本帖最后由 下个月 于 2010-3-15 08:10 编辑
【中文标题】为何要臣服中国？
【原文标题】Why Bow to China?
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文链接】http://www.newsweek.com/id/197899
【译者】满仓
【翻译方式】人工
【声明】本翻译供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，不得转载。
【原文作者】Christian Caryl
Many world leaders seem ready to cede Asian supremacy to Beijing— but China may not be ready for the role.
很多国家的领导人似乎已经决定把亚洲之王的桂冠戴在北京的头上，但是中国也许还没有做好接受这个称号的准备。
A growing chorus of pundits in Asia and the West is declaring that China's moment has finally arrived. Who can blame them? While the United States is trying to fight a massive economic contraction and to restore an image tarnished by two seemingly endless wars, China is growing and extending its influence. Throughout the Middle Kingdom, the confidence is palpable. Last month at the Boao Forum (Beijing's answer to Davos), a series of Chinese speakers dispensed with their usual modesty and derided Washington for its financial mismanagement, calling for the establishment of a new reserve currency to replace the dollar and demanding more influence in the global economic system. A few days later, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Navy, Beijing debuted two nuclear subs and vowed that its blue-water force would soon project power into the Pacific and beyond.
亚洲和西方的经济学家们异口同声地宣称中国时代终于到来了。谁说不是呢？当美国还在和经济衰退抗争，还在试图恢复其被两场似乎永无止境的战争玷污的形象时，中国在马不停蹄地成长，并延伸其影响力。目前，这个中土帝国的信心是无处不在、触手可及的。在上个月的博鳌论坛中（北京主办的达沃斯），一些中国发言者摒弃了以往谦虚的态度，嘲笑华盛顿经济政策的失误，并呼吁用新型的储备货币取代美元的位置，还要求在国际经济舞台上获得更多的影响力。几天之后，在中国海军成立60周年的庆祝仪式中，北京首次展出了两艘核潜艇，并郑重宣布其深海力量很快就会延伸到太平洋和更远的海域。! y6 i
What's particularly striking about the rise of China is how little anyone questions its purported status as the first nation of Asia. That's true even in Japan, which has an economy 10 times larger. The spectacle of Beijing's playing a lead role at global summits, where Tokyo is generally invisible, has been almost universally greeted as an overdue promotion. More and more, world leaders are quietly bowing to China as the superpower with all the economic momentum. This was the unspoken message when, last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy apologized to Chinese President Hu Jintao for meeting with the Dalai Lama, or when the U.S. quietly stopped accusing China of manipulating its currency. Newspapers from London to Seoul have begun heralding China's emergence as a global hegemon, and journalist Martin Jacques recently predicted in The Guardian that Shanghai would soon replace New York as "the world financial center." He did not even mention regional rivals like Tokyo, Singapore or Seoul.
中国的崛起最让人吃惊的一件事是，几乎没有人质疑其传说中的亚洲霸主地位，即使日本这个经济规模比中国大10倍的国家也是如此。北京在国际峰会中的形象光辉耀眼，而东京越来越淡出视线，这几乎被全世界认为是对中国地位的一个迟到的晋升。鉴于中国各方面的经济势头，越来越多的国家领导人默默地向这个超级大国鞠躬致意。当法国总统萨科齐在上个月就会见达赖喇嘛一事向中国主席胡锦涛道歉时，当美国悄悄停止指责中国操纵人民币汇率时，这一切都是不言而喻的。从伦敦到首尔的报纸都在预测中国即将成为世界的霸主。记者Martin Jacques最近在英国卫报上撰文预测，上海很快会取代纽约的“世界金融中心”地位。他根本没有提及上海的区域竞争对手，比如东京、新加坡和首尔。bbs
Scholars like UCLA's David Kang even argue that the rise of a Sinocentric world order could be a positive, stabilizing development. For much of the past two millennia, he notes, Asians took Chinese dominance as a fact of life. And that dominance was generally benign: while imperial China expected its neighbors to acknowledge its supremacy and pay it tribute, it otherwise mostly left them alone. Chinese hegemony proved remarkably stable and elastic, Kang says: "If you look at history, you may not automatically conclude that the bigger China gets, the more dangerous it is."
加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校的学者康大卫甚至认为，“中国中心论”的世界秩序或许是有积极意义的，有助于稳定发展。他说，在过去的两千年里，整个亚洲都认为中国的主导地位是天经地义的。这种主导、支配地位大致是这样形成的：中国帝国希望邻国承认它至高无上的地位，并纳贡，它给与“不侵略”的承诺作为回报。中国的统治被证明是极端稳定，而又有弹性的。康说：“如果你了解历史，就不会得出中国越强大，威胁就越大的结论。”
Perhaps. But it's worth asking whether China is really ready to call the shots, even regionally. Modern-day Asia is a messy, multipolar place that doesn't lend itself to hierarchies. China is much bigger than its neighbors in terms of the size of its economy, but by other measures—technology, per capita GDP or the strength of its institutions—it's far from supreme. Asia watcher Bill Emmott writes in his recent book, Rivals, that China's growth has been plagued by wasteful investment, massive capital export, bloated foreign-exchange reserves and crippling pollution. China's own prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said recently that structural problems are causing "unsteady, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable development."
这也许都是对的，但是还是有必要问一下，中国真的做好准备发号施令了吗？即使是在亚洲地区？目前的亚洲处于混乱、多极的状态，似乎没有等级制度的迹象。中国在国土面积和经济规模方面比它的邻居们大出很多，但是用其它标准来衡量，比如技术、人均GDP和制度的强势程度，它还远不到霸主的地位。亚洲观察家Bill Emmott在他的新书《对手》中写道，中国的增长是被过度浪费的投资、大规模的资本出口、过多的外汇储备和可怕的污染所填充起来的。中国总理温家宝最近也说，结构问题引发了“不稳定、不平衡、不协调、不持久的发展”。
The China model is hardly superior to its rivals for Asian leadership. Japan is far less corrupt and better managed, and holds a vast technological lead. While Japan's export-oriented economy has taken a huge hit from the global slowdown, its cash-rich companies have continued to spend heavily on R&D in everything from electronics to steel. Thus Japan now leads the world in green-car technology, and China is not likely to catch up. Charles Gassenheimer, CEO of the U.S. green-car firm Ener1, says that Japan's total investment in the development of state-of-the-art batteries was 10 times greater than America's every year in the decade after 1998, while China, by contrast, is only just entering the game (albeit at a rapid pace).
中国模式与其竞争对手比较起来，在争夺亚洲领导者地位方面，几乎没有什么优势。日本的腐败现象要少很多，并且握有大量的世界领先技术。尽管日本的出口导向型经济在全球金融危机中遭受重创，但那些富有的公司依然继续投入大量的科研资金在从电子到钢铁的各个方面。中国似乎不大可能有所起色。美国环保汽车公司Ener1的首席执行官Charles Gassenheimer说，从1998年开始的10年里，日本每年投资在艺术级电池开发上的总资金是美国的10倍。而中国，仅仅是刚刚加入到队伍中（尽管步伐不慢）。
Even South Korea—a country that loves to fret over its supposed status as a "shrimp between whales"—has emerged as a force, with one of the world's most dynamic, innovative and high-tech economies. In the recent International Innovation Index, South Korea scored second in the world, while China landed in 27th place. The Korean example suggests that Asia today has multiple leaders in different fields: China excels at producing huge volumes of low-cost products, but Japan and South Korea are tops in innovation and high-tech goods.
即使是韩国这样一个不愿意被人称作“游走与鲸鱼之间的小虾”的国家，也逐渐以世界上最有活力、最有创新精神和高技术含量的经济模式出现在人们的视野中。在最近一期的国际创新发明汇编中，韩国排名世界第二，而中国排在第27位。韩国的例子显示出当今亚洲的多极化、多领域的领导现状：中国赢在制造数量庞大的低成本产品，但日本和韩国在发明和高科技产品领域一枝独秀。
In many ways, the whole idea of a No. 1 is becoming passé. Some experts argue that Asians remain wedded to the idea because Confucian tradition emphasizes respect for hierarchy and order. But look at how Singapore is exploiting the growing importance of information technology to command a global role out of proportion to its tiny size. Or at how global trade and the Internet make it increasingly tough for Beijing to maintain order at home. The global age does not respect Confucian hierarchies.
从很多方面来看，整体意义上的“老大”已经不合时宜了。有些专家认为亚洲人依然对“老大”的位置怀有执念，因为孔学传统强调对等级制度和秩序的尊敬。但是，让我们看看新加坡，他们是如何通过开拓信息科技获得与其微小的国土面积不相称的全球地位；还可以看看国际贸易和互联网如何让北京越来越无法控制自己家中的秩序。全球化时代并不推崇孔子的等级制度。
Foreign-policy realists like to point out that the region has never before known a period when both China and Japan were strong at the same time. They worry that this development could lead to conflict, and fret that China's naval forces, which could be bottled up by the Japanese island chain in a conflict, have already taken to probing Japan's defenses. Meanwhile Tokyo has been beefing up its Coast Guard forces around disputed islands and staging surveillance flights over Chinese drilling rigs. Princeton political scientist Aaron Friedberg compares modern Asia to Europe in the 19th century, with great powers still jockeying for control.
一些现实的外交政策专家指出，亚洲这个地区从来没有过一个中国和日本都同时强盛的时期。他们担心目前这种发展趋势会导致双方的冲突，中国的海军力量也同样令他们不快。鉴于有可能在冲突中受制于日本列岛的地理优势，中国海军已经开始试探日本的防卫线。同时，东京也已经开始加强有争议岛屿周边的海岸防卫力量，并且在中国钻井平台上方开始监视性的飞行。普林斯顿政治研究专家Aaron Friedberg把当代的亚洲和19世纪的欧洲做比较，强国在不惜代价地争夺控制权。
Yet this point underlines just how far China is from regional supremacy. No single nation was able to dominate 19th-century Europe. Similarly, it's not clear China would win even a small conflict with Japan, much less a larger one that drew in Japan's main ally. Consider: despite years of double-digit increases in China's defense budget, it will be at least a decade before Beijing launches its first aircraft carrier—the mark of a serious navy able to project power. (The United States has 11.)
这个观点还同时强调了中国距离区域性霸主的位置有多么遥远，没有一个国家能够统治19世纪的欧洲。同样，中国是否可以在小规模冲突中战胜日本也是一个未知数，更不用提有可能把日本的主要盟友拉进来的大规模战争了。原因在于，尽管中国国防预算的增长已经连续几年超过两位数，但是北京还至少需要十年的时间才能造出一艘航母，而这是延伸海军军事力量能力的标志。（美国有11艘航母。）
Of course, China disavows any desire for military supremacy or economic tribute, and perhaps it should be taken at its word. Much has been made of how China and the U.S. are now fatefully tied to one another as creditor-to-debtor and seller-to-buyer. But the same is true of China and Japan. China surpassed the United States as Japan's No. 1 trading partner back in 2007. An aging Japan benefits from low-wage Chinese workers, while those factories in the Pearl River Delta often rely on machine tools and technology made in Japan. Global and regional cooperation are very much in both countries' self-interest.
当然，中国一直在否认对军事霸权和经济贡品的渴望，或许它应当说到做到。太多的事情把中美关系以债权人/债务人和卖方/卖方的方式宿命性地绑在一起，但是中日关系也是一样。中国在2007年就已经超过美国，成为日本的第一大贸易伙伴。日本长久以来一直受益于中国低廉的劳动力，而遍布珠三角的工厂里使用的机器、设备和技术都是来自日本。无论是全球还是区域范围内的合作都淋漓尽致地体现了双方自我利益的满足。
That doesn't mean there's no reason for neighbors to prepare for a more aggressive China. Efforts to create a regional self-defense organization have been stymied by differences in wealth and ideology and by fear of provoking Beijing. But there are ways to promote an Asia of many powers. The Obama administration seems to get this: when Hillary Clinton visited Asia in February, she made a point of hitting Japan first and then Seoul, urging them to work together. Then came Indonesia, a big new democracy. Only then did she stop in Beijing, where she called on the Chinese and Japanese to work together on climate change. That's just the kind of transnational issue that demands cooperation, not great-power jockeying—the kind of increasingly common problem that pays no attention to who's on top.
这并不意味着其它邻国不需要戒备中国的野心。在建立一个区域性自我防御组织方面的努力，因财富力量的不均衡、意识形态不同和惧怕激怒北京而陷于停滞状态。但还是有一些方法在亚洲培养多极势力。奥巴马政府似乎是这样做的：希拉里克林顿在2月份访问亚洲，她重视的是首先打压日本，然后是韩国，敦促他们采取合作的态度。之后她访问了印度尼西亚这个新的民主大国。最后才来到北京，她在那里呼吁中日双方在环境问题上要紧密合作。这其实不过是一个需要多方合作的跨国问题，而无法形成强国间的角逐。而后者才是越来越普遍、不在乎谁是赢家的问题。
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发表于 2010-1-25 13:57
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发表于 2010-1-25 14:06
日本经济规模是中国的十倍？？怎么算出来的？
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