“大国协调”的重负与近代中国的“旧邦新造”

The Burden of“Concert of Great Powers”and the Remaking of Modern China

面对后冷战时期单极国际秩序的衰变,国际上已有不少学者主张参考19世纪的“欧洲协调”机制,重建全球性的“大国协调”机制。然而,作为半殖民地的近代中国作为殖民帝国“大国协调”客体的历史经历,尚未获得充分总结。自第一次鸦片战争以来,列强不断在中国取得片面最惠国待遇,相互之间形成了临时的利益连带关系,进而发展出了驻京公使团会议、“条约网络”与银行团等协调机制。在一战前夕,即便欧洲内部冲突加剧,六大列强在中国仍然通过“大国协调”塑造了辛亥革命的结果,直到一战的爆发带来战前协调机制的衰落。日本利用了一战的时势,在华权势迅速增长。一战后的凡尔赛—华盛顿体系局部重建了协调机制,然而其内部具有极大的结构性矛盾,英法美等列强未能及时阻止日本侵华步调。然而,殖民帝国之间“大国协调”的破裂,也使得中国成为全球殖民秩序中的一个“薄弱环节”,为中国通过新民主主义革命实现“旧邦新造”准备了基础条件。以近代中国“大国协调”经历为参照,如何避免历史上旧式“大国协调”阴暗面的重演,将是中国推进当代“大国协调”机制之时需要深入思考的主题。

In the face of the decay of the post-Cold War unipolar international system,many scholars in the world attempt to rebuild the global“concert of great powers”by referring to the 19th century experience of“concert of great powers”.However,China’s historical experience of being the object of the“concert”of the colonial empires has not yet been fully studied.Since the first Opium War,many colonial empires obtained unilateral most-favored-nation treatment from China,which brought them mutual interest.Since the early 20th century,great powers developed new mechanisms of concert such as the conferences of ministers in Beijing,the“network of treaties”and the banking consortium.On the eve of World War I,even though internal conflicts in Europe intensified,the six major powers in China still acted in concert to shape the outcome of the 1911 Revolution.The outbreak of World War I brought about the decline of the pre-war concert mechanism.Japan,taking advantage of the World War I,stregnthened its power in China.After the First World War,the Versailles-Washington system partially rebuilt the mechanism of concert,but suffered from great internal structural contradictions.Great powers such as Britain,France,and the United States failed to act in concert to stop the Japanese invasion of China.However,the breakdown of the“concert of great powers”also made China a“weak link”in the global colonial order,which prepared the basic conditions for the Chinese revolution.Taking modern China’s experience of“concert of great powers”as a reference,how to avoid the repetition of the dark side of the old“concert of great powers”in history will be a topic that China needs to rethink in the post-unipolar era.