How Taiwan Activates Beijing’s Chosen Fear
The standard explanations for why Taiwan is so important to the Chinese Communist Party are familiar: territorial integrity, credibility of deterrence commitments, great power competition with the United States, the strategic value of the first island chain, and the semiconductor industry concentrated in TSMC’s fabrication facilities.
为什么台湾对中国共产党如此重要的标准解释是熟悉的：领土完整、威慑承诺的可信性、与美国的大国竞争、第一岛链的战略价值以及半导体产业集中在台积电的制造设施中。
These explanations work, but they don’t tell the whole story.
这些解释虽然有效，但并不能说明全部情况。
Rational strategic calculation does not produce a posture in which a nuclear-armed state with the world’s second-largest economy treats a democratic island of 23 million people as a permanent, non-negotiable crisis.
理性的战略计算不会导致一个拥有世界第二大经济体的核武器国家将一个拥有2300万人口的民主岛屿视为永久性的、不可谈判的危机。
But what is rational depends largely on how history has defined you and the ways in which you have defined yourself.
但什么是理性很大程度上取决于历史如何定义你以及你定义自己的方式。
The Chinese Communist Party’s posture toward Taiwan is driven not primarily by strategic calculation, at least not in the way it is understood from outside.
中国共产党对台湾的态度主要不是出于战略考虑，至少不是外界理解的那样。
Its posture is driven by a political trauma the party has consistently chosen to adopt and emphasize: three millennia of Chinese political history, interpreted through what I call the fragmentation pattern.
它的姿态是由共产党一贯选择采用和强调的政治创伤驱动的：通过我所说的碎片化模式来解释中国三千年的政治历史。
This describes the situation in which a displaced regime establishes a rival power node that continues to claim sovereignty over the whole.
这描述了这样一种情况：一个流离失所的政权建立了一个竞争性的权力节点，继续声称对整体拥有主权。
It then either reconquers the center or is destroyed.
然后它要么重新占领中心，要么被摧毁。
The fact that this binary is false is irrelevant: It is the story that has been embraced, and cynically cultivated.
这个二元论是错误的事实无关紧要：这是一个被接受和愤世嫉俗地培养的故事。
Beijing is finding that echoed civilizational trauma invoked in the name of regime stability is not easily discarded.
北京发现，以政权稳定的名义引发的文明创伤并不能轻易被抛弃。
The resulting ways in which the party is obliged to act are shaped by this narrative.
政党有义务采取的行动方式是由这种叙述决定的。
For the United States, the consequence is significant: Deterrence built around imposing costs may fail if Beijing perceives inaction itself as a threat to regime survival.
对于美国来说，后果是重大的：如果北京将不作为本身视为对政权生存的威胁，围绕施加成本建立的威慑可能会失败。
Understanding the historical template through which the Chinese Communist Party interprets Taiwan is therefore necessary to understanding what will deter Beijing and where U.S. strategy is most likely to miscalculate.
因此，了解中国共产党解释台湾的历史模板对于了解什么会威慑北京以及美国战略最有可能在哪些方面出现误判是必要的。
Victoria Tin-bor Hui’s comparative analysis of Chinese and European state formation argues that neither Chinese unification nor European fragmentation was structurally inevitable: Both were the products of strategic choices, particularly the self-strengthening reforms that allowed dominant states to absorb rivals.
维多利亚·丁波·惠（Victoria Tin-bor Hui）对中国和欧洲国家形成的比较分析认为，中国的统一和欧洲的分裂在结构上都不是不可避免的：两者都是战略选择的产物，特别是允许主导国家吸收竞争对手的自我强化改革的产物。
She argues specifically against geographic determinism in favor of political agency: The Chinese heartland was just as prone to political fragmentation as any other region.
她特别反对地理决定论，支持政治机构：中国的中心地带和其他地区一样容易出现政治分裂。
There was no foreordained pattern.
没有预定的模式。
China was never destined to be a centrally controlled single state.
中国从来就注定不会成为一个中央集权的单一国家。
The fact that it happened repeatedly has no intrinsic value, but tremendous propaganda worth to anyone wishing to point to a tradition of political unity.
这种事情反复发生的事实没有内在价值，但对于任何希望指出政治团结传统的人来说却具有巨大的宣传价值。
The patterns of history may not themselves be deterministic, but they are politically useful, and the Chinese motif of unification has proved extraordinarily useful to the Chinese Communist Party.
历史的模式本身可能不是决定性的，但它们在政治上是有用的，而且中国的统一主题已被证明对中国共产党非常有用。
Fragmentation and reunification have been the defining rhythm of Chinese political life, and a generation of Chinese citizens — including today’s cadres — have been schooled in it the way American officers are schooled in the lessons of Pearl Harbor and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
分裂与统一一直是中国政治生活的决定性节奏，一代中国公民——包括今天的干部——已经接受了这种教育，就像美国军官接受珍珠港事件和古巴导弹危机的教训一样。
On both counts the events themselves were real and documented, but American education focuses on the events as a product of their time and geopolitical circumstance, not a historical motif.
在这两个方面，事件本身都是真实的并有记录，但美国教育将这些事件视为其时代和地缘政治环境的产物，而不是历史主题。
Mark Edward Lewis’s histories of the early Chinese empires document the cycle from its origins: the Warring States period that preceded Qin unification in 221 B.C.
马克·爱德华·刘易斯 (Mark Edward Lewis) 的中国早期帝国史记录了这一周期的起源：公元前 221 年秦统一之前的战国时期。
and the collapse of the Han into the Three Kingdoms.
汉朝灭亡为三国。
The pattern repeated through the Sui, the Tang, the Song partition, and the Yuan Mongol conquest.
这种模式在隋朝、唐朝、宋朝的分裂和元朝蒙古的征服中不断重复。
The Ming expelled the Mongol Yuan, reunified China, then fell to the Manchu Qing.
明朝驱逐了元朝，统一了中国，然后又落入满清手中。
Southern Ming loyalist courts persisted for nearly two decades claiming continued legitimate authority over all of their former empire .
南明的效忠朝廷坚持了近二十年，声称对其整个前帝国继续拥有合法权威。
The Qing collapse in 1912 produced warlordism, civil war, and left China vulnerable to Japanese invasion.
1912 年清朝垮台，导致军阀割据、内战，使中国容易受到日本侵略。
The lesson that the modern Chinese Communist Party has chosen to learn, and rely on, is this: When a Chinese dynasty falls, the displaced regime or its successors do not accept the loss and establish an independent state.
现代中国共产党选择学习和依靠的教训是：当中国王朝垮台时，流离失所的政权或其继承者不会接受失败并建立一个独立的国家。
They relocate, claim continued sovereignty over the whole, and persist as a standing challenge to the legitimacy of whoever holds the center.
他们重新安置，声称对整体拥有持续的主权，并坚持对中心的合法性构成长期挑战。
The Eastern Jin fled south after the fall of the Western Jin and ruled from Nanjing for over a century while non-Chinese dynasties held the north.
西晋灭亡后，东晋南逃，在南京统治了一个多世纪，而北方的非中国王朝则占据了统治地位。
The Southern Ming established rival courts after the Manchu conquest and fought on for nearly 20 years.
南明在满族征服后建立了敌对朝廷，并持续了近20年。
The conclusion that can be drawn if only considering these cases is that the rival claimant represented an existential challenge to the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty, and the dynasty that tolerated the rival claimant’s existence was eventually judged to have failed the fundamental test of governance.
仅考虑这些案例就可以得出这样的结论：敌对势力对统治王朝的合法性构成了生存挑战，而容忍敌对势力存在的王朝最终被判定没有通过治理的根本考验。
That test has a name that is so familiar it has become a cliché, which is precisely why its operational significance is underestimated: the Mandate of Heaven.
这项测试有一个如此熟悉的名字，以至于已经成为陈词滥调，这正是它的操作意义被低估的原因：天命。
The concept, which dates to the early Zhou dynasty, is not divine-right doctrine in the European sense .
这个概念可以追溯到周朝早期，并不是欧洲意义上的神权主义。
It is much better understood as a performance standard.
最好将其理解为性能标准。
Dingxin Zhao traces how the Western Han fused Confucian moral legitimation and Legalist administrative control, with the mandate as the test of that system: The ruler held it as long as he governed competently, maintained order, and preserved the unity of the realm.
赵鼎新追溯了西汉如何融合儒家道德合法性和法家行政控制，并以委任状作为对该制度的检验：只要统治者有能力治理，维持秩序并维护国家的统一，就拥有委任状。
The mandate’s withdrawal is demonstrated by natural disasters, popular unrest, and above all by the fracture of political unity — when the ruler morally fails.
自然灾害、民众骚乱，尤其是当统治者在道德上失败时，政治团结的破裂就证明了委任统治的撤销。
The existence of a rival claimant is, then, evidence that the mandate is in doubt and represents a direct refutation of the regime’s legitimacy.
那么，敌对声索国的存在就证明了这一授权是有疑问的，并且代表着对该政权合法性的直接反驳。
It is part of the evaluative framework through which political legitimacy has been assessed far beyond living memory, and it is the framework that Beijing has chosen to evaluate itself by.
它是评估框架的一部分，政治合法性的评估远远超出了人们的记忆，也是北京选择用来评估自己的框架。
Zheng Wang’s research on Chinese political memory shows how the party maintains this framework through its schools.
王铮对中国政治记忆的研究表明了共产党如何通过学校维持这一框架。
The patriotic education campaign launched after 1989 made the choice of which history to remember, putting the Century of Humiliation and the equation of national unity with national survival at the center of Chinese identity.
1989年后发起的爱国主义教育运动选择了要记住哪段历史，将世纪屈辱和民族团结与民族存亡置于中国身份的中心。
Wang, borrowing the psychiatrist Vamik Volkan’s term, calls this a chosen trauma.
王借用了精神病学家瓦米克·沃尔坎（Vamik Volkan）的术语，将其称为“选择性创伤”。
The template is not merely inherited but actively reinforced by the state.
该模板不仅是继承的，而且还得到国家的积极强化。
This reinforcement only further constrains Beijing on the Taiwan question.
这种强化只会在台湾问题上进一步限制北京。
To back down becomes a blow to legitimacy out of all proportion to its actual significance.
退缩对合法性的打击与其实际意义完全不成比例。
Taiwan fits the pattern Beijing has chosen to embrace with a precision that should alarm anyone responsible for deterrence planning in the Western Pacific.
台湾符合北京所选择的模式，其精确度应该让任何负责西太平洋威慑计划的人感到震惊。
In 1949, the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan after losing the civil war to Chairman Mao Zedong’s Communist forces.
1949年，蒋介石领导的中国国民党在内战中输给毛泽东主席的共产党军队后撤退到台湾。
They did not establish an independent state.
他们没有建立一个独立的国家。
They established the Republic of China on Taiwan and maintained, for decades, that they were the legitimate government of all of China.
他们在台湾建立了中华民国，并几十年来一直坚称自己是全中国的合法政府。
The Nationalists occupied China’s seat at the United Nations until 1971 .
国民党一直占据中国在联合国的席位，直到1971年。
They maintained a posture of eventual reconquest well into the Cold War.
他们在冷战期间一直保持着最终重新征服的姿态。
The rival claim has softened over time as Taiwan democratized and developed its own identity , but the structural fact remains: A defeated regime retreated to a nearby position, claimed sovereign authority, and has persisted for 77 years under foreign protection.
随着时间的推移，随着台湾民主化和发展自己的身份，这种对抗性的主张已经软化，但结构性事实仍然存在：一个战败的政权撤退到附近的位置，声称拥有主权，并在外国保护下坚持了 77 年。
All of this tells a very neat story, and it’s the story that the Chinese Communist Party has been telling for decades.
所有这一切都讲述了一个非常精彩的故事，也是中国共产党几十年来一直在讲的故事。
But the Century of Humiliation narrative, stretching from the Opium Wars through the Japanese invasion to the Communist victory, is less historical analysis than political engineering.
但从鸦片战争到日本入侵再到共产党胜利的“百年屈辱”叙事，与其说是历史分析，不如说是政治工程。
Rana Mitter shows how the narrative of Chinese experiences in World War II was deliberately constructed to prime the threat architecture of the Chinese population for a specific emotional payload: the memory of foreign exploitation and civilizational degradation, with the Chinese Communist Party positioned as the sole agent of restoration.
拉纳·米特（Rana Mitter）展示了关于中国在二战中的经历的叙述是如何被刻意构建的，以便为中国民众的威胁结构奠定基础，以实现特定的情感负载：外国剥削和文明退化的记忆，而中国共产党则被定位为恢复的唯一代理人。
General Secretary Xi Jinping’s “ great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation ” is both a slogan and a commitment — framed in the language of the mandate — that the Chinese Communist Party will complete the civilizational task that every previous dynasty was measured by.
习近平总书记的“中华民族伟大复兴”既是一个口号，也是一个承诺——用使命的语言来说——中国共产党将完成历代王朝所衡量的文明任务。
Taiwan’s continued separation is, within this framework, proof that the task is unfinished.
在这个框架内，台湾的持续分裂证明任务尚未完成。
The Chinese Communist Party’s narrative seems to have survived its own historical counterexamples.
中国共产党的叙述似乎在其历史反例中幸存下来。
The Northern Song Dynasty coexisted with its Liao neighbors after decades of warfare.
经过几十年的战争，北宋与邻国辽共存。
Under the 1005 Treaty of Chanyuan, it accepted the Liao ruler as an equal emperor .
根据1005年的《澶渊条约》，它接受了辽统治者作为平等的皇帝。
The Eastern Jin, which the party’s reading treats as a rival claimant, opened a multi-state era: From A.D.
党的解读将东晋视为竞争对手，开启了一个多国时代：从公元
317 to 589, through the Northern and Southern Dynasties, China functioned as a system of rival states for over 250 years.
从公元317年到公元589年，从南北朝开始，中国作为诸侯国制度运行了250多年。
The Yuan court, as the Northern Yuan , resisted every Ming attempt to extinguish it in Mongolian exile .
元朝作为北元，抵制了明朝在蒙古流放中消灭明朝的每一次企图。
These historical episodes seem to call into question the truism that a rival claimant continuing to maintain total sovereignty is fundamentally intolerable.
这些历史事件似乎对一个不言而喻的事实提出了质疑，即竞争对手继续维持完全主权从根本上是无法容忍的。
Yet the Chinese Communist Party, having fully committed itself to the pattern, cannot accept the record of history it did not choose.
然而，完全遵循这种模式的中国共产党不能接受它没有选择的历史记录。
Treating rival claimants for sovereignty, breakaway territories, and every other flavor of territorial dispute as an existential problem is not a trait limited to the Chinese Communist Party.
将主权声索国、分裂领土和其他各种形式的领土争端视为一个生存问题，这并非中国共产党独有的特征。
North and South Korea technically remain in a state of war and both governments treat that fact as a critical reality, yet peace has largely been maintained on the peninsula for seventy years.
从技术上讲，朝鲜和韩国仍处于战争状态，两国政府都将这一事实视为关键现实，但七十年来半岛基本上维持了和平。
Time has decoupled reunification from regime survival.
时间已经使统一与政权生存脱钩了。
Russia has shown repeatedly its willingness to use military force against its neighbors for various reasons, all framed as existential.
俄罗斯一再表示愿意出于各种理由对邻国使用武力，所有这些理由都被认为是为了生存。
They are existential: just to Vladimir Putin, not to the Russian state.
它们是存在主义的：只对弗拉基米尔·普京而言，而不是对俄罗斯国家而言。
What sets apart the Chinese pattern is the deep pedigree of the falsehood.
中国模式的独特之处在于谎言的根深蒂固。
China can rightly claim to have a linguistic and civilizational record that stretches back millennia, and this is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party has tried to tap into.
中国可以正确地声称拥有可以追溯到几千年前的语言和文明记录，而这正是中国共产党试图利用的。
In doing so it has solidified its control over a staggering amount of territory and people, but it has also tied itself to an outdated template it found useful to cultivate and did so in such a way that it cannot be easily abandoned by the regime.
通过这样做，它巩固了对数量惊人的领土和人民的控制，但它也将自己与它认为有用的过时模板联系在一起，并以这样的方式做到了这一点，即它不能轻易被政权抛弃。
A choice hardens into a constraint once it is written into institutions, and this one has been written everywhere.
一种选择一旦被写入制度，就会变成一种约束，而且这种选择已经随处可见。
The 2005 Anti-Secession Law put the claim into statute.
2005年《反分裂国家法》将这一主张纳入法律。
The 2023 Patriotic Education Law makes reunification a mandatory subject of state education and calls completing it a “sacred duty” of all Chinese, Taiwanese included.
2023年的爱国教育法将统一列为国家教育的必修科目，并称完成统一是包括台湾人在内的所有中国人的“神圣职责”。
A 2022 white paper declared reunification indispensable to national rejuvenation — Xi’s signature slogan.
2022 年白皮书宣布统一对于民族复兴不可或缺——这是习近平的标志性口号。
In 2013 Xi told a Taiwanese envoy the problem could not be passed down from one generation to the next, which constitutes a sharp break from Deng Xiaoping’s willingness to wait a thousand years .
2013年，习近平告诉一位台湾特使，这个问题不能代代相传，这与邓小平愿意等待一千年的态度截然不同。
Each layer raises the price of walking away, however contingent the origins.
无论起源如何，每一层都会增加离开的代价。
After three decades of reinforcement, reunification is more tightly bound to regime survival in Beijing than when the campaign began.
经过三十年的巩固，统一与北京政权的生存比运动开始时更加紧密地联系在一起。
Those bonds do, however, have some slack.
然而，这些债券确实存在一些松动。
Survey experiments by Jessica Chen Weiss and Allan Dafoe found that Chinese citizens punish leaders for empty threats, but approve of propaganda that frames present restraint as a path to future success.
杰西卡·陈·维斯（Jessica Chen Weiss）和艾伦·达福（Allan Dafoe）进行的调查实验发现，中国公民会因空洞的威胁而惩罚领导人，但赞同将当前的克制视为通向未来成功之路的宣传。
The party can sell patience at home far more easily than anything that looks like retreat under foreign pressure.
与在外国压力下看似撤退的任何事情相比，共产党在国内推销耐心要容易得多。
North Korea shows the instrument can be set down and what the cost can look like.
朝鲜展示了可以设定的工具以及成本。
When Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un abandoned reunification as a goal in January 2024 , he had to declare South Korea a “primary foe,” abolish the agencies built around reunification, and order the destruction of a monument his father built to it.
当最高领导人金正恩于 2024 年 1 月放弃统一目标时，他不得不宣布韩国为“主要敌人”，废除围绕统一建立的机构，并下令摧毁他父亲为统一建立的纪念碑。
Pyongyang could afford that because its legitimacy now rests on a dynasty, not on finishing a national task.
平壤有能力承担这样的后果，因为它的合法性现在取决于一个王朝，而不是完成一项国家任务。
Beijing has staked its legitimacy on rejuvenation, and its own white paper calls reunification indispensable.
北京将其合法性押注于复兴，其白皮书也称统一不可或缺。
Setting the instrument down would mean admitting the slogan cannot be delivered.
放下乐器就意味着承认口号无法传达。
Any move by Beijing in Pyongyang’s direction would therefore show the party loosening its grip on the fear it cultivated.
因此，北京朝平壤方向采取的任何行动都将表明该党正在放松对其所培养的恐惧的控制。
A leadership change would give us unparalleled insight into whether the embrace of the template is institutional or personal.
领导层的变动将使我们对模板的接受是机构性的还是个人性的产生无与伦比的洞察力。
A new general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party could radically alter China’s priorities, and such a change would allow a face-saving way to quietly abandon the template.
中国共产党的新任总书记可能会从根本上改变中国的优先事项，而这种改变将允许以一种保全面子的方式悄悄放弃这个模式。
If that — or anything like it — happens, then we will be privy to exactly what kind of template was in place.
如果发生这种情况（或类似的情况），那么我们将确切地了解所采用的模板类型。
The real test will play out over years.
真正的考验将持续数年。
Does the Chinese Communist Party’s rhetoric continue to emphasize reunification with Taiwan, or does it simply gradually disappear from party communications, never having been formally abandoned?
中国共产党的言论是继续强调统一台湾，还是只是逐渐从党的通讯中消失，从未正式放弃？
This is where wargaming reveals a gap in American planning.
这就是兵棋推演揭示了美国规划中的缺陷的地方。
Most wargames or analyses modeling a Taiwan contingency assign Chinese decision-making to a rational actor framework: Beijing calculates costs, weighs probabilities, and acts when the expected value of military action exceeds the expected value of restraint.
大多数模拟台湾突发事件的兵棋推演或分析都将中国的决策分配给理性的行为者框架：北京计算成本，权衡概率，并在军事行动的预期价值超过克制的预期价值时采取行动。
Adjudicators know the imbalance between modeling and actual decision-making well.
评审者深知模型与实际决策之间的不平衡。
The models are precise about capabilities and logistics — where data exist — but can be crude about how the adversary actually decides, where it matters most.
这些模型对于能力和后勤（数据存在的地方）是精确的，但对于对手实际如何决策以及最重要的方面可能是粗略的。
Fidelity typically depends on the Red Cell leader’s intimate knowledge of Chinese political life.
忠诚通常取决于红细胞领导人对中国政治生活的深入了解。
A game can report sortie rates to the decimal and still rest on a guess about what Beijing fears.
游戏可以将出动率报告到小数点，但仍然依赖于对北京担心的事情的猜测。
Stephen Downes-Martin has shown that standard adjudication methods break down on exactly these novel strategic problems, where data are thin.
史蒂芬·唐斯-马丁（Stephen Downes-Martin）已经证明，标准的裁决方法恰恰无法解决这些数据稀薄的新战略问题。
The most detailed public example, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ wargame series on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan , is built on operations research rules and “most likely” base values.
最详细的公开例子是战略与国际研究中心关于中国入侵台湾的兵棋系列，它是建立在运筹学规则和“最有可能”的基本值之上的。
By design and definition, it was a rational actor model, and a rational actor model alone risks unsophistication in its treatment of the adversary’s threat perception.
从设计和定义上来说，它是一个理性行为者模型，而理性行为者模型本身在处理对手的威胁感知时存在着过于简单的风险。
The center did not build its game to address this problem specifically, but any game constructed to gauge reaction and retaliation must consider it.
该中心并未专门构建其游戏来解决这个问题，但任何构建用于衡量反应和报复的游戏都必须考虑它。
Mirror imaging , in which planners assume their adversaries assess costs the same way they would, remains a recognized problem in how wargames are built.
镜像成像（即规划者假设对手以与他们相同的方式评估成本）仍然是兵棋构建过程中公认的问题。
As a wargame designer and adjudicator at the U.S. Naval War College, I treated it as a prudent working rule that omitting the fragmentation template carries risk: To be complete, games must incorporate it, even if only as an understanding among the adjudication cell.
作为美国海军战争学院的兵棋设计师和裁决员，我将其视为一项谨慎的工作规则，即省略碎片模板会带来风险：为了完整，游戏必须将其纳入其中，即使只是作为裁决小组之间的一种理解。
Beijing’s decision calculus must include not just the military cost of action but the civilizational cost of inaction.
北京的决策计算必须不仅包括采取行动的军事成本，还包括不采取行动的文明成本。
The relevant comparison is not “can we win,” but “can the party survive being the dynasty that lost the mandate.”
相关的比较不是“我们能赢吗”，而是“党作为失去授权的王朝能否生存”。
A game built this way should behave differently.
以这种方式构建的游戏应该有不同的表现。
When the adversarial cell is played by experts who understand modern China as a polity, Red would be harder to deter at lower rungs of escalation, more willing to absorb costs that rational actor models flag as prohibitive, and more sensitive to symbolic provocations that capability-focused models dismiss as strategically irrelevant.
当敌对小组由了解现代中国政体的专家扮演时，红色将更难在升级的较低阶段进行威慑，更愿意承担理性行为者模型标记为令人望而却步的成本，并且对以能力为中心的模型认为与战略无关的象征性挑衅更加敏感。
This is the behavior that open analysis of China’s Taiwan calculus already predicts.
这是对中国台湾算计的公开分析已经预测到的行为。
Some recent analyses read reunification as bound to regime legitimacy, and describe not calculated wars of choice, but wars of necessity: undertaken because the cost of inaction is regime survival itself.
最近的一些分析认为，统一与政权合法性息息相关，并且描述的不是精心策划的选择战争，而是必然战争：之所以进行战争，是因为不采取行动的代价就是政权生存本身。
Beijing’s template does not make conflict inevitable.
北京的模式并不会让冲突不可避免。
It makes the threshold lower and the triggers different than most American planners assume.
它使门槛更低，触发因素也不同于大多数美国规划者的假设。
So what does any of this mean for actual strategy?
那么这对于实际战略意味着什么呢？
If the Chinese Communist Party’s posture toward Taiwan is driven by rational cost-benefit calculation, then deterrence is a matter of raising costs until the expected value of military action falls below the expected value of the status quo.
如果说中共对台的态度是出于理性的成本效益计算，那么威慑就是不断提高成本，直到军事行动的预期价值低于现状的预期价值。
This is the logic that underlies most American deterrence planning, and it has a solid intellectual pedigree in the work of Thomas Schelling and the broader rational deterrence tradition .
这是大多数美国威慑计划背后的逻辑，它在托马斯·谢林的著作和更广泛的理性威慑传统中有着坚实的知识渊源。
But if the Chinese Communist Party’s posture is driven by the activation of an outdated civilizational threat template that it chose for itself in the name of national unity, then the cost-benefit framework is incomplete.
但如果中国共产党的姿态是由它以国家统一的名义为自己选择的过时的文明威胁模板的激活所驱动的，那么成本效益框架就是不完整的。
Rational actor theory still holds, but as the Chinese Communist Party applies it to itself, it must be understood that Beijing’s chosen threat template warps fragmentation into regime death.
理性行动者理论仍然成立，但当中国共产党将其应用于自身时，必须明白，北京选择的威胁模板将分裂扭曲为政权死亡。
Taken to its apparent logical extreme, treating China and the Chinese Communist Party with kid gloves because they have tied themselves to an idea and have a credible nuclear arsenal seems like a recipe for appeasement.
从明显的逻辑极端来看，因为中国和中国共产党把自己束缚在一个想法上并拥有可靠的核武库而对他们小心翼翼地对待，这似乎是绥靖政策的良方。
The reality is that effective deterrence requires an accurate model of the adversary’s threat perception, and the model most American planners are using is incomplete.
现实情况是，有效的威慑需要对手威胁感知的准确模型，而大多数美国规划者使用的模型是不完整的。
Deterrence that accounts for the real architecture would take seriously that the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership may accept costs that the current rational actor model classifies as irrational, because their chosen threat template classifies the costs of inaction as possible regime death.
解释真实架构的威慑将认真对待中国共产党领导层可能接受当前理性行为者模型归类为非理性的成本，因为他们选择的威胁模板将不作为的成本归类为可能的政权死亡。
It would understand that public demands, conspicuous shows of force, and language that positions the United States as the latest in a line of foreign powers dictating terms to China do not deter.
它会明白，公众的要求、明显的武力展示以及将美国定位为对中国发号施令的一系列外国势力中最新的一个的语言并不能阻止中国。
They escalate.
他们升级了。
A harder version of the objection is that this rewards Beijing: If invoking trauma buys American restraint, Beijing has every reason to invoke it more.
反对意见的一个更严厉的版本是，这会奖励北京：如果援引创伤换来了美国的克制，那么北京有充分理由更多地援引它。
But what it buys is restraint on symbolism only.
但它所购买的只是对象征意义的限制。
Arms deliveries, deployments, training, and the commitment itself stay where they are, so the invocation purchases nothing Beijing can fight with.
武器交付、部署、训练和承诺本身都保持不变，因此这一调用不会购买到北京可以与之对抗的任何东西。
Every invocation tightens the handcuffs.
每一次召唤都将手铐收紧。
The louder Beijing ties its legitimacy to reunification, the costlier any visible retreat becomes and the less room it has to choose.
北京越是大声地将其合法性与统一联系起来，任何明显的撤退的代价就越大，其选择的空间也就越小。
Withholding pretexts while delivering capability leaves Beijing paying for its rhetoric and collecting nothing.
在提供能力的同时隐瞒借口，会让北京为其言论付出代价，却一无所获。
Washington has lately done the opposite.
华盛顿最近却采取了相反的做法。
Asked in May whether he would approve a pending $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, President Donald Trump said he was holding it “in abeyance” and that it “depends on China,” adding: “ It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly .” Putting capability on the table while the summits continued is the one trade this argument rules out.
5 月份，当被问及是否会批准一项悬而未决的价值 140 亿美元的台湾武器计划时，唐纳德·特朗普总统表示，他“暂时搁置”该计划，并表示这“取决于中国”，并补充道：“坦率地说，这对我们来说是一个非常好的谈判筹码。”在峰会继续进行的同时将能力摆上桌面是这一论点所排除的一项交易。
Depriving Beijing of rhetorical leverage means rethinking several elements of the current approach.
剥夺北京的言辞影响力意味着重新思考当前做法的几个要素。
It does not mean prostration: It means exploiting the handcuffs the Chinese Communist Party has placed itself in.
这并不意味着屈服：它意味着利用中国共产党给自己戴上的手铐。
First, in the signaling environment, the distinction that matters is between two kinds of statements.
首先，在信号环境中，重要的区别在于两种语句之间的区别。
Statements about what the United States will do if force is used speak to Beijing’s cost calculation, and that is where deterrence lives.
关于如果使用武力美国将采取什么行动的声明说明了北京的成本计算，而这正是威慑的所在。
Statements about what Taiwan is, its status, and its place in a contest between democracy and autocracy speak to the template.
关于台湾是什么、它的地位以及它在民主与独裁之间的竞争中的地位的陈述都符合这个模板。
Washington should make the first kind clearly and often, and the second as seldom as it can.
华盛顿应该明确、经常地提出第一种情况，而第二种情况则应尽可能少地提出。
Congressional delegations to Taipei are designed to signal resolve to Beijing.
国会代表团前往台北旨在向北京表明决心。
In practice they hand Beijing a pretext.
实际上，他们给北京提供了借口。
Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit is the clearest case.
时任议长南希·佩洛西 2022 年的访问是最明显的例子。
Its lasting effect was to give Beijing the occasion to erase the median line of the Taiwan Strait : 302 People’s Liberation Army aircraft crossed it in August 2022 alone, and by 2025 crossings ran at about 1,500 a year and no longer made the news.
其持久影响是让北京有机会抹掉台湾海峡的中线：仅在 2022 年 8 月就有 302 架解放军飞机飞越台湾海峡，到 2025 年，飞越的数量约为每年 1,500 架，并且不再成为新闻。
Beijing may have wanted a pretext anyway, but the visit supplied it.
无论如何，北京可能想要一个借口，但这次访问提供了借口。
Actions like this publicly replicate the pattern of foreign powers intervening in what the Chinese Communist Party must process as a threat to itself.
此类行动公开复制了外国势力干预中国共产党必须将其视为对自身威胁的模式。
A carrier transit of the Taiwan Strait or a quiet weapons sale signals something completely different, and it is a signal that can be understood by Beijing without requiring a high-profile response.
航母过境台湾海峡或悄然出售武器发出的信号完全不同，这是北京可以理解的信号，无需高调回应。
Time can be used to the advantage of the United States.
时间可以为美国带来优势。
The longer Taiwan remains an independent polity, the less existential reunification becomes, provided that the pattern is not constantly re-invoked.
台湾保持独立政体的时间越长，只要这种模式不被不断地重新调用，存在的统一就会变得越少。
The United States cannot abandon Taiwan or cease military preparation, but it must distinguish between signals that deter by raising costs and signals that escalate by feeding the template and creating a public spectacle that the Chinese Communist Party must respond to or lose legitimacy.
美国不能放弃台湾或停止军事准备，但它必须区分通过提高成本来进行威慑的信号和通过提供模板并制造中国共产党必须做出回应或失去合法性的公众景观来升级的信号。
It must be disciplined about which forces are deployed and when.
必须严格规定部署哪些部队以及何时部署。
Quiet capability building deters by changing the military calculus without activating the civilizational narrative, even when the capability being built is devastating.
安静的能力建设通过改变军事计算而不激活文明叙事来实现威慑，即使正在建设的能力是毁灭性的。
There is a simple litmus test: Does the action change the military balance, or does it only make a statement to which the Chinese Communist Party must respond in escalatory terms?
有一个简单的试金石：这一行动是否会改变军事平衡，还是只是做出了中国共产党必须以升级的方式回应的声明？
Beijing’s reactions can legitimately be considered as they bear on things that the United States intends to say.
北京的反应可以被合理地认为是因为它们与美国想要说的话有关。
Beijing gets no veto over who goes to Taipei.
北京对于谁去台北没有否决权。
Washington should send people when a visit gains something and hold them back when it would only hand Beijing a pretext.
当访问有所收获时，华盛顿应该派人；当访问只会给北京一个借口时，华盛顿应该阻止他们。
What the United States does is entirely its own business.
美国做什么完全是美国自己的事。
The main danger of this approach is under-signaling.
这种方法的主要危险是信号不足。
If the United States only publicly announces things which meaningfully shift the military balance in the Pacific, there is a possibility that the Chinese Communist Party feels emboldened to test established boundaries.
如果美国只公开宣布那些能够有意义地改变太平洋地区军事平衡的事情，中国共产党就有可能有勇气测试既定的边界。
Fortunately, this is a problem the current situation is suited to solve.
幸运的是，这是当前形势适合解决的问题。
Beijing overreacts reliably to U.S. signaling: Indeed, that is the crux of this entire analysis.
北京对美国发出的信号确实反应过度：事实上，这是整个分析的关键。
That means that any under-signaling can be easily fixed.
这意味着任何信号不足的问题都可以轻松修复。
Persistent under-signaling is rectified with one clear and targeted declaration, but the reverse is not true.
持续的信号不足可以通过一项明确且有针对性的声明来纠正，但反之则不然。
Under-signaling is cheap to fix in terms of time, money, and personnel.
解决信号不足问题所需的时间、金钱和人员成本都很低。
Over-signaling is not.
过度信号则不然。
None of this is Washington’s or Beijing’s alone to settle, and Taipei would not welcome some of it.
这些问题都不是华盛顿或北京能够单独解决的，台北也不会欢迎其中的一些。
Taiwan has changed: 62 percent of residents now identify as Taiwanese only , and under 3 percent as Chinese only.
台湾已经发生了变化：62% 的居民现在仅认为自己是台湾人，不到 3% 的居民仅认为是中国人。
The rival claimant frame fits a Taipei that claimed all of China.
对手的声索国框架适合声称拥有全中国的台北。
It fits today’s Taipei poorly, and Beijing’s template has not adjusted.
不太适合今天的台北，北京的模板也没有调整。
Taipei has also agreed to a status quo, its own: President Lai Ching-te pledged at his inauguration to “neither yield nor provoke ” and to maintain it.
台北也同意维持现状：赖清德总统在就职典礼上承诺“不屈服，也不挑衅”并维持现状。
What Taipei rejects is Beijing’s definition.
台北拒绝的是北京的定义。
The approach here asks Washington to defend Taipei’s version with capability and to stop arguing about either version in public.
这里的做法要求华盛顿有能力捍卫台北的版本，并停止在公开场合争论任何一个版本。
The approach would cost something in Taipei, where American visits read as reassurance.
这种做法会让台北付出一些代价，美国人的访问被视为一种保证。
A majority of Taiwanese welcomed Pelosi’s visit even after the exercises that followed — though most Kuomintang voters did not.
即使在随后的演习之后，大多数台湾人仍然欢迎佩洛西的访问——尽管大多数国民党选民并不这么认为。
Reassurance matters more now that only about a third of Taiwanese see the United States as a credible country .
现在，只有大约三分之一的台湾人认为美国是一个值得信赖的国家，因此保证更加重要。
Washington can offset it by delivering capability.
华盛顿可以通过提供能力来抵消它。
It has also asked restraint of Taipei before.
此前它也曾要求台北克制。
In 2003 a Republican president publicly opposed President Chen Shui-bian’s referendum because Washington opposes unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.
2003年，一位共和党总统公开反对陈水扁总统的公投，因为华盛顿反对任何一方单方面改变现状。
Taipei’s current government holds that Taiwan is already sovereign and needs no declaration, and it has largely kept to that line.
台北现任政府认为，台湾已经拥有主权，无需声明，而且它基本上也坚持这一立场。
Second, the diplomatic vocabulary: Language that frames Taiwan as a pawn in great power competition — a strategic asset or a democratic beacon to be defended against authoritarian expansion — is accurate from Washington’s perspective, but unwise from the standpoint of template management.
其次，外交词汇：将台湾视为大国竞争中的棋子、战略资产或抵御威权扩张的民主灯塔的语言，从华盛顿的角度来看是准确的，但从模板管理的角度来看是不明智的。
It confirms exactly what the Century of Humiliation narrative predicts: that foreign powers view Chinese territory as a playing piece in their own strategic games.
它准确地证实了《世纪耻辱》叙事的预测：外国列强将中国领土视为其战略游戏中的棋子。
Decoupling Taiwan’s security from the broader competition frame would reduce the template activation without reducing the commitment.
将台湾的安全与更广泛的竞争框架脱钩将减少模板的激活，但不会减少承诺。
Taipei, which leans on that framing to build support abroad, will not like this, but Washington can defend Taiwan’s democracy without making it a front line in its own contest with Beijing.
依靠这一框架来获得海外支持的台北不会喜欢这样的做法，但华盛顿可以捍卫台湾的民主，而不必将其作为与北京竞争的前线。
Third, the internal coherence of the American position: The current approach simultaneously tells Beijing that the United States does not support Taiwan independence, sells Taiwan advanced weapons systems, and sends senior officials to Taipei.
第三，美国立场的内部一致性：目前的做法同时告诉北京，美国不支持台独，向台湾出售先进武器系统，并向台北派遣高级官员。
From the current rational actor perspective these are calibrated signals of ambiguity.
从当前理性行为者的角度来看，这些都是经过校准的模糊信号。
From the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party’s chosen template, they can be seen as incoherent provocations that confirm the party’s deepest fears about foreign interference.
从中国共产党选择的模板的角度来看，它们可以被视为语无伦次的挑衅，证实了该党对外国干涉的最深的恐惧。
Strategic ambiguity works only if the adversary processes ambiguity the way you intend.
只有当对手按照你的意图处理模糊性时，战略模糊性才会起作用。
If the adversary must publicly process it through a template that converts ambiguity into threat, the policy is escalatory, not ambiguous.
如果对手必须通过将模糊性转化为威胁的模板公开处理它，那么该政策就是升级性的，而不是模棱两可的。
A more coherent approach would align words and actions around a single message, a statement about an American redline rather than about Taiwan’s status: The United States, regardless of administration, takes no position on how the two sides settle their differences, only that they do so peacefully , and it will never accept a unilateral military alteration of the status quo.
更连贯的做法是围绕一个信息调整言行，即关于美国红线而不是台湾地位的声明：美国，无论哪个政府，对双方如何解决分歧不持立场，只是和平地解决分歧，并且永远不会接受单方面军事改变现状。
That was true when Chiang proposed — and fully planned — an operation to retake the mainland in the 1960s .
当蒋介石在 20 世纪 60 年代提出并全面计划了一项夺回大陆的行动时，情况确实如此。
It remains true now.
现在仍然如此。
The Eisenhower administration was not practicing appeasement when it wrote the constraint into a 1954 exchange of notes attached to the treaty, the Johnson administration was not practicing appeasement when it blocked the invasion’s launch in 1965 , and no modern administration would be doing so now by enforcing the exact same principle.
艾森豪威尔政府在 1954 年将限制写入条约所附的换文时，并没有实行绥靖政策；约翰逊政府在 1965 年阻止入侵发动时，也没有实行绥靖政策；现在没有哪个现代政府会通过执行完全相同的原则来这样做。
The most stable outcome may require not the resolution of the Taiwan question, but the abandonment of the template the Chinese Communist Party adopted, cultivated, and bound itself to: maintaining a status quo that avoids activating the fragmentation trigger while preserving Taiwan’s functional autonomy.
最稳定的结果可能不是要求解决台湾问题，而是放弃中国共产党采用、培育和约束自己的模式：维持现状，避免触发分裂触发器，同时保留台湾的功能自治。
In the wargaming context, building the fragmentation template into adversary decision models is intended to produce higher quality games, not fatalism: games where Blue team strategies are stress-tested against an adversary that behaves the way rational actor theory predicts, when that theory is calibrated with as much fidelity as possible.
在兵棋推演的背景下，将碎片模板构建到对手的决策模型中是为了产生更高质量的游戏，而不是宿命论：在游戏中，蓝队的策略针对对手进行压力测试，对手的行为方式符合理性行动者理论预测的方式，前提是该理论尽可能保真度地进行校准。
The strategies that survive that stress test are the ones worth building policy around.
能够经受住压力测试的策略才是值得制定政策的策略。
The adversary’s threat map is legible to anyone willing to both read three millennia of evidence and understand how it has been selectively applied.
任何愿意阅读三千年证据并了解其如何被选择性应用的人都可以清楚地看到对手的威胁地图。
The question is whether American strategy is built on what the evidence actually says.
问题是美国的战略是否建立在实际证据的基础上。
Charles Edward Gehrke is the former deputy division director for wargame design and adjudication at the U.S. Naval War College.
查尔斯·爱德华·格尔克 (Charles Edward Gehrke) 是美国海军战争学院兵棋设计和裁决部门的前副主任。
He holds a B.S.
他拥有学士学位。
in Quantitative Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy and an M.A.
美国海军学院数量经济学学士学位和硕士学位
in National Defense and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College.
美国海军战争学院国防与战略研究学士学位。
He is now a Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
他现在是麻省理工学院斯隆研究员。
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent those of the U.S. Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, any part of the U.S. government, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
本文表达的观点是作者自己的观点，并不代表美国海军战争学院、海军部、国防部、美国政府任何部门或麻省理工学院的观点。