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【英国 Spiked 北京2008系列 之三】利用西藏和中国算老帐
【标题】Using Tibet to settle scores with China 利用西藏和中国算老帐
【来源】http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4880/
【翻译】dakelv
【声明】本文翻译仅限Anti-CNN使用，转载请注明译者及出处。
【译注】本文是Spike Online 的 “2008北京：挑战对中国的污蔑”系列文章之三。全系列一共有二十篇文章。
【原文】
Using Tibet to settle scores with China
Tibetans want to be free. But they’ve been given a green light to riot by Western elements driven more by spite and envy than a love for liberty.
Brendan O’Neill
The grainy, sneaked-out footage of Tibetans rioting in Lhasa and in parts of China itself clearly reveals one thing: Tibetans want more control over their daily lives and destinies. Frustrated with living under illiberal and undemocratic Chinese rule, they are lashing out against what they consider to be symbols of Chinese domination: Han Chinese businesses and buildings owned by Chinese officialdom.
But there’s another story behind the images of instability being broadcast around the world, a more complex, dangerous and difficult-to-spot story of cynical, spiteful political manoeuvring. Elements in the West have effectively encouraged Tibetans to riot, not because they are committed to democracy and liberty, but because they fear and loathe the Chinese. Western encouragement of Tibetan instability may dress itself in the rallying cry of ‘Free Tibet!’, but its real motivation is to ‘Humiliate China!’
The Tibetan protesters’ angry outbursts reveal their deep-seated dissatisfaction with life under the Stalinist regime. Yet the protests can also be seen as a physical, violent manifestation of Western China-bashing, which is increasing in intensity as the Beijing Olympics approach. For the past three months, Western officials and commentators have implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) encouraged Tibetans and others to ‘use the Olympics to humiliate China’ (1). Taking their cue, at least in part, from Western culture’s feverish fear and suspicion of China, Tibetans have launched protests that seem designed as much to please Western observers as to push through real, meaningful changes in Tibet and China.
In both their timing and their presentation, the protests seem more a product of Western cajoling than of an independent, groundswell demand for liberty amongst Tibetans. It is no coincidence that the protests, reportedly the biggest amongst Tibetans since the late 1980s, have erupted in the run-up to Beijing 2008. Vast numbers of political entrepreneurs and activists are trying to transform the Olympics into a platform for moral posturing and China-bashing. According to the International Herald Tribune, such is the frenzied politicisation of the Olympics by Western officials and campaigners that athletes are becoming confused about which cause to support. They have found themselves ‘overwhelmed by menu choices’ and also by numerous ‘wardrobe decisions’: should they wear a ‘China, Please’ armband to protest against China’s links with Sudan, or a yellow ‘Livestrong’ bracelet to indicate their support for a ‘pollution-free games and lead-free toys’? An American triathlete has complained: ‘Every time you turn around, there is someone trying to make a statement about something.’ (2) The relentless politicisation of the Olympics by Western elements, the widespread discussion of Beijing 2008 as an opportunity to ‘humiliate China’, has helped to create a volatile atmosphere in the more restive parts of China and its surrounding territories, including Tibet.
Presentation-wise, the protesters’ use of English slogans and their speedy dissemination of mobile-phone footage suggest the demonstrations are aimed very much at a Western audience. In the march of the Tibetan monks in northern India last week, and during the more fiery protests in Tibet and China over the weekend, Tibetans carried placards with English-language demands such as ‘Tibet Needs You’. They wore headbands saying ‘Free Tibet’ - the favoured slogan of Western middle-class and even aristocratic pro-Tibet sympathisers, such as Prince Charles (3). Tibetan monks in Dharamsala, India (where the Tibetan government-in-exile resides, led by the Dalai Lama) have put up English posters saying ‘Beijing 2008: A Celebration of Human Rights Violations’ (4). One British newspaper has celebrated Tibetan protesters’ use of ‘the most dangerous weapon in the world - the cameras on their mobile phones’ (5). Many Western observers who cheer Tibetans for using this ‘weapon’ to beam images of their struggle around the world would probably feel very uncomfortable if Tibetans used real weapons to force their Stalinist rulers to make changes or concessions.
The protests seem orientated very much towards the outside world. They appear to gain their legitimacy and fire from today’s widespread China-bashing, and they seem designed, in some ways, for Western consumption. This shows the extent to which Tibetans have become caught up in a global tug-of-war between the West and China. No doubt some people feel genuinely inspired by the Tibetan unrest, but many of the Western elements cheering the Tibetan cause and encouraging the Tibetans to ‘humiliate China’ are motivated less by a genuine commitment to liberty and democracy than by a deep and cynical desire to make life difficult for the Chinese.
Today’s Tibetan protests are taking place in a broad, quite sinister political context: the West’s transformation of China into a cultural and political target. In recent years, China has inexorably, and in some ways unconsciously, been transformed into a whipping boy for the West. Anti-Chinese sentiments cut across the political divide: on both the old right and the new left, attacking China for its economic growth, human rights record, environmental destruction or suppression of the Tibetan people has become de rigueur. There is an unspoken consensus today - amongst Western officials, commentators and radical activists - that China is a global threat which must be put back in its place with a short, sharp dose of humiliation. Far more than the demonisation of the Soviet Union as the ‘Evil Empire’ during the Cold War era, the labelling of China as a dirty, uncontrollable, violent beast enjoys widespread, unquestioned support throughout political circles in the West.
On the right, China-bashing has become a way of settling old scores from the Cold War. American right-wing thinkers and officials seem to take comfort in the familiar feeling of standing up to an ‘old communist foe’. Robbed of the ‘Evil Empire’ in the East by the end of the Cold War, and thrown by the unpredictability of global affairs more broadly, old right elements cling to China as an old-fashioned enemy from an era when politics was simpler and international affairs were more black-and-white; they are trying to recreate that era with a new ‘yellow-and-white’ divide between barbaric China and the civilised USA (6). Last week, the Pentagon made a splash with its annual report to US Congress on the threat posed by Chinese military power. It was hard not to nod, at least in partial agreement, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman who accused officials in the Pentagon of being consumed by ‘Cold War thinking’ (7).
There is also an element of palpable jealousy in right-wing attacks on contemporary China. As America’s economy spins from one crisis to another, becoming reliant in many ways on East Asian cash to bail it out, traditionalist economic thinkers are discussing Chinese growth as a problem and a threat. Using the language of environmentalism - clearly sensing that old-fashioned protectionism would not go down very well today - establishment publications in the US publish essays with headlines such as ‘Choking on growth’; they argue that if China is to reduce its carbon emissions (that is, slow down its growth) then there will have to be a ‘wholesale mindset change’ amongst the Chinese people (8). Books such as The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future are snapped up and celebrated by traditionalist American thinkers and economists (9).
Amongst left-leaning campaign groups and writers, China has become the No.1 International Bogeyman because of what they see as its ceaseless industrialisation. Westerners who find the idea of growth so nineteenth-century openly discuss China as a poisonous nation that is killing its own people and possibly the planet. Liberal green writers see only the ‘dust, waste and dirty water’ in modern China; they describe the economic progress there as the ‘mass poisoning of a people and the ecological devastation of a nation’, which is a product, apparently, of greed - ‘ours and theirs’ (10). Those greedy Chinese, getting jobs in the city and buying cars and TVs… why don’t they go back to the paddy fields where they belong? Green campaign groups call on Western nations to cut their political and economic ties with China, and instruct Western consumers that ‘If it says “Made in China”, don’t buy it’: only then, they argue, will ‘The World’s Biggest CO2 Emitter’ and ‘The World’s No.1 Consumer of Coal’ (that’s ‘China’ to those of us who don’t think and speak in the dehumanising language of trendy China-bashers) be forced to change its ways (11). They fancy this as a radical stance, but in today’s Great China-Bashing Consensus, greens are merely the protesting wing of the backward, fearful, protectionist politics of a West worried about the ‘Chinese threat’.
In many ways, campaigners and commentators in the West are projecting their own disgust with ‘the Western way of life’ on to China. They see in China everything that they doubt or loathe about modernity itself. That is why commentators frequently tell China not to make ‘the same mistakes that we made’. On everything from economic growth to sporting competitiveness, from the use of coal to the building of skyscrapers, today’s China-bashing is motivated by Western self-loathing, as well as by spite and envy towards the seemingly successful Chinese. Ironically, this means that China is now seen as ‘the Other’ precisely because it appears too Western: it is China’s ambition, growth, its leaps forward - things that a more confident West might once have celebrated - which make it seem alien to Western observers who today prefer carbon-counting to factory-building and road tolls to road construction. China-bashing is underpinned by a crisis of belief in the West in things such as progress, growth, development.
It is the sweeping consensus that China is dangerous and diseased that has attracted Western observers to the issue of Tibet. Both left and right elements in the West are exploiting the Tibet issue as a way of putting pressure on China. They are less interested in securing real freedom and equality for Tibetans, and for the Chinese people more broadly, than they are in using and abusing internal disgruntlement in China and nearby territories as a way of humiliating the Chinese government. That is why Tibetans can symbolise different things to different people. For conservative commentators, the Tibetans are warriors for freedom against a Stalinist monolith; their protests are a replay of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 (12). For greener, more liberal campaigners, Tibetans are symbols of natural and mystical purity in contrast to rampant Western and Chinese consumerism. As one author puts it, Tibetan culture offers ‘powerful, untarnished and coherent alternatives to Western egotistical lifestyles [and] our gradually more pointless pursuit of material interests’ (13). Various political factions in the West are using Tibetans as ventriloquist dummies in order to mouth their own complaints against modern China. They are promoting Tibetan unrest not to liberate Tibetans but in the hope that the protests will represent their own personal disgust for China in a real-world, physical manner.
There is a long history of Western politicians and activists using Tibet as a stick with which to beat China. In his fascinating book Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Donald S Lopez Jnr shows how, in the Western imagination, ‘the invasion of Tibet by [China] was and still is represented as an undifferentiated mass of godless Communists overrunning a peaceful land devoted only to ethereal pursuits… Tibet embodies the spiritual and the ancient, China the material and the modern. Tibetans are superhuman, Chinese are subhuman.’ (14) Today, too, pro-Tibetan activism often disguises a view of the Chinese as subhuman. Indeed, in the current, all-encompassing right/left consensus about China, even left-leaning campaigns can employ old right tactics of demonising the Chinese. A poster for the trendy campaign group Free Tibet shows Tibetans as serene and peaceful and the Chinese as smog-producing modernisers with distinctly slitty eyes and goofy teeth (15).
spiked is no friend of the Chinese regime. Yet those promoting self-serving internal unrest in the run-up to the Olympics, encouraging Tibetans and others to bash China for real where the West only does it with words and propaganda, are playing a dangerous game indeed. Such a strategy of cynical destabilisation could unleash yet more violence in China, and have repercussions around the world. And the biggest losers, at least in the short term, are likely to be Tibetans themselves: they will not win liberty or equality by being transformed into performing protesters for the benefit of Chinaphobic Westerners.
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【翻译】
利用西藏和中国算老账
西藏人想获得独立；西方则为西藏的骚乱大开绿灯，他们这样做不是出于对自由的热爱，而是受怨恨和嫉妒的驱使。
作者：Brendan O'Nell
一段画面不清的、偷带出来的西藏人在拉萨和中国其他地方骚乱的录像本身非常清楚地说明了一件事：西藏人想要对他们的日常生活和命运拥有更多的控制权。处于对常年生活在不自由不民主的中国政府的统治的不满，他们迁怒于中国官方拥有的中国汉族人的生意和建筑物，因为在他们看来，这些都是中国统治的象征。
【西藏】动荡的画面在全球传播，但是在这个画面的背后，还有隐情--一段更复杂，更危险，更难以识破的冷嘲热讽和心怀恶意的政治操纵的故事。西方分子成功地鼓励西藏人制造骚乱，不是因为他们信仰民主和自由，而是因为他们害怕并憎恶中国人。西方可以用“自由西藏”的游行口号来掩饰他们对西藏不稳定局势所起到的煽风点火的作用，但是它们真正想喊的却是“羞辱中国！”
西藏抗议者愤怒的爆发显示了他们对斯大林式政权统治的深深不满。但是这些抗议也可以看成是西方污蔑中国行动的一个具体而激烈的表现，这种对中国的污蔑随着奥运的临近而愈演愈烈。在过去三个月里，西方官员和新闻解说员暗中（有时也是明确地）鼓励西藏人和其他人“利用奥运来羞辱中国”（1）。西藏人从西方文化对中国的疯狂恐惧和疑心中得到暗示（至少部分地得到暗示），于是便发动各种抗议活动。这些抗议的目的似乎不是为了在西藏和中国推动真实和有意义的变革，而是为了取悦西方的观察家们。
无论在时间还是在形式上，这些抗议看起来都像是西方挑唆的产物，而不是对西藏人自由的独立和自发的诉求。这些从1980年以来发生的规模最大的抗议活动发生在奥运前夕，不是一种巧合。大量政治企业家【译注：这里把西方搞政治的人称为企业家，暗指他们不是为了自己的信仰，而是怀着功利心理。】和活跃人士试着把奥运变成一个道德表演和污蔑中国的平台。据《国际先驱报》称，西方官员和活动家如此疯狂地要把奥运政治化，以至于运动员正在变得迷惑，因为他们也不知道倒底应该支持哪项政治事业。他们在无数的菜单选择和“服装决定”面前显得无所适从：倒底应该套上“中国，求你了”【译注：原文是"China,Please"，这里的“Please"是表示敦促某人去干或者停止干某件事情，不是很好翻译。】的袖章来抗议中国和苏丹的来往呢，还是带上一个黄色的“健康着活着”的手圈来表示他们对“一个无污染的奥运和无铅玩具”的支持？一个美国铁人三项运动员抱怨说：“每当你一转身，就会发现有一个人在试着就某件事表达自己的看法。”（2）西方分子对奥运的毫无止息的政治化，加上有关把北京2008变成一个“羞辱中国”的机会的广泛讨论，在包括西藏在内的中国不安定地区及其周边地区造成了一种一触即发的局面。
从表现形式上来看，抗议者的用的是英文标语，而且用手机拍摄的视频传播得很快，这就意味着这些抗议活动是做给西方人看的。在上周在印度北部举行的西藏僧人的游行，以及周末在西藏和中国爆发的更激烈的抗议活动中，西藏人举着标语牌，上面用英文写着诸如“西藏需要你”之类的标语。他们戴的头带上写着“自由西藏”的标语，而这个标语是西方中产阶级，甚至是诸如查尔斯王子这样的同情和支持西藏的贵族，最喜欢的标语。在印度的达兰萨拉（以达赖喇嘛为首的西藏流亡政府所在地）贴出了英文海报，上面写着“北京2008：一场关于违反人权的庆典”(4)。一份英国报纸还庆贺西藏抗议者使用了“世界上最危险的武器--他们手机上的相机”（5）。当西藏人用这种“武器”把自己斗争的图片传向全球时，很多西方的观察家为之欢呼雀跃，但是如果西藏人用真正的武器来迫使他们的斯大林式的统治着改弦更张的话，他们可能会感觉不太舒服。
这些抗议看起来是面对外部世界的。看起来他们是从目前很普遍的对中国的污蔑中取得自己的合法性和灵感的，而且这些抗议也是专为西方人设计的。这表明西藏人是如何地深陷于西方和中国的拔河赛之中。难怪有些人从西藏的骚乱中真正地得到了灵感，但是很多为西藏人呐喊助威、鼓励西藏人“羞辱中国”的西方分子并不是出于对自由和民主真正的关心，而是出于一种深深的恶意，那就是让中国人没有好日子过。
当今的西藏抗议活动的发生是有着广泛而异常险恶的政治背景的：那就是西方正把中国变成一个文化和政治标靶。近年来，中国被无情地，而且以某种不知不觉的方式，变成了西方的出气筒。反华情绪跨越了政治上的分歧，弥漫在旧的右派和新的左派阵营里。针对中国的经济发展、人权纪录、环境破坏以及对西藏人的压迫等方面对中国进行攻击已经成了家常便饭。当今在西方官员、新闻解说员以及激进的活跃分子间有一种不成文的默契--那就是中国已成为全球的威胁，所以必须通过严厉的羞辱它来使它快速重新回到它过去的位置。把中国描述成一个肮脏、失控的猛兽的做法在西方政治圈里得到广泛而毫无异议的支持，其受支持程度远远超过了冷战时期把苏联妖魔化成“罪恶帝国”的做法。
在右翼阵营里，对中国的污蔑已经成了算冷战时期老账的方式。美国的右翼思想家和官员似乎从和“老共产主义的敌人”对立的熟悉感觉中获得某种舒适。旧的右翼分子在冷战结束后失去了东方的“罪恶帝国”，而且普遍地被环球事务的不可预测性搞得无可适从，所以他们把中国当作是一个政治事务更简单、国际事务非黑既白的年代里的一个旧式敌人；他们想通过野蛮中国和文明美国之间的“黄色和白色”的对立来重塑那个时代。上周，五角大楼在对美国国会的年度报告中，就中国武力威胁问题大做文章。当中国外交部发言人指控五角大楼官员陷入“冷战思维”时 （7），我们也很难不点头称是，至少我们对这种指控也是部分赞同的。
在右翼对当代中国的攻击中，还有一种可以感觉到的嫉妒在作祟。当美国经济灾难此起彼伏、从很多方面都越来越依靠东亚国家的资金来为其解围时，传统经济思想家仍在讨论中国的发展如何成为一个问题和威胁。美国有名望的出版机构深知用老掉牙的贸易保护主义的论点不会引起多大共鸣，于是便用环境保护主义者的论调推出“因发展而窒息”之类的文章；他们主张，如果中国减少其二氧化碳排放量（即：放缓其发展速度），那么中国人民的“观念便会产生广泛的改变”（8）。诸如“黑河奔流：中国未来的环境挑战”一类的书籍得到美国传统思想家和经济学家的广泛推崇。【译注：书名"The RiverRunsBlack"很明显是模仿罗伯特·雷德福执导的影片《大河奔流》- “A River Runs Through it"的标题。】
在左倾的活动组织和作家眼里，中国，由于其毫不停息的工业化进程，已经成为国际第一号的怪物。那些把工业发展当作是十九世纪的专利的西方人公开讨论中国如何成为一个正在毁灭其人民、也很可能正在毁灭整个地球的毒害之国。自由派的绿色环境保护者作家，比如《我们的和他们的》一书的作者，只看到现代中国的“灰尘、废物和脏水”；他们把中国的经济进步描述成“对一个民族的大规模毒害和一个国家的生态灾难”，而这一切都很明显的是贪婪的产物（10）。那些贪婪的中国人，那些在城市找到工作、又买汽车又买电视的中国人。。。他们为什么不会到属于他们的稻田？绿色运动组织呼吁西方国家断绝他们与中国的政治和经济联系，并教导西方消费者，“如果一个产品写着‘中国制造’，就不要买它”。他们说，只有这样 --套用时髦的污蔑中国的非人性化的语言--“世界上最大的二氧化碳排放国”、“世界第一大煤炭消费国”才会被迫改弦更张（11）。他们把这个看成是他们基本的立场，但是在今日的污蔑中国的运动大潮里，绿色组织仅仅代表了惧怕“中国威胁”的落后的、恐惧的、保护主义策略中的抗议先锋。
在很多方面，西方的运动活跃人士和新闻解说员们是在把自己对“西方生活方式”的厌恶转嫁到中国身上。在中国身上，他们看到了他们对现代化所厌恶的一切。这就是为什么新闻解说员一再告诫中国不要再犯“我们犯过的同样的错误。”从经济增长到体育竞争力，从煤炭的消费到摩天大楼的建造，当今的中国污蔑运动的动力来自西方的自惭形秽，以及对看起来很成功的中国人的那种恶意和嫉妒。具有讽刺意味的是，中国现在被看作是“他们”，其原因正是因为它看起来太“西方化”了：中国的雄心、发展，进步 -- 这些昔日自信的西方所赞美的东西--使中国在那些赞成减少二氧化碳排放量而不赞成建造工厂、赞成设置收费公路却不赞成建设公路的西方观察家眼里变得陌生。中国污蔑运动的支撑点是西方对于进步、增长和发展产生的信仰危机。正是对中国是危险的、中国是不健康的这种观念的广泛共识才把西方观察家吸引到了西藏事务上来。西方的左右翼分子利用西藏事务来对中国施加压力。他们感兴趣的不是为西藏人，或广义的中国人，争取真正的自由和平等，而是利用和滥用中国内部以及和周边国家的不合来羞辱中国政府。这也是为什么对于不同人来说，西藏人具有不同的象征意义。对于保守的新闻解说员来说，西藏人是反对斯大林式顽固政府的自由卫士；他们的抗议活动是1989年捷克斯洛伐克“温和革命”的继续。对于有环保倾向的、更自由化的运动组织来说，西藏人是与猖獗的西方和中国消费主义对比鲜明的自然和神秘圣洁的象征。正如一个作者所说，西藏为“西方自我为中心的生活方式以及我们逐渐变得毫无意义的对物质利益的追求”提供了一个有力的、纯净的、连贯的另一个选择（13）。西方诸多政治派别正在把西藏当作一个口技表演者手中的木偶，并利用它来表达他们对现代中国的怨言。他们对西藏骚乱的支持不是为了解放西藏人，而是希望这些抗议活动能够以现实的、实实在在的形式来表达他们自身对中国的憎恶。
西方政客利用西藏为由攻击中国的做法有来已久。在《香格里拉的囚徒：藏传佛教与西方》一书中，唐纳德 S.落帕兹指出，在西方的想象中，“[中国]对于西藏的侵略过去被，而且现在也一直被描写成一群分不清面孔的、不信神的共产主义者践踏一个完全献身于超然追求的和平之地。。。西藏是神圣和古老的象征，而中国则是物质和现代的象征。西藏人是超人，而中国人是次人类。”（14）。支持西藏的活跃人士直到今天仍然试图掩饰他们把中国人看成是次人类的这种观点。当今左右翼对中国问题达成广泛的共识里，以至于即使左倾的政治活动也可以使用妖魔化中国的右翼的旧伎俩。当今时髦的自由西藏组织的一个宣传画里，西藏人平静和安详，而中国人则是长着明显眯缝眼和滑稽牙齿的喷射烟雾的现代者。（15）
Spiked网站不是中国政权的朋友。然而那些为了一己之利在奥运前真实地支持骚乱，鼓励西藏人和其他人污蔑中国的人（西方只能通过言论和宣传达到此目的），是在玩一个非常危险的游戏。这种旨在制造不安定的做法会导致中国更多的骚乱，进而对整个世界也会产生影响。其最大失败者，至少从短期来看，可能正是西藏人自己，西藏人被西方的中国恐惧者利用，上演抗议中国的表演，他们绝不会因此而赢得自由和平等。
(1) China feels the heat of its Olympic ambitions, Los Angeles Times, 13 February 2008
(2) Athletes face dizzying choice of causes, International Herald Tribune, 15 August 2007
(3) See Australia won’t support boycott of Beijing Games: Olympic chief, The Citizen, 17 March 2008
(4) See Australia won’t support boycott of Beijing Games: Olympic chief, The Citizen, 17 March 2008
(5) Dalai Lama attacks ‘cultural genocide’, Independent, 17 March 2008
(6) China condemns Pentagon’s Cold War thinking, Reuters, 4 March 2008
(7) China condemns Pentagon’s Cold War thinking, Reuters, 4 March 2008
(8) Economy: China’s ability to tackle greenhouse gas caps, Council on Foreign Relations, September 2007
(9) The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future, Elizabeth C Economy, Cornell University Press, 2005
(10) See Polluting minds, by Brendan O’Neill, Comment Is Free, 25 July 2007
(11) See Enough is Enough’s Boycott China campaign here
(12) Could Tibet achieve the impossible dream of independence?, Vancouver Online, 16 March 2008
(13) See Why Western Tibetophilia won’t set Tibet free, by Brendan O’Neill
(14) See Why Western Tibetophilia won’t set Tibet free, by Brendan O’Neill
(15) See Why Western Tibetophilia won’t set Tibet free, by Brendan O’Neill
[ 本帖最后由 撒小丫 于 2008-9-10 06:44 编辑 ] |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2008-9-8 12:14
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他们是想重新瓜分中国吧!
发表于 2008-9-8 15:43
