The world is changing with really remarkable speed. 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. We should bear in mind here these projections were drawn up before the Western financial crises.
世界正在以惊人的速度飞快得改变着。如果看2050年的图表，预测表明中国经济规模将会是美国经济的两倍，印度的经济规模将会和美国的经济几乎持平。在这里，我们应该记住这些预测是在西方经济危机之前做出的。
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at the latest projection by BNP (Banque Nationale de Paris) PARIBAS for when China will have a larger economy than the United States. Goldman Sachs projected 2027. The post-crisis projection is 2010. That’s just a decade way.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% 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.
几周前，我查看法国巴黎银行的最近预测，中国在什么时候会超越美国经济，成为第一大经济体。高盛投资公司预测2027年。危机过后的预测是2020年。这也不过只有10年的光景。中国将在两个基本方面上改变世界。首先，中国是一个幅员广大的发展中国家它有13亿人口，在过去30年间它以每年10%左右的经济增长率发展。在未来10年间，它会有世界上最大的经济体。在世界现代史中，以前从来都是发达国家还没有一个发展中的国家变成了世界上最大的经济体。
Secondly, for the first time in the modern era, the dominant country in the world which I think is China will become, will be not from the West, and from very very different civilizational roots.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 3 building blocks for trying to understand what China is like just as a beginning.
第二，在现代史中第一次在世界上，我认为中国会变成大国，它有别于西方国家而它是从非常，非常不同的文明根源发展起的大国。现在我知道西方国家有一个普遍的假设随着国家的现代化，它们也会西方化。这是个幻想。这是对于现代化仅仅是竞争，市场和技术的一种产品的假设。中国的现代化不仅仅是这样的，也是由历史和文化共同作用下形成的。中国不同于西方国家，它也不会变成和西方国家一样。它会在非常基础的方面表现得非常不同。现在这的大问题明显是，我们该怎样认识中国?我们该怎样了解中国?在西方我们现在的问题大体上是传统的方法我们用西方的术语，用西方的观点来了解真正的中国。我们不能这样。现在我想给大家3个基础理由来试着了解中国只是起个头。
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 with the victory of the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. at the end of 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 2000 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.
首先是这个，中国事实上不是一个民族国家。在过去的几百年，中国自称是一个民族国家。但对中国很了解的人知道中国比这历史要悠久得多。中国是在公元前221年也就在战国时期的末期从秦朝一统江山起，现代中国就诞生了。你可以看到现代中国的边界线。随之其后的汉朝，还在2000年前。你可以看出中国已经占据我们现在所知的华东地区的大部分，绝大多数的中国人当时在那儿居住现在还生活在那儿。
Now what is extraordinary about this is what gives China it’s 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.
这点非同寻常的是，它赋予了中国做为中国的意义，也赋予了中国人成为他们中国人的意义，这不是从过去几百年，也不是从民族国家开始形成这种认识，这跟西方发展也不一样，而这一阶段，如果你喜欢，可以说是文明国家的阶段。我想到这儿，举个例子吧，传统习惯例如：对祖先的崇拜，非常有特色的国家概念，诸如此类的，非常有特色的家庭观念，社交关系如关系，儒家价值观等等。所有这些事都来自于文明国家的阶段。
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 demographicallyand 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.
换言之，中国不像世界上的西方国家和多数国家，它由它自身文明所形成，它是作为一个文明国家而不是一个民族国家而存在的。还有另一件事要加进来，这就是：当然我们知道中国是幅员辽阔，人口众多，在人口统计和地理上都是首屈一指，它有13亿人口。我们常常没关注的事实是中国也是极其多样化和非常多元化的，在许多方面甚至权力是非常分散化的。尽管我们认为不能仅从北京中央政府来管理这庞大规模的国家，我们以为会是这样，但从来都不是这样。
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.
所以这才是中国，一个文明国家，而不是一个民族国家。那这意味着什么呢?那么我想这有很多种深刻的含义。我会给你两个简短介绍。
The first is that the most important political value for the Chinese is unity, is the maintenance of Chinese civilization. You know, 2000 years ago, Europe breakdown, the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire, it divided, and its 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.
第一个是中国人最主要的政治价值观是统一，用来维护中华文明。大家知道，2000年前，欧洲灭亡，神圣罗马帝国[罗马帝国]的分裂。从那时到现在，它不断地分裂。在同一时间段，中国却有着完全相反的方向，非常艰难地维系着这种强大的统一文明，把文明国家统一在一起。
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 Knong, that won’t be the case. 13 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 though, naturally enough in nation state ways.
第二或许是更一般的例子香港的例子。大家是否记得香港在1997年从英国政府转交给中国政府?大家能记得中国宪法体制是什么吗?一国两制。我会打赌在西方没有人会信这一套。“装饰门面。当中国政府接手香港，这不可能。”13年来，香港现在的政治和司法体制和1997年一样，但和中国大陆的有所不同。我们都错了，为什么我们理解错了呢?我们错是因为我们理所当然地以民族国家角度思考。
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.
想想1990年德国统一。发生什么了?基本上东德被西德吞噬。一个国家，一个体制。这是民族国家的心态。但是你不能用此来管理一个像中国这样的, 一个文明国家，它建立在一种文明，一个体制上。这行不通。的确中国在香港问题上的回应也是在台湾问题上的回应，它是一个很自然的回应：一种文明，多种体制。
Let me offer you another building block to try to understand China, maybe it’s not such 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% of them think they belong to the same race, the Han. Now this is completely different from the other world’s 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. Very very…you know, at least 2000 years, a history of conquest, 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.
让我来说另一个基础理由来试着了解中国, 这或许是一个让人不舒服的理由。中国与其他大多数国家对民族的概念有非常，非常不同的理解。大家知道，13亿中国人，超过90%的中国人认为他们属于同一个民族，汉族。目前这与世界上其它人口众多的国家截然相反。印度, 美国，印度尼西亚，巴西，他们都是多民族的。中国人没有感到过多民族。中国仅是在边界线上有多种少数民族的人。那问题是，为什么?好吧，我认为实质上，原因得再次追溯到这文明国家。至少在2000年的历史长河中，征服，占领，合并，同化等的历史随着时间的推移导致了汉民族这概念的形成过程当然，这概念也孕育了增强了汉文化认同感也使其变得非常强大, 具有深远意义。
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 differences. 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.
现在这历史经验的巨大优势呈现出来，没有汉民族，中国永远不可能连为一体。汉民族文化认同一直把这个国家粘合在一起。它的巨大的劣势是汉民族对文化差异有很少的认知概念。他们真正相信他们自身汉族文化的优越性，他们不尊重那些不同民族的差异性。因此, 举个例子，比如他们对待回族和藏族的态度。
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 areoverwhelminglyseem to think—in these days at least—that the authority and legitimacy of the state is a function of democracy. The problem of this proposition is that the Chinese state enjoys more legitimacy and more authority amongst the Chinese that is true with any Western state. And the reason for this is because—well, there’re 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.
让我给出第三个基础理由，中国式的国家。现在在中国国家和社会间的关系非常不同于西方的那种关系。在西方我们绝大多数人似乎认为--至少在最近国家的权威和合法性是民主的一个功能。有关这问题是中国这个国家对中国人民享有更多合法性和更多权威性这比起任何西方国家，它都是事实。这个的原因是因为我认为有两个理由。中国很明显与民主无关，因为依我们来看，中国完全称不上是民主。
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 embodimentand the guardian of Chinese civilization, of the civilization state. This is as close as China gets to a kind of spiritual role.
这个理由是，首先，因为在中国，国家是一个非常特别有所指的，它享有一个非常特别的意义作为中华文明的代表，体现和捍卫者，也是代表中国国家的代表，化身和捍卫者。这也接近中国有种精神象征的作用。
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 1000 years, the power of the Chinese state has not been challenged. It’s had no serious rivals. So you can see, the way in which power has been constructed in China is very different from our experience in Western history.
第二个理由是因为，反之在欧洲，北美洲，国家的权力不断受到挑战。我指在欧洲历史传统，历史上反对教堂，反对其它各种贵族阶级，反对商人等等有1000年历史，中国国家的权力从来没被挑战过。它没有真正的对手可抗衡。所以大家可以看到在中国已经建立的权力的方式与我们西方历史的经验非常不同。
