[国际新闻] 英报书评：如何与日渐强大的中国打交道

“如果别国要在未来与日渐强大的中国打交道，他们就需要知道中国人是如何看待他们，以及中国人在世界上所占地位。”国际知名学者、澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚大学名誉教授哈里·盖尔伯在新着《龙和洋鬼子》中这样说。
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　　针对盖尔伯教授这部名着，新华网刊登了英国星期日电讯报的一篇评论文章，要点如下：人在德国社区. `# |3 X0 K( S0 H

　　中国政府刚刚宣布，未来一年的国防开支将增长近18%。中方发言人说，国防费用的增长只是为了防御自卫。但在华盛顿，美国官员越来越多地谈到21世纪的中国将是美国最大的挑战，甚至有可能在军事上对美构成威胁。在这样的背景下，我们有必要回过头去看看数千年来中国和外部世界漫长而又错综复杂的关系，并从中吸取教训，想想未来我们该如何和这个泱泱大国打交道。 rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de# ]4 ]  K' b& B8 k& i
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　　如果不是立意大胆，国际知名学者、澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚大学名誉教授哈里·盖尔伯的着作《龙和洋鬼子》并没有什么突出之处。作者打算涵盖中国上下3000年的历史，展示中国自身发展——譬如说人口增长——和它的对外关系之间的交互影响。此外，作者还探讨了一个“相对被忽视”的课题，即其他国家和社会是如何看待中国并与之打交道的。
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　　本书概括了中国3000年的历史，并向读者介绍了中国的朝代变迁以及中国社会经久不衰的特性，如家族世袭、中央官僚政府等等。书中恰当地强调了19世纪中国腐朽的社会秩序被强大而充满活力的西方列强打碎后，中国人所遭受的苦难。 rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de& V: p2 _: ?8 c

　　它的不足之处是没有充分探讨中国人与外界打交道的种种不同方法。中国有博大精深的治国传统，在与其他民族和国家打交道方面拥有丰富的经验。例如，书中提到把中国皇帝置于世界统治者地位而其他国家皆为臣下的进贡体制，却没有解释它的许多细微差别和在不同时期发挥的不同作用，这是不够的。还有外界是如何看待中国的？文中提到了很多民族——蒙古族人、北韩族人、日本人、欧洲人、美国人——但他们是如何看待汉人的？对此我们收获甚少。 + H, o5 j+ m; J- C8 ^

　　看得出来，盖尔伯经常偏离书中论述的主题，似乎总忍不住向我们炫耀他的成果。更严重的问题是盖尔伯把中国错综复杂的历史处理得过于平淡。儒家并非只是强调服从权威。中国历史上一些最伟大的英雄就是儒家学者，他们挺身而出反抗失德的统治者。孔子的追随者、中国历史上另一位伟大的儒家孟子就发表过类似的言论。
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　　中国人也没有不分青红皂白地把所有外国人都视为蛮夷。他们对外来者有很好的鉴别能力，尤其是唐朝，对外来事物有浓厚的兴趣和鉴赏力。外来者曾以各种各样的方法帮助中国塑造文明：中国人从北方游牧民族那里学到了很多关于战争和其他方面的知识，并且在中国历史上有两个覆盖全国的非汉族统治的朝代——元朝和清朝。
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　　中国人对外界事物的反应也是多种多样的，从排挤到与之打交道、甚至仿效，无所不有。人们常常把长城视为中华民族对外防御的象征，而在历史上长城也是中国统治者与外族对抗或向外扩张领土的一个办法。明清两代学者就中国该如何与外界打交道掀起激烈的辩论。这种辩论持续到民国时期，并延续到今天。人在德国社区, O' Q. M! ?# j- M- N; g

　　如果我们要在未来的数十年间与日渐强大的中国打交道，我们就需要知道中国人是如何看待我们及他们自己在世界上的位置的，本书的建议是当谨慎为之。

China's uneasy relationship with the world

Margaret Macmillan reviews The Dragon and the Foreign Devils: China and the World, 1100 BC to the Present by Harry G. Gelber1 b- S2 @- p7 U3 u& _

The Chinese government has just announced that it is increasing its defence spending for the coming year by nearly 18 per cent. Its spokesmen say this is for defensive purposes only, yet China has been increasingly assertive in staking out claims around the world to resources such as oil or in warning Taiwan against any hint of independence. In Washington, they talk increasingly of how China is the great challenger, perhaps even militarily, to the United States in the 21st century. All this makes it particularly timely to take a look at China's long and tangled relationship with the outside world and to see what we can learn for dealing with it in the future.
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The Dragon and the Foreign Devils is nothing if not bold in its intended scope. Its author, Harry Gelber, is, he promises, going to cover the whole story, from the earliest known Chinese history of 3,000 years ago to the present. He will show the interplay between developments in China, population growth for example, and its external relations. Moreover, he will also deal with the 'relatively neglected' subject of the ways other states and societies have thought about and dealt with China. (At this point, I couldn't help thinking of that great classic by John King Fairbank, The United States and China.)

Well, if you make big promises, you have to expect to be judged by how well you fulfil them. The answer in this case is not all that well.+ J! d$ O% w. [5 I9 o) F0 g: u' c& i+ S
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The book, to be sure, gives a useful summary of China's history and will introduce newcomers to the field to the great cycles of dynastic change and to the enduring characteristics of Chinese society such as the family and centralised bureaucratic government. And it emphasises, rightly, the trauma which the Chinese suffered in the 19th century when their decaying order was broken up by the encounter with a strong and dynamic West.0 h3 V) t9 I* \! S$ f1 u% z( N

Where it falls short is in not exploring sufficiently the many different ways the Chinese have dealt with the outside world. China has a rich tradition of statecraft and much experience in dealing with outside peoples and nations. It is not enough to refer, for example, to the tribute system, which positioned the Chinese emperor as ruler of the world and all others as his subordinates, without explaining that it had many nuances and worked differently in different eras. And what about the promise to look at outside attitudes to China? All sorts of peoples pop up - Mongols, Koreans, Tibetans, Japanese, Europeans, Americans - but we get very little of their ways of thinking about the Chinese.人在德国社区6 }4 Q# W8 x3 \* J# M! y

Too often Gelber drifts away from his own themes and seems unable to resist showing us the fruits of his industry. The text is dotted, in a distracting way, with what he calls 'intermezzos' - sidebars on subjects as varied as the odd career of General Charles Gordon, Mao's sex life, or how the US broke Japanese naval codes. We also get aphorisms worthy of fortune cookies: 'Crises usually offer opportunities' or 'Demography is destiny'. It is hard to see how any of this really helps us to understand China.

There are also worrying stylistic errors. Many sentences start with pronouns. Which can be irritating. Henry Kissinger was not advising Richard Nixon on foreign policy in 1958; in fact he was working for the Kennedys. Belgium did not separate from the Netherlands in 1834 but four years earlier. The Industrial Revolution did not take place, as implied, in the late 18th century.3 l6 G! ~4 Z1 s7 U( K8 }/ m# o* R

More seriously Gelber flattens out the complexities of the Chinese past. Confucianism did not simply stress obedience to authority. Some of the greatest heroes in Chinese history are the Confucian scholars who stood up their rulers because the latter were immoral. As Mencius, the great follower of Confucius, famously said when a bad ruler named Chou was killed, 'I have heard that the fellow called Chou was put to death, but I have not heard that this was killing a sovereign.'8 w5 S5 _/ H' a% l
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Nor did the Chinese lump all foreigners together indiscriminately as barbarians. They were perfectly capable of making distinctions among outsiders and in the Tang dynasty in particular had great admiration for and interest in things foreign. Outsiders have helped to shape Chinese civilisation in a myriad of ways: the Chinese learned much about war, among other things, from the nomads along the northern frontiers and two of its dynasties - the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Ching - were themselves non-Chinese.
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Chinese responses to the outside world have ranged from wanting to keep it away to dealing with it, even emulating it. The Great Wall itself (as Julia Lovell points out in her fascinating book of that title published last year ), which is often seen as the symbol of an inward-looking defensive China, is not really a single wall at all and much of it was built by one Chinese ruler against another or to stake out more territory along the frontier. In the last two dynasties, the Ming and the Qing, there were passionate debates among scholars about how China should deal with the wider world. The debates continued through the Republic of 1911-1949 and on into the present day. In the late 1980s a famous television documentary, River Elegy, argued passionately that China's perennial weakness was to look inwards and not to reach outwards.
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If we are to deal with a powerful China in the decades to come, we do indeed need to know about what the Chinese think about us and about their own place in the world. As far as this book goes, though, handle with caution.

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