美驚呼：美國的命運籠罩在中國的霸權主義陰影之下

美國的命運籠罩在中國的霸權主義陰影之下America"s Fate Under Chinese Hegemony: A Review of Eamonn Fingleton"s Jaws of the Dragon

正文:The news has recently hit the press that China"s economy, measured on the purchasing-power basis that adjusts for price differences between nations, may surpass the U.S. in only another five years or so.

最近有新聞對大眾報道說, 中國的經濟，如果以在考量國與國之間價格差異為前提，以購買力為衡量標準，或許將在下個五年超越美國

Surprisingly, China has still shown no signs of morphing into the cuddly liberal and democratic nation,devoted to American ways from Coca-Cola to democracy, whose eventual appearance has been assumed by American policy for thirty years now.

令人驚訝的是，中國仍然沒有絲毫向民主國家演變的跡象。從美國的可口可樂公司就可以看出美國政府一貫致力於民主進程的推廣（美國可口可樂公司把原汁運送到其他國家，兌水後就能變成產品銷售），而且該民主推廣政策已經維持了30年。

Our policy during this period has, after all, enthusiastically cooperated with China"s efforts to build up its economic power--which entails,of course, every other kind of power, including the military kind. So our assumption of a benign China had better be right, or else we have been abetting the creation of a monster. A hostile China will be arguably even worse than the USSR, because it will not do us the favor of sabotaging its economy by adhering to a dysfunctional economic ideology.

在這段時期內，我們的政策積極的配合了中國經濟力量的建設，當然也包括其他力量，例如中國的軍事力量。因此，我們設想中國是一個比較溫和的國家，否則，在輿論的影響下中國早就變成了一個怪物。蘇聯曾經是我們的敵人，但中國可能有過之而無不及，因為它永遠也不會允許我們去干預它的經濟發展。

The above realities are the subject of Eamonn Fingleton"s book In The Jaws of the Dragon: America"s Fate Under Chinese Hegemony. Fingleton is a Tokyo-based Irish journalist who has lived in East Asia for over 25 years, and he has a long and distinguished record of telling truths about the region"s politics and economics that the establishment (on both sides of the Pacific!) would rather the public did not learn. This is one of those books that one wishes the President would read.

以上所述的就是埃蒙-芬格爾頓《在巨龍的咽喉之下》一書中的一些內容：美國的命運在籠罩在中國霸權主義的陰影之下。芬格爾頓是一名常駐於東京的愛爾蘭新聞工作者，並且在東亞地區已經生活了25年之久，他在政治和金融界的新聞報導工作中享有很高的聲譽。這是唯一一本我希望美國總統能抽出時間來看的書。

While it is hardly news that America is facing a Chinese challenge, the seriousness of this challenge is still poorly appreciated. For example--this was my big takeaway from the book--China is not just another despotism. It is the implementer of a systematic and sophisticated political philosophy, which Fingleton calls Confucianism, which will almost certainly constitute a serious threat to liberal democracy in the years ahead.

當然，我不願意看到美國正面臨著中國的挑戰，但問題的嚴重性在於很多人還沒有意識到這種挑戰的存在。舉個例子，從這本書我意識到，中國不僅僅是一個獨裁國家，而且還是這種獨裁政治體制富有經驗的制訂者和實施者。芬格爾頓所說的儒家思想，將來很有可能會對西方自由民主體制構成威脅。

Confucianism, as the reader may recall from a comparative religions class taken long ago, is the political philosophy derived from the ancient Chinese sage Confucius. It was the official ideology of the state in Imperial China for thousands of years.

說道儒家思想，也許讀者們依稀還能記得很久以前學過的「比較宗教學」。這種儒家思想起源於中國古代的一位聖人孔夫子，這種意識形態已經存在於中國帝制長達幾千年之久。

Now Confucius wasn"t a bad man, but he did base his political philosophy on taking authoritarian government as a given and trying to civilize it. He did not, as Western political thinkers since the dawn of democracy in Ancient Greece have done, base his political ideology on trying to prevent despotism in the first place. As a result, he simply wasn"t that interested in concepts like individual freedom or limited government.

我並不否認孔夫子是一位聖人，他把他的畢生學術所得獻給了當時的統治階級，試圖以此來引導他們變的更加文明。但是他沒有借鑒西方思想家有史以來在古希臘所獲得的成功。他的政治意識形態只是為了維護當時統治階級的封建獨裁統治。看起來他對自由開放的民主思想絲毫不感興趣。

The bottom line, after a few thousand years of history and some astonishing ideological twists and turns, is an approach to politics that is systematically opposite to liberal democracy.

經過幾千年的歷史積累和驚人的思想轉變之後，他們已經學會了有系統的來反對自由民主體制。

It is the velvet glove on the iron fist, and increasingly a very sophisticated one. It has tamed capitalism and mastered modern media. It is not headed for collapse or metamorphosis any time soon. If anything, it is currently more successful at imposing its will on us than we are at the reverse.

他們外柔內剛，而且手段運用地越來越駕輕就熟。他們讓資本主義制度變的毫無脾氣可言，而且他們還控制了一些現在的主流媒體。當然，他們的目的不是為了推翻資本主義制度。就現在來看，他們比我們更成功更具有活力。這讓我們懷疑我們目前的政治體制是不是已經落後了。

To be fair to poor old Confucius, the political system of contemporary China is not a direct extrapolation of any blueprint he drew up, and its flaws should not blind humanity to the genuinely civilizing aspects of his teachings (which are real). But, as Fingleton shows in considerable detail, a Confucian mentality underlies the politics of not only China, but also, in a soft-authoritarian version that has mastered the surface rituals of democracy, the politics of neighboring nations like Japan, Korea, and Singapore.

從公平的角度來說，我真的為孔子感到惋惜。中國目前的政治體制已經不以孔子所規劃的藍圖為基礎了。而孔子的儒家思想的缺陷就在於不應該盲目地，教條主義地引導人類走向文明。但是正如芬格爾頓所提出的一些重點，以儒家思想為基礎的政治體制不僅僅只存在於中國，一些表面上看起來很民主，但其實是變相地，相對溫和的獨裁政府也一直存在，諸如中國周邊的日本，韓國和新加坡。

Make no mistake: East Asia is on a fundamentally different civilizational track than the U.S., and it isn"t going to get off any time soon. And why should it, when East Asians are currently watching America decline?

保守中庸：東亞文明的發展軌跡和美國是截然不同的。但這並不意味這種文明就應該退出歷史舞台。也許這就是東亞人只是在靜靜的看著美國衰退的原因吧。

If the U.S. had not chosen, by its unconditional embrace of economic globalization by means of (one way) free trade, to render itself vulnerable to China, the above might not matter very much. After all, for most of its long history, China has maintained a civilization upon principles very different from those of the West, and it didn"t do us much harm.

由於無條件的接受全球經濟自由和貿易一體化，美國別無選擇，這導致了美國很容易遭受中國的侵害。上面說的看起來或許不是很重要，畢竟，由於有著悠久的歷史，中國維持自己文明的方式與西方有很大不同，而且看起來對我們並沒有什麼威脅。

Unfortunately, the U.S. has, in fact, chosen the opposite course, with the result that our own government is increasingly slipping under the control of an ethically alien and geopolitically hostile power.

不幸的是，美國作出了一個錯誤的選擇，其結果就是我們的政府在一個我們永遠也無法猜透的敵對強國控制下變得越來越弱不禁風。

To take just the most obvious example: because political bribery is, by way of political action committees, essentially legal in the U.S., Beijing can manipulate the U.S. Congress and the presidency almost at will. Why? Because it can manipulate the profits of the Fortune 500 companies that do business in China, and they do its bidding as lobbyists here. Because they are still headquartered in the U.S., they find welcome on Capitol Hill, but it is Beijing that is calling the shots.

舉一些很明顯的例子：通過對美國政治委員會的政治賄賂，北京可以操控美國國會甚至總統。為什麼北京要這麼做？因為他可以操縱世界財富500強的公司跟中國做生意，為中國的利益服務。這些公司的總部設在美國，他們接受美國國會的保護，但他們只聽命於中國。

Americans sometimes puzzle over why their government doesn"t "get" the Chinese threat. The answer is simple: because it has been bribed not to by China.

美國人有時候會感到很困惑，為什麼他們的政府感受不到來自中國的威脅。答案很簡單，因為他們已經被收買了。

The most important issue on which our government has been bribed is, of course, trade. China runs astronomical trade surpluses with the U.S. In fact, a majority of our trade deficit is now with China. This is no accident: it is the product of China"s aggressive embrace of predatory mercantilism plus America"s government being bribed not to take defensive measures.

最重要一條是，我們的政府一直在接受賄賂，當然，只是在貿易方面。事實上，中國天文數字般的貿易盈餘都和美國有關，而美國多數的貿易赤字也都和中國有關。這絕不是偶然的，

這是中國重商主義的掠奪，侵略和美國政府被賄賂後的不作為所造成的。

To find an historical parallel, one would probably have to go back to something like the suicide of the old Polish state in the 18th century, carved up by its adversaries after its domestic politics was paralyzed by foreign bribery.

相類似的情況，可能要追溯到18世紀的波蘭，當時的政府由於接受了來自國外的政治賄賂而導致整個波蘭被敵對勢力瓜分。

America"s defense against Chinese mercantilism is further sabotaged by the fact that, despite our using similar policies earlier in our own history, mainstream American economists are largely blind to the fact that mercantilism even works. Trapped in the same "free" market thinking that led to the 2008 financial crisis, they don"t believe that China"s policies can possibly be a winning move for that country.An economy that has gone from peasant agriculture to superpower in 30 years doesn"t seem to persuade them.

美國對中國重商主義的防禦措施進一步被現實所破壞，我們無視歷屆政府早先用過的類似政策，大部分美國主流經濟學者無視重商主義的危害。由於陷入了所謂的自由貿易市場的錯誤思想導致了2008年巨大的金融危機。美國人不相信中國的政策法規會為中國帶來巨大的進步。30年來，中國已經從一個農業國家逐漸向一個全方位的超級大國轉變，這難道還不具有說服力嗎？

Why are China"s economic policies so effective? The aggressive pursuit of exports is a game other nations, like Germany and Japan, also play well. But these are both medium-sized high-wage nations that are already developed, not gigantic low-wage nations still on the early stage of their development path. (China is an economic superpower because it has so many workers, but their per capita output still only qualifies China as a middle-income nation globally, behind nations like Jamaica.)

為什麼中國出台的政策法規會如此有效？具有侵略性的商品出口就像一場遊戲，像德國和日本也很善於玩這場遊戲。在規模上來看，德國和日本都只能屬於中型國家，而且是屬於那種高薪水收入的發達國家，而不是那種還處於初級發展階段的大規模低薪水收入的國家。（中國是一個經濟大國，但是他的人均收入在全球範圍內還只能處於中等的水平，甚至還排在牙買加的後面。）

China is unique because it combines standard-issue (if exceptionally cynical) mercantilism with other policies, like forced savings and systematic technology acquisition, made possible by its despotic ex-Marxist political system. For example, it has, by deliberate state fiat, a savings rate close to 50%, while America"s is close to zero. This gives China a tidal wave of investment capital to put into everything from factories to freeways. (It is also enabling China to accumulate ownership of American government securities and private-sector assets.)

中國是獨一無二的，因為他把重商主義和其他一些政策相結合，例如強迫儲蓄和有系統有計劃的獲取技術資源，這些都出自於他的馬克思主義政治體系。舉個例子，通過中國政府深思熟慮後所頒布的法令，當美國的儲蓄率幾乎接近於0的時候，中國的儲蓄率已經接近50%了。從工廠到高速公路，中國掀起了資本投資的巨大浪潮。（這也使中國有機會掌握了一部分美國國債和一些私人資產的所有權。）

Japan never took over the world, so some people dismiss the Chinese threat as yet another big wolf-cry. But China has ten times Japan"s population, nuclear weapons, and a hard-authoritarian rather than soft-authoritarian political system. This time, it"s different.

日本永遠也不會有能力來接管這個世界，所以有些人認為中國的威脅只是另一個狼來了的故事。但是中國有十倍於日本的人口，擁有核武器。這次，真的不同於以往。

Beijing is already extending its political tentacles everywhere from the Middle East to Latin America. Now that Uncle Sam worships democracy (at least in principle) and doesn"t cut dictators the slack he did during the Cold War so long as they were anti-communist, China is the new best friend of despots everywhere. China"s voracious demand for natural resource imports alone guarantees that this rivalry will not remain trivial forever.

中國已經把他的政治觸角延伸到了中東和拉丁美洲。由於山姆大叔對民主體制的崇拜和反共冷戰期間對獨裁統治的疏忽，導致中國成為了所有獨裁統治政權的好朋友。

If worst does come to worst, don"t say you weren"t warned. This is a readable and very important book.

如果發生最壞的情況時，不要說我沒有警告過你們，這是一本非常有價值和重要的書。