【TED】是一个会议的名称,它是英文technology, entertainment, design三个单词的首字母缩写。TED是社会各界精英交流的盛会,它鼓励各种创新思想的展示、碰撞。


Martin Jacques
Martin Jacques is the author of "When China Rules the World," and a columnist for the Guardian and New Statesman. He was a co-founder of the think tank Demos.

三个基础理解中国:文明国邦,而非民族国家;汉民族为主体;家长式的政府管理


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Hints:
implication
civilizational
Chinese
guanxi
decentralized
Europe
Roman Empire
China
Now what is extraordinary about this is, what gives China it's sense of being China, what gives the Chinese the sense of what it is to be Chinese, comes not from the last hundred years, not from the nation state period, which is what happened in the West, but from the period, if you like, of the civilization state. I'm thinking here, for example, of customs like ancestral worship, of a very distinctive notion of the state, likewise, a very distinctive notion of the family, social relationships like guanxi, Confucian values and so on. These are all things that come from the period of the civilization state. In other words, China, unlike the Western states and most countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of civilization, its existence as a civilization state, rather than as a nation state. And there's one other thing to add to this, and that is this: Of course we know China's big, huge, demographically and geographically, with a population of 1.3 billion people. What we often aren't really aware of is the fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic, and in many ways very decentralized. You can't run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case. It's never been the case. So this is China, a civilization state, rather than a nation state. And what does it mean? Well I think it has all sorts of profound implications. I'll give you two quick ones. The first is that the most important political value for the Chinese is unity, is the maintenance of Chinese civilization. You know, 2,000 years ago, Europe: breakdown, the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire .It divided, and it's remained divided ever since. China, over the same time period, went in exactly the opposite direction, very painfully holding this huge civilization, civilization state together.
这点非同寻常的 是,它赋予了中国做为中国的意义, 也赋予了中国人 成为他们中国人的意义, 这不是从过去几百年, 也不是从民族国家开始形成这种认识, 这跟西方发展也不一样, 而这一阶段,如果你喜欢, 可以说是文明国家的阶段。 我想到这儿,举个例子吧, 传统习惯例如:对祖先的崇拜, 非常有特色的国家概念, 诸如此类的,非常有特色的家庭观念, 社交关系如关系, 儒家价值观等等。 所有这些事都来自于 文明国家的阶段。 换言之,中国不像世界上的西方国家和多数国家, 它由它自身文明所形成, 它是作为一个文明国家 而不是一个民族国家而存在的。 还有另一件事要加进来,这就是: 当然我们知道中国是幅员辽阔,人口众多, 在人口统计和地理上都是首屈一指, 它有13亿人口。 我们常常没关注的 事实是 中国也是极其多样化 和非常多元化的, 在许多方面甚至权力是非常分散化的。 尽管我们认为不能仅从北京中央政府来管理这庞大规模的国家, 我们以为会是这样, 但从来都不是这样。 所以这才是中国,一个文明国家, 而不是一个民族国家。 那这意味着什么呢? 那么我想这有很多种深刻的含义。 我会给你两个简短介绍。 第一个是 中国人最主要的政治价值观 是统一, 用来维护 中华文明。 大家知道,2000年前,欧洲: 灭亡,神圣罗马帝国[罗马帝国]的分裂。 从那时到现在,它不断地分裂。 在同一时间段,中国 却有着完全相反的方向, 非常艰难地维系着这种强大的统一文明, 把文明国家统一在一起。