SUPERPOWER: By drawing on its unique creative resources, China has a chance to be the next century's dominant international player.

By Jonathan Spence

Newsweek, January 1, 2000

A century ago, China had its first bout of science-fiction fever. There seem to have been three main reasons for this. One was literary, the translation into Chinese of various Western utopian works, and of adventure stories such as Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." One was technological, a growing fascination with new developments in science and transportation, from chemistry and electricity to the balloon and the automobile. And one was political, based on the mounting certainty that the reigning dynasty, the Ching, was about to disintegrate under the combined weight of its own incompetence and the overwhelming firepower of the foreign aggressors.

The driving question behind that sci-fi writing was a simple-sounding one: what was China to do next? The country had never before asked that question with such stark simplicity, nor had the stakes ever seemed so high. Between them, as David Wang of Columbia University has recently shown in an absorbing study, these Chinese writers around the turn of the last century came up with a wide range of possibilities, all set at different points in the future, from fifty to a hundred years ahead. In one of these novels, China weathers decades of internal warfare and imperialist aggression to emerge in the 1960s as an independent and powerful republic, guided by a vibrant constitution. In another, an incomparably wise Chinese ruler has created a new civilization blending traditional Chinese virtues with the highest achievements of Europe and the United States. So potent is this culture, peaceful its life and wealthy its economy that dissidents from the bordering "barbarous lands" flee there for sanctuary. In a third, China's women are the guides, creating a new society of sexual independence and technological sophistication, and asserting their power through a secret anarchist organization a million strong, with local chapters spread across the entire country.

Of all these tales, perhaps the most apocalyptic is "New Era." Published in 1908, just before the fall of the Ching dynasty, the novel portrays a series of colossal battles between the Mongoloid and Caucasian races beginning in Eastern Europe in 1999. Overseas Chinese around the world rise up in support of their motherland, creating breakaway Chinese republics in the Western United States and Australia, and seizing the Panama Canal. In the fighting, both sides call on the fullest range of new military technologies, from submarines and bulletproof vests to radioactive dust, electronic deflector shields and poison gas. The combined Chinese armies win the final victory and sign a treaty with the Western powers: China will henceforth control Singapore and Ceylon, Bombay and the Suez Canal, and have bases in the Adriatic Sea. Furthermore, though the Western powers can keep their own calendars, all Chinese will henceforth acknowledge and live by Chinese time, the traditional calendar dating their own history to the reign of the Yellow Emperor in high antiquity. Thus the treaty is dated both "2000 AD" and "Year 4707 of the Yellow Emperor."

These fantasies were constructed at a despairing time of national weakness. China lost Taiwan to Japan in 1895, Beijing was occupied in the year 1900 by an international expeditionary force after the catastrophe of the Boxer Uprising, and many of China's major cities had foreign settlements exempt from Chinese law. Though China now is infinitely stronger than it was a century ago, some of those once fantastical elements have an oddly current ring of reality. Those secret woman anarchists with their cells scattered across the land have a contemporary echo in the crowds of women and men from the Falun Gong, gathering boldly in Beijing and elsewhere. A deadly misplaced bomb on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade draws Eastern Europe suddenly into the very heart of Sino-Western relations, prompting riots and cries for retaliation in China. China competes aggressively in all international markets for the latest nuclear, rocket and undersea technologies, and are steadily acquiring the potential to reach around the globe. Even that hope for a harmonious and well-ordered republic, though still not realized, is kept alive by many who were not cowed by the repressions of 1989.

The last time there was a Chinese century was the 11th. During the 11th century, China was both the largest and the most successfully run country on earth: its commanding position sprang from a combination of technological innovation, industrial enterprise, well-managed agriculture, widely available education and traditions of administrative experimentation combined with religious and philosophical tolerance. Its decline was largely due to its military weakness in the face of a formidable array of enemies on its borders, enemies whom the government chose to attempt to bribe away rather than to confront directly. The policy of weakness and accommodation was fatal. If China proves it can defend its borders effectively, limit the disruptive intrusion of foreign forces while utilizing their positive sides, and re-establish that formidable combination of positive attributes it knew 900 years ago, there is just a chance that it will give its name to a century for the second time. Except perhaps for the Roman Empire at the height of its glory, that is not a feat any single state has been capable of before.

2000年1月2日（京港台时间）

【多维新闻】中国有独特的创造性资源，如果善加利用，它很可能成为新世纪国际事务中的主宰力量。

多维新闻网记者王维理编译报导，最新一期《新闻周刊》发表“新时代将在东方升起”的文章，探讨了中国崛起的可能性。文章认为，中国大陆、台湾、港澳和海外华人携手合力，将是中国称雄世界的关键。

文章说，一个世纪之前，中国首次出现科幻作品热潮。当时有三大原因：文学上，大批西方乌托邦作品和探险小说翻译成为中文；技术上，从化学、电力、热气球到汽车等方面的发明引人著迷；政治上，由于朝廷的昏庸无能和西方炮舰的攻击，清朝处于解体崩溃边沿。

写作科幻小说的背后动力实际上是另一个重大问题：中国要向何处去？中国过去没有人如此明确的提出这个问题，国家命运问题也没有如此严重。哥伦比亚大学王大卫(DavidWang,音译)最近的研究证明，上一世纪末的作家都在探讨国家前途的各种可能性，主要是五十年到一百年后的中国。其中一部小说描述，经历几十年的内战和帝国主义侵略之后，六十年代终于出现了一个独立、强大、法治的共和国。另一部小说讲述，一名智慧超人的圣明君王创造了融合传统中国美德和欧美最高科技成果的新文明，由于这种文明造成文化发达、人心平和、经济富裕，夷蛮邻邦纷纷来朝。

《新闻周刊》说，在当时的小说中，最有启示性的要算《新世纪》。这一小说在清朝崩溃前夕的1908年发表。小说描写了清军同高加索军队1999年在东欧进行的一系列大战。世界各地华人纷纷起来援助祖国，在美国西部和澳大利亚组成流亡政府，并占领巴拿马运河。双方都采用了最先进的军事技术，从潜艇、防弹背心、辐射性尘埃、电子反射屏障到毒气。中国联军最后取得胜利，同西方签订协议，中国因此控制了新加坡、锡兰、孟买、苏伊士运河，并在亚德里亚海建立基地。不仅如此，尽管西方可以使用自己日历，所有中国人都采用黄帝纪元，例如，西方的2000年就是黄帝纪元4707年。还有一部小说描写妇女掌权，创造性别独立和技术发达的新社会，她们通过有一个百万人参加的无政府秘密组织治理整个国家。

这些小说都是在中国极度贫弱时期出现的。1895年，日本占领台湾；1900年八国联军蹂躏北京；各大城市都出现了不受中国法律管辖的外国租界。尽管今天的中国比一百年前强大无数倍，但那些荒诞小说中许多情节却在现实中不时得到印证。那些秘密的妇女无政府主义者组织也许就是目前各地出现的法轮功，那些男女法轮功弟子勇敢地在北京和其他城市继续集会、活动。北约轰炸中国驻南斯拉夫大使馆事件将东欧卷入中西关系核心，也引发中国各地骚乱和要求报复的呼声。中国目前正在各个领域同西方争夺国际市场：包括最新核技术、导弹和海洋技术，并在集聚向全世界发展的潜力。尽管中国发生了1989年镇压事件，尽管它还没有成为和谐、法治的共和国，许多人仍然没有放弃这一期望。

《新闻周刊》说，21世纪以何种方式成为中国的世纪？显然不会是我们这个时代美国逐步发展成为世界强权的方式，也不会是英国在19世纪建立大英帝国所采取的方式，当然也不会是十三世纪莫卧尔王朝的野蛮残酷扩张方式。只有中国的理想与现实都能融合成为一种新的体系，中国世纪才会到来。这种新体系包括融为一体的三大要素：领土是个灵活的概念，可以扩张、缩小或分割；能够理解与消化中国传统文化中的丰富营养；承认海外华人是具有更宽广意识的中国人并发挥他们的作用。

中国人力资源巨大，但自然资源有限。为了实现强国梦，科技进步要达到能够克服中国现有重大弱点的地步：国防技术足以改变中国的战争方式，水利技术足以把新疆沙漠成为绿洲，基因技术足以改变畜牧方式，交通技术在速度和成本上都超过人们现在的想象。

今天的中国科幻作家可能仍然是民族主义者，但他们的立场是很多个中国观：出自大陆、台湾、香港、东南亚、美国或加拿大的立场。有一作品描写，中国通过吸收台湾的民主潮流实现振兴；有一作品描写中国一大城市由于地层断裂，漫无边际的漂向世界其它地方；另一作品描写中国政治上四分五裂，数亿人外移，整个世界因此动荡；还有一部作品描写台湾采用邪恶的商业能量侵蚀美国，美国被迫依赖中国的食品供应。

《新闻周刊》认为这些听似荒诞的情节很可能成为现实。在这个世界上，新任加拿大总督伍冰枝是华裔妇女，香港大亨李嘉诚赢得沃达丰空触曼内斯曼一千二百多亿美元收购案的精华，参议员洛德还警告李嘉诚在巴拿马运河的控制权；这些事例已经将过去与未来熔为一体。新世纪将是机会未知的世纪，因此要求无限灵活性，而精力充沛和灵活的华人，以中国的巨大消费市场和劳动力为后盾，将成为最勇敢的开拓者。在这个大背景下，华人在全球各地竞争中将能绕过使各种国际贸易协定和政府规则的限制。

上一个中国世纪是十一世纪。当时中国是世界上最大和治理最好的国家：它的技术、工业、农业、教育、行政管理以及宗教和理念上包容性都具领先地位。中国的衰落是由于当时的外敌入侵，而朝廷采取的赔款软弱政策更是致命。如果中国能够有效保卫疆土，减少外来势力的干扰，同时充分发挥自己的优势，中国很有可能再现九个世纪前辉煌