與龍共舞？

與龍共舞？



週六日讀了另一篇明報外地評論摘要﹕對中國的錯誤理解


【明報專訊】不少評論都說，中美兩國的紛爭源於互不了解，美國《華盛頓郵報》的專欄作者親身到北京考察，並且提出「美中是互相倚靠，說一國擊敗另一國是荒謬的」。

美國《華盛頓郵報》11月30日評論版文章 作者：Eugene Robinson

即使你對北京只有皮毛了解，也知道美國總統候選人對於中國的論述都是虛假、不誠實及愚笨的。每個社會都是相當難觸摸及複雜，我唯一所知是美國很多政客對中國的看法肯定是錯。

除了前駐華大使洪博培外，所有共和黨的候選人似乎主張「對中國強硬」，羅姆尼顯然是最強硬，至少在經濟事務上，他主張對中國打貿易戰，並揚言不能被中國擊敗。事實呢？在北京看到似乎是兩國擁抱多於戰爭，我住的酒店附近有蘋果電腦專門店、星巴克、Calvin Klein服裝店及其他耳熟能詳奢侈品牌。

一小時車程外的景點，第一間看到的餐廳是 Subway，名貴房車有保時捷、奧迪、平治等等。這些並沒有令中國操縱匯率的不公平政策變得合理，也沒有令中國更尊重知識產權，但當你走到北京的街上，看到的是急速增長、與美國相似的消費社會。

美中是互相倚靠，說一國擊敗另一國是荒謬的。正如坊間說，若你欠銀行 1000元，你對銀行有欠債，若你欠銀行1萬億，銀行則淪為你的財產。中國官員最不希望損害美國的經濟，若美國盡快恢復平穩增長，中國借給美國的貸款也會安全些。

中國最不希望損害美國經濟
差不多沒有人提及美國去年進口 3650億美元的中國貨，讓美國有胃口吸納中國工廠大量生產的貨品才符合中國的利益。所以不應該把問題看成是強硬恫嚇、擊倒對手，解決問題需要談判及簡單計算，中美雙方是極需要達成協議。

佩里指中共政權最終將灰飛湮滅，但中國早於 20年前已放棄共產主義。我當然知道中國政府不斷侵犯國民人權，這個政府自肥、貪污及壟斷所有權力，這些暴行不應該姑息，但我估計迅速增長的中產階級會令這個政府改變，我們應該鼓勵他們。


文中指：『20年前已放棄共產主義。』既然明報指明是外地評論摘要，因此未能一窺全豹，我急忙上網在《華盛頓郵報》網頁搜尋 Eugene Robinson 的原著原文來閱讀一遍。


The wrong way to talk about China by Eugene Robinson
【Washington Post】Even the briefest acquaintance with this smoggy, sprawling capital is basis enough to conclude that much of the campaign rhetoric we’re hearing about China is unrealistic, dishonest or just dumb.

This is my first visit to China, and I plan to spend the next few columns reporting what I see and learn. I spent enough years as a foreign correspondent to know how tricky first impressions can be. The subtleties and complexities of any society are — unsurprisingly — subtle and complex.

But not all first impressions are unreliable. Some are such no-brainers that they can only deepen with experience. One thing I already know is that the way many U.S. politicians talk about China is surely wrong.

With the exception of Jon Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador here, all the Republican candidates seem to want to be “tough on China.” Mitt Romney apparently has decided to be the toughest, at least on the economic matters most often cited as a reason to display toughness.

“We can’t just sit back and let China run all over us,” he said in one of the debates. “People say, well, you’ll start a trade war. There’s one going on right now, folks.”

Really? From here, it looks more like an embrace than a war. My hotel is in the chic, yuppified Chaoyang District, just up the street from an Apple store, a Starbucks, a Calvin Klein boutique and just about every luxury retailer you could possibly name.

An hour’s drive away, at the visitors center for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, the first restaurant you see is a Subway. High-status automobile brands in China include not just Porsche, Audi and Mercedes, but also Buick.

None of this remedies China’s unfair policy of manipulating exchange rates or its laxity in protecting intellectual property rights. But when you walk the streets of Beijing, you see a huge, rapidly growing consumer society that in many ways looks much like our own. I know this is an oversimplification. I know that boomtowns such as Beijing, Shanghai and others near the coast do not reflect conditions in the less-developed hinterlands.

But I also know that the U.S. and Chinese economies will be the two largest in the world through much of this century — and that they are so codependent that talk of one country running all over the other is nonsensical.

There’s a saying that if you’re in debt to the bank by $1,000, the bank owns you. But if you’re in debt to the bank by $1 trillion, you own the bank. The last thing Chinese officials would want is to do meaningful damage to our economy, because the more quickly we return to steady growth, the more secure China can be that all the money it lent us will be paid back.

It goes almost without mentioning that the United States imported about $365 billion of Chinese goods last year. China also has a compelling interest in making sure the United States retains the capacity to serve as the biggest buyer of the flood of products that Chinese factories produce.

So this is really a dispute over issues that shouldn’t be addressed with chest-pounding and tough-guy threats. The solution involves negotiation and simple arithmetic — and both sides have a powerful incentive to reach an accord.

Someone should explain this to Rick Perry — though on second thought, it might not make any difference. His most quotable bit of China-bashing came in the political realm. “I happen to think that the Communist Chinese government will end up on the ash heap of history,” he said.

But this ignores the big picture. Yes, China is governed — in an authoritarian, repressive, at times shockingly brutal manner — by a regime that calls itself communist.

But communism self-immolated two decades ago. Walk down any commercial street in Beijing and you see storefronts, venders and hawkers selling anything under the sun. Communism is no longer a system in China. It’s just a brand name that officials haven’t figured out how to ditch.

I’m aware, of course, of the shameful human rights violations that the Chinese government commits every day — and of the government’s selfish, corrupt insistence on maintaining a monopoly of power. These atrocities can never be forgotten.

But I’m betting that the burgeoning middle class will find a way to cast off these shackles. The correct response would be to cheer them on.


上篇舊文是一位美國學者嘲笑中國，國內還有四千萬人是穴居的，這一篇又是另一位美國的 columnist 在《華盛頓郵報》發表，他認為頗多美國人對中國錯誤理解。至於這位先生是何許人也？


【維基百科】Eugene Harold Robinson (born 1955) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist and former assistant managing editor for The Washington Post. His columns are syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group. Robinson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.


【維基百科】The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American (Hungarian-born) publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City.


原來 Eugene Robinson 是一位職業寫稿佬，不過就曾經勝出美國報業頗有名的 American Pulitzer Prize “普立茲”獎。


以上文章開章明義就指出：
即使你對北京只有皮毛了解，也知道美國總統候選人對於中國的論述都是虛假、不誠實及愚笨的。每個社會都是相當難觸摸及複雜，我唯一所知是美國很多政客對中國的看法肯定是錯。

Even the briefest acquaintance with this smoggy, sprawling capital is basis enough to conclude that much of the campaign rhetoric we’re hearing about China is unrealistic, dishonest or just dumb. The subtleties and complexities of any society are — unsurprisingly — subtle and complex. One thing I already know is that the way many U.S. politicians talk about China is surely wrong.



有人說：美國的奧巴馬總統臨近選舉年，為了鞏固籠絡保守派的游離票，必須向中國擺出強硬姿態，散播中國威脅論。美國人的霸主心態，她保持全世界最強盛的軍事力量，到處不戰而屈人屈國，要全世界屈從美國。德法倡導成立歐盟，並組建歐元 Euro歐羅區，就是要抗衡美國和歐洲美元（Eurodollars），至今歐盟歐羅落得如斯下場，各位有目共睹。


美國敵視中國又豈止須要競選連任奧巴馬呢？美國人即使在克林頓時代布殊時代，都是講的一套做的一套，在整個世界那處有利益，美國都要分一杯羹，到處如取如攜，暗偷不到就來明搶，直至榨乾榨淨為止，又何止中國呢？


況且美國有著 CNN，AP，NBC，ABC，CBS，FOX 等等強大跨國傳媒網絡 networks，總把美國處置於道德高地，向全世界指點江山，美國人的霸權主義主導世界 the American Way！


這位 爾雋 羅便臣先生是第一次來訪中國，就說要與龍共舞，他必須要先看清楚明白中國，雖然共產主義在中國名存實亡，但是具有中國特色的社會主義仍然存在，羅便臣先生不能單靠表面的遊覽項目，並且心存善意，便可以隨便說了解中國！



後記：
在《華盛頓郵報》網頁剛巧有另一位 columnist Jennifer Rubin 向 Eugene Robinson 的文章發礮。

A response to Eugene Robinson on China By Jennifer Rubin
【Washington Post】My colleague Eugene Robinson is in China and wrote a column Wednesday that reads a little like Walter Duranty in the USSR. He says this is his first visit to the country but then plunges into an attack on those who take issue with China’s trade and human rights policies, calling such critics’ arguments “wrong” and imploring us simply to “cheer” China’s progress.

His first bit of “evidence”that China isn’t so different from the good old U.S.A? He’s in a really nice hotel. “My hotel is in the chic, yuppified Chaoyang District, just up the street from an Apple store, a Starbucks, a Calvin Klein boutique and just about every luxury retailer you could possibly name. An hour’s drive away, at the visitors center for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, the first restaurant you see is a Subway. High-status automobile brands in China include not just Porsche, Audi and Mercedes, but also Buick.” Umm, so??

He concedes that doesn’t justify China’s unfair trading practices. But then what’s the point of raising it?

He says, “But when you walk the streets of Beijing, you see a huge, rapidly growing consumer society that in many ways looks much like our own. I know this is an oversimplification.” Actually, it’s horrible, tragically wrong.

I asked Daniel Blumenthal, an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute （AEI), for his opinion. (He has spoken regularly with Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign about Asia but was speaking here purely for himself.) He was a bit dumbfounded by the column. He said that he would “suggest a visit by Robinson to the many women in China who have been forced to abort their second child thanks to the One Child Policy.”

Blumenthal was just getting warmed up: “Or perhaps an orphanage where he can find untold numbers of abandoned baby girls. How about Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in his jail cell? Or some Tibetan monks who have taken to burning themselves to protest religious repression. If he does have time to leave Beijing he can visit some of the villages where people’s homes have been taken from them without compensation to make way for some pet project of a favored Communist Party crony.”

A former Bush administration official, now at a think-tank specializing in China, was nonplussed, e-mailing me: “The bit about communism ‘self-immolating,’ in addition to not being factual, is in unbelievably bad taste when Tibetan monks actually are self-immolating under very communist, Cultural Revolution-style, Chinese rule in Tibet. Beyond tacky.”

Robinson does, in cursory fashion, recognize “the shameful human rights violations that the Chinese government commits every day — and of the government’s selfish, corrupt insistence on maintaining a monopoly of power.” So maybe China isn’t much like the U.S. after all? A Starbucks doesn’t make you pro-Western or just like America. It says nothing about your political system, to be honest. (It reminds me of the euphoria that greeted each new Soviet dictator. He drinks Scotch — just like us!)

But perhaps most troubling is Robinson’s attack on Perry, who expressed the hope that “the Communist Chinese government will end up on the ash heap of history.” Robinson has a problem with the sort of outbreak of freedom that swept Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s? He writes: “Yes, China is governed — in an authoritarian, repressive, at times shockingly brutal manner — by a regime that calls itself communist.

But communism self-immolated two decades ago. Walk down any commercial street in Beijing and you see storefronts, venders and hawkers selling anything under the sun. Communism is no longer a system in China. It’s just a brand name that officials haven’t figured out how to ditch.” So perhaps Perry should have said he hopes “the government masquerading as a Communist government but really ‘just’ brutally oppressive will end up on the ash heap of history”?

Actually, China’s rulers very much cling quite cynically to their ideology, which it uses, as all totalitarian ideologues do, to crush dissent, brutalize its people and murder minorities. It’s very appropriate to hope for such a system’s decline, just as Ronald Reagan rooted for the rotting, corrupt Communist Soviet government to fall.

But not to worry, Robinson is confident “the burgeoning middle class will find a way to cast off these shackles.” He wants us to cheer that, and we should. But cheering suggests that we do little or nothing about the regime itself. Blumenthal argues, “Yes, we should cheer the reformers on. Maybe Robinson can come home and visit with Obama. He can tell him to meet with just one of these dissidents and reformers. To my knowledge, our president has not yet done so.”

Perry and Mitt Romney, whom Robinson also dismisses as a hothead, see what Robinson does not: oppression, military aggression and economic criminality (especially with regard to theft of intellectual property).

Blumenthal reminds us, “China has undertaken the largest military build-up since the end of the Cold War. Yet no nation threatens China. President Obama has responded by cutting our defense forces across the board, and make no mistake, our Pacific forces will be profoundly affected. Robinson should visit Taiwan, Japan, Australia, India, the Philippines.

All have been intimidated by the Chinese military. They are the ones calling for a tougher China policy. Australia pushed Obama to place Marines in Darwin. They are frightened, as they should be. China’s military grows and we retreat.” He adds: “Obama is now pounding his chest with his ‘we are back in Asia’ rhetoric, but there is much less firepower to back up our supposed ‘return.’ ”

I hope Robinson’s column was the result of jet lag, and not the first in a series of Tom Friedman-like apologies for the brutal regime. I look forward to his accounts of meetings with monks, Christian minorities, mourning mothers, human rights activists and the rest.


兩篇由美國人寫有關中國的文章，可以代表著西方存在不同的角度來解讀中國，但那一派屬多數呢？那一派屬少數呢？我相信敵視中國的美國人一定仍然佔絕大的 majority 多數！還有最尾尾 珍妮花魯彬小姐 反諷 爾雋羅便臣先生的文章，明報卻沒有翻譯刊登出來，可謂失諸交臂，實在十分可惜！


【維基百科】Jennifer Rubin is an American columnist and a blogger for the Washington Post. Previously she worked at Commentary Magazine, the Pajamas Media, Human Events, and the Weekly Standard. She also published at Politico, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, the Jerusalem Post, and a variety of other media publications.



看 魯彬小姐的背景和保守右傾立場，和她原來找來 AEI 的學者詢問有關中國（見前文提及 AEI），還有在她文章字裡行間，像夾雜對 爾雋 羅便臣先生的私人恩怨，無怪她須要鳴大礮了！





伸延閱覽：
對中國的錯誤理解 雅虎新聞網
Eugene Robinson：The wrong way to talk about China washingtonpost.com
Jennifer Rubin：A response to Eugene Robinson on China washingtonpost.com
Eugene Robinson 維基百科
Jennifer Rubin 維基百科
Pulitzer Prize 維基百科