主题：最近看到的笑话之八 -- 钛豌豆

FALSE ASSUMPTION #3: CHINA, THE FRAGILE FLOWER

错误的假设三：中国：脆弱的花朵

In 1996, I was part of a U.S. delegation to China that included

Robert Ellsworth, the top foreign policy adviser to the Republican

presidential nominee, Robert Dole. Shrewdly playing to the

possibility that Dole might win the presidential election and tap

Ellsworth as secretary of state, the Chinese offered us what

appeared to be an unprecedented look at their country’s inner

workings and problems. Some of our escorts were military officers

who called themselves ying pai.

1996年，我是美国访华代表团的人员之一，代表团里还有共和党总统候选人罗伯特·多尔（Robert

Dole）的首席外交政策顾问罗伯特·埃尔斯沃斯（Robert

Ellsworth）。出于对多尔有可能会赢得总统选举并提拔埃尔斯沃斯担任国务卿的精明盘算，中国人为我们提供了一次前所未有的审视他们国家内部运作及问题的机会。我们的一些陪同人员就是自称“ying

pai”的军官。

In what appeared to be a forthright exchange of views with Chinese

scholars, we were told that China was in serious economic and

political peril—and that the potential for collapse loomed large.

These distinguished scholars pointed to China’s serious

environmental problems, restless ethnic minorities, and incompetent

and corrupt government leaders—as well as to those leaders’

inability to carry out necessary reforms. Considering the well-known

secretiveness of the Chinese Politburo, I was astonished by these

scholars’ candor and startled by their predictions, which only

underscored my support for efforts to provide U.S. aid to a

supposedly fragile China.

在与中国学者的直接交流中，我们被告知，中国正处于严重的经济和政治风险之中，崩溃的可能性极大。这些杰出的学者指出了中国严重的环境问题，不安分的少数民族，以及无能腐败的政府领导人，此外，还有这些领导人无力进行必要的改革。考虑到**局众所周知的隐秘性，我对这些学者的坦率感到惊讶，对他们的预测深感震动，这只说明了我支持向一个貌似脆弱的中国努力提供美国援助的举动。

I later learned that the Chinese were escorting other groups of

American academics, business leaders, and policy experts on these

purportedly “exclusive” visits, where they too received an identical

message about China’s coming decline. Many of them then repeated

these “revelations” in articles, books, and commentaries back in the

United States. For example, a study published by the influential

RAND Corporation listed ten factors that would cause China’s

slowdown or even collapse in the imminent future.22 This trend would

continue to characterize the China debate for years afterward. The

title of an article published in Commentary magazine in 2003

referred to China’s “sickness,”23 and a best-selling book published

in 2001 referred to China’s “coming collapse.”24 Many expressed the

worrisome view that if the United States pressed China too hard to

have elections, to free dissidents, to extend the rule of law, and

to treat ethnic minorities fairly, then this pressure would lead to

the collapse of the Chinese state—causing chaos throughout Asia.

直到后来，我了解到，中国人一直都会陪同其他的美国学者、商界领袖和政策专家等进行这些所谓的“高级”访问，他们也从那里收到了同样的关于中国即将衰落的信息。接着，当他们回到美国，他们中的许多人就会在文章、书籍还有评论中重复这些“启示”。例如，有影响力的兰德公司发表的一项研究报告列出了未来中国经济放缓甚至崩溃的十大因素。如此描述中国的论调将一直持续到多年之后。2003年发表在评论杂志上的一篇文章，其标题里提到了中国的“病症”，2001年出版的一本畅销书也提到了中国的“崩溃”。许多人表达出这样一种令人担忧的观点，即如果美国对中国过分施压，要求中国进行选举、释放异见人士、扩大法治、公平对待少数民族，那么这种压力将导致中国崩溃，并在整个亚洲地区引发混乱。

For decades, we have seen such arguments in op-ed pieces, news

stories, and books that have dominated our national discourse about

China. Yet the hard fact is that China’s already robust GDP is

predicted to continue to grow by at least 7 or 8 percent, thereby

surpassing that of the United States by 2018 at the earliest,

according to economists from the International Monetary Fund, the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the

United Nations.25 Unfortunately, China policy experts like me were

so wedded to the idea of the “coming collapse of China”26 that few

of us believed these forecasts. While we worried about China’s woes,

its economy more than doubled.

几十年来，我们在专栏文章、新闻报道和书籍中都看到了这样的论点，这些论点主导了我们国家对中国的论述。然而，无情的事实是，依据国际货币基金组织的经济学家，经济合作与发展组织以及联合国的预测：中国强劲的GDP仍将持续增长至少7%～8%,从而最早到2018年超过美国。不幸的是，像我一样的中国政策专家们对“中国崩溃论”是如此执着，以至于几乎没有人相信这些预测。当我们还在担心中国的困境时，中国的经济却增长了一倍多。