風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
Civilization state versus nation-state
http://www.martinjacques.com/uncategorised/civilization-state-versus-nation-state/
This article was the most read article in April 2020. The original copy was published on the 15th January, 2011. The embedded video is extracted from an interview with Fu Xiaotian on Talk with World Leaders (Phoenix TV) on the 18th June, 2020
China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it
China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it. Worse, we are not even conscious of the fact. We insist on seeing the world through our Western prism. No other tradition or history or culture can compare. Ours is superior to all and others, in deviating from ours, are diminished as a consequence.
中國讓歐洲麵臨一個巨大的問題：我們不理解它。 更糟糕的是，我們甚至沒有意識到這一事實。 我們堅持通過我們的西方棱鏡看世界。 沒有任何其他傳統、曆史或文化可以與之相比。 我們的優於所有人，其他人偏離我們的結果會被削弱。
This speaks not of our wisdom but our ignorance, an expression not of our cosmopolitanism but our insularity and provincialism. It is a consequence of being in the ascendant for at least two centuries, if not rather longer. Eurocentrism – or perhaps we should say western-centrism – has become our universal yardstick against which, in varying degrees, all others fail.
這不是我們的智慧而是我們的無知，不是我們的世界主義而是我們的狹隘和地方主義的表現。 這是處於上升期至少兩個世紀（如果不是更長的話）的結果。 歐洲中心主義——或者我們應該說西方中心主義——已經成為我們的普遍標準，所有其他標準都在不同程度上失敗了。
This mindset threatens to become our greatest handicap as we enter an era in which Europe will be progressively marginalised, the United States will experience irreversible decline, the emergent nations will become major actors and China will replace the United States as the dominant power. In other words, those countries and cultures that we now look down upon will increasingly become the arbiters of the future. How will we ever make sense of them if we refuse to understand them in anything other than our own Western terms? How will they view us if we continue to look down upon their culture and polities as inferior to our own?
隨著我們進入一個歐洲將逐漸被邊緣化、美國將經曆不可逆轉的衰落、新興國家將成為主要參與者、中國將取代美國成為主導力量的時代，這種心態有可能成為我們最大的障礙。 換句話說，那些我們現在看不起的國家和文化，將越來越成為未來的仲裁者。 如果我們拒絕用我們自己的西方術語以外的任何方式來理解它們，我們將如何理解它們？ 如果我們繼續看不起他們的文化和政治不如我們自己的，他們會如何看待我們？
Which brings us to China. We choose to see China overwhelmingly in a context calibrated according to Western values: what overwhelmingly preoccupies us is the absence of a Western-style democracy, a lack of human rights, the plight of the Tibetans, and the country’s poor environmental record. No doubt you could add a few more to that list. I am not arguing that such issues do not matter – they do – but our insistence on judging China in our own terms diverts us from a far more important task:
這把我們帶到了中國。 我們選擇壓倒性地在根據西方價值觀校準的背景下看待中國：我們壓倒性地關注的是缺乏西式民主、缺乏人權、西藏人的困境以及該國糟糕的環境記錄。 毫無疑問，您可以在該列表中添加更多。 我並不是說這些問題不重要——它們確實重要——但我們堅持以我們自己的方式來評判中國，這讓我們偏離了一項更重要的任務：
understanding China in its own terms. If we fail to do that then, quite simply, we will never understand it. That is why mainstream Western commentary on China over the last three or more decades has singularly failed to get China right, from predicting the imminent downfall of the regime after Tiananmen Square and the likely break-up of the country, to the constant insistence ever since that the economic growth could not possibly last and that the regime would be unable to sustain itself. Virtually no-one predicted what has happened; phenomenal economic growth for over thirty years and a regime that has been hugely successful and which now enjoys greater legitimacy and prestige than at any time since the reform period began in 1978.
以自己的方式了解中國。 如果我們不這樣做，那麽很簡單，我們將永遠無法理解它。 這就是為什麽在過去三個或更多的十年裏，西方對中國的主流評論從預測天安門事件後政權即將垮台和國家可能解體，到從那以後一直堅持 經濟增長不可能持續，政權將無法維持。 幾乎沒有人預料到會發生什麽； 三十多年來顯著的經濟增長和一個取得巨大成功的政權，現在比 1978 年改革時期開始以來的任何時候都享有更大的合法性和聲望。
Our western-centric value-judgements about China must no longer be allowed to act as a substitute for understanding the country in its own terms. This is no easy task. China is profoundly different from the West in the most basic of ways. Perhaps the most basic difference is that it is not a nation-state in the European sense of the term. Indeed, it has only described itself as such since around 1900. Anyone who knows anything about China is aware that it is a lot older than that. China, as we know it today, dates back to 221BC, in some respects much earlier. That date marked the end of the Warring States period, the victory of the Qin, and the birth of the Qin Empire whose borders embraced a considerable slice of what is today the eastern half of China and by far its most populous part.
不能再讓我們以西方為中心的對中國的價值判斷替代從中國自身的角度來理解這個國家。 這不是一件容易的事。 中國在最基本的方麵與西方有著深刻的不同。 也許最基本的區別是它不是歐洲意義上的民族國家。 事實上，它自 1900 年左右才這樣描述自己。任何了解中國的人都知道它比這要古老得多。 正如我們今天所知，中國的曆史可以追溯到公元前 221 年，在某些方麵要早得多。 那一天標誌著戰國時代的結束、秦的勝利以及秦帝國的誕生，其邊界涵蓋了今天中國東部的相當大一部分，也是迄今為止人口最多的地區。
For over two millennia, the Chinese thought of themselves as a civilization rather than a nation. The most fundamental defining features of China today, and which give the Chinese their sense of identity, emanate not from the last century when China has called itself a nation-state but from the previous two millennia when it can be best described as a civilization-state: the relationship between the state and society, a very distinctive notion of the family, ancestral worship, Confucian values, the network of personal relationships that we call guanxi, Chinese food and the traditions that surround it, and, of course, the Chinese language with its unusual relationship between the written and spoken form. The implications are profound: whereas national identity in Europe is overwhelmingly a product of the era of the nation-state – in the United States almost exclusively so – in China, on the contrary, the sense of identity has primarily been shaped by the country’s history as a civilization-state. Although China describes itself today as a nation-state, it remains essentially a civilization-state in terms of history, culture, identity and ways of thinking. China’s geological structure is that of a civilization-state; the nation-state accounts for little more than the top soil.
兩千年來，中國人認為自己是一個文明而不是一個民族。 當今中國最基本的定義特征，以及賦予中國人認同感的特征，不是來自上個世紀中國稱自己為民族國家時，而是來自前兩千年，當時中國可以被最好地描述為一種文明—— 國家：國家與社會之間的關係，一個非常獨特的家庭觀念，祖先崇拜，儒家價值觀，我們稱之為關係的人際關係網絡，中國食品及其周圍的傳統，當然還有中國人 語言及其書麵和口頭形式之間不尋常的關係。 其影響是深遠的：雖然歐洲的民族認同絕大多數是民族國家時代的產物——在美國幾乎完全如此——但在中國，恰恰相反，認同感主要是由該國的曆史塑造的 作為一個文明國家。 盡管今天的中國將自己描述為一個民族國家，但就曆史、文化、身份和思維方式而言，它本質上仍然是一個文明國家。 中國的地質結構是文明國家的地質結構； 民族國家隻占最表層的土壤。
China, as a civilization-state, has two main characteristics. Firstly, there is its exceptional longevity, dating back to even before the break-up of the Roman Empire. Secondly, the sheer scale of China – both geographic and demographic – means that it embraces a huge diversity. Contrary to the Western belief that China is highly centralised, in fact in many respects the opposite is the case: indeed, it would have been impossible to govern the country – either now or in the dynastic period – on such a basis. It is simply too large. The implications in terms of the way the Chinese think are profound.
中國作為一個文明國家，有兩個主要特點。 首先，它的壽命非常長，甚至可以追溯到羅馬帝國解體之前。 其次，中國的龐大規模——包括地理和人口——意味著它擁有巨大的多樣性。 與西方認為中國是高度集權的看法相反，事實上在許多方麵情況恰恰相反：事實上，無論是現在還是在王朝時期，都不可能在這樣的基礎上治理國家。 它太大了。 中國人思維方式的影響是深遠的。
In 1997 Hong Kong was handed over to China by the British. The Chinese constitutional proposal was summed up in the phrase: ‘one country, two systems’. Barely anyone in the West gave this maxim much thought or indeed credence; the assumption was that Hong Kong would soon become like the rest of China. This was entirely wrong. The political and legal structure of Hong Kong remains as different now from the rest of China as in 1997. The reason we did not take the Chinese seriously is that the West is characterised by a nation-state mentality, hence when Germany was unified in 1990 it was done solely and exclusively on the basis of the Federal Republic; the DDR in effect disappeared. ‘One nation-state, one system’ is the nation-state way of thinking. But, as a civilization-state, the Chinese logic is quite different. Because China is so vast and embraces such diversity, as a matter of necessity it must be flexible: ‘one civilization, many systems’.
1997年香港由英國移交給中國。 中國的憲法提案可以用一句話來概括：“一個國家，兩種製度”。 在西方，幾乎沒有人認真考慮或相信這條格言。 假設香港很快就會變得像中國其他地區一樣。 這是完全錯誤的。 香港的政治和法律結構與 1997 年時一樣與中國其他地區不同。我們沒有認真對待中國人的原因是西方以民族國家心態為特征，因此在 1990 年德國統一時 它完全是在聯邦共和國的基礎上完成的； DDR 實際上消失了。 “一個民族國家，一種製度”是民族國家的思維方式。 但是，作為一個文明國家，中國的邏輯卻截然不同。 因為中國幅員遼闊，包含如此多的多樣性，所以它必須具有靈活性：“一種文明，多種製度”。
The idea of China as a civilization-state is a fundamental building block for understanding China in its own terms. And it has multifarious implications. The relationship between the state and society in China is very different to that in the West. Contrary to the overwhelming Western assumption that the Chinese state lacks legitimacy and is bereft of public support, in fact the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. We have come to assume that the legitimacy of the state overwhelmingly rests on the democratic process – universal suffrage, competing parties et al. But this is only one element: if it was the whole story, then the Italian state would enjoy a robust legitimacy rather than the reality, a chronic lack of it. And to explain this we have to go back to the Risorgimento as only a partially fulfilled project.
中國作為一個文明國家的想法是從中國自身的角度理解中國的基本基石。 它具有多方麵的含義。 中國國家與社會的關係與西方截然不同。 與西方普遍認為中國政府缺乏合法性且缺乏公眾支持相反，事實上，中國政府比任何西方國家都享有更大的合法性。 我們已經開始假設國家的合法性絕大多數取決於民主進程——普選、競爭政黨等。 但這隻是一個因素：如果這是整個故事，那麽意大利政府將享有強大的合法性，而不是長期缺乏合法性的現實。 為了解釋這一點，我們必須回到意大利複興運動，認為它隻是一個部分完成的項目。
The reason why the Chinese state enjoys a formidable legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese has nothing to do with democracy but can be found in the relationship between the state and Chinese civilization. The state is seen as the embodiment, guardian and defender of Chinese civilization. Maintaining the unity, cohesion and integrity of Chinese civilization – of the civilization-state – is perceived as the highest political priority and is seen as the sacrosanct task of the Chinese state. Unlike in the West, where the state is viewed with varying degrees of suspicion, even hostility, and is regarded, as a consequence, as an outsider, in China the state is seen as an intimate, as part of the family, indeed as the head of the family; interestingly, in this context, the Chinese term for nation-state is ‘nation-family'.
中國國家之所以在中國人眼中享有強大的合法性，與民主無關，而在於國家與中華文明的關係。 國家被視為中華文明的化身、守護者和捍衛者。 維護中華文明——文明國家——的統一、凝聚和完整性被視為最高政治優先事項，被視為中華國家神聖不可侵犯的任務。 在西方，國家被不同程度地懷疑，甚至敵視，並因此被視為局外人，而在中國，國家被視為親密的人，家庭的一部分，實際上是 一家之主； 有趣的是，在這種情況下，民族國家的中文術語是“民族家庭”。
Or consider a quite different example. Over 90 per cent of Chinese think of themselves as of one race, the Han. This is so different from the world’s other most populous nations – India, United States, Indonesia and Brazil, all of which are highly multi-racial – as to be extraordinary. Of course, in reality the Han were a product of many different races, but the Han do not think of themselves like that. And the reason takes us back to the civilization-state and one of its defining characteristics, namely China’s remarkable longevity. Over thousands of years, as a result of many processes, cultural, racial and ethnic, the differences between the many races that comprised the Han have been weakened to the point where they were no longer significant.
或者考慮一個完全不同的例子。 超過 90% 的中國人認為自己屬於一個種族，即漢族。 這與世界上其他人口最多的國家——印度、美國、印度尼西亞和巴西，所有這些國家都是高度多種族的國家——截然不同，非同尋常。 當然，實際上漢人是許多不同種族的產物，但漢人並不這樣認為。 原因讓我們回到了文明國家及其決定性特征之一，即中國非凡的長壽。 幾千年來，由於文化、種族和民族的許多過程，構成漢族的許多種族之間的差異已經弱化到不再重要的地步。
We will never make sense of China if we persist in treating it as if it is, or should be, a product of our own civilization. Our present attitude towards China is a function of arrogance and ignorance. And it threatens to leave us bewildered, confused and alienated. Our historical inheritance, and the mentality it has engendered, ill equips us for the very new world that is presently unfolding before us.
如果我們堅持將中國視為或應該是我們自己文明的產物，那麽我們將永遠無法理解中國。 我們目前對中國的態度是傲慢和無知的結果。 它可能會讓我們感到困惑、困惑和疏遠。 我們的曆史遺產及其所產生的心態使我們無法為目前正在我們麵前展開的全新世界做好準備。
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Understanding the rise of China
TEDSalon London 2010
https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china?language=en
Martin Jacques is the author of "When China Rules the World," and a columnist for the Guardian and New Statesman. He was a co-founder of the think tank Demos.
Speaking at a TED Salon in London, Martin Jacques asks: How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise? The author of "When China Rules the World," he examines why the West often puzzles over the growing power of the Chinese economy, and offers three building blocks for understanding what China is and will become.
在倫敦的 TED 沙龍上，馬丁·雅克問道：我們西方人如何理解中國及其非凡的崛起？ 作為《當中國統治世界》一書的作者，他研究了為什麽西方經常對中國經濟不斷增長的力量感到困惑，並提供了理解中國現在和未來的三個基石。
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at the latest projection by BNP Paribas for when China will have a larger economy than the United States. Goldman Sachs projected 2027. The post-crisis projection is 2020. That's just a decade away. China is going to change the world in two fundamental respects. First of all, it's a huge developing country with a population of 1.3 billion people, which has been growing for over 30 years at around 10 percent a year.
幾周前，我在看法國巴黎銀行關於中國經濟規模何時超過美國的最新預測。 高盛預測 2027 年。危機後的預測是 2020 年。距離現在隻有十年。 中國將在兩個根本方麵改變世界。 首先，中國是一個擁有13億人口的發展中大國，30多年來一直以每年10%左右的速度增長。
And within a decade, it will have the largest economy in the world. Never before in the modern era has the largest economy in the world been that of a developing country, rather than a developed country. Secondly, for the first time in the modern era, the dominant country in the world -- which I think is what China will become -- will be not from the West and from very, very different civilizational roots.
十年之內，它將擁有世界上最大的經濟體。 在當今時代，世界上最大的經濟體從來沒有出現在發展中國家，而不是發達國家。 其次，在現代時代，世界上的主導國家——我認為中國將成為這樣——將第一次不再來自西方，也不再來自非常非常不同的文明根源。
Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West. It will remain in very fundamental respects very different. Now the big question here is obviously, how do we make sense of China? How do we try to understand what China is? And the problem we have in the West at the moment, by and large, is that the conventional approach is that we understand it really in Western terms, using Western ideas. We can't. Now I want to offer you three building blocks for trying to understand what China is like, just as a beginning.
現在，我知道西方普遍認為隨著國家現代化，他們也會西化。 這是一種錯覺。 它假設現代性隻是競爭、市場和技術的產物。 它不是。 它也同樣受到曆史和文化的影響。 中國不像西方，也不會變得像西方。 它將在非常基本的方麵保持非常不同。 現在的大問題顯然是，我們如何理解中國？ 我們如何嚐試了解什麽是中國？ 總的來說，我們目前在西方遇到的問題是，傳統的方法是我們真正用西方的術語、使用西方的思想來理解它。 我們不能。 現在，我想為您提供三個構建塊，以幫助您了解中國是什麽樣的，這隻是一個開始。
The first is this: that China is not really a nation-state. Okay, it's called itself a nation-state for the last hundred years, but everyone who knows anything about China knows it's a lot older than this. This was what China looked like with the victory of the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. at the end of the warring-state period -- the birth of modern China. And you can see it against the boundaries of modern China. Or immediately afterward, the Han Dynasty, still 2,000 years ago. And you can see already it occupies most of what we now know as Eastern China, which is where the vast majority of Chinese lived then and live now.
首先是：中國並不是真正的民族國家。 好吧，它自稱是近百年的民族國家，但凡了解中國的人都知道它比這古老得多。 這就是公元前 221 年秦朝勝利後的中國。 戰國末期——近代中國誕生。 你可以在現代中國的邊界上看到它。 或者緊隨其後的是漢朝，距今還有 2000 年。 你可以看到它已經占據了我們現在所知的華東地區的大部分地區，那裏是當時和現在絕大多數中國人居住的地方。
Now what is extraordinary about this is, what gives China its sense of being China, what gives the Chinese the sense of what it is to be Chinese, comes not from the last hundred years, not from the nation-state period, which is what happened in the West, but from the period, if you like, of the civilization-state. I'm thinking here, for example, of customs like ancestral worship, of a very distinctive notion of the state, likewise, a very distinctive notion of the family, social relationships like guanxi, Confucian values and so on. These are all things that come from the period of the civilization-state. In other words, China, unlike the Western states and most countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of civilization, its existence as a civilization-state, rather than as a nation-state. And there's one other thing to add to this, and that is this: Of course we know China's big, huge, demographically and geographically, with a population of 1.3 billion people. What we often aren't really aware of is the fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic, and in many ways very decentralized. You can't run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case. It's never been the case.
現在這件事的不同尋常之處在於，是什麽賦予了中國它是中國的感覺，是什麽賦予了中國人什麽是中國人的感覺，它不是來自上個百年，也不是來自民族國家時期，那是什麽 發生在西方，但如果你願意的話，來自文明國家的時期。 例如，我在這裏想到的是祖先崇拜這樣的習俗，一種非常獨特的國家觀念，同樣，一種非常獨特的家庭觀念，社會關係，如關係、儒家價值觀等等。 這些都是文明國家時期的東西。 換句話說，與西方國家和世界上大多數國家不同，中國是由它的文明意識塑造的，它作為一個文明國家而不是一個民族國家存在。 還有一件事要補充一點，那就是：我們當然知道中國幅員遼闊，人口眾多，地理分布廣，擁有 13 億人口。 我們常常沒有真正意識到的是，中國極其多樣化和多元化，而且在許多方麵非常分散。 你不能僅僅從北京經營一個如此規模的地方，盡管我們認為是這樣。 從來沒有這樣。
So this is China, a civilization-state, rather than a nation-state. And what does it mean? Well, I think it has all sorts of profound implications. I'll give you two quick ones. The first is that the most important political value for the Chinese is unity, is the maintenance of Chinese civilization. You know, 2,000 years ago, Europe: breakdown -- the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire. It divided, and it's remained divided ever since. China, over the same time period, went in exactly the opposite direction, very painfully holding this huge civilization, civilization-state, together.
所以這就是中國，一個文明國家，而不是一個民族國家。 這是什麽意思？ 好吧，我認為它具有各種深遠的影響。 我會給你兩個快速的。 首先是中國人最重要的政治價值是團結，是維護中華文明。 你知道，2000 年前的歐洲：崩潰——神聖羅馬帝國的分裂。 它分裂了，從那以後一直分裂。 而同一時期的中國卻走上了完全相反的方向，非常痛苦地將這個巨大的文明、文明國家維係在一起。
The second is maybe more prosaic, which is Hong Kong. Do you remember the handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China in 1997? You may remember what the Chinese constitutional proposition was. One country, two systems. And I'll lay a wager that barely anyone in the West believed them. "Window dressing. When China gets its hands on Hong Kong, that won't be the case." Thirteen years on, the political and legal system in Hong Kong is as different now as it was in 1997. We were wrong. Why were we wrong? We were wrong because we thought, naturally enough, in nation-state ways. Think of German unification, 1990. What happened? Well, basically the East was swallowed by the West. One nation, one system. That is the nation-state mentality. But you can't run a country like China, a civilization-state, on the basis of one civilization, one system. It doesn't work. So actually the response of China to the question of Hong Kong -- as it will be to the question of Taiwan -- was a natural response: one civilization, many systems.
第二個可能更平淡無奇，那就是香港。 你還記得1997年英國將香港移交給中國嗎？ 你可能還記得中國的憲法命題是什麽。 一國兩製。 我敢打賭，西方幾乎沒有人相信他們。 “裝點門麵。當中國控製香港時，情況就不會這樣了。” 十三年過去了，香港的政治和法律製度與1997年一樣不同。我們錯了。 為什麽我們錯了？ 我們錯了，因為我們很自然地以民族國家的方式思考。 想想德國統一，1990 年。發生了什麽事？ 好吧，基本上東方被西方吞沒了。 一國一製。 這就是民族國家的心態。 但你不能在一種文明、一種製度的基礎上管理像中國這樣的文明國家。 它不起作用。 所以實際上，中國對香港問題的反應——就像對台灣問題的反應一樣——是一種自然的反應：一種文明，多種製度。
Let me offer you another building block to try and understand China -- maybe not sort of a comfortable one. The Chinese have a very, very different conception of race to most other countries. Do you know, of the 1.3 billion Chinese, over 90 percent of them think they belong to the same race, the Han? Now, this is completely different from the world's [other] most populous countries. India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil -- all of them are multiracial. The Chinese don't feel like that. China is only multiracial really at the margins. So the question is, why? Well the reason, I think, essentially is, again, back to the civilization-state. A history of at least 2,000 years, a history of conquest, occupation, absorption, assimilation and so on, led to the process by which, over time, this notion of the Han emerged -- of course, nurtured by a growing and very powerful sense of cultural identity.
讓我為您提供另一個嚐試和了解中國的基石——也許不太舒服。 中國人對種族的看法與大多數其他國家截然不同。 你知道嗎，在13億中國人中，90%以上的人認為他們屬於同一個種族，漢族？ 現在，這與世界上[其他]人口最多的國家完全不同。 印度、美國、印度尼西亞、巴西——它們都是多種族的。 中國人沒有這種感覺。 中國隻是真正處於邊緣的多種族。 所以問題是，為什麽？ 好吧，我認為，本質上，原因再次回到了文明國家。 至少有 2000 年的曆史，征服、占領、吸收、同化等等的曆史，導致了這個過程，隨著時間的推移，這個漢人的概念出現了——當然，受到了一個日益強大的強大勢力的培育 文化認同感。
Now the great advantage of this historical experience has been that, without the Han, China could never have held together. The Han identity has been the cement which has held this country together. The great disadvantage of it is that the Han have a very weak conception of cultural difference. They really believe in their own superiority, and they are disrespectful of those who are not. Hence their attitude, for example, to the Uyghurs and to the Tibetans.
現在，這一曆史經驗的巨大優勢在於，如果沒有漢族，中國將永遠無法統一。 漢族身份一直是將這個國家凝聚在一起的水泥。 最大的缺點是漢族文化差異觀念很淡薄。 他們真的相信自己的優越感，並且不尊重那些沒有優越感的人。 這就是他們對維吾爾人和西藏人的態度。
Or let me give you my third building block, the Chinese state. Now the relationship between the state and society in China is very different from that in the West. Now we in the West overwhelmingly seem to think -- in these days at least -- that the authority and legitimacy of the state is a function of democracy. The problem with this proposition is that the Chinese state enjoys more legitimacy and more authority amongst the Chinese than is true with any Western state. And the reason for this is because -- well, there are two reasons, I think. And it's obviously got nothing to do with democracy, because in our terms the Chinese certainly don't have a democracy. And the reason for this is, firstly, because the state in China is given a very special -- it enjoys a very special significance as the representative, the embodiment and the guardian of Chinese civilization, of the civilization-state. This is as close as China gets to a kind of spiritual role.
或者讓我給你我的第三個基石，中國國家。 現在中國國家和社會的關係和西方有很大的不同。 現在我們西方人似乎絕大多數認為——至少在這些日子裏——國家的權威和合法性是民主的一種功能。 這個命題的問題在於，與任何西方國家相比，中國政府在中國人中享有更多的合法性和權威。 這樣做的原因是——嗯，我認為有兩個原因。 而且這顯然與民主無關，因為用我們的話來說，中國人肯定沒有民主。 而之所以會這樣，首先是因為國家在中國被賦予了非常特殊的——作為中華文明的代表、體現和守護者，文明國家具有非常特殊的意義。 這是中國接近某種精神角色的時候了。
And the second reason is because, whereas in Europe and North America, the state's power is continuously challenged -- I mean in the European tradition, historically against the church, against other sectors of the aristocracy, against merchants and so on -- for 1,000 years, the power of the Chinese state has not been challenged. It's had no serious rivals. So you can see that the way in which power has been constructed in China is very different from our experience in Western history. The result, by the way, is that the Chinese have a very different view of the state. Whereas we tend to view it as an intruder, a stranger, certainly an organ whose powers need to be limited or defined and constrained, the Chinese don't see the state like that at all. The Chinese view the state as an intimate -- not just as an intimate actually, as a member of the family -- not just in fact as a member of the family, but as the head of the family, the patriarch of the family. This is the Chinese view of the state -- very, very different to ours. It's embedded in society in a different kind of way to what is the case in the West.
第二個原因是因為，在歐洲和北美，國家的權力不斷受到挑戰——我的意思是在歐洲傳統中，曆史上反對教會，反對其他貴族階層，反對商人等等——1000 多年來，中國國家的權力沒有受到挑戰。 它沒有真正的競爭對手。 所以你可以看到，中國構建權力的方式與我們在西方曆史上的經曆大不相同。 順便說一下，結果是中國人對國家的看法截然不同。 盡管我們傾向於將其視為入侵者、陌生人，當然是一個權力需要受到限製、定義和約束的機構，但中國人根本不這麽看國家。 中國人將國家視為親密關係——實際上不僅僅是親密關係，而是家庭成員——實際上不僅是家庭成員，而且是一家之主，一家之主。 這是中國人對國家的看法——與我們的非常非常不同。 它以一種不同於西方的方式融入社會。
And I would suggest to you that actually what we are dealing with here, in the Chinese context, is a new kind of paradigm, which is different from anything we've had to think about in the past. Know that China believes in the market and the state. I mean, Adam Smith, already writing in the late 18th century, said, "The Chinese market is larger and more developed and more sophisticated than anything in Europe." And, apart from the Mao period, that has remained more or less the case ever since. But this is combined with an extremely strong and ubiquitous state. The state is everywhere in China. I mean, it's leading firms -- many of them are still publicly owned. Private firms, however large they are, like Lenovo, depend in many ways on state patronage. Targets for the economy and so on are set by the state. And the state, of course, its authority flows into lots of other areas -- as we are familiar with -- with something like the one-child policy.
我建議你，實際上我們在這裏處理的，在中國的背景下，是一種新的範式，它不同於我們過去必須考慮的任何事情。 要知道中國相信市場和國家。 我的意思是，亞當·斯密在 18 世紀後期就已經寫過，“中國市場比歐洲任何地方都更大、更發達、更成熟。” 而且，除了毛澤東時代之外，從那以後，情況或多或少一直如此。 但這與極其強大且無處不在的國家相結合。 國家在中國無處不在。 我的意思是，它是領先的公司——其中許多仍然是公有的。 像聯想這樣的私營企業，無論規模有多大，在很多方麵都依賴於國家的資助。 經濟等目標由國家設定。 國家，當然，它的權力流入許多其他領域——正如我們所熟悉的——比如獨生子女政策。
Moreover, this is a very old state tradition, a very old tradition of statecraft. I mean, if you want an illustration of this, the Great Wall is one. But this is another, this is the Grand Canal, which was constructed in the first instance in the fifth century B.C. and was finally completed in the seventh century A.D. It went for 1,114 miles, linking Beijing with Hangzhou and Shanghai. So there's a long history of extraordinary state infrastructural projects in China, which I suppose helps us to explain what we see today, which is something like the Three Gorges Dam and many other expressions of state competence within China. So there we have three building blocks for trying to understand the difference that is China -- the civilization-state, the notion of race and the nature of the state and its relationship to society.
而且，這是一個非常古老的國家傳統，一個非常古老的治國傳統。 我的意思是，如果你想要一個例子，長城就是其中之一。 但這又是另外一回事，這就是大運河，它最早開鑿於公元前五世紀。 終於在公元七世紀完工，全長1114英裏，連接北京、杭州和上海。 因此，中國有著悠久的非凡國家基礎設施項目的曆史，我想這有助於我們解釋我們今天所看到的，就像三峽大壩和許多其他國家能力在中國的表現。 因此，我們有三個基石來試圖理解中國的不同之處——文明國家、種族概念和國家的性質及其與社會的關係。
And yet we still insist, by and large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong -- our predictions about what's going to happen to China are incorrect -- this is the reason. Unfortunately, I think, I have to say that I think attitude towards China is that of a kind of little Westerner mentality. It's kind of arrogant. It's arrogant in the sense that we think that we are best, and therefore we have the universal measure. And secondly, it's ignorant. We refuse to really address the issue of difference. You know, there's a very interesting passage in a book by Paul Cohen, the American historian. And Paul Cohen argues that the West thinks of itself as probably the most cosmopolitan of all cultures. But it's not. In many ways, it's the most parochial, because for 200 years, the West has been so dominant in the world that it's not really needed to understand other cultures, other civilizations. Because, at the end of the day, it could, if necessary by force, get its own way. Whereas those cultures -- virtually the rest of the world, in fact, which have been in a far weaker position, vis-a-vis the West -- have been thereby forced to understand the West, because of the West's presence in those societies. And therefore, they are, as a result, more cosmopolitan in many ways than the West.
然而，我們仍然大體上堅持認為，隻要借鑒西方的經驗，用西方的眼光看中國，用西方的觀念，我們就可以了解中國。 如果你想知道為什麽我們似乎無誤地誤會了中國——我們對中國將要發生的事情的預測是不正確的——這就是原因。 不幸的是，我想，我不得不說，我認為對中國的態度是一種小西方人的心態。 這有點傲慢。 從我們認為自己是最好的這個意義上說，這是傲慢的，因此我們擁有普遍的衡量標準。 其次，它是無知的。 我們拒絕真正解決差異問題。 你知道，在美國曆史學家保羅科恩的一本書中有一段非常有趣的段落。 保羅科恩認為，西方認為自己可能是所有文化中最國際化的。 但事實並非如此。 在很多方麵，它是最狹隘的，因為 200 年來，西方在世界上一直占據主導地位，以至於它並不真正需要了解其他文化、其他文明。 因為，歸根結底，如果有必要，它可以用武力為所欲為。 而那些文化——事實上，實際上世界其他地方，相對於西方而言，它們一直處於弱得多的地位——因此被迫了解西方，因為西方在這些社會中的存在 . 因此，他們在許多方麵比西方更國際化。
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And the second implication is that the world will inevitably, as a consequence, become increasingly unfamiliar to us, because it'll be shaped by cultures and experiences and histories that we are not really familiar with, or conversant with. And at last, I'm afraid -- take Europe; America is slightly different -- but Europeans by and large, I have to say, are ignorant, are unaware about the way the world is changing. Some people -- I've got an English friend in China, and he said, "The continent is sleepwalking into oblivion." Well, maybe that's true, maybe that's an exaggeration. But there's another problem which goes along with this -- that Europe is increasingly out of touch with the world -- and that is a sort of loss of a sense of the future. I mean, Europe once, of course, once commanded the future in its confidence. Take the 19th century, for example. But this, alas, is no longer true.
第二個含義是，世界將不可避免地變得對我們越來越陌生，因為它會被我們並不真正熟悉或熟悉的文化、經曆和曆史所塑造。 恐怕最後——以歐洲為例； 美國略有不同——但我不得不說，歐洲人總的來說是無知的，沒有意識到世界正在改變的方式。 有些人——我在中國有一個英國朋友，他說，“這個大陸正在夢遊中被遺忘。” 好吧，也許這是真的，也許這是誇大其詞。 但隨之而來的還有另一個問題——歐洲越來越與世界脫節——這是一種對未來感的喪失。 我的意思是，歐洲曾經，當然，曾經自信地掌控著未來。 以 19 世紀為例。 但是，唉，這不再是真的了。
If you want to feel the future, if you want to taste the future, try China -- there's old Confucius. This is a railway station the likes of which you've never seen before. It doesn't even look like a railway station. This is the new [Wuhan] railway station for the high-speed trains. China already has a bigger network than any other country in the world and will soon have more than all the rest of the world put together. Or take this: now this is an idea, but it's an idea to be tried out shortly in a suburb of Beijing. Here you have a megabus, on the upper deck carries about 2,000 people. It travels on rails down a suburban road, and the cars travel underneath it. And it does speeds of up to about 100 miles an hour. Now this is the way things are going to move, because China has a very specific problem, which is different from Europe and different from the United States: China has huge numbers of people and no space. So this is a solution to a situation where China's going to have many, many, many cities over 20 million people.
腳注
如果你想感受未來，如果你想品嚐未來，試試中國——那裏有老孔子。 這是您前所未見的火車站。 它甚至看起來都不像一個火車站。 這是高速列車的新[武漢]火車站。 中國已經擁有比世界上任何其他國家都更大的網絡，而且很快就會超過世界上所有其他國家的總和。 或者這樣：現在這是一個想法，但它是一個很快就會在北京郊區嚐試的想法。 這裏有一輛巨型巴士，在上層甲板上載有大約 2,000 人。 它沿著郊區道路在鐵軌上行駛，汽車在它下麵行駛。 它的速度可達每小時 100 英裏左右。 現在這就是事情的發展方向，因為中國有一個非常具體的問題，它不同於歐洲，也不同於美國：中國人口眾多，空間不足。 因此，這是針對中國將有很多很多城市超過 2000 萬人口的情況的解決方案。
Okay, so how would I like to finish? Well, what should our attitude be towards this world that we see very rapidly developing before us? I think there will be good things about it and there will be bad things about it. But I want to argue, above all, a big-picture positive for this world. For 200 years, the world was essentially governed by a fragment of the human population. That's what Europe and North America represented. The arrival of countries like China and India -- between them 38 percent of the world's population -- and others like Indonesia and Brazil and so on, represent the most important single act of democratization in the last 200 years. Civilizations and cultures, which had been ignored, which had no voice, which were not listened to, which were not known about, will have a different sort of representation in this world. As humanists, we must welcome, surely, this transformation, and we will have to learn about these civilizations.
好的，那我想怎麽結束呢？ 那麽，對於眼前這個飛速發展的世界，我們應該持什麽樣的態度呢？ 我認為它會有好事也會有壞事。 但最重要的是，我想為這個世界爭辯一個積極的大局。 200 年來，世界基本上由一小部分人口統治。 這就是歐洲和北美所代表的。 中國和印度等國家（它們占世界人口的 38%）以及印度尼西亞和巴西等其他國家的到來，代表了過去 200 年來最重要的民主化行動。 曾經被忽視、沒有聲音、沒有被傾聽、不為人知的文明和文化，將在這個世界上以不同的方式呈現。 作為人文主義者，我們當然必須歡迎這種轉變，我們將不得不了解這些文明。
This big ship here was the one sailed in by Zheng He in the early 15th century on his great voyages around the South China Sea, the East China Sea and across the Indian Ocean to East Africa. The little boat in front of it was the one in which, 80 years later, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. (Laughter) Or, look carefully at this silk scroll made by ZhuZhou in 1368. I think they're playing golf. Christ, the Chinese even invented golf.
這裏的這艘大船就是15世紀初鄭和下西洋，繞南海、東海，橫渡印度洋到達東非的那艘大船。 它前麵的小船是 80 年後克裏斯托弗·哥倫布橫渡大西洋的那艘。 （笑聲） 或者，仔細看這幅1368年株洲所製的絹本，我覺得他們是在打高爾夫球。 天哪，中國人甚至發明了高爾夫。
