|
|
【08.08.24 美国 纽约时报】美国熔炉遇上中国长城
【原文标题】Melting Pot Meets Great Wall
【链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
【翻译方式】原创翻译-文火/译
【译文】
美国熔炉遇上中国长城
托马斯·L·弗里德曼(THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN)
2008年8月24日
奥运会也许只是个体育赛事，但仍不难从结果中看出端倪，尤其是在见到中美如何雄踞奖牌榜时。两国能够（也将会）把奥运会上各自的成功视作对其迥异政治制度的肯定。但我关注的是，它们彼此能够学习到多少东西。奥运会，正如他们所说，是个教学相长的时刻。
称之为：一个奥运——两种制度
怎么会这样？看到美国的奥运团队，你不可能不领会其多元的力量；看到中国的团队，你不可能不到感受到其专注和集权的力量。
先从我们开始。前些天在奥运村散步，那里让我让我印象最为深刻的是：俄罗斯队看起来全是俄罗斯人；非洲队看起来全是非洲人；中国队看起来全是中国人；而美国队看起来则像他们中的所有人。
要是你把教练也算上的话，那就千真万确。乔良，爱荷华洲体操运动员肖恩·约翰逊（Shawn Johnson）的教练，是上世纪80年代很受欢迎的中国国家队主力体操运动员，之后移民到西得梅因（West Des Moines）。美国女子排球队由前中国排球手Jenny郎平执教，几天前这支队伍击败中国。郎平，中国的民族英雄，在1984年洛杉矶奥运会上带领中国队获得金牌。要是由迈克尔·乔丹（Michael Jordan ）执教，中国篮球队兴许也能战胜美国。
美联社报道说，美国奥运团队有33名出生于国外的运动员，包括四名出生于中国的乒乓球手，来自英国的皮艇赛手，田径队的七位成员，以及洛佩兹·卢蒙（Lopez Lomong），一个苏丹内战中的弃儿，在天主教慈善会的帮助下定居美国。还有莱奥·曼扎诺（Leo Manzano）,一个非法移民的墨西哥劳工之子，4岁时到美国，但直至2004年才取得公民权。
令人匪夷所思的是，伴随我们诺亚方舟般奥运团队良好表现，“美国此时正增强对移民限制的呼吁”，高盛国际副董事罗伯特·霍马茨（Robert Hormats）说：“某些人试图压制的正是那种使我们变得强大和独特的力量。
中国也能从我们的奥运团队学到东西：源于自下而上编束成股的强大社会力量。比如，近些天在北京周遭驾车，很难不去享受那疏畅交通和蔚蓝的天空（很大程度上是由于中国的交通管制及工厂关闭）——不用琢磨这一切在奥运后怎样才能维持。很多同我交谈过的中国人都曾问道：“我们怎样才能保持住这一切？现在我们已经看到天真得可以这么蓝，我们不想就此放弃。
然而，中国的问题在于，环保主义在世界其他地方都是一种自下而上的运动。在它要求强势政府从高层通过法规时，也不可缺少一个强大的、独立的市民社会作为监督员，曝光污染者，起诉违规企业。中国在奥运会的两周中能够自上而下地重现环保，但如果没有进一步自下而上的行动，它就不能够在在未来20年保持住绿色环保。
尽管如此，我们也能从中国学到很多东西，也就是，致力于大型的、长期项目，国家建设目标，并一以贯之。一位中国的学者朋友告诉我，奥运会的成功已促使某些中国高官论证，只有强大的、自上而下的、共产党领导的中国，才能够组织这样令人叹为观止的奥运建设项目，以及这么多不同中国运动员的专注表现。比方说，中国在赛艇团队上没有传统优势，但在这几次比赛中，如从天降，北京女子四人双桨无舵手（women’s quadruple sculls）决赛中的选手，为中国赢得赛艇项目上的首枚奥运金牌。
那些启示并不意味着我们需要专制政府。启示在于，我们需要让我们的民主更好地运作。美国男子篮球队在上届奥运会表现糟糕，因为它不能像一个团队来作战。因此我们的明星们被实力不如我们，但有良好团队协作的球员们打败。我们的篮球队吸取了教训。
国会已变得更加糟糕。我们的民主越来越麻痹，因为在华盛顿的协作已变得几乎不可能——不管是因为钱，划分选区不公，24小时滚动新闻，还是无休止的总统竞选。结果是，我们对于美国独特的自下而上能力的专注（体育除外）已弱化。在我们日益老化的基础设施和构建现实能源项目的无能上，你就能明白这一切。中国聚精会神，我们心浮气躁。
那么，的确，美国和中国应享受它们的奖牌——但我们也应当反思，为什么对方能得到那么多。
原文：
Melting Pot Meets Great Wall
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: August 24, 2008
The Olympics may just be a sporting event, but it is hard not to read larger messages into the results, especially when you see how China and America have dominated the medals tally. Both countries can — and will — look at their Olympic successes as reaffirmations of their distinctly different political systems. But what strikes me is how much they could each learn from the other. This, as they say, is a teaching moment.
Call it: One Olympics — two systems.
How so? You can’t look at the U.S. Olympic team and not see the strength that comes from diversity, and you can’t look at the Chinese team and not see the strength that comes from intense focus and concentrated power.
Let’s start with us. Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.
This is especially true when you include the coaches. Liang Chow, the coach of the Iowa gymnast Shawn Johnson, was a popular co-caption of China’s national gymnastics team in the 1980s before he emigrated to West Des Moines. The U.S. women’s volleyball team was coached by a former Chinese player, Jenny Lang Ping, when it defeated China a few days ago. Lang, a national hero in China, led the Chinese team to a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It would be like Michael Jordan coaching China’s basketball team to a win over America.
The Associated Press reports that there are 33 foreign-born players on the U.S. Olympic team, including four Chinese-born table tennis players, a kayaker from Britain, seven members of the track-and-field team — as well as Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan’s civil war, who was resettled in the U.S. by Catholic Charities, and Leo Manzano, the son of an illegal immigrant Mexican laborer. He moved to the U.S. when he was 4 but didn’t gain citizenship until 2004.
It is amazing that with our Noah’s Ark of an Olympic team doing so well “that at the same time you have this rising call in America to restrict immigration,” said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. “Some people want to choke off the very thing that makes us strong and unique.”
China could learn something from our Olympic team as well: the power that comes from a strong society, woven together of many strands from the bottom up. For instance, it’s hard to drive around Beijing these days and not enjoy the thinned-out traffic and blue sky — which are largely the result of China ordering drivers off the roads and closing factories — and not wonder how these can be sustained after the Olympics. Many Chinese I have spoken to have asked: How can we keep this? Now that we have seen how blue the sky really can be, we don’t want to give it away.
The problem for China, though, is that environmentalism is a bottom-up movement in the rest of the world. While it requires a strong government to pass regulations from the top, it also can’t work without a strong, independent civil society acting as a watchdog, spotlighting polluters and suing businesses that do not comply. China can be green for the two weeks of the Olympics from the top down, but it can’t be green for the next 20 years without more bottom up.
That said, there are some things we could learn from China, namely the ability to focus on big, long-term, nation-building goals and see them through. A Chinese academic friend tells me that the success of the Olympics is already prompting some high officials to argue that only a strong, top-down, Communist Party-led China could have organized the stunning building projects around these Olympics and the focused performance of so many different Chinese athletes. For instance, the Chinese have no tradition of rowing teams, but at these Games, out of nowhere, Beijing fielded a women’s quadruple sculls crew that won China’s first Olympic gold medal in rowing.
The lesson for us is surely not that we need authoritarian government. The lesson is that we need to make our democracy work better. The American men’s basketball team did poorly in the last Olympics because it could not play as a team. So our stars were beaten by inferior players with better teamwork. Our basketball team learned its lesson.
Congress has gotten worse. Our democracy feels increasingly paralyzed because collaboration in Washington has become nearly impossible — whether because of money, gerrymandering, a 24-hour-news cycle or the permanent presidential campaign. And as a result, our ability to focus America’s incredible bottom-up energies — outside of sports — has diminished. You see it in our crumbling infrastructure and inability to shape a real energy program. China feels focused. We feel distracted.
So, yes, America and China should enjoy their medals — but we should each also reflect on how the other team got so many.
[ 本帖最后由 vehoo 于 2008-8-26 13:55 编辑 ] |
中国长城, 熔炉, 纽约时报, 美国, 中国长城, 熔炉, 纽约时报, 美国, 中国长城, 熔炉, 纽约时报, 美国
-
弗里德曼
评分
-
1
查看全部评分
-
|
狗仔卡
发表于 2008-8-26 13:53
提升卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
