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但它却是至关重要的。这意味着中国将站在地缘政治领域的中心位置，尽管它在向全球超级力量前进的道路上并不是一帆风顺。
今天中国的野心和一个世纪前的美国一样激进，但是其根源却大不相同。中国并没有摆出传教士的姿态来插手国际事务，也没有试图扩散自己的意识形态或者政府管理体制。取而代之的是，它的行为是由对安全的能源、金属和战略矿藏的需求所驱动，目的是支持其巨大的人口不断提高生活品质的要求。
在中国的领土上，新疆和西藏是居民拒绝中国政府拉拢的两个主要地区。为了牢牢掌控新疆，同时还有那里所蕴含的石油、天然气、铜矿、铁矿，北京在几十年的时间里源源不断地把汉族人从国家的中心地带迁往那里。
多山的西藏高原蕴藏丰富的铜矿和铁矿，占据了中国境内的大部分储藏量。这就是为什么北京深恶痛绝西藏的独立企图，以及在那里大量修建公路和铁路的原因。
中国的北部边境线环绕着蒙古，这一片广阔的土地看起来像是被从中国的后背咬掉的一块。蒙古是世界上人口密度最低的国家之 一，它现在面临着邻近的中国城市化文明带来的人口威胁。
北京在征服了外蒙古（译者注：即内蒙古） 之后，获取了大片肥沃的土地。现在它又摆出征服蒙古的姿态，尽管没有直接威胁，而是通过获取其资源的方式。
蒙古以及中国东北三省的北方是俄罗斯的远东地区，那里广阔的面积相当于欧洲的两倍，人口稀少而且还在萎缩，蕴藏着丰富的天然 气、石油、木材、钻石和黄金资源。
鉴于蒙古的存在，中国军队不大可能在未来入侵或正式吞并俄罗斯的远东地区。值得担心的是北京在人口和财力方面对这个地区的威胁不断增加。
中国在东南部的影响力也在不断扩张。实际上，这与东南亚地区相对弱小的现状不无关系，大中国的崛起几乎没有遇到任何阻力。
相对而言，中国与越南、老挝、泰国、缅甸之间没有任何地理阻碍，因此中国不断地在与这些南部的邻居发展有利可图的关系。中国把东盟（东南亚国家联盟）当作一个市场，在那里出售高价值的中国制造商品，采购低价值的农产品。
中亚、蒙古、俄罗斯远东和东南亚是自然受中国影响的地带，但是这些地方的政治边界线不大可能会有改变。而朝鲜半岛的局势与此不同。当然，没有人会认为中国将吞并朝鲜半岛的任何部分。但是，尽管中国支持金正日斯大林式的统治，它对金政权之外的朝鲜半岛（校者注：指韩国）仍有自己的打算。
北京将陆续向北朝鲜遣送数千名在华的叛逃者，希望他们可以帮忙建立亲华的政治基础，以便于北京可以逐步地在经济上控制这个地区。
与其陆地边境线情况相类似，中国的海岸线条件也是得天独厚。但是，它在海上所面临的威胁要比陆地上严重得多。
在所谓的"第一岛链"上，中国海军遇到的全是麻烦：朝鲜半岛、千岛群岛、日本（包括琉球群岛）、台湾、菲律宾、印尼和澳大利亚。
对于这种束手束脚的感觉，中国有时会采取过激的反抗方式。例如2009年3月，一批中国海军船只曾经骚扰美国无瑕号侦查舰，当时它正在南中国海公开执行任 务。
北京还计划包围台湾，不仅仅在军事方面，也包括在经济和社会方面。这个计划的进展情况将成为左右这个区域未来超级力量政策走向的关键因素。如果美国草率地将台湾放弃给北京，那么日本、韩国、菲律宾、澳大利亚和其它太平洋地区的美国盟友就会开始怀疑华盛顿曾经的承诺，这等于鼓励他们向中国靠拢，从而成全一个真正具有称霸半球实力的强大中国。
那么，美国有没有能力在不与北京发生冲突的前提下维持亚洲地区的稳定、保护自己的盟友、限制中国超级力量的出现？
相比于不惜代价地阻止中国变强，或者同意中国海军将来可以在第一岛链巡逻这，加强美国在大洋洲的空军和海军势力是一个折衷的方式。这可以确保中国对台湾采取的任何军事行动都会付出惨重的代价。
尽管如此，中国经济和军事力量的增长这一活生生的事实，在未来几年将会继续恶化中美间的紧张关系。用政治学家约翰?米尔斯海默（John Mearsheimer*）的话来说，作为西半球的霸主，美国应当试图阻止中国成为大部分东半球的霸主。这应当成为当代的标志性事件。;
罗伯特・D・卡普兰（Robert D. Kaplan）是新美国安全中心的高级研究员、《大西洋月刊》记者。本文的完整版本见《外交事务》5/6月号。
*译注：约翰・米尔斯海默(John J.Mear-sheimer)，美国芝加哥大学政治学教授、美国艺术与科学学院院士、著名国际关系理论家。他的代表作《大国政治的悲剧》已经被翻译成中文出版，在中国国际关系理论界激起了广泛的关注和争鸣。在这部著作中,，米尔斯海默教授直言不讳地指出：21世纪早期，中国的崛起将"像美国支配西半球一样支配亚洲"，而"美国将竭力阻止中国获得地区霸权，因为美国不能容忍世界舞台上存在与之匹敌的竞争对手。其结果便是中美之间激烈而危险的安全竞争，这种竞争类似于美苏冷战期间的那种对抗"。米尔斯海默教授也因此被认为是"中国威胁论"的理论代言人。
英文原文：
April 20, 2010
I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor
The Geography of Chinese Power
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
China's blessed geography is so obvious a point that it tends to get overlooked in discussions of the country's economic dynamism and national assertiveness.
Yet it is essential: It means that China will stand at the hub of geopolitics even if the country's path toward global power is not necessarily linear.
Today China's ambitions are as aggressive as those of the United States a century ago, but for completely different reasons. China does not take a missionary approach to world affairs, seeking to spread an ideology or a system of government. Instead, its actions are propelled by its need to secure energy, metals and strategic minerals in order to support the rising living standards of its immense population.
Within the Chinese state, Xinjiang and Tibet are the two principal areas whose inhabitants have resisted China's pull. In order to secure Xinjiang ― and the oil, natural gas, copper, and iron ore in its soil ― Beijing has for decades been populating it with Han Chinese from the country's heartland.
The mountainous Tibetan Plateau is rich in copper and iron ore and accounts for much of China's territory. This is why Beijing views with horror the prospect of Tibetan autonomy and why it is frantically building roads and railroads across the area.
China's northern border wraps around Mongolia, a giant territory that looks like it was once bitten out of China's back. Mongolia has one of the world's lowest population densities and is now being threatened demographically by an urban Chinese civilization next door.
Having once conquered Outer Mongolia to gain access to more cultivable land, Beijing is poised to conquer Mongolia again, albeit indirectly, through the acquisition of its natural resources.
North of Mongolia and of China's three northeastern provinces lies Russia's Far East region, a numbing vastness twice the size of Europe with a meager and shrinking population and large reserves of natural gas, oil, timber, diamonds and gold.
As with Mongolia, the fear is not that the Chinese army will one day invade or formally annex the Russian Far East. It is that Beijing's demographic and corporate control over the region is steadily increasing.
China's influence is also spreading southeast. In fact, it is with the relatively weak states of Southeast Asia that the emergence of a Greater China is meeting the least resistance.
There are relatively few geographic impediments separating China from Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, and China continues to develop profitable relationships with its southern neighbors. It uses Asean (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as a market for selling high-value Chinese manufactured goods while buying from it low-value agricultural produce.
Central Asia, Mongolia, the Russian Far East and Southeast Asia are natural zones of Chinese influence. But they are also zones whose political borders are not likely to change. The situation on the Korean Peninsula is different. No one really expects China to annex any part of the Korean Peninsula, of course, But although it supports Kim Jong-il's Stalinist regime, it has plans for the peninsula beyond his reign.
Beijing would like to eventually dispatch there the thousands of North Korean defectors who now are in China so that they could build a favorable political base for Beijing's gradual economic takeover of the region.
China is as blessed by its seaboard as by its continental interior, but it faces a far more hostile environment at sea than it does on land.
The Chinese Navy sees little but trouble in what it calls the "first island chain": the Korean Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Japan (including the Ryukyu Islands), Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia.
China's answer to feeling so boxed in has been aggressive at times ― for example when, in March 2009, a handful of Chinese Navy ships harassed the U.S. surveillance ship Impeccable while it was openly conducting operations in the South China Sea.
Beijing is also preparing to envelop Taiwan not just militarily but economically and socially. How this comes about will be pivotal for the future of great-power politics in the region. If the United States simply abandons Taiwan to Beijing, then Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and other U.S. allies in the Pacific will begin to doubt the strength of Washington's commitments. That could encourage those states to move closer to China and thus allow the emergence of a Greater China of truly hemispheric proportions.
So can the United States work to preserve stability in Asia, protect its allies there, and limit the emergence of a Greater China while avoiding a conflict with Beijing?
Strengthening the U.S. air and sea presence in Oceania would be a compromise approach between resisting a Greater China at all cost and assenting to a future in which the Chinese Navy policed the first island chain. This approach would ensure that China paid a steep price for any military aggression against Taiwan.
Still, the very fact of China's rising economic and military power will exacerbate U.S.-Chinese tensions in the years ahead. To paraphrase the political scientist John Mearsheimer, the United States, the hegemon of the Western Hemisphere, will try to prevent China from becoming the hegemon of much of the Eastern Hemisphere. This could be the signal drama of the age.
Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic. A fuller version of this article appears in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs.
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