今秋，美国联邦政府关门，迫使第44任总统取消海外出访。在巴厘岛举行的APEC峰会少了巴拉克•奥巴马，中国国家主席习近平成为会议室内最有权势的人，美国的“重返亚洲”战略只能停留在嘴上功夫。

事实的确如此，习近平是2013年最有影响力的人物。中国局势平稳，而欧盟群龙无首，美国政治瘫痪。从全球大势来看，西方失去了主动权，只是被动地回应中国的新颖招式和快速动作。

习近平是2013年最有影响力的人物

中国最高领导人在12个月内引入了强有力的叙事，用“中国梦”表达中国人的时代精神。他接续着邓小平的改革精神。从安纳伯格庄园到巴厘岛，习近平不失谦谦君子之风，扮演世界政治舞台的关键角色。

习近平40岁担任福州市委书记，这是他成为国家主席之前担任过的16个领导岗位之一。他要求官员挂上“马上就办”四个大字；20年后，他塑造了中南海迅疾、高效的办事作风。

习近平的中国梦可以说三个部分的有机结合：“现代中国”、“全球化中国”和“文明中国”。

“现代中国”不仅包括孙中山以来的建国历史，还包括寻求社会经济发展的历程。中华人民共和国帮助数亿人民摆脱贫困，让广大妇女同胞识字接受教育——毛泽东说“妇女能顶半边天”——人均期望寿命从1950年的41岁，提高到现在的76岁。邓小平的“改革开放”政策依旧是改善中国社会状况的催化剂。

中国第五代领导人习近平肩负双重任务，一方面要保持毛泽东、邓小平、江泽民、胡锦涛以来的延续性，另一方面，面对变幻的内外部环境，引进新的动力。

十八届三中全会（与1978年的十一届三中全会有着直接关联）距离习近平担任国家主席仅仅过了8个月，他再度肯定邓小平的改革精神，提出“全面深化改革”。

正是习近平的父亲习仲勋（1913-2002）在广东任职3年间推动了邓小平的经济特区构想。另外，习近平1985-1988年任职的厦门也是经济特区之一，他尤其能够领会邓小平的深谋远略。

如三中全会公报所言：“面对新形势新任务……必须在新的历史起点上全面深化改革。”使市场在资源配置中起决定性作用的决定立即获得了吴敬琏等开明改革派的支持。

废除劳教制度、调整计划生育政策、成立全面深化改革领导小组等举措，构成了一系列的精心布局，务求改进中国的治理方式。

“现代中国”与“全球化中国”密不可分，后者是全球局势变化的最重要因素。中国的商品、技术、人才（海外人员、商人、学生、游客）、资本和文化正在通过21世纪的丝绸之路抵达世界各个角落。

当下中国是唐朝“天朝大国”的升级版，她越来越国际化，时刻把握互相依存、互利合作的21世纪精神。在中国梦的叙事中，“和平”理念对应“全球化中国”，“进步”理念对应“现代中国”。

“全球化中国”并没有向世界传教的意味，她不是霸权、不是全球领导者，而是回到“天朝大国”的“中央”理念。

中国宣布涵盖钓鱼岛的防空识别区，这一举措应从字面理解，是“预防”机制，美国、日本早就实行过，绝非侵犯。这显然是改变亚洲地缘政治现状的妙招，让外界逐渐承认中国的东海划界。虽然美国人反应高调，但政府已经要求航空公司遵从北京方面的新政策。

从南极考察站到北极航运线，甚至太空旅行，“全球化中国”的存在感越来越强。习近平的十年以嫦娥三号探月为起点，开始中国人探索外太空的征途。

西方维持现状、中国开创新时代的对比已经十分明显。西方认为2008年金融危机后的世界和以前没什么不同，而中国则日益坚持其自身的利益的诉求。全球化第一次蒙上了中国化的色彩。

与美国梦不同，中国梦不是凭空而来的叙事，它是4千年历史记忆对美好未来的想象，用习近平的话说，是“文明中国”的“复兴之路”。

建筑、设计、时尚、艺术等领域，中国的审美观念正在逐渐复兴。从茶道到书法，中国品位、中国形式焕发新的活力。“开放”不是中国进入西方世界，而是再度确认中国精神的自我意识，循此进入多极化世界。

“文明中国”务求再造中国古典文化，重解传统观念。经济增长提升了中国人的生活水平，而和谐理念则要求中国考虑环境因素，保持好物质发展与生态平衡之间的辩证关系。

进步、和平、和谐是支撑“现代中国”、“全球化中国”与“文明中国”的三大原则。

有意无意间，中国的第一夫人彭丽媛已经成为中国自信的象征。以中国梦为内容，习近平夫妇为媒介，习的十年从莫斯科出发，到巴厘岛、安纳伯格庄园，书写国际交流的范本。

2013年的重要性还与台湾有关。习近平在APEC峰会会见台湾地区特使萧万长时向台湾岛和世界宣告“两岸政治分歧终归要解决”。

如果邓小平的政治天才体现在香港“一国两制”，那习近平则处于解决台湾问题的有利位置。习近平在福建生活了17年，厦门与台湾仅有海峡之隔，他对台湾的经济、政治体制有着独具慧眼的认知。

习近平料曾从容思考“中国梦”的历史统一性，回味《三国演义》开篇：“天下大势，分久必合，合久必分。”

（本文原载于《赫芬顿邮报》网站2013年12月4日，原标题Xi Jinping - Person of the Year 2013. 观察者网朱新伟/译）

（翻页请看英文原文）

 

Xi Jinping - Person of the Year 2013

By David Gosset

In the fall, the shutdown of the U.S. federal government forced the 44th American President to cancel a series of trips abroad, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bali, in the absence of Barack Obama, China's President Xi Jinping was de facto the most powerful man in the room, the American pivot to Asia ironically reduced to a mere rhetorical posture.

It is indeed Xi Jinping who most influenced the year 2013. The constant movement in China contrasted with the lack of leadership in the European Union and the American political paralysis, on the global chessboard, the West lost the advantage of the initiative, it simply reacted to China's new moves and rapid actions.

Within 12 months, China's top leader introduced a powerful narrative apt to express the Chinese zeitgeist, the "China Dream," he managed to reconnect with Deng Xiaoping's spirit of reform, and, from Sunnylands to Bali, he occupied without departing from his natural modesty the center of the world's political stage.

At the age of 40 when Xi became the secretary of the Fuzhou Party Committee in the province of Fujian -- one of the 16 leadership positions he held before becoming China's President -- he requested his aides to hang on the walls of the office four Chinese characters "Ma Shang Jiu Ban" -- "Take immediate action"; twenty years later, he has taken to Zhongnanhai a management style characterized by swiftness and effectiveness.

Xi's China Dream is a dynamic synthesis which can be presented as a triptych, the interrelated visions of "Modern China", "Global China" and "Civilizational China."

"Modern China" summarizes the achievements which have been accomplished since the Republic of Sun Yatsen but it is also the quest for even greater socio-economic advancement. The People's Republic took hundreds of millions out of poverty, liberated the Chinese women -- "Women hold up half the sky," proclaimed Mao Zedong -- and extended for all the life expectancy -- 41 years in 1950, 76 now -- but Deng Xiaoping's "Reform and Opening up" remains a catalyst for improvement across the Chinese society.

As the core of the PRC's fifth generation of leaders Xi Jinping has a double task, he needs to maintain a certain level of continuity with the work of his predecessors -- Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao -- but he has also to introduce a new momentum in rapidly evolving internal and external contexts.

On the occasion of the third plenum of the 18th Congress of the Party, in a direct reference to the historical 1978 third plenary session of the 11th CPC Central Committee, eight months only after he became the PRC's President, Xi Jinping reaffirmed Deng Xiaoping's spirit of reformism with the notion of "comprehensive deepening of reforms" - quanmian shenhua gaige.

It is Xi's father Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002) who worked for almost three years in the Guangdong province from 1978 who pushed for Deng's idea of Special Economic Zones, moreover, Xi Jinping's tenure in Xiamen, one of the Special Economic Zones, from 1985 to 1988, put him in a situation to especially appreciate Deng's visionary strategy.

As stated in the plenum's communiqué Xi is taking China on a new course: "In the face of new circumstances and new tasks (...) reform must be comprehensively deepened from a new historical starting point." The choice to clearly allow market forces to play a decisive role in resource allocation immediately won the support of enlightened reformists like Wu Jinglian.
The abolition of the laojiao or the "Re-education through labor" system, the adjustment in the one-child policy, the constitution of a leading group to conduct a wide range of economic and financial reforms and the establishment of a National Security Committee form a series of well calculated decisions which perfect the way China is governed.

"Modern China" is interconnected with "Global China," the world's most significant factor of change. Chinese goods, technology, people -- diaspora, business men and women, students, tourists -- capital and culture are reaching every corner of the globe through an almost infinite number of 21st century's Silk Roads.

In an upgraded version of the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Middle Country is becoming increasingly cosmopolitan but it also projects itself globally with the awareness that interdependence and cooperation characterize the 21st century. In the China Dream, peace is to "Global China" what progress is to "Modern China", a conceptual reference and a project.
The widening of "Global China" is not accompanied by any missionary spirit, its horizon is not hegemony or even global leadership but the return to the Middle Country's ethos of centrality.

The announcement of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) which envelops the Diaoyu Islands should be interpreted for what it is, a defensive mechanism already used by the U.S. or Japan and certainly not an offensive operation. It is obviously a masterstroke altering Asian geopolitical status quo since it invites the world to gradually recognize China's mapping of the East China Sea, and, despite the use of a spectacular rhetoric, the American administration has already asked the U.S. commercial airlines to abide by Beijing's new policy.

"Global China" is not only the increasing Chinese presence abroad from stations in Antarctica to the Northern Sea Route of the Arctic but it is also an age of space travels and discoveries. The Xi Jinping decade started with the launch of the Chang'e-3 and its moon rover, another significant step into the Chinese exploration of deep space.

The contrast is striking between the West's attempts to preserve the status quo and China's making of a new world, the former believes that the post 2008 crisis period can be a copy of the pre-crisis situation, the latter anticipates a future which will be increasingly conform with its interests and intentions. As never before, globalization rimes with Sinicization.

Distinct from the American Dream, the China Dream can not be a narrative of pure newness, it is the imagination of a better future with the memory of 4000 years of history, a movement of renaissance -- a concept often used by Xi -- expressed in the vision of "Civilizational China."

In architecture, design, fashion and in the arts, a renewed Chinese aesthetics is gradually imposing itself, from tea to calligraphy, the Chinese savors and forms are been revitalized. The opening up of the Middle Country is not the dilution of China into a Western centered order but it is the reaffirmation of the Chineseness and, therefore, the entry into a multipolar world.

"Civilizational China" aims to reinvent the Chinese classical culture but it is also the reinterpretation of traditional notions. While quantitative growth is transforming the life of the Chinese people, harmony has become the imperative to take into account the environmental factor, the call to maintain the equilibrium between material development and sustainability.

Progress, peace and harmony are the principles which substantiate "Modern China", "Global China" and "Civilizational China."

In what can be interpreted as a coincidence but also as a revealing synchronicity, China's First Lady, Peng Liyuan, has become a symbol of China's confidence. Correspondence between the message, the China Dream, and the medium, China's First Couple, the Xi Jinping decade has also started from Moscow to Bali through Sunnylands with a master class in global communication.

But it is in reference to Taiwan that the year 2013 might have been highly significant. While Xi met a senior Taiwanese envoy, Vincent Siew, at the APEC Summit he explicitly signaled to the island and to the world that his decade might also mark the end of the Chinese political divide.

If Deng Xiaoping's political genius was at the source of Hong Kong's "One Country, Two Systems," Xi Jinping is ideally positioned to design a framework which would take into account the specificities of the Taiwan issue. After 17 years spent in Fujian, culturally a mirror of Taiwan, of which three years in Xiamen where he neighbored with the Jinmen archipelago administered by the Republic of China, Xi has gained truly unique insights on the Taiwanese economic and political dynamics.

He certainly had many occasions to reflect about the historical China Dream of unity and to meditate on the opening of Luo Guanzhong's immortal novel The Three Kingdoms : "The world under heaven, after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of union, tends to divide."

David Gosset is director of the Academia Sinica Europaea at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, Beijing & Accra, and founder of the Euro-China Forum.