國皮尤研究中心（Pew Research）發布的調查，不難發現各國對中國的發展方向及其對它們是否有利，存在極大的焦慮與不安。我認爲這不符合中國的利益。
BBC：那麽你認爲有什麽更好的解決方法或更好的方式？
李顯龍：我不願向其他國家的領導人建言獻策。我相信他們都有各自的盤算。盡管如此，我們希望看到的是，中國能成爲一個世界各國都能接受的國家，而且世界各國能把中國的繁榮、發展與強盛視爲共存共榮的機遇。這之前其實已維持了一段相當長的時間，因爲自1978年改革開放以來，中國在這40多年間的對外開放和經濟增長，不僅爲亞洲國家，也爲歐洲、美國、拉丁美洲等世界各地的人民帶來許多機遇。即使是現在，包括新加坡在內的許多國家，都渴望與中國保持良好關系，並從中國的發展中獲益，互惠共榮。我認爲，這是中國極其重要的優勢，如果下一個發展階段，中國失去這個優勢的話，那就太可惜了。
我們再來看看美國。以前，美國商人和跨國企業極力主張與中國建立良好關系，因爲他們看到了機遇及如何在中國取得成功。于是，他們在那裏投資和展開貿易。沃爾瑪（Walmart）從中國購買了大量商品，使美國人獲益。這不僅爲沃爾瑪，也爲美國家庭主婦和全國各地的民衆帶來好處。但我認爲，美國商界的態度在過去五至七年內發生了變化。他們不再像過去一樣，公開支持中國。實際上，我們看到許多倒退現象。這並不是因爲中國沒有了機會，而是他們看到中國已向前發展，並希望它能提供一個更開放的環境，讓他們得到更多的機會。我想這種情況是可以理解的。中國現在的地位跟過去不同，它必須重新平衡與世界各國的關系。其他國家在早期對它的應諾，如今也須要重新調整，而這對一個國家來說是難以接受的現實。
BBC：的確，這使得新加坡等處于其中的國家難以遊刃。當你嘗試與這些經濟和政治大國打交道時，有哪些主要考量？
李顯龍：首先，什麽符合新加坡的利益？其次，我們該如何對此做出理性的評估，做出判斷，然後把人民團結起來，說服他們政府這麽做是正確的？總的來說，我們想要與中美兩國結爲朋友，但我們必須尋找自己的道路。國與國之間，時不時總會發生爭執。我們偶爾會與中國發生爭議，偶爾也會與美國出現分歧。當這種情況發生時，我們必須明白這是不可避免的。國家之間必然會發生這種事。這並不意味著我們就是對手，但這確實說明我們之間存在一些須要解決的問題，同時我們可以在其他領域繼續合作。這就是我們的生存之道。
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Comments by PM at the Teck Ghee Vaccination Centre
Karishma Vaswani (BBC): How much of a game changer is this vaccine for Singapore, do you think?
PM Lee Hsien Loong: The only way for us to stop being vulnerable and to open up to the world again is to get ourselves protected with a vaccine, very comprehensively, which we can do within this year. It will not be a full answer, because first it’s not absolutely foolproof. Secondly, you will have new mutants that are turning up and we may need further vaccinations. Thirdly, the other countries are not all ready to come out from lockdown yet. So even if we are ready to do business, you need partners.
BBC: Prime Minister, thank you for joining me on Talking Business Asia. We are more than a year into the pandemic. Is the worst behind us?
PM Lee: We have to keep on watching to see how the virus mutates, whether new strains evolve, how quickly the vaccines can catch up, and how quickly the Governments can proliferate the vaccines and vaccinate everybody.
It is amassive task. Nobody has ever tried to vaccinate the entire population of the world within a year, or two or three years, I think that we are going to be struggling with this for some time yet, but we are no longer defenceless.
BBC: When you say struggling for some time yet, how long do you see the pandemic last?
PM Lee: It will not last forever. Pandemics have happened before. Eventually, it subsided. I hope after several years, this will subside too, one way or the other. and we learn to live with this if it does not disappear. And that may be three to five years.
BBC: When do you see life returning to normal? I know you projected that the pandemic might last three to five years, but travel for instance, when do you see that normal life coming?
PM Lee: I hope if that many countries can have substantial proportions of their populations vaccinated by later this year, we will be able to have the confidence and to have developed the systems to open up our international borders to travel safely again. It would not be like before where you can just buy a ticket, hop onto the plane and go off to Hong Kong, Bangkok or Bali for a weekend and a casual holiday. You have to plan for it, you must have some documentation, you need some way to prove that you have been properly vaccinated and maybe be tested to prove that you have the antibodies in you when you fly.
But hopefully, by the end of this year or next year, the doors can start to open, if not earlier.
BBC: Singapore’s contact tracing app was sold to the public as a way to identify people at risk of being infected by the virus. But your Minister admitted in Parliament that police can also use it to access data for certain crimes.
PM Lee: As we have explained in Parliament, and we have passed legislation to say that you can only access a contact tracing information for certain enumerated serious classes of crime, such as terrorism, murder, kidnapping, rape, violent crimes. We have to go by the law. If we do not go by the law, you go to jail.
BBC: There is a concern and we have read this from online forums and your own citizens about how wide-reaching this app could be, and that if in the first instance, there was a sense that perhaps not the whole truth came out, that could you then use it again, for some other purposes?
PM Lee: I think we made a mistake. This app was designed for contact tracing and for pandemic purposes. But under the law, the police have powers to ask for information for criminal investigations and police investigations, and it covered this app. We should have said so upfront. We did not, and we came out and said so. When one of our own MPs raised that question, we had to come out and explain this. I think there was anxiety, there was a reaction, quite a strong one. And after the pandemic is over, we will delete the information. I think people have accepted that, and we will be able to live with this.
BBC: Is the pandemic a gateway to a world where surveillance is more acceptable to people and useful for governments? Other countries are looking at surveillance apps or contact tracing apps like this.
PM Lee: I think it is not just the pandemic. It is the modern world. Even without surveillance apps, there are all kinds of apps which track where you have been and what you are doing. The owners of these apps collect the information and often resell them. But the fact is that privacy, [compared to] the days before the internet, Wi-Fi and Google image search, is not the same anymore, anywhere in the world.
This is something which people are getting used to, and at the same time, it is something societies have to find ways to deal with, to protect the legitimate concerns which people have, that this is going to be used against them. I think that there is a certain tension between individual rights and privacies, and our need to work together as a society and a community and to trust one another.
BBC: Just how badly has Singapore been hit by the pandemic and by the larger forces against globalisation?
PM Lee: The pandemic has been an enormous upheaval for us. Economically, last year, we had minus 5.5 per cent GDP growth (correction: 5.4%), which is our worst ever. In terms of cases, we have had quite a lot of cases, 60,000 odd. But fortunately, most of them have not been severe cases, so our fatalities have been very low. So far, 29 have died of COVID-19. But the social impact, the disruption, anxieties over loss of pay and jobs, over what you do with our children at home when schools close – that has been pervasive.
Globalisationis a longer-term problem, but deglobalisation, there have been trends underway for some time now, not least because of the US and China, but not just that. COVID-19 may give it a further push, I hope not over the edge, but it will push it a little bit further, because everybody says I need to make my own masks, I need to have my own supply chains. When everyone scrambles at the same time for something scarce, it is not very good for the world.
BBC: Is the era of globalisation over?
PM Lee: I hope not. I think there is a lot going for globalisation even now. Not every country can make its own vaccines, and even the countries which can make their own vaccines need to cooperate with one another. I think that globalisation will be under pressure, but the imperative for countries to cooperate, for businesses to operate across many geographies, to tap resources, to bring skills and talents and experiences together, and then serve markets all around the world, I do not think that is going to disappear. It will be moderated, and there will be tensions over security, tensions over competitiveness, who controls technology. But you cannot avoid working with one another because to go back to where you were, that way lies poverty and despair, and probably instability and conflict.
BBC: But globalisation, even in your own country, has not always benefited everyone. Many people have felt left out here. Do we need a new economic model?
PM Lee: Globalisation has benefited everybody in Singapore. You may not feel it so, but if we did not have the multinationals here, if we did not have the international trade that we have, if we were not open as we are, I have no doubt all of us would be worse off. But what has generated tensions is when the interface is so stark, people see the competition directly – because they are in a global market now. But at the same time, they understand that our way forward cannot be to close ourselves up, because if we do that, we are all going to be worse off.
BBC: Is that the way you see Singapore growing in the future, given the backlash against globalisation that we are seeing now?
PM Lee: We will work very hard to do that. It is not just a matter of good intentions, but also whether or not we can make sure people see that globalisation is working out for them. For the people who feel that the competition is fierce and the future is unpredictable, that they know there is in fact extra help and support for them, that they are not alone in this, and in Singapore, we will make sure that they are well looked after, provided they make the effort to continue to upgrade themselves.
We are putting a lot of effort into this. We have Skills Future, which is a comprehensive programme to train and retrain people throughout their working lives after they have left school. Courses, recognition, schemes, arrangements with employers, Government subsidies,. Every country is trying to do this, but we are trying to do it more systematically, and with our full resources behind it.
BBC: The US-China relationship has deteriorated significantly over the last few years. When the time comes, which one will you choose?
PM Lee: I hope the time does not come. It is not possible for us to choose one or the other because we have very intense and extensive ties with both the US and with China, economic as well as in other areas, and so do many other countries in the world. I do not think this is a dilemma only for Singapore. It is a problemfor many countries in the world, which is why we are all hoping and encouraging the two large powers to think very carefully before deciding that the other one is an adversary which has to be kept down, if not put down.
BBC: What would it take, do you think, to get to a point where we see real military conflict between China and the US? How likely is the possibility, do you think?
PM Lee: It is more likely than it was five years ago, but I think the odds of a military clash are not yet high. But the risk of severe tensions, which will raise the odds later on, I think that is considerable, because both sides take the domestic calculations as paramount. What is their domestic position? How canthey secure it? What must they do with their own populations, [that] their external relations are based on? Therefore, it is not so easy to say the external logic compels you to work together, because the internal logic may impel you to takea very hard line, and then you may find yourself at an impasse and clash. That can easily happen.
BBC: Do you think the US needs to accept that it is no longer number one?
PM Lee: The US is still number one, but number two is not so far behind. That is what is difficult for the US to accept.
BBC: How concerned are you with the direction that China is taking politically?
PM Lee: We cannot judge the domestic pressures which lead China to make the decisions it makes. But I think internationally the position it has taken has won it some friends but at the same time, has led to tensions with major powers, and with many other countries. And there is significant uncertainty and anxiety over which way China is going, and whether this will be good for them. I do not think that is in China’s interest.
BBC: What do you think might be a better solution or a better way?
PM Lee: I would hesitate to give advice to other countries’ leaders. I think they all make their own calculations, but what we would like to see is China being ableto be a country where its prosperity, development and its growing strength is welcomed by other countries in the world, who see this as an opportunity for them to prosper together and to live in a stable world together. Even now, many countries, including Singapore, want very much to maintain good relations with China in order to benefit from China’s development and to co-prosper with them. I think that that is a very important factor which China has had in its favour, which would be a pity to miss out on in the next phase.
If you look at America, it used to be that the business people, American businessmen, MNCs, would be one of the strongest advocates for good relations with China, because they saw the opportunities there. They saw how they could prosper there; they were investing there, they were trading. Walmart buys enormous amounts from China, and it benefits Americans, not just Walmart, but American housewives and ordinary people all over the country. But in the last five to seven years, I think American business attitudes have shifted, and they are now no longer as open in the support of China. In fact, there is quite a lot of pushback. It is not that the opportunities are not there, but they see that China has moved forward, and they want to see a more open environment, and one where they get a bigger bite of the cherry. I think it is understandable. China is [in] a new position now, and you have to set a different balance in your relationship with the world. What the world was prepared to grant you in an earlier phase now has to be reworked, and that is quite difficult for a country to accept.
BBC: Indeed, and it makes it quite difficult for a country like Singapore that sits in the middle of all of these to navigate. When you do try and navigate with these big economic and political powers, what are some of your key considerations?
PM Lee: First, what is in Singapore’s interests? How do we make a rational assessment of that and make that judgment for ourselves, and hold our people together, persuade them that this is the right thing to do? Generally, it is that we want to be friends with both, but we have to find our own way forward. From time to time, there will be kerfuffles. We have had kerfuffles with China once in a while, with America also once in a while. When that happens, you have to understand it cannot be helped. Between countries, this happens. It does not mean we are your opponents, but it does mean that we have problems which need to be worked through, and meanwhile [there are] other areas where we can continue to work together. That is how we do it.
BBC: But is it realistic to sit on the fence? The Biden administration has already called for a review of supply chains, saying it wants to work with like-minded countries. It sounds like the US has made a choice. Do you not want to make achoice before it is made for you?
PM Lee: These tensions will come. The Europeans feel the same. They signed an investment agreement with China, just before the Biden administration took office, so I do not think we are the only ones in this boat.
BBC: What sort of leader do you hope to see in President Biden when it comes to dealing with China and Asia?
PM Lee: I do not need to give him advice, but we look to a President who has first, good domestic support. Second, a good understanding of the world and the US’ role in the world, believes in multilateralism and international trade, and is prepared to play America’s part to uphold the system from which America benefits so much.
BBC: What would it take, do you think, to get to a point where we see real military conflict between China and the US?
PM Lee: It could happen before you expect it, if there is a mishap. If the countries are careful, it will not happen. During the Cold War, there were many near misses, but that went on for nearly 40 years, and we avoided a nuclear catastrophe.
BBC: How likely is the possibility, do you think, given that you know these two countries so well, of something like that happening now? How do you see these two superpowers co-existing, if at all, in this region?
PM Lee: They have to coexist. There will be competition in the region, tensions, and issues like the South China Sea. But these are two very major powers, neither of whom is going to be able to put the other one away, and neither of whom is going tocurl up and die. China is not like the Soviet Union, which had an economy which was unsustainable, a lot of which was make-believe, and eventually, Ronald Reagan said SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) and pushed for that. That was enough to push [the Soviet Union] over the brink, and Gorbachev took them adifferent direction.
But the Chinese economy is not like that. It has got a lot of resilience, tremendous energy and creativity, and people who are on the move and are making great progress. If necessary, on their own, but anyway, they are going to move forward and they are not going to give up. Neither is the US going to die. It has very serious political schisms and problems, but it has got tremendous vitality and attraction for people around the world. It has come back from many difficult spots before. In that situation, I think unless the two powers decide to coexist, they are both in for a hard time, and so are we.*
來源：榮興下午茶