【上】长城实现了它的既定目标吗？

Paul Denlinger, US_2016 = Germany_1933
The Great Wall of China is made up of several different sections which were constructed at different times.
There were different purposes at different times.
The most recent construction was made during the Ming dynasty, and consisted of lixed watchtowers which allowed troops to be moved easily.

中国的长城是由几个不同的部分组成，它们是在不同的时期建造的。
不同的时期，建长城的目标是不一样的。
最新建造的长城，是明朝时期的，它由相互连接的瞭望塔组成，方便军队移动。

Donghwan Kim, College Student. Korean Canadian.
Tactical success but strategic failure
The Great Wall is one of the greatest military complex in history. It was unbreached for a thousand years, even when the empire was near its death.
But the Great Wall is similar to the Maginot Line: tactical success but strategic failure. The Maginot Line enforced France a purely defensive strategy, and France was unable to stop Germany until she became unstoppable. And when Germany did invade, she simply went around. The better option would've been investing in larger army instead, which can be used to immediately invade Germany as soon as she militarize.
The similar fate happened to Jin dynasty. Jin dynasty failed to stop Mongols from becoming too strong, and when Mongols invaded they simply bypassed the Great Wall.
The best counter was seen in the Han-Xiongnu war. Instead of relying on the Great Wall, Han invaded Xiongnu when Han was stronger. After decades of war, Ham finally prevailed and Xiongnu threat was eliminated.

战术上成功了，但是战略上失败了。
长城是世界上最伟大的军事设施之一。直到帝国快灭亡的时候，它延续了上千年。
长城类似于马奇诺防线：战术上是成功的，战略上是失败的。马奇诺防线迫使法国采用了纯粹防御的战略，直到德国变得非常强大的时候，法国才无法阻挡德国。德国入侵的时候，法国只能这边跑跑那边转转。当时法国有更好的选择，那就是花巨资打造更大规模的军队，当法国实现军事化的时候，她就可以进犯德国了。
类似的命运还发生在中国金朝。金朝没能阻止蒙古人变得强大起来，蒙古人入侵金的时候，他们只是简简单单地绕过了长城。
最好的反击出现在汉匈战争中。汉朝没有依赖长城，在自己强大的时候打了匈奴。经过几十年的战争，汉朝最终胜利了，匈奴的威胁也就消除了。

Xuan Su, There is your truth, my truth and what really happened. This is my truth.
No. The Great Wall was not a failure at all.
To understand the point, all you need to do is look at the only major Chinese dynasty that did NOT have control of the great wall, Song dynasty.
When Song dynasty started, the northen mountain region where the Great Wall located were already lost to the Khitan during the previous dynasties. They never managed to fully recover the region. So to defend their northern border, they had to build massive number of fortifications in the plain area, maintain a standing army of more than a million, and offer peace payment of hundreds thousands of coins and silk. The massive financial burden of this military was a key reason for the dynasty’s failure.
Even then, when the Jurchens came, they easily ran through the defensive fortified regions straight to the Song’s capital, because there were simply too many open spaces for them to get through.
On the other hand, all of the other dynasties that had control of the wall, didn’t have to worry about such a long strike to nation’s capital. It’s only when the dynasties were in terminal decline, and border armies were increasingly drawn down to fight in the interior that barbarians could break through.
So the Great Wall was incredibly successful. It allowed the dynasties that controlled it to defend the border with much less forces than otherwise would have required. Saving massive cost in military spending.

不。长城一点都不失败。
想要理解这一点，你只需要看看历史上没控制长城的朝代，宋朝。
宋朝建立的时候，长城所在的北部山区已经沦陷到了契丹手中，这个局面在前朝就已经形成了。宋朝人他们也从来没有完全收复过这些地区。为了保卫宋朝的北部边界，他们必须在平原地区建造大量的防御工事，维持一支超过100万人的常规军。为了买平安，他们还要向契丹提供几十万的银币和丝绸。
军事上造成的巨大财政负担，是宋朝灭亡的一个重要原因。甚至在那个时候，女真人打来的时候，他们轻易就越过了宋朝加强防守的区域，直奔宋朝的首都。之所以会这样，是因为宋朝没有长城，有太多的开阔地带供女真人通过了。
另一方面，那些控制了长城的朝代，就不必担心敌军对国家首都的长途奔袭了。只有当王朝衰落的时候，驻防边境的军队越来越多地被征调至内地作战，这个时候蛮夷才能突破长城防线。
所以，长城是非常成功的。它让控制了长城的王朝，可以用比原本需要的少的多的兵力，就能保卫边界，这让王朝在军事上面节省了大量的开支。

Yevgeniy Leto
To defend against nomadic incursions and it worked, at least for a long time. China was a (relatively) rich agriculture society that faced periodic nomadic invasions big and small. China had the numbers, but they were not good soldiers. Agriculture culture was at a sever disadvantage against nomadic people when it comes to warfare—they don’t kill for a living and they are not very mobile. Wall was the best option under the circumstance. Europeans recognized that too, so they built castles. The Great Wall is just a castle in grand scale.

至少在很长一段时间以内，长城在抵御游牧民族入侵方面，发挥了很大作用。中国是一个相对富裕的农业社会，面对着周期性的大大小小的游牧民族入侵。中国有大量的人口，但他们不是好的战士。农业文明面对游牧民族的时候，有个非常严重的缺点：他们不需要为了生存去杀人，他们也没什么流动性。在这种情况下，高墙就成为了最好的选择。欧洲人也认识到了这一点，所以他们建造了城堡。长城只是一座规模宏大的城堡罢了。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Dan Gall, worked at Canadian Armed Forces (1972-1997)
The Great Wall was a series of walls, not one long wall. It was designed to slow down and funnel raiders into specific areas so the military could defeat them. Most of the wall was unmanned, only being occupied when there was a raid, the troops would man the wall so the raiders could not withdraw.
It discouraged raids into China, and worked well for that purpose.

长城是一系列的高墙，而不是一堵长长的墙。它设计的目的是为了减缓敌军的进攻速度，让敌军在特定区域进入漏斗状的包围圈，以便击败他们。大多数城墙是没人看守的，只有在敌军进犯的时候，军队才会登上城墙，让入侵者无法撤退。
长城阻止了敌军对中国的入侵，在这个目标上，它发挥了良好的作用。

Tianle Yuan, exploring quora
I just want to add one point. the great wall is only useful when the chinese government was relatively powerful and the society prosperous. they can utilized to effectively as a warning and first line defense system. it can serve lixs and places where local populations to gather safely.
however, when times were tough the great wall seldomly prevented the tides, i am afraid.

我只想指出一点。长城只有在中国政府相对强大、社会相对繁荣的时候才会发挥作用。那个时候，他们可以利用长城作为预警系统和一线防御的系统，也可以为当地人提供赶集的安全地点。然而，在艰难的时代，长城恐怕很少能阻止敌军的入侵。

Yuxiao Xu, studied at Zhejiang University
I think the answer is "Yes".
Just look at the map of China：
The green part are the plains and the yellow circle is the common main areas controlled by ancient china dynasties. Three main capital cities (Beijing, Xian and Bianliang)are marked with red points and the Great wall is the black line.
It can be found that the dominion of China is circled by oceans from east and south. Additionally, there exists lots of mountains in the south-west. Both mountains and oceans are not easy to get through in the ancient and the enemies from east, south and west will not be a great threaten.
The only threaten is the nomads from the north and this threaten lasts for over 2000 years. And just look at the red points which refer to the main capital cities, they are so close to the north. Under this condition when the only threaten is from the North and the capitals are so close to the nomads, the Great Wall is necessary no matter how much it costs.

我认为答案是肯定的。
只要看看中国的地图：
绿色的部分是平原地区，黄色的圈圈是中国古代各朝控制的主要区域。三个主要的都城（北京、西安、汴梁）标注了红点，长城是图上的黑线。
可以发现，中国领土的东面和南面都是大海，西南部分还有很多山。在古代时期，山和海都不容易跨越，所以来自东面、南面和西面的敌人，不会构成太大的威胁。
唯一的威胁就是来自北方的游牧民族，这种威胁持续了2000多年。看看那些红色的点，那都是古代中国的主要的都城，它们离北方都很近。在这种情况下，唯一的威胁来自北方，首都又如此接近游牧民族，所以无论长城的建造成本有多高，它都是有必要存在的。

After building this great architecture, the Great Wall has indeed acted as an important role in defense:
1. Protect the heart of the empire. It is shown in the figure above that if the nomads go across the Great Wall, there is no tenable defense positions. The remaining way to the capitals are all plains, which is fit for rapid advance of cavalry. And because of the lack of horses, the cavalry of China is an absolute disadvantage.
2. Efficiently resistance of nomads. The advantage of nomads is the strong cavalry, but their technology is backward and has little method to climb over the wall. The Great Wall indeed seriously resist the march of nomads.
3. Military surveillance and transportation. The Great Wall is always built along the mountain ridge which is hard to go across. The gate tower in the wall can be used for surveillance and the relative flat path in the wall reduce the difficulty of military transportation. For the enemy under the wall, it's much harder for them to move as fast as the defenders since they have to go across mountains.
4. Indeed, it should be noted that the Great Wall is seldom broken through in the history.(The easiest way to capture a fortress is from within).This great architecture did fulfill its intended purpose.

建造这个伟大的建筑以后，长城确实起到了重要的防御作用：
1、保卫了帝国的心脏。正如上图显示的那样，如果游牧民族越过了长城，中国就无险可守了。剩下的通往都城的路，都是平原地形，非常适合骑兵的快速推进。由于缺乏马匹，中国的骑兵处于绝对的劣势地位。
2、有效地抵抗了游牧民族。游牧民族的优势在于他们有着强大的骑兵，但是他们的技术落后，几乎没办法翻过长城。长城确实抵抗了游牧民族的进军。
3、军事监督和兵力运输。长城一直都是沿着较难穿越的山脊建造的。墙上的塔楼可以用来监视敌人，墙内相对平坦的道路减少了军事运输的难度。对于墙下的敌人来说，他们很难像防守者那样快速地移动，因为他们还要翻山越岭。
4、确实应该指出，长城在历史上很少被突破。（夺取城堡的最简单的方法，是从内部突破）。这个伟大的建筑确实实现了它当初的目标。

Sophie
There were great walls both in Qin dynasty and Ming dynasty throughout Chinese hostory.They were built to defend the border against invasion.The main purpose of the Great Wall of Qin was to defend the Hun,that is Xiongnu,an ancient nationality in China,thus allowing the authority to have more time and army to react and attack.And it worked at that time.But when it came to Han dynasty,it had failed to act as a defence.Whether it worked or not somehow depends on the authority and what they had made of it. As for the Great Wall of Ming,which has remained well today,it was built to protect the country from the attack of nomads of the North.But that's not the only purpose.It also helped with the development and economy in that area as well as the harmony of the country.And it also fulfilled the intention,I suppose.Hope this helps,but I'm not a history major and certainy not pro,so ...

纵观中国历史，秦明两代都有修建长城。它们都是为了保卫边界抵御侵略修建的。
秦朝长城的主要目的是为了抵御匈奴（中国古代境内的一个游牧民族），长城的存在，让秦朝政府和秦朝军队有了更多的应对时间，从而发动进攻。在那个时候，它确实起到了作用。但是到汉朝的时候，它的防御就没什么作用了。长城是否起作用，取决于当时的政府如何利用它。
至于明朝的长城，它至今保存完好，它也是为了保护国家免遭北方游牧民族的袭击。但那不是它唯一的目的。它也促进了当地的经济发展，实现了国家的和谐。所以我认为它也实现了当初的意图。希望我的回答能对你有所帮助，我不是历史专业的，回答肯定不专业，所以（多包涵）……