风萧萧_Frank
以文会友
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.
中国让欧洲面临一个巨大的问题：我们不理解它。 更糟糕的是，我们甚至没有意识到这一事实。 我们坚持通过我们的西方棱镜看世界。 没有任何其他传统、历史或文化可以与之相比。 我们的优于所有人，其他人偏离我们的结果会被削弱。
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.
这不是我们的智慧而是我们的无知，不是我们的世界主义而是我们的狭隘和地方主义的表现。 这是处于上升期至少两个世纪（如果不是更长的话）的结果。 欧洲中心主义——或者我们应该说西方中心主义——已经成为我们的普遍标准，所有其他标准都在不同程度上失败了。
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?
随着我们进入一个欧洲将逐渐被边缘化、美国将经历不可逆转的衰落、新兴国家将成为主要参与者、中国将取代美国成为主导力量的时代，这种心态有可能成为我们最大的障碍。 换句话说，那些我们现在看不起的国家和文化，将越来越成为未来的仲裁者。 如果我们拒绝用我们自己的西方术语以外的任何方式来理解它们，我们将如何理解它们？ 如果我们继续看不起他们的文化和政治不如我们自己的，他们会如何看待我们？
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:
这把我们带到了中国。 我们选择压倒性地在根据西方价值观校准的背景下看待中国：我们压倒性地关注的是缺乏西式民主、缺乏人权、西藏人的困境以及该国糟糕的环境记录。 毫无疑问，您可以在该列表中添加更多。 我并不是说这些问题不重要——它们确实重要——但我们坚持以我们自己的方式来评判中国，这让我们偏离了一项更重要的任务：
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国。 如果我们不这样做，那么很简单，我们将永远无法理解它。 这就是为什么在过去三个或更多的十年里，西方对中国的主流评论从预测天安门事件后政权即将垮台和国家可能解体，到从那以后一直坚持 经济增长不可能持续，政权将无法维持。 几乎没有人预料到会发生什么； 三十多年来显着的经济增长和一个取得巨大成功的政权，现在比 1978 年改革时期开始以来的任何时候都享有更大的合法性和声望。
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.
不能再让我们以西方为中心的对中国的价值判断替代从中国自身的角度来理解这个国家。 这不是一件容易的事。 中国在最基本的方面与西方有着深刻的不同。 也许最基本的区别是它不是欧洲意义上的民族国家。 事实上，它自 1900 年左右才这样描述自己。任何了解中国的人都知道它比这要古老得多。 正如我们今天所知，中国的历史可以追溯到公元前 221 年，在某些方面要早得多。 那一天标志着战国时代的结束、秦的胜利以及秦帝国的诞生，其边界涵盖了今天中国东部的相当大一部分，也是迄今为止人口最多的地区。
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.
两千年来，中国人认为自己是一个文明而不是一个民族。 当今中国最基本的定义特征，以及赋予中国人认同感的特征，不是来自上个世纪中国称自己为民族国家时，而是来自前两千年，当时中国可以被最好地描述为一种文明—— 国家：国家与社会之间的关系，一个非常独特的家庭观念，祖先崇拜，儒家价值观，我们称之为关系的人际关系网络，中国食品及其周围的传统，当然还有中国人 语言及其书面和口头形式之间不寻常的关系。 其影响是深远的：虽然欧洲的民族认同绝大多数是民族国家时代的产物——在美国几乎完全如此——但在中国，恰恰相反，认同感主要是由该国的历史塑造的 作为一个文明国家。 尽管今天的中国将自己描述为一个民族国家，但就历史、文化、身份和思维方式而言，它本质上仍然是一个文明国家。 中国的地质结构是文明国家的地质结构； 民族国家只占最表层的土壤。
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.
中国作为一个文明国家，有两个主要特点。 首先，它的寿命非常长，甚至可以追溯到罗马帝国解体之前。 其次，中国的庞大规模——包括地理和人口——意味着它拥有巨大的多样性。 与西方认为中国是高度集权的看法相反，事实上在许多方面情况恰恰相反：事实上，无论是现在还是在王朝时期，都不可能在这样的基础上治理国家。 它太大了。 中国人思维方式的影响是深远的。
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年香港由英国移交给中国。 中国的宪法提案可以用一句话来概括：“一个国家，两种制度”。 在西方，几乎没有人认真考虑或相信这条格言。 假设香港很快就会变得像中国其他地区一样。 这是完全错误的。 香港的政治和法律结构与 1997 年时一样与中国其他地区不同。我们没有认真对待中国人的原因是西方以民族国家心态为特征，因此在 1990 年德国统一时 它完全是在联邦共和国的基础上完成的； DDR 实际上消失了。 “一个民族国家，一种制度”是民族国家的思维方式。 但是，作为一个文明国家，中国的逻辑却截然不同。 因为中国幅员辽阔，包含如此多的多样性，所以它必须具有灵活性：“一种文明，多种制度”。
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.
中国作为一个文明国家的想法是从中国自身的角度理解中国的基本基石。 它具有多方面的含义。 中国国家与社会的关系与西方截然不同。 与西方普遍认为中国政府缺乏合法性且缺乏公众支持相反，事实上，中国政府比任何西方国家都享有更大的合法性。 我们已经开始假设国家的合法性绝大多数取决于民主进程——普选、竞争政党等。 但这只是一个因素：如果这是整个故事，那么意大利政府将享有强大的合法性，而不是长期缺乏合法性的现实。 为了解释这一点，我们必须回到意大利复兴运动，认为它只是一个部分完成的项目。
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'.
中国国家之所以在中国人眼中享有强大的合法性，与民主无关，而在于国家与中华文明的关系。 国家被视为中华文明的化身、守护者和捍卫者。 维护中华文明——文明国家——的统一、凝聚和完整性被视为最高政治优先事项，被视为中华国家神圣不可侵犯的任务。 在西方，国家被不同程度地怀疑，甚至敌视，并因此被视为局外人，而在中国，国家被视为亲密的人，家庭的一部分，实际上是 一家之主； 有趣的是，在这种情况下，民族国家的中文术语是“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.
或者考虑一个完全不同的例子。 超过 90% 的中国人认为自己属于一个种族，即汉族。 这与世界上其他人口最多的国家——印度、美国、印度尼西亚和巴西，所有这些国家都是高度多种族的国家——截然不同，非同寻常。 当然，实际上汉人是许多不同种族的产物，但汉人并不这样认为。 原因让我们回到了文明国家及其决定性特征之一，即中国非凡的长寿。 几千年来，由于文化、种族和民族的许多过程，构成汉族的许多种族之间的差异已经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.
如果我们坚持将中国视为或应该是我们自己文明的产物，那么我们将永远无法理解中国。 我们目前对中国的态度是傲慢和无知的结果。 它可能会让我们感到困惑、困惑和疏远。 我们的历史遗产及其所产生的心态使我们无法为目前正在我们面前展开的全新世界做好准备。
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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.
在伦敦的 TED 沙龙上，马丁·雅克问道：我们西方人如何理解中国及其非凡的崛起？ 作为《当中国统治世界》一书的作者，他研究了为什么西方经常对中国经济不断增长的力量感到困惑，并提供了理解中国现在和未来的三个基石。
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.
几周前，我在看法国巴黎银行关于中国经济规模何时超过美国的最新预测。 高盛预测 2027 年。危机后的预测是 2020 年。距离现在只有十年。 中国将在两个根本方面改变世界。 首先，中国是一个拥有13亿人口的发展中大国，30多年来一直以每年10%左右的速度增长。
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.
十年之内，它将拥有世界上最大的经济体。 在当今时代，世界上最大的经济体从来没有出现在发展中国家，而不是发达国家。 其次，在现代时代，世界上的主导国家——我认为中国将成为这样——将第一次不再来自西方，也不再来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.
现在，我知道西方普遍认为随着国家现代化，他们也会西化。 这是一种错觉。 它假设现代性只是竞争、市场和技术的产物。 它不是。 它也同样受到历史和文化的影响。 中国不像西方，也不会变得像西方。 它将在非常基本的方面保持非常不同。 现在的大问题显然是，我们如何理解中国？ 我们如何尝试了解什么是中国？ 总的来说，我们目前在西方遇到的问题是，传统的方法是我们真正用西方的术语、使用西方的思想来理解它。 我们不能。 现在，我想为您提供三个构建块，以帮助您了解中国是什么样的，这只是一个开始。
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：中国并不是真正的民族国家。 好吧，它自称是近百年的民族国家，但凡了解中国的人都知道它比这古老得多。 这就是公元前 221 年秦朝胜利后的中国。 战国末期——近代中国诞生。 你可以在现代中国的边界上看到它。 或者紧随其后的是汉朝，距今还有 2000 年。 你可以看到它已经占据了我们现在所知的华东地区的大部分地区，那里是当时和现在绝大多数中国人居住的地方。
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.
现在这件事的不同寻常之处在于，是什么赋予了中国它是中国的感觉，是什么赋予了中国人什么是中国人的感觉，它不是来自上个百年，也不是来自民族国家时期，那是什么 发生在西方，但如果你愿意的话，来自文明国家的时期。 例如，我在这里想到的是祖先崇拜这样的习俗，一种非常独特的国家观念，同样，一种非常独特的家庭观念，社会关系，如关系、儒家价值观等等。 这些都是文明国家时期的东西。 换句话说，与西方国家和世界上大多数国家不同，中国是由它的文明意识塑造的，它作为一个文明国家而不是一个民族国家存在。 还有一件事要补充一点，那就是：我们当然知道中国幅员辽阔，人口众多，地理分布广，拥有 13 亿人口。 我们常常没有真正意识到的是，中国极其多样化和多元化，而且在许多方面非常分散。 你不能仅仅从北京经营一个如此规模的地方，尽管我们认为是这样。 从来没有这样。
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.
所以这就是中国，一个文明国家，而不是一个民族国家。 这是什么意思？ 好吧，我认为它具有各种深远的影响。 我会给你两个快速的。 首先是中国人最重要的政治价值是团结，是维护中华文明。 你知道，2000 年前的欧洲：崩溃——神圣罗马帝国的分裂。 它分裂了，从那以后一直分裂。 而同一时期的中国却走上了完全相反的方向，非常痛苦地将这个巨大的文明、文明国家维系在一起。
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.
第二个可能更平淡无奇，那就是香港。 你还记得1997年英国将香港移交给中国吗？ 你可能还记得中国的宪法命题是什么。 一国两制。 我敢打赌，西方几乎没有人相信他们。 “装点门面。当中国控制香港时，情况就不会这样了。” 十三年过去了，香港的政治和法律制度与1997年一样不同。我们错了。 为什么我们错了？ 我们错了，因为我们很自然地以民族国家的方式思考。 想想德国统一，1990 年。发生了什么事？ 好吧，基本上东方被西方吞没了。 一国一制。 这就是民族国家的心态。 但你不能在一种文明、一种制度的基础上管理像中国这样的文明国家。 它不起作用。 所以实际上，中国对香港问题的反应——就像对台湾问题的反应一样——是一种自然的反应：一种文明，多种制度。
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.
让我为您提供另一个尝试和了解中国的基石——也许不太舒服。 中国人对种族的看法与大多数其他国家截然不同。 你知道吗，在13亿中国人中，90%以上的人认为他们属于同一个种族，汉族？ 现在，这与世界上[其他]人口最多的国家完全不同。 印度、美国、印度尼西亚、巴西——它们都是多种族的。 中国人没有这种感觉。 中国只是真正处于边缘的多种族。 所以问题是，为什么？ 好吧，我认为，本质上，原因再次回到了文明国家。 至少有 2000 年的历史，征服、占领、吸收、同化等等的历史，导致了这个过程，随着时间的推移，这个汉人的概念出现了——当然，受到了一个日益强大的强大势力的培育 文化认同感。
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.
现在，这一历史经验的巨大优势在于，如果没有汉族，中国将永远无法统一。 汉族身份一直是将这个国家凝聚在一起的水泥。 最大的缺点是汉族文化差异观念很淡薄。 他们真的相信自己的优越感，并且不尊重那些没有优越感的人。 这就是他们对维吾尔人和西藏人的态度。
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.
或者让我给你我的第三个基石，中国国家。 现在中国国家和社会的关系和西方有很大的不同。 现在我们西方人似乎绝大多数认为——至少在这些日子里——国家的权威和合法性是民主的一种功能。 这个命题的问题在于，与任何西方国家相比，中国政府在中国人中享有更多的合法性和权威。 这样做的原因是——嗯，我认为有两个原因。 而且这显然与民主无关，因为用我们的话来说，中国人肯定没有民主。 而之所以会这样，首先是因为国家在中国被赋予了非常特殊的——作为中华文明的代表、体现和守护者，文明国家具有非常特殊的意义。 这是中国接近某种精神角色的时候了。
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.
第二个原因是因为，在欧洲和北美，国家的权力不断受到挑战——我的意思是在欧洲传统中，历史上反对教会，反对其他贵族阶层，反对商人等等——1000 多年来，中国国家的权力没有受到挑战。 它没有真正的竞争对手。 所以你可以看到，中国构建权力的方式与我们在西方历史上的经历大不相同。 顺便说一下，结果是中国人对国家的看法截然不同。 尽管我们倾向于将其视为入侵者、陌生人，当然是一个权力需要受到限制、定义和约束的机构，但中国人根本不这么看国家。 中国人将国家视为亲密关系——实际上不仅仅是亲密关系，而是家庭成员——实际上不仅是家庭成员，而且是一家之主，一家之主。 这是中国人对国家的看法——与我们的非常非常不同。 它以一种不同于西方的方式融入社会。
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.
我建议你，实际上我们在这里处理的，在中国的背景下，是一种新的范式，它不同于我们过去必须考虑的任何事情。 要知道中国相信市场和国家。 我的意思是，亚当·斯密在 18 世纪后期就已经写过，“中国市场比欧洲任何地方都更大、更发达、更成熟。” 而且，除了毛泽东时代之外，从那以后，情况或多或少一直如此。 但这与极其强大且无处不在的国家相结合。 国家在中国无处不在。 我的意思是，它是领先的公司——其中许多仍然是公有的。 像联想这样的私营企业，无论规模有多大，在很多方面都依赖于国家的资助。 经济等目标由国家设定。 国家，当然，它的权力流入许多其他领域——正如我们所熟悉的——比如独生子女政策。
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，这是一个非常古老的国家传统，一个非常古老的治国传统。 我的意思是，如果你想要一个例子，长城就是其中之一。 但这又是另外一回事，这就是大运河，它最早开凿于公元前五世纪。 终于在公元七世纪完工，全长1114英里，连接北京、杭州和上海。 因此，中国有着悠久的非凡国家基础设施项目的历史，我想这有助于我们解释我们今天所看到的，就像三峡大坝和许多其他国家能力在中国的表现。 因此，我们有三个基石来试图理解中国的不同之处——文明国家、种族概念和国家的性质及其与社会的关系。
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，我们仍然大体上坚持认为，只要借鉴西方的经验，用西方的眼光看中国，用西方的观念，我们就可以了解中国。 如果你想知道为什么我们似乎无误地误会了中国——我们对中国将要发生的事情的预测是不正确的——这就是原因。 不幸的是，我想，我不得不说，我认为对中国的态度是一种小西方人的心态。 这有点傲慢。 从我们认为自己是最好的这个意义上说，这是傲慢的，因此我们拥有普遍的衡量标准。 其次，它是无知的。 我们拒绝真正解决差异问题。 你知道，在美国历史学家保罗科恩的一本书中有一段非常有趣的段落。 保罗科恩认为，西方认为自己可能是所有文化中最国际化的。 但事实并非如此。 在很多方面，它是最狭隘的，因为 200 年来，西方在世界上一直占据主导地位，以至于它并不真正需要了解其他文化、其他文明。 因为，归根结底，如果有必要，它可以用武力为所欲为。 而那些文化——事实上，实际上世界其他地方，相对于西方而言，它们一直处于弱得多的地位——因此被迫了解西方，因为西方在这些社会中的存在 . 因此，他们在许多方面比西方更国际化。
15:29
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.
第二个含义是，世界将不可避免地变得对我们越来越陌生，因为它会被我们并不真正熟悉或熟悉的文化、经历和历史所塑造。 恐怕最后——以欧洲为例； 美国略有不同——但我不得不说，欧洲人总的来说是无知的，没有意识到世界正在改变的方式。 有些人——我在中国有一个英国朋友，他说，“这个大陆正在梦游中被遗忘。” 好吧，也许这是真的，也许这是夸大其词。 但随之而来的还有另一个问题——欧洲越来越与世界脱节——这是一种对未来感的丧失。 我的意思是，欧洲曾经，当然，曾经自信地掌控着未来。 以 19 世纪为例。 但是，唉，这不再是真的了。
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.
脚注
如果你想感受未来，如果你想品尝未来，试试中国——那里有老孔子。 这是您前所未见的火车站。 它甚至看起来都不像一个火车站。 这是高速列车的新[武汉]火车站。 中国已经拥有比世界上任何其他国家都更大的网络，而且很快就会超过世界上所有其他国家的总和。 或者这样：现在这是一个想法，但它是一个很快就会在北京郊区尝试的想法。 这里有一辆巨型巴士，在上层甲板上载有大约 2,000 人。 它沿着郊区道路在铁轨上行驶，汽车在它下面行驶。 它的速度可达每小时 100 英里左右。 现在这就是事情的发展方向，因为中国有一个非常具体的问题，它不同于欧洲，也不同于美国：中国人口众多，空间不足。 因此，这是针对中国将有很多很多城市超过 2000 万人口的情况的解决方案。
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，那我想怎么结束呢？ 那么，对于眼前这个飞速发展的世界，我们应该持什么样的态度呢？ 我认为它会有好事也会有坏事。 但最重要的是，我想为这个世界争辩一个积极的大局。 200 年来，世界基本上由一小部分人口统治。 这就是欧洲和北美所代表的。 中国和印度等国家（它们占世界人口的 38%）以及印度尼西亚和巴西等其他国家的到来，代表了过去 200 年来最重要的民主化行动。 曾经被忽视、没有声音、没有被倾听、不为人知的文明和文化，将在这个世界上以不同的方式呈现。 作为人文主义者，我们当然必须欢迎这种转变，我们将不得不了解这些文明。
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.
这里的这艘大船就是15世纪初郑和下西洋，绕南海、东海，横渡印度洋到达东非的那艘大船。 它前面的小船是 80 年后克里斯托弗·哥伦布横渡大西洋的那艘。 （笑声） 或者，仔细看这幅1368年株洲所制的绢本，我觉得他们是在打高尔夫球。 天哪，中国人甚至发明了高尔夫。
