What you must know about China | 了解中国
（译文请往下阅读）
Dear friends around the world,
I came across this by accident and decided to listen to Mr. Martin Jacques and I it opened my eyes to more understanding. Although he tells you mostly how Westerners see China, it applies to most of the non-Chinese world. I think it is worth our time to listen to his experiences, research and thoughts. It will bring more understanding in this complex subject. China without a doubt is becoming more powerful and a force to be reckoned with. We can either accept this fact and understand more or fight with this fact. I think understanding this phenomena will be much more useful. China is here to stay and will continue to exert powerful influences globally in many aspects as she has been a powerful world influence within human history. Better to understand and come to friendships with this powerful and ancient nation. There are changes within China as in every country we all like to see, but to effect changes is by first understanding their culture and respectfully approaching them from understanding. Approaching something via ignorance or hearsay will never bring desired results.
I highly recommend everyone to take some quality time and listen to his 20 minute video as he speaks very well, clearly and extremely articulate. I have the transcript in English and Chinese for your convenience.
Tsem Rinpoche
English Transcript
Martin Jacques – Understanding the rise of China
Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/MartinJacques.mp4
The world is changing with really remarkable speed. If you look at the chart at the top here, you’ll see that in 2025, these Goldman Sachs projections suggest that the Chinese economy will be almost the same size as the American economy. And if you look at the chart for 2050, it’s projected that the Chinese economy will be twice the size of the American economy, and the Indian economy will be almost the same size as the American economy. And we should bear in mind here that these projections were drawn up before the Western financial crisis.
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at the latest projection by BNP Paribas for when China will have a larger economy than the United States. Goldman Sachs projected 2027. The post-crisis projection is 2020. That’s just a decade away. China is going to change the world in two fundamental respects. First of all, it’s a huge developing country with a population of 1.3 billion people, which has been growing for over 30 years at around 10 percent a year.
And within a decade, it will have the largest economy in the world. Never before in the modern era has the largest economy in the world been that of a developing country, rather than a developed country. Secondly, for the first time in the modern era, the dominant country in the world — which I think is what China will become — will be not from the West and from very, very different civilizational roots.
Chinese explorer Zheng He’s ship compared to Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria.
Now, I know it’s a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It’s an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West. It will remain in very fundamental respects very different. Now the big question here is obviously, how do we make sense of China? How do we try to understand what China is? And the problem we have in the West at the moment, by and large, is that the conventional approach is that we understand it really in Western terms, using Western ideas. We can’t. Now I want to offer you three building blocks for trying to understand what China is like, just as a beginning.
The first is this: that China is not really a nation-state. Okay, it’s called itself a nation-state for the last hundred years, but everyone who knows anything about China knows it’s a lot older than this. This was what China looked like with the victory of the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. at the end of the warring-state period — the birth of modern China. And you can see it against the boundaries of modern China. Or immediately afterward, the Han Dynasty, still 2,000 years ago. And you can see already it occupies most of what we now know as Eastern China, which is where the vast majority of Chinese lived then and live now.
Now what is extraordinary about this is, what gives China its sense of being China, what gives the Chinese the sense of what it is to be Chinese, comes not from the last hundred years, not from the nation-state period, which is what happened in the West, but from the period, if you like, of the civilization-state. I’m thinking here, for example, of customs like ancestral worship, of a very distinctive notion of the state, likewise, a very distinctive notion of the family, social relationships like guanxi, Confucian values and so on. These are all things that come from the period of the civilization-state. In other words, China, unlike the Western states and most countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of civilization, its existence as a civilization-state, rather than as a nation-state. And there’s one other thing to add to this, and that is this: Of course we know China’s big, huge, demographically and geographically, with a population of 1.3 billion people. What we often aren’t really aware of is the fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic, and in many ways very decentralized. You can’t run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case. It’s never been the case.
So this is China, a civilization-state, rather than a nation-state. And what does it mean? Well, I think it has all sorts of profound implications. I’ll give you two quick ones. The first is that the most important political value for the Chinese is unity, is the maintenance of Chinese civilization. You know, 2,000 years ago, Europe: breakdown — the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire. It divided, and it’s remained divided ever since. China, over the same time period, went in exactly the opposite direction, very painfully holding this huge civilization, civilization-state, together.
The second is maybe more prosaic, which is Hong Kong. Do you remember the handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China in 1997? You may remember what the Chinese constitutional proposition was. One country, two systems. And I’ll lay a wager that barely anyone in the West believed them. “Window dressing. When China gets its hands on Hong Kong, that won’t be the case.” Thirteen years on, the political and legal system in Hong Kong is as different now as it was in 1997. We were wrong. Why were we wrong? We were wrong because we thought, naturally enough, in nation-state ways. Think of German unification, 1990. What happened? Well, basically the East was swallowed by the West. One nation, one system. That is the nation-state mentality. But you can’t run a country like China, a civilization-state, on the basis of one civilization, one system. It doesn’t work. So actually the response of China to the question of Hong Kong — as it will be to the question of Taiwan — was a natural response: one civilization, many systems.
Let me offer you another building block to try and understand China — maybe not sort of a comfortable one. The Chinese have a very, very different conception of race to most other countries. Do you know, of the 1.3 billion Chinese, over 90 percent of them think they belong to the same race, the Han? Now, this is completely different from the world’s [other] most populous countries. India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil — all of them are multiracial. The Chinese don’t feel like that. China is only multiracial really at the margins. So the question is, why? Well the reason, I think, essentially is, again, back to the civilization-state. A history of at least 2,000 years, a history of conquest, occupation, absorption, assimilation and so on, led to the process by which, over time, this notion of the Han emerged — of course, nurtured by a growing and very powerful sense of cultural identity.
Now the great advantage of this historical experience has been that, without the Han, China could never have held together. The Han identity has been the cement which has held this country together. The great disadvantage of it is that the Han have a very weak conception of cultural difference. They really believe in their own superiority, and they are disrespectful of those who are not. Hence their attitude, for example, to the Uyghurs and to the Tibetans.
Or let me give you my third building block, the Chinese state. Now the relationship between the state and society in China is very different from that in the West. Now we in the West overwhelmingly seem to think — in these days at least — that the authority and legitimacy of the state is a function of democracy. The problem with this proposition is that the Chinese state enjoys more legitimacy and more authority amongst the Chinese than is true with any Western state. And the reason for this is because — well, there are two reasons, I think. And it’s obviously got nothing to do with democracy, because in our terms the Chinese certainly don’t have a democracy. And the reason for this is, firstly, because the state in China is given a very special — it enjoys a very special significance as the representative, the embodiment and the guardian of Chinese civilization, of the civilization-state. This is as close as China gets to a kind of spiritual role.
And the second reason is because, whereas in Europe and North America, the state’s power is continuously challenged — I mean in the European tradition, historically against the church, against other sectors of the aristocracy, against merchants and so on — for 1,000 years, the power of the Chinese state has not been challenged. It’s had no serious rivals. So you can see that the way in which power has been constructed in China is very different from our experience in Western history. The result, by the way, is that the Chinese have a very different view of the state. Whereas we tend to view it as an intruder, a stranger, certainly an organ whose powers need to be limited or defined and constrained, the Chinese don’t see the state like that at all. The Chinese view the state as an intimate — not just as an intimate actually, as a member of the family — not just in fact as a member of the family, but as the head of the family, the patriarch of the family. This is the Chinese view of the state — very, very different to ours. It’s embedded in society in a different kind of way to what is the case in the West.
Did you know that amongst many other things like paper and gunpowder, the Chinese also invented golf?
And I would suggest to you that actually what we are dealing with here, in the Chinese context, is a new kind of paradigm, which is different from anything we’ve had to think about in the past. Know that China believes in the market and the state. I mean, Adam Smith, already writing in the late 18th century, said, “The Chinese market is larger and more developed and more sophisticated than anything in Europe.” And, apart from the Mao period, that has remained more or less the case ever since. But this is combined with an extremely strong and ubiquitous state. The state is everywhere in China. I mean, its leading firms — many of them are still publicly owned. Private firms, however large they are, like Lenovo, depend in many ways on state patronage. Targets for the economy and so on are set by the state. And the state, of course, its authority flows into lots of other areas — as we are familiar with — with something like the one-child policy.
Moreover, this is a very old state tradition, a very old tradition of statecraft. I mean, if you want an illustration of this, the Great Wall is one. But this is another, this is the Grand Canal, which was constructed in the first instance in the fifth century B.C. and was finally completed in the seventh century A.D. It went for 1,114 miles, linking Beijing with Hangzhou and Shanghai. So there’s a long history of extraordinary state infrastructural projects in China, which I suppose helps us to explain what we see today, which is something like the Three Gorges Dam and many other expressions of state competence within China. So there we have three building blocks for trying to understand the difference that is China — the civilization-state, the notion of race and the nature of the state and its relationship to society.
And yet we still insist, by and large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong — our predictions about what’s going to happen to China are incorrect — this is the reason. Unfortunately, I think, I have to say that I think attitude towards China is that of a kind of little Westerner mentality. It’s kind of arrogant. It’s arrogant in the sense that we think that we are best, and therefore we have the universal measure. And secondly, it’s ignorant. We refuse to really address the issue of difference. You know, there’s a very interesting passage in a book by Paul Cohen, the American historian. And Paul Cohen argues that the West thinks of itself as probably the most cosmopolitan of all cultures. But it’s not. In many ways, it’s the most parochial, because for 200 years, the West has been so dominant in the world that it’s not really needed to understand other cultures, other civilizations. Because, at the end of the day, it could, if necessary by force, get its own way. Whereas those cultures — virtually the rest of the world, in fact, which have been in a far weaker position, vis-a-vis the West — have been thereby forced to understand the West, because of the West’s presence in those societies. And therefore, they are, as a result, more cosmopolitan in many ways than the West.
I mean, take the question of East Asia. East Asia: Japan, Korea, China, etc. — a third of the world’s population lives there. Now the largest economic region in the world. And I’ll tell you now, that East Asianers, people from East Asia, are far more knowledgeable about the West than the West is about East Asia. Now this point is very germane, I’m afraid, to the present. Because what’s happening? Back to that chart at the beginning, the Goldman Sachs chart. What is happening is that, very rapidly in historical terms, the world is being driven and shaped, not by the old developed countries, but by the developing world. We’ve seen this in terms of the G20 usurping very rapidly the position of the G7, or the G8. And there are two consequences of this. First, the West is rapidly losing its influence in the world. There was a dramatic illustration of this actually a year ago — Copenhagen, climate change conference. Europe was not at the final negotiating table. When did that last happen? I would wager it was probably about 200 years ago. And that is what is going to happen in the future.
And the second implication is that the world will inevitably, as a consequence, become increasingly unfamiliar to us, because it’ll be shaped by cultures and experiences and histories that we are not really familiar with, or conversant with. And at last, I’m afraid — take Europe; America is slightly different — but Europeans by and large, I have to say, are ignorant, are unaware about the way the world is changing. Some people — I’ve got an English friend in China, and he said, “The continent is sleepwalking into oblivion.” Well, maybe that’s true, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But there’s another problem which goes along with this — that Europe is increasingly out of touch with the world — and that is a sort of loss of a sense of the future. I mean, Europe once, of course, once commanded the future in its confidence. Take the 19th century, for example. But this, alas, is no longer true.
If you want to feel the future, if you want to taste the future, try China — there’s old Confucius. This is a railway station the likes of which you’ve never seen before. It doesn’t even look like a railway station. This is the new Guangzhou railway station for the high-speed trains. China already has a bigger network than any other country in the world and will soon have more than all the rest of the world put together. Or take this: now this is an idea, but it’s an idea to be tried out shortly in a suburb of Beijing. Here you have a megabus, on the upper deck carries about 2,000 people. It travels on rails down a suburban road, and the cars travel underneath it. And it does speeds of up to about 100 miles an hour. Now this is the way things are going to move, because China has a very specific problem, which is different from Europe and different from the United States: China has huge numbers of people and no space. So this is a solution to a situation where China’s going to have many, many, many cities over 20 million people.
Okay, so how would I like to finish? Well, what should our attitude be towards this world that we see very rapidly developing before us? I think there will be good things about it and there will be bad things about it. But I want to argue, above all, a big-picture positive for this world. For 200 years, the world was essentially governed by a fragment of the human population. That’s what Europe and North America represented. The arrival of countries like China and India — between them 38 percent of the world’s population — and others like Indonesia and Brazil and so on, represent the most important single act of democratization in the last 200 years. Civilizations and cultures, which had been ignored, which had no voice, which were not listened to, which were not known about, will have a different sort of representation in this world. As humanists, we must welcome, surely, this transformation, and we will have to learn about these civilizations.
This big ship here was the one sailed in by Zheng He in the early 15th century on his great voyages around the South China Sea, the East China Sea and across the Indian Ocean to East Africa. The little boat in front of it was the one in which, 80 years later, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. Or, look carefully at this silk scroll made by Zhuzhou in 1368. I think they’re playing golf. Christ, the Chinese even invented golf.
Welcome to the future. Thank you.
[Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china/transcript?language=en)
中文文稿
马丁·雅克：了解中国的崛起(演讲稿)
或在我们的伺服器观赏视频：
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/MartinJacques.mp4
世界正以惊人的速度变化着。如果你们仔细观 察最上方的图表，就会发现，在2025年，这些高盛集团的预测报告，表明中国经济将会赶上美国经济。如果你观察下2050年的图表，它预测出，中国经济将会是美国经济的两倍，同时印度经济将会与美国经济并驾齐驱。至此我们应该清楚一点，这些预测报告绘制于西方金融危机发生之前。
几周前，我正在看由法国巴黎银行绘制的最近预测报告，是讨论中国何时能成为比美国更大的经济体。高盛集团预测是在2027年。而后危机报告预测显示出，是在2020年，距现在仅有十年时间。中国将从两个基本方面改变这个世界。第一方面，中国是一个国土辽阔的发展中国家，拥有十三亿人口，超过三十年来都在以每年约百分之十的速度增长。
在十年内，它将会成为世界上最大的经济体。在近现代从未出现过，发展中国家拥有比发达国家更庞大的经济规模这种情况。第二方面，在近现代第一次，世界上居主导地位的国家，以我之见会是中国，将不会来自西方世界，而是会来自一个非常不同的文化根源。
中国航海家郑和的船只相较于克里斯托弗·哥伦布的圣玛利亚号。
我知道在西方有一种普遍认同的观点，那就是各国在现代化的同时，也在不断西方化。事实并非如此。有这样一种观点，认为现代化是竞争、市场和科技 的一般产物。不仅仅是这样，它同样是由历史与文化塑造的。中国不像西方国家，它也不会发展如西方国家一样。它会在最基础的方面保持差异。很显然，现在的关键问题是，我们如何理解中国？我们应该怎样了解中国的实质？总体说来，如今西方国家的问题是，以传统方法理解中国。我们运用西方思维、西方观念来看待中国，这样是行不通的。现在我想给大家三个构成要素，以帮助了解中国的实质，以此作为开场。
第一个，中国并非真正意义上的民族国家。确实，过去几百年来，它称自己为民族国家。但对中国略有所知的人，都知道中国历史悠久。这是在公元前 221年，战国时期结束后，秦朝统一六国时的中国版图，标志着近代中国的诞生。你可以清楚地看到近代中国的边界。之后是汉朝，距今有2000年的历史。可以看到它已经占据如今的中国东部的大部分地区。而绝大多数中国人口，过去和现在，都居住在这片地区。
最值得称道的是中国的国家意识，以及中国人的公民意识，并非觉醒于最近几百年，并非如西方国家一样觉醒于民族国家时期，而是觉醒于，可以这么 说，文明国家时期。说到这里我想到，比如，祖先祭拜的习俗，独特的国家概念。同样地，独特的家庭概念，一些社会关系，如“关系学”，儒家价值观等等，这些思想和观念都源自于文明国家时期。换句话说，与西方国家及世界上大部分国家不同，中国不是一个民族国家，而是由其作为文明国家的文明意识所塑造的。在此之外还有一点，就是这个。当然我们知道，中国国土辽阔，人口密集，有十三亿人口。但我们经常忽略这样一个事实，中国是一个极其多样化、多元化，以及在很多方 面分散化的国家。你不可能仅以北京为中心管理这么大的区域，纵然我们认为情况就是如此。情况从来不是这样。
这就是中国，一个文明国家，而不是一个民族国家。这有何解呢？以我之见，有多方面深刻的含义。我举出其中两个。第一，中国人最重要的政治价值观是团结一致，是经久不衰的中华文明。2000年前，欧洲分崩离析，圣罗马帝国分裂解体。它分裂之后，再也没有统一。而处在同样时期的中国则截然不同，它艰难地维持着庞大的文明体系，以一个文明国家存在着。
第二点，可能更通俗易懂一些，是关于香港。你们是否还记得在1997年香港主权由英国移交给中国？你们也许记得，中国宪法的规定：一个国家，两种制度。我敢打赌，在西方世界，几乎没有人相信这点。“真是夸大其词，当中国行使对香港的主权时，情况就不会是这样了”。13年来，香港的政治制度和司法制度与1997年一样，和大陆实行不同制度。我们的想法错了。为什么会错？错在我们自然而然，以民族国家的眼光看待问题。想一想1990年德国的统一，结果怎样？基本上，西德吞并了东德。一个国家，一种制度，那才是民族国家的理念。但是治理像中国这样的，文明国家不能基于“一种文明，一种制度”的思想，那样是行不通的。事实上，中国针对香港问题的方针政策，也会用于台湾问题，是基于国情的，即“一种文明，多种制度”。
另一种用以理解中国的构成要素，也许不那么尽如人意。中国人的民族观念，与其他大多数国家都迥然不同。你是否知道，在十三亿中国人中，超过百分之九十的人认为他们共属同一民族– 汉族，这与世界上其他人口大国的观念截然不同。印度，美国，印度尼西亚，巴西，这些都是多民族国家，而中国人并非感觉如此，中国的多民族只位于边缘地区。问题就是，为何如此？我想，从根本上说，原因要归咎于文明国家这一事实。一段超过2000年的历史，一段包涵征服、占领、吞并、同化的历史，长久以来，造就了汉族思想的萌发。同时，这种思想由日益增长、强而有力的文化认同感滋养成长。
这段历史经验的最大优势是，如果没有汉族，中国可能永远不会统一，汉族是这个统一国家的坚固的基石。而其劣势在于，汉族的文化差异观念非常薄弱，他们笃信自身存在的优越性，同时蔑视非汉族人群，造成了他们对诸如维族和藏族的态度。
第三个构成要素是中国政府。中国的政府与社会的关系，同西方国家大不相同。我们西方国家的公民，会不由地认为，至少目前如此，政府的权力与合法性是民主制度一种表现。这种观点的问题在于，在中国公民的意识中，中国政府更具合法性，也更有权威, 相较于其他西方政府。这种情况的原因则在于，我想，有两方面原因。而且很明显，与民主制度无关。因为在我们看来，毫无疑问，中国不存在民主。而究其原因，其一，中国政府被赋予非常特殊的…或者说享有特殊的意义，其作为中华文化的、作为这个文明国家的代表和体现，以及守护者，中国成为一种近乎精神层面上的角色。其二，在欧洲和北美，政府权力持续不断地受到威胁。在欧洲历史中，政府曾与教会势力对抗，或与贵族阶级势力对抗，或与商会及其他势力对抗。而1000年来，中国政府的权威从未受到过威胁，它从没有敌对势力。由此可见，中国树立权威的方法，与从西方历史中得到的经验是大相径庭的。而结果就是，中国人以非常不同的观念看待政府。鉴于我们倾向于把政府看作不受欢迎者，或者不速之客，或者是一个需限制并制约其权力的国家机构。但中国人并不这样看待他们的政府，中国人把政府看作父母官，并不仅仅是父母官，而是家庭的一员；并不仅仅是家庭一员，而是一家之主，家中的长者。这就是中国人眼中的政府，与我们的观点非常不同。相比较西方的情况，这种观念以不同方式深入社会。
我想告诉大家，在此我们在中国当前环境下，所面对的问题实际上是一种新型的思维模式，与我们之前所认为的有所不同。中国注重市场与政府作用。亚当·斯密已在十八世纪末写道，“中国市场比欧洲任何市场都要更加广阔，更加发达，更加复杂。”除了毛泽东时期，大体上来讲，一直是这种情况。而这种市场是 与繁荣强大且无处不在的政府相辅相成的。在中国，政府的影响力遍布全国。它控制公司企业，大部分公司仍收归国有。而诸如联想的私营公司，无论规模大小，在 很多方面都依靠政府支持。经济目标和其他政策都由政府制定。同时，政府职权会渗入到各个方面，比如我们所熟知的计划生育政策。
你知道吗？在中国人的多项发明之中，除了纸张及火药以外，他们还发明了高尔夫球？
此外，这是政府的历史传统，是政府机构的一贯作风。如果你想找到例证，长城就是其中之一。这是另一个，这是京杭大运河。在公元前五世纪初具规模，在公元七世纪全面建成，总长1114英里（约1794公里），连接北京、杭州和上海。在中国，由政府建造的杰出的基础设施项目，可谓是历史悠久、这有助于解释我们今天所看到的，比如三峡大坝，以及其他中国国土范围内政府能力的充分表现。因此这三个构成要素，有助于理解中国的不同之处，包括其文明国家的实质，种族观念，以及政府性质和政府与社会的关系。总的来说，我们仍坚持己见，认为仅仅套用西方世界的经验，运用西方观点，采用西方思想，就能理解中国。 如果你想知道，为何我们对中国的看法大错特错，为何我们对中国未来的预测失误，以上就是答案。不幸的是，我不得不说，对中国的看法，带有那么点西方人的思想观念，就是有些妄自尊大，自负地认为我们是最好的，因此认为我们的思想政策全球通用。其次是无知，我们不肯应对关于差异的问题。一位美国历史学家保罗· 科恩的一本书中，有一段非常有趣的文字。保罗·科恩提出，西方世界自认为可能是各种文化中最国际化的一个，但事实并非如此。在很多方面，西方文化狭隘短浅，因为200年来西方国家统治世界，因此并不真正需要理解其他文化和其他文明国度。原因在于，到了最后它可能会，若有必要会动用武力摆平一切，达到目的。而其他的那些文化，事实上是世界的其他地区，它们与西方文化相比，远远处于弱势地位。但由于西方文化在其中的存在地位，它们被迫去了解西方世界。结果就是，它们在很多方面，比西方文化更加国际化。
以东亚为例，东亚包括日本、朝鲜、中国等等，拥有全世界三分之一的人口，现为世界上首屈一指的经济区。现在我要告诉你们，东亚人民对西方世界的熟知程度，要远远超过西方世界对东亚的了解。我想，这一点在目前是非常切合实际的。到底发生了什么？让我们回到开头的图表，高盛公司预测图。现在看来，从 历史角度来看，世界在快速发展和不断变化着，并非由老牌发达国家带动，而是由于发展中国家。我们通过二十国集团，很快取代七国集团或八国集团这一事实可见一斑。而这种情况导致两个结果。其一，西方世界对世界的影响力急速下降。一个突出的实例就是一年前，在哥本哈根举行的气候变化大会，欧洲各势力并未出现在最终谈判桌前。这种情形最后出现在何时？我敢打赌大约在200年前。而这种情况以后还会出现。
其二，这个世界对我们来说，将不可避免地变得越来越陌生。因为它将由我们所陌生的，所不熟知的文化、经验及历史塑造。到最后，以欧洲为例，因为美国还稍有不同。大体上来讲，欧洲人，我不得不说，对世界的变化一无所知，并且毫无察觉。某些人，如一个我在中国的英国朋友，他说，“欧洲大陆正逐渐被人遗忘却不自知”。也许他说的对，也许只是夸大其词。但同时还存在另一问题，欧洲正逐渐与世界脱轨。而这种情况的出现，则是由于对未来认识不清。当然，欧洲曾一度对掌控未来信心满满。以十九世纪为例，但情况不再是这样。
如果你想感受未来，如果你想体味未来，看看中国，那里有历史悠久的儒家思想。这应该是你们前所未见的火车站。看起来并不像火车站，这是新建的广 州高铁火车站。中国已拥有比其他任何国家都庞大的交通网络，不久之后将发展到比世界其他国家的总和还庞大。目前有这样一种想法，而这种想法将很快在北京的 一个郊区变成现实。这是中途巴士，在路面上能承载2000人。它沿着城郊道路在铁轨上行驶，而汽车则在它之下穿梭，其速度能达到100英里（约161公里）每时。这就是现实的发展趋势。因为中国的问题极其特殊，既异于欧洲，又异于美国。中国人多地少，因此这是对于，中国将会有许多城市人口突破200万这 一状况的解决方案。
那么，我该以什么作为结语？我们应该如何看待当前这个飞速发展的世界呢？我想这其中肯定有好坏利弊。但首要的，我想说的是，这个世界会朝着积极的方向发展。200年来，这个世界基本上是由一少部分人统治的，以欧洲与北美洲为代表。而诸如中国、印度等一些国家的诞生，这二者拥有全球38%的人口， 还有印度尼西亚、巴西等国家，它们代表了近200年来，民主化的进程中走出的举足轻重的一步。那些曾被忽略、曾没有发言权，未被注意、未被了解的文明与文化，将会在世界范围内展现其魅力。作为人道主义国家，我们必须对这种转变表示欢迎，我们也应该了解这些文明。较大的那艘船，是昔日郑和出航所使用的。在十五世纪初，郑和率领舰队经由中国南海、东海，穿过印度洋，到达东非。在它前面较小的那只船，是在郑和80年后，克里斯托弗·哥伦布横跨大西洋所使用的。仔细观察这张绢轴国画，在1368年由朱洲所画。我想他们在打高尔夫。老天呐，中国人居然还发明了高尔夫球。欢迎来到未来！谢谢各位。
For more interesting information:
- The Dorje Shugden category on my blog
- Reuters Investigation on Dorje Shugden Inaccurate?
- China officially supports Dorje Shugden
- China’s official stance on Dorje Shugden
- Malaysia and China friendship
- Panchen Lama meets Chinese President
- Stephon Marbury embraces China
- Why is Buddha Amitabha So Prevalent in China?
- Vajravarahi Caves in China
- China’s HUGE Buddha Statues!!!!
- Dalai Lama, China & Dorje Shugden
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It’s just a matter of time before China overtakes the U.S. as the world’s leading economy. China is set to dominate the global economy as it becomes the richest country in the world. Since opening the door to the outside world . China is increasingly playing an important and influential role in development and in the global economy. The Chinese economy experienced astonishing growth in the last few decades .
Thank you Rinpoche for this sharing for us to know more of China as a powerful country
China, will ascend to the top in the world, economically and culturally. It is only a matter of time. China already looks for resources all over the globe and they tend not to meddle in other countries affairs especially in Africa, so that is quite a difference from US modus operandi and could be the defining factor in deciding which country will be the top nation in the world.
China was a great nation historically and attracted many people from various parts of the world to trade, visit and establish political relations. China fell with the opium was, which is said to be brought in by foreigners to “cripple” the people into addiction. Despite the poor conditions China had to ensure, she once again rises this century to be a world power. This talk was give in 2010 and today, 6 years later, what Martin Jacques shared has come true.
We can only expect China’s influence to grow and spread as we witness political authorities make effort to be friends and avoid offending them.
I admire what they have accomplished and agree with Rinpoche that we must be open to changes and adapt to them. As we learn, everything is impermanent 🙂
**** Sam Crane debunks Martin Jacques’ claims of “CULTURAL EXCLUSIVISM” for China :
“When Martin Jacques Fools the World”
Couldn’t resist the title, which came to mind after I read this recent BBC commentary by Martin Jacques: “Is China more legitimate than the West?” (his book is entitled When China Rules the World) There are many problems with the piece, perhaps the least of which is its main thesis, but let’s start there.
Jacques argues:
“Now let me shock you: the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. How come?
In China’s case the source of the state’s legitimacy lies entirely outside the history or experience of Western societies.”
This was less shocking than simply inane. What does it mean to say that the PRC state is more legitimate than any in the “West”? He gives us no definition or basis for understanding what he means by “legitimacy.” Serious considerations of the topic, remind us that legitimacy is not simply popularity. And it’s obvious that Jacques has not really done any sort of systematic analysis to back up his claim. He’s just throwing rather empty rhetoric out there to demonstrate his admiration for the CCP.
But he gets into some historical trouble with that second assertion, that China is somehow “outside the history or experience of Western societies.” This belies a certain inattentiveness to both Chinese politics, from at least 1911 onwards, as well as international relations more broadly. As Amitav Acharya , among others, argued years ago: “…China uses Westphalian language to stake its claims to territory and sovereignty.” Imperial China did not operate with the same understanding of sovereignty as the Western powers in the 19th century. This created big, big problems that weakened the Celestial Empire’s capacity to resist imperialist encroachments.
Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, Chinese states, both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China have not repeated that mistake. They have embraced the Westphalian notion of sovereignty as exclusive and extensive political dominion within a given territory, and they have used that concept to define and defend Chinese interests in terms very much within the experience of Western societies.
And, yes, we all know that Westphalian sovereignty is regularly violated by the Great Powers that say they respect it. We all learned this in our international relations theory classes, of which, perhaps Jacques needs a bit more. The point is that the concept of sovereignty, as adapted from the Westphalian idea, matters because it defines a good part of the give and take, and hypocrisy, of contemporary international relations, China included.
But there are bigger problems with Jacques’s piece. Take this assertion:
“…China is not primarily a nation-state but a civilisation-state. For the Chinese, what matters is civilisation. For Westerners it is nation. The most important political value in China is the integrity and unity of the civilisation-state.”
He’s taking an idea – China as “civilization state” – first forwarded by Lucien Pye twenty years ago and misapplying it by putting it in the service of a facile historical exceptionalism. Yes, Chinese history is different than American or British or French history. Yes, the idea and practice of “national identity” and “nationalism” arose in the West (theorists differ on where it started and when, but the modern concept is generally understood to have developed outside of China). But it is rather clear at this point that “nation” is very important to “the Chinese” (is there a singular, monolithic “Chinese” experience? I don’t think so…). Similar to the embrace of Western notions of sovereignty, many Chinese people, especially poltiical leaders and intellectuals, have worked hard, for over a hundred years, to define and reproduce various understandings of modern national identity in China.
It is curious that Jacques discounts the importance of nationalism in China. I don’t know him, but his biography suggests that he was trained as an economist, with a focus on Marxist theory. And that might explain his disregard for nationalism. Remember: Benedict Anderson, in his classic study, works hard to convince those on the left that Marx was wrong in this regard, that nationalism is, in fact, a powerful political force, not just in Europe but all around the world.
Jacques really misses the boat here. Of course, other aspects of his argument have some merit. China has gained a great deal of economic and political and military power in the past three decades. And the PRC is pressing against certain international rules and practices that its leaders feel do not serve its interests. But there is nothing particularly remarkable here. Other “Western” powers have behaved in similar ways. Moreover, it is not at all clear that China will “rule the world” any time soon. It will be more powerful. It will get its way in some areas where in the past it did not. But global power is diffuse. Capital in dynamically mobile. Advantages come and go, and that pattern seems to be accelerating as globalization makes everything – production, information, understanding – move faster and faster and faster.
Assertions of cultural exceptionalism thus seem untenable in a world that fragments and shifts and chages so quickly. And nostalgia for a world that never existed is simply misplaced, as with this line from Jacques:
“The Chinese idea of the state could hardly be more different [than that of the “West]
They do not view it from a narrowly utilitarian standpoint, in terms of what it can deliver, let alone as the devil incarnate in the manner of the American Tea Party.
They see the state as an intimate, or, to be more precise, as a member of the family – the head of the family, in fact. The Chinese regard the family as the template for the state. What’s more, they perceive the state not as external to themselves but as an extension or representation of themselves.”
This strikes me as the fluffiest form of faux-Confucianism, uninformed by serious engagement with Chinese history or philosophy. Has he never read Mozi, the inspiration of an early Chinese utilitarianism? Is he familiar with Han Feizi, who rejects the government-as-family metaphor? Or the myriad ways in which family interests can clash with, and thus often take precedence over, state interests? How one could ignore the horrible assault on families and family institutions by a tyrannical state during the Great Leap Forward, and by omission assume that the memory of tens of millions of deaths is politically and culturally insignificant, is beyond me.
So, to answer the question that Jacques poses, no, China is not more legitimate than the West. Not, at least, until the CCP allows for truth telling about the worst famine of the twentieth century.
( by SAM CRANE )
LINK : http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2012/11/when-martin-jacques-fools-the-world.html
“Why China Will Not Become The Dominant Power In Asia” (2014)
by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb and Adjunct Associate Professor John Lee.
http://www.regionalsecurity.org.au/Resources/Documents/SC10-3DibbLee.pdf
*** YOUTUBE :
*** “Why China Will Not Become the Dominant Power in Asia”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0
Uploaded on March 26, 2015
Public Lecture by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb and Adjunct Associate Professor John Lee.
The belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is based on assumptions that its continued and rapid economic rise, and its emergence as a regional peer of America’s in military terms is all but assured. Such a belief underpins arguments that a fundamental strategic reorganisation of Asia is inevitable, and that it will be necessary and perhaps even desirable to concede to China significant ‘strategic space’. Dependent largely on linear extrapolations about the future, such arguments ignore the implications of China’s economic, social and national fragilities, its lack of major friends or allies in the region as well as the considerable military deficiencies and challenges faced by the People’s Liberation Army. With the Defence White Paper due for release in 2015, the government should bear in mind that planning for an era of Chinese dominance in the region—or even its emergence as an American strategic peer in Asia—would be premature if not improbable. Australia should not design its defence force for war with China, but it should be able to counter Chinese coercion and contribute to Allied military operations if necessary.
CREDENTIALS :
Paul Dibb is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell schol of Asia-Pacific Affairs, ANU. He was head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1991 to 2004. Before that he held the positions of deputy secretary for Defence, director of the Joint Intelligence Organisation and head of the National Assessments Staff. He studied the former Soviet Union for over 20 years both as a senior intelligence officer and academic. He advised ASIO on certain Soviet activities. His book The Soviet Union–the Incomplete Superpower was published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies , London in 1986, reprinted 1987 and second edition 1988.
John Lee is an Australian academic working on international economic and security affairs with a focus on the Asia-Pacific. Lee is an adjunct associate professor at the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, a Michael Hintze Fellow at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney and a senior scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. Lee is a board member of the Institute for Regional Security.
**** Sam Crane debunks Martin Jacques’ claims of “CULTURAL EXCLUSIVISM” for China :
“When Martin Jacques Fools the World”
Couldn’t resist the title, which came to mind after I read this recent BBC commentary by Martin Jacques: “Is China more legitimate than the West?” (his book is entitled When China Rules the World) There are many problems with the piece, perhaps the least of which is its main thesis, but let’s start there.
Jacques argues:
“Now let me shock you: the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. How come?
In China’s case the source of the state’s legitimacy lies entirely outside the history or experience of Western societies.”
This was less shocking than simply inane. What does it mean to say that the PRC state is more legitimate than any in the “West”? He gives us no definition or basis for understanding what he means by “legitimacy.” Serious considerations of the topic, remind us that legitimacy is not simply popularity. And it’s obvious that Jacques has not really done any sort of systematic analysis to back up his claim. He’s just throwing rather empty rhetoric out there to demonstrate his admiration for the CCP.
But he gets into some historical trouble with that second assertion, that China is somehow “outside the history or experience of Western societies.” This belies a certain inattentiveness to both Chinese politics, from at least 1911 onwards, as well as international relations more broadly. As Amitav Acharya , among others, argued years ago: “…China uses Westphalian language to stake its claims to territory and sovereignty.” Imperial China did not operate with the same understanding of sovereignty as the Western powers in the 19th century. This created big, big problems that weakened the Celestial Empire’s capacity to resist imperialist encroachments.
Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, Chinese states, both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China have not repeated that mistake. They have embraced the Westphalian notion of sovereignty as exclusive and extensive political dominion within a given territory, and they have used that concept to define and defend Chinese interests in terms very much within the experience of Western societies.
And, yes, we all know that Westphalian sovereignty is regularly violated by the Great Powers that say they respect it. We all learned this in our international relations theory classes, of which, perhaps Jacques needs a bit more. The point is that the concept of sovereignty, as adapted from the Westphalian idea, matters because it defines a good part of the give and take, and hypocrisy, of contemporary international relations, China included.
But there are bigger problems with Jacques’s piece. Take this assertion:
“…China is not primarily a nation-state but a civilisation-state. For the Chinese, what matters is civilisation. For Westerners it is nation. The most important political value in China is the integrity and unity of the civilisation-state.”
He’s taking an idea – China as “civilization state” – first forwarded by Lucien Pye twenty years ago and misapplying it by putting it in the service of a facile historical exceptionalism. Yes, Chinese history is different than American or British or French history. Yes, the idea and practice of “national identity” and “nationalism” arose in the West (theorists differ on where it started and when, but the modern concept is generally understood to have developed outside of China). But it is rather clear at this point that “nation” is very important to “the Chinese” (is there a singular, monolithic “Chinese” experience? I don’t think so…). Similar to the embrace of Western notions of sovereignty, many Chinese people, especially poltiical leaders and intellectuals, have worked hard, for over a hundred years, to define and reproduce various understandings of modern national identity in China.
It is curious that Jacques discounts the importance of nationalism in China. I don’t know him, but his biography suggests that he was trained as an economist, with a focus on Marxist theory. And that might explain his disregard for nationalism. Remember: Benedict Anderson, in his classic study, works hard to convince those on the left that Marx was wrong in this regard, that nationalism is, in fact, a powerful political force, not just in Europe but all around the world.
Jacques really misses the boat here. Of course, other aspects of his argument have some merit. China has gained a great deal of economic and political and military power in the past three decades. And the PRC is pressing against certain international rules and practices that its leaders feel do not serve its interests. But there is nothing particularly remarkable here. Other “Western” powers have behaved in similar ways. Moreover, it is not at all clear that China will “rule the world” any time soon. It will be more powerful. It will get its way in some areas where in the past it did not. But global power is diffuse. Capital in dynamically mobile. Advantages come and go, and that pattern seems to be accelerating as globalization makes everything – production, information, understanding – move faster and faster and faster.
Assertions of cultural exceptionalism thus seem untenable in a world that fragments and shifts and chages so quickly. And nostalgia for a world that never existed is simply misplaced, as with this line from Jacques:
“The Chinese idea of the state could hardly be more different [than that of the “West]
They do not view it from a narrowly utilitarian standpoint, in terms of what it can deliver, let alone as the devil incarnate in the manner of the American Tea Party.
They see the state as an intimate, or, to be more precise, as a member of the family – the head of the family, in fact. The Chinese regard the family as the template for the state. What’s more, they perceive the state not as external to themselves but as an extension or representation of themselves.”
This strikes me as the fluffiest form of faux-Confucianism, uninformed by serious engagement with Chinese history or philosophy. Has he never read Mozi, the inspiration of an early Chinese utilitarianism? Is he familiar with Han Feizi, who rejects the government-as-family metaphor? Or the myriad ways in which family interests can clash with, and thus often take precedence over, state interests? How one could ignore the horrible assault on families and family institutions by a tyrannical state during the Great Leap Forward, and by omission assume that the memory of tens of millions of deaths is politically and culturally insignificant, is beyond me.
So, to answer the question that Jacques poses, no, China is not more legitimate than the West. Not, at least, until the CCP allows for truth telling about the worst famine of the twentieth century.
( by SAM CRANE )
LINK : http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2012/11/when-martin-jacques-fools-the-world.html
Martin Jacques’ explanation on China’s psyche makes a lot of sense. Coming from Chinese descent and growing up with family of strong Chinese culture and mentality although I spent most of my teenage years in the US, I can relate to what Mr Jacques says. Even though my parents are 1st generation Chinese living in Malaysia, they are very pro China and very proud of being Han chinese. Thousands of years of Chinese culture and mentality seem to be in the bloodstream although they have never lived in China before. Imagine how strong Chinese ideology is with mainland Chinese.
It’s true that Western ideology is very different from Chinese. It’s difficult to relate to Chinese mentality if we use Western mentality as a point of reference. So if we want to be part of the rise of China, which is inevitable, it makes sense to understand Chinese mentality.
“Why China Will Not Become The Dominant Power In Asia” (2014)
by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb and Adjunct Associate Professor John Lee.
http://www.regionalsecurity.org.au/Resources/Documents/SC10-3DibbLee.pdf
*** YOUTUBE :
*** “Why China Will Not Become the Dominant Power in Asia”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0
Uploaded on March 26, 2015
Public Lecture by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb and Adjunct Associate Professor John Lee.
The belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is based on assumptions that its continued and rapid economic rise, and its emergence as a regional peer of America’s in military terms is all but assured. Such a belief underpins arguments that a fundamental strategic reorganisation of Asia is inevitable, and that it will be necessary and perhaps even desirable to concede to China significant ‘strategic space’. Dependent largely on linear extrapolations about the future, such arguments ignore the implications of China’s economic, social and national fragilities, its lack of major friends or allies in the region as well as the considerable military deficiencies and challenges faced by the People’s Liberation Army. With the Defence White Paper due for release in 2015, the government should bear in mind that planning for an era of Chinese dominance in the region—or even its emergence as an American strategic peer in Asia—would be premature if not improbable. Australia should not design its defence force for war with China, but it should be able to counter Chinese coercion and contribute to Allied military operations if necessary.
CREDENTIALS :
Paul Dibb is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell schol of Asia-Pacific Affairs, ANU. He was head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1991 to 2004. Before that he held the positions of deputy secretary for Defence, director of the Joint Intelligence Organisation and head of the National Assessments Staff. He studied the former Soviet Union for over 20 years both as a senior intelligence officer and academic. He advised ASIO on certain Soviet activities. His book The Soviet Union–the Incomplete Superpower was published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies , London in 1986, reprinted 1987 and second edition 1988.
John Lee is an Australian academic working on international economic and security affairs with a focus on the Asia-Pacific. Lee is an adjunct associate professor at the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, a Michael Hintze Fellow at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney and a senior scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. Lee is a board member of the Institute for Regional Security.
This is a blog post everyone needs to read if they want to understand more about the world’s most powerful nation. It is undeniable that China is on the rise and it has been so for the last decade. Where most economies have shrunk, China has only expanded and it doesn’t look to be changing any time soon. I mean, with their population alone, they have a sufficiently large enough market to keep all of their industries going without needing outside help.
But what I appreciated most about this objective talk is Martin Jacques’ assertion that we need to stop looking at China through Western eyes and making predictions based on that. We cannot judge one nation of people on the values and principles of another nation; there is no shared history or shared culture to make this possible. China has always been historically Buddhist / Taoist / Confucianist for example so how can you judge their values based on Judeo-Christian / Abrahamic concepts?
To do so and then question why China doesn’t live up to expectations is (as Martin Jacques said) arrogant. Yes, the Anglophile has said it! 🙂
Setting aside our preconceived notions about China, and whatever we may like or dislike about them, understanding this rich, deep culture is important for anyone to have a successful relationship with them. When you go to a powerful person to ask for a favour, isn’t it logical to ask around and find out what they like and don’t like, so you know how to talk to them, what kind of gift to give them, what their favourite foods are, how you can woo them? Dealing with China is just like that and if we want to achieve our aims (whether it is political, financial or spiritual), then we had best swallow our pride, examine the evidence and the facts, and move on from there.
What do we want, to do the necessary to achieve our aims and goals, or to sulk on the sidelines because we tried to make Goliath play our game and in the end, we didn’t get what we want?