纽约时报——金钱能让中国成为强国么？

来源Op-Ed Contributor - Will China’s Wealth Bring Global Ambitions? - NYTimescom
译者草白Cambridge, England
英国剑桥
“ WHEN China awakes,” Napoleon is said to have warned, “the world will tremble.” For more than a century and a half after his time, that prospect seemed remote.
据说拿破仑（Napoleon）曾经就发出过这样的警告：“当中国觉醒，世界都将为之震颤。”（然而）在他之后的一个半多世纪里，这样的展望却似乎是愈行愈远。
The ancient civilization became a byword for isolation and stagnation. China’s decadent emperors were immured behind the Great Wall and inside the Forbidden City. Its vaunted invention of gunpowder had spluttered into firecrackers. Its art of printing had withered into the production of stereotyped editions of Confucius. Its navy was antediluvian: mandarins tried to emulate Western paddle-steamers with junks propelled by coolies turning treadmills.

（相反），这样一个文明古国成了孤立封锁和停滞不前的代名词：看那颓废的君主，苟且蜷缩于长城和紫禁城的高墙之内；看那自以为傲的火药发明，已化为鞭炮的噼啪之声；看那印刷术，畏缩成为了一成不变儒家经典的制造工具；还有那老掉牙的海军设备，靠着一帮苦力不断踏转踏车来推进的中国式帆船，（而）满清官吏却妄图以此赶超西方的明轮船。
China was devastated by flood, famine, rebellion, warlordism, invasion, civil strife and, finally, a Communist dictatorship. It’s all the more of a shock, then, that the sleeping dragon has now awoken with a vengeance.
（之后的）中国，洪水饥荒遍野，叛乱和军阀主义横行，外族入侵，同室操戈，最后以裁独义主产共做结。然后，天际一声雷，骇然间中国这只曾经的沉睡之龙就苏醒了。
As the media have breathlessly reported, China has just overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy, and bids fair to knock the United States from the top spot within 20 years. Ever since Deng Xiaoping embarked on his “second revolution” in 1978, introducing free market reforms and opening up to the outside world, China’s economy has grown by almost 10 percent a year — one of the most sustained expansions in history.
正如媒体已经不遗余力所报道的那样，中国刚刚已经取代日本成为世界第二大经济体，并有望在二十年之内敲开美国世界第一的大门。自从邓小平开始他在1978年的“二次革命”——引进自由市场改革，向外部世界开放的政策——中国的经济就一直以几乎10%的年增长率发展，这是历史上持续时间最长的经济膨胀之一。
Deng retained socialist control while permitting capitalist enterprise, a well-nigh miraculous achievement that resulted in the creation of another workshop of the world. The crucial question is: how will China use its new-found wealth?
在允许资本主义企业发展的过程中，邓保留了其社会主义的管制，这几乎是奇迹般的成就，并造就了另一个世界工厂的诞生。而（现在）关键的问题是：中国将如何使用它新获得的财富？
The traditional answer is that rich countries tend to equip themselves with the sinews of war in order to enhance their position at the expense of rivals. According to the dominant economic philosophy of the 18th century — mercantilism — wealth and power are interchangeable, each helping in the acquisition of the other.
传统的回答是，富裕国家倾向于利用战争的肌腱武装自己，在损害对手利益的情况下强化它们的地位。根据十八世纪主流经济学理论——重商主义——的观点，财富和权力是可互换的，两者在获取的过程中相辅相成。
Thus Britain used its economic predominance after the Industrial Revolution to establish global hegemony. Protected by the fleet, its multiplying colonies supplied the mother country with raw materials and bought her manufactured goods. But by 1914 Germany was easily out-producing Britain, and Kaiser Wilhelm’s challenge to the Royal Navy’s supremacy did much to precipitate the First World War.
正因为如此，英国过去利用其工业革命以来的经济主导地位建立起全球霸权。在舰艇的保护之下，大量的殖民地向母国英国提供原材料，然后购买她的工业制成品。但到了1914年，德国的工业生产大大超过英国，而德皇威廉（Kaiser Wilhelm）对皇家海军（代指英国-译注）霸权地位的挑战，则加速了第一次世界大战的爆发。
However, history does offer alternative answers — and the case of America is particularly pertinent. The economy of the United States overtook that of Britain in the 1870s, and by 1914 it was nearly three times as large. A small island making steam engines by hand inevitably fell behind a bountiful continent that mass-produced motor cars on assembly lines.
然而历史还提供了另一种回答——美国的例子尤其如此。在十九世纪七十年代，美国的经济超越英国，而到1914年其经济规模几乎已经是英国的三倍。一个手工生产蒸汽机的小小岛国，注定是要落后于依靠生产线大批量生产汽车，拥有广袤大陆的美国。
It also seemed inevitable that the United States, particularly under the internationalist leadership of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, would mount its own challenge to the British Empire by translating its economic strength into military might. Uncle Sam did arm, of course, during the conflict with Spain and World War I, creating an outstanding Navy.
而似乎同样不可避免的是，美国通过将经济实力转化为军事实力的方式，将其对英帝国(霸权地位)的挑战摆上台面，这在国际派领导人威廉·麦金利（William McKinley ）和西奥多·罗斯福（Theodore Roosevelt）总统的领导之下尤甚。当然，在与西班牙的冲突以及在一战期间，山姆大叔挥动大棒，并由此缔造一支杰出的海军。
But for the most part, the nation’s business was business. In the 1890s it was suggested that the State Department should close down because it had so little to do. And during the isolationist period between the two world wars, when at its peak America was responsible for nearly 40 percent of the world’s manufacturing output, the United States Army was around the 17th-largest on the planet.
但在大多数情况下，这个国家还是一个“宅”国。十九世纪九十年代，有人建议取消国务院（the State Department），因为这个部门实在是没多少事可做。同样，在两次世界大战的间隙，美国奉行孤立主义的外交政策，经济上达到高峰，制造产出占据整个世界的将近40%，而美国陆军的实力在全世界也就是排在第17位左右。
In other words, the military of the world’s richest nation amounted to hardly more than a border constabulary armed with obsolete equipment like 1903 Springfield rifles. During the Depression, cash was so tight that its best officer, a bald-headed major named Dwight D. Eisenhower, had to make a requisition for his streetcar fare between the War Department building and the Capitol.
换言之，这个世界上最富裕的国家，军队总人数比边防警察多不到哪里去，且装备简陋，诸如1903式的斯普林菲尔德步枪（1903 Springfield rifle）。在大萧条时期，由于银根实在太紧，一位名叫德怀特·D·艾森豪威尔（Dwight D Eisenhower）的秃头将军，不得不申请报销来去陆军部和国会大厦的车费钱。
Needless to say, Axis aggression transformed the United States into a military-industrial colossus. It so galvanized a depressed economy that the historian Niall Ferguson of Harvard has been moved to dwell on “the benefits of militarism.” Indeed, in his 2001 book “The Cash Nexus,” Mr. Ferguson argued that the “imperial America” should devote “a larger percentage of its vast resources to making the world safe for capitalism and democracy.” He regretted, however, that the United States was unlikely to impose “the rule of law in countries like Iraq,” partly because of “a pusillanimous fear of military casualties.”
毋庸置疑，轴心国（Axis）的侵略将美国转变为一架军工航母。美国低迷的经济为之一振，以至于哈佛大学的历史学家尼尔·弗格森（Niall Ferguson）也转而研究起“军国主义的利益”。事实上，在他2001年的著作《现金的网络：现代世界中的金钱与权利，1700－2000》（The Cash Nexus）中，弗格森主张“美帝国”应该致力于“利用更大的资源建设一个对资本主义和民主安全的世界”。然而，美国一部分因为“对军队伤亡率的怯懦”，以致无法将法制强加于像伊拉克这样的国家而让他感到遗憾。