文明国家与民族国家
Civilization state versus nation-state
http://www.martinjacques.com/articles/civilization-state-versus-nation-state-2/
2011年1月15日 - 南德意志报
中国给欧洲带来了一个巨大的问题：我们不理解它
中国给欧洲带来了一个巨大的问题：我们不理解它。 更糟糕的是，我们甚至没有意识到这一事实。 我们坚持通过西方的棱镜看世界。 没有任何其他传统、历史或文化可以与之相比。 我们的优越于所有人，而其他人如果偏离我们的，就会因此而被削弱。 这不是说我们的智慧，而是我们的无知，这不是我们的世界主义的表现，而是我们的狭隘和地方主义的表现。 这是至少两个世纪甚至更长时间处于上升状态的结果。 欧洲中心主义——或者也许我们应该说西方中心主义——已经成为我们的普遍标准，在不同程度上，所有其他标准都失败了。
当我们进入一个欧洲将逐渐被边缘化、美国将经历不可逆转的衰落、新兴国家将成为主要参与者、中国将取代美国成为主导力量的时代时，这种心态有可能成为我们最大的障碍。 换句话说，那些我们现在看不起的国家和文化将越来越成为未来的仲裁者。 如果我们拒绝用我们自己的西方术语以外的任何东西来理解它们，我们将如何理解它们呢？ 如果我们继续认为他们的文化和政治不如我们的文化和政治，他们会如何看待我们？
这把我们带到了中国。 我们选择在绝大多数情况下根据西方价值观来看待中国：我们最关心的是缺乏西式民主、缺乏人权、西藏人的困境以及该国糟糕的环境记录。 毫无疑问，您可以在该列表中添加更多内容。 我并不是说这些问题不重要——它们确实重要——但我们坚持用自己的方式来评判中国，这让我们偏离了一项更重要的任务：用中国自己的方式来理解中国。 如果我们做不到这一点，那么很简单，我们永远不会理解它。 这就是为什么在过去的三十年或几十年里，西方主流对中国的评论完全未能正确地理解中国，从预测天安门广场事件后政权即将垮台以及国家可能解体，到此后不断坚持 经济增长不可能持续，政权也无法维持。 几乎没有人预测到会发生什么； 三十多年来经济取得了惊人的增长，政权取得了巨大成功，现在享有比 1978 年改革时期开始以来任何时候都更大的合法性和威望。
我们不能再让以西方为中心的对中国的价值判断取代以中国本身的方式来理解这个国家。 这不是一件容易的事。 中国在最基本的方面与西方截然不同。 也许最基本的区别是它不是欧洲意义上的民族国家。 事实上，自1900年左右以来，它才这样描述自己。任何对中国有所了解的人都知道，它的历史要早得多。 正如我们今天所知，中国的历史可以追溯到公元前 221 年，在某些方面甚至更早。 那一天标志着战国时代的结束，秦国的胜利，以及秦帝国的诞生，秦帝国的边界涵盖了今天中国东半部的很大一部分，也是迄今为止人口最多的地区。
两千年来，中国人一直将自己视为一个文明而不是一个国家。 当今中国最基本的特征，以及赋予中国人认同感的特征，并非源于上个世纪中国称自己为民族国家的时期，而是源于过去两千年，当时中国最能被描述为一个文明—— 国家：国家与社会之间的关系，非常独特的家庭观念，祖先崇拜，儒家价值观，我们称之为“关系”的个人关系网络，中国食物及其周围的传统，当然还有中国人 语言及其书面形式和口头形式之间不寻常的关系。 其含义是深远的：欧洲的民族认同绝大多数是民族国家时代的产物——在美国几乎完全是民族国家时代的产物——而在中国，相反，认同感主要是由国家历史塑造的 作为一个文明国家。 尽管中国今天将自己描述为一个民族国家，但从历史、文化、身份和思维方式来看，它本质上仍然是一个文明国家。 中国的地质结构是文明国家的地质结构； 民族国家只占表层土壤。
中国作为一个文明国家，有两个主要特点。 首先，它的历史非常悠久，甚至可以追溯到罗马帝国解体之前。 其次，中国的庞大规模——无论是地理还是人口——意味着它拥有巨大的多样性。 与西方认为中国高度集权的看法相反，事实上在许多方面事实恰恰相反：事实上，无论是现在还是在王朝时期，在这样的基础上治理国家都是不可能的。 它实在是太大了。 这对中国人的思维方式产生了深远的影响。
1997年，英国将香港移交给中国。 中国的宪法提案可以用一句话来概括：“一个国家，两种制度”。 西方几乎没有人对这句格言给予太多思考或相信。 人们的假设是香港很快就会变得像中国其他地区一样。 这是完全错误的。 香港的政治和法律结构与1997年一样与中国其他地区不同。我们不认真对待中国人的原因是西方具有民族国家心态，因此德国在1990年统一 它完全是在联邦共和国的基础上进行的； DDR实际上消失了。 “一个民族国家，一种制度”是民族国家的思维方式。 但作为一个文明国家，中国的逻辑却截然不同。 由于中国幅员辽阔，具有如此多样性，因此它必须具有灵活性：“一种文明，多种制度”。
中国作为一个文明国家的理念是理解中国本身的一个基本组成部分。 它具有多种含义。 中国的国家与社会的关系与西方有很大不同。 西方普遍认为中国政府缺乏合法性，缺乏公众支持，但事实上，中国政府比任何西方国家都享有更大的合法性。 我们逐渐假设国家的合法性在很大程度上取决于民主进程——普选权、政党竞争等。 但这只是一个因素：如果这是整个故事，那么意大利国家将享有强大的合法性，而不是长期缺乏合法性的现实。 为了解释这一点，我们必须回到复兴运动，将其视为仅部分完成的项目。
中国国家之所以在中国人眼中拥有强大的合法性，与民主无关，而在于国家与中华文明的关系。 国家被视为中华文明的体现、守护者和捍卫者。 维护中华文明 — 文明国家的统一、凝聚力和完整性被视为最高政治优先事项，被视为中国国家的神圣任务。 在西方，国家被不同程度地怀疑甚至敌意，并因此被视为局外人，而在中国，国家被视为亲密的人，家庭的一部分，甚至是家庭的一部分。 一家之主； 有趣的是，在这种背景下，民族国家的中文术语是“民族家庭”。
或者考虑一个完全不同的例子。 超过 90% 的中国人认为自己是汉族这一民族。 这与世界上其他人口最多的国家 — 印度、美国、印度尼西亚和巴西 — 这些都是高度多种族的国家 — 截然不同，非同寻常。 当然，实际上汉族是许多不同种族的产物，但汉族并不这样认为自己。 其原因将我们带回到文明国家及其决定性特征之一，即中国的非凡长寿。 几千年来，由于文化、种族、民族等诸多过程的影响，汉族众多种族之间的差异已被削弱到不再显着的程度。
如果我们坚持认为中国是或者应该是我们自己文明的产物，我们就永远无法理解它。 我们目前对中国的态度是傲慢和无知的结果。 它可能会让我们感到困惑、困惑和疏远。 我们的历史遗产及其所产生的心态无法让我们为目前正在我们面前展开的新世界做好准备。
Civilization state versus nation-state
http://www.martinjacques.com/articles/civilization-state-versus-nation-state-2/
15/01/11 - Süddeutsche Zeitung
China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it
China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it. Worse, we are not even conscious of the fact. We insist on seeing the world through our Western prism. No other tradition or history or culture can compare. Ours is superior to all and others, in deviating from ours, are diminished as a consequence. This speaks not of our wisdom but our ignorance, an expression not of our cosmopolitanism but our insularity and provincialism. It is a consequence of being in the ascendant for at least two centuries, if not rather longer. Eurocentrism – or perhaps we should say western-centrism – has become our universal yardstick against which, in varying degrees, all others fail.
This mindset threatens to become our greatest handicap as we enter an era in which Europe will be progressively marginalised, the United States will experience irreversible decline, the emergent nations will become major actors and China will replace the United States as the dominant power. In other words, those countries and cultures that we now look down upon will increasingly become the arbiters of the future. How will we ever make sense of them if we refuse to understand them in anything other than our own Western terms? How will they view us if we continue to look down upon their culture and polities as inferior to our own?
Which brings us to China. We choose to see China overwhelmingly in a context calibrated according to Western values: what overwhelmingly preoccupies us is the absence of a Western-style democracy, a lack of human rights, the plight of the Tibetans, and the country’s poor environmental record. No doubt you could add a few more to that list. I am not arguing that such issues do not matter – they do – but our insistence on judging China in our own terms diverts us from a far more important task: understanding China in its own terms. If we fail to do that then, quite simply, we will never understand it. That is why mainstream Western commentary on China over the last three or more decades has singularly failed to get China right, from predicting the imminent downfall of the regime after Tiananmen Square and the likely break-up of the country, to the constant insistence ever since that the economic growth could not possibly last and that the regime would be unable to sustain itself. Virtually no-one predicted what has happened; phenomenal economic growth for over thirty years and a regime that has been hugely successful and which now enjoys greater legitimacy and prestige than at any time since the reform period began in 1978.
Our western-centric value-judgements about China must no longer be allowed to act as a substitute for understanding the country in its own terms. This is no easy task. China is profoundly different from the West in the most basic of ways. Perhaps the most basic difference is that it is not a nation-state in the European sense of the term. Indeed, it has only described itself as such since around 1900. Anyone who knows anything about China is aware that it is a lot older than that. China, as we know it today, dates back to 221BC, in some respects much earlier. That date marked the end of the Warring States period, the victory of the Qin, and the birth of the Qin Empire whose borders embraced a considerable slice of what is today the eastern half of China and by far its most populous part.
For over two millennia, the Chinese thought of themselves as a civilization rather than a nation. The most fundamental defining features of China today, and which give the Chinese their sense of identity, emanate not from the last century when China has called itself a nation-state but from the previous two millennia when it can be best described as a civilization-state: the relationship between the state and society, a very distinctive notion of the family, ancestral worship, Confucian values, the network of personal relationships that we call guanxi, Chinese food and the traditions that surround it, and, of course, the Chinese language with its unusual relationship between the written and spoken form. The implications are profound: whereas national identity in Europe is overwhelmingly a product of the era of the nation-state – in the United States almost exclusively so – in China, on the contrary, the sense of identity has primarily been shaped by the country’s history as a civilization-state. Although China describes itself today as a nation-state, it remains essentially a civilization-state in terms of history, culture, identity and ways of thinking. China’s geological structure is that of a civilization-state; the nation-state accounts for little more than the top soil.
China, as a civilization-state, has two main characteristics. Firstly, there is its exceptional longevity, dating back to even before the break-up of the Roman Empire. Secondly, the sheer scale of China – both geographic and demographic – means that it embraces a huge diversity. Contrary to the Western belief that China is highly centralised, in fact in many respects the opposite is the case: indeed, it would have been impossible to govern the country – either now or in the dynastic period – on such a basis. It is simply too large. The implications in terms of the way the Chinese think are profound.
In 1997 Hong Kong was handed over to China by the British. The Chinese constitutional proposal was summed up in the phrase: ‘one country, two systems’. Barely anyone in the West gave this maxim much thought or indeed credence; the assumption was that Hong Kong would soon become like the rest of China. This was entirely wrong. The political and legal structure of Hong Kong remains as different now from the rest of China as in 1997. The reason we did not take the Chinese seriously is that the West is characterised by a nation-state mentality, hence when Germany was unified in 1990 it was done solely and exclusively on the basis of the Federal Republic; the DDR in effect disappeared. ‘One nation-state, one system’ is the nation-state way of thinking. But, as a civilization-state, the Chinese logic is quite different. Because China is so vast and embraces such diversity, as a matter of necessity it must be flexible: ‘one civilization, many systems’.
The idea of China as a civilization-state is a fundamental building block for understanding China in its own terms. And it has multifarious implications. The relationship between the state and society in China is very different to that in the West. Contrary to the overwhelming Western assumption that the Chinese state lacks legitimacy and is bereft of public support, in fact the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. We have come to assume that the legitimacy of the state overwhelmingly rests on the democratic process – universal suffrage, competing parties et al. But this is only one element: if it was the whole story, then the Italian state would enjoy a robust legitimacy rather than the reality, a chronic lack of it. And to explain this we have to go back to the Risorgimento as only a partially fulfilled project.
The reason why the Chinese state enjoys a formidable legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese has nothing to do with democracy but can be found in the relationship between the state and Chinese civilization. The state is seen as the embodiment, guardian and defender of Chinese civilization. Maintaining the unity, cohesion and integrity of Chinese civilization – of the civilization-state – is perceived as the highest political priority and is seen as the sacrosanct task of the Chinese state. Unlike in the West, where the state is viewed with varying degrees of suspicion, even hostility, and is regarded, as a consequence, as an outsider, in China the state is seen as an intimate, as part of the family, indeed as the head of the family; interestingly, in this context, the Chinese term for nation-state is ‘nation-family’.
Or consider a quite different example. Over 90 per cent of Chinese think of themselves as of one race, the Han. This is so different from the world’s other most populous nations – India, United States, Indonesia and Brazil, all of which are highly multi-racial – as to be extraordinary. Of course, in reality the Han were a product of many different races, but the Han do not think of themselves like that. And the reason takes us back to the civilization-state and one of its defining characteristics, namely China’s remarkable longevity. Over thousands of years, as a result of many processes, cultural, racial and ethnic, the differences between the many races that comprised the Han have been weakened to the point where they were no longer significant.
We will never make sense of China if we persist in treating it as if it is, or should be, a product of our own civilization. Our present attitude towards China is a function of arrogance and ignorance. And it threatens to leave us bewildered, confused and alienated. Our historical inheritance, and the mentality it has engendered, ill equips us for the very new world that is presently unfolding before us.
