【赫芬顿邮报 20140218】拯救台湾

满仓

【中文标题】拯救台湾
【原文标题】Save Taiwan
【登载媒体】赫芬顿邮报
【原文作者】Mahlon Meyer
【原文链接】http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mahlon-meyer/save-taiwan_b_4800220.html


台湾必须要存在。它不仅仅是民主、五千年的文化和芳香的山川和河流，也不是峭壁边落入海中的花岗岩激起美丽的浪花；它不仅仅是一种人们对正义、善良和道德非抽象化的信仰，也不仅仅是到目前为止依然清洁的空气和干净的水源；它不仅仅是满怀怒气的媒体，也不仅仅是大中国区里唯一一个人民选举官员的地方。它必须要存在，因为13亿中国人需要一个榜样。

台湾是山巅的阳光之城，或许这就是为什么中国共产党坚决要摧毁其自由的原因。只要台湾继续存在，中国那些遭受污染和不良食品戕害、生活在水深火热环境中、遭受独裁统治洗脑而不是治愈他们几个世纪以来所遭受的创伤的民众，内心中必然有一样宝贵的东西。只要台湾存在，必然会有一样东西让共产党领导人担惊受怕，并且威胁到他们自身的存在。这样东西必须要永世存续下去，用我们的语言来说，那就是——希望。

美国人很难理解大部分中国人愤世嫉俗的态度。尽管如此，深藏在外表之下、历经数代积累起来的困苦生活依然是温暖、和善的风俗。但是对于其他人、对于那些超越了利己主义之外的、用来定义一个人的生活的各个方面，愤世嫉俗的态度依然普遍。就好像是在乡间和城市里横冲直撞的鬼魂。其原因来自除了少数精英人群之外所遭受的污染和一事无成的生命，或许精英才是最愤世嫉俗的。

台湾和中国经历了很长一段时间之后，刚刚开始首次直接的政治对话，然而台湾旅游的业内人士对此有不同的看法。中国直到不久前给这个小岛送去了成千上万的游客，给当地萎靡的经济带来了宝贵的现金。当地人在享受宿敌的慷慨同时，大力兴建基础设施，他们掏出本已不多的积蓄，怀着对两岸未来稳定、持续关系的美好憧憬，修建了酒店、道路和度假村。台湾提供旅游圣地，大陆提供游客。

但形势突然变化了，中国通过限制游客的方式对台湾进行制裁。据业内专业人士介绍，去年赴台游客达到250万，但今年的游客少之又少。

众所周知，台湾在大陆投资了数十亿美元兴建工厂，而且其40％出口商品的目的地都是中国大陆。十年前，哈佛大学历史学家William C. Kirby在台湾的一次演讲中预测，台湾海峡两岸的经济关系无法促进政治关系的进步。他认为，决定人类事务前进方向的是政治，不是经济。

制裁到底是经济手段还是政治手段？你从一个人类学家和一个政治学家那里会得到不同的答案。中国在对台湾进行经济制裁，这是软实力的体现，还是在宣战？

那么我们该如何理解台湾与中国新近的谈话？这对我们代表着什么？

台湾在中国内战中被打败，我们本以为这件事早已成为历史，但实际上它一直延续至今。国民党会说他们没有选择，台湾岛的未来取决于跟宿敌合作的紧密程度。

但实际情况更加复杂。国民党被大中国的梦想搞得心烦意乱，他们本想分享中国经济腾飞带来的利益，本以为让所有中国人团结起来面对外部邪恶世界的爱国主义可以掩盖政治分歧。毛蒋之间的战争毕竟已经结束半个多世纪了。

但他们低估了共产党的智力，也低估了自己作为垂头丧气、伤痕累累的中国民众希望所在的价值。

这对我们意味着什么？

让美国烦恼的事情是中国的海外巨额现金储备、污染、军事力量、国际影响力、对非洲和加勒比地区的投资、无数的学生涌入高等学府，其实我们搞错了重点。中国人无论如何都要解决自己的问题，无论那种方法都会带来更多的肮脏、独裁、民族主义和绝望。或者我们可以设法让台湾的民主试验成为共产党的榜样，至少是他们改革的一个动力。

我们必须确保中国周边有一个榜样可以存在十年，或二十年。这样当中国陷入彻底的混乱，当他们的国家遭到灭顶之灾，当他们失去了包括绝望的愤世嫉俗在内的一切，当他们叫天天不应叫地地不灵的时候，可以看到台湾海峡另一面的宿敌的榜样。我们必须确保台湾的民主得以延续，即使仅仅是一具收藏在博物馆里的遗骸，让中国人可以看到管理国家还有另外一种方法。

实际上，这不仅仅是民主的问题，这是一种来源于开放文化、有足够的自信来拥抱和试验外国社会结构模式的思想。中国在其鼎盛时期引进了佛教，另外一个开放的时期，随着内战引进了西方的思想，包括民主。

台湾一直保存着这种久远的文化传统。中国对地主的大规模屠杀并没有摧毁这个传统，地主在中国是文化的承载者，毛在改造中国社会时认为有必要对他们赶尽杀绝。于是很多地主逃到了台湾，带走了5000年的文化传统。

理想主义在台湾，唯物主义在大陆。

当然，问题并不是这么简单。但是如果不保存台湾今天的文化，我们必将失去更多无法挽回的东西。一个已经被吸收、被毁灭的文化无法被重建。

拯救台湾！



原文：

Taiwan must survive. It's not just democracy. It's not just five thousand years of culture. It's not just sweet-smelling hills and rivers like perfume. Nor is it cliffs like granite collapsing into oceans like glittering marble. It's not just a belief among the people that justice, goodness and morality are not just abstractions. It's not just clean air, so far. And clean water, for the most part. It's not just a rancorous media. It's not just that it is the only place in the greater Chinese world where people actually elect their officials. It must survive so that the 1.3 billion people of China have a role model.

Taiwan is the shining city on the hill. Perhaps that is why the Chinese Communist Party is so adamant about destroying its liberties. So long as Taiwan survives, the masses of China, chained in pollution and poor food, chained in lives of poverty and hell, chained to a dictatorial system that brainwashes them rather than heals them of the trauma of centuries of collapse, so long as Taiwan survives, something will exist that is so scary to the communist leaders that it will threaten their very survival. That something that must survive, to translate it into our language is: hope.

Americans scarcely comprehend the cynicism of most Chinese. Granted, deep below the exterior, the hardness built up by generations of fear, is often warmth and kindness. But cynicism about other people, about anything higher than selfishness as defining human life, is rampant. It is like the ghost that rampages through the countryside and major cities. Its trappings are the pollution and wasted lives of most but the very few elite. Perhaps the elite are the most cynical of all.

Taiwan and China have started having direct political talks for the first time in a long time. Taiwan watchers with direct connections with the tourism business have another explanation for it. Until recently, China sent millions upon millions of tourists to the island, bringing in much-needed cash to the starving economy. The locals, on Taiwan, rejoicing at the largesse of their former enemy, spent massively on infrastructure. They built hotels, roads and resorts, sinking their precious savings into what appeared to be a stable and solid future that would define relations between the two rivals. Taiwan would be a resort. The mainland would supply the tourists.

But then it all dried up. China suddenly implemented sanctions against Taiwan by restricting the flow of tourists. According to industry experts, last year the number of tourists reached 2.5 million. This year, it has been reduced to a trickle.

It is well known that Taiwan has invested billions in factories on the mainland. In addition, forty percent of its exports go to the mainland market. A decade ago, at a talk in Taiwan, Harvard historian William C. Kirby predicted that economic ties across the Taiwan Strait would not determine the political outcome of their relationship. He argued that it was usually politics, rather than economics, that determine the course of human events.

But are sanctions considered a political or an economic tool? You might get a different answer if you talked to an anthropologist or a political scientist. China is engaging in economic sanctions against Taiwan. Is this soft power? Or is this warfare?

So how do we understand these new talks between Taiwan and China? And what do they mean for us?

Here's the answer: Taiwan has just surrendered in the Chinese Civil War. We thought it was over. But now we see it's been going all this time. The Nationalists will say they had no choice, that the island's survival depends on pulling closer to the former enemy.

But it's more complicated than that. The Nationalists were distracted by the dream of a greater China. They thought that they could share in the wealth of a rising China. They thought that nationalism, the idea that all Chinese would stick together against a hostile world, would efface any political differences. After all, it's been over half a century since Mao and Chiang Kai-shek fought.

But they underestimated the mentality of the communists and they underestimated their own value as a beacon of hope to the discouraged and traumatized masses of China.

What does this mean for us?

As the United States frets over how to deal with China's foreign cash reserves, pollution, military build up, global posturing, investments in Africa and the Caribbean, influx of students to our higher institutions of learning, we are losing our focus. The Chinese will solve their problems one way or another. Either things are going to get a lot messier, more dictatorial, more nationalistic, more hopeless. Or somehow, the democratic experiment that has taken hold in Taiwan will someday serve as a model to the communist party, or at least those elements that want to reform.

We need to make sure that there is a model still around in a decade or two when the Chinese, reaching a state of ultimate crisis, when their lands are destroyed, when they are bankrupt and bereft of even their helpless cynicism, have nowhere else to turn but their former enemies across the Taiwan Strait. We need to make sure that Taiwan's democracy survives, even if only as a museum relic, to show the Chinese that there are other ways of governance.

Actually, it's not democracy itself that matters. What matters is the mindset, created by a culture of openness, a culture that contains enough true confidence to embrace and experiment with foreign articulations of social organization. China at its height imported Buddhism. Then during another period of openness, this time brought about by internal chaos, imported western ideas such as democracy.

On Taiwan is preserved this long, long tradition of culture. It was not destroyed, as it was on China, by the pogroms against landlords. Landlords were the culture bearers in traditional China. Mao found it necessary to exterminate most of them as he remolded society. The rest of them escaped to Taiwan, bringing with them 5,000 years of culture.

Idealism exists on Taiwan. Materialism on the mainland.

Sure it's not quite this simple. But without the preservation of Taiwan's culture as it is now, something will be gone that will be irretrievable. You cannot rebuild a culture that has been absorbed and reduced to ashes.

Save Taiwan.

Pentium_5

Better save yourself first!
最好还是先拯救你自己吧！（别唯恐天下不乱了）

Pentium_5

Actually, it's not democracy itself that matters. What matters is the mindset, created by a culture of openness, a culture that contains enough true confidence to embrace and experiment with foreign articulations of social organization. China at its height imported Buddhism. Then during another period of openness, this time brought about by internal chaos, imported western ideas such as democracy.

-- In fact, where there is the imported democracy, there are slaughters, chaos and wars. Unfortunately, as the so-called imported democracy realizes, corruption and autocracy still survive.
事实上，哪里有了这种舶来的民主，哪里便有了杀戮、混乱和战争。且不幸的是，随着这种所谓的舶来的民主的实现，腐败与独裁统治仍然幸存。

LI5367

阿门

寒冬过去的地方

楼主发此文，啥意思？难道国家现在对台政策有变？不可能吧？台湾现在就是中华民族的睾丸，是决不允许让世界上任何国家攥在其手中作主的。中国现在可以为了治好自己身体虚弱的毛病，只是暂时让美国的大资本将其拨动着玩，但是，中国并没有允许其攥在手中啊！故，楼主的文章眼界太低，楼主没有站到高处去看台湾、看中国、看美国。哈哈。

paoding

哦，那么先停止高价卖垃圾武器给台湾来压榨台湾人的无耻行径吧，、、、还真当台湾人全都是凯子啊？

why3

.