在1月下旬，唐纳德·特朗普完成其重返白宫的第一个年头时，清华大学人民大学财新崇阳金融研究院的王文和其同事写下了一份感谢特朗普的报告，语气讽刺却表达了真实情绪，称赞他驱逐美国传统盟友、暴露美国“帝国暮光”的衰退与虚伪，并把对华施压转化为中国创新的动力。这并非边缘立场：自2008年金融危机以来、并在特朗普两次当选后，越来越多中国高层知识分子与官员把美国视为终局性衰落的力量，这与习近平“东升西落”的论断以及官方媒体长期强化美国失败的叙事形成一致。

布鲁金斯学会的Jonathan Czin和Allie Matthias的研究表明，过去近二十年中文写作中“美国衰落”这一叙述一直是稳定主题，而特朗普回归后该主题进一步抬头，特朗普被视为美国衰败的症状与加速器。中国对美国的诊断反复出现三组指标：经济上是金融化、制造业空心化与高企公共债务；军事上是做世界警察的负担与不可持续性；政治上是极化加深和“走向自我否定的民粹”。

“霸权焦虑”概念帮助解释为何北京仍谨慎：既认为美国是正在下滑的霸主且容易在失势中外放暴力行为，也据此把特朗普的越界举动（如对委内瑞拉、伊朗的动作、轻视盟友）解读为维持主导地位的绝望式危机管理。尽管如此，风险并未完全消失——美国对全球经济的份额在过去数十年已趋于平台化，而中国份额快速扩张，因此北京得出结论是“下降但未穷尽”，并据此在对美政策上倾向克制。

By late January, as Donald Trump completed his first year back in the White House, a report by Wang Wen and colleagues at Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute thanked him in a sarcastic tone but expressed a genuine view that U.S. power was declining, noting that he had driven away allies, exposed U.S. instability, pressured China to innovate, and signaled what they called America’s “imperial twilight.” It is not a marginal view: since the 2008 global financial crisis and reinforced by Trump’s two election victories, many leading Chinese intellectuals and officials have adopted nearly two decades of consensus that America is in terminal decline, reflected in long-running state media narratives and Xi Jinping’s dictum that the East is rising while the West declines.

A Brookings study by Jonathan Czin and Allie Matthias finds that “American decline” language has been present in Chinese writing for nearly twenty years and has intensified since Trump returned, with him seen as both a symptom and accelerator of decline. The recurring diagnosis is economically focused on financialisation, manufacturing hollowing, and high public debt, militarily on the burden and unsustainability of being world policeman, and politically on hyper-polarization and increasingly self-defeating populism, with the notion of “hegemonic anxiety” framing U.S. actions as potentially volatile even while Beijing remains cautious.

Behaviorally, China’s caution is clear despite occasional economic coercion of allies from Japan to Canada and harder military signaling around Taiwan and the South China Sea; unlike Russia, China has not moved into overt territorial grabs. Strategically, analysts also stress a countertrend: U.S. share of global economic weight has plateaued over decades as China’s share has rapidly expanded, so relative change is real without implying absolute U.S. collapse; despite weakened institutional leadership, Washington still retains the largest global economic and military reach, and figures like Wang Jisi argue American polarisation has historically corrected, so Xi’s mid-May meeting is expected to treat the U.S. as dangerous but declining rather than omnipotent.

Source: China thinks America is declining but still uniquely dangerous

Subtitle: It sees Donald Trump as both symptom and accelerant of the decline

Dateline: 5月 07, 2026 06:28 上午