译言网 | 奇趣地图系列——孤岛中国(中英对照)

来源:百度文库 编辑:神马文学网 时间:2024/03/28 20:41:38

孤岛中国


China has land borders with 14 other countries – a world record*. And yet you should not think of China as particularly well-integrated with its neighbours. In fact, as shown in this dramatic map, you should rather consider China to be an island.

中国有14个邻国,这是一项世界记录。但是请不要想当然地认为中国和其邻国是密切联系的。事实上,根据这张富有想象力的地图,不如把中国看作一个大岛。

That stark image can be found illustrating this article on John Mauldin’s Outside the Box, a blog at Investors Insight, which is a website dedicated to ‘Financial Intelligence for the Informed Investor’. On his blog, Mr Mauldin hebdomadally profiles one of the many articles he reads each week, to challenge and stimulate investors to ‘think outside the box’. What follows is a very brief summary of the article he recently highlighted: ‘The Geopolitics of China’, taken from a series of Geopolitical Monographs by Stratfor.

本地图出现在John Mauldin的博客Outside the Box中的一篇文章之中,Outside the Box是 Investors Insight,网站上的一个博客,该网站专注于”为了解信息的投资者提供金融智能“。在该博客中,Mauldi先生每周一次将为他在本周阅读的文撰写概述,用来挑战和激励投资人士“跳出思维桎梏”。本文下面阐述的是他最近推荐的一篇文章“中国的地缘政治”(“The Geopolitics of China”),该文是Stratfor的地缘政治专题系列中的一篇。4

The Chinese heartland, pictured here as the part of China above water, is favourable to agriculture and has traditionally held the bulk of the Chinese population (i.e. the ethnic Han, whom we think of as ‘the’ Chinese); Over a billion people live here, in an area half the size of the US. The heartland’s northern part is dominated by the Yellow River and speaks Mandarin, the southern part by the Yangtze River and by Cantonese.

本地图中,中国的核心区域部分被描画为由水包围,中国的这一部分是适于农耕的地区,并一直以来都承载了中国人口的主体部分(即,汉族,其实汉族才是人们对“中国人”的通常理解)。超过十亿人口生活在这片地区,该区域大约有美国的一半大。这片土地的北部大部分由黄河所主宰,大部分人讲普通话(Mandarin),而南部由长江所主宰,粤语流传甚广。

Population pressure has always pushed China to expand into Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria. Another factor is the historical threat emanating from this non-Han ‘shell’ surrounding the Han heartland, for example from the nomad Mongol horsemen that have long threatened and occasionally dominated the sedentary, agricultural Han.

人口压力迫使中国扩张到了西藏、新疆、蒙古和满洲地区。这种扩张的另一个原因乃是历史上环绕汉族腹地的“蛮夷”所带来的威胁。例如,作为游牧民族的蒙古骑兵长期以来对汉人造成威胁,他们甚至曾一度征服了安土重迁的汉民族。

In the past, when the Chinese state was strong, it managed to conquer and rule these outlying areas, providing a defensive buffer for the heartland. When central authority was weak, these fringes broke off – leaving the heartland vulnerable to invasion. China is strong again, even up to the point where the fringes now are the target of large migrations of Han, much to the chagrin of the native peoples.

在历史长河中,当中国政权强大时,它就征服并统治这些边缘区域,这样就为中国的腹地提供了防卫缓冲区。而当中央政权衰弱时,外围区域往往土崩瓦解,而中华腹地则易遭入侵。现在中国再次强大起来,而这些边境区域就成为了汉民族移民的目标,这使得原住民们颇有微词。

This Han-ification of the Chinese fringe does not necessarily imply that the Chinese have more contact with the countries beyond their borders. Only in three places are the Chinese borders naturally permeable: at the Vietnamese frontier, via the Silk Road, and near Russian Far East. Hilly jungles separate China from Laos and Burma, the Himalayas shield it from the Indian subcontinent, almost impassable deserts divide it from Central Asia and the forbidding expanses of Siberia have never appealed to Chinese expansionism (until now, as the Russians fear).

然而,中国边境地区的汉化并不意味着中国人与邻国进行更多的接触。中国边界中,自然情况下可以相互来往的仅有三处:中越边境、经过丝绸之路的区域和与俄罗斯远东地区交界的地区。中国与老挝和缅甸之间是遍布密林的丘陵、与印度次大陆之间是喜马拉雅山区、与中亚之间则是几乎不可逾越的沙漠,而无边无垠的西伯利亚则在历史上从未有中国人垂青(当然,现在开始有中国人移民过去,这正是俄国所担忧的)。

With the exception of the Ming dynasty’s sponsorship of admiral Zheng He’s naval expeditions (as far away as Sri Lanka, Arabia and Africa) in the early 15th century, China has never attempted to be a naval-based power – so for most of its history, China’s ports on the Pacific were hardly windows on the world either.

在十五世纪早期明朝发动了郑和下西洋,最远到达了斯里兰卡、阿拉伯和非洲,但除此之外,中国从未尝试要成为海洋强权。因而,中国的通往太平洋的港口也几乎从未向世界开放。2

China’s relative isolation, combined with the size of its population (1 in every 5 humans is Chinese), means China is virtually impossible to subdue militarily (as the Japanese discovered to their disadvantage in the 1930s). It also means China can – and often has – turned its back on the world, existing in splendid isolation.

中国与外界的相对隔离,加之中国占世界五分之一的庞大人口,意味着实际上不可能从对中国进行军事征服,日本人在1930年代发现了这一点。这还意味着,中国能够无视外部世界而光荣独立。1

Its size and its penchand for autarkism dictate China’s three main geopolitical objectives:

中国的广阔土地加上它对自给自足的深深迷恋奠定了中国的三个主要地缘政治目标:

    * maintain unity of the Han heartland;

 * 维持汉民族腹地的统一

    * maintain control over the non-Han buffer zone;

 * 维持对非汉族缓冲地区的控制

    * deflect foreign encroachment on the Chinese coast.

 * 打击外国对中国沿海的入侵

Clearly isolationist, these objectives also condemn China to poverty: as a densely populated country with limited arable land, China needs internatioal trade to prosper. The paradox is that prosperity will lead to instability. Prosperity will tend to be concentrated in the areas trading with the outside world (i.e. the coastal regions), creating economic tensions with the poorer interior. This might destabilise the Han heartland.

如此明显的孤立主义目标给中国带来的是贫穷:有限的可耕地和密集的人口,使中国需要国际贸易才能繁荣起来。而悖论在于:繁荣会导致不稳定。繁荣会集中在与外界进行贸易的地区(即,沿海地区),而在经济方面这会引发,沿海与贫穷内地的紧张状态。

This is exactly what happened during an earlier ouverture towards the outside world, in the early 20th century. And this is why Mao’s revolution first failed in the coastal areas, and only succeeded after his Long March towards the poorer interior. Mao’s victory allowed him to reassert central control from Beijing (also over the buffer regions which had ‘drifted away’, such as Tibet). He also ‘re-isolated’ the country, in the process making everybody equally poor again.

这正是20世纪早期与外部世界交往期间发生的情况。这也造成毛泽东的革命失败于沿海地区、而历经长征到达贫穷内地才得以成功。毛泽东的胜利让他重申了北京政府的中央统治地位,这种统治还涵盖了一度游离在外的缓冲地区,比如西藏。毛还让中国重新关闭开放的大门,在这个过程中,建立了贫穷面前人人平等的社会。

In the late 1970s, early 1980s, Deng Xiaoping took the gamble of reopening China in order to make it prosperous again. He counted on Mao’s strong, centralised, single-party state system to keep the country together. Time will tell whether he was right, for the main threat to China’s geopolitical goals has again become the economic bifurcation of the Han heartland, with 400 million Chinese living in the relatively wealthy coastal areas, and 900 million in the often still desperately poor interior.

在1970年代末期和1980年代早期,邓小平冒险让中国重新开放,目的是重建繁荣。邓维护国家统一所依靠的是毛泽东建立的强大的中央集权的一党政府系统。时间会判断邓的决策是否成功,原因在于,汉族核心区域的经济差异已经再次成为对中国地缘政治目标的主要威胁,四千万中国人生活在相对富裕的沿海区域,而九千万人则生活在极其贫困的内地。1

China is now less isolated than it once was – although its points of contact remain coastal rather than terrestrial, meaning the insularity portrayed in this map has not completely vanished. But what makes the Chinese leadership nervous is that its Deng-instigated preference for prosperity over stability is precariously linked to circumstances beyond Beijing’s total control: the health and growth of the global economy. What will happen if a global recession threatens the Chinese model? Will the fringe rebel, will the heartland fracture? Or will the center hold – if necessary by again choosing the stability of an isolationist, hardline dictatorship over openness and prosperity?

现在,中国的孤立性已经降低了,但中国与外界的交往局限于沿海地区而没有扩展到陆地区域,这意味着本地图中所描绘的岛国性(insularity)并未完全消失。而令中国领导人担忧之处在于:邓小平的发展经济高于保持稳定主张是与全球经济的健康和增长紧密相关的,而这是超出北京政府的掌控力量之外的危险状况。全球经济衰退对中国模式的威胁会造成什么情况?边境地区会不会反叛?核心区域会不会分崩离析?或者,中央政府会不会在必要情况下重新选择孤立主义所带来的稳定,重新选择强硬的专政而放弃开放和繁荣?

Many thanks to Eric Johnson for providing a link to this map.

Eric Johnson提供了到本地图的链接,对此表示感谢。

* North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar/Burma, Laos and Vietnam. China shares the world record with Russia, which also borders 14 countries: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea.

* 中国的邻国:朝鲜、俄罗斯、蒙古、哈萨克斯坦、吉尔吉斯斯坦、塔吉克斯坦、阿富汗、巴基斯坦、印度、尼泊尔、不丹、缅甸、老挝、越南。中国和俄罗斯同时分享这一世界纪录。俄罗斯也与14个国家接壤:挪威、芬兰、爱沙尼亚、拉脱维亚、立陶宛、波兰、白俄罗斯、乌克兰、格鲁吉亚、阿塞拜疆、哈萨克斯坦、中国、蒙古、朝鲜。

【本文翻译仅为外语学习及阅读目的,原文作者个人观点与译者及译言网无关】