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2021/3/24
China Doesn’t Respect Us Anymore — for Good Reason
KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES
Sometimes a comedian cuts through foreign policy issues better than any diplomat. Bill Maher did that the other week with an epic rant on U.S.-China relations, nailing the most troubling contrast between the two countries: China can still get big things done. America, not so much.
有時候，喜劇演員比任何外交官都更擅長解讀外交政策問題。比如比爾·馬厄(Bill Maher)幾週前那場有關美中關係的經典吐槽，一下子就抓住了兩國之間最令人不安的對比：中國仍然可以搞定大事。美國則不然。
For many of our political leaders, governing has become sports, entertainment or just mindless tribal warfare. No wonder China’s leaders see us as a nation in imperial decline, living off the leftover fumes of American “exceptionalism.” I wish I could say they were all wrong.
對於我們的許多政治領導人而言，執政已經成為了體育競技、娛樂或僅僅是無腦的部落戰爭。難怪中國領導人視我們為一個衰落的帝國，靠美國「例外主義」的余灰為生。我希望我能說他們都錯了。
“New Rule: You’re not going to win the battle for the 21st century if you are a ‘silly people.’ And Americans are a silly people,” said Maher. “That’s the classic phrase from ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ — when Lawrence tells his Bedouin allies that as long as they stay a bunch of squabbling tribes, they will remain ‘a silly people.’ …
「新規則：如果你是一群『愚民』，你將不會贏得21世紀的戰鬥。美國人是一群愚民，」馬厄說。「這是《阿拉伯的勞倫斯》(Lawrence of Arabia)的經典台詞，當勞倫斯告訴他的貝都因盟友，只要他們的部落繼續爭吵不休，他們就仍然是一群『愚民』。」
“We all know China does bad stuff. They break promises about Hong Kong autonomy; they put Uyghurs in camps and punish dissent. And we don’t want to be that. But it’s got to be something between authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do and a representative government that can’t do anything at all.”
「我們都知道中國在做壞事。他們違反了香港自治的承諾；他們將維吾爾人關在拘禁營，並懲罰持不同政見者。而我們不想成為那樣。但我們得在告訴所有人該做什麼的威權政府和什麼都做不了的代議制政府之間找個位置。」
Maher added: “On a national level, we’ve been having Infrastructure Week every week since 2009, but we never do anything. Half the country is having a never-ending ‘woke’ competition. … The other half believes we have to stop the lizard people, because they’re eating babies. … China sees a problem and they fix it. They build a dam. We debate what to rename it.”
馬厄還說：「我們從2009年開始每週都在搞舉國的『基建周』，但我們什麼都沒有做。半個國家正在進行一場永無休止的『覺醒』比賽。……而另一半認為我們必須阻止蜥蜴人，因為他們在吃嬰兒。……中國看到問題就解決問題。他們修了一個水壩。而我們爭論如何為它更名。」
Yes, China has huge problems. Its leaders are not 10 feet tall, but they are focused on real metrics of success. “China’s leaders are fierce but fragile,” argues James McGregor, the chairman of the consultancy APCO Worldwide, Greater China. “Precisely because they were not elected, they wake up every day scared of their own people, and that makes them very focused on performance” — particularly around jobs, housing and clean air.
是的，中國有嚴重的問題。它的領導者沒有三頭六臂，但他們專注於真實的成功指標。「中國領導人是兇狠而脆弱的，」諮詢公司安可顧問公司(APCO Worldwide)大中華區董事長麥健陸(James McGregor)說。「正是因為他們不是由選民選出的，他們每天醒來都害怕他們的人民，這使他們非常注重業績」——尤其是圍繞就業、住房和空氣質量。
By contrast, many U.S. politicians these days are elected from safe, gerrymandered districts and seek to stay in power by just “performing” for their base with populist theatrics.
相比之下，如今，美國的政客是從安全的、操縱劃分選舉版圖的選區選出的，他們僅僅是通過為選民「表演」民粹主義橋段來尋求繼續執政。
Whenever I point this out, critics on the far right or far left ridiculously respond, “Oh, so you love China.” Actually, I am not interested in China. I care about America. My goal is to frighten us out of our complacency by getting more Americans to understand that China can be really evil AND really focused on educating its people and building its infrastructure and adopting best practices in business and science and promoting government bureaucrats on merit — all at the same time. Condemning China for the former will have zero impact if we’re not its equal in all of the latter.
每當我指出這一點時，極右或極左批評家都會荒唐地回應，「哦，所以你愛中國。」實際上，我對中國不感興趣。我在乎的是美國。我的目的是通過讓更多的美國人明白，中國可以非常邪惡，它也非常專注於教育人民、建設基礎設施、採用商業和科學最佳實踐以及憑業績提拔政府官員——這些是同時存在的，來讓我們從自滿中驚醒。如果我們在這些方面不能與其匹敵，那麼譴責中國的邪惡行為將產生不了任何影響。
At last week’s Alaska meeting between America’s and China’s top diplomats, Chinese officials made it quite clear that they no longer fear our criticism, because they don’t respect us as they once did, and they don’t think the rest of the world does, either. Or as Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker, baldly told his U.S. counterparts: “The United States does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”
在上週中美兩國最高外交官舉行的阿拉斯加會議上，中國官員表現得十分明確，他們不再懼怕我們的批評，因為他們不像過去那樣尊重我們，而且他們認為其他國家也是如此。就像中國最高外交政策制定者楊潔篪大膽地告訴他的美國對等官員：「你們沒有資格在中國的面前說，你們從實力的地位出發同中國談話。」
Surprised? What did you think, that the Chinese didn’t notice that our last president inspired his followers to ransack our Capitol, that a majority of his party did not recognize the results of our democratic election, that a member of our Congress believes that Jewish-run space lasers cause forest fires, that left-wing anarchists were allowed to take over a section of downtown Portland, creating havoc for months, that during the pandemic the U.S. printed money to help its consumers keep spending — much of it on Chinese-made goods — while China printed money to invest in even more infrastructure, and that gun violence in America is out control?
感到意外嗎？我們的上任總統激勵他的追隨者洗劫我們的國會大廈；他的黨派中多數人不承認我們的民主選舉結果；我們的一名國會議員認為是猶太人操作的太空雷射引起了森林大火；左翼無政府主義者被允許接管波特蘭市中心的一部分，造成數月之久的破壞；在大流行期間，中國增發貨幣是為了投資更多的基礎設施，而美國增發貨幣以幫助消費者保持支出——相當一部分商品是中國製造的；並且美國的槍枝暴力已經失控。你們認為以上這些中國人沒有注意到嗎？
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