西方视中国为“威胁”，而不是一个真实的地方，一个有真实人民的地方
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/05/west-china-threat-real-place-domestic-agendas
Yangyang Cheng，耶鲁法学院博士后研究员，2021 年 10 月 5 日
我出生的国家政府最严重的滥用职权行为被用来推进国内议程
我和一位朋友共进晚餐，她问我的工作。“说出一件你希望美国人了解的关于中国的事情，”她说。
“中国人就是人，”我回答道。
她让我详细说明，我说中国人民和这里的人其实没什么不同，我们和任何地方的人一样具有人性。这是一次令人不快的交流。我的朋友是白人和美国人，而我两者都不是。我很后悔我的回答，我对她善意问题的回答暗示了一种指责。我把种族这个难以承受的重担抛在了轻松的谈话中。但种族问题总是摆在桌面上，甚至在空气中，即使只有我们中的一些人习惯于看到它。
在大型强子对撞机上工作了十多年后，我今年离开了物理学界，转而从事科学政策和中国政治的研究。我以为我在美国从事欧洲实验的经历教会了我如何在作为“少数族裔”的情况下从事一份职业。我错了。作为一名在美国研究中国的中国女性，我经常被这个领域令人眼花缭乱的白人群体所震惊。
我并不是说只有中国人才能研究中国。生活经历并不等同于专业知识，不同的背景会带来新的视角。被视为“真实性”标准的指标，例如会说中文或在中国待过一段时间，也可以用来排除。中国政府经常利用自我东方化——将中国视为与西方截然不同的事物——来为其政策辩护，将任何外部批评都斥为“帝国主义”。中国政府还限制了境内或公民自由研究的空间。根据研究主题，外国护照可以允许进入中国并受到保护，外国可能是对中国进行独立研究的唯一安全场所。
那么，真正的问题不是谁或在哪里，而是如何，更重要的是，为什么和为了什么？西方产生了什么样的中国知识？根据美中关系全国委员会最近发布的一项调查，美国对中国研究的需求日益增长，但讨论越来越受国家安全问题的主导，正如一位受访者所说，该领域“极其缺乏多样性”。从国家利益的角度来看，一个国家变成了一个“挑战”、“威胁”和一个需要解决的“问题”。国家边界与人们想象中的同情心的种族界限相一致，中国人变成了一个标签、一个统计数字。
在关于中国的普遍叙述中，中央政府是一个开始统治世界的万能怪物，它充满了古老的远见，并通过庞大的政府官僚机构毫不费力地表达自己的意愿。在中国，公众的表达要么是抗议，要么是宣传，人民要么是无助的受害者，要么是国家压迫的盲目步兵。美国政客和评论员吹嘘计划保卫南海或用军事力量保护民主的台湾。当真正的目标是维护美国的权力时，另一个大陆上可能的生命损失并不重要。从新疆到香港，中国政府最严重的虐待行为被用来推进国内议程。许多人认为应该“惩罚中国”的人权记录；但很少有人停下来思考，这些惩罚是否会伤害到他们声称要捍卫权利的人民。
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在公共论坛和私人谈话中，我经常被问到：中国想要什么？我们应该如何应对他们？代词的选择揭示了这一点，让我既不在这里也不在那里。我从来不知道如何回答这些滑稽的泛泛问题，好像我是某种龙语者。那些默认这种概括的人并不是真的想了解中国这个地方。他们更喜欢把它作为一种理念，一种可以提炼成声音片段并转化为政策的地缘政治概念。白人可以在一夜之间重塑为“中国专家”，并为他们的见解收取高额费用，而中国人更有可能被视为“异见人士”，而不是学者。一个反对压迫性超级大国的孤独斗士是一个吸引人的叙述。它证实了西方认为中国是独裁邪恶化身的观念。它向西方观众肯定了他们的优越感。对中国政权的谴责不够，会让人怀疑自己对中国的学术研究，无论其关注领域是什么。
我对我所遭受的职业偏见并非个人的不满。问题的核心不在于西方对中国的了解程度，而在于西方对自己的了解程度。中国的崛起及其在全球资本主义中的作用挑战了西方的经济主导地位，打破了市场必然带来自由的便捷观念。给人留下政治压迫或技术滥用问题只存在于中国这一印象，就是拒绝了解治理的复杂性以及人性的复杂性。与其面对自己的真相，不如将一切归结为虚假的二元对立，将恐惧投射到一个不露面的他者身上，这要容易得多。西方并不是唯一犯下这种逻辑的一方。
随着每个新闻周期漫不经心地谈论最新的中国“威胁”，随着我的出生国和我的第二故乡似乎陷入了“大国竞争”，我感到脚下的地面正在裂开。我有时会想，这种不稳定是否是我离开祖国必须付出的代价。然后我提醒自己，几代人一直生活在边缘地带，反对那些贬低他们人性的人为划分。如果我们聚集足够多的人，重新夺回这些边缘地带，一个没有人被流放的新世界可能会诞生。
The west sees China as a 'threat', not as a real place, with real people
Yangyang Cheng, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School, 5 Oct 2021
The worst abuses of my birth country’s government are used to advance domestic agendas
I was at dinner with a friend, and she asked about my work. “Name one thing you wish Americans knew about China,” she said.
“That the Chinese people are people,” I replied.
She asked me to elaborate, and I said that the people of China are really not so different from the people here, that we possess as much humanity as people anywhere. It was an uncomfortable exchange. My friend is white and American, and I’m neither. I regretted my response, that my answer to her well-intentioned question implied an accusation. I had dropped the unbearable weight of race into a lighthearted conversation. But race is always on the table and in the air, even when only some of us are conditioned to see it.
After more than a decade working on the Large Hadron Collider, I left physics this year for a position researching science policy and Chinese politics. I thought my time working in the US on a European-based experiment had taught me well how to navigate a profession while being a “minority”. I was wrong. As a Chinese woman studying China in the US, I’m constantly stunned by the blinding whiteness in this field.
I’m not saying that only Chinese people can study China. Lived experience does not equate to expertise, and diverse backgrounds bring fresh perspectives. The metrics seen as criteria for “authenticity”, such as being able to speak Chinese or having spent time in the country, can also be used to exclude. The Chinese government routinely deploys self-orientalisation – treating China as if it were radically different from the west – to justify its policies, discrediting any external criticism as “imperialism”. The state has also constrained the space for free inquiry within its borders or by its citizens. Depending on the subject, a foreign passport can grant access and protection in China, and a foreign land may be the only safe place for independent research into the country.
The real issue, then, is not about who or where but how, and, more importantly, why and what for? What kind of knowledge about China does the west produce? According to a newly published survey by the National Committee on US-China Relations), there’s a growing demand for work on China in the US, but the discourse is increasingly dominated by national security concerns and, as one respondent put it, the field “lacks diversity in the extreme”. Filtered through the lens of state interests, a country becomes a “challenge”, a “threat”, an “issue” to be solved. National borders align with racialised boundaries of one’s imaginative sympathy, and the Chinese people are morphed into a label, a statistic.
In the prevalent narratives about China, the central government is an almighty monster embarking on world domination, imbued with ancient foresight and effortlessly expressing its will through the vast bureaucracy of government. Public expression in China is either protest or propaganda, and the people are either helpless victims or mindless foot-soldiers of state oppression. Politicians and commentators in the US boast of plans to secure the South China Sea or protect democratic Taiwan with military force. The potential loss of life on another continent is of little concern when the real objective is maintaining American power. From Xinjiang to Hong Kong, the worst abuses of the Chinese government are appropriated to advance domestic agendas. Many postulate “punishing China” for its human rights record; few pause to ponder whether the punishments might harm the very people whose rights they claim to defend.
China's pledge to kick the coal habit comes at a critical moment for the planet
At public forums and in private conversations, I’m often asked: What does China want? How should we deal with them? The choice of pronouns is revealing, placing me neither here nor there. I never know how to address these comically broad questions, as if I’m some kind of dragon whisperer. Those who default to such generalisations do not really want to know China as a place. They much prefer it as an idea, a geopolitical concept that can be distilled into soundbites and translated into policy. White men can rebrand as “China experts” overnight and charge a fortune for their insights, while a Chinese person is more likely to be heard as a “dissident” than a scholar. A lone crusader against an oppressive superpower makes for an appealing narrative. It substantiates the west’s notion of China as the embodiment of authoritarian evil. It affirms to a western audience their sense of superiority. Insufficient denunciation of the Chinese regime casts doubt on one’s scholarship on China, regardless of its area of focus.
My disappointment with the biases of my profession is not a personal grievance. The heart of the matter is not how much the west understands China but how much the west understands itself. The rise of China and its role in global capitalism have challenged the economic dominance of the west, and shattered the convenient notion that the market necessarily brings freedom. To create the impression that problems of political oppression or technological abuse are uniquely Chinese is to refuse knowledge of the complexity of governance, as well as of humanity. Instead of confronting the truth about oneself, it’s much easier to collapse everything into a false binary and project fears on to a faceless other. The west is not the only party guilty of this logic.
With every passing news cycle carelessly talking up the latest Chinese “threat”, as my birth country and my adopted home appear locked in “great power rivalry”, I feel the ground splitting beneath my feet. I sometimes wonder if this precariousness is the price I must pay for leaving my homeland. Then I remind myself that generations have persisted in the margins and contested the artificial divisions that discount their humanity. If we gather enough of us and reclaim those margins, a new world may be born where no one is an exile.
“That the Chinese people are people,” I replied.
She asked me to elaborate, and I said that the people of China are really not so different from the people here, that we possess as much humanity as people anywhere. It was an uncomfortable exchange. My friend is white and American, and I’m neither. I regretted my response, that my answer to her well-intentioned question implied an accusation. I had dropped the unbearable weight of race into a lighthearted conversation. But race is always on the table and in the air, even when only some of us are conditioned to see it.
After more than a decade working on the Large Hadron Collider, I left physics this year for a position researching science policy and Chinese politics. I thought my time working in the US on a European-based experiment had taught me well how to navigate a profession while being a “minority”. I was wrong. As a Chinese woman studying China in the US, I’m constantly stunned by the blinding whiteness in this field.
I’m not saying that only Chinese people can study China. Lived experience does not equate to expertise, and diverse backgrounds bring fresh perspectives. The metrics seen as criteria for “authenticity”, such as being able to speak Chinese or having spent time in the country, can also be used to exclude. The Chinese government routinely deploys self-orientalisation – treating China as if it were radically different from the west – to justify its policies, discrediting any external criticism as “imperialism”. The state has also constrained the space for free inquiry within its borders or by its citizens. Depending on the subject, a foreign passport can grant access and protection in China, and a foreign land may be the only safe place for independent research into the country.
The real issue, then, is not about who or where but how, and, more importantly, why and what for? What kind of knowledge about China does the west produce? According to a newly published survey by the National Committee on US-China Relations), there’s a growing demand for work on China in the US, but the discourse is increasingly dominated by national security concerns and, as one respondent put it, the field “lacks diversity in the extreme”. Filtered through the lens of state interests, a country becomes a “challenge”, a “threat”, an “issue” to be solved. National borders align with racialised boundaries of one’s imaginative sympathy, and the Chinese people are morphed into a label, a statistic.
In the prevalent narratives about China, the central government is an almighty monster embarking on world domination, imbued with ancient foresight and effortlessly expressing its will through the vast bureaucracy of government. Public expression in China is either protest or propaganda, and the people are either helpless victims or mindless foot-soldiers of state oppression. Politicians and commentators in the US boast of plans to secure the South China Sea or protect democratic Taiwan with military force. The potential loss of life on another continent is of little concern when the real objective is maintaining American power. From Xinjiang to Hong Kong, the worst abuses of the Chinese government are appropriated to advance domestic agendas. Many postulate “punishing China” for its human rights record; few pause to ponder whether the punishments might harm the very people whose rights they claim to defend.
China's pledge to kick the coal habit comes at a critical moment for the planet
At public forums and in private conversations, I’m often asked: What does China want? How should we deal with them? The choice of pronouns is revealing, placing me neither here nor there. I never know how to address these comically broad questions, as if I’m some kind of dragon whisperer. Those who default to such generalisations do not really want to know China as a place. They much prefer it as an idea, a geopolitical concept that can be distilled into soundbites and translated into policy. White men can rebrand as “China experts” overnight and charge a fortune for their insights, while a Chinese person is more likely to be heard as a “dissident” than a scholar. A lone crusader against an oppressive superpower makes for an appealing narrative. It substantiates the west’s notion of China as the embodiment of authoritarian evil. It affirms to a western audience their sense of superiority. Insufficient denunciation of the Chinese regime casts doubt on one’s scholarship on China, regardless of its area of focus.
My disappointment with the biases of my profession is not a personal grievance. The heart of the matter is not how much the west understands China but how much the west understands itself. The rise of China and its role in global capitalism have challenged the economic dominance of the west, and shattered the convenient notion that the market necessarily brings freedom. To create the impression that problems of political oppression or technological abuse are uniquely Chinese is to refuse knowledge of the complexity of governance, as well as of humanity. Instead of confronting the truth about oneself, it’s much easier to collapse everything into a false binary and project fears on to a faceless other. The west is not the only party guilty of this logic.
With every passing news cycle carelessly talking up the latest Chinese “threat”, as my birth country and my adopted home appear locked in “great power rivalry”, I feel the ground splitting beneath my feet. I sometimes wonder if this precariousness is the price I must pay for leaving my homeland. Then I remind myself that generations have persisted in the margins and contested the artificial divisions that discount their humanity. If we gather enough of us and reclaim those margins, a new world may be born where no one is an exile.
