中国民族主义：火炬在传递

Chinese nationalism
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中国民族主义：火炬在传递


Apr 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Rather than shout themselves hoarse, maybe foreign and Chinese protesters could try talking

中外的抗议者们与其各自咆哮，不如尝试对话

WHATEVER hopes there were that this August's Beijing Olympics would be a festival of fun and friendship with a bit of sport thrown in are fading fast. The event was intended to mark China's reintegration into the world, and re-emergence as a great power. Instead, preparations for the games have degenerated into some of the ugliest verbal confrontations for years between China and its critics. Passions and tempers are running high on both sides. On China's, even those suggesting something as innocuous as a dialogue are being pilloried as “traitors”. Foreign journalists have received death threats. Far from being a celebration of China's new openness, the Olympics risk vindicating those abroad who argued it was not a fit host and those at home who think a fearful, envious world will never give a resurgent China its due.

不管如何，今年八月北京奥运会成为一个快乐、友谊的体育盛会的希望正在迅速褪色。本来，这次盛会被视为中国再次融入世界，并再度以伟大的力量崛起的标志。但现在，为赛事的准备退化成了中国以及中国批评者之间多年来的最肮脏的口头争辩。双方的热情都正在高涨。在中国一面，甚至那些提出进行像对话这样无害的建议的人，也被讥讽为“汉奸”。国外的记者已经收到死亡威胁。奥运会，远没有成为中国新开放的庆典，却陷入了互相争辩的风险中——海外的人辩称中国不是一个合适的东道主，而中国人则认为，那些恐惧而嫉妒的外部世界从来不肯给中国一个本来就值得拥有的崛起的机会。

As in 1999, after NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, or in 2005, when anti-Japanese protests in China threatened to get out of hand, China's government finds itself in an awkward fix. It wants to rein in the popular anger before it descends into violence, or turns on the government itself. Yet its own policies and its control of information have stoked the anger in the first place.

就像1999年中国驻贝尔格莱德的大使馆被北约轰炸后，或者像2005年，中国的反日游行者们面临失控，中国政府发现自己处于困难的境地中。中国政府想要缓和这股流行的愤怒，以免变成暴力或最后冲向自己。但中国的政策以及其对信息的控制本身却首先为愤怒火上浇油。

That is not to deny that the angry Chinese nationalists who have deluged the internet with their splenetic outpourings and staged protests in China (see article) have a point. Coverage in the Western press of unrest in Tibet has been rather one-sided. It has stressed the harsh Chinese crackdown on peaceful protests and tended to overlook the violence by Tibetans. For most Chinese observers, what happened was an outburst of vicious racist thuggery directed at ethnic Han Chinese in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. And the authorities, incomprehensibly, tolerated it until 19 people had been killed.

但这并不表示那些已经在互联网路上泛滥的生气的中国民族主义者们将他们的不满倾吐出来，并在国内示威是毫无理由的。西方媒体对西藏动荡局面的报道完全是一面倒的。这些报道强调的是无情的汉人镇压了藏人的和平示威，却忽略了藏人们的暴力行为。对于大多数中国观察者来说，在西藏首府拉萨发生的，是一场针对汉民族的邪恶的民族仇杀。而官方竟然不可理解地容忍这一切，直到有19个人因此丧生。

Similarly, views of the protests attracted by the round-the-world tour on which China is taking the Olympic flame differ sharply. In the West most attention has been paid to the exploits of pro-Tibetan protesters, such as hanging banners high above the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, and the menacing behaviour of the Chinese torch guards. In China, the defining moment was when a protester in France tried to grab the flame from a female torchbearer in a wheelchair. How dare the outside world, runs the refrain of a legion of Chinese bloggers, lecture China about uncivilised behaviour?

相似的，被中国主导的奥运火炬全球传递活动吸引来的抗议者们的观点也截然不同。在西方，大多数关注点都放在了西藏抗议者们的“英勇行径”上，比如，在三藩市的金门大桥上高高地挂上横幅，以及对中国火炬保镖的冲击行为。在中国，决定性的时刻发生在法国，一名抗议者试图从一位坐在轮椅上的女火炬手手中抢过火炬。外部世界怎么可以谴责中国做出了不文明的行为？中国大量的博客主们不断地重复说。

Of course, the antics of unruly demonstrators in Paris cannot be used to condone or justify Chinese repression in Tibet. Although it remains unclear exactly what happened in Lhasa, it is certain that Chinese police shot protesters in neighbouring Sichuan; that thousands of Tibetans have been detained; and that others are forced to undergo hated “patriotic re-education”, which many see as aimed at obliterating their own culture. Tibetans have real grievances, after decades of cultural discrimination and economic marginalisation.

当然，巴黎粗鲁的抗议者们做出的古怪行为不能用来宽恕或赦免中国在西藏的镇压。尽管在拉萨到底发生了什么仍然无法确定，但有一些是确定的，比如说，与西藏相邻的四川，中国警察向抗议者开了枪；有数以千计的藏民被拘留；很多其他藏民被强迫进行“爱国主义再教育”，很多藏民认为这是为了消灭他们自己的文化。在数十年的文化歧视和经济边缘化之后，藏民们有真正的冤屈。



All over bar the shouting

【这个小标题不知道该怎么翻，请大家教教我。】



China's government cannot admit that. Nor, having blamed the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, for the unrest, is it easy to open talks with him. So it has closed the obvious path to reconciliation with its Tibetan minority. Having lied to its people about Tibet for so long, how could it explain to them a new, less hostile policy? It seems also to have convinced many of its people of the truth of two other egregious lies: that criticism of China's government is an attack on the Chinese people, and that dialogue is a sign of weakness. In fact, both foreign and Chinese protesters might learn something from each other. But it is hard to learn with one hand holding a megaphone and the other clenched into a fist.

中国的政府不会承认这些。西藏“暴乱”后对西藏流亡精神领袖达赖喇嘛进行的指责，也使得中国政府很难与达赖喇嘛开放对话。所以，中国政府已经关闭了缓和西藏少数民族的捷径。在已经向其人民撒了这么多年关于西藏的谎后，中国政府如何向他们解释一个新的，没有敌意的政策？看起来，中国政府还让它的很多人民相信了两个不可思议的谎言：对中国政府的批评就是对中国人民的攻击，以及，对话是软弱的信号。事实上，中外的抗议者们应该从彼此处交流学习到一些东西。不过一只手拿着扩音器，另一只手攥着拳头是很难交流的。