Thirty-Five Imperial Centuries

二、三千五百年帝国史


The Qin First Emperor never claimed to be China’s very first ruler. He probably saw himself as renewing and improving a very old pattern of Imperial power. His title describes him as ‘First Sovereign Qin Emperor’, with the expectation that the new dynasty would be at least as long-lasting as the earlier Xia, Shang and Chou. His heirs were to be Second Qin Emperor, Third Qin Emperor etc. – but both were short-lived and the Third was also the last.

秦始皇从未自称是中国的第一个统治者。他可能认为自己是在改进一个非常古老的帝国权力模式。他的头衔将他描述为“秦始皇”，期望新王朝至少能像早期的夏、商、周一样长久。他的继承人有秦二世、秦三世等，但都是短命的，而秦三世也是最后一任。

Chinese tradition as we know it today was handed down to us via the official histories of the Han dynasty, which re-unified China after a period of chaos in which the Qin were overthrown. This Han version spoke of three earlier dynasties: the Xia, Shang and Chou. The Shang used to be viewed as legendary, but have long since been proven to exist. We can even read their writing in the ‘oracle bones’ that I mentioned earlier. Shang writing is also not a primitive scxt: it looks sophisticated and must have had a long history behind it. The Xia Dynasty that supposedly existed before the Shang may also turn out to be real: that is still being debated.[H]

我们今天所知道的中国传统是通过汉朝的官方历史传给我们的，汉朝在推翻秦朝的一段混乱时期后重新统一了中国。汉代的版本记载了更早的三个朝代:夏、商、周。商朝曾经被认为是一个传奇，但很久以前就被证明是存在的。我们甚至可以在我之前提到的甲骨文中读到他们的文字。商代的文字也不是原始的文字:它看起来很复杂，背后一定有很长的历史。据说在商朝之前就存在的夏朝也可能是真实的，这仍在争论中。

China was the last-emergent of the four great River Valley civilisations in which the main concepts of civilisation were standardised and popularised. Oldest of all is Mesopotamia, though its city-states may have been inspired by even older cities nearby – Catal Huyuk in Anatolia is the most ancient we have so far found.

中国是四大河谷文明中最后一个出现的，四大文明这一概念得到了标准化和普及。最古老的是美索不达米亚，尽管它的城邦可能是受到附近更古老的城市的启发——安纳托利亚的加泰土丘（Catal Huyuk）是迄今为止我们发现的最古老的。
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Mesopotamia as it existed more than 7000 years ago made urban life stable and sustainable. Both Egypt and the Indus Valley civilisation used crops developed in Mesopotamia: ancient China shows much less sign of direct influence and had crops of its own, millet and later rice derived directly from East Asian wild plants. There was probably outside inspiration: Chinese legends have a series of heroic figures before the Xia Dynasty, inventors of the arts of civilisation. Fascinating figures like the Yellow Emperor, a sage-king who was both a successful military leader and the inventor of medicine, and is credited as the ancestor of all Han Chinese.
(It is interesting to note that Chinese legends show the early rulers as primarily creators of a new way of life. Only secondarily generals or warriors, if indeed they fought at all. For most Chinese, war was only admired if it created peace.)

7000多年前的美索不达米亚使城市生活稳定而可持续。埃及文明和印度河流域文明都使用了在美索不达米亚发展起来的农作物:古代中国受美索不达米亚的直接影响要小得多，而且有自己的农作物，小米和后来的水稻，两者都直接来自东亚的野生植物。当然也可能有一些来自域外的灵感：在夏朝之前，中国传说中有一系列英雄人物，他们是文明艺术的发明者。黄帝是一个伟大的人物，他是一位成功的军事领袖，同时也是药物的发明者，被认为是所有汉人的祖先。有趣的是，中国的传说表明，早期的统治者主要是一种新的生活方式的创造者。即便他们真的打过仗，将军或战士与否都是次要的。对大多数中国人来说，只有当战争能带来和平，才会受到赞赏。

China also remained a single slow-changing civilisations with no sharp breaks before the 20th century. Egypt and Mesopotamia both fell to outside conquerors and cultural continuity was lost. Two centuries ago, no one could read the Egyptian hieroglyphs or the various Mesopotamian scxts and languages. They remained mysterious until modern Europeans began investigating them. Both Egypt and Mesopotamia (Iraq) now define themselves as Arab and Muslim.

在20世纪之前，中国也是唯一一个变化缓慢的文明。埃及和美索不达米亚都被外来的征服者征服了，文化的连续性也丧失了。两个世纪以前，没人能读懂埃及的象形文字，也没人能读懂美索不达米亚的各种文字和语言。直到现代欧洲人开始研究它们，才逐渐揭开神秘面纱。埃及和美索不达米亚(伊拉克)现在都把自己定义为阿拉伯人和穆斯林。

Egypt’s first dynasty is traditionally dated to 3100 BC, and its traditions were broken when the Ptolemaic dynasty ended with the death of Cleopatra 7th and her son Caesarean in 30 BC. The tradition had been damaged by the Greek conquest of Egypt, but the Ptolemaic rulers used many Egyptian forms. These were retained even when they came under the domination of Rome. But Octavian’s defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra was followed by Egypt’s absorption as a province of the Roman Empire. So that makes thirty-one centuries.

埃及的第一个王朝传统上可以追溯到公元前3100年，随着公元前30年克利奥帕特拉七世因剖腹产手术而死亡，托勒密王朝结束，这个传统被打破了。原本这个传统已经被希腊对埃及的征服所破坏，但是托勒密统治者保留了许多埃及形式。即使在罗马统治下，这些也被保留了下来。但是屋大维击败安东尼和克利奥帕特拉之后，埃及被罗马帝国收归为一个省。所以算下来也有3100年了。

China could be said to have existed from around 2000 BC if you accept the Xia dynasty as historic. But since this is disputed, I’ll start from 1600 BC, the Shang Dynasty. This tradition lasted with various breaks till the abdication of the last Manchu emperor in February 1912, which makes at least thirty-five centuries. Shang ideograms are the direct ancestors of the ideograms used today. The language they spoke is the ancestor of today’s Standard Chinese (Mandarin) and of the various Chinese dialects, some of which are thought to be closer to the original.

如果你认为夏朝是有历史意义的，那么中国可以说是从公元前2000年左右就存在了。但由于这是有争议的，我将从公元前1600年的商朝开始。这一传统一直持续到最后一个满族皇帝1912年2月退位，这至少延续了35个世纪。商代的表意文字是今天使用的（汉语）表意文字的直系祖先。他们所说的语言是今天的标准汉语(普通话)和各种中国方言的祖先，其中一些被认为更接近于原始语言。

The only major culture that might be older is India. The Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization dates back to 3300 BC, much older than similar developments in what is now China. But the cultural and social continuity of the Harappans with Hindu civilisation is disputed. The political system and history is unknown, but there is a notable lack of buildings that appear to be palaces or temples, suggesting no kings or priests raised above the general population. (I say more about this in an appendix to this article.)

唯一可能更古老的主要文化是印度。印度河流域或哈拉帕文明可以追溯到公元前3300年，比现在中国的类似发展要古老得多。但哈拉帕人与印度文明的文化和社会延续性存在争议。政治制度和历史是未知的，且明显缺乏宫殿或寺庙建筑，这表明没有国王或祭司凌驾于大众之上。我将在本文的附录中详细说明这一点。

Even if Indian civilisation should turn out to be old, China is remarkable for having repeatedly unified its civilisation as a single powerful state.

即使印度文明被证明是古老的，中国也因反复将其文明统一为一个强大的国家而引人注目。

Ancient China seems to have emerged by the merger of several similar but distinct traditions in the north-east of the current People’s Republic. Kingdoms found mostly along the Yellow River, with an extension down to the Yangtze. Whatever they were, they were definitely unified under the Shang and Chou. Remained similar enough for the Qin and Han conquest to be seen as a reunification of people who belonged together.

古代中国似乎是由现今人民共和国东北部（华北）几个相似但不同的传统合并而成的。王国主要分布在黄河沿岸，一直延伸到长江。无论他们过去是谁，他们肯定是统一在商、周的统治下。它们的相似之处足以让秦汉的征服被看作是对同一群人的统一。
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The modern Han people are more a cultural than an ethnic unit: they cross the divide between the wider Northern Mongolian and Southern Mongolian ethnic groups. North Chinese have more in common genetically with Koreans and Japanese than with South Chinese, who resemble the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians.

现代的汉民族与其说是一个民族单位，不如说是一个文化单位:他们跨越了更广泛的北方种族和南方种族之间的鸿沟。……

Only culture lixed the bundle of ethnic groups who became the core of China. But the culture of the ‘Yellow Empire’ was a very powerful one, the most successful large-scale solution to the problems of running a non-industrial civilisation.

只有文化才能联结其成为中国核心的族群。“黄帝之国”的文化是一个非常强大的文化，它是解决非工业文明运行问题的最成功的大规模解决方案。

The difficulties of the process are often underestimated. Things that we now take for granted had to be painfully evolved. The first cities led on to what I’ll call an Advanced Agricultural Civilisation, a state that combines a number of cities and the countryside between them. They began in the Neolithic: there was often much more continuity between the Neolithic beginning and their various Bronze Age and Iron Age successors than between different civilisations that used the same metal technology.

这一过程的困难往往被低估。我们现在认为理所当然的事物都经历了痛苦的进化。第一个城市导致了我所谓的高级农业文明，一个由许多城市和它们之间的乡村组成的国家。它们开始于新石器时代:新石器时代的开端与其各种后继者——青铜时代和铁器时代之间的延续性，往往比使用相同金属技术的不同文明之间的延续性要大得多。

Archaic China had a reasonably good social organisation during its Bronze Age, the days of the Shang and Chou. In the later and more warlike Iron Age, first the Qin and then the Han managed to upxe this tradition to something much richer economically and more formidable militarily. Their state existed at the same time as that of the heirs of Alexander and then the Roman Empire, but in as far as we can estimate from archaeology, China was larger and better organised. The two gigantic Empires were separate by thousands of miles of steppe and mountain and so never clashed, but in terms of trade China was the stronger. China caused a drain of precious metals from the Roman Empire to pay for luxuries like silk.

古代中国在商周的青铜器时代有相当良好的社会组织。在后来更加好战的铁器时代，先是秦朝，然后汉朝成功地将这一传统进一步发展，使得经济上更加富裕，军事上更加强大。他们的国家与亚历山大王朝和罗马帝国的后继者同时存在，但根据考古学的估计，中国更大，也更有组织。这两个巨大的帝国被数千英里的草原和山脉分开，因此从未发生冲突，但在贸易方面，中国更强大。中国耗尽了罗马帝国的贵重金属，用于购买中国丝绸等奢侈品。

China also did not see the radical shifts in culture that happened in West Asia, Mesopotamian to Persian to Macedonian-Greek to Latin-Roman, reverting to Romanised Greek when Constantine shifted the Empire’s capital to Byzantium. And then getting disrupted in turn by the Arab / Muslim conquest. And finally the Turks – originally from the fringes of China – invading and making their own empires which lasted into the 20th century.

在中国也没有看到在西亚发生的文化巨变:美索不达米亚到波斯，到马其顿-希腊到拉丁-罗马，当君士坦丁把帝国的首都移到拜占庭时，又回到罗马化的希腊。然后又被阿拉伯/穆斯林的征服所扰乱。最后，来自中国边缘的突厥人入侵并建立了他们自己的帝国，一直持续到20世纪。

Chinese rulers in the 19th century could look back to more than two thousand years of successful government. Not a static society, but a society where any literate individual could read books written centuries in the past without the need for translations. Where past examples were considered very relevant to modern problems.

19世纪的中国统治者可以回顾两千多年来成功的政府。这不是一个静态的社会，而是一个任何有文化的人都可以阅读几百年前写的书而不需要翻译的社会。在这里，过去的案例被认为与现代问题密切相关。

But while it was not static, it was also not a society that could compete with Europe after Europe’s development of science and modern industry. Modern Europe’s rate of change and progress was much faster and more dramatic than anything the world had previously seen.

但是，虽然它不是静止的，但在欧洲发展了科学和现代工业之后，它也不是一个可以与欧洲竞争的社会。现代欧洲的变化和进步速度比世界上以往所见的任何事物都要快得多、更引人注目得多。

If you have a delivery business that relies on horse-drawn carts, you probably go out of business if someone introduces lories. It’s not that the horse-drawn carts are any worse than they used to be: they have just been overtaken. Likewise China had accumulated significant inventions over the centuries, but maybe no more than two or three per century. Suddenly Europe was producing dozens of significant inventions per decade, and was also constantly re-inventing itself without much thought for the consequences. China could not match that without breaking itself apart and wholly remoulding itself. No ruler before Mao was able or willing to do this.

如果你的快递业务依赖于马车，如果有人引入卡车，你可能就会破产。这并不是说马车比过去更糟糕了:它们只是被赶超了。同样，中国在过去多个世纪里积累了重大发明，但每个世纪可能不会超过两到三项。突然间，欧洲每十年就会产生几十项重大发明，而且还在不断地自我改造，而没有过多考虑其后果。如果中国不分裂自己又不愿彻底改造自己，就无法与之匹敌。在49年之前，没有一个统治者能够或愿意这样做。

18th century Europe was slow to recognise its advantage. Europeans in those days mostly saw China as an admirable place. In The Wealth Of Nations – a book more often cited than read carefully – Adam Smith praised it as an advanced and rational Empire, while also noting the poverty of its lower orders:

18世纪的欧洲对其优势认识缓慢。当时的欧洲人大多认为中国是一个令人钦佩的地方。在《国富论》一书中，亚当·斯密称赞它是一个先进而理性的帝国，同时也注意到下层社会的贫穷:

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe, and the difference between the price of subsistence in China and in Europe is very great. Rice in China is much cheaper than wheat is any where in Europe.[J]

“中国是一个比欧洲任何地方都富裕得多的国家，中国和欧洲的生活价格之间的差异非常大。中国的大米比欧洲任何地方的小麦都便宜。

In China, a country much richer than any part of Europe, the value of precious metals is much higher than in any part of Europe. As the wealth of Europe, indeed, has increased greatly since the discovery of the mines of America, so the value of gold and silver has gradually diminished.[K]

在中国这个比欧洲任何地方都富裕得多的国家，贵金属的价值也比欧洲任何地方都要高。事实上，自从发现美洲矿藏以来，欧洲的财富大大增加了，因此黄金和白银的价值逐渐下降了。
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The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan [sic] accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects in Europe… in manufacturing art and industry, China and Indostan, though inferior, seem not to be much inferior to any part of Europe. The money price of the greater part of manufactures, therefore, will naturally be much lower in those great empires than it is any-where in Europe.[L]

因此，在中国或印度斯坦(原文如此)，一个贵族的随从，根据所有人的说法，要比欧洲最富有的臣民的随从多得多，也漂亮得多……在制造艺术和工业方面，中国和印度斯坦虽然落后，但似乎并不比欧洲任何地方差多少。因此，这些大帝国大部分产品的货币价格自然会比欧洲任何地方都低得多。

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. It had perhaps, even long before his time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire…The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe.

长期以来，中国一直是世界上最富有的国家之一，也就是说，是世界上最肥沃、最善耕种、最勤劳、人口最多的国家之一。然而，它似乎是长期静止不动的。马可波罗在五百多年前访问过这里，他描述了这里的耕种、工业和人口，几乎和今天的旅行者描述的一样。也许在他之前，中国就已经获得了法律和制度所允许的全部财富……中国下层人民的贫困程度远远超过了欧洲最贫穷的国家。”

Adam Smith was wrong in thinking that China had been static since the days of Marco Polo. It had achieved a much bigger population, and the poverty he notes may have been due to this. But he correctly puts 18th century China and India on a level with Europe:

亚当·斯密认为中国自马可波罗时代以来就停滞不前，这是错误的。他指出，中国的人口数量要大得多，而贫困可能就是由于这个原因。但他正确地将18世纪的中国和印度与欧洲相提并论:

As through the greater part of Europe, the church, so in many different countries of Asia, the state, is principally supported by a land-tax, proportioned, not to the rent, but to the produce of the land. In China, the principal revenue of the sovereign consists in a tenth part of the produce of all the lands of the empire. This tenth part, however, is estimated so very moderately, that, in many provinces, it is said not to exceed a thirtieth part of the ordinary produce. The land-tax or land rent which used to be paid to the Mahometan [sic] government of Bengal, before that country fell into the hands of the English East India Company, is said to have amounted to about a fifth part of the produce. The land-tax of ancient Egypt is said likewise to have amounted to a fifth part.

“就像欧洲的大部分地区一样，亚洲的许多国家也是如此，国家的主要支柱是土地税，它不是按地租的比例，而是按土地产量的比例（来计算的）。在中国，君主的主要收入占帝国所有土地产量的十分之一。然而，这十分之一的产量估计得很适中，在许多省份，据说不超过普通产量的三十分之一。在孟加拉落入英国东印度公司手中之前，付给孟加拉伊斯兰教政府的地税或地租, 据说已经达到了大约五分之一的产量。古埃及的土地税据说也达到了五分之一。

In Asia, this sort of land-tax is said to interest the sovereign in the improvement and cultivation of land. The sovereigns of China, those of Bengal while under the Mahometan government, and those of ancient Egypt, are said accordingly to have been extremely attentive to the making and maintaining of good roads and navigable canals, in order to increase, as much as possible, both the quantity and value of every part of the produce of the land, by procuring to every part of it the most extensive market which their own dominions could afford. The tithe of the church is divided into such small portions, that no one of its proprietors can have any interest of this kind. The parson of a parish could never find his account in making a road or canal to a distant part of the country, in order to extend the market for the produce of his own particular parish. Such taxes, when destined for the maintenance of the state, have some advantages which may serve in some measure to balance their inconveniency. When destined for the maintenance of the church, they are attended with nothing but inconveniency.

在亚洲，这种土地税据说是为了让主权国家对改善和耕种土地感兴趣。据说，中国的君主，在穆罕默德统治时期的孟加拉君主，以及古埃及的君主，都非常注意修建和维护良好的道路和可通航的运河, 为了尽可能地增加土地每一部分产品的数量和价值，为每一部分土地提供他们自己的领土所能提供的最广泛的市场。……”

The New Right idolised Adam Smith, but don’t seem to actually read him. Or else they self-censor what they read to avoid ‘off-message’ facts. One fellow has a whole book about Adam Smith and makes many references to China, but avoids all the insights that I’ve quoted.[O] He has just a rather trivial quote in which Smith speaks about the excellence of China’s roads and navigable canals, along with a note suggesting that is tourist exaggeration. If you know the basics of British economic history, you’d know that British inland transport was indeed lousy in the 18th century, despite a wave of canal-building. China from ancient times had the Grand Canal, generally reckoned as the world’s longest, stretching more than a thousand miles from Hangzhou south of modern Shanghai as far as Beijing in the north.

新右翼崇拜亚当·斯密，但似乎并没有真正读过他的书。或者，他们会自我审查自己阅读的内容，以避免“离题的事实”。有一个人写了一本关于亚当·斯密的书，他在书中多次提到中国，但他回避了我引用的所有观点。他只是引用了史密斯关于中国优秀道路和可通航运河的一段相当琐碎的话，并指出这是游客的夸大。如果你了解英国经济史的基础知识，你就会知道18世纪英国的内陆运输确实很糟糕，尽管有一波运河建设热潮。而中国自古就有大运河，被普遍认为是世界上最长的运河，从现在的上海以南的杭州绵延一千多英里，一直到北边的北京。

Adam Smith is supposedly the foundation of the New Right world-view. But he said a lot of things that are not compatible with the New Right view, including recognising 18th century China as richer than Europe. The logic of such a recognition is that the Opium Wars and the forcible opening-up of China were acts of vandalism, done at a time when Chinese had no reason to think that European ways were better than theirs. You could make an excellent case that China would have adjusted to Western ways better if they’d been given time to observe and change, especially since the Manchu Dynasty was moribund and would probably have fallen in the 20th century even if the West had kept its distance. Violent intervention was not inevitable, nor always seen as desirable by Europeans. The philosopher Kant saw China and Japan as interesting alternatives, while Napoleon famously saw China as a ‘sleeping giant’, best left alone.

亚当·斯密被认为是新右翼世界观的基础。但他说了很多不符合新右翼观点的东西，包括承认18世纪的中国比欧洲更富有。这种认识的逻辑是，鸦片战争和中国的强制开放是一种破坏行为，当时中国人没有理由认为欧洲的方式比他们的好。你可以提出一个很好的例子，比如，如果中国有时间去观察和改变，他们会更好地适应西方的方式，特别是在满清王朝垂死挣扎的20世纪，即使西方保持距离，也可能会自我灭亡。暴力干预并非不可避免，欧洲人也并不总是认为这是可取的。哲学家康德认为中国和日本是有趣的选择，而拿破仑认为中国是一个“沉睡的巨人”，最好不要去管它。

It would have taken no great ingenuity for someone on the New Right to give such an approach a pro-capitalist ‘spin’. They might say that the interests of the monopolistic opium-producing East India Company had been foolishly put ahead of a healthy growth of home-grown capitalism in China. But the New Right are very much rooted in the Anglo history. Most of them are reluctant to accept that Anglos were ever less than perfect, even when their own background is something else. Shrewder people might have seen the advantage of admitting some faults in order to win over people from different cultural backgrounds – yet the New Right also have to keep up their alliance with the Old Right. To be politically powerful they need the votes and general confidence of people who are often ex-Colonial and/or Christian bigots, people who are quite certain that Anglos were always virtuous and clever. Rather than admit ‘off-message facts’ to the hallowed sanctum of ‘recent research by reliable sources’, all of the New Rightist I’ve come across preferred to ignore or deny anything than might offend Anglo prejudices.

对于新右翼来说，给这种方法提供一个亲资本主义的视角并不需要多大的创造力。他们可能会说，垄断鸦片生产的东印度公司的利益被愚蠢地置于中国本土资本主义的健康发展之上。但新右翼在很大程度上植根于英国历史。他们中的大多数人都不愿意认同“盎格鲁人完美无缺”，即便自己也是盎格鲁人。更精明的人可能已经看到了承认一些错误以赢得来自不同文化背景的人的好处——但新右翼也必须保持他们与旧右翼的联盟。要想在政治上强大，他们需要前殖民主义和/或基督教偏执狂的选票和普遍的信心，这些人非常肯定盎格鲁人总是善良和聪明的。我所遇到的所有新右翼人士都宁愿忽略或否认任何可能冒犯盎格鲁偏见的事情，也不愿向“可靠来源的最新研究”这一神圣的圣地承认“离题的事实”。

The New Right also favor a ‘Post-Truthful’ approach, a doctrine they probably picked up from some of the less-effective Western Marxists who were operating in the confusion of the 1970s. This philosophical mishmash, which is a direct opposite of Marx’s own Historic Materialism, tends towards a view that things you don’t observe don’t actually exist. This might seem puzzling to anyone who’d ever stubbed their foot on a stone they hadn’t thought was there, or eaten or drunk something they thought was fit for human consumption and turned out otherwise. It would also make it difficult to understand how you can get lost while reading a map that you believe to be correct. Put baldly, the doctrine is obvious nonsense. It tends to be put more subtly by its practitioners.

新右翼还喜欢采用“后真理式”的方法，他们可能是从一些效率较低的西方马克思主义者那里学来的，这些人在上世纪70年代的混乱中风靡一时。这种哲学上的大杂烩，与马克思自己的历史唯物主义正好相反，倾向于一种观点，即你没有观察到的东西实际上并不存在。这可能会让那些曾经踩到过自己认为不存在的石头，或者吃过、喝过自己认为适合人类食用的东西，但结果却不是这样的人感到困惑。这也会让你很难理解为什么你会在阅读你认为正确的地图时迷路。坦率地说，这种学说显然是胡说八道。它的实践者倾向于把它放在更微妙的地方。

Within the complexities of a human culture, it’s quite true that what people believe to be true can be at least as important as what is actually true. Fashions sprout and go to absurd lengths, once enough people decide that this is the ‘next big thing’. And in the world of finance, ‘Post-Truthfulism’ was a great success for many years, yielding millions to its practitioners. Reality stuck back in 2008, based on the minor detail that the actual material wealth of the world was considerably less than what people thought they owned. Ever since we have had austerity, seeking to reduce the real wealth spent on ordinary people and solidify the paper gains of the 1%.

在人类文化的复杂性中，人们认为正确的东西至少和实际正确的东西一样重要，这是很正确的。一旦有足够多的人认为这是“下一个大事件”，时尚就会萌芽并发展到荒谬的地步。在金融界，“后真理主义”多年来一直是一个巨大的成功，为其实践者带来了数百万美元的收益。现实停留在2008年，基于一个小细节:世界上实际的物质财富远远低于人们认为自己拥有的。自从我们实行紧缩政策以来，我们一直在试图减少用于普通人的实际财富，巩固那群1%的精英的账面收益。

To get back to China’s peculiar destiny, I’ll look again at why China took many decades before it could efficiently absorb Western knowledge. Why it needed Marxism-Leninism in order to create effective modern politics. And why it had ended up producing a hybrid that may prove better than the original.

为了回到中国独特的命运，我将再次审视为什么中国花了几十年的时间才有效地吸收西方知识。为什么它需要马克思列宁主义来创造有效的现代政治。以及为什么它最终诞生出了一种可能比原始思想更好的融合思想。
（未完待续）