【经济学人】中美关系丨2016.12.03丨总第759期

Wang and Paulson: who’s teaching whom?

王和保尔森：谁在教谁？

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. By John Pomfret. Henry Holt; 693 pages; $40.

美丽国度和中部王国：美国和中国，1776到如今。

IN 1943 Fei Xiaotong, China’s most famous anthropologist, visited America and proclaimed it “paradise”, arguing that his own country needed to embrace the American spirit. Americans created things, he said. They didn’t dwell in the past. They had Superman. America was a land “without ghosts”. Fei was typical of many Chinese before and since: an intellectual who loved the bottom-up, can-do character of America and wanted some of it for his own country, with its top-down traditions.

1943年中国最著名的人类学家费孝通访问美国并且称其为“天堂”，说道他的国家需要包容/接受美国精神。他说美国不沉迷于过去，会创造新的东西。他们创造了超人。美国是没有鬼魂说的国土。费是古往今来很多中国人的代表：欣赏美国自下而上的积极肯干的性格，并且想要有着自上而下传统的自己国家也有这样的品格。

China has long tried to work out how much of America it really wants. In 1881, the New York Times predicted that “China cannot borrow our learning, our science, and our material forms of industry without importing with them the virus of political rebellion.” Chinese leaders know the same is true today.

中国早就试着弄明白自己想从美国学到什么。在1881年，纽约时报预测：“中国在借鉴我们的学习方式、科学、工厂模式时，必然会附带“进口”政治叛乱的病菌。”中国的领导知道这些至今仍是事实。

The two huge nations, each with their own distinct sense of their exceptionalism, have long been locked in a love-hate embrace. Americans, mesmerised by China, have held the upper hand, obsessively trying to reshape China in their own image and draw it out into the world. They first came to China in the 18th century to trade. The tea that was thrown into Boston harbour in 1773 had come from Xiamen. Profits from the China trade bankrolled the American Industrial Revolution. Labour from China built the American West. Missionaries and businessmen poured the other way across the Pacific Ocean.

有着各自明显的例外论的这两大民族，很早就处于相爱相杀的状态了。被中国迷住的美国人一直占据上风，尝试用自己的形象来重新塑造中国，并且将此形象传播至全世界。他们从18世纪开始来中国做贸易。1773年废弃在波士顿海湾的茶叶就来自于厦门。从与中国贸易中的获利给美国的工业革命提供了资金支持。来自于中国的劳动力建设了美国西部。传教士和商业人士从大西洋涌入中国。

一位美国传教士镜头下的中国

The Chinese, for their part, once saw America as different from the European powers. “The Americans are pure-minded and honest,” said Prince Gong, a 19th-century leader. But China’s aim was always utilitarian. “The problem is how to control them to make them exploitable by us,” he added.

中国人曾经认为美国为不同于欧洲势力。19世纪的领导人恭亲王说过:“美国人既单纯又诚实。”但是中国的一贯目标是实用。他补充道：“问题就是如何控制他们，使他们为我们所用。”

This ebb and flow is the subject of John Pomfret’s absorbing new book, “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom”. The question woven throughout is what will happen now that China has adopted some American ways and is challenging America’s strength. It has received an injection of urgency from the election of Donald Trump, who, if he follows through on his anti-China rhetoric, threatens to throw relations into one of their periodic troughs.

这其中的兴衰起伏就是约翰·庞弗里特有趣的新书主题：“美丽国度和中部王国”。贯穿全书的问题是中国在采纳一些美国方法并且挑战美国的优势之后会发生什么。参与选举的唐纳德·川普曾投入大量的资金，催促该书，如果他依旧遵循他的反华手段，那这将威胁中美关系，使其陷入周期性低潮。

Mr Pomfret is a veteran China correspondent. Having first gone there as a student in 1980, he was expelled for his reporting during Tiananmen in 1989, before returning later for the Washington Post. He weaves a lively tale, peppered with a cast of adventurers, spies, preachers, communists and McCarthyites who have boosted and sabotaged the relationship in turn over the years.

庞弗里特先生是老练的中国通讯记者，1980年第一次作为留学生来华，在1989年由于对（敏感词汇）的报道，他被驱逐中国，之后由于华盛顿邮报再次返华。他编了一个栩栩如生的故事，其中有很多冒险家、间谍、传教者、共产主义者和在过去几年内促进、破坏中美关系麦卡锡的追随者。

After Mao died, the dream of opening up China returned, and America poured in resources almost recklessly. “To do business [American companies] have been forced to hand their technology to the Chinese and essentially train Chinese companies to become their competitors,” writes Mr Pomfret. American officials believed that it was worth it because, in time, Chinese interests would align with America’s.

在毛主席逝世后，开放中国的梦想又涌现了，美国投入大量资源。庞弗里特先生在书中写到：“为了做生意，美国公司不得不将技术交于中国人，培训中国公司使得他们成为竞争对手”。美国政府官员坚信这是值得的因为在将来，中美利益将趋于一致。

That has not yet happened, says Mr Pomfret, and many experts fear it never will. Personal friendships have continued but America now understands Prince Gong’s words: that China may not be interested in the kind of partnership that America wants. Richard Nixon saw China’s potential in 1971 (“Put 800m Chinese to work under a decent system—and they will be the leaders of the world”). But, before he died in 1994, he came to fear that “we may have created a Frankenstein.”

庞弗里特先生说：那到现在没有发生，很多专家担心永远不会发生。私人关系还在维持但是美国现在终于理解的恭亲王的话：中国可能对美国想要的那种合作关系不感兴趣。理查德·尼克松在1971年就看到了中国的潜力（使8亿中国人在体面的制度下工作，他们会成为世界领袖）。但是在他1994年去世之前，他开始担心“我们可能创造了一个弗兰肯斯坦。”【注：被自己创造物所毁掉的人】

America has helped China change. But the change, so far, is superficial. Underneath, Mr Pomfret makes clear, Chinese leaders have not laid new foundations on which to build a modern country. Despite the efforts of its new strongman, Xi Jinping, China cannot develop fully without greater freedoms. The would-be “Beijing consensus”, the idea that economic reform can continue without political reform, is illusory. Yet China’s leaders persist, and with broadening ambitions, too. In 2014, Mr Xi said it was time for the people of Asia to run Asia, presaging a push to dominate the South China Sea.

美国帮助中国改变。但是到目前为止的改变是很肤浅的。庞弗里特先生清楚地指出中国领导人还没有深层次地打好建设现代化国家的基础。尽管新一代强人习近平作出了很多努力，如果没有更多的自由，中国就不能完全发展。那个本能达成的“北京共识”，在政治制度不改革的基础上实现经济改革是幻想。但是中国领导人仍旧坚持着，并且怀有远大抱负、2014年，习近平主席说是时候该亚洲人民掌管亚洲，这预示了中国将掌控南海。

The financial crisis has shown up the incumbent superpower’s flaws. Mr Pomfret quotes Wang Qishan, a senior leader, talking to Hank Paulson, America’s treasury secretary, after the crash: “You were my teacher, but…we aren’t sure we should be learning from you any more.” Suddenly, it is China that is exorcising its ghosts, while America finds it has a few of its own, after all.

经济危机暴露了在职者超级大国的缺点。庞弗里特先生引用了高级领导王岐山在分歧之后与美国财务部长汉克·保尔森谈话时的话：你是我的老师，但是我们不确定是否应该继续向你学习。”突然，中国开始驱赶鬼魂，美国发现了自己已有的缺点。

Mr Pomfret is not a classic optimist. He has spent years as a war reporter and seen too much of China’s dark underbelly for that. He describes all the ways in which American engagement is failing: China refusing to shoulder more global responsibility; widespread Chinese cyber-espionage; a continued crackdown on intellectual freedoms at home. He quotes one senior academic saying that America’s fears are “nearer to outweighing our hopes” than at any time since 1979.

庞弗里特先生并不是典型的乐观主义者。他当了很多年的战地记者也见到了中国很多内部易受攻击的一面。（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的读者试译详解哟~）他引用一位高级学者的话美国的担忧比从1979年起的任何时候都更接近于所抱的希望。

Yet, in spite of all this, he does not foresee a confrontation, believing that a mixture of American engagement and containment will maintain stability. The relationship is not as dysfunctional as it seems, he says. And China is not as dangerous as it sometimes looks. The world must hope Mr Pomfret is right.

然而，尽管如此，他没有预见冲突，相信美国的参与和包容共存会维持稳定。他说：这关系并不是看起来那么差，而且中国也不是想象中的那么危险。世界人民一定希望庞弗里特先生预测是正确的。

编辑 ▍璃儿

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